THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 BERfRA 
 "ACF 
 HO 
 
 LC < 2 
 
/ 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 BY 
 
 ELINOR MORDAUNT 
 
 Author of 
 'Old Wine in New Bottles," "The Little Soul," etc. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
COPYBIGHT, 1B22 
 
 BT SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
 
 (INCORPORATED) 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 THE MURRAY PRINTING COMPANY 
 CAMBRIDGE, MAHS. 
 
-PR, 
 >OZL 
 
 Mini 
 
 TO 
 
 MT VERT GOOD FRIEND 
 
 MR. CURTIS BROWN 
 
 16924 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HENRY THE EIGHTH, bluff King Hal, and Catharine of Ara- 
 gon went a-maying upon Shooters' Hill. 
 
 To-day the may-trees are incorporated with trim hedges, 
 urban lawns. But for all that, they are still there: flowing 
 over the top of the hill, cropping up amid the crowded villas 
 and model dwellings which cluster about the foot of it; 
 petering out, tamed and enclosed, along the road to Black- 
 neath; all amid the gardens of St. John's Park, running a 
 little, even, into Plumstead; but free at last, altogether wild 
 and free, adown the slopes of Greenwich Park: great 
 posies of rose-red and white, brilliant and artless, intertwined 
 with the sombre tapestry of Spanish chestnuts. 
 
 Stand on the top 01 Shooters' Hill upon a sunny day in 
 the latter end of May, or during the first week in June, and 
 everywhere there is sheeted hawthorn, fruit-blossom, labur- 
 num, lilac; great rounded masses of trees sycamore and 
 beech and elm; tight bouquets of gardens, pierced by slender 
 steeples. Away to the south and the east are small, bright, 
 green fields; while to the north and the west the wavering 
 riband of the Thames looping around the Isle of Dogs so 
 that the masts of the ships seem to spring up along the streets 
 loses itself in that deepening bluish blur that is London; the 
 whole overhung with a silvery sheen, half-smoke, half 
 river-mist. 
 
 London, London proper blue haze of the early morning, 
 or deep periwinkle-blue of noontide heat: the pillar of smoke 
 by day, glowing, still smoky, gold and crimson at night, is 
 of the very essence of the world; is, indeed, the world itself 
 an amazing blend. Her wandering sons and daughters, 
 returning to her, swinging through her streets on the tops of 
 busses, threading the traffic in taxis, feeling their ears beaten 
 upon by the old familiar roar of sound, sniffing up the old 
 familiar smells, exclaim that it is good to be home again, 
 
 5 
 
6 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 " London, dear old London ! there is nowhere like 
 London! " While in the deep-bosomed country downs, 
 moorland, pasture, woodland they whisper of " England, 
 my England! " 
 
 But they are wrong, all wrong: any great town is much 
 the same. If the world were destroyed and re-created, all 
 the greed, lust, love of gain, comfort, show, the fierce struggle 
 between those who have and those who wish to have, would 
 gather, swell, and heat into just some such immense inflam- 
 matory growth a second London! As to the country, there 
 are bits of England to be found in pretty well every corner 
 of the world: " How like Devonshire! " we will exclaim, 
 " Why, that might be a bit of the New Forest," that " a 
 scrap of the Cornish coast." And this we regard as the very 
 highest possible form of praise, in the same way as some 
 women praising a flower declare that it might be made of 
 wax; or extol a fine landscape by a thin, " Pretty as a 
 picture! " 
 
 England is belittled by comparison: it robs her of what is 
 her own, brings her down to the common level. For upon 
 one point she is, and will forever remain, totally and entirely 
 unique. We miss this out, this wonder; step over it, brush 
 it aside, are contemptuous and a little ashamed; regarding 
 it as a sort of No Man's Land and yet it is this which is 
 England's self: the very essence of England: incomparable 
 with anything else in the whole wide world Suburbia! 
 
 Let us make our best bow to Suburbia; cherish it in our 
 hearts when we are away from it and most of all when we 
 are away from it. 
 
 It is like a cholera-belt; it is like a ring-fence; guarding 
 the vital organs of its nation, setting a seal upon property; it 
 is the breeding-place of great men and great mothers. From 
 the suburbs sons and husbands flow forth like a tidal river, 
 breasting, mingling with and using for their own ends the 
 sea of commerce; from here scholars, men of science and 
 learning, engineers, architects, even and this is almost 
 incredible explorers fare forth, making their mark upon the 
 world, changing, disturbing, perhaps even improving. From 
 here, stung by some queer smart of atavism, like a germ in the 
 blood from amidst all this smug trimness, lace curtains, 
 flower-beds, summer chintz and winter saddle-back, parlour- 
 maids and afternoon callers youth has heard and followed the 
 old siren voice of the sea. From the suburb to the South Pole 
 the thing is not unknown; it is, indeed, an actual fact! 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 7 
 
 As for the women, they housekeep. That also is a sacred 
 vocation which is sniffed upon like the suburbs themselves 
 and this is the worst of our Englishman: he is never proud of 
 what he ought to be proud of; for what is better, can be better, 
 than the housekeeper who is also a homekeeper? 
 
 Look at the independent woman, the business woman, the 
 bachelor woman: what good does she ever do to the race, or, 
 in the end buried alive in a mausoleum of a boarding-house 
 to herself? No, no; it is the women who pour out the 
 coffee at breakfast, and give the orders to the cook, take the 
 dog for a walk, interview the tradesmen, pay the books, and 
 put up their feet after luncheon for half an hour's nap, with 
 the daily paper open on their knees, who make Suburbia, who 
 make England. 
 
 There was once a violinist a genius, a real discovery! 
 who played divinely, lifting people out of themselves so 
 completely that they even forgot to whisper, rustle their 
 programmes. At the end of his first great concert, when his 
 admirers crowded round him, congratulating, praising, with 
 their exclamations of " Divine ! " " Wonderful ! " he brushed 
 them all aside brusquely: 
 
 "Oh yes, yes, I know that! But what about my bows? 
 Come, now, what did you think of my bows? " 
 
 We're like that, we English: forever striking attitudes, 
 buccaneering, bluff, adventurous; imagining ourselves as the 
 same sort of people as those who went a-maying with Hal and 
 his bride upon Shooters' Hill. 
 
 We still go a-maying, adventuring: but we go out to it; 
 we do not live in the midst of it, so it's no good pretending 
 that we do. Only look how little mark the war has set upon 
 us. We are even now growing shy of speaking of it, as of 
 something theatrical, a period of our lives during which we 
 were not altogether ourselves. The war! Why, the war 
 was declared over and done with, not by armistice, not by the 
 signing of the Peace Treaty, not by the ceremonies round 
 the Cenotaph and in Westminster Abbey in the autumn of 
 nineteen-twenty, but from that moment when the sound of 
 the muffin-man's bell was once again heard in the land. 
 
 By the early spring of the following year the last potato 
 had disappeared from the last lawn, as irreproachably 
 smooth-shaven as though the Motherland had never even 
 attempted to prove herself, loudly proclaimed herself, as self- 
 supporting. 
 
 It was a mild and early spring. By the beginning of the 
 
8 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 last week in May, Shooters' Hill, Greenwich, Blackheath. 
 Eltham, Sidcup, Chislehurst were as be-posied as a bevy of 
 Victorian debutantes. 
 
 It was so hot that Laura Creichton, who had been playing 
 tennis at the Hendersons', wearing white for the first time 
 that year, pleated serge skirt and transparent muslin blouse, 
 was still swinging her knitted rose-pink silk coat in her hand, 
 along with her racquet and tennis-shoes, as she came out of 
 the gate at seven o'clock. 
 
 " Better put your coat on, my dear ; one's so apt to take 
 cold when one's overheated." That's what Mrs. Henderson 
 had said, repeating one of those formulae which seem to thicken 
 like a sort of lichen over mothers of forty or more. 
 
 " Oh, but I'm simply boiling, Mrs. Henderson ! And I 
 shall have to run like blazes! Seven o'clock, and such a fuss 
 if I'm late for dinner! If only that silly ass Marjorie hadn't 
 smashed up my bike I'm lost without my bike! " 
 " There's the bus." 
 
 "Yes, if it just happens to be the right moment if not. 
 it's quicker to walk. Good-bye, everybody, good-bye 
 good-bye a topping afternoon. Thanks awfully! " 
 
 She waved her racquet, running down the hill; the as- 
 sembled Hendersons, mother, two daughters, and a son at 
 the Military Academy, " the Shop," as youth chooses to call it 
 slightingly, waving and shouting in return: something 
 about remembering next Sunday, and Friday tennis at the 
 McCullochs, remembering this and that; including the one- 
 twenty-five train for the matinee next Wednesday, supposing 
 that they could get seats. 
 
 " What a kid she is! " remarked Mary Henderson, turning 
 aside and slipping her arm through her mother's, for she went 
 in for mothering her mother, treating her as a very old woman, 
 on the verge of senile decay, while Betty muttered something 
 to the effect of there always being a fuss about everything in a 
 girl's own home; that was the worst of sticking at home, one 
 couldn't live one's own life. Why should poor Laura run 
 herself to death because old Creichton wanted his dinner 
 precisely at half -past seven? On a summer's evening, too, 
 an evening like this! 
 
 " Betty, my dear, you know " began Mrs. Henderson 
 
 in a hurt voice; but Mary pinched her arm, gently propelling 
 her along with her. 
 
 " What's the use of taking any notice of Betty? She 
 always has a grievance, wouldn't be happy if she hadn't; 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 9 
 
 wants everyone else to have one, too. Just like the 
 Irish." 
 
 "What the devil would she do if she was me? never a 
 dashed moment to myself," grumbled Philip; but he was 
 smiling as he spoke, thinking of Laura. What a mug she 
 was! "A jolly nice mug," for all that. 
 
 They all grumbled; it was not even principle, just a 
 habit; but for all that they were perfectly satisfied with 
 themselves, with life as it came to them: they had their own 
 set and were as good as anyone in it. Other people were 
 outsiders or swells, and did not touch them; instinctively 
 they shied away from anything that was queer or disturbing, 
 anything which called for thought: a clear-eyed, healthy, 
 rather stupid family; of that kind which has a way of rising 
 to any sort of real emergency. 
 
 Laura Creichton was not satisfied with herself, and in this 
 alone she differed from the Hendersons. They were faintly 
 dissatisfied with everyone apart from their individual selves, 
 while she thought other people rather wonderful, was always 
 trying to mould herself upon them, even the people in 
 books, and lamentably failing, lamentably remaining the 
 same just Laura. She had wanted to be deeply religious, 
 not to care for worldly things; that had been at the time of 
 her confirmation; then to be hard and brilliant, a sort of 
 adventuress; then to be noble; then to be clever a famous 
 pianist, a writer: to be of importance, to have people glance 
 at each other and whisper when she came into a room: 
 
 " That's Miss Creichton, Miss Laura Creichton the Miss 
 Creichton." 
 
 Above all, she wanted to be dignified, indifferent: this 
 desire alone persisted; not to let other people see when they 
 hurt her, not to seem to care. Fancy feeling the colour flood 
 her face, a lump rise in her throat, because a boy like Philip 
 Henderson, a mere boy, had called her a "silly Juggins" when 
 she bungled two serves, lost the game! If she had been 
 dignified, if she had been as she ought to have been, able to 
 keep people in their places, no one would ever dare to say such 
 things. She could have done as she pleased, like that superb 
 Miss Farquharson, who could not play for nuts, served silly 
 little " unders " like a kid, and was yet treated with the 
 greatest respect, for the simple reason that she did not in the 
 very least mind spoiling a game; just walked over other 
 people and their feelings. 
 
 Why, she, Laura, had even been servile enough to feel 
 
10 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 pleased, comforted because at the end of the lost game Philip 
 had grinned at her, remarked in a friendly fashion forgiving 
 her!: 
 
 "My hat! Of all the mugs, Laura! To muck up both 
 those serves! All the same, never mind I rather like you." 
 
 She had no idea that to himself Philip said, " I love her. 
 My word, how I love her! " thought her hair, her eyes, her 
 colouring absolutely " It "; was desperately afraid of showing 
 his feelings. 
 
 Fancy anyone daring to say " I rather like you ! " that 
 "rather" how insulting! If she were dignified, if she were 
 dark instead of fair, if she were not so gawky, everything 
 would be different. 
 
 " The Miss Creichton ! " Why, only that afternoon she 
 had heard a sort of breath on her arrival, ushered in by the 
 Henderson's parlour-maid: a breath of relief, but still, that 
 made no difference. 
 
 "Oh, it's only Laura. After all! Only Laura! " 
 
 It seemed as though these words were forever in her ears; 
 though there was something even worse than this " Little 
 Miss Creichton." 
 
 " Little," and yet gawky, five foot seven, and still growing. 
 It must be something in herself. It was, Marjorie said so: 
 Marjorie, two years younger than herself and still at school: 
 likely to be for another two years; for Laura herself was, 
 even yet, not properly out. 
 
 " If you are insignificant, you are insignificant. It 
 doesn't matter how rich you are, or how tall you are, or how 
 much a swell, titles, or anything of that sort; even if you're 
 the King. Why, that's what's wrong with the King; he's 
 insignificant! There's no changing it; it's like a crooked 
 nose." 
 
 " No changing." At the back of her mind Laura believed 
 Marjorie to be right; at least in reference to herself. In 
 regard to other people she did not feel quite so certain: 
 Marjorie was so sweeping, she came such awful croppers 
 with her assertions: that about the King, for instance! 
 When Laura, who was fiercely loyal, flared up at this, she 
 said: 
 
 " Oh, well, it just all depends upon your point of view." 
 
 But there were other cases where her mistakes could be 
 definitely brought home to her. There was, for instance, that 
 declaration that Mrs. Carlton was a widow, because of what 
 she, Marjorie, chose to call her " catch-as-catch-can " ex- 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 11 
 
 pression: actually telling everyone that she was a widow from 
 the day she took the Hermitage. 
 
 " You don't want to leave any gentlemen's cards; she's 
 a widow, you know," she would explain to anyone who spoke 
 of calling upon the newcomer. 
 
 And all the while, Mr. Carlton was no farther away than 
 Scotland; back with his wife before the end of her first 
 month of sojourn at Blackheath. 
 
 " Mrs. Carlton's got her brother-in-law staying with her." 
 That was what Marjorie said; sticking to it, too; then, when 
 husband and wife returned Lady Creichton's call, blurting 
 it out rudely: 
 
 "Why, I thought you were dead!" regarding Mr. 
 Carlton's existence, proving her wrong, as a sort of insult; 
 something wilful, augmented by his laughter. 
 
 Marjorie had been wrong there, and more than wrong 
 ridiculous. Of course she often was wrong. In the matter 
 of changing or not changing, for instance: one only had to 
 set one's mind to it and one could do what one liked with 
 oneself. 
 
 Laura bought books on " Human Magnetism," " Character- 
 Building," and " The Triumph of Personality." In addition 
 to these she read " Mental Efficiency," by Mr. Arnold Bennett, 
 which did not help her much, as the author seemed to be 
 engrossed in telling of himself and the sort of life he led, which 
 would not have fitted in at all with the Creichton household; 
 and Mr. Benjamin Kidd's " Science of Power," which appalled 
 her with its ideal, or so she read it, of a world entirely domi- 
 nated by women. 
 
 Anyhow, all these books seemed to hinge upon not caring 
 what other people thought, and this was the one thing which 
 she, Laura, really did care for, more than anything else in 
 the world: not what they thought about things in general, 
 for she never condemned, seldom criticised Marjorie always 
 said, " Laura has no standards," sometimes, even, " Laura 
 has no morals " but what they thought about her, if they 
 liked her. 
 
 She remembered, running down Shooters' Hill, how she 
 had felt when Philip said, '" Never mind; I rather like you," 
 and her face crimsoned. She was like a little dog, wagging 
 its tail, cringing! And, after all, she had no opinion whatever 
 of Philip: he was good at Rugger, but his tennis was even 
 worse than hers. 
 
 Why, Florrie, their own housemaid, had upset her only 
 
12 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 that afternoon by saying: " It seems as 'ow anyone wants a 
 bit more colour for wearing cream. Rose-pink, now, there's 
 nuffin' like pink for brightening you up, Miss Laura. That 
 there jumper o' yours, now! " 
 
 Laura had an instinctive feeling that she looked nice in 
 white; not dead-white, but the creamy tint of serge, and 
 muslin that was not " book " but Indian. The wearing of it 
 pleased her, made her feel in harmony with herself; while 
 rose-pink any pink excepting the faintest blush took every 
 bit of colour out of her. That was the true reason for carrying 
 her coat in her hand; and yet Florrie's remark had blurred 
 over this judgment, had spoilt her pleasure in that afternoon's 
 toilet. Perhaps she did not look nice in creamy-white, after 
 all: perhaps she never could look nice in anything! 
 
 She had arrived at the Hendersons' in a state of the deepest 
 depression, no way relieved by that " Only Laura." Very 
 likely people hated to see her in the same way as one hated 
 the sight of some sorts of food. There was a man in the 
 Ordnance only the Ordnance, luckily who had asked to be 
 introduced to her three times. Oh, well, no wonder! fair 
 people were all alike. A friend of Marjorie's who was working 
 at the Blackheath Art School had desired to paint her por- 
 trait, and given it up in despair. 
 
 " Somehow or other, there seems nothing to get hold of in 
 your face; unless it's your eyebrows, and one can't make a 
 portrait of eyebrows! " that's what she had said. 
 
 And the worst of it was, it was true; though only half the 
 truth. For it was that very quality of elusiveness, the 
 quality which had made Beatrice Hargreaves anxious to take 
 her portrait, then driven her to give it up in despair and pique, 
 which was one-half the charm of Laura's broad-browed, 
 heart-shaped face, so softly modelled and rounded; the 
 flaxen fair hair, gold where it sprang from the forehead, and 
 then the colour of ripe oats; the eyes, palish-grey and gold; 
 all the shadows pearly-tinted; the smooth lips, the under one 
 a little too full, pale and folded; the eyebrows alone decided, 
 too finely marked to catch the first casual glance, and yet 
 capturing the memory, focussing the whole face; absolutely 
 black, with a long sweeping curve of that sort which might 
 have been added by a Chinese artist, with Indian ink and a 
 very long-haired brush, widish at the very beginning, like 
 some miniature bird's wing, and then tailing off, distinct and 
 finished to the very end. 
 
 It was horrid to have eyebrows like that with fair hair. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 13 
 
 Laura was certain that people must think she blacked them: 
 girls at Marjorie's school they had shared a governess until 
 Laura was grown-up had said as much, according to Marjorie, 
 who always repeated things like this, if only for the sake of 
 declaring that she did not care what anyone said, hugging 
 Laura. 
 
 " Silly old ass, aren't you, Lolly? Nice old ass, though! " 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE Blackheath bus dashed out from its halting-place on 
 the hill just before Laura reached it. At the bottom it half 
 drew up, and she still hoped that she might catch it, ran, 
 waving her pink silk jacket. But the one passenger who dis- 
 mounted why, it was hard to say, for it was little more than 
 a hundred yards from its starting-place nipped off too 
 quickly for her, and it went on again while she was still a 
 good dozen yards away, with that brutally indifferent air 
 which busses have. 
 
 The man who had alighted retraced his way and came 
 towards her up Shooters' Hill for a few steps; changed his 
 mind and made a tentative movement in the Eltham direction; 
 then turned back again, and stood, hesitating. 
 
 " Whatever did he want to get on and off like that for? 
 silly idiot! " thought Laura crossly; for if the bus had not 
 stopped at all, it would not have seemed so aggravating of it 
 going on. And yet, in her heart, her sympathies were with 
 him, for she knew how lost one could feel, grappling with 
 strange busses, going on to, or getting out at, the wrong places. 
 
 The man was slender and boyish-looking, wearing a grey 
 suit and the wrong sort of hat, a broadish black felt with a 
 high crown, rather like a Presbyterian minister. At the very 
 first glance Laura put him down as a common person; while 
 just before he spoke to her she realised his red tie no one 
 apart from outsiders wore red ties. That was her first 
 impression; and during the whole of the rest of his life she 
 never realised anything else very clearly about him. She 
 used to grope back in her mind in search of that first im- 
 pression, desperately endeavouring to focus him by it. But, 
 after all, even this was only an impression of his clothes, not of 
 himself, and clothes did not count: perhaps that was a 
 revolution in feeling which came to her last of all. After a 
 while even this memory the wrong hat, the red tie was 
 overlaid with a variety of every sort of feeling, stratum upon 
 stratum, each one as intense as the other. 
 
 His eyes, deeply-set, with a sharp, overhanging curve to 
 
 14 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 15 
 
 the socket, were large and very bright, a brownish-hazel; 
 the pupils dilated, in that fashion which may lend two oddly 
 diverse expressions to a face eager vitality or dreaminess. 
 In this case it was all vitality, eagerness. Laura Creichton, 
 who had a knack of putting herself in the place of other 
 people, was sure, on looking at him, why he had jumped off 
 the bus in that fashion without any apparent reason, destina- 
 tion in view; it was just the sort of boyish, impulsive thing 
 he would do. Besides, it was evident that he did not know the 
 country, she thought of Shooters' Hill as the country, was 
 plainly enough, judging by his pale skin, a denizen of Greater 
 London. For he was smooth-shaven and privet-white; but 
 not unhealthy-looking, the vitality was too intense for that, 
 not only in the eyes but in every movement: the quick way 
 in which he had turned from one direction to another, as 
 though his own uncertainty had penned him back like actual 
 and irritating bars. 
 
 There was no one else in sight, and he raised his hat to 
 Laura as she drew level with him. 
 
 " I beg your pardon but could you direct me to Black- 
 heath station? " 
 
 "You should have stayed on that bus; it goes straight 
 there." 
 
 Laura spoke with some severity, as she so often did when 
 she was shy: her glance level and grave. 
 
 The stranger gave a comical gesture and grimace of 
 despair. 
 
 " In the tram they told me to take Number 2lA bus," he 
 said in English which was structurally perfect, and yet held 
 something faintly foreign in the intonation. " I took it, and 
 what happened? It went a few yards up hill, and then 
 stopped. I took another coming down the hill, and then 
 I don't know. Somehow or other I lost my head; someone 
 had said something about changing at the four cross-roads; 
 I am certain of that. For the rest " he spread out both hands 
 " I am bewildered, completely bewildered! " 
 
 " That must have been when you were in the tram. But 
 you took the bus coming from Blackheath by mistake. Still, 
 if only you had stayed in this second one " 
 
 " The difficulty is to know whether they are going or 
 coming," remarked the young man impatiently. " People 
 say, ' Take the Blackheath bus,' but you don't even know 
 whether it's going to Blackheath or coming from Blackheath, 
 and if you ask, then they think you're mad, and just repeat, 
 
16 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 ' The Blackheath bus,' very loud, as though you were deaf. 
 I tell you this: I've been on the Heath once already this 
 afternoon, looking for the station. I took a bus, as directed, 
 and found myself at Woolwich of all awful places! It's 
 like getting out of an underground station, one never 
 knows " 
 
 " If you take the third turning to the left, and the second 
 to the right, then the second again to the right, you'll cut off 
 a large corner, and come out almost opposite the station," 
 interrupted Laura, without so much as the shadow of a smile 
 upon her face. 
 
 The stranger made a sweeping movement with his hat, 
 still in his hand, replaced it upon his head (" I never saw 
 such a white forehead," thought Laura, trying to discount 
 his effect upon herself. "Just like a kid! ") thanked her 
 and strode on ahead; to her great relief, for she was over- 
 come by the fear that he might expect to walk all the way to 
 Blackheath at her side. 
 
 But this sense of safe finality was short-lived, for he took 
 the second turning to the right instead of the third to the 
 left. 
 
 " Oh, let him go he's old enough and ugly enough to take 
 care of himself," muttered Laura, repeating what her father 
 had once said to her in one of his bursts of irritation, and 
 walked on for a few steps. Then because she was Laura 
 Creichton, because she was putting herself in his place, 
 thinking how awful it would be if he found himself in Wool- 
 wich again as he would, if he continued upon that road she 
 started to run, reached the corner, saw him already a good 
 couple of hundred yards along the wrong road, and shouted, 
 waving her pink silk coat. 
 
 He turned and retraced his steps, moving so buoyantly 
 that it reminded her of those dreams one has of flying, not very 
 far from the ground, just skimming, floating. As he came 
 within speaking distance she was exasperated to see that he 
 was smiling in a wholly friendly fashion, as though he imagined 
 that she had called him just for the fun of the thing. 
 
 " You're going wrong." Her voice was curt with the awful 
 fear of being laughed at. 
 
 " But you said the second to the right." His frank 
 surprise was disarming, and she recovered herself, though her 
 tone was still prim. 
 
 " I said the third to the left, and then the second to the 
 right." 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 17 
 
 ** 0-o-oh ! " He turned back into the main road at her 
 side. " Then where does that road go? " 
 
 " To Woolwich." Laura bit her lip, pulling it down. It 
 did not matter in the least where that road went; she had 
 told him it was wrong, and there was no necessity for any 
 further conversation; but, oh oh, well, it was funny! Her 
 cheeks crimsoned with the effort of suppressed laughter. 
 
 "To Woolwich! To Woolwich!" He laughed out- 
 right. "How ridiculous! How utterly ridiculous, eh? 
 What a fool you must think me! Woolwich! Isn't that just 
 like me? " 
 
 She didn't know whether it was " like " him or not; the 
 question seemed impertinent, claiming a sort of interest, 
 acquaintanceship. She held her head very erect and kept her 
 eyes fixed steadily in front of her; but for all that, she knew 
 that he was peering round, wondering whether she shared his 
 merriment. He must have felt disappointed, for he sighed; 
 then laughed afresh, with a sort of comic despair. 
 
 " If I had got to Woolwich again I should have stayed 
 there. I should have known that it was Fate, stronger than 
 myself. But happily you intervened and saved me. Perhaps 
 you 
 
 " The third to the left and then the second to the right," 
 put in Laura. She had never in her life felt more at sea; 
 more confused in an odd, soft sort of way; half pleased, half 
 frightened. But there was stern blood in her veins, all 
 broken up and diluted by the honey-sweetness of the Ogilvies 
 her mother's family, with its old, safely-established business 
 and she walked briskly on ahead, without so much as a 
 glance aside, much less the shadow of a smile upon her face. 
 
 At the third turning to the left she half turned, with a 
 single guiding gesture; there was nothing compromising in 
 that, and she felt her responsibility. 
 
 The young man had vanished. 
 
 " Oh, well ! " said Laura, as though to tell herself she had 
 done with that. Anyhow, it left the short cut free for her; 
 she was terribly late as it was would have been later if she 
 had had to go the long way round. 
 
 She walked quickly, swinging her coat and racquet; then 
 slackened her speed, dawdled, then hurried on again. 
 
 She was not happy; she felt guilty. She could not follow 
 the thought, argue against the folly of fear for a young man 
 a perfectly able-bodied, apparently alert young man amid 
 the smug urbanities of Blackheath. But for all that, she felt 
 
18 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 relieved, less of a " beast," when she heard a voice calling her, 
 and, glancing back, saw him once again swim into her wake. 
 For all this, she quickened her pace. What cheek! shouting 
 to her in that way, as though she were part of a Bank Holiday ! 
 
 He ran after her, caught her up, mopping his brow. 
 "Cheek!" she thought again: glanced at him sideways, as 
 haughtily as Miss Farquharson herself, and then melted. 
 
 After all, he did not look cheeky he was not cheeky! As 
 her sidelong glance met his, he had the air of a puppy trying 
 to keep its tail between its legs and wag it at the same time: 
 the look which comes from that sort of feeling with which 
 she, Laura herself, was so fatally well acquainted, of not 
 knowing exactly where one is, ashamed, deprecating. He 
 actually put it into words, and for the second time " I know 
 I'm an awful ass." His glance added, just as hers might have 
 done, had done so many times, " But do forgive me do like 
 me." 
 
 " I took the wrong turning, after all." 
 
 " You don't seem very bright." Someone had once said 
 this to Laura, and it had hurt cruelly. She repeated it now, 
 blunting the harshness with a little laugh, and it gave her a 
 sense of power; though all the while she was ashamed of it as 
 a sort of familiarity, condoning a casual acquaintanceship. 
 
 " I know, I know; but I was thinking of something else." 
 She felt his glance, and knew that he meant, " I was thinking 
 of you." " I must have taken the second turning instead of 
 the third. I found it out because it came to an end; there was 
 nothing but a fence and a little footpath. I ran along that 
 and into another road, then into another I know I'm a fool 
 was utterly bewildered! But I thought that this must be the 
 sort of direction, and I was right, you see. My word! I was 
 glad to see you, to know I was right! " 
 
 She wondered how he knew that she was not going to 
 Woolwich: why he spoke as though he had been searching 
 for her running, too instead of for Blackheath station. 
 
 " Some day more kind 
 My fate I'll find," 
 
 he went on, cheerfully, walking at her side, swinging his hat 
 in his hand, while she wondered what in the world would 
 happen if she met anyone she knew. " Do you know that? 
 It's a Spanish song." He ran over the Spanish words, then 
 the English, soft, full syllables; ' stopping short before the 
 last line " Some night kiss you." 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 19 
 
 "Are you Spanish?" She had a girlish, old-fashioned 
 ardour for everything foreign; but she regretted the question 
 directly it was asked. What on earth could it matter to her 
 what, or who, he was? 
 
 "My mother's mother came from Spain; but my grand- 
 father met her in America. My father's people were of Polish 
 origin." 
 
 " Oh." 
 
 " And my name very much at your service is Paul 
 Vortonitch." 
 
 To her embarrassment he took out a shabby little green 
 morocco case and handed her a card. No one had ever done 
 such a thing before; and the card, like his clothes, was all 
 wrong: too large, with over-ornate lettering. The action 
 might have been that of a tradesman, but it wasn't. 
 
 " And now, as we know each other " He paused, 
 
 and then, as she did not answer, started off again, upon a 
 fresh tack: " If only you were going to Blackheath! " 
 
 Still Laura did not answer, hurrying on, her lips tightly 
 folded. It had already struck seven; the brightness of the 
 day was veiled in a pinkish-grey haze. She reflected, with a 
 sense of panic: "Why, if it were winter-time it would be 
 night. And this strange man ! " 
 
 The thought stavangering about Blackheath at night, 
 with a strange man! appalled her, and she thrust it away at 
 the back of her mind. 
 
 " Or if you were going part of the way in the same 
 direction " 
 
 Even now she did not answer. 
 
 " Or if you would tell me which way you are going, 
 
 it would seem to make a sort of jumping-off place. You're 
 not I suppose you're not by any chance going to " his 
 voice broke with a boyish half-laugh, despite his diffidence 
 " to Woolwich? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 At some tableaux vivants in which she had once helped, as 
 a representative of Spring, there had been a light grey gauze 
 curtain stretched between the audience and performers, right 
 across the front of the stage, adding illusion to the scene. In 
 this early-evening light, with everything so odd and unreal, it 
 appeared to Laura Creichton as though the gardens with the 
 trim hedges, the dim, still unlighted houses were thus sepa- 
 rated, shut away, apart from herself and the man who walked 
 by her side. Even the passers-by, the very rare passers-by, 
 
20 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 seemed strange and alien creatures, with muffled footsteps; 
 only a blackbird was near, singing clearly, wonderfully, 
 flooding the whole road with its song. 
 
 " Where where how can I tell my direction if I don't 
 know yours? " persisted the voice at her side, irrationally 
 enough. 
 
 " I'm going to Blackheath." She shot it out defiantly, 
 turning, facing him, very angry with herself, with him. 
 
 " To Blackheath? All this time you were going to 
 Blackheath and you never told me! I never heard anything 
 like that." 
 
 His reproach was so childish, so plaintive, that she was 
 filled with remorse. 
 
 " But not to the same part. I'm going to the edge of the 
 Heath, up above the station." 
 
 " But, even so, you could so easily put me on my way 
 from there. Here it is like a maze, all the same sort of little 
 roads, houses, gardens! Now, even now mademoiselle, if 
 only I might walk with you as far as you go " 
 
 The " mademoiselle " pleased her. It sounded respectful ; 
 it established him as a foreigner who did not know any better, 
 who could not be expected to know that in England strange 
 young men do not walk alone with strange young women to 
 whom they have not even been introduced. Abysmal 
 ignorance! As if there was any other country in the world 
 where such a thing were possible, excepting under the grossest 
 conditions ! 
 
 The humility, diffidence of his whole manner, this also 
 pleased her, made her feel like someone else. She gave a 
 little laugh, and turned her head, for the first time looking at 
 him as though he were a real person and not one of the great 
 world of unintroduced. 
 
 " Well, that seems to be what you are doing " 
 
 " What is that, mademoiselle? " He looked puzzled, as 
 though for that moment his English had failed him. 
 
 "Walking with me," she explained shyly; and, laughing 
 together, they moved on side by side, the mutual laugh seeming 
 to have established a sort of understanding. 
 
 Later on the same night, in thinking back over that 
 walk, it seemed to Laura that they had talked of all sorts 
 of things. He had told her of himself, his many wanderings: 
 of how all his life he had been tossed here, left there, like a 
 parcel. There seemed no sort of anchorage, to Laura 
 Creichton's mind, no placing him, because he was not a 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 21 
 
 Wellington boy, a Winchester or Cheltenham boy, or any- 
 thing of that sort, like all the other young men she knew. 
 And yet, though he was of no school, he appeared to have 
 been to any amount of schools Catholic, Church of England, 
 Lutheran; a school in Pernambuco, a school in Aberdeen, a 
 school in Buda-Pesth: languages seemed no sort of stumbling- 
 block to him. 
 
 " Oh, of course I got on all right." That was what he 
 said. " One can always make oneself understood." 
 
 Laura wondered, remembering Philip's agonies during 
 that fortnight in Normandy with the Hendersons, the summer 
 before. 
 
 She asked him what he did, and he answered : " Oh, all 
 sorts of things! " Then, when she explained her meaning, 
 rather gravely, anxiously, for it would have been "horrid" to 
 find him a shop-boy, or anything of that sort, even a clerk, he 
 told her that he wrote. 
 
 " Poems, articles, stories oh, anything. Paint a bit, too," 
 he said, so carelessly and offhandedly that he did not impress 
 her, even then, as a person with any very definite pursuit in 
 life. And yet he did not appear rich; it seemed as though he 
 must do something for a living. He was not so very young, 
 either; not a boy, despite his boyishness, for in the grey 
 light she realised that there were innumerable faint lines, as 
 fine as though scratched with some sharply pointed instru- 
 ment, round his nose and mouth: though not inevitably the 
 lines of age, for one had seen them on the faces of even the 
 youngest of those officers who had been prisoners in Germany 
 during the war. 
 
 They parted at the corner of the Heath, where the road 
 runs downhill, through the odd, old-fashioned, village-like 
 place, straight to the station. There could be no mistake 
 about it this time. They laughed over this, or, rather, he 
 laughed, for Laura Creichton was of a sudden more restrained 
 and shy than ever, panoplied in primness. For this parting, 
 with no prospect of meeting again, this going away into the 
 blue, as it were, seemed to mark the enormity of such chance 
 acquaintanceship; almost like a sort of punishment. And 
 yet, when she had transgressed so far as that, it was ridiculous 
 to draw the line suddenly, awkwardly, as she did, at shaking 
 hands. 
 
 She thought of this as she turned into her own gate, shut 
 round by the definite twilight, the end of the day; away from 
 all that odd excitement and warmth, into a loneliness greater 
 
22 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 and absolutely different from anything which she had ever 
 known before. 
 
 She was very late for dinner; they had already started 
 the sweet. By rights Laura should have cut in where she 
 found herself, at trifle and stewed fruit. This was one of 
 General Sir Harry Creichton's rules nothing was to be kept 
 hot or brought back; if his family chose to be late for a meal, 
 they must suffer for it. Luckily, the parlour-maid disregarded 
 this regulation, cheerfully and openly, as Lady Creichton 
 herself would never have dared to do, and if she chose to 
 bring back the dishes, she did so, though she seldom exercised 
 this privilege of choice where anyone save Laura, her special 
 favourite, was concerned. 
 
 Happily, a couple of old regimental friends of General 
 Creichton's were dining there that night; indeed, the family 
 were seldom alone: there were so many men connected with 
 " the Shop " and Arsenal whom it was their duty to entertain, 
 and he merely raised his eyebrows with a " Really, my dear 
 Laura! " as she slipped into her place. 
 
 Marjorie tackled her later, coming into her room where she 
 was brushing her hair: Marjorie, supposed to be in bed at 
 nine-thirty ! 
 
 " What in the world have you been up to, Lolly? You 
 looked as silly as anything! As if you didn't know where 
 you were all over the shop, and your face crimson! " 
 
 Laura, suddenly proud of her adventure, recounted it. 
 Marjorie was so fond of calling her a stick-in-the-mud " a 
 prim old stick " " centuries behind the times ! " that she 
 felt as though she were justifying herself, her youth. To her 
 surprise the younger girl was horrified. 
 
 "Well, if that isn't the limit! Really, Lolly, I never 
 did! To pick up with a man you knew nothing of, like that 
 like a servant like a common Bank Holidayite. Supposing 
 anyone had seen you! My hat! " 
 
 Laura herself had thought of all this, had thought of it and 
 braved it with a vivid sense of courage. Put into words, as 
 Marjorie put it, it did indeed sound pretty awful; and yet 
 
 " Well, for you to go on like that ! " She spoke with 
 spirit. " When I think of you and that Wade boy letting 
 him kiss you, paw you about! And Archie Gilchrist and 
 young Halliway! " 
 
 But Marjorie did not turn a hair. " That was different," 
 she remarked calmly; "absolutely different. Boys I know 
 our own sort." 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 23 
 
 " Well, how do you know this man wasn't * our own 
 sort ' ? " 
 
 " You yourself said he looked different." 
 
 " Well, can't people look different and be all right? " 
 
 " No, they can't ; they're cranks or socialists, or some- 
 thing or not the right sort. Look at that poet with the 
 funny collar who went off with the Mappletons' silver cigar- 
 box! " 
 
 " They don't know that it was he who went off with it." 
 
 " Of course they know. You only had to look at him, to 
 see the sort of Johnny he was! His hair! my hat! " 
 
 " You do all sorts of things. Things I'd be ashamed to 
 do!" 
 
 " Not things like that dawdling about the place with a 
 perfect stranger. I daresay he put his arm round your 
 waist." 
 
 " Marjorie! " Laura's pale face was aflame. 
 
 " Well, that's the " 
 
 " You can go out of my room. Do you hear? Go out of 
 my room. I don't want you here, saying such things! " 
 
 " I only said what was true." 
 
 " You didn't. You said " 
 
 " I only said, ' I daresay.' " 
 
 " You did ! You said you insinuated " 
 
 " Nothing to what any of the old cats here would have 
 insinuated, if they saw you; let me tell you that, my dear! " 
 Marjorie moved towards the door; then, catching sight of her 
 face in the looking-glass, turned aside and bent towards it, 
 surveying herself with dismay. 
 
 " I do believe I'm going to have another spot on my chin." 
 She thrust it forward, square and white. She had a beautiful 
 skin, thick and rather highly coloured, the smooth surface 
 unmarked save by the reiteration of one tiny spot which caused 
 her the greatest anxiety. 
 
 In every way she was the antithesis of her sister: shorter, 
 more squarely built, her face square where Laura's was 
 round, her neck thick and short and very white, her eyes a 
 hard blue, sharp and curious, and yet good-tempered; her 
 hair straight, dark-brown and bobbed. 
 
 She was very modern-looking; in her clothes, though she 
 was still only a schoolgirl, in her talk, her manners. Laura 
 had always looked upon her as a marvel of cleverness, because 
 she was good at sums, possessed an accurate memory, was so 
 cocksure of everything. In reality she was, like so many 
 
24 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 young girls, unintelligent through her very lack of sensitive- 
 ness, interest in anything apart from herself; unlike an 
 earlier generation, sentimental and poetical, she could talk of 
 nothing which was not an actual concrete fact, well within the 
 range of her own interest; was incapable of any discussion, 
 speculation, or flight of fancy beyond that which might be used 
 in getting the very most, and that in a wholly material sense. 
 out of life. Let anyone touch upon the more subtle forms of 
 religion, philosophy, social work, poetry, ideals, in front of 
 Marjorie Creichton, and her face would set in a blank, half- 
 aullen mask, which meant that she did not intend to take the 
 trouble even to try to understand such things. Hers was a 
 character, common enough, and daily growing more common, 
 in which there were no lights and shades. She was admirably 
 suited for the business of life upon the most commonplace 
 plane: all her adventures, her boasting of freedom, were 
 nothing; she was as conventional within the boundaries of 
 her own period as anyone could well be. Catch Marjorie 
 throwing her cap over the windmill, unless it were ** the 
 thing " to do : even then, trust her to get something of the 
 boomerang twist upon it. 
 
 Quite suddenly Laura realised her as she was: funda- 
 mentally far less adventurous than herself. Marjorie never 
 wanted to travel " Beastly foreigners ! " " Stinking black 
 people! " that was Marjorie bitten by no sombre vision of 
 tropical forest, flaming sunlit desert. 
 
 That grey curtain which had fallen between herself and 
 the stranger, the remainder of the world, still seemed to 
 hang about Laura; and oddly enough, though it set her 
 apart even from her own people, it cleared her vision of them 
 by this very setting apart. When she entered the dining- 
 room that night, it had seemed as though she saw it, her 
 father and mother, her mother's cousin, who was staying in 
 the house so often invited because she was so useful and did 
 not mind where she was put for the first time. 
 
 She had been angry with Marjorie, ashamed of herself; 
 quite suddenly she was no longer ashamed: she was, and 
 perhaps for the first time in her life, contemptuous. 
 
 "You and your beastly old spot! " she said. "I don't 
 believe you ever think of anything else! " 
 
 It was ridiculous, it was childish. All the same, it was 
 epoch-making, for it showed her emancipation from the over- 
 rule of that sister, who was, after all, two years younger than 
 herself. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 25 
 
 Lady Creichton loved her elder daughter, but she had a 
 boundless admiration for the younger, in whom she found no 
 sort of kinship with herself; had impressed it upon Laura, 
 with a constant reiteration, until it seemed a part of life, like 
 cold beef for Sunday supper. 
 
 " Marjorie's got all the brains " ; " Marjorie's so cap- 
 able " ; "Marjorie's so advanced for her age" ; "Marjorie's 
 so practical," she would declare, praising her the more openly 
 in that she was conscious of a faint, very faint, flaw in her own 
 affection, mingled with which quite unguessed at was 
 something like a sense of repulsion for the girl's insensitive- 
 ness, her almost vulgar self-assertion. 
 
 She would give a little movement when Marjorie entered 
 the room, for the most part talking over her shoulder to 
 someone in the hall or on the staircase, that was almost 
 shrinking; a drawing of herself together and apart. With 
 Laura she expanded; it was like being in the sun; she was 
 always comfortable and at ease with her, as she was, only in 
 a more vital sort of way, with her one son, a year older than 
 Laura and in his first year at Oxford. She was as she liked 
 to be with her elder daughter, she was at her best with 
 Charlie; but with Marjorie she was continually making an 
 effort to be something she was not. 
 
 A chit, this Marjorie a hard chit. And yet not so hard 
 as she seemed: simply dense. There is nothing on earth she 
 would have resented more; but if you spoke the truth regard- 
 ing her, with insight and good nature, you would have said, 
 " Stupid, but a good sort; means well." 
 
 And yet the way in which she remarked, " Oh ! You of the 
 last generation! " was enough to put almost anyone back in 
 his or her place, flattening them out away from the obvious 
 enquiry as to in which direction humanity had so greatly 
 improved; what she herself had ever really, actually done to 
 prove her superiority. 
 
 As it was, she ruled the household, apart from her father, 
 whom she could coax into anything, and the parlour-maid, 
 who would have none of her. Only later did Lady Creichton 
 herself so nebulous upon ordinary occasions plumb her, 
 find thickness in the place of depth; and, re-discovering her 
 as a very silly, helpless little girl, love her as she had always 
 loved her elder daughter. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 IT was close upon nine o'clock by the time that Paul Vor- 
 tonitch emerged from Charing Cross Station, for he had 
 doubled back again after Laura left him and watched her go 
 into her own gate; then dawdled about a little, asking a few 
 casual questions concerning a fabulous " Mr. Ponsonby " the 
 first name which came into his head. " Where did the famous 
 Mr. Ponsonby live? Might it be that house with the long 
 white-pillared portico? " being met with a blank stare, and 
 " Not as I know," or " Never heard the name," until he 
 chanced upon a person who was acquainted with the name of 
 the person who lived in that particular house, and told him 
 so with the habitual rudeness of an Englishman who happens 
 to know what another person doesn't know and the less 
 important the knowledge the greater the rudeness. 
 
 " Ponsonby ! No ! That there's General Sir Harry 
 Creichton's house, him as is head o' the Arsenal." 
 
 It was in this manner that Vortonitch discovered that 
 name which Laura Creichton had so shyly withheld. 
 
 It pleased him oddly. All his life had been like this; he 
 had cruel runs of ill-luck, like spells of severe frost, hardening, 
 wilting, benumbing; then, all of a sudden, like a burst of 
 sunshine, there would come something of this sort, something 
 little short of amazing. The odd swing of the pendulum was 
 so sure that it rendered him careless, improvident, and 
 in every sort of way, dangerous ways. Often enough the 
 downward swing would show a sickening pause, like that dread 
 full stop which will sometimes occur between two heart-beats, 
 when he would draw himself tightly together, every nerve 
 taut, to stick it out. Sometimes it went on for so long this 
 terrifying, numbing pause, when life hung fire that on the 
 top of his mind was the fear that the balance could never right 
 itself. It had been like this a little more than a year earlier, 
 when he had found himself in a very tight hole: a hole in 
 every sense of the word, a sort of wild beasts' den hollowed 
 out of a muddy hillside in Galicia, barred into a prison; where 
 his sufferings, both mental and physical, had been so intense 
 
 26 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 27 
 
 that he felt as though life must be squeezed out of him by 
 sheer cold, hunger, pain, the exasperation of the imprisoned 
 worst of agonies! And yet even then, as always, he had 
 been kept alive, though only just alive, by something that was 
 too clear and sharp for mere hope: the certainty of that 
 return, that mounting, swing. 
 
 That very afternoon he had been overweighted with a 
 sense of flat disappointment. Woolwich might have been so 
 wonderful. He had imagination, and his imagination had set 
 it in a blaze of wonderful happenings : so literally, had anyone 
 known what was inside the superficially boyish-looking head, 
 beneath that Noncomformist-looking hat "a blaze of wonder- 
 ful happenings! " And yet, at every turn he had found 
 himself baulked, by sentries, by watchmen, by policemen, 
 those marvels of English organisation, whose solid dark-blue 
 forms are even more significant, awe-inspiring and uniquely 
 insular than the much-vaunted cliffs of Dover themselves. 
 
 There were the dockyards, with the vision of all that 
 ship-building meant: transport, offence, defence; and the 
 Arsenal square miles of land, millions of square feet of 
 brickwork, tons upon tons of machinery; human beings 
 almost beyond number devoting their mind and muscle, the 
 piston-like throb of heart, passage of blood through the veins, 
 every ounce of what goes to make man, to the fashioning of 
 such machinery as must still be laid by in readiness for his 
 unmaking. 
 
 There they all were, dockyards and Arsenal alike pregnant 
 with wonderful possibilities; and yet set apart, shut away 
 within those immense blind walls, with their heavy iron 
 gates, guarded by men who in that sizzling afternoon sun- 
 shine, seemed to be more than half asleep, and were not. 
 
 " Now then," said one of them to Vortonitch. He did 
 not raise his voice; the insignificant words were good-natured 
 enough, and yet so extraordinarily significant, as significant 
 as a growl, that, almost involuntarily, Paul moved on. 
 
 For a couple of hours or more he prowled about Woolwich. 
 In his cosmopolitan, imaginative way he was stimulated by, 
 interested in, everything he saw. But, after all, there was so 
 little to see. It seemed as though he must be able to get 
 some sort of a view from somewhere or other: he even 
 crossed by the moving bridge to the further side of the river, 
 twice in succession. But it was all of no use: Woolwich, 
 the business part of Woolwich, the Woolwich, was like a broad 
 back obstinately turned away from him. 
 
28 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 When he embarked upon the bridge for the second time, 
 he noticed a heavily built, phlegmatic-looking man who seated 
 himself with an air of melancholy indifference in the stern, 
 and who was, like himself, apparently, crossing and re-crossing 
 just for the fun of the thing: for the sake of the fresh air, salt 
 with the incoming tide, or the view grey chimneys, grey 
 smoke, racing steam-tugs, slow-moving barges, masts, funnels, 
 spires, cranes, chimney-pots, madly twirling cowls; blue sky 
 and swift-running stream of molten silver churned up by the 
 bridge, in movement like some vast, prehistoric river-beast. 
 
 Not that he seemed to notice the view, for he sat as much 
 as possible with his back to everything, his knees wide apart, 
 his stout body, which seemed to be tightly stuffed with some- 
 thing that was more akin to sawdust than flesh-and-blood 
 so tightly stuffed that there was no need of any support of bone 
 or muscle bent forward in a sort of dense curve, his elbows 
 stuck back on the taffrail behind him, while he spat in a 
 perfect, painstaking, and unbroken semi-circle around him. 
 
 When the bridge attendant remonstrated with him for 
 this, he threw Paul one glance, full of simple pathos: 
 
 "Look how I'm set upon; only look how I'm harried! " 
 it seemed to say. 
 
 Later on, trying to get some clear impression of what is 
 irreverently known as " the Shop " that part of Woolwich 
 which is all that so many people know of the place Vorto- 
 nitch saw the stout stranger once more, toiling rather wearily 
 up the hill from the town. 
 
 He did not draw up quite near to him, but sat down 
 upon a bench a few yards away, and taking off his hat wiped 
 out the inside of it with the greatest care, like a housewife 
 busied over a piece of valuable china. 
 
 As Paul turned aside from the contemplation of the great 
 straggling network of buildings which go to form the Military 
 Academy, the actual figures coming and going, men in uni- 
 form, men in flannels, the mental picture of a never-ending 
 stream of young life busy learning how to kill and be killed, 
 he was bound to pass the bench, where the stranger, having 
 finished with his hat, was at work upon his own forehead, as 
 though bent upon making it fit to re-enter the swept shrine of 
 greenish-black, more greenish than black, felt. 
 
 " 'Ot! " he said. The single syllable, neither added to nor 
 weakened by pronoun, adverb, was so expressive as to be in 
 itself almost tropical, sweltering. 
 
 " Yes, yes, it is hot very hot for the time of year," 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 29 
 
 responded Vortonitch; then hesitated. He seemed to have 
 seen the man before, and if he had not actually seen him, he 
 had seen something which he represented. For a moment his 
 quick mind ran to and fro like a shuttle. Why had this 
 person crossed and re-crossed upon the moving bridge? Why 
 was he sitting here now? 
 
 Suddenly, as though in answer to this question, the man 
 spoke, with a shame-faced, deprecating smirk : " A drink, 
 now," he said huskily " a drink 'ud go down proper, if so be 
 that " 
 
 With an infinitely grotesque series of gestures he slapped 
 his pockets, tight-strained against his over-stout person, and 
 Paul Vortonitch drew a little breath of relief. Perhaps it 
 was that experience in Galicia, other experiences of his 
 difficult and insecure youth, which had made him shrink from 
 the very idea of being followed; but here, at any rate, was 
 nothing more than an ordinary cadger of drinks: his clothes 
 were respectable enough, but, like his hat, they had seen 
 better days and were by no means the clothes of an ordinary 
 working-man or prosperous citizen; while his silly buttoned 
 or, rather, half-buttoned, patent leather boots were split 
 across the toes. It would be ridiculous to fear a man so 
 obviously a failure, buffeted by his own weaknesses, thought 
 Vortonitch; and without a word, with a sense of contemptu- 
 ous relief, he tossed him a sixpence; then, turning aside, 
 jumped onto the footboard of a passing tram. 
 
 Directly he was out of sight, the stout man rose to his feet 
 and made his way back in the direction of the town; moving 
 with astounding agility, that sort of agility which may be 
 displayed by a Newfoundland pup still with no hint of bone 
 or muscle, any propelling power beyond his own rotundity 
 until he came within hail of a taxi, and, hurtling into it, 
 offered the driver ten shillings over and above his legal fare 
 if he precisely followed certain directions given. 
 
 This personage was taking his ticket at Blackheath booking- 
 office when Paul Vortonitch entered the station. 
 
 Turning round, with his change in his hand rather a lot 
 of change for a person who has lately accepted sixpence for a 
 drink meeting him face to face, he beamed widely; though 
 the younger man felt something of reserve, confusion at the 
 back of those undulations of the vast pale countenance which 
 made for a smile. 
 
 " Had your drink? " he enquired. 
 
 "Shouldn't be 'ere if I 'adn't," breathed the other 
 
30 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 gratefully, as though it were that liquid nourishment alone 
 which had propelled him over the long dusty road that lay 
 betwixt Woolwich and Blackheath. 
 
 Vortonitch smiled; but there was something bleak and hard 
 in his expression beneath the flaring gas-jet; something in 
 harmony with those innumerable fine lines which had struck 
 Laura Creichton as being so oddly in contrast with his boyish 
 air. 
 
 He walked down the dirty steps to the platform, frowning 
 thoughtfully, tapping his lip with his ticket. Then, thinking 
 of his companion of half an hour earlier, he smiled. If this 
 disreputable-looking person had been following him, spying 
 upon him, he had at least seen him in very good company 
 nothing less than that of the eldest daughter of an exceedingly 
 highly-placed official. 
 
 He thought of all this as he breasted the crowd at the top 
 of the Strand, and turned into Trafalgar Square, intent upon 
 his dinner. The mists of twilight had completely cleared; 
 the night, all that it contained within its hollowed cup, was 
 worked out in shades of clear greenish-blue, the sky pierced 
 with small, pale stars; Nelson's Column and the Lions which 
 guarded it, a darker greenish-blue, as were the clothes, the 
 sombre forms of the crowd hurrying to and fro, the dense 
 mass of houses, the fantastic architecture of the National 
 Gallery; while the water in the fountain-basin was a paler 
 shade of the same colour, sparsely besprinkled with stars; 
 the faces of the passers-by paler still, as though of people 
 habitually buried in cellars. There were a few red lights, but 
 very few, and instinctively one disregarded these; looking 
 aside from them, as from an impropriety, from those faces 
 which broke the general pallor with overmuch rouge. There 
 are some nights when wantonness seems so natural as to be 
 almost right; on a night like this, however, it was entirely and 
 obviously out of place. 
 
 The air must have been full of sound, the roar of motor- 
 busses, the shriek and whirr of taxis; and yet the whole effect 
 was one of almost overwhelming quiet, and Paul Vortonitch 
 felt it as a cool hand upon his forehead: this London in 
 which one swam like a fish in a clear glass tank, with other 
 fish swimming round, flattening their noses, so near and yet 
 never really touching you. 
 
 He thought of all this with appreciation, for he was alive 
 to every sensation, every impression; he thought of his 
 dinner: savoury omelette with mushrooms, vol-de-veau, 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 31 
 
 fruit and a pint bottle of Chianti, the black coffee which his 
 soul loved. But he also thought of Laura Creichton. There 
 was a girl for you! Apart from everything else, well there 
 was a girl! 
 
 He had, during his varied youth, spent one term at a 
 small, rather frowsty and highly-correct school at St. 
 Leonards; from there he had attended the Church of 
 England service, and heard that hymn which runs somehow 
 thus: 
 
 As pants the hart for cooling streams, 
 
 When heated in the chase, 
 So longs my soul for Thee, dear Lord, 
 And Thy refreshing grace. 
 
 This Miss Creichton that was what she was: a cooling 
 stream, a garden enclosed. Paul Vortonitch had never been 
 quite near to anyone so exquisitely clean in every sort of way : 
 there were women, of his world, ->r a world habitually near 
 to it, who bathed and manicured, brushed, polished, perfumed 
 without ceasing. But here was a different sort of cleanliness. 
 It was like a primrose, unique in its own way. The very 
 memory of it was like a cool wind upon his cheek as he 
 hurried onward up Charing Cross Road and turned aside into 
 Soho; though it dropped away as he pushed open the swinging 
 door of Le Cygne d'Or, driven back by the thick atmosphere 
 of humanity, cheap scent, smoke, wine, and over-rich food. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 As Vortonitch entered the restaurant, two or three men, and 
 one woman, looked up and nodded, while he nodded back again, 
 smiling. It was good to be here, in this cheerful place; it 
 was good to be hungry, with the smell of wine and food in 
 your nostrils; it was good to be alive. A mood of fine elation, 
 which he was old enough and wise enough to cherish, held 
 him. He did not want to sit down by anyone, talk to anyone 
 but just to feel: such sensations were growing rarer; if 
 ever they vanished completely vanished, and he had moments 
 of fear that would be the end of everything. 
 
 The lady beckoned, with a white hand, rings upon every 
 finger; patted the empty seat at her side. But Vortonitch 
 shook his head, with a gesture of mock propriety: then threw 
 her a light kiss from the tips of his fingers: upon which for 
 though she was not what is called educated, she was wise 
 enough to know when she was not wanted (it was only those 
 in the lowest ranks of the lowest dregs of her profession who 
 lacked this knowledge, or behaved as though they did), she 
 went on with her dessert, spinning it out, peeling and eating a 
 pear, that most delicately flavoured of all fruits, with a ciga- 
 rette in one corner of her poppy-red lips, still hoping that 
 someone might turn up and pay her bill for her. 
 
 It was already late. One by one the diners moved away, 
 mostly in groups, chattering and laughing; for there was a 
 pretty regular clientele at Le Cygne d'Or, and people for the 
 most part foreigners, prone to hold together had got into the 
 way of talking to each other. It was homely, too. Once the 
 rush of dinners was over, before the suppers began, Madame 
 Duval, the wife of the proprietor, and real master of the house, 
 would come in with her mending in her hand, often enough a 
 well-worn sock stretched over it, and talk to any of the late- 
 comers: for the most part of the scandalous rise in prices, 
 though on this particular evening there was something else in 
 her mind. 
 
 A group of four men had been sitting in one corner, finishing 
 their dinner, chatting over the wine, when Vortonitch entered. 
 
 32 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 33 
 
 Apart from himself, they were the last of the regular diners to 
 leave the place, and even then one of them lingered behind, 
 talking, or rather, listening to Madame. 
 
 The room had once been a double one, with folding doors; 
 in the place of these a glass partition now stood half-way 
 across the aperture, some five feet high, and decorated with a 
 painting supposed to depict Etna in full eruption: smoke, 
 fire, human beings or, rather, fragments of arms, legs. 
 trunks, odd heads hurtling through space against a back- 
 ground of bright blue clouds. 
 
 Madame was in an indignant mood, eager to voice her 
 grievance. Only the evening before, a young English under- 
 graduate, dining more wisely than well, had knocked off the 
 head of a bottle of whiskey against the top of Etna, broken the 
 glass, with some inane joke about " Cratur to Crater." 
 
 His party had paid for the damage; handsomely, too 
 Madame saw to this. But, all the same, her anger remained 
 unassuaged. " It was a work of art, monsieur " that was 
 what she said " a work immortal, and who is it can pay for 
 what is immortal ? " 
 
 " A glass-worker would cut a little figure of another man, 
 cheaper still, a red flame, enclose it in lead and insert it where 
 the glass is broken. It would cost perhaps five shillings, and 
 that, Madame, would leave you two pounds fifteen in pocket. 
 It would not pay for the insult to Art, but still Eh ? " 
 
 With a tactful smile and gesture of sympathy and encour- 
 agement, the patient listener had slipped away, and, sitting 
 down opposite to Vortonitch, leant over the table towards 
 him. 
 
 !' Well ? " 
 
 " Well ? " An added sense of that disinclination to talk 
 to talk of anything, above all to talk of that afternoon's 
 doings swept over Vortonitch, though he liked this man. 
 trusted him as much as he ever trusted anyone; looked up to 
 him with a sort of admiration which was yet tempered with 
 patronage. He was wonderful, in many ways wonderful ! 
 There was nothing he was afraid of, there was nothing he 
 would stick at; his placidity was one of the most amazing 
 things which he had ever come across. He was not merely 
 cool, with the steely eye and set jaw of the novelist's hero, 
 but placid, smiling, dimpled actually dimpled. And so 
 ordinary-looking ! Of course this was the " very thing." If 
 life were rendered difficult for a man, by the forces of civilisa- 
 tion, society so difficult, so complicated that it was necessary 
 
34 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 for him to avoid everything which might draw attention to 
 himself what more desirable than that he should be, in his 
 physical person at least, unnoticeable ? But to be podgy, 
 rosy, almost infantile particularly when that round bald 
 head, in itself so like a baby's, happened to be covered with 
 that little round hat of his here, indeed, to the mind of 
 Vortonitch, in himself so dramatic, was a very extravagance 
 of inconspicuousness, so complete that it was little wonder 
 that he allowed his sense of pity, amusement, to flow in upon 
 his admiration. 
 
 If Grobo's appearance was ridiculous, his domesticity was 
 equally so; his adoration for his wife and children, equally 
 ridiculous and equally useful; though, to do the little fellow 
 justice, he never even thought of this. 
 
 His prominent, rather watery blue eyes were full upon 
 Vortonitch's sulky face; neither keen nor watchful, just 
 pleasant, slightly solicitous. 
 
 " You look as if you 'ad the 'eadache, my friend. And 
 what wonder ! The sun 'ave been so 'ot verri 'ot for the 
 time o' year 'ot as 'ell." 
 
 He paused. But as the other man volunteered no reply, 
 sat drumming with his fingers on the table, he went on: 
 
 " There is great excite-e-ment in my 'ouse she 'ave cut 
 two teeth two ! An' 'er only six months old at the top 
 'ere " he indicated the centre of his own upper jaw. " An' 
 both of them together, side by side. My friend, do you 'ear 
 that ? Not like that there Albert, the young good-for-nothing, 
 'oo chopped up 'is all over the shop, keepin' us all awake at 
 nights; the neighbours too, keeping them all awake, getting 
 out their chemises what is it you call it ? shirts ? My wife 
 is right when she say that the girls are the easiest to upbring. 
 But I don't know. There was Lilee but of course she was 
 one twin. What do you think, eh, my friend ? " 
 
 " What the hell are you talking about ? " 
 
 " Mon enfant baby 'er " 
 
 " Oh ! " Why the devil did Grobo play the fool in this 
 fashion ? His English, when he chose, was as good as anyone 
 else's. He would get himself into bad habits, and then there 
 would be all sorts of trouble, thought Vortonitch. Oh, well; 
 he for one was dead tired of the fellow, his engrossment with 
 domesticities. 
 
 He got up roughly, pushing back his chair. " Look here, 
 Grobo; I must go." 
 
 " Yes, yes ! " The little rosy, roundabout man bounced 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 35 
 
 to his feet: " I also we are early people. She is the best of 
 babies, bless 'er 'eart ! but still, you know, never not one 
 entire night's sleep. Ah, but teeth are teeth ! Tch-tch ! " 
 
 He lifted his round felt hat from the table, wiped it round 
 with his sleeve, while the waitress made out the other man's 
 account; then spoke again, with an expression indescribably 
 different from that which he had before worn. 
 
 " Any good ? " 
 
 " Not a damned thing to be seen. Walls, iron gates, iron 
 spikes, guards, spies or so I suspect no means of locating 
 anything. Ach ! I'm sick of it all. A Bastille of a place ! " 
 
 " Something must be done; someone got at." Grobo's 
 rosy lips were pursed so that he looked like a cherubim with 
 an imaginary trumpet. 
 
 " All very well to ' get at ' anyone ! Who'll that bring 
 in, I'd like to know ? " 
 
 '* You're sure there was nothing nobody 'oo you 'ad 
 'opes of ? 'Oo eh ? " 
 
 " Nobody ! Haven't I told you ? " Vortonitch's voice 
 was harsh. He moved brusquely away from the table, scarcely 
 pausing to hand in his bill and money at the pay-desk as he 
 passed. The other man, following him, caught him up at the 
 door, laid a hand upon his arm. 
 
 " I want you to come 'ome with me." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " I want you." 
 
 " What the devil for ? to see the baby's teeth ? " 
 
 "No." The little man added nothing to the monosyl- 
 lable, but there must have been something in his expression 
 or voice, for Paul Vortonitch grumbling, complaining that 
 he had already had " a devil of a day " followed him out of 
 the door, down the street; turning up Charing Cross Road in 
 the direction of Holborn. 
 
 There are a hundred Londons in one: a patchwork of 
 nationalities, morals, manners: Soho, Shoreditch, Limehouse, 
 the West London Docks French, Italians, Greeks, Poles, 
 Chinese, Malays, Negroes. 
 
 The Grobos lived near that " Italy in England," so oddly 
 named Little Britain; near to, but not in it, a trifle further 
 north by west, just off Charterhouse Square. 
 
 By now the moon was up, high in the sky, unclouded and 
 almost completely full, patterning the pavement in a mosaic 
 of shadows from the plane-trees. 
 
 The tall, narrow house had been white, was white now in 
 
36 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 that moonlight by which London is forever at her best, with 
 high, many-paned windows and green outside shutters. 
 
 At one side stood a block of obscure offices, tenanted by 
 people engrossed in the sale of patent medicines; in shady 
 money transactions; in illusionary offers of employment sub- 
 ject to the payment of preliminary fees; in building ventures; 
 in the supply of cups, saucers, and tea-pots with unbreak- 
 able spouts for use in offices, for the army of tea-drinking 
 typists. 
 
 At the other side was a printing business, mainly con- 
 cerned with posters and bills, torn fragments of which eternally 
 strewed the street, trodden into the mud, driven by the wind, 
 banking up the areas with drifts of crude pink and blue, 
 dirty-white. 
 
 Oddly enough, it was the people connected with this 
 establishment, where the machines ran without ceasing, night 
 and day, who complained most bitterly of the sequence of 
 young Grobos, their loud protests against that miserable 
 business of teething. 
 
 If there was ever any man who appeared, almost wantonly, 
 as it were, to scatter hostages before the feet of Fate, it was 
 Grobo: and yet, how proud he was, how happy in his home 
 life ! Amazing that a man who had suffered as he suffered, 
 who beneath his bland, engaging exterior nourished a fierce 
 resentment against society, law, order, a purpose as remorse- 
 less as death itself, should yet have this heart's core sound and 
 sweet as a ripe apple: amazing, yes, almost incredible, were 
 it not so common: the love of home and family combined 
 with a mad dog hatred of all legal control. 
 
 He and his occupied the two top floors; or, rather, they 
 lived in the top floor proper; while he used the attics above 
 it, one large, the other little bigger than a cupboard, as work- 
 shop, store and meeting-place for his friends; these attics being 
 untouched by the general staircase, come at by a flight of steep 
 unbacked steps, leading up out of the Grobos' one living room. 
 
 Mrs. Grobo opened the door; then told them to wait 
 " Someone with you, eh, Carl ? a moment while I light the 
 gas. The children have left they: toys in the passage." 
 There was the spurt of a match, a flare of gas, and the two 
 men entered, while. Mrs. Grobo pushed aside a battered wooden 
 horse and rolled a rubber ball away from under their feet. 
 
 " Asleep, eh ? " questioned Grobo in a stage whisper. 
 
 His wife nodded, fondly, smiling: " I hope so. Ah ! 
 There ! Tut-tut ! " 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 37 
 
 A thin wail came from the room to the right. " Take Mr. 
 Vortonitch in; I will go to her," said Grobo, and tiptoed 
 away; while his wife turned into the living room, which, with 
 the addition of a small dark scullery, served as kitchen, 
 dining room, nursery, study; with a well-worn sofa upon 
 which any belated visitor could be put to sleep. 
 
 A small boy, thin and dark as his mother, with straight 
 sticks of legs, sat at the table, still busied with his books, 
 although it was close upon eleven. By the window the eldest 
 of the family, a girl of twelve, with long fair plaits, leant 
 against the lintel, her mouth a little open, her face ghastly. 
 
 " The heat up here, the sun," said Mrs. Grobo in her tired 
 flat voice; "terrible oh, terrible! coming so early, so 
 suddenly. Lilee, my child, you will be better in bed; when 
 once you are asleep " 
 
 " There is no air anywhere," complained the girl. " I 
 shall be stifled, I ... Oh, Paul, I didn't know it was you; I 
 thought . . . Oh, but I'm tired. I think I ... I ... Oh, 
 dear ! " Her voice trailed off, as though she were too weary 
 to finish her sentence. 
 
 As she moved forward, with her eyes upon Vortonitch, 
 puzzled and appealing, he put out one hand and drew her 
 towards him. 
 
 He was impatient with, almost contemptuous of, Grobo's 
 incessant talk of this family of his; and yet he could not find 
 himself in the midst of it without being touched by them all 
 perhaps, indeed, this was a part-reason for his antagonism 
 towards the little man: he did not want to be touched by 
 such simple, humdrum things: all real happiness was flaming, 
 hectic, wonderful; such a life as that lived by Grobo and his 
 wife was too thickly overlaid with petty worries, anxieties, for 
 any true joy. And yet . . . and yet ... 
 
 " Tired, Lily ? " The child pressed closer and leant her 
 head against his shoulder. As he put an arm about her, he 
 realised her fragility; there seemed to be neither bone nor 
 flesh nor muscle to her, so soft, slender and yielding, like some 
 delicate, soft-fibred plant. 
 
 "Tired? Oh, Paul, I am tired tired tired; and I do 
 so want ' 
 
 "What do you want?" 
 
 " Oh, I don't know; but I want I want I want . . . 
 Oh, something. I feel all oh, going out like a candle, with- 
 out any air with wanting." 
 
 " It's funny, that," broke in the boy at the table, lifting 
 
38 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 his peaked yellow face, lit with immense dark eyes, heavily- 
 marked brows. " She's a silly, always whining like a sick 
 cat. As if one ever got anything by wishing for it ! Working, 
 working, making up one's mind, screwing it up tight that's 
 the only way. But still, she says things by mistake, the 
 silly ! make one think. A candle, now; it does want air 
 she's right there; but all the same, if one blows it too hard it 
 goes out. Why's that, eh, Vortonitch ? Tell me that." 
 Quite lately, this boy of but little over ten years had taken 
 to speaking to his father's friends as though they were his 
 equals, by the surname alone. 
 
 " I don't know. Perhaps it's the force of the air, too much 
 for it, you know." He was stroking Lily's smooth fair hair, 
 parted in the middle, divided into two long plaits. He had 
 seen hair almost that colour only that afternoon; he thought 
 of this, and his touch lingered: 
 
 "That makes me feel better; all purry, like a cat," sighed 
 Lily. " If only " 
 
 " How are we to know, then ? " broke in the boy, in his 
 sharp, persistent way, hard and eager; "to judge what is 
 and what isn't enough of anything, when to stop blowing 
 not only with candles, but . . . oh, everything ! The sort 
 of things father's so sure about, now ? All very well to feel 
 sure, but how can one tell ? I I am certain of nothing, 
 nothing." He spoke like a very old man, who has tried the 
 world and all its ways found them but vanity. " Let me 
 tell you this, comrade: the older I get the more difficult it 
 seems. There's too much, and you take away a little ever so 
 little then there's not enough." 
 
 " Not enough of what ? " queried Vortonitch, hardly 
 thinking what he said, dreaming over that afternoon's walk. 
 Miss Creichton, wondering what her Christian name could be. 
 "Lily" that was a pretty name, that would suit her; and 
 yet, somehow or other, too insipid. 
 
 "Well, take the question of race-suicide, now; birth- 
 decline, and all that ! " The boy spoke loudly, like an 
 orator: of course he heard all sorts of things, repeated what 
 he heard, and yet he used his own mind, put two and two 
 together. " Plainly, it's necessary to regulate the birth- 
 rate " 
 
 " Albert, Albert ! " remonstrated his mother. 
 
 " Well, it is. Look at us, now : there are too many of 
 us. Not enough room, often not enough to eat, all because 
 father " 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 39 
 
 " Albert, I will not have it ! " Mrs. Grobo's voice was 
 suddenly and unexpectedly fierce. 
 
 "Well Stein says " 
 
 " I will not hear what Stein says. Go on with thy task 
 at once; do you hear me ? " 
 
 " I believe I know what it is," said Lily, as her brother 
 bent over his books. 
 
 " What, dear ? " Vortonitch pressed his cheek against 
 the smooth fair head as he spoke. 
 
 " Makes me feel so aching; so so funny. It's because I'm 
 a twin, and the other twin's dead, and there's only sorterways 
 half of me left. I ache here." She put a small white hand to 
 her breast. " I ache here as though I were all empty. It's 
 horrid ! I wish I didn't feel like dial I wish " 
 
 " It's anaemia," said Mrs. Grobo, in answer to Vortonitch's 
 anxious glance. " The doctor says that she ought to be in the 
 country; there is not enough red blood; the heart and lungs 
 work too slowly, faintly. Perhaps when the spring's really 
 
 over " Her lips were folded anxiously, her brooding, 
 
 tender eyes were on her little daughter, resting so languidly 
 against the young man's shoulder. " It is difficult to say; 
 at that age there are all sorts of things " 
 
 A door into the living room had opened while she spoke., 
 and a small fat girl of about two, dimpling, rosy, her eyes still 
 bright and shining with sleep, appeared there, enframed in the 
 darkness behind her, her over-long nightgown gathered up in 
 one dimpled hand, showing a fat knee, the curve of a plump 
 thigh. She smiled sideways at Vortonitch, displaying more 
 dimples, a double row of tiny white teeth in a gipsy-brown 
 face; then ran to her mother, clambered on her knee. 
 
 Without a word, Mrs. Grobo enfolded her, continued her 
 darning, with both arms round her. After a few minutes' 
 pause, a boy, slightly older, perhaps five, shyer and more self- 
 conscious, followed her; sat down on the hearth rug and 
 began playing with the cat. 
 
 From further along the passage came the sound of an 
 infant whimpering, a man's voice raised in an odd flat chant. 
 
 " They ought to be asleep by now, you know, Mrs. Grobo," 
 said Vortonitch. " That's why the children you see in the 
 parks here, the upper-class children, look so well. They're 
 packed off to bed at six seven at the latest." 
 
 " I know, I know. But here it is always too hot or too 
 cold; there is no quiet people coming and going all the 
 time. Grobo adores them, but he does not understand. 
 
40 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 To-night, for instance, the baby was asleep. This place is 
 too small for quiet; we all live too close together. It is bad 
 for children; as Lily says, there is not enough air; they see 
 too much, hear too much. It makes them old before their 
 time. Bad ? Yes late hours and all and yet not altogether 
 bad. What is ? It keeps them awake in a way those children 
 of whom you speak are never awake, never will be awake. 
 Besides, it's in their blood; in Grobo's blood, and above all 
 in mine: this wakefulness." 
 
 She spoke with a sort of slow passion. Vortonitch knew 
 very little of her apart from the fact that she was a Russian, 
 and had been, with her parents, in Siberia; she never joined 
 in the talk between her husband and his friends, took any 
 part in their plans; he had never even heard her express 
 herself as she did now. One might have been tempted to 
 regard her as a mere housewife, mother of children, if it had 
 not been for that air of tense, brooding tragedy manifest 
 beneath her tenderness. 
 
 " God knows, if we'd not been wakeful we'd not be here 
 now," she added. 
 
 The sounds at the further end of the passage ceased, and 
 Grobo, who had taken off his boots, came padding in, the 
 infant in his arms, another child just able to toddle hanging 
 on to his coat that long-tailed coat he was so fond of and 
 which went so oddly with the little round hat. 
 
 " My treasure, they're both awake. I am in the soup I 
 am disgraced ! And now now, of all times, when I 'ad just 
 been telling my friend here how she was an angel." His voice, 
 his aspect, was ludicrously deprecating, mortified. 
 
 "Give her to me; maybe she's hungry. And Lilee, child 
 take Joseph back to his bed." 
 
 Moving away from Paul's side, Lily raised the toddler in 
 her slender arms and went from the room, staggering all side- 
 ways; while her mother, without disturbing the other child, 
 now asleep upon her knee, settled her youngest offspring, 
 partly upon the top of it, partly within a crook of her own 
 arm; undid the front of her dress and bent forward until the 
 tiny pouting lips closed round the nipple of her breast; then 
 picked up the sock she was darning, and went on with it. 
 
 " Albert, it is time you were in bed. Put your books by, 
 and take Charles with you. . . . No, no, little one; leave 
 pussy; he, too, wishes to sleep." Rocking gently to and 
 fro with her double burden, the mother directed her little 
 regiment, plying her needle. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 41 
 
 Grobo was gazing at them. " A picture, a picture ! " he 
 said. " I did 'er a wrong, the poor little one. She was 
 'ungry, that's all; 'ungry. 'Er mother knew. Trust a 
 mother for that ! " There was a smiling beatitude in his 
 face, which vanished as he turned towards the other man. 
 
 " Now, if you will come up with me, eh ? I won't keep 
 you long, but I want to show you ... In case anything 
 should 'appen to me. One never knows." 
 
 He took a light, and they mounted to the attics above. 
 What he had to speak of, show, took longer than they had 
 anticipated, and half-way through Vortonitch ran downstairs 
 in search of a fresh candle. 
 
 Mrs. Grobo was sitting where they had left her, with the 
 two children on her knees. One arm encircled them both; 
 her head was bowed forward upon the hand of the other, with 
 the half-darned sock still stretched out upon it. At first 
 sight Vortonitch thought that she was asleep, but as he 
 moved towards the cupboard, where he had been told that 
 he would find a candle, she raised her eyes and looked at him. 
 
 An amazing glance ! One thinks ol patience apart from 
 what is required for actual work as something but half alive, 
 like resignation; but here was a patience vital beyond words, 
 infinite, unwavering, almost godlike. 
 
 What was she waiting for, so surely, this overworked mother 
 of many children ? 
 
 Paul Vortonitch pondered over this after he got back to 
 his own rooms. The day had been so full that he found it 
 difficult to settle to sleep: Woolwich, that obese white-faced 
 man who had dogged his footsteps Ah, he had meant to ask 
 Grobo about him, forgotten the fair-haired girl in creamy- 
 v.hite, swinging the pink silk jacket and tennis racquet in her 
 hand as she walked; Grobo and his family; the contents of 
 those cupboards, lining the side of the smaller attic, which the 
 little man had unlocked and shown to him: rows upon rows 
 of round tins like nothing so much as a careful housewife's 
 reserve store; all that ever-ready, modern paraphernalia for 
 the preservation of life, all alike ran to and fro through his 
 mind. 
 
 The preservation of life ! Ye gods ! They were even 
 labelled "Coffee," "Cocoa," "Raspberry Jam," "Golden 
 Syrup," " Condensed Milk," " Tinned Fruits," etc. And yet 
 and yet ... Talk of " death in the pot " ! 
 
 How different Grobo had been then; the doting father and 
 husband completely vanished. Nothing apart from illness or 
 
42 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 extreme old age could greatly change his outward appearance 
 those cherubic curves, that funny little roundabout figure; 
 but as he was then and there, the mind of him, that fiercely- 
 concentrated, remorseless mind, as he had been before, many 
 times, as his whole record showed him to be: all this ren- 
 dered his artless appearance in some way dreadful, an alto- 
 gether damning commentary upon all judgment of character 
 by outward appearance; a complete undermining of all trust 
 in one's fellows. 
 
 Running his mind back over Grobo's past life, counting 
 over those things which had made him trusted, admired, aye, 
 and feared, even by those in authority, those who were far, 
 far above Vortonitch, above himself above those who were 
 again, and trebly, in authority above them one's very soul 
 shrank, as the flesh shrinks and shrivels back from a burn: 
 "An arch-devil, among hypocrites; a very tiger in cruelty, 
 lust of blood," one might have said. And yet one would 
 have been wrong. He was not a hypocrite, in anything apart 
 from the fact that he kept his business to himself, as all really 
 good business men do; his simplicity was real, his family 
 affections were intensely real. In most ways he was not even 
 cruel; not for the world would he have tormented an animal, 
 said anything to hurt the feelings of any poor person. 
 
 It was just Ah well, some people are white, and some 
 are black; and some are grey, lighter or darker, uniform or 
 oddly patched. Carl Grobo was black and white, clear-cut in 
 two; without the faintest merging of one into the other in 
 any single direction. 
 
 What was it he had said ? " The dockyards ; the Arsenal ; 
 the military academies: Woolwich first, then Sandhurst; then 
 Portsmouth Dartmouth root and branch, all militarism, all 
 tyrants, and the brood of tyrants " 
 
 " The worst of it all is the amount of injured, maimed . . . 
 Beastly, that ! " was what Vortonitch himself said. He did 
 not so much mind suffering if it were well away out of sight; 
 but that day his own father was killed the day so many 
 innocents suffered with him ! phew ! Horrible ! 
 
 " Ah, there you're wrong," cried Grobo. " Killing is 
 good; for some people there's nothing else possible; they 
 must be put out of the way once and for all. But for others 
 . . . The dead are forgotten; it is the maimed, the disfigured 
 who put the fear of God into their fellows. There is a 'ospital 
 not far out of London for the treatment of soldiers who are 
 suffering from facial disfigurements, wounds, burns. I 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 43 
 
 managed to get shown round it once, not so long ago: I 
 wanted to see plan. Ah, the dreams that it brought to me, 
 my friend ! 'Ow I fed my eyes, my imagination ! What a 
 vista spread, stretching out before me ! If every crowned 
 'ead, if every titled man and woman, every pot-bellied 
 profiteer, wire-pulling politician, could be made to look like 
 that like that, thought I, they would be of more use to us 
 alive than dead. Look 'ere, mon ami; I tell you there was 
 one man . . ." 
 
 He had paused, had actually licked his lips, before going 
 off into such details that Vortonitch had retched; been glad 
 to run downstairs in search of that extra candle. 
 
 When he returned, Grobo's flight of fancy had ceased, and 
 he was practical again, going over his stores with the other 
 man; making a list of everything, supplying him with the 
 most exact instructions, for all the world like some petty 
 tradesman busy over his stock-taking. 
 
 " What about you and your family if the whole damned 
 thing went off, when you were not expecting it ? " There 
 was malice in Paul Vortonitch's question as he prepared to 
 follow his host back into the lower rooms. 
 
 " You forget ; the explosion works upwards, not down- 
 wards," answered Grobo placidly. 
 
 " But if supposing something did happen ? " 
 
 The other swung round to him at this; his rosy face 
 purplish, his blue eyes half out of his head. 
 
 " And do you think you, you, my God ! knowing the 
 world as you do do you think as 'ow I'd not rather 'ave them 
 dead, blown to bits, than left alone at the mercy of the world 
 a civilisation in comparison with which the wolves on the 
 Russian steppes are kind, gentle, humane ! " 
 
 That ridiculous accent was gone. He used it in public, in 
 moments of relaxation; but he also used it among his children, 
 in the bosom of his family, so it was in no way an armour 
 perhaps more like the loose old coat which a business man 
 slips into during his moments of leisure; easy, homely 
 simply that, and yet as baffling as everything else so super- 
 ficially simple in this strange personality. 
 
 When he talked to Paul Vortonitch, up in that attic so 
 pregnant with horrors, he might have been a man of almost 
 any nationality. But, after all, what nationality was he ? 
 Vortonitch had no idea; no one had any idea, unless it might 
 be those who were the real wire-pullers, so far away at the 
 back of everything that their very names were unknown: as 
 
44 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 unknown as the origin, the source of the appellation of this 
 mysterious personage. 
 
 Grobo -Grobo ! What sort of a name was that ? No 
 name at all, devoid of meaning in connection with any known 
 language. 
 
 Someone had once declared him to be a Jew, a German 
 Jew. But with that nose like a soft dab of putty, how was it 
 possible ? No, no; he was, and, as it seemed, would forever 
 remain, a mystery swathed round in that inimitable panoply 
 of simplicity; the more baffling in that it was a real, integral 
 part of himself. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 " WHAT'S happened to Laura ? " 
 
 It seemed as though summer, over-confident and proud, 
 had met with some sort of a rebuff, drawn back, sulky, dis- 
 comfited. It was less than a fortnight since Laura Creichton 
 had played tennis at the Hendersons', run to catch the bus 
 at the bottom of Shooters' Hill; and yet it might have been 
 thought that here was the onset of autumn, with chilling 
 wind, scudding drift of rain. 
 
 " It almost seems as though the days were getting shorter 
 instead of longer. I said to Cook, talking about the price of 
 
 coal, this morning, ' Now that the winter's coming ' You 
 
 should have seen her stare. But do you wonder ? " 
 
 " Wonder " that the cook stared, " wonder " that it 
 seemed like autumji. Gerald Stratton, sitting, talking to Lady 
 Creichton in that long white drawing room built for an 
 orangery during the Regent's day, when there was a " mode " 
 for such things running out at one side of The House, full 
 in the eye of the sun, when it was pleased to shine, found 
 himself wondering on the top of that wonder regarding 
 Laura why it was that women had such oddly-forked minds, 
 his own forking every bit as oddly. 
 
 " How do you mean, ' What's happened to Laura ? ' 
 went on Lady Creichton smoothly. " Fancy a fire in June ! 
 isn't it an amazing climate ? She's in, isn't she ? I thought 
 I heard you speaking to her in the hall. . . . Oh, tea ! What 
 a blessing ! " 
 
 " Oh yes yes I did speak to her, for a moment." 
 
 " Then what do you mean ? . . . Oh, Parker, you must 
 get another table. That little thing of mine, you know Gerry, 
 went to the Blind Asylum weeks, oh, weeks and weeks 
 ago " 
 
 " What's that ? " 
 
 She caught his puzzled, enquiring glance. " Oh, the 
 basket-stand for the bread-and-butter. They promised it in 
 three days, and they've not sent it back yet. Thank you, 
 Parker; that will do nicely; and will you tell Miss Laura ? 
 
 45 
 
46 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 . . . Perhaps she's got a cold, Gerry. Quiet, you mean, 
 eh?" 
 
 " Yes, perhaps. Oh, I don't know, but somehow different." 
 
 "My dear man, there's nothing like a cold for making 
 anyone different. Cream ? sugar without cream, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes, please. Still . . . Oh, but there're other things apart 
 from colds, you know, Lady Creichton. Love, for instance." 
 
 " That child ! Why, she's not properly out yet. I'd 
 been wondering about the Drawing-Room this year, Gerald; 
 but I think I'll wait; she is so young for her age; and with 
 the Court in mourning half-mourning, but still mourning 
 and all. ... It does seem dreadful, doesn't it ? So nearly 
 related to our own Royal Family, and so very popular, cut off 
 like that, without any warning." She veered like a skidding 
 motor-car toward the topic which had engrossed people's 
 minds for the last few days the assassination at Bucharest 
 then broke off, peering into the tea-pot. 
 
 "Oh, I don't know about that." Stratton crossed one 
 knee over the other and ran a long slender hand down an 
 immaculate grey silk-clad ankle. "It appears that there was 
 some sort of a warning sent from England, too." 
 
 " From England ? But what " 
 
 "Oh, well, of course it mayn't have had anything to do 
 with it, really, you know. Just a photograph . . ." 
 
 " What photograph ? " 
 
 " The photograph of a man, one of our soldiers, who . . . 
 Oh, terribly disfigured, smashed up in the war." 
 
 " But what did he want to send it for ? One of our 
 soldiers, and the Prince of ... A scone while they're hot, 
 Gerry ? " 
 
 " He didn't send it, poor beggar ! Why, they wouldn't 
 have even shown it to him, for anything on earth: it was 
 stolen from a file." 
 
 "What file?" 
 
 " The hospital file, the hospital where where the man is." 
 
 " Does he know ? " 
 
 "God forbid!" 
 
 "But, Gerry, I don't understand; what could that have 
 to do with an outrage of this sort ? " 
 
 "There was something written on it. I forget the exact 
 words, but something tantamount to saying that if he did not 
 abdicate, he might find himself like . . . Oh, well, like that." 
 
 "Well, he didn't abdicate. ... I wonder why Laura 
 doesn't come in to tea ? I admire him for that. Harry 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 47 
 
 always says, if people once allow themselves to be terrorised 
 they must be prepared for anything anything!" 
 
 "No, he didn't abdicate, and now . . . Poor chap, one 
 must be thankful he is dead!" 
 
 "Was he . . .?" Lady Creichton paused, her mild eyes 
 wide with interrogation. 
 
 "Terribly, terribly! And it wasn't meant to kill; they 
 realised that from the way it was thrown." 
 
 "Ah, well, it's a mercy we don't have things like that in 
 England somehow, we English are different. That's what 
 I thought, Gerry; you see, Marjorie's two years younger 
 than Laura: it would never do to bring them both out 
 together people seem to take so much more notice of Mar- 
 jorie. But as it is two years, and Laura is so very young for 
 her age with the Court in mourning and all, and everything 
 so dreadfully dear. ... I only hope they'll catch the wretch 
 who threw that dreadful bomb-thing. . . ." 
 
 " Or the people who made it." 
 
 "Some more cake? No? Nothing you're sure? . . . 
 Of course, what ought to be done with such people is to blow 
 them up with their own bombs," Lady Creichton ran on, in 
 her vague monotone. " I might have presented her this year, 
 but then, again, I mightn't." 
 
 "It wouldn't do any good, that's the worst of it," said 
 Stratton. It was impossible to keep pace with Lady Creich- 
 ton 's veerings, and his mind was, for the moment, upon the 
 tragedy in the Near East: the memory of another such tragedy 
 which had led to such far-reaching and disastrous ends. 
 " There's always someone ready to replace a man who dies for 
 a cause, however mistaken. What one wants is to get at the very 
 root of the organisation; better still, at the mind of the people 
 who pin their faith upon, risk their lives for, such things lay 
 them open to the clear light and air. Because they are enemies 
 of a set society, underground, circuitous, they are dangerous, 
 wrong. But they can't be altogether wrong, or they would 
 betray one another. If we could only try to understand each 
 other, we might find that it is their methods alone which are 
 wrong; that our aspirations are, in the bulk, the same. We 
 all, I suppose, mean well." 
 
 Stratton came to a pause with a rather sad little laugh. 
 That "meaning well" what could be more melancholy? 
 that laugh of his, too, puzzling and exasperating his fellows: 
 the laugh of a man who condones, without any special hope 
 for humanity. He spoke now as one who expected nothing 
 
48 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 from his listener. Indeed, excepting for the fact that he was 
 sane enough not to talk to himself, there might not have been 
 one; for he was simply talking out this matter which had 
 engrossed his mind for the last two days, in fact, ever since 
 he had heard of the outrage; turning it this way and that, 
 endeavouring to get some fresh light upon it. Brutal as it 
 sounds, it was not the one outrage, even the death of one 
 prince, the mind of the one individual who perpetrated it, of 
 a group of individuals, of a single nation, which pre-occupied 
 him, filled him with foreboding; but the predisposition to 
 such things which he and some of his more precocious friends 
 in the Government and Secret Service, among the highly-placed 
 police officials, realised as rampant throughout the world 
 the predisposition towards, the tolerance of, slaughter, that 
 rashest cutting of any Gordian knot. 
 
 Some years earlier, a curious incident if one may call 
 murder by such a name had taken place upon the long, nar- 
 row landing-stage running out into the bay at Valona. 
 
 A man, generally suspected of leanings towards the Turks, 
 had been standing there, waiting for his steamer, amid a 
 crowd of country-folk, for it was market-day. Just as he 
 was preparing to embark, a well-known Albanian gentleman 
 and patriot had walked up to him and, without a word of 
 warning, shot him through the head, shooting downwards from 
 above, so that there should be no danger of anyone else being 
 injured, then turned, and walked coolly away, up the long 
 road to the town. 
 
 No one had done anything, said anything, interfered with 
 him in any sort of way. Hearing of it from one of those 
 Dutch officers who had been called upon to help form an 
 Albanian Army, himself an eye-witness of the affair, it was 
 not so much the crime itself that had struck Stratton as the 
 unexcited, non-committal attitude of the crowd; the fact that 
 there would have been more excitement shown over the death 
 of a dog. 
 
 "A thing like that could not happen, in that way, in 
 England; it is purely Oriental." That was what he had said, 
 just as Lady Creichton now declared: 
 
 " It's a mercy we don't have things like that in England." 
 
 "As yet, as yet," added Stratton to himself. For that 
 was one lesson out of many which he had learnt from the war : 
 "Nothing was impossible; only just round the corner, as it 
 were." 
 
 " After all, terrorism is not an end, but a hoped-for means 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 49 
 
 to some end. There must be a reason for it all: some definite 
 aim, as they Nihilists, Anarchists, and people like that 
 see it." 
 
 "It's just wickedness, that's what it is; nothing more or 
 less," declared Lady Creichton, with sudden decision. " There's 
 no meaning or sense either in wickedness." 
 
 "But there are different sorts of wickedness. Political 
 crimes like this for instance: they're not the same as burg- 
 laries, murder for personal ends. They have some sort of 
 ideal at the back of them; that's what makes them so difficult. 
 The worst of it all is that no man can see his own age clearly. 
 What's treason now may yet come to be regarded as the highest 
 form of patriotism. Every generation gets things at a fresh 
 angle, be sure of that. We shouldn't have a statue of Crom- 
 well in the front of the Houses of Parliament, Abraham Lin- 
 coln facing Westminster Abbey, if they didn't." 
 
 " I don't see what Abraham Lincoln has to do with throw- 
 ing bombs, and all that," remarked Lady Creichton, with great 
 good sense; thinking that it was no wonder other men, even 
 those of his own party, spoke of Gerald Stratton as a "cold- 
 blooded visionary." 
 
 "The emancipation of slaves I suppose it's what we're 
 all after, more or less; if we think of, try to think for, our 
 fellow-creatures in any sort of way." 
 
 " Oh, well, I don't know, I'm sure. One doesn't know 
 what to think; everything seems so different to what it used 
 to be," answered Lady Creichton, in a confused way. She was 
 fond of Stratton, whom she had known all her life, as a little 
 boy when she was a big girl; but for all that, she was unable 
 to understand him. She herself slid aside from what was 
 difficult, while it seemed as though he went out of his way to 
 meet it; the disconcerting part of the whole thing being that, 
 having met it, he walked round and round it until he came to 
 the conclusion that it was no difficulty after all; or, rather, 
 that if you looked at it from one side it was perfectly right, 
 natural and easily understood; though, looking at it from the 
 other, you might have been inclined to condemn. 
 
 " It all depends on how you look at things." 
 
 That was what he said. It was like that loose assertion 
 that morality is nothing more than a question of latitude and 
 longitude; or that other "Orthodoxy is my doxy, hetero- 
 doxy is another man's doxy." The sort of thing that did not 
 do you any good, gave people an uneasy feeling that you were 
 difficult to understand. 
 
50 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 No wonder they said, " Stratton's all right in his way, but 
 he's got no real policy !" A wider judgment than Lady 
 Creichton's condemned him here; for he was cursed with 
 that sort of disposition which sees all round every question. 
 If he could have cut his brain in half, compassed bigotry, 
 seen nothing but his own path, his own well-rolled, nicely- 
 gravelled, turf -bordered front drive in front of him, his future 
 as Prime Minister with his family traditions, his talent was 
 assured. As it was, he owed his place to the fact that some 
 one man of his name had always been in the Cabinet; added 
 to the indisputable fact that the way he had of seeing all 
 round, over and beneath things, though a nuisance in England, 
 could prove itself a very useful quality in dealing with foreign 
 affairs; when it might be necessary to take into account other 
 views than one's own: not that it was often done; or, indeed, 
 regarded as quite quite the thing. 
 
 " Why, here's the sun ! " exclaimed Lady Creichton. " It 
 was growing so dark, one imagined it was the end of the day; 
 and really it's only just five! But of course, it's partly the 
 cedar. I'm always telling Harry . . . Ah, there you are at 
 last. My dear, what have you been doing?" she broke off, 
 as her elder daughter entered the room. 
 
 " Level-fronted as the dawn " that was the thought which 
 came to Stratton. 
 
 " I got wet, and had to change." 
 
 "Where on earth had you been?" 
 
 " Only for a walk, mother; nowhere in particular, at least. 
 Have you both finished tea?" 
 
 "You seem to be always going walks, now." 
 
 " Oh, I don't know one must have some sort of exercise." 
 
 "Did you meet anyone?" Lady Creichton had taken up 
 her knitting, and shot out this question in the midst of her 
 counting. Stratton, who had risen, and now stood in front 
 of tbe wood fire, was surprised to see that Laura changed 
 colour; a sudden flare of delicate pink, and then she was pale 
 again. 
 
 "Oh, any amount of people running in from the rain, 
 scurrying along, looking so funny, like shining beetles, with 
 their umbrellas and mackintoshes. But I suppose they'll all 
 be crawling out again now it's stopped. The sun's shining 
 like anything; the cedar-tree keeps it off this room, but it's 
 lovely, and everything smells so fresh and sweet." 
 
 Stratton had half-turned, was examining the little orna- 
 ments on the mantelshelf; to all appearances engrossed. He 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 51 
 
 had never known Laura his special favourite attempt any- 
 thing like subterfuge before. And this ! Well, it was 
 
 so childish, so palpable that it seemed almost indecent to look 
 at her; impossible to look without betraying some amusement 
 at the transparency of her pretence of being at ease. 
 
 "Some boy, I suppose," he thought; then realised that 
 he had no liking for the idea. Laura with a sweetheart! 
 Laura, who had sat upon his knee, put her arms round his 
 neck, bestowed rare, shy kisses upon his cheek, his sleek, 
 shining head "Years and years, hundreds of years ago," as 
 she would have said, with indignant disclaimer the best 
 part of a lifetime, for her, but for him such a very short 
 while back. 
 
 Ah, well ! some lucky youngster would be coming in for all 
 that now, he supposed. Then, catching her reflection in the 
 mirror, he saw that the girl was looking at him appealingly. 
 while Lady Creichton trickled out question after question 
 between her " Purl three, plain three." Merely for the sake 
 of something to say, poor innocent; something as far as 
 possible removed from his own rather alarming conversation, 
 and yet none the less difficult for her daughter. For there 
 was something Laura did not want to tell. . . . Ah, yes; that 
 was plain enough. 
 
 " I wonder would you come ut in the garden when 
 you've finished your tea? I'm like you, Lolly; I love to 
 smell things after the rain." 
 
 "Rather! Now! No, I don't want any more tea, really!" 
 There was the intensest relief in her tone, in her springy step 
 as she passed through the hall and down the terrace steps 
 at his side. " Stratty " was always "safe and comfortable," 
 she thought; there was something in his quiet, considered 
 ways, the fact that, though he never asked questions, he gave 
 anything she might say the full benefit of his consideration, 
 which was balm to her eager and uncertain youth. There 
 was none of that, "Oh, it's only Laura!" with Gerald Strat- 
 ton; and a man of note, too "in the Cabinet." "My friend 
 in the Cabinet," how grand it sounded! She liked that; 
 liked the man himself even better, would have liked him what- 
 ever he was; all the more for some appeal to her pity; for 
 that was her way. 
 
 "Come and sniff the lilacs." She slipped her hand into 
 his arm as they moved towards the long grassy path with the 
 tall limes and lilac blossoms, overweighted with moisture, at 
 either side of them; while Stratton himself became suddenly 
 
52 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 and definitely aware that, whatever there might be between 
 her and "the boy," there had been no caress, however tenta- 
 tive, scarcely so much as a touching of hands, or he would not 
 have felt this friendly, childish pressure upon his own arm: 
 Laura was too fine a creature for that, would have drawn 
 herself apart, kept apart, for a while at least, feeling herself 
 sanctified. 
 
 He was right, too. There was a bond of some sort; no 
 mistake about that; had been, indeed, from that very first 
 day: the day of that ridiculous entanglement with Woolwich. 
 For of course that was what had happened: they had met 
 again, and there was a very definite " Someone " established 
 a boyish-looking person, too, but by no means that sort of 
 boy, of the Philip Henderson type, as visualised by Gerald 
 Stratton and all with scarcely a word said, Laura's hands 
 tightly clasped round the crook of her umbrella, torn by the 
 wind, dragging her forward with it. 
 
 She had gone for her walk, though it had already begun to 
 rain, driven out by the restlessness which had possessed her 
 all the week. She was certain that she would not see him; 
 told herself, as she had done again and again, that she did 
 not want to see him; was nevertheless bitterly disappointed, 
 horribly ashamed of herself for this very disappointment, 
 every day that she did not see him; thinking that the very 
 moment she went in at her own front door, he might be coming 
 out of Blackheath station or stepping off a bus. 
 
 Of course it was all very dreadful even more, degrading 
 to go out, racing about the village and Heath, winged with the 
 inexplicable, burning desire to meet a man: a man to whom 
 she had never been so much as introduced. 
 
 The realisation of all this was forever at the back of her 
 mind. She would poke it away out of sight, and fare forth: 
 and then, every day the same thing happened. Quite sud- 
 denly she would be overcome with a sense of horror at her own 
 enormity, and bolt home with burning cheeks, telling herself 
 how thankful she was, oh, how thankful ! that she had not met 
 Vortonitch; keeping on telling hejself this until she reached 
 her own doorstep, and then finding herself overcome by a 
 perfectly sickening sense of flatness and loss, an inability 
 to imagine what she could possibly do with the rest of the 
 day. 
 
 This very afternoon she had been scurrying back to 
 safety, the wind and rain in her face, her navy-blue waterproof 
 flattened out in front and billowing at the back, when a bus 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 53 
 
 had come dashing by, so close that it had covered her with 
 yellowish mud. 
 
 She had drawn back, cross and half scared, and then 
 scurried on again, had not even glanced up. And yet that was 
 the bus; for that was the way things happened. 
 
 How did he know her name? She thought of this in the 
 garden with Gerald Stratton the safe, quiet garden, and 
 Stratty, as they called him, with his long, smooth-shaven face, 
 rather hollow cheeks and long chin, his almost too delicate 
 skin, his air of perfect breeding, his absolutely right clothes; 
 bending a little towards her in that kind way he had, and 
 saying, "Well, Lolly, and how's life treating you nowa- 
 days?" 
 
 She raised both hands and pressed them to her cheeks, 
 still burning. There were shining laurels beneath the limes 
 and amid the lilacs: how lovely it would have been to press 
 her face in among their wet leaves, with the raindrops lying 
 so clear upon them! How did he know her name? She had 
 heard quick footsteps behind her and a voice calling: 
 
 "Miss Creichton! Miss Creichton!" 
 
 Well, come to that, how did she know who it was calling, 
 without turning her head; not only knowing, but feeling it 
 through and through her, a vibration, something throbbing, 
 and wild like a bird? 
 
 " I thought I was never going to see you again." He had 
 said that. She had not even looked at him, kept her face and 
 eyes turned the other way; she remembered that now, walking 
 with Gerry, not looking at him either, because it seemed 
 impossible to meet anyone's eye quite frankly, as she used 
 to do. 
 
 He oh, no, not Stratton! had asked if she ever came up 
 to town, and she had answered confusedly, " Sometimes 
 but always on Fridays, of course, because of my singing 
 lessons." 
 
 He had questioned her as to the hour, whether she went 
 up alone or accompanied; and she had answered like a child, 
 a shy, docile child. She was angry with herself now, but at 
 the time there had seemed no other way. 
 
 One of her aunts was an authority upon the subject of 
 men; and her great saying was, "Follow, and they flee; 
 flee, and they follow." How mean that seemed; how 
 unkind! But, all the same, there was, without doubt, some 
 sort of a happy medium. How would Miss Farquharson have 
 behaved under such circumstances? It seemed that she was 
 
54 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 forever trying to model herself upon this superfine lady, and it 
 irritated her, for she did not really admire her, wish to be 
 like her. 
 
 Now Mr. Stratton was, in his turn, asking her when she 
 would be coming up to town again; talking of tea on the 
 Terrace. 
 
 "After your next singing lesson, eh, Lolly?" 
 
 "Oh no, I can't not . . ." She stumbled badly, 
 recovering herself every bit as badly. " I mean I it's 
 Fridays, you know, and you always want to get away early 
 on Fridays, don't you?" 
 
 In her distress she raised her eyes to his face; there was 
 nothing she could tell him, and yet she wanted his help, for 
 she was puzzled, frightened, with that sort of feeling which 
 comes to a person running down a very steep hill, exhilarated, 
 excited, and yet fearful of not being able to stop. Her full, 
 soft mouth, with those delicately tinted lips, was folded even 
 more wistfully than usual, her eyes dilated so as to look 
 almost black. 
 
 " She might be a beauty, would be a beauty, for any man 
 she loved," thought Stratton: and then, "If the fool didn't 
 put out the light with too much blowing upon it." For she 
 was like that: there was beauty in her delicate colouring, 
 the springing curves of her; but far above this was that 
 luminous beauty of personality, that self, concerning which 
 she was so mistrustful. Stratton remembered having seen 
 alabaster lamps in Italy, fine as she was, with the light 
 shining through them; lovely things, but . . . Oh, hang it 
 all! so easily broken. 
 
 " Laura, I want you to promise me something. If you're 
 ever in any sort of difficulty that you don't care to submit to 
 a family conclave, come and tell me about it; let me help 
 you." 
 
 " I think . . ." The girl spoke slowly, hesitatingly, the 
 colour flooding her cheeks. " I think that I that I would 
 always do that; that you're you're the only person I could 
 tell things to, things I felt very much . . ." She hesitated 
 here, so long that Stratton half thought she had come to the 
 end of her sentence ; then picked it up again : " If there was 
 ever anything to tell." 
 
 "Laura, Laura! Hullo, Stratty!" Marjorie was hailing 
 them from the terrace. " Oh, Laura, I've had such a spill 
 broken my own bike now. The roads about here the limit! 
 Rotten luck!" 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 55 
 
 "Oh, rotten luck!" Laura called back, in her old way of 
 adapting herself to her younger, more noisily dominant sister, 
 so afraid of being thought old-fashioned, proper; and then, 
 swinging back, taking a firm stand upon an attitude which 
 Stratton realised as new, secretly applauding, "Rotten luck 
 you call it! I call it beastly careless, to be able to touch 
 nothing, do nothing, without a breakage of some sort or 
 another." 
 
 Mar j one shrugged her shoulders; but they were drawing 
 nearer to each other, and Gerald Stratton realised that, shrug 
 as she might, the other girl was not altogether surprised at 
 such a tone. 
 
 So this was not the beginning of Laura's self-assertion. 
 Someone was backing her, bolstering her up; or was it that 
 she had, by chancing upon someone even more timid than 
 herself, found the self-reliance which she had always lacked? 
 
 The painstaking, far-seeing, intelligence of the Cabinet 
 Minister, detaching itself from the actual presence of this girl 
 of scarcely eighteen, drew back and circled slowly round, 
 balancing all he knew of her, her character and environment, 
 against all he knew of the world: taking a long and careful 
 survey, as he might have done of any international compli- 
 cation. 
 
 "It's not a boy!" That thought came to him with a 
 flash of supreme insight. "She wouldn't be so set up, so 
 suddenly secure from that chit's shafts, under the inspiration 
 of a mere boy." 
 
 " I don't know what's come to Lolly," Marjorie was 
 complaining. " She snaps one's head off one nowadays ! " 
 
 "Oh, well, my dear Marjorie, I must say I should imagine 
 that yours is pretty secure." 
 
 There was a gentle malice in his voice. " Stratton can be 
 damned nasty when he likes " ; that's what they said of him, 
 and Marjorie Creichton exasperated him to a point where he 
 found it difficult to be anything else; while that faculty for 
 reading character, seeing all round everything, gave him an 
 almost uncanny insight, which he was quite human enough to 
 use, into the weaknesses of his fellow-creatures; and Marjorie's 
 inclination to stumpiness, her short, thick neck, was a sore 
 point with her, as he well knew. 
 
 She put up her hand now, touched herself under her chin: 
 
 " Oh, well, anyhow, it's screwed on the right way," she 
 said, with a toss of her head. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 IT was very soon after this, a mere matter of hours, that 
 Gerald Stratton might have found more food for thought in 
 watching Carl Grobo instruct a tyro in the whole art and 
 pastime of dominoes, during that brief interval when the staff 
 of Le Cygne d'Or draws breath betwixt late dinners and early 
 suppers. 
 
 From the very beginning, however, it had seemed that 
 Grobo's heart and soul were bent upon the task in hand, while 
 his pupil was allowing his mind to be diverted by something 
 which hurt and rankled, and which he was still unable to let 
 go; something far removed from the game of dominoes, the 
 restaurant, the processes of digestion. 
 
 This indifferent tyro was one of those men who might have 
 been described as " clever-looking," were it not that the long, 
 slightly convex upper lip betrayed for any student of 
 character a fatal obstinacy, mingled with a still more fatal 
 and blind conceit; a self-made man, the foreman of one of 
 the largest departments of an immense establishment for 
 turning out the ready-made clothing of uniformed Government 
 officials endeavouring by a conformity of garment to induce 
 an equal conformity of mind which abuts upon the river in 
 the neighbourhood of Pimlico. There was the wheel of the 
 world, so far as Grobo's acquaintance was concerned: the 
 outer ring of parliament, Pimlico, with the Pimlico Works, 
 and then, as the inmost heart, the driving-power of it all 
 himself, John Harbin. 
 
 "You can do nothing with a chap like that," was Paul 
 Vortonitch's verdict upon the fellow: "Ignorant; blinded by 
 the little he does know, stuck like a mote in his eye; obstinate 
 as a pig!" 
 
 " No, no, not like a pig no so comfortable sausage from 
 that gentleman there, my friend! Like a runaway traction 
 engine, rather," asserted Grobo with some humour. "Let 
 us but set 'im upon a little 'ill, apply a lee-e-tle oh, but ever 
 so lee-e-tle pressure an' then phut! there will be no 
 stopping 'im. A fanatic, my beloved Paul, above all a 
 
 56 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 57 
 
 fanatic who is entirely fanatical concerning himself, can see 
 not one inch further than the tip of 'is own nose," he went on, 
 with one finger to that putty-like protuberance which 
 decorated the centre of his own countenance trivial, comic 
 as a portrait by Phiz. " What more can we want? Drop 
 any sort of suggestion which appeals to 'is egotism, that sense 
 of grievance which is the curse of egotism, and there you are 
 a blade with but one sharp edge, entirely dependent upon 
 the handling, ready to your use." 
 
 If this was what he was after, it is certain that Grobo could 
 scarcely have done better; for whether he had worked up the 
 factory official to feel as he intended him to feel, or whether 
 his natural egotism bourgeoned beneath the forcing influence 
 of the little man's benignity, it is certain that passing in the 
 factory as a sullenish fellow, silent, apart from his constant 
 fault-finding he had grown during his acquaintanceship 
 with Grobo, the hours passed in Le Cygne d'Or, so voluble and 
 blustering that, on this particular evening, Madame laid the 
 patron's under-pants, which she was busy darning, down upon 
 her knees spread wide apart staring, wondering what her 
 dear friend Grobo might be up to; engrossed, moreover, with 
 her never-ceasing sense of wonder as to the whys and where- 
 fores of these amazing English, who remained unmellowed, 
 unrelated, uncheered by the choicest wine, the richest food; 
 adamant to piquant sauces, to garlic. 
 
 "If it hadn't happened before, I wouldn't have taken so 
 much notice of it but twice over. That shows a set on a 
 man, if there ever was one," shouted Harbin. "Their loss, 
 too, for they'll never get another man to stand by 'em as I've 
 done; an' they know it or ought to. I'm not one to praise 
 myself, no one can say as I am," he bored on and on, " but if I 
 left, went into any private business, as I would do if I studied 
 myself as I ought to do, they'd find out the difference, and in 
 double-quick time, too. Why, there's scarce a man a week in 
 my department and mind you, they run into hundreds as 
 is ever late. I won't stand slackness, and they know that. 
 No need to say anything, where I am; it's in the air, so to 
 speak. 'No slackers' that's me, me John Harbin at your 
 service. As for their Unions 'Damn the Unions!' says I; 
 there ain't no other Union where the Government is concerned. 
 The Government's It It, let me tell you that, Mister." 
 
 He spoke as he felt: he, himself, the factory, the Govern- 
 ment much as he abused it these it were that made the 
 world. Here indeed was the very man for Grobo. 
 
58 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 Harbin thumped his fist upon the table with such violence 
 that the carefully arranged dominoes jumped from their 
 places ; upon which the other man put out one plump hand and 
 re-arranged them with an apologetic smile, as though to say: 
 
 "One can't expect a genius, a leader like you, to be 
 bothered over little games such as those that beguile my futile 
 foreign mind." 
 
 As a matter of fact, Harbin had completely forgotten the 
 dominoes; was engaged upon the far more absorbing sport of 
 hobby-horsemanship . 
 
 "What I say is this," he went on loudly, dictatorially: 
 "The Government's like that there song as goes something 
 like this: 'I am the Cook and the Captain bold and the Mate 
 o' the Nancy Brig' self-contained that's the Government. 
 A close Union, if ever there was one; no changing it, neither. 
 Men are men afore they're in it; arter that they're part o' 
 something bigger an' stupider nor themselves. Talk o' turning 
 out the Government! Turn it out, says I, an' be damned! 
 For what will you get? Tell me that. Not other men, or 
 other ideas just another Government, the dead-spit o' the 
 first the other side o' the same coat, nothing more nor less. 
 A Conservative Government, a Liberal Government, a Labour 
 Government don't you go kidding yourselves that it means 
 a collection o' Conservatives, conserving, or Liberals being 
 liberal, or Labour men, labouring. Not a bit o' it: it's just a 
 Government; that's what it is. Every man's more or less 
 like another when he's sea-sick, and it's that way with them 
 that are part o' the Government: down at a dead level, not 
 a pin to choose 'atween anyone o' them; let me tell you 
 that, Moo-choo. An' as for any judgment, as for any fair- 
 ness! Look here, now: I've been in Government employ 
 ever since I was a kid o' thirteen, but I ain't not supposed 
 to know anything. An' why? Because I'm paid by the 
 week, an' not by the year: work for my screw: there you 
 have it!" 
 
 Harbin gave a loud laugh, being that sort of man who 
 laughs in derision, bitterness, never in wholesome mirth. A 
 hard worker, a good citizen everything that Grobo was not 
 and yet, if he had children, which he had not, it would still 
 be impossible to imagine him on all fours, playing bears with 
 them, as Grobo did with his tribe. 
 
 "Government jobs! Slavery, that's what they are! No 
 thanks, no hope, no leisure, no assured position; wearing a 
 man out, throwing him aside, trampling on him; putting 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 59 
 
 other chaps as haven't half, no, nor one-quarter, o' the ex- 
 perience as he has himself over his head, damn 'em!" 
 
 There it was: the root of the matter another chap pro- 
 moted over his head. 
 
 "A shame, that! To think of it!" cried Grobo, who had 
 heard it all before. "An' one like you! Like you, as any 
 other country would be so proud to honour." 
 
 He was so clearly amazed, horrified, that Harbin's griev- 
 ance was intensified. So that was the way a man of another 
 nation looked at such things, was it? 
 
 "A shame." Yes, a gory shame come to think of it, 
 that was what it was. His indignation throbbed to bursting- 
 point. In the beginning he had taken his own place very 
 much for granted. The position he now regarded as a usurpa- 
 tion touched him but little. There had always been someone 
 over him, a University man, a man of totally different 
 class. It was only when this rosy little fellow, clever enough 
 in his own way, even though he were a foreigner, had de- 
 clared him ill-used, that he realised it. Even then he had not, 
 in the beginning, liked to hear anyone say such a thing of 
 him: he, John Harbin, so well able to take care of himself, 
 to be " put upon " ! 
 
 But there it was: a shame, a damned shame! He had been 
 too easy, too unselfish; that was what was wrong. 
 
 It was like a first sip of gin-and-bitters, distasteful. But as 
 he turned it round and round upon his palate, taking another 
 and yet another sip, he had, with almost inconceivable 
 rapidity, developed into a half-secret, altogether ardent tippler 
 of that most pernicious brew self-pity. It corroded his very 
 being, came between him and his meals, his sleep, his staid 
 pleasures, his pride in his work; and yet, like all tipplers, he 
 could not have done without it. Take his grievance from 
 him, and he would have made a grievance of the fact of being 
 without a grievance. 
 
 " They've gone a bit too far this time, though, an' if I don't 
 have that there chap as I'm supposed to take my orders from 
 out o' that, as a matter o' protest if nothing more, my name's 
 not what it is. Not that he'll need my help to get him into 
 trouble; he'll get into trouble enough on his own, in double- 
 quick time, too; anyone can see that with half an eye. 
 Talk of ignorance, talk of interfering! God! What do you 
 think he's gone an' done now? Telling the electrician as he 
 weren't getting the power out o' the plant as he ought to; 
 fiddling here, fiddling there, an' got every wire in the pressing- 
 
60 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 room fused; had 'em all at a standstill for the best part of 
 the day. That'll show you!" 
 
 "'Ow is that? what you say fused?" 
 
 " Well, it's impossible to explain to anyone that is ignorant 
 of such things, as you foreigners are bound to be no offence 
 meant, Moo-choo, for my calling you an Englishman wouldn't 
 make you one, now, would it? but all our place is run by 
 electricity, and once an amateur gets messing round a thing 
 o' that sort, there's sure to be trouble. Of course, it's got 
 nothing to do with me; but if it had, if I was in that chap's 
 place, I'd just say to the head electrician, 'Look 'ere, Mr. 
 Fry, that ain't right, that ain't as it should be,' and leave it 
 to him. But that's one thing as a fellow like that won't do. 
 ' Mr. Know-All ' that's what the men call him. There'll be 
 a fire, or something o' that sort, and perhaps that'll teach him ! 
 I only tell you this, mark you, Mister, to show the sort o' 
 chaps as a man like me gets put over his head when he's in 
 Government employ notorious, that's what it is!" For a 
 moment he paused, then bored on, and on, and on for all the 
 world like a plump pigeon Grobo patiently picking his grains 
 of wheat from out all this measure of chaff. " If they'd set a 
 man up over me as had learnt his trade through an' through, 
 as I've done, from the running errands to the ironing, the 
 cutting, the book-keeping, I'd not complain, for I'm not the 
 complaining sort: no one can say I am. But a chap like 
 that, as I could put in my waistcoat pocket; a chap as has 
 been a schoolmaster a schoolmaster, mind you! A bit too 
 thick, eh? Just a bit too thick!" 
 
 " Look 'ere now, Monsieur." Grobo leant forward, wag- 
 ging a plump finger. " The Government is wrong. The man 
 they 'ave put over you is no good doubtless, as you say, 'e 
 am no damn good. But it am you, you, Monsieur 'Arbin, 'oo 
 am the fool!" 
 
 "What the devil !" Harbin glanced up angrily. Here 
 
 was no pouring in of oil and wine such as he had grown used 
 to, expected. 
 
 "Yes, that am it. A damn fool; any man am that ' 
 
 "Look here, now! No calling of names, Moo-choo!" 
 The voice, the bright-eyed and flushed face, were truculent, 
 showing a man totally unable to endure criticism; but Grobo's 
 mild glance fixed him steadily. 
 
 "Any man am a fool as suffers in silence an injustice such 
 as you suffer, Monsieur. It is folly; an', 'arken you 'ere, it is 
 worse " his voice gathered a sudden authority, depth " it ia 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 61 
 
 an ill deed to himself an' to the public which is paying its 
 good money, the life-blood of the country, in taxes for what is 
 not the best. I say you are a fool! An' yet, Monsieur, you 
 are, in your so great patience, your so wonderful strength, an 
 'ero also like the knights of old an 'ero." 
 
 "I say, look here enough o' that." Harbin laughed, 
 half mollified, with an odd mixture of shame and pride; 
 looking round to see if Madame had heard what was said. 
 "A fool and a hero! What are you after?" 
 
 "An 'ero Monsieur, we will put that first. I say it an' 
 I keep to it, for, see you, it is this way. A man may die for 
 'is country well an' good. I take off my 'at to the corpse of 
 such a man. But, for all that, a man as 'ave lived for 'is 
 country, as you, Monsieur, 'ave lived for yours, 'e it is 'oo 
 is far more finer, more enduring, more like to zee greatest, zee 
 most symbolic work of art in this great capital of a mighty 
 nation the lions in Trafalgar Square, Monsieur." 
 
 "Oh, well, I suppose it's no good grumbling; we're not 
 the sort to grumble, we English," responded the other man, 
 with that air of sulkiness in which our countrymen veil their 
 appreciation of a compliment; drawing towards him the 
 little glass which Madame herself only a moment earlier, 
 and in obedience to a gesture from Grobo had refilled: 
 emptying it at one breath, blinking a little, with the colour 
 called up by Grobo's words fixed in a hard spot upon either 
 cheek. 
 
 He felt strangely elated and confused; quarrelsome and 
 yet pleased with himself. It was not only those odd little 
 glasses of brandy; he did not know what it was, but . . . 
 Oh, well, hang it all! a fellow was bound to assert himself, 
 make others feel his power, some time or other. 
 
 As a matter of fact, it was the oddness of everything which 
 had gone to his head: new sensations, new surroundings, new 
 ideas about everything: above all, new ideas about himself. 
 
 Grobo's sympathy the sympathy of a man whom here, 
 in this very place, he had heard speaking both French and 
 Italian was dear to him. The little fat, fair foreigner was 
 so different from any man he had ever known that it was 
 almost like one's first love encounter ; and yet, absorbing it 
 as he did, through every pore of him, he still in his entirely 
 insular and self-conscious soul felt himself a trifle stripped 
 by such a show of feeling. " No good's ever done by talking ; 
 that's what I say," he repeated. 
 
 "That's where you are wrong, Monsieur. That's why I 
 
62 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 dared to say, an' say it again 'You are a fool a damn 
 fool!' In the same manner as all your 'ole nation am a 
 nation of damn fools. Wonderful? Oh yes, most wonderful, 
 though your wonderfulness is not known as it ought to be 
 known, an' for this reason, Monsieur, that you say nothing 
 nothing; no damn thing whatever! With a magnificent 
 phlegm, a great courage, with the solidity, the persistence of 
 the Pyramids mais oui, I grant you that you keep on saying 
 nothings. An' it is there, Monsieur, that you are wrong. To 
 be silent for a little, with an air, comme ga!" Grobo leant his 
 head upon his hand, frowned portentously. "All very well! 
 But to keep on being silent! What folly, what stupidity! 
 For, mark you 'ere, Monsieur 'Arbin, other peoples they begin 
 by being frightened of the man who says nothing wondering 
 what 'e 'as in 'is mind. But in the end, what 'appens? What 
 'appens? This: they forget 'im. But yes. Completely they 
 forget 'im. That is what you call the nature of the beast 
 'uman. It is the same, Monsieur, with you an' this Govern- 
 ment for 'om you 'ave work so 'ard and 'oo am treat you so 
 bad. They forget you, because that you say nothings. They 
 put upon you, they tread you under their foots, as though 
 you yourself was nothings whatever. You you, an English 
 gentleman, a patriot, to 'om I, Carl Grobo, drink the 'ealth 
 with the profoundest, the deepest respect. Madame 
 
 Once more Madame filled their glasses, the thimble still 
 on her finger; while Grobo, who had risen to his feet, 
 bowed, touched his lips to his; and the other man 
 nodding awkwardly, half-shamefacedly drank his to the 
 last drop. 
 
 "It's the bloody unfairness o' things as gets me on the 
 raw," he muttered. "Setting a greenhorn like that over 
 chaps as knows their jobs inside out." He spoke with a 
 common intonation, the veneer of secondary schools and 
 evening classes, scratched through with the golden cognac of 
 Le Cygne d'Or. 
 
 "Monsieur, listen 'ere." Grobo bent forward and touched 
 him upon the sleeve. "You 'ave kept on with that saying 
 nothings until the injustice prey upon your mind. If you 'ad 
 the lightness of mind and tongue: the what is it you call 
 it? the the gab o' the Latin races, it would not be so bad 
 for you, not one 'alf so bad. Listen 'ere now: this is what I 
 would do to this Mr. Know-Ail, if I was you make 'im look 
 silly. There you 'ave it! Play 'im a trick: a trick o' some 
 sort as will make all the peoples in your factory laugh at 'im, 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 63 
 
 as English peoples laugh when a man's 'at is blown away by 
 the wind, an' 'e run after it. Something of the sort as they 
 'ave the 'abit o' laughing at." 
 
 Grobo leant across the table towards the other man, his 
 eyes twinkling like those of a malicious child. 
 
 " There is one thing as peoples of 'is sort, peoples as think 
 they know everything, cannot bear, an' that is to be laughed 
 at by other peoples. Eh, what? Is it not so?" 
 
 He smiled delightfully; while the other nodded, with a 
 bleak and rather suspicious stare. Oh, well, come to that, was 
 there anyone that did like being laughed at? 
 
 Madame, rising, putting by her work, beckoning the waiter 
 to attend to some new-comers, thought them an odd couple. 
 Grobo so friendly and beaming, with his little fat legs tucked 
 up under his chair; and this new client, leaning back, his 
 legs stretched out, his hands in his hip-pockets, his hat his 
 hat, there in Le Cygne d'Or! at the back of his head. 
 
 "A trick, a little trick," repeated Grobo; "the littler, the 
 more childish it is, the more silly will 'e look." 
 
 "What the devil do you mean?" 
 
 "A little trick like one boy play upon another when he 
 poke 'is nose where 'e am not wanted. You say 'e what is 
 it? blow up the electrics " 
 
 "Not blow up fuse," corrected Harbin, intolerably 
 superior. 
 
 "'E not know the difference 'imself?" 
 
 "Hell, no; not him!" 
 
 "Well, look 'ere, now. I 'ave a cousin as makes fireworks 
 for your Fifth of November. A good trick that. The Bang 
 a trick to make all the peoples jump a trick they all knows 
 is for laughing. I get a squib from my cousin Joseph as will 
 make a big noise fit to blow the tiles off 'is 'ead. All your 
 friend the electric man 'ave to do is to fasten 'im up where 'e 
 will go off, bang, when that Monsieur Know-All come pokin' 
 in 'is nose where it am not wanted to be and, la!" 
 
 Once again Harbin laughed, a laugh so ugly that a few 
 early suppers who had just drifted in turned and stared; a 
 couple of women with their bare shoulders half out of their 
 cloaks, smiling open encouragement, realising the recklessness 
 of that laugh. 
 
 "That's a good idea! teach him to mind his own busi- 
 ness, not to go interfering, butting in. Show the bosses that 
 a chap like that, as the hands make a game of, ain't the sort 
 to put in authority over a lot like ours. Now, you look 'ere, 
 
64 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 Moo-choo, you get that there squib from your cousin, an' 
 well . . ." 
 
 He leant across the table towards the other man, and his 
 voice dropped. "A damned good trick hurt nobody. Get 
 a bit of my own back" that was what he thought. 
 " Phut e e e euh La la la Bang ! " 
 Grobo gave a wriggle of excitement, one inimitable gesture, 
 and subsided in his chair, his back rounded like a cat which 
 arches itself to a caressing hand; while, as Harbin always 
 boring bored on and on, arguing against his own conscience, 
 sense of dignity, it would have scarcely seemed surprising if, 
 instead of low-voiced comments of pleasure and admiration, 
 he had emitted a purr. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 So cat-like was Grobo's attitude, his whole air, indeed, that 
 it seemed strange he should have lacked the cat-like cerebral 
 sensitiveness, which is so quickly aware of anything in the 
 least antagonistic at the back of it. For it was not until he 
 and his companion pushed back their chairs and turned aside 
 for their coats that he realised the presence of a fat, pale-faced 
 man, who had come in half an hour earlier, and was sitting in 
 a corner almost directly behind him. 
 
 As he paid for his own dinner and their joint drinks. 
 Grobo's mind raced to and fro. His smooth, pink face was 
 still bland and imperturbable, but at the back of it was some- 
 thing that ran like a mouse in and out of its hole. 
 
 As he wished Madame, re-established at the cash-desk, 
 good-night, Harbin, who had no manners, walked out alone 
 into the narrow passage entrance. 
 
 "Will he speak to me? Shall I speak to him?" Of a 
 sudden, Grobo's mind ceased to move, hung stationary, as 
 though poised in the exact centre of a fine balance. 
 
 "Hullo, look here, I've got to go on!" Harbin poked his 
 head in at the door. " You'll see to that what we were 
 speaking of won't you?" 
 
 "Wait I'm coming. No, no; go on." Grobo turned 
 at the door. He had not given the fat man so much as a 
 second glance, and yet was intensely, painfully conscious of 
 him; realised the other's intense consciousness of himself. 
 They were equal in that, at least, though on the opposing side 
 there was an even stronger pull of personality and power: a 
 power which was fully as unscrupulous in pursuit of what it 
 wanted, and yet so much more legitimate and better backed 
 than Grobo's own, so altogether surer, so Moloch-like in its 
 sureness, that it was impossible for him to pass by without a 
 word. 
 
 The other man would not speak first he knew that: 
 meant him to, was sure that he would, first. It was hate- 
 ful to humour him, giving in to his wordless, glanceless 
 insistence; and yet how much more hateful to allow him 
 
 65 
 
66 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 to imagine for one single moment that he, Carl Grobo, was 
 afraid of him. For, after all, he was not, individually, in the 
 very least afraid, though hating, dreading, and almost in- 
 tolerably exasperated by, all that this monument of flabby, 
 pale-tinted flesh stood for: the sworn enemy, by bell and 
 book, of all liberty, of all freedom of speech and thought, 
 as Grobo himself saw it; the freedom to snatch by violence 
 what had often enough, indisputably, been, in the beginning, 
 gained by violence: the scratching-post of tyrants. For though 
 he himself, Carl Grobo, might, and indeed did, run like water 
 out of those immense, stiff, square-tipped hands, this man was 
 a menace to the cause for which he worked and lived. 
 
 Anyhow, the conviction was clear and sudden, it would be 
 beet, decidedly best, to speak to him. 
 
 Once having decided upon this, Grobo turned, with no 
 pretence of but just having seen the fellow; moved across to 
 his table and sat down opposite to him. 
 
 "Well? Come now, what is it?" 
 
 As the other raised his curiously flat head, in which the 
 upper part seemed so entirely disproportionate to the im- 
 mense neck, with the folds of yellowish fat like an over- 
 voluminous and badly-tied neckerchief, Grobo was reminded, 
 as he had so often been before, of a tortoise peering up out 
 of its shell. 
 
 " A-ah! you, Grobo? I hope Madame Grobo is well." 
 
 " Quite well, thank you." 
 
 "And your charming children?" 
 
 "Yes." For once the little man seemed indisposed to 
 enlarge upon his family affairs. 
 
 The other laid his hand flat, palm downwards, on the table 
 and beat upon it with the middle finger, without stirring the 
 others, meditating. 
 
 "Grobo, you would do well the worst of these foreign 
 restaurants is that they put too much salt in the food: these 
 potatoes, now. I shall be burnt out with thirst to consider 
 your family, and choose your friends more carefully." 
 
 "Oh, that fellow? A business debt, not at all the sort of 
 man you would call a friend. No, no." Grobo shrugged his 
 shoulders. " 'E 'as served 'is end. I am finished with 'im." 
 
 Without in the least deceiving himself as to his ability to 
 deceive the other, he was yet anxious to know how often 
 Harbin and he had been observed together. As to the pallid 
 man, he was perfectly frank; these two such old opponents 
 that they had almost become friends never even thought of 
 
LAURA CREICHTON - 67 
 
 hoodwinking one another: it would have been no good if they 
 had; they respected each other sufficiently to realise this. 
 The game was open ; the pieces all on the board, Grobo's more 
 awkwardly placed than the other's, but that was an accident 
 of fate alone. 
 
 It is strange how easily one may get oneself arrested on 
 mere suspicion ; and yet, in practice, how difficult it may prove 
 to actually arrest anyone on anything apart from the most 
 clearly defined evidence. There would seem to have been an 
 almost overwhelming web of suspicion spun around Carl 
 Grobo, and yet not one which was strong enough to bind the 
 fellow. It was certain that his real name was nothing like 
 so artless and obscure as " Grobo," and yet his papers were in 
 perfect order; no one with whom he came in daily contact 
 had a word to say against him. In England, at least, nothing 
 could be proved against him. Things happened which, it waa 
 well known, had their source in him, which smelt of his brain, 
 so to speak, but that was all that could be said. He might 
 perhaps though it would have been difficult in the face of 
 his perfectly sober and well regulated life have been turned 
 out of the country as an undesirable alien; but he would 
 have been, on the whole, more dangerous elsewhere. 
 
 That assassination in Bucharest, for instance, so deeply 
 significant to Stratton and his fellows had Carl Grobo been 
 at that time resident in Roumania it might have been our own 
 English heir-apparent; for it had been observed that it was 
 in places where Grobo was not, that things of this sort were 
 most likely to occur, his bolts being long-drawn. 
 
 And, after all, little fat, fresh-faced Grobo, in his homely 
 little apartment abutting onto Charterhouse Square, and the 
 heir of a far-distant kingdom what could they have to do 
 with each other? Why, the very idea was as far-fetched as 
 the country itself. Even Stratton himself, always on the qui 
 vive for the so-called impossible, smiled when Mullings, the 
 fat and flabby, spoke of it. 
 
 " Really, Mullings, I do think you are letting your imagi- 
 nation run away with you this time!" 
 
 Mullings, eighteen stone if he was a pound! Something of 
 a weight-carrier, an imagination like that: worthy of respect, 
 too; for after all, he knew nothing of that attic store, apart 
 from what Grobo himself had told him ; and even then, a lesser 
 man might have made the mistake of thinking that he lied. 
 
 " No one would take me alive, no one would come out 
 alive!" he had said. "Send anyone you like to search my 'ons. 
 
68 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 All I say is this insure their lives first, Monsieur Mullings; 
 'eavy as 'eavy as possible for they will go up to 'eaven, even 
 if I go with them comme ga. Sh sh sh sh sh ut-t-t!" 
 
 His imitation of a rocket was superb, perfected down to a 
 sharp tap of his toe upon the floor, to show where the stick 
 fell. . . . 
 
 The police authorities, the secret agents of other countries 
 France, Austria, Russia, Bulgaria, Roumania had more 
 than once hinted that they would be glad to feel him safe 
 within their own fold. They would not say why, and they 
 could not insist, for their reasons were such as they did not 
 care to give: much the same sort of reasons as those which 
 disposed the English authorities to keep Grobo to themselves. 
 He knew too much; that was the fact of the matter: too much 
 of certain things which went on in Vienna, in Paris, Bucharest, 
 Buda-Pesth, Sofia, London; in pretty well every town in 
 Europe; was, indeed, like one of those precocious children 
 whom it is best to keep from mischievous prattling, safely 
 tucked away in their own nurseries; for it is certain that he 
 was most dangerous to those countries which he did not, at 
 the moment, inhabit. 
 
 As for Mr. Mullings: Mullings would have missed him 
 sorely; felt that the mainspring, the excitement of life was gone 
 without Grobo. There were, indeed, moments like this special 
 evening when he might have been glad to see the last of him, 
 for the simple reason that he was utterly wearied out by him ; 
 though, even so, it would have been gall and wormwood to 
 have rendered him up to the officials of any other nation. Not 
 to have said, mind you, " I find nothing against him " not if 
 he spoke the truth but, "We have utterly failed to catch 
 him," in the " catch-him-at-it " sense of the word. For even 
 supposing that any pretence might be found for putting him 
 in prison, he could not be kept there forever; and there was 
 no stopping him from thinking, planning, while he was there; 
 no way of getting at his associates that avenue of information 
 would, indeed, be completely blocked. At present there was 
 something to be learned from observing those with whom he 
 consorted. Once make sure of all the little fry which swarmed 
 around Grobo, and one might, perhaps, make sure of him, 
 himself. As for the hope of anyone turning King's evidence: 
 there were people, for the most part feeble and inefficient 
 amateurs of crime, who were inevitably betrayed; but Carl 
 Grobo stood apart from these, and the others knew it. No one 
 would ever betray him. More than one man, most certainly 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 69 
 
 instigated to crime by this bland and rosy cherub, had suffered 
 imprisonment, death even; but not so much as a single word 
 had been dropped. They might have argued and indeed it 
 was put to them, clearly, kindly that nothing could be worse 
 than death, and that Grobo's revenge was, on the whole, less 
 certain than the hangman's rope; but no one of his tools 
 could ever be brought to see it in this light, even to the extent 
 of confessing that they knew of any such person. 
 
 " For the sake of your family, you should cultivate friends 
 apart from Government employees. Even those in the least 
 elevated, the least conspicuous of positions, are scarcely 
 wholesome for you. You must know that, Grobo." 
 
 The pallid man odd that two people should both be so 
 fat and yet so unlike spoke almost deprecatingly. The 
 whole thing was coming too near home for his liking; it was 
 getting too big, too widely diffused. Grobo and those men of 
 mystery who directed him were sending out too many shoots 
 or runners; there was no grappling with them. 
 
 Mullings, like other masters of men, great artists in 
 management, had kept his inferiors in their places so jealously 
 that they were less use to him than they might have been. All 
 very well to watch Grobo; but Grobo made use of many 
 other men, aye, and women too, and to leave these unregarded 
 would have been fatal. 
 
 That day when he shadowed Paul Vortonitch through 
 Woolwich to Blackheath he was worn out with it; so tired 
 that he had fallen into the stupidity of allowing himself to be 
 re-encountered at the station. And yet, feeling himself not 
 quite so altogether up to his work as he had been, he was all 
 the more anxious to keep this Grobo affair, so long acknowl- 
 edged as his special preserve, in his own hands. 
 
 If only Grobo would turn King's evidence, betray his 
 fellows, or himself come over to the enemy! Better still, 
 that! What a detective he would make! What a help he 
 would be, with his influence, his knowledge. Mullings' super- 
 fatted heart yearned towards him. Talk of the poacher turned 
 gamekeeper ! 
 
 "This is the fourth time that you have dined here to- 
 gether; he has shown you over the clothing factory; you have 
 met in the park, at his own club in the Wilton Road, at his 
 lodgings . . ." 
 
 The police agent's voice was full of weariness; it was as 
 though he would have said: "Really, it is too much; I can- 
 not spend my entire life dodging about after you!" 
 
70 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 " It would be best to drop it all, you know. So long as the 
 results of your work remained abroad, you were comparatively 
 safe; but now, with so many irons in the fire, you'll burn 
 your own fingers in the end. You know that, Grobo." 
 
 Grobo's bland glance was unwavering; but for all that, he 
 perfectly realised the truth of what was said. 
 
 He was more deeply, more nearly involved than he had 
 been for years. For a long time now, he had thrown his net 
 so wide that there was comparatively little chance of his own 
 feet becoming entangled; but now that vast web, which he 
 himself had so largely helped to weave, was thickening, 
 spreading so that in the course of that world-wide haul for 
 which he and those over him had been so long preparing he 
 might well find himself caught, dragged down, the fisher 
 perishing among the fish. 
 
 He realised this, always had realised it: his wife and even 
 the elder among his children were prepared for it; he re- 
 spected Mullings for his realisation of it. But there it was: a 
 fact to be faced, a part of life, as, after all, death is. His only 
 real fear was of some premature exposure, the fatal over- 
 eagerness of any one of his disciples. 
 
 As for giving up the great idea, the carefully-laid scheme 
 for a series of outrages against crowned heads, governments, 
 recognised institutions, capitalists, military and civil powers, 
 so immense, so far-reaching, that the entire system would be, 
 and would for long remain, completely dislocated when 
 the world would be run, like a motor-car, by a series of 
 small explosions, exploitations, excitements that was out of 
 the question. He could not have stopped it if he would; 
 and he would not if he could. The chances of himself perish- 
 ing might be and indeed were ninety per cent against him; 
 but it would be worth while to end one's life in such a 
 flare; while, supposing he did survive, England was his: 
 they could do what they liked with the other countries; but 
 England! England was his wash-pot. He saw himself as 
 the first Dictator, with the power of life and death; sport, the 
 sort of sport the rich landowners had with their pheasants, 
 the sport of killing, all his own. He even saw and here his 
 family affection, his family idealism got the better of his 
 judgment, for no one knew better than he did the brief 
 tenure, the insecurity of such power Albert as his right 
 hand, succeeding him. 
 
 As for Mullings his small, weary eyes almost lost in an 
 immensity of countenance what was it that he saw? A 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 71 
 
 monstrous growth which it was imperative to grapple with 
 before it should have come to its full ripeness, breaking in 
 a series of horrors which no sane man could bear to con- 
 template: a bloody orgy of lust and self-seeking, mad fear, 
 greed; destruction for the. sake of destruction; a universal 
 catastrophe compared to which the memory of the world's vrar 
 would seem a strenuous, yet well-ordered game. 
 
 He was growing old, tired; things were getting too big for 
 him; and yet it seemed that they must swell to an appalling 
 size before anything could be done to lance the tumour which 
 threatened to devour Europe. Unless unless well, unless 
 people like this little fat, fair man, with a face like a German 
 schoolgirl, would voluntarily throw up the game, join forces 
 with those of law and order which would rise, and re-rise 
 must re-rise from all the trampling of blood and mud, let 
 them try as they would to prevent it. 
 
 "Drop it, Grobo; you'll gain nothing." 
 
 "Movement!" cried the other, with that sudden flare and 
 intensity which had so impressed Harbin, impressing every- 
 body in its rare manifestation, the seeming strangeness of its 
 contrast to the ground from which it sprang. "Movement! 
 The breaking up of this stagnation of civilisation upheaval, 
 destruction, re-birth. Life and death in the place of mere 
 existence." 
 
 "Ah, well!" Mullings rose heavily, drawing himself to- 
 gether so as to loosen the pressure of his person against his 
 pockets, get at his money to pay his bill. " Only remember 
 it's come to this. You're getting more personally involved 
 with smaller and therefore less trustworthy people, and 
 nearer home than before. If we find we can't dig the thing 
 up by the root as yet, as yet we'll lop off the main boughs; 
 and you'll be one of the first to go." 
 
 Grobo smiled deprecatingly. "Likely enough, Monsieur; 
 likely enough. Allow me." He put out his hand to help 
 the other on with his coat, tiptoeing to raise the collar; then 
 added : 
 
 "But not alone, Monsieur Mullings; not alone remember 
 that." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 "YOUR lesson, to-day, eh, Laura? Well, I'm going up by 
 the one-forty-five; you can come up with me; then I'll give 
 you tea somewhere after it's all over, eh? What do you say 
 to that?" 
 
 Laura murmured something; it did not matter what, for 
 General Creichton, brisk and kindly, with that air of family 
 indulgence, was not making a suggestion, but issuing an order, 
 disguised in his own mind as a conferring of a favour. 
 
 They were at breakfast, and Laura was sitting with her 
 back to such light as there was; for the great cedar, tilted 
 sideways like an immense dark-coloured parasol, flooded the 
 room with a depth of green shadow, so that there was no very 
 clear view of her face. Not that, even if there had been, 
 anyone would have thought of taking notice of the expression 
 upon it. For of course Laura would be pleased to have her 
 father's company up to town, tea out with him: men were so 
 much more generous than women in matters of that sort the 
 right sort of place, the best sort of cakes as Marjorie realised, 
 volunteering her own company: 
 
 " If you'll make it Rumpelmayer's, I'll come too." 
 
 " I rather thought of going up with Laura," put in Lady 
 Creichton. "There's a white sale at Evans' . . . But I don't 
 know I don't really want anything very much, and if your 
 father's going, and Marjorie . . . You'll go to Ridgway's 
 about the tea, won't you, dear? Perhaps, if your father 
 wasn't going . . ." 
 
 General Sir Harry Creichton rose from the breakfast-table, 
 gathering together his letters and papers. 
 
 " Lunch at one sharp and mind you girls are ready." 
 
 " I think I will come." Lady Creichton spoke more or 
 less into the air as her husband left the room, stirring her 
 second cup of coffee. " We are really getting short of pillow- 
 slips and then there are glass-cloths. I never can make out 
 what servants do with glass-cloths and dusters. Marjorie 
 and I can get through our shopping while you have your 
 lesson, Laura; then we can all meet for tea. Perhaps I shall 
 
 72 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 73 
 
 have time to slip into the Army and Navy before I come 
 home, or we might arrange to have tea there; we're running 
 out of writing-paper. There seems to be always something or 
 other. And oh, Laura, here's an invitation from the Macauleys 
 for dinner on the seventh; you and your father and I. We 
 can't accept it because he'll be away, and they'll hate having 
 two women alone. Will you write, darling? And if you do 
 go down in the village, see if you can get any books. Some- 
 thing by somebody one knows; all these new people are no 
 good; not fit to leave about for servants to pick up and 
 they'll read anything, these days!" 
 
 Still Laura did not answer. She had risen from the table 
 at the same time as her father, moved over towards the open 
 windows, the centre of them reaching to the floor in a wide 
 rounded bay, and now stood looking out, playing with the 
 tassel of the blind, a new, withdrawn look upon her face; a 
 quiet obstinacy, as though there were certain things which 
 she was determined to keep to herself, out of the way of all 
 this arranging and discussing. 
 
 Her father and mother had always settled things for her; 
 went on settling as they had done for close upon eighteen 
 years. It seemed, in that long cool room, flooded with green 
 light, as though she were a fish which must forever swim 
 round and round in the same tank. It is odd that Paul Vor- 
 tonitch, returning to London that evening of their first meet- 
 ing, should have had much the same illusion! She had never 
 had so much as a thought of imprisonment, much less wanted 
 to be free, before; but she wanted it desperately now; as 
 desperately as a person who is held down under water, suffo- 
 cating and struggling. 
 
 There was a big glass jar of early roses in the middle of 
 the shining white table-cloth. White damask and silver, the 
 mingled scent of flowers and coffee odd how the smell of 
 bacon always ran forward to meet one at breakfast-time, then 
 receded all this was what she was accustomed to regard as 
 the essential opening of a day; and yet, all of a sudden, it had 
 taken upon itself an air of complete unreality, like something 
 strange; crowding, pressing in upon her; something that was 
 not right, in a contradictory way, because it was so altogether 
 right, well-ordered, perfect. 
 
 " Strange." Yes, that was the word. Something be- 
 longing to an altogether alien age and world. And yet, 
 though she had to tell herself so, it was just exactly as she had 
 always seen it since she was first old enough to breakfast down- 
 
74 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 stairs : the eggs in a patent silver boiler heated with methylated 
 spirit, crisp toast in silver racks fashioned like five-barred 
 gates; her mother herself, her fair hair silvered with grey, 
 with her air of freshness, of being absolutely newly-bathed, 
 almost newly-born so far as the world, apart from her own set, 
 was concerned. And yet, only yesterday . . . Ah, yes; that 
 was what it was, that was what had changed the aspect of 
 everything. It was yesterday that she, Laura, had been hearing 
 of a life so different, so strenuous, so bare of all possible de- 
 cencies: a life where cold and hunger dehumanised a man so 
 that his whole heart and soul were drawn to one agonising 
 point beneath his own belt a life where men, half naked, 
 struggled together like wild beasts for a scrap of offal; where 
 men dropping out from sickness or fatigue were left behind to 
 die; forsaken by their fellows with but one thought "The 
 better chance, the more food if any for the rest of us." A 
 life where people sold themselves and sold their children for 
 food: a life forever involved with death, disease, despair; 
 frayed out by an endless succession of wrongs. Twenty-four 
 hours since it had been forced upon her that such things were 
 possible, out of books: twenty-four hours, and yet she still 
 felt physically battered. 
 
 The man who spoke of it, told her such things what a 
 marvel he was! How different from anyone she had ever 
 known before! At that first meeting he had seemed so gay 
 and boyish; and so he was this last time "gay and boyish" 
 but in streaks, intermingled with a desperate earnestness, 
 bitterness and despair, not over his own sufferings he could 
 laugh at those "the fortunes of that war called life, into 
 which we have got ourselves conscripted " but over those 
 of others: the young; the aged; the sick and helpless. 
 
 It had impressed Laura to such an extent that it was 
 little wonder everything around her now seemed strange, and 
 not only strange, altogether wrong, but utterly despicable. 
 
 All this eternal fuss over personal comfort, all this 
 "arranging"; how she hated that word! "This must be 
 arranged " " that must be arranged " " upsetting all our 
 arrangements." . . . What " arrangements " were possible 
 for people at a stark grip with premature, with wasteful 
 death? 
 
 It came now, as she knew it would. " If we can arrange 
 with your father to meet at the Stores " 
 
 "Tea at the Stores! Oh, mother, too putrid! I won't go 
 if you do that." This from Marjorie, who went on protesting; 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 75 
 
 sure of her own way anyhow, so far as her mother was con- 
 cerned. 
 
 There was a warm, low-blowing wind through the garden, 
 and the white muslin inner curtains billowed forward into the 
 room, dropped straight for a moment, and then billowed 
 forth again, bringing with them the scent of syringa. 
 
 Marjorie, having left the room in search of her school-books 
 and hat, reappeared; and as was her habit snatched a fresh 
 piece of toast, piled it with marmalade, and began to eat 
 again. A greedy child, with a habit of picking over the table 
 after she had really finished. 
 
 " I think I'll have to come," said Lady Creichton, almost 
 appealingly, anxious for an afternoon in town, and hoping 
 that someone would lend her the support of declaring her 
 reasons valid. 
 
 But Marjorie did not want her; she liked going about with 
 her handsome, soldierly-looking father, and family parties 
 were so " stodgy." " Two's company," she thought, and 
 wished that Laura were not coming either, though it was, so 
 to speak, " Laura's party." There was a fortune-teller in 
 Bond Street it would be a great adventure to go to a fortune- 
 teller alone. Though perhaps, after all, it would be better 
 to have Laura with her, if only Laura could be persuaded to 
 skip her singing lesson. She thought of all this as she 
 crammed her mouth, planning, seeing no reason why the 
 whole of creation should not group itself to fit her fancy; 
 mere backgrounds and supports for that one insistent " I." 
 
 As for Laura, she did not want her mother to come, or her 
 father either; certainly not Marjorie! Still feeling as though 
 she were being crowded out of life, suffocated, she would have 
 liked to push them all aside, violently, run away alone into 
 the open. Why should they all want to go up to town this 
 very day of all days? 
 
 There was a sudden frantic wildness about her; a feeling 
 of desperation, of not knowing herself. If Stratton had been 
 there he would have read all this in her eyes, so dilated as to 
 be nearly all pupil; her flushed cheek. 
 
 They had all the rest of the week to go up to town in. 
 Why, oh why, should they spoil her day hers? Her mother 
 did not like her going alone; but for all that, she had been up 
 alone; and more than once, for the simple reason that the 
 others were so often engrossed in their own affairs, caught in a 
 web of small engagements, in the midst of which, "Oh, Laura, 
 I forgot it's your singing lesson ! " came as a perpetual surprise. 
 
76 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 "Better ring up Betty Henderson; she said she wanted to 
 go up the next day we went." This from Marjorie. who was 
 thinking, " If only I can choke off mother, it will be much 
 better fun going to Madame le Sage with Betty than it would 
 be with Laura Laura's such a stick-in-the-mud." 
 
 " Oh, let them all come ! " thought Laura to herself, 
 strangely hot and savage. After all, though she did not dare 
 to oppose her father and mother perhaps because she had 
 not even thought of it she had, and thank goodness for that! 
 reached a point where she could and would put up a fight 
 against Marjorie. 
 
 " How can you come? It's not Saturday." 
 
 "It's mid-term. No afternoon work; no work at all 
 after this morning, until Tuesday morning. That's why 
 Betty'll be free. Laura, you ring up the Hendersons while 
 I'm out: Betty and I are in different classes; I might miss 
 seeing her. And tell her, whatever she does, not to wear that 
 blue linen thing of hers it simply kills my blue." 
 
 "Why should you wear your blue?" 
 
 "Well, why shouldn't I?" Marjorie's stare was frankly 
 surprised. "Anyhow, ring them up, won't you?" she added, 
 and swung from the room. 
 
 "Laura dear, when you've done everything else, I wonder 
 if you'd mind running over to Mrs. Carstairs? Tell her I can't 
 be fitted to-day because I'm going up to town. Thanks, darling. 
 I really don't know what I would do without you, Laura." 
 
 " Oh oh oh oh OH ! " Laura could not have ex- 
 plained what she meant by this, glancing almost wildly round 
 the room as her mother left it. The window was a French 
 one: a single step and she would have been out upon the 
 terrace, while the door was wide open; but for all that she 
 felt hopelessly imprisoned, walled round with people and 
 things things things things above all, things. There was 
 the silver cream-jug, still a third full of cream; Marjorie had 
 not half eaten her porridge; even the cat had not needed it 
 enough to finish it, and the blue and white bowl still stood 
 upon the hearthrug where it had been placed, with enough in 
 it to feed a child or two. A child such a child as she had 
 heard of in the famine areas, and in other places, before the 
 war so much as started, much less what was it he called it? 
 " this devastating peace " : infants in arms, and others of 
 two and three and tour years old the plump ages with the 
 bones cutting, yes, literally cutting, in horrible sores through 
 their skin; with faces old, lined, inexpressibly anxious. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 77 
 
 They had not been talking together for more than half an 
 hour in all, she and Paul Vortonitch, meeting again for the 
 third time, and this in Greenwich Park; but he had changed 
 her whole outlook on life by what he said; though before 
 that, ever since their first meeting, she had felt within herself 
 a curious unrest and excitement, like that silent stir in water 
 the moment before it boils. 
 
 Up to this time there had been the rather intangible re- 
 ligious beliefs which are so lightly scratched into the young 
 in these days, when the teachers themselves are wavering, 
 scarcely believing, scarcely knowing what to think; her own 
 unselfish, naturally timid nature, and the desire to be happy in 
 exactly the same way as she believed the rest of her world to 
 be happy, safe and comfortable. All very simple and sure. 
 
 But now, as it seemed, she was torn wildly from her 
 anchorage: "No one but a fool can be happy in a world like 
 this!" That was what Vortonitch had said. "No sane person 
 has a right to be happy, with other people starving, with 
 preventable death and disease on every side. The tyranny 
 of poverty! Oh, I could tell you !" 
 
 And he did tell her, of Russia, of Austria, of the scarcely 
 less dreadful life of the large industrial and mining towns in 
 England and America: " It is the incessantly overworked 
 who have no chance of holidays; it is the much-needed 
 working-class wife and mother who slips into the grave because 
 she has neither time nor money for treating her maladies; it 
 is the desperately busy and overdriven who are kept waiting 
 waiting waiting: in the out-patient departments of hos- 
 pitals, in offices, at the doors of the rich; while it is those 
 who have never done an honest day's work in their lives who 
 run for rest cures! Mademoiselle, humanity as a whole for 
 you and yours are like the bright bubbles which rise to the 
 top of what is indescribable is incessantly harried, harried 
 by the wolves of destiny. Can you imagine what it means, 
 never to be sure of a roof over your head for more than a week 
 in front of you; never to be sure of the job which means life 
 for you and your family; everything at the mercy, the caprice 
 of an employer who knows nothing of, cares nothing for, you, 
 your efforts, your sorrows, your sicknesses?" 
 
 No, she hadn't thought; she had never heard it put like 
 this. There were poor people and rich people: that was all. 
 
 "Read Dostoievski, to see what life can be like, is like for 
 so many, Mademoiselle," he cried. But she did not need to 
 read of such things; she was so fresh and untouched that his 
 
78 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 every word was bitten into her like some corroding ink upon a 
 piece of white paper. 
 
 The horrors of war, a Dance of Death, and then at the end a 
 life worse than death ; a so-called peace more hopeless than any 
 war " If they hanged the Kaiser, who made the war, what 
 would they do to the men who arranged the terms of peace? 
 
 "Peace! Peace! A feasting in a charnel-house! A feast 
 of kings, who with their greed, their jealousies, their women, 
 their family loves and hates, their nepotism, their incessant, 
 reckless intrigues, the outcome of nothing more than a pro- 
 found boredom and sense of insecurity, have torn the world 
 to ribbons, dragging it through mud and blood; driving it, 
 rather, it and every man's son with it, themselves, as they 
 think, safe and high on the box-seat, handling the reins reins 
 and lash!" 
 
 If there must be kings, if by some awful, unchanging 
 decree certain nations were damned to the recognition of such 
 rulers, let them be foundlings, or torn, like Caesar, from their 
 mother's womb. Think of CEdipus, safe and happy, those 
 around him safe and happy, up to the time he realised his 
 parentage. . . . All the petty quarrels of private families, 
 trickles of spite, flooded out, bursting forth in the blood of 
 multitudes where kings were concerned. Had she ever thought 
 of that? 
 
 No, she hadn't. Nothing could be more different from 
 everything she had ever thought of, heard. 
 
 " Think back, Mademoiselle ; think back over your history 
 lessons. In all the annals of history, has there ever been any 
 war when there was not a god or a king religion; a king's 
 greed, a king's wife or a king's mistress at the back of it 
 all? Eliminate God and His kings, the chances of war sprung 
 upon humanity by men as jealous, and restless, and unsure of 
 their place as the divinity they have created in their own 
 image, and the world will be a possible place to live in. Kings 
 stir up wars as a cook stirs up a pudding with a spoon; if the 
 people were once sure of peace they would have leisure to 
 regard them dispassionately; realise their uselessness; and 
 they know that that is what they fear. It is in times of 
 peace that the revolutions come, so-called heresies creep in; 
 for it is then that men have time for thought. With God as 
 the Celestial Bogey Man, kings as policemen for ever moving 
 them on and on, what can be done with humanity? Driven 
 driven that's what the world is, with its God and its kings 
 its God and its kings!" 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 79 
 
 "But kings there has always been a king in England; 
 and, of course . . . Well, there is God you know." Laura's 
 voice dropped with that grave reverence which was the habit 
 of her youth; her face was a little flushed, her candid eyes, 
 troubled but steady, full upon Vortonitch. 
 
 He wanted to retort, "Why do you say I know? How do 
 you know? What proof have you?" but something like pity 
 turned him; and, after all, she was as he wanted her to be. 
 But, all the same, it was impossible to keep silence, and he 
 went on, almost sullenly: 
 
 "God and the king! Look how they back each other, 
 cling to each other's skirts, shelter behind each other. Your 
 Dickens has two characters I forget their names, but there 
 they are it is always the other one who is to blame. * It was 
 the will of God.' ' It was your duty to your King.' 
 
 "Mademoiselle, do you think, have you ever thought, of 
 how this war, which is not yet over, arose? By what right 
 men drove other men to tread the faces of their fellows down 
 into the mud? Think of mothers suckling their children, 
 bathing them, tending them in sickness and in health; toiling 
 for them, sitting up at night for them, wrapped up in them, 
 living in them and for them for twenty years and more; no 
 expense, nothing spared 'Nothing good enough for my son, 
 my darling son!' And then a shell from miles and miles 
 away, far away out of sight, fired by a man whom they have 
 never seen, who has never seen them, for a reason of which 
 they know nothing, for reasons for which they would refuse to 
 recognise a neighbour. King! A sound like the singing in a 
 telephone wire, torn calico, and then . . . What then? . . . 
 ' The grandeur of death for one's country ' fearful fragments 
 of flesh, a spatter of brains, blood, offal something you 
 could not bear to look at, something which the God Whom 
 you are commanded to love is supposed to have made in His 
 own image. 'Be resigned; they are happy' that's what 
 we are told. ' They did right, dying for their King.' For 
 their king for their king! That is what they tell us, the 
 kings themselves tell us that opening their charity bazaars 
 in aid of widows and orphans! Those kings, with their family 
 secrets and jealousies, their bloody conclaves, their infamous 
 relationships that murder-ring of monarchy! kept going 
 at an almost incredible expense, toll of brain and muscle and 
 time from every man and woman in their kingdoms; by a 
 fantastic obsession of loyalty; by a people piling up and 
 pouring out millions and millions of pounds in ships, in hired 
 
80 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 assassins, in materials of death and destruction, for the 
 exploitation of quarrels, petty and mean, with which they 
 themselves have nothing whatever to do family quarrels. 
 
 "Nicky and the Kaiser! People actually laugh about it 
 even now your comic papers have jokes funny pictures. 
 The King of Greece and his German wife Ferdinand of 
 Bulgaria Spain with her Jack-in-the-box Italy, dragged 
 into a conflict which was no affair of hers, forced into a 
 mesalliance; then, again, forced into falseness; pushed here, 
 pulled there; gathering up the pieces, weeping, cursing. Put 
 your finger in turns upon the kings in Europe, with their con- 
 sanguinity of falseness, their family intrigues and jealousies, 
 dragging the world to hell count them over, one by one. Is 
 there a single one whom we could not well do without, breathe 
 freer to be quit of? Why, think of your own king George 
 of England proud title! 'the rights of little nations' in 
 his mouth, Ireland in tatters about his feet, and German 
 blood, thick and cloying through his veins. Cousins cousins 
 cousins kings and their cousins! What did the Old 
 Testament say of ' root and branch ' ? Kill but one 
 king with all his cousins, and the world would be free, 
 Mademoiselle." 
 
 This was not all even if every word were written down, 
 so often repeated, so old and stale it could not be all, for 
 Paul Vortonitch's eyes and voice would be missing. He 
 could never have talked like this to one of his own people; it 
 was the sort of thing he despised. The talkers were the 
 people who did nothing, blowing their will to bits with words. 
 But now, almost unknown to himself, he was like a peacock, 
 consciously spreading its tail; or like and that's good for its 
 very oppositeness like a dove in springtime, the " livelier 
 purple " on its breast. 
 
 He wanted Laura Creichton, for what she herself was, so 
 ineffably sweet and fresh, so different from everything which 
 he had ever known before; and for what she represented 
 the source of almost unlimited information. 
 
 He put this first, to himself; and yet there was that sense 
 of excitement which arose from some far warmer feeling; if 
 there had not been, he would not have run the risk of scaring 
 her, rousing her suspicion by spreading his peacock tail in 
 just that fashion which he had. And yet, how effectual it 
 all was, nailing his colours to her mast as something rather 
 terrifying, and yet fascinatingly diverse from all that she had 
 ever known before. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 81 
 
 For the rest of her life Greenwich Park, as it looked that 
 afternoon, would be set as some place must be, for every one 
 of us blazoned in her own colour, which was not the pink of 
 England or England's possessions, ridiculously, disproportion- 
 ately large upon the map of the world. 
 
 The May bloom was past its prime; the rose-red dulled 
 and faded, almost indistinguishable from the drabbish white. 
 Its loveliness had been thafc of youth; but now that it was 
 gone it was scarcely missed; for the splendid levels, the hills 
 and hollows, the blackness of the trunks, the tapestry -like 
 foliage of those famous Spanish chestnuts, set out by John 
 Evelyn, were enough in themselves, like an Albert Diirer 
 woodcut; ending as he might have ended it in the Greek- 
 like structure, the arcades and columns, of the Naval College; 
 the winding riband of the Thames; the masts of ships; and, 
 far away, the rounded hills of Highgate. 
 
 They had sat upon a bench at the very edge of that hill 
 cutting the northern edge of the Observatory so steeply that 
 coming along the broad, straight drive from Blackheath Park, 
 it seemed as though the world must end with it: breaking off 
 into blue sky, heaped, cumulus clouds. 
 
 Driven out by her own restlessness, taking one of those 
 hurried, impetuous walks which had now become part of her 
 daily life, Laura Creichton seemed to see herself moving 
 down the very centre of that short yet splendid roadway how 
 few Londoners know it, how few Londoners know that small 
 but incomparable park in any one of its aspects, let alone the 
 many! There were a few children playing among the shadows; 
 for the rest, it was empty; with its chestnuts at either side, 
 its amazing end, at the top of the steep and sudden slope 
 where Phoebus himself might well alight, dropping straight 
 from his heaven, reining up his horses there on the edge of the 
 world. Though it was not Phoebus whom Laura saw: she 
 would not have cared if it had been what was she to Phoebus 
 or Phoebus to her? just a slight man's figure, suddenly 
 appearing, cutting the sky. 
 
 The very last thing he had said was, " Friday. You are 
 coming up on Friday. I will meet you at the station: you 
 are coming to tea with me." 
 
 She had protested, " Oh, but I can't"; had merely played 
 with the thought, never really meant to go, until her father 
 took it for granted that she was taking tea with him, and 
 grateful for it, too; while the others flowed in upon her 
 "arranging" her out of life. 
 
82 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 Supposing he met her at the station with her father and 
 mother and Marjorie? What could she do? What could 
 she say? It would spoil everything to ignore their friendship 
 an impossible, a mean, despicable thing to do and yet how 
 could she bear to see him " run over " by their eyes, like tape- 
 measures? 
 
 She would not go; she would plead a headache, anything 
 anything. 
 
 She raced through her errands; but she did not ring up 
 the Hendersons and ask Betty to join them, and she did not 
 leave the message with Mrs. Carstairs, saying that her mother 
 could not be fitted because she was going up to town; and 
 this alone showed that her despair was, like all youthful 
 despair, nothing more than a mere woof run through by a 
 warp of hope. 
 
 And justified, after all, justified! It would have been 
 ridiculous to feign a headache a duplication of headaches 
 two in a house, when one was enough; for, arriving home in 
 time to write that note to the Macauleys and change her 
 dress before lunch with a little pucker all ready prepared 
 in her forehead, a feeling that her head, if it did not ache, 
 might easily burst Laura found her mother lying down on a 
 sofa in the carefully shaded drawing-room. 
 
 "One of my headaches, darling; it must be the sun. I 
 was out in the garden, seeing that Clutterbuck staked those 
 delphiniums properly I'm afraid I shan't be able to come up 
 to town after all." 
 
 Laura was dutifully sympathetic, but it seemed as though 
 her own head cleared. Not ten minutes later, as she was 
 writing her note, the telephone bell rang, and she answered it, 
 to hear her father's voice, explaining that he could not get 
 away that afternoon, would not be back to lunch: some 
 sudden inspection, some royalty or other visiting the Academy. 
 Sir Harry barked through the telephone as he had been 
 used to bark at his men upon parade, so that it was difficult 
 to catch his exact words, but the substance was clear 
 enough: he would be detained at Woolwich until late that 
 evening. 
 
 Laura, beginning to feel a little awed, went slowly up- 
 stairs, changed her skirt and blouse for a pale creamy-tinted 
 tussore frock, taking down her hair, doing it afresh, brushing 
 it until it shone, powdering her face with some new sweet- 
 scented powder, donning a broad-brimmed hat of dark brown 
 satin-like straw, brown suede shoes, silk stockings, and laying 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 83 
 
 out a pair of long, soft, cream suede gloves on the bed beside 
 her parasol and bag. 
 
 She went through it all slowly, with that sense of solemnity 
 which some young, pure-souled acolyte might bring to his first 
 service of High Mass; a sort of holy joy, not unmixed with 
 fear, for what was that about the devil taking care of his own? 
 
 It was almost uncanny, the way in which her father and 
 mother had been smoothed aside, like a sort of domestic Red 
 Sea, through which she saw herself crossing over to the land 
 of her desire. 
 
 " It ain't not lucky when things seem to come too easy " 
 that's what Parker had said, in recounting the climax of her 
 last love affair; realising that Miss Laura, for all her quiet 
 ways, was the only one of her master's family who looked 
 upon her as being quite human. 
 
 Anyhow, there was still Marjorie to be disposed of, and 
 she was superstitious enough to be relieved at the prospect of 
 this snag in her miraculously smoothed passage. 
 
 Then Marjorie came into the house, banging the doors, 
 Shouting, " Laura La-a-ura ! " 
 
 Someone spoke to her, and she muttered, "Oh, all right!" 
 Laura's door was open and she heard her adding, " Always 
 one damned thing or another ! " as she surged into her sister's 
 room. 
 
 " Why in the world couldn't some of you have told me it's 
 not the fifteenth? Next Friday's the fifteenth!" 
 
 " I never said it was or it wasn't." Laura turned towards 
 her dressing-table, polishing her nails, speaking coolly, where 
 a month ago she would have been apologetic over what was, 
 after all, no fault of hers. 
 
 " Well, you always know those sort of things stuffy things 
 like dates. I do think you might have told me! Letting me 
 make a fool of myself like that, telling them all silly, gig- 
 gling idiots! that I was going to tea at Rumpelmayer's ; 
 setting them all off with their inane cackle. I'm sure I don't 
 know why I'm a schoolgirl I hate schoolgirls!" 
 
 Marjorie's face was crimson; she looked all puffed up, 
 her good looks, depending on audacity and self-satisfaction, 
 temporarily obliterated. 
 
 Laura could catch their double reflection in the looking- 
 glass, and a sense of surprised pleasure in her own appearance 
 swept over her. Why did Marjorie's neck always seem to get 
 shorter than ever when she was angry? she wondered, and was 
 immediately overcome by a sort of panic of loneliness and 
 
84 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 self-reproach. Pushing her own people aside like this, willing 
 them yes, that was it, willing them not to come to town; 
 criticising them like well, like a cat what would it all come 
 to! 
 
 " I'm so sorry, old thing. Of course, it's the eighth but 
 I didn't know." 
 
 "Didn't know? Of course you knew! What's the good 
 of swankling like that pretending you've been out for ages? 
 You know as well as I do that the mid-term holiday's on the 
 fifteenth." 
 
 "I like that! When you forget, yourself!" 
 
 "I didn't forget it was on the fifteenth, stupid! I thought 
 this was the fifteenth. I can't make out what's come over you 
 lately, Lolly. I never knew anyone so beastly selfish. I 
 
 say " She broke off, staring as though she suddenly 
 
 realised her sister as something apart from a mere shying-post 
 angry, puzzled, almost awed. Laura was really grown up; 
 had a sort of style, too oh, altogether different! 
 
 "What an awful swell you are. Humph! I suppose that's 
 for tea at Rumpelmayer's cream cakes and all. Pretty rotten 
 for me, when it was me who put my foot down on that beastly 
 old Army and Navy." 
 
 " I shan't go to Rumpelmayer's. Dad's not coming, can't 
 get away, and mother's got a headache." 
 
 "Oh, well, then, it doesn't matter so much; if you're going 
 alone, just for your lesson, just " 
 
 She broke off, staring again: her good humour somewhat 
 restored by a greedy curiosity, her blue eyes hard and shining 
 as always. 
 
 "I say, Lolly, what is up?" 
 
 "What do you mean?" Laura's face was flooded with 
 colour. 
 
 "Well, all togged up like that!" 
 
 "I thought . . ." Laura hesitated. "I thought I might 
 perhaps ring up Mr. Stratton; he wants me to go to tea on 
 the Terrace. I don't know if I will, but I might." 
 
 "To tea? on what terrace?" Marjorie was amazingly 
 dense. 
 
 " The Terrace of the House of Commons, of course. Didn't 
 I say with Mr. Stratton?" 
 
 "What, to-dav? But good Lord, mashing old Stratty! 
 Your very best rig-out!" Marjorie burst into a loud laugh; 
 then added, as a protest against Laura's new air of woman- 
 hood, which was not swank, but something far more difficult to 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 85 
 
 fight against, " All the same, my dear, there'll be the eyes of a 
 row if you go to tea alone with Stratty, antiquated fossil as 
 he is." 
 
 Marjorie, so deeply conventional beneath all that freedom 
 of speech, defiant, swaggering manner, was horrified; so 
 horrified that Laura, long accustomed to measure her own 
 judgment by others, felt suddenly blurred. If she could cause 
 so much excitement by the mere suggestion of going to tea 
 alone with Gerald Stratton, who was almost one of themselves, 
 whom they had known all their lives, who was old as old as 
 anything! what would be thought if ... Oh, well, of 
 what? Of what, after all, she had never intended to do the 
 sort of thing that people simply did not do. 
 
 It was strange how Marjorie's point of view still had power 
 to disturb her. She had thought she was free, but she was 
 not; though, if she had realised it, it was not Marjorie, as a 
 unit, but the fact that she voiced the opinions of her entire 
 class and set, was always shocked at the things one ought to 
 be shocked at, which told. True, Marjorie crossed her legs to 
 the knee, said "damn" and "hell"; smoked more or less 
 openly, snubbed down the Divinity; but that was different; 
 that was the sort of thing common to almost everyone, apart 
 from fogies, nowadays: but to know the wrong people, to know 
 them in the wrong way, that was a sort of sin against the Holy 
 Ghost, or that modern edition of the Holy Ghost Savoir Faire. 
 
 Laura's head was aching in earnest long before she reached 
 Charing Cross; if any human being could feel like a steam 
 engine overpacked with fuel, running away with itself, that 
 was how she felt. 
 
 Vortonitch was standing awaiting her just outside the 
 ticket-collector's barrier: he looked so cool and natural, so 
 kind, with that sort of half-timidity which gave her courage, 
 that her heart dropped to its normal beat, or near it, at the 
 first sight of him. There was at least this about him, and it 
 was supremely comforting: he was so different that he would 
 never even think of being shocked at the things which shocked 
 those others, which used to shock her. 
 
 Quite suddenly she felt as though she were out of her glass 
 bowl, swimming in a crystal-clear lake of infinite space. 
 
 He was very careful with her, for the first sight of her in 
 the midst of that dark, drabbish stream of people which flowed 
 from out the train, and passed along the platform ugly, pre- 
 occupied, making those odd faces which distinguish, or rather, 
 extinguish, humanity hurrying either to, or away from, a 
 
86 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 train; holding itself all anyhow, dragged all sideways by 
 bags or babies showed her as infinitely precious, and dif- 
 ferent from anyone else. 
 
 What amazing people these English were! Imagine a 
 mother of any other nationality allowing a girl like this to go 
 about alone! 
 
 They took a bus to Duke Street, where her singing-mistress 
 had a room over a music shop. He did not dare suggest a 
 taxi, in case she might not like him to pay for her; was very 
 matter-of-fact, friendly and quiet. 
 
 " I will meet you when you come out at four, and then we 
 can have tea together." Nothing could have been sillier than 
 to make any sort of fuss over a statement as simple as all this. 
 The absence of fuss, the common sense of the whole thing, 
 swept over Laura like a quiet and cooling wave. 
 
 She did not sing well that day; but, all the same, she sang 
 with more feeling than she had ever done before. She had a 
 rounded contralto; but what Madame always said was that a 
 contralto without feeling was like nothing more than a mooing 
 cow; and she had been in despair over Laura Creichton. But 
 upon this special afternoon, though she was less painstaking 
 than she had ever been before, there was something new in 
 her voice. So much so that Madame, having enquired whether 
 she was alone, and been told that a friend had brought her 
 from the station and would fetch her again, had the curiosity 
 to part the lace curtain, open the double window and peer out 
 as she walked away by Vortonitch's side, holding herself very 
 upright. 
 
 Madame Caesari, accustomed as she was to young people 
 of the very best class, had caught up their expletives; and she 
 used one now: 
 
 "My 'at!" 
 
 She had seen Miss Creichton's father and brother; and 
 upon one occasion, Gerald Stratton, who had been commis- 
 sioned to call for her; but nothing could have well been more 
 different than her present companion, the slim, young or was 
 it only youngish? man in the soft black felt hat. 
 
 "My 'at" indeed! 
 
 They walked down Oxford Street, for the mere pleasure 
 of walking, breasting the crowds like waves people, just 
 people; ordinary people, so different and apart from them- 
 selves and their lives, with no real individuality of any sort; 
 for already Laura had reached this stage, not even wondering 
 whether she would meet anyone she knew past that. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 87 
 
 They crossed Oxford Circus with his hand under her arm. 
 Perhaps Paul Vortonitch had never felt, never really been, 
 quite so young: forgetting his manifold schemes in the wonder 
 of having anyone so precious, so unsophisticated and unable 
 to take care of herself, as he felt sure that Laura must be, 
 entrusted to his care. Supposing she were to be run over; 
 supposing anything, anything were to happen that sort of 
 thing which at times leapt upon him from out of the blue? 
 
 He was like an old woman at the crossing, that gay crossing 
 of the upper end of Regent Street, with the heaped baskets of 
 the flower sellers sweet peas, carnations, peonies, roses 
 stuck like an immense bouquet in a broad grey bosom. 
 
 It must have been some royalty's birthday, for the flags 
 were flying from the windows and poles: a day of brisk, light 
 winds, brilliant sunshine, all dancing and shining. 
 
 They turned out of Oxford Street and down Poland Street, 
 cut through a network of narrow ways crowded with stalls 
 the sort of London which Laura Creichton had never even 
 dreamt of; and here Paul, in love as he was, showed himself 
 astute enough, for where there could be no competition there 
 must be difference, taking her to the upper room of a little 
 patisserie in Old Compton Street. 
 
 It was very quiet and very simple: low basket chairs and a 
 few couples leaning towards each other, talking over their tea. 
 
 Vortonitch ordered chocolate cakes such as Marjorie loved, 
 but Laura, though she took one, sipped her tea, was unable to 
 eat; it seemed as though she were so languid that she could 
 scarcely move her mouth; her limbs sank into the chair as 
 though they were part of it, weighted with an odd sort of 
 sweetness which made her aware of herself as she had never 
 been before, and at the same time dazed her, so that she was 
 like a bee drunk with honey; her eyes shadowed and mysteri- 
 ous, her face pale, her lips redder than usual. 
 
 There were people talking in the street, bawling to each 
 other across the narrow way; children's voices, their laughter, 
 their quarrelsome cries; the sound of a barrel-organ: but it 
 all seemed very far away^ remote in time and space, even 
 though, when she spoke, she was obliged to raise her voice, so 
 that Vortonitch, leaning forward towards her, might catch 
 what she said. 
 
 Not that either of them spoke much; for even he seemed 
 drugged by that sense of all-enveloping sweetness. 
 
 At the end of one long silence Laura gave a deep sigh; 
 then, when Vortonitch put out his hands towards her, palm 
 
88 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 upward upon the table, she laid her own in it, while the colour 
 drained from her lips, and she felt her face grow oddly stiff, 
 as though the skin were stretched too tight: 
 
 " I say you you know, you are wonderful wonderful. 
 
 Oh, but it's all too wonderful you so beautiful, so 
 
 Paul Vortonitch, the ready-witted, the silver-tongued hero of 
 innumerable adventures, was stammering like a raw boy. 
 
 " Laura Laura ... A lovely name, with all those flowing 
 vowels. . . . Laura love my love! You and your name 
 ... so lovely, so altogether different. If any other man . . . 
 But there isn't, there can't be, there never could be!" 
 
 Beyond that handclasp he did not touch her, did not even 
 want to; some mystic strain in him was in the ascendant; if 
 he had touched any part of her it would have been nothing 
 more than the hem of her gown which he held to his lips. 
 The one point about it all that was not quite fresh, altogether 
 youthful, was his realisation of the value of the moment: the 
 way in which, even now, he was able to draw a little apart 
 and savour the beauty and wonder of it all; thinking. . . . 
 
 " I never would have believed that it could be like this 
 again." Then: "Why, it has never been like this never, 
 never. I might have died, and not known of it." 
 
 It was the waitress changing the table-cloths who, at last, 
 roused them. 
 
 "She's setting the table for dinner. It must be late. I 
 must go." Laura took her hand from his and drew on her 
 long gloves, with a sense of pleasure in their softness. The 
 narrow street filled the low-ceilinged room with shadows; so 
 that it seemed like a person, deeply sympathetic, finger upon 
 lip. She spoke in a whisper, dragging out her syllables; she 
 must go home, she would be late, but she did not greatly 
 mind. It did not matter. Nothing would ever matter again; 
 it seemed as though she and Paul Vortonitch swam in a pure 
 ether, where nothing could touch them; where all the ordinary 
 responsibilities, needs of life, were unknown. For the life of 
 her she could not have formulated any plan, projected her- 
 self, by so much as a glance, into the future; there was no 
 reasoning left in her; no definite appreciation of this as love. 
 
 Only as Paul said good-bye at Charing Cross, leaning over 
 the carriage door, she touched the back of his hand lightly 
 with one finger. 
 
 "And now what? Oh, but I must see you again!" 
 Quite suddenly, in a sort of panic, she realised the train, the 
 distance to Blackheath, the other infinitely greater, almost 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 89 
 
 immeasurable distance between the man she loved and her 
 own people, so sure of her, so altogether and unchangingly 
 the same. 
 
 "Of course we shall meet again. . . You child! Why, 
 don't we belong to each other?" 
 
 "You must come down and see my people." 
 
 He could never know what it cost her even to put it into 
 words. She was not ashamed of him, she was not even 
 afraid; but here was something sacred, and it was agony even 
 to think of it being dragged out into the merciless glare of 
 criticism and comment. 
 
 "We can talk about that when I see you again." In Vor- 
 tonitch's mind Laura's words achieved the effect of a sudden 
 shake upon a kaleidoscope: the colours the same, the pattern 
 completely altered. Here was the daughter of General Sir 
 Harry Creichton, K.C.M.G., R.E., distinguished soldier and 
 Civil Servant his to do as he liked with. Supposing, only 
 supposing that this little fool went and spoilt everything by 
 a premature exposure, when there was so much no end to 
 the information which he wanted to get out of her! 
 
 "Friday?" Laura felt the chill, the odd, subtle change 
 in his glance, his touch. In trying to be honest, she had some- 
 how or other overshot herself, she thought. For the very first 
 time in his company some of that old feeling of inferiority, 
 stupidity, came back to her, and she flushed, raised her chin, 
 protecting herself with an air of pride. 
 
 " I expect my father will be coming with me next Friday, so 
 
 I'm afraid " she was beginning, when Vortonitch broke in, 
 
 brushing aside her fears with his lover-like dismay, eagerness: 
 
 "Friday! As if I could wait until Friday a whole week! 
 Monday, Laura; say Monday, in the same place, in Greenwich 
 Park," he protested, and they parted upon that four o'clock 
 on Monday afternoon. 
 
 The train had gone, Laura waving to him from her carriage 
 window; he was giving up his platform ticket, in a sort of 
 dream, when someone touched his arm, and he saw Grobo at 
 his side. 
 
 "Ah, my dear, I arrived by that train in which your so 
 charming friend took 'er departure. I saw you oh yes, I 
 saw you, you dog you! But I was not going to be a what 
 do you call it? spoil-sport, eh?" 
 
 As the little man, all smiles, slipped a hand within his 
 arm, Vortonitch glanced down at him, ill-temperedly enough. 
 
 "And where the devil have you been?" 
 
90 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 "To Woolwich; to Woolwich, my friend. Funny place, 
 hein? Funny little animals, all busy making traps within a 
 trap and what a trap! There was some sort of a er er 
 fete, is it? at the Academy, where they fatten up their young 
 men ready for other nations to sharpen their teeth upon. As 
 the special correspondent of the Evening Post, I managed to 
 get a place a very good place, too; saw everything every- 
 body. Among others, the father of your most charming young 
 friend. Ah, what a beauty, that a-a-ah!" 
 
 They were moving out of Charing Cross station, and as 
 Grobo raised himself upon his tiptoes, blew an imaginary 
 kiss; the young lady at the fruit-stall, taking the salute to 
 herself, turned her back upon them, tossing her head. 
 
 How did Grobo know that it was Miss Creichton he had 
 been saying good-bye to? wondered Vortonitch. How oh, 
 how the devil did he know what he did know? Were there 
 some people like wireless installations, capable of picking up 
 messages from any direction? 
 
 "You've done well, my friend; very well. They were 
 right to give you a free 'and. It is as I always told them 
 among the women you will be found of most use." 
 
 Vortonitch turned his head with a sharp, half -wild jerk. 
 For some reason, he himself could not have said why, this 
 " among women " irritated him beyond words. 
 
 " What the " he began, and then broke off, sobered by 
 
 the thought of that word "them" as Grobo used it; Grobo, 
 who was in constant communication with powers far beyond 
 his own reach; Grobo, who would have experienced as small 
 qualms in putting a doubtful "comrade" out of the way as 
 anyone else. 
 
 "Did you get any information from 'er, eh, my friend 
 anything definite?" 
 
 "Not much." Vortonitch's tone was sullen: "One can't 
 rush people like that, you know. All the same" with a 
 sudden flare of vanity he was out with the very thing which 
 a moment before he had regarded as his most precious and 
 personal possession " I can do anything I like with her. 
 She'd marry me to-morrow, if I asked her." 
 
 "Good, very good! But remember this, my friend: young 
 girls like that 'ave a most splendid courage and pride. If she 
 is a little ashamed of 'er 'er preference, she will be the more 
 likely to blazon it abroad." 
 
 "Why the devil should she be ashamed? What's there to 
 be ashamed of?" 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 91 
 
 They had moved into Trafalgar Square, were standing 
 talking by one of the fountains, the spraying drops multi- 
 coloured and brilliant as jewels in the smoky crimson and 
 gold of a London sunset, a sunset like molten iron with that 
 ever-present thread of greyness. 
 
 "What the hell is there to be ashamed of, eh?" repeated 
 Vortonitch, the more truculently as he felt the other man's 
 hand drop from his arm; a coldness which was not altogether 
 atmospheric, the outcome of a declining day. 
 
 " If you 'ave not mastered the difference between classes, 
 the prejudices of classes better than that, you are of no use to 
 us," said Grobo, his voice hard and clear, utterly unlike the 
 usual impression which he gave of himself. " People who are 
 as stupid as all that " 
 
 " Oh, I know, I know. I was only amusing myself. I 
 know as well as you do that directly her people suspect any- 
 thing it will all be at an end." 
 
 " Unless you marry 'er quickly, and in secret, yes, yes. 
 But that would be the end of everything also. She would be 
 too definitely in your world, her chances of information 
 blocked. You see that eh, my friend?" 
 
 Grobo's tone was sharp, for he realised that Vortonitch, 
 leaning forward with his elbows upon the parapet of the pool, 
 had slipped off into a dream. A dream, and what a dream! 
 Laura his wife! That fragrant personality forever at his side, 
 like a flower in his buttonhole wild rose or mignonette. 
 
 "Things are beginning to move at last at last! In 
 
 Bucharest, a fortnight ago; and in another fortnight in " 
 
 Grobo veered, with a scarcely perceptible pause, though even 
 thus, through all his dreaming, Vortonitch realised a new doubt 
 of himself, a drawing back from the statement of any definite 
 locality " in another place. There is nothing that gets upon 
 people's nerves like an ordered reiteration; with a long pause 
 between each catastrophe. That alone showed master minds 
 our minds at the back of those week-end murders in Ire- 
 land: it is like waiting for a gun to go off. 'Ere we 'ad in- 
 tended to 'ave one great crash, out of the blue, so to say " 
 
 Grobo was talking with no trace of foreign intonation; any 
 native-born Britisher might have dropped his h's in just that 
 fashion. "But they feel now, an' they 'ave reason, that this 
 is not the best way; people are stunned and knocked silly, 
 and then they forget. The best is this to work on their 
 sensibilities by a series of blows, not too close together, so that 
 they are kept at a strain, growing ever worse, between each 
 
92 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 to go on and on like dripping water, until the consciousness of 
 the 'ole world is like an 'ysterical woman at a shrieking-point. 
 until every man suspect 'is neighbour, 'is brother, 'is wife, 
 until all security an' 'appiness is lost; until they are willing 
 to put the blame upon anybody anybody! And then to 
 strike, to seize, to take what we want. We, with the only 
 nerves left for anything definite; we, because all along we. 
 we only, 'ave known what is 'appening, an' what we want: 
 seeing, while they grope in the darkness. You know all this, 
 my friend yo 'ave 'eard you 'ave been informed." 
 
 "Yes, I Vortonitch hesitated, shrugged his shoul- 
 ders and turned aside, dabbling in the water with his stick. 
 "Yes, yes, I know all that." 
 
 "That it is a settled programme. A play in which we 
 each 'ave our parts: that even our mistakes are feints, to make 
 'em, as the children say, 'jump' " 
 
 " Um." Vortonitch shrugged his shoulders. " Yes oh 
 I suppose it's all right." 
 
 "And it will start on Monday you 'ave 'eard that, too?" 
 
 Grobo had recaptured, or reassumed, his air of pleasant 
 homeliness, spoke as though it were an affair of the family; with 
 his childishly foreign air; for, as he said, English people like 
 to know a foreigner when they see him, and thus discount him. 
 
 Vortonitch was startled. "Monday? This Monday?" 
 
 "Ah, nothing, nothing a mere entr'acte." 
 
 "Monday! But why the devil ?" Vortonitch's 
 
 vision was filled with the sunlit slopes of Greenwich; though 
 he did not see, he literally felt Laura at his side; the slight 
 movement of her shoulder as she breathed; then, quite 
 suddenly, as it seemed, everything was wiped out, apart from 
 the densely blackened trunks of the chestnut trees, like swathed 
 mourners. 
 
 "Why not Monday?" Grobo's voice appeared to come 
 from very far away, but for all that it steadied him. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. No reason, I expect . . ." He 
 realised that it was best to be perfectly honest; in any case, 
 Grobo knew everything, had hit upon some amazing system 
 of espionage it was all like that rhyme relating to little fleas 
 and smaller fleas " Only, I was going to meet that girl in 
 Greenwich Park on Monday, and I do not want anything 
 premature to happen, scare her off." 
 
 "You need not be afraid of that; it's nothing that can 
 possibly affect your little affair, mon ami. And as for 
 Woolwich, it is far away from there; Woolwich, my dear, we 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 93 
 
 leave to you, only work in the small as we do. Woolwich! 
 Do you think what it means, all it means, eh? Woolwich, 
 to do as you like with: the climax of our petty efforts. The 
 signal for our great, our world-wide demonstration. Almost, 
 one might say, the 'ub of it. It is what they call a test case 
 and it is more, Paul Vortonitch; it is the greatest chance 
 that has ever yet been given into the 'ands of any one young 
 man." Grobo's voice, his whole air, assumed a sudden, a 
 deep gravity; chubby and insignificant in actual physique, 
 he was capable of irradiating an atmosphere of portentous 
 authority, intimidating his underlings. " He knows too much," 
 they said; "and the devil of it all is, one never knows how 
 much he does know." 
 
 " You 'ave done much, Paul Vortonitch, but so far you 'ave 
 done nothing which stands out above the work of others; 
 'ere you 'ave all the cards in your 'and, and it is up to you 
 as you English so oddly say to play them right. Ah, well, 
 I must be going 'ome; it is my Lilee's birthday we 'ave a 
 little fete. You will accompany me, eh?" 
 
 " I am going to dinner." 
 
 "Tut, tut! you young bachelors with your girls an' your 
 dinners. We, now, we old married men, we 'ave no dinner, 
 excepting by invitation, an' it is 'igh tea to-night a super- 
 'igh tea, with cakes and twelve leetle candles twelve. I 
 count 'em count 'em greedy greedy as 'ell for the years 
 to pass. All 'ollow there, there." He struck his breast. 
 " 'Ollow with fear. Praying to the good God offering 
 candles. My God!" Grobo's voice blurred to a soft, deep 
 passion. "A candle for every breath of every hour of the 
 night and day for another year, if it were possible; the 'eart 
 out of my body to burn before 'Im, if only " 
 
 "If only what?" 
 
 "Tut, tut! nothing. But she is so pale and languid and 
 one fears, one fears. Of course it is nothing her age, a 
 delicate age, that's what my wife says; another year an' we 
 shall be safe. But if only that year could pass a-a-ah! if 
 only!" He gave himself a little shake, raised his head as 
 though to jerk himself free of thought; then laid his fineer 
 upon the other man's sleeve. 
 
 " You see that fellow there. Be careful of 'im." 
 
 Vortonitch glanced up, and gave a short laugh. "Why, 
 that's my fat friend the chap who followed me about Wool- 
 wich the first day. Not much to be feared there shows his 
 hand a damned sight too plainly." 
 
94 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 " 'E can afford to." 
 
 "Stupid, over-conspicuous, a man like a man like a 
 mountain." 
 
 "'E can afford it all all. 'E 'as something which we 
 'aven't got, you and I, my friend an 'ole country at 'is back 
 an* don't you forget it, neither." 
 
 That day of the music lesson, the quiet wonder-laden hour 
 which followed it, was, both for Vortonitch and Laura, dif- 
 ferent to, rarer than anything that had ever come before, would 
 ever come again; for the hour of love strikes while it still 
 lingers, spellbound upon the threshold, perfect in unfulfilment. 
 
 The next meeting in Greenwich Park was more like that 
 other one, in the same place, when Vortonitch had revealed 
 to her something of life as he knew it; assured like all of 
 us, clever though we may be that this was the only sort of 
 real life, the rest a mirage. 
 
 There was more in the same strain this time, and it hurt 
 more, now that she realised she loved him, becoming more 
 personal. Since they had parted at Charing Cross she had 
 found time to think; or, rather, to try and think out, plan, in 
 her woman's way, which is, in such matters, so much more 
 practical and concrete than a man's, something of their future 
 life together. 
 
 It is but seldom that a woman is content to love and be 
 loved; even a mistress wishes for " an establishment," the 
 glittering shell of domesticity. To Laura Creichton, old- 
 fashioned with that new old-fashionedness, which is return- 
 ing to women love could mean nothing else than marriage, 
 children, a joint home. That wild streak of romance, which 
 fitted her so oddly, coming down to her from some far-away 
 ancestor, was ready to risk almost anything for love, flowing 
 like a mountain stream, crystal-clear, toward the object of 
 her desire; shredding away from her Laura, the diffident, 
 the timid all thought of those differences in position, out- 
 look, upbringing, so glaringly apparent to others less blinded 
 than herself: a love essentially primal, smelling of the Garden 
 of Eden; a love which no touching of pitch ever would, or 
 could defile. But, for all that, the nest-buildir^g instinct was 
 there. She had no thought of life without it, and ip this lay, 
 at once, her strength and her weajcness. 
 
 What steps could they take so that they might remain in- 
 dissolubly together? There was in her mind, to her knowl- 
 edge, but one answer to this question. 
 
 On this afternoon she put it into words, at the end of 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 95 
 
 something Vortonitch had been telling her of his precarious 
 youth. 
 
 "Dreadful! oh, dreadful to think of! No sort of real 
 home, no anything. If you were ill what would you have 
 done if you were Ul?" 
 
 "Bite and worry through." Vortonitch's face stiffened, 
 the lines deepened at the memory of childish illnesses, which 
 even then must be concealed because they annoyed others; of 
 parched and fever-ridden nights; an incessant, instinctive 
 scheming for the means of preserving life. " Bite " the word 
 had slipped out, but that was it; he had been like nothing 
 so much as a miserable little rodent, desperately gnawing to 
 get into a store cupboard, or out of a cage. 
 
 "When I think how we are pampered when we are ill," 
 continued Laura, "it makes me ashamed. I shall never 
 never be able to do enough to make it all up to you, when we 
 are married; never! never! As long as I live I shall feel 
 oh, I don't know all sore with it. Paul, oh Paul!" Her 
 love encompassed him, maternal and oddly material. That 
 typical good woman's love, showing a deep concern for the 
 physical comfort of her ideal intermingling with, and often 
 enough stifling, all rapture. " I shall have to learn to manage 
 a house, to cook." 
 
 "To manage a house, to cook!" Good God! The girl 
 was a fool, thought Vortonitch: it was all he could do to 
 repress a loud, bitter laugh overcome by contempt. "To 
 manage a house!" Two frowsty rooms in Frith Street. 
 What in the world would he do with her there, or anywhere, 
 as a permanent part of his life, all the glamour gone, stifled 
 by domesticity? And yet, in the depths of his being, trodden 
 underfoot by his knowledge of life, of himself, the mutability 
 of all affections, his capacity for abysmal boredom, there 
 was something agonising, straining, weeping tears of blood 
 for just this sureness. 
 
 " Even if we are too poor to have a proper house like the 
 people in the rhyme, you know: 
 
 ' Two old chairs and half a candle, 
 One old jug without a handle: 
 These were all their worldly goods, 
 When they lived within the woods ' 
 
 poor, poor as anything," she went on; "terribly poor, in the 
 way you've told me of . . ." She had begun half -laughingly, 
 but now her voice took on a sudden depth and softness; and 
 
96 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 Vortonitch, glancing at her, saw her profile cut out clearly 
 against the blue of London town, passionately grave. " Even 
 if we are starving, we shall be together; and it must make a 
 difference to know that there is someone who cares, always 
 there, longing, simply longing to make things better easier 
 for you." 
 
 She spoke brokenly, hesitatingly, for it was difficult for 
 her, as for all her kind, to put feelings into words. 
 
 "Laura, Laura, I worship you!" Vortonitch was shaken; 
 he knew purity and sincerity when he met them, if only from 
 their very strangeness: adoration, wonder rose in him like a 
 wave. " I can't believe it, imagine how you can care for me. 
 Laura, if it wasn't for those people on that bench what do 
 they want there? I should be kneeling at your feet, in the 
 dust kissing your feet. That's the proper place for me, 
 with you. I've a good mind " 
 
 He made an impetuous movement, and she caught his 
 hand, laughing, her eyes bright with tears. 
 
 "Paul, Paul you can't here! Mind, dear; do mind! 
 There's someone coming up the path." 
 
 A narrow, winding footway rose from the lower slopes of 
 the park, steep as a stair, to the plateau where they sat, backed 
 by the balls and domes of the Observatory; and a moment 
 later Philip Henderson's head, in its round, Military Academy 
 cap, fronted them, as closely as though he were peering up 
 over the edge of a table; his boyish eyes full upon Laura, bent 
 a little across Vortonitch, laughing, her hand on his. 
 
 It was over in a minute: he saluted stiffly, his face crim- 
 son; mounted the bicycle which he had been pushing up the 
 hill, and rode off down the wide drive, without a word in 
 return to Laura's "Why! Hulloa, Phil!" 
 
 "Who is he? What will happen now, if he saw us?" 
 
 "Of course he saw us, duffer!" Laura was laughing, 
 flushed and bright-eyed. With a sudden sense of panic 
 Vortonitch realised that she would not mind who saw them. 
 Grobo had been right there how right! That flush it was 
 elation and pride, not shame. 
 
 " He may make mischief if he tells your people." Vor- 
 tonitch's nerve was not what it had been, and a cold trickle 
 ran down his back. If the whole affair failed, it was he who 
 would be blamed; with no question of fairness or unfairness. 
 " We can't afford failures," that was what Grobo said. 
 
 "I wouldn't mind who he told; they'll have to know some 
 day. But he won't tell Philip. He's not that sort." 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 97 
 
 Her very sureness emphasised the gulf between herself and 
 her lover. " Imagine being as sure as that of anyone," 
 thought Vortonitch. Then, again, "Are they like that? 
 really like that? But of course he'll tell. He didn't like it; 
 I could see that. In love with her himself, the young idiot 
 puppet!" 
 
 The high-crested wave upon which he had been borne 
 upwards a moment or so earlier dropped; pulled down by the 
 strong underflow of his more normal self if anything about 
 Paul Vortonitch, cockpit of nationalities, brilliant and un- 
 stable intellect, wild desires, despairs, ambitions, could be 
 described as normal. For whatever might be afoot, it is 
 certain that the instincts of the revolutionist, however wildly 
 diversified, were paramount: with the usual admixture of 
 cunning and simplicity, cowardice and courage. 
 
 They rose now, trampling passion underfoot, steadying 
 him to what he would have called sanity. There was no end 
 to the information which he wished to extract from this girl, 
 no saying how short the time might be, no limit to the dangers 
 of premature exposure. 
 
 "Listen, beloved. I cannot go to your father and mother, 
 as I would like to do, and ask them for you, with no definite 
 means of supporting a wife according to their ideas." He 
 said, thinking, slightingly enough, "She will understand that: 
 the question of an income, a settled home." 
 
 Once again, however, he was shaken out of his bitter 
 cynicism, contempt for all that Laura Creichton and her kind 
 represented; shamed by her passionate loyalty. 
 
 "I don't mind what they say; it's not that. They're 
 dears you'll love them; oh, you must love them, once you 
 know them but they can't keep us apart. It's only, I want 
 them to know; I'd be proud of them knowing." Her head 
 was high on her slender neck. "Oh, don't you see? Proud 
 proud of you: of all you've come through, of of your 
 caring for me." 
 
 "But I have my pride, too; you must see that, Laura. 
 I can't go to them empty-handed. It will be all right, 
 my treasure; but for a little, just for a little while, we 
 must keep it to ourselves. I'm getting on with my work; 
 I shall really settle down now, I have someone to work for. 
 Already I am doing weekly articles for several northern 
 papers; and I have an idea for a series of short stories laid 
 amidst the great English enterprises and institutions. The 
 London Docks, for instance there's romance for you, a fine 
 
98 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 setting for a story; the river, the salty sea-winds, the strange 
 ships, the intermingling of exotic nationalities." He spoke 
 quickly, preparing a way, and yet scarcely able to bear the 
 delay in reaching his point. "The Manchester Ship Canal; 
 the cotton-spinning industry. Why, even here I thought 
 the other day, that day I was so thrice-blessedly lost, found 
 here in Greenwich, Blackheath, Woolwich above all, Wool- 
 wich what romance! That young soldier, now, the one who 
 touched his cap to you; others like him romance! All that 
 vast Arsenal, men and weapons, of the very fabric of romance 
 love and war." 
 
 " And us two here up above it all, sort of throned," 
 murmured Laura softly. 
 
 " Olympians, true Olympians ! Why, the whole thing : 
 this hillside, the green park; below us the chevaux-de-frise 
 of war: Naval College, Military College, Arsenal, Shipyard 
 romance! With everywhere, running through it all, youth 
 and love." 
 
 "Not one story!" Laura's eyes were glowing. "Any 
 amount of stories." 
 
 "The difficulty is that there are details I would have to 
 know all sorts of little commonplace things: the sort of 
 work the different sorts of people do; the hours; the local- 
 ities. Why, I hardly know the real meaning of that word 
 Arsenal. It's there where I am stuck not being English; 
 but the romance 'The Romance of an Arsenal.' Think of 
 it, Laura. Only the details . . . Beloved, you can have no 
 idea how ignorant I am regarding all technical things in your 
 language. Coming down in the train to-day, there were men 
 talking, rough, common men, but talking Greek Greek so far 
 as I was concerned. Laura, you, you of all people what 
 are you thinking of to ally yourself with a common ass! 
 'T. and T.,' now that was one of the subjects. In the name 
 of all the saints, dear one" he laughed, spreading out his 
 hands with a deprecating gesture "have pity on my ignor- 
 ance and tell me. What on earth is T. and T.? 
 
 "Not T. and T.!" she laughed. "T.N.T. It's nothing 
 only a stupid sort of explosive one of the explosives. Of 
 course, I'm always hearing about those sort of things dad 
 and his friends talking. Paul dear, I've no sort of brain or 
 imagination, but I could help you there, I'm sure I'm sure 
 I could." 
 
 "One wants so much more than one ever puts in to 
 give the effect of reality. The story, that's easy enough, but 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 99 
 
 the rest, the mise-en-scene. . . . Supposing, now, that we had 
 the hero and the villain struggling together for oh, what? 
 Let us say, a bomb fabricated with your precious Tee En Tee, 
 
 eh? How where No, no, it's beyond me. Then, how 
 
 much should I want of the what you call it the geography 
 of the place; where things are obtainable, how it would be 
 possible for my villain to get at them." 
 
 " Of course, there's an awful lot we never know no one 
 outside, no one but dad, and perhaps one or two others; not 
 even the people that are working there, not as a whole, because 
 of the fear of Nihilists and people of that sort, you see. But 
 there are lots of other things that would fit into a story; I'm 
 sure they would." 
 
 "Well, now, that long blank wall, for instance, like an 
 eyebrow, frowning. What's that?" Vortonitch pointed. Of 
 course Laura knew what lay behind this: that other one, too, 
 and the squat towers: there was much with which she was so 
 familiar that she had forgotten it until Vortonitch provoked 
 laughter and corrections with his ridiculous blunders; the 
 preposterous questions he asked. 
 
 "We must make it as melodramatic as possible; that's 
 what they like melodrama, and plenty of it. Love and 
 horror." 
 
 " Things did happen " Laura was all eagerness to help 
 "in the war, you know: worse than any book. That awful 
 explosion at Silvertown, you know. It all seems so far away 
 now, in the face of this . . ." 
 
 She indicated the plains beneath them; the hem of a toy 
 town done out in shot grey and blue, like an embroidered 
 border to a woman's veil, run through by the silver thread of 
 the river; infinitely peaceful. 
 
 " So different, so awfully difficult to believe. Why, it 
 might have been the end of the world. I was only a kid, but 
 but ... Paul, what's that? Paul!" 
 
 She caught his arm as, like an amazing commentary on 
 her words, a heavy explosion shook down the river from the 
 west, echoing from hill to hill Highgate, Hampstead, Green- 
 wich and Forest Hill. 
 
 Vortonitch, turning towards Laura, seeing past her, had 
 caught sight of the smoke but one moment before the roar 
 struck upon his ears. So that was what Grobo had meant 
 but where? where? His brain played like lightning to and 
 fro over the works of public utility which lay in that direction: 
 electric power? water? But no; they were out to impress 
 
100 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 the popular mind by concentrating upon what was connected 
 with military and government institutions alone, letting the 
 people's ordinary sources of comfort be for the present, at 
 least. 
 
 "What is it? What . . . Oh, just as we are talking of 
 the war, of Silvertown. What, oh Paul, what can it be?" 
 
 Laura was on her feet, tense and straining; very upright, 
 the tips of the fingers of one hand just touching the back of 
 the seat, the other curved above her eyes. She was dressed 
 in a smoke-blue knitted jumper and narrow skirt showing the 
 lines of her figure; there was something veil-like about her 
 hat, which floated backwards, in the light lap of air. There, 
 on that plateau, erect, transfixed, she was, to Paul Vortonitch's 
 eye, more like some symbolical figure of Victory than the 
 credulous, loving girl whom he was engaged in winding 
 around his little finger: he could almost see the curve of great 
 wings springing from the strong young shoulders. Was this 
 the way in which she faced surprise and danger: one of the 
 amazing ways of this amazing race of Englishwomen? 
 
 "Blasting, or something of that sort," he said; and then, 
 as she turned and looked at him, saw that her face was like 
 that of a piteous child, her eyes wet with tears, wide with 
 horror. 
 
 "No, no not there. Could it be ... Paul, how awful 
 if it were the Houses of Parliament! just there, on the bend 
 of the river . . . the Houses of Parliament!" 
 
 " How awful if it were the Houses of Parliament." He 
 murmured the words to himself on the way home. Well, 
 well, that would come; that was part of it; frightening 
 people, shaking up all their traditions. A holocaust of 
 emblems, shrieked and slobbered over for what they repre- 
 sented; otherwise unmissed, unmournd; a mere cessation of 
 windy spasms in the midriff of the empire! 
 
 " The Houses of Parliament " there had been something 
 very like awe in Laura Creichton's tone; almost as when she 
 had said, " But there is a God," or spoke of " The King." 
 
 A survival, that's what she was; an exhumed skeleton, 
 the dry bones of old conventions, tied together by red tape, 
 camouflaged as flesh and blood, white skin, blue-grey eyes, 
 sweet, full lips, curved for what? Platitudes or passion? 
 Who could tell with these English! 
 
 Vortonitch, leaning his chin in his hand, his elbow propped 
 against the window-frame of the railway carriage, crowded 
 with workers from the Arsenal for on parting with Laura he 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 101 
 
 had walked down the park to Greenwich station felt as 
 though his blood were turning to wine at the thought of those 
 lips, scoff as he might. Platitudes "the Houses of Parlia- 
 ment" but, after all, what had come before that? 
 
 "I don't mind what they say; they can't keep us apart!" 
 
 "Passionate courage," Grobo had said; strange that he 
 should be able to realise the breed like that, Grobo, the 
 bastard of nations! Grobo and Laura Laura, lovely and 
 made for love. Quite suddenly, longing, like a wave, swept 
 over Vortonitch. There was nothing, nothing in the whole 
 world he desired so much as Laura's arms about him: so 
 that, leaning his head against her heart, he might feel himself 
 drowned in quiet ecstasy, far, far away from the world and 
 all that it meant; drunken with that sense of peace which 
 she never failed to bring to him; sweetly, deliciously drunken, 
 as a bee with honey. 
 
 The air, on the station platforms and in the train, was full 
 of talk of the explosion which, echoing down the river, had 
 excited the workers, already, and so completely, re-inured to 
 safety. There were all sorts of conflicting rumours; people 
 gathered in excited crowds at the station, talking; but it was 
 only as Vortonitch emerged from Charing Cross station that 
 the newspaper-boys came racing along the Strand, their arms 
 piled high with the still damp sheets, their posters torn by 
 the wind of their going. 
 
 "Terrible explosion in Pimlico!" 
 
 "Clothing factory blown up!" 
 
 "Anarchists in Pimlico!" 
 
 " Bolshevists " 
 
 " Sinn Feiners " 
 
 "Loss of life!" 
 
 "Terrific explosion!" 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 IT was close upon eight o'clock the daylight just touched 
 by the edge of evening, like a fine grey veil reaching the tip of 
 a pretty woman's nose as Vortonitch moved through the 
 hurrying, home-bound throng to his own rooms, and sat 
 awhile by the open window, half expecting a visit, or at least 
 some news, from Grobo; his thoughts with love and Laura 
 coming and going like a refrain through them engrossed by 
 the affair at Pimlico; wondering who had been directly 
 responsible and how much damage had been done: all this 
 overweighted by a feeling as though he himself were being 
 impelled, hurried into that move by which he was expected 
 to definitely assert his own value. 
 
 A little before nine a boy brought a line from Le Cygne 
 d'Or, signed with a " G." 
 
 " If you are at home, come and take a cup of coffee here 
 with me." 
 
 A vague and peaceful enough invitation; or so it might 
 have seemed. In reality, no invitation at all, but a com- 
 mand. Grobo had no use for the ordinary amenities of 
 society, no use for society itself; if he desired a man's com- 
 pany it was because he thought to make some use of him, as 
 weapon, tool or shield. 
 
 When Vortonitch reached the cafe and he did not hesi- 
 tate he found Grobo alone at his usual table, sipping his 
 coffee and chatting to Madame, who moved away with a nod 
 and smile as the other man appeared; for there was something 
 in the air, she knew that; it was part of her business to study 
 what better educated people might have described as the 
 " auras " of her customers. 
 
 Vortonitch ordered a fricassee of chicken, salad, and a 
 pint of wine. 
 
 "I've had no dinner," he said; and when Grobo re- 
 sponded, "All the better," perfectly understood what he 
 meant. A man engaged in actually eating a meal strikes the 
 popular fancy as less conspirator-like than he who sips coffee, 
 
 102 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 103 
 
 Grobo, realising this, was yet glad that it should be the other 
 man who fortified the position by paying for a repast. 
 
 " Eat as much as you like, my dear ; until 'e arrives if 'e 
 does arrive. . . . An' 'ee will. Those sort of peoples, they 
 'ave the madness for anythings! While they are going they 
 are magnificent; but 'ow to stop them, that is the question!" 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 '"Arbin." 
 
 "Then it was he?" 
 
 "Yes. Of an ordinary man you would say 'e would stay 
 'id: but we 'ave the defects of our virtues, all of us. This 
 virtue of the mad-bull rush, all very well; but dangerous 
 as ... oh, well, as all weapons are dangerous." 
 
 "And if he comes here?" 
 
 "If 'e comes 'ere 'e will come to make a row; 'e will be 
 mad with fear, passion; an' people like that 'ave but one way: 
 the more frightened they are the louder they squeals until 
 they 'ave time to think what they are doing; then they think 
 of themselves. We must get 'im away to your room; keep 
 'im quiet; show 'im 'ow it is all to 'is doin'; but if 'e 'old 
 'is mouth shut, no one will know nothing. See?" 
 
 " If you think that there is going to be a row, why are you 
 here? The first place where he'll look for you " 
 
 "If there's going to be a row, it 'ud best fall on me; for, 
 mark you, if 'e comes 'ere like that to talk, talk 'e will, 
 any'ow, to anyone. An' we can . . . Ah!" 
 
 There was a stir at the swing-door leading from the narrow 
 passage to the dining-room: that sort of stir which is more 
 than half atmospheric, and yet so distinct that the two or 
 three customers still seated there glanced up as sharply as 
 though they had heard their own names. 
 
 Harbin was in the doorway, his hat on the back of his 
 head, his face ashy, his tie up under one ear. As a waiter 
 tried to pass with a loaded tray in his hand, he jerked one 
 elbow, savagely dashing it aside. 
 
 There was a clatter of falling dishes, a rain of hoarse 
 expletives, everyone agape. The next moment he caught sight 
 of Grobo hurrying to meet him, and shouted: "Look here, 
 you you! . . . My God, what do you think? . . ." 
 
 He was plunging forward when they collided, and Grobo 
 caught him by one hand, pumping it up and down, Vortonitch 
 by the other; both alike though Vortonitch had never so 
 much as set eyes upon him before flooding him with words, 
 pressing him under with a stream of exuberant welcome. 
 
104 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 "My dear fellow at last, at last! I am so delighted 
 dee-lighted! Afraid that you were not coming. All waiting 
 disconsolate! Upon my word, disconsolate! . . . Yes, all 
 waitin', our leetle party. My friend 'ere your other 
 friends." 
 
 There was force in the pressure of Grobo's ball-like body 
 impelling him towards the door; Vortonitch, himself, was all 
 wire-like muscle, so that somehow or other, between them, 
 they had Harbin out of the restaurant and into a taxi. Vor- 
 tonitch's lodging was not five minutes' walk away, but they 
 did not dare to risk the open street, with Harbin like this, 
 utterly disorganised: questions, ejaculations, sobs, streaming 
 from him. 
 
 "Whimpering" is an expression which we apply to a 
 complaint uttered half under the breath; but there is no 
 other word for it: Harbin whimpered aloud at the top of his 
 voice. 
 
 " What the hell was it? Oh, my God, what was it? 
 What did you give me? Awful, awful! . . . Why why . . . 
 Oh, my God, if you'd seen it! What happened? What 
 ... Oh! Oh!" 
 
 "Be quiet, can't you?" Grobo pressed close against him, 
 for they were all on the same side of the taxi, felt him torn 
 with shudders. 
 
 "Oh! Oh, Christ! What happened? I ask myself that, 
 but I know, I tell you know. He must have touched the 
 electric button that fellow, that fool, that damned fool! 
 . . . He had no right there, of course, he'd no right there 
 but you told me. Even then I would have stopped him, 
 though I thought God's my witness, that's what I thought 
 ... A 'joke' you said; that's what you said; but I was 
 at the farthest end of the building. And even now what 
 was it? How could I know what it was? What were you 
 up to? Look here, now, what were you up to? Why . . . 
 Oh, I don't know, I don't know ... I can't think. But you, 
 you a devil a foreign devil ! No one but a devil " 
 
 "Be quiet, I say!" muttered Vortonitch uselessly; for it 
 would have been impossible to silence him without loosing 
 their hold to put a hand across his mouth. 
 
 " I fixed the bloody thing. Why, it all might have been 
 anything it mightn't have been that at all. You told me 
 you told me yourself. I defy you to say you didn't. ... A 
 squib a squib, that's what you said! Damn you, that's 
 what you said!" 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 105 
 
 "A squib yes, a squib. He made it too strong, that's 
 all." 
 
 "A squib! A squib!" Harbin broke into a sort of 
 laugh whinny or squeal. " I tell you those bombs, those 
 German bombs nothing to it, nothing! Hell! that's what 
 it was. A hundred people more not one-half known yet 
 even yet! . . . Carried out in ambulances, done up in sheets 
 bits of them fellows running after the stretchers with 
 more bits! Men an' women do you hear that? Women! 
 Torn flesh . . . U-ugh! Blood on the broken walls, all the 
 whitewash spattered! Blood!" 
 
 "Be quiet!" 
 
 "Blood everywhere everywhere, I tell you!" Harbin's 
 voice rose to a scream. "A shambles! What will they do 
 now? Government property an' all. . . . Compensation, 
 everything the devil to pay! What will they do to me? 
 me! An' the crowds did you see the crowds? The whole 
 place black with 'em, sorter murmuring like the sea. And 
 you you, you foreign devils ! What in the name of God . . . ! 
 You said . . . Oh, you said you know you did, you know, 
 you did, you know " 
 
 "Be quiet, can't you!" 
 
 "Quiet! Who the hell could be quiet? There ain't 
 any quiet left in the world never will be. You'd not be 
 quiet if you'd heard 'em scream, the way I did. Scream! 
 Scream! You'd not 'a been eating dinner there never eat 
 again, as long as you ever lived. I can hear it now I can 
 hear it now, if ever . . . A-h-h-h-h!" 
 
 A taxi ran past them with a shrill hoot, and he jerked, 
 stiffened like a man seized with tetanus; his head thrown 
 back. 
 
 "Keep still, can't you! Confound you, keep still!" 
 Grobo and Vortonitch were at their wits' end to hold him; 
 their fingers biting into the flesh of his arm; for it seemed at 
 though he had no feeling left, entranced with horror. 
 
 Once more his voice blurred, dropped, ran on and on. 
 
 "Those crowds! God, those crowds awful, awful! 
 Waiting, just waiting! Crowds like a black wall. I know 
 something of crowds, I do " for a moment his old aggressive 
 air re-asserted itself " seen something of crowds. Why. 
 they'd tear me limb from limb if they knew! Tear me like 
 those others those . . . My God! look here there was a 
 chap's head snipped off somehow or other men fell for- 
 ward, stunned; some of the machinery went on cutting, 
 
106 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 cutting anything; just cutting a chap's head, I tell you 
 no body, nothing blown up, stuck on a bit o' broken wall, 
 grinning like this. Look here . . ." 
 
 They passed a lamp as they drew up; could see his mouth 
 stretched, horribly, his teeth startingly regular and artificial 
 bared and shining. 
 
 They got him out of the taxi, squealing like a rabbit, and 
 somehow or other Vortonitch paid the fare, with one knee in 
 the small of his back. 
 
 "Got 'em a treat this time, an' no mistake," remarked 
 the driver genially; while they thanked their stars for this 
 neighbourhood, acclimatised to the strangest scenes. 
 
 The house seemed empty; in any case, no one would have 
 been greatly surprised at the noise they made going up the 
 stairs; while it is against the code of honour of such places to 
 peep from one's door. 
 
 With their quarry safe in his own room, Vortonitch locked 
 the door, pocketed the key, and then stood with his back to 
 it; while Grobo lit the gas, a bare spluttering jet, for the 
 globe had been broken days earlier and not yet replaced. 
 
 Harbin was standing in the middle of the room, stock-still 
 save for his shoulders, which he moved with a sort of swagger. 
 
 "I give you fair warning!" he cried. "I tell you I give 
 you fair warning! I'll go to the authorities Scotland Yard, 
 Minister of Works, Prime Minister himself tell 'em; expose 
 you, you damned foreign devils, you! Those poor chaps 
 awful, awful! But I'll let 'em know I'll let 'em know, if I 
 swing for it!" 
 
 "An' that's what you would do." 
 
 "How? . . . Why? ... I ... I ..." He collapsed 
 into a chair, a pricked bubble. " It wasn't my fault. Who 
 could say it was my fault? How could I know? Nothing I 
 did nothing perfectly innocent!" he stammered, breaking 
 up his sentences as though he were drunk. 
 
 "Look 'ere, my friend." Grobo's tone was immensely 
 impressive, overwhelmingly contemptuous; standing so near 
 to the poor wretch as to almost touch him with his own 
 comfortable person, he shook a finger in his face. " Who was 
 it took explosives into the factory a bomb eh? Come 
 now!" 
 
 "A squib a squib!" Harbin's voice rose to a shrill 
 scream. 
 
 "Call it what you will." Grobo shrugged his plump 
 shoulders. "All the same thing. It was you took it there. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 107 
 
 " You told me, you yourself a squib, to scare that fellow 
 a joke! I can swear to that swear to it!" 
 
 "An' who'll believe you? Tell me that. Who'll believe 
 you?" 
 
 "They'll get hold of you; they'll realise " 
 
 " An' 'ow the 'ell will they get 'old of me? Do you think 
 that I'd stay quietly 'ere, for them to lead me off by the nose? 
 Do you think they'd dare to touch me me, if I did? Dare, 
 I say! Yes, dare! Knowing what you do know even you, 
 pheugh! . . . That blowing up bits o' men do you think 
 they'd run themselves into that by laying as much as an 'and 
 upon me, or my friend either? To go up like a rocket 
 pn-ph-ph-ut! To come down in minces so that their own 
 wives would not know them. Do you think they'd like that? 
 Do you think they'd like that, eh? These fat English 
 policemen?" 
 
 "I don't know! I don't know! Oh, I don't know!" 
 The gas was flickering so that they seemed to be cut up into 
 wavering folds of specky light and darkness; with Harbin's 
 voice whimpering through it. "How the devil . . . Oh, my 
 God, my God! What did you do it for? That's what beats 
 me." He had sunk upon a chair, his hands to his head. 
 
 "What did you do it for?" retorted Grobo. "That 
 squib to frighten a man, make a joke make to jump . . . 
 Tell me that. Come, now, Monsieur!" Grobo's voice was 
 gently persuasive. "What reason 'ad you?" 
 
 " Damn it all, you know why I did it putting upon me, 
 driving me to it! The confounded Government setting up 
 a fellow like that over my head!" 
 
 "Now, there you 'ave it, the 'ole secret of it: your move 
 as well as mine. Now, look 'ere, my friend." He drew a 
 chair close to the shuddering man, laid a plump hand upon 
 his knee; while Vortonitch moved over to the window and, 
 lighting a cigarette, leant against the frame, observing, 
 listening, thinking; long, long thoughts, amid which Laura 
 Creichton came and went a fair, sunlit and tree-shaded 
 mirage. 
 
 In the street outside men were crying the first cheap straw- 
 berries of the season, with a long-drawn and not unmelodious 
 note: while Grobo's soft voice purred on and on. 
 
 "Listen 'ere, my friend. If you was to go to the police, 
 to the Government, the King 'imself, and say that you had 
 introduced a too big squib into a State factory because a 
 foreign gentleman had told you to for a joke what would 
 
108 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 they do? They would not believe you. If they did believe 
 you, they would put you into an asylum for mads, where you 
 might knock your 'ead against padded walls, as you 'ave been 
 knockin' your 'ead against things all your life, an' no one take 
 no notice of you whatever. An' there is nothing worse than 
 that, let me tell you to be taken no notice of whatsoever. 
 If ever there is an 'ell it is that, for a man of your sort. But 
 that is what 'ud 'appen. An' why? Tell me that? Be- 
 cause. .." He spoke more slowly, emphasising each word 
 with a gentle tap upon the other man's knee. " Because it 
 would suit them that it should 'appen. E-h-h eh? You 
 ought to know you know your Government." 
 
 "By God, yes!" 
 
 " An' for what reason? For what they want, eh? You 
 know that also what they want?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "A scapegoat." 
 
 "A scapegoat yes." Harbin repeated the words in a 
 dulled voice, shaking his head, still bent forward upon his 
 chest, heavily from side to side. "Aye, you're right there; 
 a scapegoat." 
 
 " And who will 'e be? Tell me that." 
 
 The poor wretch, who had involuntarily caught something 
 of a foreign air from his visit to Le Cygne d'Or, moved 
 his shoulder in a grotesque parody of a shrug. 
 
 "Well?" Grobo had risen and stood in front of his 
 victim, who gazed up at him without speaking. " An' 'oo will 
 that be, eh? This scapegoat?" he pressed him cruelly. 
 " 'Oo will it be, tell me that, if you are going talking, 
 putting yourself into their 'ands, makin' it all so easy for 
 them?" 
 
 Still Harbin gazed, without a word; his long chin had 
 dropped, his bloodshot eyes drooped at the corners. His 
 whole aspect was, indeed, that of a man who has been taken 
 by the top of the head and dragged violently downwards, 
 while he looked years older than he had done eight hours 
 earlier, shrunken by some spiritual deflation which bowed 
 his shoulders, drawing them together, hollowing out his 
 chest. 
 
 " Can't see why it should have happened to me. Done my 
 job done my best never interfered with nobody; and 
 now . . . Oh, my God, my God! what am I to do? Where 
 
 am I to go? There's my wife who's to " He broke 
 
 off, shaking his head despairingly, having, as Grobo had been 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 109 
 
 careful to ascertain, a pretty young wife of whom he was 
 insanely jealous. 
 
 "You're right there. Who's to ? The rates, or 
 
 some other man." Grobo laughed softly. "You go home; 
 keep your mouth shut, an' you'll keep your wife. That's the 
 only thing for you to do." 
 
 " I'd have no peace " 
 
 "Pheugh! Who 'as peace? 'Oo wants peace? Now, 
 listen 'ere, Monsieur; remember this. If by any queer 
 chance you wriggled free o' the law, we'd 'ave you. Bits! 
 Talk o' bits!" Harbin shuddered. "Well, that's what it 
 'ud be. Now then!" 
 
 Grobo put out one hand to Vortonitch, took the key, then 
 moved to the door and unlocked it. 
 
 "What time do you go to work?" 
 
 " Eight. That is to say, I used to go ... I ..." 
 murmured Harbin confusedly. 
 
 "Well, mind you're punctual to-morrow, that's all." 
 
 "What do you mean? I " 
 
 "This: I suppose there's something left more or less. 
 Any'ow, go on until you're discharged, with a character, 
 Monsieur. And keep your mouth shut." 
 
 "But you said . . ." Harbin, with both hands to the 
 arms of the chair, was rising to his feet like an old man; his 
 cheeks had actually sunken; there were deep furrows at 
 either side of his mouth; his whole expression was piteous 
 and utterly bewildered. 
 
 " It doesn't matter what I said. You can't put those 
 bits together again, can you? Nothing can be done 
 whatever you try to do will only make more trouble." Grobo 
 was speaking with an easy, almost fatherly tone and gesture; 
 but suddenly his voice hardened, sharpened. " And your own 
 life not worth an hour's purchase. Sudden death dropping 
 on you from nowhere, from anywhere round a corner, out of 
 a doorway, through a window: a tin o' meat, a milk-can, 
 a child's ball any little thing like that phut! A squib, a 
 little squib! And your wife a widow. Remember what you 
 saw to-day; remember that, an' keep on remembering. An' 
 now, out o' this, or you'll be late to-morrow. A ver-ee good 
 night, Monsieur." 
 
 Grobo pointed to the open door, and Harbin moved towards 
 it, shambling he who had walked with such aggressive self- 
 confidence muttering : 
 
 " I don't know, I'm sure I don't know. Me, of all people 
 
110 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 always standing by the Government, always face of 
 great . . ." something which sounded like "provocation," 
 as he moved heavily down the stairs. 
 
 " Hah ! " Vortonitch, who had hitherto remained com- 
 pletely silent, broke into a short laugh. "Well, I suppose 
 he'll be all right now. You count on that?" 
 
 "I know it. We caught 'im at the flood-tide; 'e'll save 
 'is own skin, trust 'im for that!" 
 
 "But the engineer? didn't you say " 
 
 " Killed. One of the few identified killed whole. There 
 is a Providence, my friend; yes, yes, without doubt there is a 
 Providence of a sort." 
 
 After Grobo had left him, Vortonitch, filled with an almost 
 unbearable restlessness, walked over to Pimlico. 
 
 It was a clear moonlit night, in which the tall old houses 
 bore a curiously cold, repellent air: as though standing very 
 upright, drawn up to a ridiculous height they nursed within 
 their hearts a never-failing sense of bitterness at their own 
 descent from the fashionable world. They were not what 
 they pretended, being, for the most part, divided up into 
 flats, or let out in lodgings; but they would not give way, 
 show themselves in any degree sociable or vulgarly good- 
 natured. Not a soul was to be seen gossiping upon the door- 
 steps; only the cats, peculiarly numerous and lean, slithering 
 in and out of the area railings, gave a hint of anything like 
 life; the sort of things which might, after all, be going on 
 inside those discreetly-veiled dwellings. 
 
 Even before he reached Buckingham Palace Road Vor- 
 tonitch had caught the acrid scent of burning, charred wood, 
 molten metal. Passing through St. George's Square, Lupus 
 Street, Chichester Street, he scarcely saw a soul; then, quite 
 suddenly, he struck a dense crowd, kept back by the 
 police, standing gorming at a great jagged hole in a high 
 blank wall, a glimpse, the merest glimpse of more broken 
 walls, shattered chimneys. 
 
 There was a sound of picks and hammers, showing that 
 men were still busy amid the ruins. A hospital ambulance 
 rolled silently out of the great gate, opened for a moment 
 only, as Vortonitch stood waiting, gorming with the rest: a 
 minute or so later the gates swung open again; but not so 
 wide; affording egress to something on a stretcher cbVered 
 in a sheet and carried by two men. 
 
 "They're getting them out," murmured a voice at Vor- 
 tonitch's elbow while another voice remarked that there was 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 111 
 
 no knowing how many more there might yet be "hundreds 
 more, like enough," alive or dead, imprisoned beneath the 
 ruins. 
 
 After a while Vortonitch moved away, and strolling into 
 the strip of garden which hems the river at the lower edge of 
 St. George's Square leant over the low parapet. 
 
 Here the smell of smoke and charred wood stung the 
 nostrils sharply, borne upon an outgoing tide and westerly 
 wind; while the moonlit river was strewn with flecks of 
 black. 
 
 The crowd before the factory had emitted an air of dense 
 depression; but Vortonitch himself felt curiously excited: 
 elated with his own superior knowledge, sense of power. 
 These sheep-like masses, what did they know? There was no 
 sequence of any sort in the minds of people like this. He, 
 Paul Vortonitch, was likely enough the only one among them 
 all who realised in the least what it was which led up to the 
 tragedy: let alone, what it, in itself, would lead to. 
 
 Of a sudden he was swept with a flare of jealousy, im- 
 patience. Grobo had been right amazing how often he was 
 right! It was time, and more than time, that he should 
 prove himself. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THAT night Vortonitch's brain seemed to narrow to a fine 
 point. He knew the phase, realised the value of it amid his 
 strangely-assorted weapons, tools; delighted in it as he 
 delighted in his other moods, excepting and in reality 
 scarcely excepting those dense blacknesses of despair which 
 overcame him from time to time. For even out of these he 
 got some sort of strange pleasure. 
 
 He had once seen velvet cutters at work with their long, 
 slender, intensely sharp and glittering knives: this was the 
 way with his brain at such times as these; it was absolutely 
 trustworthy and up to the mark, clear-cutting, flying: al- 
 together delightful, both in use and effect. 
 
 He found a means of penetrating into Woolwich Arsenal; 
 of making a very fairly reliable map of the place; likely 
 centres for mischief fixed themselves in his mind: the big gun 
 shop; the central office; and the square in front of the 
 Arsenal, black with men during the first part of the 
 dinner-hour. 
 
 It seemed as though fortune were determined to favour 
 him in every possible way. The very first day he was 
 kept waiting in the little office at the big gate, while 
 peculiarly bulky and responsible-looking policemen came and 
 went without ceasing, unmindful of all that the little map of 
 the water-cocks to be used in case of fire, hanging in a frame 
 by the door, might mean to this gentle-faced young man 
 studying the exact method of cutting off the supply in the 
 event of any such consummation of his hopes. 
 
 They appeared indeed, so trustful not to say indifferent, 
 that Vortonitch found himself obliged to struggle without 
 ceasing against that danger which is forever to hand with 
 people of his temperament and profession: the danger of dis- 
 counting one of the most effective weapons of law and order 
 as yet known to civilisation the British policeman. 
 
 There was already a man of their own, named Boyce, 
 working among the high-explosives: a useful enough fellow 
 in his own way it was through a friend of his, a perfectly 
 
 112 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 113 
 
 innocent and credulous officer's servant, that Vortonitch had 
 obtained his pass but it was disappointing to realize how 
 little he could do; off his own bat, as it were. 
 
 One had thought of all these departments devoted to the 
 manipulation of explosives as the possible nucleus of a wide- 
 spreading inferno. But the authorities, so extraordinarily 
 wooden in some things, had odd, unexpected ways of baulking 
 a far finer intelligence; and the shops devoted to explosives 
 of all sorts, so immense, in the aggregate, were yet, in- 
 dividually, too small, too widely separated, for the production 
 of any very spectacular display. 
 
 The central office; the large gun shop; the square 
 Vortonitch's first impression remained with him. These 
 were the main spots to be linked up by a series of more or 
 less sporadic explosions; while the Military Academy and 
 barracks, the shipyard could be simultaneously disposed of. 
 Oh well, it might not be so bad, after all, once these necessary 
 links were established. Men such as Boyce, and others like 
 him, would lose their lives, more likely than not: there was 
 no help for that, for it was necessary that the affair should 
 be carried out during the populous hours of daylight; but 
 then, who would miss Boyce? an honest "comrade," but 
 unenterprising just the sort of man to serve as human torch 
 in the general holocaust, when it would have been a 
 thousand pities to lose anyone really brilliant. 
 
 For close upon a month Vortonitch haunted Woolwich. 
 Had he happened to encounter Laura Creichton at this time, 
 she would have wasted no second glance upon the rather 
 greasy-looking young mechanic, with the untidy dark mous- 
 tache, and bag of tools over one shoulder. 
 
 During this time he had laboured without ceasing; had 
 drawn out innumerable maps and plans, gathering up thread 
 after thread, and like a bead-worker with his tiny toy loom 
 hanging them with human lives; introducing three more of 
 his own humbler comrades into the place, in various positions; 
 drawing to himself new friends and converts, the sort of men 
 who might be too cowardly to kindle a fire, but would yet 
 not lend a hand to put it out: bead after bead amazing how, 
 once started, each one slipped into place. 
 
 All this while his brain still held that knifelike sway over 
 the rest of his strangely-assorted make-up wayward heart, 
 fantastic imagination, abysmal boredom. He was moving 
 very slowly, very carefully, as he could do when he chose. 
 Discontent with the present conditions of life was there to be 
 
114 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 worked upon, leading to those underground channels of sullen 
 antagonism so certain to wreck any industry; and all this 
 without drawing any special suspicion upon himself. For 
 there was no use in engineering a mere series of explosions, 
 arousing borror, patriotism: the thing was to induce that 
 feeling of being so completely fed up that anything, anything. 
 which happened would be regarded as a sort of slap at the 
 Government, to " larn 'em." 
 
 Never in all the annals of English history had the time 
 been riper for an attack. Now that the excitement of the war 
 had passed, the working-classes men and women alike were 
 overcome by a sick distaste for the old monotonous ways. 
 They had got into the step of war as a sailor gets used to the 
 motion of a ship, rolling in his walk upon dry land. 
 
 The upper classes, also were affected, but in a different 
 fashion. They had given themselves freely enough, worked 
 as they had never worked before, throwing themselves into 
 every sort of scheme for social service; and yet nothing of all 
 this was stabilised. Those who had always been accustomed 
 to give of themselves and their superfluity were ruined: the 
 new rich had no interest in the poor. There was less social 
 service than there had ever been before ; and the gulf between 
 the classes for a while rilled with the shovellings of political 
 place-mongers, ill-advised Government schemes and subsidies, 
 with a good deal of sentiment but little real humanity, and 
 even less thought, at the back of them gaped dangerously 
 wide. 
 
 The old evils had scarcely diminished, but the good there 
 had always been was gone out of them: nobody believed in 
 anybody; truth and honesty were at the lowest possible ebb, 
 and religion moribund. 
 
 Never had society appeared more completely divided: the 
 two sides howling at each other, thumping their own tubs. 
 The capitalist was a criminal not, as one might surely have 
 believed, a means of livelihood for the men whose fathers had 
 not been provident enough to put by the wherewithal for 
 them to launch out upon any business of their own. If they 
 did save enough to start a shop, or their wives a lodging-house, 
 they themselves became capitalists, and thus suspect: the 
 feeling was against inherited wealth, so what was the good 
 of saving, denying oneself for what might be snatched away 
 from one's children? Better spend the money in the public- 
 house than run any risk of developing into anything so com- 
 pletely " gory " as a capitalist. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 115 
 
 The capitalist and when does one begin to be a capitalist, 
 cease to be a capitalist? . . . howled back. The working- 
 man had never been so well off as he was during the war: 
 he had given nothing, suffered nothing not him! Trust 
 him! But here again was gross unfairness; as though a 
 working-man had anything whatever to give, beyond 
 his own body and the fruit of his body? All very fine and 
 self-denying to fight for some hundreds of acres: parks, 
 gardens, woods, pastures, sporting rights, and historic homes; 
 all that they meant in pleasure, dignity of position, rent- 
 roll this was the retort, a handy one, too. But what price 
 a single vermin-infested room in Bethnal Green? What 
 about that, eh? The working-man, for awhile the belauded 
 Tommies, had hardly thought of this before they left; they 
 thought of it when they got back, and likely enough found 
 even that much of "the happy homes of England" sneaked 
 away from them. 
 
 What a ground to work upon: tilled, trenched, laid open 
 to any sort of outside influence; a word here, a word there 
 seeds sown, dragon's teeth, rather. 
 
 And yet, after all, what did the people want? The 
 sanest, the most humane might well ask themselves that. 
 
 What did they want? Was it a case of "Ask grandam 
 kingdom and it grandam will, give it a plum, a cherry or a 
 fig"? Was their need, in truth, spiritual rather than 
 natural? though they themselves neither knew nor had the 
 wit to put it into words, could think of nothing beyond 
 wages, higher and ever higher wages, as the panacea for all 
 evils, reversing the Testament, needing bread and asking for 
 a stone. 
 
 It seemed as though the revolutionary agitator read 
 them better than they read themselves; saw further than 
 anyone else, as the dishonest so often do, in tossing them 
 that old and badly-disgraced word suspect since the days of 
 Cain "fraternity," freshly trimmed into "A Fraternal 
 Soviet." 
 
 Be it as it might be, nobody was satisfied, at ease with life. 
 There were grievances, real or fancied, upon every side: 
 little sparks all ready for the revolutionary fan. 
 
 Vortonitch took a trip up to Scotland, and spent a couple 
 of days in Glasgow, for the sake of comparison. 
 
 Here he found all ripe: "Communists" fused with the 
 old Glasgow Anarchist group: "Labour," Proletarians," 
 ' Workers' Committees" all alike appertaining to the 
 
116 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 Extreme Left, and using their brains over it, too; with these 
 three staple planks Political, Industrial and Educational. 
 
 He went on into Lancashire and the West Riding; finding, 
 everywhere alike, unemployment and discontent rife; and so 
 into South Wales, observant of the work of the Labour 
 Colleges; rendered uneasy at this movement, with its threat 
 of teaching men to think rationally: building in place of 
 snatching. 
 
 If revolt went too far it might become too well-ordered; 
 once let the working-man find that he could walk alone and 
 very well, too and there would be an end of Mr. Paul Vor- 
 tonitch, of Carl Grobo, and of others like him: of all those at 
 the back of them, of all the fun and excitement of life. 
 
 The time was ripe in England, absolutely ripe; it must on 
 no account be allowed to over-ripen. On the other hand, the 
 grandiose programme of the Terror must be carried out as a 
 whole from the moment that he, by his own effort, gave the 
 signal. Not for worlds would he relinquish that. Only a few 
 months more . . . Three? Yes, it could be managed in three 
 if only the other countries were ready, and he believed that 
 they were, swollen with an incessant blood-transfusion from 
 Moscow. 
 
 He returned to London between his Lancashire and South 
 Wales visits, and at that time could have sworn that Grobo 
 thought as he thought upon the subject of this immense, 
 concerted uprising: beginning in Woolwich and leading to a 
 world aflame, quenched if ever in a sea of blood. But was 
 this nothing more than a pose, to encourage him to a greater 
 effort? Ah, well, who could know, ever had known, what 
 Grobo thought or felt: what Grobo was? 
 
 In any case, the fact remained that when Vortonitch 
 returned from South Wales he found that the policy of a 
 series of smaller acts of terrorism, succeeding each other at 
 definite periods, was still to be adhered to: running on for an 
 indefinite time. A constant dropping wearing away the stone 
 until, or so it seemed to Vortonitch, there would be nothing 
 much left worth smashing: his own part in it infinitely 
 divided and subdivided. 
 
 Little wonder that he was furious, defiant. But Grobo's 
 position was impregnable, his commands to be obeyed, and 
 Vortonitch knew it: if he chose to disregard them, his life 
 would be every bit as unsure as that of the poor wretch 
 Harbin, whose pretty wife had developed into a virago under 
 the temptation of such unrecognisable meekness and silence. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 117 
 
 A strangely-chastened Harbin, he was back in the old groove: 
 an even less important position than the last, for the reason 
 that the temporary, makeshift factory was so much smaller 
 than the other. 
 
 Woolwich was still Vortonitch's affair, at any rate the 
 Arsenal. The Military Academy, barracks and dockyard were 
 to come later, or so Grobo said, adding, with a great show of 
 kindness damnably hypocritical: "We mustn't put too 
 much on your shoulders all at once, my dear Paul. We 'ave 
 too much consideration for those 'om we value." 
 
 "To hell with you and your consideration! Why the 
 devil should I play second fiddle to you, to anyone else? 
 That's what I want to know." Vortonitch's fury, impotent 
 despite all he might say for your revolutionist writhes under 
 the tyranny of powers, expectations and obligations unguessed 
 at by the ordinary law-abiding citizens was augmented by 
 a shrewd fear that they were ready enough to use him in the 
 way he had intended to use Boyce: as a housewife uses candle- 
 ends, in kindling a greater fire. If he survived, proved 
 himself, well and good; there was still a chance for him in 
 the grand finale: if he were caught, or disappeared, his dis- 
 integration and he knew Grobo's coolness in respect to mere 
 dust and ashes, his contempt for any sentimentality regarding 
 the value of human life nobody would be very much the 
 worse: there were other young men, a curiously endless 
 succession of young men. The only difficulty was to find one 
 who could be counted upon up to the higher level of maturity. 
 These young revolutionists! They cooled off, or they were 
 too ardent and got themselves into trouble; or, else, proving 
 faithless, it was found necessary to help them to another and, 
 we hope, better world. 
 
 Vortonitch's position was anomalous; he was still so 
 much a boy in everything apart from years. He had shown 
 wonderful courage and resource. Somehow or other, he had 
 managed to extricate himself from the most perilous positions 
 without the faintest suspicion of treachery. But for all this 
 the fact remained: he had done remarkably well in small 
 ventures; in big ventures a cruel fate had intervened. The 
 ventures themselves had been successful enough, but there had 
 been no real flare about them; for the simple reason that, in 
 some way or other, they had proved abortive. One of the 
 worst holes in which he had ever found himself was that 
 caused by the ludicrous fact of having killed the wrong man: 
 a person who was then engaged in acting the part of a certain 
 
118 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 well-known Bourbon prince, supposedly visiting Rome at that 
 time. He did not only deceive Vortonitch, he deceived the 
 police, the authorities, the Court, the whole diplomatic circle, 
 and or so it was whispered the Holy Father himself. He 
 also deceived Vortonitch's comrades, including one so much 
 more highly-placed than himself that there had been no 
 question of his risking his life. 
 
 Vortonitch had risked a great deal. The whole affair had 
 been beset with difficulties; the fury of the mob, from which 
 he had been unable to escape, and who were as much deceived 
 as anyone else, had put a mark upon him for life; while they 
 would assuredly have killed him, could they have got at him a 
 second time, for making fools of them by assassinating a 
 nobody as though he had been a prince. 
 
 In any case, it seemed as though he would have been 
 punished according to his intention, had he not made his 
 escape during the process of his trial; to the great relief of 
 everyone concerned, for there is nobody who fills us with such 
 uneasiness as the man who has, in any way, contributed 
 towards helping us make fools of ourselves. 
 
 All very well for them; all very well for the bona fide 
 Bourbon; but exasperatingly bad luck for Vortonitch, more 
 or less shrugged aside by the members of his own fraternity, 
 every bit as much deluded as anyone else. 
 
 These were the sort of things which happened to him. He 
 was continually, by some extraordinary combination of 
 adverse circumstances and not in the least through any fault 
 of his own finding himself too late, or too early, in the wrong 
 place at the wrong moment; forced into the position of 
 scapegoat or pushed aside for someone more important than 
 himself. If it had not been for his courage, his unquenchable 
 spirit, his gallant air, and his really wonderful abilities, there 
 is no knowing how he might have sunk. But sometimes it 
 seemed as though he climbed by failures which were not his 
 own; "gingered," as a horsy man would put it, to even more 
 brilliant efforts. 
 
 Now, at last, his ambitions had seemed likely to be fulfilled, 
 and Grobo had squashed them. One explosion at a time, a 
 more or less hole-and-corner affair, insular almost parochial, 
 What was there in that! 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 IN his anger and humiliation Paul Vortonitch turned to 
 Laura, as a man will turn from hot rooms, a crowded, noisy 
 throng to a quiet garden. 
 
 He had seen her once during that interlude 'twixt Lanca- 
 shire and South Wales; and yet, had not really seen her, had, 
 as it were, glanced at her out of a window a pretty, sweetly 
 pretty and enclosed garden. 
 
 Laura herself, sensitive to the faintest change in the 
 spiritual atmosphere, had realised his detachment, realising 
 at the same time, with a balance strange in one so youthful, 
 that he had a very great deal to think of, and that it was 
 impossible she should always come first. 
 
 They had sat in Greenwich Park together: more than once 
 Vortonitch had glanced at his watch, sighed, frowned. The 
 things he had loved most in her would love again irked him. 
 
 "If the world was coming to the end, would you be the 
 same: so quiet, so cool frozen porcelain?" he had said. 
 
 Laura's heart was thumping heavily, like something 
 completely alien imprisoned within her; she was frightened, 
 over-weighted with a fear of love and a fear of losing love. 
 But how could he know this? With a sure instinct, the 
 instinct of an affection almost wholly unselfish, she realised 
 that, rail as he might against her quiet, it was this which he 
 really needed. 
 
 And now he came back to her he himself, as she knew 
 him best, so oddly her child and lover; while she was so much 
 a child herself that her love showed the sort of solemnity of a 
 little girl with a darling doll. 
 
 Directly anything in life became really intolerable Vor- 
 tonitch was apt not so much to lose caution as to fling it away. 
 
 For a whole day after that last scene with Grobo he hung 
 about Blackheath; then, as he caught no sight of her, wrote 
 a passionate lover's letter, a fatal sort of letter, supposing 
 anyone else had opened it begging her to meet him in town. 
 
 There was no mention of a Friday, of waiting for a Friday : 
 she must come the very next day, Tuesday. She must come, 
 
 119 
 
120 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 she must, or he himself would put in an appearance at her 
 home and carry her away with him. 
 
 "That is what it will come to in the end," he wrote, he 
 who had pressed for secrecy and delay. " It has already come 
 to this I can't live without you." 
 
 The letter arrived at breakfast-time. Marjorie's hard eyes 
 moved from it to her sister, curious and staring. But she was 
 loyal enough to ask no question in front of their father and 
 mother; and for the rest of the morning Laura was careful to 
 keep out of her way. 
 
 She could not get off to town by the train which she had 
 caught before, for she dared not risk missing lunch, or ask for 
 it earlier. But she dared this much marvellously, when one 
 remembers how every move in that family was taken, and 
 freely given out as common property she went, and without 
 a word to anyone. 
 
 She did not dare to make any great change in her dress, for 
 that alone would have provoked comment, but directly 
 luncheon was over, and Marjorie off to school again, she went 
 upstairs and put on her hat and gloves, counting out the money 
 in her purse with some trepidation. 
 
 Coming downstairs, passing through the hall, her mother 
 called to her from the drawing room. 
 
 "Is that you, Laura? Where are you going?" 
 
 Laura hesitated, for it seemed as though her heart were in 
 her throat, stuck there so that she could not speak. 
 
 Then the single word came, quietly and oddly to her own 
 ear " Out " and she moved to the door, down the steps and 
 along the gravel sweep, walking slowly and stiffly, with a feel- 
 ing as though she were in a dream. 
 
 It was the strangest thing that had ever happened to her: 
 this going to town and saying nothing about it, nothing what- 
 ever. At other times when she met Vortonitch she had made 
 endless and agitated plans and excuses for getting away; 
 conned over innumerable reasons for going. 
 
 For the habit of their life was like this: everything they 
 did was put into words. " I'm going to the library for some 
 books." " I'm going to ask Crackenthorpe about the roses." 
 " I'm going to get some flowers." " I'm going to read in the 
 garden; then, when it gets cooler, I'm going down to the 
 village " to get this or that, to do so-and-so, to see So-and-So. 
 
 Hitherto it had been like this in her meetings with Vor- 
 tonitch: hating it all the time, she had wrapped herself round 
 with a web of small deceits which were not quite lies, for that 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 121 
 
 is one of the dangerous results of an intimate and questioning 
 family life. 
 
 Upon this occasion, however, she just went. And without 
 a word. Not onto the Heath, not to the Park or Village, but 
 to London itself. 
 
 All the way up in the train her thoughts were centred upon 
 one question alone: would he, seeing that she did not arrive 
 by the expected train, wait until the next, as she had counted 
 upon him doing? 
 
 " The only sensible thing to do " that was what she told 
 herself; but did she really believe him to be sensible? No; 
 it was she who was sensible, and this knowledge was not 
 one of the least delights of her love. 
 
 She had heard people talk of the artistic temperament: 
 none of the Creichtons suffered in this way, but it seemed as 
 though she had recognised it at once as something very 
 precious and calling for very special care. 
 
 At the back of her mind during this journey up pressed 
 back and kept there with something of the same fear with 
 which her father might have regarded anything in the way of a 
 panic was the dread thought as to what might happen 
 supposing that he was not there: the realisation that she did 
 not even know his address. 
 
 But she would not let herself think of this; she simply 
 would not. And, after all, he was there. 
 
 She caught sight of him the moment the train drew into 
 the platform, with an impression of him as thinner, whiter than 
 he had ever been before. 
 
 It was plain that he was desperately glad to see her: des- 
 perately; that was it. She had never seen anyone take 
 happiness in that sort of way before, almost as though it were 
 pain. 
 
 They moved out of Charing Cross station in a sort of 
 dream: oh yes, Vortonitch every bit as much as Laura. He 
 had been so angry, so disappointed, that he felt sapped: there 
 was dust and ashes in his mouth. What was the good of 
 anything anything beyond this this girl and love? 
 
 Turning into Trafalgar Square, they sat down on the 
 edge of one of the fountain-basins. Laura wondered, without 
 in the least caring, what anyone she knew would think, seeing 
 her thus: then remembered that there were certain things 
 which were completely invisible to people of her own caste: 
 that she herself would not have as much as realised the exist- 
 ence of any young couple in such a posture. 
 
122 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 It was still within the school hours, and there were only 
 a few very small children about; one or two paddling in the 
 pool next to them, looking, with their bunched-up garments 
 and thin legs, like diminutive storks. 
 
 They were well away from the dust; the roar of traffic 
 passed by them without touching them. There were rainbow 
 glints in the water of the fountain; every now and then, as 
 the wind veered, there was a spraying shower against Laura's 
 cheek, her bare neck. 
 
 After a while they went up to what she had grown to think 
 of as their " own cafe " for tea. 
 
 But is was more crowded than it had been before, and 
 when they had finished Vortonitch suggested that they should 
 go to his rooms for the half-hour which remained before Laura 
 needed to even think of catching her train. 
 
 He had just paid for the tea, and they had both risen, were 
 facing each other over the little table: Vortonitch flushed and 
 ardent, Laura grave and a little pale, as though overweighted 
 by life, the responsibility of a lover who from that tremulous 
 joy of the meeting, not an hour earlier, could so swiftly slip 
 into a mood of boyish gaiety, laughing at everything, full of 
 the most fantastic plans for their future. 
 
 " I don't think I ought to come not to your rooms," she 
 said, her candid eyes on his; consulting him, of all people, the 
 ridiculous creature! The lamb consulting the wolf. 
 
 And yet, how very far he was from being all wolf; for 
 " I don't suppose you ought," he answered, very soberly. 
 
 But his high spirits had dropped again; he was pathetically 
 miserable, had actually paled in that moment. 
 
 "But, after all ... with you . . ." demurred Laura 
 pitifully; and once more it was much the same as that after- 
 noon they first met, when he had struck her as being like a 
 puppy a little afraid of wagging its tail. " I would like to see 
 where you live; I must know where you live. I thought this 
 afternoon, on the way up, what would happen if we missed 
 each other if you were ill, or anything." 
 
 " Only for a few minutes, a few minutes alone to our- 
 selves." Vortonitch hesitated, looking at her almost timidly. 
 
 "Yes, it can't be long, because of my train. Come now; 
 let's go." Laura spoke with decision; for, after all, she 
 trusted him, and as for doing what the rest of her world would 
 have said that she oughtn't to do, what about meeting him 
 here meeting him at all ever having spoken to him? Be- 
 sides, one had no business to be afraid, of anything, of any- 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 123 
 
 body. As to being afraid of Paul . . . "The kid!" she 
 thought, feeling old and very tender. 
 
 For all that, anything in the way of a grand apartment 
 might have frightened her; but it was such a dreary, untidy 
 little room into which Vortonitch ushered her that all other 
 thought was lost in pity. 
 
 As a matter of fact, she had never seen anything quite like 
 it; the nearest approach being an occasional glimpse of the 
 landlady's private sitting-room when, staying with her family 
 in seaside lodgings, she had penetrated to the basement to ask 
 for something or other; for Vortonitch's quarters had the 
 same stale, flat smell, gas and cabbage and damp linoleum. 
 
 A sort of delicacy prevented her from giving more than a 
 single glance around her; but before she sat down she realised 
 a door ajar into another room, the glimpse of a still unmade 
 bed. 
 
 Vortonitch was pale again now, and she was filled with an 
 almost unbearable sense of yearning pity, remembering the 
 freshness, the spaciousness, the perfect order of her own home. 
 
 If he could come down there and see them all ; if her people 
 liked him, as they must do already, when they were together 
 she forgot his variation from the familiar type and invited 
 him to stay for a week or two, so that he might be well fed up, 
 live in the open air for awhile, how much good it would do 
 him! Her mother had rather a taste for such cosseting. 
 Many a young officer, or lad from the Military Academy, had 
 convalesced there. He could bring his work with him, write 
 in the garden . . . Oh, but it would be perfect! 
 
 She had dropped into the chair by the open window, and 
 taken off her hat. The street was so narrow that the room 
 was already dim, with its own dulness, the shadow of the tall 
 houses opposite, and her smooth fair head hung like a small 
 golden moon in the midst of it. Vortonitch, kneeling at her 
 side, leaning his head against her shoulder, was filled with 
 delight at the clean, fresh scent of her; it was all so like the 
 country, rus in urbe a clover-field hedged round with wild 
 roses. 
 
 When she spoke of her plans, that he should come down 
 and make friends with her people; perhaps more than likely 
 be asked to stay there, he negatived them; but without 
 contempt, so gently that she pressed him further. 
 
 "Paul, you're not well; you ought to get away for a bit. 
 There's not enough air here at least, not in the summer," 
 she added, afraid of hurting his feelings, belittling what was, 
 
124 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 after all, his home, " In the winter I expect it would be 
 awfully jolly, cosy with a nice fire and all; but I'm sure it 
 would do you no end of good to have a change. Of course 
 Blackheath's not very far, but it's different." 
 
 It was different: could anything be more different? The 
 wind, setting up the narrow street, filled it with dust, scraps 
 of paper and straw; there was a barrel-organ playing beneath 
 the window, a continual tumult of shouting, laughter, loud, 
 raucous voices, children playing and squabbling. 
 
 "A clover field!" He remembered some of the fields 
 in the country around Dieppe miles upon miles of clover. 
 She was so English, and yet that was what she reminded 
 him of; for he had never seen quite so much clover, and of so 
 rich a bloom, in England. 
 
 " You'd get all sorts of details for your stories. There are 
 all sorts of things that dad would be able to tell you," she said. 
 But even that, though it brought back something of real life, 
 failed to rouse in him any more than a sort of gentle derision. 
 Oh yes, yes he knew the sort of information that a man of 
 General Sir Harry Creichton's calibre would be likely to 
 vouchsafe to an outsider. 
 
 " Some day, some day. Yes, yes, I must come and see 
 where my darling lives Laura, my Laura but not now." 
 
 " Yet you said that you would come down and fetch me, 
 run away with me." 
 
 "Ah, yes, run away; but that is a different matter. It is 
 the staying; the facing it out; the whole idea of the infinite 
 propriety, the solidity, of your English families which frightens 
 me." 
 
 "But some day? Soon, quite soon?" 
 
 "Yes, soon; quite soon." 
 
 A sudden vision of how he might go to her, stand by her, 
 his arm about her, almost unnoticed, there on the height, 
 with the entire family engrossed by something even more 
 terrible than a mesalliance a valley filled with flame, the 
 slopes rocked by explosion upon explosion came to him; 
 followed by a sudden determination to relinquish the whole 
 thing anarchy, not love and steal Laura away to some 
 quiet spot upon the Mediterranean coast. 
 
 He parted with her upon this note; feeling good and at 
 peace with the world. 
 
 To hell with Grobo and his crew, all those old associates 
 and schemes! He had done with them; was bored with them, 
 utterly bored. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 125 
 
 The refrain of that little Spanish song of which he had 
 quoted a few lines, then stopped short, that first day at 
 Blackheath came back to him: 
 
 Some day more kind 
 My fate I'll find; 
 Some night, kiss thee. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 AND yet, but one week later, the newspaper-boys, argosies 
 of evil, were racing up Fleet Street, flowing out in all 
 directions . . . What did I say? Argosies? More like 
 torpedoes shooting through the sea of traffic: 
 
 "Orrible disaster!" 
 
 "Ful explosion!" 
 
 'Arsenal wrecked!" 
 
 'Ter'ble loss o' life!" 
 
 'Bolshevism in England!" 
 
 "SinnFeiners!" 
 
 "Explosion at Woolwich!" 
 
 " Woolwich Woolwich ! " 
 
 By this time Paul Vortonitch, still breathless from the 
 effect of something apart from physical or mental haste, was 
 sitting in his own room, rather back from the window; con- 
 scious of little save a sensation of amazing emptiness, as though 
 the greater part of him, the middle part, were unaccountably 
 missing. 
 
 He had not intended it had intended to drop every- 
 thing of the sort after that last meeting with Laura. 
 But Grobo had pushed him on by a sort of atmosphere of 
 doubt which he manipulated in such a fashion that it spread 
 like a miasma; so that a personage in Vienna wrote: " Is it 
 not time that Comrade 57 did something to prove himself?" 
 With all this he issued no orders, gave the impression that 
 everything was just as he had always known that it would 
 be: that he himself had never expected anything very much 
 from Comrade 57 which was Paul Vortonitch's official 
 number. 
 
 It was, in the end, this, along with Grobo's attitude of not 
 condemning, scarcely even changing in his kindness, because, 
 after all, people could not help being what they were, which 
 impelled Vortonitch forward, forced his hand; for one may be 
 disbelieved into doing all sorts of things. 
 
 And, after all, it had been worth it: the terrific, the flaming 
 excitement; the feeling of almost unlimited power; the sight 
 
 126 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 127 
 
 of all that silly surprise talk of people being "struck silly"! 
 the faces wiped clean of all expression; and then, the panic. 
 
 That panic! It was like the flow of wine through his 
 veins; in a way, he was still drunk with it. 
 
 Imagine any human being, an ordinary human being a 
 rather shabby and worked-soiled young mechanic, with a 
 straggling dark moustache and what looked like a bag of tools 
 in one hand being able to set a multitude stampeding in that 
 fashion! 
 
 As he went into the Arsenal that morning he had caught 
 sight of himself, with the bag, reflected against the dark 
 window of one of the offices not far from the entrance. For he 
 had a regular pass now, as an electrician and very competent 
 workman. 
 
 A couple of hours later he had once again encountered his 
 own reflection this time without the bag and smiled at it. 
 
 "Gone an' forgotten one o' my tools, blast it all!" he 
 explained to the policeman on guard at the gate. 
 
 "Left your bag?" 
 
 " Till I come back three minutes." 
 
 He was extraordinarily cool, not to say casual in his 
 movements. There was a boat waiting for him to the right 
 of the landing-stage from the moving bridge, but he did not go 
 to it; at least, not for a while. An odd mixture of vanity 
 reckless, swaggering vanity and curiosity made him determine 
 to see the thing out; and passing through Beresford Square 
 and up the hill a little, he turned into a confectioner's shop, 
 ordered a cup of coffee, and sat there drinking it; with that 
 feeling of rather dense calmness which so often accompanies 
 any great strain. 
 
 It was not a very clean shop, and it was full of flies: he 
 did not remember ever having seen so many in England. 
 There was yellow gauze spread over the cakes on the counter, 
 but they seemed to have got through it or was that only the 
 currants? Odd how he noticed everything: even the fact 
 that one false diamond was missing from the left earring of the 
 girl who served him. 
 
 He had given what he called "Chose" half an hour: at 
 precisely twenty minutes from the time he left the Arsenal, 
 and it had taken him eight to reach the gate, he rose and paid 
 his bill. 
 
 There was some delay over the change, for he had nothing 
 less than a pound note; he heard it strike ten, and at that 
 moment, that very moment, there was a crash, a roar, while 
 
128 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 almost majestically, the whole front window of the shop fell, 
 fainting backwards over the spotted cakes. 
 
 The attendant had gone into the back room for change; he 
 himself was in the line of the door, and save for a cut on the 
 cheek from a fragment of flying glass, unhurt; though the 
 door itself flew back with such violence that the key was 
 broken off against the wall behind it. 
 
 On every side there was the crash of falling glass: little 
 pops of explosion followed one after another, like the report 
 of a gun. 
 
 Glancing upwards, he saw one large chimney at the op- 
 posite side of the street totter, bend forward, hesitate, and 
 then double up; heard the clatter of glass interspersed with 
 the heavier fall of bricks. 
 
 The air was so full of thick yellowish smoke that every- 
 thing appeared dim and unreal; for a moment he felt a little 
 sick, believed the actual earth to be stirring beneath him; 
 and, as a matter of fact, every house in Woolwich shook 
 from its foundations. 
 
 An odd roar detached itself from the medley of sounds : the 
 hoarse cries of a terror-stricken multitude, the pad of in- 
 numerable feet; hundreds upon hundreds of people racing 
 up-hill, dragging their children with them: dragging or 
 hugging every sort of incongruous burden bird-cages, cats, 
 clothes, pictures pulling and pushing the old people; giving 
 them up in despair; running forward, repenting and forcing 
 their way back to them; panting, groaning; animal-like in 
 their fear, their look of being utterly flabbergasted: that look 
 as of idiot children which overcomes people knocked silly with 
 fear; running away from what they had seen; breasting and 
 buffeting with another wave of humanity which was rushing 
 down-hill, intent upon seeing what they could see. 
 
 Among them all there was scarcely a man or woman with 
 shut mouth; gaping or shrieking, they were all alike wide 
 open. 
 
 The shop-girl had appeared in the doorway leading from 
 the parlour, one hand, with Vortonitch's change, mechanically 
 stuck out in front of her, her flaccid face absolutely devoid of 
 expression, staring dully at the odd spectacle of the street 
 debouching into the shop. 
 
 As Vortonitch took his change rather pleased with 
 himself for thinking of it a couple of urchins flung their bodies 
 across the window-pane with its chevaux-de-frise of jagged 
 glass and scooped together an armful of cakes. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 129 
 
 Moving with the descending throng, Vortonitch made his 
 way to Beresf ord Square, where a cordon of police was already 
 established. A moment or so later there was the beat of 
 steady feet, oddly significant, awe-inspiring, amid all this 
 trampling, shuffling; and a detachment of sappers moved 
 down to supplement them. 
 
 Taxis rolled up, and well-dressed men with bags in their 
 hands jumped out of them, and were admitted, with scarcely 
 a question doctors and high officials, but mostly doctors. 
 
 The sight of these bags aroused a sort of humour in Vor- 
 tonitch, who recognized the nearest policeman as the one to 
 whom he had spoken on the way out. 
 
 "My tools," he said; "my bag of tools. I'll have to get 
 in " 
 
 "No one allowed in," said the policeman: his glance was 
 contemptuous. One or two of the crowd, who had caught 
 what Vortonitch said, turned upon him. 
 
 'You an' your tools!" 
 
 ' Thinkin' o' tools a time like this!" 
 
 'Hundreds dead!" 
 
 'Thousands dead!" 
 
 'Shame upon you!" 
 
 'Shame!" 
 
 Wives who had run up-hill, remembered their husbands and 
 ran down again and thronged the square: an odd silence hung 
 over them, broken every now and then by a hysterical shriek 
 as the first definite word went round "The big gun shop " 
 and the wife of some man who worked there caught it. 
 
 A large motor drove up to the main gates, and as two 
 officers got out of it Vortonitch recognised in one of them 
 Laura's father: his mouth tightly shut, not like those others, 
 though his face was as grey as theirs were. 
 
 The crowds had ceased to bolt and scatter, and hung like 
 swarming bees as Vortonitch made his way through a narrow- 
 alleyway and down a flight of steps to the river, where a man 
 in a boat sat waiting him, hunched over his oars. 
 
 He glanced up from under his brows, head still bent, when 
 Vortonitch stepped in, moved lightly to the stern and took 
 the rudder-lines in his hand. But he did not speak, either 
 then or as they crossed the river, moving diagonally up-stream 
 to Wapping Old Stairs: a man like a bulk of dark greenish 
 timber, rudely shaped and oddly inhuman: with a face so dark 
 and blunt, so totally unexpressive save in that moment when 
 he had glanced up at the other man that strangers might 
 
130 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 have talked of their most intimate affairs in front of him, 
 regardlessly leant against him as though he were one of those 
 roughly-squared and weather-blackened posts which at low 
 tide stand high above the river-mud, with a boat or so tethered 
 to them. 
 
 His silence irritated Vortonitch in his state of high nervous 
 excitement; but he did not care to break it; held back by a 
 feeling that if he once spoke he might say too much one way 
 or another; his irritation amounting to an active dislike for the 
 man and his dense, teasing silence, when, later that same 
 night, he was rebuked by Grobo for having kept the boatman 
 waiting; run unnecessary risks by hanging about the scene 
 of the explosion. 
 
 "How did he know I wasn't dead?" he retorted bitterly, 
 childishly, for the whole thing had been immense; the excite- 
 ment of it was still flaming through him, and he was itching 
 for praise. 
 
 " 'E was not afraid you were dead; it was not that that 
 would not 'ave mattered, scarcely at all," answered Grobo 
 blandly. " It was the chance of you 'aving been caught that 
 worried 'im. It is that you 'ave to guard against; in every 
 way. Yes, at the worst, in every way." He spoke significantly, 
 and Vortonitch realised what he meant. "In every way" 
 with a pistol at his own head; by poison self -administered, if 
 this seemed necessary. 
 
 " Sometimes we want a martyr to our cause," he con- 
 tinued. "But not now, my friend. Mystery, the 'error of 
 what is not understood, located that is what we want. And 
 that is what we must 'ave." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 As for Laura Creichton, she was half-way down the hill in 
 Blackheath village, swinging a rush basket in one hand, 
 bound for the chief confectioner's shop, for they were expect- 
 ing people to tea and tennis that afternoon, when the explosion 
 the tearing crash, the roar, the shattering of glass clashing 
 to the pavement from oddly separated groups of windows 
 rushed in upon her. 
 
 It seemed as though it went through and through her: 
 how far the earth shook, how far she herself shook, it was 
 difficult to say. If a ship were a sentient thing, felt herself 
 striking a rock, with the shock vibrating, grinding, from bow 
 to stern, splitting her in half, it might have been like that. 
 
 In common with all the other people in the street Laura 
 hunched her shoulders to her ears, stared up at the sky; for- 
 getting that the war was over supposedly over. 
 
 As her glance dropped, she found that she had drawn up 
 before, was still confronting, almost touching, a tall, stout 
 man, with an immense face, deadly pale though there was 
 nothing in that; anybody would have been pale, everyone was 
 pale, at such a moment, and naturally enough while she did 
 not so much seem to hear as remember having heard, some 
 time, any time it might have* been a mere moment, or 
 centuries ago a deep, husky voice ejaculate: 
 
 "My God! Already!" 
 
 It seemed that his glance alighted upon her almost at 
 the same instant as she herself came back to earth, realising 
 the source of horror as something not immediately above 
 them. 
 
 At that moment the rest of the midmorning shoppers 
 shook themselves free from the paralysis of horror; the more 
 timid bolting into the shops; the remainder racing up-hill 
 towards the Heath realising that it was from this direction, 
 more easterly and yet to be reached by this road alone, that 
 the sound had proceeded; was, indeed, not yet over, hic- 
 coughing itself out in a series of lesser explosions. 
 
 As Laura turned with the rest, the big man caught at her 
 
 131 
 
132 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 arm, panting; although he had as yet scarcely moved, the 
 sweat poured down his face. 
 
 "Miss Creichton, wait a moment I can't you see I 
 can't hurry not up hill your father ?" 
 
 " He's at home " she was not in the least surprised at 
 this stranger knowing her name; at that moment nothing 
 would have surprised her "with General Field staying 
 with us . . ." 
 
 Her own voice broke in sharp, panting breaths, but that 
 was from excitement alone; for she herself could have taken 
 the whole hill at a run, had it not been for the stranger by her 
 side, so breathless, so blue about the lips that she and ho\v 
 like Laura! was overcome by a sort of sense of responsibility, 
 
 "Don't hurry; it's bad for you; I'm sure it's bad for 
 you. You want to see my father?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "He was there. But now " she thought: "If it's 
 
 Woolwich and it must be Woolwich he will have gone." 
 
 "Wait if only . . ." They seemed to be crawling, 
 literally crawling. But for all that, his breath came in sobs. 
 "If only a a . . . There there! Stop it!" 
 
 He waved his stick, and Laura, darting into the road, held 
 up a taxi whirling off to the scene of the disaster. 
 
 The fat man opened the door, and she got in, without a 
 protest, almost without a thought. Everything was so dream- 
 like that her every movement seemed to be pressed upon her, 
 preordained; while, though she heard perfectly, there was a 
 feeling as though cotton-wool were tightly jammed into her 
 ears. 
 
 "General Sir Harry Creichton 's house," croaked the 
 stranger, and floundering in at her side, sat down, gasping. 
 
 It would have been a bare seven minutes' walk, and the 
 taxi-driver went like the wind, afraid of missing anything. 
 
 A minute and a half two minutes at the most and yet 
 all this, questions and answers, with almost innumerable 
 thoughts shooting to and fro, splaying out in every direction 
 through both their minds. 
 
 " Do you know a man, fat not like me, tight fat small, 
 fair: little round hat. Name of Grobo?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Name of Hodder?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Name of Muller?" 
 
 " No." 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 133 
 
 " Sonnenschein?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 That being the last of the aliases which could, morally, so 
 to speak, never actually, be traced to Carl Grobo, the fat man 
 paused yes, there was time for that too fixed her oddly, 
 with eyes like an elephant's, deeply-set and small, yet strangely 
 penetrating. 
 
 "But do you know a man named Vortonitch Paul Vor- 
 tonitch." It was an assertion and not a question; and Laura 
 Creichton answered it, with a flush, a lift of her head. 
 
 "Yes, I do." It was as though she might have added 
 "And what of that?" moving as far as possible away from 
 the stranger, as though his proximity there in the taxi had 
 suddenly became odious to her. 
 
 "Miss Creichton, did you ever meet him in Woolwich?" 
 
 " No." It was so nearly a lie that she felt obliged to assure 
 herself of its truth. Though the very next moment she did lie 
 why, she could not have said and badly enough, too, with 
 flaming face: the candid gaze of conscious guilt. 
 
 "Or coming away from Woolwich?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Mind ! Remember " the fat man wagged an immense, 
 square-shaped finger; his look fatherly but compelling "I 
 beg you to remember that " 
 
 What had he been going to say? What could he have been 
 going to say? As Laura pondered over this in the watches of 
 a restless night, an odd phrase came into her mind, something 
 she must have read in the papers: 
 
 "Remember that anything you say may be used against 
 you." 
 
 But what this corpulent stranger, with his odd, rather 
 pathetic air of exhaustion, might have been going to say, at 
 that particular moment, at any moment, was lost to her 
 then, and, as it proved, for ever, for the taxi swung in at the 
 gates of " The House," drew up at the door, and, hurtling out, 
 he caught at the bell, an old-fashioned hanging affair, and 
 pulled it so that it came off in his hand. 
 
 The taxi-man bent round from his seat, shouting something 
 about paying him and letting him go. But of this his fare 
 took no notice whatsoever, standing with the lower portion of 
 the bell and a trail of wire in one hand, sounding the knocker 
 with the other, and issuing his orders to Laura at one and the 
 same moment: 
 
 "Go and see if he's still there." 
 
134 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 With no thought of disputing this command, driven by a 
 sense of extreme haste, Laura ran; was half across the hall 
 when she encountered Parker, galvanised between one thing 
 and another out of her usual hauteur. 
 
 At the same moment Lady Creichton emerged from the 
 drawing-room : 
 
 "Oh, Laura dear, I am so relieved!" while Marjorie blew 
 down upon them from the garden door. 
 
 It seemed as though they were all talking at once. 
 
 * Parker my father . . .?" 
 
 'Gone, Miss after the explosion. Quite safe. Now 
 dont you " 
 
 'Laura, wherever were you? Are you sure " 
 
 'Did you hear it? My hat! did you ever hear anything 
 like it? No school for us to-day. Such a row! Nina Boyle 
 in hysterics, and that idiot, Miss Warner, what do you 
 
 think " screamed Marjorie; then broke off, staring, for 
 
 Laura had run back to the front door, where a huge blot of a 
 man stood, silhouetted against the fresh young green of the 
 trees at the back of him. 
 
 "Gone," she said, adding something about "Woolwich 
 Arsenal," though supposedly the stranger took that for 
 granted, for he had blundered back into the car almost before 
 the words were out of her mouth, shouting to the driver of the 
 taxi so urgently that it literally shot round the curve of the 
 drive and, with a sharp hoot, out of the opposite gate to that 
 by which it had entered. 
 
 "Who's that, Laura? Laura, who's that?" 
 
 Laura's younger sister shrieked at her as though she were 
 deaf; and, indeed, she might have been: beyond the reach of 
 any human voice, too. For there, with them all claiming her 
 attention, pouring their sentiments into her ears, she turned 
 aside and walked slowly upstairs. 
 
 Why had she lied when the stranger asked that odd 
 question if she had ever met Vortonitch "coming from 
 Woolwich"? She told herself now that it was an instinct of 
 protection; that, knowing something of her lover's life, 
 realising his fate as a patriot, a fugitive from every sort of 
 political machination, a member of the most cruelly op- 
 pressed race on earth, she had suspected the fat man of some 
 nefarious intent against him: realised him as a Bolshevist 
 assassin, or some such person. 
 
 And yet, if this were the case, why, oh why, had she 
 submitted herself to his orders, entered the taxi, sat by his 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 135 
 
 side, driven to her home with him; procured for him the 
 information he desired regarding her father? Not only that, 
 but run to do it! 
 
 Was it a fatal weakness in her character, leaving her at 
 anyone's beck and call? Or was it, again, some instinct of 
 putting him off the one scent which concerned herself 
 concerned something more than herself: the man whom she 
 loved? 
 
 Upstairs, standing in the middle of her own room, she 
 trembled from head to foot; shaken through and through with 
 the shock of the explosion; with excitement and fear. One 
 of the most considerate, the gentlest, kindest creatures that 
 ever lived; and yet now without so much as a single thought 
 for the -death and bereavement, the suffering, fear and desola- 
 tion which blackened the fair summer's morning not three 
 miles away. 
 
 For that is a woman, and that is her way of love a com- 
 plete, and, often enough, sudden engrossment in personal 
 affairs, or in one person, overriding her patriotism and civic 
 conscience; overriding everything and everybody, apart from 
 the beloved. 
 
 As to the stout man, this is what happened, or had hap- 
 pened and had she but known it, Laura Creichton would 
 have been, if not glad, relieved; and that alone shows, seeing 
 what she was. 
 
 The taxi-driver, impelled by that word or so his fare had 
 uttered to him, had driven like the wind, slowing down as he 
 reached the hem of the crowd; and yet, even then, hooting 
 with such intolerance that everyone involuntarily gave way. 
 
 Pressing through Beresford Square, he drew up sharply at 
 the main gate of the Arsenal, and waited for his passenger to 
 alight. 
 
 As the door remained shut, he scrambled from his post and 
 came round to it, at the same moment as a policeman 
 approached it from the opposite side. 
 
 They both looked in the window at once, so that their 
 glances met before they veered to the stout man leaning back 
 in the corner. 
 
 "Asleep!" ejaculated the driver. "And after telling me 
 to 'urry like 'ell tellin' me as 'ow 'e was " 
 
 He broke off, the door open, the handle in his hand, as the 
 policeman opened his door, got into the taxi and bent over the 
 supine figure, flabbier and bluer than ever; then glanced up, 
 his fresh face grave and important. 
 
136 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 " Call one o' our fellows from the lodge tell 'em to send 
 for a doctor to keep the crowd back . . . Oh yes; dead 
 dead, by the look of him, but not knowing, can't say. Hurry 
 up, there, or we'll have 'em all around us." 
 
 They got him out of the. taxi and into the little lodge, with 
 some difficulty, a dead weight. . . . Oh yes, quite dead. The 
 policeman had been right there; would have been right in 
 giving utterance to his further opinion, which, being young 
 and anxious not to exceed his duty, he refrained from doing. 
 " Heart, by the look of it great fat chap like him." 
 
 " Strange the world about us lies " who was it said that? 
 " Strange the world," but stranger, stranger by far, the minds 
 of men. Carl Grobo had lost many so-called friends, fraternal 
 comrades, fellow-workers, and not turned so much as a hair; 
 but, reading of Mullings' death in the paper that evening he 
 was overcome by a sense of almost irreparable blankness. 
 
 "Ah-h-h! Well, I'm glad he's gone," said Mrs. Grobo. 
 "It will be safer without him; he knew too much." 
 
 "Ah yes, my 'eart, safer, but . . . Oh, 'eaven above! 'ow 
 much more duller!" 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 FOR close upon a month Vortonitch made no effort to meet 
 Laura, felt no need of her, engrossed as he was in other 
 affairs. 
 
 He had seen nothing of the actual suffering caused by his 
 Woolwich coup; had he done so he might have been touched, 
 or so revolted as to hold his hand; for, like all selfish and 
 emotional people, he could not bear the sight of suffering, and 
 this was what, for the most part, his humanity amounted to. 
 
 As it was, he was all on edge for more: at first just the 
 excitement, then a filling-up of the cup; anything, anything 
 to drown the flattened dregs of achievement. 
 
 He had received a certain amount of praise; but it was 
 guarded. He realised this; and, more, it was not enough: 
 nothing seemed enough, and he wondered if it ever would do 
 again. 
 
 When he read in the papers that the whole of the affair at 
 Woolwich was being attributed to one of those accidents 
 against which a place like the Arsenal can never be completely 
 proof, he was as chagrined as a small boy who, jumping out 
 from behind a hedge and crying "Bo!" at the passers-by, is 
 delighted to see them start, exasperated to find them pull 
 themselves together again and walk on as though nothing has 
 happened. 
 
 In the same little-boy way, as he was unable to run about 
 crying, " I did it," he attempted something of the same sort 
 again, this time in the Royal Naval Ordnance Depot. 
 
 Upon this occasion, however, he was baulked by the 
 courage of some unknown workman who, discovering his 
 bomb, set in a large store of detonators, ran with it to the river. 
 
 This, now, was a plainly deliberated attempt at wreckage; 
 and the same papers which attributed the other affair to 
 mischance were full of "Attempted Nihilism," "Anarchy," 
 "Bolshevism," "Revolution," "The Red Peril." 
 
 And yet, for all this publicity, here was Vortonitch once 
 again baulked, this time by the action of a man braver and 
 saner than himself. And that was not all, for in his 
 
 137 
 
138 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 comrades' minds, judging from their glances, from a word 
 here, a word there, a certain watchful contempt, he discovered 
 a belief so intangibly expressed that it was impossible to 
 combat that the placing of the bomb, the dramatic race to 
 the river, was all a piece of play-acting upon his part and 
 upon his alone; a mere ruse, staged for his own advancement 
 with the enemy; a running with the hare and hunting with 
 the hounds. 
 
 On the top of all this, and with amazing quickness, an 
 idea began to percolate that Boyce, and Boyce alone, was 
 responsible for that first successful outrage: Boyce, a martyr 
 to that cause for which Vortonitch, alive and well having 
 removed his precious person to a place of safety took the 
 entire credit. 
 
 There was the explanation of his long delay in reaching 
 the boat that had been provided for him; the reason for 
 Grobo's sharp criticism and lukewarm praise, thought Vor- 
 tonitch. 
 
 That silent boatman! He might have known that he was 
 against him, set to spy upon him. There were others also 
 equally against him, for a man of moods is bound to make 
 enemies; chief among these Stein, his rival in egotism, a 
 trade where no two agree; the one man, among all her hus- 
 band's associates, who had incurred Mrs. Grobo's dislike by 
 his idee fixe of constant slaughter and the compulsory cessa- 
 tion of the birth-rate for, say, five years, as the only road to 
 a pure democracy, work, wages, and elbow-room for all. 
 
 All this jealousy and suspicion as rife in the Anarchist 
 community as in any little English country village worked 
 upon Vortonitch, his nerves already on edge and suffering 
 horribly from insomnia, so that a mad idea came into his 
 head of destroying Nihilism by Nihilism. Stifling this, he 
 was busied with plans for another, and this time ill-considered, 
 over-dramatic coup, when Grobo, backed by an authoritative 
 letter, bade him hold his hand. 
 
 "Wait a leetle, my dear just a leetle, and see 'ow things 
 go," he said; words which were, in the younger man's mind, 
 transformed into : " See where you go, how you go." 
 
 It was now that, overcome by a sick distaste for his old 
 life, for everything in it, that his thoughts turned to Laura, 
 with a passionate desire for her presence, an equally passionate 
 disbelief that he could ever again have any wish on earth 
 apart from it. 
 
 They arranged a meeting on the little landing-stage at 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 139 
 
 Greenwich, when Laura who had been worn by anxiety 
 concerning her lover, his long silence, intermingled with a 
 sort of fear of life, in which everything seemed to have got 
 beyond her, and altogether out of scale was shocked from 
 every thought of self by his grey pallor, his listlessness. 
 
 "I'm so infernally tired," he said, and more than once, 
 like a child: "Oh, I'm so tired!" 
 
 The tide was running out. It seemed as though it carried 
 the stale scents of the town upon its breast, would not be free 
 of them until it reached the sea. There was no freshness in 
 the air, even there, at the water's edge; and Laura, remem- 
 bering what London itself had been like the day of her last 
 music lesson, was overcome with anxiety. 
 
 "You must get away for a change. Couldn't you, won't 
 you, go into Devonshire, up onto the moors, for a week or 
 two; or to the Cornish coast? Paul, you look worn out, 
 wretched. You'll be ill if you stay in London. The streets 
 are like fire; not a breath of air; and your rooms are so shut 
 in. Paul, you must go." 
 
 "I want to be near you; this is all I want, to have you 
 near me like this." The very touch of her shoulder against 
 him filled him with languid contentment; he was, as he had 
 said, desperately tired, too tired to face the thought of any 
 movement whatever. 
 
 " I'd come too, if you needed me." 
 
 He turned and looked at her curiously, with deep, sunken 
 eyes. " I believe you would," he said wonderingly, and leant 
 closer against her, dropping his cheek to hers. 
 
 "Laura, don't let's tempt fate; don't let's plan anything, 
 say anything; don't let's move we'll break something, upset 
 something, if we do. This happiness it's like a bubble of 
 Venetian glass if we dare to so much as breathe it will shiver 
 into a thousand fragments. 
 
 "Laura, beloved, now, this moment, we have each other, 
 just hung here in space, apart from the rest of the world. 
 Do you feel how the tide tugs at the landing-stage? do you 
 feel it? Throb throb. That's life. And I'm scared of it. 
 Cheek to cheek, like this, with no one near, no one knowing 
 our love, shattering it by comments; for just this moment, no 
 more, we are safe; but how long will it last? Nothing lasts; 
 nothing's allowed to last. , 
 
 "You speak of telling your own people of our love: don't 
 tell anyone anyone. Don't put it into words, even to your- 
 self. There's nothing so false, so cruel, so disillusioning as 
 
140 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 words dangerous, too, dear love, for the jealous gods are 
 the eternal gods. Shut your eyes and hold this moment tight, 
 Laura, for all it's worth. There may never be another like it, 
 for there's nothing more suspect than happiness. People 
 won't have it, just won't have it: pleasure, amusement, fat 
 contentment that's all very well; they understand that. But 
 happiness! They're like boys with butterflies, they're after 
 it with their hats, shouting, sweating; dropping on their 
 knees and clutching filled with dreams of boxes, labels, 
 cardboard, cork, pins: crying out, 'We've got it here it 
 is!' lifting the edge of the hat, and finding nothing there: 
 the soul of happiness lost in their clamour. 
 
 "That's why lovers whisper like this, beloved. If any 
 single soul guessed our happiness, do you think they'd leave 
 us so much as a breath of it? 
 
 " In Poland the children used to say your English 
 children, too, I've heard them in the street, ' Open your mouth 
 and shut your eyes.' There! that's the way with love; close 
 your lips upon it, tight as tight ! Not a word, or out it goes." 
 
 All this, and yet, with another week, a fresh swing of the 
 pendulum, and there was Vortonitch not even agreeing to, but 
 suggesting a visit to "The House." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 IT was like this more than anything else. They had met 
 one Friday after Laura's lesson, and when he spoke of going 
 down to Greenwich Park the following Tuesday she had agreed 
 to meet him, then remembered: 
 
 "Oh, but I can't; we've people coming to tea and 
 tennis." 
 
 "Well, why not there, at your home, instead of in the 
 park, eh?" 
 
 She gazed at him, bewildered, not catching his meaning; 
 and he laughed. 
 
 "Ah, you've asked me often enough, but now you don't 
 want me." 
 
 "You mean, to come to us? Oh, Paul, why, of course, if 
 only you will!" 
 
 "Well, why not? Shall I? Just for the fun of the 
 thing? no, because they are part of you, sweetheart. 
 Shall I dare? Terrific big- wigs, aren't they? But oh, 
 well! after all . . ." That boyish diffidence and eagerness, 
 displayed with Laura alone, gave place to an air of swagger; 
 he tossed back his head. "After all, one is oneself no one 
 can be anything more and not altogether a country bumpkin. 
 Shall I?" 
 
 "Will you? Paul, you know it's what I've been wanting 
 more than anything." 
 
 " A lark ! The very bosom of the elect ! You're sure you 
 won't be ashamed of me?" He was so plainly confident that 
 she wouldn't that he laughed again. He was tired of all the 
 solemnities of anarchy, and nothing could be greater fun than 
 this idea of peaceful penetration into the enemy's camp for 
 the moment. 
 
 He must have been mad, or so he told himself later. For 
 there were, indeed, times when this was what his sudden 
 accesses of recklessness amounted to. Days and days, weeks, 
 even months of the utmost care, the finest intrigue, his mind 
 sure and steady as a drill; and then, like a sudden gust of 
 wind, these moments when, borne high upon the crest of a 
 
 141 
 
142 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 wild humour, vanity, audacity, curiosity, airy fatalism, bore- 
 dom for even this in Vortonitch's strange nature rose like a 
 passion, in place of dropping to mere depression he let 
 himself go. 
 
 At such times he was like a man playing the fiddle more 
 and more quickly, madly: certain that the strings must 
 break strings never to be replaced and yet not content 
 with the bow, tanging, tearing with his fingers, from some 
 sheer drive of devilment. Oh yes! mad, quite mad! 
 
 Most often it was something like this which landed him in 
 difficulties. That was why Grobo kept a doubtful eye upon 
 him. Confound Grobo! what the devil was there in that 
 ridiculous little tub of a man, himself, as apart from his 
 authority, which impressed itself upon people so that they 
 referred their very thoughts to him and his judgment? 
 
 And yet, once again, Grobo had been right. He told 
 himself this savagely enough, that evening after his visit to 
 Laura Creichton's home. 
 
 What was it that had taken him there in the first instance? 
 For the climax of his visit was a tragedy of its own. Was it 
 one of the old flashy impulses, vanity, curiosity and the like? 
 Or was it something rather better? Laura herself a sudden 
 determination not to be outdone in pride and courage by 
 Laura the quiet, the diffident? For when he went, it is 
 certain that he had every desire to please. As to Laura, she 
 was glad that there were other people there, because she 
 thought it would be easier for him than meeting her father and 
 mother alone. The Hendersons, Mr. and Mrs. Carlton, a 
 friend of Sir Harry's, a couple of boys from "the Shop," a 
 young married couple or so: all service people; and, above 
 all, Gerald Stratton her "friend," as she thought of him, 
 counting upon him to become the friend of her friend. She 
 would not have dared mention the word " patron " to 
 Vortonitch; but for all that, having been brought up in a 
 world where the knowing of the right sort of people was 
 regarded as an ordinary asset, she undoubtedly looked to his 
 influence to help her lover forward. 
 
 She had mentioned Vortonitch's forthcoming visit, ex- 
 plained him awkwardly enough scarcely realising how 
 awkward it would be until she started and by some confused 
 mention of him in connection with her singing lessons set him 
 in Lady Creichton's mind as a friend of Madame's, some sort 
 of a musician, or, quite vaguely, singing-master. 
 
 The whole effect of him was indeed stranger and more 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 143 
 
 alien than anyone could have thought; and to people like the 
 Creichtons and their friends it was only by putting him down 
 as some sort of an artist or foreigner or "person of that 
 sort" that a man like Vortonitch could be accounted for; 
 Gerald Stratton alone realising him as a personality, a real 
 human being. 
 
 He was, in some ways entirely diverse from Stratton or the 
 General, the most distinguished-looking man there; but he 
 was wrongly dressed, and no grade of shabbiness, of the right 
 sort of style, could have so completely condemned him. 
 
 Crossing what seemed like an interminable desert of turf 
 and terrace, towards the group at tea beneath the trees to 
 one side of the tennis-court, he himself realised the wrongness 
 with that sense of shame and fury that nothing apart from 
 dress can well arouse in the human breast; a wrongness in 
 every way subtle and puzzling. For what would have been 
 good enough, in fact the very thing, for a royal garden-party 
 and oddly enough, that was the only entertainment of this 
 sort with which he had been, hitherto, acquainted ought to 
 have more than served here. But it didn't. His get-up was, 
 among all these men in white flannels and light tweeds, an 
 error of taste almost more fatal than any crime. 
 
 "Who, in the name of all that's holy !" began Sir 
 
 Harry, while Betty Henderson's sharp tongue parodied: 
 
 "Why do you walk on the lawn in gloves? 
 Oh, black-coated person whom nobody loves!" 
 
 "Hush! Laura's singing-mistress's friend the friend of 
 Laura's singing-mistress," murmured Lady Creichton con- 
 fusedly, and was moving forward with outstretched hand, 
 when Laura herself did the unforgivable thing, and with 
 nothing more than a backward word to her partner, deserted 
 the tennis-court in the very middle of a set. 
 
 Vortonitch could scarcely have realised all that this 
 meant; but he did realise the courage, and it angered him. 
 Why should anyone be brave for him? he who had travelled 
 more, seen more, knew more yes, knew more by God, the 
 things he knew than most. The sense of his knowledge, 
 his power, flamed up in him flushing his cheek, brightening 
 his eye. 
 
 Laura was very erect, her cheeks faintly flushed, as she 
 introduced him to them all, and stood over the tea-table, 
 pouring out tea, while Lady Creichton ran on with something 
 
144 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 perfectly unintelligible to the effect of Madame having taught 
 her two nieces, and her own youngest sister as well as her 
 daughter. But a man's teaching of course that was dif- 
 ferent. It was so difficult to know with young girls and all 
 and a man's voice so different "don't you think?" 
 Perhaps, later on of course, later on, he would sing to them, 
 and then she could tell everyone she knew . . . 
 
 Sing to them! Was the woman mad? Were they all 
 mad? wondered Vortonitch. Sing to them, sing to them! 
 Why, he could have killed them! 
 
 The three left stranded on the nearer tennis-court were 
 calling to Laura: 
 
 "Laura, Laura, hurry up!" 
 
 "Oh, Laura, brace up and come along!" 
 
 But Laura was adamant. "You must get someone else. 
 Marjorie, you cut in." 
 
 Marjorie, however, all eyes and ears a stocky, highly- 
 coloured girl whom Vortonitch was quite unable to place 
 refused to do anything of the sort, and it was Mary Henderson 
 who, good-naturedly enough, put down her cup and volun- 
 teered to fill the gap. 
 
 Vortonitch seemed to see the whole thing like one of those 
 small brightly-coloured paintings upon glass. The insolently 
 smooth green lawns; the light-coloured dresses, the parasols, 
 the white flannels, the tea-table with its silver; and Laura as 
 part of it all, completely alien from himself. Good God! 
 these people, so smoothed-out and bland! 
 
 For the first time in his life Grobo's lust of killing took 
 possession of him, for its own sake, not, as it had been, a 
 means to an end; while he saw himself as a creature apart, 
 Deity or devil, apart in body and mind, in every thought and 
 feeling; but, above all ludicrously, agonisingly above all 
 in his clothes, the shiny blackness of his new top-hat, his 
 black cut-away coat, his striped grey trousers, his patent- 
 leather boots. And yet, for all that, the arbiter of life or 
 death. If he had possessed a bomb then and Grobo in- 
 evitably carried something of the sort Grobo, Grobo! how 
 he loved him, for he was of his own, was always prepared for 
 anything he would have thrown it. He saw himself a black 
 note of exclamation, if only for one moment; the rest of the 
 party mere fragments of humanity, torn, indecent and utterly 
 without dignity for what can there be to a flying arm or leg, 
 however well-turned, a man's brains, once they're out of his 
 head? 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 145 
 
 "Sugar and cream?" 
 
 " If you please, Mademoiselle." 
 
 He was taking his tea and some thin brown bread-and- 
 butter from Laura's hand: Laura all in white, with a touch of 
 the palest pink in her hat, the broad brim shading her eyes. 
 
 Lady Creichton had moved away to greet a new-comer, 
 and Laura, standing by the tea-table, offered him a chair: as 
 though he could sit down while she stood! All courage and 
 eagerness, she was yet too young and untried for any savoir 
 faire, and it was Stratton who came to the rescue. 
 
 "Laura, are you going to have another tea? I am and 
 quite unblushing about it, too! Let's seize what we want 
 and camp on those chairs further back under the trees; then 
 I may have a chance of getting to know your friend." 
 
 Once established, he turned to Vortonitch: "I'm a very 
 old friend of Miss Creichton's, you know. Almost" he had 
 been going to say " a sort of uncle," but for some reason he 
 changed it clumsily for him to " almost her oldest what 
 shall we say? adorer? You are a musician, I think, Mr. 
 Vortonitch?" 
 
 "No; I have no tricks." 
 
 " But you are such a race of music-lovers that I'm certain 
 you play or sing. Come now!" Stratton's courtesy seemed 
 to smooth itself out under the other man's rudeness. " I 
 really believe that it's a birthright with you and your country- 
 men, native as the air you breathe. A trait that has been 
 nationalised by suffering, like most of the other arts." 
 
 "And of what nationality do you take me to be, may I 
 ask?" 
 
 "I don't think I can be mistaken. I know how dis- 
 gracefully ignorant we all are of other nations; but, after all, 
 I've lived in Poland, learnt to speak its language, though not 
 alas! to write it as it ought to be written that's completely 
 beyond me, and I confess it. Why, even among your own 
 people, letter -writing in your own language is an acquired art, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 "I scarcely know; I have lived in Poland so little." 
 Vortonitch's tone was distinctly more amiable, and Stratton 
 pushed his advantage for all it was worth. It would have 
 been impossible for him to say how far he liked or disliked this 
 man for himself; reading in his face, as he did, intelligence, 
 ardour, arrogance, and a sort of courage; crossed and re- 
 crossing with those fine, almost imperceptible lines eloquent 
 of a life of restlessness and constant strain; marked with 
 
146 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 passion, but, for all that, far from sensual : the face of a man 
 typical of that race which had always held his interest and 
 sympathy above all others. Anywhere else he would have 
 been almost too ready to like Vortonitch, for this, if for nothing 
 else that ridiculous leaning, which he shared with Laura, 
 towards the oppressed. But here, framed in Laura's regard, 
 here in the midst of the family which belonged to his world 
 so completely that it was almost his own, he was just enough 
 to realise the impossibility of a fair judgment. The only thing 
 which remained was to try to get to know the man so far as 
 possible; to master him by knowledge, if not by liking, and 
 so, in some sort of way, to standardise this old friendship of 
 Laura's. 
 
 " Of all men, the men of your nationality must realise the 
 affairs of their country most plainly when they are away from 
 it. At home, the eye is, must be, caught, dazzled, or maddened 
 by the glare upon either horizon Russian or German. Tell 
 me, now. . . ." 
 
 He began to ask a few questions, political and yet non- 
 committal; while Vortonitch, sensitive to any atmosphere, 
 feeling his tense nerves slacken, answered quietly and reason- 
 ably enough; volunteered information, still quiet and well- 
 balanced, speaking as man to man; until Laura, who had 
 been sitting painfully upright in her chair, leant back with a 
 little sigh of relief, unclasping her hands and watching the 
 dappled light and shadow, gold and grey, of the trees play 
 over them, lying loosely in her white lap. 
 
 There were so many things that this lover of hers knew. 
 Oh, but he was wonderful; and of course Stratton realised it! 
 Now and then she glanced towards him to see if he were not 
 surprised, as she was innocently sure that he must be, by such 
 an array of statistics, dates, such an unparalleled knowledge 
 of history. 
 
 The strain of awaiting Vortonitch, of ranging herself by 
 his side, was over; his own difficult mood past, or so it seemed; 
 and she felt herself bathed in that sort of peace which comes 
 with the relaxation of effort. If only it could have gone on 
 for ever! But it couldn't. It was, indeed, so insecure a thing 
 that, in common with Vortonitch's tractability, it snapped at 
 the first moment that Marjorie moved towards them from the 
 group at the edge of the tennis-courts; shouting in her usual 
 fashion, saving herself the trouble of a few extra steps: 
 
 "Lolly, Lolly! Mother wants you." 
 
 As the three rose and moved forward, Laura between the 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 147 
 
 two men, she met them half-way, ranged herself at Vor- 
 tonitch's side, staring at him curiously. 
 
 "Have you known my sister long?" 
 
 "I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle; you have the ad- 
 vantage of me." 
 
 The girl flushed under his gaze. She could be, had meant 
 to be, insolent, but not like this. She had a sort of feeling as 
 though this man's brilliant eyes were stripping her, holding 
 her up naked, a thing of derision. 
 
 " I'm Laura's sister." 
 
 " Still, Mademoiselle, I'm afraid I have not the 
 
 pleasure " His slight gesture seemed to say, "Who in 
 
 the world are you, and who in the world are you talking of?" 
 
 Marjorie's half -defiant jerk of the head, past him and 
 towards Laura; the clumsy, "Hers," was all schoolgirl, and 
 a triumph for him, as was his response, coolly contemptuous: 
 
 "Miss Creichton's sister! Indeed, I should not have 
 thought it!" His surprised glance seemed to pick out each 
 separate weakness in her personal appearance: her short 
 neck, that unfortunate spot upon her chin; and she crimsoned 
 as he turned aside and spoke to Laura; waiting until he 
 could attract his hostess's attention sufficiently to wish her 
 good-bye. 
 
 For, whatever might have been Lady Creichton's reason 
 for summoning her elder daughter and Vortonitch half 
 suspected that it was nothing more than a fabrication of this, 
 to him, curiously repellent young girl's she was in no hurry 
 now, entangled in a circuitous conversation with Mrs. Hender- 
 son, a reminiscence of last week, a resume of that afternoon, 
 plans for the future, and comments upon the uncertainty 
 occasioned by all the " dreadful things which seem to be 
 happening nowadays." 
 
 Once again that sense of exasperation which ha4 overcome 
 him upon his arrival rose to the surface; he remembered the 
 incongruity of his dress: imagined that Lady Creichton kept 
 him waiting like this out of some sort of petty malice: that 
 everyone present had conspired to insult him, first by their 
 cool glances and now by their disregard. 
 
 Sir Harry Creichton was walking to and fro along the path 
 under the terrace wall, talking to one of his friends; there 
 were two sets of tennis in progress, while the rest of the party 
 had drawn apart in a little confidential group, leaning forward 
 towards each other, chatting and laughing. 
 
 The shadows had not yet begun to lengthen, but the 
 
148 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 garden was already veiled in a faint film of sunlit mist, which 
 showed the midges like motes of gold: a man with a hose was 
 watering one of the wide borders, and the air was full of the 
 scent of moisture upon sun-drenched flowers: pinks, phloxes, 
 tobacco-plants. The lawns themselves were like green velvet 
 carpets, across which Parker and another maid, in starched 
 white caps and aprons, were bearing away the tea things. 
 
 To Vortonitch's mind, in Vortonitch's memory, the effect 
 was that of an almost aggressive beauty, peace, and luxury, 
 which made him ache with longing, and at the same time 
 whipped him into a savage fury; awaking in him a wild desirp 
 for wreckage. 
 
 The whole thing was an insult rammed down the throat of 
 all those multitudes who formed so much larger a part of the 
 world; overworked, diseased, starved, suffering, ridden by fear 
 and care: a challenge and an insult, a red rag in the face of 
 men like himself, Grobo, Stein, all those others. 
 
 As Lady Creichton turned to him with cool extended hand, 
 and some unintelligible murmur of " pupils," he felt as though 
 he could have ground her, her fragile, well-preserved beauty 
 delicate lavender muslin, lace, discreet jewels, pearls and 
 amethysts into the ground with the heel of his boot. A 
 sudden idea of her as a mother-in-law, his mother-in-law, 
 came into his head, and it was all he could do to prevent 
 himself from laughing aloud, savagely. 
 
 What a crew! This bread-and-butter miss at his side; 
 this inane woman, the epitome of that complete parasite, 
 "the lady"; Sir Harry Creichton's erect back, so pointedly 
 moving away from him; that other man with his almost ultra- 
 refined, delicate face, standing at Laura's elbow: all alike 
 chafed him beyond bearing, the last named above all, repre- 
 senting as he did the one characteristic which Vortonitch 
 really respected intellect. 
 
 " I'll come with you and show you the short cut," said 
 Laura; upon which Stratton, marvelling at her dignity and 
 independence, disturbed and anxious, helped on by a dis- 
 tracted glance from Lady Creichton a glance which said as 
 plainly as words, " I always depended upon you ; you must 
 help me" volunteered to accompany them. 
 
 Once at the tennis-courts, lying beyond the first lawn, the 
 cedar, the terrace and sunk fence, the station was most con- 
 veniently reached by a gate in the high paling at the bottom of 
 the orchard; for suburban as "The House" might be, there 
 was the illusion of complete country, everything in little: 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 149 
 
 while even beyond this boundary the houses were deeply 
 veiled with trees. 
 
 As they moved down the path and across the orchard 
 together, the dew already wet upon their shoes, Laura walked 
 between the two men, Vortonitch a pace in front; swaggering 
 and ill-tempered, and yet, as Stratton realised, still amazingly 
 graceful and attractive. 
 
 At the gate they paused for an awkward moment, which 
 was broken by Laura, turning, facing Stratton with steady 
 eyes, an amazing air of certainty: 
 
 " Stratty dear, I'm going to the station with Mr. Vor- 
 tonitch. Will you go back and talk to mother?" 
 
 "But Lolly !" He was absolutely taken aback, 
 
 frightened. The child Laura, like this! Like a mother-bird! 
 It was astounding; awful to think of the intensity of feeling 
 which must have gone to the steadying of her to such coolness 
 and decision. Still, there was nothing for it; he realised that, 
 and smiled and nodded. 
 
 Not for worlds would he have shaken hands with the other 
 man; he had gone out of his way to be nice to him, as Laura's 
 protege; but now now! Why, the whole thing was un- 
 believable! It oughtn't to be allowed! What were they all 
 thinking of? A man of this sort this sort! He knew the 
 type how well he knew it! had in some sort of way sym- 
 pathised with it, but not like this good heavens! no, not like 
 this touching his own personal life. Lolly Creichton, Lolly, 
 of all people! Lolly, who from the first moment of this man's 
 appearance upon the scene, had stood by him; with no vulgar 
 air of possession, but with an apparently serene and matter-of- 
 fact loyalty : as though to say, as plainly as words, " It is us 
 two against the world, and I don't mind who knows it." 
 
 What an amazing thing is the effect of civilisation! Here 
 was Laura, with her outward serenity, her primitive passions 
 unrealised, but still there: Stratton himself, equally urbane, 
 and yet feeling, as he did feel, and had never felt before, 
 jealous, suspicious; turning away, bowing, smiling he 
 thought of the little men sold by the peddlers in the Strand, 
 taking off their hats, bowing, worked by a string somewhere at 
 the back of them leaving her alone with this " damned foreign 
 adventurer"; for the first time in his life the word "foreign" 
 constituted a slur in his mind. 
 
 Beyond the fence was a narrow private road, almost a lane, 
 with grass at either side of it, overhung by trees. As the gate 
 slammed to behind Vortonitch and his companion, shutting 
 
150 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 Stratton away in outer darkness or Paradise, Vortonitch 
 himself, with contempt and envy see-sawing within him, could 
 scarcely have said which he turned to Laura, his face drawn 
 and aged with bitterness. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Well . . . Why, Paul, what is it?" She was anxious, 
 puzzled, her delicate brows drawn together. 
 
 "Pretty, wasn't it?" 
 
 "Paul! What do you mean?" 
 
 "A dancing-bear, was that it? my part among all your 
 fine friends!" 
 
 "My fine friends!" She knew that he was unhappy, that 
 something had gone wrong, but, for all that, she was utterly 
 bewildered by his tone. "Paul, how can you! What do 
 you mean? Just ordinary people " 
 
 "Ordinary people!" He laughed, rudely enough. "Do 
 you imagine that the rest of the world is like that? That 
 people real people move like that, talk like that, look like 
 that, dress like that? Puppets dangled on a wire by God 
 knows what! Half-alive, inane, simpering!" 
 
 "They are my people." Laura's face was white, her eyes 
 almost black, as they were apt to be in moments of intense 
 feeling. "Paul, you must be mad! They're my people; and 
 because they're not yours " 
 
 "Thank heaven they're not mine! Could they be? 
 Your mother, your father! The wonder is that you exist at 
 all; even as much as you do exist half-alive, like the rest of 
 them. 'Very pl-e-eased,'" he drawled, '"Very n-i-ice!' 
 Your father! Talk of Aaron's rod blossoming . . . My God, 
 nothing to the wonder of such a stick being human enough to 
 possess a daughter. Your mother! What did they think I 
 was? What did they expect me to do? Tell me that. Get- 
 ting me pupils! Dancing master, singing-master what the 
 devil did you make me out to be? Ashamed of knowing me 
 as a man just a man, eh? Passing me off as anything to 
 save your vanity? What were you at? What did you 
 want?" 
 
 "That's enough, Paul . . . Don't, oh don't!" 
 
 Quite suddenly her pride broke, and she turned away, her 
 hand upon the latch of the gate. 
 
 She was going back into her own world, her enchanted 
 garden. A wild fear swept over Vortonitch that she was 
 going forever, that he would never see her again; but for all 
 that, he could not stop himself; raged on: 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 151 
 
 "What do you think I came for? What do you imagine 
 it all meant? You and I you and I! That I should trouble 
 myself to trail down here to see you this precious family of 
 yours for any possible reason save to make use of you? By 
 God, that's good!" 
 
 He saw her raise her shoulders, stoop her head lower, 
 shuddering away from him; realised how he hurt, his cruel 
 triumph mingled with a sort of agony: he wanted her to turn 
 and defy him, or entreat him, so that he might take her in his 
 arms, forgive or be forgiven. 
 
 Damn it all, but he would make her turn! A sort of doubt 
 as to whether it were really himself speaking swept over him: 
 if she turned, he would open his arms; she would run to them, 
 and they would laugh together, laugh and cry. But she did 
 not turn, and he raged on: 
 
 "To help me about 'pupils'! What sort of twaddle's 
 that, eh? Have they any idea what I could teach their little 
 baa-lambs? What I would teach them? My God! the 
 damned, simpering superiority of such people. . . . You and 
 your relations!" 
 
 Still she did not speak, could not, indeed. The tears were 
 streaming down her face: there was a stupid little patent 
 catch on the gate at which she fumbled blindly. Her girlish 
 dignity was gone; she was like a child; her one idea to run 
 away somewhere out of sight of everyone, where she could cry 
 in peace and unashamed. As she bent her head the hot tears 
 dropped onto her neck, ran down her bosom inside her soft 
 white blouse. 
 
 "You imagine I came down here because I loved you, 
 because I wanted to see you: because I loved you as a woman, 
 a real person! Why, there's not a prostitute in London that's 
 not more of a woman than you are!" 
 
 But she did not turn, even at that; though he could see 
 her shoulders drawn closer together, as if shrinking away 
 under a blow, a rain of blows. 
 
 Ah, but he would make her turn, whether she liked it or 
 not face it out. 
 
 "Look at me. Come, now, where are your manners? 
 Look at me, while I thank you. For you've been of infinite 
 value to me, Miss Creichton; taught me more than you know. 
 But the game's at an end, with its boredom, its inanity. I'm 
 not the sort of man to feed my brains on a perpetual regimen 
 of milk and water. You'll see that if you look at me," he 
 blustered. "Look now, look!" 
 
152 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 She had one shoulder against the door, pushing it, and he 
 caught her arm. 
 
 "Look at me!" he shouted; and was amazed at the 
 fierceness of her answer, as the slight catch gave way, and she 
 wrenched herself free. 
 
 "No, no! Never again! Never again!" 
 
 There was a key on the inner side of the door, and he 
 heard it turn in the lock, standing stupidly staring at those 
 rough brown planks which had quite suddenly gathered to 
 themselves a significance more spiritual than actual: the 
 impression of an inexorable barrier, extending to eternity, 
 dropped down between the worst, and all that stood for, the 
 best of himself. 
 
 "Well, that's finished, anyhow! Thank God that's over 
 and done with!" He shrugged his shoulders with a little 
 laugh, glancing to the right and left along the tall fence, 
 narrowing off into a slender perspective at either end, for the 
 boundaries of the Creichton property spread wide. Even then, 
 through his childish pretence of relief and contempt, he was 
 conscious of an impression of that fence so intense that he 
 felt as though he could never be free of it; that it would come 
 between himself and every turn of life; confronting him upon 
 the boundaries of death; so unimposing, and yet for all 
 that so immensely significant. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 "ANYTHING more like a bit of chewed string!" was 
 Marjorie's comment as her sister came downstairs and joined 
 the rest of them crossing down the hall on their way to dinner 
 that night; uttered under her breath, for despite her faults 
 there was a standard of sisterly loyalty, and some affection. 
 
 Laura did indeed look wretched, with her face drawn and 
 white, dark shadows round her eyes; a cruel prophecy of 
 what any long term of anxious years might bring to her, as 
 Gerald Stratton thought, with a sense of impotent rage. 
 
 She would have given anything to have stayed in her own 
 room, turned her face to the wall, as some girls might have 
 done, though it would have depended less upon the in- 
 dividual than the family; for in the face of Marjorie and her 
 curiosity, Lady Creichton with her stream of comment, and 
 the General carrying as he did the impression of red tape 
 stiffened with whalebone into the very bosom of his family it 
 was far easier to endure than to give in; and in any case there 
 would be the next day to face; the day after that innumer- 
 able, unending days. 
 
 If only, only they would have left her alone! But she might 
 have known that they couldn't. Better, perhaps, to have risked 
 a locked door, for, after all, why should they? a family with 
 whom free discussion of anything concerning any single one 
 of their number was as natural as the air they breathed. 
 
 It began with the fish, and a " Can't say I think much of 
 your new friend, Laura," from the General. 
 
 " I always do feel it's a mistaken kindness to ask people of 
 that sort; it only makes them uncomfortable. Don't you 
 
 think, Laura dear " Cousin Ethel, who used the house as 
 
 a sort of jumping-off place for London shopping and visiting, 
 paid for her board by being bright and interested in every- 
 thing, began to speak; then drew up with a feeling of not 
 being quite sure of her ground. Of course Harry's family, 
 which was her family, just didn't know " people of that sort," 
 but Lady Creichton's relations were different, real Londoners; 
 and there is no doubt about it, London is mixed. 
 
 153 
 
154 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 "His clothes! Oh, my hat!" cried Marjorie. "Clothes 
 like that at a tennis-party ! " 
 
 It seemed as though they were all talking at once: laughing 
 at the stranger, picking him to bits, like a colony of rooks 
 discovering a stranger in its midst: Marjorie and Betty 
 Henderson leading, rivals in those personalities so often mis- 
 taken for wit; followed by a couple of cadets and another girl 
 who had stayed on to dinner, as people had a habit of doing 
 in that hospitable house for no other reason than that it 
 made them feel funny and in the swim of things: Philip 
 Henderson alone, of all the young people, remained silent, his 
 reddened face bent low over his plate. 
 
 Gerald Stratton, who had also remained, would have given 
 anything to have been able to say, "I like Laura's friend"; 
 even, "You don't know what you're talking about he's a 
 very interesting fellow, more brains than any of you young 
 people put together" any thing like that. But a sort of 
 stiff awkwardness held him back, more of the man and less of 
 the pure intellectual than he had ever been before. 
 
 Dinner was later than usual, and at the end of that course 
 the lights were turned on. He was sitting opposite Laura, but 
 there was a group of four tall flower-vases between them, and 
 he could scarcely see her ravaged young face until she jerked 
 up her head suddenly, with the air of a baited animal. 
 
 " I think I'd better tell you " she began. 
 
 But the young ones laughed her down: "Laura's smit!" 
 
 "He's done a click " 
 
 One of the silly laughing boys raised his glass: 
 'To the Countess Popponoff!" 
 
 'The Countess Popponoff!" 
 
 'When is it going to be, eh, Laura?" 
 
 'Ask us to the wedding, Miss Creichton." 
 
 ' He carries a knife in his boot." 
 
 'I'm sure he does! That's it there was a little kink in 
 his trouser-leg." 
 
 " Seriously, Laura," interposed Sir Harry, " it's not the 
 sort of time to go picking up with casual foreigners. Here, 
 with my position and all, one can't be too careful. Of course, 
 I'm sure you meant nothing, and we all know poor old 
 Madame; but, all the same . . . What do you say, Stratton? 
 We've been too hospitable in the past, as a nation, eh? That's 
 the fact of the matter." 
 
 "I think, perhaps, if Lolly chose her friends " 
 
 Stratton was beginning miserably, insincerely, for of course 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 155 
 
 one did not really choose one's friends, who came and went, 
 suitable or unsuitable, as the case might be; dropping "as 
 the gentle rain from heaven." 
 
 " Did you hear Betty ' Oh, why do you walk on the 
 lawn in gloves ?" 
 
 "Lolly's blushing . . . Lolly . . ." Of course one did 
 blush when one was chaffed like this. One of the boys 
 pretended to warm his hand at her face, supposedly glowing: 
 not a soul among them, unless it were her mother, realising 
 its fierce whiteness, the lines which strengthened it, pushing 
 forward the soft young jaw. 
 
 " Don't be so silly," interposed Lady Creichton. " Don't 
 mind them, Laura. It was very kind of you to think of asking 
 him. I thought he was a very gentlemanly, quiet sort of 
 young fellow " 
 
 "There, Miss Creichton!" 
 
 "There, Lolly!" 
 
 " Smooth her down, eh?" 
 
 " Of course there's no question of friendship. Laura knows 
 how to keep people in their place " 
 
 " Do you know what I thought? I thought he was the 
 piano-tuner." There was a burst of laughter at this, and 
 someone capped it. 
 
 " I thought that there must be a funeral on somewhere, 
 and he'd mistaken the house." 
 
 "Don't you think that's enough about Laura's friend?" 
 interposed Sir Harry, rather testily; for there was something 
 he wanted to discuss with Stratton, and one could hardly 
 hear oneself speak. 
 
 "I wish you wouldn't call him Laura's friend; because 
 Laura asked the young man down here out of kindness . . . 
 Gerry, they'll never pass the port unless you ask for it such 
 a pandemonium! Harry . . ." 
 
 "Poor little Laura! Dear little Laura!" 
 
 "Laura had a little lamb " 
 
 " ' Oh, why do you walk ' " 
 
 "Stop it!" 
 
 The inane repetition, the laughter and chatter were 
 broken: so oddly that it seemed as though the tumult must 
 have been something material, like a large glass, shattered by 
 a blow, a word. 
 
 In the sudden silence they gaped at Laura Laura! 
 Laura! standing upright, her slim fingers resting on the 
 table. 
 
156 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 "Laura dear!" It was her mother who spoke. 
 
 " It's no good saying ' Laura ' like that. You're all alike 
 you think of no one but yourselves you know nothing of 
 anyone apart from your own sort. Because a man's dressed 
 differently 
 
 "Laura, be silent!" It was Sir Harry's parade voice, 
 level and biting, and for a moment Laura drew herself together 
 under it, as though to attention. 
 
 She must have looked strange, unlike herself; there must 
 have been something amazing in the very fact of her, Laura, 
 as the centre of that sort of storm in which Marjorie had so 
 often figured, for a silence fell upon them all, and they bent 
 their heads, crumbling their bread, without so much as a 
 glance at one another, while she stood motionless, speechless, 
 for so long that her father, with a shrug and motion of his 
 chin towards his wife, as though to say, " She's just too old 
 to be packed off to bed; you must deal with her later," was 
 leaning forward towards Stratton, beginning something about 
 a letter in that morning's Times, when she was out with it, 
 dropping it among them like a bomb. . . . Yes, a bomb, in 
 those days of bombs. 
 
 " I love him, and I'm going to marry him," she said: just 
 that: 
 
 " I love him, and I'm going to marry him " then turned 
 and walked out of the room. 
 
 Marjorie was on her feet in a moment; but her father 
 snapped at her, "Sit down!" and she collapsed suddenly; 
 rising again, as he glanced at his wife, with some grim sugges- 
 tion of " the banquet " being over ; and they all trailed from 
 the room. 
 
 Once free, she raced upstairs, tried the handle of Laura's 
 door, and, rinding it locked, knocked softly, almost as though 
 there was someone ill inside it. 
 
 "Lolly, Lolly, let me in!" 
 
 " I don't want anyone. Go away, please." 
 
 "Lolly, darling old Lolly!" 
 
 The door was opened at that, and they were in each 
 other's arms. 
 
 "Lolly, Lolly, I was an awful beast. I never thought I 
 never knew. You might have told me. . . . I'm sure he's 
 awfully clever, and romantic, and all that. . . . Lolly, to 
 stand up to dad like that! The nerve! You poor old 
 thing! Of course you can't marry him you had us on 
 there. All the same, my hat, what a nerve!" 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 157 
 
 "Why can't I marry him?" Laura drew a little apart. 
 She had abandoned herself to the caresses; but for once it 
 was Marjorie who caressed, wept with excitement. 
 
 "Why, Lolly, Lolly dear, you must see! He's so fright- 
 fully different so 
 
 "Perhaps that's why I love him." 
 
 "You mean you . . . Marry him!" Marjorie's expression 
 was an odd blend of horror, amazement, and admiration. 
 " Oh, but, Laura marry him ! " 
 
 " Yes, if " A sudden memory of her parting with her 
 
 lover, of her own misery lost in the sense of standing by him, 
 standing up for him against the cruel ridicule, the criticism of 
 the others swept over Laura with a sense of utter weariness 
 and discouragement. " If he'll have me," she added; and 
 turning to the dressing-table, sat down in front of it and began 
 taking the pins out of her hair, staring at herself with blank, 
 unseeing eyes. 
 
 "I think I'll go to bed. I'm dead tired." 
 
 "I'll get your dressing-gown for you; I'll brush your 
 
 hair. Poor old Lolly " Marjorie was beginning, when 
 
 there was an uncertain tap upon the door, and Lady Creichton 
 entered, closing it behind her with the air of a conspirator. 
 
 "Laura darling, your father wants to see you; but if I 
 say you're too tired you're undressed . . ." She hesitated, 
 as she realised that Laura was raising her thick coil of hair, 
 replacing the pins. 
 
 "Laura, you'd better not go; he's very upset. . . . Oh, 
 Laura, why did you, my dear? So unlike you! Of course, a 
 joke's a joke but you!" She gave a bewildered shake of 
 her head, made a cobwebby motion with her hands as though 
 she would have wrung them had they been firm enough if 
 anything, anything on earth could be firm and sure, with 
 Laura like this. 
 
 "It isn't a joke. I'd better come." Laura rose to her 
 feet, her knees shaking under her; for she had always been 
 frightened of her father, not at all like Marjorie, with her 
 alternate cheeking and coaxing, and the memory of Vor- 
 tonitch's repudiation seemed to have wiped the life out of her. 
 She touched her mother's arm timidly, the old Laura. 
 
 "Do forgive me, mother. I was awfully rude to you I 
 don't know what happened to me; but they all they would 
 keep on." 
 
 Lady Creichton drew her arm round her daughter, the tears 
 running down her own face. "Never mind, my darling; 
 
158 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 don't worry. I'll tell your father you didn't mean it. You 
 were excited and overwrought." 
 
 " No, I didn't mean it. It was " 
 
 "Yes, dear, I know, I know do you think your mother 
 doesn't know? And if I tell him not to say anything more; 
 that there was nothing in it ... just a joke a sort of a 
 joke . . ." 
 
 "What do you mean?" Laura drew back, her shadowed 
 eyes intent upon her mother; suddenly and deeply suspicious. 
 
 "That unfortunate young man. So ridiculous! I said, 
 * Just as if Laura, of all people ' ' 
 
 " I think you're mistaken. I'm sorry I was rude. But for 
 the rest . . . I'll see father now." 
 
 As she turned to the door her mother caught at her arm. 
 
 "Laura, you can't be in earnest! A man we don't know 
 none of us know not even a gentleman!" 
 
 "Mother, don't!" 
 
 "But, Laura darling . . ." Lady Creichton was sobbing 
 distractedly, her face all blurred and piteous with unaccus- 
 tomed grief. "You can't mean that you really care, that it 
 means anything? Why, you can't even know him we don't 
 know him." She reiterated the argument which to her own 
 mind seemed so altogether sufficient. "Laura, it's not 
 possible that you care! You think you do; that's all." 
 
 " I know I care. How " Laura broke off, hesitating. 
 
 It had been in her mind to say, " How can one help 
 caring, or not caring? You cared once; you ought to 
 know"; but she held the words back, with an oddly 
 mature conviction that they would all be of no use; that 
 people forget the ways of love as they forget nothing else in 
 life. 
 
 " I'd better go and get it over. Don't worry, mother." 
 
 "Of course it mayn't I only hope it mayn't come to 
 anything." 
 
 "No, it mayn't come to anything." Laura laughed a 
 little oddly, almost wildly so unlike Laura Laura wild! 
 and hesitated a moment, looking at her mother in an odd, 
 brooding way, almost as though she were someone else. 
 
 "All the same " she added; then, breaking off again, 
 
 moved towards the door, and closed it gently behind her; 
 leaving the other two staring at each other in blank silence, 
 utterly amazed, as amazed as Balaam with his ass. 
 
 Laura! Laura, of all people! 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 " THERE'S nothing to be got out of her nothing to be done 
 with her." That was the surprising, and surprised, verdict 
 upon Laura and Laura's affair, both from her parents and 
 those friends whom Lady Creichton importuned for assistance, 
 with a " Perhaps if you spoke to Laura she was always so 
 fond of you." 
 
 They were willing enough to intervene, too apart from 
 Stratton, who realised the hopelessness of words, the unfair- 
 ness of any words uttered by himself in such a context the 
 general idea being that as Laura was always so sweet, you 
 must be very stupid if you failed to show your superiority by 
 influencing her. 
 
 Failing, as they did, in the face of this strangely cold and 
 detached Laura, they found a grievance in the fact of "never 
 really knowing what those quiet people are up to." 
 
 One result, however, emerged from all this inability to 
 talk the thing out, even to talk it over, in the sense of any 
 interchange of ideas : that " only Laura " business was over 
 and done with, once and for all. 
 
 As a matter of fact, there was nothing deliberate in Laura's 
 reserve. If she had been happy she might have been more 
 sensitive to the opinion of others, more easily influenced and 
 hurt by any estrangement. But the poor child was so com- 
 pletely miserable that nothing seemed to matter; was indeed 
 more than half stunned by that last scene with Vortonitch; 
 like a swimmer overcome by the waves; dashed up onto a 
 rough, pebbly shore, battered and beaten; the roar of water 
 still in her ears, insensible to all else, incapable of effort. 
 Even later, a trifle recovered, she was too weak, or too strong 
 it all depends upon the point of view in regard to love to 
 say: "He's behaved abominably. Why should I bother my 
 head about him?" too loyal to hint at any rift, implying a 
 fault, as it must do; and too honest to assume an air of 
 triumphant, blatant happiness. 
 
 In the face of all this there was simply nothing for her to 
 say; and as the others were powerless to affect her, she 
 
 159 
 
160 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 remained silent. It seemed, indeed, throughout those sullen 
 summer days, heavy with thunder, as though she were 
 frozen; her hands so icily cold that her mother was alarmed 
 when she touched them; while, from being the least con- 
 sidered member of the family, she dominated it, by the fact 
 that they, who had seemed to know everything there was 
 about each other, discovered that here, in the most unexpected 
 quarter, they knew nothing whatever. 
 
 "Is she seeing the fellow?" demanded Sir Harry; and 
 his wife replied, despairingly, " I'm sure I don't know. I 
 know nothing; she tells me nothing." 
 
 " One would imagine that you'd have some sort of 
 influence over your own daughter. Haven't you forbidden her 
 to see him? Why don't you put your foot down, once and 
 for all? What, in the name of all that's holy, are mothers 
 for?" 
 
 " Not for forbidding," said Lady Creichton, with one of 
 her odd flashes of insight; and then, as though this had 
 blazed a trail, she added, " Did you forbid her not to meet 
 him, write to him, or anything?" 
 
 " Of course I did," he snapped back ; then flushed, 
 realising the slip. "And more, too; made it plain that if 
 she persists in keeping up with that cad, I'll never speak to 
 her, never see her again." 
 
 "Oh dear, what's the use of that?" enquired his wife, 
 with a sort of weary flatness. 
 
 "How do you mean? 'What's the use of that?' By 
 George! things have come to a pretty pass if one's to be 
 beaten by a girl like Laura. If it were Marjorie, now !" 
 
 "Oh Marjorie!" Lady Creichton gave an odd little 
 movement of her shoulders, discounting the much-admired 
 younger daughter, in whom she had discovered an almost 
 slavish deference to public opinion: Marjorie had seemed a 
 rebel, for the simple reason that rebellion among daughters 
 happened to be " the thing " ; but this was pretty well as 
 far as it went: for though, during the excitement of that first 
 disclosure of Laura's she had sided with her, she was now 
 overcome by the thought of the effect any mesalliance might 
 have upon her own set, making her, Marjorie, "feel like a 
 fool." 
 
 "It's no good threatening Laura it won't alter her; 
 she's that sort. I believe you'll have to give in, Harry." 
 
 "Give in! What the deuce do you mean?" The General 
 stared with a sideway jerk of his chin over the top of his stiff 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 161 
 
 collar: during the war, when there had been mules by the 
 hundred tethered upon Blackheath, Lady Creichton had seen 
 them jerk at their halters, with the lower jaw thrust out in 
 just this fashion, and turned away her head, because they 
 hurt her sense of loyalty by reminding her of her husband. 
 
 She thought of them now, deliberately and with a sort of 
 relish; put it into words in her own mind: "Like an old 
 mule!" then, reverting to Laura, was seized with panic. 
 
 " You mustn't say that sort of thing to her, try to force 
 her hand like that. Don't you see? . . . Oh, how can you 
 be so stupid!" she cried, with a sudden passion. "Don't 
 you realise we'll lose her? You'll drive her away, and you've 
 no right to do that. She's my child as well as yours. A 
 great deal more mine, for you've got Marjorie," she added 
 amazingly, as though they were rival factions and no longer a 
 family. " I can't live without Laura ; I can't and I won't 
 so that's plain, Harry." 
 
 "Edith!" 
 
 "It's no good saying 'Edith!' to me like that. It's " 
 
 She had been knitting fiercely, and Sir Harry Creichton, with 
 a vague memory of hearing of something of the same sort in 
 connection with the women of the French Revolution, was 
 conscious of a growing fear that his home was tumbling about 
 his ears, all the familiar landmarks of the ways of women lost 
 to him, when she relinquished her position in a flood of tears; 
 while he moved over to the mantelpiece and, turning his back 
 to her, fiddled with the little Dresden china figures which stood 
 there: hating to see a woman cry, and yet with a distinct sense 
 of relief at being able to say : 
 
 "You women! As if anything was ever done by crying 
 over it!" 
 
 After a moment or so he turned again, moved towards his 
 wife and patted her on the shoulder, as though she were a 
 horse; with the oddly awkward affection of a certain type of 
 Englishman. 
 
 "After all, she's only a child, my dear; you must re- 
 member that." 
 
 "That's what I thought, Harry, and that's where I was 
 mistaken. Why, she might have been a woman for years and 
 years and years, by the way she's behaving. When do they 
 stop being children, and when do they start being grown-up? 
 That's what I want to know!" Her voice rose in a gentle 
 wail. " It's no good saying she's not even out yet I really 
 believe it would be just the same if she never came out. And 
 
162 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 perhaps, now, she will never come out one never knows. I 
 had thought over her presentation dress with skirts growing 
 wider, and all that and then, I thought, if she marries . . . 
 But now . . . Oh dear, oh dear! it all seems so unlike Laura. 
 Really, I'm beginning to think that people are more unlike 
 themselves than they're ever unlike anyone else, and that's 
 what it comes to. Oh yes, Parker " she glanced up, realising 
 the parlourmaid standing just inside the door " you can 
 bring the tea; and I'm not at home, if anyone calls. Indian, 
 please" then ran on with desperate emphasis, as the door 
 closed behind the girl: 
 
 " I'd rather she married the old gentleman himself, than 
 lose her." 
 
 A few minutes later Laura herself came in to tea. It was 
 impossible that she should live without eating; and yet there 
 seemed something strange in her persistence in the ordinary 
 ways of life: going on as though everything were the same 
 a little more silent, that was all when everything was, in 
 reality, so different; even to this having Indian instead of 
 China tea at half -past four in the afternoon, a sort of stimu- 
 lant, as significant in its own way as a whisky-and-soda. 
 
 By this time the strange suspense, that feeling of not 
 knowing what to expect, had hung over the family for eight 
 days. Five more passed, and still nothing had happened, 
 when General Creichton, coming home about five o'clock one 
 day, found the house apparently emptied of his family and 
 that afternoon's letters lying upon the hall-table. 
 
 As he picked them up and glanced over them, his attention 
 was caught by a finely-pointed, foreign-looking handwriting, 
 and thick white envelope: a letter to Laura a long one, too, 
 judging by the feel of it. 
 
 Gathering it up with his own, he went to his smoking-room 
 and, sitting down by the writing-table, took out a cigar, cut 
 off the end and lit it, with more deliberation than usual; then 
 spread out the letters in front of him, and picked up a paper- 
 knife. 
 
 His idea was that he would begin with Laura's; get that 
 over; but in the end he read his own first, very slowly; went 
 back to one or two; re-read them; folded them carefully and 
 put them back in the envelopes; then sat balancing the 
 paper-knife between his fingers, his honest wooden face set, 
 his lower lip protruding; whilst the clock ticked on, more 
 slowly than usual, it seemed, as though overweighted by the 
 afternoon heat. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 163 
 
 At last he roused himself, with that odd jerk of the head: 
 "Hang it all! it's the only thing to do!" ran his knife along 
 the flap of the envelope, and, taking the folded edge of the 
 letter between his finger and thumb, pulled it half out; then 
 pushed it back again; opened the door of his writing-table, 
 put it in there and turned the key in the lock; thinking that 
 he'd wait until after dinner, until he had more time to read it; 
 or, rather, telling himself so, knowing in his own mind that 
 the thing was impossible, tradition altogether too strong for 
 him. " To open another person's letters " in some way, his 
 mother had impressed this upon him, in company with a lie, 
 as the unforgivable sin. 
 
 It was no earthly use his telling himself that it was his 
 duty to protect his daughter by seeing what this foreign 
 bounder had to say for himself, he simply could not do it; 
 and for three days the letter remained unread in his drawer. 
 Then, latish one afternoon, he heard Laura's voice in the hall, 
 and acting upon a sudden impulse, called to her; took it out 
 and gave it into her hand. 
 
 "I opened it, but I didn't read it." 
 
 "Thank you." She hesitated, her head bent over her 
 letter; then, raising it, gazed at him for a moment, with some 
 of her old timidity and affection, her face flushed, her eyes 
 bright with tears; repeated "Thank you," added the word 
 " Dad," almost as though it were a caress, and took a step 
 forward towards him; then, turning, left the room, and 
 closed the door gently behind her. 
 
 She might have been absent for ten minutes, not more, 
 while General Creichton walked up and down the room, 
 straightening a book here, a paper there; stooping and 
 adjusting the curled-up corner of a rug. Something like tears 
 had smarted in his own eyes at Laura's glance; in that 
 moment it had seemed as though they were melting towards 
 each other; if only he could have sat down and taken her 
 upon his knee, as he used to do, everything might have 
 come all right between them. He had actually seemed to 
 feel the pressure of her head upon his shoulder, the fine silky 
 hair against his cheek, and was touched to a sort of senti- 
 mentality. Poor little Lolly! Why the devil shouldn't she 
 have any young man she liked making love to her? Hang it 
 all! he had made love in his time, more than once success- 
 fully, too. 
 
 He caught himself up in a chuckle with the thought that 
 girls were altogether different: with girls, love, any sort of an 
 
164 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 affair, meant marriage. Imagine that fellow in the black coat 
 as a son-in-law! The thing was impossible. How could 
 Laura . . . What business . . .? Hang it all! she had 
 behaved disgracefully. How the deuce had she met the 
 fellow? got to know him? deceived them all. If she could 
 do that, there was no knowing what she might do. 
 
 A large bluebottle fly buzzing against the window-pane 
 irritated him almost beyond bearing. He caught up an 
 antimacassar and tried to drive it out of the open half, while 
 it blundered and whirred, in every direction but the right one. 
 By the time he got it into a corner, picked it up and threw it 
 out, with an exclamation of furious digust, he was dripping 
 with the heat, for the sun was full upon the glass; his rage 
 boiling over from Laura, concentrated upon the insolent 
 stupidity of the insect. 
 
 Then his wife's fool of a cat came in by the open window, 
 demanding to be let out of the door, and his anger swelled 
 with a burning sensation up the back of his neck, a feeling as 
 though his collar were too tight for him. He put his forefinger 
 over the top, pulled it sideways, jerking his head, his jaw out, 
 while his mind reverted to Laura. To take the letter like 
 that! confounded cheek! From one's own child! Not 
 one word of apology, explanation. "Thank you"; just 
 " Thank you " ! What were young people coming to ! What 
 the devil were they coming to! The memory of that glance, 
 the intonation of that single word, " Dad," was lost to him. 
 
 He moved towards the bell; he would ring it, peal it, 
 summon Parker, dispatch her in search of Laura; court- 
 martial her. 
 
 Where were the others? What were they doing now? 
 Something they oughtn't to be doing, without doubt, making a 
 fool of him. 
 
 He thought of his position at the Arsenal: men saluting, 
 drawing up to attention: he was somebody there. That 
 was the result of discipline; that was what was wrong with 
 women no discipline. That was what was wrong with his 
 wife; that was the reason why she couldn't manage her own 
 children. He'd been a fool to allow Charles to go to Oxford 
 instead of putting him straight into the Army; there was no 
 discipline at the universities; Socialism and all that sort of 
 tommy-rot; men holding themselves all anyhow slouch- 
 ing! Where the devil was Parker? Where the devil was 
 everyone? Wasn't he going to be allowed any tea, in his own 
 house? 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 165 
 
 Oh, well! he'd better have it out with Laura first; no 
 sitting down to tea with Laura as though nothing had hap- 
 pened. He'd given her time to come round, pull herself 
 together, and now he was going to put his foot down. 
 
 That damned cat had returned through the open door, and 
 was miaowing to be let out of the long French window with 
 the closed outside shutter. And two other windows wide 
 open! Just like a cat! 
 
 No, he wouldn't have tea; he'd have an iced whisky-and- 
 soda; he was tired nobody ever seemed to think of him 
 being tired, and yet he was the only one of the family who 
 did anything. But first of all he would have it out with Laura. 
 
 His hand was at the bell when Laura walked into 
 the room. She held herself stiffly erect, as erect as he himself 
 might have done; there was an odd, stiffened look in her face, 
 too; something blank and withdrawn in her eyes. Years ago, 
 when he was a subaltern, he had seen a young fellow led out 
 to be shot, with just that look. It did not occur to him that 
 his daughter would, indeed, rather have been shot than face 
 the prospect of a scene with him; assert herself. 
 
 She held no letter in her hand, as she ought to have done, 
 undoubtedly showing, or at least expounding it. 
 
 General Sir Harry Creichton sat down in the armchair at 
 his writing-table; one leg stuck out stiffly to the side of him, 
 one elbow crooked; and picking up a pen, tapped gently 
 upon the table with it; his light-grey eyes, with contracted 
 pupils, steady upon Laura. 
 
 That pressure up the back of his neck had settled into a 
 general sensation of dulness; he felt exactly as though he were 
 indeed conducting a court-martial; he was in his court-martial 
 attitude, and that helped him to a sort of cold impartiality. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I've had a letter from Mr. Vortonitch." 
 
 "And who might Mr. Vortonitch be?" 
 
 Of course she would say, "The man who came here," or, 
 " The man we spoke of," he thought, counting upon this 
 opening for some sally of ridicule or satire. 
 
 But she did nothing of the kind. With a bluntness which 
 staggered him, using a word of the possible significance of 
 which she could have had no conception, she answered: 
 
 " My lover." 
 
 Like that. "My lover." To say that Sir Harry was 
 amazed would be an absurd under-statement; but with this 
 amazement was mingled a strange bewilderment, a feeling as 
 
166 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 though he scarcely knew which was Laura and which was 
 himself; a sense of her as nearer to him than she had ever 
 been before, in her docile days; and with this, something else 
 which almost amounted to a confusion as to which was the 
 culprit and which the judge. 
 
 He rose to his feet and moved a step towards her; he was 
 not a tall man, and their eyes were almost level. 
 
 "You dare to say that to me! 'My lover'! a scoundrel 
 like that! A man you know nothing of!" 
 
 " I do know." 
 
 "What do you know? What can you know? Who are 
 you, to judge a man of that sort? Your 'lover'! Do you 
 know what you mean by that? what people would take you 
 to mean? That . . ." He broke off. Here was a girl who 
 knew nothing; before whom nothing of the facts of life had 
 ever been put into words. 
 
 Laura flushed, for the way in which he spoke roused in her 
 some instinct as to the significance of his words, her own. 
 
 "I mean that I love him, that he loves me; that we are 
 going to be married." 
 
 She held her head high, for the letter had made her divinely 
 certain of this. 
 
 "Never! Never, with my consent." 
 
 " He has been ill ; he wants me to go and see him." 
 
 "Oh, he does, does he!" 
 
 "I'm going now this afternoon. Dad, I must see him." 
 Her voice broke on a note of pleading. Now that all was right 
 again between Vortonitch and herself, she could afford to 
 speak of what was past. "Everything went wrong last 
 time; it's been awful! I didn't know . . . But I must see 
 him again now." 
 
 "Now? You mean to-day?" 
 
 "Yes; to-day." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 Sir Harry's tone was ominously quiet: his men knew and 
 feared this quietness, the way in which it broke. 
 
 " In London. There's a train in half an hour. I won't be 
 long, I promise you; I'll be back soon, not very late." 
 
 " Where? I said." He heard his own voice rise suddenly, 
 shouting through the still room, the silent house, bellowing. 
 "Where? Come now, answer me, can't you!" 
 
 "I suppose at his rooms; he won't know he can't 
 meet me. The letter was written four days ago." She spoke 
 confusedly, doubtfully, because she was worried, realising 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 167 
 
 afresh the long delay; but her words might have been one of 
 Vortonitch's own bombs, laid beneath her father's feet. 
 
 " You mean to tell me that you contemplate 
 going to this fellow's rooms?" he asked, still shouting, 
 every word widely separated, as though she were deaf. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then I forbid it. That's flat. I absolutely forbid it." 
 
 " I must go." 
 
 "You will not go. Good God! do you realize what you're 
 talking of?" 
 
 "I must go. I'm sorry, but " Her joy at the love, 
 
 her tender sorrow and joy at the self-abasement and regret, 
 the desperate longing for her presence, which she had found in 
 Vortonitch's letter upheld her; but for all that, hot as the day 
 was, she shivered : " He wants me. I must go." 
 
 " If you do, you'll never come back here. Do you realise 
 that? By going to a man's room like that; by persisting in 
 keeping up with a person we've all warned you against; by 
 deliberately disobeying me, you cut yourself off from us all, 
 and for ever for ever, mind that. I'm not the sort of man 
 to go back on my word: I'll never speak to you again, and 
 your mother and sister shall never speak to you again, if you 
 choose to disgrace yourself like this. Understand that. 
 Now!" 
 
 The tears came into Laura's eyes and ran down her white 
 face. It seemed as though she bent a little, drawn together, 
 inexpressibly childish and slender; but she said nothing. 
 
 "Come now, my dear; be sensible, and we'll say no more 
 about it." She was so young, it was impossible that he 
 should be beaten by her, he thought. 
 
 " I can't give him up." 
 
 " If you don't " 
 
 " I can't." 
 
 She hesitated, looking at him piteously; for one 
 moment their gaze hung upon each other with an amazing 
 sense of relationship, stronger than antagonism, and then, 
 without another word, she turned and left the room. 
 
 Five minutes later, General Creichton heard her with ears 
 preternaturally sharpened cross the hall and go out of the 
 door leading to the garden; then, glancing up, saw her drop 
 below the level of the terrace, reappear at the edge of the 
 orchard and cross it, making for the gate which gave onto the 
 short cut to the station. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE day had been extraordinarily airless, even for London 
 in mid-August. The sun, shining through a haze, seemed 
 hotter than any clear blaze could possibly have been: such air 
 as there was heavy with hot grit and foul dust from the wood 
 pavement lay close-pressed as a blanket against the face, 
 smarted upon the parched lips, strained eyelids. The grass 
 in the park showed drab and withered, shining like the seams 
 of an old coat; the blackened leaves curled upon the trees, 
 all sap parched out of them. The paving-stones burnt 
 against the pedestrians' feet, so that men in the street walked 
 as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, marvelling that they 
 were not destroyed; while sweat ran down the sides and 
 bellies of the horses, dripping upon the ground. 
 
 It seemed well-nigh impossible to breathe, heart and brain 
 both alike labouring like a derelict engine. The staleness of 
 everything was beyond words. The water in the basins in 
 Trafalgar Square, the flowers in the flower-sellers' baskets, the 
 perfumes, the tobacco-smoke; the clothes, the movements, 
 the expressions and attitudes of the people everything, 
 everything alike was nauseatingly stale; their virtues, their 
 vices, loves, hates, all they thought and did and felt stale! 
 The odour which came through the restaurant doors, floating 
 up Old Compton Street and Little Compton Street, and Greek 
 Street and Frith Street, sickened in the place of tempting: 
 even the children were quiet, drooping listlessly upon the kerb. 
 To Vortonitch, sitting alone in his room, London seemed like 
 a corpse over-long dead, horribly corrupt. All day he had 
 been feeling ill; the noise, the smells were almost more than 
 he could bear, for he had starved so often and for so long 
 together that it took little to set him retching, with a swim- 
 ming head. He thought of going to Hampstead Heath, but 
 only the day before the heat had been greater there than 
 anywhere else; Kew, Richmond his soul fainted within him 
 at the very idea of the exertion implied in getting there 
 getting anywhere. He was, indeed, sunk in one of his moods 
 of blackest depression ; body and mind, he was ill ill he told 
 
 168 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 169 
 
 himself, dying of the sickness, the nausea of life; if release 
 did not come soon he would be dead. 
 
 He could not move; he would stay there and soak in 
 his remembered miseries: the immense tragedy of his 
 unloved childhood; the cruelty of indifferent strangers; the 
 periods of cold, hunger, utter fatigue; the persecution, the 
 filthy prisons; the greedy, inconstant women, the faithless 
 men. 
 
 He bathed himself in such memories as in a dark pool, 
 feeling the tainted waters rising around him; the cold at his 
 heart, though the sweat still ran down his forehead. 
 
 He had closed his window when the noise and smell of the 
 street had become unendurable; then opened it again on 
 account of the deadly faintness which overcame him, shut 
 away from all air. He sat by it now, bent forward in a low 
 chair, his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging loosely 
 between them, while he allowed himself to sink deeper, deeper 
 and deeper; drowning, slimed over, by all the dreadful 
 things which he had known. 
 
 That friend of his who had tried to rob him, found him- 
 self observed, and, drawing a revolver, shot wildly, catching 
 him in the leg ; he, himself, dropping, falling all sideways, and 
 yet returning the shot with effect. 
 
 The whole thing was with him now in his room in Soho: 
 deliberately he picked it out of the past, dragged it forward, 
 re-lived it: terrible in all ways, most terrible because this 
 was the one man whom he had ever quite trusted. There had 
 seemed no end to the shooting; it went on and on, both men 
 fallen, unable to move away or nearer to each other. 
 
 The walls of the little whitewashed room, high in what had 
 been a palace when Moscow boasted of such things a ser- 
 vant's room were bespattered with bullets; but the light 
 was bad, the place crowded with furniture from which the 
 shots ricocheted aside. It seemed as though, long before the 
 end, long, long after they had fallen, they must have flicked 
 scraps of flesh from each other, for there were red-brown flecks 
 ameng the bullet-marks. Then Vortonitch was caught in the 
 shoulder, and there was blood in his mouth; he coughed up 
 more blood, feeling certain that this was the end. So it was, 
 but of the other man, not of him: it seemed as though the two 
 shots must have literally crossed. 
 
 There in Soho he agonised afresh through the weeks that 
 followed; the horrors of the prison hospital, so-called the 
 vermin, the frightful cold, the garbage in place of food, the 
 
170 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 complete callousness of those responsible for the sick and 
 wounded. 
 
 There was an English police-cell too, unspeakably filthy, 
 and a stout English country gentleman who had condemned 
 him to it on the suspicion of poaching. He had worn a tan- 
 coloured buckskin waistcoat; his breath smelt of port wine, 
 and he had talked of the laws of God he and his salmon! 
 God and I our salmon! Then there was that hillside in 
 Galicia; another prison in Mexico, and yet another in Lisbon. 
 
 There were other things, too. That girl, the mistress he 
 had quarrelled with, who got out of bed, left him and drowned 
 herself in the bath; she was before him now; he looked down 
 at her long red hair, like seaweed, floating on the top of the 
 water; straight, greenish- white limbs. 
 
 Then again there was that face of awful astonishment, the 
 amazed grin frozen upon a head already separated from the 
 body, which he had seen the day his father met with his death. 
 
 He had taken his young son with him to witness his tour 
 de force, for he was vain and theatrical, as are all such men. 
 They had been separated from each other by the crowd which 
 had gathered to cheer a Grand Duke, whom all alike hated, 
 and which, pressing upon the elder man, too small and frail 
 for resistance, pressing and pushing a solid block of human- 
 ity almost impaling him upon the wire railings surrounding 
 the parade-ground, had forced him against them, so that the 
 bomb which he carried folded in his own coat, close against his 
 own heart, had exploded, blown him to fragments; killed and 
 injured innumerable innocents, while the Grand Duke went 
 on his way to his banqueting, speech-making, wine, cigars, 
 women, swelling with a sense of the good taste, the benignity 
 of a God Who would not allow His Grand Dukes to be so 
 easily disposed of. 
 
 Memories, memories! They swept round him and over 
 him: humanity, nature; pitiless days, cruel as humanity; 
 the impotence of rage, the dragging chain of poverty. 
 
 And yet some bright days, light, laughter, love. Yes, yes. 
 But all to be paid for, one way or another, nothing to hold 
 to, nothing to rest in sounding cymbal and tinkling brass. 
 
 You loved a man or woman, and they betrayed you; hurt 
 you in a thousand ways; if it was only by boring you, they 
 hurt you; it even hurt to cease to love them jagged sores, 
 these. 
 
 There was only one clear-cut way of doing anything in life, 
 and that was by death. Talk, talk, talk! How people 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 171 
 
 talked! What a fuss they made over their grievances, op- 
 pressions, when the remedy was so easy, so cheap; to cut 
 away all oppressors, root and branch; so easy safe, too, with 
 the exercise of just a little care, common-sense. 
 
 Yes, that was the way to disentangle oneself and one's 
 fellows those fellows for whom it was impossible to feel any 
 real affection, because they were dirty, mean, stupid, ignorant, 
 slavish: those fellows made to be used in the way some 
 beggars use their own sores a source of pity, indignation. 
 
 Oh yes all very well, all very well; but, after all, there 
 were other things in life: beauty, love another sort of love, 
 if one could once be sure of it. 
 
 Well, he had had it; been sure of it: so sure that he had 
 felt a sort of contempt for it, in itself so simple, so trusting 
 and childlike thought to put it to other uses, and lost ft, lost 
 it! She, Laura, knew nothing of this but he knew. If he had 
 been content to allow himself to love, to have kept this one 
 thing apart from all that other business, from everything else, 
 there was nothing which he might not have overcome. 
 
 The stinking, bitter waters had almost overcome him; but 
 it was the icy purity of the crest of the wave which threatened 
 to prove itself more than he could bear. 
 
 Supposing there were to be no upward swing of the 
 pendulum. It had always come before, a mere matter of 
 waiting, holding on, somehow or other; but then, he had 
 never aimed so high. 
 
 The lamps were lighted in the street beneath him; the 
 sounds of the day had imperceptibly yet not quite im- 
 perceptibly, for the two were divided by some sort of a hush 
 changed to those of the night; the people, the voices, were 
 different, the pace different, the roadway empty of traffic, 
 trailed over by pedestrians, the French, the Italian, the 
 drawling Cockney, was pierced through by the shriller tones 
 of the West-Enders, that high, excited laugh which points to 
 some idea of adventuring. People who did not live in Soho 
 came there to "see life"! Fools, fools! As if one could ever 
 really see life of any sort without living it, laving oneself with 
 it; a hundred pangs for every thrill. 
 
 Laura was not like this; Laura lived her own life: it was 
 because she was so entirely herself that she had rested him, 
 satisfied him, as she had done. 
 
 Laura, Laura, Laura! His whole being was torn with 
 longing for her; he was like that child "crying in the night 
 and with no language but a cry." 
 
172 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 His heart ached with the day-long struggle for air; his 
 limbs hung upon him with an intolerable weight; a parched 
 mouth and empty head, a labouring, exhausted heart; there 
 was nothing more to him, never would be, never could be, 
 unless . . . unless ... At other times there had been many 
 chances of salvation, however faint, now there was but 
 one. 
 
 Sinking, sinking, it seemed as though he must have 
 touched bottom, when there was the sound of a knock upon 
 the door. He did not answer " Come in," or " Go away." 
 What did it matter what he said? Nothing mattered. He 
 was facing the door, his head was sunk upon his chest; he did 
 not even look up when it was opened. And yet, far, far 
 away, almost buried at the back of his mind, was the cer- 
 tainty that when he had reached such depths the upward 
 swing must still come to him. 
 
 "Paul!" It was Laura. He did not know why, but he 
 was suddenly reminded of a single blade of green pushed up 
 through some intolerably dreary and frost-bitten waste of 
 mud. 
 
 The dark room, the narrow doorway showed nothing 
 more than an oblong of pale light, her tall figure for she 
 seemed to have grown even in the last couple of months, the 
 child! silhouetted out against it. 
 
 "Paul, is it ?" The tone was tentative: she saw 
 
 something, but she was not certain. Then, as her eyes 
 became more accustomed to the dimness, she repeated his 
 name " Oh, Paul ! " and moved towards him. 
 
 "What is the matter? What is it? Are you still ill?" 
 
 He rose at that, took one step towards her, put out both 
 hands. 
 
 " Laura Laura ! " 
 
 His touch was burning hot to her hands, cool as grass. He 
 clung to her, and she put her strong young arms round him; the 
 one person who had ever needed her, clung to her. She sat 
 down in the chair by the window and he knelt at her side, her 
 arms about his shoulders, his head against her breast, her face 
 bent to his, cheek to cheek, with little moans and murmurs of 
 love, like a mother with her child. 
 
 Their tears mingled. To Laura Creichton, who had never 
 though of it as possible for a man to weep, life seemed to have 
 suddenly grown astonishing, fearful from its very strangeness; 
 love also, that was strange, painful, pitiful: it seemed as 
 though her very soul were being drawn out of her body, flowing 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 173 
 
 into that of her lover, leaving her weak and bereft, yet almost 
 terribly happy. 
 
 As to Vortonitch, he was at peace; at last he was at peace. 
 Here was something which he had been searching for, longing 
 for, throughout his entire life, or so it seemed. He was like a 
 spent swimmer: the shore, the shore that was all he had 
 needed; to lie out beneath the trees, rooted in the sure earth, 
 the calm, still earth; never, never to wander more. 
 
 All wanderers have felt like that at times, for short spaces; 
 for the true wanderer, whether of the feet, the heart, or the 
 soul, can never truly remain at rest. 
 
 For a long while they stayed thus, clinging together, 
 almost without a word; then, very haltingly, for it was diffi- 
 cult to speak of her own people in any sort of way which 
 might seem like speaking against them, Laura told him of 
 what had happened, how she came to be there. 
 
 "I had to choose between you: what else was I to do?" 
 she said, very simply, not asking a question, though the words 
 were cast in that form. 
 
 "But some day they will forgive you surely, some 
 day?" answered Vortonitch uneasily. At that moment 
 something seemed to leap from the very depths of himself 
 something which he had thought of as buried, done with, and 
 ask: 
 
 "What good are you to me without your people?" 
 
 " I daren't think of that, count upon it. Anyhow, we are 
 together." 
 
 She had thrown off her hat and raised him a little; he 
 pressed his lips against her hair, so fresh and unscented. 
 
 " Yes, yes that is enough, dear one, beloved, heart of 
 my life! We are together." Once more that seemed really 
 enough, almost more than enough, and he was content to cling 
 to her. 
 
 "You were sitting here all alone in the dark," said 
 Laura. "You are trembling, my dear; you are trembling. 
 Your hands were burning hot, now they are like ice. It was 
 nearly nine when I came in did you have any dinner? 
 Paul, now tell me. Oh, but you're hopeless no more able to 
 look after yourself !" 
 
 She disengaged herself forcibly and rose to her feet. 
 " Where are the matches? I must have a light." 
 
 He handed her matches from his pocket, and she lit the 
 gas, regulating it carefully; then looked round the room. 
 
 She had been there before, on that one stolen afternoon, 
 
174 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 but she could not bear to look about her then; she was shy 
 besides, it hurt her to see him in such a place. Now, however, 
 she gazed around her steadily, with a definite aim. This 
 place was to be her home this! They would have finished 
 dinner at "The House" by now; Parker would be serving coffee 
 in the little loggia at the top of the steps leading into the 
 garden. Gerald Stratton was dining there, Mary Henderson 
 Laura's mind ran backwards like a mouse out of its hole, then 
 returned. The wallpaper hung loose in places. The stuffing 
 of the narrow sofa had dropped away from the springs, the 
 lace curtains were pulled awry, one-half off its rings; on a 
 narrow sideboard, amid a pile of books and papers, was a 
 coffee-pot, cup and saucer, and plate with half-melted butter, 
 fragments of bread, cigarette-ashes. 
 
 There was a gas-ring though; a kettle and frying-pan. Of 
 a sudden, she was intensely practical; she picked up her hat, 
 a round mushroom straw wreathed with small field-flowers, 
 and put it on her head. " I am going out to buy some food 
 and things." 
 
 Vortonitch, leaning against the mantelshelf, leaning 
 because he was too faint and weak to stand alone, remon- 
 strated. "Child, you can't. You . . . We must talk over 
 things; we must settle . . ." His mind was in a state of 
 confusion. She could not stay here: this was certain; she 
 was not " that sort." And yet, if he once sent her away from 
 him, let her out of his sight! . . . Oh, he couldn't live without 
 her couldn't, couldn't; and, what was more, wouldn't. 
 
 And yet, to spoil her, the one perfect thing: to let her stay 
 in this pestilential place alone with him! He put his hand to 
 his head. What was best? What was for the first time 
 in his life the thought came to him "the proper thing to 
 do"? He was utterly puzzled. 
 
 But he had no need to be, for Laura, the timid, the tenta- 
 tive young girl, was perfectly sure and decided; had her im- 
 mediate plans all ready. 
 
 " It's no good trying to settle anything, talk over any- 
 thing, until you've had some food. That's one thing certain." 
 
 ' But you can't go like that!" She was wearing a short- 
 sleeved white muslin dress in which she might have just come 
 from a garden-party. 
 
 "Why not? I came like this. ... Oh well, if you 
 like." She took his mackintosh from behind the door and 
 slipped into it. "I wish I had a basket; but there are 
 pockets." 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 175 
 
 She hesitated with her purse in her hand, gazing round the 
 room; her fine black brows drawn together, her lips moving. 
 
 "Bread, milk, tea, eggs, bacon . . . Oh, and wine 
 you're used to wine; some cold meat . . ." 
 
 She ran over the list which she had drawn up in her mind, 
 gave him a smiling, absent-minded nod, and slipped from the 
 room. 
 
 She was a long time gone: an eternity, or so it seemed to 
 Vortonitch. He had not thought of offering to go in her 
 place, of suggesting that they should both go out and dine 
 together. He was so weak that his brain, usually so alert, 
 worked slowly. 
 
 He pulled a chair close up to the window and leant over 
 the sill, gazing down at the people, watching for her to come 
 back: the first sight of the beflowered hat, the mackintosh. 
 He did not dare go out to meet her, for he did not know in 
 which direction she had gone. 
 
 Men with barrows, moving slowly down the roadway, on 
 their way home from a wider market, anxious to dispose of 
 the last of their wares, were bawling them loudly ; there was a 
 continual chattering, shouting; as always in Soho, people 
 with their heads out of the window, arms folded upon the sills, 
 were talking to friends on the pavement beneath them. 
 
 A sudden memory of that dark cedar, the smooth- 
 shaven green lawn at " The House " as he had seen it on that 
 one day swept over Paul Vortonitch. It was for this that she 
 was leaving such a home for this and for him. He would 
 kneel at her feet and kiss the hem of her white dress when she 
 came back again. Laura odd how the name had fallen into 
 dieuse of late years : the name that Petrarch had loved. 
 
 A woman's shriek rang out above the blurred clamour of 
 mean-street noises; a common enough sound, and yet, of a 
 sudden, he was frightened. Supposing she did not come 
 back! Anything might happen anything. There was 
 scarcely a day or night during which some woman did not 
 disappear in London, drop out of sight. Only a short while 
 back there had been letters in the papers calling attention to 
 it, comparing the statistics of such losses with those of other 
 great cities. 
 
 Even if nothing had happened, she might have met some 
 of her own people, been forced or persuaded into going home 
 with them. 
 
 He could bear the inactivity, the close confines of the room, 
 no longer it was as bad as any prison and going down to 
 
176 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 the front door, he stood there. She would not come she 
 would not come; he had lost her. 
 
 He was really afraid, and yet there was a sort of luxury 
 in reflecting over a thing which could not possibly be true. 
 Could not? Why, before he had been at the door five 
 minutes, she was there, her arms full of parcels, the pockets of 
 the shabby mackintosh distended to bursting-point. 
 
 "No, no, don't touch them! If I lose my hold on one I 
 shall drop all!" Her eyes were glowing, her face more 
 flushed than he had ever seen it. 
 
 " The shops were crowded ; everyone seemed to be 
 shopping. Such an odd hour! And such funny shops they 
 looked as if they were closed; but they weren't, luckily!" 
 She stumbled up the two flights of stairs; so steep that 
 Vortonitch, following, had to hold back the sides of the 
 mackintosh lest she stumbled over them. 
 
 By the time they reached his rooms he was trembling, so 
 that he was forced to sink into a chair. 
 
 " I thought you were never coming. I thought I had lost 
 you my dear, my dear." 
 
 "Silly!" 
 
 " I thought you'd gone back to them." 
 
 "Ah, you might have known better." She touched his 
 hair in passing; but she would not allow herself to be drawn 
 down to him, beguiled from the business she had in hand. 
 
 "You're ill, fanciful, because you're starving that's what 
 it is," she said. 
 
 He had never seen her so set, so serious; she was trying to 
 remember the housewifery lessons she had had during the last 
 term at school. She did not dare attempt an omelette, there 
 in Soho, but she poached eggs, fried bacon, made tea, set it all 
 out on the one little table, piling everything else upon the 
 already overladen sideboard with a brick in the place of 
 one foot, and one crooked drawer which would never shut. 
 
 She had brought a little round cheese, dried figs, a bottle of 
 wine. The whole meal was a pathetic intermingling of what 
 she liked and what she thought he would like. " You must 
 eat very slowly, or you'll make yourself ill, after being so long 
 without food," she said, watchful as a mother bird. 
 
 She had even brought him cigars, those Italian things with 
 that oddly-wicked look which these cigars have to the English 
 mind, like pointed moustaches, slanting eyebrows; and when 
 they had finished eating she insisted that he should sit down by 
 the window and smoke, while she washed up, tidied the room. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 177 
 
 He was glad to obey. Now that the restlessness, the 
 faintness of hunger, was over, he felt deadly tired, and yet 
 peaceful, for the first time in his life he was experiencing the 
 joys of being looked after. 
 
 It pleased him to watch Laura; her fair hair, her long 
 white hands fascinated him, there in that small, sordid place, 
 as they had never done before. Her concentration upon the 
 business in hand was wholly delightful. What a child! a 
 child going through a well-learnt task with infinite care. 
 
 She disappeared into his bedroom, and he heard the spurt 
 of a match; light flowing through the half -open door. What 
 was she doing? What could she be doing? A warm excite- 
 ment and languor flooded through his veins. If entirely of 
 her own choice if . . . 
 
 He was almost smiling when she came back, that sort of 
 smile which would have been completely fatal, besmirching; 
 but, thank God, not quite. 
 
 As she passed the little sideboard she picked up her hat. 
 
 " I've turned down your bed," she said. " Tidied the 
 room as well as I could as well as possible." 
 
 "My God!" cried Vortonitch to himself. "My God, my 
 God, my God! These Englishwomen!" 
 
 " And the best thing you can do now is to go there straight 
 away stay there until ten o'clock to-morrow; until I come 
 and get you some coffee; until " 
 
 "And you?" he broke in sharply. He could not help it. 
 He had known that she could not stay there, had told himself 
 that he would not have her stay there on any consideration 
 whatever; but that she she should be so cool, so ... 
 Oh, but it was just blague, could not be anything but blague. 
 After all, he had been mistaken in her; she was a woman of 
 the world, like all women. 
 
 " There's a funny little old-fashioned hotel in Dover Street. 
 called Brown's. I stayed there once with Dad we were all at 
 the sea, " The House " was shut up, and he brought me up to 
 the dentist." 
 
 "But " 
 
 "It's no distance, dear. I know the way; I can walk. 
 All my cousins and people stay there it's really quite nice." 
 
 She said that almost as her mother might have said it 
 " quite nice." Then, on a sudden, her candid eyes dilated, 
 clouded, her face flushed; she made the first movement of 
 embarrassment that she had shown since she entered the 
 room. 
 
178 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 "Just until to-morrow, you see, dear. I can't stay here 
 until until " 
 
 "Until what?" enquired Paul cruelly. He did not want 
 her to stay God knows he did not want her to stay but, all 
 the same, he felt somehow or other defrauded. 
 
 For a moment or so she stood silent; her gaze full on him, 
 not doubting, just a little puzzled, that was all. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "I suppose there are special licences, and and things. . . 
 Then, Paul, if you don't mind having me without a trousseau 
 I could come here and look after you. It's no good us being 
 apart, when when I should be so awfully lonely, I ..." 
 Her voice faltered, broke. 
 
 He was touched at this what man would not have been? 
 and, taking her hand, laid it to his cheek, his pique, his 
 suspicion all melted away; laughing a little, tenderly. 
 "Laura, child, how much money have you?" 
 
 She laughed, relieved at this. There was always some- 
 thing rather amusing about money. It was one of the things 
 which everyone she knew talked about more or less jokingly. 
 
 "My dear, I am pretty well stony-broke!" 
 
 " But how much?" he persisted. 
 
 "I started off with just on two pounds; it's almost the 
 time for my allowance, really: but with the things I've bought 
 this evening money does slip away so! Anyhow, there's 
 some loose silver." She peered into her purse. 
 
 "Enough for the hotel?" 
 
 "They'll trust me; they " 
 
 "At this time of night? It's just on eleven." 
 
 "Oh, not so late as that!" A half -scared look came into 
 her face. 
 
 " Yes, five to eleven. With no luggage, not even a coat or 
 cloak, or handbag?" He pressed her remorselessly. 
 
 " I think perhaps they'd remember me." 
 
 "Laura, you don't wan't to be remembered; if they did 
 that, they'd telegraph off to your father, the first thing." 
 
 "Oh, well, I can go to another hotel. There are a lot 
 near the British Museum; I've seen them. You'll lend me a 
 little more." She had never thought that she could feel ill at 
 ease with him, but now . . . Oh, well, money could be tire- 
 some, the discussion of it awkward! "Very little, just for 
 one night." 
 
 " I haven't got any. If I'd had money, I'd have gone out 
 to dinner; you wouldn't have found me here." 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 179 
 
 "What? Then , , , that . . . Why . . . Paul! ... you 
 were starving!" 
 
 " No, no. I could have got it if I had gone out and asked 
 for it before the newspaper's office shut; I'm owed money. 
 But I had felt ill all day was too wretched, despairing, to 
 trouble until you came . . ." 
 
 Suddenly he remembered how wretched, how despairing he 
 had been, and dropped that teasing manner which hurt her so. 
 
 "Laura, dear one, beloved, well be married as soon as 
 ever we can. I'm a selfish beast; I've no business to allow 
 you to do it, but I shall never be safe, never be happy, without 
 you. Still, it may take some days; I must get a little money 
 in hand. Now, listen, dear. Hotel bills mount up, however 
 careful you are; everything costs money. Besides, with no 
 luggage, or anything, they might not be civil to you; you'd 
 be lonely, unhappy! We must think of something else." 
 
 He moved to the window and stood by the lintel, staring 
 out, thinking. He had plenty of aquaintainces, of sorts, but 
 who . . . who? . . . Why, of course! The Grobos! 
 
 "I've a friend who lives not very far from here; he's 
 married and has children, a nice little wife. Not very grand 
 people rather crowded up but they'd look after you all 
 right." 
 
 "But would they mind? They don't know me, and if 
 they're crowded up already " 
 
 "Mind? Of course they won't mind. They'll love to 
 have you. Why, there never were such kind people; over- 
 flowing with the milk of human kindness! Come, now; 
 you'd better go back to the coat." 
 
 He reached for the mackintosh, held it for her. "You 
 look such a swell, you'll frighten them." 
 
 The idea of Laura frightening anyone! She looked 
 frightened herself, and a little bewildered now that the 
 management of affairs was being taken out of her own hands 
 it was that, after all, which had given her such sureness 
 her face pale, her eyes all dark rims, dark pupils, betwixt the 
 curving brim of her hat, the yellow collar of the mackintosh 
 which Vortonitch was buttoning close up to her throat. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 CERTAIN phases of the emotional life, certain periods of 
 time are pieced out by unforgettable moments. During the 
 happy days there is a sudden rent of blackness, a strip of dead- 
 grey: across the darkness of other days runs a vivid thread of 
 silk or metal. It is all like a piece of old-fashioned patch- 
 work; you move away from it, glance back, and this or that 
 catches your eye. 
 
 Years later, as a middle-aged woman, the memory of her 
 first meeting with Vortonitch would return to Laura: the 
 very look of those bewildering roads; the scent of the dust; 
 the sight of his red tie, the pose of his figure. Then there was 
 the look upon the face of that fat man, who had so suddenly 
 debouched into her life and out again, as he put the question: 
 "Ever seen him coming from Woolwich?" Added to all 
 this there was, and would forever remain, her first impression 
 of the Grobo menage. 
 
 Three flights of stairs led up to their flat; each one steeper 
 than the last. The day had been so long, so full amazing to 
 think that early that very afternoon she had been playing 
 tennis in a tree-embowered suburban garden! that by this 
 time she was half blind with weariness. 
 
 Vortonitch took her arm, and then put his own about her 
 waist as she stumbled. 
 
 They stood for some time any sort of time, it might have 
 been moments or hours upon a dark landing, while he pulled 
 at a bell from which there was no answering echo, apart from 
 the jangle of wire. 
 
 " The confounded thing's broken," Laura heard him say, 
 and his voice seemed to come from far away, though he was so 
 near to her. The atmosphere was intensely close, and she had 
 that feeling, arising from intense fatigue, of being hung in 
 nothingness, apart from all limits of time or space. Utterly 
 mazed, she found herself wondering if she were really herself; 
 how she came to be there, what she was doing there, who this 
 man was, with his arm about her waist. In the reaction from 
 the heat of the day she shivered; and it seemed as though 
 
 180 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 181 
 
 someone were pouring cold water down her back, the thin icy 
 trickle checked by the warm weight of that arm. 
 
 Then Vortonitch stopped ringing, and knocked with his 
 hand upon the panelling of the door: there was the sound of 
 someone moving inside, and a woman with a baby in her arms 
 opened it. 
 
 " It's I Paul Vortonitch. Is Carl at home?" 
 
 "No; and I don't know when he will be back there is a 
 meeting. But you're not alone?" 
 
 " No; I have a lady with me. Will you let us in?" 
 
 "Of course, of course. Come in. Charles, Charles! 
 Ah, you bad boy ! You had no right to get out of bed. Lily, 
 Lily!" 
 
 She raised her voice, a deep contralto. There was no light 
 in the passage beyond that of the moon, shining straight in 
 through a window opposite to the door, but Laura saw that 
 she was of middle height, squarely-built, deep-breasted. A 
 tiny child in a white nightdress clung to her skirt, burying its 
 head in it. As she called, a door at the end of the long 
 narrow passage, to the left of them, opened suddenly; there 
 was a stream of light, a sort of struggle, and another child 
 hurtled towards them, crying out, "Papa papa!" pursued 
 by an older girl with a fair head and two long plaits. 
 
 "Teh, tch!" The exclamation was impatient, but the 
 tone tolerant, amused even. "This is what happens when 
 anyone unexpected arrives. You must make your apologies 
 to your friend, Paul. Take Cora and the baby, my daughter; 
 come now, Charles, come with thy mother. This way, 
 Mademoiselle." 
 
 She marshalled her small forces: the young girl, who had 
 leant against the wall, panting and coughing, took the baby 
 from her arms, the child at her knee by her hand, and moved 
 off, while the mother turned towards the open door, shoving 
 the other toddler in front of her. 
 
 " It is such a little place, Mademoiselle, and we are so 
 many, you must excuse; but any friend of Paul's is welcome." 
 There was a gentle affection in her voice as she uttered the 
 name " Paul " which touched Laura with a sense of comfort : 
 instinctively she liked the woman, her quiet manner and deep- 
 toned voice. 
 
 It was impossible for her to place the room into which she 
 was shown, for the simple reason that in every direction in 
 which she glanced her eye met something which seemed to 
 suggest a different use for it: a shelf of pots and pans; 
 
182 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 household china; books; clothes hung to air on a string 
 above the gas cooking-stove; that battered wooden horse, so 
 familiar to the habitues of the place, tethered to the leg of the 
 centre table, at which a sallow-faced boy was working out 
 sums upon a slate, a broad-headed medley of figures, running 
 off into narrow flourishing tails. 
 
 " I will put this good-for-nothing in his bed, and come to 
 you." Mrs. Grobo stooped and raised the small child, with 
 its immense, staring dark eyes, in her arms; then moved to a 
 door leading from the living-room into a bedroom, from which 
 came another hoarse childish voice, demanding who was there. 
 
 Laura, overcome with weariness, sank down on the sofa, 
 dipping sideways upon the broken springs; while the boy at 
 the table glanced up at her, then bent over his figures, running 
 down and across the columns with his pencil, muttering to 
 himself. 
 
 The fair elder girl came back into the room, and leant 
 against the side of the open window, coughing. 
 
 "Lily, where did you get that cough?" demanded 
 Vortonitch, with a sort of peremptory tenderness; moving 
 towards her and raising her chin between his finger and 
 thumb. 
 
 *' Oh, I don't know, Paul ; it's been coming on." She 
 leant closer, and whispered Laura heard her "Who is 
 she?" But Vortonitch took no notice of the question, 
 meeting it with another. 
 
 "What does the doctor say?" 
 
 " He says it's a cold. As if anyone could have a cold in 
 weather like this! Oh, Paul, isn't it hot!" 
 
 Vortonitch sat down, and she leant against his shoulder, 
 with a deep sigh, gazing at Laura. 
 
 From the inner room came the sound of gentle remon- 
 strance; a bar or so of a lullaby, hummed in that deep 
 contralto. 
 
 The young girl, twelve or thirteen years of age, as well as 
 Laura was able to judge, was staring at her as though she were 
 trying to read her through and through. After a moment or 
 so, she raised both hands, and undoing her plaits, shook out the 
 long fair hair, so that it covered both Vortonitch's shoulders 
 and her own. 
 
 Through the silence of the room, intensified rather than 
 broken by the murmur in the room beyond, came Vortonitch's 
 low voice, with laughter in it. 
 
 "Why did you do that, little one?" 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 183 
 
 He looked down at the child quizzically, and Laura won- 
 dered why she coloured, the brilliant rose in either cheek 
 spreading over her face and down her neck between the falling 
 wings of hair. 
 
 " It is so hot done up like that!" 
 
 "As if I did not know better! You undid it because Made- 
 moiselle has hair of the same colour; you want to show her 
 how thick and long yours is ... Oh, minx!" 
 
 "No, no, no, Paul! No!" 
 
 She buried her face against his shoulder, and he laughed, 
 tickling her gently; while Laura wondered through that 
 maze of fatigue which grew until she now felt as though 
 someone had hit her violently on the head, and half stunned 
 her how he came to think of such a thing; knowing that it 
 was true, and yet with a sudden sharp stab of fear at the thought 
 of anyone who could see so clearly, be so amused at the 
 weakness of another. 
 
 " She is full of sentiment," said the boy at the table. " I 
 wonder that you can be bothered with her, Vortonitch. She 
 has no more brains than a silkworm which she looks like, 
 spun round with all that yellow stuff." He gave a loud self- 
 conscious laugh, and glanced sideways at Laura; then, as his 
 mother entered the room, pulled a book towards him, opened it 
 and bent over it. 
 
 Vortonitch rose to his feet, putting the little girl gently 
 on one side; moved towards Laura, and bending down took 
 her hand in his, raising her to her feet. 
 
 " Mrs. Grobo, this is my future wife." 
 
 " That is well, Paul ; it is good for a man to get married. 
 Hush, Albert quiet, I tell you!" She turned aside for a 
 moment to her son, who had looked up laughing loudly and 
 pointing his finger at his sister. 
 
 " A sell for you, miss! Ya-ah 'Lily Vortonitch' who 
 wrote that in their copy-book, eh?" 
 
 "I didn't! I didn't, I tell you you spy, you! I 
 
 never " The girl's voice broke between shamed laughter 
 
 and tears. 
 
 "Silence, at once, do you hear me?" Mrs. Grobo turned 
 upon the teasing boy with a sort of majestic wrath; that 
 dignity of a woman who seemed to swing entirely upon her 
 own axle, moved by an innate sureness and balance. 
 
 " She has left her own home : her people do not fancy me 
 as a son-in-law is that not the case, dear? and so I have 
 brought her to you, Madame," went on Vortonitch. 
 
184 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 "Of course; that was the proper thing to do." 
 
 Laura glanced shyly at Vortonitch; saw him excited, 
 flushed, proud; then at the motherly woman facing her, and 
 felt at once, in her fatigue and loneliness that sort of loneli- 
 ness which no man, however well loved, can do anything to 
 altogether overcome in a woman's mind that she would like 
 to lay her head against that broad breast and feel those kind 
 arms about her. 
 
 " I thought perhaps you would keep her for to-night for a 
 night or two, until we can be married." 
 
 "Of course, of course; there is always the sofa." 
 
 It was all so simple; there was no talk of " arrange- 
 ments"; and Laura sank into it, this kindness, this sim- 
 plicity, as into a feather-bed. 
 
 Suddenly it seemed as though the sofa, that hospitable 
 sofa, rose up to meet her. The light hanging from the ceiling 
 grew immensely large, filmed over with a thick grey mist 
 which obscured the rest of the world and everyone in it; 
 through it she heard Mrs. Grobo's voice: 
 
 " She is tired out ; you must leave her to me." 
 
 Then Vortonitch, anxious and questioning : " She is ill ! 
 What is it, my darling? Are you ill faint?" 
 
 As she leant back, there was something soft against her 
 face. Lily's silk-like hair, Lily's arms, like sticks, were about 
 her, all jealousy forgotten, in a sort of hereditary motherliness. 
 
 "Never mind. There, there! I will love you if he loves 
 you there, there, now!" A childish hand was patting her 
 shoulder, and someone lifted up her feet, while the greyness 
 thickened to a dense black. Then someone kissed her on the 
 cheek that was Vortonitch; she knew that; and that was 
 all she knew ere she dropped into something which began as a 
 half-faint and merged into a deep dreamless sleep. 
 
 Only once that night did she open her eyes. Someone 
 was stirring in the room: someone said, "Hush!" then 
 someone else, a man this time, asked: 
 
 "Who is it?" There was the faint light of a candle 
 shining through her closed lids; then that same voice 
 answered its own question. 
 
 "Why the General's daughter! 'Ow the " 
 
 It was here that Laura opened her eyes, and saw a small, 
 fat man, with a round face, bending over her, staring at her 
 with amazement, that rippled out into a broad cherubic smile. 
 
 " All right, my dear," he said. " You're all right 'ere 
 all right with 'er." 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 Two days later two days spent in the dream-like atmos- 
 phere of the Grobos' house, so oddly alien and yet so altogether 
 homelike for that is a quality to be found in the atmosphere 
 and not in any specially familiar surroundings Laura Creich- 
 ton was married. The brief, drab ceremony at a registrar's 
 office was followed by a shortened week in a little inn on the 
 river below Oxford: a week during which the intense heat 
 seemed to have been lost in a pearly mist, through which the 
 sun filtered in a delicate haze that matched her mood: for she 
 was still bewildered, wrapped in happiness and doubt; not of 
 Vortonitch never, never of him but of herself, of the reality 
 of this self, the reality of her new life. 
 
 Thinking back over that brief honeymoon from which 
 they returned to a couple of rooms Mrs. Grobo had found for 
 them in Charterhouse Square Laura's memories were, 
 curiously enough, not so much of Vortonitch as of the weeping 
 plumes of grey willows; still grey pools untouched by the 
 swirl of the river; dull green arrow-heads; verbena-scented 
 rushes; the smell of the river, one special backwater, thick 
 with white-lilies; and the long trail back to the farmhouse at 
 night, when they trudged home, swinging an empty picnic- 
 basket between them, the grass wet with dew about her 
 ankles; the little winds of evening just stirring the loose 
 straws in the stackyard; a slip of moon, thickening towards 
 fulness, overhead; a bowl of bread-and-milk in the parlour, a 
 handful of fire in the grate; a sense of infinite drowsiness, and 
 then memories shut away from all actual, definite recalling. 
 
 Settled in Charterhouse Square, in an old Georgian house, 
 with such finely-proportioned rooms, such tall windows as 
 even the lodging-house furniture was unable altogether to 
 spoil, she slowly emerged from her dream; not less happy, but 
 grave with the sense of responsibility, of her husband's com- 
 plete dependence upon her. For at the time it pleased Vor- 
 tonitch wrapped in adoration, as one-idea'd in love as in 
 everything else to lean upon his wife in everything, to refer 
 to her, to put all the arrangements of ways and means, of their 
 
 185 
 
186 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 small housekeeping, upon her young shoulders; to shrug his 
 own and say to Mrs. Grobo, "You must ask Laura; Laura 
 knows." Or to Madame of Le Cygne d'Or, "You must ask 
 my wife for the money; it's she who holds the purse-strings 
 no good bringing a bill to me." 
 
 One matter only was kept from her and this the most 
 important of all, as is the way of men with their wives the 
 meaning and origin of his association with Grobo. 
 
 He was all for peace in these days, idyllic peace: it w_as 
 impossible that the world should be so out of tune as it had 
 seemed; impossible that people should be altogether unhappy, 
 save through some fault of their own, when such happiness 
 as his was within the reach of all. 
 
 Everything was all very well as it was; there was no sense 
 or reason in stirring up horrors. 
 
 "All 'The People' want is to be let alone," he told Grobo. 
 " I for one have done with it, once and for all." 
 
 He had been as nervous as he could be of anyone in telling 
 Grobo this; but the little man had taken it smilingly. "Ah, 
 well, well you are in love, my friend, and we all know what 
 that means: a new heaven and a new earth." 
 
 That air of keen, almost antagonistic watchfulness was 
 gone, not only from Grobo but from his other comrades also; 
 even Stein was almost genial. 
 
 " All very well," he said, " so long as you involve no one 
 but yourself; not like Grobo here Grobo with his one and 
 fatal failing of progenitiveness." 
 
 At times it occurred to Vortonitch to wonder if they were 
 rather relieved to have him out of it: regarding him with the 
 tolerance one shows to an enfant gate or semi-lunatic. But on 
 the whole, he troubled his head remarkably little about anyone 
 or anything apart from Laura, entranced in delight over his 
 new home, his first real home, this wonderful young wife of his. 
 
 Together they explored London; the romance of London, 
 historical London, London of the old merchant princes, 
 London of the riverside and dockland; the city churches, 
 weighted with their years, like old, old men with their heads 
 upon their hands, dreaming of the past; the great markets; 
 the odd, narrow streets, lined with barrows, bright with 
 creosote flares, loud with the cries of the traders inviting people 
 to buy: ribands, laces, furs, meat, vegetables, stewed eels, 
 hot potatoes, china, pots, pans: buying and selling as it 
 might have been a couple ot centuries earlier. 
 
 Among all this the two of them strolled, with that sense of 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 187 
 
 leisure, so altogether illusive, which comes of love, the least 
 stationary of all the passions: Laura alive to every sight and 
 sound, understanding the expression upon people's faces, and 
 things they said, as she had never done before; moving on and 
 on until, too tired to walk any more, they turned into some 
 old church, or some quiet square, and sat down upon a bench, 
 their shoulders touching, the dry plane-trees whispering 
 huskily overhead, the leaves already falling, the moist chill of 
 autumn in the evening air, ribands and pennants of mist 
 along the river. And all this while Laura, who had always 
 been such a good, obedient child, such a home-bird, with, for 
 the time being, no more thought of her parents worlds away 
 in Blackheath than any bird at its mating. For as she had 
 been brought up so altogether theirs, she was now, with some 
 odd twist of the mechanism of her being, some need of her 
 nature, as completely her husband's. 
 
 Sometimes, dining together at Le Cygne d'Or, strange, 
 hectic-looking women would stare hardly at Laura. One 
 evening one of them touched Vortonitch on the shoulder and 
 bent over him, so low that her full breast showed between the 
 laces of her blouse, while a heavy wave of perfume swept the 
 air above the table. 
 
 "Who's the lady, my dear? Where the devil " 
 
 " My wife," answered Vortonitch stiffly; upon which she 
 stared at Laura again, ejaculated, "My God!" and swept by 
 to a table at the further end of the room, where she sat down 
 among some friends, and, bending forward with a glass in one 
 hand tapping upon the table with the other, diamonds, of a 
 sort, flashing upon every finger embarked upon a voluble 
 conversation, punctuated by an occasional backward jerk of 
 her head. 
 
 It was impossible to hear what she was saying, but not 
 only that jerk of the head, but the way in which the others 
 turned, staring, pointed her remarks, and Laura felt her face 
 redden, feeling countrified and ill at ease: while Vortonitch 
 was furious. 
 
 "Damn the bitch! Damn their impertinence!" he 
 exclaimed. "I'll soon stop that!" 
 
 He half-rose from his chair, then sat down again, crumbling 
 his bread, muttering something about it not being "worth 
 mixing oneself up with people like that " ; never, never coming 
 here again, bringing Laura here again. 
 
 A month or so ago he would have had them under his 
 thumb, and he knew it; could have silenced the lot of them 
 
188 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 with one glance. Not that the hectic lady or her companions 
 knew anything definitely far from that but they were of 
 that sort which, like other animals, realise conscious power 
 and arrogance. All that was gone now, and Vortonitch knew 
 it, felt it, suddenly, and through every fibre of his being, with 
 a sense of desperate discontent. He was living a normal 
 man's life, but because it was not his sort of life it was emascu- 
 lating him. After all, there were so many harmless people in 
 the world that the thing had become a term of reproach. 
 With an overwhelming feeling of revolt, of injured vanity, it 
 came to him that this was what people might be saying: 
 
 "Vortonitch? Paul Vortonitch? Oh, harmless enough!" 
 
 He rose to his feet and pushed back the table, grating on 
 the stone floor. 
 
 " I suppose we've finished. Might as well get out of 
 this," he said, and stood fidgeting impatiently as Laura got 
 into her coat; then, just as they turned to go, asked her if 
 she would like some coffee, which she refused with a feeling 
 that it was almost as much as her life was worth to accept 
 the offer, delay him further. 
 
 Paying their bill at the desk, he snarled: "Can't always 
 congratulate you on your clientele, Madame," adding, with a 
 nod of his head toward the corner where the same group had 
 turned and were frankly staring after him and his wife: 
 "That lot there oughtn't to be allowed in any decent house." 
 
 Madame said nothing, counting out his change; but as he 
 turned away she glanced at Laura, raised her plump shoulders 
 ever so slightly, and smiled: 
 
 "Men just men," she seemed tp say. 
 
 They walked home almost without a word. Turning into 
 the quiet of the old square, however, Vortonitch slipped his 
 hand inside his wife's arm: "How different it is here, with the 
 trees and the moonlight, the quietness, and you! You must 
 never leave me for a day, Laura; never, never. I'm not fit to 
 be left alone. In that infernal place to-night, with those 
 people, I saw red, could have killed the lot of them. Come 
 on, beloved; let's go upstairs and smoke over our coffee, ten 
 thousand times better than the stuff at Le Cygne d'Or. I'll be 
 hanged if I ever take you there again; it's not a fit place for 
 you, with all that riff-raff." 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 IN the house in Charterhouse Square, Gerald Stratton, alone 
 of all Laura's old friends, came to see them, came again and 
 again: curiously puzzled, unable to keep away, though he 
 began by telling himself that this was the only thing to do ; his 
 purely personal feelings gradually submerged beneath his 
 interest, his curiosity regarding Vortonitch, his concern for 
 Laura, with all her eggs so entirely in one basket. 
 
 He found her in an environment completely strange to her; 
 and yet so completely at home Laura, whom, with all his 
 affection, he had regarded as the most conventional type of 
 English young lady that he grew to realise her as one of 
 those women whose life is lived in one person alone: coloured, 
 ordered, bounded. 
 
 Glad as she was to see Stratton, he realised that she did 
 not need him. At this time, indeed, she needed no one apart 
 from her husband. Her conscience was not in the least dis- 
 turbed by the memory of the way in which she had left home; 
 by any special longing for her own people; and at first sight 
 Stratton condemned this, the more sharply in that he wanted 
 to prove her perfect: ingratitude, inconstancy, were odious 
 traits, odious in anyone, most odious of all in Laura. 
 
 "You ought to make some effort towards reconciliation, 
 Laura," he declared, when he was able to find her alone, get 
 her upon the subject. 
 
 "But, Stratty, Dad said at the time that they'd never have 
 anything more to do with me." Her eyes were dark with 
 tears; but still there was that slightly obstinate, stupid look 
 of a person who is only able to see one facet of anything at a 
 time. "Oh, but she is stupid, stupid!" thought Stratton. 
 longing to shake her, yet loving her. 
 
 "Well, then, your mother she's simply breaking her 
 heart." 
 
 "Stratty, I can't help it; indeed I can't! If I tried to 
 make it up with her, it would make it difficult for her with 
 Dad. I took my choice, and he ought to come first with her. 
 I've no right to make trouble." 
 
 189 
 
190 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 "You want to see them, though, Lolly? You do want to 
 see them?" He was almost desperately anxious not to find 
 her lacking in the virtue of faithfulness. 
 
 " Yes, of course I want to see them." Laura spoke 
 obstinately, stiffened with pain. "But I took my choice, and 
 not for anything anything in the world would I go back 
 on it. So what's the good of whining?" 
 
 "You don't care; you can't care much, or you wouldn't 
 take it like that. Laura, don't you ever long for your home; 
 for everything you used to care for?" 
 
 "I've everything I want." Her softly-folded mouth set: 
 "not so many things, but everything, everything." 
 
 That was as much as he could get out of her, and through 
 all this time he was unable to make out how far she was truly 
 without feeling for anyone apart from Vortonitch, and how 
 far she would not allow herself to feel. 
 
 As to Vortonitch, something in Gerald Stratton's mind 
 seemed to fling up its hands in despair at the very thought of 
 him. Who was he? Where did he come from? What did 
 he do? Really do? Above all, what was he, he himself? 
 
 Oddly enough, the thought of Mullings came to him more 
 than once. If any man on earth could have helped him, it was 
 Mullings, and poor old Mullings was dead. And, after all, 
 what did he want to know? To have spied upon Vortonitch 
 would have been paramount to spying upon Laura; and it 
 was better, far away better, not to know anything than to 
 suspect himself of this. 
 
 For all that, he wondered, wondered, wondered without 
 ceasing, as he sat talking to Vortonitch realising the scope 
 of his travels, the innumerable countries in which, for no 
 expressed reason, he had lived at some period or another 
 what really occupied him; this odd, faun-like man who, at 
 times, resembled a mere boy, and was yet, very little, if any, 
 younger than himself. 
 
 Sometimes they would talk together for hours, with 
 Laura sitting by, sewing; while, at the end of it all, Stratton 
 would realise that, however much Vortonitch talked of him- 
 self, he had told him nothing whatever: what he thought of the 
 people, the scenery, the food, the political policy of the 
 countries he visited; little adventures in train, by coach, on 
 foot; the general aspect of life; encounters in restaurants, 
 at theatres; odd personalities met with, the state of trade: 
 all this oh yes, plenty of this and all interesting enough, 
 racy, well told, with a perpetual recurrence of "I" "I* 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 191 
 
 and yet nothing whatever of his own motives in this life of 
 constant movement. 
 
 Once only did any clue come to him, to be put aside as 
 quickly as possible; not because it seemed of no use, rather 
 on account of its sinister significance. 
 
 Coming out of the Vortonitches' rooms one day, he met 
 Grobo; realised the face as that of a man vaguely remem- 
 bered, found himself unable to place it, and gave his brain no 
 rest until it came back to him as it did suddenly. Not the 
 memory of a living man, after all, but merely a photograph, 
 a common shiny photograph. He not only saw the photo- 
 graph in his mind's eye, with the sharp clearness of anything 
 which has been forgotten and then quite suddenly remembered, 
 but he also saw the room in which it had been shown him; a 
 certain room of the Criminal Investigation Department at 
 Scotland Yard. 
 
 There, next day, he learned all that there was to be learnt 
 or, rather, all that anyone was able to tell him of Carl 
 Grobo, and wished to heaven that he had not. For if this was 
 the husband of the woman, the father of the children, of 
 whom Laura had spoken with such affection, who was Vor- 
 tonitch himself to count such a man among his friends? 
 
 It would have been easier, far easier, to have known 
 nothing, cared for nothing apart from the fact that Laura was 
 happy; but now that he did know, Stratton felt himself 
 bound by the sort of duty one feels to one's own kind. Happy 
 as Laura might be, a time was bound to come when she would 
 need someone to stand by her, with such a husband, with such 
 friends. 
 
 At this time, however, it seemed as though she grew more, 
 rather than less, detached. The rooms which Mrs. Grobo 
 had taken for the newly-married couple were supposed to 
 include attendance and breakfast, and they had arranged to 
 get their meals out. But Laura, with the instincts of a 
 housekeeper, very soon discovered that nothing was done as 
 it ought to be done, that the constant dining at restaurants 
 was exorbitantly expensive, and had begun to do the rooms 
 herself, preparing simple meals for at least two or three days 
 in the week. Thus it was that the cares of a housewife, 
 exaggerated, as they always are at the very beginning, were 
 superadded to that engrossment in the new ways of life, that 
 sort of maze which seems to enwrap the very young, newly- 
 married woman. 
 
 It seemed to Stratton that Laura had grown; her figure 
 
192 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 had become fuller; at the same time there were faint hollows 
 in either temple and cheek, and she moved in a sort of dream, 
 as one overwrought by the demands of life, the consciousness 
 of a vocation, so deeply engrossed that he found himself 
 wondering if this was all that a women needed plenty to do 
 and some man to love. 
 
 One thing, however, grew upon him as he watched her. 
 Despite her tender, brooding love, Laura was, in some strange 
 way, as detached from her husband as she was from the rest 
 of the world; though it would have been impossible to explain 
 this, to balance it with her engrossment in him, unless it were 
 by the fact that she had in every sense of the word outgrown 
 her strength, and with it some of that eager friendliness and 
 ardour which had been so large a part of her charm; was 
 languid with the depth of feeling into which she had pene- 
 trated, insensitive to any fresh excitement. 
 
 Now and then Stratton would see the colour flare up into 
 her face, when Vortonitch stood near her, touched her neck or 
 cheek, as he sometimes did in a way which the other man 
 regarded as a sort of display of possession. But in general her 
 attitude towards her husband, so much older than herself, 
 was altogether maternal; and Stratton, realising this, realised 
 also its occasionally exasperating effect upon Vortonitch, who, 
 rest in Laura as he might, was yet overcome by bursts of im- 
 patience, the desire for something altogether more exciting; 
 the fevers, tempers, caprices of mere sex. 
 
 As to Laura, this mother liness was in a degree the effect of 
 that first impression of her husband; superadded to it, 
 however, was a subconscious effort of self-protection. For in 
 some way he was so childish, so regardless of her feelings that 
 she would have suffered acutely had she once let slip this vision 
 of him as a child a child of genius, it is true, for she never 
 lost her sense of wonder at his knowledge, that very command 
 of language was sufficient but no less a child in all worldly 
 matters, above all, in that business of taking care of himself, 
 which included taking care of her. 
 
 She and little Lily Grobo, coughing her soul out of her frail 
 body by now, used to have long, intimate, and tender dis- 
 cussions over this radical helplessness of mankind: for even 
 General Sir Harry Creichton himself had not been altogether 
 grown up. 
 
 "As I myself shall not live," said Lily, "I am glad that 
 he should have you to look after him." 
 
 She spoke with condescension, having planned to marry 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 193 
 
 Vortonitch herself, arranged her wedding-dress, her brides- 
 maids. As that was now impossible, with the calm morbidity 
 of sick childhood, she took pleasure in arranging the details of 
 her own funeral: with a wreath of lilies-of-the-valley from 
 Vortonitch "Or one tall lily clasped in my hand; I can't 
 make up my mind. I can't think which I would like best," she 
 would say, and knit her white, blue-veined brow, flushed and 
 troubled. 
 
 When Laura suggested both, she became petulant: "You 
 must think that he is made of money, my poor Paul! That 
 is one thing that makes me fear, Laura. You are so pretty 
 and good, but somehow or other you look expensive; and Paul 
 must not be allowed to waste his money; he needs it for him- 
 self. He needs a new winter coat. I see that. Have you 
 seen that he needs a new winter coat? Ah, I thought not! 
 And there is a button off the one he has now; it has been 
 loose for weeks. I watched for it to fall, and now it has 
 fallen," she added with triumph. "If he is not kept warm he 
 will get ill, and then who will there be to look after him?" 
 
 " I will do my best," said Laura humbly, infinitely patient 
 in humouring the sick child. 
 
 "Yes, yes but if Paul died . . ." Her thoughts ran 
 constantly upon death. "What a loss! A genius like that!" 
 
 Mrs. Grobo was out shopping, and she was lying upon the 
 sofa in the living-room: a mere wraith, neither child nor 
 woman, with hands like little bundles of peeled sticks; her 
 cheeks bright rose-colour, her eyes brilliant. 
 
 " I worry very much about Paul, I tell you that, Laura." 
 Her hand moved restlessly, picking at the fluff of the blanket 
 that covered her; her lips drawn so tightly together that they 
 showed perpendicular lines, above and below them, like an 
 old woman. 
 
 Albert, busied over his lessons at the table, jerked up his 
 dark head with a harsh laugh. 
 
 "Don't you worry about Vortonitch, my dear; he's well 
 able to look after himself, is Comrade Vortonitch. Trust 
 him!" 
 
 "Why do you call him that?" asked Laura idly, intent 
 upon Lily, wiping the sweat from her brow. 
 
 "Why? . . . A-a-a-eh, eh! You're right there. Why? 
 When he's no longer a comrade; gone over to the enemy's 
 camp." 
 
 "What do you mean? How dare you speak like that!" 
 
 Laura's voice was so severe that the boy's sallow face 
 
194 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 flushed; but he glared at her defiantly as he answered: 
 "Marrying an aristocrat ah, what of that!" 
 
 Laura laughed, and his colour deepened angrily. He was 
 never at his ease with her: if he walked by her side he struck 
 at the palings with his stick, made loud sarcastic remarks 
 upon the passers-by; at home he aired his knowledge, en- 
 deavouring to dazzle her with dates and statistics "catch 
 her out." If she appealed to him, however, confessed her 
 ignorance, he was filled with pride; for in spite of himself he 
 was fascinated by her; her look of beautiful cleanliness; her 
 slender white hands; the way she held herself; the way she 
 spoke. Child as he was in years with all the precocity of his 
 mother's race, he felt himself glow from head to foot if she so 
 much as touched him in walking, or moving round the little 
 room; for she delighted in coming to help Mrs. Grobo with the 
 children; would take charge of them while the mother was out. 
 
 "Marrying an aristocrat! I'm not an aristocrat, Albert; 
 you should see me blacking the grates. * Aristocrat ' and 
 'Comrade'! It sounds like the French Revolution." 
 
 " It will be worse than that before we've done with them," 
 bragged the boy loudly. "If you get off, it will only be 
 because " 
 
 "Albert, stop it! You know mama said you weren't to 
 say anything to to " 
 
 "I was only going to say because of us, silly! For, with 
 a father like hers a father who's a bloody " 
 
 "Stop it, stop it!" Lily cried out, so sharply that she 
 started herself coughing again; and Laura, raising her in her 
 arms, sent the boy off to the bedroom for some syrup that the 
 doctor had given her. There was no further talk of comrades 
 or revolutions. For a moment Laura's curiosity had been 
 aroused, as it had been before; but what really mattered was 
 the suffering of this frail child, who seemed as though she 
 must be literally torn in two. 
 
 Little Charles who had been sitting on the hearthrug, 
 playing with the cat, picked it up, and, staggering under the 
 weight, laid it upon Lily's lap to comfort her; while two of the 
 other children left their romping in the bedroom and came and 
 stood opposite to her, staring; then, when it was over, ran 
 back to their game. 
 
 Panting desperately, Lily resisted Laura's movement to 
 lay her down, and rested against her breast. "It's com- 
 fortable you're soft you smell nice," she declared, in gasps; 
 and closed her eyes. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 195 
 
 After a while her face, which had paled, flushed again. 
 "I suppose he lays his head here," she said; and then, 
 with a plain effort: "Well, I'm glad. A man must have 
 someone." 
 
 It had become too dark to see. Albert marked the places 
 in his books with spills of paper, and, moving over to the 
 fireplace, sat down on a wooden chair opposite to his sister and 
 Laura; staring at them through the gloaming. 
 
 Presently he asked: "Does he " And then added, 
 
 " Ah, well ! I suppose he does." 
 
 " Hush ! I think she's dropping off to sleep," whispered 
 Laura, and then, innocently curious, added almost under her 
 breath, " Does he what?" 
 
 " Rests his head there on your breast. Oh, well, I suppose 
 he does; paws you about like the other men with their 
 women." 
 
 "My husband! Albert, you've no business to talk like 
 that." 
 
 " I shall talk as I like. Aristocrat or no aristocrat, you're 
 only a woman," retorted the boy rudely, filled with jealousy 
 of Vortonitch. "The next thing'll be that you'll have a 
 baby." 
 
 "What's that?" The room door had opened, and a bent 
 man's figure stood there. "What the devil's that about 
 babies? As if the world was not over-full, sick with repletion, 
 as it is!" 
 
 "Stein! How did you get in?" asked the boy. 
 
 " I met your mother on the stairs ; she's gone along to her 
 room with that precious infant of hers." 
 
 " If there were no babies you wouldn't be here I shouldn't 
 be here," said Albert, with his air of cleverness. 
 
 " Not much loss to anyone, that," said Stein, and, moving 
 over to the mantelpiece, propped himself against the side of 
 it, staring through the firelight at Laura, his hat still upon his. 
 head. 
 
 " Is it true you're going to have a baby?" he enquired. 
 
 "No," answered the girl quietly. She had only seen this 
 man once before, and her face flamed at die insolence of his 
 queetion; but she had learnt that, in the world where she now 
 lived, people said pretty much what they liked, and so re- 
 strained herself. 
 
 "Smother it at birth, if you have it," cried Stein, with 
 that sort of shrill fury that the question never failed to arouse 
 in him. "Why should we feed the capitalist with the fruit of 
 
196 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 our bodies their factories, their mines, their armies, navies, 
 arsenals tossing them our children like the keepers at the 
 Zoological Gardens feeding the sea-lions with fish? If our 
 class refuses to breed, they'll be done: no workers left 
 obliged to work themselves, or perish." 
 
 "That won't keep the workers alive now; and perhaps 
 they want children, love them, want to live," answered Laura. 
 
 "Want to live! Can anyone believe for a moment that 
 they want to live, let alone breed; that they would be led into 
 the weakness of propagating their species, if it were not that 
 this is the only pleasure that the aristocrats, the capitalists 
 have left to them?" 
 
 "Do you know who she is, Stein?" shrilled Albert 
 maliciously. " Worse than capitalist, worse than aristocrat 
 the daughter of a General." 
 
 "Is that so?" Stein leant forward, peering. "Vor- 
 tonitch's wife, aren't you?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " That's good ! By God, that's good ! Vortonitch's wife 
 and the daughter of a General! If you do have a brat, what 
 sort of a mongrel will it be? Tell me that." 
 
 Laura made a movement to lay the sleeping girl upon the 
 sofa; but she clung to her in her sleep, so that she had not 
 the heart to disturb her. 
 
 " Go and ask you mother to come here, Charles," she said, 
 and the toddler, busy with his cat again, rose to his feet and, 
 without catching her meaning, stood staring. 
 
 Stein caught at his shoulder. " No, no, we're very well as 
 we are, mon enfant. You stay here." 
 
 "Albert, tell your mother I want her." Laura turned to 
 the elder boy, whose eyes met hers defiantly; then dropped, 
 as he turned and ran from the room. 
 
 "What's Vortonitch up to now, may I ask?" enquired 
 Stein. "The great Vortonitch! Such a wonder, as he made 
 himself out to be. It was Triibner who gave him away. Do 
 you know Triibner?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " He plies a boat up and down, to and fro across the river. 
 There's no inch of the docks that he does not know; no 
 single member of the river police or customs house officials. 
 He's the sleuth-hound of the Thames, is Triibner. It was he 
 who rowed " 
 
 Stein broke off as Mrs. Grobo entered the room. 
 
 "What is it, Laura?" she said. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 197 
 
 " I don't like the way Mr. Stein talks to me. Lily is asleep 
 and I can't move." 
 
 "Wait a minute, and I'll light the gas." With her baby 
 upon one arm. Mrs. Grobo manipulated a green paper shade so 
 that the light was shaded from Lily's face; she then turned to 
 the man leaning against the mantelshelf, slightly humpbacked; 
 his immense head, with its great domed forehead, arched round 
 with the heavy shoulders; the lower part of the body tapering 
 off into spindly legs: a creature burdened from birth by 
 poverty, deformity, and a passionate hatred for the more 
 fortunate among mankind. 
 
 "You must keep that venom of yours away from your 
 tongue while you are here, Stein." 
 
 "I said nothing," muttered the man, turning away his 
 eyes, fidgeting like an awkward schoolboy beneath her steady 
 gaze. 
 
 " You said too much." 
 
 " I said nothing, I tell you ! Nothing, that is, that we 
 don't all know, a matter of common talk." 
 
 "In any case, you must go now. I'm about to bath the 
 children." 
 
 "Oh, well!" He moved his grotesque shoulders with a 
 sort of swagger, the piteous swagger of deformity; and moved 
 towards the door. There was a tap and sink in the angle of 
 the room nearest to it, and Mrs. Grobo, her child still on her 
 arm, was standing by it, filling a zinc tub with water. As 
 Stein passed her, Laura saw that he hesitated, cringing: 
 "You are not angry with me?" he said. 
 
 " I don't like you and your ways, and you know it. If you 
 must see my husband, come while he's at home." 
 
 "Ah, so you don't like me, don't you? Why don't you 
 like me? You're a nice fool not to like me: I'd do anything 
 for you, and I'll have power, mind you. I'll have power. 
 Already people fear me." 
 
 " I don't fear you, and I don't want you here." 
 
 The humpback gave an ugly laugh: 
 
 "Not good enough for you, eh? Neither a General, or a 
 General's daughter, or the husband of a General's daughter, 
 eh?" There was a spiteful emphasis on the last words. 
 " If you don't mind, you also will be getting yourself suspect, 
 Madame Grobo." 
 
 Laura, on the sofa at the further side of the room, with 
 Lily still asleep against her shoulder, could only catch a word 
 here and there, broken by the sound of running water. But 
 
198 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 at this Mrs. Grobo turned off the tap, raised the tub, holding 
 it with one hand and outstreched arm, the bottom of it 
 resting upon her hip, and, turning, faced Stein, who was half 
 out of the door, a dark bulk, untouched by the warm light of 
 the room combined fire and gas out of it all. 
 
 " I have no reason to fear what anyone may say," she 
 remarked quietly, "so long as my own deeds and my own 
 sufferings are known to me." 
 
 Laura puzzled over this scene, was impressed by it; but 
 for the time being the significance of Stein's remarks was lost 
 in her personal dislike of him people who were really 
 "horrid" didn't mean what they said her admiration for 
 Mrs. Grobo. Apart from this, she was in daily contact with 
 so much that was strange that she was in some measure 
 deadened to it. All this talk of " Comrades " and " Causes " 
 what did it mean? She had some idea that it must have to 
 do with Freemasonry, or something of that sort; and, because 
 she had suffered all her life from incessant questioning, for- 
 bore to question her husband, or anyone else. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE long winter aftermath of an unusually hot summer 
 trailing on and on, the more plainly bedraggled, the more 
 hopeless with each lengthening day, reached its climax of 
 damp, cold, slush and sleet with the end of the first week in 
 February. 
 
 All this while Laura had seen nothing of, heard nothing 
 from, her own people. To say that she did not think of them, 
 by now, would be untrue; for, emerging from the first 
 engrossment of her new life, she thought of them continually, 
 and with a longing that, especially at Christmas and the New 
 Year, seemed almost unbearable. 
 
 And yet, all the while, her thoughts were such as we might 
 imagine the dead to have for those they have left behind 
 them. In her literal way she took the separation as being as 
 inevitable as though they were divided by the Styx : her father 
 had said that they would have nothing more to do with her, 
 and she did not even think of his changing his mind. In this 
 the acquiescent mood of her girlhood still held good: lending 
 her that sort of strength which comes to those who waste no 
 time in repining. 
 
 And indeed she had no time. Whatever Vortonitch's 
 sources of income might have been, it seemed that they had 
 failed him now: his stories and articles, at first sent out by 
 him, and then by Laura alone, came back as regularly as they 
 went, with that heartbreaking and heartless slip which tells of 
 the editor's regret at their peculiar unsuitability. 
 
 Laura had laid in a little stock of clothes after her mar- 
 riage; Vortonitch helped her with her shopping, and it had 
 been great fun. At that time it had seemed that she was 
 getting everything of the cheapest this very frugality part of 
 the delight of it all. As the months went on, however, she 
 looked back upon her own extravagance with horror. It had 
 been summer then, and in the summer it is impossible to realise 
 the coldness of the winter days, actually or spiritually; be- 
 sides, she would, of course, need more new things for the 
 winter. 
 
 199 
 
200 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 She did need them, but she did not get them; and not only 
 her own clothing but Vortonitch's was miserably inadequate. 
 When they settled in Charterhouse Square he had given away 
 most of his old clothes, above all his winter clothes, feeling it 
 impossible that he should ever go back to them again stuffy, 
 dust-laden; and one realises that feeling for freshness, for an 
 entirely new start in life which seeks to have everything in 
 harmony. Money had been so easily come by, and he could 
 not nail his mfnd down to the thought that a change in his 
 way of life would entail any great change in this respect: if 
 he had made money by being an enemy to society, he should 
 certainly make it more easily still by proving himself its ally. 
 It would not be necessary to do anything very special ; merely 
 to abstain; for with all his brilliance, his modernity, his 
 cunning, he was still child enough to cherish that old belief 
 in the reward of virtue. 
 
 A little before Christmas they had moved from the pleasant 
 rooms in the Square to a top floor in Little Britain; attic- 
 like rooms, and desperately cold. They had put all theii 
 available money into paying a deposit for furniture upon the 
 hire-system, because furnished rooms were so expensive, or if 
 not expensive, sordid: "So much nicer to have our own 
 things about us," said Laura; "and we shall never miss ten 
 shillings a week." 
 
 But they did miss it. Oddly enough, they missed it a 
 great deal more paying for it like that than they had done 
 when it was lumped into rent. Besides, the things were not 
 their own. Laura realised that in her constant fear of any 
 damage to the rickety stuff; the something which caught at 
 her heart when she saw Paul put down a hot cup or cigarette 
 upon the highly-varnished surface of a table, tilt back a 
 chair; while the sense of liability filled her with a sort of 
 nervous shame, so that any strange step coming up the stairs 
 translated itself into that of " the furniture man." 
 
 Everything creaked and moaned: the wood shrank so 
 that it showed white lines at the edge of the dark stain; the 
 cheap carpet in the sitting-room rose and fell with the 
 draughts; while the chimney-cowls ground their teeth as 
 they twirled, sucking down the smoke into the rooms beneath 
 them. 
 
 The water-tanks were in a small room next to their bed- 
 room, and there was a constant drip-drip of water. At the first 
 frost the pipes froze, then burst, and great patches of damp 
 appeared upon the walls. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 201 
 
 Little by little Laura found the laundry expenses too much 
 for them; and for the truly refined this is the first real pinch 
 of poverty. She began to wash the woollens at home, hang 
 them on lines across their living-room when they went to bed 
 at night. But she could not wring them dry enough though 
 she wrung until there were bleeding sores between her first 
 fingers and thumbs and they dripped in grey puddles upon 
 the floor; so it was almost impossible to sweep the room in 
 the morning, the dust caking in the damp, smearing over the 
 remainder of the floor, rolling up into repulsive pellets. 
 
 Then she tried washing other things pillow-slips, towels, 
 her own underlinen. Mrs. Grobo told her the clothes must be 
 boiled if she wanted them white, and she bought a large fish- 
 kettle in which to boil them; but in her ignorance she allowed 
 it to rust, and this marked the clothes. 
 
 Having mastered this business of boiling, learnt how to 
 keep her kettle rustless, she was obliged to give it up because 
 of the cost of gas, the meter devouring pennies at a rate which 
 was almost beyond belief. There had been gas in " The House," 
 and no one ever thought of the cost of it; one had no notion 
 of the existence of such a thing as a meter in those days, let 
 alone a vision of it as something alive, thankless and eternally 
 rapacious. 
 
 A fire, now, that died out with something like courtesy, 
 feeling; but a gas-ring in one moment, phut! and the flame 
 was gone, leaving it cold and black, dully unsympathetic, 
 antagonistic even. 
 
 She purchased irons, but gave up ironing her clothes on 
 account of this question of gas; and the irons rusted. She 
 bought a cookery-book, but most of the otherwise cheap 
 dishes, like porridge and stewed haricot beans, were rendered 
 expensive by the amount of cooking required. Everything 
 seemed to be cut out in some way or another: this because it 
 needed eggs; that because it needed butter; another because 
 there must be fat for frying. 
 
 In the household work it was the same: polish cost money: 
 soap was an item to be considered. It seemed to Laura as 
 though her whole outlook was becoming blocked by things 
 which she had not ever thought of before; stretching like an 
 army across her path, swollen to a ridiculous size. 
 
 One day, after a week oi continuous fogs, she went and 
 had her hair shampooed at one of the big stores. Everything 
 that she had once taken as a matter of course, the large and 
 really white towels, the ample supply of hot water, the frothy 
 
202 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 scented wash, the sense of luxury and repose were all alike an 
 exquisite joy to her. 
 
 That evening when she shook her hair down round her 
 shoulders, brushed it so that every separate hair sprang to life 
 silky and glowing, her husband's pleasure as he buried his face 
 in it, gathered it up and kissed it, filled her with delight; a 
 sense of having snatched back something half-lost. 
 
 " It's months since I saw it like this. Why don't you 
 always keep it like this?" he cried; and Laura declared that 
 she would have it done once a fortnight. Why not? Only 
 two shillings! 
 
 In the night, however, she fell to calculating. Two 
 shillings a fortnight, fifty-two shillings two pounds twelve a 
 year. Awful, awful! 
 
 She had tried washing it herself; but it was so long and 
 thick that it was impossible to rinse it properly in the one 
 little zinc tub, with water so hard that the soap floated upon 
 the top of it in curds; impossible to dry it at the tiny fireplace 
 with the smoke forever drawing down the chimney. 
 
 As she felt her roughly-dried, unironed linen against her 
 skin, struggled with her fair hair, lifeless and greasy, it seemed 
 that everything in life beauty and love included had 
 become a mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence: that 
 she would never again see anything in any other light, apart 
 from the cost of it. 
 
 Vortonitch missed her daintiness; showed it, at times, by 
 that cold, hard stare which made her feel as though they were 
 strangers; by thoughtless questions, such as why she never 
 wore cream-colour or white, as she used to do. 
 
 "That's for the summer," she answered and more than 
 once with that quiet patience, that maternal patience which 
 had become a sort of armour to her. 
 
 "But in the evenings, when we're alone," he had persisted; 
 and then, half-sulky, "Once you women marry, you don't 
 seem to care how you look!" he complained; with no thought 
 of the hopeless expense of white, under the circumstances, 
 the endless cleaners' and laundry bills that it would entail. 
 
 On the whole, however, Vortonitch scarcely noticed the 
 deprivations; felt no fear for the future, of which he had 
 never in his whole life been sure. 
 
 He never forgot Laura's face of horror and dismay one day 
 when she discovered that they had no money whatever left 
 to them; laughing over it immoderately, like a rather rough 
 schoolboy, and for once irritating her by his irresponsibility. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 203 
 
 It began with such a small thing, too. Mrs. Grobo had 
 said that the Times was the best paper for advertisements 
 not so much for its quantity as its quality. Vortonitch had 
 talked of trying for some secretarial post while the fate of his 
 stories hung in the balance, and when he came home one 
 midday, and Laura repeated what Mrs. Grobo had told her, ha 
 declared that he would go out and buy a paper at once. No 
 other time would do, for he was restless, coming back to their 
 circumscribed quarters at such an hour, with nothing to do. 
 The very thought of an empty half-day spent there bored him, 
 for he could never be entirely free of the idea of home as a 
 place in which to sleep, or entertain one's friends. 
 
 He rattled what seemed like money in his pockets; emptied 
 them, and found a penny, a halfpenny, a bunch of keys, a 
 pencil with a metal sheath. 
 
 "Have you any money, Laura?" 
 
 "No. I had a little over from last week, but not enough 
 for all the shopping; no meat or anything for to-morrow; 
 and there's no firewood. If you're going out, will you see 
 about that, Paul? The bundles for kindling." 
 
 Vortonitch was standing before the fireplace. There were 
 several little boxes and tins there; a couple of brass mugs he 
 had brought from Bulgaria, and a blue-and-green ginger-jar. 
 Without answering Laura's question, he turned them all upside 
 down and shook them in turn; but there was nothing there. 
 
 "Looks as though we were bankrupt this time," he said 
 and laughed. Glancing up, Laura had an impression of white 
 teeth, bright eyes, a look of liveness and vitality such as she 
 had not seen for weeks. This, indeed, was the sort of fillip 
 which Vortonitch needed: to be just poor was dull, to be 
 penniless exciting. " Not even the price of a Times! I must 
 write to the papers about that! Are you sure you haven't 
 any coppers, Laura?" 
 
 "No, not one," answered Laura. She was standing 
 close to the window, for the day was dark with fog, one of her 
 husband's shirts in her hands, mending the collar. " Never 
 mind about the paper, anyhow, Paul; it doesn't matter 
 whether you write to-day or to-morrow. But those other 
 things " 
 
 " Oh, but I must have it," broke in Vortonitch. " I'll go 
 and look in my pockets. A penny-ha'penny! To think of 
 being beaten for the sake of a penny-ha'penny! Another 
 grudge against the Harmsworth Press, that." 
 
 He disappeared into the bedroom, and she heard him bang 
 
204 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 the cupboard door, drag open the bottom drawer of the chest- 
 of-drawers, which always stuck sideways, and in which that 
 suit he had worn on the occasion of his one visit to her parents 
 reposed in solitary splendour. 
 
 A minute or so later he reappeared, still laughing. " One 
 ha'penny, Still a penny short. Are you sure you've 
 nothing?" 
 
 "No and, Paul, you know you haven't given me the 
 money for this week-end yet. If you haven't any you'll have 
 to go out and . . . Oh! I forgot, the banks will be shut. 
 Saturday, and one o'clock!" She gazed at him in dismay. 
 
 " Dear, dear, what a tragedy ! " 
 
 "What do you mean?" She dropped her hands, holding 
 her work in front of her, and stared. "Paul, what are you 
 laughing at?" 
 
 " Well, it wouldn't make much difference if they were open 
 every bank in England." 
 
 "But, Paul, I must have some money. I was as careful 
 as ever I could be with last week's, but it wasn't much " 
 
 "Ah, well, it was a precious sight more than I have now. 
 Twopence twopence ! " 
 
 " But we must have money, old thing ; we can't go over the 
 week-end with that. There's scarcely anything to eat in the 
 house. Perhaps if you wrote a cheque and post-dated it " 
 
 Vortonitch, who was standing in front of the tiny fire, 
 with both elbows stuck back on the mantelshelf behind him, 
 nodded his head mockingly. 
 
 "Yes, yes, that would be a good idea; a cheque, and post- 
 dated. I wonder, now, where you got that idea. Out of a 
 novel, eh?" 
 
 His wife reddened, realising that he was laughing at her; 
 but for all that she stuck to her guns. "I'm sure one of the 
 shops would change it for me, where they know me." 
 
 "We'd have to find my cheque-book first. Where is 
 it?" He made a feint of feeling in his pockets, patting himself 
 all over; desisting with a gesture of despair. "Teh, tch! 
 Laura, where have we put that cheque-book? We must find 
 that first; then make sure of my signature; then track down 
 the bank with my money in it. Dear, dear, what a world it 
 is!" 
 
 She turned away, folding up her work, the tears in her eyes, 
 for his mockery hurt her. " I don't know why you should 
 laugh at me in that way. People do that sort of thing; I 
 know they do." 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 205 
 
 "Laura!" Vortoniteh caught at her shoulders, pulled 
 her round, laughing in her face, not altogether like a man 
 more like a sort of faun or satyr. "Look at me now, you 
 little silly, you. Have I ever paid anything with a cheque 
 since we were married?" 
 
 "N-o-o." 
 
 "Given you a cheque to pay for anything?" 
 
 " No." She stared at him with a sort of bewilderment 
 which was almost stupidity; she could deal with him in most 
 moods, but like this, so coolly mocking, he was beyond her. 
 Apart from that, she was tired with her Saturday's cleaning, 
 the Saturday crowds in the little shops, where she had been so 
 proud over the disbursing of the remainder of last week's 
 money. 
 
 "Have I ever spoken to you of my banking account?" 
 
 "No, but, Paul- 
 
 "I've given you less and less, eh?" 
 
 " I've managed all right." She lifted her head with a 
 movement of pride; for she had managed, and never com- 
 plained. 
 
 "Can you imagine why?" 
 
 " I thought your income " 
 
 "My dear child, but I have no income." 
 
 "I don't know I I'm awfully stupid about money; but 
 there's . . . Oh, but you must have some money: capital, or 
 something. Of course, I know we've got to be awfully careful, 
 but still ... I have been careful, Paul; I have." 
 
 "All the same, there's a point when it's no use being 
 careful any longer; when there's nothing whatever to be 
 careful of." 
 
 "But how do you mean nothing?" 
 
 " Well, comparatively speaking." He rattled the coppers 
 in his hand. " Twopence, to be exact." 
 
 "Do you mean in the world?" 
 
 " In our world, best beloved." 
 
 Her face, already white, stiffened, her eyes were almost 
 black with incredulous horror. 
 
 "You mean that we have no money whatever? That we 
 shall starve?" 
 
 He burst out laughing. "Not us! No, no, my dear; 
 I'm not the sort that starves." 
 
 "Perhaps if you went round to some of the newspaper 
 offices where they know you " 
 
 " Saturday, and after one o'clock : they're all closed." 
 
206 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 He moved over to her, lifted her chin between his finger 
 and thumb, and kissed her on the lips; then patted her cheek. 
 
 " Don't look so tragic; it's one of the fortunes of war, the 
 fortunes of life." 
 
 He strolled across the room and picked up his hat, wiped 
 it round with his sleeve, whistling, and slipped into his over- 
 coat old and far thinner than it should have been with a 
 gay, swaggering movement; gallant enough in its way, which 
 Laura, too stunned to realise at the time, remembered later, 
 when she heard people continually complaining of "the 
 difficulties of living upon a small fixed income"; while from 
 that time onward there was a sort of cynicism in her attitude 
 towards his being "hard up." One had enough money to 
 keep one alive for the next few days, or one had not; that 
 was all that mattered. 
 
 Vortonitch was away for three hours. She never forgot 
 that three hours. They had not over-much coal left, and she 
 was so sparing with it that the fire went out and could not be 
 re-lighted for lack of wood. As the room grew dark and 
 bitterly cold it seemed to her that all her contrivances and 
 struggles had been life, with a real zest about it, but this was 
 death. She found that she could not think clearly, stupefied 
 with the cold, with fatigue, with the want of food; for they 
 had had nothing more than coffee and rolls for breakfast, to 
 which though it suited Vortonitch she found difficulty in 
 becoming accustomed, used to the ample English breakfast of 
 porridge, bacon and eggs. 
 
 Later on, when she grew more used to the ups and downs 
 of life, she would have been practical enough to make herself 
 a cup of tea, realising the necessity of keeping herself going; 
 along with the fact that this was by no means the end of 
 everything. But now she did not even think of it, overcome 
 by a sense of finality. 
 
 No money at all no money at all! Twopence worse 
 than nothing! 
 
 Even a month later less her mind would have run over 
 all her small possessions, found something that might be 
 turned into money to tide them over the crisis; but as yet she 
 had not arrived at this, lacked all the resources necessary for 
 meeting such an emergency. 
 
 When Vortonitch did return he found her sitting in the 
 dark room, a black silhouette against the window, faintly 
 lighted by the lamps in the street below, and Called gaily for 
 her to light the gas. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 207 
 
 " My arms are BO full, I've not got a hand to spare." 
 
 As she obeyed him, moving stiffly, cramped with cold and 
 that sort of deadness which had invaded both her physical 
 and mental person, she saw that he was laden with parcels, 
 the whole topped by a huge bunch of yellow chrysanthemums. 
 
 The only thing he had forgotten was the wood, and he ran 
 downstairs and out into the street for this. It reminded 
 Laura of that day when she left home and went to him in his 
 rooms ; only then it was she who had done the shopping, and she 
 had been years younger years and years and years younger. 
 
 Vortonitch was very kind to her, gay and fond; it was he 
 who re-lit the fire, made tlae tea, fried sausages, and cleared 
 away afterwards; while it was not until she had eaten and 
 drunk that Laura emerged from her stupor sufficiently to ask 
 him how he had managed to find the money to pay for his 
 purchases. 
 
 " Three pounds," he answered, laughing. " Three pounds ! 
 Didn't I tell you we wouldn't starve?" 
 
 For all that, he would not say where he had got it. The 
 sense of his wife's real dependence upon him, the conjuror-like 
 flourish of sudden and comparative wealth amused him: it 
 would have been a stupid come-down to acknowledge that it 
 was merely borrowed from Mrs. Grobo, in whose rooms he 
 had spent the afternoon, telling tales to Lily, who lay wrapped 
 in a blanket upon his knee. 
 
 It was six o'clock by the time they finished their meal; 
 but for all that he insisted upon going out to supper at Le 
 Cygne d'Or having long forgotten his grudge against it 
 soon after nine. "We shall be shut up here all to-morrow, 
 Sunday," he said; "besides, it will never do to eat up all 
 our store." 
 
 "I don't want anything more to eat, and it's so comfy 
 here," pleaded Laura; but he would not listen to her, telling 
 her to be off and get ready, or he'd have her old before her 
 time. " Then they'll all declare I ill-treat you," he said. 
 
 As she was changing her dress and shoes, he called out to 
 her to put on a little cap of dark fur which she had made for 
 herself. 
 
 " I love you in that cap, with your fair hair," he said; and 
 then, while she finished dressing, moved about the adjoining 
 room, whistling, humming to himself, so gaily that it seemed 
 impossible that nothing more than something like two pounds 
 and a very few shillings, to judge by his purchases, stood 
 between them and the rest of the world. 
 
208 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 She dreaded speaking of it, but she braced herself to the 
 effort as she stood in the sitting-room, putting on her gloves. 
 
 "Only a cup of coffee, Paul, just for the sake of the walk. 
 We must be careful. That money won't last for ever." 
 
 "Don't talk to me of money; I hate it! Come along now, 
 and let's enjoy ourselves, for this once, anyhow. What's the 
 good of worrying about money the root of all evil?" 
 
 "And do you think I don't worry that I can help 
 worrying?" A sudden wave of anger swept over her like a 
 hot wind; to her own amazement she was shaking from 
 head to foot as she turned upon Vortonitch, tearing off her 
 gloves, rolling them into a ball. What on earth was he 
 standing there for, grinning like that? Who was he? What 
 was he? A stranger, a mountebank, unable to take anything 
 seriously. 
 
 " You tell me that we've no money in the world, that we're 
 penniless. You go out and leave me thinking that believing 
 it, so that I daren't even keep the fire burning. Then you 
 come back like this like this! talking of going out to 
 supper! You must be mad mad mad; or a liar, a fool!" 
 
 "Laura!" He laid one hand on her arm, but she turned 
 away from him, pulling off her cap and throwing it down on 
 the table. 
 
 "Laura!" 
 
 " No, I won't go out with you, that's all. You may go by 
 yourself, if you're mad enough to go spending money like 
 that." 
 
 "Laura!" For the third time he repeated her name, 
 with an air of horrified amazement. But it was exaggerated: 
 there was laughter at the back of it, and she realised it. What 
 was one to do? What could one do with a man like this? It 
 was like trying to hold water in your hands. At this thought 
 her anger flickered as suddenly as it had arisen; and with a 
 sense of chill, helplessness, beaten and bewildered, she turned 
 away; dropped into a chair, folded her arms along the top 
 rail and laid her head upon them, shaken with those despair- 
 ing sobs which overcome a child in moments of complete 
 desolation. 
 
 "Laura darling " 
 
 " No, no ! " Vortonitch had dropped to his knees at her 
 side, put an arm about her; but she drew away from him with 
 a sense of agony, for it was dreadful to feel like that like 
 drawing away, when he was all that she had in the world. 
 
 She raised her tear-stained face for a moment. " What am 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 209 
 
 I to do? Jh, Paul, how can I do anything, if you treat me 
 like a child, behave like a child!" she cried. 
 
 "But, dear, we are children, you and I that's what we 
 want to be, to hold to." She had covered her face again, but 
 he pushed his hand in between her cheek and her arm, raised 
 it, genuinely touched and repentant. 
 
 " Darling, I can't take money so seriously, because I never 
 have done so. I know I'm a brute, an idiot; but I'm so used 
 to the ups and downs of life, I never thought " 
 
 " You never do think." 
 
 "I know, I know. I'm an ass!" He drew her head 
 down against his shoulder. "Laura, you mustn't cry; you 
 mustn't! Or, if you do, you must cry there." 
 
 "To frighten me like that! To frighten me like that, and 
 then to talk of going to a restaurant, spending money as though 
 nothing mattered!" For absolutely the first time in her life 
 she realised the luxury of a grievance, of giving way, of being 
 petted back to reason; for of course she had been a stupid to 
 get herself into such a state over a trifle. 
 
 "Well, nothing does matter, nothing excepting that you 
 should forgive me. We'll never go to a restaurant again 
 never, never!" He had got her hands away from her face 
 now, and they were looking into each other's eyes. His own 
 twinkled. Quite suddenly they both laughed, and drawing 
 her towards him, he kissed her again and again; laid his 
 cheek to hers and rubbed it up and down like an ingratiating 
 animal. 
 
 "Perhaps this once, eh, carissima mia? A single cup of 
 coffee apiece, and a walk through the moonlight. The fog's 
 gone and it's as clear as day. This once, and never again." 
 
 He held her away from him for a moment, looking into 
 her eyes; then she pulled herself free and picked up her cap; 
 a sigh at the back of her laugh. She loved him with her whole 
 heart and soul, and yet she could do nothing with him 
 shining, slipping through her fingers: "sparkling darkling" 
 like water. Yes, that was it: like water. 
 
 At school she had struggled vainly over the memorising 
 of "The Falls of Lodore." She thought that she had for- 
 gotten it all, but it came back to her now and again, and 
 from this time onward always in connection with her husband: 
 
 "Here it comes sparkling, 
 And there it lies darkling." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 FOR a whole week it had snowed, intermittently, ceasing 
 long enough for the streets and roofs of the houses to become 
 streaked and grey, sodden with slush and dirty water: in 
 between the falls of snow the air was thick with a yellow, 
 greasy fog. Everything was dirty to the touch; the faces 
 in the streets looked bilious, yellow and blue with cold; the 
 parks were a sordid patchwork of snow and mud. 
 
 The filth round Smithfield Market was indescribable 
 ankle-deep; the butchers and carters, brutalised by the cold 
 and by the drink they took in their endeavour to keep it out 
 of them, red and purple as the meat. 
 
 Vortonitch had been in bed for five days with a feverish 
 cold. At the slightest rise of temperature he became slightly 
 delirious, as some people do, and for twenty-four hours he 
 had talked without ceasing; then, overcome by exhaustion, 
 dropped from one doze into another. 
 
 Laura had been to the market to buy scraps of beef for 
 soup, realising that now the fever had left him what he needed 
 most was food and warmth. 
 
 There was a small fire in the bedroom, for he was so restless 
 that every now and then he liked to drag himself from his bed 
 and sit by it, with his overcoat and blanket round his shoulders. 
 
 It was difficult to tell when he was asleep and when merely 
 brooding, with his head sunk upon his breast; only when he 
 raised his eyes, seldom lifting his chin, his wife realised not 
 only that he was awake but that he was not himself at all: 
 that someone whom she had never known, even in moments of 
 fiercest impatience, was looking out at her from those 
 shining eyes, beneath the deep cavern of the brow, with a 
 contemptuous defiance and intolerance. 
 
 Sometimes he sighed, sometimes he coughed: the cough 
 was not artificial any more than the sigh; it shook him from 
 head to foot; but for all that, it was exaggerated. He was. 
 indeed, far less miserable than he seemed, less distressed by 
 his own illness than was his wife by her anxiety and sym- 
 pathy. It helped him, indeed; his very suffering, perfectly 
 
 210 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 211 
 
 real as it was for no one can have a high temperature and 
 tearing cough without suffering helped him. There had 
 even been a sort of pleasure in letting himself float away upon 
 a river of delirium, for the simple reason that it flowed in the 
 direction in which he intended it to flow. 
 
 It was all like that mood of a child whom its nurse 
 describes as " working itself up." 
 
 The first weeks of his marriage had been filled with ecstasy, 
 an extravagant and whole-souled adoration of Laura in which 
 he had let everything else go. 
 
 This was followed by a period that tingled with difficulties, 
 during which time he still posed as the adoring husband; with 
 rosy visions of himself as the adoring father; discounting 
 Stein, taking Grobo for his model; while Grobo himself, 
 realising a phase wherein he was at least out of mischief, 
 showed a strange patience with him; for he was safer, abjuring 
 Nihilism with a sort of holy horror than he might have been 
 " running away with 'imself ," as Grobo put it. 
 
 Suddenly, however, the role of exemplary husband began 
 to pall upon Vortonitch; he fancied himself wasted, slighted, 
 remembering that scene at Le Cygne d'Or. " What's to come 
 out of it all? What's the good of it all?" he asked himself. 
 
 He relinquished his slight efforts as breadwinner for the 
 same reason, for the mare maintenance of existence had never 
 been enough for him: to work to live, to live to work could 
 anything be drearier? 
 
 He had declared that he would have nothing more to do 
 with Nihilism, anarchy in any shape or form, and he would 
 not go back upon his word, not from vanity, but from prin- 
 ciple, at any rate until he was forced. 
 
 Until he was " forced." There you had it. If the circum- 
 stances, the pressure of poverty, the responsibility of a young 
 wife, sickness, despair, were too strong for him, what was he 
 to do? If, above all, the plutocrats drove him. There was 
 an added reason for reverting to his original course, renewing 
 his attack upon the powers that be, in the fact that his wife's 
 father, General Sir Harry Creichton, went on his way, tabbed 
 and bemedalled, unchallenged, with a daughter and son-in- 
 law at the point of starvation. 
 
 As a Communist agitator will cherish every case of in- 
 justice and hardship which he encounters for the exploitation 
 of his cause, Paul Vortonitch panoplied himself in his miseries. 
 
 The day he realised that Laura's little gold watch was gone 
 from her wrist brought him that sense of relief which came to 
 
212 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 Sir Roland on his first sight of the Dark Tower, " gladness 
 that some end should be." 
 
 As it happened, Grobo dropped in to see him between five 
 and six that same day, one of those evenings early in the new 
 year when the lengthening daylight no more than prolongs 
 the hours of cold and misery, with a barren and altogether 
 premature pretence of spring. 
 
 Apparently Vortonitch was but just out of bed, had risen 
 in some sudden access of excitement, for he was standing 
 aimlessly in the middle of the disordered room, his cheeks 
 flushed, an evening paper crumpled up in his hand. 
 
 As Grobo entered, he smoothed it out upon the bed, and 
 without any greeting, pointed with a shaking finger at the 
 principal headlines running the whole width of the front 
 page. 
 
 "Chatham! You have started again, then?" 
 
 Grobo shrugged his shoulders: "We 'ave never stopped; 
 they 'ave tried to keep things out of the papers, that is all. 
 But we move all the time, like one of those creatures with so 
 many legs what is it you call them?" 
 
 "Then why is this 'displayed'?" Vortonitch indicated 
 the lettering. "There's no attempt to keep that quiet. 
 Damn it all! what's your idea now? What are you up to 
 now, eh?" 
 
 "It was too big. 'Fifty thousand pounds' worth of 
 damage estimated: over a 'undred injured; many lives lost.' 
 There's no 'iding a thing like that," answered Grobo, with the 
 ridiculous pouting expression of a beauty who protests that 
 she has been unable to keep her photograph out of the papers. 
 '"Let me tell you this, my little dear: the only wonder is 
 lhat we 'ave been able to 'ide so much and for so long. We 
 could not 'ave done it, if they 'ad not 'elped us, scared to 
 death of publicity, of a whole peoples asking, 'Why are we 
 not protected? For what reason we pay rates and taxes, eh, 
 what?' For since the end of the second week in July there 
 'as been no two weeks without something 'appening. One by 
 one we 'ave drawn out teeth, chopped off fingers, toes, noses, 
 ears from this 'ere England drugged with fear and vanity 
 and the body itself scarcely so much as realised it. Great! 
 ah, great, I tell you! But now, this lifeless, armless trunk 
 which calls 'ersell ' the country ' so proudly ' the country ' 
 like that 'ow can she any more 'ide 'erself, 'er donefomess, 
 'er dangers? As for 'er keepers, they are worn out with their 
 'idings away of their idol; it is beyond them now, as it is 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 213 
 
 beyond us to stop the destruction which we which 7 T 
 myself 'ave started 'ere in England. 
 
 " Nothing can stop it, I tell you that, my dear I, Grobo 
 nothings on earth." With his hands in his pockets, the 
 skirts of his voluminous frock-coat thrown back over his arms, 
 he began to move to and fro with short, quick steps in the 
 narrow space between door and window, across the foot of the 
 bed. "An' as to 'eaven what 'ave we to do with 'eaven?" 
 he added, and puffed out his lips. 
 
 Vortonitch moved his shoulders, half -weary, half-mocking. 
 "What good does it do them, when all's said and done?" 
 The moment the words were out of his mouth, he realised the 
 subconscious change of opinion which they revealed; the 
 effect of his wife's humble and whole-souled admiration for 
 his supposed championship of the under-dog. 
 
 Grobo stared. '"Oo?" Clever as he was, he was unable 
 to grasp so ridiculous an idea as that which Laura had 
 associated with her husband. 
 
 " Oh, your precious working-man, I suppose," answered 
 Vortonitch, shamefacedly. 
 
 "Teh, tch! From you, my dear! That scorpion, the 
 working-man, stinging 'imself to death with 'is strikes! What 
 a mentality, that there, to think of moving on by standing 
 still! Not to say that 'e 'as not 'elped us in the past. Yes, 
 yes; we are not ungrateful to 'im. When we of the com- 
 mune are established, we will drop our tears upon 'im and 'is 
 liberties, slime 'im over with tears, before we crush 'im to 
 death, eh, eh, my dear? As an independent member of 
 society, that is to say, for we 'ave our uses for 'im, trust us 
 for that. Meanwhile, my little friend, this remains, and this 
 only, to kill and kill and kill." 
 
 "Even the working-man?" 
 
 "Pouf! 'E is our friend, but there is too many of 'im 
 for the work we 'ave to do: there can be no greater imped i 
 ment than an over-multitude of friends. The unintelligent, 
 the 'ewers of wood and drawers of water all very well; but 
 the intelligent, the firebrands! No, no, we 'ave 'ad enough 
 o' them. It is best for all that they are out of the way. A 
 few picked men, men of education, men of our own way of 
 thinking, not merely ' sympatica,' but of ourselves that is all 
 that is needed." 
 
 Vortonitch did not speak. He had wrapped a great-coat 
 round himself and dropped into a chair, where he now leant 
 back, haggard and unshaven, his bare feet outstretched to the 
 
214 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 handful of fire, his shoulders drawn up to his ears, his chin on 
 his breast, his hands deep in his coat-pockets; staring in front 
 of him. 
 
 After a moment or so, Grobo, realising his silence, ceased 
 his perambulations and sat down upright upon a high chair; 
 his little fat feet, in their buttoned boots with imitation spats 
 of brown leather, tucked back under it; his fat, pinkish hands 
 resting upon his thighs, tight to bursting-point in their black 
 and grey striped trousers, his red under-lip, broad as it was 
 long, protruding. 
 
 For a while he was silent, glancing at his companion with 
 a curious and appraising air; then he began again, more 
 calmly: 
 
 " It is like a stone that a man 'as started to roll down-'ill 
 neither 'e nor anyone else can stop it," he went on. " We 
 'ave provided ourselves with maps of Europe, marked with 
 crosses; every military establishment, every Government fac- 
 tory, every arsenal, every barrack town, every shipbuilding- 
 yard, every victualling or clothing department: each one is 
 numbered. As it is thrown out of gear, it is pencilled round 
 with a circle, which marks not merely a loss to the Government, 
 see you, but a centre of discontent, uneasiness, fear; where 
 many men are out of work, where there are some in the 
 'ospital, some under the earth not a few neither; and for 
 what? For what they know not, nor by what agency. It is 
 this not knowing that is tinder to our fire. But there is more 
 to do yet. Yes, my friend, I will not disguise it from you. 
 Something to clinch it all, to set the keystone to our revolu- 
 tion. Yes, yes; that is that: the keystone." 
 
 The little man put up one hand and pulled at his underlip, 
 between his finger and thumb: there was already a very fair 
 number of circles upon the map of England for which he 
 himself was responsible, and every country in Europe had been 
 supplied with the same work of art. But for all that, he was 
 in difficulties. The affair at Chatham, planned by himself, 
 had been carried out by Stein; and well enough, too. But 
 Stein's overwhelming vanity and jealousy, the fact that he 
 had his own private bee in his bonnet, made him a dangerous 
 man to work with. The foreign element in England had, 
 ever since the war, been more or less split into two parties: 
 those aliens whose one wish was to re-establish themselves in 
 a state of commercial prosperity, and the criminal classes. 
 A week earlier, Harbin had committed suicide. No loss, 
 cither, for those English . . . ach! the trial they were! You 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 21S 
 
 spurred them on to one more or less creditable effort, which 
 they carried out with an apparently whole-souled recklessness, 
 and then they drooped the ones that were worth anything; 
 the ones whom you could trust overcome by what they 
 called their "conscience," an appendage which Grobo re- 
 garded as purely English, one of the greatest drawbacks to an 
 otherwise fine race. For he realised this absurdity as a sort 
 of national wen: manifest in every walk of life, in women as 
 well as men. Only look at the English prostitute, how she 
 went to pieces, soaking in drink to drown her " conscience." 
 No sense of pride in her profession. There, alone, was an 
 otherwise useful class lost to conspiracy; no good trying to 
 use Englishwomen of this sort in the way in which one might, 
 and did, use Frenchwomen. 
 
 Between one thing and another their community was 
 running short of men, men of the stamp they wanted; that 
 was the fact of the matter. And here was Vortonitch, with 
 courage, dash, initiative, tamed to the hand by his long 
 spell of domesticity, or so it seemed to Grobo: using his 
 own home-life and affections as a feather-bed upon which 
 to rest, contrasting himself with this other man, burying 
 his head, suffocating himself with it, as one might do with 
 a pillow. 
 
 " Discontent and unemployment is swelling the fruit to 
 our 'and. It is now that we must move. Now, when the 
 winter stores are exhausted, before the chance of an 'arvest, 
 revolution will run through England like the foxes through 
 the corn of the Philistines." 
 
 Vortonitch raised one shoulder slightly higher than the 
 other; there was a sneer round his lips, but he said nothing; 
 and with a sudden flick Grobo launched that dart which he 
 had been holding in reserve. 
 
 "Next week we will get on with Woolwich." 
 
 It took. "Woolwich is mine! I'll trouble you to keep 
 your hands off Woolwich!" snarled Vortonitch, without so 
 much as a glance, twisting his lips down and round the words. 
 
 " You gave it up, and someone else 'as got it." 
 
 "Who the hell . . ." He turned at this, his hands 
 gripping either side of the chair; staring angrily. "It is 
 mine, I tell you! Mine!" 
 
 " But my dear Paul " Grobo made a deprecating move- 
 ment with both hands outspread " you come to me and 
 you says: 'Grobo, you bloody scoundrel ' ah, but, my friend, 
 you 'ave sa-a-ed it ' I am no more a revolutionist, no more. 
 
216 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 I 'ave a wife, and I love 'er; I am goin' to be a good little 
 boy, for evermore, amen.' A citizen, a leetle tame, flat-footed 
 citizen! An' this so great, so kind England will look after 
 me an' my young wife because we are good so good, and no 
 trouble to nobodies." 
 
 "Augh!" Vortonitch broke into a harsh laugh. "Well, 
 then, I was mistaken a fool. I acknowledge it! Look at 
 this damned hole of a place; look at me ill, half -starved; 
 look at my wife. What'll there be left of her, after another 
 year of this? See here, Grobo: she sold her watch yesterday, 
 poor girl her watch that she'd had since she was a child. 
 And for what? Food food!" Vortonitch flung to his 
 feet; then for he was still so weak that any sudden move- 
 ment made him giddy caught at the mantelshelf and stood 
 swaying, glowering round him. "Look at this damned room, 
 this pretence of a fire no fire in the sitting-room the reek of 
 fat here because it's here the soup must be made, to save the 
 gas! Four lumps of coal in the fender: 'Make 'em last 
 until to-night no more to-day; can't afford any more,' or 
 so she says, damn her! The General's daughter!" He 
 laughed hysterically. "My tame General's daughter! My 
 God! My God!" 
 
 " It's 'ard on 'er, my dear," said Grobo gently. 
 
 " It's hard on all of us life's hard," responded Vortonitch 
 sulkily. 
 
 " If only you 'adn't made up your mind to cut yourself 
 
 apart from us " The little man spoke regretfully, feeling 
 
 his way; but Vortonitch's loud laugh relieved him; he knew 
 where he was with a man who laughed like that. 
 
 "You didn't believe it, that I meant it?" 
 
 "For 'ow long you'd mean it." 
 
 " How long they'd let me mean it, rather." Vortonitch 
 had risen from his chair; was moving round the little room, 
 kicking things aside, throwing them out of the way with a 
 sort of savagery, a bitter glance and toss of his head at his 
 own reflection in the glass. 
 
 "Look here, Grobo; I've something to ask you." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "You don't believe that I'd done with it, really done 
 with it; that anyone could be done with it, eh? That was 
 lie number one. And now for the other." He had returned 
 to his post in front of the fire, stood with his elbows crooked 
 back in his favourite position upon the mantelshelf, and 
 stared at Grobo; sneeringly and yet with a sort of friendliness, 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 217 
 
 for it seemed as though they were getting things clear between 
 them at last. 
 
 "Lie number two. You didn't believe, whatever that 
 fellow Triibner might have said, that it was Boyce who en- 
 gineered the first affair at Woolwich. Come, now!" 
 
 "What was one to believe?" 
 
 "You didn't believe it, I say; but you chose to pretend 
 you did, to let others believe that you did." 
 
 "My friend, you was in love." The little man shrugged 
 his shoulders, spread out his hands with an oddly tolerant 
 gesture. " It was best to count you out, for a while at least." 
 
 "And you didn't believe that I played the fool with that 
 other bomb, either. Now we're at it, let's have it out : you 
 didn't believe it!" cried Vortonitch fiercely, challenging. 
 
 Grobo rose to his feet, picked up his little black pudding- 
 basin of a hat from the table and wiped it round with his 
 sleeve. " I believed it, because it was the sort of thing you 
 might do," he said, speaking slowly and gravely; "and that 
 alone constituted a danger: because you are theatrical, my 
 friend, an' a man who is like that does not know where to 
 stop more particularly when he is suffering from an excess 
 of sex." 
 
 " You dare to say that you imagined me as capable of 
 betraying our cause!" Vortonitch was honestly indignant: 
 once again it was " our cause." 
 
 " Not so much betraying the cause, my friend, but for- 
 getting, for the moment, which was the cause," answered 
 Grobo coolly, pursing up his lips. " You were 'and in glove 
 with those 'oo were against us, an' it all depended 
 
 "On what, eh?" 
 
 " If they would 'ave you." 
 
 "What the hell- 
 
 "Ah! now, now! Why so savage?" He put out one 
 chubby hand and touched the other man upon the breast. 
 "It is all well now: they 'ave not taken you to their 'carts, 
 not by any manner of means, an' now you are like any one of 
 ourselves once more; against them, more fiercely than ever, 
 for it so that such things 'appen as do 'appen, eh?" 
 
 "What the devil should I want with them? What . . ." 
 began Vortonitch angrily; then broke off, laughing. "By 
 God, Grobo, I can't say I admire your taste! Come, now 
 all this talk, all this fuss over my being theatrical, and then 
 to put Stein Stein, of all people in my place! Stein, who 
 would see us all in hell for the sake of a claque and, by Christ, 
 
218 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 you'd burn well, my little friend, frizzling the fat in the 
 fire!" He threw back his head and laughed again, deriding 
 not only Grobo but humanity itself. 
 
 As to Grobo, he glanced at him coolly, weighing him up. 
 " No need for you to be jealous of Stein, my dear. 'E 'as 'is 
 little job, but, believe me, it is not easy, it is not nice; you 
 are well out of it. It was given to 'im because it comes to 
 this: it is dangerous, and we can do without Comrade Stein, 
 very well we can do without 'im. My wife does not like 'im." 
 The last words were uttered with the greatest simplicity, as 
 though they constituted the best of reasons for helping any 
 man out of the world. 
 
 Once more he touched Vortonitch upon the chest, muffled 
 in a crookedly-buttoned great-coat, fixing his bland gaze upon 
 the dark, mocking eyes above him. "But for yourself, my 
 friend look 'ere: you chose to count yourself out, an' a man 
 'oo does that is no good to 'imself or to anyone else either. 
 But let me tell you this : there is one thing to be done, an' for 
 that I 'ave my eye upon you, Comrade, and upon you alone." 
 Grobo had dropped his half-comic foreign intonation, spoke 
 with weight and solemnity. "But first of all you must send 
 your wife 'ome to 'er own people. Some day, if she comes 
 back, she may be of use with 'er prattle; but this thing that 
 I 'ave for you to do now is for a man as sleeps alone at night. 
 I know it is an 'ard thing to ask you, my dear " 
 
 "You have not told me what it is." 
 
 "To send your wife, your so charming and sweet young 
 wife from your side." 
 
 "Oh, that!" Vortonitch, who had picked up a pair of 
 scissors from the mantelshelf and was busy with his nails, 
 assuming indifference while his whole being hung upon the 
 thought of what Grobo might be about to propose, barked out 
 with a derisive laugh. 
 
 "That! By God, if you only knew how sick I am of it 
 all!" 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 VORTONITCH rose before noon next day, hung about for a 
 while, and then went out. It was close upon midnight when 
 he came back; it had been raining heavily, and he was wet 
 to the skin. 
 
 That night he was once again feverish, sleepless, torn by 
 his cough. For all that, he seemed possessed by a fury of 
 exhilaration and excitement, a restlessness which would not 
 allow him to remain quiet; good-tempered enough, even gay, 
 and yet further removed from his wife or so it seemed to 
 Laura than he had ever been before; launched off at some 
 unseen tangent. 
 
 During the next three days he was scarcely at home for an 
 hour together, laughed Laura and her "fussing" to scorn; 
 careless of himself, stung to sudden wild bursts of irritation 
 by the most innocent question as t his whereabouts or 
 doings. 
 
 As to Laura, she went on with her duties blindly, deter- 
 mined to let nothing go; drugging herself with work; with 
 something of her father's obstinate adherence to things as 
 they were, determined to keep her eyes fixed upon what was 
 immediately beneath them. 
 
 On the fourth day she had Vortonitch back upon her 
 hands again, her child and lover: really ill this time, with an 
 alarmingly high temperature, clinging to her, unable to bear 
 her out of his sight for more than a few moments together. 
 
 During this brief Indian summer he allowed himself to be 
 nursed, to have his bed made, the room cleaned and tidied; 
 to be tended and washed, raising his face like a child; doing 
 as he was bid, grateful and tender. It really seemed, indeed, 
 to himself less, perhaps, to Laura, who was now becoming 
 fearful of happiness that some fierce fire had burnt itself out, 
 leaving him at rest. In between the bouts of fever, indeed, he 
 floated upon a vague and blissful sea of indifference: when- 
 ever his temperature rose, as it did towards evening, he cared 
 for nothing but the present: his own suffering; his wife's 
 cool hand upon his forehead; the sense of her as near, and 
 
 219 
 
220 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 forever ready to open or shut a window, to turn his pillow, to 
 hold a cooling draught to his lips. 
 
 It passed oh, of course it passed! as Laura herself had 
 known it must. So short a while before everything had 
 seemed capable of permanence; she knew better now, growing 
 years older with the knowledge, miserly over her happiness. 
 
 Still, it might have lasted longer than it did, for it was not 
 ended, was still almost perfect not quite, for there was already 
 that sort of dryness, that shadow which one may see creeping 
 over the trees while summer is still at its height; the shadow of 
 autumn; of inevitable decay when Grobo called again, bring- 
 ing a jelly from his wife, with the kindest enquiries; sending 
 Laura to see if the invalid were awake and could receive him, 
 tiptoeing into his room, closing the door so gently behind him. 
 
 As she bent over some scraps of washing in the living- 
 room, she could hear nothing save a subdued murmur next 
 door; until, quite suddenly, Vortonitch's voice struck upon 
 her ear, shrill, as it was apt to be in moments of excitement: 
 
 "How can I do without her now? I'm ill, I tell you. 
 
 How can I be left alone in this state? I'm " breaking off 
 
 as Grobo interposed with a deadened flow of indistinguishable 
 words, running on and on and on. Now and then, as they 
 broke for a moment, Laura realised that her husband was 
 speaking, but that was all. 
 
 Once Grobo opened the door sharply, and peered out: 
 "We're not disturbing you, I 'ope, Madame?" he asked, and 
 she answered, " No," puzzled by the question. It was far 
 later that it occurred to her to wonder if he had suspected her 
 of listening at the door, tried to catch her. 
 
 At last he came out, closed the bedroom door behind him, 
 and picking up his hat from the table where he had laid it. 
 smoothed it round with his sleeve. " I am sorry to find our 
 poor Paul not so well, Madame 
 
 Laura turned, wiping her hand upon a towel, her grave 
 face, so soft and young in that half-light, full of trouble. 
 
 " 'E is much grieved, downsetting 'imself over your posi- 
 tion with your own people, Madame," continued Grobo. '' 'E 
 feels, if anything were to 'appen to 'im . . ." He hesitated, 
 drawing up his lower lip, gazing at her benignly through his 
 great round glasses. "Teh, tch! Ah, well, it is natural!" 
 
 "But he is not so ill not ill like that!" Laura took a 
 step forward, gazing at him, alarmed and puzzled. " He went 
 out too soon, that is all; he wouldn't take any care of himself; 
 he got wet through. But in a few days he'll be all right again." 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 221 
 
 Grobo dropped his eyes, looking into his hat, turning it 
 round with a sort of grave concern. 
 
 " I think, if I were you, Madame, I would write to my 
 parents." 
 
 "How can I? When they said . . . Oh, he knows. It is 
 no use: we must live our own lives." 
 
 " Yes," said Grobo, " so long as . . ." He paused, pulling 
 at his under-lip, like a child. 
 
 "So long as . . .? What do you mean?" Laura moved 
 nearer; then, as he did not answer, realising, oh, so well, the 
 effect of suspense, touched his arm. "What do you mean? 
 What can you mean by that?" 
 
 "So long so long as you both have a life to live, eh, 
 Madame?" 
 
 " Oh, but indeed you're mistaken. He's not ill like that 
 indeed he's not." Laura spoke with passion, and, more, with 
 conviction; for no reason at all it came into her head that an 
 attempt was being made to frighten her. " If only he'll take 
 care of himself, let me take care of him, he'll soon get well: 
 he is better now. If he was so ill, he'd not improve like this." 
 
 " 'E can't get well while 'e is un'appy, as 'e is now, 
 Madame. 'E 'as great worries, grave worries. 'E feels that 
 'e 'as taken you from your own 'ome, your own peoples, and 
 that 'e can now do nothing for you." 
 
 "What more do I want? I've everything I want. What 
 did he mean when he called out that he couldn't be left?" she 
 challenged Grobo, bravely enough, and desperately, too; for 
 quite suddenly a sense of complete helplessness overcame her. 
 a feeling as though she were fighting her way through or over 
 a mountain of cotton- wool. Hitherto she had taken this 
 rotund little man at his face value, as an inoffensive clerk 
 or shopman, the husband of a remarkable wife, the father of 
 remarkable children. Now, for no special reason whatever, 
 she realised a certain significance and power, a ruthlessness. 
 The thought of his effect upon her husband during the last 
 few days came to her; the thought of his friends, Stein among 
 others; the memory of a haggard-faced man who had called 
 at these very rooms only a week or two earlier, to enquire if 
 he were there; a man whose features she had seemed to 
 recognise later in the portrait of a suicide in one of the 
 daily illustrated papers; while added to all this were the 
 strange, the sinister assertions let fall by Albert, that strange 
 and sinister child, with the words "my father says" tagged 
 on as quotation marks. 
 
222 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 All this flooded her mind; not definitely, or in itself, as 
 it were, but as an atmosphere which, hanging around Grobo, 
 seemed to have become charged with antagonism; danger, 
 even, though that was far too melodramatic a word to take 
 any actual form in her naturally unimaginative mind. 
 
 " 'E thought as 'ow it would be best for you to return for 
 a little bit, when 'e could go into some 'ome or 'ospital until 
 'e could regain 'is strength eh? Come, now, Madame!" 
 
 "Home or hospital? But he is not ill enough for that." 
 Laura spoke obstinately; but her own voice sounded flat, 
 without power, in her ears. 
 
 "'E thought 'e would," continued Grobo mildly. "It 
 was 'is own idea, Madame; and then 'e thought 'e wouldn't. 
 'E is sick, 'e 'as no fix in 'is mind. Afterwards 'e thought 'e 
 would send you 'ome, an' stay 'ere alone; an' then it came 
 to 'im as 'ow 'e couldn't bear to part with you, and 'e called 
 out as you 'eard 'im." 
 
 " But how could I go home? How could I leave him when 
 he is ill? Why, I've done everything for him; we've been 
 everything to each other. To go home now! They would 
 think . . . Oh, I couldn't don't you see I couldn't?" For 
 the life of her she could not have said why she appealed to 
 Grobo, as though he had anything to do with it, as though it 
 had anything to do with him. But there it was: with a sud- 
 den access of instinct, wiser than reason, she felt as though she 
 could have thrown herself upon her knees at the man's feet, 
 begging and entreating him for what? for what? Not for 
 life, not for her life or her husband's, but their happiness 
 together all it meant to them. 
 
 "How can I go? If I go now, even if I write . . ." She. 
 hesitated: a sense of fear that she could not trust herself to 
 handle two such strangely diverse threads of life life as it 
 was at her old home, as it was here came over her; a feeling 
 as though it were all utterly beyond her. " Don't talk of it 
 to anyone," Vortonitch had warned her, speaking of their 
 love: she had escaped once, because she had been swept off 
 her feet, with no time for talk; but now now . . . Her 
 whole safety had lain in complete separation from her family. 
 If she were not beaten down, she would at least be worn out 
 by arrangements and dissuasion, by her own affection, the 
 claims of conscience. She had known this all the while, and 
 for this reason she had not dared to give rein to any feeling 
 apart from that for her husband. 
 
 "I can't do it." She spoke with the blunt simplicity of 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 223 
 
 one who sees and realises the end of her powers. Ridiculously 
 enough, she still held the towel upon which she had been 
 drying her hands, clasping it to her bosom. The fireless room 
 was very cold, and she had thrown a square of some dark 
 material over her shoulders like a shawl. The sun was setting 
 in a glow of dull gold behind a dark mass of St. Bartholo- 
 mew's Hospital, and, high up as they were, the slanting attic 
 window caught it, setting a fine gold line round Laura's head. 
 Carl Grobo, who was a sentimentalist, with an eye to beauty, 
 found himself reminded of a picture of Mary at the Cross: her 
 life was nothing to him, he would have used her as a torch to 
 any sort of blaze he set his mind to; but for all that, he was 
 touched by the picture of this young wife, so devoted, so fair. 
 
 "If it is for 'is good, to save 'is life ?" 
 
 " Oh, but it can be no question of that; if he was as ill as 
 
 all that " Laura broke off, overcome by a sense of her 
 
 own ignorance. How could she say how ill he was? For 
 that they must have a doctor, and a doctor would mean 
 money; she had no idea how much, but everyone, she knew, 
 growled over the doctor's bills. Little wonder that, with her mind 
 in this state, Grobo's last argument, carefully thought out, 
 carefully timed as it was, struck home. 
 
 "You must not judge by your own people, Madame. 
 Paul 'as not the splendid stamina, the so magnificently well- 
 nourished youth be'ind him. 'E 'as suffered much," he said; 
 and left it at that, bowing his way out of the room, a little on 
 tiptoe in the overtight boots which were his one personal 
 vanity; while Laura turned towards her husband's door, opened 
 it, and, finding him hunched together over the dying fire, 
 brought broken wood and small pieces of coal from the cup- 
 board on the landing, knelt to replenish it. 
 
 " Directly you are warm again, I think you'd be better back 
 in bed," she said, as it leapt and sparkled; sitting back on her 
 heels to watch the blaze, apparently engrossed with the fire; her 
 mind busied over the thought of what, or how much, she might 
 venture to say to Vortonitch: anxious and yet not daring to 
 show her anxiety. For, happy as the last few days had been, 
 they were overshadowed by the memory of those long periods 
 during which she had scarcely dared to speak for fear of saying 
 the wrong thing. To her momentary relief, her husband laid 
 one hand upon her shoulder, and spoke more like his old self. 
 
 "You've burdened yourself with a useless piece of goods, 
 my Laura. A nice tangle we've got ourselves into! What 
 are we to do now, eh?" 
 
224 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 " First go off, I'll get the kettle on and make you some tea. 
 Mr. Grobo stayed too long; your hands are like ice." She 
 dropped her cheek to the one lying on her shoulder. "Why, 
 I can feel it freezing through my blouse." 
 
 "Yes, yes, tea that's capital! The one solace left us, 
 eh?" Vortonitch spoke with a sort of light bitterness which 
 failed to ring true. As she moved about the room, waiting 
 for the kettle to boil, drawing the curtains, lighting the gas, 
 Laura felt him watching her, wistfully and yet almost fur- 
 tively, averting his eyes when she glanced up. 
 
 Directly he had finished his tea, he went back to bed: 
 here at least was physical comfort and peace, and he hugged it 
 to himself. Grobo had issued an order, and it must be 
 obeyed, however much he might, at the moment, shrink from 
 effort; unless well, unless he threw up everything, and that 
 even more definitely than before. He found himself wonder- 
 ing how far his life would be safe, once really suspected of 
 desertion. Not that he feared the thought of death. What he 
 did fear was that desperate sense of depression and despair, 
 like nothing he had ever before experienced, which had over- 
 come him before that first visit of Grobo's something worse, 
 far worse than any death; for then, for the first time, literally 
 for the first time, he had doubted any possible rebound; been 
 overcome by the thought of all that remained of life dragging 
 itself out like this; with no danger for poverty in itself held 
 no special fears for him no temptation, no exciting possi- 
 bilities. How appaling it had been to picture himself as the 
 ordinary married man of infinitesimal means, his wife for ever 
 there, fraying out before his eyes! For dearly as he loved 
 Laura, in his loving moods, she might have held him better 
 could she have combined the sweetness of her purity with the 
 uncertainty of her possession as his mistress. 
 
 As she smoothed the sheet beneath his chin, with her old 
 exaggerated motherliness, which was half a game between 
 them, he pulled her to him. 
 
 " Lay your head on the pillow by me; I want to speak to 
 you," he said; then, before she had time to comply: "Laura, 
 it's the end; we can't go on like this." 
 
 "How do you mean?" Almost unconsciously she drew 
 herself upright, stiffening under the attack. 
 
 " Oh, well, can't you see? You'll have to write to your 
 people; you'll have to go home for awhile. There's no help for 
 it. I'd no business to take you away, to run you into this." 
 
 "I can't go." 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 225 
 
 " You must go." 
 
 "It's Grobo who put the idea into your head: you'd 
 never have thought of it otherwise." 
 
 "What nonsense! what folly!" Vortonitch drew himself 
 upright against the pillow, the colour flaming to his cheeks. 
 " Do you imagine I'd have Grobo, or anyone else, interfere 
 with my private affairs?" 
 
 "I'm sure he did." 
 
 "You can be sure as you like, but the fact remains 
 we can't carry on like this. You'll have to go." 
 
 "Supposing I refuse?" 
 
 "Supposing I leave you?" For a moment their glances 
 met, full of a fierce challenge. Then Vortonitch turned aside, 
 speaking querulously, dropping a little in the bed, drawing the 
 blankets up over his shoulders. "You can think of no one 
 but yourself. You fuss over me, pretending to nurse me, to 
 be overcome with anxiety; you say you'd do anything for 
 me, and yet . . ." He broke off with an angry shrug. 
 
 "What is it you want me to do you yourself, Paul?" 
 
 "Haven't I told you? I want you to write to your 
 people, see if they'll have you back for a bit. Give me time 
 to look round me, to get better, free of all this eternal petty 
 worry." 
 
 "What would you do?" 
 
 " Grobo thought I'd be better in a nursing-home for a 
 while; and then I must find a job." 
 
 " Oh ! " For some reason which she could not have 
 explained, Laura moved over to the window, pulled aside a 
 corner of the curtain, and, pressing her face against the glass, 
 peered out. 
 
 The pink glow was lost in two masses of cloud, dirty 
 umber and dull blackish-grey. For a moment or so she stood 
 silent; then, letting the curtain fall, turned back to her 
 husband's bedside, and, dropping upon her knees, drew his 
 hand into her own. 
 
 At first it seemed as though he would drag it away, like a 
 fractious child; then he let it lie there, relinquishing it with 
 a slight shrug. 
 
 " Paul, do you really mean that you want me to write, to 
 ask them to let me go back, to forgive me, as if well, as if I 
 was sorry?" 
 
 "That's the meaning they might put into it; it has 
 nothing to do with you," answered Vortonitch sullenly. 
 
 "But you mean it? to leave you, to go back!" 
 
226 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 "Good God, girl, you talk as though it were the affair of 
 a lifetime! A week or two at the most. Look here, Laura: 
 do you imagine that it isn't as hard for me as it is for you 
 that I've no feelings of any sort in the matter?" 
 
 He glanced at her sideways, her grave, almost preoccupied 
 face. Quite suddenly he was alarmed, remembering all that 
 Grobo had said of the obstinacy of this type of woman " the 
 English lady." At the same moment he was overpowered by a 
 conviction that he desired nothing on earth save to be free to 
 indulge in whatever adventure might offer; and upon this, 
 without a single qualm, he took the one course which would, 
 as he well knew, prove effectual. 
 
 "For my sake, Laura, whatever it may cost me and 
 God only knows what it will cost me I want you to do as I 
 ask; so that I may prove myself, make some sort of life 
 possible for us both. Not because I don't love you, but 
 because I love you better than anything else in life. Laura 
 my precious, my love see here, I'm more ill than you think; 
 if I didn't care, if I didn't worry so, it would be easier, but 
 now . . . Good God! Laura, can't you see what it costs me 
 to send you away from me? But it's the only way; I know 
 it's the only way, if I'm not to kill myself with self-reproach." 
 
 A month earlier she would have had her arms about his 
 neck at this, promising anything, anything. But now she rose 
 to her feet with an expression which Vortonitch was unable to 
 fathom upon her face. " I will think it over," she said ; hesi- 
 tated a moment, gazing at him, and then, turning, moved 
 away into the next room. 
 
 Was she ceasing to care? Was he losing his power over 
 her? Did she suspect anything? The blood pounded 
 through Vortonitch's veins as he lay wondering. That was 
 always the difficulty with women; one never knew never, 
 never: the more they talked, the less they said. And the worst 
 of it all was one wanted so much, and yet, at the same time, 
 wanted to be free of so much. Even now he was in two minds 
 whether or not to call Laura back. He was growing feverish 
 again; he knew it. If only she might lie down by his side, 
 fold him in her arms, petting, comforting he would be all 
 right; but the devil of it all was she would be asking then, and 
 with reason: "How can I leave you? How is it possible for 
 you to do without me?" 
 
 With a groan of despair he pulled the blankets up above 
 his ears and turned over upon his side, burying his head in the 
 pillows. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 LATER that same evening, upon the pretense of enquiring 
 after Lily, Laura went round to the Grobo's flat. 
 
 As it happened, Lily had been worse the night before, and 
 so passed the day in bed, where she now was sleeping, with the 
 baby in the hollow of her arm; for devoted as her mother was, 
 she showed herself completely disregardf ul or was it fatalistic 
 in respect to any infection from that dread complaint which 
 had made itself so plainly evident in her little daughter, with 
 ravages so rapid and remorseless that it seemed as though the 
 disease must end by taking upon itself some sort of bodily 
 form, an insatiate beast fattened and bloated by the young 
 life upon which it had fed. 
 
 When Laura arrived, Mrs. Grobo was out, little Marie, 
 aged six, and the two toddlers playing with their bricks upon 
 the hearthrug, absorbed and self-sufficient, as every single 
 member of that family appeared to be. 
 
 It was with a sort of courteous condescension, indeed, that 
 they allowed her to join them; though, once established, they 
 held back, fascinated by her superior skill, demanding none of 
 her attention for themselves in the way that most children 
 would have done. 
 
 As to Laura, as she sat crouched upon her heels, adding 
 storey to storey with a steady hand, her mind was engrossed 
 in the thought of what Vortonitch had said to her, while she 
 repeated his words over and over again to herself, her own 
 objection to and fears for his plans, as she would put them to 
 Mrs. Grobo, sure of her sympathy and affection. 
 
 The place was very still, for the children were awed to 
 silence by the height to which she had brought her erection 
 a sort of Eiffel Tower; though every now and then, as yet 
 another tier was added, there was an irresistible giggle, a 
 long-drawn "A-a-ah!" 
 
 Their eyes were bright, their round faces flushed. Charles 
 lay flat upon his stomach, his legs in the air, his chin cupped 
 in his hands; while the other two squatted bent forwards. 
 
 A bright fire was burning in the stove, the kettle singing. 
 
 227 
 
228 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 the cat purring. Nothing could have seemed more conven- 
 tionally homely and peaceful; and yet, to Laura's mind, it 
 was all changed, overhung by her own trouble, charged with 
 that new conception of Grobo himself which had come to her 
 that afternoon. It would be different when Mrs. Grobo came 
 in; she told herself this again and again; for she, above all 
 people, possessed that delightful faculty of smoothing out. 
 putting things to rights. And, after all, it was she, and not 
 her husband, who really counted, or so Laura pushing forward 
 this certainty in front of her vague fears, using it as a sort 
 of shield told herself. 
 
 Someone was moving about overhead in the loft, which 
 she never imagined as anything more than a box-room, and it 
 made her nervous. Of a sudden, her hand shook, the tower 
 fell with a crash, and there was a loud wail from little 
 Charles, always the most exuberant of the three. 
 
 At that moment Mrs. Grobo opened the door, and stood 
 looking in upon them, with Joseph, the boy next in age to 
 Albert, at her elbow. She was carrying a basket so evidently 
 weighty that it dragged her all on one side; while it must have 
 begun to rain, heavily too, since Laura came in, for the water 
 streamed from off their clothes, and the brim of Mrs. Grobo's 
 hat was bent over her eyes, dripping. 
 
 "Laura!" For the first time there seemed more of 
 surprise than pleasure in her voice; and she did not even greet 
 the girl, beyond that one word, as she moved forward to the 
 table, raised the basket with an effort and placed it upon it, 
 enquiring: "Where is Grobo? Is he not here?" 
 
 " I think not. . . . There is someone moving about in the 
 attic, but I . . ." Laura spoke confusedly, breaking off 
 without knowing what to say, for it seemed that the homelike 
 atmosphere of this place, where she had been so happy, had 
 suddenly grown strange, almost repellent: while she felt as 
 though she were being deliberately shut out of something, she 
 could not have said what. "Why, I don't believe you ever, 
 put up your umbrella, you hopeless people!" she added with 
 a little laugh,, realising the folded umbrella in Joseph's hand, and 
 catching at the obvious with as much relief as though she were 
 among strangers, unable to feel at ease upon any subject. 
 
 " I hadn't a hand to spare." The answer was reasonable 
 enough; but something in Mrs. Grobo's voice showed that it 
 was automatic, that she had no thought for what she was 
 saying. "Joseph, you must go and take off your wet things 
 at once; and you little ones ought to be in bed." 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 229 
 
 Even here, the words, the concern for her children, seemed 
 to Laura's mind merely perfunctory; it was not the thought 
 of them, nor was it her wet clothes which engrossed her, 
 though she took off her sodden hat and turned aside to shake 
 it with a little exclamation of annoyance. "Teh, tch! And 
 not only your shoes and stockings, Joseph everything," she 
 was beginning again, when she came back to earth, as it were, 
 with an extraordinary cry, the most terrifying and terror-laden 
 sound imaginable, swinging round to the table, where little 
 Charles, clambering on a chair in search of sweeties, or out of 
 mere curiosity, had dragged the basket towards him, and with 
 one arm buried in it, held it all toppled sideways at the extreme 
 edge of the table. 
 
 "Ah-a-ah!" This cry, so alien to everything in ordinary 
 life, so wild with fear, was followed by the sound of a smart 
 smack, a howl, the crash of the child falling from the chair to 
 the floor. 
 
 Laura, who had been reaching up to hang Joseph's wet 
 coat on a peg behind the door, turned with her heart in her 
 throat, and stood staring. 
 
 She had never before known Mrs. Grobo, so calm and 
 slow-moving, to strike one of the children, even to raise her 
 voice; and that cry she felt as though, even now, she must 
 raise her hands to her ears to shut it out; as though she could 
 never forget it, never, never so long as she lived. And yet, 
 amazing as the sound, the action might be, the aspect of 
 the woman herself was even more strange; for, without so 
 much as a glance at the child upon the floor, this good mother, 
 who at any other time would have run to pick him up, com- 
 fort him, had thrown herself across the basket: seemed, 
 indeed, to be gathering it, hugging it to her breast, not looking 
 at it, but away from it, as though she feared to see it, her eyes 
 staring into space, her mouth fixed wide, as though, having 
 uttered that one cry, she was too terror-stricken for another. 
 
 At the same moment the door in the wall at the top of the 
 stairway opened, and Albert appeared in the aperture; while 
 Lily, in her nightgown and bare-footed, flung open the bedroom 
 door, with a hoarse scream of : 
 
 "It's come . . .Mother . . .mother . . 0-o-o-h!" break- 
 ing off, coughing, both arms extended, clinging to the sides 
 of the doorway, shaking like a leaf. 
 
 Mrs. Grobo's attitude and expression, following upon that 
 cry, something in Albert's face, Lily, the child on the floor, all 
 alike struck upon Laura's mind with a terrifying effect, an 
 
230 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 actual threat of something never yet so much as thought of: 
 not only in relation to what had happened the trifling offence 
 of an over-greedy child of what was happening, but of what 
 might happen, dreadful beyond all words: a threat of some- 
 thing hourly expected, forever hanging over the little family, 
 fully realised by the mother and, at any rate, the two elder 
 children, whose daily life, tasks, games were pursued under the 
 shadow of it: a shadow so close that it had become familiar 
 and almost disregarded. 
 
 "By God! I thought . . ." It seemed as though words 
 failed Albert, even Albert! His peaked face was haggard as 
 he moved forwards down the stairs, with something drawn- 
 back, as it were, in his very advance. At that moment as he 
 broke off, his chin trembling, and reaching the floor, seeming 
 to try it with his feet, finding it firm and standing there, his 
 shoulders high, his clenched hands drawn up to them, he 
 might have been any age; while his mother made a move- 
 ment with her mouth as though to bid him be silent, in her 
 old way; drawing her tongue round her lips, raising her 
 neck and shoulders a trifle, her breast still pressed down 
 across the basket, 
 
 "That little beast!" Albert shook himself, speaking 
 with the irritation of one who finds himself needlessly alarmed, 
 indicating the still prostrate Charles with one foot. " Such 
 a bang, such a row, I thought " 
 
 "What what is it? ... Oh, mother, how it startled 
 me! I was asleep." Lily dropped one hand from the door 
 and drew the sleeve of her nightgown across her mouth. " Oh 
 mother, look, look! Blood again! Oh, mother, mother! 
 And I was better, I was sleeping; and now now . . ." Her 
 voice broke as a sudden flood of tears ran down her face, a 
 sort of ague shaking her from head to foot. "Oh, mother, 
 mother!" She drew back her arm, with the stained sleeve, 
 gazing at it in horror. 
 
 Mrs. Grobo drew herself upright painfully, as though 
 pulling against something which held her, bent double, and 
 pushed the basket forward to the center of the table. " Noth- 
 ing, nothing . . . No, not that. No, no! Nothing, I tell 
 you. Charles fell off the chair, that's all that's . . ." She 
 broke off, pressing both hands to her ears. The baby in the 
 inner room had awoken, and missing the warmth of its 
 sister's body, added its quota to the general clamour; for 
 Charles raising his head a little, glancing sideways and 
 upwards had realised that no one was noticing him, and 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 231 
 
 broke into fresh howls, determined to attract attention to 
 himself. 
 
 " Anyhow, you've got it safe," said Albert, speaking loudly 
 in his effort at self-assertion, stretched out his hand towards 
 the basket. " I'll take it upstairs, out of the way, now." 
 
 "No, no. No, I say! It's too heavy; you might drop 
 it." Mrs. Grobo glanced round as though in distraction; the 
 table against which she was leaning, heavy as it was, shook. 
 
 " Mother oh, mother ! " reiterated Lily. " Don't you 
 see? Oh, don't you see?" 
 
 "Yes, yes. Yes, my darling." For the first time, as it 
 seemed, Mrs. Grobo's conscious glance fell upon Laura. 
 
 "Laura, take Lily to bed for me; see to her. . . . Yes, 
 yes, my darling, I will come in a minute. I must get off my 
 wet things; I'd chill you if I touched you now. Joseph, take 
 Charles with you, and the others. . . . Laura, give her some 
 of her mixture; and hot water she must have a hot- water 
 bottle. In a moment, my precious; in a moment." 
 
 "Yes, yes, I will see to her. Get your wet things off." 
 Laura, who was pulling on her gloves, feeling that she ought to 
 go. and yet too bewildered to make any definite move, relieved 
 to find herself of some use, put an arm round Lily and drew 
 her off to bed, gave her her mixture; then filled a hot- water 
 bottle and, wrapping her round in the blankets, laid it at her 
 side, for she was shivering from head to foot. 
 
 Going back into the living-room for boiling water, she 
 found it empty, though there was the sound of movement in 
 the attic overhead. 
 
 Careful not to use all the hot water, for she had promised 
 Lily a cup of tea, she petted the baby off to sleep, made sure 
 that the haemorrhage had really ceased and that Lily was as 
 comfortable as she could make her, then, returned to the 
 kitchen, set out the cups and teapot, feeling more at home and 
 sure of herself. For, whatever had happened, might have 
 happened, or was going to happen, there was no reason for 
 them all to die of cold, and there was nothing more reviving 
 than a hot drink or so she told herself, finding some comfort 
 in that direct objective of waiting until the kettle boiled. 
 For, in crises of this sort, in all the joys and difficulties, the 
 disturbing excitements of her new life, it seemed as though she 
 braced herself by a tight hold upon the practical, as a man 
 might brace himself with outstretched feet, his back against a 
 wall. 
 She had taken Lily her cup, and carried a well-sweetened 
 
232 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 portion along the passage to Joseph, was coming back with his 
 wet shoes and stockings in her hand, when Mrs. Grobo clam- 
 bered heavily down the attic stairs, and falling into a chair by 
 the fire, laid her head sideways against the jamb of the mantel- 
 shelf, her face grey with exhaustion, her wet clothes clinging 
 to her, steaming in the heat. 
 
 Handing her a cup of tea, Laura dropped to her knees and, 
 regardless of her protests, undid her boots and drew them off; 
 peeled away the sodden woollen stockings. 
 
 Albert, standing by, sniggered, ashamed of his display of 
 panic, anxious to reassert himself: "The General's daughter!" 
 he said. "Only look at the General's daughter!" 
 
 " Be quiet, and get me your mother's slippers. Now, make 
 haste about it!" Laura, at the end of her patience with the 
 odious boy, turned upon him so sharply that he made a feint 
 of starting back as though afraid she was about to strike him, 
 grinning derisively, and yet obeying her command, as he 
 inevitably did do; bolstering up his pride with some silly 
 gibe about " the warlike daughter of the General, and the 
 son of the proletariat." 
 
 "I must go and see Lily," said Mrs. Grobo, glancing 
 towards the door of the bedroom, and yet without altering her 
 position, as though the effort of movement was beyond her; 
 the drag of intense fatigue in her voice, her cup of tea untasted 
 in her hand. 
 
 "You must drink your tea first, dear Mrs. Grobo; and 
 then go straight to bed. You're wet through." Laura rose 
 to her feet and pulled on her coat, which she had taken off so 
 as to move about more freely. "Can I trust you? I wonder 
 if I can trust you if I go?" 
 
 " Yes, yes, I promise. My dear, what a mother you would 
 make!" Mrs. Grobo began to sip her tea, then paused, 
 gazing at Laura over the top of her cup, her dark, melancholy 
 eyes seeming larger than usual, with the dark circles; more 
 withdrawn, veiling rather than betraying, a soul tender and 
 motherly, and yet, to the mind of the English girl, profoundly 
 obscure, manifestly unchangeable in some mysterious purpose. 
 " I don't know what I shall do without you, Laura," she added, 
 as though scarcely realising what she said. 
 
 Laura, turned, staring. "How do you know? That's 
 what I came about. Oh, Mrs. Grobo, I don't want to go I 
 can't go! Of course you'll see I can't. It's ridiculous!" 
 
 " You must go, if your husband wishes it." The elder 
 woman's voice was suddenly cold. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 233 
 
 "I don't know that he wishes it. How can I know? 
 Things are no worse than they were; we shall manage," cried 
 Laura, half-wildly, more bewildered than ever. 
 
 " You must do what he says." Mrs. Grobo rose stiffly, and 
 placing her cup on the table beside the now empty basket, 
 stood silent, as though everything had been said that could be 
 said. 
 
 "Perhaps Mr. Grobo thought perhaps he tried to per- 
 suade Paul, thinking it would be best. But how can I go? 
 If I go now oh, if I go now . . ." She broke off in despair, 
 pvercome by the feeling that, really and truly, if she did go 
 now, leave her husband, return to her own people, that would 
 be the end of everything; unable to express her feelings in 
 the face of the coldness of the woman whom she had so counted 
 upon. " Oh, well, I'm keeping you. You must get to bed. 
 And Paul . . ." She turned, blinded with tears, fumbled 
 for the handle of the door, and opened it. 
 
 Mrs. Grobo's voice followed her. "You must take the 
 umbrella; it may be raining still," she said. 
 
 But Laura did not turn or answer her. 
 
 As she was opening the passage door, Albert ran after her, 
 thrust the umbrella into her hand. 
 
 "Silly! What's the good of being in a paddy? You 
 women have got to learn to do as you're told," he said: 
 then, seeing that she took the umbrella mechanically, without 
 seeming to know what to do with it, he followed her down- 
 stairs, took it from her hand again, opened it for her at 
 the entrance with an awkward: 
 
 "All right don't you worry. I'll keep an eye on Vor- 
 tonitch for you. And you're best out of it General's 
 daughter and all that!" 
 
 He fell back; then, as she blundered forward, with the 
 open umbrella dipping forward in front of her, darted across 
 the pavement to her side, and drew her back, while a taxi 
 pulled up, hooting, not a yard in front of her. 
 
 "Ah, now! Teh, tch! can't you look where you're 
 going? What! trembling trembling! Frightened, eh?" 
 He gripped her arm with his bony fingers, his head below the 
 level of her shoulders, laughing patronisingly. "A nice 
 General's daughter, you!" 
 
 "I'm not the only one to be afraid," retorted Laura, 
 trying to shake him off. 
 
 " Oh, well, there was something to be afraid of you don't 
 know ... by Jove, if you knew!" His voice broke in a 
 
234 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 long whistle. "A taxi what's that? Oh, well, I suppose 
 I'd better see you to your own door, or Vortonitch will be 
 after me. Stein's right there's little enough to choose 
 between a wife and children. Even my mother putting the 
 basket right at the edge of the table, where the kid could get 
 at it and then, such a fuss!" 
 
 " Oh, well," Laura spoke vaguely, without thinking what 
 she was saying. " Jam and stuff like that's worth money now, 
 and once the jars are broken " 
 
 "Jam? Jam eh, what?" Albert gave a short laugh. 
 "Yes, yes, you are right there, my dear." 
 
 There was something maddeningly tantalising in his 
 words, and for a moment Laura, standing on the steps of her 
 own doorway, felt impelled to question him, but her pride 
 prevailed. It was no business of hers what went on at the 
 Grobos' and as to this business of going home that was her 
 affair, hers and her husband's. She would ask no more 
 advice from anyone. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 A WEEK later, Laura was at home, The changes which we 
 have regarded as impossible happen; the upheavals, the losses, 
 the readjustments for which we have at least, and des- 
 perately, demanded time, come to pass all in a moment, and 
 with surprise we find ourselves still alive; while, after a 
 while, if we are still sufficiently young, we begin, regretfully 
 and jealously enough feeling half disgraced by our in- 
 constancy to sorrow, our divergence from the dignity of that 
 king who never smiled again to savour life afresh. 
 
 There was no great scene of reconciliation between 
 Laura and her family: the Creichtons were not the sort of 
 people for that. The whole thing was arranged through the 
 mediation of Gerald Stratton. What Sir Harry said was: 
 "She can come home if she likes; but while she is at 
 home there's to be no carrying on with that fellow. Nobody 
 knows that she is married, or says she's married; we've been 
 able to keep that quiet, anyhow. She'll come back as she 
 was, as Miss Creichton. She'll not see or write to that chap 
 for six months; at the end of that time, if he has not dis- 
 appeared or married someone else, she can be re-married 
 decently, in church." 
 
 Here was the old family habit of arranging: the General 
 arranging himself, arranging his female belongings, as ostriches 
 in the sand; the only difference between himself and his wife 
 being that she knew what they were playing at, and he did 
 not. 
 
 No one was found with the temerity to say to him, "So 
 we hear Laura has run away and got married." That was 
 impossible in the face of his stand-and-deliver assertion that 
 Laura was in Switzerland, finishing off her education 
 " Winter sports, all that sort of thing, you know and I 
 dare you to contradict me!" He was almost threatening 
 upon this point; but he was also pitiable. Behind his cold 
 and arid stare there was something of the scared look of a 
 child who is " braving it out." Sometimes it seemed to his 
 wife that he had really begun to believe that Laura was in 
 
 235 
 
236 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 Switzerland: a state of affairs so much more creditable than 
 the fact of mutiny and desertion among his own special body- 
 guard. 
 
 However, and for whatever reason likely enough, many 
 reasons the fact remained that while everyone in Blackheath 
 knew that Laura Creichton had run away with a foreigner, and 
 was living maybe in sin, certainly in a state of poverty but 
 little less disgraceful, no one ventured to display their know- 
 ledge to the elder members of the family; for, discursive a? 
 Lady Creichton might be, she had held her reservations, held to 
 them, too, and made them felt. 
 
 As to Charles, the son, he had his own life, apart from it 
 all. Laura had made " an ass of herself." Oh, well, she was 
 an ass to do it, that was all might have known what foreigners 
 are. Everyone had a right to his or her own life, but mixing 
 the family up with foreigners who did not wash, in any sort 
 of way, that was a bit too thick. 
 
 Home on his vacation, he missed his sister, as he had 
 already missed her letters; had vague ideas of going to see 
 her, of writing. But, somehow or other, the time slipped 
 away, and he was overcome by an awkward shyness which he 
 would not have confessed to for worlds. " Laura was always 
 a bit soft," he said. "Anyone could get around Laura"; and 
 yet, all the while, there was at the back of his mind a sort of 
 admiration for, a wonder at, her courage. At any rate he was 
 unapproachable by the outside world; so enveloped in that 
 hard crust of stiffness, apparent indifference, or masculine 
 youth that no one so much as thought of interrogating 
 him. 
 
 Marjorie, of all the family, laid herself open to the wariness 
 and humiliation of outside discussion and questioning; while 
 it was Marjorie alone, the arrogant Marjorie, who had lost her 
 head. She had visions of Laura murdered by foreigners: 
 worse still, of Laura still unmarried, and appearing at home 
 with a baby, disgracing her. She made Vortonitch out as 
 being utterly impossible, working up that one sight she had 
 had of him into a fine picture of villainy; for with Marjorie 
 everything must to too dreadful, or too wonderful. So long as 
 she did all the talking, and talk she must, she was happy; 
 when she found that people took advantage of her talking to 
 question her, even to comment upon the family affairs, she 
 was up in arms at once. She wished that she had never 
 spoken of Laura; she almost wished that Laura had never 
 existed. When she heard that she was coming home, she 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 237 
 
 resented it. "Setting everyone off talking again!" that 
 was what she said. 
 
 " I wasn't aware that anyone was talking," answered 
 Lady Creichton mildly. "And I don't like anyone standing 
 and speaking to me with their back turned in that way." 
 She hesitated, her lips moving, glancing, from the knitting in 
 her hand to an elaborate illustration with printed instructions 
 propped up on the table in front of her. " When I was young, 
 I was taught . . . Four plain, and then two purl " 
 
 " I believe you'd go on like that knit, knit, knit what- 
 ever happened!" cried Marjorie angrily. 
 
 " Not to turn my back, let alone walk up and down the 
 room in that fashion swinging your arms!" went on her 
 mother calmly, as though there had been no pause whatever; 
 for she was no longer overridden by her younger daughter. 
 It was difficult to say why the fact of Laura having taken the 
 law so completely into her own hands had given her courage, 
 but it had done. Her very heartache, her incessant longing 
 for her elder daughter's presence, had strengthened her. In 
 some way it engrossed her so that she had little thought for 
 anything else; but there was more to it than this. If one 
 can imagine a tree already a trifle broken by time verging 
 upon a state of .dry-rot, never very luscious or vigorous, 
 cramped in growth, cut back to meet the requirements of its 
 owner sending out an exceptionally strong and far-spreading 
 shoot, bearing strange blossoms a " sport " of a shoot 
 and feeling proud of it, one may get at something of Lady 
 Creichton's mind. 
 
 " It's all very well for you," grumbled Marjorie; "people 
 don't say things to you." 
 
 "I wouldn't allow them to think of doing so, Marjorie, 
 I thought if I put a yellow border to this grey, of course a 
 very pale yellow . . . Oh, my dear, I forgot to tell Parker 
 Captain Markham and Mr. Jackson are dining here to-night 
 will you? I don't know what's happened; I've somehow 
 gone wrong, just there; there ought to be five of those little 
 square things, and there's only four." 
 
 "To-night! and Laura coming home!" 
 
 " I believe I shall have to undo to there no, to there 
 no. Now, I wonder . . ." Lady Creichton hesitated, one 
 pointed finger hovering over the squares forming the elaborate 
 pattern of her work. 
 
 " Oh, well, I suppose she won't put in an appearance." 
 
 "Who?" 
 
238 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 "Laura, of course." 
 
 "In her own home?" Lady Creichton's lips tightened. 
 "Why should she not 'put in an appearance,' as you say?" 
 
 "Why, good Lord! just imagine what people will think!" 
 Marjorie's face was flushed; she stood in her most awkward 
 attitude, her hands behind her back, her body thrust forward. 
 
 " One can't afford to show that one thinks of what people 
 think . . . Oh, it's there; I see now! I missed four stitches 
 there, and it's thrown the whole thing out. Dear, dear, dear, 
 isn't that tiresome! Don't forget to tell Parker, my dear: 
 and you might ask her to bring tea, and plenty of hot buttered 
 toast." 
 
 " Well, I shan't come down, anyhow." 
 
 "Down where? Marjorie, you really must have your 
 dresses longer, now." 
 
 " Down to dinner, of course." 
 
 " Oh, well, I daresay no one will notice not being out, 
 and all." 
 
 Marjorie was furious; she was at a disadvantage, and she 
 realised it. Somehow or other, it was impossible to say why, 
 she had felt herself at a disadvantage ever since Laura had 
 disgraced them by running away with a beastly foreigner. 
 Even her father would not discuss it with her, shut her out 
 from it all, so that she seemed to have lost her ascendancy 
 over him; also, one might say, for it was intangible and yet 
 completely gone, so far as her mother was concerned. AJid 
 yet, in some vague way, she found herself growing in respect 
 for the much-despised "last generation." "My word! but 
 they could keep things to themselves if they wanted to!" 
 Only imagine anyone daring to say to Lady Creichton, "Well, 
 how's Laura and her organ-grinder?" or tittering inanely, 
 "I suppose she'll have a monkey in a red jacket instead of a 
 baby!" like a friend of her own to whom she had run with a 
 tale of "that ass Laura, bolting with a man like an organ- 
 grinder ! " 
 
 Even the servants talked to her, questioned her; and her 
 cheeks burned at the thought of having herself started it all; 
 at the way in which they reminded her of what she herself 
 had said. 
 
 " One thing's certain, f ather'll never let her come home 
 again. Oh, I know him!" she had declared; and then 
 accusing the under-housemaid of wearing her sister's stock- 
 ings, flown into a rage at the impertinence of the retort: 
 " If she's never coming home again, what's the good of letting 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 23* 
 
 them rot there? Dozens of pairs an' things the price they 
 are." 
 
 Now, with Laura returning, " What are we to call her?" 
 they asked mockingly. "Oh, if she is still Miss Creichton! 
 What 'ud be said of the likes of us?" etc. Marjorie was filled 
 with discomfort and shame and rage beyond words; and yet 
 she had only herself to blame, not for their talk, but for their 
 daring to talk to her. 
 
 She determined to remain in her own room when Laura 
 arrived. But when the motor drew up at the door for Strat- 
 ton had fetched her and brought her home Marjorie's feelings 
 were too much for her, and she ran downstairs, was the first 
 to greet her sister, draw her into the hall, hug her, whispering: 
 
 "Laura, I say, good old Laura!" She was half -crying. 
 "Why, she's nothing but a bag of bones! I believe she'd 
 break if I squeezed her too tight," she declared aloud; then 
 began again: "My word! if that's what comes of being 
 married!" and broke off confusedly. Whatever was going 
 to happen, and her mind was extraordinarily set upon this 
 point, Laura was not going to have a baby: like a stick! so 
 thin, so straight up and down; and like a stick in other ways 
 also; so stiff, so restrained. 
 
 "No, no, I won't come in now," Gerald Stratton was 
 answering their mother's calm invitation to tea. 
 
 "But of course! What nonsense!" Lady Creichton had 
 kissed her elder daughter, clung to her for one moment. " Well, 
 Laura!" then added: "The dish with the hot toast's in the 
 fender I've got a new pattern for a border, but it's so 
 elaborate, it's gone wrong somehow. You'll have to help me." 
 
 That was all that was amazingly all; and from people 
 who were so ready to work themselves up over trifles. 
 
 Sir Harry Creichton came in, and kissed his elder daughter, 
 with a "Well, Laura!" then turned to Gerald Stratton, 
 enquiring whether he had seen an evening paper, and whether 
 there was any fresh news from Ireland. 
 
 Laura drank her tea and ate her toast so there was the 
 reason of that order for an extra lavish supply of toast; 
 Laura had always loved hot buttered toast. Marjorie's sharp 
 eyes raked her mercilessly, and yet not unkindly. She was 
 not only thin, she was dreadfully shabby; looked as though 
 she had not enough clothes on her: no furs, a quite hopeless 
 coat and skirt. She wore no ring, but there was a white line 
 round the base of the third finger of her left hand. 
 
 She had wept over this: it was the one occasion upon 
 
240 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 which she had made Gerald Stratton's delicate task more 
 difficult for him, lost her self-control. She would not promise 
 not to write to her husband, but she would promise not to see 
 him without telling her parents; not to tell anyone that she 
 was married, to take up her old place: "Just for six months, 
 only for six months or I couldn't bear it." But that question 
 of removing her ring she baulked at that! 
 
 Vortonitch was to go to Bournemouth for a fortnight to 
 recoup; she had been down and chosen his rooms for him, 
 spoken to his landlady about his meals . . . Oh yes, she had 
 accepted money from Stratton for this, though she would not 
 take a penny to fit herself out afresh. When Vortonitch 
 returned from the sea, he was going into one room to work: 
 she had chosen that also. She was so engrossed in arranging 
 for her husband's comfort that the possible difficulties which 
 awaited herself sank into nothingness. 
 
 As for Vortonitch himself, no one could say that he was of 
 the butterfly type, and yet to Stratton's mind there was 
 something in him of the butterfly; or was it, could it be, 
 the hawk? Come to think of it, they both had the same 
 ways, hovering, with quivering wings something bright and 
 hard, some quality not altogether human, which it was 
 impossible to take hold of. Outwardly he alternated between 
 self-pity, the pose of the deserted husband, the failure, the 
 bright, unselfish being, and the devoted lover; but at the 
 back of it all there was a sort of joyous excitement, something 
 of the air of a child mad to be free from the deadening in- 
 fluence of grown-ups. 
 
 And yet he loved Laura; at the last moment how he 
 clung to her, desperately; feeling that with her he was 
 losing the best of his life. For despite all that irresponsible 
 youthfulness which still clung to him, he realised, as only a 
 mature, almost middle-aged man could realise, that nothing 
 would ever be the same again; that he had eaten his cake 
 once and for all. 
 
 It was on the way down to Blackheath that Stratton had 
 though of Laura's wedding-ring, spoken of it; realising that 
 she would bear it better from him than from anybody else; 
 because, in some ways, he had known her and her husband's 
 life together, as well as anyone could know it. 
 
 " Lolly, I think you'll have to take that off." 
 
 "What?" She turned with wide eyes, a quick breath, 
 asking the question and yet, at the same moment, covering her 
 left hand with her right. " The child, oh the child ! " thought 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 241 
 
 Stratton. How strange it was that with her husband she 
 should show herself so maternal, and yet with him "just 
 Lolly," the old Lolly, changed in nothing apart from her 
 appearance, and yet, even that why, it might be nothing 
 more than the effect of a long illness. With a sense of happi- 
 ness, of hope, to which he had been a stranger for many 
 months, the possibility that this was, after all, what it might 
 be, came to him: this infatuation of Laura's, this mess into 
 which she had got herself; dangerous, mysterious, and deep- 
 seated, and yet, after all, an illness and not a death th?' 
 death in life involved in so many marriages for surely i 
 would not be impossible to dissolve a union such as this. 
 
 Strange how many and far-reaching thoughts can flash 
 through the mind in a moment. All this, and yet there was 
 scarcely a pause between Laura's question in reality, no 
 question and his own answer. "Your wedding-ring. You 
 see, my dear, it will be better not to begin by making 
 difficulties." 
 
 "To take it off not to wear it, you mean?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I can't! Oh, Stratty, don't you see that I can't? It 
 means everything. . . . Oh, I can't!" 
 
 " You could hang it round your neck, Lolly. I'll send you 
 a long fine chain. You need never be parted from it. Dear, 
 I do think you owe it to them. They've behaved very well." 
 
 " They left me alone, they never even wrote." The words 
 were so unjust, so unlike Laura, that they rebounded, striking 
 herself. " Oh, I know I had no right to expect it, but 
 Stratty, how I used to watch the post; how I used to listen 
 and watch for them! And then . . . You know I was happy, 
 you know how happy I was, Stratty . . . when there was 
 nothing, there seemed nothing left to do; nothing worth 
 doing." 
 
 " I don't think they understood that. I know they 
 didn't. Why, I didn't. I used to wonder if you ever though! 
 of them. Don't you remember, we spoke of it?" 
 
 "That was only at first." 
 
 "I know; but how could you expect them to know? 
 Directly you wrote, directly 1 spoke oi your coming home, 
 they were ready to meet you iiaii-\vay. Laura, you know what 
 they are; you know what anything like pretence or secrecy 
 must mean to people of that sort. Don't make it more 
 difficult." 
 
 "Why not say straight out that I am married?" 
 
242 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 "I think that would make it more difficult for you, too; 
 putting the whole thing into words, giving everyone a chance 
 of asking how and when; and why your husband isn't there, 
 why you're not with him." 
 
 "He might be in India," said Laura forlornly. "So 
 many husbands are in India." 
 
 "Oh, my dear, they know better than that." Stratton 
 gave a little laugh. " I expect, if the truth were told, they 
 know everything people always do. The only thing is, by 
 our pretending, to force them into pretending that they know 
 nothing." 
 
 "What's the good of it all?" 
 
 " Don't you see, they daren't question you, or your people. 
 The same sort of thing goes on everywhere, in everything; 
 it's the one protection of what we call our privacy." 
 
 "Oh!" cried Laura. "But you know, Stratty, you 
 know! You might think of a thing of that sort, but not them. 
 You know oh, you know what they think, mother and dad. 
 That I'd give it up because it's a failure; that I don't really 
 care; that in the end they'll 'pretend' me out of being 
 married. I know I know; they've always been like that. 
 They think if they don't mention a thing that it ceases to 
 exist. But nothing can alter it nothing nothing!" She 
 turned to him wildly, the tears raining down her face, her left 
 hand still enfolded. Her plain little black felt hat was pushed 
 on one side, her hair, with none of the old spring left in it, 
 drooped untidily round her ears; for she had flung on her 
 things anyhow; her cheap serge coat fitted so badly that it 
 rounded out upon either shoulder, showing the hollows in her 
 neck; her face was white, her nose red with the cold, for it 
 was a bitter, dank day, with the threatening of a yellow fog. 
 At that moment she was as plain as plain could be, and yet 
 Stratton, one of the most eligible bachelors in London, would 
 have given all that he possessed in the world to have taken her 
 in his arms, passionately. In place of this, he played the 
 heavy, patient father. 
 
 "We know all that, Lolly, you and I? and I don't think 
 that there's ever any reason to fight about what we know, do 
 you?" he said quietly. 
 
 She pulled herself together at this, with a strangely forlorn 
 shake of her head. By that time they were rattling over the 
 cobblestones of Deptf ord Broadway, and, putting the speaking- 
 tube to his mouth, Stratton told his chauffeur to stop; then, 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 243 
 
 getting out, disappeared into a small jeweller's shop; emerged 
 from that, shaking his head, and entered a draper's, from 
 which he bought a length of narrow black ribbon. 
 
 "They had no chain long enough, worth anything," he 
 said; "but I'll send you one to-morrow. Now " 
 
 Laura had already taken off her ring, and running it onto 
 the ribbon, Stratton hung it round her neck, where it dipped 
 away out of sight. 
 
 Of course Marjorie's eyes were on the ribbon; and the 
 first moment they were alone together she questioned her 
 sister about it: "What's that? Have you got something 
 hung on it?" 
 
 "Yes," answered Laura, and turned away. After all, if* 
 it was to be a secret, it should be a real secret; and no one 
 should be allowed to question her, not even oh, above all! 
 Marjorie. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE promised chain arrived next morning, the finest gold 
 links, replacing the ribbon, and far less conspicuous; com- 
 forting Laura with its tacit acknowledgment that someone 
 was thinking of her, modifying the dull flatness of that first 
 day, when it was so difficult to realise what she had ever 
 found to do with herself. 
 
 There was no letter from Vortonitch, and of course she 
 was a silly to have expected it, when she had only left him 
 latish the afternoon before. 
 
 But there was still no letter next day, by any single one 
 of the posts which hung like beads upon her string of thought; 
 or the day after that, or the day after that either; nothing 
 whatever for ten days; and even then nothing from Vor- 
 tonitch himself, but a heartbroken note from Mrs. Grobo, to 
 say that Lily was dying, and begging to see her. 
 
 Laura showed the letter to her father, and he raised no 
 special objection to her going, though he was plainly con- 
 cerned over what he regarded as the thin end of a wedge. 
 Still, if the child was really dying, he was too much of a 
 gentleman, too humane, to attempt to stand between her and 
 her last wish. Only, as he said to Laura : " Remember, you 
 can't live in two worlds; it's got to be one thing or another." 
 
 "Two worlds!" Could there have been more completely 
 two worlds? People have a way of arguing that life upon the 
 other planets is impossible because the conditions are so 
 different, with no conception of the diversity in conditions 
 upon this earth, scarcely a stone's-throw away. 
 
 The Grobos' flat seemed more crowded than ever, and 
 hopelessly untidy, which it had never been before. At "The 
 House " illness had appeared as, mainly, an affair of trays, 
 very white tray-cloths and napkins, shining silver and glass, 
 and something particularly tempting in the way of soup in 
 special little bowls with lids; jelly or eggs, extra thin toast in 
 a tiny rack; and eau-de-Cologne in the water in which one 
 was washed. 
 
 It was not like this at the Grobos': the haemorrhage was 
 244 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 245 
 
 almost constant by now, and Lily was dying in an atmosphere 
 of bloodstained towels, unmade beds and unwashed dishes, 
 for the whole family was overcome by a sense of despair 
 which paralysed all outside effort, in a crowded room, with 
 the other children peering in through the door, curious, rest- 
 less and awe-stricken. 
 
 The letter had only arrived by the afternoon post, and it 
 was five o'clock by the time that Laura reached the flat. 
 Albert, with his bag of school-books, overtook her going up 
 
 the stairs, and she caught at his arm: "Albert, is she ?" 
 
 The words stuck in her throat, so that she could get no further. 
 
 "I don't know how can I know? Take your hand off 
 me. Ah, Stein's right it's best not to have children. All 
 this fuss!" 
 
 His face was drawn and twisted; beneath his impatience 
 was suffering, which, in place of melting him, burnt like a 
 white fire; flaring up in contemptuous anger. 
 
 Stein himself was sitting upon the top step of the stairs. 
 "Ho, ho! What have we here? The General's daughter 
 again!" he cried, with a loud laugh, moving a little on one 
 side to let them pass. 
 
 "Aren't you coming in?" enquired Albert. 
 
 "I? No, thank you with the house packed tight with 
 squealers," he answered. " I'm here because . . . Oh, 
 well, they may be glad of someone with a head on his 
 shoulders." 
 
 Joseph opened the door. He was in his shirt-sleeves, his 
 braces hanging loose; his white face smeared with tears and 
 the marks of dirty fingers : " She's dying," he said, with a 
 gesture of utter despair: one of those gestures with which 
 every member of the family seemed capable of expressing any 
 shade of feeling. 
 
 They went into the living-room, where Albert slammed 
 his books down upon the table, while Charles already paler 
 and older, as it seemed winced like a grown-up person ridden 
 with nerves: "A-a-ah!" then ran to Laura, and hugged her 
 round the knees. "Lily is dying dying! What is it, this 
 dying? I'm frightened! I want my tea Laura will you get 
 me my tea and make me toast?" 
 
 The bedroom door was open; she heard Mrs. Grobo's 
 voice: "Is that Laura?" and entering, found her sitting by 
 the bedside, with one arm under Lily's pillow, supporting her. 
 Without moving, or any word of greeting, she glanced up for 
 a moment and shook her head, slowly; then dropped her eyes 
 
246 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 to her little daughter's face, with an expression of intense and 
 hopeless grief. 
 
 A tall, unshaven man, wearing a greenish overcoat, who 
 was standing by the bedside as Laura entered, moved away, 
 with a shrug of his shoulders, and picked up a shabby black 
 bag from a chair : " There's nothing more I can do," he said, 
 putting on his hat, buttoning his shabby coat up to his chin, 
 and staring at Laura. " If you send for me when it's all 
 oh, well, later I'll give you a certificate," he added; and 
 then, with a clumsy bow towards the newcomer, left the room : 
 stumbling over Cora's wooden horse which stood beside a 
 pile of stained linen. 
 
 "But, doctor . . ." Grobo had begun to speak, from his 
 place in a low chair at the opposite side of the bed to his wife, 
 and then broken off with an air of realising that there was 
 nothing left worth saying. He, too, was in his shirt-sleeves, 
 for there was some fire of passion affecting the whole of this 
 family, so that in times of emotion or excitement they were 
 seized with a desire to feel themselves as unfettered as possible. 
 For all her steady self-control, habitual calm, Laura had seen 
 Mrs. Grobo tear off her cotton gloves and throw them down as 
 though they constituted some sort of mingled gage and fetter. 
 Grobo's eyes were red, his face covered with yellow bristles; 
 his whole appearance desolate and dreadfully funny like 
 some figure upon a music-hall stage. 
 
 Lily lay almost upright, supported by her mother's arm, 
 the pillows, and chintz-covered cushions from the sofa. The 
 front of her nightdress was open, showing that she was nothing 
 more than a framework of bones. Incongruously, and yet 
 apropros enough, Laura was reminded of those delicate shreds 
 of ivory with which an old lady in Blackheath had taught her 
 to play Spillikins. Lily's skin was white and fine as the inner 
 skin of an eggshell; her yellow plaits, thicker and glossier 
 than ever, as if they had sucked the life from her, hung 
 straight each side of her face, which showed a scarlet spot 
 upon either cheek, as though from the pressure of a large 
 thumb; her blue eyes were glazed, the upper lids drooping a 
 little; her mouth open and rounded, the lips, cracked and 
 darkish in colour, giving vent to a short, harsh and broken 
 breath. There was a thread of blood at one corner of them, 
 and as Mrs. Grobo raised a handkerchief, with a little groan, 
 to wipe it away, the child's slow gaze settled upon the new- 
 comer. She moved her lips slightly, and though no words 
 came, Laura realised what she wanted, and moved closer to 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 247 
 
 the bed. Grobo got up from his chair and stood aside, and 
 she dropped to her knees. 
 
 "Darling, darling, what is it?" 
 
 There was a moment's silence; then, with a piteous 
 struggle, the words came singly, almost inaudible. 
 
 " Paul Paul I want Paul . You must must " 
 
 There was no more, but the filmed eyes were like an animal's, 
 entreating, intensely eloquent. "You must be good to Paul 
 you must look after him," was what they said. 
 
 "Yes, yes, darling. I understand." 
 
 There were no further words, but the silence was loud with 
 the child's breathing; louder and louder, so that it seemed to 
 tear Laura's own breast. It vras a relief when the baby, on a 
 trestle bed in the corner, began to cry, fretfully. " She is 
 teething," said Mrs. Grobo, and, going to her, sat down on the 
 edge of the bed, lifted her up and began to feed her; while 
 Grobo took her chair. 
 
 Lily's eyes were drooping. Charles and Cora appeared 
 in the doorway and whimperingly demanded their tea. Laura 
 rose from her knees, and moving into the inner room, found 
 Albert busy with his lesson. 
 
 "You might have got the children their tea," she began. 
 "Really, you might . . ." then broke off; for as he bent 
 lower, muttering angrily, she saw that the tears were falling, 
 sopping his books. Joseph, with a begrimed face, was poking 
 bits of stick and paper into the grate, already choked with 
 charred fragments. " It goes out it won't light," he said 
 despairingly. 
 
 "Leave it, leave it, you fool! Filling the room with 
 smoke!" cried Albert. 
 
 "Yes, leave it; I'll see to it in a moment," said Laura; 
 and lighting the gas-ring, set the kettle on to boil while she cut 
 the bread. There was no hope of toast, and the two younger 
 children usually so amenable upset by the general turmoil, 
 soaked their bread and jam with tears. 
 
 "I hate everybody," cried Cora. "What does Lily want 
 to die for? It's horrid, horrid!" 
 
 Grobo came in and took a cup of tea, standing, gulping it 
 down. "It's dreadful!" he said. "Oh, dreadful, dreadful! 
 past all bearing!" 
 
 Laura carried a cup in to Mrs. Grobo. " You must drink 
 it," she commanded. "You must; you will need all your 
 strength." 
 
 The poor mother took the cup, pathetically obedient, and 
 
248 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 put her lips to it. But her throat worked so that she could 
 not swallow, and she handed it back, shaking her head. 
 
 Laura took it almost mechanically, without a protest, her 
 eyes upon Lily, terrified by the change in her. Her breath 
 was coming much more quickly; it was like a toy steam- 
 engine. All the expression was gone from her face. She made 
 a faint sign with her hand, and her whole frame shook. As 
 Laura leant towards her the gaslight wavered, sank low, and 
 rose again. 
 
 "Paul," panted Lily. Then: "I I 
 
 With a sudden flicker, the gas went out. It seemed as 
 though the sound of the dying child's breath cut the darkness 
 like a file. Albert's voice was heard at the door: 
 
 "I've no pennies for the meter," he said. 
 
 Laura took out her purse and fumbled over the contents 
 with trembling fingers: there were a few small coins, shillings 
 and sixpences, but nothing more. 
 
 The smaller children began to sob from out the well of 
 darkness. 
 
 "Where are the matches? I can't find the matches. 
 Oh-h-h! where did you put the matches? The matches!" 
 
 Joseph was moving round the living-room; there was a 
 crash as he knocked over a chair: "Oh! Oh! has no one any 
 matches?" 
 
 A muffled half -cry came from the bed; a louder gasping 
 breath, followed by a rattling sound which filled Laura with 
 terror: her heart beat loudly; she felt as though her body had 
 been dipped in cold water. 
 
 "What are they doing? Why don't they move? Are 
 they all dead?" she wondered; and at that word "dead," 
 shaken by an access of terror, she fumbled her way to the 
 open door; felt round the lintel, then along the edge of the 
 sink in the living-room; found the handle of the other door, 
 at last; opened it, and ran along the passage, her hands ex- 
 tended upon either side of her, until she reached the entrance; 
 felt for the handle, at first at the wrong side, found it and 
 turned it, with a sense of immense relief at the sight of the 
 light upon the stairs, Stein's hunched-up figure still there. 
 
 " Have you any matches and a penny ? The gas has run 
 out," she cried, without a thought of the grotesque triviality 
 of the request at such a moment, with life running out. But 
 life is like that, all of it; at once grotesque, trivial and 
 terrible. 
 
 Stein scrambled to his feet. With the front door open 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 249 
 
 they found the meter on a bracket above it, and fed it with 
 pennies. The front door slammed-to, leaving them in dark- 
 ness again, and quite suddenly she was afraid, though not of 
 Stein not of anything in particular; just desperately afraid. 
 
 " Find a match ! Light a match ! " she cried. 
 
 "Fool! And like enough all the taps turned on. What 
 lights had you?" 
 
 " The kitchen and her room." 
 
 "Well, then there you are!" 
 
 They felt their way to the kitchen, found the pendant and 
 turned off the tap; then the gas at the ring, roaring beneath 
 the kettle. 
 
 Stein flung open the window. "We must wait until it 
 clears off," he said; and they waited, with the children 
 whimpering round them, regardless of Albert's fierce whisper: 
 
 "Shut up! Oh, shut up; for God's sake, shut up!" 
 
 At last the air cleared, and they lit the gas. Through the 
 open door of the bedroom they could see the dim figures of 
 Mr. and Mrs. Grobo, sitting bolt upright at either side of the 
 bed. The pillows looked flattened. 
 
 " Oh, why have they laid her down? She can't breathe, 
 like that," thought Laura. 
 
 " By your leave, Madame," said Stein, and entering, turned 
 off the gas-tap, waited a minute or so, and then lit it. 
 
 Laura, following him, was struck by the dreadful silence 
 of the room; more terrifying than any sound. As the light 
 sprang up, she looked at the bed. Lily was lying quite flat, 
 motionless, silent. She must have died that very moment 
 when the gas went out. 
 
 Laura's eyes, travelling from Mr. and Mrs. Grobo sitting 
 there as though they were stuffed round the room, lighted 
 upon Stein; and even then, with that curious detachment 
 which comes in moments of emotion, she was amazed to see 
 that he had dropped upon his knees, was crossing himself. 
 
 There was a sound of knocking at the outer door. Someone 
 must have run to open it, for the next thing she realised was 
 that her husband was moving swiftly across the room. 
 
 He dropped upon his knees at the bedside. " Lily Lily 
 my precious!" he said; and then, touching her hand, gave 
 a loud cry, and burst into tears. 
 
 After that, Laura's benumbed senses were swept under by 
 a wave of weeping. Grobo, with his arms outstretched 
 across his dead child funny, still funny weeping, weeping; 
 Mrs. Grobo, upright in her chair, weeping; the children 
 
250 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 weeping; Albert, standing there, kicking at a footstool, his 
 head bent, one shoulder higher than the other, weeping. 
 
 Laura's eyes were on her husband's back. She found 
 herself wondering about him dully: who he was, why he was 
 there, what he had to do with her. "Paul?" she thought. 
 "Paul" trying to impress him on her mind, as though he 
 were a stranger whose aspect, face and mind she was endeav- 
 ouring to make sure of; deadened and stupid. 
 
 After a while, with that relief she always found in carrying 
 on with the practical affairs of life, she raised Charles in her 
 arms, took Cora by the hand, and, leading them off to the 
 room at the further end of the passage, undressed them and 
 put them to bed. Their sobs seemed to be choking them, but 
 in five minutes they were asleep. Returning to the kitchen, 
 she dispatched Joseph to his bed. " You are tired," she said. 
 "You'd better go." 
 
 As he passed her, his head bent, his arm up against his 
 face, she pulled him to her and kissed him. "Get out," he 
 said; then dropped his arm and clung to her for a moment, 
 his face pressed against her sleeve; pushed her from him and 
 ran off, with gulping sobs, the sound of which diminished 
 down the long passage. 
 
 The baby was crying again, and passing into the inner 
 room Laura gave her to her mother, who fed her mechanically, 
 staring in front of her, the tears falling upon the downy 
 head. 
 
 Vortonitch was still kneeling by the bedside, his face hid- 
 den. After she had undressed the baby disproportionately 
 depressed because there was no hot water with which to wash 
 it and patted it off to sleep in the small bed, Laura touched 
 her husband upon his shoulder. 
 
 "Paul, Paul!" 
 
 He staggered to his feet, blinking, half-blinded with 
 tears and fatigue. He looked so tired, so ill, that her heart 
 felt sore, like an open wound. If only they had been alone, 
 she thought, she would have put her arms round him, drawn 
 his head down against her heart, in the way she had always 
 done. As it was, she could scarcely speak; she felt stiff all 
 all over, body and mind. And, after all, it was not only the 
 presence of the others; it was something in herself which held 
 her back. 
 
 " Someone must go for the doctor," she said. 
 
 Vortonitch gave a wearied movement of his head and 
 shoulders. " I'm tired, tired out," he said. " Such a journey 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 251 
 
 my God, such a journey! I only got the letter this morning, 
 after nine, just in time to catch the train, and now . . . This 
 this!" He glanced towards the bed, and the tears rained 
 down his face. "To be too late, like this!" 
 
 ** Oh, well, seeing you're all in such a state, I'll go for the 
 doctor myself," cried Stein. "Such folly, such . . . And 
 now then, I suppose there's no one knows the fellow's address? 
 the fellow who will give a certificate to say that someone's 
 been graciously allowed to die, cut away, get out of it all." 
 He spoke loudly, defiantly, as though in some way scolding 
 himself more than others, scolding himself out of feeling. His 
 face was all twisted, as though he had been sucking a lemon, 
 his fierce eyes red. 
 
 They had moved into the outer room, where Albert 
 volunteered the address of the doctor, nodding at Vortonitch, 
 "Well, Comrade," furtively putting out his tongue to lick 
 away the tears which ran down his face. 
 
 "There are other things," began Laura, haltingly. 
 
 " I know, I know," barked Stein. " To shovel her away 
 out of sight an angel, an angel if there ever was one. But it 
 shall be properly done; I'll see to it that it's properly donel 
 All this fuss! If only people would cease having children!** 
 
 Albert went off with him, and Laura and her husband 
 remained alone in the living-room. But ten days earlier they 
 had parted, with strained embraces, kisses; but now they did 
 not even touch hands, for the tragedy in the next room came 
 between them, weighing them down. Vortonitch said, "Well, 
 Laura?" and Laura answering that she was well, enquired 
 whether he were better. 
 
 "Better, but tired out," he said, and sank heavily into a 
 chair. The loaf was still on the table, and he pulled it towards 
 him, cut off a bit and began to eat it. "I'm famished," ht 
 said. "Nothing since breakfast, and travelling all day." 
 
 A feeling of bewilderment came over Laura. "But 
 Bournemouth, it's . . . surely . . ." 
 
 " Bournemouth? oh, but I wasn't at Bournemouth." 
 Vortonitch's voice betrayed some surprise, as though he had 
 forgotten where he was supposed to be. " Glasgow and 
 only got Mrs. Grobo's letter this morning. My God, but I'm 
 tired!" 
 
 "I'll make you some tea." It seemed to Laura that her 
 life was being punctuated by two things: handing the baby 
 to its mother to be fed and making tea. She glanced at the 
 clock. It was twenty minutes to ten. She had been in the 
 
252 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 flat five and a half hours more. So Paul had not been in 
 Bournemouth after all. No wonder that she had no answer 
 to her letters; and the lodging would have to be paid for, 
 anyhow. The dull thoughts went stumbling to and fro through 
 her brain, and with them a sharper resentment. " He might 
 have told me he might have let me know." 
 
 As she was making the tea, Vortonitch spoke again, as 
 though to himself: "Cruel, cruel! With more money, they 
 might have saved her. She was so lovely. Laura, she was 
 lovely in every sort of way. The first day I met you, I came 
 on here, and she reminded me of you; she has always re- 
 minded me of you." 
 
 Something m this touched Laura; it seemed like warm 
 rain falling upon parched or frozen ground. She moved 
 towards her husband, put her arms round his shoulders, and 
 drew his dark head against her breast. 
 
 "Paul, Paul my darling, how tired you are, how thin! 
 You ought to have done as we planned; you ought to have 
 gone to the sea, and rested." 
 
 He did not draw away from her, but there was no response 
 in the weight of his body against hers. With the prescience 
 of love she realised this, and moving a little away from him, 
 poured out his tea. 
 
 They began to speak of Lily. It was evident that with his 
 usual engrossment in one affair at a time he was unable to 
 think of anything apart from her death; the tragedy of it all 
 overweighed, pressed down into him, as it were, by his own 
 fatigue. 
 
 Presently Grobo came in, and seating himself at the table 
 began to eat, the tears falling upon his bread-and-butter in 
 the same way as the children's had done. As Laura moved 
 towards the bedroom, he called to her: 
 
 " She wants to be alone. She sent me out even me." 
 He turned to Vortonitch, his face working: "She was asking 
 for you; all the time she was asking for you, my dear." 
 
 There was a long silence, and then : " I must 'ear. 'ow 
 things march in the north," he said, in a changed voice. 
 
 Laura took down her hat and coat from the peg behind the 
 door, put them on and buttoned the fur up round her throat. 
 Overcome by a sense of nervous exhaustion, it was all she 
 could do not to burst into tears; crying, not for Lily, but for 
 herself, her own loneliness. 
 
 "I think I must go go back." She could not bring 
 herself to say " home." " I mustn't miss the last train." 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 253 
 
 "Wait a moment; I'll come to the station with you," 
 said Vortonitch, and half rose. 
 
 " No, no, I can go quite well alone." The offer was so 
 half-hearted that it shamed her. Her eyes filled with tears, 
 and she moved blindly to the door, almost running into the 
 doctor, who, entering at the same moment, stood aside with 
 a profound bow to let her pass. Stein and Albert were with 
 him; in the passage, beneath the freshly-lighted gas-jet, stood 
 a man in black, with a deprecating air and long white face, 
 holding his hat to his breast. 
 
 Unnoticed by all save the doctor, whose bloodshot eyes, 
 mocking and bold, followed her, Laura slipped out of the flat, 
 and down the stairs. 
 
 Since she left her husband she had thought of nothing, 
 planned for nothing, apart from meeting him again. And 
 now, now why, she did not even know his address. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 IT was close upon a month after Laura's return home when 
 there was that explosion in the House of Commons, con- 
 current with a separate and deliberate attempt upon the life 
 of the Prime Minister, in which, though several other people 
 were severely injured, and one innocent attendant killed, the 
 Premier himself escaped with nothing more than a severe 
 shaking and some slight concussion. 
 
 Was that before or after that assassination in the Nether- 
 lands? Trying to remember, retracing it all in her mind, 
 Laura realised that it must have been after; but only just 
 after, for the arrangements made for the King and Queen to 
 attend a Commemoration Service in Westminster Abbey had, 
 quite at the last moment, been cancelled on account of this 
 very outrage. . . . Though, was it on account of it, or rather 
 for fear of something of the same sort occurring again, 
 freighted with a more terrible consequence? How much was 
 known? What had been discovered? Who was implicated? 
 This was what was asked; and little wonder, when it was so 
 completely unlike the Royal Family to allow itself to appear 
 frightened: though the fierce insistence, the reiteration of the 
 blows struck at public security, life, property, was enough 
 to alarm anyone, let alone that shying-post of revolutionists, 
 as represented by royalty. 
 
 All sorts of reports were in the air. In London, people 
 gathered in groups, like hiving bees; utter strangers began 
 talking to each other, in an un-English way, with no thought 
 of introduction, almost as in the first days, those expansive 
 first days, of the war. Though Oh, well, after all, what was 
 this but war? demanded the more outspoken; that sort of 
 war in which no one knows who is, or who is not, his enemy: 
 the insidious war of terrorism, which had seemed so far away 
 and detached so long as it came no nearer home than Ireland. 
 
 Laura was very tired; the strain of those amazing seven 
 months of married life, the reversal of all that had ever come 
 before, the shock of Lily's death, the sense of being in a 
 completely false position, were all alike telling upon her, 
 
 254 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 255 
 
 bitten in by her uncertainty, her anxiety regarding her hus- 
 band; for excepting for one letter written the day after that 
 meeting at the Grobos', she had heard nothing more of him, 
 had refrained from a mingled pride for herself, for him 
 from anything that might have been interpreted as spying. 
 
 Apart from this, she was too worn out for any effort. Her 
 brain worked with difficulty, and in spasmodic jerks; she 
 found it difficult to co-ordinate: if anyone had asked her 
 suddenly what she was thinking of, or what she had been 
 doing the day before, she would have found it impossible to 
 say. 
 
 She had returned home with a sort of obstinate hope, 
 deep rooted in her heart; that belief of youth in the im- 
 possibility of anything like continued unhappiness, of any- 
 thing really coming to an end which one does not wish to 
 come to an end. Slowly, very slowly, ever since that dream- 
 like meeting with her husband in the Grobos' flat, this hope 
 had been dying. It left her with a sense of being strangely 
 wrung out, muddled and helpless; the sort of feeling that one 
 may have, buffeted here and there by a crowd, unable to pass 
 on or to turn back, or in any way to escape from the press. 
 
 A crowd ah, yes; that was it: a crowd; events, terrible 
 events, following upon each other so quickly that they appeared 
 to be all round her, pressing in upon her from every side; a 
 crowd with strange and dreadful faces. 
 
 The whole of March and the first week in April were 
 bitterly cold. The little groups of people at the street corners, 
 piling horror upon horror, prophecy upon prophecy, were 
 swept all one way, cling to their coats and cloaks as they 
 might, by a cruel east wind, dust, grit, sleet, scatterings of 
 snow which refused to fall properly and have done with it. 
 The lengthening days seemed to grow colder with the hypo- 
 critical pretence of spring; while the country was held up by 
 another coal strike. Even " The House " at Blackheath ran 
 short, the only people who were really warm being the 
 servants in their kitchens with their range; answering the 
 bells with exasperatingly warm, flushed faces. Lady Creich- 
 ton was already unwell, and Sir Harry in a state of irritation 
 beyond all words, when Marjorie was laid up with measles, 
 taking them as a personal insult, though not, unhappily, 
 beyond words. Just as she was out of quarantine she con- 
 tracted a chill, and this made matters worse; not only for 
 Marjorie, but for everyone else also. 
 
 It all sounds petty enough, but it was not really petty 
 
256 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 nothing ever is: for it frayed the nerves and tempers of the 
 entire family, left them open to any sort of attack. Then 
 as worse things happened they were overcome by the bitterest 
 self-reproach. Why hadn't they been more patient? Why 
 had they been as they had been, all snapping at each other, 
 when they were happy, really happy, happy as they could 
 never be again? Laura had not snapped, it is true, but that 
 did not clear her, fpr she had been deeply, unforgivably 
 indifferent to all trouble apart from her own, or so she felt. 
 
 One day Sir Harry returned home between tea and 
 dinner, rather nearer dinner than tea. It was broad daylight; 
 there could have been no excuse to turn on the electric light 
 and draw the curtains; but they would have felt better had 
 they done so, for the sky, light grey with a yellowish tint which 
 threatened snow, filled the room with a peculiarly unpleasant 
 light, and the quality of light affects human beings more than 
 they realise. 
 
 There was a tiny fire burning in the grate, and Sir Harry 
 remarked on it: "This room's like an ice-house. Why don't 
 you women go and take some exercise, instead of sitting here 
 shivering?" he said, and then began to sneeze. 
 
 "I've got an awful cold. By gad! this weather and no 
 coal it's beyond a joke! I don't know what things are 
 coming to!" He sneezed again, and yet again and again. 
 " I've a good mind to have a fire in my room and go to bed," 
 he said; and there was something pathetic in his voice, for 
 he was really feeling ill, and wanted his wife to say, "Yes, 
 dear; that's the best thing you can do; and have your dinner 
 in bed." Life was not easy for him, either; not for worlds 
 would he have confessed to any fear; above all for himself, 
 though that was there too; not exactly fear, but a sort of 
 jumpiness, never knowing what may come upon one round 
 any corner. For there were constant ambushes now, as there 
 had been for so long in Ireland though of course in Ireland 
 they were used to that sort of thing. It was totally unlike 
 England; it had never happened in England before, and it 
 bewildered and exasperated the General. No longer young, 
 he was incapacitated for grappling with the present by his 
 engrossment in the past : " My young days " " The old 
 Queen's time" "After the Boer War." 
 
 It was, indeed, his fear, almost amounting to shame, for 
 his country which was telling upon him far more than any 
 personal danger. For he had been so proud of his country, 
 loved it with an intensity strange and laughable to the 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 257 
 
 younger generation; while in his own home, however 
 difficult or even dangerous life might be in the outer world, he 
 had a man's way of expecting everything to go on precisely 
 the same; with no sort of alteration or curtailment. There 
 was no reason for it, with "proper management," "with 
 method." 
 
 "Other people seem to manage all right with their fires. 
 I went into the Fieldens' yesterday, and there was a splendid 
 fire." A pause; then: "I believe if I turned in now, kept 
 really warm, I might check this confounded cold. . . ." 
 Another pause; "Upon my word, things have come to a 
 pretty pass if a man can't have a fire in his own bedroom, in 
 
 his own house! It's about time " He broke off, 
 
 sneezing. 
 
 " My dear," said Lady Creichton, " as if anyone could have 
 a fire in their bedrooms at times like these! Why, even in 
 Buckingham Palace " 
 
 "A lot of good it'll do anyone if I'm ill ... By Jove! I 
 wonder if there's anyone else ever has such colds?" 
 
 "I bet you don't feel as rotten as I do, for all that," 
 muttered Marjorie; but her father did not appear to notice 
 her. 
 
 " It will be a nice thing if I get knocked up and can't get 
 down to Woolwich to-morrow, with the Prince coming to 
 inspect it, and all! Look well, eh?" 
 
 "Ump . . ." Lady Creichton was knitting, with fingers 
 so cold that she could scarcely hold the steel needles. Happen- 
 ing to glance up, she saw that her husband's jaw was stuck 
 
 out in that old mule-like way, and Ah, there is no doubt 
 
 about it, his complete helplessness in the Laura affair had 
 diluted the awe in which she had always held him snapped, 
 dropping a stitch: "Oh, well, I daresay you wouldn't be 
 missed!" 
 
 She could never forget it never, never! Neither could 
 Marjorie forget her bitter "Always something or other," as 
 her father left the room, sneezing, banging the door behind 
 him; or Laura her deadened sense of contempt for this great 
 baby, his fussing over a cold in the head. A mere cold in the 
 head, and all those horrors of which Vortonitch had told her 
 still going on and on; intensified, rolling up into something 
 monstrous beyond all words. Though, after all, come to 
 think of it, there was no one made more fuss over a cold than 
 Vortonitch himself. 
 
 Lady Creichtou had a fire lighted in her husband's room, 
 
258 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 and he found it when he went up to dress for dinner; though 
 it was too late by then, or so he declared, to think of going to 
 bed until the usual time. Marjorie retired early anyhow 
 Marjorie had ceased to count very much, one way or another; 
 but Laura, ashamed of herself and her coldness, puzzled at 
 herself, as she so often was nowadays, made a special effort to 
 be nice to her father; while Lady Creichton, recapturing her 
 usual sweet placidity, donned one of her prettiest evening 
 gowns: it was not her fault that the greater part of it had to 
 be covered with a woolly shawl, for it is impossible for little 
 fires to warm a big house. 
 
 Her husband had hot whisky-and-water, with lemon and 
 nutmeg, in bed, the last thing at night: both that evening 
 and next morning she did all she could; they all did all they 
 could: even Parker, who was constantly at loggerheads with 
 the General's soldier servant over the question of metal polish; 
 who had tossed her head and snorted when he brought out an 
 order for a fresh relay of tea, just as she was about to lay the 
 dinner. 
 
 "There isn't anything anyone wouldn't have done for 
 the master," she said later; and yet it was the memory of 
 that unfortunate interval between five and six-thirty which 
 cut into their hearts when he was brought home next day. 
 " Brought " ! What a word that is, in that context ! 
 " Brought." An end of coming and going for every one of 
 us; "brought" or being "taken" the end of the life like 
 the beginning; no choice in the matter; tugged along with 
 the nurse's hand on one's wrist. 
 
 Marjorie had accompanied him to Woolwich, for the sake 
 of the drive, because it was a fine day, and she had been ill. 
 The " arrangement " being that the chauffeur should drop him, 
 take her back home, and then return. 
 
 Just at the last moment, however, the General told the 
 man to draw up to the side of the big gates and wait there for 
 a while. " Might as well have a look at the big-wigs while 
 you're about it," he said; with the idea that it was good for 
 young people, with their ridiculous fandangle of ideas, to see 
 something of royalty; to shame them, if this were possible, 
 with the sight of a life so much better ordered than their 
 own; while Marjorie assented with a shrug for what were 
 royalties and deities, and people like that, to her and her set? 
 
 There was the usual midday crowd in Beresford Square, 
 for the most part in dark clothes; broken here and there by 
 the white aprons of those women of the more independent 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 259 
 
 sort, who came out of their homes or workshops just as they 
 were. 
 
 The fruit, vegetable and flower stalls had been pushed 
 back further up the hill, almost out of the square. Backing 
 the dark-coated crowd Marjorie caught sight of a barrow 
 piled high with yellow daffodils, the only spot of colour, apart 
 from a few flags flopping dismally against a leaden sky; for 
 the early morning brightness was already gone; it was very 
 cold, and it looked as though it might rain again. 
 
 Marjorie had always hated Woolwich in the same way as 
 she hated what she called " the common people " that is to 
 say Woolwich apart from "the Shop"; and upon this 
 particular morning Beresford Square, the blackened walls and 
 gateway of the Arsenal, depressed her beyond words. She 
 was certain she was going to take a fresh cold, and what was 
 the good of doing that for the sake of all the royalties in the 
 world, let alone one mere "infant," not even the heir to the 
 throne; for all the world like any other infant! 
 
 She was leaning forward to tell George to drive her 
 straight home, when she saw that the police were pressing 
 back the crowd, further and more fussily than usual. For 
 there was apparent among the members of the force, in these 
 days, an air of nervous exasperation, a loss of their usual 
 geniality, a tendency to glance round sharply over one 
 shoulder; the mounted men alone, uplifted in more senses 
 than one, buoyed up by the firmness and docility of their 
 mounts, retaining quite their usual dignity. 
 
 What followed passed with the effect of a too-rapidly-dis- 
 played cinema, laid out horizontally upon a level with one's 
 eye. There was the crowd, a flat mosiac of dark clothes and 
 white faces, as little relieved as a photo; the mounted and 
 foot police pressing it back; the sooty walls, the darkened 
 sky, the widening strip of drab-tinted road rolling out like a 
 narrow stair-carpet, as the people were cleared away from it. 
 
 It was bitterly cold; every vestige of sun gone; there was 
 no band, or anything; only, further away up the street, 
 from the direction of Charlton, came the sound of a cheer, 
 unimposing and unstimulating ; as chill as the wind itself. 
 
 At the same moment, a little group of officers came out of 
 the Arsenal gate and advanced so as to be ready to meet the 
 oncoming personage. As the cheers came nearer, still oddly 
 flat and void of enthusiasm, General Sir Harry Creichton 
 moved forward in advance of his staff. 
 
 It is impossible to express the whole effect in anything but 
 
260 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 the baldest terms, for that is what it was: bald, flat, dull; 
 those blessed qualities of " admiration, hope and love " 
 having, for the time being, evaporated from the hearts of 
 England. People still turned out to stare at any member of 
 the reigning family, from a sort of habit; but they stared 
 dully; not because of any feeling of general disloyalty, but 
 because they were worried, and there is nothing so dulling as 
 worry. The police were worried, the troops were worried, the 
 Staff, the General himself; and this worry, intangibly evident 
 in every face and movement, had, in conjunction with the 
 weather, the disordered livers which it engendered, the effect 
 of a sort of fine blue mould overspreading everything. 
 
 Sir Harry Creichton alone, the oldest of all the men in 
 uniform, moved with the briskness which refuses to acknowl- 
 edge that anything can be wrong. Later on, looking back 
 over it all, Marjorie had an impression of seeing her father at 
 that moment in a way she had never seen him before: clearly, 
 as one sees a person for the first time: very upright, holding 
 his shoulders rather stiffly, in a way of men no longer young, 
 who are afraid of letting themselves go: his aquiline face 
 seeming a little bronzed in contrast to the faces of the crowd 
 dull-white, bluish-red, flattened out with the cold. 
 
 There was, by now, a fair space cleared in front of the 
 gates, and he moved out onto it, a new departure, for in the 
 old days visitors, whoever they might be, were received 
 within the precincts of the Arsenal itself. 
 
 For a moment all the other people in the Square, the 
 General's own officers, the crowd, the policemen, were like a flat 
 frame pressed back and away from him. An ardent stickler 
 for dignity, for ceremony, he was alone; as it seemed fitting 
 that he should be alone. Of course, the rest of them must 
 have been near, quite near; one realised that later, because 
 of ... oh, well, because of what happened to Major Gosling, 
 Captain Hibbert, young Jackson. But, all the same, he 
 did seem to stand out quite widely detached from the rest 
 of them, the Arsenal Staff and the crowd: hanging back, 
 waiting with scarcely a movement, until the man with the 
 daffodils made a fierce attempt to drive his barrow down, 
 through the crowd, to the centre of the Square. 
 
 Almost every head, the policemen's included, was turned 
 in that direction; while in one fraction of a second, as it 
 seemed, a sense of confusion and madness, excitement at the 
 prospect of any set-to with the police, however trivial, swept 
 down over them all, like one of those sudden gusts of wind, 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 261 
 
 which catch up the dust in spirals. From a dense and lifeless 
 mass of humanity the crowd shifted to an assembly of in- 
 dividuals, gesticulating, laughing, shouting an odd effect of 
 open mouths in white faces, that. A mounted constable's 
 horse backed too suddenly, and there was a shriek, a volley of 
 curses and more or less obscene chaff: the crowd was half 
 across the road; the Prince's motor blocked, hooting: the 
 whole effect that of a saucepan of milk boiling up suddenly, 
 boiling over. 
 
 As to what followed, all in a breath . . . Oh, it didn't 
 happen not in the sort of way, more or less orderly, in which 
 real things do happen; it was nothing more than a sort of 
 kaleidoscopic impression whisked across Marjorie Creichton's 
 line of vision, or so it seemed. It was weeks before she could 
 impress it all upon herself as real; tremendously real, final, 
 concrete. 
 
 Some rough caught up a bunch of daffodils from the 
 barrow and threw it; it was as though the frame around that 
 oddly stiff and yet impressive figure of her father had suddenly 
 become alive. The General had his jaw thrust out sideways 
 she saw it, oh yes, she saw that was near enough for that. 
 . . . Things weren't going as they ought to be going, with the 
 near approach of royalty. Something else was thrown; some- 
 thing she actually saw it in the air, like a cricket-ball. And 
 then came a flash, so blinding that it seemed to tear the eyes 
 from her head, a shriek, a crash which swelled to a roar; the 
 glass of the wind-screen of the motor shattering, not hitting 
 her in the face, because she was standing up: an amazing 
 silence, and then another roar, the roar of the crowd, pierced 
 through by wild hysterical cries; the trampling and jostling 
 of thousands of people, thousands and thousands of them, 
 pressing out of the Arsenal, pouring down the side-streets, 
 converging towards the front of the gates : the police trying to 
 keep them back: a black cloud of smoke; a pungent, acid 
 smell. 
 
 Marjorie leant forward and caught at the chauffeur's 
 shoulder: "Go on go on! Oh, do go on!" she cried; 
 then as he did not turn, peered round at him, and saw him 
 with both hands before his face, the blood running down 
 between his fingers. 
 
 "How are we to get home now?" That was her first 
 thought; panic-stricken and utterly selfish, angry with fear. 
 She was halfway over the back of the front seat. She could 
 drive a little, she'd take the car home if only George would 
 
262 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 make room for her that idiot George! What good was he 
 doing, sitting there, grunting like that? If only the crowd 
 would move, give them room those beastly people! 
 
 She had never seen George more plainly; she actually 
 thought, "His gloves will be all spoilt with blood"; she even 
 noticed the odd triangle of glass left whole in one corner of 
 the wind-screen; but nothing further nothing. 
 
 Then, very slowly, as it seemed, her glance was dragged 
 outward in a half -irritated search for her father. If he'd only 
 hurry up and come to her, she could get away. Awkwardly, 
 in the grip of an odd sort of rigor, she raised herself stiffly and 
 stared out over the heads of the people, all turned in one direc- 
 tion. Here and there a little cleared path opened for the 
 passage of someone in authority, then closed up again. A 
 slim boyish figure in uniform ran down one of these: it was 
 the Prince, so he, at least, was not hurt. Then what was all 
 the fuss about? What had happened? What what? 
 
 She was stupid oh yes, she was: always stupid, because 
 she always thought of herself first, and that blocked her view. 
 It was not until the Prince melted into it that she realised a 
 small inner crowd, surrounded by the police all men, and 
 mostly in uniform flattened out, as though they were bent, 
 or kneeling. 
 
 A clear path ran out, widening like a crack, from the gates 
 of the Arsenal, and four men moved down it, carrying a 
 stretcher. 
 
 It was like a pointed finger to that small inner and flattened 
 crowd; the place where her father had stood, so completely 
 alone. 
 
 It was then, and then only, that the truth dawned upon 
 her; but even yet obscurely, stunning like a blow. That 
 open space as it had been, that one figure; and now . . . Oh, 
 what . . . what? It seemed as though her chest was torn 
 with the effect of someone, far away, shrieking : a shriek which 
 struck like a knife, turning in her: 
 
 "Father father father! Oh, oh, oh!" 
 
 The chauffeur had dropped his hands, and turned, 
 staring; the blood streaming down his face, slashed with the 
 glass from the wind-screen. Marjorie's wide eyes met his; 
 it seemed as though they were asking each other some question 
 too dreadful to be answered, regarding someone for whom 
 they, and they alone, were responsible. 
 
 " Where is he? where?" But they said nothing. 
 
 For that moment it seemed as though a claw was caught 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 263 
 
 round that bleeding wound in Marjorie's heart lungs, or 
 whatever it was torturing and yet protecting, holding tight. 
 
 Then it began again: "Father, father! 0-o-o-oh!" 
 
 Someone jumped into the car and caught hold of her; some- 
 one else led George away, holding a handkerchief to his face. 
 
 "It's his daughter!" "The General's daughter!" It 
 seemed as though the words pierced through the tumult, oddly 
 clear and apropos of nothing. Quite suddenly Marjorie 
 realised the face of a friend moving towards her, with a look 
 as though all life had been wiped out of it: the face of a man 
 who walks in some awful dream. 
 
 "Oh, Colonel Fielden!" she cried; and then began to 
 tremble from head to foot, shaking her head; the tears 
 streamed down her face: "What what oh, what ?" 
 
 It seemed that this was what she kept saying; she heard 
 it herself, and tried to stop it, her teeth chattering; tried to 
 start a proper sentence, but could get no further than that, as, 
 with a policeman in George's place, and Colonel Fielden, her 
 father's friend, at her side, the motor moved forward, pushing 
 its way slowly through the crowd, up the Grand Depot Road 
 and past the Parade Ground, gathering speed as they turned 
 away from the trams and onto the old Dover Road. 
 
 She asked no definite question; she daren't; she did not 
 know what to ask: she was torn by sobs; could hear nothing, 
 see nothing plainly. 
 
 Colonel Fielden handed her his handkerchief, without 
 seeming to look at her, and for one moment, as she wiped away 
 her tears, making an effort to control herself, she saw his face 
 set in altogether unfamiliar lines; then everything clouded 
 over, with an ever-swelling roar as of waves through her head. 
 
 When she came to herself again, in her own bed, in her own 
 room, she put her hand to her chest and drew a long, painful 
 breath : 
 
 '"What oh, what . . . Something blew up ... some- 
 thing . . . I'm wounded!" 
 
 The housemaid, who had been watching over her, cap all 
 awry, the tears running down her face, gave a sniff of con- 
 tempt. How like Miss Marjorie! 
 
 "It ain't you as is wounded; there ain't nothing wrong 
 with you, miss," she said; and then began to cry again, moving 
 to the door, for she had been told to call someone else directly 
 her charge began to rouse herself. 
 
 But Marjorie's chest did really pain her, though there was 
 no wound, was sore with the effect of those thin, long-drawn 
 
264 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 screams. She pressed her clenched fists to it, while the sense 
 of calamity rolled down upon her like a heavy leaded curtain. 
 What had happened? What was it that had happened? 
 An intense dread held her; she was like a person in a deep 
 sleep, stifled by some suffocating dream, vainly struggling to 
 awake. Once again she saw that flattened crowd; Beresford 
 Square, the mosaic of dark clothes, the man with the daffodils: 
 the sudden glare. Then, with a sense of dreadful nausea, she 
 heard that roar, which began like the tearing of calico; the 
 tumult of the crowd, cut through by those ear-splitting 
 screams. After this one vision cut off from another by the 
 sheer weight of sound came that second impression: the 
 bent figures, the men with the ambulance, Colonel Fielden's 
 face; and, sitting up in bed, her clenched hands still pressed 
 against her heart, she began to cry, loudly and uncontrollably, 
 like a small child. 
 
 Laura came into her, then Cousin Ethel; but they were 
 powerless to stop her; her body was bathed with sweat, she 
 was drenched with tears, but still she cried on and on and on, 
 until at last her mother appeared in the doorway: stood 
 there, without attemping to advance, to take Marjorie in her 
 arms, or comfort her; with all the soft, uncertain lines in her 
 delicate face changed, gathered into furrows deep as though 
 carved in stone, one either side of her mouth, and three 
 upright on her forehead. Her whole face looked stiff; she 
 held herself stiffly; she looked altogether different; she was 
 different. Marjorie realised this, but still she went on 
 howling. 
 
 Cousin Ethel bent, trying to pull the bedclothes straight 
 over her arched knees, looked up : "I can't do anything 
 with her," she said helplessly; the tears were running down 
 her face. Indeed, they were all crying, apart from Lady 
 Creichton, though they made no noise about it; even the 
 housemaid, who had come back into the room. 
 
 "Be quiet!" said Lady Creichton. She spoke automatic- 
 ally, like a doll, and yet sharply, so unlike herself: " How dare 
 you make that noise, with your father lying dead in the 
 house?" 
 
 Out of sheer surprise Marjorie was silent; and Lady 
 Creichton turned to her elder daughter, though she did not 
 really look at her looked at nobody: "I shall want you, 
 Laura. There are letters which must be written those poor 
 Jacksons! you'll stay with Marjorie, Ethel; but she must 
 control herself." The housemaid was flattening herself back 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 265 
 
 against the open door, and she spoke to her as she went out: 
 "You must get the blue room ready, Gladys." 
 
 "Freddie Jackson was killed," said Cousin Ethel. The 
 Jacksons lived at Eltham, and were old friends of the family. 
 "They think he must have realised it coming run forward. 
 And Major Gosling; terribly injured. A policeman, too. Oh, 
 dear, oh dear! whatever is the world coming to!" 
 
 "And father!" Marjorie had ceased her howling, was 
 catching her breath in gulping sobs. 
 
 Cousin Ethel stared: "Didn't you know? He must 
 have been killed at once his head . . . Oh, horrible, hor- 
 rible! It was at him it was thrown. . . . Oh, Marjorie, when 
 you think what he was! That he never did any harm to 
 anyone in his life! ... To throw it at him right, straight 
 at him like that!" 
 
 "What? Throw what?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't know I don't know! Something dreadful. 
 Oh, I suppose some sort of a bomb something like that at 
 your father! Your father, of all people!" 
 
 "He had a cold in his head," said Marjorie. It sounded 
 so idiotic, so heartless, that it was little wonder Cousin Ethel 
 looked shocked; but in reality Marjorie was overcome, as all 
 young people are in the face of any great calamity, by the 
 realisation of the commonplaceness, the everyday aspect of 
 things as they were up to the very last moment; the sudden, 
 the amazing irrelevance of tragedy in connection with their 
 own people. 
 
 She began to cry again, catching her breath in gasping 
 sobs: 
 
 "Oh, it was dreadful, dreadful! I shall never forget it 
 never, never! I was sitting there in the motor it was all so 
 dull, just like always; and then . . . Oh, Cousin Ethel, 
 o-o-oh! What's that? What . . . ?" 
 
 She caught at Cousin Ethel's arm and buried her face 
 against it, as a motor turned into the drive gate with a 
 long-drawn hoot. 
 
 And that was the beginning of months and months during 
 which she would burst into tears at any unexpected noise; 
 when she daren't go out of the house alone; when her sleep 
 was broken by dreams so dreadful that she tried to keep 
 herself awake by sitting up in bed all night, propped up with 
 pillows; when she talked and talked and talked: depended 
 upon everybody, appealed to everybody, even to God, saying 
 her prayers on her knees, at night, human and humble. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 THE spring was early that next year which followed upon 
 General Creichton's death; and mercifully, too, for it had 
 been a hard, a dreadful winter, in which the cold, the gloom, 
 the unnatural combination of thunderstorms and snow seemed 
 to be reflected in the hearts of men. Disputes and tragedies, 
 endless recriminations, retaliations, had followed close upon 
 each other throughout the whole of the preceding summer; 
 and then, quite suddenly, everything had flattened down to 
 what seemed like the inertia of despair. Shortly before the 
 New Year the last strike had fizzled out, and the labour world 
 was at peace; but a sullen sort of peace to the casual observer; 
 to the more thoughtful a possible prelude to, the drawing of a 
 long quiet breath prior to a fresh start. 
 
 As a matter of fact, now, and now only, in nineteen- 
 twenty-two, was the reaction from that sort of St. Vitus's dance 
 engendered by the war: the realisation by the civilised world 
 the more or less civilised world of its own aching limbs. 
 
 "Moribund" that's what the seeming wise said in 
 respect to England. As they had once declared that it would 
 have been better if the Germans had actually invaded the 
 country, so they now said that it would have been better if 
 there had been a revolution, "to bring things to a head"- 
 as though the fact of any sort of inflammation coming "to a 
 head " meant, once and for all, as though any body, personal 
 or political, couldn't, and didn't, get into the habit of these 
 sort of swellings: at least, that's what Gerald Stratton said, 
 and it was from him that Laura drew most of her ideas her 
 one intimate friend in a world almost bereft of friendship. 
 For there is nothing which cuts one apart from one's fellows 
 like any sort of a secret. Stratton's hopes, diverse from the 
 hopes of his fellows, lay in the fact that there had been no 
 revolution; chiefly because there never is but just one, clear 
 cut and done with; for so soon as standardised Governments 
 are upset, everyone wants to govern, and there are endless con- 
 fusions and changes of government, with subsequent suffering. 
 
 Marjorie was herself again a nicer, simpler self, however 
 and at a finishing-school in Lucerne; a great idea, this, to 
 
 266 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 267 
 
 Lady Creichton, carrying on the tradition of her elder daugh- 
 ter's supposed education. "The House" was up for sale, 
 for it was far too big and too expensive for the family now, 
 without even Charles coming home for the vacation; for he had 
 cut his last year at Cambridge and gone out to the Argentine, 
 to one of his mother's cousins, who was horse-breeding there. 
 
 So far, there had not been so much as a nibble at the place; 
 not enough town and not enough country. The uncertainty, 
 however, the thought that it was no good planting this or that 
 in the garden, because they might be leaving so soon, the 
 reduced staff of servants, was breaking the home-ties and 
 sentiments by making it seem so unlike home, little more than 
 a camping-place. 
 
 During these early spring months Laura's longing for some 
 news of her husband became almost unbearable. She had 
 awoken from her inertia, from the effects of underfeeding and 
 fatigue, the shock of her father's death, and she was 
 desperately lonely. It was worse than any physical pain, 
 worse than anything upon earth; that sort of loneliness which 
 is most acute among others, when small-talk separates one from 
 those memories, those imagined conversations which in some 
 way stuff out the emptiness of life. 
 
 It was a year now since she had seen Paul; a year since 
 that one letter; a year and this thought was one with the 
 first really spring day since Lily's death. 
 
 At this, it came over her that she could bear it no longer. 
 And why should she? The Grobos would be almost certain 
 to know where he was. She had written to them, but that was 
 months ago. She was so sharply, so suddenly decided, that it 
 seemed as though some pressure, some weight, were removed, 
 and she was springing up from under it. 
 
 She did not even think over what she was going to say to 
 her mother, but said it, at lunch that very day: "Is there 
 anything you want in town? I'm going up this afternoon" 
 the simplicity of her words sounding almost ludicrous in her 
 own ears, contrasted with all that they meant: above all 
 when, in answer to a question, she added: "To see some old 
 friends of my husband's," using that word " husband " for the 
 first time for months, conscious of a strange feeling of play- 
 acting at the sound of it. 
 
 "My husband"! Was it true that she had a husband 
 had ever had one? Sometimes she wondered like this; 
 wondering if she were really herself or the " Miss Creichton " 
 so well known to society in Blackheath, which had by now, in 
 
268 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 these crowded days, almost forgotten that it ever had any 
 other idea of her. At times she had acquiesced in this; it 
 was a sort of relief: at others, she had felt like crying her 
 estate aloud : " I'm married married, I tell you ! Stop that 
 Miss Creichton business! Stop it! Married? Why, I've 
 been married for years years and years and years!" 
 
 Putting this into words to herself, she was torn by a des- 
 perate desire, not only for a sight of Vortonitch, the touch of 
 his hands, the feeling of him near her, but for the something 
 so completely different which he made of her; for the hard 
 life, intermingled with a sort of easy recklessness; the dis- 
 regard of trifles and conventions. 
 
 And this was not all, for beneath her quiet exterior she 
 was growing fast; fast and furiously, with that crowded 
 growth which we find in a plant with a massed tangle of roots 
 crowded into an over small pot. She might have had a child. 
 Strange that the thought came to her so late, and never during 
 her actual married life. If she had only had a child she would 
 have been happy with something belonging to her, free of that 
 eternal ache, that sense of chill across her breast, down the 
 front of her arm, over her entire body; the ache to enfold 
 something, mother something. She would actually curve her 
 arm, alone in bed at night, feeling a downy head in the 
 hollow of it. There had been none of this when Vortonitch 
 was with her, so much her child as well as her lover; but now 
 that she had not Vortonitch, there were times when everything 
 was almost beyond bearing. 
 
 With this longing for a child came feeling, longing which 
 she could not have expressed. She had once been just one 
 Laura, simple and single-minded. Now things twisted them- 
 selves, were many-sided, complicated, almost shameful: 
 one moment she wanted one thing, the next moment she 
 wanted another. She was puzzled at herself, bewildered, half- 
 frightened. It was like living with some erratic stranger; and 
 yet always, above everything, she wanted something really 
 belonging to herself, of herself: Paul, or that child that there 
 might have been, that there ought to have been. Sometimes 
 it did not seem to matter so much, but sometimes it was un- 
 endurable. The thought of it would come over her quite 
 suddenly, raking her body and soul, as a harrow rakes a field, 
 tearing up all the silly little top-growth, flowers and weeds, 
 wounding her, leaving her sore. And when this happened, 
 mostly at night, she would cry and cry and cry, until she was 
 past feeling. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 269 
 
 One night, about three months earlier, her mother had 
 come into her room, and found her in such an access of anguish 
 that she was unable to control herself: Laura, who had been 
 so quiet, slipped back so perfectly into her old ways that Lady 
 Creichton had made sure that she had " got over it all." As 
 if anyone ever does really get over anything; as if with every 
 wound, in even the greenest wood, there is not the mark of a 
 scar left beneath the bark. 
 
 When the six months, which it had been determined should 
 elapse before making the marriage public, came to an end and 
 there was no news of Vortonitch, she had been anxious; but 
 Laura had said nothing, gone through that day, that week, 
 exactly like any other, and she was half-disappointed. Perhaps 
 Laura had not very much depth of feeling, after all; young 
 people hadn't in these days, she thought, and turned her 
 affections more to her youngest daughter, who definitely 
 needed her. 
 
 As for Laura, she too wondered, but in a different way, how 
 long one went on feeling, longed to be older: " If I was as old 
 as mother, I should be like her; I shouldn't feel it as I do; 
 anyhow, I should be nearer the end. Look what she and 
 Dad had! Years and years and years together. But for 
 all that, she doesn't seem to care much; perhaps it's being 
 old old people don't care much. If she cared I could talk 
 to her of Paul; but I can't talk to her now no girls can talk 
 to their mothers, and it's because they don't care. That's it 
 they don't care." 
 
 On this special night, however, all barriers were broken 
 down between the two: the daughter, who was so reserved in 
 every way, and the mother, who had always talked over the 
 top of her feelings. 
 
 "I can't bear it! Oh, mother, I can't bear it I can't 
 bear it!" cried Laura. "You don't know what it is ... Oh, 
 mother, mother!" 
 
 "I know, my dear; I know. One feels that one must tear 
 at something, break down something; that it's impossible to 
 go on." 
 
 "You feel like that?" 
 
 "Yes, yes." 
 
 "I sit up and press my body against the bars at the back 
 of my bed, because they're hard and cold, and hurt me I 
 think I'll go mad." 
 
 " I know, I know. If one could be beaten anything . . . 
 But it's worse for you, because you're so young." 
 
270 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 *' For you, because you were used to each other, had so 
 long together. You miss him more must miss him more. 
 . . . Oh, but no; you are happier than I am because you did 
 have longer together. Look at me: such a little time, such a 
 little time! And nothing left nothing to show that it was 
 ever there." 
 
 "Oh, Laura dear, but with me so much longer time to be 
 unkind in; to laugh at him at him, whom everyone loved 
 and respected, to laugh!" 
 
 "You never did, never, never! You were perfect with 
 him." 
 
 "I did I did. And, Laura, there were other things. I 
 sort of prided myself upon being so fastidious. When I was 
 young, women of the last generation were like that I always 
 remembered my mother saying to me : ' There are horrid 
 things about marriage, but women have to learn to submit.' 
 Laura, I'm glad I was not able to give you any advice before 
 you married. Oh, I was I was cruel to him. I see it now. 
 And, besides, women get old sooner than men; or perhaps we 
 think we're old; then, when we're left alone, we find we're 
 not, after all. I wish I was old. Laura, if only I was old! 
 Old people don't feel things. At least, I don't think they do. 
 One never knows!" 
 
 Lady Creichton spoke in a half -whisper, for she belonged to 
 an age when women were unused to discussing their private, 
 let alone their matrimonial, affairs with anyone; above all, 
 with their children. But suddenly, in the realisation of their 
 common suffering, it seemed that she and Laura were just two 
 women, no longer weighted with that mutual distrust common 
 to mothers and daughters, however loving they may be. 
 
 " Sometimes I thought he was like a mule, with his chin 
 out," Lady Creichton went on desperately. " Sometimes we 
 quarrelled not exactly quarrelled, but disagreed with each 
 other. About you, now: I was all for you, Laura. We 
 couldn't really have it out, like young people. It seems 
 ridiculous to show one's feelings as one gets older feelings of 
 that sort. One's always remembering it, thinking, ' A woman 
 of my age! ' Then that day, the very day before do you 
 remember, Lolly? I said" her voice dropped to an almost 
 undistinguishable whisper " I said, ' You'd never be missed. ' 
 I shall never forget that as long as I live never, never!" 
 
 "But he knew how you cared; he must have known it." 
 
 " I don't know I don't know. Oh, Laura, Laura, you are 
 happier than I am. At any rate, he he is alive." 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 271 
 
 "If I knew! If only I knew!" 
 
 The two wept in each other's arms. In some strange way, 
 Lady Creichton's gentle vagueness had rendered her un- 
 approachable; or, rather, she had seemed to slip away and 
 aside from all responsibilities and depths; but she had greatly 
 changed since her husband's death, gathered herself together, 
 become at once more human and more efficient. Gerald 
 Stratton, who was one of the trustees, her men of business, the 
 relations, scarcely knew her; found themselves wondering 
 whether she had always been as competent as she now showed 
 herself. "Playing the fool," as her own brother John said, 
 "to save the trouble of fighting things out with that dear old 
 stick, Harry; got used to it in the sort of way some women 
 get used to wearing stays." 
 
 However this might be, there was, with so much to 
 arrange, less " arranging " than there had ever been before, 
 and the two girls found a curiously tolerant friend in their 
 mother. Thus, when Laura announced, after months of total 
 silence upon this subject, that she was going up to town to 
 see a friend of her husband's, Lady Creichton merely 
 remarked that she'd better take an umbrella, " as it might 
 rain." 
 
 She took the umbrella and an immense bunch of early 
 daffodils and went by bus; on the top, for it didn't rain, 
 though it was cold so cold that it braced her; the wind 
 seeming to cut against her bare skin, as though her coat and 
 furs were no more than mere filaments of the imagination. 
 
 For no reason whatever she felt younger and more alive 
 than she had done for months: full of hope, ardour, and 
 determination. If Vortonitch were in London, she must find 
 him. How stupid to be proud when one loved a person! If 
 one was married, where was the sense of pretending that one 
 was not married? She had shrunk more and more, as time 
 went on, from seeking out the Grobos, had a feeling as though 
 she were too deeply wounded, sore to the touch; with this 
 there was that idiotic pride, mingled with a sense of " He 
 knows where I am; if he wants to see me, he can come to me. 
 I won't go making enquiries about him behind his back" a 
 sort of honour as well as pride. 
 
 Quite suddenly this was all wiped out; it might have been 
 the effect of the spring which made these ideas seem so pre- 
 posterous and heavily absurd. 
 
 At Piccadilly Circus she got off her bus, stiff, chilled to the 
 bone, and yet braced as though by a cold bath; hesitated 
 
272 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 for a moment or so in front of Swan and Edgar's windows, 
 then crossed the Circus to Shaftesbury Avenue, stopping 
 upon the centre island to add a large bunch of violets to her 
 bouquet. 
 
 She had on a new grey tweed coat and skirt, and grey 
 furs; a little black velvet hat tilted over her eyes; and 
 the significance of this, for Laura! the coquetry, the evi- 
 dence of growing up to youth, as it were a short veil edged 
 with a line of black chenille, just tipping her nose, intensifying 
 her fairness. Her height attracted attention, and people 
 turned and looked at her admiringly ; she was " in form," " in 
 face," as the old writers have it. Just for that short while, 
 and for no reason whatever, she felt perfectly sure of herself, 
 full of confidence. She was going back, back to real life, back 
 to her husband; for of course the Grobos would know where 
 he was. She would put her arms round him and draw his 
 head down to her shoulder, where he had loved to lay it; 
 nothing should separate them again; nothing, nothing. 
 
 She might find him in Le Cygne d'Or there was no know- 
 ing. As she went in, her back would be to the light, and he 
 would not see who it was; anyhow, he would scarcely know 
 her she looked prettier, she looked different: catching sight 
 of herself in the shop windows, it seemed that she looked 
 completely different, more finished, somehow; in the sidelong 
 glances of the passers-by was the assurance that no man 
 would ever want to send her away from him again. She 
 would touch Paul on the shoulder, and say, " Good evening, 
 Mr. Vortonitch," with the cool assurance of those other 
 women. What a lark it would be! 
 
 Or perhaps she would find him at the Grobos', actually 
 there when she arrived, sitting by the window, looking child- 
 ishly sad and tired, as he sometimes did; looking as though 
 he wanted her. 
 
 She walked a little way up Shaftesbury Avenue, and then, 
 overcome with impatience, hailed a taxi. 
 
 With the idea of taking a short cut, apparently, the driver 
 turned off into Earl Street, and was blocked and blocked again 
 in the narrow purlieus of Drury Lane. He crossed Holborn 
 and was entangled in and about Gray's Inn; freed himself of 
 these, and dipping again to Holborn, refusing the obvious 
 Charterhouse Road, pushed on past the Viaduct; then, as the 
 resultant of a sudden impetuous dart to the left, found himself 
 completely entangled in the meat market, where Laura got 
 out and paid him; liking him because, though he had gone 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 273 
 
 completely wrong, he had not hesitated, but dashed on in a 
 way which fitted in with her mood. 
 
 "Queer sort of place to bring a lady," he remarked; and 
 she laughed. It was " a queer sort of place " queerer still to 
 be so glad to be there, horrible as it was, with its sickly smell, 
 its red-faced men impregnated with beef, its appalling din: 
 voices like bulls bellowing; motor-lorries hooting; carts with 
 iron-bound wheels rattling over the cobbles. She turned into 
 Little Britain, and moved slowly along it, glancing back at 
 the peep of St. Paul's which had always brought her peace; 
 feeling as though she would like to pat all those little shops 
 where she had once made her frugal purchases; though she 
 would not look at the house where she had lived, the house 
 out of which she had crawled like a winter fly, wrung with 
 tears and misery; getting into the taxi meekly at Stratton's 
 side, going away because she had been told to go away. She 
 would not have done that now; she was a woman now, full 
 of self-confidence or so she thought. 
 
 She turned into Charterhouse Square and lingered there 
 for a few moments; the plane-trees were in bud; the school 
 playground alive with shouting boys. 
 
 It wasn't going to rain, after all ; the sun was out. A good 
 thing, for she had left her umbrella on the bus. She might 
 see Paul she would see Paul. The thought sang through her 
 head like a sort of refrain as she turned into the short narrow 
 street where the Grobos lived: had lived. 
 
 There was something deliberately, smirkingly cruel in the 
 sunshine, in that feeling of joy and self-confidence which had 
 been growing upon her, which had been allowed to grow, for 
 the sake of this. It was like a face offering itself to you for a 
 kiss, with a striking hand darting up between; or a kiss itself, 
 a Judas kiss, betraying. 
 
 If it had not been that she approached the house from the 
 far side of the road, she might have actually gone in at the door 
 and up the first flight of stairs: she could not have gone any 
 further, because there was nothing further, nothing whatever; 
 she would have just toppled over into nothingness. In any 
 case, she supposed the policeman would have stopped her, 
 hovering there round the scene of decay, like nothing so much 
 as a stout bluebottle. But as it was, coming up the further 
 side of the street, she saw it at once, saw it, but could not 
 realise it: a butt-end of a house, always so narrow, but 
 mutilated now as though some savage wit had been seized 
 with the idea of making it no higher than it was broad: 
 
274 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 roofless, the two upper storeys and part of the one beneath 
 them completely gone; the ground and first-floor heaped in 
 blackened debris; while the buildings at either side were re- 
 roofed and patched, with glaringly new red-brick chimneys, 
 the workmen still engaged upon the upper window of the 
 printer's, from whence came the old, dull, familiar roar. 
 
 The aspect of an empty bird's-nest is sad enough: to 
 Laura's eyes there was something desolate beyond words in 
 the look of this place, in her memory of it as a crowded nest 
 of happy children; though that is not how the police would 
 have described it. Quite another sort of nest "a nest of 
 anarchists" was what they said. 
 
 Overcome by a feeling of complete bewilderment and 
 helplessness, she crossed the street. The policeman, who was 
 watching her, moved a little towards her, puzzled by such a 
 figure in such a place: grey coat and skirt, grey furs, hands 
 full of violets and daffodils; an air of breeding and finish in 
 the way she walked, in the turn of the foot and ankle beneath 
 the short skirt. 
 
 He was moving past her, not speaking, just watchful, when 
 she turned to him. 
 
 "Can you tell me what . . ." She indicated the devas- 
 tated house with a gesture of despair; then turned from him 
 and stared at it as though scarcely able to believe her eyes. 
 "Has there been a fire? What is it? I expected . . . 
 thought . . ." She broke off, too utterly taken aback to put 
 her thoughts into words. All the sureness and gaiety, the 
 grown-upness, was wiped out of her; as she shifted her gaze 
 to the policeman her eyes were dark wells of unshed tears, her 
 face white, her lips trembling. 
 
 "Yes, Miss?" It was a question, giving nothing away. 
 
 "There were some friends of mine, living there on the 
 upper floor. I thought I never thought I heard nothing." 
 
 A curiously alert, almost avid, look, came into the man's 
 face; he set his lips and squeezed up his little round eyes: 
 " What was the name of the party you was looking for, if I 
 might ask?" 
 
 " Grobo, Mr. and Mrs. Grobo and their children. I knew 
 nothing I heard nothing I was here . . ." 
 
 "Yes, Miss?" 
 
 " Oh, it's a year yes, a year ago." Suddenly her own 
 delay and cowardice seemed culpable beyond all words: why 
 hadn't she come before? What would Lily think if she had 
 known of it? "Was it a fire? Was was there anyone 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 275 
 
 hurt?" that's what she wanted to add, but she dared not 
 put it into words. 
 
 " Well, not exactly. More like . . . Well, you might call 
 it a sort of explosion, more like, so to say," the man answered 
 doubtfully; wondering what he should do next, running his 
 mind through his schedule of duties. 
 
 "And they they . . ." Laura could hardly speak; the 
 roof of her mouth was dry, her lips stiff. A warm, vivid pic- 
 ture of the little family, above all of Charles and Cora, fat 
 and brown and rosy as any country children, swept over her, 
 blazed round with horror, the memory of all the dreadful 
 things that had happened since she saw them last. Her own 
 father's death, for instance. Was it something something 
 like that? A bomb? A "bomb" what a stupid word that 
 was, so soft and unimpressive, and yet pregnant with sucli 
 meaning ! 
 
 With an effort as though she were raising some immense 
 weight, she began again: "Were they any of them 
 hurt?" 
 
 The policeman gave a short laugh. "Hurt? Not them! 
 Trust them for that! They'd cleared out right enough. 
 Perhaps, if you could give any information, Miss, as might 
 help the authorities " 
 
 But Laura had no information to give. If she had not 
 thought that they were still there, would she have come here 
 like this, laden with flowers? She was utterly bewildered, 
 stricken to the soul; and yet a little reassured by the police- 
 man's apparently benevolent suggestion that they might be 
 able to give her some information at "the Yard"; for if 
 she could once find the Grobos, there were hopes for news of 
 her husband. What a fool she had been not to realise that 
 long before, realise all that they meant to her! With them 
 gone, it was as though the bottom had dropped out of her 
 world, and Paul with it; as though he had suddenly and 
 completely ceased to be real. 
 
 Having summoned another man to take his place, the 
 policeman took her off in a taxi, from out the midst of a 
 staring group of children who seemed to have sprung up 
 spontaneously from somewhere between the cracks of the 
 pavement, all eyes and mouths and boots. 
 
 They paid for the taxi at Scotland Yard, and she thought it 
 was very kind of them, when she had come about her own 
 business; as she had thought it kind of the policeman to 
 accompany her. In her old way, helpless and miserable, she 
 
276 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 caught at any hint of kindness, insanely grateful for it; telling 
 herself, " People are kind." 
 
 She was shown into a small room smelling of soft soap and 
 dampish wood, with a stool, a chair, a small table in one 
 corner, and a large writing-table at which there was another 
 policeman sitting, writing, who glanced up at her, and then 
 went on with what he was doing, as though she were not there. 
 
 The sun was hot on the window, which was shut, with a 
 bluebottle buzzing up and down the lower pane, to and fro. 
 to and fro, likely enough the reincarnation of some long-dead 
 policeman. The writer's pen scratched and spluttered; he 
 held his head very much sideways and put out his tongue as 
 he wrote. 
 
 Laura's courage, at a low ebb to begin with, oozed out of 
 her; there was no air in the room, and she felt flattened, 
 dulled, beyond hope. 
 
 After a long, long wait, to which there seemed no reason 
 for any end, another man, in a different sort of uniform, came 
 in, and with a curt "Good day," took the place which the 
 scribe relinquished to him, while Laura's escort stood in the 
 doorway. The newcomer picked up a pen, but he did not 
 write; fixed her with clear blue eyes that she thought kind. 
 
 "You mustn't be nervous," he said; "there's nothing to 
 be nervous about. Just a few questions. . . ." 
 
 She was on her feet at this ; those questions which she had 
 been rehearsing over to herself crowded upon the tip of her 
 tongue. She had pulled off her gloves, and one slender white 
 hand just touched the table; with the other she still hugged 
 the drooping flowers; her face was flushed, her eyes glowed. 
 "Yes, please, I want to know the Grobos I want to see 
 them. I thought they were still there. I never thought . . . 
 and I found " 
 
 "Yes, yes. A moment, if you please. Your name's 
 Creichton, I believe? Miss Creichton?" 
 
 " Yes no not really . . ." She was in for it now. The 
 first policeman had asked her name, and she had given it 
 without thinking, in the way in which she had got into the 
 habit of giving it. But now she wanted news of her husband 
 she must be exact; she must explain things. It seemed simple 
 enough, but it wasn't; it never is, for of all arts that of 
 explaining is the most difficult in the world: above all, ex- 
 plaining away anything which one has already said; especially 
 a name, in regard to which most people are primitive enough 
 to entertain a certain shame. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 277 
 
 Laura felt her face grow crimson, burning like fire. 
 
 "What is your real name, then, may I ask? Try and be 
 exact, please." The blue eyes were like steel; the tone 
 whipped round her. 
 
 "Vortonitch Mrs. Vortonitch," he repeated her words: 
 "Wife of Paul Vortonitch, of of . . . You don't know 
 where? Now, Mrs. Vortonitch, be careful what you say; this 
 is a very serious matter. You don't know where your husband 
 is? You're sure of that? quite sure? Now, when did you 
 see him last? Where? the exact date, please. . . . And 
 this man, Grobo: what was your relation with him his 
 family? . . . Oh! very great friends of yours, you say? How 
 long since you saw them? A year? You're sure of that? 
 a year?" It went on and on, a quick succession of questions 
 like the beat of a hammer. The policeman who had been 
 there when she first entered was taking down her answers in 
 a notebook, at the small table in the corner. 
 
 She had to stand, because he had her chair; her legs felt 
 like the side of a concertina, pleating up beneath her. What 
 did they suspect her of? Why were they so curious about 
 Grobo? about her husband? When she said that she was a 
 daughter of the late General Sir Harry Creichton, her inter- 
 rogator turned to the policeman who accompanied her, and 
 said: "I suppose they're on the 'phone at the late General's 
 place? Better make enquiries, eh?" 
 
 That roused Laura from her sense of being utterly battered 
 down, rapped under. She could not have her mother 
 frightened, that was certain. In her anxiety, her confusion, 
 that sense of running up against a blank wall which comes to 
 a person whose word is, for the first time, disbelieved, she 
 providentially enough thought of Stratton. If they sent for 
 Mr. Stratton, he would tell them all they wanted to know. 
 
 "Stratton Stratton? Who might he be?" enquired the 
 inspector slightingly, discounting anyone with whom Laura 
 might claim acquaintance.. When she explained, however, the 
 tone was altered; and remarking that this was enough for the 
 present, he went to the door; spoke to someone outside, and 
 came back considerably chastened. 
 
 They rang up Stratton. Mercifully enough, he was at the 
 House, and would come round at once. The policeman who 
 had been taking notes gave Laura back her chair and fetched 
 a stool for himself. 
 
 The hail of questions had ceased; but she had forgotten 
 everything which she herself had wished to ask. If this was 
 
278 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 the way they treated suspected criminals, how was it possible 
 for anyone to emerge as innocent? Great waves of hot shame 
 went through and through her; she felt stripped. 
 
 When Stratton appeared upon the scene, she could hardly 
 bear to look at him. He spoke coolly and at some length. 
 Laura found it difficult to realise what was being said, because 
 it felt as though her head was full of hot cotton-wool packed 
 close against her ears; but one sentence caught her attention 
 so that it came back to her later. 
 
 "... Any possible sources of information regarding this 
 man Grobo, the most dangerous of the whole gang, utterly 
 unscrupulous. Oh yes, clever undoubtedly clever! Too 
 clever for us, I'm afraid, Mr. Stratton. Yes, yes; totally 
 disappeared not a trace. We're having the grave of that 
 girl of his who died watched always someone there, on the 
 chance that he might come back to visit it. At least, that's 
 what our chief thought. You'd be surprised at the sentimen- 
 tality of people of that type." 
 
 There was an apology to Laura: "Greatly regret having 
 put you to any inconvenience, Miss Creichton." That was 
 what was said, as the great man himself and he was a great 
 man in his own little way, for other men stood back flat 
 against the walls of the corridors, saluting him as they passed 
 held the taxi door open for her and Mr. Stratton. 
 
 For, once again, she was being borne away by Stratton, 
 away back to Blackheath. 
 
 He took the flowers from her hand almost violently, and 
 threw them out of the taxi, down in the dust among the 
 crowded traffic of Westminster Bridge. 
 
 "Oh, Laura, Laura!" he said, with a jerk of his long 
 chin, as though he at once loved her and despaired of her; 
 then, looking at her whimsically, his face drawn and white: 
 "Really, Laura! to go hanging about round a burnt-out 
 wasps' nest like that! The most badly-wanted man in the 
 whole of Europe! How like you, Laura! how true to type!" 
 He spoke with the only real exasperation he had ever shown 
 towards her: "Ah, well, I suppose, if I was a convicted 
 criminal, or deaf and dumb and blind, or anything of that 
 sort . . ." 
 
 "But you knew, Stratty, you knew that I was friends 
 with them!" She gazed at him with the deepest concern. 
 What was the matter with Stratty? Was everyone going 
 mad? Was there some contagious tang of madness in that 
 cell where they had cross-examined her? 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 279 
 
 "I thought you'd forgotten them I thought . . ." 
 Stratton broke off with a groan. " Oh, God only knows what 
 I thought! that you'd forgotten everything. You're so quiet, 
 Lolly. You seem so sure and safe; and yet, was there 
 ever anybody on earth so elusive! If you were my wife, I'd 
 tch, tch!" 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Shake you smack you." 
 
 "But I don't know I don't know how can I? what 
 people expect of me, what they're thinking. And now . . . 
 Oh, I don't know, I don't know!" She broke off the sentence, 
 which had no meaning to her own mind, and was silent for a 
 moment, her white lips folded, her face maturely grave, 
 looking straight in front of her; then turned to Stratton. 
 
 "What made him call me 'Miss Creichton,' like that, at 
 the last?" 
 
 " I suppose he thought it was best." 
 
 "But I'm not Miss Creichton!" She spoke with sudden 
 passion, the blood flooding into her face. " I'm not I'm 
 not! I never can be again. It's time everybody knew it; I 
 expect they do know it, but if they don't, they'll have to 
 know it," she added firmly. "There's been enough of this 
 pretending." 
 
 " Laura, it's best not. Believe me, it's best not." 
 
 "I don't care what's best. That's what I've done all 
 along let things slide, tried to please everyone." 
 
 "But you do care what's best for for him." 
 
 "How do you mean, 'for him'?" She bent round towards 
 Stratton, staring at him, frowning. 
 
 "Well, you know, just for the present, as a friend of 
 Grobo's; it might make everything more difficult for him, if 
 there was any talk, anything like that." 
 
 "But I want to feel sure of of things. Stratty, it seems 
 as if by acknowledging him I'll make it all more real; make 
 him real; bring him, bring him . . ." Her voice broke, she 
 was staring in front of her. 
 
 "Yes, dear?" 
 
 " Oh, but I want to see him, more more than anything on 
 earth I want to see him!" 
 
 Her face was grey; she looked almost old; her hat was a 
 little on one side, with the coquettish veil flung back, all any- 
 how; her hair disordered: she was wiped out with misery, 
 as blonde women are. The people who had turned for another 
 look at her crossing Piccadilly Circus, thinking, " That girl's 
 
280 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 like spring," would not have given her so much as a second 
 glance now. 
 
 Stratton was filled with a sense of desperate revolt at the 
 sight of her. She had seemed to be reviving, forgetting. 
 Seemed to be seemed to be! These women! Were they all 
 the same, with the sort of motion of a boomerang, eternally 
 harking back? That cad Vortonitch! Good God! to think 
 of a country packed with laws, so many that it was impossible 
 to remember one half of them laws against every sort of theft, 
 and not one against the worst crime of all, this theft of youth ! 
 
 "Lolly, dear, wait a little longer; go on as you are for a 
 little longer. You see for yourself how any connection with 
 Grobo might hurt him now. Just a little longer. Everything 
 comes to those who wait." 
 
 "Or else, I suppose, they wait so long that they forget 
 what they're waiting for," answered Laura, with a sombre and 
 unnatural fatalism. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 LAURA was "coining out." The term, as applied to a 
 woman who had been married a year and a half earlier, was 
 absurd, the whole idea was absurd. But, changed as she might 
 be in many ways, Lady Creichton still preserved that in- 
 tractable obstinacy of the meek in spirit; and, after all, she was 
 right. " What Laura needs is a break of some sort," was what 
 she said; and so events proved; for Laura had slipped into a 
 rut of dullish indifference, there was no doubt about that. 
 
 "As she's not altogether well, not altogether quite not 
 seeming altogether quite married, the thing is to go on as 
 much as possible as if she wasn't." This was the foundation 
 of Lady Creichton's idea, so confusedly expressed, so un- 
 swervingly held to. 
 
 And, after all, why shouldn't Laura be brought out of 
 herself, and into society? For, whatever marriage had done 
 for her, it had not, most emphatically, done that; while, 
 though it had originally been intended that she should make 
 her formal debut at the end of May nineteen twenty-one 
 an arrangement cancelled by her father's death and what 
 her mother called " things " she was, in the spring of 
 nineteen twenty-two, still three months short of her twentieth 
 birthday, an age at which a great many girls were only just 
 leaving school. 
 
 Marjorie, it is true, was closer upon her heels by a year 
 than she would have been in the original programme; but this 
 did not greatly matter, seeing that the whole business of 
 " coming out " at eighteen had been planned to give Laura 
 that " chance " which might have been interefered with by the 
 public appearance of her more exuberant sister: the word 
 " chance " standing for marriage, which was now counted 
 out; or in some measure counted out, for it would have been 
 impossibe for Lady Creichton to rid herself of the belief that 
 Vortonitch's disappearance would, by its very persistence 
 and almost automatically become permanent; while here was 
 Philip Henderson, such a nice boy, and with prospects, still 
 as unswervingly devoted as ever. 
 
 281 
 
282 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 There was the question of Presentation; but against this 
 Laura herself, more or less acquiescent in the rest of the 
 arrangement, rebelled, calling Stratton to help her with his 
 unquestionable veto : the thing was out of the question because 
 of the difficulty of the name. Under what name would it be 
 possible to present her? Was she to appear as a debutante 
 or a young married woman? 
 
 In the end it came to this : " The House " was to be shut 
 up for a while; Lady Creichton, in half -mourning, in every 
 sort of way so completely that Laura found herself wonder- 
 ing whether that scene in her bedroom had been a dream, or 
 whether her mother had merely shrugged herself back into an 
 outer garment of gentle and half-humourous tepidity was to 
 stay with a widowed sister at Tunbridge Wells, where there 
 were a good many other widows; while Marjorie returned for 
 another term to Switzerland, and Laura spent the time seeing 
 things, and being taken out by Stratton 's sister the wife of a 
 jaded peer with blood as thin and blue as London milk, a 
 trifle soured who lived in Pont Street, and had rather a 
 managing fancy for young people, being deeply interested in 
 Laura "That romantic child; and that great donkey, Gerald, 
 as much in love as a boy of eighteen. Little wonder, either. 
 Did you ever see anything prettier! The way she holds 
 herself, the way she walks, so lightly and uprightly; that 
 lovely silvery fairness, which really does pay for dressing! I 
 wonder what will happen . . . Now I do wonder what will 
 happen. What do you think, Filson? eh, Filson?" She 
 would appeal to her husband, though entirely unbiassed by 
 his answer, which went no further than grunting, stretching 
 out his long thin legs in their pale-grey, wonderfully-creased 
 trousers, and drawing them up again like a praying mantis. 
 
 As to Laura, she was at first just that "acquiescent"; 
 wondering, perhaps a little priggishly, what girls found so 
 exciting about this business of a London season; for after all 
 those threats of, those more than threats, those lunges at, 
 revolution, everything was going on in much the same old 
 way. Lady Filson was, however, so immensely and almost 
 breathlessly engrossed in the interest of the moment the 
 interest for the time being Laura, and nothing and nobody but 
 Laura that she found herself gradually drawn into it all: 
 forgetting to think what Vortonitch would have thought of it, 
 delighting in her pretty clothes, dancing for the first time for 
 two years; dancing, not as a child, but as a grown-up person, 
 a personage in some slender way, partly because of that 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 283 
 
 distinctive fashion in which she held herself, and partly 
 because there was without doubt, a sense of mystery. It was 
 now that she might have been almost inclined to forget that 
 she was married at all, had it not been for those sudden 
 chilling gaps in conversations and confidences which would 
 come upon her all of a sudden, as they will upon anyone who 
 has anything to hide; pulling her up sharply, making her 
 feel very old and very out of it all. Old, and yet in some 
 contradictory way younger than most of these laughing, 
 chaffing, flirting boys and girls, for the reason that she had no 
 sort of an axe to grind, that her pleasure was, and must be, 
 so entirely simple. 
 
 For there could be no flirtations for Laura, no endeavour 
 to attract anyone in particular, no plans for the future. She 
 discovered a sense of youthful delight, which she could never 
 have believed possible for herself, in the amusements of which 
 she had hitherto tasted nothing whatever, a naive joy in the 
 very motion of dancing, in the sound of the music, in the 
 crowds in the Park, in tennis at Ranelagh; and yet a joy 
 which was totally different from that of the other girls with 
 whom she was friends in so far that she showed herself an 
 untiring recipient of confidence, listening with patience to all 
 the: "He said," "He looked," "He was waiting there, and I 
 said," " Silly, sentimental sort of ass, but still," " Ra-a-ther 
 nice, don't you think? and frightfully in earnest," " I always 
 said that when I am married," " Of course there's no sentiment 
 about us, but I do think don't you think . . ." "Stacks, 
 simply stacks of boys, but none of the others," etc., etc. 
 Until, all this exhausted, they, the other girls, would go away 
 and remember that Laura Creichton had told them nothing 
 whatever of herself: that Laura Creichton might be their 
 friend, but they did not know in the very least if they were 
 hers. While the " boys " themselves, admiring what Lady 
 Filson described as her "sylph-like airs," found themselves 
 growing shy and ill at ease in the realisation of a gentle aloof- 
 ness, which was too timid for pride and yet never quite timid 
 enough to give itself away : " elusive," that's what the older 
 ones, with a better command of language, called her, for the 
 chaperone had been right in the use of that word " sylph," 
 though "nai'ad" might have been better. 
 
 Sometimes, coming upon her afresh at a dinner-party or 
 at the theatre, seeing her at a dance, Stratton found himself 
 wondering what she really was: Laura, so seemingly simple, 
 and yet so complicated; totally unable to reconcile this 
 
284 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 Laura, in those filmy, floating draperies of silver, palest blues 
 and greens which his sister and the dressmaker had decided 
 upon for her, with that other Laura, pale and grave and 
 shabby, whom he had seen engrossed in her sordid duties in 
 those unspeakable attic-rooms in Little Britain: that Laura 
 of despair and sadness and infinite weariness: Laura of the 
 shoddy serge and dowdy little felt hat, all on one side, hunched 
 together in the corner of his motor that day he took her 
 "home," as he said; "away," as she said. 
 
 Sometimes he wondered if she had a soul, if any of these 
 really sweet women had souls; then, at the back of her slight 
 smile as she listened to some boyish partner always, as it 
 seemed, on a lower seat, looking up at her, sitting very upright 
 in a way she had, with her slender bare arms hanging, showing 
 the silvery blue-veined whiteness of their inner side he would 
 realise a sort of far-away sadness and patience, as the back- 
 ground to an enjoyment which was never quite happiness; 
 a patience which was, as he well knew, the explanation of a 
 bitter complaint he overheard from one of her most faithful 
 partners : 
 
 "Of course you think I'm an awful ass better shut up, 
 sort of thing. All the same, if you weren't so frightfully nice 
 about it all, it wouldn't matter half so much. Sorter rubbing 
 it in, you know." 
 
 She was "nice about it," nice about everything, and to 
 everyone. It exasperated Stratton, because it seemed at 
 times as though she were trying to make up for something, 
 trying to give all she could to make up for what she 
 withheld. 
 
 After all, however, he had less to complain of than anyone, 
 for he alone of her entire world had her confidence though 
 even this was not altogether consoling: "Looks on me as 
 such a complete old fogey that nothing matters," that's what 
 he said: complaining to his sister, and to no one else, for he 
 could count upon her to contradict him. 
 
 One thing there was which scared Laura, sent her straight 
 to him, and that was a proposal. She had more than one 
 during that short season, and they terrified her; gave her a 
 dreadful feeling of being smirched. " You shouldn't let them 
 get so far," that was what Stratton said, hating it almost as 
 much as she did. 
 
 "Oh, but, Stratty, I never think about it! Don't you see 
 that I never can think about it? And then it's upon me, in a 
 moment . . . Boys, the merest boys, laughing and ragging 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 285 
 
 the instant before, and then like that! It makes me feel 
 awful, Stratty; awful!" 
 
 "But you ought to be prepared; you ought to think of 
 it." 
 
 "But I can't, I can't. How could I? And even if I 
 could such infants!" 
 
 " As old, and older than you are, I'll be bound." 
 
 "I don't know perhaps, oh yes, in years. But years 
 are nothing; I feel a thousand times more the same sort of 
 age that you are. Why, I'd a thousand times rather " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 She reddened. " If well, if I wasn't married, if I had to 
 marry well, someone more like you comfortable. I'm 
 not really young, you know, Stratty," she added with an odd 
 pathos. " I suppose I look young, and I play at being 
 young . . . Oh yes, I love it all. Sometimes I love it just 
 because it makes me forget things; and then" her voice 
 dropped " I'm ashamed of forgetting, of pretending to 
 forget." 
 
 "Laura, ,do you really want him back?" 
 
 The words were out of Stratton's mouth before he even 
 thought of them, and for a moment he was panic-stricken, not 
 knowing in the least how she would take them; for despite her 
 girlishness Laura was, always had been, one of those people 
 with whose inmost thoughts one is actually afraid to tamper. 
 
 They were sitting under the trees at Ranelagh; it was close 
 upon seven o'clock and the shadows were lengthening; long 
 velvety shadows, like the veils of night laid out ready upon 
 the grass; the scent of freshly- watered flowers was in the 
 air; peacocks were slowly revolving with spread tails in the 
 slanting strips of sunshine which cut in between the tree- 
 trunks. Stratton had a vivid impression of it all, as sensitive 
 people do have of those scenes which seem set clear for the 
 memorising of certain moments, certain words that matter: 
 " I've done for myself now," he thought, with no idea of 
 comparison between himself, his position, and this chit of 
 nineteen. 
 
 Laura was looking away from him, with her hands folded. 
 She did not turn, and her silence continued for so long that 
 his obstinate decision to let the question stand was well-nigh 
 broken, and he was formulating a sort of apology, when: "I 
 want him back; I really want him back," she said. "Some- 
 times I want him back, so that I hardly know how to bear it; 
 and then then I get scared, Stratty." 
 
286 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 "Scared of what, Lolly?" 
 
 " Of myself, of him of both ourselves. I've grown a lot 
 you see; perhaps that's it. I've gone on growing while he's 
 been since I saw him. 1 suppose" she spoke slowly and 
 hesitatingly, as though she were trying to clear things up in 
 her own mind " I suppose he's gone on growing, too, in some 
 ways of course he has. But I it frightens me sometimes to 
 realise how I've changed." 
 
 "How do you mean, Lolly?" 
 
 " Well, I suppose it's like this. I used to think everything 
 must be wonderful and right if I didn't understand it; if it 
 it was different. I used to feel so awfully silly and ignorant; 
 I daresay that was it. I don't know if I should feel like that 
 now about the wonderfulness of things. I don't know. I 
 can't feel sure, and it frightens me. I don't seem to think of 
 it much, I suppose, but I do think of it; I'm always thinking 
 of it, at the back of me." 
 
 " How do you mean?" 
 
 " If he came back, and I didn't . . . Oh, Stratty, it seems 
 awful to say so and when I long for him so, long and ache, 
 just the look of him, the sound of his voice, the ways he had 
 of taking things but if he did come back, and I didn't think 
 him wonderful, like I used to do, a sort of don't laugh at 
 me; it's true, it's what I did feel a sort of wonderful child, 
 we wouldn't be happy; we're we're, oh, so awfully different. 
 There are things one's been taught that don't seem to matter 
 at first one doesn't notice them; if one did, one would be 
 oh, well, sort of pleased at everything being so different 
 different, that's all one seems to want when one's very young. 
 But later oh, I don't know, but perhaps things go deeper 
 than one thinks; they stick, and then they come out." 
 
 "What sort of things?" 
 
 "I don't know, but . . . Oh, English sort of things; all 
 the silly little things that don't really matter. If I didn't love 
 him dreadfully and altogether Stratty, it's horrible of me, 
 but that's what I'm like; I suppose it's because I know so little 
 but if I didn't didn't love him altogether, I mean, we 
 wouldn't we wouldn't be happy; we couldn't just half -care, 
 either of us. I'm afraid of him never coming back again, so 
 afraid that when I think of it it seems to leave me all hollowed- 
 out; and then I'm afraid oh, frightfully afraid of him 
 coming, and me me well " her voice dropped to a whisper 
 " sort of failing him." 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 LAURA had been to tea in Queen Anne's Gate, and was 
 walking across St. James's Park to join Lady Filson at her 
 club in Piccadilly, where she had been giving a reception to a 
 party of Continental women writers. It had been raining 
 early in the day, but now the sun was shining and CYerything 
 exquisitely freshened; the air in the hollows and around the 
 lake filmed with a sunshot mist. 
 
 It was one of those evenings when London and her parks 
 has a peculiar, almost mystic beauty of her own. Despite the 
 rain it had been very hot, and Laura moved languidly, with 
 the feeling of being in a pleasant dream; unwilling to change 
 the odorous air, the golden lights and velvet-like shadows of the 
 trees for the stuffy and ejaculatory cackle of a second tea-party. 
 
 Just before she came to the bridge, walking slowly and 
 circuitously so as to keep as much as possible to the grass, she 
 almost brushed past a man who jumped up from a chair and 
 spoke her name. 
 
 "Laura!" 
 
 It was Vortonitch. Laura's first feeling was one of almost 
 incredulous amazement; not so much at seeing him there as 
 at him being what he was. "My husband?" The words 
 passed through her mind, a question more than an assertion. 
 But even then they meant nothing to her; she could not make 
 them mean anything: it was, indeed, as though they were 
 applied to someone else. In that fraction of a moment she 
 saw him no longer as her wonderful child, but as a shabby, 
 infinitely wearied and almost middle-aged man. 
 
 She saw everything, with frightful, cruel vividness and 
 surprise, a dreadful sort of shame: his hair a little too long, 
 his hollow cheeks none too recently shaved; the sort of tie 
 and collar which he wore, all wrong and none too fresh; his 
 clothes, his shoes, shabby and in need of brushing. For there 
 are these sudden poisonous rifts in love; moments of the 
 bitterest criticism. It had been like that with Lady Creichton 
 when she had first realised her husband moving his head like 
 a tethered mule. 
 
 287 
 
288 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 It was over in a breath, swept under by a surging wave of 
 warm love and tenderness. She had passed so nearly passed 
 so close that he was actually standing in front of her as he 
 rose. He did not attempt to touch her; his hands were 
 hanging at his side; his shoulders were bent; his chest hollow: 
 he was thin oh, dreadfully, dreadfully thin! And he was 
 changed, too; there was a look of uncertainty, nervous strain 
 upon his face; all the buoyancy was gone. 
 
 "Laura," he said again; and then, "Oh, Laura!" And 
 at that both her hands went out to him, her child and lover. 
 
 "Paul, Paul! Where have you been? Paul, my dear, 
 my dear, what have they done to you?" 
 
 It was an instinctive cry "What have they done to 
 you?" In that moment there was no thought of anyone 
 special attached to it; though later he* mind turned to 
 Grobo, for it seemed plain that something had literally " been 
 done": that no completely free man could have worn an 
 aspect at once so harried and wretched. Wretched! Vor- 
 tonitch, who had, in his own way, gloried in everything which 
 came to him. 
 
 There, indeed, was the change in him, that it was which 
 pulled him down: not his shabby clothes, but that air of 
 something almost furtive. 
 
 "Wretched! Wretched!" Oh, but it was heart-breaking! 
 Laura caught his arm in both hands and clung to it, mur- 
 muring over him. In a sort of maze and desperate love 
 and sorrow, for strangely enough there was no joy in this 
 meeting, they found a couple of chairs and, pulling them 
 close together, sat shoulder to shoulder, drawing life from 
 each other, as in the old days. 
 
 It seemed to Laura, indeed, as if the blood flowing through 
 their veins was common to them both; the colour rose in 
 Vortonitch's cheeks, as though actually fed from hers; for 
 with all their differences, her cold-seeming diffidence, his own 
 carelessness and cruelties, there could have been no two people 
 more completely mated. 
 
 In one moment, when no one was actually near to them 
 not that it mattered, for it didn't; nothing, nothing mattered, 
 apart from this their lips met in a long kiss. His arm was 
 frankly about her; they were like any other couple, com- 
 pletely forgetful of that difference of caste which is so 
 marked by the lower classes' objection to be seen eating, 
 and the upper classes' objection to be seen making love in 
 public. 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 289 
 
 "Paul, Paul!" 
 
 "Laura my Laura!" At first this was all. It was all 
 that Vortonitch wanted it to be; wrapt away from all his 
 troubles the almost prophetic sense of impending disaster 
 which had been weighing him down by that sense of restful- 
 ness which Laura alone brought to him. 
 
 Once again, as so often before, he said to himself: "This 
 is all I want, all I ever can want." And yet, for weeks and 
 months upon end he had completely forgotten her very exist- 
 ence; long intervals, interspersed with moments of passionate 
 longing, or hurt vanity, when he would say to himself, 
 "Laura would know better; Laura is the only one who ever 
 understood me"; other periods of depression and sickness, 
 when he had wanted nothing and nobody else upon earth; and 
 still later on, curious blank spaces of almost reasonless fear, 
 when it seemed that there would have been safety in the mere 
 possession of anything so completely his own. 
 
 But Grobo had said, "Wait," and he had waited; though 
 it was not mere obedience to a power which grew and grew 
 over him a hold that every move he made to shake it off 
 served but to tighten nor was it the excitements and triumphs 
 of his career, the intoxication of a peculiar power over life and 
 death, which had made him hold away; it was all these, and 
 yet at the same time it was something better than these, that 
 feeling which had come to him with his marriage of hating to 
 have Laura mixed up with the more turgid events of his life; 
 for, with that odd streak of naivete which ran through his 
 entire character, he still thought of retiring, as simply as any 
 grocer might do. He had thought of it before, but he had been 
 too full of life then; he was getting tired now, desperately 
 tired; his nerves were giving way; his heart played odd tricks 
 with him. When he looked back over the last year and a 
 half, he was amazed at himself, full of admiration. 
 
 "How the devil did I dare?" was what he asked himself; 
 endeavouring to forget all that still lay before him. 
 
 He had returned from the Continent a week earlier; but 
 he had made no attempt to see his wife, or even obtain any 
 news of her, though restless with longing as he had never been 
 on any of his previous visits home odd how he had thought 
 of England like this ever since his marriage! But the fact 
 was that old desire to feel settled with a grinning imp of 
 doubt still at the back of it all was strong upon him; while 
 he was epicure enough to feel he would rather wait and have 
 everything at once, in its full sweetness. 
 
290 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 " Just this" Grobo had said, " and then, my dear, you 
 will 'ave proved yourself; without doubt you will 'ave proved 
 yourself.*' 
 
 If it had been like that before: "Only this once, an' you 
 shall return to your so charming wife." Then, again, " Only 
 this once." It had gone on and on; at first Vortonitch had 
 not cared, for every fresh move had been full of fresh excite 
 ment. But now everything was getting too difficult, and he 
 had a sense of being continually harried and watched; for 
 the conscience, not of one country alone, but of the whole of 
 Europe, was against him and his, because, instead of making 
 things more comfortable for the community, they had made 
 them more uncomfortable. 
 
 It was not Vortonitch alone who was tired of it; the few 
 "comrades" left to them had had enough, and more than 
 enough; for the saner masses of Europe, realising these 
 swarming agitators as a species of malarial mosquitoes, 
 realising also that there is neither rest nor work possible to 
 men with their blood forever stung to fever-heat, had started 
 out upon an organised scheme of repression. 
 
 It was now Grobo, and Grobo only Grobo, risen to the 
 topmost rung of his profession, by the dropping away of so 
 many around and about him who kept them in any wise 
 together; running a trail of blood, holding them with their 
 noses to it, with a passionate consistency of aim which, as 
 time went on, became more and more a hallucination of 
 personal power: "Kill, kill go on killing, and then who will 
 be left? I I!" 
 
 It was strange that the fire within him failed to consume, 
 melting away that fat at which Vortonitch had so often 
 mocked; for he was plump and outwardly smiling as ever, 
 though even less open to compassion. Vortonitch, indeed, 
 had an idea that if he were unable to destroy members of any 
 royal family, statesmen of worth, military authorities, indus- 
 tries, princes of industry, he was glad, positively glad, when 
 one of his own kind perished in the attempt; and that was 
 why he was pushing him, Vortonitch, on and on to under- 
 takings of which each was more dangerous than the last. 
 
 He had once seen a black panther in the London Zoological 
 Gardens, kept in a cage behind the scenes, for the reason that, 
 if it was confronted with human beings, and unable to get at 
 them, it would gnaw its own tail, overcome by a blood-thirst 
 which over-ruled pain. 
 
 Grobo was like this, more and more like this as time went 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 291 
 
 on, and he felt, as he must have felt, the range of his powers 
 diminishing. Sometimes Vortonitch wondered if he would 
 even hesitate to sacrifice Albert, who, relinquishing all pre- 
 tence of being a child, swam with his father the pilot fish 
 with the shark. 
 
 Vortonitch had taken supper in a little cafe in Buda-Pesth 
 with the two of them immediately before he came to England, 
 and there received his instructions, without heart and without 
 belief in anything he was about to do: realising Grobo as 
 the supreme egoist, as what a schoolboy might describe as 
 " a comic little cuss " ; realising him also as something com- 
 pletely ruthless; a power with men enough still at his com- 
 mand this snippet of a hungry-faced boy, if everyone else 
 failed him to pinch out his, Vortonitch's life, as one may 
 pinch out the flame of a candle, should he dare to fail him. 
 
 Mrs. Grobo was not with them. When Vortonitch last 
 heard of her, she had been in Berlin, busied over the education 
 of her children among other things ; and this separation from 
 his family seemed to have completed the de-humanising of the 
 little man, though there were times when he spoke of them 
 with the deepest affection, growing sentimental over that 
 home which he had destroyed when England became altogether 
 too hot to hold him. 
 
 The first coherent question which Laura asked her husband 
 on this afternoon, when they met so altogether by chance, con- 
 cerned the Grobos; and when he answered evasively that he 
 had not seen the family for some time, she took it for granted 
 that this included them all, and remarked: 
 
 " I'm glad. I like Mrs. Grobo, and I love the children, but 
 I don't like him. He somehow, he gives me the creeps. 
 And there must be something queer about him, Paul. I went 
 to his place oh, when was it? early this spring; I thought 
 I might hear something about you; and I found the whole of 
 the top burnt away." 
 
 "My dear, let's hope it was insured!" remarked Vorton- 
 itch, with a flicker of his old mockery, half turning his head, 
 looking down at her; amused by her simplicity and yet 
 anxious. What did she know? Hang it all! he simply 
 couldn't bear that she should know anything of what he 
 thought of as " all that business." 
 
 " Of course, that was nothing, really. But a policeman 
 who was watching me asked me all sorts of questions; then 
 took me off to Scotland Yard. It it well, it was rather 
 horrid." 
 
292 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 "To Scotland Yard! You? You? Laura! By God, 
 if this isn't too much! A pretty state for things to come to! 
 You my darling! I well, I don't know what to say. This 
 beats everything." He was genuinely amazed, hurt, as the 
 aggressor against society is, should the forces of law and 
 order retort upon him or his. To dare to question his wife! 
 It was shameful! The sort of thing to drive a man to well, 
 to anything. And when this was just what he'd been trying 
 to keep her clear of; was beginning to think that he had gone 
 away on purpose to keep her clear of. 
 
 "Oh, I don't suppose that it had anything really to do 
 with me," went on Laura, sobered by his exuberant anger; 
 feeling, as she always had done, that it was somehow " up to " 
 her to stand between her husband and any of this rushing off 
 with the bit between his teeth. " It was because I knew the 
 Grobos, was asking about them; I'm sure of that, though 
 they heckled me, too. There was a second man, in some 
 superior position, at Scotland Yard, who questioned and 
 questioned mt. Paul, it worried me, because the Grobos were 
 friends of yours; and afterwards Mr. Stratton said, seemed to 
 think, that they might drag you into it all." 
 
 "And what the devil had Stratton to do with it, eh?" 
 
 " I got them to send for him ; someone had to swear to 
 who I really was I heard them speak of ' this man Grobo * 
 'dangerous.' Paul, I believe I hate him; but dangerous! 
 That funny little tubby thing! They said that the Home 
 Secretary and the Head of oh, some special department 
 had it in hand, but that he was too clever for them." 
 
 "All the same, I don't see what business it was of Strat- 
 ton's," persisted Vortonitch, childishly jealous, as he had 
 always been, of Gerald Stratton: the man who had as many 
 brains and so many more advantages than he himself. 
 
 "Dear, I told you: there had to be someone." Laura 
 spoke gently, for she had patience with him, understood him 
 when he was like this; and, besides, his misery was so 
 palpable. " I was determined not to have mother worried. 
 Perhaps it was my name." 
 
 "Your name? Oh, so they knew your name, did they?" 
 he began loudly; and then quite suddenly laughed: "And I 
 wonder what they thought of my wife, my beautiful wife." 
 
 " It wasn't very pleasant, I can tell you. I felt . . . Oh, 
 I think there was nothing that I felt I mightn't be guilty of." 
 
 " Darling, I'm sure it wasn't pleasant. Don't let's talk 
 of it; it's over and done with." 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 293 
 
 "But what did they think Grobo had done?" 
 
 "Oh, well, you saw probably suspected arson, or some- 
 thing like that." He gave a restless movement of his head, 
 oddly like some wild and graceful animal. " Oh, hang Grobo! 
 Laura, beloved, why waste a moment talking of anyone else, 
 when we have so frightfully little time?" Something driven 
 and desperate showed itself at the back of his impatience: 
 "So little time so little time!" That sense of fatalism was 
 over him again: if only he could encompass everything, 
 everything in life within this moment! "Laura, I love you, 
 I love you. Why let ourselves be worried by anything 
 else?" 
 
 He tried to draw her closer, but she pressed back against 
 his arm, staring at him with scared eyes: "So little time? 
 What do you mean?" 
 
 "Well, now, and like this." 
 
 "But what do you mean? Paul, what do you mean? 
 Oh, don't laugh don't! You're not really laughing, and I 
 can't bear it; it's hateful! You can't laugh like that about 
 things that matter: laugh, and go away go on going away 
 or cry and go away; and all meaning nothing, all the same 
 thing." She had drawn herself definitely apart from him, her 
 hands twisted together. "I can't bear it, because it's not real 
 and it's past bearing." 
 
 "Laura!" 
 
 "Yes, yes, it is past bearing; it's belittling for me to 
 pretend not to be married, and for you . . . Oh, what do you 
 pretend? That's what makes it so awful. I know nothing. 
 It's like living among shadows. It would be awful with 
 anyone, but with the person one loves . . . You go away, 
 disappear; and then suddenly here you are, back in London, 
 and do not even let me know, though I'm your wife really 
 your wife, pretending to be a girl like the others. I meet you 
 here by chance, like oh, like anyone else; and you expect me 
 to feel, to be just the same in every sort of way: loving, sym- 
 pathising. It's like why, it's like nothing more than a 
 ' turn ' at a music-hall. You feel you can go away, and come 
 back and find everything the same again! Well, you can't 
 that's all; you can't! Oh, Paul, do you mean to say you 
 don't see that, though it may be the same outside, it's not the 
 same really and truly? It can't be, it can't: one can't go 
 on like that." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 " Feeling the same. One changes, one must change. One 
 
294 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 can't start again suddenly, like this not if you do it again: 
 not twice over; never, never twice over. Months and months 
 of silence! Oh, cruel, rotten! not even wanting that's what 
 makes it so hopeless not even wanting to know anything 
 about me." 
 
 "Laura, Laura, what do you mean?" 
 
 "One can't; that's all simply can't go on. Don't you 
 see? Nothing ever is the same again all broken up like 
 this!" Her strange passion had dropped to a sort of sullenness, 
 a sense of desperate depression. 
 
 "Laura! But what have I done?" 
 
 "You feel like that? you wonder what you have done!" 
 She repeated the words with that blankness which comes when 
 one realises the impossibility of grasping the twists and turns 
 of another's mind, finds something incredible taken as a matter 
 of fact. Paul was happy to be with her; and he wondered 
 what he had done, where he had failed her: honestly won- 
 dered! And after close upon seventeen months of complete 
 silence! 
 
 "Laura, I love you believe that; anyhow, believe that, 
 I love you." Quite suddenly he was gentle, deprecating, 
 tender. 
 
 "And yet you can talk as though you were going away 
 again." 
 
 "Only for this evening, this one night, beloved: there's 
 something I've got to do. But to-morrow, to-morrow, upon 
 my oath here and at the same hour . . . Let me see; what 
 is it?" 
 
 He took her wrist and turned it round to look at her watch. 
 " Twenty to seven . . . Oh no, that's too late. How can we 
 wait all that time? Let it be in the morning; ten in the 
 morning and we will go away together, just you and I ... 
 we'll . . . Laura, it's a new watch! You never got that 
 other one out?" 
 
 "No; it would have seemed like like going back on 
 things. To-morrow Paul, you promise? Upon your word 
 of honour to-morrow morning?" 
 
 " I swear it if I'm alive. Laura, I think if I was dead 
 I'd come just the same. Oh, my dear, my dear!" He gazed 
 at her, shaking his head, overcome with an intense sense of 
 melancholy: really overcome, not enjoying it as he used to 
 do. 
 
 "Paul . . . Look here, Paul; if I let you go now, I feel 
 I shall never see you again." 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 295 
 
 "Don't, don't! Don't say it; don't put it into words!" 
 
 "If it isn't anything very particular this evening, I don't 
 see why Paul, is it very particular?" 
 
 "A promise." 
 
 " Oh, then, if it's a promise . . . And I suppose to-morrow 
 will soon come. Only . . ." She broke off, shivering. " It 
 must have grown colder; or is it the damp from the lake? 
 Oh, I must go. To-morrow to-morrow morning. 'I'm glad 
 it's not the afternoon; nothing much can happen between 
 now and ten o'clock to-morrow. Luckily we're going out 
 to-night, and that will help to pass the time." 
 
 "You alone? you and your mother?" 
 
 " No ; she's away. * The House ' is shut up. We won't be 
 so very far from each other, after all, Paul," she added, all 
 her anger burnt out; sad and wistful. "I'm up in London, 
 in Pont Street, with Lady Filson, Stratty's sister." 
 
 " Stratty again, the great Stratty ! And why this, may I 
 ask?" 
 
 " Just to go out to have someone to go about with." 
 
 "Oh, well . . ." He made a movement as though to 
 shrug something aside, gave a little laugh: "Oh, well, well, 
 so long as I am here to take you away from it all, this fashion- 
 able world! You look like it, do you know? you've grown 
 to look like it, my beautiful." He pinched up a bit of the 
 material of her gown between his finger and thumb, looked at 
 it, smiling. " Such a swell as you are! The fashionable 
 world society and my wife! Laura, Laura, what a mix-up 
 it all is!" 
 
 They had moved onto the bridge by now, and, leaning 
 against the parapet, he turned, facing her, gazing into her 
 eyes with an air of mocking melancholy. " My God! I wonder 
 what they'd do with me in that milieu, eh, Laura? And what 
 you'd do with me, eh? What will you do with me? Will 
 you Laura, you made me promise that I'd be here to-morrow; 
 but you? What of you? What of you?" 
 
 "Of course I'll be here." 
 
 "But swear it. No, no; you needn't. There's that 
 about you, among everything else you'd never break a 
 promise you'd made me. You're a fine creature, Laura. But 
 to-night . . . Oh, I hate to think of to-night. If only we 
 could cut it out, throw it away! Where are you going, and 
 what finery are you going to wear? That's pretty enough for 
 anything; but an evening dress! To think that I've never 
 seen my Laura in a low-necked gown; and now fellows who 
 
296 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 have no right to see an inch more than your face not even 
 that women should be veiled, all women who are worth 
 loving will be gloating over you: arms and neck and breast." 
 
 "They don't Paul!" 
 
 "Oh, they do. People try to pretend that men aren't 
 beasts, but they are; or the world would come to an end. 
 Oh, well, this once; it's only until to-morrow." 
 
 " It's a new frock, Paul. I wish you could see me in it." 
 She gave a girlish laugh, her face flushed. "Pink tulle and 
 silver; the palest, palest pink. It's a gala night, you know." 
 
 He drew a little back and stared at her oddly: "A gala 
 night where?" 
 
 "At the Opera. The King and Queen are going to be 
 there." 
 
 "So you're going to the Opera to-night? To-night!" 
 
 "Why? are you going? Paul, are you going, too?" 
 
 "Yes, yes perhaps. Who knows?" 
 
 "Then why . . ." She puckered her brow and gazed at 
 him, anxious and puzzled, for his face had an odd, stiffened 
 look, more grey than white: yes, that was it grey like the 
 stones of the bridge, the chill shadows creeping over every- 
 thing. "Paul, what is it?" 
 
 "Nothing, nothing but when one cares very much . . ." 
 He broke off, overcome by a sense of horror, a sudden wild 
 fear and desire for flight; pierced through by that faculty 
 he had always had of picturing things : seeing himself and his 
 wife both at the Opera, though not together. At the Opera, 
 this night of all nights! It was funny. Oh, after all, it was 
 funny, thank goodness! damned funny! He, and this wife 
 of his at the Opera, under the wing of a Cabinet Minister's 
 sister enough to make a cat laugh, that, if only one knew. 
 . . . Well, if one did know if any of them, resting before the 
 excitement of the evening, preparing their fine clothes, dining 
 together did know? He threw back his head, stiffening with 
 his old sense of supremacy, godship: after all, it was he who 
 would be the figure of the evening; after all, any man, any 
 simple, obscure man, any fool who dealt death to a king was 
 twice a king, mastering kings. For a moment the old gran- 
 diloquent thought held him; then that sense of impending 
 disaster fell over him afresh, weighing him down with a chill, 
 flat dejection. He put out his hand and touched Laura's, 
 lying along the coping of the bridge, almost timidly, with 
 clammy fingers, 
 
 "Beloved, when you get out of the carriage, motor, or 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 297 
 
 whatever it is, going into the Opera House this evening, drop 
 your cloak off your shoulders, so that I can see you for a 
 moment you in your pale pink frock." 
 
 "Yes, yes and perhaps I shall see you, too." 
 
 " I don't suppose so ; but I shall be there. Now you must 
 go. I can't kiss you here, embrace you, my Laura; but I'm 
 glad of that. That would frighten me, weaken me. Too 
 much like a last embrace, eh, Laura?" He gave an oddly 
 broken laugh, his dark eyes in the arched hollows fixed on 
 her with a look of despair and famine. " Now go ; I'll stay 
 here and watch you go." 
 
 " But, Paul, why " 
 
 "Go! go now!" He spoke almost sharply. "Oh, for 
 goodness' sake don't make it harder!" 
 
 Fifty feet or so away, Laura turned her head, and glancing 
 back, saw that Vortonitch, a grey-faced man in shabby grey 
 clothes, leaning sideways against the bridge, gazing after her, 
 had taken out his handkerchief and was wiping his hands 
 upon it. 
 
 Half-dazed, she walked across the Park, turned up Picca- 
 dilly. Only when she was actually mounting the steps of 
 Lady Filson's club did she realise time in any sort of way 
 apart from Paul and herself. It was seven o'clock, and 
 dinner was at half-past. Hailing a taxi, she got into it, telling 
 the man to make as much haste as possible; overwhelmed by 
 that sense of pressure which comes to a person who awakes 
 suddenly and over-late; a desperate desire to get over the 
 business of dressing, dinner, the Opera, the hours of the night 
 as quickly as possible. A feeling of fear and haste and des- 
 perate determination, as though by a sort of pushing through 
 time she could push aside all danger and doubt, shoving it 
 away. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 As Laura got out of the motor in the eddying wake of Lady 
 Filson that evening, she allowed her cloak to slip from one shoul- 
 der; reasonably enough, for her ankle-short dress of pink and 
 silver, above silver shoes and palest pink silk stockings, had a 
 tag of a train like an over-long-sash, which needed manipulation. 
 
 There was a crowd at either side of the shallow steps with 
 the crimson carpet, roped back with thick crimson ropes: a 
 flat wall of darkly-clad figures, and faces which were greenish- 
 white where they were untouched by the light from the 
 lamps, orange-tinted, immediately beneath them: apathetic 
 and vacant enough, and yet, on the whole, more contented 
 than they had been the year before. Glancing from side to 
 side, and seeing no sign of Vortonitch though his face as she 
 had seen it last was so clear in her mind's eye that it seemed 
 to float like a mirage between herself and the rest of the world, 
 more real, more closely present than any other there Laura 
 hesitated upon the top step, had turned, gazing, when Lady 
 Fileon stretched back a hand and touched her arm. 
 
 " My dear," she said, and moved on, while the girl, with a 
 sense of some deep and fatal loss, turning, followed her, 
 melting in among the other luxuriously-gowned women and 
 men with gleaming white shirt-fronts, their overcoats thrown 
 over their arms for after the chilly evening, it was once more 
 almost unbearably close with a feeling as though she were 
 being drowned, pressed down and under by humanity. 
 
 As she entered the vestibule, friends were exchanging 
 greetings with Lady Filson, people were talking all round her: 
 people, people, nothing but people, like a stifling curtain 
 dropped down between herself and the real world. 
 
 As they mounted the stairs and were moving along the 
 corridor, that wild desire for flight which had overcome 
 Vortonitch the same evening swept over her : for a moment she 
 paused, almost at the door of the box, and drew a sharp breath, 
 clutching her cloak with one hand, her train with the other, and 
 half -turned. She must get away out of this; she must, she 
 must. It was stifling, unbearable; everyone smelt of scent. 
 Oh, she must get out, into the open, find Vortonitch, drag him 
 away from what? where? Get between him and what? 
 She did not know; she knew nothing, could not think plainly, 
 stupefied by a sense of inexpressible and reasonless panic. 
 
 298 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 299 
 
 Stratton, who had joined the party, touched her arm: 
 "Lolly, what is it?" 
 
 She turned to him, her eyes dark with pain and fear; her 
 white lips moved stiffly, though no words came. 
 
 " Oh, Gerry ! " Lady Filson caught her brother's arm : 
 "Gerry, I quite forgot; I said I'd wait in the foyer for Hilda 
 Stracey. Do go back and find her, there's a dear; she'll be 
 alone. Come along, Laura." 
 
 For a moment Stratton hesitated, glancing at Laura: 
 "What is it, Lolly? Is there anything on earth I can do? 
 You know . . ." 
 
 But she had turned her head aside and, shaking it without 
 looking at him, followed in his sister's wake, her bright hair 
 with its silver fillet showing above the crowd. 
 
 Something must have happened; something in connection 
 with Vortonitch, for he alone could bring that look to Laura's 
 face. "Confound that fellow!" thought Stratton, moving 
 down the stairs, his lips set tightly, his head high, searching 
 the crowd for an auburn head, that sort of elaborate head- 
 dress which Lady Stracey affected. 
 
 He caught sight of her as he reached the lower steps, 
 signalling to him, excitedly moving her lips, pantomiming 
 despair. For she was just too late: the stairway and the 
 centre entrance were being cleared. The Opera House attend- 
 ants pressed back the loiterers. Through the widely-opened 
 doors he could see the police either side of the steps; the 
 semi-circle of the crowd, the buildings opposite; orange and 
 yellow lights; a plaque of indigo sky patched with chimneys. 
 
 There was a distant, rather faint, cheer; the hoot of a 
 motor. As Stratton slipped from the bottom step of the 
 stair and rounded the corner of the balustrade, a woman with 
 a towering head-dress was in front of him, blocking his view. 
 
 He heard the royal motor stop; there was another and 
 louder cheer; that odd fluttering murmur, like a waving ban- 
 ner, which accompanies such moments. He fancied that he 
 saw the Queen's elaborately-waved fair head and white aigrette 
 as she stepped out of the motor. 
 
 As the woman in front of him craned upon tip-toe, shutting 
 out everything, there was the sound of two quick shots, one upon 
 another; then, after a pause, another; followed by an extraor- 
 dinary series of cries. For a moment the people in the vestibule 
 surged forward, and others came running down the stairs, while 
 Stratton, moving sideways, pressed his way towards the door. 
 
 A moment before, he could have sworn that his thoughts 
 had been of nothing apart from the coming of royalty; the 
 
300 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 boredom of being kept waiting, Hilda Stracey's tiresome late 
 arrival: that the very thought of Laura had been frayed out 
 of him by this petty exasperation. 
 
 At the first shot, however, his thoughts amazingly 
 personal for such a man were with her; and then, like a 
 dart winged by that look which he had seen upon her face, 
 they lighted upon Vortonitch. 
 
 As he moved forward, the well-dressed crowd made way 
 for him. He heard his own name, " Stratton," " Mr. Stratton " 
 or again from some more personal acquaintance: "What is 
 it? Oh, Mr. Stratton, what is it?" 
 
 The tumult outside had dropped to a murmurous roar 
 which might have been anything: a cheer, a threat, or a mere 
 breath of overwhelming emotion. 
 
 Stratton was at the door, rounding it, when he was pressed 
 back by a tall, heavily-built attendant, and the King and 
 Queen entered, bowing, smiling, from side to side, as though 
 nothing out of the way had happened; upon which, with a 
 pang of self-reproach, Stratton realised that he had either 
 forgotten about them or taken the worst for granted. 
 
 As their suite followed, moving smoothly and imperturb- 
 ably with the splendid mechanism of the English, there was a 
 murmur of admiration and relief; the sound of a swelling 
 cheer from the road outside, broken again by that curious 
 sullen roar: "Like an animal," thought Stratton; and then, 
 again: "An angry mob!" while his mind rebounded, once 
 again, to Laura Laura's husband. Was this what she had 
 meant? Was this what she had thought, dreaded? 
 
 As he pushed his way through the dense crowd under the 
 lights upon the outer steps, eddying away into darkness, wave 
 upon wave of people, he was curiously ready for what he saw. 
 
 "Two shots at his Majesty, then turned it upon 'isself," 
 volunteered one policeman, as Stratton was held back; passed 
 on; then held back, and passed on again. 
 
 The crowd had dropped its roar by the time he reached the 
 inner ring and was recognised by the King's personal detective, 
 who motioned him forward. 
 
 Vortonitch was lying half on the edge of the pavement and 
 half over it, with blood from a wound in his breast falling into 
 the gutter, caking the dust. Some men had come up with a 
 hand-ambulance too late for a living man, too soon for a 
 dead man and the doctor kneeling at Vortonitch's side 
 motioned them away; then, bending lower, thinking that the 
 pulse beneath his fingers had flickered out, felt it leap with a 
 sudden spurt of vitality, and following the movement of the 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 301 
 
 still bright eyes, realised a tall thin man in evening dress, with 
 a long, thin, white face, and beckoned him nearer. 
 
 " I think he wants to speak to you if he can." 
 
 As Stratton knelt and bent low, so as to catch the dying man's 
 last words, the white faces and dark forms of the crowd seemed 
 to sway, swinging round him, amid a silence so intense that he 
 could hear their breath; while the boots of the policeman 
 standing nearest to him gave out a faint, long-drawn squeak. 
 
 "Laura . . ." began Vortonitch, and then stopped. 
 There was blood round his mouth, and one of the policemen, 
 stooping, wiped it away with his own handkerchief. 
 
 "Lungs," said someone; the word, isolated as it was, 
 sounding as irrelevant as though it had nothing whatever to 
 do with the matter. 
 
 "Laura . . . tell . . ." 
 
 Stratton bent still lower: "Shall I fetch her?" 
 
 He dreaded the answer, but Vortonitch shook his head. 
 
 "It ought . . ." he began; paused, gasping, and then 
 started again, "should . . . have been a ... bomb, you 
 know. ... I ... I ... all right with with that . . . 
 there's no one else. . . ." He closed his eyes, and there was 
 another long break. When he opened them again, they were 
 veiled with death, though something of his old mocking smile 
 twisted his lips: "Rotten . . . shot always . . . always . . . 
 But she . . . she said . . . she would be here . . . thought 
 it ... it ... safer . . . for her . , . Laura ... in her 
 pink gown. . . . Tell her ... I saw her . . . tell her . . ," 
 
 His face was convulsed; something in his agonised eyes 
 seemed to beseech Stratton, and he half rose. 
 
 "I'll fetch her," he said; his reluctance of a moment 
 before swept away, half impatient with Laura for not being 
 there; for knowing so much, as betrayed in that look of hers, 
 and not knowing this. 
 
 He was turning, when, with a surprising spurt of strength, 
 Vortonitch caught at his arm, half -raised himself, jerked back 
 his head in his old fashion, and threw round him a long glance 
 of bitterest hatred and contempt, sweeping the stolid forms of 
 the policemen, the flat, disc-like and utterly unexpressioned 
 faces of the crowd which stood watching him die. 
 
 "Not . . . not ..." A froth of blood was round his 
 mouth, but he swept it away with one hand, supporting 
 himself upon one elbow, his head high. 
 
 "Not for God's sake front of that canaille!" he cried; 
 and fell back, crumpling up into a heap; while the doctor rose 
 to his feet, and beckoned forward the men with the ambulance. 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 "LAURA, what was he? You're constantly thinking of 
 him; you've been thinking of him now. What was he? Are 
 you ever any nearer understanding?" 
 
 Stratton, with his pen in his hand, seated at his writing- 
 table, but not writing, had been watching his wife for a good 
 five minutes, her fair head raised as though listening, a trick 
 as he realized caught from Vortonitch; the window of his 
 study, tall and narrow, framing her, the plane-tree outside, 
 with its flat and neutral-tinted masses of shade, silhouetting 
 her out, clear-cut and delicate. 
 
 Their thoughts were running parallel, as they so often did ; 
 he felt this, for they were extraordinarily in unity. Until 
 they were married three months earlier, and close upon two 
 years after Paul Vortonitch's death, Stratton had been half 
 afraid of Laura's youth. But this, he found, was a matter of 
 actual years, nothing more; he owed that much to his prede- 
 cessor, anyhow. After all, come to think of it, there was no 
 end to what he owed him; he realised this with his usual 
 whimsical philosophy: among other things, a wide tolerance, 
 a sort of quiet benignity not merely bridging but obliterating 
 the gap between twenty-two and forty-three. In addition to 
 this, Laura was glad to be safe, to be at peace and that, too, 
 was Vortonitch's doing yet always a little scared of life; so 
 that, with their positions reversed, she was to Gerald Stratton 
 as much his child and wife as Vortonitch had been, in those 
 days which were passed, at once her child and her lover; 
 wiping out her girlhood with a burden of care and tenderness. 
 
 She was happy, too; though, at the beginning, tentative, 
 and half afraid of it all: happy, as Stratton himself 
 was happy; happy and secure enough though not 
 until she was safely his wife to embrace the memory of 
 Vortonitch himself in his old way of speculating, weighing, 
 considering all sides of every question; content to realise 
 that his wife's thoughts were often enough harking back to 
 her first husband. Confound it all, that was the trick the 
 fellow held; one could not help thinking about him. Absurd 
 
 302 
 
LAURA CREICHTON 303 
 
 as it seemed, he, Stratton himself, had a habit of speculating 
 over him with a sort of amused tenderness. After all, how 
 much he had missed of life or seemed to miss; for was it not 
 possible that he had squeezed out more than most people in 
 his own lawless and erratic way? There you were! You no 
 sooner arrived at one decision regarding him than the very 
 opposite showed itself as far more likely. 
 
 At one time Stratton had actually begun to set down a sort 
 of summary of it all: a series of questions and answers, 
 ending in nothing but questions. 
 
 Was he a tool, more or less innocent? Was he really 
 innocent in the realisation of his acts? Did he care twopence 
 about liberty, equality, the overthrow of imaginary tyrants, 
 the people? Of course not. Remember that " canaille!" 
 Was all this Nihilism a game, then; or a love of excitement, 
 or a lust of blood, second to Grobo's? Did he feel sweetly, 
 passionately, shallowly, or not at all? Could he love or hate, 
 or did he just pretend to both? That "canaille!" ah! there 
 was hatred; there you had him. But there, only. For the 
 rest? Which side of him that known to Laura, to Grobo, 
 or to Grobo's children was real? Had he any real self? 
 Was he just a bright mirror, throwing back any sort of re- 
 flection; or an inevitable heliograph, flashing signals of 
 revolt; a burning-glass? Was he cruel, or was he just care- 
 less, indifferent to pain? 
 
 He had a name and a form, but he had no country and no 
 definite nationality. Who was he? What was he? Stratton 
 had written down this question as he put it to Laura; placing 
 it first, numbering it: I. What was he? A question still 
 unanswered, as the rest of them. For Vortonitch had died as 
 he lived, most curiously and completely his own. His career 
 was known, at least in part, but of the people whom he had 
 come across, of his lovers, his friends, his enemies and there 
 must have been many there was, apart from the Grobos, 
 neither sign nor tradition; no letter; not a single soul to 
 say, " I knew him as a child " " a youth " " I remember 
 his parents " " his relatives " : no photo, though if there had 
 been, what could it have shown? The name of the photog- 
 rapher, perhaps, but nothing whatever of Vortonitch himself, 
 with his flashing changes of expression, pose. 
 
 Come to that, what help would it have been to meet a man 
 who said, "I knew him"? With the word "knew" as 
 comparative as it must have been? 
 
 "What was he?" 
 
304 LAURA CREICHTON 
 
 " I don't know, Gerry. I don't know. One can't think 
 clearly when one thinks of him. I loved him; in a way I love 
 him now one must, you know. But I never understood 
 him; I understand him less and less. Perhaps, Gerry, perhaps 
 it's this : that no one ever can understand a person who under- 
 stands himself so little." 
 
 To die in the gutter so literally, too: a failure as a 
 regicide, a success as a suicide, tenderly remembered by your 
 widow, the wife of a Cabinet Minister; and, what is more 
 incongruous, brooded over with a sort of affectionate tolerance 
 by your successor himself! The whole thing was too amazing, 
 but 
 
 Oh, well! Grobo, with his most preposterous pose of 
 universal foreignness, burning his fingers more than that, 
 burning his life out with a bomb of his own contriving, 
 might, and with more truth, have summarised him, Vortonitch, 
 as he summarised himself at the last: 
 
 "La fin couronne I'ceuvre." 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Form L9-Series 4939 
 
PR6025. M81L 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000 559 774 5