THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY A 
 OF CALIFORtfl 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 MRS. VIRGINIA B. SPORER
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 MARY AGNES HAMILTON
 
 DEAD 
 YESTERDAY 
 
 AUTHOR OF "LESS THAN THE DUST," "YES" 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 "Unborn To-morrow and Dead Yesterday, 
 Why fret about them ..." 
 
 NEW YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 Copyright, 1916, 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 FEINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 2041958
 
 DEAD 
 YESTERDAY 
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 
 LONDON in August is a mistake, " said Ned Coventry, 
 relighting his pipe as he stretched himself in a yet more 
 comfortable attitude in the deep armchair and moved 
 his glass within easier reach. 
 
 No one seemed disposed to take up so obvious a truism. 
 Gertrude Fenner, curled up on the floor, was turning over the 
 pages of a weekly with contempt on her expressive face. She 
 was a small, dark creature, with angry eyes and a petulant, un- 
 happy mouth. 
 
 "London's always a mistake," she said. "I suppose you'd 
 say Berlin is better, Mallard?" She glanced at a pale under- 
 sized young man, with large gold spectacles and a bulging fore- 
 head, seated on the window-sill, his dangling short legs showing 
 large ugly boots and rumpled socks above them. 
 
 Mallard Floss did not reply, and Gertrude returned to her 
 paper. 
 
 Although all the windows were open, the air outside was 
 hot and breathless: over the room clouds of pipe and cigarette 
 smoke hung thick. Across the dull roar of London and the 
 sharper sounds of the horns of taxis speeding along Fleet Street, 
 came the boom of a distant clock. Half-past eleven. No one 
 stirred. They knew each other too well, these half-dozen, and 
 met too constantly to make social exertions at any time, and 
 on this particular evening no one seemed in the mood for 
 talk. 
 
 The evening had begun with a play. The play had been a 
 failure. Every one had been bored. Each member of the 
 party, irritated with the others for their share in an occasion 
 
 7
 
 8 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 which had not come off, refused to make the effort to appear 
 pleased which alone could have saved it. Leaving the theatre 
 in the middle of the third Act, quite regardless of the discomfort 
 of the other occupants of the pit, they had straggled out into the 
 smelly Strand and paused on the pavement, under a livid sky, 
 in doubt as to what to do next. They were bored with one 
 another; but no one seemed able to break up the party and go 
 home. Finally Nigel Strode had suggested drinks in his rooms 
 in the Temple, whither they had adjourned, only to relapse 
 there into a silence punctuated by occasional trivial remarks. 
 
 Chris Bampton, a fair girl with glasses, sitting at one end 
 of the sofa, stretched out a hand, murmuring, "Cigarettes." 
 The young man at the other end passed the box, lit and held out 
 a match without altering his own comfortable position. The 
 sharp light showed a face smooth, unlined, clean-shaven, that 
 offered few indications of type beyond the obvious English 
 public school and university: or of age, save that a slight 
 thickening of the jaw and pressure about the lips suggested that 
 Nigel Strode was not so young as his fair face and childlike 
 eyes made him appear to a casual glance. 
 
 Gertrude Fenner suddenly threw her paper on the ground. 
 
 "Poor stuff, isn't it?" she said, looking round. "I don't 
 think, Nigel, you're much of a journalist. " 
 
 Nigel only smiled. 
 
 "You'd like to be our dramatic critic, wouldn't you?" he 
 said easily. 
 
 Gertrude frowned, half closing her long prominent eyes, 
 and pushing forward her underhung jaw. She did not look 
 English; but as a matter of fact her parents, whom none of her 
 friends had seen, and whom she never mentioned, were well- 
 to-do retired tradespeople in Lancaster. Gertrude had left them 
 to go on the stage. She acted very badly, and after a few years 
 spent in doing old ladies on tour, she had, thanks to an acci- 
 dental conversation in a railway dining saloon, secured the 
 post of theatrical dress critic to a syndicate supplying suburban 
 and provincial papers. By this means she made a somewhat 
 precarious living. 
 
 "I could do a better column than this stuff on 'Magdalena'
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 9 
 
 anyhow," she jerked out. "The idea of talking of Royal 
 Carrington as a seer!" 
 
 "Oh, but," interposed Ned Coventry, sitting up, "that ar- 
 ticle is rich; isn't it there that they talk of the 'note of holiness' 
 in Carrington's stuff?" 
 
 "Yes," said Gertrude scornfully, picking up the discarded 
 paper and turning over the leaves. 
 
 "Something 'devout and beautiful, which leaves on the 
 mind of the spectator a profound impression of the mighty 
 forces at work in human life. ' ' Devout and beautiful, ' indeed! " 
 
 The others joined in Coventry's laugh, though Gertrude 
 continued to look savage. 
 
 "It's wonderful," he cried, "when one thinks of Royal Car- 
 rington as we know him, blaspheming against everything in 
 heaven and earth over too much champagne; talking so inde- 
 cently that it even makes me blush; an atheist without a belief 
 in God or man or anything except his own technique and its 
 s. d. equivalent. And it's not only the New World. I saw 
 another serious critique which noted how frequently the word 
 'holy' occurs in his work." 
 
 " Did he write the review himself, Nigel? " said Chris Bampton. 
 
 Nigel shook his head. 
 
 "Oh, no; it's quite genuine." 
 
 Dulness again descended. It was broken by the sudden 
 entry of another young man: a tall, thin, angular creature, 
 black haired and hot. His appearance produced a faint stir. 
 Every one looked up. 
 
 "Hullo, Jimmy any news?" ejaculated Gertrude Fenner, 
 her brow smoothening. 
 
 "Whiskey and soda on the side table," murmured Nigel. 
 
 Jimmy otherwise the Honourable Gervase O'Connor 
 acted on the hint. 
 
 "News?" he said, quickly accepting the character. "No, 
 nothing much. But I've saved you all from something. Met 
 Wellesley Drew outside. He wanted, as far as I could make 
 out he was hopelessly tight and not alone to come up. I 
 put him " 
 
 "Alone?" queried Gertrude.
 
 10 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "Yes, alone into a taxi and told the man to take him home. 
 I expect Lois 'd be glad to see him! " 
 
 "Oh, Lois, she wouldn't be at home," murmured Ned 
 Coventry. 
 
 Jimmy glanced at him quickly he was the ideal civil 
 servant in appearance, distinguished mainly by his perfect 
 boots and laughed. 
 
 "Drew told me something rather funny," he went on. 
 "Wilmot's done it again." 
 
 "Oh, Lord, " groaned Nigel. " Same lady? " 
 
 Jimmy laughed; he laughed constantly, but apparently 
 more from a nervous habit than from genuine mirth. 
 
 " Doesn't sound like her from Drew's description. He met 
 them in Paris. Drew swears she's Lady Lucilla something or 
 other, so Wilmot's Toryism seems to be taking shape. He really 
 has shaken off the Fabian dust this time. " 
 
 "Leaves that to Mrs. Wilmot," sighed Mallard Floss. 
 
 Nigel Strode got up and moved towards the window. 
 
 "They're all open, Nigel," cried Chris Bampton. 
 
 There was a short silence. Jimmy refilled his glass, empty- 
 ing the siphon, which emitted a pathetic squeak. 
 
 "Do you know," said Nigel slowly, as if he had been think- 
 ing hard, " I believe in the end that vice is really more tedious 
 than anything else. " 
 
 "Of course it is," cried Jimmy, turning round. His quick 
 indistinct utterance and rather loud voice contrasted strongly 
 with the dropping softness with which Nigel's words came out. 
 "It's the most boring thing there is. I don't know what one's 
 to do." He stared at the company in fierce interrogation. 
 "There's simply nothing left." 
 
 The girl on the sofa emitted a yawn. 
 
 "All right, Chris!" Jimmy turned on her. "We're all 
 in the same boat. " 
 
 "It's the weather," sighed Mallard Floss. 
 
 "Good heavens, Floss!" Jimmy shouted, "how super- 
 ficial you civil servants are! For twenty days, more or less, 
 the sun has shone on us and the sky's been like brass even at 
 midnight it's like purple brass. The heat melts one's bones
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 11 
 
 and makes one ache for happiness. And yet, we're bored! 
 It's in us, the poison, not in the thermometer. " 
 
 Nigel looked up. 
 
 "Ache for happiness? Yes. But surely an unsatisfied 
 want is boring. " 
 
 "If I had a real want I should be excited," Jimmy almost 
 screamed. " Hunger isn't boring : but none of us has ever felt it. 
 I don't mean a vague emptiness. That's our case; there's all 
 the difference in the world. We're bored, bored stiff. I'm 
 twenty-six: I'm tired of all the people I know and all the things 
 I do. Eating doesn't excite me: drinking doesn't." He 
 emptied his glass angrily. "I'm sick of falling in love, and still 
 more sick of falling out of it. I never want to go to a music- 
 hall again, and as for night clubs! . . . Respectability is 
 worse. I went to a respectable dance this evening and came 
 away simply suffocated with tedium. When I'm alone I want 
 to blow my brains out, and when I'm with other people I want 
 to blow out theirs except that even that's not worth the 
 trouble. " 
 
 Nigel laughed. 
 
 "You want too much," he murmured. "I don't cull that 
 boredom. It's mania. . . . Now, I am really bored: there 
 isn't anything I want. " 
 
 Jimmy glared at him. 
 
 "I want excitement, you want comfort that's because 
 I'm under thirty and you're over it. " 
 
 No one said anything for a minute or two. Then Gertrude 
 Fenner uncurled herself and, rising to her feet and stretching 
 out her arms, cried 
 
 "I wish something would happen and end us all an earth- 
 quake or a flood." 
 
 "Oh, no!" interpolated Mallard Floss. "Think of all the 
 mess." 
 
 Jimmy gave a guffaw. 
 
 "I believe that if the world were only tidy you'd be content, 
 Mallard: well-regulated weather, even temperature, clean 
 streets, paper-baskets and pigeon-holes everywhere. You're 
 a Webb-ite, after all, you know. That world would be only one
 
 12 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 I can conceive worse than this. For there's still chance: it 
 may do something for one, one day!" 
 
 "You are young, Jimmy," said Ned Coventry. 
 
 Jimmy stamped. 
 
 "Young? Of course I'm young. Being young, I tell you, 
 only makes it worse. If you weren't a civil servant, stifled 
 in your own security, you'd know that. But Nigel's really 
 just as bad we're typical, he and I. If he's more torpid about 
 it, that's only because he's English, and, thank God, I'm not. 
 Otherwise we're all in the same boat. So's Gertrude, so's Chris. 
 So are all the others. The married people are worse. They 
 put it off on to one another because they've mortgaged their 
 hypothetical chances; but it's there, everywhere. Scratch 
 any intellectual and you'll find him weeping with ennui." 
 
 Silence followed this sweeping assertion. No one seemed 
 prepared to argue with Jimmy. Nor was he far wrong in feel- 
 ing, as he looked from one to the other, that none of them dared 
 openly agree with him. They pretended to be afraid of nothing, 
 they and their set : they had a passion for dragging things usually 
 left in dark corners out into the light of casual discourse; but 
 there were things they did not want to see. Not because they 
 were not true; rather because they were. Jimmy wondered 
 where Hugh Infield was. He would have suffered from no such 
 squeamishness, and he was probably less tainted with boredom 
 than any of them. In the intent to utter some of these reflec- 
 tions, Jimmy opened his mouth, but thought better of it and 
 emptied his glass instead. 
 
 It was Nigel who at last took up the word. 
 
 "I believe Coventry's right," he said. Every one looked 
 at Ned, who, deep in his chair, had said nothing for a long time. 
 He gave^no sign of life and Nigel went on, "It's London. The 
 way we live. The machinery of existence has got so complicated 
 that the individual has no chance. " 
 "Here, here," from Mallard Floss. 
 
 "Everybody, metaphorically, and most people quite liter- 
 ally, is only making a part of a pin. We're utterly removed 
 from real things. In the country it's different. There people 
 are quiet and happy."
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 13 
 
 This was too much for Jimmy. 
 
 "Oh, bosh!" he cried. "In the country they're rotting in 
 apathy. You've never been there except for intellectual week- 
 ends and walking tours. In the country there's nobody with 
 a spark of life: those that had one, once, have long ago come 
 up to town. The others may be quiet, but they're certainly 
 not happy. Unless you'd argue that a turnip is happy." 
 
 "Yes, Nigel," Gertrude agreed. "It's really time you 
 got off to Italy. Evidently you need a holiday shockingly! 
 I expect an article on ' The Return to Nature ' in next week's 
 New World. I really do." 
 
 Jimmy was moving up and down the room, and his rest- 
 lessness gradually infected the others, who began to give 
 hints of departure. He stood for a moment looking out of 
 the window. Then he turned and addressed them all, pointing 
 with his finger to Nigel. 
 
 " New World" he cried, in an accent of accumulated scorn. 
 "That's the lie he lives on is there any wonder he's a sen- 
 timentalist? Oh, yes, you are, Nigel! There isn't any New 
 World: it's old, far too old. That's the root of it all. We're 
 too old. We're effete. We're decadent, like the people under 
 the Roman Empire. You can't be the heir of all the ages 
 on any other terms. We've no future: we're the slaves of 
 our past. Every emotion has been felt a million times and 
 expressed a thousand. That's why we've no poets and no 
 painters. Above all, no men. Isn't it so, Hugh? You're a 
 philosopher. I appeal to you." 
 
 A man who at the first glance looked at least ten years 
 older than any of the others had come in and stood now just 
 inside the doorway, inspecting the company, through the 
 dense haze of smoke, with an air in which shyness and hu- 
 morous contempt were oddly mingled. Tall, with heavy 
 stooping shoulders, his grizzled hair rumpled and his spec- 
 tacles pushed up on his forehead while he shielded his eyes 
 from the strong light, Hugh Infield looked as if he belonged 
 not only to another generation from that of these young men 
 and women, but to another world. Yet he had for the last 
 year shared rooms in the Temple with Nigel Strode, who was
 
 14 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 essentially of their world, indeed its centre. The arrange- 
 ment was a standing subject of discussion with the other 
 members of Nigel's set, coming up perennially when newer 
 topics failed. Jimmy O'Connor, who had an explanation 
 for everything, had once said, in a moment of irritation against 
 Nigel, that Hugh was the sort of man who, if he had mar- 
 ried, would certainly have had a silly, smart wife: and that 
 Nigel did instead. It was characteristic of the atmosphere 
 of the set that though they all liked Nigel every one had laughed 
 delightedly and no one had repudiated the analogy. At any 
 rate, Nigel lived with Hugh, not Hugh with Nigel. The 
 rooms were Hugh's; had been Hugh's since any of his friends 
 knew him. All that time, too, he had worked among vases 
 in the British Museum, and gone abroad for his holidays. 
 He had a strange liking for foreigners, and a vast knowledge 
 of their literatures; but it was very hard to get him to admit 
 that he knew anything. There had once been a legend that 
 he had been a foreign correspondent of The Times and had 
 given it up because he disapproved of their policy. The story 
 if not true was intrinsically credible: Hugh professed the 
 utmost contempt for all idealisms, but stories of quixotic 
 behaviour on his part leaked out from time to time. That 
 he could talk if he chose was proved by the fact that Nigel 
 sometimes "talked Infield" unless this were another of 
 Jimmy's libels. 
 
 "What are you appealing to me about?" he asked, as 
 Jimmy reiterated his question. 
 
 Nigel explained that Jimmy was attacking civilisation. 
 
 "He's proved to his own satisfaction that it implies de- 
 cadence," he smiled. "We're over-civilised, according to him." 
 
 "Over-civilised?" said Hugh. "We're not civilised at 
 all. We're in a wretched transition stage between savages 
 who live for the satisfaction of simple instinctive wants and 
 intelligent beings who pursue truth." 
 
 "Simple instinctive wants," cried Jimmy, clapping his 
 hands. " Thereyou are, Nigel, we're savages after all, you and I ! " 
 
 Nigel looked his surprise. 
 
 "I thought you said you didn't want anything?" he re-
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 15 
 
 marked. "That's what I agreed with you about, I thought." 
 
 Jimmy relit his pipe, as if happily preparing to start the 
 whole argument over again. Inconsistency did not worry him. 
 
 "Ah but we want to want, don't you see? We can't, 
 but we want to. ... Truth there's no such thing; one's 
 own desires are all the solid truth there is; eh, Infield?" 
 
 Infield, standing with his back to the mantelpiece, seemed 
 to have no intention of saying any more; feeling Jimmy's 
 eyes upon him he smiled, but that was all. Jimmy meantime 
 worked it out for himself. 
 
 "And wanting to feel implies that the instinctive busi- 
 ness has stopped working; we have to apply more and more 
 violent stimuli. And they bore us, in time." 
 
 "That's about it," Hugh acquiesced. 
 
 "What's left to us, then?" said Nigel. 
 
 "To a generation tired of life?" said Hugh. "Surely, 
 it's obvious." He paused. Then as the others still looked 
 to him he gave a shrug of his shoulders. 
 
 "Death," he said. "That's all." 
 
 Chris Bampton got up from her sofa. 
 
 "Oh, dear," she said, "this is very gloomy. Gertrude, 
 let's go home." 
 
 Gertrude's sombre eyes were fixed on Hugh. She gave a 
 little start. 
 
 "It's frightfully interesting," she said. 
 
 "Yes," cried Jimmy exultantly, "you've done it, now, 
 Gertrude. That's our motto, our rubric, our epitaph. Death 
 is 'frightfully interesting.' My God!" 
 
 He laughed and swung, still laughing, out of the room. 
 
 The others followed. Hugh Infield dropped into the 
 deep chair that Ned Coventry had vacated, while Nigel saw 
 the company out. Hugh had not changed his position 
 legs extended, hands deep sunk in his pockets, chin on his 
 chest when the other returned with letters in his hand. 
 
 "Do you know," Nigel said, as he threw the envelopes 
 the letters were all for him neatly into the paper-basket one 
 by one. "I sometimes think that we," he craned his head to 
 indicate his departed friends, "see too much of one another."
 
 16 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Hugh laughed. 
 
 "I should find it intolerable," he said. "But I always 
 imagined you had a much larger charity. By the by, where 
 was Myrtle?" 
 
 Nigel did not at once reply. He was tearing a letter into 
 very small fragments, which he then dropped, bit by bit, 
 into the basket. Then he straightened the rumpled hearth- 
 rug with his foot and removed two glasses from their dan- 
 gerous proximity to Hugh's feet. 
 
 "I don't know," he said at last. 
 
 Hugh relit his pipe. 
 
 "Tired of her, too?" he said between long puffs. 
 
 Nigel turned and looked down at him. 
 
 "It's off," he said shortly. 
 
 Hugh did not show any surprise, nor did he for some time 
 make any remark. Then, raising his head, he found Nigel 
 still looking at him with something almost pathetic in his 
 blue eyes; the eyes of an inquiring child. 
 
 "I'm sorry," said Hugh, answering them. "I hoped you 
 didn't mind. . . . She doesn't, somehow, seem that sort." 
 
 Nigel still looked at him. 
 
 "No," he said slowly. "She isn't. . . . She never was. 
 And I don't. Don't mind, I mean. But that's the worst 
 of it. . . . I'm getting old." 
 
 His eyes widened and the corners of his mouth bent down 
 almost as though he were going to cry. 
 
 "Not you," said Hugh. "All you want is a holiday. Italy 
 will cure you." 
 
 A sudden crooked smile gave Nigel back his boyish air; 
 but it passed swiftly as he shook his head. 
 
 "Mo, no. Gervase was right. I've lost my interest in 
 everything. Nothing seems real. Nothing matters. I don't 
 feel as if I could care about any one; not even about myself. 
 And yet" he smiled again, wistfully "all the time I know, 
 I know, that unless one cares, life is a wilderness." 
 
 Hugh shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Perhaps it is," he said. " But here we are."
 
 CHAPTER TWO 
 
 AT first there seemed no way of getting in. The casa 
 Nigel Strode supposed they would call it a casa, his 
 Italian did not get much farther than that was perched 
 high above the road, on the crest of a steep bank covered 
 with vines, on which thick clustered fruit was slowly ripen- 
 ing. Nigel followed the muddy winding track to which the 
 road had degenerated, passed through an open gate, hang- 
 ing slack on a broken hinge, and wandered round a series 
 of empty stalls and deserted-looking out-houses without 
 discovering any sign of life. There was no "approach," un- 
 less he had taken a wrong turn somewhere. The lower row of 
 windows was closed and shuttered, but above he espied two 
 that were open. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon. Mrs. Leonard was prob- 
 ably asleep. To call attention to his presence by shouting, 
 and perhaps rudely awakening her, would not be a favour- 
 able introduction to an unknown lady on whom he wished 
 to make an impression. 
 
 After all, there was no hurry. Leaving Florence in the 
 morning he had been accompanied by a sense of something 
 vaguely adventurous. It had grown as he walked slowly 
 up from Montevarchi, along silent empty roads, through 
 chestnuts and olives and up among the vines, meeting noth- 
 ing but a somnolent oil-cart drawn by splendid white oxen. 
 On the voiceless house it seemed now to concentrate, this 
 sense, so that there was a pleasure in the arrest which let 
 it all sink in. The air had, all day, been still, with a held 
 stillness, as if it waited and watched. A faint mist blurred 
 
 17
 
 18 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 the tops of the blue hills, pale on the horizon, and hung over 
 their grey-green slopes. Nigel had felt the atmosphere of 
 the place like a restraining hand laid upon his impatience, 
 and had walked up with a leisurely pace not normal with him. 
 The more he wanted to reach the casa, the more everything 
 seemed to say "tarry," to hold him back from one more 
 eagerly anticipated disappointment? 
 
 Would she disappoint him, Aurelia Leonard? The slen- 
 der basis of his expectation suggested that she must. After 
 all, he knew next to nothing about her. There were her books, 
 which, with what Hugh Infield always regarded as a deplor- 
 able want of curiosity, Nigel had never read. They con- 
 stituted, of course, her admitted claim to be interesting; 
 but Nigel had a general conviction that authors were more 
 interesting than their works, which he had never impaired 
 by wide experiment. Hugh thought the books wonderful, 
 but Nigel had gathered, even from Hugh, that there was 
 more in Mrs. Leonard than that, and his very reticence as 
 to what, in particular, it was had irritated him more than 
 once. Not that he would have expected Hugh to be able 
 to tell him what she was like, even if he had been willing to 
 try; Hugh was no use about people. Connection with Hugh 
 merely created a presumption that Mrs. Leonard would be 
 dowdy and if Nigel had a deep certainty that she was not, 
 he was at a loss to explain whence it arose. 
 
 There was also the connection, discovered by accident, 
 and to his considerable surprise, with Lady Toller; it was 
 difficult to say what that suggested. Lady Toller, though 
 a friend of twenty years' standing, had not thrown much 
 light. But then she never did. She lived in the reflected 
 radiance of her husband and daughters; they had long ago 
 extinguished any of her own. And they apparently did 
 not know Mrs. Leonard, except as an author. Sir An- 
 thony, of course, could not read her: he hated "diffi- 
 cult" novels; Myrtle would not. She was busy safe- 
 guarding her own point of view and had evolved a theory 
 that reading was a mistake, especially with authors of 
 a strong personality such as, every one seemed to agree, Au-
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 19 
 
 relia Leonard possessed, if any one in the world. It 
 was nearness to that strong personality, in some one who 
 also owned a name so melodious and so suggestive of 
 further beauties, that made the thing an adventure for 
 Nigel. Whether personality could be predicated of him- 
 self was a question that sometimes worried him; and 
 now, as he stood uncertain, outside the house, he suddenly 
 wondered whether he really did desire to come into con- 
 tact with an undoubted case of it. Was the failure to find 
 the door perhaps symbolic? Should he accept the warning 
 and turn back? 
 
 He began to walk slowly round the walls again. Ab- 
 sorbed in his question he almost ran, as he turned, into a 
 red-kerchiefed woman who had come out whence he could 
 not guess with a pitcher in her hand. 
 
 Nigel summoned his uncertain Italian to inquire whether 
 this were the abode of Mrs. Leonard? Oh, yes. And was 
 Mrs. Leonard at home? She was not sure: but would the 
 signer come in? He followed her through the thickly and 
 variously obstructed yard, along a tiled path that, passing 
 under a little archway, suddenly became a flight of steps up to 
 a door. The door opened, gave on to a dim cool passage, tiled 
 again, and full of a sweet elusive smell. The woman shuffled 
 along in front of Nigel and, showing him into the sala at the end, 
 bade him, if he understood what she rapidly poured out, to 
 wait while she searched for the signora. 
 
 It proved to be a long wait; but Nigel, after deciding that 
 Mrs. Leonard must in fact be out, found himself sufficiently oc- 
 cupied in trying to take in all the indications that the room 
 offered him. It was large, and seemed larger from its cool emp- 
 tiness. There were three open windows, one at the end opposite 
 to the door, the other two at the side looking over the garden: 
 windows that reached almost to the ceiling, while their low deep 
 sills were but a few inches from the ground. Three shallow 
 stone steps enabled one to step out into the garden. It was 
 thence, from the ranks of lavender, from the rows of pinks, 
 above all from the little lemon trees in pots that stood just below 
 the windows, that the fragrance rose which Nigel had felt as
 
 20 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 he entered the house, and which filled the sala, furnishing it in 
 the absence of other decoration . On a round table in the centre of 
 the room stood a bowl of pink carnations, their colour reflected 
 in the bare polished wood; nothing else. Round the white- 
 washed walls, on the shiny red stone floor, various straight- 
 backed chairs were ranged: chairs of no pretensions to modern 
 comfort or elegance, covered in faded leather. Along one wall 
 ran a low bookcase, and under the further window was a cane 
 chaise-longue: beside it a smaller table, on which lay several 
 newspapers, a volume of Jean Christophe with a paper-cutter 
 stuck in about three quarters through it, and a spectacle-case. 
 
 The spectacle-case was the most personal thing in the room; 
 but it did not help Nigel to fit his new impressions in with his 
 old. On the contrary it gave him a twinge, a revival of the 
 impulse to turn and flee. After all, Mrs. Leonard had known 
 Lady Toller for twenty years: she had a daughter just leaving 
 Newnham: she might well wear spectacles. The drawing 
 the only thing of the kind in the room framed in black and 
 leaning against the wall above the bookcase, might perhaps be 
 the daughter. Nigel moved over to look at it, and stayed long. 
 It was a profile head, very lightly and firmly drawn. The face 
 was not strictly beautiful, and Nigel hardly wondered, as he 
 looked, whether the daughter resembled the mother: he did not 
 clothe the girl with any individuality. The alert poise of the 
 head, the direct gaze of the eyes, the parted lips, the jutting 
 chin all that was simply youth incarnate: youth with its 
 splendid eagerness and sureness, its almost cruel calm. 
 
 It was with a sigh that he at last turned away, and, moving 
 back to the window, stared across the charming, formal garden 
 to where the sweeping lines of the blue hills rose now clear 
 above the mist-wreathed valley. It was always there, the world 
 outside, alien even here where such beauty clothed it; forcing 
 home, in its contrast, the sense of personal weakness and inade- 
 quacy. Only in the morning of life, standing like that girl on 
 the threshold, ignorant of all but the glow within, could one 
 challenge and meet it, feel it unreal and the self real. The weari- 
 ness of past emotions swept over Nigel for a moment. 
 
 Only for a moment : these things never held him long. Now,
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 21 
 
 too, his mood underwent a sharp change, for beyond the rose 
 hedge that made the division between the garden proper and 
 the rows of vines he saw something moving. At first he thought 
 it was no more than a point of wavering light ; then he decided 
 that it was a white sunshade. He withdrew a little further 
 into the room, that unseen he might continue to see. Slowly 
 the white object took form: it was a lady with a book under 
 her arm and in her hand a white parasol lined with green. She 
 advanced with a leisurely pace, as though deep in thought; 
 Nigel fancied, though she was still too far off to be seen dis- 
 tinctly, that her eyes were on the ground. At the rose hedge 
 she paused, bent down to smell a full-blown white rose, 
 and then, with a kind of grave deliberation, picked it and came 
 on, holding it in her hand and occasionally smelling it, along the 
 walk, between the pinks and lavender, past the well with its 
 carved stone rim. As she approached, Nigel's eyes were riveted 
 on her. His adventure was really upon him now and he felt 
 curiously excited. For it was an adventure, after all. This 
 woman would have interested him had she never written a 
 line, had he never heard her name. Something in the way she 
 moved, with an erectness that while lending her a height beyond 
 what her inches warranted had no suggestion of stiffness, only 
 a grace quite unselfconscious, affected him as certain musical 
 intervals did. Her white dress, though simple, had an elegance 
 that pleased him and made him smile as he thought of Hugh 
 and how it must have been lost upon him. And at last, as she 
 paused, hatless, her parasol bent back over her shoulder, by the 
 lemon trees, he saw her face. It was the strangest face, like no 
 other he had ever seen. So strange that he did not know 
 whether it were beautiful. Her thick fine hair, parted in the 
 middle, growing low on her forehead, and bound smoothly and 
 closely round her head, was white, absolutely white, without 
 any visible grey or dark threads. Her skin was like old ivory, 
 and her features, the straight nose and strongly marked line of 
 mouth and chin, as clear as those of a chiselled statue. In 
 sharp contrast to this white skin, her marked eyebrows were 
 black and her eyelashes, also black, so thick that Nigel could 
 only guess at the colour of the eyes they hid. She was a pen-
 
 22 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 and-ink drawing ; exquisite, glowing ; for behind the marble was fire. 
 
 Nigel stood still, after she had disappeared round the side 
 of the house, his hands deep in his pockets. His excitement 
 made him smile at himself, but he could not smile it away. It 
 was useless to try to formulate the phrase in which he should 
 address Mrs. Leonard when she came in; none of his old open- 
 ings fitted this occasion. He was so deeply absorbed, and the 
 door opened so softly, that he heard nothing: only turned 
 round suddenly at the sound of his own name uttered by a voice 
 singularly deep for a woman, and with an intonation that gave 
 the syllables a new music. 
 
 "Mr. Nigel Strode?" 
 
 The name was evidently unfamiliar to her. Nigel murmured 
 something about Lady Toller's having promised to write and 
 introduce him. 
 
 "Though I really," he said, "wanted simply to come and 
 pay my respects to the author of Prometheus. " Something, he 
 could not have said what, kept him from mentioning Hugh 
 Infield. 
 
 The faintest shade of colour tinged Mrs. Leonard's pale 
 cheeks: the shadow, he thought, of a blush. Was it possible 
 that a tribute so small could move her? 
 
 "Oh, Evangeline!" She waved Lady Toller aside with a 
 little gesture. "She only writes to send me a pamphlet by 
 her husband or a poem by her daughter! And I can't read 
 either. But you yourself write, I am sure. Is it not so? " 
 
 She had seatedherself now, andinvited her guest to dothesame. 
 
 Nigel explained that, under the veil of editorial anonymity, 
 he did so. In the New World. 
 
 Mrs. Leonard's fine brows were drawn down: and he saw 
 that if she could look gentle, tender, whimsical, she could also, 
 on occasion, look severe. The lines of her mouth were stern as 
 she answered 
 
 " Yes. I read the New World; and if you allow, on holidays, 
 readers to be frank I don't always like it, Mr. Strode. Indeed, 
 I feel that to have, by a happy chance, got hold of you, is for 
 me a great opportunity ! To tell you why, if you will some time 
 allow me that freedom. "
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 23 
 
 It was Nigel's turn to blush. He hoped that a fortnight's 
 sunburn hid how much she hurt him; but as her clear eyes drew 
 his to meet them he wondered. 
 
 "Writing, " she went on, "tells, it seems to me, more in these 
 days than it has ever done. Especially writing in the press. 
 That is a big responsibility; and my excuse for being so 
 brutal." 
 
 As she smiled gently now upon him, and as he met her eyes 
 fully they were dark grey, he saw, not black Nigel felt that 
 there was little she could not do for him, if she would only go 
 on looking at him like that. For her eyes called back the wild 
 emotions of his youth: emotions which bore no kinship to the 
 dry calculations of his parting, only a month ago, from Myrtle 
 Toller. Suddenly to feel like that again was still to be young, 
 and for a blessed instant at least, to lay a hand on the vanishing 
 skirts of reality. 
 
 "Meantime," Mrs. Leonard spoke again, after what seemed 
 to Nigel quite a long interval, "we will have some tea. If you 
 walked from Montevarchi, you must be very ready for it. 
 You can, I expect, give me news of many friends in England 
 I have not seen for long, and of much that is happening there 
 that you people in Fleet Street are too clever to let into the 
 newspapers. If you will unbolt that very stiff window, Mr. 
 Strode, we can step out into the garden. Ah, thank you; my 
 wrists are no good and Emilia's Carlo has been too busy. Poor 
 Emilia! she sighs over a house without a man. " 
 
 Talk with Mrs. Leonard Nigel found extraordinarily easy. 
 He was soon quite sure that she was beautiful, and charming in 
 a way that excited and perplexed him by its unlikeness to the 
 charm of any of the many charming women whom he knew. 
 She was also intelligent. She had read everything, and assumed 
 that he had read everything too: which was hardly the case. 
 It was long since he had read anything through; but journalism 
 had taught him all there was to know about skimming, and 
 the newspapers can carry one a long way. Mrs. Leonard, he 
 gathered, read newspapers too; but her angle of interest was 
 clearly quite different from his, and it puzzled him. 
 
 "Do tell me," he plunged at lastdiscreet plunging he had
 
 24 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 found useful before now "what is it you don't like in the 
 New World?" 
 
 She looked at him thoughtfully for a few seconds. 
 
 "Don't mind my feelings, " he cried. 
 
 "Oh, no. I was not thinking of them. " 
 
 Nigel bit his lip; it was not the first time within the hour 
 that she had caught him up by her impersonality. 
 
 "I want specially to know," he went on, "because I'm just 
 going to have my chance. A year on my own. Davis that's 
 my editor is going round the world. He'll be away twelve or 
 eighteen months: not back till October or perhaps even Decem- 
 ber 1914. So I can really write what I want to. Hitherto, of 
 course " 
 
 He waved his hands. 
 
 Mrs. Leonard's eyes rested on him for a moment longer. 
 
 "My criticism," she said at last, leaning forward and 
 speaking quickly, "is this. The New World claims to be an 
 independent paper, but it's really entirely committed to the 
 Liberal party. It moves about exclusively on the surface of 
 party catchwords. Its notion of a programme is simply some- 
 thing that the National Liberal Federation could be got to 
 accept. It combines sentiment and business exactly in the 
 wrong proportions, emotionalising over trifles of no conse- 
 quence, and refusing to think out any of the big issues. It's 
 been deplorable about Suffrage. " 
 
 "That's Davis " 
 
 "It's equally deplorable about foreign policy." 
 
 Nigel knocked the ash of his cigarette neatly into his saucer. 
 
 "Of course," he said lightly, "I don't pretend to understand 
 foreign policy." 
 
 Looking up, he found Mrs. Leonard regarding him with an 
 expression that was almost stern. 
 
 "Does that seem to you a very serious lapse?" 
 
 "Very," she said shortly. "Very serious indeed. " 
 
 "But why?" he asked. "Domestic affairs are surely 
 infinitely more important to say nothing of their being both 
 interesting and rrore or less intelligible, which is more than I 
 can say for foreigr policy. "
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 25 
 
 "Hasn't it then occurred to you that domestic affairs are, at 
 any moment, at the mercy of foreign policy? And largely be- 
 cause so many people, especially so many Liberals, think, like 
 you, that it's none of their business; don't understand, don't 
 try to understand, and therefore can't criticise, much less 
 guide?" 
 
 Nigel moved rather restlessly in his chair. He began to wish 
 that Mrs. Leonard were not so intelligent. He felt comfortable 
 and at peace in an atmosphere beautiful, restful and potentially 
 romantic; why must her brain so inexorably work? 
 
 "Peace, retrenchment and reform," he murmured, ashamed 
 of the shibboleth, but too happily lazy to trouble about that. 
 
 "Ah how you say that! Have you ever thought what it 
 means? The New World is keen about social reform, I give you 
 credit for that ; but aren't reformers always put off because their 
 schemes cost too much money? How can we get the money 
 in any country in Europe if we have to go on pouring millions 
 into armies and navies? And how can you stop pouring in 
 those millions unless foreign offices work for peace? Instead of 
 which, the continuity of foreign policy is a continuous risk of 
 war. " 
 
 Nigel sat up. Mrs. Leonard's tone was so eager, her face 
 so grave, that he felt that all this was, to her, very important. 
 If he showed that to him it didn't matter, he would earn her 
 contempt. 
 
 "I am afraid the difficulty with me has been a rather stupid 
 one. The kind of Liberal who is always making a row about 
 Morocco and Persia and Denshawai and Miss Malecka, and 
 all that, puts me off dreadfully. " 
 
 "Oh, your 'all that'!" Mrs. Leonard exclaimed. 
 
 "They haven't thought it out," he went on. "They 
 want us to reduce armaments and be the preux Chevalier 
 of Europe at the same time. I'm all in favour of interven- 
 tion; but to intervene one must be strong. If our civ- 
 ilisation which, after all, is the highest in Europe 
 is to count, we must use it to help other peoples who are strug- 
 gling " 
 
 "Ah, but wouldn't it tell much more effectively if we
 
 26 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 were definitely always on the side of peace? I don't mean 
 vaguely, as a pious aspiration, given up when there is any 
 difficulty, anything that looks like an affront to our amour 
 propre or a danger to our exported capital, but as a definite 
 policy?" 
 
 Mrs. Leonard went on, speaking earnestly, but without 
 excitement. The sound of her own lovely voice clearly did 
 not excite her. She was not, he guessed, led on from 
 word to word, as he was. The argument was a familiar one 
 to her, she had traversed all the ground before, and knew 
 the ways. To Nigel it was a jungle, thick with catch- 
 words, tags, echoes of things he had said himself or heard 
 others say. Words came back to him, not ideas. A 
 weight of ignorance oppressed him. Foreign policy he 
 had always looked upon as like mathematics: a thing 
 most ordinary people had better leave alone. Matheson 
 always wrote the foreign articles for the New World, and 
 very dull they were. He supposed they must have them 
 now and then, and that somebody read them; but he sel- 
 dom did more than glance over them himself, mainly 
 in order to sigh over Matheson's deplorable indifference to 
 English. Beyond this ignorance, which made the sub- 
 ject wearisome, he was conscious of a vague disagree- 
 ment with Mrs. Leonard, which he did not want to for- 
 mulate. Why he came back again to that must she 
 argue? It was sheer pleasure to listen to her voice, if 
 only he might listen to the sound without being asked to 
 take in what she said, and to watch her as the moving light 
 of the gradually sinking sun played over her pale face and 
 wonderful hands. 
 
 "You don't feel it, I see." 
 
 Nigel roused himself, for he caught disappointment in the 
 flattening of her voice. These things were not lost upon 
 him. 
 
 "You don't care about peace?" 
 
 "Peace?" he said. "No. I suppose not. It always seems 
 to me rather a dull smug thing, like all the other negatives: 
 Anti-Suffrage, Anti- Vivisection, Anti-War." His tone was
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 27 
 
 indefinably scornful and belittling, a more or less unconscious 
 refusal of the solemnity of hers. 
 
 Mrs. Leonard looked at him: he felt her eyes hold his, 
 as she shook her head. 
 
 "Peace is not easy; it's not just the negation of war. It 
 is . . ." she paused and looked away from him, out to- 
 wards the horizon. For a perceptible instant she was 
 silent. "It's the hardest achievement of effort in the 
 general life, just as self-control is in the individual life." 
 
 Nigel thought for a moment. What strange connections 
 she saw. Life thus seen was almost terrifying in the dense 
 complexity of its tissue. 
 
 "I don't think I put self-control nearly so high," he said. 
 
 "No, I know you don't. Oh, it doesn't take me long 
 to see you're a modern. You're one of the young genera- 
 tion Jean Christophe speaks of. You want something 
 quite different. Excitement; the sense of life rushing. 
 So does my Daphne. . . . But there is absolutely more life 
 in stillness, for it's only when a thing is deep that it 
 is still. Peace real peace not the sort Europe's got at 
 present is the deepest thing there is. Look at those 
 hills. Their peace is the outcome of their long history. No 
 new or desert place gives you that sense. It's long en- 
 durance, labour, sacrifice, conquest of the unwilling soil, 
 just as self-control is conquest of the unwilling self. And 
 there's no short road to it. You have to want peace 
 passionately, with all the hardest feeling and thinking 
 you've got, before you can win it, even for your little 
 soul. How much more for all the world. It's the greatest 
 quest there is. And yet you're belittling it in your mind, 
 Mr. Strode, even now, while I talk to you. I know you are. 
 . . . And yet, I believe if you could only see it, you would 
 work for it. ... One day you will." 
 
 There was a long silence. Nigel's eyes still rested on the 
 hills to which they had turned when Mrs. Leonard point- 
 ed to them, his eyes gradually distinguishing their out- 
 lines and separating vine from olive on their sleeping 
 slopes, now left in shadow. He looked thoughtful; but he
 
 28 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 was not thinking. He was acutely aware of himself, 
 aware that Mrs. Leonard was looking at him in the belief 
 that his mind was at work to follow hers. But he was not 
 thinking. Vague phrases floated across his brain, bring- 
 ing with them trails of old argument, and the pages of for- 
 gotten books, that was all. Something was happening 
 to him, something far more thrilling than the search for 
 thoughts. 
 
 "When you speak like that," he said at last, "I almost 
 see it. But I can't hold it for myself. It's like all these in- 
 hibitions." 
 
 Mrs. Leonard sighed, but smiled when he paused and mo- 
 tioned him to go on. 
 
 "I can't, yet, feel I want any of them for its own sake. 
 Self-realisation still seems to me to come before self-control, 
 and many, many things before tranquillity. In tranquillity 
 all the hard and ardent parts of one go soft and dull parts 
 that awake and live under stress." 
 
 "But stress," Mrs. Leonard took him up, "need not come 
 from outside. The real stresses that make men are in- 
 side the soul. You don't grow good and strong from 
 what other people do to you, only from what you do to 
 yourself." 
 
 Nigel frowned. 
 
 "I wonder . . . Do you know, I feel I'm always waiting 
 for some experience that will make me. ... I'm not made 
 yet, I know ... for something that will bring me out. Is 
 thirty-seven too late for hope, do you think?" 
 
 Mrs. Leonard did not reply. Her eyes rested on him 
 in a slow inquiry that, despite the soft beauty of her gaze, 
 he felt as searching. But life while she looked at him and 
 the scents floated up from the garden was real; it had never 
 been so real before. He rose to take his leave, promised joy- 
 fully to return next day to lunch, and mentally determined 
 to remain at least till Sunday at Montevarchi; he had clean 
 shirts to last till Sunday, even without writing to his Florence 
 hotel.
 
 CHAPTER THREE 
 
 THE inn at Montevarchi was neither comfortable nor 
 very clean. Nigel, who disliked discomfort, and loathed 
 dirt, had not intended to pass more than one or at most 
 two nights there, though his first walk up to the casa had 
 given him a vivid sense of the beauty of the country. 
 After all, there was beautiful country in many parts of Italy, 
 and some inns that were both comfortable and clean: 
 to say nothing of Florence, where one could even have 
 a hot bath and food that, while interestingly different, was 
 not soaked in olive oil. Yet after his first visit to Mrs. 
 Leonard he decided to stay on, and after his second ceased 
 to consider his departure at all. His previous plans for 
 seeing all sorts of places Siena, Assisi and Ravenna, 
 never seen before and that certainly ought to be seen, 
 disappeared, and he gave himself up to a vagueness 
 of intention not in the least characteristic. Every morn- 
 ing found him ascending the long road up the hill; and it 
 was more often than not under the stars that he walked home 
 at night. 
 
 Mrs. Leonard asked him nothing about his plans: she 
 asked no questions at all, and, except about his views, 
 seemed without curiosity. They parted in the evening 
 with an absence of leave-taking which implied his return; 
 but he could not be sure that she expected him or that she 
 would be surprised if he did not turn up. He hoped she did 
 expect him but he did not know. The only indica- 
 tion she had ever let slip of any interest in his movements 
 was a remark dropped one morning to the effect that Daphne 
 
 29
 
 30 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 was probably coming out at the end of the week: but she 
 did not say, as he had hoped she might, that she wanted him 
 to see Daphne. 
 
 It was curious the combination in her of a complete ab- 
 sence of inquiry as to his life with an extreme interest in his 
 opinions. Sometimes he regretted that she was so imper- 
 sonal: often her preoccupation with opinions worried, occa- 
 sionally even wearied him. But her charm was so great that 
 even when he found it fatiguing to keep up with her 
 mind, he rested on her face and on her voice; and he 
 grew clever, as he learned to know his way about her 
 ideas, in calling up from the mixed confusion of his own 
 mind those that were harmonious. He could feel gen- 
 uinely thrilled by her belief in human goodness: for to 
 believe in the ultimate tightness of things was as near 
 as he had ever got to a general view of the world. If 
 he could not share her faith in International Socialism 
 as a means, he could sympathise with the end; and after 
 all, since a limited time must carry him away from her 
 to London where International Socialism seldom pre- 
 sented itself, he could agree provisionally to much that 
 he was not prepared to accept permanently. There were 
 times when a fear crossed him that she rated his brains 
 and his agreement too high; but that fear was less poign- 
 ant than its twin, the dread that she might think him 
 narrow and limited. He was not narrow or limited when 
 he was with her; that was the wonder. She enabled 
 him to see things in a sustained manner which he could 
 not achieve for himself, and if the effort sometimes tired 
 him, there were long and lovely intervals of silence when 
 she did not ask him to think at all; times when they 
 merely sat in the sunshine; times when he read aloud 
 to her, and he read aloud uncommonly well, as he knew. 
 
 Nigel, like many loose thinkers, had a conviction that 
 there was a vast, vague region of the inexpressible, in 
 which most of the big ideas and emotions of life resided. He 
 believed that he saw many more things, felt many more 
 things, than he could put into words either to himself
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 31 
 
 or any one else. He had, of course, never defined at all clearly 
 what these things were; but just as he held that the world 
 was ultimately good, without knowing how or why or where, 
 so he held that there were innumerable things in himself 
 not analysable or realised, capable of coming out at their 
 right time. He had a kind of horror of sharp analysis. Hugh 
 often grieved him by the downrightness of his expression 
 and his constant endeavour to "get things clear," as he called 
 it; it was a process under which so much lovely bloom dis- 
 appeared without compensation. Mrs. Leonard sometimes 
 seemed to him to err, as Hugh did, by a kind of hardness 
 of mind, a propensity to place and settle things, a desire 
 "to know what one thought" on subjects not intrinsically 
 adapted to such knowledge. But generally he could supply 
 the blur round her clear edges, while she gave shape to the 
 dim forms of his own apprehensions. She made him 
 feel that he had, after all, more clear ideas than he had im- 
 agined: made him look forward, with a keenness long 
 unfamiliar, to his desk at the New World office, where he 
 saw himself writing remarkable articles that would give him 
 a new position and journalism a lost zest. 
 
 Moreover, if her mind were unnecessarily tough, no 
 woman happily could be all mind, or even so predom- 
 inantly mind as some men managed to be: Aurelia Leonard 
 least of all. The very contrast between some of the 
 things she said the way, for instance, in which she seemed 
 to deprecate emotional and insist on intellectual judg- 
 ments and the soft richness of the voice in which she 
 uttered them, indicated to him a fund of beautiful differ- 
 ences. When she sat sewing while he read to her, she 
 was all woman, and woman full of tenderness and potential 
 passion. If the fine clearness of her features corresponded 
 to the clearness of her brain, from the first he had seen her 
 face as complex rather than clear. Simple she certainly was 
 not. There were expressions in her eyes, curves of her mouth, 
 that showed her to him daily as a woman not to argue with, 
 but to adore. That, hidden, was her real self: the fire he had 
 felt behind the marble.
 
 32 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Nigel's desire to know her history grew, but not his knowl- 
 edge. Whatever else she talked of she never talked of herself. 
 By the end of two days Nigel fancied she knew all about him; 
 but his self -revelations provoked no revelations from her; he 
 continued to know nothing about her. He exhausted all his 
 store of openings generally the process of getting to know a 
 person proceeded on fairly definite lines without any result. 
 He had thought more than once of asking her about Hugh 
 Infield, but each time decided against it. Hugh had never men- 
 tioned him to her: that was obvious and a relief, for Hugh would 
 have told her about Myrtle Toller, an incident he wanted to 
 forget. Moreover, Nigel wanted to be known to her entirely 
 as himself, not as connected with Hugh. Nor would Hugh 
 help him to discoveries. Hugh, Nigel felt sure, knew nothing: 
 Hugh was not the sort of man who knew secrets about women. 
 Hugh probably argued with Mrs. Leonard; that was all. 
 
 The only personal topic on which she seemed interested in 
 talking was her daughter. Nigel did not know Daphne and 
 desired, on the whole, to obliterate her existence from his 
 mind. She was associated there with Myrtle Toller, which was 
 bad; and with Mrs. Leonard as a mother, which was not much 
 better. Nor did the subject in itself help him much. Mrs. 
 Leonard adored her daughter; she never looked more lovely 
 than when she spoke of her; but Daphne to her was an individ- 
 ual, not an extension of herself. She did not speak of Daphne 
 in ways that cast light back; she never, by any chance, referred 
 to Daphne's father. Clearly he no longer existed, in any effec- 
 tive sense; but it was not clear that he was dead. It was 
 Daphne's future that Mrs. Leonard looked to, and Daphne's 
 future, in her view, was in Daphne's own hands. 
 
 Since Daphne had gone nearly three years ago to Newnham, 
 her mother had lived mainly abroad; before that apparently 
 also largely abroad, but at some time in London. London was 
 a wide term; but there was only one London in which a woman 
 like Mrs. Leonard could have moved, and assuredly she could 
 not, Nigel felt, have lived in his London without being a marked 
 figure in it. There must, therefore, be people, accessible people, 
 who knew all about her. He longed to get hold of one of them.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 33 
 
 She admitted to knowing houses he knew: and evidently knew 
 more intimately than he did some that he knew a little, and 
 would have gladly known better. But none of these references 
 led on to anything. 
 
 She made London seem far away the London of incessant 
 personal discussion, shifting relationships, ennui and rush far 
 away and also small. The things for which there was never 
 time in London were the things that occupied her. To Nigel 
 life out of London had always before looked empty and unreal; 
 but Mrs. Leonard made London look unreal, life was so real 
 with her. He thought of the world of which only a fortnight 
 ago he had been part, the people with whom he had spent his 
 days and nights passed before him, a bright procession of pan- 
 tomime figures further away from his feelings than their forms 
 were from his sense. It was difficult to believe that they were 
 all going on, as much alive as he was: Hugh Infield as cheer- 
 fully gloomy, Gervase O'Connor as angrily eager, Myrtle Toller 
 as brightly gay, the Nugents as important as ever, perhaps 
 talking of him as one talked in London for a brief time of the 
 absent before they dropped out in favour of some newer face. 
 He wondered idly what they were saying. It seemed to matter 
 less than usual. He wanted, less than usual, to analyse and 
 inspect himself. He felt that he had escaped from himself, no 
 less than from London. A new atmosphere had closed round 
 and was re-making him. New atmospheres, when as strong as 
 this, generally meant that one was falling in love. Nigel smiled 
 as he asked himself whether he were falling in love with Mrs. 
 Leonard. The fascination of the question was that he need not 
 answer it. 
 
 More than a week passed thus; then an evening came which 
 Nigel, looking back, could never quite explain. 
 
 Mrs. Leonard had told him not to come up till tea-time, for 
 she was busy. The day had been extraordinarily hot and Nigel 
 spent most of it lying half asleep under the shade of a vast 
 cypress tree. He had taken out with him a French book on 
 Socialism which had produced a delightfully soothing effect. 
 After a few pages it had dropped from his hand, to be replaced 
 by dreams half real and half the pleasant weavings of an idle
 
 34 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 The sun was stffl blazing as he walked up to the casa and 
 the garden so hot that they sat in the house, going out again for 
 sapper on the terrace. 
 
 Gradually the fight thirfawd and withdrew as they sat on 
 with cigarettes. Round them the warm night dosed, a presence 
 shotting out the need for talk. The cry of the cicalas in the 
 grass made an incessant undercurrent, and now and then Carlo's 
 voice from the yard broke out in a snatch of sudden song, curi- 
 
 MnJy mplnfKnns thnrigh his frmps tn sppalring WPTP harsh The 
 
 lavender ramp to them in wafts and mingled with the sharp 
 sweetness of the If-mnns, The sky was fike bhie velvet: star- 
 less and stffl. Tn Niggl thp .qpTtgR of -pmrf* foflt had hppn mrmH 
 him '-" d.iv dr^er-rC. 
 
 Suddenly Emilia appeared at the window and said some- 
 thing to Mrs. Leonard in Italian, on which she rose and went 
 into the house. Nigel sat on, dreaming. 
 
 A few minutes passed and he became aware that the sky, 
 which had been dear, had thickened and darkened. It was 
 black velvet now, not blue; wet black velvet. Heavy raindrops 
 clattered on to the stone flags round the well, large and few at 
 first, then more numerous. The shower was sudden and violent: 
 it ceased almost as quickly as it had begun. But instead of 
 clearing the air it left it full of a curious oppression. Theskyin 
 its unbroken darkness gpnryy|| heavy with a weight of something 
 stffl held back that brooded, threatening, over the garden and 
 the hflie 
 
 Nigel had gone indoors, where he dropped on to a chair by 
 the window and fit a cigarette. On the table the small lamp, 
 which the servant had fit when she brought in the coffee that 
 waited there for Mrs. Leonard, cast a circle of fight, brilliant 
 on the carnations, growing dim as it spread, and leaving most 
 of the room wrapped in mysterious fJarimpss that gave its size 
 an immeasurable extension. Faint shadows glimmered on the 
 polished floor, and the white of the drawing of Daphne on the 
 wallshone queeriy, so queeriy that Nigel almost got up to 
 reamine it. He did not. Instead he leaned back in Ins chair, 
 drugged by the atmosphere of the room, which seemed to wait 
 even more intensely than the sky outside. He wondered as
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 35 
 
 tching the light and puzzhng over the way in 
 
 waiting, of which he had spoken to Mrs. Leonard again only 
 last night, was really to be solved in achievement at last; was 
 tins the experience to which everything had been leading? The 
 place was right; it was exactly a place in which tilings ought to 
 happen; his mood was right a dreamy receptivity that surely 
 came from the tension of secret strings; and Aurefia remote, 
 mysterious, beautiful, baffling was fife, that elusive thing, at 
 its strangest and richest. He did not know her story, but all 
 that had happened to her in the past had only served to give her 
 the wonderful maturity she carried now. Xo compare her with 
 younger women was to compare a rich embroidery to a plain 
 muslin. Muslin had its beauty, but not for a royal robe. He 
 could not get beyond these vague comparisons in the effort to 
 express her: and then it was still the effect on him that got ex- 
 pressed, not what she was in herself. That remained for him 
 indefinable. Knowing her better had made her more obscure, 
 not dearer. She was wonderful; but he could not fnrmnlatg a 
 single impression about her. He simply, stupidly, rann back 
 to that. No one had ever been so wonderful. And to feel a 
 person wonderful to tins extent, was it not to be in love? 
 
 At last the door opened and Mrs. Leonard came in, her long 
 skirts swishing softly behind her as she moved over the polished 
 Boor. She was lovely in that dim rose colour with its hanging 
 sleeves and trailing draperies: the silver threads in the filmy lace 
 
 srarf OVPT hpr hpgH glfanvH 
 
 In her hand she held a pale yellow envelope. 
 
 Nigel's eyes interrogated her. 
 
 "Daphne's not coming, after all. Not for a week. She's 
 got influenza. ' 
 
 "Oh, Fm sorry," he mummied. 
 
 "Yes. It's very disappointing. For, of course, it cuts short 
 her time, if she comes at ah. I am not sure that she had better 
 come. The journey's trying in the heat, and she's not used to 
 being 21: shell hate it, and need more restoring after - '* 
 
 "I am sorry," Nigel repeated. "You win have to put up 
 with me."
 
 36 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 He was conscious of a thrill as he met her eyes: but nothing 
 in them told him whether she felt anything. They were dark 
 to him, her eyes; deeper than any eyes he had ever looked into 
 seemed the depths in which he lost himself: he gazed down and 
 down and the clear darkness gave him back so many things that he 
 emerged gasping, with the feeling that he had plunged without 
 knowledge or direction. Nigel felt he was committing himself 
 as he gazed, involuntarily and yet entirely without invitation, to 
 what he did not know. A kind of terror stirred beneath his 
 thrill. Mrs. Leonard did not make any reply: he was not sure 
 that she had heard. 
 
 "You haven't had your coffee," she said. "I'm afraid it 
 must be cold . . . and there's a real storm coming on ... 
 I'm almost glad Daphne is not coming: it would have been a 
 wild drive up from Montevarchi. " 
 
 She filled a cup and held it to him as she spoke. 
 
 As he took it a low roar was audible. 
 
 "Listen." Mrs. Leonard held up her hand. "It's begin- 
 ning. Ah ! there's the lightning. " 
 
 She moved to the window and sat down on the low seat. 
 Nigel had sprung to his feet and stood, his upraised arms against 
 the edges of the window-pane, staring out. Across the sky 
 another flash tore, leaving it darker than ever, and then nearly 
 a minute after came the dull roar of the thunder still far away, 
 among the hills. 
 
 He stood fascinated, watching for the next flash. It came, 
 and for an instant blinded him; but its effect lasted longer than 
 the flash. He felt as though he had received an electric charge; 
 as though it had all passed direct into him; as though he were 
 there just to take it in and it was for him that it had come. 
 And the lightning seemed to have made things clear, to have 
 given him what he was waiting for, what he wanted. It filled 
 him so that he did not dare to turn round. He simply could 
 not look at Aurelia, with all that thrilling and darting through 
 him; he felt that if she saw him she must see what had happened, 
 see that some one else was standing there, not the normal Nigel, 
 cool and calm, but a creature dangerously transported and trans- 
 figured as by fire. The sensation was wonderful, he wanted it
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 37 
 
 to last; he longed for the next flash, to increase and reinforce it; 
 for in the strangest way he felt, as he had never felt before, 
 directly in touch with elemental things. It was not, of course, 
 he said to himself, that the lightning had given him these feel- 
 ings: they had been called out of their trance, their slumber, 
 that was all. It was from him they came, that was the marvel. 
 
 Louder, quicker, nearer came the thunder. The storm was 
 passing from the distant hill tops, coming down their slopes, 
 coming towards them. 
 
 The next flash was tremendous, it lit up the whole garden 
 Nigel saw the well and the lavender hedges and the lemon trees 
 in their carved pots with an unreal distinctness and passed 
 into the room so that for an instant all was light there too. In 
 that luminous instant Nigel saw Mrs. Leonard. She was lean- 
 ing back in her chair, her arms extended along its arms, her 
 head resting against the cushion, her eyes wide open and shin- 
 ing like stars. Her lips were parted and curved into what was 
 not quite but very nearly a smile. Joy seemed to radiate from 
 her. Her eyes met Nigel's for a moment; rested on him with a 
 steady glance that spoke untranslatable things: and then she 
 smiled. 
 
 He moved a step towards her and would have fallen at her 
 feet and caught her hand. But before the impulse could pass 
 into act, the light had gone, extinguished in opaque darkness. 
 A sudden wild gust of wind had blown open the window and put 
 out the lamp. The room was filled with chill air and the roar 
 and rattle of thunder. 
 
 Nigel stood still, his heart beating wildly. He had missed 
 his moment and he knew it ; but as he felt the cold air on his brow 
 and the rain, that had suddenly begun and was now pouring 
 down in little cataracts, wet against his face, he did not know 
 whether he were glad or sorry. 
 
 He moved quickly to the window; caught the pane swing- 
 ing to and fro on its hinge and creaking dangerously, and 
 slammed it to; then turning and feeling his way to the table 
 struck a match and fumbled with the lamp. The first match 
 went out and the second, for his fingers trembled, but the 
 third was successful. The light sprang up again and, small
 
 38 DEAID YESTERDAY 
 
 though it was, it seemed, after the intense and solid darkness, 
 to illuminate the whole room with a brilliance that was harsh, 
 almost cruel. 
 
 Mrs. Leonard had said nothing. She had not moved 
 from her chair or changed her position. When Nigel looked 
 in her direction not at her, he felt he could not do that 
 she was still sitting with her arms extended, her hands clasp- 
 ing the knobs, her head resting against the cushion. But 
 if her position had not changed, something had changed. 
 It was not only that her face, which had been relaxed, was 
 now tense; her hands were clasped round the knobs so that 
 the little blue veins stood out on the smooth tanned skin; 
 her mouth was shut and her chin firm; and her eyes, which 
 had been open, were now closed. Something more had hap- 
 pened. Joy had died. The colour had gone from her alto- 
 gether. The rose of her dress was not now reflected in her 
 cheeks, they were paler than ivory, transparently pale; and 
 her unsmiling lips were closed, like a window over which a 
 shutter has been barred. 
 
 Nigel looked at her and realised that he felt cold, and 
 that his coldness was not physical only; it did not come from 
 the relentless rain swishing down in the garden, run- 
 ning off the roof in little rills, beating on the flags with 
 a sound almost as of stones dropping. It was the cold 
 of fear. 
 
 He could not understand or analyse his fear, it was too 
 comprehensive. He only knew that it was there, and so much 
 there that nothing else was there at all. He dreaded the 
 moment when Mrs. Leonard should open her eyes. That was 
 not all he dreaded, but he did dread it so much that he turned 
 again to the window. 
 
 He might fix his eyes on the dark pane, but there was 
 nothing to be seen, nothing but blackness; he could not even 
 see the rain except where it had starred the glass, only 
 hear it. As he listened, absorbed in the mechanical act 
 of attention, it seemed to him that the downpour was 
 slackening. Yes, certainly it was. For a new sound 
 surely became audible, the chirping in the grass of the
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 39 
 
 cicalas. He listened; this sound gained upon the other, 
 that of the falling down of water, until he perceived it 
 only. 
 
 The rain was stopping, had stopped as suddenly as it 
 had begun. The opaque darkness grew less solid. As 
 he stared, he first imagined that he could distinguish 
 a paleness where sky ended and hills began, then really could 
 distinguish it, then as his eyes travelled down could once 
 more make out the forms of things the rose hedge, the flower 
 beds, the well and the carved pots. There they all were again. 
 It seemed ages since he had seen them before, though nothing 
 had happened, not a word been spoken. But there they were 
 again. The real garden had come back, the dream had parted 
 and fled. The sky passed from black to darkest grey, from 
 darkest grey to blue; a star arose. The sound of the cicalas 
 filled the air once more, and the water running away in rills 
 was nothing but a distant undercurrent. Again the voice 
 of Carlo broke out, sweet because human and normal, bring- 
 ing back the world of every day. 
 
 "Oh, open the window, Mr. Strode; it's very hot in here 
 and smells of lamp." 
 
 The spell was broken. 
 
 Nigel opened the window and leaned out. The night air 
 was sweet and soft: washed and refreshed. The scents rose 
 up at him and swept in through the window. Under the clear 
 dark sky the hills lay sleeping. 
 
 Nigel took out his watch. 
 
 "I must be getting home," he said. "It may begin to 
 rain again." 
 
 Mrs. Leonard she had risen to her feet and was standing 
 by him smiled as she extended her hand. 
 
 "Good night," she said. "The road is quite safe now, I 
 think."
 
 CHAPTER FOUR 
 
 IT had seemed to Nigel quite absurd that he should be 
 dragged out to the wilds of Hammersmith within ten 
 days of his return to town, because Davis would fuss over 
 final arrangements, insisted on seeing him before his own 
 departure, and had a cold which he refused to bring up to 
 Fleet Street. Davis really had nothing to say that mat- 
 tered; he had never had any voice on the literary side of the 
 paper; and his ugly room was stuffy, smelt of eucalyp- 
 tus and was certainly impregnated with germs. The 
 whole thing was a waste of time, and ten to one Nigel would 
 have caught his cold. It was after six when he got away, 
 not in the best of tempers. 
 
 But perched on the top of a bus swinging eastwards he 
 forgave Davis, as the sense of London sank into his mind 
 again and he realised how intimately he was part of that 
 mighty whole. London did for one instead of so much: in- 
 stead of almost everything. She lived, even if one did not 
 live oneself; she filled up the holes and spaces. To other 
 eyes London might be harsh and cruel. Mrs. Leonard 
 had felt her like that, seen her trampling down the fine 
 and delicate in feeling as she had trampled down the 
 fields. But to Nigel her ruthlessness was part of her charm. 
 He loved her crudity, her violence, the sense of rich com- 
 plicated life, which all the pain and dirt and disease and suf- 
 fering made more splendidly variegated; he found in the 
 gorgeous prodigal just the colour and force he missed 
 in his own life and the lives of his friends. He and 
 his friends were civilised to tenuity, but London remembered 
 the brute in man. 
 
 40
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 41 
 
 And to-night she was beautiful. Hammersmith Bridge, 
 with its lights like jewels hung on an Ethiopian's neck; the 
 road, crammed with vehicles; even the cars lit up and the 
 violent clanging sky signs of the Broadway; the jostling peo- 
 ple in the road; then the comparatively open space along 
 to Olympia; the great sweep of railway lines with more col- 
 oured lights; the thick dark leafless trees of Holland Park; 
 and at last, Kensington High Street with the spire of St. 
 Mary Abbott's cleaving the intense dark violet of the sky 
 it was all wonderfully, painfully beautiful. 
 
 The bus stopped at the corner; people got off, more peo- 
 ple got on. Nigel leaned over the side and watched 
 the crowds slowly moving along the path; across the 
 road people who got out from work too late to buy, 
 staring in at the big plate glass windows of Barker's and 
 Deny and Toms; on this side men and women coming in 
 and out of the public-house at the corner, stopping to stare 
 at the posters of the evening papers, or waiting for buses 
 to take them here and there, to other portions of the 
 thronging ant-heap. Just in front was a taxi, pausing 
 to take in a man in evening clothes and a woman with 
 splendid chestnut hair in which an aigrette waved: hair only 
 a shade darker than her orange velvet cloak. Two girls in 
 simple evening cloaks, bare-headed, with fascinating pink and 
 blue slippers, tripped along the pavement. 
 
 Nigel sighed with satisfaction. Yes, London was the 
 place. All the strictures they had so often passed on it, 
 he and his friends, were true, no doubt; but if one had 
 to live, London was the place. There, after a brief re- 
 adjustment, it was easy, as it had always been, to put 
 aside troubling questions. There was no time for them 
 in an existence packed full from day to day with small 
 occasions. 
 
 As a journalist the topic of the day and of the week oc- 
 cupied him; and in the world in which he moved the peo- 
 ple were few who showed interest in anything beyond. With 
 'the men with whom he lunched and the women he met at 
 dinner conversation was easy and pleasant, largely because
 
 42 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 it was confined to the surface of the latest event. Nigel moved 
 in a gregarious set of people who were for ever "doing things" 
 together; he called most of them by their Christian names 
 and all of them, without exception, called him Nigel. All 
 the members of the set were highly modern. They had al- 
 ways read the latest edition of the evening paper, seen 
 the newest "revue"; they read, saw and heard every- 
 thing as it came out. Beyond these limits, however, 
 they enjoyed, or professed, a vast ignorance. If they had 
 read an old book or seen an old picture, they forgot, or at 
 least never mentioned it. Reference except for pur- 
 poses of demolition to masterpieces more than twenty 
 years old passed as priggish. They all spoke with the 
 utmost contempt of the accepted great, and were icono- 
 clasts of many more gods than those of the market-place. 
 Theoretically they all scorned success; but no one would 
 have admitted that any of the others was proof against 
 it. Hugh Infield was the only person clearly in that 
 position; but Hugh was safe against any dangerous temp- 
 tation. Moreover, he was not, in the true sense, one 
 of them. In him the herd-instinct was imperfectly de- 
 veloped. 
 
 Some of them were politicians. Edgar Nugent, for 
 instance, was a Liberal member, and Wellesley Drew a 
 Liberal candidate. The enforced platitudes of their pub- 
 lic utterances, and Liberal principles generally, were the 
 standing jokes of their friends. Edgar was rich and 
 rather stupid, but his wife was clever, though admitted 
 to be a snob. They gave amusing parties, at which 
 minor members of the government were to be met, and 
 had a delightful place in the country. Edgar and Welles- 
 ley might be solemn enough in their constituencies: in 
 town their politics were exclusively backstairs. They 
 never discussed political questions except as throwing 
 light on the folly and incompetence of the other side and 
 the corruption and gullibility of their own. Occasionally 
 a jarring note was introduced by Lois Drew, who was a 
 militant suffragist; but it was generally agreed that her be-
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 43 
 
 haviour was due to Wellesley's incurable tendency to 
 flirt with other people, and that she would cease to care 
 about the vote when she learned, as in time she certainly 
 would, to follow his example. Suffrage as a topic of 
 conversation was by the autumn of 1913 rather played 
 out. Art was represented by the little band of post 
 impressionists whom Myrtle Toller was collecting, as the 
 main fruit of her somewhat spasmodic attendance at the 
 Slade School; philanthropy by Allan Mottershaw, who 
 had lived, like every one else, at Toynbee before his 
 marriage and had a large independent income; social 
 work in some form or other by almost everybody. A 
 very large number of the men were civil servants. Most 
 of them, including a fair proportion of the women, did work 
 for their living, though not all lived on what they earned. 
 Nearly all regarded their work as simply a means of 
 making a necessary, but never sufficient, amount of 
 money. Therefore the daily task was relegated to the limbo 
 of things not talked about; and the larger portion of exist- 
 ence being thus devoted to the dull, monotonous and ugly, 
 pleasure, variety and excitement had somehow to be extracted 
 elsewhere. 
 
 "Do not let the impression of life as a whole confound 
 you": they might all have laid that maxim to heart, 
 so thoroughly did they avoid any contemplation even of 
 the smaller unit of the individual life as a whole. Dim some- 
 where in the unexamined background it brooded the 
 sense that life as a whole did not bear looking at, that 
 it would plunge one into despair if one tried. Religion, 
 the normal mode of such contemplation, played no part 
 in the lives of any of them. They had either been 
 brought up without it, like the Tollers, or reacted early 
 and easily from its conventional observance, like Nigel 
 himself. Few of his generation had got rid of it in 
 the throes that had made the spiritual experience of 
 their fathers: in all Nigel's acquaintance he only knew 
 two such cases, in which inferior social origins had post- 
 dated normal development. For the others the Church
 
 44 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 stood for a contemptible array of conventional catch- 
 words. Chris Bampton sometimes attended "Higher 
 Thought" services as a means of spiritual hygiene, just 
 as she did a course of Muller now and then when her 
 muscles got slack. Mottershaw was a high priest of the 
 same cult. Lois Drew claimed to be "psychic" and 
 stared into crystals from time to time. But such views con- 
 stituted essentially an escape from "life as a whole," to which 
 all their talk about life and life-forces seldom brought any 
 one back. 
 
 Nigel felt himself settling down into his groove again with 
 a sense of relaxed tension. He was still waiting; but waiting 
 had resumed its passive character. He had said once to 
 Hugh to Hugh one could say anything that he was happy 
 when he did not think; and it was true. The natural bent of 
 his disposition was towards happiness, he could easily absorb 
 himself in little things. It was only now and then that there 
 swept over him a wave of depression: a sense of the emptiness 
 and worthlessness of life. Generally he liked it well. He 
 might agree, at the moment, with the passionate anger and de- 
 spair to which Gervase O'Connor sometimes gave vent; but 
 always he reverted to the feeling that Gervase was exaggerated : 
 mad in his hatred of life, just as, sometimes, he was mad in his 
 delight in it. Normally Gervase was merely an absurd 
 and rather delightful buffoon. When he became serious, 
 when he pretended to think, he was worrying and a spoil- 
 sport. 
 
 A happy oblivion: that was the art of life. Nigel did not 
 formulate, but as a rule he practised it. As Montevarchi had 
 obliterated London, so London now obliterated Montevarchi. 
 Not entirely, however. Every now and then Nigel found him- 
 self thinking of Mrs. Leonard: often she rose before his mind's 
 eye. But he thought of her generally not as an uncomfortably 
 searching intellect, in whose person the reality he at once sought 
 and dreaded faced him with accusatory eyes, but simply as a 
 woman, beautiful, poetic, disturbing. It was her presence, not 
 her mind, that haunted him. He played with her image, falling 
 into unusual silences as he thought of it. Mrs. Nugent ac-
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 45 
 
 cused him of being in love, and he enjoyed the accusation. 
 Every now and then his curiosity about her past revived; but 
 for a long time he refrained from speaking to any one about 
 her; something, he did not know or ask himself what, seemed 
 to seal his lips. 
 
 At last one evening he questioned Hugh, plunging straight 
 in without any preamble or introduction. 
 
 "I say, Hugh, do tell me about Mrs. Leonard." 
 
 He was sitting on the edge of the tall fender, warming his 
 back at the fire preparatory to going out to dinner, and as he 
 looked down upon Infield his consciousness of freshness, clean- 
 ness, finish, even of youth, was agreeably heightened by the 
 other's lack of all these qualities. Hugh lay back in his usual 
 chair, obviously tired out, his long legs crossed and one muddy 
 shoe held out to the fire. His hair needed cutting, and looked 
 greyer than usual. Pushed back from his forehead, it showed 
 the deep lines in his brow. He had taken off his spectacles and 
 was rubbing them on a large silk handkerchief while he stared 
 before him out of his short-sighted eyes. He stayed so long 
 without answering that Nigel wondered whether he had heard 
 the question and was about to repeat it when Hugh growled 
 out, as he replaced his handkerchief, while still leaving his 
 spectacles on his knee, "Haven't I told you time and again 
 to read her? " He hunched his shoulder in the direction of the 
 bookcases along the wall. "Her books will tell you a great deal 
 more than I could, if you take the trouble to look inside. She 
 doesn't write like Henry James you could understand her if 
 you wanted to." 
 
 Nigel laughed. "Oh, I daresay. But writing seems to me 
 a long way round. And after all, the writer must be more than 
 the book. You don't agree? " 
 
 Infield's eyes were on the fire. 
 
 "No. Not with good writers. But it's partly true of her, 
 though she is good. When I say you could understand, I don't 
 mean that you could appreciate her. " 
 
 Nigel at this laughed outright. 
 
 "Oh but appreciate is just what I do. I have seen her, 
 you see."
 
 46 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "Then why ask me?" 
 
 "Oh, because you know her. I have only spent ten days 
 in her company. " 
 
 "I at least have read her," Infield corrected. "Yes and 
 I know her or did. But in ten days I daresay you saw a great 
 deal. There's a great deal to see; and she used not to go in for 
 concealment; it was against her theory. " 
 
 Nigel was silent for a few moments, pondering on this. 
 "She frightens me, rather, " he said at last. 
 
 "Too generous, eh?" Infield's eyes were now fixed upon 
 his friend, and if Nigel had been looking at him he might have 
 been struck with the way in which something, possibly the 
 removal of his perpetual glasses, had diminished his years. But 
 Nigel was not looking at Infield, he was inspecting the bottom 
 of his own trousers, just a trifle frayed. 
 
 "She made me feel small," he said. 
 
 Infield shrugged his shoulders a trifle impatiently. "Oh, 
 my dear Strode, of course if you spent your time in feeling 
 yourself instead of her, no wonder you have to come to me for 
 information. " 
 
 Nigel had turned round and was playing a little nervously 
 with the objects on the mantelpiece. Infield regarded his 
 immaculate back, slim and boyish, and the fair bent head, with 
 an expression in which many feelings mingled. A smile just 
 curved his lips as he went on 
 
 "I suppose you fell in love with her most people do." 
 
 Nigel turned round quickly. 
 
 "That's the worrying part of it I don't really know 
 whether I did or not. The first two days I was sure I had 
 but then we got involved in politics and do you know she 
 almost bored me. She went on, simply tirelessly, about foreign 
 policy of all things and got tremendously angry with me be- 
 cause I wouldn't take it seriously enough. I didn't mind her 
 talking, because she's got the most perfect voice, but when she 
 expected me to answer I was simply lost. Then the next day 
 
 she seemed to have given all that up again and I was Well, 
 
 I don't know where I was. But I kept feeling, at the moments 
 when I hadn't completely lost my head, cold shudders of anxiety,
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 47 
 
 about what I don't know. But it got more and more on my 
 nerves. So at last I fled. " 
 
 "How do you mean, fled?" 
 
 "Why, one morning I sent myself a telegram and came 
 straight back. Oh, you may laugh, Hugh; I feel an awful 
 idiot, now, and the thought of meeting her again actually alarms 
 me, though in a way I long to meet her again and think about 
 her a lot. But she gave me the feeling that I was not real. Do 
 you ever feel that?" 
 
 Infield had replaced his spectacles and was now gazing into 
 the fire. 
 
 ' ' No, ' ' he said. ' ' What I do feel, constantly, is that nothing 
 else is real. " 
 
 Nigel looked at him. 
 
 "You are a queer fish, Infield. Do you know, I don't be- 
 lieve I know you, after all this time?" 
 
 Infield lay back in his chair, smiling. 
 
 "Really?" he said. "Well, it isn't at all necessary. Here 
 I am and here I shall be to the end of this chapter, for good or 
 ill. Now, you are another matter. " 
 
 "You mean I'm still fluid. " 
 
 "Amazingly so for a man of what is it? Thirty-seven?" 
 
 "Thirty-eight," said Nigel gloomily. "Two days ago." 
 
 Hugh did not seem to feel the tragedy. 
 
 "Thirty-eight and still fluid with life floating all round 
 you in a wondrous haze! I suppose that's it. ... I say, you 
 will be late for dinner, however fashionable the Nugents' hour 
 has now become. That's a quarter past." 
 
 Nigel looked at his watch, though his quick ears had caught 
 the chime. 
 
 "Oh, no," he said easily, "it's all right. It's at the Savoy. 
 I believe Daphne Leonard is to be there. Do you know her?" 
 
 "Daphne? Oh, yes. That I say with some certainty, odd 
 though it may seem in the case of a girl of twenty-two. I know 
 Daphne. She's not fluid. . . . Run off and meet her. She'll 
 help to clarify your ideas about her mother!" 
 
 "But they're not in the least alike. " 
 
 "Aren't they? How do you know?"
 
 48 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "Oh, I've seen her picture." 
 
 Infield laughed. 
 
 "Oh, the things you see!" 
 
 Returning towards midnight from a sufficiently entertaining 
 dinner, at which, however, Daphne Leonard had not been 
 present, Nigel found Hugh still up. He was sitting with a book 
 on his knees, but not reading. He raised his eyes when his 
 friend entered, but made no remark. Nigel knew him well 
 enough to say nothing either. There were times when Hugh 
 seemed incapable of speech, and sometimes they lasted for days.
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 AUTUMN became winter : Christmas passed and a new year 
 began. Not till well on in February did Nigel manage to 
 get down to Melbury to spend a week-end with his brother 
 and sister. He really had been busy, for it took the office some 
 time to adjust itself to the absence of Davis, though the burden 
 fell mainly on the broad shoulders of the sub-editor, Mr. Rob- 
 inson. He arrived after a very chilly drive out from Cambridge, 
 feeling rather cross and tired. Juliet, his sister, accepted that 
 as quite natural and just. All men, and especially men who 
 worked with their heads, had a right to be cross. It was a right 
 of which all those with whom she had ever had anything to do, 
 from her late father downwards, had taken the fullest advantage. 
 A woman found her satisfaction in soothing and smoothing them 
 back to amiability: and Nigel was delightfully easy to soothe, 
 and seldom even a little cross. She kissed her brother tenderly, 
 inquired about his journey without expecting an answer, poked 
 the fire in his room, offered to unpack his bag, felt the can of hot 
 water to see that it was really hot, and murmured that dinner 
 was in half-an-hour. 
 
 When Nigel came downstairs, his normal happy temper was 
 restored by the fact that he was now clean, and smelt of fresh 
 soap instead of stale tobacco, other people's tobacco, for he rare- 
 ly smoked, and never in the train. Juliet was waiting for him 
 in the drawing-room, attired in the dark red evening frock in 
 which she went to small parties, not the black which she wore 
 every night at home. She indicated the softest of the many soft 
 chairs, by an admirable fire. On a small table near it lay papers, 
 the Hibbert Journal and the Contemporary, and H. G. Wells's 
 
 49
 
 50 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 new novel. Stephen, who was a clergyman, was broad in reli- 
 gion and a Liberal in politics, though the 1909 Budget had been 
 a shock from which he had never quite recovered. Juliet's 
 gesture and her smile indicated that if Nigel preferred to read, 
 she quite understood and would not bother him. When he said 
 no, he had rather talk to her, she flushed up quickly. She had 
 a face like a sweet rosy apple, not pretty, but charming from the 
 candour of her clear pale eyes, set rather too far apart, and the 
 ready smile that made them shine. Before Nigel had done 
 more than ask her how things were going in the parish, the Rev. 
 Stephen Strode himself appeared. Physically, Stephen was 
 the link between the graceful slightness of his brother and the 
 soft roundness of his sister. He was taller than Nigel, but his 
 frame was amply covered, and his features, though well cut, too 
 small for his large smooth face. He had Nigel's self -conscious- 
 ness without his nerves; Juliet had the nerves without self-con- 
 sciousness. Not that any one credited her with nerves, least 
 of all herself. She had no time to think about them. Stephen 
 was good-looking at a certain angle, but it was an angle difficult 
 to find, though always presented, by a happy accident of light- 
 ing, in his own pulpit. His parishioners regarded him as a hand- 
 some man; a view helped by the fact that he shared it, also by 
 his single state. As he came in now, rubbing his large, soft, 
 well-made hands together, his brother, rising to return his 
 greeting, received his usual impression that Stephen was a 
 success. It was not an impression that held; in London, any- 
 where but in Melbury, it evaporated; but in Melbury it was 
 like an aroma. To be so eminently pleased was surely a success, 
 to which Nigel felt he could present, on his own account, nothing 
 comparable. The less you had to be pleased about, the stronger, 
 surely, was your moral position; it testified to such solidity 
 within. 
 
 "Well," said Stephen cheerily, "and how is the great world 
 wagging?" 
 
 He always couched his opening remarks to Nigel in some 
 such phrase, as if to pay a tribute to his nominally central 
 position on a London paper. It was, however, as his brother 
 well knew, his conviction that a truer view of main currents was
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 51 
 
 to be got in Melbury. Melbury, or at any rate the Vicarage, 
 was thoroughly abreast of the times. To be within three miles 
 of Cambridge removed all danger of provincialism. Cambridge 
 was, by its own admission, the hub of the universe. 
 
 Nigel intimated that the great world was much as usual; 
 a small and tedious place, he found it. 
 
 "Rapid motion, you know," he said, "doesn't involve one's 
 getting anywhere. One revolves fastest round a fixed point." 
 
 Juliet looked at him with large round eyes. 
 
 "Ah!" said Stephen, "you always were an optimist." 
 
 Nigel did not see the particular connection, nor was he pre- 
 pared to accept the general definition. Stephen went on, as 
 they moved into the dining-room. "Personally I see signs every- 
 where that make me fear we are on the verge of very serious 
 change. Things are bad, Nigel, very bad. Parliament has 
 fallen into utter contempt, as is not surprising. The spirit of 
 the people seems to me deplorable. Lloyd George has de- 
 bauched them; they think of nothing but spoliation and material 
 gain. " 
 
 "Really?" Nigel regarded his brother with mild amuse- 
 ment. It was odd to find Lloyd George discussed in this serious 
 strain. 
 
 "Yes, indeed." Stephen was carving a saddle of mutton 
 with consummate delicacy, a kind of sustained tenderness. 
 "The recent strikes have been disgraceful, quite disgraceful. 
 They shake one's confidence in England, and living here it is 
 impossible not to see that the young generation of our class is 
 little better; little calculated to set an example. Our young men 
 are without discipline and without ideals. . . . Do try that 
 Burgundy, you won't find it so bad. . . . Yes, judged by the 
 two tests which one should apply to a nation, our condition is 
 bad." 
 
 Nigel smiled as he recalled a recent evening, in the course 
 of which Jimmy O'Connor and two friends of his had roundly 
 declared ideals to be the source of all evil and a relic of Vic- 
 torian hypocrisy and cant. 
 
 ' ' What are your two tests? ' ' he said. ' ' I wonder if we should 
 agree about them?"
 
 52 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Stephen looked at his brother. There was a slight asperity 
 in his voice as he replied: " I daresay not, Nigel. I do not read 
 the New World quite regularly, there are so many things one 
 must read, but Juliet does, I believe, and she generally tells me 
 if there is anything outstanding. I am familiar, however, with 
 its general tone. . . . Yes, a little more cauliflower, Juliet, 
 please. " 
 
 Juliet took advantage of the momentary diversion her 
 tactics were simple and transparent enough to ask her younger 
 brother how he would define the two tests. 
 
 Nigel felt too lazy to think out a definition of his own, nor 
 was the company worth it; but it was easy enough to resume the 
 course of many familiar arguments. This he did, as he said: 
 "I should say the condition of labour and the position of art. 
 If I had to answer these questions at the moment, for England, 
 I should not feel very happy. But Stephen doesn't accept my 
 classification, I see, so that he need not be affected by my 
 answer. " 
 
 Stephen, in fact, almost snorted. "Indeed, I do not. It 
 is because most people, of the sort, that is, which expresses itself 
 freely in the press, ask those superficial questions, that they go 
 wrong. The condition of labour and of art are essentially 
 secondary; they are not the root of the matter; there are deeper 
 questions. What is called great art in particular is often the 
 flower of a rotten civilisation; when people begin to think too 
 much about art, when they regard it as fundamental, they are 
 already on the down grade. I have feared that we might be 
 in that danger in England, the danger of thinking art more 
 important than life." 
 
 "I don't think you need worry about that, Stephen. The 
 number of people in London who think art really important 
 would, I fancy, be quite reassuring to you. " 
 
 "As for labour," Stephen swept on, "I have long thought 
 the preoccupation with material things the chief weakness of 
 modern Socialism I speak, you know, as a Socialist. " 
 
 He waved his hand, presumably towards the row of books 
 on the white shelf above the small spindle-legged writing table 
 with its back to the light. There, as Nigel knew, the Minority
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 53 
 
 Report of the Poor Law Commission (bound) rested side by side 
 with The Condition of England and Poverty, a Study of Town Life. 
 His eyes wandered from the book case over the room, noting all 
 the details of its elaborately simple comfort. Stephen had sold 
 the old furniture when he moved into Melbury, and replaced 
 the heavy mahogany and horsehair with Jacobean oak, the 
 Sheffield plate with Liberty pewter, and the old Indian carpets 
 with patternless velvet pile. The pictures had gone too, the 
 queer coloured prints which Nigel remembered in the old dining- 
 room, and the heavy oil paintings of earlier Strodes; instead 
 there was a long, beaten pewter plaque over the white mantel- 
 shelf, and a mirror above the oak dresser, that was all. Pewter 
 evidently had some spiritual or aesthetic significance for Stephen, 
 for the fruit and sweet dishes were in that metal, and the fittings 
 of the electric light. It stood, perhaps, for cultured simplicity, 
 like the leadless glaze plates and the heavy cut glass out of 
 which Stephen drank his port. Simplicity of this conscious 
 and expensive kind was familiar to Nigel, who was used to draw- 
 ing-rooms with brick floors, inglenooks, and raftered ceilings. 
 He turned back from it all to ask Stephen what his two criteria 
 were. Stephen would expound them some time or other, to 
 give him his head saved trouble. He knew that it was vain to 
 attempt to direct conversation into other channels in the hope 
 of saving Juliet and himself from well-worn platitudes. 
 
 Stephen was pleased. He passed the port and turning the 
 stem of his glass in his long fingers his rich voice and fine hands 
 were his natural gifts for a successful ecclesiastic, beautifully 
 displayed in asking a blessing leaned back in his chair and 
 spoke impressively. 
 
 "I have seen for some time that we are, as a nation, getting 
 slack, set on comfort, unable to make sacrifices, blind to spirit- 
 ual things. Patriotism and religion are the mainsprings of a 
 sound national life. I fear this generation is dead to both. " 
 
 His sonorous voice flowed on, but Nigel did not listen, until 
 suddenly recalled by his sister's voice. 
 
 "Of course," Stephen was saying, "I hate militarism, the 
 Prussian system. But national service is a very different thing. 
 Discipline is what our people need, discipline and the power to
 
 54 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 make sacrifices. As it is, their idea is to get everything from 
 the State. " 
 
 "I thought," Juliet interposed, and it was practically the 
 first time she had spoken, "that was what we women were al- 
 ways reproached for, making sacrifices just for the sake of 
 it." 
 
 Stephen dismissed the irrelevance with a plump hand. 
 Juliet, Nigel saw, had failed to convert him to Suffrage. He 
 was not the man to be converted to anything by a sister who 
 made him so comfortable. But the interruption enabled a move 
 to be made to the drawing-room. There the hot fire and 
 cushioned ease of his chair disposed Stephen to repose. 
 
 Juliet attempted a diversion. 
 
 "Nigel, you've told us nothing about Italy. Or is it so long 
 ago that in your busy life you've forgotten all about it? " 
 
 Nigel smiled. Nothing made him appear in his own eyes so 
 second-rate as Juliet's simple wonderment. To her, he was, he 
 knew, a brilliant creature, leading in the great world of London 
 a rich and complicated life. She saw him at the focus of the 
 whirling forces that made progress the mysterious, splendid and 
 rather terrible thing it was. She listened to him as to a prophet, 
 and he never seemed to himself so platitudinous as when he met 
 her wide-open eyes and saw her lips part in mute amazement. 
 She thought him much more remarkable than Stephen. There 
 Nigel had to agree. Stephen basked in the relatively smaller 
 meed of admiration given him and had grown mentally sleek 
 on it, just as he was becoming physically rotund on the excel- 
 lence of his sister's cuisine. But Nigel felt himself reduced to 
 his real insignificance by her ingenuous simplicity and absence 
 of saving comparisons. A world in which he bulked as brilliant 
 was a poor affair. True, any career might well look striking, 
 any world might seem large, from the close-shut windows of the 
 vicarage. To count as small in the eyes of Aurelia Leonard was 
 distinguished in comparison. 
 
 The mention of Italy had set her vividly before him. For 
 the last few weeks she had been little in his thoughts. Grad- 
 ually the mere passage of time had blurred his sharp impres- 
 sions, and on the whole he had been glad that it was so. Hugh
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 55 
 
 had told him nothing about her, and he felt a shyness most 
 unusual and impossible to explain to himself, in broaching the 
 subject with any of his other friends. Mabel Nugent's jesting 
 assertion that he was in love had sealed his lips, as far as she was 
 concerned. To ask her about Mrs. Leonard would, to her in- 
 geniously active mind, have supplied all the pieces of her puzzle. 
 As Mrs. Leonard was coming to town in the summer, that 
 would have introduced an unnecessary complication, and he 
 must be content to accept the mystery. He had felt an interest 
 in the prospect of making her daughter's acquaintance, but 
 after the failure of the first occasion he had decided that he did 
 not particularly desire to know Daphne. In addition to every 
 other awkwardness she was intimate with Myrtle Toller, whom 
 he had decided it was convenient not to see for a time. 
 
 "Italy!" he said. "Oh, Italy was wonderful. No, I never 
 got to Siena, nor Ravenna either. " 
 
 Juliet stared at him, amazed. She had never been to Italy. 
 
 " I had meant to go. But I went out to see a friend of mine 
 who has a house in the country, near Florence, and it was so 
 lovely there that I got no further. You read novels, Juley, 
 perhaps you have read some of hers? A Mrs. Leonard? " 
 
 It was most improbable, as he knew, that Juliet had done 
 anything of the kind, but he felt a sudden desire to utter 
 Aurelia Leonard's name, to talk of her. 
 
 Juliet shook her head, but her puzzled expression suggested 
 that the name was not altogether unfamiliar. She turned to 
 her elder brother. 
 
 "Stephen, you know about Mrs. Leonard, I'm sure." 
 
 Stephen roused himself. His expression was that of the 
 clergyman of the parish, with nostrils drawn down and lips 
 pursed. 
 
 "Mrs. Leonard? Certainly I do. But it is not a story I 
 should wish to tell you, Juliet. " 
 
 Nigel felt an inclination to laugh. It seemed too paradoxical 
 that after casting about so long for some one who could tell 
 him Mrs. Leonard's story, he should run it to earth in Melbury 
 Vicarage. 
 
 "Do tell it to me though, Stephen. She's quite the most
 
 56 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 interesting and charming woman I have ever met, and extra- 
 ordinarily distinguished too. Has she committed one of the 
 seven deadly sins?" 
 
 He spoke jestingly, but the stern expression of Stephen's 
 face did not relax. 
 
 "Surely," he said, "you remember Richard Leonard?" 
 
 Nigel shook his head. The name was, he declared, without 
 associations for him. Mrs. Leonard was the only Leonard of 
 whom he had ever heard. 
 
 "But tell me about Richard. Was he a friend of yours?" 
 
 "Not exactly," said Stephen; "I only met him once or 
 twice, but Uncle James used to talk so often of him that I should 
 have thought you must remember him. He was a great favour- 
 ite of his; they were in India together. Leonard was a subaltern 
 in Uncle James's regiment." 
 
 "Oh, he was in the army." Nigel's tone suggested that 
 Richard Leonard was disposed of. "But it is Mrs. Leonard 
 I'm interested in. Tell me about her. " 
 
 Stephen sat up. 
 
 "All I know about Mrs. Leonard is that she deserted her 
 husband, went off, abandoned him, and that, in so far as I 
 ever gathered, without the slightest excuse. Colonel Leonard 
 he was a Colonel when it happened was, from all I have heard, 
 a most amiable man: Uncle James was devoted to him. " 
 
 "Then why," said Nigel, "did she leave him?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't know. Apparently she was impossibly ex- 
 igeante. " 
 
 "Do you mean" Nigel was still curious "that Colonel 
 Leonard was unfaithful to her?" 
 
 Stephen winced, and glanced at Juliet. 
 
 "I think it not improbable," he said acidly. "Even if it 
 were so, are we not told to forgive to seventy times seven? 
 The real reason seems to have lain in her temper, not in his. " 
 
 "I see," said Nigel thoughtfully. He was silent for a few 
 moments. "She didn't, I suppose, divorce him?" 
 
 "Oh, no, of course not." Stephen looked horrified. "Be- 
 sides, she left him, so of course she had no legal status. " 
 
 "I see," said Nigel again, smiling slightly. He looked at
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 57 
 
 his sister, who was busy counting stitches. "But was it sug- 
 gested that she went of! with any one? " 
 
 "Colonel Leonard was always most chivalrous. He would 
 never say who it was. But yes, I gather there was some one. 
 Anyhow, my impression of the whole affair was exceedingly un- 
 favourable to her. " 
 
 Nigel nodded. Of course it would be. Nor would, he 
 thought, a meeting with Mrs. Leonard improve the case in 
 Stephen's eyes. "Impossible" yes, he would certainly find 
 her impossible. Nigel himself could easily imagine that she 
 might have been difficult. 
 
 "Is Colonel Leonard alive?" he said. 
 
 "Oh, no, he was killed in South Africa, after being mentioned, 
 I think, in dispatches. " 
 
 Nigel relapsed into silence. Stephen had given him much 
 to think about. 
 
 Juliet came up with him to his room, where they separated 
 for the night. After again seeing to everything, and looking 
 dcprecatingly at the row of books in the carved stand over the 
 writing-table she had carefully selected them, but it was not 
 likely there would be anything in the house which he would care 
 to read she still hovered about, as though waiting for some- 
 thing, for that intimacy, perhaps, which Nigel felt with a twinge 
 no one in the world probably gave to her. Certainly not 
 Stephen; he had no such thing in his composition to give. Nor 
 could Nigel fancy that he himself made a satisfactory substitute. 
 He saw Juliet so seldom. She did not belong, she never had 
 belonged, to his real life. Poor Juliet, had she a real life of her 
 own? He laid a hand affectionately on her shoulder as she stood 
 by him. Juliet flushed up instantly. A moment of embar- 
 rassed silence followed. Each was conscious of it, each wished 
 to break it. Nigel could think of nothing intimate to say to 
 his sister. He did not know his way about her world, and there 
 seemed nothing out of his own that he could bring up. Cer- 
 tainly he could not tell her about Aurelia Leonard. He lost 
 himself in the endeavour to frame any account of her and of his 
 feelings about her that would serve in talking about her to 
 any one. Juliet's voice broke in upon his thoughts.
 
 58 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "Nigel ... I never said anything to you about . . . about 
 your engagement. But you knew, didn't you, that I felt, oh 
 very sorry? It must all have been such a sadness for you; 
 and she looks so attractive." 
 
 Nigel awoke with a start. 
 
 "My engagement?" he said sharply, removing his hand 
 from his sister's shoulder, where it had rested while he dreamed. 
 "I wasn't engaged to Myrtle Toller if you mean her." 
 
 Juliet flushed painfully. 
 
 " I'msorry, " she stammered; " I use words wrongly, I know." 
 
 "It's perfectly intolerable, the way people talk." Nigel 
 broke out into anger. "Can't two people be interested enough 
 in one another to ... to discover how far and no further their 
 interest goes, without everybody making absurd assumptions 
 about them?" 
 
 "I'm sorry," Juliet murmured again. "It's my fault. I 
 didn't want to seem curious, Nigel, and I promise you I've never 
 talked about it with any one; only it seemed such a nice plan. 
 She's so nice, and you've always liked them all so much, so that 
 I hoped " 
 
 Her words died away in an indistinct quaver. Nigel, 
 realizing that the break in her voice was an attempt to conceal 
 that she was crying, felt a little ashamed of his outburst. He 
 took the hand near him and patted it vaguely. Juliet swallowed 
 a sob. 
 
 "It would be so delightful if you found the right person, 
 you see, Nigel, that I can't help wanting it to happen. " 
 
 Nigel stared darkly into the fire. 
 
 " I don't think it ever will, " he said. 
 
 "Oh, don't say that!" cried his sister; "it would be such a 
 dreadful pity." 
 
 Nigel was silent. He was thinking about himself. 
 
 "Anyhow," he brought out at last, "Myrtle was quite the 
 wrong person. So you needn't be sorry for me about that." 
 
 But Juliet was now crying softly. 
 
 "Cheer up, dear," said her brother, again patting her hand. 
 "I'm all right. These things aren't so bad after thirty, you 
 know. "
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 59 
 
 " But it must have been horrible, " wailed Juliet. "Finding 
 any one out is so dreadful. " 
 
 Something in her expression struck her brother. Why had 
 she assumed that he had "found Myrtle out," as she put it? 
 
 "Perhaps she found me out." He smiled a little wryly. 
 
 Juliet blinked, to clear her eyes of tears. The notion 
 evidently struck her as absurd. 
 
 "Oh, no," she said, "I'm sure that wasn't it. Don't think 
 I want to ask, Nigel, really I don't. But, of course, I know you, 
 I know that it was the other way round. And that must have 
 been dreadful for you. " 
 
 Nigel partially concealed a yawn. 
 
 "Oh, you must be tired, after your work. I ought not to be 
 staying here, keeping you up." 
 
 Her tears were dried, her voice and manner had recovered 
 their maternal, elder sisterly quality. 
 
 "I hope you'll sleep well," she murmured. 
 
 Nigel kissed her rather absently, and stood, for some time 
 after she had softly closed the door, on the spot where she had 
 left him, thinking. A family was certainly a curious institution: 
 mysterious alike the closeness and remoteness of one's blood 
 relations. Stephen and Juliet were his nearest, his only near 
 relatives, but if they had not been related, could he ever have 
 selected them as friends? They resembled in no way the friends 
 he had selected ; they might indeed have belonged to a different 
 world. It was not only that the form of their lives was alien, 
 the things they did, the way they lived from day to day. Their 
 mental make-up, the ideas among which they moved, were 
 strange. Or rather, his ideas were strange to them, his way of 
 life inexplicable. He was of his own generation; but of what 
 generation were they? Stephen was three and Juliet one and a 
 half years his senior, but they were further from him than the 
 young men and women fresh from the Universities, whom he 
 met in London or at the Tollers'. The obsolescence of Stephen's 
 world might be due to his profession; of Juliet's to her woman- 
 liness. But it was strange that they seemed so satisfied, so 
 unconscious of the world beyond. Juliet was nearly forty, 
 Stephen had passed that grim milestone; and yet on the long
 
 60 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 road nothing, it seemed, had happened to them. He saw them 
 at long intervals, but they never seemed to change. Yet 
 Stephen was a mature man, Juliet a mature woman; though to 
 him they were the indescribable age they always had been, that 
 he was, he supposed, himself. It was odd to recall how in boy- 
 hood one had looked forward to middle age as a period with de- 
 fined characteristics. In reality it slipped upon one unnoticed. 
 It was accomplished and one knew it not. 
 
 As he turned to undress, he suddenly stood still. Was it 
 possible that his share of their illusion was the measure of his 
 kinship? Was his London life after all as narrow in its own way, 
 and his acceptance of it equally self-sufficient? Mrs. Leonard 
 had said things that seemed to suggest it. 
 
 Had Nigel Strode been disposed to continue his reflections 
 on the mysteries of family life, he might have found much food 
 next day at the Tollers'. But he knew the Toller household too 
 well, from other points of view, to see it as a family picture. It 
 had dissolved, like one's own family, into units, and the units 
 stood for too many theories to be viewed as grouped in a land- 
 scape smaller than the whole of modern life. It was only 
 that the details had been organised into so perfect a routine 
 Lady Toller had been sacrificed, by the pressure of years, to 
 that organisation that one sometimes had an illusory vision of 
 the household as a whole. 
 
 That he should spend Sunday at the Tollers had always 
 formed part of Nigel's plan in visiting Melbury. Accident 
 rather than any design of his was responsible for his having bare- 
 ly met Myrtle since his return to town. She had suddenly 
 embarked on a course at the Slade and vanished into Blooms- 
 bury. One encounter there had been, at a Friday Club con- 
 versazione, but that had hardly counted. It proved to him 
 that to see her caused him no kind of shock, but he had not 
 expected that it would. Their relations had never been of that 
 character. He was not in the least prepared to give up the 
 Tollers; there was no reason in his feelings why he should. 
 Cambridge, with their door shut, would have sadly shrunk, 
 and an entire Sunday at Melbury was impossible. He was 
 thoroughly familiar with their routine, and knew that, walking
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 61 
 
 up about eleven o'clock, he should, on such a fine mild morning 
 as had followed on the rain, find Sir Anthony in the garden, 
 arguing with the principal week-end guest, whom he would, 
 later on, take for a walk along the muddy Madingley Road. 
 There would be at least two guests. The house had two spare 
 rooms, even when the whole family was at home, including 
 Godfrey, who could not be counted on and did not count. In 
 term time they were always filled with visitors whose importance 
 was nicely adjusted to their respective sizes. In the morning 
 one guest walked with Sir Anthony; one of the girls took the 
 other as a rule to King's Chapel, if he showed any strong inclina- 
 tion thereto. The Tollers never attended chapel or any form 
 of service on their own account, but they were equipped to take 
 an intelligent interest in the curiosities of worship. The guests 
 were preponderantly male, since they were invited in the first 
 place to provide Sir Anthony, and in the second his daughters, 
 with people to whom to talk. Talking was Sir Anthony's main 
 relaxation. His talk, not his lectures, was the source of his 
 prodigious influence over young men. Lady Toller did not care 
 about talking. She counted for very little in the week-end 
 arrangements. She wrote the invitations, instructed the house- 
 maids to get rooms ready, and ordered more or less appropriate 
 meals. But with that her part ended. Nobody expected her 
 to walk round the garden with any visitor of either sex: it was 
 enough that she babbled to the undergraduates who came in 
 serried, silent rows to tea. Her friends were invited in the 
 middle of the week, when Sir Anthony was too busy to talk with 
 them and the girls were up in town. 
 
 Now, as Nigel skirted the thick hedge, he heard a voice, 
 peculiarly high and penetrating, which he knew well, saying 
 
 "The difficulty is to organise those ideal stimuli. They are 
 there, they are, indeed, the strongest stimuli, even in modern 
 life, but we don't organise them. The Church after two thou- 
 sand years of effort largely on wrong lines has failed absolute- 
 ly. Modern life is so riddled with cross-references, there are 
 so many minor lines of stratification, that the big currents can 
 hardly get free play. Liberalism ought to do it that's why 
 I'm a Liberal, not a Socialist."
 
 62 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "The big currents " Nigel wondered what they were. 
 
 Stephen had been ready enough with his definitions, but Sir 
 Anthony would not see things so simply as Stephen. 
 
 Another voice replied, fuller, harsher, younger. 
 
 "The Church is done. The theatre has got to take its 
 place. " 
 
 Nigel shrugged his shoulders impatiently. Cant for cant, 
 he preferred that of the parson to the artist. Turning in at 
 the garden gate he found himself immediately face to face with 
 Sir Anthony and his interlocutor. Sir Anthony was a fine-look- 
 ing man with long grey hair standing out like a halo round his 
 head and all the features of a prophet, except the eyes, which in 
 his case were quick and calculating, and not, apparently, blinded 
 by the vision of what was far to the sight of what was near. 
 He greeted Nigel warmly. The Tollers were too advanced to 
 mind such a trifle as a broken engagement in the case of an 
 interesting young man. Then, turning, he introduced him to 
 Royal Carrington, the distinguished producer. Nigel had been 
 introduced before, but Carrington seemed to have no recollec- 
 tion of the occasion, a fact that gave substance to the prejudice 
 inspired by a man whose little brown eyes were so very near 
 together, and who wore a pink shirt. Nigel wondered why he 
 was there, but at the Tollers one met every one; and Magdalena 
 had been the success of the season. Perhaps his presence was 
 a tribute to Evangeline, who had appeared in Magdalena in a 
 small, undressed part. The man looked a brute, he thought; 
 tall, stout and florid, his physique was slack for all its solid 
 fleshliness. Nigel hated his thick white jaw and small brilliant 
 eyes. Sir Anthony with his fine parchment face and the aureole 
 of hair that gave him such a misleading air of gentleness, looked 
 like a disembodied spirit beside him. 
 
 Nigel's first spontaneous opinion of the single production 
 of Royal Carrington's that he had seen had been that it was 
 detestably, brutally, unmeaningly ugly. That brutality, how- 
 ever, had been hailed by all his friends as strong, new, cour- 
 ageous, and Nigel, going again in a party assembled for the con- 
 genial purpose of laughing at the absurdity of Evangeline Tol- 
 ler's supposing she could dance, had found himself compelled
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 63 
 
 into a kind of admiration. He was in presence of something he 
 did not understand, and that impressed him. Occasionally 
 there flashed across his mind a fear that he was really, after all, 
 a timid mid-Victorian; that he did not belong in essence to the 
 younger generation at all; and that fear made him distrust his 
 judgment whenever it rose instinctively against anything new. 
 His dislike of Carrington's thick white flesh was probably only 
 this same prejudice of refinement; the man was certainly 
 abominably clever, whether he were really an originator or 
 merely a skilled exploiter; and the more people of his sort one 
 met, the nearer one got to what Nigel vaguely described to him- 
 self as "the mind of age." 
 
 Carrington had merely nodded in response to Sir Anthony's 
 introduction; he did not remove his hands from his pockets, and 
 now continued the conversation, a fat Egyptian cigarette droop- 
 ing meantime from one corner of his mouth. 
 
 "The object of the artist, I take it, is to administer a shock. 
 He must catch the attention. The attention of your over-fed, 
 after-dinner audience is torpid, otiose, stagnant. You can't get 
 a reaction out of them except by violence. Hit 'em and they 
 must protest. Hit 'em hard enough and they wake up. The 
 ordinary idea is to tickle. I'm out against the ticklers. 
 A man when he's tickled laughs and goes to sleep." 
 
 "I suppose," Nigel threw in, "it doesn't matter what they 
 wake up to?" 
 
 Carrington shrugged his heavy shoulders. 
 
 "Not to me. My business is to wake 'em. That's all." 
 
 Sir Anthony was frowning intently. 
 
 "But the weak point of your method I'm talking theoreti- 
 cally; I don't, as you know, ever go to a theatre seems to me 
 that it only jangles the nerves. Now, this generation is a mass 
 of nerves. They've got away from all the strong, simple 
 emotions. What's wanted, is to make a little blood circulate, 
 if it can, in their veins. " 
 
 "You don't go to the theatre? Then you make a great 
 mistake, Sir Anthony. The theatre is the thing. I don't 
 mean the ' slice of life ' theatre Galsworthy and all that school. 
 There's nothing, I grant you, to be got from that kind of dry
 
 64 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 logic-chopping. It's all utterly and hopelessly given over to 
 words. Words are the destruction of what I mean by the 
 theatre. They just lead it astray. Emotion is the stuff, and 
 words have nothing to do with emotion. " 
 
 Nigel felt excited. After all, if Royal Carrington were the 
 last note in modernity, here was an idea he could thoroughly 
 accept. An argument he had often had with Mrs. Leonard 
 came back to his mind. 
 
 "Emotion in general, yes. But how," he said, "can one 
 get any definite emotion without words? Isn't the stuff you 
 can express in any other way pictorially, I mean; I suppose 
 music is different highly limited and generalised?" 
 
 They paused for a moment, for the end of the path had been 
 reached again. Carrington turned his eyes for a moment in 
 Nigel's direction, while he took a fresh cigarette from a beaten 
 gold case which he brought out from the pocket of his striped 
 waistcoat. 
 
 Meantime Sir Anthony had eagerly taken up the word. 
 
 "Emotion is never definite until it issues in action. Action 
 is its only legitimate issue. Nowadays we've got so clever that 
 we whittle every emotion away by reasoning about it. As if 
 reason and emotion had anything to do with one another! 
 Reason is one function, emotion another. Science teaches us 
 to distinguish them and what they can tell us. The reality of 
 life is apprehended emotionally : Bergson is right there. Reason 
 tries to describe it in words. It escapes. So far I agree, Car- 
 rington. " 
 
 An acuter listener than Nigel might have wondered whether 
 words were not, here again, doing their evil part. Carrington 
 had no use for the type of high human emotion of which Sir 
 Anthony was thinking; clever as he was, it was something out- 
 side his purview. That jaw never belonged to a mystic. More 
 probable was it that he saw before him a new and highly usable 
 type: the emotional scientist, who did not, or could not, let 
 the right lobe of his brain know what the left was doing. 
 
 A slight brightening of Carrington's eyes caused Nigel to 
 turn his own in the direction of the house. Two tall young 
 women and a short young man were coming down the steps. He
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 65 
 
 knew the women as the daughters of the house, Evangeline and 
 Myrtle. The young man was a stranger to him. 
 
 Neither Evangeline nor Myrtle was handsome in the ordi- 
 nary sense. They had not inherited the beauty of their mother. 
 But they both enjoyed that measure of good looks which belongs 
 by happy right to the well-fed and well-dressed and self-assured. 
 They held themselves well, thanks to continuous and varied 
 outdoor exercise. They moved with a grace bred of a social 
 experience which had begun almost in the nursery, and an entire 
 absence of shyness. Both, as photographers say, "took" 
 admirably and posed so habitually that they appeared more nat- 
 ural than a really simple person can ever seem. Evangeline, 
 extremely dark, with heavy-lidded slumbrous eyes, and a mouth 
 that suggested tragedy now, but would reveal itself as merely 
 peevish when the pale bloom began to fade from her cheeks, 
 moved at present with the air and cultivated the manner of an 
 odalisque. Her black hair, wound round her head in a fillet, hid 
 the high forehead she had inherited from her father; when she 
 spoke her words dropped out listlessly, as from one ineffably 
 bored with life. As a matter of fact she had a quick, narrow 
 mind and a fund of energy directed solely to getting what she 
 wanted at the moment the attention of Mr. Carrington. 
 When Nigel last met her she had been interested in a young man 
 with a plus-two handicap at golf, brushed her hair back and 
 held herself erect in a short tweed skirt. Now she came trailing 
 toward them in long purple draperies edged with fur. A vivid 
 crimson sash was loosely knotted below her waist. 
 
 But Nigel had no time for Evangeline. Myrtle was advanc- 
 ing to greet him and he felt himself waiting for a sensation. 
 None came. Myrtle was admirably dressed in the latest fashion. 
 She disliked Evangeline and did everything she could to slur 
 the annoying physical resemblance between them, accentuated, 
 when they were girls, by Lady Toller's tiresome insistence in 
 dressing the sisters alike. Her efforts were successful; the like- 
 ness only remained as a piquant heightening of their difference 
 when they appeared together, which was seldom, for Evangeline 
 had gravitated towards Chelsea, Myrtle to Bloomsbury. 
 Alert, frank, vivacious, slangy, Myrtle presented a type of
 
 66 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 modern womanhood antithetical to her sister's. She held out 
 her hand to Nigel with a cheerful, "So you've turned up at 
 last," and a smile in which he seemed to read a kind of tri- 
 umph. Why triumph? He might be glad that the incident 
 had left no scar, but that she should be glad too belittled it all. 
 Such rapid recovery assimilated her to her sister. He longed 
 to tell her so. The opportunity came almost at once. Evange- 
 line drifted towards the gate with Royal Carrington. The 
 unknown young man it was a habit of the Tollers not to in- 
 troduce, they took a great many things for granted had ad- 
 dressed to Sir Anthony a question which seemed to interest 
 him. Myrtle's smile she had an agreeable smile, slow and 
 perfectly regulated developed, and showed her large white 
 teeth. 
 
 " Evidently we are to amuse one another, " she said. " Let's 
 sit on the wall there in the sun. I don't feel energetic enough 
 for a walk. It's too muggy. Have a cigarette. " 
 
 She opened the silver chatelaine-case that jangled by her 
 side as she walked. 
 
 "It's the worst of week-ends at home that mother has a 
 prejudice against smoke in the drawing-room before lunch. . . . 
 Home life is impossible, isn't it? " 
 
 They were now seated side by side on the low wall at the 
 end of the big garden, dividing it from the paddock behind. It 
 was a very dull garden, with formal beds and strips of grass on 
 either side of the tennis lawn. In front of them was the house : 
 new red brick, commodious but not beautiful; beside it a tall 
 poplar. Myrtle was looking at the house, but her remark 
 clearly had a more general reference, for she went on 
 
 "What a mistake it would have been if we'd really got 
 involved in it. I can't imagine now how I ever contemplated 
 it." 
 
 "Don't you mean to marry ever, then?" Nigel's tone was 
 sharper than he knew. 
 
 "Oh, yes!" She looked at him, amusement sparkling in 
 her eyes. "Oh, dear, yes. But marrying doesn't necessarily 
 involve 'home life. ' " 
 
 "It's generally supposed to do so."
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 67 
 
 Nigel's cigarette had gone out: Myrtle offered a match. 
 
 "Yes, but not by our generation," she corrected. "It's 
 one of the things we're getting beyond. When I marry as I 
 shall do, don't be afraid it won't be any one with a domestic 
 ideal. You have it, you know. Oh, yes, you have. It's part 
 of your charm, perhaps the most dangerous part of it. You 
 suggest such fascinating opposites. That's why it won't be 
 easy for you to bring it off. " 
 
 "Why not? " said Nigel. "Oh, I'm interested, I assure you. 
 You think you understand me?" 
 
 Myrtle looked at him more seriously. 
 
 "I think so," she said. "Anyhow, what I mean is, it won't 
 be easy to make a success for you and her. You're very attrac- 
 tive, of course; ah, when you smile like that at me, I forgive 
 myself! We have wonderful smiles, both of us. I suppose 
 that's what drew us together. " 
 
 Nigel's smile became a laugh. 
 
 "No further explanation is needed," he said. "You're 
 much too exciting for a wife. " 
 
 Myrtle frowned and shook her head. 
 
 "There you are," she said. "You want to be excited, but 
 you're afraid of people who excite you. You want to be mod- 
 ern, and yet you'd like to be out of the danger in a little nook 
 of your own. . . . You want some one who'll think you perfect, 
 and yet is so clever that you can believe it's true; who'll sacri- 
 fice everything for you, and never let you know it. You want 
 to take and think you're giving: so do we. Women of mother's 
 age wanted to give and think they were taking. Those women 
 are rare nowadays. I don't believe one exists of my generation. 
 And, of course, you'd insist on some one young and interesting. " 
 
 "You're awfully interesting," cried Nigel, as she paused. 
 
 "Of course. I'm talking about you." 
 
 "No, in yourself I mean." 
 
 "Of course," repeated Myrtle calmly, "I know I am. But 
 not interesting enough for you!" 
 
 Nigel parried it. "Not enough interested," he said. 
 "What was wrong with us was that each wanted to go on being 
 just the same, not making any concession to the other."
 
 68 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Sir Anthony and the short young man reappeared from the 
 front garden, and began pacing up and down along the path 
 which ran under the open French window of the study, along 
 the top of the lawn. 
 
 "Poor Mr. Delahaye," Myrtle murmured. "Father is 
 simply pouring mysticism into him, and he doesn't understand 
 it in the least. Do you see them there on the upper path? 
 When father walks like that with his head tilted he's always on 
 the Super-sensible Reality! What were you saying? Oh, yes. 
 Yes, you're right. It was all interest. When we had found 
 each other out we had got to the end and shut the book. But, 
 do you see, it was extraordinarily lucky that we happened to 
 get to the last page together. We might not. People don't 
 often. You ought to be careful, Nigel, because you don't know 
 what you're like, what your effect on people is: you open the 
 book as if it were going to live under your pillow always. Now, 
 I know I'm only taking it out of the circulating library. I don't 
 insist on marking it all over and writing my name on the flyleaf. 
 You do. I want to read a tremendous lot of books, all there 
 are; I don't take each up as if it were the family Bible." 
 
 Nigel laughed, but his laughter died away and he looked 
 gravely at Myrtle. She was extraordinary: extraordinary in 
 her self-assurance and hardness. It was amazing that he could 
 ever have made love to her. Had he? 
 
 "Don't look so tragic about it, Nigel, although you look 
 very handsome, like a hero of a novel, when you're tragic. Do 
 you feel sad when you look tragic? It must be so tiresome to 
 practise a tragic look, like Evangeline, if one does. " 
 
 Nigel walked home in the late evening feeling singularly 
 tired. The Tollers gave one that feeling, a sense of strain and 
 effort, constantly beaten back. Sir Anthony, with his per- 
 petually baffled attempts to classify and seize the things he ad- 
 mitted to be unclassifiable and unseizable; Lady Toller, sur- 
 rounded by a family beyond her grasp; Evangeline in her 
 changing impersonations, each of which destroyed, or tried to 
 destroy, all that had gone before ; Myrtle, demanding sensations 
 which her temperament could never know: they all somehow 
 missed the thing, whatever it was, that one wanted, supremely,
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 69 
 
 from life; and none of them could, therefore, ever satisfy one 
 who, like Nigel, knew himself as groping after that secret. It 
 struck him now as strange that he could ever have hoped to get 
 near that secret through a relation with Myrtle. Mrs. Leonard 
 had shown him that his fancied suffering was totally unreal; 
 Myrtle herself had swept away the last film of illusion. She 
 had felt no more than he, and that was nothing. It had been 
 an episode, no more, for her as well as for him. A slight an- 
 noyance, that she had felt no more than he, persisted, but he 
 saw it, and saw that it was absurd. Of course, she never could 
 feel more: it was a function of her nature, that incapacity, not 
 of his. It was she who could not feel, not he who could not 
 inspire, real passion.
 
 CHAPTER SIX 
 
 NIGEL sat before the great roll-top desk, heaped with 
 a confusion of papers that suggested the importance of 
 a busy editor, the pressure on his time. Leaning back in 
 his chair he began to dictate a final paragraph. 
 
 "In our opinion the Government has already gone to the 
 fullest limit of concession. The Home Rule Bill has behind it 
 the clearly expressed wish of a majority of the electors of Great 
 Britain. If democracy " 
 
 The telephone on the little square table by the desk vibrated 
 violently. Nigel continued as he took down the receiver 
 
 "Is to be a reality. . . . Yes yes. " He heard a sharp 
 voice, unmistakable even over the wires. 
 
 " Hullo, Nigel, is that you? Good-morning. Myrtle speak- 
 ing. Will you join a party to a show to-night? Chris Bampton, 
 Ned Coventry, Jimmy possibly the Drews: certainly Daphne 
 Leonard. What show? Oh, I'm afraid Magdalena, Evange- 
 line's given me some seats. Can't you stand her? I've some- 
 thing interesting to tell you about her, by the bye. Do come. " 
 
 "Awfully sorry, but you see it's Friday." Nigel entered 
 into explanations, of which Myrtle seemed a little sceptical. 
 She did not appreciate the responsibilities of an editor's chair. 
 At last he had an idea. 
 
 " I can't get away till nine. But, look here, why not all meet 
 for drinks afterwards? Yes, the Caf Regal. It's handy, and 
 unless you want to stay for the Bioscope? No. Well, that'll 
 be excellent. About ten. Oh yes, the more the merrier. 
 Righto. " He rang off and turned to his typist. 
 
 "Where had we got to, Miss James? Oh, yes. 'If democ- 
 
 70
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 71 
 
 racy is to be a reality, the will of a majority cannot be overridden 
 by a threat from a minority. If the Government act firmly, 
 their position is unassailable." 1 He paused. Myrtle had 
 broken the thread on which his periods had, before, been deli- 
 cately strung. "That will do for the present, Miss James. I 
 will add something in proof. " 
 
 He rose and opened the door for Miss James to pass out. 
 She had hardly done so when Mr. Brown, the head cashier, 
 appeared. 
 
 "May I speak to you for a moment, sir?" 
 
 Mr. Brown was a tall grey-haired man, with the stiff bearing 
 of an ex-soldier: an erectness that made Nigel straighten his 
 own limp back as he resumed his place in the seat of authority. 
 There was an unusual hesitation in the cashier's manner: he 
 had been in half-an-hour ago for the signing of cheques and Nigel 
 had then guessed that he had something more to say. It had, 
 however, failed to bring itself out. 
 
 "What is it, Mr. Brown? " He half turned round in his chair 
 to look at him. In the hierarchy of the office, members of the 
 editorial staff were addressed without prefix, as Matheson, 
 Jeffries, Robinson; while the clerks and advertisement staff 
 retained it. Nigel, of course, was Mr. Strode to every one, but 
 that was a different matter. Matheson and Jeffries lunched 
 together and addressed each other as Bill and Walter; Matheson 
 dined with Mr. and Mrs. Jeffries at Putney. Robinson, equal 
 in official status, did not exist outside the office. The other two 
 sometimes lunched with him and occasionally even supped on 
 press day; but no one called him anything but Robinson. It 
 was felt but never said that though he was all right, Mrs. 
 Robinson might be difficult and not quite up to the delicate 
 standard of Putney. On the other hand, Robinson was far the 
 ablest of the three : Fleet Street was full of substitutes for Mathe- 
 son and Jeffries, but Robinson was indispensable. So in his 
 way was Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown moved from one foot to the 
 other. 
 
 "It's about Mr. Jenkins, sir." 
 
 "Jenkins?" Nigel was for the instant at a loss. Then 
 he recovered.
 
 72 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "Oh, yes, the advertisement manager. What about him? 
 Sit-down, Mr. Brown." 
 
 Mr. Brown looked at the indicated seat, but made no motion 
 towards it. To have sat down in the editor's room would have 
 disturbed his sense of values; for an awkward job of this kind 
 he preferred to stand. 
 
 "It's like this, sir. For some time past I've been afraid 
 Jenkins hasn't been running quite straight. ... I knew he'd 
 been in money troubles. ... I've had my suspicions about the 
 ads. for some time. " He hesitated. 
 
 "Well?" said Nigel, still in the dark. 
 
 Mr. Brown stared at the portrait of Mr. Gladstone over 
 the fireplace. 
 
 "Taking commissions on the ads., sir. Putting up the rates 
 to advertisers and pocketing the difference. " 
 
 The cashier entered into a detailed explanation, which made 
 the point clear even to Nigel, who had never troubled to master 
 the technical side of the paper: and further showed that Jen- 
 kins's defalcations all dated from the period of Davis's departure. 
 Mr. Brown handled this point delicately, but he observed that 
 Mr. Davis used to go through all the accounts on Saturday 
 morning, and "a thing like this couldn't have escaped his 
 notice: he is wonderful with figures, is Mr. Davis." Nigel 
 never came in on Saturday : he had not even realised that Davis 
 regularly did so. But, of course, Davis was a creature with no 
 life outside the office. Nevertheless, to realise that Jenkins 
 had so quickly taken advantage of the slacker hand at the helm 
 caused him a moment of anger. It was not lessened when Mr. 
 Brown stated that Jenkins was a very useful man: to dismiss 
 him would be awkward for the paper. The problem grew more 
 annoying, the more it developed. Nigel had conceived of 
 Davis's absence as coinciding with a marked all-round lift in 
 the New World. This did not look like it, and coming on top of a 
 weariness which he felt in connection with the literary side of the 
 paper, filled him with a disgust of his profession. It was all very 
 well for Davis to live for the New World, Nigel could not do so. 
 
 "I suppose I had better see Jenkins," he said at last. 
 "Will you send him in, Mr. Brown?"
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 73 
 
 Jenkins appeared, and at first stoutly protested that the 
 whole allegation was an invention of the cashier's. Mr. Brown, 
 however, once the affair fell into his hands which Nigel was 
 soon glad to let it do speedily reduced Jenkins to a condition 
 so abject that Nigel, feeling sorry for the wretched little man, 
 bade the cashier go. The door closed behind him. Jenkins 
 suddenly dropped his face in his hands and began to sob. This 
 was a new and unexpected turn in the affair. Nigel felt em- 
 barrassed; his embarrassment increased his annoyance. 
 
 "Look here, man," he said sharply, "there's no use in going 
 on like that. Pull yourself together and tell me what's hap- 
 pened. How have you got into this mess? " 
 
 Jenkins gulped noisily once or twice; then clearing his 
 throat burst into a torrent of inexact and irrelevant detail, from 
 which, gradually, the truth emerged. Nigel did not know what 
 to say. . 
 
 "But she must be a hopelessly bad lot, Jenkins?" 
 
 "Oh yes, sir. I see that. I've always seen it. When I 
 don't see her, I know. I see the awful mess I'm in; and I see 
 she's done it. But you know, sir, when I'm with her, I forget all 
 that ... I don't care for anything; I'd do anything. Nothing 
 matters. " 
 
 Nigel looked at the advertisement manager. He was a 
 little man rather like a rat in appearance, with sleek hair, 
 shiny, pimply face, weak, pursed-up mouth and pale, shifting 
 eyes. In his dapper city clothes, light spats and white-edged 
 waistcoat he looked an absurd, incredible vehicle for a passion 
 that swept manners and security and decency away: one of the 
 ten thousand colourless suburbans who came up to town day 
 in, day out, did the same things week after week and year after 
 year, and kept up an appearance. With his eyes pink and swol- 
 len behind his dimmed glasses, he was a forlorn but also a ridicu- 
 lous figure. Nigel watched him carefully flick a speck of dust 
 off his trousers, and marvelled at it all. Jenkins, the type of 
 machine-made modern life at its poorest ; the product of a cheap 
 and hurried schooling, evening classes, the city and suburban 
 trains; born and bred behind dirty lace curtains in a jerry-built 
 house, with no hope in the future of anything but such another
 
 74 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 house, in a quarter where every house was as like its neighbours 
 as were a row of peas in a pod; imprisoned from his earliest 
 breath in a false respectability whose maintenance was the only 
 religion that had ever been instilled into his mind Jenkins the 
 centre of this wild tale of dangerous dishonesty and still more 
 dangerous love! It was amazing. And for Nigel the sordid 
 meanness of it all disappeared in the wonder of a passion that 
 could make Jenkins take such risks. He took off his hat 
 to that. His feelings were, indeed, so confused that, on 
 pretence of being busy, he bade Jenkins go and return on 
 Monday. 
 
 But he could not so easily dismiss him from his mind. 
 Over his solitary Friday chop he reflected upon Jenkins. He 
 was disappointed to find Hugh out: he would have liked to hear 
 his opinion. What his own was he could not decide. It was 
 absurd, but he had to admit, as he sat before his fire, that he 
 almost envied Jenkins. What was it that he envied the miser- 
 able worm? Jenkins was the typical wage slave, bound to a 
 more dreary servitude than that of the manual worker he de- 
 spised. One could picture his drab existence from start to finish, 
 were it not so hopeless that to do so even in imagination was 
 depressing. Typical he was in all save this sudden incursion 
 of something not arranged for, which was plunging him into 
 a chaos from which there seemed no escape. Nigel's thoughts 
 soon left Jenkins and returned to himself. He had been in love 
 more than once: but not in that way. There had been nothing 
 deep or ruinous in any pleasant relationships he passed in review. 
 Least of all in the last. Myrtle could never have thrilled him; 
 he had never at any moment felt the least spark of dangerous 
 fire in her, and she had kindled none in him. One woman had 
 come near to that, and he had fled. What, he wondered, would 
 Aurelia say about Jenkins? It was strange to feel so sure that 
 she would see in him that quality of irrelevant strangeness and 
 splendour that he felt himself: she, and no one else, in all his 
 acquaintance. 
 
 A sharp ring at the bell broke in upon his thoughts, and the 
 next moment Mallard Floss appeared. It suddenly struck 
 Nigel that Mallard was rather like Jenkins to look at; like, and
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 75 
 
 yet extraordinarily unlike. Jenkins was insignificant, as no 
 one with Mallard's hard-set, fanatical mouth could be. Nigel 
 greeted him warmly, glad to be interrupted, though he was not 
 sure that he liked Mallard. Mallard had not, in the years 
 that had passed since he came down from Oxford, got rid of 
 the conviction that the world was, intellectually speaking, at 
 his feet. He had never been visited by difficult doubts and 
 tortured by dim apprehensions. He went straight for what he 
 wanted, and, thanks to an admirable simplicity that made what 
 it was quite clear to him, grabbed it. He had just written a 
 series of articles on "Labour Unrest" in a prominent morning 
 paper, which had created quite a stir. The anonymity made 
 necessary by his official position had only increased his reclame, 
 for it gave all his acquaintance the satisfaction of knowing and 
 communicating something supposed to be a secret, and so mark- 
 ing their status at the centre of things. Mallard Floss was su- 
 premely conscious that he stood at the centre of things. He had 
 hardly finished setting forth his views on the Dublin Strike 
 when Hugh appeared. 
 
 "Hullo, Nigel," said the latter; "thought you were sure 
 to be at Magdalena. Myrtle Toller rang me up and asked me 
 to go." 
 
 "Oh, Magdalena," Mallard Floss snorted. "How people 
 can waste time on that stuff!" 
 
 Hugh smiled as he lit his pipe. 
 
 "It's the new gospel, Floss; you'll have to fit it into your 
 scheme. Royal Carrington's a clever fellow: he's struck the 
 popular note so loudly that no one can miss it: so they all 
 throng and feel tremendously courageous. " 
 
 "And what, " said Mallard, "is the popular note? " 
 
 Hugh looked down at him, still smiling. 
 
 "I thought you'd analyzed us all," he said. "Surely you 
 can't have missed our new hero, the Brute? " 
 
 Mallard shrugged his shoulders impatiently. 
 
 "There's no use doing that, Floss. Magdalena and the 
 Big Fight at Olympia these are our 'notes' if you're really 
 going to organise us you must fit them in. " He glanced across 
 at Nigel. "What do you think, Nigel?"
 
 76 ^ DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Nigel moved restlessly in his chair. "I don't know," he 
 said. 
 
 Hugh puffed at his pipe. 
 
 "You rather hanker after the Brute, I believe," he said. 
 "Now, Floss hates it, because it upsets his arithmetic." 
 
 "And you?" said Nigel. 
 
 "Oh, I? I simply accept it. After all, it's there. There's 
 no use in pretending it isn't. We used to do that. Now we've 
 rushed to the other extreme and glorify it. We tried bottling 
 it up, and now it's bursting our bottle. Don't you feel there's 
 some danger of that, Floss?" 
 
 Mallard shook his head. 
 
 "Not if we once get things decently organised," he said. 
 "As a matter of fact I see what you mean, Infield, though of 
 course you express it in an absurdly fantastic way. I've always 
 felt that the Socialist movement was far too negative. That's 
 why it's got no drive. Its eyes are glued to dirt and disease 
 and a pound a week: it goes on saying we must make an end 
 of this, not we must have that. " 
 
 Mallard expatiated on this congenial theme for some 
 minutes. As he developed his ideas they always came back 
 to the same point. What was required was the adequate organ- 
 isation of everything, with a certain number of first-class brains 
 in control. These brains would include in their purview and 
 provide for every rational impulse, scope would be afforded to 
 everything, and the whole scheme of things thus rendered effi- 
 cient would then redound to the praise of directing mind in 
 the person of Mallard Floss. Nigel's attention wandered while 
 Mallard discoursed, and as soon as he ceased he turned to 
 Hugh and said he wanted to put a case before them both. He 
 then elaborated the story of Jenkins. 
 
 "Ass," was Mallard's incisive comment. "I suppose he's 
 married, too?" 
 
 The point had not occurred to Nigel. He thought so, but 
 was not sure. Hugh looked thoughtful, but said nothing. 
 There was a silence. Mallard Floss broke it. After all, he 
 had been taking it in. 
 
 "Of course it's a very typical instance of the waste of energy
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 77 
 
 that we allow to go on, thanks to our want of decent organisa- 
 tion. It's that combination of acquiescence to go on marrying 
 and having children and wearing a black coat and voting Tory 
 because it's respectable, and hating the working class, all on 
 thirty-seven shillings a week, and then suddenly to break out 
 in the only way that can drag you down still further it's that 
 damned combination that keeps us muddling where we are " 
 
 "What!" cried Nigel, suddenly hating the point of view. 
 "Can't you feel anything fine in a feeling so big that it sweeps 
 a little fly like Jenkins up against the sun? " 
 
 Hugh, who had said nothing, laughed. 
 
 "Nigel, you're incurably romantic! Feelings can't be 
 measured just in terms of amount. You might admire drunken- 
 ness on those lines perhaps you do?" 
 
 Nigel, however, had got hold of the vague idea that had been 
 floating in his mind all evening. 
 
 "Ah, but," he cried, "if you think what Jenkins's life, 
 the life of all his class is it's drab monotony, nothing hap- 
 pening in it ever that can't be foreseen from the be- 
 ginning to the end, a sordid struggle, just to remain 
 where he is and then think of a thing so violent, so prim- 
 itive, crashing in, sweeping order and sense and prudence 
 away!" 
 
 "And honesty and reason and sanity too?" 
 
 "Yes, I daresay. I give you sanity and reason. We've 
 far too much of them. But, honesty, no. Jenkins is honest. 
 I envy his honesty. Don't you, in the bottom of your heart?" 
 
 "Envy him?" Infield laughed rather bitterly. "No, 
 I should as soon envy a savage his desire to eat his 
 enemy. ... I pity him. He isn't honest; he doesn't 
 realise what's happened. He, like you, probably thinks it's 
 rather fine. Whereas it's nothing of the kind. It's the 
 control of the brute that's fine: not the brute that breaks out 
 from it." 
 
 "Of course," said Mallard, "the force that makes 
 men snatch and hit and steal is tremendously useful: 
 only it's utterly wasted. Organisation is what we want." 
 
 "Oh, no!" cried Nigel eagerly. "Freedom, surely, is the
 
 78 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 real thing. Freedom from routine and suppression. Women 
 are beginning, anyhow." 
 
 Hugh rose to his feet with a movement of impatience. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "there we are: a talisman is what we 
 want, after all, all of us. 'Organisation,' 'Freedom.' 
 Every problem solved by turning handles or giving women 
 latchkeys." 
 
 Nigel stared at him. 
 
 "But, surely, Hugh, you want women to be free?" 
 
 "Yes, I do. But my idea of freedom for women is that 
 they should enter the door to the house of life. All they want 
 is the latchkey of the flat." 
 
 "I don't," said Mallard indignantly, "know in the least 
 what you're talking about." 
 
 Hugh laughed and said no more. 
 
 Nigel felt rather irritated with them both. Neither of 
 them seemed to have taken in the case of Jenkins as that 
 of a human being, and certainly neither had thrown the small- 
 est gleam of light on the settlement of the immediate prac- 
 tical problem. Mr. Brown would probably be of more as- 
 sistance there. To Mr. Brown and the morning it might 
 accordingly be left. 
 
 Nigel looked at his watch, and finding that it was 
 already after ten-thirty, rose to his feet, inviting either or 
 both of the others to accompany him to the Cafe" Regal. Hugh 
 at once refused, declaring it was too ugly. His manner 
 very definitely failed to constitute an invitation to the 
 other to stay, and Mallard Floss and Nigel Strode ac- 
 cordingly left the Temple together. In Fleet Street, 
 however, they parted. Mallard turned east: he was 
 due apparently at Toynbee; while Nigel jumped into 
 a taxi it was pouring with rain and made for Picca- 
 dilly. 
 
 Passing through the swinging plate-glass doors, Nigel 
 paused on the threshold of the enormous room to which 
 they admitted him, and looked round in search of his 
 party.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 79 
 
 The place blazed with light, the maximum intensity of 
 unsoftened electricity, hanging in chandeliers from the 
 roof, all gilt and glass, and repeated in heavy standards 
 against the walls. It was reflected in the innumerable 
 mirrors and given back by the white marble-topped 
 tables with which the space was filled. Light blazed 
 from the walls, lavishly decorated in crude tones of 
 brown, red and purple, and incongruously adorned with 
 miscellaneous antlers, heraldic shields and caps, and 
 from the ceiling, where more mirrors alternated with 
 vast panels which displayed sprawling Teutonic nymphs 
 casting their ample limbs about in a sea of gilt scrolls. 
 But despite this superfluity of light, the hot richness of 
 the decoration, the incessant scurry of laden waiters at- 
 tending to the wants of a crowd of guests, the clatter 
 of spoons, glasses and dominoes, the scene as a whole 
 was somehow not gay, far less brilliant. The spirit of 
 jollity, to whom the place was presumably dedicated, 
 had neglected to sprinkle the air with his torch: enjoy- 
 ment was the last sense that breathed from it. The 
 atmosphere was hot; but it was a stuffy oppressive heat, 
 the heat generated by too many people smoking bad 
 tobacco in an airless room. The glare of the light was 
 harsh and unbecoming. The men and women seated 
 on the red plush benches round the walls, or on the hard 
 chairs set in rows along the tables, looked ugly, tired 
 and bored. With few exceptions, they were in morning 
 dress, and their appearance suggested that they had 
 worn those clothes not only all day but all night. The bowler 
 hats, overcoats and umbrellas hanging on the clumsy pegs 
 or lying in heaps on unoccupied chairs, increased the frowsi- 
 ness that hung over the scene like dust over a neglected house. 
 The place, like the people, was somehow furtive and brazen at 
 once. 
 
 Nigel, however, knew the Cafe Regal too well to be struck 
 by anything in its aspect. He had accepted it on the rec- 
 ommendation of others, and never seen it with his own eyes. 
 It was the place to go to: and so, one went. "Life," pre-
 
 80 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 sumably, was to be seen there, and if it presented itself as pre- 
 vailingly drab and dreary, that caused no surprise. As he 
 moved up the room, threading his way through the haze of 
 smoke that hung over the tables dotted with thick coffee 
 cups, little glasses containing various coloured liquids and 
 long tumblers of light beer, he surveyed the people sitting at 
 them and recognised various habitues. There was a well- 
 known painter, leaning back half asleep and saying nothing, 
 only his little darting eyes keeping watch on the girl beside 
 him. Her amazing red hair was uncovered, and her orange 
 garment, of no particular shape, fell away at the sleeves to 
 show bare arms of flawless contour, and hands, equally beau- 
 tiful but dirty, that turned the stem of her little green glass 
 round and round. The other people, sitting at the tables near, 
 glanced from time to time at the young woman, who returned 
 their interest with a stare of complete sangfroid. A well- 
 dressed youth, suddenly entering, plumped himself down 
 opposite, and leaning forward said something to her. Nigel, 
 who had paused to search for his party, did not hear what 
 he said, but he saw the girl's slow provocative smile, and 
 the quick answering flash in the eyes of the painter. He 
 moved on, glad to be out of earshot of what was clearly going 
 to be a difficult situation: the more glad that he suddenly 
 recognised the man as a casual acquaintance. The other 
 groups were uninteresting, heavy-eyed young men of no 
 assignable class, pale as celery and with the same air of having 
 grown up in the dark; among them, a group of men he knew, 
 but not the right group; older men with more colour, generally 
 in the wrong place; a few uninteresting women. 
 
 At last in the furthest corner he caught sight of the black 
 head of Gervase O'Connor, and reflected in the glass 
 the face of Myrtle Toller, brilliant in her scarlet Cos- 
 sack dress. She saw him, and smiled and waved her 
 hand. Beside her was the inevitable Chris Bampton: 
 intelligent enough to be acceptable in any company, but 
 missed from none: and Ned Coventry; opposite to them sat 
 an unknown and rather dirty-looking dark young man 
 whom Nigel guessed, from the spotted handkerchief he wore
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 81 
 
 in lieu of a tie and other signs, to be Myrtle's latest discov- 
 ery a post-impressionist genius. Lois Drew completed the 
 party. 
 
 "What's that stuff you're drinking?" Nigel asked, as 
 he wedged himself in beside Gervase, and a waiter approached 
 to take his order. 
 
 Jimmy slowly poured a little water through the lump of 
 sugar balanced in a spoon across his glass, filled with a thick, 
 yellowish fluid. 
 
 "Absinthe. Beastly stuff. Tastes like soap and 
 water. Try it!" Jimmy laughed. He seemed in excel- 
 lent spirits. 
 
 "Makes you feel wonderful when you've got it down," 
 said Ned Coventry, inspecting the changing colour in his own 
 glass with the eye of a connoisseur. "I got quite to like it 
 in Paris this spring. Jimmy is learning." 
 
 Jimmy made a face; 
 
 "All right, I'll try it," said Nigel. "Where are the 
 others? " 
 
 "Daphne thought she would like to see the Bioscope, 
 and Wellesley stopped to flirt with her," said Myrtle, pro- 
 ducing her cigarette-case, and lighting up with the aid of a 
 match supplied by Nigel. 
 
 "I think she'll have a good influence on Wellesley," said 
 Jimmy thoughtfully, "for she apparently did not even know 
 he was doing it." 
 
 "Nobody does," interjected Lois with sudden irrelevant 
 fierceness. "They never find out till he tries to kiss them. 
 Then they come and tell me." 
 
 Nigel laughed, more to cover up the difficult sense Lois 
 produced than from any amusement. He was tired of the 
 angularities of the Drew household. 
 
 "She's certainly likely to have more influence on 
 Wellesley than he on her," Jimmy resumed, glancing 
 towards the door. "She's remarkably impenetrable, I 
 should say." He took a small gulp of his yellow mixture. 
 
 "That's your chance then, Jimmy; you say no one ever 
 refuses you!" Myrtle laughed.
 
 82 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Jimmy made no reply, a circumstance unusual with 
 him; and there was a pause that lasted for two or three min- 
 utes. 
 
 Ned Coventry broke it. 
 
 "I'm not sure that she's not too young to be taken to 
 Magdalena, you know," he said. " Magdalena is well 
 
 Myrtle laughed. 
 
 "You've forgotten the 'devout and beautiful' atmosphere," 
 she said. "As a matter of fact, though, Magdalena simply 
 isn't there at all, if you've got a pure mind. I saw nothing 
 in it the first time. In fact, I was dreadfully disappointed 
 weren't you, Cecil?" 
 
 If Cecil were the name of the artist, he made no kind 
 of response to this appeal. He continued to stare al- 
 ternately at Myrtle Toller and into his glass, that was 
 all. 
 
 "You hoped to be shocked, and it didn't come off?" said 
 Nigel, as something seemed to be expected which no one was 
 ready to produce. 
 
 "Yes." Myrtle developed her idea. "You see, the ques- 
 tion is whether to be shocked or not to be shocked 
 shows a deeper corruption. One can't be sure; that's 
 where Royal is so clever, and that's why Magdalena is 
 such a success. In either case one gets puzzled; doubts whether 
 one has had any experience; and so goes again and 
 again." 
 
 "Not Mallard Floss. He wouldn't go again. That 
 seems," said Nigel, "to suggest fearful doubts about his 
 experience." 
 
 "As for me," said Ned, "I was bored." 
 
 Nigel laughed. "That's abysmal. Well, I suppose we 
 shall hear whether Miss Leonard was shocked or not." 
 
 "Yes, do you know, we shall," said Jimmy eagerly. "If 
 she tells us anything, that's to say, she'll tell us the truth." 
 
 "Is that so unusual?" said Lois sharply. 
 
 Jimmy leaned back, laughing. 
 
 "Unusual!" he said. "Unique. You try doing it, Lois. 
 You couldn't. None of us could. We should become so
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 83 
 
 self-conscious that we'd give it up in the attempt. I blurt 
 things out now and then that are true to a mood; but not 
 things that are true to me. None of us can do it. Daphne 
 Leonard can't help it. ... Of course she may say nothing, 
 but she'll know what she thinks." 
 
 Nigel had glanced at Jimmy more than once during this 
 passage, wondering when and how he had acquired this knowl- 
 edge of Miss Leonard, and feeling a slight resentment against 
 him in that he had so far the advantage. 
 
 The conversation, which had been sustained by a series 
 of spurts, seemed at this point in danger of expiring. The 
 young artist, who had not opened his mouth, stared darkly 
 before him. Ned Coventry ordered another absinthe, but 
 whether to break the tension or to show how much he liked 
 it, was obscure. Every one seemed to be trying to think of 
 a bright remark. None came. 
 
 A welcome relief was afforded by the appearance of Wellesley 
 Drew and Miss Leonard, who were hailed with cheerful shouts. 
 A great deal of noise and re-arrangement of chairs followed and 
 a period of confusion before they were all seated again. Wel- 
 lesley talked at the top of his voice, though no one paid much 
 attention to him. He was a large man, with a ruddy face and 
 loud laugh that suggested good humour and little cold eyes that 
 took the suggestion back. As a Liberal candidate his great 
 asset was that he did not look in the least like one. To him 
 politics, like life in general, was a game ; his mind was mean and 
 timid, but he had never found himself out, for the code of the 
 playing field carried him along and most people would have 
 described him as a "thorough sportsman." His marriage with 
 Lois was, from his point of view, simply a piece of bad luck. It 
 had seemed likely that he would have done well for her a pretty 
 little thing, then, whose idea of life was that some great tall man 
 with, preferably, a black moustache, would whirl her off her feet 
 in a passion. Wellesley's moustache was red, not black, but 
 otherwise he had seemed to fit the part. Now Lois was at no 
 pains to conceal her contempt for him. If he flirted with other 
 people it was not because he had any natural facility in the art, 
 or would not honestly have much preferred to talk baby Ian-
 
 84 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 guage to his own wife at home. At home, however, was where 
 Lois never happened to be, unless she were lying down with a 
 splitting headache. Wellesley bored the young women of his 
 own set, and they had, one by one, ceased to be even polite 
 to him. Miss Leonard's tolerance of his company might show a 
 natural kindness of heart, or ignorance. She did not look as 
 though his attempts at flirtation could have amused her. Nor, 
 so Nigel thought as he rose to greet her, did she look as though 
 she would have allowed them for long, if they did not. For 
 though his first impression of her, as she shook hands with a 
 firm, strong grip and gravely surveyed him, was that she was 
 very young, his second was that she was not in the least helpless. 
 The slow serious eyes that surveyed the company were grave, 
 but calm. 
 
 Daphne Leonard was not tall: standing between Wellesley 
 Drew and Gervase O'Connor, both nearly six feet high, though 
 Wellesley looked taller because of his solid bulk and Gervase 
 shorter because of his slightness and his stoop, she appeared 
 definitely small. Nor at first was she at all like her mother. 
 Mrs. Leonard's whole appearance suggested sharpness and fine- 
 ness; as of a sword tempered by intense heat. Daphne was 
 built on a larger, simpler scale that suggested a sane robustness 
 rather than the dangerous nervous energy of her mother. Her 
 face was wide, while her mother's was narrow, with a broad 
 low brow, short nose and wide mouth with beautifully curved 
 rather full lips. And she was fair, with a pale clear skin and 
 hair growing low on her forehead that, as far as could be seen 
 under her straight brimmed hat, was golden-brown, like her 
 thick eyebrows and short thick lashes. Under the shadow cast 
 on her face by the blue lining of her hat, her eyes could not be 
 clearly seen, but Nigel thought she looked altogether more 
 like a boy than a girl; the sort of charming, serious boy who 
 was the being in the world he found most alarming. She was 
 so like a boy that he hardly wondered whether or no she was 
 pretty: yet his eyes, during the rest of the evening, often re- 
 turned to her face. Her eyes, he fancied, saw a good deal; and 
 he was filled with curiosity to know what it was. 
 
 After a good deal of rather difficult movement it was by
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 85 
 
 no means easy to get in or out from the narrow space between 
 the chairs and tables the whole party got seated again. Miss 
 Leonard was between Jimmy and the silent artist, who trans- 
 ferred his sombre gaze to her for a few minutes and then returned 
 to his previous contemplation of Myrtle Toller. Nigel, on the 
 other side of the table, and not directly opposite, was too far 
 removed to do more than look at her; but, after all, revealing or 
 even interesting conversation was not to be expected. There 
 were too many of them, and they were all too bright. 
 
 "What did you think of Magdalena, Miss Leonard?" cried 
 Ned Coventry. 
 
 Daphne Leonard looked at him for a moment before she 
 answered, in a slow, rather soft, but very distinct voice 
 
 "I thought it rather ugly, and empty." 
 
 "Ugly!" cried Lois Drew and Ned Coventry in chorus. 
 
 "Empty!" cried Jimmy, "empty! Oh, God, oh, Mon- 
 treal!" 
 
 Daphne looked first at one, then at the other, a slight smile 
 curving her lips. 
 
 "Yes," she said unabashed. "There was nothing in it. 
 Nothing for me, I mean. " 
 
 "Splendid!" cried Jimmy, tapping on the table with his 
 ringers. "Oh, would that our Royal were here!" 
 
 "Oh, Royal would be delighted to have it called ugly," said 
 Myrtle. " To annoy him, you must call it pretty ." , 
 
 "But empty!" murmured Ned Coventry. "Isn't that the 
 same as pretty?" 
 
 The conversation continued to be general and spasmodic: 
 always apparently on the point of expiring under one attempt 
 at an epigram, only to be galvanised into life again by some new 
 disconnected clutch at brilliance. Miss Leonard did not take 
 much part in it, but her silence did not seem to embarrass her. 
 After all, Nigel reflected, she knew these people: they had all 
 met her before, except himself. In him she seemed to find no 
 particular interest: she gave no sign of being conscious of his 
 gaze. 
 
 At first he thought that her failure to be like her mother 
 was so disappointing as to remove the main element of interest;
 
 86 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 gradually, however, he began to feel it, on the contrary, as a 
 gain. To be Mrs. Leonard was certainly everything; but to be 
 like her would probably have been nothing, a hope perpetually 
 frustrated, an expectation never carried out. This girl was 
 not a suggestion or a reminder. She was an individual about 
 whom everything remained to be discovered. That spelt an 
 adventure of the personal sort, for, if one might assign traits 
 to recognisable sources her voice to her mother, her slow, clear 
 annunciation to Cambridge, her calm to youth and a good educa- 
 tion behind them he guessed at a personality about which he 
 knew nothing except that he could not classify it. And this 
 constituted a rarity. 
 
 The babble went on, vague, inconsequent, leading to nothing. 
 It was mostly about people, and there seemed no reason why it 
 should ever stop. At last Jimmy O'Connor looked at his watch, 
 turned to Miss Leonard, and reminded her that if she were 
 going eastwards (she was apparently living at the moment in a 
 Settlement, though she did not like it), it was already late. 
 Evidently he had an arrangement to convey her home. Their 
 departure broke up the party, which no one seemed to regret.
 
 CHAPTER SEVEN 
 
 THE power to see each day as a unit, existing in and for itself, 
 is often defined as the secret of happiness. Such a view 
 may imply a pessimistic conception of life as a whole, but it 
 has the validity which belongs to the assertion that when ignorance 
 is bliss, to be wise is folly; a deep saying, insufficiently probed. 
 Nigel Strode possessed the power of living from day to day in a 
 high degree; if, when he thought of life as a whole, he thought 
 badly of it, he must, if quite honest, also have admitted that 
 he thought on these lines but seldom. This faculty had been 
 little, if at all, impaired by living with Hugh Infield. Hugh had 
 a passion for seeing connections; but it seemed to Nigel that the 
 preoccupation with the vision of each thing as related to others 
 prevented any sight, far less any enjoyment, of it as it was in 
 itself. He disliked connections. They seemed to reduce ex- 
 perience to a dull pattern. He liked individual blobs of colour, 
 each of which came to him with the freshness of a thing entirely 
 new. On the other hand, each day being an end in itself, he 
 resented sharply one that played him false, such as seemed to 
 be foreshadowed when, on the morning after the evening at the 
 Cafe Regal, he got up with a headache and a sense of vague 
 depression. He had slept badly, with absurd dreams in which 
 Jenkins, with the head of a yellow tom-cat, followed him about 
 through a labyrinth of mean streets. 
 
 His room, when he came in for breakfast, still smelt thickly 
 of tobacco and discussion. He glanced at the table. There 
 was nothing to be expected of the newspaper. Even the New 
 World lying in its pale blue wrapper roused no interest he did 
 not open it; and beyond that the post had brought nothing but 
 
 87
 
 88 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 a little roll of Press cuttings, two notices of meetings (Race 
 Regeneration and the Arbitration League), which he began to 
 throw into the fire, then leaned up upon the mantelpiece; and 
 an invitation to what Gervase O'Connor called a "stand-up," 
 which he stuck into the frame of the big "Virgin of the Rocks. " 
 Breakfast looked uninviting. He poured out some tea and 
 replaced the lid on the bacon dish, then moved across the room 
 and threw the bottom of the window wide. 
 
 The wind, which had been making the slim branches of the 
 ash-tree wave, rushed in, fresh and delicious. Nigel leaned out; 
 there was something wonderful in the air. It smelt new. The 
 flags in the little yard were drying; what had been a continuous 
 puddle last night had shrunk to a few small pools of water. 
 The sky beyond the roof-tops was blue and white and shining, 
 the spires dazzling white. It was a day for the country. 
 
 He turned back into the room and fingered the telephone. 
 Yes, the country was the thing; but in whose company? Myrtle 
 Toller would come, no doubt, but he was not sure that he wanted 
 her; she had lost her charm latterly, and if she insisted on bring- 
 ing Chris Bampton, that would be a bore, as he should have to 
 sit alone in front. Lois Drew? He shook his head; she was 
 absorbed in some one else, and he didn't want to hear about it. 
 Jane Sandys, much the nicest of the trio who lived together 
 Chris, Gertrude and Jane had disappeared into her engage- 
 ment, and Gertrude Fenner's bitterness would jar. The thought 
 of Mrs. Nugent revived his headache. Infield was not coming 
 back till the evening, and he did not want Infield. This was 
 not the day either for silence or argument; it was a day for being 
 happy but again with whom? As Nigel pondered, he had sat 
 down at the table and eaten an excellent breakfast. The air 
 caressed his face and touched his hair softly. Anyhow he must 
 go out; he could at least walk across the Park towards the garage, 
 and trust to luck. He lit a cigarette as he ran downstairs. 
 
 As he passed out of the cold shadows of the Government 
 offices and turned into St. James's Park, Nigel almost clapped his 
 hands, for he suddenly realised what had happened. In the 
 Strand one might be dubious; the Strand was not in touch with 
 Nature's secrecies; the pavements shone only because the rain
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 89 
 
 had washed them, and the sky only because the houses could not 
 shut off all the sun; that might happen any day. And the 
 people were the usual ugly men and women of the town, exhala- 
 tions of the pavements, whose home was not under the sky, but 
 in the streets. But in the Park it shouted at him from the blue 
 of the shimmering water, the emerald of the grass, the gold and 
 purple of the crocuses, the chequered loveliness of the air. 
 Spring had come. It was still March by the calendar, and to- 
 morrow it might be March in fact, as it had been yesterday and 
 all the dark days of the week; but to-day spring was looking out 
 of her window, revealing herself for all with eyes to see, sweeter 
 in her coy boldness than later when she came heralded and recog- 
 nised in the greenness of trees and the bursting forth of flowers. 
 There was something subtly delightful, he felt, as he strolled 
 slowly on, in the idea that these sensations were not being shared 
 by everybody, but were peculiarly his. In May the beauty of 
 London almost bored him, because every one felt it and praised 
 it, and people who had no right to that beauty came crowding 
 up to fill up expensive houses, praising and enjoying because to 
 praise and to enjoy was "the thing. " This morning's loveliness 
 was untainted; it could not even last. To-morrow it would 
 probably be blotted out in rain; the sky would return to lead, 
 the paths to mud, the trees to blackness. The thought of that 
 shadow gave the final exquisite touch to the radiance of to-day, 
 and Nigel was so happy as he walked along, perceiving and not 
 thinking, that the plan he had come out with vanished from his 
 mind. He leaned long over the bridge that spanned the orna- 
 mental water to watch the crowding birds; he paused at Hyde 
 Park Corner to enjoy the almost Parisian aspect of the scene 
 under the washed clearness of the sky, and entering Hyde Park, 
 left the Row, with its few belated riders and early nursemaids, 
 to turn up into a less-frequented path. Thick through the grass 
 the crocuses shone splendid : first a splash of purple, then one of 
 brilliant gold, then all running together, purple, gold and white. 
 Beyond them, blue-green leaves of daffodils and tulips, in 
 serried ranks; no flowers yet, but fat buds ready to burst; and 
 sheltered from the wind and exhaling a wondrous sweetness 
 in the sun, a bed of hyacinths, blue, purple, pink, white and
 
 90 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 red. And suddenly almond blossom. He must have seen it 
 before, but this time it made him stop and cry out. Three 
 exquisite trees, tall and slender, stood laden as with drifted 
 snow with pink; pink that against the blue and white of the 
 sky was an intoxication. 
 
 Nigel left the path and stepped on to the grass to draw nearer 
 to the little trees and see whether the blue lying at their roots 
 was a bit of sky dropped down or some unknown flower. As he 
 approached he saw that some one was there before him. Tilted 
 back on a little green chair, beneath one of the leafless, flower- 
 crowned trees, a young man was sitting; that is to say, the back 
 of his neck lay on the rail of the chair and some portion of his 
 body, resting against it, supported the equilibrium of his ex- 
 tended limbs. His hat had apparently fallen off, for it lay on 
 the ground beside him; his hands were in his pockets, his eyes 
 on the sky. This absorption suggested by his whole attitude 
 was genuine, for he neither heard Nigel Strode's approach nor 
 immediately replied when the latter called upon him by name. 
 At a second appeal he righted himself and, assuming a normal 
 sitting posture, accepted his friend's greeting. 
 
 " Stunning, isn't it? " He waved a hand vaguely to indicate 
 the scene around. "Really, the lines of these little black 
 branches against that striped blue and white would be enough 
 to make one silly, if one left out all the pink stuff; but with it 
 too! My God!" 
 
 Nigel looked at Gervase O'Connor, for it was he, conscious 
 of a distinct displeasure in the fact that the young man felt the 
 day not less, but perhaps more, than he did. Gervase spoiled 
 his own sense of unique awareness, and with his intolerable 
 glib expressiveness he must blurt it all out. Nigel was annoyed, 
 and annoyed at being annoyed. But Jimmy was blandly 
 unconscious. He sat there, his hands in the pockets of an im- 
 maculate grey suit, his outstretched purple socks matching the 
 purple of his tie, with no thoughts but his own. 
 
 ' ' Heavens above ! " he cried. " I want to lie down and thank 
 some God, Pan, or one of them that made the world, for having 
 made me in it! Just smell the air! Isn't it like fifty scent- 
 sprays, or a florist's shop in June? And the sky! Sit here and
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 91 
 
 look up. Do you see the pink mosaiced on to the white and 
 blue? If that long-haired friend of Myrtle's could paint that or 
 want to paint anything so lovely, he'd make a fortune. Jove, 
 it's good to be alive!" 
 
 He stretched himself, as if to take into his lungs the largest 
 possible draught of the divine ether. Nigel laughed and sat 
 down beside him. 
 
 "Don't laugh, you silly cynic! Envy me! I'm alive! 
 I'm twenty-six. It's spring, and I'm in love! Oh, world as 
 God has made it! And so on ad infinitum. Oh, it's all very 
 well for you, Nigel, to make your eyes round. I don't care. 
 Nothing else is real but that. " 
 
 Jimmy laughed aloud as if he could not help it. Nigel felt 
 his irritation streaked with new feelings, envy predominating. 
 
 "What, Jimmy, again!" he murmured, handing his penny 
 to the tax-gatherer who had sprung up out of the unknown. 
 
 Jimmy sat up. 
 
 "Oh, stow it, Strode. Never before. Only this time, this 
 time it's real; it's the thing that never was on sea or land. You 
 know. " 
 
 "I? How should I?" There was a trace of bitterness in 
 his tone, but the other was too entirely absorbed to notice it. 
 He merely laughed aloud again. "Oh, come, you old philan- 
 derer," he cried. "Who should know, if not you? Though I 
 dare say you've only wet your feet. I'm head over ears; water 
 in my mouth and eyes; nothing else but it in all the world. 
 Never mind! I won't talk to you if it annoys you. I shall go 
 to Infield. He'll enjoy the bitterness of looking into Paradise 
 through another man's eyes, and I fancy he may understand, if 
 any one can. You can't, I see. You're a cold-blooded fish, 
 after all, aren't you?" 
 
 He began to whistle as he leaned back again, gazing upward 
 into the almond blossom. Nigel felt that he had wasted his 
 penny. Jimmy did not want him, and he did not want Jimmy. 
 He rose to go. The sun had gone in and the air was sharp. 
 Jimmy, hatless, did not seem to feel it. His sun still shone. 
 
 A thought struck Nigel. 
 
 " Do I know her? " he asked, pausing as he turned to go.
 
 92 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Jimmy opened his eyes, surprisingly blue, when his thick 
 dark lashes were raised and his normal frown smoothed out. 
 
 "Know her? No. No one knows her. You've met her, 
 I dare say. There's only one person it could be, so I give you 
 one guess. No, on second thoughts I shan't even give you that. 
 I'll shout her name at you, because at present to be in love with 
 her's enough for me. I daren't even think of what's in her mind. 
 Daphne . . . Daphne . . . Daphne Leonard. Listen to the 
 music of it." Jimmy paused, as if with that sound echoing 
 in his ears he wanted no more. Then he glanced at Nigel. 
 
 "Ah, I dare say you can't bear it! Think me an ass, my 
 dear Strode, or any mortal thing you like; but I tell you I'm 
 happy. Be my witness to that; whatever happens I shan't 
 have lived in vain. ' He who has once been happy is for aye out 
 of destruction's reach.' I used to think it rot; but now I know 
 it's true." 
 
 Nigel Strode turned on his heel and walked away. The 
 voice of Gervase rang in his ears; but he was not thinking of 
 him he was merely conscious that his happiness of half-an-hour 
 ago had gone, and left uppermost a sense of weariness and 
 futility, of dissatisfaction with himself. He had told Mrs. 
 Leonard that he felt himself to be waiting; this morning he 
 seemed to realise that he waited still, but with less and less of 
 hope. What was it that one waited for? he asked himself as he 
 walked on. Gervase, if he had been waiting, which seemed 
 unlikely, for waiting was not in his character, had found his 
 answer in a strong emotion that whirled him away; but as Nigel 
 asked himself whether he wanted such a whirl, the reply came, 
 obscure and muffled he was not sure. One did not know what 
 the whirl would be like; the unknown grew more, and not less 
 terrifying as one knew more and more of the known. And yet, 
 and yet to feel as Jimmy felt was to live; and Jimmy knew it. 
 Nigel sighed. 
 
 For some time he had been walking behind a young woman, 
 at first a long way ahead of him on the straight path ; then, his 
 steps quickening mechanically as his mind worked, the distance 
 reduced itself; and now, as he came within measurable space, he 
 was struck by something familiar in her carriage. Familiar, and
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 93 
 
 yet strange; for Aurelia Leonard was abroad. Aurelia Leonard 
 was abroad, yes, but her daughter was in London, and the girl 
 in front of him, whose blue dress was like a darker piece of sky 
 walking along the path as her light, swinging step was a free 
 translation of the exhilaration of the morning, was, of course, 
 Daphne. Nigel felt his lost satisfaction given back to him. 
 He quickened his pace, and, calling out a gay " Good-morning, " 
 made the girl turn a three-quarter face to him as he came up. 
 
 She looked at him a little vaguely, though she smiled. 
 
 "Ah!" he murmured. "You don't remember me; you've 
 forgotten me already? " 
 
 A faint flush deepened the rose which the wind had blown on 
 to her pale cheeks. " But I do, " she answered. "We met last 
 night; of course I do. I don't know you, but I know who you 
 are. You're Mr. Strode, Hugh Infield's Mr. Strode, and you 
 know my mother too, I think? " She looked at him, and he saw 
 that her eyes were not simply dark, as he had imagined the night 
 before, but within their short, thick lashes, grey; the eyes of 
 Aurelia, with something of Aurelia's troubling directness of gaze. 
 He smiled as he answered 
 
 "I must certainly try quickly to establish an identity of 
 my own. I can't exist simply in other people's guarantees. 
 You must know me, not merely know who I am. " 
 
 "Yes," she nodded gravely; "but anyhow I should have to. 
 I never can use anybody else's experience. That's what makes 
 me so slow. " 
 
 Nigel looked at her. His satisfaction was growing. He had 
 been right in his judgment last night. That pleased him. 
 There was something in this girl entirely fresh. If an edge 
 had been given to his interest in her, if she were somehow 
 hall-marked by what Jimmy had just told him, he was uncon- 
 scious of the extent to which that operated in his mind. He 
 merely told himself that there was something exhilarating in 
 the thought of getting to know her, to which a touch of ad- 
 venture was added by the notion of setting up her opinion of 
 him against the opinion she might receive, or have received, 
 from her mother. 
 
 "But are you slow?" he said, surveying her clothes. They
 
 94 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 pleased him in spite of their extreme simplicity; there was a 
 kind of distinction even in that. Her gloves and shoes were 
 quite right too. 
 
 "Yes. About most things very. . . . Sometimes, though, 
 one feels as if the whole time were being set quicker, when there's 
 a rush, like this, into spring; one's hurried on too, isn't one? I'm 
 not sure whether I like it. " She paused. 
 
 "Ah!" he cried. "Don't say that. I'm sure it's those 
 sudden instinctive rushes that are true that count and that make 
 one. What one feels this morning " 
 
 Their eyes met. Nigel's heart suddenly irrationally beat 
 fast; he was aware of an excitement mounting to his brain, the 
 sense of adventure growing, growing, carrying him away. Her 
 expression had not changed, but as she looked at him her eyes 
 wore the reflected brilliance of the sky on which they had before 
 been fixed, and seemed to cast that radiance on and draw it 
 out of him. He went on eagerly 
 
 "Don't let's lose it; it's so exquisite, isn't it?" 
 
 He waved his hand over the Round Pond by which they 
 had found themselves standing, and which was like a fairy 
 mirror as it glassed the delicate tracery of the trees in a wondrous 
 criss-cross over blue and white, and echoed the happy cries of 
 the children trying to make little boats move over its still sur- 
 face. Daphne said nothing, but her hands were clasped tight, 
 and through her faintly parted lips he knew the breath was 
 coming fast. 
 
 "I'm just going across to get my little car. Come off for an 
 hour. We can get into real country, better than this loveliest 
 pretence, and catch spring just in the act. It's the one day 
 in the year. Do come ! " 
 
 He was afraid that the sudden eagerness he felt might 
 frighten her. His tone was light and careless, but his eyes 
 might be sparkling with the excitement that he knew. Daphne, 
 however, did not look at him. She stood by his side with her 
 gloveless hands locked together, her eyes not on him, but on 
 the reflections in the water, and he felt that her thoughts were 
 concerned with herself, not him. The realisation heightened 
 his desire. She existed solidly, he felt sure; she was a person-
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 95 
 
 ality, self-regulating, self-moving, independent of the words 
 and thoughts of others. Not like himself. If she came it 
 would be because she wanted to come; and when she looked up, 
 as a vivid burst of sunshine dazzled down on to her head, and 
 smiled, he had an irresistible inclination to take her hand and 
 run. Her smile gave him back the impression long ago re- 
 ceived from the drawing in her mother's room: the impression 
 of youth, youth with its splendid sureness and recklessness. 
 Her smile said, "Yes, she would come," and that gave him a 
 sense of triumph. Triumph was a big feeling disproportionate 
 to so small an occasion. That, on so fine a morning, a girl 
 should accept the suggestion of a motor ride was surely nothing. 
 But Nigel could not feel that it was nothing that Daphne 
 Leonard had accepted. He had, half consciously, been trying 
 his luck ; and trying it against the luck of some one else. He had 
 won. The day was going to be a good day, and sufficient for 
 the day the goodness thereof. 
 
 Nigel Strode was a skilful driver; the little car passed every- 
 thing on the road. Daphne sat by him, saying nothing, but 
 he felt that she was aware of everything that happened. She 
 knew when they were racing the big yellow Daimler along the 
 Richmond Road and that it was by clever steering that they 
 passed it; she saw the first pale green on a hawthorn hedge, the 
 first patch of daffodils in a sunny, sheltered garden; he knew 
 from the quick intake of her breath that she caught sight of the 
 downs when they suddenly for an instant came into sight. 
 Nothing, he guessed, could be dull in her company. Her silence 
 was as alert and alive as speech. They might go on for hours 
 saying nothing and yet be very much together. 
 
 But the most vivid of impressions was with Nigel before 
 long replaced by something else, and interest in and appreciation 
 of Daphne's silence soon made him long to hear her speak. 
 
 "Motoring doesn't send you to sleep?" he asked. She said 
 nothing; merely smiled at the absurd and superfluous question. 
 
 They sped on for another half -hour. The day was fulfilling 
 its promise royally. The sky swung higher overhead as they 
 left the straggling outskirts of London behind and escaped into 
 wide fields; the clouds were bigger, more magnificently blown
 
 96 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 across the blue in sweeping lines like the pathway of a visible 
 breath; in the trees the birds shouted and sang; the fields were 
 vividly green, and the shallow water that lay flooded over many 
 of them reflected the sky; on the commons the gorse was out 
 in great golden masses, and the scent of it rose up like cocoanut, 
 a splendid earthy smell. 
 
 Suddenly Daphne spoke. 
 
 "I'm hungry," she said. 
 
 Nigel laughed out in delight at her. He took out his watch, 
 
 "And so you've every right to be; it's nearly two o'clock. 
 I tell you what: we'll stop at Burford Bridge we're nearly 
 there now; this is Mickleham and get some bread-and-cheese, 
 and run up the hill. " 
 
 "Yes I feel I want to run; motoring is good, but one wants 
 to be doing it oneself. " 
 
 When they stopped she jumped out and declared that he 
 must get the food and follow while she ran straight up. She 
 did not ask him whether that plan would please him; it was 
 what she intended to do. She could not wait for him; no, she 
 wanted to run this minute; and while he stood looking at her, 
 preparing to argue in favour of the greater convenience of lunch 
 indoors first, and greater pleasure of running up together after- 
 wards, she had started. Her easy, rapid stride had carried her 
 well up the steep white chalk track before he could protest. 
 Nigel stood staring after her. She was a masterful young 
 thing, he said to himself, smiling; but how alive, alive with a 
 vitality that fed itself; real, with just that independence that 
 he missed in himself. His thoughts were pleasant as he strolled 
 up the steep path more slowly, because of his loaf and cheese 
 and ginger-beer bottles. Strolling was an affair of choice; he 
 could have run as fast as she, he knew. Being thirty-eight 
 did not mean that you could not run, unless you let yourself 
 not want to do so. Infield might refuse to run and let his 
 muscles atrophy; Nigel kept his own hard and springy. Sud- 
 denly, for no reason, the thought of Gervase came into his mind. 
 Poor Jimmy. He might have asked him to come too. He 
 might; but if he had, he should have spoiled his own day; and 
 his own day was being very good. And would Daphne have
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 97 
 
 been glad? Well, if Jimmy had come she might have found 
 that she was glad ; but as he had not if there were a place wait- 
 ing to be filled, it was not now Jimmy's. Chances to him 
 who can take them. Nigel found his pace so quickened that 
 it was almost a run, and the balancing of the ginger-beer bottles 
 precarious. Reaching the top, he did not at once see Daphne. 
 Independence was a delightful quality; but if she were so inde- 
 pendent of him as to enjoy the wonders of the top of Box Hill 
 alone, it had drawbacks. After all, he had brought her out 
 for his pleasure as much as for her own, and to disappear at 
 the crisis was not playing the game. 
 
 At last under a tree he caught sight of a patch of blue, which 
 showed him where she was, and he quickly turned in that direc- 
 tion. Daphne was lying full length on her face on the dry brown 
 leaves that covered all the ground, and glowed now with an 
 almost crimson hue as the sun touched them. With her chin 
 on her hands, she was gazing out at the wide landscape ex- 
 tended all around her, so absorbed that she did not hear Nigel's 
 feet rustling among the leaves as he approached. She had taken 
 off her hat, and he saw that her hair, which he had imagined, 
 the night before, rather pale and colourless, was really a warm 
 brown, with streaks of light in it. It was quite straight, very 
 soft and fine, and bound close round her head with yellow shell 
 hairpins, like a little cap. It was the sort of hair, Nigel thought, 
 that one wanted instinctively to stroke; he could imagine the 
 delicious feel of it, and how it would stir, electric, under the 
 touch. 
 
 At his call she turned her head and sat up. He noticed the 
 supple grace of her rather slow movement; it suggested, as her 
 easy stride up the hillside had done, muscles under admirable 
 control, and strong. Nigel sat down at her feet, and they shared 
 the bread and cheese he had brought and the ginger-beer. 
 Daphne said very little. Even when, with cigarettes lit, they 
 lay side by side on the crunching leaves, he placed so that he 
 could watch her face, she with her eyes on the blue distance, 
 she only made a remark at long intervals. Then, too, it was 
 only by way of comment or question on the scene before them. 
 Her comments were cool and not particularly enthusiastic; her
 
 98 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 questions directed to grasping the lie of the land. But though 
 she said little, Nigel could see the glow in her eyes, and he won- 
 dered whether she did not perhaps feel the beauty of it all more 
 than he with his articulate admiration. Such a question often 
 rose in his mind; he was apt to stop in the middle of any sensa- 
 tion to feel his own pulse, in the hope, generally defeated, of 
 finding it gallop. This girl clearly was absorbed in the act of 
 seeing and feeling, unconscious of herself as seeing and feeling. 
 There were people like that. He wanted to investigate. But 
 her silence hung a veil between them, and his impatience had 
 no time for its tranquil beauty. He wanted her light upon 
 himself, to compare her mind with his. She gave him, even in 
 her silence, curious and interesting feelings about himself, es- 
 pecially when he looked at her, as her absorption allowed him 
 to do. 
 
 " Don't you ever talk? " he asked at last. 
 
 "Talk?" She brought her eyes back to him for a moment. 
 "I don't know. At Newnham we used to argue " 
 
 "Ah, I don't mean argument." 
 
 She looked at him questioningly. 
 
 "I like listening best, I think. My thoughts come out so 
 slowly. . . . Mother talks wonderfully; I love listening to 
 her. . . . You talk a lot too, don't you? I admire people who 
 can talk; it must mean such self-command." 
 
 Nigel pondered for a moment over the last phrase, but 
 decided to drop it. Daphne went on after a moment 
 
 "I hope you don't mind my not talking?" 
 
 Nigel smiled. 
 
 "Mind? No. I am happy." 
 
 "Are you?" She glanced at him, and then quickly returned 
 to the landscape. "So am I. ... But aren't you generally 
 happy? You say it as though you weren't. " 
 
 This was better. Nigel sat up. 
 
 " If I could give up expecting I should be, I think, and that's 
 why I sometimes feel I shall leave London and come to live in 
 the country. ... In the country one would know that excite- 
 ment was excluded; one would accept a lower level and be satis- 
 fied. Contemplation is probably the only lasting feeling.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 99 
 
 But it's difficult to accept. In London, where one feels excite- 
 ment all round and oneself out of it, nearly impossible. Impos- 
 sible, at least, for me. Should you like to live in the country?" 
 
 Daphne looked surprised. 
 
 "I? Oh, I never thought of it. ... I don't know. I find 
 the country very exciting. " She paused; then, as he seemed to 
 wait, went on slowly, "I don't think I understand your feeling, 
 really. You want excitement, but you don't believe in it for 
 yourself. Is that it?" 
 
 Nigel nodded. 
 
 " I don't believe in it because modern life doesn't seem to me 
 to make it possible. . . . It's education, I suppose. One feels 
 all the centuries behind pressing on one so that everything 
 is really settled, and one can't make any difference. And one's 
 nerves are over-educated too, so that they respond to too many 
 
 stimuli at once. . . . The result is " He paused; then, as 
 
 she said nothing, went on, "The result is that one's hopelessly 
 cut off from the stronger, simpler emotions of less, what we 
 call less, civilised people. In the country one might get back 
 to them." 
 
 "I see," said Daphne slowly. "You don't really want 
 to contemplate; you want to be made to feel. What I don't 
 quite see is, why?" 
 
 "Ah," he cried "you've never felt utterly weary of your- 
 self." 
 
 She gave a little sudden smile. 
 
 "But surely feeling makes you more yourself than ever? 
 Not less." 
 
 "In a way, yes, but it makes you a new self: a simpler, 
 
 deeper, less complicated one. Like He paused, casting 
 
 about for an analogy. "It's like freeing the water that had 
 had an ornamental fountain and letting it rush out as a moun- 
 tain brook. " 
 
 "But that," Daphne smiled, "would surely be a great pity 
 from the gardener's point of view." 
 
 "Ah, your garden," cried Nigel, "is just right. Modern 
 life is like a huge, a dreadfully tidy garden, with plants growing 
 in beds, all the same and yet wondrously variegated, and ranged
 
 100 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 in neat, orderly rows. Wonderful others, in hothouses, that 
 have lost the sap of individual life altogether. And all of them 
 are tended and ordered by armies of dull, soulless gardeners. 
 If only the fountain could be turned into a brook and sweep 
 over the whole thing all sorts of strong, strange-coloured 
 plants " 
 
 " Weeds?" 
 
 "Weeds, if you like, would spring up." 
 
 "You want, I see, to go back to a wilderness?" Daphne 
 spoke more quickly. 
 
 "There are things about the wilderness that we've lost that 
 are better than anything we've got. In the wilderness there's 
 life, the struggle for survival. And in that struggle there'd be 
 excitement. Do you see what I mean? " 
 
 Daphne's cheeks were flushed and she was sitting upright 
 now, with her hands clasped round her knees. 
 
 "I don't know," she said; "you're very exciting. You 
 make me feel the thousands of things there are I don't under- 
 stand. . . . But take your garden. Isn't it really truer to 
 say that people are trying, awfully hard, to get life into a garden, 
 out of a waste, but that there are still simply jungles of weeds 
 that need rooting out, hard, deep weeds that will take years of 
 digging up? The way people hate foreigners, I mean, and the 
 rich the poor, and employers trade unionists, and so on. And all 
 the ugliness of life, and poverty and misery. . . . Poplar isn't 
 much like a garden. You're in such a hurry, you know." 
 She paused. Nigel broke in eagerly 
 
 "Yes, I am," he cried, "because I don't believe these 
 weeds will ever be rooted out; they must be swept away by 
 some big common impulse. Christianity has tried and failed. 
 ... It needs some force in men as big as that, and a force men 
 can feel in common. As it is, all our education and civilisation 
 is only separating people more and more . . . instead of 
 bringing them nearer. Look at London. I know hundreds of 
 people, and have tens and twenties of so-called friends. ... If 
 I disappeared, would any of them care? They'd ring me up 
 once or twice, and if they got no answer they'd assume the 
 telephone was out of order and ring up some one else. In a
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 101 
 
 week they'd have forgotten all about me, unless I rang them 
 up. And those are people all of the same sort. Working people 
 aren't like that. Country people aren't. " 
 
 Daphne wrinkled her brows. 
 
 "No," she said, "they do care. But there's awfully little 
 excitement about their lives. They feel; but their feelings are 
 very slow and often, unless you knew them well, you'd never 
 guess they were there. I don't think they'd satisfy you. " 
 
 Nigel looked at her. There was something strange in the way 
 her mind worked, so different from his own, and in the sense 
 she gave him, for all her youth and slowness, of strength 
 and stability. He felt a desire to tell her all about himself 
 and hear her comments; see her eyes widening, as they had 
 when he spoke of the wilderness, and filling with light. 
 
 "You want a great deal, don't you?" she said. 
 
 He looked at her. 
 
 "Yes, I suppose I do. But I despair of getting it." 
 
 Her eyes were on his face now, and as he looked up he met 
 them, only to drop his own before the pity there. 
 
 For some few moments they sat in silence. Nigel thought 
 of many things to say, but none of them came out. He was 
 suddenly afraid of uttering a jarring note. For this girl, he 
 felt, for all her strength, was sensitive. Round them the brief 
 day was fading fast. In the west the sun was dying with no 
 glow, only a thickening of the sky. Prom the valley below a 
 mist rose slowly and unfolded round them, wreath upon wreath. 
 
 Nigel rose to his feet; Daphne followed, and they walked 
 across the rustling leaves and down the narrow chalky path. 
 
 Hardly anything was said by either on the drive home. 
 But as they parted outside South Kensington Station Daphne 
 refused to be taken further than the nearest point to the garage 
 Nigel felt that a great deal had happened, though so little 
 had been said. As he held the girl's cold hand and tried, under 
 the brim of her blue- veiled hat, to meet her eyes, he knew at 
 least that Jimmy's chance, for what it had ever been worth, 
 was gone.
 
 CHAPTER EIGHT 
 
 1SAY, Infield, the Westminster has attacked the Govern- 
 ment!" 
 Entering his rooms on a Friday in mid-April, his arms full 
 of evening papers bulging with the Ulster crisis, Nigel found 
 Hugh Infield on his knees on the floor. He was unpacking a 
 small case which appeared to be full of nothing but straw, and 
 gave off a curious smell of the East. 
 
 Hugh looked up in response to his friend's appeal. Nigel 
 went on. "Can you believe it? The Westminster, which 
 always discovers that the reasons that might have struck one 
 as proving the Government to be wrong, in the given case, 
 prove the exact contrary! Seely will certainly have to go. 
 The only question is whether French will stay. I've been 
 writing about 'Army v. People' all afternoon, and feel as if we 
 were back in the Civil War. " 
 
 "'Army versus People,'" murmured Infield. "So it has 
 been found that Zabern doesn't exist in Germany alone." 
 
 Nigel shook his head. "Ah, but we won't stand that sort 
 of stuff here. We have got beyond that. " 
 
 "Ulster doesn't seem to have, though, or the Tory press," 
 murmured Hugh. 
 
 Nigel walked quickly up and down the room. "I wonder, " 
 he said. "It's extraordinary to know that people do think 
 Civil War possible. ... I was lunching with Nugent and he's 
 full of the strangest rumours. Says he doesn't believe them, 
 though. Some people say the Government want Ulster to re- 
 volt. . . . And the things that are believed about Winston are 
 simply farcical. Of course, Gough ought to be cashiered. 
 But the Government has no courage. " 
 
 102
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 103 
 
 "Can you wonder the foreign newspapers can't understand 
 us?" 
 
 Nigel waved the foreign press aside. It did not matter. 
 He threw himself into an armchair with a sigh. "Well, I've 
 written my article. I shan't think any more about it all till 
 Monday. There are pleasanter things to think about." He 
 smiled to himself. 
 
 "Lucky fellow!" Infield glanced at him, while he con- 
 tinued to unwrap fold after fold of brownish tissue paper. " The 
 way you don't think of unpleasant things is wonderful. I've 
 got something pleasant here for you, if you like, and in an immu- 
 table form. It won't change, even though your feelings about 
 it do. " 
 
 Nigel leaned his head back against the cushions and half 
 closed his eyes. 
 
 "Yes, yes," he murmured, "that's what one is always seek- 
 ing; something on which the mind can rest. " 
 
 "Perhaps," said Hugh, in a rather dubious tone. "But 
 your search is so hurried that when you've found it you only 
 sit for two minutes and then rush on. " Nigel opened his eyes 
 as if to protest. Hugh smiled, and continued: "Ah, you sit 
 'down quickly enough, I grant. You've a wonderful flair, but 
 your speed creates distrust even in your own mind, and off you 
 go again, almost before you've made sure what the god is you've 
 worshipped for a day. " 
 
 "Rich in the simple worship of a day . . . that's enough 
 forme!" 
 
 Hugh laughed. "Well, if you want to worship, here's a 
 god." 
 
 He had at last extracted from its multitudinous exterior 
 wrappings and held now between his hands an object, enwound 
 still in yellow cotton wool. It was long and flat in shape, like 
 a box or small picture. Slowly and tenderly, Hugh took off 
 the wool bit by bit, and threw it down beside him among the 
 straw with which the floor was now littered. Then he lifted 
 up his treasure and placed it on the mantelpiece. 
 
 Nigel rose from his seat and stood beside him to observe it. 
 It was a panel of stretched silk, about three feet long by twelve
 
 104 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 inches broad, framed in a flat band of dull grey ash wood. On 
 the silk was represented the figure of a young girl, Japanese 
 apparently by her dress, standing under a cherry tree in full 
 blossom; her arms upraised so that with her hands she just 
 touched the clusters of white flowers. On a branch high above 
 her head a small bird perched. The sleeves of her wide blue- 
 grey kimono fell back, showing slender, exquisitely rounded 
 arms; and her face, with its halo of black hair, was lit by an ex- 
 pression that made it strangely, touchingly beautiful, for all its 
 alien type. 
 
 "What is it?" Nigel asked. 
 
 Hugh Infield did not at once reply. He had removed the 
 miscellaneous objects from the mantelpiece and now took down 
 the big photograph of the Virgin of the Rocks so that the wall 
 was bare. Against the grey-brown, which Nigel had always 
 disliked and wanted Hugh to change for something more cheerful, 
 the new picture certainly looked beautiful. Nigel admitted 
 that the background could not have been better. Hugh stood 
 back for a minute or two, then he replaced two delicate blue and 
 white Chinese vases, a yellow lacquer cigarette box, and the 
 black and gold lacquer candlesticks of which he was so fond. 
 
 "No more invitation cards!" he said to Nigel with a grin. 
 "You must range them over your desk. I'll hang Lionardo over 
 it directly. " With that he resumed his stare. 
 
 Nigel watched these proceedings with a smile. Hugh was 
 not a connoisseur in the ordinary sense; and he exercised no 
 tyranny in the arrangement of the room, though nearly all the 
 things in it were his. He was extremely untidy and had no feel- 
 ings against pipes and match-boxes everywhere. But he waged 
 war against ornaments, and refused to admit more than a very 
 few pictures to hang on the walls at once. He often bought 
 pictures some of them remarkably queer but he also very 
 frequently gave away those he had. He had a range of curious 
 friends of his own, impecunious people who lived in awkward 
 places, who never appeared on what Nigel called social occasions; 
 but who called their second babies after Hugh and sent him 
 queer presents. Cabbages and gingerbread cakes used to turn 
 up in knobbly parcels; slim volumes of poetry published at the
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 105 
 
 author's expense, and long novels which got reviews in very 
 small type, filled Hugh's shelves. Hugh liked these parcels 
 apparently, and sent off others not much less odd, of his own, 
 from time to time. Nothing about Hugh suggested mystery; 
 if Nigel knew little of these friends of his, it was largely that 
 he never asked about them. Hugh, of course, never volun- 
 teered information on any subject whatever. Had Nigel not 
 found him unpacking this particular treasure, its origin might 
 have remained forever obscure. Even now Hugh said nothing. 
 
 Nigel repeated his question. "What is it?" 
 
 "Oh, it's the Cherry Blossom Festival Japanese, as you 
 see. Only ten or fifteen years old. " 
 
 "It's beautiful," said Nigel. 
 
 "Yes," said Hugh shortly, "that's civilisation." 
 
 Nigel stared. 
 
 Hugh laughed. "Your expression tempts me to a longer 
 sermon than any Eastern divinity often heard! Do you realise 
 that this is not a painting? " 
 
 "Not a painting?" Nigel advanced a step nearer. "What 
 is it, then?" 
 
 "Embroidery. Some one took the best part of ten years in 
 producing it; a man who was done for in the Russo-Japanese 
 War. He had just finished it when they dragged him off. Ten 
 years, and did not grudge the time. So it's a little masterpiece, 
 and a text from which I could, though I won't, preach." He 
 paused, then as Nigel said nothing, but looked at him rather 
 blankly, he went on: "That's Japan before it began to imitate 
 us; to be a great Western Power. And that, and not our hypoc- 
 risies, is civilisation. The belief that beauty is worth a life- 
 time's search, and is only to be got by that. The man who did 
 this took years to train. Before he began on it he knew every- 
 thing there was to be known about how to do it ; you can't take 
 out stitches or cover up weak lines in work like this. Search it; 
 you won't find one. No hurry can give us work like that 
 instinct won't do it for you. Revelation won't. " 
 
 Hugh had spoken in his usual dry, slow way, but something 
 neither dry nor slow might have been felt underneath his words, 
 and when he paused his cheeks were a little flushed.
 
 106 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 " Does it leave you cold? " he said, turning to Nigel. "Per- 
 fect work often does leave people cold. It seems inhuman. 
 And yet a human being did that and can do no more of it, be- 
 cause in the war he lost both his hands. . . . Oh, yes. Didn't 
 I say Japan was becoming Westernised? . . . Well, there's the 
 sermon I didn't mean to give. " 
 
 Nigel had turned away. He came back, and after gazing 
 at the panel again for a minute cried: "I've got it! I couldn't 
 think what it reminded me of; but now I see. That girl's arms 
 and throat are Daphne Leonard's. You look, this evening 
 she's coming, you know and see if it isn't so." 
 
 Hugh regarded his friend with a mixed expression. 
 
 "That's all the Eternal Idea says to you!" 
 
 "But it is Daphne exactly!" Nigel cried again. "Look 
 at the wrists. " 
 
 "You seem to have got on very rapidly in your acquaintance 
 with Daphne," retorted the other. Then after a pause he 
 added: "As a matter of fact the face is more like her mother's. " 
 
 This last remark was lost upon Nigel, who had sat down and 
 was drawing on the back of an envelope hieroglyphics intended 
 to represent the arrangement of their table for the evening meal. 
 Six guests were coming, an event which had kept their admirable 
 housekeeper in a state of irritability all day; and Nigel was deep 
 in the problem of how they were to sit. It was primarily his 
 party. Hugh, indeed, had announced his intention of going out, 
 as he generally arranged to do when Nigel invited what Hugh 
 called "the latchkey set"; but on hearing that Daphne was 
 included he had promised to stay. The party had originated 
 in the alleged necessity of giving a dinner to Alan Mottershaw 
 and his bride, and since the table only held eight, and eight 
 rather closely packed, those who could not be fitted in were 
 coming to coffee. 
 
 "Will you take in Lily Mottershaw or Mabel Nugent?" 
 asked Nigel after a moment's scratching. "Lily of course as 
 the bride is the principal guest. " 
 
 "Why shouldn't you have them both? " said Hugh. "You're 
 the host, it- seems the proper arrangement. ... I don't know 
 Mrs. Mottershaw. "
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 107 
 
 "Neither do I," cried Nigel quickly. "I've only seen her 
 once before the wedding, and then she just giggled at us all. . . . 
 I think you'd better have her. She'll like you, I'm sure. " 
 
 "Not half as much as she'll like you no one ever does," 
 said Hugh grimly. 
 
 "Well, then, you can have Mabel." 
 
 "No," said Hugh with decision. 
 
 Nigel looked up, but Hugh evidently meant it. 
 
 " It seems, " said Hugh, coming and looking over his shoulder, 
 "a perfectly easy table only one couple " 
 
 Nigel executed some more scratching. "There we are,'* 
 said Nigel, "look at that. You at one end with Lily on your 
 right and Myrtle on your left me opposite with Mabel and 
 Miss Leonard. Alan Mottershaw and Mallard in the gaps. " 
 
 Hugh smiled. "As I'm here simply in order to see Daphne, 
 I think she might sit next to me. I didn't, after all, stay at 
 home for the sake of meeting Miss Toller." 
 
 Nigel did not say anything. He merely continued to draw 
 whorls and squares on his envelopes. 
 
 Hugh's smile broadened. 
 
 "Myrtle can be very amusing," said Nigel after a moment. 
 
 Hugh's smile became a grin. 
 
 "Oh, very well, " he said. "Put me anywhere you like. " 
 
 Mrs. Nugent was the first to arrive. It wanted, indeed, still 
 ten minutes to eight when she appeared, smart, rustling and 
 cheerful; the replica, from her ear-rings to her shoes, of some 
 hundreds of well-dressed London women of indefinable age, 
 differentiated from them not by any accent of personal dis- 
 tinction, but only by the superior glow of her self-satisfaction. 
 At eighteen, with her dark fuzzy hair and bright colouring, she 
 had looked a full-blown woman, and her appearance had hardly 
 changed since, save in so far as it had acquired a high metropoli- 
 tan polish. She was extremely vivacious with a rather loud 
 and penetrating voice and perpetual laugh. Vivacity, she be- 
 lieved, was the quality in a woman which above all others 
 appealed to men; and her consciousness of charm carried her 
 through many situations which might have been difficult to 
 any one less effectually armoured. Opinions differed as to
 
 108 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 whether the silence of her husband were the effect or the cause 
 of her loquacity. Edgar was this evening detained at the 
 House; but he hoped to come on later. 
 
 Mrs. Nugent at once took the occasion under her wing. 
 She inquired who the other guests were to be and assured her 
 hosts that they might leave it to her to make the party "go." 
 The list she received with approval. They were all particular 
 friends of hers. She had, she asserted, brought the Motter- 
 shaws together. Other people might find Mallard Floss as- 
 sertive, Wellesley Drew boring and Jimmy O'Connor mad, but 
 she delighted in them all. Myrtle Toller was a charming 
 creature, ' 'so simple and direct ! ' ' This remark was accompanied 
 by a smile directed at Hugh, which, however, missed him, for 
 his eyes were on the panel over the mantelpiece, illuminated 
 now by the candles in their lacquer sticks. The smile indicated 
 that Mrs. Nugent quite understood all that had passed between 
 this young lady and Nigel, and that it was all over, and that she 
 could be trusted, there too, to manage everything perfectly. . . . 
 Yes, Myrtle was charming indeed. All that set were nice crea- 
 tures, especially little Jane Sandys, about whose engagement 
 she would tell them more anon. As for Daphne Leonard, she 
 was longing to meet her and could not think how the girl had 
 been in London so long without her finding her out. She had 
 been a great friend of her mother's, though Mrs. Leonard was, 
 of course, years older than she was herself. 
 
 "I always took her part," she said. 
 
 "Her part?" Nigel asked vaguely. 
 
 "Oh, my dear Nigel, you, I daresay, have never heard of 
 it, she's been away from London so much. But there was a 
 time when people spoke very disagreeably about her. " 
 
 "Only very stupid people." She had Hugh Infield's atten- 
 tion now. He had been standing with his back to the other 
 two seated on the sofa, deriving much quiet amusement from 
 the fact that Mrs. Nugent, on whom, by her own account, 
 "nothing was lost," had passed by the panel unobserved while 
 she approached the "Virgin of the Rocks" and inspected the 
 cards stuck into the convenient aperture between its glass and 
 frame.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 109 
 
 "Ah, but, Mr. Infield, we are apt to forget how many stupid 
 people there are in the world. One assumes that one's own 
 friends are typical, and they're not. People were very disa- 
 greeable about her leaving Colonel Leonard, although, of course, 
 she did it for her child's sake. I never believed all the stories 
 about another man; though she was so attractive. I went 
 about contradicting them. Of course, her being a pro-Boer 
 did make it worse, her being one so publicly, I mean. " 
 
 "But we were all pro-Boers," said Nigel, recalling with 
 amusement his brother's strictures on the case. "Wasn't 
 Edgar?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, I think so, at least; we were only engaged at the 
 time. But it was rather different for her. " 
 
 "Was Colonel Leonard killed in the war?" said Nigel. 
 
 Mrs. Nugent nodded. "He got a V.C. or something like 
 that," she said. 
 
 The contemporaneous announcement of Miss Leonard and 
 Mr. Floss, speedily followed by that of Mr. and Mrs. Mottershaw, 
 put a stop to the conversation. Mrs. Nugent ran Daphne over 
 with a rapidly appraising eye. She could find nothing to cavil 
 at in the simplicity of a white muslin dress, or a head bound 
 with seed pearls, which she inspected, without letting go of 
 Nigel, to whom she continued to talk with a brightness that gave 
 him no chance of escape. The conversation only nominally 
 included Mrs. Mottershaw, a shy little lady in cream satin 
 covered with tinsel, who shared the sofa with Mabel, and 
 laughed, generally in the wrong place. Her husband's evening 
 paper was seized upon by Mallard Floss. Daphne was thus 
 left to Hugh. 
 
 "Well, Daphne," he said, "if I may still call you so, now 
 you are on your own? How do you like the whirlpool, since 
 you are in it? " 
 
 "Oh, please!" She smiled up at him with a frankness in 
 which Hugh might have felt his complete relegation to an older 
 generation. "I don't know. I'm rather frightened. It's all 
 right in Poplar, but here I feel so unnecessarily solemn and 
 serious. Can one learn, " she glanced quickly round, " to buzz? " 
 
 Infield laughed.
 
 110 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "It's only too easy," he said. "In a few weeks you'll be 
 pattering the evening papers like all the rest of us. " 
 
 "But I'm so slow." 
 
 "Ah, you try to think. That's a fatal mistake. The rule 
 is, you see, to say the first thing that comes into your head as 
 loudly as possible. You'll find it works infallibly. An in- 
 vincible ignorance is a great asset; you give other people a 
 chance to instruct you, which they love. But you must be 
 proud of your ignorance, not ashamed of it. It's all a game. " 
 
 "But I don't," said Daphne, "know the rules." 
 
 "The only rule is to read the stop press edition," said Hugh. 
 "Model yourself on Gervase O'Connor." 
 
 Daphne looked round again. 
 
 " Is he coming? " she said. " I like him. " 
 
 Hugh nodded. 
 
 "That's right; he's a good sort, our Jimmy. And you'll 
 be good for him, I expect. " 
 
 Daphne's eyes widened. "Really?" she said. "Do tell 
 me how." 
 
 Hugh's explanation was prevented by the entrance of Myrtle 
 Toller, brilliant in an emerald green dress which effectually 
 "killed" the turquoise of Mabel Nugent's; and they went in 
 to dinner. 
 
 The "Original Walker," who prescribed eight as the perfect 
 number for a dinner party, omitted to give the dimensions of 
 the table at which the eight were to sit, a point of considerable 
 relevance if the desire of the giver is to secure private conversa- 
 tion with any of his guests. Nigel had planned the seating of 
 his party with that intention; but his plans were defeated by 
 the smallness of the table and the penetrating voices of some of 
 his friends. Mallard Floss and Mabel Nugent were each de- 
 termined to talk to the table as a whole, and from soup to 
 dessert the conversation remained persistently general. Coffee 
 and the arrival of other guests permitted some regrouping to 
 take place a process much assisted by Hugh's firm measures 
 with the lights. Of the electric bulbs which normally hung 
 from the wall he had banished one to the top of Nigel's desk, 
 where its glare, cast downward instead of generally diffused, no
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 111 
 
 longer vexed weak eyes; the other he placed on top of the low 
 bookcase at the further end of the room. On a sofa there, 
 Hugh with masterly strategy marooned Mrs. Nugent and Alan 
 Mottershaw. Mottershaw's soft voice might have seemed to 
 rob him of any hope of getting his word in, but he had a slow, 
 irresistible flow of words, which hypnotised most listeners within 
 a measurable period of time, and Hugh, from the distant 
 window-sill in which he had perched himself, watched this 
 process gradually taking effect. Absorbed, he had not noticed 
 that Myrtle Toller had dropped into the big low chair beneath 
 him, until her voice suddenly broke in upon his thoughts. 
 
 "That will put dear Mabel's nose out of joint," she said, 
 blowing a smoke ring and watching it float off. Hugh did not 
 at first understand the full bearing of this remark until, follow- 
 ing the direction of Myrtle's eyes, he saw that she was not 
 looking, as he had supposed, at the inspired countenance of 
 Mr. Mottershaw. Her gaze was bent to where, by the mantel- 
 piece, Nigel Strode and Daphne Leonard were standing side 
 by side. 
 
 Nigel had his back to them. Hugh could see nothing but 
 his fair head, on which the candlelight fell. He was leaning 
 forward and speaking quickly, no doubt explaining the beauties 
 of the embroidered panel; and explaining them very well, to 
 judge from the absorbed attention of Daphne's uplifted face. 
 Her eyes were on the picture, but as Hugh looked at her he saw 
 their direction change to rest for an instant on his friend's face. 
 He looked, at that, quickly away, back to Myrtle. 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 "Pretty clear what's happening there, isn't it?" she said, as 
 she shook the ash from her cigarette on to the carpet. "Your 
 carpet doesn't mind, does it? Or is it Nigel's carpet? It's 
 very perplexing when people live together. Especially when 
 one of them does all the talking; one assumes he has all the 
 taste. Nigel certainly gives one the impression of having 
 quantities of the most exquisite taste; he's always discriminating 
 and choosing, isn't he? I suppose that's why people are excited 
 when they think he's chosen them. " 
 
 Myrtle spoke slowly, with many pauses. Hugh's eyes
 
 112 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 had reverted to the group by the mantelpiece, but he had heard 
 all she said. 
 
 "Is that what you think is happening?" he asked. 
 
 Myrtle laughed. 
 
 " That she thinks he's chosen? No. Not exactly. I should 
 think so if Nigel looked at me in that way, but Daphne, dear 
 soul, isn't like that, she's far too modest. Besides, she's not 
 complicated a bit. " 
 
 "You mean she knows she's chosen?" said Hugh. 
 
 Myrtle nodded. 
 
 "And that's enough for her?" he went on. 
 
 "Exactly, and quite right too. That's how one should do 
 it. ... But really, Mr. Infield, you're not a bit what I 
 thought. " 
 
 Hugh laughed. 
 
 "I did not realise," he said, "that you had ever turned the 
 subject over." 
 
 Myrtle Toller smiled up at him frankly. 
 
 "Oh, dear! As if one didn't turn every one over. I never 
 meet any one without wondering whether they could thrill me. " 
 
 Hugh shook his head with a smile. "I'm afraid I'm no good 
 for that. " 
 
 "There you're quite wrong. " Myrtle sat up. "The most 
 unlikely people can. . . . But with you, honestly, I don't think 
 I had any impression at all, except that you didn't like any of 
 us, despised us all. That, of course, is interesting, as far as it 
 goes. But then your living with Nigel was puzzling, because 
 he's so much one of us. " 
 
 Hugh Infield looked down at her dark head. 
 
 "I do despise you all in a sense," he said; "it's quite true. 
 But I include myself." 
 
 "Ah!" said Myrtle quickly. "That's where we differ from^ 
 you, then. " 
 
 "You don't despise yourself?" 
 
 "Oh no, of course not. How stupid. I am profoundly 
 interested in myself. It's all there is ... so, of course 
 She waved a hand. 
 
 "And Nigel?" said Hugh. Evidently one need feel no sen-
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 113 
 
 sitive reticences. Myrtle would be only too delighted to realise 
 a nerve being touched. Her light laugh suggested that the touch 
 did not, in this case, operate. 
 
 "Nigel is odd. He's one of us, as I said, but in some ways 
 he's different. He's never made up his mind, you see, what sort 
 of person he is; so of course he's tremendously interested in any 
 one new, who may throw some light. " 
 
 Hugh's eyes were again on the group. 
 
 "And Daphne?" he said. 
 
 Myrtle Toller hesitated, and her hesitation raised her in 
 Hugh's esteem. The rudiments of difference were, after all, 
 not lost upon her. 
 
 "I don't understand Daphne," she said. "She only came 
 up to Newnham when I was in my second year, and we weren't 
 in the same set. She worked, of course, and was very good at 
 games too. There's something profound and queer in her. 
 She'd die for her ideas (it's rather a blow to her that no one, 
 nowadays, wants you to do anything of the kind!) And she's 
 full of ideas. About things in general. Not about people. 
 . . . Oh, how do you do, Mr. Delahaye? So you've conde- 
 scended to recognise me! I thought Jane had blotted us all 
 out." 
 
 Hugh leaned back within earshot of the light banter passing 
 between Miss Toller and the newcomer, a good-looking youth 
 known to him only by name as engaged to little Jane Sandys; 
 but he was not listening to them. He glanced round the room, 
 which was now tolerably full. Mrs. Nugent had escaped from 
 Alan Mottershaw, who had transferred his deep intensity to 
 Chris Bampton. Little Jane Sandys, who was always nice 
 to every one, was being nice to Mrs. Mottershaw, after rescuing 
 her from Mallard Floss. Mallard had buttonholed Edgar 
 Nugent at the very threshold of the room. Over them, as over 
 Gertrude Fenner, Ned Coventry, the handful of strange-looking 
 art students and the other people whose names he did not know, 
 Hugh's gaze travelled rapidly. It rested for a moment, how- 
 ever, on Mrs. Nugent and Jimmy O'Connor. Mrs. Nugent 's 
 voice reached him, but he did not attend to what it said, any 
 more, apparently, than did her interlocutor. The eyes of
 
 114 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Jimmy were fixed, furtively, on Daphne Leonard. All he gave 
 Mrs. Nugent was a bright abstracted smile; his intention of 
 escape at the first possible moment was obvious to Hugh. 
 
 Daphne had not moved. She still stood by the fire, uncon- 
 scious apparently of its heat, her hands clasped, her eyes travel- 
 ling from Nigel's face to the panel and back again. What 
 Jimmy or Nigel saw in those eyes Hugh could only guess; they 
 were turned away from him. He wondered whether Myrtle 
 Toller's arrow had hit the mark and marvelled at the quickness 
 of her insight. He could see what she had shown him, but he 
 wondered whether he should ever have seen by his own unaided 
 light. 
 
 Probably not. In Hugh Infield, as in many men of middle 
 age who live solitary lives, great intellectual courage was com- 
 bined with extreme personal shyness. This shyness, partly self- 
 distrust, partly moral delicacy, prevented his asking questions 
 about people, even of himself. He tended to accept them as 
 they came. Acceptance did not necessarily mean liking; Hugh 
 was no indiscriminate liker; but it did mean an absence of that 
 incessant desire to probe and test which, as Myrtle had admitted, 
 characterised the set in which she moved. There were some 
 things which Hugh did not want probed or tested; things in 
 himself and, it followed, in other people. Tearing up by the 
 roots was a process he detested. And here lay part of the ex- 
 planation of his living with Nigel. Their association was, on 
 Hugh's side at any rate, far from close. If Nigel felt he could 
 talk to Hugh about anything, that was partly because there were 
 so few things about which Hugh ever wanted to talk to him. 
 Hugh listened with admirable good temper, and commented 
 with caustic humour; but he never initiated inquiries. Hugh 
 liked Nigel largely because of this. Men can live together 
 without asking one another questions, without demanding 
 intimacy. The last thing Hugh wanted of a companion at 
 breakfast and supper was that he should share his thoughts. 
 To one scarred and shaken, as Hugh visibly was to eyes that 
 cared to see, there was something soothing in association with 
 a being whose feet skimmed lightly over the burning plough- 
 shares of life, whose eyes glanced away from its boiling abysses.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 115 
 
 But now as he tried to look at Nigel with the eyes of an ardent 
 young girl, Hugh wondered what he was really like; and felt 
 he could not say. He was easy; he was agreeable; he had a 
 charm which every one felt; he was everything that Hugh was 
 not himself; but these things, valuable enough in themselves, 
 were somehow too negative. Daphne's eyes saw something else. 
 
 Hugh dropped from his window-seat and joined the pair 
 by the fireplace. 
 
 "She's beautiful, but she's remote," Daphne was saying. 
 "Look at her lovely eyes. They've never seen anything but 
 clear skies and happy birds and cherry blossom. " 
 
 "And you want her to see other things?" said Hugh. 
 
 Daphne looked at him for a moment gravely. 
 
 "There are other things, aren't there?" she said. 
 
 Hugh's eyes rested on her for a moment with a gentleness 
 that made him first hesitate, then strike. 
 
 "Yes," he said. "But they're mostly terrible." 
 
 Daphne frowned, and looked at Nigel, as if she wanted him 
 to say something. He only smiled, however, and after a 
 moment she said 
 
 "Oh, no!" with sudden emphasis. "Some of them, yes, but 
 even those are our chance to overcome. One's not alive, is 
 one, if one pretends that even the most terrible are not there? 
 If we know they're there we may destroy them. " 
 
 She glanced quickly, first at Hugh and then at Nigel. 
 Hugh, watching her, felt that Myrtle had been right when she 
 said that Daphne would die for her ideas. But something in 
 her glance at Nigel made him go on. 
 
 "The most real things are the coldness and timidity of our 
 hearts, the cowardice and weakness of our minds. Life is an 
 incessant striving for things we don't really want; the goods we 
 could have, we refuse. " 
 
 "That," said Nigel, "is to say we can't live and be happy, 
 which is manifestly absurd. Go away, Hugh; your pessimism 
 is not to infect Miss Leonard!" 
 
 Daphne smiled on him. 
 
 "Thank you, Mr. Strode. I am sure that if enough people 
 would really look at life as it is, they could make it good for
 
 116 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 the others. But as long as they pretend, they can't have it good, 
 even for themselves; and it can be good whatever Hugh says." 
 
 As she looked at him, her head a little thrown back, her eyes 
 bright, Hugh was not disposed to dispute her right to think so. 
 Still less, apparently, was Jimmy O'Connor, who had at last got 
 free and stood by her. If he said nothing, his silence, enforced 
 by the expression in his eyes, was eloquent enough, had Daphne's 
 attention been given to him. But it was not. 
 
 "Of course it can be good," cried Nigel. "Ultimately it is 
 good." 
 
 Something in his tone acted as an irritant on Hugh. 
 
 "That's right," he murmured. "Smear your bandage with 
 phosphorescence, tie it tight enough over your eyes, and you 
 can believe, all your days, that you are staring at the sun. 
 Isn't that so, Mottershaw? There's nothing either good or bad, 
 but thinking makes it so?" 
 
 Mottershaw, who had gravitated towards them, stroked his 
 full reddish beard with a shapely white hand. He was really 
 under thirty, but his beard and something soft and solemn in 
 his manner made him appear much older. 
 
 "Our thoughts can be true," he answered, "if we will only 
 sit quiet and allow the message of the universe to penetrate. 
 But it's not done by thinking; if you try to ratiocinate, you 
 lose the spirit and only get a dead formula. The way to get in 
 touch with truth is perfect receptivity. " 
 
 With Mottershaw in control, the conversation soon lost 
 such interest as it had ever had. Jimmy carried off Miss 
 Leonard to have lemonade at the further table. Nigel turned 
 to attend to neglected duties, in the persons of Mrs. Motter- 
 shaw and Miss Sandys. 
 
 Hugh Infield, standing for a moment apart, surveyed the 
 scene and listened to the extraordinary buzz, marvelling as he 
 did so at the social passion. Every one in parting would declare 
 that they had had a "perfectly delightful" evening. He won- 
 dered how far it would be true. His own chief delight would be 
 in its termination, for which he began to long. He saw Daphne 
 Leonard rise from her seat and approach Nigel with the obvious 
 intention of taking farewell with a satisfaction that for some rea-
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 117 
 
 son was heightened by the fact that Jimmy O'Connor accom- 
 panied her; and although his hope that their departure would 
 break up the party failed of immediate realisation, his satisfac- 
 tion continued, and continued to puzzle him. Vaguely pre- 
 occupied with it, he hardly observed the going of the other 
 guests, but he did observe with some surprise that Nigel, instead 
 of sitting down "to talk over the party," went straight to his 
 own room with the briefest of good-nights.
 
 CHAPTER NINE 
 
 THAT accident, even in the form of the accidental kind- 
 ness of friends, would throw him and Daphne Leonard 
 together, Nigel Strode knew his London too well to hope. 
 Accident had done more than could have been expected of 
 it in the Park. Accident as a rule did nothing for one, but 
 design could be made to do everything, even to look like 
 accident, or, thanks to the thick muddle of the place, not to 
 care whether it looked like anything at all. His ingenious 
 and cheerful mind found delightful entertainment in plan- 
 ning opportunities; an entertainment only heightened by the 
 risk of encountering the observation of his friends. In London 
 there is no one one may not hope to meet, or to avoid. At 
 least one can never be safe; and for the risks involved in mild 
 and innocent intrigue Nigel had a zest which no practice had 
 worn dull. 
 
 The fact that it was there, this zest, as keen as ever, de- 
 lighted him. It had been given back just at the moment when 
 he had felt himself in danger of losing it; at the moment, too, 
 when he saw it as the sole fruit on the tree of life worth grasping 
 and within his grasp. There were other things that other men 
 strove after and thought desirable, but they were not for him 
 and he did not even want them. He might despise Hugh 
 T nfield for what he saw as his lack of gift for life: in other words, 
 for his deep want of cheerfulness: but after living with Infield 
 for more than a year Nigel had no longer any doubt as to the 
 second-rate quality of his own intellect. There were too 
 many things that Infield apprehended clearly, saw as defined, 
 consistent threads, which he himself had never seen, he knew, 
 
 118
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 119 
 
 save as part of the muddled texture of things in general, whose 
 warp and woof life was too short to unravel. Infield first, then 
 Mallard Floss, then Mrs. Leonard, and last, and not least 
 clearly, his editorship of the New World and its failure to absorb 
 him or stir the age, had made him feel that, as far as sheer 
 brains went, he was never going to do anything much. His 
 brain was good enough to pass, but not good enough for a place. 
 At thirty-eight one could accept such a conclusion; for at 
 thirty-eight, if one were lucky, as he was, one could also see 
 how little it mattered. There were so many things that 
 counted before sheer brain. To think so often meant one could 
 not feel, and to feel was the important thing. To feel the 
 general drift; that was often impossible to the people who 
 could analyse one particular tendency, just as it seemed im- 
 possible to them to see the general drift as good. A contempt 
 for reason was part of the fundamental creed of the younger 
 generation, and to that generation Nigel essentially belonged. 
 They claimed to know things more immediately. Hence they 
 went about incessantly in search of the personal experience, 
 above all of the personal thrill, that could alone give them such 
 knowledge. It was, they held, for ever concealed from the 
 thinker who sat at home, head in hands. 
 
 On personal experience Nigel took his stand. And since 
 his day at Box Hill with Daphne Leonard it had been a happy, 
 confident stand. She thrilled nerves whose capacity for 
 response he had begun to distrust. In her he felt, more and 
 more at each meeting, a vitality, vivid and ardent, fed by an 
 immense fund of interest in things and perception of them; 
 and beneath her silence, her inexperience, her youth, a reserve 
 of passion. She gave him back, with a fulness never experienced 
 before, his sense that he possessed the gift for life. For he 
 could see how she felt him. She thrilled him; and he gave her 
 back the thrill. 
 
 Their ride to Box Hill was only the first of many expeditions. 
 Nigel loved to see her in the country, for he had never met any 
 one who so reminded him of something growing out-of-doors. 
 Youth, in Myrtle Toller insolent in its assertion, in Evangeline 
 grotesque in its assumption of age, in Jane Sandys merely
 
 120 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 sweet, was in Daphne beautiful, without either crudeness or 
 immaturity. It suggested not the ends not yet achieved, but 
 all that was lovely in the process of achieving them. It was 
 beautiful with the grace proper to Nature's work, in which 
 each stage has its own perfection, absolute, not relative to 
 something else to follow it. In this she reminded him of her 
 mother. One could not regret that Mrs. Leonard was not 
 young, or think of her other than she was. So with Daphne. 
 To wonder what she would be like at thirty was an act of 
 ingratitude to the delicious thing she was now. 
 
 The country was the best; for in the country they could 
 be really alone together. But Daphne down at Poplar was 
 absurdly conscientious. Three out of every four of his sugges- 
 tions were met by her with a refusal in which he was sure there 
 was no prudishness, no coquetry; nothing but a straightforward 
 occupation of her time in something disagreeable which she, 
 therefore, felt she ought to do. The most he could secure dur- 
 ing the week was an evening at a concert or at a theatre. 
 
 Nigel was not very fond of the theatre. There was too little 
 opportunity for talk and one's subjects were apt to be chosen 
 for one. Least of all did he care for the modern theatre, which 
 made him feel uncomfortable. Nan, the play ^Daphne chose, 
 was worse; it made him actually unhappy. It brought up all 
 the doubt of life that had assailed him last autumn and winter; 
 that Daphne had driven away. Through all its beauty and 
 its violence there rang the note of death. He expressed some- 
 thing of this to Daphne as they walked away together along 
 Sloane Street, quiet and deserted, its pavements shining under 
 the cool starry sky. 
 
 "Sometimes, you know," he said, "one feels that death is 
 the only ultimately beautiful, the only right and saving thing." 
 
 Daphne shook her head. 
 
 "Oh, no," she said, "death is terrible." 
 
 "But," Nigel urged, "Nan's death is surely beautiful." 
 
 Daphne was not shaken. 
 
 "Beautiful? Oh, no," she said again. "Think what drove 
 her to it, the agony that Dick caused her; the hideous things 
 he made her see. He made her hate life so that there was
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 121 
 
 nothing left but death; but her death is awful. The pity 
 Masefield makes one feel is beautiful, and the terror, beautiful 
 by his art; but death is defeat. Nan was defeated." 
 
 "Wouldn't you have killed yourself?" he asked. "I'm 
 sure you would. You have courage." 
 
 Daphne looked at it. 
 
 "I don't know," she said slowly. "Courage courage 
 would be to go on. I don't know if I could go on. . . . But 
 if one did, don't you see, one would master one's experience. 
 I'm sure that's what real strength means. ... Of course it may 
 only be that I have had no experience. . . . But look at Mother. 
 You don't know, of course, I don't know what she suffered, not 
 fully. But I have a dim idea of it. And look how splendid 
 she is. You must have felt her! She's strength, she's courage, 
 she's what I mean." 
 
 "Yes, yes," said Nigel; and changed the subject. 
 
 After their first concert Nigel decided that of silent forms 
 of social intercourse this was the one he preferred with her. 
 To sit by Daphne listening to music was, for Nigel, to hear 
 music as he had never heard it before. He did not know 
 whether she were aware of him or no, he thought she was, but 
 he was more aware of her than of what he was hearing. Yet 
 he did hear, and this double consciousness suggested to him the 
 possibility of depths in his own nature never sounded before. 
 As the great tide of sound surged through him, and he looked 
 at Daphne absorbed in response to it, he was whirled away 
 from his moorings and swept out into a great heaving sea, in 
 which he believed he might learn to swim. 
 
 Among the many evenings in which they sat side by side 
 together in the high balcony at Queen's Hall, filled with a 
 beauty of sound that blotted out the ugliness of the place, 
 there was one that made Nigel realise where he stood with a 
 curious sudden distinctness. It was a crowded evening; every 
 seat in the huge building was filled, even the stalls, so often half 
 empty when the galleries were packed; for Nikisch was con- 
 ducting, and conducting Beethoven's 8th Symphony. But 
 of the 8th Symphony Nigel heard almost nothing. It was 
 only a background for what he saw, what he felt. What he
 
 122 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 saw was Daphne, sitting beside him in a dark silk shirt, whose 
 white collars and cuffs gave her the appearance of a young 
 acolyte, with her neat smooth brown hair and grave face. 
 Against the black coat of the young man in the seat beyond 
 her, leaning forward, her face showed white and almost stern 
 in its concentration. Her profile was rigid but for her quiver- 
 ing and dilated nostrils; her eyes saw nothing that was before 
 them; her mouth was tense. She was utterly unconscious of 
 him, but there was something almost terrifying in her con- 
 sciousness of the music. 
 
 Looking at her, Nigel suddenly understood, suddenly 
 knew that he was no longer young. He could not have ex- 
 plained the steps by which it was driven home to him; but 
 there it was. Daphne was young; he was young no longer. 
 It stood before him, with the force of certainty and a new 
 meaning. For an instant he was smitten, struck down by the 
 sheer pain of the realisation. Only for an instant ; the darkness 
 lifted; light entered and penetrated it. Daphne could give 
 him back his youth. Through her he could say to the moment, 
 ''Stay, thou art fair"; she could stay it, hold it for him. She 
 could. She must. 
 
 He knew his power over her. But she was young, his hold 
 was insecure. Youth might call her, youth in Gervase. Nigel 
 knew what Gervase felt had not Gervase shown him the 
 way? So far Gervase had been baffled; Nigel had beaten 
 him in the happy game of devising opportunities, more intimate 
 than he had the courage to suggest or the experience to con- 
 ceive. But his fiery eagerness might even yet suddenly leap 
 ahead. 
 
 And there was her mother. Mrs. Leonard, Daphne had 
 told him, was to be in town in June; she had arranged to resume 
 possession of the flat then, and her daughter was to leave 
 Poplar and join her. Daphne adored her mother. It was no 
 phrase; Nigel realised that. The tie between these two was 
 not the mere filial bond that separated many daughters from 
 their parents. It was something wholly different, unlike any- 
 thing he had known, something he did not understand and whose 
 influence he therefore could not calculate, but only dreaded.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 123 
 
 How Aurelia Leonard saw him was a question Nigel did not 
 like to ask himself; but Daphne's seeing must be established 
 on an unshakable basis before her mother came to make her 
 see with other eyes. 
 
 The first movement of the Symphony was over. Nigel 
 had heard only a confused and lovely noise. The second 
 began. Daphne's hand rested on her knee; the firm, round 
 fingers quivered; he almost saw the shuddering delight that 
 ran through her tremble in them as the glorious rejoicing 
 melody poured out. Her face was as stern as before, stern as 
 that of a young priestess, unapproachable, adorable. Nigel 
 laid his left hand over her right. She did not move. Her ex- 
 pression did not alter. Her hand, warm and living under his, 
 trembled and lay still. Nigel pressed it softly. Her fingers 
 made no response, but he could feel the electric current in 
 them. It passed on to him. 
 
 Yes. Assuredly she could give it to him, that tingling 
 sense of life moving in the veins. She could, and Nigel believed 
 she would. 
 
 And fortune smiled on him. Next morning he found on 
 his plate at breakfast a note from Mabel Nugent, reminding 
 him that he had promised to come down to Tenacre for a week- 
 end soon; when was he coming? Hugh was sitting behind the 
 newspaper, for Nigel, in the exhilaration of the chase, got up 
 earlier than had been his habit, and after a cold bath (agreeable 
 now that May had come, all sun and sweetness) breakfasted 
 with Hugh at eight o'clock. 
 
 To Hugh he said after reading Mabel's letter, "I say, 
 old man, come down to Tenacre with me for the week-end. 
 Mabel says 'bring a party,' and I want to bring Miss Leonard." 
 
 Hugh laid down the Daily Mail (which he took for pur- 
 poses of exasperation), and looked at his friend through his 
 large round spectacles. Hugh was not looking younger, Nigel 
 thought. The white in his dark hair was gaining ground. 
 
 "Is that quite playing the game?" he said. Nigel frowned. 
 Hugh could be very tiresome. The dry light of his bare per- 
 ceptions made things look ugly that were not if one did not 
 insist upon considering them so deeply.
 
 124 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "Why not?" he said. "It's a lovely place. She'd cer- 
 tainly enjoy it." 
 
 Hugh shrugged his shoulders impatiently. He was quite 
 ready to accept the fact that there were numerous things that 
 Nigel did not see, but that he should pretend a density when 
 he had it not was merely irritating. 
 
 "Would she?" he asked drily. "I know quite well why 
 you want her. And what I know Mrs. Nugent will certainly 
 guess. You know what her guesses are. You've experienced 
 them before this. She has no use for half shades. She'll jump 
 to a conclusion, and having landed on it, will certainly not keep 
 it to herself. Every gesture, every word will indicate to all 
 the world that she knows everything. Whether she's right or 
 wrong, that can hardly be agreeable to Daphne, even if you 
 happen not to mind it." 
 
 Nigel listened and found himself unwillingly in agreement. 
 Hugh's words explained the reluctance he had felt to telling 
 Mabel anything about Daphne. He had told her all about 
 Myrtle Toller; more, indeed, than there was, strictly speaking, 
 to tell; for he had, half unconsciously, allowed her to under- 
 stand more action on his part than there had been, both in 
 the beginning and the close of that featureless affair. But 
 Daphne somehow was different. There was a bloom about 
 her, for all her independence, her opinions, and her power to 
 stand alone, that was a part of her that he cherished as a dis- 
 covery of his own. If Hugh were right, he might not only offend 
 his idea of her but her idea of him. For she saw him, he knew, 
 as composed of delicacy and subtlety; she credited him with 
 wonderful complex apprehensions, closed to her simpler mind; 
 with a conscious achievement of all the fine shades that in her 
 were unconscious, ignorant. 
 
 "Daphne isn't like all these other girls, you know," Hugh 
 went on, "she's extraordinarily shy and sensitive really. Have 
 you ever talked to her about Mrs. Drew?" 
 
 "No." Nigel did not see the connection. 
 
 "Well, the other day I happened to hear Miss Bampton 
 describing the whole situation to her, a very neat, hard, lucid 
 description. Daphne was quite shocked. It hurt her, morally;
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 125 
 
 not the facts, for of course, she could understand the facts in 
 a way none of these jabberers could; but the way they talked 
 of it. ... She's got a bump of reverence, you see she naturally 
 would have with that mother which none of these girls know 
 the meaning of. Some things are still sacred to her 
 
 "Oh, yes," cried Nigel eagerly, "of course I see all that." 
 
 Hugh smiled. 
 
 There was a short silence. 
 
 "Do you happen to know when Mrs. Leonard is coming 
 back to town?" Hugh asked. 
 
 Nigel looked up. "At the end of the week after next, 
 I believe." 
 
 Hugh said nothing. Nigel continued to ponder. He 
 must risk it; there was only this week-end. After all, if Daphne 
 said yes, it would not matter, and if she said no well, in that 
 not-to-be-believed contingency it would not matter either. 
 
 "Don't you see, Hugh" he made another effort, "if 
 you came too, if I could say to Mabel Nugent that I wanted 
 you and Daphne Leonard, it would be all right." 
 
 Hugh smiled. 
 
 "You could make it look so, I daresay," he said. "But 
 I'm afraid I can't. You know why. I don't like the Nugents. 
 I have refused invitations to Tenacre before." 
 
 Nigel got up and walked about the room. 
 
 "I can't think," he said, after a couple of turns up and 
 down, "why you must analyse so deeply. Nobody can stand 
 it. The Nugents are thoroughly jolly people. Of course, they 
 have their faults, but so has everybody else. They don't 
 expect you to consider them faultless because they ask you for 
 a week-end and you go. They enjoy being hospitable, and 
 Tenacre, delightful at any time, is a dream in May." 
 
 Hugh laughed. "That's what Jimmy says, only he begins, 
 'Edgar Nugent is a solemn ass and Mabel's a snob, but 
 Tenacre They've something to give you, so you go. If 
 they hadn't, you wouldn't, even if they were just the same in 
 themselves. I don't like them, so I won't go. . . ." He paused, 
 then, as Nigel still looked at him with questioning eyes, went 
 on in a more serious tone: "If you want me to be quite frank,
 
 128 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 I think that Mabel Nugent is an inquisitive, vulgar-minded 
 woman, with a hide like a rhinoceros and no more perception. 
 She sees nothing and tramples over everything. ... I don't 
 know how you can stand her." 
 
 "I like her," said Nigel shortly. 
 
 "I know you do. She likes you. I suppose that's the 
 reason. It would make me very uncomfortable if I thought 
 she liked me." 
 
 "But she does," Nigel interposed. 
 
 Hugh shook his head. 
 
 "Oh, no. She has discovered that some 'interesting' 
 people know me, that's all. 'Interesting' being simply the 
 latest label. It sounds rather better than 'well-known,' which 
 is its equivalent in the press. I'm a new carrot, that might go 
 into her social soup." 
 
 "You think very well of yourself," said Nigel rather tartly. 
 
 "If I do," retorted Hugh, "it's only the measure of my 
 contempt for my kind." 
 
 Nigel continued, for a few moments, to be annoyed, but a 
 little reflection convinced him that he did not want Hugh at 
 Tenacre. Hugh somehow contrived to make the Nugents 
 appear inferior; Nigel never found Edgar so banal or Mabel 
 so dangerously near vulgarity as in his company. It was 
 impossible to say how he produced this effect. It was nothing 
 that he said; he was, as a rule, quite silent on the rare occasions 
 when they met. Nor was this the worst. Hugh made Nigel 
 himself feel inferior. The Nugents gave him a sense of superi- 
 ority, which Hugh destroyed by relegating them all in their 
 different degrees to the futile and the obvious. Nigel did 
 not regard himself as really inferior to Hugh. On the con- 
 trary, in the most important respects the balance seemed to 
 him all the other way. For life Hugh was handicapped; Nigel 
 admirably equipped. Nevertheless, on an occasion on which 
 Nigel wanted, to put it crudely, to shine, Infield might be a 
 nuisance. 
 
 Moreover, another and much better solution of the week- 
 end problem had occurred to Nigel's fertile mind. He sat 
 down and wrote to Mabel saying that if she were to ask Gervase
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 127 
 
 O'Connor and Miss Leonard down for the week-end she would 
 at least ensure the happiness of one person in addition to that 
 which it always caused himself to be at Tenacre. He was 
 delighted to come on the Friday night as she suggested. A 
 plan formed itself in his mind for motoring Daphne down. He 
 should not attempt to see her before Friday; that would be a 
 mistake. Yet he wished it were already Thursday, not Monday.
 
 CHAPTER TEN 
 
 THINGS, however, did not work out quite so neatly as Nigel 
 had planned them; which was disconcerting, for his plans 
 generally did work out. Daphne refused to be motored 
 down. She could not get off on Friday, and she seemed unwilling 
 or unable to say when she^could get off on Saturday. She might 
 have to go up to the flat, and, no, Mr. Strode could not be of 
 any assistance there. Nigel slammed down the receiver after 
 a cool "Good-bye" from her, with his head whirling. He did 
 not even feel sure that she was coming down at all. Had Mabel 
 Nugent, in an incautiously worded invitation, frightened her 
 about Jimmy? Hugh was right about Mabel, after all. She 
 was not to be trusted. Or was it Mrs. Leonard's influence, 
 already fatally operating on her daughter from afar? Whatever 
 it was, the obstacle spurred Nigel's impatience. He went down 
 to Tenacre, when Friday at last arrived, in something like a 
 fever, endangering the lives of many innocent people on the 
 way by the recklessness of his driving. 
 
 Tenacre was soothing. In May it was, as he had told 
 Hugh, perfect. The summer darkness was gathering as he 
 arrived, but he could see that in the large park which Edgar 
 had recently added, and which made the modest name more 
 of a misnomer than it;had always been, the beech trees were pale 
 green and the ground beneath them shimmering with hyacinths. 
 The place smelt exquisite: it breathed the flawless sweetness of 
 early English summer. 
 
 Mabel Nugent purred over him; and after an excellent cold 
 supper at which he talked brilliantly about the latest phase of 
 the Ulster crisis and the King's visit to Paris, Nigel retired early 
 
 128
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 129 
 
 to bed, to recover from the week's fatigues (about which his 
 hostess was soothingly sympathetic) and dream of what the 
 morrow might bring. His dreams kept him awake for more than 
 an hour; but the conviction that this restlessness was due to the 
 violence of his-love dissipated any lingering doubt as to Daphne's 
 being absolutely the right person. For he had never been so 
 excited before. Mabel Nugent had said that after seeing 
 Daphne once or twice she had formed no impression of her be- 
 yond the fact that she was a rather shy and not remarkably 
 pretty girl, and Nigel had found it difficult to supply her with 
 an adequate catalogue of attractions. But he had been re- 
 strained by a fear of Mabel's too quick suspicions. If she 
 suspected even half of what he saw in the girl, she might have 
 refused to ask her, in spite of the promised amusement of watch- 
 ing Jimmy in love. Mabel was all right, she would adore. 
 Daphne when the proper time came. 
 
 On Saturday Nigel awoke happy, eager. The sun shone; 
 the garden, as he leaned out of his window on leaping out of 
 bed, was full of scent and colour. Wall-flowers and polyanthus, 
 sweet alyssum and pansies smiled up at him from the beds, and 
 below him was a mass of white and purple lilac. The arbour 
 was all gold laburnum and the orchard a drift of white and pink. 
 He sang in his bath and came down smiling to a late breakfast. 
 
 Walking round the flower-beds with Mabel Nugent after- 
 wards he found it hard to keep his smile from broadening into 
 a laugh, a disconnected laugh of sheer happiness. Mabel knew 
 nothing about flowers: the gardeners did everything at Ten- 
 acre; but she talked about them with easy, rapid, unobservant 
 enthusiasm, just as she talked about the people in the village. 
 Nigel hardly heard what she was saying. He longed to tell her 
 about Daphne, but refrained. After all, it was great fun, 
 mystifying her. When she began to smile over Jimmy O'Con- 
 nor, he played up. 
 
 "Jimmy is a nice boy, you know," she said. Nigel made 
 a face; the description was rather too loose and inaccurate. 
 
 "But," Mabel went on, "I can't imagine any girl's wanting 
 to marry him. He's so angular and so queer. I am never 
 sure that I know what he means. And he says the most out-
 
 130 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 rageous things. Do you think he is very much in love with 
 her? He hasn't told me anything about it. " 
 
 "Oh, yes," Nigel answered lightly. "Jimmy takes things 
 violently, you know." 
 
 Mrs. Nugent reflected. 
 
 "I wonder if he'll propose down here? I should like a pro- 
 posal at Tenacre it's such an ideal place, isn't it?" 
 
 "Perfect," said Nigel, flicking the ash from his cigarette 
 and blinking up at the brilliantly blue sky as he smiled to him- 
 self. "We must try to arrange it for you. I'll speak to the 
 young man. The lady is coming, I suppose? " 
 
 "Oh, yes. They're both coming down by the five-forty, 
 and the Carringtons, too, I hope one must call them that. 
 They're as good as married; it's only three weeks off. I ought 
 to have asked a lady for you, Nigel, but you'll have to put up 
 with me!" 
 
 She smiled at him archly. 
 
 "Haven't I come down on Friday night on purpose? I may 
 have to return on Sunday, you know." 
 
 "Oh, your horrid paper. Nigel, you were wonderful last 
 night about Ulster. Do you think they'll really fight?" 
 
 He shook his head. "All bluff. " 
 
 "Oh, I hope not. A real fight would be so exciting. Noth- 
 ing happens nowadays we are all far too comfortable. " 
 
 Nigel found the morning pass away easily enough in spite 
 of his excitement. It pleased him, that excitement. He felt 
 his pulse frequently, with satisfaction in its rapidity. How 
 could he ever have doubted his own capacity to feel? He was 
 feeling, and his feeling was happy. It made his brain clear, 
 his step light, his eyes shining. It was intense, but intense 
 without any element of dread. Yet when he drove down to the 
 station to meet the five-forty his heart thumped almost uncom- 
 fortably. And Gervase was a bore: he wished he had said 
 nothing about him. 
 
 Gervase was more than a bore. He threatened to upset 
 everything. Daphne was there all right; for a moment he had 
 a cold fear that she might not be. She was there and adorable 
 in a little hat with wings of yellow ribbon under which her eyes
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 131 
 
 shone luminous, almost green. But after a quick handshake 
 she deposited her bag in the car and declared that she intended 
 to walk up to the house. It was too extraordinary to be in the 
 country after Poplar. She stood looking up at the larches, pale 
 green with rosy cones, smiling a little, and Gervase smiled too 
 and, of course, said he would walk with her. 
 
 Nigel was left to conduct Evangeline Toller, whose trailing 
 hems unfitted her for any kind of exercise, and Royal Carrington, 
 who neither could drive nor would walk. Getting in all Evange- 
 line's boxes took some time. When the car passed the other two 
 on the road they were clear of the village, standing under a tree, 
 while Jimmy with fingers that Nigel saw, or imagined he saw, 
 shaking, lit Daphne's cigarette. Daphne waved her hat, which 
 she had taken off and carried slung over her arm, and her light 
 laugh rang out at some remark of her companion's as the car 
 whirled away. Nigel felt baulked and angry. 
 
 In the evening there was a dinner party. Tiresome people 
 of importance in the constituency who lived within motoring 
 distance of Tenacre came, and Nigel was sandwiched among 
 them and compelled to talk politics at Edgar's end of the table. 
 Gaiety was reserved for the other end, with Jimmy as its centre. 
 His elder brother Fergus had recently been from Rome, where 
 he was in the Embassy, to Vienna, whence he had written home 
 wondrous reports, some apparently excruciatingly funny, of 
 the representation, by the great Viennese producer, of Magda- 
 lena. Royal Carrington seemed to enjoy them, for Jimmy 
 was in great form. Glancing again and again towards that end 
 of the table, Nigel saw Daphne's eager eyes, all light, turned to 
 the young man. She was looking lovely in a clear primrose 
 yellow dress, and she seemed to be talking more than usual. 
 It was no wonder that Jimmy was brilliant, or that his laugh 
 rang out triumphant, or so it sounded in Nigel's ears. Why, 
 he asked himself, had he been such an ass as to give him this 
 chance? There had been a moment, as he drove down to the 
 station, when he had felt sorry for Jimmy; but now he only 
 longed for the moment when he should see him suffer . 
 
 It did not come that night. Saturday was Jimmy's day, 
 and on Sunday his star seemed still in the ascendant. The
 
 132 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 morning was hopelessly gregarious: they all walked and talked, 
 but Nigel had no word with Daphne. On the contrary, he had 
 the sensation, when chance left them for a moment side by side, 
 that she avoided his eyes, avoided speaking to him, took refuge 
 gladly in gregariousness, and would baffle him if she could. 
 After lunch Mabel carried off Evangeline Toller and Royal 
 Carrington in the car to pay a call; and Nigel, wandering out 
 into the garden after their departure, guessed that Gervase had 
 seized Daphne for a walk. Muttering imprecations on his own 
 stupidity, he turned from the sunny terrace into the smoke 
 room. There he moved about aimlessly, lifting up and laying 
 down papers and periodicals, biting at his cigarette till it went 
 out. A crunching on the gravel outside made him look up. 
 Edgar Nugent never remembered his wife's hints, bless him. 
 There he was, carrying off Jimmy to look at his ponds: ponds 
 in which the poor young man could have no interest. 
 
 They disappeared. Nigel watched them, smiling. Sunday 
 was his, after all. But where was Daphne? He threw away 
 his dead cigarette and lit another with fingers that positively 
 trembled. His plan was going to work. Jimmy had only been 
 tantalised by the opportunity that he might more keenly realise 
 that it was not his at all. The chance was Nigel's and it was 
 here. For a moment he stood on the terrace looking round. 
 Daphne was out of doors somewhere. Of that he felt no doubt. 
 But as his eye travelled rapidly over the brilliant flower-beds 
 of the garden and strove to penetrate the white and pink of 
 the orchard he saw no sign of her. Tenacre had become ex- 
 tensive and she might have gone a long way. Edgar, however, 
 adored his ponds, and could be trusted to bore Gervase with 
 them until his infallible sense of tea called them back to the 
 house, and the others were not due till dinner. The long sum- 
 mer afternoon was before him. The sun beat down on his bare 
 head as he ran down the steps of the terrace, the scent of the 
 wall-flowers and lilacs rose up intoxicating as he crossed the 
 garden. 
 
 Nigel's heart beat fast as he paused for a moment to look 
 round. A perfect stillness wrapped the place. The road was 
 far away; no sound of passing motors reached him. As he stood
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 133 
 
 listening, he heard the birds in the trees, nothing more. The 
 branches overhead did not move. A white butterfly flew in 
 and out among the flowers and brushed his face for an instant. 
 Then it darted off in the direction of the park. 
 
 Nigel smiled. It was a happy omen. He turned to the left 
 and, crossing the drive, struck in among the beech trees, their 
 leaves dappled pale and dark as the sun glanced through the 
 branches and fell on the sheets of azure hyacinths shimmering 
 round their roots. It was all lovely, but Daphne was not there. 
 No sign of her on any path he tried. He came out on to a little 
 grass clearing: a fairy ring of short velvety mosslike turf. Be- 
 yond it lay the big oaks clothed in the exquisite yellow-green of 
 their early leaf, and beyond them the hawthorns. He remem- 
 bered a conversation he had had with Daphne about haw- 
 thorns, and how she had said that a red hawthorn tree seemed 
 to her the most joyful thing in nature, the real burning bush. 
 He could hear her voice now as she spoke a verse which evi- 
 dently meant much to her, though to him it was unknown 
 
 "They will return, the birds who singing sat 
 Upon the branches of red hawthorn trees: 
 Green blue and golden in the summer breeze, 
 Rejoicing in the world's Magnificat." 
 
 And the hawthorns here were amazing. They had been the 
 pride of the old owner of Tenacre a gentle old man to whom the 
 place had belonged as an inheritance from generations of yeo- 
 men farmers, and who had died broken-hearted when compelled 
 to sell it bit by bit; and Nigel, who had known him, remembered 
 how he had said with pride that there were none so large in 
 the South of England: none that blossomed so freely or whose 
 flowers were so rich a red. Birds from three counties, he had 
 said, came in the winter to eat the berries. Yes, Daphne was 
 sure to have found the hawthorns. 
 
 He crossed the fairy ring and stood looking. Against the 
 blue and white of the sky they blazed, crimson, rose and scarlet 
 in the sun: perfect in shape, with wide, uncurled branches that 
 almost touched the ground under their weight of blossom. At
 
 134 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 first he saw only the trees: felt only the thick fresh smell that 
 came to him on the warm air. No sign of any white-clad 
 Daphne sitting beneath them or wandering in and out. Even 
 when he was right up under the biggest tree he saw nothing, 
 heard nothing but the faint rustle of the grass or the soft fall of 
 a shower of petals as a sudden breeze stirred the branches: that 
 and the singing of the birds high up among the leaves. 
 
 Suddenly another sound broke in upon his ears, a low hesi- 
 tating laugh, the laugh of some wood nymph or fairy, invisible, 
 mocking his perplexity. Nigel looked down, around, and saw 
 nothing, then up, and saw. At the top of one of the wide- 
 extending branches of a tree bigger than any hawthorn he had 
 ever seen, half hidden by the massed and clustering blossom 
 which fell down on him in little sparks of fire as she moved, 
 Daphne was sitting and smiling down at him. 
 
 Nigel, looking up, felt his heart contract with a sudden joy 
 that was almost painful. Daphne up there, with her little 
 brown head seen against the rose-red of the hawthorn, was like 
 the spirit of the joyous Spring; he suddenly felt as though he 
 ought to fall down on his knees before her and then turn away. 
 Only for an instant. The absurd feeling passed, the feeling 
 that he had nothing to give, swept away in the immensity of 
 what he needed to take. She stood for everything he wanted 
 as his own, for the very flame of life itself, that would shine 
 on for him in her when the tree had withered, its flowers fallen, 
 its leaves shrunk and dry. 
 
 "Oh, Daphne!" he murmured at last. For a moment they 
 looked at one another, and Nigel, generally so ready with words, 
 felt his gone, not needed. 
 
 "Why are you hiding from me up there? " 
 
 Daphne smiled, a faint tremulous smile. Her lips parted, 
 but he heard nothing. She continued to look at him, and as 
 she looked Nigel felt his happiness mounting, mounting to his 
 head like the fumes of some rare wine: filling him with courage 
 and extraordinary strength. 
 
 "All these days you've hidden from me. Haven't you? " 
 
 Daphne's eyes were still on his face. She nodded. Her 
 face had grown pale, her mouth was set, unsmiling.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 135 
 
 "But why?" he pleaded. 
 
 She grew a shade paler; but this time Nigel heard what she 
 said, although her voice was so low that it might have been the 
 leaves rustling. 
 
 "I was afraid " 
 
 "Afraid? . . . afraid of me?" He almost shouted it. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " Not of you. Of myself. " 
 
 Nigel looked up at her still; and as he looked something 
 passed from her eyes to his that lit them so that they shone 
 as hers were shining. 
 
 "Ah, but dearest! You mustn't. I shall come right up 
 into your tree and carry you away from your fear. " 
 
 He caught hold of the knotty branch with one hand and, plac- 
 ing his foot against the trunk, swung himself up. One more 
 strain and he was kneeling on the gnarled limb that curved round 
 so that he was quite near where the girl sat, leaning back against 
 the trunk, her eyes so bright that her face looked transparent, 
 lit with a radiance that Nigel had never seen on any face 
 before. 
 
 "Oh, Nigel!" she murmured. "What are you doing to 
 me?" 
 
 A rapid shift had seated him securely astride his branch, and 
 he caught her hands in his and drew her face towards him as he 
 cried 
 
 " Doing, my darling? I am going to make you happy as you 
 have never been in all your life." 
 
 "Yes," she breathed. "Yes, Nigel." Her head lay 
 against his shoulder and her eyes looked up to his. 
 
 "And to begin with, I'm going to bring the colour back to 
 those pale cheeks. You mustn't give it all to the hawthorn 
 flowers, it's mine now, mine." He kissed her again and again 
 as he spoke. 
 
 Daphne leaned against him, her lips trembling into a smile, 
 her eyes wet. 
 
 "Oh, Nigel," she murmured again. "Is it real?" She 
 looked round her up into the rose-red tree, down through the rose 
 at the green and gold at their feet, up to the blue of the sky
 
 136 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 diapered on to the branches, and then, at last, into his face. 
 As her eyes met his the colour came flooding back to her checks 
 and her smile broke into a laugh, a laugh that to his ears was 
 purest music. 
 
 "I can't believe it's me!" she cried. "Me that you care 
 for." 
 
 "Care for ... Oh, Daphne! I so much more than care 
 for you. " 
 
 She laughed again. "Ah, but it's a great, great deal, caring 
 for a person. I am happy happy! if you care for me." 
 
 "Daphne," he cried earnestly. "I adore you. I worship 
 you. You don't know ... I can't say. You're everything 
 to me. Joy, youth, hope, reality, the key to all the mysteries 
 of life, the answer to all its questions. I've always felt shut 
 out . . . Now I'm in." 
 
 "Oh, but you, Nigel? You who understand everything. 
 . . . You mustn't have that sort of wonderful idea of me. I'm 
 not like that. I'm not like you. ... I'm crude and inexperi- 
 enced and slow. ... I don't see all of you yet, you're too fine 
 and delicate for me. I can only do plain sewing. But I'll 
 try." 
 
 "You do love me, darling?" 
 
 "Yes." She looked at him now very gravely. "Yes, I 
 love you." 
 
 "Then what does anything else matter? We've got all our 
 lives to find out the pattern . . . together . . . Oh, Daphne!" 
 
 When at last they came down from their tree and walked 
 hand in hand across the fairy ring and through the beech trees 
 and the hyacinths, slowly, reluctantly towards the house, the 
 sun had sunk behind the little hill, and the colour was dying 
 from the hawthorns, all but the topmost branches, still crowned 
 with fire. Long shadows lay across the wood. Golden light 
 steeped the wide grass swathes of the park, and the level rays 
 of the setting sun dazzled them as they stepped out into the 
 avenue. At the entrance to the garden some one was standing. 
 Not till they were quite near him did Nigel see that it was Ger- 
 vase, standing so still that Daphne had not seen him at all. He 
 stood aside to let them pass, and as they passed Daphne looked
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 137 
 
 up and saw him. Something that she saw in his face made her 
 utter a little sudden cry. She would have dropped Nigel's 
 hand, but he held hers hard and looked straight into the young 
 man's flushed face. 
 
 Gervase turned sharply on his heel and walked away from 
 them, away from the house, into the wood.
 
 CHAPTER ELEVEN 
 
 IT all looks quite nice, doesn't it?" Daphne spoke dubi- 
 ously, as if she would have been glad of reassurance. She 
 stood in the centre of the drawing-room of Mrs. Leonard's 
 flat, surveying it with critical eye. Clean and very fresh it 
 all looked, if a little austere and colourless and conspicuously 
 empty; with its white walls bare save for the Muirhead Bone 
 drypoint over the mantelpiece, and the holland-covered chairs 
 and straight curtains matching the pale matting on the floor. 
 Certainly there was no trace left of the departed tenants, who 
 had converted the rooms into "quite a snug little nest" by 
 means of rugs, photographs, hangings, draperies and artificial 
 flowers. 
 
 "Very nice indeed, my darling," murmured Nigel, taking 
 Daphne's hand with his as he slipped his arm round her. 
 
 "Your rose tree is lovely, Nigel." Her eyes rested on the 
 tall rambler, covered with deep pink blossom, that stood on a 
 little low black table by the window, its flowers touched to fire 
 by the afternoon sun. "It will be just right for mother to see 
 that first thing. It's so like you. Otherwise the room looks 
 to me somehow rather dead. I can't make it better, but you'll 
 see, as soon as she comes, the difference. It will be full of her." 
 
 For only reply Nigel kissed her on the forehead. A sharp 
 sting of premonition of how full the room would, in a few 
 hours now, be of Mrs. Leonard, already smote him. For the 
 last two days, indeed since her arrival had been definitely fixed 
 for this very Tuesday evening, he had been almost perpetually 
 conscious of a kind of oppression that was now culminating in 
 this sharper sense of dread. It asserted itself, his dread, through 
 
 138
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 139 
 
 and in spite of the feeling that the week had given him of an 
 absolute security as far as Daphne was concerned. It had been 
 a week of amazing flawless happiness; a week on wings, thrilled, 
 uplifted and carried high by Daphne's joy. Joy any other 
 word seemed too faint and weak radiated from her; it shone 
 in her deep clear eyes, curved her lips even when she was not 
 smiling, and gave to her a loveliness beyond the veiled charm 
 she had had before. Nigel felt as though he were watching 
 the opening in the sunshine of some lovely, dewy flower, whose 
 scent and colour were there for him alone. To others he 
 supposed she had not changed ; but he saw her as incarnate light 
 and felt that light play round him as he murmured to himself 
 "Daphne loves me." Analysis need go no further; that was 
 elemental and at the same time final. She had said it and the 
 conviction of its truth had passed through his veins like liquid 
 fire; to say it to himself was to be dazzled again and warmed; 
 to hear her say it was to feel every doubt as to the reality of 
 himself or the beauty of the world vanish for ever. He wanted 
 it repeated again and again. She need say nothing else, 
 if she said that; to say that was Daphne; more was not 
 needed. 
 
 So now he pressed her hand and murmured, after they had 
 stood silent for some minutes, she gazing at the rose tree 
 
 "Daphne . . . you still love me, don't you?" 
 
 Daphne slightly turned her head so that she looked into 
 his face. As he knelt on the edge of a chair and she leaned 
 a little against him, their eyes were level. She smiled; her 
 eyes widened. 
 
 "Say it, Daphne," he urged. 
 
 Daphne's smile grew. 
 
 "Still?" She lifted her chin and laughed. "Oh, Nigel 
 always. . . . From the beginning, to the end." 
 
 "From the beginning?" Nigel broke in eagerly. "Really 
 from the beginning? From that day on Box Hill?" 
 
 Daphne opened her lips; paused and closed them again. 
 
 "Oh, no," he teased her. "You musn't keep things shut 
 in like that, Daphne! That's not allowed. Those are just 
 the thoughts that you have got to learn to let out."
 
 140 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "What, all of them?" She looked away from him now, 
 back to the rose tree. 
 
 "Yes, all of them, especially those that you think better 
 of! I'm sure there are so many things you think better of 
 saying, aren't there?" 
 
 "Not half enough," she answered gravely. "Oh, no. You 
 think me silent, but it's only a sort of nervousness that makes 
 me say the most hopelessly wrong things when I do talk. Hav- 
 ing kept them back often only makes them worse when they 
 do come out, you see." 
 
 Nigel laughed. 
 
 "Well, you might let this one out. When was the begin- 
 ning?" 
 
 Daphne was silent for a minute, then she said slowly 
 
 "The beginning was a time you don't even remember. 
 At the Tollers in my second year at Newnham. You were 
 staying there, I think, or spending the day. I came in to tea. 
 You didn't say anything to me. You talked all the time to 
 Myrtle but I saw you." She paused. She looked at him 
 for an instant, then quickly away. "I've seen you ever 
 since." 
 
 Nigel kissed her, but his mind was alive with questions. 
 There were things he longed to hear her ask. But she seldom 
 asked him anything. Did she know about Myrtle, and what 
 did she know? They were friends; but he could not guess how 
 much intimacy that vague word covered in this case. He could 
 imagine Myrtle discussing the situation at any stage with 
 perfect frankness; but not Daphne even so much as listening 
 to her. Conversation with her would not run, he fancied, on 
 those lines. ... It struck him as strange that he should suddenly 
 feel that it would have been easier to tell her about Myrtle if 
 there had been more to tell. The thinness of the relation 
 seemed the part of it she would least like or understand. And 
 to present it as anything else but thin was impossible. Time 
 made it inconceivable as the tragedy with which Daphne would 
 have sympathised. As he looked down at her glowing face, 
 saw his own image reflected in her eyes, Nigel felt the whole 
 Myrtle episode as absurd and irrelevant. This was real;
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 141 
 
 nothing else even had been; this was eternal, as everything real 
 must be. 
 
 "You won't stop? You won't get tired of me?" he 
 said. 
 
 "Tired of you? Nigel, sometimes you don't seem to under- 
 stand at all. How can you care for me if you think me like 
 that?" Daphne's voice rose in a quick, pained staccato. 
 
 "Ah! It's not you, it's me." Nigel had become serious; 
 almost sad. "You might find out that I was stupid slow; I 
 shall never be a great man, or do great work. I'm not any of 
 the wonderful things you think me." 
 
 Daphne was smiling again now. 
 
 "But you don't understand a bit, Nigel. I can't explain; 
 but what you do, in that sense, is nothing. It's what you are. 
 How you feel things; how you see them. It's your being fine. 
 When you say 'great,' I don't know what you mean. My idea 
 of greatness is fineness. I can't explain, but I know what I 
 mean. So do you. I used to be afraid that I might not have 
 the eyes to see fineness. I'm clumsy; I go flop into things. 
 Mother used to tell me that was my danger. Because you 
 only see fine things slowly; they come to you, you can't rush 
 out to them. . . . That's why I feel so wonderfully happy and 
 so sure. If you do see fineness, you can't want to look away; 
 it's ultimate. So when you talk about stopping or getting 
 tired it seems to me just . . . funny." 
 
 She spoke slowly, dropping the words out so that they 
 came to him with an accent of intense truth. Nigel, holding 
 her hand, watching her face, felt his heart beat fast, so fast that 
 it almost frightened him. 
 
 "Oh, Daphne!" he murmured, lifting her fingers and 
 pressing his lips to them, hot and passionate. Nothing more 
 came to him to say. Across his mind phrases exquisite and 
 tender flitted; they hovered over him, but somehow just beyond 
 his reach, refusing to settle into any adequate response. 
 
 But Daphne did not seem to expect any response. She 
 knew. After a moment she gently released her hand and 
 moved slowly round the room, inspecting everything, shaking 
 the curtains into more perfect shape, turning the rose tree
 
 142 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 half-an-inch to bring a specially fine cluster into view, re-arrang- 
 ing the clean blotting paper and new quills on the large bureau 
 in the corner, patting the books in the shelves so that none stuck 
 out beyond the others. Nigel watched her, smiling as she finally 
 paused before the fireplace and stood looking in at the empty 
 grate. 
 
 "Hopeless thing, a fireplace when there's nothing in it," 
 she said. "I haven't an idea what to do with it it must wait 
 for mother. She'll know. . . . What's the time, Nigel?" 
 
 Nigel frowned. 
 
 "That's the third time you've asked me since tea. It's 
 half -past five." 
 
 Daphne turned round quickly she had not observed the 
 frown. 
 
 "Half -past five. Oh, Nigel we must go. It would be 
 dreadful to be late 
 
 "I suppose you won't take a taxi?" 
 
 "Oh, no. No. Certainly not. Not to meet mother." 
 
 "Why? Does she think them wrong?" 
 
 It was Daphne's turn to frown a little, though Nigel had 
 spoken jestingly. 
 
 "Mother? I don't know. But that's not the point. The 
 point is the things with her, like the things I do with you, have 
 to be quite right. ... I might go to the dentist in a taxi not 
 to meet mother." 
 
 Nigel laughed. He did not in the least see it. 
 
 "Absurd child!" he murmured. 
 
 Daphne had meantime picked up the small hat with long 
 floating velvet ribbons lying on the chair by the door and put 
 it on her head. With gloves, bag and parasol collected she was 
 ready; but Nigel had made no move. 
 
 "Aren't you coming, Nigel?" 
 
 He rose. "I'll come down to the 'bus with you." 
 
 "Train, I think," she corrected. "I must not be late. 
 Train to Charing Cross is as quick as a taxi." 
 
 "Horribly hot and stuffy," murmured Nigel. 
 
 They emerged from the lift into the hall and from the hall 
 into the hot glare of the street.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 143 
 
 "But aren't you coming to the station?" Daphne returned 
 to the point. Nigel crossed behind her to take the outside of 
 the pavement and quickened his steps to keep up with hers, 
 whose rapidity he felt was due to rising excitement caused not 
 by him, but by her mother's approach. 
 
 "No, dearest, if you don't mind, I'm not." Daphne looked 
 at him quickly, and then away. "I'm sure your mother would 
 rather have you to herself." 
 
 Daphne did not look at him again. Her eyes were busy in 
 threading the speediest passage through the irritating throng of 
 slowly moving people that blocked the path in front of the 
 windows of the shops. Nor did she say anything. Nigel was 
 grateful to her for not arguing. After all, it did not matter 
 what she thought; it could only be the tiniest temporary cloud, 
 to be kissed away when next they met. He would have argued 
 had she protested; for he was not going to the station. That 
 he had known all along; though he had only realised that he 
 knew it when Daphne's anxiety about the time waked him by 
 its prick of annoyance. 
 
 At the entrance to the District Station Arcade Nigel raised 
 his hat smiling; Daphne did not smile, but in her eyes there was 
 no reproach. Nigel might guess as he walked away at all the 
 lovely reasons she was making for his defection and find none 
 too lovely for her mind. 
 
 On Charing Cross platform the first person Daphne saw was 
 Hugh Infield. He was standing quite still, leaning against an 
 automatic machine with his eyes fixed on the ground in a stare 
 of such genuine abstraction that he did not notice Daphne. 
 The train was indicated as being fifteen minutes late; and she 
 paused at a few paces from Hugh, unwilling to break in upon 
 his thoughts. Something constrained her, however, to look 
 at him, absently at first, for her own thoughts were elsewhere, 
 fixed on her mother, approaching swiftly, every moment bring- 
 ing her nearer, nearer; and on what her mother would say, 
 would feel. Her mother had met Nigel. That was a joyous 
 reflection. She need not embark upon the impossible task of 
 describing. Of course, there were things to tell that even Mrs. 
 Leonard, wonderful as her perception was, could not know, and
 
 144 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 on these things Daphne wandered off lost as Hugh was lost 
 to the scene around her. Some one passing jostled her arm and 
 woke her up, and her mind returned to Hugh, on whom her 
 absent eyes had been fixed. 
 
 How extraordinarily unlike Nigel he was! Every one, now, 
 came before Daphne's mind in cruel comparison with him; as 
 she sat in the train or 'bus, or walked along the streets, she 
 surveyed the men sitting or walking, and felt sorry for the 
 women whose affections had to find rest on them instead of 
 on Nigel. With Hugh, however, the comparison was even more 
 insistent. Hugh lived with Nigel; had, amazing thought, lived 
 with him for more than two years. He must know Nigel 
 quite well. Not as she knew him, of course; Daphne smiled 
 to herself. No one knew him as she knew him; no one, in 
 effect, knew him but she; but Hugh, happy Hugh, knew him just 
 in the way she did not. She knew his soul, his inner life, she 
 saw his essence more clearly than his modesty allowed him to 
 see it himself; but Hugh saw him all day and every day; Hugh 
 knew him at breakfast, lunch and dinner; he sat and talked 
 with Hugh over the fire. His every day, external man was 
 familiar to Hugh, as not to her. Hugh knew his history; had 
 known him perhaps as a boy an adorable boy Daphne saw 
 him in jackets and a stiff Eton collar; as an undergraduate; 
 raw as if Nigel had ever been raw! undistinguished by the 
 fine discriminations that marked him now. She wondered as 
 she looked at Hugh whether he appreciated his rare advantages. 
 She saw Nigel as she had seen him half-an-hour ago, vivid in 
 all save his face, blurred in her imagination from too much fond 
 gazing, slim, erect, graceful, elegant without dandyism in his 
 grey summer suit and the bright tie that was not so bright a 
 blue as his eyes; his mouth lifted in its charming crooked smile. 
 Hugh stood before her, in shabby dark clothes with bulging 
 pockets, his head, bent forward on his chest, grizzled under 
 his slouch felt hat; his eyes behind their spectacles almost 
 tragic in their absorbed stare. Daphne felt suddenly sorry 
 for Hugh. He looked so battered and uncared for. Nigel 
 shone with youth; and, yes, with happiness. A lump rose in 
 her throat; that happiness was partly due to her. It was
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 145 
 
 hardly credible; but she had to do with Nigel's shining eyes. 
 They shone for her. If he were dreaming now he dreamed of 
 her. Had Hugh's sombre eyes ever shone? Had tender hands 
 once smoothed his rough hair? To Daphne, Hugh, who be- 
 longed to the world in which she had grown up, seemed old; he 
 belonged to the generation for whom she had assumed that 
 feeling was over. But once he must have felt, and if he had 
 felt at all, he had probably felt a great deal. 
 
 At this point Hugh looked up, and his eyes, still abstracted 
 as they were, answered her question. Yes, he had cared. Poor 
 Hugh. It was with a catch in her voice that, stepping towards 
 him, she said, as she held out her hand 
 
 "Oh, Hugh, how nice to see you. ... I have come down 
 to meet mother." 
 
 She said it as if she had come to meet the Queen, but Hugh 
 seemed to feel no incongruity in the triumphant ring of her 
 voice. He clasped her hand and wrung it hard. 
 
 "Yes," he said. "So have I. I always used to come and 
 meet her, you know. Oh, ever so long ago, when you were a 
 tiny tot." 
 
 Daphne was looking up into his eyes; and, absurd as she 
 felt it, her own were filling. Nothing came to her to say, and 
 for a few minutes they stood so, side by side. A sudden sad- 
 ness had swept over the girl, a sadness that was somehow both 
 beautiful and strange. There was borne in upon her a sense of 
 the range and reach of human life, of unexplored depths and 
 darknesses into which she would, one day, have to penetrate. 
 They had stretched out before her, mysterious but not terrify- 
 ing, as she looked into Hugh's eyes. With them there swept 
 over her a longing for her mother. She had hardly realised 
 until now what it meant, that her mother was so near. Nigel 
 had stood between her and its fulness; Hugh gave it her again. 
 Her heart beat fast and she trembled with impatience. 
 
 The signal went down. There was a slight movement on 
 the platform. Porters began to collect and people stood at 
 attention. Hugh drew himself up, pulled down his coat and 
 tried to flatten his bulging pockets. The action recalled 
 Daphne to her lost sense of the ordinary.
 
 146 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "You've never congratulated me, Hugh," she said. He 
 looked down at her; his eyes full of a deep kindness. 
 
 "I have congratulated Nigel, though," he smiled. 
 
 "Ah! I see; you know him better." 
 
 "Yes." Hugh accepted it; but he still smiled, and Daphne 
 was not sure that she understood his smile. 
 
 A loud shrieking heralded and accompanied the train, which, 
 slowly gliding in along the curve, almost immediately broke 
 out into a crowd of people and bags. At once the platform, 
 which had for so long been given over to bored and weary 
 waiting, became an animated and surging mass, as from the 
 open doors of the carriages people swarmed out, appearing en- 
 larged to twice their real number by the superabundance of 
 their baggage and the preponderance among them of bustling 
 ladies in flowing cloaks and flying scarves. None of these was 
 Mrs. Leonard. Daphne smiled a little as she watched them 
 pouring out like ants from a hive, and thought how unlike to 
 any of them she was. 
 
 "There she is," cried Hugh Infield, moving quickly forward; 
 seeing before Daphne did the one unmistakable figure, neat 
 and fresh in her dark blue silk dress and little hat with flowing 
 veil, and with that curious accent of distinction, impossible to 
 attach to any particular item of her appearance, that made 
 Mrs. Leonard not American, not French, not English, but 
 simply herself. She saw them, and the next moment Daphne 
 was holding both her hands and realising with exquisite happi- 
 ness all the difference between her most vivid imagination of her 
 mother's nearness and the fact. For as Mrs. Leonard's eyes 
 caressed her she felt that if she had been before as happy as 
 she had thought possible, she now leaped to a stage beyond. 
 In those eyes there was no criticism, no question, no suspension 
 of judgment. She knew, she understood everything, and her 
 knowledge and understanding were like a benison that con- 
 secrated and sealed. A mist swam before Daphne's eyes, 
 but it was a mist of happiness. She did not hear Mrs. Leonard's 
 greeting to Hugh; but the next moment she and her mother 
 were walking down the platform together, while he had dis- 
 appeared, presumably with a porter in search of luggage.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 147 
 
 Daphne moved along vaguely. The station, the bustling 
 people, the heat and noise and hurry of the scene had dis- 
 appeared into a blur; she was hardly aware of them. Somehow 
 or other she and her mother were seated in an open taxi, boxes 
 and bags were piled in front, and Hugh leaning over the door 
 talking to Mrs. Leonard. In another minute he stepped aside; 
 they were off. 
 
 Mrs. Leonard leaned back, her daughter's hand in hers. 
 She said nothing, but there was no need of words. That, 
 Daphne felt, was what she was; that was what her return meant. 
 All the little fussy tiresome things, which for other people, with 
 other people, rose up and blotted out everything else, vanished 
 away. Her mere presence diffused an atmosphere in which 
 they fell into place. Everything, with her, always "went"; 
 there was always time; time to be happy, time to care, time to 
 see. The taxi had entered the Park and was moving slowly. 
 On the seats people were sitting. Behind them the trees 
 waved, clad in their June glory of abundant but not yet weary 
 leafage. The rhododendrons made a blaze of extravagant 
 colour against the green of the grass. The sun, low in the 
 west, cast over the whole scene an enchanted glow as of a 
 dream picture. Daphne gave a deep, contented sigh. 
 
 "Oh, mother," she breathed, "I am too unutterably happy! 
 ... I understand now what you used to say about religion; 
 about the instinct to worship. I feel so profoundly grateful 
 to Something. I don't know how to express it, but you under- 
 stand." 
 
 Mrs. Leonard only held her hand in hers, but Daphne knew 
 that she did, indeed, understand, and relapsed into happy 
 silence until they reached the flat.
 
 CHAPTER TWELVE 
 
 IT was not going to last well, the rose tree. Glowing in the 
 hot sunlight that steeped the empty room it shone resplen- 
 dent when Nigel arrived next day at the flat for lunch, but 
 several of the flowers were, he observed, already faded, and on 
 the matting lay a little heap of petals, blown off by the soft 
 breeze that stirred the curtains and cooled the warm air within. 
 The strong sun had been too much for it. It was a pity. 
 
 Nigel turned from the rose tree and glanced quickly round. 
 Daphne had been right; the room was alive, as it had not been 
 yesterday. The bureau was heaped with papers, foreign papers 
 mostly, by their look. A large photograph leaned against the 
 wall on top of it. Nigel inspected the signature and made out 
 that it was a portrait of Jaures. There were heaps of books, 
 again many of them foreign, in pale yellow, blue and orange 
 paper covers, lying on the little tables; and a spectacle-case that 
 he remembered well. But the air of life the room now had was 
 not lodged in any of these things. It was something more 
 subtle and pervading, that spoke not from the mere presence 
 of the objects, but from the way in which they were placed. 
 They were not there to be seen; they were indispensable ad- 
 juncts of the life of some one very much alive. 
 
 Nigel turned away from them all and stood at the window, 
 looking, through the softening muslin within the holland cur- 
 tains, down on the green trees of Kensington Gardens and the 
 roofs of York House. The windows were all open, and from 
 not far off the noise of the High Street rose, the incessant noise 
 of London. Nigel looked down and listened; he felt, dimly, 
 an antithesis between that noise and the influences of the room; 
 
 148
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 149 
 
 and those influences he wanted, consciously, to resist. For they 
 brought back the sensations he had had at Montevarchi of a 
 personality, stronger than his own, subduing and compelling, 
 and he did not want those sensations. If he were to meet and 
 perhaps resist Mrs. Leonard he must be himself. 
 
 But as he waited he felt almost afraid. Never, in all his 
 thoughts of Montevarchi had he faced the question What 
 impression had he made on Mrs. Leonard, what did she think 
 of him? Now, however, he was going to know, and he would 
 infinitely rather not have known. If, as was not inconceivable, 
 she opposed his engagement to Daphne, there would be diffi- 
 culties, unpleasantnesses, stress; things he did not want, 
 especially not now, in the midst of his happiness. That Daphne 
 would give way to her mother's opposition, he did not imagine. 
 Of her he felt sure. But it must distress her, and might dim 
 the lustre of her faith in him. For Mrs. Leonard's opposition 
 would not, he felt certain, be a blank negative; she was not 
 like that. It would be reasonable, based upon a theory and on 
 facts (as she saw them) that he would have to meet. It would 
 involve explanations to Daphne; and the glory of their present 
 relation, in which he had to explain nothing, in which she ac- 
 cepted him absolutely, as he did her, would be gone. 
 
 The door behind him opened. Nigel turned quickly, but 
 it was neither Mrs. Leonard nor Daphne. A short, thick-set 
 young man came in, who looked in his neat clothes and excessive 
 cuffs like a shop-assistant, but that his bristling black hair, cut 
 en brosse, gave him a foreign flavour, carried out when he clicked 
 his heels together and made Nigel a polite salutation. Nigel 
 returned it distantly and went back to his window. What on 
 earth was this strange creature doing here, to-day of all days? 
 He could not, he found, resume his thoughts: something about 
 the young man held his attention unwillingly. He had sat 
 down on a small chair by one of the tables and remained so, 
 quite still but for his eyes, which travelled rapidly over the room 
 until they rested on the portrait of Jaures; on it they remained 
 fixed in a stare of strange intensity. Those fixed eyes worried 
 Nigel; he found more satisfaction in inspecting the stranger's 
 boots; very ill-made, ugly boots they were, such as no English-
 
 150 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 man would have worn, not even a workman. He felt a con- 
 tempt for the man who wore such boots. The eyes, on the 
 other hand, troubled him; they were incomprehensible and some- 
 how not to be contemned. 
 
 Again the door opened, and this time it really was Mrs. 
 Leonard. Nigel's instant impression was that she was older 
 than she had been at Montevarchi; but that disappeared when 
 she smiled. When she smiled he had no impression but of her 
 overwhelming charm. For her smile was not the timid, fugitive 
 thing that lit her daughter's face and was gone as quickly as it 
 came; it was slow, deep, lasting. She smiled in one's memory 
 long after she had ceased to do so in actual fact. Her mouth 
 set in a rather straight line was made to smile; the straight 
 line represented what life had made her do; it stood for all her 
 resistance, her struggle; nature had made those deeply indented 
 lips to curve, and when they curved, as now, lifting to show her 
 large regular teeth, Nigel felt his fears absurd, childish. To 
 have been afraid of such a woman, in the sense in which he had, 
 he could now a<lmit it, been afraid, was grotesque. He almost 
 blushed for the incongruous vulgarity of it. Mrs. Leonard 
 was incapable of behaving in the way he had seen her doing in 
 his fear. Nothing in her manner suggested that she recalled 
 anything from Montevarchi beyond some interesting discus- 
 sions. He began to believe that his memory had played him 
 false; that he had not behaved so stupidly; that it was only in 
 his own mind that he had looked like a craven and a 
 coxcomb. 
 
 He had time for these reflections, for, after her smile and 
 quick handshake, Mrs. Leonard had turned to the singular 
 young man, and it was to him, not to Nigel, that she gave her 
 attention. He instantly poured forth a flood of eager unintelli- 
 gibility in some language to Nigel unknown, and in this lan- 
 guage Mrs. Leonard replied, leaving Nigel to stand and look 
 at them. At first he was amused; but as they continued, he 
 began to be annoyed. Even a scene of painful argument, of 
 passionate pleading on his part, such as he had foreseen when 
 putting his prospects at their worst, would really have been more 
 tolerable than to find himself thus relegated by the mother of
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 151 
 
 his fiancee, meeting him for the first time in that relation, to 
 the position of a superfluous auditor. 
 
 The entrance of Daphne, charming in a white frock which, 
 Nigel guessed, had come from Paris in her mother's trunk, 
 brought a happy restoration of importance. She had no eyes 
 for the bristling young man, whose name, a mere collection of 
 cacophonous consonants, Nigel made no attempt to grasp. Her 
 eyes were all for him, and her eyes carried her mother's with 
 them. Mrs. Leonard might continue to listen to the young 
 alien; she looked at her daughter. She must see Nigel now clad 
 in the light cast upon him from the eyes of Daphne; it was un- 
 necessary to go beyond that. 
 
 For a moment Daphne did not more than look. They 
 stood together in the window by the rose tree while she absently 
 picked off the faded flowerets. 
 
 " Well, " said Nigel at last. " Is it all right? " 
 
 Daphne glanced round. 
 
 "Oh, yes, mother thinks it looks charming. " 
 
 "Oh, I didn't mean the room; I meant me." 
 
 Daphne laughed. 
 
 "Oh, yes But, of course!" No doubt had apparently 
 even visited her. This was all right as far as she went; but 
 Nigel wanted something different, something for which he had 
 to wait. 
 
 Lunch was spoiled for Nigel by his imperfect knowledge of 
 French; for the black-haired young man, who appeared to be a 
 Russian, and a Russian for Mrs. Leonard bursting with interest, 
 poured forth in that language a stream of talk, the purport of 
 a large part of which was lost upon Nigel. To none of it could 
 he make any adequate reply. He felt awkward and uncom- 
 fortable; rare sensations with him, but none the less disagreeable; 
 and was consequently critical. Mrs. Leonard was again show- 
 ing the side of herself he had found tiresome at Montevarchi; 
 her incessant preoccupation with ideas, and especially with 
 political ideas. The young Russian was, of course, a Socialist. 
 Nigel found Socialism tiresome enough as a theory but he 
 had at least hoped that with Mrs. Leonard, as with so many of 
 his other friends, it would remain at that; a subject to be dis-
 
 152 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 cussed when better themes failed, or Mallard Floss, that man of 
 few subjects, turned up. Daphne's earnest attempts at prac- 
 tical applications had only amused him; he could not take 
 seriously her refusal to go in a taxi or her rejection of any form 
 of jewellery as a gift from him; these things were the charming 
 exaggerations of youth, that would be cast off as the normal 
 course of things brought with it a conviction of their irrelevance. 
 Daphne's feeling that every trifling action was significant was 
 too much part of her, of a vitality which lived each moment at 
 full pressure, to be criticised in application in the light of reason. 
 But Mrs. Leonard's practical applications were different; likely 
 to be on a much larger scale and far more vexing. The presence 
 of Krutznecheff was a case in point. Why was he there at all, 
 to-day of all days? 
 
 Foreigners were always rather disagreeable even when they 
 spoke English. That Krutznecheff's French was a concession 
 to him exasperated Nigel. He did not care what Russia was 
 doing or thinking. Rasputin was only a name to him and 
 scenes in the Duma Krutznecheff apparently was, or had been, 
 a Social Democratic member of the Duma, and also a journalist 
 of some kind extremely boring. He never could remember the 
 difference between Octobrists and Decembrists or whether the 
 Cadets belonged to the Right or to the Left. But Mrs. Leonard 
 seemed actually excited when the young man produced from 
 his pocket a grubby paper covered with hieroglyphics, seized 
 upon it and read it out in a thrilling voice. 
 
 "But this is extraordinary. Listen, Mr. Strode. It's an 
 appeal issued by the Galician Polish leaders to the Russian Poles 
 and Jews to liberate the ancient Tzardom of Poland from Rus- 
 sian domination in the event of a war between Russia and 
 Germany or Austria." 
 
 "Yes," said the young man. " Purishkevitch read that 
 out in the Duma; he talked of revolution, seamen's strikes, 
 Navy mutiny." 
 
 "Has the big strike on now anything to do with that?" 
 asked Mrs. Leonard. 
 
 The young man shook his head. 
 
 "Things are very bad," he said. "You see, the Minister
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 153 
 
 of the Interior was censured by 185 votes to 95. People won't 
 go on standing these things, even in Russia." 
 
 "Then what will happen?" Mrs. Leonard leaned forward, 
 her chin supported by her hands, her eyes bright with appre- 
 hension. All this was real to her, it seemed. 
 
 The ugly young man waved a podgy hand, and poured forth 
 a stream of words, mostly, so far as Nigel could gather, about 
 Revolutionary movements. 
 
 "Then the great card for the Right would be a war?" said 
 Mrs. Leonard. 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "It's awful. . . . Mr. Strode, you know about these things. 
 Tell me why nothing gets into the papers here. Is it true that 
 The Times has been bought?" 
 
 "By the Russian Government?" cried Daphne with round 
 eyes. 
 
 Mrs. Leonard nodded. "What I want to know is you see, 
 I've been out of London a long time, and only recently really taken 
 up the London papers again what is behind all this ? They keep 
 us in the dark about Russia and talk against Germany inces- 
 santly. You saw what Grey said the other day, Mr. Strode, at 
 the Press dinner?" 
 
 Nigel shook his head. He had a hazy recollection of the 
 aspect of the ticket on his mantelpiece; but it had been overlaid 
 by a card for a party to which he was going, that night, with 
 Daphne, and had found its way into the waste-paper basket. 
 
 "Well, if you had, you'd know how wrong it was of you to 
 stay away. That sounds Irish but, seriously, I mean it." 
 She smiled a little, but her eyes were grave. Nigel, looking 
 up to meet them, had to accept the strange truth that all this 
 dull, dead stuff in which they had been submerged all lunch- 
 time was to her evidently of supreme interest. On each of her 
 pale cheeks there was a faint spot of colour and under her drawn- 
 down brows her eyes shone. He wished he had been reading 
 Matheson, or even talking to Infield. Infield despised politics, 
 or said he did, but he had extraordinary reserves of knowledge, 
 and his desk was generally cluttered up with queer foreign news- 
 papers, unsightly to the eye.
 
 154 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Mrs. Leonard meantime went on 
 
 "Grey said, you see, that it was practically in the power of 
 the Press to decide what was and what was not possible for a 
 foreign minister. " 
 
 "In England?" Nigel queried. 
 
 "Yes, and in Germany." 
 
 "Not Russia, " Krutznecheff threw in. 
 
 "No," said Mrs. Leonard. "And perhaps not in France." 
 
 Nigel made an effort. 
 
 "But is it true? After all, the Press can only approve or 
 disapprove what the Foreign Office has done. They're never 
 told till it is done. " 
 
 Mrs. Leonard nodded. "Yes. But they can force the ad- 
 mission that action has or has not been taken. For instance, 
 it's admitted that we're not allied to France. You shake your 
 head, M. Krutznecheff?" 
 
 " Because in Russia we are sure that England is with France. 
 And in Germany they are sure. " 
 
 "The German Socialists think there is an alliance?" 
 
 The Russian nodded. 
 
 "When your king went to Paris, they were sure of it. " 
 
 At last M. Krutznecheff departed to return to supper. 
 Mrs. Leonard leaned back upon her sofa, cigarette in hand. 
 Her eyes, tired now that the light had died out of them, were 
 far away. For a few moments she said nothing. Daphne 
 moved from the settee on which she had been beside Nigel and, 
 dropping on a footstool by her mother's side, took her hand 
 in hers gently and leaned her head against her knee. 
 
 Mrs. Leonard looked up with a sigh. 
 
 "Sometimes, you know," she said slowly, "one feels des- 
 perately small and weak, pitted against these great forces. . . . 
 Every year we vote against armies in every country; we meet 
 as brothers but what a handful we are. " 
 
 "Ah, but, mother," cried Daphne, "we've got a real faith 
 on our side, something big to work towards. ..." 
 
 Mrs. Leonard looked down and gradually her face cleared. 
 
 "Yes, Daphne. I'm wrong. Look at that young man. 
 Think of what they have to struggle against in Russia. It's
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 155 
 
 splendid. It must tell in the end. . . . But one's so in the 
 dark; and all the organisation is on their side. . . . And there's 
 your Nigel I may, mayn't I, now?" she looked up at him 
 with her smile again "thinking all this is just tiresomeness 
 and he could do so much to help if he only would. " 
 
 "Could I, Mrs. Leonard?" cried Nigel, eagerly leaning for- 
 ward and meeting her eyes. He realised as he did so that he 
 had not met them before. They said so many things that for 
 an instant he could only stay still and hold himself. For he 
 knew that his sense of escape was illusory. Mrs. Leonard was 
 a modern woman, a clever woman, a woman of amazing charm, 
 and a woman of perfect manners. She gave her daughter the 
 freedom she wanted for all the world. Daphne had chosen. 
 She allowed her choice. She would make no scene, offer no 
 opposition, allow them no opportunity to argue or explain. 
 But she would judge. 
 
 Yet even while he felt this he knew that it was superficial. 
 Beyond her cleverness, her modernity, her ideas, even beyond 
 her charm, lay something deeper; out of which they all grew. 
 He could not analyse it, but out of her deep eyes it looked at him, 
 the extent to which she cared. He had felt it before, how she 
 loved Daphne, but never so much as now. She cared so much 
 that she could not resist, could not protest, could not allow 
 protestation, could not stand for an instant between Daphne 
 and Daphne's joy. Not for an instant. Not even for the 
 second's quivering of an eyelid in which Daphne might guess 
 that she suffered at all. She did suffer. In a sudden flash 
 Nigel seemed to see it, and as he saw her pale face lit by that 
 sacrificial light he felt for her an emotion that while it lasted 
 was the same that he had known in Italy on the night of the 
 thunderstorm. 
 
 The emotion passed; and the need to speak remained with 
 the impossibility of saying anything adequate. 
 
 The impossibility faded; for Mrs. Leonard was holding out 
 her hand to him, and smiling, a smile all acceptance which 
 made him think all that had passed through his mind was per- 
 haps only the ridiculous creation of his own heightened fantasy, 
 the foolish cob web- weaving of a man in love.
 
 156 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "My dear Nigel," she said, as he took her hand, "you do 
 everything if you make my Daphne happy. . . . You can save 
 her from the hard knocks that bruise young enthusiasms; from 
 the disillusionment I might bring her with my Committees and 
 my papers. ... I'm up to my eyes in wretched practical 
 detail; but you and she are at the beginning; you can work 
 at the ideas with the strength young people have to see them 
 new. . . . Daphne, that bit from Tolstoi I read to you last 
 night " 
 
 "Oh, yes, mother," cried Daphne, lifting her head from her 
 mother's shoulder, on which it had been resting. 
 
 "Bring me the book, dearest it's on my dressing-table." 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. Leonard," cried Nigel as the door closed behind 
 her. "I can't tell you what I feel." Mrs. Leonard still held 
 his hand. She pressed it gently with her long slim fingers. 
 
 "No, dear Nigel. If you could, I should be very unhappy. 
 . . . Daphne loves you. That's the beginning and the end 
 for me." 
 
 "And you know I adore her?" 
 
 Mrs. Leonard released her hand. 
 
 "She knows it ... which is much more important." 
 
 "What is much more important?" Daphne reappeared 
 with the red-covered book in her hand. Mrs. Leonard took 
 the book without answering. 
 
 "What I wanted to read to you was only a sentence in a 
 letter Tolstoi wrote his son when on the point of marriage. 
 Listen 'All this because the idea shared by many, that life 
 is a vale of tears, is just as false as the idea, shared by the great 
 majority, the idea to which youth and health and riches incline 
 you, that life is a place of entertainment. Life is a place of 
 service, and in that service one has to suffer at times a great 
 deal that is hard to bear, but more often to experience a great 
 deal of joy. But that joy can only be real if people look upon 
 their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside 
 themselves and their personal happiness. ' ' : 
 
 "That's wonderful," said Nigel. 
 
 Mrs. Leonard rose from her couch and stood looking at the 
 two as they stood together. She said nothing, but her eyes
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 157 
 
 rested on them with a searching tenderness. After a moment's 
 pause she said 
 
 " Go out in the sun, dear children or stay here. I am going 
 out no, Daphne, you're not coming with me. I've had you 
 all morning, and Nigel is busy at night, I expect? Come in to 
 dinner, breakfast, lunch, tea, Nigel your place will always be 
 laid." 
 
 She had gone from the room while they stood together. 
 
 Nigel put his arms round Daphne. 
 
 "Oh, Daphne," he cried, "she is wonderful!" 
 
 Daphne looked up into his face with dim eyes. 
 
 "Mother? Yes. I knew you'd love her. And she, you. 
 . . . Oh, Nigel, I am so happy!" 
 
 He held her for a moment; then, letting her go, walked to the 
 window and once or twice up and down the room, as though 
 stretching himself to get rid of a sense of tension that oppressed. 
 
 "Let's go out, Daphne, dear," he cried. "It's a day to be 
 ever so gay, isn't it?" 
 
 "But haven't you been happy?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," he cried. "But I don't want to be serious any 
 longer. Put on your hat and let's go out. "
 
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN 
 
 IT was the last night of the Russian opera season, and to hear 
 Chaliapine in Boris Gudunov Drury Lane was crowded, as 
 the reports next morning put it, "from floor to ceiling with 
 a brilliant throng." When the curtain fell on the second act 
 this throng trooped out in search of air, for the heat was op- 
 pressive under the low-roofed balconies, and of refreshment, as 
 well as for the discovery of friends seated in other parts. For 
 "every one" was there: every one in the world that goes to 
 things and makes things go in London. Had Mrs. Leonard been 
 disposed to pass social London under review, and mark the 
 changes that had come over its expressive face in her absence, 
 she could hardly have chosen a better moment. But her 
 thoughts were directed to a more limited field. As the other 
 members of her own party wandered out into the foyer she 
 watched them and pondered over them, forgetful of the am- 
 bassadors and cabinet ministers, academicians, bishops, intel- 
 lectuals major and minor, ladies great and small, whose presence 
 constituted the brilliance of the scene. She liked them, these 
 friends of Daphne's, though it sometimes seemed to her a little 
 odd that they should be her friends. That was how one felt 
 the passage of time, though : the pattern into which the younger 
 generation fitted itself was inevitably different from that of the 
 older, and not to be dismissed because some colours appeared 
 to be lacking, or the general effect showed as crude. Yet, as 
 she thought vaguely of her own contemporaries, Mrs. Leonard 
 wondered. There did seem to her to be something which these 
 young people, pleasant, glib, clever, indifferent, had not got. 
 As she tried to understand them, to see their type, the common 
 
 158
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 159 
 
 note struck again and again was not so much what they had as 
 what they had not. And it applied to them all, for one of the 
 surprises about them was their essential similarity, a similarity 
 that covered wide surface differences over a range bigger than that 
 represented by the half-dozen now beneath her observation. 
 
 Myrtle Toller passed out first. As she moved slowly up 
 the gangway, looking round her, it was difficult to imagine cir- 
 cumstances in which she could appear diffident or at a loss. 
 There was no situation she was not prepared to meet, none 
 she was not ready to discuss. Myrtle moved gracefully, and 
 Mrs. Leonard approved of the appreciation of her own values 
 shown in her dress a strong orange in colour but definitely 
 smart in cut. Myrtle knew better than to attempt Post- 
 Impressionist sloppiness; her hair was perfectly done. And 
 yet for all her vivid colouring Mrs. Leonard did not feel her as 
 a vivid person. She wanted to be vivid, but that was a very 
 different thing. Indeed, her most striking quality was her igno- 
 rance. Every door had been opened to her by her father's name, 
 position, income, but she had got into nothing. There was no 
 surface she had not skimmed, hardly any she had penetrated. 
 This applied equally to Gertrude Fenner, who "could tear the 
 heart out of any book in five minutes"; to Ned Coventry, who 
 had been "everywhere " ; to Mallard Floss, who knew everything 
 indeed, to all of them. They were prodigiously intelligent 
 and receptive Mrs. Leonard reviewed with a smile the limited 
 contents of her own mind before her marriage and yet, as 
 individuals, thin. The more they all knew, the less differ- 
 entiated did they seem. The social apparatus they carried 
 about was so complex that it occupied them exclusively. They 
 were like perpetual week-enders, always packing their bags 
 tight with the latest ideas and then repacking with a new set; 
 and to keep up with ideas seemed as devastating as to keep up 
 with fashions. Seen thus, however, Daphne was not one of 
 them, though they all liked her. For she was narrow where 
 they were diffused, slow where they were quick, and deep where 
 they were shallow. 
 
 They had all moved along the passage behind, and soon 
 reappeared at the extreme left, where they stood leaning over
 
 160 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 the rail and looking down into the body of the theatre, surveying 
 the right-hand boxes, hitherto concealed, talking and laughing 
 gaily. The party had rearranged itself. Nigel and Daphne 
 were now together at the extreme end; then Myrtle, Ned 
 Coventry, Mallard Floss, Chris Bampton, Gertrude Fenner and, 
 nearest to Mrs. Leonard, Gervase O'Connor. They were all 
 quite out of hearing and quite oblivious of her. She could look 
 at them unobserved. Her eyes travelled rapidly along the row 
 of faces, pausing on that of Gervase. A little sigh rose as she 
 looked at him. Poor Gervase. She understood only too well 
 why he was there, what compelled him to flutter like a moth 
 round the candle that burned his wings. He might laugh 
 loudly and talk excitedly to Gertrude Fenner and Chris Bamp- 
 ton Chris was looking actually pretty in pale blue, whereas 
 the yellows and browns she generally affected made her faded 
 and insignificant Mrs. Leonard knew that his whole being 
 was simply an agonised consciousness of Daphne, at whom he 
 never looked, to whom he had, throughout the evening, not 
 spoken. The first time she met Gervase Mrs. Leonard had 
 divined his feeling, and her heart had gone out to him. None 
 of the others could feel like that: that he could and did, set 
 him apart. Underneath his flippancy there lay this almost 
 terrifying seriousness which gave his nonsense, more extravagant 
 than any one's, an edge theirs never had. Gervase could laugh 
 because he could cry, and his laughter very often brought 
 dreadful echoes after it. They all said, on occasion, things that 
 almost shocked Mrs. Leonard: shocked her till she remembered 
 that the words they used were only counters; but Gervase 
 really shocked her, because his rang true. 
 
 No one would have greeted with such derision as Gervase 
 himself any suggestion that he belonged to the same order as 
 Krutznecheff ; but it was true. He did, and so, in the end, did 
 Daphne. Life to him was frightfully difficult, to the others it 
 was easy. 
 
 It was easy to Nigel Strode. That ease was the secret of his 
 charm, that charm which Mrs. Leonard felt, which every one 
 felt. It was because he was so easy, of course, that Hugh In- 
 field, who had always declared he hated charming people, chose
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 161 
 
 to live with him. Hugh might pretend not to see his charm, but 
 as Mrs. Leonard looked at Nigel she wondered whether Hugh 
 did not deceive himself. She had known that happen before. 
 If he were really indifferent to Nigel's appearance he was very 
 rare. For Nigel's physical grace, his tall slenderness, in which 
 there was nothing effeminate, only the fineness of the athlete, 
 the poise of his fair head, with its thick straight golden hair, 
 his complexion clear and brown as that of a sunburnt child, 
 his candid childlike eyes counted tremendously in his charm. 
 The convention which assumed that looks mattered not at all, 
 counted for nothing in the case of a man, had always seemed 
 absurd to Mrs. Leonard. They counted as much as in the case 
 of a woman. They gave their possessor the grace of unselfcon- 
 sciousness, they made every one else look and look again and 
 remember. People who met Nigel Strode always asked who he 
 was and always knew him when they met again. No one could 
 look at Ned Coventry or Mallard Floss while Nigel was there, 
 no young woman probably at Gervase O'Connor. His awk- 
 wardness might charm Mrs. Leonard, to whom awkwardness in 
 the young promised grace in maturity, but she knew that 
 experience had burnt into her an unnatural dread of physical 
 charm in men. Jimmy's awkwardness could not charm Daphne, 
 awkward herself and hating her own awkwardness. To her 
 the finished grace of Nigel was irresistible, and Mrs. Leonard 
 understood why Daphne had told her that the word that 
 seemed to her best to describe the man she loved was "ex- 
 quisite. " It was a word that terrified her mother. 
 
 She had not forgotten Montevarchi. She had understood 
 what had happened. But she was forty-two. It had happened 
 before. She knew that while nearly every man in love protests 
 that what his soul yearns for is that some one should under- 
 stand him, the eyes that understand are the eyes of Medusa, 
 that turn to stone the passionate gaze uplifted to them. One 
 man in a thousand can bear to be understood, and then not by 
 the woman he loves. But Daphne did not understand. So 
 her demands on Nigel might, in their very unconsciousness, call 
 out what the conscious demands of a woman who knew her way 
 in life would never do. Her blind faith might kindle into life
 
 162 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 the beauty she believed in. Nigel was extremely intelligent. 
 He knew the existence of things, of feelings, that he did not find 
 in himself, and he was certainly in love. The thread was in his 
 hand, if he could only hold it. 
 
 At Daphne, beside him, Mrs. Leonard hardly dared to look. 
 For Daphne's joy wrapped her in a shimmering aura which 
 separated her from all the world, even from her mother. She 
 was as tender as ever and more considerate about little things, 
 but she was withdrawn into a region in which she had no need 
 of her: oblivious, exalted, remote. She did not want to talk, 
 she could not really care about anything but Nigel. She 
 accepted her mother's preoccupation with public affairs a 
 preoccupation which at any other time she would have seen to be 
 largely fictitious and made no attempt to share it or break 
 in upon it. Had Mrs. Leonard gone away, Daphne, she be- 
 lieved, would hardly have noticed it. She was supremely 
 unaware of her own silence, but her silence, for her mother, 
 filled the flat. Mrs. Leonard understood, but her understand- 
 ing made her tremble. For she had known that lyric ecstasy 
 known it even for Colonel Leonard. Daphne would think the 
 comparison blasphemous: Mrs. Leonard smiled to herself as 
 she thought of hazarding it to her but her own honesty faced 
 it. It was horrible to her to recall the baselessness of her own 
 joy of twenty years ago; but the truth was the thing she had 
 learned in forty years of life to look at unblenching. It had been 
 utterly false, utterly unreal, based upon nothing in her husband 
 that corresponded to her dream of him; but she had felt it. 
 She had faced its life as she had faced its death, with the same 
 refusal to sentimentalise with which she had faced her husband's 
 unfaithfulness. It was her refusal to sentimentalise, her insist- 
 ence on seeing, that had most outraged Colonel Leonard. Long 
 had she clung to the belief of her girlhood that the quality of 
 love authenticates its object; but Colonel Leonard had refuted 
 that and so many other vain idealisms. She could not remem- 
 ber herself and hold that Daphne's love for Nigel proved him 
 anything at all. But it was unfair she smiled at herself to 
 assume that because Nigel was charming and Daphne loved him 
 he must resemble Richard. Daphne was older, wiser, stronger
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 163 
 
 than Aurelia saw herself at that age, and there was nothing in 
 Nigel, if she had met him now in London for the first time, to 
 make her fear. On the other hand, there was much to make her 
 hope. Richard Leonard would simply have laughed had she 
 suggested that life was a place of service; Nigel was not like 
 that. True, her hope of persuading him to interest in the 
 International a hope born of her belief in the binding force of 
 shared ideals and work had failed. Nigel was not interested, 
 and he had no desire, at present, for work, no time for ideals. 
 And he had drawn Daphne away after him. The big world out- 
 side did not exist for them. But they were only just engaged; 
 it was natural enough. If the effect of Nigel's love at the mo- 
 ment was to reduce Daphne, ultimately that of hers might be to 
 enlarge him. Daphne would come back to the big world out- 
 side; happiness would only make her more sensitive to its misery. 
 They would come back hand in hand, or so Mrs. Leonard 
 formulated her hope. 
 
 Absorbed in these thoughts she leaned forward, her elbows 
 resting on the balcony, her chin propped in her hands. So 
 Hugh Infield found her, as he paused at the gangway before 
 sitting down by her side. Her dark eyes travelled over the 
 people in the area; but he knew she neither saw them nor was 
 aware of him, and for a few moments he stood so, looking at 
 her, hardly desiring that she should look up. She was beauti- 
 ful, he thought; more beautiful than her daughter, more beauti- 
 ful even than when he had first known her, nearly sixteen years 
 ago. The beauty of youth had gone, but life had worn her face 
 to a fineness rarer than bloom. The shadows under her eyes, the 
 little lines round her mouth, did not distress him, though their 
 sadness did. As a man he might grieve over the marks of suf- 
 fering, but as an artist he could only admire the exquisite finish 
 to which the mind within had wrought every indication of the 
 surface. The eager mouth, which in youth had been held open, 
 ready to speak, ready to smile, was closed now in a firm line 
 depressed at the corners; but the line was firm, not tight, and 
 the depression wore no hint of peevishness. The perfect nose 
 was nature's, but the mouth had the beauty of character; and 
 the eyes were clear with vision and deep with mystery. They
 
 164 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 were eyes full of secrets not to be revealed to the casual 
 glance, eyes into which one could gaze, not baffled by the 
 reflecting surface, but looking down, down into unexplorable 
 depth. 
 
 Yet, although he had thought he wanted always to look 
 at her, never to have her look at him, Hugh knew when she 
 did at last raise her eyes that he had been wrong, for her sudden 
 smile was one of the things he could never get used to, that 
 never failed to give him the same sense of sudden thrilled release 
 that the sun gave when it parted clouds -and shone out warm 
 and blinding. Even across the thick hot atmosphere of the 
 opera-house he felt it. 
 
 With her there were no awkward moments, no need of 
 fencing or pretence. 
 
 "I was thinking about Nigel," she said. "Hugh, tell me 
 about him. I never gathered the least idea of him from your 
 letters, and knowing him in this way, as Daphne's fiance, 
 doesn't help. One has to accept so much. Do sit down and 
 tell me." 
 
 That, Hugh felt, was one of the things he could not do. So 
 he remained standing while she looked up at him. 
 
 "You like him?" Her eyes interrogated his face as though 
 that might tell her more than his words. It might, and Hugh 
 moved uneasily. 
 
 "Of course I like him. Isn't he a charming fellow?" 
 
 Aurelia shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "Oh, Hugh. Not you too . . . It's a perfect gag about 
 Nigel, that he's so charming. No one seems to get beyond it. " 
 
 Hugh's eyes wandered away across the circle to the far 
 corner. The group then was in the act of moving out with 
 much laughter and noise. 
 
 "What about Daphne? She does surely. " 
 
 "Oh yes, Daphne does. But too much so far. " 
 
 "She can't tell you anything?" Hugh asked. 
 
 "Nothing. But she looks unutterable things. " She paused. 
 Then quickly she went on. "Hugh . . . I'm frightened. His 
 eyes are sometimes, not often, but sometimes . . . like Rich- 
 ard's a sudden look, now and then. "
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 165 
 
 Hugh took off his spectacles and rubbed them with his 
 handkerchief as though they were the reason for some obstruc- 
 tion in his sight. 
 
 "If they were like yours I should feel much happier," 
 Aurelia murmured. 
 
 "Oh, don't talk about me," he murmured. "Let's thank 
 God that he's at least not like me. " 
 
 But Mrs. Leonard shook her head. 
 
 "We won't talk about you if you don't like it." 
 
 "Don't be disappointed," Hugh suddenly threw out, "if 
 he doesn't care about Socialism. These things just worry 
 him: he tries to feel them and he can't. You were worried 
 the other night when we were talking about Sarajevo?" 
 
 "Yes," she caught it up. "He seemed to me so ... well, 
 so cheerful about it. " 
 
 "He's profoundly ignorant of foreign politics." 
 
 "I know. But he ought not to be." 
 
 "I daresay not," Hugh smiled. "But he is. Most of 
 us are. " 
 
 "But he seemed to be cheerful about the risk of war." 
 
 "We don't believe there is any. We've forgotten it." 
 
 She glanced round the auditorium. People were coming 
 back to their seats. It certainly was a brilliant scene, careless, 
 happy, gay. 
 
 "London does forget." Hugh came back to it. "And 
 Nigel is extremely typical. . . . He's ignorant and, after all, no 
 cleverer than the average journalist: quite clever, that's to 
 say, good at this job good at window-dressing but not in 
 the least" he hesitated, then found his word "responsible." 
 
 "Ah, but," Aurelia almost wailed, "if he's going to be re- 
 sponsible for Daphne!" 
 
 Hugh gave a little impatient movement. 
 
 "Oh, you women! Daphne's going to be responsible for 
 him." 
 
 Aurelia laughed, but her eyes were grave. 
 
 "That's how you see it." 
 
 "Of course it is. It's generally the case, though women 
 love to pretend it's the other way round, and pre-eminently so
 
 166 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 in this one. ... In a few years Nigel will be ever so keen about 
 Internationalism. He revels in big emotions and she'll make 
 him see that as one. . . . After all, you can't get away from 
 the burden of being superior, Daphne can't, I mean. . . . 
 She'll have to make him. At present she thinks he's making 
 her, no doubt. And he thinks so too. She wouldn't look 
 at, never has so much as seen, poor Gervase, who does see that 
 she'd make him and she would. " 
 
 "I like Gervase." 
 
 "Poor Jimmy!" Hugh sighed and wrinkled his brow. 
 "Yes, so do I. He's genuine. Help him, Aurelia, if you can. 
 He's at a very bad moment. . . . I'm quite seriously fright- 
 ened about him. . . . He might go off any minute. Yes, he's 
 London too, London at its top note, so not typical." He 
 paused. "Of course, you know, Jimmy couldn't have shown 
 Daphne a clean sheet. " 
 
 There was a short pause. 
 
 "No. And Nigel can?" 
 
 "Yes, I think so. But, you know, I don't think it's the best 
 thing about him. " 
 
 Aurelia 's eyes widened. She nodded. She took it all in. 
 
 "Hugh, do you know, you frighten me." 
 
 "Don't be frightened. ... It isn't the least use. . . . 
 You ought to be thinking about public affairs. The ultimatum 
 expires to-morrow." 
 
 They plunged into a serious discussion of the crisis, in the 
 midst of which they were disturbed by the others, who shouted 
 at them when they found how they were occupied. 
 
 Jimmy alone, Mrs. Leonard noticed, did not share in the 
 shout; on the contrary, he stood talking to Hugh, as the latter 
 moved away to return to his own seat, with an expression that 
 struck her, it was so sombre. The others, however, with one 
 accord declared that the Austrian ultimatum could certainly 
 wait and must wait, and not be mentioned again that 
 evening. 
 
 " I suppose, " said Ned Coventry, who was by way of being 
 an authority on the Slav peoples on the strength of a holiday 
 spent in Agram, "that you are a Pro-Serbian, Mrs. Leonard?
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 167 
 
 You are partly Russian, aren't you, and don't the Russians claim 
 to protect the Serbs?" 
 
 "Indeed they do; that's the serious point, Mr. Coventry, 
 which your papers don't seem yet to see, except The Times, 
 which speaks with the voice of Sazonoff. " 
 
 "Ah, but, mother, a true Russian would think of nothing 
 but Boris!" cried Daphne, sitting down beside Mrs. Leonard. 
 
 "Quite true, my child. A true Russian can think of only 
 one thing at a time. " 
 
 They were not in the least shy, any of them, with Mrs. 
 Leonard the barrier of age did not seem to exist with her nor 
 did they ignore her, which was their habitual attitude to older 
 people. She was queer in some ways, they had decided, but 
 delightful, and really, after all, when one came to it, easier 
 than Daphne. This was Myrtle Toller's opinion, and Myrtle 
 had carried ignoring people who did not matter to a fine art. 
 It was she who had suggested including Mrs. Leonard in the 
 opera party when Nigel got it up. The party had begun with 
 himself and Daphne. Daphne had missed Boris before and 
 specially wanted to see it. So they had arranged, before she 
 went away for that long fortnight in the country now happily 
 over, that it should mark the evening of her return. The aunts 
 who had brought little Jane Sandys up had suddenly, within 
 three weeks of her return from her long honeymoon with Lionel 
 Delahaye, made her miserable by raising all kinds of objections 
 to having him in the house because they had discovered him 
 to be an atheist. A very painful situation had arisen, and poor 
 Jane had begged Daphne, whom the aunts for some reason 
 adored, to go to her assistance. She so wanted everything to 
 be harmonious; and the aunts would love Lionel, if they would 
 only agree to let him come. Nigel had liked the idea of Daphne's 
 importance and appreciated her function; but he had not liked 
 letting her go. Daphne's loyalty to Jane made going imperative ; 
 Nigel's unwillingness caused her a curious mingle of pain and 
 pleasure. All this heightened the importance of the celebration 
 of her return. During her absence Nigel had added Myrtle 
 Toller and Ned Coventry; Gertrude Fenner and Mallard Floss 
 had to be asked because he happened to meet them on the same
 
 168 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 occasion. Lois Drew had added herself and, Wellesley being 
 away, Jimmy had been called in to balance. On the Friday 
 evening Lois rang up to say she had a headache: Chris Bampton 
 was the obvious substitute. Nigel had proposed the Nugents. 
 Myrtle had struck at them, but asked for Mrs. Leonard. 
 
 "We're getting dull," she said. "We're all the same. 
 She's different." 
 
 "There's your father," remarked Nigel, who had been lean- 
 ing over the balcony so as to survey the tier below and the 
 stalls below that, "and Evangeline." 
 
 Myrtle did not display any interest. "Is it?" she said, 
 settling down into her seat. "I suppose Godfrey's been getting 
 into trouble again: that's generally what brings father up to 
 town. " 
 
 "I saw Godfrey upstairs just now," Jimmy threw in, 
 "with a very beautiful young lady." His tone made the 
 others laugh. 
 
 "Poor father," said Myrtle cheerfully. "It'd be ever so 
 much better if he'd give Godfrey up. The only thing that would 
 stop him would be to have no money ... as long as he can sign 
 cheques it's hopeless." 
 
 A loud "ssh" from the rest of the audience imposed silence.
 
 THE late July sun, high overhead, shone with the per- 
 sistency of high summer which makes shadowed days 
 incredible. The full unwinking glare imposed a sense of 
 permanence. As it shone out of the blue enamelled sky hardly, 
 flecked with white, so the sun, one must believe, had shone for 
 all the days behind, so it would shine on for ever. Always, 
 as now, the white road must stretch out beneath that vast and 
 vivid arch, a ribbon dropped between the dusty green of the 
 hedgerows and the clean fields and trees beyond: hard, hot and 
 happy in its silence and its glare. No breath stirred, the tall 
 grass did not wave, the branches of the trees were quiet and 
 all their leaves lay motionless. The heat, clear and almost 
 tangible, brooded over everything with a still intensity. The 
 scene had the immobility not of a dream but of complete 
 reality. It held Daphne and Nigel as they left the little station 
 behind them and walked up the hill along the road. There 
 was no mist; the eye could see for measureless miles over the 
 fields across the forest-clad valley, away to the line of downs, 
 blue but not remote. Nothing looked remote, everything was 
 solid, actual. 
 
 One or two other people had got out of the train, but they 
 had all disappeared by the time the' few houses that made up 
 the small village were passed. Somehow they had vanished, 
 it was impossible to say where or when. The houses with their 
 windows twinkling in the sun, the full-blown roses in their vari- 
 ous strips of garden and the scarlet and pink ramblers climbing 
 over porch and window filling the warm air with heavy fragrance, 
 looked as though no one had gone in or could ever come out. 
 
 169
 
 170 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 The world, it seemed, had gone to sleep. On one window-sill 
 a vast white cat dozed, with eyes tight shut and tail curled 
 round its paws. A few hens clucked lazily across the path. 
 Even they seemed without their normal restless apprehensive- 
 ness. On the road there was no one. There never, it seemed, 
 would be any one. Only Nigel and Daphne, walking slowly 
 side by side, saying nothing. 
 
 In the train they had said hardly anything. Nigel, tired 
 by early rising after his late night at the opera, leaned back in 
 his corner, with his eyes shut. He opened them now and then, 
 when the incessantly stopping, slow-moving train jerked itself 
 up at a station, to smile amiably at Daphne, sitting opposite. 
 Each time he opened his eyes he found hers upon him, and this 
 sense that she was looking at him at once prevented his going 
 off to sleep and encouraged him to keep his eyes shut. For he 
 found it difficult to meet her gaze and sustain it, though he 
 could not have said why. After a fortnight's absence Daphne 
 had come back clothed in a certain newness. Dimly and from 
 afar he had felt it in her letters: at the opera last night he had 
 been aware of it. Something had been added, what, he could 
 not say, in the days of their separation. At Covent Garden 
 she had looked much prettier than he remembered her, be- 
 wildering and disturbing. He had felt that he was more in 
 love even than he had imagined. This impression had been 
 strong at Boris, it had held through the dangerous repetition 
 of another night of the same party in the same place for the last 
 night of the Ballet. On the Saturday Nigel had taken the whole 
 party to supper after the final fall of the curtain on innumerable 
 bouquets, anthems and speeches; but it was not the champagne 
 he drank that had made him talk brilliantly, as he had done, it 
 was the passion that he felt thrilling in his veins, his sense of 
 Daphne, her loveliness and his happiness singing in his head. 
 But to-day it was gone, gone as if it had indeed been volatile 
 as the froth of champagne. This morning on the platform at 
 Victoria he had felt a kind of embarrassment before Daphne, 
 an embarrassment absurd and yet paralysing. He had found 
 nothing to say. Daphne, it was true, had said little enough 
 on her side. But she was not embarrassed in the sense that
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 171 
 
 he was. If she was silent it was because she had, he knew, 
 things to say that could not be expressed on platforms, in railway 
 carriages, or at the opera. It was those things that embar- 
 rassed Nigel, and he knew it. They looked at him as he met 
 her eyes: were looking at him when his eyes were shut. Daphne 
 was not criticising him, her eyes held no reproach of his silence 
 or his sleepiness. She was only loving him. But that speech- 
 less love was harder to meet adequately than criticism would 
 have been. 
 
 Nigel was annoyed with himself for rinding it so. Why 
 had he sat up so late last night? Why did he feel tired, list- 
 less, unresponsive, when he ought to have been able to meet her 
 happiness with a joy as brilliant? Last night he could have 
 done so. To-day he seemed dead. As they walked along the 
 road he pinched himself, straightened his shoulders, took off 
 his hat and pushed his hair back from his forehead. The 
 hot sun dazzled his eyes. The merciless glare made his head 
 ache. He glanced at Daphne. Instantly aware, she turned 
 her face to him. 
 
 "Oh, Nigel," she murmured, "isn't it amazing? On 
 Friday morning, when I was packing up at Bristol I had the 
 most horrid fear. I suddenly went all cold and thought: 
 Perhaps something had happened to you; perhaps something 
 would prevent our having this day. But this morning when I 
 woke up and saw the sun pouring in, I knew it was all right ; and 
 when I saw you at the station, I nearly died, I was so happy." 
 She threw back her head and laughed. The cornflower-blue 
 lining of her wide-brimmed hat cast a cool shade on her 
 face. 
 
 "Isn't it all wonderful?" she repeated, glancing round. 
 "The sun shining and never going to stop that's what you 
 do for me, Nigel. You don't realise how grumpy and dis- 
 contented I used to be before I knew you: always dissatisfied 
 with myself and what I was doing, and waiting, waiting I 
 didn't know for what. I was cross and critical about other 
 people, and disgusted with the world because everything seemed 
 to be arranged all wrong. Now I don't think about myself 
 at all, and the world must be all right when you are in it."
 
 172 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Nigel felt a total incapacity to answer. Fortunately Daphne 
 did not seem to expect it. He caught the hand near him in his 
 and held it while they walked on, turning round and round the 
 plain seal ring which was all she had allowed him to give her, 
 and which she declared to be precious because he had worn it 
 and it bore his initials. 
 
 For some time the road, hot and shadeless, had been gradu- 
 ally climbing up towards the forest, which extended, growing 
 darker and higher as they drew near, between them and the 
 distant downs, until gradually it blocked their view entirely. 
 A sharp turn in the road brought them within reach of its very 
 gate. One great pine tree, lonely forerunner of its massed 
 companions, cast its heavy shadow across the way: a patch of 
 sudden welcome cool. A little to the right, a notice-board 
 leaned crooked, its inscription rendered undecipherable by the 
 wear and tear of time, and beyond it a brown track led into 
 the heart of deepest shade. 
 
 The main road followed on over a wide parched common 
 with great clumps of gorse, here and there a group of single 
 pines, here and there a widespread hawthorn tree. But on 
 the common the sun poured down. Daphne and Nigel by a 
 single impulse turned into the dim wood. 
 
 The cool and silence of the trees closed round them like a 
 healing hand, after the bruising glare of the road. The soft 
 pine-needle track was delicious to their feet, as the shade to 
 their eyes; and as they moved slowly on, deeper into the forest, 
 the sun, penetrating through the branches, lit up the red 
 stems and filled the place with a resinous scent, poignant and 
 aromatic. Here and there a group of scarlet toadstools shone 
 like dropped fire in the midst of a patch of green moss soft as 
 velvet. The road had been silent; but the silence of the forest 
 was so much more intense that it was like a visible presence, 
 compelling them to walk softly, lest a crackling branch should 
 disturb it. Daphne took off her hat and held it in her hand. 
 In her white dress, the flecks of light that filtered through the 
 branches softly touching the brown plaits wound round her 
 small head, she looked like a wood nymph under whose spell 
 they were being led on to fantastic adventures. Nigel did not
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 173 
 
 want adventures to-day: he wanted nothing to happen, nothing 
 to be said, nothing, above all, asked of him. Insensibly his 
 pace slackened. Daphne, half a step ahead, was now fully 
 in his sight. He looked at her almost with the sense that he 
 had never seen her before, as she moved on, her head a little 
 tilted back, so that her eyes could trace the pattern of the 
 branches where they crossed and recrossed against the roof of 
 sky. Through her thin dress he could almost see the movement 
 of her breathing, the faint quivers of delight that ran through 
 her strong sensitive frame. To her the forest was an adventure. 
 Everything was an adventure. She loved adventure. She 
 was very young. Nigel smothered a sigh as this thought 
 crossed him: a sigh not of regret for the fact that he was not 
 young, but of sheer weariness. He wanted simply to lie down 
 and sleep. The scent of the forest, its silence and its cool, 
 lulled him to a drowsiness that was not merely physical. The 
 electric energy that ran through Daphne almost repelled him; 
 he did not want to be excited, no, not even to be thrilled. He 
 felt an actual shrinking from the moment when Daphne would 
 turn and expect him to put his arms round her. It must 
 come. She imagined, he knew, that he shared her silent 
 soaring exaltation, whereas he felt chained to earth. She 
 thought it was part of her wonderful, her terrible belief in 
 him that there was no lovely or loving thought she had that 
 he had not in greater fulness; she had put him on a pedestal 
 and credited him with a miraculous delicacy of tenderness; 
 if he were silent, if he held back, it was only because he was 
 finer than she was, because he restrained feelings more acute 
 than hers. But there were moments, and to-day was one, when 
 something in her beyond his comprehension carried her away 
 into an air he could not breathe: and he had felt before premo- 
 nitions of the moment when she must know that it was she, 
 not he, who soared too high for wings of words to follow; when 
 she would address him a question which he did not even under- 
 stand or want to understand. If he had been saved so far it 
 was mainly because she waited, nearly always, for him to set 
 the pitch, for throughout the ten weeks of their engagement she 
 had kept intact her beautiful reticence. She never volunteered
 
 174 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 caresses, never made demands. Yet he knew quite well that 
 this was in her simply a wonderful dignity and an almost un- 
 canny knowledge of his mood. More than once, and once 
 especially just before her departure a fortnight ago, he had 
 obscurely felt in her an expectation of something he had not 
 produced. She acquiesced at once; but the expectation had 
 been there, the readiness to give, if he had asked. He had not 
 asked. He felt it more strongly than ever yet to-day, the 
 expectation : and by an irony which he cursed, it coincided with 
 a special deadness in himself. He thrilled her while he could 
 not thrill himself. 
 
 His step slackened still more. Daphne, now quite a pace 
 ahead, turned and paused for an instant for him to come up. 
 Yes, she was thrilled; her eyes were full of light; they held and 
 called to his. Nigel put his arm round her and kissed her; he 
 felt her mouth trembling, and the sweetness of it intoxicated 
 him for an instant, but while she still looked up at him it passed 
 and he could only smile and let her go. 
 
 Feeling in his pocket he produced a cigarette-case. 
 
 "Look at that heavenly bed of moss." He pointed to 
 a deep swelling bank round the roots of two vast trees, covered 
 with golden moss. "Let's sit down there. Have a cigarette? " 
 He lit one as he spoke. Daphne shook her head, but she sat 
 down on the bank and Nigel stretched himself at her feet. 
 
 A long silence followed: a silence in which the falling of 
 the pine needles could almost be heard, and very far off the 
 trickling of some tiny underground stream. Nigel lay with 
 his eyes shut but not asleep. His drowsiness had passed off. 
 He was thinking, puzzling over an idea which had occurred to 
 him: a brilliant idea. At last he said 
 
 "Do you know, these must be the Nugents' woods, or 
 the beginning of them. Indeed, we must be quite near Ten- 
 acre you know, the woods behind the hawthorn park." 
 
 "Yes." Daphne accepted it dreamily. Nigel could not 
 see her face without changing his position. He did not move. 
 Her voice sounded far away. 
 
 Another interval of silence followed. But Nigel was now 
 wide awake and alert again. He sat up in order to discover the
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 175 
 
 exact position of the sun and adjust the compass hanging at 
 his watch-chain. 
 
 "Yes Tenacre must be just over there to the south- 
 west. It can't be more than a mile off along the top here. 
 The road, of course, goes down through the gap and up again, 
 but the house must be just along this ridge." 
 
 "Yes," Daphne murmured; but again her voice was tone- 
 less and remote. Nigel turned to look at her. She was lean- 
 ing back against the stem of the tree, her hands locked behind 
 her head, her eyes, fixed apparently on some point in the 
 distance, large and wide, eyes that saw, but not the sight 
 before them. 
 
 Nigel drew out his watch. 
 
 "I say, dearest, do you know what the time is?" He 
 spoke lightly. Daphne's eyes turned to him. She shook her 
 head, a faint smile now parting her lips. 
 
 "It's very nearly one o'clock. . . . That doesn't seem to 
 interest you? . . . What do you say to dropping down to Tenacre 
 for lunch?" 
 
 Daphne breathed something that was not consent. 
 
 "We needn't spend more than a couple of hours there, and 
 then stroll back in the cooler part of the day." Nigel spoke 
 persuasively. He had risen to his feet and was shaking him- 
 self to get rid of the moss and pine needles that adhered to 
 his coat. Daphne merely looked at him. 
 
 "I think it's an excellent scheme . . ." he went on. 
 
 "I don't want any lunch," said Daphne, as he obviously 
 paused for her to say something. "The chocolate in your 
 pocket will be quite enough for me on such a hot day. Ten- 
 acre will be very hot. It's lovely here." She paused. Her 
 voice grew more and more dreamy. "I'm too happy to stir," 
 she finally brought out, looking round the place almost plead- 
 ingly. 
 
 "Oh, no!" cried Nigel briskly. "Do come." 
 
 Clearly he was going. Daphne looked away, down the 
 long aisle of the trees. 
 
 " I don't think I can," she murmured. "Not yet, anyhow." 
 
 Nigel felt an obscure irritation.
 
 176 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "Well, I shall go on. You can follow me. I need a little 
 exercise. . . . Shall I leave you the cigarettes?" 
 
 Daphne had leaned back against the tree again and her 
 eyes wandered away for a moment before returning to his 
 face. 
 
 "No, thank you," she answered. "I don't need any- 
 thing." 
 
 Nigel hung in one foot. 
 
 "It would be much nicer if you would come too," he 
 said. 
 
 Daphne still looked at him. There was no reproach or 
 wonder in her look. She was evidently too deeply absorbed 
 really to take in what he was saying. 
 
 "Perhaps I'll come later," she said vaguely. "I could not, 
 now." 
 
 The first person Nigel saw on turning into the neatly kept 
 drive of Tenacre was Gervase O'Connor. The young man 
 was standing quite still in the middle of the drive, with his back 
 to Nigel. He was clad in flannels and might have merely 
 come out from the tennis-court in search of a lost ball, but his 
 attitude as he stood, hands in pockets, the sun beating down 
 on his bare black head, staring at the ground, did not confirm 
 this. His stare was fixed and unnatural. He might have been 
 gazing down at a grave instead of at the smooth hard surface 
 of the gravel. Whatever it was he looked at he was absorbed, 
 so much absorbed that he did not hear the click of the gate 
 behind Nigel, or his footsteps on the drive as he approached. 
 Nor did he appear in the least interested in or pleased by the 
 sight of Nigel when the latter struck him cheerfully on the back 
 and hailed him by his name. He looked round without smiling 
 for a moment his dark eyes rested almost angrily on the 
 other's face and looked away again immediately. 
 
 "Got a paper?" he suddenly ejaculated. His remark bore 
 no relation to Nigel's greeting or to his question as to whether 
 there were a large party at the house. 
 
 "Paper?" said Nigel easily. "No. Why should I? Who 
 wants to read papers on such a day as this?"
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 177 
 
 Gervase shrugged his shoulders and gave a short mechanical 
 laugh. 
 
 "No," he said, and now he stared so hard that Nigel blinked 
 and looked away towards the tennis-lawn, on which he caught 
 a glimpse of several white figures. "No, you, of course, are 
 better employed." He looked round vaguely, made a short 
 pause, and then went on, "Where is Miss Leonard?" 
 
 Nigel, to his own annoyance, felt himself suddenly flush- 
 ing. Gervase laughed rather disagreeably. 
 
 "Oh, say it's no business of mine if that will amuse you," 
 he ejaculated. 
 
 "I do not see why you should assume that we are insep- 
 arable. Miss Leonard has been away/' Nigel snapped out, 
 annoyed with Gervase's tone. 
 
 "Don't bother trying to snub me, my dear Strode and 
 as for prevarication, that you can keep for your dear Mabel. . . . 
 I happened, you see, to come down by the nine-forty myself 
 this morning, that's all." 
 
 He turned on his heel and moved towards the house, leaving 
 Nigel distinctly ruffled, annoyed with his own clumsiness and 
 furious with Gervase for having involved him in it. 
 
 His complacency was only partially restored by the cheer- 
 ful shouts with which he was nailed when he approached the 
 house, by Mabel Nugent and the Carringtons, who were sit- 
 ting under the big cedar watching Edgar, purple in the face, 
 playing a vigorous single with Ned Coventry. They belonged 
 to the school which holds that nothing is so cooling on a hot 
 day as to make yourself hotter by exercise. His meeting with 
 Gervase O'Connor meant that he should, at some stage or other, 
 have to explain Daphne's absence: and that was irritating. He 
 felt annoyed with Gervase and only a little less annoyed with 
 Daphne for having placed him in a false position. 
 
 Mabel Nugent, however, could, it seemed, think of him 
 apart from Daphne. She purred over him delightedly for a 
 few moments, while Evangeline Carrington, with her long 
 violet draperies arranged round a deep chair, dozed beautifully 
 under the shade of a vast yellow and blue Chinese umbrella. 
 Her husband, who had contented himself with a brief nod to
 
 178 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Nigel, was absorbed in one newspaper, while others lay round 
 him in heaps. Nigel recovered his serenity; but it was external 
 and insecure. The party was a tiresome repetition of the 
 former one: and when Mabel at last did ask after Daphne he 
 could think of nothing better to say than that he had left her 
 in the wood asleep. Mabel was entirely on his side, but she 
 was too sympathetic, and on the wrong lines. He could almost 
 see her rapid mind constructing a card-house of misunderstand- 
 ing. To arrest her at least for the present, he turned to Royal 
 Carrington and asked him what there was in the papers, al- 
 though he did not in the least want to know. One knew what 
 there was in the Sunday papers. " Echoes of the big fight "- 
 that was all the halfpenny press was likely to have produced. 
 
 Royal Carrington looked up. 
 
 "Austria's going in," he said, with an accent of distinct 
 satisfaction. 
 
 "Really?" cried Mabel Nugent. "In spite of the Serbian 
 reply?" 
 
 "Yes. I was afraid it was all going to blow over, but 
 they're evidently spoiling for a fight, the Magyars." 
 
 Nigel groaned. "Another Balkan war," he said. 
 
 "I missed the first," said Carrington. "I was in the States. 
 I must get out and see this time. I've great notions of a modern 
 war production. It's never been done, and there are tremen- 
 dous chances in it, for any one with the right ideas." 
 
 No one took him up. They were rather tired of Carring- 
 ton's advance notices. He returned to his papers. The other 
 two watched the tennis for a few moments. 
 
 "It's cooling to see them getting so hot, isn't it?" mur- 
 mured Mrs. Nugent. "Edgar needs to run: he's getting fat. 
 Jimmy did all the work last set." 
 
 "What's the matter with Jimmy?" Nigel asked. 
 
 "Is anything the matter?" said Mrs. Nugent carelessly. 
 
 "I don't know," said Nigel. "But he seemed to me rather 
 madder than usual when I ran up against him just now in the 
 drive. Of course he's always rather mad." 
 
 "Yes." Mabel looked thoughtful for a moment. "No 
 doubt your engagement rather cut him up."
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 179 
 
 "Did he really mind much?" Nigel felt a little uncom- 
 fortable. He had rather forgotten about Jimmy in this con- 
 nection in the last two months. Not happening to have seen 
 him except in company he had assumed that the young man 
 had quite got over his aberration. 
 
 "I don't know," Mrs. Nugent mused. "I think it was a 
 shock to him. You know, when you were down here, in fact 
 the night your engagement took place, he bolted off, just as 
 he was, without a hat or any luggage we had to send all his 
 things after him. He said he was called away, but I don't 
 believe it. No telegram came up to the house as far as I could 
 find out. I asked all the servants. I don't know how he got 
 up to town either. There's no train till the ten, you know." 
 
 Nigel did know, for Daphne had that very evening when 
 they came in jestingly suggested that they should run away 
 from the Nugents and their congratulations: and looking up 
 the time-table he had persuaded her that it was impossible, 
 because there was no train. She seemed to have forgotten his 
 car, and he did not remind her of it. Mabel went on 
 
 "He must have walked at least part of the way, East Croy- 
 don or something like that. I've often thought of asking him 
 about it. " 
 
 Nigel glanced at Mabel Nugent. He remembered some of 
 the things Hugh had said about her and felt for an instant that 
 Hugh was not perhaps, after all, so unjust as he had always 
 thought him. 
 
 She went on 
 
 "There's something rather alarming about him, though. 
 . . . He's not like you, Nigel; I should have asked you, in a 
 similar case. " 
 
 Nigel smiled. 
 
 "And you think I should have told you?" 
 
 "Oh, yes" she was quite confident "at least, you would 
 have made some kind of answer, and I should have guessed 
 the truth. " 
 
 He pondered on this for a moment. 
 
 "Why do you think Jimmy more alarming than I am? Do 
 you agree, Mrs. Carrington?"
 
 180 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Evangeline had waked up and was looking at him with her 
 large dull eyes. 
 
 "That you are not alarming?" she murmured in the slow 
 soft drawl she affected. " I don't know. " 
 
 "Nigel's too charming to alarm any one." Mrs. Nugent 
 was quite ready. "You know he'll always be nice. " 
 
 Nigel bowed. "And Jimmy?" he queried. 
 
 "Oh, you don't know anything about him. He's incalcu- 
 lable. For instance, he seems now to have disappeared again. 
 And there's lunch. " 
 
 The gong sounded loudly from the terrace. Mable rose, 
 Edgar Nugent lay down his racquet. 
 
 "Now, Edgar, don't leave it lying on the grass like that," 
 screamed his wife. "That's Edgar all over," she sighed to 
 Nigel. "He hasn't got the art of life in the least bit. Nor 
 has Jimmy. . . . You have it more than any one I know. " 
 
 Nigel enjoyed his lunch. Gervase did not appear. Edgar 
 Nugent made a perfunctory inquiry as to the whereabouts of 
 Miss Leonard; but since he did not listen for any answer, Nigel 
 felt himself absolved from giving one. He had a good appetite 
 and found the company congenial. They talked of nothing in 
 particular, after Royal Carrington's attempt to describe the 
 probable cause of the Austro-Serbian quarrel had been squashed 
 by Ned Coventry's superior knowledge of the domestic difficul- 
 ties of Austro-Hungary, and Ned Coventry's exposition of the 
 rights of the Ruthenes and Slovaks had in its turn been drowned 
 in a general howl of boredom. It was simply the usual light 
 banter, but Nigel found it restful and refreshing as a change 
 from what he did not quite know. He felt at home among 
 them and at ease. They found him clever, charming, delight- 
 ful; and he expanded in the tepid sunshine of their appreciation. 
 Gervase O'Connor did not turn up during the afternoon. His 
 absence was queer, but a relief. Nothing marred Nigel's good 
 humour but a faint sense that his having come alone might 
 be commented on in tones he should not like, tones wounding 
 to his self-esteem, when they all talked it over together after 
 he was gone. He had rather too sharp a vision of Mabel 
 Nugent's probable explanations.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 181 
 
 But as, so late in the afternoon that he left tea on the table 
 and his own hasty cup emptied, he started down the road 
 towards the woods, Nigel comforted himself with an assurance 
 that he could not have explained, but which he nevertheless 
 found sufficient, that Jimmy, even if he had returned, would 
 take no part in the discussion. After all, it was one of the 
 consequences of living on more or less intimate terms with a 
 large number of people that one was discussed. A set must 
 discuss its absent members; to do so was, in the last resort, 
 what held it together. One could not complain if one of the less 
 agreeable aspects of a very agreeable condition were that one 
 paid for the pleasure of analysing other people by being in one's 
 turn sometimes the subject of their analysis. 
 
 The sun shone with unabated brilliancy as Nigel crossed 
 the road and struck into the wood. After the hot scented glow 
 of the Tenacre garden, with all its ordered beds ablaze with 
 colour, roses, sweet peas, poppies, carnations so thick that they 
 hid the brown soil entirely and seemed to grow straight out of 
 the dry green grass, the forest struck him as cold and colourless. 
 He wondered what Daphne had been doing all the time: and felt 
 worried by the reflection that she had had no lunch. It struck 
 him that there was something exaggerated and almost perverse 
 in her staying there alone. 
 
 Daphne was exactly where he had left her, on the mossy 
 bank beneath the big pine tree: at first he thought she had not 
 moved, then he saw that she was lying with her elbows on 
 the moss and her face hidden in the palms of her hands. She 
 lay still; so still that he thought at first that she was asleep, 
 then that she was crying. On the soft path his feet made no 
 sound. She had not heard him. He bent down and touched 
 her. 
 
 "Daphne, you haven't been making yourself miserable?" 
 
 She dropped her hands and lifted a face not tear-stained but 
 radiant. 
 
 "Miserable, Nigel? Oh no!" she cried; and indeed she 
 smiled up at him. 
 
 Nigel was immensely relieved, relieved and touched. 
 
 " I was afraid you might be. Alone all this time and having
 
 183 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 no lunch. That was very wrong. You mustn't do that, you 
 know. That'll make you miserable, and what shall I do then? " 
 
 "Oh, but Nigel, it was not because I was miserable that I 
 wanted to be here. Don't you understand?" She was sitting 
 upright now, her elbows on her knees, her chin propped between 
 her hands, her eyes on his face. " It's only that I am too happy. 
 I feel too much ... I can't manage it. ... It almost frightens 
 me. When one is so happy the only possible thing seems to be 
 to die but that would be cowardly. . . . Only I feel too small 
 to hold so great a feeling. Perhaps, however, in time I shall 
 grow. You'll help me, Nigel, won't you?" 
 
 Nigel could only hold her hand tight and press the ringers 
 against the palm of his hand. Daphne leaned against him. 
 He looked down at her. Her eyes had left his face and rested 
 upon the patterns the sun was making between the stems and 
 branches of the trees. She saw something else, the light that 
 never was on sea or land; it was that which gave her the look 
 she wore of an almost religious exaltation. Nigel raised her 
 fingers and pressed them silently to his lips. An immense, and 
 almost painful tenderness constricted his throat. He could 
 not have spoken. Before the simplicity, the white radiance of 
 her feeling, he could only bow his head with a sense almost 
 of worship. His incapacity to give back the feeling he yet had 
 so strangely been able to kindle made him tremble, and that he 
 could have been so blind as to leave her to go to Tenacre, that 
 before this wondrous glory Daphne cast round him he had fled, 
 filled him now with a sense of poignant regret, regret on which 
 there followed something like shame for himself and for her a 
 heart-searching tenderness. 
 
 " Oh, Daphne, " he murmured at last. " I'm a dull old thing. 
 I'm not good enough for you. " 
 
 At that Daphne turned. 
 
 "Good enough for me? Oh, Nigel, how am I good except 
 in that I care for you?" 
 
 " Daphne, I can't explain. Sometimes it always has been 
 so a sort of dreadful numbness comes over me. I can't 
 feel. ... I look at myself as if I were the ghost of some one 
 else, walking, talking, drained of all reality. That's not the
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 183 
 
 real me; but when it comes I go and I can't come back to 
 fife." 
 
 Daphne smiled. 
 
 "Oh, dearest," she murmured. "Don't try to explain. 
 As long as the real you cares for me, what does it matter? You 
 don't mind if I love the ghost too?" 
 
 He could say nothing; only kiss her hands with a passion 
 that asked pardon, that prayed, incoherently, to continue and 
 to grow.
 
 CHAPTER FIFTEEN 
 
 NEXT morning was Monday. After the fatigues of the 
 previous day Nigel overslept; and coming down late to 
 breakfast fancied Hugh Infield, of whom he had seen lit- 
 tle or nothing for several days, must already have gone out. The 
 ball into which his Daily Mail had been crumpled lay under the 
 table. Nigel smiled as he caught sight of it. Evidently 
 Hugh's indignation had been ungovernably roused by some- 
 thing. He opened his own Times and propped it up against 
 the teapot. 
 
 Hugh entered the room, his straw hat on his head. 
 
 "I say!" cried Nigel, looking up. "This Irish business is 
 surely very ugly. " 
 
 "M'yes." Hugh seemed vague about it. He paused to 
 direct his friend's attention to another part of the paper. " Do 
 you see what Northcliffe says about the concentration of our 
 fleet: 'A welcome earnest of our intention to be ready for 
 any course which the national interests may render desirable'?" 
 
 Nigel re-read the sentences indicated. 
 
 "Do you attach any importance to that?" he said. "I 
 can't see any question of our national interests in Austria's 
 squashing secret societies in Serbia. " 
 
 "No more can I; or any reasonable man. But Winston 
 seems to." 
 
 Nigel returned to the part of the paper devoted to the Dublin 
 shooting affray. Hugh moved to the mantelpiece and stood 
 staring down into the blank grate, filled with old matches and 
 stumps of cigarettes, imperfectly concealed by crinkled paper. 
 Suddenly he remarked 
 
 184
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 185 
 
 "By the bye, Strode, have you seen young Jim O'Connor 
 lately?" 
 
 Nigel felt annoyed. He was tired of Jimmy O'Connor. 
 
 "Why, you saw him yourself at the opera the other day, 
 didn't you?" he said. "I saw him then and he seemed very 
 gay. Anyhow he always strikes me as remarkably well able 
 to look after himself. " 
 
 Infield looked straight in front of him for a moment. 
 
 'Do you think so?" he said. Then, turning on his heel, 
 "I ran into him last night and thought him looking very queer 
 indeed; he cut me dead." 
 
 Nigel looked up quickly. He wondered what Jimmy had 
 said to Hugh. 
 
 "Oh, well, his manners were always atrocious." 
 
 Hugh still appeared to have something on his mind which 
 Nigel's replies did not ease. 
 
 "Did you know his brother was back from Rome?" 
 
 "What, Fergus? No, I didn't. Nice fellow, Fergus. 
 None of Jimmy's sulkiness about him. " 
 
 "Yes. One wonders why he's back. " 
 
 "Hasn't he come with Rennell Rodd?" 
 
 " Yes. But why is Rennell Rodd in London? " 
 
 "Oh, dear me, Hugh, you seem to be full of posers this 
 morning. " 
 
 "Well, you're a journalist, aren't you?" 
 
 Nigel got up, stretched and laughed. 
 
 "I am. But I don't pretend to be the foreign editor of 
 The Times," 
 
 " No, " said Hugh grimly. " If you were you ought to be shot." 
 
 Nigel interrogated his face; but Hugh's expression gave 
 nothing away. 
 
 "Are you specially worried, Hugh, or is it just normal 
 pessimism?" 
 
 Hugh did not smile. 
 
 "I retain my normal distrust of the Foreign Office, which 
 will get us into a mess if possible," he said seriously, "com- 
 plicated by a feeling that here is a special opportunity for mess. 
 True, Serbian politics are no concern of ours; but they are of
 
 186 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Russia's Russia has said so already. Russia will play Old 
 Harry if she can don't you gather that from all the fellows 
 you meet up at the Leonards'?" 
 
 Nigel gave an impatient shrug. 
 
 "Oh, those long-haired revolutionaries! I don't pay any 
 attention to them. " 
 
 "Nigel, you're deplorably English sometimes English in 
 the worst sense. " 
 
 "I do not like dirty, palpable foreigners." 
 
 Hugh sighed. 
 
 "Heavens! I'm afraid the Foreign Office will find its work 
 easy even without The Times if a reasonable creature like 
 you is filled with anti-alien spite on a cool Monday morning. " 
 
 "Oh, I'm all right really," Nigel laughed. "I wouldn't 
 touch any of them. " 
 
 "But you don't listen to what they say, either, I gather? 
 If you did you'd know, as I was saying, that Russia is in this 
 business already and she'll drag France in if she can. And 
 then where are we? " 
 
 Nigel paused. 
 
 "I don't see that we're anywhere. After all, France is 
 France can't she look after herself? Besides, the Entente 
 is only a vague friendly sort of understanding, not an alliance. " 
 
 At this Hugh interrupted. "We don't know what the En- 
 tente is that's the worst of it. " 
 
 Nigel looked about him. 
 
 "Do you know, Hugh, you quite upset me I feel as if we 
 were on a volcano." 
 
 "So we are." 
 
 With that he departed, leaving Nigel full of a vague uneasi- 
 ness. He rang up Edgar Nugent to find out whether he shared 
 Hugh's gloom; but Edgar appeared to have no apprehensions of 
 anything more serious than a slump on the Stock Exchange 
 and took a hopeful view even of that. As to France he was 
 quite clear. Grey had said we were not bound, so, of course, we 
 weren't. The whole thing was no more than the sort of flutter 
 there had been in the European dovecotes ever so often before. 
 "It'll sell your newspapers, my dear fellow; that's all."
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 187 
 
 The sun was high and hot when Nigel got out into Fleet 
 Street and luggage-laden taxis blocked the way. The season 
 was practically over and everybody going off. Things naturally 
 were flat at such a moment; to liven them up papers got up 
 panics. Nigel stared vaguely at a row of men carrying sand- 
 wich boards bearing some intimation about the builders' strike. 
 It was strange to think of that still going on. The gaunt cor- 
 rugated iron structures in Kingsway drove the same thing 
 home. He looked at one of the men carrying the notice-boards, 
 his face was wan, shrunken and his eyes hollow and dull. Nigel 
 had forgotten the merits of the dispute, it had been going on so 
 long, and yet there were thousands of men ready to endure 
 discomfort and privation on a question of a halfpenny one way 
 or the other on to wages, and to keep it up for weeks and months. 
 Daphne could do that sort of thing, he suddenly felt. He could 
 see her setting her jaw and holding out; see her eyes shining 
 with the idea of it, no matter how wrong-headed. She was 
 wonderful Daphne. Such ideas were uncomfortable, but 
 one missed something if one couldn't have them. His thoughts 
 moved on to Mrs. Leonard and her Socialists; there were Serb- 
 ians and Russians among them, lots what were they up to at 
 the moment? Excited they were sure to be. Nigel resolved 
 not to go up to the flat to-day. It was very hot. Fleet Street 
 at that hour caught and held the sun's unmitigated rays. He 
 looked rather enviously at the heaps of luggage. He felt tired 
 of London. 
 
 Arriving at the office of the New World he was told that 
 Mr. O'Connor had just come in and was waiting in his 
 room. 
 
 Jimmy, as usual full of what was in his own mind, left the 
 other no time for salutation or selection. 
 
 "Look here, Strode," he said. "The London press seems 
 to have got myopia worse than usual. I can't tell you my 
 authority, but you can take it from me that this Austro-Serb 
 business is jolly serious. " 
 
 Nigel looked at him dubiously. 
 
 "You mean because of Russia's coming in?" 
 
 O'Connor hunched his shoulders quickly. "Of course."
 
 188 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 His eyes were twitching unnaturally, and Nigel noticed a 
 queer pallor round them. 
 
 "That's all. I can't stop. You ought to take a line, you 
 know. " 
 
 Nigel felt no disposition to take any line Jimmy could sug- 
 gest, or to go into the matter with him, unless he had any inside 
 information from Lloyds. About Lloyds Jimmy was not com- 
 municative. When Nigel turned the conversation by asking 
 him how he was, he merely looked at him suspiciously, angrily, 
 and flung out of the room. 
 
 Nigel, leaning back in his chair with a sense of relief, decided 
 that he was a very tiresome young man. He looked out of 
 his dirty office window and felt bored. Monday morning was 
 boring. There was no use in wondering what one was going to 
 write about on Monday; the effect on world finance of Austro- 
 Serbian war, he supposed; and "The Future of the Dual Mon- 
 archy." Jimmy certainly exaggerated. 
 
 "Sir Anthony Toller to speak to you on the telephone, sir. " 
 
 "Oh, put him through. " Nigel yawned. "Godfrey again," 
 he said to himself, as he waited for his own bell to ring. It was 
 not Godfrey, however. Sir Anthony had had disquieting letters 
 from a friend in Vienna and was anxious about his shares in the 
 Skoda works. Nigel smiled to himself. Pacifists who invested 
 in armament shares amused him. He accepted Sir Anthony's 
 invitation for lunch, and assured him that he had not forgotten 
 his promise to spend the week-end in Cambridge and to bring 
 Miss Leonard. 
 
 He enjoyed his lunch, in spite of Sir Anthony's anxieties, and 
 also his dinner at the House of Commons with the Nugents. 
 Daphne was there, gay and normal. Mrs. Nugent playfully 
 stated that engaged couples counted as married, and must be 
 separated; so Nigel sat between her and the wife of a minor 
 member of the Cabinet and looked across at Daphne. She 
 was making a charming impression on the minister in question. 
 They would give delightful little parties when they were 
 married. Daphne's intelligent seriousness was really quite an 
 asset, granted that she was so young and so pretty; for great 
 men, especially when not too great, her manner of listening with
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 189 
 
 wide-open serious eyes was exactly right. She had most hap- 
 pily avoided her mother's excess of intelligence. She under- 
 stood but did not criticise. He kissed her hand as he put her 
 into a taxi she gave way with only just enough protest to his 
 desire that she should not go home by train and made his own 
 way eastwards, well pleased again with things in general. 
 "Austrian mobilisation" on the bills merely made him feel that 
 the world, which had looked dull in the morning, was alive and 
 interesting after all. It was a mistake to go into the country 
 yet; September was really the time for a holiday. 
 
 He had hardly got into his room Hugh was either out or 
 gone to bed and torn open the envelope of the first letter of 
 the little pile lying on his table, when he heard heavy steps on 
 the stair outside, and in another minute some one pushed open 
 the door which he had neglected to shut properly, and came into 
 the room. It was once more Gervase O'Connor. At first Nigel 
 thought he must have been drinking, for his face was flushed and 
 his bristling dark hair rumpled, while his breath came in quick 
 uneven pants as though he had been running. He moved once or 
 twice up and down the room without saying anything, dropped 
 his soft felt hat on a table and stood staring at the headlines of 
 the evening paper. "Text of the Austrian Note." "Austria 
 Declares War." "Partial Russian Mobilisation." 
 
 His silence irritated Nigel, who could not imagine why he 
 had come. He had seemed queer and excited enough in the 
 morning. He could think of no reason why he should turn 
 up again at night. He seldom came that way; never except 
 on the occasion of a general gathering or in order to see Hugh 
 Infield, who for some reason of his own was fond of him. Nigel 
 neither knew him well nor, except in company, liked him much. 
 Then he was amusing enough; but he had always classed him 
 with the buffoons, not to be taken seriously either in his gloom 
 or his exaltation. Lately, indeed, he had rather avoided him, 
 because of Daphne. After Sunday he had felt that he never 
 wanted to see him again. As several minutes passed and 
 Jimmy still said nothing, Nigel invited him to have a whiskey 
 and soda or a pipe. 
 
 Jimmy, without answering, shook his head.
 
 190 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "Well, anyhow, sit down, O'Connor, and don't stand staring 
 at that rag as if it were a basilisk. It's not even a late edition 
 and you've just come from the Street." 
 
 "Basilisk, you may well call it," Jimmy turned round with 
 the paper in his hands. "Do you realise what this is going to 
 bring us?" 
 
 Nigel sighed impatiently. 
 
 "After what you said to me this morning," he said, "I told 
 Matheson to write a leader on it. ... I suppose another 
 Balkan war; or, at the worst, perhaps, the end of Austria. That 
 wouldn't cause me to lie awake at night, I'm afraid. " 
 
 "I see. " Jimmy spoke slowly and very quietly. "You've 
 noticed, I suppose, that Winston has kept the fleet at Portland; 
 that Rennell Rodd returned from Rome last week; that the 
 Kaiser is to return to Berlin and that the Berlin Bourse is talk- 
 ing of closing? . . . That doesn't make you lie awake at 
 night?" 
 
 "No," Nigel replied cheerily, "why should it? Europe's 
 used to these alarms. We escaped war I suppose that's what 
 keeps you lying awake two years ago. I can't see why we 
 shouldn't escape it again." 
 
 O'Connor took a turn up and down the room. Nigel noticed 
 that his arms seemed rigid as though he were holding himself 
 in by an effort. 
 
 "What would you think if we did have war? " he said. 
 
 "Think? Why if you mean a war in which we were in- 
 volved, I think it's unthinkable therefore, I don't think 
 about it." 
 
 Jimmy suddenly raised his arms, clenched his fists and shook 
 them above his head. 
 
 "Don't think! Oh, no," he cried. "Don't let any of us 
 think for God's sake. We never do, until it's too late. It's 
 our national habit. Well, we deserve our fate. And it's com- 
 ing, sure enough. " 
 
 "I don't know what you're talking about, dear boy. . . . 
 Hadn't you better go to bed?" 
 
 Gervase threw himself into a chair, and hid his face in his 
 hands. There was a long silence.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 191 
 
 "Look here, Strode," Gervase suddenly uncovered his face, 
 flushed red by the pressure of his hands, and showed his eyes, 
 hot_with some other, inward heat, and staring with a queer, 
 glazed stare that almost frightened his companion. "You do 
 care for her, don't you? " 
 
 Nigel stared back. The suddenness and disconnection of 
 the question startled him. His mind could not make these 
 abrupt transitions. 
 
 "Good God!" Gervase laughed; a queer and rather horrible 
 laugh, that continued itself hysterically. It was obvious that 
 he was not amused; the glare of his eyes denied it; and yet he 
 laughed on. Nigel hastened to answer, if only to interrupt 
 that laugh. 
 
 "My dear fellow, of course I care for her. Surely it is not 
 necessary to ask. I hope we shall be married in the autumn. 
 I'm looking forward to it tremendously. We're looking for a 
 house now. You know, don't you, that Mrs. Leonard has 
 waived her demand for a year's engagement?" He babbled on, 
 telling Jimmy these things that were no business of his, though 
 he felt that the other was not listening to him, because a kind 
 of nervousness had come over him, a dread of something that 
 looked out at him from Jimmy's eyes. 
 
 The young man hid his face in his hands again with a heavy 
 groan. Nigel got up and laid a hand on his shoulder. 
 
 "You know, Gervase," he began, "I'm frightfully sorry that 
 my happiness should be at the cost of yours " 
 
 Gervase moved his arms so that Nigel's hand was brushed 
 aside and sat up sharply. 
 
 "Of course, I knew that I hadn't a chance you don't 
 imagine I was ever such a damned ass as to think myself good 
 enough?" 
 
 "These things are strange," Nigel began; but Gervase cut 
 across him. 
 
 "Strange? Yes, they're damnably strange. One's such an 
 egotist, you know, that one can't, simply, understand it. How 
 one has this tearing, hideous pain that eats into one's bones 
 and all for nothing; why one has feelings that seem divine be- 
 cause they make the world all good, only to have them denied and
 
 192 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 be oneself cast out into howling darkness. . . . But why I say 
 all this to you who can't understand a word . . . " his voice 
 died away. 
 
 "But I do understand, perfectly," Nigel cried. "I've been 
 there myself." 
 
 At this Gervase rose to his feet and, drawn suddenly to his 
 full height, stood for a moment staring at the other. Nigel 
 felt himself constrained to meet his eyes, from which the wild- 
 ness had gone, replaced by a strange intensity of sadness. For 
 a minute Gervase held him so. Then he slowly shook his 
 head. 
 
 "Try to care for her," he said in a low, deep voice. "Try, 
 not because I ask you, but because," his voice faltered for a 
 moment, he cleared his throat, and went on, "because she 
 cares so much for you. . . . Terribly. Oh, yes, I know. I 
 have been there. You haven't. But try, promise me you'll 
 try." 
 
 Nigel attempted a laugh. The solemnity of the young 
 man's tones got on his nerves; he felt that the occasion was 
 becoming absurd. But Jimmy's sombre eyes still held him; 
 he could only drop his own and murmur something incoherent. 
 Gervase stood still for a moment, staring at the other's averted 
 face. Then, throwing back his head, he laughed again. It was 
 more than Nigel could bear, that laugh. 
 
 "Stop, for God's sake, my dear O'Connor. I can't stand 
 it. . . ." 
 
 "You can't stand it! Oh, no; that's really priceless! . . . 
 Well, I'm off. Good-night." Without glancing at Nigel, or 
 staying to pick up his hat, he slammed the door behind him 
 and was gone. 
 
 Nigel breathed deep with relief. Then, catching sight of 
 the hat, he moved to the door, opened it, and shouted down the 
 stairs ' ' O 'Connor ! O 'Connor ! ' ' But Gervase was gone. There 
 came no reply. 
 
 All next day the hat of Jimmy O'Connor lay on the bookcase 
 where he had left it. The sight of it annoyed Nigel at breakfast ; 
 it annoyed him more when he returned in the evening and found 
 it still there. Why on earth had the young man not come to
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 193 
 
 fetch it? He could hardly have made his way home to Curzon 
 Street without noticing that he had not got it. Nigel thought 
 of ringing Jimmy up and telling him where it was; but thought 
 better of it. If he wanted his hat, he could ask for it. The 
 vision of Jimmy was a disturbing one. Although Nigel said 
 to himself, when it recurred, "Of course, he's simply mad," 
 he could not so easily dismiss him and all that he had said. 
 Jimmy had talked wildly, not sanely; but deep down Nigel felt 
 a sense of self-reproach in relation to him. He had never been 
 quite happy in his own mind about the use he had made of 
 Jimmy in his own engagement. Impossible, after what he had 
 said that night, to think of Jimmy's having "got over" his feel- 
 ing for Daphne. He had too clearly done nothing of the 
 kind. 
 
 But the gathering strain of world events drove Jimmy and 
 every other topic into the background. From hour to hour 
 the situation grew more ominous. On Wednesday Nigel had 
 no thoughts for anything but finance. When seven firms were 
 hammered on the Stock Exchange, and the Berlin Bourse fol- 
 lowed the example of Paris in closing, trivial irritations, such as 
 forgotten hats, disappeared; there was no time to think of 
 them. 
 
 Hugh Infield, however, apparently had time for them, for 
 coming in at dinner-time on the Wednesday Nigel was told 
 by his servant that Mr. Infield, who had been away since 
 Monday morning, had returned an hour ago and gone round 
 to see Mr. O'Connor. Yes; he had taken the hat with him. 
 Nigel sighed with relief as he sat down to his meal. He had 
 grown to dislike the hat because it brought Gervase vividly 
 before him; and Gervase in the state of nerves in which he had 
 seen him last was a disturbing and distracting vision. He 
 looked round the room and felt its atmosphere cleared. The 
 world outside was quite troublesome enough without disagree- 
 ables indoors. He propped up his evening paper in front of him 
 and tried to gather what was really happening from the medley 
 of conflicting telegrams. The situation was grave. Useful 
 word; but he could not find in it justification for the extreme 
 distress which Mrs. Leonard had shown at lunch-time, the more
 
 194 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 that her distress had nothing to do with the financial situation. 
 Daphne had been worried too; but, of course, Daphne was 
 worried when her mother was. 
 
 The irritating whirr of the telephone broke in upon his 
 thoughts; he half rose in his chair; then sat back. He was 
 tired; Annie could answer it. 
 
 Annie did, and appeared a moment later. "Mr. Infield 
 rang up, sir; he says will you go round to Curzon Street when 
 you've had your dinner. " 
 
 Nigel stared. "Was that all he said? " 
 
 "Yes, sir. Shall I bring the coffee in now, sir?" 
 
 Nigel nodded. What on earth was Hugh up to? Why 
 should he go round to Curzon Street? The house was in a 
 remarkably uncomfortable state, for Lord and Lady Flam- 
 borough were in the States with their daughters, most of the 
 house shut up and Gervase living in two rooms under the 
 ministrations of a caretaker. It was an arrangement highly 
 characteristic of the Flamborough family, which certainly was 
 not afflicted with an excess of mutual devotion. But to what 
 sort of an entertainment under the circumstances he was now 
 being invited, Nigel was at a loss to guess. However, he sup- 
 posed he should have to go. He generally did do things when 
 Hugh wanted them. Luckily he was not often so unreasonable 
 as this. 
 
 In the white evening dusk Curzon Street certainly looked 
 forbidding enough, with its windows shuttered and barred, the 
 steps dusty, the white door grey with dirt and the brass dull 
 to greenness. The caretaker must be more than usually incom- 
 petent. Nigel rang the bell and waited. Nothing happened. 
 He lit a fresh cigarette from the stump in his mouth, which he 
 dropped into the area, and rang again. A very thin cat ap- 
 peared from somewhere and rubbed itself affectionately against 
 his legs; but the door did not open. Nigel pulled harder at 
 the bell and executed a postman's tattoo with the knocker. 
 
 At last he heard steps on the stone stairs coming down, then 
 along the passage. The door was flung wide, not by the frowsy 
 caretaker, for whom he was preparing curses, but by Hugh 
 Infield, who held it open, looking pale and gaunt in the dim
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 195 
 
 light of the bare hall. On the elegant Louis-Seize ormolu table 
 beneath the tall mirror lay a heap of dusty cards and circulars 
 in long envelopes. Beside them two hats; Hugh's straw and 
 the felt which Gervase had left behind and which had lain so 
 long on the bookcase in the Temple. 
 
 Hugh said nothing, only held the door open. Nigel stepped 
 in, followed by the cat, now purring loudly. It leaped up on to 
 the table and began pushing the dusty cards and envelopes with 
 its paws, until one fell to the ground. 
 
 "Well?" said Nigel, standing still and looking at Hugh, 
 who looked back at him bleakly, but seemed to have nothing 
 to say. "I've come because you asked me to but I can't 
 imagine what in the world for. . . . The house doesn't look 
 cheerful. " Nigel's tone was captious. Hugh continued to 
 look at him. 
 
 "You don't know what's happened? " he said. 
 
 "Happened?" cried Nigel, shaking his shoulders with an 
 air of irritation. "No, how should I? Has anything hap- 
 pened?" 
 
 Hugh looked away. "He's killed himself. " 
 
 Nigel stared at him; his eyes round and blank. 
 
 "Who? Jimmy?" 
 
 Hugh nodded. He went on in a toneless voice 
 
 "Yes. He's committed suicide. ... I found him when I 
 got here. It was all over. I was hours too late. The care- 
 taker has bolted. She was just going when I came, otherwise 
 I shouldn't have got in and he might have lain for days. " 
 
 He began to move and Nigel mechanically followed. 
 
 "I don't understand," he murmured. 
 
 Their footsteps on the bare stone stairs echoed through the 
 silent house with a terrifying clearness. The marble figures 
 holding great electric standards on the staircase seemed to 
 look at them with malignant eyes. The cat, which had run 
 lightly on before them, suddenly paused on the second landing 
 and began to mew. 
 
 "How did he do it?" said Nigel. 
 
 Hugh turned round and looked at him, his thick brows drawn 
 down in an expression of disgust and anger.
 
 196 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "How?" he said. "Bath." He walked on without an- 
 other word. 
 
 Nigel shuddered. He felt a desire to escape. He did not 
 see why Hugh was taking him on. And yet with his horror 
 there mingled a kind of dreary curiosity. He did not under- 
 stand. He had never known any one who had killed himself. 
 He could not see how it was possible; how, when it came to the 
 point, one did it. 
 
 The stairs seemed interminable; but at last, on the third 
 landing up, Hugh, instead of turning to go up yet further, 
 walked across the space of bare boards and, pushing open the 
 white door facing them, walked in, followed by Nigel. The 
 small room faced west, and the faint blurred pink of the setting 
 sun tinged the sky outside the window and fell on the carpet, 
 bringing out the blue in its red and blue pattern. Nigel glanced 
 round; glanced at everything, the dressing-table, exquisitely 
 neat, not untidy as he should have expected; the clothes folded 
 on a chair; the row of books along one wall; the school and 
 college groups hanging above it; the oar over the door; before 
 coming to the bed. 
 
 The bed was covered by a sheet, but Hugh, going up to it, 
 turned the linen back before Nigel could stay him and he saw 
 Gervase. Side by side they stood looking down. In its dead 
 pallor, with the thick dark hair, usually so erect and bristling, 
 lying damply on the forehead, the face was peaceful and beauti- 
 ful. The violence and strain, which had distorted it in suffering 
 when Nigel last saw Jimmy, had been wiped out; gone with the 
 uneasy passionate spirit that had been its life. 
 
 So for some minutes they stood. 
 
 "I don't understand," said Nigel, passing his hand over his 
 brow. 
 
 Infield did not look at him; his eyes rested still on the face 
 of Gervase O'Connor. 
 
 "Poor Jimmy," he said at last, after a long silence. "One 
 can't say it's cowardice, for perhaps one in the ten thousand 
 people who think of suicide really gets near it, really suffers 
 enough for one to say it's braver to bear such pain than to 
 end it. But Jimmy was that one. He was made to suffer
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 197 
 
 horribly. And I don't think it was just his own personal pain 
 either." 
 
 Nigel was hardly listening; he stood gazing, fascinated, at 
 the dead face. 
 
 "It's rather awful, " he said at last. "How little one feels 
 it, when it comes to the point. Some one's going out like this. 
 ... I suppose one's stunned. " 
 
 " No, " said Hugh after a pause. " If you could feel it, you'd 
 understand." Nigel looked up quickly. He felt as though 
 Hugh had hit him. 
 
 "Do you understand it then, Hugh?" his voice was sharp. 
 Hugh was not looking at him. He was listening. 
 
 " Hush, " he said. "There's some one in the house. I can't 
 have shut the door properly. Who on earth can it be? 
 The caretaker was full of some yarn about some one coming to 
 supper." He went out on to the landing. 
 
 "Jimmy, Jimmy!" a voice echoed up the stairs. Nigel 
 started. Surely it was the voice of Myrtle Toller. He heard 
 Hugh's tones, low and deep, in explanation, though he could 
 not catch what he said, and a sudden cry from Myrtle. Then 
 a pause in which he wondered whether to go out or stay where 
 he was. Uncertain, he looked about the room, struck again 
 by its neatness. There seemed to him something sinister in 
 that neatness. Inappropriately, he remembered that his sister 
 Juliet always said that she hoped that if she were to die suddenly 
 all her "places," as she called them, would be found neat. 
 Jimmy's room looked as if everything had been carefully ar- 
 ranged, even to the little pile of letters stamped and addressed, 
 on the table by the glass absently Nigel stared at them. The 
 top one was addressed to the Hon. Fergus O'Connor, British 
 Embassy, Rome. So Fergus had gone back. Gervase must 
 have waited for him to go back. Such consideration was appal- 
 ling. 
 
 The door opened and Hugh came in frowning, followed by 
 Myrtle Toller. In her summer hat and light striped dress, with 
 a bunch of roses at her waist, she looked inappropriate and al- 
 most cruelly young and happy. She had a handkerchief in her 
 hand and did not so much as glance at Nigel. Slowly she moved
 
 198 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 up to the bed and with her handkerchief pressed to her lips stood 
 there gazing down into the face of Gervase. For a few moments 
 she stood so; then she bent down, and taking one of the roses 
 from her belt put it in the young man's fingers; bent further 
 still and kissed him. Then with an apparently uncontrollable 
 sob she turned and ran out of the room. 
 
 Hugh stood looking after her, but did not attempt to move. 
 Nigel felt tears rising to his eyes. Hugh saw them. 
 
 "That seems to you a touching incident?" 
 
 Nigel nodded. The scorn in Hugh's voice surprised and 
 angered him. "Didn't it to you?" 
 
 Hugh moved towards the window, opened it, and taking the 
 rose from the limp fingers of the dead man threw it violently, 
 almost viciously, out of the window, which he then shut down 
 again. 
 
 " Oh, Hugh ! How could you? " 
 
 "How could I? " Hugh was drawing the sheet over the life- 
 less face. "How could she? It's all absolutely false. She 
 does not, never did, care that for Jimmy; nor he for her. It was 
 some one quite different and the minx knows it. Bah! 
 She was just scalping thrill-hunting I don't know for who's 
 benefit. Probably we shall meet the Daily Mirror on the stairs 
 next." 
 
 "Hugh, you're simply horrible. I'm going home." 
 
 "Yes," said Hugh briefly, "you'd better. But you might 
 make yourself useful on the way go to the police. "
 
 CHAPTER SIXTEEN 
 
 MOST men and women move normally through a world 
 crowded with people in practical unconsciousness of all 
 but the few among their fellows whose lives happen to 
 touch theirs. The others, the vast mass of unknown mankind, 
 constitute merely so much background, a little more differentiated 
 than the trees, the streets, the houses, but not gifted, to the 
 careless, unobservant eye, with any traits beyond their bare 
 humanity. But sometimes with a strange and almost terrible 
 effect it is forced in upon the mind that this background is 
 animated by feeling, is conscious, feels and suffers as the ob- 
 server feels and suffers. 
 
 The sense that over the people in the Park some common 
 emotion brooded was palpable to Hugh Infield as, on Bank 
 Holiday, he made his way towards Mrs. Leonard's flat. It was 
 not merely that he had passed three practically sleepless nights; 
 or that the terrible death of Gervase O'Connor dominated his 
 imagination as a portent of calamity. There really was some- 
 thing that dominated the mind of every one in London, in 
 England, perhaps in Europe. 
 
 Under the high blue sky, across which white clouds now 
 raced, sparkling white after the heavy rain-scud, people were 
 moving about slowly in twos and threes in the sunshine. And 
 they all seemed oppressed, apprehensive; there was something 
 in their minds which made their feet drag and dulled their 
 voices. 
 
 It was early in the day for jollity, even on August Monday ; 
 but Hugh had spent many Bank Holidays in London, and seen 
 none like this. On the spirits even of the least conscious of these 
 
 199
 
 200 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 people there weighed a vague unformulated dread. They were 
 too ignorant to give it words; but they felt it. Those who 
 had papers and they were many read items aloud to their 
 companions, generally in a subdued voice. A great silence, 
 an immense sense of waiting, held them all. 
 
 At Hyde Park corner the silence was rent by the shouts of 
 newsboys; and the placards lying on the pavement carried head- 
 lines that burned into the mind. Hugh was glad to escape 
 from them as he crossed into the Park again. He had spent 
 the last three days with those shouts incessantly in his ears, 
 those placards for ever before his eyes. He was physically and 
 mentally exhausted, he knew; but deeper than that was a moral 
 fatigue, an unnerving sense of hopelessness, against which he 
 felt incapable of struggling alone. Aurelia Leonard might help 
 him; no one else could. It was only her energy that had made 
 him spend the last three days in a whirl of unnatural and, he 
 felt convinced, quite useless activity, rushing hither and thither 
 in taxis, hanging on the telephone, talking, talking, talking, in 
 the attempt to organise an opposition to the awful tide of dis- 
 aster, which had risen with such hideous suddenness in a gigantic 
 wave that was going to sweep away everything in life one cared 
 for. It had been preposterous, the way they had fatigued them- 
 selves, Aurelia and her futile handful; absurd the mere difficulty 
 of getting hold of people. Every one seemed to have gone into 
 the country. The few who remained in town were prostrate 
 financiers, paralysed by the collapse of the world's Stock Ex- 
 changes and convinced that the worst had already happened. 
 They were ruined; the country was ruined; could anything be 
 worse? 
 
 It was all too late, anything any one could do. Every one 
 said so even those most anxious to have something done; and 
 Hugh himself believed it. But when Aurelia declared that made 
 no difference, they must do what they could, he was ready to 
 try anything, everything she suggested. Aurelia was not 
 demoralised; she was not stunned. And her unbroken spirit 
 was good, when so little else was. Feverish activity at least 
 kept her imagination quiet; she had no time to stop and let 
 herself realise what it meant in human terms, this approaching
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 201 
 
 Juggernaut, the vision of which paralysed Hugh. He felt it 
 was no more to be stopped by anything he could do than an 
 express engine by a fly ; without Aurelia he would, he knew quite 
 well, have made no effort to prevent the inevitable. He could 
 only have sat at home and cursed. In the end it would probably 
 make very little difference, one way or the other. 
 
 Hugh shrugged his shoulders as he entered the flats. His 
 shrug was not simply an apology to his normal self for this 
 futile activity of his; it was also a deprecation of the charge to 
 which he felt himself really open, that of an inveterate tendency 
 to take no action; a tendency born of a fatalism of which the 
 thought of Aurelia Leonard made him feel ashamed. 
 
 Mrs. Leonard looked up quickly as he entered. She was by 
 the open window, sitting on the little sofa surrounded by news- 
 papers. They seemed to fill the room; the table and all the 
 chairs even were piled with them; they lay about her in heaps. 
 As Hugh came in she dropped the pink sheet she had been scan- 
 ning, and taking off her spectacles, passed her hand over her 
 eyes as if they were tired. They looked tired and unnaturally 
 dark, because of the deep shadows under them; dark even behind 
 the spectacles which she almost at once replaced. She had 
 looked at Hugh as he entered, but said nothing, did not even 
 smile. He sat down; she picked up her paper again. 
 
 Hugh glanced about him. The sun was shining again out- 
 side, after the brief scud of rain that had come on just before 
 he entered the building, and the little white room was full of 
 light. But it had not its usual bright freshness, any more than 
 Aurelia herself had. The roses in the glass bowl on the low 
 table were withering for want of water; a heap of fallen petals 
 lay on the matting. Nothing could have spoken to Hugh more 
 eloquently of his friend's absorption, of her suffering. He looked 
 at the little heap for a few minutes; then stooped and picked up 
 the soft petals one by one and carried them to the window, 
 which he opened to let them fall. 
 
 "I'm afraid there isn't any hope." Mrs. Leonard dropped 
 her paper, as she spoke in a dry toneless voice. Hugh's eyes 
 were fixed on the matting again. 
 
 "You never thought there was any, did you, Hugh? "
 
 202 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Hugh shook his head. 
 
 "Not much," he said. "Everybody loses his head, you 
 see, and it's just a stampede. . . . Nobody realises, they just 
 all rush together. That's what psychologists call herd-instinct, 
 isn't it? ... It's like a fire in a theatre; if people could sit 
 still, probably none need be injured; but they're trampled to 
 death by one another. " 
 
 Aurelia was staring straight in front of her; she looked as 
 though she had hardly heard what he said. 
 
 "It's incredible," she said, "that a week ago we were all 
 going on just as usual; blind and deaf to what was happening. 
 It was then we ought to have been working, Hugh. Perhaps 
 England at least might have kept out?" 
 
 Hugh shook his head again. 
 
 "Oh, no," he said. 
 
 " I saw there was no hope of that yesterday, " she acquiesced. 
 "Yesterday it seems like last year. But I thought, even 
 yesterday, that there would be people still, whatever happened, 
 whatever the Government did, who would go on thinking we 
 ought to keep out. Now I begin to see that even that isn't 
 going to be." She felt in her belt and produced a telegram. 
 "Look at that." 
 
 "They're bolting already?" said Hugh as he took it. The 
 faintest shadow of a smile, a very unhappy smile, flitted across 
 Aurelia's lips. She nodded. 
 
 "'Please withdraw signatures to neutrality letter. Anthony 
 Toller. Nigel Strode." Hugh read out. He made no com- 
 ment, only handed the pink slip back to Mrs. Leonard. 
 
 "Of course, " she said, after a pause, "if enough members of 
 the Government really do resign " 
 
 "They won't," Hugh cut across her faint hopes. "If they 
 had had enough head they'd have resisted before. Imagination 
 one doesn't credit them with. Oh, no, theyTl sit tight, and all 
 the Pro-Boers who declaimed against a Conservative war will 
 say this is entirely different. " He moved the sheets of news- 
 papers about with his foot. " I don't think there are any John 
 Brights in this generation. And as for the Press! ..." 
 
 "Have you seen the Xew World?" Mrs. Leonard asked.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 203 
 
 Hugh signified that he had not. 
 
 "Don't you generally?" 
 
 "Yes, generally I do. But I don't generally read it." 
 Mrs. Leonard frowned a little. 
 
 "Hugh, you ought to. Ought to influence him. You 
 could, you know. But you don't. Indeed, you rather make 
 a point of not doing so, don't you?" 
 
 Hugh could not deny it. "It's my laziness," he said. 
 "Or do you think," as she still frowned, "I'm putting my case 
 too high?" 
 
 "What I think is," she said, "that you could have kept 
 him straight and you haven't. . . . It's all part of the ..." 
 she hesitated, "of the unreality of your living with him. 
 You don't know him. . . . You won't be responsible for 
 him." 
 
 "It's the only way to live," Hugh tried to defend himself. 
 
 "Oh, no," said Mrs. Leonard. "Look at what's hap- 
 pened now. ..." He felt there was more in it than was 
 expressed in the sentence that followed; but there was no time 
 to go now into what it was. " If Nigel had only stayed in Lon- 
 don over Sunday instead of going to Cambridge he might have 
 been all right. . . . You don't think so?" 
 
 "Nigel?" said Hugh after a moment's pause. "Not last- 
 ingly. Not against a big wave. " 
 
 Mrs. Leonard got up. 
 
 " But, Hugh, there isn't any big wave, " she cried. "There's 
 the press and the Government. But those people in the 
 streets they're not asking for war. They're miserable, aren't 
 they? They didn't want it on Sunday?" 
 
 "No," said Hugh. "But they will ask for it, when they've 
 been told to. They'll never have a chance to to anything else. 
 . . . Look at the people who signed that letter on Saturday. 
 How many even of them will be left? " 
 
 Mrs. Leonard moved restlessly about the room. Encum- 
 bered as the floor was with papers her movements were difficult. 
 Hugh, watching her, felt the whole thing ironically symbolic; 
 that was how disinterested passion was foiled and baulked; 
 defeated by organisation, not inaptly, to his mind, represented
 
 204 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 by those ill-printed sheets with their screaming headlines, de- 
 signed to inflame and excite. 
 
 "Oh, Hugh!" She paused suddenly, reverting to the par- 
 ticular point they had left. "I do mind about Nigel. I did 
 hope he'd stick to it. He was quite good last time he was here. 
 Shockingly ignorant, but quite good. And his paper isn't 
 hopeless. They're sentimental his two leaders but not hope- 
 less. He didn't want war. " 
 
 "Ah, but!" cried Hugh. "Don't you see, nobody wants 
 war till it comes. Then they all say the alternative is 
 worse. " 
 
 "But war," cried Aurelia, in a tone of agony. "Think 
 what war means." 
 
 There was a silence. Aurelia broke it. She looked up and 
 said 
 
 "Hugh, did that young man see all this coming?" 
 
 "Jimmy? Some of it, I think. He's got a brother, a very 
 clever chap, in the Embassy at Rome. And Jimmy himself 
 had a curiously clear head. . . . But I don't think he can have 
 realised it fully. If he had, it would have done instead. " 
 
 Mrs. Leonard pondered. "You mean, he needn't have killed 
 himself?" 
 
 Hugh nodded. "He had got the disease of death very deep 
 in him, you know. Lots of us have a tinge of it nowadays 
 but in Jimmy everything was at its top note and latterly he felt 
 life had betrayed him. " 
 
 "You mean," said Mrs. Leonard slowly, "because of 
 Daphne?" 
 
 "Yes. Mainly Daphne, I think. All this just came on top 
 and it was too much. " 
 
 "Oh, poor boy. . . . Hugh, it makes one's heart break. 
 Does Daphne know?" 
 
 "That it was because of her? No. I don't think she's got 
 the least idea. ... I don't suppose Nigel would tell her. " 
 
 "He knew?" 
 
 "Oh, yes. He knew. . . . Gervase came to see him just 
 before he did it. ... I was away. I found his hat in our rooms 
 when I got back on the Wednesday. That was how I found
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 205 
 
 out. We went round Nigel had been worried by his manner 
 just too late." 
 
 There was another silence. 
 
 "Nigel couldn't understand it in the least," said Hugh, 
 musingly, inspecting the matting. Aurelia looked at him 
 sharply. 
 
 "You could?" she said. 
 
 "Oh, yes." 
 
 Mrs. Leonard got up and came and stood by him. 
 
 "Hugh." Her voice was sharp now. "You didn't ever 
 get near it?" 
 
 He did not look up; but his silence was answer sufficient. 
 Mrs. Leonard turned away and moved towards the window. 
 She stood there for some time; at first merely gazing with un- 
 seeing eyes, then looking down to where the people could be 
 seen moving, tiny, ant-like. 
 
 "One feels everything going at once," she said without 
 turning round. "Democracy is a farce too. ... It is, if this 
 can happen. How can the workers do anything but lose by 
 war?" 
 
 "Oh," Hugh groaned, "we're all in it. Not you, you have 
 cared about peace, thought about it, worked for it. But what 
 have the rest of us done? After all, we've had a Liberal Govern- 
 ment in power for nearly nine years; and those nine years have 
 brought us to this. Obviously the world isn't civilised. That's 
 all. In a civilised world war would be impossible. ... In this 
 I believe it will not only be it will be popular. " 
 
 Mrs. Leonard dropped into a seat. 
 
 "Am I too awful for you?" 
 
 She looked up, her eyes large with pain. 
 
 "I expect you're good for me, really. But it's horrible to 
 think you're right always have been right. ... I can't 
 believe it." She sprang to her feet again. "Let's go out, 
 Hugh. Perhaps something will happen." 
 
 "A miracle? . . . Ah! I don't mean to be cruel." He 
 laid a hand very gently on her arm. "But to see your faith 
 going to defeat again is almost more than I can bear. " 
 
 Suddenly she sat down on the sofa again, all limp; as if
 
 206 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 the nerves that made her slight frame strong had ceased sud- 
 denly to hold it together, and covered her face with her hands. 
 Hugh stood looking at her, wretched, but unable to think of 
 anything to say. 
 
 From the street below there came the shrill voice of a news- 
 paper-boy, breaking the dull silence like the cry of an ominous 
 bird. Hugh moved towards the door. 
 
 "I'll go down and get a paper," he murmured, glancing at 
 the clock on the mantelpiece. "They may have got something 
 of Grey by now." 
 
 Mrs. Leonard dropped her hands. "It's too early," she 
 said, "but you might try to hear him. That would be far better. 
 I still feel a faint hope of Grey. " Hugh shook his head. 
 
 "I distrust those strong silent Englishmen," he said. "But 
 I'll go. It ought to be a remarkable performance, anyhow. 
 With people's nerves in their present state, he's got the chance of 
 a lifetime. " 
 
 "Yes. If we have a great man, here is his moment. " 
 
 Hugh sighed. 
 
 "You still expect miracles, I see," he said. "Well, I'm off. 
 Do try to rest if you can. " 
 
 The sun had gone in, and the sky was clear and colourless. 
 Hugh, seated on top of a 'bus, looked down into the streets, 
 crowded with silent drifting people. Otherwise there was 
 little traffic on the road. Now and then a motor-car, covered 
 with country dust, sped past at top speed; or taxis, with occu- 
 pants in very unholidaylike attire. At the corners where the 
 news-boys stood the press was thicker; approaching Westminster 
 it became dense. Charing Cross was a solid mass of humanity 
 and Whitehall almost impassable, even on foot. Hugh realised 
 long before he succeeded in making his way into Parliament 
 Square, that he had no chance of getting in to hear Grey. He 
 reached an island in the midst of Bridge Street and seemed likely 
 to get no further, so solid was the throng of men and women 
 patiently waiting, hardly moving, save for a vague back and 
 forward motion like that of the waves of the sea. For some min- 
 utes he stood surveying the scene. A familiar voice at his elbow
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 207 
 
 made him start, it was so strange in that dense mass to find 
 any one he knew. Turning, he found himself rubbing shoulders 
 with Wellesley Drew. 
 
 "Not much chance of getting through that, is there?" said 
 Drew cheerily. "House will be packed, too. After all, you 
 see, we've heard nothing since Friday, when Asquith told us 
 to ask no questions and he'd tell us no lies; precious little on 
 Thursday, either. And everything's happened since then. 
 . . . Seems weeks since that poor young fellow went off, 
 doesn't it? Only Wednesday Good Lord!" 
 
 Hugh said nothing; merely nodded. 
 
 "Shocking thing that," the other went on. "Bad sign 
 . . . looks as if we were getting like Berlin they're always 
 doing it there, the young fellows. . . . Well, I hope we shall 
 have a whack at Berlin before any of us are much older. . . . 
 It's time they learned the size of their hats over there. Don't 
 you think so?" 
 
 Hugh looked at the other. Drew's appearance was as usual; 
 blond, large, Teutonic. 
 
 "Are you indulging in a jest? " he said. 
 
 "No, indeed, sir. . . . I've been a big-Navy man always. 
 Never voted a penny off Service Estimates. They're our in- 
 surance; and not half high enough. Do you think I don't see 
 it's us they've always been aiming at? If they're coming 
 through Belgium it's us they're after. Jealousy, of course. 
 They want our place. . . . Why must they have a Navy?" 
 
 "Why not?" said Hugh, as coolly as he could. 
 
 "That's just it, though," a workman at his elbow with his 
 cap well over his eyes joined in. "We want to have every- 
 thing that's our way. It's just like the masters; can't see 
 why us men should ever have a shilling on to our wages. And 
 we shan't, if they put a war on us. ..." 
 
 "Do you think they're going to?" said Hugh, looking at 
 the mechanic. The man hunched his shoulders in the direction 
 of St. Stephen's. 
 
 "They've fixed it up in there by now, you bet," he said; 
 then, gazing gloomily at the sea of humanity surging all round, 
 "It's us'll have to pay for it, too."
 
 208 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "What do you say to that, Drew?" asked Hugh as the man 
 began slowly but very efficiently making his way forward his 
 quick eye had caught the chance that Hugh, listening to him 
 and not caring much whether he moved a few yards further 
 forward or back, had missed. 
 
 "Socialist," said Drew, squaring his shoulders. "They're 
 not to be trusted. " 
 
 "But look here, Drew, what earthly good do you suppose 
 war's going to do any one? " 
 
 Drew surveyed the crowd. 
 
 "Well, it'll make men of some of these fellows anyhow. 
 We're getting slack, you know. Slack and undisciplined. The 
 Germans can give us points there. " 
 
 "You mean they could beat us? That might be good for 
 us, I admit," said Hugh drily. 
 
 "Beat us? Good Lord, no! But we should have to sit up 
 and look around a bit and get rid of some of our sentimentalists. 
 They've been drilling and training while we've been making 
 ourselves too jolly comfortable, with pensions here and insur- 
 ance there. " 
 
 Hugh smiled. "Are you still standing as a Liberal, Drew?" 
 
 "Of course I am. The other side has no brains. I'm as keen 
 about social reform as any man. But national defence comes 
 first, you know. If you're not a nation there's no good being 
 comfortable. Men are what tell. It's just like boys at school. 
 Your brainy boy that can't fight isn't going to be as good a man 
 as the keen young shaver who's ready to take any one on. " 
 
 Drew developed his idea; drawing himself up to his full 
 bulky six-foot-two as he spoke. Hugh hardly listened. He 
 was surveying the crowd which was denser even than before 
 and thinking how disagreeable people were when you got enough 
 of them massed together. He scanned the expression of their 
 faces. Most of them seemed to him vacant; they were simply 
 waiting, like people at a theatre; here and there a face detached 
 itself, angry, unhappy or eager; but the vast majority were 
 dull, expressionless. 
 
 "Our Bert got his papers last night; 'e's gone off to Chatham 
 this afternoon, " a voice behind him murmured.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 209 
 
 "Reely," another voice accepted it. " 'E's a reservist, 
 isn't he?" 
 
 " 'E was right through the old South African War, 'e was," 
 said the first speaker. 
 
 "Oh, then 'e'll come back alright; never fear, " said the other. 
 
 Hugh began to wonder whether there was any use his 
 waiting. The great clock in the tower boomed out ding, 
 dong, ding, dong. Half-past four. He had been there more 
 than half-an-hour already, and began to feel that he might 
 remain there for ever, so strangely did the sense of form- 
 ing part of the vast expectant concourse affect him. They 
 just stood there, all the people, waiting; they had given up 
 their individual thoughts and feelings and were assimilated 
 to one blind, dumb organism, dull, incapable of initiation, 
 infinitely capable of suggestion or response. They were si- 
 lent because they were vaguely unhappy. Some one a good 
 way behind struck up a song unfamiliar to Hugh; appar- 
 ently an Irish song. One or two voices joined in, but not 
 many. Clearly the general sense of the crowd was opposed 
 to demonstration, and the song died away. Vague discon- 
 nected ideas floated across Hugh's mind. He suddenly re- 
 membered a speech at some great congress, a poor law, he 
 thought, at which a speaker had illustrated the change that 
 had come over public thought in the last thirty years, by 
 reminding his audience that the title of one of Herbert Spen- 
 cer's books was The Man Versus the State a title, he said, 
 absurd in the light of modern ideas. Hugh wondered now. 
 It was absurd, in the sense that the man was powerless 
 against the State, that his resistance was nugatory in effect; 
 but was it absurd in the sense that there was always iden- 
 tity of interest? He felt acutely the powerlessness of 
 men against the organised power possessed by their gov- 
 ernment. These people were waiting for orders; that 
 was all. Could they resist them, whatever they might 
 be? Suppose that Grey declared that England was going 
 to be neutral, would they not go home shouting for peace? 
 Or if he said we were going to war, would they shout 
 with any more or less conviction? They were not ex-
 
 210 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 cited; they were not afraid; they were not conscious 
 of outraged nationality; they seemed to him mainly blank, 
 puzzled, apprehensive. Surely the crowds in Vienna de- 
 scribed so eloquently as clamouring for vengeance against 
 Serbia, or the masses in Russia who sang "Bohze Tsara 
 Khranie," under the windows of the British Embassy, 
 were more animated than this crowd? If they were not, 
 the whole thing became more outrageous, more outrageously 
 foolish, than he had seen it yet. 
 
 "Do you suppose Grey's sat down yet?" he asked Drew, 
 who was still standing by him. 
 
 "Never speaks long, Grey; yes, I expect so. ... Yes, 
 look, there are people coming out. . . . We shall have papers 
 in a minute." 
 
 Even as he spoke there was a movement in the crowd and 
 the cries of paper-boys rent the air as they endeavoured 
 to make their way among the people who obstructed 
 them in their eagerness to get hold of news. It was 
 amazing, to see the boys with their heavy bags slung 
 round their necks, threading in and out, shouting as they 
 came and penetrating the solid mass as if by magic. Hugh 
 managed to secure a handful which he distributed among 
 the people on his island. 
 
 "That's all right." Drew spoke in a tone of relief 
 and satisfaction. "We're going to play the game after all. 
 I hoped Grey had something up his sleeve. We're in it all 
 right." 
 
 "He hasn't even mentioned Belgium," said Hugh, his head 
 inside his paper. 
 
 "No. He's coming on to that, I expect. . . ." 
 
 Hugh hardly heard him; his eyes were glued to the blurred 
 letters on the damp sheet before him. He read very slowly, 
 taking in every word; engraving it on his retentive mind. 
 Leaning back against the standard of the lamp he was more 
 or less steady and could hold his position while the people 
 round him moved; the buzz and murmur of their voices and 
 the rustling of the sheets in their hands could not disturb 
 him. He was so absorbed that he did not even notice
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 211 
 
 that Drew had moved on or that a reverse movement had 
 begun to take place in the crowd as people in small groups, 
 twos and threes, pressed their way through from the House 
 of Commons. 
 
 The report stopped in the middle of the speech. Hugh 
 looked up murmuring to himself the last phrase "But how 
 far that friendship entails obligation it has been a friend- 
 ship between the nations and ratified by the nations how 
 far that entails an obligation, let every man look into his 
 own heart and his own feelings and construe the extent of his 
 obligation for himself." 
 
 "Wonderful," he said to himself in sheer admiration. 
 As he raised his eyes he saw coming towards him on a path- 
 way that seemed to have quite suddenly opened in the crowd 
 a man whom he did not at first recognise. It was Sir Anthony 
 Toller, but Sir Anthony remarkably transfigured. He wore 
 no hat; behind him a dark cloak spread wide as he came on, 
 his white hair standing out like an aureole and his pale eyes 
 shining as if filled with a light of prophecy. As he 
 made his way through the crowd he glanced from side 
 to side with an expression oddly compounded. It had 
 something of the exaltation of the High Priest, some- 
 thing too of his keen eye for a fair victim for the sac- 
 rifice. Or so it seemed to Hugh's somewhat jaundiced 
 vision. Behind Sir Anthony followed Nigel Strode. He 
 looked quite as usual and picked his way neatly through 
 the crowd, with a smile for any one who gave him way; 
 nor was he apparently incommoded by the great bundle 
 of papers under his arm nor by the wide felt hat 
 not his own, his own was on his head, but the pro- 
 fessor's in his hand. Hugh looked and felt he could 
 not face them. Nigel's quick eyes had probably dis- 
 covered him, though Sir Anthony certainly had not; 
 but he did not care. He turned; reached the other 
 side of the standard and made his way with more celer- 
 ity than he had thought possible into the shelter of 
 the District Railway station, intending there to wait for the 
 complete text of the speech.
 
 212 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Standing by the booking office under the clock he 
 returned to the paper he had secured, and read it carefully 
 through once more. What he read convinced him that 
 to wait for a full text was really unnecessary; unneces- 
 sary at least so far as knowing where one stood was 
 concerned. That was perfectly clear. England was going 
 in. The sanction of the House of Commons was a for- 
 mality; the question of Belgium came after the fact. 
 If France were in, we were in; and France was in. That was 
 quite settled. Efforts to secure neutrality were wasted 
 words; for they were all based on the belief that the 
 commitment to France did not exist which Grey now 
 felt an obligation of honour. Of course, it was an obligation 
 of honour. 
 
 Hugh folded up his paper and leaned back, his hands 
 in his pockets. Personally he was not surprised nor even 
 very angry. It all fitted in with his general view. But as 
 he looked out at the helpless crowd, still surging to and fro 
 in dreary expectation, men and women with no knowledge, 
 no views, no ideas, no power of resistance, he felt on the heels 
 of his contempt for them a poignancy of pity that made 
 him for an instant ready to curse Grey and the Liberal 
 Government, even as Aurelia would curse them. For 
 it was these people who stood there waiting who would 
 have to pay the price; their lives, the lives of those 
 dear to them, would be called for; they had little enough, 
 but all that they had they would have to sacrifice. War was 
 evil, unutterable, unmitigated evil; but as there flashed across 
 his mind the face of Sir Anthony Toller, Hugh realised that 
 the thinking portion of his countrymen might refuse to accept 
 it as such; they might even say evil, be thou my good. 
 A grim smile crossed his face as he wondered how they would 
 do it. 
 
 As he at last travelled westward with the full text of 
 the speech in his pocket he was still busy with this 
 question. He almost wished he had stayed to talk to 
 Nigel, in order that he might discover; but a moment 
 later he was glad he had not. That would come in due
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 213 
 
 course; Aurelia need not have it all at once. The evil 
 would be enough for her to bear; let her wait as long as 
 she might for the deeper disillusionment of finding it was 
 admitted as evil only by herself and a handful of cranks. 
 Outside High Street station a crowd was collected. Evi- 
 dently some kind of scuffle had been going on; some 
 one had outraged the feelings of the respectable passers- 
 by. The ground was covered with leaflets, most of them 
 trampled, dust-covered and torn; but one or two suffi- 
 ciently clean for Hugh to recognise them as the hand- 
 bills of the Neutrality Committee. As he made his way 
 up Church Street he overtook a girl he knew by sight, 
 though not by name, pale and dishevelled, with a bundle 
 of papers under her arm; obviously she was the heroine of 
 the scuffle. He took off his hat to her and asked to 
 be allowed to carry the pamphlets. The girl sighed as 
 he relieved her of her burden and tried to straighten her hat 
 and re-adjust her hair. 
 
 "Funny," she said. "In the East End this morning the 
 people were so nice and reasonable; took lots of the 
 papers. And my postman this morning read the one I 
 gave him and said he agreed with every word. ... It 
 was a woman who began the row down here. She came 
 back with the bill and threw it in my face; said I was a 
 traitor and a German spy! Then the others set on me 
 and tore up all the papers they could, men who looked 
 like gentlemen, some of them. ... A policeman saved 
 me." 
 
 "It's no good now, I'm afraid," he said. 
 
 The girl looked up at him, her eyes round. They had 
 passed the barracks unnoticed, but from behind them came 
 a noise of singing. 
 
 "Do you mean we're really going in?" Her flushed cheeks 
 grew a perceptible shade redder; and a little wail broke from 
 her. Hugh said nothing. They walked on over the hill in 
 silence. At the Tube station he restored the parcel. The 
 girl held out her hand. 
 
 "Thank you so much. I was feeling a worm." She looked
 
 214 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 up at him shyly, and gave a little gulp. "I'm engaged to a 
 man in the Territorials," she said. 
 
 Hugh gripped her hand hard. 
 
 "Good luck to you both," he said, as he turned to retrace 
 his steps.
 
 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 
 
 AT Cambridge the week-end appeared preternaturally 
 long. Week-ends at the Tollers, filled with incessant, 
 disjointed and rather strained talk, were always long. 
 Courageous guests were apt to depart by Sunday trains, 
 timid ones to take refuge in evening chapel. But no week- 
 end ever, anywhere, had been quite as long as this. 
 None had ever had this nightmare quality. People kept 
 coming and going. Every one in Cambridge appar- 
 ently wanted to talk to Sir Anthony, to know what he 
 thought. Yet, though the table at meals was always 
 crowded, and in the garden where they sat at other times 
 every chair was occupied, the talkers lost their human 
 identity, faded away to meaningless voices, perpetually 
 asking one another questions to which there was no answer, 
 hiding under the words of hope a nameless apprehension. 
 A hunger for news obsessed them, one and all. Tele- 
 grams kept coming all day. Newspapers poured into the 
 house. And all the time darkness held them. A thick cloud 
 of smoke and horror had descended, and in it the nor- 
 mal world had disappeared. War was only a word as 
 yet, for all its incessant reverberation; but it was a 
 word that filled the ears to the exclusion of all other sounds. 
 Other people came and went, but all the time talk went 
 on between Sir Anthony himself, Nigel Strode, a young jour- 
 nalist also staying in the house, and Godfrey Toller, 
 who had suddenly appeared, whence no one troubled to 
 inquire. Lady Toller wandered in and out of the garden 
 where they sat under the apple tree, dropping scarves 
 
 114
 
 216 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 and veils as she went, and bringing back things to eat 
 or drink. Myrtle was invisible. Daphne said very little. 
 She felt oppressed by ignorance, caught up in some 
 monstrous thing she did not understand. It was coming 
 nearer, nearer, at every moment, but what was it? what did 
 it all mean? It amazed her, sometimes, that the others 
 could talk at all. Her own mind had ceased to work. 
 Since Thursday everything had been incredible, pre- 
 posterous, appalling. It was appalling to think that on 
 that day she had heard that Gervase O'Connor, with 
 whom she had been laughing and talking, whose hand 
 she had held in the common civility of leave-taking less than 
 a week before, was dead. He was dead. He had killed 
 himself. And already his death seemed nothing. None 
 of these people thought of him. Daphne looked at Nigel 
 and said to herself, "If it had been he!" The thought 
 was unbearable. It crossed her mind only to be driven 
 away before it had taken on form. If it had been Nigel, 
 all this would have been nothing to her. War the 
 thought of it was almost happiness, in comparison with 
 that blackness. To feel so might be selfish; but there 
 was no use in pretending it was not so. Daphne faced 
 it; just as she faced the further reflection that came to 
 her as she thought of Myrtle. She was not sorry for 
 Myrtle, white, wan and pathetic as she looked as she sat 
 at table, toying with her food; because she did not believe 
 in her. With the curious intimacy, distinct from af- 
 fection, that college comradeship can breed, she knew 
 Myrtle, and she knew that, conscious or unconscious, 
 her attitude about Gervase was a pose. It was a pose 
 that seemed to Daphne the more horrible that it dishon- 
 oured and disfigured one who had died in dreadful pain. 
 She was glad Myrtle stayed in her own room, she could 
 not have spoken to her. She did not want to talk about 
 it, even to Nigel; she could not have explained how, 
 knowing Gervase so little, she was yet quite sure; but 
 her certainty was complete. It distressed her in itself, 
 and because it forced her into an attitude of mind critical
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 217 
 
 of the Tollers that she did not desire, least of all at such a 
 time. 
 
 Criticism did not seem the right note when Lady Toller 
 murmured gently that the one good that might come out 
 of these dark days was that they would all be drawn together. 
 Drawing together was not what any one associated with the 
 Tollers. Certainly not with Sir Anthony. He had always 
 stood, not least to himself, for his differences; surely he stood 
 so now. Daphne had looked up to him with a kind of rev- 
 erence, as that rare being, an eminent, indeed a super-eminent 
 scientist, who was also a Liberal; who believed in progress 
 and saw the spiritual behind the material; who had 
 never become narrowed by his special studies or cabined, 
 cribbed and confined in his thinking by age or by suc- 
 cess. That official Cambridge distrusted him, only made 
 him the more splendid figure. The young men sat at 
 his feet and called him Master; and sat not snugly, 
 but on the windy mountain tops. He was still on the 
 mountain top as he denounced war and Imperialistic 
 adventure, and walked up and down the garden de- 
 claring that no Liberal Government could ever involve 
 this country in a Continental quarrel. He turned angrily 
 on his son when Godfrey said there had never been 
 a war in his time and he wanted to see one, rating 
 him in terms which might have been those of Mrs. Leonard. 
 
 Then on Sunday came the report that German troops had 
 entered Luxemburg. 
 
 "It's all up with France if they have!" cried Sir Anthony 
 in great agitation. "I'm afraid we shall have to go in. . . . We 
 can't let them walk over France: we can't have 1870 over again." 
 
 Nigel was still calm. 
 
 "Oh, the French will be all right," he said. "Their ar- 
 tillery's the best in Europe, so Sir Charles Dilke said, and 
 artillery's the thing in modern war." 
 
 Sir Anthony walked up and down, his head on his chest, 
 his white hair rumpled. 
 
 "What about the Entente, though? " cried Godfrey. "We're 
 bound to go in now?"
 
 218 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "No, no," said his father. "The Entente doesn't bind 
 us. Grey always said it didn't. It will break up the Gov- 
 ernment if they try to drag us in." Again he paced in silent, 
 fierce abstraction. Godfrey leaned far back in his deck-chair 
 and contemplated his father with an irreverent smile. Sud- 
 denly Sir Anthony stopped dead. 
 
 "I don't know what you feel about it, Strode, but I don't 
 see how I can let my signature to that letter stand. We ought 
 to leave Grey quite free. After all, I'm not so clear as I was 
 that if this appalling business is going on we really can stand 
 out. ... Of course I hope we shall. But we ought to leave 
 Grey free. There are things we don't know. I feel entire 
 confidence in Grey." 
 
 "That's right, dad," cried Godfrey, sitting up. "Don't 
 embarrass the Government." 
 
 Sir Anthony turned on his heel and looked hard at his 
 son. Godfrey laughed. 
 
 "Oh, don't sit on the high horse, governor," he cried, 
 not a whit abashed. "I hope we'll go in. It'll be jolly un- 
 sporting if we don't. . . . And once they're all at it, we're 
 bound to take a hand sooner or later." 
 
 From this moment Godfrey established a kind of 
 ascendancy. He even did most of the talking. He at 
 least was perfectly clear as to what he wanted clearer than 
 any of the others. Gradually they talked less and less 
 of peace and neutrality; more and more of honour, and 
 of honour's implication, intervention. But as they talked 
 they seemed always to be waiting for something from 
 outside which was going to decide what they thought. 
 It was appalling, but it was there. They sat and watched 
 it coming as they might have sat and watched a thunder- 
 storm approach. At first it is no more than a darkening 
 and thickening of the air; then a still yellow coldness that 
 spreads over everything like a clammy hand; then a pause, 
 and then the roar and anger of the elements. 
 
 So Sunday passed in the grip of the slowly turning screw 
 of fatality. 
 
 On Monday the moral atmosphere was tenser, but
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 219 
 
 somehow clearer. There was a sense of minds made up. At 
 breakfast Sir Anthony was obviously excited. His eyes 
 were large and bright; his hair seemed to stand out, 
 electric; he talked incessantly in a high shrill voice, with 
 an accent of exaltation and purpose. Godfrey, who had 
 managed to get down in time, was in high favour. Nigel 
 seemed to hang on what Sir Anthony said and to share his 
 mood. Daphne could only look on. Suddenly to her em- 
 barrassment her host turned to her and said 
 
 "What line will your mother take now, Miss Leonard? 
 She's a great pacifist, I know." 
 
 "Mother?" Daphne looked up vaguely. "Oh, I don't 
 know." It seemed ages since she had seen her mother, or 
 talked with her. Sir Anthony would think her very stupid, 
 but she had no answer to give. He, however, hardly seemed 
 to notice her difficulty; he replied, in effect, to his own ques- 
 tion. 
 
 "I know she's been trying to work up the International 
 Socialists to take a line. Poor dears, as if they could! I sup- 
 pose she's been working at that for some time. It's an age 
 since I saw her. . . . However, she's sure to see now that 
 there's no alternative. . . . No alternative at all. Unless 
 they clear out of Belgium we're bound in honour. ..." He 
 looked at Daphne. 
 
 "Oh, yes," she murmured. "Mother will see that. But it 
 will hurt her our going to war. War at all." 
 
 "Yes, yes," said Sir Anthony. "It is horrible hor- 
 rible. We all hate it. But there are things worse than 
 war." 
 
 Daphne wondered what they were, but felt too much 
 ashamed of her own ignorance to ask. 
 
 She accepted Nigel's wish that she should remain another 
 night in Cambridge instead of coming up to town with 
 him and Sir Anthony, simply because it was his wish. 
 He had reasons that were good enough he wanted her to 
 see his sister, who was preoccupied all Monday with 
 a treat for the children of the parish, and who had 
 therefore asked her to lunch on Tuesday; and there was no
 
 220 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 use in her coming up on Monday since her chance of 
 getting into the Ladies' Gallery was nil, and that being 
 so, she might just as well wait for the papers. These 
 reasons were sufficient. It was true she could not hear 
 Grey, and natural that Nigel should want her to meet 
 Juliet, though he did not seem disposed to make much 
 effort to see Juliet himself. But they were not, for Daphne, 
 the real reasons. She stayed, simply and solely, be- 
 cause although she wanted, passionately, to be in Lon- 
 don, she saw that he wanted her to stay; or rather, 
 more precisely, he wanted to go without her. It did 
 not occur to her to criticise this desire of his, criticism of 
 Nigel was for her an impossible thing; but she saw it. 
 She wanted intensely to be with him, to rest on his judg- 
 ment, to escape through him from the sense of smallness, 
 loneliness and insufficiency that this vast, overarching, 
 uncomprehended cloud produced. She had never needed 
 him more. But he seemed to evade this need of hers. 
 After all, he was right. He must see things, judge them, 
 decide; and to do that quite calmly and justly, he ought no 
 doubt to be alone. She was learning that love did not 
 free one from responsibility. She had no right to cast 
 hers upon Nigel. She saw that she was doing that, 
 that she waited for his judgment; and she saw that, 
 obscurely, he felt the burden. It was strange that she had 
 this desire. Hitherto she had gone through life deciding 
 such issues as came before her very simply for herself; 
 feeling her own judgment in the main sufficient; prepared 
 to defend it, when slowly reached she was, she thought, 
 phenomenally slow against other views; to go on hold- 
 ing it whatever other people thought. Suddenly, however, 
 the most vital of all decisions had been made for her. She 
 had not worked out her views about Nigel: she had been 
 submerged, overwhelmed, swept off her feet by something 
 that had come to her. She was in love with him, irre- 
 trievably, at once and for ever, and the steps in the process 
 were obliterated beyond recovery. She could not trace 
 them. She might look back over the days when she had
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 not known she loved him, but they were vague blurred; 
 they gave her nothing out of which to build. And with this 
 annihilation of her normal judgment had come a kind of 
 helplessness. She could not argue out her love for Nigel or 
 explain its implications to herself, but one of them now 
 seemed to be that it was more important to her to know what, 
 upon this huge issue that had overwhelmed all else, 
 he thought, than to know what she thought herself. The 
 need of knowing what he thought indeed prevented her 
 from thinking herself; she tried to argue it all out with 
 his mind, and, well as she thought she knew it, lost her 
 way. The argument depended on so many facts she did 
 not know. 
 
 During the week-end he had been reticent, she had 
 felt him withdrawing. When she asked him what he 
 thought was going to happen, he only shrugged his shoul- 
 ders. This sense of his withdrawal troubled her, al- 
 though she found it easy to justify. No one could know 
 in advance what was going to happen; no one, and 
 least of all a responsible journalist, would dare to say. Yet, 
 deep down, Daphne felt it, and it made her almost glad that 
 Nigel should go up to town without her. It was better that 
 he should be gone altogether than that he should be there 
 and yet not there for her. 
 
 So Monday dragged by. Tuesday's papers brought 
 the report of Grey's speech; but on Tuesday morning 
 Daphne found that Lady Toller had innumerable little 
 things to do in which she could help her. She put the 
 speech aside to be read properly in the solitude of the 
 train, and devoted the time before she had to go out 
 to Melbury to writing notes and arranging flowers, and 
 incidentally hearing all about the family from Lady 
 Toller. It was an odd and new angle from which to see 
 them, and Daphne found herself genuinely interested, 
 though a good deal distressed. They all seemed so un- 
 satisfactory, and Lady Toller admired them all so blindly. 
 She talked mainly about Godfrey; whereas Daphne would 
 rather have heard about Herbert, the eldest, whose ex-
 
 222 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 istence she had never realised before. Herbert was a 
 soldier, out in India. It seemed a strange career for a 
 Toller to have chosen; a reversion to the Herbert type 
 (Lady Toller had been a Herbert) and none the more 
 welcome on that account. Godfrey, on the other hand, 
 had chosen nothing, or rather he had chosen to do nothing, 
 for according to his mother there was nothing he could not 
 achieve if he did choose. He and Evangeline were her 
 favourites. 
 
 If Lady Toller's world struck Daphne as strange, that 
 of Juliet Strode appeared even more so. Nigel had said so 
 little about his sister that she had expected her to be 
 uninteresting; but she found that after seeing her, she 
 wondered about her. Juliet was not uninteresting, but 
 she did not seem to matter. It was difficult to realise that 
 she had a life of her own. To realise that in general 
 was not easy; to take in the fact that every single indi- 
 vidual in the world existed for himself, not as background 
 but as centre; with Juliet Strode it was especially hard. 
 She seemed consciously secondary. She did not come 
 before Daphne vividly even as the sister of Nigel. She 
 was not at all like Nigel, less like him than Stephen was, 
 though Juliet was nice, while Stephen was simply, for 
 Daphne, a clergyman, with all that implied. And yet 
 Stephen was like Nigel, in funny, teasing little ways. 
 Daphne had nothing to say to Juliet, but she felt sorry for 
 her. Juliet had missed everything. She had even, though 
 his sister, missed Nigel. She lived with Stephen and 
 hardly ever saw Nigel. She knew nothing of his life, 
 shared none of his ideas. In comparison with her Daphne 
 felt herself curiously hard and modern; a greedy snatcher 
 of good things for herself. Juliet's goodness, her un- 
 selfishness, her gentleness were a cushion through which 
 she could not cut. She could not even talk to Juliet 
 about Nigel. It seemed selfish to have him and to be 
 happy, when Juliet had nothing. Dimly she felt that 
 Juliet would have liked to be told "all about it"; to 
 hear how Nigel had "proposed" and what clothes she was
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 223 
 
 going to be married in. This, however, only embarrassed 
 Daphne and caused her to present a yet more unresponsive 
 surface. She could never talk of these things easily. 
 Least of all now, when even to think of them seemed 
 almost wrong. 
 
 Juliet's view of the prospect of war was that whatever 
 happened was the will of God. Daphne found it impossible 
 to discuss on these lines. She finally came away, feel- 
 ing baffled and inefficient. Baffled and inefficient she 
 still felt as she leaned back in her seat in the train that was, 
 at last, slowly carrying her back to London, and tried to 
 realise from the newspapers what really had happened and 
 what was going to happen and why. It all seemed settled, 
 but Daphne was as far as ever from understanding. She 
 seemed to have fallen into a whirlpool, entirely lost her hold 
 on things. The world in which war happened did not seem 
 the real world at all. Yet after Grey's speech there was no 
 room for doubt. It was dreadful; but of course England 
 was bound, as he said, bound to France and bound to Bel- 
 gium. A lump rose in her throat as she thought of Belgium 
 and its heroic people. There were things that were 
 worse than suffering and death, even the suffering and death 
 of innocent people. 
 
 She dropped the paper and gazed out of the window, over 
 the flat fields, so ironically peaceful beneath the wide calm 
 sky: field after field of pale corn, shot through with scarlet 
 poppies. The land seemed steeped in a profound quiet. The 
 air was still, there were hardly any clouds. Over everything 
 silence brooded, the happy silence of the day's work done. 
 Along a road between low green hedges she saw a young labour- 
 ing man, leading a big dappled cart-horse. The man's hand 
 rested on the horse's neck, and the beast's head rubbed itself 
 lovingly against him. The soft tones of the labourer's worn 
 corduroys blended into the landscape as the horse's coat did. 
 She saw them only for an instant, before they were lost amidst 
 the yellow of the corn; but her mind followed them home to 
 where the man's wife and child were waiting now and watching 
 for his coming in to the evening meal. Beauty, tranquil,
 
 224 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 effortless, serene, breathed over the whole scene. Suddenly 
 its very calm, its very happiness hurt. Yes, that was England, 
 its very core and essence. It was what a man could die for, 
 but how much more what called on him to live. Tears filled 
 Daphne's eyes as she thought of the hundreds of thousands of 
 men in Europe, leaving just such homes and fields, to go out, 
 filled with love for them and hatred for their brothers; and of 
 Englishmen, too, perhaps even now saying good-bye, going off, 
 like those others, to kill and to be killed; and of fields like these, 
 all trampled underfoot and stained with blood, under the same 
 tranquil sky. Daphne pressed her hands together. That was 
 not how one ought to think of it. She picked up the paper 
 lying beside her and tried to read and realise what she read ; tried 
 to take in, as she knew that people with heads Nigel, her 
 mother, Hugh would be taking in, the irresistible reasons 
 which drove all that rightly into the background. She remem- 
 bered Grey as she had once heard him, and the immense ad- 
 miration and confidence with which he had filled her. But 
 the words that came back to her mind from that occasion were 
 his statement that the race of armaments, if it went on, would 
 in the long run break down civilisation. If he felt that and 
 sincere conviction had spoken in his deep and measured utter- 
 ance only agony could have wrung from him the conviction 
 that now war was inevitable. His speech was wonderful ab- 
 solutely convincing. She felt no doubt that he was right; only 
 a glow of pride in the man who could see the right when it was 
 so horribly painful, when it spelt the failure of everything, and 
 go on, over the burning ploughshares, not crying out, simply 
 because he felt it was his duty. But she found she could not 
 read the paper. Her head would not work. The thing had 
 come and she could only sit absolutely stunned, incapable of 
 thinking and taking it in. The world ought to look different, 
 but it did not. It looked just the same, and the extent to which 
 it looked the same made it impossible not to believe, deep down, 
 that all this nightmare of the newspapers was unreal. She 
 tried again, hard, to follow the argument Sir Anthony had ad- 
 umbrated when he said that there were things worse than war. 
 Once, it now seemed long ago, she could, she felt sure, have
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 225 
 
 said what they were: it was the realisation of those things that 
 made great men, great nations; that was what history was 
 about. But now, somehow, they had vanished. Silly tears 
 ran down her cheeks. She could only see the young labourer 
 with the horse, see him going away from his home, going out 
 to be killed; and his wife waiting and crying. Everywhere 
 wives waiting and crying, and little children. But that was 
 not, could not be, all there was to see. 
 
 At Bishops Stortford the platform was lined with men in 
 khaki fair-haired, pink-cheeked young men they all looked, 
 smart, erect, smiling. They shouldered their heavy sacks as the 
 train drew up, and somehow all disappeared into it. Daphne 
 almost wished they had got into her carriage; but Lady Toller 
 had insisted on her going first-class, because it was so late, 
 after seven, and she continued to be alone. Slowly the summer 
 dusk gathered, gradually shrouding the landscape in a thicken- 
 ing mist. By the time they had begun to enter the London 
 fringe it was quite dark. Bishopsgate Street was black and 
 mysterious, but Liverpool Street brilliant with all its 
 lamps. 
 
 The first person she saw was Nigel, standing under one of 
 the great lights. He was still in the grey suit and straw hat he 
 had worn when he left Cambridge, and it gave Daphne a stab 
 of relief to see him so. She might feel that all the world was 
 changed, but she did not want that to apply to Nigel. 
 
 "Oh, Nigel, " she cried as soon as, descending from the train, 
 he saw her, "I am so glad to see you. ..." 
 
 Nigel smiled down at her as they began to move slowly out 
 of the station, she with her hand round his arm and holding fast 
 on to it. 
 
 "Why?" he murmured. "Did you think I might have 
 disappeared?" 
 
 "Yes. Don't you sometimes feel that about me? " 
 
 "That you may have disappeared? Not really; I have 
 an extraordinarily strong conviction of your existence, you 
 see . . . " he smiled down at her. 
 
 Daphne pondered. Yes, Nigel again was beyond her: his 
 faith even was more complete than hers. She sighed.
 
 226 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "I'm afraid," she said, "I do always have the most 
 awful fear that you may have disappeared when I don't see 
 you. " 
 
 "Even for so short a time? Though it does not seem short, 
 I admit. ... It seems incredible that only yesterday morning 
 Sir Anthony and I sat in the train and discussed it all quite 
 calmly. ..." 
 
 Daphne held on tighter to his arm, for their progress had been 
 arrested and they had to stand back and wait. The soldiers 
 were being marshalled, preparatory to marching out ; and now, as 
 the sharp word of command rang out, after marking time for 
 a minute, they began to pass. The tramp of their feet shook 
 the platform.. Daphne felt Nigel draw himself up as they 
 passed. She saw his eyes shine and felt his arm tremble. Tears 
 rose to her own eyes as she watched, and for a moment blurred 
 her sight completely. Still they passed on, row after row, their 
 heavy boots and spurs jangling on the stone. Nigel pressed 
 her hand hard. Daphne could not say anything. She only 
 looked at him. 
 
 "Yes," he said, when the last line had passed them and the 
 crowd of waiting people began to close in behind the young 
 officer who brought up the rear, "England's all right. " 
 
 They passed out of the station into the street, crowded with 
 jostling people, full of hurrying traffic. On the pavement as 
 they emerged lay posters of the evening papers, and a row of 
 boys held damp copies, snatched from them by the people as 
 they streamed by. On each poster yellow, green, white, 
 pink were the same words filling the space with all the empha- 
 sis of the three repeated lines of heavy leaded capitals "Eng- 
 land's Ultimatum to Germany. " Daphne stared at them, the 
 letters dancing before her eyes. The mist cleared, but it was 
 no dream. On each the same "England's Ultimatum to 
 Germany." 
 
 Nigel had hailed a taxi ; but Daphne stood staring, unaware 
 that he was waiting for her with the door held open. The 
 words suddenly made clear to her how little before she had real- 
 ised. All the time, stunned as she was, unbelief had lived; she 
 had secretly hoped. Even the soldiers in the station had not
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 227 
 
 killed her hope. But there it stared at her, monstrous, real, the 
 truth. 
 
 In the taxi Nigel talked, but Daphne hardly took in what 
 he said. She heard, but the words said nothing. For the first 
 time in all her experience she was with Nigel and hardly con- 
 scious of him. They emerged from the Strand into the open 
 space of Charing Cross, and it was solid with people: people, 
 packed in, filled the square, sat on the lions and on the base of 
 the column. Up St. Martin's Lane, Pall Mall and Northumber- 
 land Avenue it stretched, the unbroken mass, blocking the way. 
 Hundreds and thousands of men and women : a sea of straw hats : 
 waiting. To and fro it swayed, but the movement was on top 
 of, did not break up, the solid mass. Nigel leaned forward, 
 his eyes bright; but Daphne felt suddenly afraid though the 
 crowd was silent its silence was more alarming than noise. 
 The taxi stopped opposite the station. 
 
 "We might as well get out here," Nigel said. "We can 
 get across to the Ship on foot. We'll have something to eat 
 there. You must be very hungry. " 
 
 Daphne looked round her while he paid the man. She was 
 not hungry; food seemed absurd. But she was frightened and, 
 suddenly, she thought of her mother and wanted to be at home. 
 She began to murmur something of this, but Nigel did not hear 
 her. 
 
 "Hang on to my arm, tight," he said. "We'll get across 
 in time. It's rather thrilling, a big crowd like this, don't you 
 think? You'll never see such a sight again. It's a great thing 
 to have seen it. " He looked about him, his head a little thrown 
 back. Daphne said nothing, but held his arm as she was told. 
 She felt helpless, helplessly dumb: not thrilled, only afraid. 
 Nigel, whose height gave him an advantage in enabling him to 
 see, was clever in pushing his way, catching sight of the least 
 opening, going with the general movement. Daphne clung to 
 him. She looked at the people whom they jostled as they made 
 their way through, and wondered what they were like, what they 
 were feeling; shrinking into herself as young men made loud 
 remarks, or laughed at jokes which she heard but did not under- 
 stand. Most of the people seemed to be silent. On the back
 
 228 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 of one of the lions a girl was standing, wrapped in a Union Jack 
 and with a cap of Liberty on her head. She was surrounded 
 by a group of young men and girls all shouting and laughing, 
 and every now and then she burst into song music-hall patter 
 song, varied by the "British Grenadiers" the others joining in 
 the chorus. But their noise and hilarity was in marked contrast 
 to the apathetic gloom of the mass of the people. They looked 
 as if they had always stood there and would always go on stand- 
 ing there. 
 
 "Nigel, what are they all waiting for?" she asked as they 
 paused on an island. 
 
 "To hear the reply to our ultimatum, I suppose: the 
 declaration of war. " 
 
 "War with Germany?" 
 
 Nigel nodded. Daphne found herself staring into the faces 
 of two sombre looking young men, held up like themselves on 
 the island. Something in their eyes struck her as more miser- 
 ably helpless than any she had yet met, and she looked at them 
 more carefully. They were about the same height ; small, with 
 very sleek hair, one dark, the other light; little bristling mous- 
 taches and neat suits cut rather low in front. They looked like 
 waiters; perhaps they were Germans. Of course they were 
 Germans; she realised it in a moment. Germans in the midst 
 of that huge crowd waiting to know whether England was going 
 to war with Germany. She felt sorry for them, and would have 
 spoken had shebeen able to think of anything to say. But noth- 
 ing came. In another minute Nigel had seen his opportunity; 
 they were struggling across Whitehall, really struggling, for the 
 crowd wasmoving down to Westminster and they had to cut across 
 it. Buffeted and bruised in flesh as well as spirit they landed 
 on the pavement. Daphne, with her hat all over one eye, feel- 
 ing irritated and degraded, found to her surprise that Nigel ap- 
 peared exhilarated. He evidently did find a crowd "thrilling" 
 as he had said. 
 
 It was after nine o'clock and the "Ship" empty and quiet, 
 an emptiness and a quiet for which Daphne was thankful. She 
 was glad to lean back, her face away from the window, and 
 would have been still more glad if there had not come in at it
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 229 
 
 the incessant roar of the street below, which seemed now to 
 grow louder and more menacing every moment. She wanted 
 an interval of quiet, and she wanted, above all, the sense of 
 being with Nigel again. She had been with him for the last 
 forty minutes, but under conditions that denied all reality to 
 their companionship; she wanted the sense of that renewed. 
 The last few days had so broken in upon it. She did not know 
 where Nigel was, and even less where she was herself. She 
 wanted him to tell her where she was as only he could do. 
 
 Nigel was recalled from the window, out of which he had 
 been staring, by the waiter; after ordering something to eat 
 that could come quickly, he leaned back in his chair. His 
 cheeks, Daphne saw, were flushed; his eyes, bright with excite- 
 ment, wandered away from her over the room. She held out her 
 hand with the intention of laying it over his, to call his attention 
 and make him speak to her; but the motion was arrested in the 
 act, for he had half risen to his feet to speak to some one who 
 had just come in. It was Ned Coventry; but his blond, 
 inexpressive face was so worn and haggard that Daphne 
 hardly recognized him, even when he came right up to their 
 table. 
 
 "You're the very man!" cried Nigel. "You can tell us 
 everything. Sit down here!" 
 
 Coventry dropped wearily into the chair beside Strode. 
 
 "What do you want to know?" he asked, dropping his 
 hat on an adjoining table and passing a hand over a damp 
 brow. 
 
 "Why the answer to our ultimatum." 
 
 Coventry shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "Answer? What answer could there be? Goschen asked 
 for his passports at seven this evening. . . . They're howling 
 round the Embassy in Berlin now, I expect. " 
 
 There was a short silence. The waiter brought food and 
 Nigel helped it. 
 
 "Champagne," said Coventry, hardly scanning the wine 
 list. "I'm half dead," he explained to Daphne. "I haven't 
 been to bed for three nights. I don't know when Grey last 
 slept. He can sleep now. "
 
 230 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "Yes," cried Nigel with enthusiasm. "He has been 
 splendid." Coventry seemed too weary to respond. 
 
 The champagne was brought. Nigel, filling glasses, raised 
 his, crying with a smile, " Der Tag. " 
 
 Coventry gave a faint smile as he clinked his glass against 
 the other's. Daphne looked at them: they both seemed unreal, 
 the whole scene part of a dream. A silence followed, in which 
 they ate. Food evidently revived the weary civil servant, for 
 he said, in an almost envious tone 
 
 "You seem in great form, Strode. I suppose all this appeals 
 to you as a journalist?" 
 
 Daphne gave an involuntary shudder. 
 
 "Journalist? Oh, no, it'll ruin us ... I hope I feel it as 
 a man. After all these years of unreality and sham a big thing 
 like this gives one the sense of having escaped out of a tunnel 
 into the air. " He waved his hand to indicate the people. "All 
 this tension, the crowds of people everywhere all feeling and 
 thinking the same, the silent intensity of it I have never felt 
 England before. I was in the House yesterday with Anthony 
 Toller we heard Grey. It was the most wonderful ex- 
 perience. I never felt anything like it. I was absolutely 
 carried away. Grey could have made us do whatever he 
 wanted. " 
 
 "Yes," said Coventry, without expression. Nigel looked 
 at him. 
 
 "Oh, I suppose you people are blase, you get too near the 
 thing to feel it. " Coventry rubbed his brow. 
 
 "You'll know how we feel in a couple of days, when the 
 dispatches come out. ... I can assure you the last week has 
 been one continuous nightmare." Nigel nodded. 
 
 "Yes. But we've waked up now. " 
 
 A burst of shouting suddenly rent the air. They turned 
 to the window, but could see nothing. 
 
 "It's only some one going into the Admiralty, I expect," 
 said Coventry. "Winston perhaps." 
 
 "Daphne, are you going to sleep?" said Nigel, turning to 
 her. "You haven't said anything for a very long time. " 
 
 Daphne shook her head.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 231 
 
 "No, I'm not sleepy. But I can't take it in. It seems to 
 me . . . awful." 
 
 "Awful? Yes, it is awful. But grand, magnificent, real. " 
 Nigel drained his glass. " Let's go out. " 
 
 Daphne looked up at him. 
 
 "Not into the crowd, Nigel. I'm tired, it frightens me. 
 Let me go home. " 
 
 Nigel patted her gently on the shoulder. 
 
 "Poor child!" he said kindly. "It's too much for you all 
 this, isn't it?" Daphne nodded. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "it is. But you want to stay, Nigel. 
 Don't bother about me. I can get home all right. " 
 
 "If you're going to Kensington, Miss Leonard, I'll take 
 you down, I'm going that way myself. I dare say we can get 
 through on to the Embankment," said Ned Coventry. 
 
 But when they emerged from the restaurant into Whitehall 
 any chance of getting anywhere seemed gone. The noise which 
 had broken in before was evidently only the forerunner of a big 
 movement, and now, up from the Strand, from Northumberland 
 Avenue, from Pall Mall, a vast concourse of people came that 
 swelled out into a mob in Trafalgar Square and swept on, thence, 
 down Whitehall; a mob of people and an indescribable inferno 
 of sound. They were a strange and motley collection: mostly 
 men, and men of the roughest; a few women and excited girls; 
 a few men in miscellaneous uniforms. Every other individual 
 seemed to be armed with some kind of instrument, mouth 
 organs, concertinas, penny whistles, tin trumpets, gongs and 
 combs: any and every vehicle of noise. Others carried ban- 
 ners, mostly battered Union Jacks. From time to time they 
 burst into unintelligible song. Along the side of the main body 
 of the procession, if it could be so called, there ran boys waving 
 small flags, caps or coloured handkerchiefs. They kept up a 
 running accompaniment in which all the others from time to time 
 joined, of a single word "War. War. War." Incessant, 
 monotonous, sinister, that cry rang clear above all the other 
 noises, loud and raucous as they were, until it seemed to gather 
 them all up into itself. People standing in the crowd were by 
 its power swept into the procession and came on with it, yelling
 
 232 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 in their turn "War. War. War." As they came on down 
 Whitehall the din was tremendous; the whole wide street 
 seemed to have become part of the seething, hideously shouting 
 mass, all crying, as with one hungry bloodhound throat "War. 
 War. War."
 
 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 
 
 ENTERING on Wednesday morning the large building in 
 which the New World Office was situated, Nigel Strode 
 surveyed it with a sense that it was a long time since he 
 had last been there, so long indeed that he looked about him ex- 
 pecting to find it somehow changed. It seemed odd to see the same 
 porter, to go up in the same lift, to pass on the upward way all 
 the old doors with the old notices on them, suggesting that, 
 behind, business was going on as usual. It was really only four 
 days since he had been busy at his desk reading proof-sheets, 
 weighing and measuring the sentences in which he had tried to 
 estimate the gravity of the crisis and express hopes that might 
 not look ridiculous read in cold columns the next day. They 
 had looked ridiculous; and yet it was only four days ago. In 
 those four days the whole face of life had changed, who could 
 say for how long? A portent had risen in the East and ex- 
 panded, under their awed and terrified gaze, into a new Sun, 
 under whose burning light all the old forms of existence had 
 withered, and now looked absurd and irrelevant. One could 
 not tell, yet, what the new world was going to be; but it was 
 utterly unlike the old. One had to start afresh, with new stand- 
 ards, new eyes adjusted to these strange conditions of vision. It 
 was a tremendous prospect. Nigel could not feel, as he ex- 
 amined his own mind, that he regretted the old world. It had 
 been pleasant enough, but small and, in retrospect, strangely 
 empty. Besides, what was the good of looking backward? 
 One wanted to visualise the new forms, created by this fierce and 
 terrible illumination; to rise to the height of its demands and 
 experiences. That was an opportunity thrilling and majestic. 
 
 233
 
 234 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Nigel walked quickly along the corridor, his fingers itching for 
 his pen. These were thoughts that demanded to be expressed. 
 There were plenty of people who would be frightened: but he 
 felt something quite different from fright; and to put it into 
 word would sustain and continue his feelings. 
 
 He could go straight into his own room, or pass into it 
 through a door on the right which gave into a larger one in 
 which Jeffries and Robinson sat. The sound of voices within 
 inclined him to choose that way. 
 
 Robinson, a short red-haired man with very prominent false 
 teeth and an eager snub nose, was standing with his back to 
 the window, hands in pocket and a pipe between his teeth. 
 Jeffries, tall, slight and rather good-looking, sat on the table, 
 swinging his feet in dangerous proximity to Matheson, who 
 was hunched up, his chin on the back of a chair, his legs 
 across it. Matheson was a good deal older than the other 
 two, though not so old as his grizzled beard and greying hair 
 suggested. 
 
 "Of course," Robinson was saying in his loud unmodulated 
 voice, "the Banks have behaved abominably the Joint Stock 
 Banks, I mean. Simply lost their heads and thought of nothing 
 but themselves." 
 
 "Banks?" Matheson looked up. "Who cares about the 
 Banks? This is the end of civilisation. " 
 
 "What I want to know," piped in Jeffries, in his slow clear 
 drawl, "is why those fellows resigned? What on earth did they 
 think we could do: sit and wait till Germany had walked over 
 the others and then came on and walked over us? The French 
 Army is no good, is it, Matheson?" 
 
 "The men are all right," Matheson looked up, "but the 
 whole system's rotten with corruption. I wouldn't guarantee 
 that any one's got a boot that fits him. . . . And as for going off 
 to Alsace, it's madness, sheer madness. " 
 
 "Oh, I don't know," cried Jeffries. "The Belgians are 
 evidently much better fighters than we thought, and we shall 
 be on the spot in no time. " 
 
 Nigel had greeted them with a nod and paused to listen as 
 he hung up his hat. But he did not feel much inclination to
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 235 
 
 join in. They had gone off on to points of detail, which were 
 not the points that interested him. 
 
 Matheson got up. 
 
 " I understand there will be official papers out to-morrow or 
 Friday," he said. "The negotiations. . . . But not, I'm 
 afraid, in time for us to handle them? " 
 
 "Oh no," said Nigel quickly. "We want, this week, to 
 handle the thing broadly. . . . Come in, in an hour or so, 
 Robinson, and we can discuss what we ought to say about the 
 financial situation." 
 
 "You'll have to try to convert him, Robinson," murmured 
 Jeffries as the door shut. 
 
 "Oh, he'll see the point all right. The editor's jolly sharp, 
 knows a lot more about finance than you'd think. You should 
 see him dictating on the Exchanges you know how Davis 
 used to have to work it all out? Well, Strode just sits there and 
 dictates as clearly as if it were A B C. " 
 
 "Yes," said Jeffries, "his mind's wonderfully quick, isn't 
 it?" 
 
 "Another thing," Robinson went on, "about him is he 
 knows what the week's topic is going to be Davis never did. 
 But the New World's on it every time now. . . . Davis was a 
 crank in some ways: I'm glad he's not here. He'd take a queer 
 line; like you, Matheson." 
 
 Matheson shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "I don't take any line," he said, "but I don't expect every- 
 thing to stand on its head. People will want profits just the 
 same; look after their own interests just the same; and say to 
 all the others, 'You began it, yah! ' That's all we're doing. " 
 
 "Well," cried Jeffries eagerly. "So they did begin it." 
 
 Matheson, who began to move away, cut across his eager- 
 ness. "All right, Bill," he said. "You'll be a good journalist 
 in time. Suggest to Strode a leader called 'They Began It' 
 he'd like it. Only you must phrase it better." 
 
 Nigel had hardly sat down at his desk when the office boy 
 appeared to ask whether Mr. Jenkins could speak to him for a 
 moment. Nigel frowned. The thread of his ideas had been 
 broken by the irrelevancies of the outer office: this mterrup-
 
 236 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 tion was worse. Jenkins had been doing quite well since his 
 warning some months past ; but a desire to speak with the editor 
 so early in the week suggested complications. However, he 
 had better get him over. 
 
 " All right, " he said. "I'll see him now. " 
 
 Jenkins appeared. He looked pink as before, but a rather 
 brighter pink, and his little mouth was set in a firmer line. 
 
 "Well, Jenkins," said Nigel, affably enough. "Not been 
 getting into any more trouble, I hope. " 
 
 Jenkins inspected the carpet. 
 
 "No, sir, not exactly. " He paused. 
 
 Nigel smiled. "You mean you've not, strictly speaking, 
 got out of it? " 
 
 Jenkins raised his eyes. He evidently, except under the 
 stress of strong emotion, found it difficult to touch on such 
 matters with the editor. There was a short pause. Jenkins 
 cleared his throat. 
 
 "The fact is, sir, I want, if you'll allow me, to apply for a 
 commission. I have done a certain amount of training and I 
 have some influence." He hesitated. Nigel looked hard at 
 him now. So that was what had so visibly perked Jenkins up: 
 for he was perked up. 
 
 "It does you great credit, I think, Jenkins," he began. 
 
 "Oh no, sir," Jenkins interposed. "I'm afraid not, sir. 
 I shouldn't like you to think better of me than I deserve. . . . 
 But it's a way out, sir. I didn't see any, you know, but now 
 I do." 
 
 " I see, " said Nigel. He did. To Jenkins the war was not 
 a great national call; he was not pondering sublime thoughts 
 about his duty to his country or the world. The character of 
 the war was nothing to him. It was simply a way out. He 
 could leave his debts, his entanglements, his absurd passion; 
 cut the knots that bound him so hopelessly, and escape. 
 
 "I certainly would not stand in your way, Jenkins. You 
 will be doing the right thing, whatever your motives. As to the 
 business side of the matter, I must talk it over with the directors; 
 but I am sure they will want to do the right thing. You're 
 not married?"
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 237 
 
 "Oh, yes, sir," said Jenkins. "Unfortunately I am." 
 
 Nigel glanced quickly at him, but Jenkins seemed to have 
 spoken without irony. He dismissed him with a promise to 
 let him know the directors' decision and an instruction to 
 speak to Mr. Brown. 
 
 Jenkins certainly had made hay of his ideas. He wrote 
 a sentence and scratched it out. Another fared no better. 
 He leaned back in his chair, feeling annoyed. Nothing 
 occurred to him but the banalities that had decorated 
 all the leading articles he had read this morning. This 
 would not do. He looked at his watch and decided 
 to go and see Sir Anthony Toller. Sir Anthony would not 
 have lapsed from the splendid exaltation of yesterday. He 
 was not exposed to the petty irritations inseparable from 
 making a living. 
 
 Before going out, however, he decided to ring up Daphne 
 and inquire whether she had got home all right after the ex- 
 citements of Tuesday night. Oh yes, Daphne assured 
 him, Mr. Coventry had taken great care of her, and seen 
 her right to the door. Her voice sounded to Nigel rather 
 flat and weary, she too was suffering from reaction per- 
 haps. "Are you very tired?" he asked. Not tired, 
 Daphne -said, but her mother was not at all well. Indeed 
 Daphne had persuaded her to stay in bed. Nigel hesi- 
 tated. "I'm afraid," he said, "I can't suggest coming up 
 till after Friday. We shall be dreadfully busy; a short week, 
 you see, and so much to get in." Daphne quite un- 
 derstood; but as Nigel hung up the receiver he felt 
 his own sense of reaction increased, not lifted. Why 
 was that? Must it really die, the thrilling exaltation 
 he had felt all Tuesday as he walked about the crowds? It 
 was akin to what he had known in the first days of 
 his engagement: must it fade, as that had faded? It 
 was blasphemy to measure or examine sensations divine 
 in their essence. But it was also folly to refuse to admit the 
 change that must come over them: Nigel knew that 
 change in himself. Gradually, gently, his days had re- 
 sumed their normal tenor. The old sense of the length
 
 238 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 of time, even of its weariness, had come back. He could 
 not have assigned a date to the beginning of the process by 
 which the normal tempo had been restored; or rather, 
 since it was a subject of painful rather than pleasant 
 investigation, he let it lie. But on the Sunday spent 
 at the Tenacre woods, the Sunday now marked as the 
 date of the Austrian ultimatum, its achievement had 
 risen up before him and made him sad. Sad because it 
 drove home to him the sense of something wanting 
 wanting in himself. Over Daphne no change had come. 
 Over him it had. She had something which he had not. What 
 it was he did not know. He loved her, of course, but 
 neither his love for her nor hers for him had proved 
 able to hold fast for him that first singing glow. It had failed 
 and faded, that ecstasy, because it depended on him; 
 and it was of the nature of merely individual feeling 
 to pass through stages. To the top notes of the scale 
 there succeeded others, beautiful in their way, but dif- 
 ferent. One could not live, in one's personal life, on 
 the top note. One should not even want to do so. It 
 was selfishness, however lovely its disguise. But a great 
 world movement was another thing. Its source was mightier, 
 and mightier surely its hold. It was real, as no feeling of 
 one's own only could be. 
 
 As he walked along the Embankment on his way to the 
 National Liberal Club, Nigel pondered thus and told 
 himself that the sense of reality given him by this vast up- 
 heaval of all the ordered life of Europe was a sense 
 that could and should last. For ordered life was a life 
 of burden, of weariness, of boredom, of insufficiency, a 
 life limited and barred within the narrow bounds of self. War 
 burst those bounds, swept them away with its terrific 
 tide of new, incredible, uncomprehended passions; pas- 
 sions that carried the stamp of a superhuman reality 
 in their vastness and their range. The self of every indi- 
 vidual was submerged in and transcended by this great 
 new entity of the nation. All this terrified Daphne. 
 She could not take it in. She shrank away from it. But
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 239 
 
 Nigel felt himself rushing out into the waves, drawing 
 strength from the salt and stinging buffets against his 
 face. It stirred and stimulated him to feel himself throb- 
 bing with the beat of a mightier heart. Grey's speech 
 had been to him a kind of trumpet call; Sir Anthony had 
 made it sound again; he would revive whatever had been 
 dulled of its first clearness. 
 
 Although it was nearly noon, Sir Anthony Toller was 
 still in bed. Nevertheless he sent down a message in- 
 viting his visitor to come up, and explained when Nigel 
 entered his room that he was merely rather tired and a little 
 asthmatic. 
 
 He was sitting bolt upright in bed, well propped up with 
 a mass of white pillows against which he certainly appeared 
 frail enough, with his parchment pale face, surrounded by 
 its halo of snowy hair, showing every line and furrow in the 
 strong sun that streamed in upon the bed. Frail he 
 looked, but not tired; his pale eyes glinted almost fever- 
 ishly, and all around were the signs of restless activity. 
 On a chair beside him lay his breakfast, hardly touched. 
 The coverlet of the bed was hidden by papers of all 
 kinds, letters and writing materials. On his knee he held 
 a stout pad, on which he was writing with a fountain pen 
 when Nigel came in. 
 
 "Well, my dear fellow," he said, holding out a bony hand 
 on which blue veins stood up. "This is an extraordinary 
 moment. Were you in the streets last night? I hope to hear 
 all about it from you. How did the people take it all? Sol- 
 emnly, soberly as they ought?" 
 
 "Oh yes," said Nigel. "Yes, on the whole. Of course 
 there were some roughs, making a row. But otherwise they 
 were extraordinarily calm. It was rather wonderful, the 
 whole thing, to feel that great silent current moving 
 every one." 
 
 Sir Anthony nodded. His eyes opened and shut 
 quickly, as they did when his mind was working hard. Nigel 
 went on. 
 
 "It suddenly came on me on Tuesday, as I stood in the
 
 240 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 crowd, what it really means being part of a nation. One 
 can't get over it; it's something very deep down, that thrills 
 when it's stirred." 
 
 "Get over it?" interrupted Sir Anthony. "No. Thank 
 God, no." 
 
 Nigel looked at him, with a sense of reviving glow. 
 
 "It's the root of everything that's strong and splendid," 
 Sir Anthony went on. "The greatest of the great simple 
 emotions out of which all that ultimately matters springs." 
 
 "Of course,", said Nigel slowly, "I do feel war is 
 horrible." 
 
 But Sir Anthony interrupted. 
 
 "There's nothing really horrible. It's all how one 
 takes it. If a nation can go into war with pure hands 
 and high intentions, it can transform war, make it an 
 instrument of moral regeneration for itself and to the 
 world the trumpet call of freedom. . . . Chat's w hy j 
 feel so strongly I've been trying to express it just now, in 
 this letter I'm writing to The Times that one must 
 try to see this tremendous thing greatly. There will be plenty 
 of people ready to carp and criticise, plenty of cynics 
 who'll only see the evil. But such sight is narrow. We 
 didn't want war: Grey struggled against it to the last. 
 But honour called us, honour and the demand to de- 
 fend all we hold sacred against Prussianism. A war against 
 Prussia, for Belgium, is a sacred war. One must hold on to 
 that." 
 
 Nigel listened, eagerly. Yes, Sir Anthony was right. 
 He sanctioned, he ennobled, those vague but exalted feel- 
 ings that Nigel had known as he stood in the crowd. 
 It was something more than the mere sense of being one 
 of a concourse of people, feeling as they felt, swept by 
 the vast diapason of common emotion. The terror, the 
 pity, the fury, the joy that had moved and lifted him 
 had moved and lifted them; and the brooding horror 
 behind only made the whole thing more tremendous, 
 giving to it all the dignity of tragedy on a scale never 
 staged before. Nothing so real had ever happened in the
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 241 
 
 life of any man now living; and from horror Nigel felt 
 himself swinging to a kind of joy joy in his own intimate 
 awareness of it all, the sense it gave him of being at the core 
 of prodigious life forces. And Sir Anthony gave to that joy 
 an almost sacred tinge. It was not only real, it was capable 
 of being infinitely noble. 
 
 "I'm sure all the country wants" he came back into 
 the room from the window and returned to Sir Anthony 
 "is to understand what the issue really is." 
 
 "It's a great moral affirmation." Sir Anthony had re- 
 turned to his pad, from which he now looked up. "We 
 stand for spiritual value against brute force. . . . You 
 have a great opportunity in your hands, Nigel, through 
 your paper. . . . Every one has in his own degree the op- 
 portunity the opportunity of not letting this tremendous 
 event be lost upon him. We can't all fight but we can all 
 feel it." 
 
 He drew himself up and punched his pillows as if they 
 were enemy heads. Nigel looking at him, felt for the first 
 time something almost like a doubt. Was it conceivable 
 that Sir Anthony was enjoying it? He dismissed the 
 thought as unworthy. One could not deny a certain 
 quality of aesthetic satisfaction to anything so huge and 
 so dramatic. Of enjoyment in the ordinary sense, there 
 was no question. Exaltation, the glow of purpose, was an- 
 other thing. 
 
 Descending to the lunch-room, he ran up against Alan 
 Mottershaw. Mottershaw felt the war just as he ought, 
 but he had already got on to inoculation. He foresaw an 
 attempt to force inoculation upon everybody, and tried to 
 persuade Nigel to sign an anti-inoculation letter he was writing 
 to the papers. 
 
 "In a war like this, where our cause is just, where we 
 are definitely carrying the Banner of the Good against the 
 Powers of Evil" (Mottershaw always spoke of the Good 
 with a capital G: it was presumably a more advanced 
 way of referring to God), "we ought to reject all forms 
 of falsehood, all distrust. Our faith is our strength. If our
 
 242 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 hearts are pure, as our cause is, no harm can come to us. To 
 rely on inoculation (apart from the purely medical evi- 
 dence of its worthlessness) is the abandonment of our 
 higher claim." 
 
 Nigel looking into his large blank eyes felt that it 
 would be unfair to remind him that death and disease 
 were the normal incidents of war. Before his inoculation 
 letter he fled. He promised Mottershaw, however, to use 
 such influence as he possessed to get him a commission in 
 the R.A.M.C. His owning a useful motor-car might com- 
 pensate for his views. But it was a pity that so many 
 people who thought rightly would clothe their views in 
 such unfortunate formula;!. Mottershaw's remarks about 
 the Banner of the Good made him a little uncomfortable. 
 Mottershaw had no sense of style: Christian Scientists 
 very seldom had, for some reason or other. He was 
 somehow rather soft and woolly altogether, Mottershaw, 
 and Nigel was rather glad when he departed immediately 
 after lunch. He himself sat on in the smoke-room, turn- 
 ing over the pages of the papers and half listening to 
 the conversation of a group of men, most of whom he knew 
 slightly, though not well enough to feel any inclination to 
 join them. 
 
 They were talking about the Germans and revealing a 
 hatred of them that surprised Nigel. He had never 
 suspected any of them of any prejudice of the kind, 
 except perhaps the stout little valetudinarian who went every 
 year to Homburg for a cure and was there taken, to 
 his infinite disgust, for a German arid a Jew to boot; 
 a mistake not very surprising since his name was Schwarze 
 and his looks matched his name. The others were normal 
 easy-going people, not apt to be much excited about 
 anything, liberals, minor intellectuals of sorts, people 
 who always abused the Government and knew no phrase 
 of deeper contempt for a person or an institution than that 
 of being "hopelessly British." Now all that had gone. 
 To be British was to be everything; to be German an- 
 athema.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 243 
 
 Nigel wondered as he listened. He felt no hatred for 
 the Germans; to hate them seemed to belittle the whole mean- 
 ing of what was happening and lower the plane of feel- 
 ing and of action. He felt lifted far above anger or 
 hate. But it was clear already that unity of purpose by 
 no means ruled out a rich and interesting diversity of view. 
 
 Bent on the register of opinion, Nigel turned in, on his 
 way home that evening, to see the Nugents, who had been 
 at Tenacre and only that afternoon got back to town. 
 They were, however, disappointing, dull and matter-of- 
 fact. The war was not apparently a great spiritual adven- 
 ture to them or anything great at all. They said in 
 a perfunctory way that it was "perfectly appalling": that 
 was all. Their attitude was that of Jeffries and Rob- 
 inson. Edgar refused to be interested in the members 
 of the Cabinet who had resigned, and why they had done 
 it; or to tell Nigel any gossip about the others who had thought 
 of resigning and stayed in an even more interesting topic. 
 The financial aspect of the crisis still for him dominated every 
 other; he was engrossed in discussing what the Treasury 
 was going to do for the Banks. Mabel Nugent, whose sister 
 was married to an officer, was full of secrets about the move- 
 ments of the expeditionary force, and loud in her contempt 
 for the Germans. 
 
 "Jack is only afraid they'll be done for before he gets out. 
 Of course if these tiresome people Simon and the others 
 hadn't threatened to resign, the force might have been out by 
 now. . . . But aren't the Belgians ripping?" 
 
 "As it is," Nugent sighed, "I suppose the next thing will 
 be I shall have to go down to Sussex to get the yokels to enlist. 
 So that I shan't even be able to live on my land unless Mabel 
 and I turn labourers. Of course I can save the men's wages 
 they'll have to go. After all, maids are really nicer, especially 
 in the country. " 
 
 "Lois will be down on you if you don't get rid of Fritz 
 quickly," his wife agreed. "Have you heard, Nigel, she's got 
 spy mania? She always had some mad idea or other. . . . By 
 the bye," as Nigel rose to go, "how is your future mother-in-
 
 244 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 law? If I were Lois I should shut her up as a Pro-German. 
 That letter was awful." 
 
 Nigel laughed tolerantly. 
 
 " I think you do her an injustice. Mrs. Leonard's a pacifist ; 
 but, after all, we were all pacifists before the Germans invaded 
 Belgium. It isn't as if this country had begun it; or, like the 
 Crimean War, when we were dragged in by stupid ministers, 
 for no good reason; or a Jingo adventure like the Boer War. 
 Grey is a pacifist if any one was. . . . Belgium does for all 
 that." 
 
 Mrs. Nugent did not seem quite convinced. 
 
 "I distrust these International labour people. They're 
 always against everything." 
 
 Nigel protested. "This really is different, though. All the 
 people I know who were Pro-Boers are perfectly sound this time. 
 Pacifists ought to be keen on a war to end war. " 
 
 "You don't think Mrs. Leonard will agree with Ramsay 
 Macdonald? " 
 
 "Oh dear me, no!" cried Nigel with conviction. 
 
 "Well, of course you know best." But Mabel's tone sug- 
 gested "Wait and see." "And your Daphne? I suppose she 
 thinks what her mother thinks? Or does the modern young 
 woman go by contraries?" Nigel smiled. 
 
 "You mean," Mrs. Nugent interpreted his smile, "she'll 
 think as you do? That's better still. . . . Nigel, it really is 
 a great blessing she's not too like her mother. " 
 
 Nigel looked at his friend inquiringly. 
 
 "You don't like Mrs. Leonard, Mabel?" 
 
 Mrs. Nugent pursed up her lips. 
 
 "I used to like her. But she's got hard, I think. And so 
 wrongheaded. That's the worst of those professionally intellect- 
 ual people. They reduce everything to a kind of logic. . . . 
 She's too clever, you know; too brainy." 
 
 Nigel was not to be shaken out of his own view. 
 
 "I don't believe that applies to the war. It's too big. 
 Everything else, I grant you. But this is not a case for logic. 
 It's a case for feeling, and as regards feeling, Mrs. Leonard 
 will be all right. "
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 245 
 
 Mabel was not so sure. Logic was a dangerous thing, if 
 you gave yourself up to it. Look at Mr. Infield. What 
 malicious views he took because he had a theory of consistency 
 and always thought the worst of every one. 
 
 "He's sure to think England in the wrong, you see if he 
 doesn't, " she cried. 
 
 Nigel took no responsibility for Hugh. Hugh was, he ad- 
 mitted, a cynic. He was delighted with the word. He had, 
 he felt, at last discovered a label that fitted Hugh and armed 
 one in advance against the dire speciousness of his arguments. 
 But he was slightly worried by what Mabel said. 
 
 When he got back to the Temple he found the rooms empty. 
 Hugh, as usual, was out. Only one letter lay on the table. 
 Nigel recognised his brother's handwriting, and wondered why 
 Stephen, who never wrote to him, had suddenly been moved 
 to do so. 
 
 "My dear Nigel," he read. "I write merely to tell you 
 that I have read your article in the Daily News with the greatest 
 satisfaction. We have often differed about minor points, but 
 I have always felt that in any big issue your heart would keep 
 you right, and I am delighted to find that I was correct. One 
 really feels the hand of God in all this, working in mysterious 
 ways for good; restoring men and women to the saner, simpler 
 emotions under the stress of common danger and common duty, 
 and bringing them face to face with reality. " 
 
 Nigel paused for a moment. Was Stephen unconsciously 
 parodying him? No; it was merely, as he said, that a great 
 emergency expressed all men in terms of their greatest com- 
 mon measure. He returned to the letter. 
 
 "I remember saying to you when you were here nearly a 
 year ago that I saw signs of reviving national spirit; and I feel 
 no doubt that the men of this country will respond splendidly 
 to its call. Alas that there are not more of them ready for 
 service ! But the mistakes of the past ought to be forgotten at 
 such a time, and I blame no one. You will be interested to hear 
 that young Godfrey Toller has applied for a commission. There 
 always was good stuff in that young man. He was agreeably 
 free from that pride of intellect which often distresses me in the
 
 246 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 young men of this University. I trust that his example, and 
 his father's splendid words, will not be without their effect: I 
 am sure they cannot be. Juliet is busy organising at a Red 
 Cross centre; she sends her love to you and to Miss Leonard. 
 I need hardly say how much we liked the latter. I suppose 
 these terrible events will postpone your marriage. ..." 
 
 Nigel folded the letter up and put it back in its envelope, 
 pondering as he did so over Stephen's last remark. He was 
 right: it would probably be better to put off getting married; 
 it would not seem the right thing now to be looking for a house 
 and furniture. He must go and see Daphne and talk to her 
 about it, as soon as he could get the paper out of the way.
 
 CHAPTER NINETEEN 
 
 ALTHOUGH Nigel had waved aside Mabel Nugent's sus- 
 picions as to the attitude likely to be assumed by Mrs. 
 Leonard, he shared them sufficiently to feel that to meet 
 her would involve argument, and to be glad to put that argu- 
 ment off for a day or two. By the end of the week his own 
 views had crystallised by expression. In the New World on 
 Saturday he took back nothing of the enthusiastic solemnity 
 of his first outpouring in the Daily News; but he had time to 
 fix its form and clarify its details; and his article "Why We 
 are Right" pleased him in expression as well as in idea. Upon 
 it he was ready to meet Mrs. Leonard or any one else, for he 
 could claim adherence not only for an unanalysable emotion 
 but for a formulated creed. 
 
 That Mrs. Leonard rejected both at first dismayed and then 
 rather pleased him. Her arguments did not touch him, they 
 rather strengthened his own conviction. He found a complex 
 satisfaction in maintaining his own view against her. He 
 was free. He was no longer in the least under her influence. 
 He had formed his own view, stood on his own feet. She was 
 wrong, and wrong because of that flaw he had recognised in 
 her from the very first, her tendency to intellectualise everything. 
 All that she said to him, as they sat together by the window 
 of the dusky flat, Daphne a white silent blur against a distant 
 sofa, and Mrs. Leonard herself ghostlike in her enveloping 
 shawl, only reinforced his conviction that to meet any great 
 call or crisis, reasoning, logic, was inadequate. There were 
 things too big for that method, and this was one of them. The 
 very complexity of Mrs. Leonard's mind seemed to impede her 
 
 247
 
 248 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 vision. She confused the issue by talk of foreign policy and the 
 evils of war. Of course they were there, those evils, but they 
 were not all there was to see. One had, he urged, to accept 
 and transcend them. To do this raised the moral stature of a 
 nation or an individual. As he faced her it seemed to Nigel 
 that there was some deep contradiction in the incapacity of a 
 woman who looked like Mrs. Leonard to rise above mere argu- 
 ment, above the obvious and therefore negligible horror of war 
 in general, to see the greatness and grandeur of a war like this. 
 That surely was her proper function, to inspire and prophesy. 
 Every movement of her lovely pale hands, on which the big 
 emerald in her ring flashed like an eye, every tone of her deep 
 voice, asked for that noble use. Instead, she seemed to see 
 nothing but moral degradation and uncompensated waste. It 
 was extraordinary; it was, Nigel felt as he walked homewards, 
 almost tragic. 
 
 Nobody agreed with her, except a handful of people who 
 always disagreed with every one else, and whose solitariness 
 only made the unanimity of the nation more remarkable. They 
 did not matter; but Aurelia Leonard did matter, because there 
 was something splendid about her, which made her blindness 
 a kind of apostasy. That Hugh Infield, for instance, should 
 carp and criticise, should see the mote in his country's eye far 
 larger than the beam in its enemy's was to be expected. Hugh 
 was apt to take an inverted point of view. It was eminently 
 characteristic of him that having abused the pacifists in and out 
 of season for their blindness to facts and their absurdly simpli- 
 fied analysis of human motive, he should now suddenly come 
 out as their champion. But Hugh only gibed at what he did 
 not understand. 
 
 What was much more important was that Daphne was all 
 right. She had been stunned at first, as was only natural; 
 unable to take in what was happening; terrified by the vast 
 forces in action. But she felt it all as Nigel did. Although 
 unduly affected by the horror how could it be otherwise, with 
 Mrs. Leonard there? she did see beyond the horror. Her 
 vision, however, Nigel felt, was insecure. She had not reached 
 to the religious exaltation that sustained him; and he realised
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 249 
 
 that there was danger of her lapsing altogether unless his influ- 
 ence operated strongly, counteracting her mother's. This was 
 a big responsibility; but for a time he was in the mood to wel- 
 come responsibility and rejoice in stress. 
 
 Then, one afternoon early in the next week Daphne came 
 in to tea very tired after a long day in Limehouse among 
 weeping soldiers' wives. She sat down at the table and cried 
 helplessly that it was all too awful; she could not believe there 
 was any good in it or that it could be right to create such 
 misery. When he tried to argue with her, she had only talked 
 in a way that convinced him her mother must have been trying 
 to convert her. This, and the fact that he did not seem able 
 to cheer her that she even accused him of not realising the 
 horrors of war annoyed Nigel. It worried him to see her sit- 
 ting there, dishevelled and pale, overworked and nervy, lost 
 to big issues and overwhelmed by little things; obsessed with 
 death and unable to see life. The room was untidy, the table 
 heaped with papers, the tea-things badly set Annie had no 
 idea of how to make a table look nice across one corner; 
 Daphne, as she sat there, her hat on the chair beside her, her 
 eyes red, stirring her cup incessantly with a spoon she did not 
 require, for she took no sugar, was a depressing spectacle. 
 Nigel sat opposite her, feeling helpless. Why could Mrs. 
 Leonard not leave her alone? 
 
 "You must not look at it like that, dear child," he said 
 soothingly. "After all, it's part of war that men should have 
 to go out and leave their wives. " 
 
 "I know," wailed Daphne, "but it's horrible. . . . Think of 
 all this happening in France and Germany and Austria and 
 Russia: all over the world. . . . How can it be right? What's 
 it all for?" 
 
 "You must ask the German Government that," Nigel re- 
 plied, cutting himself a piece of cake. 
 
 Daphne looked at him, obviously unconvinced. 
 
 " Dearest, " he said, " try to see the larger aspect of the thing. 
 War does mean misery, but isn't dishonour worse? " 
 
 "I wonder," Daphne mused, "if we'd been friends with 
 Germany all these years, instead of being afraid?"
 
 250 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Nigel could not restrain a movement of irritation. ''Ah!" 
 he cried, "your mother's been talking to you. Germany's been 
 preparing this thing for years; doesn't everything prove it? 
 How could we be friends while they were piling up armies; 
 talking about shining armour in Morocco, and building forts to 
 attack Belgium?" 
 
 "But haven't we been piling up armies too?" said Daphne 
 in a rather less miserable tone. 
 
 "It's only a pity we haven't done it more thoroughly," 
 Nigel retorted. "If we had we might have frightened them 
 off. . . . But dearest, you're tired; don't let's argue about 
 these things. ... I thought we agreed. I'm afraid your 
 mother has been talking to you?" He came back to it again. 
 He had not meant to mention Mrs. Leonard; a conflict was the 
 test thing he desired, but he felt she was not playing the game. 
 
 Daphne looked up quickly. 
 
 "Nigel, you look quite cross!" 
 
 "Well, so I shall be if she worries you!" 
 
 "But, Nigel, I'm not a child; I must hear both sides and 
 think about it for myself. ... I'm ashamed of the way I 
 don't, as it is." 
 
 Nigel made an impatient movement. 
 
 "Mother knows so much more about it than I do," Daphne 
 went on. Nigel interrupted quickly. 
 
 "Yes, but she's biassed. Her views are quite peculiar. 
 Think of all the people we know; not one agrees with 
 her." 
 
 "No," said Daphne slowly. "But they don't, most 
 of them, seem to feel it as she does. . . . Do you, 
 Nigel?" 
 
 Her clear eyes interrogated him. 
 
 Nigel gave a sigh. 
 
 "Feel it? Dear Daphne, yes. But, thank God, I feel 
 the greatness of it, not only the horror. That's what I hoped 
 you'd do too. . . . It's a tragic greatness if you like, 
 but there's something sublime in it. Think of all these 
 people giving up everything for their country; think 
 of the men we know who are leaving their work and
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 251 
 
 their play. I think of Lionel Delahaye, Tom Ridgley, 
 Luke Marsden and dozens more. They hate war in 
 general as much as we can, but they go. They're fighting 
 against war. Men won't be men when they can't do 
 that: risk all they have and are. Would England be 
 a nation if they didn't? If I were a few years younger I'd 
 go myself: it would be much easier than stopping at 
 home." 
 
 Daphne stared at the tablecloth, making patterns with 
 her crumbs. 
 
 "I know," she said in a low voice. "You're splendid, 
 Nigel. ... I wish I could see it as you do all the time. I 
 do agree with you. But it's hard to see that side, especially 
 in Limehouse." 
 
 Nigel sighed rather wearily. Yes, it was hard to 
 sustain one's vision. Action was certainly easier, as he 
 said. 
 
 "And," Daphne went on, "dreadful things come out 
 as well as good ones. Some of the women down there are 
 married to Germans: some are Germans. If you heard the 
 way some of the workers quite nice people, too speak about 
 them. It's awful." 
 
 Nigel only nodded. He had had enough of argument for 
 the moment. 
 
 Later in the same week Nigel and Daphne met at din- 
 ner at the Royal Carringtons. The conversation at table 
 had, of course, been exclusively about the war; every con- 
 versation, anywhere, was that now, though a slight element 
 of difference had been provided by Royal Carrington him- 
 self, who, with the extraordinary rapidity of recovery char- 
 acteristic of him, was beginning to see it all as an un- 
 equalled medium for himself as a producer. He was going 
 to put modern war on the stage, and it had never been 
 attempted before. It would be a tremendous artistic 
 opportunity, and might also serve a patriotic purpose as a 
 recruiting draw. 
 
 "Thank God I'm an American citizen," he said. "I can 
 go over the whole field I shall begin with Serbia and
 
 252 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 work through. By the time I get to Berlin there ought 
 to be something to see there; and Poland will be 
 superb. ... Of course if the Germans get to Paris I might 
 begin on the West; but I have a feeling that the Eastern cam- 
 paign will be the most pictorial. ... I'd like to catch Austria 
 in the act of breaking up. Riots in Buda Pesth would be a 
 splendid scene." 
 
 "I think you're horrible, Royal," cried Nigel. "You regard 
 it all simply as a spectacle." 
 
 Royal Carrington grinned at him. 
 
 "Well, after all so we all do." 
 
 The others protested violently, but Carrington was 
 not affected. "You regard it as a moral spectacle, Strode; 
 you as a great military display, Drew; I as an artistic 
 one there doesn't seem to me to be much difference. 
 To me German militarism is a splendid type figure in 
 a world drama; you can call it the devil if you like: 
 the devil has always been recognised as one of the great pro- 
 tagonists of tragedy. . . . The superb simplification of the 
 whole thing makes a tremendous appeal to me . . . one's 
 got rid, at a stroke, of all the tiresome superficial differences, 
 and back to the old ruling instincts which are the stuff the 
 artist wants." 
 
 "Yes," said Wellesley Drew, squaring his shoulders. 
 "We've got to realise now that what makes a nation is its 
 men. All this surface tosh we have had so much of 
 lately is disappearing now about intellect ruling the 
 world and so on. Where are the intellectuals, I'd like 
 to know? They'll have to take a back seat for a long time. 
 And the suffragettes, too, I fancy." He looked at his 
 wife with a kind of masterful grin, such as would have 
 produced a fierce outburst from Lois under normal cir- 
 cumstances. But now she was silent. She had said 
 very little all the evening, nor had either of the other ladies 
 contributed much: they accepted their relegation. Evan- 
 geline, in wonderful orange draperies, with a leopard 
 skin round her shoulders, lay back on a deep black velvet 
 lounge, looking darkly at the company out of her sombre
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 253 
 
 heavy lidded eyes. Only occasionally did she throw in a 
 remark in her slow drawl. Royal talked so much that she 
 adopted silence. It was much the cleverest thing she could 
 have done; as a pictorial element in the background she was 
 admirable, when she spoke rather silly. All her brains 
 seemed to have gone to the science of appearance, in 
 that she was masterly; but except to the eye she had 
 nothing to say. Wisely, therefore, had she placed herself 
 in a circle normally devoted entirely to parlance through 
 the eye. Carrington's friends incessantly painted her. 
 Now she could accept woman's sphere with complete 
 grace; while Lois, untidy, ill-dressed and restless, re- 
 sisted awkwardly. Certainly Evangeline was decorative 
 as she lay smoking one heavily scented cigarette after 
 another, her lazy eyes travelling idly over the faces of the 
 various speakers, or wandering away from them to sur- 
 vey the room. The walls were black, the ceiling like- 
 wise black, the carpet a deep blue. It was all arranged 
 to give the utmost value to Evangeline 's vivid orange 
 robes, repeated in the great orange lilies that stood on 
 a little lacquer table against the black wall, and in the tawny 
 coat of the vast cat that slumbered in sphinx-like attitude 
 at her feet. 
 
 Wellesley Drew got up from his seat and moved to the 
 fireplace to light his cigar at the little torch burning blue 
 there. He stood, evidently supremely conscious of his six- 
 foot-two of height and breadth. 
 
 "After all," he resumed his speech, "the real question 
 is simply are we strong enough to beat the Germans? If 
 we win we're the better men; but that's all I can see in it. 
 I regard them simply as a wasps' nest which we've at last 
 got a chance of destroying. There's no use in telling me that 
 our people haven't been longing for a whack at them 
 for ages, I'm sure they have. I hate this talk about 
 our not wanting to go in. ... It seems to me pusillanimous." 
 
 "Ah, but on your lines," said Nigel, "might is right, which 
 is just what we're fighting to deny." 
 
 Wellesley laughed. It was extraordinary, the aplomb
 
 254 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 he had acquired. In olden days he had begun his tirades 
 by a kind of apology he was not clever, he knew; he was 
 the "plain man." All that had now entirely disap- 
 peared. He took his stand, literally and metaphorically, 
 upon the hearthrug. 
 
 "Of course might is right," he said. "How can you tell 
 which side is right except by its winning? I can't see 
 any other criterion. ... If the Germans were to beat 
 us which is inconceivable they'd prove themselves the 
 better men, and that's all there is in it, as far as I can see." 
 
 This was too much for Nigel. 
 
 "I disagree with you entirely," he said. "I can't 
 admit for a minute that it's simply a case of force against 
 force. We are fighting for an idea the idea of freedom and 
 respect for treaties. What idea are the Germans fight- 
 ing for?" 
 
 No one answered. 
 
 "Aren't the Germans fighting to defend themselves against 
 Russia? " Daphne threw in. 
 
 "That's no doubt the excuse they give their own 
 people. . . . But we are fighting for an idea," Nigel 
 went on, "and it's because of that that you find heaps of 
 people who hate war ordinarily enthusiastic for this 
 war men like Sir Anthony Toller and all the other men 
 of letters and professors Gilbert Murray, Bridges, and so 
 on and young men who hate the idea of killing going 
 off to fight. They're not in love with force they hate 
 it. This is a war against war: that's why all the pacificists are 
 in favour of it." 
 
 "Pacificists always have been in favour of war when 
 it comes to the point," said Lois. In the general laugh 
 that accepted this remark Daphne's protest went unheeded. 
 
 A diversion was provided by the entrance of Godfrey 
 Toller, in khaki. Godfrey's rehabilitation was complete. 
 He was restored to the bosom of his family and his name 
 was perpetually on his father's lips. His own opinions had 
 apparently not changed, however. 
 
 "Oh, father's quite off his head," he explained, in an-
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 255 
 
 swer to inquiries after his health. "As he never killed a fly 
 in his life, he regards every Tommy as a holy hero. . . . Our 
 house is all on its head, being turned into a hospital jolly 
 uncomfortable hospital it'll be. Myrtle is learning Red 
 Cross and goes about all day in a huge apron. Father talks 
 of nothing but Home Defence and mother is trying to dis- 
 cover a bomb-proof cellar. When Myrtle's nothing else 
 to do she goes about worrying people to enlist. You 
 know that little artist man of hers can't remember his name 
 he's joined! Lot of use he'll be. ... Cambridge is doing 
 quite well. ... I expect Nugent '11 find Sussex a bit 
 slow. I suppose he's made a beginning with his gar- 
 deners. I got five chaps at the Palace the other night 
 took 'em all off for drinks: that finished them. . . . 
 Funny thing, isn't it, Eva," he turned to his sister, "to think 
 that five years ago father stormed and fumed about the 
 place because Herbert insisted upon going into the army? 
 Pretty rotten we all thought it then, I know. I used 
 to look down on army men as awful asses. They've got the 
 pull now, however Herbert is in France while I'm still 
 in the dust at Seaford." 
 
 The conversation soon degenerated into anecdotes, and at 
 a signal from Nigel Daphne rose to go. 
 
 "Do you know, Nigel," she said, after they had walked 
 for a few minutes in silence. "I am not sure that I really 
 do find unanimity stimulating. It's rather awful to agree 
 with Royal Carrington and Mr. Drew . . . and to have 
 to think Godfrey Toller really worth more to his country 
 than well, than you or Hugh, just because he's twenty-nine 
 and you're thirty-nine." 
 
 "Ah!" cried Nigel. "That's just the danger for people 
 like us. ... I mean one gets so separated and intellectualised 
 that one really doesn't like a common feeling and tends to 
 see in it the things that hold apart, not the ones that bring 
 people together." This was not very clear; but Daphne ap- 
 parently understood it. 
 
 "You think it's just intellectual pride, my feeling?" she 
 asked. "Perhaps it is. ... But it certainly isn't that that
 
 256 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 makes mother see it all so differently. She doesn't want to 
 be different, it breaks her heart." 
 
 Nigel was silent for a moment, and merely pressed Daphne's 
 hand sympathetically. 
 
 "It's very hard for you that she does see it so differently," 
 he began. Daphne interrupted. 
 
 "Oh, do you know, Nigel, I think it's much harder for 
 her; I can't help feeling that I've somehow failed her. We've 
 always been so together, seen things so together, and 
 now she's alone . . . I've got you . . . but she's alone." 
 
 "It would hurt you more to differ from me, wouldn't it?" 
 said Nigel quickly. 
 
 Daphne looked at it. Then she raised her eyes to his 
 and nodded. It was not apparently a thing she could talk 
 about. 
 
 "Though, do you know, I can't help a kind of feeling 
 that mother may, after all, be right . . ." she said after a 
 pause. Nigel laughed happily. 
 
 "Ah, I don't mind your thinking that, if you agree with 
 me." 
 
 Daphne was again silent. They walked on, crossing High 
 Holborn and turning down Kingsway: the Carringtons lived 
 in Russell Square. Then Daphne said 
 
 "The difficulty with me is, you know, that I'm not really, 
 deep down, half as wretched about it as I ought to be. I've 
 got you and that means so much that I can't take it in, 
 that all the rest of the world has gone." 
 
 Nigel pressed her hand. But he could not find anything 
 to say in answer. Daphne embarrassed him when she talked 
 like that. She did it rarely now; but that she had ceased 
 to say these things did not, he knew, mean that she had ceased 
 to think them. Would she ever cease to think them? He 
 found himself almost hoping that she would. He did not 
 want life screwed up to that pitch emotionally. One couldn't 
 bear it, not in private life. 
 
 Their walk had now brought them to the corner of Welling- 
 ton Street. Nigel saw Daphne ascend to the top of the 'bus 
 and turned homewards to the Temple.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 257 
 
 Hugh was sitting at the table when he got in, writing 
 hard. He wrote with the greatest possible appearance 
 of effort, very slowly, in a remarkably ugly and rather 
 illegible hand. Nigel threw himself into a deep chair 
 and yawned profoundly. An evening paper lay on the 
 hearthrug at his feet. After a few minutes, in which 
 Hugh went on with his writing, he yawned again. Hugh 
 looked up. 
 
 "Tired of the war already, Nigel? I see you don't even 
 look at the paper. . . . The Germans are getting on 
 at a great rate. They'll be in Paris for Sedan day, I 
 expect." 
 
 Nigel yawned again and picked up the sheet. 
 
 "It does look bad, doesn't it?" he said. "I'm afraid the 
 French are no good, you know. " 
 
 Hugh gave a short laugh. 
 
 "We shall give up the holy war after a bit and talk about 
 fighting for existence, I fancy, " he said. "But I thought you'd 
 keep it up a bit longer. " 
 
 Nigel sat up. "I don't know what you mean, Hugh." 
 
 "Oh, don't mind me," said Hugh, addressing an envelope. 
 "Only it amuses me to watch the temperature of moral indigna- 
 tion going down. Come, confess you don't feel the glow of three 
 weeks ago? " 
 
 Nigel tried to be angry; but in the end he laughed. 
 
 "One can't keep at fever heat," he admitted. There was 
 a short silence. Hugh stamped his letters and collected them 
 together. 
 
 "No," he said, rising to his feet and lighting his pipe at the 
 lamp. "Only the sacred terror can keep you at that. " 
 
 Nigel looked up. 
 
 "What do you mean by the sacred terror? Is it racial 
 hate? " Hugh smiled as he drew at his pipe. 
 
 "No," he said slowly. "It's not the impulse that drives 
 men out to kill their brothers, there's nothing sacred about that. 
 Love is the sacred terror, love such as" he paused "such as 
 Daphne Leonard feels for you. " 
 
 He stopped and stood looking at his friend.
 
 258 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "Well?" said Nigel, who saw that he had more to say. 
 
 "Nothing," said Hugh. He moved towards the door, his 
 letters in his hand, paused upon the threshold; but finally 
 went out without saying anything. Nigel listened to his heavy 
 footsteps on the stair and then across the courtyard as he lay 
 back in his chair, turning over his ambiguous phrase. The 
 sacred terror. Yes, Hugh was right; sacred or no, terror was 
 the word for that kind of feeling. He was not sure that it did 
 not terrify him.
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY 
 
 THE golden light of late afternoon filled Kensington Gar- 
 dens. Across the smooth walks and on the grass, hardly 
 touched with yellow, the trees cast fantastic patterns. 
 The scent of heliotrope floated on the warm air. London 
 seemed remote: the hum of Knightsbridge was only a soft 
 undertone which increased the Sunday hush. Few people 
 passed along the lesser walks, and in the sheltered spot where 
 Mrs. Leonard and Hugh Infield were sitting nothing suggested 
 war save an occasional khaki-clad youth passing in the distance, 
 his arm round the waist of a young woman. 
 
 Nothing suggested it to the eye, but to the mind of every 
 one, and certainly of these two, it clouded the beauty of the 
 garden, the brilliance of the August sun. As they walked they 
 had talked of the news. How could they talk of anything else, 
 with Paris in danger every instant more terrible, and Belgium 
 suffering things before which imagination blenched? But after 
 they sat down on their little green chairs a time passed in which 
 neither said anything. Hugh lit his pipe and leaned back, his 
 felt hat well over his eyes, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, 
 staring now down the long green vista before him, now at the 
 delicate reflections which his companion's mauve sunshade cast 
 upon her face, and the dappled light and shadow across the 
 black and white stripes of her dress. Her eyes, he knew, were 
 on the two figures that only occasionally came within their 
 field of vision, when they crossed the opening between the trees 
 at the bottom of the glade: a white-clad girl and tall young 
 man in grey: Daphne and Nigel. Hugh wondered what they 
 were talking about and whether they would finally go to tea 
 
 259
 
 260 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 with the Mottershaws as Nigel had suggested. It did not 
 seem a question of much importance; but Hugh found himself 
 curious to know. From the fact that they were still in the 
 Gardens, he thought Daphne must have won. 
 
 She had, but at a price, the price of a recognised division 
 of desire between herself and Nigel. He wanted something 
 she quite definitely did not want, and that was extraordinarily 
 disagreeable. To call or not to call on Mrs. Mottershaw mat- 
 tered nothing. What did matter was that Nigel continued 
 to want to do it after she had told him she did not, and that he 
 did not seem able to understand the reason of her unwilling- 
 ness. 
 
 "We haven't really seen each other for so long, " she pleaded. 
 
 He waived the plea gaily aside. They had just been seeing 
 each other he took out his watch for two hours and a half. 
 
 "Oh, but!" Daphne took him up. "I don't call that really 
 seeing, talking about the war with other people there. " 
 
 "After all, " Nigel smiled, "we can't live on a desert island. " 
 
 Daphne sighed a little. 
 
 "I believe you wish we could!" he exclaimed. 
 
 She looked at him on that. 
 
 "Sometimes I do," she admitted. "Don't you ever, 
 Nigel?" 
 
 Nigel was full of sound ' sense upon the absurdity of 
 such wishes. And anyhow they need, he urged, only spend 
 half-an-hour with the Mottershaws. One must not fall into 
 the habit of avoiding friends: what would life be without them? 
 Daphne was not convinced. The Mottershaws were not really 
 friends, and they would probably not see them, for there was 
 sure to be a crowd of other people. 
 
 "Very nice people too." 
 
 "Yes, but a crowd. You'd disappear and talk to some one. 
 I should have to talk to some one else. You know how one 
 talks to people nowadays how hopeless it is. Then we should 
 come away and I shouldn't have seen you at all. " 
 
 Nigel stared in front of him, a little frown on his brow. 
 They walked on in silence, till Daphne, turning her head, saw 
 the frown still there. She instantly relented: laid her hand on
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 261 
 
 his arm and declared that she would go. Nigel's frown became 
 more pronounced. 
 
 "That really is nonsense, Daphne. You don't want to go. 
 So we won't. There's an end of it, let's talk of something else. 
 No don't look so glum. You've got your way and ought to be 
 pleased about it, not sorry. " 
 
 Talking of something else, however, did not prove so easy, 
 for over them there hung the sense of an unuttered question 
 that neither seemed able to voice. They had tea under the trees 
 at the edge of the Gardens, but the place was thinly peopled, 
 and drove home the change that had come over the old careless 
 life, that had subtly, in ways impossible to measure, coloured 
 their relation, so that, though August was nearly at an end, the 
 date of their marriage remained uncertain, undiscussed. 
 
 Hugh Infield's ponderings did not give him the details of 
 their conversation, either in what it said or what it left un- 
 uttered; but unobservant as he passed in general for being, he 
 guessed a good deal. After all, he had seen them both at lunch, 
 and the atmosphere of lunch had been suggestive. That occa- 
 sion, which ought to have been pleasant, had somehow failed. 
 Of course the news was bad: it had, for the last ten days, been 
 getting worse, and the suspicion that little of the truth percolated 
 through the newspapers encouraged the gloomiest interpreta- 
 tions of what did. That very Sunday The Times had contained 
 an account of the British retreat from Mons that bore the im- 
 press of truth and suggested a terrible catastrophe. But the 
 oppression that hung over the lunch-table was more personal. 
 There was a failure of adjustment somewhere, a sense of oppos- 
 ing camps and armed neutrality. Nigel had been bright and 
 talkative; but his brightness had seemed forced. He kept it 
 up, as if he were lunching with people whom he did not know at 
 all. His attempt to distract the mind perhaps only his own 
 mind whether from apprehension or from difficult disagree- 
 ments, did not seem to Hugh the right line to take with Mrs. 
 Leonard, or even with Daphne. Daphne had worn a baffled 
 expression. She had said little, looked at Nigel a great deal, 
 with unanswered questions in her eyes: questions to herself as 
 much as to Nigel. Nigel had appeared supremely unaware; but
 
 262 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Nigel's unawareness, like his brightness, rang a little false. 
 You could be unaware of many things the atmosphere of the 
 flat was thick with them but not, Hugh thought, of quite so 
 many. A complete blank could only be presented by a con- 
 scious effort, and a conscious effort implied that you were, to 
 that extent, aware. And being aware was a perilous process, 
 a step upon the inclined plank that led straight down to abysmal 
 understandings. They yawned for two at least of the party, 
 beneath everything said or left unsaid, beneath every pause. 
 Even to imagine them might well create an oppression. It was 
 at Mrs. Leonard's suggestion that Nigel and Daphne had gone 
 out for a walk an hour before she and Hugh Infield followed 
 them, after tea, into the Gardens. 
 
 "You are quite right, Hugh," Mrs. Leonard's voice broke 
 in upon his thoughts. "He never will see. He doesn't want 
 to see. He hates me for trying to make him see." Hugh 
 looked round. His pipe had gone out and he re-lit it. 
 
 "About the war?" he said. "Oh yes." His tone did not 
 express the least surprise. 
 
 "It isn't, you see, Hugh, as if to accept the conventional view 
 were natural for Nigel. It doesn't hurt me that nice men like 
 Edward Sturton, who's always been a romantic Jingo, or his 
 dear little wife, who can't think at all, should approve of it all : 
 that's part of them and all one's ever thought about them. 
 But Nigel's attitude does somehow hurt. He is wilfully refusing 
 to continue to think on the lines on which he, at least nominally, 
 always thought before. And he's enthusiastic about it, he 
 seems to enjoy it. He makes a kind of creed of not seeing and 
 calls me unpatriotic and cold-blooded. The people who think 
 it right are not, all of them, blinded to its horror, but Nigel has 
 to think the horror splendid. " 
 
 Hugh did not want to enter into the question in detail. He 
 was, he knew, afraid of it. 
 
 "Nigel goes with the tide," he said. "That saves a great 
 deal of trouble. It's a thrilling feeling too, swimming with a 
 big wave. " 
 
 He moved rather restlessly in his chair and his pipe seemed to 
 require much attention. Mrs. Leonard had closed her sunshade
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 263 
 
 and was now making a little hole in the ground with the 
 point. 
 
 "You ought not to do that," said Hugh. "You'll spoil 
 the pretty white wood. " 
 
 Mrs. Leonard smiled, as if the remark had for some reason 
 pleased her. The smile soon died, however, as she took up 
 Hugh's remark. 
 
 "Swimming with the tide thrills him? Yes. But, Hugh, 
 you alarm me when you say things like that. You ought to 
 have said them before. " 
 
 Hugh did not take this up ; he seemed to accept its truth with 
 bent head. 
 
 "You know Nigel, you see, so much better than we 
 do." 
 
 "We?" he questioned. 
 
 "Than Daphne and I." 
 
 "Daphne oh, of course she can't, she sees him in a golden 
 haze. But, Aurelia, I can't believe you don't see him just as 
 he is." 
 
 "And that is?" Mrs. Leonard interjected quickly. Hugh's 
 embarrassment grew. 
 
 "Nigel is a friend of mine. . ."he began. Mrs. Leonard 
 laid a hand on his arm, with a gesture that seemed to intimate 
 it was time to break down barriers. Her words, when she 
 went on, showed that she was prepared to do so. 
 
 "Your loyalty, Hugh, is perfect, I know. But I'm not sure 
 that Nigel's being a friend of yours hasn't helped to blind me. 
 Though the fault was mine in the beginning. Yes," as Hugh 
 looked up in some surprise. " It was. It's rather a humiliating 
 confession for a woman of my age, but I will confess to you that 
 once, when I first knew him, I really got frighteningly near 
 being well, bowled over by him myself. So that I understand 
 Daphne too well to understand him, to put together what he 
 seems and his attitude about the war, for instance. Does that 
 make you laugh: that I felt him like that?" 
 
 Hugh was evidently strongly moved. He stared at the 
 ground with an expression that was far removed from amuse- 
 ment.
 
 264 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "Laugh?" he said in a low voice. "No it makes me feel 
 inclined to cry. . . . And I want to kill Nigel. Yes, I do. " 
 
 "Oh, come! He can't help my having been a fool for ten 
 minutes. . . . After all, it's not a crime to be charming," 
 said Mrs. Leonard lightly, as if repenting of her frankness and 
 desirous of reducing the effect of what she had said. Her effort 
 was vain: Hugh had understood. He sat up rather stiffly. 
 His mouth was grim and his eyes glared behind their glasses. 
 
 "It is a crime, it's the worst of crimes, to feel life so cheap 
 and make it so damnably expensive for other people. That's 
 what one forgets; what one, rather, tries not to see, refuses to 
 see, till it's absolutely forced on one. Oh, I too. . . . You've 
 rated my slackness, but never half as severely as I deserved. 
 I thought 'Here's a fellow who'll always be gay and jolly and 
 make life seem gay and jolly too, and who's clever and sensi- 
 tive enough to see that other people are different and adapt him- 
 self to them.' He's a wonderful mimic phonograph, poor 
 Jimmy used to call him can strum any tune he's ever heard. 
 He thinks he's an aeolian harp, of course, vibrating to every 
 thrill of passion. Youth thrills him, spring thrills him, suffer- 
 ing thrills him, the war thrills him, but all his thrills are harp 
 thrills, pretty running things that die away with a sort of delicate 
 pathos into the next. He feels all the poetry of life, in verses 
 about six lines long. " 
 
 "Oh, Hugh!" cried Aurelia. "I'm sure you're unjust: you 
 exaggerate. ... I think Nigel's all wrong about the war, he 
 doesn't see anything, he won't; but he does feel it?" 
 
 It was phrased as a question, this last sentence; but Hugh 
 recognised in it more of the quality of an appeal. The impulse 
 that had made him so suddenly and almost brutally speak out 
 still held, for he rejected the appeal. 
 
 "No, he doesn't. If he did it wouldn't thrill, it would 
 tear and rend him, as it does you. The people who are thrilled 
 by it are people of cold passions and slow imagination. Pas- 
 sionate natures live on their own passion. They don't need 
 these violent stimuli from outside, it's the sentimentalists who 
 respond to them. Not because their passions are strong, but 
 because they're weak. It's all part of Nigel, to be thrilled by the
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 265 
 
 war. I didn't see it myself until a week or so ago; but one 
 night it became clear to me how just because he's such miles 
 away from the real thing, he can take in people like you, who 
 are full of it. But, oh God, what a world! Daphne may be all 
 right: what I cannot stand is the thought of you, Aurelia. " 
 
 Mrs. Leonard's eyes rested on Hugh's bent head with an ex- 
 pression in which many feelings mingled. 
 
 "Oh, it doesn't matter about me. That was nothing, and 
 it's all over. That's not the question." 
 
 "Ah, that's what you've always said But it does matter 
 to me." 
 
 "Oh, Hugh, not now." Hugh still stared at the ground. 
 
 "Yes, "he said. 
 
 Mrs. Leonard looked away. She did not speak, Hugh did 
 not, apparently, expect her to speak. 
 
 "Besides," she went back to it. "I think you are unjust 
 to Nigel. You're revenging on him now the extent to which 
 you've liked him irresponsibly. He's just a little off the picture 
 you made of him, that it suited you to make, that you were too 
 lazy to make fit the reality; and therefore you insist on smashing 
 the whole thing. That's not fair to him or you. But it brings 
 me to what I feel, what I have always felt, ever since their 
 engagement. Daphne is Nigel's chance in life, because she 
 likes him, not irresponsibly, as you did, but responsibly. And 
 she has got just the quality he hasn't. " 
 
 "Feeling?" 
 
 "Yes. Feeling." 
 
 Hugh said nothing: he only sat and looked at it, as if he 
 could not trust himself to say the things that rose to his lips. 
 There was a long pause. 
 
 "What are you going to do, then?" he said at last. Her 
 whole manner had told him that she was going to do something. 
 Mrs. Leonard smiled a little at his quick recognition of what she 
 had not said. 
 
 "There are only two things to do," she said. "Up to now 
 I have hardly said anything to Daphne of my feelings about the 
 war and the way it's being taken by people here. But I can't 
 go on like that. It's an unnatural relation between me and
 
 266 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Daphne, and dreadfully painful to us both. Because it isn't 
 as if she didn't know that I'm keeping things back. That 
 means I must either talk to her in other words, fight against 
 Nigel or I must go away and leave the field to him." She 
 paused. Hugh knocked out his pipe against his boot, and then 
 slowly re-filled it. 
 
 "Daphne could see?" he said at last. 
 
 "Yes, she could see, and my being here and seeing as I do 
 is all the time, even when I say nothing, exercising a kind of pull 
 on her, away from him. . . . She asked me, for instance, 
 whether I didn't think his article 'Why We are Right' 
 splendid. " 
 
 Hugh made no comment. 
 
 "So you see, if I stay, I'm tearing her in two." 
 
 Hugh nodded. 
 
 "Truth pulls one way, Nigel another. Yes. Then Nigel 
 ought to go. " 
 
 Mrs. Leonard shook her head. 
 
 "Ah, Hugh, it's not so simple as that. We think truth is 
 on our side, you and I; but Nigel doesn't. The antithesis in 
 effect would be not between truth and Nigel, but between me 
 and Nigel. And there's more in it than that. This isn't my 
 problem. It's Daphne's. One can't, ever, do another human 
 being's thinking for them. Or their suffering either, if it comes 
 to that. That's the agony of every parent. One has to see and 
 stand aside. ... I haven't the right, even if it were possible, 
 to make Daphne see. " 
 
 "And her seeing, as you call it, seeing the war, involves every- 
 thing else? " 
 
 Hugh was vague in phrase, but his meaning was clear 
 enough for Mrs. Leonard; too clear for her to be ready with a 
 reply. When her answer did come, it might have sounded 
 irrelevant. 
 
 "Daphne isn't forty-two, like you and me, Hugh. She's 
 twenty-two. " 
 
 "Yes." Hugh accepted the fact with its implications. 
 "You mean, among other things, that she wants to think as 
 Nigel thinks, not have him think as she does? "
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 267 
 
 "Partly. Anyhow, whatever her strength, and I think she 
 is strong, she doesn't know it. But I do still hope that her feel- 
 ing may make him feel. He won't see, but he might feel. " 
 
 Hugh was silent. 
 
 " So that I have decided to go away, " Mrs. Leonard resumed 
 after a pause in which neither said anything. " If they marry 
 towards the end of October, that leaves eight or nine weeks. 
 . . . Oh, I know it isn't usual." She smiled in answer to 
 Hugh's questioning look. "But it's not a usual case. I trust 
 Daphne entirely, and Nigel too. They must work this thing 
 out. So I'm going." 
 
 "To Wending End?" 
 
 "Yes. To Wending End. " 
 
 "And leaving her to Nigel?" 
 
 Mrs. Leonard nodded. 
 
 Hugh examined the ground. She did not need to tell him 
 what that would cost. He knew. It was not a thing to be 
 talked of, even between them. 
 
 "You think he's worth it?" he said at last. On that Mrs. 
 Leonard's eyes met his. 
 
 "She loves him," was all she said. It seemed enough. 
 Hugh made no further remark. 
 
 The shadows lengthened and deepened, a faint breeze, rising, 
 brought a few pale leaves fluttering down. Hugh watched them 
 as they fell. Between the far trees he again caught sight of a 
 white dress. 
 
 " I'm going over to France on Tuesday. " Hugh's deep voice 
 broke the silence. Mrs. Leonard started. 
 
 "But, Hugh! And you've never told me anything about 
 it." 
 
 There was an accent of reproach in her tone. Hugh looked 
 up. 
 
 "No," he said apologetically. "You have had more than 
 enough to think about. I've kept away. " 
 
 "I know you have," she took him up quickly. "But if 
 that's your idea of consideration!" 
 
 Hugh laughed and then proceeded to explain, not very 
 clearly, why he had come to this decision. "The B.M. seems
 
 268 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 absurd, you know. There's really nothing to do. There's a 
 man who can keep my stuff going just as well as I can, and 
 that's all any one can do at the moment. But what decided me 
 was that Emerson do you remember him? a great tall raw- 
 boned chap who got into a dreadful mess about ten years ago? " 
 
 "Out of which you pulled him yes I remember him. Did 
 he marry his pretty little bank clerk in the end?" 
 
 "No, thank goodness, he didn't. I happened to introduce 
 him to a most extraordinary girl. I'll tell you all about her 
 some time yes, really extraordinary, so don't smile like that 
 and it was she who saved Ted Emerson, not me at all. " 
 
 Mrs. Leonard's smile, instead of fading, had broadened; but 
 it was an entirely tolerant, affectionate smile. 
 
 "I know," she murmured. "It never is you, but by acci- 
 dent, somehow, you just manage to be able by no merit of 
 your own to do the really saving turn just at the crucial 
 moment. It's odd those accidents don't happen to other people, 
 that's all. But go on about Emerson. He became a doctor, 
 didn't he?" 
 
 "Yes. He'd always longed to, that was what made him 
 go wrong; he was so wretched, all the good stuff in him being 
 thwarted. Now he's a great success: a really admirable 
 doctor. Poplar adores him; so they ought to. Well, Emerson 
 is taking out a Red Cross unit to 'France; a lot of boys I know 
 are in it, and he had an idea that I could help, do the accounts 
 and so on, all the non-medical part, of which, I gather, there's 
 plenty. Anyhow, he swears I shall be of use. . . . It's difficult 
 to feel one is any here. It isn't as if I could write: that's your 
 job, Aurelia. And I do want if one is ever going to do a hand's 
 turn in getting this ghastly mess straightened out to know 
 some of the facts. The whole combination is weak my 
 motives, I mean. ... I only hope you don't see it as unmixedly 
 contemptible?" 
 
 Mrs. Leonard rolled and unrolled her sunshade. At his 
 last phrase she smiled. 
 
 " Dear Hugh, am I such a slave to words? I know how you'll 
 hate it, and I'm sure you'll be very useful. ... I wish Nigel 
 would go too. "
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 269 
 
 "Oh, Nigel's of use here. And he'll have a quite free field, 
 if we both go away. " 
 
 Mrs. Leonard sighed. She might have been looking at it, 
 that free field, as she gazed out over the grass, to where above 
 the tree-tops the sky slowly thickened to an opaque gold. Hugh 
 glanced at her abstracted face: she was unconscious of his eyes, 
 and he could let them rest. She was thinking, he knew, of 
 Daphne, not of him. His going to France affected her, it 
 seemed, mainly because of the light it cast back upon Daphne's 
 Nigel, who stayed at home. Hugh almost wished he had not 
 told her, as he saw how this thought must work in her mind. 
 He felt, too, almost as though he were deserting. He might 
 have "looked after" Daphne had he stayed. But whether his 
 view of Nigel or Aurelia's were the true one, Daphne must 
 look after herself. Mrs. Leonard was right, absolutely right; 
 but Hugh fully understood that none of all the hard things that 
 had come to her to do had been so hard as this decision to go 
 away and do nothing. He was almost sorry he had, perhaps, 
 made it a little harder by expressing what he felt about Nigel 
 Strode. There were things that it was dangerous, even cruel 
 to express, true though they were. Once one uttered them, 
 they became so much more menacing. He understood that 
 Aurelia wanted to feel the war, and her own attitude about it, 
 the main problem; but he knew that she saw further than that, 
 because, being what she was, she could not allow that to think 
 one way or the other about the war was an isolated or a merely 
 intellectual question. It was a moral not a mathematical test. 
 Some people might hold the views Nigel held honestly, but with 
 Nigel they were, fundamentally, dishonest. He saw that and 
 he thought that Aurelia saw it. She saw it, but she would not, 
 could not, as yet, go on to ask whether that did not stand for the 
 whole of Nigel. 
 
 Nigel and Daphne were approaching over the grass. They 
 were a pair pleasing to the eye; as they came on they might 
 have made the coloured cover for any happy-ending novel. It 
 was all very well thinking about Nigel in cold blood; the real 
 Nigel would always have the world at his feet. His straw hat 
 in his hand, the sun touching his fair hair so that it shone, his
 
 270 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 eyes very blue, his mouth lifted in his crooked smile, he looked 
 young, younger at that moment than Daphne. For Daphne's 
 face was clouded; the smile with which she greeted her mother 
 was a fugitive thing, that died away at once; and the handker- 
 chief in her hand crushed into a tight ball suggested many things. 
 Hugh got up to give her his chair. She sat down a little wearily. 
 
 "We want to consult you about something, Mrs. Leonard," 
 Nigel began, after they had exchanged a few words about the 
 evening papers they had failed to get and the beauty of the sky. 
 Hugh made a motion towards going. 
 
 "Don't go, old man," said Nigel easily. "It's nothing 
 you may not share. It's about our wedding. " 
 
 Daphne looked up, almost as if surprised, her cheeks flush- 
 ing. She opened her lips to speak, but said nothing. Nigel 
 continued, looking at Mrs. Leonard as he spoke 
 
 "We haven't really discussed it yet, out I know Daphne 
 feels just as I do. That this is not a time for personal happi- 
 ness. " 
 
 Mrs. Leonard faced him, her eyes grave. She glanced from 
 him to her daughter. But Daphne was drawing in the gravel 
 with her parasol. 
 
 "Yes?" said Mrs. Leonard, as if waiting for more. Nigel 
 hesitated. 
 
 "Everything's so terrible; there's so much to do it seems 
 to me, somehow, inappropriate to be thinking of oneself to 
 be preparing one's own happiness." 
 
 There was again a silence. Hugh moved a few paces away. 
 Mrs. Leonard clasped her hands. 
 
 "Of course, if you both feel this I won't say a word. It's 
 entirely a matter for your own feelings. . . ." She paused 
 and looked again at Daphne; but Daphne's eyes were fixed 
 upon the sand. She could not see her face. Nigel's told her 
 nothing. "You have discussed it together and come to this 
 decision." 
 
 Daphne looked up: her eyes, wandering over the group, 
 avoided her mother's, but encountered Hugh's as a turn 
 in his short perambulation brought him back to the chairs. 
 Hugh received from them an extraordinarily direct impression.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 271 
 
 He knew, Daphne's eyes told him, that Nigel and she had 
 not discussed it, that this was the first intimation to her as 
 to them; and, as Daphne's eyes held him, he knew beyond 
 this, that she was imploring him to keep this knowledge to 
 himself. He could only look back an unwilling acquiescence, 
 and be thankful, as he turned again, that he was going 
 away. 
 
 Mrs. Leonard went on 
 
 "I don't know whether you are wise or not . . . but if 
 you both feel the time . . . inauspicious . . . there's nothing 
 more to be said." 
 
 "I do," Nigel accepted the word eagerly. "That's just 
 what I feel. It's inauspicious. One oughtn't to be happy 
 at a time like this." 
 
 Mrs. Leonard looked at him, growing a little pale as 
 she did so; and then again at Daphne, who raised her 
 hand as if to shield something off. There were too many 
 things to be said, so many that it seemed impossible to say 
 any. Nigel had found his word now inauspicious seemed 
 to be for him a kind of talisman, and he expounded 
 his idea for a few minutes, speaking quickly, easily, 
 glancing from Daphne, who did not once raise her eyes 
 to his, to her mother, who held hers fixed upon his 
 face. 
 
 When he had finished she rose. 
 
 "This is a thing upon which I cannot say anything: you 
 two must settle it. ... I see you have settled it, Nigel." 
 There was no emphasis on the pronoun: her eyes included 
 Daphne and Nigel in one. "I know this is a very trying 
 time for you both, for every one. I had rather hoped that 
 you would soon be together and find in union a strength that 
 would help you not merely to bear it, but to find something 
 in it beyond endurance." 
 
 Daphne was looking up now, but she remained silent. 
 
 "But it is for you to decide. You must find your own 
 way. It's a big decision, one way or the other, and you will 
 want to talk it over together more fully. . . . Anyhow, my 
 own plan remains. I have decided to go away, Nigel, for
 
 272 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 a time. No, not to France. I am too old and not strong 
 enough to be of any use there, even if I wanted to 
 go. I am going down to the country to stay with an 
 old servant of mine who's got two sons in the army; she's 
 anxious and lonely." 
 
 "I'm so glad," cried Nigel. "That will be good for 
 you. You look very tired. London is rather terrible 
 nowadays; more terrible to you, I suppose, even than 
 to us." 
 
 "Daphne and I have made all our plans," Mrs. Leonard 
 went on. "She will be busy with her workrooms." 
 
 Hugh Infield suddenly rejoined the group. He had wan- 
 dered away during the last passage. 
 
 "Do you know," he said, "there's a very heavy dew fall- 
 ing? You'll catch cold in those thin dresses."
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 
 
 SEPTEMBER passed into October, and the beauty of 
 the year lingered as if unwilling to depart. Even in 
 London, day followed day of tranquil sunshine, with the 
 last golden leaves lingering on the trees, the Park a romance 
 of blue-grey mist in the mornings and the sky full of stars 
 at night. For all her lovers the town had never shown her- 
 self in more perfect beauty. But even to the most impas- 
 sioned of them, this beauty was charged with irony. For 
 over it all there spread like a miasma the horror of the war, 
 hiding everything else away. London was far from the 
 torture of Belgium and Poland, the agony of France, 
 yet gradually even London became impregnated with 
 the sense of the slow actuality of war. Social life ceased: 
 men disappeared into training in remote parts of the 
 country to Egypt, India and the Persian Gulf. Women were 
 absorbed in multifarious organisations. Every activity, 
 from knitting to the making of shells, was dominated 
 by a single hideous purpose. Artists stared at ruin 
 and hastened, where they could, to enlist. The intel- 
 lectuals bowed their heads and cried aloud that the muscle 
 makes the man. 
 
 Every one lived in and for the moment, and each 
 moment seemed interminable as day followed day without 
 recognisable difference or change. Few people now snatched 
 at evening papers in the hope of news of decisive victory. 
 But as the hope of the end receded, passions grew, and 
 on pure enthusiasm there followed all the ugly variations 
 of hate. 
 
 273
 
 274 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Mrs. Leonard, in the country, watching the signs, 
 could trace a subtle modification of opinion. As the 
 contest grew more and more serious, illusions fell and 
 withered one by one. The papers still talked of a holy war. 
 Idealistic liberals continued to dream of the inauguration 
 of the reign of peace through murderous exhaustion. Prag- 
 matists planned a new Europe on nationalistic lines. 
 Slowly, however, the thing began to be seen for what 
 it was: a holocaust of ideals, a trampling underfoot of 
 the slow gains of civilisation, the suicidal rending of 
 humanity by itself. She wondered whether the jour- 
 nalists still believed in their own articles. It made small 
 difference however; the monstrous stone would roll on now, 
 with gathering momentum, down the hill. No garlands of 
 flowers could stay or delay it. 
 
 Nigel had welcomed Mrs. Leonard's departure as prom- 
 ising a truce to difficult discussion. And so at first 
 it proved. Daphne had been transferred from the relief 
 committee at Limehouse to the big workroom opened 
 further West, and there she found herself exceedingly 
 busy. She had to learn a new routine and adapt her 
 mind to new work, requiring quick, responsible judgment, 
 decision and tact in managing large bodies of girls. She was 
 so successful in this that before many weeks had passed 
 she had been made head of the workrooms. The work, 
 though interesting, was tiring. Once more she had little 
 time free save the evening in which to see Nigel. That 
 and the distance from him which her taking up her 
 quarters with Chris Bampton and Gertrude Fenner in 
 Baker Street involved, meant fewer opportunities for 
 talk, and most of those opportunities restricted. Yet 
 as the time passed on each was aware that it was not 
 merely absence of time that kept them mutually silent 
 on a growing number of questions which it would, earlier, 
 have been natural, indeed inevitable, to discuss openly 
 and freely. Neither would have admitted that they 
 were left thus on one side because they held possibilities of 
 disagreement, but the fear of disagreement slumbered un-
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 275 
 
 easily beneath their silences. They hardly talked of 
 the war, in its more general bearing; and after one diffi- 
 cult conversation, difficult for all its apparent lightness, 
 the question of Nigel's applying for a commission was 
 left likewise. He had raised this himself, saying he felt he 
 ought to go; but when Daphne agreed with him, he seemed 
 both surprised and disappointed. 
 
 "Your mother would be horrified," he urged. 
 
 "Yes, but mother thinks the war wrong. You think 
 it right. You want other people to go," was her unsatis- 
 factory reply, a reply tainted with Mrs. Leonard's logic 
 chopping. She ought to have felt that duty retained 
 at home any one with a real power of affecting opinion in 
 the right way; but though she admitted the force of 
 that argument, it was left for Nigel himself to bring it 
 forward. 
 
 The date of their marriage was a topic still less capable 
 of discussion; and on this Nigel found that her disagreement 
 was deeper than he had suspected, deeper and most 
 tiresomely complicated. Feeling one day more than or- 
 dinarily weary of daily life, and oppressed by the sense of 
 overarching calamity, he suddenly voiced a desire to have a 
 great deal of money, for then they might go abroad to- 
 gether, away to some balmy Pacific island, and escape 
 from the whole thing. Daphne agreed joyously, and for 
 some time they were more happily employed than they had 
 been for long, more absolutely unanimous, in building 
 castles and planning the details of the serene life they 
 might there lead. Then Daphne's face clouded. When Nigel 
 interrogated her as to what was the matter, she was rather 
 incoherent. 
 
 "That's all right for me, Nigel," she said. "I don't ex- 
 pect myself to be bigger than that. I don't understand the 
 war; it's just a horror, and so I only want to run away 
 and hide. . . . But you feel it's a great thing. . . . So, 
 you ought not to want to escape. . . . What makes you 
 want to escape? Love ought to make one welcome great 
 things, rise to them, not try to escape. Is my love a little,
 
 276 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 reducing thing? That's what worries me. Sometimes it 
 seems to be." 
 
 All Nigel could say was, "Don't let's talk about it any- 
 more; we shall never agree." He was annoyed and per- 
 plexed. 
 
 His annoyance and perplexity were to grow. This con- 
 versation seemed to have started her mind at work 
 upon the whole question of the war again. Shortly 
 afterwards she admitted that she was deep in the Diplo- 
 matic Correspondence; and a few days later there followed 
 an incident, trifling enough in itself, which showed him that 
 her thinking had gone on, and was developing on very vexing 
 lines. They had met for lunch at a restaurant half-way be- 
 tween the workroom and the New World office, and tempted 
 by the warm sunshine had wandered, afterwards, into the 
 Embankment Gardens, where they sat down on a seat facing 
 the river. After a few words they relapsed into silence. Nigel 
 stared at the river, so did Daphne. On the seat be- 
 hind them he had noticed, when they sat down, a young- 
 ish working woman, and a child of three or four years 
 old; the child's face was wan with a more than London 
 pallor, and its limbs extraordinarily thin. Nigel had 
 suggested to Daphne, when he saw them, that they should 
 move on, but she was tired and they stayed. All at once 
 he became aware that Daphne was listening to the whimpering 
 of the child. 
 
 "I want my daddy. . . . Mummy, when is he coming 
 back?" 
 
 "Soon, dearie," said the woman in a weary voice, as if 
 she had already said it hundreds of times. 
 
 He glanced round and met the woman's eyes, deep sunken 
 in her wasted face. 
 
 "Mummy," the plaintive voice began again. "Will he 
 really come back soon?" 
 
 Daphne leaned over the back of the seat, and taking a 
 carnation from her buttonhole gave it to the child. She smelt 
 it for a few moments, then let it drop from a listless 
 hand.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 277 
 
 "She doesn't look very well," said Daphne to the mother. 
 "Poor little mite! so thin." The woman's eyes met 
 hers. 
 
 "No, miss. I've taken her to the doctor, and he says 
 he can't do nothing for her. She's fretting for her father. . . . 
 Look, dearie, look at that pretty dog." 
 
 The child's attention was distracted for a moment, and 
 its mother went on, encouraged by the sympathy she saw 
 in Daphne's eyes 
 
 "I don't know what to do with her, miss. She cries all 
 night I can't get her to sleep always asking for her father. 
 Nothing else will do. And I heard two days ago that Jim 
 was killed in France." 
 
 Daphne was sitting by the woman now, and at this took 
 her hand and pressed it without saying anything. The woman's 
 eyes filled with tears. 
 
 "I don't know what to do," she repeated. "I can't tell 
 her, you see; but I feel sure she really knows. . . . She will 
 ask for him. . . ." 
 
 Daphne continued to talk to the woman for some time 
 in a soft voice. At last she rose, taking the child in her arms 
 and moved slowly away. Daphne came back and sat down 
 beside Nigel. Nigel looked at her, and the suffering in her 
 face gave him a sudden pang. The incident was nothing, 
 these things were happening all over Europe, every day; 
 but it was hard that Daphne should feel it so. He laid his 
 hand over hers. The colour in her cheek showed him that 
 she felt it, though she said nothing. 
 
 "Dearest," he said after a pause "you mustn't feel 
 it so." 
 
 Daphne looked up. 
 
 "Oh, Nigel, yes," she said. "Do you know, I don't think 
 I've felt it half enough. ... I'm ashamed when I think 
 that mother's feelings seemed to me exaggerated. I have 
 been appallingly dull and blind. I've just covered it all up; 
 hidden away all the things that hurt to see. I haven't thought 
 of these people as real at all, or what it means for men to go 
 and kill and want to kill."
 
 278 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "Ah, but that's morbid," cried Nigel. "They're going out 
 to be killed, poor dears, not to kill." 
 
 "Yes, they're going to be killed. But we, we who sit 
 at home, we want them to kill: kill as many as they can. It's 
 what Tolstoi says: what is terrible is not suffering and death, 
 but that men should desire suffering and death; and we are 
 doing that, every minute. That woman, whose husband's 
 been killed on the Aisne, feels just what I should feel if you 
 were killed, Nigel. And yet, when my love ought to make 
 me understand that, I've used it as an excuse for hiding my 
 eyes and wanting to escape. . . . And you, you've made 
 me worse, Nigel. Yes," she cried, as he made a gesture of 
 protest, "you have. Because deep down you don't really 
 feel it either. You don't really mind, really care. It hasn't 
 broken up and upset your life. It hasn't made you see things 
 differently. You're just the same as you always were. It's 
 outside of you, all this, just as it's outside of me. You aren't 
 horrified, you aren't appalled. Even the way the Church takes 
 it only makes you laugh. Laugh! ... It terrifies me, because 
 it makes me feel there's something wrong, something weak in 
 our love if it shuts us up in cotton wool when this is going on all 
 round us." 
 
 "What do you want me to do then?" asked Nigel, rather 
 at a loss. 
 
 "I don't know. I wish I did. . . . No, no, I'm not sug- 
 gesting that I want you to go out and kill. I don't. It's far 
 more complicated than that ... I don't think I want you to 
 do anything, only to feel it. " 
 
 At first Nigel met this attack with raillery. Then he be- 
 came indignant, reminding Daphne that in August he had felt 
 far more than she had. In the end it left him more than a little 
 disturbed. 
 
 For it was true. It drove home what he had begun to realise 
 weeks before, but wished to leave alone: the knowledge that the 
 great uplift the war had given him was over. It had spent itself 
 just as the purely personal uplift which Daphne had once given 
 him had done. Now that Daphne had found it out, he could 
 not leave it alone. She seemed to think that his not "feeling
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 279 
 
 the war," as she phrased it, was somehow due to her, but he 
 knew that he felt it more when he was with her than at any other 
 time, except when he was writing. But even when he was most 
 shaken he was not shaken to his depths. She had discovered it; 
 and her discovery he could not refute, for self-consciousness 
 confirmed her. Without her he might have continued to feel the 
 war as an escape, but now she was forcing him to realise it 
 as nothing of the kind. As she made him see it, it was not 
 an escape; on the contrary, it was the strongest call upon him 
 to be himself that he had yet to meet. He had fled, it seemed, 
 before Mrs. Leonard's logic only to be faced by a demand at 
 least as resolute for lucidity of another kind. Daphne did not 
 insist upon his understanding the causes and seeing the result as 
 wrong; she did not appeal to reason or call to him to sit down 
 and argue fine-drawn points. She did not ask whether the 
 war were or were not inevitable and just; she merely saw it as 
 horror and asked him to feel it. And he could not do it. Her 
 words, her whole attitude drove him in upon himself, and in 
 himself he found emptiness. 
 
 They were both later to look back to this conversation as a 
 kind of landmark, for it was less than a week later that they had 
 their first quarrel. By ordinary standards it perhaps hardly 
 deserved that name; but both Nigel and Daphne knew it for 
 what it was, and it arose directly from their talk on the Em- 
 bankment. Nothing had happened there, yet Daphne had 
 returned to work feeling wretched, with a wretchedness to which 
 she could not give a name, bruised and baffled; Nigel had made 
 his way back to Fleet Street thoroughly disturbed. 
 
 On his desk he found a short note from Hugh Infield, the 
 first he had had from him since his going to France; and a letter 
 from Jeffries, who was in camp on Salisbury Plain. Neither of 
 them said anything interesting. After a few moments' reflection 
 Nigel called for a file of the New World since August, and began 
 glancing through the leaders with a view to discovering whether 
 they gave any colour to Daphne's suggestion that the catas- 
 trophe had not really shaken him. It was strange now to re- 
 read the Editorials of the first weeks of August and recall the 
 white heat at which they had been written. .Very well written,
 
 280 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 too, he candidly thought them, as he reviewed them now, quite 
 as good as many of the thoughts that had reappeared in the 
 dignity of book or pamphlet form. That was not the time, 
 he still thought, for dwelling on horrors. There were other 
 aspects rightly prominent in taking up the sword. After all, 
 horrors were obvious; and when you wanted men to join the 
 army there was good reason against them. But perhaps 
 Daphne was right, the time had come now for looking at that 
 side. Number four of his articles on the cost of the war might 
 well be something of the kind. Hugh and Jeffries had proved 
 useless, but it ought to be easy enough to get hold of a certain 
 number of facts and make a column of stuff that would bring the 
 thing home to people and prove, incidentally, to Daphne that 
 she had been wrong: and to himself also, perhaps. 
 
 Accordingly on Saturday the New World's fourth page was 
 devoted to an attempt to visualise a modern battlefield. Nigel, 
 reading his paper at breakfast, felt pleased with his performance, 
 and after a telephone conversation with Edgar Nugent, who 
 rang him up to ask whether he were ass enough to be starting a 
 "Stop the war" campaign, he thought that Daphne was sure to 
 approve of him. So sure did he feel that he rang her up at the 
 workroom to bid her to lunch. To lunch she came, but with a 
 face so grave and a manner so distraite that he thought she could 
 not be well. A battlefield article did not seem at all the thing 
 to discuss at lunch Nigel had a strong sense of times and 
 seasons so he chatted lightly of other things. But Daphne was 
 difficult. She replied to his remarks, but gave him no help in 
 initiating subjects, and lunch dragged. Nigel regretted that he 
 had refused to go down to Tenacre by the early train. He had 
 promised to speak at a recruiting meeting of Edgar's in the 
 evening, and it would have been less tiring to go early with 
 him. He had stayed to see Daphne; it hardly seemed worth 
 while. 
 
 When coffee had been brought in and they were left on the 
 sofa, Daphne still said nothing. She gazed at Hugh's Japanese 
 embroidered panel over the mantelpiece as if she had never 
 seen it before. 
 
 "The face is like mother, isn't it?" she said suddenly.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 281 
 
 "So Hugh says," Nigel agreed. "But I have never been 
 able to see it. " 
 
 She looked away from the picture to him for a moment. 
 
 "Have you heard from your mother lately?" Nigel 
 asked. 
 
 "No. . . . Yes, that's to say, I heard on Tuesday; not 
 since then." 
 
 "I've sent her the New World. ... By the bye, Daphne, 
 you've never told me what you thought of the article. ... I 
 hope it convinced you that I do feel the war. " 
 
 Daphne looked at him with a strained expression. 
 
 "Oh, Nigel," she said. "Do you call that feeling?" He 
 felt distinctly annoyed. 
 
 "It's my idea of feeling, I confess." Daphne hid her face 
 for a moment in her hands. 
 
 "My dear child," said Nigel patiently, "what on earth is 
 the matter? Nugent has just rung me up to ask if I was 
 founding a 'Stop the War' league, so you see he thought it 
 strong enough. " 
 
 Daphne uncovered her face, but she did not look at him. 
 Instead she fixed her eyes on the seat ring on the third finger 
 of her left hand, and turned it round and round as she said in a 
 low voice 
 
 "Feeling! No. I call that being sick. Why gloat over 
 wounds and physical horrors? What good can that do? " 
 
 Nigel sprang to his feet. 
 
 "I think you're most unreasonable," he said, and walked 
 away across the room. Daphne stared at his back. 
 
 "Oh, Nigel," she murmured. "Don't you understand?" 
 
 He turned round sharply. 
 
 "No," he said. "I don't. I don't know what you're at. 
 I think you're overwrought, you know. I hoped when your 
 mother went away that you'd be able to see things more 
 naturally and normally. . . . But instead you get worse. ..." 
 
 Daphne made no reply. A silence followed. Nigel looked 
 at her as she sat on the sofa, leaning back, her eyes closed. 
 She looked small and very young, and he felt suddenly sorry 
 for her. He came and sat down by the sofa and put his arm
 
 282 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 round her; awkwardly enough, for her hat got in his way, and 
 the buttons on her coat-sleeve jarred his wrist. 
 
 "Daphne, this isn't like you. . . . What are you unhappy 
 about?" He kissed her lightly on the forehead. 
 
 Daphne opened her eyes, starry and dim, and tried to say 
 something. But there seemed to be a lump in her throat; 
 she only gave a faint smile and turned away her head. 
 
 "You know, Daphne, we shan't ever be happy if you're like 
 this if you take things like this. . . . What are you making 
 yourself unhappy about? I'm sure all this is nothing." 
 
 Daphne looked at him; her eyes, wide open now and clear, 
 seemed to search his face. 
 
 "Well?" he said, after a moment. 
 
 "Oh, I don't know," she said miserably. "What is it, 
 Nigel? Something is happening to us. " 
 
 Nigel got up and looked at his watch. 
 
 "Nothing is happening but that you need a rest and I must 
 catch my train. I shall be down at Tenacre till Tuesday night, 
 I expect. " 
 
 He began to move about the room, collecting papers and 
 putting them into the attache case that lay open on the table. 
 Daphne got up too, straightened her hat and drew down her 
 veil. She had lately taken to a veil, on Nigel's recommenda- 
 tion: he thought her too careless in the way she put her hats 
 on, and too apt to take them off. 
 
 "There's a hole in your veil," he said now, looking at her 
 critically. 
 
 His tone was cool. Daphne felt the tears rise to her eyes. 
 It was absurd and humiliating that to be told she had a hole 
 in her veil should so upset her, when the terrible things they 
 had been saying terrible to her, though apparently not to 
 Nigel left her calm. But she could not answer, could not 
 take off her veil and readjust it. 
 
 Nothing more was said. They went down the narrow stairs 
 and across the courtyard. In the street Nigel hailed a taxi. 
 
 "You'll write to me, Nigel?" Daphne made an effort. 
 
 "Perhaps," he smiled, leaping in. 
 
 Women were incalculable, he thought, as he leaned back in
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 283 
 
 the taxi. Daphne took things absurdly sometimes. It was 
 foolish to pay too much attention to what she said, she was 
 obviously tired and nervy. Hugh's remarks about the sacred 
 terror came into his mind, and he decided that this little scene 
 must be another instance of its operation. A very inconvenient 
 thing it certainly was, that created mountains out of molehills. 
 No. He should not write to Daphne. Letters about misunder- 
 standings were a mistake.
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 
 
 AT the recruiting meeting Nigel's speech was a decided 
 success. With great effect he employed as his starting- 
 point his own article in the New World. There was no 
 danger that Sussex would have read it. Even the gentry in 
 the front rows, even Mrs. Nugent in the centre of the very first, 
 her bright eyes fixed on his, even the Vicar in the Chair, would 
 not get it until the evening, and then reserve it to assist them 
 through the somnolent hours after Sunday's lunch. Such was 
 the fate of weeklies, Nigel knew. He could pass safely from the 
 horrors of the battlefield, thus eloquently delineated, to the 
 causes that made it inevitable, essential for a nation that still 
 held its head high, to take part in those horrors. For a rustic 
 audience they could be simply and broadly sketched the long- 
 planned malevolence of Germany, the innocence of Belgium, 
 the heritage of England's glorious past. From the motives 
 an easy transition carried him to the future: a free world, ex- 
 panding in the sun that shone upon it, once the dark cloud of 
 Prussian militarism was swept aside. To every man the call 
 was clear and insistent. Honour had made it impossible for 
 the nation to stand aside. Now every day was proving more 
 clearly that this was not only a war of ideals, but of self-defence ; 
 a war for existence in which every man who was a man must take 
 his part. 
 
 Nigel sat down amid mild applause. The serried rows of 
 people at the back were torpid ; but to make up for their dullness 
 the well-dressed folks in front were enthusiastic. Mrs. Nugent's 
 eyes shone yet more brightly, and she recklessly endangered 
 her white kid gloves in the eagerness of her clapping, warmly 
 
 284
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 285 
 
 seconded by the plump middle-aged gentleman and their 
 cosy-looking wives. One red-faced, white-haired old man 
 turned in his seat and glared angrily round the hall, as if to mark 
 who hung back. There was a short pause, in which no one 
 seemed quite clear as to what was going to happen next. Then 
 from the extreme back of the room a tall young man, in tweeds 
 and a flannel collar, rose to his feet, and in an unmistakable 
 Cambridge drawl inquired whether questions were per- 
 mitted. 
 
 Edgar Nugent, on the platform, leaned over to the Chair- 
 man, who was on the point of rising to his feet. "Most un- 
 wise. Quite unnecessary at a meeting of this character. 
 Socialist. " His whisper rose to an audible hiss. 
 
 The Chairman hesitated and glanced at Nigel. Nigel shook 
 his head. His afflatus had subsided. The idea of further exer- 
 tion was tiresome. 
 
 The Vicar accordingly got on to his feet and stated that, 
 in view of the object of the meeting, he thought that no useful 
 end would be served by putting questions to the speaker, to 
 whom they were all most grateful. It would be better to let 
 his admirable and inspiring words (Hear, hear) sink into their 
 minds. This was not a time for controversy, but for unanimous 
 action. Let each man look into his own conscience. (He 
 stared pointedly at a group of youngish men in muddy corduroys 
 near the door.) Church and State, with a single voice in which 
 all distinctions of party and creed had been laid aside, called 
 on them to remember Christ's words when He said that He 
 came not to bring Peace but a Sword. As in the days of the 
 Crusades, so now, the trumpet call had sounded. 
 
 The would-be questioner had resumed his seat and now 
 leaned forward, his eyes fixed with an ambiguous expression on 
 the Vicar, whose sonorous voice rolled out. as though he were 
 reading the lesson, as he went on to point out that the war was 
 God's way of speaking to his people. Nigel surveyed the 
 audience. They were acquiescent, but altogether inanimate. 
 The young man looked disagreeably alert and more and more 
 contemptuous. Before the homily ended he had got up and 
 left the hall.
 
 286 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "You did that jolly well, Nigel," said Edgar, as he helped 
 his guest into his overcoat a few minutes later. "I can't think 
 how you do it. I always feel such a fool when I tell those fellows 
 they ought to go while I sit tight. They don't realise the thing 
 a bit, you know: it hasn't come home to them. " 
 
 "No," said his wife. "Their apathy is awful. On the 
 whole, I really don't think we've done badly, considering the 
 material. " 
 
 "A big disaster would fetch them," Nugent went on cheer- 
 fully. "Mons gave us a spurt, but this deadlock takes the life 
 out of 'em. They just get used to it all. But I hope you've 
 waked them up. . . . Jump in, old man. I expect you're 
 dead." 
 
 Patriotic enthusiasm was, Nigel admitted, exhausting. 
 Very agreeable it was to sink back against the soft cushions of 
 the ample motor-car which carried them so smoothly over the 
 heavy mud and through the innumerable little streams that lay 
 across the road. The sound of the rain beating on the roof and 
 lashing against the windows enhanced the warmth and security 
 within. Even more agreeable was it, on arrival at Tenacre, to 
 find an enormous fire crackling and blazing in the snug smoking- 
 room, with deep chairs in a circle before it, and on a polished 
 round table, lit by a rose-shaded lamp, good things to eat, drink 
 and smoke, spread out in sparkling glass and silver. It was 
 with a sense of delighted repose that Nigel lay back in the softest 
 and deepest of the chairs, his feet stretched to the fire, sipping 
 whisky-and-soda and smoking a good cigar; repose of mind no 
 less than of body, for in the easy give and take of light gossip 
 with Edgar and Mabel there was no need to wonder whether 
 one were saying or thinking the right thing, or coming up to 
 standards not one's own. He knew that they liked him, ap- 
 proved of him, even admired him; and as he basked in that kind- 
 ly warmth he felt that he had latterly been unjust to himself; 
 given way to a depression for which there was no need, accepted 
 limitations that were not really there. 
 
 After inquiries as to the doings and whereabouts of various 
 acquaintances, and an account of his own recruiting and other 
 activities, Edgar wandered off. He was apt to disappear:
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 287 
 
 nice though he was, it was not the least of his merits that he so 
 much preferred the background. 
 
 "I hope you don't mind our being alone," said Mabel. 
 "We haven't really seen you for so long. That's the worst 
 of engaged people." She smiled archly. "Ought I to have 
 asked Daphne?" 
 
 "Oh dear me, no," cried Nigel. "We're not that sort of 
 couple. Besides, Daphne hates recruiting meetings. She 
 wouldn't at all have approved of my speech. She thinks you 
 ought either to enlist yourself, or else say nothing about it; 
 nothing in favour of it, that is. " 
 
 Mrs. Nugent smiled again, a deeply comprehending 
 smile. 
 
 "She'd have to change her mind if she heard you speak," 
 she said. "You are far more use than if you were to go out. 
 I thought your description of the battlefield marvellous: simply 
 marvellous. I can't think how you do it. Of course you've 
 such an imagination. Mine shrinks away. And yet I feel one 
 ought to go and look. As it is, one feels so out of it all. " 
 
 "It's funny," said Nigel. "You know, Daphne simply 
 hated that description. It's an article in the New World, you'll 
 see it to-morrow. " 
 
 "Really?" Mrs. Nugent looked at him sympathetically. 
 "But I'm so glad you've 'written it down. It's wonderful. I 
 want to read it. It's dreadfully painful, of course; but I feel 
 one ought to face those things. ... Is Daphne a pro-German, 
 then?" 
 
 "Heavens, no," cried Nigel. "I hope she has more sense 
 than that. But don't ask me to explain her attitude. It's 
 beyond me." 
 
 Mrs. Nugent still wore her thoughtful expression. 
 
 " It is odd, " she murmured. "But people are cowards often 
 without knowing it, aren't they? That's why I admired that 
 description of yours so specially. And the New World alto- 
 gether. It does require such courage to hold on to one's ideals. 
 One has such an inclination just to sit down and groan and say 
 one can't bear it, and turn away and not look. To see it all, 
 and see that it's necessary and right that's big work, Nigel.
 
 288 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Bigger than you could do as a soldier. As a soldier you'd only 
 be one among hundreds of thousands. As it is, you're doing 
 work no one else could do. You do feel that, don't you? You 
 aren't seriously thinking of going out?" 
 
 "Oh no," said Nigel. Indeed he was not. "But it does 
 help to feel some one appreciates what one's trying to do. I 
 sometimes feel quite useless: so that it would be better to go 
 and get killed. " 
 
 Mabel Nugent gave him a long look, which seemed to say 
 that she felt much more than she dared to express. Then she 
 turned and gently filled his glass. Something in the way she 
 did it made it an act of supreme tenderness, almost as if she had 
 stroked his hand. She rose. Nigel watched her as she moved 
 towards the windows to see, preparatory to retiring to bed, 
 whether they were shut. It struck him that she was very good- 
 looking of course she always had been; but it came upon him 
 with fresh force, the charm of some one in every sense a woman. 
 The soft rustle of her silks, her admirably dressed head, the 
 swing of her diamond earrings, the flash of the stones on her 
 hand, even her shiny buckled shoes, all pleased him. She was 
 finished, complete, independent. Perhaps she laughed too 
 much; her voice was a trifle harsh; but one could not imagine 
 her crying or clinging. This independence, in conjunction 
 with such polished elegance, made her interest and sympathy 
 a subtle form of homage. 
 
 "I'm going to bed now," she said, pausing by his chair for 
 a moment, her fine eyes resting on his face. "You're in your 
 own room, you know. Sleep well!" 
 
 With that she left him. Nigel leaned back in his deep soft 
 chair and drew a long breath of comfort. Comfort Mabel 
 Nugent diffused it round him: comfort in its deepest, richest 
 sense: comfort not merely physical, but of his whole being. 
 He felt at ease at Tenacre, as he never felt with the Leonards. 
 Aurelia in one way, Daphne in another, forced upon him a sense 
 of inadequacy; and when he was with them he had moments 
 in which they seemed to be right. They asked of him some- 
 thing, to them very important, which, it seemed, he had not 
 got. But was it really important?
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 289 
 
 The incident of the battlefield article, and the conversation 
 out of which it arose, was a case in point. Nigel had, for a 
 moment, admitted Daphne's accusation that he did not feel 
 the war, and had seen it as constituting a true case against him. 
 He had seen himself with her eyes, as lacking something, and a 
 wave of depression and self -disgust had swept over him. With 
 an effort that seemed to him splendid in retrospect, he had risen 
 out of his depression, and shown her that she was wrong. To 
 himself the proof was convincing. To Mabel Nugent it was 
 more than convincing. She denied the whole accusation in 
 advance. But Daphne? To Daphne, by some incompre- 
 hensible mental perversion, the article seemed to strengthen 
 instead of annihilating her case. Her criticism therefore seemed 
 to him to throw light not upon himself, or upon the war, but 
 upon her; and it was a light disquieting in the highest degree. 
 It showed her as an uncomfortable person; and resentment was 
 added to the sense of exhaustion which all their recent inter- 
 course had forced upon Nigel. He had hoped so much from 
 Mrs. Leonard's absence, but his hopes had been woefully 
 disappointed. 
 
 As he looked back over the last few months it seemed to 
 him that Daphne had changed. His previous assumption 
 that she had remained unaltered, while his feeling for her had 
 suffered modification due not to anything in her but to some- 
 thing in himself, now seemed false. It was she who had changed. 
 He had thought of her youth and her passion as of a fire which 
 would light and warm their life together, a glow which would 
 give to shared emotion the radiance apt to fade when one was 
 middle-aged; but it had turned to a flame malign and destruc- 
 tive. A fire, after all, was a lovely thing in a well-tended grate; 
 one did not want it all over one's carpet. Daphne loved him. 
 Of that he felt no doubt. But a love so ardent, consuming and 
 uncontrolled as hers, was really a source of more misery than 
 pleasure. She did not now seem happy herself, and assuredly 
 it was long since she had made him happy. 
 
 Without rhyme or reason there came into his head the 
 phrase in which Hugh Infield had congratulated him on his 
 engagement. When Nigel had communicated the news he
 
 290 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 had been silent for some time. Then he had said: "You are 
 an uncommonly lucky fellow. I hope you realise it. " 
 
 The solemnity of his tone had so struck Nigel that he had 
 jestingly told Hugh that he almost frightened him. On that 
 Hugh had looked at him hard and declared 
 
 "That's right. You ought to be frightened. She's a most 
 remarkable girl." 
 
 When Nigel replied that she was a very charming one, which 
 was more important, Hugh had got up and walked about the 
 room. Then, approaching his friend's chair, he had stood for 
 some minutes, looking monstrously owl-like and solemn, as if 
 on the point of delivering some piece of profound wisdom. 
 Nothing had come of it, however; he had returned to his writing 
 without uttering another word. It was odd that his casual 
 phrase should return now. Hugh spoke little: that must be 
 why one remembered, with such unnecessary vividness, his rare 
 sayings. This seemed to belong to that other about the sacred 
 terror, which had latterly haunted Nigel's brain. Hang it all! 
 whatever he meant, he was not far wrong. There was some- 
 thing terrifying, if one looked forward into the long flat days of 
 the future, in the idea of association with that sort of consuming 
 fire. It must make existence uncomfortable, at the least. 
 It was the perpetual presentation of excessive demands. 
 Was there anything so wearing? It was bad enough to make 
 demands of life that life rejected. One got used to that: by 
 thirty-eight one knew all about that. But what if, when one 
 had at last learned to accept one's own limitations, to realise 
 that one was not, for good or evil, a person to whom life was 
 going to grant big things, some one else insisted that one was 
 to produce them? insisted on making one the centre and the 
 star? What did that mean but being involved, for ever, in a 
 struggle one had rejected for oneself? 
 
 Experience Nigel stretched his feet out to the still excellent 
 fire, and lighted another of Edgar's excellent cigars had taught 
 him that on thrill there followed reaction. You went up, only 
 to come down. After a time, when you knew this, you learned, 
 if you were wise, to dread thrills. As he stood outside the Casa 
 at Montevarchi, he had still believed that the big continuous
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 291 
 
 thrill was possible. Aurelia Leonard had thrilled him for a 
 week; but he remembered the night of the thunderstorm. 
 Then he had plunged straight from the crested wave into the 
 dragging sand of the recoil. The war had lifted him high on 
 a new wave of exaltation. Who felt anything now but sick 
 ennui of it all? And Daphne? Oh, with Daphne it was worse, 
 because while he had descended gradually to earth, she would 
 not let him walk there with her as he wanted. She still held 
 him by cords to her balloon, cords that dragged incessantly, 
 bruising and lacerating his flesh. Yet how could he cut them? 
 She was young: her head was enveloped in the gold clouds of 
 illusion: she was still convinced that those were the levels on 
 which one's soul should live. For Nigel the wax had melted 
 from the wings on which he had once soared towards the sun, 
 and he did not want them on again. 
 
 No. He did not want them on again. It was not, he told 
 himself, that he was incapable of flying; rather that he had 
 learned to see such an attitude, however long sustained, as mis- 
 taken and undesirable. It was the aim that was wrong, not 
 that he could not achieve it. About that he was clear, Mabel 
 Nugent had helped him to be so. Self -depreciation was out of 
 place; what one wanted was sanity and courage, the courage 
 not of folly, but of wisdom. If only Daphne could see it too. 
 If she could come down to earth she would again be dear and 
 delightful: as she was not now. Nigel moved a little restlessly. 
 Even in his cosy chair and gently drowsing state, the thought of 
 Daphne acted like a draught of outer air, chill and disturbing. 
 
 He dismissed her at last from his mind; and it was of Mabel 
 Nugent that he thought as he composed himself to sleep. He 
 did not dream of her: who wanted to dream? He was unaware 
 of having dreamed at all. Yet when he awoke he found, for 
 no explicable reason, his mind suddenly occupied with Gervase 
 O'Connor. Gervase stood before him, and insisted on remaining 
 in possession. His appearance was as undesired as it was 
 strange. Three months ago Nigel had definitely dismissed 
 Gervase from his mind. He was worried by an unreasonable 
 sense of responsibility towards the young man, which had made 
 him anxious to avoid all associations connected with his terrible
 
 292 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 end. For this reason he had been glad to have seen nothing of 
 Myrtle Toller, although subsequent events had convinced him 
 that as far as she was concerned, Hugh had been right. Myrtle's 
 relation to Gervase was entirely supposititious. He par- 
 ticularly did not want to have to connect Gervase with Tenacre. 
 To find his image there was more annoying than to have found 
 it in the Temple. 
 
 In spite of the heavy rain that blotted all view from the 
 windows, Nigel sprang up to shake off the intruder on his 
 thoughts. 
 
 The morning was pleasantly spent in three-handed bridge. 
 Lunch, however, was spoiled by the fact that the doctor, a 
 Scotchman named Anstruther (a Socialist, but not a bad fellow 
 all the same, according to Edgar), brought with him a young 
 man who was his guest for the week-end. Edgar had met them 
 on his early morning tour of inspection and invited them both. 
 A glance from Mabel indicated to Nigel that Edgar was always 
 doing these things. The doctor was pleasant enough, and as 
 he lived at their gates one had to be civil. Sunday lunch every 
 now and then was imposed by one's own sense of what was fitting. 
 His friends were another matter: there Edgar might have shown 
 a little tact. But Edgar was hopeless. The friend was indeed no 
 other than the would-be questioner of the night before. As 
 Nigel had guessed, he was a junior fellow of a minor Cam- 
 bridge college; and, as his previous behaviour had suggested, 
 tiresome. He insisted upon talking about the war, and his 
 talk was aggressively controversial. He was not content, as 
 any reasonable being might, on Sunday, have been expected 
 to be, with a cursory reference to the contents of the papers; 
 which amounted to little beyond confused and contradictory 
 reports of German and Russian victories in Poland. Having 
 expressed a profound disbelief in and scorn of the Russian Gov- 
 ernment, generals, armies, motives and materiel, he suddenly 
 turned 'on Nigel and asked him to define the objects of the 
 war. 
 
 "I know," he said, "that we are fighting for a worthy 
 purpose. But what is it? " 
 
 In spite of Nigel's weariness of the question, he was ulti-
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 293 
 
 mately compelled to enter into an argument with the young 
 man and Dr. Anstruther, in which he found poor allies in the 
 Nugents; this prolonged lunch intolerably, and only ended 
 with the tardy departure of the guests. 
 
 "What a bore that young man was," sighed Mabel. " Nigel, 
 I apologise for him." 
 
 "Yes," said Edgar, cheerily, unconscious of his guilt. 
 "Not a bad fellow, but one does want a rest from it all some- 
 times. That's the worst of these young men. They have no 
 sense of proportion. " 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 "All the same, " said Nigel, "it's a great thing to be young. " 
 His tone had a hint of wistfulness, which Mrs. Nugent's quick 
 ear caught. 
 
 "I don't know," she said. "They're tiresome, the young, 
 I think. All over the place, you know. That youth reminded 
 me of Gervase rather. " 
 
 Nigel gave an impatient shrug. Gervase again. 
 
 "Poor Gervase!" said Edgar. "What a pity it was!" 
 
 Mrs. Nugent made a face. 
 
 "I don't know," she repeated. "He was too much of a 
 good thing altogether, Gervase. I don't like these extremists. " 
 
 "Ah, you mustn't say that to Nigel. Miss Leonard's an 
 extremist if ever there was one." 
 
 Nigel looked his surprise. Was it obvious, then, even to 
 Edgar? He was glad to take refuge in a book from further 
 conversation.
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 
 
 THE wish to see ourselves as others see us is doubtless an 
 insincere and exaggerated one, never maintained by any 
 one to whom a glimpse of the disagreeable truth in its 
 paralysing whiteness has been revealed; but to see ourselves 
 as we see others is more useful and quite possible. Yet few 
 draw from the relative transparency of their acquaintance the 
 correct inference of their own. We go about the world, imagin- 
 ing that we present a blank surface behind which everything 
 that we desire to hide is hidden; ignoring that our most effective 
 vizor is not our own skill to conceal, but lack of interest on the 
 part of our friends to inspect. Occupied in hiding, we do not see 
 how their eyes are shrouded. As it is, to any of them not sim- 
 ilarly occupied, the very fact of disguise is invitation to inquiry ; 
 and once they begin to look there is a great deal they cannot 
 but see. 
 
 As Daphne's distress grew upon and absorbed her, the 
 people among whom she lived retreated, till she felt herself 
 alone in a world made up of will-o'-the-wisp thoughts. It did 
 not occur to her that Gertrude Fenner and Chris Bampton, 
 whom she saw every day at breakfast and at dinner, with 
 whom she more often than not passed the evening behind a 
 newspaper of which she seldom turned the pages, noticed 
 anything. She never thought of them except as figures in the 
 background, hardly more real than those who sat opposite 
 to her in 'bus or train, or at the marble-topped table of the 
 A B C at which she lunched. They seemed exactly what they 
 had always been, and she supposed that she did too. 
 
 They were the same, but she was not; and the fact that little 
 
 294
 
 295 
 
 ever happened to Chris and Gertrude personally, that they had 
 nothing either to hide or to show, made them in the particular 
 case deeply interested in a person to whom it had once occurred 
 to them that something was happening. Moreover, while 
 Daphne's affairs might have left them careless, Nigel's could not. 
 Nigel was the centre and chief ornament of the set in which they 
 moved, felt by all as a possession endeared to them by a bache- 
 lorhood that was delightful almost in proportion as it could 
 not be felt to be safe. There could be no such interest in Mal- 
 lard Floss, for example, who obviously would never marry, as 
 in Nigel, who, it had always been clear, one day inevitably 
 would. Nigel's engagement had been to them all a topic of 
 engrossing interest. The war had driven that interest back, 
 but the war, after all, was every one's affair, this was more 
 special. Old interest had been revived and a keen new curi- 
 osity awakened by the postponement of his marriage. Thus 
 when Daphne joined the Baker Street household in September, 
 she constituted for it an unfailing fund of talk, of which she was 
 wholly unaware. 
 
 Gertrude Fenner and Chris Bampton had shared their flat 
 for three years. The third partner had in that period changed 
 several times. Jane Delahaye had lived with them for nearly 
 two years, Myrtle Toller for six months; but they went on, 
 and would, to all appearance, go on for ever. They were ex- 
 tremely modern, both of them, and always, intellectually, mov- 
 ing on; but this movement was a stable characteristic, that 
 would never, it seemed, carry them into any permanent or 
 larger mode of existence. Keeping up with things exhausted 
 their energies. They received the impression of the current of 
 ideas so constantly, and were so conscious of the obligation to 
 do so, that they had nothing to give. In themselves they were 
 thus the abstract and brief chronicle of the time. Half an hour's 
 talk with them, or the same time spent in examining their pos- 
 sessions, would at any time have indicated for an alert returned 
 traveller exactly the hour which the London clock had just 
 struck. Over the mantelpiece of their white-distempered little 
 sitting-room, all angles and nooks, there hung a Slade School 
 essay in Post-Impressionism, the work of Myrtle's now enlisted
 
 296 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 friend. On one side was pinned a map of the Western War 
 area, with a few rather drooping flags. They had followed the 
 campaign through the first six or seven weeks, but ceased in 
 October. On the other side stood a photograph of Godfrey 
 Toller in khaki. The sofa was heaped with lemon and emerald 
 cushions; the windows hung with curtains from the Omega 
 work-rooms, vivid and restless. A heap of newspapers lay 
 in one corner: The Times, the Daily Mirror, the New World, 
 New Numbers, the Common Cause and Vogue. Along two white 
 shelves was ranged a motley collection of books. On the top 
 shelf two or three volumes of the Yellow Book made a vivid 
 splash of colour, heightened by juxtaposition with the orange 
 of Bernhardi ; beside them were two or three pale green volumes 
 of Bernard Shaw; an odd Galsworthy, Sons and Lovers, The 
 Georgian Book of Verse, Varieties of Religious Experience, The 
 Brothers Karamazov, Thais, Chance, The Old Wives 1 Tale, and 
 a row of blue English Reviews. On the shelf below were more 
 novels, all quite modern, and a miscellaneous collection of 
 small shilling books, mostly on labour questions: The Minority 
 Report, The Great Illusion, Art by Clive Bell, Chats on 
 Costume, Walks Around London, and the Notebooks of Samuel 
 Butler. 
 
 "Daphne's late." Chris Bampton threw down the evening 
 paper and glanced at the grandfather clock that stood in one 
 corner, far too large for any other piece of furniture in the 
 room. 
 
 "Yes," said Gertrude. She lay back on the sofa with 
 her hat still on, her arms extended along the back, her eyes half 
 shut, a cigarette between her lips. "She always is ... I 
 suppose Nigel walks home with her?" Her tone was scornful. 
 
 "Oh, no," said Chris. "Not now. He left that off long 
 ago. I suppose you can't keep that sort of thing up, if you have 
 a long engagement. " 
 
 Gertrude stared in front of her. 
 
 "Nigel can't, you mean," she corrected. "Daphne could." 
 
 Chris looked interested. 
 
 "Oh," said Gertrude sharply, "you know what we always 
 thought. "
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 297 
 
 "Yes. " Chris got up and lit a cigarette. "That is, I know 
 you've always thought it a mistake. ... I confess I never 
 quite understood why. " 
 
 Gertrude took off her hat and examined it. The velvet 
 was decidedly shabby, but it must do for several months yet. 
 Fortunately the days would be dark for a long time to come. 
 She ran a pin through it, carefully choosing a hole already 
 marked. 
 
 "Don't you like Nigel?" Chris continued, in a reflective 
 tone. They had been over the ground often before, but that 
 did not lessen its interest. 
 
 "Like him? Yes, I like him. He's charming ... far too 
 charming, that's just the difficulty. Every one likes him. 
 Those people who are right for every one, can't be right for any 
 one who is very much an individual. Nigel's like Myrtle. 
 They would have suited one another perfectly. " 
 
 "They didn't, though." 
 
 "I know." Gertrude shrugged her shoulders. "They 
 were too much alike, I suppose. " 
 
 "Certainly Daphne's not very like him," said Chris, medi- 
 tatively. "Not in that way; lots of people don't find her 
 charming at all ... I'm not sure that I do myself." 
 
 "No." Gertrude sat up. "Of course they don't. That's 
 just it." 
 
 Chris relit her cigarette, which had gone out, and adjusted 
 her eyeglasses. Gertrude went on. She was generally rather 
 silent; but when she did begin, she was apt to go on at subjects 
 longer and probe them more deeply than most people liked or 
 thought quite kind. 
 
 "Daphne is very highly individualised. She's like her 
 mother. You don't like Mrs. Leonard either, I know? " 
 
 "She makes me uncomfortable." 
 
 "So she does Nigel. . . . Oh, I've seen her doing it, ever 
 so often." 
 
 "She's fascinating, and one can't keep away," Chris took 
 it up. "But I feel a kind of well, almost alarm when I'm 
 with her. I don't want, always, to stay at that height. It 
 tires me to have to keep my mind working so hard. I begin to
 
 298 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 doubt whether I really have any mind at all. And that's very 
 disagreeable. " 
 
 " Yes. That's so, " said Gertrude. "Ordinary people can't. 
 But Nigel is an ordinary person. " 
 
 "I like ordinary people best, then," said Chris stoutly. 
 
 "Of course," Gertrude was quite serious, "we all do. . . . 
 Oh, I know 'you have been an angel, Chris, putting up with 
 a peculiar one, like me; but you couldn't do with me alone for 
 long. Now, Jane was a lovely pillow. Dear little Jane! I 
 hope she finds Lionel's people bearable. It must be atrocious 
 to go and live with your husband's people; and in Wimbledon, 
 of all places. " 
 
 "Oh, Jane doesn't mind Wimbledon. " 
 
 Gertrude looked doubtful. It apparently seemed to her 
 incredible that any one could endure Wimbledon. 
 
 "I suppose she's full of pride. The outside of the envelopes 
 will keep her up. Do you remember how she used to practise 
 writing 'Mrs. Lionel Delahaye'? That's where we're all the 
 same, Chris yes, I too but Daphne Leonard is different. 
 Envelopes are nothing to her, really nothing. She never even 
 thinks of them." 
 
 Chris was not shaken. 
 
 "That may be," she said. "But I like the people of our 
 sort better. Nigel is one of us, certainly. " She paused, and 
 after meditating in silence for a minute or two, looked up and 
 asked, "Do you think Daphne sees that Nigel is an ordinary 
 person?" 
 
 Gertrude had got up and now stood staring at the picture 
 over the mantelpiece. 
 
 "That's just the question," she said. "Not yet, I think. 
 But one day she's bound to find it out. I can't think how she's 
 been so long about it. You'd have thought it was impossible 
 to go on reading the New World every week and imagine him 
 anything else. I expect she's shed such a halo round him that 
 it blinds her. " 
 
 "But where," asked Chris, "does she get the halo? It does 
 not fit Nigel, nor improve him a bit. He's much nicer as 
 he is."
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 299 
 
 "Much." Gertrude admitted it. "But then Daphne's 
 in love with him. " 
 
 "I see," said Chris. 
 
 "Oh, no." Gertrude had suddenly turned round on her. 
 "You don't. She's not in love with him as Jane is with her 
 man, or Enid Freen with Jack. It's not that easy sort of 
 affair with Daphne. Being in love, with a girl like Daphne, is 
 something tremendous. It's an all-or-nothing business. You 
 can't feel what Daphne feels and admit that your hero is just 
 an ordinary, delightful, rather insincere but quite charming little 
 man. . . . Have you ever asked her what Nigel's faults are?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Well, I have. She couldn't name anything he hadn't got, 
 but there were things he had in excess. He was too sensitive, 
 too fine, too good for this rough world, altogether wonderful. 
 Now, Nigel isn't in the least wonderful, and some day she must 
 find him out. " 
 
 "I don't know what you mean," cried Chris, rather indig- 
 nantly, "when you talk of finding Nigel out. There's nothing to 
 find. He is really nice, infinitely the nicest person in our set. 
 If it were Hugh Infield now, I can imagine finding out all kinds 
 of things. But Nigel is just what he seems. " 
 
 Gertrude looked at her friend thoughtfully. Chris had 
 taken off her eyeglasses and was rubbing them on her hand- 
 kerchief as she stood with one foot on the fender. Without 
 her glasses Chris might have been called pretty, but they ac- 
 centuated all the bad points of her face its excessive breadth 
 and the want of finish of nose and eyebrow while detracting 
 from the one good one, her large pale eyes. Her prettiness was 
 of the insignificant type that needed help : glasses destroyed it. 
 Gertrude, though not in the least pretty too short, too thin, 
 too pointed and angular was interesting. Women generally 
 felt sorry for Gertrude because of her hungry, unsatisfied ex- 
 pression; men thought she looked bad-tempered. 
 
 "He is just what he seems: yes," said Gertrude. "But not 
 what he seems to Daphne. " 
 
 "I see," said Chris. But the difference seemed to her a 
 fuss about nothing.
 
 300 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "Myrtle's coming to dinner, isn't she?" said Gertrude after 
 a pause. 
 
 Chris nodded. 
 
 " I hope she's got out of black. " Gertrude's tone was sharp. 
 "It looks so gloomy. It's bad enough to have all the people 
 who are entitled to it, without any more. . . . Did you ever 
 know that Myrtle cared two pins for Jimmy?" 
 
 Chris hesitated. " I've hardly seen her since. " 
 
 "Oh, I know you won't admit anything against her. " Ger- 
 trude smiled. "I'm sure there was nothing in it. I suppose 
 it makes up for not having a young man at the front. " 
 
 At the sound of an opening door Chris moved off to the hall, 
 and Gertrude following her, they found Daphne Leonard and 
 Myrtle Toller, shining with the wet that dripped off their oil- 
 skins and umbrellas. 
 
 Myrtle was herself again; bright, efficient and normal. 
 She had discarded her black clothes, and with them the silent 
 gloom they demanded. 
 
 "Couldn't stand Cambridge another minute," she said, 
 greeting her friends with unusual affection. "All the agedest 
 dons are drilling. Yes, father too. He revels in what he calls 
 the 'discipline' as if there were any in his corps. After all, 
 one does get sick of soldiers: in Cambridge you'll hardly see 
 any one else. London is quite refreshing. I had lunch with 
 Nigel." She smiled down at Daphne, who was busy wiping 
 her wet skirt with a duster. "He was just back from Tenacre, 
 and as delightful as ever. It's a comfort there are a few people 
 who are not in camp. I suppose the New World is too impor- 
 tant for Nigel to go out? " 
 
 Daphne looked up. 
 
 "Didn't you ask him?" she said. It seemed improbable 
 that there was any question to which Myrtle wanted an answer 
 which she would not put. She had never admitted that there 
 were any things one could not talk about. Myrtle laughed 
 cheerfully, as she took off her hat they were now in Daphne's 
 minute bedroom and combed out her hair before the glass, 
 while Daphne, sitting on the bed, was taking off her damp 
 shoes.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 301 
 
 "Oh, yes. I asked him. He said he was too old. I don't 
 see anything in that. He's only one year over age. He could 
 go out with his car, anyhow. I should make him go if I were 
 you, Daphne. But I suppose you don't feel like that?" 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Oh, well, I thought you shared Mrs. Leonard's views." 
 
 "Nigel doesn't." Daphne's head was hidden under the 
 curtain of her hanging-place, in the bottom of which she searched 
 for slippers. Myrtle laughed. 
 
 "Oh, my dear, Nigel's views are what anybody likes to 
 make them. You surely realise that?" 
 
 Daphne, for only answer, proffered two pairs of shoes, 
 between which Myrtle might make her choice. They passed 
 back into the sitting-room, where Chris and Gertrude awaited 
 them. Myrtle took up a position before the fire, holding out 
 first one foot and then the other to the blaze. 
 
 "My dears! I quite forgot. " She suddenly turned round. 
 "I hope you won't mind Herbert turned up this afternoon, and 
 as this evening seemed the only time I had, I asked him to come 
 along. He ought to be here by now. He's got three days' 
 leave. ... I'm sorry to inflict him on you, he's dreadfully 
 dull; but I couldn't face an evening with him by myself. We 
 might go on to something after supper, if you find him too 
 bad." 
 
 The others, none of whom had ever met Herbert Toller, were 
 full of inquiries as to what he was in and where he had been, 
 to none of which Myrtle was able to produce much by way of 
 reply. Obviously in her mind there was still a confusion be- 
 tween the contempt which the whole Toller family had pre- 
 viously entertained for a brother with no head, only a soldier, 
 and the new attitude of reverence for everything in khaki. 
 Little had been gleaned when Herbert himself appeared. 
 
 Captain Toller was tall, brown-faced and rather good-look- 
 ing. He showed no sign of embarrassment at being one male 
 in a company of four ladies, three quite unknown. Lack of 
 embarrassment was a Toller characteristic, but in Herbert it 
 seemed to be part of a real simplicity. He was simple, slangy 
 and quite unself conscious : a big schoolboy, with a certain
 
 302 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 blunt charm. He knew his own worth, and set it neither 
 high nor low. 
 
 The girls plied him with all kinds of questions. His answers 
 were brief and businesslike. He dismissed some of the stories 
 they instanced with a shrug of his shoulders. 
 
 "Don't you believe all the yarns that are brought over," 
 he said. "The Germans are first-rate soldiers, and you'll not 
 find a man who's fought against them who doesn't say the 
 same. About killing prisoners I don't know. War is war: 
 some of the correspondents seem to forget that." He looked 
 round at them with a pleasant smile. 
 
 "You don't hate them, the Germans?" Daphne asked. 
 
 "Good Lord, no!" he laughed out. "Leave that to the 
 people at home. " 
 
 "Daphne's a pacifist, you know, Herbert," his sister 
 threw in. 
 
 Herbert looked at her again. 
 
 "Well," he said, "I don't think she's so far wrong. Pity 
 there weren't more of them, that's all." 
 
 The others shouted. 
 
 "But, Herbert," cried Myrtle, apparently struck by a 
 strange suspicion. "You think we ought to have gone to 
 war, don't you? I mean, Germany's got, somehow, to be 
 crushed. " 
 
 "Oh, rather!" her brother agreed. "I'm all for crushing 
 Germany, only it's a tough nut." 
 
 Chris Bampton was not quite satisfied. 
 
 "You think we're in the right, anyhow? It's a just 
 war?" 
 
 Herbert lit a cigarette. They were sitting round the fire in 
 the drawing-room now. 
 
 "Well," he smiled, "I'm an Englishman, you know, and 
 perhaps not quite unbiased. . . . It's as just as any war, 
 I dare say. " 
 
 "But what about Belgium?" cried Myrtle. 
 
 A frown crossed the soldier's face. 
 
 "Good Lord, Myrtle, don't talk father's cant at me. Bel- 
 gium had jolly little to do with it at the beginning. It's got
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 303 
 
 everything to do with it now, I admit, but that's another 
 matter. " 
 
 Daphne was staring at him, her eyes wide and round: they 
 grew rounder as he went on. 
 
 "We should have been in it just the same without Bel- 
 gium. I am not saying we ought not to be in it. " He glanced 
 at his sister. "There don't seem to me to be any oughts in 
 the matter. Only I don't see any sense in sentimentalising 
 that's all." 
 
 "Surely," exclaimed Gertrude, "if you read the White 
 Paper ..." 
 
 Herbert looked kindly at her. 
 
 "White Papers are beyond me," he said. "The diplo- 
 matists trying to tidy up the mess they've made that doesn't 
 interest me much. " 
 
 "Well, if you had read it," Gertrude went on undaunted, 
 "you'd see that England really did try to avoid war." 
 
 She talked on quickly and cleverly, looking at him from 
 time to time, as if she wondered whether he could really take 
 it in. When she had finished, Herbert Toller leaned back in 
 his chair. 
 
 "I'm stupid, you know," he said, glancing at his sister. 
 "I'm sure Myrtle's told you that. What you say is quite 
 correct, I have no doubt. But you see all that seems to 
 me rather like shutting the stable door very neatly after the 
 horse has bolted. As I see it, we've been getting more and more 
 annoyed with Germany: cheeky little boy looking over the 
 wall: and kept letting them see it was our wall. They saw a 
 chance to hit out and took it. That's all I see in it. " 
 
 "Then they began it you admit that?" cried Gertrude. 
 
 "Oh, yes. They began it. But as to Belgium, after all 
 we always knew they'd come through if they could, and they 
 have. They'd have got to Paris too, if Von Kluck hadn't 
 made a twenty-four hours' miscalculation. That dash was 
 their one chance of winning, and they knew it; but at the 
 eleventh hour they missed it. Because there aren't any 
 Napoleons around, I suppose. Anyhow, we're in for a long 
 job now: Lord knows how long."
 
 304 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "That's it, they chose their moment. They were ready 
 and the French weren't, " Chris took it up. 
 
 "More shame to them," Herbert remarked drily. 
 
 A sudden ring at the bell caused Chris and Gertrude to 
 look at one another in some surprise. 
 
 "I expect it's Nigel," said Myrtle calmly. "I suggested 
 his coming in." 
 
 Gertrude glanced at Daphne, and then from her to Chris 
 as the latter moved to the door. Daphne had coloured and 
 made a quick movement of surprise. It was plain to them 
 both that she had not expected Nigel. Her colour might have 
 been merely surprise, followed by pleasure. But her expression 
 did not suggest pleasure. There was something almost appre- 
 hensive in the glance she cast at the door as Chris closed it 
 behind her. It was Wednesday. Since Saturday she had 
 not seen Nigel, nor had she written to him; or rather, strictly 
 speaking, she had written, but not posted the letter. Her first 
 intimation of his being in town again had come from Myrtle's 
 remark that they had lunched together. She had thought of 
 him incessantly, but her thoughts had been vague, and painful 
 in their vagueness. As he came in now, she looked up in the 
 absurd expectation of seeing him somehow 'altered. Her mind 
 had shown him to her as he had appeared on Saturday. That 
 had not seemed the real Nigel. She hoped now that the cloud 
 of strangeness might have vanished, proving to have been a 
 mere subjective illusion of her own. But no. He looked 
 exactly the same as on Saturday. He bent on her the same 
 blithe, friendly smile that he gave to all the others. Perhaps 
 he held her hand a thought longer. She was not sure; but 
 his eyes met hers only for the fraction of a second and she 
 could read in them nothing. He was remote, as he had been 
 on Saturday. How could you greet some one you loved in 
 that distant way, with no shade of special interest? There 
 was no need for concealment: there had been no concealment 
 before. Every one in the room knew they were engaged. 
 Chris, Gertrude and Myrtle were intimates of both. Suddenly 
 she thought, "It is incredible that he loves me." This idea 
 darted across her mind, not as a reproach; it brought, at the
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 305 
 
 moment, no pang; it was merely a logical inference from his 
 manner. Her mind registered it mechanically, and there it lay. 
 
 Nigel's entrance caused a kind of bustle. Everybody 
 got up, and a re-arrangement of seats, to allow of an exten- 
 sion of the semicircle round the fire, followed. Finally Daphne, 
 on her low stool at one corner, had Gertrude just opposite 
 to her on the corresponding stool, with Herbert Toller and 
 Nigel side by side, next to her. Myrtle, at Nigel's elbow, 
 and then Chris, completed the group. 
 
 Nigel began to ask questions in his turn, questions that 
 showed much more precise and up-to-date knowledge than 
 those of the others. The conversation soon developed 
 into a series of stories. Herbert's manner of recounting 
 was dry and unsentimental. He spoke of "expensive" 
 actions with professional callousness. The rare touches 
 of colour were only extracted by Nigel's ingenious ques- 
 tions. Nigel was clever in framing questions, in drawing 
 the reticent Captain out. He seemed much more curious 
 to elicit than Herbert to impart information; and when it 
 came it was singularly unpictorial. War as it emerged 
 from his laconic utterances was a dreary routine of contin- 
 uous discomfort. Yet his matter-of-factness gradually 
 conveyed to his listeners an impression of something more 
 grim than they had gathered from any decorated tale of 
 horror. 
 
 "Is it true," said Nigel, "that the Germans shoot their 
 own men from behind?" 
 
 Herbert shrugged his heavy shoulders. 
 
 "Do that in any army," he said. "Very infectious thing, 
 funk." 
 
 "But our men don't want to run away, do they?" 
 
 "Lord, yes. Every one wants to run away. If enough 
 of them want it at once, nothing can keep them back. Don't 
 get any idea] into your head that the Germans aren't brave. 
 They're damnably brave." 
 
 Nigel sat thoughtful for a moment. 
 
 "It's all rather a splendid answer to the people who 
 thought that our civilisation, had bred out the virile quali-
 
 306 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 ties of the race, isn't it?" He expanded this idea at some 
 length. 
 
 "Hugh would say we never had been civilised," said Daphne, 
 as a silence followed. 
 
 Captain Toller looked at her. 
 
 "No," he said shortly. "We haven't. And this won't 
 help." 
 
 Nigel protested against the wrong and limited view of 
 civilisation implied in such a view. 
 
 "Killing does nobody any good," said the Captain, 
 who seemed incapable of taking up a general idea. "If you 
 don't mind it, so much the worse for you. If you do, 
 in the end it does for you. You lose your nerve." 
 
 "You won't be able to go home, Herbert!" Myrtle laughed. 
 "Father would be furious with you." 
 
 "Oh, father! he's busy seeing the moral of it all, I sup- 
 pose. It's all working for good in some wonderful way. He 
 might as well be a bishop." 
 
 "You've been too near it, you know," said Nigel lightly. 
 "After all, I believe one has a better sense of proportion at 
 home." 
 
 Captain Toller was evidently slightly irritated. He got 
 up and stood with his back to the fire. 
 
 "Twenty kilometres of corpses, burning like dead 
 leaves, does rather put one out of focus, I dare say," he 
 said. 
 
 There was a silence. 
 
 "Anyhow," said Myrtle, "we've got to go on." 
 
 "Yes, we've got to go on." Captain Toller took out his 
 watch. "So have we." He looked at his sister. 
 
 Myrtle got up gracefully. Chris Bampton followed her 
 out of the room. Gertrude Fenner was talking to Captain 
 Toller. Nigel and Daphne were left standing side by 
 side. 
 
 "Well," said Nigel lightly. "Better?" 
 
 Daphne bit her lip. 
 
 "Oh, come," said he. "How seriously you take every- 
 thing. Don't you?"
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 307 
 
 She raised her eyes to meet his, and for a moment they 
 looked at one another. Nigel's, if as clear, were as impene- 
 trable as glass. His tone had been light; but now as she looked 
 at him he wrinkled his brow and his voice was almost sharp 
 as he went on 
 
 "You aren't still making a mountain out of that mole- 
 hill, are you?" 
 
 Before she could say anything Myrtle had returned, 
 and Nigel said he would walk with them as far as Baker Street 
 station. The three girls stood by the fire, listening to 
 the clank of Captain Toller's spurs on the stone stairs. 
 
 "Not a bit like Myrtle, is he?" said Chris, straightening 
 her eyeglasses, and pushing aside an invisible hair that tickled 
 her. Gertrude ran her hand through her own dark locks, 
 making her untidy head a little more untidy. 
 
 "No," she said. "Queer views for a soldier, hasn't 
 he?" 
 
 "I liked him," said Daphne. 
 
 "Yes." Gertrude looked at her. "So did I." 
 
 "He was rather brutal, wasn't he?" said Chris. 
 
 "The truth generally is," Gertrude retorted. 
 
 Daphne stared into the wild mosaic over the mantel- 
 piece. She continued to stare at it, while the others 
 moved about, straightening the furniture; and still stared 
 when Chris went out, to bed, and Gertrude sat down at her 
 table to write her diary. Scraps of the evening's talk 
 came back to her, mixing in with the criss-cross of her 
 thoughts, seeming, strangely, to belong to the problem 
 before her mind. Why was it, for instance, that what 
 Herbert Toller had said about the war seemed real and true, 
 and, for all its cruelty, bearable, when what Nigel had 
 said seemed unreal, untrue, unbearable? Nigel thought 
 the war was good: more good than bad. As Herbert 
 Toller described it, it was certainly bad. Her mother 
 thought it bad in itself, in some deeper sense, into which 
 Daphne had not yet penetrated. It did not matter 
 what Herbert Toller thought; yet, when he spoke, her 
 mind accepted him. It was all important, what Nigel
 
 308 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 thought, yet her mind had risen up against him. He had 
 been unreal. His article had been unreal. Most unreal 
 of all was the idea that he loved her. She could not 
 understand. It was incredible that he loved her: in- 
 credible that he could really see the war as good. And 
 yet he said the war was good. He said he loved her. 
 
 Daphne felt a sick pain surging up within her. She 
 pressed her hands against the sharp edge of the mantelpiece. 
 In her mind all was darkness. She was physically tired. 
 She had walked all the way from the workroom, trying 
 to think. But she had not thought. She had been 
 too tired to think; and outside the station she had met 
 Myrtle. She was too tired to think now. A weight 
 of accumulated days of weariness lay heavy on her, and not 
 of bodily weariness only. What was worse was the 
 sense of moral dejection and confusion. That was the 
 reason why she had been unable to write, on Sunday, to her 
 mother; why her previous letters had been so unreal. 
 Their intimacy had been broken. Not because Mrs. 
 Leonard was away. That did not matter. Months of 
 separation before had made no difference at all. It 
 was broken because Daphne was holding something back. 
 She knew it, though she did not know what it was. She 
 shrank from self-examination, but she knew that she was 
 unhappy and hiding, in her unhappiness, from her mother, 
 whose eyes would see it all. She was glad that Mrs. Leonard 
 was away. 
 
 All was quiet now in the building, so quiet that the rain- 
 drops on the leads of the balcony made a distinct sound; 
 and the scratch, scratch of Gertrude's pen was loud. 
 Daphne looked at Gertrude and wondered what she was 
 writing. 
 
 "Do you put your thoughts in your diary, or only events?" 
 she said at last. 
 
 "Oh, nothing ever happens to me," said Gertrude, look- 
 ing up for a moment, pen in hand. Daphne found no reply, 
 and Gertrude returned to her writing. Daphne continued 
 to look at her, and as she looked a new train of thought awoke.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 309 
 
 Gertrude closed her book and came and knelt by the fire. 
 The red embers still glowed with heat, and she held out her 
 hands to them. 
 
 "I think a fire would be the most satisfactory thing in 
 the world to be," she said, after a long silence. "It 
 gives and gives until there's nothing left of it, and then it's 
 done." 
 
 Daphne looked down at the dark tousled head, sur- 
 prised by words which seemed directly to continue her own 
 thoughts. 
 
 "You do think to give is more blessed than to receive?" 
 she said slowly. 
 
 Gertrude looked up. 
 
 "Oh, no," she said quickly. "It's humiliating. Don't 
 you think so?" 
 
 "I don't know," said Daphne, still looking down. 
 
 "I can't imagine your doing it you're too strong and 
 proud," Gertrude went on. 
 
 "But surely," Daphne broke in, "giving is a more 
 positive act than receiving, there's ever so much more 
 life and energy in it. It's much harder to take, I 
 think." 
 
 Gertrude got up. 
 
 "You can do like me," she said, "and give to some one 
 from whom you expect nothing. Or to an impersonal thing 
 like your country. Or, best of all, to some one who's dead. 
 But don't try giving to a real live person. . . . They'll turn 
 and rend you in the end." 
 
 Daphne was staring into the embers. 
 
 "Or run away?" she said after a long pause. 
 
 "Yes." Gertrude took it up quickly. "Or run away." 
 
 Daphne drew herself up very straight. Her mouth was set 
 in a firm line. 
 
 "No," she said. 
 
 Gertrude glanced at her, as if for further explanation; 
 but Daphne only shook her head, and saying Good-night, 
 left the room. Gertrude looked after her; she had thought 
 Daphne would kiss her, and was disappointed.
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 
 
 THE rain which set in on the Saturday and following 
 days that Nigel Strode spent at Tenacre continued as 
 if it could never stop, as if the skies above were weep- 
 ing over the folly and madness and agony of men. Day after 
 day the water poured down from a sunless sky. The last 
 leaves dropped sadly from the trees and lay rotting on the 
 ground; the grass withered and turned to mud. London be- 
 came a city of darkness. All November it rained, and in 
 December it was still raining. 
 
 Unobservant foreigners, seeing only the surface, de- 
 scribed London as unchanged, and declared that England 
 was not feeling the war; everything was going on just the 
 same. There was no distress; every one was busy in the old 
 way. Busy indeed they were, for the country had become 
 one vast arsenal of war, turning out human and mechan- 
 ical instruments of destruction without pause or rest. For 
 six days and sometimes seven, pale men and women 
 in factories and workshops toiled incessantly at the man- 
 ufacture of shells, guns, swords, uniforms, boots. On 
 Sunday people went to church and prayed to God to 
 grant peace in their time, and returned on Monday to the 
 work of war. 
 
 There were still those who cried, as Nigel himself had 
 cried in August, that life had never been so interesting be- 
 fore, never so real. Incessant activity made thought 
 unnecessary: war news supplied a daily false stimulus 
 to dull imaginations: the passion of hatred gave an en- 
 ergy to sterile emotions. To thousands war was still 
 
 310
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 311 
 
 a great external pageant, absorbing as no cinemato- 
 graph or theatre had ever been. But others, and their 
 numbers grew every day, went about with a dumb prayer 
 behind their closed lips a prayer for an end of the 
 slow agony of unendurable dread, of the nameless things 
 happening behind those lines on which "no change" was 
 reported day after day. Young men who had left their pre- 
 vious occupations, filled sometimes with the joy of sac- 
 rifice, sometimes with the mere enthusiasm of change, 
 set their teeth as they realised, if their elders did not, 
 that they were going out to no high adventure, but into the 
 mouth of a dark monster, which might perhaps, at best, gorged 
 with the youth of a continent, lie down to sleep again for 
 another quarter of a century. Life went on at home, as the 
 foreigners saw it, because life must go on. Each day 
 brought its work, and the small daily vexations and 
 satisfactions, of which people still talked and thought, 
 because to live by little things from hour to hour is 
 the law of human existence; eating and sleeping, marry- 
 ing and giving in marriage, did not cease. Children were 
 born into a world more full of weeping than they could under- 
 stand. 
 
 One of these children was born to little Jane Dela- 
 haye; and on Sunday, a week after its birth, Daphne 
 Leonard made her way out to Wimbledon to see Jane, 
 who had been living there since August with her husband's 
 people. She had been surprised and rather touched 
 that Jane wanted her, and felt a sort of self-reproach 
 in the realisation of how little she had thought of Jane 
 lately, and what it meant to her that Lionel was out in Flan- 
 ders in the stinking trenches. Jane Delahaye had never 
 been regarded by any of the set to which she belonged 
 as an interesting individual. She was a dear little thing, 
 just the person you would like to have to look after 
 you if you happened to be ill with a cooing voice, 
 and soft, small hands that would smooth a pillow de- 
 lightfully; but not the person to whom you wanted 
 much to talk or who could conceivably have anything
 
 312 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 to tell you. There always had seemed something rather 
 contradictory in Jane's earning her living and knocking 
 about London at odd hours. She did not even look the part. 
 She was just such a pretty, roundabout little creature 
 and to be quite candid, such an empty-headed one 
 as would have seemed more in place in a tennis-playing 
 home at Baling or Richmond. Her work she taught 
 singing and morris-dancing at various schools was purely 
 perfunctory. She would obviously marry. Daphne, 
 who, when she left Newnham, had been quite sure that 
 she herself was not going to marry, at any rate not 
 before thirty, had known Jane only as engaged, and 
 as the friend of Gertrude Fenner and Chris Bampton, 
 with whom she had been living. But she had been 
 drawn to Jane by her frank, absorbed happiness. It 
 was perhaps strange that any one could see Lionel Dela- 
 haye, a robust young Oxford don, as authenticating the good- 
 ness of God; but Jane had seen it, and that threw over 
 her, for Daphne, a kind of glory. She was not cool 
 and business-like, as so many people who get engaged 
 were apt to be: she was carried away. The difficult and 
 rather sordid circumstances of her marriage, the struggle 
 with her aunts about Lionel's religious perversities, had 
 dimmed nothing of this radiance; and Daphne, staying 
 then with her in the old house down at Bristol, had found 
 it more possible to tell Jane of her deepest feelings about Nigel 
 than any one else in the world, even her mother. And 
 when in June she had again to go down to Bristol to 
 persuade the aunts to receive Jane and her two months' 
 husband, she had succeeded because her understanding 
 of Jane's feelings, born of her own, had enabled her to 
 get the gentle old ladies to see that Lionel's atheism 
 could never shake their niece's faith, and that there was 
 a religion as genuine as their own that had nothing 
 to do with kneeling in church and taking part in the 
 Communion. "Jane is so happy, do let her happiness 
 be perfect," she had begged them; and they had given 
 way. Daphne only stayed to see Lionel and Jane arrive,
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 313 
 
 and to hear Jane whisper the incredible news that she hoped, 
 soon after Christmas, that their happiness was to be crowned 
 by the birth of a child. 
 
 Then the war had come. Lionel, a brilliant classic with 
 a power of inspiring his pupils that gave him a real 
 future as a teacher, had applied at once for a commission. 
 He loathed the war so intensely that he felt he must 
 help to end it. His extreme intelligence and his efficiency 
 with a gun and on horseback had defeated his friends' hopes 
 for him of so long a period of training that he might never 
 see service. By mid-November he was at the front, and his 
 departure had brought his little daughter into the world two 
 months before her time. 
 
 Daphne knew very little about babies; but the tiny 
 scrap that Jane, looking very small herself in the mid- 
 dle of the great brass bed in the huge Wimbledon bedroom, 
 was holding to her breast, seemed to her terrifyingly 
 fragile and wan. Jane smiled up at her as she came 
 in and sat down beside her, and Jane's little triangular 
 face was lit by a radiance that almost brought the tears 
 to Daphne's eyes. She could only hold her hand and 
 murmur something inarticulate. The room was very 
 hot and very ugly; full of vast shining furniture, with 
 a wall-paper that ran up and down in restless pink and 
 green stripes. Photogravures of pictures by Maud Good- 
 man, in magnificent gold frames, hung out, crooked, 
 on long cords. On the table by Jane's bed were three 
 exquisite pink roses in a glass, their colour killed by 
 the old rose of the curtains, and a photograph of Lionel 
 in a round silver frame; beside it a little packet of 
 letters. 
 
 "She's very like Lionel, don't you think?" said Jane, 
 uncovering the little puckered face. "I'm going to 
 call her Leonora. We decided that before he went 
 out." 
 
 "I hope you're pleased it's a girl," said Daphne. 
 
 "Oh, yes. Lionel always wanted a girl. A girl can't fight, 
 you see."
 
 314 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Daphne found it difficult to think of anything to say. 
 It was always difficult to her, and lately the difficulty seemed 
 to have grown. 
 
 "Don't you envy me?" said Jane, with a wonderful smile, 
 as she looked down at the tiny scarlet head Leo- 
 nora's head was, at present, the colour of marmalade. 
 "You know at first I thought I couldn't bear it to 
 happen when Lionel was away, but he would have minded 
 so dreadfully I had quite a bad time, and I am such a cow- 
 ard I simply howled and now he'll come back and we shall 
 be so happy together. . . . And meantime she's sort of hold- 
 ing the hole he makes, beautifully closed. . . . When I've got 
 her, I've got him." 
 
 Jane prattled on and Daphne listened, murmuring 
 assent from time to time. Jane would not have agreed with 
 Gertrude she never had; she felt that to give was more 
 blessed than to receive, evidently. And was she not 
 right? It was harder, but that only made it more beau- 
 tiful. Why could she not do the same? Giving was 
 life. She could give to Nigel, and that was what mat- 
 tered; not what he gave her. To be allowed to give was the 
 great thing. 
 
 Very softly she kissed the little red head. A nurse came 
 in and removed the baby to its cot, lifting it with a care that 
 to Daphne was almost ominous. 
 
 "May she stay and have tea with me?" Jane asked. 
 
 The nurse inspected Daphne. 
 
 "Oh, she's a splendid person for me," Jane cried. "So 
 soothing." 
 
 The nurse seemed satisfied. 
 
 "You are, you know," said Jane, as Daphne's eyes had 
 opened. "I feel you're strong . . . like Lionel. There's 
 something deep in you both like a full well. The water 
 on the top looks like any other, but you can go down, down 
 and never come to the bottom. That's so restful. That's 
 what I don't find in any of the other people. Myrtle, 
 you know, she's all froth, and Chris. . . . And men are worse 
 as a rule."
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 315 
 
 "Shallower, do you mean?" 
 
 "Yes. . . . Do you know, I used to think Mr. Strode 
 was you don't mind my saying this? But I only do it be- 
 cause I was wrong. . . . Since he's got engaged to you 
 I see he's different. . . . When are you going to be 
 married?" 
 
 "I don't know," said Daphne, looking out of the win- 
 dow. It was nearly dark, and the rain fell steadily on to the 
 sodden garden. "Not for a long time, I expect. Not till 
 after the war. . . . It's pouring again." 
 
 "Oh, how I hate the rain," cried Jane. "Think of it in 
 France. Lion says his men were up to their knees last 
 week; it must be worse now. . . . It's lucky for you in a 
 way that Nigel hasn't got to go." 
 
 Daphne nodded. "Only sometimes," she said, thought- 
 fully, "I think it would be almost better to feel it all 
 personally. . . . Feeling the whole thing about every 
 one is somehow so futile and one's getting off too eas- 
 ily, too, in a way. Do you understand what I mean, 
 Jane?" 
 
 Jane nodded. 
 
 "I understand all sorts of things now that I didn't 
 before," she said. "I used not to understand anything, 
 you know. . . . Would you have gone if you'd been a 
 man?" 
 
 Daphne met her eyes. She nodded. 
 
 "I couldn't have stayed," she said. "It would have been 
 sentimentalism in me." Jane looked puzzled. "But I should 
 have gone. I couldn't have stayed." 
 
 "That's what Lion felt. He hates it, you know, a& yottL 
 mother does he' admires her so terrifically, you know that? 
 But he couldn't let other people go for him. How is Mrs 
 Leonard?" 
 
 Daphne again looked out of the window. 
 
 "She's away, you know. In the country," she said 
 vaguely. "I don't know . . . I'm afraid she's very un- 
 happy. . . I must go, Jane, dear. I don't want to tire 
 you."
 
 316 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 She stood up by the bed, looking down at Jane, who, very 
 pale, smiled up at her. 
 
 "Dear Daphne!" she murmured. "I wish you were happy 
 too." 
 
 "Oh," said Daphne, "but I am. . . ." She under- 
 stood all the implications of Jane's short sentence, but dared 
 not meet them. And Jane's eyes, filled with their strange 
 new light, seemed to penetrate behind her words to the blank 
 and futile wretchedness she hid behind a wretched- 
 ness that seemed the more intolerable for its smallness. 
 She bent down, and Jane put her arms round her neck and 
 kissed her. Daphne returned the kiss, and lifting Jane's 
 hands to hers, pressed her face to them to hide the 
 tears in her eyes. 
 
 "Come again soon, dear," said Jane. "I shall tell Lion 
 about you, and how nice it's been. I write such silly letters, 
 it will be good to have something to put in." 
 
 Daphne ran quickly downstairs, and was making her way 
 to the door when the nurse came out of the room to the left 
 and called her in. 
 
 "Miss Leonard," she said. "May I speak to you for 
 a moment?" She held a piece of pale, fluttering paper in 
 her hand. "Mrs. Delahaye is an old lady. I can't tell her 
 I don't know what to do. . . . This has just come. . . . 
 Captain Delahaye was killed two days ago." 
 
 Daphne read the words, but they swam before her 
 eyes. She looked at the nurse. The nurse looked at 
 her; but nothing came to either of them. Old Mrs. 
 Delahaye adored her son the blow would almost kill 
 her; but it was not of her that either was thinking, but of 
 Jane. 
 
 "She's been worrying because she's had no letters," the 
 nurse went on. "And the doctor says she's to be kept quite 
 quiet." 
 
 Daphne held the telegram in her hand. 
 
 "You'd better consult him, I should think," she said. 
 
 "And the baby's so small," the nurse went on; "a seven 
 months' child, you see. Anything that upsets the mother
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 317 
 
 might ' She did not finish, but it was all too clear. 
 
 Daphne stared at the dining-room tablecloth, tracing 
 its rich design, brown and red stamped velvet, with 
 intense absorption. A sudden gust of wind sent a puff 
 of black smoke out from the dull fire. Following it 
 with her eyes, she stared at the grey marble mantel- 
 piece with its heavy clock and bronze statuettes, and then 
 at the picture hanging above. It was a fine painting, 
 beautiful even against the lincrusta walls, and above 
 the hideous ornaments full of air and light: a portrait of a 
 boy of twelve or thirteen standing, in flannels, his back 
 against a smooth-stemmed tree. His fresh cheeks glowed 
 with health, a colour lost in manhood; but the candid 
 grey eyes were unaltered, and through them the soul 
 of Lionel Delahaye looked out, simple, genuine, lovable: 
 ordinary human nature at its best. Daphne bit her lips and 
 turned away. She guessed what that picture must say for 
 ever to the two women whose life existed in Lionel's. She 
 turned to the nurse and explained that if the doctor thought 
 Jane should be told, and that she could do it better than old 
 Mrs. Delahaye she was ready. 
 
 "I'm no good at telling things" . . . She hesitated. 
 
 "But you wouldn't break down, miss. . . . The old lady 
 would, I know, and she'll talk about the will of God, and 
 that'd upset Mrs. Lionel more than anything." 
 
 "No, I shouldn't talk about that. . . . Well, you'll 
 tell me if you want me. I'm on the telephone, Paddington 
 
 7799-" 
 
 The nurse would have liked her to stay. She longed to 
 turn over and discuss the horror in all its aspects. Beyond 
 the mere human, it had for her a kind of awful professional 
 interest, both in itself and in its possible reactions; and with 
 Daphne's departure that discussion must be cut off. 
 But Daphne, stunned and terrified, wanted only to 
 escape. She would do anything that was asked of her, 
 it was not from that she fled but clearly there was 
 at the moment, until the doctor had been consulted, nothing 
 to do.
 
 318 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "Jane doesn't see the papers, does she?" 
 
 The nurse shook her head. Mrs. Delahaye was not 
 allowed to read at all. Sometimes she asked what the 
 news was, but not often, and then was only given a 
 summary. 
 
 The rain was now streaming down, and the house was 
 some way from the station a very dark and muddy 
 way. Daphne splashed in and out of puddles, careless 
 of the condition of her shoes, careless of anything, conscious 
 only of the cruelty of life. From some distance off, 
 the sound of church bells came towards her, ringing 
 for evening service. As she turned out of the lane and 
 emerged on to the Ridgway, she saw a company of khaki- 
 clad men on the road ahead of her, going, no doubt, 
 in the direction of the bells. She paused to adjust her hat- 
 pins, for the wind was tearing her hat away, and also 
 to let them get well ahead of her. As she watched, a kind 
 of passion of resistance swept over her. Men, thou- 
 sands, even millions of them, were being drilled all over 
 Europe and sent out, when drilled enough, to suffer 
 atrociously, to die or lose the health that made life 
 bearable, to kill and maim and torture other men, who, 
 like them, accepted as a duty what they loathed so far as 
 they thought at all the best of them loathing it most. That 
 was patriotism. And the Church, which told them to love 
 their enemies and bless them that hated them, urged them 
 on to kill and to be killed. That was faith. And the women 
 who loved them, to whom their life meant everything, sat 
 at home and bore it, and no one dared to say it was a hideous 
 blasphemy which made the name of God a mock. In- 
 stead, they covered all the truths over with sentimen- 
 talities, and pretended that nations were purified and 
 exalted by the delivery of their best to death or bru- 
 talisation. Were they not the real enemies, the people who 
 talked like that? 
 
 The train into which Daphne got, for it was waiting in 
 the station, was crowded with yawning and irritable Sun-
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 319 
 
 day passengers who had apparently all sat in it for some time. 
 Their dripping umbrellas and wet boots and mackin- 
 toshes gave off a disagreeable smell, and the carriage 
 was hot and glaring. To Daphne the whole thing was 
 like a nightmare. The ugly people, the heat, the smelj, the 
 glare all seemed the proper physical counterparts of the ter- 
 rible pain and confusion of her mind. This confusion 
 was hateful and unnatural to her; but it was all round her, 
 a jungle, through which Lionel's death did not cleave 
 a way, though it lit it up hideously, and showed it to 
 her for what it was. Lionel's death was war: what war meant, 
 brought home to one in the single instance which alone the 
 human mind, it seemed, could feel. As she looked at it, and 
 saw it, that death, Daphne knew that she had not fully felt 
 the war before. She had felt all kinds of things, but 
 not the war. She had thought she felt it when she 
 sat on the Embankment and heard the little girl call- 
 ing for her father; when she listened to Herbert Toller, 
 and took in, as his candour compelled her to take in, 
 some of the raw details of what men suffered and had 
 to see others suffer, every day; but it was not these 
 things that made her heart ache so that she could press 
 her hand against it as against a stone. No. What 
 she had actually felt was her own futile distress, a dis- 
 tress which, though obscurely connected with and inter- 
 wound in the war, still sprang not from it, but from 
 Nigel. What had lain upon her heart all these days, all these 
 weeks, was the cloud was it only a cloud, not something 
 much more solid? between her and Nigel. But now as she 
 thought of Jane and her baby, the war broke in upon her in 
 its naked truth. 
 
 It smote through her as she sat, staring at the ugly people. 
 This was what was happening everywhere, this rending pain, 
 final and appalling; while she was engrossed in her own trivial 
 pain. That she could have been so blinded was awful. 
 What did it mean? What kind of love was it that 
 made one blind to other people, while staring for ever 
 at oneself? She had told herself that to give was more
 
 320 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 blessed than to receive. So, in spite of Gertrude, in 
 spite of her own doubts, it was: when you gave like Jane, 
 and gave to Lionel. 
 
 The train started, and jarred and jangled on its way. 
 It stopped at a station. More wet people got in. Then 
 suddenly, without any warning, as they left the platform 
 all the glaring lights went out. The ugly, restless people 
 disappeared, and in the darkness the windows showed, 
 instead of vacuous reflected faces, the cold steel blue 
 of the sky; below it the opaque black of the houses and the 
 fields beyond. Then, as the train swung over the bridge, 
 the river, starred with tiny points of light along its 
 banks, spread out; a mute reminder of the enduring 
 calm on the surface of which humanity buzzed and 
 agonised. 
 
 "How awful!" cried a woman next Daphne. "They 
 really ought to warn one!" She gave a shrill giggle. 
 But Daphne hardly heard. On her jangled nerves the 
 darkness had descended like a healing hand. There came 
 into her mind a line of which her mother was very fond: "Nous 
 ne possedons e'ternellement que ce que nous avons perdu." 
 Was that what made Jane's giving beautiful, her pain 
 beautiful too, that she possessed for ever him whom she had 
 lost?
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 
 
 AN invitation to spend Christmas at Tenacre afforded 
 Nigel the good excuse he wanted for refusing Mrs. 
 Leonard's suggestion that he and Daphne should go 
 down to Wending End. 
 
 "You look tired, Nigel," said Mrs. Nugent; "Mrs. Leonard 
 will make you more tired." 
 
 Nigel did not rebut the suggestion; and Mrs. Nugent, en- 
 couraged by his silence (which marked, she felt, a 'stage: she 
 dared not have expressed her idea so frankly two months back), 
 pursued her advantage. 
 
 "Do you want me to ask Daphne too?" 
 
 Nigel inspected the catalogue he held in his hand, trying to 
 find any connection between the description set down for No. 
 37 "a portrait" and the curious arrangement of mathematical 
 figures which made up the canvas on the wall before him. 
 
 As he did not reply, Mrs. Nugent went on she was making 
 no pretence of any interest in the pictures. It was a War 
 Relief Exhibition, and, having paid her shilling at the door, she 
 felt that she had done all that was needed. No one talked 
 about pictures nowadays. 
 
 "I think, you know, in a long engagement it's a mistake for 
 people to see too much of each other. ... I'll ask her, of 
 course, if you like; but I think it would be better, for you, not 
 to do so. ... I feel tired myself, and Daphne is well, very 
 intense. " 
 
 Nigel looked up. Mabel Nugent's bright eyes were bent 
 upon him, but there was no criticism in her gaze or in her ready 
 smile. She was entirely sympathetic. 
 
 321
 
 322 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "I don't know," he said slowly. "I think you'd better 
 sound her." 
 
 "I see," said Mrs. Nugent; but what she saw would have 
 been difficult to put into words. "Of course," she went on 
 boldly, " I'd much rather have you to myself . . . . Edgar finds 
 Daphne rather well, rather difficile." 
 
 Nigel merely nodded. 
 
 "Edgar doesn't like heights, you know," she went on. 
 
 Nigel was still apparently pondering over No. 37. 
 
 "And you do want a thorough rest." 
 
 Nigel sighed. 
 
 "I am tired," he said, with an access of self-pity, "though 
 I don't really know why." 
 
 Mrs. Nugent's eyes rested on him tenderly. 
 
 "You feel things too much," she said. "Let's sit down on 
 that settee. ... I don't think these pictures are up to much, 
 do you? The fact is one gets thoroughly fed up with Belgians. 
 We can see them quite well enough from there . . . they 
 seem quite unintelligible. " 
 
 Nigel followed her and sank down by her side on the soft 
 velvet. The gallery was nearly empty; only a bearded gentle- 
 man who went round inspecting everything with the most 
 minute interest by the aid of a large magnifying glass, and in 
 the further room a young man in khaki, who paid no attention to 
 anything but the girl in furs who accompanied him. Mrs. 
 Nugent adjusted her magnificent sables and looked at Nigel. 
 He leaned back, long and slim, his fair head very fair against 
 the dark velvet (he had taken off his hat, which lay on the seat 
 beside him), and stared with eyes half closed at the variegated 
 ,wall in front of them. 
 
 "You know," said Mrs. Nugent suddenly, "it was a mis- 
 take, putting off your marriage." 
 
 A slight frown contracted Nigel's smooth brow, his 
 eyes opened wide. He made no other movement, how- 
 ever. 
 
 "A great mistake," Mrs. Nugent reiterated. "There's 
 nothing so wearing as being engaged. . . . When you're 
 married you settle down."
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 323 
 
 "Sometimes," Nigel threw in. "I can't imagine Daphne 
 'settling down, ' as you call it. Can you? " 
 
 Mrs. Nugent looked at him. 
 
 "I see two grey hairs," she said irrelevantly. Nigel sat 
 up and felt his head. 
 
 "Only two?" he said. "I expect there's a forest." 
 
 "No. Only two. . . . The others will come fast enough, 
 once they begin. Those two are quite new, aren't they? 
 They've come since your . . . since the war. . . . No; I 
 can't imagine Daphne settling down but you'll have a calm- 
 ing effect, I dare say. " 
 
 "I don't at present," he said rather sharply. Mrs. Nugent 
 smiled. She could smile safely, for Nigel was looking away. 
 For a moment her smile lingered. Then she resumed 
 
 "I mean what I say, though. You ought to get married 
 if you're going to marry at all. " 
 
 "So you said." Nigel's tone showed irritation. 
 
 "I can't see what you're waiting for. . . . The war's not 
 going to be over at any rate before the autumn. " 
 
 "It's much more likely to go on for years. " 
 
 "Exactly. That's just it. ... You see, you can't realise 
 how it's affecting you, dear Nigel. . . . One gets used to one- 
 self and doesn't see changes they come so gradually." 
 
 He turned his head. 
 
 "Do you mean I'm changed?" 
 
 "Changing. Yes." 
 
 Nigel was sitting up now. Evidently his interest was 
 aroused. 
 
 "Don't smile in that irritating way, Mabel, but tell me." 
 
 Mabel, however, continued to smile. "I'm not sure that 
 I dare," she murmured. 
 
 But Nigel insisted. 
 
 "Well," she said at last, as if the admission were being 
 dragged from her, "you're worried." 
 
 "You said that before. " 
 
 "Well, it's true. You're older. You're losing your 
 charm " 
 
 She faced him with it, and Nigel did not smile. He stared
 
 324 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 at the cocoanut matting on the ground, his hands deep in his 
 pockets. 
 
 "And you think," he said at last, "that I might recover if 
 I married?" 
 
 "I'm sure that this long strain is bad for you," was her 
 reply. 
 
 Nigel felt annoyed. Mrs. Nugent, though on very different 
 grounds, was echoing what Hugh had said weeks ago. He had 
 suddenly appeared one evening early in December, having 
 mysteriously returned from France, and being on his way back 
 thither within two hours ; and instead of giving Nigel the colour 
 and detail that would have been so useful, he had wasted the 
 short half-hour they had together in persistently talking of 
 Daphne and Mrs. Leonard. The upshot of his talk was an 
 appeal to Nigel not to what he called "fail" the latter. Hugh's 
 emphasis seemed to be all on Mrs. Leonard. Translated into 
 action, it amounted to advice to marry early in the New Year, 
 because the present strain was wearing every one out. Nigel 
 had taken the advice in good part, but somewhere deep down 
 he resented it. What business was it of Hugh's, anyhow? 
 Hugh knew nothing about these things, he had never had an 
 emotional experience in his life. 
 
 Mrs. Nugent's line was certainly quite different she 
 thought, at least, of him, and not of other people; but her 
 argument was almost more disquieting, though it was not one 
 he could meet without appearing an ass. Not being able to 
 meet it, he felt no further desire to talk to her, and looking at 
 his watch invented an engagement. 
 
 "You'll come to Tenacre for Christmas without fail, then, 
 won't you?" she said, as he shook hands. 
 
 "I will, without fail, " he bowed. 
 
 "Ah!" she cried, "I was wrong about your charm! . . . 
 And Daphne?" 
 
 He paused, on the point of departure. 
 
 "You'd better ask her yourself," he said. 
 
 Mrs. Nugent smiled and waved her hand. "All right. Ill 
 ask her to tea say on Wednesday; you might come in, later 
 on."
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 325 
 
 One couldn't, Mrs. Nugent felt, very well have an evening 
 party in war time, in December it might seem unfeeling to be 
 amusing oneself to that extent: but a tea was allowable. 
 There was something much more subdued about afternoon en- 
 gagements. She was therefore At Home on the third Wednes- 
 day of December from four to seven instead of from nine to 
 eleven, and a surprising number of her acquaintances found 
 themselves free to be amused to that extent. The room was 
 droning with conversation and dark with feathered hats when 
 Daphne arrived late and full of the intention of departing 
 early. She saw Mr. Mottershaw in earnest conversation in one 
 corner with an enormously stout lady whom he was recom- 
 mending to lie on the sofa for an hour a day at least, and free 
 her body of sensations and her mind of thoughts: it was only 
 when one was in a state of complete passivity that one could 
 receive what, Daphne did not gather. Mallard Floss, in 
 a uniform very much like that of a South-Western Railway por- 
 ter, was the centre of an animated group listening eagerly to 
 his views on the paralysing of approaching Zeppelins. In 
 the window she saw Enid Freen, and began moving in that 
 direction when her hostess suddenly bore down upon her. Mrs. 
 Nugent was all eager affability. While she gave Daphne tea 
 she talked incessantly, mainly about herself, how impos- 
 sibly busy she had been, how she had given up society and 
 never saw any one except occasionally when she snatched a week- 
 end at Tenacre. The war was too dreadful, wasn't it, going on 
 all the time? It had quite broken up their set, she never saw 
 any of them now except, of course, Nigel. 
 
 Daphne did not look up at the mention of Nigel's name, 
 though she knew that she was expected to do so. She could not 
 have talked about him with Mrs. Nugent at any time, least of 
 all now. As it was, she felt Mabel's restless, inquisitive eyes 
 piercing her like gimlets, and was glad to avoid them by glancing 
 round the room. It was so much like many other rooms in 
 Chelsea and Kensington in which she had from time to time 
 gone to tea, in her best gloves and shoes, that it was difficult 
 to be interested in it. There must be hundreds of highly 
 cultivated houses like this in London. You entered a narrow
 
 326 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 white hall, sparely hung with Japanese prints or Durer en- 
 gravings, with a narrow oak settee and a Japanese blue and 
 white drain-pipe; and passed into a white or pale grey double 
 drawing-room with a few rugs on a shining floor, mauve and 
 black and white chintz-covered chairs, an exquisitely appointed 
 escritoire in a dark corner, low polished tables with silver trays 
 and bonbonnires on them, and blue and white china here and 
 there, flowers in tall glasses, one or two pictures, correct but 
 impersonal, a piano in the back drawing-room, and bulbs in 
 bowls in the window. It was all perfectly safe it represented 
 correctly a certain social grade but it was entirely without 
 individuality. Mrs. Nugent, after all, had a good deal of 
 individuality. The penalty of the climber, however, was never 
 to be sure in any of the departments of taste. She got no further 
 than a more or less successful copy, picking up ideas for tables 
 and curtains as she picked up ideas for conversation. 
 
 "It is wonderful," Mrs. Nugent purred on, "the way in 
 which every one is doing something. The war certainly has 
 called out the best in people given them a call and a chance 
 nothing else could have done. . . . Your workroom sounds so 
 interesting, Miss Leonard. " 
 
 "I like the girls, some of them," said Daphne. Her tone 
 was rather dry. "They're not all nice, of course. " 
 
 "I feel quite an outsider," Mrs. Nugent sighed. "One 
 can't feel really in it, if one's a woman and one's men are over 
 forty. One envies the mother of sons, doesn't one? Any- 
 how, our boys have done splendidly, haven't they?" 
 
 Daphne felt there was some connection she ought to see, 
 but she missed it. 
 
 "Oh, yes," she murmured vaguely, wishing to escape, but 
 held where she was by the fact that she had a cup in her hand 
 of which she saw no means of getting rid. 
 
 "At least there is no one among the people one counts as 
 one's own who could fight who isn't doing his bit," Mrs. 
 Nugent went on, her eyes very wide open and her voice full of 
 feeling. "I feel so glad about Godfrey Toller. . . . But dear 
 Gervase is the one my heart aches over. ..." Looking 
 rather hard at Daphne she went on. "Poor Gervase; he would
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 327 
 
 have made a splendid soldier, wouldn't he?" She sighed 
 again. 
 
 " Mr. O'Connor? I don't know. He was not at all military 
 in his ideas." 
 
 Mrs. Nugent smiled. 
 
 "Oh, well, no one was before the war, " she said. 
 
 "No," said Daphne, quickly putting on her gloves. 
 
 "How clever of you to have French gloves still." 
 
 Daphne looked up in some surprise. " My mother got them 
 before the war." 
 
 "One wonders whether the war had something to do with 
 poor Gervase's death." Mrs. Nugent was not to be diverted. 
 
 "I thought it had everything to do with it," said Daphne, 
 surprised. 
 
 Mrs. Nugent laughed and tapped her gently on the shoulder, 
 regardless of the girl's involuntary flinching. 
 
 "That's very clever of you, dear Miss Leonard, but is it 
 worth while?" 
 
 Daphne raised her clear eyes. 
 
 "I don't understand," she said. 
 
 "No? Oh, well, the young generation is queer. I should 
 have felt rather proud if any one had gone off his head on my 
 account. You seem to prefer to know nothing about it." 
 
 Daphne's stare was now unmistakably genuine. Mrs. 
 Nugent went on 
 
 "No doubt our grandmothers went too far in sensibility, 
 but I must say the modern girl seems to me to err in the other 
 extreme. Though perhaps you feel it a responsibility? Shirk- 
 ing responsibility is, of course, absolutely the modern note." 
 
 During this speech Daphne's eyes had been riveted on her 
 hostess's face. It was incredible that Mrs. Nugent should 
 invent such a story, there seemed no kind of motive. Daphne 
 groped darkly. 
 
 "I don't know what you mean, Mrs. Nugent. Mr. O'Con- 
 nor didn't care about me, as you seem to suggest. It was 
 some one quite different. " 
 
 "If you mean Myrtle Toller, I am not taken in by her. It 
 was very clever, no doubt all that black and woe-begone air
 
 328 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 of hers a good device for a girl whose friends have all got 
 sweethearts at the Front; but she couldn't put it on with me. 
 But it's amazing, simply amazing, that you were taken in. ... 
 Did Nigel never tell you?" 
 
 Daphne was too much absorbed in this sudden opening 
 of windows to care to parry Mrs. Nugent 's thrusts. 
 
 "You mean that it was on account of me that he 
 
 "Certainly, I do. I knew it was the case. If you don't 
 believe me, ask Nigel or ask Mr. Infield. He . . . I'm sorry 
 if I have told you something unpleasant " 
 
 Daphne's eyes were full of unutterable things. They 
 troubled even Mrs. Nugent, not prone to be troubled. 
 
 " Perhaps I shouldn't have said anything. " 
 
 "Oh, yes. ... I'm glad to be told. ... I ought to have 
 known long ago. . . . But why did you tell me, Mrs. Nugent?" 
 
 Before her gaze Mrs. Nugent felt her colour suddenly rising. 
 
 "I suppose you thought I knew and wanted to make me 
 uncomfortable . . . but why?" 
 
 Mrs. Nugent laughed. 
 
 "Make you uncomfortable? My dear Miss Leonard, what 
 an idea! Only I am glad I have told you if you really did not 
 know, for I'm sure it's only not seeing that makes you so how 
 shall I put it? so hard. . . . You're very young, you see; 
 young people are so self-absorbed. ... I expect Nigel spoils 
 you 
 
 Daphne did not smile. 
 
 "Yes," she said slowly; "I expect he does." 
 
 "Sometimes," Mrs. Nugent flowed on, in a low, confi- 
 dential tone, "an older woman can help. One sees further, 
 when one's not thinking about oneself. . . . Nigel's looking 
 very tired and thin, I think. . . . You must not forget he's 
 older than he looks. " 
 
 "No?" 
 
 "One can't adapt oneself so readily then. . . . Perhaps 
 you're rather well, how shall I say? exigeante? I know what 
 I was at your age. . . . Ah, there is Nigel. ... I must go and 
 get him some tea. . . . But I'm so glad we've had this little 
 talk, dear Miss Leonard. Do come and see me some time "
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 329 
 
 She disappeared, smiling, through a passage that opened 
 in the block of people between them and the door. The dis- 
 persion of groups caused by her movement brought Daphne 
 up against Nigel and Myrtle Toller. Myrtle had her back to 
 Daphne, who, however, was near enough to her to be tickled 
 by the long pale blue plume of her hat; while with Nigel she 
 was face to face for an instant before he saw her. He was 
 smiling and evidently happy and absorbed, the tense and irri- 
 tated look had been wiped from his face, and yet Myrtle was 
 saying to him just those things Daphne knew she must not 
 trench upon. 
 
 "I think you ought to go, Nigel, since I hear old Davis is 
 on his way back. After all, you're within the old age limit, 
 aren't you? apart from the new appeal. I can't see why you 
 don't. . . . You haven't any moral objection to killing, surely? 
 Or has Daphne made you a Quaker?" 
 
 "Oh, no ; she allows me the freedom of my barbarian errors ! " 
 he laughed. But as he laughed his gaze shifted Nigel's self- 
 consciousness was a delicate thing and met Daphne's. Instant- 
 ly his eyes narrowed, the little lines refurrowed themselves on 
 his forehead. 
 
 "Hullo, Daphne!" he said; "I've never met you here 
 before." 
 
 Myrtle turned round. She was looking absolutely pretty 
 under her wide hat, and Daphne at another time might have 
 felt envy of some one who could come out in such dirty gloves 
 and preserve complete ease and a convincing elegance that 
 came from ease. Myrtle was sure of herself; if a wisp of hair 
 lay across her forehead she made it a decorative asset, just as 
 she did her dirty gloves. Daphne always felt awkward and 
 prim, over-charged with inappropriate seriousness. At the 
 moment, however, none of this mattered. 
 
 "I'm telling Nigel he ought to take a commission," Myrtle 
 said. "Do you not agree?" 
 
 "Yes," said Daphne, after a second's pause; "I think any 
 one who approves of war should go. " 
 
 "Good heavens, child!" cried Myrtle. "Approves of the 
 war! What does it matter whether one approves or not?
 
 330 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 How can one not approve when the Germans are such devils? 
 But I forgot, you've become a pro-German. I wonder Nigel 
 allows it!" 
 
 "Oh, I have no influence over her thoughts," said Nigel 
 quickly. 
 
 "You've improved, I see," Myrtle laughed. "I was right 
 after all, wasn't I? What a pity you didn't see it before!" 
 
 Her eyes met his with a candour that was a challenge to 
 Daphne, in its reference to things unknown to her but under- 
 stood by the other two. 
 
 "Yes, " said Nigel, " I agree. It is a pity. " 
 
 Myrtle was still laughing as she turned away. 
 
 "Well it may not be too late," she murmured; "the 
 whirligig of time brings round many revenges. " 
 
 She left them standing side by side in a silence neither 
 seemed inclined to break. After a few moments that to each 
 seemed long, Nigel suggested that they should go. Daphne 
 at once acquiesced. 
 
 "Did Mabel ask you down to Tenacre for Christmas?" 
 said Nigel, as they left the house together and walked towards 
 Sloane Street. 
 
 Daphne shook her head. Mrs. Nugent had said a great 
 many things, but not that. 
 
 "I'm going down," Nigel went on. 
 
 "Yes." Daphne accepted it. "Mother told me she 
 expects me on Saturday. " 
 
 "Oh, then you'd feel, I suppose, that you can't go. " 
 
 Daphne stared in front of her at a soldier obviously three 
 parts drunk, who was making his way unsteadily along, knock- 
 ing into people and falling against the wall. Nigel's remark 
 was a statement, not a question. 
 
 They walked on in silence. Then Daphne said 
 
 "I'm going up to the flat now to see about getting it ready. 
 The people who had it go out to-day or to-morrow. Will 
 you walk across the Park? " 
 
 Nigel glanced at a clock in a shop. 
 
 "I'm dining out," he said, "but I dare say I could manage 
 it."
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 331 
 
 On the 'bus that took them down Sloane Street Daphne 
 said nothing, nor did she say anything for some time after 
 they had entered the Park, except to suggest that it was a 
 wonderful night and the Round Pond would be looking beauti- 
 ful. 
 
 "Yes," said Nigel; "but the Gardens will be shut." 
 
 The icy wind that had blown the streets dry all the earlier 
 part of the day had dropped at sundown, and the bare trees 
 were shrouded in a blue-grey beauty like that of early morning. 
 Overhead the sky was dark, with a clear cold darkness, and 
 high up a tiny crescent moon floated, transparent as a shred 
 of filmy lace. Nigel made one or two casual remarks, but 
 Daphne let them all drop. When she spoke her words came out 
 as though she had been waiting all the time to utter them. 
 
 "Nigel, did you know about Gervase O'Connor?" 
 
 "What about him?" Nigel's tone was sharp, and it re- 
 quired three matches to light his cigarette. 
 
 "That he ... cared for me." Daphne's voice had sunk 
 very low, but the words were distinct. Nigel nodded; he looked 
 relieved. 
 
 "Gervase never kept anything to himself, you know," he 
 said, as if by way of explanation. 
 
 " Did you know that he cared when he was down at Tenacre 
 the time we" she hesitated "the time we met?" 
 
 "Of course I did. I asked Mabel to ask you on that plea. 
 I couldn't tell her I wanted you on my own. It would have 
 been . . . giving the show away." 
 
 "Yes." Daphne looked at him. "She wouldn't have 
 liked it, you mean?" 
 
 "Or you might have refused, and then I should have looked 
 an ass for my pains." He was smiling now, but there was no 
 hint of a smile in the face Daphne raised to him. 
 
 "I see," she said slowly, still in the same toneless voice. 
 "Do you remember we met him . . . that day? when we 
 were coming out of the orchard. ... I can see his face now. " 
 
 "No. I can't say I do. I had other things to think of. 
 But don't think of him, Daphne. It's quite hopeless." 
 
 "Yes, quite," she said. Something in the expression of
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 her voice made Nigel turn his head to scrutinise her face. But 
 her eyes were on the road, and the profile turned to him might 
 have been cut out of wax, it was so pale and still. 
 
 Another silence fell. Then Daphne said 
 
 "Did you know about him before you began to care for 
 me?" 
 
 "Dear child, what a catechism! How can I remember?" 
 
 Daphne at that turned and looked at him before she said, 
 "I suppose it wouldn't strike you." She paused; then as he 
 said nothing, she went on, "You didn't like him much, did 
 you?" 
 
 "Gervase? He was a nice creature in many ways, but 
 mad, you know. " 
 
 "Mad?" she said quietly. "That's what you call it. ... 
 Do I strike you as mad too, Nigel?" She spoke very gently, 
 but her eyes were serious. 
 
 "Oh, no!" he cried politely. 
 
 "Oh, Nigel! " Daphne stopped in the middle of the path to 
 give more earnestness to her words. "Don't talk to me as if 
 I were a social acquaintance or a child. . . . You freeze 
 me." 
 
 Her eyes were on his face now, and they seemed to him to 
 burn with a sombre glow, vivid against the blue shadows that 
 were gradually closing round them. 
 
 "Well," he said quickly, "you frighten me sometimes." 
 
 "Ah!" A low cry came from her. "I do strike you as 
 mad " 
 
 They walked on in silence. Behind the darkening trees 
 a few pale yellow lights had begun to appear, and before them 
 the sky grew purple as one by one the stars came out. To Nigel 
 the whole scene seemed dim and dreamlike; he felt himself like 
 a figure in a faded tapestry, vanishing, as the dusk gathered, 
 into the obliterating haze. Daphne by his side was remote, 
 and he was glad of her remoteness. The sense of irritation 
 against her with which first Hugh and then Mabel Nugent had 
 filled him, gradually died away. It had been acute while she 
 had catechised him so uselessly about Gervase, but now with 
 the removal of that violent image and her own subsidence,
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 333 
 
 tranquillity had returned. He looked at her. The glow had 
 died from her face, leaving her again very pale. 
 
 "I think, you know," he said, "Gervase is a kind of warn- 
 ing for one. Violence does turn against itself and destroy." 
 
 Daphne looked at him. 
 
 "Yes, " she said, still in a quiet dead voice. 
 
 They walked on in silence until they reached the Alexandra 
 Gate and passed through the gates into Kensington Gore. 
 Across the dark arch of the sky there swung a sudden track of 
 light, that swept over them and disappeared into the darkness 
 again. 
 
 "Searchlight," said Nigel, looking up. He had not looked 
 at Daphne while it passed, but she, he knew, had been looking 
 at him. He did not want to meet that gaze again, nor did he 
 want to answer any more questions. 
 
 "I think," he said, "I had better get into a 'bus here. A 
 No. 9 is sure to come in a minute; yours goes from the 
 other side. " Daphne made no comment, nor did she move or 
 hold out her hand. 
 
 "You're going to Wending End for Christmas?" he said. 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "I shall be at Tenacre till the Tuesday morning." 
 
 This seemed to recall her. 
 
 "Tuesday?" she said. "Then will you come up to the 
 flat and see me in the early afternoon? I shall be alone; 
 mother doesn't come back till the middle of the week. Yes, 
 please," as he looked dubious. "I do want to see you. . . . 
 There's something I want to talk over with you. " 
 
 " Can't we do it now? That seems so . . . formal." 
 
 Daphne stared at an advancing 'bus and shook her head. 
 
 "I'm not quite ready yet," she said. "I want it so, if 
 you don't mind." 
 
 "All right, then. . . . And, in case I don't see you again, 
 a Happy Christmas!" 
 
 But Daphne had swiftly crossed the road and disappeared. 
 Nigel smiled a little dubiously, and told himself that a holiday 
 would do them both good.
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 
 
 OLD Esther stood, the door of the sitting-room in her 
 floury hand; letting in the raw damp air so that Mrs. 
 Leonard shivered in spite of the fire at her back. It 
 was a habit of Esther's, thus to stand at the half-open door 
 discoursing, of which Mrs. Leonard had in years not been 
 able to cure her: if asked to come in, she went away. 
 Esther was not really old, though she looked much more 
 than her five-and-forty years, because her thin hair was 
 quite grey and her hard-bitten face covered all over 
 with tiny wrinkles; but in Wending End she was always 
 called old Esther since her daughter, young Esther, had, 
 to the surprise of the village, married the one-legged 
 bootmaker. Every one had condoled with her mother at the 
 time; but young Esther was now regarded as the luckiest 
 woman in Wending End, for she alone had got her man at 
 home with her. 
 
 Old Esther surveyed the table covered with writing ma- 
 terials, her eyes round. Mrs. Leonard's table had always 
 been covered with writing, but Esther had never ceased to 
 marvel at it. 
 
 "I'd rather do scrubbing or washing any day than writ- 
 ing," she said. "It takes me all my time to write a letter 
 one week to Ben and the next to Gunny. All those pages! 
 what's the use of it all, mum?" 
 
 Mrs. Leonard smiled. 
 
 "I don't know, Esther. Not much, I'm afraid." 
 
 "Are you writing another book? ... I wish you'd write 
 something I could read; I couldn't get on with the one you 
 
 334
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 335 
 
 gave me. It had some funny name I couldn't say, I 
 know." 
 
 "Yes; but I don't know that you'll want to read it, Esther. 
 It's about the war." 
 
 "About the war? What is there to say about the 
 war?" 
 
 Mrs. Leonard laid down her pen. What indeed was there 
 to say? 
 
 "But I suppose," Esther went on, "you can understand 
 it all." 
 
 "Oh, no," said Mrs. Leonard sadly; "no. But I can't 
 think about anything else." 
 
 A knock at the outer door called Esther away for an in- 
 stant. She returned with shining face. "Here's some- 
 thing to please you, mum. Yes, there is one from missy 
 . . . it's under the other two dry-looking ones." She 
 smiled with pleasure in the success of her little ruse, 
 repeated every time there was a letter from Daphne. 
 "That's something better than your dry writing. When's 
 missy coming?" Mrs. Leonard was reading her letter 
 a very short letter with an expression that made Esther 
 cry with real concern: "Oh, isn't missy coming for Christ- 
 mas?" 
 
 Mrs. Leonard laid down the single sheet. 
 
 "Yes. She is coming. But not till Christmas Eve." 
 
 "Oh!" Esther's face fell. "And her young man, is he 
 coming too? I do want to see him, though I can't believe 
 he's good enough for missy." 
 
 Mrs. Leonard shook her head. "No, he can't come. He's 
 too busy." 
 
 "Can't come?" said Esther. "I call that a shame. And 
 he's not a soldier either, is he?" 
 
 Mrs. Leonard did not look up. She felt that old Esther's 
 judgment had been passed. 
 
 "No." She took up the other letter. "But Mr. Infield 
 is. He'll be here for Christmas, I hope: he's coming a day 
 or two before." 
 
 Esther's face brightened.
 
 336 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "I must get to that plum-pudding," she said. "He al- 
 ways liked my puddings. . . . But I'm that disappointed 
 not to see Mr. Strode. It's hard on Miss Daphne. She won't 
 enjoy her Christmas without him. I can't think he is good 
 enough for her." 
 
 Mrs. Leonard could not pursue this line of thought. "Have 
 you any news, Esther? How is Gunny getting on?" Gunny, 
 old Esther's younger boy, was down with pneumonia on Salis- 
 bury Plain. 
 
 "Oh, he's all right, I guess," said Esther. "He's in Eng- 
 land; he'll come to no harm. It's poor Ben I'm wor- 
 riting over. . . . Not knowing where he is; thinking 
 those Kaiser devils may have got him that fair takes the 
 life out of me, it does. . . . But there, other people have 
 worse to bear than what I have. Look at poor Mrs. Clark. 
 Her husband's been out three months now, and she's only 
 had one postcard since he got wounded in the head; and her 
 Jim him she thought so much of, you remember, mum, 
 he's gone crazy. Yes, Bill Gretton, he was in the same 
 company, wrote and told her; he just lies on his back 
 and talks like a silly about swallows on the roof when 
 there ain't no swallows nothing but flies. He just 
 lies and counts them all day long. And he was a bright lad, 
 was Jim Clark. But everybody's got something; and those 
 that haven't yet, it's coming for. There's hardly a house 
 in this village that hasn't got some one to worrit about. . . . 
 But I must be getting back to that pudding, and you want to 
 go on with your writing." 
 
 Old Esther closed the door behind her; but Mrs. Leon- 
 ard did not find it easy to get back to her writing. She had 
 thought that in the country she might, if not escape 
 from the war, at least learn to see it in some proportion; but 
 as the long days of autumn passed into winter, she 
 found that it oppressed and enchained her imagination 
 not less but more completely. In Wending End there 
 was no excitement, there never had been any. The war stood 
 there for nothing but suffering. It had come upon the 
 village like a black thunder-cloud, as unintelligible as
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 337 
 
 the rain that came and ruined their crops. There was 
 no need for recruiting meetings there, the young men 
 had all gone; the day's work was left to the old, the 
 halt, the maimed, the women and the children. They 
 did not understand or try to understand it in Wending 
 End; they simply accepted it, as part of the inscrutable, 
 painful order of life. Life was always hard there; its 
 anxiety, which used to be no more than the monotonous 
 pressure of the problem of making both ends meet, had taken 
 on a keener edge, that was all. This dumb accept- 
 ance seemed to Aurelia Leonard terrible. She almost 
 wished that the suffering women, whom she hardly dared 
 to visit, because their pain was so much greater than hers, 
 and they bore it in such silence, would cry out or revolt. They 
 did not. They only waited. The earth waited, but 
 for its renewal in the spring; these people waited in 
 fear, not in hope. A northern regiment was billeted in 
 the village: each of the dark damp little houses was 
 filled to over-crowding with men who at night slept on 
 straw, ranged in rows like animals. In the muddy roads it 
 rained without ceasing Aurelia used to meet them march- 
 ing. Peeling off from the rotting tree-stumps on the 
 roads along which they tramped there hung limp posters, 
 telling men that their King and country needed them. 
 Needed them for what? No one might ask: no one did ask. 
 Certainly no one in Wending End. Except Aurelia Leon- 
 ard. She asked incessantly, how had it come to be, 
 this agony. The war was not a thunderstorm, nor, though 
 the clergyman must say so, a voice from on high. It 
 was an event with causes, and those causes must lie 
 in the minds and wills of European men. They did not, she 
 felt sure, come out of the silence of the country, or 
 from the maligned impulses of Nature; but out of the 
 noise of the towns, where the factories whirred and engines 
 thundered, where people toiled at mechanical work and 
 drugged themselves with mechanical pleasure, seeking 
 frenziedly to escape from the horror which man had made 
 of his life. In the country, even under the sodden rains, there
 
 338 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 was beauty, quiet, an instinctive satisfaction in the mere 
 act of moving and looking. As Aurelia looked out of 
 her high window in the morning, across the water-logged 
 fields to where against the white sky the thin branches 
 of the trees waved, or at night up to the purple dark- 
 ness lit only by one watery star, she felt it; and knew that 
 somehow, however obscurely, it stirred in the slow silent 
 people of the village. 
 
 But the country was deserted, drained of life. Twen- 
 tieth-century Europe had its being not in the country, but 
 in towns; in those towns where existence had become an un- 
 bearable strain, where the weariness of work for wages 
 drove the starving soul to deaden its unhappiness with 
 drink or obliterate it with excitement. Work was a 
 mechanical slavery; love a blind rage of brief possession: 
 religion a drug that had ceased to operate. Too tired 
 to think, too jaded to feel, too unhappy to believe, men and 
 women sought in excitement the only relief they Joiew 
 from the ennui that grew as they struggled, frantically, 
 to escape from it. They had got beyond, in the cant 
 modern phrase, everything else. From ennui they swung 
 to violence, and from violence back to ennui; and violence 
 culminated in death. To spirits weary of life death was 
 the one adventure left. And so, death ruled over Europe. 
 Aurelia remembered what Hugh Infield had said, when 
 speaking to her of the suicide of Gervase O'Connor, how 
 he had spoken of his belonging to a generation tainted 
 with the disease of death; and she saw that he was 
 right. Right because, though death ruled, there were 
 people who glorified its ghastly reign and hailed it as the 
 return of reality. Nigel's battlefield article, which she 
 read with a kind of heartsickness, forced Aurelia to admit, 
 what she had before always denied, that there were those 
 who gloated over war. Old men had done it, in letters 
 and pamphlets that made her shudder; but that Nigel 
 could do it was a more dreadful turn of the screw. She had 
 refused to see his early enthusiasm as gloating. It was 
 possible to accept the war as right without that; and
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 339 
 
 she had given him the benefit of every doubt. But 
 the battlefield article killed any lingering hope. It horri- 
 fied and appalled her and made her tremble for her 
 daughter. What must it not make Daphne feel? That she 
 would feel, though she -night not understand, Mrs. Leon- 
 ard felt certain. Feeling with Daphne was far ahead, 
 often, of intellectual understanding. She might not, 
 she probably would not, know why Nigel's article was 
 horrible: but she would feel it to be horrible, and Aure- 
 lia blanched when she thought of what that blind feel- 
 ing must make her suffer. That she was suffering she 
 knew from her letters: from their silence. Daphne wrote, 
 but said nothing. She talked about her work and the 
 people she saw in connection with it; a new world, the 
 world of Labour, was, through it, opening before her, 
 and into it she was gradually making her way. That was 
 all good. She mentioned that she had been out several times 
 to see little Jane Delahaye, who was wonderful, and 
 gradually getting stronger in spite of everything, helped 
 by Leonora. But of Nigel she said nothing. She no 
 longer sent her mother the New World. It was from Nigel, 
 not from her, that Mrs. Leonard had received the battlefield 
 article. 
 
 December dragged slowly on. Mrs. Leonard knew how 
 to wait, and she waited. She hoped much from Hugh In- 
 field's visit. But when Hugh arrived, only two days before 
 Christmas, she found that he had no news to give her. He 
 had seen Nigel, but not Daphne; and of Nigel he had little 
 to say that he could, or would, report. 
 
 Hugh arrived suddenly late in the evening, as Aurelia 
 was sitting down to supper, which Esther would not per- 
 mit to be further delayed beyond its proper time. During 
 the meal and afterwards, when they sat on either side of the 
 fire, he said little, and that mostly newspaper talk, or 
 the trivial incidents of his journey. Aurelia saw that he 
 was making an effort after his old rather mocking manner; 
 he wanted, desperately, to be normal. For Hugh to 
 want to be anything was a sign of deep-seated abnormality.
 
 340 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 France had told on him. He looked older. The white 
 had gained on the black in his shaggy hair, there was a 
 strained tightness about his mouth, the lines round his deep- 
 set eyes were deeper, and the eyes themselves, behind 
 their round protecting spectacles, had a haunted look. 
 When he was not talking he stared into emptiness, as 
 if, for him, it were peopled, and not agreeably. Mrs. Leon- 
 ard accepted the light tone he tried to set. She talked of 
 Wending End, telling him stories of Esther and of the women 
 she had got to know in the village, and describing the little 
 incidents of life there. 
 
 But between them this kind of fencing could not be long 
 kept up. 
 
 "Aren't you dreadfully lonely here?" Hugh asked. 
 
 They had been silent for a few minutes, and in the silence 
 broken by no sound from outside he had become conscious 
 of the quiet of the place. 
 
 "Without Daphne? Yes." Hugh frowned a little. "But 
 I'm used to being lonely," she said. "Of course the war makes 
 it bad." 
 
 Hugh moved impatiently. 
 
 "The war makes it impossible," he said. 
 
 She turned to him on that, as if asking a question. 
 
 "No, don't ask me about it this evening," he exclaimed. 
 "Oh, don't be afraid I shan't inflict enough of it on you, I can't 
 help it; but I'm not going to begin to-night." 
 
 He leaned towards the fire, his head propped on his hands, 
 and stared at the glowing sparks that poured out from the 
 peat, and the blue below that grew under the bellows in Aure- 
 lia's hands. 
 
 "Tell me about Daphne," he said. "No, I've not seen 
 her," in answer to Mrs. Leonard's quick questioning 
 look. "I saw Nigel and some of the others, had ten 
 minutes at the Foreign Office, and saw Coventry, but not 
 Daphne." 
 
 Mrs. Leonard did not reply. Instead she asked 
 
 "Tell me about Nigel. What did he talk about?" 
 
 "Nigel?" Hugh shrugged his shoulders. "He wanted
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 341 
 
 copy, that was all. He talked about the war. And 
 about poor Herbert Toller. . . . But I needn't ask about 
 Daphne. I can see; I have never seen you look so badly, 
 Aurelia." 
 
 " Daphne is inside a wall of glass; I'm outside. That's all." 
 
 Hugh looked at her dubiously. "Not really?" 
 
 "Yes. Really. I have never been so far away before. 
 I understand it, but that only makes it worse. Because I 
 know how she's suffering." 
 
 "It was no use, your going away, then?" 
 
 Mrs. Leonard did not reply. But the expression with 
 which she stared at the fire, the limp grace of her hands in 
 her lap, were answer sufficient for Hugh. She knew it had 
 been no use. No need for him to add to that dreary 
 certainty. 
 
 "Of course," he said, "she still cares for him." 
 
 Hugh's sentence might have been a question. She merely 
 affirmed it. "Of course." 
 
 "It's a curse, you know, to care like that." Hugh spoke 
 drily, but his tone grew almost savage as he added: "And 
 for Nigel. How can she?" 
 
 Mrs. Leonard sighed. "Oh, Hugh!" 
 
 "You can't expect me to understand that?" 
 
 "Or me not to," she breathed, on a smile. 
 
 Hugh pushed back his chair and walked across the room, 
 as far as its narrow space permitted, and back. 
 
 "It's damnable," he said. As she looked at him, half 
 doubtful of his meaning, he added, "That it should happen 
 again." 
 
 She made no comment. None was needed. She knew 
 that he was thinking, as she had been thinking, of Richard 
 Leonard. 
 
 "Why," Hugh broke out again after a short silence, 
 "should there be this gratuitous pain for you? Isn't it enough, 
 to have the war, on top of everything else, without 
 this?" 
 
 "This is the worst," she murmured. Hugh looked at 
 her. As she sat leaning forward, the firelight throwing a
 
 342 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 ruddy light on her pale face and soft dress of thick white 
 wool, it was impossible to believe in the years that had 
 passed between them. To him, in spite of her white 
 hair, Aurelia looked as she had looked fifteen years ago. 
 She had returned to that time in her thoughts and it 
 was vividly present to him, as it had been ever since 
 that day in Kensington Gardens when she had suddenly let 
 him come near her again, so near that for him Daphne and 
 Daphne's joy or suffering became only an episode in the more 
 moving story of Aurelia herself. It was not so to her. To 
 her the past came back, because of the light it seemed to 
 cast on Daphne. But as Hugh gazed into that past which 
 was his as well as hers, he forgot Daphne and thought of 
 Aurelia and of himself. 
 
 "My terror is," Aurelia went on, "that Daphne is so 
 young that she may fail, as I did, to understand what's hap- 
 pening to her." 
 
 Hugh wondered. "Does that matter?" 
 
 "Oh, Hugh, yes. It matters more than anything. . . . 
 If you understand your experience you can conquer it." She 
 got up on this and moved towards the little table on 
 which candles stood. Turning as she lit them she met Hugh's 
 eyes, bent on her with an expression that made her 
 nervous. It was the expression he had worn when he 
 came in, and it had given her a pang then. It held 
 the suggestion of something in him that she dreaded and 
 wanted to keep at bay. But now as their eyes encountered 
 for a moment, her feeling was complicated. For sud- 
 denly she had a doubt as to whether what she really 
 felt about it was, after all, dread; whether there were 
 not, too, something in herself that answered his appeal and 
 even went out to meet it. Under his eyes something 
 stirred: her own personal life, so long buried, buried, she 
 had believed, the more deeply by the weight of that half- 
 hour of shamefaced memory in which Nigel Strode had called 
 it, for an instant, to the surface. But Hugh had powers 
 of evocation that were his alone. The past, with all 
 its mingled pain and sweetness, lay always under his hand.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 343 
 
 She had believed the desire to stir it dead. To-night she 
 knew it lived, that desire; and she did not know whether she 
 were sorry or glad. 
 
 Although it lacked but two days of Christmas, the air 
 was mild, and Aurelia, going up to her own high-perched 
 room, sat for long by her window, staring out into the 
 impenetrable soft darkness of the night. The rain had 
 ceased, but the sky was opaque, lit by no star. The small 
 copse to the right hid the scattered lights of the village. 
 Even the road, which generally lay white across the 
 opposite hillside, was invisible. After the incessant drip 
 and splash of the rain on roof and yard the hush had a mys- 
 terious quality, as if some unseen presence were hold- 
 ing its breath before whispering in the listening watcher's 
 ear its secret. Aurelia sat quite still on the low settee, her 
 elbows propped on the window-ledge, her hands covering 
 her burning cheeks, her eyes resting on the darkness. Through 
 her there throbbed an unanalysable emotion, in which fear 
 and joy mingled and melted with an almost fainting sweet- 
 ness. At first she tried to think, to control and order 
 her sensations; then with a sigh she abandoned herself to them. 
 
 Suddenly she got up. "It's absurd! At my age!" she 
 murmured; but she was smiling when she looked at herself 
 in the glass; and for more than a minute she stood so, still 
 looking and smiling. 
 
 The next day was Christmas Eve. The rain still held 
 off, and the sky, so long leaden with moisture, arched over- 
 head in unbroken pallor. There were no clouds anywhere, 
 but the sun seemed to have retreated far out of sight be- 
 hind the thick whiteness of the atmosphere. Aurelia 
 saw that Hugh must talk; and as she had a hatred 
 of talk in small rooms, as soon as the postman had 
 come, bringing nothing but newspapers, they set off with 
 lunch in their pockets. Old Esther promised to send a boy 
 in search of them Mrs. Leonard described their probable 
 route should the expected telegram from Daphne come 
 while they were out.
 
 344 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Soon Hugh began to talk; and as he talked, as bit by bit 
 it came out, the raw reality of war, Aurelia shuddered 
 and shrank. Hugh spared her, she knew, there were 
 things he would not, could not, describe; but gradually 
 his incoherent narrative built up for her a picture the 
 more awful in its very lack of form, in the void all 
 round it. 
 
 "Sometimes," he said, as he stared across the wide ex- 
 panse of sodden field to the ridge beyond, where against the 
 sky-line the trees of the copse were etched in Indian ink, 
 "I think it's all a nightmare, that I have dreamed the whole 
 thing. ... To be here, in this untainted quiet, under 
 this pure sky, with you, Aurelia, it makes it all look 
 incredible." 
 
 Mrs. Leonard leaned back against the stone wall under 
 which they had found a convenient dry tree-trunk on which 
 to sit and eat their bread and dates. She said nothing; her 
 eyes followed a flight of birds that flew low across the pale 
 horizon. 
 
 "And yet," Hugh went on, "no imagination, even in 
 dreams, could have created anything so ugly as the truth. 
 I went out without any illusions, and my imagination is not 
 very strong, but I hadn't guessed what science could make 
 of killing. People here talk of atrocities modern war is 
 an atrocity. And yet, because people won't admit the 
 fact of evil, the suffering, instead of creating revolt, 
 perpetuates the horror. Those who've lost relations won't 
 admit that the cause of their anguish is evil; they pretend 
 it's good. So, the worse the suffering, the greater the hypoc- 
 risy. . . . And besides all this lying, there's a positive 
 delight in evil. Yes, Aurelia, you shake your head; 
 but there is. It's not only that the war has happened. 
 People, lots of people, are, in an awful way, enjoying 
 it. They're revelling in their own sensations and the 
 sensations of their friends. ... If you could see London 
 now. London's appalling. Our London, I mean. It's enjoy- 
 ing itself it really is." 
 
 "Oh, no, no," cried Mrs. Leonard. "Hugh, you must rot
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 345 
 
 let this thing distort your judgment. I sometimes feel mine 
 is going; but I counted on you." 
 
 "If you'd met Myrtle Toller, all in black, as I did two 
 days ago, you'd agree with me, Aurelia. I happened to see 
 Herbert before he died. If you could call what I saw a hu- 
 man being at all. I won't try to tell you what it was like. 
 . , . You say London's a Calvary? I dare say it is, to you, 
 but I assure you there are thousands of so-called civilised 
 people to whom it's a Colosseum. Did you see Sir Anthony 
 Toller's letter in Thursday's paper? Well, that's what I 
 mean. It's obscene, gladiatorial. I assure you it makes me 
 sick. I've met a handful of men who were fascinated 
 by shell fire men who'd been in it, and who go back 
 because they can't keep away: soldiers, not journalists. 
 They're exceptional. But London is full of such people. 
 I can understand men who seize the chance of death because 
 they find life intolerable, but to do it vicariously, as Nigel 
 and his crowd do. . . . No. London seems to me more hide- 
 ous than France." 
 
 Mrs. Leonard rose to her feet. 
 
 "Let's go on," she said. Hugh tramped behind her, as 
 they crossed the field by a narrow track. When they 
 turned on to the road again, and he could walk by her side, 
 he went on 
 
 "It's very strange, how these things affect one person- 
 ally," he said. 
 
 Aurelia glanced at him. 
 
 "Yes," she said shortly. 
 
 "I had convinced myself, you know," he said, "that I 
 had got firmly fixed in a case-hardened routine, in which 
 there was no room for feeling, as regards things that 
 affected me personally. Thought was the only thing that 
 mattered. I was quite hard, or so I imagined. I used 
 even after you came back from Italy, to stick pins into my- 
 self now and then, without any one noticing it, just to ex- 
 periment." 
 
 Aurelia glanced at him and gave a little smile; but Hugh, 
 absorbed in working out his idea, did not notice it.
 
 346 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "The only thing I felt was your suffering. That mad- 
 dened me. I felt the war through you. But now, somehow, 
 it's all come down upon me." 
 
 Aurelia did not say anything. She suddenly felt that 
 she could not trust her voice. If she said nothing, Hugh, 
 with eyes averted, might continue to think her calm; if she 
 spoke he must see that she was trembling trembling not 
 because of what he said, but because of what she had felt 
 behind it all morning, what had looked at her out of his eyes, 
 in the moment when she had met them, all unknown to Hugh 
 himself. To that she could oppose nothing but her silence. 
 Generally it was she who talked, she who directed the lines 
 of their conversation and of their whole intercourse; but to- 
 day it was not she but Hugh. She could not interrupt him, 
 far less distract him from the thing he was going to say. 
 Whether she wanted so to distract him there seemed no time 
 to ask. 
 
 "All this horror, blotting out the world of thought," Hugh 
 began again, "makes one feel that one's own personal hap- 
 piness is the only thing that's left. One has simply got to 
 clutch at that. It's the only thing there is. Truth has gone: 
 civilisation has gone: life is going." 
 
 They turned out of the road again, over a stile and so 
 across a field. On the top of the field over which the nar- 
 row path led them climbing steeply up, by a difficult way, 
 partly stones, partly mud, stood a little group of trees. Slen- 
 der young oaks they were, with straight stems that gleamed 
 like pewter. On their branches a few brown leaves were 
 still fluttering, while the rest of their autumn glory lay 
 black and rotten on the ground. Wide acres extended 
 out below them, with low stone walls and shabby hedges; 
 across the misty valley bottom brown earth sloped up to 
 thicker leafless woods, crowned on the horizon by a 
 vague line of low hills. At the top Aurelia paused invol- 
 untarily, and drew a long sighing breath. As she paused 
 Hugh turned to her. 
 
 "Aurelia!" he cried, and his deep voice shook on her name. 
 "Happiness for me has only one meaning; you know what
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 347 
 
 that is. I'm never coming back to this again, but once I 
 must say it. Is it all gone, what you once felt? Is it use- 
 less what I feel? For I've always felt it, I shall always feel 
 it. ... I failed you miserably, I know; I haven't any right 
 to ask you to care. But I love you, as I didn't know how to 
 love you then." 
 
 Aurelia said nothing. She stood by him, her hands clasped, 
 her eyes on the dead leaves she was idly stirring with her 
 shoe. Hugh moved a little nearer and caught her two hands 
 inside his own. 
 
 "Aurelia!" His voice was so low it was almost a whis- 
 per. 
 
 At that she raised her head, and for a moment her eyes 
 looked into his, and for Hugh they held an answer that filled 
 his own with sudden tears. He raised her hands to his lips 
 and covered them with kisses. 
 
 He said nothing, but was still holding her hands when 
 Aurelia suddenly raised her head. 
 
 "Listen!" she said. 
 
 Hugh looked up. He too heard the sharp sound of a bi- 
 cycle bell. It was repeated, and turning their eyes in the 
 direction whence it came they saw, coming along the curving 
 road they had left to cross the field, a small boy riding slowly 
 along. 
 
 " Shout to him, Hugh ! " cried Aurelia. " It's from Daphne." 
 
 Hugh took off his hat, and waving it, shouted. 
 
 The boy heard, dismounted, and came towards them 
 across the field, with the orange envelope in his hand. Hugh 
 walked down to take it from him, and came back with il 
 
 Aurelia. 
 
 "Yes, it's from Daphne," she said. She arrives^ at half- 
 past four. We've just time to go down to the station." 
 
 Hugh dismissed the boy with sixpence, and together 
 walked down the field beyond the trees. Neither said any- 
 thing till they were on the road again. 
 
 Then Aurelia turned to him. 
 
 "We must wait, Hugh," she said. "You understand? 
 Daphne needs me, I know."
 
 348 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Hugh took the hand she held out and kissed it silently. 
 She said "we;" what did anything else matter? He did not 
 want to talk. As they walked along the road together 
 his heart overflowed in silent happiness; and the dreary 
 station where they waited for the train, sitting side 
 by side in silence on a chilly bench, was for him the 
 antechamber of Paradise. He thought of the Christmas 
 tree he had sent to the little Emersons, and felt that no child 
 dancing round its glow could have a heart that leaped as high 
 as his.
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN 
 
 CHRISTMAS DAY broke sad and overclouded, with no 
 light in the sky, no colour in the fields, over which a low 
 mist lay that thickened by midday into rain. At first 
 it was a soft unobtrusive rain, but soon a chill wind rose which 
 drove it against the cottage windows. It slashed against the 
 glass, beat on the roof and on the tiles of the path, and ham- 
 mered angrily on the top of the dustbin. The water-butt 
 overflowed and ran splashing down the garden. The sound 
 of the rain filled the little sitting-room, louder than the crackling 
 of the wood fire or the rustle of Mrs. Leonard's papers, as she 
 sat busy with her press-cutting books. Hugh Infield had gone 
 back to the inn, where he was sleeping, to work; and Mrs. 
 Leonard had settled down to her table when the rain made 
 going out impossible. She might, to any one opening the door 
 and glancing in, have appeared to be occupied with her usual 
 absorbed efficiency; but in reality her mind refused to con- 
 centrate. She read the same printed slip over and over again, 
 without in the least taking in what it said. She tried to seem 
 busy only in order that, if Daphne looked up, she mighl 
 see in her eyes any of the questions she must not put to her. 
 Her heart ached with them, those questions; had ached 
 ceasingly ever since Daphne had stepped out of the 
 so pale and gentle-gentle with a gentleness that was i 
 remote and, to her mother, almost unendurable, 
 think only of her. Everything else had been driven 11 
 background. It was almost with a sense of self-reproach tl 
 Aurelia glanced at what Hugh had said to her; she did i 
 than glance at it. That must wait. Hugh would understand. 
 
 349
 
 350 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 His eyes, as they met hers for a moment, when Daphne on the 
 platform had turned away to get her bag, had told her that he 
 did understand, as far as a man in love could understand. Per- 
 haps further; but she had no time now to think of that. She 
 could think only of her daughter. 
 
 Daphne had proffered nothing. She held aloof with an 
 almost fierce reticence, that seemed to resent any suggestion of 
 tender approach. Mrs. Leonard looked at her, as she sat in a 
 position unchanged for more than an hour, on the little hard 
 sofa by the window, out of reach of the fire, almost as if she 
 shrank from it, as she shrank from human kindness. As a 
 small child she had hated to be touched, even when cut fingers or 
 bumped head compelled attention. She had retained, as she 
 grew up, an undemonstrativeness that struck strangers as 
 positively harsh, and that had sometimes caused her mother to 
 shed secret tears. Happiness had wonderfully, and to Aurelia 
 most touchingly, thawed her. She had never said much; but 
 her eyes had shone, and in her voice something had sounded 
 that had more than once brought to her mother's eyes tears of 
 a very different quality from those that smarted in them now. 
 Daphne sat with her arms extended along the back of the sofa, 
 her eyes fixed immovably on the ground. On a small table 
 beside her lay her half -emptied coffee cup and unlit cigarette; 
 two or three letters which had come some time before, unopened. 
 Her attitude was absolutely passive. It was difficult to believe 
 that she was thinking. Mrs. Leonard's heart contracted with 
 helpless yearning as she looked at her. It was so unlike 
 Daphne, this dumb inaction, as of a creature too deeply wound- 
 ed to stir or utter a moan. If she could have cried, if she 
 could say anything, her mother could have taken her in her 
 arms, as she longed to do; but her silence was a wall between 
 them. 
 
 It was a wall, a wall, as Mrs. Leonard had said to Hugh, 
 of glass, behind which she knew an intolerable suffering. She 
 dared not try to penetrate it, dared not ask what had happened. 
 As a child Mrs. Leonard's thoughts went back persistently to 
 Daphne's childhood she had hardly ever cried. Doctors and 
 dentists had said that this control of hers madeh er difficult
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 351 
 
 as a patient, for one did not know how much she was hurt. 
 Mrs. Leonard remembered how, as a child of seven, she had 
 mourned inconsolably over the death of a tiny kitten; mourned 
 inconsolably but quite quietly. She had simply sat, staring 
 at her toys without interest : not to be tempted away from her 
 grief by sweets or new books or the suggestion of a visit to a 
 circus: furious when it was suggested that a new kitten might 
 take the place of the old. To physical pain there was a natural 
 limit: when it got to a certain point, it could go no further; it 
 ceased or consciousness ceased. It was simple and finite. 
 Moral pain was not like that ; it went on and on. It fed itself on 
 every complexity of your nature. The more you felt it, the 
 more you could feel it. Daphne was without the dramatic 
 instinct. She could find relief neither in expression nor in the 
 vision of herself as suffering. She hid her pain, not because 
 she was proud, but because she was ashamed of it, and because 
 her whole nature was absorbed in bearing it. Any personal 
 pain might perhaps seem trivial at a time when the whole world 
 was racked with anguish; but to Mrs. Leonard that thought 
 carried no consolation. 
 
 With an effort she returned to her papers. Cuttings could at 
 least be pasted in, though not read with any intelligence for 
 their meaning. 
 
 "What do you want all those papers for?" Daphne sud- 
 denly broke her long silence. Her tone was irritable, almost 
 peevish, the tone of some one with a vexing toothache. 
 
 Mrs. Leonard looked up. 
 
 "They're material," she said. 
 
 'Material for what? Are you going to write something?" 
 Her accent was tinged with contempt. 
 
 "Some time, yes. But anyhow, one wants to under- 
 stand. " 
 
 Daphne gave a heavy sigh. 
 
 "What is there to understand?" she said. "Isn't it all 
 perfectly hopeless? What's the good of talking or thinking 
 about it? If one were a man one could go out and get killed. 
 As one isn't " 
 
 "It is very difficult," said Mrs. Leonard. "But one can't
 
 352 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 just stop. Beyond all this there's the future. We have got 
 to live, even now; and people after us. This has happened 
 partly because too few people understood and cared, because 
 of things in ourselves we wouldn't realise. If it's not to go on 
 happening, time after time, we must see what it is, why it is. 
 And if one's to live at all, one must be aware. " 
 
 "But when it's all so awful, wouldn't it be better not to be 
 aware?" 
 
 Mrs. Leonard laid down her pen. 
 
 "No, no, Daphne. Not to be aware is to be dead. To be 
 truly aware, is to be master of life. " 
 
 Daphne had covered her eyes with her hands. She made no 
 answer. She might not have heard. For a long time she stayed 
 so, without moving or speaking. Outside the rain still fell with 
 dreary persistence, and the early darkness descended. Across 
 the drip, drip, there came, muffled, the sound of the church 
 bells, ringing for an afternoon service. At last they ceased and 
 there was no sound save the rain and an occasional spurt from 
 the fire, whose dim red glow made all the light there was in the 
 room. 
 
 Daphne opened her eyes and sat up. Mrs. Leonard's pen 
 had stopped some time before. She was still sitting at her table, 
 but her head was buried in her hands. Daphne went to her, 
 and falling on her knees by her side, drew down her hands and 
 laid her own over them. 
 
 "Mother, darling," she cried, "what is it? Do you mind 
 so much?" 
 
 Mrs. Leonard looked down at her daughter without saying 
 anything, then put her arms round her. She held her close. 
 There was a long silence. Daphne looked away into the fire. 
 At last she said, speaking in a slow even voice, almost as if 
 addressing herself 
 
 "I can't say anything, because I don't understand. . . . 
 That's what's so dreadful. There's a sort of wall of darkness 
 in front of me, and I just stare and stare at it, and see no light. 
 But I don't know what it is. ... It's just like the war. It's 
 happened, and I didn't understand it, don't understand it. 
 Sometimes I think that if I could understand the war I could
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 353 
 
 understand this. Perhaps there's no connection, but I feel as 
 if there were. Only I can't see it. It's all mixed and mangled 
 in my mind. . . . Sometimes I have a kind of horror of myself 
 because I don't feel the war . . . but I don't seem to feel any- 
 thing at all. I'm just numb all over. But you, oh, mother, 
 don't feel it like this!" 
 
 Mrs. Leonard held her daughter to her, and very gently 
 kissed her hair. She felt Daphne's tears falling on her hands, 
 and her own fell too. 
 
 "I know, darling," she murmured, in the soft deep voice 
 which to Daphne in her childish days had always sounded 
 something like the music of the big conch shell that kept for ever 
 the magic of the surf. " But you will. " 
 
 "It's dreadful," murmured Daphne, "the blind egotism of 
 one. I always imagined people about forty had got over all 
 this: that one didn't have to struggle any more, then." 
 
 "Ah, struggle!" said Mrs. Leonard, smiling faintly. "It's 
 the condition of life. One's dead when one doesn't. One's 
 dying when one wants not to. " 
 
 "Dead," murmured Daphne, as if the word had a kind of 
 fascination for her. "That's a thing that puzzles me too. . . . 
 Jane seems to me so strangely calm, I almost envy 
 her." 
 
 "Yes, " said Mrs. Leonard gently. "But to accept death, not 
 just to let it happen to you, that needs courage too. It's part 
 of the struggle: the struggle, I mean, to see. But it is true 
 that death is the least wasteful form of suffering, because, if 
 you can accept it as part of the order of things, and continue 
 to love, your love is the conquest of the ideal over all the nar- 
 rowing conditions of human existence. You love all that is 
 imperishable in the soul that has become part of yours. " 
 
 Daphne nodded. 
 
 "That's Jane," she said. "It's wonderful, the way she can 
 talk of Lionel. But all the time one feels she's got for ever a 
 Lionel she never talks about. Could she, do you think, have 
 loved him like that if he'd lived? " 
 
 Mrs. Leonard looked down at her daughter. In the dim 
 firelight she could only just see her face, very pale, and her eyes,
 
 354 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 fixed on the glowing heat with an expression which made it 
 hard for her mother to speak at all. 
 
 "If her love was real, if it was based on a real Lionel, yes. 
 But to love something small and pretend it's great, that's the lie 
 in the soul that kills love by inches. Love itself is degraded 
 by a passion of giving that is blind; it's tarnished in its very 
 tissue " Her voice died away. 
 
 Daphne said nothing. She seemed, as she sat, staring into 
 the fire, to have fallen again to the silent immobility from which 
 she had been roused by her mother's emotion. Mrs. Leonard 
 did not know whether she had heard what she had said; she 
 was anyhow now re-absorbed into her own preoccupation. 
 It was clear enough to her mother that nothing final had hap- 
 pened. Nigel had not been mentioned; but Daphne wore 
 his ring and waited with a tense eagerness, that hurt to 
 see, for the post which had so far brought no letter from 
 him. 
 
 The door opened, letting in a blinding blaze of light. It 
 was only old Esther with the lamp and under her arm more 
 logs. 
 
 "What a dull fire for Christmas Day," she grumbled 
 cheerfully. "Here are some nice pine faggots for you, missy. 
 Do you mind how you always used to tease me for them when 
 you was a little thing? . . . But it don't seem to be Christmas 
 Day, anyhow with this rain and nobody at home. . . . No, 
 mum, no news of Ben. But I hope no news is good news, as 
 they say." 
 
 She disappeared again, to return a moment later with a large 
 basket in her hands. 
 
 "This has just come, mum. From Mr. Hugh. It's one of 
 his jokes, I fancy. Yes, for you, missy. Something to cheer 
 you, I expect: you're not looking very bright either, I must 
 say. " She deposited the small hamper on the ground. " Open 
 it, missy, do." 
 
 Daphne, with an effort for Esther's sake at a smile, got up 
 and came over to the basket, from which unmistakable sounds 
 were proceeding. It was only loosely tied with twine and soon 
 undone. A small kitten sprang out, mewing at first; but
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 355 
 
 then loudly purring as Daphne picked it up and rubbed the 
 little ball of tawny fluff against her cheek. 
 
 "Well! I never, " said Esther. "Look, mum, it's got a label 
 round its neck." 
 
 Daphne examined the card. 
 
 "Wang the Second presents the Compliments of the Season 
 and wishes you a Merry Christmas. " 
 
 Mrs. Leonard looked at Daphne and saw that her eyes 
 were overflowing and wetting the yellow coat of the little 
 cat. 
 
 "I know," cried old Esther. "It's one of Mrs. Clark's 
 big cat's; it had kittens a little time ago, but I thought they 
 were all drowned. This must have been picked up some- 
 where. Mrs. Clark never did drown kittens properly. Look, 
 you can see its neck's been tied in. Poor little mite: it's 
 happy now." 
 
 "Do you remember our old Wang, Esther?" said Mrs. 
 Leonard, as Daphne was obviously incapable of speech. "I 
 was thinking of him only this morning, and how unhappy poor 
 Daphne was when he died. " 
 
 Esther did remember, and entered into a long story of Wang 
 the First, in the course of which Daphne got up and left the 
 room. Esther shook her head after her, as she closed the 
 door. 
 
 "Poor missy!" she murmured tenderly. "I'm afraid she's 
 not enjoying her Christmas Day. ... I fair hate that young 
 man of hers, that I do. " A double knock on the door inter- 
 rupted her. "Why, there's the postman, " she said. "I didn't 
 think he would come again. It's a long round, and he has to 
 do it all himself these days." 
 
 She moved slowly to the door, coming back in a few minutes 
 with letters for Mrs. Leonard and a small parcel for Daphne, 
 who re-entered the room at the same moment, Wang the 
 Second perched happily on her shoulder. Mrs. Leonard would 
 have known, from the mingle of emotions in her face, that it was 
 from Nigel, even had she not seen his neat writing on the out- 
 side. 
 
 "You had better go and look after your pudding, Esther,"
 
 356 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 said she, as the old woman lingered, obviously desirous of seeing 
 what the package contained. "Mr. Infield will be here at six, 
 you know." 
 
 Esther hesitated; but as Daphne still held the parcel in her 
 hand, almost as if uncertain whether to open it or no, she un- 
 willingly withdrew. Mrs. Leonard turned away and busied 
 herself with her letters. 
 
 Daphne stood quite still by the table, balancing the little 
 box in her hand and staring at the clear lettering of the address 
 as if trying to read from it the answer to a riddle. At last with 
 slow fingers she untied the string, spending an infinity of 
 patience over each careful knot, and unwrapped the brown 
 paper. Under it lay a card with "A Happy Christmas" in the 
 same neat writing: that was all. Daphne turned it over. 
 There was nothing on the other side. Then very slowly, she 
 opened the little brown cardboard box and took out of the tissue- 
 paper in which it was wrapped round a long chain of blue and 
 green beads. The smooth stones slipped between her unsteady 
 fingers and dropped to the table with a noise that made Mrs. 
 Leonard look round. 
 
 "How pretty!" she cried. "Is that from Nigel, Daphne?" 
 She brought the name out with an effort. 
 
 "Yes," said Daphne in a dull voice. "Mrs. Nugent makes 
 these chains. " 
 
 " Mrs. Nugent? " said Mrs. Leonard a little vaguely. " She's 
 the lady who lives at Tenacre and has such a disagreeable 
 voice, isn't she? " 
 
 "Yes," said Daphne again, holding the beads in one hand 
 and letting them drop between her fingers. Wang, attracted 
 by the bright moving thing, stretched out a soft paw to catch 
 them; but Daphne seemed unaware of him. The door opened 
 and Hugh Infield came in. He glanced from Mrs. Leonard to 
 Daphne. 
 
 "I hope Wang the Second won't be a nuisance to you," 
 he said. " I met some boys trying to drown him, and it seemed 
 such a shame. " 
 
 Daphne moved towards the door, the beads still in her hand, 
 and disappeared. Hugh came towards the fire.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 357 
 
 Mrs. Leonard looked up. "Oh Hugh!" she cried. "It's 
 terrible!" 
 
 Hugh looked at the door. 
 
 "I can't do anything for her; I am afraid, really, of saying 
 anything. ... I don't know where she is." 
 
 Hugh stood looking down at Mrs. Leonard's averted head. 
 
 "Did you see her expression when you came in?" 
 
 Hugh nodded. 
 
 "Yes," he said. "I've seen that look on the faces of Bel- 
 gian refugees at Ostend. Their faces haunt one; they're quite 
 blank, as if so much had passed over them that they couldn't 
 feel at all. " 
 
 Hugh's tone was very gentle. Aurelia, without turning, 
 held out her hand. He took it in his own and clasped it silently. 
 
 "You might take her out for a walk to-morrow, Hugh; she 
 can't talk to me, but she might to you. If she could talk it 
 might help her." 
 
 Hugh merely pressed her hand. The.i after a pause he 
 said 
 
 " I have to go up to town on Monday." 
 
 "Oh!" cried Mrs. Leonard, and in her tone there was some- 
 thing almost of gladness. "Then you can look after her. She 
 has to go then." 
 
 Hugh smiled a little ruefully. Since last night Aurelia had 
 been carried off, as in some magician's cloak, and he was left 
 face to face with Mrs. Leonard. But the momentary resent- 
 ment he had felt against her daughter had vanished at the sight 
 of Daphne's face, as she got out of the train, and there was now 
 nothing of it left. He could wait. 
 
 Esther came in to lay the cloth; and a few moments after- 
 wards Daphne herself came in. She had changed her dress, 
 and now wore a white muslin that, even while it accentuated 
 her look of youthfulness, brought out her likeness to her mother, 
 also in white. But it was wrong, Hugh felt as he looked at her, 
 that she should be like her mother in just this way; that there 
 should be already at work that refining pain that made Aurelia's 
 face so wonderful. Aurelia looked at her too, and saw that 
 she had not put on the bead necklace.
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT 
 
 1L TEXT morning the rain still fell; but gradually as the wind 
 1^^ 'dropped it diminished in force, became a drizzle, and 
 -i- ^ finally ceased altogether, although the watery sky held 
 out no hope of more than a temporary lull. After lunch, there- 
 fore, Hugh readily fell in with Mrs. Leonard's suggestion that he 
 and Daphne should go for a walk, while she wrote letters. Hugh 
 disbelieved in the letters, but did not say so. They set off in 
 silence at a round pace, up the long road that stretched ahead of 
 them like a curling ribbon, up the gradually ascending slope 
 of the hillside, between the water-logged fields, until it lost itself 
 among the trees of the wood that crowned the height. The 
 muddy road was dreary; there was no hint of colour anywhere; 
 yet the leafless trees against the pallid sky were beautiful in 
 their quiet. Over the whole countryside there seemed to rest 
 a brooding melancholy that tinged with pain the patient resigna- 
 tion in which the earth mutely endured the slow silence of the 
 winter. 
 
 Hugh glanced at Daphne. Her profile, framed in a close- 
 knitted cap of yellow wool, was grave and set. She was like 
 one of the figures on the Parthenon frieze, he thought, with her 
 straight athletic frame and air of absorbed self-possession. It 
 was not really surprising that people generally thought of 
 her as calm, even as apathetic. Her heavy eyelids and the 
 firm closure of her full lips gave to her face a kind of strong 
 immobility; and, after all, the ordinary acquaintance had prob- 
 ably never seen what she looked like when her eyes suddenly 
 opened wide and her lips parted, how all her hid resemblance 
 to her mother then looked out from under her lifted lids. The 
 
 358
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 359 
 
 eyelids were her father's; the eyes her mother's own. At 
 present she was all eyelids; of her eyes, fastened on the muddy 
 ground, he caught no glimpse. 
 
 Gradually they climbed up to the top of the ridge, and after 
 passing through the trees and crossing a field whose heavy 
 clay clogged their feet, struck a hard high road, with telegraph 
 posts along it. 
 
 "This is best for walking in this weather," said Hugh, 
 apologetically. 
 
 Daphne assented. There was another long period in which 
 they walked on in silence. 
 
 "Christmas is over; how strange!" said Daphne. "Last 
 Christmas Eve I was walking with Gervase O'Connor." 
 
 "Poor Jimmy!" said Hugh. "I'm not sure that he's not 
 well out of all this. " 
 
 "Hugh" Daphne had turned quickly to him, and her voice 
 had a new accent "why did he do it? " 
 
 Hugh was lighting his pipe, and did not at once reply. 
 
 "Things got too much for him, I fancy," he said. "Jimmy 
 wasn't well built for life, you see. He broke to it instead 
 of bending. Always, when he was a little fellow, when he 
 came up against anything he couldn't manage at once, or 
 didn't like, he wanted to smash it. I remember him as a tiny 
 boy cutting his hand frightfully on a window-pane; he went 
 clean through it trying to get something on the other side. . . . 
 If life was not going to be what he wanted, he wouldn't have it 
 at all. " He paused; then, as Daphne made no comment, went 
 on again. "And, under that queer, brutal manner, Jimmy 
 was an idealist. He wouldn't have admitted it, but he 
 was. He couldn't bear the dullness and indifference of other 
 people. The way they didn't feel maddened him. He felt, 
 appallingly " 
 
 "And one shouldn't, do you think?" 
 
 He glanced at her, but Daphne had not turned her head, 
 her eyes were still on the road. 
 
 "Not unless one's pretty tough. . . . Most people don't 
 know what to do with Jimmy's kind of feeling. His mother 
 did you ever meet Lady Flamborough? a lovely woman, made
 
 360 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 of glass she thought him mad, I fancy." He paused. "Do 
 you remember your father, Daphne?" 
 
 "My father? No, not really. I have a sort of dim vision 
 of some one beautiful, in a uniform, with a cleft chin, who always 
 smelt very nice. That's all. Why?" 
 
 "He would have thought Jimmy stark mad." 
 
 "Nigel does." It was only a murmur. Hugh was not 
 sure whether she were speaking to him or to herself. He said 
 nothing. After a pause, Daphne began again. 
 
 "What made you think of my father?" 
 
 She had turned her head and Hugh met her eyes. Yes, 
 they were Aurelia's eyes, indeed; with fire behind their clearness, 
 undefeated life behind their pain. They held him until Daphne 
 with a little smile, a smile that hurt Hugh even while it blessed 
 him, turned away again, crying 
 
 "Oh, yes. I know. ... I have been a mole; but I'm 
 learning things now. More than I can take in. ... If only 
 they were all as good as this!" 
 
 Hugh held out a large hand and held hers in it for a minute, 
 during which they walked on. Then he cleared his throat, over 
 a gap which covered more things than either could have touched 
 upon, and said 
 
 "He was the sort of person about whom no one ought to 
 have felt, or if you had been so unlucky as to begin and he had 
 an abominable trick of making people begin the only thing 
 to do was to stop." 
 
 "But she didn't?" said Daphne, as he paused. 
 
 "No. She didn't." 
 
 For a long time no more was said. They walked on, each 
 following their own train of thought. Hugh travelled back 
 into the past, and felt again the intolerable futility of rage 
 with which he had looked on at the Leonard household; had 
 seen Aurelia uselessly suffering, and been powerless to help, 
 the more powerless because of the pride in her which forbade the 
 slightest suggestion on the part of any one, however intimate, 
 that she had anything to suffer or conceal. It was long since 
 he had dared to look back in any detail at a time which was, in 
 retrospect, so mixed up with his sense of personal failure, but
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 361 
 
 now that failure was to be so gloriously, so still incredibly, 
 redeemed and forgotten, he could do so. He recalled his first 
 meeting with Aurelia, not the first time he had seen her, but 
 the first on which she had seen him, on which he had taken 
 her hand and spoken to her a dinner-party to which she had 
 come without her husband and felt again the rage that had 
 risen in his throat as he listened to her apologies for Colonel 
 Leonard's absence. No one wanted Colonel Leonard. Of 
 that he was sure even then. But Aurelia's manner allowed no 
 hint of such a feeling, no suspicion that the alleged excuses 
 were not to be taken at their face value. Her repudiation of 
 complicity created a sort of solitude round her. Hugh had 
 guessed it then. He was to learn it fully later, when, as the 
 slow achievement of patient insistence, he forced his friend- 
 ship upon her. Every one was held at arm's length, because 
 no one might know the secret of her unhappiness and her 
 shame. To the very last, the pretence was maintained between 
 them that Colonel Leonard was all he should be as a husband. 
 His absence was never taken for granted. He was always ex- 
 pected, though he never came. There was always some good 
 particular reason to cover each instance of general neglect 
 and faithlessness. Any invitation to her without him met 
 with invariable polite refusal. 
 
 "Why not?" said Daphne. 
 
 Hugh started. He had to hesitate a moment before he could 
 recall the statement which had provoked her query. In Daph- 
 ne's face, as she looked at him, there was an expression that 
 made him for an instant forget his own problem to think of 
 hers, made him ask whither her thoughts had led her. For she 
 had reached something, he felt, by a path of her own, quite 
 different from his; a goal or perhaps only a barrier. He did not 
 know. 
 
 "Why not?" he echoed. It was a question he had put to 
 himself a thousand times. The answer had varied because 
 he saw it now it was never the true answer, the one he gave. 
 Behind all his subterfuges, all his hopes, the true answer lay; 
 and he had known it always, though he would not see it. 
 Now, to meet Daphne's eyes, no answer but the true one would do.
 
 362 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "She was in love with him," he said. 
 
 Daphne looked at him still, as if the force and relevance 
 of his words were only penetrating slowly to her mind. 
 
 "She was in love with him," she murmured. "Oh!" 
 It was almost a wail, though so soft. "She went on being 
 in love with him . . . through everything? Even after she 
 knew what he was? " 
 
 Hugh nodded. "She went on, giving and giving." 
 
 "And he?" 
 
 Hugh laughed harshly. 
 
 "He didn't even notice it." 
 
 Daphne looked at him again, with a kind of horror grow- 
 ing in her face, the expression Hugh had seen her wear when 
 he came in last night and found her holding the bead necklace 
 in her fingers. 
 
 "But she did finally leave him?" 
 
 "Yes. At last she did. But years and years too late." 
 
 "Too late for her?" 
 
 "No," said Hugh surprisingly. "Too late for him." 
 
 "Too late for him?" 
 
 Hugh nodded. It excited him, his discovery for it was 
 a discovery, he had never thought of it quite in this way be- 
 fore and he was eager to work it out. 
 
 "She sacrificed herself, and in a kind of way, him too, 
 to her desire to sacrifice. His only chance if he had 
 one at all was for her to have turned and rent him. 
 She couldn't do it. Because it would have been something 
 for herself " 
 
 " I wonder," said Daphne. " Do you think he had a chance? 
 I mean something might have happened to him, if she'd 
 left him earlier?" 
 
 "Perhaps," said Hugh vaguely. He was not really much 
 interested in Colonel Leonard's chances, nor did it occur 
 to him what interest they might have for Daphne. He 
 had gone back to his own part in the tangle, and was ask- 
 ing himself whether what he had said might not seem to give 
 Daphne an unjust picture of her mother, because of what 
 he had left out.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 363 
 
 "There's something I ought to tell you, I think," he said. 
 "I don't suppose your mother's ever said anything about 
 it?" 
 
 Daphne gave a slight start. She seemed to recall herself 
 to him with an effort. 
 
 "Mother's never really told me anything about it at all. 
 I knew she had left my father when I was about seven 
 or eight, and that he had been killed soon after; that's 
 all. I knew she'd been dreadfully unhappy. I never 
 wanted to know about him. He must have been hor- 
 rible." 
 
 "Oh, no," said Hugh, with his sense of justice. "Not 
 horrible. Horrible for her. An impossible husband 
 weak and sentimental and untruthful and petty; blind 
 to all the things she cared for; a promiscuous animal. 
 But according to his own standard he wasn't horrible 
 at all. I hated him, but most people would have thought 
 he was a man, while I was I don't know what. And I 
 don't think he'd have failed as I did through sheer 
 cowardice." 
 
 Daphne only looked at him, saying nothing. But Hugh, 
 having begun, meant to go on. 
 
 "I must tell you," he said. "It got worse and worse; 
 her misery and the shame of it. ... I used to tell her she 
 ought to go. I wanted her, of course, to go with me. . . . 
 At last there came a day when she said she would. Some- 
 thing particularly painful I needn't tell you what it 
 was had happened, and she felt suddenly the sick dis- 
 honour of it all, and turned to me. I went home, sing- 
 ing. But in the night I went cold with fear. I felt I wasn't 
 good enough for her; not strong enough; that I should make 
 her wretched; that I couldn't carry it through. I was 
 only twenty-nine then not that that's any excuse. All 
 next day I went about in an agony, and didn't go to 
 see her. Then I suddenly decided I must go away and 
 think it all out. I went down to Cornwall for a week. 
 Of course, I couldn't think. I came back, in the same 
 state. The day after I got back I was just starting out
 
 364 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 for her house, because I thought to see her would drive these 
 clouds away, when I got a letter from her, saying she 
 had gone alone. She didn't tell me where. I was 
 stunned. Stunned by myself, by my own ghastly failure. 
 I just sat and looked at it, and it turned me to stone. 
 I couldn't do anything. Days passed, I don't know 
 how. I made no effort to find her, I couldn't have 
 written, couldn't have spoken. I had been right about 
 myself; I wasn't good enough. She had seen it too. 
 ... I nearly killed myself, but I simply hadn't the 
 energy." 
 
 Hugh's voice died away. He walked on quickly, staring 
 in front of him. He had forgotten Daphne; he was only think- 
 ing of himself. For a moment he had even forgotten the 
 present; everything was submerged, and he was swept away 
 again on the bitter tide of self -contempt in which he had so 
 long been steeped to the lips. 
 
 It had begun to rain again, softly and silently, but he 
 did not feel it, was aware of nothing until looking up he found 
 his spectacles dimmed by the heavy drops, and paused 
 to wipe them and turn down the brim of his hat to 
 keep them dry. As he paused he looked at Daphne. 
 They were passing a gate, and with a sudden movement she 
 turned from him, left the road and went and stood against 
 the gate, with her back to him. She had said nothing; 
 but Hugh, awake again, saw from the heaving of her shoul- 
 ders that she was sobbing. She dropped her head upon her 
 arms to hide it, but he knew that tears were running down 
 her cheeks. 
 
 He stood looking at her, helpless and cursing his own 
 egotism and folly. Aurelia had asked him to take Daphne 
 out for a walk in order that she might talk to him, and he 
 had forgotten all about her, and talked ceaselessly, stu- 
 pidly about himself. Why he should have made her cry he 
 did not know; but perhaps, poor child, it was better 
 for her to cry, no matter over what, than to endure 
 in silence her dry, speechless misery. At last she looked up, 
 her eyes red.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 365 
 
 "Sorry, Hugh," she said. "I am an ass. Don't take any 
 notice of me " 
 
 "It's me," he murmured. "I'm a selfish brute." 
 
 Daphne gave a watery smile. 
 
 "Oh, no, Hugh. You've helped me. Oh, yes. Yes, you 
 have. Really. . . . And don't think I don't care. About 
 you and mother, I mean. If only that can come out right, if 
 she can be happy, and you. That's something. Sometimes there 
 seems to be nothing but misery. And one's just lost in it all." 
 
 Hugh did not venture to say anything, for fear of making 
 her cry again; and under the darkening sky, from which the 
 rain now poured down steadily and dully, they made their 
 way back to the cottage. 
 
 Aurelia asked no questions about the walk. After sup- 
 per, as they sat round the fire, she took down a book, and 
 having turned over the leaves for some time, began to read 
 aloud to them. Daphne lay on the settee by the window, her 
 face shielded by her hands. Hugh glanced at her from time 
 to time. Her posture never changed, she gave no sign to 
 show whether she were listening or no, but he thought that 
 she heard. He himself sat on a low chair at one side of the 
 fire, from which he could watch Aurelia, who sat opposite 
 to him, as she read. His ears were filled with the music of 
 her voice, his eyes with the beauty of her firelit face. He 
 was happy. For the moment he asked no more, than 
 thus to sit in silence, listening to and looking at Au- 
 relia. Her mind, he feared, was far away from him; 
 but some part of her was aware of his feeling and ad- 
 mitted it, and for the present that was enough. He 
 could have wished the evening might have lasted for ever; 
 that nothing should happen to change or mar the tranquillity 
 on which he floated. 
 
 Aurelia's voice deepened slightly; she was coming to the 
 end of what she read. The words were wonderful, and as 
 she read them they sank into the mind. 
 
 "Oh! yet a few short years of useful life, 
 And all will be complete, thy race be run, 
 Thy monument of glory will be raised;
 
 366 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Then, though (too weak to tread the ways of truth) 
 
 This age fall back to old idolatry, 
 
 Though men return to servitude as fast 
 
 As the tide ebbs, to ignominy and shame 
 
 By nations sink together, we shall still 
 
 Find solace knowing what we have learnt to know, 
 
 Rich in true happiness if allowed to be 
 
 Faithful alike in forwarding a day 
 
 Of firmer trust, joint labourers in the work 
 
 (Should Providence such grace to us vouchsafe) 
 
 Of their deliverance, surely yet to come. 
 
 Prophets of nature, we to them will speak 
 
 A lasting inspiration, sanctified 
 
 By reason, blest by faith: what we have loved 
 
 Others will love, and we will teach them how; 
 
 Instruct them how the mind of man becomes 
 
 A thousand times more beautiful than the earth 
 
 On which he dwells, above this frame of things 
 
 (Which, 'mid all revolution in the hopes 
 
 And fears of men, doth still remain unchanged) 
 
 In beauty exalted, as is it itself 
 
 Of quality and fabric more divine.' 
 
 Aurelia closed the book. For a moment there was silence. 
 Then Daphne said, her hands still over her eyes 
 
 "Too weak to tread the ways of truth?" 
 
 Aurelia looked up. 
 
 "Yes, "she said. 
 
 Daphne got up and moved towards the door. "Good- 
 night, " she murmured, and was gone. 
 
 Aurelia stared into the fire for a moment. Then she said 
 
 "Will you go up to town with her, Hugh?" 
 
 "To-morrow morning? Yes. I have to go to the War 
 Office." He paused. " Wouldn't she rather be alone? " 
 
 Aurelia sighed. 
 
 "Yes," she said. "But there's a kind of comfort to me in 
 thinking you'll be with her." 
 
 Hugh got up. 
 
 "I may have to go back to France almost at once," he said. 
 
 Aurelia did not look up, nor say anything. And with no 
 more than a look at her, Hugh, murmuring good-night at the 
 door, went out into the mild rainy night.
 
 CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE 
 
 BETWEEN Hugh and Aurelia no more was said. Hugh 
 departed on Monday morning, by the early train, on 
 which Daphne insisted, with a long handshake and a long 
 silent look into Aurelia's eyes; that was all. But this tacit 
 postponement did not distress him; on the contrary, it exactly 
 suited his mood. He felt no resentment of Aurelia's absorp- 
 tion in Daphne, no jealousy of a devotion that might have 
 seemed to shut him out. It did not shut him out, because he 
 shared it. Daphne had always been there, always been part 
 of Aurelia, and a part of her he loved. Nor could Daphne's 
 suffering impair his own happiness, though he felt it. If he 
 said nothing to her during their long journey it was because 
 there was nothing to say; she was in a situation in which no one 
 could help her. It was no use to wonder what was going to 
 happen; probably she did not know herself. But as he looked 
 at her stern young face, as she sat in her corner, staring before 
 her, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, as oblivious of him as of 
 the unopened newspaper on her lap, Hugh thought she did 
 know. Some change, too subtle to admit of his definition, 
 had come over her since her arrival at Wending End. Despair 
 still sat behind her eyes, but her mouth was set in a line that 
 did not suggest defeat. 
 
 The cold, slow train stopped everywhere, between as well 
 as at each station, gathering delay as it crawled along. The 
 compartment was soon crowded beyond its alleged capacity 
 by people enlarged by damp mackintoshes and cloaks, and 
 encumbered with unmanageable hand luggage which most 
 of them seemed to prefer to hold on their knees. The journey 
 
 307
 
 368 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 was long, though the distance from Wending End to London 
 was not more than forty miles; and Hugh had to stand for nearly 
 half of it. He did not mind. The time passed for him in a 
 happy dream. He was almost sorry when they at last reached 
 Paddington, more than half-an-hour late. Hours, even days of 
 solitary reflection, were insufficient to enable him to take in 
 what had happened. He still moved in a haze of felicity, and 
 hardly wanted to reduce it to terms. That he had left Aurelia 
 without anything having been, in any ordinary sense, settled 
 between them, enhanced rather than limited his satisfaction. 
 He almost wanted to get away from her that he might unin- 
 terruptedly contemplate what had passed. He did not desire 
 to hurry on to the next stage, which hung, dazzling, before his 
 imagination, with a radiance almost too bright to bear looking 
 at. What was given was so beautiful, so astonishing, that to 
 leave it behind would have seemed an ungrateful prodigality. 
 He told himself that he was like the starving man who dare 
 not take, after prolonged abstinence, more than a glass of water, 
 who knows that his senses, perturbed by the mere sight of food, 
 cannot assimilate more than a very little at a time. That the 
 table is spread is, for him, feasting enough. But though this 
 analogy satisfied Hugh, it was really far from complete or per- 
 fect. His condition was not that of the simply hungry man, who 
 refrains through wisdom; it was rather, following his own meta- 
 phor, that of the dyspeptic, for years on a peculiar diet, who 
 does not know that restriction has affected his organs, and that 
 his abstention from food, for so long denied him, is due not sim- 
 ply to caution but to something more profound; to an atrophy 
 of disused functions ; an incapacity to digest the dish over which 
 he gloats in imagination. His present happiness and his atti- 
 tude towards it were alike coloured and conditioned by the 
 circumstances of his previous relations to Aurelia. Nearly 
 fifteen years had passed since the failure at the test of action 
 which had marred his life, and in those years he had accepted 
 the conclusion that any feeling for a man who had collapsed as 
 he had done was inconceivable, above all on the part of a 
 creature like Aurelia. His love for her had grown and expanded 
 in the dark into a plant that, tall and strong as it was, bore the
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 369 
 
 marks of that condition. In his passion of self-contempt he 
 had removed Aurelia altogether from any criticism. By his 
 own fault entirely he had lost her; he had seen and bowed his 
 head with a humiliation that forbade any further effort, any 
 hope. She had disappeared from the life of day to day, only 
 to rule more absolutely the world of his thoughts. Aurelia, as 
 he met her at long intervals in the world, was one person; 
 Aurelia as she existed, transcendent, adorable, unapproachable, 
 in the solitude of his heart, another, an unique being, to whom 
 no one else had access, not even Hugh himself in his habit as he 
 moved. For years he had been in love with an idea and lived 
 his personal life in a world of his own, entered by no human 
 being, over which that idea held sway. This division of his 
 inner life made Hugh, by nature shy, a solitary and apparently 
 an indifferent looker-on at life. He had numbers of strange 
 friends, scattered about the globe, in remote and generally 
 undistinguished positions, who turned to him in any kind of 
 trouble, shared with him their sorrows and their joys, to whose 
 homes he played fairy godfather, over whose fortunes he 
 watched with a kind of humorous tenderness. They were 
 devoted to him, these friends; but though he knew all their 
 affairs, they knew little or nothing of his. Even less was he 
 known to the men and women of the London set to which 
 he nominally belonged; they thought of him as cynical and 
 pessimistic, a realist who had got beyond the illusions by which 
 the world in general lived. So far as the world in general 
 was concerned he had, but only because his idealism dwelt in 
 its own inner fastness, in a world apart; a world inhabited 
 only by Aurelia Leonard, and by Hugh himself, not as he was, 
 but as he would have liked to be. To bring this world and the 
 real world into relation was a feat the very thought of which 
 dizzied him. That he had ever uttered words which opened 
 the door upon hope filled him, in retrospect, with amazement. 
 Only the shattering influences of the war could have so broken 
 through the wall of his dreams; and now as he looked at the 
 breach he could formulate no vision of what lay beyond. He 
 could admit hope into his dream world; but hope shot it 
 with colour so brilliant that he turned away, blinded. With
 
 370 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 hope he was more than satisfied; he was intoxicated. Of the 
 reality which hope promised he could form no conception, he 
 wanted to form none. But what it meant, this satisfaction 
 with, this incapacity to pass beyond, the incomplete, he did not 
 ask. He would not admit to himself that to translate Aurelia 
 from the world of dreams to the world of actuality seemed to 
 reduce her, and to reduce instead of extending his life; but, 
 unadmitted, this suspicion hovered over his thoughts and in- 
 fluenced the pictures his mind built, keeping them persistently 
 in the region of the undefined. 
 
 Every train, however slow, arrives at last; Paddington 
 brought Hugh back to ordinary things, and to Daphne. On 
 the platform they parted, and as they did so he felt a pang of 
 self-reproach. He had done nothing for Daphne; he could 
 only squeeze her hand hard and let his look convey no hint of 
 the sympathy which her pride held at arm's length. Her words, 
 awkwardly formal, told him how remote she was, how pre- 
 occupied. 
 
 "Mother's coming up on Wednesday, I hope. You'll 
 come and see us before you go? Or are you going back to 
 Wending End?" 
 
 "It depends on what they tell me at the War Office," he 
 said. "But, anyhow, I shall see you before I leave town." 
 He hesitated; she was turning away. "Good luck," he mur- 
 mured. It was inappropriate, unmeaning; but she turned her 
 head to look back at him with a low "Thank you. " 
 
 Hugh still thought of her and wondered about her as he 
 made his way towards Whitehall. But his thoughts could 
 not long be distracted from himself; they were so pleasantly 
 absorbing that he did not resent the forty minutes he was kept 
 waiting at the War Office, nor the invincible ignorance displayed 
 by the khaki-clad functionary there with whom he had, at 
 last, an entirely futile interview. He did not suffer fools gladly 
 as a rule; to-day, however, he only smiled on them, as he had 
 smiled at the discomforts of the train. As he finally emerged 
 again into Whitehall he almost ran into a young woman who 
 was waiting just outside. She held a large umbrella in a white- 
 gloved hand, to shelter a huge feathered hat from the eternal
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 371 
 
 rain, and Hugh glanced at her again as he passed out, struck by 
 something curiously festive in her appearance. He knew 
 nothing of clothes, but this woman would have suggested a 
 party, if one had not known that parties were things of the 
 past. There was about her altogether an indefinable air of 
 gaiety, odd in such weather, in that place. She at least had 
 not come to scrutinise casualty lists, or if she had, had found the 
 loved name happily absent. Hugh smiled, but not with any 
 recognition, and was passing on when a voice called him. 
 
 "Really, Mr. Infield!" It was a protesting, almost an 
 indignant voice. He turned. A hand was being held out, and 
 dark eyes were raised to his face. There was something 
 familiar in the eyes, but he could not place it. 
 
 "You insist upon cutting me?" the lady went on. "But 
 I'm not going to allow it, for I want to give you an invita- 
 tion. . . . Oh, well, if you still can do nothing but stare, 
 I'm Gertrude Fenner. " 
 
 Hugh lifted his hat in slow apology. 
 
 "Honestly," he explained, "I didn't know you. You're 
 
 changed somehow, you look " He hesitated, and his eyes 
 
 travelled up and down again, seeking for the seat of his puzzle- 
 ment. Gertrude Fenner had always stood in his mind, with 
 Lois Drew, as one of those bitter, exasperated women, of whom 
 there were unfortunately so many, who had not pride enough 
 to hide a rage against life that could hardly bear scrutiny by 
 those who were involved in life too. This was Gertrude Fenner, 
 she said so, but marvellously changed. The rage and bitter- 
 ness had gone, gone with the smoothing of the tousled hair, the 
 clearing of the dark eyes, the smile that now curved the once 
 peevish mouth. While he still hesitated, trying to find the 
 word which would express what he felt without undue blunt- 
 ness, Gertrude supplied him. 
 
 "Younger?" she queried, with a rather uncertain smile, 
 a smile that at once hoped and feared. Hugh nodded; younger 
 would do well enough. 
 
 "Something's happened to you too," said Gertrude, look- 
 ing at him hard. Hugh only smiled; it was a happy, but, he 
 felt, probably a rather fatuous smile. Gertrude did not see it,
 
 372 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 she was looking away into the hall of the War Office through 
 the glass doors; nor did she pursue any inquiry into the source 
 of Hugh's altered air. She went back to her own. " I wonder 
 what you'll say when I tell you I'm engaged. " 
 
 She looked for a moment almost apprehensive, and her look 
 gave Hugh a sudden vision of the change that had indeed come 
 over himself. A week ago if he had been told that Gertrude 
 Fenner had got over the hopeless passion in which she had, 
 ever since he had known her and his knowledge went back 
 further than that of almost any of the other members of the 
 set gone about enwrapped as in a tragic mantle, the news would 
 have appeared but as one more instance of the littleness of 
 human beings, one more sign of the moral perversities bred 
 by war. The ghost of his natural comment brushed him with 
 its wings and dulled the congratulations he murmured. 
 
 "Oh, I dare say you scorn me," said Gertrude sharply, 
 with a return on her own part of her former two-edged man- 
 ner. "I dare say one hasn't any right to be happy. But," 
 she threw back her head with a defiance that Hugh found 
 rather splendid, "I am." 
 
 She looked out into the street. It had stopped raining 
 and the sun was struggling feebly through the thick brown 
 of the atmosphere. A young officer passed them with a pretty 
 girl in red hanging on his arm. 
 
 "It's the only thing." 
 
 In Hugh's ears it sounded with a kind of echo, this cry 
 of Gertrude's. Yes, it was stirring everywhere, the passion- 
 ate demand for personal happiness which, suddenly rising 
 out of the very horrors he had been living among, had en- 
 abled him to speak to Aurelia after so many years of silence. 
 The world had become unbearable. It did not stand think- 
 ing about. One stood, a lonely human being, in the midst 
 of agony and held out helpless hands, that hungered 
 for the warm clasp of other hands. Of course the sol- 
 diers felt it; even more keenly than they the women 
 who could not snatch, like them, forgetfulness from 
 action. War, sweeping over them like a mighty wave, 
 levelled all complexity, all difference, and left high and
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 373 
 
 dry a naked simplicity. Thought was annihilated; emo- 
 tion ruled. Hugh looked back at Gertrude, on whose 
 lips a smile lingered. He wondered whom she had found. 
 Not that it mattered much, obviously. One must find some 
 one. That was the point. While his eyes were on her face 
 he saw her smile broaden; some one was coming out through 
 the swinging doors and Gertrude's face showed him that this 
 was the right person at last. 
 
 "Ah, here's Denis," she murmured, and glanced quickly 
 at Hugh, with a sort of new pride of possession, as there ap- 
 proached a bland and blond young man, very fresh and sim- 
 ple looking, and to Hugh for that reason oddly pathetic in his 
 khaki, in spite of his cheerful and contented smile. He was 
 obviously very young, a boy probably just down from Ox- 
 ford. Gertrude introduced him and then asked eagerly for 
 the result of his inquiries. 
 
 He shook his head. "No chance at present," he said 
 brightly. "Back to the mud-heap again." 
 
 Gertrude's face visibly cleared. 
 
 "Oh, well," she said. "Then we might take that 
 cottage." 
 
 They talked together for a few minutes, then as Ger- 
 trude and Denis prepared to move off in the opposite 
 direction from that in which Hugh himself was going, she 
 said 
 
 "By the bye, I hear Nigel is talking of going out to 
 France. . . . His chief is back, you know old Davis. 
 I suppose they'd get married at once in that case. . . . 
 Yes," she smiled and blushed very becomingly, "we're going 
 to." 
 
 Hugh looked after them as they walked away together, 
 and pondered. Not about their future. They had, poor 
 things, no future. Of that, he knew, Gertrude shared his 
 own terrible conviction. Some men bore on their brows the 
 mark of death, and it sat above the round brown eyes 
 of Denis Lane and gave a dignity to his boyishness. 
 Gertrude's future was the substitution of a new for an old 
 pain. Could one say of a real for a false, or was it the other
 
 374 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 way round, he asked himself, as he walked slowly along the 
 Strand. 
 
 Nigel, he found on arriving at his rooms, was still in 
 the country, though expected that evening or early the 
 next morning. Hugh was glad of his absence. He very 
 decidedly did not want to see Nigel. He did not even 
 want to think about him. Fortunately he could sit 
 in his rooms without any sense of Nigel's presence haunt- 
 ing him. It was one of his merits that he created no 
 atmosphere; the rooms were Hugh's and had always 
 been Hugh's. If Nigel departed, there would be hardly any 
 difference in their visible aspect. He would take his 
 neat desk away and his silver tea-set, but hardly anything 
 else. Hugh, looking about him, felt that he would be glad 
 when the desk and the silver tea-set were gone; but 
 they hardly mattered. Nigel at Tenacre might fill the 
 place with his presence; he left practically nothing be- 
 hind. It was odd, that. Aurelia, in lodgings for ten 
 days, filled the place with herself; rooms she had once in- 
 habited were impregnated with the sense of her. Hugh him- 
 self had created in the Temple an abode that was redolent 
 of his personality. Nigel was entirely different. Hugh felt 
 that it was a problem that it would be interesting at some 
 other time to consider, to discuss, for instance, with Aurelia. 
 At the moment he had no time, no inclination to reflect upon 
 Nigel. It was sufficient to accept, with thankfulness, the 
 fact that he was not there. 
 
 He sat down at his own confused table to write letters. 
 There were a great many necessary business ones, for 
 he had decided, after his talk at the War Office, to return 
 at once to France, although for a period which he in- 
 tended to make extremely brief; and there was also a 
 letter to Aurelia. That he left to the last, after the others 
 had been finished, and sat for long in silence, his pen idle 
 on the blotting paper. What he at last wrote was very 
 short. 
 
 "Aurelia, I must go back to France, I hope only for ten 
 days. I shall carry with me a joy that I can yet hardly realise;
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 375 
 
 a hope that makes even that joy pale. You won't, I know, 
 expect or want me to say anything more. The sun shines; 
 that's all." 
 
 He paused for a moment, then wrote on 
 
 "I wish I could have seen Daphne again, but I go off 
 early to-morrow. She will be all right, I'm sure. She's your 
 daughter, and that means, whatever happens, that she 
 possesses her own soul. Dearest, the thought of you 
 has always been what I lived by, since I lived at all; and at 
 forty-three you make me feel that life is beginning. There 
 is a relation beyond giving and taking, so I won't re- 
 gret that I have nothing to give you but my love. It 
 has always been all yours; that you accept it makes it 
 glorious."
 
 CHAPTER THIRTY 
 
 GERTRUDE FENNER'S sudden and strange engage- 
 ment was a stone cast into the waters of her set, 
 making many circles. For in spite of the wild and 
 awful phantasmagoria reflected, the surface of their own par- 
 ticular pond had, for some time, seemed to all of them sur- 
 prisingly stagnant. They had all got used to the war, and 
 found that when it could no longer stir them, Gertrude Fenner's 
 engagement did. At Tenacre it was exhaustively discussed 
 in every aspect by the Nugents, Nigel Strode, and Myrtle 
 Toller, who made up the Christmas party; and there was 
 no one of them who did not feel a kind of envy of Gertrude, 
 who had thus made herself interesting and important at a 
 time when the individual's role might have seemed to 
 have been reduced to the most tenuous. For Nigel 
 the subject possessed a fascination which he could not 
 have analysed, but which compelled him to recur to it again 
 and again. 
 
 On the Monday after Christmas he was playing billiards 
 with Myrtle. She was a very good player and he was being 
 badly beaten, which diminished his interest in the game 
 and encouraged his mind to wander off on general re- 
 flections. 
 
 "The one thing I never expected," he said after a con- 
 siderable period in which they had played in silence, "was 
 that war would be dull. But it is duller than peace, when 
 one isn't actually in it." 
 
 Myrtle nodded acquiescence. 
 
 "I suppose," Nigel went on, "when you are in it, it isn't." 
 
 376
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 377 
 
 "Herbert said it was the dullest thing he ever struck. 
 Hideous, but appallingly dull." 
 
 Nigel pondered. "You feel it, I suppose?" 
 
 "Because of Herbert?" Myrtle looked at her new black 
 skirt. 
 
 "Well, you are in it." 
 
 Myrtle looked at him. 
 
 "I don't feel Herbert's death much, you know. ... I 
 didn't know him; not half as well as I know you or Ned 
 Coventry, or poor Cecil Tebb, or lots of other people. 
 What I do feel is that I have done my bit, you know. . . . 
 One feels out of it unless one's got some kind of a part; and 
 being in black is all there is for a woman, unless one 
 goes out to nurse or something, which I don't want to 
 do." 
 
 Nigel agreed. "Out of it" was precisely what he felt, and 
 to an extent he could not explain. 
 
 "What I can't understand," Myrtle went on, "is why 
 you don't go in. ... You see, you've got a first-rate part 
 waiting for you, much better than Gertrude's. I don't know 
 what will happen to Gertrude, you know, unless her man 
 gets killed. She can't possibly live with a baby like Denis, 
 she's not the sort." 
 
 Nigel was tired of Gertrude. 
 
 "What is my good part?" he said. 
 
 Myrtle looked at him, smiling. 
 
 "You believe I can tell you?" 
 
 "You understand me, don't you?" 
 
 Myrtle examined the end of her cue, then she nodded. 
 
 "Pretty well. Your part is, a to marry, and b to go 
 out to France. Oh, it doesn't matter in what capacity. You 
 could drive your car as an ambulance, or get an adminis- 
 trative job, easily. I told you so, a week ago." 
 
 "You told me about going out. Not about marrying." 
 
 Myrtle shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "Marrying is obvious. I can't see what you've been 
 waiting for. Now's the time to marry; there's nothing else 
 to do. To marry and go out is so much the beau role that
 
 378 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 I can't understand what you've been up to." She paused. 
 "You haven't quarrelled, by any chance?" 
 
 "Goodness me, no!" cried Nigel. 
 
 Myrtle again looked at him. 
 
 "I don't think Daphne likes it, you know." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Waiting. She looked pale green on Wednesday, I 
 thought. What on earth have you been hanging about 
 for?" 
 
 It was not a question Nigel could answer, even to him- 
 self. He had known why once, he supposed, since the 
 postponement had been entirely his doing; but his mo- 
 tives had become obscured, and he did not want to revive 
 them. What Myrtle now said affected him, it fitted in with 
 the train of thoughts stirred by Gertrude's approaching mar- 
 riage. To marry was just what he wanted at the mo- 
 ment. It was the only thing he could think of doing that 
 would give back to him his lost sense of the reality of his 
 world. He had ceased to be a centre, and in losing that sense 
 he seemed to have lost the sense of being at all. The thing 
 absolutely lost interest otherwise. If he had to stand 
 outside of it, he was overcome by a vast indifference. 
 Events which did not happen to him were unreal and 
 nothing was happening to him. To see other people 
 suffering, rejoicing, thrilled by any sheer emotion, only 
 gave him a pang of envy. To marry would centralise him 
 again. It had centralised even Gertrude. Moreover, if 
 marriage in the abstract was one thing, and marrying 
 Daphne quite another, the second half of the r61e sketched 
 for him by Myrtle met this problem adequately too. For 
 to go out to France in some capacity or other would 
 revive his interest in the war, and so enable him to meet 
 Daphne's demands on him for feeling and action. She 
 expected him to be .remarkable; if he were going out, he would 
 be remarkable enough, and, moreover, would not have 
 to meet these demands unintermittently. At home, 
 where nothing happened, it was natural he should feel 
 that she asked a great deal, and that he had nothing
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 379 
 
 adequate to give; and that in its turn produced a sub- 
 jective reaction which made him progressively less and 
 less able to meet her. This explanation pleased Nigel, 
 for it seemed to cover the malaise of the past months and 
 to promise something entirely different for the future, 
 something more like the terms of the earlier relations 
 between himself and Daphne. Daphne had certainly 
 been particularly unresponsive at their last meeting; 
 but she had been obviously tired, and all that she had 
 said, from her exaggerated attitude about Gervase O'Con- 
 nor downwards, had shown how the strain of long wait- 
 ing was telling on her. She was young, and her tem- 
 perament much more ardent, in the crude sense, than 
 his own, he knew that; long engagements did tell upon 
 people of that type. There was probably a simple natural 
 explanation for everything queer in her. He should not sug- 
 gest anything of the kind to her, of course, but he found 
 considerable comfort for himself in the late discovery 
 of this primitive fact. It meant, too, that nothing that 
 was difficult in her need persist. From Daphne's point 
 of view the arguments in favour of marrying were so strong 
 that Nigel could only marvel how he had been blind to 
 them. 
 
 What had happened to his relations to her in the last 
 few months Nigel indeed found himself, again, incapable 
 of analysing; but something had: she had moved away: he 
 had lost hold of her : he had the sense that he no longer knew 
 her. But was that not, after all, his own fault? Re- 
 viewing their recent meetings, Nigel saw them all as 
 too intellectual, too little emotional. He was tired of his 
 mind, of the mind of every one; he wanted once more to feel, 
 not to think. He had made a mistake in proposing a long 
 engagement. Every one's experience proved the diffi- 
 culty of that. People always got on each other's nerves. 
 What was wanted to save him and Daphne from the 
 morass of nervous ennui for which they had been head- 
 ing, was a sudden emotional shock. Marriage would 
 give that. If they were to be married quite quickly and go
 
 380 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 away together to some remote spot, they could rub 
 out all the tiresome little lines that had blurred the surface 
 of their feeling by a broad stroke of vivid colour. What 
 Daphne wanted he knew it now what she had wanted 
 more than once, was that he should simply catch her in 
 his arms. He had not been able to do it he did not 
 know why; he had been a fool but his power over her 
 was, he felt sure, unimpaired. That she loved him he had 
 not the least doubt. He had held her off. He would do so 
 no longer. He would let her love him, and her love would 
 give him the thrill that had deserted him so long and left 
 him thus stranded, empty, desolate. 
 
 Nigel suddenly felt sorry for himself, for the time he had 
 wasted, for the aridity of his lonely days. He was impa- 
 tient to see Daphne, to whirl her off her feet and be whirled 
 off his own. Beyond the whirl he did not look. He saw Daphne 
 again as he had seen her in the early days of their engage- 
 ment; all that had passed between was swept away. The 
 hours that separated him from Tuesday afternoon dragged 
 slowly, although he left Tenacre in the morning by an ab- 
 surdly early train. 
 
 But Daphne, when he at last saw her, was not as 
 she had been in June and July, not as he had seen her in the 
 picture of their meeting that had formed itself in his 
 mind. She said nothing when the maid showed him in 
 to the white drawing-room, but he felt her silence like 
 a hand held up to ward him off. She hardly even moved. 
 He found her, as he came in, standing with her back to 
 the window, and she stood so and looked at him, that was 
 all. When he drew near, with the intention of embracing 
 her, she still said nothing; but her look arrested him, kept 
 him too, standing where he was, without a word. It 
 was not that she looked hard or critical, on the contrary she 
 had never seemed more gentle or more young; but there 
 was something in her face that made approach diffi- 
 cult. The words he had meant to say died on his lips, 
 the wish to utter them in his heart. And though they 
 had exchanged only the formal greeting needful while
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 381 
 
 the maid still lingered on the threshold, Nigel felt the con- 
 trol over their interview passing out of his hands, passing 
 from him to Daphne. Before this mere contact with 
 her his imaginings fell away. They had been woven 
 round a void; against the real Daphne they withered 
 and dropped. For she knew something he did not know. 
 He had, he knew it almost at once, come to hear her, not 
 she to hear him, and he could only wait for what she had 
 to tell him. Again there swept over him the sense that he 
 was outside, and empty-handed. He could not offer Daphne 
 that emptiness; she made him feel that, as she looked 
 now, straight at him. In her clear eyes, darker some- 
 how than usual, and more coloured because of the shad- 
 ows under them, there was something that he did not 
 understand, something painful and hard to meet. He 
 wanted to look and to look away at once; to look in 
 order that he might see her, to look away in order that she 
 might not see him. With her deeper intensity she held 
 and compelled his eyes, and her gaze was penetrating. 
 She was not showing him what was behind her own 
 eyes; he might guess at pain, but it was only a guess. Daphne 
 he felt did not mind what he saw. That seemed no longer 
 to concern her. She was searching his face for some- 
 thing that he knew himself unable to give. He pre- 
 sented, he knew, only the blankness of his own questions; 
 no answers to hers. 
 
 It seemed a long time that she thus looked at him, but 
 at last she turned away, and moving towards a chair 
 by the fire, sat down. She sat with her hands straight by 
 her side, the palms pressed against the wood which 
 she grasped so hard that Nigel saw how the knuckles and 
 little bones stood out and the veins showed blue under 
 the white frills at the end of her sleeves. He liked those white 
 frills, and the grey velvet dress she wore in which she 
 looked pretty, he thought, and nunlike, with her small 
 smooth head bound by a narrow velvet ribbon; liked too 
 the grey shoes with buckles, and something exquisitely 
 neat about her whole appearance which he had not always
 
 382 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 found in it. He looked at her, observing all these trivial 
 details, but nothing came to him to say. He simply 
 waited, and while he waited his heart began to beat 
 fast, as though he were afraid of what was coming. 
 He did not know what it was, but he dreaded it. Yet 
 when it came, when he heard Daphne's voice speak it, 
 amid all the confusion of his feelings there was hardly any 
 surprise. 
 
 "Nigel," she said, "I am not going to marry you." Her 
 voice was low, there was a faltering in the dropping notes 
 that made his name; but the words were clear, and they came 
 to him with something final in their unaccented tonelessness. 
 Daphne had not changed her position; she sat as before, her 
 hands gripping the chair, her eyes fixed on some point straight 
 before her. 
 
 Nigel too sat quite still. It had come. It had come from 
 Daphne. And his first, clearest feeling was one of re- 
 lief. Across the stifling disarray of his mind the words 
 blew a gust of cold air. He could not take in all they 
 meant, but he felt that windows had been opened, blinds 
 let spring. There was in him no impulse to resist or 
 even to protest, although he had come filled with such 
 different intentions. An instinct that underlay all the 
 elaborate superstructure of his arguments, told him she 
 was right. This was the solution, not the one he had 
 found. Plunged deep in his own sensations, he had 
 made no answer, and it was with a start that, coming to the 
 surface again, he realised that he had said nothing. He turned 
 towards Daphne, opening his lips in mechanical pro- 
 test, but as he turned he met her eyes upon him. Per- 
 haps they had been upon him all the time, grave and 
 very sad. They made him wonder what had been passing 
 in her mind, and as he looked deeper the question gave 
 him his first stab of pain. What had he done or failed 
 to do that she should look at him like that, say what she had 
 said? 
 
 "Oh, Daphne!" he breathed, and all his sorrow for 
 himself was in it and in the glance he fixed on her. Daphne
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 383 
 
 did not look at him again. Her face was pale; there 
 was a rigidity in its lines that struck him as hard. She 
 did not look beautiful or pathetic, she only looked far 
 away, her colour obliterated, her sharp vividness dim. 
 She opened her lips, but closed them again without giving 
 forth anything. 
 
 Nigel groped in the darkness of his mind, trying to 
 discover surprise, indignation, even distress; feeling him- 
 self, as it were, all over, avoiding yet seeking the pain- 
 ful spot, the place where he had been hurt. He must 
 be hurt, yet the spot eluded him. He found only a baffled 
 indistinctness, an inability either to think or feel. Was 
 he perhaps so much hurt that he could not think or feel? 
 
 "I don't understand," he murmured. 
 
 This seemed to waken Daphne. 
 
 "No," she took it up quickly. "I know. That's 
 just it. For a long time I didn't understand either. 
 Because I couldn't bear it, I think. I refused to see." The 
 words dropped out like little hard pebbles, aimed at some 
 mark, but missing it. "But now I do see." The mark was 
 found. 
 
 Found for her, Nigel knew, but not for him. He did not 
 understand. He did not want to. What he wanted was only 
 to get away. With Daphne before him he could do nothing, 
 feel nothing. This failure to feel puzzled and disturbed him, 
 the more that he now saw that Daphne was feeling 
 acutely. Her trembling mouth confessed it, though her 
 voice sounded level and dull; and her eyes, which refused to 
 meet his. 
 
 "But, Daphne," he fumbled helplessly, "why is this? 
 I came this morning, full of hope. ... I wanted you. . . . 
 I wanted to be married at once " 
 
 Daphne gave a little laugh. 
 
 "I don't see why you laugh," Nigel cried, with a clutch 
 at indignation, though indignation seemed somehow absurd. 
 "Don't you love me?" 
 
 At that Daphne did look at him, though only for a fleet- 
 ing instant.
 
 384 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "Yes," she said, "I love you. But I see." 
 
 Nigel got up from his chair and moved restlessly about on 
 the hearthrug. 
 
 "I don't know what you mean by seeing. What do 
 you see? What is there to see? I think you might 
 
 explain. To treat me suddenly like this is " He 
 
 cast about him for a word; the right word would not 
 come. "It's cruel," he said. Cruel was not the right 
 word; it was theatrical, childish, inaccurate; but it must 
 serve. 
 
 "No . . . I'm not being cruel. Not to you, at any rate." 
 Daphne paused and then went on again, more evenly, 
 as if she had thought it all out, as if it were clear to 
 her, though she did not trouble to put it into words 
 that flowed. "I am sparing you a kind of misery, discom- 
 fort, worry that you can't see the point or value of. 
 I can. I could bear it, even be glad of it, because I get some- 
 thing else with it, in return for it, as part of it, that 
 I can bear, can almost rejoice in, because it's the price of 
 something great. But for you, it's simply not worth 
 while. You can't take what I want to give you. You 
 don't want it, don't know what to do with it. So, I 
 let you off. That's all. No!" she held up her hand, as he 
 made a motion as if to interrupt her, "it is not that 
 I don't love you. I love you too much. More than you can 
 bear. I could bear your not loving me in the same 
 way, though it has hurt; but you can't. So, this is the end. 
 The people who can't give, can't take. That's what I'm up 
 against." 
 
 She had risen to her feet and moved towards the fireplace. 
 With her back to him she went on 
 
 "I am doing it because it has to be done. If I waited 
 you'd do it one day. ... I can bear to do it; not to have 
 it done to me." Her arms lay along the mantelpiece and 
 she bent her head so that it rested upon them, and said no 
 more. 
 
 Nigel had sat down again when she rose, and still sat 
 after she ceased, his elbows on his knees, his chin on
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 385 
 
 his hands, stunned into speechlessness. As the words 
 dropped out one after another from Daphne's lips, low 
 and unemphatic, he heard them, but that was all. The 
 right thing surely was to protest, eagerly, violently; 
 to catch her in his arms and sweep away her arguments by 
 the only logic that could meet them. But he could not do 
 it. For it was true, what she said. He had no word 
 to answer, could only sit and look at her as she stood 
 with her face buried and hidden, look and feel nothing. Slim 
 and straight and very young she stood, like a child 
 weeping because chidden for some fault. Was she weep- 
 ing? She made no sound. Nigel almost wished she 
 would weep, for it might break in upon his sense of 
 unreality. 
 
 The sun, parting the grey afternoon mist, cast across the 
 room a long shaft of light that fell on Daphne, so that her 
 hair, that soft smooth hair he had loved to stroke, was strewn 
 with gold-dust. Did this mean he should never stroke 
 it again? The thought hurt him as nothing had done yet, 
 but still he sat frozen. 
 
 The numbness that held him was rudely broken. The 
 telephone on Mrs. Leonard's desk suddenly rang out stri- 
 dently, with a harsh sound insulting to the nerves. Daphne 
 raised her head no, she had not been crying and moved 
 towards it. 
 
 "Yes. . . . yes. Yes, this is Kensington 1001. Oh, 
 Hugh, how very nice of you. . . . Yes, of course I will." 
 
 Nigel rose to his feet. Daphne did not turn: the receiver 
 was still at her ear; evidently it was going to be a 
 long conversation, he thought. He moved his chair a 
 little noisily so as to attract her attention. Daphne turned 
 her head. 
 
 "Yes," she said, speaking not to the instrument, but to 
 him. "Please do go." 
 
 Nigel hesitated. The ending seemed to him horribly 
 crude and paltry, but he could find no adequate words, 
 and there was a look in her eyes from which he wanted to 
 escape.
 
 386 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "I'll write," he murmured. 
 
 Daphne's attention was given to the telephone. She 
 did not turn her head; he opened the door and let himself 
 out. Half-way down the stone stairs he paused. He could 
 not go, they could not part, like that. That was not how 
 big things went from you. But his pause only lasted a few 
 seconds, he went on and out into the air. 
 
 The sun had swept the mists aside and for a moment 
 was casting a sombre splendour over the Gardens. Behind 
 him the spire of St. Mary Abbotts reared its wedge 
 sublime against the dark glow of the sky, above the black 
 mass of the houses. Along the street the lit lamps were pale 
 yellow. Nigel stood irresolute for a moment at the 
 corner. He glanced up at the windows of the flats. It 
 was strange that it was all over, that he should probably 
 never climb those stairs again. He felt undecided as to what 
 to do or where to go. He did not want to go home and think. 
 Hugh might be there, and Hugh was the last person he 
 wanted. 
 
 Still uncertain, he turned into the Gardens. About 
 the stems of the bare trees the mists that lay heavy 
 over the grass still swirled. It was damp and chilly: there 
 were very few people about. One or two belated nurse- 
 maids, hurrying home to tea before the gates were shut, 
 and in front of him a sailor with his arm round the waist 
 of a girl. She leaned close to him, and smiled up into his 
 face, heedless that the grass was heavy with wet. Nigel 
 glanced at them with disfavour as he passed. They were 
 absorbed and did not see him; and hard on his disfavour 
 there followed a sharper stab. Was it envy? Daphne's words 
 came back to him. "You can't take what I want to 
 give you . . . the people who can't give, can't take." 
 Was that true? Had something great been offered to 
 him which he could not accept? Something which that com- 
 mon fellow in blue could take and give, from which 
 he was shut out? A sense of personal humiliation swept 
 over him, a bitterness against Daphne, against himself, against 
 life.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 387 
 
 At Hyde Park Corner the pavements were plastered with 
 the eternal war posters, and hoarse boys shouted out the 
 headlines of stop-press editions. "What is a broken engage- 
 ment in the midst of all this?" Nigel asked himself. But 
 the question hardly helped him. The day when he had seen 
 the war as an escape was over. Calling a taxi, he directed 
 the man to drive to Chelsea. 
 
 With Mabel Nugent almost complete frankness was pos- 
 sible; but Nigel could not tell her what he did not know, or 
 explain what he did not understand. At least, if he threw 
 more light than he was aware of, she cast none of it back to 
 him. 
 
 "What I can't understand is why I don't mind," he said, 
 as he sat before the cosy fire in her boudoir. She had 
 recently turned the little room opening into the gar- 
 den in which one used to leave coats, into a very snug 
 little boudoir with black paper and orange curtains, 
 like Evangeline Carrington's. "I don't, you see. There's 
 no doubt about it. I really feel nothing. Rather cheap, 
 that's all." 
 
 Mabel looked at him reproachfully. 
 
 "Oh, not at this moment! But life has shrunk some- 
 how." 
 
 "Oh, that will soon readjust itself," she said. 
 
 But Nigel was not quite satisfied. 
 
 "One ought to feel, you know. ... I can't understand 
 it. I didn't even at the time, even when she was telling me." 
 
 There was a short pause. 
 
 "Do you feel sorry for her?" 
 
 Nigel looked up. "Do you?" 
 
 Mabel laughed, and he was not sure that she did not blush. 
 She equivocated, however. 
 
 "She's young, you see." 
 
 "And I'm not. . . . Do you think that's the explana- 
 tion?" Nigel spoke quickly. Mabel, who knew his 
 tones, felt the irritation of which he was himself perhaps 
 hardly aware. 
 
 "Oh, dear, no. In some ways you're younger than
 
 388 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 any of us, younger even than Daphne. But I should 
 fancy I thought the other day when she was here that 
 she was the sort that takes things hard. That's all I 
 meant." 
 
 "And I'm not?" 
 
 "Oh, no, dear Nigel; thank Heaven you're not." 
 
 Nigel stared at the fire. 
 
 "I was in love with her," he said. 
 
 "A long time ago," Mabel commented. "You had got 
 over it when you were at Tenacre in November; I'm not sure 
 that you hadn't in July." 
 
 "I wonder," Nigel mused, "shall I always get over 
 it?" 
 
 He looked up now and met Mabel's eyes. For the first 
 time they held something that was not all approval. 
 
 "Because if so," he went on, "I suppose I had better not 
 marry . . . any one. What do you think?" 
 
 Mabel had looked away. She had a gaudily painted fan 
 in her hand, and screened her face from the fire so that he no 
 longer saw her expression. 
 
 "No, perhaps not," she said. "Do you know I hope 
 you won't. . . . You're so very nice as you are. ... A 
 wife would spoil you. ... I thought Daphne would, 
 at first. Then I decided she wouldn't do anything to 
 you." 
 
 "And she hasn't?" 
 
 "No. I don't think she has done anything to you." She 
 paused. Nigel was not sure whether he were pleased or no. 
 But when she smiled and went on, "You're just as nice as 
 you were," suddenly, for no reason, she jarred upon him. 
 But he kept it up. 
 
 "I haven't, as you threatened the other day, quite lost 
 my charm?" 
 
 He had risen to his feet. Mabel, still sitting, had lowered 
 the fan. 
 
 "No," she said softly. "You haven't lost any of it." 
 
 He stood looking down. 
 
 "All the same, you know, I can't help feeling that I have
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 389 
 
 lost something. But what it is, I can't, for the life of me, 
 discover." 
 
 "You won't tell any one yet, will you?" he said as he 
 departed. She promised, but he knew she would not keep 
 her word.
 
 CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE 
 
 HUGH'S expectation that he might be back in Eng- 
 land within ten days was frustrated. He remained 
 in France for three months. January, February, 
 March passed. April was touching the trees with green when 
 he again found himself in London. And those three months 
 passed in almost complete silence. One letter from Aurelia 
 told him that Daphne had broken off her engagement to 
 Nigel; little more than the bare fact. 
 
 "Daphne is going on with her work," Aurelia said, "and 
 I think will refuse an offer to go out to Serbia. But it is dread- 
 ful to see how she suffers." Of herself she said nothing, noth- 
 ing of what had passed between her and Hugh. This silence, 
 however, hardly afflicted Hugh. After a week to write seemed 
 impossible; after a month he did not even want to write. 
 There were things that must not be mixed up together; enough 
 to know that behind this horror, a light for him shone beau- 
 tiful. He had waited too many years to feel impatient. Au- 
 relia was, of course, absorbed in Daphne. It was natural 
 that she should not write. That he was glad she did not 
 write, that he not merely endured postponement cheerfully, 
 but was actually grateful for it, Hugh was too little versed 
 in reading his own mental processes to admit; far less did 
 he draw the true inference from them. In the middle of Feb- 
 ruary there came an opportunity to get home for a day or 
 two, but he stood aside in favour of some one else. It was 
 natural to him to stand aside in favour of some one else, to 
 feel that he could wait when other people could not; but the 
 impulse which caused him to urge Emerson to go, while he 
 
 390
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 391 
 
 stayed, was not only kindness. It was something deeper, 
 that he did not in the least understand. In the same way 
 he hid his thoughts about Aurelia, about their future, deep 
 in his heart; overlaid them with the urgencies of day to day. 
 She coloured all his inner life and filled it with dreams, but 
 in those dreams she was as she had been in the past, not as 
 she might be in the future. And he hardly thought of Daphne. 
 It distressed him to think how much pain the severance of 
 her engagement must cost her, but in itself he was glad 
 of it. The reasons why it had happened he did not 
 try to unravel, nor what its effect might be on his relations to 
 her mother. 
 
 Not until he was sitting in the caxi that carried him Tem- 
 plewards did it occur to Hugh that the first person 
 he should see would, of course, be Nigel. He had given 
 no warning of return; he seldom wrote to Nigel and had had 
 no inclination to do so, after what had happened. Prac- 
 tically no London news, of any sort, had reached him, 
 save what could be gleaned from an occasional English 
 newspaper; very occasional, for all the people in the 
 hospital with whom he had been working were French, 
 and all, like himself, absorbed in the atmosphere of war. There 
 was actually no time for talking, except about the business in 
 hand; at night one dropped asleep, dead tired. 
 
 London looked strange, strange because so little changed. 
 But it brought back to him with a rush all the life 
 that had been interrupted, the life that it seemed in- 
 credible one should ever resume. Was Aurelia in town 
 still? What was Daphne doing? Hugh smiled a little 
 as he asked himself whether he could inquire of Nigel. 
 Probably he could. It would certainly be Nigel's idea 
 to establish a charming friendship on the ruins of a 
 defeated love. Nigel's idea, yes; but would it be Daphne's? 
 As he put himself the question Hugh realised how little he 
 knew of what had, between them, really happened. It was 
 hardly conceivable that any one so much in love as Daphne, 
 should have been forced to see Nigel as he was. She was 
 too young, surely, to read the writing on that wall. Yet it
 
 392 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 seemed almost equally improbable that Nigel had actually 
 done anything that could afford, to any outside observer, 
 a reasonable excuse for breaking the engagement. The nearer 
 one got to it, the more puzzling it all was. 
 
 As he climbed up the long, dark, uneven stairs, his heavy 
 bag in one hand and a khaki overcoat, far too hot for the 
 mild day, over the other arm, Hugh remembered that Nigel 
 had been talking, three months ago, of going out to France. 
 Perhaps he had carried out that intention. But Annie, when 
 she opened the door, told him that Mr. Strode was at 
 home, and had just come in. Hugh paused on the thresh- 
 old of the sitting-room, whence he could hear the rattle 
 of a teacup; then turned into his bedroom, to divest 
 himself of the lieutenant's uniform he hated, and resume the 
 garb of ordinary life. 
 
 When he entered the living-room, his own tea awaited 
 him on the table with a pile of letters arranged beside it. Nigel 
 reclined in the deep chair by the fire, a cigarette between his 
 lips, a review in his hand. 
 
 "Well, Nigel," he said. "How are you? You look much 
 as usual." 
 
 "Oh, I'm all right," the other replied, laying down his 
 review. "Nothing ever happens to me." 
 
 His voice had a hint of peevishness. Hugh, turning over 
 his letters, looked at him as he lay extended, one slim foot 
 stretched out to the fire, and smiled a little bitterly to him- 
 self. Nigel certainly was not changed. He was just where 
 he had been. Whatever had happened had clearly, as he 
 himself admitted, not happened to him. He was indeed, 
 of them all, the one man to whom nothing had happened, 
 nothing could happen. Hugh poured himself out a cup of tea 
 and sat down. 
 
 "I'm thinking of applying for a commission," said 
 Nigel, after a pause, in which neither seemed to find any- 
 thing to say. "Davis has got back into the saddle now, you 
 see." 
 
 "The New World can spare you, you mean?" 
 
 "Oh, heavens, yes. The New World doesn't matter
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 393 
 
 that!" Nigel snapped his fingers contemptuously. "I must 
 do something. Every one else has disappeared. There's 
 nothing to do in London. . . . I'm bored to death here." 
 
 Hugh stared at him for a moment. Nigel felt his gaze 
 and resented it. 
 
 "Well?" he said sharply. 
 
 "I'm sorry for you, I think," said Hugh slowly. 
 
 Nigel sprang to his feet. 
 
 "Oh, stow it, Hugh. Not you too." 
 
 "Too? Who else is sorry for you?" 
 
 Nigel met his eyes for an instant, then turned away with 
 a short laugh. 
 
 "You'll never guess, I hope," he said. 
 
 Hugh was lighting a pipe. The match cast a strong light 
 on his lined face. Outside, the day was thickening to dusk 
 He shook his head. 
 
 "I might; but it would probably be unwise." 
 
 Nigel stood at the window, staring down into the bare 
 branches of the plane tree. When he spoke it was without 
 turning round. 
 
 "Daphne Leonard." 
 
 Hugh opened his lips. 
 
 "Daphne? Have you seen her, then?" 
 
 Nigel came towards the fire. 
 
 "I went to see her one day last week." 
 
 "Then she's not gone to Serbia?" 
 
 " No. Was she thinking of going? She seemed very busy." 
 
 "I'm glad," said Hugh thoughtfully, more to himself 
 than to Nigel. "I thought she wouldn't. She's too strong 
 to do things like that." 
 
 Nigel heard his muttered comment. 
 
 "Strong?" he said quickly. "Yes, she is strong." 
 
 Hugh stared into the fire for some time. It grew darker 
 in the room. A vigorous poke at the big lump set the flames 
 leaping and crackling, and produced a great glow of 
 light. 
 
 "Why did you go to see her, after so long? I suppose 
 you hadn't seen her . . . since?"
 
 394 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 Nigel walked up and down restlessly. 
 
 "I don't know really. I wanted to put things straight. 
 It occurred to me, thinking it all over, that I ought to 
 go and say something . . . put things on a decent footing 
 somehow. We parted very . . . very abruptly, you see. So 
 I went." 
 
 He paused. Then as Hugh made no comment, he con- 
 tinued. 
 
 "I asked her to forgive me." 
 
 Hugh gave a sudden laugh. 
 
 "Really, Nigel, you're wonderful. . . . And did she?" 
 
 'I don't see anything to laugh at in it. ... No. 
 She said she couldn't. 'I can't get used to you, any 
 more than I can get used to the war,' she said. She seemed 
 to see some connection, but what it is I haven't the least 
 idea." 
 
 "And yet she is sorry for you. Did she tell you that, 
 too?" 
 
 Hugh felt that Nigel for some reason wanted to explain 
 it all, though his impulse, either in going to see Daphne, or 
 in desiring to speak of it, remained incomprehensible. It 
 all threw a strange light on the man, more light than Hugh 
 could take in. 
 
 "Yes," Nigel went on meditatively. "She stood there, 
 looking ten thousand miles away, and yet, somehow, not 
 dim. She gave me the feeling, I can't explain it to you, that 
 it was I who was dim and far away, while she was in a clear 
 light, awfully alive, and, as you said, strong. . . . And she 
 looked beautiful. I used not to think her so at all, 
 except at moments; but that afternoon she was. I didn't 
 understand her in the least; but what she said was that 
 she was inside and I was outside something, and there- 
 fore she was sorry for me. Do you understand it, Hugh?" 
 He turned suddenly on his friend. Hugh was silent for a 
 long time, then looking at him slowly, he said 
 
 "Yes. I think so. I can guess at what she means. . . . 
 You don't know, Nigel, what you have made her suffer." 
 
 Nigel winced.
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 395 
 
 "That would make me sorry for her, surely. . . . That's 
 what I wanted her to forgive me for." 
 
 Hugh shook his head. "No," was all he said. 
 
 Nigel sighed wearily. 
 
 "I don't understand," he repeated. 
 
 "No." Hugh was looking away from him now, up to the 
 Japanese embroidery over the mantelpiece, where, nearly a 
 year ago, he had placed it. "Of course you don't. . . . That's 
 why it has all happened." 
 
 Hugh returned to his letters, and Nigel after a few mo- 
 ments left the room. There was nothing in any of them, 
 nothing that mattered, or could not wait for another three 
 months, if necessary. Hugh sat on, deep in thought, with 
 the envelopes lying round him where he had thrown them 
 untidily on the floor, until roused by Annie, who came in to 
 ask whether he should be in to dinner. Mr. Strode had gone 
 out, and had left a message that he was going away for the 
 week-end. 
 
 "Was he going to Tenacre?" Hugh asked 
 
 Annie thought so, but was not quite sure. A place in 
 Sussex where he often went, she knew. 
 
 Hugh drew the telephone towards him. Daphne had 
 been at the flat last week. Mrs. Leonard might be there 
 now, unless she had, as he feared, gone away for Easter. The 
 usual pause ensued, followed by an ominous buzz; then 
 through the buzz a voice came, a voice for him, like no 
 other. 
 
 "Aurelia? Yes. This is Hugh. Just back. May I come 
 round to see you?" 
 
 "Yes, do. I want very much to see you. Daphne has 
 gone down to Wending End with Jane Jane Delahaye; 
 I'm going to-morrow. We want you to come too. Yes, come 
 as soon as you can, then we can arrange about to-morrow." 
 
 Hugh hung up the receiver, his heart beating fast. Ar- 
 range about to-morrow? Yes, and about much more. 
 Aurelia had spoken as if there were no more than that, but 
 only because there were things one could not bear to 
 touch on the telephone. Hugh laughed at himself, but
 
 396 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 his heart continued to thump so that he could do poor 
 justice to Annie's dinner, pay scant attention to all she had to 
 tell him of what had occurred in his absence. If he could 
 neither eat nor talk, still less could he think. 
 
 He did not think at all as he made his way westward; 
 and the sight of Aurelia only proved to him that, if it had 
 been difficult in absence to conceive the terms of a new re- 
 lationship, it was impossible with her before his eyes. She 
 was sitting before the fire, her hands folded on her lap in 
 an idleness most unusual with her, and as she turned her 
 grave clear eyes to greet him, Hugh suddenly felt that it 
 was absurd to want more. How could any promised near- 
 ness bring her nearer than she was, always had been? He 
 had almost a gesture of deprecation as he took her hand and 
 raised it to his lips, as if he wanted actually to hold her off, 
 not draw her near. This action, unconscious, instinctive, 
 spoke him more truly than any words he could have found, 
 for it corresponded to that deep holding back within 
 himself which he could not have admitted, because he 
 did not know it for what it was. But Aurelia, he felt, 
 understood it all. Understood, as she had always done, 
 far more than he could himself. The eyes that rested 
 on his face, that met his in a long look, were not the 
 eyes she had given him for an instant at Wending End; 
 but they were the eyes of the Aurelia he had worshipped 
 from afar, and not less dear than those other unfamiliar, almost 
 frightening ones. 
 
 He sat down beside her, and for a moment nothing was 
 said. Hugh hardly wanted anything said. To sit thus with 
 Aurelia, if it dissipated his excitement and stilled the 
 beating of his heart, diffused all through him a deep 
 and silent satisfaction. He was with her; he could look 
 at her, beautiful and soothing to the eye in her white 
 dress, and feel a profound tie between them in the very 
 fact that they could thus sit silent, even at such a moment, 
 without embarrassment. 
 
 At such a moment! It brought him back, the phrase, as 
 it crossed his mind. What moment was it?
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 397 
 
 Aurelia seemed to feel the question, for she moved a little, 
 and turned to look more directly at him. 
 
 "Yes, Hugh," she said, as though in answer to some- 
 thing he had said, though he had spoken no word. "I be- 
 lieve you know what I am going to say. Anyhow, I am going 
 to say it, and trust to you to understand. No one 
 else in the world could understand; but you will, I think. 
 Daphne, perhaps. It's Daphne, you know, who has 
 helped me to it; and if I can't make it clear to you, I believe 
 she may." 
 
 She paused. Hugh only looked at her. As he looked 
 he had an odd sensation, as if something rose, fluttered, touched 
 him with its wings, and flew away. He could not have de- 
 scribed it more nearly. It was impalpable, but he felt it; 
 and his feeling found involuntary expression in a deep sigh. 
 Aurelia was staring into the fire, but she caught the sound 
 and turned. 
 
 "I'm not going to pretend with you, Hugh, or speak 
 in parables. I can't do what I thought I could three 
 months ago, when you spoke to me down at Wending 
 End." 
 
 Hugh did not start or turn. He only looked at her, and 
 waited. He had no words ready in which to cry out against 
 what she said, or say it must not be. Pain kept him silent, 
 pain and his profound trust in her truth. Before his eyes 
 the golden mists in which he had moved for three months 
 in blissful vague unconsciousness were parting; and he could 
 only watch them go, silently, swiftly, as the mists of an Oc- 
 tober morning before the sun. They fled away; he had no 
 power to stay them. 
 
 "When you spoke to me, Hugh, something answered," 
 Aurelia went on, in her deep soft voice. "But I know now 
 what it was. I didn't then. I didn't realise that I, too, was 
 infected with the poison that's all around us. When 
 you said then that there was nothing left but personal 
 happiness, I agreed; I felt I wanted to snatch at it 
 and get away from the agony of sight. But I was wrong. 
 Wrong not only because I couldn't do it, but because
 
 398 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 it isn't, for me or for you, Hugh, the right thing to 
 do." 
 
 "When you say you couldn't do it" Hugh looked up, 
 raising his face which had been buried in his hands "you 
 mean" he hesitated a moment "you mean you don't love 
 me?" 
 
 Aurelia looked very sadly at his bowed head. 
 
 "Ah!" he cried. "Don't mind saying it. I don't de- 
 serve that you should love me. Even then I could hardly 
 believe it." 
 
 Aurelia leaned forward and laid her hand over his, but 
 for a moment she said nothing, nor did he. Hugh understood, 
 or thought he understood, the meaning of her silence; but it 
 wrung from him a sudden groan. 
 
 "Can the past never die?" he cried bitterly. 
 
 Aurelia got up and moved across the room. Her hands 
 were locked together and her face drawn with pain. She 
 turned once or twice round the narrow space and then came 
 back to her seat. Hugh had not been watching her, his thoughts 
 were driven back again to the ignoble darkness of his 
 failure. 
 
 "What is the past?" her voice broke in upon him. He 
 made a quick movement, as if to wave it aside, but she went 
 on. "It's strange how long it takes one to answer that ques- 
 tion truly." 
 
 Hugh groaned. 
 
 "I can answer it truly enough, I think," he said. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "Perhaps. But I did not, not till a very short time ago. 
 . . . You say I don't love you, Hugh. In a sense 
 it's true. You are, you always will be, dearer to me and nearer 
 than any one in the world, except Daphne. Your loy- 
 alty, your truth, your love for me." Her voice faltered, 
 but she went on. "Ah, dear Hugh, don't think I don't feel 
 it ... they are the best things I have. But beyond friend- 
 ship, even the nearest, there is something else. And 
 that I can't give you. I haven't got it to give. For 
 a moment I thought I had, but I was wrong. And
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 399 
 
 now I know why, and I want to tell you, if you can 
 bear it." 
 
 Hugh looked up. His face was haggard, but his eyes met 
 hers. In them there was a tenderness that even at that mo- 
 ment seemed to him beautiful, and that, later, lived in his 
 memory like balm. 
 
 "Yes. Go on," he said. 
 
 "I loved my husband. That was my excuse; it is also 
 my condemnation. It is what I'm paying for now; and, be- 
 cause life in this is very cruel, you are paying for me, Hugh. 
 It is my punishment that you have to pay. . . . Because 
 it isn't enough to love a person, you must see them too. I 
 never saw Richard, or myself, or our life. I fed my- 
 self with lies, and called the degradation duty. ... I 
 am now what I let Richard make me. . . . Daphne, 
 yes, Daphne has made it clear to me, because she has 
 done what I couldn't do. She has refused to let Nigel make 
 her life a lie." 
 
 Hugh listened, and the words fell upon his heart like 
 stones and lay there. It was true, he knew, what she 
 said; he could not refute it. Had he not said some- 
 thing of this to Daphne, even in December, presented 
 the data, without drawing the inference? Yet the in- 
 ference was implicit in the data; he believed what Aurelia said 
 to him. 
 
 "That was why," Aurelia went on, "all those years ago, 
 when you went away instead of calling to me, deep down 
 I was glad. I didn't know it; I lay and wept and longed to 
 die. But I was almost glad you had failed me because your 
 failure hid the worse failure my own. For I could never 
 have done it. Never. Never. Never. I know now. That's 
 why I can't do it now." 
 
 Hugh still said nothing; he was conscious of nothing but 
 an overwhelming, comprehending pain, a pain much larger 
 than any of his own, in which his own was merged and dis- 
 appeared. What was it, the pang he suffered now, in com- 
 parison with what Aurelia had endured? His own pain seemed 
 to gather itself up into a heartrending pity for her,
 
 400 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 a pity that held him dumb. The most poignant ele- 
 ment in what he endured was his helplessness; he could 
 do nothing with his pity, could in no way, it seemed, 
 reach or succour her. He could only look on; it was 
 all he had ever been able to do. He could not even tell her 
 what he felt that his sorrow for himself was lost, disap- 
 peared, in his sorrow for her. 
 
 "You must come down to Wending End and talk to 
 Daphne," Aurelia spoke again after a long silence. "She will 
 help you. She will make you understand." 
 
 Hugh got up. 
 
 "Yes," he said vaguely, looking about the familiar room 
 as if he had never seen it before. His eyes avoided Aurelia's 
 face; he felt he could not trust himself to look at her, nor his 
 voice in speaking. If, as he feared, she were to say anything 
 more which suggested sorrow for him, he should break down. 
 To avoid that he must get away quickly. Aurelia seemed to 
 divine his intention. 
 
 "Come down soon," she said. "You will, won't 
 you?" Her voice had an accent of appeal, almost as if she 
 expected a refusal. Hugh nodded, and began to move to 
 the door. Aurelia held out her hand without another 
 word; he took it, held it for a moment and pressed it to his 
 lips. 
 
 Aurelia, after the door had closed behind him, stood 
 looking after him, and at her hand on which something glis- 
 tened.
 
 CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO 
 
 MORE than a week passed, in which Hugh did noth- 
 ing, gave no sign. Then, late one afternoon, as he 
 came out of the War Office, he found his way across 
 to the Strand, blocked by an apparently endless stream of 
 men in khaki, returning, he supposed, from a route march. 
 He stood still where he was, waiting for them to pass. 
 They looked hot, for the day had been mild and they 
 were loaded with heavy accoutrements, but their faces 
 for the most part seemed cheerful and apathetic. He 
 glanced round at the people standing by him on the 
 pavement; they were simply waiting, like himself, for 
 the men to pass. Their faces showed no more interest 
 than, he supposed, his own did; for he felt none, merely an 
 impatience to get on his way. On the 'buses, held up 
 by the burly policemen, men were reading the evening 
 papers, or looking vaguely about them; no one was 
 standing up or waving to the soldiers, as people used to do 
 in the early days of the war. Soldiers marching in 
 the streets had grown as normal a part of the daily life 
 of London as the stream of common traffic, and meant noth- 
 ing more. London absorbed and accepted them, as 
 it absorbed and accepted all the other horrors that un- 
 derlay its daily life of jollity and dreams, noise and 
 weariness. 
 
 At last the stream passed, the policeman stepped aside, 
 'buses, carts and taxis swept along, and Hugh made his way 
 across to the corner of Northumberland Avenue. On a sud- 
 den impulse he turned that way, deciding to walk Temple- 
 
 401
 
 402 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 wards along the Embankment, feeling that he could not face 
 the Strand. It was growing dark; the sky was thickening 
 from pale to deepest blue, and over it the long swords of the 
 searchlights flashed and crossed. The river was still 
 and silent, only a few dim lights reflected in its sur- 
 face on the farther bank. Hugh walked along very 
 slowly, aware at first of nothing but the compelling 
 beauty of it all. Gradually the darkness gathered, till Cleo- 
 patra's Needle and the sleeping sphinx were hardly dis- 
 cernible against the sky, save where a sudden illumi- 
 nation lit them, sombre and menacing. Then a malign 
 smile seemed to flicker over the graven mouth of cap- 
 tive Egypt, as if she understood secrets that made ab- 
 surd her imprisonment under the damp skies that vainly 
 rotted and consumed her surface. 
 
 Hugh's steps slackened and stopped; he leaned over the 
 parapet, and stood looking down into the river-bed. Lon- 
 don was all round him; its life made the dull roar that kept 
 his thoughts so blind. As he stood and felt it he was invaded 
 by a vast sense of pity; pity not for himself, not, certainly, 
 for Aurelia, but for London, for humanity. He thought 
 of the people who had stood on the kerb with him and 
 watched the soldiers, and felt again their apathy and 
 his own; but felt it not, as so often before, with futile 
 anger, but with compassion. To feel as little as they 
 all did, to be so dumb, so blind, so near the vegetables 
 and the stones, when all this he could not stay to 
 find any more adequate expression for it was going 
 on, when everything was falling in ruins round them 
 and they themselves were, by their very immobility, the 
 authors of that ruin nothing, surely, could be so terri- 
 ble, so pitiable as that, not even war. He was one 
 of them, he was like them in their immobility and their ap- 
 athy. He stood still and let things happen; he held the golden 
 apple in his hands, and let it fall, and went on as if 
 nothing had occurred. Worse than that, he was almost 
 glad to find it gone, so little had he known what to 
 do with it, so little had he ever had it at all. His tragedy
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 was not that he disputed what Aurelia had done, but that 
 he accepted it, and knew that she was right. He could not 
 have taken what she would not give. Suddenly a ques- 
 tion flashed across him; was he, after all, just like Nigel? 
 He smiled a little ruefully as he looked at it and stared down 
 into the turbid water. No; at least he was not like 
 Nigel, though Nigel certainly, and nearly every one 
 else he knew probably, would see no difference. But 
 there was a difference, and it was one of those differ- 
 ences which one lived and grew older in order to be able to 
 see. He knew what had happened to him, as Nigel never 
 would; and he knew what he had lost and what he had left. 
 Aurelia would not marry him, and she was right; but 
 Aurelia was there and their friendship, and he was going down 
 to Wending End no later than to-morrow. He was a fool, he 
 told himself as he walked quickly on, to have waited already 
 so long. 
 
 Yes, decidedly he was a fool, Hugh reiterated, as he walked 
 up from the station. For it was spring, and spring at Wend- 
 ing End was an exquisite thing, that made all misery, even 
 the direst, seem transient and endurable. The fields were 
 no longer brown, they were purple, and the hedges that di- 
 vided them already touched with green. Against the 
 chequered blue and white of the sky the bursting buds 
 were golden in the sun. Birds sang everywhere, and 
 the sweetness of the air touched Hugh's face like a 
 caress. Every year the earth was thus miraculously 
 renewed. Every year it recklessly poured out its beau- 
 ties, burned them passionately without regret in the 
 fires of autumn, saw them die and moulder under rain 
 and frost, and waited, because it knew that spring returned. 
 And was it not the same with the slower, more painful life 
 of man? Again and again the laborious beauty of the world 
 had destroyed itself by war; but war had never killed the 
 immortal striving for perfect expression that man carried in 
 his deepest heart. To the eyes of any one generation, all might 
 seem to be lost; but it was not. Unhappy those whose brief
 
 404 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 time of suffering and struggle coincided with the impulse to 
 destroy; but beyond their winter the spring brooded, invisible 
 but sure. 
 
 The road swerved quickly round, and the orchard was 
 before him, a shimmer of white, a waft of intoxicating per- 
 fume and promise. Hugh went in at the gate, and passing 
 round the house by the little tiled path on either side of which 
 Aurelia's bulbs stood up proudly, crossed the grass that lay 
 between him and the cherry trees. Under the biggest cherry 
 tree Mrs. Leonard, wrapped in her familiar white shawl, was 
 sitting in the sun. On the grass beside her, books and papers 
 lay unheeded. 
 
 At the sound of his footsteps she looked up. 
 
 "Ah, Hugh!" she smiled at him. "Here you are, at last. 
 I knew that you would come." 
 
 Hugh sat down beside her. 
 
 "Yes," he said. "Of course I have come. . . . I'm not 
 sure that I agree," he smiled in his turn, "but I couldn't 
 stay away. . . . Hullo, what's that you've got?" He saw 
 that the white object on Aurelia's knee was not needlework, 
 but a sleeping child. 
 
 "It's my godchild, Jane Delahaye's baby. Jane's down 
 here with us. She and Daphne are great friends now, though 
 so different." 
 
 Hugh lifted the fine veil that covered the tiny face and 
 looked at it for a few moments. Then he said 
 
 "How is Daphne?" 
 
 Mrs. Leonard did not at once reply; she, too, was watch- 
 ing the baby's face. Then, as she covered it gently, she 
 said 
 
 "You will see. Daphne will help you, Hugh, if you need 
 it, which, as a matter of fact" she glanced up at him 
 "I rather doubt. It's only your old self -depreciation. But 
 you must talk to Daphne." 
 
 Across the grass long shadows began to fall, and as the 
 sun sloped westwards its beams touched the snowy flowers 
 with fire. Hugh continued to say nothing, but he lit 
 his pipe. Through the trees Jane Delahaye came to
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 405 
 
 wards them. Her little triangular face had lost some- 
 thing of its soft roundness, and her small mouth was set in 
 firmer lines, but she still had her charming, uncertain 
 smile, and when she smiled there was a dimple in either 
 cheek. 
 
 "Time for baby's bath, isn't it?" she said, stooping down 
 to the tiny bundle on Mrs. Leonard's knee and taking it ten- 
 derly in her arms. 
 
 "I expect so." Aurelia got up. "I shall come in with 
 you. I can't miss a bath. . . . You'll find Daphne in the 
 orchard, Hugh." 
 
 Hugh sat on for a few moments after the other two had 
 gone in together. Then, knocking out his pipe against his 
 boot and putting it in his pocket, he rose and moved slowly 
 through the orchard. The branches were low and closely 
 entangled with their load of blossom, and he made his way 
 blindly through the long grass. 
 
 "Oh, Hugh! You're treading on the flowers!" A voice 
 came to him through the trees. He looked up. Daphne stood 
 in front of him, holding out her hand. Hugh took it, 
 but his eyes were on the ground, on the lovely fragile 
 thing whose stem he had broken, a tall narcissus. Daphne 
 bent and picked it up; breaking off the stalk and press- 
 ing the soft petals to her face, she inhaled the deli- 
 cate perfume for a moment, then held the flower out to him. 
 
 "Such a wonderful scent," she murmured. "Like some- 
 thing dead laid up in lavender." 
 
 Hugh looked at her as he took the narcissus from her hand. 
 Daphne went on 
 
 "Let us walk to the edge of the coppice, there's a mar- 
 vellous view. Mother will be busy helping Jane to put Leonora 
 to bed." 
 
 They moved on side by side under the blossom-laden 
 trees, more widely spaced on the far side of the orchard. A 
 little wind stirring them gently from time to time shook 
 down showers of white petals, that fell softly on their 
 heads. Hugh, looking at Daphne, saw that she was 
 smiling.
 
 406 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 "It's beautiful, isn't it?" she said, waving her hand to 
 take in all the white wonder around and above them, 
 the blue of the sky overhead, the green of the long grass 
 at their feet, and drawing as she did so a deep breath, as if 
 she were drinking in the cool air. "Beautiful, whatever 
 is happening. Nothing can take it away." She paused. 
 "Nothing can take anything real away. Only, it must be 
 real." 
 
 Hugh looked at her still, and again his eyes spoke a ques- 
 tion he dared not utter in words. 
 
 "Yes, I was thinking of Nigel," she said. Her eyes were 
 on the trees, but Hugh saw a little quiver of her closed lips. 
 
 "I saw him the other day," he said. 
 
 Daphne did not look round. 
 
 "He's talking of going to France," Hugh continued. 
 
 "Yes," she said, as if more were to follow. But Hugh 
 had no more to offer. There was a pause. Then he said 
 slowly 
 
 "He doesn't understand." 
 
 "Oh, no," said Daphne, as if that were obvious. Then 
 after a moment she added, "Poor Nigel!" 
 
 Hugh felt something strangely like a sob in his throat. 
 
 "Daphne," he said, "do you still care for him?" 
 
 At that she turned her head. 
 
 "Oh, yes," she answered. "That was it." 
 
 Hugh said no more. He was thinking. They passed 
 through the little leafless wood that rose steep behind the 
 orchard and came out on to the high clearing above it, from 
 which they looked down to the long sweep of the valley, in 
 whose cleft the road ran to right and left. 
 
 "You know," Daphne spoke again, "sometimes all that 
 has happened to me and Nigel, I mean seems trivial; 
 trivial to mind it so much, in the midst of what's going on. 
 But really it is all part of the same thing. I can't make it 
 clear, perhaps, but as I see it, the war has come because so 
 many people are like Nigel. . . . He can't feel, you see, and 
 of course he wants to feel; and so must grope after 
 things and seize them before he knows where they are."
 
 DEAD YESTERDAY 407 
 
 She paused. "He got hold of me, and I hurt him". And 
 I wouldn't let go, because I loved him, and love seemed a 
 short cut to everything. And I didn't know where I was. 
 Even when I let him go I didn't know where I was. I only 
 felt I couldn't bear what was coming." 
 
 "What was coming?" Hugh repeated. 
 
 "His letting me go, I mean. I could do it; I couldn't 
 have it done to me. And while I didn't understand, I could 
 do nothing but stupidly suffer. But now, especially since 
 I've been so much with Jane, I do understand. I haven't 
 stopped caring one can't, if one ever has but I see." 
 
 She ceased, and for a long time they stood side by side, 
 their eyes on the prospect before them. Hugh was filling 
 up the gaps in what she had said to him, seeing how it all 
 fitted in. At last he looked again at Daphne. She was look- 
 ing out to where beyond the farther ridge, above the wooded 
 valley with its dense leafless trees, the sun was beginning 
 to set in a pale glory. Untinged by red as yet, the sky shone 
 with a pure intensity of gathered light. That same light, 
 that seemed only the clearer and stronger from its colourless 
 austerity, was reflected in the girl's wide-open eyes. Straight 
 and almost stern she stood, her smooth fair hair blown back 
 from her face, her lips shut in a firm line, her profile in its 
 strength and purity reminding Hugh, as it had often done 
 before, of that of some Greek urn-bearer. For a moment 
 he seemed to see her, as she stood looking out, not only at 
 the visible scene before her eyes, but at the vision of all she 
 had learned to see through suffering, as the type of a new 
 generation, that might even now be arising out of ruinous 
 war. War was far from them there, but to his ears, and he 
 knew to hers, the valley resounded with its agony, and the 
 pale sun hung blood-red over devastated and corrupting fields. 
 Her face wore a look he had seen on the faces of one or two 
 among the hundreds of men who had come back from the 
 front. Thousands had looked at the anguish and degradation 
 of war. One or two had seen. What they had seen in Flan- 
 ders, in Poland, in Serbia, Daphne had seen by the awful 
 strength of her love. Events exist in the intensity with which
 
 408 DEAD YESTERDAY 
 
 the individual is capable of receiving them; and for Daphne 
 the suffering which had made her reject Nigel had rent the 
 veil of illusion from end to end. Hugh understood how Nigel's 
 facile soul had shrivelled up in the white blaze of a passion 
 such as hers, pure and fierce enough to deny itself happiness 
 and shut the door on hope. Before it his own feeling was a 
 rushlight that paled and trembled. 
 
 "Do you know, Daphne," he said, "I cannot pity 
 you." 
 
 "Pity me?" Daphne lifted her head with a movement 
 that was not without its hint of pride. "Oh, no. . . . Nor I 
 you, Hugh." 
 
 Their eyes met on that, in full understanding. Together 
 they walked back. On the edge of the little lawn Aurelia 
 stood; she had just come out of the house, and watched them 
 as they approached. Hugh paused a few paces from 
 her. 
 
 "Yes, Aurelia," he said. "You are right." 
 
 She raised her eyes to his, and her smile, passing from 
 him to Daphne, caressed them both with its slow ten- 
 derness. 
 
 "Daphne has made you see?" 
 
 "No; you have made me see. Daphne showed me that 
 I did though I didn't know it." 
 
 Aurelia smiled still. 
 
 "Well, we won't quarrel about that," she said. "Come in, 
 both of you. The baby's in bed, and supper waiting." 
 
 THE END.
 
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