TOC SiOGiOG
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THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
IN MEMORY OF
MRS. VIRGINIA B. SPORER
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
By the same author
QUIET INTERIOR
"She has a beautiful visual gift . . .
a sense of character that can be brilliant
or touching." The New Statesman.
"The whole novel is carried beyond
the bounds of commonplace by its
distinction of style." The Athenaeum.
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
BY E. B. C. JONES
(Mrs. F. L. Lucas)
"We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry."
WEBSTER: The White Devil.
BONI AND LIVEEIGHT
Publishers New York
Copyright, 1922, by
BONI AND LlVERIGHT, INC.
Printed in 'the United States of America.
TO MY MOTHER
PAET ONE
" RODEN, dear, you're so perverse."
"Roden is so perverse. "
"Of course, when Roden 's in one of his per-
verse moods! . . . "
When Lady Peel rang the changes thus upon
her favourite word of the moment not only her
eldest son, Roden, but her husband, Sir Harold,
her nephew, Evelyn Cashel, and her daughters,
Caroline and Stella, sat in a silence which was
neither alert nor embarrassed nor partisan, but
merely profoundly indifferent.
Last autumn her word had been "highbrow" ;
shortly before that, "snobby"; earlier yet,
"precious." Whatever it was, Lady Peel
worked it to death, and long before it died it
ceased to make the faintest impression on her
auditors, whether they were involved in the in-
dictment or merely spectators.
The speaker was a small, brown, restless,
simian woman with a young, wrinkled face and
eyes whose pathos was perhaps misleading. She
fidgeted continually with knives and forks and
9
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
glasses; flicked her diamond earrings with a
forefinger ; shifted a heavy chain of variegated
stones that seemed to chafe her neck. She was
not brilliant in her restlessness ; in spite of the
luminous dark eyes there was a dimness about
her face. Nor was her voice arresting ; v in
spite of its odd sudden drops into a murmur,
its gusty increase of volume, which bore no
relation to the purport of the words, its effect
was monotonous. The whole impression was
one of rather meaningless and empty commo-
tion. Yet Lady Peel was not wholly insignifi-
cant.
None of the company assembled at dinner
was altogether negligible, to judge by a first
appearance. How much of their distinction
was due to their juxtaposition and to their
rich, dark, gilded puce-and-umber background,
it is hard to say; they certainly presented a
picture of pleasing symmetry; and the Lon-
don dining-room enclosed their composite per-
sonality as it were an essence. Upon its
brightly-lit sombreness, their faces, necks,
shirtfronts and hands detached themselves
with a sort of gay, careless emphasis, at
once theatrical and intimate. They scarcely
spoke; only Lady Peel's complaints dribbled
10
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
and clicked like billiard balls knocked about in
an idle moment with monotonous vivacity.
At her left hand, her elder son, Roden,
glowered and lowered more openly than is
usual in polite society. His indifference to his
mother 's opinion of him was profound; but to
be baited in public is always odious. He was
remarkably pale, with a large, arrogant, sensi-
tive nose, whose nostrils were nearly vertical,
and opaque brown eyes. He had a child-like
look, due partly to his sulky mouth and wavy
brown hair; and this look took the mind back
further than adolescence, further than grubby
schooldays and the schoolboy's frown, into the
remoter period of infancy the period of
splendid projects, undiluted romance, un-
imagined obstacles, vast despairs; the period,
too, of absolute faith. His face, to the sister
who watched him covertly, was the type and
symbol of a childhood lost but not regretted;
it was Roden 's strength and singularity that
he had never quite grown up ; he never looked
back; his face was set always, childlike, to the
future. He was childlike both in his sulky
silences, as now, and in his loquacity, as when
alone with Caroline. He lacked moderation,
the fruit of self -consciousness, self-criticism;
11
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
he had not the intelligent adult's fear of being
a bore; he was anecdotal; he related his
dreams.
Yet Caroline, the self-conscious and self-
critical, was aware of something beyond and
above his moodiness and triviality, or perhaps
a part of it a promise and a power. He was
unhampered by the diffidence, the humour, the
ironical self-suspicion which shackles the in-
trospective and the analytical. His sister
pinned half her faith to him; she saw him as
a potential conqueror. Lady Peel, Stella, her
cousin, Evelyn Cashel, she herself, might tor-
ment him like mosquitoes; if there were a
noble beast in her home, it was not her large
blond, handsome father, but the mute, pale,
lowering Roden. She gave him her unspoken
support; the glance she dropped upon her
mother was scornful in its cool indifference;
Lady Peel was not worthy of her hostility.
There was none there, save Roden, in Caro-
line's opinion, worthy of any sharp or pro-
found emotion. Her mother, her sister, her
cousin, she frankly despised; her calm, fair
father, the embodiment of a Frenchman's idea
of an English lord, she regarded with mild
affection: at least he kept quiet. Lady Peel's
12
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
and Stella 's restlessness were irksome; the lat-
ter 's femininity insistent; it addressed itself
both to Sir Harold and to Evelyn Cashel,
drawing them into a little circle of intimate al-
lusiveness. Caroline wondered if Evelyn
relished his position; for he was fastidious in
many ways. Caroline's fastidiousness revolted
against the situation which his presence
created ; a rivalry between mother and daugh-
ter. She did, on this account, spare him a
morsel of admiration: his manner was perfect
not insolent, nor proprietary, nor humble.
Judging by his ease, and an occasional side-
long smile, he enjoyed his role; at which judg-
ment, Caroline's scorn over-rode her admira-
tion.
Evelyn Cashel was a slender, fair, carefully-
groomed young man, who sat with his smooth
head and aquiline profile gracefully tilted, his
hand curled round his wine glass. In middle
age he would be dried up, bird-like; but at
thirty he retained his clear complexion, elas-
ticity and bloom. He spoke slowly with a slight
lisp, and with considerable emphasis, and
avoided with consummate skill any serious
aspect of whatever topic was under discussion.
So perfect, consistent and invulnerable was
13
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
his insincerity that Caroline often wondered
if indeed he did dissemble anything; if indeed
the highly-finished exterior were not the whole
man.
A footman handed fruit.
" Can't we have canary bananas, Mother?"
Stella asked. "I do hate these great yellow
Zeppelins."
"You should go and live in the Canary Isl-
ands, my dear," said Evelyn, "and wear a
grass skirt, and behave like the young person
in Rupert Brooke's later poems and Gauguin's
pictures with a beautiful, innocent licence."
"Cabs is more in that line," Sir Harold re-
marked, glancing at his elder daughter's
slender brownness.
"Ah, but the point of my idea, Hal," his
nephew protested, "is that Stella would be so
delightfully . . . perverse ... in those cir-
cumstances like Ninon de 1'Enclos wrecked
on a desert island at the age of sixteen."
Stella, small and fair, with a pointed equivo-
cal face of wavering outline, laughed; and
Lady Peel cried, jangling her bracelets:
' ' What ideas you do get hold of, Evelyn ! It 's
as bad as a French novel."
"You know, Aunt Leila, I believe you'd like
14
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
me to be rather wicked and loose for the sake
of the vicarious thrill : sin at second hand. ' '
"I know nothing of the sort, you ridiculous
boy," his aunt retorted. "It's quite loose-
sounding enough for you to be mixed up with
aniline dyes. . . . By the way, Hal, Mr. Crack-
ham or is it Packham? called to-day . . .
Evelyn, he said you were an ornament to the
firm."
"He must have a sense of humour," said
Caroline softly.
There passed then between her and her
cousin a long look, neither hostile nor amic-
able one of cool, amused, mutual measure-
ment and comprehension.
"I'm glad you realise how decorative I am,"
he replied at last, smiling faintly.
"Of course," said Caroline gravely, dipping
her fingers into a bowl of water.
"Hal!" Stella suddenly exclaimed, "it's
April, and I must have a new hat. I owe ten
pounds."
After a pause her father inquired: "And
what about Cabs?"
"Oh, Cabs is never in debtl It's Evelyn
and I who are extravagant."
15
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"I disclaim this fellowship of vice,"
"You! Who daren't go down Savile Bow
for fear of duns?"
"I'll pay for a new hat," Sir Harold an-
nounced, "in exchange for a sight of your ac-
counts. ' '
"Hal, you're a mean pig! Cabs, be a dear
and lend me your accounts to show Hal. ' '
"Certainly," said Caroline.
"You see," Stella informed them, "I'm
lunching at the Carlton to-morrow, with Geof-
frey. . . . Can't we go upstairs, now? I've
something to show you, Evelyn."
In the vast drawing-room, rose-coloured cur-
tains hid the blue night, crystal drops shrouded
the lights, and the walls were covered, incon-
gruously, with seascapes. The ocean in paint
was Lady Peel's one constant artistic passion,
although she declared that the sea in reality
gave her a sick headache at a distance of five
miles.
Released from the dining-room, the group's
composite personality evaporated. Contrasts
between them seemed less sharp, and at the
same time each individual was more himself.
As though to symbolise this independence Sir
Harold prepared, almost at once, to leave the
16
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
house. His younger daughter, following him
from the room, returned after an interval,
holding two cheques, one of which she gave to
Caroline.
They were grouped round the hearth, Roden
at Caroline's feet, Evelyn in a deep chair on
whose arm Stella perched herself. She showed
the young man a pill-box, bidding him guess
the contents.
" Cocaine?"
"No. Patches. Are they made of sticking
plaster?" Together they examined the con-
tents of the box. Then, glancing provocatively
at her mother and sister, the girl held a patch
to her cheek, and said "Where shall I wear
it?"
Caroline watched her, coolly critical. Lady
Peel seemed not to have heard or seen; but
suddenly she spoke: "One gets so sick of 'em!
They're all right for a day or two."
"Oh, mother, how you do take the gilt off
the gingerbread! They'll suit me, won't they,
Evelyn?"
"Yes, my dear." He surveyed her, while
she leaned away from him, her odd little face,
not modern, yet bespeaking an infinite self-as-
surance, tilted daintily. "Come here," Evelyn
17
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
finally resumed ; ' * one here ; and another there,
when you wear your pink faille frock. ' '
"According to mother, there'll only be one
occasion."
"One can do a lot in that time," said Caro-
line.
Roden handed her his cigarette case, and
she took one, bending towards him her sloping
shoulders, her long neck, her fine, light-boned
head, capped with dense brown hair. Her
brows were darkly marked, like Roden 's; but
her eyes, unlike his, were hazel, lucent, lucid,
scrutinising everyone and everything; more of-
ten critical than soft. From her brow her hair
sprang away in a definite curve, though art
had flattened it over her ears; and from her
teeth her upper lip sprang away with a similar
movement, while her under lip came up, it
seemed with deliberation, to cover them. She
smoked very slowly, husbanding the ash on the
cigarette-end, and finally flicking it off with a
sure, quick gesture. She had these sudden, yet
certain, movements, which might have been
taken for signs of impulsiveness, but which
could be seen germinating in her mind, in her
poise. That, too, was how she spoke unhesi-
tating, sudden, soft and sure and clear.
18
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"Do you remember, Evelyn," Lady Peel
asked, "the Victorian Ball in 1914?"
"Of course I do."
"You and Stella were in Paris, then, weren't
you, Cabs? Did I ever tell you about it?"
"No; the war intervened," the girl an-
swered.
"Eoden, you went with us, didn't you?"
Her son grunted: "Yes. That Victorian
coat was tight in the arm-holes."
"We went in the Vesey's box," his mother
resumed. "In those days there was a motion
that Roden and Babs were ..."
"Lies," Evelyn supplied.
"I thought it was you, Evelyn, who was so
devoted to Babs Vesey!" cried Stella.
"Yes indeed, now; but not then," her cousin
retorted.
There was a pause while the various inter-
pretations of which this answer was capable
hovered in the air. Evelyn Cashel's voice was
peculiarly suited to innuendo ; nor did he shirk
the silences which follow remarks full of im-
plication indeed, he seemed to savour them.
He sat in perfect ease, while two thin streams
of smoke issued from his nostrils; and finally,
went on: "Babs in those days was impossibly
19
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
ingenuous. Now-a-days, there's nothing she
doesn't know, which makes conversation not
only possible but pleasant."
Caroline smiled at the fire.
"All girls know everything now," said Lady
Peel, "but it doesn't seem to give 'em any
satisfaction. They are so glum and solemn "
"I'm not," Stella protested.
"And so are the young men," her mother
added.
"I'm not," said Evelyn.
"Roden is. Cabs and Roden are a very typi-
cally modern pair, in my opinion," their mother
pursued, kicking away a footstool which! hit
the fender and caused the fire-irons to fall
with a clatter. When the din had subsided she
completed her sentence: "You do and say all
you want, and still you aren't pleased."
"It was rather hard to feel pleased during
war," Caroline remarked.
"But that's over now. Why can't you en-
joy life? You have everything you want,
haven't you?"
"It's hard, I suppose, to shed things just
like that," the girl replied slowly, marvelling
yet again at her mother's crudity. Were three
years to be counted an age, during which even
20
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
the loss of one's betrothed must be forgotten?
Lady Peel's crudity amounted in her next
speech to cruelty the , trivial, unconscious
cruelty of a child tearing a flower to pieces.
"To shed things," she echoed, moving her
chin quickly from side to side, while she
loosened her jewelled chain. "To shed what?
What do you mean, I wonder? You young
things are solemn and mysterious to a pitch!
"To shed the war."
"Oh, Cabs," cried Stella irritably, "don't go
on repeating 'the war' over and over again.
We've all been in it."
"My dear Stella, I'm not proprietary about
it."
"Yes. Evelyn and Stella were in it, too,
especially Evelyn; and Francis was, just as
much as any one who didn't fight. He isn't
gloomy," said Lady Peel.
Francis was her absent schoolboy son.
"Francis and Stella are younger than Roden
and I," Caroline answered. "They can be-
gin again. It's hard for us, nearer (thirty
than twenty, to begin again." She spoke
coolly, reasonably, in the way Stella hated:
she felt her sister hating her now.
21
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"What about Evelyn?" the latter asked
with hostility.
"Evelyn's the complete epicure. As long as
good food and hot water are available he re-
tains his equanimity."
"I hope you feel crushed," said Stella to
her cousin.
"But I admire her, while she dissects me,"
he answered.
"Dissect! Dissect! That's exactly what they
do now-a-days. Evelyn has the word," cried
Lady Peel.
"Now, Aunt Leila, don't you appropriate it.
It's my copyright; you've got quite enough
words already."
"I don't mind your teasing me, Evelyn, be-
cause at least you're gay."
"I'm gay, I'm gay, too," gurgled her
younger daughter, swinging one leg violently,
while she supported herself with a hand on the
young man's shoulder. "I want a smoke."
Her cousin opened his case ; it was empty.
"Oh dear! Roden, give me a cigarette," she
commanded.
Her brother handed her his case in silence.
"Old glum-face, why don't you speak?"
22
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"Because I've no words to waste," said
Roden gruffly.
"Oh, oh, oh, the ogre! Oh, the sage, the
philosopher!" cried Stella, still swinging her
leg. Her brother made no answer; and pres-
ently, her cigarette alight between her fingers,
she sat still and mute regarding him. His
silence, his remoteness piqued and puzzled her,
when she noticed him; and this occurred more
frequently than, to judge by the number of
times she addressed him, one would have
thought likely. He was indocile to the process
of capture by femininity, quite unsusceptible.
The thought of him, further, was indocile to
Stella's particular method of dealing with
ideas that failed to fit in her scheme of exis-
tence. The queer, the mysterious, the alien, the
intractable, the incomprehensible, were simply,
by her, put by. The thought of Roden would
not be put by; it continually cropped up; she
could not finally dismiss him from her mind.
She even sometimes missed him from the din-
ner-table. She liked to feel the gaze of his
opaque eyes fixed on her, on the rare occasions
when he noticed her; she liked to elicit from
him a response, however grudging. She longed
now to prick him into consciousness of her.
23
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
His oblivion as he stared at the fire seemed a
challenge. Then Evelyn touched her hand, and
her thoughts slid away to him, to herself
adorned with a beauty-spot, to a vision of her-
self in a pink faille frock, walking into a res-
taurant in front of Evelyn. . . .
Caroline, unaware of Stella's interest in
their brother, although she compared her
sister's attacks on his reserve to Lady Peel's,
marvelled at the strange house-fellows which
blood and convention make. She herself felt
separated from her family by a gulf; but how
much further even than she was Eoden spirit-
ually removed. She had bracketed him with
herself in speech just now; but were he and
she, in fact, any closer than she and Stella?
"Roden can begin again; just like Stella and
Francis can," she said to herself. "He's not
too old at twenty-seven, too war-worn, too
heart-broken. He'll live and grow intensely.
He's like a tree; one feels the sap strong inside
the bark; it'll break out in leaves and fruit.
Is it only I that feel half-dead, empty, and pur-
poseless?"
She glanced down at Roden, as she put her-
self the question, and saw his head drop for-
ward with a jerk, then raise itself; his whole
24
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
body swayed back towards her, and his head
came to rest, warm and solid, against her
knee. She bent with a protective movement
over him and found that he had fallen asleep.
25
n.
IN 1917, Caroline's fiance, Gerald Sexton, had
been killed in Mesopotamia. Introduced to the
Peels by Roden, whom he knew at Cambridge,
Gerald the gay, the gallant, the candid and
chivalrous, had conquered 'the/ whole family;
he was, to them, a hero before he put on khaki,
before he was decorated, before he lost his life
in battle.
The Caroline Peel of those days was a differ-
ent person from the Caroline Peel of 1920.
Her family's united affection for Gerald had
positively recommended him to her; not that
her feeling for the young man was in the least
spurious ; it was, on both sides, a genuine pas-
sion. It flowered slowly from seeds sown in
pre-war days; it was to have been crowned
in the autuntn of the year in which Gerald was
killed. In the shock of that event, Caroline,
disorientated, amazed, with the world crumbl-
ing about her, the earth trembling under her
feet, life crouching like an assassin scarcely
less hideous than death, had closed the gates
26
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
of herself against existence, had prepared for
a long siege, determined to eat her heart out
rather than surrender. There was no one in
those days to help her, to persuade her to keep
open one postern, one wicket, so that communi-
cation with life should not be utterly pre-
vented. Her family, in pity and awe, had stood
away> from her; had, in their phrase,, " re-
spected her grief. " Her girl friends were too
young, or too much occupied with their own
affairs, to take an intimate interest in hers.
She faced tragedy alone. She looked at life,
saw that it was evil, and swore herself its
enemy. Her own loss brought about her first
sharp intense realisation of the war a general
realisation of which her class, her family, her
upbringing, made extraordinarily difficult. Not
till Gerald's death did she come to visualise
however inadequately the meaning of war;
and when she did, it overwhelmed her. She
looked at her surroundings and searched the
faces of her family and friends for some an-
swering recognition of the immensity of the
catastrophe in which they were involved; she
perceived trivial excitement, boredom, self-
satisfaction, and sometimes the ravages of
grief ; but never the message of comprehension
27
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
which would have called out the answering
dignity in her. She did not even know her own
plight, bewildered by longing, sickness and
woe. She hugged for comfort the catchwords
concerning England, the patriot's death, the
struggle for liberty, the eternal glory of the
noble dead, and found that she was treasuring
pinchbeck jewels. No one in whom these
phrases were a faith turned them for her into
fine gold ; and so she began to suspect that the
fine gold did not exist.
Nor had she any help from the knowledge
that Gerald had died for a faith. She knew that
he had been unselfish and courageous; hitherto,
this had been enough; they had never dis-
cussed the ethics of patriotism; Gerald was
not an introspective or even a thoughtful per-
son. The instinctive quality of his response to
a national need began to trouble her ; she could
not even leave her lover's nobility unques-
tioned. She became a walking den of unfor-
mulated suspicions and uneasy speculations,
tinged with a hatred of herself for her dis-
loyalty. This sudden quick growth and de-
velopment of character affected her as with a
malady. The family doctor treated her for
anaemia.
28
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
After several months of such a state, Caro-
line had the good fortune to find herself placed
in close relation to Gerald's brother, Hugh, re-
turned from France, where gas had incapaci-
tated him.
Hugh Sexton had also been at Cambridge
with Roden, whose contemporary he was, but
owing to his brother's attractive personality
he had been rather overlooked by the Peels.
In her new state of mind Caroline, from her
fortress, scanned the faces of all comers for a
reflection of her own dismay and disillusion.
She had not yet quite given up hope, for the
very reason that her hope was not formulated.
She perceived in Hugh something which dif-
ferentiated him from her surroundings; she
found that he was willing to talk, and that he
was capable of expressing for her much that
had seethed unspoken in her mind. Tenta-
tively, he touched on Gerald's death, boldly on
the war, bitterly on the attitude towards it of
persons such as Lady Peel. She found that
Hugh had no spring of patriotism, only a dis-
like of letting others suffer for him; and yet
she could not think him quite ignoble; he left
on her an impression of fineness and sincerity.
29
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
Could it then be that there was nobility and
self-sacrifice without that inspiration?
For three years now, Hugh's and Caroline's
friendship had endured and grown. To him
only was she fully articulate, perfectly candid.
In his presence, the reserve which appeared so
complete in the midst of her family, melted,
and she exposed herself without fear, without
after-thought, almost without restraint.
Her silence at home was largely due to an
irritable expectation amounting to certainty
that she would be misunderstood; or have to
repeat her words ; and to a complacent convic-
tion that most of what she had to say was too
interesting to be of interest to such persons as
her parents, Stella, Francis, Evelyn. The lat-
ter could, she knew, if he so desired, perfectly
comprehend any utterance of hers; but he
shrank and shielded himself consistently from
anything dark, deep or intricate, preferring
the polished subleties and obscurities of Henry
James' novels to the sombre intricacies of
actual experience. Caroline, as a graceful,
silent, occasionally ironical presence^ he ap-
preciated; but in moments of expansion, she
reminded him too sharply of "horrid realities"
which he preferred to forget.
30
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
Koden, for very different reasons, con-
demned his sister no less straitly than did
Evelyn to a role of auditor. He had been dis-
mayed, once, at her taking up the cudgels for
him against Lady Peel, using in his defence
the weapons he most distrusted: pointed
fluency, light-handed wit what he mentally
condemned, without using the word, as facile.
But this was not all. Even alone with him he
feared Caroline's tongue. He valued her as a
listener, occasionally even as a confidante and
critic; but as a party to discussion he almost
hated her; she was tainted with the passion
for analysis and wit-sharpening which he re-
garded as inimical to action and creation.
Several times after his return from Prance
he had gruffly silenced her and she had not re-
sumed her efforts at self-expression.
In the circles where the propensities con-
demned by Roden would have found full play
Caroline was scarcely more talkative; though
for a different reason. If at home, she felt or
imagined her own intellectual and spiritual
superiority; among her literary acquaintances
she was correspondingly conscious of theirs.
Her family's conventionality, superficiality and
obtuseness compared with her, set, as it were,
31
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
the measure of her own compared with her
clever, queer, critical and creative friends.
She was cautious about exposing herself before
them; yet even here she nursed an especial
complacency suspecting these persons no less
than her family of coldness, of an absence of
the deepest, wildest, most far-reaching emo-
tions. How they would probe, finger, handle
the most intimate topics, with never a tremor,
it seemed, of sentiment or modesty, never a
moment of awe ! And yet, at least, they could
hate. They were languid, perhaps, over their
loves, their joys; their malice was a little
weary ; but hatred of tyranny, hypocrisy, mawk-
ishness, cruelty, woke them to bitter alert-
ness; and this hatred seemed a less ignoble,
personal and petty thing than the emotions of
Stella and Lady Peel.
It was Roden, oddly enough, who had intro-
duced her to this circle of men and women
from which he had since quite removed him-
self. Shortly before the war he had published
a book of poems, and these had brought him
into prominence, though not into popularity,
with those who watch for young talent and
foster it. It had not taken him very long to
become disgusted with his patrons, whom he
32
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
regarded as the most anaemic of dilettantes,
the flimsiest of ''intellectuals." Their ideals
were repellent to him; and on the outbreak of
the war he had definitely quarrelled with some
members of the group. Affection for one par-
ticular woman, had, however, drawn him back
into the hated circle whenever he returned to
London on leave ; and on one of these occasions
Caroline, recently emerged from the first
agonised period of grief, had accompanied him
thither. Since then, she had gone without
Roden; and doubtless the frank, cynical disil-
lusionment from which the members of the
group suffered played its part in her reaction
to her loss ; but so conscious was she of poverty
of brain, culture, education and experience in
comparison with these /companions jthaii she
made no advances, and received none; remain-
ing thus unfriended, although in friendly re-
lation, just where she was most likely to find
understanding, if not sympathy.
In Hugh Sexton, however, she found both.
He had the advantage over her other acquaint-
ances of being Gerald's brother, and of having
witnessed from its conception her's and Ger-
ald's love. He had known it, he remembered
it, in all its stages. She had scarcely noticed
33
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
him, but he had noticed her; and she was as-
tonished and touched to find how carefully he
had followed her emotional history. They both
wondered,, she with deep gratitude, he with
proud humility, what would have become of
her sanity had the young man remained in
France instead of being invalided out of the
army a few months after his brother's death.
He had given her untiring companionship,
never obtruding his own very real grief on
her. He had acted as the young seldom do,
with complete selflessness. It was no wonder
that she admired, loved, trusted him. He was
all that Eoden was not; he gave, he did not
take.
Only rarely did he make demands on her.
Once he had come distraught to Kensington
soon after breakfast. It was the day after the
signing of the Armistice. Eoden being still in
France, she took Hugh up to her brother's
room, where there was a gas-fire. She lit it,
and crouched before it, while he sheltered his
ravaged face in his hands, leaning on the
mantel-piece.
"You haven't slept, Hugh."
"Oh, Cabs, how could I? Ever since London
went mad yesterday I've been thinking how
34
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
typically damnable it was of fate to kill Gerald
and to leave me. If he'd been merely gassed
you and he would have lived happily ever after.
It seemed to me last night that I could never
face you again. Then, when it got light, I
couldn't rest till I'd seen you. It seemed to me
as if it was, in some fiendish way, my fault."
Caroline heard the wave of nervous emotion
climbing the steep breakwater of his control.
She began quickly to speak. "You'll see by
noon how foolish you've been. Even in Lon-
doners there's something which knows what
time it is. Something in me knows when it's
noon and when it's midnight, although I my-
self don't. When you wake feeling low and
cold and deserted in the night it's almost cer-
tain to be two or three o'clock. One's often a
little mad in the night. At noon one is matter-
of-fact."
She paused, and the young man shifted his
position and faced her, his shoulders character-
istically a little hunched, his mouth crinkled at
the corners with the effort of restraint, the
mauve stains of insomnia under his slow-
moving eyes grey meditative eyes in a fair,
keen Danish face.
She looked at him compassionately; and
35
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
under her scrutiny he smiled, and brought out :
" 'Poete, prends ton luth.' Go on; you're not
eloquent, yet you're poetical . . . Cabs, is liv-
ing worth all this trouble? What care and
energy we waste on the effort to earn our liv-
ings and not to cry in public ! ' ' He felt for his
pipe.
But Caroline pursued her theme: " Haven't
you often made the most wonderful plans in
the night, which make you blush in the morn-
ing, for their idiocy, or what is itf grandilo-
quence?"
"Oh, yes."
"That's what makes Eoden different from
us, you know. He doesn't blush in the morn-
ing; they seem just as good as they did in bed
. . . Your feelings last night, Hugh I quite
understand them. They were simply dis-
torted."
"So Roden, then, is perpetually distorted?"
"No, no. He has the horrors sometimes, of
course. I can't explain him. But those very
conceited ideas of oneself and one's ability
that you and I only have at night and in soli-
tude aren't destroyed for Roden by daylight
and the world."
Although she had led the talk round to her
36
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
brother, Caroline had not dismissed from her
mind Hugh's first fantastic speech. It con-
tinued to occupy her long after he had left her.
It raised, not for the first time, the question of
how Gerald's and her life would have fallen
out had they been married. This speculation,
fruitless and idle as it was, inevitably employed
her at times ; but for some reason unknown to
herself, she never spoke of it to Hugh except
in passing not from any fear of disloyalty,
nor from a sense of the sacredness of the topic,
for she intuitively knew that what has never
been, and can never be, cannot be held sacred.
This was her one reserve from Hugh; and not
till much later did she break the silence.
37
m.
IT was past ten o'clock of a fine April morn-
ing, but still Roden Peel lay in bed, tossing
from side to side and groaning: "0 God,
God! There's no use in trying to have
friends. "
This was a favourite, an attractive, a tor-
menting topic: it occupied a great deal of
Roden 's time. To the question of what he
called Caroline and Ann Davies and Joe Tucker
if not friends, Roden had no answer, save that
one of his most outstanding and constant sen-
sations was that of friendlessness.
He had returned from the war full of hopes
and projects. Nothing seemed too simple, too
splendid, too humble, too difficult for him to
do. He pictured a gay, crowded, childlike, active
existence in the midst of an appreciative family
and a circle of kind, enthusiastic, hard-work-
ing friends. He would have no dealings with
the super-subtle, the hypercritical, the chatter-
ing, back-boneless persons who had tried to
1 'take him up" after the publication of his
38
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
poems. Cleverness he did not demand in
people ; all that he had to express was compre-
hensible to the least intellectual of minds. All
the large, the real, the fundamental things
were capable of comprehension by anybody, if
lucidly expressed. He, Eoden, would write
the real democrat for everyone.
Concerning his own part in these schemes,
he had not been disappointed; soon after his
return to England he had begun to write, and
had completed ' ' Swedenborg : A Drama." It
was the desired friends of whose existence he
began to doubt. To begin with, his family
hardly seemed to notice him. Stella, newly
grown-up, looked at him as at a curious
animal; his father, after a few mild vain ef-
forts at setting up a current of sympathy,
ignored him; and Lady Peel, whose period of
enthusiasm about the stage happened to co-
incide with the completion of Roden's play,
showed one brief flare of interest only. Roden
recalled the conversation:
"Mother, I've finished my play."
"Roden, how wonderful! Is it typed? If
it's typed I'll show it to Miss What 's-her-name
she's a power in the S. S. S. "What is it
about?"
39
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
" Swedenborg. "
"Oh . . . Is it like Ibsen? Of course, Roden,
dear, I know that Norway and Sweden are
very tragic and interesting and advanced; but
I don't think they're very popular just now.
Couldn't it take place in in the Potteries, say?
Look how Arnold Bennett goes down."
Since Roden 's failure to respond adequately
to this suggestion, Lady Peel had seemed un-
able to focus her gaze on him. Besides, her
passion for the stage had soon subsided.
Sir Harold, after one attempt to interest his
son in a commercial opening which would have
provided him with a salary and later a partner-
ship, had let the young man alone. The
vacancy was filled by Evelyn Cashel. When
announcing to his family that aniline dyes had
absorbed their cousin's daily energy, Sir Har-
old had thrown out one question to Roden:
"What do you think of doing?"
"I shall write," was the reply, received in
silence.
His family, then, with the exception of the
fond though critical Caroline, did not provide
the nucleus of sympathy which Roden needed.
Caroline herself was sure that he would find
the necessary friends, in spite of difficulties at
40
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
the outset. Roden, tossing in bed, remembered
fragments of conversation with her:
''You don't try to make people like you
not even Hal and mother and Stella."
"If I do try, they don't. They must take me
as I am, or leave me."
"Well, don't grouse if they leave you; and
anyway, 7 take you."
"You're no good. You're a pessimist. I
want some one who'll love life as I do, and do
all the things there are to be done."
"Such asf"
"For instance, I enjoy everyday, ordinary
things and people. You only like them in
books."
"That's art, isn't it? I like them transub-
stantiated."
"Damn long words! We shall never under-
stand each other."
"Well, Eoden, at least we shall always care
for each other."
"Shall we? I'm not so sure."
"Why? Do you sometimes hate me?"
"IVe been pretty near it, Cabs, when you
sneer. You despise* every one you despise
life, I believe."
He remembered vividly her long thoughtful
41
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
look, fixed on him, yet in reality seaching her
own mind for the truth. He remembered her
accent as she replied: "I don't despise life, I
fear it. It's stronger and cunninger than I
it comes along behind me and tries to push me
under motor-buses.'*
"Turn on it, and you'll find it's on your side.
It's good to be part of life . . . Oh, you'll
never agree, so we can't be friends."
"But we are friends. I have you here." She
had touched her breast-bone. "You and I are
like Cathy and Heathcliffe: Cathy is half
Stella, half me."
It had not occurred to Roden that this was
an odd speech for a sister to make to a brother.
Instead he had answered quickly: "Your
Brontes weren't afraid of melodrama as you
call it nor of ordinaries. Nothing's wasted,
or to be despised nothing and nobody. Every
one is of equal value and interest."
"Ah, no."
"The only people I despise," the young man
had added in sudden anger, "are pessimists,
because pessimism is a denial of life : it's nega-
tive. They are on the down-grade."
"Am I?"
"Yes. It's they who fail," he had re-
42
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
affirmed, his thoughts passing from her to in-
clude the hated intelligentsia.
Caroline, with one of her moments of in-
tuition, had followed his thoughts. He re-
membered her accusing him. of being taken in
by the talk of cultured people, of believing
them to be ineffectual because they were fluent ;
and his reply:
"It's enough for me that they are snobs.
They despise me because I don't speak their
beastly jargon."
His sister, in spite of these differences, had
done her best to bring him into contact with
sympathetic acquaintances. Boden went over
in memory his first encounter with Ann Davies,
a gay, robust, blue-eyed young woman with
whom Caroline left him to deal alone. Roden's
first question: "What do you do?" elicited
from Ann that she did anything, or rather
nothing.
"Isn't London enough? except when one's
in the country, and that's better still."
"Yes, indeed. Let's go," he had cried im-
pulsively, "to the Graf ton Galleries. No, it's
dark, damn it. Let's go to a cinema."
With eyes closed, lying in bed, he recalled
how Ann had written on the back of an en-
43
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
velope: " We've gone to a cinema," which mes-
sage was propped against his mother's draw-
ing-room clock for Caroline to find on her
return.
But the promise of this meeting had been
too hopeful. He read Ann Davies " Sweden-
bo rg : A Drama, ' ' and, calling Caroline into his
room in the evening, he had broken out:
1 ' Damn that girl, Cabs! She doesn't know
when to hold her tongue."
"Who does!"
"Don't enrage me with philosophy I'm
nearly off my head as it is. What a family ! I
thought Ann was sane and kind; but now I've
lost her."
"What exactly did she say?"
" * Exactly!' She said a damned sight too
much. Either my play's worthless, or she's a
fool."
He remembered his anger the anger of al-
most a year ago; it burned in him again at
the thought of Ann's careless, bruising words,
and of Caroline's silence. Her silence seemed
accusatory.
' ' Say it 's my play, say it : you think it ! " he
had stormed. "I know you don't care, but I
thought she did."
44
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
He knew now, even as he tossed in his
fevered mood of retrospect, that both these
girls cared for himi Ann gaily, light-hearted-
ly, and Caroline in her divided, baffled, critical,
constant manner.
She was sanguine on his behalf; it was, she
said, only a matter of time. She knew that he
would co-ordinate his dream with reality; she
swore to that ability in him, which was not in
her. Her own dream had gone by the board;
it would not mingle with life. It was a guar-
antee for him that he was so essentially dif-
ferent from her.
Meanwhile, it was hard for him. Almost
every day his mother indirectly attacked what
she considered his idleness, and by implica-
tion praised Evelyn Cashel for his industry.
Sir Harold was amiable, but made no ad-
vances. Stella looked at him curiously.
Evelyn mildly, subtly echoed Lady PeePs un-
answerable questions not for the purpose of
annoying Roden, not even solely for the pur-
pose of pleasing his aunt; his motives were
seldom so simple, as Roden intuitively and
Caroline analytically knew. Evelyn's apparent
criticism of his cousin, couched in a cunningly
transformed version of Lady PeePs jerky
45
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
speech, was at once a criticism of the speech
and a flattery to the speaker. Evelyn knew,
none better, which side his bread was but-
tered; and it was his pastime and pride to
act on this knowledge while giving rein to his
taste for satire. Such obliquity infuriated
Eoden, rousing all that was puritan in him.
The very thought of Evelyn made him scowl.
It was the thought of Evelyn that to-day
made him roll himself over in bed, and mutter
"Damn! Damnation!" as his elder sister
entered the room. "Go away!" he adjured
her. Nevertheless, she sat down by the win-
dow, and said:
"I'm lunching with Ann at Simpson's to-
day. Will you come?"
"No. I'm sick of Ann. Of everybody, in-
cluding you. Why don't you go away?"
"I will, for you. But I thought it was on
my account you told me to go."
"It was." He lay staring at her.
"Have you had any breakfast?"
"No. Give me a drink of water."
As he drank, he glanced at her, and then
said: "You are fond of me, Cabs. I wonder
why you stand my tempers?"
" 'Beareth all things'," the girl answered
46
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
with a slight grimace, holding out her hand for
the empty glass.
Roden banged it on his bed-table so that it
broke. ' * There ! Damn you, Caroline, go into
an asylum; don't try to be a flesh-and-blood
person. You can't be. You'd cut up Christ's
own body with phrases "
1 'Saint Paul's, you mean."
* * Oh, hell ! Your passion for tags is inhuman
it's indecent."
"Oh, no a lust, like another."
4 < Lust, then. But gross words are only a
fashion. It's all a fashion. You're a spiritual
dandy."
Still standing, her eyes on his dark face,
Caroline wondered, as often before, at its po-
tential tragedy, which not even his present
mood of childish fury obliterated. In spite of
five years of war, the tragedy was still only
potentially, not actually, there. She feared for
him, on that account, at the same time as she
confidently hoped. And yet it might fade, melt
into a simple ability to enjoy. There was in
him a power and a strength, which might turn
to misery or to serenity. At present, it was a
dark, driving force; but she thought that, used
and treated aright, it might turn to a force for
47
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
happiness. For she knew that behind his tor-
mented moods, his discouragements and sense
of frustration, burned a faith in life, a confi-
dence in himself, which were the profoundest
things in him. This faith had survived the
huge despairs of childhood, the black moods
of adolescence, the drawn-out ordeal of war,
the death of his comrades, the coldness of his
family ; and so it would survive the disillusion-
ments of peace and of maturity. So strong was
her sense of it in him, of it being the main-
spring of his character, that she did not resent
the blunt, even cruel indictment of her own
pessimism which sprang from it. She recog-
nised his revolt against her view of life as the
revolt of the affirmative against the negative
temperament.
What puzzled her was the inability of his
face to express his confidence in existence; the
opacity of his features disconcerted her. Only
his nose, large, arrogant, sensitive, though not
finely cut, seemed to scent life out as if he were
the hunter, it the prey seemed to challenge
life, as though he met it as an equal, instead of
suffering its abuses like a captive. Caroline
had once or twice, laughing at her own sen-
timentality, kissed her brother's nose; feeling
48
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
herself thus in some way indentified with his
capacity and courage; as women, who in old
days embroidered and embraced the standard,
felt, when it was carried into battle, that the
glory and splendour of the struggle were not
wholly denied them. She kissed it now, despite
his motion of repulse, before she left the room.
49
IV.
AT noon Roden roused himself, and sat up,
tousled-headed, to stare out of the window and
round the room.
His room was full of himself and evidences
of his activity. On a large deal table by the
window lay a stack of papers the first
draft of " Harriet Brown: A Melodrama."
"Swedenborg" was in the hands of an agent.
The table further bore paints, pencils, a draw-
ing-board and a pot of murky water. Above
the fireplace was a pastel portrait of the Deity,
surrounded by somewhat homosexual angels
with bobbed hair; this work of art, as well as
Satan, who, dressed in American clothes with
side whiskers and cloth-topped boots, leered in
the shadow of the wardrobe, was of Roden 's
own execution.
By the gas-fire was one shelf of books, sup-
ported by a chair. It contained: "Robinson
Crusoe"; "Dr. Syntax's Tour," illustrated by
Rowlandson; "War and Peace"; a Chaucer;
a Swedish "Baedeker"; and Nietzsche's "Thus
50
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
Spake Zarathustra," on which once- treasured
but now unloved volume Roden had experi-
mented with his notions of bookbinding.
In Roden 's nebulous cloud of angry thoughts
one became clearer than the rest : hatred of his
frescoes. He would colour-wash them lover
to-morrow, disgusting things. Nevertheless,
he remarked for the hundreth time the skill,
if not the inspiration, with which he had
grouped the heavenly attendants; one in par-
ticular was masterfully drawn.
He dressed quickly, in dark grey clothes;
and, without definite intention, with only the
feeblest impulse, went out and turned east-
wards. It was a beautiful day. The streets
were already emptying for the lunch hour. In
Knightsbridge, he stopped to gaze in the shop
windows, for he took a deep interest in
women 's dress.
He had not yet/ however, thrown off his
troubled mood. In the bright clamour of the
streets there still clung to his brain, his hands,
his heart, a drab fog, a sensation of muffled,
haunted irritability. As though flying from
it, he started resolutely for Green Park.
When he entered it, it seemed quite empty.
After a few paoes he noticed a girl sitting on
51
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
a seat, eating out of a paper packet. There
was something so familiar in her attitude that
he slackened his pace to watch her. She was
dainty, squirrel-like, alert, He could not clearly
see her face, but he was sure that she kept a
wary, bright eye open for strangers and dis-
turbances. Approaching, Roden became aware
of what she reminded him; not only of a
squirrel, but also of the slightly squirreline
Stella. This girl belonged to the same type of
woman as his sister and his mother the type
which suggests the smaller animals: cat, rab-
bit, monkey, rodent. She was not simian, as
was Lady Peel; she was too neatly finished;
her outline was too definite, her poise too alert.
Now that she knew that a young man was
watching her the natural daintiness of her
actions was accentuated became an affecta-
tion.
Roden sat down beside her. After one quick,
sharp look at him, she turned a trifle more
away.
''It's lovely," Roden calmly remarked, as
to the air. "D'you know, I can smell the hya-
cinths in Hyde Park right across the tar and
the petrol? Sometimes, I think I shall be ill
with London's smells."
52
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
After ^ moment an answer came primly:
"They say the smells one doesn't smell are the
worst. ' '
"As for the din!" the young man pursued,
not noticing her, "of course I used to think
it ruddy. I used to think my ear-drums would
split, before I went to France. Now I can
stand anything from the trump of doom
downwards. ' '
"I suppose you can," said the.girL "I
must say I used to think my ears would split
when first I went to Gay's. Of course, as soon
as you start making a noise yourself, you
don't notice the others."
"On the other hand, I seem to have de-
veloped my nose in France," Roden went on,
"you wouldn't think there could be so many
smells, all bad ones."
"No, you wouldn't, would you?" She had
been turning herself gradually towards him,
and her profile was now square to his.
"Smells!" she echoed reminiscently; and
added: "But the cloak-room at Gay's beats
all."
"What's Gay's?"
"It's where I work Gay's Pantechnicon
Corner . . .I'm second for speed now. I be-
53
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
gan as office girl in 1917, and then I learnt my
shorthand."
"You're a typist. "
"Yes; but my shorthand's better than my
typing, Mr. Leslie that's my boss says.
'Miss Draper,' he says, 'you'll never learn, not
ever, where to begin a new paragraph, not
unless I tell you.' But I'm second for speed
now, so I don't mind what Mr. Leslie says."
Roden who, without apparently listening,
had taken in all the essentials of this speech,
announced that he wrote plays. Miss Draper
was suitably awed; and, at her silence, he at
last turned his face to her, and said: "Would
you like to type a play for me?"
"I haven't a machine of my own."
"You could hire one if I paid."
"Oh yes." She offered him a bag: "Have
an acid drop?" and then, reassembling her
errant formality, added primly: "If you'll
excuse me."
"No, thanks. I'll smoke. Have one?"
"I don't smoke, thank you. Lots of the girls
smoke; in fact almost all of them do; but I
don't see the good of it. It runs away with
money. How is one to put by for a rainy day
if one's for ever buying cigarettes?"
54
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"Did you say your name was Draper?"
She hesitated. Rita's moving story of an
innocent girl led astray by a licentious artist
came to her mind; these writers were just the
same as artists, "sort of Bohemian." How-
ever, when the young man said:
"My name is Roden Peel," her good sense
made her reply:
"Mine is Grace Draper."
"As I came along," said Roden, "I thought
you looked like a squirrel eating nuts."
A return of gentility made her voice arti-
ficial as she answered:
"I bring my lunch out whenever it's fine.
The air's good for one. How's a girl to keep
herself fit and her complexion good, if she's
for ever cooped up in a typing-room 1 ?" At the
end of her little speech, her garrulity having
banished primness, she looked with open in-
terest at her companion, who gravely agreed.
His worries had mysteriously vanished; the
drab fog had lifted from his brain, had melted
from his hands and heart. The smells of hya-
cinths and Piccadilly, the sounds of London
and this girl's voice had banished care. ( He
rose and produced a card, saying: "Here's my
55
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
address. I'll send you the play or could you
meet me here to-mjorrow? "
"I shan't have got the machine by to-
morrow. ' '
There was a pause. Roden's thoughts had
flown away on the word " machine". Puzzled,
she rose from the seat, and stood watching him
side-long. Then, reminding herself that no girl
gets on who is too nervous, she decided to be
"foward," and added: "I might call for your
play. Is it far? Of course, if it was Putney
or Cricklewood. . . ."
"T'other side of the Albert Hall."
"Oh, is that all! Well, I like a stroll in my
lunch hour, so I'll call for it on Tuesday if
that suits you."
"Thank you awfully. Ask for me."
He raised his hat, nodded and turned away.
She stopped him with an exclamation, and
he turned back.
"Mr. Peel, I don't know what they'll charge
for the machine."
"That doesn't matter."
"I shall have to charge you a shilling a
thousand words the usual charge."
"That's all right."
56
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
' <I thought I'd better tell you. It's best to
be businesslike, isn't it?"
"Of course. Good-bye. "
At lunch Roden was, as usual, silent; but as
they moved from table and lit their cigarettes
Caroline and Stella fell into laughter over
some private joke. Under cover of this, their
brother, succumbing to an expansive impulse,
told Lady Peel that he had lately finished the
first draft of his second play.
His mother fixed on him her luminous dark
eyes, while she ineffectually scraped a match
on its box. "I hope," she mumbled through
her cigarette, "you aren't counting on me, dear
boy. You know I've severed all connection
with the S.S.S. That officious Miss Thing-
amabob made my position simply impos-
sible. ..."
Roden was at sea for a moment. Then he
recollected her past offer of help, and returned :
"Oh, it's not ready to be seen yet. And when
it is, I shall send it to my agent. He's already
got old Swedenborg."
"Can't we see it?" Stella cried suddenly,
coming to his side.
"No. Well, I might read it to you when
when it's typed." His face was inscrutable;
57
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
and yet Stella perceived some clue in it, or in
his tone, for she cried maliciously:
"Roden's in love with a typist !"
He acknowledged the accuracy of the guess:
"I picked one up in the park to-day." There
was a sudden gust of laughter from Sir Harold
and the girls. Lady Peel jangled her bracelets
and said: "What does he mean?"
"I say I picked one up in the park," her son
repeated doggedly. Even this scene could not
drive away his equanimity.
"A typewriter?" Lady Peel asked.
Stella laughed again. They were all grouped
round him, where he stood by the littered din-
ing-table.
"No. A girl."
"But why?"
"For some one to talk to."
"Haven't you anyone else to talk to?" said
Stella.
Caroline shrank away. There was some-
thing odious to her in scenes of family life
neither gay, intimate nor kind. Stella and her
mother might have been urchins teasing a bear,
while Sir Harold, the bland policeman, looked
on impartially. As Caroline moved! towards
the window Lady Peel remarked with unusual
58
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
directness, but without severity almost as if
automatically :
"You wouldn't need to talk between break-
fast and lunch if you had some work to do
real work."
Instead of answering angrily, instead of
turning away in silent wrath, Roden replied
mildly: "Well, I'll see."
Caroline was surprised. She glanced at the
assembled faces Lady Peel's already twitch-
ing dreamily with preoccupation; Stella's half-
attentive, her mockery dying into boredom ; Sir
Harold's stolid and calm; Roden 's own, mutely
unresponsive. She wondered what his words
implied, and what her father made of them.
For Roden, in his new mood of equanimity,
the silence was filled with a complacent, gen-
teel, but clear and pleasant voice which said:
"I don't see how one's to get on if one doesn't
have some work to do. A girl must put by for
a rainy day. You never know with the future.
It's no use trusting to luck. A girl has to be
sensible; if she doesn't look out for herself, no-
body else will. One must do something, musn't
one? There's no harm in trying." And these
amiable platitudes were so applicable to his
own case that they seemed oracular, even in-
spiring. No intellectual jargon here! . . .
59
V.
AFTER spending Easter at Brighton with her
family, Caroline felt in need was it of sooth-
ing or stimulation? She found a holiday with
them at once hectic and dull; it affected her
like a mediocre game of auction bridge involv-
ing bitter recriminations. At all events, she
very much wanted to see Hugh; she therefore
telephoned to him immediately on her return
and arranged to dine at his rooms in the
Temple on the following evening.
Hugh Sexton was one of those restful people
who never prepare surprises, verbal or other-
wise ; he had not that itch to provoke astonish-
ment which makes some hosts, in other ways
delightful, greet their guests with a cracker in
the form of a startling piece of gossip, an in-
triguing ancedote, an unexpected rearrange-
ment of the furniture or an innovation in the
order of the courses at dinner. His whole con-
duct was of a piece with his address quiet
without shyness, gentle without suavity, char-
acteristic without eccentricity. His fair, clean-
60
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
shaven face was keen without being aquiline;
though long, and though fine in detail, its
corners were squarely turned; the thin mouth,
finely squared, crinkled at the corners with
emotion or laughter, but never curled ; the eyes,
meditative and grey, opened widely to amuse-
ment only, were never cold. He had rather
high shoulders, a very deep, gentle voice, and
walked slowly since he had been gassed. He
did, however, surprise Caroline, though cer-
tainly without intention, by his first remark
after their greetings: "How is Francis these
days?"
"His holidays begin very soon. Why do you
ask?"
He wondered for a moment. "Because you
none of you ever speak of him."
"Oh, he's quite mentionable; the perfectly
conventional public-school boy, as like his fel-
lows as possible. . . . Mamma, as a matter of
fact, adores him, when she remembers him,
and when he 's there. He combines the qualities
of baby-boy, slave, and decorative male appen-
dage."
"I like him," said Hugh. "I prefer him to
the rest of your family."
' ' I quite understand that. You know by now
61
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
that I don't hold a Peel brief! . . . Francis,
d'you know, adores Hal; I suppose because
he's all that a public-school-boy's father ought
to be: rich, distinguished, quietly, but perfect-
ly dressed, with a beard. ... I say, Hugh,
you've not asked me about Brighton."
"What shall I ask? How is Brighton?"
"Very well, thanks, with a strong wind. It
was dreadful."
"What on earth made you go?"
"Oh, you know my moments of extra-
ordinary adaptability? I hadn't invented any-
where else to go."
"Is that your definition of adaptability?"
"One of my definitions. We ate vast meals
four times a day, with snacks in between; and
the others played bridge."
"Did Cashel go?"
^ "Need you ask? What would Mamma and
Stella have done without their little Evelyn?
[ was cast for the part of devoted daughter to
the distinguished English papa; we made what
the senile love to call a 'striking couple.'
Don't you agree that Hal ought to have been
a contemporary of Du Maurier's? I wish he'd
grow whiskers. And he would look wonderful
m an ulster, wouldn't he, Hugh? ... I must
62
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
tell Evelyn that, it will amuse him."
1 'You do sometimes speak to Cashel, then?
Never in my presence."
"I never speak at all at home. But Evelyn
and I converse occasionally in silence. To go
on about Hal : in spite of his solidity, he has no
more inside reality, internal 'me' what shall
I call it?"
* * Subjective existence. ' '
"Yes than a type of English aristocracy
according to Madame Tussaud. He doesn't
wonder or worry; he hardly ever works. He
eats and smokes and plays bridge and goes to
the club and directs companies; and they pay
twelve per cent. I've never seen him really
minding or getting even mildly excited about
anything. It would be better to be like mother!
Her activity of course is all gas in a teacup;
but at least she gets a few thrills out of buzzing
round. She and Stella are really quite unreal ;
their life is one long game of dolls' tea party
only the dolls must have trousers."
Hugh smiled, and Caroline's face reflected
his smile; but there was in hers more scorn
than amusement. At once, however, a different
expression came into her face, and she began
63
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
to look ashamed of herself, saying in a lower
voice: "Am I odious?"
"You're certainly unsparing. I wonder if
you're right?"
"Do you think I underrate or misunderstand
them?"
Hugh waited as if considering the point ; but
finally evaded it. "You are infernally superior
about them, Cabs."
"I know I am. I often hate myself just as
much as I despise them."
"Why do you so utterly despise them?" he
asked, not admonishingly but without interest.
"Of course I know why: because of what they
are, as you've just described. But is that des-
picable? I mean, what's your standard?"
It was her turn to wonder. "I don't think
I know quite what you mean. One thing I
know: that I think it's despicable not to feel.
I can't help thinking I'm somehow a more real
person because I've " she broke off, em-
barrassed.
"Been unhappy? I know the feeling: the
aristocracy of grief."
Without resentment, indeed with keener in-
terest, she looked at him and nodded.
"But aren't you," the young man went on,
64
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"almost certainly mistaken about their lack of
feeling? After all, your parents have presum-
ably loved even if they haven't lost? And
Roden "
"I don't include Boden. He feels. It's the
others those four, Hal and mother and Stella
and Francis. Hal sits like a 'blooming idol'
and chews the cud; mother and Stella chatter
and ogle, and Francis takes a manly interest
in cricket and socks."
"Whereas you are a serious person."
"Yes. If you deny it, it's merely to be, as"
Mamma would say, perverse."
"Ah, but I don't deny it. Nor will you, I
imagine, deny that you're a smug, self-satisfied
young member of the Intelligentsia." He looked
at her with gentle mockery as he spoke, and
the mockery brought a cry from her :
"Oh Hugh, I'm not really like that, surely
you know. I'm dissatisfied with myself inside.
It's not only conceit. I know that I'm incap-
able of anything but pulling to bits. I'm just
as much of a monkey or parrot as Stella and
Mamma. I can't make anything out of life. I
don't see how anyone can if they have feelings.
Life has it both ways; if you're sensitive, it
hurts you, and if you're insensitive, you're
65
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
worthless, and you don't enjoy the things most
worth enjoying. Roden of course despises me
he's 'master of his fate' and all that. And
that makes me wonder even about him: can
he feel much? Why doesn't he pay more for
what he gets? How does he deal with misery
and poverty and cruelty and death? Perhaps
he carries his creativeness into himself. "
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, perhaps he creates his emotions
and destroys them at will. But then they
wouldn't be real. I don't know! . . .He's
queer. . . . Mother complains of Roden be-
cause he's self-centred and sulky and un-
sociable; but it's really me she ought to nag
at. Roden 's sulkiness hides all kinds of splen-
did thingsplans and ideas and imagination
and hope and courage and the conviction that,
somehow, all is for the best. Whereas my
ladylike reserve hides nothing but what is it?
Not despair, not even exactly disillusion just
hopelessness."
Hugh, half-way through Caroline's tirade,
had been inclined to smile at a tendency to
dramatise which he sometimes suspected, in
her ; but so reasonable and calm were her man-
ner and voice that the inclination was only
66
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
momentary, and gave way to grave attention.
He watched her throughout, sitting alert,
coloured but not vivid, not moving her hands
nor tossing her head, her tones as controlled
as her poise. He found her far more convinc-
ing about herself than about her family. She
did not often talk at such length except about
her family; her seriousness was always tinged
with scorn; he often thought her, then, unfair.
Her emotion now was too deep for scorn. She
arraigned life and herself in one indictment,
without irony or complacency or anger. He
waited while the room absorbed her words into
its silence. Finally, he asked her, " Would
you, then, prefer not to live?"
She considered this question with her eyes
on her plate, honestly trying to focus the nebu-
lous problem evoked. "I would prefer," she
then brought out, "never to have been born.
I'd never kill myself: it's too difficult, I'm too
cowardly." She raised her eyes to his face.
"Tell me, Hugh, doesn't everybody think
something deeply about life? even Stella and
mother and Hal? Yet, if they did, ever, for a
moment even, wouldn't one know it by some-
thing in their looks?"
"Ask Boden ask Francis," Hugh replied,
67
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"they could tell you more about the others
than you know or I can guess."
"But you yourself what do you think?
Can't you tell me? With them it would be a
feeling only, I suppose; with you, it would be
partly a thought, like mine."
There was a long pause. The young man
lowered the apple he was peeling and looked
past his companion at the dim wall beyond.
The lamp on the table, masked with paper, was
the only light, and the shadowed remainder of
the room, dark with masses of books, and
faintly jewelled in one corner with the aque-
ous, indecisive gleam of a mirror, seemed to
wait to absorb his answer as it had absorbed
her words. At last his eyes came back to the
small lit circle of the table, and his intent com-
panion ; he rested them on her clear, grave, ex-
pressive face, and said slowly: "The same as
yon ; yes, the same. ' ' Then something impeded
his voice, and he went on with difficulty: "I
wanted I hoped to get done in at the front."
Perceiving his loss of composure, Caroline
looked away from him, and he went on:
"I used to feel then, constantly, and I often
have since, as though I were beating against
bars I couldn't see. . . . (That's what I think
68
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
deeply as you say. But it's scarcely a thought.)
. . . Thousands of men got through the bars
in the war; they got killed. But I didn't. . . .
Of course, it's all due to bad health I used
not to be like this at Cambridge. It dates from
the time I had pneumonia in camp."
Caroline exclaimed with quiet anger: "They
never should have sent you out! That's part
of the cage, that's part of the trap, that's one
way life has of scoring off us."
1 'But I enjoy myself all the same. The
great thing is, Cabs," he pursued with a very
slight change of tone from reminiscence to ex-
hortation, "not to fly too wide, not to ask too
much, not to be agitated into fluttering; then
the cage seems big enough. . . . Lord! what
a dismal pair of ravens we are!"
"Yes. But would we rather be canaries who
don't know they're in a cage? Or if they do
know it, they are quite contented. In fact,
they like it."
"Ah, but do they?" Hugh wondered.
They rose from the table; the young man
moved the lamp to the mantel-piece, and lit two
candles upon a shelf near the window. Here,
with the curtains drawn back, they sat looking
out into the quiet Temple court, filled with the
69
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
dove-grey evening, and brooded over by gently
stirring planes. The servant came in wit|h.
coffee, and to clear. After that, there was
deep silence until Caroline shivered.
"Shall I close the window?" Hugh asked,
"or light the fire!"
"No. Give me my fur, that's all. No, don't
shut it, I like it."
"There's nothing wrong, is there?" he won-
dered aloud, after he had put the fur stole
round her shoulders.
She didn't answer at once, and when she did
it was indirectly: "You didn't think me odd,
did you, after I'd told you about my feeling
for Ann?"
"Odd? Of course not."
"But it must have seemed odd to you some-
timesif you've ever thought about it that
I haven't had a single love-affair. It's three
years since Gerald's death."
"I have wondered; but you know you told
me it must have been last autumn how you
still felt about it, about him. Why, is it wear-
ing off? as it's bound to."
"No; oh no. Of course it will . . . But in
another way I'm changed; or rather it is that
I've realised something. It's rather dreadful:
70
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
I've begun lately to think that I've grown out
of Gerald not only out of his memory. I mean
that, if he were alive, I should by now have
grown out of him. Not out of love; I'm so
much still in love with him that if he were
here and we weren't already married I'd be
his mistress."
Hugh fastened on the essential: "But you
wouldn't marry him?"
She nodded slowly; her hazel eyes fixed on
him in the candle-light, troubled but still clear.
"Well, and if so?" said her companion, his
keen fair face dropped a little between hunched
shoulders, his elbows resting on the arms of
his chair.
Caroline, her body in one series of sloping
lines, her head raised, her palms pressed on
the seat of her chair, hesitated how to frame
her answer. There was no impatience in
Hugh's voice or look; he gave her unlimited
time. Only the fear of saying nothing because
silence was easiest forced her to clothe her
thought, however inadequately : " But loyalty?"
"My dear, my dear!" he exclaimed in his
deep voice, "don't torment yourself on such a
chimerical account. Gerald's dead; if he'd
lived' you'd have developed differently per-
71
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
haps less, certainly in a different way; and
he'd have developed too. You'd have been an-
other Cabs, and he wouldn't have been the
same Gerald, after three years. Don't conjure
disloyalties from the grave of impossibility,
jferald would have trusted you; and you must
trust the Gerald that would have been."
She said nothing, nor moved her eyes from
his face. Rising, he went to the hearth, and
returning with his pipe, and leaning back on the
window-frame while he filled it, and went on:
' 4 If you still feel this physical tie to Gerald,
which makes other men unattractive to you,
then that's to be taken into account; it's a fact,
and as far as it goes, it constitutes a relation to
him. But you, as you are in 1920, can't be
guilty of disloyalty to a man who died in 1917,
if the disloyalty consists in an imaginary situ-
ationa situation pre-supposing that he is still
alive. The only disloyalty possible would be
for you to say: 'I never loved Gerald, he never
loved me, it wasn't real.' ... It seems best to
me neither to deny the past nor to be senti-
mental about it; but of the two, I prefer senti-
mentality. However, that's beside the point."
Caroline was glad that he had not ceased
speaking on the climax. His last two sen-
72
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
tences let her down a gradual slope to a more
normal level of discussion.
"You agree, don't you?" he asked.
"Yes, I do really; but you know how bogeys
rise up and put one into states of mind."
"I do, indeed. . . . You know, Cabs, I can't
help wanting you to fall in love again, to get
over this physical obsession with Gerald and
exercise your normal inclinations."
"I want to, too. And so I shall some day,
soon perhaps ... If only I could forget how
he looked! Oh, Hugh, it's still agonising to
remember the feel of his hands, and his smell.
Oh, Hugh, it's so long ago, why can't I for-
get?"
"My poor Cabs." He stood over her, while
she looked piteously, darkly up at him, with
faith abiding somewhere dimly in her that this,
her greatest friend, could free her from the
old cherished, sacred, formidable fetters. He
only, however, repeated "My poor Cabs," and
then added: "You will forget no, you won't
forget. Something else will break in on you,
and sweep your memories away."
"Don't say that; you frighten me. Almost
anything that can happen can hurt one so.
Perhaps I'm better as I am, for Gerald can't
73
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
die again, or desert me, or turn out to be a
canary. Yes, that's what I'm afraid of that
he would have been like my family, and per-
haps have made me like that, too. I won't be
contented with a swinging perch and gilt bars ;
I'd rather ten times over croak myself into a
bitter and virgin old age!" Her tone had^
passed from apprehension, through the inten-
sity of expressing something that had before
eluded her, into her usual tones of mockery.
As she finished, she put out her hand to him
for a cigarette, which he gave her. They sat
silent for a long time. At last Hugh said: "To
return to Francis, what's going to become of
him?"
"The youngest canary is going, in due
course, to Cambridge unless he muffs
Littlego."
"And Roden?"
"Roden is going to write. He has written
two plays. Fortunately, Hal can afford such
little luxuries as a literary son."
"Yes, it is nice for both of them," the young
man remarked, smiling. "Now let's play
chess."
74
VI.
THE next morning Caroline, going into the
drawing-room, found Roden crouching before
the unlighted fire, writing slowly and meticu-
lously.
"I say/' she said as he looked up, "can I
talk? "
He laid down his pen, and she went on: "Do
you ever wonder about the family ? "
"I don't wonder, I know," her brother
answered. But it was not to discuss the family
that he had interrupted his writing. "Look
here, Cabs, you must come out to lunch with
me, for two reasons. I've had a story accepted
by Land and Water, so I've money to spend;
and I want you to meet a girl called Grace
Draper."
"Right ... I am glad. Do they pay well!
. . . But what a name ! Supposing you were
called Roden Bones. Parents are idiots!"
"We have to lunch at half-past twelve, be-
cause she gets out from work then."
Stella came in, dressed from neck to foot in
75
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
mole-colour, her fair hair pulled low over her
ears under a hat of brilliant barbaric colours.
"Hello, Stell," her sister cried, " you 're
got up to the nines. I like your hat."
"Oh, Cabs, it's lovely to have a new hat.
Nothing in the world matters; I don't care
what happens until my hat palls." She took
some dancing steps. "Mother and I are going
to the Berkeley to meet Evelyn's American
friends."
"Is your hat aniline?"
"Woad, woad of course!" the younger girl
exclaimed fantastically. "There's twelve
striking I must fly. I have to see that
mother's nose is powdered properly." She
vanished, and Caroline said to Roden:
"It's time we went, too."
As they walked to the bus she cross-ques-
tioned him about Miss Draper.
"She's a typist at Gay's."
"Gay's Pantechnicon Corner ? You do love
your love with an A. What is her age and her
taste T Does she play games and live in Maida
Vale ? "
Roden 's temper was good that day, and he
replied with equanimity: "She's got grit, she's
76
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
ambitious, she'll get on. She's not all talk and
cleverness. "
"Like some young women we know," his
sister broke in. "Well, you don't have to go
to the suburbs to find girls with ambition and
grit. Are you prepared to be a step-ladder!"
"Oh, rot she doesn't require me, I can tell
you. It's I who require her."
"Roden, tell me, seriously; do you feel mis-
understood ? "
He looked at her, suspicious of mockery, for
which her words allowed; but her eyes were
merely enquiring, her mouth quite grave.
"Don't ask!" he almost begged her. "Well, if
you must know, No. . . But you want to know
too much. That's what's wrong with people
like you and Sexton, you can't let anything be.
Now, with this girl you're going to see, she
goes ahead with her job, and let's me go ahead
with mine, and we have fine talks when we're
together. ' '
"But you must talk about something? "
"About heaps of things, of course. But we
don't chop straws, and question and doubt
about everything. You don't seem able to feel
sympathy only."
77
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
4 'It's not worth any less because one is crit-
ical. However, you do talk
"Yes, but not in the way you mean. Can't
you be friends with some one and know them
well without putting everything into terms?'*
"Yes, when I have once got to know them
well ; but the process entails words. Except
in love : then sometimes one does seem to know
by intuition."
' ' I always know that way. ' '
"Yes, I believe you do," Caroline agreed.
There was no grudging admission in her tone,
but a little sadness ; because Roden, who found
her friendship so little use, was inspired by
this unknown and perhaps not negligible and
yet surely ill-educated girl. Was he then so
simple to understand and to deal with this
moody, rather historic, passionate, imagina-
tive young man with a hunger for life I
When they reached the Soho restaurant she
saw outside it a small neat figure, vaguely rem-
iniscent of some one she knew. Before she
had decided of whom, they were close on the
stranger, who was holding out her hand
primly, and obviously hesitating between her
"gentleman friend" and her "gentleman
friend's sister", (ladies first).
78
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
" This is my sister/' said Eoden.
11 I'm very glad to meet you," said Caroline.
As they entered she asked her brother: "Did
you order a table ? "
"No, it's not full. I ordered lunch because
Grace has to be back by half -past one."
" Yes, isn't it a sharnie ? " Miss Draper ex-
claimed. " I can't get an extra ten minutes
even by asking not ever so seldom."
"You're valuable," smiled the other girl;
and was immediately aware that Grace had
perceived the artificiality of this reply, and
that the speaker was thereby put at a disad-
vantage. Controlling a tendency to blush for
herself, Caroline sat silent, covertly scrutinis-
ing her new acquaintance. The girl was cer-
tainly rather pretty, with a remarkably clear
complexion, rose-leaf cheeks, sharp bright
eyes and sharply cut features.
"You do like hors d'oeuvres, don't you?"
Roden asked, unconscious of the subtleties
which beset his sister. " And steak ? I re-
membered you liked chip potatoes, and so does
Cabs."
"I should think I did!" Miss Draper ex-
claimed with genteel enthusiasm. "This is a
great treat for me, you know, Miss Peel."
79
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"You like Soho ? " Caroline murmured
tentatively, wondering if the other's mincing
speech was habitial, or accentuated by shyness.
"I think it's too quaint. I love to see differ-
ent parts of London. Different districts are
so well, so different, aren't they ? The top of
a bus is as good as a carriage to me."
"We must go to the Tower one Saturday,"
said Roden, "you've never been there, Grace,
have you? Cabs, do you remember the dear
little houses just by the Tower ? "
"Yes, darling old cottages."
"I do love a piece of old architecture. It's
our misfortune, Miss Peel, to live in a new
villa; I often say to mother, How I wish we
could have a ducky little old-world cottage in-
stead."
"Those dear little cottages are the very
devil, if you only knew," said Caroline,
throwing caution completely away, for it was
obvious that if she and this girl were to come
to any point of sympathy it could only be
through naturalness ; and of this, the onus
must rest on her, if only because she was the
elder. She saw that her language had sur-
prised without shocking Miss Draper, and she
went on: "Personally, I'd rather live in a
80
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
hideous pink object with a bow window and
hot and cold water than in an insanitary cot-
tage, however old-world. To begin with, I
can't bear what's called 'outside sanitation.' "
She ceased abruptly, realising that in speaking
as she would have spoken to her own friends
she had perhaps offended the other girl; but
although a rather scared gleam of amusement
shone for a moment in Miss Draper's eyes, she
was not too shocked to reply with arch com-
posure :
" Perhaps you have lived in a cottage, Miss
Peel. Now I never have. One always wants
to do what one hasn't done, doesn't one ? "
Caroline, who found the number of units in
the foregoing sentence rather paralysing, said
nothing. The movements of Grace's head and
hands again reminded her of some one, and
after pondering for a few moments, she asked
Roden : " Who is Miss Draper like I "
" Mother and Stella."
"That's it. You're right. Only mother's
like a monkey . . . Excuse me ; it's awfully
rude to talk like this but you aren't. Stella's
like some little graceful indeterminate animal,
one doesn't quite know what. You're like
81
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
something quite definite, but I don't know
what. Yes I do it's a squirrel!"
" That's what your brother said the first
time I saw him, Miss Peel ; and I must say, I
take it as a compliment. Mr. Peel took me to
Regent's Park on Good Friday and we saw
lots of the dear little grey ones, and oh, they
are quaint!"
"Are you fond of animals ? "
"I'm very fond of dogs. Yes, I like a dear
little dog. But not cats oh no, cats are creepy
things. Don't you think so, Miss Peel ! My
mother can't bear one in the room. Of course,
that's silly. Still, I do think they're creepy."
" I like all animals moderately, except hu-
mans, and them I either love or hate. Except
my family, and I like them moderately."
" You only despise us," said Roden.
Caroline realised! then that she had been
sententious she put it down to the strain pro-
duced by Miss Draper's gentility. Was it im-
possible to be quite at ease in her presence f
"I'm talking rot," she added. "I'm sorry."
"Oh no, Miss Peel!" Grace politely pro-
tested. " I was most interested in what you
said. I always like to hear what people think.
And sometimes their ideas are too quaint."
82
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
" It's so hard to get people to tell one the
truth."
"They do to me," said Eoden.
"The Lord knows," his sister went on,
" it's hard enough to be truthful. I find my-
self preparing startling views so as to sur-
prise stodgy people. It's awfully hard to ac-
centuate aspects of oneself according to what
the other person is like."
Miss Draper looked bewildered, and after a
moment said with a pretty puzzled air : "Mr.
Peel, your sister is too clever for me."
"It's only her jargon," he answered gruffly.
Caroline wondered if he noticed the taking
manner. She wished for their sakes as well as
her own that she were away. "I'm sorry,"
she repeated, genuinely regretful for her ob-
scurity, "I only meant I found it hard to be
honest and accurate. It's so easy to invent
opinions."
"Oh ... yes, I've never had time to to
cultivate my mind," said the other girl
"I haven't had the energy. I do nothing.
I fritter my time away. It takes Satan all his
spare time to keep me occupied."
Roden offered cigarettes. Grace shook her
head saying archly : "Your brother does his
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
best to tempt me, Miss Peel, but I won't give
in. I think it's waste of good money, and I'm
not ashamed to say so."
11 I should think not," was all that Caroline
found to murmur. The Peels as a family took
their means too much for granted either to be
snobbish about them or concerned with the
subject in general; it had no resonance for
them, no overtones, for they were, except
Caroline, indifferent to social problems. To in-
vest in war-loan was their nearest approach
(except in the case of Roden, the soldier) to
acting or thinking as citizens. Caroline's in-
terest in people and problems had inevitably
brought her up against the fundamental evil
of poverty; but her long training of ease and
ignorance still made a barrier between her
and an acute realisation of poverty, so that for
her it was less an actual condition of persons
she knew than a general condition of a vague,
vast mass of the population. The defiance in
Grace Draper's tone meant nothing to her ;
she classed it with archness, primness, and a
too-frequent repetition of proper names ; it did
not convey to her the girl's sharp conscious-
ness of an essential difference in their circum-
stances, and her determination not to be too
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
much impressed by the Peel's wealth, security,
leisure, and refinement. It had never occurred
to Caroline that Grace saw the Peels in such
terms. Caroline had not even vaguely com-
puted the yearly income of people who live in
little red villas on the weekly earnings of a
stenographer at Gay's; she had never set out
to imagine what it would be like to lunch every
day at an A.B.C. for a shilling or to go without
cigarettes so as to buy a new pair of shoes.
The defiance in Grace *s voice, , however,
caused her to reflect that the lunch party was
not being a success. It was, from her point of
view, a failure, because she had missed the op-
portunity of setting up a rapport with Roden's
friend, and thereby of pleasing him, of gaining
his confidence. At worst Grace would depart
antagonistic, at best puzzled by, and indiffer-
ent to her " gentleman friend's" sister.
When, however, Roden sought her out on
his return from conducting Miss Draper to
Gay's, his cheerfulness was obvious. "Well,
did you like her?" he asked.
"She's pretty. She's not stupid, either. But,
Roden I can't be natural with people like
that."
"What do you mean? You were just as you
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
always are. I thought you were being very
nice, and so did Grace."
"Did she?" Caroline was astonished.
"How queer you are, Cabs. She thought you
were very kind and friendly."
"I felt friendly enough."
"Well, that's all that matters."
"Yes, if she felt all right, . . . How
odd. . . . Tell me, Roden, do you like her
very much?"
"Awfully. Better than any of your intellect-
uals. Better than any girl I know. Joe Tucker
is the only person I like better."
"What's become of your play?"
"The agent is touting it round." He paused,
and then added abruptly: "I think I'm going
into a motor firm as artist."
"Roden! How thrilling. Is it a sign of
grace!" It was out before she knew what she
was saying, and she could have bitten her
tongue off to unsay the jibe.
Without replying, her brother shrugged his
shoulders.
"I'm odious. Forgive me. I think I'm be-
witchedlike the girl who spat toads when she
talked. I don't mean to be horrible; I do care
for you, Roden."
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"It's all right."
"Are you going to draw lovely pictures for
coloured advertisements, like the ones in
Vogue?"
"I suppose so. I'm going to see the man
about it to-morrow."
"Who is he?"
"Blake; a chap in the regiment." He re-
fused, characteristically, to say more.
"Francis arrives to-morrow," Caroline
presently remarked. Then, as the young man
moved to the door, she remembered Hugh's
advice; to ask her brothers their opinion of
their family. "Don't go," she said.
"I must. I've got to finish my play before
I take on this new job. You know," he went
on, pausing with his hand on the latch, ' ' Grace
has more cards than she puts on the table."
Caroline nodded, and he pursued:
"She and I understand each other without
talking. Her point of view and mine are the
same. She's got life in her, she's serious, and
yet not heavy."
"Buoyant," his sister suggested, but he
wouldn't accept a word from her.
"Not a dead weight, like so many people are
since the war." He went out abruptly.
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"Like me," said Caroline to herself as the
door closed; but speaking as though for him
rather than for herself. She had no sensation
of heaviness; her health was good, and the
dreadfulness of life did not obsess her to the
exclusion of all pleasure. She enjoyed every
ironical contingency, every interesting facet,
every lovely aspect of existence that she could
perceive. Her sensation was that of being in-
volved in an insoluble and probably meaning-
less conundrum a riddle of marvellous com-
plexity, savour, beauty, but whose beauty was
darkened with a dreadful shadow inherent in
life's structure, and whose savour was for her
spoiled and flattened so that it's taste was
often stale upon her tongue.
vn.
WHEN Caroline saw Francis the next day she
wondered how Hugh could like him at all; his
jaunty whistling composure repelled her even
while his upright, fresh-coloured slimness at-
tracted her. Her speculative eye perceived in
him a younger Caroline, graceful and com-
placent. But there was something in this
youth a little underbred. She had noticed the
same thing in Roden, under quite a different
form. Francis, like his sisters, had the social
polish, the tact, the ease, the charm which Rod-
en remarkably lacked; if anything, he had
them to excess. Was it in this that his in-
feriority consisted? And if he were so like her
superficially, might the resemblance not go
deeper? Was she, then, second-rate in that
particular, indefinable way? Arrived at this
point, Caroline pressed no further. There are
some faults against the conviction of which the
nature revolts. A man can admit to being
jealous, vindictive, morbid, prejudiced; even
to being mean and without a sense of humour ;
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
but can he, if he understood the term, plead
guilty to insensitiveness toj a coarseness in
the fabric of his soul?
That Francis was sensitive in the more or-
dinary sense that he had a vulnerable vanity
none looking at him would doubt. The cock
of his head was complacent; but his eyes were
watchful for criticism. He had. Caroline's
clear hazel eyes, short upper lip, brown hair,
long legs, but there was an extreme shallow-
ness in the modelling of his face which made
the whole resemblance superficial, unless the
shallowness were due merely to youth. Caro-
line, after her scrutiny of him, had the curios-
ity to seek out a photograph of herself in her
teens. The camera had by chance caught her
in a characteristic pose head tilted a little
downwards, the gaze a little sideways and up-
wards, very solemn. She compared it with her
face in the mirror; yes, even at seventeen, there
were those shadows, those lines, that lurking
ambiguity. The chief difference was the trans-
formation of that dominant seriousness into
an expression of faintly ironic gravity. Even
at seventeen, she thought without vanity, her
expression must have demanded a second look;
but in Francis's face there was nothing equi-
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
vocal, nothing held back; it told as much and
as little as the sleekness of his hair and the
crease of his trousers.
Whether or not because he was! aware of
Caroline's sentiments concerning him, Francis
evidently preferred, in the absence of Sir
Harold, to be with Stella. This was natural;
there were only four years between them,
whereas to meet his elder sister he had to
bridge a decade. Like most families of four,
this had always split into couples. Roden and
Caroline, perhaps because they were so differ-
ent, had grudgingly admired each other from
earliest childhood, and they still did. The al-
liance of Stella and Francis, though superfi-
cially more comprehensible, was in reality no
more founded on mutual sympathy than was
the elder pair's, and it endured a shorter time.
For three years, now, ever since she left the
schoolroom, Stella had paid little attention to
her schoolboy brother, except to make use of
him. Caroline, wondering at the readiness
with which Francis allowed himself to be made
use of, had a short time since come to the con-
clusion that it was due to the credit which his
complaisance obtained him with their father.
Sir Harold liked, and showed that he liked, to
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
see Stella's caprices served; he wished his
sons to betray consideration and fondness for
their sisters; one of the things that, Caroline
was sure, alienated Roden from his affections,
was the young man's self-centredness and un-
sociability. If, as often occurred, Stella and
Sir Harold planned a diversion in holiday-
time, Francis was almost always included.
Evelyn Cashel was rarely a party to these
festivities; Stella reserved him for the more
frequent occasions when her father was other-
wise occupied. In Stella's absence, Evelyn
was usually to be found in the company of his
exacting Aunt Leila ; but when the girl wanted
him he was almost always at hand. Caroline,
a disdainful spectator of these combinations,
marvelled at her cousin's skill in handling the
rather delicate situation of rivalry which ex-
isted between the mother and the younger
daughter. In all these manoeuvres Francis
was a useful pawn.
But during the Christmas vacation, Caro-
line had thought to detect in the schoolboy a
crescent unwillingness to be used by Evelyn.
To please Stella, and thereby to please his
father, Francis would do much; but he grew
restive when this involved close or prolonged
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
intimacy with Evelyn. Caroline had seen him
sheer off had even known him take refuge
with herself; but the topic of his relations with
his family was never touched on between them.
Those holidays, Francis was voluble and
jubilant at the prospect of going to Cambridge
in the autumn. The coming term was his last
at school. Whenever possible he led the con-
versation round to the absorbing subjects of
his enfranchisement and the university, trying
in vain to elicit from Roden reminiscences of
the magic city by leading questions, which
Evelyn, an Oxford man, answered with elabor-
ate sarcasm.
"You'll discover, my dear Francis, at Cam-
bridge, that it is not only bad manners for
that would positively recommend it there but
bad taste, and almost an indecency, to speak
unless you have something worth saying to say.
And if you want, without being unduly con-
spicuous, to keep your head (not to speak of
your tongue) smooth, you'll have to consort
solely with Kingsmen. King's is Cambridge's
attempt a superb, admirable and very-nearly-
successful attempt at civilisation. The other
colleges are woad, as Stella would say."
At the moment of this speech the Peels were
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
waiting to go down to Sunday supper; waiting
for Sir Harold, Roden and Hugh Sexton, It
was customary for friends of the children to
be invited to this meal; contemporaries of the
parents were tacitly excluded. Evelyn Cashel
came regularly; indeed, so often in the week
was he to be found eating at his aunt's table
that one might have imagined him to be living
in the house. As a matter of fact, he had rooms
near by in Kensington, and his office hours
were only from ten to five, with an undefined
lunch-interval.
In spite of the absentees, Lady Peel rose
when the gong sounded; but Caroline said:
"Let's wait for Hugh, Mamma."
"Oh no, let's go down," cried Stella.
"Evelyn and I are famishing."
In compliance with this imperious demand
Lady Peel drifted to the door, and Caroline
followed without rancour. For some reason
to-night her thoughts were out in the country,
where the hay-deep fields were shadowy be-
tween the hedges of white may. Soon the
moonlight would transform the countryside in-
to a marvel. She wandered down imaginary
or half-remembered lanes, and heard the night-
ingales. Imagination had indeed more to do
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
with such waking dreams than memory, for
her contact with the country had been, all her
life, but fragmentary and incomplete. Her
childhood's holidays had been spent with gov-
ernesses by the sea not the blue and green
sea where the corn and the woods and the flow-
ers grow down to the cliff's edge, and rich low
hills and heathery moors rise close behind, but
the grey eastern sea of hard shingle beaches,
barren salt marshes, dreary fields, breakwaters
and monotonous horizons. True, since ma-
turity she had been released from this recur-
rent summer-bondage. For ten' years now
Lady Peel had kept her children with her for
the holidays. As has been said, Lady Peel de-
tested the seaside. A country house was hired
for three summer months, usually in the north,
for Sir Harold came from Yorkshire and had
a sentiment about that country. It was indeed
a land of great beauty; but it was of the south
that Caroline dreamed; it was about the south
and west country that she liked to wander in
fancy. Staying with Ann Davies, with the
Veseys, with one or two other London friends,
she had yearly caught glimpses of its intimate
and tender loveliness, had snatched a few of
its moods and contours, sounds and odours;
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
and these fragments, woven on the web of her
conception of the south country's nature a
conception strengthened by literature had
gradually come to form a refuge from the tedi-
ousness of daily life. It was curious that, in
all this time, she had never taken the course so
simply open to her had never gone away
alone, or with a friend, to a remote spot and
stayed there, steeped in the atmosphere she
loved to conjure with. This course, so obvious
and natural to persons of a less conventional
upbringing, of a less worldly and wealthy class,
had never in truth occurred to her. Her inde-
pendence of mind had so far been directed to
purely emotional and spiritual problems ; it did
not spread out over the whole field of her life ;
she remained in many respects what she was
born and reared to be a cultivated, conven-
tional, hidebound London woman of the upper
middle-classes, as much removed from the
"fast," pseudo-intellectual, wildly gay section
of the aristocracy as from the " loose" artis-
tic and literary sets of Chelsea, Hampstead
and Bloomsbury. Caroline had always taken,
physically and in exterior daily life, the line of
least resistance ; her unorthodoxy was contained
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
in the secret, spiritual sphere; it was un-
suspected by her family.
They sat down to table, Caroline as usual at
the right of Sir Harold's place, Lady Peel with
a blank seat on either side of her, waiting for
Hugh and Roden. She began to complain of
the latter 's perversity in being unpunctual.
"Isn't Hugh's unpunctuality perverse,
too!" Caroline inquired mildly; but all the
time there was moving in her head, and bet-
ween her spoken words slipping on her tongue
a poem about Shropshire :
"Far in a Western brookland
That bred me long ago,
The poplars stand and tremble
By pools I used to know.
* * * *
There, by the starlit fences,
The wanderer halts and hears
My soul that lingers sighing
About the glimmering weirs."
She did not hear her mother's reply, which
was anyway interrupted by the brisk opening
of the door, and the appearance of a knot of
persons, which sorted itself out into Sir Har-
old, Roden, Hugh Sexton, and Grace Draper.
Caroline rose quickly and went towards the
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
stranger. "I'm so glad you've come. Mother
this is Miss Draper, a friend of mine and
Roden 's. . . . Has Roden introduced my
father to you? He never remembers about in-
troductions! Father, let's put Miss Draper
between us."
While she piloted the girl to her place, Caro-
line was aware that the momentary confusion
of the room had subsided, and turning, she saw
Hugh making a friendly signal to her diagon-
ally across the long table, and she returned the
unsmiling look which is for intimate friends
only. She had been drawn forcibly from her
rural wanderings back into urban actuality;
she had the sensation, in that exchange of
glances with Hugh, that she closed a door on a
secret way of escape, and that he perceived
and knew the purport of the gesture.
She glanced at Roden, who appeared obliv-
ious of everyone and everything, and especial-
ly of his responsibility for introducing a
strange young woman into the bosom of his
family. Caroline felt- momentarily angry;
Roden had such a blind, wholesale way of
ignoring what it did not suit him to recognise ;
he had the self-protective instinct that is com-
mon to the creative artist and the egotist. Her
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
anger passed quickly, however, for she knew
that he was, essentially, no shirker, he did not,
over things that mattered, imitate the ostrich.
By this time Miss Draper had punctiliously
shaken hands all round the table, and returned
to the seat by Caroline, who inquired whether
they had all met on the doorstep.
"Yes, wasn't it funny, Miss Peel? I hope I
haven't put you out by coming unexpected like
this?"
"Of course not, we like it."
"We were very late, I'm afraid."
"Somebody always is; it doesn't matter at
all."
"We went to Kew," said her brother
abruptly.
"Oh, Miss Peel, it was lovely! The bluebells
are a perfect picture. And the cherry-blossom
you never saw anything like it I"
Caroline, pleased with this genuine enthu-
siasm, answered: "It's a lovely place. And yet
I never go there I'm an idiot. Did you see
any poplars?" she added, the tune of the
poem still running in her head.
"N o; I don't think so. ... You should
go there, Miss Peel, indeed you should."
"Yes. Why is one so lazy?"
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"One is rather a stay-at-home, isn't one?"
Miss Draper agreed, with one of her sudden
accesses of primness.
" Caroline is a stay-at-home," said Sir Har-
old, bending towards the guest with a dignity
which justified his supposed likeness to a Du
Maurier aristocrat.
"Is she? Oh, but I'm sure Miss Peel's been
to ever so many places," Grace exclaimed, a
little flustered by his gallant, serious air, send-
ing a bright glance sidelong at the girl.
"Have you ever been to Cambridge, Miss
Draper?" Evelyn inquired with intention.
There was a ripple of laughter round the table,
while Grace, visibly discomforted, answered
that she had not.
"We weren't laughing at you, though we are
so rude," said Caroline. "My brother not
Roden is going to College this autumn; and
we always rot him about Cambridge."
"Poor France!" sighed Lady Peel. "How
they tease you."
"Don't pity me, Mother; pity Evelyn. I'm
going to disinter (good word, what?) a secret
from his murky past, and dangle it above his
head."
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"You'd better look out, Cashel," said Hugh;
' ' come to me in case of blackmail. ' '
''You shall be my counsel," the exquisite
young man returned imperturbably, "if it
comes to litigation."
" 'Tears of gratitude flowed down the face
of the briefless barrister,* " Hugh exclaimed
with mock emotion.
" Aren't they silly?" cried Stella, address-
ing Miss Draper for the first time.
' 'Young men always must have jokes, musn't
they?" the guest replied genteelly. This uni-
versal truth silenced all but Sir Harold who,
leaning his great, bearded head once more her
way with respectful gaiety, remarked :
"And so must young ladies."
"But men and girls are so different, aren't
they?" Grace pursued, encouraged.
There was a prolonged pause. Miss Draper's
contemporaries were too kind to utter the flip-
pant rejoinders which leapt to their lips; the
speaker's face was so serious, though lit with
conversational attention.
Her host, however, was quite equal to the
occasion.
"I see," he said, with smiling, solid gravity,
"that you are a very observant young lady."
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
11 'But she didn't notice the poplars," Caro-
line remarked to herself, crossly. * ' How could
one go among trees and look for those
green towers, so stable and yet so living, so
mutable, their foliage so rich, and yet so deli-
cate in shape and music? 'The poplars stand
and tremble ' they are scarce in Derbyshire. I
must go to Shropshire one day."
"Well, it's not surprising," Stella was say-
ing, rather peevishly, "considering that I've
been up late every night this week, three of
them dancing."
"Oh, Stella, darling, you must have learnt
some new steps, surely!" her mother cried ex-
citedly, knocking her bread off the table with
an awkward movement of her arm. "You must
show me afterwards. They say there's a new
hen-scratch, and a new heel-waggle, and a new
tango-walk."
"Leila, you've gone back into the twenties,"
said Sir Harold.
"Why shouldn't I dance! I'm light, aren't
I, Evelyn?"
"Aunt Leila, you are light."
"You say it as though it were an improper
joke, you absurd boy. Francis, I can dance as
well as the flappers, can't I?"
102
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
1 'Well, Mother . . . yes."
"But you prefer dancing with flappers?"
Evelyn suggested. "Oh, Francis, you must
put these childish things away now "
"Stop giving Francis bad advice, and pass
on the claret," said Stella.
"Roden, why don't you dance?" Lady Peel
lamented. "It's so unnecessary, so perverse,
to be young and not to like dancing. Stella,
couldn't you teach him?"
"I?" said Stella sulkily. "Me teach Roden
to dance? My dear mother, I can't teach Rod-
en anything I don't want to. I've quite
enough to do. If you could see my engage-
ment-book! It's crammed." She cocked her
head, monkey-like, though so pale and fair, and
sipped her wine. On her face an elusive, mixed
expression of invitation and uneasy vanity
wavered. Her glance rested finally on her eld-
er brother ; Caroline saw the expression change
and crystallise, there was no vanity in it now;
the invitation, the restlessness, seemed almost
a hunger, almost a demand. It blotted out the
dreams, the rhythms from Caroline's mind;
she watched her sister all the evening.
As the girls and Francis trooped up to bed,
the latter had a mild tussle with Stella over
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
which there was some spontaneous laughter.
But when the boy had disappeared into his
room, the girl, lingering on her threshold, quot-
ed with a return of bad temper :
" ' Young men must have their jokes.' '
Caroline, little knowing how like her own
voice of scorn was Stella's, stood in silence,
puzzled, waiting, but betraying nothing by her
expression. Stella went quickly on:
"If Miss Draper's a pal of yours, Cabs,
you'd better tell her Hal's name before she
comes again. What a lot of times she might
have said, 'Oh, Sir Harold,' 'Yes, Sir Harold,'
'One docs, doesn't one, Sir Harold'."
"Don't be snobbish, Stell."
"I'm only saying what everybody was think-
ing. Where did he pick her up?"
Caroline turned towards her room. "You'd
better ask him," she answered.
"Is she a tobacconist's young lady? . . .
Well, Roden may be a bear with a sore head,
but he needn't have picked up that!"
As Caroline opened her door, expecting then
to close the episode, Stella came forward and,
to her surprise, followed her in.
"You're very serious about it," the elder
girl remarked, in her clear, neutral voice. "You
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
haven't fretted much about Roden up till now."
"One doesn't fret till things begin to hum.
It must be fairly serious if he brings her to
supper. Such prunes and prisms! And Rod-
en is such woad."
There was a pause while Caroline took off
her dress. Her tones muffled as she hung it in
the cupboard, she asked: "Do you mind so
much what friends Roden has?"
"Of course I mind. I'm not quite without
feelings. ' '
Caroline hesitated; but then; "Why be
timid ? ' ' she asked herself, and remarked aloud,
evenly, coolly: "Well, I thought you scarcely
tolerated him, you and mother."
"Mother?"
That, then had been a false step. Stella would
shelter behind that. Yes, for she went on: "I
don't know what mother thinks for two min-
utes running nobody does." The girl rose
from her chair and seemed to swallow. Caro-
line, facing the mirror, heard the inarticulate
sound, and turned, to receive a passionate ex-
clamation; "I can't I can't tolerate him tak-
ing up with that common little creature!" and
to see Stella's small, plastic face moulded by a
totally uncontrolled emotion into a mask of
primitive resentment.
105
PART TWO
vm.
IN the garden of a house perched on an exceed-
ingly steep hillside in Derbyshire the Peels
were holding a conclave. They were at tea;
and while eating and talking, their eyes, pass-
ing lightly from each other's faces, rested on
the wide view, drenched in sunlight; the view
of a large, long valley, holding one visible and
more hidden villages, and a river; and of fur-
ther hills, bastioned by ramparts of limestone,
and topped by moors on which the heather was
just in bloom. Stella and Francis, in tacit com-
petition, and seated at the extreme edge of the
terraced garden, continually threw pebbles out
into the still air; for pebbles, accurately di-
rected from this shelf, fell on to the roofs of
houses below.
Every one except Roden was present, in-
cluding Evelyn Cashel, whom Sir Harold, after
a night in town, had brought back with him for
the week-end. Apparently exhausted by the
journey, the young man lay in graceful lan-
guor, and with no detail of his person disordered,
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
in a deck chair, sipping from a delicately tilted
cup, and eyeing the family with a little less
than his usual attention. He was beginning to
find the subdued jangling of the Peel discords
a little tiring, almost a little vulgar. A serene
presence, lately come into his life, was modify-
ing his standards ; and the lack of repose which
he had previously tolerated amusedly, and not
quite disinterestedly, and had affected to watch
as a characteristically modern symptom, seemed
now not only jarring in itself, but also old-
fashioned when regarded as a spectacle; it re-
called war-work and uniformed women and the
hectic days of leave from France. Sir Harold,
of course, and Caroline, were exempt from his
disapproval; they had always been eminently
serene. Caroline, indeed, was akin in type to
his new friend; only there was something
sharp in her flavour; he preferred the other's
mellower, sunnier atmosphere. He had had
enough sharpness, restlessness, oddness from
the combined feminine section of the Peels to
last him a lifetime. He watched his aunt's
parasol dip dangerously towards Sir Harold's
head as the holder poured out tea with her free
hand.
"It really is too much," she repeated for the
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
third time, setting down the milk jug with a
crash. "Roden's really too crude for words!"
''Young men frequently are crude, Leila, "her
husband pointed out with his usual air of judi-
ciousness. It happened that three of his listen-
ers scanned his face at this remark Francitt
swiftly, before he hurled a pebble; Evelyn
casually, as he lit a cigarette; Caroline stead-
ily, as she formulated silently an impression
received an hour ago when her father and her
cousin arrived from the station. He looked,
Sir Harold, different ; he looked, more precise-
ly, fatigued and worried. Was it a new look,
or was it that she had noticed it for the first
time? Was it the beginning of old age? Was
it not a fact that she had thought of him as un-
alterable, immortal, immovable, not subject to
worry or fatigue or even emotion as a monu-
ment rather than a man? He was so Olympian,
so dignified, so unshakable and reasonable and
solid; he so much suggested durability, mod-
eration, worth, safety and success, that it was
not difficult it was in fact quite easy for
one of the younger generation to look on him
as a symbol, a type, an institution. And here
was the institution getting pronouncedly
weatherbeaten, wrinkled round the eyes and
111
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
grizzled on the temples and in the beard ! Caro-
line experienced a sudden unprecedented' in-
terest in her father's inner life. What did he
"think deeply" about existence, if he thought
about it at all?
"In the early twenties well and good,"
Lady Peel was saying. "Although some of
them are never crude look at Evelyn. You
must be fagged out after that odious journey,
you poor boy. I wanted Hal to have the car to
meet you at Sheffield, but he seems to like that
disgusting tunnel. . . . What was I saying?
Oh, yes crude at twenty; but need they be at
twenty-seven? Of course not! Roden's be-
having like a young man in a book."
"Ah, but what book?" Evenly inquired. "It
would be delightful to behave like a Henry
James young man."
"Not that kind, you may be sure. You re-
member that dreadful supper? and that
young woman called Caper or Taper? It's too
absurd Roden wants us to have her here for
a week in September when he comes for his
holiday. ' ' As she spoke Lady Peel flicked at a
wasp with her handkerchief, shut her parasol,
dropped it, and leant down to fumble with a
footstool.
112
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"The children always do have their friends
here," Sir Harold remarked.
"Yes, what about dear Geoffrey?" cried
Francis, making a face at Stella, who looked
angrily back, at a loss for a retort. "And dear
Ann Davies and Hugh Sexton and Babs
Vesey?" he added, glancing at his father as
though to ask, or perhaps to render, support.
"That's not the point, my dear child," his
mother answered; "the point is this and it's
no use evading it, for it may be now or never ;
it usually is with people like Roden who have
the artistic temperament" she paused to re-
gain her central thread, while Caroline mur-
mured, "And are perverse and crude."
"The point is, Aunt Leila " Evelyn sug-
gested.
"That it's high time we drew the line at this
Caper-Taper-Paper affair. She's not like the
other children's friends, and it's no use shirk-
ing the fact; she's simply a little typewriter
Roden picked up, heaven only knows why, in
the park. He said so he admitted it! Well,
where is it to end, if we positively encourage it
by asking her here? Isn't that giving our
blessing?"
"Does he want a blessing?" said Caroline.
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"I mean, doesn't he simply want ordinary re-
cognition of ordinary facts?"
4 'Cabs thinks blessings old-fashioned, and
so they are," Stella put in.
Having paused in vain for Sir Harold to
speak (an unconscious tribute of respect),
Evelyn began: " Isn't the essential point this:
whether, by asking the Draper girl here you
precipitate or prevent the fruition of Roden's
honourable intentions? Always supposing, "
he added drawing in smoke and smiling sub-
tly at his auditors as it crept from his lips,
''that his intentions are as perverse and crude
as to be honourable."
Stella laughed not her usual care-free,
high, almost hoot-like chuckle, but an abrupt,
brief, unresonant laugh of two notes. It had a
theatrical, an artificial sound, and yet it had
come quickly, spontaneously on top of Evelyn's
words.
Caroline looked at her sister; but not at once
an inexplicable modesty had prevented a
quick turn of her head, as though she feared to
learn too much from Stella's attitude or ex-
pression. The girl was now composed enough,
arranging rose-petals in patterns on the gravel
path. "Have I theatricality on the brain?"
114
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
Caroline wondered. As though to test an eye
suspected of jaundice she turned hers deliber-
ately away from the group and sat confront-
ing the landscape; a view all distant, owing to
the position of the house, and with no fore-
ground; but all brilliant and with colours in-
tensified by the lens of the strong air. Did
this beauty convict her of distorted senses?
Had constant, close companionship with arti-
ficiality, and too conscious a revolt against it,
given her mind a twist, so that she perceived
insincerity, sham, affection, where none was?
And her revolt was that also proved fictitious
by the equanimity with which she sat here,
listening to her mother's silly chatter, to Eve-
lyn's elegant mock-pomposity, to Stella's
meaningless laughter, when the discussion con-
cerned the future of Roden, for whom she
cared? The coldness, the superficiality of
their tone did indeed revolt her; but how was
she to combat it? What could she say that they
would understand? . . . And yet, wasn't she
too lacking in a sense of proportion? Weren't
they all in hue and cry after a snail? Was she
not implicated in her family's triviality be-
cause she had not protested even inwardly
against their regarding Roden's proposal as
115
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
an enormity? Of course it was no enormity,
his straightforward request; it was not a
mountain; but was it a molehill? Could a symp-
tom of true love be a molehill?
The trouble was she thought after a mo-
ment, that her family had only one method of
dealing with molehills and mountains ; only one
pitch, only one focus, which belittled the seri-
ous and swelled the unimportant with equal
inevitability. They lived, morally, all on one
plane ; they had no spiritual fourth dimension.
Of course, they were canaries ! Well, one had
to meet canaries on their own ground. Her
distaste for the whole discussion sounded in
her voice as she said:
"Mayn't you be miscalculating rather? I
mean, mayn't Roden be asking your blessing
on something already settled? It may be too
late for all this talk."
Lady Peel was silenced only for a moment.
"Well, that's far, far worse, isn't it? You
talk glibly enough, my darling Cabs, but do
you realise what you're saying? By the way,
hasn't he taken you into his confidence?"
"If he had I wouldn't be discussing it," her
daughter sharply yet calmly retorted.
"You know that girl better than any of the
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
rest of us do, anyway, " said Stella; and this
gave Caroline her cue.
"Which is exactly what Roden's trying to
remedy, " she answered.
"Whether or not anything . . . irrevoc-
able has taken place?" Evelyn suggested.
"Yes. . . That seems reasonable," said
Caroline. "He wants us to know her properly."
"But how are we to know," Stella cried, al-
most with anger, "how far it's gone!"
"You're evading the real question, Cabs,"
Lady Peel began again, "which is: Why, why,
why in heaven's name that perverse boy should
have taken up with a shorthand- typist?" She
pronounced the penultimate syllable in a tone
suggesting that the variety of typist in ques-
tion surpassed other varieties in virulence.
Caroline summoned her vocabulary, for now
was the moment. "Thank goodness," she
thought, "I've inherited mother's fluency;
otherwise I'd be nowhere." Fortunately no
one seemed disposed to answer Lady Peel's
rhetorical question save her elder daughter.
"Is that what matters?" the latter brought
out so as to gain time ; and then, in a rush, yet
lucidly and calmly: "It seems to me quite su-
perfluous to wonder about whys and hows. As
117
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
he has taken up with her, and as you've noth-
ing against her nothing morally, I mean,"
she hastily amended in response to an outraged
yelp from her mother, " surely what you've got
to decide is whether it wouldn't be better all
round, for everybody concerned, to make the
best of it and have her here."
"Caroline, you're an opportunist." said
Evelyn. "You ask, not what is right, but what
is politic and expedient. Unfortunately, it's
very hard to know, being in the dark, whether
your actions will affect the issue, or whether
it's all gone too far."
"It can't have gone too far unless they're
actually secretly married," said Stella.
Lady Peel rolled her luminous dark eyes
helplessly, and stirred her tea with violence.
Then she seemed to be struck by a thought.
"We seem to be going round in a circle,"
Sir Harold remarked with some weariness, ris-
ing and moving a few paces away from the
group. He stood looking towards the Hope
Valley, and Caroline's eyes followed his.
Lady Peel whose silence had been omin-
ous, enquired softly: "Why do you say 'you,'
Cabs? Why not 'we'? Hasn't he confided in
you?"
118
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
Caroline turned towards the speaker a face
lit with recognition of her misplaced clever-
ness. "No, honestly, he hasn't," she answered.
She pursued after a pause: "I think Evelyn
was . . . right when he talked of precipitat-
ing events. Don't you think, if you refuse to
ask Miss Draper here, Roden may go elsewhere
for his holiday?"
< ' With her ? " asked Stella.
Sir Harold came back to them at that. "Do
you think he has an alternative plan in his
mind?" he enquired of his elder daughter as
though controlling himself so as not to alarm
her.
"I haven't an idea, Hal. Do believe me
when I say I know no more than you. But I
care about Roden I don't want you to have a
row with him." She stopped; and then, in
reply to a speechless question in her father's
face, added: "She's a perfectly straight girl;
you must have seen that!" They confronted
each other silently for an instant.
Stella created a diversion by jumping up
and exclaiming: "Well, I'm sick of this. Does
anyone object to having the gramophone on?"
She stopped, and then added with a great air
of worldly wisdom: "I don't see why you
119
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
don't just say there's no room for her,
mother."
To everyone's astonishment, before Lady
Peel could bring out a word, Sir Harold had
uttered an unmistakably decided "No!"
Stella, halfway through the French window
of the drawing room, stopped to stare at her
father, who stood in profile to her, his eyes
still fixed on the view. "Hal!" she said, and
then, her tone rising to irritation, and from
irritation to an anger which was tinged, it
seemed to Caroline, with hysteria; "You don't
icant that girl to come here, do you? You
don't want Roden to be in love with her? Think
if he marries her. . . Oh, Hal, think! ..."
she broke off, stammering; and then, with a
rush of tears to her eyes and colour to her
cheeks, she turned precipitately into the room
and disappeared.
Evelyn, his eyebrows a trifle raised, rose
languidly, and strolled down the steep path
leading to a lower terrace.
"Cabs and Francis,, do you mind taking
yourselves off, too?" their father mildly en-
quired. "I want to talk to your mother."
"Come up the hill," the boy murmured; so
Caroline went off with him in the opposite
120
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
direction to their cousin. As they moved off
they heard the gramophone begin to sing.
"I pity Hal having to talk against Caruso,"
said the girl.
"Well, he's used to talking against mother,"
Francis replied ; and Caroline thought his tone
a little grim. The next moment, however, the
impression was wiped from her mind by a flow
of remarks about county cricket, a subject sec-
ond only in importance to Cambridge in her
brother's mind. She abstracted herself. A
beech-wood received them.
121
IX.
THE gramophone was Lady Peel's latest fad.
She had but recently discovered, what had al-
ways been the fact, that it was a superlatively
good machine. She had spent nearly a week
and quite ten pounds on hearing and buying
records at Harrod's, a pastime into which her
children and friends were pressed. Her pre-
vious passion for dancing did not suffer the us-
ual swift eclipse of the superseded craze: the
old love and the new flourished together in am-
ity. The house in Kensington Gore resounded
for hours to dance tunes, as well as comic
songs, fragments of operas, orchestral pieces,
violin solos and drawing-room ballads.
The obstacles to transporting the unwieldy
cabinet to Derbyshire were, fortunately for
Lady Peel, of the kind that money can over-
come. A box of brand-new records accompan-
ied it, as well as a large selection of old ones ;
for so many turned out to be, when the time
for packing came, favourites from whom some
member of the family could not bear to be
122
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
parted. Even Sir Harold and Caroline had
their favourites, rather grudgingly admitted.
To-night, after dinner, Stella moved towards
the gramophone. Caroline, without thought,
clearly, authoritatively said: "Not a rag,
Stella. Put on Moon of my Delight or
Bredon."
Stella, with unusual amiability, complied;
and as Caroline settled down to enjoy the song,
she heard her mother ask Sir Harold if he
were going by the early train. She was sur-
prised, for it was unprecedented for him to go
to town on a Saturday. He nodded, and, when
the maid brought coffee, gave directions about
breakfast and the car.
"Are you going into Sheffield, Hal?" the
girl asked, during the final bars of the music,
"because I'd like to go in with you, and do
some shopping before the shops shut."
"Very well, dear."
"That's a rotten thing," said Francis. "Put
on El Relicario, and mater can practice the
hen-scratch."
"No, no," Lady Peel protested peevishly.
"I'm going to have a nice peaceful evening.
Let's have Tosti's Good-bye."
There was a burst of laughter, for the per-
123
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
former in the record referred to had a pecul-
iarly strident tenor.
"You do a little work for a change, Prance,"
said Stella, wandering to the window. "I'm
going out. Is anyone coming?"
There was a pause; everyone expected
Evelyn to rise. Then Lady Peel suggested a
hand of bridge.
"Not for me," Caroline hastened to say, and
followed Stella out into the garden.
It was not often that the sisters walked alone
together; there was something for the elder
strange and new and pleasing in the experi-
ence. She did not court solitude here as she
would have in the south. The sense of space,
the sense of moors and dales, was too present
to be marred by this companionship; one could
walk for miles and see nothing living but
grouse and perhaps a hawk.
"What's wrong with mother? She's off
dancing, and, she kissed me before dinner."
Stella wondered aloud, in a tone suggesting
that such an action was symptom of a fell dis-
ease.
"What's the matter with Evelyn if it comes
to that?"
124
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"Oh, he'll perk up to-morrow. I expect
town's horribly hot."
"Well, what's the matter with father, thenT
He's going to town to-morrow."
"Is he? For the week-end? Did he say
so?"
"I didn't ask for how long; I suppose only
for the day. I'm going into Sheffield with
him."
Stella broke off humming: "What's the mat-
ter with father? He's all right" to exclaim
with a gleam of mischief: "What the matter
with Eoden? There's something wrong with
everyone."
"Except me."
"You're all right, are you, Cabs?"
"Quite, thanks."
"I wish there weren't these dust-ups."
"I thought you liked excitements," Caroline
remarked.
"Do I? I suppose so. But I know I hate,
I simply hate things to go wrong like that."
"Are you talking about Roden's affair?"
They were climbing the steep path leading
from the garden to the summit of the hill the
path Francis and Caroline had climbed earlier
in the evening; halfway up it entered a hang-
125
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
ing beechwood. Stella did not answer.
"I don't know that things are going wrong
from his point of view," said Caroline.
"My good Cabs! You must be off your
head and Hal too, by the calm way he takes
it. ... He might as well marry the cook."
"I don't believe you have any idea what
Roden's really like, Stella. He isn't like us
like ordinary people; }ie never will be. It
would probably dish Francis to marry beneath
him; but it won't dish Roden. He's in a sort
of way, somehow, he 's outside conventions and
civilisation."
"Outside? . . I don't know what you mean.
I know he's different and queer. Mother said
to-day she almost wished it was an illegitimate
offspring of Roden's that had to be dealt with
instead of what Evelyn calls the worst hon-
ourable intentions."
"I dare say she does. That could be settled
with money. It's where money's no earthly
use that mother is completely at sea. I have
been expecting her to suggest 'buying' Grace
Draper off; only Hal's got too much sense to
allow her to try to do anything so idiotic."
"Well, I don't think it's such a bad idea."
"0 Stella, you're impossible, you and mo-
126
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
ther! Don't you know what Grace Draper's
like from having seen her? She might very
likely be impressed if you asked her to re-
nounce Roden for the sake of his family or his
career; but if you insulted her, she'd merely
glue on all the tighter, and quite right too."
"Do you mean you think she's in love with
him?"
"Probably. Or she may love him. There
are so many different kinds. ..."
"You think, anyway, that she minds about
him, about his future and all that?"
"I'm sure she does, as far as she visualises
it. I'm certain she isn't a selfish little pig, nor
even on the make at all; though I daresay she's
flattered at some one in a class above her be-
ing keen on her."
"I dare say so, too," said Stella sar-
donically.
"And so would you be, if a duke happened
to fall in love with you."
"Oh, I expect so," the younger girl admitted.
"It's a sad life that Geoffrey's only a blooming
honourable."
"Can't you make shift with that?" Caroline
asked, smiling, but smiling at the dusky, sil-
ent beauty of the wood where they walked care-
127
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
fully and close together on the rough path,
rather than at the picture her words suggested.
"I imagine I could if I could put up with
Geoffrey's appearance, for he's not a bad old
sort when you get to know him. But Lord,
he's so podgy."
"It's annoying that all the slim young men
who like you are penniless."
"I don't so much mind about slimness if
they look interesting," Stella answered unex-
pectedly, "Geoffrey's just as ordinary as he
looks. . . . But if it's Evelyn you're think-
ing of, I don't want Evelyn any more than he
wants me."
They emerged on to the plateau crowning
the long ridge into the diffused, soft, miracu-
lously clear starlight. The heat of the day, ris-
ing from the bracken, the heather, the thymy
sods, tempered the cold of the strong moorland
air, so that they could stand in their thin, low
cut dresses without being chilled.
"Who do you think Roden would marry if
he didn't marry this girl?" Stella presently
inquired, sucking a grass. "I mean, what sort
of a person?"
Caroline stared at the starlit landscape.
"Perhaps nobody. How can one say? He's
128
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
awfully self -controlled, and I don't think he'd
let a passion run away with him unless he
thought the woman was really the sort of wife
he wanted."
"D'you mean to tell me he thinks that this
girl will suit him?"
"Yes. I know it's queer. I can hardly be-
lieve he won't grow out of her; and yet I trust
Roden. Anyway, nobody knows better than he
does, and I doubt if they know as well."
"Good Lord, what a notion! I thought it
must be an infatuation she is rather pretty."
"Everybody calls love affairs they disap-
prove of infatuations," Caroline retorted sen-
tentiously.
After a pause Stella remarked, "I don't
agree with mother that it would have been bet-
ter if he'd just . . . carried on with her.
Then we should probably never have known
about it."
"Then you'd rather know the worst?"
"Yes, I think I would. Should you be shocked
if you knew that Roden had carried on with
a girl!"
"No!"
Something in Caroline's voice reminded
Stella vividly of her father's tone as he said
129
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"No!" to her suggestion, made at the end of
the conclave, that Lady Peel should settle the
dilemma with a white lie.
"Don't make me cry again, for heaven's
sake, Cabs," she exclaimed. "There's some-
thing wrong with me, as well as with the rest
of them."
"There is," her sister gravely agreed.
"What is it?"
"I don't know. I suppose it's the heat."
"There have only been about three warm
days since Whitsun," Caroline replied.
"Oh, well, I don't know. I wish things would
settle down again, and go on as they used to."
"Things never do. . . . What's your ideal
existence, Stella?"
"I've always been quite happy since I've
been grown up since the war stopped. I
don't want things to alter. I like plenty to do
and plenty of friends."
"Friends" was an odd word, Caroline
thought, for Stella's series of boon compan-
ions : girls in whom she confided one week and
verbally tore to shreds the next; young men
with whom she danced and supped and flirted
until either they or she tired utterly of the
affair and behaved as though it had never been.
130
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"AVe're none of us much good at friendship,'*
she remarked; "I've only got Ann, and Hugh,
and Eoden, out of all the dozens of people I
know. ' '
"Roden!" her sister echoed. "You don't
surely count the family as friends. One takes
them for granted."
"I don't," answered Caroline.
They did not speak as they descended the
hill. The elder girl, glancing at her junior's
face, saw that she was plunged in thought a
very rare occurrence.
When they returned to the drawing-room
the others were still playing bridge. At the
end of a rubber the usual argument broke out
the inevitable post-mortem. Caroline, light-
ing a cigarette, glanced sidelong, with sup-
pressed scorn, at the flushed, irritable faces of
Lady Peel and Francis, the half-bored, half-
amused face of Evelyn, the unmoved, bearded
face, faintly shadowed with weariness, of her
father. What a fuss about what was supposed
to be a pleasure! What thought and concen-
tration her mother bestowed on this game
far more than she expended even on the more
exacting of her crazes ! Surely the brains need-
ed for auction bridge would carry Francis
131
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
through Little-go. And why did Evelyn play
if it bored him? Out of politeness? .
Their supercilious glances met for a moment.
Turning from her cousin's oblique smile, the
girl's eyes rested on her sister, who, with her
back to the company, was occupied somehow
at Lady Peel's writing-table.
''Come on, Stella," cried Francis, jumping
up. "Let's have one ramp round before bed.
Here, I'll put on My House is Haunted. Pull
up your socks, mater, I'm going to take you
on. This is a preparation for May-week next
year." He pushed back the chairs, and, the
card-players having risen, began to move the
table to the wall.
"No, I don't want to dance, Francis, darling.
I don't mind watching you, though."
"You are an old slacker."
"Now, Francis, leave Aunt Leila alone, "*
said Evelyn. "Think of the intellectual strain
we've just been through, not to mention the
strain of controlling our tempers." As he
spoke the young man glanced covertly at his
uncle; but Francis must have perceived the
look, for, turning to Sir Harold, he asked:
"Do you mind if we perform, Hal?"
"Not a bit, my dear boy. As a matter of
132
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
fact, I'm going to bed. I suppose you'll have
breakfast with me, Cabs?"
His daughter nodded. "Are you coming
back to-morrow night?" she asked.
"Yes. But I can come from Sheffield by
train, if you meant to use the car late."
That had not been the reason for her ques-
tion; and at this proof of Sir Harold's care
for their pleasure a rush of affection filled her.
That stolid, Saxon, unemotional man was not
so wholly lacking in imagination as she was
apt to consider him.
"We might go to Monsal Dale for tea," said
Stella. "I suppose you won't be back much
before lunch, will you, Cabs?"
"Not much." Her slow answer was drowned
by the opening bars of the ragtime.
Francis and Stella began to gyrate. Soon
their mother jumped up.
"I can't resist it, Evelyn," she cried. "I
must practise my tango-walk: it's too delight-
fully quaint for words. Put it just a shade
slower, will you, Caroline darling. What a
tune! What a floor! I feel as though I were
a girl of twenty again."
133
X.
"You look as though you'd slept badly,
Hal," said Caroline at their early breakfast.
He answered heavily, but without any trace
of self-pity: "I did rather."
The hieroglyphics of fatigue were indeed
scrawled more plainly on his face than yester-
day; and his daughter had an unpleasant, half-
suppressed notion that his mouth might be
trembling or grimacing under its moustache.
"Must you go?" she presently enquired.
"It's absolutely necessary, I'm sorry to
say."
"Well, I hope you'll be able to take the
whole of next week off you haven't had one
quite clear week this summer."
"Next week?" he echoed slowly, looking at
her, and speaking, it seemed to her super-sen-
sitive early-morning ears, with a careful but
not successful counterfeit of his usual suave
deliberation: "I don't know about next week."
This brief colloquy left the girl with an un-
comfortable sensation, which, however, she at-
134
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
tributed to having herself lain wakeful for
several hours of the night. She had thought a
great deal about 'Roden and Grace Draper,
without coming to any more decided conclu-
sion than her previous one: that Roden 's in-
stinct was probably more trustworthy than
other people's opinion of what was good for
him, and that Grace Draper was as likely to
make him happy as anyone. She had wonder-
ed, too, about Stella, but without arriving at
any theory which would account for the girl's
recent outbursts. Nerves? This vague term
might cover almost anything, and was there-
fore all the more unsatisfactory as an explan-
ation.
Caroline's night-thoughts had come, of
course, in time to herself, and so to Hugh Sex-
ton. Perhaps he was right: perhaps she had
hitherto dismissed her relations too facilely
under the category of puppets, thus herself be-
traying a superficiality equal to that of which
she accused them. Hugh had seen further,
perhaps, or made a lucky shot. And yet habit
of mind made it hard to think of Lady Peel, of
Stella, of Francis, of Sir Harold, as subjects
worthy of study; it was far, far more prob-
able that Stella was suffering from a disordered
135
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
liver, or from the effects of too exciting a
season, than from anything more interesting.
She had betrayed no yearnings, no aspirations,
not the slightest sickness of soul, when asked
what sort of life she coveted; indeed, her ans-
wer implied contentment. And could Lady
Peel's successive passions for knitting sweat-
ers, the drama, infant welfare, spiritualism,
dancing, the gramophone, possibly be regarded
as stages in a quest for the ideal, a crying for
the moon, a search for the good or the true or
the beautiful? Caroline was sure that they
could not. When the monkey dresses up in its
owner's finery, when the jackdaw steals and
hoards fragments of glass and metal, must one
recognise proofs of a soul making shift with
substitutes because the absolute, dimly con-
ceived, is unattainable? Caroline thought not.
The real test to which she mentally put her
mother and sister and brother was their ca-
pacity for affection ; and none of them stood the
test, except, perhaps, Francis. At least, he
was fond of his father, in his jaunty, feather-
headed way. But Lady Peel, although she
called her children and her friends "Darling,"
and often professed exceeding love for them,
and although Caroline had never seen her
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
deliberately unkind to anyone, had never been
known by her to do anything which pointed to
a sustained or profound affection. As for
Stella, she was frankly fickle.
Sir Harold, of course, was different in this
respect. He cared for them all, Caroline be-
lieved even for Roden, with whom he had no
sympathy. The trouble with Hal was that he
was too successful, too stolid, too closely iden-
tified with comfortable clubs, a luxurious home
respectability, blind optimism, the Church and
the State. Even the war had not touched him.
He was as ignorant of the struggles and dark
realities of poverty, of the struggles and dark
abysses of the soul, as a glossy-coated, friend-
ly, golden-brown retriever dog; and he avoid-
ed contact with such things more successfully
because less consciously than Evelyn Cashel.
If at the time of Gerald's death Caroline had
gone to her father in a dumb agony he would
have been helpless, embarrassed, almost re-
sentful; he certainly would have produced an
atmosphere of grievance against her after-
wards. If she had gone to him weeping he
would have patted her, and, with tears in his
own eyes, have begged her to take comfort; but
Caroline thought that such an incident, far
137
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
from making their relation more close and in-
timate, would have made him a little afraid of
her, because it would have dragged him a few
steps towards the edge of a territory of whose
existence his whole life was a consistent denial.
"No," she had decided, turning over pre-
paratory to sleep. "Hugh's idea must have
been a reaction against my damned superior
condemnation of them. I don't think there's
more in it than that. . . . But Stella certain-
ly is different and upset."
Returning from Sheffield, she found lunch
already on the table, and was informed that
the start for Monsal Dale was fixed for half-
past two.
"I shouldn't be surprised if it rained," she
said; "it's cloudy."
"It's a south wind," Francis agreed, "but
I don't think it'll rain till to-night. Let's go,
anyway."
"Evelyn's been teaching me poker-patience,
Cabs," cried her mother, "and it's really too
entrancing. I've quite decided to start a poker-
patience club. . . . Those dreadful children
would have the gramophone on the whole
morning. It was too distracting for words.
I know your Aunt Violet plays, she tried to
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
teach it to me once, years ago, but I wouldn't
play anything but billiards in those days. And
I shall teach darling Hildegarde and you and
Stella and Francis."
"Oh, no, you won't," the boy retorted.
"Francis darling, your way of answering is
very crude. We'll take the cards to Monsal,
anyway . . . Amy, tell cook not to spread
the gentleman's relish sandwiches too thick."
When first they started off, packed into the
big car, the sun was obscured by clouds, but
when they arrived at the Saracen's Head it
came out again, and everyone was in good
spirits. There is no road down Monsal Dale;
even the rich must walk; the railway, crossing
the river on a viaduct just below the inn, goes
down one arm of the L; but in the other only
the voices of occasional picnickers and the
rushing of the river over its weirs disturbs the
silence. It is not such a flowery dale as some,
although in May the lilies pierce the limestone
shale of the steep sides. In early August,
when the Peels were there, there was only a
scattered multitude of coltsfoot, rock- rose, thyme
and lady's slipper; a few clusters of big
blue cranesbill, and every now and then some
creamy spikes of meadow-sweet. Caroline
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
looked in vain for the rarer vetches, the beds
of large glowing willow-herb and the tall pur-
ple campanulas that she had found the week
before in Lathkill Dale. She sat down disap-
pointed by the weir; but soon her disappoint-
ment faded into a deep content. Sunlight al-
ternated quickly with shadow, for there was a
strong southern breeze; but in this deep nar-
row valley there was shelter. The continuous
rushing of the waterfall over its stone steps
mesmerised her. A little way off Francis and
Stella were playing beggar-my-neighbour on a
rug. Lady Peel and Evelyn were wandering
along the grassy path under the sycamores;
the chauffeur, having deposited the tea-basket,
bad taken his way back up the steep slope to
the Saracen's Head. No other picnickers
were in sight. A sapphire dragon-fly darted
past; Caroline thought of the flashing blue
kingfishers who, she had read, haunted the
streams in the south. What was there so won-
derful about blue, setting it apart from other
colours, so that somehow blue flowers, though
not more beautiful than others, have a peculiar
charm? so that the halcyon bird has become
a symbol of happiness, and azure butterflies
seem the embodiment of early summer, and the
140
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
blue horizon synonymous with unattainable
desires ? There is some association in men, im-
memorially old, prehistoric, probably prehu-
man, which vibrates inexplicably at the sight
of blue ; perhaps it is the association of the sky.
After some time Caroline began to walk in
the direction which her mother had taken, with
the half -formulated intention of engaging her
in conversation about Grace Draper. Nothing
more had been said on the subject; she did not
know if a refusal had already been sent to
Roden; knowing Lady Peel's dilatoriness, she
thought it improbable. Evelyn's presence
would be no bar to further discussion; he
would have the tact to be silent, even if direct-
ly appealed to by his aunt. The latter was the
more amenable the fewer persons were pres-
ent ; she was slightly more capable of a reason-
able mental process in tete-a-tete than in gen-
eral conversation ; it was possible to affect her
a little by one's own concentration and deliber-
ation if one had her alone.
Caroline was, however, spared even Evelyn
as an audience. When she came up with Lady
Peel the latter was seated alone on a knoll,
smoking a cigarette.
"Evelyn insisted on climbing the hill," she
141
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
explained, "or, rather, on trying to. Of course
it's absurd. I refused to exhaust myself by
scrabbling on a cliff. I can't think why he
wouldn't stay comfortably here with me and
enjoy the view."
"I suppose he thought there 'd be a better
view from the top," the girl answered. "Or
perhaps he just wanted to be alone for a little
while."
"I dare say." Lady Peel was refreshingly
free from sentimentality; she never uttered
what she thought to be appropriate or telling
remarks about nature, human or otherwise,
solitude, art or love. When she used cant ex-
pressions it was because they fell easily off her
tongue, not because she thought they sounded
fine or did her credit; she was quite without
self-consciousness. Her children did not fully
appreciate her complete spontaneity, for they
had never endured the ordeal of close or pro-
longed proximity with/ a sentimentalist, a
mouther of picturesque or would-be profound
phrases.
The couple sat for a few moments without
speaking, while the elder woman hummed.
Caroline was collecting her resources. She
felt like a governess who is about to explain
142
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
to a wayward, scatter-brained child, who does
not particularly want to know, why it is high
tide on both sides of the earth at once. It was,
however, essential to begin before her mother
either opened another topic, or was distracted
by the return of Evelyn, or the discovery of
an ant-heap, or the notion of tea; so she asked:
1 'You haven't written to Roden or Miss
Draper yet, have you?"
"No. I don't know what I'm going to do,
and Hal doesn't seem to have any clear idea
of what line to take either."
"I have," said Caroline boldly.
Lady Peel looked at her with her dark, lum-
inous, pathetic eyes.
"For everybody's sake you must ask her
here," the girl went on. "For ours, because
if he means to marry her it's awfully import-
ant that we should be on good terms. If he
doesn't marry her well, no harm will have
been done. It seems to me that's the only sane
view. ' '
There was a pause; then:
"Well, I only hope Roden isn't expecting
Hal to shell out any capital for his motor
affair," came the unexpected reply, "because
if he is he'll be sadly let down."
143
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"I don't think lie is. ... But why shouldn't
Hal, as a matter of fact?" The girl spoke in-
attentively, for she was wondering if indeed
victory was hers, or if this change of front in-
dicated further resistance.
"Your father's awfully worried," Lady
Peel answered. "In fact he's what Francis
would call got the wind up. Of course I expect
it 's all just a scare ; there Ve been so many, and
all false alarms; I shan't begin to worry yet.
But I know the effect of these scares on Hal;
they make him as close as anything, just for a
little while. He won't be feeling inclined to
give twopence to anybody for six months or
so. ... My dear, look at that exquisite but-
terfly with splodges of red on it ! They are the
most unlikely beasts I never get used to see-
ing them about."
Caroline was mute with astonishment; then
after a moment she began to revise the im-
pression conveyed by this speech. It was al-
ways very difficult to gauge the importance of
any communication of her mother's, so incal-
culable, so disproportionate, were her gusts of
irritation, interest, weariness or surprise. It
was impossible to tell from her tone whether
she was referring to a world-disaster or a hole
144
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
in her stocking, immortality or chip potatoes.
One of the sentences she had just spoken had
particularly struck her listener: ^ There Ve
been so many, and all false alarms: I shan't
begin to worry yet." That might signify a
very great deal or nothing at all. However
satisfactory the outcome of Sir Harold's peri-
ods of anxiety, however unnecessary his sub-
sequent periods of economy, wasn't it odd that
in all the ten years Caroline had been grown
up she had never heard of either! It had
never, in the vaguest way, occurred to her until
yesterday that her father had business wor-
ries; she had always imagined him as idling
away a few hours in a resplendent office, pre-
siding at director's meetings and declaring
dividends (whatever that might mean!), all
with the Olympian, unruffled, complacent calm
of the man whose investments bring him sev-
eral thousands a year, and whose investments
are as "safe as houses." But the very word
"worry" spoilt this picture, somehow dimmed
the image of the resplendent office, turned the
sleek boards of directors into hurried, harried
men, and her father into an Atlas rather than
a Jupiter.
"D'you mean to say, mother, that Hal's
145
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
companies, or whatever they are, aren't doing
well aren 't paying ? ' '
" There's practically only one now that
counts, from our point of view. I can't tell
you why, and really I don't care it's all too
tedious for words but Hal has lumped a vast
sum into some mine or other; and he's in a
funk now for fear it should turn out a bad
thing."
Caroline felt the blood withdrawing from
her cheeks, from her neck withdrawing in a
chill shiver down her spine. She stared in
silence at her mother's face.
"My darling girl, don't look so upset! I
tell you it's probably all a false alarm."
That brought Caroline back to the sentence
which seemed to be a clue to some unexplained
portion of her existence. "Did you say that he
had often been in a funk before?"
"Not so badly; no, not nearly so badly. Poor
old Hal! I think we shall have to tear our-
selves away from town this winter, Cabs, and
take him abroad. We might go to Cannes, and
then to Switzerland after New Year. Wouldn't
it be rather amusing? and back by Paris in
the spring. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
"But, mother, tell me this: does Hal go in
146
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
for unsafe things? I mean, does he really . . .
speculate ?"
"I suppose so, darling. Why not? Every-
body in the city does. We shouldn't ever have
had half the money we have got if Hal hadn't
speculated." There was a 'pause, and then
Lady Peel pursued: "I wish Evelyn would
come back. It must be tea-time. Come on,
Cabs, I'm getting chilly. Give him a shout."
It was useless, Caroline saw, to question her
further; she was already tired of the subject.
She called to her cousin, and when he came,
lingered behind while he went on with her
gaily-chatting mother.
She was too much disturbed to be able at
once to recover her equanimity. How hard
and surprising her discovery, even with its
edges blurred by Lady Peel's off-hand manner
of telling, by her obvious taking of it for grant-
ed! It necessitated a complete revision of
Caroline's view of her father, the formation of
an altogether new conception of him. She was
not so immediately concerned as to his present
financial situation; it was impossible to judge
from Lady Peel's account how bad that situ-
ation was; but his appearance, the difference
she had dimly perceived in him, did not di-
147
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
minish her apprehensions. That, however, was
a question not yet capable of solution; what
she already felt certain of was that she had in-
deed utterly misjudged her father his charac-
ter, his temperament, his attitude towards ex-
istence everything! He, the safe, the solid,
the unemotional, the unimaginative, was a
gambler in stocks and shares! She tried to
tone down her conviction, to assure herself
that she was being melodramatic and exagger-
ated ; but the conviction persisted in its height-
ened tones. The very readiness of Lady Peel
to admit the charge against her husband in
some way contributed to the convincingness of
Caroline's impression; her mother evidently
took, and always had taken, his speculations,
his scares and economies, his drawings in and
launchings out, his swayings over the abyss of
ruin and his recoveries, quite as matters of
course ; she probably minimised the dangers of
the game because she was so used to it and be-
cause she did not enquire into the details. But
to Caroline the idea of Hal engaged in this
reckless sport and as a sport she visualised it :
something like mountain-climbing was a stun-
ning, astounding, revolutionary idea ; it blotted
out everything else for the moment, like one
148
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
of those headaches whose piston-throbbing
dwarfs the whole universe, so that nothing else
is of the slightest importance.
Tea, the packing up, the walk to the car, the
drive home, passed for her in a dream. She
looked, with a new interest added to her famil-
iar scorn, at her mother, who, undeterred by
the possibility of trouble, chattered and ges-
ticulated with her customary liveliness. Now
that the first shock of discovery was over, it
was the practical aspect of the case which be-
gan to occupy Caroline. As they drew near
home she became tormented with anxiety to
hasten their progress, to learn the result of
her father's visit to town, to know the worst.
Anything might have happened and here was
her mother telling the chauffeur to slow down
that she might exchange polite remarks with
an acquaintance in the road. This fiddling
was far worse than Nero's; it had not even
the sublime absurdity of a megalomaniac's
gesture; it placed her mother, more certainly
than ever before, more irretrievably and des-
picably on a level with creatures not human.
Caroline was filled with cold anger against her.
Looking ostentatiously at her watch she broke
into the small-talk, saying in clear, hard tone
149
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"If we go on at once we shall just have time to
meet Hal at the station. "
"Very well," Lady Peel agreed. "Good-
bye, Mrs. Baines. Go on, Hutchinson. Go to
the station. Francis, dear, you might walk up
to make room for Hal. ' '
' ' No, ' ' said Caroline, once more unconscious-
ly echoing her father's tone, which fact this
time seemed to pass unnoticed by Stella, "Pm
going to walk up with him."
"But I expect he'll be tired, Cabs. Don't be
silly, darling. Francis won't mind walking up,
will you, dear boy?"
The girl made no reply ; but, jumping out as
soon as the car stopped, she moved quickly in-
to the station. The train was signalled. Stella
and her brother, idly following, joined her;
but she ignored them until the train was ac-
tually in sight. Then, turning on them with all
the command she could muster, she said: "Go
back go up in the car. Please, Stella. I must
speak to father."
"What is it?" the boy asked quickly.
"It may be nothing. I'll tell you afterwards.
Please go, Francis."
"Very well," he answered to her immense
relief, his words drowned in the noise of the
150
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
approaching train; and he must have added
something to Stella, for she, inquisitive and
unwilling, nevertheless obeyed her sister and
turned with him towards the station exit.
Caroline had ceased, at his reply, to notice
her companions; all her faculties were concen-
trated on catching sight of her father as he
descended, in deducing from his appearance
whether he carried bad tidings or good. This
she was, however, unable to do. He came to-
wards her, upright, well-groomed, young in
bearing and yet unhurried as always, overtop-
ping many of the other passengers in height,
and surpassing all in distinction. She had a
right to be proud of his appearance: no won-
der foreigners, waiters, newsboys, called him
"me lord." She had thought that that was the
whole man that he was a type, a figurehead,
one whose suavity and courtesy were polish
upon a simple, solid, eminently reliable, be-
cause so limited, structure. She had imagined
that he was hedged away not only by upbring-
ing, tradition, and circumstances, but also by
character and temperament, from all contact
with danger or romance, from all extremes of
thought, conduct or emotion. She knew now
that she had been gulled; she could smile at
151
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
her former fatuous unhesitating judgment.
Surely to play with money involves romance
and danger and the possibility of any ex-
tremes; it implies a desire for them, a wooing
of them, a courage, a refinement of reckless-
ness which she admired. She was beginning
to know him now, to love him. She hastened
forward to meet him.
' 'Arc you alone, Cabs!" he asked, and she
thought she detected anxiety in his voice.
"Yes," she answered. "At least, I think
so. The others were going up in the car.
We're just back from a picnic." She wanted
to add : * ' Mother has told me. Are you ruined ? ' '
but the phrase "Fly: all is discovered,"
coming to her mind, prevented her. At last,
however, she screwed up her courage to say:
"Have you are you less worried? Have
things gone well today?"
Sir Harold did not turn his face towards her
as they walked, nor did he reply quickly; she
had time to expect a snub.
"You knew I was worried?" he asked her.
"My little Cabs, your stupid old father has
come down badly this time."
"This time," she echoed vacantly, a little
dazed.
152
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
There was a long pause.
"Are we ... shall we have to be . . .to
live in quite a different way?" Caroline pres-
ently enquired, with unprecedented timidity.
Without! answering, he nodded; and his
daughter, as they climbed the hill, felt for the
first time for years like a very small, depend-
ent, ignorant and bewildered child.
153
XL
DINNER passed off much as usual. Caroline,
still in her bewildered, helpless state of mind,
scanned her mother's face in vain for some in-
dication that the bad news had been broken
to her ; Lady Peel was her ordinary self talk-
ative, restless, fidgety; her eyes shining dark
and pathetic in her young, though dim and
wrinkled, face. She had put on a new tea-
gown, and against its blue the yellowness of
her skin was accentuated. She was to-night
perhaps more than usual like a piece of bric-
a-brac, at once fragile, wiry, and grotesque. She
was discussing theosophy with Evelyn Cashel,
praising it in her inconsequent, unconvincing
way, while her nephew insinuated his languid
and yet often pointed remarks comments
rather than replies.
Stella and Francis were speaking in low-
tones to each other, ending in a sudden burst
of laughter.
" What's the joke; what is it?" their mo-
ther cried testily; but Francis would only
154
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
droop an eyelid in response, while Stella began
to interest Evelyn in the clothes she meant to
buy on her return to town.
Only Sir Harold and Caroline were silent;
but that was customary. Nothing, nothing ap-
parently was changed; and yet it was to the
girl as though a spectre stood within the door,
unheeded; as though some one had died and
lay ignored upstairs ; as though some infinitely
complex situation with which no one there was
competent to deal had arisen unknown and un-
envisaged. These children, playing with buck-
ets and spades upon the shore, were ignorant
of the tidal wave which swept, house-high, to-
wards them. It was too late to cry out, to
warn them ; it was already upon them, and upon
her too, the watcher. She looked at her father
who, with one hand at his beard, stared at the
dish before him.
How would her mother take the news? With
a nerve-crisis, a tear-storm, or with a bewil-
dered, helpless silence like her own ? How would
she accustom herself to circumstances of pov-
erty and discomfort after a life-time of wealth
and luxury? It would need the combined
forces of Caroline and Hal to impose on Lady
Peel the necessary economy. And there was
155
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
Stella and Francis. What would become of
him? Would enough be saved from the wreck
of their fortunes not only to keep them housed,
fed and warm, but to pay Francis' Cambridge
fees? And Roden, where would he come in?
Already half cut adrift from them, he would
certainly be no problem, and probably not a
help either. But it comforted Caroline to
think of him, absorbed in his work and in his
art, contented with his unself-conscious little
typist. It was a good thing that one member
of the family at least was more or less inde-
pendent, would not be involved in the crash.
By dint of thinking, however inconsecutive-
ly, of these aspects of the disaster for Caro-
line, by a safeguarding instinct, assumed that
her father's situation amounted to disaster
she began to emerge from her childish, help-
less mood into one more normal for her years
and character. She began, healthily, to be
thankful on her family's behalf that she was
there, young and sane and intelligent even if
uneducated and ignorant able to grasp the
implications of the event, able to think ahead,
to plan, and when the time came to take action ;
Hal would not be without a lieutenant in the
struggle with adversity. It did not occur to
156
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
her to question his capacity for leadership; a
life-time habit of unconscious, unquestioning
trust and dependence, even when tempered by
intellectual and moral snobbishness, cannot be
cast off in a day. He had been shown to her,
fragmentarily by her mother, as very different
from the man she had imagined him to be ; and
yet she still counted on him, by an unreasoning
but perfectly sound instinct, to act with sense
and foresight and integrity. To have gambled
and to have lost does not necessarily imply
knavery or even folly. And there he was,
looking, except for fatigued eyes, just the same
as ever, solid, calm and suave; not giving in
his appearance one clue to that fatal passion,
making it almost impossible to believe that he
had ever thrilled to danger, uncertainty, excite-
ment, triumph, ever been sick with defeat.
There he was, with all that he was, not only the
long-familiar, but also the newly-discovered,
summed up in the word "Hal."
"The moon's getting up," said Francis, as
they rose from the table. "Let's take the car
out for a run," he added with nonchalance;
"I'll drive."
"Now don't say you're tired, Evelyn, you
157
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
lazy pig. Come and put your coat on," cried
Stella. "Coming, Cabs?"
Caroline glanced at her parents; her father
was drinking coffee, her mother lighting a cig-
arette. "Yes," she said.
It had grown finer since sunset, and of
course colder. Snuggling in her fur coat be-
side, but not close to, Evelyn in the large back
of the car, the girl reflected that this was very
nearly the last pleasure drive she would ever
get in it. She supposed that retrenchments in
expenditure would have to be begun immedi-
ately; the house in London and the car would
be sold; they would move into some poky flat
or villa in Hammersmith or Hampstead or
Surbiton. Who was it who had talked about
living in a villa? . . . Grace Draper, of
course, that day when she and Eoden and Grace
had lunched together.
Evelyn was leaning forward, saying some-
thing to Stella. Caroline felt, suddenly, her
isolation. As usual, heri subsequent thought
was of Hugh. She must write to Ann and
Hugh to-morrow.
"Hal and I are going to Cambridge for a
week-end next term," called Stella, turning
round to continue a conversation.
158
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"I wonder if he's telling mother now," Caro-
line wondered.
11 Let's go back," said Evelyn plaintively.
"The moon's exquisite 'and with so wan a
face' but I can watch her quite well from the
drawing-room, and have a whisky and soda at
the same time."
"Oh, we ought to have gone by 'Surprise,' '
Stella suddenly cried; and at that her brother
slowed down, turned the car, and took them
back, through their own village, up a hill, and
along the moorland road which, with a sharp
sudden bend between high rocky banks, brings
you suddenly out on to the edge of the valley
which their house overlooked, but at a point a
few miles distant. The landscape lay spread
out in that unearthly, remote, calm, miracul-
ous beauty which moonlight gives; the hollows
filled with mist, the woods black with shadow,
the fields and roofs washed with a dim pallor.
Caroline leant forward and said "Stop."
The brakes ground; they paused, all staring in
silence.
"Topping!" Francis murmured, releasing
the brakes again, and they slid forward down
the hill.
Caroline was disturbed by the conflict in her
159
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
mind between that peaceful wonder and her
troubled thoughts. Beauty had only partially
entered into her; she felt cheated of its full
effect. It seemed to her that on foot, alone, or
with one congenial companion, she could have
taken full measure of the moonlit landscape's
influence; but not thus, in the car, with these
three, who were, somehow, in league with lux-
ury. As long as things went well as long as
they were yours motors and rich clothes,
large houses and good food were beautiful, not
sordid nor hostile to finer, less material things ;
but once they became important because in
danger of vanishing or difficult of attainment,
they became obstructions, and were the enem-
ies of beauty. They were, she thought, like
sex, which, when it has its desired expression,
is so close an ally to beauty that they are in-
separable; but when thwarted becomes a bur-
den, and the enemy of all that should be its
happiest concomitants.
When they arrived home it was half-past
ten. The downstairs rooms were dark. Caro-
line went straight upstairs; and presently she
heard the others come talking down the pass-
age, and with "Good nights" retire to their
rooms. The cold rush through the air had
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
made her sleepy ; but after settling down in the
dark she found it had been a merely superfi-
cial symptom which now vanished. She lit her
bed-lamp and opened a library book of which
she had read more than half. It was called
The Happy Foreigner, and at the end of
the chapter was a description of moonrise in
the forests of Chantilly. The flexible, natural
and yet fastidious style of the writer fascinated
Caroline. The last paragraph made her
want to look at the moon again. She got up,
still in the dreamy yet exceedingly vital state
into which absorbed reading puts one, and,
turning out the lamp, went to the window.
''Stupid! it's on t'other side, of course," she
said to herself.
Her room faced sideways on to the narrow
shelf of the rose garden. She could see the
paler roses on their stems. Beyond, the beech
trees were grey; the sky above, the indescrib-
able deep blue of midnight.
There was a step on the gravel path, and
looking down she saw her mother walking
swiftly away from the house towards the roses.
"What on earth? . . . " she murmured *o her-
self, and then, without hesitating, seized her
dressing-gown, thrust her feet into slippers,
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
and cautiously opened the door. There was
not a sound in the house. She crept along the
passage, down the stairs, and then, with her
thoughts moving orderly and clearly in her
brain, went to the hall cupboard where over-
coats hung, and took from it her own and her
mother's fur coats. They were heavy, and
clasping them, she forgot to raise her dressing-
gown from the floor, and, moving towards the
front door, stumbled against a chair.
She paused motionless to listen ; but nothing
ensued. A clock struck the half-hour as she
unbolted the door. It was a laborious business,
but safer than going out through the drawing-
room windows, which were directly under her
father's and mother's, and the creak of which
would possibly wake Hal. She had no wish to be
followed, following her mother ; her sense of hu-
mour, usually, like everyone's, keen at wakeful
midnight, repudiated the idea of a comic fam-
ily encounter.
She stole across the path and on to the turf
The wind had dropped to a little breeze; the
moon was setting. Lady Peel was no longer
visible; she might have passed into the vege-
table garden, a tapering triangle beyond the
rose hedge, or she might be sitting under the
162
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
rambler arbour. As she approached the lat-
ter, the girl called "mother!" softly. There
was no response and she saw a moment after
that it was an empty, dark, fragrant shell.
The wicket gate into the vegetable patch
creaked as she opened it; and emerging, she
saw Lady Peel facing her along an alley of
scarlet runners. She advanced, not hurrying,
between the bean hedges, and said calmly:
"Put this on, mother, dear; it's cold." She
saw that her companion was in her nightdress
and a woollen sweater.
"How did you know I was here, Cabs!"
"I looked out and saw you."
The elder woman turned away. "I was go-
ing up the hill when I heard the gate squeak,"
she said, indicating a rough little track which
climbed the slope and higher up joined the
beechwood path. Caroline followed, clutching
her skirts, and they climbed in silence until
they were under the trees.
"Let's sit down," said Lady Peel. "Put on
your coat, darling. Are you warm?"
"Quite warm." Their matter-of-factness
was complete. The girl perceived that her
mother, was in one of her rare, preoccupied,
thoughtful moods. They sat down on the rough
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
twig and nut-strewn path. It was very
dark and sheltered under the trees, and they
could see only each other's faces, and those in-
distinctly.
"How bad is it?" Caroline wondered aloud.
"It's as bad as can be," her companion an-
swered dreamily. "Of course, Hal will get a
job with a fairly big salary; but it's bound to
be rather miserable for us. What do people
who are badly off do to pass the time?"
"I suppose they see friends, and do things
in their houses, and read and sew."
"That's what I don't know how we shall
pass the time," said Lady Peel softly, as
though her daughter had not spoken. "Of
course Stella will probably marry soon," she
added after a pause.
"She doesn't seem to care for anyone spe-
cially, though, does she ? She told me yesterday
she didn't' want to marry Geoffrey Laken-
bridge."
"People are different, I don't know how
like me Stella is."
Caroline was at a loss. Evidently her mother
was embarked on some characteristically wan-
dering train of thought; it might be pertinent
or not; how could her daughter arrive at it?
164
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
What could one think about in such circum-
stances? one's youth, surely, the years of
plenty now so suddenly brought to an end, and
their beginning. What had her mother been
like as a girl Sir Harold as a young man? It
seemed that they must always have been what
they were now; people did not alter funda-
mentally. It must be odd, and yet quite ordin-
ary, to have spent years and years in such a
close relation as husband and wife. She had
often during her engagement, pictured the
long time ahead in which she would have grown
closer and closer to Gerald. In connection
with no one else would this prospect have been
tolerable; would it ever be tolerable again? It
could be a perfect relation or an odious one.
But it seemed that her parents was half-way
between the two. It was hard to know; she
would never again feel able with absolute cer-
tainty to deduce facts from appearances; her
misjudgement of Hal had taught her how easy
it is to make mistakes.
"I don't think Stella's ever been in love,"
said Lady Peel. /'She's twenty-one, isn't she?"
"Yes. I hadn't been in love till I was with
Gerald, and I was twenty-two."
1 'I fell in love when I was nineteen. And I
165
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
was married on the day I came of age." The
speaker managed to convey by her tone that
the two facts existed independently of each
other in her mind.
"Were you engaged long?" Caroline asked;
it was the first time she had ever talked to her
mother of the days preceding her own birth.
"I was engaged for a month. Hal brought
me a present every day; sometimes jewellery,
often flowers. . . . Can you smell the roses,
Cabs? I believe I can distinguish that old-
fashioned tea."
"You're like; Roden I mean, he gets his
sense of smell from you." It was useless try-
ing to prevent digressions.
"Yes, I've got a very good sense of smell.
Sometimes it's been a pest."
Caroline was startled. "And to me, too,"
she said quickly, "though I haven't a specially
keen one." She thought what anguish the
memory of an odour could that be only a
memory which seemed actually to touch her
nostrils? had caused her.
"I could always win at that game they used
to have at children's parties different things
in pots that one smelt, and had to say the name
of. ... I wonder what time it is? I don't
166
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
think I could sleep yet. Aren't you sleepy,
Cabs?"
"Not a bit? Is Hal asleep?"
"Yes. I waited till he was. He needs rest;
it's been a perfectly dreadful week for him.
... I wonder what that awfully bright star
is there, between those branches. Can you
see ? I used to be awfully keen on astronomy
once before I was married."
"Was it a great shock, when father told
you?"
Perhaps Lady Peel had to drag her mind
from the past into the present ; at all events, it
was not till after a pause that she replied: "I
don't think it was a shock. Perhaps I'd got
used to the idea because of all the times Hal's
been worried before. But of course I didn't
ever think it would really happen. It's hor-
rible; it's a dreadful worry. It's beastly for
you poor children. Hal says Francis won't be
able to go to the 'Varsity after all ... poor
boy, he will be upset. We must wire to Roden
to-morrow, I suppose. It doesn't really mat-
ter now whether he marries that girl or not.
We shan't have any position to keep up."
"But wasn't it important anyway for him
167
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
to marry the person he wanted to!" the girl
said with a sudden return of irritation.
"Yes, oh quite, if he was really in love with
her. But I don't believe he is. It would be
like him to want that sort of wife out of per-
versity. Oh no," Lady Peel exclaimed, as
though reassuring herself against a doubt, "I
don't believe for a minute he really cares aw-
fully about this Draper girl."
"Don't you? I do."
"Do you really, Cabs?" her mother asked
with an access of her customary animation re-
placing the dreamy, introspective tone; " Well,
in that case I've been wrong all along. Not
that he won't marry, anyway, if he wants to,
of course. If it's true love, nobody ought to
come between them."
So that was the line to have taken! Not to
have pleaded policy, expediency, but the cause
of true love ! Unaccountable woman ! she must
have a sentimental side as yet unbetrayed to
her children.
"I think I shall try and see more of Mrs.
Leverson." She was off on quite a different
track now. "I think a religion like Theosophy
might be so helpful and calming. Besides, one
must do something; and that won't cost money,
168
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
as most things do. ... Have you a cigarette
case on you, darling?"
"No; shall I fetch it?"
"Never mind. . . I shall go in soon. I
mustn't keep you up all night gossiping about
my past." She began to make movements
preparatory to rising.
"You've hardly said anything about your
past, mother; you only said you fell in love
with Hal when you were nineteen, and married
him on your twenty-first birthday."
Lady Peel got to her feet, and, moving her
hands, answered sharply yet softly, "I said
'fell in love.' " There was a brief pause while
Caroline peered up at her indistinguishable
face. "I fell in love with one man, and I mar-
ried another."
"D'you mean that you didn't love Hal?"
"I liked him, and he was awfully in love
with me, goodness only knows why ... I was
a plainish little object."
"What happened to the other man?"
"He went back to the West Coast of Africa,
where his work was. Of course, if I'd had the
determination, I could have married him and
gone too. But it's a deadly climate; he hadn't
any private means, and my people were dead
169
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
set against it." And a moment she added:
"Come on, darling, let's go back now."
Caroline rose unwillingly, and stood above
her mother in the dark of the beech trees.
"Have you ever regretted it what you did?"
she asked, trying to read her companion's face;
but the latter turned to go down the path,
answering :
"Yes, yes, of course I've regretted it. HaPs
a dear; we've got on awfully well; but every
one knows it's not the same thing. I'm too
faithful it's stupid I'm too constant. It took
me years to get over Maurice ; and all the time
I had to keep myself busy with something:
you children, and the blind, and dress, hunting
and yachting, and care committees. I've always
had something interesting on: hand, thank
heaven. That's what worries me about our be-
ing poor. It costs such a lot to do amusing
things even gramophone records cost
money."
Never before had Caroline become aware of
any definite heritage passed by her mother to
her, except her dark hair and her gift of the
gab. In the foregoing speech one sentence
struck her specially: "It took me years to get
over Maurice." That was where it came from
170
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
her tenacious love, her hard-dying passion,
the fidelity which kept her Gerald 's long after
his death. And just as unfortunate love had
driven her into the fortress of herself, from
which she looked out, at once fearful and
supercilious, at life, so unfortunate love had
driven Leila Cashel, hecome Leila Peel, into
the midst of trivial and absorbing occupations,
seeking distraction feverishly here and there,
casting off the worn-out fad, and taking on the
new, in the absolute necessity of somehow
passing the time.
She saw, now, how in truth she was her
mother's child. The calm she had inherited
from Hal had seemed to divide her, in the past,
from her mother, just as other differences
divide them in the present. Physical bonds
meant nothing to Caroline, she had no sense of
blood being thicker than water; but this dis-
covered heritage, this dissatisfaction with life
manifested in such contrary ways, was a bond
whose strength she recognised.
In silence they regained the sleep-wrapped
house.
171
xn.
IT was late on Monday evening when Roden
arrived in Derbyshire. There was no one to
meet him; he had not informed the family of
his advent. Caroline in a brief letter had told
him almost more than he had wanted to know;
his imagination could well supply the details,
the attendant circumstances, and how the dif-
ferent Peels would face, or avoid facing, the
crisis. He was in a sombre rage, but on a quite
different account. He felt, as Caroline had
suspected, aloof from this unexpected and yet
not, after all, surprising event ; he was already,
and had always been, so separate from his
family; and now that he was earning a modest
living, the separation was merely more com-
plete. He could dispense with the allowance
made him by his father, he could dispense with
their company. Of course, if they needed him,
he was ready to help. And there was Caroline ;
he did care deeply, though irritably, for her.
He felt something of the Cathy-Heathcliffe
quality in their affection, leaving out most of
172
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
what was sexual in that classic and romantic
love. He sometimes hated Caroline, he even
sometimes feared her for what she might do
or say to sap his energy, faith, and confidence ;
he came near to morally condemning her; and
yet he knew that always, whether repressed,
ignored and neglected, or cherished, their affec-
tion would survive most other loves, and re-
main until he died one of the most real emo-
tions in his life.
He found his mother and his sisters sitting
together in the drawing-room. Lady Peel was
writing letters; Caroline was reading, Stella
was wandering uneasily about the room. As
he opened the door she turned towards him
and stood, startled for a moment into silence.
"Well, my dear boy, I'm glad you've come,"
said his mother, holding out her left hand to
him. "Your father's staying to-night in town
did you see him, by the way?"
"No. He hasn't been to the house to-day."
He sat down far from any of them.
"Did you have dinner on the train T" Caro-
line asked.
"Yes." It was characteristic of Eoden that
he asked no questions; that he suffered un-
willingly the questions of others. Some people
173
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
make statements which are really questions;
Roden's questions were almost always state-
ments. He unconsciously hated to betray igno-
rance of any kind ; and it was true that he did
know a great many things by some other
agency than verbal information.
"1 suppose we've got this house till Sep-
tember," he presently remarked.
"Yes. Hal will be in town, though, most of
the time. We're sending Amy away at once.
You'll come for your holiday, won't you,
Rodent" said Lady Peel.
Instead of answering, the young man asked,
"Where's Francis?"
Stella, still moving about, replied, "Nobody's
seen him since lunch time yesterday."
Roden accepted this news unmoved, and
Lady Peel broke in: "Poor boy, he was awfully
upset when Hal told him he couldn't go to Cam-
bridge. I'm feeling very worried about him,
but what can we do?"
"I expect he'll turn up to-morrow," said her
elder son gruffly, and she resumed her writing.
Caroline, feeling unable to read any more,
and disliking the quality of the silence, began
to talk in her clear, even tones: "Hal is seeing
about selling the house and part of the furni-
174
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
ture at once ; you see, in a small house we shan't
need anything like so much. He's going to try
and find a quite tiny house or a large flat in
some cheap part of London, or in one of the
least horrible suburbs."
"That reminds me, Roden, darling; shall
you want a room in our new establishment, or
do you think you'd rather be on your own?"
"I'll think it over and tell you, mother," he
replied. "I suppose there's no immediate need
to decide. If I take rooms I might have some
of the furniture."
"The car is going to be sold," said Stella
suddenly, almost viciously; it was clear that
she knew, by observation or intuition, how
some of the happiest moments of Roden's
peace-time existence had been spent in driving
the car. He made no answer, staring sombre-
ly past her, as though deliberately ignoring her
presence. Caroline, quivering to the atmos-
phere, hoped that she would not be fated to
live at close quarters with both Stella and Rod-
en; the latter provoked all the former's latent
hysteria and malice ; and he could not ordinar-
ily be considered, on his own account, a gay
companion.
"How's work!" she asked him.
175
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
''Work's all right. It's interesting. There's
plenty to do. Oh, I say, Cabs, I met Sexton
to-day in Piccadilly and he's coming down on
Wednesday for a night."
"Oh, good!" she breathed, and the tension
of the atmosphere seemed to be a little relieved
by the news. Stella still moved about the room.
"Stella, do for heaven's sake sit down, or at
least stand still!" Lady Peel cried in exas-
peration. But she herself rose after a little
while and began wandering about to collect her
book and tortoise-shell spectacles preparatory
to going to bed.
"She's very calm," her son remarked when
at last she had gone.
"She has been all the time," his elder sister
answered. "It's extraordinary." Glancing at
Roden as she spoke she saw his opaque dark
eyes fix themselves on their companion who
stood by the fireless hearth, looking at herself
in the mirror over it. Caroline saw that he was
about to say something of importance, and
waited in suspense. His words were:
"I wish you'd mind your own business,
Stella, and not make such a damned little fool
of yourself."
He spoke deliberately, controlling his cold
176
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
anger, scarcely admitting that it was anger he
felt. The girl was just as he had remembered
her : his mental picture was in every detail cor-
rect; she was insignificant and yet not quite
harmless, an insect with a sting: a pretty in-
sect with irridescent wings. She was perfectly
all right if only she'd let one alone. God,
these girls who meddled!
Stella had faced him ; they both saw that she
was pale. "I haven't," she said slowly.
"You have indeed. What's the good of try-
ing to mess up things between Grace and met
You can't do it and it only makes me angry."
Stella turned towards Caroline, as though
she were judge. "I only tried to appeal to her
better feelings!" she exclaimed. "You know,
Cabs, you said you thought she'd give him up
if it was for his good. Well, it is for his good,
isn't it?"
Before Caroline could answer, Eoden re-
torted: "Who knows except me what's for my
good? Don't try and drag Cabs in. It's over
now. I won't say any more, only for God's
sake in future keep your fingers out of my
pie." He found that his anger had melted
away. Stella looked forlorn, a rather pitiful
little insect.
177
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"Roden, you're horrid, you're cruel!" she
exclaimed, turning away. "And I wasn't try-
ing to drag Cabs into it only she's fair. You
don't care for anybody. Oh, you're horrible to
me." She began to cry, leaning her head on
one supporting hand.
He got up and patted her shoulder. "Don't
cry. It's all over: it's forgotten . . .I'm sorry
if I was brutal . . . you silly little thing."
The scorn in his voice, finally superseding
the kindness, stung her. She swept round to
her sister: "Isn't he horrible to me? I did it
because I mind what happens to him. You
both think I care for nobody but myself I
know you do. He hates me."
"What did you do?" Caroline mildly en-
quired.
"Where is the letter have you got it!"
Stella cried. "Give it to me, I'll burn the
stupid thing."
"Grace tore it up to-day, after she'd shown
it to me," said Roden.
"0, I wish I'd never written it I wish I'd
never seen her at all. Then perhaps it wouldn't
be so bad; I wouldn't picture it all so." Stella
began to walk up and down the room with short
steps, the tears drying on her small face, while
178
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
her companions watched her uneasily. "I can't
think of anything else not even now we've
lost our money. Boden, why do you hate me
so?"
"I don't hate you."
"Yes, you do. You don't care what becomes
of me." There was half a question in her tone,
the dawning of a question in the eyes she fixed
on him, standing before him with her back to
Caroline. Caroline could hear the inflexion but
could not see the expression; she could only
see Boden 's pale, dogged face, his opaque mi-
revealing eyes, as he replied:
"My dear Stella, you know what I'm like to
all the family, to everyone it's not only to
you. I'm unsociable and crude and all the
things mother says. Cabs will tell you how I
treat her how I swear at her when we're
alone. Don't I, Cabs? But of course, I mind
what happens to you all. Don't I, Cabs!"
"Yes," she agreed softly.
Stella stood mute and motionless, her eyes
fastened on her brother's face. Then she said,
as though she had scarcely heard his words:
"Yes, that's it. It's Cabs you like, next to
Grace Draper . . . Mother says if you love
Grace of course you must marry her. Well, do
179
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
... I don't care! I shall be married myself,
soon, shan't I, Cabs?" She turned, with the
defiance in her voice translated into her move-
ment, and looked at her sister, who replied
coolly yet pitifully:
"Shall you, Stella?"
Eoden, feeling that perhaps he had been
rather unnecessarily unkind at the opening of
the interview, put out a hand to touch the
younger girl's shoulder. She withdrew sharply.
"Don't touch me!" she exclaimed. "It
would make me cry again. Leave me alone I
wanted to look at Caroline."
"Here I am," the latter remarked.
"You're not happy, any fool can see that,"
said Stella thoughtfully, as though a whole
world of implications and realisations was
newly opened to her eyes. "And I'm not
happy, and I suppose Hal can't be. Perhaps
Roden and Grace will be." She turned yet
again to the young man. "Well, I hope I'll
never see you being happy, that's all. I think
I might forget all about you if I never saw
you you and your Grace. I'd rather not have
you at all than in little bits, like Cabs does
much rather" she paused, then adding: "I'm
180
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
going to bed," she went straight out, and left
the pair staring at each other.
1 'She's hysterical," Caroline said presently,
"she's had several outbreaks about you lately
and I couldn't make it out at all. What was in
the letter?"
"It was what you'd call high-falutiny Rod-
en answered.
Presently Caroline pursued: "I think she
must be rather in love with you, though it
seems a dreadful thing to say. Poor Stella
not happy either . . . Did you know, Roden,
that mother was in love with some one else
when she married Hal?"
"Oh, was she?"
"That's why she always rushed about so.
She loved him for a long time, like I do
Gerald."
"One can love hundreds of people in hun-
dreds of different ways. Has mother really
come round to my marrying Grace?"
"Yes, more or less. Are you doing well,
Roden?"
"Fairly well. I like the work I'm general
bottle-washer as well as artist. I interviewed
a man to-day who knew ten times as much
about the inside of a car as I do, and by the
181
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
time he left I'd learnt as much as he knew. He
thought I was a brightish young fellow." He
grinned.
"When shall you get married?"
"About Christmas, I think, if we can find
some rooms. Grace wants to go on working.
She has to dispose of her old hag of a mother,
first; I won't take her on," said the young man
with calm ruthlessness.
"You'll do well," said Caroline presently,
with a familiar feeling of vicarious pride and
certainty of success.
"So would you, if you'd settle down to it,"
said Roden.
"Settle down to what?"
"Anything marriage, enjoying yourself,
work, love ordinary life, in fact. Don't stand
aside and be so critical."
"That's life to me; just as much as the use
of my five senses is. To be critical is as in-
evitable as to see and hear. You wouldn't by
choice lose one of your senses."
"It's my turn to quote scripture this time,"
the young man said almost gaily; " 'If thy eye
offend thee.' Poverty may do the trick, Cabs."
"You mean adversity may bring out my
finer nature," she returned with irony. "I'm
182
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
more likely simply to get red hands from wash-
ing up or a rough forefinger from sewing. Rod-
en, I shall have to darn! Mother never will.
And if Stella does get married I shall be alone
with Francis and mother and Hal. What will
it be like?" In spite of her dismay at the image
thus conjured up, she, too, was almost gay. Rod-
en, when he did not depress her, often made her
gay, communicating to her temporarily some
of his relish for existence.
" There are so many things to do," he said;
"it won't be like anything else. You can make
it quite different from anything else that ever
happened. Don't you see that the fund of
possibilities is huge?"
"I see the possibility of becoming domestic,"
she answered. "It's all very well to joke, but
it is, it must be, horrible to be poor."
"I wasn't joking. You'll have enough to eat
and a bed to sleep in and if there isn't a coal
strike warmth. On that basis one can rear
an immense erection. Cabs, our life is only
just beginning."
"Don't say that, Roden Oh, don't! I com-
fort myself that I've got through twenty-seven
years."
"Oh, you're abnormal."
183
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
''So I thought. But all I can say is, Hugh
and Stella and mother must be abnormal too.
And what about Hal? his games with money
may have been a distraction, just like mother 's.
As mother says, one must do something to pass
the time."
Roden growled. "We're beginning again.
Same old song! Let's go to bed."
She took his arm as they left the room, con-
scious of his affection for her, despite their
differences; content, unlike Stella, to "have him
in litle bits." He would never go farther from
her than he now was, his place in her was fixed;
and she felt the same security in him. She
thought: Some of the best things are unalter-
able, too.
184
xm.
BEFORE lunch on Tuesday a warm, sunless
day Francis returned. Caroline, sitting in the
garden with a book, saw him come up the steep
drive with his usual jaunty step; hut when he
drew nearer she saw that he did not look well.
" Where's everybody ?" he asked, as though
to forestall her questions.
" Stella's playing tennis at the Grange;
mother's gone over to lunch with the Lever-
sons. Where have you been?"
"Where's Hal?" was all he said.
"In town, of course, seeing ahout selling the
house and getting a job."
"Getting a job?" Francis echoed.
"Well, you didn't suppose he was going to
sit still and do nothing, did you? What have
you been doing? we've been worried about
you."
"I'm sorry," he answered, but that was all;
yet his tone was not casual. He stood uncer-
tainly at his impatient sister's side, his chin
raised as ever. His glance went to the house,
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
to the view, everywhere but to her face. She
was moved by his look of weariness and by his
hesitating pose, and yet, as usual, vaguely re-
pelled. She repeated sharply: "Tell me what
you've been doing."
"Walking, mostly." He moved indetermin-
ately towards the house.
"You're very secretive," said Caroline.
"You're very inquisitive," he retorted.
She began to be sorry, then, she had not con-
trolled her impatience. She had the impres-
sion, too late, that, as the first person to en-
counter him on his return, she had held the key
to something it was important to know. And
besides this vague, unformulated feeling was
the reproach of common sense ; for to antagon-
ise one of the people with whom she was to
share close quarters and poor circumstances
was short-sighted.
"Interest does verge on inquisitiveness,"
she remarked, "but in this case I think it real-
ly is interest."
Standing half turned away from her, the
boy replied: "You'll only sneer if I tell you:
you're so damned superior."
"Sneer" what a horrible word, what a de-
grading suggestion it carried! Was this how
186
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
she appeared to her young brother? Was this
the total effect of her conscious ironic aloof-
ness, her critical fastidious attitude the effect
of a sneer? What was the use of her experi-
ence, her analysis, her introspection her vaunt-
ed sensitiveness if she was simply a person
who sneered at others, and so forfeited their
confidence? As at her mother 's careless words
in Monsal Dale, she felt the blood withdrawing
from her cheeks, from her neck withdrawing
in a chill shiver down her spine. For an in-
stant she had seen herself from the outside;
and the vision was exceedingly unpleasant.
She spoke, not impulsively but deliberately:
"I won't, Francis; I promise I won't. I
know I'm odious and supercilious yes, 'damn-
ed superior'; but I'll try not to be as bad in
future. And I'm not feeling like that now. It's
not even curiosity; it's just that I have a na-
tural interest in why you left here without a
word and stayed away two nights. But if you
don't want to tell me, don't. I don't deserve to
to be told things if I sneer."
Perhaps the sincerity of her speech struck
him; at all events, Francis took off his hat and
sat down on the grass with his arms round his
knees. "This is what I actually did," he said.
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"I went to Castleton on Sunday, and prowled
about there all evening. It's a topping place,
Cabs! the spookiest hole you've ever struck.
I explored Cavedale and Pindale and all about.
Of course there were a good many people, it be-
ing Sunday. I slept that night at the pub there.
Then, yesterday, I walked to Edale. It was rip-
pingly desolate and lonely up there. I slept last
night at a pub, and caught a very early train
here."
' ' That 's what you ' actually did, ' ' ' quoted his
sister thoughtfully, not looking at him.
The boy glanced at her quickly, and ex-
claimed: "I will say you have something to be
cocky about ; for you are clever, Cabs. ' '
Caroline smiled with real pleasure at this art-
less tribute, and waited. There was a long sil-
ence. Francis lit a cigarette and changed his
position several times. Presently he glanced at
his watch and said: ''Thank the Lord it's near-
ly one. Will Stella be in to feed I ' '
"I don't think so. No, I know she won't."
But even this assurance of prolonged priv-
acy produced no further revelation. The girl
perceived that she would have to "pump" him.
She began to talk at random of their plans
the sort of house that Hal was going to look
188
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
for; Stella's expressed intention of marrying
soon ("I suppose that means Lakenbridge ; I
like him, he's a sport," was Francis* com-
ment) ; their mother's predominant anxiety
that she wouldn't have sufficient occupation;
her new craze, inaugurated by to-day's visit to
an "occultist" friend, for theosophy; and their
father's hopes for the post of secretary to one
of the companies of which he had been a di-
rector.
"I suppose," said Francis, gazing past her
at the view, "Hal will wangle me a stamp-
licking job in the city."
"I expect that's what he means to do why,
didn't he say anything about it to you on Sun-
day?"
"Yes. He did." There was some hesitation
in the reply.
"Is there anything you fancy more? I'm
sure Hal will agree to anything sensible. He's
not a bit unreasonable, ever."
"It would be stupid not to make the most of
having a parent in the business line. I can't
say I want to farm, and I'm not good enough
to become a professional cricketer."
"Are those the only alternatives T"
"Well, there isn't much choice for a chap
189
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
with no particular education and no training
at all, is there? The university is supposed to
fit one for lots of things, but I never heard that
a public school did."
It might have been Caroline herself speak-
ing, so cool and sceptical were the tones, so
nonchalantly fluent the words ; but she was too
closely occupied in trying to penetrate her
brother's mind to perceive his likeness to her-
self. "Yes," she said, "if you can bear the
idea of an office, that is the obvious thing to do,
with Hal on the spot and knowing all about the
city. You're passable at maths, aren't you?"
"Moderate." There was a defiance in his
utterance of the word out of all proportion to
its import, and the girl glanced at him in sur-
prise. She did not know, probably he himself
did not know, that it was a defiance thrown at
the dejection which he had set himself to
ignore, and which the image of himself on an
office stool brought to life again. With some
dim inkling of this, Caroline exclaimed softly:
"Poor Francis."
"Don't pity me, for heaven's sake, Cabs!
It's no worse for me than for you or anyone.
It's hardest on poor old Hal. Only I do damn
well wish I'd grown up five years earlier I
190
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
don't mean so as to avoid this crash, but so as
to have been in the war. I do envy that blighter
Roden."
"I know you do. But you needn't resent
pity, Francis. There's nothing despicable in
people who care for you being sorry for you
they can't help it, in fact. You're sorry for
Hal."
"Yes, but I wouldn't let him see it. And
look here, Cabs, for the Lord's sake don't let on
to Hal or to mother, if it comes to that that
I've been grousing."
"You haven't been grousing. But I won't
talk to them about you at all."
"Oh, you can, just about what you think,"
he answered. ' * Hal may ask your advice about
me I shouldn't be surprised."
"I should."
"Well, surely one of the things which makes
you look down on the family is because you've
got your head screwed on tight. Hal knows
that, trust him. By the way, where 's the Mailf
I must see how Essex is doing."
Caroline groaned inwardly at this interven-
tion of country cricket in the course of such a
promising conversation,
"When will Hal be back here?" Francis
191
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
asked when he had assured himself that his
faith in the Essex team was not proved a mis-
taken one.
"I don't know if he'll come back at all. We
have the house till September 15th. He hopes,
by then, to have got his future more or less
settled, and a new house found."
"What about Roden?"
' ' He came down for the night yesterday : he
had to go back early this morning. He's prob-
ably going to be married at Christmas."
* ' To the girl mother calls alternately Paper,
Caper, and Taper?" His smile showed revived
spirits. "Any news from Evelyn!"
"Yes, mother had a letter thisi morning;
she'd written to him on Sunday, and he seems
to have seen Hal yesterday. It was a very
nice letter, but very non-committal."
"What d'you mean?"
"I mean he didn't offer to share his last
crust with us. I have a feeling, as a matter of
fact, that Evelyn had already had a womanly
intuition several weeks ago that he'd better
prepare a cosy little raft for himself. He's
been distinctly off-handish, though quite polite,
of course, to both mother and Stella, the week-
ends he's been down here."
192
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"Oh, I hadn't noticed. There's the gong."
It was an apparently quite normal Francis
who sat down to lunch at Caroline's right
hand, in spite of the traces of fatigue in his
face. His sister could not, however, quite put
aside her idea that there was something vital
he had kept from her in speaking of his flight
from home. The phrase "this is what I actu-
ally did" had struck her, with its implication
of information withheld. She had spoken the
truth in saying that it was interest as opposed
to curiosity that made her enquire into his
actions; and as far as these two emotions can
be separated, they were separated in Caroline
Peel. She was not an inquisitive person; she
had not that maddening, and yet so human,
supposedly feminine, defect. But she was not
too supercilious nor too self-centred to be in-
terested in anything people voluntarily told
her; and in this particular case, the events of
the week-end had combined to put her in a
state of unusual watchfulness. She was on the
look-out for revelations; she expected to be
surprised ; her attitude to her whole family had
undergone a very radical change. She was,
moreover, piqued by Francis's reserve. He
was, after all, merely a schoolboy, even if not
193
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
quite such a dense one as she had supposed;
she had gone as far as to apologise to him for
part of her conduct in the past, and to solicit
his willing confidence; who was he, her junior
by ten years, to be stubborn in face of these
conciliatory gestures? He evidently did not
realise his advantage in having her for a sister!
Her pity for him began to melt away before a
recurrence of familiar irritation.
"Do you think I'd better go to town in case
Hal wants me?" the boy asked her when the
maid had left the room. "I might be useful;
besides, he might want me to interview some
one."
"I don't think that's very likely, in August,"
she answered. "But I dare say you could make
yourself quite useful, and help in house-hunt-
ing." It came to her, all of a sudden, that it
was unkind to have let her father go all alone
to London, to tired, dusty, empty Kensington,
when he was in trouble and about to undertake
the distasteful and arduous task of dealing
with the practical side of their situation. "I
might come too," she added impulsively; "we
could look at houses together, and discard the
hopeless ones. Then Hal and mother can in-
spect the residue. What a good idea! And
194
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
there '11 be a fearful lot of turning out of things
to do at the house, and packing up. Hal meant
us to do it in September ; but it would be much
better to start at once. It might be quite fun.
Eoden's still there, you see." Francis not re-
plying, a new thought occurred to her, and she
went on: "Or did you like the idea of being
alone there with Hal, without any females at
all?"
He looked, for a moment, embarrassed, at
his plate, but finally met her glance, and said:
"I had some sort of an idea like that."
"I'm glad you told me. Well, I won't butt
in." She could not, however, altogether hide
the fact that she was crestfallen.
"I don't mean to be nasty, Cabs."
"I know you don't, and it's not nasty. I'd
much rather you said. I'll keep to the original
plan. But do go up yourself."
"D'you think it would annoy Hal to have
me buzzing round?"
"Of course not. Why should it? On the con-
trary, he'll be pleased."
Caroline was beginning to perceive that
Francis attached some special significance to
this plan. "Had you ever had any idea," she
presently asked him, "that . . . things might
195
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
go wrong I mean that our fortunes weren't
secure?"
"Good Lord! no; not the slightest."
"Mother had, of course. There Ve often been
scares, she says. I suppose Hal's hung over
the brink of ruin several times, and always
just recovered."
"It never occurred to me," said Francis,
flushing a little, "that he wasn't as safe as
as the Bank of England."
"Nor to me. Yes, that's exactly what he did
seem: a sort of monument of safety and re-
spectability."
"But you don't suppose you don't mean
?" the boy broke off, with a dark flush
suffusing his shallow, small-featured face, fix-
ing on his sister a startled and rather shamed
gaze. "I say," he added, looking away again,
"it's beastly to talk like this ! I feel like a crim-
inal."
Here, thought Caroline, is some schoolboy
taboo I'm not familiar with. "There's nothing
disloyal discussing what's a fact," she pointed
out, conscious of sententiousness.
"Disloyal! That's it!" he echoed. "That's
what I've been. And you seemed just now to
be trying to say that Hal had got something to
196
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
be ashamed of."
"Did I? No, I didn't. What do you mean?
There's nothing dishonourable in losing your
money that I know of."
"Well, you said he'd seemed to be a monu-
ment of respectability and something or other."
"Oh, goodness! I didn't mean anything by
that, except that I'd looked on him as solid
and he turned out or rather that I looked on
him as hardly human, and he's turned out to
be very human indeed."
"Oh, was that all? Still, I don't much care
for talking about him behind his back. You
see, I feel I've behaved . . . disloyally already
in running away like that, as though I couldn't
face the music. Exactly as if it wasn't twenty
times worse for him than for anyone else."
"Not one of us had the slightest idea why
you'd gone, so nobody thought badly of you.
We were just worried."
"But it was an idiotic way to behave, if not
caddish. Oh, I don't suppose Hal noticed if
I was there or not; but still, I ought to have
been there, if you see what I mean."
Caroline nodded.
"I felt as if I'd been knocked silly," Francis
went on, staring about in the effort to find
197
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
words. "As if the bottom had been knocked
out of everything. "
"Yes," said his sister, "we'd always all de-
pended on Hal so utterly without knowing it."
"Yes, It didn't seem as if things could go
on. And then Cambridge being biffed that,
on top of the surprise, seemed too perfectly
beastly to stick. I imagined myself cooped up
in an office from year's end to year's end, do-
ing frightfully monotonous work, and never
seeing life or having any sort of a time at all,
and getting a wizened old clerk. Well, it is a
pretty foul outlook," the boy ended, with a
fresh access of dejection. Before Caroline
could think of any obvious consolations to
offer, he pursued: "Still, there it is. One's got
to make the best of a beastly bad job. 'Sno
use grousing. I was a perfect young ass on
Sunday I didn't know I could be such an
idiot, or have the blue devils so badly. After I'd
tramped about in Castleton for a bit I bucked
up. A squint over some of those cliffs settled
me. I didn't fancy coming home, even
then, so I went on to Edale. However, going
to sea seemed the only alternative, so I came
back."
198
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"Do you mean you chose Castleton because
you knew there were precipices J"
"Don't get the wind up, Cabs; it's all over
now. You've no idea what I felt like: all the
worst moments in my life lumped together. I
didn't know one could have such blues. I
couldn't see a single thing that made life worth
living the sort of life stamp-lickers lead. And
yet I don't believe I'd have minded anything
like so much if the crash had come through
some one else."
"Through mother, for instance?" Caroline
suggested. "I understand that. It was Hal
letting you down that made it so bad. But
there he still is, and he needs you more than
ever."
"Yes," Francis agreed, "that did occur to
me rather late, it's true ... By Jove, Cabs,
this Wensleydale is a first-class cheese. Here,
I'll carve you off a bit."
199
XIV.
HUGH SEXTON was walking along Piccadilly,
unconscious of decisive events in the lives of
some of his friends, not having yet received
Caroline's letter, when he saw Roden Peel ad-
vancing with his odd, attractive walk and his
self-absorbed look, slightly dispelled to-day,
perhaps, by the rich summer beauty of the
town. Instead of passing blindly by, as Hugh
expected, Roden stopped and said: "I suppose
you've heard the news?"
"No. Your news?"
"The family's. Hal's gone smash at last."
Through his groping, but not astounded,
consternation, Hugh discerned in the other's
final words a tone of relief. He made no answer
at once; to ask "Are you sure?" would be im-
pertinent; yet this was his impulse, for ru-
mours of ruin circle continually round the
names of well-known members of the Stock
Exchange as birds encircle the head of Angus,
the Celtic god; and, further, he knew Roden 's
taste for dramatic occurrences and clearly de-
200
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
fined situations. "Do they all do Lady Peel
and Caroline know?" he enquired.
"Yes. I got a letter from Cabs this morning
that's how I know. I'm going down there
this afternoon to see how things stand."
There was silence. Boden stared up at the
roofs, dazzling as metal in sunshine, and Hugh
watched him, conscious as usual of the atmos-
phere of power which Caroline's brother bore
about with him, indefinable and hard to trace
to its source.
"How did she sound?"
' * Oh, ' ' Roden answered, resting his eyes for
a moment on Hugh's face, "I couldn't tell you.
She only said that the whole cat was out of the
bag. Well, Hugh, I must get along. Couldn't
you come down there with me?"
"I'm sorry, but I can't possibly get away till
the day after to-morrow. Tell Cabs I'll come
on Wednesday, if that's convenient."
"Right. What a mess! Goodbye."
Hugh, deflected by the news from his course
towards a tailor, climbed on an eastward-go-
ing omnibus for purposes of meditation. On
top of Caroline Peel's emotional bankruptcy
came this disaster; her material life was now
in ruins. If only he loved her ! For if he had
201
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
loved her, however vainly, with her affection
and trust, and their candid intimacy to help,
he might have shown her the way to a new
existence, into a life that was not half death.
But they were too much alike to love : stricken
as they were with the same disease. Not that
he believed himself, because life-sick, incapable
of emotion: it was merely that Caroline was
not steel to his tinder. Between two children
of such a tired civilisation only friendship was
possible. To smite or to draw him into passion
a woman would have to combine Caroline's
delicacy of touch and fineness of perception
with courage, enthusiasm, and a bolder out-
look.
That this fact constituted for him perhaps a
permanent misfortune, admiring and knowing
her as he did, he was fully aware; but for her
temporarily it constituted a misfortune too, be-
cause sudden crises seem to demand prompt
action and definite solutions. For Sir Harold
and Lady Peel, drabness might supervene, a
disagreeable, even a pathetic fate ; but for such
a fate to submerge a young, attractive, and in-
telligent woman was not less than tragic in the
eyes of a young man, even a young man with
no closer tie than affection. He knew all the
202
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
Peels too well to have an indistinct vision of
Caroline 's future ; without deliberately conjur-
ing up the actualities of poverty, he reflected
that an attitude of supercilious toleration of
one's family, an attitude maintainable in a
large house, on large means, without much un-
pleasantness, tends in straitened circum-
stances and at close quarters to be transformed
into a direct emotion of dislike, even of
hatred. Hugh foresaw with repulsion the in-
creased sharpness of tongues and shortness of
tempers, the differences of opinion quickly de-
generating into bickering foresaw the hostile
bitter women that Caroline and Stella and
Lady Peel would become in restricted space
and with restricted activities. Sir Harold and
Francis would escape; Stella would probably
escape; and some escape must also be devised
for Caroline. It was not, after all, improb-
able that she would come in contact with a man
able to give her back a taste for life, a belief in
the possibility of happiness; but if this event
delayed too long the chance would have passed
by. "I think," said Hugh grimly to himself
"I shall have to set up a Sexton's Matrimon-
ial Agency."
He received her letter next morning; it told
203
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
him nothing except that she had a great deal to
tell him; that more had occurred than mere
financial ruin he smiled a little at the proud,
characteristic "mere" that she hoped he
would come that week to visit them. Hugh was
a little surprised at her reserve.
She met him, on Wednesday, at Sheffield;
and together they drove across the high misty
moors, whose austerity was enriched but not
diminished by the wine-glow of the heather.
It was a wet day, and having, without encoun-
tering the rest of the family, ensconced them-
selves in a small sitting-room with a fire, they
drew close to the hearth, as though by common
consent refusing to glance at the grey, rain-
spattered window. Hugh, with his customary
unlugubrious gravity, kept his eyes on Caro-
line's face as she related in detail the story of
the week-end. He leaned by the mantel-piece,
his back to the light which fell pallidly on his
companion's countenance, and as he filled his
pipe he put to her first one and then another
question, and yet a third, drawing from her
mind a lantern beam upon the obscurer aspects
of her narrative, the obscurer passages of the
conversations which she had reproduced for
him. He had spoken no word, he had felt
204
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
scarcely a pang of pity during her narrative,
so closely did he share her angle of vision, so
absorbed was he in her revelations and her
comments, so united with her in her quiet as-
tonishment and curious pleasure. There was
pleasure for Caroline of an odd, rarefied and
subtle kind, in weighing, examining and com-
puting, for their value, the secrets which the
crisis had brought to light; the secrets were a
treasure, rich and simple and complex as only
human secrets can be. And he experienced,
while listening and speaking, a satisfaction
that was almost a relief from pain, in perceiv-
ing how much these discoveries meant to her,
and what they would mean in time to come. Of
course, much of their charm would wear thin
with familiarity and fade with time; that was
where art had the grin of life, because life
can keep the lustre of its jewels, the perfect
poise and contour of its grouped figures, only
in memory. But, passing into her memory,
these discoveries would pass, too, into Caro-
line 's inmost existence, and become there an in-
separable part of that conception of life which is
life's finest product. That he was able to share
with her, so soon after the events, her review
of them was part of the privilege of being her
205
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
friend; it bestowed on him also the power of
recalling her to a sense of their importance
when and if, in future she showed signs of be-
littling it ; he would, in some sort, stand guard-
ian to the faith she now, by implication, pro-
fessed; the faith that, given that we seem to
ourselves to exist, how we exist is of supreme
importance. He did not mean to touch at once
on this, the more transcendental aspect of the
situation; there would be time and opportun-
ity for that when they returned to it, a little
way hence. At last he sat down opposite her,
and said: "Does the future appal you?"
"Curiously enough, not more than it ever
did," she answered. "Sometimes I think it
will be dreadful being cooped up with the
others; but I don't believe that, as long as
we've actually got enough to live on, I shall
mind much. It isn't as if Fd* so frightfully en-
joyed life up till now. T want to try and get
work; I can't imagine what sort for I'm not
competent to do anything; but as there won't
be any margin for amusements, it will be rather
grizzly having nothing special to do."
"But you haven't ever amused yourself very
hilariously," the young man pointed out. "Not
that I don't applaud your desire to work; but
206
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
you'll still know all the same people; you'll still
want to see them.'*
"It's rather difficult. Of course there are
one or two Ann for instance that I shall be
on just the same terms with. But there aren't
very many people that one can see without giv-
ing any sort of return. Of course the 'intellec-
tuals,' " she added with a smile, "don't expect
to be asked to dinners and dances, and I sup-
pose I can go to their parties still. But all the
ordinary friends that I have in common with
Stella and mother of course they aren't
friends really are the sort of people who as-
sume that one has money. They expect one to
play bridge for money, and go to Albert Hall
balls and race meetings, and to have a car; or
anyway they entail taxis. And besides, I ex-
pect a lot of them will drop us like hot coals
when they hear."
"A good many, surely, will ask you to their
parties for the pleasure of seeing you."
"I doubt it. ... You know I regard myself
as fairly unsociable compared with Stella and
mother ; but do you know, Hugh, I was looking
at my engagement book the early part of this
y ear s i as t night, and it's amazing how much
I went about. It seems to have slipped off me
207
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
like water off a duck's back; I don't feel as if
I'd had a giddy season; and yet there were at
least two engagements booked every day, and
often more. Well, that will inevitably stop.
Even if people ask me out because they like me,
I simply shan't have the clothes to go in."
"Do you know at all accurately what your
income will be?"
"No. I don't know what salaries secretaries
of companies get."
"About 800 or 1,000. And youVe none of
your own left?"
"Mother has two hundred a year. So far,
she's used that all on dressing. Stella and I
have never had fixed allowances, but we mus
have spent quite that much each on clothes
and going about. Roden has had an allowance
of 150 ever since he left school. We must have
lived at an awfully high rate; what with the
car, and the house, and holidays and entertain-
ing. We have six servants, besides the chauf-
feur. . . . Oh, there's no end to what we've
taken perfectly for granted!"
There was a long silence while Caroline con-
templated the extravagances of herself and
her family. Presently Hugh asked: "Do you
208
THE SINGING CAPTIVES
think Stella will marry Geoffrey Laken-
bridge?"
" She had a wire from him this morning from
Berwick to say he was coming down to-morrow
if we can find him a room at the pub. Of course
he'll come here. I don't know what she said to
him in her letter; but from that I suppose she
revived his hopes."
"And you think the famous interview with
Roden brought her to that?"
"I think it had occurred to her, naturally,
as a way out, when she realised how bad the
crash was; but I can't help feeling, though it
may all be rot, that she put off the decision with
some sort of an idea of getting hold of Roden
of making him notice her and be fond of her ;
and that when she found it was no good she
simply took the plunge and wrote to Geoffrey/
"Not that she wouldn't have done it in the
end, anyway," said Hugh. "After all, no
amount of affection from Roden would have
made a very restricted and uninteresting life
tolerable to her."
"I don't know people are queer. T think
she might have stood it for quite a long time.
But anyway, Roden 's too much taken up with
Grace and his work Stella doesn't come into
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
it at all. I hardly do, although he and I are so
fond of one another."
"But you aren't upset about him and Grace
Draper, are you!"
"No. I feel he belongs to me whoever he
marries, and I to him whoever I marry. It
goes far deeper than that. I don't mean that
his love for Grace isn't real; it's probably
greater than his love for me, because they're
congenial, and pash comes into it, too; but our
affection is independent of other emotions, and
of circumstances."
"I think I understand," said Hugh.
Caroline looked at him with unsmiling satis-
faction: "I know you do: that's why we're
friends. I could never talk to Eoden as I do to
you; he'd get impatient, or irritated to my
point of view; or else he'd be too taken up by
his own affairs. . . . You are good to me, Hugh ;
and I don't do anything in return."
"One doesn't measure obligations like that,"
the young man answered. "Friendship just
is."
"There's five striking; they must be having
tea. What a time we've been talking." She
did not, however, rise; and presently Hugh
said :
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
"I can't help thinking how at home Gerald
would have been in this affair saying all the
right things, and making your mother feel gay
and interested about it."
"He would have made losing one's money
seem somehow a kind of adventure," Caroline
agreed. "He did enjoy life. So did I in those
days; but only because I hadn't the faintest
idea what things were really like."
"Gerald would have gone on thinking it
splendid and amusing."
"Yes," Caroline agreed; "I believe his hap-
piness was real, because it was inside him; not,
like mother's and Stella's, made up of exterior
things. They aren't happy I don't think they
ever will be. About Hal I'm still not sure. Oh,
Hugh, I forgot to tell you of a conversation I
had with mother yesterday. I was asking her
about money, and about whether she'd ever had
to economise, and if so, why we'd never been
told. I suppose I showed that I didn't see
why Hal had been, need have been, so rash and
risked almost everything in one venture; be-
cause she suddenly said: 'Don't you know,
Cabs darling, men must have a hobby and
most of them have a vice women or drink or
betting or golf, or something; well, Hal's was
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THE SINGING CAPTIVES
speculation.' It's her same idea again: 'One
must pass the time somehow.' '
"Part of me is shocked and revolted by that
idea," said Hugh, "and yet I suppose that's
what I do, by means of work, six days out of
seven, or if you like three hundred and
sixty-four out of the year; but on the remain-
ing day comes something that's good in it-
self."
Caroline remembered the blue dragon fly by
the river in Monsal Dale. "Don't go to-mor-
row," she commanded suddenly, "let your
people wait another day. I'd like to go for a
drive in the car with you, even if it's wet. We
shan't have the car in a few weeks. Do you
remember going down the hairpin bend on the
way to Longnor last year?"
Hugh nodded at her, and in the contempla-
tion of a day in the past, and of to-morrow,
they shared a moment's happiness.
THE END
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