The man did know. “There’s sense in that.” he said approvingly. Peace was restored, and they would have reached Salisbury if they had not had some more beer. It unloosed the soldier’s fancies, and again he spoke of old Em’ly, and recited the poem, with Aristophanic variations.

“Jolly day,” repeated Stephen, with a straightening of the eyebrows and a quick glance at the other’s body. He then warned him against the variations. In consequence he was accused of being a member of the Y.M.C.A. His blood boiled at this. He refuted the charge, and became great friends with the soldier, for the third time.

“Any objection to ‘Saucy Mr. and Mrs. Tackleton’?”

“Rather not.”

The soldier sang “Saucy Mr. and Mrs. Tackleton.” It is really a work for two voices, most of the sauciness disappearing when taken as a solo. Nor is Mrs. Tackleton’s name Em’lv.

“I call it a jolly rotten song,” said Stephen crossly. “I won’t stand being got at.”

“P’r’aps y’like therold song. Lishen.

 

    “‘Of all the gulls that arsshmart,

    There’s none line pretty — Em’ly;

    For she’s the darling of merart’”

“Now, that’s wrong.” He rode up close to the singer.

“Shright.”

“’Tisn’t.”

“It’s as my mother taught me.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’ll not alter from mother’s way.”

Stephen was baffled. Then he said, “How does your mother make it rhyme?”

“Wot?”

“Squat. You’re an ass, and I’m not. Poems want rhymes. ‘Alley’ comes next line.”

He said “alley” was — welcome to come if it liked.

“It can’t. You want Sally. Sally — alley. Em’ly-alley doesn’t do.”

“Emily-femily!” cried the soldier, with an inspiration that was not his when sober. “My mother taught me femily.

“‘For she’s the darling of merart, And she lives in my femily.’”

“Well, you’d best be careful, Thomas, and your mother too.”

“Your mother’s no better than she should be,” said Thomas vaguely.

“Do you think I haven’t heard that before?” retorted the boy. The other concluded he might now say anything. So he might — the name of old Emily excepted. Stephen cared little about his benefactress’s honour, but a great deal about his own. He had made Mrs. Failing into a test. For the moment he would die for her, as a knight would die for a glove. He is not to be distinguished from a hero.

Old Sarum was passed. They approached the most beautiful spire in the world. “Lord! another of these large churches!” said the soldier. Unfriendly to Gothic, he lifted both hands to his nose, and declared that old Em’ly was buried there. He lay in the mud. His horse trotted back towards Amesbury, Stephen had twisted him out of the saddle.

“I’ve done him!” he yelled, though no one was there to hear. He rose up in his stirrups and shouted with joy. He flung his arms round Aeneas’s neck. The elderly horse understood, capered, and bolted. It was a centaur that dashed into Salisbury and scattered the people. In the stable he would not dismount. “I’ve done him!” he yelled to the ostlers — apathetic men. Stretching upwards, he clung to a beam. Aeneas moved on and he was left hanging. Greatly did he incommode them by his exercises. He pulled up, he circled, he kicked the other customers. At last he fell to the earth, deliciously fatigued. His body worried him no longer.

He went, like the baby he was, to buy a white linen hat. There were soldiers about, and he thought it would disguise him. Then he had a little lunch to steady the beer. This day had turned out admirably. All the money that should have fed Rickie he could spend on himself. Instead of toiling over the Cathedral and seeing the stuffed penguins, he could stop the whole thing in the cattle market. There he met and made some friends. He watched the cheap-jacks, and saw how necessary it was to have a confident manner. He spoke confidently himself about lambs, and people listened. He spoke confidently about pigs, and they roared with laughter. He must learn more about pigs. He witnessed a performance — not too namby-pamby — of Punch and Judy. “Hullo, Podge!” cried a naughty little girl. He tried to catch her, and failed. She was one of the Cadford children. For Salisbury on market day, though it is not picturesque, is certainly representative, and you read the names of half the Wiltshire villages upon the carriers’ carts. He found, in Penny Farthing Street, the cart from Wintersbridge. It would not start for several hours, but the passengers always used it as a club, and sat in it every now and then during the day. No less than three ladies were these now, staring at the shafts. One of them was Flea Thompson’s girl. He asked her, quite politely, why her lover had broken faith with him in the rain. She was silent. He warned her of approaching vengeance. She was still silent, but another woman hoped that a gentleman would not be hard on a poor person. Something in this annoyed him; it wasn’t a question of gentility and poverty — it was a question of two men. He determined to go back by Cadbury Rings where the shepherd would now be.

He did. But this part must be treated lightly. He rode up to the culprit with the air of a Saint George, spoke a few stern words from the saddle, tethered his steed to a hurdle, and took off his coat. “Are you ready?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” said Flea, and flung him on his back.

“That’s not fair,” he protested.

The other did not reply, but flung him on his head.

“How on earth did you learn that?”

“By trying often,” said Flea.

Stephen sat on the ground, picking mud out of his forehead. “I meant it to be fists,” he said gloomily.

“I know, sir.”

“It’s jolly smart though, and — and I beg your pardon all round.” It cost him a great deal to say this, but he was sure that it was the right thing to say. He must acknowledge the better man. Whereas most people, if they provoke a fight and are flung, say, “You cannot rob me of my moral victory.”

There was nothing further to be done. He mounted again, not exactly depressed, but feeling that this delightful world is extraordinarily unreliable. He had never expected to fling the soldier, or to be flung by Flea. “One nips or is nipped,” he thought, “and never knows beforehand. I should not be surprised if many people had more in them than I suppose, while others were just the other way round. I haven’t seen that sort of thing in Ingersoll, but it’s quite important.” Then his thoughts turned to a curious incident of long ago, when he had been “nipped” — as a little boy. He was trespassing in those woods, when he met in a narrow glade a flock of sheep. They had neither dog nor shepherd, and advanced towards him silently. He was accustomed to sheep, but had never happened to meet them in a wood before, and disliked it. He retired, slowly at first, then fast; and the flock, in a dense mass, pressed after him. His terror increased. He turned and screamed at their long white faces; and still they came on, all stuck together, like some horrible jell — . If once he got into them! Bellowing and screeching, he rushed into the undergrowth, tore himself all over, and reached home in convulsions. Mr. Failing, his only grown-up friend, was sympathetic, but quite stupid. “Pan ovium custos,” he sympathetic, as he pulled out the thorns. “Why not?” “Pan ovium custos.” Stephen learnt the meaning of the phrase at school, “A pan of eggs for custard.” He still remembered how the other boys looked as he peeped at them between his legs, awaiting the descending cane.

So he returned, full of pleasant disconnected thoughts. He had had a rare good time. He liked every one — even that poor little Elliot — and yet no one mattered. They were all out. On the landing he saw the housemaid. He felt skittish and irresistible. Should he slip his arm round her waist? Perhaps better not; she might box his ears. And he wanted to smoke on the roof before dinner. So he only said, “Please will you stop the boy blacking my brown boots,” and she with downcast eyes, answered, “Yes, sir; I will indeed.”

His room was in the pediment. Classical architecture, like all things in this world that attempt serenity, is bound to have its lapses into the undignified, and Cadover lapsed hopelessly when it came to Stephen’s room. It gave him one round window, to see through which he must lie upon his stomach, one trapdoor opening upon the leads, three iron girders, three beams, six buttresses, no circling, unless you count the walls, no walls unless you count the ceiling and in its embarrassment presented him with the gurgly cistern that supplied the bath water. Here he lived, absolutely happy, and unaware that Mrs. Failing had poked him up here on purpose, to prevent him from growing too bumptious. Here he worked and sang and practised on the ocharoon. Here, in the crannies, he had constructed shelves and cupboards and useless little drawers. He had only one picture — the Demeter of Onidos — and she hung straight from the roof like a joint of meat. Once she was in the drawing-room; but Mrs. Failing had got tired of her, and decreed her removal and this degradation. Now she faced the sunrise; and when the moon rose its light also fell on her, and trembled, like light upon the sea. For she was never still, and if the draught increased she would twist on her string, and would sway and tap upon the rafters until Stephen woke up and said what he thought of her. “Want your nose?” he would murmur. “Don’t you wish you may get it” Then he drew the clothes over his ears, while above him, in the wind and the darkness, the goddess continued her motions.

Today, as he entered, he trod on the pile of sixpenny reprints. Leighton had brought them up. He looked at the portraits in their covers, and began to think that these people were not everything. What a fate, to look like Colonel Ingersoll, or to marry Mrs. Julia P. Chunk! The Demeter turned towards him as he bathed, and in the cold water he sang —

    “They aren’t beautiful, they aren’t modest;

    I’d just as soon follow an old stone goddess,”

and sprang upward through the skylight on to the roof. Years ago, when a nurse was washing him, he had slipped from her soapy hands and got up here. She implored him to remember that he was a little gentleman; but he forgot the fact — if it was a fact — and not even the butler could get him down. Mr. Failing, who was sitting alone in the garden too ill to read, heard a shout, “Am I an acroterium?” He looked up and saw a naked child poised on the summit of Cadover. “Yes,” he replied; “but they are unfashionable. Go in,” and the vision had remained with him as something peculiarly gracious. He felt that nonsense and beauty have close connections, — closer connections than Art will allow, — and that both would remain when his own heaviness and his own ugliness had perished. Mrs. Failing found in his remains a sentence that puzzled her. “I see the respectable mansion. I see the smug fortress of culture. The doors are shut. The windows are shut. But on the roof the children go dancing for ever.”

Stephen was a child no longer. He never stood on the pediment now, except for a bet. He never, or scarcely ever, poured water down the chimneys. When he caught the cat, he seldom dropped her into the housekeeper’s bedroom. But still, when the weather was fair, he liked to come up after bathing, and get dry in the sun. Today he brought with him a towel, a pipe of tobacco, and Rickie’s story. He must get it done some time, and he was tired of the six-penny reprints. The sloping gable was warm, and he lay back on it with closed eyes, gasping for pleasure. Starlings criticized him, snots fell on his clean body, and over him a little cloud was tinged with the colours of evening. “Good! good!” he whispered. “Good, oh good!” and opened the manuscript reluctantly.

What a production! Who was this girl? Where did she go to? Why so much talk about trees? “I take it he wrote it when feeling bad,” he murmured, and let it fall into the gutter. It fell face downwards, and on the back he saw a neat little resume in Miss Pembroke’s handwriting, intended for such as him. “Allegory. Man = modern civilization (in bad sense). Girl = getting into touch with Nature.”

In touch with Nature! The girl was a tree! He lit his pipe and gazed at the radiant earth. The foreground was hidden, but there was the village with its elms, and the Roman Road, and Cadbury Rings. There, too, were those woods, and little beech copses, crowning a waste of down. Not to mention the air, or the sun, or water. Good, oh good!

In touch with Nature! What cant would the books think of next? His eyes closed. He was sleepy. Good, oh good! Sighing into his pipe, he fell asleep.

XIII

Glad as Agnes was when her lover returned for lunch, she was at the same time rather dismayed: she knew that Mrs. Failing would not like her plans altered. And her dismay was justified. Their hostess was a little stiff, and asked whether Stephen had been obnoxious.

“Indeed he hasn’t. He spent the whole time looking after me.”

“From which I conclude he was more obnoxious than usual.” Rickie praised him diligently. But his candid nature showed everything through. His aunt soon saw that they had not got on. She had expected this — almost planned it. Nevertheless she resented it, and her resentment was to fall on him.

The storm gathered slowly, and many other things went to swell it. Weakly people, if they are not careful, hate one another, and when the weakness is hereditary the temptation increases. Elliots had never got on among themselves. They talked of “The Family,” but they always turned outwards to the health and beauty that lie so promiscuously about the world. Rickie’s father had turned, for a time at all events, to his mother. Rickie himself was turning to Agnes. And Mrs. Failing now was irritable, and unfair to the nephew who was lame like her horrible brother and like herself. She thought him invertebrate and conventional. She was envious of his happiness. She did not trouble to understand his art. She longed to shatter him, but knowing as she did that the human thunderbolt often rebounds and strikes the wielder, she held her hand.

Agnes watched the approaching clouds. Rickie had warned her; now she began to warn him. As the visit wore away she urged him to be pleasant to his aunt, and so convert it into a success.

He replied, “Why need it be a success?” — a reply in the manner of Ansell.

She laughed. “Oh, that’s so like you men — all theory! What about your great theory of hating no one? As soon as it comes in useful you drop it.”

“I don’t hate Aunt Emily. Honestly. But certainly I don’t want to be near her or think about her. Don’t you think there are two great things in life that we ought to aim at — truth and kindness? Let’s have both if we can, but let’s be sure of having one or the other. My aunt gives up both for the sake of being funny.”

“And Stephen Wonham,” pursued Agnes. “There’s another person you hate — or don’t think about, if you prefer it put like that.”

“The truth is, I’m changing. I’m beginning to see that the world has many people in it who don’t matter. I had time for them once. Not now.” There was only one gate to the kingdom of heaven now.

Agnes surprised him by saying, “But the Wonham boy is evidently a part of your aunt’s life. She laughs at him, but she is fond of him.”

“What’s that to do with it?”

“You ought to be pleasant to him on account of it.”

“Why on earth?”

She flushed a little. “I’m old-fashioned. One ought to consider one’s hostess, and fall in with her life. After we leave it’s another thing. But while we take her hospitality I think it’s our duty.”

Her good sense triumphed. Henceforth he tried to fall in with Aunt Emily’s life. Aunt Emily watched him trying. The storm broke, as storms sometimes do, on Sunday.

Sunday church was a function at Cadover, though a strange one. The pompous landau rolled up to the house at a quarter to eleven. Then Mrs. Failing said, “Why am I being hurried?” and after an interval descended the steps in her ordinary clothes. She regarded the church as a sort of sitting-room, and refused even to wear a bonnet there. The village was shocked, but at the same time a little proud; it would point out the carriage to strangers and gossip about the pale smiling lady who sat in it, always alone, always late, her hair always draped in an expensive shawl.

This Sunday, though late as usual, she was not alone. Miss Pembroke, en grande toilette, sat by her side. Rickie, looking plain and devout, perched opposite. And Stephen actually came too, murmuring that it would be the Benedicite, which he had never minded. There was also the Litany, which drove him into the air again, much to Mrs. Failing’s delight. She enjoyed this sort of thing. It amused her when her Protege left the pew, looking bored, athletic, and dishevelled, and groping most obviously for his pipe. She liked to keep a thoroughbred pagan to shock people. “He’s gone to worship Nature,” she whispered. Rickie did not look up. “Don’t you think he’s charming?” He made no reply.

“Charming,” whispered Agnes over his head.

During the sermon she analysed her guests. Miss Pembroke — undistinguished, unimaginative, tolerable. Rickie — intolerable. “And how pedantic!” she mused. “He smells of the University library. If he was stupid in the right way he would be a don.” She looked round the tiny church; at the whitewashed pillars, the humble pavement, the window full of magenta saints. There was the vicar’s wife. And Mrs. Wilbraham’s bonnet. Ugh! The rest of the congregation were poor women, with flat, hopeless faces — she saw them Sunday after Sunday, but did not know their names — diversified with a few reluctant plough-boys, and the vile little school children row upon row. “Ugh! what a hole,” thought Mrs. Failing, whose Christianity was the type best described as “cathedral.” “What a hole for a cultured woman! I don’t think it has blunted my sensations, though; I still see its squalor as clearly as ever. And my nephew pretends he is worshipping. Pah! the hypocrite.” Above her the vicar spoke of the danger of hurrying from one dissipation to another. She treasured his words, and continued: “I cannot stand smugness. It is the one, the unpardonable sin. Fresh air! The fresh air that has made Stephen Wonham fresh and companionable and strong. Even if it kills, I will let in the fresh air.”

Thus reasoned Mrs. Failing, in the facile vein of Ibsenism. She imagined herself to be a cold-eyed Scandinavian heroine. Really she was an English old lady, who did not mind giving other people a chill provided it was not infectious.

Agnes, on the way back, noted that her hostess was a little snappish. But one is so hungry after morning service, and either so hot or so cold, that he would be a saint indeed who becomes a saint at once. Mrs. Failing, after asserting vindictively that it was impossible to make a living out of literature, was courteously left alone. Roast-beef and moselle might yet work miracles, and Agnes still hoped for the introductions — the introductions to certain editors and publishers — on which her whole diplomacy was bent. Rickie would not push himself. It was his besetting sin. Well for him that he would have a wife, and a loving wife, who knew the value of enterprise.

Unfortunately lunch was a quarter of an hour late, and during that quarter of an hour the aunt and the nephew quarrelled. She had been inveighing against the morning service, and he quietly and deliberately replied, “If organized religion is anything — and it is something to me — it will not be wrecked by a harmonium and a dull sermon.”

Mrs. Failing frowned. “I envy you. It is a great thing to have no sense of beauty.”

“I think I have a sense of beauty, which leads me astray if I am not careful.”

“But this is a great relief to me. I thought the present day young man was an agnostic! Isn’t agnosticism all the thing at Cambridge?”

“Nothing is the ‘thing’ at Cambridge. If a few men are agnostic there, it is for some grave reason, not because they are irritated with the way the parson says his vowels.”

Agnes intervened. “Well, I side with Aunt Emily. I believe in ritual.”

“Don’t, my dear, side with me. He will only say you have no sense of religion either.”

“Excuse me,” said Rickie, perhaps he too was a little hungry,— “I never suggested such a thing. I never would suggest such a thing. Why cannot you understand my position? I almost feel it is that you won’t.”

“I try to understand your position night and day dear — what you mean, what you like, why you came to Cadover, and why you stop here when my presence is so obviously unpleasing to you.”

“Luncheon is served,” said Leighton, but he said it too late. They discussed the beef and the moselle in silence. The air was heavy and ominous. Even the Wonham boy was affected by it, shivered at times, choked once, and hastened anew into the sun. He could not understand clever people.

Agnes, in a brief anxious interview, advised the culprit to take a solitary walk. She would stop near Aunt Emily, and pave the way for an apology.

“Don’t worry too much. It doesn’t really matter.”

“I suppose not, dear. But it seems a pity, considering we are so near the end of our visit.”

“Rudeness and Grossness matter, and I’ve shown both, and already I’m sorry, and I hope she’ll let me apologize. But from the selfish point of view it doesn’t matter a straw. She’s no more to us than the Wonham boy or the boot boy.”

“Which way will you walk?”

“I think to that entrenchment. Look at it.” They were sitting on the steps. He stretched out his hand to Cadsbury Rings, and then let it rest for a moment on her shoulder. “You’re changing me,” he said gently. “God bless you for it.”

He enjoyed his walk. Cadford was a charming village and for a time he hung over the bridge by the mill. So clear was the stream that it seemed not water at all, but some invisible quintessence in which the happy minnows and the weeds were vibrating. And he paused again at the Roman crossing, and thought for a moment of the unknown child. The line curved suddenly: certainly it was dangerous. Then he lifted his eyes to the down. The entrenchment showed like the rim of a saucer, and over its narrow line peeped the summit of the central tree. It looked interesting. He hurried forward, with the wind behind him.

The Rings were curious rather than impressive. Neither embankment was over twelve feet high, and the grass on them had not the exquisite green of Old Sarum, but was grey and wiry. But Nature (if she arranges anything) had arranged that from them, at all events, there should be a view. The whole system of the country lay spread before Rickie, and he gained an idea of it that he never got in his elaborate ride. He saw how all the water converges at Salisbury; how Salisbury lies in a shallow basin, just at the change of the soil. He saw to the north the Plain, and the stream of the Cad flowing down from it, with a tributary that broke out suddenly, as the chalk streams do: one village had clustered round the source and clothed itself with trees. He saw Old Sarum, and hints of the Avon valley, and the land above Stone Henge. And behind him he saw the great wood beginning unobtrusively, as if the down too needed shaving; and into it the road to London slipped, covering the bushes with white dust. Chalk made the dust white, chalk made the water clear, chalk made the clean rolling outlines of the land, and favoured the grass and the distant coronals of trees. Here is the heart of our island: the Chilterns, the North Downs, the South Downs radiate hence. The fibres of England unite in Wiltshire, and did we condescend to worship her, here we should erect our national shrine.

People at that time were trying to think imperially, Rickie wondered how they did it, for he could not imagine a place larger than England. And other people talked of Italy, the spiritual fatherland of us all. Perhaps Italy would prove marvellous. But at present he conceived it as something exotic, to be admired and reverenced, but not to be loved like these unostentatious fields. He drew out a book, it was natural for him to read when he was happy, and to read out loud, — and for a little time his voice disturbed the silence of that glorious afternoon. The book was Shelley, and it opened at a passage that he had cherished greatly two years before, and marked as “very good.”

“I never was attached to that great sect Whose doctrine is that each one should select Out of the world a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion, — though it is the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world, — and so With one sad friend, perhaps a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go.”

It was “very good” — fine poetry, and, in a sense, true. Yet he was surprised that he had ever selected it so vehemently. This afternoon it seemed a little inhuman. Half a mile off two lovers were keeping company where all the villagers could see them. They cared for no one else; they felt only the pressure of each other, and so progressed, silent and oblivious, across the land. He felt them to be nearer the truth than Shelley. Even if they suffered or quarrelled, they would have been nearer the truth. He wondered whether they were Henry Adams and Jessica Thompson, both of this parish, whose banns had been asked for the second time in the church this morning. Why could he not marry on fifteen shillings a-week? And be looked at them with respect, and wished that he was not a cumbersome gentleman.

Presently he saw something less pleasant — his aunt’s pony carriage. It had crossed the railway, and was advancing up the Roman road along by the straw sacks. His impulse was to retreat, but someone waved to him. It was Agnes. She waved continually, as much as to say, “Wait for us.” Mrs. Failing herself raised the whip in a nonchalant way. Stephen Wonham was following on foot, some way behind. He put the Shelley back into his pocket and waited for them. When the carriage stopped by some hurdles he went down from the embankment and helped them to dismount. He felt rather nervous.

His aunt gave him one of her disquieting smiles, but said pleasantly enough, “Aren’t the Rings a little immense? Agnes and I came here because we wanted an antidote to the morning service.”

“Pang!” said the church bell suddenly; “pang! pang!” It sounded petty and ludicrous. They all laughed. Rickie blushed, and Agnes, with a glance that said “apologize,” darted away to the entrenchment, as though unable to restrain her curiosity.

“The pony won’t move,” said Mrs. Failing. “Leave him for Stephen to tie up. Will you walk me to the tree in the middle? Booh! I’m tired. Give me your arm — unless you’re tired as well.”

“No. I came out partly in the hope of helping you.”

“How sweet of you.” She contrasted his blatant unselfishness with the hardness of Stephen. Stephen never came out to help you. But if you got hold of him he was some good. He didn’t wobble and bend at the critical moment. Her fancy compared Rickie to the cracked church bell sending forth its message of “Pang! pang!” to the countryside, and Stephen to the young pagans who were said to lie under this field guarding their pagan gold.

“This place is full of ghosties,” she remarked; “have you seen any yet?”

“I’ve kept on the outer rim so far.”

“Let’s go to the tree in the centre.”

“Here’s the path.” The bank of grass where he had sat was broken by a gap, through which chariots had entered, and farm carts entered now. The track, following the ancient track, led straight through turnips to a similar gap in the second circle, and thence continued, through more turnips, to the central tree.

“Pang!” said the bell, as they paused at the entrance.

“You needn’t unharness,” shouted Mrs. Failing, for Stephen was approaching the carriage.

“Yes, I will,” he retorted.

“You will, will you?” she murmured with a smile. “I wish your brother wasn’t quite so uppish. Let’s get on. Doesn’t that church distract you?”

“It’s so faint here,” said Rickie. And it sounded fainter inside, though the earthwork was neither thick nor tall; and the view, though not hidden, was greatly diminished. He was reminded for a minute of that chalk pit near Madingley, whose ramparts excluded the familiar world. Agnes was here, as she had once been there. She stood on the farther barrier, waiting to receive them when they had traversed the heart of the camp.

“Admire my mangel-wurzels,” said Mrs. Failing. “They are said to grow so splendidly on account of the dead soldiers. Isn’t it a sweet thought? Need I say it is your brother’s?”

“Wonham’s?” he suggested. It was the second time that she had made the little slip. She nodded, and he asked her what kind of ghosties haunted this curious field.

“The D.,” was her prompt reply. “He leans against the tree in the middle, especially on Sunday afternoons and all the worshippers rise through the turnips and dance round him.”

“Oh, these were decent people,” he replied, looking downwards— “soldiers and shepherds. They have no ghosts. They worshipped Mars or Pan-Erda perhaps; not the devil.”

“Pang!” went the church, and was silent, for the afternoon service had begun. They entered the second entrenchment, which was in height, breadth, and composition, similar to the first, and excluded still more of the view. His aunt continued friendly. Agnes stood watching them.

“Soldiers may seem decent in the past,” she continued, “but wait till they turn into Tommies from Bulford Camp, who rob the chickens.”

“I don’t mind Bulford Camp,” said Rickie, looking, though in vain, for signs of its snowy tents. “The men there are the sons of the men here, and have come back to the old country. War’s horrible, yet one loves all continuity. And no one could mind a shepherd.”

“Indeed! What about your brother — a shepherd if ever there was? Look how he bores you! Don’t be so sentimental.”

“But — oh, you mean— “

“Your brother Stephen.”

He glanced at her nervously. He had never known her so queer before. Perhaps it was some literary allusion that he had not caught; but her face did not at that moment suggest literature. In the differential tones that one uses to an old and infirm person he said “Stephen Wonham isn’t my brother, Aunt Emily.”

“My dear, you’re that precise. One can’t say ‘half-brother’ every time.”

They approached the central tree.

“How you do puzzle me,” he said, dropping her arm and beginning to laugh. “How could I have a half-brother?”

She made no answer.

Then a horror leapt straight at him, and he beat it back and said, “I will not be frightened.” The tree in the centre revolved, the tree disappeared, and he saw a room — the room where his father had lived in town. “Gently,” he told himself, “gently.” Still laughing, he said, “I, with a brother-younger it’s not possible.” The horror leapt again, and he exclaimed, “It’s a foul lie!”

“My dear, my dear!”

“It’s a foul lie! He wasn’t — I won’t stand— “

“My dear, before you say several noble things, remember that it’s worse for him than for you — worse for your brother, for your half-brother, for your younger brother.”

But he heard her no longer. He was gazing at the past, which he had praised so recently, which gaped ever wider, like an unhallowed grave. Turn where he would, it encircled him. It took visible form: it was this double entrenchment of the Rings. His mouth went cold, and he knew that he was going to faint among the dead. He started running, missed the exit, stumbled on the inner barrier, fell into darkness —

“Get his head down,” said a voice. “Get the blood back into him. That’s all he wants. Leave him to me. Elliot!” — the blood was returning— “Elliot, wake up!”

He woke up. The earth he had dreaded lay close to his eyes, and seemed beautiful. He saw the structure of the clods. A tiny beetle swung on the grass blade. On his own neck a human hand pressed, guiding the blood back to his brain.

There broke from him a cry, not of horror but of acceptance. For one short moment he understood. “Stephen— “ he began, and then he heard his own name called: “Rickie! Rickie!” Agnes hurried from her post on the margin, and, as if understanding also, caught him to her breast.

Stephen offered to help them further, but finding that he made things worse, he stepped aside to let them pass and then sauntered inwards. The whole field, with concentric circles, was visible, and the broad leaves of the turnips rustled in the gathering wind. Miss Pembroke and Elliot were moving towards the Cadover entrance. Mrs. Failing stood watching in her turn on the opposite bank. He was not an inquisitive boy; but as he leant against the tree he wondered what it was all about, and whether he would ever know.

XIV

On the way back — at that very level-crossing where he had paused on his upward route — Rickie stopped suddenly and told the girl why he had fainted. Hitherto she had asked him in vain. His tone had gone from him, and he told her harshly and brutally, so that she started away with a horrified cry. Then his manner altered, and he exclaimed: “Will you mind? Are you going to mind?”

“Of course I mind,” she whispered. She turned from him, and saw up on the sky-line two figures that seemed to be of enormous size.

“They’re watching us. They stand on the edge watching us. This country’s so open — you — you can’t they watch us wherever we go. Of course you mind.”

They heard the rumble of the train, and she pulled herself together. “Come, dearest, we shall be run over next. We’re saying things that have no sense.” But on the way back he repeated: “They can still see us. They can see every inch of this road. They watch us for ever.” And when they arrived at the steps there, sure enough, were still the two figures gazing from the outer circle of the Rings.

She made him go to his room at once: he was almost hysterical. Leighton brought out some tea for her, and she sat drinking it on the little terrace. Of course she minded.

Again she was menaced by the abnormal. All had seemed so fair and so simple, so in accordance with her ideas; and then, like a corpse, this horror rose up to the surface. She saw the two figures descend and pause while one of them harnessed the pony; she saw them drive downward, and knew that before long she must face them and the world. She glanced at her engagement ring.

When the carriage drove up Mrs. Failing dismounted, but did not speak. It was Stephen who inquired after Rickie. She, scarcely knowing the sound of her own voice, replied that he was a little tired.

“Go and put up the pony,” said Mrs. Failing rather sharply.

“Agnes, give me some tea.”

“It is rather strong,” said Agnes as the carriage drove off and left them alone. Then she noticed that Mrs. Failing herself was agitated. Her lips were trembling, and she saw the boy depart with manifest relief.

“Do you know,” she said hurriedly, as if talking against time— “Do you know what upset Rickie?”

“I do indeed know.”

“Has he told any one else?”

“I believe not.”

“Agnes — have I been a fool?”

“You have been very unkind,” said the girl, and her eyes filled with tears.

For a moment Mrs. Failing was annoyed. “Unkind? I do not see that at all. I believe in looking facts in the face. Rickie must know his ghosts some time. Why not this afternoon?”

She rose with quiet dignity, but her tears came faster. “That is not so. You told him to hurt him. I cannot think what you did it for. I suppose because he was rude to you after church. It is a mean, cowardly revenge.

“What — what if it’s a lie?”

“Then, Mrs. Failing, it is sickening of you. There is no other word. Sickening. I am sorry — a nobody like myself — to speak like this. How COULD you, oh, how could you demean yourself? Why, not even a poor person — Her indignation was fine and genuine. But her tears fell no longer. Nothing menaced her if they were not really brothers.

“It is not a lie, my clear; sit down. I will swear so much solemnly. It is not a lie, but— “

Agnes waited.

“ — we can call it a lie if we choose.”

“I am not so childish. You have said it, and we must all suffer. You have had your fun: I conclude you did it for fun. You cannot go back. He— “ She pointed towards the stables, and could not finish her sentence.

“I have not been a fool twice.”

Agnes did not understand.

“My dense lady, can’t you follow? I have not told Stephen one single word, neither before nor now.”

There was a long silence.

Indeed, Mrs. Failing was in an awkward position.

Rickie had irritated her, and, in her desire to shock him, she had imperilled her own peace. She had felt so unconventional upon the hillside, when she loosed the horror against him; but now it was darting at her as well. Suppose the scandal came out. Stephen, who was absolutely without delicacy, would tell it to the people as soon as tell them the time. His paganism would be too assertive; it might even be in bad taste. After all, she had a prominent position in the neighbourhood; she was talked about, respected, looked up to. After all, she was growing old. And therefore, though she had no true regard for Rickie, nor for Agnes, nor for Stephen, nor for Stephen’s parents, in whose tragedy she had assisted, yet she did feel that if the scandal revived it would disturb the harmony of Cadover, and therefore tried to retrace her steps. It is easy to say shocking things: it is so different to be connected with anything shocking. Life and death were not involved, but comfort and discomfort were.

The silence was broken by the sound of feet on the gravel. Agnes said hastily, “Is that really true — that he knows nothing?”

“You, Rickie, and I are the only people alive that know. He realizes what he is — with a precision that is sometimes alarming. Who he is, he doesn’t know and doesn’t care. I suppose he would know when I’m dead. There are papers.”

“Aunt Emily, before he comes, may I say to you I’m sorry I was so rude?”

Mrs. Failing had not disliked her courage. “My dear, you may. We’re all off our hinges this Sunday. Sit down by me again.”

Agnes obeyed, and they awaited the arrival of Stephen. They were clever enough to understand each other. The thing must be hushed up. The matron must repair the consequences of her petulance. The girl must hide the stain in her future husband’s family. Why not? Who was injured? What does a grown-up man want with a grown brother? Rickie upstairs, how grateful he would be to them for saving him.

“Stephen!”

“Yes.”

“I’m tired of you. Go and bathe in the sea.”

“All right.”

And the whole thing was settled. She liked no fuss, and so did he. He sat down on the step to tighten his bootlaces. Then he would be ready. Mrs. Failing laid two or three sovereigns on the step above him. Agnes tried to make conversation, and said, with averted eyes, that the sea was a long way off.

“The sea’s downhill. That’s all I know about it.” He swept up the money with a word of pleasure: he was kept like a baby in such things. Then he started off, but slowly, for he meant to walk till the morning.

“He will be gone days,” said Mrs. Failing. “The comedy is finished. Let us come in.”

She went to her room. The storm that she had raised had shattered her. Yet, because it was stilled for a moment, she resumed her old emancipated manner, and spoke of it as a comedy.

As for Miss Pembroke, she pretended to be emancipated no longer. People like “Stephen Wonham” were social thunderbolts, to be shunned at all costs, or at almost all costs. Her joy was now unfeigned, and she hurried upstairs to impart it to Rickie.

“I don’t think we are rewarded if we do right, but we are punished if we lie. It’s the fashion to laugh at poetic justice, but I do believe in half of it. Cast bitter bread upon the waters, and after many days it really will come back to you.” These were the words of Mr. Failing. They were also the opinions of Stewart Ansell, another unpractical person. Rickie was trying to write to him when she entered with the good news.

“Dear, we’re saved! He doesn’t know, and he never is to know. I can’t tell you how glad I am. All the time we saw them standing together up there, she wasn’t telling him at all. She was keeping him out of the way, in case you let it out. Oh, I like her! She may be unwise, but she is nice, really. She said, ‘I’ve been a fool but I haven’t been a fool twice.’ You must forgive her, Rickie. I’ve forgiven her, and she me; for at first I was so angry with her. Oh, my darling boy, I am so glad!”

He was shivering all over, and could not reply. At last he said, “Why hasn’t she told him?”

“Because she has come to her senses.”

“But she can’t behave to people like that. She must tell him.”

“Because he must be told such a real thing.”

“Such a real thing?” the girl echoed, screwing up her forehead. “But — but you don’t mean you’re glad about it?”

His head bowed over the letter. “My God — no! But it’s a real thing. She must tell him. I nearly told him myself — up there — when he made me look at the ground, but you happened to prevent me.”

How Providence had watched over them!

“She won’t tell him. I know that much.”

“Then, Agnes, darling” — he drew her to the table “we must talk together a little. If she won’t, then we ought to.”

“WE tell him?” cried the girl, white with horror. “Tell him now, when everything has been comfortably arranged?”

“You see, darling” — he took hold of her hand— “what one must do is to think the thing out and settle what’s right, I’m still all trembling and stupid. I see it mixed up with other things. I want you to help me. It seems to me that here and there in life we meet with a person or incident that is symbolical. It’s nothing in itself, yet for the moment it stands for some eternal principle. We accept it, at whatever costs, and we have accepted life. But if we are frightened and reject it, the moment, so to speak, passes; the symbol is never offered again. Is this nonsense? Once before a symbol was offered to me — I shall not tell you how; but I did accept it, and cherished it through much anxiety and repulsion, and in the end I am rewarded. There will be no reward this time. I think, from such a man — the son of such a man. But I want to do what is right.”

“Because doing right is its own reward,” said Agnes anxiously.

“I do not think that. I have seen few examples of it. Doing right is simply doing right.”

“I think that all you say is wonderfully clever; but since you ask me, it IS nonsense, dear Rickie, absolutely.”

“Thank you,” he said humbly, and began to stroke her hand. “But all my disgust; my indignation with my father, my love for— “ He broke off; he could not bear to mention the name of his mother. “I was trying to say, I oughtn’t to follow these impulses too much. There are others things. Truth. Our duty to acknowledge each man accurately, however vile he is. And apart from ideals” (here she had won the battle), “and leaving ideals aside, I couldn’t meet him and keep silent. It isn’t in me. I should blurt it out.”

“But you won’t meet him!” she cried. “It’s all been arranged. We’ve sent him to the sea. Isn’t it splendid? He’s gone. My own boy won’t be fantastic, will he?” Then she fought the fantasy on its own ground. “And, bye the bye, what you call the ‘symbolic moment’ is over. You had it up by the Rings. You tried to tell him, I interrupted you. It’s not your fault. You did all you could.”

She thought this excellent logic, and was surprised that he looked so gloomy. “So he’s gone to the sea. For the present that does settle it. Has Aunt Emily talked about him yet?”

“No. Ask her tomorrow if you wish to know. Ask her kindly. It would be so dreadful if you did not part friends, and— “

“What’s that?”

It was Stephen calling up from the drive. He had come back. Agnes threw out her hand in despair.

“Elliot!” the voice called.

They were facing each other, silent and motionless. Then Rickie advanced to the window. The girl darted in front of him. He thought he had never seen her so beautiful. She was stopping his advance quite frankly, with widespread arms.

“Elliot!”

He moved forward — into what? He pretended to himself he would rather see his brother before he answered; that it was easier to acknowledge him thus. But at the back of his soul he knew that the woman had conquered, and that he was moving forward to acknowledge her. “If he calls me again— “ he thought.

“Elliot!”

“Well, if he calls me once again, I will answer him, vile as he is.”

He did not call again.

Stephen had really come back for some tobacco, but as he passed under the windows he thought of the poor fellow who had been “nipped” (nothing serious, said Mrs. Failing), and determined to shout good-bye to him. And once or twice, as he followed the river into the darkness, he wondered what it was like to be so weak, — not to ride, not to swim, not to care for anything but books and a girl.

They embraced passionately. The danger had brought them very near to each other. They both needed a home to confront the menacing tumultuous world. And what weary years of work, of waiting, lay between them and that home! Still holding her fast, he said, “I was writing to Ansell when you came in.”

“Do you owe him a letter?”

“No.” He paused. “I was writing to tell him about this. He would help us. He always picks out the important point.”

“Darling, I don’t like to say anything, and I know that Mr. Ansell would keep a secret, but haven’t we picked out the important point for ourselves?”

He released her and tore the letter up.

XV

The sense of purity is a puzzling and at times a fearful thing. It seems so noble, and it starts as one with morality. But it is a dangerous guide, and can lead us away not only from what is gracious, but also from what is good. Agnes, in this tangle, had followed it blindly, partly because she was a woman, and it meant more to her than it can ever mean to a man; partly because, though dangerous, it is also obvious, and makes no demand upon the intellect. She could not feel that Stephen had full human rights. He was illicit, abnormal, worse than a man diseased. And Rickie remembering whose son he was, gradually adopted her opinion. He, too, came to be glad that his brother had passed from him untried, that the symbolic moment had been rejected. Stephen was the fruit of sin; therefore he was sinful, He, too, became a sexual snob.

And now he must hear the unsavoury details. That evening they sat in the walled garden. Agues, according to arrangement, left him alone with his aunt. He asked her, and was not answered.

“You are shocked,” she said in a hard, mocking voice, “It is very nice of you to be shocked, and I do not wish to grieve you further. We will not allude to it again. Let us all go on just as we are. The comedy is finished.”

He could not tolerate this. His nerves were shattered, and all that was good in him revolted as well. To the horror of Agnes, who was within earshot, he replied, “You used to puzzle me, Aunt Emily, but I understand you at last. You have forgotten what other people are like. Continual selfishness leads to that. I am sure of it. I see now how you look at the world. ‘Nice of me to be shocked!’ I want to go tomorrow, if I may.”

“Certainly, dear. The morning trains are the best.” And so the disastrous visit ended.

As he walked back to the house he met a certain poor woman, whose child Stephen had rescued at the level-crossing, and who had decided, after some delay, that she must thank the kind gentleman in person. “He has got some brute courage,” thought Rickie, “and it was decent of him not to boast about it.” But he had labelled the boy as “Bad,” and it was convenient to revert to his good qualities as seldom as possible. He preferred to brood over his coarseness, his caddish ingratitude, his irreligion. Out of these he constructed a repulsive figure, forgetting how slovenly his own perceptions had been during the past week, how dogmatic and intolerant his attitude to all that was not Love.

During the packing he was obliged to go up to the attic to find the Dryad manuscript which had never been returned. Leighton came too, and for about half an hour they hunted in the flickering light of a candle. It was a strange, ghostly place, and Rickie was quite startled when a picture swung towards him, and he saw the Demeter of Cnidus, shimmering and grey. Leighton suggested the roof. Mr. Stephen sometimes left things on the roof. So they climbed out of the skylight — the night was perfectly still — and continued the search among the gables. Enormous stars hung overhead, and the roof was bounded by chasms, impenetrable and black. “It doesn’t matter,” said Rickie, suddenly convinced of the futility of all that he did. “Oh, let us look properly,” said Leighton, a kindly, pliable man, who had tried to shirk coming, but who was genuinely sympathetic now that he had come. They were rewarded: the manuscript lay in a gutter, charred and smudged.

The rest of the year was spent by Rickie partly in bed, — he had a curious breakdown, — partly in the attempt to get his little stories published. He had written eight or nine, and hoped they would make up a book, and that the book might be called “Pan Pipes.” He was very energetic over this; he liked to work, for some imperceptible bloom had passed from the world, and he no longer found such acute pleasure in people. Mrs. Failing’s old publishers, to whom the book was submitted, replied that, greatly as they found themselves interested, they did not see their way to making an offer at present. They were very polite, and singled out for special praise “Andante Pastorale,” which Rickie had thought too sentimental, but which Agnes had persuaded him to include. The stories were sent to another publisher, who considered them for six weeks, and then returned them. A fragment of red cotton, Placed by Agnes between the leaves, had not shifted its position.

“Can’t you try something longer, Rickie?” she said; “I believe we’re on the wrong track. Try an out — and — out love-story.”

“My notion just now,” he replied, “is to leave the passions on the fringe.” She nodded, and tapped for the waiter: they had met in a London restaurant. “I can’t soar; I can only indicate. That’s where the musicians have the pull, for music has wings, and when she says ‘Tristan’ and he says ‘Isolde,’ you are on the heights at once. What do people mean when they call love music artificial?”

“I know what they mean, though I can’t exactly explain. Or couldn’t you make your stories more obvious? I don’t see any harm in that. Uncle Willie floundered hopelessly. He doesn’t read much, and he got muddled. I had to explain, and then he was delighted. Of course, to write down to the public would be quite another thing and horrible. You have certain ideas, and you must express them. But couldn’t you express them more clearly?”

“You see— “ He got no further than “you see.”

“The soul and the body. The soul’s what matters,” said Agnes, and tapped for the waiter again. He looked at her admiringly, but felt that she was not a perfect critic. Perhaps she was too perfect to be a critic. Actual life might seem to her so real that she could not detect the union of shadow and adamant that men call poetry. He would even go further and acknowledge that she was not as clever as himself — and he was stupid enough! She did not like discussing anything or reading solid books, and she was a little angry with such women as did. It pleased him to make these concessions, for they touched nothing in her that he valued. He looked round the restaurant, which was in Soho and decided that she was incomparable.

“At half-past two I call on the editor of the ‘Holborn.’ He’s got a stray story to look at, and he’s written about it.”

“Oh, Rickie! Rickie! Why didn’t you put on a boiled shirt!”

He laughed, and teased her. “‘The soul’s what matters. We literary people don’t care about dress.”

“Well, you ought to care. And I believe you do. Can’t you change?”

“Too far.” He had rooms in South Kensington. “And I’ve forgot my card-case. There’s for you!”

She shook her head. “Naughty, naughty boy! Whatever will you do?”

“Send in my name, or ask for a bit of paper and write it. Hullo! that’s Tilliard!”

Tilliard blushed, partly on account of the faux pas he had made last June, partly on account of the restaurant. He explained how he came to be pigging in Soho: it was so frightfully convenient and so frightfully cheap.

“Just why Rickie brings me,” said Miss Pembroke.

“And I suppose you’re here to study life?” said Tilliard, sitting down.

“I don’t know,” said Rickie, gazing round at the waiters and the guests.

“Doesn’t one want to see a good deal of life for writing? There’s life of a sort in Soho, — Un peu de faisan, s’il vows plait.”

Agnes also grabbed at the waiter, and paid. She always did the paying, Rickie muddled with his purse.

“I’m cramming,” pursued Tilliard, “and so naturally I come into contact with very little at present. But later on I hope to see things.” He blushed a little, for he was talking for Rickie’s edification. “It is most frightfully important not to get a narrow or academic outlook, don’t you think? A person like Ansell, who goes from Cambridge, home — home, Cambridge — it must tell on him in time.”

“But Mr. Ansell is a philosopher.”

“A very kinky one,” said Tilliard abruptly. “Not my idea of a philosopher. How goes his dissertation?”

“He never answers my letters,” replied Rickie. “He never would. I’ve heard nothing since June.”

“It’s a pity he sends in this year. There are so many good people in. He’d have afar better chance if he waited.”

“So I said, but he wouldn’t wait. He’s so keen about this particular subject.”

“What is it?” asked Agnes.

“About things being real, wasn’t it, Tilliard?”

“That’s near enough.”

“Well, good luck to him!” said the girl. “And good luck to you, Mr. Tilliard! Later on, I hope, we’ll meet again.”

They parted. Tilliard liked her, though he did not feel that she was quite in his couche sociale. His sister, for instance, would never have been lured into a Soho restaurant — except for the experience of the thing. Tilliard’s couche sociale permitted experiences. Provided his heart did not go out to the poor and the unorthodox, he might stare at them as much as he liked. It was seeing life.

Agnes put her lover safely into an omnibus at Cambridge Circus. She shouted after him that his tie was rising over his collar, but he did not hear her. For a moment she felt depressed, and pictured quite accurately the effect that his appearance would have on the editor. The editor was a tall neat man of forty, slow of speech, slow of soul, and extraordinarily kind. He and Rickie sat over a fire, with an enormous table behind them whereon stood many books waiting to be reviewed.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and paused.

Rickie smiled feebly.

“Your story does not convince.” He tapped it. “I have read it with very great pleasure. It convinces in parts, but it does not convince as a whole; and stories, don’t you think, ought to convince as a whole?”

“They ought indeed,” said Rickie, and plunged into self-depreciation. But the editor checked him.

“No — no. Please don’t talk like that. I can’t bear to hear any one talk against imagination. There are countless openings for imagination, — for the mysterious, for the supernatural, for all the things you are trying to do, and which, I hope, you will succeed in doing. I’m not OBJECTING to imagination; on the contrary, I’d advise you to cultivate it, to accent it. Write a really good ghost story and we’d take it at once. Or” — he suggested it as an alternative to imagination— “or you might get inside life. It’s worth doing.”

“Life?” echoed Rickie anxiously.

He looked round the pleasant room, as if life might be fluttering there like an imprisoned bird. Then he looked at the editor: perhaps he was sitting inside life at this very moment. “See life, Mr. Elliot, and then send us another story.” He held out his hand. “I am sorry I have to say ‘No, thank you’; it’s so much nicer to say, ‘Yes, please.’” He laid his hand on the young man’s sleeve, and added, “Well, the interview’s not been so alarming after all, has it?”

“I don’t think that either of us is a very alarming person,” was not Rickie’s reply. It was what he thought out afterwards in the omnibus. His reply was “Ow,” delivered with a slight giggle.

As he rumbled westward, his face was drawn, and his eyes moved quickly to the right and left, as if he would discover something in the squalid fashionable streets some bird on the wing, some radiant archway, the face of some god beneath a beaver hat. He loved, he was loved, he had seen death and other things; but the heart of all things was hidden. There was a password and he could not learn it, nor could the kind editor of the “Holborn” teach him. He sighed, and then sighed more piteously. For had he not known the password once — known it and forgotten it already? But at this point his fortunes become intimately connected with those of Mr. Pembroke.