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MAG PYE


By The Baroness Won Hutten
Mag Pye
Bird's Fountain
Maria
Sharrow
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Publishers New York
2O6


4…sº
*//> 2-
M A G P Y E *
BY
BETTHNA VON-HUTTEEN--
AUTHoR or “BIRD's Fountain,” “MARIA,” “shah Row,” ETC.
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK 1917

C. §


The New York ||
PUBLIC ºf BRARY
691125 A
Astor, Lerºx AND
TILDEN FOUN ºf £10 Ns
R 49-3 P
CopyRIGHT, 1917, By
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
* º
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Printed in the United States of America


i
M A G PYE
CHAPTER I
It is between seven and eight years ago that Mrs.
Brankles, inspired woman, for the first time sent Mag
to Pump Court.
It was an October evening, one of those opalescent,
moist, evanescent-looking twilights that somehow seem
to be, of all twilights, the most becoming to the
Temple.
I stood at my high window looking out on it, wonder-
ing if even May could possibly be more beautiful, and
regretting that I could never decide this most impor-
tant question, for the reason that I could never put a
May and an October evening side by side, compare
them like two pictures, and thus judge them.
My mood was as soft and mellow as the atmos-
phere—I was dining at the Lossells’; I had a new
pair of shoes that combined the usually irreconcilable
qualities of smartness, and comfort; I felt myself to
be an old young man, whereas in my bad hours, I
know myself to be a young old man; my only earth-
ly anxiety lay in the fact that I had no clean
white waistcoat until the faithful Brankles should
come.
But it was a Thursday, and on a Thursday she always
did come, I assured myself, as I stood by the win-
1


M A G. P. YE
dow visualizing the good soul's absurd face and smil-
ing at it.
Mrs. Brankles is not a plain woman, as a cow is
a plain beast; she is not regularly and overwhelm-
ingly ugly, as is the rhinoceros; she is, with her huge
dough-like face, and her tight-packed, infinitesimal fea-
tures, as crushingly ridiculous as is the hippopotamus.
She was disconcerting, I felt sure, to her vis-à-vis in
buses; she might easily disintegrate a Salvation Army
meeting.
(It is one of my minor happinesses that my laundress
should be not only a master hand at her work, but a
so remarkable appearing woman.)
The evening darkened, clouds began to gather, in
a dramatic, inexorable way; rain was coming, and I
should have to have a taxi; I had no clean white waist-
coat, but I should have one. Brankles, the peerless
Brankles, would come. She always did.
The Church clock struck the quarter, and I started.
The Lossells dine at eight, and they live in Grosvenor
Place. Lord Lossell is not annoyed with guests who
arrive late for dinner; he simply waits for no one,
and whoever the culprit may be, he or she has to join
the party in the dining-room, which is, as most people
know, not a cheering experience. I am a shy man,
and the idea gave me a real shiver of discomfort. My
faith in Brankles was hard to shake, but as I started
to dress, it wavered.
It was twenty to eight when the door opened, doubt-
less following a knock I had not heard, and in came,
bearing the basket I was longing for, not the basket’s
owner, but a much younger, and extremely prepossess-
ing female.
“Mrs. Brankles sent me with your waistcoat,” this
2


M A G P. YE
lady announced. “Mr. Brankles isn’t very well, so the
other things won’t be done till Saturday. She hopes
you won’t mind.”
I seized the waistcoat and put it on, murmuring some
insincere expression of regret regarding the health
of Brankles. The emissary looked at me in a knowl-
edgeable way.
“He’s had,” she observed, “very little sleep the last
two nights; the twins were born yesterday. Boys!”
“Oh, the twins 55
It is a proposterous fact that although Mrs. Bran-
kles's unfailing weekly visits had given me every ad-
vantage of observation, I had never assimilated the idea
that the contingency of twins was, so to speak, in
view. However, I expressed for the afflicted father the
sympathy that was plainly expected of me by the
young creature with the freckles, gave her a shilling,
snatched up my hat and coat, and preceded her down
the stairs.
Beyond observing that she was very fat, very freckled,
and emblazoned with fine, glowing eyes, I had, in my
haste, hardly noticed her. We had gone down the first
pair of stairs, I thinking that with any luck at all I
should be able to reach Grosvenor Place by eight, when
she made an arresting remark.
“I like,” she said, with a deep and audible sniff, “the
smell of this house.”
She liked, this messenger of a Pimlico laundress, the
smell of an old Temple staircase!
“What does it smell off” I asked, regarding with
disfavor the sudden onslaught of the hitherto only im-
pinging rain, and opening my umbrella.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “Oldness I should
think!”


M.A. G. P. YE
Whereupon she, uninvited, stepped under my um-
brella, and, apparently quite as a matter of course,
accompanied me through the archway, and up into
Fleet Street.
I never walk up this bit of classic pavement with-
out thinking of Goldsmith dying in the house over
the way in 1774, and the young Charles Lamb being
born almost opposite the house, only a year later—
yet how much further back in history Goldsmith seems
than Lamb' I was still mooning over this idea when
we reached Fleet Street, and a taxi drew up at the
curb.
I had not called it, and it amused me to see that
my young companion had.
“How did you know I wasn’t going in a bus P’ I
asked.
She laughed.
“Not with those new shoes, on a night like this!”
I looked down at her. She wore a scant looking
blue frock, and a tight, red cap, knitted or crocheted,
from under which a cascade of black hair poured over
her shoulders.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Margaret Pye.”
I can still hear the pattering of the rain on the
taut silk of my umbrella, as for the first time I heard
her name.
“Pye p?
“Yes; thanks for taking me under your umbrella.
Good-bye.”
But I bade her come with me in the taxi.
“I will take you as far as the Buckingham Palace
Road,” I explained, and, on seeing her face, I blushed
for the disgraceful old vehicle into which I helped her.
4.


M. A. G. P. YE
It should have been a gold coach with rose-colored in-
terior.
We made our way through the thick-clotted traffic;
she talked, bless her, how she talked'
She was nearly eleven; she lived in Blantyre Build-
ings where Mrs. Brankles lived. Mrs. Brankles was
very nice, wasn’t she? And didn’t she look like a cur-
rant bun? She, Mag, lived with her father, who was
a painter; he didn’t paint much. She had no mother,
she had reason to believe that her mother had died
before she was born. For this domestic catastrophe
I sympathized, but I was assured that whereas of
course it was very sad for Mag’s mother to be dead,
it didn’t make so much difference to Mag as it might
have done, because of Madame Aimée who lived in 183
on the top floor. Madame Aimée was sometimes called
the Poor Thing, because half her face had been burned
off years before. She wore a sort of hood round her
head, like the thing the nuns wear who come begging for
the poor.
Miss Pye herself was, as I suggested, usually—in
the Buildings—called Magpie, which she didn’t mind
a bit; she didn’t mind most things; rain, for instance;
she never minded rain, she hated a dusty wind, but
loved a wet one. She didn’t care for chocolates; it
was figs she liked, all squashed flat in little wooden
boxes; they came from Syria, which was such a beau-
tiful name for a country; it would be a good name for
a little girl baby, a very dark girl baby.
I asked her if she didn’t think Smyrna a beautiful
word, for it has always been one of my favorites, and
has to me a spicy, honeyed, lucent sound—the Smyrna
of my imagination has always been dear to me.
She agreed, adding that her father had once been
5


M A G PYE
at a place with a heavenly sounding name; Bésançon.
(This shibboleth she pronounced perfectly.) She would
go there some day, to see if it really was what it
sounded like. After which, she reverted to the subject
of Blantyre Buildings (by this time we were speeding
up the Mall, the rain had ceased, and through a lin-
gering light fog the Palace looked very nearly beautiful,
and the eyesore in front of it had become a fairy
thing).
No dogs and cats were allowed in Blantyre Build-
ings, and no loose women. Loose women, of course,
were the women who didn’t belong to any man. Yes,
she'd love half-a-crown to buy figs, only she would like
to spend half of it on chocolates for Madame Aimée.
These things and others I learned before we parted
at the corner of Buckingham Palace Road and Vic-
toria Street, but as I took off my coat in the Lossells’
black and white paved hall one great fact stood out
in my mind.
This fact, considering the child who brought my
waistcoat to me from the wash, was certainly a remark-
able one.
She was a lady.


CHAPTER II
As the looker-on, the mere recorder of the story I am
trying to tell, my own personality (vitally interest-
ing as it is to me) is of no great importance to the
reader, but for simplicity’s sake, it will be as well to
make a short statement about myself.
My name is Victor Quest; I was named Victor after
her late Majesty Queen Victoria, with whom my dear
father was all his life deeply in love. This story of
my father’s life, told by the right person, would make
a very beautiful romance, but I cannot tell it.
It was a romance as delicate, as filmy, as the dew-
spangled cobwebs on the grass on a sunny autumn
morning. Of course my father had not only never
known this lady whom he worshipped, but he had never
even heard her voice, and had never been nearer to
her than the kerb is to the middle of the street, where
the carriages go; yet she was the romance of his life.
He was fifty years old when he married, and I fear
my poor mother was chosen for her apparent absence
of personality. She was to keep his house, and, as
events proved, to produce my sister and me, but she
was not to disturb his dream; however this has little
to do with my story.
At the time when my acquaintance with the Blan-
7


M A G. P. YE
tyre Buildings people began I was forty-nine years old.
I am now nearly seven and fifty.
I am a briefless barrister, briefless to an extent which,
if it appertained to taillessness on the part of a fox, or
trunklessness on the part of an elephant, would insure
to that animal immense fame during its life, and, after
death expensive stuffing and a place in some museum.
However, though the Law loves me not, I love the
Temple, and as I have £400 a year of my own, and
turn an infrequent penny by an essay or a short tale,
I live with as great comfort as shabbiness in Pump
Court. I am a happy man, for I love many things.
I love books, prints, church music, paintings, chops
with almost burned tails, and, above all, many people,
a large number of whom I don’t know. -
I loathe politics, men with names I never am sure
how to pronounce, musical comedy, the perpetrators
of certain chatty columns in certain illustrated papers,
writing cheques, champagne, English ballads, and go-
ing out to tea.
As to the people I like, they are many.
There are certain houses, the names of whose in-
habitants I don’t know, and don’t want to know, which
are to me in a way the abodes of intimates. The names
I give these people in my mind are very probably
more beautiful or more appropriate than the ones to
which they answer.
Other houses harbor people whom I dislike. There
is one woman with a hard face—you could break coals
with it—whom I loathe as I loathe spiders, or as her two
nervous, skinned-looking daughters appear to do. She,
to me, is Mrs. Skinner. I often pass her in the street—
we buy our cheese at the same shop—and it amuses
me to think of what her amazement would be if she
8


M A G. P. YE
could know how I dislike and disapprove of her. The
eldest daughter, Annie, I am sure, will rise some cold
morning at dawn and slay her sleeping parent, and
Mrs. Skinner will deserve it. A mean, carping, bitter
woman, bent on her own rights, selfish and cruel.
In a cheap little house in Primrose Hill—whither
I sometimes walk because Charles Lamb once sent some
friends there at dawn, in the belief that they would
find the Parisian Ambassador sun-worshipping at the
summit of the Eminence—dwell a family that I love,
whom I have named the Primroses. There are many
daughters and several sons; the father I think is a
bank clerk, a tubby, round little man not unlike R.
Wilfer, and they all love each other, and the girls wear
each other’s clothes, which seems to me to indicate a
very high degree of affection.
These are two instances of my friends whom I don’t
know.
There are also people with whom I often talk,
standing beside vegetable barrows while they buy
green stuff, or resting on benches in the Embankment
Gardens. These people are poor. I don’t like them
because they are poor, I like them as individuals.
Some of them are very interesting, and their stories
are wonderful. It is also wonderful the way they trust
me.
I happen to be perfectly trustworthy, and I want
to know their stories, and ask them questions out of a
sentiment which, while it must undoubtedly endure the
name of curiosity is, I think, not meanly curious.
But how do they know that I am trustworthy? It
certainly is not my beauty that draws them. I am
very tall, very thin, a little bald, and my large, bony
nose—though I drink most moderately—is, there is
9


M A G P Y E
no denying it, red. My eyebrows are peculiar and
striking to a painful degree; they are of a fierce flaxen
color and so unmanageable that they hang down like
bushes over my eyes. Hideous eyebrows! But the very
common fascination of talking about myself is upon
me and I must brush it away. In a word, then, I am,
except to myself, an unexciting, grotesque looking, un-
successful man; the only thing about me that can in-
terest the reader is my love story, and I shall dwell
on that as little as possible for various reasons.
I shall, at present, say only that although it has
been, I now see, for many years a most useful though
sometimes painful preoccupation for me, it has neither
ruined, embittered, nor softened me; perhaps it was
always too hopeless to do any of these things. And
there’s enough about that.
In setting out to write the story of Mag Pye up to
date, I am undertaking a most interesting, but very
difficult task. The tale, as I watched its development,
had no consideration for my feelings and, instead of
unrolling itself like a decent scroll, it twisted and
recoiled in a most cussedly serpentine way.
I have, so to speak, learned in Chapter IV things I
should by rights have become aware of only in Chap-
ter XVII, whereas I have been left, say in Chapter VI,
in respect of vital matters, much unnecessary research
into the past.
A story with two distinct mysteries would be difficult
to manage by an amateur, even if it were developed
in a straightforward manner, and this one’s manner
really is deviousness itself.
I have had the further disadvantage of knowing the
story from every possible side. I have been told it by
the three chief characters, two of whom were violently
10


M A G. P. YE
prejudiced in their own favor, the third of whom being
as unreasonably favorable to one of the others.
However, one thing is certain; whether or not I can
tell it properly, the story in itself is worth telling, so
I shall get to work and do my best.
I shall tell it more or less as I heard it. It would be
simpler if I began twenty years ago at Concarneau,
but the tale would in this way lose what to me is far
more important than the old incident; the effects the
incident had on the lives of the Blantyre Buildings
folk.
But for that old Madame in Brittany, Mag would
never have existed, and Madame Aimée would never
have known us. As to Edith and Bill Bettany it is
nearly as true that but for Mag and Madame Aimée
their story would have been quite different from what
it is.
But all this reads as if I were out for mystifying,
whereas my object is to elucidate.
I shall, therefore, while not choosing, as I have said,
the most obvious method of elucidation—that of begin-
ning the story at the beginning—I shall tell it as it
became known to me, and the reader—I hope there
will be more than one—must bear with me, as I bear
with him, the different viewpoints of its different char-
acters.
Having made my apologies and expressed my hopes,
I shall now begin.


CHAPTER III
Mag and I were friends from the first.
At Christmas I took her to the Drury Lane Panto-
mime, and she enjoyed it nearly as much as I did.
A little later we went to see “Julius Caesar,” which she
did not at all like.
I fear she will never like Shakespeare, which, of
course, is dreadful, but to balance this crime she has
the virtue of loathing musical comedy (we are both
of us all for pantomimes, or legitimate modern stuff,
melodrama for choice).
Another milestone on the road of our friendship
was the event of my buying a hat for her, in Regent
Street, that first May. It was a very nice hat, of
brownish yellow straw, the color of her freckles, and
it had a tidy little bunch of sunflowers on it.
She looked a dear in it, her coarse black hair stream-
ing from under the broad brim.
Madame Aimée is, I suppose, the real heroine of this
book, but at the period of the sunflower hat Madame
Aimée Le Noir was forty, and Miss Pye only eleven, so
to Miss Pye we will concede the honors of the first de-
scription.
Truth compels me to admit that physically she was
not, at that time, all that I could have wished. If I
12


M A G P Y E
had had my own way she would have been slim—even
skinny—rather than the over-rotund person she ac-
tually was. To put it bluntly, at eleven Miss Pye was
extremely fat. She bulged, even her cheeks bulged,
and her legs were awful!
Her eyes, of course, were already beautiful; clear,
hazel eyes, with an odd sort of bluish shadow over
them, and little streaks of gold, like the petals of a
sunflower radiating from their centers. Her eyelids
were then, as now, her only real, extraordinary beauty.
They are thick, smooth, velvety things, which open
and close without crumpling. They just fold away
back, and only one clean-cut line shows how they work.
The lashes are long and thick but straight, and she
often looks down, as if her eyelids were heavy.
Her skin was at that time of an extreme ivory white,
powdered over with millions of pale freckles, almost
like gold dust.
Her mouth was large, of a good color and texture;
her teeth small, uneven and of a glittering white.
There you have her, a fat child of eleven, with fine
eyes and thick ankles.
We were great friends even at the beginning, and
as she was extremely communicative, I soon knew about
her almost as much as she knew herself; more, prob-
ably, in some ways.
Conversation such as the following used to take
place.
Mr. Quest: Well, where do you buy your food?
Miss Pye: In the Pimlico Road, of course.
Mr. Quest: Shops?
Miss Pye: Barrows when there are any—only not
meat. The barrowmen keep the meat under their beds
at night
13


M A G P Y E
Mr. Quest: Disgusting brutes'
Miss Pye: Yes—but you see they probably only
have one room, and wives and children all packed to-
gether—under the bed may be the only empty space.
Mr. Quest: No doubt it may—and do you cook, too?
Miss Pye: Of course I do. Father couldn’t cook!
Mr. Quest: What do you have to eat?
Miss Pye: All sorts of things
Mr. Quest: Roast beef? -
Miss Pye: Bless you, no—not your kind! We have
the tops of ribs roasted. We have beef pies—that is
good, with onions and gravy. Then we have toad-in-
the-hole. It’s a nasty name, but it’s very good. It’s
made of
Mr. Quest: (In an injured voice) I know what toad-
in-the-hole is made of I’ve often eaten it.
Miss Pye: Have you? (Pause.)
Mr. Quest: And what about vegetables, now?
Miss Pye: Cabbage, and sprouts, potatoes of course,
and—greens. Peas, sometimes; grass, never.
Mr. Quest: Grass?
Miss Pye: Asparagus. I’ve never tasted them.
When she did, shortly afterwards, she took to the
delicacy as a cat brought up on skim milk might take
to cream.
Mr. Quest: What do you cook on?
Miss Pye: A gas stove—not like yours. Ours is
smaller, with only two rings, but it has an oven.
Mr. Quest: Can you make bread?
Miss Pye explains that only millionaires make their
own bread; other people buy the produce of other hands.
She then resumed: “Sometimes I make a cake for
Madame Aimée—without raisins, and with lots of
spices”
14


M A G. P. YE
I think it was here that I asked her to explain
Madame Aimée to me. I knew that her friend was
practically bed-ridden, that she had had her face badly
burned, but that was about all I did know, and in
my thirst for knowledge I wanted more.
Mr. Quest: Try to tell me more about her.
Miss Pye: Well—she’s old—and her eye is blue.
Mr. Quest: Her eye?
Miss Pye: Yes. The other one is—gone. She wears
a black thing over it, like courtplaster.
Mr. Quest: What does the poor creature do?
Miss Pye: Mends.
Miss Pye: The linen—sheets and so on—for the in-
mates. The Corporal got her the job.
Mr. Quest: Who's the Corporal?
. . Mr. Quest: P
Miss Pye: You do want to know a lot of things! The
Corporal’s the Superintendent. He lives in the rooms
at the right of the gate as you go in. And he (with
indignation) has a dog!
Mr. Quest: There’s injustice for you. I hope it is
at least a nice dog.
Miss Pye: All dogs are nice, but Boomer is—Boom-
er is—not one of the nicest.
Mr. Quest: I see. Well, tell me more about the Cor-
poral.
Miss Pye: He has the Omdurman Medal, 21st Lan-
ciers.
Mr. Quest: Ha! Ha! And what are his duties now?
Miss Pye: He sees that the rules are kept.
Mr. Quest: Tell me about the rules. All about ’em.
Miss Pye: I don’t know 'em. Because, you see, we
never break 'em, father and I.
Mr. Quest: You must have read them.
15


M A G. P. YE
Miss Pye: Oh, yes. They’re stuck up—with thumb
tacks—in all the flats, but really I don’t remember
most of them. One is, you pay the rent every week.
Mr. Quest: What happens if you don’t?
Miss Pye: Nothing. At the end of the next week
you—go.
Mr. Quest: Good! And the next rule?
Miss Pye: No dogs, cats or other wild animals—ex-
cept canaries.
Mr. Quest: Ah! And then?
Miss Pye: Well, I remember about mat-shaking of
course. Over the rails into the courtyard, you know.
You can only shake them between 7 and 10 A.M. Mr.
Quest, what does A.M. mean?
Mr. Quest (gravely): It’s Irish; Airly Morning, it
ImeanS.
Miss Pye: How nice!
Drunken people, she went on, as well, were not wel-
comed by the Corporal, and wife-beating, that salu-
brious pastime of the British lower classes, was distinctly
unpopular. Quarreling on the stairs, or in the galleries,
was discouraged. Children might play, and clamor,
and bawl on the concrete floor of the courtyard, round
which the galleries run, all the week, but even they are
constrained by the Corporal to remember the Sabbath
Day, and to keep it holy.
It struck me that the infant population of Blantyre
Buildings must execrate the Seventh day. I wondered
how they amused themselves when not allowed to brawl,
and bellow, and tumble over each other in the court-
yard. I also felt a pang of pity for their mothers, when
obliged to pen them—and endure them—in the captiv-
ity of the one sitting-room.
Then we went back to Madame Aimée again.
16


M A G. P. YE
She was, it appeared, old. Of hair, she had to all
appearances none at all. The white thing under her
chin (I suggested the word “wimple”) went over her
forehead as well, and over this the afflicted woman
wore a soft blue silk scarf that completely hid the
burned side of her face.
“It’s pinned tight,” Miss Pye explained, “like the
things the Virgin Marys wear in the National Gal-
lery.”
After this I learned certain details of the child’s
own life, of the occasional excursions on which her fa-
ther took her to the great collections of paintings—
the National Gallery, the late Hereford House, and so
on, and I made a mental note to the effect that I must
learn more about her father when I had polished off
Madame Aimée.
“Years ago her face was burned clean off,” Miss Pye
went on. “I mean half of it. Wasn’t it awful, Mr.
Quest?”
Mr. Quest: Horrible! Have you even seen the
scars, Magº
Miss Pye: Oh, no! I couldn't.
Mr. Quest: Are you afraid?
Miss Pye: Yes; only I’m not so afraid as father is.
You know, father has never seen her yet, though she
has lived there for seven years. He sends her a turkey
every Christmas, and a plant on her birthday—be-
cause she is so good to me—but he won’t go to see
her, because he is afraid.
I rather sympathized with her parent, but I said
nothing. For the moment he did not engage my im-
agination, whereas the woman with the burned face did.
“What is her room like?” I asked after a pause.
Miss Pye: It’s a beautiful room. There’s a curtain,
17


M A G PYE
with parrots on it, hung across, nearly in the middle
of the room. That makes it into two rooms, you see.
The bedroom part is very plain, but the sitting-room,
is—Oh, so pretty! The chair—it’s a chair with a
seat as long as a sofa—a chaise longue, you know—is
covered with lovely blue stuff, and the tablecloth has
lace round it. And then there are the books.
Mr. Quest: Where are the books, my dear?
Miss Pye: On the walls, of course—lots and lots.
This puzzled me, my dear reader, as I am trusting
it will puzzle you. Why should a mender in a Pimlico
“Model Dwellings” have lots and lots of books?
When, however, it transpired that the lots and lots
of books had come to Mag’s friend as a legacy, I was
relieved, and was glad to hear that the emolument
contingent on the care of the communal linen was suf-
ficient to insure to the poor woman with the burned
face a very fair amount of comfort.
“She always has flowers,” I was informed, “even in
the winter.”
Mr. Quest: Does she go out to buy flowers?
Miss Pye: She never goes out. I buy them for her.
At Stocks’, in the Road.
An odd feeling had come over me that many people
will understand—chiefly, I fear, rather idle, useless
people, like myself; a feeling of such acute comprehen-
sion of the woman of whom I was thinking, such a
thorough, momentary oneness with her, that for the
time I almost felt that I myself was the burned French
mender, in her little room close under the roof.
The things I was looking at with my eyes grew
misty and vague. There were no sharp edges in the
room; nothing looked solid. I could almost see across
the vagueness the parrot-strewn curtain, the chaise
18


M A G. P. YE
longue, on which I myself seemed to be sitting, and
there was a feeling about me as thought I saw a soft,
bright, blue, fabric
“What flowers does she have?” I asked suddenly,
coming to myself with a jerk, as Mag’s surprised gaze
penetrated the odd atmosphere of “place” that hung
about me.
Miss Pye: Del-phiniums' That’s the color of her
scarves, too. And her Sunday shawl. I think it’s
the very best color of all.
Ah, well, so did the old painters, who, as the child
knew, gave their Blessed Lady garments and a veil of
that same celestial hue.
I was very brisk for a while after that, and I made
tea and pretended to be hungry and matter of fact;
for I knew that Mag’s sharp eyes had observed the
mental condition, my capability for which I sometimes
cherish as a strength, and sometimes regret as a
weakness, but which in either mood I am very shy of
letting anyone see. And I felt, as I spread large slabs
of bread and butter with joyous relish, that I must
know Madame Aimée.


CHAPTER IV
This was at the end of March, and it was a blowy
checkered day in May that I first beheld Blantyre
Buildings.
My imagination had been greatly engaged with
this human hive ever since Mag had first named it to
me, and this for more reasons than one.
Edith Lossell’s father had built it, and, years be-
fore, I had heard of the place from him; he had even
offered to take me to see it, and I had refused, because,
merely as a building, it held no interest for me. Now,
however, I knew about Mag and her father, Mrs.
Brankles, and the Corporal, so it became a real place.
I had just come back from the country, where I
had been for a dismal fortnight, and London was look-
ing its very best to my enraptured eyes.
After an excellent lunch in a stuffy old inn in Fleet
Street, I decided that I could do nothing better then,
to celebrate my return, than to go call on Miss Pye.
I therefore mounted a bus in Piccadilly, and we pro-
ceeded in state and pomp-there is nothing more ab-
surdly pompous in the world than a bus to Pimlico—
or, as I learned from Mag to call it, “Pimilico.” At
the corner of Lower Sloane Street and the Pimlico
Road I broke off an interesting conversation with my
20


M A G. P. YE
neighbor, a delightful, sunburned sailor on leave, and
got down.
It was a Saturday, and the shopkeepers were busy.
The road was crowded with more or less shabby women,
with more or less bulging baskets, and many children
impeded my slow progress. Butcher shops have always
held a certain shuddering fascination for me, and I
was standing in front of one, listening to a discussion
about mutton between a large woman and a small
salesman, when I caught sight of Miss Pye herself
in pursuit of the domestic avocation of Saturday shop-
ping.
She did not see me; she was obviously bent, with all
the grimness of her young character, on obtaining the
greatest possible amount of nourishment for the least
possible number of pennies. -
She wore a rush basket on her left arm, and with
her right forefinger she was poking a piece of meat.
The meat displeased her, and she edged along the
counter, seeking.
She wore a gray flannel frock—unpropitious mate-
rial —and her usual blue sailor hat. Her hair was
tucked away under the hat, and I realized at once that
this was a sly maneuver to lend age—and therefore
importance—to her as a purchaser.
“The bone, too, please,” she barked suddenly, with
a strong Cockney accent.
She put her meat into her basket, and then, still
without seeing me, moved up the street.
She was so engrossed in her occupation that it was
perfectly easy for me, unobserved, to observe her.
At the greengrocer’s she bought a pound of pota-
toes—each of which she personally selected, as a wily
dealer in Hatton Gardens might select diamonds—and
21


M A G P YE
a large, long lettuce, tied up with bast. For these
articles she paid fourpence ha'penny.
The child’s face was a study, as she proceeded on
her way. Everyone has an indoor and an out-of-door
face—even at the age of eleven.
The fitful May sun showed me Mag’s out-of-door
face for the first time, and I saw that though it was
a round, not to say fat one, it was, from the struc-
tural point of view, oval. I divined a neat, well-turned
jawbone, as she jerked her head back to survey the
sky, and the little sunflowers of light in her dark eyes
shone like wee stars under the heavy lids. These prom-
ises of future beauty gave me great pleasure, for plain
women always seem to me one of nature’s greatest mis-
takes.
In a perfect world every young female should be al-
lowed at least a year of good looks, no matter what
caricature of a face is to be imposed upon her later
in life. And I rejoiced to see that the corpulent
Miss Pye was, without a doubt, to have at least her
day.
In the meantime, short, fat and freckled, the very
plain child stumped into a baker’s shop, and, choosing
in the window a crumbly and golden Madeira cake,
watched alertly while the young lady fished it out—
stonily refusing two easier-to-get-at ones—and embos-
omed it in the fair white paper of commerce. The cake
did not go into the now crowded basket. Instead it
was given the honor of hanging by its string to Miss
Pye's right thumb.
When she issued from the shop, I approached and
saluted her.
For a second she stared at me, non-recognition in
her eyes. Then she smiled, her teeth shining like a
22


M A G P YE
good deed in a naughty world, and shifting the cake
to the other hand, she greeted me warmly.
“I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “I’ve finished
the book.”
“Like it?”
“Oh, yes. Only, of course, it isn’t true.”
“Why not?” She was, I knew, as we turned off the
Road into a squalid street near the river, making for
home.
“There aren’t any real Lob-lie-by-the-fires,” she an-
swered in a tone so conclusive that it forced me to
silence.
“Madame Aimée is reading it now. You said I
might lend it to her, you know. She says there may
be some in the fells—Lobs, I mean—but I don’t be-
lieve it, Mr. Quest—What are fells?”
Thus it came about that it was while I was trying
to explain to a child who never since she could remem-
ber had been out of London, the nature and feeling
of the upland empty country where the sky seems so
near, that I first saw Blantyre Buildings.
It was on the wrong side of the road, and everything
inside was left-handed. It was even more prison-like,
more hopeless looking, than I had expected. It was
dark and gloomy as a ducal mansion in one of the
great squares.
Six rows of windows and one large door broke the
hideous façade. Over the door was a carved date,
1899.
So this was one of the last achievements of the
architecture of the nineteenth century. As I stood
looking up at it, the feeling of '99 came over me.
I had been in Pump Court even then, and even then
I had known the Lossells. I was thirty, and had al-
23


M A G P Y E
ready begun to be known as an unsuccessful, rather
than as just a young, barrister.
And Lord—the Honorable Hugo Lossell as he then
was, was a brisk, clever, harsh, unpleasant man of fifty.
His detestable home manner had always struck me, as
utterly incompatible with his undoubted devotion to
charitable causes, but of course I had learned to know
before that day in 1907 when I, for the first time,
beheld this crystallization of his favorite idea of the
Proper Housing of the Poor, that no two qualities
can be too incompatible to be welded together in one
character.
At all events, tyrannical and petty as the man was
at home, here was a large and concrete proof of the
presence in his mind of generous dreams for the bene-
fit of other people.
Blantyre Buildings must have cost ten thousand
pounds, and every penny of this had come out of
Lossell’s own pocket. It is, of course, easy to say that
he was a rich man, so rich that he never felt the loss
of the money, but the fact remains that other rich
men do not build homes for the poor, and that this
unpleasant domestic tyrant had done so.
“Those are our windows,” Miss Pye exclaimed,
pointing upwards, “where the geraniums are—the"pink
ones.” Then we went in.
The Corporal sat in his window as a seneschal might
have sat in his at the gate of some old castle in baron-
ial days.
He was reading the Daily Mail.
“That’s Boomer,” I said, as ashead rather like a dog’s
appeared beside the man and took a look at us.
“Yes, that’s Boomer.”
In a sudden gush of sunlight I stood in the court-
24


M A G. P. YE
yard looking up and about me. It was an enchanting
place! Up to the top, round the whole quadrangle,
were wide galleries, with a narrow-slatted railing,
over which crept creepers, behind and through which
grew flowers.
For real gayety, Blantyre Buildings could give
points to any residential flats I had ever seen.
To be sure, swarms of children roared and shouted
in the concrete inclosure at our feet, but high up in
the sun women sat and sewed among flowers. Bird-
cages gleamed like gold where they were hung to the
railings, and somewhere a bullfinch was piping.
It was amazing! It was Hugo Lossell who had
achieved this wonder. Hugo Lossell, whom I had
rarely heard say a kind word of anyone, and owing
to whose petulance and opposition his daughter was
still, at forty, unmarried—Hugo Lossell, whose daugh-
ter herself had told me that her mother had died not
exactly of a broken heart but just pestered and bored
to death by her husband's small and unending tyran-
nies. -
As I followed my small guide up the long, clean,
stone stairs these things clashed in my mind.
“I’m very late with my shopping to-day,” Miss Pye
observed, opening her door with an immense key. “Fa-
ther had to have a tooth out this mornin 39


CHAPTER V
Miss Pye's home consisted of four small rooms; a
sitting-room, two bedrooms, and a kitchen. One of
the bedrooms was, I think, the smallest room I saw in
my life, and if the bed had spent its time, as most beds
do, on all fours, only a dachshund could have dwelt
there.
This bed, however, stood on end by day, thinly dis-
guised as a baby wardrobe, thus making room for the
washstand and a chair, which I was told spent their
nights in the sitting-room.
“You see,” my hostess explained, “I get up before
Father and dress in the sitting-room; then I make the
bed, shut it up, and bring back the washstand and
chair, so it is all very comfortable!” Which no doubt
it was.
The chair, the accommodating bed, and the peri-
patetic washstand were all shabby and old, though not
old enough to be called antique, but they were of ma-
hogany, and to my joy there was in all the wee flat
none of the pernicious burned oak which for some
reason has a dreadful and depressing effect upon me.
There were, moreover, two pictures on the wall and
a freshly starched chintz curtain of a vivid blue design
at the window.
26


M A G PYE
“Haven’t you got a hairbrush?” I asked.
She laughed and opened the washstand drawer,
wherein lay very tidily a wooden-backed brush, an old
clothes brush, and a new white comb.
“How funny of you to ask me that!” she said, tak-
ing off her hat and unpinning the lump of hair on her
crown. “Now come and see the kitchen.”
It was all very small, very close packed, but to me
it seemed neither uncomfortable nor even cramped. I
liked the shiny marbled stuff on the kitchen table, the
scalloped paper on the shelves, and there was a thing
like a scrap of chain mail (for cleaning saucepans)
that took my fancy. It was a charming place.
The “big” bedroom was furnished with good plain
furniture, too large for it, evidently thirty or forty
years old; and the blue and white carpet was beauti-
fully darned (Madame Aimée's work, I was informed).
The brushes on the high chest of drawers were of
ivory, well made and good, though discolored, and
there was a shabby old leather case of razors that had
never been bought by any but a gentleman.
“He painted most of the pictures himself,” Miss
Pye explained. “That's Italy.”
It wasn’t; it happened to be a very clever sketch of
the Plaza San Fernando in Seville.
“Does he paint much, nowadays?” I asked with in-
terest.
She shook her head. “Hardly ever. That box is
full of old pictures, but he very rarely paints any
more. Poor Father!”
I wondered why, for few men who have once painted
pictures with even the rather fragile charm of the lit-
tle one hanging in the sun on the gray wall ever give
it up.
27


M A G PYE
When we had finished the tour of the sitting-room,
and a comfortable, shabby, clean place it was, furnished
in a pleasant, piecemeal way and enlivened with a big
glass-fronted bookcase full of books, we went back
across the little passage and sat in the gallery, behind
a screen of pink geraniums and ferns, and I sought in-
formation.
“I should like to meet your father,” I began.
Miss Pye: You wouldn’t like him much.
Mr. Quest: Why not?
Miss Pye: Most people don’t. You see, he never
speaks
Mr. Quest: Why doesn’t he speak?
Miss Pye: I don’t know. I suppose it bores him to !
Mr. Quest: Perhaps I shouldn’t bore him!
Miss Pye (seriously but with no wish to be offen-
sive): Oh, yes, you would.
This seemed pretty final, but I persisted: “Describe
him to me.”
Miss Pye: He's a small man, rather thin. He has a
beard, and his hair is thin and rather long.
Mr. Quest (not impressed): H'm'
Miss Pye: He's a broken-hearted man.
It sounds brutal, but at this remark my heart leaped
for joy. Thin, bearded, little men are, even in these
smooth-faced times, to be met with every day, with no
perceptible quickening of the pulse; but a broken-
hearted gentleman, living in a Model Dwelling at eight
shillings a week, presents possibilities of interest. I
waited.
Four canaries were singing in little golden palaces,
and there was a clamor of children’s voices—rather un-
pleasant are children’s voices, I think, regarded merely
as sound—and as I waited I heard a lady a few doors
28


M A G. P. YE
away embarking upon a narrative career promisingly
full of horror, about the arrival of a new citizen some-
where out 'Endon way.
“‘Mrs. Grayson,’ ”e says, “I’ll tell you the pline
truth 3 25
What the plain truth was, as imparted to Mrs. Gray-
son, I don’t know to this day, for at that moment Mag
Pye began her story.
“You see,” she said, “there’s a mystery about my
mother.”
I nodded, trying not to look as sorry as I of course
felt. Mysteries about mothers are usually things of
unhappy portent to daughters.
“Father never speaks about my mother,” the child
went on, and something in her tone grated on me.
She spoke, not as a child speaking of her mother,
but rather as a reader speaking of an exciting charac-
ter in a half-red book.
“I see,” I murmured.
I can recall every detail of the objects on which my
eyes rested while I listened to her, as she went on ;
I was leaning back against the house wall so that the
railings of the gallery the other side of the courtyard
seemed to lie flat against our own railings, making
them look twice as high as they were.
The geraniums and creepers grew lavishly, nothing
hung over the railings—no clothes or clothes drying—
and the heads of the women sewing by their doors
gained value with the shadows out of which they
showed.
It was that pleasant and romantic thing, the sight
of hard-worked people resting.
And the generous sun, having decided to give up the
game of hide and seek with which it had that day be-
29


M A G PYE
guiled its earlier hours, shone steadily out of the dis-
tant sky.
“Father does advertisements now, and posters,”
Mag said. “He says they’re very bad. He’s too old.
Youth will have its day, you know.”
I nodded in recognition of this acquired bit of wis-
dom.
“They don’t pay well, and sometimes we are very
poor. When we are dreadfully poor, we go for long
walks. Father says he ought to have been a gypsy, but
is only a tramp.”
“Tell me about your mother,” I suggested.
“I don’t know very much about her, except that she
was very pretty. Very pretty!”
“She had dark hair,” the child went on, “and very
small hands. I have her thimble. It is tight for me
already, and I am only eleven.”
“When did she die?” I asked gently.
There was a long pause, during which another iso-
lated scrap of the life history of Mrs. Grayson reached
my ears.
At last, Mag answered me.
“I don’t know,” she said, slowly, “but—I don’t think
she’s dead at all.”
Her reasons, produced by my persuasion, were not
very powerful.
“He has never said she wasn’t dead,” she admitted,
“but—I know that he didn't go to her funeral.”
“How on earth do you know that?”
“I asked him, only a little while ago.”
In view of her relentless questioning, I began to feel
sorry for the man. Supposing there were a mystery—
it was probably no more than the usual pitiful, sordid
one of a runaway mother and a deserted child—I could
30


M A G P YE
sympathize with the poor fellow’s shrinking from his
daughter's persistent probing.
She sat there in the sun, her freckled face alert with
interest.
“How could you ask him these things,” I said to
her.
“Why not?”
In her young voice was a coolness that found my
sympathy for her father.
“You say your father is broken-hearted,” I said.
“If you think that, how can you torment him with
questions?”
She looked straight at me.
“I want to know,” she said.
“You—you are interested about your mother?” I
asked her, remembering that I had disliked her former
tone about her unknown parent.
Her eyes were very soft. “Oh, Mr. Quest, of
course I am—did you think I wasn’t?”
I was a little confused. “You—didn’t seem to be,”
I murmured.
Then her unusual, practical sense flared up like a
flame.
“What was the use,” she retorted, “if she was
dead? Now that I think she isn’t dead, of course 35
After a pause she added softly: “Perhaps I shall
find her some day.”


CHAPTER VI
A few days after my introduction to Blantyre Build-
ings I went to see Edith Lossell.
I found her in her odd gray and silver room, sit-
ting by the fire, with her cat on her lap. As I sat
beside her I saw a beautiful woman of forty; a woman
with a magical, strange face; a face that to me had
always been the most beautiful in the world. And as
we talked, for the first time I noticed, with a pang of
grief, that her face was beginning, in a negative sort
of way, to show that middle age was close on her
heels.
It was not so much that she was beginning to look
old as that she was gradually ceasing to look young.
As I have said, she was beautiful—even as an old wom-
an she will be beautiful, for all her structure is good—
her bones are delightful and her soft, dark hair lies in
silky folds round her small face, her odd greenish eyes
—eyes like a kitten’s in shape, but full of dignity—
look as fresh as those of a girl, and her olive skin is
free from lines.
Yet, there lay on her that chilly spring afternoon a
look of something past its prime. It is difficult to de-
scribe, for over-ripe is the obvious word, and over-ripe
is wrong; it was rather a look of an arrested some-
32


M A G PYE
thing. She had, poor soul, never quite ripened, and
her green virginity was that day visible. She looked
a little chilled, a little ashen. My heart suffered a dis-
tinct physical pain as my mind admitted this disloyal
clarity of vision. Poor Edith !
“And how are Bob and Eleanor?” she asked gent-
ly in her odd, husky voice.
Bob and Eleanor are my sister and brother-in-law,
whom I had been visiting. My sister is an excellent
woman, and I love her, but she is not the type to in-
terest Edith Lossell, and Edith and I both knew that
she was asking her question out of mere politeness.
“They’re very fit”; I answered in the imbecile jar-
gon of our day, “the children are awfully jolly little
beggars 35
There was a long silence, during which the fire talked
to itself, and Aucassin and Nicolette, the two love birds,
pecked at each other’s beaks.
Edith and I are often silent, however, and neither of
us felt any constraint.
Presently a recrudescence of the sinking fire sent a
sudden glow over her face, and, looking twenty and
lovely as a dream, she smiled across at me.
“Well—Amigo?”
Now that name is one she dedicated to me over
twenty years ago on a certain thunderous June night
as we sat on the balcony outside her drawing-room win-
dows, and it is a name that means much, and is never
lightly used.
“Dear Edith 33
Her smile deepened to dimpling point, and that is
also a thing of rare occurrence. “Tell me,” she said.
All this reads rather pretentiously if not even pre-
ciously, but I must set it down, for such odd little
33


M A G. P. YE
scenes are woven into the fabric of my old affection
for her, and they are not pretentious or the other worse
thing!
It meant simply that she knew my head was full of
something, and was willing to have me empty it to
her.
So I told her about Mag.
She listened, as she always does on those Amigo oc-
casions, divinely, her lucent eyes like crystal wells.
When I had finished, I waited, and at last she said
gently. “It’s very interesting, Victor.”
“It is. I really want to see the father.”
“He sounds an unsatisfactory parent.”
“He does. But it would make most men unsatisfac-
tory to be a gentleman and to live in industrial dwell-
ings.”
“You forget—they’re Father's dwellings.”
“They are delightful, and I honor your father for
having created them,” I returned as seriously, for my
beautiful Edith is not cursed with a great sense of
humor, “but—they are industrial dwellings—and he is
without doubt a gentleman.”
“I wonder,” she said dreamily, “who the mother
Was P”
Now for some unanalyzed reason in telling Mag’s
story I had left out all references to her mother. Of-
ten and often since I have wondered why I did this,
and I have never been able to decide.
And then Edith went on to say: “I suppose she can
hardly have been a lady—probably the poor man mar-
ried beneath him, or something.”
I was conscious of a vague unfocused irritation.
“Why do you think that?” I retorted. “The child
is fat, and ugly, and ignorant of the nursery graces
84


M.A. G. P. YE
of children of her father's class, but—she is certainly
a lady.”
Edith’s eyebrows stirred. “I see,” she said.
But she did not see, and I, still influenced by what-
ever had been the subconscious thought that had re-
strained me from telling her of the mystery about Mag’s
mother, said no more.
Instead, I asked her to play for me, and lay back
in my chair as I had done so many hundreds of times
before and let my unchained imagination bear me away
into the might-have-been-but-wasn’t land, wherein is
the city of my dreams.
Music does this to me sometimes.
Just opposite to where I sat—that is, on my left
as I looked past the fireplace toward the piano—hung
a little watercolor painting. I didn’t know where it
was painted; I have no idea in what land grew those
dark, clustered, solid-looking trees. In the foreground
lay a small oval lake, that shone in the one shaft of
light that pierced the thick clouds, like a bit of bur-
nished copper.
For many years that little picture had hung there
on the gray wall, and it was close linked in my mind
with the sound of Edith’s playing; so I watched it
idly as she played.
She says—and I know it is true—that she’s no
great pianist.
She says she’s always out of practice, and indeed I
know many players who could beat her for force,
brilliance and swiftness. But in all the world there’s
nothing I more deeply enjoy than to sit there in the
gray back room in Grosvenor Place and listen to her
music.
There is in this, my rapturous enjoyment, more
35


M A G PYE
than a simple musical appreciation. There is, as well
as that, much of gratified vanity.
For only when she plays thus, for me alone, does
Edith Lossell allow to slip from her shoulders the man-
tle of reserve and pride that she wears as a barrier
between the world and herself.
I remember many years ago hearing a Spanish diplo-
mat describe her, in a discussion about many other
famous beauties and herself.
“Miss Lossell,” the olive-green-skinned man said,
“looks like a woman of fire, and she is a woman of snow.
To see her at the Opera—and she is one of the women
who listens to the music at the Opera—one would ex-
pect her, of all people, to be the most impulsive, the
most prime-sautière, the most enthusiastic. But who-
ever has the honor of knowing this lady soon learns that
she is of the most calm, the most unstirred.”
And this magnificent testimonial is, to put it into
plain English, the opinion of most people.
“Cold as ice,” they used to call her, in the old days,
whereas the younger generation, admitting her beauty,
qualified it by the new catchword, “No temperament.”
No temperament, my poor Edith whom I had seen
in Bill Bettany’s day, shaken as the earth is shaken by
an earthquake, her face hollowed and ravaged with
anger, shame, and grief.
I had seen that, but only I. Not even Bettany, I
believe, had ever really known. After all, his had
been, although (or possibly because) the more dra-
matic, the more terrible part.
And somehow, as she played to me that afternoon,
my mind was filled with pictures of those old days, pic-
tures melting one into the other, shadowed and
blurred, but all connected, all within one frame.
36


M. A. G. P. Y E
Edith as a girl, as I had first known her, slight,
flexible, a golden-brown girl whose amazing gray-green
eyes challenged one’s imagination for descriptive
words. Lucent they were-or lambent—they glowed,
they glowered, they shone, they did everything but
glitter. They never glittered.
And the now so rarely revealed dimples were, in those
days, all a-glowing and a-blowing in the garden of her
face. Once, at a ball, I, who certainly had the proud
distinction of being the worst waltzer who ever waltzed,
trod elephant-like on the tail of her frock, tearing off
what seemed some miles of shell-colored gauze.
To her honor be it said that never were her dimples
in finer feather than on that occasion, as I, nearly
tearful, stammered out my heartfelt but useless re-
grets.
She was very kind about it. . . .
In spite of what I said in the first chapter, I had
better declare now, once and for all, that Edith Lossell
is my love story.
I wanted her love, and she could give me only her
friendship, but I love her still and always shall, so
now I need say no more about it.
And when her tragedy came, thank God I was there,
too, for I was of some small use to her, I know.
To get back, then, to the present of that day nearly
eight years ago, my sudden realization that the eve
of my lady’s long barren youth was in sight brought
to me a kind of exquisite grief. I wondered, as she
played, if she knew. And if she knew, did she care?
Did her face, in the silver-framed mirror I had seen.
the June night I carried her fainting to her room, look
to her the same as it had a few weeks ago when I last
37


M A G P YE
saw her, or—had she seen, as I did, that odd, dried,
burned-out look that was coming over it?
Every man who loves or has loved will understand
the wish that came to me; a wish that my dear might
suddenly lose all her beauty, that by some accident she
might be made helpless, so that I, only I, could love
and care for her.
I wonder if even my deep devotion could, after all,
stand such a test? It ought to, for it is many years
since the thought first came to me, and yet—many
men must have known the wish, and in the case of wives
and mistresses losing their beauty, or even, in the in-
evitable way of things, their youth, in how many
cases does the man’s devotion really survive? Alas,
alas !
Before she ceased playing the door opened and Lord
Lossell came in. I had not seen him for some months,
and he had changed.
He was a little, thin, peevish looking man, with an
exasperatingly small chin. He wore clothes of the pe-
riod of his father’s young days, and in his voluminous
black cravat gleamed the Wandover pearl.
Like all inexperienced story writers, my mind en-
counters the possibilities of many stories at once. The
history of the great Wandover pearl is a romance in
itself, but it has nothing to do with Edith, or Mag, or
poor Bill Bettany, so I won’t go into it.
Lossell was glad to see me. He always liked me,
and poor and undistinguished as I was in the old days,
I think that, other things being equal, he would not
seriously have resisted Edith marrying me. Alas! such
resistance was never necessary.
He was interested to hear that I had been inspecting
the glories of Blantyre Buildings, and into his thin
38


M A G. P. YE
utes later I was examining a small picture, in a bur-
nished gold frame, that stood under the bright electric
light on Lord Lossell’s writing table. I know very lit-
tle about pictures, but I fell in love with this one at first
sight.
It was a quiet little English landscape of a square
old house embosomed in trees; a ruminating, blue-gray
sky above; the only bit of color being the gold and
scarlet signboard that swung from the eaves, proclaim-
ing it to be a place of refreshment for man and beast.
“I should not mind,” I said, “drinking a glass of ale
under that elm.”
Lord Lossell looked at me, his thin, dried lips twitch-
ing a little.
“Don’t you recognize it?” he said. “Don’t you know
whose it is?”
I didn’t.
“Bless my soul!” he exclaimed, his voice rising, as
it always does when he is annoyed. “I found it the
other day, in Derbyshire, in a farmhouse where I went
in to wait while my man mended a broken tire. And,”
he added, his light eyes stabbing at me in the intensity
of his excitement, “it is a Bettany!”
My amazement was sufficiently great to satisfy even
him. Frankly I didn’t believe him.
“How do you know it is?” I asked.
“How do I know ! How do I know ! Didn’t I have
“The Windmill,” and “Crossroads’ in this very room for
six months before the Chantry people bought them?
Didn’t I discover the man himself? Wasn’t it un-
doubtedly owing to me that he ever painted ‘Cross-
roads”?”
I muttered something of which he might easily have
understood nearly as little as I myself did. The ques-
40


M.A. G. P. YE
tion of Bettany’s indebtedness to Lord Lossell was a
vexed one, and to me personally always a seriously
annoying one; for though it was owing to him that the
poor fellow had painted his two great pictures, it was
as certainly owing to him—although in what way I
had never known—that Bettany had disappeared off
the face of the earth.
I knew as much of the story as most people, prob-
ably more, but what it was that had happened six
weeks after the purchase by the Chantry Bequest of
these two small pictures whose appearance had turned
the artist world utterly upside down some twenty
years before, I had no clear idea.
I knew that Edith knew, but if, since that evening
of the thunderstorm, when she had broken down, and
told me—with a keenness of suffering I have never before
nor since beheld in anyone—that her engagement to
Bettany was broken, she had mentioned the man’s
name to me half a dozen times, it was as much as she
had done.
I often thought that her sudden fainting, when she
dropped like a stone on the hearth rug, had been like
the word “finis” at the end of the real story of her life,
and that the long, subsequent, quiet years were more
in the nature of an epilogue than anything else; so I
had always resented Lossell’s unknown but keenly felt
part in the tragedy.
As he stood crooning with joy over his new acqui-
sition, my old anger flared for a minute, and I needed
all my self-control to keep myself from asking him
what the blazes it was that he had dared to do, to
ruin, as he undoubtedly had ruined, those two fine lives.
“This must have been painted before ‘Crossroads,”
and “The Windmill,’” he said gloatingly. “It’s not
41


M A G P YE
nearly so fine, of course, but it is just fine, I tell you,
Quest »
Half an hour later I left him and went out into the
evening. The pale afternoon light looked thin and
cold-blooded after the glare of electricity in the study,
and there was a chill in the air.
I walked home, lit my fire, drew my curtains and sat
down in the best armchair in the world, for a quiet
evening with Charles Lamb’s letters. Later I would
sup, as Lamb himself often supped, on bread and cheese,
and beer.


CHAPTER VII
I learned to know Madame Aimée a few weeks later,
and found her to be quite one of those people whose
friendship is a privilege.
Like most women who really influence others, she’s
very hard to describe. Physically, of course, the poor
soul was capable of unmistakable labeling in very few
words. A woman with only half a face presents few
difficulties to the word painter, and the beauty of her
solitary eye was so haunting and remarkable, that many
words could be made in a way to fit it. The wimple-
like thing, snow-white, which bound her head, quite hid
the burned side of her poor face, concealing even the
black patch of which Mag had told me; and the re-
vealed cheek and eye—the mouth was happily uninjured
—seen under the shadow of the blue veil that was
draped over her head, were a charming, slightly lined
cheek of a pleasant pallor, and a wonderful eye of a
deep, dovelike, gray-blue.
It surprised me, the first time I saw her, that a
woman of her class should have had the wisdom to wear
a nun-like, voluminous gown of a coarse woolen mate-
rial—not flannel, but loose woven—of the beautiful
blue of the darkest of delphinimus.
Never again did such understanding in Madame
43


M A G P YE
Aimée surprise me, for I had not been in her austere,
clean-smelling, almost cloisteral little room ten minutes
before I realized that I stood in the presence of an
artist.
The hour I spent there was delightful. I possess a
pretty thorough knowledge of the French language, of
the beautiful and unashamed British variety. Wander-
ing much in France on foot, or on a bicycle, I have
learned to speak French in a way that gives me con-
fidence to tackle pretty well any subject in that delec-
table tongue. Also have I listened to lectures at the
Sorbonne and elsewhere, and come away with a fairly
correct idea, I am sure, of the lecturer’s meaning.
At the same time I have no illusions as to the beauty
of my accent; I quite hear myself saying, for instance,
Hellaine, when I mean to say Aylenne—yet can I not
subdue my tongue into these intricate delicacies.
The ear is willing but the tongue is weak.
Therefore Madame Aimée's delight in finding that I
really (as she engagingly expressed it) talked French,
was at least equalled by mine on discovering that she
really spoke English.
Half in half our conversation went on; phrases be-
gun by me in French blossomed into English, and her
English beginnings as easily reached a sea of com-
plete expression in her own tongue.
This diversity lent an added charm to our conversa-
tion and I found in the quiet room, with its large ebony
crucifix on the wall, its growing plants in the spot-
lessly clean windows, and its lavishly be-parroted
chintz, an atmosphere perhaps best described as one
of romantic homeliness.
Her voice, too, was low and pleasant, and sometimes
had an odd breathlessness, followed by a little break
44


M A G. P. YE
that, though it was not beautiful, I yet learned to lis-
ten for.
She told me her story quite simply. She had mar-
ried, and lost her husband within two years of her
wedding. Then came her accident, and a few years
after that she had come to live in Blantyre Buildings.
“That,” she added smilingly, “is all.”
The next time I went to see her, I took her a grow-
ing Easter lily, a lovely, graceful thing, covered with
flowers and grooved, pointed, green-white buds. This
flower she loved, as I had known she would.
“They used to grow at home in France, when I was
a child,” she told me, her voice trembling. “I can see
the garden now—little lizards sat on a broken wall—
there were roses—and you know how strongly these
lilies smell at evening. ‘Leur senteur le soir est si
pénétrante.’”
I like the word penétrante as applied to the scent of
lilies.
I then said to her with my fine robust English accent,
“Oui, dans la soirée tous les odeurs sont plus forts.”
It was raining that day of the lilies and through the
open window came the pleasant smell of rose gerani-
ums and earth from the carefully tended window boxes.
On the floor by the chaise longue stood a large, deep
willow basket, filled with freshly laundered household
linen sheets and pillow cases, I think, for the most part.
Over a board on her knees, Madame Aimée had
stitched an old sheet with a large hole in it, and under
the hole she had placed a piece of fair, new linen.
As she talked, she was busy stitching this linen into
place, and it interested me to see the neatness with
which she curled up the raw edges of the tear and
sewed them on the new material.
45


M A G P YE
Her small, brown, beautifully tapered fingers looked
almost magically skillful to me, and I said so.
She laughed. “Ah, m'sieu, sewing is one of the
things any woman can do. Many women say they
can’t sew, but that means only that they don’t like to.
There was a time when all I knew about a needle was
that one end could prick you, and that the other end
couldn’t, but since then I have learned what the eye is
for. One learns much as one grows older.”
“I sew buttons on my clothes,” I announced with
pride, “but I have larger needles, and I wax my
thread.”
Again she laughed. “A sailor must have taught you
that.”
A sailor had, as it happened, and as I sat watching
her sew, I remembered dear Joe Rollett, with a clear-
ness with which I had not remembered him for years,
and in the wake of my recollection of him came mem-
ories of my little old sailing yacht Seagull, of the
light of the sun on the waves, the falling of the spray
on my face, and the smell of frying bacon mingled with
that of the sea.
So I was silent for a moment, and it was in silence
that Mag found us, as she opened the door.
“Oh,” the child exclaimed, and stopped short. “I
didn’t know you were here, Mr. Quest.”
“Why should you?” Madame Aimée asked her.
“Mag, if you have come to make my tea, I must re-
quest of you, first, to go downstairs, and brush your
hair and wash your hands.”
Mag was too unsophisticated to be embarrassed, and
with a friendly glance, first at her admonisher and
then at her hands—palpably grubby hands—raced
down the stairs, leaving the door open behind her.
46


M A G P Y E
I suppose I looked surprised, for the French woman
said, as she took off her thimble and put it by the
table: “You think I was rude?”
The sheet was very large, and, without asking her,
I rose and took hold of the other end of it, and helped
her fold it.
It smelled of soap, and just a little of hot irons, a
pleasant, wholesome smell, one that, freshened by a
whiff of lavender, I thoroughly enjoy in my own
sheets.
“You see, M'sieu,” Madame Aimée went on thought-
fully, “there’s no one to tell the child things like that,
except me.”
I nodded and gave my end of the neatly folded linen
into her hands.
“She is at the age when a child needs a mother very
badly,” I said wisely. “It is a great pity Mag’s is
dead.”
She did not speak, and I went on.
“That is one of the things I came to see you about,
Madame Aimée. I like Mag, and, if possible, I want
to help her. She is an odd little creature, and unless
I am very much mistaken there are the makings of a
fine woman in her. She has a brain, and she has a
heart.”
Have I said that the burned side of the French wom-
an’s face was always in shadow? Now, in spite of
her half bedridden condition, of the beautiful bandage
round her head and the veil’s shadow over the good
side of her face, it struck me as I watched her that
there was an amazingly alert look about her.
She had drawn herself forward from the waist, and
sat bolt upright, and I swear that at that moment she
was beautiful.
47


M A G P YE
Her voice trembled as she answered me, but it was
a trembling of intensity, not of weakness.
“Ah, yes, you are right,” she cried, pressing her
hands tight together. “There is much, much, in her,
my poor child, more than you know; and you and I,
M’sieu, will help her together; we will help her, n'est-
ce pas, to grow up? The child must be taught to grow
up, so that she may know how to grow old.”
As she spoke, a door slammed loudly somewhere be-
low us, and Mag’s voice reached us in a stave of song.
There was, for all we knew, the rest of our own
lives and all of Mag’s in which Madame Aimée and I
could arrange our unspoken compact about the child
—but I am sure she felt as I did, that there was not
a moment to be lost, that things must be settled at
Once.
Driven by an irresistible impulse, I seized the little
delicate hand held out to me, and stood as still as if
I had been on oath.
“We will, Madame Aimée, you and I between us—
we will.”
She leaned back as if exhausted. Her breath came
quickly, and Mag entered to find me in the tiny kitchen
getting a glass of water for our half-fainting hostess.
“Oh, what have you done to her, Mr. Quest?” the
child exclaimed reproachfully, flying to a shelf and tak-
ing down a bottle.
“You have been exciting her and her heart’s bad.
We never allow her to be excited.”
In a moment or two Madame Aimée had recovered,
and Mag had lighted the gas stove, and while the ket-
tle boiled she prepared coffee. The coffee was excel-
lent and the most holy hour uneventful and pleasant.
Sitting on top of the bus on my way home (for the
48


CHAPTER VIII
Having decided that Mag must be educated and
brought up, the next question was how she was to be
educated, and in what way she was to be brought up.
Bringing up another man’s child might strike one as a
rather difficult and not particularly agreeable task, but
I confess that from the first any fear of any possible
interference on the part of Mr. Pye never occurred to
Ine.
A parent he undoubtedly was, but I assumed, and
for once I was perfectly right, that as a parent he
was a negligible quantity.
I did not believe in girls’ schools, so I never had the
slightest wish to remove Mag from her home environ-
ment; besides, even if I had had such an idea, I knew
that Madame Aimée, my partner, would never allow
me to carry it out.
I was much pleased to find that Mag’s knowledge of
French, while naturally possessed of no very perfect
grammatical basis, was a knowledge of the most use-
ful kind. She spoke colloquially and fluently with an
accent very much better than my own. It transpired
also that she had read a good deal in French, although
the choice of the books she had borrowed from Madame
Aimée's library would probably not have been com-
50


M A G. P. YE
mended by Sir Frederick Harrison, or Mr. Gladstone.
For instance, among others she was devoted to “Can-
dide.”
I do not think that this masterpiece, or Renan’s
“Vie de Jésus,” had hurt her in any way; but it was
clear she must read much and she must learn other
things as well. Now for a rich man to undertake the
education of any young creature must be a beautifully
simple thing. Masters and schools of the very best in
every department are, of course, close at hand on all
sides in this, our dear old London. But I am a poor
man, and Madame Aimée a penniless woman, so our dif-
ficulties were manifold enough to make our undertak-
ing far more interesting than it would have been had
it consisted only of the necessity of choosing the vari-
ous channels through which should flow the informa-
tion necessary to the fertilization of the small patch
of virgin soil we were endeavoring to enrich.
Moreover, book learning was by no means the only
thing I wished to impart to the invisible Mr. Pye's
very visible and audible daughter. Book education is
all very well, but to my mind it is a not very important
part of the possible whole. I wanted Mag to know
books and people, but, above all, I wanted her to know
Mag.
I had always longed to have a finger in the pie of my
sister’s children’s education, but to my proffered digit
proving unwelcome, I had long since withdrawn it, and
listened stoically, when necessity arose, to the utterly
dull and useless lists of historical dates, unmusical
music and shopworn fags of wisdom produced by the
young Thornton and Gisella and Maud for my benefit.
Mag, I decided, was not to learn lists of dates; she
was not to learn a chronological list of facts about
51


M A G. P. YE
England, and another chronological list of facts about
France, and so on about different countries, without
contemporaneously connecting these divers facts. It
seems to me that the knowledge of my sister’s children
about history might be compared to a fabric consist-
ing exclusively of warp, or perpendicular lines. What
I wanted was the woof as well—the horizontal lines
that make of the history of any period a sound, solid
fabric, and this I meant Mag to have.
She must learn natural history, of course; she must
learn about trees and plants, but I hate Latin words
for simple English things, and I meant her facts to be
to her real and full-blooded, and not merely, as my
school facts were made to look to me, dry bones full
of rattle and dust.
Madame Aimée would teach the child to sew, and
other womanly things of that kind. Later, should a
talent of any kind develop in her, I hoped that she
would have a mental soil deep and fertilized enough to
plant it in.
How many young people of the present day have as
mental equipment but one talent, scantily rooted in a
barren mental field! It is as if one planted a rare
bulb in an ash heap.
Full indeed of ideas was I in those days—ideas as
fine-sounding and superior as the above—and many
were the long talks Madame Aimée and I had together
over the perfecting of our duckling! Hen-like, no
doubt, we cackled together, taking, of course, not the
slightest heed of the vital fact that the very reason
we were so keen on educating Mag was that Mag was
one of the people who are bound, in the very nature of
things, to educate themselves.
One warm August afternoon we unfolded to the child
52


M A G PYE
our magnificent plans for her future. She listened
politely and then, when we had finished, put one question.
“Who’s going to take care of father?”
I looked at Madame Aimée and she looked at me.
“You see,” Mag explained, “he has his breakfast
at half past nine, and then a little after ten I have to
get him off to his work. Then I have to make his bed
and sweep and dust; then I have to come up and help
Madame Aimée; then I have to do the shopping, and
once a week, of course, I do the washing and ironing.
Then father has his lunch at one, and at two I stroke
his head until he goes to sleep, and then I come up to
Madame Aimée and do her shopping, and then 25
“For goodness sake, be quiet!” I burst out. “This
is awful. Do you mean that you never have a moment
to yourself?”
“It is all to myself,” she answered, “up to now. I
was only wondering when you meant me to learn all
those things.”
We reconsidered, Madame Aimée and I. Even if we
had wanted to, we could not have afforded to give Mag
a servant to do her work and look after her father,
and even in the interests of education the day could
not be made to contain more than a certain number of
hours. As it was, this looked to us, from the child's
point of view, pretty full.
“Why don’t you have a talk with her father?” I
suggested at last. “Explain to him what it is we
want to do and see if he can manage to take up less
of her time. He must be a preposterous creature.”
Madame Aimée nodded.
“And what is it he does?” I went on. “What is the
wonderful work to which she gets him off a little after
ten every morning?”
53


M A G PYE
“He goes to some place in the City and makes
sketches for advertisements. Did you ever see that
picture about Soapine, the black child with half its
face scrubbed white? He did that, for instance. But
there is no use asking him anything.”
She added that, although the man had never been
civil enough to call on her, she felt that she knew him
very thoroughly, and had no doubt that the garrulous
and expressive Mag had unconsciously described her
father with great thoroughness to her friend.
Madame Aimée and I parted, deciding to give the
difficulties of the situation our profoundest thought and
to meet again in a few days.
On my way downstairs I saw that the door of Pye's
flat was open and I went up to it, meaning to see if
Mag was at home. Looking down the little passage
into the open sitting-room I saw a man sitting in his
shirt sleeves by the window, and, knowing it must be
Pye, I knocked. He was looking straight at me appar-
ently, but did not answer. Thinking that the noise
of the traffic perhaps prevented his hearing me, I
went a few steps down the passage and spoke.
“Excuse me,” I said with great politeness. “I am
sure you are Mr. Pye-”
The man moved in an odd way, leaning forward a
little in his chair, but did not speak. At first I thought
he was drunk, then, reproaching myself for this un-
charitable suspicion, I decided that he must be ill, and,
turning, withdrew softly, to meet Mag, who carried a
large jug of milk in her hand. I explained my pres-
ence, adding my fear. She laughed. “Oh, no, he’s
not ill—it's Saturday, you know.” Grinning cheer-
fully, she led me to the kitchen where the kettle was
boiling for tea.
54


M A G. P. YE
“What do you mean—Saturday?” I asked.
“Well, he always goes to sleep on Saturday after-
noon; he always has done.”
“But he looks very odd.”
“He always looks like that, Saturday afternoons,”
she answered, laughing. “It’s some stuff he sticks
into his arm with a little squirt. He thinks I don’t
know, but I do. I’ve often seen him do it—medicine
of some kind.”
So that was it. I said no more, but bade her good-
bye, and, going back to the stairs, knocked on Madame
Aimée's door. She didn’t answer, so I opened the
door quietly. I was sick with disgust at what I had
seen and heard.
To come back into this quiet place was what going
into a church must be to many fortunate people.
Madame Aimée had lain down, the burned side of
her face on the pillow, her delicate profile outlined
on the blue of her veil. For a moment she lay quiet,
then looked up at me. Her one eye was full of tears.
“Ah,” she said in French, “you know, you have
seen—you have seen him. Mon pauvre ami, mon
pauvre ami!”
I was startled by the intensity of her sympathy
with my horror.
“Yes,” I said, “it was a dreadful shock. I care
nothing about him, the swine, but to think of the child
and her ignorance, and the blow it is bound to be to
her when she finds out !”
To my surprise she smiled as she sat up and folded
her hands in her lap.
“It is of him I was thinking,” she said gently. “It
will not hurt Mag, and it will kill him, and he has died
many deaths already 33
55


CHAPTER IX
England is a country of pure morals and impure
vowels. There are those who might deny the purity
of the morals, but surely there lives not the man
with soul so dead as to refuse to acknowledge that
as a nation our vowel sounds are rotten to the core.
It is all very well to talk about the Cockney accent,
but the phrase is one of the grossest injustice, con-
sidering that the same dreadfully misshapen o and i
are to be found flourishing like the green bay tree
in certainly half of our fair English counties. The i
is a wretched stepchild of pronunciation. To hear the
most frequently used word in the language, the pro-
noun I, pronounced as “Oi" is a thing to make the
most nasal American strut with national pride, and
few are the lower middle and lower class inhabitants
of this dear land who can accomplish the shibboleth
“around.”
Mag, I determined, whether or no she had time
enough for history planned on my noble lines, whether
or no she was ever to do anything at mathematics,
was at least to pronounce perfectly. At the present
moment her French accent was better than her Eng-
lish one, although I already suspected that she treated
me to a worse pronunciation than was absolutely
57


M A G P YE
I had no sympathy for Pye, and said so, adding,
“But I thought you didn’t know him. How can you
be sorry for him?”
She pointed to the crucifix. “I don’t know,” she
said, with that odd break in her voice; “Judas Iscariot,
the wickedest man of all, yet shall I not be sorry
for him?”


CHAPTER IX
England is a country of pure morals and impure
vowels. There are those who might deny the purity
of the morals, but surely there lives not the man
with soul so dead as to refuse to acknowledge that
as a nation our vowel sounds are rotten to the core.
It is all very well to talk about the Cockney accent,
but the phrase is one of the grossest injustice, con-
sidering that the same dreadfully misshapen o and i
are to be found flourishing like the green bay tree
in certainly half of our fair English counties. The i
is a wretched stepchild of pronunciation. To hear the
most frequently used word in the language, the pro-
noun I, pronounced as “Oi" is a thing to make the
most nasal American strut with national pride, and
few are the lower middle and lower class inhabitants
of this dear land who can accomplish the shibboleth
“around.”
Mag, I determined, whether or no she had time
enough for history planned on my noble lines, whether
or no she was ever to do anything at mathematics,
was at least to pronounce perfectly. At the present
moment her French accent was better than her Eng-
lish one, although I already suspected that she treated
me to a worse pronunciation than was absolutely
57


M A G. P. YE
filmed over with that curious shiny glaze that seems
as much a peculiar attribute of London, though doubt-
less it isn’t, as the fog that we share, even as we share
our national anthem with several other countries.
It was the first time that season that I had worn
my winter overcoat, and I smelled slightly of moth
balls.
Mag was resplendent in a new frock; dark blue it
was, with particularly nice little lawn collar and cuffs,
and round her fat throat she wore a row of those gold
beads of which the world seemed to be full twenty odd
years ago, and which since have so mysteriously dis-
appeared.
She had on a new hat which I had given her; a very
nice blue hat covered with what looks like fur but is
part of the fabric—rather fluffy stuff it is ; and under
the hat, I knew, was tied on top of her head a handsome
blue silk bow. Nothing on earth at that period could
have made her legs other than columnar, but her stock-
ings were smooth and unwrinkled, and her large shoes
neatly polished. She also wore gloves, and I knew,
from personal inspection, that her nails were whiter
than they had ever been in their lives.
It is sad to be obliged to confess that this condition
of her nails was due to an almost violent persuasion
on my part. She had already washed her hands when
I arrived at the flat, and the fact that her nails were
not immaculate made no difference to her.
“I have washed,” she said. “Why do you make such
a fuss about my nails?”
“Because,” I returned stiffly, “they are disgusting.”
But my attempt to arouse her feminine pride was a
failure; she had no feminine pride to rouse. Joyfully
she laughed at me, and her laugh was a shout.
59


M A G P Y E
“All right,” she said in her kindest voice a minute
later. “I don’t mind; I’ll boil my hands if you want
me to. You’re so good to me, I don’t mind doing even
silly things to please you.”
So the silly thing was done, and the hands rescrubbed,
and with pride I ushered her in at the Lossells’ door.
It was one of the shocks of my life when Miss Pye,
just as I was handing my hat and stick to Pruffles,
Lossell’s old butler, dashed at him, knocked my hat
out of his hand, and gave him a sound kiss.
“Oh, Mr. Williams, Mr. Williams,” she cried, “I am
glad to see you! It’s ages since you have been to
Blantyre's. I don’t believe you have ever seen the
twins at all.”
Pruffles’ face was scarlet; his expression would have
wrung pity from the heart of an Indian brave on the
warpath.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he coughed behind his large fat
hand. “Now be quiet, there’s a good girl, do.”
“It’s quite all right, Pruffles,” I assured him has-
tily. “Come along, Mag.”
Mag was standing on one foot, tearing from her
immaculate hands the gloves I had given her.
She refused to come along. “Why do you call him
Pruffles,” she asked. “His name is Williams—Arthur
Williams, isn’t it, Mr. Williams?”
It was as if a Mr. De Courcy Montmorency on the
stage had been hailed by some Philistine as Bill Jones.
“In private life, sir,” the wretched butler murmured
to me, with an agonized circular glance at the sur-
rounding doors and staircase, “my name is Williams.”
“He’s Mrs. Brankles’ brother,” Mag cried, “and he
used to be a perfect dear. Are you going to have lunch
with us, Mr. Williams?”
60


M A G P YE
“Oh, my Gawd!” was Pruffles’ only rejoinder, ad-
dressed to his own hand. “Oh, my Gawd!!” and, for-
getting the gentler amenities, I dragged Mag across
the black and white floor and knocked at the study
door. Lossell was waiting for us, and Mag, to my
relief, behaved beautifully.
“We have nearly been the death of poor old Pruf-
fles,” I explained, as the fat child sat with extreme
gentility on the edge of a crimson and gold Venetian
chair. “It appears he is an old friend of Mag’s, and
in the rapture of reunion she insisted on kissing him.
Then she asked him if he was going to have lunch
with us.”
“Well, is he?” she put in.
Lossell laughed. Everybody has his sense of humor
somewhere, and this episode struck him as very funny.
“No,” he answered, “he isn’t. He’s my servant,
you see, and he will wait on you at lunch.”
“Also,” I added severely, “be careful you don’t
frighten him into apoplexy. He’s ‘fat and scant of
breath.’”
“Like Hamlet,” said Mag.
She had certainly never read “Hamlet,” and I am
as certain that I had never mentioned that much-dis-
cussed metaphysician to her. Yet it is perfectly true
that she recognized the little tag. I was just be-
ginning to learn that she had this superficial quickness
and that moreover she seemed literally never to for-
get anything. She had the kind of mentality that al-
ways gives its owner the reputation for far greater
cleverness than he or she deserves, but I had already
begun to make up my mind that she should not be
allowed, on the strength of it, to stop learning at a
certain point, as many of her kind do, and feed, so to
61


M.A. G. P. YE
speak, for the rest of her days, on her undeserved
laurels.
Lunch passed off happily—Lossell and I talked of
many things and Mag was engrossed not only with eat-
ing, which occupation gave her obviously the purest
and most intense pleasure, but also in observing the
small niceties and elegancies of her situation. It de-
lighted me to see that she made not one single mistake
with her forks and that she squeezed her bit of lemon
verbena in her finger bowl, and pressed it with the tips
of her fingers in a way that was almost a ludicrous
imitation of Lossell.
Little by little even Pruffles regained his serenity,
and once when he said to her in the course of his du-
ties, “Salad, miss?” she refused his offer (for salad
was a thing she got at home), with a hauteur and ab-
sent-mindedness worthy of a princess in a fairy tale.
“Don’t you like Pruffles any more?” I asked once,
when he was out of the room.
“’Course I do,” she replied calmly. “In private
life.”


M A G. P. YE
sour little man loves best of all pictures of the most
romantic type.
His father had been an adorer of the Dutch School
and also had bought the Warburton Holbein when a
young man. To him also the gallery owes two Metzers,
a Teniers and the most beautiful Van Ostade I ever saw
in my life, called “Au Coin du Feu.”
The present man, however, has added “Une Conversa-
tion Gallante” of Fragonard, that is as deliciously and
exquisitely naughty as anything that very great painter
ever achieved. Then there is a “Pastoral” of Lancret, and
the Rousseau “Une Clairière” is the most perfect expo-
sition of the woodland spirit—one can almost smell the
leaves underfoot and hear the birds overhead—that I
know anywhere. There is only one religious picture in
the gallery, and that, oddly enough, is by an Englishman,
Ford Maddox Brown, and, Edith told me, was given by
her mother to her father shortly before her death.
As we went upstairs after lunch my mind was thick
with a flock of confused and darting thoughts. What
on earth could my poor little Magpie, of Pimlico,
make of this delicate and recondite collection of pic-
tures? She had told me of her visits to the National
Gallery and the Tate, but I myself knew so little of
these great “London Prides” that I could not judge of
her knowledge or comprehension.
Lord Lossell’s lot was of a type so unobvious, so per-
sonal to the two men who had achieved it, that I feared
the taste of Pimlico might prove unequal to it.
Lossell was very kind; he was in his best mood that
day, and it was clear that he liked Miss Pye. It was
very cold in the gallery; the sun had come out and a
reddish light blazed in at the windows. The highly
polished floor looked like a mirror.
64


M A G P YE
By way of beginning proceedings, Miss Pye, of Pim-
lico, just as she stepped over the threshold, fell
down with a loud crash that seemed to shake the house.
We both sprang to pick her up, but she refused to be
helped and lumbered to her feet with the sprawling
action of a dog on the ice.
“Hurt yourself?” I asked with some concern.
“Horribly. What makes the floor like that?” she
asked. Then before she was well balanced on her feet
again, she gave a cry of joy and dashed across the room.
“That’s a Holbein,” she said. “I know it is. It’s ex-
actly like the one at the Tate. Doesn’t it look exactly
like Pruffles?”
It did, though the likeness had never struck either
Lossell or me before. There was Pruffles with his little
eyes and his big jowl; Pruffles with his pinched mouth
all too small for his face; Pruffles with large thick dew-
laps; only instead of the staid habit of the domestic
servant, Holbein had painted him in rusty and battered
armor.
From this picture my protégée made a round of the
room saying little, but apparently missing nothing.
She paused a very long time, at length, beside a small
canvas on which a master hand had painted two young
girls in two shades of blue; poor children, possibly
peasants, standing in a cornfield. -
I had never noticed the picture particularly, but now
as I watched Mag I seemed to see it through her eyes
and I stood as quietly as she, studying the tender, de-
lightful thing.
“Whose is it?” I asked in an undertone. Lossell
shook his head. “Hush,” he said.
We watched for a time, and then, without a word,
Mag went on. She spoke intelligently and with enthu-
65


M A G PYE
siasm about “Le Village Oublié.” She liked the “Por-
trait of Miss M.,” by Lawrence, and she made another
long pause before a La Thangue, but when at the end
of her survey our host asked her which picture she liked
the best, she stood still in the middle of the room, disad-
vantageously lighted by the sun, her little figure as
broad as it was long, her hat crooked, her feet, wary
of the treacherous floor, planted firmly apart, and
pointed to the cornfield where two young girls stood.
“That one,” she said.
I don’t think I have ever seen Lossell so pleased about
anything. For one moment I thought he was going to
kiss the child, but he didn’t.
“She’s right, by Jove; she’s right, Quest—That’s a
Maris, and a Matthew Maris at that. I bought it for
£500, and I was offered £1,800 for it the day before
yesterday.
Mag’s cheeks, I saw, were deep red.
“I—I love that,” she stammered. “It’s—it’s beauti-
ful. May I bring Father to see it?”
Perhaps Papa was a little more than Lossell had
bargained for; however, he at once acceded with the
greatest politeness to her fluttering request, and began
drawing her attention to different pictures.
There was a little Stanfield of which he was very fond,
and he showed it to the child as gravely as if she had
been some great connoisseur.
“How do you know all this about pictures?” he asked
her at length. -
“I don’t know much,” she answered. “But my father
does, and we often go to the galleries. I think it’s a
wonderful thing,” she added, “that one can see pictures
without paying. Father says music ought to be like
that, too.”
66


M A G P Y E
This was a new Mag whom I did not know and I was
as pleased with her as might be a mother with her
daughter at a ball, when the girl unexpectedly turns out
to be a fine dancer.
Suddenly the child turned to me.
“Mr. Quest,” she said, “Did you ever see Tuke's
‘Autumn Sunset’ at the Tate?”
I had certainly seen it because I had been many times
to the Tate, but I hadn’t the faintest recollection of it,
and said so.
After that they left me out of the conversation, and
presently we went downstairs and partook of tea and,
some of us, of appalling quantities of cake.
I was a rather humiliated man in spite of my pride
in my protégée as I walked back to the Temple that
night, that never in my plans for the child’s future, in
my deep interest in her, had it ever occurred to me to
ask her herself what she intended to be; and Lossell
who, for his narrow-heartedness, his crochety ways, and
his ungenerous temper, I had always somewhat despised,
had by one question drawn from the girl such a blaze
of interest and passionate intention as all my well-mean-
ing efforts had never elicited.
“Are you going to paint?” Lossell had asked her.
Her mouth was full of chocolate cake, and the corners
of it not innocent of creamy tea, but oh, the glow in
her eyes as she looked at him, and gave her answer.
“Yes,” she said.


CHAPTER XI
Into the summer sky of my post picture-gallery mood,
flashed with hideous suddenness the horrors of the Roop
episode—indeed, the Roop episode was really a dreadful
thing and deserves very careful characterization.
Clarity being to my mind the greatest of all literary
virtues, and literary subtleties being in any case quite
beyond my powers, I shall tell it in a few words.
One night shortly before Christmas I took Mag, by
way of an experiment, to see a play that the year before
had pleased me very much, “Pinkie and the Fairies,” at
His Majesty’s.
I enjoyed it in spite of the blow I sustained on find-
ing that Miss Terry’s part was very inadequately and
badly acted by a novelist whose books I have always
considered very inferior, and Mag herself, although she
had little patience with fairies, behaved very well and
was immensely pleased with the waterfall in the second
act. We sat in the upper circle, munched sweets, and
between the acts I pointed out to her various celebrities
whom I knew by sight and some whom I didn’t. When
I had told her that an old gentleman in the stage box
was the Prime Minister, and that the fat man with him
was the Shah of Persia in disguise, and when I had
pointed out to her rapt gaze a handsome lady in a rose-
68


M A G. P. YE
colored cloak who I assured her was no other than Miss
Marie Corelli, of whose books she was a fervent admirer,
I felt that I had done my best to insure her an evening
not devoid of thrill. Personally I loved “Pinkie,” and,
but for the exception mentioned, it was admirably acted.
The music is of a kind I fully appreciate, being tune-
ful, merry and, to my ear at least, well orchestrated.
Besides I, unlike Mag, loved fairies and all that unto
them pertains. So all unmindful of the blow about to
fall on me at the end of the performance, I led my
young charge out into the Haymarket. It was snowing
and a cold, clammy night. In my character as genial
host I was prepared to pander to her passion for taxis,
but as we had loitered on the way because she insisted
on observing at close range a little boy I assured her
was the Prince of Wales, we found we had difficulty in
getting one of those noble vehicles, and, after waiting
for some time, we started to walk up to Piccadilly. We
crossed this thoroughfare and I had just hailed a taxi
which had stopped at Scott's with a load of people.
“Come along,” I said to Mag, and moved towards
the curb. At that minute a girl approached us, walking
alone. I can see her now as distinctly as I saw her then.
She wore a dark coat and skirt and very white furs that
I believe to be fox. On her head was a little hat made
of crimson petals of some kind, and from under the hat
billowed and waved voluminous, well-oiled, violently
bleached hair. She carried a little red handbag and her
gloves were new and shiny. With pity I observed the
foolish, ugly coating of powder on her poor face, and
the lurid smear of her scarlet lips. There was no mis-
taking what she was.
I had reached the taxi door and opened it when, to
my horror, Mag, with a loud cry, dashed at the girl.
69


M A G P Y E
“Oh, Pansy P’ she cried. “What fun to meet you!”
To do her justice, Pansy Roop looked most unwilling
to stop, and I heard her say that she was in a hurry.
Evidently she did not know Magpie.
“Where are you going all alone at this time o’ night?”
she went on. “We have just been to a play at His Ma-
jesty’s. Very nice, though it’s a children’s play; and we
are going home now in a taxi. Mr. Quest,” she added,
turning to me, obviously asking me as a mere matter of
form, “this is a great friend of mine. Pansy Roop's
her name, and she lives at Blantyre's. Can’t she come
home with us?”
It is hard to say what I should have done if Miss Roop
had not come to the rescue.
I had bowed, recognizing the introduction, and there
I stood like an idiot. The poor little thing held her bag,
tawdry and cheap as herself and yet, seeming even
in that hasty moment to have something of her own
pitiable quality, close to her breast, and under the pow-
der—cheap, horrid, flaky powder—I saw her blush.
“Thank you very much, Mag,” she said. “I can’t
come now—I–I’ve got to go somewhere. Good-night,”
and she rushed on into a sudden flurry of snow and dis-
appeared among the crowd.
Mag settled herself comfortably in the taxi.
“Wasn’t it funny our meeting her P’ she said. “She’s
such a nice girl, and I do like her. She came to Blantyre
Buildings about a month ago, and I suppose she’s on
her way to see her mother now. Her mother’s married
again, and her stepfather doesn’t like Pansy, so she only
goes to see her at night when her stepfather’s out. He’s
a night watchman at Peter Robinson’s.”
In the darkness I mutely bowed to Miss Roop's
powers of invention and a minute later Mag had forgot-
70


M A G P YE
ten all about her and was eagerly criticizing the play
we had just seen.
I left her at the door of the Buildings, as I had been
given to understand through her that her father didn’t
welcome visitors and had in particular a singular disin-
clination to make my acquaintance. But I thought
about the child and her undesirable acquaintance until
late that night, and I should have gone to see the woman
the next day, but for the fact that an old friend turned
up from the Cape on his way to Scotland, and kept me
busy for twenty-four hours. -
Thus it happened that late the next night, after see-
ing Oliphant off at Euston, I went back to the Temple
and wandered for a few minutes in Fountain Court, as
is my way before going to bed. My mind was full of
my old friend and the other old friends our meeting had
recalled, and I was in one of my foolish, forlorn moods
when I feel old and useless, and when my undeniable
idleness and lack of success take on a very black aspect.
It was a mild, little, gray evening, and a young moon
cast a pleasant, frail light on the fountain. I think I
was mooning about Ruth Pinch and poor Tom, when a
shadow struck across the path at my feet. Someone
touched my arm, and Pansy Roop stood before me.
“You are Mr. Quest?” she said, and there was in
her voice something of timidity.
“I am.”
“I—I got your address from Magpie and I knocked,
and no one answered, so I have been walking up and
down waiting for you. I saw you come over here
and ” She broke off, biting her lip. “Could I
speak to you for a minute?”
Of course I said that she could, and stood waiting for
her to begin.
71


M A G. P. YE
There was in her voice and aspect something not quite
Cockney; something almost rustic under her horrid
livery, and the kind moonlight lent to her a sort of
passing purity.
“It is about Mag, I suppose,” I said, to help her.
“Yes—sir,” she added after a moment.
“Let’s walk up and down,” I said. “We shall be
less conspicuous.”
“It’s not my fault,” she blurted out; “her knowing
me, I mean. I didn’t want to, but a bird I have got out
of its cage and ran along the gallery, and she caught
it, and then—How could I help her speaking to me?”
she ended passionately.
I hardly knew what to say. Who would have known
what to say? Whatever the woman was she had come
there, stealing the time from her dreadful vocation, to
talk to me, Mag’s friend, about Mag.
“You see, don’t you—you do see?” she urged, peering
up at me, the red plush bag ground together in her
gloved hands.
“I think I do,” I answered, “but I don’t know what to
say to you, Miss ” I had forgotten her other name,
so I added “Pansy.”
At that her poor, thick, smeared mouth quivered into
a smile that was not unpleasing, and there were tears
in her eyes.
“You must tell her,” she said, “you must tell her she
must not know me. I can’t do it. I—you see, it was
wonderful, her liking me like that. I can't tell her.”
“If I told her,” I answered, as gravely as I felt, “she
wouldn’t understand.”
She nodded. “No, of course she wouldn’t. Neither
would I at her age. I’m only ten years older than her
now.”
72


M A G. P. YE
There was silence for a while, during which time the
fountain plashed and tinkled in the moonlight. Finally
the girl said, clearing her throat:
“Well, I don’t know what to do. She runs in and out
of my rooms; it’s no place for her. What shall I do?”
“Couldn’t you live somewhere else?” I suggested,
feeling a perfect brute as I did so.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I thought you’d say
that, and I made up my mind, if you did, I would. You
see it’s cheap and it’s central there. But I know what
you mean. I’ve liked knowin’ her. She's gay, and I
like gay people. Some people call us gay, but, Oh, my
God, we aren’t We laugh a lot—we've got to—and I
suppose some of us is happier than we would be in a
factory or a shop—I dunno—”
There was another long pause, during which I had
never been more uncomfortable in my life.
Finally Pansy Roop gave another heave of her
shoulders and laughed, a loud piercing little laugh that,
to my nervous upset imagination, seemed for a moment
to hush the sound of the fountain. Then she took a
powder puff out of her bag and applied it lavishly to her
face.
“Well,” she said. “So long, Mr. Quest. I’ll do it—
I’ll move. After all, they wouldn’t let me stay there if
they knew—that Corporal, I mean. He thinks I am an
actress I’ll be off.”
I held out my hand to her. “Thank you, Miss Roop,”
I said. “You are doing the right thing, and I am very
grateful to you. I wish I could do something for you in
return.”
Her face softened again. “You can,” she said
eagerly. “I’m going to tell her that I’m going back to
live with my mother. I’ll say my mother’s 'ad a stroke.
73


M A G. P. YE
There was in her voice and aspect something not quite
Cockney; something almost rustic under her horrid
livery, and the kind moonlight lent to her a sort of
passing purity.
“It is about Mag, I suppose,” I said, to help her.
“Yes—sir,” she added after a moment.
“Let’s walk up and down,” I said. “We shall be
less conspicuous.”
“It’s not my fault,” she blurted out; “her knowing
me, I mean. I didn’t want to, but a bird I have got out
of its cage and ran along the gallery, and she caught
it, and then—How could I help her speaking to me?”
she ended passionately.
I hardly knew what to say. Who would have known
what to say? Whatever the woman was she had come
there, stealing the time from her dreadful vocation, to
talk to me, Mag’s friend, about Mag.
“You see, don’t you—you do see?” she urged, peering
up at me, the red plush bag ground together in her
gloved hands. -
“I think I do,” I answered, “but I don’t know what to
say to you, Miss ” I had forgotten her other name,
so I added “Pansy.”
At that her poor, thick, smeared mouth quivered into
a smile that was not unpleasing, and there were tears
in her eyes.
“You must tell her,” she said, “you must tell her she
must not know me. I can’t do it. I–you see, it was
wonderful, her liking me like that. I can't tell her.”
“If I told her,” I answered, as gravely as I felt, “she
wouldn’t understand.”
She nodded. “No, of course she wouldn’t. Neither
would I at her age. I’m only ten years older than her
now.”
72


M A G PYE
There was silence for a while, during which time the
fountain plashed and tinkled in the moonlight. Finally
the girl said, clearing her throat:
“Well, I don’t know what to do. She runs in and out
of my rooms; it's no place for her. What shall I do?”
“Couldn’t you live somewhere else?” I suggested,
feeling a perfect brute as I did so.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I thought you’d say
that, and I made up my mind, if you did, I would. You
see it’s cheap and it’s central there. But I know what
you mean. I’ve liked knowin’ her. She's gay, and I
like gay people. Some people call us gay, but, Oh, my
God, we aren’t We laugh a lot—we've got to—and I
suppose some of us is happier than we would be in a
factory or a shop—I dunno—”
There was another long pause, during which I had
never been more uncomfortable in my life.
Finally Pansy Roop gave another heave of her
shoulders and laughed, a loud piercing little laugh that,
to my nervous upset imagination, seemed for a moment
to hush the sound of the fountain. Then she took a
powder puff out of her bag and applied it lavishly to her
face.
“Well,” she said. “So long, Mr. Quest. I’ll do it—
I’ll move. After all, they wouldn’t let me stay there if
they knew—that Corporal, I mean. He thinks I am an
actress I’ll be off.”
I held out my hand to her. “Thank you, Miss Roop,”
I said. “You are doing the right thing, and I am very
grateful to you. I wish I could do something for you in
return.”
Her face softened again. “You can,” she said
eagerly. “I’m going to tell her that I’m going back to
live with my mother. I’ll say my mother’s 'ad a stroke.
73


M A G PYE
Lord, the stuff I’ve made up to tell her! Would you
mind if she ever mentioned me to you, just to—to
just—to back me up?”
“I will certainly back you up,” I said. “Where have
you told her your mother lives?”
“In Camden Town. You won’t forget, will you?
I’ll tell her I’ve met you—may I–sir?”
“Yes.”
I held her hand for a moment and looked at her as
kindly as I could.
“I think you know,” I said, “that you have now been
very good.”
She gave a dreary laugh.
“Me—good!” she answered. “Well, so long.” With
a little click of her heels she turned and marched off
up towards Fleet Street, out of my life and Mag’s.
Poor little passing ship!


CHAPTER XII
I spent Christmas at Wandover, as I have done for
many years—Wandover is Lord Lossell’s place in
Hampshire. It is a pleasant Georgian house in a hollow
at the foot of a high, pine-covered hill. There is a
terrace in front of it with hideous and delightful urns
at the corners, in which flowers grow in summer, but
which in the winter remind me of cremations. The door
is very fine under its Doric porch, and the hall, like the
one in Grosvenor Place, is paved with large black and
white stones. When a number of people are stand-
ing in these halls I have always an irresistible desire to
divide them into kings, pawns and castles and set them
at a game of chess. It is an odd thing that two out of
Lossell’s three houses should have this chessboard floor,
but it suits him in a way, and he seems to have more
character, more individuality, down here in the country
than anywhere else. He looks exactly like a Georgian
squire who happens not to be of the usual boisterous,
roistering, hard-drinking type. Horace Walpole would
have liked him, I think, and Walpole would have looked
splendid in the chessboard halls.
We were a small party for Christmas—there was an
old Lady Houndle, Middleton Treffry, Sir Max Cohen,
and Lord and Lady Malpas.
75


M A G PYE
With the exception of Cohen, these were all old
friends, and old Lady Houndle and Treffry had both
spent several Christmases there before.
Lady Houndle is one of those old women whose con-
stant presence in desirable houses is a matter of wonder
to some thoughtful minds; she is dull, disagreeable, most
unornamental, and has not even the virtue of well-
meaningness. Why she is invited I have always won-
dered, but not only do I often meet her in my own more
or less humble circle, of which circle, I may add, Lossell
is socially the shining light, but I constantly read about
her in the papers as being one of house parties in very
good houses indeed. A disagreeable old woman, who
has lived in the great world all her life, can be, as every-
body knows, amazing good company. But old Lady
Houndle is as dull as ditch water; therefore one asks
oneself, why; and for answer one gets only the echo of
one’s own voice.
However, there she was, and her detestable little dog
Papillon, a nasty, yapping, not very fragrant animal,
who spent most of his time choking, and even occa-
sionally went to the length of being sick on the rug.
Middletown Treffry I had once said might be called
the Samuel Rogers of his generation. He knows every-
body, and though he is a fresh-faced old fellow, very
spry on his legs, he seems to have known everybody’s
grandfather as well, to say nothing of their grand-
mothers. By an occasional fugitive twinkle in his vener-
able eye, I gather that he may have known the grand-
mothers better than the grandfathers.
He has a charming little house in Park Place, St.
James’s, where he gives luncheon parties at which one is
perfectly certain to meet only the cleverest men of the
moment and the most beautiful women. His collection
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* M A G P Y E
of miniatures of beautiful girls is, of course, famous,
for he has always had plenty of money and they have
been painted by the best painters of their periods. I
love the little white room of which the walls are prac-
tically covered with small squares of black velvet, on
which hang, delicately mounted in silver gilt, the ivory
ovals. It is a very comprehensive record of the beauty
in this country and France during the last fifty years,
and any woman whose picture makes part of it is very
sure to be proud of the fact, and to count it among her
best assets.
Sir Max Cohen is as new a British product as Treffry
and dreadful old Lady Houndle are old ones. There
have been Treffrys and Houndles ever since there were
English kings, but only in Queen Victoria’s time, to go
back very far, did the Max Cohens arise. He is a Jew
banker, immensely rich and of no family at all, though
he once told me that he derives from the Ghetto at
Frankfurt. But who, on reading this, pictures him as
plethoric, vulgar and smelling of money never made a
greater mistake in his life. He happens to be a small,
delicately built man, with absurd, unsure legs and a very
large head with little of the Hebraic about it. His eyes
are light brown; the little hair he has is of a peculiarly
silky quality, and also light brown in color. He is
gentle, almost shy in manner, and afflicted with a stam-
mer. At that time I, personally, didn’t like him much,
because he was always hanging about Edith Lossell and
that bored me because I wanted her to myself at Christ-
mas time. But even then I could not help recognizing
his odd, illusive charm and the immensity of his learn-
ing. Now I have done my duty by him.
The other two members of the party, Lord and Lady
Malpas, are invited every Christmas, exclusively, I am
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M.A. G. P. YE
sure, because they are relatives of the late Lady Los-
sell. Malpas is a fat, red man who likes to kill things,
and Lady Malpas is a suffragette. I used to wonder
why Malpas never feels inclined to kill her!
I arrived at Wandover just before dinner on the
twenty-fourth, and was promptly taken into the
servants’ hall to assist in the final decoration of the
Christmas tree for the tenants’ children, the yearly
appearance of which was one of the odd inconsistencies
of Lossell’s character. Never was there a less genial
man, and he certainly doesn’t like children, and yet, year
after year he not only gives the children this very elabo-
rate party, but attends to all the details himself and
makes his guests help him.
As usual, I found the whole party assembled in the
room—Lossell himself was standing on a ladder, attach-
ing a crimson star to the topmost peak of the very large
tree. Edith and Lady Malpas were tying up gifts in
parcels, and Malpas was wandering about, a huge figure
in hideous check clothes, a whisky and soda in his hand,
talking about the horns of some ibex he had killed a few
weeks before, in the Caucasus.
I sat down by Edith, who had been away from town
some time and who I thought looked very tired, and set
to work helping her.
“Did you have a decent journey?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “It was bitterly cold and I couldn’t get
any tea.” This was a device, simple but cunning, to get
her to myself for a bit, but it failed. She sat there very
quietly with her little air of lassitude, the light blazing
down on her smooth dark hair and sparkling on her
rings, tying up the endless parcels.
Lady Houndle was not present, and I inquired with
carefully concealed hopefulness whether we were to be
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M A G. P. YE
deprived this year of the pleasure of her company.
Malpas burst into his great roar.
“No such luck!” he answered, and for a moment I felt
a pang of sympathy for him.
“Oh, George!” remonstrated his wife. “You really
are too bad!”
I watched her curiously, for I had read in the papers,
not long ago, an account of her being arrested for
breaking a window in Bond Street, and subsequently
scratching a policeman. Malpas’s new joke (and he
always had one which he ran to earth and drove every-
one to madness by repeating) was that in view of his
wife’s recent prowess he himself went in fear of his
life.
“Steer clear of Hermine,” he said to me jocosely.
“She will have her hammer out in a minute; she has had
a special pocket made for it in her petticoat.”
This time it was Edith who murmured, “Oh, George!”
and the scene went on in all its lugubrious likeness to
other Christmas Eve scenes in the same room; and as I
had often done here at that hour of that day, I told
myself that I should have to flee, and that I should never
live through it. But even as I thought this I knew that
nothing short of an earthquake could get me away from
Wandover a minute sooner than I was obliged to go.
“Is Treffry coming?” I asked.
“Yes, but he doesn’t get here till tonight,” answered
Lossell, descending from his ladder and overhauling a
box of colored candles. “This’ll be your job, Quest,”
he went on, handing me a basket full of the nasty,
treacherous, little colored metal clips with which the
candles are fastened onto the tree. I rose obediently
and set to work.
An hour later I had a few minutes talk with Edith,
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M A G. P. YE
and learned that she had not been well and that she had
had a miserable time in Devon.
“Uncle Ralph is very hard to bear nowadays,” she ex-
plained. “He is drinking dreadfully and poor Monica
is in despair.”
“She oughtn't to have married him,” I growled.
“Why did she marry a man thirty years older than
herself?”
Edith looked at me oddly. “Don’t you know, Vic-
tor?” she asked. “Do you really not know why she
married him?”
“I suppose because he was rich and she was
poor 55
She shook her head with a queer little smile.
“You are a blind old thing,” she retorted gently.
“Monica Gray married my Uncle Ralph because she
loved him.”
“Get out !” I jeered. “She couldn’t possibly have
loved him, horrible old man.”
“Yes, he is horrible, but what I say is true, neverthe-
less.”
We were silent for a moment, and then, urged, im-
pelled by a sudden impulse that I knew, even while I
couldn’t restrain it, to be disastrous, I blurted out,
“Edith, do you think Bettany is dead?” She stared at
me almost as if I had struck her.
“Victor, why on earth did you ask me that?” she said
with a kind of stammer.
I was disproportionately ashamed of myself, but I
stuck to my guns.
“I’m sorry, dear. I was talking to a man the other
day who knew him and he didn’t seem sure whether the
poor fellow was dead or not, but rather thought he must
be.”
80


M A G. P. YE !
In the firelight (we were sitting in the library), I
saw her pale.
“Who-who was it?” she asked.
“Oh, nobody you know. Do you remember that child
I told you about—Margaret Pye?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it was her father.”
I saw that she wanted to know more, although she
could not bring herself to question me, so I went on,
looking into the fire.
“He happened to mention that he had been painting
in Paris in 1887-89, and said he knew Sparking, so I
asked him if he had ever met Bettany.”
Still she was silent.
“He hadn’t known him very well,” I resumed, for I
knew she was waiting, “and he didn’t seem to admire
his work so much as we all did, but he said he had seen
a good deal of him at one time.”
That was all the man had said, but I felt I ought to
go on. However, I had no more to tell her and con-
tinued to look away from her until she moved.
“I think,” she said slowly, “that he must be dead,
Victor.”
Then she moved to the door and opened it. Before
she left the room she added quietly, “I hope he is.”


M A G. P. YE
and learned that she had not been well and that she had
had a miserable time in Devon.
“Uncle Ralph is very hard to bear nowadays,” she ex-
plained. “He is drinking dreadfully and poor Monica
is in despair.”
“She oughtn't to have married him,” I growled.
“Why did she marry a man thirty years older than
herself?”
Edith looked at me oddly. “Don’t you know, Vic-
tor?” she asked. “Do you really not know why she
married him?”
“I suppose because he was rich and she was
poor 55
She shook her head with a queer little smile.
“You are a blind old thing,” she retorted gently.
“Monica Gray married my Uncle Ralph because she
loved him.”
“Get out !” I jeered. “She couldn’t possibly have
loved him, horrible old man.”
“Yes, he is horrible, but what I say is true, neverthe-
less.”
We were silent for a moment, and then, urged, im-
pelled by a sudden impulse that I knew, even while I
couldn’t restrain it, to be disastrous, I blurted out,
“Edith, do you think Bettany is dead?” She stared at
me almost as if I had struck her.
“Victor, why on earth did you ask me that?” she said
with a kind of stammer.
I was disproportionately ashamed of myself, but I
stuck to my guns.
“I’m sorry, dear. I was talking to a man the other
day who knew him and he didn’t seem sure whether the
poor fellow was dead or not, but rather thought he must
be.”
80


M A G P YE
–
In the firelight (we were sitting in the library), I
saw her pale.
“Who—who was it?” she asked.
“Oh, nobody you know. Do you remember that child
I told you about—Margaret Pye?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it was her father.”
I saw that she wanted to know more, although she
could not bring herself to question me, so I went on,
looking into the fire.
“He happened to mention that he had been painting
in Paris in 1887-89, and said he knew Sparking, so I
asked him if he had ever met Bettany.”
Still she was silent.
“He hadn’t known him very well,” I resumed, for I
knew she was waiting, “and he didn’t seem to admire
his work so much as we all did, but he said he had seen
a good deal of him at one time.”
That was all the man had said, but I felt I ought to
go on. However, I had no more to tell her and con-
tinued to look away from her until she moved.
“I think,” she said slowly, “that he must be dead,
Victor.”
Then she moved to the door and opened it. Before
she left the room she added quietly, “I hope he is.”


CHAPTER XIII
The holidays passed, once I was resigned to certain of
my convives, pleasantly enough for me. Treffry, as
usual, was a storehouse of delights. He is one of those
people who, though they never consciously shine, or, to
carry the simile further, give out light, yet by the mere
force of their own personality illumine the way for their
fellow travelers.
On several occasions I had the luck to take a long
walk with him, and I knew from long practice just how
to get him started on reminiscences. I told him that in
my own mind I had likened him to Sam Rogers, the
breakfast-party man, but I added that I had reconsid-
ered, and come to the conclusion that henceforth I should
regard him as my own particular, private Crabb Robin-
SOn.
The old man laughed gently.
“Where, Oh where,” he said, “is my Charles Lamb,
where even is my Mr. Coleridge?” I loved him for the
“even.” However, he was not at all unwilling to talk
when one wanted him to. It is a very different thing
from the way in which most conversationalists impose
their flow of words on weary or often violently unwilling
hearers, and many interesting things did I hear from
him of the old days long before I was born or heard of.
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M A G. P. YE
“I remember Lord Palmerston telling me—” he
said, and off he went at a genial mental jog trot travers-
ing gaily the hills and dales of the social old days. He
ended up with the rather spicy anecdote of one of Lord
Lossell’s aunts and then, with a mental bounce unlike
his usual methods of procedure, he spoke of Edith.
“Edith,” he remarked seriously, “is growing old.”
I was silent, for I was trying to think of the right
thing to say.
“Haven’t you noticed it?” he went on. “In the last
few months she has really aged. Ah! the pity of it!”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“By the way, Quest. Has Lossell shown you that new
find of his, that picture?”
I nodded. “The Bettany?”
“It is no more a Bettany than it’s a Raphael,” he
replied with fine scorn, standing still as was his way
when much interested.
“Why do you think that?”
He was a man of such quick, vivid thought that
pauses in his conversation were usually dramatic ones,
instead of the pauses of the seeker for words. Yet now
I felt that he was verbally feeling his way.
“I can’t quite tell you how I know,” he said at last,
“but I am pretty sure. You know, Quest, there was
always a mystery about that fellow. I knew him fairly
well at the time.”
I looked at him eagerly. “I know. I have always
felt it and it has always been just beyond my grasp.
Tell me what you think, Mr. Treffry.”
We had reached, in the course of our walk, an odd
little summer-house built like a temple, and here, in the
mildness of the sunny winter afternoon, the old man and
I sat down, and he talked.
84


M A G. P. YE
“I knew them all before you did,” he began. “Gerald
Lossell and I were at Eton together, and Mark, this
man, is my godson, as of course you know. He is an
odd fellow, but I think you are one of the people who
know that he is not so black as he paints himself. When
he married poor Lily Vidal I was at the wedding. I
remember that wedding well—my boots were too tight
and I suffered the torture of the damned.
“Well, of course, you have heard that Lily was not
happy. She was a sweet creature and her little face
had an odd old-fashioned way of changing color with
every thought—sometimes it was paper white, and
sometimes of an almost painful glow. I do not think she
was ever called pretty, and the little prettiness she had
soon faded after her marriage. I can remember Edith
from the very day of her birth. By the time she was
twelve she was beautiful, as women are beautiful, not
children. I remember the softness of her hands, the
swansdown look of her lovely throat, the narrowness of
her feet. I shall never forget her feet as her skirts be-
came longer and they, in that odd way young girls’ feet
have, grew more noticeable as they grew less visible. At
nineteen she was the most beautiful thing I have ever
seen, and her beauty was the more arresting, the more
remarkable, because it was not at all classic. It was
a strange beauty, Quest, irregular, odd–not according
to Hoyle, so to speak—and yet it was the greatest
beauty! For two or three seasons—and I suppose you
came along about that time—she was undisputably and
undisputedly the loveliest girl in London.
“Then Bettany appeared.”
The old man paused, leaned back in his seat, and
looked at me reflectively. “Did you know him in those
very earliest days?” he asked.
85


M A G PYE
“Yes, I-happened to be present when he was intro-
duced to her. That was at Cathcart's, the day her
portrait was shown before being sent to the Acad-
emy 35
“Bless my soul! Were you, indeed? Well, I don’t
know how you felt about Bettany—I personally always
liked him—but I didn’t believe in his pictures. By Jove!
I can remember now how I felt when I first saw “Cross-
roads.’”
“It was a wonderful picture,” I murmured.
“It was indeed. “The Windmill’ is good, a fine piece
of work—but “Crossroads” of course lifted him up into
the higher regions where only the best painters dwell.
However, it was before this, of course, that he and Edith
fell in love with each other.”
“Bettany fell in love with Edith,” I declared, “the
moment he first set eyes on her. It was the clearest case
I ever saw in my life.”
The old man nodded. “Yes, that must have been in
March, wasn’t it?”
I laughed. “It was the twenty-eighth of March,
1888,” I said.
Treffry, who was looking down, raised his heavy,
languid eyelids very slowly and looked at me.
“You have a good memory,” he said dryly and after
a pause he went on:
“You were at the dinner the night that the engage-
ment was announced, weren’t you?”
I nodded.
“Well, in that case you will never have forgotten her
face. Did you ever in all your life see a face so radi-
antly happy?”
It occurred to me to wonder what he would have
thought if by chance his sharp eyes had found it worth
86


M A G. P. YE
while to investigate the expression on my face at that
famous dinner. Even now, after twenty years, I can feel
the stiffening of muscles and the queer chill that had
settled over my mouth and chin as I sat opposite Edith.
“I have often wondered,” he went on, “what the
trouble really was, but I never dared ask her.”
“Why didn’t you ask Lossell?” I growled, clearing
my throat. “It was his fault in some way.”
The old man looked at me mildly. “Do you think so?
I always had an idea that it was an individual quarrel
between Edith and Bettany.”
He rose. “It’s getting a little too chilly for my sap-
less bones. Shall we walk on ?”
As we made our way across the grass towards the
avenue he continued:
“It was an amazing thing, wasn’t it? They were only
engaged four months in all. I have often wondered,”
he added, sharply turning, standing still and looking me
straight in the eyes, “whether the poor fellow may have
been jealous of you.”
I burst out laughing.
“Of me! Dear Mr. Treffry, I never had the luck to
make Bettany or anybody else jealous. Well, do you
remember his face?”
He nodded. “Yes, he was a good-looking fellow,
though he had the bluest chin I ever saw; I believe he
shaved twice a day—Well, as I say, I often wondered
whether he disliked your friendship with her.”
We had reached the steps of the terrace and stood
still, looking up at the house which, in the sudden with-
drawal of the sunset warmth, looked chill and austere.
Remembering his redoubtable diary that was said
already to extend to fifty-two volumes, and which would,
without doubt, be published on his death, I thought it
87


M A G P Y E
well to disabuse the old man’s mind of any illusion about
Miss Lossell and myself.
“Listen, sir,” I said, detaining him. “Edith cared so
absolutely for Bettany, that if the man had been a con-
genital idiot he could never have mistaken her friendship
with anyone else—I have always been convinced myself
that it was she who broke the engagement.”
He gazed up at me eagerly, his minutely wrinkled
face alight with interest.
“You think so? You think it was her doing?” he
said. “Ah, well, perhaps you are right. But you can’t
deny that he adored her. I never in my life saw a man
so devoutly in love.”
“Nor I.”
Then, as we went slowly up the steps to the door, he
continued:
“Do tell me, there’s a good fellow, what your theory
is. If she threw him over, why do you think she did it?”
But I had had enough of the conversation, and in his
avidity I sensed the diarist. However, he was an old
man who had always been kind to me and I liked him.
“I have,” I said, gently closing the conversation as
we reached the house, “no theories at all about it, Mr.
Treffry.”


CHAPTER XIV
And here it is necessary that I should go back, as I
warned the reader I should have to do, and explain how
it was that I had heard about Bill Bettany from Mag’s
father.
After learning that Pye was a morphinist I made no
effort to see the man. That vice happens to be one
that is peculiarly abhorrent to me. It is so much worse
than drinking because, after all, the primary reason for
drinking must in nine cases out of ten be the compara-
tively excusable one of conviviality, whereas the mor-
phine fiend, with his horrid little needle, deliberately, in
a minute way, operates on himself every time he takes
his stuff. There is nothing genial in operations. Can
you, for instance, imagine one fiend saying to another,
“Come along, old fellow, have a squirt on me!” It was
hideous to think of—a young girl dependent on the pro-
tection of a man with such a bestial weakness; but, on
the other hand, even in those days it never occurred to
me that Mag needed to be taken care of ; she was of the
kind that takes care of other people, and, luckily for
her, hers was not altogether the bravery of fortitude,
but also that of indifference. She seemed quite unmoved
about her father’s Saturday indulgences, so I had no
intention of blundering with another man’s business;
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M A G. P. YE
and but for a mere hazard many months might have
passed without my again setting eyes on Mr. Pye.
The hazard consisted of a very small scrap of orange
skin left on the steps of Blantyre Buildings, just outside
Mr. Pye's door. One might trace the history of the
orange skin and the orange on which it grew. Say it
came from Jaffa—there is something delightfully Old
Testament in the name Jaffa—the orange may have
been picked by an Arab and carried in paniers on a
camel to the nearest station. I am rather vague as to
geography, but it must have coasted Palestine on its
way to Europe; possibly it landed at Marseilles and
spent a few hours on the quay there, almost within
smell of the bouillabaisse in the restaurants. Then I see
my orange dashing across France and arriving in Eng-
land. Where oranges and other tropical luxuries land
on our shores I have no idea, but I should think prob-
ably at Southampton and Portsmouth. At all events,
up my orange came to town and was dumped from the
wholesale into the retail trade and found itself one day
in a humble shop in the Pimlico Road. There it was
probably bought by a slatternly lady with a bulging
basket, and presented as a rich gift to one of her off-
spring. Having eaten the orange and being reluctant
to give up the joys of mastication, the child was, I
imagine, sent downstairs on an errand while still chew-
ing a bit of the peel. Then the hand of Fate intervened;
the child suddenly had enough of orange peel and
dropped a small fleck of it on the stairs, whereupon I,
coming down from Madame Aimée's with no intention
whatsoever of seeing Mag, as I was in a hurry, slipped
on that bit of peel and came down with such force on my
right elbow that, for a moment, I could not get up and
lay sprawling, almost sick with pain. It was then that
00


M A G PYE
Mag’s father chanced to come up the stairs. He came
to my rescue with great kindness, helped me up, retrieved
my hat, and on seeing that I really had had a bad
shaking insisted on my going into his sitting-room
to rest a bit. He made me sit down on the sofa and
out of a cupboard produced a bottle of whisky, from
which he poured me a generous and most welcome
drink.
“Sorry I haven’t any soda,” he said, “but I don’t run
to that nowadays.”
As I grew better I watched him carefully and found
that I liked him. Mag’s description was as outrage-
ously unflattering as descriptions of one member of a
family by another so often are. He was a small man,
but he was well built; he wore a pointed beard, and his
hands were of the short, spatulate type often seen in
artists. His sad, deep-set eyes were not bad in expres-
sion and his voice was pleasant.
“You got a pretty bad fall,” he said presently.
I nodded. “I did. I had just been calling on a
neighbor of yours, Madame Aimée.” He was filling his
pipe and nodded indifferently as I spoke.
“Ah, yes; she’s a very nice woman, I believe. She’s
been a good friend to my little girl.” He drained his
glass and added, rather more expansively, “And she
needs friends, poor child.”
“If you will allow me to say so,” I observed, “she has
one in me, as well as in Madame Aimée. I am a great
admirer of your daughter, Mr. Pye.”
He looked up sharply. “Then you must be Mr.
Quest?”
“I am. She is a delightful child.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “A good little thing. I
am sorry she is not going to have any looks.”
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M A G. P. YE
It was odd, for it was I who felt the indignation that
he ought to have felt had I decried Mag’s appearance.
“She has beautiful eyes,” I expostulated, “and de-
lightful hands.”
“Ever noticed her legs?”
I could have boxed his ears, but Mag’s arrival with a
roast of mutton put an end to the strain. She insisted,
to my great discomfort, on tying up my elbow with a
handkerchief soaked in some liniment, and was very
voluble about the hideous danger I had just passed
through.
Pye paid very little attention to either of us after
that. He sat by the fire smoking and brooding appa-
rently over not very pleasant dreams.
Mag glanced at him presently. “Do you like him?”
she asked.
I started, but I need not have done so, for he didn’t
hear her. It was one of his characteristics that, sitting
in the presence of others, he was so deep in his own
thoughts or dreams as to be quite unconscious of what
was said about him. I don’t know whether this is a
quality usual in people who take morphine, but it was
very characteristic of Pye and I have often observed it
in him.
In the kitchen before I left I told her that I did like
her father, whereupon she nodded gravely and dropped
the subject.
It was some days after this that I had with the man
the talk to which I had referred in speaking to Edith.
I don’t remember exactly how the subject of Bettany
came up, but I must have shown surprise that he should
have known the great painter, for he laughed and said
rather whimsically, “Ah, Mr. Quest, in those days Bet-
tany was not the famous man he afterwards became, nor
92


M A G. P. YE
n that
was I the down-at-heel failure I am now. Things were
more equal then.”
It was then that he told me in answer to my question,
that he believed Bettany was dead. “No one has heard
of him for many years,” he said with an indifferent
exclusive little shrug.
The next move in Mag’s story was, oddly enough,
due to Sir Max Cohen. That queer little Hebrew
dandy arrived at Wandover two or three days after
Christmas, and in overhearing some remark of Lossell’s
to me about Mag, he asked who she was. It was then
that I first realized the depth of the impression the
child had made on Lossell. Instead of allowing me to
explain my own protégée he took the matter out of my
hands completely.
“She’s a poor child in London that Quest picked up
somewhere—”
“I didn’t; she picked me up,” I protested mildly.
cº And brought to see my pictures. She’s very
young—how old did you say, Quest?—ah, yes; twelve
last month—and I think she is going to be an artist of
some kind, at least she has a tremendous flair for pic-
tures. She doesn’t simply look at them, she sees them
and shows the nucleus of a very fine taste. They move
her strangely as well; she rally loves them.”
“Has she drawn anything?” asked Cohen.
I shook my head. “No, not so far as I know. Her
father’s a broken-down painter, and a morphine fiend,
and he seems to have shown her more pictures in the
last two or three years than most people see in a life-
time.”
Cohen gazed at me thoughtfully, his clear, light-
brown eyes full of mild interest, and I was about to
93


M A G P YE
It was odd, for it was I who felt the indignation that
he ought to have felt had I decried Mag’s appearance.
“She has beautiful eyes,” I expostulated, “and de-
lightful hands.”
“Ever noticed her legs?”
I could have boxed his ears, but Mag’s arrival with a
roast of mutton put an end to the strain. She insisted,
to my great discomfort, on tying up my elbow with a
handkerchief soaked in some liniment, and was very
voluble about the hideous danger I had just passed
through.
Pye paid very little attention to either of us after
that. He sat by the fire smoking and brooding appa-
rently over not very pleasant dreams.
Mag glanced at him presently. “Do you like him?”
she asked.
I started, but I need not have done so, for he didn’t
hear her. It was one of his characteristics that, sitting
in the presence of others, he was so deep in his own
thoughts or dreams as to be quite unconscious of what
was said about him. I don’t know whether this is a
quality usual in people who take morphine, but it was
very characteristic of Pye and I have often observed it
in him.
In the kitchen before I left I told her that I did like
her father, whereupon she nodded gravely and dropped
the subject.
It was some days after this that I had with the man
the talk to which I had referred in speaking to Edith.
I don’t remember exactly how the subject of Bettany
came up, but I must have shown surprise that he should
have known the great painter, for he laughed and said
rather whimsically, “Ah, Mr. Quest, in those days Bet-
tany was not the famous man he afterwards became, nor
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M A G P Y E
was I the down-at-heel failure I am now. Things were
more equal then.”
It was then that he told me in answer to my question,
that he believed Bettany was dead. “No one has heard
of him for many years,” he said with an indifferent
exclusive little shrug.
The next move in Mag’s story was, oddly enough,
due to Sir Max Cohen. That queer little Hebrew
dandy arrived at Wandover two or three days after
Christmas, and in overhearing some remark of Lossell’s
to me about Mag, he asked who she was. It was then
that I first realized the depth of the impression the
child had made on Lossell. Instead of allowing me to
explain my own protégée he took the matter out of my
hands completely.
“She’s a poor child in London that Quest picked up
somewhere—”
“I didn’t; she picked me up,” I protested mildly.
66 And brought to see my pictures. She’s very
young—how old did you say, Quest?—ah, yes; twelve
last month—and I think she is going to be an artist of
some kind, at least she has a tremendous flair for pic-
tures. She doesn’t simply look at them, she sees them
and shows the nucleus of a very fine taste. They move
her strangely as well; she rally loves them.”
“Has she drawn anything?” asked Cohen.
I shook my head. “No, not so far as I know. Her
father’s a broken-down painter, and a morphine fiend,
and he seems to have shown her more pictures in the
last two or three years than most people see in a life-
time.”
Cohen gazed at me thoughtfully, his clear, light-
brown eyes full of mild interest, and I was about to
93


M A G PYE
speak again when Lossell, who had left the fire where
we were sitting (we were in his study just before
dinner), came back, carrying a big sheet of paper in his
hand.
“This came this morning,” he said with a jarring,
rather irritating little laugh of triumph.
We looked at it in silence.
“She sent it to me as a gift,” Lossell explained, “in
return for a box of colors and some brushes I sent
her.”
He had not told me of the box of colors and I had not
seen Mag for over a fortnight, so I had known nothing
of the gift until then.
Why the child had chosen as the subject of her offer-
ing an American Indian engaged in the congenial task
of scalping a settler was hard to guess. It was almost
as certain that she had never seen an American Indian
as it was that she had never seen a settler in process of
scalping. The feather headdress of the brave looked
very shaky and the blanket wrapt round him was not, to
my idea, of warpath fashion—to tell the truth I was not
very much impressed by the work, until Cohen, disre-
garding me utterly, turned to our host
“That is clever,” he said. “It is better than clever.
That chap is really standing on his feet. See the way
she’s thrown the weight?”
“Quite so, and the values are good as far as they go,”
Lossell answered.
I was a little nettled at being so completely out of it,
so I made a disparaging remark about the settler.
Once more no one paid the slightest attention to me, so I
puffed at my pipe and tried to pretend that I didn’t
care.
“You might bring her to my house some time,” Cohen
94


M A G PYE
suggested mildly, turning to me. “I should like to talk
to her. I might be able—” he hesitated with a little
modest air that was very endearing—“to be of some
use to her.”
I thanked him, and said I should most certainly bring
her. Lossell nodded cordial approval, and it did not
escape me that in this matter he was behaving better
than I had done a minute ago. After all, it was he who
had practically discovered Mag’s gift, if it was a gift,
and yet he was handing her over to his artistic superior
with a generous finality that I had been quite unable
to compass. These things make a man feel small, but
are, doubtless, salutary.
However, as it happened, it was not Mag who went to
see Sir Max, but Sir Max who called on Mag.
It appears he got her address, quite simply, from Los-
sell, and as he afterwards told me, chancing to find him-
self in the neighborhood of Pimlico, he went to see the
child.
He told me a long time afterwards more about the
interview than he bothered to communicate to me at the
moment.
“It was,” he said as we sat one night in his little
orchid house in Green Street, “washing day in Pimlico,
and Miss Margaret-Gretchen was up to her elbows in
frothy blue water. Water bluer than any sea, though I
don’t know what made it so.” (The gifted Mr. Reckitt
was not known to Sir Max, but I knew what made the
water blue.) “The room was very steamy, not to say
damp,” the little man went on, “and mutton was roast-
ing in the oven. It was very domestic, very—what shall
I say—gemütlich—you must remember, Mr. Quest, that
I am born a German Jew—She was glad to see me when
I told her I had come from you and Lord Lossell. Her
95


M A G. P. YE
manner,” he added incidentally as a little passing
tribute, “was exquisite.”
“It is,” I grunted with satisfaction, “when she wants
it to be.”
“She could not leave her washing just at first. It was
a question of some garment of her father's, but in a few
moments she dried her arms and led me into the salon.
She was quite charming, even in those days when she
was so outrageously fat, and of course the room itself
was delightful. She showed me the different “works’ she
had accomplished since the day of the Indian brave, and
there was enough in them to rivet my interest. But the
most delightful thing of all was my discovery of the
undoubted Bettany hanging over the chest of drawers.
You remember it?” he asked me sharply. I didn’t, and
said so.
“It isn’t a good one,” the great connoisseur went on,
“not even so good as “L’Abreuvoire,” which, as you
probably know, I own, and which is by no means the
equal of “Crossroads’ and “The Windmill,” but it was
undoubtedly a Bettany, as her father, who had been
asleep in the next room and came in as I was examining
it, assured me.”
“He knew Bettany,” I put in.
“Yes—I didn’t like the father,” Cohen went on.
This I quite understood. Cohen, with all his charm,
all his exquisite mental valor, never could feel, of course,
even the reluctant superior pity that I felt for poor Pye.
However, it had interested him to talk with the man of
his former friend, and apparently Pye had been more
communicative to him than he had to me. No doubt the
fellow thought me a rank Philistine, whereas even he
would have heard of Sir Max Cohen, the great critic
and buyer of pictures.
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M A G P YE
At all events, Cohen on that occasion had definitely
made friends with the two Pyes, and it was owing to his
swift and capable intervention that Mag was freed by
her father from her duties to him for four mornings in
the week, in order that she might repair to the studio
of the man Cohen had chosen as her first instructor.
The next time I happened to be at Blantyre Buildings
on a Wednesday, I met, to my astonishment, the plum-
duff-like Mrs. Brankles, who was engaged in swabbing,
in a seaman-like manner, the gallery outside the Pye's
flat.
Having exchanged the compliments of the day, Mrs.
Brankles and I had a few moments’ conversation, during
which I learned that hers was now the task of purifying
and embellishing the palazzo Pye twice every week.
“Magpie,” she informed me gaily, “has gorn for a
p’inter, so I go and clean up for 'er—eight shillings a
week I get from the gentleman. Praps,” Mrs. Brankles
added sentimentally, “p'raps ‘e’ll marry 'er some day.”
“Who'll marry whom?” I growled.
“The gent, 'e might marry 'er, Mag, I mean. She
won’t be so pl’in when she’s not so fleshy.”
I nipped this romance in the bud by telling her, which
was perfectly untrue, that Sir Max Cohen had a wife
and four lovely children, all of them girls and named
after flowers.
Mrs. Brankles sighed with delight. She loved a ro-
mance, as, to do them justice, do most women of her
class of life, however poor and unhappy their own
married lives may be. There is something rather won-
derful in this when you come to think of it.
I have said nothing for a long time about Madame
Aimée, but it is not because she had lost her importance
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M A G P YE
in Mag’s life. She had been ill, poor soul; so ill that I
had not been allowed to see her for several weeks. In-
deed, Mag had been going to the studio in Thurloe
Square for over a month before I had an opportunity
of discussing the situation with Madame Aimée, and
then, to my surprise, I found that this devoted friend
was not greatly pleased with the turn events had taken.
“But don’t you think,” I asked, “that it’s a good
thing that the child should have proper lessons in
painting?”
She looked at me anxiously. “I don’t know,” she said.
“It’s all so difficult. La vie est tellement compliquée.”
I tried to cheer her, but I failed. She was depressed,
and her poor face was sadder than I had ever seen it
before, as I took my leave. On this occasion I deliber-
ately stopped at Pye's to see if he had come in. He
had, and I told him about Madame Aimée.
“She’s so kind and such a true friend to you both,” I
urged him. “I really wish, Mr. Pye, that you would
see her and explain that you are pleased about what
Cohen is doing for Mag.”
“I don’t know her,” he said coldly. “I have never set
eyes on the woman.”
I disliked him intensely at the moment.
“I know,” I returned as gently as I could, “and Mag
has told me that you dread the sight of her burns. I
quite understand that—I know that artists are very
sensitive. But I assure you that there is nothing in the
least shocking about her poor face.”
He waved his hand. “I have never suggested such a
thing, Mr. Quest.”
For a moment I was conscious of a violent desire to
ask him whether he believed that a burnt face could
possibly be as horrible to him as was to me the fact that
98


M A G PYE
he was an opium eater. However, this remark would
have done no good, and I am glad to say I didn’t make
it.
“You told me yourself,” I persisted, in spite of the
horrid consciousness that I was making myself
thoroughly disagreeable to the man, “that she’d been a
good friend to Mag. Really, Mr. Pye, I do think that
it would be very decent of you to let her see that you do
not consider me a blundering mischief-maker for having
introduced Cohen to her.”
He shook his head, a softer expression in his melan-
choly eyes.
“It could do no good, Mr. Quest, and it would dis-
tress me. I can’t bear even to think of—burnt human
flesh.”
So I gave it up and went my way. The man was
hopeless, but doubtless he himself did not know what a
monster of ingratitude he must seem to anyone who
knew of Madame Aimée's tender, unselfish love for his
neglected little girl.
I read De Quincey that night, trying to understand
something of the workings of the mind of people who
take morphine, but I gained little comfort, for it
occurred to me suddenly that De Quincey at least had
the grace not to use a piece of mechanism to achieve
the condition he longed for—he drank his opium out of
a coffee cup.
691125 A


CHAPTER XV
A few days ago I reread what I have written and I
found that I have failed in my chief object which, as I
have called the book after her, it is hardly necessary to
say was the rendering of Margaret Pye not only impor-
tant to the story but attractive.
I suppose even an accomplished novelist might find
difficulty in explaining that most illusive of qualities—
charm. That I have failed absolutely in doing it is as
patent to me as it could be to anyone else.
Mag was, when we first met, exactly what I described
her: fat, managing, capable, a little lady, without any
of the early educational graces that should have been
hers by birth—at least from her father's side. I have
described her beautiful eyes as well as I know how, and I
have, I think, made it clear that she was destined one
day to become physically attractive even if not remark-
ably pretty. But I have given no feeling of the odd
fascination that she had, from the first, not only for
me, but for those of my friends and acquaintances whom,
as has been seen, she met soon after Mrs. Brankles
brought her to my notice.
So after much pondering over my failures, it has oc-
curred to me to do what many a wise man has done
before—ask for help in my difficulty, and I wrote letters
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M A G. P. YE
to Lossell, Sir Max Cohen and Madame Aimée. This is
what I said in them.
MAY, 1916.
DEAR -
I have been thinking about our friend Magpie, and en-
deavoring to explain her to myself. She has charmed me
from the first so that it annoys me to find that I am quite
incapable of making clear that charm to other people. Will
you therefore write to me wherein you think lies—and say
even seven years ago—that charm and attractiveness?
Needless to say, we will not mention this discussion to the
child herself, therefore you may speak quite freely.
Yours, etc.,
VICTOR QUEST.
The sending of these letters seemed to me a most ex-
cellent idea, a plan probably fertile of the necessary
elucidation, and it pleased me that I should have been
able to apply to three people so absolutely unlike as the
three I have mentioned. Their viewpoints were bound
to be not only unbiased, but also, I thought, more
characteristic than would be, about a matter of com-
parative unimportance to them, the viewpoints of almost
any other group of three of whom I could think. It
stood to reason that a rich and philanthropic peer, a
rich Jewish connoisseur of pictures and a poor French
invalid of obviously humble origin would look at the
matter from extremely varied standpoints. I told Edith
what I had done, and she was greatly amused.
“You should have asked me what I thought,” she sug-
gested.
“No good at all, my dear! You—that’s different.”
She nodded. “I know. Yet I know why she inter-
ested you at the very first.”
“Why p”
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M A G PYE
She laughed. “Because, dear old thing, almost every-
one does! But she interested you in a very personal,
very close way, because you are—a natural-born
father.” Then she added, her beautiful eyes lit with
amused malice, “I used to wonder if you would ever fall
in love with her.”
“No, you didn’t,” I returned gravely. I couldn’t go
into the matter deeply because, of course, she didn’t
know that I was writing a book, so I said no more, and
this morning the three letters arrived.
DEAR QUEST [Lossell said]:
What an odd fellow you are! If you don't know why
our friend fascinated us from the first, even though she was
fat, how on earth should I know? However, I can tell
you why she always interested me—because it was my be-
lief, after that first masterpiece of prairie life, that some-
where within her was some kind of artistic gift. Besides,
I liked her voice and her eyes, and knew she was going to
be very pretty some day. Events have justified this latter
belief as we both know. She was looking lovely at the
Malpas' wedding yesterday.
I hope this’ll satisfy you.
Yours sincerely,
LossELL.
Sir Max Cohen said:
DEAR QUEST:
Margaret Pye interested me in the beginning because
she was extremely individual. Also she struck me as being
sincere to a remarkable extent. Glenny had told me, after
the first lesson, that she had undoubted talent, and with it
the concomitant rather unusual in a child, of great industry.
While the talent may not have turned out as great as I at
first hoped, it is as you know, sufficiently greater than that
of most young painters, male or female, to make me feel
very grateful to you for having drawn my attention to her.
I don't know whether you have seen her last little pic-
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M.A. G. P. YE
ture, but to my mind it is remarkably good for a girl of
her age—is she eighteen or nineteen—and as you ask me
about her charm I may as well add that as far as I am con-
cerned my personal liking and delight in her would not
materially decrease if she never painted another picture in
her life.
Come and dine with me one night. I am very busy just
now and so am not going out much, so any time will suit
me if you will let me know beforehand.
Yours very truly,
> MAx CoHEN.
These two letters I did not feel were particularly
elucidating. I could have said as much myself. Mme.
Aimée's was as bad. She simply said:
CHER Monsieur [I shall translate it]:
Mag interested me because I loved her; because she is
more to me than anyone in the world; because she makes up
to me for much that I lost in my youth, largely by my own
fault.
I hope that you will soon have time to come and see me
again. I have some new sketches of the child's I should
like to show you.
Then she thanked me for some flowers I had sent her
and a cocoanut cake (she has a passion for cocoanut),
and hoped that I would come and see her soon.
I sat for a long time over my cold bacon and eggs,
reading and rereading these letters, which were dis-
tinctly disappointing, but finally I realized that it is as
difficult to describe personal charm as it is to describe
the scent of a flower, and it pleased me to think that the
personal charm of every individual may almost be called
a scent, whereas no one can deny that the scent of a
flower is its greatest charm.
So having failed in describing Mag up to the present,
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M A G. P. YE
I think I shall henceforth give up all attempts to con-
vey that most elusive quality of hers, and be a little
more explicit regarding her various doings. But before
I go back to where I left off, it gives me great pleasure
to record a little adventure I had this very afternoon,
the day of the letters.
I had been to an afternoon concert at Queen’s Hall,
and was walking along Regent Street. It was a wet
May day, summer having set in with its usual rigor; an
icy blast every now and then blew my umbrella nearly
out of my exasperated grasp, and I was very cross.
I had not liked the music much; it had been, I sup-
pose, a little too good for me, and the pianist had
irritated me. I won’t tell his name, but he struck me,
with his unnatural looking hair and staring black eyes,
as being like a flannellion on a penwiper. Also I had had
a sharp passage at arms with my particular bete noir,
Lady Houndle, whom I met on coming out. I am cer-
tain she grows more disagreeable as she grows older,
and no doubt she thinks I do. But our mutual dislike
grows more intense every time we meet, and I detest her
companion almost as much as herself. The old lady,
although now very fat and pretty decrepit, beat me as
usual in the wordy war, for she is hampered by no idea
of limitations. There is nothing that violent old
woman can’t say, whereas naturally there is a great
deal that I feel bound to keep pent within my smolder-
ing breast. So my temper was none of the best when,
at the corner of Were Street, I collided with another
pedestrian, who slipped and would have fallen had I not
caught her by the elbow. The handle of my umbrella
had shot out backwards under my arm, completely
separating me from my victim, and when I had disen-
tangled myself and was proceeding to apologize, I
104


M A G. P. YE
literally gasped with astonishment to find that that
victim was Pansy Roop.
She looked older and shabbier, and the wet had
washed the powder off her face, which was of an un-
lovely porous texture; but she had the same pitiful,
brazen smile, a little less pitiful and a little more brazen
than of old, and I noticed that her gloves—and on the
other two occasions of my meeting here, her gloves had
been remarkable for their immaculateness—had holes in
the ends of the fingers, and were distinctly grubby.
When we had shaken hands and inquired for each
other’s health, she said suddenly: “I’m glad to see you,
Mr. Quest. Indeed, I am. I wish—I suppose you
wouldn’t come and have a cup of tea with me?”
Naturally, but a little to my shame, perhaps, I
pleaded another engagement, for I certainly didn’t want
to go home with Pansy Roop. But a look in her face
smote me before the lie was well out of my mouth, and
murmuring something inarticulate about putting off
my friend, I turned and went back with her.
She lived up several flights of stairs in some new flats
near Mortimer Street, and in a few minutes I found my-
self sitting in an armchair while she made tea on a gas
ring. It was the first time in my life that I had ever
found myself in such an environment, and only by
putting certain inevitable thoughts resolutely out of my
mind could I carry off the situation decently. It is an
odd thing that whereas during the first fifteen minutes
of my call I was acutely, almost passionately miserable,
I suddenly, at the end of that time, found the misery
had passed off, and we sat, the poor little thing and I,
drinking our tea in a simple, friendly fashion that at
any rate on my part completely laid the evil ghosts of
the place. -
105.


M A G P Y E
True to her fondness for red, Miss Roop's little coat
and skirt, cut, even I could see, in an exaggeration of
the present fashion, were of an unmitigated crimson.
It was cloth such as coachmen’s coats are made of -a
material meant to be smooth, but that, in this probably
cheap incarnation, was rough all over with infinitesimal
balls of fluff. She wore a string of large glass pearls,
and her hair, which looked dry and metallic, was less
abundant than before.
“How d'you think I look?” she asked suddenly, smil-
ing up at me in a way that was obviously meant to be
bright.
“I think you look very tired.”
She laughed without brightness.
“Tired. I am. You look pretty much the same, Mr.
Quest. I’ve never forgot your face somehow, and you
were very kind to me that night by that fountain.
D'you remember?”
Then she asked me about Mag and I told her all I
knew. She was deeply interested, and delighted to hear
of the child’s success.
“I suppose,” she said when I paused at last, “you’d
be offended if I-if I said something—sir?”
I knew that the “sir” was, so to speak, an apology
before the act, and accepted it as such.
“You might try,” I answered.
“Well, I’ve often wondered,” she twisted her fingers
nervously, “if you wouldn’t marry her some day.”
I laughed. “My dear Miss Roop, Margaret Pye is
eighteen and I happen to be fifty-six.”
She looked at me, her soft painted lips parted a little,
her eyes full of rather shrewd speculation.
“That wouldn’t matter,” she said. “You’d be safe.”
Now I’d not had the slightest hesitation in telling her
106


M A G PYE
my real age, and Heaven knows that I see my own
rather grotesque face as clearly as anyone can see it.
Also I have always endeavored to be a law-abiding, God-
fearing citizen. Yet the fact remains that I rather re-
sented this poor little harlot's calling me “safe.” For
the moment it made me wish to be a devastating Don
Juan, a chartered menace to the safety of homes; a
social pirate. However, I said nothing of all this, and
rose to go.
I thanked her for her hospitality and asked her, as
well as I could, how she herself was getting on. It is
difficult to inquire into the prosperity of a lady of this
class. -
She, it appears, was not unhappy. Since I had seen
her she had had a very good time. She had even been
to Paris. She added other illuminating but unprofit-
able details which I shall not repeat, from which I
gathered that she had become quite resigned to life and
what it had done for her, and felt no need for pity or
even sympathy. Perhaps this was just as well, but I
could not help regretting the wistfulness and unex-
pressed shame of her manner that night in the Temple.
It was after she had opened the door and I had shaken
hands with her, that she made her great remark.
“I have missed Magpie, Mr. Quest,” she began.
“Nobody ever interested me as much as she did.”
Here was my chance. I had forgotten and now I
remembered.
“Can you tell me just why Mag interested you so
much?” I asked the girl. “I know it's very difficult to
explain.”
She laughed, shrugging her shoulders.
“If everything was as easy to explain as that! It's
as simple as rolling off a log—there wasn’t a person in
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M A G P Y E
Blantyre Buildings that Mag didn’t interest the way
she interested you and me, Mr. Quest, and of course the
reason is, we interest her so much.” And I knew that
she was right, that where the noble lord, the Jewish
connoisseur, and the little French woman had failed,
poor Pansy Roop had succeeded.
It is the Magpie's passionate, and sometimes even
pestiferously persistent interest in everyone she knows
that gives her the quality I have so lamentably failed to
describe. And this brings me back to my story, which
I take up, after this mission into 1916, back in the good
year 1910.


CHAPTER XVI
So here we are back again six years ago, Mag go-
ing three times a week to old Glenny’s studio in Thur-
loe Square; Mrs. Brankles keeping the house in order
in her absence; poor Pye celebrating his Saturdays
and Sundays in his old dreadful way; Madame Aimée
just recovering from her long wearying illness, and I
jogging along much as usual in the Temple.
About two years after the day when I had first met
Mag, I went through what I might as well confess to
be an almost annual performance with me. I took
Edith Lossell to lunch and asked her to marry me. If
I had a thousand pounds for every time that I have
distressed and embarrassed that dear woman by urg-
ing her to do this thing for which I know she has
not the slightest inclination, I should be a rich man.
But it is always the same with me; for months I go
on, one day very much like the other, content, even
if not quite happy, with my books, my insignificant
writings, and my equally unimportant little personal
interests. There are times when I am even for a few
minutes gloriously, almost triumphantly full of joy,
as, for instance, when I read certain scenes in Shake-
speare, certain essays of Lamb, certain phrases of
Hazlitt; and I have never known the day so dark
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M A G. P. YE
that it could not be lightened by a few poems that I
love.
It would interest nobody to hear what these poems
are, but one or two of them are Wordsworth's, and
one is Tom Moore's; and “The old familiar faces” of
dear Charles Lamb, sad as it is, and conclusive, holds
for me a never failing delight.
Thus, as I have said, my days file quietly past and
then there comes over me a restlessness, a curious, in-
articulate misery, and my pipe loses its flavor, and the
most beautiful curly tailed chop its interest. Some-
times I do not at first recognize this behavior as
indicating loneliness, but find gradually that that is
what it is. I am lonely; I am incomplete; and the thing
I want, the thing without which I shall never be happy,
is Edith. On these occasions I always go and ask her
to marry me, and she, dear lady, always refuses me in
the gentlest and sweetest and most affectionate way.
“Dear Victor,” she usually says, “I do wish you
wouldn’t do this. It only upsets and distresses both
of us.”
This last time I remember telling her how sorry I
was to bother her, but that I was utterly unable to
help it.
“It is a kind of autumn demonstration,” I added.
“It is a sort of mental equinox that comes tearing over
me.” And then I asked her: “Are you really perfectly
sure that you never could say yes?”
“Perfectly sure, dear Victor.”
We were silent for a while. “I have always been
perfectly sure,” she added.
It was a fine, clear, cold morning, and we were walk-
ing in St. James’ Park. I remember she stopped on
the little bridge and, turning, looked up at me.
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M A G. P. YE
She wore a gray fur coat, chinchilla I think, and a
little crumpled gray velvet hat under which her beau-
tiful eyes shone like lakes—and like lakes, I knew, they
held their secrets.
“Don’t you think,” she went on, “that you might try
to get over this—this habit?”
“Which do you mean, the habit of loving you, or the
habit of asking you to marry me?”
Then her wonderful face flushed.
“The habit of asking me, my dear. I am afraid I
am too selfish sincerely to wish you to get over car-
ing.”
My love for her is so deep, so comprehensive, that
at these words I felt a thrill that was almost happi-
ness, and almost triumph.
“If you really mean that—” I burst out. She held
up her hand.
“Hush! I do mean it, but after all, it is only be-
cause I am very selfish. Can’t you—won’t you—Oh,
please do believe that I could never marry you.”
Suddenly across the Park, down the slope from Pic-
cadilly, I saw a smart, light-gray figure coming to-
ward us on oddly uncertain looking legs.
“Does that mean you could never marry only me,
or that you could never marry anyone?” I asked rough-
ly. She hesitated.
“You know,” said Edith slowly, “that I loved Bill,
and if I lived to be a million years I could never love
anyone else, Victor.”
“I know, I know,” I interrupted hurriedly, for the
gray figure was approaching. “What I mean is, could
you ever marry anyone else?”
She smiled, and the lines round her eyes were very
visible. “I have often tried,” she said, “to marry—
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M A G. P. YE
tried, I mean, to make up my mind to say yes to the
one or two who have wanted me—and they have not
been many, Victor—I am not very popular.”
“Well, do you think you ever will?” I urged.
There was a long pause, during which the man on
the other side of the bridge came quickly toward us;
he had seen us now.
Edith looked up at me. In my wildest dreams I
could never conceive of loving a woman who could
look levelly into my eyes.
“I will be truthful with you,” she said slowly. “You
deserve it. There is one man whom I might possibly
accept if—” she laughed softly, “he ever asked me.”
With jealous certainty I knew whom she meant.
“Why could you marry him?”
She looked bravely at me and told the plain truth
—sometimes such an immensely difficult thing to do.
“Because if I married him—this particular man—
I should not be wronging him; I should never have to
pretend that I cared for him, and that would not hurt
him, because he doesn’t love me.”
“Not love you!” I burst out. He had reached the
end of the bridge by now.
Suddenly her face softened, and curved and dimpled
into the old face of long ago, in such a wonderful way
that I heard myself catch my breath.
“He loves me in his way,” she said, laying her hand
on my arm, “but, Oh, my dear, dear old Victor, my
dearest and best of friends, can’t you understand that
that way isn’t your way?”
A second later Sir Max Cohen had joined us, and
was showing us, with the delighted simplicity that
makes him so charming, an amber-headed stick that
he had bought at a sale the day before. It had a little
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M.A. G. P. YE
hole just below the crutch, and the little hole was lined
and edged with ivory, and through the ivory was
passed a black silk cord from which hung a little tas-
sel. It had belonged to some great beau of the Re-
gency, I forget which one, and the little millionaire
was as pleased as a child with it.
He was on his way to Queen Anne's Gate, but at
once announced that if she would allow him he would
walk home with her, as he wanted in any case to see
Lossell.
So I left them there on the bridge and crossed the
Park and went through Clarence Gate, where I stopped
for a word, as is my habit, with the lodge-keeper's hand-
some and delightful Irish wife, and up St. James Street.
I was lunching with Middleton Treffry.


CHAPTER XVII
Miss Pye's birthday is in December. A horrid day
for a child’s birthday, as it naturally involves the uni-
fication of birthday and Christmas gifts. Her twelfth
birthday, which arrived a month after our acquaintance,
was celebrated with Madame Aimée; I don’t remember
what she did on her thirteenth, although it was the
occasion on which Lossell had sent her the famous box
of colors, but on the following one, her fourteenth, to
which we have now come, we had a grand jamboree.
After my talk in St. James’s Park with Edith, which
took place toward the end of September, I was seized
with a bad attack of “go” fever, and as I had just sold
an extremely dull article on Aztec feather work and was
thereby some twenty pounds to the good, I left Eng-
land to its own devices for six weeks, and went to Bel-
gium for a walking tour.
It would not interest anyone particularly to know
just what my itinerary was, but for several weeks my
headquarters were at St. Hubert in the Ardennes, a
quiet cobbled village boasting a large church and one
of the finest legends of all, I always think, to say
nothing of an excellent little inn where the cooking
and wine are of the very Belgian bourgeois best, which
is going pretty far.
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M.A. G. P. YE
I walked for hours every day, climbing hills, plung-
ing through vast woods, and lying on my face in the
sun in huge, lush, overgrown meadows.
I made friends with a charming chap named Char-
lot, Octroi officer at St. Hubert, and as he was a friend-
ly soul, I met, through his kind offices, several charm-
ing provincial bourgeois families, thus learning a little
of that hardest of all things to achieve, a knowledge
of the private life of the people of any foreign coun-
try.
Dr. Vincent, a charming, pot-bellied little man who
had been chief doctor of the countryside for over
forty years, was a mine of story and legend, and his
married daughter Germaine, one of the handsomest peo-
ple I have ever seen, confided to me many culinary
secrets of which I meant to make use at home, and also
gratified me by praising my French.
Father Yves of the great, ugly, empty church, a
fervent, mystic youth, who was, oddly enough, inter-
ested in politics in a very keen way, was another
whom, in the French phrase, “I greatly frequented.”
Then there was the avocat, Maître Berlicourt, a
bad-tempered, shrewd old bachelor with a six-inch sole
to one of his shoes, and an amazing knowledge of juris-
prudence.
After dinner we used to sit outside the inn on the
cobble-stones, our wooden chairs tilted against the
house wall, and drink coffee and liqueurs and discuss
politics, and religion, and philosophy. It was a pleas-
ant time, spent in a pleasant place, and I must not
forget to mention Dr. Wannes, the apothecary. His
repertory of Rabelaisian and quite untranslatable
stories would have rejoiced any London club smoking-
room; and it was his habit to gather and preserve
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M A G P YE
in sand, by an odd process of his own, the wild flow-
ers of Belgium.
When I left St. Hubert, I walked to Bouillon and
put up at an inn there for about a week, going through
the Tunnel to France several times, and wandering
about the battlefield of Sedan. There was a high pla-
teau near by, on the extreme edge of which it pleased
me to lie in the sun and watch, a quarter of a mile
below in the valley, hundreds of washerwomen hang-
ing out to dry and to bleach hundreds of thousands
of pieces of linen. It was odd how the linen shone
and almost sparkled in the autumn sun, and some-
how the sight of these busy women accentuated to
me the delights of my utter and guiltless idleness.
I wrote few letters during this time, and received
almost none. There was nobody who really needed
news of me. My sister had her husband and the chil-
dren; one or two of my friends, whom I have not
mentioned because they have no bearing on this story,
were either happily married or as happily engrossed in
their work; and those whom I have mentioned were busy
and content with their own affairs. Mag was safe in
the hands of Madame Aimée and Cohen and good old
Gleny—and Edith—well, I wrote once to Edith, and
walked some miles in the blazing sun to fetch her letter
from the Poste Restante at Namur, where I read it as
I ate my dinner in a corner of a huge, ill-lighted din-
ing-room in one of the principal hotels. Her letter
was exactly what her letters always were, kind, inter-
esting, almost sisterly—we had always been more inti-
mate on paper than we were when together—but used
as I am to the fact that she cares nothing for me and
never will, I can even now never read a letter from
Edith without a horrid, illogical little pang of disap-
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M A G PYE
pointment. Once I wrote myself a long and ardent love
letter, and signed it Edith, but I burned it very quick-
ly, for it was not only foolish and a little impertinent,
but it was quite useless to quiet the ache that for many
years has been a part of myself.
From Namur I walked to Brussels by way of Water-
loo, taking my time every day, and thoroughly enjoying
myself, and then, I am glad to say, I trekked to Lou-
vain, and spent a few days in that most beautiful of
cities. It is curious that I should have sat at table
d’hôte next a German officer holidaying there with his
bride. He was a cultivated man, quite unlike one’s
conventional idea of a German; he had beautiful slim-
pointed hands, narrow feet, and looked high-bred al-
most to the point of degeneracy. His wife was a
charming American girl who was obviously afraid of
him. I used to look at her and wonder how she, fine,
robust creature, could fear this wire-drawn, nervous
man. However she did, and her hasty accession to all
he suggested, the painful, hurried voice with which she
tried to anticipate his slightest wishes, made an uncom-
fortable impression on me. I remember one phrase of
his—I know German fairly well, though I don’t pro-
nounce it properly—was “Bei uns,” meaning, rough-
ly translated, “with us.”
The poor girl came down to lunch one day without
gloves, although she carried her jacket in anticipa-
tion of a carriage excursion of some kind. When she
protested against his wish that she should go upstairs
and fetch gloves, he used this phrase. “Bei uns,” he
said, scowling, his small mouth almost disappearing as
he compressed it, “tragen die Damen Handschuhe,”
which meant “With us, ladies wear gloves.” Some-
how I never forgot the little scene, and I have often
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M A G PYE
wondered whether she ever learned to hate and rebel
against the little phrase that to me seemed so oddly
ominous, “Bei uns!”
I made one or two excursions with this German and
his wife—to Malines, to a village near Mastricht,
where there was a fine painting by some one whose
name I forget, and to a celebrated inn, where we
lunched—but I left Louvain sooner than I would have
done if they had not been there. Like most other
people not German, I had never liked Germany, but
this exceptionally well-bred young man—there was
no doubt about his breeding, and I looked up his fam-
ily in an old Gotha in the reading room—gave an odd
impetus to my dislike of the nation.
The last night I was there we took a walk and
stood for a few minutes in the moonlight, looking at
the university buildings. The young countess was very
much impressed by the beauty of the scene, but her
husband was in his worst mood and contradicted every
word she said with a shortness and disdain I had rarely
heard.
“But surely it is beautiful, Berthold? I have never
seen anything more wonderful.”
He laughed harshly. “Bah! You have never even
seen Cologne, to say nothing of Rothenburg and Nu-
remberg.”
She said no more, and I wondered if he hoped by
that method to inspire her with the love of his father-
land. He was a Prussian officer, and I have often
asked myself if he was one of those who enjoyed the
soul-satisfying spectacle of the destruction of Louvain
a year ago.
Traveling is, of course, one of the most valuable of
human experiences, because it alone can substitute for
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M A G. P. YE
soul-grinding, reiterative thoughts, the freshness and
restfulness of new interests.
As I have said, I never manage to get through the
autumn without a bad time because of Edith, although
early in each year I solemnly decide that I will not
walk into the jaws of death, into the mouth of Hell,
by proposing to her again. No one knows better than
I what an imbecile proceeding these self-invited annual
rebuffs are, and yet I can no more help going through
them than I could help eating if I were starving and
food were set before me.
However, my walking tour on this occasion was very
helpful and, after just the first few days, as delightful.
I saw many beautiful pictures, enjoyed much wonderful
scenery, made a great number of more or less interest-
ing acquaintances and one or two more or less perma-
nent friends; and when, early in December, I came back
to London to find the dear old place a perfect pudding
of mud and steamy rain, I felt years better, and cen-
turies more cheerful for the change.
It was delightful to find out all the different things
that had happened to all my different friends and ac-
quaintances during my absence. There was a new
baby at one of the houses whose inmates I had not
known by their real names. I learned it, in this case,
and through the baby, I managed, with some adroit-
ness, to become acquainted with the mother, who, I
learned, drew fashion pictures for a certain evening
paper and herself wore the most hideous clothes I had
ever beheld. Flannel is an outrageous fabric; I can’t
bear to touch it, and I hate its colors; yet this delight-
ful Mrs. Dennis whose pictures (I have looked them
up) are really full of charm, repeatedly presented her-
self to my resentful view in garments of that poison-
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M A G P Y E
ous material. The baby, however, was a perfect love,
and after meeting the father, who was an electric-light
specialist at Harrods’, I was allowed to see him in his
bath—the baby, I mean, not the father.
The Lossells were still away, of course; they would
not be back till after Christmas, and I, not being due
at Wandover for over a fortnight, had plenty of time
to look up everybody else.
Madame Aimée was the first one I went to see, and
she was full of pride and delight in a picture Mag had
painted for her. This work represented a brewer’s
dray very realistically treated, and the near horse, a
huge white shire horse, had slipped in the mud and
was down. It was the best thing the child had done,
although I dare say technically faulty, but the horse
was a real horse with muscle, and thickness, and action,
and the little picture was really and pleasantly true to
life.
“What a horried subject!” I said.
“Oh, but this is nothing,” Madame Aimée laughed.
“It is a great secret, and you mustn't tell her, but she’s
doing a series of murders.”
“Murders?”
“Yes, called “The Pistol,” “The Knife,” “The Bottle,”
and “The Rope.” She's only sketched them as yet,”
my hostess went on, with more amusement than I had
ever heard in her voice, “but really, Monsieur, they are
going to be quite dreadful, particularly ‘the Rope?”
“Does he hang her?” I asked with some anxiety,
for it didn’t sound a picture that would be destined
to much popularity.
Madame Aimée shook her head.
“Oh, no, it’s she who hangs him. It was a case in
the papers about a year ago, and it appears Mag has
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M A G. P. YE
always cherished the idea. Don’t you remember the
woman in Shoreditch who hanged a little boy?”
I shuddered. “What a disgusting child Mag is??
But Madame Aimée laughed at me. “These ideas so
sanguinaires,” she declared reassuringly, “these ghastly
and bloody ideas, are of her age. She despises all
thoughts soft and beautiful for the moment. Her
ideals are bloodthirsty.”
“How is Pye?” I asked presently.
“He has never been to see me—I can tell you little
about him. But Mrs. Brankles says he seems trou-
bled and uneasy.”
I answered brutally that it struck me that a man
who deliberately went on an opium spree every week
of his life had no right to expect sweet mental seren-
ity.
“The day will come,” I added, “when Mag will real-
ize how shocking it is, this morphine business.”
The Frenchwoman sighed. “I think,” she said, “the
poor child is beginning already to see.”
I did not know whether to be glad or sorry for this
bit of news, but I meant to investigate its truth, and
it was owing only to a chapter of insignificant acci-
dents that I had no chance of sounding Mag on the
subject for a full week, when, as I have said before,
I had a birthday party for her in my chambers.


CHAPTER XVIII
There is a long step, in the life of a young femade
between the ages of fourteen, and fifteen. At thirteen
it seemed to me Mag had been a little girl, a child,
a kid, a brat; and now she was about to be fourteen,
and I felt that henceforth she would be a girl, a young
girl almost a Miss. Therefore it behooved me, as her
self-constituted guardian, to celebrate this birthday
with becoming solemnity.
The Lossells were to come (they had promised to
run up for the purpose). Max Cohen, of course,
would be there, and dear old Glenny. It would have
given me great pleasure, had it been possible, to have
Madame Aimée make one of the party, but she assured
me of the infeasibility of the idea.
“Yes, I could be carried up the stairs,” she said,
“and it is most kind of you to suggest it, but I should
be too tired, Monsieur. My heart does not allow of
my sustaining great fatigue without punishing me se-
verely.”
I bowed to her decision, and in her place invited
dear old Treffry.
It was a very pleasant party, though perhaps I, as
host, should not say it. Mag’s chiefest joy in life
as yet being the joy of the table, I laid myself out to
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M A G P Y E
provide her with delectable food. We had a cold
turkey stuffed with chestnuts; we had a very brown
and crumby looking ham; we had a certain kind of
crisp rolls, fresh from the baker, which Mrs. Brankles
had skillfully torn open, stuffed with butter, and
popped into the oven just before we wanted them; we
had lobster salad with mayonnaise, the lobster being
merely an excuse for the sauce, which Mag loved with
a passion that would have admitted of her eating it out
of a tub, if such a thing had been possible; and we
had ices from Gunter’s.
There was also punch, made by myself, after a
rather famous recipe of one of my great-uncles. We
of the family try to believe that this beverage was a
favorite of George IV in the days of the Regency, but
I myself in my secret soul can find no convincing
proof that my Uncle Hubert, the pride of the family
and a most audacious old reprobate, could ever even
in his zenith, possibly have risen to the heights of
carousing with Royalty.
However, it is a very good punch and, diluted to the
debased modern taste and then still further diluted for
the benefit of the lady of the evening, cut a noble figure
in the huge Canton bowl that was one of the joys of
my father’s life.
I had filled my rooms with flowers, and at Mag’s
place at supper stood my gift to her—a gold wrist-
watch with a many-linked expanding bracelet.
Mrs. Green who, as she genially put it, “did” for
me, and had “done” for many years, presided in the
kitchen, assisted by the gifted Brankles; a large box
of chocolates stood on the table in the sitting-room,
fires burned in all the grates, and on the whole no-
body could have wanted pleasanter or more comfortable
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M A G PY E
looking rooms in which to give a small, highly select
party.
Dear old Treffry was the first to arrive. I had not
seen him for some months, and he was full of news.
He had not grown a day older and his delightful,
humorous, kind old face had the romantic and pathetic
freshness of a winter apple. The fine old fellow was
absolutely free from the affectations that beset many
clever and popular old men; best of all he possessed
none of the ghastly juvenility that seems irresistible
to some men of his age; and he had seen all the new
plays, heard the new symphony, been to three wed-
dings, even, poor old gentleman, narrowly escaped be-
ing involved, as witness, in a wide-bruited divorce case.
He had had a very interesting summer and autumn and
I thoroughly enjoyed it at second hand, as we sat by
my sea-coal fire. He was very much interested in Mag,
and also expressed his satisfaction in the thought of
meeting Edith, whom he had not seen for some time.
“I believe you know,” he said, not without a good-
natured slyness, “that that little Jewish chap has his
eye on our Edith.”
“Ha,” I answered with fine scorn, “have you only
just discovered that? I’ve know it for over a year.”
“Bless my soul! You don’t say so | She won’t
marry him, will she, Quest? I like him, you know, and
he’s an immensely clever fellow, and as modest a man
as ever I met, but somehow I shouldn’t like her to
marry a Jew.”
I laughed, but the thought made me uneasy, for I
had never forgotten what she had said to me on the
bridge in the St. James’ Park. To be sure she had
not named Cohen, but from the moment she began
to speak I had been pretty sure whom she meant, and
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M A G P YE
if I had had any doubt it would have been routed by
the look in her face as he came up behind her, and she,
turning, suddenly saw him.
“I have no idea what she will do,” I said slowly,
“but I would add this, Mr. Treffry: I’d give my soul
to have it make her happy.”
“So would I, Quest, so would I. It will be delight-
ful to see her again in any case. Ah! There’s some-
body now.”
But it was not the Lossells; it was Cohen; and a
few minutes later old Angus Glenny arrived, looking
as usual, with his long, unkempt beard and his wild,
curly hair, as if he’d been walking for hours in a high
wind.
Mag was late, and I couldn’t understand why, for
as a rule she possessed the courtesy of punctuality
in a rather striking degree, and I knew that she had
been delighted at the prospect of at last meeting Edith.
However, the next knock brought Lossell—to our
great disappointment, without his daughter.
Mr. Treffry lamented loudly over her defection,
and Lossell explained that he feared he had no really
good excuse for her beyond the fact that she had a
cold and had felt too seedy to leave home. We sat,
a little damped by this news, gathered close round
the fire, five men, none of whom, even Cohen, could
otherwise than by courtesy have been called young,
waiting for the arrival of a child of fourteen. Sud-
denly it struck me that this would be a good time to
find out exactly what Glenny thought of his pupil,
and I asked him.
The old Scotchman looked at me thoughtfully.
“She has talent,” he said, “great talent, and she
has industry, but up to the present I can’t tell ye,
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M A G PYE
Mr. Quest, whether or no it will prove a practical,
working gift.”
“How do you mean?” asked Lossell shortly. He
was not inclined to like Glenny.
“I mean, Lord Lossell, that I have known many
people who have, with far less talent than Margaret
possesses, a kind of accessory gift that I may call the
gift of self-production, who have through it achieved
far more than she ever may, and that, on the other
hand, I have known people, with far greater gifts than
hers, fail to achieve what she almost undoubtedly will.”
Lossell frowned impatiently, and Cohen, lighting a
cigarette, interrupted, his modest voice and delicately
selected words acting like balm on the two irritated
Innen.
“He means,” he explained with his little stammer,
“that Mag's gift may prove unproductive. That it
may consist chiefly of her seeing and feeling with high
artistic beauty things that she cannot draw or paint;
isn’t that it, Glenny?”
Glenny nodded and twisted his rough beard with
both hands. “Aye,” he assented.
To change the subject, I think, Treffry asked me at
this point what news there was of Pye.
I shook my head. “I know very little about him;
he’s an unsociable brute, and although there’s a cer-
tain charm about him I have never tried to know him
any better.”
“There’s nothing so depressing in this world,” added
Treffry softly, “as a broken-down gentleman 33
“Except,” put in Cohen, laughing, “the thing ex-
pressed by that frightful phrase I always think the
most terrible phrase in the English language, “the de-
cayed gentlewoman.” Fancy,” he added dreamily, “that
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M A G. P. YE
put into any other tongue—une dame pourrie—eine
werfällte Dame—una signora— Horrid!”
We laughed, for he spoke with a real catlike disgust,
and his delicately aquiline nose was wrinkled fastidi-
ously.
“I have never even seen Pye,” Lossell observed a mo-
ment later. “He drinks or something, didn’t you say,
Quest?”
“Morphine,” I answered.
“Is he coming to-night?”
“Good heavens, no! I never even asked him; he has
quite disassociated himself from Mag.”
“A very poor specimen of a father,” criticized Tref-
fry. “By the way, Quest, does the child know about
her father?”
I threw my cigarette into the fire and looked at
the clock.
“Yes, she knows. It was she who told me.”
“How dreadful!” This from Cohen.
“Less dreadful than you might think,” I answered.
“She didn’t seem to mind. She’s an odd little crea-
ture. I suppose she doesn’t realize the horror.”
“She will when she’s older.”
I wondered about this and said so, adding, “She’s
oddly unsensitive in some ways. She doesn’t seem to
mind things much.”
“Then she’s no artist,” commented Lossell, “but I
don’t believe you are right, Quest.”
The discussion might have gone on for some time but
that at that moment Mag arrived. She came bounding
in with a somewhat elephantine grace but beaming
with joy at seeing us all, and ready with a hearty
kiss apiece for me and Glenny, and a friendly, man-
to-man handshake with the others.
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M A G. P. YE
She had grown taller and, I thought, a little less
massive, though that may have been the effect of a
charming loose cream-colored frock of some woolly
material not flannel, in which I recognized the taste
and skill of Madame Aimée. Her hair, I observed,
had been newly washed and burnished with much brush-
ing. I regretted to note that she smelled violently of
white rose, but that was a minor blemish and one easy
to expunge in the future.
“Is there,” she asked when she had sat down, “is
there lobster mayonnaise?”
“There is, and the turkey stuffed with chestnuts.
Are you hungry?”
Was she hungry!
Our guests were all polite enough to eat with good
appetites, but after the first few minutes we all put
down our forks and gave ourselves up to the fascinat-
ing survey of the guest of honor in her magnificent
sustained imitation of an anaconda laying in supplies
for the winter.
Poor little Cohen seemed to pale and shrink at the
sight, and Glenny teased her, but unruffled she went
her way, hardly pausing to speak, and that meant
a great deal for Mag.
“You have a fine appetite,” old Treffry said cour-
teously, as she held her plate for her third “go” of
chestnut stuffing. She looked at him, smiling hap-
pily:
“You see, I knew what we were going to have, so I
ate no lunch 93.
She had a little champagne in a tall convolvulus-
like glass, and at this her joy knew no bounds.
“I’ve only tasted it once before in my life,” she
said.
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M A G PYE
“Where was that?” asked Lossell.
“Well, that was at a friend’s who used to live at
Blantyre Buildings. You remember Pansy, Mr. Quest,
don’t you?”
I did, and politely asked for news of that lady.
Mag shook her head, and a look of real sadness
came into her face.
“I have never heard a word from her since she left,”
she said. “Wasn’t it unkind of her?”
I felt bound to defend poor Miss Roop, but could
think of nothing to say, and Mag, being for the pres-
ent surfeited with food, launched into one of her de-
scriptive monologues, her taste and power for which
had given rise to her nickname amongst us of Cole-
ridge.
She described Pansy Roop as circumstantially as
an auctioneer might describe a small object that he
could hold in his hand and turn over and regard from
every possible point of view. I had thought that I
remembered the unfortunate girl very well, but I saw
now that I had not. It was Mag who remembered
her, Mag on whose queer mind had impressed them-
selves with almost violent clearness all manner of lit-
tle details that had utterly escaped me; and the child’s
gift of words, her amazing flow of language and her
adjectival powers, were such that four very diverse
gentlemen who had never seen or even heard of Miss
Roop sat for six or seven minutes and listened in a
kind of thrall to the description of her.
When supper was over we went back into the sit-
ting-room and I made the punch. The wind had risen,
and battered at the windows, bringing with it inter-
mittent onslaughts of rain. It was a cold night, and
the snug firelit room was very agreeable. When I
129


M A G. P. YE
put into any other tongue—une dame pourrie—eine
werfällte Dame—una signora— Horrid!”
We laughed, for he spoke with a real catlike disgust,
and his delicately aquiline nose was wrinkled fastidi-
ously.
“I have never even seen Pye,” Lossell observed a mo-
ment later. “He drinks or something, didn’t you say,
Quest?”
“Morphine,” I answered.
“Is he coming to-night?”
“Good heavens, no! I never even asked him; he has
quite disassociated himself from Mag.”
“A very poor specimen of a father,” criticized Tref-
fry. “By the way, Quest, does the child know about
her father?”
I threw my cigarette into the fire and looked at
the clock.
“Yes, she knows. It was she who told me.”
“How dreadful!” This from Cohen.
“Less dreadful than you might think,” I answered.
“She didn’t seem to mind. She’s an odd little crea-
ture. I suppose she doesn’t realize the horror.”
“She will when she’s older.”
I wondered about this and said so, adding, “She’s
oddly unsensitive in some ways. She doesn’t seem to
mind things much.”
“Then she’s no artist,” commented Lossell, “but I
don’t believe you are right, Quest.”
The discussion might have gone on for some time but
that at that moment Mag arrived. She came bounding
in with a somewhat elephantine grace but beaming
with joy at seeing us all, and ready with a hearty
kiss apiece for me and Glenny, and a friendly, man-
to-man handshake with the others.
127


M A G. P. YE
She had grown taller and, I thought, a little less
massive, though that may have been the effect of a
charming loose cream-colored frock of some woolly
material not flannel, in which I recognized the taste
and skill of Madame Aimée. Her hair, I observed,
had been newly washed and burnished with much brush-
ing. I regretted to note that she smelled violently of
white rose, but that was a minor blemish and one easy
to expunge in the future.
“Is there,” she asked when she had sat down, “is
there lobster mayonnaise?”
“There is, and the turkey stuffed with chestnuts.
Are you hungry?”
Was she hungry!
Our guests were all polite enough to eat with good
appetites, but after the first few minutes we all put
down our forks and gave ourselves up to the fascinat-
ing survey of the guest of honor in her magnificent
sustained imitation of an anaconda laying in supplies
for the winter.
Poor little Cohen seemed to pale and shrink at the
sight, and Glenny teased her, but unruffled she went
her way, hardly pausing to speak, and that meant
a great deal for Mag.
“You have a fine appetite,” old Treffry said cour-
teously, as she held her plate for her third “go” of
chestnut stuffing. She looked at him, smiling hap-
pily:
“You see, I knew what we were going to have, so I
ate no lunch 33
She had a little champagne in a tall convolvulus-
like glass, and at this her joy knew no bounds.
“I’ve only tasted it once before in my life,” she
said.
128


M A G P YE
“Where was that?” asked Lossell.
“Well, that was at a friend’s who used to live at
Blantyre Buildings. You remember Pansy, Mr. Quest,
don’t you?”
I did, and politely asked for news of that lady.
Mag shook her head, and a look of real sadness
came into her face.
“I have never heard a word from her since she left,”
she said. “Wasn't it unkind of her?”
I felt bound to defend poor Miss Roop, but could
think of nothing to say, and Mag, being for the pres-
ent surfeited with food, launched into one of her de-
scriptive monologues, her taste and power for which
had given rise to her nickname amongst us of Cole-
ridge.
She described Pansy Roop as circumstantially as
an auctioneer might describe a small object that he
could hold in his hand and turn over and regard from
every possible point of view. I had thought that I
remembered the unfortunate girl very well, but I saw
now that I had not. It was Mag who remembered
her, Mag on whose queer mind had impressed them-
selves with almost violent clearness all manner of lit-
tle details that had utterly escaped me; and the child's
gift of words, her amazing flow of language and her
adjectival powers, were such that four very diverse
gentlemen who had never seen or even heard of Miss
Roop sat for six or seven minutes and listened in a
kind of thrall to the description of her.
When supper was over we went back into the sit-
ting-room and I made the punch. The wind had risen,
and battered at the windows, bringing with it inter-
mittent onslaughts of rain. It was a cold night, and
the snug firelit room was very agreeable. When I
ſºm -
129


M A G P Y E
his clothes rain-soaked and muddy, lay Pye, snoring
hideously, his mouth open, his eyes only half closed.
It was a dreadful moment, and it is hard to describe
the horror we all felt, so I will say only the child turned
and said very quietly.
“Oh, please, go back into the room all of you—
except you, Mr. Quest—please go.” They obeyed her
without a word, Lossell setting the lamp on the chair
at a safe distance from the sleeping man.
It was impossible for me to attempt to get the fel-
low home, so I was obliged, with the best grace I could
muster, to lay him on my own bed.
“Poor, poor father,” Mag said. “He must have
followed me here; he must have wanted me. Perhaps
it was because it was my birthday; he forgot it this
morning, but he may have remembered to-night.”
She sat down by the bed and took one of the inert,
dirty hands in hers, and I left her sitting there by
him.
My guests were preparing to leave, and I hadn’t the
heart to ask them to stay.
Glenny's eyes were full of tears. “Now you see,”
he said, almost as if he hated me, “how unsensi-
tive she is . She doesn’t care about her father; doesn’t
mind his being—that! Och, man alive, man alive, did
ye see her face, her puir wee face!”
I hadn’t a word to say, and they went away in a
body, leaving me alone by the fire and the almost un-
touched bowl of punch.


M A G. P. YE
had finished the punch, I started ladling it out int
the old rummers that had belonged to my mothe:
grandfather.
“What’s that?” asked Lossell sharply.
“The rain,” some one answered.
“No it isn’t. Hark!”
For a moment I thought I myself heard an odd
then the wind redoubled its violence and I went
ing the glasses.
“There is a queer noise somewhere,” said
Scotchman. We all listened, and this time --
heard it—a long-drawn, unpleasant sound it w --
tween a grumble and a groan. -
I gave the glass in my hand to Mr. Treº
stood up.
“It must have been something overhead-
said. And then the noise repeated itself an
horrible sound.
We glanced round at each other, and whº
fell on Mag’s face I set down my glass hº
“What's the matter, Mag” I as
“You’re not frightened?”
The child’s round face had grown - -
and was ghastly between the waves of -
She looked older, and her cheekbones -
Treffry put a kind old hand on he
“Don’t be frightened, nºw dear,” he
open the door, Quest: ' , * dº - --
But Mag made a little
still.
“No,” she said harsh) |
We followed her to
light, and out on th
dled there in


~ v. E.
º- ºs "orporal
- - - spending
=º = , not even
face quiv-
s wet. “I’m
all along o'
'e sticks into
e never do "ave
nd friendly as if
fond o' Magpie, I
excellent laundress,
perhaps you’d better
ding her head. “I never
y. It's Mr. Butt as does
ain’t much Mag leaves over
bin', and polishin' the stove
res all the rest 'erself, Mag
go upstairs o' purpose, she'd
wrong, sure.”
ed, and so, when at half past
up the stairs past Pye's closed
sure that Madame Aimée could
'e events of the past night. How-
went into her room I saw that she
ad been crying, and there was a look
‘ry, misery that seemed to me, even
of her long devotion to Mag, a little
sº.
n her?” I said, sitting down.
rally.”
133


CHAPTER XIX
The next afternoon I happened to be very busy, so
I could not get to Blantyre Buildings until after din-
ner, which I had very early on purpose. I was deeply
distressed about Mag.
She had sat all night by her father’s side, absolutely
refusing to lie down or take any rest in spite of my
representations that this was illogical, for she herself
had told me that he always slept in this way on Satur-
days.
She raised her eyes to mine, and for the first time
I saw how she was going to look when she lost her
childhood.
“He was never like this before; he’s been getting
worse, but he was never as bad as this.”
I thought at first that her distress was probably
caused largely by the publicity of the affair; that it
hurt her pride to have had Lossell and the others see
her father in his disgusting condition, but I soon saw
my mistake.
“I don’t mind their seeing,” she said dully, “but he’s
so much worse.”
I made her take off her new finery and wrap her-
self in my dressing gown; then I seated myself as com-
fortably as I could in the other room.
132


M A G. P. YE
Mrs. Brankles had taken a message to the Corporal
to the effect that Pye and his daughter were spending
the night with me. I told her to say no more, not even
to Madame Aimée.
“Oi won’t sir,” she assured me, her vast face quiv-
ering with sympathy, her currant-like eyes wet. “I’m
that sorry for the pore gentleman. It’s all along o'
that stuff in the little bottle, somethink 'e sticks into
*isself. ‘E’s a nice gentleman, though 'e never do ’ave
much to say, and Magpie's as kind and friendly as if
she wasn’t no lidy at all. I’m real fond o' Magpie, I
am.”
She was a good soul as well as an excellent laundress,
and I knew that she was sincere.
“Tell Madame Aimée-or no, perhaps you’d better
not go near her.”
“Ow no, sir,” she said, shaking her head. “I never
goes upstairs to the pore lidy. It’s Mr. Butt as does
*er little bit o’ work, and it ain’t much Mag leaves over
for 'er, only just the scrubbin’, and polishin’ the stove
once in a while. She does all the rest *erself, Mag
does, and if I was to go upstairs o' purpose, she'd
know somethink was wrong, sure.”
I nodded and agreed, and so, when at half past
seven I crept quietly up the stairs past Pye's closed
door, I felt fairly sure that Madame Aimée could
know nothing of the events of the past night. How-
ever, the minute I went into her room I saw that she
did know. She had been crying, and there was a look
of hopeless misery, misery that seemed to me, even
though I knew of her long devotion to Mag, a little
disproportionate.
“You’ve seen her?” I said, sitting down.
“Yes, naturally.”
133


M A G P YE
“Of course, of course,” I hastened to agree. “It’s
very sad, Madame Aimée.”
She clasped her hands—I saw her for the first time
with no work of any kind on her lap, and I noticed
a green bottle of smelling salts on the table.
“Ah, Monsieur,” she returned passionately, “what
suffering! To see someone one loves ruined in such
a dreadful way.”
I tried to comfort her. “You mustn't exaggerate
it,” I said gently. “It was dreadful, of course, and
no one was sorrier for her than I, but, after all, she's
only a child, and her whole life is before her; this can’t
ruin her.”
She stared at me from under her coif, her face al-
most stupid.
“Of course, of course,” she stammered, “but Oh,
it’s so dreadful.” She looked as though she had been
in acute mental agony for a week; there were deep
lines in her poor face, and her white skin looked
slightly marbled with a delicate grayish mauve. Sud-
denly she put her hands to her face and burst into
such a passion of tears as I have never seen since that
night so many years ago when Edith Lossell told me
that her engagement was broken. It amazed me that
the two crying fits could be so curiously like each
other, although their sources were so different.
Edith, I knew, had been not only broken-hearted
but deeply, acutely angry, and also, for some reason,
ashamed. There was in her outburst a passion
stronger than merely grief; and here, I thought to
myself, was this poor working woman, no kin to Mag,
and who had never set eyes on her father, crying as
if she, too, were both angry and ashamed as well as
wounded to the soul. Only one thing could account
134


M A G. P. YE
for it, and that was the greater articulateness and
expressiveness of Latin feeling. Madame Aimée was
French, and therefore her grief manifested itself in
what to me, an Englishman, seemed an exaggerated
way. As I helplessly watched her cry, I wondered
what on earth she would be like in a case such as
Edith’s, and I shuddered.
The lamp was lighted on the table, the curtains
were drawn and the charming room was very pleasant.
Presently, without asking her, I went into the kitchen
and boiled the kettle. When I had made the tea, and
I flatter myself that that is a little job at which few
can beat me, I went back into the sitting-room and set
my tray down on a chair. She was still crying, but at
the sight of the fruits of my labor she burst out laugh-
Ing.
“Ah, mon pauvre Monsieur, how kind of you, how
very kind! Drink your tea, it will refresh you; but
you will forgive my not taking any. I don’t feel
myself ill, and in my country people of my class drink
tea only when they are suffering. Wous n'en etes pas
chagrine?”
I assured her that I wasn’t, but I was for a mo-
ment, and when I asked her what she would like, she
told me that she would be grateful if I would ask Mag
to come and make her a cup of coffee. I wondered,
as I went down the stairs, what the poor soul did when
she was quite alone and Mag not at hand, but I didn’t
pursue the subject in my mind, for I hated to think
of her poor broken body dragging about the room,
or anywhere but on the comfortable sofa.
Mag was sitting by the lamp sewing when I went
in—to be exact, she was mending a stocking. I
didn’t often kiss her, but I kissed her then, and asked
135


M A G P YE
her gravely how her father was. She pointed to the
bedroom door.
“He’s asleep,” she said. “He-he's very sorry.”
I nodded. “Of course, dear, he must be. Perhaps
it will never happen again. Can you come and make
Madame Aimée and me some coffee?”
She rose at once, and, after looking into the bed-
room, came back.
“He’s sound asleep,” she said. “Come along.”
She made the coffee, and very good it was. Also she
cut open some odd little oblong piecrusty buns, filled
them with butter, and heated them in the oven. They
were delicious, and I ate four. The coffee did us all good,
and in a little while we were talking more comfortably
than I should have imagined possible that night.
I left at about ten, and just as I was going Madame
Aimée said something that surprised me.
Mag had asked her if she wouldn’t have a talk with
her father and try to help him. Madame Aimée said
no so harshly, so decidedly, that I was aghast. It
seemed so unlike her, so ungenerous, that I could
hardly believe my ears.
“It is just possible,” I expostulated, “that he might
be glad to talk the thing over with a woman. It
would surely be easier for him than discussing it with
any man.”
“I am a stranger to him,” she answered stiffly.
And I with the same amount of warmth observed
that she could hardly call herself a stranger when she
had been for so many years Mag’s best friend.
“You have practically been a mother to her.”
She drew away from me as I made to shake hands
with her.
“Monsieur,” she said, with a coldness that ap-
136


M A G P Y E
proached dignity, “no one can be a mother to a child,
eaccept the mother.”
It struck me as a theatrical remark, and therefore
it offended me. For the first time I left Madame Aimée
with no feeling of sympathy for her.
I said goodnight to Mag, asked her to come and
see me the next day, and went down the stairs.
Just as I was going out of the Buildings she over-
took me, and I noticed that she had on her hat and a
jacket over her arm.
“I’m going with you,” she said, “as far as Victoria
Street.”
“Good gracious, why, at this time of night?”
“I’ve got to send a telegram.”
We got on a bus as she spoke, and went rumbling
along up the Pimlico Road.
I had an odd feeling that I had no right to ask
her questions, but that, of course, was absurd, so I
did ask her.
“To whom are you going to send a telegram?”
She looked at me gravely.
“To Mr. Glenny.”
“Why?”
“To tell him that I can’t come.”
“Tomorrow, you mean?”
She shook her head. “I mean that I’m not going
any more.”
I didn’t answer for a moment, and then I asked
her why, although I already knew what she meant.
She hesitated oddly, and seemed for once in her
voluble life to be searching for words.
“I—I must—don’t you see, I must stay with my
father?”
The little possessive pronoun seemed to set us very
137


M A G PY E
far apart and I was silent. Hitherto she had always
spoken of Pye as “father”—now by saying “my fa-
ther” she made me feel a stranger.
After a pause, I was going to expostulate, to ex-
plain, to remind her that she was being absurd and
theatrical, that there was no use in her making such a
fuss about something that she had known for years;
but somehow I couldn’t.
We had turned the corner and were swinging down
towards the station. It was a starry night, but cold;
and two sailors behind us were singing. I said no
more, and presently, in Victoria Street, the girl rose.
“Goodnight, Mr. Quest,” she said gently. “I know
you are angry with me. Please don’t be-I know I
seem silly. I don’t know why it is,” she went on, hold-
ing the back of my seat and swaying as the bus slowed
up, “I never seemed to mind before, and I know you
wanted to say just now that I’d always known it. I
don’t know why it is, but I’ve got to try to help him
now. I don’t want to stop going to my lessons, but I
must, d'you see?”
I did see, and said so, for I suddenly knew that, al-
though theoretically I was right, and that she would
probably only be wasting her time in trying to look
after her wretched and worthless father, she was right
to make the attempt, and that it was not for me or
anyone else to try and dissuade her. But I was dis-
tressed and angry, so I stayed on the bus, to my
shame be it said, and let her go her way alone. It was
not until I had walked up and down in Fountain Court
for quite half an hour that I saw why it was right;
that no matter how great a failure it might be so far
as her father was concerned, her attempt to help him
could not prove otherwise than a success to her.
138


CHAPTER XX
Lossell wanted me to have a talk with Pye about
the matter of the morphine. This I flatly refused
to do.
“He doesn’t like me and I should be worse than use-
less,” I declared stubbornly. “I don’t think there’s
ever any use in trying to persuade these people to
give up their drug, anyhow.” -
We were sitting in Cohen’s library just after Christ-
mas, when the conversation took place, and Lossell
was angry with me, and showed it.
“It is hardly fair,” he said, “to let the chap go
under without a remonstrance, and after all Mag is
your protégée more than any of ours.”
I nodded. “I don’t know—I’d do anything possible
for Mag, but not for anyone on earth will I attempt
what I know to be an absolute impossibility.”
Sir Max took his cigar from his mouth and looked
at the ash contemplatively.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
I was surprised, for of the three he was the most
fastidious, the most sensitive, and certainly the most
reserved.
“You barely know him, do you?” I asked.
“I’ve seen him once, and I don’t think he disliked
139


M.A. G. P. YE
me. Besides,” the little man added, straightening his
figure, “I know something about it—morphine, I mean
—I once took it myself.”
Lossell and I were amazed. He was the last man
on earth one could conceive of having had this revolt-
ing weakness. He struck one as being in every sense
of the word, mentally as well as physically and moral-
ly, one of the cleanest men in the world, and added to
the astounding fact that this foul vice had been his
it took my breath away that he could so coolly avow
it. An extraordinary little man! After a pause I
said hurriedly:
“Oh, well, then, of course in that case you are the
one.”
Lossell agreed in a halting phrase, and thus it was
arranged.
Since then I have grown to know Cohen fairly
well! I have grown at least to be exceedingly fond
of him; and one of his leading characteristics is his
reserve. It isn’t like the reserve of a clever man of
the world or that of a worldly woman; it is like the
shy withdrawal of a young girl from too close contact
with other people. Even today I know very little
about his life and almost nothing about his past, and
therefore his pluck in telling Lossell and me that he
once had been a morphinist has never ceased to fill
me with astonishment and respect.
In these days one is so used to people stripped of
the last remnant of mental modesty, men and still
more women who seem to have no reticences, no locked
doors in their minds, that this old-fashioned quality
of the little Jewish gentleman has a romance and
charm all its own.
For some days after our conversation I heard noth-
140


M A G P YE
ing from him, or, as it happened, from any of the
Blantyre Buildings folk. But one evening just as I
was going out to dinner there came a knock at my
door, and I opened it to find Cohen on the threshold.
He had seen Pye and had a long talk with him, and
had come to tell me about it.
“He said he’ll do what he can,” was the upshot of
the story, “but he’s pretty hopeless about it. Poor
devil! he’s the most thorough-paced cynic I’ve ever
met in my life, because his cynicism is absolutely un-
conscious. He’s going away for a few weeks, and has
told me to ask you to keep an eye on Mag in his ab-
sence.” -
I nodded. “All right, I shall be delighted. Did
you see her?”
“Yes, she looks worn out, poor child. Upon my
word, Quest, she’s a wonderful little thing. She took
the stuff away from him, clean away, ten days ago.
He told me himself, and it appears to have had a
pretty bad effect. It's my belief that he nearly killed
her.”
“Good God!”
“Yes, she’s got her arm in a sling and looks white
and thin.”
I burst out laughing. “It’s an ill wind—” I sug-
gested. “But the fellow can’t be allowed to illtreat
her. I wonder she didn’t stand up for herself.”
Cohen looked at me, his delightful brown eyes really
dancing in his head.
“She did,” he returned with a chuckle. “He has
the blackest eye I ever saw.”
The upshot of this was that Pye, faithful to his
promise, retired to a nursing home a day or two later,
and the same afternoon, according to an arrangement
141


M A G. P. YE
made by letter, Mag came to stay for a week with
Ine.
I took her to a play that night and to supper after-
wards, and bundled her off to bed without having said
a word to her about her unpleasant parent. She
looked as though she needed a change of thought,
and I determined she should have it.
The next day we had a long talk—the first for
some time, for my sister and her children had been
in town and had taken up a great deal of my time,
and of course I had spent Christmas week at Wan-
dover.
“How about the drawing lessons?” I asked her at
lunch.
“Oh, didn’t I tell you? Mr. Glenny has been so
kind. He’s come twice a week in the evenings and
given me my lesson at home. You thought I was
wrong to stop going to him, but he didn’t. He
thought I was right, and so did Sir Max. I should,”
she added contemplatively, resting her elbow on the
table, and her chin in her cupped hands, “just love to
marry Sir Max.”
“Go on!” I jeered. “He’s old enough to be your
father; besides he wouldn’t look at you, you’re too
plain.”
She accepted this remark in good faith and looked
very much depressed for a moment. Then she
laughed: “If you come to that, he’s not exactly beau-
tiful himself.”
“Oh, that’s not my only reason; he’s twenty years
older than you; also he's a Jew.”
“I think he's a perfect darling, but of course he
wouldn’t marry me,” she added resignedly; “he’ll
marry the lady in the gold frame.”
142


M A G P YE
.
“What do you mean?” I snapped, dropping my
fork and glaring at her. “Who’s the lady in the gold
frame?”
“How should I know who she is? Is it likely I’d
ask him? But one day when I was there to show him
a sketch I’d done, he sent me to his room to get some-
thing, and there was a photograph on the table in a
gold frame. Oh, Mr. Quest,” the child added with fer-
vor, “she was just lovely.”
“Fair, I suppose,” I asked, drawing a pattern on
the tablecloth with the handle of a spoon.
“No, she wasn’t. Dark hair she had and such
beautiful queer eyes, going up to little points in her
temples.”
So my instinct had been right, and it was Edith.
“She had,” the child continued, her own eyes in-
tent and full of concentration, “a face—I don’t know
how to describe it—a sort of coronet face.”
My miserable assurance was thus made doubly sure,
but as we left the table I put my arm round my guest
and gave her shoulders a squeeze.
Gold frame or not, she had hit upon a lovely phrase
to describe my Edith: “a coronet face.”
The next few days were lively ones. Mag’s spirits,
naturally volatile, had gone up with a bang once her
father was safely in his retreat. She had never men-
tioned her bruised arm to me, nor was any word
passed between us on the subject of the unfilial giving
of black eyes, but I could see from the reaction what
a hard time she must have been having, and I was glad
to do all that I could to give her a happy time.
Amongst other festivities was a visit to the Tate,
which she thoroughly enjoyed. After the first few
143


M A G PYE
minutes she left me to my own devices, feeling, no
doubt, that my knowledge and appreciation of pic-
tures were not in the same class with her own, and I
wandered about by myself for a while, renewing ac-
quaintance with certain old favorites, and making a
few new friends with a few new rivals.
At the end of about an hour I found that I had lost
sight of the child, and went to look for her.
I found her before Bettany’s “Crossroads,” appar-
ently quite under the spell of that wonderful piece of
work.
“Aren’t they splendid?” she said, nodding towards it
and the only slightly less wonderful “Windmill.”
I nodded.
“Father used to know him,” she declared proudly,
“and he was telling Sir Max about it.”
“I know—he told me.”
“Is he dead?” she asked dreamily. It was clear that
she was really away in that sun-flecked forest where
the three mossy, deep-rutted roads met and sepa-
rated.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “He left England a
good many years ago, and nobody has ever heard of
him since.”
She nodded. “I should like to do that some day.
Not die and have a horrible funeral and be burned, but
just—go away—disappear.” She pointed to the pic-
ture. “Just walk up that road under the trees into
the shadow, and not have people know what had be-
come of me.”
It was an odd idea for a girl of fourteen, but I
knew what she meant, for she is not the first person who
has wished he or she could do that—just walk away up
one of Bettany’s three roads into the velvety shade.
144


M A G PYE
It is an amazing picture, and I knew that one very emi-
nent French critic considered it the finest painting of
its kind of the century.
Miss Pye and I had tea together that day in a kind
of amateur little restaurant with red and white check
curtains, rustic furniture, and tired, ineffectual wait-
resses.
Mag devoured much bread and butter and cake, but
she was rather silent for her, and I think quite as
much because of the pictures she had just been look-
ing at as because we were on our way to see her
father.
“I’m going to work very hard,” she said. “It was
so good of dear Mr. Glenny to give up his evenings to
me, and I shall go every morning now to him, after
Thursday.” Thursday was the day on which we had
fixed that she was to return to Blantyre Buildings.
“Sometimes,” she went on, as we sat on the bus go-
ing to Hampstead, “sometimes I think I shall paint
well, and sometimes I think I never shall paint any-
thing decent. Why do you suppose it’s like that, Mr.
Quest? It’s like going along a path as hard as you
can bound, and then suddenly finding yourself facing
a stone wall miles high.”
I nodded. “Yes, I suppose every artist feels that
way. But you mustn't get discouraged, or give up
working.”
She laughed. “I shall never give up working; I
like work; only what’s the use if it isn’t ever going
to be good?”
“Sir Max was very much pleased with that sketch
of Madame Aimée,” I suggested encouragingly.
“Oh, I know, but you see, Mr. Quest, they look at
what I do and say to themselves “This isn’t so bad for
145


M A G. P. YE
minutes she left me to my own devices, feeling, no
doubt, that my knowledge and appreciation of pic-
tures were not in the same class with her own, and I
wandered about by myself for a while, renewing ac-
quaintance with certain old favorites, and making a
few new friends with a few new rivals.
At the end of about an hour I found that I had lost
sight of the child, and went to look for her.
I found her before Bettany’s “Crossroads,” appar-
ently quite under the spell of that wonderful piece of
work.
“Aren’t they splendid?” she said, nodding towards it
and the only slightly less wonderful “Windmill.”
I nodded.
“Father used to know him,” she declared proudly,
“and he was telling Sir Max about it.”
“I know—he told me.”
“Is he dead?” she asked dreamily. It was clear that
she was really away in that sun-flecked forest where
the three mossy, deep-rutted roads met and sepa-
rated.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “He left England a
good many years ago, and nobody has ever heard of
him since.”
She nodded. “I should like to do that some day.
Not die and have a horrible funeral and be burned, but
just—go away—disappear.” She pointed to the pic-
ture. “Just walk up that road under the trees into
the shadow, and not have people know what had be-
come of me.”
It was an odd idea for a girl of fourteen, but I
knew what she meant, for she is not the first person who
has wished he or she could do that—just walk away up
one of Bettany’s three roads into the velvety shade.
144


M A G. P. YE
It is an amazing picture, and I knew that one very emi-
nent French critic considered it the finest painting of
its kind of the century.
Miss Pye and I had tea together that day in a kind
of amateur little restaurant with red and white check
curtains, rustic furniture, and tired, ineffectual wait-
resses.
Mag devoured much bread and butter and cake, but
she was rather silent for her, and I think quite as
much because of the pictures she had just been look-
ing at as because we were on our way to see her
father.
“I’m going to work very hard,” she said. “It was
so good of dear Mr. Glenny to give up his evenings to
me, and I shall go every morning now to him, after
Thursday.” Thursday was the day on which we had
fixed that she was to return to Blantyre Buildings.
“Sometimes,” she went on, as we sat on the bus go-
ing to Hampstead, “sometimes I think I shall paint
well, and sometimes I think I never shall paint any-
thing decent. Why do you suppose it’s like that, Mr.
Quest? It’s like going along a path as hard as you
can bound, and then suddenly finding yourself facing
a stone wall miles high.”
I nodded. “Yes, I suppose every artist feels that
way. But you mustn't get discouraged, or give up
working.”
She laughed. “I shall never give up working; I
like work; only what’s the use if it isn’t ever going
to be good?”
“Sir Max was very much pleased with that sketch
of Madame Aimée,” I suggested encouragingly.
“Oh, I know, but you see, Mr. Quest, they look at
what I do and say to themselves “This isn’t so bad for
145


M A G. P. YE
a little girl,” and I don’t want to do stuff only ‘not bad
for a little girl' or ‘not bad for a woman.” I have
heard him talk about woman painters—I know.”
So had I, but in those days we still hoped that she
might turn out a genius, and it was an encouraging,
blowy, sunny afternoon, so we were soon both of us in
a mood of happy though baseless optimism, and when
we reached the end of the bus route and set out for our
walk to the nursing home we were telling each other
silly jokes and giggling hopelessly.
I waited downstairs in a very clean but very de-
pressing drawing-room while Mag was up with her
father.
While I was there the matron chanced to come in,
and I had a little talk with her.
She was pleased with Pye and believed in him.
“Of course it will be very difficult,” she said, “and
he may fail, but he does not strike me as a weak man,
and there is a chance that he might succeed. He cer-
tainly is doing his very best.”
“Have you ever,” I asked, “known of a case as bad
as his that has been cured?”
She looked at me thoughtfully.
“Yes, I have,” she said, “twice. You would be very
much surprised if you knew who one of them was.”
“Perhaps I do know,” I answered. “He told me
himself that he had done it.”
She saw that I knew and nodded quietly.
“That was fourteen years ago. He was very bad.
It was just after his wife's death. It—it was dread-
ful.”
“Was he a patient of yours?”
“Ah, yes, and it is owing to him entirely that I
am doing so well now. He took this house for me and
146


M A G P Y E
paid the rent for the first five years. I have only
just finished paying him back.” Her face was quite
beautiful with gratitude.
Someone else came in just then and the matron said
good-bye to me and left the room.
I sat by the window until Mag came down, think-
ing about Max Cohen.


CHAPTER XXI
It is almost unnecessary to say that I thought a
great deal, during the next few weeks, of the gold pho-
tograph frame. Edith and her father were at Cap
Martin visiting the Malpases who had owned a villa
there for some years.
I did not see much of Mag after her little visit to me
was over, for she was extremely busy, and after her
father’s six weeks’ stay in the Home he and she were
whisked away by some benevolent fellow, whom I never
dared accuse Cohen of being, to the Isle of Wight,
where old Glenny had gone because of a tiresome attack
of asthma, which he couldn’t shake off, and the particu-
larly venomous weather to which we in London were
being treated.
I missed Mag more than I could have thought pos-
sible. It gave me a real pang to pass her closed door
on the two or three occasions when I went to see Ma-
dame Aimée.
Even after Pansy Roop's illuminating remark I find
I have no power to write down on paper what Mag
really was in those early days, so the reader must just
take for granted the fact, whether or not it be a surpris-
ing one, that I loved the child and missed her dread-
fully.
148


M A G P Y E
Thus time went on. March that year was a master-
piece; it snowed, and froze, and melted, and was posi-
tively warm, in turns. A church near the Temple was
struck by lightning on St. Patrick’s day, and a week
later there was two inches of snow on the ground.
I had one of my few and far between briefs at this
time, made rather an ass of myself over it, and early in
April, compelled by the feeling that comes over me
every now and then, made for France.
I wanted to see Edith. It sounds absurd to say it,
but I was really almost sick for the sight of her, and
what made matters worse was that I’d seen in the news-
paper a few days before that Sir Max Cohen had left
London for the south of France.
I liked, respected, and admired the little man with
every decent drop of blood in my body; he was as
straight as a die, as truthful as a man would wish his
own wife to be, and as kind and chivalrous a soul as ever
lived, but there were times when I nearly hated him.
And he, as well as Edith, was pretty constantly in my
mind just then.
In the train on the way to Dover, to the horror of
everybody in the compartment but to nobody more than
to myself, I suddenly burst into a cackle of mad-sound-
ing laughter. I hadn’t even the excuse of a paper or a
book, and the other people in the compartment stared at
me till I wished I could drop through the floor and be
ground into a mince by the wheels. For the first time
it had occurred to me that if Edith did marry this won-
derful little man she would henceforth be called Lady
Cohen. Phoebus, what a name! My beautiful Edith,
Lady Cohen
However, I didn’t go to the Cap; instead I wandered
down to Bordeaux and spent a month there and there-
149


M A G PYE
abouts, enjoying the sun and the general warm-blooded-
ness of the place, and regaining, as one always does
regain through determination and self-respect, the
mental balance I had temporarily lost.
I am glad that I had the strength not even to write to
Edith all the time I was away, though I had two letters
from Cohen about Mag, in both of which he said, in his
formal little way, “Miss Lossell asks me to send you her
very kindest regards.”
The spring wore away very pleasantly, and late in
May I turned my face homewards.
I reached London on a divine evening such as only an
English spring can produce, and as if I were being re-
warded for having tried to behave decently, I found on
my table two letters that gave me the very keenest
pleasure.
One was from Mag, announcing that her father was
much better—cured, she called it—and hard at work
painting, while she herself had just finished a picture that
had pleased Cohen and Lossell very much, and that Los-
sell had bought it for the magnificent sum of ten guineas.
Now Lossell would no more have bought a picture he
didn’t want than I would have bought an aeroplane.
Cohen at a pinch might conceivably have bought a pic-
ture as a cover to charity, although he was too con-
scientious, I knew, to give undeserved encouragement to
any artistic aspirant; but Lossell’s charities were almost
invariably on a huge and impersonal scale; he would
give away thousands of pounds to some cause or institu-
tion, without turning a hair, and yet hesitate about
lending £5. So, on the whole, I was pleased that it was
he and not Sir Max who was Mag’s patron.
My other letter was from Edith: three lines written
hurriedly in an uneven scrawl very unlike her usual ex-
150


M A G P Y E
quisitely neat hand. She wanted to see me, she needed
me, and would I come. The letter was dated two days
before, and I at once telephoned to Grosvenor Place.
Pruffles answered me and informed me, after a long wait,
that Miss Lossell would be very glad to see me that
evening.
“His Lordship will be out,” the man went on, “and
Miss Lossell would be very pleased if you would come
and dine with her, sir. Yes, sir, I will, sir, thank you,
sir.”
Somehow all thought of fear of Cohen had gone com-
pletely out of my mind, and I was very nearly perfectly
happy as, a little late, I paid off my taxi and ran up the
steps.
The checkerboard hall had a very homely air to me,
and I was so glad to see Pruffles that I could almost
have emulated Mag’s behavior on a certain historic occa-
sion. However, I restrained myself and went into the
drawing-room to wait, as Edith had been detained and
was not down.
It is really a delightful room, this broad place be-
neath the picture gallery, and I am old-fashioned
enough to like the thick carpet that covers every inch
of its floor from wainscoting to wainscoting.
Beautiful rugs on highly polished boards are delight-
ful to look at but they are treacherous, unsafe things,
and this thick velvet pile is delightful to my feet. I
believe the furniture is good enough for a museum; it is
part of a collection made by this man’s grandfather. It
is either Sheraton or Chippendale—I never can tell them
apart—but there are comfortable, deep, enveloping
chairs, and soft buttony sofas as well, and there’s a
Venetian chandelier that looks like a rainbow and which
I think perfectly beautiful.
151


M A G. P. YE
I walked up and down for a few minutes and finally
went out on the balcony at the back. It was here that
Edith had told me that she was never going to see Bet-
tany again.
I stood there leaning against the side of the window
looking at the sky, and while I was there she came in.
I turned and went back towards her. She came
swiftly up to me, both hands held out. She had a very
bright color and wore an ugly little dog-collar of dia-
monds. There was something odd about her.
I caught at her hands which were very cold, and burst
out in a voice that I hardly knew as my own.
“Edith, what is it? It isn’t that man?” I couldn’t
bring myself to say Cohen’s name.
She nodded, and drawing away her hands put one be-
fore her mouth. “Yes,” she said.
At that moment Pruffles announced dinner, and we
followed him without a word.
We dined in a small breakfast-room with little white
panels, and one or two portraits of pretty ancestresses
let into the walls. I love the room, and just outside it
in the small plot of grass that they called the garden
was a May-tree just bursting into bloom. The wind
had come up and the boughs of the tree were tossing
about in it. I sat opposite the window and Edith was
outlined against the shifting trusses of green and pink.
I ate my soup in silence, listening to her as she chatted
for the benefit of the servants, and hardly daring to look
up at her.
Finally when I did, I nearly groaned aloud. She
looked like a woman who was being tortured to death.
Her eyes had sunk into her head and her nose looked
pinched like the nose of a consumptive, and there were
little dark furrows from her nostrils to her lips.
152


M A G. P. YE
“Yes,” she said in a high, strained voice, “it was de-
lightful; it always is. Your friend Lady Houndle was
there part of the time and Monica came for a week.”
I nodded. “How is your uncle?”
“Oh, he’s better, thanks.” It was dreadful, and when
at last we were left for a moment alone, I leaned across
the table.
“For God’s sake, tell me,” I said. “Why are you
going to do it if it makes you feel like this?”
She stared at me. “Going to do what?” and I saw
that she was sincere, that she did not understand what I
meant.
How we got through the meal Heaven alone knows,
but after what seemed hours of unbearable suspense we
found ourselves alone in her gray and silver sitting-
room, the coffee and cigarettes on the table, the servants
gone for good.
I asked her, very roughly, to explain.
“I will,” she said. “That's why I sent for you—but
what did you mean when you asked why I was going to
do something?”
“I mean why are you going to marry him?”
“Oh, no, no,” she murmured, moving her head rest-
lessly from side to side. “You don’t understand, Vic-
tor.” Then she added, leaning towards me and speak-
ing almost in a whisper: “I’ve seen him.”


CHAPTER XXII
It was Bettany she had seen—a week before, as she
came out of a theater. He had not seen her, and the
crowd had been so thick that when she had rushed after
him she had lost him.
“Are you sure?” I asked. She didn’t even take the
trouble to answer me. Was she sure!
“He looked well,” she said, adding that he had stared
straight at her without seeing her.
“Have I changed so much?” she asked bitterly.
Then I told her what I had thought, during dinner,
her meaning to be. She laughed.
“Dear little Sir Max,” she said absently, and I con-
fess that sorry as I was for her and distressed by her
pain I couldn’t help being glad that the trouble was
simply the old one, the old one to which I was so used.
“Did you never think of marrying Cohen?” I asked
her.
“Oh, heavens, Victor! does it matter what I thought
about him? It’s Bill, Bill. You don’t know what see-
ing him meant to me. You have no idea. And, oh,
my dear, you must find him for me.”
I was silent for a while. “And if I do,” I asked pres-
ently, “will you marry him?”
She looked down, and under what I had soon dis-
154


M A G PYE
covered to be the paint on her face, she grew very white.
“No, I shall never marry him, but I want to know—I
want to know what has happened; I want to know
where he’s been; I want to know what he’s done with his
life. Oh, Victor, can’t you see? And above all I want to
make up to him—I must find him—I must. Can't you
see?”
I did see. Much as I perforce regretted her insane
faithfulness to the memory of a man who I knew must
in some way have outraged her, I could not pretend
not to understand it. In a way her case and mine were
alike, but Bettany had certainly loved her, whereas I
hadn’t even the poor excuse that she had ever given
me a thought even twenty years ago, yet I was perfectly
ready to go to the ends of the earth for her.
I made her take off the ugly diamond collar which, it
appeared, she had put on under the very mistaken im-
pression that it might make her look less ill, less tragic,
and we sat for a long time thinking, and talking over
the ways and means of discovering the lost man.
“He must have been out of England all this time,” I
said at last. “He couldn’t possibly have been here with-
out being seen by somebody. Even if he had been very
hard up somebody would have been bound to come
across him—even old Pye might have seen him in some
of his haunts.”
She shook her head irritably. “No, no, I tell you, he
hasn’t been in low haunts and he’s not poor. He looked
older, of course, but he looked perfectly well and—Oh,
Victor,” she hesitated, “he looked almost happy!”
“You’ve looked happy many a time when coming out
of a theater,” I said with measured brutality. “He
might not have felt quite so gay if he’d seen you.”
There was a frightened look in her eyes.
---" "
155


M A G PYE
“For the moment I was glad he didn’t,” she said
slowly, as if ashamed of her words. “I was tired, and I
know I was looking plain and—old.”
“Nonsense. But it’s getting late, dear. We must
decide what I’m to do,” I broke in hastily, for I was not
prepared to discuss her looks with her. “We must ad-
vertise.”
“All right. Whatever you think.”
She rose. “Hark! There comes father; I can’t see
him tonight. You’ll begin at once, won’t you? You
won’t waste time?” She crossed the room to the door
leading to her bedroom and turned. “Good-bye. Tele-
phone me in the morning—I’ll stay in. If father asks
where I am, say I’ve a headache and have gone to bed.”
She closed the door. -
To my relief Lord Lossell didn’t appear, and a few
minutes later I went quietly downstairs, tiptoed across
the chessboard, and let myself out into the street.


M A G PYE
They were for the most part members of the lower
branches of professions. One, for instance, and this
was the one who believed Bettany was not dead, was a
man named Colwyn, who was chief clerk in a well-known
firm of solicitors.
He was a nice old fellow with three unmarried, middle-
aged daughters, and I enjoyed my call at their shabby,
comfortable old house in Ealing.
“Why do you think,” I asked, after the preliminaries,
“that he’s still alive?”
Mr. Colwyn, his elbows on his chair arms, laid the tips
of his fingers together in a way I felt to be an uncon-
scious imitation of the head of his firm.
“Willy was a good boy,” he said thoughtfully. “I
was very fond of him. His mother came from Glouces-
tershire, the same town where my mother lived as a girl,
so I knew him from the time he was about fifteen. I lost
sight of him for a while, naturally, while he was abroad,
and to a certain extent during the first great success of
that picture—what’s its name? He was taken up, as
you probably know, by all kinds of people far above him
in station, but he never altogether gave us up, did he
Clara P”
Miss Clara, the second daughter, a sweet-faced woman
who had blushed so vividly on my unfolding the reason
of my visit that I suspected her of a former weakness
for Bettany, shook her head.
“Oh, no, papa dear. He always came here occasion-
ally, and don’t you remember his taking Aunt Bertha
and me to see the picture? ‘Crossroads” was its name,”
she added, with a little air of pride.
I remember wondering as I sat there what there had
been about the fellow to make him liked as he undoubt-
edly had been. I recalled him as a slight, eager-looking
158


M A G. P. YE
young man with hair that grew in a point on his fore-
head, and an odd way of walking with his chin in the air.
There had been something vital and romantic in his
bearing, but he was not handsome, and I had never
heard him say anything arresting; yet his individuality
had been strong enough to make a permanent mark on
the memories of many very different people.
“Did you like the picture?” I asked the second sister,
gently.
She folded her pretty, faded hands. “Oh, yes, but
then I should have liked anything Willy did,” she an-
swered simply. “I was very fond of him.”
The clock struck, and my time was short. “But
you’ve not yet told me, Mr. Colwyn,” I began again,
“what your reason is for thinking that he’s still alive.”
The old man looked at his daughter and began hesi-
tatingly: “Well, I don’t know.”
Miss Clara rose. “I’ll tell you—Mr. Quest. It’s be-
cause of a letter he-Willy—wrote to me in the October
after he went away.”
Dear me! this was important and looked like a clue.
“I shall be very grateful to you if you will tell me
about the letter,” I returned. “As I have said, I am
making the inquiries on behalf of two people who were
great friends of his. It is through them that I learned
of your friendship for him.”
They were a very pleasant, devoted family, these Col-
wyns. After a moment Miss Colwyn and the youngest
sister shook hands with me and left the room; evidently
they realized that Miss Clara would like to be alone with
me and her father.
She then went into the front drawing-room and I
heard the opening and shutting of a drawer. After a
moment she came back.
159


M A G PYE
“Father, do you mind,” she said, “if I take Mr. Quest
for a moment into the garden? I’m going to show him
the letter.”
The old gentleman bowed also-the family solicitor’s
bow—and I followed the little old maid (she must have
been quite fifty) out on the sunlit, flower-bordered lawn.
We came to a standstill by an umbrella rose tree,
covered with pink flowers, and without speaking she
handed me the letter. -
Somehow I hardly liked to read it, and I took the let-
ter out of the envelope slowly. She, however, saw my
reluctance, for she said with a little smile: “Read it,
read it, Mr. Quest, I’m sure I’m glad to have you do so.
I don’t like to show it to my father, I never have done,
but if there’s a chance of our finding him, poor Willy,
I somehow feel that it would be through you.”
The letter was short; I don’t remember the exact
wording but it was something like this:
DEAR CLARA:
I can't come to dinner on Thursday. I'm going out of
England, and I'm never coming back. I have managed to
smash my whole life and the quicker I get away the better.
You've been very good to me, and I’m very fond of you.
I'm going to send you a little picture to remember me by.
Please explain to Uncle George.
God bless you all. WILLY.
Then there was a P. S. of which I do distinctly remem-
ber the wording.
My engagement is broken to the lady you saw that day.
We were both silent for a moment, and the voices of
some tennis-playing girls and boys in the next garden
reached at least my ears as though they were much
further off than they were.
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fºr


M A G. P. YE
“Father, do you mind,” she said, “if I take Mr. Quest
for a moment into the garden? I’m going to show him
the letter.”
The old gentleman bowed also-the family solicitor’s
bow—and I followed the little old maid (she must have
been quite fifty) out on the sunlit, flower-bordered lawn.
We came to a standstill by an umbrella rose tree,
covered with pink flowers, and without speaking she
handed me the letter. -
Somehow I hardly liked to read it, and I took the let-
ter out of the envelope slowly. She, however, saw my
reluctance, for she said with a little smile: “Read it,
read it, Mr. Quest, I’m sure I’m glad to have you do so.
I don’t like to show it to my father, I never have done,
but if there’s a chance of our finding him, poor Willy,
I somehow feel that it would be through you.”
The letter was short; I don’t remember the exact
wording but it was something like this:
DEAR CLARA:
I can't come to dinner on Thursday. I’m going out of
England, and I'm never coming back. I have managed to
smash my whole life and the quicker I get away the better.
You've been very good to me, and I’m very fond of you.
I’m going to send you a little picture to remember me by.
Please explain to Uncle George.
God bless you all. WILLY.
Then there was a P. S. of which I do distinctly remem-
ber the wording.
My engagement is broken to the lady you saw that day.
We were both silent for a moment, and the voices of
some tennis-playing girls and boys in the next garden
reached at least my ears as though they were much
further off than they were.
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M. A. G. P. YE
Then she said gently: “Perhaps she cared for him after
all. I’ve always thought she didn’t, or she wouldn’t
have let him go away like that.”
She said no more, and shortly after I took my leave
and went home by underground.
All I had learned was that Bettany, when he disap-
peared, had gone to France, but it was worth telling
Edith, because his letter was certainly not that of a
man who intended to put an end to his days, which was
what Lossell and many other people had, I know, always
suspected him of having done.
This was the only news of any kind that I was able to
get for weeks, and gradually Edith settled down into a
quiet mood of hopelessness, and then one day, quite
suddenly, it occurred to me that I was many kinds of an
idiot never to have thought of asking Pye if he knew
anything about his old acquaintance.
So the next day I went in search of him.


CHAPTER XXIV
I found Pye, after making inquiries at several doors,
established in a room he had taken at the very top of
the Buildings across the courtyard. I always wish I
had counted the steps as one does in St. Peter's; how-
ever, I didn’t. I was thoroughly out of breath when I
finally reached the door.
He was at work on a large canvas, and I can’t say
that he was particularly glad to see me. I was very
much struck with his appearance—for he had shaved
off his heavy mustache, and the change was a great
improvement—I have always disliked men who part their
hair in the middle, but Pye wore his lank dark locks in
this fashion, and I noticed that he was wearing glasses—
the thick glasses of a short-sighted man.
I sat down on the one chair the room boasted, and
took the cigarette that he offered me. I didn’t like to
tell him I was glad to see him looking better, equally
little did I feel inclined to congratulate him on his re-
turn to work, and I was feeling a little awkward when
He simplified matters by saying in a way that I liked:
“I don’t think I have ever thanked you, Mr. Quest, for
your great kindness to my daughter.”
We discussed Mag for a few minutes and then I ex-
plained why I had come.
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M A G. P. YE
“You used to know William Bettany,” I began. He
looked at me sharply and planted his glasses more
firmly on his nose which appeared to be the slippery
kind.
“Yes,” he said, “I knew him slightly.”
“Well, I’m told that he’s been seen in London recently,
and it occurred to me that possibly you might know
something of him.”
He shook his head. “I’ve not seen Bill Bettany,” he
murmured reflectively, for—Oh, many years!”
“Do you remember when he disappeared?” I asked.
“Were you in England then?”
“I saw him in Paris just afterwards.”
“Would you mind telling me about it? All you can
remember. I don’t know whether you know the cir-
cumstances just preceding his disappearance, do
you?”
He took up his palette. “If you’ll excuse me I’ll go
on with my work,” he answered. “There is a commis-
sion. You were saying— Ah, yes, did I know about
the circumstances? I did. I was here when “Crossroads”
and the other picture were in the Academy, and I re-
member when the Chantry people bought them; from
some peer, I believe it was.”
“Yes—Lord Lossell.”
He nodded. “I remember.—He’s the man who built
this place, by the way, did you know?”
Somehow I felt that he was trying to put me off; that
he knew more than he was willing to admit.
“Did he ever tell you anything about whatever it was
that drove him out of England?” I urged, watching him
sharply. “I am not asking out of idle curiosity, Mr.
Pye; I am not asking you what he told you, in case
you were his confidant; but a very great friend of his—
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M.A. G. P. YE
in fact two very great friends, are most anxious to find
him, and I’ve promised to do all I can to help.”
Pye put down his palette, and the little I could see of
his white forehead was corrugated nervously. Although
he looked so much better, and had so improved in every
way, it was plain that the poor fellow’s nerves were even
yet by no means good.
“Surely there must be people whom you could ask be-
sides me,” he protested, biting at his thumbnail in a way
that I remembered to have noticed before. I explained
apologetically that that was just the trouble—there
2008 no One.
“I went yesterday,” I added, “to see some old friends
of his in Ealing—their name is Colwyn.”
“Colwyn? Ah, yes. I remember,” he said quickly,
adding that he had heard Bettany speak of the family.
“It appears he wrote once to Miss Colwyn, from
France. He was obviously in great trouble.”
Pye stood in front of me—a small, stooping figure;
his palette on his thumb, his cravat awry. I knew he
wished to Heaven I would go and leave him to his work,
but I had no such intention.
“Have you heard from him since those days?” I in-
sisted gently, trying to make my voice as inoffensive as
possible.
“I’m not saying the fellow told me anything,” he re-
turned, not at all softened by my good intentions. “I
don’t see why I should tell.” a'
I rose.
“Ah, in that case I’ll be off,” I answered. “I’m sorry
to have troubled you—I shouldn’t have done so on my
own account; but I myself knew Bettany only very
slightly.”
His face changed in a curious way, oddly, and he
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M A G P Y E
stared at me. “Then you did know him?” he blurted out,
suddenly.
“Oh, yes, I had that pleasure. The Lossells, about
whom you know, are among my very dearest friends,
and were even in his day.” I held out my hand, but he
didn’t take it. He was still peering at me, his thumb
between his teeth, and I heard a little nibbling noise
while I waited. “I have often heard him—Bettany—
speak about the Lossells,” he said at last. “It is odd
that they—Lord Lossell, I mean—should have my
daughter. Is—Miss Lossell married?”
“No-”
He went on hurriedly. “Of course, I know about the
engagement, and I wondered—How are they both?”
he wound up with a jerk.
“Oh, very well,” I answered. “Then you never met
them?”
“No,” he said slowly.
“From poor Bettany, of course. He confided in you.”
He nodded. “Yes; from poor Bettany.”
So I baited my hook afresh and said as I went towards
the door:
“I’ll tell Miss Lossell that you were unable to help
us,” and I felt a beast as he swallowed the bait, hook
and all.
“Then it was she who wanted to know?”
“Yes. She saw him the other night at a theater, and
she’s most anxious to find him.”
“That she’ll never do,” he burst out, so tensely that I
was amazed.
“Look here, Mr. Pye,” I said, closing the door and
going back to him. “I know I’m being intrusive, and
that you wish me at the ends of the earth, but if you
knew what it means to Miss Lossell (I tell you this in
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M A G PYE
confidence) to find that poor fellow, you would tell me
what you know about him, if you do know anything.”
There was a long pause and then he raised his eyes
and looked heavily at me. I can see him now standing
there in the dusty room, his gaily set-out palette in one
hand, a brush in the other. In biting his nail he had
managed to decorate his cheek with a big smear of
yellow ochre, and he was an odd little figure enough.
“All I know of Miss Lossell,” he said at last with an
obvious effort, “is good, and I’m sorry if she is dis-
tressed, but the man was never worth worrying about,
and I rather think she knows that.”
I felt that he knew a great deal more, and that if I
questioned him at that moment, he would tell me, and I
was dying of curiosity. Thank goodness, however, I
didn’t do it! After all, Edith had kept the secret from
me, and I had no right to learn it from anyone else. At
last Pye spoke. “I can’t tell you much, Mr. Quest,”
he said. “At one time I knew Bettany fairly well, and
then—he went under completely, I believe. I’ve heard
several times that he died somewhere in South America,
though of course it may not be true. I do know, how-
ever, that he was at one time in Buenos Aires.”
“But Miss Lossell thinks she saw him, she’s convinced
she saw him, here—in London the other night.”
He shook his head. “And I am just as convinced
that she's mistaken,” he said gravely. “Bettany never
came back to England.”
He spoke with more than mental persuasion, he spoke
with knowledge, and I felt that he had said more than
he had meant to, out of a wish to keep Edith from going
on dreaming an unprofitable dream. He said no more,
and I didn’t insist, and then I took my leave, thanking
him.
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M A G P Y E
stared at me. “Then you did know him?” he blurted out,
suddenly.
“Oh, yes, I had that pleasure. The Lossells, about
whom you know, are among my very dearest friends,
and were even in his day.” I held out my hand, but he
didn’t take it. He was still peering at me, his thumb
between his teeth, and I heard a little nibbling noise
while I waited. “I have often heard him—Bettany—
speak about the Lossells,” he said at last. “It is odd
that they—Lord Lossell, I mean—should have my
daughter. Is—Miss Lossell married?”
“No-”
He went on hurriedly. “Of course, I know about the
engagement, and I wondered—How are they both?”
he wound up with a jerk.
“Oh, very well,” I answered. “Then you never met
them?”
“No,” he said slowly.
“From poor Bettany, of course. He confided in you.”
He nodded. “Yes; from poor Bettany.”
So I baited my hook afresh and said as I went towards
the door:
“I’ll tell Miss Lossell that you were unable to help
us,” and I felt a beast as he swallowed the bait, hook
and all.
“Then it was she who wanted to know?”
“Yes. She saw him the other night at a theater, and
she's most anxious to find him.”
“That she’ll never do,” he burst out, so tensely that I
was amazed.
“Look here, Mr. Pye,” I said, closing the door and
going back to him. “I know I’m being intrusive, and
that you wish me at the ends of the earth, but if you
knew what it means to Miss Lossell (I tell you this in
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M A G PYE
confidence) to find that poor fellow, you would tell me
what you know about him, if you do know anything.”
There was a long pause and then he raised his eyes
and looked heavily at me. I can see him now standing
there in the dusty room, his gaily set-out palette in one
hand, a brush in the other. In biting his nail he had
managed to decorate his cheek with a big smear of
yellow ochre, and he was an odd little figure enough.
“All I know of Miss Lossell,” he said at last with an
obvious effort, “is good, and I’m sorry if she is dis-
tressed, but the man was never worth worrying about,
and I rather think she knows that.”
I felt that he knew a great deal more, and that if I
questioned him at that moment, he would tell me, and I
was dying of curiosity. Thank goodness, however, I
didn’t do it! After all, Edith had kept the secret from
me, and I had no right to learn it from anyone else. At
last Pye spoke. “I can’t tell you much, Mr. Quest,”
he said. “At one time I knew Bettany fairly well, and
then—he went under completely, I believe. I’ve heard
several times that he died somewhere in South America,
though of course it may not be true. I do know, how-
ever, that he was at one time in Buenos Aires.”
“But Miss Lossell thinks she saw him, she’s convinced
she saw him, here—in London the other night.”
He shook his head. “And I am just as convinced
that she’s mistaken,” he said gravely. “Bettany never
came back to England.”
He spoke with more than mental persuasion, he spoke
with knowledge, and I felt that he had said more than
he had meant to, out of a wish to keep Edith from going
on dreaming an unprofitable dream. He said no more,
and I didn’t insist, and then I took my leave, thanking
him.
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M A G. P. YE
He had for the moment pretty well convinced me that
Edith had been mistaken, although I was just as con-
vinced that he knew far more about the matter than he
was willing or felt at liberty to tell.
This last conviction, however, I kept to myself when I
saw Edith, and after this she gradually, as I have said,
settled down more and more into the condition in which
she had been before that night at the play.
“After all,” she admitted once with a sigh, “it’s a long
time ago, and people change. I might have been mis-
taken 33
I nodded. “Of course you might, and what’s more
you say he was only a few yards away from you and
looked straight at you. Is it likely, my dear, that he
would not have recognized you if it had been he?” But
after this talk I began to feel, though the matter
speedily dropped out of my conscious thoughts, that
Bettany had been in England, and that Edith had seen
him.


CHAPTER XXV
In October Mr. Treffry had a serious illness, and
early in November he sent for me to come to see him.
I found him sitting up in bed, his fine old face worn
and thinned by his illness. It reminded me somehow of
a knife that has been ground almost to nothing by some
sharpening process.
“I am very glad to see you, sir,” I began. “You’ve
given us all an awful fright.”
He laughed. “You’ve all been very kind, with your
inquiries, and your grapes, and so on. It’s amazing how
much comfort a man can get out of sympathy. My
beautiful Edith actually shed tears over me when she
came to see me yesterday.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m afraid I can’t manage to
do that! Although I assure you I should feel sincerely
happier if you were just a little fatter.”
By chance I had never been in the old gentleman’s
bedroom before; and it was a charming room. I felt it
was now exactly what it must have been fifty years be-
fore when, as I knew, he had inherited the house from an
uncle.
The four-poster bed was hung not with chintz, but
with some aged gray-silk brocade, carefully mended in
many places, and over the old man’s delicate frame was
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M A G. P. YE
stretched, wrinkleless, a counterpane of the same beauti-
ful material.
It was a foggy afternoon and the window curtains
were drawn, and a large lamp on the table at the old
man’s right hand illuminated the place. Over the
mantelpiece was a fine portrait of Treffry’s grandmother
in her youth. She had, I knew, brought him up, his
mother having died in his boyhood.
Under the lamp on the table stood a big cut-glass
scent spray, full, my nose told me, of lavender water,
and there was a vase of white roses on the very elabo-
rately set forth dressing table, whose accouterments
were all of engraved brass, a priceless relic, I knew, of
old Italian workmanship. A peat fire burned in the
hearth and the windows behind the heavy curtains were
open, letting in the roar and hum of the great town.
“It’s a poisonous evening,” I observed. “I wish I
were in bed being made a fuss over by a handsome young
woman in blue and white uniform, and visited by
enchanting and distinguished friends.”
He laughed softly. “Yes, bed is by no means a bad
place, but I don’t like this fog, Quest, I don’t like the
fog. Neither does Cooper-Lewis. He says,” the old
gentleman added, looking at me in a way that caught
my attention, “that I must be up and off before it gets
worse.”
“That means you are going out of England for the
winter?”
He nodded. “Yes, I’ve got my marching orders.
These are wonderful days we live in. Think of an old
fellow of eighty being shipped off to Ceylon for his
health !”
I had never been to Ceylon, and sat a moment think-
ing about it as I imagined it to be.
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M. A. G. P. YE
After a pause Treffry reached under his pillow and
produced a large key, which he handed to me.
“Go into the miniature room,” he said, “and open
that ebony and ivory cabinet between the windows.”
There was a suppressed excitement in his manner that
intrigued me. I shouldn’t have been surprised if I had
found a wife or two hanging by their hair, or a bushel
of pearls, behind the doors of the cabinet, but when I
had opened it nothing more exciting met my eyes than
two rows of books bound in Russian leather.
“Do you know what they are?” the old man called
out.
“Books,” I answered with brilliance.
“They are my diary. Now you may come back.”
There was color in his thin cheeks now, and when I
had sat down he spoke about his famous diary more
fully than he had ever before done to me.
“I’ve edited it, and prepared it up to four years ago,”
he said, “and I was just beginning on a new volume
when I was taken ill.”
“You must hurry and get well, so that you can get
on with the work,” I remarked. He shrugged his
shoulders. “That’s just the point. I must get on with
the work—or someone must. Quest, I want you to come
to Ceylon with me and help me to finish this business.”
In an hour's time he had persuaded me that nothing
was simpler or easier than for us to sail from February
that day three weeks for Colombo. I was to go as his
secretary, all expenses being paid, and we should be
gone about six months. It was a delightful thought,
and I was enchanted at the prospect, and I was making
a list of books to be bought for the voyage when his
servant ushered in a young lady in dark blue who carried
in her hand a little bunch of violets. It was Mag. She
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M A G P Y E
had got to the age when girls seem to change, to develop,
and grow up almost from one week to the next, but
whereas most girls of practically fifteen show their ap-
proach to womanhood by various subtle increases of
curve, Mag signaled her progress by as subtle a shrink-
age. She no longer bulged in her old way. Her face
was lengthening, and I missed some of the freckles on
her dear little nose.
The old man had been very fond of her ever since that
inauspicious meeting on the night of the birthday party
a year before, and I knew that she had often been to his
house, so I was not surprised to see her.
I told her the plan about Ceylon and she was intensely
interested as she always was in anything concerning her
friends, and begged me to write her a circumstantial ac-
count of the devil dances in the jungle, of which some-
one had told her.
Her news was good. Her father was in steady work
illustrating books of travel for some publisher.
“He has only,” she announced with pride, “had two
relapses since August.”
“Where does he get the stuff?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. We can’t find
out, but we think he has a friend somewhere in the East
End who gives it to him, for both times that he has had
it he has told me the day before that he was going to
see this man.”
My mind jumped to the thought of Bettany for I had
never given up the idea that Pye knew more of him than
he would admit.
“Have you ever seen this friend?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yes; I was on a bus one day, ages ago
—two years, it must be—and I saw father and a man
talking together in the street, and afterwards he told
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M A G P YE
me that he had met a very old friend whom he hadn’t
seen for many years. That was the man. His name,”
she added, “is Davies.”
Treffry and I exchanged a glance, and I could see
that the idea had occurred to him as well as to me.
“What did the man look like, Mag?” he asked in the
pleasant voice that had grown as diaphanous and thin
as himself.
She looked vague. “I don’t know—I didn’t notice.”
“Oh, come, you always notice. Try to remember.
I’ve a particular reason for wanting to know.”
She frowned a little and then, with an effort, for the
man had obviously not interested her, she answered:
“He was a little man and he wore a soft hat. Oh, yes,
he had a beard.” Again Treffry and I glanced at each
other, for I’d told the old man about my search, think-
ing that perhaps he, who seemed to know everybody
under the heavens, might have some clue as to Bettany’s
whereabouts. We said no more.
Mag was studying hard these days, she went on to tell
us. Her lessons, which she still hated, lessons in the
three R’s, in geography, and so on, on which Max Cohen
had insisted, she accomplished in a conscientious jog-
trot way, while she applied herself to her drawing, and
to reading (this last under my guidance) with intensity
and even passion. It augured well, I thought, for her
future.
I was dining that night with Cohen and presently I
said good-bye, leaving the old gentleman and the young
girl chatting pleasantly together in the fragrant fire-
light.
Cohen, dear little man, was delighted about the Cey-
lon affair, and lent me several books about the island,
telling me many interesting tales about it. I was not at
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M A G. P. YE
all surprised to hear that he owned a tea plantation near
Galle. I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear that he
owned a shrubbery of laurels in the Elysian Fields, for
his possessions seemed as diversified as his knowledge.
He was very much pleased with Mag and, it appeared,
so was old Glenny.
“The old fellow’s devoted to her,” he added, “and gets
on splendidly with the father, too.” This reminded me
of Mag’s story of Pye's friend in the East End, and I
told it to Cohen. “I was wondering,” I suggested, “if
it could be Bettany by any chance.”
“Why on earth should it be Bettany? Whatever
would he be doing in the East End?”
Cohen had never been told of Edith’s thinking she
had seen Bettany at the play, but I had mentioned to
him, without naming her, that a doubt had arisen
amongst us about the man’s death. (Bettany’s day had
been before Cohen’s, for when “Crossroads” was painted
Cohen had not come to England.) However, he put
little credence in Edith’s story, for his theory was that
a man of Bettany’s genius would never be in such low
water as living in the East End would seem to imply.
“Mightn't he have lost his power of painting?” I
asked.
Cohen laughed. “A power like that is never lost, any
more than, so to speak, it is found. It is born as much
a part of a man as are his eyes or his brain.”
We were sitting by the fire looking at a collection of
silver-point drawings that the little man had just
bought, when looking up suddenly, I saw through the
open door of the bedroom a gleam of gold on the table.
It was, I knew, the gold frame of which Mag had told
me. I had not thought about it for a long time, but
somehow, as I sat there by him, I felt a sudden over-
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M A G. P. YE
powering necessity for finding out what Cohen really
felt about Edith.
My annual proposal had begun to work in me, and I
had been staving it off, as I always did, knowing that I
was bound sooner or later to fail, for some days.
Now the sight of the gold photograph frame acceler-
ated matters and I knew that my poor dear lady would
have to go through with it tomorrow.
“I’m lunching with the Lossells tomorrow,” I an-
nounced with a suddenness and inappositeness that
evidently struck my courteous little host. “I shall tele-
phone them in the morning.”
Max Cohen looked at me. “Ah, yes,” he murmured.
“Miss Lossell is looking much better. I saw her two or
three nights ago, at the Bainbridges.” Then he added
softly: “What a beautiful woman she is P’
“Yes, and as she gets older,” I returned, and my
voice, to my own surprise, had an odd dogged sound,
“she gets more beautiful.”
He looked at me reflectively. “No doubt you are
right, in a higher sense, Quest, but I should like to have
seen her in her youth.”
This made me very angry, which was quite illogical
but probably quite natural. He saw that I was ruffled
and in his kindness tried to soothe me by expatiating, in
carefully chosen, almost academic language on the re-
spect and admiration Miss Lossell had always aroused
in him.
“She’s wonderful,” he concluded.
I was ashamed of myself and said so.
“The truth is,” I blurted out, “I can’t bear to have
her grow old. I’ve always known her and admired her.”
He looked at me, his pellucid leaf-brown eyes full of
understanding and sympathy.
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M A G P Y E
“I’ve always known,” he said quietly, “my dear
Quest.”
I was not at all annoyed or embarrassed by his speech.
We were both silent for a moment, and then he said,
“I should like to show you something. It is nowadays
my most cherished possession. It is the picture of the
woman I love.”
“Is it in a gold frame?” I asked him.
He stared at me in surprise. “How did you know?”
And then, turning, he crossed towards the open door.
“I love her,” he said in a peculiarly noble and dignified
way, “more than my own life.”
After a pause he added: “Go and look at it, Quest.”
I went slowly into the next room to look at the
“coronet face,” and for a full minute I stood motionless
before it.
It was the face of a perfect stranger.


CHAPTER XXVI
Edith and I got through the next day's scene much in
the usual manner. I was very unhappy for an hour or
two after her definite refusal of me, but at least I hadn’t
the misery one experiences under an unexpected blow,
this blow having recurred regularly every autumn for
many years.
Bettany’s name didn’t come up, and she said nothing
to me except, just in the sweetest, kindest way in the
world, that she “really simply couldn't.” In the middle
of the interview it came over me suddenly that the cir-
cumstances were not without their funny side, and when
I laughed, she cheered up amazingly and insisted on
knowing why. I told her the story of the gold frame.
She was perfectly delighted.
“You silly old thing,” she declared, “so you thought
that charming little gentleman was cherishing my photo-
graph?” At that moment it no longer struck me as
funny.
“You know perfectly well you did consider marrying
him at one time,” I muttered in a surly voice. “He was
certainly devoted to you. Why shouldn’t he have had
your photograph?”
We were in her car driving home from a matinée—I
having chosen these conditions as having at least the
merit of originality, for I had never proposed to her in a
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M A G P Y F.
“I’ve always known,” he said quietly, “my dear
Quest.”
I was not at all annoyed or embarrassed by his speech.
We were both silent for a moment, and then he said,
“I should like to show you something. It is nowadays
my most cherished possession. It is the picture of the
woman I love.”
“Is it in a gold frame?” I asked him.
He stared at me in surprise. “How did you know?”
And then, turning, he crossed towards the open door.
“I love her,” he said in a peculiarly noble and dignified
way, “more than my own life.”
After a pause he added: “Go and look at it, Quest.”
I went slowly into the next room to look at the
“coronet face,” and for a full minute I stood motionless
before it.
It was the face of a perfect stranger.


CHAPTER XXVI
Edith and I got through the next day's scene much in
the usual manner. I was very unhappy for an hour or
two after her definite refusal of me, but at least I hadn’t
the misery one experiences under an unexpected blow,
this blow having recurred regularly every autumn for
many years.
Bettany’s name didn’t come up, and she said nothing
to me except, just in the sweetest, kindest way in the
world, that she “really simply couldn't.” In the middle
of the interview it came over me suddenly that the cir-
cumstances were not without their funny side, and when
I laughed, she cheered up amazingly and insisted on
knowing why. I told her the story of the gold frame.
She was perfectly delighted.
“You silly old thing,” she declared, “so you thought
that charming little gentleman was cherishing my photo-
graph?” At that moment it no longer struck me as
funny.
“You know perfectly well you did consider marrying
him at one time,” I muttered in a surly voice. “He was
certainly devoted to you. Why shouldn’t he have had
your photograph?”
We were in her car driving home from a matinée—I
having chosen these conditions as having at least the
merit of originality, for I had never proposed to her in a
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M A G P Y E
car before—and leaning forward, she looked out of the
windows for a moment. Suddenly I saw that she was
shaking with laughter. Then she turned and her de-
lightful olive-green eyes wrinkled at the corners with
mischief and amusement.
“Listen, Victor,” she said, “I’ll tell you a secret. I
did consider marrying Sir Max; I contemplated accord-
ing to him the high honor of my hand. Well—he never
asked me!”
“He didn’t P”
“No. I think for a time he meant to, and then for
some reason the dear little man cooled down, and imper-
ceptibly he drew away.”
There was something so droll in her way of telling it,
although it doesn’t sound very funny as I write it, that I
shouted with laughter. Then we were grave, and I told
her what Pye's nurse had told me about Cohen’s wife.
The photograph was, of course, hers.
Afterwards, as I have said, I had to go through my
usual, annual period of misery, but even that period was,
in that year, diversified and softened by the excitement
of my preparations for Ceylon. Like everybody else
going for the first time to a strange country, I
squandered a great deal of money on perfectly useless
specialties fobbed off on me by the clever and unscrupu-
lous tradesman. The sola topee that I bought proved to
weigh a ton, so that I threw it away the third day in
Colombo and bought an excellent and most comfortable
one for about a fifth the price I had spent on its pre-
decessor.
I also bought many garments that, unknown to me,
were destined to feed the voracious and omnipresent red
ant because nobody had told me that I ought to have a
tin trunk.
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M A G P Y E
However, I enjoyed making my purchases, and I en-
joyed, though it doesn’t seem very gracious to say so,
saying good-bye to all my friends. Everyone was most
kind, even Lossell, who gave me a case of excellent cigars.
Mag and old Glenny went down with us to Tilbury
and I showed them over the Margravia with the ridicu-
lous feeling of proprietorship common to all inexperi-
enced travelers. Mag asked me what the binnacle was,
and not for worlds would I reveal what she went on shore
believing that maritime instrument to be. She was very
much excited by the atmosphere and smell of the ship,
and her ecstasies over the Lascars were both inappro-
priate and over-audible. She had done another lap in
her great game of growing up since I had seen her a
fortnight before, and I observed with joy that no one
now stared at her ankles, which of course showed that
they were assuming normal proportions. At the same
time I feared that they would never be stared at for
better reasons, and I declare that I do love a nice, bony,
back view to a woman’s feet.
Old Glenny wandered about, looking exactly like
Neptune, as if he had just climbed up over the side; and
at the last minute they were very nearly carried off with
us, Mag being found in the engine room, learning all
about the machinery. However, at last we got off, and
finally the two kind faces faded from view, and I took
my long nose up to the extreme peak of the bow to
experience in full the delicious sensations of the Oriental
traveler. -
The first few hours of the journey were delightful;
over the next three days it would be as well to draw a
veil. I would rather have any known disease than that
from which I so grievously suffered as we beat across
the Bay of Biscay.
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M A G. P. YE
Treffry, a magnificent sailor, looked a new man when
I finally crawled out of my bunk and crept up on deck.
The fine old fellow had grown ten years younger and
pounds heavier.
The rest of the voyage was sheer delight; the captain
was a good fellow with a charming red face, a Scottish
accent, and what he himself would have qualified as “an
eye for the ladies”; and there were one or two interesting
and well worth while passengers.
At Port Said I rode a donkey, for the first time since
my childhood, with four or five other “children.” We
had our fortunes told in trays of sand, and I bought,
for those at home, rich gifts which Treffry afterwards
informed me were as British born as myself. I had
looked forward for a long time to the Red Sea and was,
like the ship, prepared for intense heat as we passed
through it. Instead of heat, however, we got the most
tremendous cold. Dear old Treffry stayed in bed two
days with hot bottles and extra rugs, trying to keep
warm, and altogether the cold was abominable and bitter.
This disgusting phenomenon was a great disappointment
to me, but it didn’t last very long, and presently we
found ourselves at the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo.
Nearly everybody has been at Colombo, so I’ll not at-
tempt to describe it. Indeed we did not stay very long,
but were soon installed in a delightful bungalow on a
rubber plantation out past Mount Lavinia.
We stayed here for four months, after which we
moved up to Kandy, where the Colonial Secretary, a very
good fellow named Oxenden, was a great-nephew of my
fine old governor, and when the hot weather came we went
to Newara Elia, which certainly is one of the most beau-
tiful and delightful places in the whole wide world.
All this time I was working pretty hard, for it is no
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M A G. P. Y E
easy matter to edit as detailed and compendious a diary
as Middleton Treffry’s.
I used to think that he must have been at every dinner
party that ever took place in London during three
reigns. There certainly was, during those three reigns,
no distinguished person of any class or type whom he
hadn’t met.
The diary, as everybody knows now, is a marvel not
only of accuracy, but of discretion, and I am very proud
of having had an insignificant and belated finger in it.
While we were Oxenden’s guests at Kandy, Dubourg,
the French painter, turned up with a lady who, I fear,
was universally known as “one of his wives.” I didn’t
like the man: he was that disagreeable thing, an old
lady-killer, and I objected to his way of flaunting the
different units of his collection. However, he and I had
two conversations that interested me greatly. The first
one took place early in the morning, in the beautiful
garden of the Colonial Secretary’s bungalow. I was
walking up and down, thinking out a problem connected
with my work (for Treffry did me the honor of not only
using me as a scribe, but of discussing knotty editorial.
points with me), when Dubourg came out on the ve-
randa. He wore a velvet coat, and his long beard
glistened with some disgusting preparation that smelt
of violets.
I looked at him with something very like loathing, for
somehow I couldn’t bear the fellow, and with a mutually
stiff “Bonjour, Monsieur,” we parted, and I walked
away.
Half an hour later I came back to find him sitting at
his easel hard at work. He glanced up at me.
“Ah, Monsieur,” he said gaily, “tell me, you, with
your cold English eye, have I got it?” and he flicked his
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M A G PYE
fingers, with a gesture that stamped him as a southerner,
towards his little canvas.
I stood still in amazement; it was perfectly beautiful,
the little picture—just a stretch of lawn, one pillar of
the veranda, and above and on both sides the wild riotous
colors of the flowers. I think my unmistakable pleas-
ure pleased the jaded and much flattered man, and I
think it pleased him the more because he knew that I
felt it almost against my will. Thus it was that pres-
ently we were walking up and down waiting for the
breakfast gong, and really talking together for the
first time. I don’t remember how it came up, but I
know that when the gong did sound I knew a great
deal more about William Bettany than I had known
before.
It appears that Dubourg and he had been really
friends in the old days in Paris—in the days when Bet-
tany had yet to prove himself, for he had been a man of
slow development.
They had lived in the same street, and bought their
colors at the same shop, and eaten their cheap dinners
at the same little restaurant.
“He was a great man,” I said thoughtfully.
Dubourg rolled his big loose-set eyes at me.
“In those days he hadn’t found himself,” he returned.
“His pictures were charming, his sense of color already
excellent, but he painted no better than half a dozen
other young men of our group.”
After a pause he added: “Where are those two pic-
tures of his now? The Luxembourg wanted them, you
know.”
I explained that they were at the Tate, and then as
Oxenden, his sister, and my old man came out on the
veranda, I put one more question hastily.
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M A G P Y E
“Did you ever see him after those pictures were
painted?” I asked.
“Yes,” the successful man returned slowly. “I won-
der where my wife is,” and taking up a little stone, he
threw it at a neighboring window, and the charming,
cropped, red head of Madame Dubourg appeared, and
assured him that she would be down in a moment.
“I saw him in Paris—I saw him several times, after he
came back from England, and just before he disap-
peared.”
“Will you tell me about it?” I asked eagerly, and as
we went in to breakfast he answered me.
“With pleasure, some time,” he said.


CHAPTER XXVII
He told me that afternoon as we sat in the green
gloom of the small room on the north side of the bunga-
low, that was supposed to be fairly cool.
He was loafing in one deck chair, I was loafing in an-
other; we had both of us taken off our collars, and iced
drinks clinked in glasses in the holes in the arms of our
chairs.
One of the reasons I didn’t like Dubourg was that he
was so obviously open to flattery; another was that he
quite plainly believed me to be a solid, thick-skulled
Islander. Now, for reasons of my own, I am afraid on
that afternoon I deliberately pandered to his weakness;
at least I made myself as pleasant as I possibly could
do, and led him up to the subject on which I wished him
to discourse, with a certain sly skill.
Finally I got him started on one of those monologues
that most men of his type love to indulge in.
“Let me see,” he began, pulling his long beard that
always reminded me of Aaron’s, slowly through his over-
well-kept hand.
“It must have been '95 or ’96. I know it was the
autumn because my picture “Aphrodite” was at the
Salon. Did you ever see “Aphrodite,’ Monsieur?”
I assured him that that painting was one of my great
admirations. This assurance was, to say the least of it,
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M A G P Y E
jesuitical, but never mind that. After a moment he went
OIl.
“It was at Constant’s, I think, that we met. You
know Constant’s, Monsieur? It is a small restaurant in
the Place Pigalle, or was, alas! The good Constant is
long since dead, and his grandson, at that time almost a
child, owns an hotel in the Champs Elysées, a detestable
place of stucco and brocade, a place without atmosphere
—hélas !”
I was boiling with impatience, but I saw that there
was no use in trying to guide the conversation, so I sat
still and tried to look interested.
“I was dining in the dear little smoky back room with
Lanier and poor Jean Pigoux—that poor Pigoux, it
was only a few months before his death—Constant was
waiting on us, naturally. We were dining well, not as
you dine in England, Monsieur, but with art.”
This scathing remark left me untouched, for I had
long since found it to be stock property of the French
conversationalist: English women don’t know how to
dress, and English men don’t know how to eat. It
pleases them to think so—why protest?
“I had seen Bettany,” resumed my raconteur, still
working with his beard, “but once in the last year, and
then not to speak to him. It was at the Café Anglais,
where I was dining with the Russian Ambassador and
Prince Mitikoff—perhaps you have known Mitikoff?
“On this occasion he-Bettany, I mean—was dining
with an Englishman and a very handsome English girl.
It was just after he had painted ‘Crossroads,” and I
understood that he was engaged to this lady.”
To my disgust, as he spoke the man kissed his fat
fingertips, and waved his hand in tribute to my beautiful
Edith.
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M A G PYE
“And now, when he came to Constant’s that night, I
hardly knew him. He was ill, and bore on his face the
look of a man who was dying standing up. It will con-
vey to you, Monsieur,” the egregious one went on,
draining his glass, “something of his condition when I
tell you that this poor Bettany looked straight at me—
me!—without recognition.”
I nodded. Surely with his unguent-laden beard and
his dreadful, pulpy red lips, and his loose-set, rolling
eyes, this great French artist was a sufficiently unfor-
gettable individuality, although possibly not quite in the
way he meant. -
“He was alone, and I noticed that he ate little. Being
sorry for him and wondering why, after his great suc-
cess, he made such a bad figure, I finally went to him
and spoke and asked him his news. He was vague and
queer. He seemed unable to collect his thoughts. I
assure you, Monsieur, I was seriously alarmed, for he
had not even known about my “Aphrodite.” I asked him
about his pictures, of whose success in England I had
heard, and he laughed. It was not the laugh of a sane
man. Then he took from his pocket an envelope in
which were certain newspaper cuttings, and showed
them to me. From this I gathered that the success of
his last two pictures was something almost unbelievable
for England. They were bought by I have forgotten
what, but something similar to our Luxembourg, after
being exhibited at the Academy. Your Academy, Mon-
sieur,” my informant added, lighting a fresh cigarette,
“is to make weep the angels, but it is the best you have.
Bettany should have been gratified, but instead he had
the air of man about to die. Parbleu! Je vous connais,
vous autres Anglais, moi, mais 33
He shrugged his shoulders, his pink palms upper-
!
}
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M A G PYE
most, as if to say that even with his great knowledge of
our entirely inferior race he could not explain to himself
Bettany’s ridiculous attitude.
“After that I saw him no more for some years.”
I started. Then Bettany had been in Paris some
years after his disappearance from London, but I was
wrong, as it appeared. Dubourg had met him in
Buenos Aires, whither he himself had gone to paint the
wives of some of those incredibly rich Argentines.
“How was he getting on then?” I asked.
“That I can’t tell you. I saw him at the theater—
the opera, to be exact. He was with a lady, and when I
spoke to him he pretended not to know me, or rather
he pretended that I had made a mistake. He assured
me that his name was not Bettany, and the lady con-
firmed this. She was sincere, I could see—she was also
very pretty. He was lying, but what will you? A man
has a right to deny himself if he likes.”
“What year was that in?” I asked.
There was a long pause, and then the Frenchman an-
swered slowly.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that with any exactitude.
I went out three or four times in about ten years. I’ve
had a certain popularity in South America, but I should
think it must have been about 1900, possibly '99 or even
1901—no, it must have been later—yes, it must de-
cidedly have been later, possibly 1904.”
He rose.
“Well, Monsieur, I’ve told you all I know about our
poor friend.”
I thanked him. He was a detestable person but he’d
been kind in telling me what I wanted to know, and I
was grateful to him. I made up my mind to write to
Edith tomorrow.
187


CHAPTER XXVIII
The English mail came in the next day and brought
me several letters. Mag’s, the first long letter I had
ever had from her, came, oddly enough, on the heels of
Dubourg’s revelations, and filled me with that curious
feeling of uncanny coincidence that everybody knows.
Perhaps I had better reproduce the whole document.
DEAREST MR. QUEST:
I am so excited I can hardly hold the pen. The most
wonderful thing has happened, and I really don't believe
I can live till this letter gets out to you, it seems such a
long time. Oh, if only you were here, if only you had been
here yesterday! I’ve seen my mother. My mother It
happened this way. Father took me to the Tate yesterday
afternoon, and then we were to go and have tea with Sir
Max. Father has been splendidly well ever since you left,
and he's doing some work for Sir Max, mending and past-
ing together old prints that Sir Max is afraid to trust to a
shop. Father loves paste, and is as happy as a king stick-
ing away, and trimming, and so on, up in his studio. Well,
he had been working hard for two or three days and was
very tired, and Mr. Glenny couldn't have me as his sister-
in-law had come to town and he had to take her to buy a
mackintosh; so father and I decided to have a holiday. I
feel just as if I were writing a chapter in a book. I do
wish you were here!
Well, you know how oddly things go sometimes, when
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M A G. P. YE
they all seem to happen in a kind of chain—well, this is the
way it happened yesterday.
The pictures seemed even better than usual, and we were
very happy. Father was wonderful about “Crossroads” and
“The Windmill.” Some American ladies were looking at
them, and somehow we got talking with them, and I wish
you could have heard father explain about the pictures.
He adores them both, and he was so interesting about Bet-
tany. It must have been wonderful to know him, though I
don't think he can have been a very nice man, from what
father said.
The ladies were very kind—one of them was a girl about
my age, with the prettiest feet you ever saw. I do wish my
feet weren’t so enormous.
Well, father was so charming and so cheery that on our
way home, walking down the Embankment, I thought I'd
ask him about my mother, so I did—just like that.
“Father,” I said, “I wish you'd tell me about my mother.”
He stared at me in that funny dazed way of his when some-
body suddenly changes the subject, and so I said that I
thought as I was going to be sixteen in six months, I was
old enough to be told about the mystery.
He looked at me for a long time and then he looked at
the river. At last he said: “Why do you think there is a
mystery?” and I said I had always thought so since I gave
up believing that she was dead. He didn't deny it, but just
talked for a few minutes about mystery as a kind of sub-
ject, as if he were lecturing, and we walked on. I was
awfully excited, as you can imagine. Then, after a while,
we sat down on one of the stone benches, and he began to
talk. He told me all sorts of things I had never known
about him. Did you know that his father was postmaster
in a lovely little village in the country, and that he got a
prize at the school and was sent to a really good one, and
that he got some prizes there, and his men came up to Lon-
don and went to St. Paul's P He was awfully interesting.
I think he forgot all about me after the first few minutes,
and he sat there leaning on his stick, his hat pulled down
over his eyes, and talked and talked. I don't think I ever
heard him talk so much in all my life. He told me about
leaving school and going to Scarborough as tutor to two
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M A G PYE
boys there. He was sent away for some reason. It must
have been funny, because he laughed as he told it, and then
he came to London and worked in a color shop—a French
place in St. James Street. He was only nineteen then, and
that is when he learned French. The shop is still there, he
said. Some day I'm going to see it; and of course then he
began to paint and he had a room in a garret over the shop,
just like in a book, and he was engaged to the daughter of
the shopkeeper. Her name was Julienne. And then, when
he was twenty-three (it was really dreadful, but he doesn't
seem a bit ashamed of it), he ran away because he didn't
want to marry her. He said her hands were always cold,
and of course that is unpleasant.
Then he went to Paris. I wish I had been alive then,
and in Paris; it must have been such fun. He sold a lot
of the pictures though they weren't very good, and that was
when he knew Bettany; I asked him.
Well, he was restoring some pictures that some old En-
glish lady had bought, and she brought him back to London
for the winter. When he got this far he stopped and I
thought he was never going to speak again—you know his
way—and so I said: “And was that when you met—Her?”
Do you know, it never struck me before that Father must
have been good-looking when he was young; one never does
think that about an old gentleman. [Oh, rage! Oh, despairſ
At the date of that letter Pye cannot have been a day over
46 or 47.] And I asked him questions and he didn't hear
me, so then I thought of something to wake him up and I
shouted in his ear, “And that was when you fell in love?”
It was awfully successful; he nearly fell off the bench. And
it nas, Mr. Quest. I asked him what she was like and he
began telling me, racing along so fast I could hardly under-
stand him. She was perfectly beautiful and she was an
angel. I’ve always known that, of course. But she was
very rich and lived in a very grand house, which somehow
I had never suspected. It was wonderful hearing him—an
old man like Father describing ladies like that—also he said
splendid things about love. Oh dear, I wish I was grown
up. Anyhow I don't want to marry Sir Max any more.
It was a perfectly lovely evening with what you call a
“glammer” over everything. The sky was all pink, and I
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M A G PY E
knew it was just half past six because the Chelsea Church
clock struck just as we got up. That is to say, Father got
up—I didn't—I wanted him to tell me more; but he told
me to come along, so I had to and I said, “Go on, Father,
please tell me all about it. I'm quite old enough to under-
stand now!” He was walking nearest the wall, which was
lucky, when just at that moment it happened. A big motor
car was coming along up the road towards us, with a lady
in it. I was looking at her thinking how dear old Mr.
Glenny would like to paint her, and what a lovely hat she
had on—it was black and small, with a beautiful curve to
the brim, and little silk wispy feathers—not those hateful
ostrich feathers but soft things that waved in the air.
She didn't look at us, and I had turned and was staring
after the car when I heard a little noise and looked back,
and there was Father, leaning against the wall gasping for
breath and as white as a sheet. He looked perfectly beauti-
ful and I thought he was going to die. I put my arm
round him and we stood still for a minute or two and I
don’t suppose I would ever have known that it was the lady
who had made him look like that, only he told me. He said:
“You saw that lady, Margaret? Well, that was she.” Then
he said to himself as if I wasn’t there at all, it was so roman-
tic—“Oh, my love, my love!” We walked home very slowly
and I didn't try to make him talk. Somehow I didn't seem
to want him to. It's exactly like something in a book. Just
before we got home he stopped and said to me very gravely:
“Magpie, dear, I don't wish you ever to mention that lady to
me again.” I nodded. I knew he couldn't bear it, so I
said, “All right, Father, I won’t. But wasn’t it wonderful
that she should have come by just when you were telling
me about her?” He laughed—such a queer little laugh,
Mr. Quest—and he said, “No, it wasn't really wonderful;
at least, it's just a part of herself to be wonderful in that
way. It was as if my talking about her had conjured her
up.” I’m sorry to say that he's got some of that stuff to-
day, and he's in bed now asleep. He went down to Mile
End Road after supper last night to see that friend I told
you about. He's been pretty bad. I don't blame him a bit,
though, do you? Oh, I do wish you were here!
I told Madame Aimée about it, and she cried, she's such a
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M A G. P. YE
dear, and so sympathetic. I do wish I could find out who
my mother is, but I can never ask Father again because I
promised, and besides he wouldn't tell me if I did. Per-
haps I’ll see her with you some time, and you'll know her.
Oh, I do wish I could go and see her and talk to her, but
I suppose she'd be ashamed of me now. I don't suppose
her father and mother even know she ever had me. I’ve
read stories like that. Anyhow, I’d rather be her child and
never see her again, than be just some ordinary mother's
daughter; most mothers are so unattractive.
Thank you very much for the lace and the pictures. I
love them. Do come back soon. Please give my love to
Mr. Treffry and keep some for yourself.
Yours sincerely,
MAG.
T also had a letter from Madame Aimée written in some
turmoil of spirit, as I could see. She was distressed and
upset by Mag’s beautiful adventure. She feared it
would spoil the child by putting ideas into her head,
and she resented, in a bourgeois fashion that somehow or
other surprised me, coming from her, the child’s assump-
tion that she was the result of a secret liaison between
the popular young genius of twenty years before and
some great lady. -
I’m doing my best for the child [the good woman went
on] and she is improving every day. She reads from morn-
ing till night, and I think you will be pleased with the list
of books she has gone through. Lord Lossell has been very
kind. He sent her several of the books on your list that
she couldn't get at the library, and asked her to lunch, but
for some reason Mr. Pye wouldn't let her go. I think it is
wise of him. This romantic idea of her mother needs no
encouraging by association with the people so much above
her in station. -
I told her this and she complained about her father's
decision, and I am sorry to say that she showed signs of
considering herself, as her mother's child, of very good
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M A G P YE
birth. However, when she's a little older this will doubt-
less straighten out all right. She brought Mr. Glenny to
see me the other day, and he tells me he is very much pleased
with her work. She has a great sense of color, it seems, and
is improving rapidly.
I've bought the clothes for which you left me the money,
and she looks very nice in her new coat and skirt. She is
much slimmer and most anxious to put her hair up. I have
assured her that you will wish to find it down when you get
back, so she's waiting.
There was nothing else of interest in the letter and I
didn’t hear any more about the mysterious mother until
I got back.
This event didn’t take place until October. For va-
rious reasons we lengthened our stay in the delectable
island until our work was completed up to date. I loved
my year out there. I shall never forget it, although
my memory of Colombo is not flattering. I like a
Turkish bath as well as anybody, but I like it in a
Turkish Bath Establishment, when I’ve only one gar-
ment on. A continual state of dripping wetness doesn’t
appeal to me, and I was thoroughly glad that my dear
old chief liked the hills.
Treffry was, of course, a great social success and be-
fore we had been six weeks in the island there was a wide-
spread feeling that no gathering of any kind was com-
plete without him; so we went to balls, and dinners, and
race meetings, and gymkhanas, and picnics, with an
assiduity that probably had more to do with the length-
ening of our stay than the dear old boy would ever
admit.
The book had to be done, and as we frivoled quite half
of our time, it followed that we were obliged to add an-
other half to it.
I was very sorry to leave, but I was very glad to go
193


M A G PY E
back in June, and I gathered from some insinuations of
Mag, who was extremely mysterious in the matter, that
there was a lady in the case. Mag has developed, you
will be amused to hear,” he went on, skipping with some
nimbleness over a puddle, as I accompanied him on his
way, “a great taste for society news. Twice she has
insisted on my taking her to church parade, and she
reads the Morning Post with fervor.”
“That’s very odd,” I burst out. “You never can tell
with these growing girls. That looks snobbish, and our
Magpie was never a snob.”
Cohen turned his soft eyes full on me, and there was in
them an ironical little gleam. “You’re wrong,” he said.
“That’s exactly what she is.”
“Mag—a snob P’
He nodded. “Undoubtedly. Possibly it is a phase,
and will pass, but for the moment her one idea seems to
be to get within at least her eyeshot of the very fashion-
able.”
I ought to have known at once what it meant, but I
didn’t, and in answer to a further question he went on
to tell me that he had formed the habit of taking the
child to the theater or opera once a fortnight or so, and
that he had observed on these occasions that the play
didn’t interest her nearly so much as the people in the
boxes and the stalls. “At first I thought it was only
her childish curiosity about human nature intensifying
as she grew up. But it isn’t,” he added with a little
laugh, in which I detected a certain ruefulness, “for
human nature in the pit or the gallery has no charm
for her whatever.” He twisted his eyeglass string round
his finger.
“You needn’t worry about one thing, though, my poor
friend,” he resumed with gentle amusement at my horror.
196


M A G. P. YE
“It’s no nonsense about men as I at first thought it
might be. It’s only the women she looks at.”
Then I remembered, and in my belief burst into a loud
laugh.
“Oh, is that all?” I exclaimed. “Then it's pretty
harmless, isn’t it?”
“My dear friend, that's what I’ve been telling you.
It's perfectly harmless, exteriorly. On the other hand
it is to be doubted whether even a technically innocent
snobbism of the kind can fail to prove deteriorating in
the long run.”
I couldn’t bear him to think ill of poor Mag, even in
his gentle way, so I explained that the reason for her
peculiarity was that she had no idea who her mother was
and was probably trying to find some fairy princess
to dream about in that relationship.
The little man's relief was evident. “I’m glad,” he
said frankly. “I enjoy taking the child out. I am fond
of her. She’s very intelligent, too, and she’s developing
early. Has she told you, by the way, about her pic-
ture?”
She hadn’t, and I said so.
“Then perhaps,” he said as we shook hands, “I’d
better not tell you. She probably means it for a sur-
prise.”
I went my way reflectively, and then, for some reason
which I didn’t attempt to analyze, I decided that before
I saw Mag I would pay a secret visit to Madame Aimée.
This I did that very afternoon, for Edith was not yet
back in town. I was rather glad she wasn’t, for I did
so want to spare her, if I could, my annual infliction.
I had, of course, come back the richer for my long
sojourn as my chief's guest, so I took a taxi, and stop-
ping at a fruit shop bought several baskets of good
197


M A G P YE
things for the poor lady I was going to see. I also
found, to my intense joy, two or three sprays of forced
delphiniums (they were at that season of the year rather
more expensive than orchids), but being that most reck-
less of all things, a temporary plutocrat, I bought them
and went gaily splashing down the mall, through a
pleasant, chilly, windless afternoon.
I found Madame Aimée busy as usual, but in a pleas-
anter manner than I had often seen her occupied. She
was embroidering a linen collar, punching little holes
through it with a delightful ivory stick, and then sewing
them up again in a charming way.
She was very glad to see me, and proved an admirable
listener as I told my manifold and exciting adventures
in the East. It was delightful anyway to be with some-
one who really liked to listen to my descriptions, for
naturally in Ceylon itself nobody wanted to hear my
opinions about Ceylon. It was a blighting experience
I had on the boat coming back to find that nearly every-
body had been not once but many times, to that island,
and most of them regarded it with a mild ennui such as
I might feel about Brighton.
So I talked my fill for about an hour. She was de-
lighted with the monkeys that I had actually seen with
my own eyes swinging in the trees, and a cobra that had
been found in Mr. Treffry’s bath at Anaradjapura (I
haven’t the slightest idea how this is spelled) thrilled her
with further horror. In fact, if I’d been the cobra my-
self her reception of my story could not have been more
satisfactory.
At tea time I made coffee and toast. I also heated
the toast plates and the milk and spread several slices
of bread and butter with Bar-le-Duc, which I had
brought her from Fortnam and Mason’s. We had an
198


M A G PYE
“It’s never safe to judge, Monsieur; she may have suf-
fered, cette pauvre mere.”
I nodded. “Anything is possible,” I returned readily,
“but I don’t think it at all probable. We must try to
get this nonsense out of the child’s head.”
“Ah, yes, that of course we must do if we can. She
talks very little of it but I can see that it’s never absent
from her mind.”
“I shall tell her,” I said suddenly, “that it's perfect
nonsense her wasting a thought on her mother. She
must be—to be very charitable—an utterly selfish, in-
human woman.”
This Madame Aimée would not have, and continued
her plea for the unknown lady.
“There are so many reasons she might have of which
you and I know nothing, Monsieur. Believe me, no
woman would willingly give up her child.”
A wild vision of the Foundling Hospital flashed across
my mind, but I didn’t voice it. After all, this little high-
up room had a cloistral quality, and Madame Aimée a
nun-like one, that Heaven knows I’d no wish to violate.
I could see that she was not happy about Mag, and I
loved the loyalty that forbade her admitting it. How-
ever, I determined, as I said good-bye to her, to see Miss
Magpie at once and put the fear of God into her; she
was in a way mine, and I would have no maundering
sentimentality about beautiful, unknown mothers spoil-
ing my plans for her.


M A G PYE
a passage, into the small, very clean room of which the
whole restaurant, barring the kitchen, consists.
Madame Picrate is the proprietor, and, faithful to
type, Mme. Picrate has built for herself, near the door, a
white and shiny altar with glass windows, at which, while
she manages the waiters, clients and cooks, she is not
averse to a little discreet incense. When she saw me she
bowed, and I went over and exchanged compliments with
her. She was delightfully interested in Ceylon, and I
was glad to hear that there was every prospect of an
excellent meal that evening.
Strictly table d'hôte, Le Paon d'Or, no juggling here
with a confusing and inaccurate list of viands; when
you came to the Golden Peacock you took what there
was, or you went away empty.
Madame Picrate, a large, high-bosomed lady in black
satin, was rejoiced to hear that Monsieur Treffry had
recovered himself and returned to his old London.
She was sorry to hear that the mer had been mauvaise,
but was resigned to the fact that it often was. The
gentleman in the corner, she told me, without lowering
her voice and yet becoming perfectly inaudible to any-
one but me, was a Cabinet Minister—no, she knew
nothing about the lady—and old Monsieur Filon, he
who always sat in the corner, and was so lavish with
toothpicks, had gone. Non, non, he hadn’t left the
country; it was simply that he was dead.
Thus I gathered scraps of news, and thus Mag and
my dear old man found me when, having met in the
courtyard, they came upstairs together. They told me
as we ate our hors d'oeuvres that they had been horri-
fied to find me flirting with the patronne, that I had
disturbed Treffry’s ideal of me, and that Mag was
grieved at my lack of taste, Madame Picrate being as
202


M A G PYE
old as the devil’s grandmother and resembling the
Crystal Palace in contours.
I let them talk, for I was hungry, and, moreover, I
was busy observing Mag.
The Magpie was in great feather that night. It wore
a frock of some soft hunter’s green material—not
flannel—and round its neck and wrists were delightful
ornaments of white linen. After a careful examination
of her, I pounced.
“Magpie,” I said to her severely, “you’re tight-
laced.”
She protested with indignation, swore she wasn’t, and
then she said she didn’t know what I meant, and when I
made her stand up, her young form outlined against the
pale wall paper, I thought that perhaps she was right.
The fact remained that, for the first time since I had
known her, she indisputably possessed a waist.
“That belt,” I observed, “must hurt.”
“It doesn’t,” she said. Then she drew in her breath
and tucked one of her hands between her person and the
strap of shiny leather. I begged her pardon on the spot,
but Treffry laughed.
“There never lived a woman,” he informed me, “no
matter in what condition of atrophy her internals might
be through pressure, who could not get her hand inside
her belt.”
Mag chuckled. “It is pretty tight,” she said. “I
might as well let it out now as after dinner.” She
slackened the thing, and it slid forward two holes. She
drew a breath of relief. “Enid Arthur,” she explained,
“is only nineteen—inches, I mean—so I just thought I’d
see what I could do.” Then she sat down and we went
on with dinner. She was certainly much slimmer, and
she had changed in the subtle, unexplainable way of girls
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M A G PYE
told him and she put my reticence down to indifference,
rather than to loyalty.
“I’ll tell you, Mr. Treffry,” she said, regarding me
almost with scorn. Then she told him.
The story was, in its structure, the same as that she
had written to me, but I observed with amused pain that
she had developed and adorned it, no doubt uncon-
sciously, until it was almost unrecognizable.
The old man looked at me, raising his eyebrows.
“This is very extraordinary, Victor,” he said. Mag
leaned over the table and laid her brown hand on his
blue-veined old white one.
“Isn’t it?” she breathed. “Isn’t it? Oh, Mr. Treffry,
if only I could find out who she is P’
He shook his head slowly. “It sounds to me as if you
must have made a mistake, my dear 35
“I’ve not made a mistake,” she declared obstinately.
“I told you what he said.”
There was a little pause, and then the man, taking
her hand in his, patted it gently. “If you are right
about it,” he declared, “I am very sorry. A mother
who gives up her child and never tries to find it hardly
deserves the name, does she?”
Mag took a long breath and her mouth sunk in deeply
at the corners.
“That’s just what Madame Aimée says. She, of
course, couldn’t know better—a working woman like
her—but I did think Mr. Treffry that you’d under-
stand.”
She was angry, and there was a grown-upness in her
anger that I’d never seen before. It silenced me, but had
no effect on the old man.
“I hope,” he said, “that you aren’t building any
Spanish castles about this, Margaret, my dear.”
205


M A G PYE
She drew her hand quietly out of his.
“Not castles,” she returned slowly. “But every girl
has a right to a mother. I’m sure that some day I shall
find her, and when I do ” suddenly her face quivered,
the tears welled into her eyes without falling. “It’s not
a castle I’m building,” she added in a broken, pathetic,
grown-up little voice, “it’s just a little cottage, Mr.
Treffry.”


CHAPTER XXXI
And now here’s our milestone: a tall, thin, flexible
looking youth, with dark reddish hair, humorous,
thick eyebrows, and the most beautiful teeth I have
ever seen—Mr. Angus Forbes, of Scotland; aged nine-
teen and two months, as he was at great pains to in-
form one; a nephew of our wind-blown old painter
Mr. Glenny; Mag’s first beau. I use this old-fash-
ioned noun purposely, because it would be as false to
call him Mag’s first admirer as it would be to call him
Mag’s first lover. It is a fault of the English lan-
guage that we have no exact equivalents for amoureur,
amant, and prétendant.
Young Angus, as he was called in contradistinction
to his great-uncle, happened along in the following
January. There was something extremely attractive
about him; perhaps it was the way in which all his
extremities ended in points; his hands were pointed,
his feet were pointed, his delightful nose; even his ears,
under their thatch of deep auburn hair, were fawn-like.
Mag brought him to my chambers one morning just
before lunch.
“This,” she said, as she pranced up to kiss me, “is
Angus Forbes.” Her information left me perfectly
cold, for I hadn’t the slightest idea who Angus Forbes
207


M A G PYE
might be. But I liked the youth, so I took them out
to lunch, and a very pleasant time we had. Half-
way through the meal, my mental darkness was illu-
mined by a remark of Miss Pye's.
“I call him,” she said, as she devoured watercress
generously sprinkled with salt, “Yangus—young An-
gus, you see? Y for young—Angus.”
He beamed at her, and I was almost certain I caught
a glimpse of his wisdom teeth as he did so.
“He’s a great deal older than you, Mag,” I sug-
gested.
He gave a sudden hooting laugh that I’m sure
would, but a few months before, have ended in a
squeak.
“Of course he’s older than I am,” she answered with
dignity, “but he’s not older than his uncle, is he?”
“Why should a young man be older than his uncle?”
I inquired, seriously at a loss for her meaning.
She burst out laughing. “Didn’t I tell you he was
Mr. Glenny’s nephew?”
“Great-nephew,” supplemented the youth. “My old
grannie is her sister.”
So then I understood, and Yangus he remained to
the lot of us.
As winter wore on, I grew to love the boy—as much,
that is to say, as it’s human to love a young man who
insists on playing the flute. He was a cheerful, hon-
est, clean-minded youth, whose ignorance of and ado-
ration for London were a constant delight to me.
It was during this winter that I finally got over even
hoping for briefs, and realized that I should never
have more to do with the law than is implied by living
there in its sanctuary, and that henceforth all my
time so long as I lived might be given to my friends,
208


M A G PYE
February, and a very mild, melting, enervating day.
To our surprise, nobody answered our ring at the
studio door, and then we pounded; still no one an-
swered except an irritated lady in a teagown, from the
door opposite, who came to ask if we were trying to
batter the place down. Yangus grinned at her and
she fled. Then he said brilliantly, “I suppose they’re
out.”
However, he had a key of his own, and a few min-
utes later we sat in the untidy room discussing the
eventuality that had taken master and pupil away
at such an odd hour.
There were some dozens of canvases tilted with their
faces to the walls; there were tables covered with colors,
and messy looking bottles, and sheaves of brushes
lay about everywhere—so did dust. The old painter,
his nephew informed me, never allowed anyone to set
foot in the room except himself and his pupils.
“He becomes perfectly hysterical at the mention
of a char-woman,” he explained; “Mag tidies up for
him once in a while, but my word, just look at it!”
For my part, I couldn’t have lived a day in the
place; the desolating confusion of it would have driven
me mad. Presently the boy began poking round,
looking at the canvases.
“That big one on the frame is Mag’s,” he explained.
“It can’t be,” I said. “That’s drawn by a man.”
“It’s drawn by Mag, sir. She was working at it
yesterday while I was here.”
I looked at it in amazement. It was merely the
sketch of a far more ambitious picture than anything
the child had done as yet.
“What's that horrid looking thing in the fore-
ground?” I asked.
210


M A G. P. YE
Yangus, however, insisted, delighted to play the
host, as young men of his age usually are.
“Oh, do come and wait,” he urged. “My uncle
won’t be long, I’m sure,” and I, impelled by some
vague feeling that I hardly know how to describe,
added my persuasion to his. The two men entered the
room, Yangus closed the door, and we all sat down.
It was dusk by this time, and almost dark in the
shadow-filled room. Pye and his friend sat with their
backs to the window which was now only an oblong
patch of lead color; Yangus had straddled a chair
on the little platform where the models sat. Pye and
I made a few remarks to each other, and then I said
to the stranger:
“Are you a painter, too; or are you an outsider,
like me?”
The man answered in a very low, hesitating voice
that he had once painted a little, years ago, but had
long since given it up. From what I could see of
him he was a small man, slightly over middle age, with
a rather round face and a close pepper-and-salt beard.
He was much Pye's height and build, but Pye seemed
to have gained in height and in youth since he had
improved in health.
“You’ve not,” Mag’s father burst out suddenly,
“anything to drink here, Forbes? My friend has come
all the way from the Mile End Road on a bus, and
it’s been raining and he’s cold.”
The stranger stirred furtively in his seat, but said
nothing, and when the whiskey and soda was produced
accepted his glass simply with a bow.
The Mile End Road—so he had come from there!
I felt again the strange, elusive sensation of being
close to the heels of the ghost that had fled from me
212


M. A. G. P. YE
so long—the ghost of William Bettany, and suddenly
I determined to find out.
“Did you ever,” I asked the stranger, leaning for-
ward in my chair, so that he couldn’t doubt that my
question was to him, “meet the painter, Bettany?”
What happened was so sudden that it is hard to
describe. There was a crash of glass, and his whiskey
and soda was pouring over the unswept floor. Yangus
sprang to the light, but before he could turn it on
the door opened and closed and the stranger was the
other side of it.
“Good gracious !” I ejaculated. “What on earth’s
the matter? Why did he do that?”
Pye looked at me inimically. “Why did you ask
him if he knew Bettany?” he returned in an angry
voice.
“Because I wanted to know. It struck me that,
being an old friend of yours, he might have some
news.”
Pye sneered.
“Oh, did it? Perhaps you thought it was Bettany
himself?”
I was nettled by his tone and not unwilling to show
it. “The idea did occur to me,” I said. “I’ve always
felt that there's some mystery about you and Bettany,
and I still think so.”
The man passed his hand over his forehead as if he
was suddenly tired, even exhausted.
“You must forgive me, Quest,” he said quietly.
“My nerves are none of the best, and I’m sorry to
have offended you.” He meant it, too, so I accepted
his apology with the frankness with which it was of
fered, and for a moment we were all silent. Then Pye
rose and held out his hand.
213


CHAPTER XXXII
I had never told Edith about my talk with Pye, for
I felt that such news as he had given me would only
distress her. It was quite plain to me that poor Bet-
tany had pretty well gone under, to be pitied as he
obviously was by Mag’s father.
I find, on looking at my diary and notes, that very
little of any interest, as far as the Blantyre Buildings
folk are concerned, happened during that spring.
Mag’s picture, as I have said, was very well hung,
and she, of course, was much written about in the pa-
pers, to her immense joy and delight. Her photo-
graph appeared in an illustrated breakfast-table men-
tor, but it was so bad as to be utterly unrecognizable,
so I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I rather hailed her
momentary celebrity as a possible means of deflecting
her thoughts from her absurd obsession about her
mother.
This obsession worried Madame Aimée and me
very much. It was disconcerting to find the child
spending all her pennies on illustrated weeklies and
papers in which appeared so-called likenesses of the
great, the beautiful and the conspicuous, and I had
no patience, either, with the new line of talk to which
she occasionally treated me. She had, it appeared, a
215


M. A. G. P. YE
great idea of being acknowledged by her mother be-
cause of her success at painting.
“Suppose,” she suggested to me, “suppose she went
to the Academy and saw my picture, and looked it up
in the catalogue, and then turned round and saw me
standing there—I do look like father, you know, since
he shaved off his beard—and she’d recognize me, of
course, and then 35
“Mag, don’t be a goose,” I jeered. “If your mother
had wanted you she’d have found you before now, be-
lieve me.”
She set her pretty mouth (for it was pretty
though large) in the way with which I was becoming
familiar, and said no more, but a few days later when
I found her having tea in Park Place I observed that
she had a kind of blue garter round her hair.
“What’s that thing on your head?” I asked.
“Everybody wears them,” she returned calmly.
“Don’t they, Mr. Treffry?” and then I perceived after
a moment’s study that her abundant locks were ar-
ranged in the carefully simulated disorder and indif-
ference germane to the heads of certain very-much-in-
the-public-eye young damsels of title.
“Oho! You’re trying to look like Lady Mildred
Blood,” I sneered. “What do they think of it in the
Blantyre Buildings?”
“Quest, Quest,” protested dear old Treffry gently.
“My dear fellow, drink your tea and don’t be so
fierce.”
Mag regarded me with a stony eye of much hauteur.
“And why shouldn’t I wear my hair like Lady Mil-
dred?” she returned. -
Treffry winked at me and changed the subject, but
I groaned in spirit to think that my Magpie, my own
216


M A G. P. YE
little Pimlico Magpie, was being spoiled in this par-
ticularly disgusting way.
In the middle of the night an illuminating idea came
to me. I’d take her to see Edith and make her give
the child a good talking to. Edith had been so much
away the first two years of my acquaintance with
Mag, and I had been in Ceylon as nearly the whole
of the third year, that it was hardly strange that the
two had never met, but it struck me now with great
force that it was a misfortune. Edith would do her
no end of good, and I determined, turning over my
pillow with a thump, that she should. I telephoned
to Grosvenor Place the next morning, and Pruffles,
after the usual interval, assured me that Miss Lossell
would be delighted.
“Will you bring the young leady to tea, sir,” he
said, “as there’ll be people here for lunch?”
“All right, Pruffles,” I said. “We’ll be there about
five. She's quite grown up by now, you know, so she
won’t 33
I heard Pruffles give a little embarrassed grunt at
his end of the line.
“Wonderful clever — ahem—young lady, she’s
grown up to be, sir,” he said. “I heard his Lord-
ship and Sir Max Cohen talking about it the other
day.”
The Magpie was much pleased at being told that
she was to meet Miss Lossell, although she wished to
know why Lord Lossell’s daughter was only “Miss.”
“It would be nicer,” she said, “to be Lady Edith.”
“Oh, shut up, Mag; I don’t believe your mother
was a lady. I believe your father only imagined it
that day on the Embankment. You’re growing up to
be the most egregious little snob, and that looks rather
217


M A G. P. YE
more as if your mother had been a barmaid or some-
thing of that kind.”
It was a horrible thing to say, but I said it delib-
erately. I tried to hurt her, but I failed. Proudly
superior to my middle-class jeer, she disregarded the
remark. I knew that she was thinking that I was not
nearly so nice as I used to be. I lunched with Cohen
at one of his clubs that day. It is a nice club, ex-
clusive, and not too exclusive, silent enough, and not
too silent, mixed enough without being too mixed.
They also have the best port in London. The little
man was going out of town early in the afternoon, so
we what he called “breakfasted” at a quarter to one.
We had an excellent meal, and toward its close I
confided to him my motherly qualms about Miss Pye.
“She’s perfectly detestable,” I moaned. “Little
brute! What am I to do?”
“Has she any ground for thinking that her mother
was a lady?” he returned. “I mean beyond the fact
that the father, poor fellow, is certainly a gentleman.”
And then, because I was really puzzled and distressed,
and felt myself sincerely in need of counsel, I told him
about the meeting on the Embankment. He sipped
his port thoughtfully, a dreamy smile on his kind little
face.
“You English are a wonderful people,” he mur-
mured; “so romantic—so romantic.”
It had never occurred to me before that we deserved
this characterization, but he explained it to me gently
and lucidly, and presently I began to feel that he was
right.
“A young child,” he began, “brings home your
washing because your laundress is a friend of hers.
You like the child and set to work to educate her.
218


M A G PY E
The father, a broken-down painter, turns out to be, or
to have been, a gentleman. There is no mother any-
where about, but there are no signs of her being dead,
and presently she appears on the Embankment in a
beautiful motor car and an expensive black hat. But
it’s beautiful, my dear Quest, beautiful!”
“It’s not beautiful, the way it’s affecting Mag,” I
growled. “It’s spoiling her, Cohen. She's detestable,
she's losing all sense of proportion.”
For a moment he was silent, and then he said with
that smile of his which, modest, almost deprecating as
it is, is so full of a higher kind of wisdom:
“Listen, Quest, it’s not all ignoble snobbishness—
remember where she was born; how she was brought
up; remember that her friends were your washerwoman
and Lossell’s butler and a French seamstress. This
story is a fairy story to her, and in dreaming over it
she is doing no more than Cinderella did. I don’t be-
lieve,” he added, “from what I know of the child, that
it is the money or the possible title that so enthralls
her.”
“What is it, then?”
“I think,” the Frankfurt banker answered thought-
fully, “that it is largely the beauty of the lady in the
car, and the wonder to a motherless child of having a
beautiful mother.”
“Delightful mother, indeed,” I returned, “to have
deserted her for all these years!”
“Ah, yes, that’s true, but you must remember that
Mag has never missed her mother. She has never seen
other girls with mothers; she knows nothing of moth-
ers as they ought to be and sometimes are. I’m sorry
it happened, because, of course, the woman, whoever
she is, can’t be the right kind, but there’s no use in
219


M A G P YE
trying to persuade the child of that. She will, I think,
no matter how much you fume about it, go on dream-
ing about this fairy mother until—” he paused—“un-
til the fairy prince comes along.”
We separated shortly after this, Cohen going to his
train, and I making my way gradually to Pimlico. I
had been too ungracious to admit it, but I felt very
much the better, even if not wholly convinced, by my
talk with Cohen, and I determined to impart his wis-
dom to Madame Aimée.
This I did, sitting with her for over an hour before
I was due at the flat below, and I think something of
the little Jewish gentleman’s optimism had extended to
Madame Aimée before I left her.
“Of course it’s true,” I impressed on her, “that Mag
doesn’t know any mothers except Mrs. Brankles.”
Madame Aimée looked swiftly up at me and there
was pain in her face. “She ought to know,” I
hastened to add, “what a real mother is like, for
that is what you, dear Madame Aimée, have been
to her.”
She dropped her sewing and clasped her hands over
it.
“You’re kind to say that, Monsieur, I — I’ve
tried 33
She could get no further, poor soul, and I was very
sorry for her. Her exaggerated sensibility, her almost
morbid love for Mag, had increased of late I saw, as
if, poor soul, lying there helpless on her couch, she
realized the great need that the young girl must have
for her care—a greater need, of course, than the child
had in reality had.
“It is bitter,” she said, “to have to lie here; never
to go anywhere with her; never to see the things she
220


M A G. P. YE
sees, or hear the things she hears. Sometimes I feel
that I can bear it no longer.”
As usual, when she became too emotional, I fled to
the tiny kitchen and made coffee for her. When I
came back, she was, as I had known she would be, sew-
ing quietly.
“You’re very good to me,” she said, the odd, sweet
break in her voice.
“I wish I could make you understand,” I returned,
moving a little table close to her side, “that the very
fact of your not being able to go about and to see
and hear things that the rest of us see and hear gives
you and your room a kind of—I don’t know how to
say it—a kind of feeling, or atmosphere—or some-
thing quite apart from the rest of the world, and
something, at least for me, unspeakably soothing and
comforting.”
It was an awkward thing to have to say, and I was
desperately afraid of rousing the poor woman’s too
highly strung susceptibilities, but it was true, and I
struggled on through it. She was glad, I know, from
the way she smiled at me, and when she had drunk the
coffee she became quite gay and insisted on making a
little buttonhole for me out of a rosebud and a scrap
of fern and a bit of silver paper.
Shortly afterwards I sallied forth, with an equally
resplendent Mag, to Grosvenor Place.


CHAPTER XXXIII
We walked from Pimlico to Grosvenor Place, Mag
talking vociferously the whole way. She was much
excited at meeting Edith, and she was even more de-
lighted at the prospect of again seeing all the pic-
tures.
I don’t know whether I have said that on two pre-
vious occasions she was to have gone for an afternoon
with Lossell and that her father had for some reason—
once when he was suffering from what we euphemisti-
cally called “illness”—prevented her doing so.
Thus it happened that it was now over two years
since her first and only visit to Grosvenor Place.
“I hope,” I said, as we approached the door, “that
you won’t kiss poor Pruffles this time.”
She laughed. “No ; poor old dear, I shall never
forget his face. After all, I'd often kissed him before;
he’s a perfect dear when he’s being Mr. Williams.
What a pity,” she went on, “that Miss Lossell is an old
maid!” -
I stopped short. “Now, Magpie,” I admonished,
“I won’t have you call her that.”
She stared with the odd directness that for all her
sixteen and a half years and her bunned hair was still
a part of her.
222


M A G PYE
“Well, isn’t she?”
“I’m sure you never heard Sir Max Cohen or Mr.
Treffry call her that,” I returned evasively. Because,
after all, what would be the use of denying that an
unmarried woman of forty-five merits the unpleasing
description?
“Course I haven’t. I never said I had. It’s Mr.
Will—Pruffles who told me. He told me all about
her one Sunday while you were in the East.”
I hated this, but once again protestation would
have been useless, so I made none.
I was very much diverted by the manner in which
Pruffles and Miss Pye met. It was masterly in its
aloof dignity. Miss Pye marched upstairs beside me,
looking neither to the right nor the left, rather as if,
in fact, having been used to Buckingham Palace and
Windsor, she found Lord Lossell’s mansion something
of a shanty, like the girl in the story,
On the landing there’s a black marble pedestal bear-
ing a beautiful fragment of sculpture. It is a thing
the late Lord Lossell brought back from Greece,
where, I believe, he had seen it dug up. It is a boy’s
head and shoulders; a smiling, kind face with a beau-
tiful brow and a dimple in one cheek. The head is
thrown slightly back and the eyes look upwards, so
Lord Lossell has dared to put it on a rather low pedes-
tal—I should think about five feet high, so that one
looks down at it; this has somehow given it a very
charming and human aspect, and it is an old favorite
of mine.
Mag stood for a moment in the late afternoon sun
that poured in from the staircase window, gazing into
the marble eyes. Then she gave a little laugh, and,
stooping over, took the youth's face in her hands and
223


M A G P Y E
gave him a quick kiss on the mouth. It was thus that
Edith Lossell first saw her.
Hearing a little sound above us, I turned and saw
my beautiful dear smiling over the balustrade. I was
about to speak, but for some reason she laid her finger
to her lips and withdrew without Mag having seen
her, and a few minutes later we were in the drawing-
room where she sat at the tea table.
She was looking particularly beautiful that after-
noon, I thought, in a delicious corn-colored frock of
some thin stuff like muslin or chiffon, and there was a
happy smile on her dear face.
“I’m very glad to see you,” she said, as I kissed her
hand, “amigo.”
“And I, how glad I am to see you!” I had forgot-
ten all about Mag for the moment, and then I remem-
bered and introduced her.
“It is odd,” Edith said kindly, “that we have never
met before. I have heard a great deal about you.
May I call you Margaret?”
To my surprise Mag burst into a harsh, loud laugh
and with a little toss of her head chirped out:
“Nobody calls me Margaret; I’m Magpie, that’s
all,” and with that my horrified eyes beheld her turn
her back on us both and march to the farther end of
the long room, where she stood with her nose about one
inch from a picture.
Edith and I stared at each other. Then she leaned
forward and whispered to me: “Don’t be angry with
her, dear Victor. She’s jealous of me.”
I was glad to know what it was, for it must have
been either that or sudden insanity, and I sat down
at her bidding and rang for tea.
“There’s a good picture just beyond that one,
224


M A G P YE
Magpie,” Edith said, raising her voice, for the room
is a very long one, “near the window—it’s a Har-
pignies.”
Without answering, Mag crossed to the place indi-
cated, and Edith and I talked quietly while Pruffles,
as expressionless as an Aunt Sally, brought in tea.
As he closed the door, Mag came back to us.
“I’m sorry,” she said abruptly, “and I’m ashamed to
have behaved like that. Please forgive me.”
“I’ll forgive you if you will drink two cups of tea,
and eat a lot of cake. You see my father has told
me that you love chocolate cake, and this one has
been made especially for you.”
After this, things went smoothly, the only sign of
the storm being the odd pallor still in Mag’s face.
For the first time I realized, as she sat there drink-
ing her tea, that she was really very nearly grown up.
Of course, I had known that she was sixteen and a
half, but for some reason she had always remained to
me a child, and it was odd to think that her child-
hood was a thing of the past, as irrevocably as was
my own.
After a while Lossell came in and took Mag up to
the picture gallery. When Edith and I were alone I
waited in silence for her judgment. It was some time
in coming, but when it did come its kindness exceeded
what I had ventured to hope since Mag’s extraordinary
display.
“I like her, Victor. There is something about her
—I don’t know what—but she’s charming.”
“Perfectly delightful she was when we first came
in How like a child to behave like that just when I
wanted her to be at her very best!”
“You dear old thing!” she answered. “I like her
225


M A G PY E
Her mockery was very gentle, but although I fully
appreciated how ridiculous I was being, it annoyed me,
and, answering shortly that it was coming on, I went
upstairs to Mag and Lossell.
Mag had entirely recovered her equanimity and
was very happy amongst the pictures. Lossell, whose
temper had been outrageous the last two or three
months, so much so that I had carefully kept out of
his way, was in a bland mood, and he and Miss Pye
were deep in technical talk and didn’t at all desire my
presence. So I wandered about by myself for a while,
looking at one or two of my old favorites, and then
went down to the dining-room for a whiskey and soda.
Here I found Pruffles with his own hands perfecting
the arrangement of the dinner table. He explained to
me that the new footman was incapable “and 'ad no
heye for symmetry. 'E’s incapable of seein’, if you’ll
believe me, sir, when the knives and forks isn’t straight,
and the middle of the table might be in Africa for all
'e knows about it.”
I drank my whiskey and inquired for the Brankles
family.
“I rarely see Mrs. Brankles nowadays,” I explained,
“since Willy is big enough to bring the washing home,
and I miss her.”
He regarded me gravely.
“She’s doin’ well, sir, thank you. You will have
heard, sir, of 'is death. 'Is death certainly was a
blessed release.”
I had, of course, heard of the demise of Brankles,
and said as much, qualifying it by the remark that I
hadn’t known that he had been a sufferer.
Mr. Arthur Williams held out his little tray for my
glass.
227


M A G. P. YE
“’E wasn’t, sir. It was a fit ’e died of, in five min-
utes. When I referred to a release, sir, I meant Mrs.
Brankles’s, my sister’s.”
When I went up to say good-bye to Edith she was
not in the drawing-room, nor was she in her own par-
ticular sitting-room, and presently her maid came to
tell me that she was dressing for dinner. She was, it
appeared, dining out.
“What are you wearing?” I called through the
door.
She laughed. “Oh, I am very grand to-night. I’ve
a new white brocade and I’m wearing the emeralds,
all of them, lock, stock and barrel.”
I had an idea. I was still ridiculously uneasy
about the possibility of Edith and Mag not being the
friends I wanted them to be, and here seemed a chance
to draw them closely together.
“I say, Edith,” I urged, while Pamphlett, the maid,
regarded me benignly, “let Mag come and see you in
your war paint.”
She agreed at once.
“Very well, I’ll be ready in a quarter of an hour.
We are going to the Russian Opera and of course
dine early.”
Then she opened the door and came to me wrapped
in a dressing gown. It was a pale rose-colored thing
and fell about her in folds like the drapery of a statue.
“You wretch!” I said. “I must fly or I’ll do it even
yet. When shall we come up?”
She laid her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t you
come at all,” she said. “Mag and I will get on better
alone.”
So that is what we arranged, and I waited in his
study with Lossell and listened to a long, uninterest-
228


M A G. P. YE
ing wail about the faithlessness of some Parisian print
seller who had failed to keep his promise about a val-
uable old engraving, until just after half past seven,
when Mag came in.
There was a bright flame of color in both her cheeks
and her eyes were wonderful; Lossell and I both stared
at her—she was almost beautiful.
She burst out into one of her old-time tirades, vivid,
eloquent, almost feverish, in explanation and apprecia-
tion of Edith’s beauty. She described that gown in a
way that would have made her fortune in a ladies’
paper. Even I could see it, and feel its charm, and
as to the emeralds the child’s words were quite amaz-
Ing.
When she pauzed, exhausted, Lossell suddenly, with-
out having had until that minute the slighest idea of
doing such a thing, invited her to lunch with him the
next day.
“We’ll go to the Savoy or the Ritz,” he said, “and
then you shall take me to Thurloe Square to have a
look at the new picture.”
Even the prospect of a magnificent meal could not
detach Miss Pye's imagination from its immediate sub-
ject, and she accepted the invitation with the most
amusing, perfectly sincere absent-mindedness and in-
difference.
I looked at Lossell, as we parted, with the cold eye
of sudden suspicion. He was an old man, but—was
he going to fall in love with this child, this baby, this
creature who was nearly my daughter? Not if I could
help it—so I determined to go to the luncheon party,
too.


M A G P Y E
a French dancer with a short crop of hair that looked as
if it had been chopped off with an axe, and who wore
a huge uncut sapphire on her left thumb, and there
was a very fashionable preacher looking like an abbot
from behind the scenes. Altogether a fine collection
of celebrities for the young Margaret to browse upon.
Personally I didn’t think that lobster salad and cider
cup and strawberries and cream promised well for a
lady with a headache, but her young juices managed
them with the greatest skill, and when finally she asked
for and received a cigarette from her attentive host, I
felt I had better say nothing.
Thus far I had won the day, but Lossell scored as
we went out into the courtyard, for there stood his little
car, the one in which he went about town; it was a
two-seater.
“Good-bye, Quest,” he said with sudden cordiality.
“I’ll take Margaret to Thurloe Square, and then give
her a run in Richmond Park—you’ll like that, my
dear?”
Mag would, and I, defeated, ground my teeth as I
went along the Strand. Of course I didn’t for a mo-
ment seriously suspect Lossell of any designs on Mag’s
young affections, but at the same time I didn’t wish
him to begin paying her grown-up attentions, because
I didn’t feel either that the time had come for her to
be grown up, or that his was the hand to open the
door of young ladyhood to her.
I decided to have a talk with him on the matter, and
as I pondered these things I found suddenly that I
was in Fleet Street on a fine summer afternoon with
the rest of the day on my hands, and not a ghost of
a plan as to how I should spend it.
A passing bus, alluringly empty on top, decided the
231


M A G P YE
matter for me, and a few minutes later I was bowling
along thoroughly enjoying myself.
It was a lovely day, the wind still as it ever can
be in this sea-engirdled isle, and I took off my hat and
gloves and leaned back as comfortably as if I had been
a Maharajah on his favorite elephant. There was an
element of excitement about the journey, too, for was
I not going to the east? Besides it was one of those
days when anything might happen at any moment.
We had lingered long over our coffee and Miss Pye's
one cigarette, and presently I heard a clock strike
four. It made no difference; the day was young, the
evening would be long, and time that day was em-
phatically made only for slaves.
At length we reached in our course a great hospital
and I got down, suddenly deciding to call on the ma-
tron, an old and valued acquaintance of mine. It would
be pleasant to have tea with this lady in her quiet lit-.
tle room, with pretty and busy nurses coming in and
out.
I have never been ill enough to have a trained nurse
—this is one of the pleasures that I am reserving for
my declining years—and I decided, as I went up the
steps and sent in my card, that I would have a young
and beauteous one, a kind and clever one—I would
have one from here. I had not yet decided what ill-
ness I should cultivate for the benefit of this super-
She, when word was brought back to me that Miss
Matthews was away for her holiday, and, turning
back, I drifted aimlessly up the street.
Whitechapel is not a place one would choose to be
stranded in on a summer afternoon, but there I was,
so I wandered on thinking a thousand things, but on
the whole still in my pleasant after-lunch mood, when
232


M A G PYE
I ran bang into and nearly knocked off his pins a
little trembling man who, when I apologized, picked
up his hat and turned on me the face of Pye's friend,
Mr. Davis.
For a moment I almost felt extremely clever, as if
it was my own doing, my own achievement, to meet this
man whom I had really wished to see. Then I shook
him warmly by the hand and asked him where he was
going. He looked a little surprised, but at once told
me. He was going, it appeared, to a chemist's, and
then home back to his rooms. I walked along beside
him, although I knew he was casting about in his mind
for some way to shake me off—it appeared that no-
body wanted me that day—but the thought amused
me, and I stuck to the poor little chap, waiting out-
side while he was at the chemist’s.
“I have been wanting, ever since we met that day
in Mr. Glenny’s studio, to have a talk with you, Mr.
Davis,” I began.
He nodded. “I was afraid so.”
I looked at him carefully in the strong sunlight.
Was it possible that this poor, jumpy, shabby man
could once, no matter how long ago, have painted
“Crossroads” and “The Windmill”? It annoyed me
very much that I couldn’t recall Bettany’s face, but
after all, I had only seen him twice, and he had, as in
those days was the fashion with painters, a beard. His
eyes, I remembered, were blue, and this man’s eyes
were blue, though faded and sunken and surrounded
by wrinkles. -
We walked slowly through the crowd, along Mile
End Road, and for about ten minutes neither of us
spoke. Then we crossed Stepney Green and turned
into a short thoroughfare called Telletson Street. It
233


M A G PYE
ing in the odd, half-audible way that seemed habitual
to him.
“The person I mean was even fonder of him, Mr.
Davis.”
He looked at me in a way that seemed to be implor-
ing me not to notice it if I’d be so kind; then he said
very slowly: “You mean Edith Lossell?”
It was very odd, hearing in this shabby, sordid room
that name uttered in that way by this shabby, sordid
IIlan.
“It is Miss Lossell,” I answered quietly. “She is
most anxious to have news of poor Bettany. You
spoke as if you know her—if you did know her, surely
you must realize that she would never intrude on Bet-
tany against his wishes, and as you know so much,”
I added very, very gently, as one speaks to an almost
hysterically nervous child, “I may tell you that her
life has not been very happy, and that by giving her
news of the only man she has, throughout it, ever loved,
you will be doing her a great kindness.”
There was a long pause, and a pitiful change came
over his not wholly ignoble face.
“Heaven knows,” he said, “I should like to make
her happy.” Then to my horror his lips began to
shake, and he buried his face in his hands as if he were
about to cry. But he didn’t; he did something infi-
nitely worse. Going to the table he took from a
drawer and from his pocket two objects, and then
poured some water from a broken-lipped old carafe
into a saucer. A moment later he had plunged the
needle of his morphine syringe into his arm.
I had often thought that the silence and furtive-
ness of people who do this dreadful thing is one of
their worse characteristics, but it was somehow very
235


M A G. P. YE
horrible to see the matter-of-fact, indifferent way in
which he disregarded me. I rose and went to the win-
dow, opening it wider, for I felt suddenly almost sick.
After a minute he burst into a little soft, almost musical.
laugh.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “to have shocked you, but this
talk is a difficult one for me.” He drew out a chair
and sat down, crossing his legs.
“Now, Mr. Quest,” he said in a stronger, brighter
voice, “I am at your service.
As he talked I remembered my talk in the green,
shadowy room at Kandy, and compared this man with
my informant of that day. I felt oddly as if my whole
life were to be but a repetition of such scenes; that
I should never again have any real life of my own and
must always be seeking, seeking news of William Bet-
tany. It even came into my mind while he talked that
perhaps this was why my name was “Quest.”
“I have always known Bettany,” he began, “ever
since we were boys. His father was postmaster in a
country village, and my father, it may surprise you
to hear, was the Vicar. We were friends as children
—played cricket together, robbed birds’ nests—if I
am not mistaken, we even smoked our first cigars to-
gether. Then I was sent away to school and saw noth-
ing of him until half-way through my first year at
Cambridge, where I was at-one of the smaller col-
leges. I was to be a person, like my father; he, Bet-
tany, had been to some school in London—a scholar-
ship or something—and then one day I met him in
the street in town, and he told me that he was work-
ing in a shop somewhere in the West End. We dined
together, and that was when I first knew that he
wanted to be a painter. He took me home to his
236


M A G P YE
paint well, for you must remember, Mr. Davis, that at
that time no one, except possibly you, believed that his
talent was anything above the average.”
He nodded. “I’m not blaming Lord Lossell, I
never did,” he said in his vague way.
“Did you ever meet Lord Lossell?” I asked.
“I did, on several occasions. You are trying to
catch me, Mr. Quest.” He laughed, not unpleasantly.
“Yes, I met him several times, and I take it that you
know as much as I do about what happened then.”
“Well, I had never met Bettany at that time,” I
answered. “I wasn’t in England as it happened.
When I came back he was already in France.”
“He was there for a year, he worked like a black;
he worked all day, and the greater part of every night;
and he never heard once from Miss Lossell—they had
promised her father not to write to each other.”
I had known this, and nodded. “Then he went to
Concarneau,” I suggested, looking at my watch, “and
painted there. She told me at the time.”
“Yes, he wandered along from village to village in
Finistère, and he had a great affection for Quimper.”
“Were you with him by any chance?” I asked.
He looked at me with a little twinkle in his eye.
“He was quite alone out there,” he answered.
“Do you know where it was that he painted the
pictures?”
“That,” my mentally eel-like informant replied,
“he, so far as I know, never told anyone. But I was in
Paris when he brought back the pictures; in fact, I
was with Lord Lossell when he first saw them. Did
you ever meet Tambourel—Etienne, not Louis? Well,
it was at Etienne Tambourel's studio that he first
showed the pictures. Bouguéreau was there and sev-
238


M A G PYE
eral others—I need not tell you about that, because,
of course, you know, but I will say that Lord Lossell
was wonderfully generous in his recognition of the
genius in the pictures, and, hard man though he was,
nothing else now mattered, neither Bettany’s obscure
birth nor his poverty, or even the peculiarities of his
character. He had proved that he could paint, and
Lord Lossell at once ratified his promise and brought
him back to London with him the next day.”
“I was at the dinner at Lord Lossell’s,” I said,
“when the engagement was announced.”
“Yes, I know,” he answered quickly, adding in a de-
liberate, absent-minded way, “he told me—Bettany,
I mean.”
It is a very hard thing to get up in a man’s own
house and tell him he is somebody else. I was pretty
well convinced as I sat there that Bettany and this
poor derelict was one and the same, but I simply hadn’t
the courage to say it.
“Of course,” I said instead, “I know about the next
month or six weeks, whatever it was—I remember
them distinctly—although I did not see Bettany
again. Then came the break—and he went away.” I
paused and then added, slowly and impressively, “Do
you know what caused the break?”
He had slid forward in his chair so that his head
was pretty well invisible in the gathering dusk. I no-
ticed that his boots were sound and of fairly good
quality, but that they were badly polished, and that the
laces were broken and tied in knots in several places.
After a pause he answered me. “I do know,” he
said, “but I can’t tell you.”
He spoke very quietly, very conclusively, in a way
that compelled me to accept his words at least in part.
-
239


M A G. P. YE
“Miss Lossell knows,” I observed.
“It is because of Miss Lossell,” he returned, and
his reply was amazing to me, “that I cannot tell you
or anyone else. She asked him for his word of honor
that he would never tell why they parted.”
“I see. I will not insist, but there can be no harm
in my asking you what you know of the poor fellow's
subsequent life. Did he ever marry?”
I disliked the look he gave me at this question.
“Did Miss Lossell ask you to find that out?” he
asked.
“No, she didn’t. She has some definite object in
wishing to find him; that much I know; but what her
object may be I don’t know.”
He nodded. “I see, and I don’t mind telling you
that he did marry.”
“Thanks. And will you tell me, not her name, but
what his wife was?”
There was a pause, during which he rose and went
to the table.
“I don’t want to shock you,” he said, “but I’m go-
ing to take some more of this stuff, so perhaps 95
“One minute, I beg of you. It would be useless for
me to try and persuade you not to do that?”
“Useless as well as–impertinent,” he put in with
perfect courtesy, adding, as he began his dreadful lit-
tle preparations.
“I will tell you in three words what became of Bet-
tany: he went under.”
“Did it happen suddenly P Had he gone under
when he was in Buenos Aires early in the century?”
He stared at me, his little bottle of pellets in his
hand. “How on earth did you know that?” he burst
out.
240


M A G. P. YE
think I must know things—and asked me all sorts of
questions about her father's young days. She’s got
some bee in her bonnet about her mother,” he said,
with an unpleasant smile.
“She’s not yet seventeen, Mr. Davis,” I suggested,
“and perhaps it is natural for a young girl to dream
about the mother she has never seen.”
Still he rubbed his arm in that horrid way, and as
I reached the door, having thanked him for his cour-
tesy, he said slowly.
“The child’s mother was a tumbler in a circus.”


CHAPTER XXXV
After a wakeful night I went early the next morn-
ing to see Mr. Treffry. He was not only very fond
of Mag and sympathetic with my own ideas about
her, but my year with him had taught me that he was
an old man of very beautiful wisdom; the wisdom of
much kindness that the widest kind of experience has
failed to embitter. I found him at breakfast, and
while I drank several cups of his delicious coffee I told
him the story. I didn’t say much about Bettany, and
I said nothing at all about Edith, but going straight
to the point I explained about the meeting on the Em-
bankment and the girl’s foolish dreams about the lady
in the car.
The old gentleman listened patiently, putting an
occasional keen question but giving me my head,
as is the way of wise people when they want infor-
mation.
“The father said distinctly that the lady in the car
was Margaret's mother?” he asked at one point.
“So far as I can remember, he did.”
“Do you think he's a liar?”
“I don’t know him well enough to have any very de-
cided opinion about that, but I shouldn’t think he or
any other man would have taken the trouble to make
243


M A G. P. YE
morals might have been, must certainly have been
without any great education or delicacy!”
The old man said: “Education be blowed, my boy!
And I don’t mean that. I mean that, considering the
effect that Miss Magpie's vain imaginings are having
upon her, nothing could be better than for her to know
at once what her mother really was.”
And then it seemed that I had known all along what
he was going to say, and moreover as if I almost, if
not quite, agreed with him.
“Perhaps you'll tell her,” I suggested, lighting a
cigarette.
“Not I,” he said with a chortle. “That's your job.
She’s your girl, your discovery, very nearly your
young woman by now. Ah, yes, you’ll have to tell her,
and the sooner the better, for, between you and me,
she’s spoiling herself. She’s been full of little airs
and graces lately. I don’t think anybody could kick
them out of her better than a tumbling mother in
tights.”
I was fully convinced that he was right, and that
afternoon I did it. I myself, with my bow and arrow,
I shot poor Mag’s dream cock robin. A mean and
cruel sparrow I felt as I did it, too.
I told her as we were sitting on penny chairs in
Hyde Park, watching the great and glorious of the
earth get up their Sunday appetites. She looked, poor
little thing, very sweet, and, so far as I could see,
quite as smart as the other girls of her age who walked
by us. She had on a delightful hat. I have forgotten
what was on top of it, but the brim, which was broad,
was lined with a sort of dark orange-colored velvet,
and her dear, almost pretty young face glowed in a
beautiful warm way as the sun poured down on us.
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M A G. P. YE
She had been talking about her imaginary parent,
and I could see how sharp was the glance she gave to
every passing carriage.
“If you see the lady you saw that day with your
father,” I suggested with guile, “will you show her to
me?”
She shook her head. “No. You yourself told me
that it might hurt her if anyone knew who I am.”
“Then why are you watching out for her?” She
turned away so that I could not see her face, and an-
swered me in that position.
“I like to see her, and some day she’ll know who
I am. Only she and I will know—and Father. I’ll
never tell a soul,” she added vehemently, turning
round, her face white with strong feeling. “I’d rather
die than hurt her. I’d rather be eaten by caterpillars
than hurt her, and I’ll never, never tell, not even you,
Mr. Quest.”
It was a very warm day, but it was not only the
heat of the sun that caused me to wipe my forehead
stealthily with my handkerchief, and I am afraid that
for the moment my feelings about Mr. Treffry were
not all that they should have been. However, I had
made up my mind to the task, and was not going to
let my own cowardice put me off it.
“Why do you think,” I asked her, “that the lady
in the carriage was your mother? I don’t think she
was, you know.”
Her eyes clouded over. “It’s horrid of you to say
so, horrid.” Then suddenly she shrugged her shoul-
ders in a curious little way that was hers.
“But it doesn’t matter—you don’t know anything
about it—and I’m sorry I was cross.”
Presently Edith drove by with old Lady Houndle.
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M A G P Y E
They both saw us and bowed, and Mag and I of
course did the same.
“I wish,” I said, “ you had told Miss Lossell about
this idea you have got into your head.”
She answered very coldly. “I will not tell Miss
Lossell. I’m not going to tell anybody. I wish I’d
never written it to you. But I know—I know—” her
voice trailed off into silence, and I knew that I was
considered unworthy, because of my disbelief, to be
told of her dream.
At last we got up and walked toward Stanhope
Gate (we were to lunch with Cohen), and suddenly I
blurted it out. I suppose it was rather cowardly to
choose such a time and place, but I couldn’t bear a
scene on the subject, and I knew the child was proud
enough to rally and behave as usual when other people
were present. Also I meant to sneak out shortly after
lunch.
“Mag,” I said, “listen to me.” We were standing
under the gate, waiting for carriages to pass. She
looked up at me, struck, I suppose, by something in
my voice.
“I have been finding out about your mother,” I
said, “and I know—” She turned crimson, and her
poor little face quivered into a delighted smile that
died away as suddenly at something she saw in mine.
“You may tell your father that I have told you, if
you like,” I continued, “and you’ll find that I have
not made a mistake. Your mother was not a great
lady, Mag. Remember, dear, we have no reason for
thinking that she was less good, or less charming, than
any great lady that ever lived; your father is a gentle-
man, and he married her.”
We crossed Park Lane and went on toward Green
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M A G PYE
Street. I wished I had never been born, but there was
only one thing to be done—to get on with it as fast
as possible.
“She was poor,” I said; “she worked for her living.
I hope you are not snob enough to be ashamed of
that.”
“Of course I’m not.”
“Good! She was,” I added, after a long pause, “a
tumbler—in a circus.”
And then to my amazement quite suddenly all the
horror died out of her face, and she looked up quietly.
“I see, Mr. Quest,” she said. “Did my father marry
her when he was very young?”
“He must have been about thirty, I should think.
What has that got to do with it?”
“Darling Mr. Quest,” she returned, putting her
hand on my arm and giving it a little squeeze, “I do
love you—you are so good to me.”
We had reached Cohen’s door, and two ladies were
standing on the steps, so I could say no more, but I
realized that the reason for Mag’s quiet and unforced
gayety throughout lunch was simply that, although
she was too polite to pain me by saying so—she didn’t
believe me.


CHAPTER XXXVI
I have said very little about Mag’s early success
as a painter, but it was a very real one of its kind,
although it was, of course, one more of promise than
of execution. Nevertheless, for a child not yet seven-
teen to have a picture in the Academy was undeniably
a remarkable thing. But I might as well say now,
to explain my apparent indifference on the subject,
that the promise was one that was never carried out.
As she grew older Mag of course, in a way, painted
better, but she never subsequently produced anything
that was as good in proportion to her age as had been
this Academy picture.
I don’t know whether I have said that it was the
head of old Glenny that was on the Line, but it actual-
ly was. After that, alas, the poor Magpie was never
even granted a small space near the ceiling within
those classic, though often derided, walls.
Cohen, and especially Lossell, were bitterly disap-
pointed in the girl’s failure to make good. Lossell in
particular was much more upset about it than either
the Magpie or me, but of course a large part of his
disappointment was due to his having hoped and pre-
dicted such great things of her—his own vanity was
hurt, and that, of course, is one of the most painful
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M A G PYE
mishaps that anyone can sustain. The next time I saw
him after he had seen the new picture—the group that
Yangus and I had inspected that day at the studio,
and to see which he had, in his malicious triumph,
driven Mag away from me on the day of my visit to
Davis—he was inclined to reproach me for her failure
to achieve what had been expected of her.
“It’s not nearly so good,” he grumbled, “as the
portrait of Glenny—and you told me it was clever.”
His little face was all scored and soured by lines of
vexation. It was one of the days when I did not like
him; when he reminded me most strongly of what he
must have been as a husband.
“Don’t be peevish,” I said. “It is clever.”
This he acknowledged, but went on fretfully describ-
ing to me the faults and ineffectiveness of poor Mag’s
cherished work.
“It’s got, or it hasn’t got, something very impor-
tant,” he grumbled. “Almost anybody might have
painted it, though most girls of her age wouldn’t
have chosen such a damned unpleasant subject.” The
little man was thoroughly disgruntled. He and Edith
were going to Scotland the next day, and I had stopped
in the library, at his own request, on may way upstairs
to say good-bye to her.
“I wonder why you ever thought she was so gifted?”
he asked me finally as I rose. Then I lashed out and
told him what I thought of him. I hadn’t even known
she had an idea of painting until he, the great Lord
Lossell, had asked her in that very room, and it
wasn’t I, but Cohen, who had set her to work with
Glenny. These things I put very clearly before my
angry host, and then I went upstairs.
“Your father,” I told Edith, “is in a filthy temper.”
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M A G PY E
She nodded. “I know. He's been pretty hard to
bear lately, and the day before yesterday he went to
Magpie's studio and hated her picture. He seems to
think,” she added gently, “that it’s my fault that the
child can’t paint. That seems a little far-fetched,
don’t you think so?”
I did, and said so, and then we had a long and, on
the whole, happy talk, and when the tea things had
been taken away, I told her of my interview with
Davis.
It was then nearly three weeks since that famous
meeting, and during that time, by chance, I had not
seen her alone.
“He’s a dreadful little man,” I said, “and it was
a dreadful room. I shall never forget it, but he told me
one or two interesting things—not very pleasant things,
my dear Edith, but—you will wish me to tell you?”
“Yes.”
Then I explained that the man had assured me of
Bettany’s complete submersion. “I am afraid there is
no doubt that the poor fellow went altogether to the
—to pieces. I don’t know whether it was before or
after the time in South America. But this is the
third person, you must remember, who has assured us
that he went under—Pye, who certainly would have
no reason to say it if it weren’t true, that loathsome
Frenchman, and now Davis.”
She folded her beautiful hands and looked at me
steadily. “Dear Victor,” she said gently, her wonder-
ful face flushed. “I have always known that. I knew
that he would do that when he went away—go to the
dogs, I mean.”
“Then why,” I asked with much sense, “do you want
to find him?”
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M A G. P. YE
She rose—we were in the gray and silver room
(and since I have started calling it that, I have noticed
that there is not anything silver in it. It is merely
the effect of the gray, I suppose, that gave me the
impression that there was), and walked restlessly up
and down, her hands still clasped, sometimes hanging
in front of her, and sometimes pressed to her bosom.
“I must find him,” she said. “I must, I must P’
It seemed as unreasonble as the obstinacy of some
very young girl about an undesirable lover, and for
a moment I saw her as she must have been when only
a little older than Mag.
“Surely, surely, you wouldn’t marry him?” I
asked.
To my relief she gave a little, bitter laugh. “No,
of course not. That would be perfectly impossible;
besides, you just told me he was married.”
“He was, years ago. But his wife might be dead,
mightn’t she? Wives have been known to die.” I looked
at her irritably, and then added with a sudden rush of
gentleness to my heart:
“My dear, can’t you tell me what it's all about? It
all seems so mysterious, so preposterous that you—
you of all women—should have wasted your youth for
the sake of a man like that.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I know it must seem
dreadful—and ridiculous, Victor. I don’t wonder you
feel that way, but you see, amigo, you don’t under-
stand, you don’t know.”
“Couldn’t you tell me?” I jerked out.
We stood facing each other in the bright, late sum-
mer sunlight, and there was a long pause—a pause
that I felt to be vital—full of strong emotion. It
seemed a long time before she answered, and when she
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M A G. P. YE
did, I was disappointed, for in a very quiet voice she
said:
“No, I can’t tell you. You must just go on think-
ing me a fool—and you must—for I know you will—
go on trying to find him.” Then she added very
slowly:
“I can tell you only one thing. You see, it's my
fault that his life was ruined in that dreadful way.”
As I walked home to the Temple I told myself that
my poor girl was indeed being a fool, and I also in-
formed myself that nearly every woman who has loved
and lost a man who subsequently goes wrong posi-
tively revels in the thought that the man went to pieces
because of having lost her.
No doubt Bettany had been badly hurt through
Edith, for the fellow certainly had loved her, and from
what she had said that day I was fairly sure that she
must have broken the engagement and sent him away
in an unnecessarily harsh manner, but, after all, there
are many women in he world and the average man,
on looking back at his life from old age, would, if
truthful, be constrained to admit that there is no very
outstanding woman in the panorama, but rather a se-
ries of temporarily important ladies, each of whom
has made a less deep impression on his life than she
very naturally imagined herself to have done. I think
I am right in regarding myself as rather an excep-
tion in these months, and I had no inclination to as-
sume that Bettany was a man as faithful to a hope-
less ideal as I, sometimes very much against my will,
had proved to be.
I felt that if the truth were known, Edith’s dismis-
sal might have driven the man into certain evil ways
for a time, but that he had speedily found feminine
253


M A G. P. YE
consolation of a more or less vital kind, and with all
my heart I wished that I might find him settled in
some foreign land with a wife and three or four nearly
grown children, so that I might tell her so and rid
her poor mind of what was undoubtedly a very pain-
ful, though foolish, obsession.
I walked for several hours that evening, for I was
upset and unhappy. I couldn’t bear to have Edith
miserable, and still less could I bear to have Edith
illogical and silly, and I felt she was being both.
When I got back to the Temple I found Yangus
walking up and down in the court. He had come to
say good-bye to me, for he, too, was going to Scot-
land very shortly. His grandmother was a widow,
lived somewhere in Perthshire, and old Glenny and he
were going to spend August there.
“Anybody else going to Scotland?” I asked rather
crossly, for the Land of Cakes seemed to loom too
largely for my comfort for the moment.
To my surprise the young fellow laughed nervously
and walked over to the window. (I had asked him to
come up for supper.) “Odd that you should say
that, Sir,” he blurted out. “I’ve come to ask you if
you’d let the Magpie go with us.”
I was very tired, and I had felt two lumbagoish
twinges in my back on my way home.
“Oh, bother the Magpie,” I said crossly. “What's
it got to do with me? Can’t you ask her, father?”
And then I was dreadfully ashamed, for young Angus
turned on me a look of the most childlike, pellucid be-
wilderment that ever I had seen in my life in the eyes
of a grown-up creature.
“I’m most awfully sorry, sir,” he said, “but I
thought I ought to ask you. It-it never occurred
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M A G PYE
to me to ask Mr. Pye. You see, you seem a great
deal more like her father than he does.”
There are moments at which this remark would have
irritated me still further; but on that occasion, for
some reason, I felt soothed and gratified by it, and
we sat down to our rather unusually luxurious meal–
for I had laid in one of those network melons, and
some mushrooms which I stewed in my new saucepan
over the spirit lamp—and discussed the pros and cons
of Mag’s visit—for I had at once decided that she
might go—in the friendliest manner possible.
Yangus was delighted, and delightfully grateful.
“I haven’t said a word to her about it, sir,” he as-
sured me. “I thought I’d better not till I’d asked you,
but Uncle Angus and I were talking about it a couple
of days ago—in fact, he suggested it—and he's sure
she’d love it. You see, she’s only been out of London
once, and that,” he added with the deep scorn of the
Northerner, “was only to the Isle of Wight.”
Little by little I learned that it was to a rugged,
very simple life that the urban Miss Pye was to go.
The young man’s grandfather, as he quite sweetly
put it, “had been a meenister,” and as the new in-
cumbent had built himself a grand new house, the late
man’s widow still lived in the little old manse. The de-
lightful atmosphere of George MacDonald’s books and
some of Mrs. Oliphant’s came over me as I stirred my
mushrooms; indeed it came over me with such potence
that I nearly burned these delectable fungi. I could
feel the cool air on my forehead, and smell the peaty,
smoky, early-morning atmosphere.
“It’s just the thing for Mag,” I said, a little later,
my whole nature softened by the emollient effect of
the excellent food and drink. “I had to give her rather
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M A G. P. YE
a hard blow the other day, Yangus. Perhaps I had
better tell you about it, in case she does.”
So I told him and he listened, his charming, bony
face glowing with interest.
“You mustn't tell her I’ve told you,” I added, when
I’d finished my story.
“I won’t, but I’m glad you did, because I’ve been
awfully at a loss sometimes lately to know what on
earth she was driving at. She’s been very mysterious
and just a little—” He broke off, in his loyalty seek-
ing for a kind word. I cut him short.
“She has been a pretentious and foolish young
monkey,” I put in, “but we mustn't blame her very
much, because, after all, every girl has a right to a
nice mother, and Mag apparently never even saw hers,
so she's had to make one up, hasn’t she?”
He nodded. “I know. I asked Mr. Pye the other
night how long ago Mrs. Pye had died, and he said
he lost her when Mag was only a year old. Hard
luck for the poor fellow, wasn’t it? So she was
in a circus!” He gave a sudden uncouth chuckle.
“I’m glad my old grannie doesn’t know that,” he
said.
I was very glad the boy had turned up. There was
something very wholesome and pleasant about him,
and I liked his rough, always woolly clothes, and even
the way a stiff little plume of hair stuck straight up
out of the middle of his scalp in a thing he called a
“cowlick.” Also I was heartily glad that Mag was to
be removed from the scene of her romantic maunder-
ings. Little by little I knew she must inevitably come
to believe what I had told her about her mother, and
it was certain to give her pain. In the Highlands
there would be new sights to occupy her, and Angus
256


CHAPTER XXXVII
It was not until a fortnight had passed that I was
able to keep my word to Mag and go to cast a fatherly
eye on Madame Aimée and Pye.
My poor sister during this interval lost one of her
children, and I was obliged to stay down in the country
with her. It was a sad time and poor little Gisella had
been my favorite niece, for she was in an odd way very
like my father, and I had been fond of him. Poor
Eleanor was broken-hearted, and there had been some-
thing very dreadful in the suddenness of the snatching
away of the little life. The child had been in the
garden on the Thursday morning, and Friday night she
was dead. For some time poor Christian had been
almost unable to make Eleanor believe that it was true,
and then, when she did realize it, her grief was a dread-
ful and desolating thing. I had always been fond of my
sister, but I had never understood her or tried to under-
stand her in any intimate way—she is twelve years
younger than I–and now I saw that underneath her
placid, rather uninteresting exterior lay a nature of
great strength and fidelity, like our poor father's.
So I stayed down there in the pleasant little Hamp-
shire house until poor Bob had persuaded her to go
abroad with him for a few weeks. Anna Christian, his
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M A G P YE
was almost a little wind, which blew the curtains about,
and stirred the flowers in the vases, and gave us a de-
lightful feeling of being at sea on land.
I had not yet told the little Frenchwoman of my visit
to Davis, and I sat debating as to whether or not I had
better let her know about Mag’s mother.
Finally she herself opened the way to me by asking
me what I thought about the condition of the child’s
mind in this respect.
“Do you think,” she asked, “she’s still imagining her
mother to be a great lady?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know. The last time I saw her
she was.”
“When was that, Monsieur?”
“The day we lunched with Sir Max. On the way there
I told her something that I think will have persuaded
her she was wrong about the lady in the motor car.”
“Did you? Sir Max was here a fortnight ago. He
brought me some beautiful flowers and a picture, and he
said that she had been particularly happy and gay that
day.”
I nodded. “She was. I am afraid that was because
she didn’t believe me, but, after all, it was pretty conclu-
sive, what I told her.”
As my mind went back to the occasion of our walk up
Park Lane and along Green Street, I for the moment
forgot that Madame Aimée didn’t know what I was
talking about, and I went on quite as if she had
known.
“No child can have two mothers, and it is a far cry
from the lady in the motor car to the circus woman,
don’t you think so?”
“What!” Her voice was so strange that I looked up
sharply. She had dropped her work and clasped her
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M A G P YE
“Yes, it is good to wake up in the morning and see
them there,” she returned simply; “and was it not won-
derful of Sir Max?”
As I went my way, greatly relieved about Magpie, I
thought very warmly of the little Jewish gentleman.
What a good fellow he was


CHAPTER XXXVIII
In the middle of September, Mag and the two Anghi
returned from the manse, Mag looking very tall and
very brown, and with more than a touch of a burr in
her speech. She brought back some sketches that I
thought delightful, and they were, although we didn’t
know it then, indicative of the kind of work she was
going to do in the future.
They were, amongst other things, eminently salable,
and she and I took them one fine morning to a shop in
Dover Street, where, after a short inspection by a
very dandified gentleman in the very latest shriek in
frock coats, two of these masterpieces were transferred
to his hands in return for the enormous sum of fifteen
guineas.
Mag, of course, trod on air; and she was much more
like a balloon than anything else as we walked home.
“I did them in four days,” she said. “If I can make
fifteen pounds every four days, that’ll make how much a
year, Mr. Quest?”
“Oh, shut up,” I said laughing. “I’m going to open
an account in my bank in my name, and make you de-
posit your earnings there.”
To this preposterous proposal she agreed with the
utmost composure, her knowledge of banking matters
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M A G PY E
“Mag,” I said, “is growing up. She has a beau.”
Edith laughed. “Who is he?”
“A very nice Scottish youth, a nephew of old
Glenny,” I explained. “Angus Forbes is his name.”
“We must invite him to the party,’” she said.
Lady Malpas inquired about the party, and announced
her intention of looking in at it.
“So that,” she added, “is the child Max Cohen is
always talking about! Perhaps he’ll marry her. It
would be just like him, odd little fellow that he is P’
Edith and I looked at each other.
“He hasn’t shown her any marked attentions as yet,”
I declared.
“One never can tell.”
I was just leaving the box when Edith suddenly
leaned forward and stared down at the back of the stalls
in a way that I could tell, although I couldn’t see her
face, was passionately intent. Lady Malpas was survey-
ing the opposite box with her glasses, and Edith turned
to me.
“Do you remember the man I was speaking about not
long ago to you?” she said quietly, pressing my arm in
a way that hurt. “A friend of Father's, I mean, a man
who used to paint.”
I looked at her, and she nodded.
“It’s odd,” she said, “I just saw him down there at the
back of the stalls. Go and speak to him, will you?”
I knew how difficult it must have been for her to tell
me this in that particular way, and I knew that she
couldn’t possibly have told me in any other manner
for the reason that Hermione Malpas is, although a
good-natured woman, the most hopeless tongue-wagger
in English society.
Answering Edith in the voice she had indicated to me
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M A G P Y E
—that of good-natured indifference—I rose and shook
hands with the two.
“I will,” I said. “I can’t see so far as that from
here but I’ll find him, of course—Briggs, you mean?”
“Yes, tell him I’d be very glad to see him some time,”
she answered, taking up her fan.
I lounged out of the box, and then dashed full tilt
downstairs and into the stalls. At that moment the
lights went down, and my miserable shortsighted eyes
became as useless as if they had both been made of glass.
I paused a moment, hesitating as to what I should do
next, and in that pause lay my defeat.
A man rose from the row next to the pit and went
quietly out, I just being able to see that a man had gone
out; but when I had retraced my steps to the passage
and made my way as quickly as I could to the door
through which he had gone, he had disappeared.
There was nothing for it but for me to go to my seat
where I found Mag enthralled at the play and with a
mouth too full for strict beauty with chocolates that the
soft-hearted Cohen had been coaxed into buying her.
Personally I hate women who eat at the play, and am
deaf to the beguilings of the girls who wander about
with trays.
“Miss Lossell sent her love to you, Mag,” I told her,
“and told you not to forget the party.”
“No fear! Oh, Mr. Quest, isn’t she too beautiful to-
night!”
“She is,” I said. “You’re right there, old girl.”
“I think,” the child went on before she settled down
to the new act, “that she's the most beautiful woman in
the whole world.”
“You having seen them all,” I returned, retrieving
my shoe which had fallen off as I crossed my legs, “your
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* MAG PYE
it is equally pleasing to know that, like dear Prince
Turveydrop, he called his instrument a “kit.”
On several occasions I went to Mag’s lesson with her.
Once we took Edith, and once we took Sir Max, and
several times the Anghi were of the party. Old Angus
electrified and delighted us all one evening (for these
lessons took place by lamplight), by bursting into a
kind of Highland Fling, and leaping and shouting in
the most bloodcurdling and entrancing manner, his
beard blowing wildly about, his eyes ablaze.
Mag took to dancing as a duck takes to water and
in this aptness I perceived the unfailing hand of he-
redity.
Monsieur Annibale, greatly delighted with his pupil,
insisted on speaking French with her, and I shall always
remember with a pleasant glow the long, low room with
its well-waxed floor, and three dim-burning and rather
small lamps, the dusty platform at one end, on which
stood an almost entirely superfluous piano, and a long,
yellow, horizontal line painted on the wall about five
feet from the floor, at which those ladies of the various
classes who intended to become footlight ornaments were
wont to demonstrate the flexibility of what one may
elegantly term their lower limbs. Sometimes Madame
Picrate adorned the party and on more than one occa-
sion Eudoxie, the old dancing master’s housekeeper
(whom my evil mind shrewdly suspected of having begun
their common life as something rather different) sidled
in at the door, bringing with her a smell of fried onions,
and stood looking on, with her large, blunt-fingered,
bony hands classically arranged over her hips.
“Picrate, ma belle,” the little man would exclaim
sometimes, “regard me that. Mademoiselle Pie, petit
oiseau noir et blanc, sautez! Sautez encore.” And Mag,
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M A G. P. YE
all fire and enthusiasm, would sauter higher and higher,
Madame Picrate and the broad Eudoxie applauding.
Madame Picrate had a romantic way of murmuring
“Bisſ Bisſ” that carried me on the wings of fantasy to
Parisian theaters, and evenings of glamour. For Mon-
sieur Pigeonnet despised the modern school of dancing;
his theory was that without muscle in the feet and legs
not even the modern debased and altogether unworthy
dances could possibly be accomplished with success. He
held to the ancient method of building on a firm founda-
tion, so his dancing lessons might almost be termed
gymnastic lessons.
Sometimes the young Angus would be inspired to
enter the ring, and then there were great larks.
However, the little old man with the fiddle and the
amazingly palpable brown wig was all for hard work,
and Mag worked like a slave the three nights in the
week dedicated to Terpsichore, with the result that the
afternoon of her birthday I went home to dress for the
party without a qualm as to her qualifications as a
young lady at a ball.
I had a new pair of shoes, and a particularly neat
waistcoat for the occasion. Moreover, in a glass on my
dressing table stood an unblemished and very expensive
gardenia with which I meant to embellish myself.
I had invited Mag to dine with me, but she was far too
excited to accede to any such proposition, added to
which she told me with her usual frankness that she
intended her supper appetite to remain inviolate. So I
was dining with young Angus, or rather he was dining
with me, at Simpson’s, and we were then to go on to
Pimlico in a swift and luxurious taxi to convey our lady
to the scene of revelry.
We had an excellent dinner and Yangus was so en-
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M A G. P. YE
partook of the festivities. Some of the young girls,
daughters of Edith’s friends, and all about Mag’s age,
were loudspoken and bitter in their condemnation of this
behavior.
Nevertheless all went merry as a marriage bell. Mag’s
dancing was a great success, and I could have wished the
good cousin Annibale might have been there to enjoy
the fruits of his instruction.
Just at midnight—supper was to be at that dramatic
hour—I saw, shouldering his way through the crowd in
a way that somehow reminded me of a water buffalo in
Ceylon, a strange young man. He was an ancient per-
son for this party, for he must have been quite twenty-
six. An enormously broad-shouldered, thick-necked
man, with a lump of muscle across his back just below
his collar—that added to his resemblance to the native
of Ceylon before referred to), and a large, forward-bent
head covered with sculptural, glossy, black curls.
This being made his way slowly along the now
crowded room to where I was sitting with Edith.
“Good Heavens ! Who’s that?”
She looked vexed. “It’s young Cardwell, Lord Max-
stoke's son; you know, the iron foundry people.”
“He looks like an iron foundry himself,” I remarked.
“What an enormous youth!”
“Isn’t he? How do you do, Mr. Cardwell?”
The young man explained in a perfectly proper man-
ner that he had been dining with the Woolcotes who, as
Miss Lossell, of course, remembered, were to have come
on here, and that Mrs. Woolcote had been taken ill at
the play, and Woolcote and he had just got her home
and settled with a nurse and so on; and she had asked
him, Cardwell, to come on to explain Mr. and Mrs.
Woolcote's absence.
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M A G PYE
“Charmion couldn’t come, either,” he explained.
“Couldn’t leave her mother, of course.”
Edith thanked him, and expressed the necessary hopes
that Mrs. Woolcote's illness would prove to be of no
importance. Then she said:
“I hope you dance, Mr. Cardwell.” The immense one
bowed.
“If you will do me the honor,” he murmured.
But she laughed. “This is a young people’s party,”
she returned. “Surely you know most of them here?”
He looked round. “Rather! There’s Cissy Pollock,
I know her.” His heavy face brightened. “And the
Derbyshire girls. Then, if I may, I shall see about
getting a partner.”
Since the days of which I write we have all heard of
that awesome and elephantinely frolicking creature, the
tank. Retrospectively, now, as I look back to my first
acquaintance with Anthony Cardwell, my mind is irre-
sistibly drawn to comparing him with this Brobding-
magian and Hun-terrifying trample specialist. Like a
tank, Lord Maxstoke's heir barged across the room and
leaned up against a wall. Then, always true to type, he
scattered several innocent young couples, and bore down
on his prospective partner. The girl happened to be a
tiny fair-haired thing clad in the palest of pale blue
gauze or chiffon. She looked like a hapless butterfly as
the huge young man folded her to him and began to
gyrate, and then to my amusement I perceived that for
all his vast bulk and weight he danced like an angel.
Lossell was quite willing to tell me all about him.
“Isn’t he amazing!” our host exclaimed. “Quite the
biggest man, I think, though not the tallest, that I ever
saw in my life. He’s Maxstoke's son and heir, you
know. Only boy, I believe. Odd thing, Maxstoke mar-
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M A G P YE
ried one of the Carlyon girls—you know, the Brading
people—she had four daughters before this boy—I can
remember old Maxstoke's rage at each birth—and they
are all, if you will believe it, my dear Quest, miserable,
squinny little women, no bigger than white mice—and
look at that P*
“He looks awfully strong,” I commented.
“He is. He's done a good deal of amateur boxing;
fought three rounds with Carpentier a short time ago—
most interesting fight it was, I’m told.”
“Who Won?”
“Oh, the Frenchman, of course, but this fellow put up
a magnificent fight.”
“He ought to have tried sitting down on the French-
man,” I suggested. “What does he ride?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure. Never heard of him in con-
nection with a horse.”
A few minutes later I was sitting at a little table eat-
ing my supper with Hermione Malpas and one or two
other people, when I heard a little laugh behind me. It
was unimistakably the coquettish and triumphant laugh
of a woman in the midst of a particularly enchanting
flirtation. I turned round discreetly, and facing me,
towering like a huge building over the little table which
he could have cracked like a walnut shell with one hand,
was the young Anthony. A minute later I took another
look, and I saw that the lady, the back of whose chair
nearly touched mine, and whose laugh had so struck my
ear, was none other than that fledgling Magpie!


CHAPTER XL
After the ball nothing particular happened for several
months. I spent Christmas, as usual, at Wandover, and
to her infinite delight Mag was included in the party.
Her adoration for Edith was a very pleasant thing to
see, and, in a curious way, her youth, instead of making
Edith look older, seemed, at least to me, to make Edith
look younger. Perhaps it was because the child’s
vehement and outspoken affection was as delightful to
my dear lady as it was to me. She certainly, for some
reason, seemed happier than for a long time, and I liked
to think that these two people of whom I was so fond
were extending their generous affection for me to each
other.
Lady Houndle was not at Wandover that year, and
we all accepted the poor old lady’s absence in a rather
unflatteringly Spartan spirit.
But Treffry was there, vigorous and well, full of his
adventures in Germany to which then supposedly very
friendly country he had gone on a visit to a married
great-niece. -
I am sorry to say the old man had liked the Huns, and
believed in their protestations, but he must not be re-
proached for this as other Englishmen, even official Eng-
lishmen who ought to have known much better than he,
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M A G P Y E
told they called an “echter, englischer gentleman,” was
deliberately and very cleverly misled.
But to go back to the house party—Mag, now that
he no longer expected her to be a genius and had for-
given her her failure in that way, was a great favorite
with Lord Lossell. In fact she was so great a favorite
that I was glad to reflect that he was nearly seventy
years old. Naturally many old men do marry young
girls, but the Magpie did not seem the kind who would
barter all the really good things of life, for, so to speak,
“a ribbon to stick in her coat.” Frankly, she treated
him as a kind old gentleman, showing in every word she
said to him and to Treffry her unquestioning apprecia-
tion of the fact that in all essentials the dear old man
of nearly eighty-two was much younger than our host.
She was always respectful to Lossell, whereas she
treated Treffry much as she treated me, and the great
old boy saw this and understood it, and with me re-
joiced thereat.
We hurried back to town the last day of the year
but one, to celebrate a good-bye party (Oh, these
parties 1) that Glenny was giving for his young great-
nephew. Yangus was sailing on the second of January,
and we were to see the old year out and the new year
in, in grand style in Thurloe Square.
I had a very bad headache that night, and as I think
of it can recall but little of the festivities. I know there
was punch, and dancing, and a good many flowers in the
room, and that Yangus was nervous, and white-faced,
and bitterly jealous, poor boy, of young Cardwell who
in some way had managed to join the party although
nobody seemed to know who had invited him.
Monsieur Pigeonnet was there, and the feature of the
evening was a sarabande that he and Mag danced to an
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M A G P YE
air played on a borrowed spinet by Glenny who was a
very odd sight leaning over the diminutive instrument,
peering out of his ambush of beard and hair. It seemed
impossible that such delicate, tinkling tones as reached
us from his corner could have come from that large and
untidy personality, but he played very well. It was a
charming sight, and in spite of my headache I enjoyed it.
Those of us who were not dancing (about ten souls we
must have been, possibly twelve for there were one or
two people I don’t remember) were huddled together on
the model platform, and in the carefully shaded electric
light, the figures of the two dancers had something very
romantic and almost unreal about them. They were in
costumes which old Glenny had designed and Mag and
Madame Aimée had made, and somehow the little bent
figure of the old man with his odd, crooked legs and
his long arms and very large, very grotesque wig
brought into fine relief young Magpie's positive youth
and comparative grace, for she was still not the lissome,
willowy thing that young girls ought to be, although she
had greatly improved.
Her gown was yellow, and of some heavy material,
with a bunched-up overdress; and, as most people know,
the sarabande being a thing of grave, almost bombastic
measure, and full of splendid bows and curtsies, the
performance had a ghostly quality that nothing quicker
could have held.
Glenny had been very clever in his shading of the
lights, and there was one place in the middle of the room
which was almost in complete darkness so that every now
and then the dignified dancers seemed to disappear for a
moment, particularly as their exaggerated esteem for
each other demonstrated itself in low swooning curtsies
and sweeping bows.
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M A G PYE
found occasion to tell him of young Forbes’ departure.
He even suggested Yangus looking up a cousin of his in
Bombay, and wrote the name and address down on his
card, but no one, not even the most prejudiced in Miss
Pye's favor, could deny that on this occasion she flirted
in an abominable way with the Honorable Anthony.
So the party ended not very gaily, and I took Yangus
home to my rooms where he was to spend the night, a
doleful and depressing companion.
Mag we had safely packed off to Pimlico by herself
in the only taxi we could find, and the Bruiser walked
with us as far as the next cab rank where we parted, he
for gilded baronial halls somewhere in the West End.
I have forgotten why Mag and Yangus were not to
meet again before he sailed, but that was the arrange-
ment, and on New Year's Day I took him and his uncle
to dine at some restaurant. There was nothing senti-
mental about the old painter, but he was sorry to lose
the boy and begged him with quite pathetic insistence to
write often.
Yangus also promised to write to me because, sly
youth, he knew that if I answered his letters he would
get news of Miss Pye.
The long evening wore away, as the long day had done,
and the next morning sailed the good ship that was to
carry the budding tea-planter to the field of his labors.
I greatly liked the boy and secretly shared Madame
Aimée's hopes for the future, although I had seen in
Mag no signs of anything warmer for him than a casual,
rather sisterly affection.
I remember watching his train go out of the station,
rather wishing I was going with it, and feeling vaguely
that this New Year was bound to bring great changes
to all of us. And God knows it did!
288


CHAPTER XLI
In May Pye had a very serious breakdown or back-
sliding. He came to my rooms one of those Arctic,
hurricane-like nights that make the English spring and
summer so fatal to tropical trees and plants, wrapped
in a hooded cloak of thick felt that gave him a strangely
picturesque look.
“I have come,” he said, dashing the hood to the back
of his ruffled head, “to tell you that you must take Mag
away for a while.”
“Good Heavens, why?”
He gave a rough little laugh. “Don’t be frightened,
nothing's the matter with her; it’s only me.”
I gave him a whisky and soda, and he drained the
glass before he spoke; then he said shortly:
“It’s simply that I can’t do without the stuff any
longer—I’m going to have it.”
“Morphine, you mean?”
He nodded. “Yes. I’ve done my best and now that
she’s grown up and I can be of some use to her I shall
keep on—understand that, Mr. Quest. I shall never
stop trying, but it has gone too far with me for me to
be able to give it up entirely.”
“I see, and you don’t want her to know?”
The poor fellow shook his head which, by the way,
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M A G P YE
of cosiness. It is not French to be cosy, and I wanted
Mag to catch as much as she could of the French spirit.
She was delighted with everything, and her face, a little
wan and pale with the fatigue of the unwonted journey,
on our arrival, glowed like a lamp while she devoured
food in a way that, if applied to lamp oil, would have
made her a hideously expensive lighting system. She
was awfully hungry, and it was an excellent dinner for
the proprietor, Monsieur Jules, himself superintended
it in the good old-fashioned way, afterwards stand-
ing by the table and conversing with his kind old
patron.
“Ah, Monsieur Treffree,” he exclaimed at one point,
“I was telling my son only the other day that it is over
fifty years since first you come to the Saint Omer—
cinquante ans!”
I caught Mag busily counting on her fingers and toes
to find to what remote period of the world’s history these
fifty years would bring her.
“Sixty-four,” I murmured. She nodded.
“Oh, Mr. Quest, isn’t it wonderful! I’d like some
more of that salad, please. I like salads made of these
things that you don’t know what they are,” she added
lucidly.
“Do you remember the day we stood on the balcony,
Monsieur, and saw the Empress drive by in her open
carriage?”
Treffry nodded. “I do, Jules. I also remember the
day when we saw ‘those others’ march by.”
“Who were “those others’?” asked Mag.
The two old men looked at each other and sighed.
“The Germans, my dear,” said Mr. Treffry, adding
to the Frenchman; “Thank God you’ve lived all that
down, here!”
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M A G. P. YE
The rotund little man in the beautifully fitting frock
coat shrugged his shoulders sadly.
“In a way, Monsieur, in a way, but I wish I could
have seen another war and partaken in the march to
Berlin.”
“Very ominous signs in Germany now,” I observed.
They are getting restive, the brutes, and a friend of
mine wrote me only a few weeks ago from Frankfurt
that they are making no bones about their readiness and
willingness, if no more, for a war.”
“Sapristi, Monsieur, with whom should they make
War?”
“Possibly with Russia,” the old Frenchman smiled.
“They would never dare attack France because,” and
he made a polite bow, “attacking France would mean
attacking England as well.”
Treffry laughed at us, secure in the evidence of what
he had seen and heard in the autumn, and shortly after-
wards we all went to bed.
I was half undressed when Mag came pounding at
my door to rhapsodize over the enthralling fact that
her bed had a canopy to it.
“What Madame Aimée calls a “ciel,’” she added.
“Too perfect for words! And curtains tied up with silk
cords and tassels to them!”
I bade her go away and leave me in peace. But I lay
awake for some time in my own bed, which appeared to
be a twin brother to the one that so delighted her, won-
dering which of my friends, Treffry or Max Cohen, had
been right about Germany.


CHAPTER XLII
For four blissful days our Magpie explored Paris.
She really knew French remarkably well and, thanks
to some of the books I had had her read, she had a
pretty good idea, as such ideas go, in girls of seven-
teen, of the history of that wonderful old town.
So it was a real pleasure to old Middleton Treffry
and me to take her about and watch her thrill at the
wonderful things we showed her.
She fell in love with Notre Dame at first sight, but
I must say that I think it was more connected in her
mind with Quasimodo and Esmeralda, to say nothing
of the goat, than with more serious and authentic
vicissitudes.
She climbed up to see the view, while Treffry and
I wandered about below, and when she came down
there was no stopping her; she talked for a solid half
hour about the things she had seen. Oh, how she did
talk!
The day after that we drove to Versailles, and of
course she loved best of all the pathetic, romantic lit-
tle Trianon with its little rococo ghosts of artificial
shepherds and shepherdesses.
Marie Antoinette was one of Miss Pye's most deeply
loved heroines, and perhaps it is that poor little
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M A G. P. YE
queen’s greatest reward for the terrible troubles
which, however, surely she brought them on herself,
she certainly bore with dignity and courage, that she
is amongst queens perhaps the best beloved of young
girls.
We did not see the waters playing—I have been to
Versailles hundreds of time and I’ve never yet caught
them at it—but we had a lovely, sunny, unhurried day
at the old place, and not the least of our joys was the
wonderful lunch at the Hôtel des Réservoirs. That
evening we heard “Faust,” and the next we saw a very
dull, classical production at the Français. And three
blissful days Mag spent, chiefly, I must confess, with-
out me, at the Louvre. I went with her to the Luxem-
bourg and bought for her there a delightful little
statue—a reproduction of something by somebody; I
have forgotten the name—a naked woman sitting
very straight in a chair, with her feet crossed, her lit-
tle head erect, and in her delicate hands a large mirror
into which she is supposed to be gazing; a charming
little thing, and the replica I bought was well worth
the five pounds I gave for it. The young man who
made it, who had heard her admiration of the original
and persuaded us to go with him to his studio and
look at his reproduction, was a charming person, care-
fully got up to resemble Rodolphe in “La Vie de Bo-
hème.” He even wore, in his passion for detail, the peg-
top trousers of the period, and his long greasy hair
was of a raven wing’s blackness.
He it was who invited us to the students’ ball, to
which, when I had had a few minutes’ private conversa-
tion with him, I agreed to take my young charge for
half an hour that evening. It was very good fun, I
must admit, for it was a real ball and we were, I think,
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M A G PYE
had time to reply, “you wouldn’t be able to see, Quest.”
“Well, do you?” I snapped.
“I think he’s a pleasant boy,” the old man returned.
“And he's beautiful manners. Naturally Mag likes
him.”
Half an hour later, as we sat in his room over a
fire, for it was rainy and chilly, and Usher had de-
cided that his master’s old bones needed comforting, I
asked my friend why he had spoken as he did.
He smiled. “I take it,” he said, “you don’t want
the child to fall in love with the young brute?”
“Oh, you horrible old hypocrite!” I burst out,
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, pretending to like
him?”
He laughed gently.
“My dear Victor, I don’t mind him myself. He’s
an interesting type. I believe he could crush an ox,
and I have never before known a man about whom
I had that pleasant conviction. I’m sure he could
pull down some of the flimsier church porches, say,
in the London suburbs. He’s a magnificent speci-
men.”
“Ho, he’s bow-legged.”
“Many very strong men are, but you are an idiot,
my dear fellow, if you don’t mind my saying so, to
show Magpie so plainly that you disapprove and are
jealous of this young man.”
Naturally I protested against the word “jealous,”
but he was in a manner right, and I deserved it, for
my feeling about Mag and her Bruiser must have been
much like the feeling a mother might have for an un-
desirable man who hovers about a dearly loved
daughter.
There was no shaking off the Honorable Anthony,
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M A G P YE
“No-that is, I–well, yes, I had a letter from him
yesterday, I think it was, or the day before, but I
haven’t read it yet.”
“Haven’t read it?” I asked severely. “Why not?”
“Well, I'm afraid I just forgot. I’ve always been
in such a hurry, and there have been so many things
to do.”
The Bruiser eyed me with triumph.
“How shocking of you, Miss Pye!” he commented,
his odd square face grave. “But I thought him such
a nice little fellow.”
I was very much annoyed, and I don’t know what I
should have said, but just as he, the Bruiser, had
walked into my life ten days ago, and trampled my
springing hopes as his prototype the elephant might
trample a field of tender green corn, at that moment
the door of the restaurant opened, and in walked un-
expected, balm-bringing and beautiful Edith Lossell,
with her father and two people I had never seen, a man
and a woman.
It was for them that the empty table next us had
been reserved, and in, a few miuntes the two parties
had been amalgamated and the Bruiser’s star began
to wane.
It was interesting and curious to watch. Lossell
was cordial in his dry way to the young man, and Mrs.
Logan-Bull seemed really to take to him, as, consider-
ing the latter half of her name and the young man’s
burly build, seemed rather a touching fidelity to type.
Edith was perfectly civil, yet she routed him. I don’t
quite know how she did it or even what it was she did,
but in a pricked-balloonish way he dwindled and be-
came silent; he ceased to shine; his magnetism failed
him; even Mag, in her rapture over Edith, forgot him,
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M A G PYE
and this the young man couldn’t endure. He sulked,
and therein lay his undoing.
Before we parted company—the Lossells and their
friends to go to their usual hotel in the Place Wen-
dôme—the two following days were arranged for.
The Logan-Bulls, it appeared, were on their way to
Belgium to visit some friends, and Lossell would of
course be busy during his stay, so Edith was to join
with us, and “us” had ceased to include young Mr.
Cardwell.
“I’m afraid I shan’t see you to-morrow,” the fallen
star murmured at the door of the hotel, “or the
next day either. Miss Lossell seems to have arranged
for your day.”
Mag nodded.
“Yes, it’s too heavenly that she should have turned
up. You’ve no idea,” she added in all innocence, “what
a perfect darling she is.”
“Indeed,” he murmured. “She must have been very
handsome once.”
To my delighted amusement Mag went for him and
railed at him. There was much coldness in their part-
ing, and I marched up to my room to an inaudible
march of victory that rang through every drop of
my blood.
Edith had routed him. The Bruiser had met his
match.


M A G P YE
With kindest regard to you, and don't forget what I have
told you about Mr. Treffry.
Yours sincerely,
MAX Cohen.
The other letter was from Nurse Johnson in Hamp-
stead, and told me in a few words that Pye, who had
been in her house for about ten days and was very
bad at first, was on the road to recovery and behav-
ing very well.
I am very sorry for him [the kind woman added], for
his is an odd case, without the hateful element of lying and
pretence that usually stamp such as he is. He's sincerely
desirous of giving up this stuff, and has altogether improved
immensely since that first time when Sir Max Cohen sent
him to me.
Thank you very much for your kind letter and for con-
gratulations about my little success. It is wonderful to be
quite independent and earning a really good living.
With kind regards. -
Yours very truly,
CATHERINE JoHNson.
I told Mr. Treffry what Sir Max had said; indeed,
I showed him the little man’s letter, but he laughed
at it, the gay old boy, and declared that nothing
should keep him from a course of the waters at Wies-
baden. In fact he unfolded a plan he had been cher-
ishing about taking Mag there with him, but this at
least I was able to veto. (I hope that the reader will
be glad to hear that a sharp touch of gout just when
he intended to go prevented our losing this enchant-
ing old citizen of the world.)
That day, the day, as I have said, after the supper
at the Café de Paris, was a grand day, for me.
Edith, Mag, Mr. Treffry and I lunched at the Pré
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M A G PYE
au Catalan, and there was no Bruiser; yet, in spite of
this fatal fact, Mag was brilliantly happy. After
lunch Edith took her to one of the good shops and
bought her two frocks as a gift, and never was bird
of paradise or peacock more consciously splendid than
was our homely Magpie at dinner that night. There
is really something different about Parisian clothes.
No one mentioned Mr. Cardwell, and I had every
hope that the coming of Edith had routed him once
and for all. In this, however, I was doomed to be dis-
appointed, and my chagrin was augmented by a fear
that the young man’s knowledge the next morning of
Edith having gone off somewhere by herself for the
whole of the day, must have had some connection with
Miss Pye.
At all events, at half past ten he was in our sitting-
room bearing a large bunch of flowers and a box of
sweets, and Mag was as pleased as ever to be with him.
Anything like the imperviousness of the Bruiser to
cold-shouldering and outrageously downright snubs, I
have never beheld. Even Mr. Treffry showed that he
was intruding, and, as for me, I was abominable to
him, yet never for one minute of the day did we lose
sight of him, and I was very much troubled to watch
Mag sparkle, and soften, and glow, in an unmistak-
able way under his attentions.
The next day I myself had an engagement with
Edith. She had written to ask me if I could spend
three or four hours with her in the afternoon, and I
had arranged for Mr. Treffry to take Mag to lunch
at Saint Cloud. At about twelve, just as I was going
out to find a suitable taxi, up came the huge young man
whom I by this time detested with a thoroughness and
venom that was really rather exhausting. He had a
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M A G. P. YE
I should not have minded quite so much if he had been
a decent fellow, but I fear I should not have enjoyed
it even in that case. However, I did my best to be
sympathetic, and made very careful inquiries at two
restaurants, the hotel, and two houses that at differ-
ent times he had either frequented or lived in. No one
knew anything about him. He had not, apparently,
on his return to Paris, gone back to his old haunts,
and we learned nothing until suddenly I remembered
Dubourg and his tale of Constant’s.
We found the place with no trouble, and, what was
more remarkable, we found there an old waiter who
distinctly remembered Monsieur Dubourg and Mon-
sieur Bettany. This old man told us that he had seen
Bettany within the last ten years.
“He came in once to lunch, Monsieur, and I waited
on him myself—I who tell you.”
“How did he look?” put in Edith.
The waiter shrugged his shoulders. “No man
grows younger, Madame,” he said, “as time goes on.”
“Yes, but did he look—How do you say ‘prosper-
ous,” Victor?”
“Non, Monsieur,” the waiter was sorry to say that
Monsieur Bettany had not looked prosperous. More-
over he had looked sad.
That was all we could gain, but we left a stamped
and addressed envelope with the waiter, and gave him
five francs, with the promise of a like sum by return
of post if he could ever send us any further news of
our old friend.
Edith was very silent as we made our way to the
Luxembourg Gardens. She looked tired and worn. It
was a beautiful day, and there was in the air that oft-
described and quite indescribable gayety that in the
306


M A G PYE
spring is as much a part of Paris as Notre Dame it-
self.
She led the way to a seat not far from the statue
of a very pot-bellied Cupid shooting an arrow appar-
ently straight at the bald head of an old gentleman
reading the Figaro on a bench opposite us.
“Let’s sit down here for a little while.”
It was very pleasant there in the sun, and I liked
watching the shrill, leggy looking French children at
play. At last Edith said:
“Victor, you are so good to me. You have been so
patient today at what I know you think is only a silly
whim, that I want to tell you something.”
“Don’t tell me, dear, if it would be painful to you.
You know how I love being with you 35
She laid her hand on mine for a moment.
“I don’t want you to think that I am looking for
—for Bill Bettany in a silly, sentimental way. You
know that I loved him, and you also know that I
have never loved anybody else, but one doesn’t go on
being in love for twenty years with a man one has
never seen during that time. I am not in love now
with poor—Bill.”
I could think of nothing to say, so I was silent.
“I am looking for him, Victor—I shall look for him,
now that I am sure he is alive, till the last day of my
life. I once did him a cruel wrong, one of the worst
wrongs a woman could possibly do to a man, and I
want to set it right.”
Of course I hadn’t the remotest notion what she
meant, and of course I couldn’t ask her, so I assured
her that I understood, and thanked her for telling me
so much.
“It was on this very bench we were sitting,” she re-
307


M A G. P. YE
away the very next morning with Miss Lossell for a
whole week.
“Oh, Mr. Quest,” she cried, grinning with the un-
reserve with which a large, affectionate dog some-
times grins at one, “how perfectly heavenly! Where
are we going?”
“Ah, that,” I returned sagely, “is on the knees of
the gods.”
To my relief this mystery only increased her de-
light, and before nine the next morning I had her at
Edith’s hotel, for their train was to go at ten some-
thing. But I decided to forego the pleasure of ac-
companying them to the station, in order to save for
myself the joy of beholding Mr. Cardwell’s discom-
fiture in finding himself thwarted.
Our interview was really rather amusing, and since
that hour I have always known what must have been
the feeling of Jack the Giant Killer after he had slain
his Giant.
This Giant came bounding in to the room about
half past eleven, beaming with joy and anticipation.
“Good morning, sir,” he exclaimed, making great
play with that reverence for my age that he had been
sharp enough to see intensely annoyed me. “I hope
you are feeling all right this fine morning.”
“Much the same as usual, thank you.”
“I have just come to tell Miss Pye that I have got
a box for ‘Carmen’ tonight, and to remind her that
she and Mr. Treffry—what a delightful old gentleman
he is—so sympathetic and kind!—that they are lunch-
ing with me at Henri’s.”
“Indeed?” I murmured, quite politely. “Won’t
you sit down?” He did.
“I suppose they told you what a jolly day we had
309


M A G P YE
yesterday?” he went on. “I’m sorry to hear that Miss
Pye's father has been ill. I’m greatly looking forward
to the pleasure of meeting him when we get back to
London.”
(Bullock-hided but doomed youth!)
“Would you mind letting her know I am here?”
“I am sorry,” I said. “I’m afraid that is impos-
sible.”
“What do you mean—impossible?”
It was very undignified of me to play with him in
this way, and I knew it, but somehow I couldn’t re-
sist it. -
“You said she was to lunch with you at Henri's?”
I asked him.
His deep-set little eye darted a glance of suspicion
at me, but I met it innocently; as innocently as he
had yesterday morning met my story about Mag be-
ing out.
“Yes, Mr. Treffry and she both promised.”
Then came my turn, and with my puny sword I
slew the monster.
“In that case,” I said, “it is odd that she should
be at this moment a good hour and a half away from
Paris by train.”
Oh, frabjous day! He could have crushed me like
a blown eggshell with his thumb and finger; he could
have pressed the breath out of my gullet; and I had
a fearful joy in thinking of these things as he crept
in silence out of the room.
I believe he left Paris the next day. At all events,
during the fortnight I was still there—for because of
Mag’s run into Belgium our visit had lengthened a
little—he no longer loomed up offending my eye in
theaters, or blocking the view at street corners, or oc-
310


M A G. P. YE
cupying on velvet seats in restaurants room that would
have done for three average-sized men. For the time
being I triumphed.
Treffry and I spent most of the time motoring and
enjoying the out-of-door life of Paris. The old man
was such a delightful companion that I didn’t miss
Mag at all, and even Edith only a little occasionally,
but when at the end of five days the two ladies came
back, we had a very happy reunion and planned to
return to London the next day but one.


CHAPTER XLIV
I shall never forget our picnic in the forest of Fon-
tainebleau. It was my party, to celebrate our last
day and everything looked happy to me.
Early in the morning I spent quite two hours scour-
ing the streets of Paris to buy beautiful and strange
food for this festa; and indeed, for a man with his
pockets full of money, as I that one day was, there
can be on this wide earth nowhere like what some bold
translator has termed “the light city.” It was about
eleven when the four of us set forth in the car I had
hired for the occasion, on the back of which was
strapped two large ambrosial hampers. Mag was
bursting with excitement because I refused to tell
her what she was going to have to eat, and spent quite
ten minutes of our life-and-limb-imperilling dashing
up the Champs Elysées in suggesting all her favorite
viands, to all of which, needless to say, I returned an
unqualified no.
I remember that it was the fourteenth of June that
day and everything looked happy to me.
Mag had been told simply that her father had had
a touch of flue, and it had never occurred to her to
doubt the truth of this information. I knew that by
the time we got back the poor man, who had greatly
312


M A G. P. YE
risen in my estimation by the news contained in Cath-
erine Johnson’s letter, would be settled in Blantyre
Buildings ready to welcome his great traveler. It was
also balm to my spirit that the Bruiser had been so
definitely routed, and surely I need not say how per-
fectly happy I was in being that beautiful morning in
that beautiful place with my two dearest women in
the world, and Mr. Treffry whom I had learned in
the past two years really to love.
They all seemed happy, too, and even beside Mag’s
glowing youthfulness my dear Edith lost, to my eyes,
none of her beauty.
It is hard to express the deep happiness it gave me
to see that Edith and Mag were growing fonder and
fonder of each other. Altogether a propitious morning.
We stopped the car somewhere in the middle of the
forest and, telling the chauffeur to come back for
us in two hours’ time, made our way, I lugging with
Mag’s help the mysterious hampers, to a lovely little
clearing which was neither sunny nor shady, but
flecked and dappled with a moving web of lovely light
and pleasant shade, and there we spread out our rugs
and there we camped.
Mag looked round.
“This reminds me,” she said, “of that lovely picture
in Lord Lossell’s gallery—‘La Clairière.” Do you re-
member, Mr. Quest?”
I did. There is something very beautiful in the
word “clairière.” It is much prettier than “clearing,”
and like so many French words seems in an unfair way
to mean so much more romantic things than their Eng-
lish equivalent, but romantic things were soon forgot-
ten in our zest for collecting sticks to make the fire
for our coffee.
313


M. A. G. P. YE
It is, of course, strictly against the law to make a
fire in the forest there, but little did we reck of such
tiresome things as laws, and very soon we had a fine
blaze, the water boiling under a patent arrangement
I had bought that morning—the water we had brought
in bottles.
I don’t suppose that there is a single soul who does
not think that he or she can make beautiful coffee. I
have no wish to dispute these pretensions, but long
experience has taught me that I really can. The cof-
fee was fresh ground, and we had cream and milk.
The bread was twisty, crusty crescents, and the butter
had been churned in Brittany.
I shan’t attempt to describe what we had to eat ex-
cept to say that as a meal for a June day under
French trees and a French sky it could not possibly
have been beaten. We were all very hungry, even
Edith, and when Mag and I had packed up the things
and buried the débris we moved a little further away
and again sat down, and told stories.
Presently the car came back, and with that lordly
disregard for time and money that characterizes me
when I really set about doing things on a grand scale,
I bade the follow wait.
Dear old Mr. Treffry (we had brought a pillow for
him) leaned against a fallen tree and very quietly and
unostentatiously dropped off to sleep.
I told Mag a bloodcurdling tale about a charcoal
burner who went mad in the forest and roamed about
there after dark; and Edith, who had taken off her
hat, leaned against a tree trunk and listened to our
nonsense with a happy smile on her dear face.
Mag and I finally took to writing rhymes—limer-
icks—and became so idiotic that we could hardly read
314,


M A G PY E
Neither of them answered me, and a moment later
Mag had dashed off amongst the trees and was lost to
view.
“What is it?”
Edith looked at me helplessly. “I haven’t the
slightest idea,” she said. “We we were talking, and
she was stroking my hand and I was nearly asleep.”
She frowned gently. “It’s very odd, Victor.”
It was odd, but as Mr. Treffry woke up at that min-
ute, we said no more about it and when, ten minutes
later, Mag came back, so to speak, into camp, she
went straight to Edith from behind, and, kneeling
down, put her arms round the older woman’s neck.
“Dear Miss Lossell,” she said, “I’m sorry to have
been so silly. Will you please forgive me?”
I saw Treffry—dear old man!—admiring the pretty
picture they made, and when Edith turned and took
the young girl in her arms, the old gentleman rose
to his feet.
“This is fairyland we’re in,” he said, “and perfectly
delightful, but perhaps, my dear Quest, it is also just
a trifle damp for my antique bones. Suppose we start
back?”
Edith agreed at once, and a few minutes later we
were again in the car, bowling along through the in-
tricate, romantic forest.
Mag sat with Edith’s hand folded close in hers,
and said very little, occasionally touching with a ca-
ressing forefinger the little chain bracelet with an ivy
leaf medallion, that Edith had worn ever since I could
remember.
The next afternoon on the boat I took occasion to
ask the child what it was that had so startled her in
the forest. ' -
316


CHAPTER XLV
And now we have come to war time. I have no in-
tention of trying to depict the effect, even on my un-
important self, of the world cataclysm. Much has
been, and much will be, written about the war; most
of it, I venture to think, nearly worthless through lack
of perspective, for to my mind great events can best
be described in the subsequent quiet and peace. More-
over, if anyone can describe its effects at such a close
range as this, Mr. H. G. Wells has very completely
and conclusively done so as Mr. Britling.
My humble little story I shall tell as a thing too in-
significant to have been much affected by the dramatic
events under whose shadow they passed, so I shall
only say that, like everybody else, I have been both
saddened and encouraged by the effects of the Kaiser's
decision to attack the bellicose, and provocative, and
contemptible little army of these isles. I know many
people who have fallen in the great conflict, and as
yet we have not come to its end, but, ignorant though
I am of psychic and metaphysical things, and though
I have no knowledge whatsoever of strategy and tac-
tics and could, if asked, offer no suggestions as to
how our country could better be governed, or by
whom, in the future, yet I still can see light breaking
3.18


M A G PYE
ahead, and it seems to me that it is, unlike the flash
of shot and shell, or the glory of conflagrations, a
clear, white illumination like the promise of dawn.
Surely better days must be in store for the whole world
after this dreadful time of purification.
And now to get on with my story. I stayed in
Hampshire for eight or nine weeks, although, I am
glad to say, I had been in town on that never-to-be-for-
gotten night when we declared war against Germany.
I had been one of the waiting crowd before Bucking-
ham Palace. No one who was there will ever forget it,
and I don’t believe anyone who was there could de-
scribe it, try he ever so hard.
The psychology of crowds is always wonderful, but
the psychology of a crowd breathlessly waiting for
the vindication of the honor of its country is a thing
not to be put into words.
When I came back from Hampshire I found Blan-
tyre Buildings, so far as I was concerned, deserted,
save for that pathetic permanency Madame Aimée.
Mag and her father, she told me when I found my
way to No. 133 one pouring wet evening, had gone
to the East End to see some one who was ill there.
“An old friend, I suppose,” the French woman added
with an odd kind of acrimony; “the man who told
you about Mag’s mother.”
“No doubt. Why on earth did Pye take the child?”
“It is probable,” she answered, smiling, “that the
child took him. Mag has changed very much, Mon-
sieur; she is growing very fond of her father.”
“Good. How is she behaving about—well, her
mother?”
Madame Aimée stitched placidly on. Being a rainy
evening the windows were almost closed, and the smell
319


M A G PYE
Mag’s pictures. She had sold two, it appeared, and
was busy on a third.
“I wonder,” I began, struck by a new idea, “whether
her lessons began too late, Mr. Pye? Whether, if she
had had earlier instruction, things might have gone
better with her.”
The air of authority with which the broken, inar-
ticulate man met this surmise astonished me.
“No, Mr. Quest,” he said, lighting a cigarette, “it
is not that. I think that even now, before she is eigh-
teen, my daughter has developed to the fullest extent
that which was born in her.”
“Then you don’t believe,” I mused, “that artistic
powers can be increased?”
He made an odd, un-English gesture with his left
hand. “No-developed, improved, yes; but increased,
no. According to Mag’s materials she has done won-
ders.”
It was raining, so I walked to Sloane Square and
went home by underground, and when I got out at the
Temple station, behold, the rain had ceased, and in a
windblown rack of cloud perched a half-ripe moon. It
was a beautiful evening, and I wandered for an hour
up and down the Embankment, wondering how far
right poor Pye had been.
Finally I came to the conclusion that at all events
he had not been far wrong, and that every mind might
be compared, so to speak, to an egg, and out of a hen’s
egg is bound to come a chicken, no matter how warm
the incubator in which it is placed, and that nothing
can prevent a peacock's egg from ultimately produc-
ing a peacock.
Then I went home to bed.


M A G. P. YE
“I’ll try if you’ll promise not to laugh at me.”
“I never laugh at you, Magpie, dear—not inside.
She nodded gravely. “All right, then, I’ll try. You
see it’s rather fun,” she said, “to be able to scare the
life out of anybody who is so big that he could liter-
ally swallow one whole.”
“Oh, I see. And this whale-like fascination is
enough for the sprightly minnow to risk all her future
on?”
“The sprightly minnow,” she answered, “is not a
minnow at all, it is an electric eel, or a poisonous jelly-
fish—that’s the fun.”
“I see. And suppose you married him, where would
you be when the joy of being swallowed alive and
stinging back had lost its freshness and charm? Re-
member you may have got over your love of stinging,
but you will still remain,” I concluded impressively
and rather pleased with my choice of a word, “like
Jonah in the whale's belly.”
“I think it is very indelicate of you to talk of Mr.
Cardwell's—I mean—Oh, Mr. Quest, what idiots we
are l’”
She laughed till I could see her tonsils. But a little
later, when we were again serious, we went back to
the subject of her feeling for the young man.
“After all, dear,” I said, “none of us, your friends
who love you, likes Cardwell, not one of us, and as we
are all fairly well-meaning and not unintelligent peo-
ple, don’t you think that our opinion ought to count
just a little with you?”
She was silent for a moment and very serious, her
charming eyelids hiding her eyes. At last she said
slowly, “I have another reason, Mr. Quest.”
“Is it one you can tell me?”
325


M A G. P. YE
Her answer amazed me. “Yes, it’s about my
mother.”
“About your mother, Magpie?”
She rose and walked up and down the long, dusty
room, her hands clasped behind, her head bent.
“I know what you think about my mother, dear
Mr. Quest,” she began slowly again, “I have never
forgotten, but—” very gently, “you were wrong, you
know.”
“My poor child, I was right.”
She shook her head. “No, I knew then, and I know
a thousand times more surely now.”
“But why do you think so? I was told—it was
Davis who told me, and he has known your father for
years.”
“He has known my father for a long time, but not
all the time. No doubt he thought he was speaking
the truth, poor little man—by the way, he died yester-
day—but he was mistaken.”
There was no doubting her absolute belief in what
she was saying, and her conviction was so convincing
that I began to wonder if, after all, Davis had been
mistaken.
“Have you ever seen the lady in the motor since
that day?” I asked.
“I could tell you,” she returned, “her name, and all
about her—the whole story—but I musn't, it wouldn’t
be fair, so you mustn't ask me.”
“Nonsense!” I said testily. “You’ve been reading
the Family Herald. These things don’t happen in
real life. I tell you your father’s wife was, before he
married her, a tumbler in a circus.”
She sat still in the middle of the room, and she was
very pale.
-T-EE.
326


MAG PYE
The next day I received a short note from Mag, for-
giving me, and thanking me for the lilies, but express-
ing no wish to see me, and although I called once and
sent an invitation not only to a play but to dinner at
the Savoy, in the next three weeks, she wouldn’t see
me, and I knew that her forgiveness had been only
one of duty and gratitude for the past, and by no
means meant that she had forgotten her anger.
I had never told Edith what poor Davis had told
me about Mrs. Pye, but now in my misery I did tell
her one day as we walked in the Park, and in order
to make my situation clear I was obliged to tell her
about the lady in the motor car. To my surprise she
already knew about this.
”Mag told me in Paris,” she explained. “She’s very
odd about it. I never saw anyone so tense and dra-
matic about something so distant, and impersonal, one
might almost call it, as a mother one has never seen
except in a motor car.”
“She’s very romantic, is Mag, in spite of her up-to-
date casualness of manner; I wonder what on earth
it can all mean. Pye must have been an attractive
fellow, and wonderful things happen, save your pres-
ence, even in the British aristocracy, my dear. But still
—her father must have told her something, because
she's perfectly truthful, and she is too quick-witted to
imagine that one thing means another. Besides she
says he nearly fainted when he saw the lady.”
“I once asked Mag,” she returned meditatively, “if
she wouldn’t like me to take her driving in the Park
sometimes on the chance of seeing this queen of mys-
tery, but she wouldn’t go.”
“Now that’s odd,” I returned, “because she sat with
me at Church Parade many a time, with her eyes
-
- —

328


M A G P Y E
glued on every woman who drove past. Of course,”
I added, looking at my watch, “she’s at just the ro-
mantic age, and is doubtless making a very huge
mountain out of a very insignificant molehill. And,
after all, at that time any well-dressed woman in a
motor car might have looked like a fairy queen to the
poor little thing.”
Edith laughed. “Not a bit of it. She’s an un-
commonly good judge, I can tell you, not only as to
looks, but as to whether a woman’s a lady or a man
a gentleman. Her observations on people are ex-
tremely amusing.”
“Do try,” I said, “to make her tell you more,
Edith dear, for she’s laying up great sorrow for her-
self. No, I must go. I promised not to be late.”
We shook hands and she laughed gently at me.
“She may be laying up sorrow for herself, but she’s
also crushing my poor old Victor under the weight of
her displeasure. She’s a vindictive monkey, and I shall
tell her so.”
But Mag was not vindictive, and as I made my way
to Bloomsbury I was very unhappy about her.


CHAPTER XLVII
As time went on I was glad to see that Yangus was
not deeply depressed by the continued devotion of the
Bruiser to the Magpie. He was instead, angry and
bloodthirsty, and showed it in a way that was balm
to my soul.
“Do you suppose they are engaged?” he asked.
“I don’t know. As I have told you, Miss Pye and
I are hardly on speaking terms.”
He looked on me with the greatest compassion.
“I am sorry, but it’s perfect nonsense, of course,
I shall tell her so.”
In view of this decision he insisted on Mag’s com-
ing to tea with him and his uncle and me within the
next few days, and, rather to my surprise, she did so,
treating me with perfect courtesy and a horrid little
film of reserve that was sincere, and that I tried in
vain to brush aside.
I sent her a book next day, pretending that I had
promised it to her, but this failed to move her, and
only a lucky (brute that I am to say it!) fainting fit
of Madame Aimée's succeeded in winning me her real
forgiveness, for by a stroke of good fortune I was
with Madame Aimée at the time, and able to be of serv-
ice to her. This she told Mag, thus winning for me
330


M A G. P. YE
a perfectly disproportionate burst of gratitude from
the haughty young woman.
After that we all dined together—Treffry’s party,
this time. We wore our best clothes, and looked very
handsome, and the dinner (it was at the Berkeley, for
Mag had expressed a wish to become acquainted with
all the great restaurants of London) was a most merry
one until the horizon was suddenly darkened by the
vast approach of the Bruiser. He came in to speak
to some people at another table, but when he saw
us (we were sitting over our coffee) he immediately
joined us, shaking hands warmly with us all and
inviting Mr. Treffry to invite him to sit down for a
bit.
I think I have said that Treffry never shared my
violent antipathy for the self-confident, rhinoceros-
hided young man, so the desired invitation was cor-
dially given, and we drew our chairs closer to make
room for the unfortunate one on which that gigantic
youth sat down.
To my delight Mag seemed less impressed than usual
by this visitant from higher spheres.
Yangus had gained in value, as young men do,
through having been absent and doing unknown things
in unknown lands. He was no longer the abject slave
he had been, and that, of course, raised him greatly
in her feminine eyes. Moreover, the huge one had lost
something of his pristine charm for her, for he was, so
to speak, always on tap, and that is disillusioning.
Therefore the race was more or less a fair one, and
as the Honorable Anthony waned in Miss Pye's esti-
mation, he, perhaps inevitably, rose a little in mine,
though I don’t know that that comforted him very
much.
331


M A G P Y E
Yangus, sly dog, had learned a thing or two in
India, as indeed is nothing unusual, and, as I have
said, paid no such abject devotion to his charmer as
of yore. So, human nature being what it is, Mag
treated the returned traveler, if not exactly with defer-
ence, at least not so much in the way in which the
boot treats the worm.
Treffry was delighted, and he and I thoroughly en-
joyed ourselves. For although the old man rather
liked young Gargantua he had never wanted Mag to
marry him, and it was with difficulty that I sup-
pressed a cheer as, before old Glenny had smoked his
second cigar, Lord Maxstoke's heir beat a dignified,
if rather sulky retreat, murmuring that he was due
at Lady Somebody’s ball, in, I think, Grosvenor
Square.
“I don’t like that lad,” Glenny declared, looking at
his cigar, and then stabbing it, in a way that looked
very dangerous, at his long beard in feeling for his
mouth.
“Rather braw?” I suggested.
“No,” said the old man, unmoved. “Yon’s not braw,
yon’s above life size.”
We then talked a wild jargon that Mag and I pre-
tended was Scotch, and in which the two Scotsmen ably
seconded us, until the party broke up in general good
temper.
Everybody remembers the turmoil of the first few
months of the war, and I suppose I was at that time no
more busy than anybody else, though I felt that no-
body had ever lived in such a whirl as I.
I blundered about, trying all kinds of things till
I finally settled down at some abnormally dull secre-
tarial work at the Home Office. No words can tell
332


M A G PYE
how I loathe this occupation, but having undertaken
it I shall stick to it until some change in the arrange-
ments sets me free. And so back to my story.
On looking back now, and gathering together its
winding threads, I seem to see nothing worth relat-
ing until a few weeks before Mag’s eighteenth birth-
day. .
At this time Edith was at Wandover, which, to
everybody’s surprise, Lossell had, within a fortnight,
turned into one of the most perfect private hospitals
surely ever seen. Yangus was living up to his neck
in mud, so he wrote, at Salisbury Plain; Mag was
what she called “grinding bandages” somewhere for
hours every day; Madame Aimée, in every moment that
she could spare from her work, was knitting huge
and hideous socks for the soldiers. Max Cohen came
out strong; there was not a charity on which he did
not figure, and he gave his time and brains as gener-
ously as he gave his money.
One evening in November, then, I was sitting in my
room, rather glad to feel, as the rain clattered on the
window and the wind howled in the old courtyard, that
autumn had really come. I know that many people
find sadness in what the Americans very beautifully
call “the fall of the year,” and that spring is sup-
posed to be the season of hopefulness and happiness;
but it seems to me that to people whose lives have
passed the time when every day is naturally expected
to bring some new delight, and when quite half one’s
pleasures must be either retrospective or vicarious,
the early part of the year has a queer little sadness
of its own. I know that I always feel older, more out
of date, more useless in the spring than at any other
time, whereas in the autumn there is in the sense of
333


M A G. P. YE
cosiness, there is in the delight of early lamps and
the pleasant company of not yet quite necessary fires,
something very comforting and very fulfilling, and I
think I feel about these two seasons much as I feel
about, say, Mag and dear old Middleton Treffry. To
Mag, who stands for spring, because she is Youth, I
am an old man; to Mr. Treffry, young though he al-
ways will be in spirit, I am almost Youth.
On this blowy, chilly, wet night, I drew my dear
armchair close to the fire which, I had been taught by
war economists, would shortly become almost a criminal
luxury; and I loaded my pipe with a secret mixture
of my own, and stretched out my feet, in a perfectly dis-
reputable pair of old slippers, on the fender; I bent
forward the green silk shade of the electric lamp at
my elbow so that no glare could offend my eyes and
a mellow light was ready for my book, and I opened
the book. - -
I had been feeling all day that the time had come
for me to go for perhaps the hundredth time to the
Hebrides with Dr. Johnson and his faithful Buzzy.
The wind howled; we had a most tiresome passage to
the Islands, but finally landed, the great man soaked
to the skin but very sententious, and Buzzy and I
hanging on his every word. And then somebody
at my door.
I called out “Come in,” and, after a moment of
fumbling, in came Mr. Pye. The minute I saw him
I knew why he had come.
It was six months since his last nocturnal visit to me,
and the poor fellow had, in the interim, done his best.
I noticed as I welcomed him and gave him a pair of
slippers, for his boots were soaked, that he looked ill
and haggard and indefinably broken.
334


M A G P Y E
I had begun by thoroughly despising him, but his
doughty struggle at his long, losing game had inspired
me with a certain real respect, and to save him the
embarrassment of an explanation, I said, as I poured
out some whiskey for him,
“You want me to take Mag away again?”
He was gnawing his lips, which were dry and scaly
looking, and his hands, I saw, were never still a mo-
ment. He nodded and I saw in his eyes a look of in-
articulate torture, such as I have, for my own peace,
never seen before or since.
“Don’t think worse of me than you must, Mr.
Quest,” he said, “and don’t think that I don’t know
how little right I have to come and bother you with
my miserable troubles.”
“Drink your whiskey, Pye, it’ll warm you. Man
alive, you’re trembling! And as to my thinking badly
of you, just listen to me. I have—”I said it very
slowly and very quietly, as if I were dropping big,
round stones into a pool I didn’t want to disturb—“I
have a very great admiration for you.”
His face worked, deep wrinkles that I had never
seen in it before appeared suddenly as if drawn by
charcoal all over it, and he stammered out something
I couldn’t understand, but that I knew meant grati-
tude and relief.
“It is worse than ever this time,” he went on, with
a sudden rush of words. “I can’t bear it any longer,
I have endured it as long as I could. You see it is
difficult to get the stuff. Since poor Davis died I
have hardly known where to go for it; but I met a
sailor the other day who sold me some. And I must
have it, I must.”
I nodded. “I see. I’ll ask Miss Lossell to invite
335


M A G. P. YE
Mag down to her hospital for a time. Mag’s crazy
to go.”
He breathed a deep sigh and finished his drink. “I
wonder if you know,” he began after a long pause,
during which I put some coals on the fire as softly as
I could, “that this kind of thing—mine, I mean—
can’t be got over?”
“Sometimes it can.”
He shook his head. “No, not when it is a habit
of many years. I shouldn’t care a bit if it wasn’t for
the child.”
“But where is the child, you poor fellow,” I put in.
“She is nearly a grown woman now, Mr. Quest.”
I wanted to tell him that a man’s daughter can never
really grow beyond the child point to her parent, but
"I didn’t. I felt that he wanted to talk, and that I
had better let him choose his own words.
“You have been the best friend Mag has ever had,”
he resumed. “There is no use my thanking you. But
for you God knows what would have happened to
her.”
“I think you forget, Mr. Pye,” I interrupted him
gently, “Mag’s very best friend, Madame Aimée.”
He shook his head and frowned. “I know. I know.
You’ve told me that before, and I have heard it a
thousand times from Mag herself, but I have never
seen the woman—I couldn’t bear to—disablement and
disfigurement have always been frightful to me.” He
shuddered from head to foot. “I know you think I am
a brute about it, and you are right. That is one
reason why I have come tonight—I have brought,”
he fumbled in his shabby coat and took out an en-
velope, “I have brought a letter that I have written
for you to give to Madame Aimée, just in case,”
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M A G. P. YE
he stammered and broke off, “just in case I . . .”
For a wild moment I thought he meant that he was
going to kill himself, and, reading the thought in my
face, he gave a little laugh and shook his head. “No,
no; if I had been that kind I should have done it years
and years ago. I was never,” he added, “brave enough
for that.”
He handed me a letter and I saw that it was ad-
dressed in a small neat hand just to Madame Aimée.
“In case anything should happen to me, even if it
is in ten years’ time,” he went on quietly; “you’ll give
her that, Mr. Quest. It is a poor attempt to thank.
her for what she has been to Mag.”
I put the letter on the table. “Then you do under-
stand what she has been to Mag”
“Yes, I have told her that she has been the nearest
thing to a mother the child has ever known.”
Then it was that I dared ask him my great question.
“Look here, Pye,” I said, “let’s talk frankly for a
few minutes—for Mag’s good. Will you tell me—
for her sake—and I’m not asking lightly—something
about her mother?”
He looked mildly surprised, but not, as I had half
expected—deeply moved. -
“Her mother? Yes, I'll tell you; but why, why do
you want to know?”
I didn’t answer, and, without waiting for me to
speak, he said simply: “I married a girl who was one
of a family of tumblers in a circus. She was one of
the best and purest women who ever lived.” He sat
staring into the fire, his dreadful nervousness for a
moment in abeyance. -
Then I said, “And Mag is her child?” -
His eyes were full of almost stupid bewilderment as
he stared at me.

337


M. A. G. P. YE
meant it about the letter. And the reparation that I
am bound to make, that I am allowed to make after
my death, shall be made through you. That will be,
perhaps, some little recompense for your marvellous
kidness to Mag and me.”
He held out his hand and an odd kind of power
seemed to radiate from him. It didn’t seem possible to
me that he could seriously intend making a brute of
himself with drugs, and yet I dared not put this
thought into words. I shook hands with him in an
obedient way that I observed, myself. He smiled at
me and his brown eyes for the first time that I had
ever seen them so were full of kindness. Then we
parted, he crossing the street to the Pimlico Road,
and I standing under the lamp where he had left me.


M A G P Y E
dame Aimée, “I’ll come back in a little while. It’s Mr.
Quest.” And we went downstairs. I told her on the
way and I let her go into the room alone. I shall
never forget standing on the little gallery watching
the moonlight, which was broken and intermittent be-
cause of the wind-driven clouds, as it poured down
into the courtyard. Most of the inmates of the Build-
ings had gone to bed, but in one or two windows lights
still showed, and somewhere a cheap gramaphone was
playing. It seemed a long time that I stood there,
and then one of the stretcher-bearers came out
and told me he was going to the chemist’s for one or
two things that the doctor would be sure to need.
It appeared that he had already sent Copley for a
doctor.
“He’s not dead, then?” I asked, knowing for the
first time what novelists mean when they say that a
man’s own voice sounds strange to him.
“No, but he’s done for, sir—at least I think so.
Spine.”
As he went downstairs a tall thin young man came
up and I found that he was, as I had supposed, the
doctor. He went in, and again I watched. After a
long time the door opened and Mag came out. She
had wrapped a shawl round her—the white shawl of
Madame Aimée's that she had worn for the sake of
sentiment at the famous birthday party in Grosvenor
Place almost exactly a year before. I went toward
her, but with a queer little smile she shook her head,
and with her left hand (the other was holding the
folds of the shawl under her chin) motioned me back,
and went almost silently downstairs.
Mine was a long and sad vigil. I loved Mag, and
for the first time I had that night somehow got into
346


M A G P Y E
sympathy with her poor father. He had trusted me
—in a way confided in me—and yet in their tragedy I
was only an outsider. It came to me as I stood there,
my feet, in my old slippers, aching with cold and
wet, that I was old and lonely and unneeded. After
a while I began to walk up and down, like an unin-
vited sentinel.
I walked as quietly as I could because of the work-
ing people round me who needed unbroken rest, and
thus it happened that I was at the far end of the side
of the gallery when Mag came back. I heard her
voice as she spoke to Copley, and as she came upstairs
I heard it again, thus knowing that she had not re-
turned alone. Largely, I hope, out of delicacy, but I
also fear to a great extent out of hurt vanity and
pique, I turned my back in the darkness as two people
arrived at the landing and went into the flat. But
when Mag opened the door again a moment later, I
was standing just outside it. She came to me. “Will
you come in?” she said, and I followed her.
Pye was stretched on his bed, his old-fashioned night-
shirt wide open over his thin chest, his hands lying in-
ertly on the counterpane. As I went into the room
the doctor came out, the ambulance men having gone;
and kneeling, her arm under his head, her face on his
chest, was Edith Lossell.
I knew so clearly at that first sight of her what it
all meant, I felt so bitterly what a fool I had been not
to understand long before, that it seems to me almost
unnecessary to write another word; but poor Pye's
eyes opened as Mag and I came in, and I knew by
something in them that he would like to speak to me.
So I laid my hand on his, and with the other just
touched Edith’s hair.
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M A G. P. YE
“He wants me to tell you, dear Victor,” she said,
“that it is he who is my dear love.”
Why I hadn’t known years before that he was Bet-
tany God alone can tell. It seemed incredible to me
then that anyone could have been as stupid as I had
been. I nodded.
“I see. And it was you Mag saw in the motor car,
and thought was her mother?” She nodded, brave
soul, she even smiled.
“Yes. But there is something else that you and
Mag must both hear.” Bending down she laid her
face for a second against that rapidly changing face
on the pillow; then she rose, still holding his hand.
“It’s this—this is why I have broken my heart try-
ing to find him.” Bettany’s eyes were fixed on her face.
“Victor, he never painted those two pictures, ‘Cross-
roads” and “The Windmill.’ You see, father said that
we couldn’t marry, and Bill, for my sake, and for his,
because he knew that I was breaking my heart with
him, pretended that these pictures were his.” Then she
added slowly: “He was robbing no one really. He
was staying at a farmhouse in Finisterre after father
had sent him away (for the excellent reason—Oh, my
dear love!—that he was not a great painter), and he
found the two pictures in the thatch of the roof of
his little garret room.” She broke off, and kneeled
down, burying her face in the man’s almost motionless
breast. “The last person who had lived in that room
had been a young painter who was killed in the Franco-
Prussian War; the people of the house didn’t even
know his name; and so Bill took the pictures and told
my father they were his.” I nodded.
“I see, dearest Edith, and then Lord Lossell allowed
you to be engaged?”
348


M A G. P. YE
“Yes.” Taking a glass from the table she poured
a few drops of some dark liquid between the dying
man's parted lips.
“Don’t blame him, Victor, don’t dare blame him.
It was dishonest—yes; he was a thief—yes. But he
was dishonest and a thief willingly for less than four
weeks, and he has been paying all the rest of his life.”
I could hardly bear to let her undergo the pain of
finishing the story. It was so unnecessary, for I knew
so well what she was going to say. Mag had come
quite close to me, and I put my arm round her, and
thus we listened. But the man’s eyes, fixed so avidly
on Edith’s face, compelled me to silence.
“You remember that night of the storm,” she re-
sumed, turning to me for one moment. “He had just
left me when you came, and he had just told me about
the pictures; he wanted to go to Father and tell the
truth; he wanted to own up to the whole world and I
wouldn’t let him.”
The silence in the room was dreadful; it seemed to
be thickening; we all held our breath. Then Bettany
gave a little rough sound without moving his lips,
and she went on. “Father had that very day sold
the pictures to the Chantry people; and it is my doing
that they are hanging on the wall now as Bettany’s
work.”
At this Mag spoke. “Why didn’t you marry him?”
she asked coldly.
“I couldn’t; I was angry, I was ashamed. I was
bad and hard and cruel to him, and I sent him away.
I made him promise never to tell and I sent him away
with that on his mind.”
“You have been trying for years to find him, Edith,”
I said slowly. “Now I know why you wanted to give
340


M A G. P. YE
him back his promise; you wanted to tell him that he
might own that the pictures were not his.”
“Yes. Now I have told you everything. Come,
Mag,” she said a minute later, “he wants you.”
At that moment I, who was standing nearest the door,
heard an odd sound in the passage—a trailing, bump-
ing kind of noise that I couldn’t explain and yet made
my heart jump. Then the sitting-room door opened,
and the noise came nearer, and they all heard it.
Edith drew away from the bed; Mag who had kneeled
down and was holding her Father's right hand to her
breast, turned round and stared at the door. Bet-
tany’s eyes had closed and he was smiling. He looked
up. The sitting-room door opened into the bedroom,
and as the odd, shuffling noise approached, I pulled
it wide. There was a little gasping sound, and then,
sideways, crab-like, ducking and bending, almost
crawling, one hand sometimes to the floor, finally
lurching against the lintel, came Madame Aimée.
Bettany opened his eyes. It was impossible for him
to be paler than he had been ever since I entered the
room, but something changed in his face, and when I
sprang to the poor, broken woman and helped her into
the room, Edith drew back, and Bettany spoke—the
only word he had spoken since my entrance.
“Charlotte.”
I helped the poor creature to the bed and she kneeled
without a word. Then, after a moment's silence, she
produced from under her loose robe the worn brown
rosary I had often seen, and began to pray.
Presently she turned to Edith and said very gently:
“I am his wife, Mademoiselle, and Mag’s mother.”
Then again she prayed.
I could bear no more, so I quietly left the room and
350


M A G PY E
stood in the gallery looking out into the rain which
was again coming down hard.
Some time after, Edith joined me and we stood there
for, I think, quite an hour, hardly speaking—just
waiting. It was Mag who told us that we need no
longer wait. She came out quite quietly and joined
us, holding out a hand to each.
“He’s dead,” she said.
Edith wouldn’t go home till we had helped Madame
Aimée upstairs, and while I went for a taxi they had
a little talk about which neither of them ever told
me a word.
I didn’t see Mrs. William Bettany again that night,
but after I had put Edith into a taxi I left her. I
knew she would rather be alone, and I knew that I
should. I went quietly back up the stairs and found
Mag straightening the counterpane over her dead fa-
ther. She wasn’t crying, she was very quiet, and
after a while she let me make her some coffee; and,
drawing up the blinds, we sat down on the shabby
sofa and drank our coffee and talked as the slow,
autumn day came to Pimlico.


M A G. P. YE
“That is because,” Madame Aimée (as she likes us to
call her even now) went on, “I had seen you and him to-
gether one day in the King's Road, where I lived, pass
my windows, and he- He was not well, Monsieur,” she
added, turning to me, “and Mag was trying to help
him.”
The poor woman’s mouth quivered and she pressed
her finger tips to it for a moment.
“I couldn’t bear that. Though I had left them for
their good, I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t endure seeing
her with a torn frock and a dirty pinafore.”
The bravery and simple goodness of her mother im-
pressed Mag as much as it impressed me, particularly
Madame Aimée's splendid self-sacrifice in enduring the
child’s nonsense about her lady mother.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Mag used to ask her. And
Madame Aimée never answered, only, under the shadow
of the blue veil, she would smile.
I came up to town once during our stay at Bourne-
mouth, to help Edith in her arrangements about the
pictures, and with Madame Aimée's permission I also
showed her the letter poor Bettany had brought me the
last night of his life. It was a good letter, expressing
much gratitude for her kindness, and then, strangely, as
if someone or something had caused him to write, as he
supposed, to a stranger, the only thing that could pos-
sibly ever have consoled his poor wife, he went on to say
that Mag’s mother, who had been dead many years, was
one of the best and most generous creatures in the
world; that he wished Madame Aimée who, so far as one
human being can ever take the place of another human
being, had taken her place, to know that although the
child’s father was a worthless and miserable wreck, yet
there was in the child good and worth-while blood—her
354


M A G P Y E
With Edith’s permission I told Max Cohen the whole
story, for he, we knew, could insure the publication of
the truth in the least unpleasant way to everyone con-
cerned—and this he did with a delicacy, and kindness,
and painstaking, not to be expressed. Edith’s name or
Mag’s was not mentioned. Edith was happier than I
had seen her for years, and when I came away to go back
to my dear charges she took from her arm the little gold
bracelet with the green enamel medallion that she had
worn ever since I could remember.
“Give this,” she said, “to Mag. Do you remember
our picnic in Fontainebleau, Victor?”
I did.
“Well, it came open that day, as she played with it on
my arm, and she saw what was in it, and that is one of
the things that confirmed our poor child’s belief about
her mother.”
I opened the little locket, and the face of the young
Bettany, so amazingly like the old Bettany as he lay
dead, looked out at me.
“Poor Mag,” I said.
Edith laid her hand on my arm.
“Happy Mag, dear, to have a mother like hers.”
I looked at her longingly and wondered whether I
should be able to get through this autumn without caus-
ing her to go through her usual autumnal bad hour.
She smiled.
“Now don’t,” she said gently. “You mustn't, for I
never, never could.” And then she kissed me good-bye
and sent me back to pineland.
Since then only a few months have passed. Young
Angus is at the front; the Bruiser has swum out of our
ken; dear old Middleton Treffry is beginning to fail,
but in a very gentle, happy way; Cohen is busy and kind
356


M A G P YE
as ever; and Mag and Madame Aimée are living in a
little house in St. Leonard’s Terrace. They are very
happy—so am I, because it is a fine thing to see our
wild Magpie gentling into a sweet and generous-minded
WOman.
Some day the war will end, by God’s grace, and some
day I hope to see Mag married, and a mother.
In the meantime she is making a fair amount of
money by selling her charming pictures, and if Lord
Lossell shakes his head over them we none of us mind.
Thus I think I have explained, up to date, the lives of
all those friends about whom I have tried to tell.
So good-bye.
# # * * *
In the Tate Gallery hang together two very fine pic-
tures: the one is called “Crossroads,” and the other
“The Windmill,” and on the little gold label with black
lettering under the title to each appear two words:
“Unknown Painter.”
(2)