THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 GREEN LADIES
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 BY 
 
 W. DOUGLAS NEWTON 
 
 ADTHOB OP 
 
 "WAB," "THE UNDYING BTOBY," "PHILIP IN PABTICULAB,' 
 "THE WAB CACHE," ETC. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK LONDON 
 
 1919
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 
 TO YOU, MY DEAR 
 
 1763067
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 PETER JOHN glanced at his cigarette and 
 looked at the scene. His neat and dis- 
 tinguished features were quizzical as he 
 lifted his eyes from the delicate paper tube to the 
 gem-like perfection of the view. His air had a 
 whimsical interrogation. 
 
 : "Should one," he inquired of his mind, "re- 
 gard tobacco in this air as an abomination? 
 Could one pretend that it is frankincense on the 
 altar of beauty?" 
 
 He stood drawing in the still and scented air 
 in luxuriant breaths. 
 
 "No," he decided, "this is a cigarette view, 
 delicate, fragrant, tranquillizing. And also there 
 is no one to contradict me." 
 
 He went 'on smoking his cigarette. It was, 
 after all, a burnt offering to beauty. 
 
 Having settled the matter in his mind, he 
 tasted deep again of the scene, his eyes dwelling 
 upon it with the slow, fine rapture of a pundit. 
 
 i
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Yes," he admitted presently, "the pilgrimage 
 ends. This is the promised land, even better 
 than its promise." 
 
 He looked down at the sequins of gold shin- 
 ing on the sea; the trees so pleasantly concen- 
 trating the view. The framing of jade and emer- 
 ald made poignant the moving expanses of the 
 vision; clarified it; gave it a bright light all its 
 own. 
 
 "If one put that on to a stage," he reflected, 
 "the critics, God bless them, would quote Theoc- 
 ritus. That is all the critics save the Johnny who 
 does the thing for The Times. He would quote 
 Sadi." 
 
 He rested his elbows on the Gothic balustrade 
 that had once been part of a Benedictine clois- 
 ter. 
 
 "Fortunately one could not get it on to the 
 stage," he decided. "It would kill all theatrical 
 realism with its natural unreality."
 
 II 
 
 WITHOUT doubt it was a bright, 
 shining and ravishing view. 
 Beneath the white stone balustrade, 
 and carved from out the gentle slope that sank 
 towards the sea, there was a little formal garden. 
 A tantalizing morsel of a garden, with infantile 
 gravel paths, which were rather less gravel than 
 moss; stone green moss that looks like felt. 
 Green places had been let into the surface of the 
 garden. Geometrical beds performed Euclid in 
 the midst of the green. In the beds were flowers 
 burning, rather like many heaps of multi-colored 
 jewels spilt by a child but a child with a color 
 sense prettily developed. 
 
 On one side of the garden the white austerity 
 of the house stood up without any nonsense. 
 From the end of the house, trees, all nonsense, 
 and all delicious, marched down towards the sea. 
 
 The wall of green-black trees sent out shadows 
 into the garden, but in the heart of the trees were 
 swaying lights of gold where the sun overcame the 
 foliage. 
 
 3
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 On the other side of the garden were trees also, 
 massed and dark. There was any amount of 
 pines trying to look like a battalion of His Maj- 
 esty's Regiment of Guards standing on that pa- 
 rade ground which battle-writers always have the 
 good fortune to find in battles, but only succeed- 
 ing, after all, in looking exactly like pines. Un- 
 less, of course, they were firs, looking exactly 
 like firs. 
 
 These two walls of trees ran downhill, but 
 gently, as the hill sank softly. 
 
 Fifty yards down the hill the infantile garden 
 had had enough of it. An iron rail fence stopped 
 it with a ruthless gesture. ("A very dull fence," 
 considered Peter. "I will not stand it") The 
 independent trees went on. They fringed, in a 
 filagree of leaves, a well barbered paddock. Pad- 
 dock and trees and the world ended as the high 
 notes of a song, sharp against the sea. 
 
 If it could be called the sea. 
 
 Peter called it the sea, all ordinance maps and 
 ancient mariners to the contrary. It looked ex- 
 actly like a sea. Call it a Solent if you like; many 
 people possessing automobiles and houses in the 
 best postal districts have done so. Peter thought 
 better of it. Almost anything could be a Solent; 
 only an ocean on its best behavior could be a sea. 
 
 It was delicately blue-green, as only the sea of 
 4
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 the southern English coast can be blue-green. It 
 was bright and virile. It was as happy and viva- 
 cious as becomes a sea that does not have to labor 
 under the alias of the German Ocean, as becomes 
 a sea that bears so much eager youth to the lands 
 of promise, and brings so many people to the 
 sight of home again. 
 
 It was now at its green-blue best; full of move- 
 ment, brisk and blowing with a big air. On its 
 surface the sun was hammering little scallops of 
 gold. The deep strength of the trees cut into it 
 squarely on either side, and the green darkness 
 of the leaves gave it a quick, moist color, quite 
 like the quick freshness in all those pictures by 
 all those painters we like. 
 
 And at the back of the sea, hanging in mauve 
 and emerald and pearl, was the Island. 
 
 There is only one Island. Just here and Peter 
 had the jolly feeling that it was doing it because it 
 liked him the Island was tapering down to the 
 pearl-pink, slightly self-conscious (had not a Poet 
 Laureate, tierce of Canary and all, stood on them 
 and made verses more or less immortal?) cliffs 
 of The Needles. 
 
 Beyond the point was the lighthouse, and be- 
 yond and beyond, the swinging sea, going on, 
 apparently, to eternity, but only reaching America 
 after all. 
 
 5
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Over the Island and the sea the big, soft, well- 
 hung clouds dozed aloft, and behind the clouds 
 hung the splendid blue banner of heaven. And 
 then, to add a decorative touch, the celestial artist 
 who had made it all up had placed a long slim 
 ship, a gray ship with a red funnel and a voyage 
 to Port Elizabeth in its chart-house, just at that 
 spot where a gray ship with a red funnel should 
 be. 
 
 Peter was enraptured at the genius of that ship. 
 It made the view so human. 
 
 And it was a bewitching view. 
 
 Peter adored it with" his eyes. He stood there 
 gazing into it, allowing himself to be morally 
 overcome by it, until, presently, a very wise old 
 man who, having risked his life on many occa- 
 sions, and gone through battles in which great 
 numbers of men had been killed, was now arrived 
 at the right condition to water flowers came to 
 speak to him. 
 
 Even then Peter's eyes still held the view, and, 
 as he did not move, the old man stood at his 
 shoulder, and he looked at the view as though, 
 he, too, had been morally overcome by it, yet 
 was still unrepentant. 
 
 After a minute he said very softly: 
 
 "It's a fine night, sir. You may go to many 
 6
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 famous places and see many wonders, but I don't 
 think you would see anything so rare as this." 
 
 "I haven't been to many wonderful places," 
 said Peter John. "But I thoroughly agree. 
 There is nothing in the world like it. It is a per- 
 fect sacrament of a view." 
 
 He turned and faced the old man, and, 
 "Will you please bring me some tea here? I 
 am going to stay forever."
 
 Ill 
 
 THE foe of humanity and the friend of 
 flowers, the old soldier was an attrac- 
 tive fellow. Peter John thought him 
 quite as good as the view. He also thought his 
 head was very like the head of Julius Caesar 
 as the British Museum bust would have it but, 
 of course, Julius Caesar rendered a little gauche 
 by the consciousness of the tubular encumbrances 
 of his legs. 
 
 With a sigh Peter John took refuge in the 
 serenity of the old man. The face, with its friend- 
 ly puckers and its curiously lambent eyes, was all 
 kindliness. It showed admirable business acumen 
 on the part of the Southampton estate agents to 
 keep a view like that and an old man like this 
 about premises they wished to let. 
 
 He was an extraordinarily amiable old man, 
 too, he thought, to talk like a human being and 
 not like a butler, or any of those determined cock- 
 neys who keep their masters in their places in 
 the painted pages of literature. 
 
 The old man smiled up at Peter, with the 
 8
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 equable air of one who could be indulgent toward 
 all jokes he could not understand. He rang the 
 bunch of keys in his hand gently, to show that he 
 possessed the hall-mark of the caretaker. He 
 said: 
 
 "You will see the house, sir?" 
 
 Peter turned his back to the sea. 
 
 "I can see it rather well. I like it. It is a 
 comely house. It is the house of dreams. It has 
 an air, a spirit, a mellowness. It is friendly. It 
 is an old friend whom I have never seen, but who 
 has always wanted me, and I it. I love it. I like 
 it. And I like tea, also just at present." 
 
 He looked at Julius Caesar. 
 
 "Just tea," he protested, "and if your wife 
 grows home-made cakes, little ones, just some of 
 them also. That is, if you have a wife." 
 
 The old man smiled at him. Well, yes, that 
 could only mean he had a wife. 
 
 "And having a wife," Peter continued, "you 
 must also tell her, I am staying forever. She 
 ought to know that, I think. For there will have 
 to be a bed, and I have to have a fire with my un- 
 dressing, even in nights like Hampshire's." 
 
 The old man smiled again. He could enjoy 
 humor with any one, even when it was beyond 
 him, which is, after all, a very small matter. He 
 ceased to juggle his keys. 
 
 9
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "My wife is making tea now," he admitted. 
 "She thought you would like tea after your ride. 
 It will be brought out as soon as you wish." 
 
 Peter was charmed. Admirable husband, ad- 
 mirable wife, he thought, or Latin to that effect. 
 
 "But I suppose that is the view," he said to 
 himself. "One naturally lives up to such a view. 
 Or is it the view living up to them? But he 
 stopped thinking like this. It was, indeed, rather 
 like Hilda Lessways asking so many questions 
 of life, that life was far too rushed and breathless 
 to answer them all. So he said to the old man: 
 
 "Your wife has a genius, I see. She has a 
 noble appreciation of the appropriate. A woman 
 of smaller stature would have offered me some- 
 thing spiritually false probably the abomination 
 of the vegetarians, ginger-ale. But tea stamps 
 her. You have just cause for pride in your wife." 
 
 The old man's face was uncomprehending, but 
 beautiful. 
 
 "She is the best wife," he answered simply. 
 
 He turned and beckoned. A window curtain 
 trembled as though nervous, and remained still. 
 
 "You can sit here at your tea," said the old 
 man, both explaining and filling the gap. "You 
 can see our view and watch the light go out. 
 There is nothing quite like it the way the light 
 goes out. It is gentle. You can watch it on the 
 
 10
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Island hills, a lot of colors getting sweet and 
 blurred. And then shadows growing up. They 
 are gentle, too." 
 
 A big, youngish old woman carrying a tray, 
 with a tripod table folded and hanging on her 
 arm, came walking from the house while the old 
 man was speaking. He looked towards her and 
 smiled as though he were seeing something ex- 
 ceedingly pleasant for the first time. 
 
 "I'm afraid you will not see the house at its 
 best, sir," he ended in warning. "We have elec- 
 tric light, our own power, but there is nothing 
 quite like the sun." 
 
 The woman came up. She courtesied to Peter, 
 showing a very bright, alert, quick, smiling old 
 face ; Peter told himself that he was hers for all 
 time. 
 
 The old man took the tray, and with quick 
 movements the tripod table was before Peter, and 
 the tray with its shining and modest vessels was 
 on the table, while quick, sure hands smoothed 
 out the cloth so flat that it fell in angular folds, 
 that reminded Peter, somehow, of a Russian 
 priest in a new stiff cope. 
 
 The old man had bowed once and said: 
 
 "This is my wife, sir." But his tone explained, 
 "This is the one perfect thing in the world. Look 
 at it well. It is worthy." 
 
 ii
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 The woman said nothing at all. She smiled 
 and looked at her man and smiled again. So they 
 stood for a moment, until both turned and looked 
 across the easy sea to the soft hills of the Island. 
 
 Peter joined them in their glance. The soft 
 fingers of dusk were coming slowly to the hills, 
 and they had become "gentle" ("What other 
 word could one use?" thought Peter). He could 
 see the sun striking into a plaque of dusty gold a 
 cornfield on the Island slopes. 
 
 "When you are ready, sir," the old man said, 
 "I will come out again. I shall see at once when 
 you want me at once." 
 
 Peter administered tea. 
 
 "I shall certainly need you. There will be my 
 bed-candle to bring, or is it an electric torch? I 
 hope not. And perhaps even before that I shall 
 want dinner. Well, something we will call dinner, 
 for I have invaded you without warning. Some- 
 thing with drink and food in it." 
 
 Peter said this in a light, nonchalant way, and 
 he kept his eyes on the old woman. How would 
 she take it? 
 
 Without a doubt she had a genius. She took 
 it remarkably well. The old man saw that Peter 
 was keeping up the joke, but she saw he was being 
 serious as well. He saw the light come into her 
 face. 
 
 12
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "You have taken the place, sir," she breathed, 
 and, "How nice of you to be so pleased," Peter 
 thought. 
 
 "It has taken me," he answered. "Though 
 that is the same thing in a lease. I am going to 
 stay here forever, only your husband thinks he 
 will not let me." 
 
 The woman looked at her husband. 
 
 "Why not, Eden?" she asked. 
 
 The old man smiled back at her. He would 
 take her into this joke he could not understand. 
 
 "The gentleman has only come over to see the 
 house." He held out the estate agent's permit to 
 view. "Nothing has been settled yet." He turned 
 with a sudden qualm to Peter. "Has it, sir?" 
 
 Peter raised his brows. 
 
 "I think," he explained to the woman, "I think 
 he means that a number of papers which are 
 wearisome have yet to be put before me, and that 
 lawyers have yet to make me pay money for the 
 privilege of signing my name. As a matter of 
 fact," he said to the old man, "the lawyers and 
 agents and all the King's papers are coming over 
 to-morrow." 
 
 The old man fell back a step. He was smiling 
 as ever, only he was smiling better. 
 
 "I did not know that, sir. I beg your pardon." 
 13
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Oh, please don't," said Peter. "I did not 
 know it myself ten seconds ago." 
 
 Eden frowned. This was something more than 
 a joke he did not understand. The woman spoke 
 at once. She had been watching Peter's face with 
 great attention. 
 
 "You will telegraph," she suggested eagerly, 
 "or telephone. You could write even; they will 
 get that to-morrow." 
 
 Assuredly, Peter reaffirmed, she had a genius. 
 
 "We will telephone," he told her. "And my 
 chauffeur will both take a message and bring all 
 the lawyers your husband would like from South- 
 ampton." Peter nodded at them. "That is quite 
 pleasantly settled. . . . And food my chauffeur 
 can go and steal some, if you tell him what shops 
 to steal from." 
 
 The old woman was as cheerful as Peter. She, 
 too, had an adventurous mind. 
 
 "I have a young fowl," she brightly told him. 
 "I can give you some sorrel soup, but I think that 
 fish . . ." 
 
 "I will think the fish, if that will be more help- 
 ful," agreed Peter. "The young fowl and sorrel 
 soup, that is enough for any man." 
 
 The old man was not showing the greatest easi- 
 ness. 
 
 "Don't think ill of me, sir," he said. "But I do 
 14
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 not know whether I would be doing right by Miss 
 Phillippa or the agents." 
 
 "Miss Phillippa?" 
 
 Uneasiness grew upon the old man. He looked 
 at Peter with pleading eyes. He was imploring 
 him not to press the matter too rigorously. His 
 wife stood by watching him. She was a little 
 amused. She knew he had stumbled into an awful 
 hole. She was going to let him remain in it until 
 he stumbled out. 
 
 "Miss Phillippa?" asked Peter again. 
 
 "It is Miss Phillippa's house, sir." 
 
 "Then we need not bother about agents. Ask 
 Miss Phillippa to have me go to her. Then we 
 will talk over things. And I will rent the view." 
 
 The old man spread his hands. 
 
 "Miss Phillippa is away," said the old woman 
 briskly, but with no intention of helping her hus- 
 band out of his fine hole. "She is in a hospital. 
 Nursing, sir." 
 
 "Oh," said Peter John faintly. 
 
 "So you see, sir, . . ." began the old man. 
 
 "I don't," said Peter John ruthlessly. "Miss 
 Phillippa is not in her house, and wants to let it. 
 I am in her house and am going to take it. We 
 are both where we want to be; we are both at- 
 taining our aims. You won't make us both un- 
 happy, will you?" 
 
 15
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Eden was perplexed. 
 
 "Miss Phillippa unhappy or you, sir? Not 
 for the world. Only it is not usual, sir. And I 
 am supposed to be careful." 
 
 Peter laughed. 
 
 "Then you had better go for a policeman. My 
 chauffeur will take you to the nearest one. I am 
 going to stay." He turned to the woman. "You'll 
 see I don't die of night air and rheumatics while 
 he is gone?" 
 
 The old woman laughed outright in a jolly way. 
 
 "Eden, you had best leave things to the lawyers 
 and the agents. They will see to it more cleverly 
 than you. They'll come to-morrow. And a bed 
 is only a bed." 
 
 "You had really better give in, Eden," ad- 
 monished Peter. "You are making all this fuss 
 about a bed which is only a bed." 
 
 Eden smiled, mainly to his wife, but Peter John 
 had some of the sun of it. 
 
 "The gentleman could have the Chinee room, 
 Eve," he said, with astonishing decision. "That's 
 quite ready. It is always ready; Miss Phillippa 
 likes to feel she can come any time." 
 
 "That, and your telephone," said Peter. "I 
 want no more. And my chauffeur, tell him the 
 name of a good inn in the village, and say he must 
 
 16
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 be back here at seven o'clock to-morrow. That 
 will help him respect me." 
 
 "We have a room," said Eve. "If you would 
 be so kind, sir, we will look after your man." 
 
 "I don't think, really, I am the one who is be? 
 ing kind," said Peter, and he turned to his view.
 
 IV 
 
 THE sun was going out in rose and prim- 
 rose. 
 The air above the Island was so thin 
 and delicate that it had taken on an interior sheen, 
 as though it were of some fine, silken fabric 
 through which a fair light shone. The Island had 
 become dim. Its mauve had deepened in the shad- 
 ows to a warm and smoky blueness ; the cliffs alone 
 beat out their strange and quivering pink fires. 
 Along the heights of the land a single brushful 
 of glowing color was burning also, outlining the 
 hills. Houses shone like small pale ghosts upon 
 the slopes; in a single window blazed a lonely 
 topaz star of light. 
 
 The sea had lost some of its living color, but 
 now Peter could hear it, breathing in its eternal 
 life over the sands of the beach. Where the sun 
 caught it it was flushed and disheveled, as a child 
 sleepy, but not anxious for bed. 
 
 The walls of the trees had become dense. They 
 had drawn their dark night-clothes about them al- 
 ready. Only through chance alleys did Peter see 
 
 18
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 the last lights of the day, shining as an inlay of 
 jewels in the far, flat distance under the boughs. 
 
 The trees were beginning tc stir a little, to talk 
 to each other in whispers, in their nightly and tene- 
 brous way. Scarfs of cool air floated through 
 the fragrant mellowness of the expiring day. 
 
 Peter felt the touch of their cool breath; he 
 shivered a little. 
 
 "Dew means death to me. In the reveries and 
 dampnesses of evening lurks my irrevocable doom 
 it has been said." He smiled not whimsically 
 but grimly. "And medical boards and pundits in 
 Wimpole Street have said it. Beware of the 
 glamours of crepuscule, and its fair but deroga- 
 tory airs, Peter John," he finished. 
 
 And he sat on thinking, a fair target for dew. 
 
 The night slipped secretly into the world. The 
 topaz lights of the houses had fled; but there were 
 stars, big, moist, glowing, brimming with light; 
 only a tremble of heaven, he thought, would spill 
 them over. Now the Island was a tender shadow, 
 large against the profound night. Nearer, the 
 massed trees were dense and black. The world 
 was quiet. The earth had fulfilled the labors of 
 the light. It had paused, and, possibly, it, too, 
 was thinking. The quiet was so very still and 
 deep. Only the sea breathed, speaking and speak- 
 
 19
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 ing in slurring undertones of the things the heart 
 understands and the tongue cannot utter. 
 
 "The land is better than the promise," reflected 
 Peter. The melancholy of crepuscule was sinking 
 into him, and he was letting it have its will. 
 
 Now, after many weeks, he could b.e himself. 
 His thoughts could go their own way; his body 
 could relax. His face became a little pinched. 
 His lassitude was telling him the truth better than 
 words of the tongue, better even than thought or 
 sensation. 
 
 "This is the place," he told himself. "I won't 
 have to be care-free here. I won't have to pre- 
 serve my unconquerable pose. I am away from 
 all and everybody who like to bear woes bravely. 
 My head is bloody, and, thank goodness, here I 
 can bow it." 
 
 He sat still. He was cold, but for the first time 
 since his wound his melancholy was master of his 
 will. 
 
 He tried an old trick for defeating depression. 
 He said with a slightly mocking affection: 
 
 "I would like to get out of myself and walk on 
 ten years. What an ass I will think me then. I 
 will see that I worried so much over things so 
 little." 
 
 The thought generally reacted with good effect. 
 It gave his life a sense of flat, continuous and co- 
 
 20
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 herent existence, as though, after all, he was but 
 the central figure in a novel. He could say to him- 
 self, as he could say of the fellow of the novel, 
 "You don't convince me with your felo de se airs, 
 my good chap. You are living through crushing 
 tribulations and apparently inextricable complica- 
 tions but obviously you are going to get out of 
 the tangle. Reflect on that. How are you going 
 to continue through two hundred and fifty pages 
 otherwise?" 
 
 He often said this to himself in his mildly ironic 
 tone. 
 
 "I know it all looks hopeless, but I have these 
 two hundred and fifty pages of life to live yet. 
 Please wait, Peter John, until the next chaper 
 comes along; you will see in that that there was 
 nothing really to fluster one in this. Life and 
 novels, they must go on, and both straighten things 
 out." 
 
 He told himself that now, but the satiric magic 
 of the idea did not release him from the darkness 
 of his heart. The threads of his life had become 
 too much entangled. He had arrived at a point 
 where it was impossible to straighten things out, 
 he felt. 
 
 He heard the small sounds of the night, and 
 they were almost nervously clear. He heard the 
 voices of people talking many hundreds of yards 
 
 21
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 away, and the sound was intimate. He heard a 
 dog bark, and so monotonously that the brute 
 seemed indulging in a kind of canine vespers. A 
 train roared softly in a mile away; a singular 
 woolly noise, through which a metallic rattling, of 
 the wheels perhaps, stood out brazenly sharp. He 
 heard an automobile very near. It rushed along, 
 and then stopped. The sound was so curiously 
 individual that, had he not known the misleading 
 quality of the night, he would have wagered a 
 pound or so that it had come up the drive to the 
 house. He knew it was not his own car; he knew 
 the song of his own car's engines. 
 
 He thought. 
 
 "Perhaps some one has hurried himself from 
 the infinite or from Ardrossan to secure the house 
 . . . and I have got in first. How thrilling . . ." 
 'He tried to develop the idea. It would not unroll 
 itself whimsically. In any case, what matter; it 
 was but a speculation, while the night was deter- 
 mined to indulge in melancholy facts. 
 
 When the night had deepened and the darkness 
 of the trees had blurred into its darkness, the old 
 man came out to him to tell him that dinner was 
 ready. 
 
 He followed Eden after a minute's pause. 
 "Grace after enjoyment," he thought, for it 
 
 22
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 seemed to him that a man should offer thanks for 
 good views as well as good meals. 
 
 Then as he turned and faced the house, its 
 
 
 
 ghostly white beauty came to him and moved 
 him through the darkness of the night. He looked 
 at it. 
 
 "I like it. I love it. It's home. . . ." He 
 thought appropriately. Now very quietly, and 
 rather mournfully, 
 
 In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires, 
 
 And all the stubble fields that were so warm to him 
 
 Keep but in memory their borrowed fires 
 
 And I, the traveler, break, still unsatisfied, 
 
 From that faint, exquisite, celestial strand, 
 
 And turn and see again the only dwelling-place 
 
 In this wide wilderness of darkening land. 
 
 "I wonder whether he'd been here, the fellow 
 who wrote that," considered Peter. 
 
 He walked towards the house. 
 
 As he walked towards the house standing up 
 with such exquisite pallor in the night, Peter John 
 had the curious feeling that the darkness was peo- 
 pled. He stopped and looked about him quietly. 
 There was an almost serene blackness every- 
 where, and he could see nothing in particular. 
 Then, as he looked, it seemed to him that there 
 
 23
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 was among the trees some one who stood and 
 watched him. 
 
 He was in the light of the door, and light and 
 darkness played tricks with his eyes. But what 
 he saw of the shadowy watcher seemed slim and 
 feminine. 
 
 He thought that perhaps he ought to call out. 
 He did not. He decided that the world was large, 
 and other people had a perfect right to stand in 
 the night. True, she stood in the grounds of 
 "Green Ladies," but she could have no less right 
 than himself, and he stood there, too. As he 
 reflected, he was aware that there was no slim 
 shadow under the trees. She had gone. She had 
 slipped out of his sensations of the night as subtly 
 as she had slipped in. Perhaps she had never 
 been there. 
 
 "A ghost of fancy and the best fancies are 
 feminine," he reflected, and went into the house 
 with his thoughts scarcely interrupted. 
 
 And presently the sorrel soup and the fowl 
 banished reflection. The fowl, indeed, would not 
 be gainsaid. It had all the virtues of rare and 
 beautiful youth. Where youth is (even in fowls) 
 gray thoughts cannot endure. 
 
 His ironic spirit came back to him. He was 
 scornful of his pre-fowl lamentations. 
 
 He had, out there in the dark, been recollecting 
 24
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 a number of things he would never be able to do 
 again, and he had forgotten, of all things, his ap- 
 preciation of the fundamentals and a young fowl 
 was one of them.
 
 PETER JOHN dreamed that he was stand- 
 ing on the terrace of "Green Ladies" and 
 that he was drenched in inconsolable 
 mournfulness, and as he stood there was a note 
 of joy from the trees. 
 
 He turned to the trees and the slim shadow 
 stood again amid their shadows, and he knew at 
 once that there was waiting a bright and revivify- 
 ing spirit and that he must go to her and her 
 song. 
 
 And as he watched the slim shadow moved, 
 and he knew he must follow. The dream quick- 
 ened; he followed the erect and pliant shade along 
 the soft aisles of the pines (unless they were firs), 
 and as he pressed on he knew that beyond there 
 was a world on fire with a golden light of joy. 
 He could see the warm gold of that world burn- 
 ing under the branches of the remotest trees. He 
 could hear through the trees the beat of the sun- 
 washed sea of happiness, and could taste its 
 strong, clean air. He knew that when the furthest 
 of the trees was reached he would see in her per- 
 
 26
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 fection this slim, upstanding, and entirely beauti- 
 ful creature who was leading him on. He would 
 see her in the glory of the light, and would learn 
 how she and the light and happiness were one. 
 There were shadows under the trees, patches of 
 darkness and evil to be passed. The patches were 
 not shade; they were living in their malevolence. 
 They tried to catch his feet, to snare him and to 
 hold him. They tried to catch the moving and 
 elusive creature who passed on before him. But 
 the patches of darkness were overcome. They 
 pressed onwards, and the glory of the light was 
 nearer, shining in his eyes. It was rising, glowing 
 and magnificent upon his face, and his dazzled 
 eyes blinked and shrank before the splendor of 
 its strength. He was assaulted, dazed and cap- 
 tured by it. He shut his eyes. 
 
 When he opened them again, he would see the 
 meaning of life and its happiness. . . . 
 
 "It is only Eden after all," his mind murmured. 
 "Eden and a window blind; these are the mechan- 
 isms of beatific visions." 
 
 He blinked at the sunlight Eden had loosed 
 from the window by the magic of the blind. 
 
 "You said seven," said Eden, moving the tea 
 tray gently nearer. "If you hadn't said it, I should 
 have let you go on sleeping. You were sleeping 
 so daintily, sir." 
 
 27
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "I approve your magic," Peter John told him. 
 "Or is it Hampshire's? or is it both Hampshire's 
 and yours?" He was conscious that he had slept 
 a night through, the first complete night for many 
 months. That was magic indeed. 
 
 "It's the sea air," Eden answered the thing of 
 the mind, rather than Peter's spoken word. "The 
 sea air, and the quiet, they soothe one, sir." 
 
 Peter remembered his dream. 
 
 "Oh, and the hamadryad, too." Eden looked 
 bewildered. "A hamadryad does go with the 
 lease, doesn't she?" asked Peter, anxiously. "I 
 saw her last night under the trees." 
 
 Eden lifted his clear eyes and looked at Peter; 
 Eden's eyes seemed troubled. 
 
 "I didn't know you saw any one, sir," he said. 
 He seemed was Peter right in thinking so? to 
 be asking not to be questioned too specifically. 
 Peter thought that possibly it would be pleasanter 
 to be ruthless. 
 
 "Was there, then, any one to see?" 
 
 "I don't know, sir." The voice was troubled. 
 "Who was it you saw?" 
 
 "That," insisted Peter, "is for you to tell me. 
 It was just a shadow. It may have been a vision; 
 it may have been a ghost; it was probably a hama- 
 dryad. I do not know. You must know." 
 
 28
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Eden put a large, coarse and noble towel on 
 the towel rack. 
 
 "I don't know," he said, and Peter knew that 
 from Eden, at least, he would never know. The 
 old man turned to the window. "It's a rare 
 morning, sir. The sun is strong already, the air 
 is soft. Perhaps you would like to bathe, sir. 
 You will not be overlooked at all. And our bath- 
 ing is notorious, sir. Quite notorious. Such sand, 
 and the water waist-deep almost at once, with a 
 gradual slope after that, never dangerous. The 
 bathing here is beautiful." 
 
 He put a swimming suit and a bath robe on top 
 of the noble towel, and he then said, as one hold- 
 ing out a chance of escape to one of weaker flesh, 
 
 "Or I will turn on the bath. . . ." 
 
 Peter looked through the long windows, finely 
 cruel in their light. There was no haze at all 
 veiling the shining world. The whole earth was 
 vigorous and clear, with that vivid, sharp vivacity 
 that is of music rather than color. 
 
 "Or I will turn on the bath," Eden prompted. 
 
 "That," cried Peter almost in anger, "that 
 would be a sin crying to the morning for ven- 
 geance. It would shame the notorious bathing." 
 
 He went out into the day, so young and warm 
 and sharp, and as he went the trees seemed to stir, 
 to catch at each other's hands and call attention 
 
 29
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 to him. He could feel the trees looking and laugh- 
 ing, and he felt that they were happy. 
 
 "Good morning, trees," he called. "We're all 
 of us much better company to-day. Last night 
 we were in our shadowy mood but we have seen 
 our fairies since." 
 
 He looked amid the tree boles, but only the 
 golden light shone through in screens and ara- 
 besques of fire. The slim shadow was not there.
 
 VI 
 
 (HE shaven paddock sloped delicately 
 seawards, and as Peter went the sea 
 opened out. The paddock ceased, and 
 a low sandy cliff tumbled and scrambled down to 
 the beach. It had a riotous air, the cliff. It 
 could not contain the ardor which made it break 
 madly for the sea. 
 
 Peter John went down a jolly path which gam- 
 boled in zigzags, that reminded one of a dog 
 frisking before one, down the face of the ridicu- 
 lous and sprightly cliff. On the beach the warm 
 sand clutched at his feet and came tumbling into 
 his shoes. He kicked his shoes off, pushing his 
 toes luxuriously into the soft, sleek warmth of the 
 beach. 
 
 The sun seemed to fill the shore with an im- 
 mense clean wind, but it was not a wind, since it 
 was moveless. 
 
 The light was something alive. It was so quick, 
 
 so virile. The living sea played with it in a superb 
 
 morning frolic. The Island, so near last night, 
 
 so fragrant and imminent, was clearer to see, but 
 
 31
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 had stepped back to an austere distance in the 
 morning air. The bay in which he stood had 
 grown infinite also, but with distances clear and 
 sharp as though seen in a mirror. Away to the 
 right was the gorgeous curving sand syncopating 
 itself in the fabulous lagoons and sandpits of the 
 Avon as it played with the sea under Hengistbury 
 Head. To the left the land lifted, but the bay 
 went on in the long sweet line that petered out, a 
 little inanely, on the end of that spit which held 
 Hurst Castle. 
 
 And in all this scene the universe was clean and 
 glowing and empty. Peter John had all the world, 
 and all the colors of the world, and all the lights, 
 the airs and the waters of the world for himself 
 alone. He also had the Island, which is a world 
 and a kingdom in itself. 
 
 He slipped the bath robe from his strong, lean 
 figure, and stood upright in this arena of empti- 
 ness. And he laughed. The whole world amused 
 him. * 
 
 "Perhaps it's a little overdone," he considered. 
 "Last night I asked for remoteness, but I think, 
 perhaps, I could do with a little less than the en- 
 tire universe to be lonely in." 
 
 The sea is not the place for the melancholy. 
 The sharp, vehement sea has no time for that 
 nonsense. It has no use for delicate and crepus- 
 
 32
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 cular thoughts. It has the vigor of honesty and 
 naturalness. Its horseplay and its boisterousness 
 are sane and animal. It does not sympathize with 
 low, gentle manners. It catches a man and jollies 
 him; it wrestles and bullies; like a dog it snatches 
 with its teeth, shakes and worries with a playful- 
 ness which has in it a hint of brutal threat. 
 
 The sea, as Peter admitted, knocked sense into 
 him. His tumble in its charging and buffeting 
 arms was bracing. It ducked him and tossed him 
 high. It smothered him with an armful of glit- 
 tering spray. It swung him heavenward ; it pushed 
 him giddily, downward, into its deep, smooth and 
 ominous chasms. It let him feel the fine mastery 
 of his own strength; it overawed him with the 
 tremendous ease of its own power. It was a gor- 
 geous rough-and-tumble, this game played before 
 Peter John and the sea and a game played to 
 the end; even as he came out of the turbulent 
 waters, the sea flung its arms round ankle and 
 knee and thigh and strove to drag him in again 
 with its rough and hearty backwashes. 
 
 Peter lay on the sand and panted, and felt crys- 
 talline all through. He looked at the sea as one 
 looks at a friend. He knew it was a dangerous 
 as well as a jolly sea, and that any hint of threat 
 it had given was because of himself. He sigheH 
 as he realized his own weakness. 
 
 33
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Will we never be such good friends as we 
 were?" he asked, and he meant by that that he 
 wondered if they would ever be the friends they 
 had been of old, when the play was rougher than 
 it had been this morning. "This silly little thing 
 that didn't fully kill me," he said, "is coming be- 
 tween the sea and me, as it has come between me 
 and all other friendly things." 
 
 But that was a thought unfitted to the morning. 
 He stood up. 
 
 "What matter! The sun's here, and I have 
 found my paradise now." 
 
 He stopped. His fine brows lifted. He looked 
 in astonishment along the beach. 
 
 "And, also Thou?" he asked ironically.
 
 VII 
 
 PETER JOHN looked along the gold- 
 dusty beach, and his brows lifted iron- 
 ically, interrogatively, perplexedly. 
 
 Eden had said he would not be overlooked, he 
 would have a beach from which a Contemplative 
 could bathe. But, perhaps, Eden had been right. 
 Perhaps it was Peter John who had been over- 
 looking. 
 
 And perhaps again Eden had only referred to 
 human creatures. This might be the sea-god's 
 daughter, or the wood-fairy; the hamadryad 
 turned, for the moment, into an Undine. 
 
 But scarcely an Undine. If an Undine, why a 
 bath robe? 
 
 The bath robe lay a splash of bright, moist pig- 
 ment on the sand. Out of the robe, rising from it, 
 as might a modern Aphrodite, was the Undine. 
 
 She was a great distance away, but the air was 
 so clear he could see her well. A fine, erect, sway- 
 ing figure, springy and strong like the wand of 
 willow. A figure not of Aphrodite but of Psyche, 
 so slim, so boyish, yet so feminine in its delicate 
 symmetry and its exquisite poise. 
 
 35
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 The silken blue of her smooth costume made 
 sure against the sand her breathless comeliness. 
 Peter John tingled with delight at her grace and 
 swiftness of line. 
 
 For a moment she stood looking out to sea. 
 Then she lifted her arms in a gesture of lyric 
 abandon. With eager hands she seemed to invoke 
 the joyous companionship of the air and the 
 waters. 
 
 And she went to the sea. 
 
 Peter thrilled with delight. Such a movement 1 
 such a swing and poise and bravura of movement! 
 She strode as a goddess strides free and buoyant 
 in her natural element. 
 
 There was a splutter of foam. A rosary of dia- 
 monds swung glittering from the waters, and the 
 flash of a white elbow lifted and fell. 
 
 Peter John turned and ran for the cliff. A 
 happy accident like this must not be spoiled by any 
 embarrassing suggestion of peeping Tom. 
 
 He did not look back. He felt that he would 
 not need nor feel any presence in that enchanted 
 spot but the sea and the sun and the air. And 
 she must not. 
 
 "And I thought she was a wood fairy," he 
 sneered to himself. "I can only think of wood 
 fairies when it is the immortal daughter of nymph 
 Endelechia herself." 
 
 36
 
 VIII 
 
 PETER JOHN sat back from the bright 
 litter of silver and porcelain and food 
 and telegrams which had made his break- 
 fast. 
 
 He had already asked of Eden: 
 
 "Is there such an expression as house-napping, 
 do you think? Even if there isn't, I am a house- 
 napper, and I will be one for several hours yet. 
 The lawyer, by telegram, tells me he will not be 
 here until three, and the agent, over the telephone, 
 says he will come with the lawyer." 
 
 Breakfast was in a serene Jacobean room, and 
 the room was at the front of "Green Ladies." It 
 was a chamber quite worthy. The leisurely and 
 spacious adventure of breakfast is, by divine right 
 and usage, only justly accomplished in Jacobean 
 surroundings. One may lunch in Queen Anne; 
 one may even, if one likes, plunge deeply into the 
 gilded table d'hoteries of cafe Louis Quinze, but 
 one must breakfast Jacobeanly if one values the 
 holy purpose of the meal. 
 
 The Jacobean room was, as it should be, nar- 
 37
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 row rather than large. With its placid oak and 
 its copper and its long pencils of windows and 
 the deep mauve curtains at them, its green tapes- 
 tried walls and its minimum of pictures, it pos- 
 sessed the lean, bright, simple air of comfort 
 which gives the braced composure fitted for the 
 beginning of days. 
 
 There are rash people who, criminally, break- 
 fast amid surroundings only to be described as 
 syncopated-Victorian. These people have never 
 yet understood why their lives are pointless and 
 bewildered. 
 
 If a man begins his day with complications, he 
 has only himself to thank if his life is futile. Peter 
 was able to see this irrefutably, and he meditated 
 upon the truth. He began to recognize how men, 
 and through them the destinies of the world, were 
 controlled by breakfasts. 
 
 He reconstructed the breakfast parlors of 
 Christendom. He saw finance rearing in crushing 
 and overburdening power from the mahogany and 
 doylies of a myriad implacably proper homes. 
 He had appalling visions of the breakfast environ- 
 ments of the men who write for Revues. 
 
 Beyond this he dared not go. 
 
 The windows of this room were tall and nar- 
 row. They did not look towards the sea. Their 
 view enfolded the drive and the calm lawns about 
 
 38
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 it. He could look beyond the scattering of trees 
 strung across the lawns, away to where, in a dis- 
 tant soft blur of leaves, the fringes of the New 
 Forest stood up against the sky. 
 
 Peter smoked and regarded the view. It was 
 vivid with white and blue and green and gold, and 
 so poignantly clear that it filled him with a sting- 
 ing pleasure. And he thought of the view as one 
 who would presently own it. It would be his. 
 He would rent it in its frames of windows, in the 
 same way as he might rent other masterpieces. 
 It was strange that very few house agents entered 
 in their inventories, "twenty very good window 
 pieces of tree and sky; frequent white clouds on 
 same." 
 
 As he regarded the view he could paint upon 
 it the attractive changes of the months. The gold 
 and brown of autumn and the mauve and gray of 
 the year's ending. He was very glad he had 
 entered "Green Ladies" like a thief in the night. 
 It was his by right of capture and desire. 
 
 As his mind dwelt upon all the attractions of the 
 house, he remembered the shade amid the tree 
 and the vision of the beach. 
 
 He said to Eden, who had the comforting habit 
 of being inconspicuously present at the moments 
 when he was needed, 
 
 39
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Does any alien from Olympus live next door 
 to me, Eden?" 
 
 The old man stopped doing whatever he was 
 doing. By now he had come to see that Peter 
 John was pleasant, if inexplicable. Also, if one 
 stood and looked receptive, sense would come in 
 time. 
 
 "You mean, sir?" he prompted with his smiling 
 patience. 
 
 Peter John referred to the telegrams. 
 
 "Very well, then, we will be precise, since you 
 insist on it. After 3 :3O to-day I don't suppose 
 the most inveterate estate agent or the most rock- 
 bottom lawyer can be more than half an hour 
 letting what they want to let to a tenant who 
 means to be a tenant. After 3 :3O this afternoon, 
 shall I have a goddess for my next door neigh- 
 bor?" 
 
 Eden went back to the service table. 
 
 "Mrs. Waymsley is next to us Milton way, 
 sir." He answered, and perhaps it was a fancy 
 of Peter's but he thought the answer reticent. 
 Who was it Talleyrand, eh? had told Eden 
 that speech was given one for the purpose of say- 
 ing nothing? 
 
 "Sure, Eden? I don't remember that name 
 among the ratepayers of Olympus." 
 
 "Olympus, sir?" 
 
 40
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "A figure of speech. Olympus is the place 
 where those that the gods love come from. Mrs. 
 Waymsley do you think that sounds God-be- 
 loved?" ' 
 
 Eden gave it up. He knew what Olympus was. 
 It was the place where, before the war, London 
 exhibitions were held. How old Mrs. Waymsley 
 had ever been an exhibition was beyond him. 
 
 "The name of Mrs. Waymsley's house, sir, is 
 'Milton Little.' She is old, and she is very good. 
 She has lived there since all the time I have 
 known." 
 
 Peter John gazed at Eden's Delphic back. 
 
 "And the land towards the Avon, does Mrs. 
 Waymsley live on that, too?" 
 
 Eden was silent. 
 
 ("You're trying to rake up some Talleyrandish 
 trickery," Peter inwardly commented.) 
 
 "No," answered Eden, as one who had given 
 the matter the deepest thought. "General Sir 
 Fraser Hensley's place is in that direction, sir, but 
 he is not in residence. He is still soldiering, sir." 
 
 "You haven't helped a bit," cried Peter John. 
 "The world is thrilling with secrets, and you put 
 me off with generals." 
 
 Eden removed plates a trifle nervously; but he 
 remained determinedly inscrutable. 
 
 "For example," continued Peter deliberately,
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "there's this young woman you keep about the 
 place. A young woman, Eden, flaunting herself." 
 
 Eden breathed sharply. 
 
 "Sir," he gasped. 
 
 "Yes," said Peter eagerly. Was revelation 
 coming? 
 
 "What young lady?" said Eden, after a fear- 
 ful pause. 
 
 "It is your young miss; what have you to say 
 about her?" 
 
 Eden glanced with his quick, bright, his appeal- 
 ing, Cassarine eyes towards Peter. He looked 
 down at the plate in his hand. 
 
 "I don't know, sir. But there is no young lady 
 about the place. Mrs. Eden and me there is no 
 one else here." 
 
 "Here," jeered Peter, "here is a subterfuge. 
 When I said about the place, I meant about it, 
 part of it, part of its air and color. Part of its 
 shadows, too, under the trees by the way, are 
 they firs?" 
 
 "Pines, sir." 
 
 "Part of the sunlight and the sea and the beach 
 too, Eden. She is the essence of all appropriate 
 places. A hamadryad last night, a nereid this 
 morning at the edge of the sea. Who is she, 
 Eden?" 
 
 42
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Out of this skein of fantasy Eden clutched at the 
 fact of sex. 
 
 "You mean you saw a young person, sir, about 
 the grounds?" Was Eden temporizing? Peter 
 did not know. The worst of the Caesarine features 
 are that they can make a Sphinx out of even the 
 ingenuous. 
 
 "Saw is not quite the word, not for all my singu- 
 lar experience. Say, rather, I felt her last night. 
 And I dreamed of her, too, I think, but you may 
 not consider that direct evidence. But this morn- 
 ing she was authentic. She bathed, Eden, and 
 quite real people do that." 
 
 "Bathing," breathed Eden, and he seemed 
 flustered. "She bathed ... a visitor, no doubt." 
 
 "What, here? In this house?" 
 
 "Not in the house, sir. Where did you see 
 the young lady?" 
 
 "On the beach. Oh, well, towards the Avon." 
 
 Eden stared at Peter. 
 
 ("You are lost, my boy," said Peter. "You 
 are cornered. You don't know what in the world 
 to say.") 
 
 But Peter did. 
 
 "There may be visitors at General Hensley's," 
 he said, as though reflecting, "or somewhere else 
 at the village." 
 
 "That is all very lame, Eden. A visitor. Any- 
 43
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 body can be a visitor. Very few people can be a 
 hamadryad. At least you might have made it 
 more attractive are you determined it must be 
 that?" 
 
 "It sounds like a visitor." 
 
 "And it looked like a nereid," sighed Peter. 
 "Oh, and a hamadryad. And she is perhaps 
 merely no, we won't probe too deeply into these 
 mysteries. She might turn out to be Mrs. Mac- 
 Stinger."
 
 IX 
 
 AN attractive hour was spent studying, by 
 sunlight, the ground floor of the house, 
 his house by right of ruthlessness. 
 
 He had determined to take the house yester- 
 day, for no more reason than that it had called 
 to him, had fitted its moods to his moods. It was 
 like faith, which one accepts in a flash, which is, 
 then, indubitably and illogically ours forever. Be- 
 tween the saddle and the ground, as it were, Peter 
 had known that "Green Ladies" must be his. It 
 was, however, satisfying to his sense of comfort 
 to find that "Green Ladies" was also a place in 
 which he could live. 
 
 There were many rooms on the ground floor, 
 and all were comely. 
 
 Near the breakfast room was a study on the 
 side away from the sea. Not an obtrusive sort of 
 study, not a room that hectored and intimidated 
 one into labor; a place for the mind almost more 
 than a place for filling up Income Tax assessment 
 forms and the labors of life. 
 
 There were big meditative chairs in the room. 
 45
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 The sort of chair that makes one say spontaneous- 
 ly, "Well, I'll sit down and think this out." And 
 one did, until the gong went, and one said, "Why, 
 that's lunch. I'll leave it until the afternoon." 
 Attractive chairs. There was a low, wide, club 
 curb before the fire. A grate that could accom- 
 modate logs. There were big windows and an 
 overwhelming light. If one must work then it 
 could be done with a fine sense of austerity and 
 intellectuality at a vast, flat, gilt and rosewood 
 table-desk. The surface was of green leather, and 
 on it were faint, half-obliterated gold lines, so 
 faint that they appeared rather a fragrance than 
 a fact. The electric light on the desk had a dark 
 green tapestry shade, and that was nice of it. 
 
 A few books of utilitarian texture, but not of 
 dismaying usefulness, were in low bookcases be- 
 tween the windows. The Encylopaedia Britannica, 
 the book that one must always have about one, and 
 one's friends sometimes use, was there, and in 
 the India paper edition, a binding and format even 
 more attractive to handle than to read. There 
 were the other books that one ignored save at 
 moments of crisis like the Postal Guide and 
 then took to one's bosom with a rapture never 
 even given by the devotee to Ethel M. Dell. And 
 Peter thanked God there were no bound volumes 
 of the Country Gentleman or Badminton. 
 
 46
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 The study allowed one into the library, which 
 led out of it. Not a big library, but a comfort- 
 ing one. There were, naturally, since libraries 
 are only human, quite a number of those richly 
 bound books which are born to go on to shelves 
 as permanent fittings and to remain there for all 
 time untouched. There were real books, too. 
 
 Peter poked about among the names, and was 
 glad that somebody else had the courage of mo- 
 dernity. Peter himself was one of those incapable 
 of feeling that the best authors, like good men, 
 were all dead. He found virtue in the living. 
 So had the maker of the library. He found him- 
 self saying, "How d' you do?" to all his old com- 
 panions from G. K. Chesterton and Remain Rol- 
 land and Wells, Hergesheimer and O. Henry and 
 Barry Pain. 
 
 He made attractive discoveries, as one does in 
 a library which has a heart and not merely affec- 
 tations. The library maker evidently enjoyed the 
 books he enjoyed. The library maker evidently 
 liked Frederick Rolfe, and C. C. Martindale 
 well, the "Goddess of Ghosts," side of C. C. Mar- 
 tindale was there, and "Orpheus in Mayfair" and 
 not Oscar Wilde. When Peter also found an at- 
 tractive blank where Henry James should be, he 
 felt he must cry out. "How nice of you. We 
 were born to be friends." 
 
 47
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Peter also admired the way the books had been 
 treated. The library maker had deposed the 
 original covers, and had bound the volumes in 
 glowing, agate-colored leather. A soft leather 
 which gave a joy to the hands as to the eyes and 
 heart and mind. 
 
 The chairs in the library were the "just chairs." 
 They enfolded the body in every contortion of 
 reading. There was a chesterfield and a narrow 
 but long, bare oak table. The carpet was red 
 and untortured by design. There were small elec- 
 tric lamps that one could carry about on their 
 strings, and since there were these lamps, there 
 were a number of those humble-looking and obe- 
 dient shelves meant to support lamps. The room 
 was bright and warm and saturated with a sort 
 of benignant serenity. 
 
 In the center of the house there was a big open 
 chamber that was neither a room nor a hall, but 
 something of both. One came into it from the 
 main door (that is, from the New Forest side), 
 one could walk from it directly into the garden 
 and down to the sea. It also led into the draw- 
 ing-room, which ran along one side of the garden, 
 and into the dining-room, which did exactly the 
 same thing, but along the other side. 
 
 As it stood it was a large, charming open space, 
 obviously consecrated to music. A big grand
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 piano was placed there, and a number of those 
 screens which seem, somehow, appropriate to 
 music, were standing about idle. There was also 
 a spinet: there should have been a spinet, and 
 there was one; it was exactly right. Screens and 
 carpet and chairs and hangings and settee were 
 rose-colored, though the furniture had lapses into 
 gilt. It was something more than a lounge and 
 something less than a room. 
 
 "I am baffled, but I will sit in you often," said 
 Peter. 
 
 The two rooms of pomp and circumstance, the 
 drawing and dining rooms, were austere and 
 comely. The young man regarded them, admired, 
 and looked out of doors. 
 
 "But I admire the sunlight more just now," he 
 decided. 
 
 He found his stick and cap and passed down 
 the steps from the music room into the sunlight 
 of the terrace.
 
 ON the terrace he stood for a moment 
 looking over the bright filament of sea 
 towards the Island. 
 
 The Island had drawn off a little as the sun had 
 risen, but it had become more emphatic in outline 
 and color. Its flanks had taken on those hard, 
 flat tints polished and striking that sometimes 
 attract one in glossily enameled toys. 
 
 Just now the Island did look like a large and 
 enjoyable toy. It was obvious that this view was 
 to be one of constant change and emotion, and 
 Peter recognized that it was ready to distract him 
 by a thousand moods. 
 
 He sighed a little. He would need all his dis- 
 tractions, he knew. When he had come on to the 
 terrace a tiny wave of depression had beat in upon 
 him again. It defied analysis, of course, but there 
 was no blinking at the melancholy drag of it, nor 
 the lassitude that it brought with it. For a mo- 
 ment he was a prey to the weariness that comes 
 to a mind which realizes that its position is hope- 
 less and that the future will be empty. 
 
 50
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Even if I take this house and the views," he 
 considered, "will they help? Can I escape? 
 Won't I be shutting myself in? Will this attrac- 
 tive place, and these jolly views, and the sea and 
 the beach, and the air, too (with pines), help me 
 at all? Won't they become familiar; even part of 
 me; conspirators in melancholy?" 
 
 He looked at the Island. The shadows of two 
 small clouds chased across the bashing water, ran 
 up the shining slope of the Island hills, and slipped 
 over the top. They were swift, mercurial shad- 
 ows, intensely dark as they passed over the bright 
 surface of sea and land, but they seemed to leave 
 sea and land more vividly, more poignantly bright, 
 as though they had scoured the world afresh. 
 Peter watched the shadows until they had leapt 
 from view over the sky-line. 
 
 "Am I to believe in omens?" he wondered. 
 "And, in any case, why two of them?" 
 
 He turned to go down the terrace steps and 
 saw Eve Eden.
 
 XI 
 
 HE had actually been conscious of Eve 
 Eden for some little space. 
 He had seen her come out on the 
 terrace, but since terraces and the sunlight were 
 large enough for many, he had given her no more 
 than a subconscious how-d'y-do. 
 
 Abruptly, as one feels the prick of love, or 
 solves a problem in mental arithmetic, a blazing 
 instant of absolute lyrical certainty, he knew she 
 had come out to speak to him. 
 
 She was watching him with an eye both eager 
 and diplomatic. Peter saw this from the corner 
 of his, noted her particular attitude. She was 
 resolved to speak to him, but she was also re- 
 solved that he must think this maneuver casual, 
 unpremeditated, accidental. 
 
 Peter was certain that this was the reason for 
 her bold yet hovering air. He wondered why a 
 creature so clear and benignant should fall into 
 subterfuge. Was it that she was conspiring for 
 his happiness a condition that makes most mor- 
 tals guilty? Or had her air that "something" in 
 it which had been unfathomable in Eden. 
 
 52
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Well," thought Peter, "we will subject you to 
 the test of 'gnawing' anxiety!" 
 
 So he ignored her. He strolled amiably and 
 unconsciously (he hoped) down the steps. He 
 walked away from her but not too rapidly. 
 "Will this unmask you, Eve?" he asked. 
 
 At the bottom of the short flattish flight he hesi- 
 tated. Which way should he go in his assumed 
 unconsciousness? To the left through the firs 
 (oh, but, yes, they were pines) towards this "Mil- 
 ton Little," or to the right in the direction of the 
 Avon, and in the direction of the Ner well, in 
 that direction. 
 
 As he hesitated, wasn't he right in thinking that 
 Eve waited with a sort of anxiety, a breathless, 
 intangible, almost imperceptible anxiety? It was 
 a shade too delicate to be emphatic, in a moment 
 too swift. For, instinctively, he turned towards 
 the Avon. 
 
 In that instant the shade, if it had been a 
 shade, which Peter had fancied to be on Eve's 
 face, had passed. He looked up at her quickly 
 as he turned. She was perfectly, bafflingly, usual. 
 
 "What jolly trap of yours have I tumbled 
 into?" Peter thought, and he was half inclined 
 to swing round and dare "Milton Little" and all 
 the Waymsleys that dwelt therein. 
 
 Eve looked down on him, smiling in her serene 
 53
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 and equable way. He could see that this fine 
 morning weather joined them in a sodality of joy. 
 She smiled, but she did not attempt to speak. 
 Peter reconsidered her as a plotter. Perhaps, 
 after all, he was a little too prone to suspicion. 
 As a concession he felt bound to speak himself. 
 
 "Please tell me that I have been clever. Is 
 this the best direction for my walk?" 
 
 "It's all along by the water, sir, an' you can 
 see it shining through the trees," she told him. 
 
 "And the other way?" asked Peter, testing her. 
 "Is it as pretty?" 
 
 "Wonderful pretty, sir," she answered, and 
 Peter asked himself, "What do I make of that?" 
 
 "But you suggest this?" 
 
 "It is a sweet walk. You go down alongways 
 towards the sea always, sir. Nothing will be in 
 front of you but the big sea. An' such a pretty 
 path, weavin' through the woods an' the brambles 
 all along the little tumbled cliff." 
 
 "I can't resist any cliff that tumbles," agreed 
 Peter, recalling the jolly of this morning. 
 
 "Always along the edge of the sea it goes," in- 
 sisted Eve. 
 
 "Nor can I resist the sea. It is your path I 
 follow." 
 
 "Yes, sir, do, do," she cried eagerly. 
 
 And Peter was suspicious again. Was she real- 
 54
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 ly devoted to beauty? Wasn't there some be- 
 nevolent chicanery behind her eagerness? Be- 
 nevolent it must be. Assuredly Eve Eden only 
 committed good against her neighbor. 
 
 And then he had cast the die. He was already 
 moving along the path she desired. "It is ob- 
 viously for my good," he thought, and he struck 
 out towards the Avon.
 
 XII 
 
 EVE EDEN stood, five minutes later, be- 
 fore the frowning gorge of the tele- 
 phone. After speaking more intimately 
 than wisely to a butcher in Bournemouth, and a 
 Serbian colonel somewhere east of Christchurch, 
 such is the Puckish whim of telephones, her ear 
 encountered an authentic, an intimate inflection, 
 and she cried in a gentle fluster, 
 
 "Lamby!" 
 
 Then after a moment, 
 
 "Is it you, Lamby?" 
 
 And then after three moments, 
 
 "It is all right." 
 
 And again after thirty-two moments, 
 
 "Yes, it is quite all right, Lamby. It is as we 
 arranged." 
 
 She hung up the telephone. She stood look- 
 ing at the instrument as one going over the whole 
 dialogue, to make sure that she had said every 
 word in the right manner, the unmistakable man- 
 ner. She left the instrument with reluctance, but 
 she carried with her a smile of jolly craftiness 
 that put a sun into all her doings of the morning. 
 
 56
 
 XIII 
 
 PETER walked the way of the path that 
 fringed the world by the lip of the sea. 
 The truth was with Eve. It was an 
 attractive walk. 
 
 Peter went down through the gem-like garden, 
 keeping steadily to the right after the manner of 
 the good young man in a moral book. He passed 
 between the spilt colors of the flowers!, went 
 through a wicket in the derogatory iron fence, 
 crossed the paddock, and plunged into the clean, 
 sub-acid shadows of the trees. 
 
 Tall laurels, dark and polished, made a gate 
 for a path that followed an errant course to the 
 west. He walked between the heavy foliage of 
 the laurels, and along their dark walled avenue, 
 and at once, and magically, Eve was no more, 
 "Green Ladies" was no more, nor anything of 
 this human world. Just twenty steps from the 
 garden and he was in the heart of solitude. 
 
 He stood feeling emptiness about him like still 
 water. He looked aloft to where the pines 
 sprang high against the sky. He saw their heads 
 
 57
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 bowing gently, and felt the curious reticence of 
 their silent movement. He saw, above their can- 
 opied leaves, the heavens slipping swiftly by, as 
 the world rushed on in space. Of course it was 
 only the uncelestial clouds rushing on in space, but 
 so mighty was this enormous, soundless swiftness 
 that clouds would not do. It had to be a world 
 on the rush or nothing. 
 
 It was silent and empty in this little path, a mil- 
 lion miles from disturbance. Yet it was the singu- 
 lar silence that is full of sound, and that superb 
 emptiness that is full to overflowing. 
 
 He heard the deep breath of the wind through 
 the leaves, and behind the wind he heard the dis- 
 tant, muffled and eternal beating of the sea. 
 
 He walked on. 
 
 Presently the laurels gave way, and only the 
 pillared masts of the trees stood between him and 
 the sea. The curious reddish tone, made up of 
 the trunks and the cone-strewn sand, accented in 
 poignant manner the flashing blue of the waters. 
 The sea, again, seemed a shining panel upon 
 which the exquisite pine masts had been strongly 
 but delicately massed. "It is like," thought Peter, 
 "it is very like a picture by a Futurist, who had 
 suddenly been afflicted with a sense of beauty." 
 
 Pressing through the trees, strong and untiring 
 and dominant like the sea its brother, came the 
 
 5*
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 sea wind. It was not jolly and rough like the 
 sea. It pushed determinedly against Peter with 
 an even and virile pressure, which gave him a 
 sense of exultance as he conquered it and made his 
 way forward in spite of it. i 
 
 The trees thinned slowly, and he came on to 
 the path that ran up and down in odd and jerky 
 levels, as it followed the edge of a cliff that would 
 persist in breaking away at intervals towards the 
 beach beneath. The Island was now behind his 
 shoulder. Before him was the immense floor of 
 the ocean and the intaglio of lagoons that fretted 
 the beach below Christchurch. 
 
 Peter walked along evenly, enjoying every step. 
 It seemed to him that the world was more full of 
 sunlight than it could possibly hold. It brimmed 
 over. It splashed over in abundant and exhilarat- 
 ing wantonness. It was in the land and the trees, 
 in the sea and the sky, the whole world was sun. 
 
 He told himself that, no, he was not actually 
 happy, but he was bathed of delight. He had not 
 lost his sense of realities; he knew what he was 
 and what life meant for him; he remained as he 
 was, but even as he was he had become part of 
 the sunlight. 
 
 "Even the hopeless can take a part in this mag- 
 nificence, and without losing their hopelessness." 
 
 59
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 He looked about him, sweeping with his glances 
 the wide and shining world. 
 
 "And yes," he said softly, "I suppose that was 
 the one thing necessary. The final touch to the 
 morning the culminating note in the sunlight." 
 
 He kept his eyes steadily ahead. 
 
 Coming towards him along the narrow cliff path 
 was the slim, light moving figure of a woman.
 
 XIV 
 
 THE woman came along the cliff. She 
 moved with a slow serenity, yet with a 
 sense of luxury which suggested that she 
 felt that sunlight like this was a rare vintage to be 
 tested and enjoyed by every fiber of her being 
 and every movement of her body. 
 
 There was no denying her poise. Her singular 
 grace was apparent even through her indolence, a 
 sort of sumptuous languidness which formed so 
 baffling and yet so feminine a contrast to the al- 
 most ruthless vigor of the morning's youth on the 
 beach. There was no doubt about her at all. 
 Peter knew her. She was the sea maiden strolling 
 in human semblance along the margin of the 
 waters, and, 
 
 "In ten minutes," he told himself, "in ten 
 minutes we'll be facing each other on a path only 
 reasonable for one. In ten minutes there will 
 occur a little drama of politeness. Only it won't 
 be a drama of politeness; it will be nothing less 
 than a crisis in human existence. We will be fun- 
 damentally and inexpressibly absurd. .We will 
 
 61
 
 pretend we do not exist. I shall step aside, and 
 she will walk through my vacuum, as though there 
 was nothing human within a thousand miles of her. 
 I, too, will have a thousand-miles-away air." 
 
 He glanced at her, and she was very near. 
 There was no mistaking her. Peter did not want 
 to mistake her. He wanted, in fact, to know 
 her. 
 
 "And, of course, I cannot. We shall stubbornly 
 ignore the fact that each of us is here. I shall be 
 less than the sunlight and the trees. Conceivably, 
 if I were a tree, she would be rather more inter- 
 ested in me than as I am as a human. She would 
 say, 'Oh, there is a hornbeam. How nice and 
 gnarly you are.' But she can't tell a human being 
 he is nice and gnarly, though, quite probably, he 
 can be more gnarly than any hornbeam. We have 
 been raised above the trees by the gift of speech. 
 We are forbidden to talk. I shall but I shall 
 loathe standing aside and looking through her 
 to the limits of the Atlantic Ocean. I shall hate 
 being an upright pillar of nothing by her wayside." 
 
 He walked on. He watched her moving, up- 
 right and firm against the bright, poignant back- 
 ground of the sea and the air. 
 
 "How sumptuously she moves. Only the wo- 
 man who went to the sea this morning in just this 
 morning's manner could walk like that. . . . and 
 
 62
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 we are so conspicuous. We're the only two frag- 
 ments of animation in all this huge emptiness. 
 We really can't avoid knowing each of us is about. 
 It's fatuous. Even the trees are friendly. Those 
 poplars now, I'll warrant they don't stand on cere- 
 mony, yet I've to be mum." 
 
 He glanced up again. The nearness of the girl 
 filled him with thrills both of pleasure and of fear. 
 
 "But I won't be mum. I want to know her and 
 I will know her. I'll stop. I'll speak. I'll say 
 what shall I say? I'll step aside and I'll but 
 what shall I do? What can one say? What does 
 one do?" 
 
 He frowned at his lack of spirit. "How absurd 
 are human limitations ! The mind ought to man- 
 age a little affair like this quite easily. I should 
 produce the apt accident, the irresistible remark. 
 And and it merely vamps up an idea about the 
 climate. How can I possibly win her attention 
 by telling her the weather is fine?" 
 
 ("Now," his mind shouted to him, "decide 
 quickly. She is here.") 
 
 "Mercy," he stammered mentally. "But what 
 but how?" 
 
 ("She's level ... in a moment she'll be 
 past.") 
 
 "I'll ask her the way absurd as it is, I'll ask 
 her the way; there is nothing else." 
 
 63
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 He stepped off the little sandy track that 
 strung itself like a thread of gold wire across the 
 grass. He stepped off, made a stride, remem- 
 bered that he must be commonplace or be forever 
 silent, swung half round, hesitated, yawned. . . . 
 
 And the woman stopped. She stopped and she 
 smiled, tilting her head in a manner inquiring, at- 
 tentive, yet somehow suggesting a secret fund of 
 amusement, and she said, 
 
 "It is straight on."
 
 XV 
 
 IT is straight on," she had said, and her voice 
 was crisp, melodious, cool, yet with an un- 
 deniable point. There was distinction in it, 
 an air of capability; she was mistress of herself, 
 and yet in her tone there was something of laugh- 
 ter, an undercurrent giving it an attraction, a 
 touch of friendliness. 
 
 And she was standing and looking at him. The 
 unexpected, the incredible had happened. She 
 had stopped; she was looking at him with her 
 cool, slightly amused glance; she was willing to 
 talk. 
 
 Peter, never so little taken aback, yet plucking 
 up heart at this unthought-of miracle, rallied his 
 wits. Then, with something of her own smiling 
 spirit, "It always is," he said. "There is an in- 
 evitableness about roads. But how did you 
 know?" 
 
 "There is no other way. Anything or every- 
 where it is straight ahead." 
 
 She smiled, not at all perturbed, not at all self- 
 conscious. She had stopped. She was regarding 
 
 65
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 him in that attitude of half-arrested motion which 
 seems to say, "I'm merely idling. I don't mind 
 stopping and exchanging commonplaces if you 
 do commonplaces nicely." 
 
 Peter recognized the attitude. He recognized 
 her quickness, her vivacity, her complete assur- 
 ance. He saw this as readily as he realized that 
 all he had imagined of her slim, crisp beauty was 
 a pale flame beside the warm fire of the reality. 
 He told himself that his luck was amazing. "She 
 dosen't, mind talking. She doesn't mind at all." 
 And he remarked aloud, 
 
 "I suppose I did appear transparent." 
 
 "Weren't you just a little transparent?" she 
 answered, and there was the merest fleck of mock- 
 ery in her quick glance, a starlight of raillery, 
 good-tempered, indulgent. 
 
 "Well, yes I think I was," he admitted recog- 
 nizing she had seen through him, had understood 
 his desire to stop and talk. "But then I wanted 
 to share the day. It seems a unique day. It is 
 too large and radiant to keep all to oneself." 
 
 She examined the sea and the sky with a friend- 
 ly glance. 
 
 "It is an abounding day," she admitted. 
 
 "Isn't it?" Peter cried quickly. "You see that 
 too. One feels bound to share it. One must 
 share things; human nature is gossip nature; oh, 
 
 66
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 and every sort of nature feels that way, too. Look 
 at the trees, those poplars, now. How they do 
 button-hole the wind. See how they nod their 
 bugles and their jet beads in their eternal chatter 
 with the airs." 
 
 "Oh, the poplars," she reflected coolly, turning 
 in a movement undeniably youthful and springy. 
 "But don't you think you might be wrong about 
 the poplars? Do you think the day really in- 
 terests them? Isn't it rather the old idee fixe of 
 theirs? Aren't they telling the wind that if they 
 had their rights, if the heavenly jury had not been 
 wrongly directed on that day when they were 
 accused of stealing Jove's spoons, they'd still be 
 leaving their cards on the best people of Olympus? 
 The god would not have changed them into trees, 
 and they would not be hobnobbing with, say, those 
 scoundrelly elms." 
 
 Peter examined the poplars. That is, he had the 
 poplar-examining attitude, but all the time the 
 corner of his eye was taking her in, enjoying that 
 curious, slim, strong beauty of her, noting the 
 pointed, yet witty, alluring face. Then, 
 
 "You think it's that?" he queried. "You think 
 they are permanently soured? To have become 
 poplars at a moment's notice too just because 
 some portable property strayed, as quite good 
 spoons will, into one's pocket, no doubt that would 
 
 67
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 warp one. But don't you think that even the 
 permanently discontented might be betrayed into 
 pleasure by this sun and this air and this breeze?" 
 
 "No," she answered, "no, people with a griev- 
 ance do not see the sun." 
 
 "Oh but surely," he protested, startled at her 
 Calvinistic certainty, "won't you even allow them 
 lapses into happiness ?" 
 
 She reflected, her clear smile fading in the 
 shadow of her thoughts. "No, not even some- 
 times. If they did, then theirs is not a grievance. 
 Not the real, full-blooded, soul-destroying griev- 
 ance. To have a real and indestructible discon- 
 tent, one has to ignore any good in the world. One 
 must turn inwards, away from the temptations of 
 light. One must be self-supporting, self-consum- 
 ing; days like this will be poison to one's appetite 
 for unhappiness. No, if you see the sun in the 
 heaven, all's not so wrong with the world." 
 
 Peter John looked at her astonished. Did she 
 know him, then, or of him? Had he been pointed 
 out to her in the world to which they both so 
 obviously belonged? Had she heard something 
 about him his disappointment, his sense of frus- 
 tration? Was she, by an oblique method, point- 
 ing a moral? Certainly he had reason to be 
 astonished; he thought that, though his illness was 
 public property, his melancholy was his own. He 
 
 68
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 regarded her, and said, not showing his thoughts, 
 
 "You speak in tones of authority." 
 
 She looked out towards the wide, glittering 
 floor of the sea, and he saw for the first time that 
 there was a note of wistfulness, a note of sad- 
 ness in her bearing. 
 
 "Why not?" she answered, almost in a whis- 
 per. "Why not? Only last night I said in my 
 heart, 'There is no sun I' ' 
 
 Peter, more startled than ever, stared at her. 
 
 Not himself, but herself had been the reason 
 for her little pointed moralizing. He had made 
 the stupidest of mistakes. He told his mind, 
 "Truly I have the worst type of grievance. I 
 turn inward. I think only of myself." And be- 
 fore he could formulate any adequate answer, she 
 had turned on him once more; facing him with 
 the tiniest grimace, half laugh, half self-reproof. 
 
 "See where the poplars have led," she cried. 
 
 "Or the road," Peter said lamely. "It leads 
 anywhere and everywhere, you know." 
 
 "And we went nowhere. Only inside our- 
 selves, the cul de sac of happiness." She made 
 a tentative step forward; she was resuming her 
 stroll. Peter's senses cried in alarm. "And you 
 you have yet to reach anywhere." She finished 
 in a manner to suggest that this rounded off their 
 dialogue. 
 
 69
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 He felt inclined to call, "But I prefer your 
 Nowhere." He would have preferred anything 
 that would keep her there, talking in the sun and 
 by the sea, if only for a space. He would play 
 any trick on her to that end. And he played one. 
 He said, 
 
 "I'm afraid I have now to confess myself a 
 fraud. What I wanted you to tell me was not 
 the way to anywhere, but the enormous distance 
 to anywhere. I wanted you to say that in getting 
 there I would become, delectable as the day is, 
 hot and uncomfortable, that undoubtedly I would 
 be late for lunch." 
 
 She arrested that movement, which was yet but 
 the dawn of motion; gave him her full face, 
 smiled with a gentle, interrogative lifting of 
 brows, then, 
 
 "It is an enormous distance to anywhere," she 
 said portentously. "You will get hot and uncom- 
 fortable, and undoubtedly you will be late for 
 lunch." 
 
 "Thank you very much," said Peter John po- 
 litely. "You have bolstered up my infirmity of 
 purpose. I won't go there. I can't be late for 
 lunch. Not that I mind, but Eve Eden would 
 be desolated." 
 
 He looked at her closely as he spoke the name. 
 Under that test, he thought, she must betray 
 
 70
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 herself as a tripper (a beautiful one, yet for all 
 that a tripper) , or as one indigenous to the place. 
 Her answer clinched the matter; she was not, as 
 Eden had endeavored to suggest, a visitor. 
 
 "I'm afraid I must pour cold water on your 
 altruism. Eve Eden will not be desolated." 
 
 "You think not?" 
 
 "She will bear up under anything." 
 
 "Oh, you know Eve Eden as well as that?" 
 
 "I've known her for a hundred years. And 
 you?" 
 
 "Not quite so long. In fact not half so long. 
 She has only lately become my housekeeper." 
 
 Whatever had been the girl's intention, she 
 checked altogether at this remark. She showed 
 him a face, bewildered, pretty, agnostic, even 
 amused in a startled way, as he had intended she 
 should. 
 
 "Eve Eden your housekeeper," she cried. "But 
 surely has Eve Eden left 'Green Ladies' ?" 
 
 "Oh, no," said Peter, slyly enjoying himself. 
 "Oh, no, of course not. But why should she?" 
 He hoped his own air of bland surprise was not 
 overdone. 
 
 "If Eve Eden has not left 'Green Ladies,' 
 then " 
 
 "Oh, I have taken 'Green Ladies,' " Peter men- 
 tioned airily, casually, his manner saying with a 
 
 71
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 sort of discreet wonderment, "But hadn't you 
 heard? Where have you been then? Didn't you 
 know that some one had come down from Lon- 
 don, and poked about and made inquiries, and 
 all that? And that there had been lawyers and 
 traffickings and coming and goings, and big vans 
 and movings in ... ? What could have been 
 the matter with you not to have noticed all this 
 fuss?" 
 
 The girl took in his manner, and her little 
 adorable chin lifted, and the amusement which 
 had been growing in her eyes burst into a little 
 flash of laughter. 
 
 "Oh, you have taken 'Green Ladies/ " she 
 cried. "And I didn't know. How stupid of 
 me. And Eve Eden and Eden himself you 
 have taken them too." 
 
 "To be truthful," said Peter, "they took me. 
 And perhaps the house did, also. The combina- 
 tion seemed perfect." 
 
 " 'Green Ladies' is thought to be the most at- 
 tractive house in these parts," said the girl, again 
 with that gravity that seemed the gravity of laugh- 
 ter. "But am I saying something already old; 
 you have become accustomed to its attraction, 
 perhaps?" 
 
 "Well, no," said Peter, after due thought. 
 72
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Every day I find a novelty, a charm about the 
 place. But you know it and like it too?" 
 
 "Yes and no," said the girl, but with a touch 
 of sobriety in her voice. "It has its charm but 
 there were disappointments, too. But its beauty 
 is undeniable. You know the German Emperor 
 is said to have been angry with it." 
 
 "Merciful heavens, why?" 
 
 "He visited Hampshire, as you know, but he 
 was given another house. Quite a beautiful 
 house. He tllought it the most beautiful in the 
 county until some one showed him 'Green Ladies/ 
 after that he thought 'Green Ladies' presump- 
 tuous." 
 
 They had, by mutual impulse, begun to walk 
 slowly back in the way he had come, in the way 
 she was going. He laughed at her small sally, 
 and then he said: 
 
 "There must be facts more interesting about 
 'Green Ladies' than emperors and their angers. 
 It looks a house that had known and had stored 
 within it many things." 
 
 She walked a little way, and now she stopped. 
 
 "Yes," she said reflectively, "it has its stories." 
 
 Peter John had paused with her. He did not 
 speak. He looked at her. Perhaps she would 
 tell him some of its stories. Her eyes, which 
 had been resting upon the sea and the glowing 
 
 73
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 mass of the Island set in the sea, came back to 
 him, and at once the gossamer of reverie which 
 had rested upon her face was swept away, by the 
 vivacious, the brave undercurrent of amusement 
 which seemed ever at her command. "And 
 meanwhile," she said, "there are lunches to eat. 
 You must not desolate your housekeeper, even 
 in theory, while I dare not desolate mine in fact." 
 She nodded to where a faint track passed lightly 
 backward over the grass to a kissing gate in a 
 hedge. "That is my way," her nod seemed to 
 say. 
 
 Peter John saw that the track continued across 
 the field beyond the hedge, though it quickly 
 twisted out of view. And he saw more than that. 
 He saw the upper windows of a low house, a 
 house with the ripe, mellow tone of a true Hamp- 
 shire chalk wall, set under a deep, slanting, fad- 
 ing straw thatch. The house had the air of a 
 cottage, and yet was obviously larger than a cot- 
 tage. Peter glanced from the house to the faint 
 path. "That is the way she came down to the 
 sea this morning," he decided. 
 
 The girl looked up towards the house. She 
 seemed to hesitate a little before she decided to 
 trace her steps towards it. 
 
 "I am not far from my housekeeper," she 
 74
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 said, almost, it seemed, as though weighing her 
 words, "that is my house." 
 
 "And I am not really very far from my house- 
 keeper, either," admitted Peter, "though mine, 
 it seems, is the less intimidating. 'Green Ladies' 
 is only a short distance. We are really neigh- 
 bors in this enchanted land," and then he added, 
 as though to balance the fact that she had let him 
 into the secret of her home, "my name is John, 
 Peter John." 
 
 She nodded a "Yes, we are neighbors," noth- 
 ing more, and with that adieu walked along the 
 lightly marked track to her home. 
 
 "All the same," Peter John reflected, "I haven't 
 found out who you are. To your other names, 
 to hamadryad, nereid, MacStinger, and the rest 
 must be added that of enigma."
 
 THE girl who was at times a hamadryad 
 and on occasion an enigma poured 
 cream over fruit salad. She looked 
 across the dark, glowing, mellow oak, and the 
 crystal shine and sparkle of the luncheon table, 
 and said coolly, casually, to the young woman of 
 sixty-six who sat opposite, 
 
 "Well, I have met the new owner of 'Green 
 Ladies.' " 
 
 The young lady of sixty-six lifted an amiable, 
 jolly and worldly face; her clear-polished, her 
 humorous human eyes snapped astonishment; her 
 slightly Roman, yet high and aristocratic, nose 
 twitched in an amused and eager curiosity. 
 
 "My dear, the new owner of 'Green Ladies'? 
 What new owner?" 
 
 "Well, if you will have it precisely," said the 
 girl, as if anxious to be accurate, "the new tenant 
 of 'Green Ladies.' ' 
 
 "That's no easier," said the young woman of 
 sixty-six. "Doesn't a place have to be let before 
 one talks of its tenant?" 
 
 The girl raised her brows in whimsical sur- 
 76
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 prise. "Of course," she admitted, "but 'Green 
 Ladies' boasts a tenant. But 'Green Ladies' is 
 let." 
 
 Her tone said with the same discreet wonder- 
 ment Peter John had employed not two hours 
 earlier, "But hadn't you heard? Where have 
 you been? Didn't you know that some one had 
 come down from London, and poked about and 
 made inquiries, and all that? And that there 
 had been lawyers and traffickings and comings and 
 goings and big vans and movings in . . . ? What 
 could have been the matter with you not to have 
 noticed all that fuss?" 
 
 The young lady of sixty-six jerked her little 
 felt hat backward in a movement of laughter and 
 appreciation. 
 
 "Well," she said, in her vivacious way, "well 
 your bomb has gone off nicely. 'Green La- 
 dies' boasts a tenant. 'Green Ladies' is let. 
 Well ?" 
 
 "A personable, distinguished tenant," said the 
 girl calmly, and yet with her attractive, intimate 
 disarming smile; "distinguished, certainly; rea- 
 sonably tall, a good carriage. He is slim, and 
 he wears his clothes well. You, no doubt, would 
 call him good looking." 
 
 "I'd have less doubt if I saw the young man," 
 said the young woman of sixty-six. 
 
 77
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Did I say he was young? Well, not too 
 young. Not so old, either. And, yes, in spite 
 of your reservations, I think that his sort of lean 
 narrow face is of the rather good looking type. 
 And he has a tongue in his head; he is not at loss. 
 He can exchange commonplaces neatly. Oh, yes, 
 quite a good tenant for 'Green Ladies,' quite an 
 acquisition to the neighborhood." 
 
 "And all this since when?" said the other in 
 her twinkling way. "All this in how many 
 meetings?" 
 
 The girl busied herself with an elusive prune. 
 
 "Call it," she said after a pause, "call it one. 
 His name is Peter John." She looked up directly 
 at the young woman of sixty-six. 
 
 "Don't know it," said the other decisively. 
 
 "It isn't a bad name," said the girl. "It has 
 a good air. He was in the war. No, not as a 
 soldier, just as a fighter; he joined up in 1914. 
 They made him a major and he had some sort of 
 illness in the Dardanelles and again in Palestine. 
 He was also wounded in Foch's big advance." 
 
 "One meeting, did you say?" 
 
 "One meeting and 'Who's Who,' " answered 
 the girl unabashed. "Also I had a little previ- 
 ous knowledge. Some people in town know of 
 him, and I happen to remember what they said. 
 He is more than civilly well-to-do ; he is, himself, 
 
 78
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 what you would call only you are so determin- 
 edly English, a 'high-brow.' ' 
 
 "Do you call him a 'high-brow'?" 
 
 "Bless you, no, but then I'm determinedly Eng- 
 lish, too. He's a savant of an archaeological 
 plane. He's written books and articles I've 
 read one in one of those reviews everybody re- 
 veres and rarely reads." 
 
 "A professor man?" 
 
 "Not a bit of it. Something with good red 
 blood in his veins. He explores. His archaeol- 
 ogy is only at the tale of his adventures. He is, 
 apparently, the sort of man who prefers his in- 
 teresting ruin to be on the further side of a virgin 
 jungle, or in the heart of untracked and danger- 
 ous mountains; generally in Peru or Brazil or 
 Mexico or Guatemala or Yucatan I could say 
 Yucatan for an hour hasn't it a blessed sound?" 
 
 "All this," said the young woman of sixty-six 
 again, "all this in a number of meetings we will 
 call one." 
 
 "And 'Who's Who,' and the reports of mutual 
 friends. One is bound to take some polite in- 
 terest in the tenant of 'Green Ladies.' ' 
 
 "Yes, that would not be unnatural," said the 
 young lady of sixty-six. She looked at the girl 
 with a smiling and enigmatic glance. She stood 
 up, smoothing the serviceable tweed costume on 
 
 79
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 her stocky yet resilient figure. She was a very 
 jaunty young woman of sixty-six, carrying herself 
 and her wedding-ring with a braveness and im- 
 pulsiveness that had a dash all its own. She 
 looked down now at the girl with the bright 
 glance which saw a good deal more than the blunt 
 tongue found necessary to express. She nodded 
 briskly. 
 
 "I see why you want to interest me in your 
 'Green Ladies' man. You think he'll miss some 
 of the wildernesses and dangers of South Amer- 
 ica. I shall certainly do my best to be a virgin 
 swamp. I'll call." She looked at the girl. 
 "And I'll keep my eye on him." 
 
 The girl looked up and nodded and smiled. 
 The brisk little lady in the useful tweeds had un- 
 derstood her meaning.
 
 XVII 
 
 THE monarch of nearly all he surveyed 
 ("After all," he reflected, "my out- 
 look on the Island is included in the 
 lease. It is metaphysically mine.") sat in a long 
 cushioned chair on the terrace of "Green Ladies" 
 watching the Island paint itself into an impres- 
 sionistic study of evening. Already it had be- 
 come a thing of soft misty stipplings. Greens 
 and grays and yellows and reds were running 
 themselves into each other in a sweet confusion 
 against the mat surface of green and gilt and blue 
 forming the mist-drowsed background of sky. 
 
 He sat reflecting, glancing down at the little 
 packet of spilled jewels that was the garden, his 
 garden, with an air rueful as well as content. His 
 eyes rested always upon the reticent back of Eden, 
 Eden who with movements almost ritualistic was 
 curling the fringes of the flowers. He was prob- 
 ably doing things more reasonable, but his curi- 
 ous, individual, affectionate treatment of the blos- 
 soms had that air. 
 
 Upon that incommunicable back Peter bent his 
 rueful, questioning glance. 
 
 81
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Could you," he wondered, "solve this riddle? 
 Could you, at a word, ease a conscience thor- 
 oughly disturbed by good fortune ? Or have you 
 nothing to offer? Are you really an hierophant 
 of the Hieracosphinx, or am I making you out a 
 devil of a deep fellow simply because I can't quite 
 believe the truth when I see it?" 
 
 He sat and let his thoughts go back over the 
 last few hours the incredible luck of events, the 
 dismaying smoothness of all that had happened. 
 He glanced at the fagade of "Green Ladies." 
 "You look beautiful, but are you sinister?" he 
 asked. "Will you develop ghosts or drains or 
 chimneys that foully smoke?" 
 
 "Green Ladies" remained exquisitely serene. 
 Eden stood upright and looked down with a slow 
 love at the flowers. 
 
 "Eden," called Peter, half twisting in his chair. 
 The old man looked up and allowed Peter to 
 share his fine smile for the flowers. 
 
 "Eden," said Peter cheerfully, "when will we 
 have the earthquake?" 
 
 The old man glanced at the sky and the Is- 
 land, as though automatically testing the nature 
 signs that foretold all the worst earthquakes. 
 Then he smiled up at Peter again, and said: 
 
 "There are no earthquakes in Hampshire, sir." 
 
 He did not ask why Peter had been stupid 
 82
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 enough to imagine there should be ; he had arrived 
 at the definite knowledge that when Peter was 
 inexplicable he was probably humorous. 
 
 "A cyclone then?" put in Peter, as one leaving 
 it to a higher faculty. "A cyclone, or a tornado, 
 maybe; something that will tear us all up and 
 throw us aside shattered forever or do you think 
 'Green Ladies' will be burnt down in the night? 
 Do you think it's that?" 
 
 Eden took a perceptible step towards the house. 
 
 "To-night," he echoed in concern. "God ha' 
 mercy on us." He stared at the house. "It 
 couldn't burn down," he said deeply. Then he 
 realized that Peter was Peter. r 'You gave me a 
 fright, sir," he said with a smile that the mist of 
 anxiety only half veiled. 
 
 "It would give me a fright, too," said Peter. 
 "It would give me a life of gloom. Oh, I don't 
 want it to be burnt down or earthquaked or tor- 
 nadoed but don't you think something must hap- 
 pen?" 
 
 "A little rain may be, sir," said Eden, teasing 
 his friends the flowers with his hoe. "The wind's 
 worked southwest. But a little rain that's all 
 to the good." 
 
 "Good ! I don't mean good," protested Peter. 
 "Don't you feel anything ominous?" 
 
 83
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Eden thought "ominous" might have a catchy 
 meaning, but he determined to take the risk. 
 
 "Why, no, sir," he said, smiling. "Why 
 should I? It's velvet weather, and the flowers 
 are coming up there's nothing amiss in the 
 world." 
 
 "But isn't that the flaw in it? Isn't it rather 
 too good, overdoing blessings? You're not afraid 
 of it all?" insisted Peter. "You're not scared 
 because things have gone so well? You're not 
 trembling at the huge goodness of good fortune?" 
 
 Eden thought, looking serenely out to sea. 
 
 "No, sir," he said slowly. "Perhaps I'm used 
 to it. Perhaps I'm too old." 
 
 As he looked out to the Island Peter could 
 fancy the old, mellow man, turning over his life's 
 good luck Eve Eden, the pinnacle and summit 
 of his good luck, this view of the Island; this 
 garden; this sweet and gracious Hampshire air 
 all these true and simple things. Perhaps he 
 had, in truth, become used to it; good fortune 
 could no longer affront or startle him. 
 I "All the same," reflected Peter, "happiness 
 makes cowards of us all. Don't you agree, 
 Eden, that it's all been too good to be true?" 
 
 "Meaning, sir?" said Eden, now resolved that 
 whimsical conversation would have no deleteri- 
 ous effect on the practical business of hoeing. 
 
 84
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "All of it. Yesterday I came here and saw 
 this was the best of all houses in the world. So 
 it is but it was empty; it was 'to be let fur- 
 nished' ; it was absolutely ready to my bed and 
 board, so to speak. The best of all the houses 
 in the world aren't like that, Eden. Not as a 
 rule. One either dreams them, and then a cal- 
 lous architect says, 'Very pretty, but how am I 
 going to get a kitchen and a drainage system into 
 your preposterous villa of vision?' which means 
 one has glimpsed the unattainable. Or, if one 
 actually meets the house in the brick, then it is 
 inhabited by maiden ladies whom, though one 
 wants to, sentimental human convention forbids 
 one turning adrift, or by brutes who produce 
 ninety-nine-year leases few fond hopes can sur- 
 vive a ninety-nine-year lease, Eden." 
 
 "It's a long time, sir," admitted Eden; "but I 
 have known men to live to beyond a hundred." 
 
 "Not with unimpaired enthusiasms," insisted 
 Peter. "But 'Green Ladies' is neither a dream 
 nor was it bastioned about by maiden ladies and 
 ninety-nine-year leases. I saw it. I said I would 
 have it, and I have it. Nobody said 'No'; no- 
 body said 'Wait a moment, we suddenly remem- 
 ber we must do this first,' or, 'We must write sev- 
 eral letters to nobodies in particular, and keep 
 you waiting about for no reasons at all. 1 Noth- 
 
 85
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 ing like that happened. In less than twenty-four 
 hours an object of human desire has been fully 
 and smoothly attained doesn't it seem all wrong 
 to you, Eden?" 
 
 "It sounds all natural, sir," suggested Eden, 
 doing geometrical things with his hoe. And then 
 he said with a soft smile playing around his lips, 
 "After all, sir, Miss Phillippa was not in her house 
 and wanted to let it. You were in the house and 
 wanted to take it; you were both getting your 
 ends, sir." 
 
 "Well, I'm jiggered," said the amazed Peter. 
 "To stun a man with his own club ; it's unexpected 
 of you, Eden." 
 
 He looked at the old man again. Why this 
 sudden flash from an unsuspected reserve? Was 
 Eden actually old and serene and simple, or were 
 there really Machiavellian depths in him? Was 
 he, too, playing a part in a conspiracy that was 
 perplexing Peter by the gorgeous ease and 
 smoothness with which his good fortune was be- 
 ing stage-managed? 
 
 He thought over events again. 
 
 Hadn't the lawyers acted strangely, unnat- 
 urally? Wasn't it wrong for lawyers to be sim- 
 ple and friendly? Weren't lawyers after all the 
 instinctive enemies of man, anyhow of man trying 
 to lease a house from them? 
 
 86
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 What right had they to shatter traditions and 
 do things on the nail, to do them at once without 
 any tortuous meanderings, or twisting into side 
 issues or "whereases," or making things thor- 
 oughly dragging, harassing and damnable with 
 temporizations and clauses, and pattings-back and 
 puttings-off ? 
 
 These lawyers had outraged his sense of law- 
 yerdom. They had made things almost intoler- 
 ably smooth-working. 
 
 They had arrived in their own big car from 
 Southampton. They had come with everything 
 prepared. They had come ready to be thor- 
 oughly accommodating. 
 
 They had brought an estate agent, who pro- 
 duced leases, and the other queer forms Peter 
 had to sign magically. The fellow waved his 
 hands, and leases all complete seemed to appear 
 in them. 
 
 Peter John had sat at his side of the big green- 
 topped desk in the study prepared to contest all 
 objections with a running exhibition of logic and 
 argument, plus certain hard facts he possessed, 
 the chief being his pass-book, which fortunately 
 traveled with him. They had driven him to 
 moodiness by their cheery assent to all his ruth- 
 less demands. 
 
 They had accepted his being here, his 'having 
 
 87
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 entered the house by force, his having slept in it 
 against all householder's precedent, his having, as 
 the man in possession, forced them to confirm in 
 legal terms his highway robbery they had ac- 
 cepted all that as the most natural thing in the 
 world. Peter had been ready with a quip to meet 
 any of their legitimate protests at his behavior. 
 . . . He had a rapier thrust or two to deliver in 
 his neatest manner against their prosaic expos- 
 tulations. When the senior lawyer, who looked 
 big and sleek, and quite like an old-fashioned 
 clergyman who had shaved his side whiskers, but 
 still had the ghosts of them about him, began, or 
 should have begun, "I think you'll admit, Mr. 
 John, that your action must be regarded as a trifle 
 high-handed. . . ." He intended to riposte 
 with . . . 
 
 But the senior lawyer asked him in a voice of 
 milk if he had slept well. And the junior lawyer 
 was anxious to know if Eden and Eve Eden had 
 done everything to make him comfortable. 
 
 Confound them, what right had he had to sleep 
 well? What right had Eden and Eve Eden to 
 make him comfortable? 
 
 And the agent had said: 
 
 "House's not damp? No. Wouldn't be. 'N 
 excellent condition " 
 
 Peter had stared at them. What manner of 
 88
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 responsible business creatures were these? Who 
 were they to sit complacent when any tramp might 
 force his way into the respectable houses they 
 were supposed to safeguard, on the mere specious 
 pretext of wanting to take them? 
 
 He had then said truculently: 
 
 "I want the house from last night. I want it 
 now. I must have it at once. I don't intend to 
 leave it at all," and he looked at them, expecting 
 well, worse than that hoping the senior law- 
 yer would intone. 
 
 "I'm afraid we can't be so quick as all that, 
 Mr. John. A big business like this cannot be hur- 
 ried. There are details to be gone into. Refer- 
 ence and things to be taken up. . . ." 
 
 And the senior lawyer beamed. He said to 
 the agent, 
 
 "Mr. Cats, you have the lease?" 
 
 And Mr. Matthew Cats waved his hand and 
 suddenly in it was a lease, and he said with an all- 
 enfolding grin: 
 
 "All'n-order, Mr. Kipinkenny. Leases two. 
 Yes, leases for signature ready." 
 
 They had put the two leases before Peter and 
 he had read them, or tried to read them, through. 
 They told him he'd find them quite in order. He 
 supposed he would if he really knew how to find 
 leases in order, and indeed he thought they must
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 be. Somehow he felt he ought to take their word 
 for it. They knew so much more about these 
 things than he, and they were so ready to help. 
 And then if he made any suggestion they'd 
 quickly show him, tactfully of course, that it 
 wasn't at all a bright suggestion, and that the 
 thing he objected to was the sort of thing that al- 
 ways went into the best leases. . . . On the 
 whole, reading it through as he did, it seemed a 
 straightforward lease. . . . 
 
 And really it wasn't the lease he was objecting 
 to. It was this unceremonial signing, this ab- 
 sence of any attack upon his character, or his mo- 
 tives of honesty, or on his desire for speed. He 
 took up his pen; he looked at them. 
 
 "You'll want references, of course," he insisted. 
 
 "Well, yes," said the senior lawyer. "As a 
 matter of form. Well, yes." 
 
 "This," said Peter John, pushing his bank book 
 forward, "this is the referee who will speak most 
 earnestly for me." 
 
 "Oh, well, it's not at all " began Mr. Kip- 
 
 inkenny, and then Peter said: 
 
 "I'd feel much more businesslike if you 
 looked." 
 
 "Purely formal," said Mr. Kipinkenny. He 
 took the bank book; he looked at it in the manner 
 of man forced to read a novel by an author whom 
 
 90
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 he did not like. He noted Peter's bank, which 
 was a very useful sort of bank to hold at the head 
 of lawyers. He glanced at the credits. Then he 
 put the book down. Peter could have cremated 
 him. His blandness was beyond human endur- 
 ance. Peter could swear that if an instrument 
 registering emotions had been applied to the fel- 
 low, it would not have registered the acceleration 
 of a beat. And he said, stoically: 
 
 "Purely formal, Mr. John. Very satisfac- 
 tory." 
 
 All through the negotiations they had been up- 
 held by their attitude of devastating acquiescence. 
 These lawyers were absurdities; they were lambs 
 in wolves' clothing. They agreed to anything. 
 They even accepted his check for rent in advance 
 under polite protest. 
 
 He tried to prick them awake with talk of an 
 inventory. If anything can stir the passions of 
 primitive man in the breasts of house-letting law- 
 yers and agents it is a casual disregard of such a 
 rubrical thing as an inventory. 
 
 Peter was heretical concerning inventories. He 
 objected to having inventory composers littered 
 about the place. To have strange thick-booted 
 men of tenacious habits about his restful house 
 would be 
 
 But Mr. Cats produced an inventory.
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Peter might have known he would. That agent 
 would produce Peter's birth certificate, or the mar- 
 riage lines of his grandmother, if necessary. He 
 would produce anything. Nothing could baffle 
 him. The inventory was quite all right. It had 
 been drawn up less than two weeks ago fortu- 
 nately. 
 
 Peter was becoming fearful of good fortune. 
 There was too much of it about. Surely the gods 
 were bemusing him with luck the better to destroy 
 him. 
 
 "I suppose it was drawn up when you heard I 
 was coming down," he said bitterly to Mr. Cats, 
 conscious that two weeks ago he had had not the 
 slightest idea that he was coming down and he 
 was bowled over by the answer. 
 
 "Probably, Mr. John." 
 
 Peter could not fight against their good inten- 
 tions. The house he wanted became his without 
 a blessed, jarring objection. It became his in 
 twenty minutes. 
 
 "Very satisfactorily settled," said Mr. Kipin- 
 kenny as though pronouncing grace after lease. 
 "Purely formal, but most satisfactory." 
 
 "You think so," said Peter, with bitter amia- 
 bility. "But was there anything unusual, any- 
 thing to make it otherwise? Aren't all houses 
 let like this?" 
 
 92
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Not always," said Mr. Kipinkenny, and then 
 the ingrained lawyer in him raised its scaly head 
 for a moment: "There are certain aspects in this 
 matter which are unusual, I might say, most un- 
 usual. If we had been concerned alone but, 
 there, our instructions were definite. In fact, 
 most definite." 
 
 "Oh," said Peter lamely. "You had instruc- 
 tions?" 
 
 "Why, yes, naturally, Mr. John," cried Mr. 
 Kipinkenny, really alarmed that Peter should 
 think this brisk manner of his was a business 
 habit. 
 
 "Instructions from the owner?" 
 
 "Of course," said Mr. Kipinkenny. 
 
 "By telegram," said Mr. Eleventrees, the sec- 
 ond lawyer, who looked extraordinarily like all 
 those footmen who walked on and arranged the 
 plates, and then said, "Dinner is served, my lord," 
 in all that sort of play, all the world over. "By 
 telegram, Mr. John, and by telephone our in- 
 structions were most implicit. And then we had 
 confirmation over the telephone when we arrived. 
 That clinched it as far as we were concerned." 
 His manner said, "So you see we really had no 
 chance of making things thoroughly unpleasant 
 for you." 
 
 "I suppose that explains," admitted Peter, feel- 
 93
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 ing rather limp. He picked up the leases. . He 
 read them absently. They were headed, "The 
 de Pierre Estate of 'Green Ladies.' ' He had 
 grasped that much before. "Green Ladies" be- 
 longed to unknown people called the de Pierres. 
 So much he had learned then. But neither that 
 fact nor the leases helped him. He said: 
 
 "But, look here, this is made out to the name 
 of Hewlett & Wink, of Great Turnstile, London. 
 Whom have you been telephoning to, Hewlett or 
 Wink?" 
 
 Mr. Kipinkenny laughed, a ruri-decanal timbre 
 of laugh. 
 
 "Hewlett & Wink are lawyers. They act for 
 our client; we act for them in this neighborhood. 
 The lease was drawn up under instructions." 
 
 "From Wink or Hewlett?" 
 
 "Neither; both are too far away from our 
 client, the owner of 'Green Ladies.' ' 
 
 "That would be Miss Phillippa," said Peter, 
 firing his shot full in their faces. 
 
 "It is Miss Phillippa," said the senior lawyer, 
 after a flicker of a pause, in which he showed pal- 
 pably to the world that he recognized he had put 
 his foot in it. 
 
 "Miss Phillippa de Pierre?" asked Peter de- 
 liberately. 
 
 94
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Mr. Kipinkenny blinked at him, obviously feel- 
 ing that whatever befall he must say no more. 
 
 "Miss Phillippa Miss Phillippa does not wish 
 to appear," said Mr. Eleventrees smoothly, as 
 one who knew how to deal with dangerous situa- 
 tions. "For reasons which no doubt you will 
 respect, Mr. John." 
 
 "Oh, damn," thought Peter, "why should I? 
 I don't want to respect 'em. I want to know." 
 
 "Of course," he said aloud. Peter could see 
 that if he looked rather like a "dinner is served, 
 my lord," young man, Mr. Eleventrees all the 
 same had wits. He went on, looking grimly at 
 Peter's chin, 
 
 "Miss Phillippa understood you wanted the 
 house in a hurry. . . . Well, your telegrams to 
 us make the matter plain. Miss Phillippa saw 
 no reason why you should not be met. . . . Miss 
 Phillippa is satisfied that all will be well, and gave 
 us explicit instructions. We have acted upon them 
 to your satisfaction, I hope." 
 
 "But I thought Miss Phillippa was away " 
 
 "For the moment, luckily," said Mr. Eleven- 
 trees, "she is in " 
 
 "In the neighborhood?" said Peter, really only 
 trying to help him out. 
 
 "In the area, anyhow within telephone radius 
 luckily," said Mr. Eleventrees, with a blink. 
 
 95
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 But even that wouldn't quite do. Again there 
 was that confounding air of reticence, of mystery. 
 Why should principals be satisfied without rea- 
 son? And over the telephone, too. Why should 
 principals neglect their jobs? Why shouldn't 
 Miss Phillippa do her duty as an ordinary, repu- 
 table landlord? Why shouldn't she come and in- 
 terview him, or allow him to go and interview 
 her, in order to see for herself whether he wasn't 
 a tramp, or a furniture destroyer by instinct? 
 Why should she accept him on trust and by tele- 
 phone ? 
 
 "Even being in the same telephone area," he 
 said, a little nettled, "doesn't help one instantane- 
 ously to decide upon a tenant one has not seen, 
 one does not know " 
 
 "No," said the lawyers, packing up their traps, 
 "no, perhaps not. But from what we gathered 
 from Miss Phillippa, she seems to know you, or 
 to know of you already, Mr. John." 
 
 Peter John stared at them. 
 
 "Oh, but I say," he blurted, "but that's rather 
 preposterous. I don't know Miss Phillippa. I 
 don't know of a Miss de Pierre who owns a house 
 called 'Green Ladies.' I am certain I have not 
 met her." 
 
 The lawyers bowed to him, the agent bobbed 
 to him.
 
 "We know no more," they said, "no more than 
 we have told you. We have received instruc- 
 tions, and they were explicit." 
 
 They went, leaving Peter John baffled but, all 
 the same, the full and legal tenant of "Green La- 
 dies" for a year with the option of an extension. 
 
 "This Miss Phillippa knows me or knows of 
 me," Peter groaned from his chair to the Island, 
 to the sunset, to the back of Eden. "And that 
 only makes things more complicated. Why 
 should an unknown person know me, and do 
 things for me? It's it's part of this colossal 
 good fortune, and it is making me scared." 
 
 He thought for a moment of finding out all 
 about these de Pierres. He could inquire. Eden 
 might tell him something. He could, no doubt, 
 turn up many of the facts in the County History. 
 But he felt no definite impulse to get facts from 
 either Eden or History. He was not very in- 
 terested in de Pierres. Man really isn't actively 
 concerned in his landlords. 
 
 He let the de Pierres slide from his mind; to- 
 morrow, some day, he would find out all about 
 them, even about this spinster, Miss Phillippa. 
 But now he had other things to intrigue his mind. 
 There was this luck and the girl who was also a 
 hamadryad. 
 
 97
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 When he lifted himself from his terrace chair 
 and walked towards the pale, serene face of the 
 house shining softly through the dusk of the night, 
 he looked deliberately and long towards the 
 hushed and secret shadows of the trees. 
 
 He looked with an attention almost poignant, 
 but as he looked he knew it was of no avail. 
 
 He had felt none of the subtle and delicate sen- 
 sations that had warned him lastnight that some 
 one something mystical and sympathetic was 
 watching him from under the darkling shades of 
 the pines. 
 
 And his eyes told him what his senses had al- 
 ready conveyed that the slim shade was not 
 there.
 
 XVIII 
 
 BUT he met her no later than the next morn- 
 ing. 
 The next day he walked, with perhaps 
 a spirit of determination not to go the other way, 
 eastward alongthe fringes of the sea. 
 
 In that grave half hour, after rising, when hu- 
 man nature is most exposed to its relentless self, 
 the half hour that begins with the first lather of 
 the shaving brush, and ends with the final pat to 
 the tie, he caught himself thinking of the girl. 
 
 He caught himself thinking too much of the 
 girl, remembering with curious vividness the way 
 she had appeared to him on the cliff, with all the 
 world and the blue sky behind her; he caught him- 
 self recalling the way she had carried herself, and 
 the lift of her chin, and her strange, slim, flexile 
 grace. And about the last stroke of the razor, 
 he had said aloud, as though the spoken voice 
 could browbeat the unspoken thoughts : 
 
 "You are letting your mind idle too long in 
 the company of that sylph, Peter John." And 
 then, as his mind did not immediately come to 
 heel, "Enough of this, Peter Fool." 
 
 99
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Then at once he began to think of the soft, de- 
 cisive note of her voice; the sureness and charm 
 of her speaking, and the things she had said, and 
 the way she had said them, and the gentle play of 
 her emotions, her vivacity, her wit, her candor, 
 that had come to her pointed and alluring face as 
 she spoke. 
 
 And he had gone on thinking of her voice, until 
 he twitched his tie into decency, and then he had 
 scowled over his tie at this mazy-dreaming Peter 
 of the mirror, and had muttered: 
 
 "You know you're being a transcendental ass. 
 .You know that in common decency you must 
 stop." 
 
 And so, after breakfast, he went the other way, 
 and was rather sorry for himself as he went. 
 
 He did not intend to go far. Presently he was 
 to return and hand to his chauffeur a list of things, 
 mainly clothes, that that super young man and 
 the car were to bring back from town. Peter 
 ought himself to go to town. There should be a 
 resolute packing of goods, there should be, for in- 
 stance, a gathering together of books, that were 
 to form the scaffolding of the work Peter John 
 was to do in "Green Ladies." But Peter John 
 had compromised with his conscience about that 
 packing and those books. He had told himself 
 that he must enjoy "Green Ladies" without dis- 
 
 100
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 traction for a few days ; he would have it flawless 
 of books for a short spell; . . . and he would 
 look about him. 
 
 He said look about him, in that general sense, 
 for he shied at the actual truth. Even then he 
 was trying to convince himself that his looking 
 about actually meant looking in all directions and 
 not merely in one direction, and that a little west- 
 ward. 
 
 So he went for his short walk, and did not go 
 as far as he intended. A very little way along the 
 sea-edge he overtook the girl, sauntering easily 
 with a sort of song of movement, in the same 
 direction. 
 
 Presently she turned to see the view. She 
 turned, as the wise do, suddenly, as though to 
 catch the beauty of the earth unaware, as though 
 to get a peep at nature before it could dissemble 
 and become mere scenery. As she turned she saw 
 Peter, and she stopped walking. 
 
 With a tingling of pleasure (all sensible ad- 
 monitions forgotten) Peter relished to the full 
 the singular intimacy of that friendly movement; 
 the indolent half-turn of the supple and delicate 
 body, as her eyes followed the glory of the view; 
 then the suspension as she recognized him, an atti- 
 tude half motion, half pause, the movement of a 
 Psyche caught for all time by a single, sumptuous 
 
 101
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 sweep of a sculptor's thumb; then a deliberate 
 pause, and turning to wait for him. 
 
 She was comely and upright, and in her light 
 dress, an indescribable milliner's miracle in soft 
 biscuit color with points of cherry, she looked at 
 a distance, and in the clarity of the sunlight, rather 
 like a slender flame; rather like a clear, strong 
 flame burning with something of the sun's golden 
 ardor against a background of green. 
 
 And as he walked towards her Peter reflected: 
 
 "After all, is she a thing of the shadows and 
 trees? Isn't she, in fact, more fitted to be the sun 
 god's daughter?" 
 
 Near enough he saw her smile. 
 
 "Ehee ! but she smiles with the sun of the sun, 
 and not with the melancholy of the shadow. She 
 is the daughter of the sun, and without doubt I 
 have done magic for her. I have released her to 
 the sun. Two days ago she was imprisoned in 
 the woods, chained in the shadows of those firs 
 which are, after all, pines. There she waited for 
 some one to come and release her, for some one 
 to break Merlin's black spell. I took 'Green 
 Ladies' and that broke the spell. She has be- 
 come free to assume her natural form and go out 
 into the day." 
 
 And when he came very near, he came closer 
 102
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 to the facts of life, and he said, almost with a 
 frown in his heart: 
 
 u She is very beautiful. ... I wish she were 
 less beautiful." 
 
 Then he joined her and agreed with her as 
 though he had thought no thoughts at all that 
 even though it was not April but July, it was good 
 to be in England now. 
 
 "Are you discovering your kingdom?" she 
 asked, as they walked again, and she gave him a 
 bright glance that was enigmatic, even amused, as 
 well as friendly. 
 
 "Am I ?" he asked. "If this is part of it, I am. 
 How far does my kingdom extend? I am still 
 woefully ignorant." 
 
 "It ends over there by the tiny headland; it 
 ends in an imaginary line, for all the world as if it 
 were a brother to an equator, and it passes by 
 those trees to where the fence begins. But surely 
 . . . ? Your own kingdom . . . ?" 
 
 Her eyes glanced at him, amused, ironical, as 
 if to say: 
 
 "But what have you been doing with yourself 
 during the long tenancy at which you hinted yester- 
 day on the cliff? Surely you have not neglected 
 your estate all that time? Surely you have not 
 allowed those weeks and weeks to go by without 
 beating your boundaries? Where can your in- 
 
 103
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 stincts have been? What have you been doing 
 with your weeks or is it months? of occupa- 
 tion?" 
 
 She smiled all this at him, and Peter smiled 
 back. He knew she had caught him out, but he 
 put a bold face on it; he said largely: 
 
 "Oh, I leave my kingdom to Eden; the house is 
 enough for me. I am not yet out of my first fond 
 rapture." 
 
 "Yet it is worth knowing. It is quite a beauti- 
 ful little kingdom." 
 
 They turned and saw the gentle fields, and 
 across them the bold massing of the pines; and 
 through the militarist pines there was a glimpse of 
 the house, the Gothic so strangely built into it, 
 making it austere and white and, yet it seemed, 
 smiling gravely in the friendly serenity of the sun, 
 aloof and white and beautiful it was with its feet 
 in the jeweled carpet of Eden's flowers. 
 
 "I shall come to my Kingdom in time," Peter 
 told the girl. "I shall savor it all bit by Kit. The 
 house, and then the estate, and then Hampshire. 
 I shall come to it slowly, rolling it on my tongue, 
 for I have plenty of time. I have broad acres of 
 time before me." 
 
 The last slipped out. It was one of those little 
 pricks of unconsidered thought that spring unbid- 
 den into the mind, and that serve to remind one 
 
 104
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 of one's loss, what will now be one's limitation. 
 Peter saw his limitation; he would be chained to 
 the house, to England for life, and no longer be 
 allowed to go beyond the length of the chain. 
 
 The girl stood looking at the house, and then 
 she looked away from it slowly, taking in the 
 length and breadth of the view. 
 
 "How lucky you are!" she said. 
 
 "Am I? Yes, perhaps I am," he agreed. 
 
 "Perhaps?" she echoed. "But, no, certainly; 
 not merely because you've found 'Green Ladies,' 
 that's a great good fortune in itself, but because 
 you've found England. I envy you. I envy you 
 as I always envy people who are about to begin 
 a book I have found delightful. This is the book 
 of England, you know not Hampshire, not just 
 a little corner of the kingdom, but all England. 
 You can't turn up a road of this soil without dis- 
 interring history." 
 
 Something of Peter's own love for ancient things 
 kindled at the girl's enthusiasm. She stood as a 
 type of England herself, bright, strong, swift- 
 built and erect; fair as England was fair with all 
 the brightness of England in her face, and with 
 all the dreamy mystery of England seated in her 
 contemplative gaze. 
 
 "You know it and love it well," said Peter. 
 
 "I was born in Hampshire," she said. "My 
 
 105
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 very roots are in the soil, and I have lived here 
 all my life." 
 
 She paused. Peter hung waiting with a pleasur- 
 able excitement. She must, he thought, say more 
 now. She must tell him something about herself. 
 Solve the engima that surrounded her. And she 
 did nothing of the kind. She said with a fleck 
 of a smile in her reflective eye, "Do my enthu- 
 siasms and loyalties for my parish pump carry me 
 too far?" 
 
 "When your parish pump is all England, there 
 can scarcely be a limit to enthusiasm and loyalty." 
 
 "Well, it is as big as that. The whole spirit of 
 the land and race is concentrated into the very air 
 we breathe. England grew up out of this, you 
 know. The souls of saints and kings and teachers 
 and heroes and the staunch common men who 
 made the very beginnings of England impregnate 
 this broad land. Winchester was the capital be- 
 fore London was even thought desirable. Eng- 
 land sprang from Alfred, and Winchester was 
 Alfred's town. English law sprang from Win- 
 chester, and English learning, too. In Alfred's 
 monkish schools young England was taught; with- 
 in the walls of Winchester the first history of Eng- 
 land was written, and chained in the Cathedral 
 Church so that all men could go and read it. 
 
 "And all over the county there are little bits 
 106
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 of the past, older than Alfred even. Over at 
 Baddesley there is a tiny church h.'gh up on a hill, 
 and first the painted pagans worshiped there, then 
 the Romans built a temple over the ancient altar 
 shrine, and then the Christians made the temple 
 into a church. ... A little old church of brick 
 that is history, standing on a hill that has held the 
 altars of all our English faiths. At Romsey, too, 
 there is a great church lording it over a sleepy 
 town, and you pull at a ring in the floor of the 
 church and the floor comes up and underneath 
 there are the stones that Saxon workmen laid at 
 the orders of the first Lady Abbess of Romsey. 
 
 "And then think of all the devoted men who 
 have marched through Hampshire to aphold the 
 ideals of the Anglo-Saxon spirit. Southampton 
 do you know that it was on Southampton shores 
 that Canute sat and got his feet wetted by the 
 waves? Southampton has always been the gate 
 of English valor. Saxon and Dane and French- 
 men have known it as the entry port of England. 
 A French Dauphin tried to steal England through 
 Southampton in a dash for Winchester. At 
 Southampton you can still see the little gate 
 through which the hosts of Agincourt marched, 
 their pikes striking the walls of the narrow olden 
 street that still holds its memory, to embark for 
 France. . . . Think of all the hosts of England 
 
 107
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 sailing from Southampton to the wars down to 
 the host that sailed away in the War. Ships of 
 war are built here, too. In a little dead village 
 on a dead stream; at Bucklers Hard on Beaulieu 
 river a splendid name?" 
 
 "A name born to the purple," agreed Peter. 
 
 "In that tiny, inconspicuous, half-vanished vil- 
 lage on an inconspicuous stream they used to build 
 the British ships of the line. They dragged the 
 oak from the New Forest, and built up the big 
 war vessels on the slips. You can't get a reason- 
 able sized tug up Beaulieu river now, but great 
 ships went out from it, and their guns thundered 
 at Trafalgar." 
 
 She paused and laughed. 
 
 "I can't begin or end the story of Hampshire," 
 she laughed. "But you must find it all out for 
 yourself." 
 
 They were walking away from the sea. They 
 had struck back along a field path and were com- 
 ing to the road. Peter was a little intolerant of 
 that road. Roads, when one comes to them, are 
 places where people part, intimacy breaks off and 
 conversations end. 
 
 He did not want this conversation to end. He 
 had a sense of restfulness, of serenity, of supreme 
 satisfaction while in the presence of this girl. Her 
 very proximity; the charity, the high demeanor, 
 
 108
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 the gentleness, the humor and the sympathy com- 
 forted him. In her presence he felt, indeed, that 
 the sun of life was a radiant thing and not a mock- 
 ery. He forgot the ghosts of his melancholy; he 
 forgot his wistful desires. 
 
 He did not say in his heart, "I wish you were 
 less beautiful," but he said, "She really is astonish- 
 ingly good looking. Every turn of her, every new 
 inflection, every shade of thought, every move- 
 ment, even the little, trivial, unconsidered move- 
 ments and shades and inflections are songs of 
 beauty. I really do believe she is the most attrac- 
 tive woman I have ever met." 
 
 And then at the road, as he had feared, she 
 stopped. She stopped, and her eyes smiled at him 
 with that half-expressed raillery, that gentle, 
 kindling irony that was part of her captivating in- 
 dividuality. 
 
 "Well, here is a country ready and waiting to 
 your archaeological hand," she said. 
 
 She nodded at him, and for the moment he 
 could only utter an astonished "Oh," a feeble, 
 witless "Oh," before the shock of the fact that she 
 should know something about him. 
 
 And perhaps she enjoyed his surprise. 
 
 "You should make something of it," she said, 
 "unless, of course, your heart is wedded to South 
 America." 
 
 109
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 u Oh," he cried again, and as feebly, "oh, you 
 know about South America?" 
 
 "Why not?" she smiled at him, and her eyes 
 were half-veiled by her long lashes, as she relished 
 his bewilderment. "Why not? If you write 
 articles for the public press you mustn't take it 
 amiss if people occasionally read them." 
 
 And Peter John, looking at her still bound by 
 his astonishment, murmured in his heart: 
 
 "I wish you wrote for the public press, and had 
 your name, and, after the modern fashion, your 
 photograph published by the public press, then I 
 should know who you are, and what your name 
 is, and this pleasant interlude wouldn't be so woe- 
 fully one-sided." 
 
 And aloud he said, "Oh, 'amiss' is not the word; 
 I take it so little amiss that I think it is almost 
 too good to be true. The astonishing thing is 
 to meet a person who has read them." 
 
 "Well, I have read them you have met me." 
 
 "Hampshire, I am beginning to recognize, is 
 the home of miracles as well as history. I hope 
 the articles didn't bore you to extinction." 
 
 "Then, of course, I wouldn't have read them, 
 and my boast would be empty." 
 
 Peter John was beginning to recover from this 
 surprising, this altogether pleasing, shock. But 
 his sense of pique increased. She knew all about 
 
 no
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 him, yet he knew nothing of her save that she was 
 beautiful, a neighbor, and had read his articles in 
 the public press. 
 
 "The subject of the articles gives them some 
 passing interest," he admitted, with a certain se- 
 verity of judgment. 
 
 "And the manner, too," she answered. "Ob- 
 viously, you are in love with South America." 
 
 "I was," he said, with a touch of seriousness. 
 
 "You are now, I think," she said, studying him 
 with her gentle, ironic gravity, and then again 
 with that surprising touch as though she knew 
 what lay in his soul. "But perhaps Hampshire 
 will take its place in your heart." 
 
 "There seems," said Peter, looking at her stead- 
 fastly, "there seems to be fairly definite reasons 
 to think it will." 
 
 But after she had left him, when he was walk- 
 ing back along the road to "Green Ladies," he 
 said to himself, 
 
 "I might almost name a reason if I only knew 
 her name. ..." and presently, "I really must 
 find out all about her."
 
 XIX 
 
 AND with astonishing regularity Peter did 
 not see the girl for four days. 
 It was an astounding, almost an af- 
 fronting, blank. The high glory of the weather 
 continued. Eden's prophetic shower had come 
 and had merely added rapture to the shining per- 
 fection of the emerald and ruby, the topaz and 
 fire-opal and moth er-o' -pearl that made the grass 
 and the flowers of his jeweled corner of the world. 
 
 The sea was never so splendid, and the view of 
 the Islands never so quick as during those four 
 comely and intolerable days. And he felt that 
 all this attractiveness was affected and empty. 
 
 "What is the good of your being a mere back- 
 ground?" he asked of the world. "A background 
 is only surveyor's topography without its figure in 
 the foreground, its transfiguring subject. And 
 you're that You're a song without music and 
 without words. You are lumps of earth and pud- 
 dles of water. Ichabod is written all over you." 
 
 He frowned as he said this. The mere saying 
 of it made him understand that most of the things 
 
 112
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 that latterly he had been pretending to be were 
 polite mockeries. His interest had betrayed his 
 attitude toward life. He had come down to 
 "Green Ladies" to retire apart. He had rented 
 "Green Ladies" because it possessed all that he 
 considered ideal in remoteness. And here he was, 
 fretting himself like a schoolboy, because one girl, 
 slim, graceful and of nereid quality, had not gone 
 with the lease of the house. 
 
 He frowned, and he said, "I'm a sheer ass in 
 my fancies to-day." He made those shrugs and 
 gestures and head noises by which man endeavors 
 to convince himself that nothing out of the ordi- 
 nary has been happening. That he had merely 
 moved through life in his regular, commonplace 
 way . . . but Peter John wasn't to be bluffed by 
 this reason. The blackest part of his frown came 
 from the knowledge that he knew what had been 
 happening to him during the past four days. 
 
 When he examined the conscience of those days 
 he saw the things he had been doing in the sedate, 
 silken ease of their smooth unfolding. And what 
 he saw disturbed him. 
 
 No, he had not run after this girl, this thing 
 slim and fine in the sunlight and of a shadow's 
 grace in the shadow. No, he had not run after 
 her; he was of course only intrigued by her, by 
 her mystery, not attracted, not seriously attracted,
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 for he knew that circumstances forbade his be- 
 ing attracted, but . . . 
 
 Although, studiously, he had altered his bathing 
 time in order not to pry, he had every morning 
 looked eagerly across the wide and superb arc of 
 the gold-dusty sands. He knew he might not see 
 that first morning's vivid scene again, but he had 
 looked and he had hoped to have just the barest 
 glimpse of a swift slim figure moving in a fine, 
 boylike stride towards the sea. 
 
 He had hoped to see, like some classic thing 
 come to life, the blue-clad erectness of her body 
 standing sharp against the gold, and the burning 
 splash of her peignoir upon the gold, and the white 
 flash of the sea as it joyfully and riotously became 
 one with her. 
 
 And not seeing her . . . somehow the soul of 
 the sea and the wind of the sea had had less zest, 
 less vigor. 
 
 And then, since he must walk daily, he had 
 walked, not to meet her. . . . No, certainly not. 
 Why should he? But he had given opportunity 
 its full chance. 
 
 He had walked along the cliff. Hurst Castle, 
 an inconceivably dull home of dullness, a fortress 
 of abbey stone, a mass of anachronism where the 
 cloisters of Beaulieu had been wrought into the 
 ramparts of Henry VIII, but for all that had 
 
 114
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 never fulfilled the peculiar destiny of ramparts, 
 and had done nothing more than, and that quite 
 accidentally, become the prison for a King who 
 had lost his head. Hurst Castle called him east. 
 Northeast the New Forest called. He had gone 
 west. 
 
 Deliberately, every morning, he had paused at 
 the foot of the terrace steps, pretending with the 
 very feeblest pretense that his mind was not made 
 up, pretending to be so thoroughly perplexed by 
 the number of desirable strolls that lay to his 
 choice that he was uncertain which one to take. 
 And he had gone west. 
 
 He had walked briskly and with determination 
 along the cliff path. When he came to that open 
 vista on the little cliff, that particular open vista, 
 his briskness became the languorous indolence of 
 a meander. 
 
 He had, on his second walk out, perceived that 
 there was a window in the thatching of the cottage 
 which was her home; a window with a flower box 
 and dainty curtains and a section of twisted Jaco- 
 bean mirror in it, which did not suggest a cook, 
 or even the housekeeper, whom one dare not af- 
 front, but some one much more individual and 
 tasteful. And this window obviously raked his 
 path. If, by fortunate chance, some one, some- 
 body, should be looking out of that window . . .
 
 well, here was Peter John, well in sight, and will- 
 ing to pass the time of day with any one who could 
 appreciate its beauty. 
 
 But nobody appeared ready to appreciate its 
 beauty. 
 
 "If people neglect weather like this," Peter mut- 
 tered ruefully, "they deserve to live in Newfound- 
 land. How can they expect the sun and the flowers 
 and it all to keep at top pitch without encourage- 
 ment?" 
 
 One day, it must be said, he did show strength 
 of mind. He did not take the cliff path that led 
 by the back of the little thatched cottage. He was 
 very strong. Very determined. He took the 
 metaled road that ran by the front of the little 
 thatched cottage. 
 
 From the front it was the comeliest cottage. Its 
 original and rather inefficient windows had been 
 removed, and broad and generous windows had 
 been substituted. He caught a glimpse of an in- 
 terior of oak and silver and lively and vitalizing 
 chintz covers. 
 
 The front garden had a tiny piece of lawn look- 
 ing like an inlay of green between Oriental wan- 
 tonnesses of flowers. Flowers, all manner and 
 sexes and qualities of flowers, poured up from the 
 borders of the lawn; they spilled and heaped and 
 spirited skywards, in very much the manner of liv- 
 
 116
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 ing fountains of a thousand tints forever at play. 
 They seemed to run up the red, broad steps of the 
 cottage and call with voices of happy color 
 through the door, a massive oak affair, grim with 
 nails, and always open. 
 
 Inside the door there appeared the suggestion 
 of a coolness, like deep water, and the blue drug- 
 get, and the shine of copper. 
 
 But no nereid. 
 
 No hamadryad. 
 
 No enigma. 
 
 Not even Mrs. MacStinger. 
 
 Nothing. 
 
 Goaded by this insufferable feminine reticence, 
 Peter John did a thing that it was not his nature 
 to do. He would not have done it had not Provi- 
 dence placed a hedger at that precise spot for ask- 
 ing questions. Peter asked the hedger a question. 
 He asked who lived in the house. 
 
 Without looking up, the hedger said, "Mrs. 
 Patricot." He said "Mrs. Patricot" twice, for he 
 Had learnt that people did not always catch it the 
 first time, and he went on hedging. 
 
 Peter did not know that he was not Hampshire, 
 that he had come from some grim land north of 
 Basingstoke, and was therefore not human and 
 affable and friendly, and given to conversation. 
 If that hedger had been Hampshire Peter would 
 
 117
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 have learnt much about this Mrs. Patricot and her 
 peculiar charm. 
 
 But as it was, he learnt no more than her name, 
 and that mattered very little. 
 
 "She is living with somebody," his mind told 
 him, and of course he meant the girl of the cliff, 
 and not Mrs. Patricot. "She is staying with this 
 Mrs. Patricot." 
 
 Was he jumping at conclusions? Was he being 
 stupid in ignoring the fact that even a nereid 
 might be called Patricot for the purpose of hu- 
 man intercourse, and Mrs. into the bargain? He 
 felt certain he was not being stupid. His intui- 
 tion, his years of training in the world, had taught 
 him that young women who carried themselves 
 with just that something in their poise were not 
 at all married. His very reason told him she was 
 not married. 
 
 Also, he had noticed that she had no wedding 
 ring. 
 
 "She is living with Mrs. Patricot," he deter- 
 mined. "And the fact that she is living with Mrs. 
 Patricot does not help me in the least."
 
 XX 
 
 THAT evening, it was the evening of the 
 fourth day, he made up his mind to try 
 a fall with Eden. He would confront 
 that charming and Buddha-like fellow with Mrs. 
 Patricot, and by surprise assault tear from him 
 the secret of the cottage and the girl who lived 
 in the cottage. 
 
 But it was on that evening that he frowned, and 
 remembered all that had happened in the four 
 days, and the folly of that that had happened. 
 
 He had come to "Green Ladies" not because a 
 girl was proximate, but to escape the proximity 
 of girlhood. Girlhood was not for him. The 
 ordinary life of men and women was not for him. 
 He had come here to escape from life ; to be alone ; 
 to cumber the earth as little as possible ; to com- 
 plicate the lives of others including hamadryads 
 as little as possible. He had come here to bury 
 himself. It was really foolish in the circumstances 
 to allow the first girl he had seen in his predestined 
 graveyard to disinter him. 
 
 He was, he felt, in danger of thinking too much 
 119
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 of this girl. If he was not careful he would think 
 more than enough of this girl. This would be 
 criminal for him, and a crime against the girl. 
 He decided that all this must end. 
 
 "It's absurd. To-morrow I will go to town 
 and fetch my books and all the grimnesses of life. 
 You've thwacked your bladder of indolence and 
 folly among the butterflies far too long, Peter 
 Fool." 
 
 When Eden came out to the terrace with the 
 coffee, instead of asking about Mrs. Patricot and 
 the water maiden (or sylvan spirit) she kept im- 
 mured in her cottage, he asked the bland old man 
 if it was true what his medal-ribbon said (he had 
 seen it on a Sunday waistcoat) , that is, that he 
 had fought in Burma, and if it was true, what had 
 the fighting been like ? 
 
 And from what he could gather from Eden who 
 looked with serene and smiling eyes at the past, 
 fighting in Burma had been like a sunset. 
 
 It has been like a big smoldering sunset, seen 
 massively through forest mists through the 
 mists, of blue and pearl that rose like Homeric 
 steam from the great caldrons that made the val- 
 leys between the immense hills. Sunsets that shone 
 in marvelous set colors like enamel; great washes 
 of vermilion and gold and green; hard celestial 
 sunsets that looked like a heaven afire. Sunsets. 
 
 120
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 . . . The Burma war had been sunsets to Eden 
 . . . that was like him. Eden wouldn't notice 
 a battle for the glory in the sky. 
 
 Next morning Peter said very severely that he 
 would go up to London for his books and grim- 
 meries. Outside it was a positive temptation in 
 green and gold, and he had to be stern over his 
 breakfast. . . . Then he thought, 
 
 "But I'd better write to those caretaker people." 
 
 And he wrote to those caretaker people, and 
 felt that it would be unwise to disturb them before 
 they got his letter. He was still being strong. But 
 he was being wise also. He could feel he was 
 being wise. 
 
 He walked. He walked firmly towards the 
 station. He tried to convince himself that his re- 
 turn journey would not bring him near the house 
 of Patricot. . . . 
 
 And his return journey did. But on the way he 
 met the girl again. 
 
 She came by rather swiftly, and she was driving 
 the car that carried her. He had an impression 
 of a blue-clad and resilient figure at the wheel, and 
 of a face of alert calmness above the wheel and of 
 a general pose suggesting the active beauty of the 
 winged victory. 
 
 She saw him, and she nodded, and she was by. 
 
 He noted that a small bright woman, who 
 121
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 looked as though she were a singularly capable 
 grandmother who had strayed into a golfing cos- 
 tume, and then mounted the front seat of a car 
 under the impression that it was the family ba- 
 rouche, but was not intimidated by the mistake, 
 was beside her. Behind was the bereft figure of 
 a chauffeur and a trunk. 
 
 He stared at the trunk. He scowled at the 
 trunk. Was it hers? Was it Mrs. Patricot's? 
 Was that Mrs. Patricot? 
 
 And if it was their box, that meant . . . ? 
 
 It was their box. The cottage proved it. The 
 oak door was shut when he passed. The windows 
 were being shut. The housekeeper, who was 
 Hampshire, was rapidly barring out the benevo- 
 lent air, now that her "ladies," who forced her 
 to submit to the air in excess, were off and away. 
 
 Peter John walked sullenly home. He told him- 
 self time and time again, 
 
 "You didn't take 'Green Ladies' just because 
 that chit of a girl was about. You're being a 
 fool. You are letting your interest in this human 
 creature get the better of you." 
 
 He was, naturally, merely interested in the girl. 
 Merely intrigued. Nothing more. He was cer- 
 tain of that. He would have been extremely an- 
 noyed if he had found himself to be otherwise. 
 
 At the door of his house he hesitated. He saw 
 122
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Eden passing in the distance. Should he speak to 
 Eden? He decided not. He turned back and 
 walked to the motor house. 
 
 In the garage was a thin and delicate young 
 man, a man so thin and delicate as to be fine. He 
 had deep brown leggings and deep brown 
 breeches, and a brown waistcoat and a brown face. 
 His brownness and his thinness made him look 
 like something spindly in Chippendale. His head 
 looked like something decorative the Chippendale 
 maker had turned neatly to finish off the design. 
 
 "Do you know a big Vauxhall?" Peter asked 
 this young man. "A stream-line Vauxhall, in 
 olive-green finish." 
 
 "I know it quite well," said the young man, and 
 then he said "sir." 
 
 "Indeed, whose is it?" 
 
 "A reactionary's," said the young man, not 
 angrily, but with a good-natured superiority of 
 one who could look down on reactionaries from 
 the heaven of the I. L. P. "Talks of Empire and 
 trip like that. Read The Daily Telegraph. Speak 
 to him of Guild Socialism and he's lost. Doesn't 
 know whether you're asking riddles or not." 
 
 "Sometimes, of course, one is," admitted Peter 
 pleasantly. 
 
 "But then it don't matter very much," went on 
 123
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 the chauffeur. "I suppose the people for whom he 
 drives are crusted Tories." 
 
 "Most Tories who survive are heavily crusted, 
 Veats," said Peter. "That is how they survive. 
 And what may their name be under their crust ?"i 
 
 "Oh, people called Waymsley, I understand," 
 said Veats. "One person, to be precise." Veats 
 thought a little and said, "sir ... a widow, I be- 
 lieve. Lives over towards Milton way." 
 
 Peter stood and thought. He should not have 
 ignored this Mrs. Waymsley. He should have 
 accepted Eden's suggestion and called on this 
 Waymsley. It was Mrs. Waymsley's car, there- 
 fore the Patricot regime was going to that lady's 
 place. He should have been a friend of the 
 widow. He should have made a place for him- 
 self there, ready to meet her. Still, it was a neg- 
 lect that could be rectified. 
 
 Turning away, he asked: 
 
 "How are you getting along, Veats?" 
 
 "Very passably sir. The country is really at- 
 tractive. I like this country. The people are 
 kindly, though they have no conversation. The 
 landed interests and squireachy kill conversation, 
 in my opinion, sir." 
 
 "And Eden and Mrs. Eden, you hit it off with 
 them?" 
 
 "Very passably, indeed sir. Dear old things, 
 124
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 tho' Mr. Eden is very weak on international poli- 
 tics." 
 
 "No complaints, then?" 
 
 "None sir, though it's quite impossible to get 
 The News Statesman. Under any circumstances." 
 
 Peter John paused without words. Could he 
 say any words to meet a situation so momentous? 
 He did not say them, for Veats was modern; he 
 had already met the situation. He said, 
 
 "I've subscribed direct to the office." 
 
 In the house Peter met Eden. 
 
 "What is the name of a little lady who looks 
 old enough to be a grandmother and young enough 
 to know better. She wears a tweed frock, a Hom- 
 burg hat with a feather, and it suits her, feather 
 and all. And she . . ." 
 
 "Mrs. Waymsley, sir," said Eden, surprisingly. 
 Not Mrs. Patricot, but Mrs. Waymsley. Peter 
 was so taken aback, that Eden had time to say 
 again, "Mrs. WaymsFey, sir. She is a grand- 
 mother. She was married very young." 
 
 "I shall certainly go and see Mrs. Waymsley," 
 thought Peter. "But Mrs. Patricot, where is she? 
 Perhaps she went away early, by train, and Mrs. 
 Waymsley was taking . . ." but he remembered 
 that the car was traveling in the direction of the 
 railway, and there was a trunk. 
 
 125
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Is there a morning train about 12:30?" he 
 asked, mentally timing the car. 
 
 "The London train is at 1 1 124," said Eden. 
 
 "She was going to London," he reflected. 
 "Mrs. Waymsley with the reactionary were driv- 
 ing her to the London train. And Mrs. Patricot 
 perhaps she went to London earlier, or yester- 
 day . . . but Mrs. Patricot is too difficult; I wash 
 my hands of Mrs. Patricot." 
 
 "Everybody is going to London, Eden," he 
 said; "so why shouldn't I?" 
 
 Eden stared at him with again that look which 
 was half reticence, half anxiety, but Peter misread 
 it. 
 
 "But I am coming back again, for good," he 
 went on. "I am going to bring back my books 
 and all my grimmest things, and there will be no 
 more silken dalliance." 
 
 And he said to himself, 
 
 "This time I mean it.'*
 
 XXI 
 
 THE study was a delectable room for 
 work. Its serenity, its air, its light, its 
 urbane unconcern with t distractions 
 truly the one perfect room for good-tempered, 
 smooth, powerful application. 
 
 Peter, having spent as much time over his Jaco- 
 bean breakfast as his conscience allowed, walked 
 to this room in which he was to perform miracles 
 of application. He stood inside the door and 
 stared at its consummate attraction. He examined 
 it in all its detail. He said: 
 
 "The jolliest of work-rooms. One should ac- 
 complish immensities in it. It is the quintessence 
 of all one dreams of for labor. A perfect room. 
 It provokes. It entices one to begin." 
 
 He went past all the work that was enticing 
 him to begin; went by it with no great pang of 
 attraction. He went to the window, sat down in 
 a chair, and stared at the New Forest. 
 
 Arranged on the desk, and in the shelves about 
 the room, were all the books he had been specially 
 to London to get. They were books he loved, 
 
 127
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 books that seemed to him to bear the seeds of great 
 ideas. He had only to plunge into them to be 
 pricked awake; only to taste of their pages to 
 start his brain on the trails of a thousand absorp- 
 tions and speculations. 
 
 He had only to open the fascinating yet not al- 
 together credible fantasy of Ixtlilxochitl's not 
 now in this dead age could a man be born with a 
 name so worthy as that Historia Chichimica, or 
 dip into the manuscripts which had tucked them- 
 selves away in a moldering monastic library for 
 hundreds of years after the monk, Bernardino de 
 Sahagun, had written them, before they were 
 found to the astonishment and admiration of the 
 world; he had only to scratch at the fine imagina- 
 tive soil of Lopez Cogolludo's Historia de Yuca~ 
 than, a book so rare that he ought not to have a 
 copy (yet he had a copy), to find himself off on 
 the scent of rare half-forgotten, half-discovered 
 things once more. 
 
 Just one fillip to an appetite jaded by the massy 
 events of war, and civilization, and the renting 
 of "Green Ladies," and a dalliance after a slim 
 figure, and he'd be back again, not on the old trail, 
 the trail that led over hot and stinging tropics and 
 stretches, or through the steamy half nights of the 
 tropic bush, that, alas, was forbidden, that was his 
 tragedy, but back on the glowing, lambent trail 
 
 128
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 which he could clear with his pen, and by which 
 he could trace and expose clearly for the world the 
 details of the long-vanished splendors. With his 
 pen he could set down the dead dramas of races 
 gone, in a way to stir a living world. He had only 
 to turn to that gorgeous pageant of books. . . . 
 
 And he sat and stared at the wavering gold- 
 green of the New Forest. 
 
 They were all there, arranged and eager for 
 him. Books that carried forgotten history in a 
 triumphal march of color and of trumpets. Books 
 that rang with the brazen calls of circumstance and 
 pomp. The Antiguedades Peruanas of Don Mar- 
 iano Rivero; the Relation de los Costombras 
 Antiguas de los Naturales del Peru; the steady, 
 careful writings of the old Jesuits, the old Au- 
 gustinians and the other clerics who civilized and 
 converted a new world with the labor of their 
 hearts, and wrote down the glittering details of 
 its life even as they labored. 
 
 There on the attractive, green-topped desk was 
 the work of love of Juan Jose Betanzos Juan 
 Jose Betanzos, a name to roll on the tongue, and 
 he had married an Inca princess and he had 
 penned an account of her gentle race out of the 
 glowing of his heart. There were the books of 
 all the pundits, Spanish, French, and German, the 
 perfect English books of Clements, Markham, 
 
 129
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 and the Hakluyt translations of which the Eng- 
 lish knew so little. 
 
 And there, in a score of fat, oblong notebooks, 
 with edges slightly eaten away by tropic bug, were 
 his own contributions to the brave mass of color- 
 ful, antique knowledge ; his own gleanings, his own 
 annotations to this panorama of history, his own 
 probings after truth, won in adventure and toil, 
 won in spite of fever and the knife edge threat 
 of death. 
 
 All the worthy things that a man might do were 
 there, waiting for but the dip of a pen in ink. And 
 Peter John made no movement towards ink. He 
 sat smoking a cigarette that tasted flat and un- 
 friendly, and he stared at the distant jeering leaves 
 of the New Forest. 
 
 He had but to shift in his seat to see about him 
 mementos of a score of brave marches, tangible 
 reminders that would take him back to days of 
 bold, dogged endeavor under a scorching sun or 
 amid the fever-thrilled mists of the forest ruins. 
 
 On brackets on the walls were mirrors of pol- 
 ished stone, into which the long-gone beauty of the 
 dead had gazed, and seen herself fair and con- 
 querant. There, near the mirrors, were the ham- 
 mered jewels which had decked beauty, ear-rings, 
 necklets, bosses, shining now with the star mem- 
 ory of fine yet forever faded eyes. These were 
 
 130
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 from the high lands of old Peru, from the land 
 of the old, the vanished Chibchas. 
 
 On one shelf was pottery from the Inca hills, 
 red and black and gray, painted and terra cotta ; 
 and there were eerie yet exquisite statuettes of 
 mercury and gold, fused in furnaces that were no 
 longer known to the art of men. On one wall was 
 a section of decorated stone from the huge and 
 lovely nunnery of Chichen-Itza, that marvelous 
 memoried place of Yucatan. There was a plaster 
 cast of the wall-sculpture from that stupendous 
 foot-note to history, Mitla. On those brackets 
 were the red, yellow, and blue glaze statuettes of 
 Zapotec, Mexico, and lording it like an arch-mon- 
 ster was a replica, horrible yet wonderful, of the 
 ritual mask of Tezcatlipoca from above those 
 false jeweled cheeks, through those terrible bossy 
 eyes, the butcher priest looked down as his arm 
 went out to slay with a knife of stone his cring- 
 ing victim. 
 
 Peter, indeed, did look round, did note every- 
 thing, did note all the books in place, and the sheaf 
 of pens and the virgin blotting paper. He looked 
 about the serene and provocative room and dug 
 himself deeper into his easy chair. 
 
 "Everything is ready," he agreed. "Every- 
 thing is attractive, and this room was simply cre- 
 ated for work. And I'm not going to work."
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 With incurious fingers he lifted and drew 
 through his hands some knotted pieces of finely 
 cut hide. The strings of hide were colored, and 
 the knots in them had been put in irregularly, and 
 for a reason. Peter John drew the quipos, this 
 letter of long ago, this written message of the 
 Incas, through his fingers. 
 
 "What do you say, what is your message?" he 
 wondered. "Are you a letter from a javelin man 
 to a queen rare in her feather robe of emerald? 
 Are you a call to arms, or a bill for ocean fish? 
 Are you a note from a philosopher telling a fool 
 not to be a fool, but to realize life is life and has to 
 be lived, and that all vain repinings are simply 
 waste of good tissue? Or are you merely an in- 
 dent for labor used in the piling up of local 
 huacas?" 
 
 As he drew the knotted, untranslatable message 
 through his fingers, he saw again the journey that 
 had given it, and many other things of its kind, 
 to him. Looking out at the fresh and innocent 
 green of the New Forest, he saw again the steamy 
 levels of the tropic woods. 
 
 They had made a long scorching march up the 
 sun-bitter hill paths with the smelly llamas of the 
 baggage train grunting under the burdens of their 
 small packages. They had, in time, marched 
 down from the hills and come to the bush 
 
 132
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 where the llama could not go, and had gone on, 
 carrying what they could themselves; and what 
 the porters left the natives took. They had gone 
 through the deep hush of the rarely trodden 
 woods, through places where even the brazen sun 
 could not strike, where there was no undergrowth, 
 only vile fungus that stunk vilely if it were 
 wounded, and where dying trunks afar gleamed 
 eerily with phosphorescent rot. 
 
 He recalled it all with a vividness which seemed 
 to fill the small room with the thick wet heat; the 
 foggy airs, the dead odors of that tenebrous jour- 
 ney. He could see even now the single file, the 
 sweating men, morose, superstitious, firmly con- 
 vinced that they would never get back from this 
 journey alive. They had been entirely willing to 
 fling down their loads and to risk the demons they 
 knew crouched in every bush shadow, if they could 
 only break back on to the return trail that led to 
 inhabited Peru. And he had walked behind that 
 file with his Winchester in the crook of his arm. 
 When a man turned he had always met the fellow's 
 eye. 
 
 What a nightmare of stumbling and sweating 
 and pain it had been. One of the peons had fallen 
 into a poison vine, and had cried to heaven that 
 he was burning in hell because of a girl he had 
 wronged back in human land, near Corongo. Tay- 
 
 133
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 leur, who had been with Peter that trip, had set- 
 tled the fellow. He gave him an overdose of 
 something accidentally, and while they waited for 
 the brute to die, he miraculously recovered. They 
 had not only cured him, but had won reputations 
 as miracle workers. 
 
 They found their place in the end a small ruin, 
 matted and obscene with vines and rank growing 
 things. They had found a small shrine to the 
 Sun, but they had found a thing that was even 
 more interesting. The Sun shrine had been used 
 by a missionary many years after its sacrificial 
 altar to the Sun had vanished, and while this spot 
 was still the center of a community. Sun shrine 
 and Christ's altar remained, but nothing remained 
 of that community. The tidal sea of vines and 
 growing things had swept over it, and all signs 
 of man had vanished. 
 
 Only the remnants of a little chapel, set in the 
 heart of the ancient shrine, remained. This ut- 
 terly unknown missionary had built himself a small 
 altar, and his own altar-stone was still upon it. 
 And there was a statue or two of saints, still 
 reasonably intact. On clearing away the bush 
 they found the site of his tiny humble adobe pres- 
 bytery, his cooking vessels of iron and pottery, 
 a crucifix, a section of what had been a large con- 
 
 134
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 ventual rosary, and deeper in the earth a bent 
 silver chalice. 
 
 Amid the rubbish there had been an iron box, 
 and some papers were inside. The iron had kept 
 them intact from insects, but the all-pervading 
 damp had found its way in and a long and per- 
 haps carefully written diary of the lonely and 
 isolated soul who, for his soul's ideal, had buried 
 himself away from all his fellows, was matted and 
 crumbled. Only here and there the stilted letter- 
 ing of a Spanish" word in pallid, fading ink re- 
 mained of his message. There was the pulp of 
 what had been a breviary. 
 
 That was all they found of this man's life's de- 
 votion. There was nothing more. But as they 
 worked in that forest place, they felt that the monk 
 watched them quietly, for his spirit was very real 
 in that place. 
 
 Peter John, with the gaudy colored quipos in 
 his hand, looked out across the serene lands to- 
 wards the New Forest, and he saw again the 
 places he must see no more. He saw the white 
 hot sun and the mauve gloom of the deep forest, 
 and the hanging vines starred with the faint shine 
 of tropic flowers. He saw the hot stone walls of 
 ancient places and the men who worked in them 
 with marvelous patience, glad only if months of 
 
 135
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 careful labor brought them no more than a hint 
 of new knowledge of the olden world. 
 
 He saw it all. He put the knotted message 
 down; he stood up and surveyed the array of 
 books. 
 
 "You're only ghosts, my friends," he said. 
 "You're not real. You're but memories bitter 
 sweet. You're only incentives to the contempla- 
 tion of the damnably impossible." 
 
 He walked to the table, saw his virgin blotting 
 pad, and the rakish parallelogram of writing 
 paper upon it, and the sheaf of pens. 
 
 "Write a book," he scoffed. "As if there were 
 not too many books already. As if writing a book 
 will help a fellow who wants the moon. Only, 
 confound it, the moon I want is the sun, the sun 
 that ancient men adored, the golden sun that glows 
 unwinking on the waters of high Titicaca." 
 
 He picked up the rakish parallelogram of writ- 
 ing paper and shoved it into a drawer. 
 
 "Something has come between me and reality," 
 he said. "Something has come between me and 
 my sunlight." 
 
 He did not even glance again at the room abso- 
 lutely made for work. He walked out of it and 
 out of the house, on to the terrace, into the sun- 
 light. 
 
 136
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 On the terrace he stood a moment. 
 
 "Well, I ought to make myself known to Mrs. 
 Waymsley," he muttered. Immediately he felt 
 less melancholy than he had been since breakfast.
 
 XXII 
 
 MAN proposes and man's chauffeur dis- 
 poses," reflected Peter John, as he 
 sat back in that singular attitude of 
 aloofness, of not being there at all, proper to those 
 occasions when one's chauffeur speaks his mind 
 to another chauffeur. 
 
 Veats was speaking his mind to no less than 
 the Reactionary. He was convicting that mute 
 inglorious Conservative of being responsible for 
 an accident that was nobody's fault. 
 
 That was how destiny was stage-managing hu- 
 man intentions. 
 
 Peter John had made fairly definite plans. He 
 had decided loosely that he would run over to 
 Mrs. Waymsley's house in the course of the after- 
 noon, somewhere about tea time, and not before. 
 Having decided that, here he was running into 
 Mrs. Waymsley's automobile at a little before 
 lunch. 
 
 It had been the type of accident that has a per- 
 fect right to happen on a road that is narrow and 
 prone to cones. It was not truly an accident, but 
 
 138
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 an Act of Hampshire where the roads are like 
 that. Everybody had behaved in the best possible 
 manner; both sides had been well within the legal 
 code; only the laws of destiny cannot be circum- 
 vented by the blowing of horns or driving slow 
 round curves. 
 
 Horns had been blown, driving had been slow, 
 yet for all that there had come a gentle, grinding 
 concussion and the mudguard of the olive-green 
 Reactionary was crumpled in a ridiculous manner. 
 And Veats began to say in very terse, cool accents, 
 for all the world as if he were a vocal edition of 
 one of Arnold Bennett's handbooks on the way to 
 get the better of this world, that inefficiency in- 
 variably led to the evil end of mudguards, and 
 that if people only kept their brains screwed up 
 and eschewed loose thinking and loose driving, 
 there would be fewer accident claims to pay, and 
 the world would be a safer place for olive-green 
 cars to live in. 
 
 Veats had an unfair advantage ; he could be dev- 
 astating to a chauffeur without bringing a blush 
 to the cheek of a passenger. Reaction on his driv- 
 ing seat had no chance. His peculiar medieval 
 eloquence was of a powerful kind, but the presence 
 of owners forbade him loosing it. He spluttered. 
 He tried to do something with the few pallid and 
 inoffensive words that made up the rest of his vo- 
 
 139
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 cabulary, but the effect was feeble. If he began a 
 sentence he had to stop speaking just about the 
 time it became interesting, because the words he 
 wished to employ were not at all the words of 
 Arnold Bennett, or the words that a Tory, crusted 
 though he or she might be, might hear anyhow, 
 not outside the pages of Compton Mackenzie. 
 
 The brisk, vivid little woman, who was young 
 in everything but her age, got out of the olive- 
 green car. She smiled up at Peter, who had joined 
 her in the road, and she looked at Veats with the 
 thrilled gaze of a savant examining a new species 
 of beetle. 
 
 "I've never seen one like that before," she said 
 to Peter. 
 
 "He's only unusual to-day; to-morrow there'll 
 be a lot of him," Peter John told her. "He's an 
 advance copy of a new race of chauffeurs." 
 
 "Perhaps that makes him seem a little in- 
 human," said the brisk grandmother. "Do you 
 mind walking a little way away? My chauffeur 
 wants to swear, and I think he ought to do it. My 
 name is Waymsley." 
 
 Peter John mentioned his own name. 
 
 "Yes, I know. You're at 'Green Ladies.' 
 Don't you love it? Only don't tell me now. I'm 
 coming to see you one of these days and then you 
 can do it with space and formality." 
 
 140
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "It's the one thoroughly beautiful, charming 
 and perfect place," said Peter in his own smiling 
 manner. "Only I won't tell you that now. It's 
 much better for you not to have the slightest idea, 
 and then for me to spring it on you. ... I was 
 going to spring it on you this afternoon. I was 
 coming to tea at 'Milton Little.' " 
 
 "You were coming? But you are, if you've 
 made your plan. Of course I expect you to tea. 
 How nice of you. You mustn't let a motor acci- 
 dent interfere with tea. And, by the way . . ." 
 She turned back briskly towards the cars. "I 
 think Bald's had ample time for his swear." 
 
 Bald, it was obvious, had sworn to capacity. 
 The contest of vocabularies was ended. Both 
 chauffeurs were standing by the olive-green car, 
 and were in that condition of satisfied misery that 
 only chauffeurs enjoy when they know a car is 
 damaged and an owner will have to walk. 
 
 Both men stood looking down at the car, hands 
 on hips, as though they were mesmerizing the 
 brute before attempting to heal it. When the lit- 
 tle lady and Peter John drew up to them, they 
 stood aside respectfully, like mutes permitting the 
 chief mourners to take one last look at the body. 
 Mrs. Waymsley said at once: 
 
 "And why won't I be able to ride home in it?" 
 141
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 It appeared she knew chauffeurs in all their atti- 
 tudes. 
 
 Veats, too full of modernity to be really helpful, 
 raced off on a technical explanation, which sounded 
 alarmingly like anatomy, but Bald, immaculate 
 from learning, muttered: 
 
 "Haxile." He looked defiantly at his mistress 
 and Peter John, and he muttered again. 
 
 "Haxile." 
 
 After a minute he also offered: 
 
 "Twisted." 
 
 Without waiting for reply he turned, walked 
 over to the bowels of the car, and began throwing 
 things out behind him on to the road. Only chick- 
 ens and chauffeurs have this divine gift of flicking 
 things behind them without turning round. 
 
 They stood looking at his back. And presently, 
 amid the rain of spanners and inner tubes, his 
 voice also came flicking to them: 
 
 "Take a nour and narf," said the voice. "At 
 least. . . ." 
 
 Mrs. Waymsley glanced at the back, glanced 
 at Peter's car, and glanced at Peter. Her bright 
 eyes shone in merriment. 
 
 "Come to lunch with me as well," she said, and 
 she took a step towards Peter's car. Peter 
 laughed. He liked this grandmother who was 
 younger than she ought to be. He liked her crisp- 
 
 142
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 ness and decision. He opened the door of his car 
 for her. 
 
 "You can telephone to Eve Eden," said Mrs. 
 Waymsley. 
 
 "I'll telephone," said Peter, and he got in be- 
 side her. "Does everybody in Hampshire know 
 and understand Eve Eden?" he wondered. "And 
 does every one use the telephone? And does 
 every one do things with this astonishing snap 
 and decision? One woman let me her house by 
 telephone, another commandeers my car by magic. 
 I thought the country was going to be restful, and 
 it's brisk and bewildering. Have I stepped from 
 the Arcady of London into the feverish life of the 
 meadows? I'm beginning to suspect that the tak- 
 ing of 'Green Ladies' is going to be an adventure, 
 not a retreat."
 
 XXIII 
 
 MILTON LITTLE" was a deep, cool, 
 reposeful house. Steep, dark trees 
 stood over it, guarding it, but they 
 stepped aside, and Peter had the feeling they did 
 it every fine morning, so that its face could for- 
 ever feel the sun. 
 
 It was a low, comely house of the kind the 
 Americans name Colonial, and all people call 
 charming. 
 
 Peter went to lunch and stayed to tea. 
 
 "No, don't go," Mrs. Waymsley had cried in 
 her brisk manner, "that'll interrupt conversa- 
 tion." So he stayed on in an aurora borealis of 
 chatter, in which the shining figments of talk were 
 spun glowing in all colors from the very air. 
 
 The vivid old lady had immoral support in her 
 passion for chatter from two grandchildren. 
 Grandchildren, she explained, usually encumbered 
 "Milton Little." Parents sent them there to keep 
 them young. 
 
 There were two, and the one who needed a 
 dose of youth the more, was a middle-aged man 
 
 144
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 of twenty-two who would be a nice boy presently, 
 when he grew down a bit, and had overcome the 
 handicap of a university career. 
 
 He was still in the stage that wonders whether, 
 after all, there is any life after Oxford. Tristram 
 Waymsley had been to war, but he had not noticed 
 it much, it had been rather less of war than a 
 fourth year at a university. 
 
 He was, in his way, like a brother in mind to 
 Eden, Peter reflected. If battles in Burma had 
 been to Eden merely sunsets, war in France had 
 been to Tristram merely rendezvous. 
 
 Battlefields to this young man, who sat about 
 with much of the abandoned grace of an unfolded 
 newspaper (the floppy sort, decided Peter, that 
 clubmen throw down in smoking-room chairs), 
 were merely places where one met one's friends. 
 He was under the impression that all England had 
 gone to war to meet his friends. 
 
 He asked Peter, not if he had come across any 
 Turks or Germans in the Dardanelles, but if he 
 had come across Wrensley-Puke, of the Cornish 
 Wrensley-Pukes, or Frank Lang of Balliol, or 
 Billie Pratte. 
 
 "Most of my service in the Dardanelles was 
 malaria," Peter had answered, wincing at "ma- 
 laria." "I met few interesting human beings, ally 
 or enemy." 
 
 145
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 The fatigued young man thought that malaria 
 had been the hardest luck, but no doubt Palestine 
 had given Peter some comforting moments. Had 
 Peter seen anything of Goffin-Smith or Herbert 
 Daghis. Tristram seemed certain that they must 
 have occupied a considerable tract of the Holy 
 Land, and could scarcely be overlooked. 
 
 "If they weren't in hospital, I fear I didn't 
 meet them," said Peter. "My service in Palestine 
 was extensively hospital. Malaria again." And 
 then because he did not want to talk for the 
 most melancholy of reasons on a subject mainly 
 malarious, the conversation faded. 
 
 Conversation with this infinitely aged child had 
 a fading quality. Peter might have kept it brisk 
 and anecdotal by mentioning the French battle- 
 fields of 1918, where he had been, and which must 
 have been studded with Wrensley-Pukes and 
 Langs of Balliol. But France, too, was embit- 
 tered by malaria, and he evaded it. 
 
 And besides he did not desire to talk at all of 
 battles and friends or malaria. Certainly the least 
 said about battlefields and the more of other things 
 the better. He was willing to talk about anything, 
 but most willing to talk about Hampshire, about 
 "Green Ladies" if they liked, and rather particu- 
 larly about the neighbors of "Green Ladies." 
 
 He thought they should feel it their business 
 146
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 to talk to him about the neighbors of "Green 
 Ladies." After all, it is the duty to which the 
 Bible gives unqualified support, for man to know 
 his neighbors, and to be on the best terms with 
 them. He craved to know his neighbors, or any- 
 how, as a beginning, one of his neighbors. 
 
 There was the neighbor, a little to the west in 
 the first house to the west of him in that cottage 
 was surely a neighbor he ought to know, and who 
 they should make known to him. And if they 
 were not inclined to do their duty in this respect, 
 he was going to prompt them. 
 
 He would have to do it gently, delicately, for 
 after all he could not be gauche; he could not rush 
 things, he dare not show an excessive interest in 
 a girl whose name he did not know. 
 
 And then and then, slowly, delicately, circum- 
 spectly, as he went, wasn't there something bar- 
 ring his way? Wasn't there something elusive 
 in the serene charm of this friendliness of grand- 
 mothers and grandchildren? Was he making a 
 mistake or was there really behind the bright 
 meals and the chatter something deliberately with- 
 held, something of the air of reticence that seemed 
 to be filling the part of the hemisphere called 
 Hampshire? 
 
 He made his small allusive advances. He 
 talked of Veats and Veats' opinion of the Reac- 
 
 147
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 tionary who was master of the olive-green Vaux- 
 hall. He talked of this solely and simply because 
 thus having referred to an encounter with Mrs. 
 Waymsley and an obvious trunk, Mrs. Waymsley 
 might have occasion to explain that obvious trunk 
 and its obvious owner. 
 
 But Mrs. Waymsley did not explain. Not the 
 car, not the trunk, not the girl in the car engaged 
 her attention. The modernity of Veats alone 
 seemed to captivate her. Veats became the nozzle 
 for a fountain of bright comment. It was very 
 charming and thoroughly baffling. 
 
 And when he talked of the cliffs and his walks 
 along the cliffs the sparkling grandmother talked 
 of cliffs, too. She fastened on to cliffs, with, what 
 Peter thought, an abnormal tenacity. A cliff, 
 Peter had thought up to this, was a meek thing to 
 talk about. The cliff as a topic has strict limi- 
 tations, but Mrs. Waymsley centered on cliffs. 
 Merely cliffs, not the houses on the little crum- 
 bling cliff, or the inmates of the houses, but cliffs 
 solus, their attributes and their beauties and their 
 histories. 
 
 She said and did she or did she not do it with 
 diplomacy aforethought? too much concerning 
 cliffs and too little concerning the dwellers on cliffs. 
 
 It was no doubt entertaining, and perhaps im- 
 portant that he should know that the cliff, if one 
 
 148
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 could call it a cliff, over to the east by the Beaulieu 
 river, had not always been a cliff. In its dim youth 
 it had gone on being just land. It had gone on 
 across the Solent (only there had been no Solent 
 then) to the Isle of Wight. And it had formed, 
 at least that was the impression he gathered, a 
 sort of tremendous via sacra passing from the 
 Island to Stonehenge. Along that road, when the 
 Sun was near its time for sacrifices, barbarians 
 poured northward to gather in the far stone circle 
 on Salisbury Plain. 
 
 It was engaging and thrilling; yes, the way this 
 vivid, vigorous grandmother told of it made it 
 thrilling, but wasn't it perhaps something more 
 than thrilling? Mightn't this hypothetical road 
 be merely so much dust flung into the face of his 
 curiosity? 
 
 He wondered. So often, it seemed to him, the 
 conversation twisted away from the things he 
 desired to explore, turned aside into the placid 
 deeps of general chatter where there were no 
 thrills of revelation, and neighbors did not figure. 
 
 And Peter half suspected that the bright little 
 grandmother was the twister. It was hard to say. 
 She had the divine gift of skating off at angles, and 
 that might equally be uninspired irrelevancy or 
 calculated cleverness. 
 
 He could not decide if it were one or the other. 
 149
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 But he could decide that he was learning nothing 
 of what he wanted to learn. It was either one of 
 those incalculable days when all things seem 
 against one and by which one's will is apparently 
 baffled, or, indeed by the high gods, or there was 
 in fact a diplomatic reticence in the people about 
 him. 
 
 And as he wondered if this were so, quite unex- 
 pectedly, quite dazzlingly, the conversation went 
 galloping along a road he had not dreamed of 
 taking, and his mind was out and away from the 
 old problem and chasing a new. 
 
 They had all been talking about his landlords, 
 the de Pierres, but landlords do not naturally thrill 
 one. Peter had heard that the de Pierres had 
 lived honorable but inconspicuous lives, and that 
 now the de Pierres were ending. 
 
 It came out suddenly, abruptly, that Phillippa 
 was the last of her kind. And then, even more 
 abruptly and more astonishing, Gabrielle's litany 
 of Phillippa had broken and burst over the 
 luncheon table. 
 
 Gabrielle was the other encumbering grand- 
 child; she was a bubbler in conversation. She 
 either ran dry or ran to ecstasy. And over Phil- 
 lippa she ran to ecstasy. She cried with a sudden, 
 an amazing, a petrifying fervor, 
 
 "Oh, but Phillippa is the most perfect thing! 
 150
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 She's so beautiful I want to weep for my snub nose 
 every time I look at her. And such an exquisite 
 skin. But, Mr. John, you do agree with me, don't 
 you?" 
 
 "I agree with every word," cried Peter; an en- 
 tirely taken-aback Peter; an entirely mystified 
 Peter. 
 
 "But, Mr. John " began the cheery grand- 
 mother, looking at him with her sharp eyes. 
 
 "And her figure, too. Her slimness, the way 
 she carries herself?" 
 
 "Perfect," admitted Peter John, more amazed 
 than ever. 
 
 "Mr. John," demanded Mrs. Waymsley, with 
 her bright eyes fixed on his face. "Are you mis- 
 leading a grandchild? Have you met Phillippa?" 
 
 "No," said Peter John lamely, and ruefully. 
 
 "Oh, fraud," bubbled Gabrielle. "But didn't 
 you? Not this time, but surely ?" 
 
 "Don't tempt him, Gabrielle," said Mrs. 
 Waymsley, briskly. "He'll swear to anything 
 simply to make you enthusiastic. And in any case 
 you are using too many adjectives and taking too 
 few strawberries." 
 
 Was that a deliberate twist? Gabrielle at once 
 recovered her common sense and her control of 
 the dish of strawberries. And there had been 
 that natural collapse of talk that comes when the
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 thread is snapped. And after they had gone on 
 quite serenely talking of other things. 
 
 But was it a deliberate snapping of the thread, 
 or was it but an accident which might happen to 
 the best conversations? Peter for the life of him 
 could not have told.
 
 XXIV 
 
 AND then Peter was not noticing the ac- 
 tion or the reticences of the conversation 
 now. His world was crowded to the 
 sky with this new vision of a landlord. 
 
 He forgot aught else, he forgot yes, even 
 that his Quest of the Nereid; why he had come 
 to this house, what he had hoped to learn. He 
 could only contemplate this unexpected figure in 
 landlords. 
 
 His landlord lovely! And he had never even 
 dreamed of any landlord being lovely. He had 
 never occupied his mind with his landlord. One 
 does not dwell on such mysteries; and his had 
 been but a dim wraith of plain middle-age lurk- 
 ing in the dusty shadows of existence proper to 
 landlords. 
 
 His landlord had been as all landlords; a myth 
 without features and yet she was beautiful. 
 Middle-aged no doubt she remained, but she was 
 beautiful, and, yes, her figure was slim. It was 
 simply bewildering as a revelation. 
 
 For the remainder of lunch his bright talk was 
 153
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 false currency, his mind was dwelling upon the 
 uniqueness of his discovery. He told himself he 
 had not paid enough attention to the de Pierre 
 side of "Green Ladies," and he must make 
 amends. 
 
 "I must find out everything about this Miss 
 Phillippa de Pierre and I will," he told himself. 
 
 After lunch, in a big, comely room that glowed 
 like a bowl of cool water in the level sunlight, 
 they sat and chattered again. They talked about 
 South America, because, it appeared, they knew 
 about him, had heard something of his doings in 
 South America. 
 
 "One does hear," said Mrs. Waymsley, and 
 her eyes twinkled as though she had some private 
 joke. "There's 'Who's Who' and people who 
 know, and friends in London who give you away 
 one can't keep secrets now-a-days." 
 
 So of South America inevitably they talked. 
 
 He told them of his discovery of South 
 America. It had been rather in the manner of 
 the discovery of Brazil, an accident. 
 
 "But you can't possibly go out and suddenly 
 meet a large piece of continent by chance," said 
 Gabrielle. "Brazil seems too big to be an acci- 
 dent." 
 
 "Oh, you mustn't be put off by size," Peter 
 assured her, "and as large as it was, it was like 
 
 154
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 that. The Portuguese seamen who first arrived at 
 the coast had to be convinced it was Brazil. You 
 see they were perfectly certain it wasn't. To them 
 it was the East Indies, because that was what they 
 wanted. Being human, they took it amiss that 
 they had made a mistake of a continent or so." 
 
 "And so you set sail for the East Indies and 
 found yourself in Yucatan," teased Gabrielle. 
 
 "No, I set sail for oil and found Teotihuacan. 
 I went to Mexico to look at an oil district and 
 instead looked at the teocallis the pyramids of 
 the Sun and the Moon at San Juan, Teotihuacan. 
 I had had a young man's idea that oil would be 
 rather interesting and it wasn't in the least. I 
 hadn't any ideas about Mexican ruins at all, be- 
 cause I didn't know they existed and they were 
 tremendously amusing. So I forgot all about 
 oil, and went on looking at and grubbing among 
 antiques in Mexico and Central America and 
 down to Peru, and I became so absorbed in dead 
 things that I never noticed life not until the war 
 called my attention to the fact that I was exist- 
 ing in a living world. Then I came home." 
 
 "But you'll go back," said the young girl with 
 a sudden darting enthusiasm that wounded Peter 
 like the thrust of a spear, "you'll go back to that 
 wonderful place?" 
 
 155
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 And Peter speaking softly because of the pain 
 she had caused him, said, 
 
 "No. No, I'm not going back." But his 
 heart said, "I can't; I may not." 
 
 And then, as he had expected, this talk about 
 South America brought them to "Green Ladies" 
 once more. He had willingly talked of South 
 America, for he saw that it must lead back to 
 Hampshire. Hampshire as contrasted with the 
 deep heat, and the forest charms of Aztec and 
 Inca lands. He had played for this. Out of 
 their ballad of the beauties of "Green Ladies" 
 he felt he could extract the essential information 
 concerning Miss Phillippa of "Green Ladies." 
 
 He would make them tell him everything about 
 her. He wanted to know why one who was beau- 
 tiful gave up such a setting so adequate to beauty. 
 He wanted to know what was her alternative liv- 
 ing place, and what she did, and how she lived. 
 He wanted to know everything. He wanted this 
 thoroughly unexpected landlord put before his 
 eyes as a real thing, an actual creature of flesh 
 and blood. 
 
 So he said with all the innocence of the serpent, 
 
 "Yes, 'Green Ladies' is charming, and it makes 
 me feel guilty." 
 
 "Guilty," burst Gabrielle, "but it couldn't. 
 Happy, yes, it would make you happy, I can un- 
 
 156
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 derstand it doing that; but it can't possibly make 
 you guilty." 
 
 "But perhaps happiness is the root of guilt. It 
 quite often is. You see, isn't it some one else's 
 happiness? I feel I'm living in another's para- 
 dise. Eden and Eve Eden, and the view and the 
 look of the sea, and the sun on it, and the pretti- 
 ness of the flowers all of it. Doesn't it all be- 
 long to other spirits than mine? It's because it's 
 such a beautiful old place that I feel an interloper 
 in another's Arcady." 
 
 And as he said this, he watched the eager, in- 
 genuous, pretty, sympathetic face of Gabrielle. 
 And he did not feel a serpent at all; or rather he 
 felt intensely that he hoped he had been a thor- 
 ough-going serpent; that he had played on her 
 chatter strings and that she would blurt out 
 everything. And he had. She began, 
 
 "But, Mr. John, you mustn't feel like that. It 
 isn't that way at all. You know Phillippa really 
 can't bear " 
 
 And before she could tell him of Phillippa, and 
 of what Phillippa couldn't bear, Mrs. Waymsley 
 said decisively, that "Green Ladies" wasn't old 
 at all. Old! its youth was almost unseemly. 
 
 Peter John, torn away from Phillippa and what 
 Phillippa could not bear, blinked at the brisk, 
 amazing young old thing who was either draw- 
 
 157
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 ing herrings across his path with astonishing nim- 
 bleness, or being irrelevant with a zest equally as- 
 tonishing, but being, whatever she was, entirely 
 effective as a baffler of curiosities. 
 
 She was quizzing him with her bright polished 
 eyes (was there or was there not a twinkle in 
 them?) , and she was saying, 
 
 "Old place. But it's an upstart of a place, as 
 Hampshire goes. You can tick off its age in cen- 
 turies on the thumbs of both hands. You're an- 
 other who has been hoodwinked by that Gothic." 
 
 "I confess I was rather hoodwinked by that 
 Gothic," admitted Peter, surrendering uncondi- 
 tionally. The Gothic, which was incorporated in 
 the structure of "Green Ladies," was, of course, 
 interesting; Gothic that hoodwinks is more than 
 ordinarily interesting, and if he could not hear 
 why Miss Phillippa could not bear whatever 
 she could not bear in connection with "Green La- 
 dies" then perhaps hoodwinking Gothic was a 
 good substitute. "Yes, I confess I was entirely 
 hoodwinked. That Gothic seems to me thor- 
 oughly responsible Gothic. I decided that it was 
 good ecclesiastical Gothic of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury. I had no suspicion of that Gothic. I ad- 
 mitted it to my bosom." 
 
 "And you thought it probably stolen by the 
 original de Pierres from Beaulieu Abbey?" sug- 
 
 158
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 gested Tristram languidly. "Everybody likes to 
 think it was stolen and everybody hopes Beaulieu 
 was the place from which it was plundered." 
 
 "Well, I did play with the idea of wicked, but 
 tasteful de Pierre of Tudor times, making a very 
 good haul from Beaulieu. And after all, is not 
 Beaulieu or fourteenth century merely hood- 
 wink?" 
 
 "It's undoubtedly thirteenth century," said 
 Mrs. Waymsley, "and it is ecclesiastical, and the 
 rest is not romance but humdrum." 
 
 "And also," answered Peter, "a bit of a rid- 
 dle. It is real Gothic and yet not real. It is ro- 
 mantic and yet humdrum." 
 
 "It is real but not Beaulieu, not stolen," said 
 the old lady. "You can console yourself with 
 the thought that 'Green Ladies' is one of the few 
 houses or estates not stolen from some one. The 
 de Pierres were not monastery thieves. They 
 have always owned that land. They've lived 
 there, though not in 'Green Ladies,' but in an- 
 other house " 
 
 "The Dower House, wasn't it?" asked Tris- 
 tram lazily. And Peter thought he caught a sud- 
 den alarm in the grandmother, a quick glance 
 thrown at the young man, and a short breath of 
 hesitation before the brisk and vivid old thing 
 answered; and as he saw that he asked himself, 
 
 159
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Why doesn't she want the Dower House men- 
 tioned? Where is the Dower House?" But al- 
 ready she was saying, 
 
 "Yes, they lived in the original Dower House, 
 at first. But about two hundred and fifty years 
 ago, a de Pierre built 'Green Ladies,' because he 
 liked the view, and because he had some Gothic." 
 
 "The view I can understand," said Peter. 
 "The Gothic, no. How did this de Pierre come 
 by thirteenth century Gothic?" 
 
 "He bought it." 
 
 "Alas, for the charm of thievery! Alas, for 
 romance 1" 
 
 "Yes, it was a rigidly dull affair as dull as 
 weighing sugar. It's only illuminated by the ap- 
 palling lack of taste of a Lord Abbott. A new 
 broom of a Lord Abbott, who lived in France, and 
 yet kept his soul unspotted from the beauty of the 
 world. Think of the heroic quality of that man, 
 to live in the land of Rheims and Amiens, and yet 
 to be blind to Gothic." 
 
 "A colossal statue of a Lord Abbott of the 
 Philistines," suggested Peter. 
 
 "Oh, but that puts him nicely in his place. 
 Anyhow, he sold his Gothic. He hungered for 
 something new and crude and unsuitable, prob- 
 ably in the Montmaitre-Michael-Angelo style, 
 and he pulled down his cloisters and his chapter 
 
 1 60
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 house, and got rid of them for money to pay for 
 his new abominations. And this de Pierre who 
 had some taste and adored Gothic when he saw 
 it, partly ruined posterity but bought the Gothic 
 and shipped what he could over to Hampshire. 
 Since he had not enough for a house he used what 
 he had, and put the most seemly structure he could 
 get invented round it. That is your 'Green La- 
 dies.' " 
 
 "It is a blow," murmured Peter. "It really is 
 attractive to feel that some one reprehensible in 
 the past age committed a crime for which we, un- 
 sullied by the guilt, can reap the reward. And in 
 'Green Ladies,' humdrum and beautiful as it was, 
 the de Pierres lived and flourished until when?" 
 
 Peter John was asking deliberately. He was, 
 he thought, seeing light. Thrillingly he was be- 
 ginning to understand. He was beginning to see 
 through the veils of unsaid things ; he was begin- 
 ning to find out what lurked behind the reticences. 
 And what he was beginning to understand, to see 
 and find out was so amazing, so unexpected, so 
 delightful, that he felt he must be certain. So he 
 put that decisive question, 
 
 "So they lived and flourished there until 
 when?" 
 
 The adroit, the diplomatic grandmother was 
 at a disadvantage, she was entangled in cups by 
 
 161
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 this time. Her wits were demanded by the de- 
 liberative rubrics of tea. But she jerked at him 
 her ambiguity or was it an inconsequence? 
 
 "Yes, they lived there always." 
 
 "Tea will possess you altogether in a moment, 
 then I shall strike at your weaker member,' 1 
 thought Peter, and he watched her becoming in- 
 volved in the duties of the teapot. Then, coolly, 
 he said to Gabrielle, 
 
 "And how long ago was it since she lived at 
 'Green Ladies'?" 
 
 "That cake-stand, please, my child," said 
 Granny to Gabrielle. 
 
 "Who lived?" demanded Gabrielle as she went 
 to the cake-stand. 
 
 "Miss Phillippa," said Peter sweetly. 
 
 "Would you mind " began the nimble old 
 
 lady. 
 
 "Miss Phillippa I" cried Gabrielle, staring at 
 Peter in astonishment. "Why ?" 
 
 "Would you mind letting the blind down a lit- 
 tle, Gabrielle? The sun " 
 
 Gabrielle went to the blind. But Peter would 
 not be beaten. He stared at Tristram. His eyes 
 said, "I repeat my question," to the eyes of Tris- 
 tram. And Tristram answered languidly, 
 
 "How long ago? Well, you know Phillippa 
 used to go to 'Green Ladies' when she got leave 
 
 162
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 from her hospital. As a matter of fact, I 
 thought she was there this time. You see, I 
 didn't know you had taken the place." 
 
 "And as I was there, she went ?" 
 
 "To the Dower House, I suppose." 
 
 And Peter sat back with a beating heart. 
 "Well, I'm blest," he was thinking. "Well, 
 really this is astounding. It's absurd, it's in- 
 credible, but I really do believe " 
 
 He was thinking that he had made a gorgeous 
 find. And though Mrs. Waymsley thrust tea 
 upon him and turned upon him a crisp, under- 
 standing and yet enigmatical smile a smile that 
 seemed to say, "You've found out something, and 
 yet what have you found out?" a smile that 
 seemed to surrender and yet baffle he could go 
 no farther into the mystery for the greatness of 
 the discovery he had made. 
 
 And in the flights of conversation that followed, 
 conversation that did not touch on the mystery 
 of mysteries was that crisp, innocent diplomat 
 of a grandmother controlling it? he could only 
 think, "Miss Phillippa. She was thought to be 
 staying at 'Green Ladies' when I was staying 
 there. . . ." 
 
 And when he reached "Green Ladies" he said 
 to himself, 
 
 "The Dower House, where is this Dower 
 163
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 House? That, I think, will give us the answer 
 to the riddle." 
 
 He turned up the Dower House on an old map. 
 And he saw the Dower House. The Dower 
 House was a biggish cottage overlooking the cliff 
 some little way to the West of "Green Ladies." 
 It was the first house on the road to the West. 
 
 It was the one veritable cottage of Mrs. Pat- 
 ricot. 
 
 Peter John stared down at it. 
 
 "Miss Phillippa beautiful and slim . . . and 
 the way she carries herself . . . and the de 
 Pierres lived at the Dower House when not 
 at 'Green Ladies.' And Miss Phillippa was 
 thought to be staying here when really I was stay- 
 ing here. Miss Phillippa . . . Heavens above 
 that girl, she's not a nereid, nor a hamadryad, 
 nor an enigma she's a landlord."
 
 XXV 
 
 PETER JOHN turned his face from the 
 wide sea, the wide sea that broke softly 
 with a slurring, meditative undertone 
 away in the darkness beneath the little crumpled 
 cliff. He turned his face from the splendid ex- 
 panse of warm and sleepy water, stirring with 
 an indolent restlessness in the faint silver of the 
 decrescent moon. 
 
 He turned because in the infinite warm silence 
 of the night he had heard a rustle beside him; 
 the veriest ghost of a sound, the shadow of a 
 whisper breathed against the scented texture of 
 the night. Just the rustle of silk, just a flourish 
 of gossamer on gossamer, and, 
 
 "Good evening," said a gentle voice, and be- 
 side him, slim and erect, delicate and almost im- 
 palpable, a thing of the night, woven of its misti- 
 ness and its mystery, was a girl. 
 
 He could see the faint brightness of her face 
 and her shoulders. And about her dainty and 
 upstanding body a dress, as vague as mist, caught 
 the faint and elusive light and made about her 
 
 165
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 a soft opalescence, an ethereal penumbra, so that 
 Peter John could not help thinking, as his heart 
 leaped on a pace or two, 
 
 "I wasn't far wrong a nereid, a hamadryad, 
 a thing of spirit, a thing spun of moonlight and 
 shadow and dreams, she's all that. She's more 
 that than anything one can set one's tongue to. 
 She's a wood spirit, a sea spirit, a cliff spirit, if 
 one likes, in spite of leases and houses to let." 
 Aloud he said, without a tremor of his thoughts 
 getting into his voice, 
 
 "Good evening," and he made the first move- 
 ment towards scrambling to his feet. 
 
 "No, not that please. Don't get up," she 
 cried and as he still moved, "please don't make 
 me feel that I have interrupted your night." 
 
 She said this with that fleck of unuttered laugh- 
 ter that gave all she said a touch of individuality, 
 and she made a tiny gesture enfolding the night, 
 the swinging sea and the slur of the veiled moon- 
 light on it, and the hidden land and the scented 
 darkness the whole thing. The whole thing 
 which had been getting into his very bones, into 
 which he had been sinking with a gentle, melan- 
 choly sweetness. 
 
 "You don't interrupt, or no more than is good 
 for me," Peter told her. "And then shouldn't I 
 be the one to ask forgiveness? To walk out on 
 
 166
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 your particular cliff of contemplation, and find 
 some one sitting stolidly in the very pathway of 
 your meditations well, isn't that rather an out- 
 rage?" 
 
 "I could have taken my meditations along an- 
 other pathway," she said with a tiny smile in her 
 voice, "for I saw your cigarette. And well, 
 an interruption is no more than is good for me." 
 
 "You too?" he said, laughing. 
 
 "We are both in the same gallery," she an- 
 swered softly. "And since you think you must 
 get up ... there!" 
 
 She sat down on the little, crumbling cliff. She 
 sat down finally, deliberately, a little distance away 
 from him. 
 
 "Thank you," said Peter, and his heart said 
 more than a mere "Thank you"; it was thrilling 
 with a sense of his astonishing luck. "Thank you. 
 Could I confess, you won't think me too selfish if 
 I confess, that I was willing to stay seated? It's 
 such a perfection of a night." 
 
 "It's an English night," she agreed. "It's worth 
 enjoying." 
 
 "Yes, it's worth enjoying. There's nothing, 
 after all, quite like an English summer night. It 
 is tender and gentle, and the mists of England 
 soften it to its own grave, delicate sweetness. Its 
 light and its texture are serene, and its stars are 
 
 167
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 soft and shy. And there's a modesty about it, a 
 fragrance of modesty that gives it its quiet, quick, 
 colorful charm. It is a dainty thing, a reticent 
 thing. There is no conscious effort to excel, it is 
 beautiful without being exotic, or striking, or 
 blatant. It is soft and sentimental and gracious 
 like its soft and sentimental stars." 
 
 "And melancholy a little?" 
 
 "Perhaps more than a little, that's its senti- 
 mentality the Anglo-Saxon sentimentality that 
 makes the whole world a dream." 
 
 They sat silently for a moment, Peter supreme- 
 ly conscious of the night, supremely conscious of 
 his proximity to her, and his immense good luck 
 at being here in this blessed night, and near to her. 
 
 The sheer surprise of it was the charm of it. 
 He had thought her millions and millions of miles 
 away, that is, in London at least. Yesterday, at 
 "Milton Little," when they had talked about her, 
 there had been no hint that she would at any time 
 be so near, that she would be coming back so soon. 
 She had vanished out of his world with her trunk, 
 and her trunk had suggested that her vanishing 
 would be a permanency. 
 
 And yet, despite the augury of that ineffable 
 trunk, here she was sitting, slim and alert, not 
 three paces from him. He could see her face, 
 pale, vague and spiritual under the dark massing 
 
 168
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 of her hair, and see the slim poise of her white 
 throat upon her white shoulders. She sat with the 
 ingenuous, comely ease of a boy; knees drawn up, 
 and white arms clasped around knees. And she 
 showed a complete and boyish composure, turning 
 to him in the friendliest, naturalest manner, turn- 
 ing from him to gaze out over the immense moon- 
 hazy distances of waters. 
 
 Peter thought, as they sat there very quietly for 
 half a minute, or perhaps more than half a minute, 
 that the whimsical impulse which had brought him 
 out after dinner into the half-dusk to look at her 
 house had had the inspiration of good fortune. 
 And so had the impulse that caused him to sit 
 down on the cliff to watch the day stray slowly 
 into night. 
 
 "There is," he thought, "a Puckishness, a 
 magic about this place, about 'Green Ladies,' that 
 makes a sport of chance oh, and of resolutions 
 too." 
 
 For he recalled that somewhere in the infinite 
 remoteness of three or four days ago he had re- 
 solved that his curiosity naturally, it could be no 
 more than the pleasantest, idlest curiosity con- 
 cerning this girl was becoming too much of an 
 interrupting thing. Was making him unsettled 
 and restless, whereas he had come to the country 
 for a settled eternity of resolute rest. 
 
 169
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 As he thought that, the astonishing girl said 
 astonishingly : 
 
 "There's a sort of Puckishness, a sort of magic 
 about the night, don't you think?" ("Good Lord, 
 are you a sibyl, too, can you read my thoughts?" 
 reflected Peter in amaze.) "It plays the wildest 
 tricks with one's good intentions." ("Good 
 Lord," Peter's mind stammered once more.) 
 "Yesterday I made up my mind that I could no 
 longer endure the town. I said I would come down 
 to the country and live a human life, a life of se- 
 renity and brightness and cheerfulness. I said I 
 would go down to to Hampshire, and renew my 
 vivacity and spirit. And down I came to-day for 
 good." (Peter's heart appreciated that.) "And 
 all this afternoon I have been singing with satis- 
 faction. And now . . . the first night, the first 
 veil of darkness, the first sight of the country 
 moon, and and I am in a state when an inter- 
 ruption is no more than is good for me. Is hu- 
 man nature ridiculous, or is this place magical?" 
 
 "Well," said Peter, "well I think it is the 
 place." He looked across at her, and wondered 
 suddenly, should he? Should he say what he 
 wanted to say? How would she take it? She had 
 a sense of humor, a sense of whimsicality, yes, 
 but dare he? 
 
 She was saying: 
 
 170
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "You think it is the place? Why? Have you 
 run to earth its familiar spirit, its Puck?" 
 
 And Peter John was reflecting "Well, the time 
 is appropriate, and the very atmosphere is in 
 alliance and I'm certain she has a sense of humor. 
 I'm of a mind to risk it." 
 
 "Well, yes and no," he began. "Perhaps there 
 isn't an essential spirit, but there is there is that 
 Puckish sense. Why why, you find me here, 
 even now, and even at this spot, mourning the end 
 of a vision, the death of a legend; oh, not an old 
 legend, one but about to be born." 
 
 "That sounds the most tragic of all deaths." 
 
 "And the most tragic of all ends, it was an 
 apparition laid" and he didn't look at her as he 
 said it "laid by a telephone wire." 
 
 It seemed to him that there was a sudden per- 
 ceptible silence, as if her indolent attention had 
 been arrested abruptly, as though she had stiff- 
 ened spiritually. He looked across at her, and 
 she was looking out to sea. And he thought, "I 
 believe she understands. She is so witty and ca- 
 pable, she is sure to understand. Should I risk it, 
 even, will she let me go on?" 
 
 And after a perceptible minute, she said, 
 
 "O-oh," and then almost at once, with a little 
 lift of her head and a little touch of laughter, 
 "Well ? What was this ghost the telephone 
 
 171
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 wire laid telephone wire, is it possible that could 
 be so potent?" 
 
 ("I'm in for it," said Peter to Peter. "Pray 
 heaven I make the best of it.") 
 
 "Well, did I say a ghost; not really a ghost; 
 rather let us say a spirit, an elemental thing. And 
 then, it might be said, that the thing wasn't there 
 only I thought it was there. I thought that the 
 lady who is called on the Amazon 'The Prin- 
 ceza' had come to live at 'Green Ladies,' either 
 she or her sister. I thought I saw her there." 
 
 "All the way from the Amazon. But I am 
 interested. Tell me " 
 
 "On the Amazon, you know, they give you a 
 fruit, and you eat the fruit calmly, for it is pleas- 
 ant, until somebody shows you what is on the 
 fruit, and tells you the reason it is on it, and then 
 you eat no more, unless you are a barbarian, a 
 Goth, or a sort of metaphysical cannibal." 
 
 "The fruit makes you that a metaphysical 
 cannibal?" 
 
 "It is, of course, a matter of temperament. 
 What is on the fruit is the profile of a girl, the 
 faint, delicate profile of a girl, a sweet and unmis- 
 takable outline. And when you mention that this 
 is a rather remarkable thing, they tell you over 
 there amid the still, hot mystery of the tropic 
 trees, that it is not remarkable at all. That since 
 
 172
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 this is the fruit of The Princeza, it cannot help 
 bearing her countenance. 
 
 "They will tell you the story of the Princeza. 
 She lived long ago in the heavy and mystical heats : 
 among the deep and suggestive silences of the un- 
 trammeled woods. They will tell you how this 
 royal woman, young and beautiful, and ardent, 
 scorned all the heroes of her land and turned her 
 heart from the love of men to the love of a noble 
 tree. 
 
 "This noble tree, so straight, so magnificent and 
 massive had won her heart. She could not love 
 in the way of other maids because of her infatua- 
 tion for its sumptuous, upspringing strength. They 
 tell you how this maid languished for her great 
 tree, how she staved off love until love became 
 stronger than she, and how one day she vanished 
 from the sight of men. 
 
 "She vanished, and man saw her no more. She 
 had gone into the heart of the immemorial woods 
 and there she had joined herself to her lover, and 
 there forever she remained. She was gone and 
 no human eyes looked upon her again . . . but 
 man knew where she had gone, and what was the 
 end of her. For a day came when the men of the 
 Amazon picked the fruit of a tree, and they saw 
 on the fruit the outline of a girl, the faint, delicate 
 profile of a girl. And they knew then that the 
 
 173
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Princeza had come into her own and into 
 love. . . ." 
 
 "She was a fortunate Princeza," said the girl 
 softly, in the little silence that followed. And 
 "Well you thought that she had come to 'Green 
 Ladies' . . . Why?" 
 
 "She or her sister," said Peter gently. "It 
 seemed to me that I saw her one of them, a 
 sister of her spirit amid the trees, looking out 
 at me from among the trees that stand about 
 Green Ladies. 
 
 "Oh, it was only once, on the first night I was 
 there, and it was only for a moment, the barest 
 moment. But in that instant I thought I saw her 
 standing quietly, movelessly against the straight 
 trunks of the pines, just the shadow of a shadow, 
 just the wraith of a watching figure, just a shade 
 so vague and ethereal that it seemed part of the 
 trees, part of them and their shade. 
 
 "But even as I looked this shadow that had 
 seemed to me one with the trees, a tree spirit, a 
 shy, graceful elemental thing even as I looked 
 she was not there. She was gone. I saw her no 
 more." 
 
 He stopped with pulse beating perhaps, no, 
 certainly, a little faster than normal. He looked 
 at the girl and waited. She must know, she must 
 understand, and would she be furious, or ? 
 
 174
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 She laughed, she laughed softly, as one seeing 
 a joke. She had, heaven be praised, a blessed 
 sense of humor. She asked, 
 
 "But you didn't see her again, and yet yet you 
 are certain that she was not The Princeza, or her 
 sister, or any fabled wood thing. You did imply, 
 didn't you, that she ultimately proved nothing of 
 the sort, that the first telephone wire that came 
 along exposed her, showed her up as an impostor? 
 Well . . . ? How? Why . . . ?" 
 
 "That is where the tragedy lies. That is where 
 one's sense of fairy gets a shock. No, she was not 
 an elemental, not The Princeza, not a hamadryad, 
 not a wood fay, nor anything preternatural. She 
 was human, she was everyday. She was . . . ' 
 
 "Not humdrum? Not commonplace?" 
 
 "She was just a landlord," he said and he look- 
 ed across at the girl. 
 
 He stopped. He left it at that.
 
 XXVI 
 
 WOULD she take it well? Would she 
 take it ill? 
 They sat silent in the intense warm 
 quietude of the moon-misty night. The girl was 
 very still, gazing out into the enormous darkness 
 of the sea. She did not move, she did not speak. 
 Peter looking at her felt that fate and friendship 
 were hanging before him in the trembling balance 
 of the night. Which way would the balance fall 
 . . . for, 
 
 "I have told you something about yourself that 
 you, for some definite reason of your own, did 
 not wish me to find out," he reflected. "What is 
 your attitude towards that? Will it be the dig- 
 nity of chagrin, or the humor of resignation? 
 Will you snub or will you laugh?" 
 
 And suddenly the girl laughed. 
 
 She laughed. It was young laughter, it was 
 laughter clear and spontaneous and generous. 
 
 "Oh," she cried. "A landlord. You found that 
 your elemental amid the trees was no more than 
 that. And, even remembering the telephone 
 
 176
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 wires, how did you do it? Even a telephone wire 
 how does that figure as the machine of the gods? 
 How can that shatter a shadow to make a land- 
 lord?" 
 
 "It was will you permit the expression? a 
 connecting link. 
 
 "It was just the link between surmise and fact, 
 it was the link that explained the otherwise inex- 
 plicable, and finally it was the one link needed, 
 the link between 'Green Ladies' and the house of 
 this landlord." 
 
 The girl waited while Peter had time to count 
 twenty heart beats, and then with the neatest 
 show of perplexity she shook her head. 
 
 "No," she said, "it explains nothing. Please 
 
 9" 
 
 ("Does it explain nothing?" wondered Peter, 
 "or do you want to find out how muda it explains 
 tome?") 
 
 "But wouldn't another story bore you?" he said 
 aloud. 
 
 "Oh there is another story, a long one?" 
 
 "Longer than the melancholy history of the 
 Princess who loved a tree." 
 
 "It won't bore me," she said. 
 
 "To begin," began Peter. "In the middle ..." 
 
 "But in the middle?" she asked. "Is that 
 usual?" 
 
 177
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Quite usual, though of course, my candor is 
 not usual. It is a trick of story makers to say that 
 they are beginning at the beginning, or, if they 
 want to cut out an aesthetic dash, to say that they 
 are beginning at the end and unfolding facts from 
 effect to cause. But whatever they say they begin 
 in the middle. It is the only way to get to the 
 living heart of the thing. It is the only way, in 
 this case, to give you any impression at all of the 
 mystery within a mystery that surrounded the 
 letting of 'Green Ladies.' ' 
 
 "But taking a house, can there be anything 
 mysterious in that? Isn't it one of the several 
 deadly commonplace things?" 
 
 "That's it. That's the very essence of the mys- 
 tery. It should have been deadly and common- 
 place and drawn-out and tedious. Even from the 
 very circumstances it should have been more 
 deadly commonplace, more tediously drawn out 
 than usual. 
 
 "Consider what happened. I was known to the 
 agents only as a person wanting permits to view 
 houses. I viewed 'Green Ladies' as a strolling 
 house hunter, found that it was the one paradisial 
 house in the kingdom, and refused to leave it. 
 
 "Absolutely I refused to quit it. I put a pistol 
 at the head of the caretaker who had been placed 
 there specially to guard the house against such 
 
 178
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 rogues as I, I forced him to let me steal it and 
 stay in it. And then I put another pistol to the 
 heads of the lawyers and agents. I wired them, 
 I told them curtly I was in their house and meant 
 to keep it. I told them that not even the law or 
 the need of signing leases would make me leave it. 
 I told them peremptorily that they must come to 
 me, not I to them, if papers were to be signed. 
 And they came without a murmur. 
 
 "Consider that, they didn't know me from 
 Adam. I had no references, no apparent standing 
 or backing. And I had burst my way into their 
 house. They accepted it all with a criminal 
 meekness; they never protested. They never de- 
 manded guaranties or suggested delays. Blindly 
 they treated with me, and in twenty minutes they 
 had tamely handed over the house. What do you 
 think of it?" 
 
 "I should think of it," said the girl, with a catch 
 of laughter in her voice to take the edge off her 
 serious tone, "I should think of it as prodigious 
 good luck. And I should be careful not to quar- 
 rel with it." 
 
 "Oh, it was amazing good luck; immense luck, 
 I admit it, and I'm the last to quarrel with it. But 
 all the same it was preposterous luck too; even 
 with the explanation they gave." 
 
 "So there was an explanation?" 
 179
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Well, yes, naturally. But even as an explana- 
 tion not the best of its kind, an explanation with 
 qualifications. There was this telephone wire. 
 They put it all down to the telephone wire. 
 Everything had been settled across it. It ap- 
 peared prodigious good luck had ranked itself 
 solidly on my side. My landlord " and here 
 Peter paused instinctively, he had to name names, 
 and yet it was a cold-blooded thing to do, even 
 under the cover of this warm and scented dark- 
 ness "my landlord, a Miss de Pierre . . ." 
 
 "Miss who?" cried the girl with a sudden 
 astonishment in her voice. 
 
 "Miss Phillippa," said Peter, and he wondered 
 whether he should have spoken the name. He 
 wondered whether this cool, offhand, aloof men- 
 tioning of the name might not affront her. But 
 the thing was done. "Miss Phillippa, as Eden 
 calls her; Miss Phillippa de Pierre, my landlord." 
 
 "I see ... go on ..." said the girl in a 
 voice just a little agitated he thought, as perhaps 
 it had a right to be. 
 
 "My landlord had talked over the wire, and 
 she had settled it all. I was to have 'Green La- 
 dies.' If I wanted to have 'Green Ladies' at once, 
 no barrier was to be put in my way. The thing had 
 been taken completely out of the hands of ob- 
 stacle creating lawyers. And there was the won- 
 
 180
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 der again. My landlord at that lucky moment 
 was not only within telephone call, but my land- 
 lord knew of me. My landlord, even, had met 
 me. She had seen me, had found me not so bad 
 a tenant, and had issued her commands, all this 
 the lawyers told me. An astonishing mystery, for, 
 as far as I knew, I had never met her, and as far 
 as I could see there was no reason for assuming 
 that she had ever heard of such a person as 
 myself." 
 
 "But isn't that rather a false assumption?" 
 said the girl gently and yet impersonally, as 
 though weighing the matter solely on its merits. 
 "In these days every one is known to every one. 
 And then one sees people, say in town, if only for 
 a few minutes in a crush, and sometimes one re- 
 members. And then, if you don't mind my saying 
 it, you've done some things that people can call to 
 mind. You weren't altogether unknown to me, 
 for example." 
 
 "Oh, I don't think I should have forgotten," 
 began Peter, and then saw the way the wind was 
 blowing. "I mean, I think I should have remem- 
 bered enough of such a meeting not to be so very 
 much at sea as I was. And then and then I 
 don't think Miss my landlord referred to any 
 meeting in town." 
 
 181
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 He paused, perhaps she would speak. She did 
 not. 
 
 "You see, I found out more yesterday. I found 
 it out at that charming and irresistibly young old 
 Mrs. Waymsley's. From no more than a hint 
 here and there I found out something about my 
 landlord. I found out that she had been down 
 here, in this district, at the very moment I took 
 'Green Ladies,' and I found out where she lived 
 I found out things that helped me piece the puz- 
 zle together." 
 
 "Please piece the puzzle together," said the 
 girl softly, and he thought, smilingly. 
 
 "I found out that she usually stayed at 'Green 
 Ladies' when she had her holiday from hospital 
 work, was, indeed, thought to be living there when 
 all the time I was there. But since I was at 'Green 
 Ladies' she must have gone elsewhere at once. 
 And she had, to another house, a house quite close, 
 and the name of this house was mentioned. And 
 I knew it. I knew it well. And the mere men- 
 tioning of it gave the key to the whole riddle. For 
 already what do you think? I had linked up 
 that house with my shadow under the trees. That 
 shadow of a shade I had seen on the first night, 
 lived, I could swear, in that very house." 
 
 "Oh," breathed the girl, softly, gently. 
 
 "Yes, I had already fixed on that house as the 
 182
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 one house likely to harbor this this elemental of 
 the trees. And when the very house was named I 
 saw the whole reason for everything blazingly, 
 astonishingly clear. I saw, for instance, my land- 
 lord, coming down late at night, coming to 'Green 
 Ladies' in a car I had heard a car coming un- 
 expectedly as far as the Edens were concerned, and 
 finding that I had her house, had practically stolen 
 over her head. 
 
 "I saw her slipping out into the shelter of the 
 pines to take a look, through the evening, at the 
 strange, robber fellow as he lounged on the ter- 
 race. I saw her deciding that he was not too evil, 
 and, in the kindness of her heart, making up her 
 mind to leave him in possession. And then having 
 given way to this charity perhaps telephoning, but 
 anyhow, going off in her car to the other house, 
 that other house which belonged to her and which 
 was near. 
 
 "And then, having heard the full story from 
 those most blessed of all secret diplomats, the 
 Edens, she decided to take the law into her own 
 hands, to telephone to lawyers, to issue com- 
 mands. But, before she did that, I think she 
 decided to have another look, a more ample look 
 at the fellow who wanted her house; a good, 
 sober daylight scrutiny. I think she decided on 
 that." 
 
 183
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 With the tiniest laugh, with a laugh that had in 
 it the faint, nervous traces of a giggle, the girl 
 said, 
 
 "But then you weren't certain of that. In all 
 this tissue of certainty, you aren't certain of 
 that?" 
 
 "Well, no, I'm not certain. That sweet secret 
 diplomat, Eve Eden, was too much for me. I had 
 meant to take a walk before the lawyers came, 
 and I don't know whether it was my walk, or her 
 walk I took. I don't know whether she forced me 
 to walk along the cliff by the power of active nega- 
 tion, or whether fate had already fixed the matter 
 up. Anyhow, I am certain, well, I am nearly 
 certain, she ran to the telephone, and called across 
 that linking wire that I was coming along the 
 cliff, and that a good look could be had of me. 
 
 "Well, I met my landlord. . . . 
 
 "She had her good look at me. She saw me, 
 she talked to me. Even she let me strut and 
 preen myself before her; let me talk largely of 
 'Green Ladies,' as if it were my 'Green Ladies,' as 
 if I had lived there for a hundred years. She must 
 have chuckled secretly at the figure of fun I was 
 cutting, with my airs, with my omnipotences, with 
 my telling her of my fixed possession of a house 
 she had not yet let. She was charming! oh, 
 please, she was gentleness itself. She didn't point 
 
 184
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 to my cap and bells. She didn't prick the bladder 
 of my vainglory. She did not 'let on' for a 
 blessed moment that I was just a little ridiculous. 
 She was exquisitely kind." 
 
 "But, would you call it kindness or diplomacy? 
 She couldn't 'let on' could she?" said the girl. "If 
 she wanted to keep up the mystery, she had to 
 play her part in the game. And, then, was the 
 situation ridiculous? Wasn't it rather an attrac- 
 tive situation? Rather, don't you think, a jolly 
 situation? One of those high comedy situations 
 that give a zest to life? After all she probably 
 enjoyed the savor of it." 
 
 "How nice of you to put it like that," he cried. 
 "And no doubt she did enjoy the situation, she 
 has that generous air, a witty and zestful air. 
 And she handled the whole business so well. She 
 played me neatly, and yet she was aimiability 
 itself. And she confirmed herself in her opinion 
 that I would do. She talked over the telephone 
 to the lawyers when they came to 'Green Ladies,' 
 and all was well. Although she remained in the 
 background, benevolently anonymous always, until 
 by the sheerest accident her identity was revealed, 
 she did it all handsomely. I can't thank her 
 enough. I could go on thanking her for a hun- 
 dred years, and yet not thank her enough, not 
 
 185
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 warmly enough, not sufficiently, not in the least 
 way adequately." 
 
 "But, do you think it is a matter for thanks?" 
 said the girl rising to her feet. "After all she 
 wanted to let 'Green Ladies' and she let it." And 
 then, suddenly, she spoke with a deep thrill of 
 feeling. "She may have had the best possible 
 reason for ridding herself of 'Green Ladies.' She 
 may have been as anxious as you that the trans- 
 action should be a swift one. She may have 
 desired to sever herself from the place, to put it 
 away from her once and for all." 
 
 She stood looking out to sea, a slim and at once 
 a tragical figure. 
 
 "But, 'Green Ladies' and all its beauty?" was 
 all the astonished Peter John could blurt out. 
 
 "Couldn't the very beauty of 'Green Ladies' be 
 at the root of such a desire?" she said softly, 
 staring out at the sea. "It is the beautiful things 
 that hurt the most, the beautiful things that touch 
 the memory so poignantly. Oh, the beauty is the 
 pain of it." 
 
 And Peter John, feeling that he had been crim- 
 inally clumsy, that he had blundered on to holy 
 ground, could only stand and murmur, in the face 
 of the sudden pitiable revelation, 
 
 "Oh, but I am truly sorry. I have been so 
 stupid. ..." 
 
 186
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 She stood there a slim, erect figure, so delicate, 
 so tragic and so young; a figure poised and held 
 by a vision of immeasurable grief. She stood 
 there, firm and slim and youthful and erect, facing 
 squarely the unconjecturable things of the night. 
 
 So for a moment she stood, and then she turned 
 on him, and he could feel that the face that was 
 lifted towards his in the vague mist of the moon- 
 light was bravely smiling with a clear and uncon- 
 querable courage. Whatever her tragedy was 
 she knew how to bear it with an indomitable spirit. 
 
 "How could you be stupid, you did not know. 
 No, it was only only she who was stupid. She 
 tried to put life behind her, she tried to run away. 
 And you cannot do that. You cannot run away. 
 You must face life, accept it. She was stupid . . . 
 and she isn't now. She has come back, and she is 
 facing life." 
 
 And there was something in Peter's heart that 
 seemed to swell and break, he wanted to weep 
 for her; but more, he wanted to kneel in adoration 
 before her courage. 
 
 "You make me humble," he cried. "For I 
 have run away. I ran away from life to 'Green 
 Ladies.' " 
 
 "You too?" she cried, using the words he had 
 used, and he answered her in her words, 
 
 "Yes, we are both in the same gallery." 
 187
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 They were looking at each other, then, and at 
 that they both laughed. They turned, and began 
 to move, walking instinctively towards the house, 
 towards the Dower House, the lights of which 
 shone in a golden haze beyond the distant hedge. 
 
 They walked without speaking, but, it seemed 
 to Peter John, ineffably close to each other, inef- 
 fably intimate, as though they were drawn to- 
 gether in a spiritual alliance, as though they had 
 entered upon a brave confederacy to outface life. 
 As though they had joined ranks to stand their 
 ground and not run away. 
 
 She spoke once only before they reached the 
 point where they would separate, 
 
 "You see," she said, and the smiling, the ironi- 
 cal, the whimsical note had come back to her 
 voice, "you see, it is possible that your landlord 
 did not remain anonymous from a generous 
 motive. . . . You did imply that, didn't you ?" 
 
 "Oh, there may have been some other motive 
 mixed up in the business, but I still feel she wanted 
 to let me down lightly. She did not want me to 
 know that I had bundled her out from house and 
 home, without even the proverbial moment's 
 notice. I still think it was her gentle way of 
 letting me get 'Green Ladies' without heartburn- 
 ings and without friction." 
 
 "Put like that, it is at least generous." 
 18*
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "But, isn't there the barest possible shade of 
 truth in it?" he insisted. 
 
 "Well . . . perhaps the barest possible shade," 
 she agreed, smiling. And they were quiet again 
 until they came to her footpath. And then 
 
 "But about the telephone wire," she cried 
 softly. "Even now we haven't learned how it 
 turned your your hamadryad into a landlord. 
 How is that mystery explained?" 
 
 "It was almost daylight when I came along the 
 cliff," said Peter John. "I came to look at the 
 well, the house in which the hamadryad lived. 
 And on the top of the house was the telephone 
 wire. The hamadryad was linked up with all the 
 mystery." 
 
 "That seems irrefutable," said the girl. 
 
 "You think so, too?" 
 
 "I don't see how I can doubt it good-night," 
 she said, and she walked up the little footpath to 
 her house. But two paces along the path she 
 called, 
 
 "Good-night, tenant." 
 
 "Good-night, landlord," said Peter John. 
 
 And he walked home through a singing night.
 
 XXVII 
 
 ALL the same," mused Peter John for the 
 benefit of Eden, "all the same a tele- 
 phone wire does not explain everything, 
 potent though it be ... you agree, potent was 
 the word she used?" 
 
 Eden set the fruit before Peter. Eden was now 
 lord of a bevy of brisk, good-tempered Hampshire 
 girls, as well as of flowers, but he himself served 
 Peter, acting no doubt on the assumption that 
 destiny would not be fulfilled otherwise. He set 
 fruit before Peter and waited. He had learned 
 in his wise old way that a pause of thirty seconds 
 after any of Peter's remarks made life easier. 
 Only by this means could he discover if his new 
 master was conversing or merely reflecting aloud 
 on things in general. 
 
 As Peter did not speak again, the old man 
 recognized that this inconsequence was also a 
 question. An inexplicable question, but one to 
 demand some sound of the human voice in re- 
 sponse. He said simply, 
 
 "Who, sir?" 
 
 190
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Who? But who else?" cried Peter in aston- 
 ishment. "Who else but the lady who isn't Mrs. 
 MacStinger as you wanted me to think?" 
 
 Eden, whom the mellow and lengthening years 
 had taught the folly of attempting the impossible, 
 placed the port in its Venetian decanter near to 
 Peter's hand. He did not attempt the impossible. 
 He said nothing at all. 
 
 "Or who isn't a hamadryad or a nereid either 
 for that matter," added Peter reflectively. And 
 Eden who recognized that while he might be a 
 useful person to direct a conversation at, was not 
 the best possible person to answer it, stood silent. 
 He stood gazing across the oak of the dinner 
 table, over the garden of spilled gems and across 
 the grass slope to where the island stood up like 
 a land of enchantment from a sea of polished 
 steel. Steel that was flat and hot, for beneath the 
 skin of the surface there showed iridescent flushes 
 of crimson and blue and dull green and transient 
 yellow. 
 
 The evening was muted down. All things 
 seemed muffled by the veilings of the powdery 
 haze. The slow, ardent sunset burnt with a 
 dimmed and almost secret passion above the som- 
 ber and unresponsive sea. The air stagnant and 
 oppressive, yet seemed to hold something in leash 
 
 191
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 behind its stillness. Peter had said as much in the 
 course of his dinner. 
 
 "There's a storm waiting," Eden had told him. 
 
 The old man had looked with concern at his 
 friends the flowers, as though he hoped they were 
 worldly-wise enough to know what was coming, 
 and to have the sense to tuck themselves safely 
 away; and he had glanced at the sunset as though 
 to measure the mighty forces that he and his wise 
 eyes alone could see marshaled in grim array. 
 Peter had followed his glances. 
 
 "But, surely this is bad management, Eden?" 
 he had said ruefully. "To have a storm running 
 into to-morrow of all days, isn't that disastrous? 
 Perhaps you've overlooked the fact that to-mor- 
 row is the day of St. Swithun." 
 
 "Storms come, sir," said Eden, "and they pass, 
 always." 
 
 "Do they," scoffed Peter. "Not St. Swithun's 
 anyhow. They keep it up for a preposterous 
 number of days. But you know that St. Swithun 
 was a Hampshire man, like you, so you can't be 
 ignorant of him." 
 
 .Eden turned a smiling face to Peter. 
 
 "Yes, sir, he was a Hampshire man and he was 
 kind. It was because they wouldn't let him lie out 
 under a Hampshire sky, under the Hampshire sun 
 and with the rain beating on him in the way he had 
 
 192
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 known in life that he caused the angry rain to 
 fall." 
 
 "Oh, is that the secret of the forty days?" 
 asked Peter. 
 
 "Yes, they wanted to make a saint of him," 
 said Eden. "They wanted to take his bones 
 from under the common turf and put them in a 
 noble grave in the great church over at Win- 
 chester. An' he didn't want it for he was a humble 
 man. And so he sent the rain every day, until 
 they left off trying to move him and let him rest 
 where he wanted to be." 
 
 The old man smiled again at Peter. 
 
 "But we don't tell of the forty days' rain in 
 Hampshire, sir. We say it is just St. Swithun 
 baptizing the apples and we know it will soon be 
 over. It'll be a quick storm, and the country will 
 be sweet after it." 
 
 "New baptized and with a shining virtue," 
 mused Peter. 
 
 "What will it be like then, for it is sweet now?" 
 
 He had fallen into a meditation on its sweet- 
 ness. It's new sweetness since when? Last 
 night ? 
 
 Up to last night he had felt that there was a 
 certain lack about all this radiant beauty. It had 
 been unrestful. He had been discomposed, fret- 
 ful, unsettled. He had felt the longing for a 
 
 193
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 forbidden life. The tropic south had pulled on 
 his heart strings, and he had wanted with an intol- 
 erable pain the things that had seemed to him 
 his life's work to do. He who had come to settle 
 down, had not settled down. 
 
 But since last night the country had been more 
 comely, more serene. And now he made no pre- 
 tense of ignoring the reason. This wood-sprite, 
 this landlord, this Phillippa had made the deuce 
 of a difference. 
 
 No disguising that; no use protesting he had no 
 right to entangle himself in such schemes of com- 
 panionship and beauty; it had happened. He had 
 talked with her. He had heard from her own 
 lips, in her own voice that cool, soft and young, 
 that so tender yet so bright and courageous a 
 voice that she was to remain in the country. 
 That she was not going away again, that he would 
 see her more (for that is what it implied to him) 
 and talk with her. And, 
 
 "Yes, the background did need its central fig- 
 ure," he mused. "Man cannot live without neigh- 
 bors. There may be sermons in trees, but there 
 is very little exchange of satisfying conversation. 
 And one does want an essential, not any but an 
 essential companion." 
 
 He thought of the slimness and the grace of 
 the girl, the spring of her carriage; the delicacy 
 
 194
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 and fragility of her bearing; her wittiness and 
 vividness, and yet the high seriousness and sensi- 
 tiveness of her manner. 
 
 And he thought of her face, quick and vital, 
 with the dainty and precise features ; the shine of 
 her bright and yet enigmatical eyes; the warm, 
 and beautiful lips, softly curved, alluring, deli- 
 cately mocking and lovely and grave. And the 
 sumptuous massing of her hair that seemed to 
 throw an elfin shadow across the ardent vitality 
 glowing in her face, a shadow that gave a touch of 
 spirit, the fairy, of intangible other-world mystery 
 to her radiant charm, so that one truly felt that 
 she was a thing of another plane, a wood-spirit 
 indeed, a creature compounded of gossamer and 
 mystery. 
 
 And as he thought of her he gave a half groan 
 of misery and pleasure: 
 
 "You are thinking too much of the girl, and 
 you musn't, Peter John. You are on the verge of 
 the deeps of love, just the veriest push of fate. . . . 
 Steady yourself, Peter John. . . ." 
 
 And he did not steady himself. He went on 
 thinking. He knew within his heart that he must 
 go on thinking. There was nothing else half so 
 worth while. 
 
 And then, as he thought, he had come to that 
 telephone wire. He went over it all again, ex- 
 
 195
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 plaining all of the apparently inexplicable things. 
 He had even made a reason for her stay at the 
 Dower House; for instance, her going there at so 
 late an hour of the night. This Mrs. Patricot, he 
 decided, was an old and amiable friend, a widow 
 with a roomy house and a heart to match ; she had 
 willingly taken the girl in. That was easy to 
 explain, but, as he had said to Eden, there were 
 things less easy. 
 
 "Why, for instance, couldn't a person bear a 
 certain place as Miss Gabrielle had it?" he 
 asked. "What would be the best possible reason 
 for any one ridding oneself of a place, as she her- 
 self had it? Why should one fly from beauty, 
 Eden?" 
 
 Peter was speaking diplomatically, naming no 
 names. He had learnt by now that the wise and 
 simple old man was a very prince of dumbness on 
 certain matters on one certain matter. 
 
 "Can you," he insisted, "can you conceive any 
 one running away from a place that was beautiful 
 and attractive in every way?" 
 
 "It might be perhaps, too beautiful" said Eden, 
 and Peter stared at him in astonishment. 
 
 "Is it a conspiracy," he cried in wonderment, 
 "or are you a magician that you should speak in 
 the tongue of well, hamadryads and landlords?" 
 
 "It's how it seems to me, sir," said the old man, 
 196
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 as usual catching the sense rather than the signifi- 
 cance of Peter's question. "If you love a place, 
 if you had been happy in it, so it seems to me, 
 you might turn against it when sorrow came. 
 Because you loved it so it would hurt you. As 
 you went about a place like that you'd be reminded 
 everywhere of how happy you had been, and you 
 couldn't bear it, sir." 
 
 "Even in a place like this?" 
 
 "More than anywhere, I think, sir," said the 
 old man gently, looking wistfully at the serene 
 comeliness of the house. "If one grew up in a 
 place like this, knew it as a place where one had 
 always been happy, and expected it to be the place 
 where one always would be happy then, if some- 
 thing happened, sir. Something that was cruel 
 happened here, then being here would always 
 remind you of the happiness that might have been 
 and the cruelty that spoiled it so. Everything 
 here would bring it back to you." 
 
 He looked at Peter in his shy hesitating way, as 
 though he wished to say much, and yet dare say 
 only a little. 
 
 "You couldn't bear a place like this if you 
 loved it a lot, an' it was here your heart was 
 broken. You couldn't bear it, sir, pretty as it is, 
 could you?" 
 
 "I see what you mean," said Peter. 
 197
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Eden stood looking over the sea, his old face, 
 the face of a gentle Caesar, soft with memories, 
 a wondrous pity on his fine old lips. 
 
 Peter nodded assent. 
 
 "Yes, the greatest pangs of hell are those that 
 we endure amid the scenes we loved," he said. 
 "The doctors tell us that, and the doctors are 
 
 wise." 
 
 They were silent for a spell, looking out at the 
 slow fires of the sunset, then, 
 
 "Even in 'Green Ladies' might there be a sea- 
 son for such unhappiness?" Peter asked softly. 
 
 The old man looked away from the sky, looked 
 down at Peter, and his eyes were kind and sad. 
 
 "There was, sir," he said. 
 
 He lifted the butler's tray with the remnants 
 of the meal upon it. He said no more. He 
 walked across the gravel of the terrace into the 
 house. 
 
 His going was deliberate, Peter knew. He 
 would say no more, and Peter dare not press him. 
 But at his going Peter had again that gray and 
 intolerable emotion of sadness he had encountered 
 on his first night. 
 
 He glanced around at the fairness of the house, 
 and he understood. This place made for happi- 
 ness of man, how crushing it would be if its beauty 
 
 198
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 were but to house a world of bitter thoughts of 
 what might have been. 
 
 To Phillippa it wasn't the scene of happiness 
 but a setting for tragedy. What that tragedy was 
 he did not know, but he could feel with her. He 
 could understand how it might be that the very 
 gold of the sunlight on the house and the garden 
 might be the light of mockery.
 
 XXVIII 
 
 AND again that night he dreamed of the 
 little wood of pines, and the dim shape 
 that dwelt in that wood. 
 
 He had gone boldly in the delicate azure of the 
 night into the darkness of the trees. The shape 
 had beckoned him, a voice cool, soft, tender, yet 
 shining and courageous had called to him, and 
 he had pushed among the trees, scornful of their 
 malignant shadows; ignoring the clutching hands 
 of their gloomy branches; facing magnificently the 
 golden-burning light that shone afar off between 
 the pillars of the trees. 
 
 He had pushed into the darkness under the 
 branches with a sense of invulnerable buoyancy, 
 for he and this slim sweet spirit of the trees had 
 made their firm alliance against the tenebrous 
 forces of the night. They were linked in indom- 
 itable intimacy, and were joining their hands to 
 out-face life. He pushed on amid the evil black- 
 ness of the woods and presently he was close to 
 this slim, elemental thing; moving with her 
 towards the shining beacon of their hopes. 
 
 200
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 She moved beside him with her faint and lovely 
 grace, and her hand, soft and delicate and strong, 
 had sought and held his in their bond of cour- 
 age. He could feel the clear power of her spirit 
 In the cool, sure grasp of her fingers. He knew 
 that a thrill of communion had passed from one 
 to the other, and that, hand in hand like this, they 
 could go on and defy the principality of darkness. 
 
 They moved through the wood with their high 
 courage, evading the greedy and prehensible 
 hands of gloom. And as they went they knew 
 that the glorious and shining land of promise was 
 nearer. They could see the majesty of its light, 
 and hear the superb and inspiring note of its great 
 waters and its great wind. 
 
 And he knew with the decisive knowledge of his 
 soul, that this was why he was here, why he had 
 come to this house. He and this girl were to find 
 their way to happiness helping each other. The. 
 glory and the splendor of life was beating in on 
 them through the tree trunks. He could see it 
 shining on her face, on her mobile and sensitive 
 face, see it glowing in her eyes and lighting up 
 the quick, warm, splendid promise of her lips. 
 
 And he called out to this heart-beautiful girl 
 of mystery and mist, 
 
 "See, we are nearly there. Together, with our 
 201
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 hands and our spirits linked like this, we are to 
 win through." 
 
 She had turned to him, and the splendor of 
 her eyes had filled him with fire. She had smiled 
 and held his hand tighter; they knew it was or- 
 dained they were to triumph together. 
 
 And then they were in the valley of the pit. 
 
 Yes, suddenly they were down in the deeps of 
 darkness, and the glory of the promised land had 
 gone from them. About them was the massive 
 night, tangible and crushing. Close to them was 
 the massive array of evil, marching down on them, 
 beating down on them, plucking at them, trying to 
 tear them apart with ugly and greedy hands. 
 
 And the sound of the great waters and the 
 great wind had gone, as the fine and shining light 
 had gone. In their place was the tumult of de- 
 spair. A horror of darkness was about them and 
 it was full of sound. Worlds fell in deep and 
 awful crashes. Noise piled up, heaped up and 
 horrified rushed down on them . . . they were 
 being ground to earth by great blows of sound. 
 They cowered together under this mighty assault 
 of the night. Their hands clung tight, but their 
 spirit winced beneath the awful shocks of evil. 
 Despair and pain and terror were loosed on them 
 in destroying uproars. They bowed beneath the 
 terrible strokes of the darkness. They could hear 
 
 202
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 the sweeping movement of an enormous wind, as 
 the forces of wickedness charged down on them 
 from the illimitable regions of space. 
 
 They were deep in the pit of pain, and helpless. 
 And then with a huge blaze of white and wicked 
 light, and a huge thunder of feet, the vile hosts 
 bore down on them. And in that blaze of light, 
 he saw the girl on her knees, bowed and on her 
 knees, and her arm across her eyes ..... He 
 saw her there beaten by the dark forces of life, 
 with only his hand between her and annihilation. 
 Only his hand . . . and as the light flickered 
 and vanished in the blackness he tightened his 
 grasp on her warm, weak finger, and he called 
 aloud in defiance of the night, 
 
 "I have her tight. I will not let her go. You 
 shall not beat her down." 
 
 And then he opened his eyes to the waking 
 world. 
 
 The lightning played again across the broad 
 windows of his room, and thunder broke the 
 heavens with a rending crash of worlds cleft 
 asunder. 
 
 "The storm," he whispered, "Eden's storm." 
 
 He lay until the lightning played again, then 
 he got out of bed. 
 
 He did not know why. He did not even then 
 quite realize he had been swept from the kingdom 
 
 203
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 of dreams to the world of reality. He rose and 
 with the movement of his dream he stepped to 
 the window. 
 
 The lightning blazed again. 
 
 Down in his garden, down where the iron rail 
 divided the paddock from the little formal garden 
 of flowers, he saw the girl. 
 
 Unmistakably she was there. In the intense 
 world-wide blaze of light, he saw her against the 
 iron railings. And she was on her knees, bowed 
 on her knees against the rails, and her arm was 
 across her eyes. 
 
 She was there slim and young and pitiable, 
 kneeling in agony. And he knew that as she 
 crouched there, one arm on the rail, one arm 
 stretched along it, that she had been beaten down 
 by the dark forces of the night, that she was 
 crushed down by the awful powers of despair. 
 
 And as the pale light blazed again, he stretched 
 out his hand as though to catch the hand that lay 
 along the thin iron rail. And as the thunder broke 
 in awful clamor, he called aloud in defiance of the 
 night, 
 
 "I have her tight. I will not let her go. You 
 shall not beat her down." 
 
 And even as he spoke he seemed to feel within 
 his hand the flutter of her soft fingers. It was 
 mnmistakable. He could feel as though he really 
 
 204
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 held her tight, the responsive, the appealing, the 
 hopeful tightening of that weakening clasp. 
 
 It was real, he could swear it was actual. . . . 
 He experienced a definite sensation of holding her, 
 he definitely felt the narrow softness of her 
 fingers, and the strengthening pressure of her 
 palm. I 
 
 And the lightning blazed again, and she was 
 standing up, staring towards the house, gazing 
 towards the house in an attitude shrinking and 
 startled and yet uplifted. As though she, too, had 
 felt the clasp of his hand, the strength of his 
 purpose. 
 
 And then the world was black again, but Peter, 
 turning away from the window, called once more 
 in defiance of the night, 
 
 "I have her tight. I will not let her go. You 
 shall not beat her down." 
 
 And as he called he laughed aloud. He felt 
 that he would win, would beat the powers of 
 darkness and of evil. That was what he was here 
 to do. He had been sent to "Green Ladies" for 
 that purpose alone. He knew it, with the deci- 
 sive knowledge of one who has experienced a 
 revelation. He sank into a chair, and buried his 
 face in his hands, and did not look from the win- 
 dow any more.
 
 XXIX 
 
 HE woke to the day clear-eyed and exul- 
 tant. 
 He had spent half the night without 
 sleep ; he had had a strange and disturbing experi- 
 ence. For a brief and terrible moment he had 
 stepped beyond the border line of the known, had 
 passed the frontiers of the flesh into that dread, 
 intangible plane of mystical happenings. He had 
 touched hands with the mysteries. And despite 
 this he woke with a high and clarified spirit. Both 
 body and soul were worlds above fatigue. The 
 universe seemed not dark but good. 
 
 He remained with waking eyes, asking himself 
 if that which he had gone through had been 
 merely a dream. Had it been reality or merely 
 illusion? And he answered with conviction, 
 "No, it happened. It really did happen." 
 It really had happened. The girl had been 
 down by the fence, really in the flesh and not in 
 the spirit. She had come there in one of the inex- 
 plicable moods of sorrow. The house where she 
 had known tragedy had drawn her. She had 
 
 206
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 walked to it from her cottage, and there, facing 
 it, had succumbed to despair and had sunk down 
 by the rails. He really had seen her. And, as he 
 had stretched out his hand to her, he had really 
 touched her hand. 
 
 He had really touched her hand, he had felt 
 her hand in his. It had happened. Though there 
 was no means of explaining how it had happened, 
 by what strange and mystical means that impos- 
 sible thing had come about, yet he had no doubt 
 about it. Strange, mystical, preternatural though 
 it might be, he knew that that handclasp had 
 taken place. 
 
 And as he thought he said, 
 
 "It happened for a reason. It was to show me 
 what I am to do. I am to help her." He felt a 
 settled and quiet happiness at this. For a moment 
 he saw the girl before him, slim, swaying, and 
 lovely, and he knew that in some way that would 
 be shown to him presently he was to help her. 
 He was to take her by the hand, lift her up and 
 bring her safely through the dangers of the dark- 
 ness. All this, he considered, was unmistakable. 
 
 What the evils of darkness meant for her, he 
 did not know. Why "Green Ladies" with its 
 beauty should be the reason for so acute a grief, 
 he did not know. Why there should be tragedy 
 in the life of one so young, what he was to do, how 
 
 207
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 he was to do it, he did not know, he did not care. 
 
 "It doesn't matter," he thought. "I am to save 
 her from the despair of the pit. Why and how 
 perhaps that will be told me in time, it matters 
 little. I am to do it." 
 
 Not a vestige of the blackness of the night was 
 upon him. He rose with a serene, uplifting pur- 
 pose. He went to the window and looked out, 
 and smiled. 
 
 "After the storm the triumph of the sun; even 
 nature breaks into adage and gives me an omen." 
 He drank in the brightness of the sun-washed 
 earth. "Hampshire and Eden are right. St. 
 Swithun has baptized not only the apples but 
 everything. The earth is born anew. New virtue 
 shines from it." 
 
 Indeed the world has had a new-born, new- 
 washed air after the rain of the night. The green 
 and the gold, the blue and the white of the day 
 shone with a pellucid radiance. All the colors of 
 the morning were limpid and crystalline. Even 
 the sunlight seemed distilled. 
 
 On his way to the sea he stopped by the thin 
 iron rail. 
 
 "She was here," he reflected. He looked 
 towards the house. "She could not have seen me 
 within my window." 
 
 208
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Even now he recalled her startled standing atti- 
 tude. 
 
 "Yet she knew. She felt my hand in hers as I 
 felt hers in mine. She knew." 
 
 He thrilled at the thought. He was sure she 
 had shared with him that strange moment in the 
 tremendous passage of the night. 
 
 As he toweled himself, with a keen sense of 
 the virility of all the world surging within him, he 
 stopped and lifted his face to the radiant sky, 
 
 "But it is not a tragic universe; it is a glad 
 universe," he cried. "There is a sun and I am 
 to teach you so you may not say, 'There is no 
 
 sun.' 
 
 He stood quiet, recalling her attitude as she 
 had uttered that phrase at their first meeting. He 
 saw the shadow of sorrow that had clouded her 
 face. He saw again the small, wistful drooping 
 of her lips, the sore, tragic line of her erect body. 
 
 "Oh, but you're so young and so lovely. One 
 can't even begin imagining that you have known 
 sorrow. You aren't built for tears, but for 
 smiles." And after a moment, "How old are 
 you, I wonder, twenty-five, twenty-seven? Yes, I 
 suppose I can give her nine or eight years. Nine 
 years is that too great a breach?" 
 
 Then as a memory of his own despondency of 
 209
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 was it only a day ago? passed across his mind, 
 he murmured half defiantly, 
 
 "Yes, I am in love with her. I own up. In 
 spite of malaria and broken ambitions, and one's 
 weighty decisions to live and die a hermit, I am 
 in love with her. I am even in love with being 
 in love with her. And I can't help myself, and I 
 don't want to help myself. And even if I did, 
 the thing has been taken out of my hands of my 
 will if it was ever in the hands of my will." 
 
 In his exultation he felt that the action of a 
 power outside himself was undeniable. Some- 
 thing had happened to him. He had been given 
 a vision for a definite purpose. In his present 
 mood he questioned nothing. He felt that to do 
 so would be to quarrel with an Act of Providence. 
 And then, maybe, the human side in him was 
 also on the side of Providence. It so often is. 
 Why quarrel with something very much to one's 
 taste? This girl Phillippa was so remarkably 
 adorable, it was easy to surrender to what seemed 
 the force of circumstances. He willingly sur- 
 rendered. 
 
 Even in that hiatus of human existence, when 
 the gloomy forces within man have undisputed 
 sway, that is, in the moment when one is ready for 
 breakfast, and breakfast had not yet arrived, 
 Peter's serenity was undiminished. He stared at 
 
 210
 
 the bright, waving banners of joy, that people 
 without vision insisted were only the leaves of the 
 trees, and he told himself, 
 
 "She is looking at a view very much like this. 
 I wonder how she is feeling? I wonder what she 
 is thinking?" 
 
 When he sat down he said half aloud, 
 
 "Well, fate has taken control of events. Some- 
 thing big has happened to both of us. The little 
 ideas of yesterday have gone. How does she take 
 it? I am another person." He said to Eden, "I 
 think your St. Swithun must have baptized me as 
 well last night. I have a new virtue. Don't you 
 find an enormous change in me?" 
 
 Eden slipped a dish in place. 
 
 "Not changed, sir, but happier." 
 
 "Oh, but isn't that the devil of a change? Don't 
 you find my early morning smiles different from 
 my habitual scowling gloom?" 
 
 "You smiled before, sir," said Eden gently. 
 
 "And wasn't that happiness? Isn't smiling the 
 outward sign of joy?" 
 
 "Not all smiles are happy, sir?" said Eden. 
 
 "Oh," breathed Peter, taken aback, even 
 though he was by now used to the penetration of 
 this wise and simple old man. "Oh, and my 
 heart wasn't in it. But now you think my heart is 
 
 211
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 taking its share in the business of smiles. Well, 
 but wouldn't you call that a change?" 
 
 "No, sir," said Eden. He stood upright, and 
 as usual he looked out at his friends the green and 
 growing things, as though they were his council- 
 ors always at difficult moments. "It's not a 
 change, any more than a bud changes when it be- 
 comes a rose. . . . It's merely becoming com- 
 plete." 
 
 Peter John stared at Eden with something of 
 wonder in his heart. 
 
 "And I'm merely becoming complete. Who 
 gives you wisdom, Eden? I believe you are right, 
 I believe, after all, I am beginning to see what I 
 am to do. I am beginning to see a meaning in 
 things; and that, after all, is the way to become 
 complete." 
 
 And, after a moment, 
 
 "You wouldn't' call such a change well, if you 
 like such a process of completion, an act of fate, 
 Eden?" 
 
 Eden removed a plate. 
 
 "I don't know overmuch about fate, sir, but it 
 seems to me, it's only our word for things that 
 have happened to us," he said softly. 
 
 "Where did you get your wisdom?" Peter 
 wondered, as the wise old man went out. 
 
 212
 
 XXX 
 
 [HE things that were to happen to Peter 
 happened at once. Now that events 
 were marching they went forward with- 
 out pause and without break. It was as though 
 Dame Fate, having set his feet to his predestined 
 path, was breaking him of his habit of straying. 
 
 He rather wanted to stray, to have a breathing 
 space. He had even decided he would take a 
 breathing space. He did not want to see Phil- 
 lippa yet; presently, when he had got his wits into 
 key, he would see her; but not now. He made up 
 his merely human mind as if there was not 
 such a thing as fate, and a woman at that to 
 project himself into a long, stiff walk. In that 
 long, stiff walk he would think things out. He 
 would be wise and circumspect, would classify 
 facts neatly and range them into order. He 
 would get at the heart of this wonder, examine it 
 and evolve a wise course of action. 
 
 No, he did not want to meet Phillippa yet; he 
 must think first. 
 
 Man likes to manage life like this, but fate is a 
 woman. 
 
 213
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Fate cannot be bothered with human meticu- 
 lousness, perhaps she has too many destinies to 
 manage. Certainly her business methods are not 
 man's. She has no human order in her doings. 
 She merely picks man up and hurls him from en- 
 counter to encounter, spins him from crisis to 
 crisis. She wastes no time. 
 
 Peter John decided that he was going for a 
 sober, cogitative walk. Fate flung him among the 
 tea cups of "Milton Little." 
 
 It was easily manipulated. Fate strewed 
 Tristram Waymsley, that extraordinarily strew- 
 able young man, across Peter's path. Tristram 
 tempted Peter with tea, and Peter succumbed. 
 The first person who shook Peter's hand in Mrs, 
 Waymsley's drawing-room was the girl, Phillippa 
 
 It happened with a sort of detonative unex- 
 pectedness. "Detonative" is the only word. Peter 
 had not the vaguest hint of an idea that he might 
 meet her, and she had turned round suddenly j 
 and in, well, yes, it was the only word, an explo- 
 sion of astonishment they were looking into each 
 other's startled eyes. 
 
 That explosion, that shock of meeting, seemed 
 to have made about them a great vacuum. Alone, 
 standing in that inhumanly empty space, they hung 
 without breath, without faculty of movement, 
 staring at each other; their hands touching. 
 
 214
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 What his eyes said to hers he did not know. 
 But he saw in her eyes surprise, and more than 
 surprise, a look of flight, a look of alarm. She 
 gazed with a wide glance, transfixed, hypnotized, 
 by the shock of the sight of him, for how long 
 was it, a score of centuries? Only after tremen- 
 dous cycles of time did the blood, which had 
 drained away from her cheeks, come back again, 
 with a delicate, quickening flow. And she drew 
 away a little, and her eyes dropped. Yes, the eyes 
 which gazed so steadily and candidly out at the 
 world, dropped, and the rose on her cheek deep- 
 ened. 
 
 For how long was it, a score of centuries, that 
 they stood thus in the communion of isolation; 
 under the shock of their recognition of each other 
 as companions of the darkness and the storm? 
 A score of centuries it seemed indeed before she 
 drew away. 
 
 Her hand moved in his. The soft, warm, 
 familiar flutter of her fingers moved under his. 
 They were slipping from him. And instantly, in- 
 stinctively, he seemed plunged back into that 
 moment of blackness and rain and thunder; for 
 an instant he felt about him the menace of the 
 evil and ominous things. Instinctively his clasp 
 tightened. He held her tight. It was then she 
 lifted her lashes and looked at him, a quick glance 
 
 215
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 of fear, wonder and interrogation. Her pitiable 
 frightened glance gave him a "You! You know? 
 You had that experience too?" He could see the 
 soft tumult of her breast, her lips formed a breath- 
 less "Oh." 
 
 A score of centuries was it, or an instant, before 
 he released her; before she stepped back with a 
 slight stiffening that was not reserve, but rather 
 reticence and fear. Even that gesture Peter knew. 
 It was the shadow of her attitude of the night. 
 So she had stood and looked up at his window 
 after that strange spiritual handclasp of the storm. 
 
 Then it was all over, she was standing back, 
 and he was shaking the hand of the other girl, the 
 ecstatic Gabrielle. Gabrielle who was as ecstatic 
 as all the litanies of the world, and far too uplifted 
 to notice a cataclysm happening under her tilted 
 nose. 
 
 It had taken, not a score of centuries after all; 
 only moments. That immense crisis, that tremen- 
 dous reunion, that breathless recognition had 
 occupied only seconds. Even now the gay and 
 brisk grandmother had not completed her gra- 
 cious gesture of greeting and general introduction; 
 a gesture part teapot, part hand that held it. It 
 had taken only that brief feckless space of time, 
 the wave of a friendly teapot and yet all that 
 had happened in that space. 
 
 216
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 In just another moment they were sitting, and 
 all were chatting and smiling and talking delight- 
 ful nonsense as if nothing had happened, as if two 
 mighty spiritual forces, souls, had not come 
 together in immense impact. 
 
 "But of course," reflected Peter, looking across 
 at Phillippa, chatting against the superlatives of 
 Gabrielle, but looking, yes, looking pale, "but 
 of course they don't know. Only she and I know. 
 Only she and I shared that experience." 
 
 And as he thought this Phillippa looked across 
 at him ; it was a quick fluttering look of fear and 
 wonderment and bewildered questioning. 
 
 There was no doubt she knew, and that now she 
 recognized that her knowledge was shared by 
 him.
 
 XXXI 
 
 POSSIBLY the walk home in the evening 
 with Phillippa was not a decree of fate. 
 It was perhaps merely an accident of 
 politeness, though it might have been an act of 
 Mrs. Waymsley. 
 
 After all, what else could they do? Social 
 Euclid foreordained that walk. If two persons 
 are to return home in the same direction and at 
 much the same hour, it is merely mathematics that 
 they go together. Mrs. Waymsley, and maybe 
 her eyes twinkled, had drawn attention to the 
 arithmetical fact. 
 
 So they walked home together in the quiet end 
 of the day and through the gentle lanes, and they 
 spoke that little that is not enough. 
 
 They began by speaking a good deal. They 
 began by pretending they were perfectly capable 
 of carrying on the spontaneous combustion of 
 lively talk that made the home of the grand- 
 mother a spritely and bustling place. But the com- 
 bustion was not spontaneous. Soon it was not 
 even combustion. 
 
 218
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 The dancing flames of talk flickered lower and 
 lower as they went along, and at length died alto- 
 gether, and they walked side by side in the leafy 
 Hampshire lanes still humid from the storm, still 
 dewed with the holy water of St. Swithun's bap- 
 tism, in silence. And not in an ordinary silence, 
 but in a silence that tingled with unsaid things. 
 Silence did not quell the exultance that had been 
 his all day; it merely curbed and fretted his 
 breasting spirit. 
 
 They walked on thinking their own thoughts, 
 which were undoubtedly exactly the same thoughts, 
 and they could say nothing. They shared the 
 immensities and they could not exchange opinions 
 on them. 
 
 "And we ought to be talking," Peter told the 
 delicate cameo of her profile. He cried it with the 
 utmost protest, but in a voice that only his heart 
 could hear. "We ought to be speaking of the 
 whole of this mystical, mysterious business. We 
 ought to join hands as we joined hands before, 
 and we ought to be telling each other what it 
 means. Why I am to help you. What we must 
 do, what we must attain to work out the destiny so 
 obviously set us last night. It ought to be 
 supremely simple. It ought to be as natural and 
 as simple as saying 'How d'y do !' And it's im- 
 possible." 
 
 219
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 He stole glances at her as she moved beside 
 him. How well she carried herself; how pretty 
 she was moving forward like that with a slim, 
 erect, irresistible fluency. 
 
 He noted her face, the vague troubled wonder- 
 ment of her air. He could detect the sense of 
 discomposure, of trepidation not in the least hid- 
 den by her chin-high pose of serenity. He noted 
 her pallor, and read in her features the stress of 
 the night. And that goaded him. Was he not 
 there to alter all that? 
 
 "You're thinking of it," he cried aloud in the 
 silence of his soul. "Of course you're thinking 
 of what happened in the night. How can you 
 think of anything else? How can I? How can 
 we be anything else but absorbed by it? How can 
 we, for a moment, keep silent about it? But 
 we do. We don't speak. We daren't speak." 
 
 They walked on. Now and then they did play 
 up to the conventions. They did pretend with a 
 show of coolness to make a slight to-do about 
 things that did not matter. She, for instance, 
 called his attention to a riot of flowers. 
 
 "Look," she said with her air of whimsical, 
 ironic and smiling friendliness driven ("literally 
 whipped," scowled Peter), to the surface of her 
 lips and eyes. "Look, did you ever see such a 
 
 220
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 splashing about of herb-trinity? Only . . . 
 only, perhaps you don't call it herb-trinity?" 
 
 "I call it, as a matter of fact," said Peter with 
 his whimsical, quizzical air driven and no doubt 
 literally whipped to the surface of his lips and 
 eyes, "I call it heart's-ease; or, if you like, three- 
 faces-under-a-hood or even kit-run-about." 
 
 "Oh," she breathed, "oh, and not," and per- 
 haps the effort was not so difficult now "and not 
 pansy?" 
 
 "Not now. Not in public. If Eden is part of 
 my public, never pansy." 
 
 "But when Eden is about, you call it all that?" 
 her air had a genuine note of artificial specula- 
 tion; she carried it off. Her laughing, whimsical 
 pose said, "I only ask you this as a matter of in- 
 formation; not as a matter of teasing." 
 
 He answered in her own manner, 
 
 "Not at all. When Eden is about I call it 
 just love in idleness." 
 
 "The best name of all," she laughed. "Eden 
 taught you that?" 
 
 "Yes. He quoted Shakespeare to prove he 
 was correct." She opened her eyes in wonder- 
 ment. "It's quite true. He stood looking down 
 at the flowers, as though they were to listen too, 
 and said very softly, but you know his way, 
 
 221
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 'Yet marked I, where the bolt of Cupid fell, 
 
 It fell upon a little western flower, 
 
 Before milk-white, now purpled with love's wound, 
 
 And maidens call it "Love-in-idleness." ' 
 
 He said that, and smiled at me, yes, and at the 
 flowers, and gave me all the other names off- 
 hand. He was generous. No need to restrict 
 me to one because it was his favorite." 
 
 "But but " wondered Phillippa. "Eden 
 
 and Shakespeare . . . where is that from; I for- 
 get?" 
 
 "I asked the same question. Eden didn't 
 know." 
 
 "But, surely, if he quoted . . ." the astonish- 
 ment was soft, laughing, genuine. 
 
 "No, Eden has his own method. He doesn't 
 read Shakespeare for drama. He reads him for 
 flowers. He goes through Shakespeare from 
 end to end, picking out the flowers. He never 
 notices the plays. As a matter of fact it's from 
 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' ' 
 
 "I shall look it up. It's quite wonderful and 
 queer." 
 
 "I did look it up. And isn't Eden always won- 
 derful and queer? He has plundered all the 
 blossoms out of the classics. Did you know 
 Spenser said the fairest things about the fragrant 
 eglantine ? You didn't. All you know, all I know, 
 
 222
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 to the good of Spenser is 'The Faerie Queene.' 
 Eden didn't see 'The Faerie Queene' for the 
 flowers in it." 
 
 They talked of Eden. They talked of Eden 
 more than Eden warranted. They drew out 
 Eden as a subject. They stretched him lamen- 
 tably thin. But even Eden was not eternal. In 
 a short time they were again walking without 
 words. 
 
 They walked stoically, thinking. Peter groaned 
 in spirit. 
 
 "Of all the folly; of all the crass, conventional 
 stony-visioned folly, the folly of human beings is 
 the crassest. We walk here side by side, touch- 
 ing each other, almost. We walk alone, we share 
 the same perplexities, the same thoughts and it 
 is as though a wall of illimitable length and a 
 million miles high stood between us. We talk 
 of Eden. We talk of a thousand million things 
 that do not matter. We cannot talk of the one, 
 supreme, tremendous doing that matters." 
 
 And after a score of strides, 
 
 "Eden wonderful and queer indeed. What 
 could be more wonderfully queer than the baf- 
 fling enigma of human companionship? We can 
 join hands in a myriad encounters, and in a thou- 
 sand ways can get in touch, but we can never pene- 
 trate. Always this imponderable curtain is about 
 
 223
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 us; we romp outside the curtain with our fellows 
 and they never come inside. We have sight and 
 tongue and hearing and telegraphy and telephony 
 and the marvel of the wireless waves but we 
 have nothing that will enable soul to speak to 
 soul. We are unfathomable mysteries to each 
 other." 
 
 And forty paces on he cried to his heart: 
 
 "It's unendurable. I wish I dare speak. I 
 wish I dare ask her how I can begin to help." 
 
 But he could not speak. He dare not, and a 
 little way on they walked into the distraction of 
 the sun. 
 
 The neat Hampshire lane bent and went down 
 hill, and facing them they saw the sea and the 
 sun. 
 
 They stood and gazed entranced downhill, 
 where the land appeared to fling wide its arms 
 in absolute surrender to the sun, where smooth 
 grass swept in a stupendous line to the marvel- 
 ous mobility of the sea, where sea swept to the 
 limits of the world in a shining, heaving, flashing, 
 glowing floor of sun flame. They gazed, and 
 Peter, the spirit within him swelling up until it 
 was ready to burst its way beyond endurable lim- 
 its, cried out, 
 
 "Isn't it entirely gorgeous? It's Intipampa, 
 the Field of the Sun, as I live. The veritable 
 
 224
 
 Field of the Sun, nothing else, nothing less. Isn't 
 it ... isn't it leagues beyond the range of any 
 spoken language? Could one say what one felt 
 about that in anything less than music?'* 
 
 The girl Phillippa gazed down at the splendor 
 of the sun. She did not speak. As Peter had 
 said, it was a veritable field of the sun. The 
 grass went down to the sea without a tree upon 
 its surface, though it was enclosed by walls of 
 trees, the broad, gently palpitating sea- continued 
 the flat surface of the grass.* Poised above the 
 horizon, the sun, a molten flame, poured itself 
 out on this huge field. 
 
 "Isn't it even beyond music?" Phillippa asked. 
 "I should imagine that even the musicians would 
 despair of getting that into their songs." 
 
 Her soft, quick lips were a little parted at the 
 sheer wonder of the sight. The pallor which 
 had marked her face was transfigured into radi- 
 ance by the golden night beating upon her. 
 
 She looked, Petef reflected, as though she her- 
 self were one with the sun; a saint of the sun; a 
 natural part of it; absorbed by it; throwing out 
 its very light with a noble and clear spirituality. 
 Peter considered the view. 
 
 "It's miraculous," he murmured in delight. 
 "It's breathless. It's a pageant of the glory of 
 the sun. All the sun is poured into it, concen- 
 
 225
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 trated upon it. It's heaped up and brimming 
 over with the sun. We are regarding the won- 
 der of the ancients, Intipampa." 
 
 He said this aloud, but he also wanted to cry 
 aloud, 
 
 "That is what lies beyond the trees. That is 
 what we are to reach, you and I. That is the 
 meaning of our meeting last night." 
 
 Perhaps his eyes conveyed this message too ar- 
 dently. For she looked up and her glance was 
 caught in his, and hung there embarrassed. And 
 under the golden sheen of the sun the gentle glow 
 of her blood mounted up in her throat and cheek. 
 
 She turned quickly to the field of sunlight. 
 Turned hurriedly, she was summoning her re- 
 serves. She nodded at it, as though bowing it a 
 gentle thanks for the pleasure it gave her. She 
 walked on. 
 
 She walked without speaking for a full min- 
 ute, then, with a very fair attempt ("colossal 
 feminine bluff," scoffed Peter) at her old, bright, 
 smiling, suggestively ironic attitude, 
 
 "It's probably merely refraction after all," she 
 told him. "The scientists would soon shatter 
 your theories. They would reduce your wonder 
 of the ancients to its native elements. An over- 
 plus of the water in the air, a clear sky and a 
 bright sun. That is all it is to the scientists." 
 
 226
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Only, we aren't scientists, not creatures who 
 see only chemical experiments in the wonders of 
 the earth," said Peter. "We are common peo- 
 ple who just see glory in the sky." 
 
 She smiled, she smiled partly at his retort, 
 partly at having steered away from danger. 
 
 "What is Intipampa?" she asked. 
 
 "Just what that is," said Peter, deliberately 
 holding back information to punish the duplicity of 
 her smile. "It means the Field of the Sun." 
 
 "Why does it mean it and to whom does it 
 mean it? What is the story behind it?" 
 
 "I shall have to mount my hobby?" 
 
 "But hobbies are meant to be mounted." 
 
 "It is Intipampa, just the Field of the Sun. 
 The real Intipampa was in Peru, at Cuzo. Not 
 a flat field like that, I am. afraid, for I tricked my 
 symbol to fit my view; but a great garden. It 
 was a great garden of gold, standing beneath a 
 great temple of gold. Standing over it, tower- 
 ing above it on a hill, was the Town of Gold, the 
 Coricancha. Truly of gold, you know, a vast 
 temple of the Sun god, covered over the whole 
 surface of its walls with plates of polished gold. 
 And this garden of gold stretched away beneath 
 it. And that was truly gold, too. All the flow- 
 ers were of shining gold; all the shrubs and the 
 trees were gold, even the insects and the birds, and 
 
 227
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 tHe animals, so they tell, were of gold. And the 
 tools, too, the spades and rakes and hoes, and 
 trowels, they were gold. All things were of gold 
 in that golden garden which stood beneath the 
 Town of Gold. And beating down upon it was 
 the gold of the sun, whom the ancient people 
 of the Incas worshipped. Can't you see the flash 
 and shine- of that garden? Can't you see the 
 tremble of light that swept among the golden 
 trees as the leaves moved in the sun? They 
 adored with a large gesture in those* days and in 
 those lands," 
 
 They walked on quietly. 
 
 "They don't mention that among the wonders 
 of the world," she said. "It was a wonder of 
 the world for all that. Oh, it must have been- 
 worth seeing. . . -.- They tell me," she obviously 
 indicated the Waymsleys, "you are not going back 
 to South America." 
 
 "I am not going back," said Peter, and, sud- 
 denly, he felt he had his chance. "I can't, you 
 know. It is forbidden." 
 
 "Oh," she said, and her sympathy was very 
 real. "I'm truly sorry." 
 
 "There was a time when I was truly sorry, 
 too," said Peter deliberately. "I am not sorry 
 to-day." 
 
 22?
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 He looked at her, their eyes caught, he thought 
 her breath caught, too. 
 
 "Malaria forbids," said Peter, not helping, her 
 out but deliberately leading her into the way he 
 wanted her to go. 
 
 "Oh, South America gave you malaria?" 
 
 "It did," answered Peter, now finding the turn 
 of the talk very much to his purpose. "But 
 South America wasn't the reason. South Amer- 
 ica merely introduced the malaria. It was the 
 beginning of a habit in malaria." 
 
 "Yes, I remember," she said gently. "They 
 told me you had it again in the* Dardanelles, and 
 then in Palestine. But* if you had had it in South 
 America, how came you to run the risk of the 
 East?" 
 
 "I wasn't actually consulted. In fact, I am 
 inclined to think that my having had malaria in 
 South America was a direct inducement to the 
 powers that be to send me East; on the principle, 
 you see, that if I got it I wouldn't be meeting the 
 unexpected. And they probably transferred me 
 to Palestine* for the same good but inexplicable 
 reason. 'This man/ I can hear them say, 'knows 
 all about malaria. We will send him where he 
 can make full use of his knowledge.' ' 
 
 "You can make a joke of it?" 
 229
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "I can to-day," said Peter, and he looked at 
 her, and she glanced away and said quickly, 
 
 "But they sent you to France in the end, didn't 
 they?" she said quietly. 
 
 "Yes, in the spring of 1918. But there I was 
 rather an irritant. You see, their wisdom had 
 had its wise side. In the East they were accus- 
 tomed to malaria. In the west, they were not so 
 accustomed, and I had the habit by then. When 
 other men felt chilly, I caught fever, and that 
 worried the' doctors. I was a thorn in their flesh. 
 And then I got a ridiculous wound, an absurd 
 scratch in the advance towards Cambrai, and that 
 trivial thing became a storm center and I had the 
 fever again. That was too much for them; they 
 ridded themselves of me once and for all." 
 
 They were near the gate of the Dower House 
 now. 
 
 "I have had malaria cases," she told him. "I 
 have been working in a hospital during the war. 
 And you you can live down malaria." 
 
 "The doctors told me that, too. I had only 
 to follow their ruling and I would remain, with 
 occasional slight lapses, to all intents and purposes 
 an ordinary, fairly healthy citizen of the British 
 Isles. But that was the basis of their ruling, I 
 must remain a citizen of the British Isles." 
 
 "And not go to South America?" 
 230
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "They are fatalistic concerning South Amer- 
 
 ica." 
 
 "It is a tragedy," she said to him standing at 
 her gate, her face aglow with sympathy. "I can't 
 tell you how sorry I am." 
 
 "It is not a tragedy," he told her, looking at 
 her boldly. "I thought it was a tragedy. I 
 played at it being a tragedy. I pretended that 
 my life was shattered, that without South Amer- 
 ica there was nothing left for me but to bury 
 myself away. To go out of life and hide myself 
 away from the haunts and habits and compan- 
 ionships and the eyes of men. I played on that. 
 I stamped in gloomy zeal across my narrow lit- 
 tle stage. But now I am inclined to think it 
 wasn't tragedy at all. I think, almost with cer- 
 tainty, that that which I thought was malice was 
 merely opportunity. We are inclined to grumble 
 at Fate, but sometimes the very acts we think 
 hardest are merely means to an end. Fate, as I 
 see it now, denied me my work in South America 
 because it had something for me to do in Hamp- 
 shire. I railed against Fate because I didn't un- 
 derstand her workings. But last night I was 
 made to understand." 
 
 He said this deliberately, facing her as she 
 looked at him. Her eyes had not left his face, 
 and the look of perplexity and fear was still in 
 
 231
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 her glance. Her lips were parted and under the 
 stress of her emotions she found it difficult to 
 speak. 
 
 But she made a great effort. 
 
 "How did you learn that?" she began, and 
 stopped, and began anew, "what did you 
 learn . . . ?" and stopped again. 
 
 "I learnt that a life that seemed to be useless 
 could yet be useful to some one else. I found 
 out that I could help, and, I think, was sent here 
 to help some one who sorely needed such aid." 
 
 Still she stood and looked at him, frightened 
 and incapable of adequate expression, even her 
 eyes seemed to appeal to him for silence, as 
 though she feared to touch on things to which this 
 talk must lead. She trembled slightly, and she 
 did not speak. 
 
 "I learnt all this last night during the storm," 
 Peter insisted, and the soft flutter of a frightened 
 breath came from her lips. 
 
 "What could you have learnt?" she breathed. 
 
 "I think you know what I learnt," he answered. 
 
 "Last night in the storm, I looked from my 
 window." 
 
 "You saw me," she cried in distress. "I didn't 
 know." 
 
 "I saw you . . . but is that the thing that mat- 
 7.32
 
 GREEN UADIES 
 
 ters? Something else happened which matters 
 more. Do you remember?" 
 
 Again there was that fluttering and fearful 
 breath, but after an instant she nodded her head 
 a little, to show that she understood to what he 
 referred. 
 
 "I took your hand," said Peter slowly. "You 
 remember that, and I promised I would hold it 
 until I had taken you away from all the things 
 that make your life so tragic." 
 
 And Peter, as he said that, took her hand, so 
 cold and small and weak, as though it were life- 
 less. He lifted it to his lips, and for a moment it 
 lay against the warmth of his mouth. 
 
 Then he let it go, and stood erect, facing her. 
 
 She stood pale and frail and slight, her eyes 
 bright with pain and fear. She stood thus for a 
 moment, and then she opened her lips as though 
 to speak, but failed to utter a sound. It was 
 only with an effort she presently said, 
 
 "It's too big. I can't understand it." 
 
 At the sound of her voice she seemed to awake 
 to the realities of the moment. She said to Peter 
 quickly, 
 
 "It was a dream." 
 
 "You held my hand," Peter told her. 
 
 She looked at him, 
 
 233
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Yes, I held your hand. I can't understand 
 it, but I cannot deny that." 
 
 "And there is some big sorrow in your life?" 
 
 "Yes," she answered in pain. 
 
 "Then, isn't that the reason I am to help?" 
 
 Then suddenly she was alive, speaking with ve- 
 hemence. 
 
 "No, that cannot be the reason. That is 
 where it seems so wrong. You cannot help me. 
 It is impossible for you or any one to help me." 
 
 She stood still, gazing over his head, her face 
 quick with sorrow, 
 
 "There is no means of helping me." 
 
 She stood thus for a moment. Then she 
 turned and walked along the garden path into 
 the house. She did not speak again.
 
 XXXII 
 
 PETER JOHN spent a wretched evening 
 and endured a sleepless night. 
 At the earliest reputable moment next 
 morning and naturally that did not occur be- 
 fore breakfast he had the telephone switched 
 through to his study, and from that chamber of 
 discretion called up the Dower House. 
 
 A woman, the housekeeper, Peter thought, or 
 even the mystical Mrs. Patricot herself, an- 
 swered, and he asked for Miss Phillippa. He 
 had to ask twice. The entity at the other end 
 of the wire was one of those people who treat 
 telephone conversations as riddles. She uttered 
 the name "Miss Phillippa" several times, as 
 though she had to get its full, legal significance 
 before committing herself, and Peter in his im- 
 patience, cried, "Yes, yes, she is staying at the 
 Dower House, you know." Even to that 
 prompting the distant creature said, "Is she?" as 
 though mention of the dooming fact had put her 
 on her guard. 
 
 Peter, in his exasperation, was spelling the 
 2 35
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 name, when a new voice intervened, and he was 
 speaking to Phillippa herself. 
 
 He spoke to her with a certain air of embar- 
 rassment and helplessness. If he could have seen 
 her before him it would have been easier to make 
 his very simple request. But the telephone is 
 the daughter of the Sphinx. Only disembodied 
 words come over it, and it is impossible to tell the 
 mental temper of the speaker. Peter was baf- 
 fled. He wanted to know exactly what were her 
 emotions. He wanted to know exactly where 
 the turmoil of her thoughts (and there must ob- 
 viously have been such a turmoil) had carried her. 
 He wanted to know how she regarded him; did 
 she think of him as an intruder on the privacy of 
 her sorrow, or as one who had a right to so in- 
 trude. He wanted to read in her face, in her at- 
 titude, in the changing emotion of her eyes, in 
 her gestures, the answers to a thousand ques- 
 tions he had asked himself all night. And merely 
 a cool, self-possessed voice asked across the wire 
 who it was speaking. 
 
 Peter John wanted to protest, 
 
 "Oh, but you must know, who else could it pos- 
 sibly be. . . ." 
 
 Instead he floundered in the way of some peo- 
 ple when the intimidating eye of the receiver 
 stares at them unblinkingly, that he was John, 
 
 236
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Mr. Peter John, of "Green Ladies," you know, 
 and he began a rather damp and spluttery ex- 
 planation of how he had called up and couldn't 
 make some one understand. It was the usual 
 fatuity of a nervous caller. 
 
 When he had made his name known there had 
 been the first sign of agitation. There had been 
 a pause, slight and distinct, then, 
 
 "Oh . . . you want to speak to me?" 
 
 "I want to speak to you, and I want to see 
 you," said Peter, abruptly urgent. 
 
 Again there was a brief pause, and Peter added 
 on a note of insistence, 
 
 "I must see you. Things can't be left as they 
 are." 
 
 He was ready for a battle. He was ready to 
 urge and argue and persuade. He was ready to 
 beat down all her protestations. And quite un- 
 expectedly he heard her say in a voice of decision: 
 
 "Very well. I will wait for you on the cliff." 
 
 "Now?" 
 
 "Now." 
 
 Peter for a moment felt nonplussed. He 
 stared at the telephone wondering whether he 
 would say anything more, whether so laconic an 
 exchange had satisfied all the requirements of the 
 situation. Then he said unnecessarily, 
 
 237
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "I shall start at once," and hung up the ear- 
 piece. 
 
 But her decision had chilled him. It seemed 
 ominous. If she had temporized he would have 
 taken courage from her uncertainty, but her ac- 
 ceptance of his demand spoke of an inflexible 
 purpose. Her mind was made up, just as it had 
 been yesterday, when she left him to go into her 
 house. She was only ready to meet him because 
 she was unshakable, and because she felt it her 
 duty to prevent him from going any further. 
 
 She was being kind to him, he felt sure. She 
 had understood how things were with him. The 
 meeting was no doubt to be a painful one to her, 
 but she had the courage to face him frankly and 
 to check any hope that might be springing up 
 within him. The interview would hurt her, she 
 would endure it rather than he should go on and 
 suffer. 
 
 He walked along the cliff dreading the inter- 
 view now. During the night his dread had been 
 tempered by the ambiguity of the situation. He 
 had explained away the firmness of her attitude 
 in a hundred ways. 
 
 He had, he told himself, put his case very clum- 
 sily yesterday. He had dwelt too much on the 
 strange experience they had undergone, and too 
 little on his own love for her. Or, maybe, he 
 
 238
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 had startled her by the abruptness of his attack, 
 he had thrust his way in on her when she was still 
 a prey to the many emotions begot of abnormal 
 happenings. There were a hundred reasons. 
 
 All these explanations of her attitude had risen 
 to the surface of his mind during the night, and 
 as the night wore on his desire to see her again 
 and speak with her had grown within him. If 
 he saw her, talked with her, persuaded her; if 
 he could be near her arguing and pleading, he 
 might gain the hearing of her heart. 
 
 If he could speak with her he felt he might dis- 
 pel the idea which seemed to him the chief bar- 
 rier between them, the idea, held perhaps with 
 the tragic exaggeration of youth, that her part in 
 life was a tragic one, and that the rest of her ex- 
 istence was limited by the boundaries of her sor- 
 row. Whatever the cause he felt that he would 
 be able to convince her that under no circum- 
 stances did such a finality exist. He could vis- 
 ualize no tragedy from which escape was im- 
 possible. 
 
 As night traveled into day he had become more 
 and more desirous of speaking to her, and of put- 
 ting his case to her in a way more definite, ardent 
 and complete. He was supported in his resolve 
 by the strange mystical experience they had un- 
 dergone together. That must mean something. 
 
 239
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 That could not be denied, and he felt that it 
 pointed to a happy consummation. 
 
 But as he walked along the cliff his spiritual 
 force dwindled. He felt helpless. The two 
 nights of exhaustion were, no doubt, already tell- 
 ing upon his strength. And her decisive accept- 
 ance over the telephone had sapped his courage. 
 
 She had made up her mind already. She 
 would not allow him the intimacy of aiding her. 
 Her will was firm. How could he hope to over- 
 come her purpose? 
 
 It was with dread that he drew near her house. 
 It was with a shrinking spirit that he saw her on 
 the cliff, sitting and waiting for him. 
 
 She sat there quietly, calmly. Her self-pos- 
 session was profound. She was already master 
 of the field. 
 
 She was pale. The strain of the night had 
 left its mark on her, but she was composed, too. 
 The smile she gave him was but a pallid sister of 
 her usual friendly greeting, but it was steady and 
 assured. He felt that argument would not pre- 
 vail against her. 
 
 He flung himself down on the grass beside her, 
 and looked at her. He had thought of many 
 things to say as he came along. Now he felt 
 that nearly all he had to say was useless. In his 
 
 240
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 despair he groaned; he turned his face squarely 
 to her; he cried out, 
 
 "Phillippa . . . did you understand that all I 
 tried to say to you yesterday evening was only 
 that I loved you?" 
 
 She threw at him a startled, frightened glance. 
 Her composure vanished completely. She had 
 been prepared for reasoning, she had not been 
 prepared for this. 
 
 "I did it clumsily," Peter told her, in his own 
 emotion taking little heed of hers. "I did it fool- 
 ishly and stupidly. All I wanted to say was 'I 
 love you.' ' 
 
 "Oh no no " she cried in pain. 
 
 He did not heed her. 
 
 "I love you, nothing else matters. I got it all 
 tangled up with this strange thing we have gone 
 through. It seemed all mixed up with that mo- 
 ment of the storm, oh, and all the other moments 
 that went before, that first meeting on the fringe 
 of the pines, even. They are all part of it, but 
 the whole of it is that I love you. That is what 
 I tried to say to you, my dear, and I said it so 
 clumsily." 
 
 She was looking at him almost with horror. 
 She put out her hand to stop him, but he went on. 
 
 "I love you," he said again. "That is the 
 whole of it. Perhaps I am to help you, I think 
 
 241
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 I am. I think everything that has happened, my 
 disappointment about America, my coming to 
 Hampshire, that moment I took your hand in the 
 storm, has meant this, but before all these things 
 I love you. You come first. It is you and you 
 only who matter." 
 
 She had turned her face away from him. She 
 was looking out to sea. She was deadly quiet. 
 
 "Did I put it badly yesterday? I think I did," 
 Peter went on. "I spoke as a champion, as one 
 who wanted to help only. I want to help, but 
 that is nothing. That is only part of it. I want 
 you more than any help I can give." 
 
 Then after a pause, 
 
 "I began loving you under the trees. I have 
 found new things to love in you every day." 
 
 She sat rigidly still, staring out to sea. 
 
 Peter stopped talking. He watched her face. 
 He knew what her answer would be. He felt he 
 had known it all the while. In a full minute she 
 answered him, not looking away from the sea. 
 
 "I wanted to prevent this," she said softly. 
 
 "You couldn't," he told her. "It had to be 
 said." 
 
 "I came to meet you to prevent this." 
 
 Peter was silent for a moment. He did not 
 feel pain. His faculties were entirely unre- 
 sponsive, 
 
 242
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "You mean you do not love me?" 
 
 "I am married," she answered, still in her soft 
 voice, still staring out to sea. And at that sen- 
 tence the whole fabric of his dreams collapsed. 
 There was nothing left to be said. It forbade 
 love, it forbade help, it forbade everything. It 
 multiplied his experience, the experience they 
 both seemed to have gone through. It exposed 
 it as mere fantasy. How could he help her at 
 all if she had a husband? The meaning which 
 had seemecl so clear now became meaningless. 
 
 Peter was dumb. He could say nothing. He 
 could neither protest nor ask questions. He did 
 not feel anger or agony. He was dumb. Every- 
 thing, her voice, her astonishing revelation seemed 
 part of a vast unreality. It seemed to have a 
 blank inevitability; as though he had known all 
 along that what he desired could not be. So 
 they sat for many minutes. 
 
 Presently she spoke again, in that quiet voice 
 that told of her stress of spirit, 
 
 "I have turned my back on my marriage for 
 years. I have tried to forget it. I have never 
 spoken of it, nor allowed other people to speak 
 of it. I have tried to wipe it out of my memory. 
 It never occurred to me that it might lead to 
 this." 
 
 She stopped speaking for a moment. 
 243
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "It is too late to ask you to forgive me," she 
 said. "I cannot forgive myself." 
 
 Peter was still part of the vast unreality where 
 there was neither pain, nor feeling, nor sentient 
 thought. 
 
 "It is your tragedy?" he asked evenly. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "It explains a great deal of what I could not 
 understand about you and about 'Green Ladies,' ' 
 he said, his mind branching off in an inexplicable 
 manner to what had been the main mystery under- 
 lying the letting of his house. And he asked, 
 
 "You are, I suppose, Mrs. Patricot?" 
 
 "Yes," she said again. 
 
 Peter John presently rose to his feet. 
 
 "You are right," he said dully. "It is all 
 wrong, that affair in the storm. It can have no 
 meaning at all. Fate has played a trick on us 
 both." 
 
 She stood up before him, she was white, only 
 her high courage kept her erect and self-pos- 
 sessed. 
 
 "A cruel trick," she cried, her hands clasping 
 themselves tightly before her. "How I have 
 hurt you," she whispered. 
 
 Peter glanced at her and tried to smile. 
 
 "It has hurt us both. You have not come out 
 of this without pain . . . and you had much to 
 
 244
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 bear before." Amid his unresponsive wits he 
 groped for a sentence to explain his lack of ex- 
 pression. "There is no need for us to say any- 
 thing or to forgive anything, you or I," he said 
 at length. "We can understand what has hap- 
 pened. It is not of our asking, nor is it of our 
 doing. We both have much to bear, and you 
 will have to bear more than I. You have your 
 own sorrow, and now the thought of mine." 
 
 They moved by common impulse towards the 
 path to her house. 
 
 "It is a cruel trick," he said. "We both have 
 to suffer." 
 
 Without speaking again, each walked their 
 way. 
 
 He went back to "Green Ladies"; he looked 
 at the serene beauty of the house and thought 
 it deceitful and smug; he looked at the shining 
 beauty of the Island and the sea and thought their 
 beauty hateful; he glanced at the pines and he 
 said, 
 
 "You have led me astray. You made me feel 
 I could help. How can I help? The only way 
 to help her is to rescue her from her tragedy. Her 
 marriage is her tragedy no man can rescue her 
 from that. You have led me astray. You have 
 made me think that by loving her I could lead 
 her away from darkness to happiness, the hap- 
 
 245
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 piness of love that blinds one to sorrows. Loving 
 her. ... I have simply added to her tragedy. 
 I have made for myself a new tragedy." 
 
 He sat in a chair, deep in the darkness of mis- 
 ery.
 
 XXXIII 
 
 FOR three days Peter John moved dully 
 about "Green Ladies." 
 It seemed to him that he had lost all 
 feeling and sensibility. He felt no sense of trag- 
 edy; he was not angry, he did not rebel, he sim- 
 ply did not feel at all. His mind was listless and 
 apathetic. There is a drug which, when admin- 
 istered, deprives the sufferer of all active feeling: 
 he can feel nothing, neither pain nor pleasure can 
 react upon him. In a waking dream he knows 
 all that is going on around him and is not touched 
 by it. In this twilight of the mind Peter lived 
 through the three days. 
 
 Only vaguely the beauty of "Green Ladies" 
 and the views, the proximity of Phillippa troubled 
 him. These things did not hurt. There was 
 none of that divine poignancy about them to sting 
 him awake. Only a degree above this numb- 
 ness did he feel that there was a wrongness in the 
 whole situation. He ought not to be here, he 
 ought never to have come here, his position in this 
 place of beauty was an anachronism. He ought 
 
 247
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 not to be within call of Phillippa, his closeness 
 to her had been throughout the crowning folly 
 of the whole business. For him to continue here, 
 to be always near her, to be ever striking a false 
 note in the whole scheme of life set out in this 
 place, impressed him, even through his indiffer- 
 ence, as being incorrect. 
 
 "I must go away," he told himself without 
 emotion, but he made no attempt to move. He 
 seemed powerless to make such a move. 
 
 He wandered about the house, he sat on the 
 terrace, he walked down to the sea without any 
 sense of accomplishment. He merely drifted, 
 because drifting filled out the hours. He experi- 
 enced no sensations at all in doing these things. 
 
 He knew no trains of consecutive thought. He 
 could not examine what had happened to him, he 
 could not arrive at any order of mind or definite 
 conclusion. He did not try to do so. He made 
 no movement to learn more of the tragedy of 
 Phillippa's life. There must, naturally, be a 
 fuller story than she had told, than she could 
 bring herself to tell. He might get something 
 more of that story from Eden; Mrs. Waymsley, 
 he felt sure, would tell him much that Phillippa 
 would not tell him. But he did not question 
 Eden, he did not call on Mrs. Waymsley. 
 
 Once, when this thought rose insistently, he 
 248
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 shrugged his shoulders, not tragically, merely 
 listlessly. 
 
 "What more need be known beyond the in- 
 superable fact of her marriage?" he asked dully. 
 "Details would be merely embroideries on the un- 
 alterable. They would not mitigate the hope- 
 lessness of the thing." 
 
 The fact of her marriage was final : it destroyed 
 all hope. 
 
 Through all this time he neither loved nor 
 hated Phillippa. She existed solely as an instru- 
 ment of malign fortune. He acknowledged her 
 presence near him, even her meaning to him; he 
 felt that as things were they had no right to move 
 in the same circle, to inflict each other upon each 
 other. But he did not feel this as a reality. He 
 felt he must go away, because it was something 
 that ought to be done; he did not feel any pas- 
 sionate desire to fly this place, nor did he dread 
 the poignancy of* parting. 
 
 She, too, was but a shadow in this world of 
 unreality. She, too, could not spur him awake 
 with emotions of desire and loss. 
 
 It was only gradually that this necessity of 
 moving away merged into something of active 
 need, and then the feeling was one of uneasiness, 
 of slight fretful irritation, rather than of active 
 volition. 
 
 249
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 On the second night he began to dream again 
 of the pine wood. The dream was akin to the 
 first two dreams. Phillippa and he were in the 
 darkness of the wood, struggling through it, hand 
 in hand. They had reached that supreme point 
 of blackness and despair when the powers of the 
 night seemed omnipotent. They were still bat- 
 tling in that dark crisis of the dream, and yet the 
 impressive fact arising from the dream was the 
 promise of happiness beyond, and their certainty 
 of reaching it. 
 
 He dreamed vividly and actually, as though 
 the episode was a thing of the living day, and 
 even when the living day came it seemed su- 
 premely real. 
 
 He frowned at the memory as he sat on the 
 terrace. 
 
 "It is all wrong," he reflected. "It is mis- 
 leading and wrong. I have been led astray by 
 ghosts. It has no meaning and no consummation. 
 It is a mirage only." 
 
 But the dream continued. On the third night 
 he underwent the same experience, and it was 
 more and not less real than before. It seemed 
 as actual and as concrete as life. He woke up 
 feeling that Phillippa and he were truly engaged 
 in a struggle against black misfortune, that they 
 had reached the most desperate moment of their 
 
 250
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 encounter, but, for all that, there was the golden 
 promise beyond, and they had only to fight on to 
 reach the sunlight of happiness. 
 
 During the whole of the following day Peter's 
 discomposure was more dominant than his in- 
 ertia. He could not evade the emotions of his 
 dream. It impinged upon his listlessness. It 
 broke into his vacancies. And always the note 
 that disturbed him most was the dream picture 
 of Phillippa; her vague ethereal tenderness; her 
 slimness; the weak fluttering appeal of her brave 
 and gentle spirit followed him out of the dream 
 into the day. Her reliance on him, her mute and 
 woeful appeal for his help, disturbed him. It 
 gave him an uneasy sense of neglecting a duty, of 
 standing aside from a task he should take up, of 
 neglecting an effort that was to bring her to hap- 
 piness. 
 
 "It is impossible to help her," he said savagely, 
 unconscious that this feeling had stung him near 
 to activity by its reality. And then he realized 
 the force of the disturbing emotion, he stood up 
 and glared at the calm beauty of the house. 
 
 "It's the whole place," he cried. "The very 
 atmosphere of this house is impregnated with her 
 and her sorrow. It conspires against me and 
 against reason. I must go away from it." 
 
 It was "Green Ladies" itself, he felt, that 
 251
 
 drove him forth in the end. Its very associations 
 forced their way into his dreams. While he re- 
 mained there he would always be tormented. On 
 the next day he decided to go. 
 
 He had had his dream of the pine wood again. 
 Again he had taken part in that experience of 
 tragedy and yet of promise. And the dream had 
 been more real, the note of hope more insistent. 
 
 He decided with unmoved fatality to go away, 
 to go back to South America. There was no 
 sense of drama in his decision. He did not think 
 of America as the place that would kill him, but 
 as the place where he might escape 'from it all. 
 No, there was no air of sacrifice in this. South 
 America might be the end of him, but that was 
 merely part of the natural order of things. If 
 it did not end him, there was work to do, and he 
 might as well do it. 
 
 He made his decision and his plan for setting 
 about it without any thrill of spirit. He was a 
 little more awake now. A little more percep- 
 tive, but he was unable to experience the pang of 
 any great emotion. He made up his mind that 
 his first step would be to go to London on the 
 next day. He would see people connected with 
 South American research, discuss the whole mat- 
 ter and fix upon a line of action. He would stay 
 
 252
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 in town collecting the necessary material for his 
 journey, and he would book a passage. 
 
 He even thought, 
 
 "I'll go by Panama. I'll look at the canal." 
 
 There were no arrangements to make for his 
 journey. He would go by train. He would go 
 straight to his London flat, where he had clothes 
 and where there were servants to look after him. 
 There was no need for delay. 
 
 He would probably come to a decision about 
 the future of "Green Ladies" while he was in 
 London. 
 
 But having made up his mind, he did not be- 
 come less unsettled. 
 
 That night the dream of the pine wood came 
 to him more vividly than before. 
 
 It came to him with a force and an intimacy 
 of detail that made it more actual than every day, 
 and its greater reality seemed to be in its prom- 
 ise of hope. In the dream they were no longer 
 struggling in the valley of blackness and despair. 
 They were mounting the side of the valley. They 
 were going on to the promise of happiness. 
 
 Vividly and with an astounding reality this 
 light of promise seemed near to them. They 
 were moving up the side of the valley and the 
 golden light which shone beyond the trees was 
 
 253
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 on their faces and the sound of the sea was very 
 close. 
 
 They were mounting to that glad place of light 
 and sea and wind. It was very near. 
 
 It was with this emotion in his heart that Peter 
 awoke.
 
 XXXIV 
 
 THE vivid memory of the dream, the dis- 
 turbance it caused him, the undercur- 
 rent of altogether reasonless feeling 
 that he was running away from duty it gave, be- 
 trayed Peter into irritation when he found Tris- 
 tram Waymsley on the station platform. 
 
 He did not wish to meet anybody, and on the 
 station less than anywhere else. To meet Tris- 
 tram Waymsley here meant that he would have 
 to go in the train with him, and suffer his com- 
 panionship during the long journey to London. 
 Very decisively, though he had not thought of it 
 before, he knew the one thing he wanted was to 
 be alone. 
 
 He detested the idea that, since they knew each 
 other, they should feel it incumbent to share a 
 compartment. Why should it be? Why should 
 mere acquaintance force them into each other's 
 society? Why couldn't they be as free as stran- 
 gers and after a nod go their own way, and con- 
 fine themselves in their own little cubicle of silence 
 and contemplation on the train? 
 
 255
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 They could not; they played the social com- 
 edy, they nodded to each other; they asked how 
 each other did; only when the grandson said, 
 "Going to town?" did Peter have an impulse 
 towards chicanery. It would be easy to draw 
 this youth, find out if he was going to town, and 
 then say his own destination was Southampton. 
 It was easy to change trains at Southampton. But 
 Peter did nothing of the sort. He said yes he 
 was going to town. 
 
 "So am I," said Tristram; he seemed to range 
 himself beside Peter for the journey, though the 
 train was not signaled yet, and Peter felt that he 
 was insufferable. 
 
 Peter was probably wrong. It is more than 
 likely that Tristram experienced exactly the same 
 distaste of the prospect now before him, for all 
 masculine human nature hates to have people 
 thrust upon it on train journeys. But Peter had 
 been wrong all the morning. 
 
 His apathy had been less protective from the 
 moment the dream ended. He had been rest- 
 less, vague; indefinable emotions had filled him 
 with fretfulness, and his will had been both more 
 alive and more unstable. He had been a prey 
 to irresolution, and he had asked himself if he 
 ought to run away like this, was it altogether nec- 
 
 256
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 essary? Although by conviction he knew it was 
 both right and proper. 
 
 And then for the first time he had known cer- 
 tain keennesses of emotion. Going away hurt 
 him. Now that he was taking the irrevocable 
 step he felt a pang at his severance from "Green 
 Ladies." It disturbed him to realize that he 
 would not walk on the terrace, or see the Island 
 across the water, or look on the trees or Eden's 
 flowers, nor see Eden himself again. He had 
 told Eden he was going to London for a time; he 
 had felt it impossible to tell Eden that he was 
 going away from him for all time. 
 
 Even more acutely he felt going away from 
 Phillippa. It was not a pain of loss, it was rather 
 that putting so great a distance between them dis- 
 turbed him. There would be no chance of see- 
 ing her; no accident would bring him in contact 
 with her; he would be cut off from her completely. 
 Anything might happen to her and he would not 
 know. She might need him, and he would not 
 know. He felt a dread at going away from her. 
 
 He had felt the stirrings of unrest and pain all 
 the morning, and the memory of his dream swept 
 across his mind every now and again, stirring up 
 the unrest into tormenting eddies of worry, as 
 though at the breath of a wind. He did not want 
 human companionship. He was not fit for hu- 
 
 257
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 man companionship. But here he was tied for 
 a journey to this young man. And presently the 
 train came in and they were imprisoned together 
 in an otherwise empty compartment for several 
 hours. 
 
 Peter listened and answered as the other talked, 
 with but a section of his mind. As he listened 
 and answered he was conscious that the train was 
 taking him away from Phillippa and "Green La- 
 dies," and in an indefinable way he had a sense 
 of something being amiss, as though something 
 ought to have happened at the last moment to pre- 
 vent his leaving. Through this vague mist of 
 sensation rather than thought he caught the one 
 word "Phillippa." 
 
 He glanced up at the young man, his attention 
 more alert, his eyes perhaps, asking a question. 
 
 "Oh, not really ill," said the young man. "She 
 is probably only run down. She worked rather 
 hard at her hospital, and it's beginning to show 
 effect now." 
 
 Peter was startled, not violently, but none the 
 less decidedly. Philippa was ill, he hadn't 
 thought of her being ill. He was perturbed. 
 
 "I didn't know she was ill," he said, staring at 
 the youth. "She was quite well the other day, at 
 your place." 
 
 "Oh, I didn't know until I called this morn- 
 258
 
 ing ... of course, she doesn't allow you to tell 
 her she is ill. She's not that sort. She pretends 
 the whole world is just the same as ever, and she 
 is the most unchanging thing in it. But she 
 looked pale. And she has a tired, indifferent 
 manner that isn't her at all. You know, she tries 
 to carry off everything with a high air, as though 
 nothing can touch her, and she is never indiffer- 
 ent . . ." 
 
 He went on describing Phillippa and her atti- 
 tude towards the world. He had his family's 
 habit of making a conversational portrait of 
 every one and everything his eyes encountered. 
 Perhaps he felt, too, that by talking about Phil- 
 lippa, he would not have to talk about the weather. 
 He hated talking about the weather, or anything 
 that was a common topic, and Peter's vague re- 
 sponses had filled him with dread that presently 
 all his subjects would be run through, and he 
 would arrive at the weather by a process of ex- 
 haustion. So, Peter having shown a more ac- 
 tive interest in Phillippa, he let himself go on 
 Phillippa. 
 
 But after hearing she was ill, and how she was 
 ill, Peter's mind had turned inwards again. But 
 it had not lapsed into apathy. There was a 
 tingling sensation of anxiety within him. She was 
 ill, he was telling himself, and he had not known. 
 
 259
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 It seemed unnatural that he did not know. His 
 very instinct, he felt, should have told him of her 
 sickness. His lack of knowledge seemed to him, 
 almost, a reason for bitterness. 
 
 He did not know, but other people knew. 
 These Waymsleys knew. He felt a little stiff 
 towards the young man. It was as though they 
 were in a conspiracy against him. They knew 
 everything about her, and he knew nothing. 
 They had intimacies wtih her that left him out- 
 side. Even her marriage, and her name, and her 
 peculiar position were known to them, and he 
 knew next to nothing. He loved her, and he was 
 the one who knew least. As he thought of that, 
 something stirred sharply within him, and abruptly 
 he thought, 
 
 "Well, at least I can find out something about 
 that." 
 
 He stared at the youth before him, and in the 
 midst of one of that youth's fine, expository sen- 
 tences he asked gruffly, 
 
 "Why did you let me call her Miss Phillippa?" 
 
 The young man broke off and glanced at him 
 in confusion. To his own immense contempt his 
 ingenuous features became tropic in a blush. 
 
 "I don't know." He answered uneasily. 
 "Well, I suppose you shot it at us so suddenly 
 that we were too startled to say anything. ' T 
 
 260
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "You let me call her Miss Phillippa de Pierre, 
 too," said Peter. "You might have pulled me up 
 then." 
 
 "I know, I was going to say something, but 
 my grandmother, you know, shot right across the 
 talk. And then it was all very difficult." 
 
 "You mean the facts of Mrs. Patricot's mar- 
 riage made speaking difficult?" 
 
 "Oh, you know now. Not merely that, but you 
 see we've got into the habit of ignoring it. It's 
 never spoken of. You know what it is in a place 
 like this, if there's an arrangement one falls into 
 it and it becomes second nature. I really haven't 
 heard the name of Patricot for years. You see we 
 always call her Phillippa, and all the people we 
 know call her Phillippa. There's nobody we 
 come in contact with to call her anything else." 
 (Peter understood that, he was the outsider, the 
 newcomer.) "The servants, like Eden and the 
 country people, have called her Miss Phillippa 
 from the year dot, they never really had a chance 
 to call her anything else." 
 
 "Didn't it strike you as strange that I should 
 be ignorant of the name of my own landlord?" 
 
 The youth smiled. 
 
 "Deucedly queer. But I thought there might 
 be a reason for it, and you know, my grand- 
 mother seemed to want to keep you in the dark, 
 
 261
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 anyhow I thought so, and so did Gabrielle, though 
 I don't know why. ' 
 
 "I do now," said Peter, allowing a smile to 
 escape him, for he saw that that vivid old Machi- 
 avelli of a grandmother was connected with the 
 mystery of his landlord. And the smile spurred 
 the grandson to self-confession. 
 
 "And then inside us we guessed you'd hear 
 about it in time. As you have." 
 
 "As I have," and for no definite reason Peter 
 felt a thrust of pain at the bitterness of his knowl- 
 edge. "Even now I know little enough. The 
 marriage wasn't a happy one? That seems im- 
 plied." 
 
 "Happy!" cried the youth in astonishment. 
 
 "Good God, no!" 
 
 "They didn't get on together?" 
 
 The youth stared in wonder at the other's ig- 
 norance. 
 
 "He was an appalling brute," he cried, vehe- 
 mently. 
 
 It was Peter's turn to stare in astonishment. 
 
 "An unspeakable brute, the rankest of cads," 
 cried the youth, his vehemence carrying him away 
 before he saw the fascinated gaze of Peter upon 
 him. Then feeling perhaps that he had plunged 
 deeper than a grandmother might desire, he 
 added, "If what I hear is true." 
 
 262
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Peter ignored that; he demanded in a voice 
 which spoke of the new tempest which had sprung 
 up within him at the shock of this knowledge, 
 
 "But how . . . how?" He had not thought 
 of the husband. Phillippa was unhappily mar- 
 ried and living apart from Patricot, that much 
 went without saying, and it was tragedy enough; 
 but that there should be something darker in the 
 marriage, that her husband should be a black- 
 guard, that the evil of her marriage should be 
 an active evil, was a shock to him. 
 
 The intensity of his voice put the grandson 
 further on guard. 
 
 "Oh, in every way," he temporized. "He was 
 a brute; he was unclean and cruel . . . and . . . 
 well, brute all through, so I have heard." 
 
 Again Peter ignored that and struck at the es- 
 sentials. 
 
 "But how?" he insisted. "If he was all that, 
 how did she come to marry him? What was the 
 whole reason of it?" 
 
 The youth felt on safer ground. 
 
 "That is beyond me altogether. I was only a 
 kid when she married. I wasn't taking much no- 
 tice. I remember her marrying. I was at 
 school, and there were mumps, so I didn't come 
 down . . ."he was skilfully, he thought, making 
 
 263
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 the most of a side issue, was leading the conversa- 
 tion away from dangerous ground. 
 
 Only Peter was determined to pin it to dan- 
 gerous ground. 
 
 "But you must know some of the facts?" 
 
 "Only what I have picked up from my grand- 
 mother." He hoped that this diplomatic men- 
 tioning of his grandmother would decide the ur- 
 gent Peter to consult the main source of knowl- 
 edge and leave him alone. "From my grand- 
 mother and others. It doesn't amount to more 
 than the fact that James Patricot was a beast and 
 a brute, and that the marriage was a calamity. 
 Really no more than the bare outline." 
 
 "Yet you must have known him." 
 
 "Good Lord, no!" burst Tristram Waymsley 
 with warmth, and then he delivered another 
 shock. "I saw him, of course, once or twice, his 
 home was about here. But he'd left her even be- 
 fore I went to Oxford." He saw the absolute 
 astonishment in Peter's eyes. He supported his 
 statement with a stout "Years before." 
 
 Peter stared at him, his mind a whirlwind of 
 indescribable emotions. Astonishment, shock, 
 bewilderment, hope, even elation whirled within 
 him in an unspeakable chaos. Was this an an- 
 swer? Did the dream mean this? His voice 
 trembled when he asked, 
 
 264
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "He left her?" 
 
 "Yes," said the grandson, feeling his way to 
 say the least he could. "He ran away from 
 her." 
 
 "And where is he now?" asked the trembling 
 Peter, and the unwitting grandson launched an- 
 other bolt. 
 
 "Nobody knows. He vanished." 
 
 Peter stared at his companion until that youth 
 felt embarrassed. His eyes were fixed on Tris- 
 tram's face with so much intensity that the in- 
 souciance of Oxford collapsed and more blushes 
 arrived. But Peter did not see the face or its 
 blushes. He was trying to take in that stagger- 
 ing, amazing fact. Phillippa's husband was a 
 brute, he had left her years ago. He had van- 
 ished years ago. 
 
 His mind came back to Tristram. 
 
 "How many years ago was it?" he asked in a 
 tone he scarcely knew. He saw the youth's em- 
 barrassment. "Do you mind telling me? I have 
 a particular reason for asking?" 
 
 "I know so little about it," protested Tristram. 
 "You should really ask my grandmother, she 
 could tell you all about it." 
 
 In spite of his bewildering emotions, Peter 
 could not repress a smile. He knew why the 
 
 265
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 grandson wanted to shift the responsibility to the 
 grandmother. 
 
 "I only want to know the bare outline," he said 
 with a smile. "And really I have a reason, if you 
 wouldn't mind. . . ' 
 
 "Oh, . . it was a good many years ago. . . ' 
 Peter's eye admitted no quibble. "Perhaps ten r 
 at least eight, I should think. But my grand- 
 mother would tell you the exact number. Really 
 all I know I get from her." 
 
 Peter John sank back in his corner. His mind 
 was racing, he could scarcely control the tumult of 
 his thoughts. His mind was saying, Phillippa's 
 husband had left her, vanished eight years ago. 
 He vanished eight years ago. 
 
 The thought resounded through his mind with 
 tremendous insistence. And, as he thought, he 
 remembered his dream, and the dream seemed to 
 be part of this thought and moment, and it's 
 promise he seemed to read in this new knowledge. 
 There was of course perplexity too. ... If her 
 husband had vanished eight years ago, why had 
 she been so firm? Why hadn't she held out some 
 hope. . . ? But he couldn't understand that. 
 That was beyond his grasp just now. He could 
 only think "He vanished eight years ago, perhaps 
 ten," could only see that fact mixed up with the 
 omen of his dream. This must be the meaning of 
 
 266
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 the dream. His thoughts were racing, his heart 
 was racing. His apathy had been entirely dis- 
 pelled. His mind ceased to jbe] irresolute, it 
 grasped at this straw of hope. He cried within 
 himself, "I must get to the bottom of this. I must 
 know more." 
 
 As the thoughts swung through his head, he 
 turned to the youth, 
 
 "But eight years ago," he cried. "What age 
 could she have been?" 
 
 "She was an absolute flapper," said Tristram. 
 "A kid . . . she's only twenty-eight now." 
 
 Peter's attention was puzzled and at once 
 anxious. 
 
 "But, if she was married at nineteen or twenty 
 .... would that make it eight years ago?" he 
 asked, hoping he did not let the cold fear which 
 had suddenly touched him appear in his voice. 
 
 "His leaving her, you mean? Easily. He left 
 her in the first year, the brute. Within months 
 only of the wedding. He was an appalling cad." 
 
 Peter could say nothing. The series of shocks 
 he had experienced had deprived him of all pre- 
 cise thought, of all ability to reason. He sat back 
 and stared blindly at a pictured reproduction of 
 Bournemouth set in the wall of the carriage. He 
 could think of nothing. He could only feel enor- 
 mously. 
 
 267
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 The train slowed, slackened and stopped. 
 
 "Southampton West," said Tristram with the 
 air of one who had caught the name of the station 
 before the alert staff could hide it. 
 
 Peter sat up, and saw the name written upon 
 the back of a seat. 
 
 "Southampton," he echoed. He stood up. 
 "Good-bye." 
 
 "But," blurted the astonished young man. 
 "Aren't you going to London?" 
 
 "Good-bye," said Peter again. "I get out 
 here." 
 
 He left the train.
 
 XXXV 
 
 PETER made up his mind at once, or had 
 he had his mind made up for him? He 
 left the train, he was going back to Phil- 
 lippa and "Green Ladies." 
 
 Directly the youth had made his astounding 
 revelation, Peter had known that this was the 
 reason why it was wrong to go away. The fact 
 that Phillippa's husband was not living some- 
 where in England; an incompatible creature, yet 
 living in more or less reputable estrangement, but 
 one who had already put himself outside the law, 
 first by his brutality and then by leaving her, put 
 a different complexion on the whole business. It 
 suggested that there were still reasons for hope. 
 The matter had not ended. It was wrong to 
 accept defeat at the first set-back; there was more 
 in it than that. 
 
 "There is a struggle before we attain the light," 
 he thought, as he stood on Southampton platform. 
 "I didn't take that into account. It was never to 
 be easy." 
 
 He learned that, in any case, destiny hadn't 
 269
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 managed things carefully in the matter of trains. 
 He could not get back for hours. He went out 
 of the station, and to the right, until, driven off 
 the main road by the noise of the trams, he struck 
 across an open space. 
 
 He said again, 
 
 "It's not going to be easy. I must remember 
 that. There is to be sorrow and struggle before 
 we gain the end. I must not be put off by rebuffs." 
 
 He said this, as he walked across the open 
 space, which bore, he found, the inexplicable name 
 of "The Marlands," for his thoughts had veered 
 round to the finality of Phillippa's attitude. That 
 wanted explaining. If James Patricot was a 
 brute; again, if he had vanished eight years ago 
 why had she told him with such decision that her 
 condition was unalterable? She must know that 
 the law would help her. Was there some other 
 reason still to be told? Or was she, after all, 
 ignorant of the law? 
 
 He said again, 
 
 "It's not going to be easy. There will be diffi- 
 culties. But I must not be put off." 
 
 He said this, not to strengthen his purpose, but 
 rather to impress it upon his mind in case he 
 should ever forget it again. It was to be a mental 
 sign manual to be turned to should circumstances 
 again betray him into weakness. 
 
 270
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 His attitude of mind was singular, but quite 
 clear. He was without excitements. He was 
 experiencing no particular gladness of exultation. 
 He was filled, rather, with a serenity of deter- 
 mination. His apathy was still within him, but 
 now it had been turned into a calm disregard of 
 anything that distracted him from his end, any- 
 thing that seemed to forbid his going on. Serene, 
 without emotion, passionless, he felt himself the 
 mechanism by which the plan of a fixed destiny 
 was to be worked out, rather than a sentient 
 being. 
 
 "Emotions play old Harry with the will," he 
 reflected. "It is better that I feel like this." 
 
 All the same he was not without his emotions. 
 As he passed a theater and turned into a side 
 street that, he had been told, led to the main road 
 of Southampton, he remembered that Tristram 
 had said that Phillippa was ill. She was tired, 
 indifferent to the world, why? Before he had 
 spoken to her at her door she had not been tired 
 or indifferent, and the world had filled her with 
 delight. If she had changed, she had changed 
 because she felt as he felt; because rejection of 
 him had meant pain to her. 
 
 Peter as he reflected on that knew a throb that 
 was happiness as well as soreness. She wa^ not 
 
 271
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 indifferent to him. To send him out of her life 
 had meant pain. 
 
 In the main road, in the thoroughfare called 
 "Above Bar" for the reason that it was merely 
 the top half of a street divided by the old Bar 
 Gate of the town, Peter looked about for a place 
 to get lunch. He saw no place to get lunch, but 
 he saw a garage. He forgot lunch, he walked 
 across to the garage and hired a car to carry him 
 back to Green Ladies. He did more than that, 
 he telephoned to Eden and told him he was re- 
 turning, and would be home to dinner that night. 
 
 Presently he was swinging through the New 
 Forest, through Lyndhurst, where old time people 
 had built a church on a mound so that its steeple 
 could lead the hunting kings of England home 
 through the wayward tracks of the Forest, and 
 through Brockenhurst, and sleepy Lymington. 
 
 When he drew near to "Green Ladies" he told 
 the chauffeur to go on until he came to The Dower 
 House. And then very soon he was standing with 
 Phillippa, in the cool bright room of oak and 
 chintz of her own home. 
 
 She stood facing him, and he saw, not without 
 cruel pleasure, that indeed she was ill, but with 
 an illness that was of the mind. Her cheeks were 
 pale, and through her calm her manner was 
 .nervous. When he came in upon her she had 
 
 272
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 obviously determined not to make a sign, but at 
 the sight of him, neck and cheeks took a swift 
 flooding of color, and her quick lips trembled. 
 She strove to master herself, but Peter, and it 
 must be agreed that he did it deliberately, broke 
 down her reserve at once. He said, 
 
 "Last night I made up my mind. I decided to 
 leave England, and go back to South America. I 
 thought you ought to know." 
 
 His eyes were fixed greedily on her face, and if 
 he had been cruel, his cruelty had reward. The 
 color flooded away. Her lips opened in distress, 
 her eyes showed him a soul frightened, hurt, cut 
 deeply by its sense of loss. 
 
 For a moment she stood thus, her eyes bright 
 with pain, the pliant grace of her body showing 
 subtly her revolt against that pain. The whole 
 expression of her delicate being gave him unmis- 
 takable knowledge that the mere loss of him, not 
 the danger to him, but the loss, the loss of sight 
 and chance of contact and mere proximity caused 
 her suffering. And that was what he wanted to 
 know. She did not want him to go away from 
 her. 
 
 Just for a moment only she revealed this exquis- 
 ite secret, and then she had control of herself. 
 Her eyes hid their pain. Suffering she was, but 
 she was composed. She looked at him; she asked, 
 
 273
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Why do you tell me this?" and her eyes 
 seemed to say, "Do you think that circumstances 
 can be made easier that way?" 
 
 Peter did not answer at once. A quiet happi- 
 ness, a serenity, filled him. He knew what he most 
 wanted to know. He looked at her, he said softly, 
 
 "You love me, Phillippa?" 
 
 She dropped her eyes, the tips of her fingers 
 pressed strongly upon the table by her side. She 
 did not move. She did not answer him, 
 
 "You love me?" he said again. 
 
 "I answered you on the cliff," she whispered. 
 
 "You love me?" he said. 
 
 She trembled. 
 
 "It cannot alter things," she answered in a 
 voice hardly to be heard. 
 
 "You love me?" he said again. 
 
 She lifted her face and looked into his with 
 distressed and wounded eyes. He could see the 
 bewilderment and appeal in her face, 
 
 "You love me?" he insisted. 
 
 "Yes," she answered in a low voice. "I love 
 you." 
 
 The quietness in the room was a palpable thing. 
 It was an immensity of silence, and in the heart of 
 it they stood and looked into each other's eyes. 
 For eternities of time they stood bound up in their 
 glances, and all the tenderness and agony of life, 
 
 274
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 all the tremulous sweetness and the pain, all that 
 they meant to each other and all that was forbid- 
 den to natures such as theirs, all the heart quick- 
 enings and the heart burnings, the desires and the 
 frustrations, their yearnings, ardors, distresses 
 and sorrows were intermingled in the tremendous 
 silence of that look. Trembling they gazed at 
 each other, pouring out their very souls into each 
 other's eyes. 
 
 Then Peter said with a soft laugh, 
 
 "My dear ... I had to know." 
 
 She looked away as though she could no longer 
 bear the pain this moment caused her. 
 
 "Yes, I think you had to know. I could not 
 help your knowing. But it makes no difference. 
 How can it alter things?" 
 
 "I can go on now," he said, and as she glanced 
 at him, "I have only told you half. I must tell 
 you also that, not only did I decide to go to South 
 America, I left for South America this morning." 
 
 Her eyes were fixed on his face, and they grew 
 perplexed, 
 
 "You left this morning," her voice caught, she 
 had so nearly lost him then. . . . "What made 
 you return?" 
 
 "Tristram Waymsley Tristram Waymsley, 
 acting, I think as an envoy of destiny." He smiled, 
 and she too was forced to smile. It would take 
 
 275
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 at least destiny to make that young man accom- 
 plish anything definite was the tenor of their 
 thoughts. 
 
 "Still I don't understand." 
 
 "Tristram Waymsley told me something 1 about 
 your marriage, and rather more about your hus- 
 band." 
 
 She became grave at once, her face was -clouded 
 with sorrow. She had been standing, and now 
 she sat. She motioned Peter to sit, and all the 
 while her eyes did not leave his face. 
 
 "What did he tell you?" she asked. 
 
 "He told me your husband left you, vanished, 
 he said, many years ago." 
 
 "That is true," she answered quietly. "It was 
 eight years ago." 
 
 Peter let her see the wonder in .his eyes ; her 
 apparent indifference to all this filled him with 
 astonishment. 
 
 "But don't you see," he protested, "that is 
 exactly why I came back." 
 
 She looked down at her hands, she was still for 
 a moment. 
 
 "You mean," she said speaking slowly. . . . 
 "You were thinking that under certain circum- 
 stances, if no trace of the husband has been found 
 for seven years the law allows the wife to presume 
 his death." 
 
 276
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Peter nodded, she knew all the time, and hadn't 
 acted upon it. . . . why ... ? 
 
 "That is what I meant," he said. 
 
 "I cannot presume my husband's death," she 
 looked up at him with calm sorrow in which was 
 also an air of austere resolve. 
 
 "You mean," said Peter, and it seemed to him 
 he knew the answer before he asked, "you mean 
 you know your husband isn't dead?" 
 
 "He was alive five years ago," she told him 
 and in answer to Peter's took. "Tristram Wayms- 
 ley did not know. Only I and my lawyers know. 
 But I did not mean that, I mean that if -my hus- 
 band were alive, if I had no reason to think him 
 dead, then that would not make any difference." 
 
 Peter sat quietly. Now that the fact was out, 
 he realized that he had expected nothing less. It 
 came to him as a confirmation not as a shock. 
 To her her husband was alive. Until she had 
 proof of his death he was alive. To her legal 
 loopholes did not matter for she would not avail 
 herself of them. Her husband had been a brute, 
 he had treated her disgracefully, he had been un- 
 clean, as Tristram Waymsley had hinted, but she 
 was staunch to her contract with him. Her own 
 austere and pure outlook forbade her to look at 
 the matter in any other light. Her marriage 
 bound her until death. Her confession of love 
 
 277
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 did not alter her attitude. She had been betrayed 
 into love, but she would never be betrayed by it. 
 
 Peter was less disturbed by the knowledge than 
 seemed possible. He felt indeed, as though this 
 fact, black though it was, did not matter. He felt 
 that it did not end here, they had more discoveries 
 to make. And he had a curiously assured feeling 
 that, in some inexplicable way, he of all men was 
 the one man to .make them. The dream, Tris- 
 tram's revelations, the knowledge that Phillippa 
 loved him, all supported' him in this. A curious 
 detachment of calmness was in him. He must not 
 be put off. Dark though the future looked, he had 
 still to go on. 
 
 But for all that there was a faint sense of 
 resentment at her attitude, at her austere stub- 
 bornness; before he could check the impulse, he 
 had blurted out, 
 
 "But he was a brute, if what I hear . . . . ' 
 
 Her face filled with distress, 
 
 "Please," she pleaded with tears in her eyes. 
 "Please don't touch on that. I am answering 
 everything you ask, I am willing to answer any- 
 thing you have a right to know." She held her 
 head bravely, but she could not prevent 
 the color coming to her cheeks, "But if you can 
 spare me. . . ." 
 
 "My dear," he said, "it was a cruel remark. 
 278
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 It was a touch of the unregenerate brute coming 
 out. Forgive me I" Partly to turn the conversa- 
 tion, partly because he must know he said, 
 
 "You heard of your husband five years ago, you 
 have heard nothing of him since then? Nothing 
 at all?" 
 
 "Nothing. He was lost sight of then. My 
 lawyers kept touch with him up to that time, but 
 then he disappeared and there has been no further 
 trace." 
 
 "Was he in England?" 
 
 "In Malacca. He left England when he left 
 me -and traveled over the world," she told him. 
 Her hands clasped each other nervously in her 
 lap, and suddenly she cried out with the sponta- 
 neity of confession, "Oh, they tried to find some 
 trace. I wrote to the lawyers only a few days 
 ago" (could anything have prevented Peter's 
 heart from leaping to that "few days ago" ?) , "but 
 they say there is nothing to add to the old reports. 
 The people who had the case in hand in Malacca 
 have sent them no fresh news." 
 
 Peter was thinking of what might happen to a 
 man in five years, particularly in the last five 
 years. 
 
 "It has been a fateful five years," he told her. 
 "War and death everywhere, he may be dead. 
 
 279
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 It is conceivable he might have been killed as so 
 many others have been killed." 
 
 She did not answer, she gazed in hopeless dis- 
 tress out of the window, and he understood her 
 feeling. He too could see the vast and entangled 
 scheme of the world war; he too could realize 
 how easily one man might be engulfed in it and 
 have his track forever lost. 
 
 It was a dismaying thought, and yet, though he 
 realized it, he was not overcome with dismay. 
 The illogical optimism that had come to him filled 
 him with a strong confidence. He felt the sense 
 of destiny very profoundly. It was a big and dis- 
 maying task confronting them, but he felt, and 
 there was no reason at all in his thinking it, that 
 in a particular way it was ordained' that he should 
 accomplish the task. All through his illness, his 
 going to "Green Ladies," his love for this girl 
 there had been, he felt, something more than mere 
 chance at work. 
 
 He was confident. The unexpected revelation 
 of the husband's desertion following so closely on 
 the promise of the dream had made him confident. 
 Phillippa's confession of her love had made him 
 more confident, and, moreover, had put him in 
 the right. 
 
 "We will find what has happened to your hus- 
 band," he said evenly. "I feel that there is some- 
 
 280
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 thing for us to find out. I will go out to Malacca 
 myself, if necessary." 
 
 Phillippa looked at him quickly, she had remem- 
 bered what he had forgotten, as man will when he 
 chases a dream, his illness. She smiled at him, 
 a purely woman's smile, in which tenderness, and 
 the eternal knowledge that man needs an enor- 
 mous amount of looking after were delicately 
 blended. 
 
 "The lawyers cabled out again four days ago," 
 she saw he must understand the meaning of that, 
 and her blushes and her soft laughter mingled. 
 "We shall see what that brings to light." 
 
 "Meanwhile we wait," said Peter. 
 
 But half an hour later he added to that, 
 "Meanwhile we learn as much as we can. We 
 tackle that Delphic old grandmother." 
 
 He was on his way to Milton Little. There 
 were certain things Phillippa would not tell him, 
 and he could not bring himself to ask about her 
 marriage, but his attitude in respect to Mrs. 
 Waymsley was ruthlessness itself.
 
 XXXVI 
 
 SITTING in the presence of the brisk and 
 vivid, the impenitently young old lady, 
 grandmother enough to know better, Peter 
 John felt himself reflecting and returning some of 
 her spritely vivacity and cheerfulness. 
 
 She sat before him knitting a woolly labyrinth 
 for some unsuspecting cottage baby, and she threw 
 at him glances that were as darting, as bright and 
 as birdlike as the play of her clicking needles. 
 
 There was a good deal of the quizzical in her 
 glance, as though she knew rather more than she 
 need tell of the human comedy, and found what 
 she need not tell intensely amusing. 
 
 "How's 'Green Ladies' and Eden, and that 
 motorist young man who talks in the way other 
 people write? And how are you?" 
 
 Peter looked at her calmly, allowing the flow 
 of her talk to splash off him. 
 
 "I came to tell you I have proposed to Phil- 
 lippa Patricot," he said, watching her. 
 
 A bright smile, a smile of unabashed delight, 
 parted her merry old lips. 
 
 282
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Oh oh . . . ' she began, and then with 
 smiling guile, "Indeed." 
 
 "I thought you ought to know." 
 
 "Ought?" she darted at him, and he felt that 
 she was enjoying it all. "Ought? But why 
 ought I know? Why should you go about the 
 world telling your proposals?" 
 
 "Because," said Peter John, with mock gravity, 
 "because it's exactly what you wanted me to do." 
 
 The brisk old lady, lifted her firm round chin 
 and chuckled with delight. 
 
 "I I?" she smiled. "I wanted you 
 
 to? What had I to do with it? You'll be saying 
 I encouraged you presently." 
 
 "Not presently," Peter retorted, "now. You 
 encouraged me." 
 
 She dropped her hands and her knitting into 
 her lap, she laughed unaffectedly. 
 
 "Well, I encouraged you, did I? ... And 
 how did I manage it? How did this matchmak- 
 ing old thing, me, manage to insert the right 
 word. . . . ?" 
 
 "Did I say word? I withdraw 'word.' The 
 trick was done by an absence of words; by, what 
 shall we call it? an accomplished silence." 
 
 Peter's air was as quizzical as her own, but 
 there was behind it a note of sobriety. They ex- 
 changed glances, and, perhaps, after all, there was 
 
 283
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 beneath her laughter a gravity also. The grav- 
 ity of the old and the wise who watch youth, and 
 can suffer when it sees youth missing its chances. 
 They exchanged glances, and they knew that they 
 understood and loved each other very well. 
 
 "Confess it," said Peter. "When a word could 
 have been said, when a married name could have 
 been mentioned, you did not mention it, you did 
 not allow grandchildren to mention it." 
 
 Her small, plump, capable hands picked up the 
 wool work with a deprecating gesture, a gesture 
 of confession. 
 
 "You are made for each other," she said, and 
 there was defiance, and perhaps wistfulness in her 
 smile. 
 
 "You are entirely unashamed?" said Peter, 
 looking at her whimsically but intently. 
 
 "Yes," she cried. Her face more sober. "Yes," 
 she said again firmly. "You are both young, you 
 both have good looks and brains and character 
 and all the things that count. And there are many 
 years before you both." 
 
 "And one of us is married," said Peter grimly. 
 
 "Pish!" said the old lady. Her needles sawed 
 the air in contempt; that was what she thought of 
 the marriage. 
 
 "This marriage," said Peter judicially, watch- 
 ing her closely, "the fact that one of us is mar- 
 
 284
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 ried, doesn't seem to you to constitute a serious 
 obstacle?" 
 
 "I don't call this a marriage," said the old lady 
 decisively. "There was not, in fact, the slightest 
 bit of marriage about it. Besides, my dear man, 
 the fellow left her ten years ago." 
 
 "Only eight," grinned Peter. 
 
 "Seven would be quite enough," she continued 
 vividly. 
 
 "And he was alive five years ago," added Peter, 
 implacably. 
 
 "Oh," she cried her eyes widening, and she was 
 obviously taken aback. But she wasn't non- 
 plussed. "Five years. A long time and this 
 war." 
 
 "I mentioned it to Phillippa," said Peter. 
 
 She looked at him, her lips smiling, her bright 
 eyes, narrowed a little to study him, grave enough. 
 She understood him at once. She read into his 
 remark all that had occurred between Phillippa 
 and himself. She saw that he had tested Phil- 
 lippa's attitude towards her marriage and found 
 her obdurate. She looked at him for a moment 
 so, then said dryly, 
 
 "Phillippa is young." 
 
 Peter shrugged his shoulders. He was not old 
 enough himself to find comfort in the youngness 
 of youth. 
 
 285
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "And she has been in love with you, how long 
 is it quite a week?" 
 
 "I merely said I had proposed to her," pro- 
 tested Peter. "You mustn't build a young grand- 
 mother's tale out of that one single fact." 
 
 The young grandmother proceeded to knit. 
 She sat there a wise old woman of laughter, 
 knowing what she knew and that was all the world 
 and the currents of all the life and youth in the 
 world. 
 
 Her enigmatical silence goaded Peter to argu- 
 ment. 
 
 "Phillippa being young, Phillippa having hav- 
 ing loved me for no more than a week, how does 
 that promise a change of attitude?" 
 
 The old lady continued to knit. 
 
 "The young are Spartans," she said gently. 
 "There are none so inflexible as the young." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "And have you ever asked yourself why that 
 is?" 
 
 "I am myself accused of being young," said 
 Peter. "Perhaps I couldn't answer." 
 
 She nodded at him, agreeing with him, appre- 
 ciating his quickness. 
 
 "It's because they have ideas and not experi- 
 ence," she said. "They have ideas; cold, pure, 
 inflexible ideas; beautiful and noble ideas; cruelly 
 
 286
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 exact ideas. And they hold them so unbendingly 
 because not having had to bend them they think 
 they can never bend. It is easy to be unyielding 
 when one is not called upon to yield. And it is 
 so easy to yield, my friend, when the whole weight 
 of life and desire and need is the pressure that 
 compels." She smiled at him. "You have, per- 
 haps, not asked yourself why middle age is so 
 much less inflexible, though you may have noticed 
 that old age is not always even scrupulous." 
 
 "If you mean yourself, let me tell you that you 
 are younger than any one ought to be, and entirely 
 unprincipled; you are a confusion to your own 
 philosophy," smiled Peter. "But are you really 
 suggesting that one should give up one's principles 
 simply because one's heart pulls one in a certain 
 direction?" 
 
 "I am suggesting that one lives and learns," 
 smiled the old lady. 
 
 "That one's ideas might be modified by experi- 
 ences?" 
 
 "Or softened," she smiled. 
 
 Peter meditated for a moment on this. Then 
 he said, 
 
 "In the case of Phillippa's marriage " and 
 she interrupted again with that contemptuous ges- 
 ture of her needles. 
 
 "It's not a case; it wasn't a marriage." 
 287
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "There are others who seem to think it mate- 
 rial." 
 
 The flutter of her hands said, "Youth I Youth ! 
 *The exaggerated airs of youth." 
 
 "Well, what do you think of it?" she demanded. 
 
 "I know nothing about it," he told her. "I 
 heard this morning that James Patricot had left 
 her eight years ago and that he was an appalling 
 brute, the rankest of cads." 
 
 "Tristram . . . ' she cried. 
 
 "Yes, he let the cat out of the bag, and then he 
 tried to save the situation by sending me to you. 
 He had great confidence in your craft. He is wise 
 in his generation." 
 
 The old lady smiled again. 
 
 "And you know no more?" 
 
 "You know everything I know. Why wasn't 
 Phillippa's marriage a marriage?" 
 
 She ceased to smile, she looked at him keenly, 
 
 "Would you call three days a marriage?" 
 
 He stared at her, startled. 
 
 "That was the length of Phillippa's marriage," 
 she said. 
 
 Peter gasped, he looked his confusion of 
 thought. 
 
 "For heaven's sake . . . ?" he pleaded. 
 
 "That was the length of it," she declared. 
 288
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "After that time it ceased and in three months he 
 had left her." 
 
 Peter was utterly bewildered, and his heart was 
 torn by his sorrow for the girl. 
 
 "What an unspeakable tragedy," he said. 
 "How did it come about?" 
 
 "Because James Patricot was a brute, he had 
 always been a brute, he always would be a brute. 
 Even while he was making love to Phillippa, while 
 the arrangements for the wedding were going for- 
 ward, there was a woman." Peter exclaimed in 
 pain and disgust. "Yes, it's inconceivable but it's 
 true. A common wretch of a woman, she lived 
 not far away, he found it handy to to go to her 
 while he was occupied with the details of his mar- 
 riage. Oh ! he was thoroughly vile, and three days 
 after the wedding this creature turned up at 
 'Green Ladies.' She was drunk, and there was a 
 scene, she made her status unmistakable." 
 
 Peter sat still with horror in his eyes. He was 
 overwhelmed by the revolting picture conjured up 
 by the old lady. So vile was it, he was trying to 
 convince himself that it could be real. 
 
 The wise old lady read his thoughts. 
 
 "You find it hard to believe, don't you? You'll 
 have to believe it, it is a fact." 
 
 "It's monstrous," he murmured with dry lips. 
 "To happen to her." 
 
 289
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "It was monstrous," said the old lady. She 
 looked at him kindly. "You understand why it 
 is never mentioned, why it cannot be talked about. 
 We never speak about it only you must know." 
 
 "I can't understand the beginning or the end 
 of it," cried Peter in distress. "How could she 
 have married that sort of man?" 
 
 "How could a girl of nineteen know he was 
 that sort of man?" she answered crisply. She 
 saw that this did not satisfy him. "How could 
 anybody know he was that sort of man? That 
 sort don't blazon its infamy from the housetops. 
 James Patricot was just one of the young men 
 about here. He wasn't very much older than 
 Phillippa, a year or two. He was part of the 
 youth of the place, he behaved in no way differ- 
 ently on the surface. He was taken at face value, 
 how else could he be taken, depravity doesn't wear 
 an outward sign? He was depraved but he kept 
 it to himself." 
 
 "The woman, this woman, wasn't the only 
 thing against him?" said Peter, catching more 
 from the inflection of her voice than her words 
 told. 
 
 "No," she answered soberly. "When it was 
 too late, a great deal more came out. It generally 
 does, too late. There was enough to prove that 
 
 290
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 he had been rotten for years. He was born like 
 that perhaps." 
 
 She reflected. 
 
 "You see, he could keep things quiet. He was 
 his own master, he had the remnants of a small 
 estate here it's all gone now. When he ran off 
 the debts poured in and swept up the place. His 
 parents were dead. There was no check on him, 
 and nobody noticed his habits. And he didn't let 
 his private life intrude upon his public goings and 
 comings. We all thought him rather a nice boy 
 until we found out he had simply been laughing 
 at us. He was handsome, you know, and had 
 good manners, and possessed a sort of spurious 
 cleverness. Oh, he passed well enough in our 
 crowd." 
 
 "And Phillippa," Peter's voice was a little 
 harsh, "I suppose she was in love with him?" 
 
 "Do you?" smiled the old lady. "Well, I 
 won't be so decided. Does a girl of nineteen, or 
 even twenty, know when she is in love? Oh, there 
 was an attraction, they got on well together, I 
 won't deny that; but does a young, untried girl, 
 full of romance, as sentimental as one of Shake- 
 speare's sighing ladies, full of candor and inno- 
 cence and sympathy can she love? Does she 
 experience the grand passion, the overwhelming 
 immensity of the thing? Or is it, merely, again, 
 
 291
 
 this untried idea?" Her bright eyes snapped at 
 him in raillery, "this bright and ingenuous idea, 
 which, having no experience at all of love, is per- 
 fectly confident that this calf affection is undoubt- 
 edly it." 
 
 "And you don't think it was?" 
 
 "I knew Phillippa," she reflected. "To what 
 you see in her now add an innocence in affection, a 
 simplicity of character, a willingness to accept 
 everything as good, a shining desire to love every- 
 body, a nature as pliant as gold. Don't you think 
 a man who wanted her, a man of James Patri- 
 cot's character, could win her? The very skill 
 and cunning he had learnt in his vices would be 
 powerful to win such a nature as hers." 
 
 "Oh, don't," cried Peter in horror. "It's in- 
 famous." 
 
 "It's hateful, but it's true," said the wise old 
 woman. "These men are practiced in love, and 
 we have to recognize their power. Don't you 
 think a man like that could throw a web round a 
 young, inexperienced innocent like Phillippa and 
 make her think the artificial was real? I think 
 so." 
 
 "You are much wiser than I," said Peter. "You 
 are right, I think." 
 
 "And then there were other things. Facts that 
 mustn't be overlooked. Phillippa was practically 
 
 292
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 alone, her father died fifteen years ago, her 
 mother was then, on the way to die she did die 
 a year after the marriage. Phillippa was alone, 
 she would presently have the burden of 'Green 
 Ladies' upon her shoulders; already she knew that 
 her mother was anxious about her, that her last 
 days were colored by the dread that she might 
 leave her daughter alone, unsettled. . . . Don't 
 you think those things might have added their 
 weight to the current of circumstances setting in 
 favor of her marriage? Remember there was 
 nothing against Patricot then, he seemed as likely 
 a match as a dozen others. And indeed, she might 
 have chosen one of the others as far as her affec- 
 tion was concerned; only James Patricot got in 
 first, and made sure that he would be first." 
 
 Peter reflected, he agreed with her. 
 
 "It's a horrible thing, life, at times, but I can't 
 deny that you are right. . . . They married, and 
 that woman came, and after that?" 
 
 "I cannot tell you much of that . . . nobody 
 ever will. Phillippa keeps that locked in her 
 heart. They were at 'Green Ladies,' the mother 
 was so ill, you know, so they did not go away, and 
 the woman turned up. It must have been a loath- 
 some business, she was very drunk, she had no 
 scruple about demanding her rights publicly. All 
 the servants learned. But what happened to 
 
 293
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 them, what happened to the girl outraged in every 
 idea, every holy thought, I cannot tell you. One 
 can only picture, and that dimly, the horror of it. 
 What happened I don't know; . . . there must 
 have been a terrible hour. But he left the house, 
 went and stayed at Lymington .... unrepent- 
 ant." 
 
 Peter's distressed face demanded what she 
 meant by that. 
 
 "The woman joined him in a week," she said. 
 "And when Phillippa made advances to him 
 he flung them back in her face. Since he had 
 nothing to lose now he preferred his own way of 
 living." 
 
 "She she tried to get him to come back, you 
 mean that?" asked Peter. But he was not aston- 
 ished. He already knew enough of Phillippa's 
 character to know she would do that. 
 
 "Youth youth," said the old woman, with a 
 moisture in her eyes, "youth has its ideas of 
 duty, its ideas of sacrifice. It demands sacrifice, 
 it demands to bear all the burdens it has taken up. 
 Yes, Phillippa asked him to come back. Her 
 mother told me that before she died. She asked 
 that brute to return, to accept her help in living 
 straight and clean, she offered him his chance of 
 beginning all over again. And he flung back her 
 
 294
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 brave and pitiable pleading in her face thank 
 God." 
 
 She knitted and Peter had nothing to say. 
 
 "He couldn't have changed," she went on. "He 
 was rotten all through. Life with him would have 
 been an unspeakable thing. Thank God he re- 
 fused . . . and three months after he cut the 
 country. He ran away, vanished. Not because 
 of Phillippa. He was just sick of that other 
 woman, he ran away from her, and from his 
 debts. I have never heard of him since. Until 
 you told me, I didn't know Phillippa had heard." 
 
 "Her lawyers have kept in touch," Peter said, 
 "she told me that." And they both fell silent. 
 
 "What has she been doing since?" asked Peter, 
 not because he particularly wanted to know, but 
 to give him time to think. "She hasn't been living 
 at 'Green Ladies,' I understand." 
 
 "No, 'Green Ladies' hurts her too much. She 
 tried to put it all behind her. She has been doing 
 hospital work. She underwent training at a hos- 
 pital; that took up many years, and she let 'Green 
 Ladies.' She has continued her nursing in various 
 parts of England until now, but the strain of the 
 last years has told on her, and she has had to 
 give it up. She went to 'Green Ladies' occasion- 
 ally, when she had her holidays, and when it was 
 not let; she can't help going back, though it is 
 
 295
 
 painful. She prefers to let it, and place herself 
 outside temptation." 
 
 Peter John had not followed her in all she said, 
 his thoughts were dwelling on the sad story of 
 Phillippa's life, the unmitigated tragedy of it, his 
 thoughts were considering her need for happiness, 
 and yet, how could such a nature as hers possibly 
 enter upon happiness if her husband was alive. 
 
 "I don't quite see how how all this bears upon 
 the case, upon us, upon me," he said at last and 
 slowly. "There is again the fact that she is mar- 
 ried." 
 
 "For three days," said the old lady sweepingly. 
 "And to a brute." 
 
 "Even those facts won't break a marriage. 
 Even if he was a brute. . . ' 
 
 The old lady went on knitting. 
 
 "Even if she had grounds," argued Peter. 
 
 The old lady went on knitting. 
 
 "Even if she was married only three days." 
 
 The old lady smiled. Peter glanced at her net- 
 tled, 
 
 "She wouldn't think of divorce." 
 
 He glanced at this aged and mellow Penelope. 
 
 "Would you countenance divorce?" he asked 
 bluffly. 
 
 "Not in people who were really married," she 
 retorted and went on knitting. 
 
 296
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Then what on earth do you mean?" asked 
 Peter with smiling impatience. 
 
 "My dear, I don't know," said the old lady 
 whimsically. "I think it merely means that I love 
 Phillippa, and hope so much for her. She is so 
 young, her life has been so sorrowful, she has 
 never loved, and she was never truly married .... 
 and there is so much of her life to be lived that it 
 hurts me to think that she will not take what is 
 now promised to her. And it seems to me that she 
 is only just beginning to feel the warmth of life 
 oh, my old eyes can see things and that in the 
 warmth of her heart she will be softer, less firm, 
 and that, if she has the chance, she will not be so 
 obdurate. . . . Do I think it, or do I only hope 
 it? I want so much for her, she has such a dear 
 and noble nature; life could be so ample for her 
 .... and I want her to take this good chance. 
 Perhaps her weakness will be a divine aid. Her 
 husband has been gone from her eight years; per- 
 haps now she will not be so inflexible, perhaps she 
 will accept her chance. . . . maybe that is all that 
 an old woman means, my dear." 
 
 She stopped and gazed dreamily before her, 
 
 "And then, you know," she added with a quiet 
 smile that was astonishingly assured, "I have a 
 presentiment. I have an old woman's intuition 
 that this is going to work out right." 
 
 297
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Peter looked at her in surprise. 
 
 "I have it too," he told her, "I have it in my 
 bones. Doesn't it seem extraordinary?" 
 
 "No," she said, "it doesn't. Very little is ex- 
 traordinary in this world." 
 
 Peter puzzled things out. 
 
 "I feel as though I knew, actually and tangibly 
 knew, that something has happened to James Pat- 
 ricot in the last five years. And that I am the one 
 person who can make it known my very coming 
 to 'Green Ladies' seems part of that ... as 
 though I was sent here and to Phillippa to fulfill 
 this definite end." 
 
 "Do you feel that?" she asked. "You may be 
 right and in five such years anything might hap- 
 pen." 
 
 "He might have died like others?" 
 
 "Very easily. He was a brute, but he would 
 have gone to fight." 
 
 "But to find out, to pick him out in all that big 
 mess of affairs it's a dismaying thought." 
 
 "Not if you're the one to pick him out," said 
 the old lady. 
 
 Peter stood up, 
 
 "But don't you see, that would make me a crea- 
 ture of destiny." 
 
 "Oh, but don't you feel you are?" she cried 
 laughing. "Don't you feel that you are Phil- 
 
 298
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 lippa's destiny . . . ? Well . . . well ... if 
 you are, if that's what you are, it must all work 
 right through you." 
 
 And with that cryptic saying in his head Peter 
 walked home.
 
 XXXVII 
 
 PETER carried the old lady's oracular re- 
 mark with him a day later when he went 
 to Phillippa and read the cable she had 
 to show him. 
 
 She sat quietly in the big, decorative room of 
 The Dower House. She was neither tragic nor 
 happy, but passive as one whom nothing can move. 
 And her greeting was the cablegram. She held 
 it out to him. 
 Peter read, 
 
 "Nothing known of J. Patricot in Malacca since 
 spring, 1914." 
 
 The lawyers, Howlett and Wink, had inclosed 
 this in a letter. They insisted, as firmly as law- 
 yers know how, that their agent in the East was 
 a reputable fellow. They intimated that this man 
 had had his instructions five years ago, and at 
 intervals he had been reminded of them. The 
 lawyers made it perfectly clear that if their man 
 said that J. Patricot could not be found, then there 
 wasn't even a stone in the Straits Settlements 
 
 300
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 under which any one could discover a trace of 
 him. 
 
 Peter studied the cable and the letter in silence, 
 bending over them. He held them in his hand 
 long after he had read them, for his thoughts 
 were facing the giant scheme of a world made 
 chaotic by war, and the seeming hopelessness of 
 finding one man in that vast and tangled scheme. 
 
 But he remembered the words, "If you are the 
 one to pick him out . . ." and though the prob- 
 lem was so huge he felt a curious sense of cer- 
 tainty rather than dismay. He gave her the 
 papers back smiling a little, 
 
 "We will find him," he said. 
 
 She lifted her hands in a tiny gesture, it spoke 
 of her hopelessness, of her despair more elo- 
 quently than words. 
 
 "Yesterday," said Peter, "an old sibyl said to 
 me, 'If you are Phillippa's destiny, well, then it 
 must all work right through you.' ' 
 
 "An old sibyl?" she asked, half frowning, half 
 smiling. 
 
 "A wise old woman, an old witch, Mrs. Wayms- 
 ley." 
 
 She smiled outright through her trouble. 
 
 "She may want you to be my destiny," she said. 
 
 "We both felt it in our bones," Peter smiled. 
 "We both felt a presentiment." 
 
 301
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "But feeling things, desiring things, wanting 
 them with all your heart," she cried out with a 
 startling, low fervor, "they're the very reasons 
 that lead us astray. We want things so much that 
 we think they must come to us. Our feelings be- 
 tray us. We read into everything the pointing 
 finger of destiny. We find what we are looking 
 for in everything, every omen. . . . But there 
 are the facts . . . ' She lifted the papers and 
 let them drop . . . "There are the facts." 
 
 Sitting erect, gazing before her, her face pale 
 and tragic, she seemed to confront an intolerable 
 anguish that wrung her to her soul. 
 
 "Peter," she said presently, "Peter, my dear, I 
 want it all so much. I want it all to come right 
 but that is no reason to evade the truth. I have 
 known so much misery. I will not risk another 
 betrayal of of my hopes. We have our hopes, 
 our feelings, our presentiments. . . . what is the 
 good of one of them against this . . . ?" 
 
 She held up the cable. 
 
 "You have had your presentiments too?" 
 
 She sat quietly and did not answer. He went 
 on, 
 
 "That moment in the storm, when I stretched 
 out my hand as you knelt by the rail ... I 
 stretched out my hand and caught yours. In 
 some way, in a way we cannot explain, our hands 
 
 302
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 clasped together. I felt it, you felt it ..." She 
 bowed her head . . . "Doesn't that mean some- 
 thing, don't you think?" 
 
 "Does it undo this, Peter?" she asked touching 
 the papers. 
 
 "Who knows, perhaps it does, perhaps it is a 
 sign that it will be undone. And then that is not 
 the first of the signs . . ." 
 
 She turned facing him quickly, her eyes leapt to 
 his, her lips parted as though to speak. But she 
 did not. 
 
 "And not the last," Peter went on. "On the 
 first night I came, on the first night I saw you, I 
 had a dream. I went into that pine wood with 
 you, in that dream, and it was awfully dark, and 
 we moved forward side by side. Away beyond 
 the last trunks there was a golden light and the 
 noise of the sea and the wind. But the blackness 
 lay between us and the light, and before we could 
 reach it we had to overcome the evil of the dark- 
 
 ness." 
 
 An exclamation came from her, an exclamation 
 as soft as a breath, her face was startled and mys- 
 tified, 
 
 "But you know it?" he cried sharply. 
 
 "Yes," she whispered. 
 
 "You have dreamed that dream?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 303
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "And since the night of the storm?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Always the same dream, the darkness and our 
 struggle hand in hand, and the golden light that 
 meant promise?" 
 
 "Always the same," she answered in her low, 
 perturbed voice. 
 
 "And two nights ago, the night before I left for 
 London, the night before I came back to you, how 
 was it with us then in the dream?" 
 
 She had to control herself before speaking, 
 
 "We were going up the slope of the valley; we 
 were winning against the darkness, and the light 
 beyond the trees was shining in our faces, it was 
 very near; we could hear the sound of the wind 
 and the water almost on us." 
 
 "Yes, that was my dream too. And it means 
 nothing to you?" 
 
 Her hands fluttered down to the lawyer's pa- 
 pers. That was her answer. 
 
 "It has a meaning to me," he told her. "At 
 first I was wrong, or, perhaps, half right only. 
 I thought it meant merely happiness for me. You 
 see, I was filled with my stupid little tragedy. I 
 thought the world had broken into pieces under 
 me. ... I looked at it with my eyes only. It 
 seemed to me that it meant that this spirit of the 
 dream, of the woods, of 'Green Ladies' . . . 
 
 304
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 you, you were to lead me to a new world, were to 
 be the means of my passing from sorrow to hap- 
 piness." 
 
 He paused. 
 
 "Perhaps it wasn't so far wrong, as I looked 
 at it. You were, you are, to be the means of hap- 
 piness for me. . . . But I had a part, too. I had 
 my role to play too. I was to help you. I was to 
 catch you by the hand and lead you forward to 
 that golden land beyond the last of the trees. I 
 was to help you when the powers of darkness 
 seemed to prevail. That is the role I saw myself 
 in, I see myself in. I am to help you. I and I 
 alone am to be the means of overcoming the 
 blackness of your tragedy, and of bringing you to 
 the light. Don't you read it like that?" 
 
 Her hands gripped tightly one on the other. 
 
 "How can I?" she murmured. "How can I?" 
 
 "You must have had some feelings?" 
 
 "Feelings," she murmured, "yes the things 
 that betray us." 
 
 "What were they?" 
 
 "Can they matter?" 
 
 "Please?" 
 
 She smiled wanly, she spoke as one indulgent 
 to a whim of the beloved. 
 
 "I felt as you did. I felt that both of us were 
 to win through from that darkness of sorrow to 
 
 305
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 to that golden land. We had both known 
 misery, that was the blackness, and we were both 
 to help each other to happiness." 
 
 "And the last dream, when we were breasting 
 up the slope, and the light was in our faces, what 
 did it mean to you?" 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 "Didn't it seem to you that happiness was now 
 very near; very close indeed; almost in our 
 grasp?" The papers rustled in her hand. "Didn't 
 it?" he insisted. 
 
 "Yes," she answered. 
 
 Peter smiled at her. 
 
 "It's unmistakable. We can't deny it means 
 something." 
 
 "I wish I had your faith," she answered smiling 
 with him. But she looked ruefully at the papers. 
 
 "Oh, those," said Peter. "Our task is to deal 
 with those. We must get the bottom of the mys- 
 tery behind them." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "We must begin where they leave off. I must 
 take up the chase where they drop it." 
 
 "In Malacca?" she cried, her hands lifted and 
 caught at the breast of her dress. "You will go 
 there?" 
 
 "If necessary," he told her, and he wasn't alto- 
 gether ignorant or displeased at her agitation. 
 
 306
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Do you know what he was doing in Malacca?" 
 
 "The lawyers know," she answered nervously. 
 "They kept track of him all the time. I gave them 
 those instructions." 
 
 Peter read her manner rightly. There were 
 things she was not willing to tell him about James 
 Patricot. 
 
 "Would you mind my going to the lawyers?" 
 
 She hesitated. 
 
 "We must give destiny every chance," he urged. 
 "I have been led as far as the lawyer by destiny. 
 Perhaps I will find what we want there." 
 
 "Very well," she answered. 
 
 And Peter left for London that evening.
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 MR. V WINK, of Hewlett and Wink, did 
 not dispense law, he pontificated in a 
 continual round of legal ritual. He 
 had, as he protested, nothing to add to his reports 
 in the matter of James Patricot, but he said this 
 with a bell, book and candle, and an incessant 
 moral bowing to the East. 
 
 He had read Phillippa's letter of introduction 
 and explanation without speaking, though he had 
 managed to make even his silence tingling and 
 impressive. He was a large man with a super- 
 abundant forehead, and lips so big and firm that 
 Peter had the impression he had had them special- 
 ly made for him to keep back indiscreet utterances. 
 He sat largely and superabundantly at his desk, 
 and there was about him an air of vivid negation. 
 
 He read the letter, and after going through 
 this, as it were legal collect, he put it solemnly 
 down. He said nothing and he stared at Peter. 
 He had nothing to say. His letter to Phillippa 
 inclosing the cable had enunciated a dogma, and 
 to say anything more would be to place himself in 
 danger of committing the sin of heresy. 
 
 308
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 Peter, very blandly, committed heresy, he said, 
 
 "You are quite confident that there is really no 
 chance of picking up James Patricot's track after 
 his break at Malacca in 1914?" 
 
 With difficulty Mr. Wink prepared to grapple 
 with agnosticism. 
 
 "Nothing has been left undone," he boomed. 
 "No stone has been left unturned." 
 
 "How came it that he was lost sight of?" 
 
 "Ah," breathed Mr. Wink, as one might say 
 "who can prevail against an act of Providence," 
 but recognizing that Peter was an agnostic and 
 not concerned with legal Providence, he said, "He 
 left suddenly, in the night our agent thinks. Our 
 agent thinks the action was deliberate." He 
 reflected maturely. "We agree with our agent." 
 
 Peter frowned his puzzlement. 
 
 "Deliberately, you mean that he knew that he 
 was being watched?" 
 
 Mr. Wink showed solemn surprise. It was not 
 a display of emotion, it was a method of business. 
 He wished to impress Peter's ignorance upon him, 
 and also to draw him out. 
 
 "We were not watching him," he said, as 
 though Peter must really appreciate the full value 
 of terms. "We were keeping in touch with him." 
 
 "There is a good deal of the matter of which I 
 309
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 am ignorant," declared Peter. "Would you mind 
 telling me the whole of it?" 
 
 Mr. Wink glanced carefully at Phillippa's let- 
 ter to discover if he had a loophole for refusal. 
 Phillippa's letter left no such loophole, with a 
 palpable air of resignation, he answered, 
 
 "Our instructions were to keep in touch with 
 him and to help him." 
 
 Peter thought and nodded. Yes, that was 
 Phillippa's way. Mere negation would not be 
 her part in duty, she had to act. 
 
 "With money, I suppose?" 
 
 "Yes, we had our instructions to extend finan- 
 cial help to him. In fact Mrs. Patricot had set 
 aside a definite allowance which we were to make 
 to him. However, he never accepted it." 
 
 "He refused all such assistance?" 
 
 "With contumely," said Mr. Wink, obviously 
 enjoying the flavor of the word. 
 
 "What do you mean by that exactly?" 
 
 Mr. Wink with solemnity selected one from the 
 many papers in a deed box. He handed it to 
 Peter, 
 
 "That was the last refusal," he. said. "It was 
 returned, judging from the postmark on the envel- 
 ope, two days before Patricot vanished." 
 
 Peter held in his hand a check for a large sum 
 drawn on a Malacca bank. The fact in itself was 
 
 310
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 not the arresting thing. Across the back of it was 
 written in heavy, black, up and down pen strokes 
 of curiously individual and angular writing, 
 
 I've told you before to go to Hell with your money. 
 Stop behaving like a driveling school girl. And for God's 
 sake leave me alone, 
 
 Peter stared at the writing fascinated by it, 
 startled by it, shocked by it, his heart furiously 
 beating. Directly he had seen the writing, some- 
 thing had leaped within him, something had cried 
 out, 'This is why you were sent to the lawyers, 
 Peter John.' 
 
 "That," said Mr. Wink, "was sent without cov- 
 ering letter to Mrs. Patricot at 'Green Ladies.' 
 Every check, I might say, was so treated." 
 
 Peter could not take his eyes from the strange, 
 uncouth, evil and distinctive writing, it was almost 
 incredible that he should know it, yet, all the same, 
 his knowing it had the now recognized flavor of 
 inevitability. 
 
 "He was," pursued Mr. Wink, "he was unre- 
 pentant and determined to go his own way untram- 
 meled. He would not brook any attempt to win 
 him back. He was, if you will allow me to say, 
 inured to his evil habits, satisfied with them." 
 
 Peter was hypnotized by the writing. 
 
 "It is a strange handwriting," he said.
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "He was a strange character," said Mr. WinE, 
 frail before this blessed chance of moralizing. 
 "There are some men, Mr. John, who seem born 
 to follow the paths of evil. He was one of them. 
 He selected the crooked way instinctively; if he 
 had the choice of good or ill, he turned almost 
 naturally to the ill. One does not like to say it, 
 one, almost, cannot conceive it possible, but he 
 seemed happiest when leading a wicked life. 
 Goodness, honesty, chastity, the ordinary decen- 
 cies of life were irksome to him. There are 
 few, fortunately only a few, who have wicked- 
 ness in their very blood, such was James Patricot. 
 He . . ." 
 
 Peter interrupted, he was still staring at the 
 strange writing. 
 
 "I have seen this writing before," he said. "I 
 have seen it recently." 
 
 "Oh," said Mr. Wink, startled also and looking 
 at him closely. "Where?" 
 
 "I am trying to remember," said Peter. "It 
 was recently, I am sure. Within say the last few 
 years, but where I don't know." 
 
 His heart was beating, his pulse was throbbing. 
 He felt as one who had stumbled on the key-point 
 of all this business, all this mystery. He felt that 
 he had an answer to all the strange happenings in 
 
 312
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 his hand. He was very near to the solution . . . 
 but . . . but where had he seen the writing! 
 
 "You can't recollect?" said the lawyer anx- 
 iously. 
 
 "No, I seem so near to remembering, only 
 only, it is just outside actual grasp." 
 
 "It means a very great deal if you do," said 
 Mr. Wink, as though impressing him with the fact 
 that he was in great danger of playing ducks and 
 drakes with the majesty of the law. 
 
 "I know ... I know ..." cried Peter. "I 
 have seen it somewhere within recent years. 
 It's not a writing that one would forget." 
 
 "No," said the lawyer, and then as though it 
 were a separate answer, "No." 
 
 They both waited in silence for ten minutes, 
 Mr. Wink giving Peter an opportunity to rack his 
 brain. Peter was racking them. Then, 
 
 "No, I can't place it yet," said Peter. 
 
 "You must try," said the lawyer and they were 
 again ineffectually silent. 
 
 After due reflection Mr. Wink said, 
 
 "To have seen it in the space of, say, a few 
 years, and then only, possibly by chance," he 
 waved his hand, "that may not, when we come 
 to the rock bottom, help us." 
 
 "It seems to me much more real than mere 
 chance, .... and I think it was close enough 
 
 313
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 to make it seem useful to us. ... Well, the 
 recollection is so very vivid." 
 
 The lawyer stared at him. 
 
 "It may come to you in time." 
 
 "It will," said Peter. "I am certain it will. 
 May I keep this?" 
 
 "By all means," said the lawyer. They were 
 both silent, thinking. Peter, staring at the writing, 
 his heart throbbing as he considered it, his mind 
 amazed by its familiarity, yet baffled to place it 
 in his memory. 
 
 The lawyer, after weighing the effect of his 
 remark, said, 
 
 "There is the contingency, we must be prepared 
 for it, that since you remember the writing, re- 
 member having seen it within a year or two, James 
 Patricot is alive." 
 
 Peter's heart stopped beating. He glanced up 
 from the writing and looked at the lawyer. 
 
 "Yes," he said painfully, "there is that contin- 
 gency." 
 
 "Not that Mrs. Patricot hasn't a case against 
 this fellow," said Mr. Wink with an approach to 
 judicial sympathy. "She has a winning case all 
 through. There is not only that initial infamy, 
 but in Australia, New Zealand, even in Malacca, 
 and elsewhere our agents have found material
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 enough to make any proceeding an absolutely 
 foregone conclusion." 
 
 They looked at each other, understanding each 
 other and Phillippa completely. It was because 
 he understood Phillippa that the lawyer's next 
 remark was a lame one, 
 
 "It is more than possible also, that the man 
 would not defend his case. Would be glad to 
 break a bond. . . . ' 
 
 He stopped, he looked at Peter, he knew that 
 it was not very material to continue. 
 
 "I don't think we need consider the likelihood 
 of proceedings taking place," said Peter resign- 
 edly. 
 
 "I'm afraid not," said Mr. Wink with a spark 
 of real sincerity. And he added, "Then there is 
 only the writing." 
 
 "Yes, I must puzzle my wits over the writing," 
 agreed Peter. 
 
 "Let us hope that it will have a happy issue," 
 said Mr. Wink. 
 
 Peter nodded. He could not offer an opinion. 
 The writing baffled and confused him, filled him 
 with fear and hope. He put it into his pocket- 
 book. After a few more questions he left. He 
 went straight back to "Green Ladies"; there 
 seemed nothing else to do. 
 
 315
 
 XXXIX 
 
 EDEN picked up a photograph and looked 
 at it, and presently Peter was aware that 
 he was looking at it. 
 
 Peter had returned from the lawyers his mind 
 a maze of perplexities. The coming of the writ- 
 ing had been a shock. That strange, evil hand- 
 writing, which, once seen, could never, Peter 
 decided, be forgotten, had entered into the drama 
 of happenings with all the elements of a direct 
 clue. Until he had seen the writing his feeling 
 that things would work out rightly had been a 
 matter of presentiment, of fancy. The writing 
 had made presentiment a surety, he was certain. 
 
 He knew the writing. Undoubtedly he knew 
 it. He knew it as one knows an intimate face. 
 And yet, as one may know a face extraordinarily 
 well and still forget the name of the person, so he 
 could not for the life of him recall the circum- 
 stances in which he had seen that writing. 
 
 He had seen it, but when and where and in 
 what circumstances? During the whole of the 
 train journey he had racked his brains to remem- 
 ber, and he had not remembered. During the 
 
 316
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 night he had tossed and turned in a sleepless bed 
 to remember, and he had not remembered. The 
 fact was so near his grasp and yet it eluded him 
 always. He was worried and bothered and irri- 
 table. He must remember where he had seen the 
 writing. How could he possibly forget. The 
 thing was so vital, so significant, so much was 
 bound up in it, that it made him furious that his 
 memory should be so ineffectual. 
 
 He had returned home. He had hesitated 
 about going to Phillippa and had decided against 
 it. He must recall something about this baffling 
 familiar writing presently, and until he had made 
 his discovery for good or ill he felt he could not 
 face the girl. He might raise hopes that would 
 end in agony, if the fellow was alive. He might 
 not even be able to remember. 
 
 He had sat long thinking it out. Yes, his famil- 
 iarity with the writing was recent, it had occurred 
 since he had left South America. But where had 
 it occurred? Under what circumstances? Had 
 he seen it in England, or in the East, or in France, 
 or after his return to England? And why had he 
 seen it and how? What business had introduced 
 it to him? Was it connected with a living man, or 
 a dead man? His heart became cold at that. If 
 he had seen the writing that spoke of a living man, 
 it must have been sent by a living man. 
 
 317
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 But he did not know, he could not remember. 
 Tax his brain as he would he could find no light, 
 there was no answer to his eternal questioning. 
 
 In the early morning hours he resolved some 
 order into his thoughts. He had not seen the 
 writing in South America, he was certain of that. 
 He had, seen it since, that is, since he had returned 
 to England to serve in the war. Very well, he 
 must go over all the circumstances of his life since 
 he returned from South America. He must take 
 his life even day by day and carefully examine 
 each day, and all the happenings of each day. He 
 must be systematic. After breakfast he would go 
 over his war kit, examine all the papers, and par- 
 ticularly go through his diaries. He would start 
 on his valise, where all his portable papers and 
 material relating to his years of service were 
 stored, and he would examine every item carefully 
 and in order. 
 
 Eden had come into the little neat study with 
 letters and had found him at it. 
 
 He had attacked the problem with method. He 
 would not be haphazard. He had spread out 
 all the papers, his photographs and his books on 
 the desk and about the room. Roughly he ha4 
 parceled these items out into their respective 
 years; his period of training in England; his ser- 
 vice at the Dardanelles, his stay in hospital when
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 he had gone sick at the Dardanelles; his service 
 in Palestine, his period in hospital there; and so 
 on. He was ranging them, getting them in order 
 when Eden came into the room. 
 
 He had not looked up when Eden came into the 
 room. He would not have looked up, so occupied 
 was he, had not Eden lingered in the room. Had 
 not Eden, in a manner rather unexpected, looked 
 down at a photograph, looked down at it a second 
 time, lifted it up and stood gazing at it. 
 
 Peter turned about and saw him staring at the 
 thing with a troubled recognition in his eyes. 
 Peter on one knee paused and stared, and he felt 
 that the silence was rather big, rather pregnant. 
 He felt that the matter was ended; the final criti- 
 cal moment had come. 
 
 And presently Eden took his eyes from the pho- 
 tograph and caught Peter's eyes. 
 
 There was a look of bewilderment, of distress, 
 in the old man's face. He glanced at Peter with a 
 look of appeal. 
 
 He asked, 
 
 "Will you pardon me, sir. . . . but in this pho- 
 tograph . . . would you mind telling me the 
 name of ... of this sergeant . . . ?" 
 
 Peter rose slowly to his feet and went to the 
 old man's side. It seemed to him that the room, 
 the whole world, was curiously still. It seemed to 
 
 319
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 him that the air was in some subtle fashion thrilled 
 by the momentousness of this happening. He 
 stood at Eden's side and looked at the photograph 
 and saw what he had expected to see there. 
 
 It was a gray and inefficient photograph of the 
 kind French photographers so often took of 
 British soldiers in billets. It represented a group 
 of officers and non-commissioned officers and 
 Peter was in it. It was, in fact, a photograph of 
 the officers and N. C. O.'s of the company in 
 which Peter had served in France. 
 
 Peter looked at it and he wanted to shout, 
 
 "Which one?" he said to Eden deliberately. 
 The old man put his finger on the Company Ser- 
 geant Major. 
 
 "His name," said Peter, with a composure that 
 belied the racing beat of his pulse, "his name was 
 John Allard." 
 
 "Yes," said Eden reflectively, "his mother's 
 name was Allard." 
 
 He said it as though he saw some significance 
 in the fact. 
 
 "You know him?" asked Peter, steadying his 
 voice against the rush of exultance. For the thing 
 was done. The whole mystery was solved. The 
 man whose writing he knew was found. The 
 meaning of the dream, of the handclasp, of every- 
 thing was made unmistakably clear. 
 
 320
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 "Yes, sir," said Eden slowly, "I knew him." 
 
 "Shall I tell you his right name?" asked Peter. 
 
 The old man looked up at him, his quick, kind 
 old eyes examined Peter's face. 
 
 "You know it is Mr. James Patricot, sir?" he 
 said. 
 
 "Miss Phillippa's husband?" 
 
 The old man's look cried, "You know that 
 too," but his tongue said, 
 
 "Yes, sir, Miss Phillippa's husband." 
 
 They stood regarding the photograph. Then 
 presently Peter said quietly, 
 
 "He is dead. He died in the big retreat of 
 1918. He was shot. I was within ten yards of 
 him when it happened. . . . He was my Ser- 
 geant-Major, you know. ... I buried him." 
 
 Eden stared at the photograph. His eyes were 
 soft. 
 
 "He wasn't a good man," he whispered. "He 
 never was good. But he died a good death." 
 
 He put down the photograph. 
 
 "Does Miss Phillippa know, sir?" he asked. 
 
 "I am just going to write to her and tell her," 
 said Peter. 
 
 Presently he sat down and told her all that had 
 happened. How he had recognized the writing, 
 but how he had failed to connect it with any 
 definite memory. How Eden had both enabled 
 
 321
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 him to remember it was his Company Sergeant- 
 Major's handwriting, and had identified the pho- 
 tograph of James Patricot. 
 
 He told her all the circumstances. He wrote, 
 "This is the meaning of it all. This is why I of all 
 men was sent to 'Green Ladies,' this is the reason 
 of the dream." And then, when he had written, he 
 sent the letter to Phillippa by the hand of Eden. 
 
 "I have told Miss Phillippa everything," he 
 said to the old man, "but I think you are the only 
 one to give her this news in the way she should 
 hear it. Tell her, and then give her my letter." 
 
 He went on the terrace, and with his eyes on the 
 golden sunlight shining on the waters and the 
 Island and the garden and the spilled jewel casket 
 of Eden's flowers, he sat and thought.
 
 XL 
 
 IN the dusk of the following day Peter sat 
 with the girl on the cliff and talked, 
 "I dreamt again last night, Phillippa," he 
 said to the soft shadow so close to him in the dusk. 
 "It was the same dream, yet not the same. I held 
 your hand, and we pressed on, only . . . ' 
 
 "My dear," she said softly, "I know. Let me 
 tell you the rest . . . Only we had passed the 
 last of the trees, and the darkness was gone, the 
 blackness was behind us. And we were out in the 
 sunlight. Wasn't it golden, and how big the 
 world was? And the sea was beneath us, and we 
 felt the great wind blowing in our faces, and heard 
 the friendly noise of the sea. Everything was 
 radiant, the sea and the sky and the sun and the 
 color went on in joy forever." 
 
 "Yes, that was the dream. We stood there and 
 looked and laughed, and we still held each other's 
 hand." 
 
 He put out his hand and found hers waiting for 
 him, and once again he felt the warm, soft flut- 
 tering fingers beneath hi*. 
 
 323
 
 GREEN LADIES 
 
 After a moment he said, speaking softly, 
 "And the strange part of the dream was that 
 the place on which we stood was 'Green Ladies.* 
 The garden of 'Green Ladies' was about us, 
 'Green Ladies' was behind us. We hadn't won 
 through a new land, only to 'Green Ladies.' ' 
 
 "It isn't strange," she said, and she laughed 
 softly. " 'Green Ladies' is our happiness. It 
 was always meant to be." 
 
 (i) 
 
 THE END
 
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