itli 
 
 M 
 
 i! 
 
 nun
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE TORTOISE
 
 BOOKS BY MARY BORDEN 
 
 THE ROMANTIC WOMAN 
 THE TORTOISE
 
 THE TORTOISE 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 MARY BORDEN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 ALFRED A KNOPF 
 
 1921
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 
 ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. 
 
 FEINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMEXICA
 
 PART ONE 
 
 641524
 
 THE man and the woman were dreadfully 
 still in the joyous rustling garden. 
 Through the early rippling light of lovely 
 morning they showed like desolate statues mo- 
 tionless, soundless, pallid. It was as if the dark 
 night had turned them to stone, and left upon them 
 its darkness. The man was at a distance from the 
 woman. The long emerald lawn still silvery with 
 dew, and the shining space above it, where the birds 
 darted and twittered, separated them, but something 
 invisible, taut as a strong wire held them together. 
 The man was bigger than most men. He loomed 
 huge and heavy before the rose-laden gable of the 
 small doorway, his great back and hunched shoul- 
 ders turned to the long low house that seemed too 
 small for him. A weary Colossus, his feet planted 
 on the brick walk between the beds of wallflowers 
 and pansies, he waited, immensely still. His atten- 
 tion was fixed on the distant woman, who sat rigid 
 on the edge of a garden seat, in the centre of the 
 lawn, her long body tilted forward, her bosom lifted, 
 her pale head averted and thrown back so that 
 her face received the full light of the sun. Her 
 pose was that of a figure nailed to the prow of a 
 ship. Her arms hung down, slanting backward. 
 The powerful gesture of her hands, if she had 
 
 9
 
 io THE TORTOISE 
 
 moved, would have been that of a swimmer, but she 
 made no gesture. Her figure was tense with the 
 dangerous stillness of fear. She looked to him like 
 one who would commit suicide by drowning in the 
 sunlight if she could. 
 
 It was clear that this man was capable of great 
 physical effort, but now all his effort and all his 
 power was concentrated in looking at her. In the 
 large white mask of his expressionless face, his eyes 
 were like small lighted openings through which es- 
 caped, toward her, all the life that was in him. His 
 looking at her was desperate. He looked because 
 he could not help looking. And while he looked 
 his strength ebbed away from him. Looking weak- 
 ened him as if a vein had been opened in his wrist, 
 but it was impossible to take his eyes from her. He 
 thought: " Tomorrow she may be gone. It is im- 
 possible that I shall never see her again." 
 
 He dared go no nearer. 
 
 She was small and white in the centre of the lawn. 
 High birch trees towered above her shaping the sky 
 to a canopy over her head. Beyond her gleamed 
 the lily pond framed in its round basin. He saw 
 her as the mysterious and incalculable, and uncertain 
 centre of the beautiful unsafe world. So he had 
 always seen her. Never had he felt safe with her. 
 Keeping her had been his gamble with fate. He 
 had played high, he had played constantly, higher 
 and higher, and he had believed he would win. His 
 faith had been profound, but now he was no longer 
 sure. He saw her in a new and terrible posture.
 
 THE TORTOISE n 
 
 She had told him, without speech, not to believe any 
 more. Yet he would not give up hope and how 
 could he stop believing? She had acted. She had 
 taken the issue out of his hands and yet he counted 
 still on one chance. If he left her completely alone 
 there was a chance. He could do nothing but leave 
 her alone. Yet he could not help watching her. 
 He could not help looking. 
 
 He felt sure that up to that moment she had not 
 seen him looking. He believed that never had she 
 seen him looking at her as he had actually always 
 looked. And although it might possibly be that 
 even now his face expressed nothing, he felt that it 
 must at last be the ordinary man's face of self-be- 
 trayal. 
 
 She had once said what a pity it was that he had 
 not a face of his own. Now he was glad of that, 
 but was nevertheless afraid to trust the blankness 
 of the mask God had lent him. He would have 
 lived over again all the many dumb hours of hatred 
 of that vast pale disc that said nothing to her to 
 be sure now that it was quite as usual, a smooth 
 round slit surface that made people stare curiously 
 and told no tales of its owner. 
 
 His stillness was not dramatic as was her stillness. 
 It was not a wild arrested movement. His was a 
 far greater stillness than hers. It conveyed no pos- 
 sibility of relief. He was so still that he looked as 
 though never again could any ripple of movement 
 pass over his bulk, neither over his heavy shoulders, 
 his huge torso, his massive legs, nor his feet. One
 
 i2 THE TORTOISE 
 
 felt that his present stillness was a thing acquired 
 long ago and was only the culmination and the tre- 
 mendous result of his old habitual quiet. The effort 
 he now made was only the gathered concentrated 
 expression of the effort he had always made. He 
 had always willed not to alarm her, and he had never 
 enjoyed making her laugh. So he had always willed 
 to be quiet in her presence. It was only when he 
 was quiet that he neither alarmed people nor made 
 them laugh. His effect of alarm or amusement on 
 other people was indifferent to him, but nothing that 
 concerned her was indifferent to him. 
 
 Now he knew that there was the greatest danger 
 of alarming her and the pathos of her fear that had 
 always hurt him, hurt him anew in the midst of other 
 new things. 
 
 It seemed to him at this moment that with all his 
 stillness, if he moved towards her, he was bound to 
 frighten her to death. Just as it seemed to him that 
 to her, his restrained regard for her must seem like 
 a curse. Yet he could not help his regard for her. 
 Ages ago, he had known that all he could do for her 
 was to restrain it, so that it might not alarm her. 
 The restraint that he put upon himself was so great 
 that it made the sweat stand in beads on his fore- 
 head, but it was only a greater degree of the same 
 restraint that he had practised for years. 
 
 Everything that had to do with him and with her, 
 seemed to him to have been for ages. Everything 
 that concerned them together seemed to him to be 
 forever. She had willed to destroy it, but it could
 
 THE TORTOISE 13 
 
 not be destroyed, so it seemed to him. He watched 
 fixedly the fixed gesture of her destroying despair. 
 The hurt that it caused him was so great that he 
 found it difficult to breathe, but the pain that had 
 plunged into him the night before and had 
 stayed there had destroyed nothing. He would 
 have set her free to destroy if he could, but he could 
 not. He would have freed her from that terrible 
 posture at any risk, if he could, but he could 
 not. He saw that she would kill herself to save 
 herself if she could. And he would have killed him- 
 self to save her if he could, but he saw that she could 
 not and that he could not. There would be no kill- 
 ing and no ending, yet there must be something. 
 He did not know yet what it must be, but he knew 
 that there must be something. 
 
 He became aware as he watched her that her 
 beauty interfered with his seeing of her. It had 
 always been so, more or less. Now it was more so. 
 In his great desire to understand her, he was hin- 
 dered by the fact of her beauty. Her beauty dis- 
 guised her, and made her mysterious in a less impor- 
 tant way than she was actually mysterious. Her 
 beauty used up a part of his mind and his will, and 
 the strength that he would have turned to her serv- 
 ice. He found himself now dwelling upon the per- 
 fect round of her head that was like a smooth gold 
 coin glinting in the sun. He was disturbed to find 
 that he could not keep even now from looking with 
 absorption at that golden head. His keen exclusive 
 delight in the look of that object confused him. He
 
 14 THE TORTOISE 
 
 could not distinguish at such a distance the line of 
 her profile, her high nose and the curve of her fine 
 pointed lips, but he imagined them for himself and 
 he pondered again upon the strange quality of her 
 face that made her look a foreigner in every coun- 
 try. It was neither Scandinavian nor Slav. There 
 were days when she even looked what she was, an 
 Englishwoman, but her wide smooth lidded eyes with 
 the sweeping eyebrows that dipped down the sides 
 of her forehead and the thin cheeks that came up 
 high under them gave her a strange distinction. 
 Often she looked to him when she moved in an 
 open space like some strange Goddess come to earth 
 to escape boredom. She moved as if she had wings 
 to her feet, and were refraining from soaring out 
 of kindness for heavy people. Now, he perceived 
 so much energy in her stillness that he felt if the 
 thing that held her gave way, she would shoot like 
 a rocket into the distance, disappear above the tree 
 tops and go back perhaps to Olympus where there 
 was the freedom he could not make for her, the 
 immense monotonous freedom of irresponsible per- 
 fection. 
 
 Her grandeur was not perfection. There was 
 not that finality to her. He had never found any 
 fault in her, nor had he ever been disappointed. On 
 the other hand, never, and that was the strangeness, 
 never had he been content with her. The moments 
 of most complete possession had been the moments 
 of deepest longing, but it was not only because of 
 his own limited capacity for receiving, it was also
 
 THE TORTOISE 15 
 
 that his mind went beyond what she so wonderfully 
 was and beheld breathlessly what she could be. He 
 was doing that now. He was doing it as he had 
 never done it. The pain she had dealt him had sent 
 his imagination tearing through vistas of herself he 
 had never dreamt of. 
 
 He admitted with an anguish made up of shame 
 and anger, that another man's interference had 
 brought this about. 
 
 One thing was certain, he refused to divide her. 
 But he knew that his refusal to share her with that 
 one or with any other was not a claim to owning. 
 He had never so much as thought of her in terms 
 of owning. It was rather that he could not conceive 
 a modification of their juxtaposition. Either he or 
 she must cease to exist to make room for another. 
 And if he and she persisted, then the other must 
 cease to be. 
 
 And one thing bewildered him. He was not sure 
 that she saw it as he did. He was almost sure 
 that she did not. If she did, why had she come back 
 with the impression of the other man so deep upon 
 her? She had not left that other one. She had 
 brought him with her. The face she had turned to 
 him on her arrival was marked with his mark. It 
 had become a luminous sharp face. The stranger's 
 hatred of him had looked at him out of her eyes. 
 He had watched for the compassionate sweetness 
 her eyes usually offered him, but when the stranger's 
 hatred faded it had given place to her own appre- 
 hension. Her movements too were not her own.
 
 1 6 THE TORTOISE 
 
 She had moved swifty, darting here and there in little 
 rushes. Her body had been a tormented thing in 
 his presence. 
 
 Yet she had come back to him. 
 
 And she had given no explanation. 
 
 It was clear that she had not yet decided to leave 
 him. Something had driven her back. Another 
 thing was pulling her away. Maybe she had come 
 back to decide. Maybe she was deciding now. 
 
 He understood that she was spell bound by the tor- 
 ment of her indecision. 
 
 All that he could do was to leave her alone. If 
 she had come back wanting to know how he would 
 take it, she knew now. Actually she must have 
 known all along. She had wanted perhaps merely 
 to do him the justice of having there before her his 
 enormous dumb refusal. 
 
 Silence was their one safety. He put his trust in 
 it. More than their dignity depended on it. Any 
 sound of words would be fatal. He knew that if he 
 approached her and spoke, his voice would terrify 
 her into action. The thing needed understanding. 
 Speech would destroy comprehension. Also, she 
 must face it alone. He had lost her, either for the 
 time being or for eternity, he did not know which. 
 She must go or come back to him. It must be her 
 doing. He was helpless. If she were intending 
 to go, no word of his would keep her. If she went 
 she would go without speaking; he would find her 
 gone. 
 
 So with one final draught of her beauty, that he
 
 THE TORTOISE 17 
 
 took from his distance, panting slightly as a man 
 exhausted with pain and with thirst, he turned from 
 her and stumbled his way up the stairs. In his room 
 he took off the clothes he had had on all night, put 
 on some others and ordered his motor. 
 
 She from her seat in the garden, heard the sound 
 of his car and turned her head startled, listened to 
 the grinding of its brakes and the powerful whirr 
 of its engines and then as it burred smoothly away, 
 carrying him up to the city, the thing that held her 
 snapped suddenly, and with her hands up to her face 
 she flung herself back in her chair.
 
 II 
 
 THOUGH she had not seen him standing un- 
 der the porch she had felt him somewhere 
 in the background and his presence had ex- 
 ercised on her nerves an intolerable pressure. Her 
 physical fear of him had kept her rigid. She had 
 drawn herself in tight, to combat it, but his going 
 did not give her the kind of relief she had expected. 
 While there, he had filled the place to suffocation 
 but his absence was a positive thing too, a vacuum 
 which refused to be filled. There was no comfort 
 in it. Instead of a definite menace confronting her, 
 there was now closing about her a confined and 
 strained emptiness with her thoughts let loose in it to 
 buzz like a lot of flies under a glass jar. 
 
 There was no longer, at least for the moment, any 
 probability of his hurting her, there was only the 
 horror of the certainty of her hurting him. It 
 would have been much easier for her, had he hit her. 
 For a time she had been so convinced that he would 
 kill her, that she had forgotten his pain. What she 
 hated most of all was the idea of making him suffer. 
 She would have preferred his killing her. Now she 
 was left to imagine what depths of complicated suf- 
 fering had made him refrain from doing so. 
 
 It was like him not to do the inevitable thing. 
 
 18
 
 THE TORTOISE 19 
 
 He was a violent giant who had never cracked a tea- 
 cup in her presence. 
 
 Her mind zig-zagged suddenly. 
 
 How sea-sick she had been yesterday. It was 
 yesterday that she had come home. She remem- 
 bered the green chopping waves of the Channel and 
 the nausea that had absorbed all thought and all 
 torment. Sea sickness, wonderful and annihilating, 
 had come to her rescue. What a relief. She had 
 solved every problem by wanting violently to die and 
 end the horrid sensation. If one were often sea- 
 sick one would have no emotions and no conscience. 
 No man's attraction was strong enough to counteract 
 nausea. She would have turned from Jocelyn de 
 St. Christe with a groan. 
 
 Very well then. 
 
 Her mind wavered. William was always very 
 gentle when one was ill. He knew what to do. She 
 remembered him in a darkened room sitting beside 
 her bed in the night, hour after hour, watching, 
 keeping her alive by the closeness of his watching 
 willing her to live moment by moment, never let- 
 ting go. She jerked her mind back from that mem- 
 ory. It hurt her too much. 
 
 Her husband had saved her life, so that now she 
 could leave him and break his heart. That was 
 just a phrase. She imagined his actual heart under 
 ribs in his enormous chest, bursting, being torn in 
 two there inside him, shreds of blood and naked 
 flesh. Ugh ludicrous. People didn't suffer as 
 much as one thought. They couldn't. There was a
 
 20 THE TORTOISE 
 
 limit to any suffering. She was in pain now. There 
 was a vivid, throbbing pain in her side and a dull 
 sick pain all through her. It was because of Wil- 
 liam. She was imagining what he would feel. 
 
 If only she could forget him, she would be happy. 
 She could then give herself up to enjoying her ro- 
 mance. It was more than a romance. It was a 
 deep, elemental, fearful thing. It was like a story of 
 cave-dwellers of a prehistoric man and woman, a 
 great instinctive passion surging up through the glit- 
 tering artificial layer of social life. 
 
 Jocelyn was beautiful. She herself was beautiful. 
 They were two beautiful animals. That was import- 
 ant Surely that was important. The mating of 
 two beautiful creatures was glorious. She was not 
 vain, she knew what she was made for she was a 
 primitive woman, and she knew at last what she 
 wanted. She had seen it and recognized it and then 
 had run away from it. Why? Because of William. 
 William her husband was in the way. He was not 
 her mate. The other was that but but 
 William was something something enormous, 
 something strong and wistful and innocent. Could 
 one hurt a child? She thanked God now that she 
 had no children, but could one strike a child in the 
 face that looked at one with believing eyes that 
 drew one's hurting compassion out of one ? William 
 was a power. His brain was immense. He ex- 
 isted publicly, filling much space. Sometimes he ex- 
 ulted over mobs of men silently without show- 
 ing it, enjoying his power. Then in those moments,
 
 THE TORTOISE 21 
 
 she could turn against him, but with her he was never 
 like that, he was timid a child. It was unfair. 
 
 Always, always she had been sorry for William. 
 It was exhausting being sorry for a man in that way. 
 . Or was she deluding herself, did it only seem to her 
 like that now? If she were honest, she would have 
 to admit that she had had other feelings for William 
 than compassion. Fear she was afraid of him 
 sometimes. Confidence . It was a habit to 
 count on him and other feelings. 
 
 But she wanted Jocelyn. She wanted his joy, his 
 humor, his fantastic whimsical mind. He was 
 happy. His happiness was contagious. He was 
 full of "joie-de-vivre ". One could not imagine 
 him suffering very much. He knew what things were 
 worth; he never asked for the impossible. He un- 
 derstood the limits of pleasure. He knew how to 
 drain the cup of life he had drunk deep of it. 
 She had not even tasted. She would drink with him, 
 she would drink deep, deep. His voice made her 
 Understand. It promised wonderful things. His 
 voice quick and staccato ; clever, caressing voice, 
 expressing things she had never dreamed of. It 
 had affected her strangely. The mocking poetry in 
 his voice, passion laughing at its own savageness, 
 sensuality of the intellect, delicate fire. Ah yes, 
 he was a proficient lover Where had he learned it 
 all? She was jealous. 
 
 Never mind. She had never wanted anyone be- 
 fore. She would never want anyone again never. 
 She was like that. She had recognized him at once,
 
 22 THE TORTOISE 
 
 the unique man. It had not been the same with him. 
 He had only realized gradually. Men were differ- 
 ent. Frenchmen. Jocelyn was French. He was 
 not primitive, on the contrary. He knew everything. 
 His youth seemed a miracle, for he might have lived 
 a hundred years, so his voice said, sometimes. His 
 knowledge had troubled her at first. His eyes had 
 travelled over her terribly wise, divining everything. 
 Horrid, if one was not brave enough to strip one's 
 soul to his gaze. Shameful or wonderful. He 
 would laugh if she talked like that. She must never 
 use exalted language with him, he would only make 
 fun of her. He had no illusions no dreams all 
 the more reason to believe in the tribute of his 
 earnestness. And he was in earnest she knew 
 he admitted the deep elemental thing drawing them 
 one to the other. Nothing else mattered nothing 
 in the world mattered but that. 
 
 William was romantic but dumb. Poor Wil- 
 liam ! Certainly his love for her was sublime 
 but how it bored her now. 
 
 Why had she refused Jocelyn what he wanted, 
 what they both wanted? She might have had it. 
 
 She was conscious of a swooning sensation. 
 Closing her eyes she invoked his physical presence, 
 the odor of his face, his dark skin, his hair, the 
 touch of his coat and his intangible personal essence 
 so real in her imagination produced in her body a run- 
 ning fiery sweetness as if she were sipping a strong 
 intoxicating liquor. 
 
 She had been unable to escape William without
 
 THE TORTOISE 23 
 
 first coming back to face him. It had been neces- 
 sary to confront him with her secret. Her faith in 
 the miracle had been so great that she had not be- 
 gun to be afraid till the train drew into Charing 
 Cross station. She had actually until then expected 
 him to shrivel up at the sight of it. On the con- 
 trary, he had swelled to even greater proportions. 
 
 He had loomed upon her through the dark hurry- 
 ing crowd, and she had thought: "Either he will 
 kill me or I shall see him lying at my feet hideously 
 undone by what I've to tell him." 
 
 He had remained impassive, and she had been 
 forced to admit that his impassivity had partaken of 
 grandeur. 
 
 Yet Jocelyn had remained beautiful. She still 
 saw him as she had always seen him, slim, swift, 
 electric, full of light, shining and drawing her to him. 
 Lying there, limp and flabby in the garden chair, she 
 felt him drawing her, just as the sun was drawing up 
 the dew from the grass. She felt like a soft, sticky 
 substance that was oozing away, being soaked up b^ 
 a distant longing. 
 
 She lay in a stupor of emotion. 
 
 Suddenly it seemed to her that she was in danger. 
 Her position on that solid wooden seat in the centre 
 of the compact expanse of emerald turf, became per- 
 ilous. She lifted her head and looked about her, 
 breathing hurriedly, and conscious of her heart 
 thumping. There was the garden, closing round her 
 in all its comfortable luxuriance. The staunch trees 
 spread wide their crisp branches, shutting out dis-
 
 24 THE TORTOISE 
 
 tance, refusing mystery. The hedges were solid 
 walls of deep green. Where brick walls cut them, 
 pleasant vistas of sunny tangles led one's eye just a 
 little kindly way, but the seclusion of the place did not 
 assure or comfort her. All about it, beyond those 
 neat and charming confines she seemed to perceive 
 a surging waste, something as wide and terribly 
 empty as a desert. She had a vision of herself in a 
 garden, as of a solitary figure on an island that was 
 cut loose from its foundation and set a-floating on 
 the vast expanse of desolate and eternal uncertainty. 
 
 She shook herself. 
 
 The garden was safe, but she hated its safety. 
 Beyond it the dangerous future summoned her. 
 
 She gripped the arms of her chair and looking 
 down into the grass, saw little creatures there. Tiny 
 ants were scurrying across a bare patch of ground 
 where the legs of a chair had scraped away the turf. 
 One was dragging a crumb of bread. He was busy. 
 His occupation was of vast importance. His com- 
 panions too were all busy. The sight of their mi- 
 nute self-sufficiency annoyed her. 
 
 She realized now that she had hoped William 
 would do something terrible. If he had, she would 
 be free now and running toward the fulfillment of her 
 joy. It was for this that she had come back. She 
 had wanted him to help her destroy the thing that 
 bound them. Some obscure instinct had impelled 
 her. She wanted perfect happiness and she had 
 known deeply that she would never obtain it unless 
 William annihilated her memory, her respect, and
 
 THE TORTOISE 25 
 
 her admiration, by some ugliness. He had not done 
 what she wanted. His refusal to set her free had 
 been mute and mysterious and complete. He had 
 kept his dignity. His identity remained intact. He 
 appeared to her just as he always had done, only 
 more so. He had not struck her nor insulted her. 
 He had merely walked up and down the garden all 
 night. She had heard his step under her window 
 at regular intervals. The sound of it had made her 
 want to scream, but when it ceased she had listened 
 for it with longing. It took a long time for him to 
 go to the bottom of the garden and come back. Her 
 mind had followed him in the dark, keenly aware of 
 him, of his tenacity, of his weight, of his power. 
 Toward morning she had listened in vain for his step, 
 and had gone out on the balcony hoping to find him 
 beneath her. She would have spoken, or thrown 
 herself down, or summoned him up to do violence to 
 her secret, but he was nowhere to be seen and the 
 mysterious trees emerging above the low streamers 
 of white mist had diminished her sense of herself to 
 a pin point. 
 
 She felt dizzy and slightly sick. Her chair 
 seemed to sway under her. Looking apprehensively 
 over her shoulder she got upon unsteady feet. The 
 place was empty and its safety was false and the sun- 
 light pouring down did not warm her. She shivered. 
 
 Jocelyn de St Christe was there waiting. She 
 could see his eyes. They drew her to him. She 
 could feel his hands. Hers throbbed within them. 
 Closer she leant. Closer. She had only to close
 
 26 THE TORTOISE 
 
 her eyelids and fall into the embrace that waited to 
 engulf her. 
 
 Something was holding her back. 
 
 She did not know what William would do if she 
 left him, and it was important to know this. 
 
 She asked herself plainly the question, forming 
 the words distinctly. 
 
 " What would William do if I left him ? " Then 
 she listened within herself for the answer, her head 
 bent and turned slightly sideways as though actually 
 she expected to hear a reply, from within that region 
 of her body where her heart was beating, but while 
 she waited an obscure feeling of terror, like a spread- 
 ing voluminous presence, seemed to envelop her and 
 a sense of desolate suffocation fell upon her, as if a 
 gigantic curtain of dust were falling upon her out of 
 the sky. 
 
 Instinctively drawing herself together she clasped 
 her arms with her hands across her chest where 
 there was so much hurting. Her expression was be- 
 wildered. Could it be that a question asked so dis- 
 tinctly in words could be answered by such a shape- 
 less sensation? That was not what she wanted. 
 She was suffering enough as it was. She wanted 
 some precise knowledge, some literal certainty; any 
 fact that would fix her in regard to the man she was 
 bound to. 
 
 She must know what he would do before she did 
 anything herself. 
 
 See walked across to the lily pond and looked down
 
 THE TORTOISE 27 
 
 into the water. There she saw her reflection and 
 little gold fishes swimming across it. 
 
 " What would he do? What would he do? " 
 
 The round stone basin held a pool of infinity cap- 
 tive. Looking down beyond her own image she dis- 
 cerned the sky. She looked down and down into the 
 blue. There was the sandy bottom, and there was 
 the depthless azure, there was too, a white cloud 
 floating and the round leaves of the water lilies cut- 
 ting discs out of its whiteness. 
 
 What would he do, the man to whom she was 
 married? 
 
 The crisp leaves of the ivy growing over the 
 stone rim of the basin, made a dark border for the 
 mysterious round of water. The sunlight glanced 
 off from the hard little leaves. They absorbed no 
 light. They were dark and glinting. 
 
 It occurred to her that it would be easier to tell 
 what Jocelyn would do, if he were the one in 
 her husband's place. He would take a pistol, a 
 sword or a horsewhip. He would probably choose a 
 sword. He had done it before, that sort of thing, 
 so they said, laughing in Paris. He was not very 
 modern. He liked to do things as his grandfather 
 did them under Napoleon. She could see him bow 
 and then run the other man through and turn away 
 slightly pale. 
 
 But it was not William he killed. It was just 
 some imaginary being. No one could kill William 
 or hurt him. No one but herself.
 
 28 THE TORTOISE 
 
 Then what was the use of thinking of things that 
 were not to be. Thinking of her lover, gave her no 
 clue to her husband. 
 
 It was growing warm in the garden. The morn- 
 ing had deepened. The flowers glowed. They 
 meant nothing to her. Her eyes skimmed over their 
 colours impatiently. There was the house beyond 
 at the end of the long lawn. Maybe the house 
 would tell her what she wanted to know. 
 
 Shaded by towering beeches, it rested cool and 
 serene, its many deep windows open. She imagined 
 that she could see from where she stood, into the 
 pale dim rooms. Those enclosed spaces, so calm 
 and so still, summoned her to them. If she went in 
 and walked through them, they would tell her some- 
 thing. Among all the memories that filled them, 
 surely she would find her answer. But possibly she 
 would find more than she wanted to know, and pos- 
 sibly something different. It was more than likely 
 that the actual question she asked would remain un- 
 answered, but that other questions, endless questions 
 would there annoy her. 
 
 They owned her in a measure, those rooms. They 
 would reflect her too much to herself. All her ges- 
 tures were caught there as if in a hundred mirrors 
 with William towering beside her, filling her back- 
 ground, wherever she turned, a silent significant pres- 
 ence. She saw him now looking over her shoulder 
 into those imagined mirrors of her plaguing memory. 
 His face wore its white mask of comedy, but he bent 
 his head down toward her in a gesture of reverent
 
 THE TORTOISE 29 
 
 attention, and she saw his hands hover toward her, 
 as if he would lay them friendly, reverently on her 
 shoulders. She dared not go into the house. 
 
 It would be dangerous to submit to or to invoke 
 its influence. The appeal of a place one had made 
 to fit round oneself was deadly. Because she had 
 been quiet there, and safe, was no reason for want- 
 ing to stay. 
 
 A maid came out onto the balcony before her bed- 
 room window. Her crisp white cap and apron were 
 blindingly white in the sun. She had a pink gar- 
 ment over her arm. She shaded her eyes with her 
 hand but on seeing her mistress disappeared quickly. 
 She must be unpacking. Should she be told to pack 
 up again? Once more the grey suffocating curtain 
 fluttered round her. She flung out her arms, and 
 dropped them. 
 
 " What would her husband do if she left 
 him?" 
 
 Would he follow her? No. Would he just 
 let her go? No. Would he then force her to 
 stay? No. What then? Would he go himself 
 first? Had he perhaps actually gone? The house 
 was hers, not his. He had left two hours ago. 
 Maybe, he would not come back? Maybe. Could 
 that possibly be? Good God, had he done it al- 
 ready? 
 
 She found herself running. At the door she 
 bumped into a footman. He had a green parasol in 
 his hands. 
 
 " Is it this you wanted, madam? "
 
 30 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " No yes thank you. " 
 
 He opened the parasol and handed it to her. 
 ' Where is your master? " 
 
 " He took the Panhard up to town at nine o'clock, 
 ma'am. " 
 
 " Did he leave any instructions?" 
 
 " No, ma'am." 
 
 " Did he say what time to expect him? " 
 
 " No, ma'am." 
 
 " Please get me a glass of water. " 
 
 She thought while she waited. " If he intended 
 to go he would not necessarily have taken anything 
 with him. He has a set of things in town. If I 
 order the Renaud at once I can be there by one 
 o'clock. " 
 
 She twirled her parasol nervously. It caught in 
 one of the trailing creepers that hung from the low 
 porch. Pulling at it, she realized that she was stupid 
 and ridiculous. She loosened the parasol with a 
 jerk. What did it mean, this frantic behaviour? 
 Why had she run like that in a panic? 
 
 If he had gone, he had gone and there she had 
 her solution. She had intended leaving him and 
 had almost promised in Paris. At least there had 
 been an undersanding, but it occurred to her now 
 that perhaps the word understanding was ill-chosen. 
 She was not sure of what she had given Jocelyn to 
 understand because she was never quite sure of what 
 meaning he attached to words, and she was not really 
 certain that he expected her to come back. There 
 was even something more. As the servant appeared
 
 THE TORTOISE 31 
 
 in the doorway with a glass on a tray, she found 
 herself formulating the phrase: " I don't quite be- 
 lieve in him. " 
 
 The thought startled her with its ugliness as if a 
 toad had dropped on her shoulder instead of a rose 
 from that tiresome creeper. Her outstretched hand 
 trembled. She spilled some of the water out of the 
 glass that she lifted to her lips. The china blue eyes 
 of the groom were fixed on her in an idiotic 
 stare. His face was brick-red and he moved his lips 
 nervously. The water was cool and good. She 
 drank it all and turned back wearily into the garden. 
 If she didn't trust Jocelyn, what was there left her 
 to do? It was eleven o'clock by the sundial. A 
 blue jay flashed from one tree to another. A pearly 
 haze hung above the river beyond the fields. 
 
 She took the path that led to the orchard. 
 Sweetbriar made a frail green tunnel for her to pass 
 through. In the direction of the stables she heard 
 the sound of splashing water. Hens were clucking 
 near by. The grass in the orchard was deep and 
 the crooked apple trees dipped their branches down 
 into it. There was a singing of insects in the air. 
 Everywhere birds twittered. The air was heavy 
 with warm sweetness. She walked through it feel- 
 ing herself a cold dead thing in the midst of all this 
 murmuring life. 
 
 Following the little backwater that bounded the 
 orchard, she went on down across the deep bosomed 
 fields to the river. She was a ghost abroad in the 
 sunshine.
 
 32 THE TORTOISE 
 
 She knew now that William would come back. 
 The thought sent her flying. She could not face 
 William, and as if pursued, by him, yet wanting to 
 hide from the smiling country her panic, she hurried 
 smoothly, in a running walk. 
 
 There was so little time. She had meant to de- 
 cide something. Yet without a decision to present 
 to him, she could not meet him, and how was she to 
 decide ? 
 
 Whatever she did or said would be horrible. 
 
 If only she could get away by herself quite alone 
 for a little, or better still, forever. She must dis- 
 appear where he could not follow her, that is, 
 where the great image of the harm she had done 
 him could not pursue her. Oblivion was her 
 necessity. 
 
 In order to obtain this, she must get rid of Jocelyn 
 too and her want of him. To be free from her 
 horror she must be free from her longing. 
 
 " But as long as I live I shall be the victim 
 of both," she said to herself. Why live any 
 longer? 
 
 She remembered now the body of a woman that 
 her farm hands had fished out of the river under 
 the bank. It had been washed down by the cur- 
 rent and had caught in some bushes. Actually hun- 
 dreds of people had been drowned in the river. 
 Drowning was a blank unexpressive form of death. 
 One was sucked down into death in a meaningless 
 vague way. The water washed all significance away 
 from drowned faces.
 
 THE TORTOISE 33 
 
 The river was deep at the bottom of the field. 
 Its black current slid by swiftly. She stood with 
 her back against the trunk of a tree and looked down 
 into the water.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE Countess of Sidlington said: " My 
 poor Brandon, I've come to lunch, but you 
 don't look at all yourself. " And droop- 
 ing there before the grey butler, she gave him the 
 smallest of smiles, her little head on its very long 
 throat bent down to him under a phenomenally 
 dipping hat. She was even taller than he, but her 
 height was not imposing. It was just an extreme 
 lengthening out of her childlike delicacy and it gave 
 her in her excessive thinness an exaggerated charm. 
 
 Her appearance was not merely a fact, it was an 
 apparition, not because there was anything sur- 
 prising in her being there, but because she herself 
 was surprising. Serenely, she gathered to her all 
 the light there was in the dim hall. Her outline 
 was a little too strange to be true. Without waist, 
 without hips, with sloping disquieting shoulders, 
 there seemed to be scarce any corporal connection 
 between the small head on the wavy neck and the 
 long feet that were so far distant, scarcely anything 
 to hold them together save a frothy cascade of mus- 
 lin and an intangible grace. Two white hands, with 
 cool gestures, were there to point out that she was 
 nevertheless, all of a piece. 
 
 " Where is your mistress? You are not ill, are 
 
 34
 
 THE TORTOISE 35 
 
 you, Brandon?" The old man blushed under her 
 blue shining gaze. 
 
 " Oh no, my Lady, thank you, not at all ill. Mrs. 
 Chudd is in the garden. " 
 
 His rigid face became suffused with a glow of 
 pleasure, and as she floated away from him into the 
 sunlight murmuring that she would find his mistress 
 herself, his pale eyes followed her. 
 
 " Thank God, her Ladyship's come! " he said to 
 himself." Things aren't as they should be in this 
 house, and that's the truth. " 
 
 The merest glimpse of a small chin under a droop- 
 ing hat, the lightest note of sympathy in a cool voice 
 and the thing was done. Brandon was a happier 
 man. A spell had been cast upon him. 
 
 "A very naughty lady" Mayfair said of her in- 
 dulgently. " A magic lady weaving spells," some 
 one had called her, but the mass of her friends did 
 not ask themselves why they loved her, or worry 
 about forgiving her. She was just Peggy Sidlington 
 and they found no fault with her. 
 
 She did not look at all like a person admired over 
 half a dozen continents. For the moment she looked 
 just a nice country girl. Going into the sunlight 
 she became at once a part of the garden. It wel- 
 comed her. Her freshness was uncorrupted. It 
 sweetly mocked the flowers. She took off her hat, 
 baring her narrow little curly head to the sun. The 
 blue larkspur along the hedge vied with her eyes in 
 blueness. 
 
 A gardener sent her down the path to the river.
 
 36 THE TORTOISE 
 
 He had seen Mrs. Chudd go that way an hour be- 
 fore. She gave him her hat to take back to the 
 house and swept away from him across the grass with 
 a long free movement, lifting her head to the sweet 
 sky where lazy little white clouds floated. 
 
 She was happy. She was thinking of the nicest 
 man in the world who was coming to fetch her that 
 afternoon. But she was troubled about Helen. 
 Something out of the ordinary she knew had hap- 
 pened in Paris. Helen had written just one strange 
 little note during the month she had been away. 
 
 From across the wide field that dipped to the 
 river she spied the white figure crouching on the 
 bank. She waved. There was no responsive 
 movement. 
 
 Lady Sidlington had erratic perceptions. She was 
 ignorant of a great many things from choice. 
 Things that bored her were blandly ignored. She 
 had a way of slipping through experiences untouched, 
 but she had a flaire for the dangers and troubles of 
 people she liked. Helen, she knew, was not like 
 herself. Anything that happened to Helen would 
 be something big, because she would take it that 
 way. Brandon's worried old face had impressed 
 her. She now connected its harrassed look with a 
 certain queerness in Helen's distant posture. She 
 sent out a strong note across the field, halloo-ing 
 through the funnel of her hands. She saw Helen 
 lurch forward then sideways, and backward, and 
 then holding her breath she saw with immense re- 
 lief that the white figure was still there. She knew
 
 THE TORTOISE 37 
 
 that she had expected for one horrid instant to see 
 it disappear. 
 
 She exclaimed: "Merciful God!" and ran. She 
 ran well. There was nothing of the languid attenu- 
 ated doll about her as she ran. 
 
 " You needn't have run, Peggy dear," said Helen 
 without so much as lifting her eyes from the stream 
 that swirled under the bank. 
 
 " I may if I like, I suppose, darling. " 
 
 " Certainly, but it's so hot this morning. " 
 
 Lady Sidlington looked closely at the back of the 
 golden head on the strong broad shoulders. She 
 was convinced that her friend had been about to 
 throw herself into the river. She was conscious of a 
 mute and terrible struggle going on in that strong 
 crouching body with its long bowed back and tense 
 arms. Her own heart was beating painfully. 
 There being however no further need for action and 
 every reason for calmness, she became languid 
 again, and drooped beside the great tree, superla- 
 tively quiet. 
 
 " Aren't you glad to see me? " she asked sweetly. 
 " The back of your head looks strangely savage. " 
 
 " Don't be absurd. " Helen turned abruptly. 
 They stared at each other. The eyes of the woman 
 on the ground defended her secret from the gaze of 
 the woman standing above her. 
 
 " I came to lunch, " said Peggy's voice. " I'll go 
 away if you like, though it would be rather unkind of 
 you to pack me off. " Her eyes said: "Give it up. 
 You can't get away from me. I'm that curious
 
 38 THE TORTOISE 
 
 thing called your best friend and I'm making the 
 most of all my privileges. I'm interfering with 
 your life at a crucial moment and I mean to do so." 
 
 Presently, it looked as if an unseen hand had 
 taken Helen by the scalp and was shaking her. A 
 violent jerking travelled down her body. Dry 
 scraping sounds came through her, choking their 
 way out of her throat into the drowsy air. 
 
 " Not you, Oh my dear, not you of all people ! " 
 groaned Peggy, swooping down and gathering the 
 sobbing body into her arms. Her legs crossed 
 under her, she held the violent creature, one arm tight 
 round the shoulders, the other round the leaping 
 waist, and against the quaking turmoil of her burden 
 she opposed her own rigid quiet, and to the hurting 
 noises, her pointed, determined silence. 
 
 For a long time, she sat there. The golden mo- 
 ments of the humming noon slipped by one by one 
 over her head. Gradually she compressed those 
 sobbings and shakings, little by little, she imposed 
 'quiet. The warm field drowsed behind her. A 
 fisherman on the far bank of the river flicked a mi- 
 nute silvery fish out of the water. Helen at last lay 
 still. Her hair clung in a damp mass to her head. 
 Her body was hot with the perspiration of anguish. 
 Peggy Sidlington marvelled at the force that had 
 spent itself in her arms. She spoke mildly, caress- 
 ingly, coaxingly. 
 
 " Poor child. Poor darling. There you 
 mustn't, you know. He's not worth it. " 
 
 And then, after a pause :
 
 THE TORTOISE 39 
 
 " Men are brutes," she announced; " but I never 
 thought that William " 
 
 Helen freed herself. " William has done noth- 
 ing, " she said angrily. 
 
 Again they stared at each other. From each a 
 thought travelled through the eyes to meet the 
 other, glanced off at contact and darted back into 
 hiding. 
 
 Helen said, without speaking: " I refuse to con- 
 fide in you. If I did, you would have the upper 
 hand. You wouldn't betray me, but I should hate 
 you afterwards. " They sat side by side now and 
 their parallel gaze travelled across to the fisherman. 
 
 " I got quite dizzy looking into the water, " said 
 Helen aloud and laughed, whereupon Peggy said to 
 herself : 
 
 " Helen never laughed like that before. She's 
 different. Something has done her harm, she's 
 the worse for it. Her laugh gives her away; it is 
 ugly. " 
 
 Then they both felt tired and became aware that 
 they were glad to be together. They remembered 
 that they had been together as children. A maze 
 of memories, all blurred into a composite thing with 
 a colour and substance of its own, like a web held 
 them together. Their minds fluttered toward one 
 another and brushed each other, softly. They did 
 not want to hurt each other. However strange 
 they might seem each to the other, they could never 
 be strangers and they were comforted by this realiza- 
 tion.
 
 40 THE TORTOISE 
 
 They leaned nearer, and feeling the warmth of 
 the nearness they obscurely exulted in spite of the 
 anguish of one and the pity of the other. " After 
 all, " they thought," we are still young. We are 
 fortunate. People love us. Our power is un- 
 limited. Most important of all, we are inevitable, 
 we are women. Whatever we do, we are bound to 
 do. Nothing can stop us. " 
 
 And above the harmonious rumble of their sub- 
 consciousness, Peggy's sweet voice mumured: 
 
 " Paris must have been delicious. Who did you 
 see?" 
 
 And Helen's voice answered: " Oh, lots of peo- 
 ple, quite amusing." 
 
 " Did you do any racing? " 
 
 " Yes, some, " 
 
 "Who is doing what?" 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. Yvonne de Cibourg is get- 
 ting an annulation. She had just been to Rome. 
 Robert de Beauvallon, the blackeyed one, was badly 
 wounded in a duel with that little white faced Jew, 
 you remember the man I mean. I saw something of 
 the old fashioned people, and was taken into their 
 fine dingy old houses. Dear stiff creatures who look 
 half frozen on the sunniest days. Lunched with the 
 Princess of Narbonne. I believe she had been ex- 
 humed by her daughter to preside at the meal. A 
 famous beauty of fifty years ago or perhaps less. A 
 very proud old lady, not over-kind. She didn't like 
 me." 
 
 " You mean Jocelyn de St. Christe's mother? "
 
 THE TORTOISE 41 
 
 The name fell like a dart through the web of their 
 sympathy. 
 
 " Yes. " 
 
 " Is he as attractive as ever?" 
 
 " I don't know, I had never known him before. " 
 
 They drew apart. A cord of suspicion shivered 
 between them, was stretched taut and sang warn- 
 ingly in their ears. 
 
 " He is really almost too seductive, " mused 
 Peggy, aloud. " He adores you, " responded 
 Helen hurriedly. 
 
 " Oh, no, my dear, he doesn't, and never did, for- 
 tunately. " 
 
 " Why fortunately? " 
 
 " Because he would have reduced me to a little 
 pulp and I don't like any one having the upper hand 
 but myself in these matters. He's too good at it 
 by far. " 
 
 Helen quaked, her secret leaping to her mouth for 
 exit, strangled her. Stiffening her mouth, she ar- 
 ticulated: 
 
 " So you found him dangerous? " 
 
 Peggy eyed her sideways and announced in a dis- 
 tinct dry voice : 
 
 " I am convinced that he is heartless. " 
 
 Helen felt the word sink into her like a drop of 
 poison that found its way to and mingled with the 
 doubt of her own mind's distilling. 
 
 She crouched lower, hugging her sides miserably. 
 From under down-drawn eyebrows she looked at 
 the serene creature beside her.
 
 42 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " I know what you're thinking," said the object 
 of her glare. " Just that I am the most so of any- 
 body, but you are wrong, I never willed to do any 
 one any harm; I hate doing it. The gravest accusa- 
 tion against me is that I am too willing to make 
 people happy. " 
 
 She turned her pure face sweetly round to be 
 scrutinized and spoke aloud. " You know exactly 
 what I am. Everybody knows. I'm a simple harm- 
 less abandoned creature and I envy you " 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because you have the energy to take it so hard. " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Why, falling in love, you goose, and breaking 
 the seventh commandment. " 
 
 " I've not broken it. " 
 
 " Then do it quickly, for pity's sake, and feel bet- 
 ter, unless of course, you you. " 
 
 She paused. A shadow slipped over her face like 
 a veil. " Go on, " muttered Helen. 
 
 " Unless you've really got the stuff in you to 
 stick to William," burst out the exquisite person 
 rudely. 
 
 The coarse phrase startled neither of them. It 
 had its uses. It saved words. Helen took it calmly. 
 She liked it better than the honeyed tones that had 
 evoked between them the man she wanted to possess 
 in her mind quite alone. Anything was better than 
 that they should both think at the same moment of 
 Jocelyn. It terrified her to feel that his image was 
 lodged in both their heads simultaneously. Hers
 
 THE TORTOISE 43 
 
 had been on the point of cracking, to reveal him 
 there, to those great disquieting eyes. 
 
 " At bottom I'm furious with you, " Peggy was 
 saying. " You and William have always been my 
 miracle, my only one. I used your happiness, to ex- 
 orcise my own calamities and the thought of your 
 goodness to offset my own failures in that line. You 
 were unique, I depended on you. " 
 
 " Well, I'm afraid I'm not unique any longer. " 
 
 " Then let's go to lunch, I'm hungry. " 
 
 They started back to the house, wearily, dragging 
 behind them over the grass the weight of their un- 
 spoken thoughts. Helen felt that she had perhaps 
 left a great failure, there on the bank of the river. 
 
 The chair that she had been nailed to early that 
 morning, was waiting for them, in the middle of the 
 lawn. They stopped by it. 
 
 " But you can't hurt William, you simply can't do 
 it, " burst out Peggy. 
 
 Helen stared at the house without answering. A 
 man's figure appeared under the porch. Startled, 
 she held out an uncertain pointing hand. But it was 
 only Brandon, waiting to announce lunch. So they 
 went toward him, arm linked in arm, dark head and 
 golden head glinting in the sun. 
 
 People often said that they went about together be- 
 cause they set each other off to such excellent ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 " As for me, " Peggy was saying lightly, " I be- 
 lieve I shall settle down. I have found the very 
 nicest man in the world. "
 
 IV 
 
 A GROUP of men shut up in a room in Lon- 
 don with the harassing news from Eastern 
 Europe were waiting for William Chudd. 
 He entered the roaring hum of the city at eleven 
 o'clock. June sunshine was tickling the monster. 
 The crowds were happy. A million windows glit- 
 tered. The bright frocks of the women were like 
 petals floating loose from the flower stalks in the 
 squares. The lazy people in the sleek motors and 
 the brisk pedestrians on the pavement smiled at each 
 other. Balloons bobbed above children's heads in 
 the park. No one noticed the long grey car that 
 made like a needle following a magnet for the grim 
 spot in Whitehall where frightened men sat round 
 a table. 
 
 The men in the room knew something that they 
 were hiding from the crowd in the streets. Their 
 knowledge gave them the look of nervous prisoners. 
 They were condemned men, responsible for the ex- 
 ulting mass of free human beings outside. Together, 
 they turned to Chudd as he entered, expecting help 
 from his presence. Collectively they tossed to him 
 with a gesture of irritable appeal the news from 
 Austria that was but the serious confirmation of 
 their fear of the day before. They were greeted by 
 a weary blink of his eyes and a scarcely audible yet 
 
 gigantic sigh. 
 
 44
 
 THE TORTOISE 45 
 
 Then, while they waited for him to speak and 
 help them, he lowered himself in a chair, put his 
 hands on his knees and seemed to go to sleep staring 
 at their exasperated faces as if they were so many 
 sheep, he was counting in a dream. 
 
 They knew they were not sheep, The country 
 had called them its leaders. Portions of the country 
 named them statesmen. On ordinary mornings they 
 were accustomed to consider themselves more than 
 ordinary men, but today, the immense menace of the 
 extraordinary had diminished their sense of them- 
 selves and they were uncomfortable at being looked 
 at as sheep by those formidable eyes. 
 
 Eastern Europe was large enough to swallow up 
 a hundred thousand two-legged creatures like them- 
 selves and show no sign of difference. They were 
 a dozen and they felt the hot glare of such a place in 
 conflagration and cowered before the distant heat. 
 If each one threw on the blaze a bucket of water, the 
 result would be scarcely remarkable. W. B. Chudd 
 was bigger than any of them. He could carry an 
 enormous bucket. They had superstitiously hoped 
 that he would do something gigantic. 
 
 He appeared unaware of their misery or their 
 superstitions. At the word " war ", he raised his 
 hand to his forehead that was beaded with perspira- 
 tion, fumbled for his handkerchief, did not find it, 
 gave up the idea of mopping his head and assumed 
 an even greater immobility. 
 
 When asked a point-blank question he answered in 
 a monosyllable or cited a few figures in a small voice
 
 46 THE TORTOISE 
 
 that echoed uncannily through the empty spaces of 
 their undocumented subject. The murdered Arch 
 Duke, rising among them in all his ghostliness, would 
 have given them more satisfaction. They became 
 annoyed with Chudd. They knew that he could not 
 be drunk. If this were softening of the brain, then, 
 he ought to have warned them long ago. Brains 
 don't soften overnight. He had been unscrupulous 
 in allowing them to depend on him, if he knew his was 
 giving way. 
 
 Some of them, those who knew him best, were 
 made particularly uneasy by his sleepiness. They 
 remembered other days when he had dozed in their 
 midst refusing to speak, his face as expressionless as 
 a plate. The Government calendar bore a red 
 mark on each one of those days. His silence had 
 preceded his thunderbolts. Now they wondered 
 whether they were to understand his great positive 
 stillness as a guarantee of security; or a menace of 
 even greater danger than they imagined. Did he 
 really feel safe or was his brutal indifference his way 
 of meeting the earthquake that was about to engulf 
 them? The telegrams they kept opening, the tele- 
 phones that squealed in their ears, the harassed secre- 
 taries who came and went with bundles of papers, 
 produced on his surface no flicker of interest. The 
 tears of a dusky little ambassador drew no word from 
 his wide closed lips. 
 
 Did he know something that none of them knew? 
 
 They buttonholed each other in corners of the 
 dismal chamber, before separating for the enticing
 
 THE TORTOISE 47 
 
 relief of lunch and asked one another what was up. 
 One of them at last approached him where he still 
 sat like a lonely Buddha before the littered table. 
 
 " Look here, W. B. C. do you know something in- 
 teresting or are you really sleepy?" 
 
 The big man gave the slightest sign of recogniz- 
 ing the other's presence, a faint flutter of the eye- 
 lids. 
 
 " Leave me alone till tomorrow," he replied. 
 
 " You mean you'll have no opinion till to- 
 morrow? " 
 
 " Exactly. " 
 
 And that was all anyone got out of him. He re- 
 fused to lunch. They were obliged to leave him 
 seated there. No one knew how long he stayed, but 
 he was gone when they came back. Downing 
 Street did not see him. He did not stop there; it 
 was a hundred yards out of his way. 
 
 His way led him back now to the place where he 
 had left Helen. He had made a wide loop away 
 from the place in order to leave her alone. For her 
 sake he had travelled all day in empty space, like an 
 aviator looping in a blank sky. He had started 
 slowly, he was ending his circle swiftly. The most 
 difficult part had been when he had poised motion- 
 less, and had been annoyed by the semblance of men 
 and the illusion of voices calling at him the word 
 war. From the hard height of his solitude he had 
 heard and seen them, nervous pigmies agitating hor- 
 rified hands that would have dragged him into their 
 midst, if they could have reached them.
 
 48 THE TORTOISE 
 
 He knew that tomorrow he would find himself 
 down among them, weighted to the earth that was 
 quaking. Tomorrow Austria and Serbia would 
 stare at him out of the map and he would have to 
 consider the relative solidity of the British Isles 
 anchored off the edge of a shaking Europe, but to- 
 day he remained in the void that Helen had created. 
 
 He neared the ground. Approaching the spot 
 from which he had leaped, his senses registered defi- 
 nite jolts of pain. He realized that he would in a 
 few moments find her actually there, or actually 
 gone. His eyes and his nerves would prove her 
 presence or touch the substance of her absence. Pos- 
 itive knowledge was rushing to meet him. 
 
 The leaping of the motor car under him, the taut 
 desperate leaping ahead of that thing of steel that 
 he was urging into incredible speed, seemed but a 
 mild straining compared to the bursting strain of his 
 heart valves. He saw the world stream past in 
 ribbons. He was aware of the country as a thing of 
 tattered streamers. He tore through it, scattering 
 it behind him. 
 
 Would she be there? Had she gone? Was he 
 already alone forever? 
 
 The scratching shriek of his klaxon sounded to 
 him like the voice of his own torment. He felt sure 
 that if he opened his mouth a sound would spring 
 out of it, quite equally hideous. 
 
 Her physical being flew beside him, crowding close, 
 a thing with wings that kept pace with the headlong 
 motor. He saw her there in the air, her head out
 
 THE TORTOISE 49 
 
 to the wind, her hair streaming behind her like a 
 golden flame. He marvelled at the vitality of her 
 hair that seemed to send off sparks in the sunlight, 
 and that as he remembered shone in the dimness of 
 her room with a light of its own. Her hair in whose 
 meshes she had once or twice allowed him to bury 
 his face, he felt it now shading his cheeks. Her 
 strong body clove the air with him, the aroma of her 
 flesh was in his nostrils. She was a mermaid of the 
 air, swimming swiftly without moving her cold arms 
 that were laid back along her sides, or her white feet 
 that pointed back to the rushing space they left be- 
 hind them. 
 
 She was outdistancing him. He quickened his 
 speed. Their headlong course became a race, then 
 a pursuit. A long hill rose before him, the white 
 road like a pole perpendicular to his eyes. He 
 mounted it, losing ground. She shot ahead of him. 
 He saw her disappear like a silver flying fish, across 
 the skyline. Reaching the top he found himself 
 alone under white clouds on wide sunstreaked downs. 
 Plunging again into the next familiar valley, chil- 
 dren in a pony cart shrieked with fright as he grazed 
 past them. 
 
 Their shrill voices punctured his obsession, bring- 
 ing him down to the reality of a twisting road and 
 cottages. But he was by this time seized with panic. 
 He felt sure that she had gone. His hallucination 
 seemed to him a message. 
 
 He recognized the iron gates of the Sidlington's 
 place. Through the bars he imagined Peggy's baby
 
 5o THE TORTOISE 
 
 face mocking him. Five miles further on the gates 
 of his home waited to introduce him to the haunted 
 abandoned place that he knew best on the earth. 
 
 He settled down to the prospect of a deserted 
 house. In order to make the reality less horrible, 
 he summoned it to meet him. " Her room, " he 
 said to himself. " will be bare of her little things, 
 her toilet set will be gone from the dressing table by 
 the window. The gold slippers with green heels will 
 not be beside the ' chaise-longue '. The miniatures 
 of her father and mother will not be on the table. 
 The bed will remain, with its smooth lace coverlet, 
 and the chairs and the cushions and the white bear 
 skin on the floor. The perfume she uses will still 
 float there in the room, but, she will be gone. If I 
 seal up the doors and windows the place will keep its 
 scent perhaps for a long time, but she will be gone 
 and will never come back. " 
 
 He asked himself then why he had let her escape. 
 He felt obscurely that he was to blame. He had 
 won her after a struggle. With a blaze of trumpets 
 and to the flash of lightning he had carried her off. 
 He had captured her in a storm of his own making. 
 Now he wondered whether he had committed a crime 
 in so doing. He had a picture of himself running 
 through a tempest with her in his arms, cold as a 
 stone. In those days he had not been afraid. He 
 had grown gradually afraid. Now he knew why. 
 
 Their companionship that he had thought a 
 wonderful thing dwindled now in his memory to a 
 mean makeshift. He realized that he had been
 
 THE TORTOISE 51 
 
 waiting all that time for something better. Her 
 kindness had made it possible for him to deceive 
 himself. He had done so. 
 
 He had been stupid. He had continued to hope. 
 He had refused to admit that he was incapable of 
 winning her completely. He had been guilty of 
 laying siege to the self she had closed from him. 
 
 Because she had been interested in his career he 
 had resisted the longing to concentrate all his at- 
 tention upon her. Because he had thought that 
 she admired power, he had gained greater power. 
 He had succeeded in translating political ideas into 
 national acts. England as it is today, owed 
 something of its personality to him, but he had done 
 it for her and he had failed to touch her imagination. 
 She had destroyed in him the passion of work for its 
 own sake. What he had dreamt of doing he had 
 done, and this, without joy, because it gave him no 
 added nobility in her eyes. His effort had been for 
 nothing. 
 
 Everything had been for nothing. 
 
 He might better have followed his inclination. If 
 he had stayed beside her constantly, done nothing 
 but accompany her, watch her, enjoy her, he would 
 have lost her no more completely and he would have 
 had more hours with her to remember. She might 
 have left him sooner, a little sooner perhaps 
 that was all. 
 
 But if he had never let her out of his sight, how 
 could she have gone? No one could have ap- 
 proached her.
 
 52 THE TORTOISE 
 
 He ought to have put her in chains. He ought 
 to have taken her to the wilderness and have lashed 
 her to a rock and have spent his life at her feet mo- 
 tionless. 
 
 He had done none of these things because he had 
 cared so much for her happiness. Day after day, 
 year after year he had continued to hope that she 
 would be happy. He had worked for this. His 
 efforts had been futile. 
 
 Yet sometimes, he had thought she was happy. 
 He remembered days when her face was alight. 
 He remembered hours when But he must have 
 been mistaken. 
 
 He remembered now what a rare thing it was for 
 her to laugh. He did not remember her ever hav- 
 ing laughed when with him alone. The very in- 
 tensity of his will to make her happy must have 
 blighted her gaiety. He imagined now that she had 
 always been subdued and restrained in his presence. 
 He had weighed on her. He had depressed her. 
 It was possible that he was repulsive to her. 
 
 The strength went suddenly out of his hands. 
 The car swerved. He could no longer feel the 
 wheel in his fingers. Flinging himself forward with 
 numb arms hugging the thing, he brought it back in- 
 to the centre of the road. 
 
 Shame Ah the shame, the humiliation, the 
 self-disgust, the loathing! It seemed to him that 
 he was swallowing dust mixed with grease. His 
 eyes smarted horribly. He could scarcely see the 
 road and the trees on either side. Fool that he was.
 
 THE TORTOISE 53 
 
 Why had he not thought of that before, why had he 
 not known? He was fat, he was white, he was 
 clumsy. He was a buffoon. He was fashioned by 
 God to make a nation stare and a government trem- 
 ble. He was a mountain of unpleasant flesh. Why 
 had he never seen himself as she must have always 
 seen him? He had never once looked at himself. 
 He had been far too intent upon her, yet, if she had 
 shuddered, if the shadow of his ugliness had passed 
 over her, would he not have seen it there? Was 
 his own desire such a blind and stupid thing that 
 it made him insensible to her distaste. Surely that 
 could not be. He had studied her. He had studied 
 her breathing, the lifting of her eyelids, the dilation 
 of her nostrils, the changing curves of her lips, the 
 infinite variety of her sensitive hands. How 
 could he not have noticed he who knew what all these 
 things meant? When he kissed her hands, could he 
 have been unaware, had a shudder gone through 
 her? No, no! He must have known unless - 
 Ah, yes unless she had matched his exquisite scru- 
 tiny with as exquisite a deceit. 
 
 He cowered in his seat, wanting to hide ashamed 
 as if he had discovered himself driving naked 
 through the country. Shame was new to him. He 
 could not cope with the sickening feeling. His face 
 streamed with sweat. He felt it sticky and tight. 
 Waves of nausea rose to his mouth. 
 
 The children of his own village waved to him. 
 They did not know. They did not see that he was 
 a changed and humiliated man. He crossed the
 
 54 THE TORTOISE 
 
 bridge beyond the post office. A white swan floated 
 on the slow stream where golden clouds were mir- 
 rored. His gate was open. In another moment he 
 was past the lodge, with the sun in his eyes. Then 
 the house came serenely into view its long facade in 
 shadow and a golden sky glowing behind its rosy 
 gables. His dogs rushed to meet him. Neither the 
 fox, nor the skye, nor the hound had his tail between 
 his legs. They knew no shame. They would never 
 realize. 
 
 The distance between the step of the motor and 
 the front door was very great. It was a difficult 
 distance. He was not sure that he could cross it. 
 It was the last lap of the region of uncertainty that 
 seemed to him after all, a blessed region. The door 
 of the house threatened him. It was about to 
 open and let out the truth and like a deadly oracle 
 it would condemn him. He quailed, he half turned 
 to go back, the door opened. 
 
 " Mrs. Chudd is in the garden, sir," said Brandon 
 at the door.
 
 THE sound that crashed out of him had 
 frightened Brandon. It was nothing more 
 than the sound of his relief, but it had con- 
 vinced the butler that his master was drunk. The 
 incident had been to Chudd just another proof of 
 the fact that whenever he made a sound or gesture 
 without holding down on it beforehand, he fright- 
 ened some one. 
 
 It was more important than ever not to frighten 
 Helen now, so he tiptoed up to his room to prepare 
 to meet her. He washed timidly, afraid of smash- 
 ing glass bottles in his nervous hands. He must 
 be calm when he went to her. 
 
 As the horrid sweat disappeared from his face, 
 he whispered. 
 
 " She's not gone she's not gone." 
 
 He told himself that everything he had thought 
 on his way from town had been idiotic. 
 
 If she had hated him, she would not have stayed. 
 Her being there was a proof of his own foolishness. 
 
 He imagined her, as he had left her. She was 
 waiting for him to release her from her suspense. 
 He would do it, oh so gently. He would bow down 
 to her from a distance, in silence. She should not 
 be frightened. 
 
 55
 
 56 THE TORTOISE 
 
 Brushing his hair, he muttered that it was a lucky 
 thing for the country. Tomorrow he would throw 
 himself into the national difficulty. He would tell 
 them to prepare for war and make them act. Helen 
 would never know how near she had been to helping 
 on the ruin of her people. 
 
 It now remained to separate truth from night- 
 mare. 
 
 She was there waiting in the garden, but she was 
 not the same. He must wait to appreciate the dif- 
 ference. Somehow they must work it out between 
 them. He still hoped for her happiness. 
 
 The afternoon sun gave the garden an unreal 
 splendour. The leaves on the trees showed trans- 
 lucent against the golden rays, like slivers of precious 
 metal. The flowers glinted, and the people in the 
 distance were ethereal beings whose garments were 
 clouds of rainbow light. 
 
 He had believed she would be gone, he had even 
 thought he might find her dead. It had not occurred 
 to him that he would come on her giving tea to a 
 lot of people by the lily pond. 
 
 He stood, fascinated, slowly taking in the mean- 
 ing of the charming abhorrent group. 
 
 The magic light showed them to him, as if the 
 group were embedded in a crystal globe and he were 
 outside looking into it. If he took a hammer he 
 could smash it to shivers. He had a vision of the 
 actual possible destruction of them all and of the 
 place they decorated. Their safety seemed to him 
 the thinnest covering of glass. He remembered the
 
 THE TORTOISE 57 
 
 word war that he had heard so often that morning. 
 But all of this only annoyed the surface of his mind. 
 
 War, spreading like a prairie fire over Europe and 
 the flames of it leaping across to lick at the greenness 
 of England, this he could and had envisaged without 
 difficulty. He hadn't strangled over it, he had fast- 
 ened on to it. It was there now in his brain a con- 
 viction to be acted upon later, but it must wait. It 
 was not half so incredible as this other thing that 
 loomed before him, and God forgive him, not half 
 so terrible. If his reason were rocking, it was be- 
 cause the little innermost spring of his being had 
 been set whirling backwards. A white finger had 
 poked its way in and had set it buzzing backward, 
 and the immediate result in sensation was a giddi- 
 ness that distorted his eyesight. He felt that he 
 must have become suddenly crosseyed, for the gar- 
 den danced and zigzagged before him and he had a 
 feeling of wanting to look at it sideways to keep it 
 in focus. It would be horrid to see Helen jiggling 
 about before him. What postures might she not 
 make. 
 
 Yet it was necessary to look, it was necessary to 
 scrutinize. 
 
 There she was surrounded by figures in draperies, 
 cloudy petticoats, filmy sleeves, shiny parasols, dip- 
 ping hats, white flannelled legs, tweed jackets. 
 There she was, she was not dead, she had not gone, 
 no, she was pouring tea. Her long arm in its white 
 sleeve was lifting a silver tea kettle. Her round 
 golden head was bent slightly. He believed that
 
 58 THE TORTOISE 
 
 even at this distance he could detect a smile curving 
 her lips. She was unaware of his presence and at 
 ease among her submissive friends. 
 
 Had he dreamt it all? 
 
 There was a mauve girl at the tea table drinking 
 lemonade through a straw. A pink creature was 
 on the grass leaning against a tree trunk. Some 
 one was holding a cherry coloured parasol against 
 the sun. A bull harassed by picadors with their 
 nasty coloured rags could feel no more frantic than 
 he at those colours. Vaguely and irritably he waved 
 his hands before his face, as if to brush them away, 
 out of sight. How could he see her, how could he 
 find out anything about her with all those things 
 round her? 
 
 A wave of heat engulfed him, as if the door of a 
 furnace had been suddenly opened in his face, but 
 the furnace he knew was inside him and the furious 
 hot sensation was merely the sign to him of his own 
 anger. He waited for it to subside. 
 
 He had left her to make up her mind. What had 
 she decided? Was this her reply to the question he 
 would never put to her? If so, what did it mean? 
 How could he be supposed to interpret it? Was he 
 never to know what she thought? 
 
 Would she never face him? Why should she 
 barricade herself behind fools? What was the use 
 of his years of self denial if his respect for her in- 
 violate and sacred solitude was not enough to con- 
 vince her of her safety with him? 
 
 Was it all wasted, the terrible continued restraint
 
 THE TORTOISE 59 
 
 that had cost him more energy than all his public 
 activity? Was the manhood in him that he had 
 burned up and consumed within himself for years, 
 was all that precious power that he had gone on 
 pouring into the abyss of his longing, was that not 
 even enough to command her respect? 
 
 She was making fun of him as truly as if she had 
 told them all about it and was laughing at him with 
 them. 
 
 She had no inkling of what it all meant. She 
 had no memory. She was perhaps after all not a 
 human being. If she had had any inkling of what 
 it all meant she would not have insulted them both 
 by the presence of outsiders. If she had had any 
 memory, she would have remembered that never 
 once had he approached her, except at her bidding, 
 or with her permission. If she were human, she 
 would have taken pity on his ugly anguish. 
 
 She seemed to expect him to endure his loneliness 
 with the sight of her before his eyes to mock him. 
 No, he could not endure it. No, he would not. He 
 would rather wring the necks of each one of those 
 women. He would rather break the backs of each 
 one of those men. He must know. He must have 
 her secret, her soul, herself. He would have it, if 
 he had to horsewhip her. He would strip her naked 
 and beat her he 
 
 His mind stopped short. He saw her rise to her 
 feet. Her white figure with its golden crown was 
 straight as a taper against the green distance. He 
 gazed upon her spellbound a moment, gasping, va-
 
 60 THE TORTOISE 
 
 cant, then with a groan went toward her. She was 
 the same, good God. She had the same power. 
 Her beauty meant the same thing to him. 
 
 11 Here's W. B. at last." 
 
 " Hello, Bill, what's the news? " 
 
 " Billy dear, come here beside me on the grass, 
 it's safer than a chair." 
 
 ' We've been talking geography. No one knows 
 quite where Serbia is." 
 
 " It's so beastly far, you know." 
 
 " You tell us, W. B., we're ready to learn." 
 
 Their voices buzzed round his ears like bothering 
 insects but with a sensation of plunging through 
 them, his head down, he made straight for Helen, 
 and there, within a foot of her, he came to a stand- 
 still, abruptly, making an effort not to fall on her 
 and crush her, astonished at the coolness of her 
 face that received what he felt was his onrush. She 
 looked him in the eyes, without speaking. The sun 
 met her gaze, turning her eyes to amber, and dimin- 
 ishing their black pupils to pin points. They 
 dazzled him. He seemed to be looking into wells 
 of fire. He blinked. 
 
 " You've seen her before, you know, Billy," said 
 a sly female voice. " She's your wife." 
 
 He wheeled as if stung, and felt the light waves 
 of their laughter roaring and beating in his ears. 
 
 He must keep still, very still, so as not to hurt 
 any of them. He half closed his eyes. 
 
 " You're too big, William, you shut out all the 
 breeze," said Peggy from the grass.
 
 THE TORTOISE 61 
 
 " You're an impertinent little thing," he heard 
 himself reply. He had always liked Peggy, why had 
 she come to torment him? If she knew she would 
 go away. 
 
 It occurred to him a moment later as he loomed 
 there in their midst, that they were friends, his as 
 well as Helen's. This fact was astonishing some- 
 how. His first view of them had refused them any 
 individuality or humanity. Now he saw them fa- 
 miliarly and their familiarity frightened him, for he 
 remembered that they knew him only a little less 
 well than he knew them, and he wanted no one to 
 know him any more. If they turned their easy ban- 
 ter upon him and Helen he would pull the sky down 
 onto their heads and bury them alive, every one of 
 them Millicent with her amethyst earrings dan- 
 gling above her mauve frock, Mary Bridge with her 
 cherry parasol, Peggy with her big baby eyes, he'd 
 spare none of them if they showed the least sign of 
 suspecting anything. Let them not suppose be- 
 cause they'd no secrets and no shame, that he would 
 allow them to let their curiosity play upon Helen. 
 As for the men they were easier to deal with. The 
 men were after all men, more or less like himself. 
 It had never been necessary to point out to them 
 the difference between Helen and the other women 
 they loved so gaily. He had been willing for them 
 to look at her from a distance and no one of them 
 had ever infringed on the liberty granted him. For 
 ten years they had respected his attitude toward his 
 wife. It had, he realized now, been one of his fixed
 
 62 THE TORTOISE 
 
 ideas, that their world, his and hers should admit 
 their uniqueness. Happy and healthy, changing 
 loves with the seasons, taking no trouble to dissimu- 
 late their passions and their raptures, they were 
 pleasant beings, who still had enough sense to recog- 
 nize that his house was different from their caravan- 
 saries. 
 
 He had liked them for respecting his idea. They 
 were gentlemen and that gave one something to go 
 on, but he would sacrifice all and each one of them 
 if he gave the flicker of a sign of comprehending a 
 difference between today and yesterday. Even 
 Jimmy Gower, the faithful, never tiresome, always 
 appreciative, would walk out of that house for ever 
 did he seem to begin to see anything. After all, 
 it was only Jimmy who would be likely to see, the 
 others were too stupid or too absorbed in Peggy 
 to notice. 
 
 Suspiciously, he looked from one to another, and 
 he found their eyes fixed on him. Was it possible 
 that they were innocent? Could it be that his rolls 
 of fat concealed his quaking nerves from their gaze? 
 How was one to tell in the midst of such well bred 
 creatures? Their faces were disciplined to betray 
 nothing. To flaunt their own caprices in the face 
 of the world and to turn a blank stare back on all 
 things disagreeable, that was their way. 
 
 He became aware of her hand holding out to him 
 a cup of tea and he took the cup carefully, conscious 
 of the dangerous fleeting proximity of those brown 
 tapering fingers that curled nervously round the
 
 THE TORTOISE 63 
 
 saucer. They realized it and vanished from his line 
 of vision leaving him staring at his own great flabby 
 paw that he loathed. 
 
 Truly the marriage of those two hands was an 
 outrage. The image of his, wide white and soft 
 beside her slim palm revolted him. 
 
 " Other men who are ugly," he thought to him- 
 self, " are ugly in moderation, but there is so much 
 of me, so much, too much." He had a feeling of 
 lurching as he turned off with his cup. 
 
 " Tell us something," said some one. 
 
 " About Ireland." 
 
 " Or about Servia." 
 
 " Isn't it bounded on the north by the Danube? " 
 
 "What was said in Downing Street?" 
 
 There was a pause. They waited for an answer 
 to that. 
 
 " I don't know," he muttered. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " I didn't go to Downing Street." 
 
 " Bill darling, you mustn't tell lies," breathed 
 Millicent. 
 
 Why in God's name wouldn't they leave him alone? 
 
 He did not want to talk. He wanted to stare at 
 Helen and find out from her face what had hap- 
 pened since he had left her. If he kept his eyes on 
 her, he would be sure to catch something. Sooner 
 or later she would betray herself. Her face looked 
 the same. Its outline was as clear as ever and the 
 firm clear features maintained their strange har- 
 mony. It would take a long time for that face to
 
 64 THE TORTOISE 
 
 change. Its surface would not willingly betray her, 
 neither would it easily take on the imprint of time. 
 After all, it was hopeless looking at her. Looking 
 always blinded him. The curious contrast between 
 the pale crinkled gold of her hair and the darker, 
 almost copper, tint of her face was distracting his 
 attention from his search. In that darkly glowing 
 oval, her teeth were like pointed diamonds. She 
 was not sallow, but she was brown, and her cheeks 
 were smooth and firm and all one perfect tint; an 
 indescribably close, fine surface. Her jaw was 
 strong, her forehead low. It was the lifted arch 
 in the upper lip that made him think of them as 
 pointed lips. Her eyelids were shaped like eyelids 
 in Egyptian drawings. There was something an- 
 cient about the drawing of her eye-brows and nose. 
 
 " We're panting for news, Billy, while you stand 
 there like a blinking mountain." 
 
 " You ought to know that I wouldn't tell you any- 
 thing, if I had anything to tell." 
 
 "Why, Billy dear?" 
 
 " You're not to be trusted with secrets." 
 
 "Oh Oh Oh!" 
 
 They were very foolish. Was Helen never go- 
 ing to speak? 
 
 He heard Jimmy say to her in a low aside : 
 
 " You're very quiet, Helen." 
 
 Her murmured reply was scarcely audible, but he 
 saw her smile. Why should she smile at Jimmy? 
 It was hypocritical of her to smile at any one. He 
 wondered if she would smile at him if he asked her
 
 THE TORTOISE 65 
 
 a question. He spoke straight at her in a loud 
 voice : 
 
 "What have you been doing all day? " 
 
 " Nothing." Her face stiffened. It became 
 rigid. Her eyes dilated. 
 
 It was true then that she was afraid ot him. 
 
 He felt no pity for her now. The sight of her 
 fear tempted him. He had a voluptuous feeling. 
 He wanted her to be more afraid. To bring this 
 about it was not necessary to do anything. He had 
 only to will it. 
 
 " You are going to let us go home without one 
 little crumb of news? " wailed Millicent. 
 
 "Yes." He didn't like Millicent. She was 
 anaemic and whining. 
 
 " If you won't tell, then I shall make something 
 up." 
 
 " Do." 
 
 " W. B., you're not a bit like yourself." 
 
 " On the contrary, I'm always uninteresting." 
 
 He spoke very softly. He wanted Helen to be 
 more and more afraid. 
 
 " No, you look as if you were going to explode. 
 It's a clue. That shall be my news. William 
 Chudd is excited. They'll be impressed by that, for 
 if you W. B. are excited, what must the rest of 
 them be?" 
 
 " Pooh," said Mary Bridge. " I don't see what 
 the murder of an Arch Duke in Servia has got to 
 do with us." 
 
 " Hear, hear! We're an island."
 
 66 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " Let's be happy." 
 
 " We are." 
 
 " No one more so." 
 
 " But rather stupid," put in Peggy. " I wish my 
 husband were a great mysterious man." 
 
 "Peggy dear!" 
 
 " Well really, no one could call Arthur great or 
 mysterious could they? He's so very short I've 
 begged him to wear high heels, but it's no use. Poor 
 darling! He'll be wondering where I am, I've not 
 seen him for a week though we've both been home 
 several times since last Sunday." 
 
 " He said he lost you at Ascot." 
 
 " He loses things so easily." Peggy put on her 
 hat wistfully. Her pure little face was turned 
 sweetly to them all. She smiled lazily, and her eyes 
 said as they always did : " Yes, love me, all of you. 
 I'm incorrigible and though their name is legion, 
 I'm a kind old thing." 
 
 She bent over Helen. " Good-bye, darling. I 
 forgive you for forgetting the lingerie but I needed 
 the things badly." 
 
 William watching, saw Helen clutch at the two 
 little hands. 
 
 The group was breaking up about him. 
 
 " Come, William, put me into my car," said 
 Peggy's voice. She had disengaged her hands. He 
 followed her. They all came along, making a noise. 
 If Peggy knew anything, she would never tell. Her 
 sweetness was unruffled. She took Mary Bridge 
 with her and Jimmy, and a new quiet man with a
 
 THE TORTOISE 67 
 
 brown face and lazy voice whom she seemed to like. 
 Jim looked at him anxiously, Peggy waved a gay 
 little hand. 
 
 There was a great fuss getting the rest of them 
 off. He kept saying to himself: " She's alone at 
 last." He anticipated her terror greedily. There 
 was no one to protect her now. She would be 
 obliged to reveal herself. 
 
 There was no sun in the garden when he got away 
 from the last spirting motor. Helen stood like a 
 figure of snow in the distance. The blue shadow 
 of the trees was like cold water all around her. He 
 drew nearer and saw that her eyes were fixed on him 
 in a motionless widening stare. Her stare drew 
 him on swiftly. His strides carried him through 
 the cold space that separated them, in an instant, but 
 the instant was too long for him to reach her. He 
 had stretched out an arm and suddenly, just as if 
 shot by a soundless bullet, she fell forward on her 
 face, at his feet. He had still another wide step 
 to go before bending down.
 
 PART TWO
 
 PART II 
 
 PARIS held its breath. The pulse of a nation's 
 life seemed to have stopped its beating. It 
 was as if the day, the incredible last day of 
 July were not a day at all, but an absolute unlimited 
 interval cut out of time. Beneath the little black 
 numbers of a thousand calendars were written the 
 invisible words "The end"; and between the era 
 that was ended and the era that was to begin on the 
 morrow, the day existed a thin impassible slice of 
 nothingness. 
 
 In innumerable frightened houses, on strange si- 
 lent streets the people waited. They waited for a 
 word. As if petrified by the sight of some enormous 
 medusa hanging in the hot summer sky the face of 
 the city was turned to stone. 
 
 The word " War " hovered beyond the confines 
 of the empty day. It was there hidden in the piled 
 up stuff of tomorrow, like a flash of lightning hidden 
 in layers of cloud that loomed tremendous against 
 the edges of the horizon. 
 
 The oppressed people listened to the great clocks 
 that were ticking out the time instant by instant, 
 and each instant removed them a little further from 
 the shore of the world they knew. They saw their 
 occupations and their comfortable homes and their 
 friends and their serenity of mind, like objects on 
 
 71
 
 72 THE TORTOISE 
 
 a receding land, fade into the distance; but they 
 could not see what was ahead. Ahead was the steep 
 wall of the precipice of war. It was a blank unscal- 
 able surface upon the face of which each one beheld 
 the reflection of his own disturbed soul. 
 
 Nevertheless there were a great many people in 
 Paris who had never been there before at the end of 
 July. From across every section of the country they 
 had come hurrying. The map of France had been 
 covered with myriads of tiny scurrying specks con- 
 verging from the seashore and the lakes and the 
 mountains to the hot cities. No one wanted to be 
 alone and no one wanted to be far away. Each 
 had hurried to the centre of his interest. Each 
 looked for the person to whom he belonged, and 
 clung to the one who had shared with him the life 
 that was ended; only the children were left by the 
 seaside and the women who belonged to the children. 
 As if by magic all the men in the world had dis- 
 appeared from holiday places and the women who 
 belonged to the men had gone with them. 
 
 The Princess of Narbonne had Accompanied her 
 son to Paris. He had left a yacht full of friends 
 on the coast and had gone to fetch her in the grey 
 chateau where she was dozing. There had been no 
 question for either of them but of her going with 
 him. She had taken her jewel-case in one hand and 
 her stick in the other and had led the way, her head 
 up and a mask on her wasted face. 
 
 She sat alone now in her sultry Paris garden sur- 
 rounded by other gardens and the high white walls
 
 THE TORTOISE 73 
 
 of other shuttered houses. With one hand on the 
 knob of her stick, she sat leaning slightly forward, 
 staring at a bit of dusty ivy-covered wall and before 
 her red rimmed eyes passed a succession of men, in 
 strange uniforms, with clanking swords and proud 
 faces, all the men of her family that she had seen 
 go off to other wars. 
 
 Her son Jocelyn was in his room in the left wing, 
 packing. If she lifted her head she could see the 
 windows of his rooms that gave on to the garden, 
 but she did not look that way. She was measuring 
 her strength against the suffering ahead of her. 
 Carefully, she would mete it out. She would not 
 allow herself the luxury of any sudden pang, or any 
 sweeping emotion. 
 
 Her attitude was one of defiance. She refused to 
 acknowledge the fact that tomorrow her son's rooms 
 would be empty; she would not admit that any harm 
 could come to him; she defied the Heavens to break 
 her heart. " I will have prayers said for him every 
 day," she muttered to herself grimly. She would 
 burn innumerable candles and neglect no courtesy to 
 the celestial powers, but she would not be frightened. 
 It was impossible to admit that her youngest son, 
 the one person in the world who had ever called 
 out of the languor of her heart an unquenchable 
 passion of affection, should be taken from her in her 
 old age. It was not for this that she had loved him. 
 
 Nevertheless, she felt that she knew the meaning 
 of war. She remembered the horror of war spread- 
 ing like a pestilence over the elegant society in which
 
 74 THE TORTOISE 
 
 she had reigned. Her husband had lost an arm in 
 1870. Her lover of that year had been killed. She 
 remembered the feverish excitement of the salons 
 of Paris, the arrival of the bad news in the middle 
 of a ball. She had worn pale blue satin with silver 
 slippers that night. Some women had fainted 
 one had had hysterics. 
 
 In those days men had fought for the emperor; 
 there had been a certain elegance about war. To- 
 day one fought for a France shorn of glory, clothed 
 in the dull abhorrent garment of the Republic. One 
 went to war, with the sons of the butcher, the baker, 
 and the maire of one's village. Some fat trades- 
 men in a black coat had signed the papers for 
 Jocelyn's mobilization. 
 
 The Government was despicable but it was right 
 for her son to fight for his country. France be- 
 longed to such as he, the others were interlopers. 
 
 Behind the Princess, in the deep-shrouded rooms 
 of the house, a bell tinkled. Slippered feet moved; 
 shuffling across polished floors. Doors opened and 
 closed. 
 
 " Pierre," she called. There was no answer. 
 " Pierre," she repeated in a loud shrill tone and 
 pounded with her stick on the stone floor of the 
 terrasse. 
 
 An old man, in carpet slippers and a blue holland 
 apron appeared blinking in one of the open windows 
 behind her. 
 
 " Yes, Princess." 
 
 " What is it? " she demanded without turning.
 
 THE TORTOISE 75 
 
 " It is a note for Monsieur le Comte." 
 
 "A note?" 
 
 " Yes, Princess." 
 
 "What kind of a note?" 
 
 " A blue note, Princess." 
 
 " Don't be foolish, bring it here." 
 
 The old man advanced distressfully. His watery 
 eyes wavered. The pale sunlight reflected from the 
 white walls of the house made his bald pate shine 
 like a polished globe. He handed the envelope to 
 his mistress and began rubbing his knotted hands 
 on his apron. 
 
 " I don't know the writing," she muttered. 
 
 " No, Princess." 
 
 "Who brought it?" 
 
 " A messenger boy, Princess." 
 
 "What kind of a boy?" 
 
 " An impudent rascal of a boy." 
 
 " Well, take it to the count." 
 
 " Yes, Princess." 
 
 " And then fetch your wife. I must talk to her 
 about cooking us something for dinner." 
 
 " Very well, Princess." 
 
 The old man turned away. He was half across 
 the terrace when she called after him: 
 
 " Was the boy in livery? " 
 
 " Yes, Princess. Hotel livery. The Meurice, I 
 think." 
 
 " The hotel Meurice," she repeated shrilly, 
 " where's that?" 
 
 Pierre threw out his hands in a gesture of exas-
 
 76 THE TORTOISE 
 
 perated surprise, but his voice remained respectful. 
 
 " The Princess does not know the Hotel Meurice? 
 It is in the rue de Rivoli." 
 
 " How should I know? Do I ever cross the 
 river? Well, well, go along." 
 
 Pierre disappeared into the house. The old lady 
 crossed her two yellow hands on her stick and leaned 
 further forward. Her long back did not bend; it 
 looked as if it could not do so, without snapping, 
 but she slanted forward toward those emaciated out- 
 stretched hands with their heavy diamond rings and 
 her rigid white head under its folds of black lace 
 quivered. She stared at the ground muttering. 
 
 The note with its unfamiliar bold writing had dis- 
 turbed her. She had always resented being dis- 
 turbed. All her life, she had economized her emo- 
 tions and had opposed her will to any menace to 
 her calm. Her business for forty years had been 
 to remain beautiful. She had achieved this with 
 unceasing pains. No unpleasant expression had 
 been tolerated upon her features. No trouble had 
 been allowed to mark her serenity. No person had 
 been suffered who worried her. Jocelyn alone had 
 penetrated beneath the perfect enamel of her worldly 
 surface. He had weakened her, for him she was 
 vulnerable. When suddenly, fifteen years ago, she 
 had at the age of fifty on the death of her husband 
 given up the world, and had stepped down from her 
 throne there, she had continued in her seclusion the 
 habits of her grandeur. Buried in her self-imposed 
 solitude, she held court among the ghosts of her
 
 THE TORTOISE 77 
 
 brilliant past. Jocelyn alone of all living beings 
 had entered the secret place of her mind's retirement. 
 Her other sons and her daughter and her grand- 
 children had been relegated to the edges of her life. 
 Their respectful devotion she accepted as a matter 
 of course, but she took only a mild sceptical interest 
 in their doings. Her grandchildren bored her; her 
 eldest son annoyed her with eternal questions of 
 the sale of forests and fields. Her daughter seemed 
 to her much too undiscriminating in her tastes, she 
 received artists and journalists and foreigners. 
 Jocelyn alone amused her and tickled her fancy, and 
 satisfied her pride. From him she demanded con- 
 fidence, coming year by year to depend more and 
 more upon the recital of his experiences for enter- 
 tainment. His amusements she understood, and 
 from her seclusion she participated in his capricious 
 triumphs. She had in mind a series of definite 
 images of the women who had taken his fancy. 
 With a kind of vindictive pleasure she had watched 
 their coming and going, the rising of their stars and 
 their waning. She flattered herself that she was 
 acquainted with them all, without knowing any of 
 them. Of some she had mildly disapproved, but 
 of none had she been jealous. Only one had 
 troubled her peace of mind, a strange foreign woman 
 that her son had once brought bodily into her pres- 
 ence. She had been obliged to give lunch to the 
 great anglo-saxon creature, the first foreigner who 
 had been invited to a meal in her house since the day 
 that the present Czar had dined there.
 
 78 THE TORTOISE 
 
 She remembered the Englishwoman now with her 
 great yellow eyes and broad shoulders. There had 
 been something dangerous about her. She had not 
 dared express to Jocelyn her feeling of antipathy, 
 nor had Jocelyn confided in her on that occasion. 
 She had been glad when Yvonne her daughter had 
 told her that the woman had left Paris. She could 
 not understand Yvonne's interest in foreigners. 
 
 It occurred to her now that there was something 
 foreign about the handwriting on the envelope. 
 Suppose that this woman or some other from her 
 cold savage country were to make an appearance at 
 this moment. It would be more than she could 
 bear. 
 
 She had summoned all her energy to meet the 
 hour of separation. Moment by moment she was 
 letting it approach her. Lower and lower she 
 crouched to meet it, so that it might not overturn 
 her when it came. She had commanded her will 
 to uphold her, but to succeed she must be undis- 
 turbed. Keeping still was now an effort that needed 
 the concentration of all her powers. She felt that 
 if she let go of herself for one moment she would 
 crumble to pieces. If a stranger should come upon 
 her now, the shock would knock her down. 
 
 " Dust to dust " the words stared at her from 
 the ground. Her bones were brittle. One blow 
 and they would go to the dust they were made of. 
 
 She was conscious of a sharp stabbing pain in her 
 side. Jocelyn was her son. He was her own. She 
 was about to send him away to the war. . . .
 
 THE TORTOISE 79 
 
 A feeling of faintness came over her. She seemed 
 to be falling forward toward the stone flags of the 
 terrace, and a voice seemed to whisper to her out 
 of the sultry air. 
 
 " You are old. You cannot fight against fate 
 any longer. You are about to be left alone. Your 
 child is being taken away from you. What will 
 be left to you ? What have you done for your son 
 to fit him for life or for death? You have lived 
 for fetishes always. Shams have been your treas- 
 ures. Now you will be punished. He will be 
 killed." 
 
 Convent bells were ringing. Their notes came 
 floating across the surrounding labyrinth of streets 
 and gardens. 
 
 The princess straightened herself with a jerk. 
 Was she a weak woman fool, to be tormented now 
 by her conscience? That was all very well for peas- 
 ants and superstitious people. The church urged 
 repentance, but she, what had she to regret? She 
 had been the greatest lady of her time. 
 
 Her black eyes under their shrivelled reddened 
 lids flashed, like brilliant stones in a dilapidated 
 setting. The thin loose layer of worn yellow flesh 
 that covered the proud bones of her face worked 
 erratically. The shaking of her head was plainly 
 visible against the white wall behind her. 
 
 Toward her quivering figure the pealing notes 
 of the convent bells came rolling. They were waves 
 of silvery sound that broke against her black decrepi- 
 tude. Her brittle body shook under the undulating
 
 8o THE TORTOISE 
 
 pressure of their contact. She was weak, she was 
 old; her beautiful being had long ago turned to 
 wreckage. No blood in the long pale veins of her 
 body mounted to her face to meet the living air. 
 No breath of life in her dry heart went out to meet 
 the mystery of the beauty of the dying day. The 
 sweet light of the heavens hovering above the hushed 
 and fearful city, found her eyes glaring above a 
 thin column of dead bones and flesh, while once 
 again she opposed to the menace of truth the skele- 
 ton of her indomitable pride. She thought: 
 
 " Jocelyn will not be killed. No harm will come 
 to him, but I would rather he were killed than caught 
 in the toils of that woman. He would want to 
 marry her. The men of his family do not marry 
 divorced middle class women. His forefathers 
 knew how to live and how to die. They knew what 
 was permitted." 
 
 When the pealing of the bells ceased her head 
 was no longer shaking. She sat erect in the deep- 
 ening shadow, a black effigy on a throne passing 
 in review the elegant ghosts of her memory. 
 
 Pierre, the concierge, had darted into the house, 
 scurrying through the dim salons where marble 
 columns and shrouded sofas were reflected in the 
 great mirrors and gleaming parquets, down a dark 
 corridor and up three steps, to a door at which he 
 knocked. 
 
 "Entrez!" 
 
 He entered a place of confusion. Two flushed
 
 THE TORTOISE 81 
 
 young men in their shirt sleeves looked up at him 
 from a quite extraordinary disorder. In the middle 
 of the floor was the regulation iron trunk of the 
 French officer and around this spreading over rugs, 
 tables, chairs and sofas, was a litter of objects: 
 boots, boot-jacks, breeches, coats, leather cases, 
 sponges, bottles, piles of linen, revolvers, soap, letter 
 paper. 
 
 Jocelyn de St. Christe was on his knees before the 
 trunk, a pair of scarlet cavalry breeches in his hands. 
 Behind him, in the window, his friend, Guy de Bris- 
 sac, was polishing a sword with the tail of a flannel 
 shirt. 
 
 " A note for Monsieur le Comte," quavered 
 Pierre. 
 
 " Well, give it here. It's nothing to be emotional 
 about, my poor old one." 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Monsieur Jocelyn, it's not 
 the note." 
 
 " I know, I know. But what will you ? Don't 
 take on." 
 
 " But will Monsieur le Comte ever arrive? Does 
 Monsieur le Comte propose to put all that in that 
 box?" 
 
 " No, no, not all, a half, a quarter. Here 
 The note, it came? " 
 
 " By messenger." 
 
 " Ah, I see. " St. Christe stood up. He fin- 
 gered the note as if it were ever so slightly unpleas- 
 ant to the touch. His glance at the address had
 
 82 THE TORTOISE 
 
 slanted off out of the window. He seemed to be 
 pursuing there in the treetops a fugitive and annoy- 
 ing idea. 
 
 Pierre waited. His waiting was ignored. The 
 note in the fastidious fingers was ignored. The 
 disorderly present was ignored. 
 
 Pierre was too old to be patient. 
 
 " At your service, Monsieur le Comte," he mut- 
 tered fretfully. Receiving no answer he screwed 
 his pale eyes toward the silent young gentleman in 
 the window and withdrew, but outside the door he 
 stopped and stuck his bald head once more into the 
 room. 
 
 " Monsieur le Comte dines this evening with 
 Madame la Princesse? It is because of the fowl." 
 
 " Yes, yes." 
 
 His old head was gone. 
 
 Jocelyn de St. Christe opened the letter delicately. 
 It took an instant to read, and was tossed to his 
 friend. 
 
 " The beautiful Madame Chudd, who falls from 
 heaven," he enunciated concisely. His lips clipped 
 off the words neatly. His fine eyes under lifted 
 arching eyebrows watched the slip of paper undergo 
 the scrutiny of his friend. It took an instant to 
 read, a second time, and was laid on the table. 
 There were only a dozen words to it. They stared 
 up from the paper at the ceiling. " Dear friend, 
 I have come. You will find me at the Hotel 
 Meurice at any hour of the day. Faithfully yours, 
 Helen."
 
 THE TORTOISE 83 
 
 The two men, so many times larger, so very much 
 more important than that thin sheet of paper, looked 
 at each other across it. Their look conveyed a 
 perfect understanding of such a fine discriminating 
 quality as to make conversation almost unnecessary. 
 
 " At this moment," murmured Brissac. 
 
 " You will admit that it is not the moment." 
 
 The letter became for an instant the object of 
 their converging unfriendly glances. Then the two 
 pairs of eyes looked at each other with sympathy. 
 
 St. Christe lifted his shoulders and pushed his 
 hands into his pockets. 
 
 " I understand nothing, but nothing at all," he 
 brought out after turning his back and then facing 
 round again. It was impossible to walk up and 
 down on the crowded floor. 
 
 "As for that Does one ever understand?" 
 ' Tomorrow I leave for Rheims." 
 
 " Just so." 
 
 " After that, God knows where." 
 
 " Exactly." 
 ' Tomorrow, the depot; the next day war." 
 
 " Well, perhaps not the next day." 
 
 " There remains tonight," announced Jocelyn. 
 
 Brissac had begun again the polishing of the 
 sword hilt. He did not lift his eyes. 
 
 ' There remains, as you say, tonight," he echoed. 
 
 His attitude suggested that he had no opinions 
 and no ideas on this or any other subject. His 
 sleek head, his square shoulders, his fine well kept 
 hands, conveyed an impression of exquisite and ele-
 
 84 THE TORTOISE 
 
 gant discretion. One felt certain to look at him, 
 that none of those closely knit nicely modelled limbs 
 of his could ever make a false movement. Never 
 would either of his smartly shod feet take a mis- 
 step. One could trust them to the most difficult 
 and intricate paths. 
 
 Their way, at the moment, their owner was say- 
 ing to himself, was out of the door. Silence had 
 followed his last phrase. He laid the sword beside 
 the letter on the table and began putting on his coat. 
 It was a beautifully fitting coat. He was buttoning 
 it up when St. Christe rapped out sharply through 
 tight lips. 
 
 " But it's not done. One simply doesn't do it." 
 
 Brissac looked at the fine lean face of his 
 friend through narrowed eyes. The flutter of his 
 eyelids expressed the faintest shade of surprise, but 
 the sound that his neat mouth emitted was a grunt 
 with a definite intonation of sympathy and it drew 
 from the other the sudden nervous query : 
 
 "What shall I do?" to which Brissac re- 
 torted: "What does she expect you to do?" 
 whereupon St. Christe followed up quickly with 
 a kind of exasperated hiss: " That's just it; I don't 
 know." 
 
 The surprise on Brissac's face betrayed an 
 obvious incredulity, but it passed unnoticed. 
 
 " You see, I don't even know why she left. She 
 disappeared at the moment of my highest expecta- 
 tions without explanation, without warning. I went
 
 THE TORTOISE 85 
 
 round one day and found her gone. No word since 
 then. Not a word all this time. Two months; my 
 letters unanswered, and now, suddenly she arrives, 
 on the eve of the war." 
 
 " Perhaps she knows nothing of the danger." 
 
 " Then why has she come? " 
 
 " A whim, a remorse." 
 
 " But she must know. Her husband I am told is 
 one of the confidential advisers of his Government." 
 
 " Then she has come to say good-bye." 
 
 " Ah, there you are. She may have come to say 
 good-bye." 
 
 " In which case?" queried Brissac. 
 
 " In which case," cried St. Christe, " she is 
 mad." He threw up his hands and flung himself 
 forward on the open window-sill and began drum- 
 ming on the stone ledge with his fingers. 
 
 He thought. 
 
 " It is impossible, what she has done. She puts 
 me in an impossible position. I cannot go to her. 
 It is too dangerous. If I went I would stay; she is 
 not wise. We would both be seriously com- 
 promised. Beside, I have other things to think of 
 now. This is no moment for a love affair. In a 
 week I may be dead. I have hundreds of things to 
 do before tomorrow. And there is my mother." 
 
 He could see his mother down below on the ter- 
 race. Her black solitary figure seemed to him very 
 small and pitiful beneath the broad facade of the 
 house with its rows of high shuttered windows. She
 
 86 THE TORTOISE 
 
 did not look up at him. Her head was bent over 
 her hands that were clasped on her stick. She 
 looked as if she were praying. 
 
 "You don't want to see her then?" Brissac 
 asked behind him. 
 
 " No, I don't want to see her. I have only to- 
 night. I must spend tonight with my mother." 
 The words were spoken slowly and with a certain 
 solemnity. 
 
 Brissac moved toward the door. He thought 
 that a groan floated back to him from the head be- 
 yond the window. He hesitated. On his part there 
 was timidity now, to meet the solemnity of his friend. 
 
 " Shall I go to the Meurice and tell her that you 
 have left?" 
 
 "Yes, do that. Ugh! this is most painful." 
 
 " It won't seem important a month from now." 
 
 " No, I suppose not, but she is proud, the proud- 
 est woman I've ever known." 
 
 " You forget that she will never know that you 
 know." 
 
 " Yes, yes. And there is my mother. She has 
 a right; she has every right." 
 
 " I'm off then unless you will go yourself for 
 half an hour." 
 
 Jocelyn turned. He shook his head. 
 
 " Too dangerous," he muttered. " She would 
 keep me. I'm afraid of her; you see her, you tell 
 her; I leave it to you. It's better so. There's no 
 time. Good God man, the Germans may cross the 
 frontier tomorrow. How can one begin a love
 
 THE TORTOISE 87 
 
 affair at such a moment? End one? Yes, perhaps, 
 but begin. No. Take a new mistress the night 
 of the end of the world? No, truly, it's not worth 
 while ; one doesn't do it." 
 
 " Good-bye then till tomorrow." 
 
 " Good-bye."
 
 II 
 
 JOCELYN DE ST. CHRISTE was thirty-five 
 years old and for thirty-five years he had en- 
 joyed himself. His nature was on the whole 
 a happy one. Circumstances had conspired to 
 please him. If he had inherited any of the austere 
 intolerance of his parents, the trait had been buried 
 beneath a charming layer of softness. Life had 
 always caressed him. Its caresses had given him a 
 genial brilliance. He carried light with him into 
 the dimmest salon. People hovered about him like 
 moths round a candle. 
 
 He had become an artist in the enjoyment of life: 
 giving pleasure and receiving it in the most attrac- 
 tive way possible had been his occupation since his 
 tutor had proclaimed him a man. 
 
 He was in harmony with his world. Its limita- 
 tions seemed to him pleasant, it's prejudices honour- 
 able. His people had, at the birth of the Republic, 
 cut themselves off from all public activity. They 
 considered themselves bound in honour to love 
 France and loathe the Government and do nothing 
 about it. It had never occurred to him to consider 
 their attitude as unfortunate. The world had pre- 
 sented itself to him as a treasure house wherein he 
 could let his taste gratify itself. His taste was con- 
 sidered infallible. He had been too busy, exercis-
 
 THE TORTOISE 89 
 
 ing the faculty of choice, to consider any of his vi- 
 tality as wasted. Selection, comparison, minute ob- 
 servation of beautiful objects, this had occupied him, 
 and if women had become for him the most engross- 
 ing of objects, taking up more of his time than rare 
 bibelots or old bindings, it was because they, rather 
 than he, wanted it to be so. Women loved him. 
 
 He was grateful to them for being so nice to him. 
 Scarce any of them had caused him a pang. His 
 occasional duels had not been concerned with them. 
 He cultivated certain prejudices in order, as he put 
 it, not to get too lazy. Israelites were to him an 
 abomination. He laughed at them and occasionally 
 picked a quarrel with one, just to prove that his 
 sustained contempt was dangerous. Secretly, he 
 was proud of being considered the best swordsman 
 in Paris. An obscure instinct impelled him, now 
 and then to run after danger. He called it amuse- 
 ment, but it was deeper than that. At bottom he 
 felt life to be too easy. His gratitude to the women 
 who were kind to him would have been greater had 
 they been less easily kind. Of late years, he had 
 even begun to feel that he would enjoy suffering for 
 a change. Being incapable of inflicting it upon him- 
 self, he had gently experimented in it with others, but 
 to humiliate a woman and tease a man to exaspera- 
 tion was not on the whole worth while. He was 
 beginning to wonder whether some day he might 
 not after all be dreadfully bored, when Helen Chudd 
 stepped across his horizon. She had been admirably 
 difficult. Her coldness had been just the tonic he
 
 90 THE TORTOISE 
 
 wanted. The aspect of her splendid struggle 
 against him, had thrilled him. He had been moved, 
 as he had never been moved before and had been 
 on the verge of adoring her, when she had disap- 
 peared. For a month afterwards he had been 
 angry. The experience was peculiar. Resuming 
 once again the pleasures of habit he had discovered 
 that the boredom he had dreaded as a distant peril, 
 was now suddenly upon him. 
 
 The summons of the country calling him to pre- 
 pare for war had been an immense relief. 
 
 He had left his agreeable rather tiresome friends 
 in a state of exalted excitement. 
 
 The sight of his mother's valiant horror had been 
 to him the first sign of monstrous disaster. On her 
 stricken face he had read the message of fear. Be- 
 cause he had always feared her, and had never quite 
 lost his child's feeling of awed belief in her tyrannical 
 power, the sudden realization of her helplessness 
 had made him understand the immense catastrophy. 
 He saw her, minute and frail, in a desolate world. 
 She appeared to him, suddenly, just a helpless old 
 woman in danger. The fact had disturbed him pro- 
 foundly. 
 
 Their trip to Paris, which should have taken four 
 hours, had been interminable. The train had been 
 twelve hours late. They had spent the night in a 
 compartment with six other people. He had been 
 unable to get her any food. In the stuffy dark of 
 the carriage, he had discerned her sitting upright 
 in her corner, a grim, tortured figure. She had 1
 
 THE TORTOISE 91 
 
 scarcely spoken a word. Leaning over her, at in- 
 tervals during the night, he had stroked her hand. 
 The lights of passing trains had shown him her face, 
 dry and gray with wide open eyes. He had been 
 afraid the fatigue would kill her. The thought kept 
 recurring that in a few hours, he would no longer 
 be near to protect her. 
 
 They had arrived in Paris at nine o'clock in the 
 morning. There was no one to meet them at the 
 station. He had managed to find a fiacre to drive 
 them home. The coachman and the groom and the 
 two footmen had already gone. The butler they 
 had left in the country. There was no one in the 
 house but the concierge and his wife, who had not 
 received the telegram announcing their arrival. 
 The house had welcomed them like a familiar tomb. 
 He had opened the windows and had helped old 
 Jeannette make his mother's bed but she had re- 
 fused to lie down on it. All day she had been 
 sitting in the garden. He had been obliged to leave 
 her alone there. Without his valet, packing had 
 assumed hideous difficulties. Guy de Brissac had 
 turned up and had tried to help him. They had 
 been interrupted by the apparition of Helen Chudd. 
 Everything remained to be done. It was getting 
 late. He left at seven o'clock the next morning. 
 
 The aspect of his disordered room dismayed him. 
 It showed him the upheaval of the world. With his 
 well-ordered tasteful life torn to pieces, he felt him- 
 self a nonentity, a naked two-legged creature, in- 
 significant and impotent. He was starting out to
 
 92 THE TORTOISE 
 
 war, with a crowd of men naked and ugly all ex- 
 actly like himself. There would be no one he knew 
 there in that vast and horrid confusion; there would 
 be no one to help him. He would be alone. He 
 was going to flounder out there and die in some 
 horrid dirty way. 
 
 His head throbbed. It was full of annoying and 
 troublesome ideas that he could not sort out. Ob- 
 viously, his first task was to finish packing. He 
 hung idly over his box. What was he to take with 
 him to the war? A lot of little objects, a bottle 
 of hair wash, a shaving stick and a confusion of 
 pleasant memories. 
 
 It occurred to him that the very pleasantness of 
 those memories was a source of weakness to him 
 now. Out of the fabric of the past, he must make 
 himself an armour for the future. From what was 
 fine and strong and durable in his experience, he 
 must supply himself with a defensive covering for 
 his naked soul. He searched about in his mind for 
 the stern stuff of resistance. For the life of him 
 he could think of nothing that would bear the weight 
 of half a dozen good blows of the hammer of danger 
 except the image of his mother's tyrannical idolatry. 
 Out of his mother's love he could make himself a 
 shield. For the rest, he saw himself going off tp 
 war, in an armoured suit made of tinsel. 
 
 He said to himself: " Suppose that I were to 
 be afraid. What should I do then?" but he could 
 not answer the question and he knew that he could 
 never answer it until the war was over. It would
 
 THE TORTOISE 93 
 
 always be there, hanging over him. He would 
 never be sure that he was not going to turn coward 
 tomorrow. The idea of disgracing his name made 
 him feel sick. He fell to packing desperately, 
 throwing things into his box and pounding them 
 down. 
 
 Certain kinds of danger he felt confident that he 
 could meet with success. Anything in the nature of 
 a hand to hand fight with swords for instance, or a 
 sudden spectacular attack, anything in fact that ap- 
 pealed to his dramatic sense but what he was not 
 sure of was the stealthy thing that crawled at you 
 from behind, or the great slow enveloping thing that 
 covered you with the desolate conviction of death. 
 Suppose he were left alone with a handful of men 
 somewhere in a wood, in a field, behind a hill and 
 the regiment went off and forgot them, and there 
 was nothing to do but wait and no one to communi- 
 cate with and the growing conviction upon one that 
 they were cut off. Could he stand it? Was he 
 sure that something wouldn't snap? and that he 
 wouldn't just turn tail and run like hell? 
 
 What was it that kept men solid on a quaking 
 earth ? Pride, Faith. A deep affection that they 
 could not betray. His only affection, he came back 
 to it again, was his affection for his mother. Would 
 that help him? 
 
 Faith? In what? The good God was waiting 
 for one to die and the saints with him were waiting 
 to welcome one. They would hinder rather than 
 help. Pride? He had always believed he had
 
 94 THE TORTOISE 
 
 enough of that for anything, but what was he proud 
 of? His name, the record of his family, the brave 
 deeds of his ancestors? Certainly he was not proud 
 of anything that he himself had done. It had never 
 occurred to him as necessary to earn self-esteem. 
 Suppose he was killed at once before he could do 
 something admirable. He would not have one thing 
 to his credit on the other side of death and would 
 leave no monument behind him. The saints would 
 look at him and say: " What has he got to show 
 for his life? " And some one would answer: " A 
 collection of old Sevres, some of the finest ' Rose 
 de Barry ' in existence and a chest full of women's 
 letters." 
 
 He gave a loud laugh. His desk was crammed 
 with letters. He must destroy them. Why under 
 heaven had he kept them all? He had kept them 
 out of vanity. Some day he had actually intended 
 reading them over. 
 
 Crossing to his secretaire, he opened one of its 
 drawers with a key. There they were, neatly ar- 
 ranged in packets. They inspired him with disgust. 
 He saw himself at that table, idiotic, sentimental, 
 eternally answering the notes of amourous ladies. 
 What good would such a man do in a battle? His 
 eyes falling on his sword became fascinated. That 
 was to be his best friend now. He pulled it out 
 of its sheath. How was it that he had been taught 
 to manipulate it? There would be no rules in this 
 duelling. Suppose he were on his horse, and the 
 German on the ground, he could then bring it down
 
 THE TORTOISE 95 
 
 so, on the back of the fellow's neck. Suppose he 
 missed and the man lunged upward, got his horse in 
 the belly, brought him down. On his feet in the 
 melee, he must slash out. They would be on all 
 sides of him. He lunged, right and left. A bit 
 of china fell to the floor, and lay in pieces. Ah, 
 to kill, to kill, to rip them open. Once one was 
 in it, it would not be so bad. He would account for 
 his man anyway, the man that was destined to bar 
 his way. But suppose he failed. Suppose his nerve 
 gave way, suppose he were seized with panic, and 
 scrambled on a horse, and turned tail, and ran 
 
 This was nonsense. Here he was like a clown, 
 brandishing his sword about and nothing was done. 
 
 He must anyhow tear up these letters. It would 
 not be safe to leave them there. One never knew. 
 He might not come back. And there was that 
 affair of the farm that he had decided to sell. He 
 must, positively, write to those people and have the 
 hundred thousand francs by next month. Next 
 month he might be dead. His brother would get 
 the money. 
 
 He began tearing up envelopes. Not one of these 
 women meant anything to him now. No woman in 
 the world had left with him, even a feeling of loss, 
 except Helen Chudd, and now Helen was here and 
 he was not in the mood to see her. There were bills 
 to be paid in that small upper drawer. He would 
 write the cheques and leave them with his mother. 
 
 " Votre folle Jacqueline." He looked absently at 
 those words on the mauve sheet of note paper.
 
 96 THE TORTOISE 
 
 Who was Jacqueline? He could not remember. 
 He could remember no one, but Helen Chudd. She 
 was there, just across the river, separated from him 
 by a few streets. He remembered her precisely and 
 he saw her suddenly in her room at the Meurice, 
 waiting for him. He could recall his own feeling 
 on seeing her for the first time. He had said to 
 himself in a flash: "There she is," just as if he 
 had been expecting her all his life. His inward ex- 
 clamation had been a note of triumph. He had 
 recognized her as the person for whom all his time 
 of selecting and scrutinizing had been a preparation. 
 
 After that he had seen her in countless attitudes, 
 in innumerable settings. For a week he had re- 
 frained from asking to be presented to her and had 
 gone to every place where she was, just to look at 
 her. He remembered the quality of his inward 
 glow during that week. It resembled nothing so 
 much as the golden glow of the collector who has 
 discovered some priceless perfect object and is so 
 lost in ecstatic contemplation that he does not even 
 covet its possession. 
 
 She had resented his behaviour. He remembered 
 her glaring at him magnificently. Subsequently he 
 had found himself confronted so often by her long 
 back and disdainful averted head that he had been 
 forced to bring his blissful detachment to an end. 
 She had acknowledged his presence icily and had 
 conveyed to him the most perfect sense of his own 
 impertinence. That had stung .him. He had been 
 near losing his head. Artifice had been thrown
 
 THE TORTOISE 97 
 
 aside. He had plunged deep, with one leap into 
 the dark well of her seduction. He had had at mo- 
 ments the feeling of drowning. Her magnetism 
 was immense. 
 
 She had remained for him an enigma. Her cold- 
 ness had conveyed the promise of immeasurable won- 
 ders. Then suddenly, she had disappeared. Now, 
 again, she was there. He imagined her standing 
 in the ugly hotel room, looking down out across the 
 Rue de Rivoli and the Tuileries gardens. Her gaze 
 was directed straight to the spot where he was sit- 
 ting. It travelled across the dusty trees, the white 
 street, the slate roofs. He could see her lifted head, 
 her slightly dilated nostrils, her pointed upper lip. 
 
 " Helene," he muttered to himself. " Helene." 
 He buried his head in his hands. Through the open 
 windows, the bells of the Benedictine Chapel came 
 pealing. His room with its silken hangings and 
 gleaming furniture, all covered over with the confu- 
 sion of his packing, was filled with the sound of the 
 bells. His head throbbed. He imagined Helen's 
 voice speaking to him as it had sometimes spoken. 
 Its richness had a slight roughness that had always 
 been to him inexpressibly disturbing. It vibrated 
 now in his ears: " Come to me. I have come to 
 fulfil my promise. Come to me before it is too 
 late." 
 
 Suddenly, he knew that all he wanted in life was 
 to see her once more. He had been mad to send 
 Guy to her. It was inevitable that he himself should 
 see her. She had willed it.
 
 98 THE TORTOISE 
 
 But Guy had gone. He was already with her. 
 The thing was settled. He groaned aloud. 
 
 It seemed to him that could he see her she would 
 do him some marvellous good. He saw that he had 
 missed something divine in her that he might have 
 found. He thought of her soul and believed that 
 he might have known it. He recognized the beauty 
 of her coming. She had come to give him herself 
 in a superb and final gesture of farewell, that would 
 protect him long after when he was alone. Why 
 had he not understood an hour ago? Why had he 
 never understood her? If he had, he would not be 
 lonely now. Guy would have told her the lies they 
 had arranged between them. It was indecent to lie 
 to her. Why not go to her anyhow, make a clean 
 breast of it, tell her the truth? And find with her 
 in his hour of imminent peril the wonder of wonders 
 in which he had never believed. He should have 
 been truthful. He could still be. 
 
 There was a knock at the door. 
 
 " What what is it? " he shouted. " Come in. 
 What do you want? " 
 
 " The Princess sends word that dinner will be 
 served in her boudoir in half an hour," said old 
 Pierre, sticking in his head. 
 
 " Dinner? Half an hour? What time is it?" 
 
 " It is a quarter to eight." 
 
 "No Very well. Very well. Tell the 
 Princess I'll be down presently." 
 
 He swept the last scraps of paper into the grate. 
 So much for old love letters. There they were all
 
 THE TORTOISE 99 
 
 of them, a mass of little scented scraps of paper. 
 He touched a match to them remembering too late 
 that Helen's note was among the lot. She had never 
 written him before. He had nothing of hers, not 
 a souvenir of any kind. 
 
 His hands were very dirty. This annoyed him. 
 He had always taken great care of his hands. He 
 remembered while cleaning his fingernails (one was 
 torn) that he must show Pierre after dinner about 
 oiling the motor he was leaving in the garage and 
 must give him instructions about the two ponies that 
 were to go to the country. He could do this and 
 be at the Meurice by nine-thirty. There would still 
 be time.
 
 Ill 
 
 HE did not at first see his mother on entering 
 her boudoir. Candles were lighted on the 
 chimney piece and a small table was laid 
 for their evening meal. Her favourite chair was 
 drawn up to the window, its high silken back half 
 turned to the door. It was a stiff, but commodious 
 armchair of the Louis XVI period with rounded side- 
 pieces curving out to enclose its occupant, and round 
 the edge of one of these his mother invariably turned 
 with a bobbing duck of her head to greet him when 
 he opened the door. Now with a slight tremor of 
 apprehension he noticed the absence of the familiar 
 amusing gesture. She was there, he ascertained a 
 moment later, but she had fallen asleep and had 
 slid down into a crumpled heap against the stiff 
 brocaded back of her chair. Her head had fallen 
 to one side, and rested against the worn golden wood 
 of one of its curved wings. The relaxation of her 
 usual rigid pose appeared to have dislocated her 
 body. Her thin limbs lay together lifeless and dis- 
 jointed under the black covering of her merciful 
 clothes. He had the feeling that if he lifted her 
 up in his arms, she would fall to pieces. 
 
 He leaned over her; fearfully approaching his 
 lips to her white hair. There were tears in his eyes. 
 Never had he seen her so exposed in all the defence- 
 
 100
 
 THE TORTOISE 101 
 
 less unattractiveness of her old age. Sleep had 
 stolen from her the disguise of her dignity. She 
 was a pitiful old woman. His heart ached for her. 
 
 Under the pressure of his lips, she started, quiver- 
 ing. Her eyes opened. She turned her head, look- 
 ing up from the black depths of her dreams, in terror. 
 " Oh oh ! " she cried softly and made little quick 
 whimpering sounds. Her shaking hands clutched 
 him. 
 
 " C'est toi," she whimpered; " c'est toi." 
 
 He kissed her forehead and she leaned it against 
 his coat for a moment. Never had he seen her like 
 this. She was like a little frightened child, and yet 
 how old she was! Her lean old fingers travelled 
 round his head like the fingers of a blind woman. 
 
 " Yes, little mother. I have come for dinner." 
 
 She sat up, half pushing him away. 
 
 " I have been dreaming, such dreadful dreams." 
 
 Her voice had hardened suddenly. She dismissed 
 him and them and her weakness with a wave of the 
 hand. Her hand was transformed. It had im- 
 plored his comfort like a blind frightened thing a 
 minute before; it was now an imperious hand accus- 
 tomed to being obeyed. He obeyed it and moved 
 away, taking his stand in front of the chimney be- 
 tween the two lighted candelabras, on the other side 
 of the room. The moment of his walking three 
 steps with his back to her had been enough. Look- 
 ing again he observed that a miracle was accom- 
 plished. She sat bolt upright and her black eyes 
 gleaming out at him challenged him to an admission
 
 io2 THE TORTOISE 
 
 of weakness, either his, or hers. Her will working 
 like the invisible artist behind the scene of the 
 guignol had pulled the necessary strings. Her fea- 
 tures and her limbs were in place again. He felt 
 like applauding. The word " Bravo " sounded 
 within him. 
 
 She pointed a long finger. " Ring for dinner to 
 be served," she commanded; and actually, as she 
 said the words, her long arm outstretched, the 
 shadow of the ghost of her beauty fell upon her. 
 
 " How she must have ruled them," he thought 
 as he did her bidding, and he looked round the 
 crowded walls of the faded shining room as if ap- 
 pealing to all those silent witnesses of her glory that 
 looked out from their little golden frames. The 
 pale silken panels of the room were studded with 
 miniatures, so many of them, so close together on 
 the lustrous surface, that the place had the air of a 
 jewelled casket. He knew them all. They had 
 been named to him in his childhood. Some of them 
 he had seen in the flesh, but not those by whom he 
 had been the most impressed. For years during 
 his boyhood he had had personal relations with the 
 little exquisite people. He had had feelings of 
 reverence for the proud-nosed men in white wigs ; he 
 had been sentimental about some of the pretty la- 
 dies. When during his studies he came upon their 
 names in the history of his country, he had often had 
 a glow of pride or of friendliness, or sometimes of 
 mortification. It had been noticeable and sometimes 
 confusing that the facts concerning them as told by
 
 THE TORTOISE 103 
 
 his mother and as recounted by historians did not 
 always corroborate each other. His great great- 
 uncle, a cardinal, had had his ears cut off during 
 the Revolution. The fact was nowhere denied, but 
 its causes and the motive attributed to it were va- 
 rious and contradictory. On the whole he had gath- 
 ered the impression that his innumerable ancestors 
 and relations had been almost constantly getting into 
 trouble, and that between them, what with their 
 scope of influence in the Church and with the Crown 
 and among the embassies of foreign countries, they 
 had found a wide field for making it. They seemed 
 to have been arrogant, restless people, with now and 
 then flashes of extraordinary brilliance. The 
 women, some of them beautiful, had not always been 
 circumspect. Several had died violent deaths. 
 One, the prettiest, had been given poison, it was 
 alleged, by her own husband, who had refused to 
 allow her to accept the favours of the king. They 
 now looked bland enough in their minute and pol- 
 ished elegance. Their portraits on ivory, some of 
 them in oval frames studded with pearls, repre- 
 sented a large sum of money. His mother had had 
 very generous offers for the collection; she would 
 leave it, the collection, to him and he was to leave 
 it in turn to the museum of the Louvre. 
 
 He thought vaguely of all these people, while he 
 waited for dinner. On the whole, the soldiers in 
 his family had the best record. The churchmen 
 had amassed fortunes, and the diplomats had spent 
 them. The men who had gone to war had won
 
 104 THE TORTOISE 
 
 glory. He was going to war the next morning. 
 He would take a ticket and get on the train 
 
 " Henriette came to see me," his mother was say- 
 ing. 
 
 "Henriette? Who is Henriette?" 
 
 " Your cousin, Henriette de Vaumont." 
 
 " The ugly old maid with the crooked face? " 
 
 " Yes, if you must be unkind about the excellent 
 creature. She leaves for Alsace tomorrow. She 
 belongs to a group of nurses who go to the army at 
 once." 
 
 " But Alsace is in the hands of the Germans." 
 
 " It has been for some time, but they don't think 
 it will be for much longer." 
 
 " I see, Henriette de Vaumont is going to occupy 
 Alsace. Well, she's nearly big enough to do it. If 
 she put out one foot and stepped " 
 
 " You're not nice. She has a heart of gold." 
 
 " I've no doubt." 
 
 " And I wish I were going with her." 
 
 He gaped: "What?" 
 
 " Yes, and I'm thinking of doing something like 
 it. I see no reason why I shouldn't organize a hos- 
 pital. One must have an occupation," she added 
 grimly. 
 
 "Seriously?" 
 
 " Seriously." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 " Here, I shall turn all the ground floor into wards 
 for the wounded." 
 
 " But you have had no experience in such things."
 
 THE TORTOISE 105 
 
 " I shall learn." 
 
 " You will fatigue yourself terribly." 
 
 " Yes, perhaps; I expect that." 
 
 He continued to gape at her. She was surprising, 
 she was admirable, she was obstinate, she was in- 
 credibly pathetic. 
 
 u But you are no longer young, dear mother, 
 and you have never done anything like this," he ven- 
 tured. 
 
 " As I say, one must find new occupations," she 
 rejoined irritably. " One must begin again." 
 
 " But I hope your life will not be so very different, 
 after all." 
 
 She silenced him: "You will not be there," she 
 said shortly. 
 
 He was glad of the grimness in her voice. His 
 feeling was one of immense relief. He knew that he 
 could rely upon her to protest with all her being 
 against his annihilation and her own fear for him. 
 She appeared to him powerfully real. She was not 
 only splendid and touching, she was also a guarantee 
 and a protection. He saw her rising up in her 
 gaunt old age, to protect him, to dispute him with 
 death, to exorcise from his path the powers of dark- 
 ness. 
 
 " You, my child, will worry yourself less about 
 me if you know I am occupied," he heard her say. 
 He understood that her effort was for him, more 
 than for herself, and something sublime in her love 
 for him touched him now, for the first time. 
 
 Old Pierre bringing in a fried sole on a platter
 
 io6 THE TORTOISE 
 
 and a dusty bottle of Burgundy announced that the 
 Princess was served. They sat down opposite one 
 another at the small table. He touched her hand 
 across it and watched the fleeting sweetness of her 
 answering smile play hide and seek through the bit- 
 ter wrinkles of her withered face. 
 
 Beyond the long window, the sultry day died 
 slowly, reluctantly, as if sickening to death with fore- 
 boding. Above the treetops of the breathless en- 
 closed garden that was like a well, the sky was aglow 
 with the lights of the city, that seemed far distant. 
 The occasional hoot of a far away motor was the 
 only sound that broke the stillness. 
 
 Confronted by food St. Christe had a feeling of 
 suffocation. It was impossible to eat. He thought 
 to himself: "This house is like a prison on an 
 island." He wanted suddenly to get out on the 
 boulevards and feel the crowd jostling him. He 
 thought of Helen waiting. Maybe she was no 
 longer waiting. She seemed very far away. He 
 wondered how he could get to her without alarming 
 his mother. He must invent some imperative er- 
 rand. 
 
 "You had no disturbing news this afternoon?" 
 asked the princess. 
 
 " No, nothing; a note from a friend, of no im- 
 portance. " He felt himself flushing. He im- 
 agined that her eyes were reading his thoughts. 
 Their burning gaze penetrated him uncomfortably, 
 but his mind dodged her idea and continued its dan- 
 gerous imaginings.
 
 THE TORTOISE 107 
 
 If Helen had been free, he would have married 
 her. Strange that he had never thought of that be- 
 fore. He had never wanted to marry. Wives 
 had always been connected in his mind with settle- 
 ments and the ordered business of founding a family. 
 Marriage he had thought tiresome and he had 
 chosen not to be tired. To his mother's argument 
 in favour of the institution he had always replied 
 that as he was not the head of the family and she 
 had already four grandchildren and as he knew that 
 she liked to have him to herself just as he was, he 
 could not take her too seriously. She had not in- 
 sisted; she had even admitted that another daughter- 
 in-law would add nothing to her happiness. 
 
 But if he had a wife and children now, he would 
 feel less lonely. Had he been given a son to survive 
 him, death would not be final. He would not be so 
 soon forgotten. Another Jocelyn de St. Christe, 
 the image of himself, made of the stuff of his own 
 life, would continue to live on the earth. 
 
 He looked at his mother with the words on his 
 lips: " I ought to have married, " but he saw that 
 she was agitated and refrained. 
 
 " What is it, my mother? " he asked caressingly. 
 
 " Nothing, nothing. " 
 
 " But yes, there is something, tell me." 
 
 " Well, it is that note. Pierre brought it to me, 
 and I feel you are hiding something from me. " 
 
 His heart sank. He realized that long ago he 
 had prepared by his minute confidences this little un- 
 welcome moment. Her jealousy had in the past
 
 io8 THE TORTOISE 
 
 amused him. He had pampered it. Tonight was 
 no time for taking a stand against it. 
 
 " Foolish mother. It was a note from a friend 
 who has arrived from London, and who wanted to 
 see me. You have met her, Madame Chudd. " 
 
 "Ah, the Englishwoman." 
 
 He was startled by the fierce shuddering breath 
 that carried the words. 
 
 " Yes, she is English." 
 
 " You thought her beautiful." 
 
 " She is indeed very beautiful." 
 
 " I did not, as I remember, agree with you about 
 her beauty." 
 
 " No? I thought you rather admired her." 
 
 " On the contrary." 
 
 He hesitated. His mother had been speaking 
 with what seemed to him unnecessary energy. He 
 felt the need of being cautious. 
 
 " As for that," he resumed mildly after a mo- 
 ment, " our respective tastes in beauty have not al- 
 ways coincided. It has amused us to differ." 
 
 "On this occasion I was not amused; I disliked 
 the English woman intensely." 
 
 " That," he replied quickly, " you never told me." 
 Under the sting of her remark he had flushed again, 
 but this time hotly. 
 
 " No," she went on, rapping out her words as if 
 with a hammer. " I saw that you were very ab- 
 sorbed; you chose to go so far as to bring her to this 
 house. I understood that any advice from me would 
 have been useless."
 
 THE TORTOISE 109 
 
 " You mean that you would have warned me 
 against her? " 
 
 " Yes, she is dangerous." 
 
 They were both silent. He was confused and dis- 
 turbed. What disturbed him most was that his 
 mother had voiced with conviction just the same 
 fear that he himself had had. Helen was dan- 
 gerous; he agreed, but he had had no idea that his 
 mother thought about her or even remembered her. 
 Her prejudice and her awakened suspicions seemed 
 to him formidable things with which to have to deal. 
 She was terribly strong at all times, and now she had 
 the added weapon of her imminent loss of him. He 
 was too sorry for her to dare to hurt her, and he 
 thought : " Tomorrow morning she will wake up, 
 again, frightened, like a little child, as she did an 
 hour ago. And I will be gone." 
 
 His face was clouded over and she watched his 
 face with the eyes of a hawk, her waxen cheeks 
 growing more waxen, the lines about her withered 
 mouth deepening. Strange, that she did not leave 
 him alone, she who knew him so well, and every ex- 
 pressive line and every tell-tale hue of his flushing 
 sensitive skin. She might have trusted him to be 
 good to her as he had never failed to be, but she was 
 impelled to go on prodding him. 
 
 "It was so surprising your bringing her to lunch. 
 It seems to me that I was very civil. As for that, 
 she assumed my cordiality; I but followed her lead." 
 
 He winced. She saw him wince and her eyes 
 gleamed.
 
 no THE TORTOISE 
 
 " Her manner," she began again. 
 
 But he was by now exasperated. 
 
 " Her manner," he broke in, " was perfect." 
 And then more lamely he added : 
 
 " Yvonne admired her." 
 
 " As much as one can admire any one so much un- 
 like oneself." 
 
 " You think her so very unlike us? " 
 
 " Enormously." 
 
 " Well," he cried in a new burst of courage, " she 
 is unlike any one and every one. Put it that there is 
 no one like her and I'll agree with you." 
 
 At the fervour of this declaration the Princess 
 shuddered and closed her eyes. She seemed to 
 shrink in size, her features trembled and appeared 
 about to decompose. 
 
 "My poor child," she whispered; "my poor 
 child." 
 
 He took her hands, both of them, in his own 
 across the table, bringing his face close to hers. He 
 was not sure that this last weakness was genuine. 
 He suspected her of acting a part. He felt that she 
 was playing on him too cleverly. 
 
 " I loved her," he said with a slow deliberate dis- 
 tinctness. " She is wonderful, I still love her." 
 
 Her eyelids flickered and were lifted above her 
 near staring eyes, that met his defiantly. 
 
 " She would have ruined you." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " She would have made a scandal. Unheard of 
 things would have happened."
 
 THE TORTOISE in 
 
 " What things? " 
 
 " Her husband would have divorced her." 
 
 They stared at each other. It was after all his 
 eyes that wavered. 
 
 " You mean? " he hesitated " you think " 
 
 " I know," she announced with finality. 
 
 He left her at that abruptly and began walking up 
 and down the room, feeling nervously all the while 
 that her triumphant eyes followed him. He had a 
 sense of defeat and extreme depression. Old Pierre 
 came and went, dismally, clearing the table. His 
 jerky disconsolate movements, his shaking head and 
 wheezing lungs, were annoying. At last he brought 
 in the coffee and went away closing the door after 
 him. 
 
 There was no longer any shimmer of twilight be- 
 yond the window. The dreadful breathless day had 
 been swallowed up forever and the swift rolling 
 blackness of night was hurrying the world to disaster. 
 The little shining room was close as an air tight box. 
 All about it was the oppression of darkness, and 
 war; beyond and above the dark, was looming higher 
 and higher, a vast and terrific cloud that would burst 
 on the morrow. St. Christe shuddered. He 
 had a vision of the thing crashing upon that room 
 like an unnatural tempest, a monstrous bolt of de- 
 struction that would crush the frail treasures to pow- 
 der. His mind struggled under the weight of his 
 apprehension. Each thought was a thin streamer, 
 weighted with lead, that fell like a plummet into the 
 depths of his hopelessness. What good would it do
 
 ii2 THE TORTOISE 
 
 to struggle against the dreadful old tyranny of his 
 mother, when the morning waited to consume him? 
 Of what use fighting for an hour's freedom when to- 
 morrow he would be a slave of a power a thousand 
 times more imperious than her own? 
 
 He felt something precious slipping from him. 
 Was it his soul that was escaping him? He did not 
 know, but he dared not look at his mother, lest he 
 look at her with anger, and he dared not think of 
 Helen, for fear of being ashamed. The crisis had 
 come and had passed, and he had scarcely recognized 
 it, but he knew vaguely and obscurely and deeply that 
 he had missed something sublime that life had of- 
 fered him on the evening of death. 
 
 As if across an infinite distance he heard his 
 mother's voice speaking. It sounded to him like the 
 mimical echoing voice of a malicious ghost. 
 
 " Your father liked England, but he liked it so to 
 speak in the open. He used to say that in a country 
 where duelling was prohibited and divorce accepted, 
 drawing room manners were bound to be bad." 
 
 And he heard himself answering absurdly and 
 peevishly, as if indeed there were any need to say 
 any more. 
 
 " You actually thought then that Helen Chudd 
 had bad manners?" and heard again the faint voice 
 remonstrate: " Must you be so personal, my son?" 
 
 Then, suddenly when it was too late, he broke 
 through the unreality, the subterfuge, the make-be- 
 lieve. He cried out and heard himself shouting and 
 he knew that it would be no good:
 
 THE TORTOISE 113 
 
 " But this is a personal matter to me." 
 
 " Then all I can say is that it had better cease 
 being so." She was invincible. He could not even 
 frighten her. 
 
 He turned to her now in despair. Let her see 
 then, that she had won. 
 
 She saw. His face was one of defeat and his 
 eyes had a look of boyish suffering that implored her 
 compassion. 
 
 " This is no moment for personal matters," she 
 said more softly. And then with one of her beauti- 
 ful gestures: "What of my personal need of you? 
 My son, my son! Am I not giving you up for 
 ever?" She held out her two long hands. Her 
 face was working strangely. He saw her eyes blurr 
 over. The sight of her tears was ugly and terrible. 
 He went to her swiftly and knelt beside her. This 
 time, he was certain that she was not acting. 
 
 He felt weak and ashamed. He knew that she 
 had tyrannized over him finally and completely, but 
 his compassion for her made him forgive her. He 
 buried his face in her lap. 
 
 Late that night, his packing finished, his uniform 
 laid out for the morrow, his last letters written and 
 his instructions given, he sat by her bedside stroking 
 her hand and watching her deathlike face on the pil- 
 low, yellow as wax, in the candlelight. And as he 
 waited for her to go to sleep, he thought of Helen 
 as a phenomenal apparition of beauty that had very 
 nearly led him into disgrace and ruin. The spas- 
 modic clutch of the thin fingers round his hand told
 
 ii4 THE TORTOISE 
 
 him this, and the disdainful arch of the high nose on 
 the pillow seemed to mock his regrets. He was go- 
 ing to the war to fulfil the pride of that battered 
 queenly head. The future was no more than this to 
 him now, but he said to himself that this must be and 
 would be enough.
 
 IV 
 
 GUY DE BRISSAC was accomplished in dif- 
 ficult situations. His friends often sent 
 him on delicate missions to their ladies. 
 He was reputed, never to bungle anything. His tact 
 was equal to his loyalty and when trusted with the re- 
 sponsibility of a cunning fib he could be counted upon 
 to transmit the falsehood with perfect faithfulness 
 and with a tender sincerity that could not so much 
 as bruise the finest, most sensitive skin of feminine 
 vanity. 
 
 He nevertheless approached the Hotel Meurice 
 with far less than his usual self-confidence. His 
 memory of Mrs. Chudd, met a dozen times at lunch- 
 eons and dinners, was vivid enough to warn him that 
 in her case, vanity would play no part, and that he 
 had a bigger thing to deal with than the petulance 
 of a lady's pique. He was not sure what she would 
 do, and he liked always to know beforehand how 
 people would behave. It caused him a feeling of 
 acute discomfort to see any one give themselves away. 
 It was possible that this haughty Englishwoman 
 would shock him by some unnecessary display of 
 emotion. He had admired her less than had St. 
 Christe. Brissac liked above all things to be 
 amused and he had not found her amusing. Her 
 wit, if she had any, could not deal with the light in- 
 ns
 
 n6 THE TORTOISE 
 
 tricacies of the French tongue. Her beauty, he had 
 of course appreciated, but it had left him cold. She 
 had the finest shoulders in the world and for an 
 Englishwoman her hands and feet were good. As 
 for her colouring it was startling enough with its 
 clear coppery skin and golden hair. Indeed it was 
 too startling. To Jocelyn's enthusiasm he had re- 
 plied that he liked soft shades and elusive lines and 
 the beauty that escaped the vulgar eye ; that he liked 
 being charmed without knowing why and did not en- 
 joy being knocked on the head by any dazzling bolt. 
 His remarks had, he admitted to himself now, been 
 even more critical than his thoughts. Jocelyn's in- 
 fatuation had annoyed him and made him uncom- 
 fortable. It had gone too far. He had been 
 obliged to give himself infinite pains to keep the two 
 of them from becoming the talk of the town. If 
 their names were not fatally coupled together, it was 
 due to his own untiring efforts, nothing else. Joce- 
 lyn toward the end had behaved like a child. He 
 had done all those things that are not permitted, 
 and none, it appeared, that were. Instead of taking 
 tea in her drawing-room from five to seven, he had 
 spent whole days alone with her in the country, rid- 
 ing blandly out through the Meudon Wood, the two 
 of them on a couple of horses, at ten o'clock in the 
 morning and riding back again at seven. 
 
 To tell the truth, he, de Brissac, had not believed 
 in her ignorance of conventions. He had suspected 
 her of a deliberate plan, or at least of a desperate 
 daring. Her husband was probably a brute who
 
 THE TORTOISE 117 
 
 had driven her crazy. Maybe he had turned her out 
 of the house. Englishmen did these things. If so, 
 the scene awaiting him would be nothing less than 
 horrible. 
 
 He was told at the desk that she was in her 
 apartment and that he could mount. Halfway up in 
 the lift he realized with a heightening of his nerv- 
 ousness that the sleek gentleman behind the counter 
 had murmured something about his being expected. 
 
 He knocked at the door, with a feeling of intense 
 distaste, straining his ears as if about to surprise 
 some painful secret sound, and it came; nothing 
 secret or tragic in its audible joyous note for one who 
 did not know of the trick that was being played upon 
 her, but to him the culprit, more horrible in its me- 
 lodious ring of exultant command, than any whimper 
 or wail. 
 
 " Entrez ! " came the strong ecstatic voice; and 
 then as he opened the door, during the seconds he 
 took to round the edge of the protecting screen, he 
 heard her swift feet running toward him across the 
 carpet, and the swish of silken clothes and the intake 
 of hurried breath. 
 
 He thought: " In one second she will be in my 
 arms." He rounded the obstruction. She was all 
 but upon him, close, oh terribly close, yet not too 
 close to stop dead, her hands outstretched, her 
 body slanting forward. He held his breath, and 
 holding it, he had time to see it all, her glorious 
 blighted movement of welcome exposed there before 
 his eyes, and the light on her face before it died out,
 
 n8 THE TORTOISE 
 
 leaving in its place a stony astonishment that made 
 him quail. 
 
 He felt the blood of shame on his face, and as he 
 watched her miserably fascinated, he realized that 
 he had committed an outrage. He had caught her 
 waving her beautiful passion like a sunlit banner be- 
 fore him and he saw her draw together those lumin- 
 ous folds and wind herself in them as if in a shroud. 
 He could not speak. He watched her blanch, and 
 quiver. Her nostrils dilated. Her eyes stared, 
 wider and deeper than eyes should be permitted to 
 stare. 
 
 He believed in her now. 
 
 She said, dropping her arms to her sides, as if a 
 spring in her shoulders had snapped and swung 1 
 them down : 
 
 " Oh, I thought it was some one else." And then 
 frankly with a lift of the head daring him to mock 
 her, disdaining the confusion of subterfuge, she 
 added abruptly: " I was expecting Monsieur de St. 
 Christe, I sent him a note." 
 
 " Yes, I know. It was for that, that I came." 
 
 "He sent you?" 
 
 " No. I received the note. St. Christe has 
 gone." 
 
 He had not intended any abrupt speech of this 
 kind, certainly never in his worst nightmares had he 
 imagined himself an assassin or a butcher, but her 
 question had precipitated the bold lie, and the loath- 
 ing of his task that had seized him in her presence
 
 THE TORTOISE 119 
 
 had urged him to make short work of the nasty 
 business and get himself away. 
 
 She echoed the word " gone " and looked at him, 
 and he felt under that look as if he were literally 
 and visibly breaking out into a cold perspiration. 
 
 " Gone? " " When? " she asked strangely. 
 
 " An hour ago," he blurted out with a sense of 
 imbecile clumsiness. 
 
 " You mean that I'm too late? " 
 
 He shuddered for her, and manoeuvred to shield 
 her, from his own indelicate knowledge of what she 
 was feeling. 
 
 " If you mean too late to see him? Yes." 
 
 She took it in silence, staring and he perceived all 
 at once that she had ceased to see him. She simply 
 forgot him there as he (at least so he felt) 
 cringed before her. She might have been made of 
 bronze, so motionless was she. Nothing about her 
 moved, not a fold of her brown silk garments, not a 
 finger in her still hands that pointed down to the 
 floor. Her eyes remained wide open, the eyelids 
 fixed. He found the sight unbearable and began : 
 
 " I had just been to see him off at the station and 
 went back to attend to his things and I found your 
 note. He had asked me to answer any letters. 
 Things had been left in confusion; I thought it best 
 to come. I dared to present myself. Pray accept 
 my excuses. I understood at the desk downstairs 
 that they had announced me." 
 
 " It is most kind of you," she murmured.
 
 THE TORTOISE 
 
 He moved toward the door, but she stopped him 
 with a gesture that hooked him like a wriggling fish. 
 
 " Please give me the note, mine." 
 
 He stammered: "I I am afraid I did not 
 bring it with me." 
 
 " You read it and threw it away? " she asked 
 quietly, oh very quietly. 
 
 ' Yes, I read it and threw it away, or rather I 
 should say, I left it there on his table." 
 
 " And came straight here? " 
 
 " And came straight here." 
 
 " It was most kind of you." she repeated. This 
 time she allowed him to move two steps across the 
 carpet. It was his own nervousness that stopped 
 him. 
 
 " Jocelyn will be chagrined," he mumbled. 
 
 " Ah ! " She lifted again her curious eyes. 
 " You mean when he knows? " 
 
 " Yes, when he hears." 
 
 " You will be seeing him perhaps? " 
 
 " But surely; tomorrow." 
 
 " You join him? " she asked quietly. 
 
 " We are in the same cavalry regiment." 
 
 " I see." She pondered. And suddenly he saw 
 his blunder. Did she suspect, he asked himself mis- 
 erably. He had a sense of panic but she gave no 
 sign. Her manner expressed nothing as she lifted 
 her eyes again, but this time she scrutinized him 
 coldly and he felt her gaze penetrate him icily. 
 
 " I see," she repeated. " You are in the same 
 regiment, but he went ahead."
 
 THE TORTOISE 121 
 
 " A different company," he articulated, writhing 
 as if pierced through by the icicle of her stare. 
 
 " I see," she said again and he was sure now that 
 he caught a new glitter in her strange eyes. She re- 
 mained silent, and he, half hypnotized by that pro- 
 foundly pondering face, waited, and as he waited he 
 realized that though she had not moved, her atti- 
 tude and the hue of her attitude had changed. She 
 seemed to him like some proud stricken animal of the 
 wilds, some fleet and beautiful creature of the woods 
 or prairies terrified and transfixed and helpless, wait- 
 ing for the wound that would kill it. He saw now 
 that this had been an illusion. He detected flashes, 
 signs that suggested anger magnificently held; he 
 felt that if she were actually a deer or some antlered 
 creature, instead of a human being in brown dra- 
 peries, he would be in danger of his life. She would 
 roll him at her feet and trample on him with her 
 beautiful hoofs and transfix him with her horns. 
 Yet she had not moved and all his terror and foolish 
 imagery was gathered from her eyes, that were 
 blazing upon him, glittering, freezing. 
 
 Then all at once she let him go. Deliberately 
 she turned away and over her shoulder said 
 casually: 
 
 " It was most good of you to come. Tell him 
 how sorry I was to miss him." 
 
 He gained the door. " I will certainly do so," 
 and then idiotically as it seemed to him he added. 
 " Jocelyn will be grateful for a message." 
 
 " Give him my very best wishes of course. May
 
 122 THE TORTOISE 
 
 you both be spared to do the brave deeds that be- 
 come you so well." 
 
 He could only mumble inarticulately as he got him- 
 self out, but beyond the closed door, his escape as- 
 sured, he thought that he heard her laugh. He was 
 not sure of that sound and knew as he ran to the lift 
 that not for anything in the world would he have 
 made sure. It was done. He was safe. He 
 wanted to know nothing, nothing. The exigencies 
 of friendship were great indeed. 
 
 Later, when he could think the matter over calmly, 
 he was amazed at the impression she had made on 
 him. He had thought her inexpressive, before, and 
 she had expressed to him with a total absence of 
 gesture, innumerable things. He had been very 
 stupid. He had wondered whether she would know 
 how to behave. The result had been that he him- 
 self had behaved like a clown. Weighing the pros 
 and cons in his mind, he decided against giving 
 Jocelyn a faithful account of the interview. It 
 would be better for the latter not to know that she 
 had detected the ruse.
 
 PART THREE
 
 JIMMY GOWER had no great opinion of him- 
 self but he loved his friends and his friends 
 were many, too many some people thought. 
 Women were constantly saying to him: " Oh, but 
 you like everybody, Jimmy, and everybody likes 
 you," and he had come to feel that this meant that 
 he had no character. He admired character. He 
 looked at stern old men wistfully and sighed at the 
 admirable sight of young men fighting to get on in 
 the world of public affaris. 
 
 " Men of character," he would ruminate trying 
 to look wise as he lathered his face of a morning, 
 " men of character have enemies. I'm afraid, old 
 chap, that you're not much use." He would heave a 
 sigh and run to answer the telephone and forget to 
 be dismal at the sound of a sweet voice saying: 
 " Jimmy dear, you must come. We can't get on 
 without you." 
 
 Jimmy did not know whether he had more men 
 friends than women friends or which he liked best, 
 though of course they were vastly different, oh, un- 
 deniably different. He never deceived himself into 
 thinking that they were similar, or that he felt the 
 same about them. Women were women, the dears, 
 and thank God they were. Women liked you to 
 make love to them and thank God they did. Jimmy 
 
 125
 
 i26 THE TORTOISE 
 
 was never tired of making love. He was always 
 ready to begin again. On the other hand, he was 
 always ready to retire from the field if he seemed to 
 be spoiling another man's game. He never poached. 
 He never disputed a prize. After all it didn't much 
 matter to him. He would tell himself that he 
 wasn't serious and other people were, and he had a 
 profound respect for those others so different who 
 took things hard and grew thin nursing a hopeless 
 passion. When he saw what he solemnly termed the 
 real thing, he would withdraw to a wistful distance 
 and confide mournfully to some one that he had never 
 been in love in his life, and the someone would say: 
 " Jimmy you are an incorrigible liar." 
 
 He had never admitted to himself that this was 
 true and that his favorite lament was a lie. It 
 would have spoilt his disposition to have stopped to 
 think about it, and so he kept it,way down, some- 
 where out of sight, and no one imagined that he, dear 
 old Jimmy of the ready laugh and the untiring en- 
 thusiasm, had a secret. 
 
 Sometimes, on the very rare occasions when he 
 was obliged to have a meal alone and when, conse- 
 quently, he was gloomy, his secret would begin to 
 take shape and threaten his peace of mind. He 
 would reason with himself and say: " Look here, my 
 dear fellow, you can't be in love. If you were you'd 
 look it. You wouldn't sleep, you wouldn't eat. 
 And as for eating, you know, there aren't many 
 people who think as much, or more about it than you 
 do, not in England anyhow." He would cock an
 
 THE TORTOISE 127 
 
 eyebrow and send his fancy across the channel to 
 seat itself at a small table before a savory dish, and 
 if this flight to the city of fine cookery did not suc- 
 ceed in laying the ghost, he would resume, in a more 
 impatient tone, to his image: 
 
 ' You look what you are, and you are what you 
 look, a good-natured ass. There's no heart about 
 you, and no romance. You've no damask cheek and 
 no concealment like a worm in the bud ever ate into 
 it, and besides, good God! if it were true now, then 
 it must have been always true, oh for years and years, 
 ever since you were a kid, and you needn't suppose 
 that it's possible you've loved her all that time. It's 
 impossible, therefore you see, it's not so." 
 
 This usually finished the shaking he gave himself 
 and he would come out of it brisk and merry as ever. 
 Monologues of the kind occurred three or four times 
 a year, not more. One had to be alone for a longish 
 time to begin to talk to oneself and he was never 
 alone. It was perhaps for this reason that he had 
 never found out that the truth of the matter lay in 
 the fact William Chudd was his best friend and that 
 his enormous enthusiasm for the man would suffer 
 no breath of even secret disloyalty, for W. B. C. was 
 his idol and the rock of his belief, and the anchor 
 that kept him in England. " If it were not for W. 
 B.," he had said, " I'd give up all this funny fagging 
 I do for the Government and end my days eating in 
 Paris." His fidelity to the big man had become a 
 legend. He had told so many people for so many 
 years that William Chudd was the greatest man in
 
 128 THE TORTOISE 
 
 England that when W. B. really did loom at last, 
 enormous and solid behind the shifting scene of poli- 
 tics, the world of politics smiled at Jimmy and made 
 use of him. He became a kind of intermediary and 
 was to be seen running comically between the staid 
 portals of Whitehall and Chudd's obscure den in the 
 city. His sporting air, his somewhat startling 
 waistcoats, his noticeable spats, usually white, and 
 his refractory eyeglass came to stand for something 
 unique. " An uncommonly useful chap," he was 
 called. " Never out of sorts, and he's got the ear 
 of the Mandarin." Of all of this, Jimmy was un- 
 aware. He had a poor opinion of himself, as has 
 been said, but he loved his friends, and most of all 
 he loved William Chudd. How was it possible for 
 him to admit that he was in love with Chudd's wife? 
 To have been brought to admit this to himself, he 
 would have had to be alone with himself for a long 
 time indeed, or to have been tremendously and ter- 
 ribly startled into sudden self knowledge. 
 
 Poor Jimmy Gower, he expected no such shock as 
 he rushed through Paris on the 2nd of August at 
 seven o'clock in the morning. Himself was the last 
 thing he dreamt of thinking about. William Chudd 
 had been at the bottom of his being sent to Rome on 
 a piece of business of oppressive importance, and he 
 was returning with a precious diplomacy and the feel- 
 ing of having muddled things down there as a worm 
 like himself was sure to do. He was racing along 
 an empty boulevard behind a grim chauffeur who 
 was driving as if the Germans were already at the
 
 THE TORTOISE 129 
 
 gates of Paris, and he was defying all the powers 
 of Heaven to unravel what those Italians had meant 
 from what they had said, when he saw Helen stand- 
 ing in the middle of the Boulevard St. Germain on 
 one of those raised rounds of pavement where one 
 hails tramcars. That she was the last person in the 
 world whom he expected to see in Paris, on that day 
 and at that uncannily early hour, explained to him 
 very inadequately the horrid thumping that began 
 under his ribs at the sight of her. Any one might 
 have been anywhere and it would have seemed just 
 mildly curious and in keeping with the general un- 
 naturalness of things. It was the look on her face as 
 he dashed past that arrested him and made him pound 
 on the glass of the motor. Europe was sending 
 shudders across half its surface, continents were 
 crouching ready to leap from their anchorage. No- 
 thing less than that look on that face could have 
 stopped him, for Jimmy was aware of the horror of 
 events and overpowered with the seriousness of his 
 own fragment of responsibility. No face but the one 
 face in the world, and that face touched with mad- 
 ness, could have stopped him. He realized this 
 afterwards, but at this moment of the swerving round 
 of the car as it turned and swept back to her, where 
 she stood, staring up at the sky, so strangely, he real- 
 ized only that there was something terribly wrong 
 with Helen and that the ghastly hue of her face had 
 flashed out and hurt him as if she had thrown a knife 
 and hit him as he passed. 
 
 He drew alongside, opening the door of the lim-
 
 130 THE TORTOISE 
 
 ousine and was abreast of her before she could move. 
 Something told him that if he had given her one 
 instant's time she would have fled, but he was there 
 on to her before she saw him and as she started back, 
 glaring at him in a way that he would have termed 
 " dotty " had he named it, he grabbed her arm, 
 
 "Good God, Helen, what's the matter?" 
 
 She struggled to free her arm, gasping as if for 
 breath. Her face was damp like the face of a sick 
 person in an agony of pain. Beads of perspiration 
 glistened on her forehead and round her mouth. 
 Her pallor had a greenish gleam. 
 
 " Let me go," she muttered; " what do you stop 
 for? I was waiting" She looked at him, knit her 
 brows, seemed to try to think or rather seemed as 
 if in spite of herself to recognize him: "It's you, 
 Jimmy? I didn't know you I mean " 
 
 " Come, get in." 
 
 " Get in what for? Oh no, I don't want to get 
 in." 
 
 " Come quick, I'm in a hurry." 
 
 " Why? " she mumured vaguely. " What for? 
 Where are you going? " 
 
 " To the Embassy. I'll give you a lift." 
 
 He had by this time pulled her into the car and 
 she had let herself be pulled heavily, in a dazed 
 way as if not knowing what he was doing. Once 
 there beside him, she let her head drop forward; it 
 hung loosely downward. Her chin almost touched 
 her breast. She might have fallen suddenly into a 
 profound sleep, so limp had she become. The sight
 
 THE TORTOISE 131 
 
 of her made him feel ill. He realized that he was 
 trembling. He was afraid. He thought to him- 
 self: " She has gone mad, and it's true, I have loved 
 her all my life." 
 
 Was she mad, or ill ? What could he do ? His 
 brain told him nothing. His instinct said: " Rouse 
 her." 
 
 " What are you doing in Paris, Helen? " he 
 brought out in a loud matter of fact voice. She 
 looked up heavily. 
 
 " What did you say? " 
 
 " I asked, what are you doing in Paris? " 
 
 She stared at him: " I'm waiting," she announced. 
 
 "To get back?" 
 
 " No, oh no." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 "I don't know exactly that is I'm waiting to 
 find out what I'm waiting for." 
 
 His heart sank. His round fresh face grew red. 
 His eyes began to smart, to fill; he had a gulping sen- 
 sation. 
 
 " My poor Helen poor dear! " He took her 
 hand and stroked it. " There, don't bother to talk. 
 It's all right. Don't look so worried. It's all 
 right; you poor darling." 
 
 She stiffened suddenly. 
 
 " Ah, you think I'm ill?" 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "You think I'm mad?" 
 
 He shuddered. 
 
 "Jimmy, look at me, look into my eyes." He did
 
 132 THE TORTOISE 
 
 so and saw with immense relief that although blood 
 shot and shrivelled to half their size they were sane. 
 
 " I am not mad, nor ill. Jimmy, do you hear? 
 It's not that." 
 
 He stammered: " I didn't say so." 
 
 ' You thought so; you're not sure now. You be- 
 lieve I'm not responsible for what I'm doing. I 
 won't let you get out of this car unless you swear to 
 me that you'll not mention at the Embassy that 
 you've seen me." 
 
 " But, Helen " 
 
 "Swear it!" 
 
 " I can't leave you like this." 
 
 " Swear it." 
 
 ' Will you wait then outside if I promise? " 
 
 She hesitated. At last she said: " Yes, I'll wait." 
 
 He was told in the Embassy that he could share a 
 car to Bologne, but that the man who was going 
 would not be ready for two hours. Would he come 
 back at that time? No, the passenger trains were 
 not running, or at least if they were, they were go- 
 ing backward. 
 
 Helen was waiting. She lay back in the corner 
 of the motor, her eyes closed. He was grateful at 
 finding her like that: anything was better than that 
 terrible posture when her head had hung loose, 
 drooping forward and down like a drunken woman. 
 She opened her eyes as he joined her but did not 
 move. It seemed to him now that she was merely 
 exhausted. Her eyes were sunken. The corners of 
 her mouth were drawn. Her nose seemed pinched.
 
 THE TORTOISE 
 
 She had the look of some one who is suffering from 
 deadly cold. 
 
 " I have more than an hour to wait. Will you 
 give me some breakfast?" 
 
 She signified her assent, scarcely audibly. 
 
 Watching her in silence, he wondered what she 
 would do when they reached the hotel, but his fears 
 on that point were groundless. She walked natur- 
 ally enough, though slowly, dragging her feet one 
 after the other through the hall to the lift, and he 
 realized, as they passed worried women and hag- 
 gard women in veils, that no tragedy or horror 
 would seem strange to any one now and that the 
 look on her face would pass unnoticed anywhere. 
 
 In her sitting-room he made a great to do about 
 his breakfast. He would like coffee and two soft 
 boiled eggs and some jam, if it wasn't too much 
 trouble, and it seemed to him that she grew more 
 natural and less afraid of him for his fussing. If 
 that was what she needed he could do any amount of 
 that. He began to chatter. He said that Italy 
 was a long way off and that they had been held up in- 
 terminably at the frontier. He said that it was hot 
 in Rome and that the hotter it was the more people 
 talked. He described a baby in the train who ate 
 bananas, one after another, countless bananas. The 
 recollection of those bananas disappearing into that 
 baby was, he insisted, most awfully funny. It made 
 him laugh to think of it. And he actually achieved 
 the laugh. He knew then why he had been born in 
 the guise of a court fool, it was so that now at this
 
 134 THE TORTOISE 
 
 moment, he would not frighten Helen. She would 
 think him a harmless idiot and the presence of a 
 harmless idiot was evidently what she needed. 
 
 The waiter brought in the breakfast tray and he 
 pounced upon it with a roar of hunger, wondering 
 how under Heaven he would choke any of it down. 
 He flourished his napkin and poured out coffee with 
 gurgles of delight. " Ass," he said to himself, " go 
 ahead. Be it. It's your one chance." 
 
 He felt her behind him, hanging away, distractedly 
 moving this way and that. He heard the swish of 
 her skirts, and a little sound like a groan. It was 
 as if some poor little wild animal were suffering 
 there behind him. Looking into the mirror, he saw 
 her staring at him, her eyes fixed, while her hands 
 twisted together. 
 
 He took a gulp, wiped his moustache and burst 
 out: "Jove, that's good!" He felt her come 
 nearer shyly. He held his breath. She took off her 
 hat and laid it on the chimney piece. He dared not 
 look up. Then she said, standing before him, and 
 her voice had a quivering sweetness: 
 
 " You're a dear soul, Jimmy." 
 
 Like a starving man, he attacked an egg, broke 
 open a roll and applied to it a wealth of butter. He 
 gave no sign of his immense joy at her tone. He 
 was enormously and busily hungry. 
 
 " It's lucky you met me," she murmured. 
 
 " Yes, wasn't it? " he said brightly, fatuously grin- 
 ning up at her. Her face had relaxed. She 
 drooped wearily before him. He noticed that her
 
 THE TORTOISE 135 
 
 hair was matted and damp. It clung in wet tendrils 
 to her temples. How glad he was now of his comic 
 appearance, and what people termed his frolicking- 
 puppy-features. Trusting to these and eyeing her 
 closely he added mildly: " W.B. will worry; I can 
 reassure him." 
 
 She started. He groaned inwardly. 
 
 "Reassure him?" she breathed with a strange 
 tremor. Her eyes widened and fixed on something 
 beyond him. 
 
 " Tell him I saw you and say you're alright." 
 
 " Oh God, now I've messed it," he wailed to him- 
 self, for he saw that once again she was quivering. 
 A shudder, plainly visible to him, travelled down her 
 as if some invisible power had seized her and were 
 exerting a horrid vibrating pressure. He saw her 
 try to master that shaking. He saw that she 
 couldn't and then he saw in her eyes that she saw 
 that he saw. He thought in one second more her 
 teeth will begin to chatter, but with an effort that 
 made her grimace strangely, twisting her mouth 
 awry, she was still, then she took a step away and 
 turned her back on him. 
 
 Miserably bound to his chair, he watched her lift 
 her hands to her face, drop them again, and then 
 she said coldly as if from a great distance : 
 
 " Yes, of course, certainly; you have seen me, and 
 I'm alright." 
 
 " I'll tell him too, that you'll be home as soon as 
 you can get across." 
 
 She whirled, facing him again.
 
 136 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " Coming home? No! " she cried out as if he 
 had struck her, and then at the sight of his round 
 flushed troubled face : " Oh, it doesn't matter what 
 you say; say whatever you like. Only don't ever as 
 long as you live tell any one how you found me, or 
 what I was like. You wouldn't, you couldn't " 
 She was imploring him now "You won't tell, will 
 you, Jimmy; you'll say I looked well and happy. 
 No, you needn't say that. I forgot War is de- 
 clared. No one need be happy now. Isn't it 
 strange ? It's so hard for me to think, I can't think 
 clearly." 
 
 " You look most awfully fagged." 
 
 " Yes, that's it, I'm worn out. I've not slept for 
 three nights. When you've not slept at all for three 
 nights, you're bound to be tired, aren't you? " 
 
 " Of course. There's nothing so bad for one." 
 
 " Dear Jimmy, you see, I'm alright. I only want 
 a little sleep." 
 
 " That's why you went out so early this morning 
 I suppose." 
 
 " Yes, I couldn't sleep, so I got up at five. I'd 
 been walking since then. I went to the Luxembourg 
 gardens. They were locked, so I walked through 
 the Latin quarter, and then I found myself in the 
 Faubourg St. Germain. All the houses in the Fau- 
 bourg St. Germain were closed. Every one is away. 
 Or so they say so it seemed. Perhaps they were 
 there, who knows? The shutters were closed. 
 How could one tell? It was so early. I had no 
 one there, no one I wanted to see. I did not mean
 
 THE TORTOISE 137 
 
 to go. My feet took me. I hate the Faubourg, 
 all those proud, old deceitful houses." Her voice 
 quivered, trailed away. " I am so tired," she added 
 in the tone of a child. " I believe I could sleep 
 now." She smiled. " Seeing you eating your eggs 
 has made me sleepy." 
 
 He suggested casually: " stretch out on the 
 couch." 
 
 " I believe I will; do you mind? " 
 
 She dragged her feet across the floor, swaying, 
 uncertainly, then dropped, crumpled up, clung to the 
 couch, pulled herself further on to it and sank down 
 with a long sigh, her eyes closed. When he rose 
 a moment or two later and crossed to look at her, she 
 was sound asleep. 
 
 And then Jimmy fell on his knees. He wasn't 
 praying, or if he was, did not know it. He was just 
 wishing, willing, trying, trying to help, trying to un- 
 derstand, trying to know what to do, feeling him- 
 self a worm, wondering what W. B. C. would have 
 him to do. " If you were Bill Chudd, what would 
 you have a man do for your wife, now here, like 
 this?" he asked himself. Poor Jimmy, he didn't 
 know; he could think of nothing to do. He had to 
 take a bag to London. England would be at war 
 in another twenty-four hours. The Italians had 
 given him messages, which might or might not be 
 sincere. He was bound to go. He was bound to 
 leave her. He had promised her not to tell them 
 at the Embassy of her presence. All he could do 
 was to tell W. B. to send for her to come back. He
 
 138 THE TORTOISE 
 
 was of no use to any one. He was unable to help 
 her. He could do nothing for her. He could only 
 go away on tiptoe, leaving her asleep and remem- 
 bering her smile, the most pitiful thing he had ever 
 seen in all his life. 
 
 And he knew now that he couldn't any more get 
 the best of his secret with monologues about food 
 or anything else. There it was, staring at him, and 
 William Chudd was his best friend.
 
 II 
 
 PARIS on the third of August had seemed to 
 Gower supernaturally calm. Its intense pre- 
 occupied quiet showed him a light-hearted 
 nation, transformed by terrible knowledge. Alive 
 grimly to its history, remembering with awful clarity 
 the tragedy of other wars, Paris was terribly wise. 
 He found London in the throes of a savage and 
 ignorant excitement. The placards of the afternoon 
 papers were having it all their own way; Piccadilly 
 was a chattering flood of fantastic conjecture; the 
 crowd was aggressive and noisy. Under the 
 stimulus of a tremendous and unreal danger the 
 Anglo-Saxon felt himself a giant; Europe, he knew, 
 was in upheaval, but his British Islands were solid, 
 anchored firmly forever to the bottom of the sea 
 and the sea belonged to him. He saw it dotted over 
 with the hulls of his warships. He swelled out his 
 chest, squared his shoulders and strode abroad, his 
 fighting instinct exalted; his fingers itched for a gun; 
 he demanded a part in the business. If his Govern- 
 ment kept him out of it, he would consider himself 
 cheated and disgraced. He thought of Belgium as 
 a very plucky little country and France as a vague 
 continent full of weaklings who would be no match 
 for the Germans whom he hated. He was bound in 
 honour to go over there and lend them a hand. 
 
 139
 
 140 THE TORTOISE 
 
 Gower delivered his precious bag to a haggard 
 friend at the foreign Office and was told that the 
 Chief Secretary would like to see him if he had 
 anything very particular to say about the situation 
 in Rome, but that if he had not, he the haggard 
 friend who had not slept for five periods of twenty- 
 four hours, advised him to go home and leave the 
 minister alone. Gower was certain that nothing he 
 could have to say was worth five minutes of the great 
 man's time. His friend agreed with him and follow- 
 ing him stiffly to the door, breathed in a languid tone 
 that it was too late for any power on earth to do 
 anything now. The Prime Minister had returned 
 from Buckingham Palace half an hour ago. The 
 thing was done. The sepulchral undertone had the 
 sound of the still voice of Heaven. 
 
 Jimmy took himself out into the sunshine feeling 
 a little as if he had had a blow in the stomach. He 
 believed as much as any man in the street in those 
 warships with their guns pointing across the seas; 
 it did not for an instant occur to him that England, 
 and his home and his mother and sisters and cousins 
 and friends were in danger, but he knew Germany 
 and he hated the Germans positively and personally, 
 and he realized that not later than tomorrow morn- 
 ing he must join the army that would go out to kill 
 them, and he felt himself very unfit to kill Germans. 
 He was convinced that he wouldn't be any good as a 
 soldier. His regiment had let him go five years be- 
 fore, because of a blow on the head at polo. His 
 eye sight was bad, and he had a feeling that this was
 
 THE TORTOISE 141 
 
 particularly unfortunate, for surely one needed a 
 good pair of eyes to shoot Germans. On the other 
 hand no one would miss him at home. He was not 
 a useful member of the community. His mother, 
 when he said good-bye, would give him her weather- 
 beaten cheek to kiss and go on with her game of 
 bridge. His father would perhaps go so far as to 
 settle his bills for him. Mentally calculating the 
 sum of his debts he found that they made a con- 
 siderable total but he felt fairly certain that under 
 the circumstances his father would pay them, being 
 convinced that this time was positively the last. 
 
 The phrase, " for the last time," seemed to him 
 the refrain of his walk up Whitehall. He felt in a 
 great hurry but did not take a taxi. The still small 
 voice in the Foreign Office had paralyzed his power 
 of decision. There were a lot of things he would 
 like to do for the last time, but the day was too short 
 to hold them. He would leave them undone. He 
 must find Chudd and then take the five o'clock train 
 to the country. The Government had determined 
 on war and W. B. had had something to do with that 
 determination. He must find him and tell him that 
 Helen was all right. 
 
 He would go to the club and telephone to W. B.'s 
 office and have a drink. Some one there would tell 
 him what to do to join up in a hurry. 
 
 He felt very tired. It was hot. The streets 
 stewed and sent up strong odours. The crowds 
 were as violent as ever. He moved through them 
 wearily. " God help 'em," he muttered. Human-
 
 142 THE TORTOISE 
 
 ity swirled at street corners. Piccadilly Circus was 
 a whirlpool where motor buses navigated like en- 
 raged walruses. An old woman in a shawl was sell- 
 ing flowers, just as she had always sold flowers in 
 Piccadilly Circus. She knew nothing, observed noth- 
 ing, feared nothing. He bought a red carnation 
 for his buttonhole, for the last time I 
 
 Helen was anything but all right. Something 
 dreadful had happened to her. It was none of his 
 business to wonder what it was. She was alone in 
 Paris, and war had cut off France from England as 
 if the Channel had become an impassable torrent. 
 He wondered if he had seen Helen for the last time. 
 " We'll all lose each other in the beastly confusion," 
 he said to himself. It seemed only too immediately 
 true, for he could not find W. B. Half an hour 
 in the suffocating enclosure of a telephone booth 
 produced no result. There was no trace of Chudd 
 anywhere. The only information he obtained was 
 negative. No, he was not in his office; no, his secre- 
 tary did not believe he was in Downing Street; no, 
 the caretaker of the house in Mayfair had not seen 
 him since eight o'clock the morning before, and did 
 not know whether to expect him or not that night. 
 He had disappeared like a wraith, a man of no sub- 
 stance who leaves no track behind him. The fact 
 was disturbing. If a person of such height and such 
 social bulk could be lost so completely, then the 
 world had indeed become a horrid mystery. 
 
 Gower had no desire to join the groups of worried 
 men in the bar or the smoking room. They were
 
 THE TORTOISE H3 
 
 talking with the animation of women at a tea party. 
 It was extraordinary how many ideas they had. 
 They were talking of Belgium and its invasion and 
 the indomitable little Belgian army; they said that 
 the war couldn't last more than three months because 
 Germany would be ruined financially in that time; 
 they believed that Russia would march straight to 
 Berlin; they agreed solemnly that for the sake of 
 Belgium they themselves must enter the war. They 
 talked of " scraps of paper " and violated neutrality 
 and the probable movement of the stock markets; 
 they prophesied, they laid wagers, they blustered one 
 to another. Jimmy had no ears for their words. 
 He had heard the voice of the being who exists above 
 all Gods and all worlds. Through the thin lips of 
 a tired man at a desk it had spoken to him and had 
 said: "Let there be death, let darkness swallow 
 the earth." It sounded now in his head. He could 
 not hear what the excited men in the bar were say- 
 ing. They were like men gesticulating behind a 
 thick pane of glass that shut in the sound of their 
 voices. He left his drink undrunk, and started to 
 go, but he did not know where to go to find Chudd. 
 
 He hesitated miserably in the doorway at the 
 top of the front steps of the club, mopping his head 
 and screwing up his eyes at the sunlight outside. 
 
 " Hello Jimmy, what's the matter? You look as 
 if you were going to cry." 
 
 " Well, you don't." It was Stump Arkwright, 
 recently become private secretary to the Prime Min- 
 ister, cool, immaculate, imperturbable, in a silk hat
 
 144 THE TORTOISE 
 
 and grey gloves. He lit a cigarette, flicking an 
 imaginary speck off his perfect coat, and turned a 
 handsome blue eye on Jimmy. 
 
 " Come with me," he said blandly. 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 " To Downing street. The P. M. wants to see 
 you." 
 
 " Don't be funny, little darling; I'm busy." 
 
 " Ass, I'm not funny, neither are you. He asked 
 me to send or bring you." 
 
 " Why? " Jimmy was being propelled down the 
 steps and into the waiting car. 
 
 " It's about W. B. C," said Arkwright once they 
 were inside the car. 
 
 " What do you mean? " 
 
 " It appears that he has refused his support." 
 
 " I don't understand." 
 
 " The P. M. wants him in the Government. At 
 a moment like this, you understand " 
 
 " Of course, of course." 
 
 " Well, W. B. won't hear of it. We've all been 
 after him. He just blinks at us and says nothing. 
 Won't give his reasons." 
 
 " What's the matter? " 
 
 " That's what we want you to find out. The P. 
 M. is willing to make concessions. If there's any- 
 thing that Chudd doesn't like it may be possible 
 to to arrange things." 
 
 " It can't be that, he wouldn't quibble." 
 
 " Ah, you imagine a different sort of thing? A 
 private reason? "
 
 THE TORTOISE 14$ 
 
 Jimmy jumped. "Why do you say that?" he 
 blurted out. 
 
 Arkwright smiled: "Why? Oh, for no reason 
 at all I assure you. I was merely wondering; one 
 hears things." 
 
 " Peggy's been giving lots of people tea lately," 
 murmured Arkwright. 
 
 " Peggy isn't nasty, she couldn't be." 
 
 " No one suggests it of the dear child, but she has 
 a flaire, she says his brain is ill." 
 
 " Humph." 
 
 " And well you know it is singular, it is re- 
 markable " 
 
 "What the devil are you driving at? Singu- 
 lar? What's singular? " 
 
 " Helen's absence is singular, if you will be so ill 
 tempered." 
 
 "Well, that's all rot; she's held up in Paris; I 
 saw her; she's crossing as soon as she can get on a 
 train." 
 
 " I see." 
 
 Jimmy grunted: "You're just like an old 
 woman," he said peevishly. " Why don't you take 
 care of the country and leave people's private affairs 
 alone?" 
 
 " W. B. hasn't any private affairs now. We're 
 going to war with Germany. He knows as well as 
 any one that his support is invaluable. I confess 
 I don't understand him and never did. What's he 
 been working for all these years, if he throws over 
 the whole thing now? Putting aside the question
 
 146 THE TORTOISE 
 
 of his obligation, it's at the same time his chance 
 his great opportunity. He could and would soon be 
 running the country. No one else has such weight 
 with Labour. He could bring them all in. He re- 
 fuses. Naturally his refusal arouses suspicions. 
 What's his game? He's a mine of information; 
 what's he going to do with it, use it against us? 
 Here we are. Come along in, the P. M. will give 
 you his ideas." 
 
 " Oh, God! " groaned Jimmy. 
 
 He didn't want to go in at that door. The house 
 that he knew so well, and where he lunched three 
 days in the week, seemed to him a strange and for- 
 bidding house, and the man who was the father of 
 one of his friends and the host of a hundred others 
 and who had now sent for him on business of impor- 
 tance seemed to him a strange and sinister man. 
 Nevertheless he went in, and a quarter of an hour 
 later he came out. He did not look very different; 
 often and often he had come out of that house, a 
 round little figure with a rosy face and a carnation 
 in his button hole and white spats on his shiny boots 
 and with laughter bubbling out of him. The carna- 
 tion and the white spats were still there, the face 
 was still rosy and comically sweet, for no amount of 
 worry could make it look anything else, but the 
 laughter was gone, forever he would have told you. 
 He was a forlorn little jester shorn of his jester's 
 cap and his reason for being. Things were beyond 
 him, things great and important and depressing had 
 been told him, and they were beyond him.
 
 THE TORTOISE 147 
 
 He ordered Arkwright's car to take him to Lady 
 Sidlington. If any one could help him to find W. B. 
 she could. And he sat very still and plump and 
 solemn against its cushions and he felt that he was 
 crushed, but inside his crushed bruised person he 
 held to his idea ; he still believed in William Chudd. 
 
 Three solemn members of the Government had 
 combined to crush him with the evidence of his 
 friend's faithlessness to his country. The word 
 treachery had not sounded in the stiff atmosphere, 
 but its place had marked a definite hiatus in the 
 smooth damning sentences. Had W. B. absconded 
 with the funds of the Bank of England the reproach 
 cast upon him could not have been much greater. 
 
 " They take themselves too damn seriously," he 
 muttered to himself. " God, a man's soul is his 
 own I s'pose; " but his anger with those cold masters 
 of diction who held the reins of the country in their 
 accomplished fingers, was feeble. The pressure and 
 weight of authority directed upon him at such close 
 quarters had impressed him; and the great need of 
 his country was heavy on his heart. He remembered 
 the silent white roads of France with the dusty troops 
 plodding along them in the sun. He saw those col- 
 umns of men, coming up from every village and ham- 
 let and city, to the frontier where the Germans were 
 massing. Already perhaps the enemy had poured 
 over. Already, France was invaded. 
 
 " We'll be too late," he groaned inwardly. 
 
 There was no time. Did no one realize how little 
 time there was? Those three men, sitting still in
 
 148 THE TORTOISE 
 
 a room, weren't they going to do something? 
 
 He would miss his train to the country. Well 
 then, he'd join up in the morning and go down after- 
 wards. Impossible to put off joining another 
 twenty-four hours. Suppose the Germans beat the 
 French before he could get there. 
 
 The Prime Minister's wife had come out into the 
 hall and had asked him about Helen. 
 
 "Why doesn't the wretched girl come home?" 
 she had said. 
 
 He felt sure now that Helen would never come 
 home, she wouldn't be able to. He believed defi- 
 nitely that he had seen her for the last time. 
 
 The world was black, black, black. 
 
 He loved Helen and W. B. and they had both 
 abandoned him. Some tragic circumstance that was 
 none of his business had cut him off from them for- 
 ever. He had been told by the P. M. to go and 
 bring W. B. to his senses. The idea was grotesque. 
 If W. B. had gone mad, his madness would be 
 colossal. He saw him in his mind's eye, pulling 
 down his house with his hands and strewing the 
 bricks over the green grass, and he heard him say- 
 ing: " Helen has gone, so I'm pulling it down." 
 
 He started guiltily. The door of Peggy's house 
 was open before him and she was in it, hatted and 
 gloved. 
 
 " Oh," she said, " it's you? Come in." And she 
 turned back beckoning him to follow.
 
 Ill 
 
 SHE took him through the hall that was full 
 of packing cases and parcels into the dining 
 room. From behind the double doors of the 
 library came the sound of voices and the clicking of 
 typewriters. 
 
 " For the French Red Cross," she explained 
 briefly. Her face was serious. She had on a limp 
 linen dress and a small straw hat that came down 
 over her head like a bowl. He noticed vaguely a 
 difference in her. She was business-like and tired 
 and strong. Closing the door after them she laid 
 a bulging leather hand-bag with her gloves and 
 parasol on the bare table and faced him. 
 
 They spoke then simultaneously: 
 
 " Have you seen, Helen? " 
 
 " Have you seen W. B.?" 
 
 And they both nodded assent, keeping still for a 
 moment after, because neither wanted to begin a 
 revelation that perhaps did not sufficiently concern 
 the other to justify its telling. They weren't there 
 to discuss the affairs of their friends for their own 
 amusement. Their exchanged look conveyed each 
 to the other an admonition: " Don't think that 
 I'm going to talk to you unless it's really worth 
 while." 
 
 " Have a cigarette," said Peggy, offering her case. 
 149
 
 150 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " I haven't much time." 
 
 11 Neither have I." 
 
 " It's just this, then. I can't find W. B. Do 
 you know where he is? " 
 
 " What do you want him for? " 
 
 " The P. M. has given me a message for him." 
 
 " I see. " She leaned against the dining-room 
 table, her hands on it behind her, her eyes in a level 
 concentrated gaze turned to the window. Her at- 
 tractive appearance seemed a mistake. She had the 
 manner of a severe school-mistress. 
 
 " Well," she said deliberately after thinking a mo- 
 ment, " I can tell you where to find him, but," and 
 she nipped off his sigh of relief with a frown, " I 
 don't know whether I will or not." 
 
 "And why on earth not? Isn't he? Ain't I? 
 Aren't we friends for Heaven's sake? " 
 
 " Don't get fussed, Jimmy. Of course you are his 
 friend, but perhaps that's just the reason I mean 
 if he wanted to see you, he would have left word, 
 wouldn't he?" 
 
 ' You mean he is deliberately avoiding me?" 
 
 " I don't know; it is possible, he didn't say so; he 
 didn't say anything about you." 
 
 She gave it to him straight like a challenge. 
 
 He flushed. She seemed to him antagonistic and 
 somehow disagreeable. 
 
 " Well, why should he? " To this she answered 
 nothing, so he added irritably: "What the devil 
 did he say? " 
 
 " Ah, that I can't tell you."
 
 THE TORTOISE 151 
 
 He turned away then to hide his annoyance. He 
 was jealous: why should W. B. have confided in her? 
 He kept his back to her and lowered his head be- 
 tween his shoulders. The idea that perhaps he 
 would be forced to go off to the war without seeing 
 W. B., and never perhaps see him again, and never 
 perhaps come back, filled him with a great envelop- 
 ing hurting fear. He was conscious of a sense of 
 enormous loss, as if a huge and fatal theft had been 
 perpetrated upon him. He had known for some 
 time, all that day anyhow, that he would go out and 
 get killed, but he had not known what it meant. 
 Now he knew. This was one of the things it meant. 
 He was aware now that he would leave them forever, 
 W. B. and Helen. Never again would he look at 
 their faces, or feel the warm good comfort of their 
 companionship. He would be alone; he would be 
 done in. He would cease to be. He would not 
 even remember. If only he could see W. B. just 
 once more, he felt that it would all be bearable. 
 This was childlike, he knew, but he felt like a child, 
 and a wronged child who had been cheated, betrayed, 
 and who had been left alone in the dark. He was 
 afraid. Ah, how dark it was, the sunny dreary 
 square beyond the window, with the green trees be- 
 hind the black iron railing. How many times he had 
 driven into that square with W. B. to pick up Helen, 
 and take her down to the country. She used to wave 
 from the window and W. B. would look up and smile 
 and stand waiting to hand her into the car, and then 
 they would carry her off the two of them. W. B.
 
 152 THE TORTOISE 
 
 would drive with Helen beside him and he, Jimmy, 
 behind. They had tolerated him always. Always 
 they had been kind to him and he had been happy, 
 because they were happy. Now they were unhappy 
 and they had no use for him; he had lost them, W. 
 B. had thrown him over. 
 
 He was too disturbed to hide his feelings. 
 
 " But I want to see him," he blurted out. I'm 
 joining up tomorrow; I can't go without seeing W. B. 
 
 He felt Peggy's arm slip through his own. 
 
 " Dear Jimmy, I'm so glad, and I'm so sorry." 
 Her voice was sweet now and kind. " Come, sit 
 down. I'll tell you what I can, and you tell me; I 
 swore to W. B. that I would put no one on his track. 
 It's no use going to him with a message from the 
 P. M. He knows all that; it's no good interfering 
 with him now; we can't do anything any of us, he is 
 determined. 
 
 " Determined to do what? " 
 
 " Determined to give it all up." 
 
 " But he can't, not now. He can't just chuck 
 everything and he won't, I don't believe it, he's not 
 a coward." 
 
 " No." Peggy took off her hat and leaned her 
 head in her hands. She had drawn up a chair to 
 the table and faced Jimmy across a corner of it. 
 " No," she repeated, " he'll go out to France and 
 get killed." 
 
 " But he's not a soldier." 
 
 " He'll become one." 
 
 "Good God! I don't understand. He's no
 
 THE TORTOISE 153 
 
 right to do it. The Government needs him." 
 
 Peggy sniffed: " Government! " and twirled her 
 fingers, but her face was serious. 
 
 " Well, that's all very well, but if no one stays 
 by the Government " 
 
 She eyed him wisely : " They've been getting at 
 you," she announced, "I know them." 
 
 " I admit " but she interrupted him. 
 
 "They're stupid. Of course it's his duty to help 
 them. They needn't think we don't understand; W. 
 B. understands perfectly, but he's not going to do 
 it, he can't, he doesn't care. He can't care; he 
 he is like a dead man walking round watching. His 
 eyes his eyes " Her voice became a whisper; 
 then stopped; her mouth twisted. Gower watching 
 her with appalled attention felt that he must dash 
 from the house, if she cried. Peggy in tears was 
 just the final stroke that his nerves could not stand. 
 He would rather know nothing, and go away for- 
 ever and get himself done in as quickly as possible. 
 But she did not cry; she was made of fine hard stuff 
 and her face stiffened. 
 
 He waited a moment, then, timidly, afraid of that 
 white little face beginning again to twist and quiver, 
 he asked: 
 
 " Where did you see him? " 
 
 " Here. He came here two days ago, three days 
 after she left. She had been here before; he had 
 guessed that. He asked me if she had looked 
 happy: I told him the truth." 
 
 "Which was?"
 
 154 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " That she was transfigured." 
 
 " Then God help them both, for she's not happy 
 now." 
 
 She seemed not to hear him. " I never saw any- 
 thing like her. She frightened me. Her face was 
 a blaze of light. She went off with her head up, 
 as if she were going to fly, to soar straight to 
 Heaven. It takes us all a little like that, but with 
 her it was more so than with any one I'd ever seen. 
 It was terribly beautiful." 
 
 "What was terribly beautiful?" 
 
 " Her joy, her passion, visible passionate joy. It 
 showed, so that I hated to let her go out in the 
 street, it seemed indecent to show her, to the street. 
 I would have kept her back if I could, but what could 
 I do? Nothing I could have said would have had 
 any effect. ;She was invulnerable, supernatural; I 
 wanted to shout at her that he wasn't worth it, that 
 he was worth nothing." 
 
 "Who? Worth what? Who?" 
 
 " Jocelyn de St. Christe, worth her love." 
 
 " Do you mean? " whispered Jimmy faintly; " do 
 you mean?" He felt deathly ill. 
 
 " Yes, I do, yes, yes, it's incredible, it's monstrous, 
 but that's how it takes us. She couldn't fight it; 
 she tried, I saw her. She gave him up, she stuck 
 to William, and then, at the first breath of war, at 
 the first threat, she broke loose to go to him. Don't 
 you see? Don't you see? " 
 
 Jimmy huddled in his chair white as a sheet, his 
 plump arms on the table, his blue eyes staring, saw
 
 THE TORTOISE 155 
 
 indeed; he saw so much that he wanted to die. 
 
 "And William knows?" he asked dully, at last. 
 
 "Yes, he knows. She must have told him; she 
 would you know. She is brutally honest. He knew 
 that she had meant to go for good. He came to 
 leave a message, in case she came back to England. 
 He was like a great heavy clown made in white 
 chalk and his eyes were the strangest things in 
 Heaven and Earth. He said : ' Don't look at me, 
 Peggy; it might make you laugh or it might make 
 you cry. Don't look; just listen.' Then he left his 
 message and went away. He was like a giant clown 
 with a face of white chalk and tragic eyes. It's only 
 once in a hundred years that a man cares for a 
 woman as much as he cared for Helen. Why didn't 
 Helen understand?" 
 
 " God forgive her; she's paying for it now." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 " She was ghastly." 
 
 Peggy shook her head: "That's nothing. St. 
 Christe has gone off to the war. That's nothing." 
 
 " I don't know; it seemed as if something horrid 
 had happened to her, something humiliating, shame- 
 ful. I may be wrong; I thought she was crazy, in- 
 sane, I mean. She hung her head as if she had been 
 whipped, cuffed, like a dog, or something worse. I 
 don't know what I'm saying; I'm sorry, it's not my 
 business, is it? There is nothing to do, is there? " 
 
 " No, nothing, unless somehow one got her 
 home, unless some miracle happened before he 
 went."
 
 156 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " Have you wired? " 
 
 " Yes, three times; no answer." 
 
 " Telegrams are all held up." 
 
 " I know." 
 
 " Trains aren't running." 
 
 " I suppose not." 
 
 " And if she came, would he? " 
 
 "How could he?" 
 
 They stared at it, in silence. 
 
 And at last, Jimmy got up, very wearily, and took 
 up his hat and stick and turned to the door. The 
 carnation in his buttonhole was crumpled, but not 
 more crumpled than he himself. 
 
 " I would have accepted to burn in hell for W. 
 B.," he said solemnly and his mild blue eyes fixed 
 on Lady Sidlington had the look of a child whose 
 heart has been broken. She nodded back at him 
 gravely. 
 
 " Perhaps William will want to see you after all," 
 she said. " I'd stay in town tonight, if I were you." 
 She went with him to the door. 
 
 He had dined alone at his club when the message 
 came. He was asked by Lady Sidlington to call 
 that evening at a boarding house in Bloomsbury, No. 
 32, Tottenham Court Road. 
 
 He was at the house by nine o'clock. A respect- 
 able person told him to go to the top up two flights 
 and knock at the door opposite the stairs. It oc- 
 curred to him while he climbed the narrow stair that 
 he had never been in such a house before. It con- 
 veyed nothing to him. The stairs went up between
 
 THE TORTOISE 157 
 
 dark blank walls. On each landing was a gas jet 
 turned low. People presumably lived there, a kind 
 of people that he did not know. He thought : " If 
 one wanted to be lost, no qne could find one here. 
 There are thousands of houses just like this. If 
 one went in to any one of these, one would find the 
 same steep stairs covered with the same oilcloth, 
 the same dark enclosing walls, the same pale jets 
 of gas. One could spend one's life knocking at 
 doors, one after another all alike." 
 
 He felt the uncomfortable thumping of his heart 
 as he stopped on the top landing. He did not really 
 believe that W. B. was there under that dismal roof. 
 He was walking in his sleep;. he would wake up in 
 a moment and find himself at home, in the country, 
 in bed, with his valet telling him firm things about 
 getting up. His hand was on the door knob of a 
 blank inimical door, beyond which was some dread 
 revelation, or nothing. He knocked with the 
 knuckles of his other hand, holding his ear close to 
 the door. No sound came from within. He lis- 
 tened, his hand of itself turned the door knob, and 
 he entered the room. It was large and dark and 
 silent. It reminded him of a garret or box room, 
 but there was a shaded lamp on a table, and beside 
 the table William Chudd was seated.
 
 IV 
 
 THE great bulk did not stir at the opening of 
 the door. One would have believed it in- 
 capable of movement. Its mass was inani- 
 mate; it seemed scarce, human and terribly heavy, 
 and its heaviness betrayed no inner power that could 
 conceivably summon it to move. So, a great heap 
 of wreckage, so, a giant lump of stuff or a water- 
 logged bale might appear after sinking through a 
 great depth of water, so it would settle at the bot- 
 tom, and be anchored there forever by its own iner- 
 tion, its invincible weight. No tides would move 
 it ever; no strange creatures swimming about it, 
 would work upon it any change. It was there to 
 stay because it was a dead enormous weight, and 
 the resistance of its lifelessness was greater than 
 the energy of life. Of such an aspect was the bulk 
 in the cavernous room. 
 
 Gower overwhelmed by this impression said to 
 himself. " He is dead," but a voice thin as a string, 
 that seemed to draw itself out from the mass in the 
 armchair said, as if in answer: 
 
 "I'm not dead, Jimmy. Don't look so fright- 
 ened." 
 
 Gower approached the figure. He saw then in 
 the light of the solitary lamp the white face and the 
 strange eyes that Peggy had told him about. The 
 
 158
 
 THE TORTOISE 159 
 
 eyes were very small. They might have been points 
 burnt into that white surface leaving a red spark to 
 linger in each one, and those tiny glaring sparks 
 were the only living things in the mass of the man. 
 The thin voice that made the soft whirring sound 
 like the singing of a taut cord, seemed not to belong 
 to the man at all. It might have come from a 
 ghost, or a practical joker behind a curtain. 
 
 " Sit down," it whirred: " I've one or two things 
 to ask you and one or two things to say. You will 
 excuse my not getting up. I can't. I am too fat, 
 I shall not get up until tomorrow morning and then 
 I shall never sit down again." 
 
 It did not occur to Jimmy until afterwards, walk- 
 ing the hot night streets in a fever of misery, that 
 the words William Chudd uttered during that hour 
 were strange. It was as if the impression of his 
 complete annihilation had been so immense and in- 
 disputable that anything he might say was perforce 
 logical and reasonable. If one were listening to a 
 man talking from the other side of the grave one 
 would not be surprised if he talked differently from 
 men at the club. Ghosts have, presumably, a lan- 
 guage of their own. Condemned men in cells are 
 allowed differences of tone and phrase. Who knows 
 what may have been the utterances of victims near- 
 ing the end of their agony on the rack. Jimmy 
 knew nothing of these things. Neither history, nor 
 mediumistic seances, furnished his mind with images, 
 nor did he think of Chudd as a man about to die; 
 nevertheless he was not surprised at the words that
 
 160 THE TORTOISE 
 
 came from behind that deathly mask. The desola- 
 tion of a human being loomed enormously before 
 him and commanded his reverent and minute atten- 
 tion. He had no will left with which to analyse and 
 no heart with which to lament. His faculties were 
 paralyzed by the knowledge of what was before him; 
 he could only listen. 
 
 "I am too fat for anything but butcher's meat," 
 the voice went on. " Helen is not a cannibal, Helen 
 is a lady. If she were nothing more than that, that 
 in itself would be enough to explain. The only 
 thing that is not explicable is why she waited so long, 
 and why she ever came. 
 
 " Olympus is a long way from the swamp in which 
 monsters wallow. What made her descend? She 
 floated down. I did not drag her. How could I 
 have done so, had I dared attempt it. My paw had 
 not a great enough reach to attain her, up there. Be- 
 sides, I saw her coming, I watched her, floating, sink- 
 ing down on the wings of the morning, golden in the 
 light of Heaven, I, wallowing in my swamp, looked 
 up and saw her. That was long ago, oh very long 
 ago, I would put it as a few aeons before the Myce- 
 naean Age. And as she only stayed a little while, ten 
 years, or ten days, it must have been a long time ago, 
 that she went away, but on that point I am not very 
 clear. I do not remember her actual going, I did not 
 see her go. She slipped away when I was asleep, 
 sunk deep in disgusting sleep and I only knew that 
 she was gone when I found she was gone." 
 
 The voice stopped. A sound like a shudder of
 
 THE TORTOISE 161 
 
 wind followed its high small chant. A sigh of un- 
 utterable weariness breathed up from the wide chest 
 and was lost in the still suffocating gloom of the 
 room, then the voice began again, its falsetto notes 
 were spun smoothly from the colourless,, motionless 
 lips. 
 
 " In the meantime Europe was moving toward 
 war. One observed upon the face of Europe spots, 
 like fever sores, angry chafed places. One observed 
 the growing restlessness of nations. The sore 
 places seemed infected, the fever spread, the pulse 
 grew rapid, one could feel its heightened beating. 
 A day came when the pulse of Europe throbbing un- 
 der your hand, leaped like a mad thing. Some of us 
 felt it, some of us watched, knowing what was brew- 
 ing beyond the horizon. We saw the nations 
 crouching, eyeing one another ready to spring. 
 Then a voice over there said the word war, and they 
 sprang. They were at each other's throats. Pre- 
 sumably, they do not know what it means, this death 
 grapple. It is possible that each one believes he 
 will emerge intact from the struggle. They do not 
 know how difficult it will be to let go. 
 
 "Life as we have heretofore understood it, is at 
 an end forever. The chief business of life will 
 from now on be the business of extermination. It 
 is good to understand that at the beginning and make 
 one's preparations. I have made mine; my life 
 has ceased, I am prepared to lend a hand in this mat- 
 ter of extermination, and this brings me to certain 
 practical questions, in which I wish to trust you with
 
 1 62 THE TORTOISE 
 
 my confidence. You are my friend, you are honest, 
 I used to love you, and if I cannot remember quite 
 what that means it is because it was so long ago that 
 I ceased to be a human being. I am a private in 
 His Majesty's army, nothing more. I will not tell 
 you the name of the regiment I belong to, and I ask 
 you not to endeavour to find out. All business and 
 government affairs in which I was concerned, I have 
 put aside. Everything is in order, even to the dis- 
 posal of my personal belongings. There remain 
 certain things that belonged to Helen. There is 
 the house Red Gables. Lewis & Osborne are 
 charged to keep it open and in repair, and to keep 
 up the garden in so far as that is possible. Her 
 jewels are at Barclay's Bank, the Westminster 
 Branch. Her two hunters were taken by the Re- 
 mount people, the chestnut hack is at Tattersalls. 
 The Renaud limousine is in her garage in the coun- 
 try. In regard to her banking arrangements, no 
 special changes had to be made. Her income will 
 fluctuate less than most people's, but, as I remember, 
 she had never any definite idea as to its extent or lim- 
 itations. I have therefore asked her solicitor to 
 keep her informed and advised each month as to the 
 amount available for spending. She never liked 
 making out cheques, and in fact could not seem to 
 grasp the use of stubs in a cheques book; however, 
 I I presume she will manage somehow." 
 
 His voice cracked. It stopped in a kind of squeak. 
 He remained silent a moment and the lids fell over 
 his small burning eyes. When he spoke again it was
 
 THE TORTOISE 163 
 
 in a different tone, scarcely louder than a whisper 
 and his words were blurred, running one into the 
 other so that it was difficult to understand what he 
 said. 
 
 " The most superb women have often something 
 very childish about them. Helen could not do sums ; 
 she used to bite her fingers; the knuckles of the fore- 
 finger of her left hand until it bled, and sometimes 
 she would cry. You would not believe that she 
 could cry like a little girl and want to have her hair 
 stroked and be soothed, would you? Just because 
 arithmetic was so beastly, and her accounts came 
 out wrong? I have seen her like that. I have 
 stroked her hair, she let me, I it was, who soothed! 
 her. She ran to me when she was in trouble with 
 those figures. Why did I not understand then in 
 those moments that she was just a child? Her ap- 
 pearance deceived me; she looked a Goddess. Her 
 beauty always bewildered me. If I had been blind, I 
 would have known how to make her happy. When- 
 ever I was away from her I made plans and thought 
 over my mistakes and worked out new ways of 
 joy for her. I used to lay deep schemes to make 
 her laugh, but when I came back into her presence, 
 I was afraid to try. She was too beautiful, I lost 
 confidence in myself, I hung before her dumb, quak- 
 ing, stupid, afraid to move a finger lest she run away 
 and hide from me. 
 
 One day she fainted at the sight of me coming 
 towards her. That was the day when I knew 
 about the war and about her going. Both inevit-
 
 164 THE TORTOISE 
 
 able It is terrible to know, and to wait, I suppose. 
 I hoped. It seems to me now that I was struggling 
 all that time. I remember hours of exhaustion, 
 such weariness as is unknown to most men, exhaus- 
 tion produced by the struggling of my hope that 
 found it so hard to die. That hope kept me breath- 
 ing, praying, watching, wanting, waiting." 
 
 He paused, then went on: 
 
 " When she was here, I did not understand her; 
 now that she is dead, I understand. Her heart was 
 just a child's heart, a little, holy, ardent thing throb- 
 bing pitifully in a queenly bosom. Poor little heart, 
 it needed beauty and tenderness, and it had in me a 
 monster of ugliness and clumsiness. How could a 
 hippopotamus convey tenderness? Conceive of the 
 grotesque gesture meant to convey the finest and 
 most frail of all the emotions of the soul; suppose 
 the ugly beast wanted to smile, even to smile. The 
 result would be appalling and the lift of its paw that 
 willed to caress would hideously crush. 
 
 " When I think of the inrush of joy that the sight 
 of her gave me, how through my eyes that beheld 
 her I seemed to penetrate to the heart of all lovely 
 mystery, I realise how my presence must have 
 blocked the way of her soul, I, I, enormous and fat, 
 shut her in and hid the romantic horizon where the 
 fairies of love and high fancy dance and beckon and 
 throw kisses to the yearning hearts of mortals. I 
 was her jailor, her giant, her curse. 
 
 " Once she was ill, then in her weakness she clung 
 to me. In those days, my arms cradled her. She
 
 THE TORTOISE 16$ 
 
 would ask to be carried, and I would walk with her 
 fevered head on my shoulder; then, with her eyes 
 closed, she drew comfort from my strength, and 
 trusting it, would fall asleep, and I would be allowed 
 to watch her as she slept. 
 
 " Now that she is gone I remember her weakness 
 and I see that when she was most strong, even then 
 she was weak. 
 
 " Now that she is dead I understand. Beauty is 
 an illusion, but I loved her beyond and in spite of her 
 beauty. Life is a curious dream, bounded by the 
 mirage of the world, but all about it and under it and 
 beyond it, is death. Death is the only reality, and 
 sorrow is its voice in the world. We struggle to be 
 happy and we fight to live, knowing that life leads to 
 death and that we are born so that we may know 
 what it means to die. 
 
 " I took a more active part in the gigantic farce 
 than most men. I dealt in large pretences and ma- 
 nipulated the scenery and puppets on a stage that was 
 quaking. Now that is finished, for me there remains 
 the only reality, death. They, the puppets, wanted 
 to keep me behind the scenes. They said that they 
 wanted my advice about Germany, Russia, the Bal- 
 kans, about harvests, mines and oil wells; of what 
 good would my opinion be now, when it is all summed 
 up in the word "destruction? " It is better for me 
 to follow the lead of death and go out and kill. 
 
 " Tomorrow the army owns me ; I shall go with 
 it, to kill the Germans who are certainly those who 
 should be exterminated if any one else is to survive,
 
 1 66 THE TORTOISE 
 
 and if children are ever to be born to joy in the 
 world. For humanity is destined to pursue its illu- 
 sions through the centuries, and it is perhaps worth 
 while trying to clear the scene of brutes and cow- 
 ards. Tomorrow, the army owns me and takes me 
 away from the places that I used to know and where 
 I am known as a first-rate scene-shifter. 
 
 " Ah yes, I remember, it was for that I asked 
 you to come." His eyelids lifted. The burnt spots 
 stared out of the wide white face, the massive fore- 
 head, with its finely modelled temples, caught the 
 full light of the lamp, and the light seemed to reveal 
 under that shining surface, the wonderful work- 
 manship of some power that had formed a great 
 brain: William Chudd's forehead dominated his 
 face, at last, for the cheeks were sunken, and the 
 fullness of it had perceptibly withered. 
 
 " People may ask for me," he said. " Some may 
 try to find me. I wish you to defeat them in their 
 efforts. It is necessary that I be left alone. Make 
 it clear that no power on earth can bring me back to 
 live among them. Convince them of the finality of 
 the thing. Convey to them the sense of what I am 
 at this moment conveying to you and what I see re- 
 flected in your face, my annihilation, my extinction. 
 Tell those that ask out of kindness that the only 
 kindness they can do me, is to behave as if I were 
 dead. 
 
 " Death, you see, is the one complete solution for 
 such problems as mine. Death with nothing beyond 
 it. Oblivion soaking me up, not only my conscious-
 
 THE TORTOISE 167 
 
 ness, but also the memory of me in the minds of men. 
 Such shall be and must be my freedom. And if at 
 any time, for some time, who knows, she may come 
 back to her home, if Helen should come to you and 
 ask, tell her what I tell you now. Tell her that it is 
 her freedom and my own that I want and will obtain, 
 freedom from all clinging clutch of memory and from 
 all horrors of the imagination. You see I must con- 
 sider her as dead. Anything else would be too ter- 
 rible. If it is an illusion that I allow myself, it is 
 only in anticipating the day when it will be literally 
 true. She will die, some day. I had thought to be 
 with her until then and watch the kind lines of time 
 on her face. I imagined that she would grow more 
 and more lovely as she grew old. I believed that 
 she would be beside me, white haired, erect and 
 lovely, and that we would leave the earth together 
 in one bound, but now she is gone. The end is now, 
 and I am as lonely as if I were the only human being 
 left on the earth. Loneliness is another reality. 
 Loneliness ; we are all afraid of it, I am afraid of 
 it." 
 
 His voice faltered; it seemed to scrape against an 
 obstruction in his throat. He spoke again, more 
 loudly and with difficulty. 
 
 " If in the meantime it is actual legal freedom she 
 wants, tell her that it will soon be hers. The War 
 Office will inform her on the day that this monstrous 
 carcass no longer bulges upon the surface of the 
 earth. That is all, I think. I do not seem to have 
 said to you what I meant to say. There were things,
 
 1 68 THE TORTOISE 
 
 I cannot remember what they were. I told you 
 about Helen's money matters, did I not? Yes, I 
 told you, and how she could not look after them. 
 Child, little child, wild thing; it was for her I did all 
 the things that I can't remember. They called it 
 serving one's country; I did it for her, and I was 
 wrong. It did not make me more pleasant in her 
 eyes; I remained as fat as ever, I am so fat I cannot 
 move. Pounds and pounds of flesh, monstrous 
 flesh, ugly. Ugliness and loneliness, these two things 
 I keep by me, the rest is gone. Loneliness!" The 
 voice stopped, the lips closed, the pale eyelids drop- 
 ped and with the completion of that infinitesimal 
 ripple of movement the man was still. 
 
 Jimmy Gower was afraid to speak. And what 
 indeed had he to say? It was clear that no word of 
 his could penetrate the fastness of that immobility. 
 He waited in the suffocating gloom of the room un- 
 til he could bear it no longer. Tiptoeing to the 
 door, he looked back at the great pale head with its 
 strange dead mask, then he went out, leaving Wil- 
 liam Chudd alone, like some giant image of extinct 
 humanity presiding over eternal solitude.
 
 V 
 
 DURING the days that followed, when first 
 the men in khaki marched through London 
 to the strains of Tipperary, camped in Hyde 
 Park and drilled in Regents Park, and said good-bye 
 in thousands to white faced women at Victoria sta- 
 tion; in those days when Kitchener's army rose up 
 out of the smoking cities and the smiling fields of 
 England and crowds of men hung outside recruiting 
 offices, the fate of Lady Peggy hung in the balance. 
 For Lady Peggy was determined to take part in the 
 war and had set her lovely face toward France. 
 
 Her appearance and her record were against her, 
 her millions and her persuasive tongue were for her ; 
 oh, very much so. She was, so they said at the War 
 Office and at Devonshire House, wagging their wise 
 old heads, far too pretty in that uniform, to be 
 turned loose upon an army, French or English. On 
 the other hand, she wanted to give ! there you were. 
 What she was prepared to give made them lift their 
 hands. The hands remained lifted; no one knew 
 whether they would come down in a sign of accept- 
 ance and benediction, or whether after all Mrs. 
 Grundy would work the strings that controlled them 
 and produce a gesture of dismissal. Perceiving 
 Mrs. Grundy, in the background and annoyed with 
 her, as she had thought she would never have occas- 
 
 169
 
 170 THE TORTOISE 
 
 ion to be, Peggy began to talk. She talked in 
 English and she talked in French. Strange potent 
 words fell from her lips; technical terms, in all their 
 magic played upon the hearing of stern officials. 
 Fracture beds, extensions, water pillows, sterilizing 
 drums, X-ray apparatus, operating tables, ether 
 masques, hypodermic needles, the principles of 
 asepsis, she was lost in none of these things and dealt 
 in dozens, and in prices with a liberal exactness. 
 The principles of asepsis, was one of her favourite 
 phrases. She made of it the text of her sermon, 
 and shuddered at the horrid vision of infected 
 wounds that might be cleansed were she allowed to 
 cross that churning channel. To ensure perfect 
 asepsis, and fine surgery, and that close to the line of 
 battle, to provide the most perfect surgical equipment 
 in the smallest possible compass, easily transported, 
 magically light, this was her formula. It would ring 
 out bravely, then her voice would drop; " And, " she 
 would add, " to save the lives of those heroes, our 
 tommies or the French poilus, to bring them comfort 
 and peace and the hope of life, that is what I would 
 do. How can you refuse me? A small effort, nat- 
 urally it must seem so to you, but if out of the thous- 
 and, only a hundred come to us and are saved, will 
 it not be worth while ? How dare you say no to me ? 
 What right," and she would smile, " has your horrid 
 red tape to interfere with saving men? " 
 
 How indeed could they refuse? For themselves 
 yes, the War Office was stubborn, it wanted no vol-
 
 THE TORTOISE 171 
 
 untary effort; its medical corps was fully competent, 
 but for France, they would allow the unit to be 
 formed. The gesture was one of benediction and 
 the French authorities smiled on Peggy, thanking 
 her in terms that filled her eyes with tears. 
 
 " We've the worst manners in the world," she 
 sighed when the final verdict was given. " You'd 
 think the only gentlemen in London were the 
 French." She did not realize that she was an ob- 
 ject of fear to those old Anglo-Saxons, nor would 
 she believe it, even when Mary Bridge told her to 
 tuck her curls under her cap. 
 
 Lady Sidlington saw no connection between tango 
 parties and a field ambulance. It did not occur to 
 her that because she had once patronized the former, 
 she could not undertake the latter. Making ban- 
 dages came easily to her fingers. If she could not 
 hunt five days a week, she could work seven, and if 
 no chauffeurs were forthcoming, she would drive 
 herself, in Belgium, France, or along the road to 
 Berlin; the chauffeurs were forthcoming quickly 
 enough, however. 
 
 Doctors and surgeons, and nurses thronged the 
 big house in Eaton Square and Peggy in dark blue 
 serge with no curls showing under her veil, or per- 
 haps just one over her ear, received them sweetly, 
 her lips stained from much chewing of a blue pencil. 
 She greeted them all with her loveliest smile topped 
 by just the smallest most business-like frown, and 
 said:
 
 172 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " It is really too sweet of you to help us. Please 
 talk to Miss Bridge about details; you'll find her in 
 the library." 
 
 And Mary Bridge with professional grimness 
 sorted them out. A stenographer at her elbow and 
 a bell under her hand, and a boy scout at the library 
 door, she interviewed, dictated, telephoned. She 
 had insisted that Peggy should leave her alone and 
 never enter the room unless she rang the bell three 
 times. 
 
 " You're a darling, Peggy, but you've no practical 
 sense, and if you want me to organize the thing you 
 mustn't bother me. Beside you'll have quite enough 
 to do getting round all the old men, so just leave me 
 alone unless I send for you." And Peggy obeyed, 
 she went forth, she smiled, she persuaded, she melted 
 hearts of stone. Obedient to the library bell she 
 would appear in the door and listen. 
 
 " P e ggy tne transport people are being very 
 nasty. They object to half of all our staff; you'll 
 have to go and see a Colonel named Stratham. Ex- 
 plain to him that the motors aren't touring cars, or 
 only one of them, and that the operating tables aren't 
 sofas and that we're not taking one thing more than 
 absolutely necessary." 
 
 Peggy would go, the colonel would begin by being 
 cross, and end by being gallant and remain an ardent 
 friend. 
 
 Stump Arkwright began talking of Peggy's army 
 and Peggy's war. Bond Street stared sympatheti- 
 cally at the red crosses on the doors of her limousine
 
 THE TORTOISE 173 
 
 and many a man in khaki smiled at the sweet face in 
 the blue veil behind the glass window. Peggy was 
 foolish, and Peggy was wise. 
 
 She knew her limitations and sat meekly at the 
 feet of her surgeons, and let her matron discard al- 
 most all her pet things and listened with angelic pa- 
 tience to Mary scolding about prices. 
 
 " Peggy > these Turkish towels are twice the price 
 of the others." 
 
 " But, dear, they're nicer, they're pretty, they have 
 a blue stripe." 
 
 " Who wants bath towels to be pretty? They're 
 no better in quality; you can't have them. It's mad 
 extravagance." 
 
 " Very well, dear," and Peggy would acquiesce 
 wistfully. In the bottom of her heart she had hoped 
 everything might be pretty, but she knew she was 
 foolish. 
 
 Sometimes when Mary did not war>t her, she 
 would go shopping. The result was as a rule con- 
 sidered lamentable. She could not resist blue 
 enamel, and jugs and basins of minute size, but of 
 that heavenly blue, began to arrive in hundreds. 
 
 " They are not suitable, we must send them back." 
 
 " But, Mary, the enamel's just as good even if it 
 is blue." 
 
 " I'm not objecting to the colour, darling, it's the 
 size." 
 
 " Oh, are they so small? " 
 
 " Absurdly. Think of scrubbing a whole man, in 
 that much water."
 
 174 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " I didn't think of that. I'm so sorry." 
 " I know you didn't; you never scrubbed a sol- 
 dier." 
 
 " But the people at Harrods will be so disap- 
 pointed if I send them back." 
 
 Peggy's brow was puckered; then it lightened. 
 " I'll give them to the children's hospital, may I ? " 
 " You dear, but of course you may." 
 Peggy's friends were amazed at her. A feeling 
 of awe took possession of her many admirers. 
 
 " By Jove, she's an angel, she's a saint. Fancy 
 her going out there to rough it ! Have you seen her 
 boots? Field boots, old man, the real thing, and 
 on those feet, and a camp bed, X pattern. She says 
 she's going to live in a tent." 
 
 In the matter of personal wardrobe, Peggy was 
 certainly reasonable. " We must have warm un- 
 derclothes, they say: flannel combinations, ugh, and 
 weary dark blue pyjamas and high woollen boots, so 
 that if we're called suddenly in the night, we'll be 
 decent." But her greatest proof of good faith was 
 shown in the fact that she put away the dear little 
 red cross in rubies that the very nicest man in the 
 world had given her, and pinned her collar with the 
 regulation brooch, the result of all of which was that 
 Mary Bridge a week after the ceremony of benedic- 
 tion announced that the unit was ready to start as 
 soon as the War Office gave the word. It consisted 
 of two surgeons, one medical man, three dressers and 
 twelve fully trained nurses, tons of material, four 
 ambulances, two motor lorries, and one touring car.
 
 THE TORTOISE 175 
 
 Portable huts or tents were to be sent on demand, if 
 no building were found to house them. 
 
 It was at this point in the proceedings that old 
 B'randon turned up from the country and begged her 
 ladyship for a moment alone. 
 
 " Mrs. Chudd is at home, your ladyship. I've 
 been hoping you'd come, but when I saw how things 
 were turning out, I made up my mind to let you know. 
 It's not my place I know, and Mrs. Chudd would be 
 very angry if she knew, but I felt it my duty, Mr. 
 Chudd being away at the war and there being no one 
 but me to look after her now." 
 
 " You were quite right, Brandon. When did she 
 get back?" 
 
 " A week ago, my Lady. She arrived in a taxi, 
 in the middle of the night with all her bags round 
 her and her face as white as a sheet. She said she 
 had found the home in Curzon Street closed, not even 
 a caretaker there and so she had motored down, 
 straight away that evening. She was in a very 
 strange state, my Lady, so cold, we couldn't get her 
 warm and that on an August evening with the air as 
 soft and not a breath of wind. We put her to bed 
 and gave her a drink of hot milk. She wouldn't eat 
 anything whatever, not so much as an egg, and she's 
 been like that ever since." 
 
 "Cold, you mean ill?" 
 
 " No, not ill, at least not exactly, but she won't eat 
 and she won't speak, scarcely a word all the day; 
 she just sits in the library, with her hands crossed, 
 not even a book in them. Whenever we go in, any
 
 1 76 THE TORTOISE 
 
 of us, the maids or myself, we find her like that sit- 
 ting and looking at nothing. She doesn't so much as 
 notice us coming and going. All day she sits in the 
 house, it's not natural, she was always so active, my 
 lady, on a horse, or on the river, or motoring some- 
 where, or with people about. Not a living soul has 
 been near her, except one day Mr. Gower came, I 
 should say Captain, and since then she's been even 
 worse, my Lady. She walks up and down for hours 
 in the room, and she's given orders to admit no one. 
 I don't know as one ought to observe such orders, 
 my Lady, seeing as how she can't be quite herself." 
 
 " No, Brandon, one shouldn't. I'll motor down 
 tomorrow." 
 
 ' Thank you, my Lady." The old man hesitated : 
 
 ' You'll perhaps not say that it was me as told you, 
 
 my Lady. I've been with Mrs. Chudd for ten years 
 
 and I wouldn't like to leave her now with the war 
 
 on, and she all alone." 
 
 ' You can trust me, Brandon." 
 
 ' You'll find her very strange, my Lady. Some- 
 times she quite frightens one. It's a great pity Mr. 
 Chudd should have gone off to the war so sudden." 
 
 Lady Sidlington was not sentimental. She hated 
 people who sat about mooning over things that were 
 finished and settled. William Chudd had gone to 
 the army and Helen had come home too late to see 
 him. She had no sympathy with Helen. When 
 one took the reins in one's hands one was supposed 
 to know how to drive. Helen had had her hour, she 
 had been to see her lover, and her lover like every
 
 THE TORTOISE 177 
 
 other man in the world had gone to the war. She 
 was no more unfortunate than hundreds of other 
 people. All the women she knew were living on 
 the rack of suspense. Every one loved some one 
 out there. They didn't whine about it; they kept 
 their fears to themselves. If they had good news 
 they shared it, if they had bad news they hid them- 
 selves from sight; if they had no news at all, they 
 kept a stiff upper lip. Lady Sidlington admired a 
 stiff upper lip, more than most things. And she ad- 
 mired William Chudd more than most men. She 
 regarded his resignation from public life as an admir- 
 able act of extreme simplicity. The war fever had 
 seized her and had diminished for her the sense of 
 personal issues. She no longer saw William's chalk 
 white face and tragic eyes. She' saw him brown and 
 enormous, clad in khaki, fighting the Germans. 
 What difference did it make that he was an officer 
 or a tommy? The great thing was that he was a 
 soldier and no one had a right to criticise his will to 
 be one. She had quarrelled with several people 
 about him and had been rude to the Prime Minister's 
 wife. Stump Arkwright had worried her to exas- 
 peration. He had given her to understand that the 
 Government considered William's act one of simple 
 disloyalty and would exercise no influence on his be- 
 half, and she had told him to mind his own business, 
 that she was bored with politicians and politics and 
 that he needn't come to see her again until he had 
 gone out and won a Military Cross or lost a leg. 
 There was far too much talk in London about
 
 178 THE TORTOISE 
 
 Helen's mysterious absence. Now that she, Helen, 
 was back, she must show herself and put an end to 
 their miserable tongues. She, Peggy, had an angry 
 feeling of responsibility for Helen and admitted the 
 obligation of protecting her. Her brain worked 
 rapidly during her drive to the country, the morning 
 after Brandon's visit. She saw what she had to do. 
 She had to make Helen come with her to France and 
 work. 
 
 Arriving at Red Gables, she made straight for the 
 library and walked in without knocking. He<len 
 was seated on the window seat, her back to the gar- 
 den, her hands crossed in her lap, her head bent for- 
 ward. Lady Sidlington spoke abruptly: 
 
 " My dear, they wouldn't let me in; I was too sur 
 prised to snub any one. Brandon seems to have for- 
 gotten me. So you're back at last. I came to find 
 out when you were expected." 
 
 " I gave orders that I would see no one," said 
 Helen lifting her head. 
 
 If Lady Sidlington was startled by the face that 
 was turned to her, she gave no sign of it. 
 
 " Well, my dear, you've got to see me because 
 I'm here and I want you to give me a thousand 
 pounds." 
 
 "A thousand pounds? What for?" 
 
 " For my hospital. I'm taking a hospital out to 
 France and have spent on it all that I can afford." 
 
 Helen looked at her without speaking. Lady 
 Sidlington described that look to herself afterwards
 
 THE TORTOISE 179 
 
 as stupid. It was as stupid as the look of a drunk- 
 ard or a drugged person. 
 
 " I don't know whether I've got a thousand 
 pounds to give you," said Helen slowly. 
 
 Lady Sidlington was troubled. There was a 
 heaviness and a senselessness about Helen that dis- 
 mayed her. The thought came to her that perhaps 
 Jimmy had been right and that something dreadful 
 and horrid had happened in Paris. She spoke more 
 gently. 
 
 " Well, dear, you'll give me what you can." 
 
 " Help yourself," said Helen idiotically; " you're 
 welcome to all I've got." 
 
 Lady Sidlington was disturbed; the remark was 
 foolish, and the heavy lidded gaze that remained 
 fixed upon her, was baffling. 
 
 " You've not been drinking, have you? " she asked 
 suddenly. 
 
 "Drinking?" 
 
 "You're not drunk, or drugged, are you?" 
 
 " Oh no, I'm not drunk." 
 
 " Well then, what's the matter? " 
 
 " Nothing." A vague gleam of anger appeared 
 in the heavy stupefied eyes. " I told you I had 
 given orders not to admit any one ; I did not want 
 to see you, that's all." 
 
 u That's it," whispered Lady Sidlington's in- 
 stinct; " make her angry." 
 
 " You're behaving disgracefully," she announced 
 in a loud tone. " What are you going to do? The
 
 i8o THE TORTOISE 
 
 world is at war, and you sit here with your hands 
 folded. Aren't you going to help? Aren't you go- 
 ing to do something? What right have you to sit 
 twiddling your thumbs, when all the men in the world 
 are going out to be killed? " 
 
 " Hold your tongue, Peggy." 
 
 " I won't hold my tongue, you make me ashamed." 
 
 Certainly she had not anticipated the effect of the 
 word. At the sound of it Helen had sprung to her 
 feet, and standing, not upright, but crouching as if 
 for a spring, had thrown it back at her. 
 
 " Ashamed who are you to know what it is to 
 be ashamed? " And then suddenly she had gone off 
 into a long wild shriek of laughter through which 
 Peggy caught the words " humiliation " and "shame" 
 cut into syllables by the shrill horrid gurgles. , 
 
 She did not realize then what it meant. She had 
 been much too frightened; not until that night with 
 Helen in the bed beside her in her own room in 
 Barchester Square did she begin to see. She had 
 listened petrified to that laughter; it had stopped 
 suddenly as it had begun. She had been afraid to 
 speak, and then suddenly Helen had said normally. 
 
 u I am sorry, Peggy; I'm behaving like a fool." 
 
 She had been like a lamb after that and had 
 agreed to everything, even to going to France with 
 the hospital. 
 
 Only once had she said anything strange ; she had 
 turned back at the front door: 
 
 " I had meant to wait here," she had said, " but I 
 knew I should wait for nothing. It doesn't matter
 
 THE TORTOISE 181 
 
 where I am. Jimmy told me that I was dead." 
 
 It was in the car going to town that Peggy had 
 started to give William's mesage, but Helen had 
 stopped her. 
 
 " Jimmy told me, that and more, much more. 
 We won't speak of William again if you don't mind." 
 
 That night Lady Sidlington wrote to Captain 
 Gower at Aldershot. 
 
 " I know now, though I don't know why I know, 
 that she cares for William, but that other man has 
 destroyed her self-respect. If you have any news 
 of W. B. keep me posted. Helen is, I believe, de- 
 termined not to try and find him. If you can get 
 leave, come to see us before we go." 
 
 But they did not see Jimmy again in London. 
 Orders came for the unit to start for France three 
 days later, destination unknown.
 
 PART FOUR
 
 PART IV 
 I 
 
 THE war had reached its apotheosis. Death 
 let loose upon Europe had not yet dimin- 
 ished the fighting power of nations, organ- 
 ized for each other's destruction. Hunger was not 
 yet threatening the authority of governments who 
 had pressed not only the men, but the mountains and 
 plains and rivers of their countries, into the service 
 of annihilation. 
 
 Human beings were diminished to pin points in 
 size and importance. Men had suffered their iden- 
 tity to be taken from them. Like animals, they had 
 taken on the colour of the earth, so as to be invisible 
 to the enemy. Their disguise was uniform. Each 
 man looked like every other man. No man was 
 distinguishable from any other. 
 
 The brain of the world had ceased to take ac- 
 count of individuals; it dealt in units called armies, 
 moved men across continents in loads of a hundred 
 thousand and sent them to death in uncounted con- 
 glomerate masses. Cities, like buckets tipped up 
 to pour out their contents, were emptied of men, 
 keeping a residuum of women and children and the 
 aged. 
 
 The face of the earth was changed. Populations 
 had shifted and were incessantly shifting. The 
 pleasant places and the busy places of a former era 
 
 185
 
 1 86 THE TORTOISE 
 
 were vacant Hordes of men lived on the barren 
 surface of deserts, inhabiting tents, or holes in the 
 ground, or heaps of broken stone. In some places 
 cities had been destroyed and to balance these, other 
 cities of wood and of tin had been manufactured in 
 haste. These new cities were perched on the earth 
 without foundations, and were transported in pieces 
 from one point to another. 
 
 A scar showed across the face of Europe. It 
 stretched from the coast of Belgium to the Adriatic 
 Sea, and on the edges of this scar myriads of men 
 clung like insects. Viewed from a high point in the 
 sky, the men looked like beetles; struggling through 
 debris, burroughing underground ; crawling over the 
 obstructing edge of the ditch and dropping dead in 
 it. Stretching away to either side, the earth ap- 
 peared, pitted like small-pox, and along the length of 
 this area ran little curling puffs of smoke and flashes 
 of fire. In some places the smoke smothered the 
 whole and the myriad little clump of men were to be 
 seen crawling into it in thick swarms. These were 
 the places where battles were raging. 
 
 The long thin ditch appeared, to the observer in 
 the sky, an unpassable barrier. It was scarely dis- 
 tinguishable, yet to cross it the easiest and the only 
 way seemed to be to go round the globe of the earth 
 and come up on the other side. 
 
 During the summer of 1916 the place on the map 
 of the greatest smoke and the greatest noise and the 
 greatest swarm of men, were the fields of Picardy in 
 France. It was said in the world of men, where Pol-
 
 THE TORTOISE 187 
 
 iticians and newspaper Editors still occupied sever- 
 ally the usual individual's number of cubic feet of 
 space, that very large effectives were engaged in the 
 battle of the Somme but scarce any one had an exact 
 conception of what the term meant. God in his 
 silent heaven, beyond the sound of war, saw masses of 
 infinitesimally tiny corpses strewn like dead flies 
 across a pock-marked desert : the politician in London 
 saw rows and rows of figures on sheets and sheets of 
 paper. The soldier, who had struggled like a bur- 
 dened insect crossing a quaking earth, saw what an 
 insect can see, a heap of rubbish, stones, bricks, lumps 
 of mud, fragments of bodies like his own, a cloud of 
 smoke behind him, a wall of earth in front of him, 
 and overhead fragments of glittering sky. 
 
 He, the soldier, the infinitesimal human being who 
 through the turmoil went on with his minute busi- 
 ness, he had become accustomed to war. His mind, 
 a tiny spark, lighted in the recesses of his tiny brain, 
 enclosed in the frail walls of his skull that one frag- 
 ment of flying iron could dash to fragments, his 
 mind that burned steadily a pure inextinguishable 
 flame, had generated an idea. He believed in him- 
 self. His idea was that he could and must alone, 
 stand up against the raving terror of the elements of 
 universal destruction. He opposed his small in- 
 domitable self to the monstrous war. He met it, he 
 recognized it, he lived with it. 
 
 Accepting the war, the mentality of the human 
 race was undergoing a change, yet no one noticed the 
 change. The governments of Europe did not real-
 
 1 88 THE TORTOISE 
 
 ise that men were different. Human beings ap- 
 peared diminished in size, while every hour they 
 were growing bigger. They were growing into 
 giants, but the scene of the war was so great that 
 they continued to appear as specks in it. They them- 
 selves did not realize the change. They realised 
 nothing but the war. None of them expected to see 
 the end of it. They lived in it as if it were going to 
 last forever. The killing would go on until there 
 was no one left to kill. The end of the war might 
 come and with it, the end of the world, but this did 
 not concern them; they would not be there to see it. 
 
 Life was distributed to them daily with their ra- 
 tions. They accepted it, day by day in packets. So 
 much discomfort, cold, wet, dust, thirst, soreness, 
 sickness, fear, excitement, blood, hunger, pain; these 
 things were doled out to them. They took the day's 
 supply and to offset the monotony of it, stole what 
 they could find to steal. They helped themselves to 
 what came in their way. In the name of the death 
 that awaited them tomorrow, they celebrated the 
 mug of beer today. The red cheeks of a village girl, 
 a game of cards in a dug-out, an extra pipe of tobac- 
 co, these were their compensations for sure annihila- 
 tion. They had established a new equilibrium. 
 
 Living in the war was not living in the world. 
 The new existence had nothing in common with life. 
 It did not even resemble the struggle of prehistoric 
 man against savage nature, for nature had disap- 
 peared with civilisation and man was left, to face the 
 powers of darkness across the cracked and blighted
 
 THE TORTOISE 189 
 
 surface of a ruined earth. It was as if the earth had 
 rushed ahead through aeons of time, and as if the 
 life of the earth had died. The warmth of it had 
 grown cold, the germinating power of its soil was 
 exhausted. Its forests and fields had withered away. 
 Only the old worn shell of it remained, bleak, barren, 
 covered with the refuse of uncounted discarded 
 ages. The gods had abandoned it and forgetting 
 the man that still lived by some freak of gigantic cir- 
 cumstance on its crust, had turned their attention to 
 other, living planets. 
 
 Humanity, abandoned, seemed to have under- 
 taken the business of its own extermination. In 
 despair at being forgotten, it had determined on 
 death and in order to achieve its own extinction, it 
 had improvised a temporary existence in the incom- 
 prehensible landscape of the earth it held in horror. 
 
 A fury of activity animated the oozing desert, 
 where once in former ages had been the fertile fields 
 of Picardy. Men poured across the dead face of 
 the earth, in an angry flood, bringing with them in- 
 fernal engines that created a great noise. The 
 muddy plain was strewn with iron. The roads were 
 snakes of iron on whose length grinding engines, 
 with heavy wheels fitted one behind another like 
 scales. 
 
 Waves of dull incessant sound beat against the 
 sides of the cold hills. Other noises broke at in- 
 tervals out of the resounding sky, screams, whistling 
 shrieks, and the sound of avalanches crashing down 
 into the echoing caverns. There was a feeling of
 
 190 THE TORTOISE 
 
 concussion in the air as if the whole plateau with its 
 hordes of men were being rushed through space at 
 an incredible speed. The land looked as if it were 
 swept by a devastating wind that had churned up the 
 earth like water. 
 
 A battle was preparing. Another chapter in the 
 history of the effort of the human race to die was 
 about to be written on the stained page of time. 
 
 Some fifteen miles behind the scene of battle near 
 a sheltered bend in the river under a protecting rise 
 of ground, a part of the village remained clinging 
 to the soil. Its ruins appeared incredibly old. 
 Half the church tower was there above a heap of 
 stones, a crazy remainder of a forgotten era. A 
 dozen hovels crouched in the mud, windowless, but 
 capped still by torn roofs. For the rest, stones, 
 and bits of masonry stuck up like teeth out of the 
 ground. 
 
 Men inhabited the ruins, men came and went 
 through the single muddy alley that still resembled 
 a street. An unconquerable instinct of recognition 
 had urged them to inhabit this place. Determined 
 upon death, they still clung to the semblance of 
 dwellings that reminded them of other places that 
 had once given them comfort and shelter. 
 
 The plan of the battle that was preparing was 
 housed in the interior of one of these hovels. A 
 general had established his headquarters there. He 
 sat on a canvas stool before a wooden table with a 
 map spread before him and around the table stood 
 his officers. The general was talking. He pointed
 
 THE TORTOISE 191 
 
 out the places on the map with the one finger re- 
 maining on his mutilated hand. 
 
 Beyond the gaping window troops were passing. 
 Their heads on a level with the broken window still 
 moved endlessly by. Three bobbing helmets were 
 perpetually framed in the aperture. The men pass- 
 ing by in the mud of the road, paid no attention to 
 the officers in the room. They looked neither to the 
 right nor to the left. They ignored the general and 
 the pointing finger that was indicating the place on 
 the map where they were going to die. Out of the 
 distant past that they remembered, through the con- 
 fused and menacing eternity that surrounded the 
 village, they came into the grotesque mockery of its 
 shelter and they passed through it and moved on out 
 of it, to the battle that was preparing. 
 
 They marched, bending forward under the heavy 
 knapsacks that they carried; each one close to the 
 next one and all moving together. The color of 
 their sodden clothes that once had been blue, was the 
 color of the earth, their heavy mass sank into the 
 stuff of the road, their boots were inextricably 
 mixed up in the clinging mud; they covered the long 
 road and were a part of it, forming on it an extra 
 layer that was fused into the deep mud of its bot- 
 tom, so that the whole road moved with them, and 
 their glinting helmets were like a stream of pebbles 
 carried along by its current. 
 
 A woman was walking in the road a mile beyond 
 the village. She wore a white kerchief on her head, 
 and a dark cloak round her shoulders. The mir-
 
 192 THE TORTOISE 
 
 acle of her presence was not noticeable, because she 
 too had lost her identity and resembled the land- 
 scape. The soldiers made room for her on the edge 
 of the road. She walked steadily as they walked, 
 her head bent, planting her heavy boots slowly one, 
 then, another, in the oozing mud. The fact of her 
 being there, seemed neither strange nor wonderful, 
 because her attitude denied that it was so. H'er 
 dreary hooded figure claimed its right to be there. 
 It was bespattered with mud, and patient and un- 
 concerned. She made no gesture, she did not turn 
 her head. She walked through the mud as if she 
 belonged there. 
 
 Nevertheless the army took cognisance of her 
 presence. Out of its disciplined dumb mass, an ob- 
 scure feeling of sympathy went out to her. The 
 rows of men, passing her, one after another, would 
 have welcomed her as one of them, if they could 
 have. If their arms had been capable of making a 
 gesture, they would have waved to her, but their 
 arms were too heavy. If they could have spoken, 
 they would have called out to her a greeting, but they 
 could not. They had no voice with which to speak 
 to her. The noise of cannon, and the wind, and the 
 splashing suffocating mud, had done away with their 
 voices. They had no faculty left, save the faculty 
 of existing and moving on. All there was in them of 
 the energy of life they needed to push one leg in 
 front of the other. They had come a long way, such 
 a long way that they had forgotten its beginning. 
 They did not know where they had come from or
 
 THE TORTOISE 193 
 
 where they were going, they only knew that they 
 could not stop. So they passed by the woman on 
 the edge of the road, weary condemned beings that 
 did not look quite like men, and out of their dogged 
 determined despair they gave her what they could, 
 the only thing they had to give, the recognition of 
 comrades. 
 
 The road climbed to a hard sky-line. The pano- 
 rama of the liquid desert widened out. Over all its 
 slippery surface, were strewn men and animals and 
 carts and guns, and in the midst of them appeared 
 a city of wooden sheds with low peaked roofs. Two 
 posts, standing stark by the roadside, indicated an 
 entrance to the unboundaried settlement. On a 
 painted board between them was written in black 
 letters H. O. E. 29. A sentry in an oblong box that 
 stood on end by the gate post saluted the woman who 
 turned in under the sign. She did not look back as 
 she crossed the open windy space before the wooden 
 sheds. Her figure was a minute thing in that wide 
 place. The white handkerchief on her head was 
 like a solitary snowflake fluttering across the mud in 
 the wind.
 
 II 
 
 THE French Evacuation Hospital No. 29 
 covered a square mile of the plain. It had 
 a population of five thousand souls. An 
 engineer had built it in an ugly symmetry. Its 
 long rows of unpainted sheds formed a system of 
 straight alleys leading out from a central square 
 where ambulances unloaded the wounded. An im- 
 provised railway line ran between the rows of huts 
 to the square. The place was naked and unshelt- 
 ered. There was no tree or shrub anywhere. A 
 thousand unshuttered windows glittered at each 
 other across the bare ground, where scattered 
 stretcher-bearers carrying their swinging burdens 
 struggled against the wind. Except for the 
 stretcher-bearers and the knot of men unloading the 
 ambulances scarce anyone was to be seen. A doc- 
 tor, blackbearded and bareheaded in a white coat 
 bespattered with red blood, came out through a 
 swinging door and went in through another. From 
 somewhere behind the staring windows, a scream 
 travelled out into the wind and was lost. All about, 
 as if forming with their noise a throbbing band that 
 encompassed the earth, the guns were pounding. 
 
 An officer in khaki with a red fez on his head and 
 a cane in his hand stepped aside from the group of 
 
 194
 
 THE TORTOISE 195 
 
 ambulances to greet the woman coming towards him. 
 He limped, his bow was ceremonious. 
 
 " Bonjour, Madame." 
 
 " Bonjour, Monsieur le Medecin chef." 
 
 " You have been walking? " 
 
 " I went to the cemetery." 
 
 " On such a day " 
 
 " I took a wreath sent me by the wife of a man 
 who died here. You do not object, Monsieur le 
 Medecin chef?" 
 
 " Madame is free to do as she chooses, but it is 
 not prudent. The crossroads is an unpleasant 
 place." 
 
 " There was not much shelling." 
 
 " You are brave, Madame." 
 
 " You are indulgent, Monsieur." 
 
 Two orderlies passed carrying a corpse on a 
 stretcher. The wind whipped at the edge of the 
 coarse sheet that covered the stiff body. 
 
 " Hi What Stop Name of God, where 
 are you going? " burst out the officer in a loud voice. 
 The old orderlies stopped and looked around dully 
 over their burden. " Don't you know yet that this 
 is not the way to the morgue? Go round to the 
 back I tell you. Go, get along with you ! Are you 
 deaf, imbeciles ! Name of God, what specimens ! 
 Pardon, Madame; this rabble they give me for or- 
 derlies." 
 
 " They are old men, Monsieur." 
 ' They are idiots, Madame, idiots. Those that 
 can hear can't see. Those that can see can't hear.
 
 196 THE TORTOISE 
 
 They send me all the broken down grandfathers and 
 expect me to run a hospital with them. I swear, I 
 shout, at night I am hoarse with shouting, I shock 
 you. It is my business to shout, I beg pardon. 
 Bonjour, Madame." He repeated his ceremonious 
 bow. 
 
 " Bonjour, Monsieur." She turned away, but he 
 stopped her. 
 
 " Madame Chudd. One moment! " 
 
 " Yes, Monsieur." 
 
 " Be so kind as to tell your companions that the 
 order has come to prepare for a heavy intake to- 
 morrow." 
 
 " I will do so, Monsieur le Medecin chef." 
 
 " A train will leave at seven in the morning. At 
 what time did you go to bed this morning, Madame? 
 At four o'clock? I thought so. You will kill your- 
 self, and that will help no one. I have given orders 
 that all evacuable patients are to be evacuated, but 
 all, you understand, without sentiment, strict selec- 
 tion, only the moribunds to be kept." 
 
 " I understand." 
 
 " We have beds for four thousand. There are 
 at this moment two thousand five hundred patients in 
 the hospital. Two thousand at a minimum must be 
 evacuated. We must make room. The surgeons 
 will cry out and call me names. They will make a 
 fuss over this pet case and that pet case. Their 
 beautiful operations, their knees, and their thighs 
 and their heads, that they want to keep under ob- 
 servation ! It is always the same story. They will
 
 THE TORTOISE 197 
 
 not understand. This is not a place for delicate 
 surgery." 
 
 " It is a place for saving life." 
 
 " You ladies have too much heart." 
 
 " I am sorry that you should think so, Monsieur." 
 
 " This is no place for heart, Madame." 
 
 " I dare to think the contrary, Monsieur." 
 
 " Je vous presents mes hommages, Madame." 
 
 " Bonjour, Monsieur." 
 
 She left him and made her way to the nurses hut. 
 " He is perfectly right," she said to herself. " This 
 is no place for heart." 
 
 Long ago, when she had first come, she had an 
 inspiring vision of the place. Its enormous activity 
 and the sinister excitement that prevailed there, had 
 been a stimulus. She had left Peggy Sidlington 
 after a year of sporadic amateur work in the North, 
 at the invitation of the French Inspector General, 
 and had enrolled herself as a military nurse. Feel- 
 ing herself a definite part of the great machine, she 
 had experienced a sense of relief. It had seemed 
 to her wonderful to take a serious part in the colossal 
 contest between the business of killing and the busi- 
 ness of saving life. The human flood that poured up 
 the roads past them, flowed back to them a stream of 
 poisoned wreckage. The hospital dealt with the 
 wreckage. She had seen herself for a time as one 
 of a band of life savers, wading through a perpetual 
 storm to the rescue of pitiful survivors. 
 
 She had lost her vision of the place. She worked 
 in it now blindly unthinking and almost unfeeling.
 
 198 THE TORTOISE 
 
 Pity had given way under the overwhelming fact of 
 horror, to apathy. The sight and sound of suffer- 
 ing, no longer conveyed to her any sensation. She 
 reacted to it, like an accurate machine made to deal 
 with it. Her gesture responded to its appeal com- 
 petently; her brain registered its needs, but her mind 
 failed to understand its meaning. It had been a 
 question of becoming a machine or going mad. She 
 realized this and did not condemn but merely dis- 
 liked herself. 
 
 Her duty was to receive the wounded in the great 
 central shed of the hospital as they came from the 
 trenches. They were brought to her on stretchers 
 and laid on the floor. Each man had a ticket tied to 
 his coat on which was written the nature of his 
 wounds. It was her business to examine each one 
 and pick out the most urgent cases, and rush them 
 through to the surgeons. It was her duty to know 
 who in that mass of torn humanity was nearest the 
 point of death. She had learned to read the signs 
 on their faces and limbs. The green pallor of a 
 face, the sweat on a forehead, a pinched nose, a 
 jerky movement of the legs, a thick rattle in the 
 throat, a peculiar odor, these things spoke to her. 
 She understood the language. Wrapped in their 
 great coats, covered with mud, stained with rusty 
 blood, soiled bandages showing, crowded one against 
 another like battered parcels, she would sort them 
 out, see at a glance that the one had all but bled to 1 
 death, that death already had claimed another, that 
 yet another, though suffering agonies, could wait.
 
 THE TORTOISE 199 
 
 They passed before her, an endless, helpless pro- 
 cession of recumbent bodies. They were carried in 
 and laid at her feet. Under her direction their 
 clothes were cut from them, their bodies washed, 
 their wounds dressed. She gave them stimulants, 
 drinks, warmed their feet, bandaged their wounds 
 and sent them on to the surgeons. Some of them 
 died in her presence and were carried away to the 
 morgue, all passed on to make room for others. 
 She had no time to know them. It was impossible 
 to remember them. She never learned their names. 
 Sometimes after a burst of work she would ask the 
 operating room nurses, what had become of one or 
 another, identifying them by their wounds, but it was 
 difficult to trace them as far as a ward. If she 
 went for a moment to one of the wards, she recog- 
 nized no one. The men were transformed. The 
 clean, white bandaged figures in the rows of beds, 
 were a different race from the bearded, mud-en- 
 crusted bundles that were laid on the floor of her 
 shed. 
 
 But she realized them in the mass and in her own 
 way, absolutely and ultimately, as if she with them 
 had been put down into Hell forever; they belonged 
 to her and she to them. Under a curse, she loved 
 them. Their hideousness had become to her gran- 
 deur. She recognized the nobility of their distorted 
 mangled limbs. Their stoicism, their supreme cour- 
 age kept forever alive her deep despairing admira- 
 tion, and their tenacious hold on life filled her with 
 awe. On her knees amongst them, cutting, strip-
 
 200 THE TORTOISE 
 
 ping, binding, washing, she fought with them for 
 the life they wanted. Grimly, and bitterly, she 
 helped them to live, knowing how much easier it 
 would be for them to die. 
 
 They seldom spoke to her. They never com- 
 plained and she herself spoke little. Their common 
 struggle was carried on fiercely in silence broken only 
 by grunts, or stifled groans and quick exclamations. 
 They obeyed the language of her hands, and re- 
 sponded to the pressure of her fingers. They al- 
 lowed themselves to be handled by her and she 
 handled them competently, for their salvation. 
 They knew this, and she knew that they knew it. 
 Through the thick envelope of their horrible dis- 
 guise, their idea reached her and her understanding 
 travelled back to them through the living touch of 
 her hands. Defying the purpose of the war, they 
 willed to live. She willed to keep them alive. 
 Communion was established between them. 
 
 Her personal consciousness was at its lowest pos- 
 sible ebb. She remembered almost nothing and 
 looked forward to nothing. Only one idea of her 
 own remained to her, and that remained with her 
 always. She had had no news of her husband. 
 She expected daily to hear of his death. The idea 
 in its form of an eternal question stared at her anew 
 each day. It kept her awake for a time each night, 
 no matter how great her physical exhaustion. " Is 
 he still alive? Is he wounded? Is he at this in- 
 stant being killed? " These questions she asked her-
 
 THE TORTOISE 201 
 
 self, while she lay awake, in her cubicle in the nurses 
 hut. 
 
 Some companionship she found in the Hospital 
 community. Her orderlies were her friends. 
 They were old men, most of them had been farmers. 
 They were grizzled, weather beaten and dirty, they 
 were deaf and rheumatic and lazy; they were stupid 
 and patient and careful. Their heavy gnarled 
 hands accustomed to guiding a plow and hoeing the 
 soil, were tender with the wounded men. Their 
 rough voices were kind. Some of them had grand- 
 children. They took hold of mangled men as if 
 they were babies. Their untidiness exasperated 
 her, their stupidity maddened her, their simple good- 
 ness was a repose to her soul. Ruling them and 
 scolding them and teaching them, she depended on 
 them and their presence was a comfort to her. 
 Sometimes they made her laugh. 
 
 Of the doctors she saw very little. She was sur- 
 prised at the interest some of the nurses took in the 
 doctors. She liked the nurses without getting to 
 know them. They were a cheerful chattering lot 
 of French women, whom she saw at meals. The 
 only one with whom she had ever talked, was the 
 Infirmiere Major, Mademoiselle de Vaumont. She 
 had never seen any one the least bit like Mademoi- 
 selle de Vaumont. She was not sure, given time 
 and leisure to do so, whether she would end by lov- 
 ing her or by finding her merely a bore. The large 
 woman with her aristocratic crooked face under its
 
 202 THE TORTOISE 
 
 false front of auburn hair, her large emotional un- 
 gainly bosom, her shrill laughter, her huge untiring 
 feet, her fanatic religious devotion, made up a baf- 
 fling creature. She openly despised the doctors as 
 beneath her in social position as indeed they were. 
 She reverenced the many priests who acted as order- 
 lies. She lavished unquenchable and untiring mater- 
 nal affection upon her patients. The nurses adored 
 her. Helen certainly did not adore her, but the 
 thought came to her sometimes, that if she were in 
 trouble the French woman might help her. She felt 
 that Mademoiselle de Vaumont respected her, be- 
 cause she worked hard and didn't make a fuss, went 
 out to the kitchen hut for her own hot water to wash 
 in and cleaned her own shoes and tried to eat the 
 meat and beans that were put before her. Some- 
 times at night, when work was slack, they would 
 wash and iron their kerchiefs together in the mess- 
 room after the others had gone to bed. They would 
 talk then, as they heated the irons on the small glow- 
 ing stove, about religion and the war and the char- 
 acter of the French people. Never did they men- 
 tion their own personal affairs. They knew nothing 
 about each other. Helen was grateful to the 
 woman under whose authority she worked for re- 
 specting her incognito. 
 
 It did not occur to her to wonder whether any 
 of the people around her thought it strange that 
 she should be alone, the only English person among 
 them. She was not conscious of herself as an object 
 of interest or curiosity. When the nurses told her
 
 THE TORTOISE 203 
 
 that she looked ill, she smiled and said that she was 
 perfectly well. It seemed to her superfluously kind 
 of them. She was tired. They were all tired. 
 Her feet were swollen, so were their feet. Most 
 of the time, her back ached. She had chilblains. 
 They all had chilblains. These things did not 
 trouble her. The only thing that bothered her was 
 an almost constant sensation of nausea, it was as if 
 her feeling of excited nervous apprehension had 
 taken hold of her stomach. She forgot about this, 
 while at work. It was only when off duty that she 
 was obliged to notice it, and she was off duty as little 
 as possible. She found that she could do an eighteen 
 hour day regularly. During battles, she stayed on 
 for thirty-six hours at a stretch, with time off for 
 meals and a foot bath. Her work in the receiving 
 hut was irregular. She began at any hour of the 
 day that the wounded arrived and stayed on as a rule 
 until midnight or one in the morning. There was 
 no other nurse to relieve her. When she went to 
 bed, she left word with her sergeant to call her when- 
 ever the work demanded it. He was so often 
 obliged to do so, that of late she had taken to sleep- 
 ing in her clothes. She would take a bath in her 
 canvas tub and dress again before going to bed. 
 Dressing was not a complicated business. She wore 
 woollen underwear and breeches under her uniform. 
 Her hair, done in a long plait, was wound in a knot 
 under her veil. She made no attempt to take care 
 of her hands. They were the hands of a working 
 woman. One finger was misshapen. It had been
 
 204 THE TORTOISE 
 
 badly infected. She had neglected it, and it had had 
 to be cut. 
 
 Once, she had fainted outside the hut. They 
 had thought it fatigue. The medecin chef had 
 wanted to send her away for a rest, but she had re- 
 fused to go and had let them think what they would. 
 To whom could she explain that the sight of a very 
 large soldier in English uniform by the gate had 
 made her run forward and stumble, and fall, when 
 he turned a strange red face to her? To whom 
 could she confide anything? 
 
 Sometimes, when British troops passed by, her 
 heart would suffocate her with its thumping and she 
 would hold tight to the nearest solid object, to pre- 
 vent herself from running out like a lunatic to watch 
 them. " What good would it do, you idiot? " she 
 would say to herself. " If you stood all day every 
 day on a cross road watching them go past, you 
 would never see him. He may not even be in 
 France. He may be in the Dardanelles; " but in 
 spite of herself, she felt each time that perhaps that 
 time he had actually been among the bent mud- 
 coloured forms under the round tin hats, that were 
 marching by in the road. 
 
 That night at nine o'clock to the minute the can- 
 nonade tripled its force. It was as if the earth 
 during its spinning course through the heavens had 
 leaped suddenly aside into a storm. The wounded 
 men on the stretchers who were being carried to the 
 train turned their heads to listen and the old order- 
 lies with their shaded lanterns flickering in the wind
 
 THE TORTOISE 205 
 
 stopped to listen, and the Doctors playing cards 
 round the lighted lamps of their mess rooms and 
 the nurses in the wards busy with the patients who 
 were being evacuated, all stopped what they were 
 doing, to listen. Only the dying men left alone 
 in their beds did not listen. They were dying, noth- 
 ing could interrupt them, nothing could stop them 
 dying. The roaring throb of the dark made to them 
 no difference. No thundering message of death had 
 for them any meaning. For them the last word was 
 spoken. They lay still in their beds, in the shaking 
 huts behind their rattling windows. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Vaumont coming into the nurses' 
 hut at midnight found Mrs. Chudd sitting in the 
 mess room, her cloak wrapped round her, her lighted 
 lantern on the floor beside her. The fire in the stove 
 had gone out. Blasts of wind and a throbbing noise 
 invaded the cold room. 
 
 " You are not in bed? " 
 
 " No, I have just come in. And you? " 
 
 " I had to make up beds for tomorrow. All my 
 men have gone but two." 
 
 The French woman sat down. 
 
 " Shall we make some chocolate? " 
 
 " The fire has gone out." 
 
 Neither moved. They sat huddled in their can- 
 vas chairs, staring at the dead stove and listening. 
 The bare room with its rough inadequate walls was 
 in shadow. Their lanterns shed a dim light by 
 which they could see each other, but it was not each 
 other that they saw.
 
 2o6 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " The attack is timed for six o'clock," said Made- 
 moiselle de Vaumont. 
 
 " So I believe." 
 
 Their silence was swallowed up in the noise that 
 surrounded them like a swirling flood. 
 
 Helen was watching her husband. She saw him 
 from an infinite distance but with perfect precision. 
 She saw him out in the dark on a field of mud, with 
 an indistinguishable mass of men. He was one of 
 them* He was one of a countless number destined to 
 be killed in the morning. 
 
 The throbbing of the cannon was like the pound- 
 ing of a clock beating out the running seconds of 
 the life of the earth that was rushing to an end.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE world was cracking to pieces beyond 
 there in the dark. The man heard it. He 
 knew that it couldn't last more than a mo- 
 ment longer, but he didn't care. It would fly into 
 fragments. He felt it straining. One blow right 
 in the middle would do it, like that, no, that was 
 to the side. Where was He? 
 
 Voices spoke round him. He heard them, small, 
 complete soft things, clearly audible in that cracking 
 thunder. 
 
 "Attention! " 
 
 "Quietly" 
 
 " For the love of God be careful." 
 
 "Life Push Higher" 
 
 " Name of God " 
 
 " There now. Another one." 
 
 Dark forms move round him. A coat brushed 
 against his face. He would have remonstrated it 
 if he could, but somehow he couldn't. He knew 
 that he was helpless, but did not know why. He 
 had no curiosity. Men were pushing and stumbling 
 round him in the dark. He could not move. He 
 knew without trying that he could not. 
 
 Another voice said : ' Take the officers. That 
 makes four. Drive direct to the Evacuation Hos- 
 pital. Bad cases. Hurry! " 
 
 207
 
 2o8 THE TORTOISE 
 
 He opened his eyes. A glare of light showed a 
 grizzled bearded face bending over him. The light 
 went out. He felt himself lifted, swaying. He 
 thought: " I am lying on a swinging rope. I shall 
 fall off, I shall drop." He felt sick at his stomach. 
 If only he could vomit, but he was flat on his back. 
 Impossible to lift his head. There was a grinding 
 noise. Something closed round him, suffocating. 
 Suddenly the earth quaked, jolted, began to lurch 
 beneath him. A spasm of intolerable pain seemed 
 tearing his bowels out of him. He lost conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 Another voice, this time a woman's. It said: 
 
 ' Yes, there were four officers; one is dead." 
 
 A man's voice then: 
 
 " Send me the most pressing." 
 
 The woman's voice. " This one is." 
 
 "What's he got?" 
 
 " Penetrating wound of the abdomen." 
 
 "Ah! How's his pulse?" 
 
 " Very low." 
 
 " Has he vomited? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 "How long since he was wounded?" 
 
 " Six hours." 
 
 " Send him along to me, but stimulate him first." 
 
 " I've given him 10 cc. of camphorated oil." 
 
 " Good. Give one of sparteine, and one oi 
 cafeine." 
 
 " Very well." 
 
 The woman's voice speaking close beside him was
 
 THE TORTOISE 209 
 
 a voice that he knew. He had heard it many times 
 before. It was a part of him. It linked him with 
 himself. He recognized it as belonging to him. 
 He was filled with a sense of peace and security. 
 He felt like a little child, light and helpless and 
 innocent. He wanted to cry and be comforted by 
 the woman who was there to care for him. A 
 miracle had saved him. He was at home. His 
 mother must be in the next room. He imagined 
 her white head shining in the lamplight. If he 
 turned his own head on the pillow he would be able 
 to see the clock on the chimney piece and the two 
 green china dogs. 
 
 He made the effort. An unclean odour under 
 his nose smothered him. The pillow under his head 
 was hard. It was no pillow at all. It was his coat 
 folded up. He remembered something. It eluded 
 him, but he knew it was horrible. He was thirsty. 
 He was very cold. His body felt to him like a cold 
 stone, but in the middle of it there was a warm sticky 
 sensation. He felt sick. He could not move his 
 hands or his feet. He could only move his head. 
 He rolled it to the other side, opening his eyes. 
 
 An object blocked his view. It was another head, 
 there beside him, horribly close, with a bandage 
 round it, hiding the eyes and ears. Only the black- 
 ened nose and jaw were visible. Wet blood oozed 
 through the bandages. He knew what it was. He 
 knew all about it. With infinite disgust and lassi- 
 tude he looked at it. It brought back to him the 
 thing he remembered. He remembered noise and
 
 210 THE TORTOISE 
 
 red light running along the edge of the dark, and 
 a throng of men in the dark running forward and a 
 hail of lead peltering, and a pellet hitting him. 
 He was overcome with disappointment. Where 
 was the woman with the voice he knew? She was 
 not there. He was not at home; he had been 
 cheated. 
 
 Was he back in the trenches? No, he had no 
 clothes on, only a blanket. How cold he was. But 
 the blanket was too heavy, it was suffocating him. 
 If he tried he could perhaps throw it off. It was 
 hurting his stomach. If he tried like that 
 
 " Lie still," said the woman's voice from beyond 
 his feet. " If you move you will be sick. It is 
 necessary for you to lie perfectly still." The voice 
 was firm and convincing. He obeyed it. 
 
 " Please, may I have a drink? " he asked. 
 
 " No, I can't give you a drink." 
 
 " I am dying of thirst." 
 
 " I know I am sorry you must wait." 
 
 " Just a sip, just a drop." 
 
 " No, not now. I am giving you something that 
 will diminish your thirst." 
 
 He whimpered as a dart of fire ran into his thigh. 
 
 Then he saw her rise above him like a white pillar. 
 She was immensely tall. Her face was indistinct. 
 It reminded him of some one, but before he could 
 remember what she looked like, it was gone. 
 
 He hated her for not giving him a drink. A 
 drink was the only thing to be desired in the world. 
 She was cruel and powerful and vindictive. His
 
 THE TORTOISE 211 
 
 mouth was full of a bad sour thick taste. Waves 
 of nausea swept over him, rolling up from hideous 
 aching depths inside him. His tongue was enor- 
 mous. It filled his mouth. It was unclean and cov- 
 ered with fur. If only he could spit it out! Ugh! 
 the revolting flood surged to his lips. He lurched 
 forward, throwing out his head. His entrails 
 seemed bursting through the walls of his body. His 
 head wavered. An abyss seemed to open up behind 
 him he would fall. 
 
 Arms supported him. He was saved. A basin 
 was held beneath his lips. He was conscious of 
 immense relief, and then of phenomenal weakness. 
 
 *' Gargle this and spit out every drop," said the 
 woman who had saved him. He filled his mouth 
 with cold water. Conscious of the enormous sin it 
 would be to yield to the temptation of swallowing he 
 resisted temptation. Her divine presence gave him 
 the strength to do it. She was an angel with a will 
 of iron and he was her slave, eternally grateful. He 
 spat out all the water, not one drop found its way 
 down his throat. He was filled with a sense of 
 victory. Surely she would commend him. 
 
 " You see, I am good," he murmured. 
 
 " Yes, very good, my poor child." 
 
 Then all at once, he knew her name. 
 
 " Helene," he said weakly, " Helene." 
 
 She did not answer. She was laying him flat 
 again. She was going away. Panic seized him, he 
 clutched her hand. 
 
 " Don't leave me."
 
 212 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " They are taking you to the radiograph now. 
 I will go as far as the door with you." Her voice 
 was cold and infinitely wise. She undoubtedly knew 
 everything about him. She knew who he was and 
 what they were going to do to him, and what had 
 happened, and what wasi going to happen. Of 
 course she knew; she was omniscient and omnipotent 
 and she was his friend. She was marvellous and 
 white and strong. His life depended on her; she 
 had held him while he vomited filth; she was a saint. 
 
 They were by this time moving. He was sway- 
 ing again. She walked beside him. Lying on his 
 back he turned his head sideways to see her. She 
 floated beside him; her head was in a white aureole. 
 They went on and on, they passed under miles of 
 interminable roof, that arched like a cave above him. 
 He was in a cave of pain. She guided him. He 
 was conscious of great solitude, yet he knew there 
 were figures moving all about him. They were 
 shadowy blurs. Their voices sounded far away. 
 She was near, he could touch her sleeve. Strange 
 mysteries of horror menaced him. Her reality was 
 a guarantee of safety. 
 
 In a black hole, they put him down. A huge red 
 face with a black beard came down on him. He 
 cried out to her: 
 
 " Helene, don't leave me ! " 
 
 She said: " I must go; there are others waiting." 
 
 "Other what?" 
 
 " Other wounded men." 
 
 "Ah, it's that is it?"
 
 THE TORTOISE 213 
 
 The red face said. " There's the orifice of en- 
 trance. The ball has remained. There's no other 
 wound." 
 
 They were stripping him of his blankets and of 
 the covering round his stomach. 
 
 She said. " Au revoir! Bon courage!" She 
 was gone. He called her name despairingly, but his 
 voice made no sound. There was no more light, 
 only a red spark somewhere down there way off like 
 the signal of a train on a dark night. Monsters had 
 him now in their power. He was helpless. She 
 had abandoned him. He resigned himself to the 
 horrors of the dark. 
 
 Helen marvelled to herself as she went back to 
 her ward, that even the gods of war could indulge 
 in irony. 
 
 It was two o'clock in the morning. The glaring 
 light in the entrance hut, showed up with infernal 
 distinctness the double row of wounded men, lying 
 on stretchers one against another. The floor was 
 littered with refuse, piles of clothing, soaked with 
 mud, boots, helmets, water flasks, soiled bandages, 
 dirt. Orderlies were coming and going, scrubbing, 
 gathering up bundles of clothes. Pails of dirty 
 water stood about. Basins full of blood. Tin cups. 
 Hot water bottles. Two men, naked on tables be- 
 hind a screen were being washed. The hideous in- 
 timacy of their wounds glared up from their flesh, 
 unashamed. A man in delirium with nothing on him 
 but a belt of flannel and the head bandage that held 
 together his skull, was sitting up on his stretcher
 
 214 THE TORTOISE 
 
 gesticulating and shouting to the prone bodies round 
 him like some mad preacher. He was unheeded. 
 His congregation lay about him in attitudes that 
 mocked his ravings; some on their stomachs, some 
 with twisted legs, some hanging off their stretchers, 
 head downward, most flat on their backs staring up- 
 ward. The light showed up the dark stains of the 
 life blood that was oozing out of each one of them. 
 
 At the end of the long shed the door kept opening 
 incessantly to the endless procession of arrivals. 
 
 The grizzled orderlies moved slowly with feet of 
 lead. They were tired, they were like grey beetles, 
 crawling about under the weight of an impossible 
 task. 
 
 From the centre of the hut she called out to them. 
 
 " Now then, some energy. We are all tired, but 
 it's no use saying so. Come, Edouard, quick, cut 
 that one's clothes off. This one is ready, carry him 
 through to operating room No. 5. Clear away this 
 pile, my old one. No, little father, don't touch him, 
 let him die in peace Help me lift this one. And 
 those basins must be emptied. Remenez go to the 
 pharmacie for more ether and iodine. Have those 
 bottles filled quickly. Now then, a little courage, 
 my friends." 
 
 They obeyed her. With their old joints creaking 
 and their ancient faces sweating, they bent again to 
 the endless business. 
 
 An hour later an orderly from the operating 
 rooms came for her. 
 
 " Monsieur Groult wants you."
 
 THE TORTOISE 215 
 
 She found St. Christe lying on an operating table, 
 motionless. A group of doctors stood round the 
 shining room, chatting and smoking cigarettes. 
 Their aprons were streaked with blood, their faces 
 humorous. A nurse flew through the door and out 
 again with a happy intense smile on her face. Be- 
 yond the thin partition the electric engines of the 
 sterilizing apparatus, roared and whizzed. Clouds 
 of steam came through the door of the sterilizing 
 room into the corridor. The doctors and students 
 were discussing with enthusiasm the beauty of the 
 operation just finished. 
 
 The head surgeon said to her. 
 
 " It seems the captain is a friend of yours." 
 
 " Yes, I know him." 
 
 He smiled sympathetically, his eyes feverishly 
 bright in his drawn face. 
 
 " I've extracted the bullet. There were two per- 
 forations of the small intestine. We must try and 
 pull him through. Do you know his mother's ad- 
 dress?" 
 
 " The Princess lives in Paris, 1 1 rue." 
 
 " Thank you, I'll send a wire in the morning." 
 
 " It is very serious then? " 
 
 " All that is most serious." 
 
 She was conscious of the eyes of the surrounding 
 doctors fixed on her with interest. Had Jocelyn 
 called her name again she wondered. 
 
 She turned away. 
 
 " You might see that the captain is put properly 
 to bed, Madame."
 
 216 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " If you wish, Monsieur, but they are arriving 
 constantly. There are waiting for you now two 
 abdomens, three knees, a fractured pelvis, as for 
 the rest, many head cases, legs, shoulders " 
 
 " You don't wish then, particularly to take care 
 of the captain? " 
 
 " No, Monsieur." 
 
 " Ah, very well." He lost interest in her and 
 turned to give orders to some one else. The faces 
 of the doctors expressed astonishment and disap- 
 pointment. She left them and went back to her 
 reeking hall, that had become of a sudden a refuge. 
 
 Out of the prostrate silent crowd, a voice was 
 calling. It came to her faint and plaintive. 
 
 " Madame, ma soeur, Madame, where are you? " 
 
 She could not at first tell from which recumbent 
 body it came; up and down the rows of them she 
 searched for it. 
 
 " Ma soeur, ma soeur! " sounded the wail of dis- 
 tress. It was the blind man who had lain next to 
 Jocelyn de St. Christe. She had seen on his ticket 
 the words: " Blind, shot through the eyes," and 
 had left him. No urgent call in his case, he was 
 blind forever. Then she had forgotten him. Now 
 his voice summoned her. She went to him, sliding 
 between his form and the next one and took his 
 hand. 
 
 " Ah, you are there! " The sightless bound head 
 did not move, but a great sigh of relief. 
 
 " Yes, my friend, I am here." 
 
 " It is well," he said in the tone of a comforted
 
 THE TORTOISE 217 
 
 child, and then he added. " I thought that I was 
 abandoned here, all alone." 
 
 She looked round the crowded place ; " No, my 
 friend, you are not alone," she said, then suddenly 
 her nerves gave way. She began to cry. Her face 
 twisted. She fled to the end of the hut behind the 
 screen. Her orderlies were greatly concerned. No 
 one had ever seen her cry. 
 
 " It is the weariness," muttered one. 
 
 " She's not strong," put in another. 
 
 " All the same it's a dog's job this," growled an- 
 other. 
 
 They watched her miserably from under their 
 shaggy eyebrows. He who was known as " little 
 Father " brought her coffee in a tin cup. She smiled 
 at him through her tears. Presently she went on 
 with her work. Dawn found her kneeling on the 
 floor with a boy of nineteen in her arms. 
 
 " Maman," he breathed, " Ma pauvre Maman, 
 adieu." His slim body, slippery with cold sweat, 
 clothed by the soaked bandages that bound his 
 wounded chest and shattered legs, was heavy and 
 cold against her. One grey arm tightened convul- 
 sively round her neck. His head fell backward. 
 His jaw worked regularly, with the jerking twitch 
 of death. Remenez, the priest stood over them 
 muttering prayers for the soul that was slipping 
 away. The working of the jaw ceased. No more 
 breath came through the parted lips. There was no 
 flicker from the open eyelids. She laid him down 
 as the first rays of the sun came through the windows
 
 2i8 THE TORTOISE 
 
 of the fearful place. Of all the dead who had died 
 that night in her presence, this boy had wanted the 
 most to live. 
 
 She staggered to her feet. The old priest said. 
 
 " Madame, it is morning, you must go and rest." 
 
 "And you?" she asked. 
 
 " I will go soon, when the others come on duty. 
 There are no more wounded arriving at present." 
 
 " You are a good man," she said, " and a faithful 
 priest of God." 
 
 " But what has God to do with this? " she asked 
 herself as she crept away over the stained floor 
 that glittered with the slime of wasted life, and went 
 out into the glorious morning, of the new incredible 
 day. 
 
 It was however known that day in the hospital 
 that a captain in the " Chasseurs a pied " had come 
 in wounded during the night, that he had called for 
 Madame Chudd, by her 'Christian name and that 
 the latter, whom every one had believed so cold 
 and businesslike had broken down after the opera- 
 tion and had wept. Romance, a strange creature of 
 Heaven, had found its way across a battlefield and 
 had alighted on the settlement of wooden sheds. 
 
 Helen wrapped in her woollen dressing gown with 
 her feet in a pail of hot water and mustard, heard 
 the nurses whispering beyond the thin walls of her 
 cubicle : 
 
 11 He is very bad." 
 
 " And as handsome as a God." 
 
 " A croix de guerre with two palms."
 
 THE TORTOISE 219 
 
 " Susanne is nursing him in the officers' ward, and 
 you know " 
 
 ' You think so really What an extraordinary 
 thing. Is she with him now?" 
 
 " I don't know." The two whisperers moved 
 away with a rustle of petticoats. 
 
 Helen heard them without taking in the meaning 
 of what they said. Their voices reached her ears 
 but not her brain. Her head felt very light and 
 empty, and her feet unnaturally large. Throbs of 
 pain travelled up them to her knees and thighs. She 
 had lost contact with reality, except for her feet. 
 Those aching limbs down there in the steaming pun- 
 gent water held her down, otherwise she felt that 
 she would float away into nothingness. She had 
 only to close her eyes to die. Dying was so easy, 
 death was so simple. She had watched it. It came 
 like a healing angel. It laid its hand on a struggling 
 thing of agony and the struggling ceased. She re- 
 membered rolling heads and distorted limbs, and 
 starting eyes, and wagging choking tongues. She 
 heard the groans, the short panic-stricken panting 
 breaths that preceded the absolute, unutterable quiet 
 of death. 
 
 She thought: " If William is dead, he is quiet, 
 and I need not live any longer." And then, " if he 
 is dead, he knows the truth." 
 
 It seemed to her that the only happy men in the 
 world were those who had died. She imagined 
 their souls like little puffs of white smoke floating 
 away through the glorious day, while their bodies 
 were being carried to the morgue.
 
 IV 
 
 MADEMOISELLE DE VAUMONT re- 
 turning from early mass in the chapel next 
 the morgue, was joined by the sergeant 
 of the officers' ward. She had adored the blessed 
 Virgin with desperation that morning. Kneeling on 
 the bare ground, her heart sick with the horror of 
 the dreadful night she had prayed for faith. If her 
 faith failed her, her reason she felt would go with 
 it. If there were no peace in no Heaven and no 
 solace, no comfort, no joy, anywhere, for any one of 
 the men who went by chattering delirious thousands 
 to the gates of death, then the world was a mad 
 house and she the slave of a monstrous delusion. 
 
 She knelt motionless before the rude altar, whis- 
 pering feverishly while blasphemous thoughts like 
 crazy imps, darted through her dazed brain. A 
 nauseating odour from the dead bodies beyond the 
 partition permeated the hallowed place. The lame 
 priest Remenez administered the Holy Sacrament 
 as if in a trance. His hands trembled. His eyes 
 were sunken. There was an expression of fanatic 
 peace on his grimy bearded face. 
 
 The mystic ritual steadied her brain. Her an- 
 guish in doubting God that was like the anguish of 
 a woman afraid of being betrayed by the man she 
 adored, produced a revulsion of feeling. She con- 
 
 220
 
 THE TORTOISE 221 
 
 demned herself for doubting, and abased herself be- 
 fore the divine being, and was ashamed. Minutely 
 she scrutinized her own conduct during the last 
 dreadful twenty-four hours. She was not sure that 
 she had not failed in her duty. Her sense of per- 
 sonal weakness overwhelmed her. She implored 
 forgiveness from the Holy Son of God. 
 
 She came away fortified. Praying; she no longer 
 questioned the wisdom of the Divine Spirit who sent 
 men to death in thousands. She knew that she could 
 not understand and that it was not necessary for her 
 to understand. Her self abasement comforted her. 
 She was made strong by the realization of her own 
 sinfulness. God was wise and merciful, no matter 
 what the horrors of the earth might lead one to 
 suppose. She believed this. She must believe it, 
 her life depended on her believing it. 
 
 The sergeant of the officers' ward said that a 
 captain in the chasseurs a pied had come in during 
 the night and was asking for Madame Chudd. 
 Mademoiselle de Vaumont listened to him, showing 
 no surprise, and followed him into the officers' hut. 
 
 Two rows of haggard heads stared from above 
 disordered blankets. 
 
 " In which bed is he? " she asked. 
 
 " No 12, at the end, behind the screen." 
 
 Here and there from stained pillows a flicker of 
 intelligence greeted her nod of good morning as she 
 made her way to the end of the hut. 
 
 She leaned down above the grey moist face of the 
 man in bed No. 12.
 
 222 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " Ah, yes, I know him," she murmured. But 
 the vague eyes that half opened at the sound of her 
 voice, showed no signs of recognition. 
 
 " So it is you, dear Jocelyn, my poor child," she 
 said tenderly, taking his hand. 
 
 The sick man spoke plaintively. 
 
 " Where is Helene? Why doesn't she come? " 
 
 " She is resting." 
 
 " Resting? " he queried vaguely, and then, like 
 a pettish child: " But she will come soon, won't 
 she? She's sure to come, isn't she?" 
 
 " But assuredly," she soothed him, straightening 
 his blankets. 
 
 He moved his head. An idiotic smile half deliri- 
 ous twisted his features. He seemed by some play 
 of his damp features to be beckoning her closer. 
 She leaned down. 
 
 " I'll tell you," he whispered, " I'll tell you in 
 confidence, I must see her, I have something impor- 
 tant to tell her; a secret, you understand. You must 
 call her, you see? It's like that, you understand." 
 
 The smile died away, a desperate sane entreaty 
 darkened his now wide-open eyes. 
 
 " Find Helene," he commanded. 
 
 " I will find her," said Mademoiselle de Vaumont. 
 
 He closed his eyes. The stillness that came over 
 him was like the stillness of death. 
 
 Henriette de Vaumont was a nun who had never 
 taken the veil. She had lived like a nun in the midst 
 of a world of men, since the day that her five 
 brothers had forced her to abandon her dream of en-
 
 THE TORTOISE 223 
 
 tering a convent. She adored her brothers. The 
 family conference to which uncles and aunts and 
 cousins had been summoned by the impetuous five 
 and over which the plump little old mother of the 
 big men presided with timid wistfulness, had been 
 a clamour of affectionate reproach and entreaty. 
 The note of affection had rung sincere through 
 the loudest and highest bursts of protestation. It 
 was sufficient tribute to the goodness and sweetness 
 of the dear big plain creature under discussion 
 that all of those present, and among them were 
 some of the proudest men and the most elegant 
 women of France, declared that they could not do 
 without her. They had embraced her, and cried out 
 at her shrilly in emotional terms of endearment. 
 Tears had been shed. The little mother had wept 
 gently, the brothers had tramped up and down wav- 
 ing their arms, but at last a.n agreement had been 
 reached. She was not to be forced to marry, no 
 further proposal of that kind would ever be made, 
 she was to be allowed to become that strange and 
 abhorrent thing, an old maid, provided she remained 
 among them. She had remained, giving her life to 
 her relations and the poor. It had not seemed to 
 her incongruous to live in the world and follow the 
 humble way of the blessed saints. In turn with her 
 aunt and cousins she had fulfilled the duties of Lady 
 in Waiting to the Duchess d'Orleans and the 
 Comtesse de Paris. Carefully and conscientiously, 
 she had divided her time between the hospitable 
 Royal Families of Europe and the slums of Paris.
 
 224 THE TORTOISE 
 
 Her ungainly figure was seen periodically at Windsor 
 Castle and Buckingham Palace. For as regular pe- 
 riods it disappeared into the tenement houses of 
 the poorest arrondissement of Paris. She admitted 
 the obligations of her family. With them, she 
 mourned the fall of the monarchy, but she loved her 
 seamstresses and washerwomen. Her relations 
 thought her queer but they kept to their part of the 
 bargain and did not interfere. Only one of her 
 more distant cousins, the Princess of Narbonne had 
 indulged in mockery. She was known to have said: 
 " Henriette, poor creature, it is because she is so 
 ugly that she wished to espouse the Christ," but 
 later, the Princess had defended Henriette to her 
 son. 
 
 "Why do I have her about the house? Be- 
 cause she is good and happy. She is the only per- 
 fectly cheerful person of my acquaintance, and she 
 prays for me without ever letting me know it. If 
 God forgives me my sins it will be her doing." 
 
 However that might be, Mademoiselle de Vau- 
 mont at the age of forty-five loved God and under- 
 stood the world. She was not easily shocked by the 
 latter. Its habits were to her an old rather than 
 tiresome story, it held for her no surprises. 
 
 She was not in the least scandalized by the fact, 
 for such she assumed it to be, that Jocelyn de St. 
 Christe was the lover of Mrs. Chudd. Deep in 
 her old maid's heart she had a romantic sympathy 
 with lovers. She felt that she had come on the solu-
 
 THE TORTOISE 225 
 
 tion of the Englishwoman's mysterious sadness. 
 They were lovers and they had been separated by 
 the war. A miraculous coincidence had brought 
 them together and she pitied them both, for she was 
 sure that Jocelyn was going to die. 
 
 A doctor stopped her at the door of the officers' 
 ward. He suggested to her in a discreet undertone 
 that it would be advisable that Madame Chudd 
 should come to sit beside the " captaine." Monsieur 
 Groult, the Head Surgeon believed that the latter 
 might pull through if he could be kept perfectly 
 quiet. Keeping him quiet was extremely difficult. 
 He knew that Madame Chudd had been up all night, 
 but he was sure, that under the very special circum- 
 stances she would not mind being disturbed. It was 
 an interesting case. The operation had been most 
 successful. Monsieur Groult would be desolated, if 
 things were to go wrong. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Vaumont agreed with him 
 gravely. 
 
 A group of nurses looking somewhat like arctic 
 explorers were drinking their morning coffee round 
 the stove in the mess room as she entered. They 
 greeted her with a chorus of cheerful good mornings. 
 She put a cup of coffee and two slices of bread on a 
 plate and went down the corridor to Mrs. Chudd's 
 door, knocking timidly. It seemed to her that she 
 was about to do a necessary but indelicate thing. 
 She was confused at the idea of intruding on an- 
 other's secret. Her errand was both tragic and awk-
 
 226 THE TORTOISE 
 
 ward. She must convey somehow the true impres- 
 sion that she had come in sympathy, and without 
 curiosity. 
 
 Helen was in bed. Only the top of her smooth 
 head showed above the grey blankets. 
 
 "Yes, what is it?" she asked dully of the big 
 woman looming above her. 
 
 " I have brought some coffee, I hope you were not 
 asleep, I am so sorry." 
 
 " No, I wasn't asleep. It is most good of you." 
 The long gaunt creature in the rough bed pulled 
 herself up to a sitting posture and taking the plate 
 and cup began drinking the coffee in large gulps. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Vaumont sitting miserably on 
 the foot of the bed, her little pitying eyes fixed on 
 the thin face between the two long plaits of fair 
 hair, waited for the coffee to be finished. 
 
 " How ill she looks," she said to herself. " How 
 she must have suffered. Her eyes are too large for 
 her face. They seem to be falling back into her 
 head from sheer weight. There is nothing left to 
 her face. Poor thing! Poor thing." 
 
 She nerved herself to speak: "You are so 
 brave," she faltered; " I cannot bear to tell you, but 
 you are brave. I have sad news for you, a message." 
 
 The cup in Helen's hand rattled suddenly against 
 the plate. A look of terror distorted her face. 
 
 "A message?" she echoed. 
 
 ' Yes, a message from a wounded man." 
 
 "Quick, tell me; I am sent for, where?"
 
 THE TORTOISE 227 
 
 She plunged forward, was half out of bed. 
 
 " An officer is asking for you." 
 
 "An officer? No, he can't be an officer." 
 
 " My poor child, the capitaine de St. Christe is 
 here, dangerously wounded." 
 
 "Yes, yes, I know; but the message You 
 said " 
 
 " It is from him, he is asking for you." 
 
 " You mean, you mean ! You are telling me that 
 Jocelyn de St. Christe is sending for me? " 
 
 11 Yes." 
 
 " That was the message? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Oh!" Helen groaned, her eyes closed. She 
 fell back into the bed. She seemed scarcely to 
 breathe. " I thought," she murmured, " that it was 
 something else." 
 
 Mademoiselle de Vaumont saw her shudder, and 
 her pallor became livid. The Frenchwoman was 
 bewildered. Instinctively maternal she tucked the 
 blankets round the thin shoulders. Helen lay quite 
 still with her eyes closed. 
 
 Henriette de Vaumont stared helplessly at the 
 enigmatic suffering before her. 
 
 " You knew?" she asked at last. 
 
 "About Monsieur de St. Christe? Oh, yes, I 
 knew, I was there when he came in." 
 
 "You realize that he is gravely wounded?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " The doctors have very little hope." 
 
 " I am exceedingly sorry."
 
 228 THE TORTOISE 
 
 "He is calling incessantly for you; Monsieur 
 Groult asks you to come to him." 
 
 " I scarcely think that necessary." 
 
 Mademoiselle de Vaumont was shocked. 
 
 " You do not wish to go to him? " she gasped. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Ah, I see. I have made a mistake." The 
 French woman rose to go. She did not understand, 
 and she recoiled from the mystery that no longer 
 concerned her, since she could no longer help. 
 
 " I will tell the Doctor that you are too tired to 
 come," she said coldly. 
 
 " Yes, tell him that," replied Helen. 
 
 Then Mademoiselle de Vaumont's good breeding 
 broke down. 
 
 " You mean to say that you don't care if he dies," 
 she cried. 
 
 " No, I don't care." 
 
 Helen heard the French woman go. She would 
 have called her back to explain to her what she meant 
 if she had not been so tired. She would have said 
 that of course if she were ordered to nurse de St. 
 Christe she would obey, that she was very sorry 
 he was so ill, and that when she said she didn't care 
 whether he died or not she meant that his death was 
 no more terrible to her than the death of any other 
 wounded man. She wondered whether such an ex- 
 planation would have made things any better. Per- 
 haps not. She realized that she had alienated the 
 one person in the hospital upon whom she had 
 counted for sympathy. Her solitude was complete.
 
 THE TORTOISE 229 
 
 But in spite of Madame Chudd's peculiar be- 
 haviour Jocelyn de St. Christe did not die. His 
 mother found him very weak but clear-headed when 
 she arrived three days later. Monsieur Groult, 
 who had dismissed the English nurse's amazing 
 attitude with a lift of exasperated shoulders, was 
 delighted. The arrival of the Princess and her 
 daughter the pretty Marquise de C . . . in the 
 motor of the corps commander, accompanied by the 
 general in person, created a flurry of pleasurable ex- 
 citement in the community of surgeons and nurses. 
 Monsieur Groult was very busy receiving congratu- 
 lations and thanks. The general decorated the 
 Comte de St. Christe with the Legion of Honour 
 and took tea with the ladies in the Medecin Chef's 
 office. Every one talked of the Princess's courage 
 in venturing so near the line of fire. Eyes followed 
 her from every doorway as she hobbled through the 
 mud, leaning on Monsieur Groult's arm. 
 
 She begged permission to remain beside her son 
 for a day or two. The permission was granted, 
 with effusive apologies for the discomfort she must 
 endure in such quarters. She professed herself per- 
 fectly satisfied with the two cubicles that were pre- 
 pared for her daughter and herself in the nurses' 
 hut. 
 
 The general took leave of her with a promise to 
 send an officer the next day for news. He kissed 
 the Princess's hand at the door of the nurses' hut, 
 and she called him her " cher General et ami." The 
 hospital staff were pleasantly thrilled.
 
 230 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " And now, Henrietta, what's this Jocelyn tells 
 me about an English woman, a nurse here," asked 
 the Princess turning up her petticoat in front of 
 her nurse's stove. " I arrive at my son's bedside, 
 thinking to find him dying, and he says to me, after 
 letting himself be kissed : ' What have you done 
 with her? ' ' with whom? ' I ask. ' With Helen,' 
 he raps out. ' This is the second time,' he insists. 
 ' And I won't have it. She saved my life.' I am 
 nonplussed. I smooth his forehead, I tell him I will 
 see, I promise. What, my good Henriette, is it all 
 about?" 
 
 " We have an English nurse here, dear Aunt, who 
 knows your son." 
 
 "What is her name?" 
 
 " Madame Chudd." 
 
 " No, it's not possible, it can't be." 
 
 " You know her, Aunt? " 
 
 " Yes, I do, and I don't like her." 
 
 " I am sorry, Aunt; she is a good nurse." 
 
 " And she's been nursing Jocelyn, I suppose? " 
 
 " No, Aunt; as he told you, she has not been with 
 him at all." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " She refused." 
 
 "Refused?" 
 
 " Yes, Aunt, she refused." The Princess scowled. 
 
 "Where is she?" 
 
 " In her service." 
 
 "Shall I have to see her?" 
 
 " It will be difficult to avoid it. We are obliged
 
 THE TORTOISE 231 
 
 to have our meals here together; moreover, she has 
 given you her room, I should say her bed." 
 
 "Given me her bed? Where does the creature 
 sleep then? " 
 
 " Here on a camp bed." 
 
 " So I must see her at dinner time and thank her 
 for giving me her bed? " The Princess made a 
 face. 
 
 " It would be courteous." 
 
 " Well, well, if I must, I must; but I don't like it. 
 Take me back to Jocelyn. I don't know my way; 
 all these sheds are alike. What shall I tell him 
 about his friend? It's very curious, very curious; 
 I don't understand it." 
 
 But the Princess did not see Mrs. Chudd at dinner. 
 The latter sent an orderly to tell the Infirmiere Ma- 
 jor that her work kept her. She excused herself 
 from dinner. 
 
 That night at ten o'clock, Mademoiselle de Vau- 
 mont found her behind the screen at the end of the 
 empty receiving hut, cleaning instruments. The 
 older woman remonstrated. 
 
 " My dear, you must come and rest." 
 
 " I am not tired, Mademoiselle." 
 
 " But your work is finished ; there are no arrivals." 
 
 Helen looked about her. " I like it here, I am at 
 home here," she said. 
 
 Henriette de Vaumont was no fool, and her heart 
 smote her. She knew that the Hospital staff had 
 turned against Mrs. Chudd and that the latter was 
 aware of it. She blamed herself for not having de-
 
 232 THE TORTOISE 
 
 fended the isolated Englishwoman. Her aunt had 
 told her enough that evening after dinner to give her 
 the clue she wanted. She understood her aunt. 
 
 She spoke timidly. " Come with me, come to my 
 room. I have misjudged you ; I want to have a talk 
 with you, so that I can explain; the doctors, the 
 nurses " 
 
 " I can't talk," said Helen in a level concise tone. 
 " I can't. If the staff is displeased, if they don't 
 like me, if you don't want me any longer I can go 
 away. Thank you for your kindness, but believe 
 me, there is nothing to say; I cannot explain." 
 
 That night, the Princess had a whispered conver- 
 sation of some intensity with her son in the dark- 
 ened ward, at the end of which he turned his head 
 from her with a groan. He did not mention Mrs. 
 Chudd's name again.
 
 DURING the days that followed Helen be- 
 came more and more conscious of the fact 
 that the nurses and doctors avoided speak- 
 ing to her. One day passing the mess room she 
 heard some one say: " But why doesn't she nurse 
 her own people ? She is English ; we can quite well 
 take care of our wounded without the help of a 
 stranger." 
 
 She put on her cloak and rubber boots and went up 
 the hill behind the Hospital. On the top of the 
 hill, she sat down on a heap of stones and wondered 
 what she should do. She must go away, but she 
 did not know where to go. Peggy was in the North 
 of France taking care of officers. She would be 
 no help to her there. She must either go home, or 
 ask the French authorities to transfer her to another 
 hospital. Had she the courage to begin again 
 among strangers? For the first time she admitted 
 to herself that she was almost too tired to live; yet 
 she could not bring herself to the decision to go 
 home. She had determined to see the war out, to 
 a finish: moreover, if she went home, she would 
 feel that she was losing her one slim miraculous 
 chance of finding her husband. She had had no news 
 and could still believe him to be alive. 
 
 Beneath her feet, the strange desert rolled away 
 
 233
 
 234 THE TORTOISE 
 
 to a hard horizon. As far as she could see, armies 
 were camping. William was there perhaps, some- 
 where. She shaded her eyes, staring north to the 
 English lines, and as she looked, carried to her on 
 the wind, came the sound of fifes playing. A Brit- 
 ish regiment was marching, somewhere, hidden 
 within a fold of the hills. 
 
 No, she would not go home. Since she had no 
 place to go, and they did not want her to stay though 
 Mademoiselle de Vaumont had stated the contrary, 
 she must go where she was sent. After all, it didn't 
 matter where, she was always alone, wherever she 
 was. 
 
 She stumbled wearily down the hill, past the re- 
 mains of old abandoned trenches and tangles of 
 barbed wire. Another attack was preparing. 
 There would be a new rush of work the next day; 
 she would wait for that and then ask for her trans- 
 fer. 
 
 At the door of the nurses' hut, an English officer 
 was waiting. He advanced toward her, and said in 
 very quaint French: " Est Madame Chudd la?" 
 
 "Jimmy! " she cried, running forward. 
 
 "Helen! "he shouted. 
 
 They stood clinging to each other's hands, devour- 
 ing the sight of each other. 
 
 " I didn't recognize you Jove, how good it is 
 to see you." 
 
 " Jimmy, Jimmy," was all she could say. 
 
 His round pink face grinned at her from under his 
 round tin hat. He was all round like a bundle in
 
 THE TORTOISE 235 
 
 his rough coat. He looked like a disreputable cupid 
 who had started out for the North pole. 
 
 " He knows something about William," she said 
 to herself, but she dared not ask. Scarcely dared 
 she formulate the question in her own mind. She 
 had a feeling of giddiness; his face swam before her 
 eyes. 
 
 " There's no place to receive you, but the 
 popotte," she stammered and then noticed that his 
 eyes like her own were suspiciously wet. u But why 
 does he feel like crying? " she wondered. 
 
 She led him into the hut. There was no one 
 there. Soiled tea-cups and crusts of bread covered 
 the bare table. 
 
 They sat down by the stove, stretching out their 
 muddy boots to it. 
 
 " Shall I make you some tea? " she asked. 
 
 " No, thanks; I've such a few minutes. My gen- 
 eral gave me a lift. He'll be back to pick me up at 
 any moment. There is so much to say " He 
 paused. 
 
 " Yes," she faltered, and then, neither spoke. 
 
 She felt his eyes on her face. She was afraid to 
 read what was written on his. 
 
 " You limp," she said at last. 
 
 " It's nothing, a flesh wound. I was laid up a 
 week or two, I'm just back from the base. Aw- 
 fully bad luck being out of it, for such a trifle." 
 
 " You you don't like it, do you, up there, here, 
 wherever you are?" 
 
 " I hate it."
 
 236 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " Poor Jimmy." 
 
 " One's so awfully afraid." 
 
 " I don't believe you." 
 
 " Oh, but I am, I'm afraid all the time. I'm 
 afraid of it, and I'm afraid of being afraid. You 
 can't let your fellows know how scared you are, you 
 know, you can't let them down. That would be 
 worse than anything. That's what keeps you go- 
 ing. They depend on you." He paused. ' The 
 mud is bad; five of my men were drowned in it the 
 other night. They fell into a shell hole in the dark 
 and were sucked down. 
 
 She shuddered; a deadly feeling of sickness filled 
 her. Was he preparing her for bad news, the worst 
 news? She closed her eyes. 
 
 " You are so changed, I didn't recognize you," 
 she heard him saying. " It's awful your being like 
 this; you must have lost two stone; you ought to 
 go home." 
 
 "Home?" she echoed. 
 
 " You look as if you were dying by inches," he 
 muttered. 
 
 " Oh, no," she responded quickly, " I'm not, I'm 
 living by inches." 
 
 " You're killing yourself in this place." 
 
 " No, I like the place." 
 
 " But I can see it; your face, it's all gone." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose it is; I hadn't noticed. Is it so 
 ugly? " She tried to smile, looking at him, but 
 her mouth trembled queerly, and at the sight of his
 
 THE TORTOISE 237 
 
 kind funny features working so painfully, his eye- 
 brows chasing each other up and down his forehead, 
 his hand rumpling his troubled head, she broke 
 down. 
 
 ' Tell me, tell me," she whispered huskily, " have 
 you any news? Have you seen him?" 
 ' Yes, I saw him yesterday." 
 
 She grew suddenly very still. "Where?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " In a dug out." 
 
 "Near here?" 
 
 " About twenty miles away." 
 
 " Oh, my God! Oh, my God! " she whispered 
 and began to silently weep. 
 
 Jimmy sat watching her, huddled over the stove. 
 His eyes dwelt on her miserably; he seemed to be 
 struggling with some difficult and serious problem. 
 His eyebrows were distracted. He watched won- 
 deringly the lines in her face, the twisting creases 
 of her pale weeping mouth, the convulsing contrac- 
 tions of the chords in her thin throat. 
 
 He put out a hand and patted her shoulder. The 
 tears streamed silently down her face. He gave 
 her his handkerchief; he was very miserable; he 
 was glad when she blew her nose. That silent white 
 weeping was awful. And yet somehow, it didn't 
 seem to be hurting her. It was as if it were a relief. 
 She fumbled for his hand that was on her shoulder 
 and clutched his fingers. Her unseeing eyes stared 
 before her. Her breath still came trembling from
 
 238 THE TORTOISE 
 
 her thin bosom. How thin she was, how thin! 
 She looked as if she was hollowed out inside, just a 
 brittle shell. Jimmy groaned. 
 
 She looked at him, startled by the groan. 
 'What was he doing when you saw him?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " He was eating his dinner." 
 
 " What was his dinner? " 
 
 " Bully beef and bread and cheese and beer." 
 
 " Was it good cheese? " 
 
 ' Yes, Stilton." 
 
 "What kind of beer?" 
 
 " Pale, I think, in a mug." 
 
 " Oh, a mug, what kind of a mug? " 
 
 "A tin mug." 
 
 "Was he alone?" 
 
 " Yes, I met his corporal outside, he told me 
 where to find him." 
 
 " What's he himself? " 
 
 " He is a colour sergeant." 
 
 "He's been promoted then?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I'm so glad," she said. 
 
 Jimmy's face flushed crimson. He was not 
 subtle was Jimmy, but the pathos of her sigh of 
 pride reached him straight enough. He remem- 
 bered William's triumphs in the old days. 
 
 " It's something to rise from the ranks to be a 
 sergeant, isn't it? " she was saying. 
 
 " Rather," he agreed; " it's splendid." 
 
 "Yes, it's .splendid."
 
 THE TORTOISE 239 
 
 They looked at each other, she caught her breath. 
 Suddenly they both laughed, a little timidly. 
 
 Jimmy didn't know that it was almost the first 
 time she had laughed in two years, but an enormous 
 relief welled up in his heart. He did not analyze 
 the exultancy that grew in him from that moment. 
 He just let it grow. 
 
 " Tell me exactly what he looks like," she de- 
 manded giving a last blow to her nose and returning 
 him his handkerchief. 
 
 " He looks like a first class colour sergeant." 
 
 " Only bigger than most," she added. 
 
 " Yes, bigger, oh, very big of course, but thin." 
 
 "Thin? What do you mean? William couldn't 
 be thin." She was greatly troubled. 
 
 " Well, I mean thin for him. His face, it's a 
 different shape; hard and a brownish colour." 
 
 " Oh, dark? " 
 
 " Weatherbeaten, you know." 
 
 " You don't mean his expression is hard? " 
 
 " No, I should say his expression was jolly." 
 
 "Jolly?" she cried her question. 
 
 " Yes, he grinned when I stuck my head in, 
 and" 
 
 "And?" 
 
 " And said I don't know if I ought to tell you 
 what he said." 
 
 " But you must." 
 
 " He said: ' Come in out of my light damn you, 
 and don't think I'm going to stand at attention.' ' 
 
 "Oh, and what then?"
 
 240 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " Then he gave me some of his bread and cheese." 
 
 " I see," she paused. " He is happy," she an- 
 nounced strangely, as if to herself. 
 
 And because Jimmy was not subtle he said: 
 " He's awfully fit. He's enjoying himself, he loves 
 it. Everything that I hate is the breath of life to 
 him." 
 
 " You mean he enjoys the fighting? " 
 
 " Yes, his captain told me afterwards that he was 
 a terror. Sees red. No holding him. In a bay- 
 onet charge, he's everywhere, a wonder. Gets 
 them, one after another, spinning on his spike." 
 
 " Oh ! " She covered her face with her hands. 
 Jimmy cocked an eyebrow at her. He didn't know 
 what it meant, her hiding her face. Perhaps he 
 oughtn't to have told her that. 
 
 " He's got the D. C. M. you know," he said hur- 
 riedly. 
 
 She lifted her face, flushed and excited. 
 
 "Ah, tell me. How did he get it? " 
 
 " He wouldn't tell me. I dragged out of him 
 something about getting the fellows together dur- 
 ing a scrap, when all the officers were down and out." 
 
 " He took command you mean? " 
 
 u Yes, of the company, what was left of it." 
 
 " He's seen hard fighting then? " 
 
 " The hardest; been in all the nastiest places." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 " In Belgium, Ypres salient, Loos, Armentieres, 
 Neuve Chapelle." 
 
 She clasped her hands round her knees.
 
 THE TORTOISE 241 
 
 ' They might have made him an officer after all 
 that, it seems to me," she brought out. 
 
 Jimmy grinned. 
 
 " It's the least they could do," she reiterated with 
 a show of anger. " Why don't they? What's the 
 matter with them?" 
 
 " I rather think it's that he doesn't want to be 
 made one." 
 
 " You mean he refuses? " 
 
 ' Yes. Oh, it's all right. They leave him alone, 
 and that's what he wants." 
 
 She took this in silence. Her face that had grown 
 animated, drooped again. She knit her fingers to- 
 gether, straining them. Once she started to speak, 
 but closed her lips over a deep breath. 
 
 It had grown dark in the bare room. The glow 
 of the red coals in the stove showed them to each 
 other dimly. Outside, the wind had risen, and on 
 its wailing wings, the noises of the war came flying 
 by. The growl of the cannon had gained in volume. 
 The pulse of the roaring giant beat faster and faster. 
 
 " It must be cold, up there," she said at last. 
 
 " Beastly cold at night." 
 
 " How the earth shakes. I suppose the artillery 
 is preparing another attack." 
 
 He did not answer, for he knew, it was useless 
 telling her, what awaited him at dawn. 
 
 An orderly's voice told them that an English gen- 
 eral was waiting at the gate for Monsieur le Capi- 
 taine. 
 
 They stood up in the gloom of the uncertain shel-
 
 242 THE TORTOISE 
 
 ter of creaking boards and rattling windows." 
 
 " I must be off," he said. 
 
 " I'll go to the gate with you," she replied. 
 
 Her nervousness was intense. His departure 
 seemed to her terrible and final. She had suddenly 
 a conviction that she would never see him again and 
 she was aware all at once of the wonderful unself- 
 ishness of his friendship. 
 
 She realized that he was the one being in the world 
 now who provided a link between her husband and 
 herself. His faithfulness to them both was her one 
 hope, and for two years her hope had been centred 
 upon him. If anything happened to him, she felt 
 that she would be lost. 
 
 They went out into the windy dark, figures with 
 lanterns moved in the wide blackness. To the 
 West, red flashes were running along the sky line. 
 
 She could not let him go without asking him the 
 question that tortured her life. They neared the 
 gate. 
 
 " Jimmy, if he had spoken of me, you would have 
 told me, wouldn't you? " 
 
 His voice came to her on the wind. 
 
 " Yes, dear, I would have told you." 
 
 A load like a weight of lead fell on her heart 
 that had been almost glad, for an hour. 
 
 Jimmy was going forever perhaps and nothing 
 was done, she was no nearer her goal. Her salva- 
 tion was slipping away from her. As those flashes 
 disappeared, running into the dark, so the gleam of 
 her hope would be extinguished.
 
 THE TORTOISE 243 
 
 " Jimmy, I want you to know that I was never 
 unfaithful to William, I meant to be, I left him, 
 but I did not see the man whom I went to see in 
 Paris. I thought before then that I loved him; I 
 found out in Paris, alone, that it was all a lie. He 
 was brought here wounded, a hero, I did not care, 
 I had known for a long time that I had never loved 
 him. I love William, I know it, I swear it on the 
 heads of every man that is going into battle. I am 
 waiting for him to come back to me. If ever again 
 you see him, I want you to tell him what I've told 
 you, you must not refuse me." 
 
 They had reached the gate. The guard's lantern 
 lit up his face with the ugly chin strap holding his 
 tin hat on his poor funny round head. His great 
 coat was buttoned up high; he had not the slightest 
 resemblance to the Jimmy she used to know. To 
 her, he resembled all the other men in the world 
 who were going to die, in the clamorous obliterating 
 dark of the war. 
 
 He took her hands. " I promise," he said, " if 
 I have a chance. Good-bye." 
 
 " Good-bye, Jimmy." 
 
 " Good-bye, dear." He had always loved her; 
 he wanted her to be happy; he left her standing in 
 the mud. She saw him climb into the car. It 
 moved with a grinding of brakes and was swallowed 
 up in the dark. 
 
 And so Jimmy went back to the place where a 
 laugh like his was worth all of Lady Peggy's won- 
 derful pearls, and where the rough khaki figures in
 
 244 THE TORTOISE 
 
 tin hats and monstrous boots called him " H'our 
 h'own little orficer " and followed his walking stick 
 over the parapet as if it were a fairy godmother's 
 wand. For Jimmy forgot to be scared when the 
 time came to run away next morning, and if he felt 
 solemn and a little light in the stomach as he watched 
 the minute hand on his wrist watch near the destined 
 instant of the dawn when they were to go out across 
 the open, he said to himself: "These fellows are 
 depending on you, old man, you know, and if you let 
 them down, God won't help you." And no one 
 knew that he was afraid and those who saw him 
 fall, said there was a smile on his face and that he 
 was running forward, his arm lifted. 
 
 He was carried in to the field ambulance that eve- 
 ning, very white and very weak, and all he said 
 was : " Keep me alive here for two days, Doctor, 
 I've got a message to deliver, there'll be just time." 
 
 The thread of Jimmy's life was very thin now. 
 It was spinning itself out to the end, but it held to- 
 gether two people in the world whom he loved the. 
 most, all the same.
 
 VI 
 
 NO one had a very clear idea of what hour 
 of the night it was that it began, or of 
 where the first bomb dropped, or of how 
 many bombs did actually burst in the precincts of 
 the Hospital, until it was all over and the sun had 
 risen on the horrid sight and the Medecin Chef had 
 taken stock of the damage. Four supply huts had 
 been hit squarely and reduced to scrap wood. Half 
 a dozen others, two of them wards full of wounded, 
 had rents in them or parts of roof torn off. The 
 block of buildings making up the operating rooms 
 and receiving hut, had caught fire and by morning 
 were burned to the ground. Mrs. Chudd had been 
 hit by a bullet out in the open, where with her order- 
 lies she had carried the wounded from her burning 
 shed. 
 
 The German aviator had flown down within two 
 hundred yards of the earth, and by the light of the 
 flames had turned his machine gun onto the wounded 
 men that were spread helpless over the ground. 
 Mrs. Chudd leaning over a dying man had been shot 
 through the back. It was discovered in the dis- 
 pensary where she was eventually carried and put on 
 a table, that beside this bullet wound, her hands 
 and ankles had been badly burnt, her clothes black 
 with smoke had large holes scorched in them. (She 
 
 245
 
 246 THE TORTOISE 
 
 had, as her orderlies said, been in and out of the 
 burning shed innumerable times.) It was evident 
 to Monsieur Groult that she had gone on carrying 
 stretchers for an hour or more, with her burnt hands. 
 
 The priest, Remenez, and his band of old men, 
 hung miserably outside the door of the office where 
 their infirmiere was lying unconscious. It was no 
 good driving them away, they came back like un- 
 happy dogs to wait, with their old shaggy-browed 
 eyes fixed on the door. This was at sunrise, long 
 after the bombing had ceased and the wounded had 
 been housed again in other undamaged huts. 
 
 " She kept us at it," they muttered. " It's our 
 sister that's wounded. God curse the soul of that 
 German to hell. She told us what to do and we did 
 it; she'd make a good general." 
 
 " Mother of God, if you'd heard her calling out 
 through the smoke and the noise of bombs bursting, 
 you'd have obeyed her. " Now then," she said, 
 " one stretcher at a time and no pushing. The ones 
 farthest from the door first." 
 
 You see," and an old greybeard wagged his head 
 wisely, " she knew that if the roof fell the ones near 
 the door could crawl out. And each time she came 
 back she went to the farthest end and took a stretcher 
 with one of us." 
 
 " Bien mon vieux, she wouldn't let me do anything 
 but put wet clothes on their faces. She gave me 
 a pail and a bundle of rags and told me to go up 
 and down sousing 'em." 
 
 " Did you see the devil? I saw him, as clear as a
 
 THE TORTOISE 247 
 
 spider in a chimney. He'd thrown all his bombs. 
 He swooped down like that, and turned his mitrail- 
 leuse on them. They were lying there on the 
 ground. Where else could we take 'em? We'd no 
 time. We'd just got the last ones out when the roof 
 went. Easy mark, he thought God Boche 
 and he poured lead into them lying there on their 
 backs looking up at him. The sister was on her 
 knees on the ground bandaging, a hemorrhage she 
 had said she asked me to help, her hands were 
 clumsy she said, and she fell forward on her face 
 across the man who was dying. I gave a shout when 
 I saw her. The sister! I shouted. We picked 
 her up, she was game, was our lady; she said: 
 " Don't take on, old one, it's nothing." 
 
 " We've worked with her a long time now." 
 
 " She worked just like one of us." 
 
 " She was never tired was our sister." 
 
 " We called her our lady, because she was always 
 with us, and said she belonged to us for the war." 
 
 In the improvised operating room Monsieur 
 Groult worked swiftly. Now and then he spoke, 
 he who was always so silent and serene, and now and 
 then he gave a sharp exclamation of pity. 
 
 " My God, look at these hands, there is no flesh 
 left on their palms." 
 
 " The ankles are not so bad." 
 
 " Gently, Mademoiselle, we must lay her on her 
 face." 
 
 Mademoiselle de Vaumont helped him turn the 
 white body, tears streaming down her face.
 
 248 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " The bullet has not, I believe, touched the spine. 
 Back again. Lay her on her back. There it is, I 
 can feel it, under the breast. Impossible to operate 
 here. The X-ray is destroyed. She must be rested, 
 and stimulated and taken into Amiens, I will op- 
 erate tomorrow. 
 
 The news spread through the Hospital that 
 Madame Chudd was being evacuated by ambulance 
 to the base. The Medecin Chef was heard shouting 
 over the telephone to the Inspector General : 
 
 " An infirmiere seriously wounded. Monsieur 
 Groult asks that a bed be prepared in Stationary 
 Hospital No. 10. She will be accompanied by a 
 nurse and doctor. Monsieur Groult assumes respon- 
 sibility. Impossible to operate here. I am waiting 
 for that sanitary train I asked for. Shall evacuate 
 all wounded. Those who cannot go by train, in 
 ambulances. Morale of patients fairly good. 
 Eleven deaths among wounded. Six orderlies in- 
 jured. No casualties among officers." 
 
 In the officer's ward the Princess looking as if 
 she had been saved from a wreck at sea sat beside 
 her son's bed. One of the nurse's old blue cloaks 
 was buttoned up under her chin. Her face was livid 
 with fatigue, her white hair hung down in wisps 
 under the black handkerchief she had wound hastily 
 round her head. Her eyes closed, her hands crossed 
 on her stick, she listened to the officers in their beds, 
 talking excitedly. 
 
 " It appears there were thirteen bombs."
 
 THE TORTOISE 249 
 
 ' This is how the Germans avenge themselves for 
 losing a battle." 
 
 An aviator with his leg in plaster was beside him- 
 self with excitement. 
 
 " Name of God, if I don't show those devils some- 
 thing when I get out of this bed." 
 
 " Nothing is bad enough for the swine." 
 
 " All the same it wasn't very gay here, lying tied 
 to one's bed." 
 
 "Sapristi; I thought we were done for at one 
 time ; didn't you ? When all those stones and lumps 
 rattled on the roof?" 
 
 ' The orderly was saying his prayers under the 
 table, did you see him? " 
 
 Suzanne de St. Germain, the nurse, moved briskly 
 about straightening bed clothes. Her face was 
 pale, her cap awry, but she laughed cheerfully. She 
 had not left the ward all night. 
 
 " I said a few prayers myself," she remarked. 
 
 " Ah Madame, you were epatante," they cried in 
 chorus. 
 
 The Princess heard some one talking at the other 
 door of the ward. She caught the words: 
 " Madame Chudd shot through the back." She 
 made a gesture with her cane to silence the speakers. 
 Too late, Jocelyn had started up on his pillow. 
 
 " What's that? What's that? " 
 
 " Nothing, dear; nothing." 
 
 " But I heard them, I heard Madame Chudd's 
 name. What is it? I say "
 
 250 THE TORTOISE 
 
 The Princess laid a strong hand on his shoulder 
 forcing him down on his pillow. 
 
 ' Your friend has been wounded," she said grimly. 
 " Keep quiet and I will tell you." 
 
 "Good God, wounded! How? When? But 
 I thought you said, she took you down into the dug 
 out?" 
 
 " So she did." 
 
 "And stayed there?" 
 
 " No, I didn't say she stayed there. She left me 
 almost at once, and said she would come back when 
 the danger was over. Your sister went with her. 
 It was Yvonne that came back to get me. Yvonne 
 said that Madame Chudd had told her if she wanted 
 to be useful to go into one of the wards and keep the 
 men quiet, so she went. Yvonne didn't see her 
 again. She stayed in the ward, I don't know which 
 one, till it began to get light, then she came to see 
 how I was. I was all right, I had plenty of com- 
 pany. They brought wounded down there as many 
 as it would hold." 
 
 " Yes, yes; it must have been trying for you; but 
 what about Helene? " 
 
 " It seems she was wounded outside, by a machine 
 gun bullet. They all say, she behaved very well, 
 quite extraordinarily well. Yvonne said she could 
 see the flames from the window." 
 
 "What flames?" 
 
 " The hut, what is it, it's called the ' salle d'at- 
 tente,' caught on fire. It seems it was Madame 
 Chudd's hut, her service."
 
 THE TORTOISE 251 
 
 " Yes, yes." 
 
 " She got out all the wounded before the roof fell 
 in." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 " As I have told you, she behaved with great cour- 
 age." 
 
 " But how is she? Is it serious? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " You must find out." 
 
 "I can't bother them now; we must just wait. 
 No one wants an old woman fussing around at such 
 a time." The Princess's voice quavered. " I 
 could do nothing," she muttered bitterly, " I and my 
 stick, nothing but give a few drinks down there in 
 that hole and tell them stories. I'm too old to 
 be any use. I stayed down there to be out of the 
 way." 
 
 " Dear mother, I know you're as brave as any of 
 them." 
 
 " Brave? I don't know about that; I was fright- 
 ened enough at first, when half the window and most 
 of the shelves fell on me in bed; I couldn't move." 
 
 " Then how did you get out? " 
 
 " She appeared suddenly, swept the debris on to 
 the floor, pulled me out of bed, put my coat on me 
 and said to me as if I'd been a bad child: " Come 
 along quick, I've no time to waste." 
 
 "Helen?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Well, mother?" 
 
 They looked at each other. " Well," she said
 
 252 THE TORTOISE 
 
 grimly, " there you are, I was mistaken ; I admit my 
 mistake." 
 
 The Medecin Chef came in then with the corps 
 Commander. The officers were all to go off that 
 morning. Monsieur Groult was too busy to come, 
 but had sent word that it was safe for Monsieur de 
 St. Christe to go on the train to Paris. 
 
 It was by then seven o'clock. Their infirmiere 
 had prepared hot coffee for them all. The General 
 and the Princess and the Medecin Chef drank to- 
 gether out of tin cups. Everyone was conscious of 
 the pleasantness of being alive. The General con- 
 gratulated the ward on its excellent morale. He 
 drank to the health of the Princess who though not 
 a soldier and no longer young, had stood the ordeal 
 of the dreadful night with such courage and sang- 
 froid. He hoped that the cowardly villain who had 
 committed the dastardly crime would meet with his 
 deserts. 
 
 He regretted deeply the terrible misfortune that 
 had befallen one of the brave women who had de- 
 voted themselves to the wounded. He must leave 
 them now to give Madame Chudd the Croix de 
 Guerre that she deserved as much as any soldier in 
 the French Army. 
 
 "Hear, hear!" 
 
 " We'll avenge her! " cried the officers from their 
 pillows. 
 
 Jocelyn de St. Christe lay very still in his bed, his 
 eyes closed. 
 
 Helen had regained consciousness when the Med-
 
 THE TORTOISE 253 
 
 ecin Chef ushered the General into the pharmacy. 
 She lay on the table, wrapped in a blanket on which 
 rested her bandaged hands. Her face was white as 
 wax. One of her long golden braids dangled down 
 to the floor. She opened her eyes at the entrance 
 of the General. Mademoiselle de Vaumont lean- 
 ing down spoke to her softly, but she did not seem 
 to understand. The General stood at the foot of 
 the table on which she was lying. He drew his 
 sword from its scabbard and saluted the prostrate 
 woman. " In the name of the Commander-in-Chief 
 of the Allied Armies and on behalf of the officers and 
 soldiers of France, I decorate you with the Croix de 
 Guerre in testimony of the great bravery and 
 devotion you have shown always, and especially 
 this night to the poilus of France." The great 
 soldier's voice faltered; he sheathed his sword 
 and coming nearer pinned the bronze medal with its 
 green ribbon on the grey blanket. Then he kissed 
 the white forehead, and went out. Helen looked 
 from one to another. Mademoiselle de Vaumont 
 was there and Monsieur Groult, and beyond the 
 door she saw for a moment a group of shaggy 
 heads, but she seemed to be looking for some one 
 who was not there. 
 
 " I do not understand," she murmured " I am 
 very tired. I wish William would come." She 
 closed her eyes. 
 
 At noon they took her away in an ambulance. 
 Mademoiselle de Vaumont and a doctor went with 
 her. All the nurses were at the gate to watch her
 
 254 THE TORTOISE 
 
 go, but she did not know they were there to wave 
 good-bye. 
 
 It was four o'clock in the afternoon of the same 
 day that an English soldier came in at the gate and 
 asked if. there was a nurse there named Madame 
 Chudd. He was a big man and he seemed to have 
 walked a long way for he was covered with mud. 
 
 The sentry at the gate didn't understand what he 
 was saying and pointed to the Medecin Chef's office. 
 
 "Eh, what? An English sergeant? I've no 
 time to talk to him. What does he want? Ask- 
 ing for Madame Chudd, is he? Tell him she's 
 gone." The Medecin Chef bent again over his 
 desk. 
 
 The administration officer went out into the wind, 
 where the soldier was waiting. It had begun to 
 rain. 
 
 " Madame Chudd has gone," he announced 
 abruptly. 
 
 The man looked at him strangely. 
 
 "Gone?" he echoed. 
 
 'Yes, gone; I say; she was evacuated at noon. 
 We had a raid last night. She was wounded." 
 
 "Wounded?" 
 
 " Yes, wounded." 
 
 The Englishman lurched forward. 
 
 "How wounded?" 
 
 " In the back, machine bullet." 
 
 "Dead, you mean? Dead?" 
 
 " No, not dead, I tell you, evacuated." 
 
 The great rough figure in its muddy clothes
 
 THE TORTOISE 255 
 
 stood hanging forward as if it were going to fall. 
 The head was bent. The man seemed stunned, or 
 perhaps only very stupid and tired. When he 
 lifted his head and spoke at last, it was in a kind of 
 dull apology. 
 
 " I am a relative of Madame Chudd's, sir," he 
 said. " I should be grateful to you if you would 
 tell me where she has gone." 
 
 " Stationary hospital, No. 9, Amiens." 
 
 " Thank you." 
 
 The administration officer who was a small man 
 but very dapper looked over the muddy giant coldly, 
 from the top of the wooden steps, then went into the 
 hut, and slammed the door. 
 
 The soldier stood a while in the rain staring at 
 the closed door, then turned and made for the gate 
 with long heavy steps. It was growing dark as he 
 turned off up the road toward the British lines.
 
 VII 
 
 LADY SIDLINGTON had found it not quite 
 so easy to deal with soldiers in the war zone 
 as it had been to deal with politicians in 
 England. Statesmen in her experience had liked to 
 have their work interfered with. Soldiers did not. 
 Generals were stern beings who did not encourage 
 visits to their headquarters. She forgave them, 
 and protested that even though they made the mis- 
 take of not taking her seriously, she did so take them. 
 It had been a disappointment to her, to find that 
 she was allowed to suffer no hardship or discom- 
 fort or danger. She had settled her staff in a hotel 
 and herself next door to it in a villa by the sea. 
 This was not at all what she had expected to find at 
 the war. Her camp bed and woollen pyjamas were 
 useless, and it seemed to her for a time that she 
 herself was more so than anyone, but she had ended 
 by settling down to it. There was after all plenty 
 of work to do and all the men in the world came to 
 drink tea and console her. Even the Generals were 
 kind to her, so long as she and her motor kept 
 within the limits their Provost Marshal had set 
 her. Being near an important base, had too, its 
 advantages. The very nicest man in the world 
 who by now was commanding a Division was able 
 to come there once in a while. 
 
 256
 
 THE TORTOISE 257 
 
 He was actually sitting in the drawing room of 
 the villa, eating poached eggs on toast and drinking 
 tea at four in the afternoon, and looking quite 
 dreadfully tired, having come out of the line only 
 ten days before after a fortnight of the very 
 worst, when she was handed the telegram from 
 Amiens. It said that Madame Chudd was seriously 
 wounded in Stationary Hospital No. 9, Amiens 
 and desired her presence, and it was signed Med- 
 ecin Chef. 
 
 Peggy Sidlington turned white. 
 
 " I must go at once." 
 
 The nicest man in the world said: 
 
 " Yes, of course," and looked wistful. 
 
 " You must go and get me a motor pass while I 
 pack." 
 
 The nicest man who was really very tired, said: 
 " Right ho ! " and looked bored. 
 
 " You wouldn't have me sit here with you when 
 Helen may be dying, would you?" 
 
 " No, of course not." 
 
 " Then don't look like that." 
 
 " I'm sorry, I didn't mean to." 
 
 " That's a darling. A blue pass to Amiens, 
 shortest route. I'll be ready in half an hour." 
 
 " But you can't get there to-night; it'll be dark in 
 another hour." 
 
 Peggy's eyes widened from the doorway. 
 
 " Have you never motored in the dark? " 
 
 The divisional general smiled: 
 
 " Well, yes, I have once or twice."
 
 258 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " Then I don't see why I shouldn't," and she left 
 him. 
 
 The man adored her. Humbly he came back 
 with the pass in forty minutes. She was waiting 
 for him on the steps of the villa, giving final in- 
 structions to Mary Bridge and the surgeons and the 
 matron. He tucked the rugs round her feet and 
 leaned a moment on the door of the car. His eyes 
 were faithful and humble and rather sad. He was 
 wondering whether if he lived through the fighting 
 she wouldn't some day break his heart and whether 
 actually, he was ever going to see her again. 
 
 " I go back to-morrow, you know, Peggy; I only 
 had twenty four hours." 
 
 " Poor Bumps! " He was not known in his di- 
 vision as Bumps. " I hate leaving you, but I know 
 what Helen would do for me if I was in trouble, 
 and it's not as if she had any one else." 
 
 The man's face lightened. Perhaps he might 
 live. Possibly she wouldn't break his heart. 
 
 " Good-bye, dear." 
 
 " Good-bye." 
 
 The motor with the red crosses on its doors and 
 the pretty lady inside and the big police dog out- 
 side, whirled away. 
 
 She arrived at Amiens at midnight. It took her 
 an hour to find the hospital. She went to several 
 others by mistake. A number of soldiers with lan- 
 terns showed her the way out of one dismal street 
 into another. At last, a heavy eyed orderly in a 
 stifling office told her that she had arrived at her
 
 THE TORTOISE 259 
 
 destination and that he would see if the Medecin de 
 garde could be disturbed. A large woman with a 
 pale crooked face and clumsy feet came down the 
 long corridor and greeted her with a singularly 
 sweet smile. 
 
 "Are you the Countess of Sidlington?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Madame Chudd is sleeping. She was operated 
 upon yesterday." 
 
 " Is she in danger? " 
 
 " I believe not, but we are not sure of the left 
 lung." 
 
 Peggy Sidlington's face quivered. 
 
 " Poor Helen, poor, poor Helen ! " she whis- 
 pered. 
 
 " If you will come with me I will tell you, while 
 you eat something. I will make chocolate or bouil- 
 lon. Then you must sleep. There is a couch in 
 the major's office. To-morrow we will find you a 
 room. Your friend will be so happy to have one 
 of her own with her. I do not know her family, I 
 did not know whom to write to; you will be able to 
 do that now; I am very relieved, very glad. It has 
 been a great responsibility for us. She seemed so 
 isolated, so solitary. She spoke of no one. Her 
 mother? Her father? Her husband perhaps? 
 I did not know what to do. My name is Henriette 
 de Vaumont. I was in the hospital with your 
 friend. I love her; I owe her a great deal. She 
 is the bravest person I have ever known." 
 
 The Frenchwoman led the way down the dim
 
 260 THE TORTOISE 
 
 stone flagged corridor and opened a door, bearing 
 an enamelled plate with the words: Medecin Major 
 K Bureau. 
 
 " We are visitors here," she said. " The as- 
 sistant surgeon has given me his rooms. Every 
 hospital in Amiens is full of wounded. It was im- 
 possible to put your friend in a ward full of men." 
 
 On a table was a shaded lamp, a tray with plates, 
 cups and saucers. An open door led to an inner 
 room. 
 
 "Would you like to see her? Be very quiet; 
 she must not be disturbed, sleep is precious for her 
 now." 
 
 A night light was burning beside the narrow bed. 
 Helen was breathing peacefully. Her arms end- 
 ing in two great gloves of cotton wool, lay on the 
 coverlet. Her face was an ivory mask. 
 
 The two women stood together looking down on 
 her, in silence. As they watched, the pale blueish 
 lips moved, and a faint sound, more like a sigh 
 than a groan issued from the still body. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Vaumont laid her fingers on 
 the arm above the bandaged hand, and nodded her 
 head satisfied. 
 
 " Her pulse is good," she whispered. 
 
 Lady Sidlington's face was wet with tears when 
 she turned back to the outer room. 
 
 " Tell me, everything," she said. 
 
 And Mademoiselle de Vaumont told her. When 
 her story was ended, she paused. " I believe," she 
 said timidly, " that she wanted to write a note,
 
 THE TORTOISE 261 
 
 before the operation. But she could not use her 
 hands. There seemed to be something grievous 
 on her mind. At the very last, in the operating 
 room, just before they gave her the anaesthetic, she 
 motioned to me to lean down to her and whispered: 
 'If I do not come back, say to Lady Sidlington 
 that she must tell William I was thinking of him 
 " all the time." Then she let them put the ether 
 masque on her face." 
 
 " William is her husband," said Lady Sidling- 
 ton. 
 
 " Ah, I see, I understand." 
 
 It was three days later that a letter for Madame 
 Chudd was brought to the Hospital from the office 
 of the A. P. M. of the British troops in Amiens. 
 Lady Sidlington recognising the handwriting was 
 frightened. Helen was still very weak. She 
 seemed to be sleeping when Lady Sidlington en- 
 tered, but she said without opening her eyes: 
 
 "Is that you, Peggy?" 
 
 " Yes, darling, I have a letter for you." 
 
 " A letter? " 
 
 " Yes, look." " Happiness never yet killed any 
 one," Peggy said to herself in a panic, holding the 
 envelope before the helpless woman's eyes. But 
 the sudden light on the pale face was too much for 
 her. She felt the two incapable bandaged hands 
 fold over the little square of paper, and turning 
 abruptly, left the room. " There are some things, 
 one has no right to look at," she muttered blowing 
 her nose beyond the door.
 
 262 THE TORTOISE 
 
 A few moments later a voice called her. 
 
 "Peggy I" 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "Come back!" 
 
 She obeyed. The letter was still lying against 
 the thin breast under the crossed, bandaged hands. 
 
 " I can't open it, you'll have to. There, hold it 
 for me to read." 
 
 Peggy held the sheet of paper, her eyes averted. 
 She remembered William and Helen together, as 
 they used to be in the old days. " God help them, 
 and bring them home together," she breathed. 
 
 " Jimmy is dead," she heard Helen say. 
 
 Peggy dropped to her knees. 
 
 "Jimmy! Not Jimmy," she echoed. 
 
 " Yes, Jimmy. He sent for William before he 
 died, William says. He died like a gallant gentle- 
 man and a true friend. He sent for William to 
 give him my message." 
 
 " And William? Where is he? " 
 
 " I don't know. It seems he walked over to the 
 hospital the day I was wounded, and was told I had 
 gone." 
 
 "Is he coming here?" 
 
 " If he can, but his battalion goes into the line 
 to-morrow, that is to-day, for eight days." 
 
 " Only another eight days to wait, dear." 
 
 " Yes, if " 
 
 " And you know now that he knows." 
 
 " Yes, he knows, because Jimmy told him before 
 he died."
 
 THE TORTOISE 263 
 
 " Poor Jimmy! Poor Jimmy! " 
 
 ' We'll never hear him laugh again." 
 
 " And never see his kind baby face." 
 
 " Do you remember his white spats and red car- 
 nation? " 
 
 " He loved William, I knew he would save us." 
 
 " He loved you both." 
 
 " William walked to the hospital, to find I was 
 gone. Perhaps they didn't know who he was. 
 Perhaps they turned him away. He must have 
 been tired and hungry. Perhaps they gave him tea. 
 I wonder where he is now. May be May be 
 If he were If anything happened now " 
 
 " Nothing will happen, darling." 
 
 " But it does, always, every one is killed, sooner 
 or later. Who would have thought Jimmy? All 
 the finest are killed, you know that." 
 
 " Yes, I know," said Peggy. 
 
 " Peggy." 
 
 "Helen! . . ." 
 
 " We're helpless, we can't do anything." 
 
 " We can't even pray." 
 
 They clung to one another. 
 
 After a long silence, Helen said: 
 
 " Jimmy saved me in Paris two years ago." 
 
 "Saved you?" 
 
 " Yes, I was going out of my mind. He found 
 me on the street, very early one morning. He 
 took me into his car ; I would have I don't know 
 what would have happened." 
 
 "You were so unhappy?"
 
 264 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " Yes, I must have been, because I nearly went 
 mad. Jocelyn de St. Christe had thrown me over." 
 
 " How do you mean? " 
 
 " I had gone to meet him, he refused to see me. 
 It all seems very unreal now, but I've been paying 
 for it ever since. I wonder if I have paid enough, 
 I wonder if William can ever feel the same. 
 His letter is kind, but I am not sure. Can I ever 
 undo what I have done, do you think? " 
 
 " When he sees you as you are now " 
 
 " Ah, but it won't be enough for him to be just 
 sorry for me, it won't be enough for him, I mean, I 
 am thinking of the future, if the war ever ends " 
 
 " Trust him." 
 
 " I do, but I have no right to." 
 
 " Jimmy thought so." 
 
 " But Jimmy never did any man or woman the 
 slightest harm." 
 
 That afternoon a motor ambulance came to take 
 Mademoiselle de Vaumont back to the hospital 
 Helen whispered to her, as she leaned over to kiss 
 her good-bye : 
 
 " I have heard from my husband, for the first 
 time in two years. He is coming to see me, in eight 
 days; I am so happy." 
 
 But when the eight days were up, he didn't come. 
 The ninth day and the tenth day, they waited full 
 of hope. They would start at the sound of foot- 
 steps in the corridor, Peggy would go to the door 
 and look. No one came. Twelve days passed, 
 thirteen days, fourteen days, he didn't come.
 
 THE TORTOISE 265 
 
 Helen did not speak of him any more. Her eyes 
 looked like the eyes of a hunted animal caught in 
 a trap. Peggy could bear it no longer. She paid 
 a visit to the A. P. M. Telephones carried along 
 the British zone the request for news of William B. 
 Chudd, Sergeant Major, 5th Battallion of the 
 The reply came from Army headquarters: " Re- 
 ported missing." Peggy white to the lips told the 
 truth. 
 
 " We need not wait here any longer," was all 
 that Helen said. 
 
 Monsieur Groult arranged for them to go to 
 Paris. In another month, he would come to see 
 them there. He advised the South of France. 
 The lung had been grazed. There would be a 
 weakness there for a long time. 
 
 Peggy said in Paris: "I shall not leave you; 
 Mary Bridge will run my show." 
 
 "But Peggy-" 
 
 " Am I your friend or am I not? " 
 
 " You are indeed." 
 
 " Then there's no more to be said." 
 
 They had become, both of them, stoical women 
 of few words. Distraction was no antidote for 
 Helen now; they did not try to deceive each 
 other. 
 
 A week had gone by in Paris when the news 
 came that William Chudd was a prisoner of war. 
 
 And then it was Peggy that broke down. 
 
 Helen simply began to breathe again. " I can 
 wait," she said. " He is alive, he will come back."
 
 PART FIVE
 
 PART V 
 
 THE war was over, the armistice had been 
 signed, Paris had been celebrating for a 
 fortnight. The captured German guns 
 massed round the Place de le Concorde looked al- 
 ready like relics of a past age. From the coast of 
 Belgium to the Adriatic Sea, men had stopped kill- 
 ing one another. At eleven o'clock on the morning 
 of the nth of November, they had stopped. On 
 the tick of the clock, the advancing armies of 
 France, of Great Britain, of America and of Italy, 
 had been pulled up and brought to a stand still. 
 The guns were silenced. The ruined earth lay 
 serene and horrible, testifying mutely to the Hea- 
 vens. 
 
 Alsace Lorraine was in gala attire. Marshal 
 Foch had made a triumphal entry into the city of 
 Strasbourg and had reviewed the soldiers of France 
 before the Palace of the Kaiser, and, a mile away, 
 from the other side of a dismal river, a strange pro- 
 cession was moving along the road. They came on 
 foot across the Bridge of Kiel, starving men, in 
 strange rags, with hollow cheeks, and haunted 
 feverish eyes. And they penetrated like ghosts in- 
 to the throng of merry makers. They were pris- 
 oners of war coming home. There was no one to 
 meet them and no one to show them the way. Step- 
 
 269
 
 270 THE TORTOISE 
 
 ping onto the soil of France they did not seem to 
 know where they were. Strange homecoming for 
 innocent men who had been in prison for so long. 
 They seemed to have been forgotten; no one recog- 
 nized them. Freedom appeared before them 
 shrouded in bewilderment and weariness. Some 
 of them were British; they had still a long way to 
 go. They moved on doggedly. Their walking 
 was not so very different from the marching they 
 had done in a distant time when they were going 
 up to the trenches, but it was feebler. They vacil- 
 lated on the long crowded way. There was no one 
 to command them or guide them. They were 
 guided only by a desperate longing that seemed to 
 elude them on the very threshold of its fulfilment. 
 They did not look like heroes. No one crowned 
 them with flowers or lifted them up on acclaiming 
 arms. They were covered with dust and very much 
 fatigued, yet they were heroes. 
 
 Three days later in Paris, in the lounge of the 
 Ritz Hotel a British general with an empty sleeve, 
 tucked up neatly over the stump of his arm, was 
 talking to a silvery headed diplomat with a rosy 
 face the diplomat was smoking a cigarette, and 
 sipping a glass of Cognac and saying: 
 
 ' You soldiers have won the war. Now it's our 
 turn you're not needed any more." 
 
 The general did not reply he knew it was true, 
 and he was wondering what he would do now. He 
 was forty-five years old. He had lost his right 
 arm. He was very tired. War had left marks
 
 THE TORTOISE 271 
 
 upon his face. The shadow of a deep eternal hor- 
 ror was in his eyes. 
 
 He had come to Paris to find out whether Lady 
 Peggy still thought him the nicest man in the world. 
 If she did, he would be able to face the problem of 
 a future without an occupation. She had told him 
 she would dine with him at the Ritz, and he had ex- 
 pected to find her alone, but her flower-like face 
 with its shining blue eyes smiled at him sweetly 
 from the center of a group of diplomats and poli- 
 ticians. They were a merry party. They had 
 talked wittily of the dangers of peace and eaten ex- 
 pensive foods with an indifferent greediness that 
 had left him gaping. 
 
 Peace ! He thought of it as it had appeared to 
 them all out there in the seething mud of battle- 
 fields, a being of supreme beauty and simplicity, 
 bringing healing and quiet and repose and relief 
 from fear. With what unutterable longing they 
 had fought for it. How many thousands of them 
 had died for it. He looked wearily round the 
 crowded dining room. Women with bare should- 
 ers and impudent eyes stared at him curiously, scrut- 
 inizing languidly the coloured ribbon on his coat 
 and the empty socket of his sleeve. The chatter- 
 ing of many voices rattled in his ears. 
 
 " Believe me, old chap," said one of Pegg/s 
 guests to another, " the Germans won't sign the kind 
 of peace we want. They don't think they're beaten. 
 If we had pushed on with that last attack in Alsace 
 but as it is we've gained nothing."
 
 272 THE TORTOISE 
 
 He groaned his head swam he felt ob- 
 scurely that he was the victim of a monstrous de- 
 ception. 
 
 Beyond the many shining heads and white shoul- 
 ders, past the pink and red and congested grimacing 
 faces, he saw out in the dark a black field with in- 
 numerable wooden crosses sticking up out of the 
 ground. 
 
 Peggy's favourite politician was picking his teeth 
 and saying: 
 
 " Yes, that poor fellow Jim Gower was killed 
 in 1916." 
 
 But a gay voice broke in at another table. 
 
 " How amusing it will be, if the conference 
 is in Paris. Everyone in the world will be 
 here." 
 
 And some one else. 
 
 " Yes, labour is going to be a great nuisance. I 
 don't know what the country is coming to. Capi- 
 tal, my dear man, Capital can never survive Ruin 
 it's Ruin the P. M. is too soft with these 
 chaps." 
 
 They filed out of the dining room a very 
 handsome French officer in a sky blue tunic, ap- 
 proached Lady Sidlington. 
 
 " Bonjour, Madame." 
 
 11 Bonjour." 
 
 " May I be permitted to ask for news of 
 Madame Chudd? Is she well? Quite recovered? 
 My mother often asks " 
 
 " Quite well, thank you." Peggy's voice was
 
 THE TORTOISE 273 
 
 cool and sweet and chilling. " She is here with me." 
 
 "Here?" The handsome officer looked about 
 him. 
 
 " Staying here, I mean; she has gone to meet her 
 husband at Nancy " 
 
 11 Ah, I see." 
 
 "He was evacuated there, from Germany." 
 
 " From Germany? Ah yes, I have heard, he 
 was a prisoner." 
 
 " Exactly." 
 
 " Present, I beg you, my hommages to Madame 
 Chudd." 
 
 " I will do so." 
 
 " Good-evening, Madame." 
 
 " Good-evening." 
 
 The Frenchman moved away. He was seen to 
 join a group of men round a red haired woman in 
 black. 
 
 "Who is your handsome friend, Peggy?" 
 
 " The Comte de St. Christe." 
 
 " What a lot of medals he has! " Three palms 
 to his Croix de Guerre." 
 
 " I don't know, has he, he's not very interesting." 
 
 " So William Chudd is coming home at last," 
 said the nicest man in the world. 
 
 " Yes, at last." 
 
 The wonderful old diplomat with the silvery 
 head that had charmed a hemisphere for half a 
 century, took a leisurely pull of his cigar. 
 
 " Let me see," he murmured. " William 
 Chudd? Do I remember William Chudd? I
 
 274 THE TORTOISE 
 
 seem to, and yet I seem not to. Which is it, Peggy 
 my child, do I, or don't I ? " 
 
 ' You do, or at any rate you ought to. You! 
 used to see a lot of him, at one time; you called him 
 the Mandarin." 
 
 " Ah, yes, it comes back to me, a big man, fat, 
 with a white face and curious eyes, rather Mongol- 
 ian, quite distinctly Mongolian, Arkwright's mys- 
 tjerious friend, socialist, good head for figures; 
 small voice in a large chest. Passive resister. 
 Dead weight to move. Handsome wife, who 
 didn't like me. Of course; what's he been up to? 
 Got interned in Germany?" 
 
 " No," snapped Peggy, " he enlisted as a pri- 
 vate." 
 
 " How very curious." 
 
 " And was taken prisoner." 
 
 " You don't say so ! 
 
 " He might have been in Mr. Asquith's Cabinet." 
 
 " God bless my soul ! " 
 
 " But he preferred to fight for his country." 
 
 " And quite right too, excellent choice." The 
 old gentleman yawned, delicately. 
 
 Peggy was flushed, her eyes blazed. 
 
 " You're an inhuman old thing." 
 
 "Why my dear? Why?" 
 
 ' You ought to admire him, and do something to 
 make it up to him help him to take up again the 
 old life." 
 
 " Ah, I see, you want him back in politics." 
 
 " Politics I don't care that for Politics but I
 
 THE TORTOISE 275 
 
 want his old colleagues to help him to a normal life 
 again, and give him a welcome worthy of him." 
 " I'm afraid my child that you are rather ro- 
 mantic. The war forms a hiatus in such lives, noth- 
 ing more. Nothing a man has done in the war, 
 will be of any use to him now. Soldiering, unfor- 
 tunately, merely unfits a man for living. Chudd 
 has no doubt lost his aptitude for public affairs. 
 You say he is a hero. Ah well. Heroes are at a 
 discount now. And heroism is not exactly a profes- 
 sion." But Peggy was no longer listening. She 
 had risen to her feet and was staring with parted 
 lips down the long corridor over the heads of the 
 gay crowd, to the door. 
 
 " There they are," she cried, " there they are." 
 A pale woman in a dark coat and skirt and a hag- 
 gard man who might have been taken for a desti- 
 tute and exhausted tramp, had just come into the 
 lighted hall. They hesitated a moment in the 
 glare, and those who were seated near by had an 
 opportunity, of seeing their faces, and they were 
 startled by what they saw. Supreme happiness, 
 shining there unconscious and unashamed, on a 
 woman's white face, and on the worn and furrowed 
 visage of a ragged giant, the timid trustfulness of 
 a child it made them stare. They saw too 
 Lady Sidlington in black velvet and pearls run to 
 these strange people, cling to a hand of each, kiss 
 the woman, and then too the man, and go with 
 them to the lift holding tight to both of them and 
 come away, with tears swimming in her eyes.
 
 276 THE TORTOISE 
 
 " He looked like a man come back from the 
 grave," said one. 
 
 " But did you see his face? " asked another. 
 
 "And hers?" 
 
 " He is a returned prisoner of war," said some- 
 one, " and that is his wife." The whisper travel- 
 led through the hall from one table to another. 
 
 Jocelyn de St. Christe had watched Lady Sid- 
 lington run to the door. He had seen what the 
 others had seen. He was standing alone, as she 
 came back, but she did not notice his pale curiously 
 intent stare, for her eyes were dimmed, she saw 
 nothing, and no one, but she found her way to the 
 side of the nicest man in the world. 
 
 " P e ggy>" ne whispered. 
 
 "Yes dear" 
 
 "Are they happy?" 
 
 ' You should have seen their faces." 
 
 She turned to face him, her eyes brimming, and 
 smiled, and, there was something for him in that 
 smile, and something new in her face, that had 
 never been there before. 
 
 Upstairs in the little hotel sitting room Helen 
 knelt on the floor beside her husband's chair. He 
 sat motionless, his head thrown back, his eyes half 
 closed, his head touching her hair. His immense 
 frame was shrunken in its torn and shabby khaki 
 clothing, his face streaked with deep lines, his eyes 
 sunken. He spoke slowly: 
 
 " Forgive me Helen, if I seem queer I am so 
 very tired. When they released me the other day
 
 THE TORTOISE 277 
 
 and told me to find my way back, I was afraid. I 
 was almost sorry to leave the camp. It is difficult 
 to come back to life again. I had left friends 
 there pals who will never come home now. I 
 have been ill myself typhoid. You have written 
 that you were waiting for me but I wasn't sure. 
 It was difficult to distinguish between dreams and 
 reality I had had so many delusions. How 
 could I know you were really alive? I had be- 
 lieved for so long that you were dead. Then 
 Jimmy told me that I was mistaken, but when I 
 went to find you in that Hospital you were gone. 
 That was long, long ago. Once I had lived for 
 you, only for you. Then I had ceased to live. Liv- 
 ing meant nothing. Death was far more real. 
 What is living? 
 
 " In the camp, we had enough food. Packages 
 came for me, supposedly from you. I always had 
 enough tobacco for my pipe. The Germans swore 
 at us. That was not living. Washing out the hut 
 emptying slops making boots I was an ef- 
 ficient cobbler Perhaps I'd better go on earning 
 my living as a cobbler Maybe that is all I am 
 good for now I can't remember what I used 
 to do before the war. Before the war. What a 
 rum idea as if there ever had been a war. 
 
 " I took the road with half a dozen others, they 
 turned us loose like beasts, thought we could smell 
 our way home. We didn't know where to go 
 and we were out of training. I pulled my cap over 
 my eyes so as not to see too much. It worried me
 
 278 THE TORTOISE 
 
 you know to be free in such a big place. The men 
 were worried too. They kept saying: 
 
 " ' Which way, Bill ? ' 'You lead, Bill.' ' How 
 far is it Will there be a train ? ' 
 
 " I didn't feel happy just depressed and guilty, 
 as if I were being pursued. I kept saying to my- 
 self 'Helen is waiting, Helen is waiting,' with 
 my eyes fixed on the mud of the road, but I didn't 
 really believe, I couldn't believe, I didn't know how, 
 I couldn't imagine what it would be like seeing you 
 again you had been for so long the light of my 
 eyes and now I couldn't remember your face 
 not really remember. I didn't seem to know any- 
 thing about you, not as I know other things I 
 knew all about the war I knew for instance all 
 the different sounds of shells, of all kinds and cali- 
 bres, and all the sounds of pain, the shouts and the 
 screams and the cries and the curses and whinings 
 I knew about rats and vermin and flooded 
 trenches and I knew all the odours and aspects of 
 disease I knew men, stripped of every pretence 
 and every protecting bluff, stark, solid, quailing stoic 
 men. I knew just exactly their capacity for suf- 
 fering, the extent of their power of enduring fa- 
 tigue and the tenacity of their hold on life. I 
 knew a hundred ways of dying and as many of kill- 
 ing, and what it was to be hungry, to the point of be- 
 ing sick at the sight of food. And I knew that a 
 man could give his life for a friend, and his last 
 piece of bread to a whining pal but I knew noth- 
 ing about women And I did not know about you
 
 THE TORTOISE 279 
 
 Helen I remember that I had spent years of time 
 absorbed in looking at you, but strain my inward 
 gaze as I might, I could not see you now And I 
 was afraid to see you afraid I would not recog- 
 nize you. 
 
 " Thank God I did. It was the strangest thing. 
 You were so different, so different, but you were 
 different in a way that I understood when I saw 
 you there in the railway station, my heart gave a 
 leap, your white face so wonderful it had 
 changed as I remember now, imagining that it would 
 change, and as I looked at you I knew because 
 of the war you had changed, that you were mine. 
 
 " Jimmy found me just in time another year 
 like those two first years of the war and I would not 
 have been fit to come back to you now I don't 
 know you and I are not the same but we'll 
 find a way Jimmy said you wanted me to live and 
 that I suppose is the reason I did live some didn't. 
 Some went crazy. Many died. There was typhus 
 in the camp. Some died of heart break, it was too 
 long. They hadn't enough hope to last out to the 
 end. 
 
 " We'll go back to the country shall we? And sit 
 awhile very quiet in the garden, and after a time, 
 the war will seem just a bad dream. 
 
 " You know, the strangest thing is going to hap- 
 pen. No one is going to want to remember this war 
 and no one will ever know what men did, out 
 there, and no one will care, and they are going to say 
 it was all for nothing, and no one will ever under-
 
 280 THE TORTOISE 
 
 stand, because those of us who know won't be able 
 to tell. 
 
 " But I will be able to care for you I believe I 
 will be able to care for you better than I ever did 
 before you see the war has been a wonderful 
 thing for individual man up against it all 
 alone all alone. The men that died and the men 
 that lived discovered things out there but they 
 can't tell. The dead are dumb and will be forgot- 
 ten and the living if they tried to tell would be 
 thought only tiresome bores but all the same 
 it's true I'm tired now but you will see 
 Helen you will see " 
 
 THE END
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 ^ T T *7 rn the last date stamped below. 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF v.
 
 A 000 501 237 2