HE ROMAN 
 
 OAD ag ae ae 
 
GIFT OF 
 
 
 r* TV/I i., 
 
JO 
 
 / IV 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE ROMAN ROAD, tamo . . . . $1.50 
 TALES OF DUNSTABLE WEIR. iamo . .1.50 
 THE WHITE COTTAGE, izmo . . .1.50 
 ON TRIAL. A Novel. iamo . . . .1.50 
 LIFE IS LIFE, isrno 1.50 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 Gwendoline, 
 ZACK 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 1903 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published, May, 1903 
 
 
 TROW DIRECTORY 
 
 PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 THE ROMAN ROAD i 
 
 THE BALANCE in 
 
 THOUGHTY 195 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 GROOT village was built half moon fashion 
 round the edge of a marsh. The rotting houses 
 humped themselves up a slight incline and 
 squinted at the marsh out of one eye, while the 
 other skewed round to peer over a succession of 
 dips and rises towards Groot Hall. Straight 
 through the heart of the village ran the Roman 
 Road and passed on. It seemed to image forth 
 life triumphant over disease and failure. Groot 
 and the house of Groot had need of their Roman 
 Road, and many a time old Sir Theophilus had 
 looked at it fiercely before he stepped aside 
 after his three sons had died leaving the prop- 
 erty to his nephew Roland. This change of 
 
 3 
 
"4 ' THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 masters did not profit Groot much, for Roland, 
 though but a bare eight and twenty, was in debt 
 to the Jews. 
 
 It was owing to an oversight on the part of 
 Providence, Groot felt, that bible folk like the 
 Jews had not been long since respectably dead 
 and buried, and as this was not to be, they 
 agreed Providence might at least have so ar- 
 ranged matters that Wantage, Sir Theophilus' 
 younger nephew, succeeded to the property in- 
 stead of his brother. 
 
 "A mere matter of horning one afore the 
 other ain't like wiping out a race," Groot ob- 
 served over its beer, and no one in the position 
 to do either of these deeds but must have ad- 
 mitted there was perspicacity in Groot's remark. 
 Providence in fact, while it had refused to juggle 
 with the many little causes which made Roland 
 Roland and Wantage Wantage, had yet not 
 been neglectful of village interests, and none 
 knew this better than Mrs. Groot, the lady that 
 seemed so to have misadventured over and 
 through the sound laws that should govern good 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 5 
 
 primogeniture. If it had ever occurred to Mrs. 
 Groot in an unwary moment of introspection to 
 sum up herself by the light of her past, she 
 would have said that she was a good woman, 
 who had made one little mistake ; but the seven 
 deadly sins sprung from one root could not have 
 shown signs of bearing a finer crop than did the 
 little mistake Mrs. Groot had grafted on to the 
 tree of her fortunes. By nature Mrs. Groot be- 
 longed to those infinitely wise people that never 
 indulge in skirmishes with their own thoughts 
 for the pleasure of fighting, but events pressed 
 hard and think she must whether she would or 
 no. She sat now in the yellow drawing-room 
 at Groot Hall waylaid by an army of thoughts. 
 Roland, meditative and amused, watched her 
 from the terrace, then he flung away his cigar 
 and entered the room. 
 
 "Well, mother," he said, "are you planning 
 a bazaar, or a new curate, or is it merely that 
 the cook has hung herself?" 
 
 Mrs. Groot twisted her head round, bird 
 fashion, and looked at her son. He was a 
 
6 THE ROMAN KOAD 
 
 middle-sized, slightly built man, with a face that 
 was hard without being unkindly. 
 
 " What's that you say, Roland, about the cook 
 having hung herself? I am sure I hope she 
 hasn't. Her clear soups are quite excellent." 
 
 "Console yourself. I believe she has not yet 
 carried her knowledge of clear soups into a 
 celestial sphere. But what's the worry, 
 mother?" 
 
 Instead of replying, Mrs. Groot rose and 
 looked at the clock. She had something to say 
 to her son, but the thing once said she wished 
 to be in a position to close the interview. It 
 was six o'clock, at half past six her niece Jean 
 Morice would arrive; Mrs. Groot decided to 
 speak. Pushing a low chair nearer the fire she 
 sat down and opened a fan to shield her face; 
 but whether she had approached the fire for the 
 opportunity it afforded her of manipulating the 
 fan, or whether she had chanced on the fan as 
 a ready means of protection against the fire Mrs. 
 Groot did not know more than the dullest 
 spectator. If the theory of the existence of a 
 
THE ROMAN EOAD 7 
 
 second self be true then it must be admitted that 
 this woman's secondary self was for ever on the 
 alert to guard its mistress from all possible 
 forms of attack. Roland glanced down at the 
 fragile jewelled hands, which looked as if they 
 spent their time weaving and unweaving gos- 
 samer threads, and then up at his mother's soft, 
 womanly face. Mrs. Groot was forty-five, she 
 suffered from an incurable disease, angina-pec- 
 toris, but the onslaught of that grim old stalker, 
 pain, had not whitened the hair which coiled 
 smooth and mouse-coloured round the shapely 
 head. 
 
 "You are looking well, mother," he re- 
 marked. 
 
 Mrs. Groot smiled ; no compliment meant for 
 Mrs. Groot ever fell short of its goal. Her 
 face grew more soft, more kindly. "I shall 
 always love you best, Roland," she said, and then 
 with a glance of reproach at the clock she dived 
 straight for the deep waters of all she had to 
 say. "How," she asked, "could I be expected 
 to know that your cousins would die?" 
 
8 THE ROMAN KOAD 
 
 "Really, mother," exclaimed Roland, tug- 
 ging at his moustache, "what has that got to do 
 with it? Still, they did die of phthisis, didn't 
 they?" 
 
 "No reasonable person dies from consump- 
 tion nowadays," replied his mother with de- 
 cision. 
 
 "I daresay they regret their folly more than 
 I do." 
 
 "You!" cried Mrs. Groot, turning on him 
 fiercely, "you have no business where you are 
 at all, an idle, good-for-nothing spendthrift. 
 Why you should be you, and Wantage Wantage, 
 is just one of those perverse fates that makes 
 this world such an aggravating, impossible 
 place." 
 
 "You are a bit stinging." 
 
 "I sting myself," though it must in truth 
 be admitted that the sting did not protrude be- 
 yond the figure of speech. 
 
 "Am I so bad as all that?" 
 
 Mrs. Groot leant back in her chair and laid 
 her fan on the table. She was about to attack 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 9 
 
 Roland. Possibly as a weapon of offence a fan 
 is of scant service. 
 
 "Baker tells me that you have given orders 
 for the oaks in the long walk to be felled." 
 
 "I am afraid they must come down," replied 
 Roland shamefacedly. 
 
 "They mustn't." 
 
 "Really, mother, I'm sorry, but " 
 
 "Wantage would never have them down." 
 
 "Wantage ! He hardly comes into the ques- 
 tion. Does he?" 
 
 Mrs. Groot looked curiously at her son. 
 "Supposing the place were his, not yours?" 
 
 "It seems rather idle to suppose that." 
 
 A sudden helplessness crushed down on Mrs. 
 Groot. "Do you think so?" she said, letting 
 both her hands fall palm outwards on her 
 knee. 
 
 "Don't you?" 
 
 "He would be a better landlord." 
 
 "Ah, yes." 
 
 "The village has been very neglected." 
 
 "Horribly." 
 
10 THE ROMAN KOAD 
 
 "At least he would make it weather-tight." 
 
 "I suppose so." 
 
 "And you " 
 
 "Ah, I I shall do nothing, of course," 
 Roland replied, assuming an indifference that 
 did not hang well with the cut of his thoughts. 
 
 Mrs. Groot's oppression lightened somewhat. 
 "There is no doubt that you deserve to be 
 ousted," she said. 
 
 "One does not always get one's deserts." 
 
 Her face grew hard. "I have always loved 
 you more than Wantage." 
 
 "A case in point, you see." 
 
 Her face grew harder. "Still I must guard 
 his interests." 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 "Even when they clash with yours." She 
 paused a moment and reconsidered the position. 
 It was foolish, she thought, to waste sympathy 
 in advance. "Oh, I wish I were a little 
 wickeder," she exclaimed. "One needs a hard 
 heart to do right." 
 
 Roland laughed uneasily. 
 
THE KOMAN KOAD 11 
 
 "Well, then, don't do right. I hate hard- 
 hearted women." 
 
 She grew more cheerful and at ease. "If 
 only I could take your advice," she said. "But 
 then there's Wantage." 
 
 "How does he come in?" 
 
 "Oh, he he's the one who would be 
 wronged." 
 
 Drawing his upper lip in with his teeth, 
 Roland frowned down upon his mother. "Well, 
 that wouldn't please you," he said harshly. 
 
 Mrs. Groot broke into a little hysterical laugh. 
 Something prompted her to be womanish at all 
 costs. "Oh, no, it wouldn't please me. I've 
 had eighteen months of misery." 
 
 "Eighteen months! Why eighteen months?" 
 
 A sob choked a way through Mrs. Groot's 
 lips. "I prayed and prayed and prayed that 
 your cousins might live, but God never heard 
 me. He never does when you really ask 
 Him." 
 
 Roland stared at his mother, and then bend- 
 ing down shook her lightly by the shoulder. 
 
12 THE KOMAN EOAD 
 
 "What do you mean? Why talk in these de- 
 testable riddles? Let us have a little plain- 
 speaking." 
 
 A curious notion that if she spoke quickly 
 things ought to smooth out and look pleasant 
 again skipped through Mrs. Groot's mind. 
 "When Wantage's father died," she said, "there 
 was no money worth troubling over. I thought 
 it did not matter being silent then, besides he 
 was as fond of you as Wantage." She stopped 
 short; Roland's face looked the reverse of un- 
 ruffled, and Mrs. Groot felt dully aggravated 
 at his refusal to play the part assigned to 
 him. 
 
 "Wantage's father," he rapped out, "my 
 father too, I hope." 
 
 There was a brief pause ; Mrs. Groot glanced 
 up at the little ormulu clock. It wanted ten 
 minutes to the half hour. Bending down 
 Roland took his mother gently by the wrists. 
 "Mother, answer me. He was my father?" 
 
 "You hurt me, Roland," she said, but she did 
 not struggle to free herself. 
 
THE ROMAN EOAD 13 
 
 He dropped her hands. "I suppose I am 
 answered." 
 
 "I have always loved you best," she said 
 feebly, bursting into tears. 
 
 He crossed to the window and stared out. 
 Mrs. Groot watched him and remarked with 
 strange inconsequence how well his clothes 
 and his lithe figure became each other. "I 
 thought," she murmured, "that you need never 
 know." 
 
 "One always has to know these things in the 
 end." 
 
 "But you will never feel the same to me 
 again." 
 
 "So I'm not Roland Groot I'm Ro- 
 land " 
 
 A sharp-toned red dyed Mrs. Groot' s delicate 
 face. "I don't know how such people are 
 called," she said. 
 
 "I bear your name, mother," he answered 
 more gently. 
 
 "Morice, then. It's spelt i-c-e. It's not a 
 bad name as names go. I have always thought 
 
14 THE KOMAN EOAD 
 
 Groot so ugly." She looked expectantly at 
 Roland, half awaiting him to pick up this crumb 
 of comfort and make a meal of it. 
 
 "Still, I would rather be called Groot," he 
 answered, brutally direct. 
 
 "Oh, don't say it in words." 
 
 "And my father?" 
 
 "He is dead." 
 
 "Dead, is he?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I'm glad of that." 
 
 "You needn't speak so bitterly, Roland. He 
 loved me." 
 
 "He was a cur for all that." 
 
 Mrs. Groot's face darkened. "You are quite 
 wrong." 
 
 "A man is the best judge of these things." 
 
 "He was always so good, so tender never 
 harsh, Roland, as you are inclined to be some- 
 
 times." 
 
 Roland quitted the subject. "Wantage 
 knows nothing of this?" 
 "I have not told him." 
 
THE EOMAN EOAD 15 
 
 "But he must be told." 
 
 Mrs. Groot paused and tapped the toe of her 
 right foot impatiently against the ground. "Ah, 
 you think so too?" she said. 
 
 "Of course I think it. What else could I 
 think?" 
 
 "I thought perhaps if I told you, you might 
 see things in a fresh light. I've brooded over 
 it all so long." 
 
 "A thing either is or isn't. I can't be Roland 
 Groot and Roland somebody else at the same 
 time." 
 
 "But you could be a different Roland Groot, 
 more well, more like Wantage," Mrs. Groot 
 said, turning half round in her chair to watch the 
 remark well home to Roland's understanding. 
 
 It appeared not to reach the goal. "I don't 
 see your point," he rapped out. 
 
 She had expected him to be dense, and there- 
 fore was not annoyed. "Oh, don't you under- 
 stand," she replied airily, "that if you had been 
 Wantage and Wantage you, I need never have 
 spoken?" 
 
16 THE EOMAN ROAD 
 
 He clung to dulness as to a garment. " Where 
 does that come in?" he asked, and bending 
 down stared his mother in the face. Mrs. 
 Groot drew back, she detested to be at close 
 quarters with anything or one, idea or man ; be- 
 sides that, she thought her son's conduct un- 
 pleasant and therefore ungentlemanly. She did 
 not however give way to her feeling of grievance, 
 but stuck creditably to the affair in hand. "Be- 
 cause then," she said, "things would have been 
 better left as they were." 
 
 Roland laughed out harsh and sudden. "A 
 novel reason for conversion certainly," he an- 
 swered. "Don't you see, mother, that my turn- 
 ing saint and he fiend would not alter the car- 
 dinal fact that the property is his by right?" 
 
 This was a point of view Mrs. Groot did not 
 wish to see from, and she avoided it by leaning 
 back and glancing at the clock. The hands had 
 scarcely moved, she therefore tackled the 
 question. 
 
 "Sometimes I see it like that, but then again 
 I should always feel that perhaps God did not 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 17 
 
 wish him to have Groot. Oh, Roland! (Mrs. 
 Groot clasped her hands) you don't know how 
 I have begged and prayed God that you might 
 pull up in time." 
 
 Roland felt hampered by an inability to keep 
 pace with his mother's strange freaks, which at 
 one bold cut severed the plane of most folk's 
 ethics, and then, whirling gaily round in a moral 
 ellipsis of their own contriving, left him in the 
 position of an amazed spectator. Bending down 
 he took her delicate, fragile hand in his and 
 looked at it as if it were some strange specimen 
 butterfly. "I never did like logic in a woman," 
 he said in his harsh, bitter voice, "but there are 
 limits." 
 
 Offended, she scarce knew why, Mrs. Groot 
 withdrew her hand. "Oh, don't imagine that I 
 can't see the matter your way, it's only that I 
 can't feel it like that; and then, too, I have often, 
 often thought of Wantage, and what a dear, 
 good boy he has always been, and how inter- 
 ested he is in the poor. You know, I do love 
 Wantage." 
 
18 THE ROMAN KOAD 
 
 "Of course, mother." 
 
 Mrs. Groot again felt vaguely annoyed. 
 "Wantage is a little trying, you must admit, 
 Roland; and then he hasn't your figure. He 
 and his clothes never quite hit it off ; but one so 
 seldom finds taste in the really good." 
 
 "Where is he now?" 
 
 "In Liverpool, working in some hideous slum. 
 The place is so dirty that he is obliged to wear 
 a new sort of oil-silk next his skin. It creaks, 
 and I believe people think he wears paper shirts 
 so terrible. He comes back next week." 
 
 Roland turned away. "I suppose some poor 
 devil of an East-ender will get the money 
 now." 
 
 Again Mrs. Groot felt that it would be absurd 
 to waste sympathy in advance upon Roland. 
 "And you?" she asked coldly. 
 
 "Oh, mine is a simple case. I shall be made 
 bankrupt." 
 
 She wheeled round on him at once. "How 
 could you manage to run through so much money 
 in eighteen months?" 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 19 
 
 "I am afraid I must confess to raising the 
 wind further back than that. You see I had 
 more faith in phthisis doing its work than you 
 had." 
 
 The hands of the clock steadily advanced and 
 Mrs. Groot felt altogether more at ease. She 
 sat up, so as to give her words more effect. 
 "That was very wrong of you, Roland." 
 
 Again he disappointed her of her own. "Ah, 
 yes," he replied airily, "but it is evident I was 
 forced to do wrong that you might do right. 
 Providence, you know always so alert in these 
 matters." 
 
 Her manner stiffened. "I don't understand," 
 she said, "but I am sure you are profane." 
 
 "Am I? I feel profane enough." 
 
 Mrs. Groot indulged in an appeal. "Oh, 
 Roland, Roland, don't you see that you ought 
 to be a good man for my sake ?" 
 
 Bitterness crept over him. "Because it would 
 have been better if I had never come on the 
 scenes, I suppose?" 
 
 "You put it coarsely, but I did mean that." 
 
20 THE EOMAN EOAD 
 
 "Fates are against you. I am afraid there is 
 small chance of my turning saint." 
 
 A distant bell sounded as he spoke. The long- 
 awaited moment of release had come, and Mrs. 
 Groot rose with affected nonchalance. "Oh, I 
 quite forgot," she said. "That must be your 
 Australian cousin." 
 
 "My Australian cousin!" repeated Roland in 
 surprise. "Never heard of him." 
 
 "Oh, you must remember my speaking of 
 Jean Morice, my brother John's only child." 
 
 "Is she pretty?" 
 
 "My dear Roland, I have never seen her. 
 She has only just arrived from Australia. I have 
 ordered mutton for dinner and given special in- 
 structions that tea without milk should be sent 
 in afterwards. I believe they live like that out 
 there." 
 
 "Good Lord! Is she black, by any chance?" 
 
 "No, no, of course not, and quite young. I 
 think I hear her coming. You must entertain 
 her, Roland, I am not up to it. Parkins knows 
 her room." 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 21 
 
 Mrs. Groot walked hastily to the door, stop- 
 ping with her fingers on the handle to observe : 
 "I believe, by the way, she has some sort of 
 chaperone with her. I have forgotten the 
 woman's name, but you can easily look as if you 
 knew it." Then she went out and left him. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 WHEN Jean Morice entered the yellow 
 drawing-room, Roland had disappeared. Her 
 glance travelling slowly round the great room, 
 was stayed from time to time by wide spaces 
 bare of all but restfulness. The room pleased 
 her and she sat down on a high straight-backed 
 chair and fell into a dream. Life, over-rich in 
 much, is prodigal of isolation; there is always 
 a strip over to wrap each man round and spread 
 out in quietude at his feet; with Jean perhaps 
 this shadowful land, where the dust of roads 
 is unknown, stretched a little further than with 
 most, and possibly she loved more to dwell 
 in it. 
 
 When, later, Roland returned, he wondered 
 first what had made her choose that particular 
 chair and how she came to draw so restful a 
 picture of herself. 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 23 
 
 "We are cousins, are we not?" he asked. 
 
 "I am Jean." 
 
 "And I merely Roland." 
 
 She smiled. "It is satisfactory to find that 
 we are each ourselves," she said. 
 
 "Do you think that is satisfactory?" he asked 
 with languid interest. "One has to atone for it 
 so often." 
 
 Jean looked at the question. "There is a 
 possible privilege in paying for what one has 
 had," she answered. 
 
 "Or what some one else has had," he said with 
 a laugh. 
 
 "We were all tipped in our school-days," ad- 
 mitted Jean. 
 
 "And rooked when we came to years of dis- 
 cretion," Roland added. 
 
 At that a shrill voice broke in upon them. 
 "Be sure and put it in a dry spot," cried the 
 voice. "I am afraid from the looks of this house 
 that the place is damp." 
 
 Roland glanced at his cousin. 
 
 "Oh, that is Miss O'Rell," Jean answered 
 
24 THE ROMAN EOAD 
 
 composedly. "I suppose she is giving directions 
 about her piano." 
 
 "Does she generally travel with a piano as 
 part of her luggage?" 
 
 "This piano has a particular value for Miss 
 O'Rell. It belonged to her mother. Miss 
 O'Rell brought it out to Queensland thirty years 
 ago and didn't like to leave it behind. Very 
 natural, don't you think?" Jean never apol- 
 gised for her friends, and it must be admitted 
 that she picked up strange acquaintances. 
 
 "Ah hum yes, most natural. But will she 
 play on it?" 
 
 "Ah, here she comes to answer for herself," 
 said Jean. 
 
 A stout, middle-aged, plain-featured woman 
 entered the room. "Well, my dear," she ex- 
 claimed gleefully, "I have seen it housed." 
 
 "I am glad of that. This is my cousin, 
 Roland Groot." 
 
 Miss O'Rell wheeled round. "Oh!" she ex- 
 claimed, "you can tell me if I am right in letting 
 them put my piano in the west wing." 
 
THE ROMAN KOAD 25 
 
 "I think it will be quite safe there," he an- 
 swered gravely. "The west wing is the driest 
 part of the house." 
 
 An expression of relief came into Miss 
 O'Rell's homely face. "The poor thing suf- 
 fered so on the voyage," she said. "The many 
 changes in the temperature hurt its feelings, and 
 I want it to know that it is at home at last, and 
 cared for." 
 
 Jean smiled. "I think it will soon feel it is at 
 home again," she said softly. 
 
 Then the dressing gong sounded, and swept 
 every one upstairs. 
 
 Life had hardened but had not succeeded in 
 uniting in Roland the instincts of a gentleman 
 with the actions of a blackguard. He had sailed 
 close to rocks, had heard the near shriek of 
 many a whirlpool, and still had avoided ship- 
 wreck more perhaps from a natural affection for 
 the lead than aught else, for unlike Mrs. Groot 
 Roland had always desired to come to close 
 quarters with his thoughts and know exactly 
 where he stood. It seemed to him, thinking over 
 
26 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 his interview with his mother, that the question 
 so far concerned itself more as to where she 
 stood than where he did, and he concentrated 
 his mind on that point. Roland was fond of 
 his mother, but he did not cherish many illusions 
 concerning her. In his mind she remained 
 clothed because he had a distaste for seeing so 
 close a relation stripped; at the same time he 
 knew himself to be capable of undressing the 
 poor frail thing did grim need demand a sight 
 of her bare skin. Such a moment he felt had 
 come. What end, he asked himself, did his 
 mother seek to attain? Would she divulge to 
 Wantage and to the world what she had already 
 divulged to him? If not, why had she broken 
 silence? Had she by subtle intuition sounded 
 some deeper depth in his character than he had 
 ever plumbed? Did his mother's conscience in- 
 sist on having its whipping-boy and would it only 
 feel safe from the cane when his back was tin- 
 gling? Mrs. Groot sailed serenely into the 
 yellow drawing-room as Roland asked himself 
 these questions. 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 27 
 
 "Ah," he said, "I hurried through with dress- 
 ing on the off chance of catching you alone." 
 
 Mrs. Groot frowned; she disliked the expres- 
 sion he had made use of almost as much as she 
 disliked being caught, but she did not show her 
 annoyance. 
 
 "So good of you taking Jean off my hands," 
 she said, tearing open and smoothing out the 
 telegram. She read it, paused a moment in 
 thought, and then hastily crumpled the twitter- 
 ing, crackling bit of paper up in a ball, and 
 flung it to the fire. 
 
 "Bad news, mother?" 
 
 "Yes. I mean," she added, correcting her- 
 self, "that Wantage is coming back. He ought 
 almost to be here now." 
 
 "Wantage! I thought it was next week?" 
 
 "My dear, has Wantage ever arrived at any 
 moment but the most inconvenient?" 
 
 "There is nothing against his arriving now 
 that I can see, and there certainly is enough 
 matter for his presence." 
 
 "My dear Roland, how can you be so foolish 
 
28 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 as to imagine that I should breathe a word about 
 this troublesome business to him as long as your 
 cousin is here?" 
 
 Roland sighted land. "Will she be here 
 long?" he asked. 
 
 "She has an open invitation. I am certainly 
 not going to hurry dear John's only child out 
 of the house the first time she puts foot in it." 
 
 "What made you pitch on this particular time 
 to ask her?" 
 
 Mrs. Groot felt justified in her irritation. 
 "What a pointless question. Jean has only just 
 reached England, and naturally she comes first 
 to her own relations." 
 
 Roland resettled one of the coals with his 
 foot. "It would be wiser to face things out 
 and have done with them," he said, but he 
 did not expect that his suggestion would be 
 acted on. 
 
 Mrs. Groot was more than annoyed. "You 
 speak in a very unfeeling and coarse fashion, 
 Roland, but I haven't the strength to face things 
 out, as you call it. Of course I shall be espe- 
 
THE KOMAN ROAD 29 
 
 cially kind to Wantage this time, and I think, 
 Roland, you ought to make a point of taking 
 more than usual interest in the dear fellow's 
 affairs." 
 
 "I never felt less interest in a man's hobbies 
 in my life." 
 
 "It is not a question of what you feel, or I 
 feel, it is a question of what we owe." 
 
 "We appear to owe him so very much more 
 than we are inclined to pay." 
 
 "That is one of your remarks that appears 
 both pointless and rude." 
 
 "Pardon, mother, I thought it was just the 
 truth, but then I was speaking for myself." 
 
 "You should consider more before speaking," 
 replied Mrs. Groot, seating herself in a low 
 chair and taking up the fan. "We are both in 
 a peculiarly delicate position, Roland." 
 
 "And how do you propose we should act 
 in it?" 
 
 Mrs. Groot slowly fanned herself. "We 
 must pay Wantage with one hand," she said, 
 "while " 
 
30 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 "Helping ourselves to his till with the other. 
 Quite so, mother." 
 
 "That, Roland, was not at all what I was 
 going to say." 
 
 "Do you know, mother, I am beginning to 
 get a very wholesome dislike of Wantage,- the 
 result, I suppose, of helping myself to his till." 
 
 The leaves of Mrs. Groot's fan clicked as they 
 fell together in a sharp little ivory shower. "I 
 don't in the least understand what you mean. 
 Personally, I was never fonder of him. Ah," 
 she added, the door opening, "here is Wantage. 
 Oh, my dear boy!" she exclaimed, rushing up 
 and kissing the newcomer on both cheeks, "we 
 are so delighted to have you back again." 
 
 W T antage disengaged himself from the em- 
 brace with both courage and coolness. "Thanks, 
 dear mother, I thought you would be. Ah, you 
 there, Roland? How do?" and Wantage held 
 out a flabby hand gloved in green calf. 
 
 Roland's hands took instant refuge in his 
 pockets. 
 
 "The first gong has gone three-quarters of an 
 
THE ROMAN KOAD 31 
 
 hour," he observed, "but perhaps you prefer to 
 dine in those peculiarly unsavoury looking 
 clothes." 
 
 Mrs. Groot glanced at Wantage and acknowl- 
 edged to herself once again that good taste in 
 morals did not imply good taste in dress. There 
 was, she felt, something almost pitiable in the 
 way he had fingered himself into the wrong 
 things. He had taken such evident trouble that 
 his lack of success seemed the more cruel. 
 
 "Dear Wantage," she exclaimed, "why do 
 you always choose shiny things?" 
 
 Thus addressed, Wantage looked inquiringly 
 at his clothes. "I got a very decent fellow to 
 choose this tweed for me," he said. 
 
 "My dear boy," returned his mother, feeling 
 even as she spoke that her warning would be 
 thrown away, "the sort of people you mix with 
 can't be depended on in such matters; their 
 genius is all for the other world ; in this world, 
 Wantage, their taste is sadly to seek." 
 
 Jean entered as Mrs. Groot spoke and she 
 turned and kissed her niece with genuine ten- 
 
32 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 derness, partly because her arrival was oppor- 
 tune and partly because the girl herself was 
 young, charming, and the child of a man Mrs. 
 Groot had a real affection for. 
 
 "Dear Jean," she said, "so delighted to have 
 met you at last. You put me in mind of your 
 father, especially about the eyes. Poor dear 
 John, so sad his dying just when he did, but that 
 is always the way. Still we mustn't talk of sad 
 things the moment we meet. Let me see, you 
 and Roland have made friends already, I be- 
 lieve; and this is my son Wantage. Wantage, 
 your Australian cousin." 
 
 Wantage wheeled round and held out a 
 flabby hand still encased in green calf. "How 
 do; I hope now you have come so far, that you 
 will interest yourself in our poor people. There 
 is a great deal to do in the village by those who 
 are willing to do it." 
 
 Jean did not jump at the invitation, neither 
 did she reject it. She smiled and then turned 
 to introduce Miss O'Rell, who had entered. 
 
 Mrs. Groot advanced enthusiastically towards 
 
THE ROMAN EOAD 33 
 
 her guest, for she felt that any woman content 
 to cut so odd a figure could not fail of being of 
 use in village affairs. "Now, if Miss O'Rell 
 will take an interest in our poor neglected vil- 
 lage I am sure Wantage will need no better 
 supporter." 
 
 "Hm! Ha! most charmed," remarked 
 Wantage, and bestowed a wary glance upon Miss 
 O'Rell, much as does a mouse when it suspects 
 the trap in the cheese, and having made up his 
 mind that there was poison about, Wantage beat 
 a retreat upstairs to dress. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 AN irregular flight of rooms in the west wing 
 had been pressed into the service of Jean, Miss 
 O'Rell and Miss O'Rell's piano. The sitting- 
 room, which with a fine sense for ease had ar- 
 ranged itself in a wide-spread angle, peered out 
 from a set of windows on to the distant village, 
 while down upon an old-fashioned bowling 
 green it looked with one deep-set eye. Miss 
 O'Rell sat at this window sketching. Her pict- 
 ure was the bowling green in a mood which a 
 spectator might well believe the bowling green 
 did not often publicly indulge. Its well-ordered 
 reserve had fled and the whole wide stretch of 
 grass lay expanded in laughter. So broad was 
 the thing's mirth one blushed to play the part 
 of eavesdropper, and feared in another moment 
 to hear how the world was made, the secret di- 
 vulged in Elizabethan English. Miss O'Rell 
 
 84 
 
THE ROMAN KOAD 35 
 
 undisturbed added a trace more gamboge to the 
 green on her palette. 
 
 "Jean," she said, "your English village op- 
 presses me. I would not ask a Kanaka to live 
 in such a place." 
 
 "A Kanaka !" repeated Mrs. Groot, who, fol- 
 lowed by Wantage, entered at this moment. "Is 
 that a new kind of nut? I wonder if the Army 
 and Navy would have it?" 
 
 "The Kanakas are coloured folk, Aunt 
 Emily," said Jean. "They work in the Queens- 
 land plantations." 
 
 "How delightful I I am so interested in 
 Australia. It seems so far away," ended Mrs. 
 Groot vaguely. 
 
 "Mother," said Wantage, coming forward 
 with a large brown paper parcel, "what am I to 
 do with this?" 
 
 "Ah, those are some things I bought at a 
 bazaar," Mrs. Groot remarked, undoing the 
 parcel as she spoke. "They are so perfectly 
 hideous I thought they would be the very thing 
 for the village. Jean, you must give them to 
 
36 THE EOMAN ROAD 
 
 the dear people, you know the giver is always 
 more than half the gift." 
 
 Jean smiled. "If you enlist my services you 
 must tell me who the things are for," she 
 said. 
 
 Mrs. Groot held up a long, narrow red shirt 
 and regarded it intently. 
 
 4 'Let me see; I believe this is the identical 
 garment old Miss Skiffington made for a con- 
 verted Hindoo, but I don't know of one at pres- 
 ent. You must use your discretion, and if you 
 see any one the shirt is likely to fit, why give it 
 them by all means." So saying, she folded and 
 replaced the shirt, and fearing that the parcel 
 might contain more enigmas than she cared to 
 solve hastily corded it up. "And now, dear 
 Jean, put on your hat, the sooner you and Wan- 
 tage start the better." 
 
 Jean rose to do as she was bid and Mrs. 
 Groot walked to the window and looked first at 
 Miss O'RelPs picture and then sharply at the 
 bowling green. 
 
 "My dear Miss O'Rell," she exclaimed in a 
 
THE EOMAN ROAD 37 
 
 shocked voice, u when did you see the bowling 
 green looking like that?" 
 
 "Last night when the dew was falling," Miss 
 O'Rell replied composedly. 
 
 Mrs. Groot was filled with dismay. "Mac- 
 kenzie must be told at once. It must need 
 mowing, and yet from here the grass looks quite 
 short." 
 
 There was a moment's silence and then Miss 
 O'Rell lifted a vacant face to her hostess. 
 "Yes," she said, "tell Mackenzie to keep it in 
 order. The mood would lose its freshness if 
 indulged in too often." 
 
 More startled than reassured Mrs. Groot 
 hastened away. The incident, so trivial in itself, 
 caused her to entertain a quite disproportionate 
 fear of Miss O'Rell, a fear that was at once 
 followed by dislike and suspicion. The old saw 
 which says that one half of the world does not 
 know how the other half lives is true in more 
 senses than most credit, and it is these mysterious 
 and, as Mrs. Groot found, startling glimpses we 
 get into our own and one another's souls that 
 
38 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 constitute the education of life; and yet it is 
 only a distorted reflection and not a man that 
 has thus flitted past, and he that gives chase 
 tracks down a phantom. 
 
 Miss O'Rell washed out her brushes and 
 rolled them up in a worn leather leaf. "That 
 woman," she remarked, "reminds me of a locked 
 box with nothing inside but a cobweb." 
 
 Rising, she opened the piano and began to play. 
 She carried into her music the same marked in- 
 dividuality that she did into her painting. Ro- 
 land, detesting the thoughts that circumstances 
 pressed on him, caught sound of the music, stood 
 awhile and listened, then went and begged ad- 
 mittance. Miss O'Rell nodded permission and 
 he sat down in one of the bow windows and won- 
 dered to himself how so plain-faced a woman 
 came to have so many secrets. 
 
 Had life in a spirit of grim farce given the 
 plain-faced woman a heart to love with, and had 
 Spring whispered for her with the tread of 
 coming lovers, coming lovers that never came? 
 Till that moment Roland had not felt the least 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 39 
 
 interest in a plain woman, he had a vague idea 
 that she eked out a dull existence minding babies 
 and dusting down the stairs, but beyond that his 
 surmise did not extend. It seemed, however, 
 that women, plain or pretty, middle-aged or 
 young, had a foolish habit of harping on the 
 same string as if all alike expected listeners to 
 their tune. Roland felt truly sorry for Miss 
 O'Rell, he tried to think of a kind of man that 
 might be foolish enough to fall in love with her, 
 but imagination failed him and manufacture 
 such an oaf he could not. Miss O'Rell ceased 
 playing and shut the piano. 
 
 "A fig for clamour 1" she exclaimed. "Give 
 me honest silence.' 1 
 
 "Is silence ever honest?" said Roland. 
 
 "It is the only honest thing left," Miss O'Rell 
 answered, twisting herself round on the music 
 stool and letting her hands fall idly in her lap. 
 "Silence will have nothing to do with bad com- 
 pany, but loves all that is beautiful." 
 
 "A great many dirty things take refuge in it," 
 he said bitterly. 
 
40 THE KOMAN EOAD 
 
 "Ah, well," she answered, "they don't hurt 
 silence. It is silence that hurts them." 
 
 Roland scrutinised the woman's plain face. 
 "Tell me, Miss O'Rell," he asked, "would you 
 recommend honesty as a profession?" 
 
 She opened the piano and played three dis- 
 connected bars. "It is a poor profession," she 
 said, "but a good livelihood." 
 
 "What is a poor profession and a good liveli- 
 hood?" asked Jean, who entered at this moment 
 and stood slowly pulling off her gloves. 
 
 The afternoon sun pouring richly in through 
 the open window seemed as if it must stream 
 through the slight opposing figure of the girl. 
 Her hair ruffled by the wind caught fire and crept 
 in little flames of red and gold across the smooth 
 forehead. Roland looked at her with sudden 
 interest. "We are trying to wed honesty to 
 silence," he explained. "Will you throw rice at 
 the happy pair?" 
 
 "A silent honesty or an honest silence, which 
 is the finest?" asked Jean. 
 
 "Honesty such a necessary thing in a servant," 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 41 
 
 said Mrs. Groot, who, having fallen thrall to a 
 notion that it would be safer to keep an eye on 
 Miss O'Rell, now popped hurriedly into the 
 room. "I do hope," she continued, "that none 
 of you are so unwise as to leave money about. 
 It was only last week I had to send away an 
 under-housemaid for stealing half-a-crown. She 
 declared it was the first time she had ever done 
 such a thing and implored me not to mention 
 it in her character; but of course I shall be 
 obliged to say that she was dishonest. Stealing 
 must be put down." 
 
 Roland's face darkened. "I happened to see 
 the girl's father to-day and he begged me to 
 ask you to take her back." 
 
 "My dear Roland, what an extraordinary re- 
 quest to make. Of course I couldn't think of 
 entertaining it for a moment." 
 
 "Oh, I said she was to have a fortnight's holi- 
 day and then come back," Roland remarked 
 coolly. "You might give her a rise in wages, 
 mother. Encourage her to be honest, tempta- 
 tion overcome is a battle won, you know." 
 
42 THE ROMAN KOAD 
 
 Mrs. Groot did not argue the matter. She 
 disliked wrangling in public or private. "I am 
 sorry you did that without first consulting me," 
 she said and left the room. 
 
 Following shortly after, Roland found his 
 mother in the garden cutting roses. "Are you 
 vexed?" he asked. 
 
 She looked at him. He had a high-bred face 
 and she felt glad that he was her son. "Dear 
 Roland," she answered, "little things like that 
 haven't the power to vex me. I put them 
 straight away and forget them." 
 
 Roland had often felt pity for his mother, 
 but suddenly he felt compassion, that blood and 
 bones of ruth. "I wish for your sake, dear 
 mother," he said, "that big things could be put 
 away as easily as little." 
 
 The remark vexed her. She hated an unex- 
 pected turn in a conversation, it made her suspi- 
 cious of the speaker's intentions. "You seem 
 to delight in putting me in mind of what I want 
 to forget," she exclaimed petulantly. "Why do 
 you do it?" 
 
THE ROMAN KOAD 43 
 
 He could not but ask himself the same ques- 
 tion. "I suppose," he answered, "because one 
 always believes that the other person's attitude 
 to the thing is the same as one's own. It gener- 
 ally isn't though." 
 
 Mrs. Groot frowned. "The difference be- 
 tween my attitude and yours is that what I can't 
 mend I like to banish from my thoughts." 
 
 "But," he said, taking her hands firmly in his, 
 "you are going to mend this as far as it is pos- 
 sible to mend such a thing." Yet even as he 
 spoke it seemed that it was to himself and not to 
 her that he put the question. 
 
 She tried to withdraw her hands, but finding 
 she could not do so without a struggle let them 
 remain in his. "You make me sorry, Roland, 
 that I ever spoke to you." 
 
 "Why did you speak to me, mother?" 
 
 Something startled Mrs. Groot. A devilish, 
 lack-comfort reason had presented itself, bowing 
 and scraping over the edge of her mind. She 
 banished the imp and conjured up a more 
 sober, plausible companion. "I told you, Ro- 
 
44 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 land, because it was the honest, upright thing 
 to do." 
 
 He let her hands drop and walked away with- 
 out a word. She gave a little suppressed cry 
 and, twisting round like a live butterfly on a pin, 
 fell. Roland ran and lifted her in his arms, but 
 pain had a tighter grip and taking this husk of 
 a woman ripped it first this way, then that, and 
 when the poor fragile sheaf was torn from end 
 to end, there, as the folded wings of a sleeping 
 soul, lay courage. 
 
 Roland, as he held his mother's twisted, shiv- 
 ering body, and looked down on the dumb white 
 lips, wondered at her for meeting one issue so 
 bravely and yet turning so wan a face upon the 
 other. Later, with this thought still uppermost 
 in his mind, he found himself alone. He was 
 standing near a boundary wall that ran along 
 the lower end of the park. A tree's roots had 
 burst a way through the masonry and made the 
 old wall skew, bulge and take on a shape that 
 ill became so ponderous a person. Fate, it 
 seemed to Roland, was twisting his life in much 
 
THE EOMAN ROAD 45 
 
 the same high-handed fashion. He looked 
 across the wall towards the rotting village and 
 wished that the foul thing would get swallowed 
 up by the foul marsh into which it gaped. It 
 imaged forth a very small-pox of dishonour, and 
 contact with it set the soul itching to scratch out 
 her own beauty. He turned away nauseated, 
 and doing so he heard the sharp click of a gate 
 and glancing down saw Jean. The wall threw 
 a cumbrous shadow on the slight figure, yet 
 Roland felt that the wall with its blind force 
 would fare but ill if ever it played at buff with 
 the woman. 
 
 "Well," he said, "what do you think of our 
 village?" 
 
 "I have seen so few English villages, a bare 
 two or three." 
 
 "You won't venture on a comparison?" 
 
 Jean smiled. "It would be more interesting 
 perhaps if you told me what you thought of it." 
 
 "I make a point of never thinking of it. Why 
 should I think of anything so damnable?" he 
 answered brutally. 
 
46 THE KOMAN ROAD 
 
 Jean looked out upon the village. "Poor 
 damned thing!" she said. 
 
 They were both silent a moment. 
 
 "Why," she asked, "can no one make bricks 
 without straw? There is obviously some quite 
 simple way of doing it." 
 
 "You must wait till every one lives in a tent 
 from choice for that question to be answered. 
 But after all," he added with candour, "there 
 is in fact no necessity for the village to remain 
 the beastly hovel it is. Money could be found 
 out of the estate to put the place in decent re- 
 pair; all that is needed is that the right man 
 and the money should come together." 
 
 Jean looked at her cousin's eager, bitter face. 
 "Probably it is not so simple as all that," she 
 answered. 
 
 He was grateful to her because she did not 
 judge before she had seen the matter from more 
 sides than one. "Out in Australia," he asked, 
 "does a man learn wisdom from looking at bare 
 fields?" 
 
 "Not wisdom, - still I have sometimes 
 
THE ROMAN KOAD 47 
 
 thought he learns patience, but patience is a big 
 thing. I suppose Nature alone knows it." 
 
 He sprang lightly down from the wall and 
 took his place beside her. "Supposing, humanly 
 speaking, it were possible to lay the whole facts 
 of the case before you. What then? Would 
 you judge?" 
 
 "No," she answered and drew a little further 
 away from him. 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Why do you ask these questions?" 
 "Because of the ethical value of all answers." 
 "Still," she replied coldly, "that gives you no 
 right to ask the question and I shall not an- 
 
 swer it." 
 
 It seemed as if Roland's experience of women 
 had been fated to be enlarged on that particular 
 afternoon, for having undergone the unique sen- 
 sation of finding himself interested in plain Miss 
 O'Rell in spite of her looks, he now matched it 
 by feeling a lively concern in Jean apart from 
 her looks. Jean without doubt, with her oval 
 face, spacious brow and fine curling mouth, was 
 
48 THE EOMAN EOAD 
 
 beautiful, but Roland forgot the beauty in an 
 interest in the woman. 
 
 "Some day out of cousinship you will answer 
 that question, Jean." 
 
 "Who knows!" said Jean and turned home- 
 wards. He did not go with her. He had but 
 a short-lived interest in woman just then; but 
 wandering away into fields fell to cursing him- 
 self and his fate. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 PARSON PORT was dead, but Groot still ob- 
 served Parson Port's Sunday. Indeed that fine 
 ample-bodied spirit had left his mark on the 
 village; there was old Tom Kettle who Par- 
 son Port in a conservative humour had married 
 to the wrong woman, for no other reason, it ap- 
 peared, than that she, poor simple creature, had 
 seen fit to dress herself in white while the bride 
 had chosen to go robed in blue. All Groot, 
 silent, astonished, and abashed, had stood by 
 while this most unloverlike knot was tied, and 
 not one from Tom Kettle downwards had had 
 the spunk to up and abrogate the ceremony, con- 
 tenting themselves with observing afterwards 
 over their beer, 
 
 "Tom was a man and her a woman and they 
 reckoned that was what marriage meant if it 
 meant anything." 
 
 49 
 
50 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 When Mrs. Groot retired to rest on Saturday 
 she might, as a person versed in the habits of 
 her own constitution, have foretold that she 
 would awake on the following morning with a 
 sick headache, but on Sunday, the headache duly 
 arriving, no one was more surprised than Mrs. 
 Groot. She sent for Roland. He came unwill- 
 ingly; he had begun to find his own desires re- 
 flected in hers and the picture thus made struck 
 him as quite abnormal in its hideousness. 
 
 "Roland," she said, "I had a most extraor- 
 dinary dream last night. I really feel very ill. 
 I think I shall go to church. It is Parson Port's 
 Sunday, so that in any case I should have felt it 
 right to make the effort." She was silent a mo- 
 ment and sniffed feebly at her smelling salts. 
 "I dreamt I was in the fowl yard. So odd; 
 a place I should never think of being in if I were 
 awake. The hens all flew at me, Roland. There 
 was one creature with reddish feathers and eyes 
 like Miss O'ReH's. (Mrs. Groot twisted her- 
 self suddenly round and buried her face in the 
 pillows.) It tried to peck my face, but I beat 
 
THE EOMAN KOAD 61 
 
 it off. I wish I had never seen Miss O'Rell. 
 I wish she had never come into the house. 
 You must find some excuse for sending her 
 away." 
 
 Roland sat down on the bed. This latest 
 vagary of his mother's had at least the merit of 
 amusing him. "Why should you want such a 
 harmless old thing as Miss O'Rell sent pack- 
 ing?" he expostulated. 
 
 "Do you think she is harmless?" Mrs. Groot 
 asked, sitting up and scanning his face. 
 
 "It would be hard to find any one more so, 
 I should imagine." 
 
 "Roland," said Mrs. Groot, with an insight 
 bought at the mart of experience, "it is these 
 very harmless people that do all the mischief." 
 
 "What mischief could she do?" 
 
 Mrs. Groot poured some lavender water into 
 a little silver basin. "If I had anything I 
 wished to conceal, which thank GOD I haven't," 
 she remarked, bending down and sprinkling her 
 face, "I should be afraid of Miss O'Rell." 
 
 "Why would you be afraid?" 
 
52 THE EOMAN KOAD 
 
 "She is so mysterious. I don't understand 
 her in the least." 
 
 "I should have thought she was simple 
 enough." 
 
 "You are no judge of character, Roland. 
 Tell me, have you seen her picture of the bowl- 
 ing green? I don't believe any one but Miss 
 Q'Rell could have made the bowling green look 
 like that." 
 
 "What did it look like?" 
 
 "Frankly, Roland, it looked indecent and 
 and wicked" 
 
 Roland burst out laughing. "Then at all 
 costs let us buy it. But," he added with a return 
 to seriousness, "I should have thought you had 
 quite enough real worries without manufacturing 
 trouble out of nothing. Miss O'Rell is a harm- 
 less, eccentric, middle-aged woman and I have 
 no doubt but that she is as good as she is 
 plain." 
 
 Paradoxically this attestation of Miss O'RelPs 
 moral worth served rather to increase than allay 
 Mrs. Groot's fears. "I have all my life dis- 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 63 
 
 trusted that kind of good person," she remarked. 
 "However, I don't wish to act with undue haste. 
 I will go to church and decide what is to be done 
 when I come back." 
 
 Roland got up. 
 
 "I'll order the horses then." 
 
 "No, I will walk. I don't think it is right 
 to take the horses out on Sunday. One can't be 
 too particular about little things, Roland." 
 
 He half smiled. "But you are tired, mother, 
 and have a headache." 
 
 Mrs. Groot leant back upon the pillows. "I 
 think God must know that I try to do right," 
 she exclaimed feebly. 
 
 Roland looked at the tired white face. "I 
 expect our measure was taken long ago," he an- 
 swered. 
 
 The remark irritated Mrs. Groot. She felt 
 her son was profane in speaking of God as if 
 God were a tailor, also she was not above dis- 
 liking the idea of being measured even by a 
 Deity. However, she did not give vent to 
 either feeling. "I am quite sure," she said, 
 
54 THE ROMAN BOAD 
 
 "that when we die God will consider what we 
 have tried to do and not what we have done." 
 
 "If death doesn't close the book for us," sug- 
 gested Roland yawning. 
 
 "Oh, my dear boy, please don't let me hear 
 you suggest such a thing. I am certain there 
 is a life after death. What would be the 
 use of trying to do right if there was to be no 
 reward. Life would be quite meaningless if this 
 were all. I remember when I was a little girl 
 I was very fond of a pigeon till one day I re- 
 membered that it had only this life, then I ceased 
 to care for it at once. I like things that go on 
 and on, they are always so much more secure." 
 
 "Ah well," said Roland, glancing at his watch, 
 "it doesn't much matter what we believe, our 
 sons will believe something different. But if you 
 are going to church, mother, there is no time to 
 waste. Shall I ring for Parkins?" 
 
 "Yes, do." 
 
 When some three-quarters of an hour later 
 Mrs. Groot came slowly down the stairs, Jean 
 was standing near the great chimney piece in the 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 55 
 
 hall talking to her cousins. The fire-light shone 
 upon the girl's delicate face, and her hair be- 
 neath the wide-brimmed sombre hat became itself 
 a flame of molten colour. Mrs. Groot smiled 
 approval, and was surprised into wondering 
 whether her brother had left Jean well or badly 
 off. Then at the next turn of the staircase she 
 caught sight of Miss O'Rell, and her face hard- 
 ened. "Dear Miss O'Rell," she exclaimed 
 gushingly, "we must walk to church together, 
 and you must tell me all about those charming 
 Kanakas you are so fond of. I am always in- 
 terested in blacks and missionaries." 
 
 Miss O'Rell's plain countenance grew plainer. 
 
 "They say," she observed, "that man is born 
 to teach and be taught, and I suppose that is why 
 the missionaries are sent to the blacks and the 
 blacks to the missionaries; first they cultivate, 
 then they eat each other." 
 
 "Oh, my dear Miss O'Rell, what a gloomy 
 view to take of mission work," said Mrs. Groot 
 in a shocked voice. "I was reading in a book 
 a few days ago that more than a million yards 
 
56 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 of striped calico was sent out every year to 
 heathen lands. So encouraging, don't you 
 think?" 
 
 A brisk wind blew the last day of March be- 
 fore it as they crossed the park. The trees flung 
 their bare branches skyward, the stately cedars 
 alone remaining equable and unmoved. Mrs. 
 Groot threw a quick glance at Jean, who was 
 walking with Roland and Wantage, and, noting 
 that the girl was still within earshot, slackened 
 pace. 
 
 "I have been wondering," she said, turning to 
 Miss O'Rell, "whether my brother left dear 
 Jean well provided for. In Australia people 
 seem to be either very lucky or the reverse, and 
 it is so necessary nowadays for a girl to have 
 money." 
 
 Jean had an income of about three thousand 
 pounds, but Miss O'Rell, if she were aware of 
 the fact, did not impart her knowledge to Mrs. 
 Groot. 
 
 "Jean," she observed, "has always her face 
 to fall back on." 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 57 
 
 Mrs. Groot was not a mercenary woman, but 
 she was disappointed in her niece. 
 
 "A pretty face," she answered almost sharply, 
 "is worse than useless; it encourages flirtation 
 but does not compel marriage." 
 
 "There is no reason why Jean should marry," 
 remarked Miss O'Rell. "If she is careful she 
 can get on quite comfortably without a hus- 
 band." 
 
 The conversation languished. Mrs. Groot 
 never discussed the husband question with old 
 maids. She felt that for the married to do so 
 was like the full discoursing to the empty on 
 the subject of dinner, the argument on both 
 sides would be biassed by circumstance. 
 
 "Ah here," she exclaimed, as Wantage 
 stopped to hold open the gate, "is our Roman 
 Road. Dear me, how ugly and straight it looks. 
 I always dislike straight things." 
 
 "Don't abuse the road, mother," said Wan- 
 tage. "It is fine company on a dark night." 
 
 "My dear," replied Mrs. Groot, "I never 
 walk in the dark, I always drive." 
 
68 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 Jean glanced back. "What a fascinating 
 fashion of going through life, Aunt Emily. 
 Keep a coach and four always at hand; then 
 when things look gloomy, in one hops. Heigh 
 presto and one is again in the light." 
 
 At this moment the two Miss Skiffingtons 
 drove up on their way to church. They stopped 
 the big yellow barouche and offered Mrs. Groot 
 a lift. She accepted and the carriage went on. 
 The Miss Skiffingtons were middle-aged women 
 whose great-uncle had been one of Nelson's 
 favourite captains. This relationship, so remote 
 in time and affinity, still cast a glow over the lives 
 and conversation of the two ladies, both as it 
 were being indirectly fed from the same source. 
 Mrs. Groot, who cherished her neighbour's 
 weaknesses with a tender hand, delighted in 
 dropping harmless bits of bait into the pleasant 
 stream which flowed beneath the Skiffington 
 family tree, and this she did as much for the 
 sake of the plump fish which gobbled the food 
 up and then swam unhooked away as for her 
 own amusement. 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 59 
 
 "Dear Miss Skiffington," she exclaimed, 
 "what a delightful breeze. How welcome it 
 would have been to Sir Richard when he chased 
 the French Admiral." 
 
 She alluded to Nelson's stern hunt from the 
 shores of the Mediterranean half round the globe 
 after Villeneuve in which the Superb under 
 the command of Captain Skiffington had set the 
 pace by proving herself the slowest vessel in the 
 fleet; and this the good ship had done from no 
 fault of her own, for the poor thing, barnacling 
 her way through the sea-weedy water, knew well 
 that she ought at the time to be safe in dock 
 having her bottom scraped so as to be in good 
 fighting trim for Trafalgar, but rather had the 
 ship been forced to join in this useless chase 
 through the ardour of her commander, who, 
 man-like, hated to lose touch with the enemy. 
 
 Miss Skiffington glowed. She had never been 
 able to understand what so many people found 
 to dislike in Mrs. Groot, U A fine sincere 
 woman," she called her. 
 
 "How curious you should make mention of 
 
60 THE ROMAN EOAD 
 
 that particular voyage/' she answered. "It was 
 only last night I was reading an account of it 
 in Captain Mahan's book." 
 
 The church, for a reason long lost in the mists 
 of the past, stood on a hill some three-quarters 
 of a mile beyond Groot village; as the yellow- 
 wheeled barouche rolled slowly up the steep in- 
 cline it passed a high pointed white stone which 
 marked where the Groot property ended and 
 that of Blaize began. Miss Skiffington's manner 
 stiffened, and she glanced at her sister Miss 
 Maria to see if her attitude was one of equal 
 correctness. Miss Maria, however, who be- 
 longed by nature to an amorphous class consti- 
 tutionally incapable of forming up into any 
 shape, looked smilingly round. 
 
 "Dear me," she remarked, "here we are at 
 Blaize. Did the Bevans return our call? I al- 
 ways forget." 
 
 The Bevans, people of no extraction but much 
 wealth, which latter, if report spoke the truth, 
 had been smoked in some fashion out of bloat- 
 ers, had lately bought Blaize. Their coming 
 
THE EOMAN KOAD 61 
 
 had put Miss Skiffington, a stickler for birth, 
 into a cup and ball of two minds whether to call 
 on them or no ; but moved perhaps by the thought 
 that a bloater once in the form of herring swam 
 in the sea and thus established an indirect claim 
 upon her hospitality, Miss Skiffington had or- 
 dered out the yellow barouche and driven Miss 
 Maria over to Blaize. From this point any less 
 far-seeing than Providence might well have ex- 
 pected things to work smoothly ; but the Bevans 
 were out and when on making inquiries they 
 found that the Miss Skiffingtons were poor, mid- 
 dle-aged and did not entertain, they failed to 
 return their visit, contenting themselves with 
 sending a footman round to the Miss Skiffing- 
 tons' back door with a card. Such conduct might 
 well leave an indelible mark on any woman's 
 mind, but human nature, Groot observed over 
 its beer, has fences that the Almighty couldn't 
 cross, and while the elder Miss Skiffington had 
 been constituted so that she could not forget a 
 slight, Miss Maria had so been fashioned that 
 she could not remember one. For her sister's 
 
62 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 sake she honestly tried but never could recollect 
 whether the Bevans had or had not returned the 
 call, and always ended by recollecting wrong. 
 Miss Maria's question had bare time to settle 
 acidly down in her sister's stomach before the 
 yellow-wheeled barouche drew up at the lych- 
 gate and Miss Skiffington, gathering her skirts 
 together, stepped out to make her weekly call 
 upon the Almighty. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 CLEAN as thought from a wholesome mind 
 came the echo of the axe from the Long Walk. 
 The tall trees trembled in all their length before 
 this autocrat of the forest. Oaks long and lean, 
 short and stout, lay stripped across the earth, 
 paying the penalty of life with death. Roland 
 watched the men at their work and wondered 
 why he did not call upon them to put up their 
 tools and seek orders from another master. 
 Usurpation after all was mere child's-play. A 
 silent tongue and the kingdom remained your 
 own. Looking up he saw Jean. 
 
 "What constitutes a right to a thing?" he 
 asked. "The need?" 
 
 "Has a need ever been fitted yet?" she re- 
 turned. 
 
 "Give a starving man food." 
 
 "And his need grows as he eats." 
 63 
 
64 THE KOMAN ROAD 
 
 "Yet," said Roland, "it is no crime to wish 
 to live." 
 
 "I suppose not," she answered, "yet above a 
 certain price it perhaps becomes a luxury and 
 economists ban luxury." 
 
 "Why do they ban it?" 
 
 "Is it not supposed to be barren, or at best 
 to bring in no adequate return?" 
 
 He looked into her eyes and found them 
 beautiful. "Suppose," he argued, "I took money 
 which was not my own and spent it well, for the 
 benefit of others. What then?" 
 
 "Well, perhaps many people would lose by 
 that, you for instance." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Would you not be wasting your time making 
 ropes of sand? The money would not be yours 
 and you could not make it yours." 
 
 He laughed harshly. "Why should that 
 trouble me ? It is not what one does that matters, 
 but what one is supposed to do. Verisimilitude 
 is the thing. Why run one's self lame after truth 
 when one can get her likeness cheap by sitting 
 still?" 
 
THE ROMAN KOAD 65 
 
 "We answered that question long ago by not 
 running after truth," Jean replied, sweeping 
 away some chips with her foot. "I don't think 
 that any of us care much for truth. Do you?" 
 
 "And yet we can all be hard on a liar." 
 
 She looked at his harsh, worn face. "Yes," 
 she admitted, "we cannot forgive ourselves. I 
 have often wondered why we are so hard on 
 ourselves. We know better than others how 
 slaying was the temptation; and still Roland, 
 why is it that we cannot forgive ourselves?" 
 
 He was not conscious of having meant that, 
 yet he half guessed that she read him better 
 than he did himself. 
 
 "Jean," he said, "tell me the reason you will 
 not judge between me and the village?" 
 
 The blood swept warmly from her throat to 
 her brow. "It is not between you and the village 
 that I refuse to judge. I do not judge, that 
 is all." 
 
 "You must judge, but why do you withhold 
 sentence?" 
 
 She laughed uneasily. "It doesn't please me 
 
66 THE EOMAN KOAD 
 
 to fit other people's feet into my boots," she said. 
 "Besides, I am like the blacks, and have a set 
 formula to resolve all riddles." 
 
 "What is this formula?" 
 
 "Why should I tell it you?" 
 
 "Because," he said in his grating voice, "the 
 time has come for you to tell it." 
 
 Still she remained silent. 
 
 He drew closer to her. "Tell me," he com- 
 manded harshly. 
 
 She half smiled; she was so free not to tell 
 him unless she chose to do so. 
 
 "I have a foolish little belief," she answered, 
 "that only God can look down, and yet perceive? 
 and that all we can do is to look about us, and 
 perhaps sometimes look up." 
 
 Roland did not reply; he was thinking of his 
 mother. He would not deceive himself; he had 
 made up his mind to keep Groot; and he knew 
 that his mother had foreseen his decision from 
 the first. 
 
 "She at least had never mistaken her man," 
 he thought bitterly; yet even as the thought 
 
THE ROMAN EOAD 67 
 
 passed through his mind it found there a subtle 
 and growing belief that Jean also understood 
 him. 
 
 They strolled along the walk till it split into 
 two paths. Jean returned to the house, and he 
 crossing the park came to the Roman Road, and 
 the sight of the great onward-cleaving, straight- 
 going road filled him with inexpressible bitter- 
 ness. Suddenly Wantage appeared from behind 
 the trees. 
 
 "There is no over-weight about you, old 
 man," he remarked facetiously. 
 
 Roland's dark face darkened as a wave of 
 angry blood swept across it. He had never liked 
 Wantage, now he loathed him. 
 
 "Two brainy men in the same family would 
 be superfluous," he answered. 
 
 Wantage passed the remark over. 
 
 "Baker tells me there is a fresh case of fever 
 in that sodden clump of houses you aptly name 
 Rotten Row," he observed. 
 
 "Thanks for the warning, but I had no inten- 
 tion of exposing myself. By the way," con- 
 
68 THE EOMAN EOAD 
 
 tinued Roland, glancing at his brother, "may I 
 ask if that curious hirsute appendage you wear 
 under your chin is a beard or a new style of East 
 End comforter?" 
 
 This remark had the quite unwarrantable 
 effect of pleasing Wantage. "I am glad you 
 mentioned that," he said. "I wanted your opin- 
 ion. Do you think I should look better if I clean 
 shaved?" 
 
 "Your style of appearance is so peculiarly your 
 own, perhaps you set a value on it." 
 
 "Well, I know one or two fellows who wear 
 this kind of beard," replied Wantage, running 
 his fingers softly over his chin. 
 
 "Yankee chimney-sweeps, I presume." 
 
 "I'll get Johnstone to take it off for me." 
 
 "Ah do, he knows where the brandy and sodas 
 are kept if the task should prove too much for 
 his feelings." Roland turned away and saw with 
 heightened annoyance his mother and Miss 
 O'Rell coming slowly over the grass. 
 
 Wantage caught sight of them at the same 
 moment. He disliked Miss O'Rell, but her 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 69 
 
 clothes always gave him that fine confidence in 
 his own, which is the most striking garment of 
 the well-dressed man. The situation was so full 
 of subtle flattery that he waited a moment, his 
 eyes full on Miss O'Rell. "I will leave you now 
 to play the part of host," he said and then smil- 
 ingly withdrew. 
 
 "My dear Roland," exclaimed Mrs. Groot, 
 "how fortunate we should meet you just now. 
 I have persuaded Miss O'Rell to pay a visit to 
 our picturesque village and you shall act as 
 guide." 
 
 Roland beckoned to an old man, who was 
 creeping heavily along the road. 
 
 "Jakes," he said, "this lady wishes to see the 
 village. What would you recommend to her 
 notice first?" 
 
 The man pulled a rust-coloured forelock. 
 
 "Well, Sir Roland, if 'twas yourself now, I 
 wouldn't ax 'ee to look further than the roof o' 
 my cottage, or maybe I'd bide content if you 
 was to put a patch or two on the pig-sty, for 
 my old sow has most wore herself out standing 
 
70 THE ROMAN KOAD 
 
 under water-spouts," and he pointed to a dilap- 
 idated cottage and shed some little distance down 
 the road. 
 
 "Is that a pig-sty?" exclaimed Mrs. Groot, 
 nodding her head at the cottage. "Covered, I 
 see, with Virginian creeper. Why, your pig 
 must be charmed with her quarters." 
 
 "Saving your presence, ma'am, for seeming 
 to contradict you," Jakes answered, "but my old 
 sow ain't no artist; her never that I knows by 
 saw more'n one picture in her life, and that her 
 made bold to eat up. It was a good picture 
 enough, I've heard tell, as such trash goes, but 
 the old sow was wonderful cautious in her feedr 
 ing for some days afterwards." 
 
 "I should think," remarked Miss O'Rell, 
 "that this village is full of sickness." 
 
 "Law bless 'ee, ma'am," returned Jakes, 
 pushing his hat back to run his fingers through 
 his hair, " 'tis as full of sickness as an apple of 
 wasps; measles over to there, whooping-cough 
 over to there, but lawks, you'll find they in every 
 village. Them houses which lie low like be full 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 71 
 
 of marsh fever; us wouldn't complain o' that, 
 if the houses was weather-tight, which, saving Sir 
 Roland's presence, they none o' them is. Why, 
 Lord love 'ee, there isn't one o' us that dares 
 to sit two nights running in the same spot, us 
 wud get all over mildew for certain." And 
 Jakes, with the light of words running up his 
 front and down his back, turned and glowed 
 warmly into Mrs. Groot's face. She withdrew 
 herself. 
 
 "I think, Jakes," she said, in a cold, metallic 
 voice, "you poor people never know when you 
 are well off." 
 
 A dull, stolid scorn came into the old labourer's 
 face. "Maybe not, ma'am," he said and touch- 
 ing his hat went on his road. 
 
 Mrs. Groot turned quickly away from the 
 bent, retreating figure. She had an instinctive 
 dislike of the working classes, their needs were 
 so hideously genuine. Intercourse with them 
 was much the same as gathering a handful of 
 earth instead of flowers. She offered the flowers 
 and they in return pelted her with barren soil. 
 
72 THE EOMAN EOAD 
 
 "Dear Miss O'Rell," she said, "I have such 
 a dreadful headache. I am sure you will forgive 
 my leaving it to Roland to play the part of 
 cicerone. He will be able to tell you all the 
 little ins and outs, the village requires so much 
 explaining, though it is a dear, picturesque place 
 and I am always glad to remember that it is our 
 very own to do what we like with." Nodding 
 gaily Mrs. Groot turned away. At the last bend 
 in the path she stopped and waved a minute 
 handkerchief as if she wished to encourage her 
 son and guest on to the task in front of them. 
 
 "Are you interested in the village?" asked 
 Roland in a morose voice. 
 
 Miss O'Rell smiled grimly. "To be frank 
 with you, I am not," she answered. He laughed 
 out harsh and sudden. "It will soon rot into the 
 earth," he said. A heron rose from the marsh 
 and sailed off, its long legs scribbling the sky. 
 Miss O'Rell watched the bird's flight. 
 
 "And the herons Will build where it once 
 stood," she added. 
 
 "You do it too much honour if you think such 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 73 
 
 birds would choose so damnable a spot to nest 
 in," he corrected. U A heron loves to build in 
 the high branches of the trees." 
 
 "No matter," she put in, "the grass and reeds 
 will trample it down." 
 
 He turned to the plain- faced elderly woman; 
 she seemed the first comrade he had met to his 
 taste these many days. "You hate it," he said, 
 "as if it were a rotting body; but I hate it as 
 if it were a rotting soul." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE moonlight slipped between the big cedar 
 trees of Groot; while from the hill above the 
 village the church clock drummed out twelve. 
 Roland, leaning over the billiard table, sending 
 the balls merrily clicking this way and that, heard 
 the tally of the hours called, and the whole 
 twelve like twelve watchmen go marching away 
 into silence. Then the door opened, and Mrs, 
 Groot entered. Her son did not turn. He did 
 not feel as if there was another presence in the 
 room; he felt that the evil in himself was aug- 
 mented: for there are moments when the hard 
 and fast lines that separate individuals melt 
 away, and the body ceases to be an isolating 
 station to the spirit: moments when we cannot 
 take refuge in ourselves, for we are one with 
 another in weird, mysterious union. 
 
 Mrs. Groot moved slowly across the room. 
 74 
 
THE KOMAN ROAD 75 
 
 "I am tired, but disinclined for bed," she re- 
 marked, and curled herself comfortably upon a 
 couch. Something in her movements reminded 
 him of a snake and he shuddered. "Things are 
 very perverse, Roland," she continued. "Now, 
 if Jean had money she might marry Wantage." 
 
 This conjecture, as unexpected as disagree- 
 able, kept Roland for a moment to silence, then 
 he looked at his mother to see if she was in 
 earnest. "A fine opening for Jean," he said. 
 
 "I am afraid I was not thinking of her but 
 of her money. It would have been useful. It 
 might even have solved all the difficulties. 
 Something must be done for the village and done 
 
 at once." 
 
 Roland frowned down on his cue, which he 
 chalked and rechalked. The desire filled him 
 to bring his mother to heel and then to crush 
 her. "Let us be simple," he said at last, "and 
 acknowledge that if I don't do it no one will." 
 
 She disregarded the innuendo. "You will do 
 it then?" she replied. 
 
 "I did not say so." 
 
76 THE ROMAN KOAD 
 
 "Yet you must admit that is the only hon- 
 ourable course open to you." 
 
 "My dear mother, honour does not come into 
 this affair at all. If I consent to keep the prop- 
 erty, I shall do so because I wish to marry." 
 
 Mrs. Groot sat bolt upright. "Marry," she 
 repeated in a shrill tone, "who do you wish to 
 marry?" 
 
 "Jean." Till that moment marriage with 
 Jean had not presented itself to him as contin- 
 gently possible, but the thought once uttered 
 filled up the whole body of his imagination. 
 
 "Jean !" cried his mother. "A girl without a 
 farthing. How preposterous !" 
 
 "I admit there is something preposterous in 
 turning thief for such reason. A thief might 
 find it hard to commend himself to Jean, that is, 
 if she knew he was a thief; but then you see, 
 mother, she will not know. You will know, but 
 you have grown accustomed to the idea of having 
 a thief for a son. Indeed we might almost allow 
 you prefer him to play that role to any other." 
 
 There was silence. Mrs. Groot, white and 
 
THE ROMAN EOAD 77 
 
 trembling, got slowly on to her feet. She 
 walked a few steps and took hold of the billiard 
 table. "Why," she asked in a low voice, "do 
 you insult me, Roland?" 
 
 His face did not soften but grew harder. 
 "You are afraid of the word thief," he said, 
 "but you are not ashamed of the thing itself." 
 
 "How do you know what I am afraid of?" 
 
 "Have I not watched you winding in and out 
 of every falsity all my life?" 
 
 She tottered backwards and sank down on the 
 sofa. "But, Roland," she exclaimed, piteously, 
 "I am a good woman." 
 
 Turning to the billiard table he made half a 
 dozen brilliant cannons and then laid down the 
 cue. "Mother," he said, "let us settle this mat- 
 ter once and for all. Either I put Wantage in 
 possession of the truth to-night or we agree that 
 he shall never know it." 
 
 Mrs. Groot sat up. "Supposing," she re- 
 marked, "I agree to neither proposition." 
 
 "The answer is simple, I go to Wantage and 
 tell him without your consent." 
 
78 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 "You are very harsh," she said. "I wonder 
 
 you can be so." 
 
 "Well," he asked, "which is it to be?" 
 "You are forcing me to do wrong so that you 
 
 may do wrong yourself with an easy con- 
 
 science." 
 
 He laughed. "Is not that what you have been 
 trying to do with me? But," he added, "we 
 differ in this: if I once make up my mind to be 
 a thief you may be certain that I shall not allow 
 conscience to spoil me of my profits." 
 
 She began to be afraid of him. "Roland," 
 she said, "you are much wickeder than I 
 thought." 
 
 "In that case we ought to strike a satisfactory 
 bargain." 
 
 "I do not understand you." 
 
 "Oh, it is quite simple. You are not a good 
 woman, and I am not a good man; that being 
 so we should come to terms." 
 
 Mrs. Groot had never stripped her own heart, 
 and to see the poor bleeding thing torn ruthlessly 
 from its coverings by her son paralysed her. 
 
THE ROMAN KOAD 79 
 
 She began to cry, not for effect, but because her 
 spirit was broken. Unfortunately, tears had so 
 often been used by her as a false flag of truce 
 that the mere sight of them infuriated Roland. 
 "Come," he said, u you capitulate and I take the 
 property." 
 
 She gave up the struggle. "You will be fair, 
 Roland," she exclaimed feebly. "You will re- 
 build the village. You will do all you can 
 for it." 
 
 "Damn the village," he said. "I'll pay my 
 debts, and " he stopped short; he could not 
 bring Jean's name into the hideous dispute. 
 
 "You are not yourself. You do not mean 
 what you say," Mrs. Groot exclaimed, rising to 
 her feet. 
 
 "Unfortunately for you I was never more in 
 earnest." 
 
 She dropped her hands to her sides : "I can- 
 not struggle with you to-night." 
 
 "No," he said, "and you never will, you have 
 not the moral courage." He opened the door, 
 she went out. "I've built on that fact," he cried 
 
80 THE KOMAN KOAD 
 
 after her. "I'm not your son for nothing." 
 Then he closed the door. 
 
 "I am a thief," he remarked aloud. "I must 
 drink my own health." He fetched the whisky, 
 half filled a tumbler and drank it. "Not stiff 
 enough," he said and took another glass. "A 
 man who has just come into a fine property ought 
 to be more exhilarated," and he took a third. 
 "I feel better," he exclaimed. "I must finish 
 the bottle." 
 
 The next morning a housemaid found him 
 drunk upon the floor. He was put to bed and 
 the servants' hall decided to keep a silent tongue. 
 There are advantages attached to being a fa- 
 vourite below stairs. 
 
 Among the letters Mrs. Groot found on her 
 breakfast tray that morning was one from the 
 Ragstocks asking her to Topham Park. Lord 
 Ragstock, a distant cousin of Mrs. Groot's, was 
 a cultivated man afflicted with an incurable need 
 of yawning, so that he no sooner talked a way 
 into a man's good graces than he yawned himself 
 out again, and all this with the best feeling in 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 81 
 
 the world, being as anxious to please in retreat 
 as in advance. 
 
 Topham Park lay about five miles distant 
 across a low range of hills. Mrs. Groot, glad of 
 an excuse for a few days' absence, drove over the 
 same afternoon. The affair, however, miscar- 
 ried. Lady Ragstock, as hospitable a woman 
 as could be met in the county, suffered from pro- 
 longed fits of absence of mind, and Mrs. Groot 
 happening to put in a maladroit appearance at 
 just such a period, Lady Ragstock, after ru- 
 minatingly regarding her guest, ordered the 
 horses and drove her straight home again. This 
 unwarrantable piece of good-nature so tickled 
 Mrs. Groot that it provided her with more dis- 
 traction than fifty visits less ably engineered. 
 It had been well said that between Ragstock and 
 Ragstock's wife a man might be sure of a good 
 meal. 
 
 The first person Mrs. Groot chanced on after 
 her return was Jean. There was something so 
 fresh, young, and altogether charming about the 
 girl's appearance that Mrs. Groot was surprised 
 
82 THE ROMAN KOAD 
 
 at the blind stupidity which had hitherto pre- 
 vented her from seeing the use such good ma- 
 terial might be put to, and she straightway de- 
 termined to neglect opportunities no longer. A 
 flash of insight having thus lit up a new path 
 to success Mrs. Groot glowed all over with a 
 generous appreciation of another woman's good 
 points. 
 
 "My dearest Jean," she said, "what a delight- 
 fully pretty face you have and how little I see 
 of it. Come in here and let us have a good talk." 
 She drew the girl into a small oval-shaped sit- 
 ting-room where the chairs were more than 
 usually comfortable and the light soft and un- 
 obtrusive. Pushing a chair nearer the fire for 
 Jean, she lay down herself upon a couch. "I 
 was not aware I was so tired," she added, 
 stretching out and pointing her feet. "Tired 
 and worn and I suppose dying, yet glad that I am 
 still alive. That's what I am, Jean. It sounds 
 rather a sad little tale. Doesn't it?" 
 
 Jean took one of the fragile hands in hers and 
 caressed it gently, but she made no comment. 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 83 
 
 "This life is full of responsibility," continued 
 Mrs. Groot, closing her eyes, "and responsibility 
 is killing me. I don't want responsibility, Jean. 
 I never asked for it. It is heaped on me, I am 
 smothered beneath the thing. I cannot breathe. 
 Oh, I wish I could throw my responsibilities 
 away and be done with them for ever. Heaven, 
 Jean, is a place where our acts will have no con- 
 sequence; we shall be happy in doing or not 
 doing, that is all." She was silent a moment. 
 "Fancy, if I found another Groot village in 
 Heaven. Why, I should be almost better off 
 in hell. No (emphatically), nothing so dis- 
 agreeable could happen." 
 
 "You all seem troubled about the village," re- 
 marked Jean after a pause. "Yet I do not see 
 why Roland should be expected to do in a few 
 short months what Sir Theophilus was content 
 to leave undone for years." 
 
 "My dear Jean, Roland will do nothing, 
 nothing. He is content to take the money and 
 spend it in paying his own debts." 
 
 "I suppose till his debts are paid he would 
 
84 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 not be justified in spending money on the 
 village." 
 
 Mrs. Groot sat up. "The matter is far more 
 complicated than you can have any idea of. I 
 will say this, and Roland if he were here could 
 not deny its truth. The estate was left to him 
 on the provision that the village should be put 
 into good repair." 
 
 "I thought," replied Jean slowly, drawing a 
 little further away as she spoke, "that the estate 
 was entailed." 
 
 "You are mistaken," said Mrs. Groot, and 
 then realising that she had embarked on a course 
 of untruth, looked about for something to deepen 
 the water. "Of course, Jean, you understand 
 that I am telling you this in confidence." 
 
 Jean got up. "I feel, Aunt Emily, as if I 
 would rather not know these things." 
 
 Mrs. Groot rose also. "You must know 
 them," she exclaimed excitedly, "for only 
 through your coming to know of them can they 
 be remedied." 
 
 "I do not understand." 
 
THE ROMAN EOAD 85 
 
 "You must influence him to do right." 
 
 "How could I presume that I have the in- 
 fluence?" 
 
 Jean's mental attitude brought a smile to Mrs. 
 G root's face. "Surely you are woman enough to 
 know that Roland loves you." 
 
 The girl grew curiously still and cold. "I 
 think, Aunt Emily," she said, "that we both 
 exceed our rights in discussing this matter at 
 all." 
 
 "Oh, my dear," replied Mrs. Groot with im- 
 patience, "wrong would never be righted if 
 every one behaved after that fashion." 
 
 "You say," Jean answered, driven into a cor- 
 ner, "that the estate was left to him provisionally ; 
 well, if he does not observe the provision he loses 
 the estate; we must allow him to be the best 
 judge of his own interests." 
 
 Mrs. Groot sighted the goal she had been 
 making for, and lowered her voice. "The pro- 
 vision would not be held binding in a court of 
 law, only in a court of honour" 
 
 Jean walked to the window and looked across 
 
86 THE ROMAN KOAD 
 
 the park towards Groot village. Poor rotting, 
 cursed thing, every one hated it, even she had 
 come to hate it with the rest. 
 
 "Well?" questioned Mrs. Groot harshly. 
 
 "I cannot interfere," said Jean, and went out. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE April sun beamed big, and Mrs. Groot 
 sat down beneath a tree to needle a wisp of noth- 
 ing into a shirt for a girl's first baby. So soft 
 and fine was the garment it would have had 
 one believe that the mystery of sex was about 
 to put on flesh and walk the earth in a gossamer 
 ephod. The very breeze, shamed out of inquisi- 
 tiveness, lifted up a fold only to let it fall back 
 again into secrecy, but Mrs. Groot, having long 
 since as it were made a thumb-nail sketch of 
 motherhood, whisked the little shirt this way and 
 that, laid it on its face, unripped a gusset, re- 
 modelled a hem and proved for the millionth 
 time that the masculine heart alone knows rev- 
 erence. Mrs. Groot glanced about her and 
 frowned. She was disappointed with men and 
 women in general and Roland and Jean in par- 
 ticular. There was something cruel, she felt, in 
 
 87 
 
88 THE EOMAN EOAD 
 
 the way they had failed to rescue her from the 
 grip of circumstance, the more so because her 
 heart told her that had the position been reversed 
 she would not have deserted them. Picturing 
 to herself the lengths she would have gone to 
 fish Jean out of a muddy ditch set Mrs. Groot 
 glowing with generous warmth ; and yet the same 
 Jean had refused to raise a finger to help her 
 sadly soused aunt to land. 
 
 "We can't all be generous," remarked Mrs. 
 Groot aloud; u but we might all be more gener- 
 ous than we are." At this moment she happened 
 to catch sight of Wantage and her mind em- 
 barking on a different course brought a smile to 
 her lips ; having arrived so far it washed her to 
 shore with a sense of almost renewed security. 
 
 "Mother," exclaimed Wantage, caressing a 
 smooth chin, "Johnstone has just taken off my 
 beard. Do you find me improved?" 
 
 Mrs. Groot looked at her son ; his face, much 
 as a badly placed pin, put her in mind of the past. 
 She was astonished at his likeness to her dead 
 husband. 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 89 
 
 "Dear boy," she said, "it is long since I saw 
 you look so well." And then, struck by the un- 
 expected truth of her own remark, she was sur- 
 prised into a fit of motherly interest. "Really, 
 Wantage," she exclaimed, "it might almost be 
 worth your while to dress better." 
 
 This somewhat two-edged compliment went 
 straight home. Wantage beamed. 
 
 "Why," he asked, sitting down beside her, 
 "should I not give Roland's tailor a turn?" 
 
 Overcome with surprise Mrs. Groot could 
 scarce unravel the situation. "My dear," she 
 expostulated after a pause, "but he is very 
 expensive." 
 
 Wantage gazed blushingly down the calf of 
 his leg, shamed it may be by the ill-shaped 
 limb. 
 
 "Supposing," he said, "that the man whistles 
 for his money?" 
 
 For the life of her Mrs. Groot could not keep 
 from laughing. She laughed and laughed, 
 wiped her eyes and laughed again. Wantage, 
 who all his life had been more laughed at than 
 
90 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 laughed with, saw that the merriment was not 
 ill-natured and took it smiling. A sudden no- 
 tion blunted the edge of Mrs. Groot's mirth. 
 She might yet live to make Wantage master of 
 Groot. It was the second time that day the idea 
 had crossed her mind and she relapsed into se- 
 riousness. "When I am dead," she thought, 
 "what does it matter if people do say ill-natured 
 things? They can't hurt me. I sha'n't hear 
 them." Raising her eyes she looked at her son 
 with unusual interest. His face was neither in- 
 telligent or well-bred, but it was not a stupid 
 or an unpleasant face; she could even imagine 
 some women being attracted by it. A glance at 
 the figure corrected her estimate of the man. It 
 was as hopelessly bad a figure as his father's 
 had been before him, sloping shoulders, big 
 hips, knees bent inwards. 
 
 "Only an adventuress or a good woman would 
 marry a man with that figure," was her mental 
 exclamation. 
 
 Wantage, quite unaware that he was being 
 weighed in the balance and found wanting, now 
 
THE ROMAN EOAD 91 
 
 interposed. "Mother," he said, "there are some 
 patterns in the smoking-room which Roland had 
 down from his tailor this morning. Shall I 
 fetch them?" 
 
 She did not want to hurt his feelings, still 
 could not but realise that his hopes were fore- 
 doomed to disappointment. "Yes, fetch them," 
 she answered and watched him with languid in- 
 terest depart on his errand. The man was devoid 
 of magnetism and his cause suffered in propor- 
 tion. Mrs. Groot lamented this singular lack 
 of personal charm in her son. She would have 
 found it much easier to fight for him had he been 
 more capable of inspiring affection; but she had 
 felt neither affection for or interest in Wantage 
 from the day he was short-coated and proved for 
 the first time that no amount of dressing would 
 make him presentable. 
 
 "I shall always love Roland best," she mur- 
 mured. Then her face darkened. "If I do not 
 end by hating him," she added. 
 
 Startled at a bitterness she had been uncon- 
 scious of harbouring, she tried not to fit the 
 
92 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 knowledge she had thus acquired to the plans 
 she was stealthily at work on. 
 
 "I would rather not know why I do things," 
 she thought. "It is more satisfactory to do 
 right and leave circumstances to speak for them- 
 selves." At this point of her meditations pain 
 took her by the throat and drove her staggering 
 back into the house. 
 
 Scarce had she quitted the garden before Jean 
 came down the terrace steps, and passing from 
 one lawn to another found herself at last in a 
 cedar grove. Cradled in tenebrous, heavy 
 shadow the trees seemed to sleep. For a while 
 Jean looked at them. Tears unsought, un- 
 wanted, brimmed her eyes, then stole forth slow 
 and quiet. So standing Roland found her. 
 
 "Jean," he said, "Jean." 
 
 She turned to him and smiled through her 
 tears. "Am I not foolish to cry because there 
 is nothing but shadow under the trees," she said. 
 
 He took her hand. "Come," he exclaimed, 
 "let us go together into the light." 
 
 Hand in hand, helpless as children they walked 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 93 
 
 out into the fields. The sun was there, and the 
 wind and the sweet freshness of grass, but 
 availed them nothing, so they went back to the 
 house. Deep in indifference the house just ex- 
 erted itself sufficiently to see that the two were 
 separated from each other and then sank back 
 once more to repose. 
 
 That night Death advanced and laid sudden 
 siege to Mrs. Groot. Generalled by Life, she 
 retreated by a series of forced marches, Death 
 occupying the abandoned territory, till at last 
 Life and Death confronted each other across an 
 invisible line. Here, much as a ballet dancer 
 on a rope, Mrs. Groot took to capering ; Death, 
 a humourist at heart, heaved his vast sides in 
 laughter and meek Life stood hair on end to see 
 so strange an image of himself. Turning wit 
 Mrs. Groot tossed up ball-like fear and pain, 
 despair and judgment, catching the swift shower 
 so nimbly in her containing hand that it was 
 hard to tell whether such things had existence 
 except as paraphernalia to that conjurer the 
 brain. One could not but ask what, after all, had 
 
94 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 Mrs. Groot to do with Death. Would she not 
 for ever be threading a way out from the caverns 
 of his presence back to that needling thing Life ? 
 Could Death catch in his sieve a soul that Life 
 had no mesh fine enough to entangle? Would 
 the needle's eye spew out the camel and Mrs. 
 Groot live because Death found her? It seemed 
 much as if Death had put a similar question to 
 himself and answered it in the negative, for 
 turning his back he marched off the way he came 
 and Mrs. Groot coiled round in Life's lap and 
 fell asleep. After some hours she woke, her 
 wits well about her, and sent for Roland. He 
 came. At sight of this pain-shattered woman, 
 who looked far too feeble to hurt any one or 
 even to grope for shelter, he was filled with 
 compassion. Kneeling down beside the bed he 
 took her hand. 
 
 "Mother," he asked, "can I do nothing for 
 you?" 
 
 She smiled feebly. "After all," she thought, 
 "it would give her little pleasure to strike 
 Roland." 
 
THE KOMAN ROAD 95 
 
 "I shall always love you best," she admitted. 
 
 He kissed her hand, glad for a while to for- 
 get the past and bury much of what lay between 
 them. She cast a satisfied glance at him; he 
 seemed more reasonable, more himself. 
 
 "You can do so much for me if you only will," 
 she said. 
 
 He could not repress a shudder. "What can 
 I do?" 
 
 "Promise that you will rebuild the village, 
 then I shall die at peace with myself." 
 
 The grotesque inadequacy of such a garment 
 to keep out shame made him smile. His silence 
 irritated her. "You always try to prevent me 
 doing right," she said. 
 
 At that he promised and life energised Mrs. 
 Groot afresh. It was profoundly pathetic to 
 see how this wisp of comfort vivified the dying 
 woman. Sitting up she demanded Wantage. 
 
 "My dear Wantage," she exclaimed in an 
 animated tone the moment he entered the room, 
 "at last I have made Roland promise to put 
 the village into decent repair. You must know 
 
96 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 that every penny he spends is to be spent in the 
 way you would wish if the money were yours. 
 In fact, it will be exactly as if you dipped your 
 hand into your own pocket. Indeed, my dear 
 boy, let me say, for the pleasure of saying it, the 
 estate is your own and that Roland desires noth- 
 ing more than to administer it in the way that 
 pleases you best." 
 
 This offer, which seemed so tipped and feath- 
 ered to win a way to Wantage's most cherished 
 goal, mischanced. 
 
 "That is rather a big order for Roland, or for 
 me either, isn't it, mother?" he answered coldly. 
 
 Mrs. Groot's ardour waxed rather than 
 waned. It was impossible to believe that but a 
 few hours back she had been at death's door. 
 "Oh no, we are a long-established firm, Roland 
 and I, and we like big orders," she said excitedly. 
 "Besides it is all quite simple. Roland will con- 
 sider the money yours and consult you in every- 
 thing. You and he will spend your time either 
 in the village or thinking of the village." 
 
 "It seems rather ungrateful of me to say sq 
 
THE BOMAN ROAD 97 
 
 just now, mother," replied Wantage, "but I 
 would rather be left out of the matter." 
 
 Mrs. Groot leaned back upon the pillows. 
 "Left out of the matter?" she repeated. 
 
 There was a moment's pause. Wantage 
 stared shamefacedly at a pair of shiny genteel 
 boots. 
 
 "To tell you the truth, I have been getting 
 rather full up of the village lately," he said. 
 
 "Full up of the village?" She would not, 
 she could not, understand him. 
 
 "Yes, mother," continued Wantage firmly, 
 "I should like to ring the change on something 
 or somebody else. I might, for instance, see a 
 little more of my cousin." 
 
 "Your cousin! What cousin?" 
 
 "Well, Jean." 
 
 "Of Jean?" 
 
 Wantage twiddled a loose button on his coat. 
 "She is very pretty, mother, don't you think?" 
 
 "Pretty!" repeated Mrs. Groot, throwing up 
 her hands. "Oh, this is too absurd." 
 
 "I see nothing absurd in it, mother," Wantage 
 
98 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 answered with a certain stubborn ring in his 
 voice that Mrs. Groot felt echoed her own too 
 closely. 
 
 Roland walked to the window to hide his 
 amusement, and also his pity. He suddenly felt 
 that he would have given a good deal not to 
 have just then disappointed his mother. "Why, 
 Wantage, I believe you are a rake at heart," he 
 said shakily. 
 
 "Not quite that, Roland. I must confess 
 though that I should like to make things hum a 
 little if I had the means," and a glow of self- 
 approval warmed the sallow face of Wantage 
 with streaks of red. 
 
 Indeed the fellow's pleasure in himself and 
 the situation bid fair to be infectious; for the 
 life of him Roland could not help being amused 
 at this sudden twist in the situation. "So you 
 wouldn't plump your all in giving the village a 
 new set of roofs," he said. 
 
 "I would do a great deal for the village, but 
 there are other places and other things," replied 
 Wantage. 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 99 
 
 "Do you hear that?" asked Roland, turning to 
 his mother. "We left the other places and other 
 things out of account with Wantage." 
 
 Mrs. Groot while her sons were speaking had 
 dwindled quite quietly down to withered age. 
 "I am too tired to listen to sentiments that I am 
 sure by to-morrow Wantage will regret ever 
 having entertained," she answered, and leaning 
 back on the pillows closed her eyes. 
 
 Roland put his arm through his brother's and 
 led him from the room. "I congratulate you," 
 he said, as the door closed behind them. "You 
 are evidently as sick of the village as I am." 
 
 "Oh, ah, I must own to being a little tired 
 of it." 
 
 "Thanks for the truth, my dear Wantage; I 
 shall spend the money with a fresh zest because 
 I shall know I am spending it in a way you do 
 not approve 1" 
 
 "Do not misunderstand me," replied Wan- 
 tage, with geniune earnestness, "I am only too 
 delighted to see you spend your money on the 
 village, though I must admit that were I in your 
 
100 THE ROMAN KOAD 
 
 place I should not devote all my spare cash to 
 it. In fact I should hope to " 
 
 "Hope what?" 
 
 "Well (sheepishly), perhaps to marry." 
 
 "Marry! Great Scott, Wantage, who are 
 you thinking of marrying?" 
 
 Wantage withdrew his arm and faced Roland. 
 "Can't you guess?" he asked. 
 
 "Guess? No. Some pupil teacher, I sup- 
 pose." 
 
 "Not exactly," replied Wantage in a curiously 
 even tone. "I want to marry Jean." 
 
 Roland stared and then burst into wild, harsh 
 laughter. 
 
 Wantage paid no heed to him. "By Jove," 
 he said, "I could do with a little money just now; 
 but I suppose I shall have to whistle for it." 
 
 At that Roland clapped him hugely on the 
 back. "Whistle for money," he exclaimed. 
 "We can all fife that tune; but you, Wantage, 
 shall fife loudest and longest" 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THIS apostasy, this defection of Wantage 
 from his better self, had a diverse influence on 
 the conduct of Roland and his mother. Mrs. 
 Groot changed her rooms to some that did not 
 look out upon the village, and waited, with eyes 
 turned towards a bare and ugly hill, for her 
 younger son's home-coming from husks, swine 
 and guzzledom. Into Roland it seemed at 
 first to infuse the spirit of a master-builder; he 
 would drain and remodel the village from end 
 to end, prop up the church tower which bid fair 
 to topple down, and sweep with vicious swift- 
 ness reward to virtue. Not content with that, 
 Jean, he told himself, must play Queen of the 
 Ceremonies in this strange masque of all that 
 was not. She should be the central figure on 
 whom the artist perforce must lavish his finest 
 101 
 
THE ROMAN KOAD 
 
 touches, his most consummate art. Rotten Row, 
 the name savoured the scheme, should first 
 be rebuilt, and the architect having drawn out 
 the plan, Roland laid it before Jean. 
 
 She gently pushed it on one side with a light, 
 almost imperceptible, gesture of scorn. 
 
 "I can be of no help to you in this matter," 
 she said. 
 
 "There you mistake. Your interest is part 
 payment of the game. In fact the game might 
 never have been played if Fate had not allotted 
 to you the part of protagonist." 
 
 She loved this man and her love made her 
 very cold. "You cannot bargain with a third 
 party over such a matter," she replied. 
 
 "The third party holds the stakes, is umpire, 
 applauds the justice of the decisions," he an- 
 swered bitterly. 
 
 "You either owe the village something or you 
 do not." 
 
 "I knew," he said, bursting into a harsh laugh, 
 "that when it came to the point, you would take 
 sides." 
 
THE ROMAN KOAD 103 
 
 Her face was curiously expressionless. "And 
 what if I do take a side?" she asked. 
 
 He had given up so much to get this woman's 
 love, he determined to get it. He drew nearer ; 
 but for all his will to have his way, he could not 
 fit the desire of his heart to words. 
 
 "A man's words always fail him when he 
 wants them most," he exclaimed hoarsely. 
 
 Her face, which had grown as white and hard 
 as his, softened. 
 
 "Ah," she answered in her gentle voice, "why 
 should we wish it otherwise ? for if a man could 
 speak at such a moment, he would speak with 
 too much authority." 
 
 A dull hopelessness at having to lose this 
 woman possessed him; he had not known that 
 he loved her so much. "Jean," he said, "it is 
 when a man does not love that he tells a woman 
 of his love." 
 
 She looked past him to the wide-spreading 
 green fields and spoke to herself. 
 
 "When we are learning to love we would break 
 down barriers," she said, "but when we love we 
 
104 THE EOMAN ROAD 
 
 rejoice that we are barred out, lest all unwit- 
 tingly we should intrude." 
 
 Roland left her and went to his study. He 
 took the architect's plan and thrust it into the 
 fire. The flames twisted and shrivelled the 
 parchment, and soon the thing turned ash; 
 but Wantage was no nearer coming into his 
 own. 
 
 That day Death with delicate hands shook out 
 his veil over Mrs. Groot so that, to the dying 
 woman's eyes, all she fled so fast from, seemed 
 more strange and distant than the mystery she 
 hastened towards. In those last moments she 
 was haunted by the vision of something that 
 needs had to be revealed. In other days Mrs. 
 Groot had pecked at the idea of a death-bed 
 confession, urged to it maybe by a half-formed 
 wish to have revenge on Roland, but, death at 
 hand, it was not revenge she thought of; she was 
 possessed by a vague notion that her one road 
 to safety lay through a public disclosure of all 
 that she had hitherto kept carefully hidden. 
 
 Hastily, at her request, an audience was gath- 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 105 
 
 ered together, Wantage, Jean, Miss O'Rell, 
 the Miss Skiffingtons, the Ragstocks. They filed 
 in and stood and looked at the dying woman who 
 lay picking at the sheets as if she were picking 
 flecks of her own soul. 
 
 Raising herself feebly, Mrs. Groot counted 
 heads. "I am glad, so glad you have all come. 
 I had only Roland to trust to," and she looked 
 dimly across to where she thought her eldest son 
 stood. "I have wanted to see you all so long 
 and so much, so much and so, so long" She 
 leant back on the pillows. "I am tired," she 
 gasped, "tired. It has been a long battle against 
 fate and against well, no matter. Dear Ro- 
 land, I have always loved him best, but I must 
 be fair to all." The dying woman stopped short 
 and beckoned Wantage to her. "Groot is yours, 
 Wantage," she said, "and poor, erring, mis- 
 guided Roland has no right even to the name. 
 He has known this for a long time and that is 
 why I have found it so difficult to tell you. 
 Right, Wantage, is harder to do than most 
 people credit, and it has been the struggle, the 
 
106 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 ceaseless struggle to do right, that has killed me. 
 Be kind to Roland, Wantage, for though he has 
 not helped me I should be glad to think that you 
 will help him." The small voice twittered away 
 into nothing, and the guests as so many dolls 
 stared woodenly at their feet, and then as wood- 
 enly rose and marched out, leaving the room 
 empty of all but Jean, Wantage, Roland and 
 the dying woman. Quiet and still they stayed. 
 Death might have claimed them also for his 
 own. 
 
 Suddenly Jean smiled so unheralded a vis- 
 itor none had well awaited, and yet of all the 
 guests it seemed the god-bidden one. It came, 
 a breath of that finer hope which blows athwart 
 human despair, a mystic, intangible freshness 
 breathing men back to God. Then Jean also 
 passed out of the room and Wantage drew 
 near the bedside. His face had the severe ex- 
 pression of a man who condemns with no uneasy 
 sense of the narrowness of his own under- 
 standing. 
 
 "I am glad you told me, mother," he re- 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 107 
 
 marked, "though I am afraid what you said 
 won't help much to put things right." 
 
 Mrs. Groot looked at him, pushed him away, 
 and he went, leaving her alone with Roland. 
 She tried to peer through the thickening dark- 
 ness for Roland's figure, but could not see him. 
 
 "Are you there, Roland?" she asked. 
 
 He came to her. 
 
 "I have always loved you best, Roland," she 
 murmured. He understood that she spoke the 
 truth. 
 
 "Are you happier, mother?" he asked. 
 
 "I don't know," she answered feebly. 
 
 The setting sun sought the horizon, filling as 
 it did so the room with a noble radiance. Mrs. 
 Groot looked at it, first carelessly, then with in- 
 creasing interest. 
 
 "What a lot of light," she said, and died. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THEY buried Mrs. Groot, and with her as 
 much of her shame as the grave can swallow in,- 
 which, after all, is not much. When the funeral 
 was over and Mrs. Groot stamped into the earth 
 like some frail little butterfly, Roland crossed 
 the park and close to the Roman Road found 
 Jean. He had come in search of scorn; but so 
 worn and sad the girl looked he scarce had heart 
 to seek it from such hands. 
 
 "Jean," he said, "I have been kicked out, and 
 it is only fair that you should have your kick 
 with the rest I love you, Jean. I hoped to 
 have told you this with Groot, the name and the 
 property, at my back, but " he stopped short 
 and stood dumb and bitter, stuttering after 
 words that would not come. 
 
 She did not answer for a moment; she loved 
 the man ; but felt that there was something gro- 
 tesque in his attitude towards her. 
 108 
 
THE ROMAN ROAD 109 
 
 "I love you, Roland," she admitted, and 
 turned away to hide a half-smile. 
 
 He had awaited her scorn, but her love he 
 had no room for; where should he house it? 
 
 "Jean," he said, "you cannot be wife to a 
 thief." 
 
 She took his hands and drew him towards the 
 Roman Road. "We are but children, Roland, 
 you and I," she said. "Let us run from all the 
 mistakes that we have made and leave men and 
 women to put away our broken toys and raze 
 our castles." 
 
 He grew more stubborn. "They shall not 
 say my wife has a thief for husband," he burst 
 out. 
 
 "Hush," she said softly, "we have played too 
 long and grown too earnest. What is the past, 
 Roland, that we should value it more than the 
 present ? Even to dwell on the past is to forfeit 
 the future. Look at the Roman Road. See 
 how triumphantly it presses on. Let us trust 
 ourselves to the Roman Road." 
 
 "Jean," he answered, and his harsh voice 
 
110 THE ROMAN ROAD 
 
 sounded harsher than ever before, "this is mad- 
 ness. I have not the money to support a wife." 
 
 She laughed. "I have enough and to spare," 
 she said. "We will lend ourselves sufficient to 
 be happy on and if we need more we will work 
 for it. See," and she pointed westward. "The 
 sun has begun to sink; soon the night will be 
 here when no man can work. Let us hasten, 
 Roland, while there is yet time." 
 
 Hand in hand, helpless as children, they fled 
 down the Roman Road. 
 
THE BALANCE 
 
THE BALANCE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ABOVE the festering streets of Naples the 
 new moon, a silver ripple, was blown through 
 the Italian night. Fragile, fugitive, she fled 
 amid the clouds, while from below the beautiful, 
 bestial city harried her with gross cries, cruel 
 laughter, and the dark waters of the Bay re- 
 vealed how tremulous was her glistening flight. 
 A breeze scarce stirred the palms that rose tall 
 and majestic before a palace; houses hemmed 
 the palace in, and from its foot the street sank 
 abrupt, treacherous and squalid to the quay. 
 Doors, windows, street were filled with gaily 
 dressed, chattering men and women; the palace 
 alone seemed deserted; but high up in the top- 
 most story, half hidden in shadow, was the 
 
 113 
 
114 THE BALANCE 
 
 solitary figure of a man. So grey he looked 
 amidst the greyness, so old, so still, the palace 
 could well have claimed him as part of itself; 
 then he leant forward, struck a match, and the 
 light falling on him showed that he was but a 
 youth with a tired face. The flame flickered a 
 moment, went out, and the black horde of 
 shadows swarmed in once more upon him, 
 mysterious, intangible, blighting they were as 
 those 
 
 "Fears and sorrows that infest the soul.'* 
 
 Suddenly with much cracking of whip, jan- 
 gling of bells, and followed by maledictions from 
 the crowd, a carrozza rattled down the street 
 and halted before the palace. Flinging a coin 
 to the driver, a young man jumped out and dived 
 into the gloomy entrance. His feet struck the 
 steps with a virile sound, sending tidings of his 
 coming racing in advance; the corridors echoed 
 as he spurned through them on his way upwards ; 
 from gallery to gallery, from tier to tier, he 
 sprang till at last, panting and breathless, he 
 
THE BALANCE 115 
 
 reached the topmost story and found himself 
 barred back by a massive door. Within nothing 
 stirred. Raising his hand he rapped out a quick 
 knock. 
 
 "East," he cried, "Richard East, are you 
 there?" 
 
 His voice, fresh and resonant, rang through 
 the palace, only to get muffled and lost in some 
 far away waste of emptiness; while disturbed by 
 the outcry a legion of bats wheeled from end to 
 end of the great corridor, bruising themselves 
 against the walls with a hideous, spattering 
 noise. The man recoiled, shuddered and re- 
 newed his assault upon the door. It opened 
 quietly; and he stared into a grey, shadowful 
 room, which seemed to protest by its silence 
 against the youthfulness of his intrusive clamour. 
 For the first time he misdoubted the impulse 
 which had sent him helter-skelter thither from 
 the other end of the continent : he felt a desire 
 to bolt back more rapidly than he had come; 
 and as he paused, hesitating, a gentle mocking 
 laugh sounded among the shadows. 
 
116 THE BALANCE 
 
 "Oh, damn it, Richard!" he said, and en- 
 tered. 
 
 A brass lamp with three spouts, old as the 
 palace, threw a vague light on the frescoed walls 
 and up towards the arched ceiling, where, among 
 dust and shadows, a few pale stars still shone. 
 The room had but a table and two chairs, yet 
 with windows wide to the purple night, it sus- 
 tained an air of magnificence. 
 
 Sliding unobtrusively into a seat, the new- 
 comer flung one leg over the other and glanced 
 with a mixture of shyness, embarrassment and 
 affection at Richard East. 
 
 The lean, brown face of Richard East did 
 not lend itself well to description. If the man's 
 reticent spirit was portrayed, it was portrayed 
 veiled. There was nothing common or unclean 
 in the face, much that was harsh and uncouth, 
 much that was tender, delicate and beautiful. 
 
 "Well, Jeffrey?" he said. 
 
 Jeffrey coloured ; he was oppressed by his own 
 raw youth and inexperience, and by the knowl- 
 edge that he had condemned unheard this friend 
 
THE BALANCE 117 
 
 he loved, but did not understand. Then he 
 
 bungled into speech. 
 
 * 'There is a fishing village over in England," 
 
 he began, u just the usual sort of English fishing 
 
 village; a strip of sand, rocks, the sea tearing 
 
 over them, and plenty of wind;" he stopped and 
 
 looked helplessly at Richard. 
 
 "Was it to tell me that you came here?" 
 
 Richard asked. 
 
 Jeffrey sought refuge from discomfort in a 
 
 half truth. "Yes," he admitted. "I was in 
 
 Paris. Something made me think of the 
 
 village." 
 
 "And that something was?" 
 
 "I had been thinking of Naples." 
 
 "The two places are so different." 
 
 "That's it; they are so different " 
 
 Richard smiled: "The one place all health." 
 "The one place all health," repeated Jeffrey. 
 "The other all disease." 
 "Naples is a pest-house," Jeffrey blurted. 
 "And now," said Richard, "you must give 
 
 me your real reason for coming." 
 
118 THE BALANCE 
 
 But at this point circumstances became too 
 strong for Jeffrey; the most truthful of men, he 
 lied out flat and simple. "I haven't the ghost 
 of a notion why I came," he answered. Snap- 
 ping open his watch, he glanced at the time, an 
 expression of relief crossing his hot, flurried face. 
 "I must be off. I want to catch the night mail 
 back." For a moment he stood looking at the 
 Bay, which, seamed from end to end by the moon, 
 fringed with harbour lights, slept beneath a 
 many-coloured cloak. To him this marvellous, 
 living sea reeked with the abomination of en- 
 chantment; the unnatural beauty of Naples was 
 but part of her foul spiritual grossness in which 
 his friend's soul had been engulfed and sucked 
 down. Suppressing a shudder, he turned away. 
 
 On the table a bottle of Marano, a vine leaf 
 for stopper, had been pushed in amongst a heap 
 of loose manuscript. Jeffrey bent down and 
 scribbled an address on one of the blank sheets. 
 
 "I read your last book," he remarked absently. 
 
 Richard made no comment. 
 
 Picking up his hat, Jeffrey walked to the door 
 
THE BALANCE 119 
 
 and stood a moment looking back at his friend, 
 already lost to him in the shadow of the vast 
 empty room. 
 
 "Richard," he said with sudden passion, 
 "come out of this place. Come out into the 
 fresh air." Then he went, and the echo of his 
 retreating footsteps rushed hither and thither 
 through the long galleries, as if anxious to find 
 some way of escape; abruptly at last they broke 
 free and were gone, and the great palace was 
 no more than a forlorn, forsaken shell, so 
 eagerly had this man cast it aside in his quest 
 of an ampler home. 
 
 Little by little, still feverishly crying, Naples 
 fell into fitful slumber; the clouds sank to the 
 horizon, and the new moon, a ghost within her 
 crescent, canted towards the dawn. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 A STRIP of sand, a distant village, and out 
 among the breakers, Jeffrey. The green waves 
 tossed him from one to the other, and he, diving 
 through their embrace, caught them by their 
 great white beards. Jeffrey loved this sea which 
 washed the wild coasts where his fishing village 
 stood, loved it for its stupendous strength and 
 virility; stung by its kisses he coveted nothing 
 from woman: and the breakers pawed and 
 fondled him, as if he were some whelp sprung 
 from their own salt loins ; then uprearing, moun- 
 tainous and hissing, shot him down icy lengths 
 of sea to land. He dressed, the wind for 
 towel, and clambered across the rocks till a deep 
 narrow gorge filled with the swirling tide barred 
 back his progress. Near a mass of green sam- 
 phire on the cliff opposite lay a woman asleep. 
 Her pale face was turned towards Jeffrey, and 
 
 120 
 
THE BALANCE 121 
 
 against the dead blackness of the rocks her black 
 hair was lustrous. The body, carelessly out- 
 stretched, retained inviolate its air of guarded 
 mystery ; and the sun's rays playing on the sleep- 
 ing form seemed but an iridescence of woman- 
 hood. Very lovely the woman looked lying 
 there. A feeling of awe stole over Jeffrey; and 
 while he yet stood watching, the woman, touched 
 by some hidden sorrow, wept. Quietly the tears 
 had gathered behind the closed lids ; quietly they 
 fell, and unmoved the dead black rock received 
 them. Raising her poor hands in protest the 
 woman wept on. What communing did the 
 spirit have with that body thus to disturb the 
 serene recess of sleep? Those hands, raised 
 in mute entreaty, against what did they appeal ? 
 Stirred to the depths Jeffrey moved away, and 
 left the sea a white fire to guard the woman 
 with leaping flames. Long it thundered at the 
 base of the cliff, then drew off, muttering in all 
 its channels: and the woman, waking and con- 
 scious of no hidden grief, knew not that she had 
 wept. She rose and wound the loose masses of 
 
122 THE BALANCE 
 
 her hair round her shapely head, her body 
 swaying joyously against the breeze. 
 
 A bare twenty summers old, Rachel Loraine 
 was more girl than woman, and light of heart 
 and step she followed the path which led down- 
 wards to the beach. On the far horizon the 
 brown-sailed fishing-boats, waiting to beat back 
 with the turn of tide, seemed a mirage of some 
 event yet to fall out. At sight of them lying 
 there watchful, patient, assured, a vague yearn- 
 ing filled Rachel, and her heart hungered, but 
 after what she did not know. Swiftly she crossed 
 the sands, and leaving behind the village, the 
 whitewashed inn, where she and her father had 
 that morning taken rooms, followed a road which 
 with abrupt zigzags crept up the hill's face. 
 Far above, the pine-woods awaited her approach ; 
 and she toiled on till at last the road reared 
 straight up and dived into the sombre forest. 
 A little afraid, Rachel glanced back. The fish- 
 ing-boats still lay motionless. Their inactivity 
 annoyed her as a laggard future might have 
 done; quickening pace she penetrated deeper 
 
THE BALANCE 123 
 
 into the wood till at a bend of the path a cottage 
 came in sight, wedged against a flat-faced rock. 
 A gaunt, middle-aged woman sat near the door- 
 step knitting. The trees grew close round her, 
 and before the two windows on either side were 
 two heart-shaped beds, bare of flowers. A low 
 moan came from within the cottage. Rachel 
 straightened herself abruptly. Again and again 
 the dull, agonised sound, followed by a child's 
 weary sobbing, mourned past the woman, who 
 with head bent over her work knitted on un- 
 moved. A few quick steps brought Rachel to 
 her side. 
 
 "There isn't nought to be done. The doctor 
 says so," the woman announced. "He's got to 
 die: the sooner the better." Her face was white, 
 with blue lines about the eyes and mouth, but 
 her voice was stolid to hardness. 
 
 Rachel brushed by her and entered the cot- 
 tage. A withered, skinny, big-headed, wide- 
 eyed child lay twisted half under and half out 
 of the sheets, and standing looking down at him 
 was Jeffrey. The man's huge frame, his utter 
 
THE BALANCE 
 
 helplessness, struck Rachel. Turning quickly 
 she knelt beside the child, but the child would 
 have none of her, and impotent as Jeffrey, her 
 all as his was to compassionate. While she knelt 
 there, her tears mingling with the child's, Rich- 
 ard East entered the room. He came to the 
 head of the bed, unstrapped the knapsack from 
 his shoulders, and laid it with slow deliberation 
 on the floor. 
 
 The child, ceasing to cry, watched him. 
 
 "Who are you?" said the child. 
 
 "The friend of the butcher's dog," Richard 
 answered, and the child accepted the intro- 
 duction. 
 
 "What do you do?" he asked. 
 
 "I write stories." 
 
 "What kind of stories?" 
 
 "Stories of men and boys and the fierce ad- 
 ventures of the spirit." 
 
 "Then," said the child, "you will write about 
 
 me." 
 
 "I will get paper and pen," replied Richard, 
 and took both from his knapsack. Intent on 
 
THE BALANCE 125 
 
 interesting the dying boy he did not appear to 
 see either Rachel or his friend. Withdrawing 
 to the window Rachel watched and listened, as 
 might some less privileged child, who, allowed 
 to look on, was yet neither to be seen nor heard. 
 Jeffrey also was silent: vague misgiving filled 
 him. A few short hours back and he would have 
 been overjoyed at the sight of Richard; but now 
 something had come between Richard and his 
 welcome and Jeffrey felt that it was the pres- 
 ence of Rachel. 
 
 "What is the book to be called?" the boy 
 asked. 
 
 "The book's name," said Richard, "is The 
 Magnificent Adventures of King Pain's Hench- 
 
 man.' " 
 
 "What is a Henchman?" 
 
 "When real kings wore real crowns a hench- 
 man led King Pain's horse. A henchman is a 
 servitor." 
 
 "A Servitor?" 
 
 "Yes," said Richard, "we all wish to serve, 
 but only the great are born to serve." 
 
126 THE BALANCE 
 
 The child, who had half risen, lay back once 
 more on the bed. "Don't speak, please," he ex- 
 claimed, adding after a pause: "We shall want 
 a big piece of paper." 
 
 "The biggest." 
 
 "Who will see the magnificent adventures?" 
 asked the child. 
 
 "No one," said Richard authoritatively. 
 
 "No one !" 
 
 "Magnificent adventures are never witnessed 
 or they would not be magnificent." 
 
 "Ah !" said the child, adding not without sat- 
 isfaction, "I shall have to tell you or you could 
 not write them down." 
 
 "I am 'No One,' " observed Richard. 
 
 "You must put that in the title too," said the 
 child, and Richard took the paper and wrote 
 down, "The Magnificent Adventures of King 
 Pain's Henchman as told to No One." "Now 
 we must fill the book." 
 
 "Well," said the child, "I was born. I meant 
 to be like everybody else." 
 
 "I hope not," Richard put in, "for then it 
 
THE BALANCE 127 
 
 wouldn't have been worth while being born 
 at all." 
 
 "I mean," corrected the child, "that I meant 
 to have been able to run very fast, a little faster 
 than the other boys, just enough to beat them." 
 
 "Ah!" exclaimed distracted Richard, "then 
 you would never have been King Pain's hench- 
 man and the book would never have been 
 written." 
 
 "I did not think of that till this minute," the 
 child admitted and looked solemnly into Rich- 
 ard's face. 
 
 "Well," said Richard, "we must pass it over." 
 
 "Do you think King Pain will pass it over?" 
 
 "He is a great king and it is your first 
 offence." 
 
 "I am glad it is my first offence," said the boy. 
 "How," he asked, "can I have magnificent ad- 
 ventures?" 
 
 "How!" exclaimed Richard, surprised. 
 
 "In bed, I mean." 
 
 "Magnificent adventures," answered Richard, 
 "are adventures of the spirit. Other adventures 
 
128 THE BALANCE 
 
 are merely adventures. No man counts those 
 in at all." 
 
 "Ah!" said the boy and shut his eyes tight. 
 Then suddenly his body twitched together and 
 he uttered a sharp cry. Rachel and Jeffrey 
 turned their eyes to Richard, as if asking how 
 he would meet an emergency they found so baf- 
 fling. Richard's face was calm, almost placid. 
 
 "King Pain speaks to you," he said softly. 
 
 "Is that how the king speaks ?" the child asked, 
 surprised into attention. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "What do you think he said?" 
 
 "He told you to forget him." 
 
 The child's white, shrunken face grew pink, 
 as he strove to be a faithful henchman. Then, 
 all unawaited by Richard, the boy smiled. "I 
 am glad I serve a king," he murmured. 
 
 "It is a great honour to serve King Pain," 
 Richard replied, kneeling down beside the 
 bed. 
 
 "What do you think he said then?" the child 
 asked feebly. 
 
THE BALANCE 129 
 
 u He told you to sleep and when he called you 
 were to acclaim him." 
 
 "Acclaim him?" 
 
 "All kings are acclaimed. You must cry 
 'The King! The King!'" 
 
 The boy's face lit up. "I am glad I serve 
 a king," he repeated, and shutting his eyes dozed 
 off to sleep. 
 
 "None but a child could learn that lesson in 
 twenty minutes," said Richard softly to himself, 
 and looking up he saw the woman standing by 
 the bed. 
 
 'Tis the first natural sleep he's had these 
 many days and nights," she remarked. Her face 
 grew less hard. She went back to the kitchen, 
 the others following. "I'll not let you go," she 
 exclaimed with sudden fierceness, turning on 
 Richard. "Leastways not till the lad is dead. 
 You can please un better than I can: 'tis more 
 a matter of hours than days." 
 
 Richard sat down in a big wooden arm-chair. 
 Jeffrey went forward to welcome him, but had 
 no welcome to give. 
 
130 THE BALANCE 
 
 "So you have come," he said feebly, and 
 touched Richard on the shoulder. 
 
 Richard had fallen into a dream and did not 
 hear and for a moment Jeffrey halted indecisive, 
 then followed Rachel out. At the cottage door 
 they both glanced back. Richard's frail body 
 was lost in the amplitude of the massive chair; 
 but his spirit dominated the quiet room. Sup- 
 pressing a sigh Jeffrey left him. Scarce had he 
 gone before Richard awoke from his dream, 
 hurried to the door, gazed after them, and 
 Jeffrey turned and saw that Richard's eyes were 
 fixed on Rachel. Deep down in Jeffrey's heart 
 a dull fire kindled into life. 
 
 The long track of forest drew together as 
 Rachel and he hurried through it ; soon they be- 
 gan to descend the hill, while stretched out before 
 them bare and motionless was the sea. Rachel's 
 eyes searched the horizon for the fishing boats : 
 they were no longer visible. With sails clewed 
 against the mast the boats lay safe in harbour. 
 The trivial circumstance filled her with strange 
 satisfaction; turning to Jeffrey, she asked him 
 to tell her the name of his friend. 
 
THE BALANCE 131 
 
 "He is Richard East, the novelist," Jeffrey 
 answered in curt tones. 
 
 She made no comment till they reached the 
 inn, then she stopped on the whitewashed steps. 
 "We were so helpless till he came," she said 
 smiling. 
 
 Jeffrey did not smile; his face hardened, her 
 words had called up a different vision of help- 
 lessness; a vision of her asleep and weeping on 
 the black rocks. 
 
 His grudging silence displeased Rachel: she 
 passed into the house and left him a prey to 
 disquieting thought. He loved Richard East; 
 yet had become hostile to him. Jeffrey, by nat- 
 ure loyal, had hitherto found scant difficulty in 
 keeping true to his engagements and to his fellow- 
 men ; but now it seemed that circumstances were 
 about to prove less pliable. That night he could 
 not sleep, and as he tossed to and fro on the 
 bed he always seemed to hear Richard's step 
 coming down the hill towards the village, and 
 it was bitter to Jeffrey that he had no welcome 
 in his heart for Richard. It sometimes seems 
 
132 THE BALANCE 
 
 that the sinner caught between the anvil and the 
 hammer does so deafen men with his groans 
 they have no ears to hear the just man's plaint 
 that he cannot be wholly just or loyal. But in 
 truth this world is so contrived that the man 
 who is born with a loyal nature pays as heavily 
 in fruitless strivings after an impossible loyalty, 
 as ever does the disloyal man for those weird 
 inclinations of his towards treason. Man's ideal 
 of justice is but a poor affair placed beside this 
 implacable rectitude of ruling. Good and evil 
 are after all but different rays of the same spec- 
 trum, thrown out by the soul in its efforts to 
 grow. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 MAJOR LORAINE hurried through breakfast, 
 while the dog-cart that was to take him to a 
 favourite trout stream waited in the street be- 
 low. He was fond of his daughter, fonder of 
 sport, and having gathered up his rod and fish- 
 ing tackle, he kissed Rachel, ran down the stairs, 
 jumped into the dog-cart and drove off. Jeffrey, 
 who seldom criticised his neighbours, felt, as he 
 watched Major Loraine's departure, something 
 not unlike scorn for the man and fathers in 
 general, a scorn Rachel augmented, when a few 
 minutes later she left the inn, and followed the 
 upward winding road towards the forest. Jef- 
 rey half rose, then sank back once more in his 
 chair and turned his face to the sea, which, with 
 undulating, sorrowful sounds, fretted round 
 and over the distant shoals. 
 
 Jeffrey knew little of women : if they had fig- 
 133 
 
134 THE BALANCE 
 
 ured in his life at all they had figured inci- 
 dentally, and played an unimportant part. He 
 had never loved a woman ; but woman's position 
 in a world refashioned by men with a view 
 mainly to their own needs, had often filled him 
 with disquietude and profound pity. Woman, 
 for her part, had regarded Jeffrey and his atti- 
 tude, so far as she had troubled to regard either, 
 with a like indifference : his pity had been thrown 
 away on her; his chivalry misunderstood; and 
 yet all unknown to Rachel, it was to these pas- 
 sions in the man she had made her first appeal. 
 Unconscious of the tie she had formed, the 
 girl pursued her way towards the forest; while 
 the delicate freshness of the spring breeze and 
 the grey arched heaven out of which it came, 
 seemed to her but part of a beautiful dream 
 world waking into melodious life. Deep hid- 
 den in the silence of the forest the cottage 
 awaited her. A hesitant shyness fell on Rachel : 
 she was thankful to the soft pine mould for 
 muffling the sound of her approach. The cot- 
 tage window stood open; raising herself she 
 
THE BALANCE 135 
 
 peered in and her eyes met Richard's staring 
 hungrily out. Rachel drew back among the 
 trees. 
 
 "The King! The King!" the child cried. 
 
 Richard went to him. u The seven longest 
 days in the butcher's dog's life were of course 
 the seven days before he could see," he remarked, 
 raising the child in his arms. 
 
 "How he must have wished to see," said the 
 child. 
 
 "What do you think he wished to see most?" 
 asked Richard. 
 
 "Oh, himself." 
 
 "He did," admitted Richard. "The first day 
 he pictured himself as big as the whole world, 
 but that was dull because there was no room 
 for any one else to stand and look at him, so on 
 the second day he made himself a little smaller, 
 not much smaller, just enough to leave space 
 for a narrow rim all round the world for other 
 dogs to stand and gape at him." 
 
 "It is nice to feel big," said the child. 
 
 "It is," admitted Richard, "but then one has 
 
136 THE BALANCE 
 
 to come down in size before one can do anything. 
 The butcher's dog found that out. It vexed 
 him to think that half the dogs in the world had 
 only seen his head and the dogs remaining over 
 had only seen his tail. He wanted to turn round 
 and show the dogs that had seen his head his 
 tail, and the ones that had seen his tail his 
 head." 
 
 "What a pity," the child remarked, "that the 
 other dogs could not see right round him." 
 
 "Then," said Richard, "he would never have 
 thought of turning round himself." 
 
 "Did he turn round?" asked the child 
 anxiously. 
 
 "Yes, on the third day. But of course he had 
 to make himself a little smaller to do it. 
 
 "How much smaller?" 
 
 "Not much. He scraped all the other dogs' 
 noses in turning. They weren't best pleased, but 
 he didn't mind that. The worst part came after 
 he had turned round three times, for then he 
 wanted to walk. That of course meant making 
 himself smaller once more." 
 
THE BALANCE 137 
 
 "How vexing," said the child. "Did he 
 do it?" 
 
 "Yes," replied Richard. "He was sorry to 
 make himself smaller, but he was glad to have 
 room to walk. That was the fourth day. He 
 wasn't glad long though, for the very next morn- 
 ing he wanted to run and there was no room 
 to get up pace." 
 
 "Ah !" exclaimed the child, "how difficult it 
 is to fit all you want in." 
 
 "Yes," Richard admitted, "the butcher's dog 
 had to give up something for everything he 
 took." Sadness fell on Richard as he made this 
 admission: raising his eyes he looked towards 
 the forest and saw Rachel. So quiet she stood 
 there, she might have been a flower growing in 
 the heart-shaped bed. 
 
 Richard drew nearer to her. "For everything 
 he took the butcher's dog had to give something 
 up," he repeated, half in doubt. 
 
 "Is the balance so just?" she asked; and he, 
 remembering all that he had taken and thinking 
 on the stored and argosied future, looked down 
 upon this woman. 
 
138 THE BALANCE 
 
 "Men pray that the balance may not be just," 
 he said hurriedly. 
 
 u How big was the butcher's dog now?" cried 
 the child. 
 
 "Not so very much bigger than the other 
 dogs," Richard answered absently and again he 
 looked at Rachel. 
 
 None too tall, yet taller than she seemed, her 
 head would have been proudly carried had it 
 not been so graciously inclined. The darkness 
 of depths lay pooled within her eyes, and he, 
 who saw down into them, was refreshed. She 
 was not clever, but her spirit turned towards 
 the truth, as does a flower to the sun; for the 
 rest, her brow was broad, low and white, and 
 her mouth but what matter it was so 
 beautiful, it angered Richard even to look at 
 it. 
 
 His pulse quickened. Why had she come, 
 this woman, disturbing his dreams, and driving 
 his body like a spear through his soul? He al- 
 most hated her. Then the child spoke. "You 
 are forgetting about the dog." 
 
THE BALANCE 139 
 
 Richard's face softened, and there came into 
 it a wealth of humour and tenderness. "Oh no, 
 I am not forgetting the dog," he answered, "that 
 was the fifth day it had been blind. The sixth 
 day he wanted to jump a ditch. The ditch did 
 for him. He jumped, opened his eyes just as 
 he landed and found himself the smallest pup 
 in the litter." 
 
 "Ah," cried the child, "how terribly disap- 
 pointed he must have been." 
 
 "Well," said Richard, "he hadn't time to 
 think of the disapppointment." 
 
 "How was that?" asked the child. 
 
 "He was so occupied in looking about and 
 seeing things. The world was bigger than he 
 had expected and there were more people in it, 
 and ever> dog and cat and man and mouse he 
 met talked a different language, and he had to 
 learn their language before he could speak to 
 them. You see he had to tell them all about 
 himself." 
 
 "Of course," admitted the child, "and how 
 he had grown smaller and smaller." 
 
140 THE BALANCE 
 
 "Those that looked on from outside thought 
 he had grown bigger," said Richard. 
 
 "Which had he done?" asked the child. 
 
 "No one will be able to tell exactly what hap- 
 pened to the butcher's dog till the secret of the 
 whole universe is revealed," Richard answered. 
 
 The boy drew in a deep breath. "How big," 
 he said, "how very, very big." 
 
 Silence fell on them all, and again Richard's 
 eyes strayed towards Rachel. Her spirit, heavily 
 shrouded in dreams, seemed to have gone apart 
 and left the body to express its loveliness 
 unaided. 
 
 "She does not think," Richard murmured to 
 himself. "Nature thinks through her." 
 
 "The King I The King !" cried the boy. 
 
 Richard gathered him close in his arms, and 
 walking to and fro strung nursery rhymes to- 
 gether and sang softly: 
 
 " Tell me a tale of crowns and kings, 
 
 Tell me a tale of gold, 
 Tell me a tale of wondrous things, 
 Tell me a tale of old. 
 
THE BALANCE 141 
 
 " Tell me a tale of deeds well done, 
 
 Tell me a tale of strife, 
 Tell me a tale of conquest won, 
 Over the ills of life. " 
 
 The boy slept, but Richard, afraid to lay him 
 back in the bed lest he should wake, sang on 
 of things old and new, of life and death and 
 the mighty deeds of the spirit. Without, Rachel 
 listened; but Richard had forgotten her presence 
 and when later he looked for her she had gone ; 
 only two small footprints in the heart-shaped 
 bed marked the spot where she had stood. Dis- 
 quietude filled Richard at the sight of those two 
 small footprints. He went out and covered 
 them up. Hardly had he done so before he 
 longed to see the little prints once more upon 
 the warm brown earth. Stooping he tried to 
 recover them; but the earth kept their hiding- 
 place secret. Vexed he wandered through the 
 forest till he came to the brow of the hill. Even- 
 ing was beginning to fall and Jeffrey's great form 
 towered suddenly out of the dusk between Rich- 
 ard and the village. It seemed to block his path 
 
142 THE BALANCE 
 
 and thrust him back on to alien lands. Loneli- 
 ness and resentment filled Richard. 
 
 "You asked me to your village," he said. 
 
 Jeffrey did not answer; and yet he felt that 
 his silence was but an added disloyalty. 
 
 "I have come," said Richard. 
 
 Still Jeffrey did not speak and Richard thought 
 he knew the reason of Jeffrey's silence. For a 
 moment the two men looked at one another, and 
 it seemed to Richard that never before had 
 Jeffrey met him with a greater distrust; then 
 without a word, Jeffrey went, and striding away, 
 was swallowed up in the mist. 
 
 Richard distrusted himself; but it is when we 
 trust ourselves least that we would have those 
 we love trust us most, and Jeffrey's defection 
 was bitter to bear. Such a storm swept across 
 the shallows of Richard's soul that in truth it 
 was small wonder the man thought himself far 
 out at sea. Richard's anger gathered and he 
 hated woman, the cause of all his trouble. What 
 had woman ever brought him but thirst and 
 anguish, humiliation and shame? She had no 
 
THE BALANCE 143 
 
 part or lot in all that was beautiful in his life, 
 in all that was of worth. He hated her and 
 her puny intellect; her pygmy soul. Night 
 closed in around him; little points of colour 
 showed where the village lay warm against the 
 hill. Richard could almost see the fisher-folk 
 sitting round their homely fires ; he could almost 
 hear the laughter and the voices. His soul went 
 out in exile, and there was none to comfort her; 
 none to say : "We also are alone." 
 
 He drew near the village, gazed upon it, and 
 as some famished, homeless dog, tracked it 
 round, then hurrying away he came to the black 
 rocks. The night was dark and the wind blew 
 off shore ; the ocean might have been an old pine 
 forest, so resinous was the air. Drawing out a 
 flute, Richard began to play. The silvery music 
 crept through the silence, and the moon, which 
 had long lingered, crossed the horizon, as if in 
 answer to a call, and rising she sailed upwards 
 followed by a wavering greyness. Her beau- 
 tiful face, crowned and crested with all she could 
 not do, was turned towards Richard, but to see 
 
144 THE BALANCE 
 
 it did not heal his desolation, and the moon 
 seemed to know how ineffectual was her woman- 
 hood, and with a travesty of faithfulness, stayed 
 on although she was not wanted. 
 
 Far off Rachel too heard the melody, and find- 
 ing it beautiful she drew nearer to it. Across 
 the sands the music threaded its way straight 
 to the black rocks, and they loomed down on 
 her lost ships at sea derelict, but not utterly 
 forsaken, while the melody clung to their ragged, 
 broken sides. Fear filled Rachel; her spirit 
 trembled to drift so companioned in such soli- 
 tudes. Hurriedly she raised her eyes, seeking 
 help from she knew not whom, and saw, look- 
 ing down on her, Richard. 
 
 "I thought," she said, "that the children of 
 Ruel were playing on the rocks." 
 
 "Who are the children of Ruel?" 
 
 "They are fairies," she answered, "and their 
 music is honey-sweet." 
 
 He laughed. "Did the music sound sweet?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "Yes," she said. 
 
THE BALANCE 146 
 
 "It came from a bitter heart," he returned 
 harshly. 
 
 Hurt at having thus intruded on him, Rachel 
 drew back. "Strangers make such foolish mis- 
 takes. Do they not ?" she said, and turned back 
 towards the inn, and he peered after her, till 
 night, as the belated fall of wings closed over 
 and hid her from view. 
 
 A sigh burst from him. He despised women ; 
 he despised that part of his nature to which they 
 appealed ; he despised them for appealing to it ; 
 he had got nothing from them but soilure, and 
 yet how beautiful this woman was; with what 
 compelling force she drew him : she had but to 
 show herself and every pulse in his body bade 
 him follow her. Suddenly he remembered that 
 the dying boy had need of him. He would go 
 to the boy ; he would forget the woman. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 RAIN followed with the night tide, and fell 
 heavily throughout the following day : the wind 
 blew in gusts, which, growing more frequent as 
 the hours went on, ended at last in a steady, pro- 
 longed moan. Major Loraine tapped the 
 barometer for the third time, and for the 
 third time receiving the same answer, coun- 
 termanded the dog-cart, and reconciled him- 
 self to a day spent indoors. He looked up 
 his diary to see what flies he had used, what 
 luck he had on that day a year back; and but- 
 ton-holing Jeffrey confided the whole tale of ad- 
 venture to him; together with the exact weight 
 of the fish caught and a less exact surmise as 
 to the weight of the fish hooked but not landed. 
 Jeffrey, who from where he sat could see Rachel 
 standing in the porch, listened patiently till a 
 break came between the showers, and the girl 
 
 146 
 
THE BALANCE 147 
 
 went down the steps and disappeared; then he 
 grew restless, changed his chair to one nearer 
 the window, and caught sight of her again on 
 the beach. 
 
 The sea was out: a mass of white foam 
 careered across the glistening sands, chasing the 
 girl : while her dress, twisted round her slender, 
 supple form by the wind, gave her the appear- 
 ance of being caught in a wave. A desire came 
 to Jeffrey to be out in the wind and spume with 
 Rachel : he longed to pitch Major Loraine into 
 the middle of one of his own stories and leave 
 him to wind a way out as best he could: then 
 suddenly he lost sight of Rachel behind the black 
 rocks. Making an absurd excuse, Jeffrey took 
 his hat and went. 
 
 The air was cold: a shower half rain, half 
 sleet, came like a dark shadow over the sea and 
 hissed itself out on the sands : the wind caught his 
 hat and sent it trundling through a dozen pools, 
 and him schoolboy fashion after; but the joy of 
 life filled him and he felt wildly, madly exhilarat- 
 ed. He tore along, trying to outrace the wind; 
 
148 THE BALANCE 
 
 rushed up and over the black rocks, and saw 
 Rachel. She stood near the sea edge. A great 
 flock of grey gulls had settled near her feet. 
 Rising they shot out fan-shaped so that she stood 
 against a background of beating wings. Jeffrey 
 held his breath. To him it seemed as if the girl's 
 spirit had been brooding on that grey waste of 
 water and that he had startled it. The flut- 
 tering wings beat the air and then sank down 
 once more upon the water. 
 
 A sigh of relief burst from Jeffrey, and as it 
 trembled shivering away on the wind, love was 
 born in him. It came a reticence, a shyness; 
 and a passionate longing to protect the woman 
 he loved, and the woman he loved was Rachel. 
 He turned towards the cliffs that rose abrupt 
 and black, and scaled their slippery sides, pos- 
 sessed by a curious notion that he was walking 
 up a flight of steps. A big cloud burst into icy 
 rain; but he did not feel the rain, and driven 
 blindly forward he entered the forest, coming 
 at last to the cottage. A sound fell on his ears. 
 It was Richard's voice. For a moment Jeffrey 
 
THE BALANCE 149 
 
 stood listening, then walked heavily, almost lum- 
 beringly, towards the cottage, and Richard, rec- 
 ognising his footstep, met him at the door. The 
 two men stood and scrutinised each other. 
 Jeffrey had hardened into sudden manhood; 
 but Richard had stepped back to youth in his 
 boyish longing for Jeffrey's love and trust. 
 
 "Come in, Jeff," he said. 
 
 "I want you out here," Jeffrey answered, and 
 Richard came to him. 
 
 "What is it?" he asked. 
 
 "Let us go farther away," said Jeffrey, and 
 hurried off as if all that he had to disclose lay 
 beyond the border of the forest. The path led 
 farther and farther from the village ; but noth- 
 ing would have made Jeffrey turn just then, 
 and Richard, following after the huge, clumsy 
 figure stumbling, crashing through the under- 
 growth, knew better than to try and make him 
 turn. At last the forest thinned and the path 
 opened out on to a broad grey road that wound 
 past hamlet and village out to the unknown 
 world beyond. 
 
150 THE BALANCE 
 
 Jeffrey pointed to it. "You must go, Richard," 
 he said hoarsely. 
 
 Richard grew stubborn. The knowledge 
 that unasked he would have gone was bitter to 
 him. "I cannot go," he said, "the boy needs 
 me. Even if he did not need me I would not 
 go like this." 
 
 "Richard, I ask you to go," Jeffrey re- 
 peated. 
 
 "And I tell you I will not go." 
 
 "You will not?" 
 
 "I will not," said Richard. Still, even as he 
 spoke, there seemed to him that there must be 
 in the whole range of language some simple 
 phrase left that would somehow and in some 
 way disperse the darkness between himself and 
 Jeffrey. He had juggled with words all his life, 
 and now the time had come for them to do him 
 a service. They flocked in on him like locusts 
 and ate his thoughts bare to the bone, then up 
 they rushed with their clattering wings, and 
 back they went to the darkness out of which they 
 came. 
 
THE BALANCE 151 
 
 Jeffrey sought no aid from words: he never 
 had sought aid from words : he never would seek 
 aid from them; but turning from Richard he 
 walked off through the wood. 
 
 It seemed to Richard that his youth went with 
 Jeffrey, and there remained not even anger, 
 only bareness and hurt. The wind whistling 
 through the leafless trees found none so bare 
 as his heart. The love of Richard for Jeffrey 
 was the purest and best passion his heart had 
 ever known. All others it had befouled, this 
 it had wrapped in fragrance and kept inviolate ; 
 and yet had a more restrained, a more unselfish 
 affection gone to the making of it he would not 
 have been left thus dry mouthed in the desert. 
 "Nulla poena, quanta poena," and it may be 
 that the gods saw something of worth in Rich- 
 ard, for they stripped him to the bleeding bones : 
 but strip him howsomuch they would, repentance 
 they got not from him, and perhaps for this 
 he was held worthy of their wrath. Fiercely 
 grasping, or as fiercely giving up, his spirit never 
 mourned and moped along the ground mewling 
 
152 THE BALANCE 
 
 over what it had done, or what it had failed 
 to do; it never stayed to remember how soiled 
 and stained it was; but born an Ishmael, knew 
 not it was an outcast. Lonely and hungered, 
 having companionship more with ideas than 
 with men, had Richard journeyed on, and still 
 as he travelled for ever had he thought that on 
 the morrow the board would be set, the feast 
 be ready and the guests be called. He had not 
 glanced down to see whether or no he himself 
 were fitly garmented; he had not looked back 
 along the road that he had travelled to mark 
 the ruin and devastation following on his heels; 
 his eyes had been fixed on Beulah; he had seen 
 the Promised Land, before him and beyond, 
 attainable and unattained, lay always the victory, 
 the conquest and the kingdom. 
 
 The wind blew bleakly afer Richard, gath- 
 ering him in its cold embrace, wishing to remind 
 him how empty was its companionship; but he 
 did not heed it; he was thinking of the far-off 
 morrow. 
 
 He reached the cottage; night fell and the 
 
THE BALANCE 153 
 
 wind rose to a gale. The gulls fled shrieking 
 over the forest inland, and the distant trampling 
 of the sea upon the beach mingled with the tur- 
 moil of sound. Only the dying boy slept. Mo- 
 ment by moment, as the woman knelt and 
 watched him, he slipped casually into deeper 
 repose. 
 
 At last she raised her eyes to Richard's face. 
 "Speak to un," she commanded harshly. Rich- 
 ard took her hands in his: and the child slept 
 on. 
 
 Colder and wilder grew the night. Once 
 more the woman became restless; but just as 
 she was about to speak, the child, dreaming of 
 some pleasant thing, smiled, and she resumed 
 her watch. 
 
 Far off behind the darkness was the dawn: 
 and the dying boy seemed to await it, so calm 
 and unperturbed he lay. It was the woman 
 who after long unyielding had grown suddenly 
 flustered; it was she who forestalled separation, 
 and peopled the moments with misdoubt: 
 womanlike, she would have had him wait at 
 
154 THE BALANCE 
 
 least till the storm was past; she could not but 
 remember that he was only a child, and the way 
 long and dark. 
 
 "He ain't never had no experience," she kept 
 on mumbling. 
 
 The boy, well in mind to be off, foul or fair, 
 when the hour sounded, cared not a jot for her 
 fears, but slumbered on. 
 
 In her distress she turned to Richard. 
 "Do 'ee reckon the wind's falling a bit?" she 
 asked. 
 
 But the bars across the door rattled mock- 
 ingly. 
 
 Again and again the storm shook the cottage, 
 as if angered that the child dallied over going. 
 It seemed about to drive death willy-nilly in 
 upon the lad. 
 
 "Lord, have mercy upon us!" muttered the 
 woman, stretching out her arms above her 
 child. 
 
 Richard looked at King Pain's Henchman, 
 lying there so stalwartly unafraid, then at the 
 terrified woman, while quietly through the tur- 
 
THE BALANCE 165 
 
 moil broke the dawn. Opening his eyes, the boy 
 sprang upright. 
 
 'The King! The King!" he cried, and smil- 
 ing fell back dead. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE storm went as suddenly as it had come, 
 leaving an overcast sky and falling rain. 
 Draggled and flustered, the sea-birds beat back 
 once more to sea ; some never coming back, hav- 
 ing lost their way far inland. 
 
 The village, without the harsh cry of the wind, 
 seemed silent to Rachel: little human sounds, 
 the clattering feet of the fishermen and children 
 on the cobble-stones ; man's daily work, his worn, 
 complicated passions were all too trivial and too 
 unimpressive to disturb the quietness which had 
 followed on the storm. Nature, for the moment, 
 had ceased to thumb man into shape, but had 
 left him one small thing among many in apparent 
 freedom; yet to such good use did the village 
 put the moment, so bent was it on carrying out 
 purposes formed in other and leisurer hours, so 
 full of life it was and will, that Nature had been 
 156 
 
THE BALANCE 167 
 
 hardly wise in giving the little thing so much 
 rope unless she had meant that some day it was 
 to lead a self-controlled, a self-shaped existence. 
 Watching the village one felt that if man ceased 
 to dream he yet would hope again. Rachel's 
 book had slipped from her knee on to the ground, 
 and the sun, breaking through the clouds, the 
 shadows of Spring, softer than the shadows of 
 other seasons, played around and over the girl. 
 She looked herself a child of Spring and shadow, 
 a freshness, a reflection, a mirage of a peaceful 
 hour : and yet Rachel seemed more at peace than 
 in truth she was. She was thinking of Richard 
 and his trouble. His spirit she felt was made 
 for war; he was a born Henchman of King Pain. 
 Glancing upwards at the forest which, half 
 shrouded in mist, looked gloomier than ever, she 
 almost caught the sound of Apollyon's cry to 
 Christian: "Here will I spill thy soul." 
 
 For a moment her heart thrilled, then she 
 smiled at herself, and Jeffrey, who was sitting 
 near, asked her why she smiled. 
 
 "I was thinking," she said, "the strangest 
 
158 THE BALANCE 
 
 things about some one I scarcely know at all." 
 And again she looked at the forest. "It is so 
 big," continued Rachel softly, "that only the 
 henchman of King Pain can wander in it with- 
 out being afraid," and once more she smiled at 
 her thoughts. 
 
 "Those tales are nothing but words," Jeffrey 
 returned; his face white, harsh and impatient. 
 
 "What matter; they are beautiful." 
 
 "I have grown to hate words," he said in 
 a dull voice. 
 
 Rachel looked at him. His mind, she thought, 
 was as clumsy as his body. "I have never known 
 big things, so I delight in little, unimportant 
 things like words," she answered. 
 
 "And I have grown to hate them," repeated 
 Jeffrey in the same dull, even voice. His thoughts 
 were lumps of pain and shot out like a load 
 of stones from a tipped-up cart. She did not 
 answer, but, taking her book, began to read, 
 and Jeffrey saw from the title that not only was 
 it one of Richard's, but it was also one that 
 was least worthy of the man. 
 
THE BALANCE 159 
 
 It hurt Jeffrey to see her read the book. It 
 was almost as if Richard had already put out 
 a soiled hand and touched her. Rachel was 
 conscious of Jeffrey's disapproval, and a cold, 
 distant expression came into her face and body ; 
 she did not stir, and yet she seemed to remove 
 herself far from him. "I have read this book 
 once," she said, "and am about to read it again." 
 
 He could do nothing ; he could not even make 
 the situation less ridiculous, but sat there rigid 
 and silent while Rachel turned page after page. 
 He might have been a great milestone marking 
 off the distance between himself and this woman 
 he loved. The words on the page crept together 
 and the corners of Rachel's mouth twitched; she 
 felt inclined to be sorry for the man, but much 
 more inclined to laugh at him. She put the 
 book down. "Shall I confess that I don't under- 
 stand the book in the least?" she said and smiled. 
 
 Jeffrey did not even return the smile ; he only 
 looked gloomily at her, like an owl daylight 
 blinded. She became impatient, and rising went 
 nearer to the window. 
 
160 THE BALANCE 
 
 "How it rains," she said, u how it longs to 
 wash us all away, and how we cling in our 
 miserable little shells to the earth." She turned 
 and faced him. He looked bigger than ever, 
 and formless in the grey dusk, his gigantic body 
 stretched out morass-like, swallowing up the 
 ground. "Why do we all cling so tight to 
 earth?" she asked. 
 
 A man has many reasons for clinging to life; 
 yet Jeffrey could remember but one. He did 
 not give it. "I cannot tell you," he said. 
 
 Rachel's calm, untroubled gaze rested on him. 
 She did not expect to get news from this clown 
 of a man. 
 
 "Find me some answer," she said lightly. 
 
 He drew his long legs under him and stood 
 up. "There is no answer." 
 
 "I think I could find a thousand," she re- 
 turned, and went away. 
 
 Darkness laid hands upon the earth, and the 
 rain fell through it with a soft, fluting sound. 
 All night Jeffrey heard the music, and always 
 it sang the same words to the same tune. "Be- 
 
THE BALANCE 161 
 
 cause we love," it fluted, "because we love." 
 At dawn it went out crying with the tide and 
 Jeffrey slept. 
 
 So many pleasant faces has the Spring she 
 must carry a merrier heart than the other sea- 
 sons ; or perhaps it is because her legs are younger 
 that she manages thus to spin round from grave 
 to gay, from tears to laughter between two wood 
 notes of a bird. In the Spring we know the 
 fairies are born, elves hold weddings, birds hatch 
 eggs, and Love's about. No romping cupid, but 
 a shy fellow is this same Love that haunts the 
 Spring. He casts his spells upon the frozen 
 dawn, and at once the lapwing will forget her 
 ready speech, and break into a wild and unfa- 
 miliar cry. Men have rather felt his presence 
 than seen him ; but it is for him that the curlew, 
 spreading broad her green wings, hurries inland 
 after her mate. 
 
 Five days had the Spring called to Rachel be- 
 fore she turned and looked dreamily at the forest. 
 Again Spring called, and Rachel began to climb 
 the hill. The sunlight followed her, then gath- 
 
162 THE BALANCE 
 
 ering for the effort leapt through a torrent of 
 colour into the forest, and as some frail and 
 beautiful spirit it flickered after her through the 
 desolate wood, where, ravaged by the storm, the 
 trees hung about each other's necks like a pack 
 of weeping women. Rachel came at length to 
 a great wind-torn glade, at the end of which was 
 the cottage, despoiled of roof and forsaken. 
 Standing near the abject, helpless thing was 
 Jeffrey. It gaped wide for pity ; but a torrential 
 gladness poured from Jeffrey's heart that Rich- 
 ard was gone. He took a few steps forward 
 and saw Rachel. She paid no heed to his pres- 
 ence, but stared at the empty, tenantless house. 
 Jeffrey drew nearer; it seemed to him that she 
 must know how good was the fortune that had 
 befallen her; instead she turned on him the most 
 desolate face he had ever seen. 
 
 4 'While we were thinking of other things the 
 child died," she said. He had forgotten the 
 child; but her mention of it rid him of his dis- 
 may. 
 
 She looked across at the deserted cottage. 
 
THE BALANCE 163 
 
 "Yes, he and your friend gone too/' she con- 
 tinued, her voice full of regret. 
 
 "He has gone," repeated Jeffrey. 
 
 "I am sorry," she admitted simply. 
 
 "Why are you sorry?" 
 
 "I don't know why, perhaps because the 
 things that he said were beautiful. He was not 
 like most men at all." 
 
 "You found him then " Jeffrey stopped 
 short, "very different," he ended feebly. 
 Something in the tone of his voice made Rachel 
 glance at him ; his face was turned away, but his 
 body, she thought, looked as if it had been hastily 
 heaped together with a spade. There rose be- 
 fore her eyes a vision of Richard, frail, delicate 
 half lost in the wastes of the big wooden chair. 
 
 "Cannot you remember how helpless we all 
 were till he came?" she asked sharply. 
 
 He remembered but did not say so; he 
 could not bandy cheap praise of the man he 
 had shaken off like so much dirt and she, not 
 waiting for his answer, walked off through the 
 wood, Jeffrey following. The path began to 
 
164 THE BALANCE 
 
 slope downwards, and after a few moments 
 Rachel halted beside a small pool in the shadow 
 of a rock. 
 
 "The Wishing Well," she observed. "Have 
 you a wish?" 
 
 He grew suddenly white, opened his mouth 
 in a way that put her in mind of one of her 
 father's ploughmen, and said not a word. 
 
 "If you have a wish," she continued mock- 
 ingly, "you must hand it on to me, and I must 
 put it in the well for you." 
 
 "How?" he jerked out. 
 
 "Wrap it up in your hand, and put it into my 
 hand, of course." 
 
 "Oh!" he said, but he did not stir. 
 
 "Well?" (He remained stuck in silence like 
 an ox-waggon in a quagmire.) "I believe," she 
 observed, "that your wish is so valuable that you 
 are afraid to trust me with it." 
 
 He suddenly smiled the most beautiful smile 
 she had ever seen on the face of man or woman. 
 "That is the truth," he said. She laughed a little 
 perplexed laugh and walked on. Jeffrey did not 
 
THE BALANCE 165 
 
 stir. He might indeed have been a son of the 
 soil so dumb were his thoughts ; he might indeed 
 have been born to labour through the long hours 
 of day, and see at even his work passed unnoticed 
 by. He knew that Rachel did not love him; 
 he knew that never in this world would she so 
 much as stay and attentively regard him : but his 
 love for her was planned on a big scale, and had 
 in it something of the slow wheeling eternities, 
 and he could afford to wait. 
 
 Finding after a moment that Jeffrey had not 
 followed, Rachel felt glad and forgot all about 
 him, content to fill her mind with thoughts of 
 Richard. She could not believe that she would 
 never meet Richard again ; and as she wandered 
 through the wood, startling the hares and send- 
 ing the rabbits bobbing for cover, she kept look- 
 ing for Richard; but the forest was empty of 
 his presence. At last she came out on a road 
 bare but for creaking carts and buxom country- 
 women; and the winding, patient, grey thing, 
 which had been trodden under so much, led her 
 to a moor. Desolate and vast, its emotion hid- 
 
166 THE BALANCE 
 
 den beneath an austere quietude, the moor lay 
 as some outpost to another world. It seemed 
 made for man's spirit and not for his tired feet 
 to travel over; but Rachel crossed it and reached 
 at last the sea. Sinking down, she laid her face 
 against the rocks: she felt very young, very 
 weary, and the world was emptier than it had 
 a right to be, seeing that so many people lived 
 in the world. Turn which way she would there 
 was always some one that she did not want to 
 meet, and even as Rachel sat and tried to rest 
 she could hear the sound of a heavy, clumsy tread 
 upon the rocks, and she knew that she had but 
 to look up to see Jeffrey. At a little distance 
 from her he halted, waiting for her to need him. 
 Why did he stand there, she thought, so big and 
 fooolish? He reminded her of a wingless bird. 
 
 "Are you tired?" he asked. 
 
 He might have known that she was very tired, 
 or she would have found some way to escape 
 his presence. 
 
 "The world is too full and too empty," she 
 exclaimed with petulance. 
 
THE BALANCE 167 
 
 "I know that, 1 ' he answered. "I have known 
 it many days.'* 
 
 She looked tiredly at him. How did he 
 know it? He looked big enough to fill three 
 worlds and lap over into a fourth. "Well," she 
 said, trying to smile, "if you know it, why is it?" 
 
 "I cannot tell you," he said. 
 
 Rachel scrambled on to her feet. "You have 
 the same answer for everything," she exclaimed, 
 "and it isn't enlightening." 
 
 There came into his face an infinite sadness, 
 a vast solemnity. He looked as if he could have 
 answered her question with the best had there 
 been no such things as words. 
 
 "We love, and are not loved; or we love and 
 are loved; the whole of life is contained in that," 
 he said. 
 
 His silence did not trouble her. She would 
 have found it as reasonable to have taken les- 
 sons in dancing from a bear, as to have learned 
 of life from Jeffrey. She laughed a little tired 
 laugh. 
 
 "Let us go back to the inn," she said. "I 
 
168 THE BALANCE 
 
 am sure tea will make us both wiser," and she 
 started at a hurried pace across the sands. 
 
 A narrow verandah ran round three sides of 
 the inn, and when Rachel and Jeffrey drew near 
 the house they saw Richard blowing bubbles 
 from a long clay pipe. Up and down the man 
 gently chased the diaphanous, light-burdened 
 bubbles ; they might have been so many pellucid 
 thoughts blown from his brain; the flowers of 
 some dialogue held betweeen his spirit and 
 himself. 
 
 Rachel's tiredness left her; she went eagerly, 
 smilingly up the steps. She was glad that men 
 and women were still children, and that the 
 world, nursery-like, was full of ups and downs. 
 If Richard had a reason for coming, Rachel did 
 not trouble to seek it out. It was enough that 
 he had come; and yet no wish to see her had 
 brought him, only bravado and bitterness. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 GOUT set its chalky teeth into Major Loraine's 
 right foot, and he lay with his leg sunk in cush- 
 ions and his temper hopping and skipping at the 
 end of control much after the fashion of an 
 enraged dog on a chain. A pile of Richard's 
 books had come from the library and in a short 
 half-hour had been classed, judged and disposed 
 of: one lay a-sprawl in the fireplace as "damned 
 nonsense"; another, labelled "infernal nest of 
 maggots," sat with half its pages out striding 
 a screen; a third, "mere dung," had been ar- 
 rested on its flight streetwards by the verandah 
 rails; the fourth, condemned as "the work of 
 an ass," had followed the innkeeper out of the 
 room, pressing hard against his coat tails and 
 leaving him in doubt whether he were or were 
 not the subject of the Major's malediction. 
 
 A soft rain had been falling, but went seaward 
 
 169 
 
170 THE BALANCE 
 
 with the tide, and Rachel, taking her hat-crept 
 quietly down the stairs and out of the inn. The 
 shore was wrapt in haze, but the forest, distinct 
 and dark, capped the hill like a great plumed 
 helmet. Rachel climbed upwards till she reached 
 the Wishing Well, then pausing she gazed into 
 the quiet green waters. She wondered to her- 
 self what she would have asked of the little well 
 if she had believed in its powers to grant her 
 wish; and as she wondered she blushed. Rich- 
 ard drew near and looked at the girl. So young 
 she looked, so innocent, so fresh ; all his troubles 
 were swallowed up in the joy that she lived, and 
 that the sweet Spring air that breathed around 
 her breathed also on him. 
 
 "Tell me," he said, "what you see in the 
 well." 
 
 Instead of answering, Rachel raised her 
 startled eyes to his, and it seemed to Richard 
 and Rachel that somewhere up among the hid- 
 den stars the great pendulum of the Universe 
 paused in its stroke. 
 
 "Tell me," he said again. 
 
THE BALANCE 171 
 
 She looked down half-shyly, half-afraid, as 
 if she thought love itself might be reflected 
 there. 
 
 "Well," he exclaimed impatiently. 
 
 "My own reflection/ 1 she answered. 
 
 "Leave it there for me to find." 
 
 "I cannot. If I go it goes with me." 
 
 "Then do not go," he said, and drawing close 
 they gazed each at the reflection of the other's 
 face. A shiver ran through them, and for one 
 memorable moment neither their bodies nor 
 their spirits knew whether they would tremble 
 closer together or apart; but the hard and 
 hurrying moments separated them, and as chil- 
 dren who had stayed out too long they turned 
 breathlessly and tried by much hastening to get 
 back to the inn, where all along they knew they 
 should have been. 
 
 "La, Miss," said the innkeeper's wife, when 
 with guilty hurry they entered, "the Major's bell 
 has been ringing this half-hour, and there isn't 
 one pusson in the house that dares take upon 
 hisself to answer it." 
 
172 THE BALANCE 
 
 Rachel ran lightly up the stairs, and Richard 
 went out once more among the hills. The sun 
 was up; a hideous plainness lay on every- 
 thing. 
 
 What was this thing that he had done? 
 How came he to have done it? He had meant 
 to keep so far apart from Rachel, Rachel, the 
 woman that Jeffrey loved, but now it had grown 
 hard even to leave her for a moment. Despair 
 fell upon Richard, just as despair had fallen on 
 him many times before. Always, always, love 
 came to him thus: never did he see it from afar, 
 beautiful and serene a mountain gushing with 
 streams of life; but ever it came an inundation, 
 a swirling, hurrying rush, a hideous going down. 
 There is for the soul no darker hour, no chiller 
 moment than the one which breeds the hideous 
 suspicion that for her also an orbit is fixed; and 
 that turn she ever so willingly she shall never 
 come nearer to the sun. Such a moment almost 
 dawned for Richard then, almost, but for him 
 at least it never quite dawned. If it had, his 
 
THE BALANCE 173 
 
 spirit would have gently powdered away into 
 dust. 
 
 A sudden fear of thinking, a warning against 
 looking too closely into his own mind and heart 
 beset Richard a dim horror of a present that 
 could so repeat the past, so counterfeit all that 
 he would not willingly see again. 
 
 A woman crept towards him, a mighty faggot 
 of sticks upon her back. Aged she was, and 
 bent, and worn with toil, she might have been 
 Time himself. To look at her was to under- 
 stand that soilure, repentance, tears, all things 
 are passing away. Richard could hear her 
 groaning beneath her load; her short, laboured 
 breathing and her heavy sighs. 
 
 "Your son," he said, "has forgotten to carry 
 your sticks," and he took the faggot from her. 
 
 "My son has been dead these twenty years," 
 answered the woman, "and I could wish that 
 he had lived to make old bones." 
 
 "What is old age like?" asked Richard. 
 
 "Old age is like a coat, and made by the man 
 who wears it." 
 
174 THE BALANCE 
 
 "I see myself," said Richard, "beggared and 
 in rags." 
 
 "It goes so with some," replied the woman. 
 
 "What shall a man do who cannot trust 
 himself?" 
 
 "He shall flee from others." 
 
 "Why should one man have a home if an- 
 other is an outcast?" 
 
 The woman raised her wrinkled face and 
 looked into Richard's. 
 
 "Answer me first, has a man power or not 
 over the working of his own heart?" she 
 said. 
 
 "None can answer that question; none 
 know." 
 
 "Get you gone," she exclaimed fiercely. 
 "You cannot find God because you will not." 
 
 "Let me but carry your faggot to your 
 door." 
 
 "Nay," said the woman, "I know your breed, 
 with the same hand you would carry the stran- 
 ger's sticks you would rob your heart's friend 
 of his wife." 
 
THE BALANCE 175 
 
 The faggot slipped from Richard's shoulders 
 on to the ground. "You speak the truth," he 
 answered. "These hands have done both." 
 
 He left her, and going to a stream he looked 
 into the water, and there was reflected back for 
 him to see his whole past life; the ideals that he 
 had held up for others, and the deeds that he 
 himself had done. Richard found that the 
 words that he had said were quite worthy of 
 being commended ; but when he came to examine 
 his own deeds they were of such bestial foulness 
 that he stood shivering and abashed before them. 
 Suddenly he was visited by a radiant vision of 
 Rachel's beauty, and flinging the memory of 
 his shame behind him he ran towards the inn. 
 The wind blew after him cold and barren, and 
 all the women he had ever loved peered at him 
 to see if he were just as a-thirst for the sight of 
 Rachel as he had been for the sight of them. 
 Dusk fell, but to Richard it was not dark; he 
 thought he was a tall flame, and the wind rising, 
 blew him towards the inn and Rachel. There 
 at the door, like some god carved in rock and 
 
176 THE BALANCE 
 
 forsaken, sat Jeffrey, his great hands spread 
 broad upon his knees; and as the pariah, desert 
 dog, jackalling for bones, slinks past the pyra- 
 mids, Richard slunk past his friend into the 
 house. Jeffrey did not stir; perhaps his body 
 was tenantless. 
 
 Pale and shadowy against the dusk, Rachel 
 turned at Richard's approach and they stood 
 leaning forward in frozen pursuit, while the 
 twilight deepening, blotted each from the other, 
 and only the soft cry of the wind throbbed be- 
 tween them. Richard's eyes sought Rachel in 
 the darkness. He could not see her, but her 
 beauty was close against the shadow, so close, 
 so infinitely closer than the girl herself that its 
 petals seemed about to cast themselves in loveli- 
 ness at his feet. 
 
 A harsh hurried sigh escaped him : and with- 
 out, Jeffrey rose and came stumbling in like a 
 great cataclysm turned man, that was to sweep 
 them all to a common fate. The moon crossed 
 the horizon, and its light fell on Rachel. Her 
 face was wet with tears; she seemed to have 
 
THE BALANCE 177 
 
 grown smaller. Richard did not see her: he 
 saw himself, a Judas; he saw the Potter's 
 Field; he saw the forked tree; and turning he 
 went out into the night. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE night was dark, the wind blew gustily, 
 and the moon lost in a great heaven of rushing 
 clouds. Uphill, down hill, this way, that way 
 Richard hurried, seeking rest and finding none, 
 till the tossing trees and the fleeing man seemed 
 animated by the same demonian spirit. Watch- 
 ing the man's poor storm-driven body one was 
 led for some paradoxical reason to think of 
 death. The body one felt must be a thing of 
 the moment, for the moment to be so big a 
 thing to it, and one saw not the hopeless rush- 
 ing forward, the terror-stricken grasping after 
 the unreachable, but rather the attained repose 
 of death, a vision of the body when the fierce 
 spirit had quitted it. The body, how calm it 
 lies then ! Who having looked at it thus, and 
 with purged eyes, can ever again see it and be 
 
 178 
 
THE BALANCE 179 
 
 unmoved by compassion ? How often the body 
 must have echoed the soul's cry, "You hurt 
 me!" 
 
 U I am not," it says, "the bestial thing you 
 take me for. I could be content with little." 
 
 u Nay," answers the soul, u you ask too much. 
 You yourself are your own crime. Your body 
 is your sin." 
 
 And yet the soul is placable. She loves har- 
 monious peace. It is for that she wages warfare, 
 for that and that alone does she exercise her 
 innate right of resistance to sin, soilure, death. 
 
 The doorless dark closed in on Richard. 
 The wind dropped and around him the damp 
 walls of night dripped and dripped. White as 
 bones Richard trod on, while the earth, blind 
 with age, fumbled about the face of dawn trying 
 and in vain to recall it by the touch. An im- 
 mense weight lay on Nature, pressing her down. 
 She shivered in her grave clothes ; then she took 
 breath and expanding her mighty lungs she threw 
 off the night, and it was day. Straight up from 
 the earth a lark leapt heavenward, scattering his 
 
180 THE BALANCE 
 
 silver shower of song, till rhe dew-laden gos- 
 samers on the bents of grass seemed full of sus- 
 pended melody. Deep in the copse a thrush 
 whistled three notes, then with a shake of her 
 five speckled feathers, flung out a marvellous 
 changing tune ; the swing-song of the blackbird, 
 clear, round, soft, swung in the thorn tree 
 branches; and there in front of Richard, within 
 a hand's reach of him, was a homely cottage. 
 
 "Open the door," he cried hoarsely. "Open 
 the door to the Spring." 
 
 A woman unbarred the door, flung it wide, 
 and he fell across the threshold. She raised 
 the frail body in her arms she might have been 
 Richard's mother and he her wounded son, so 
 tenderly did she carry him in and lay him on 
 the bed. His eyes remained fast shut, but some- 
 thing told him who the woman was. 
 
 "I have been with devils the whole night 
 through," he said. 
 
 "They can't come nigh 'ee here," the woman 
 answered. 
 
 "I am tired," he said, and sobbed. 
 
THE BALANCE 181 
 
 "Then zlape," she murmured, "with the Lord 
 for friend." 
 
 And Richard slept. 
 
 The woman drew the blind, letting the shad- 
 ows rest on the tired face worn with conflict. 
 Pity and joy filled her; King Pain it seemed had 
 found in Richard another henchman, and the 
 woman another son. For a while she watched 
 him. He slept with clenched fists as one who 
 had fallen asleep fighting; but the muscles re- 
 laxed, the hands opened, and the woman smiling 
 to herself went about her work. From time to 
 time she came back to look at him, and her 
 fierce old eyes were full of savage tenderness. 
 Richard's nursery rhymes jingled through her 
 memory : 
 
 " Tell me a tale of deeds well done, 
 
 Tell me a tale of strife, 
 Tell me a tale of conquest won 
 Over the ills of life." 
 
 Stooping, she unlaced his boots, and noted 
 with grim satisfaction that he wore two odd 
 socks. "There is not a man that doesn't need 
 
182 THE BALANCE 
 
 a woman to look after him," she thought to 
 herself. His feet were stone cold, and she 
 heated a great earthen jar, slipped off his socks 
 and wrapped his feet and the jar up together 
 in a shawl. She laid her finger lightly on his 
 coat. It was wet, but she feared to disturb him, 
 and trusted to sleep and youth to pull him 
 through. Such a wisp of clay had been deemed 
 big enough to rag Richard round, that this 
 woman of the soil could have undressed him and 
 nursed him on her knee. Towards sundown he 
 awoke; and when he and the woman had had 
 tea, and the hearth was brushed, the lamp lit 
 and evening at hand, they both drew closer round 
 the fire. A passionate longing to escape back 
 to Rachel filled Richard, he could no longer un- 
 derstand his reasons for having left her; he must 
 have been mad, he thought, to throw away so 
 much time. Twisting his chair round he stared 
 at the still open door. It seemed to whisper to 
 him: "Creep out, creep out into the night while 
 there is yet time." 
 
 A faint breeze blew the door wider ajar. 
 
THE BALANCE 183 
 
 "Creep out," it whispered, "creep out into the 
 night." 
 
 The woman knitted; click clack went her 
 needles; never faster, never slower they moved 
 on their dull, even round. Click clack, turn a 
 row and click clack again, click clack, click clack. 
 Life itself, when it has been tempered in a fur- 
 nace, the passions straightened and beaten out 
 on an anvil, could not hold to a steadier course. 
 
 An unreasonable hatred of the woman and 
 her needles came to Richard; she seemed in some 
 fashion or other to be chaining him up with her 
 endless stitches; then she raised her grim old 
 face and looked at him. 
 
 "If she locks the door I will burst it open," 
 thought Richard. 
 
 But the woman did not stir. 
 
 A sudden revulsion of feeling swept over 
 Richard, and with it a sense of his utter help- 
 lessness and a longing to seek aid from some one 
 stronger than himself. 
 
 "I am a drunkard," he said hoarsely, "and 
 out there is drink." 
 
184 THE BALANCE 
 
 No sooner had he asked for help than his 
 humiliation swallowed up his need of help, and 
 straightening himself, he turned and gazed sul- 
 lenly into the fire. The woman went on with 
 her knitting, the lines of her face iron cast in 
 rigidity. 
 
 Richard wanted to humiliate her also ; to drag 
 her down into the dung where he himself was : he 
 would have liked to have torn to rags her self- 
 respect, and thrust her dignity and reserve to 
 the door. He waited for her to speak, but not 
 a word did she utter. 
 
 "You were young once," he exclaimed. 
 "What did you feel like then?" 
 
 The woman's still lips worked, as if words 
 came seldom and with difficulty from them. 
 
 "I have never thought over what I felt," she 
 answered. "The doing o' such has not been 
 given to me." 
 
 Richard laughed. "What," he said, "has 
 life given you?" 
 
 "It gave me my man; and it gave me my 
 lad." 
 
THE BALANCE 185 
 
 "Your husband," Richard asked harshly, 
 "what of him?" 
 
 The woman was silent. She looked as if the 
 Book of Life were open before her and she was 
 reading it page by page. 
 
 "Well," exclaimed Richard, "what of him?" 
 
 "I ain't got the gift of the teller," she an- 
 swered at last. "But he was a plain man and 
 good to stockings." 
 
 The woman shamed Richard, and not Richard 
 the woman ; and he felt a cleaner man for hav- 
 ing been thus put to shame by her; but dirt and 
 soilure jambed him in on every side and he was 
 full of bitterness. 
 
 "Tell me," he asked, "has God ever helped 
 you one jot?" 
 
 Again the woman's stiff lips worked dully. 
 "I have not found God," she said, "and I reckon 
 I never shall." Then she went on with her 
 knitting, each stitch falling evenly into its place. 
 It was easy to see that there is no time in this 
 world for people of sense to mewl and cry out. 
 
 Night drew quickly on ; and she rose and made 
 
186 THE BALANCE 
 
 f 
 
 Richard a bed in the corner of the kitchen, then 
 she went to the door and looked up at the great 
 heaven of stars, and for a brief moment there 
 was given to her fine old countenance the power 
 to express that unquenchable longing of the soul 
 for God. 
 
 "Who be we," she said, "that us should find 
 God? In His very Presence we shall not see 
 Him. Aye, though His garments sweep us to 
 the healing yet shall we not behold God face 
 to face." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THAT year Spring came hurriedly. She 
 rustled through the woods; swept like a green 
 wave of light over the plains, and it seemed to 
 Richard that the birds sang as they never had 
 sung before; and his spirit rested on that quiet 
 sea, which stretches out unbridged and innavi- 
 gable between man and all created things. It is 
 when we are sick, sorry and ashamed that Nat- 
 ure heals us by her aloofness. We take our 
 stained hearts into the woods, and the birds are 
 not afraid; they will come as near to us as they 
 did before: they might have learned unchange- 
 ableness from God. We press our faces down 
 upon the mossy grass, and the violet does not 
 shiver, nay it gives us of its fragrance. Yet 
 it would not be true to say that Richard felt 
 these things; his guilt had never come close 
 187 
 
188 THE BALANCE 
 
 enough home to him ; perhaps too, he had never 
 been guilty enough. The earth he knew was 
 an irresponsible earth, an irresponsible sky, a 
 gay spun web of chance: he had laughed in it, 
 wept in it, but he had never been awed by the 
 astounding powers of resource with which Nat- 
 ure meets the demands made on her by man's 
 spirit. This, after all, is only a thumb-nail 
 sketch of man and things; a trumpery tip-scale 
 and no balance. There are women, lovely of 
 body as of soul, that Richard would not have 
 dared to love as he loved Rachel; women, who 
 for all the fire and ichor in his blood and veins 
 he would have feared to approach even in his 
 thoughts as he had permitted himself to ap- 
 proach her. They are women who would not 
 have been harsh of judgment; they would not 
 have sought to wound him, and to thrust him 
 out to the outer darkness of his deeds; rather 
 they would have striven to heal the jagged tears 
 he had made in his own flesh: yet their pres- 
 ence would have been a subtle gift, filling him 
 with that self-distrust and searching of heart 
 
THE BALANCE 189 
 
 which is for each one of us the beginning of 
 righteousness. 
 
 But Spring with its clattering heels made 
 Richard eager to be starting once more upon his 
 journey. He longed to be out, -a man among 
 men; out on the warm Gulf Stream of thought, 
 where ideas float like so much drift waiting 
 to be washed on fruitful or barren shores, or 
 to be left to rise and fall and be passed by un- 
 sighted. He stood restlessly turning over the 
 pages of a big book, while from far off there 
 came the sound of footsteps. Nearer came the 
 sound and nearer, a woman's step, little empty 
 shells of steps which seemed to grow almost 
 lighter and emptier the nearer they approached. 
 A fire sprang up in Richard's heart ; and at each 
 step the woman made it was as if a little twig 
 of wood tumbled into the flames. She came to 
 the cottage, passed it, walked almost out of 
 hearing away, and then, possibly because she had 
 not tipped enough little twigs into the fire, she 
 returned back again the way she had come. 
 This time she halted aVthe cottage door, and 
 
190 THE BALANCE 
 
 glancing in and seeing that Richard was there, 
 she walked boldly up the steps. 
 
 Richard did not look at Rachel. She stood 
 opposite him, the deal table between, and on 
 it the book. Rachel drew the book towards her. 
 It might well have been called "The Great 
 Deeds of Men," and to open it was to be present 
 at the discovery of new worlds. The history 
 of man was written in that book; the tale of his 
 warrings through ages of strife and struggle on 
 towards pellucid day. Rachel, seeking, it may 
 be, for some record of woman, casually turned 
 the pages; but of woman, she might as well 
 never have been born, the book made no mention 
 of her at all. 
 
 "Has woman done nothing?" said Rachel at 
 last, and she looked at Richard, half smiling, 
 half wistfully. The answer to the question 
 might be what it would, for its import she cared 
 nothing; but every word that this man said she 
 treasured. 
 
 He turned on her a face so full of anger and 
 scorn that if she had 'not loved him she would 
 
THE BALANCE 191 
 
 have been afraid. Trembling a little, she took 
 the big book up and held it close to her, not 
 knowing quite what she was doing; yet still 
 conscious that she was drinking in news of Rich- 
 ard from his tired face and angry eyes. She 
 knew well that she had been more woman than 
 womanly in coming there at all : but many men 
 had loved her, and she could not but remember 
 that she was beautiful. 
 
 "Why do you despise women? What have 
 they done ?" she asked, her voice tailing off into 
 a foolish quiver. 
 
 Richard walked a few steps from her to the 
 window. A dull resentment against fate began 
 to mix itself in with his anger. There was, he 
 felt, an unreasonable cruelty, a more than usual 
 hard capriciousness in this sudden jambing him 
 up between a brick wall and a muck-heap. He 
 tried to steady himself; he believed that if he 
 spoke he should burst a way through the wall 
 and shatter the woman beneath the falling 
 bricks. The most hideous speeches rushed ready 
 made to his lips. Words full of the horrid 
 
192 THE BALANCE 
 
 torment that did so torment him; words alive 
 with the same fire of passion. He pushed the 
 words from him and doing so got some glimpse 
 of the pathos and tragedy that lay at the bottom 
 of this strange burlesque of love. 
 
 "Woman," he said, "has brought man noth- 
 ing but misfortune since the world began." 
 
 One of Rachel's hands moved a little, and 
 then became quiet. Bitterness flooded in on 
 Richard; his life it seemed was always to be 
 messed and spoiled and pulled about. "With- 
 out woman," he said, "man would have possessed 
 his soul; he would have come into his inher- 
 itance." 
 
 Rachel took a little halting step nearer. "It 
 is not true," she answered stonily. 
 
 He had but one wish, and that was to free 
 himself. "What is woman?" he said, "but a 
 thing that drags man down? And where she 
 is, what is it but the place where his soul rusts?" 
 
 The features of Rachel's face grew suddenly 
 heavy, seeming to sink inwards, and her voice 
 when she spoke did not sound like a woman's 
 voice at all. 
 
THE BALANCE 193 
 
 "Then," she said, "woman loathes to be 
 
 woman." 
 
 She left him, and passing through the forest 
 came at last to the ruined cottage, and here, 
 standing on the heart-shaped bed, she looked in 
 at the room where she had first seen Richard. 
 
 And it was to her as if all the misfortunes 
 that women have brought to men fell on her and 
 bore her to the earth. Sinking down on the 
 heart-shaped bed, she wept. 
 
THOUGHTY 
 
 
THOUGHTY 
 
 A LITTLE girl sat looking down the side of 
 a big sun-reddened hill. The fury of the Jutes 
 might have painted the hill with the burning, 
 glowing ashes of prisoners; and as moment by 
 moment the sun sank seaward, the great hill 
 decked and re-decked itself for the lurid rites of 
 sacrifice. Undisturbed by her surroundings, the 
 little girl crooned softly to herself. "I am so 
 happy when I am alone," she sang. "I am so 
 happy when I am alone." Rising, she began 
 to climb upwards; and at once she thought she 
 was Moses on his way to talk with God. Fear 
 fell on her; she dared not raise her head lest 
 she should see God's face and die; and at last 
 her awe and dread became so overpowering that 
 she crept into a little hole in the side of the 
 hill and hid herself. All this time a boy, younger 
 and smaller and wiser than she, had been fol- 
 197 
 
198 THOUGHTY 
 
 lowing her up the hill. He put his hand into 
 the hole and pulled her hair. She thought she 
 was dead. 
 
 "Why are you scrabbled up in there like a 
 frog, Doozle?" he asked. 
 
 She was thankful to recognise her brother 
 Pepper, and know that she was still alive. 
 
 "I am Moses, talking with God," she an- 
 swered in a choked voice. 
 
 "That's not the way to play Moses," returned 
 Pepper disgustedly. "You must break the tables 
 of stone, and strike the rock. You had better 
 be the golden calf, and I'll be Moses." 
 
 "I shouldn't care to be the golden calf," said 
 Doozle. 
 
 "It's a girl's part, anyhow," remarked Pep- 
 per, "and you'll have to be it or nothing." 
 
 Leaving Doozle in the throes of two minds, 
 he glanced about him and saw two taller boys 
 walking with heads bent and hands thrust well 
 down in trouser pockets. "There are the 
 others," he cried excitedly. "Let us follow 
 them and see what they are doing." 
 
THOUGHTY 199 
 
 "Yesterday they put me in the saw pit as 
 Joseph and left me there all the afternoon," said 
 Doozle, trotting after Pepper over the turf. 
 
 "That was because you preached." 
 
 "I wasn't preaching. I was thinking of a 
 bird I'd seen." 
 
 "Well, you looked like preaching. I never 
 saw any one with a stupider face in my life. All 
 the same," he added cautiously, "we had better 
 not go close to them at first." 
 
 The warning came too late, for scarcely was 
 it uttered before the taller of the two boys 
 turned. "What are you doing here?" he de- 
 manded. 
 
 "Oh, Gimlet," said Pepper, "you might let 
 a fellow come this once. You know I let you 
 break a bad egg in my mouth yesterday, and 
 was sick all the afternoon." 
 
 "Get away! We don't want either of you." 
 
 "I'll give you my missel-thrush's egg if you 
 let me come," pleaded Pepper. 
 
 "Don't want it. Get away!" 
 
 "Well then, the sparrow-hawk's egg," said 
 Pepper, and sighed. 
 
200 THOUGHTY 
 
 "Don't want that either. Get away !" 
 
 "Tell him we'll twist his arm if he comes 
 after us," said the eldest boy, and at that the 
 two taller Thoughty Ones walked off. 
 
 Pepper fell into a deep dejection which had 
 in it also a fine blend of viciousness. He turned 
 on Doozle. "Get away!" he exclaimed coldly. 
 "I won't be dogged wherever I go by a girl." 
 
 "I thought," said Dozzle, "we might both 
 play with Gimlet's white rat." 
 
 "Well, we just sha'n't, so there." 
 
 "You like it when it runs up your sleeve, 
 Pepper." 
 
 "I'm not going to have it up my sleeve, and 
 now you know." 
 
 "Well, you choose what we shall play at." 
 
 "We won't play at anything. Do you see that 
 tree?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Don't dare to move one step past it till I 
 am out of sight," and he walked off at a smart 
 pace. "Are you standing still?" he cried back. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
THOUGHTY 201 
 
 "Wait till I say gone. I am not gone yet. 
 Gone!" he announced in so triumphant a voice 
 that Doozle at once thought she was Elisha 
 when Elijah threw down his cloak. 
 
 Night began to fall, and from the distance 
 came a low mutter of thunder. The two taller 
 Thoughty Ones were far away on the side of 
 a bleaker, lonelier hill. Hundreds of feet below 
 the boys the sea crept quietly into a little bay; 
 while overshadowing them was a ruined church, 
 the vaults of which had many a time been used 
 by smugglers as a store for kegs of spirits and 
 fine big drums of tobacco. Like the church, 
 however, the smugglers had fallen into disrepair, 
 and only the Thoughty Ones knew that the long, 
 low, rakish, devilish-looking craft which lay in 
 the offing, quiet as peas in a pod, was not what 
 she made herself out to be. 
 
 "There isn't a cap full of wind," remarked 
 Gimlet in a sombre voice. 
 
 "Oh, she'll wear her way in, never fear. 
 She's only waiting for dark," returned the eldest 
 Thoughty One. 
 
202 THOUGHTY 
 
 A great yellow streak of fire zigzagged slap 
 from one end of the sky to the other. Gimlet 
 whistled. "Even a fool of a coast-guard could 
 see in that light," he said. 
 
 " Coast-guards?" repeated his brother scorn- 
 fully, "no jolly fear. They are all indoors hav- 
 ing tea with the kids. They've been squared." 
 
 This idea had not even been tasted before, 
 and Gimlet relished it slowly down. "You 
 think that?" he said. 
 
 "Sure of it." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I've watched their faces when they did not 
 know I was looking." 
 
 Another flash, followed by a terrific peal of 
 thunder, broke in for a moment upon the dia- 
 logue. The two boys lay facing each other 
 across a grave. Gimlet leaned a little nearer 
 to his brother. 
 
 "Do you think they are all squared?" he 
 asked in a whisper. 
 
 "There is one I'm not sure about." 
 
 "Brauwn?" 
 
THOUGHTY 203 
 
 "No, Tuke. He's either honest or ," the 
 eldest Thoughty One glanced about him for 
 listeners. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Devilish deep." 
 
 Gimlet sighed heavily with accumulated in- 
 terest. "Which is he?" he asked. 
 
 "We shall soon learn, but " again the eldest 
 Thoughty One glanced about him, and then the 
 heads of the two boys met over the top of the 
 grave. "I believe," whispered the Thoughty 
 One, "he means to give both sides away." 
 
 "I believe it too," said Gimlet 
 
 "When knaves fall out you know the rest." 
 
 Gimlet rose to his feet, unable any longer to 
 remain still. "If it wasn't dark, I could swear 
 I saw a boat," he said. 
 
 "It's the sound of oars we must listen for: 
 they'll be muffled; but if you know how you will 
 hear them all the same." 
 
 Rain began to fall, first in big drops, then in 
 a sharp, loud, continuous shower. The boys 
 climbed through a broken window and dropped 
 
204 THOUGHTY 
 
 softly into the interior of the church. A flash 
 of lightning followed them, and showed, almost 
 at their feet, a green basalt effigy of a crusader. 
 The fellow having fought through the best part 
 of one century, was content enough to lie cross- 
 legged through the rest ; and the Thoughty Ones 
 respected his slumber, understanding well that 
 the man's heart had known how to beat. N. T. 
 was carved on the stone near which he lay ; but 
 who N. T. was, or what N. T. had done, the 
 stone did not relate; he had fought once; he 
 slept now; he had been a man, it seemed, like 
 in all respects to other men. At the far end of 
 the church under the belfry a flight of steps led 
 to the vaults below, and the two boys, groping 
 their way down, entered the crypt. Striking a 
 match, Gimlet lit a candle and the dim, wavering 
 light fell on the dripping walls, and on some 
 broken pieces of coffin, and on a rusty spade. 
 It was plain that the grave, whatever the grave 
 may be, is a powerless affair at best, for all it 
 had sought to hold had escaped. Drawing for- 
 ward the lid of a coffin, the Thoughty Ones sat 
 
THOUGHTY 205 
 
 down and waited. A life or death affair this 
 waiting at the risk of a slit throat or shattered 
 brain-pan; but the Thoughty Ones had faced 
 the odds before, and would, if they lived, face 
 them again ; for the Thoughty Ones, like all good 
 men and true, had their code of honour; and it 
 was to play the game to the best of the light 
 that was in them. A queer rush of a light, a 
 fata morgana of a light, an ignis fatuus, but 
 such as it was they followed it faithfully, and 
 that was what God meant them to do, no more 
 and no less. A fine thing this licence to sin 
 given to every free-born man; this permit to 
 do wrong so long, and only so long, as he strives 
 to do right. Evil, what is it, but the pathway 
 over which we must all travel to righteousness ? 
 And one could well believe that shall death un- 
 seal our eyes, and we look again on that which 
 we have done, it will not be our so-called sins 
 that will trouble us, but those showy acts which 
 we so fondly name our good deeds. 
 
 The Thoughty Ones had unwritten permis- 
 sion to leave the vault when the candle was 
 
206 THOUGHTY 
 
 within three gutters of dying out, but on its 
 nearing the end of its time a sudden gust ex- 
 tinguished it, and sent the two boys simulta- 
 neously to their feet, Gimlet, for no reason 
 whatever but that it is good sometimes to have 
 something stout and sturdy in the hand, laying 
 hold of the rusty spade. 
 
 "How many gutters had it left?" he asked 
 huskily. 
 
 "I think if we wait where we are till we have 
 counted five, we shall about hit it," returned his 
 brother, and began at once to count : "One, two, 
 three, four, five." 
 
 At the fall of five the Though ty Ones beat a 
 retreat, a certain disorder being apparent in their 
 going. 
 
 "Why, youVe got the spade," remarked the 
 elder of the two boys when they found themselves 
 once more in the open air. 
 
 "We may want it," said Gimlet, looking 
 slightly confused. 
 
 The answer, with all it might or might not 
 imply, was received in silence and in silence given 
 
THOUGHTY 207 
 
 a quittance ; for he who honours strength knows 
 also how to honour weakness. Gimlet, conscious 
 that he had somehow fallen short, glanced 
 fiercely about him, as if expecting to see a dragon 
 or maiden in distress under every bush. The 
 rain had ceased and high over the boys' heads 
 one sullen, angry cloud travelled slowly along 
 against the wind, sending out great jagged forks 
 of light, now this way, now that. On the far 
 side of the hill, withered and leafless, the Felon's 
 Tree stuck straight up into the sky. Many a 
 dead man had hung on that tree in chains; his 
 poor ghost might still be met where the rotting, 
 crow-pecked bones had fallen and lain unburied. 
 
 Gimlet shouldered the spade. "I am going 
 to the Felon's Tree," he remarked with careless 
 ease. "You may come or not, as you like." 
 
 The elder boy smiled grimly. "Make a bee- 
 line for it," he said, "and we shall see what we 
 shall see." 
 
 At that the two started on their adventure, 
 and at such an hour, and in such a place a more 
 ugly adventure it would have been hard to start 
 
208 THOUGHTY 
 
 on. From the first step the boys took towards 
 the tree a long train of phantoms, the more weird 
 for being utterly invisible, tracked with them 
 pace for pace. The night air gibbered with 
 ghoulish merriment; but the Thoughty Ones, 
 the collars of their coats turned well up about 
 their ears, stalked through the noise till within 
 a stone's throw of the haunted tree. Then they 
 stopped short, and even their stout hearts 
 quailed. For, lying stretched out beneath the 
 tree, white as cardboard, stiff as a wooden doll, 
 was the deadest looking dead man that ever 
 ghost charaded with. 
 
 "It's old Rabbit - Skins," exclaimed the 
 Thoughty Ones shakily; and then, cheered by 
 the sound of a familiar name in such an unfa- 
 miliar place, the boys advanced and looked upon 
 the dead man. 
 
 "Let us bury him," said Gimlet, stimulated 
 to a barefaced hardihood by certain unwarrant- 
 able emotions of another kind. 
 
 The elder Thoughty One did not answer, but 
 stared down at the dead old reprobate who 
 
THOUGHTY 209 
 
 looked as if he had drunk in death by the gallon. 
 "He'll haunt us if we do," he observed at last. 
 Gimlet fumbled in the sandy ground with the 
 spade and made no comment. "I'm game if 
 you are," continued his brother. "Here," he 
 added, "give me the spade." 
 
 But there lay a virtue in the old, worn, spade 
 handle, and Gimlet was loath to let go his hold 
 on it. "No," he said, "I'll do the digging." 
 
 Never did a man need so much burying as 
 did Rabbit-Skins : three Sir John Moores could 
 have been bayoneted to bed in the time that this 
 old mole took to get into position for the night. 
 At last, however, he was comfortably disposed 
 of, and the Thoughty Ones were free to look 
 back on a deed done. They did not stay to do 
 so ; but flinging away the spade, bolted for their 
 lives, pursued by Rabbitt-Skins, who, no sooner 
 buried than risen, chased them over the haunted 
 ground. 
 
 Meanwhile Pepper, having driven twenty- 
 two geese into the dining-room and left them 
 
210 THOUGHTY 
 
 there to feed on the carpet, had been soundly 
 spanked, and he lay in bed flumping first onto 
 his face and then onto his back, the one position 
 reminding him of the past and the other of the 
 present, and each, as such, equally undesirable. 
 The storm rattled and blazed outside, but Pepper 
 took no interest in it at all till Doozle appeared 
 in her night-gown, with a very scared face, and 
 bearing in her hand, votive offering to an of- 
 fended deity a meringue. Circumstance had 
 so angered Pepper that he almost found it in his 
 heart to sacrifice Doozle and the meringue on 
 the same altar; but moved to an inward com- 
 passion by a softening feeling in the mouth, he 
 took the meringue, ate it up, his face the while 
 so void of expression that Doozle would not 
 have known that he liked the meringue had he 
 not licked his fingers and hunted about the sheet 
 for stray crumbs. 
 
 "May I get into bed?" said Doozle. 
 "No," said Pepper, "you mayn't." 
 There was a pause in the conversation, during 
 which Pepper once more licked his fingers, 
 
THOUGHTY 211 
 
 thrusting them far back in his mouth so as to 
 taste them to the full. 
 
 "Can I sit on the edge of the bed?" asked 
 Doozle. 
 
 "No," said Pepper, "you can't. Fetch three 
 stair-rods," he continued authoritatively. "I'm 
 going to bottle lightning." 
 
 "How will you bottle it?" 
 
 "In the bath, of course, silly." 
 
 "Will it stay there?" 
 
 "How can I tell till I try?" 
 
 "But supposing it doesn't?" 
 
 "Oh," said Pepper, putting a small, muscular 
 leg out of bed, "if you are going to stand there 
 supposing, I'd better get the rods myself." 
 
 He went, and returned shortly afterward 
 bearing the rods in triumph. "I took the three 
 shiniest I could find," he observed. "Now, 
 Doozle, you stand at the window and wave the 
 looking-glass while I tie the rods together." 
 
 Instead of obeying, Doozle climbed into Pep- 
 per's bed and sat with her chin resting on her 
 
212 THOUGHTY 
 
 knees. "I am dreadfully sorry, but I just can't 
 wave the glass," she said in a choked voice. 
 
 " Why can't you?" 
 
 "I'm afraid." 
 
 "CM/" 
 
 An appalling clap of thunder resounded 
 through the room, and Doozle disappeared, 
 head and all, beneath the bed-clothes. "Is it 
 bottled?" she asked shakily. 
 
 "No," replied Pepper, wild with excitement, 
 "but if you had done what I told you, it would 
 have been." 
 
 Once more the lightning split the sky, turning 
 everything grey-blue, and even Pepper let go 
 his hold on the rods as the great streak of fire 
 came bumping and banging earthwards. He 
 drew a little nearer to the bed. "What are you 
 doing there under the clothes, Doozle?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "Praying that the lightning mayn't be bot- 
 tled," she answered truthfully. 
 
 "Get out of the bed. I won't have you in 
 the room at all." 
 
THOUGHTY 213 
 
 "I daren't get out." 
 
 Scarcely had she spoken before the sky caught 
 fire and blew up with the most awful bang that 
 two children were ever asked to listen to. "Oh, 
 Pepper," cried Doozle imploringly, "please put 
 the bottling machine in the cupboard." 
 
 Truth to tell, however, Pepper himself had 
 grown more than a little shy of his bottling ma- 
 chine. "It's made now and will have to stay," 
 he said. "But I'll put the sponge-bag on your 
 face and then you will be much safer. It's a 
 non-conductor." 
 
 This simple and ready means of protection 
 failed to impress Doozle. "I am praying to 
 God," she replied with pious fervour. "Come 
 in to bed, Pepper, and pray too." 
 
 Pepper reddened. "I sha'n't do anything so 
 foolish," he answered. 
 
 "Oh, Pepper, don't speak like that till the 
 
 storm is over." 
 
 "I shall; I shall speak how I like." 
 "Supposing you get struck?" 
 "Supposing I do." 
 
214 THOUGHTY 
 
 Crash, bang, splutter, bang, bump, toll, roll, 
 roll, roll, roll went the storm. "Oh, Pepper, 
 please pray before it is too late," implored 
 Doozle again. 
 
 "I sha'n't," said Pepper, who had grown 
 white, and who clutched at the sponge-bag as 
 a drowning man clutches at a life-buoy. He sat 
 down on a chair, his small brown feet and legs 
 drawn up under him, and it would be hard to 
 tell what took place in Pepper's heart just then : 
 yet one cannot but think that there was some- 
 thing fine in that stern refusal of his to seek 
 God's protection. Little by little, growling and 
 muttering and spitting fire, the storm drew off 
 and Pepper was free to get into bed beside 
 Doozle. When the Thoughty Ones returned 
 they found the two children fast asleep. Pep- 
 per, it was evident, sleep had taken unawares, 
 for his thumb was in his mouth, a position he 
 would never have allowed it to take up in public. 
 The Thoughty Ones gazed down on the small, 
 ignorant brother and sister with eyes new washed 
 by experience. "Ignorant as kittens," they 
 murmured. 
 
THOUGHTY 216 
 
 Two at least of the Thoughty Ones awoke 
 the next morning in a state of mind that might 
 best be described as bursting to tell and bursting 
 not to tell; a most painful predicament to be in 
 with a lot of joy attached to it. At last they 
 told Pepper, and Doozle came in for the fag 
 end of a fact here and there, just such scrappy 
 bits of information as is thrown out by little boys 
 for little girls to build up a new heaven and a 
 new earth as best they may. All four children 
 spent an enjoyable afternoon in making prepa- 
 ration to resist the police. Bullets were cast for 
 the old horse pistol; cartridges filled for a pin- 
 fire breech-loader, money being scarce browns 
 were held good enough ; and that no contingency, 
 however remote, might be overlooked, the 
 Thoughty Ones wound a huge coil of rope 
 round Doozle's legs under her dress, so that in 
 the event of their being captured she might visit 
 them in prison and enable them by means of a 
 rope to effect their escape. The rope was heavy ; 
 she could scarcely wobble from one leg to the 
 other, and it had the further penalty attached 
 
216 THOUGHTY 
 
 to it, in that whenever she sat down it raised 
 blisters. 
 
 "They'll take her up for being drunk and in- 
 capable if she walks about the roads like that," 
 said Pepper. 
 
 "She'll be put on 'the Black List' and knocked 
 off drink for three years ; that is what will hap- 
 pen to her," commented Gimlet. 
 
 "No; they'll shut her up in a home for in- 
 ebriates and give her whisky in all she eats and 
 drinks, till the very sight of three prize medals 
 on a bottle makes her sick," remarked the eldest 
 Thoughty One. 
 
 "The rope rubs," said Doozle; "can I take it 
 off and put it on again later?" 
 
 "No, you can't," returned all three boys at 
 once. 
 
 "My legs are so sore; mayn't I carry it some 
 other way?" asked Doozle. 
 
 "No, you mayn't," chorused the three. 
 
 "Can I have something soft between me and 
 the rope?" 
 
 "No, you can't." 
 
THOUGHTY 217 
 
 "Must I wear it in bed too?" 
 
 "Yes, you must." 
 
 "Why," asked Doozle despairingly. 
 "Couldn't I carry it in a basket?" 
 
 "Girl!" shouted all three Thoughty Ones in 
 derision. 
 
 "Under my cloak then?" 
 
 "Girl!" 
 
 Doozle sat down. "It's a most soring thing," 
 she said tearfully. 
 
 The Thoughty Ones regarded her with at- 
 tention. "Will you swear on your Solemn-Dick,- 
 may-I-drop-dead-this-moment-Bible-oath that if 
 you are allowed to take it off you will put it 
 on the moment you are told?" 
 
 "Yes," said Doozle, ready to swear anything. 
 
 "Then take it off, cry baby." 
 
 Doozle hastened to do so. 
 
 After consultation it was decided that a fort 
 must be built in the wood and armed with can- 
 non and not a moment lost in setting about the 
 task. Enormous stones were hauled up from 
 the quarry and every unmortared wall was made 
 
218 THOUGHTY 
 
 to contribute its share towards the defence. At 
 last the fort was finished, but the police still 
 lingering, a general field day was ordered, all 
 arms to take part. Pistol, breech-loader and 
 cannon went off simultaneously with so much 
 noise and effect that the Thoughty Ones laid 
 more low than they had intended; and brought 
 down on themselves an indignant be-peppered 
 gardener, who, having been busy raking a path, 
 turned to and raked down the fort; and as it 
 had taken three days to build and had been held 
 to be impregnable, its demolition came as a sur- 
 prise to the Thoughty Ones, and like most sur- 
 prises that overtook them, proved to be 
 unpleasant. A mutual distaste for each other's 
 society filled the Thoughty Ones and they left 
 the ruined fort by separate paths, only to meet 
 again later on the back stairs, each being sent to 
 bed for a different and a rankly unjust reason. 
 The next day the sun shone bright, and it was 
 held advisable to send a spy to the village to 
 spy out the land, and learn what measures the 
 police were taking, and whether Rabbit-Skins 
 
THOUGHTY 219 
 
 was being sadly missed or no. Pepper was 
 chosen to play the part of spy, the Thoughty 
 Ones to await his return in the look-out tree. 
 He went smothered and bedazed with instruc- 
 tions, and confident that he could learn all that 
 there was to be learnt by the light of his own 
 wits alone. At the top of the Look-out Tree 
 the Thoughty Ones awaited his return, the 
 breech-loader and horse pistol loaded and full 
 cock beside them. After some time had elapsed, 
 Pepper was seen breathlessly hurrying up the 
 hill. It had been agreed that three low whistles 
 were to signify danger, while the wearing of his 
 hat on his head was to be interpreted as a sign 
 of security. 
 
 u He has forgotten to take off his hat," said 
 Gimlet in an annoyed voice. 
 
 "That's the worst of having a silly sheep like 
 that to depend on," remarked the elder 
 Thoughty One. u We shall end by being shot 
 down." 
 
 Gimlet smiled. "Well, what news?" he asked 
 softly, leaning through the branches and looking 
 
o 
 
 220 THOUGHTY 
 
 down on Pepper, who had reached the foot of 
 the tree. 
 
 "No one has even missed Rabbit-Skins," re- 
 plied Pepper, in a loud, excited voice. 
 
 "Ass," exclaimed his brothers, "youVe been 
 taken in, of course." 
 
 "No, I haven't," said Pepper. 
 
 "Did you go and watch Kelly?" asked Gim- 
 let. (Kelly was the policeman.) 
 
 "Yes, I went there first." 
 
 "What was he doing?" 
 
 "He was asleep in the sun." 
 
 Pause. "That may mean anything," re- 
 marked the eldest Thoughty One. "Kelly's 
 deep." 
 
 "You always said he was a fool," returned 
 Pepper. 
 
 "Did you go to Mrs. Rodgers' ?" asked Gim- 
 let. Mrs. Rodgers kept a small sweet shop. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "What did she say?" 
 
 "Oh, she asked me to pay her what we owed, 
 
THOUGHTY 
 
 and when I said I hadn't any change she told 
 me to run away and not take up her time." 
 
 "You seem to have made a jolly fool of your- 
 self all round," remarked Gimlet, caustically. 
 
 "Then," continued Pepper, "I went on to 
 Sally Harriett's." 
 
 "Well, and what did she say?" 
 
 "She said that if Rabbit-Skins was dead it 
 would be a good riddance of bad rubbish; that 
 the last time she saw him about he stole her 
 clothes pegs, and if ever he dared put his nose 
 inside her door again she would learn the rea- 
 son why." 
 
 The two elder Thoughty Ones slid down the 
 tree. "A fat lot of good you are as a spy," 
 remarked Gimlet in an icy voice. "We might 
 as well have sent Doozle. You're a girl, that's 
 what you are, and you will have to go into the 
 housemaid's cupboard." 
 
 Pepper got very pink. "Twist my arm," he 
 said, holding out a small wisp of an arm towards 
 Gimlet. "You'll see then whether I'm a girl 
 
 or no." 
 
222 THOUGHTY 
 
 "I wouldn't twist such putty," returned 
 Gimlet. 
 
 "Well, kick me on the shins, then," said 
 
 i 
 
 Pepper. 
 
 "You would jolly soon blub if I did." 
 
 "Kick away." 
 
 "Shove him in the housemaid's cupboard and 
 have done with him," remarked the eldest 
 Thoughty One. 
 
 The three boys returned to the house. Pep- 
 per made no resistance. It was etiquette among 
 the Thoughty Ones to accept the inevitable with 
 stoicism. Just as the door of the housemaid's 
 cupboard was about to close on Pepper, Doozle, 
 more than usually indiscreet, walked down the 
 passage, and was promptly seized and thrust in 
 with him, so that he might see for himself ex- 
 actly what he was like. Complete darkness and 
 a smell of black-lead reigned together in the cup- 
 board, and inward vision alone enabled Pepper 
 to see Doozle. Neither child spoke: Doozle 
 dared not speak; Pepper could not speak. Sev- 
 eral years passed away and then Doozle knew 
 
THOUGHTY 223 
 
 that she was about to sneeze. She pinched her 
 little finger. 
 
 "Don't you stir," said Pepper in a thick voice. 
 
 "I'm afraid I'm going to sneeze," replied 
 Doozle humbly. 
 
 "You'd better not, that's all." 
 
 The sneeze continued to mount. "Oh, Pep- 
 per, it's coming," cried Doozle, breaking into a 
 loud, high-pitched tisshum. 
 
 The whole contents of the cupboard fell upon 
 her with so much stir and noise that an enraged 
 housemaid flung open the door and ordered both 
 children to "Come out of that, smart." 
 
 They did so, and separated, Doozle wander- 
 ing away through the woods. Suddenly she re- 
 membered that Baldar, the Beautiful, was dead, 
 and had had scarce time to wring her hands at 
 the sight of his horse and hounds when the 
 Thoughty Ones, who had been stalking her as 
 a witch, bore down and took her prisoner. She 
 was conducted to the horse pond that it might 
 be ascertained whether she would sink or swim, 
 Doozle alone of the party cherishing no illusion 
 
224 THOUGHTY 
 
 as to which of the two she would be found to 
 do on trial. At this juncture, however, Pepper 
 rushed up to say that Kelly, the policeman, was 
 in the road looking about him ; and abandoning 
 Doozle, and guided by Pepper, the two elder 
 Thoughty Ones stole away to take in their turn 
 a look at Kelly. 
 
 Nothing could have been better calculated to 
 awaken suspicion than the attitude Kelly might 
 be said to have assumed as a disguise. He stood 
 bang in the middle of the road, a straw between 
 his teeth, gazing at vacancy. The Thoughty 
 Ones found in that empty space enough matter 
 to make any nervous female shout "Police!"; 
 but Kelly, inured to crime, twiddled the straw 
 and stared and stared. Suddenly he stretched 
 his great arms high over his head, first to the 
 right, then to the left. 
 
 "Gee-wah," he exclaimed, "Tum-dum," and 
 marched off down the road towards the village. 
 
 A moving silence fell upon the three boys. 
 "One of us had better shadow him," observed 
 the eldest Thoughty One at last in a husky voice. 
 
THOUGHTY 225 
 
 "Let us draw lots," said Gimlet; and picked 
 three stalks of grass. 
 
 "It will be a ticklish affair; we had bet- 
 ter leave Pepper out," remarked the eldest 
 Thoughty One. 
 
 "I am certain positive sure I wouldn't mull 
 it," said Pepper shakily. 
 
 Gimlet looked at and felt for his younger 
 brother. "He is small," he said, "and that would 
 help him to worm a way after Kelly." 
 
 "Pd rather trust myself than him in a business 
 of this sort," answered the eldest Thoughty One. 
 
 "Well," said Gimlet, "supposing we don't 
 draw lots and you go." 
 
 "It might be better;" and pulling his collar 
 up round his ears, and his cap well down over 
 his eyes, the eldest Thoughty One slithered 
 away after Kelly. 
 
 Gimlet and Pepper watched his retreating 
 form with admiration. 
 
 "See how he takes advantage of each rise in 
 the ground," remarked Gimlet. 
 
 "Can't he just wriggle," said Pepper. 
 
226 THOUGHTY 
 
 "He's lying flat now," cried Gimlet enthu- 
 siastically. 
 
 A certain faint mistrust of his eldest brother's 
 tactics tempered Pepper's enthusiasm. "He'll 
 have to make haste or he'll never catch Kelly 
 up." 
 
 "Oh, he'd track him down by the footmarks," 
 said Gimlet. 
 
 "Kelly's gone!" announced Pepper. 
 
 "Now you watch," said Gimlet. 
 
 At this point, however, to the ordinary on- 
 looker it almost seemed as if the eldest Though ty 
 One, having wriggled so much, had grown some- 
 what confused. 
 
 "Why doesn't he run up the hill and see where 
 Kelly is, instead of wriggling round and round 
 that bush ?" exclaimed Pepper impatiently. 
 
 "Trust him; he knows what he is doing." 
 
 "He's running now as hard as he can, and 
 in the wrong direction," said Pepper. 
 
 "He's going to cut Kelly off." 
 
 "How does he know that Kelly will go down 
 that road at all?" 
 
THOUGHTY 227 
 
 Gimlet did not feel sufficiently inspired to 
 answer the question. "Just you wait till he 
 comes back, then you'll learn why he did things." 
 
 About an hour later the eldest Thoughty One 
 did come back. 
 
 "Well," cried his two brothers, rushing down 
 on him. 
 
 He waved them off. "Everything was exactly 
 as I expected," he said. 
 
 "Which way did he go?" asked Pepper, who 
 differed from the other Thoughty Ones in ap- 
 preciating facts as well as fiction. 
 
 "Oh, he just hid himself half the time. I 
 think he knew I was after him." 
 
 "I expect he did," remarked Gimlet reas- 
 suringly. 
 
 "He didn't gain much by being so ferrety," 
 said the eldest Thoughty One in a bitter voice. 
 I was reading him all the time. We'll do him 
 in the eye yet." 
 
 "Look here," said Gimlet, "why shouldn't we 
 give ourselves up as the murderers?" 
 
 The suggestion seemed to relieve the eldest 
 
228 THOUGHTY 
 
 Thoughty One of some inward embarrassment. 
 "We should want a witness," he remarked. 
 
 "I saw you," said Pepper. "I saw you kill 
 him with a hatchet." 
 
 "You silly sheep, he hadn't a mark on him." 
 
 "Well, fire at him through the ground," said 
 Pepper, not one whit abashed. 
 
 "There is something in that," observed the 
 eldest Thoughty One. 
 
 Gimlet twisted from one foot to the other. 
 "I don't vote we fire at him," he remarked in a 
 low voice. 
 
 "Why not?" said Pepper. "Rabbit-Skins 
 would never know; he can't feel; he's dead." 
 
 "Well, I don't vote we fire at him, that's all," 
 repeated Gimlet lamely. 
 
 "How did we kill him?" exclaimed the eldest 
 Thoughty One, "that's what beats me." 
 
 "You poisoned him with rats' poison," said 
 Pepper, "and I bought the poison." 
 
 "We might stick Kelly with that," admitted 
 Gimlet. 
 
 "Let us go and stick him then," said the eldest 
 
THOUGHTY 229 
 
 Thoughty One, and the three boys started on 
 their errand. 
 
 They found Kelly having his tea. A small 
 baby bubbling noisily was balanced on one of 
 the man's big thighs, while opposite to him sat 
 his wife. Sarah Kelly had been nurse to each 
 of the Thoughty Ones in turn, and she loved 
 them with a fervour which a wide knowledge of 
 their shortcomings served rather to augment 
 than diminish. She smiled as the three boys 
 filed in. 
 
 "There now," she exclaimed, "and if it hasn't 
 just happened that there is potato cake for tea." 
 
 Pepper and Gimlet glowed, but the eldest 
 Thoughty One, though by no means indifferent 
 to the attraction of potato cake, waved back the 
 proffered dainty. 
 
 "I don't think, Sarah, that we ought to 
 take it." 
 
 "Why not, for ever no, then?" said Sarah. 
 "It's piping hot and a touch heavy, just to a turn 
 how you like it best." 
 
 Pepper at once rose from his chair and helped 
 
230 THOUGHTY 
 
 himself to a big bit of cake; Gimlet looked un- 
 comfortable, and the eldest Thoughty One de- 
 termined. 
 
 "Thank you, Sarah,' 1 he said; u but I don't 
 think any of us feel like cake just now," and he 
 cast a vicious glance at Pepper as he spoke. 
 
 Sarah smiled as she put the cake back on the 
 table. "La, and how like yourself you are in 
 everything," she remarked. "You always was 
 one for having your play out first no matter what 
 it cost 'ee." 
 
 "It is likely to cost us a good deal this time," 
 said the eldest Thoughty One, gloomily, for he 
 had begun to believe that he had killed Rabbit- 
 Skins. 
 
 "Why," exclaimed Sarah, "whatever have 'ee 
 all done now?" 
 
 "Well Pepper is not in it; there'll be one 
 of us at any rate who'll escape the gallows." 
 
 "Gallows indeed!" repeated Sarah sharply. 
 "Don't you tell up none o' such stuff. Thoughty 
 you always was, and God help 'ee, always will 
 be; but murder never." 
 
THOUGHTY 231 
 
 The eldest Thoughty One leant forward. 
 "We killed Rabbit-Skins/' he said in a husky 
 voice, "and buried him under the Felon's 
 Tree." 
 
 "And how, if I may make so bold as to 
 inquire," Kelly asked, stretching out his long 
 legs, "did you kill the drunken baste?" 
 
 "I can answer that question for you," said 
 Pepper, who, defrauded of the gallows, saw with 
 dismay the younger son's portion rapidly falling 
 to his share. "We killed him with prussic acid. 
 I know, because I stole the poison." 
 
 "We put it in his beer," continued Gimlet, 
 taking up the tale, "and the fool drank the stuff 
 to the dregs." 
 
 There was a moment's silence, while Kelly 
 weighed the possible veracity of the evidence 
 against the glibness of the witnesses. 
 
 "What did Rabbit-Skins do after that?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "He gave the awfullest curse you ever heard, 
 and hooked it," said Pepper. 
 
 "I can believe you," admitted Kelly. 
 
232 THOUGH TY 
 
 "Don't you dare to believe any such stuff," 
 exclaimed Sarah. 
 
 "Talking about dead men," said the eldest 
 Thoughty One, "I never saw a dead man look 
 so dead as Rabbit-Skins." This remark had all 
 the weight of truth behind it. 
 
 "I don't believe that there is one of 'ee that has 
 ever set eyes on a dead man yet," Sarah inter- 
 posed in a sharp tone. 
 
 "What did he look like?" asked Kelly. 
 
 "He was bent up and yet he looked straight," 
 the eldest Thoughty One answered. "He was 
 all angles; you could have measured a square 
 with him." 
 
 The words conjured up a vision of the dead 
 man before Gimlet's eyes and he shuddered at 
 the remembrance. "There was one foot that 
 simply wouldn't get buried," he said. "No 
 sooner did we bury it up than it trod out again." 
 
 Kelly's face grew more serious. "And what 
 do you suppose is going to happen to you all 
 if this be true you're telling?" he asked. 
 
 "True !" cried Sarah indignantly, "there's not 
 
THOUGHTY 233 
 
 a word o' truth in it, and you're nothing but a 
 banging great babby to listen to such trash." 
 
 "Go and poke under the Felon's Tree with a 
 stick, and you'll soon learn whether what we 
 say is true or not," remarked Pepper, helping 
 himself to another piece of potato cake as he 
 spoke. 
 
 1 Well," said Kelly rising, "dang me if I don't 
 go and see for myself." 
 
 Sarah turned on him. "Don't you think to 
 stir from this house," she said threateningly. 
 "I've not heard tell yet that it is a policeman's 
 business to go digging about for dead men that 
 ain't never been buried. I always supposed as 
 how he was put in the village to keep things 
 quiet and respectable." 
 
 Kelly sat down again. 
 
 "They'll have to answer for what they've 
 done, Sarah," he expostulated feebly. 
 
 "Done !" repeated Sarah, "done ! They ain't 
 done nothing, that's what they've done. Don't 
 I know 'em inside out." 
 
 \ 
 
234 THOUGHTY 
 
 "He'll have to do his duty," said the eldest 
 Thoughty One, in a solemn voice. 
 
 "Now you just be quiet like a good child," 
 replied Sarah, "for child you are and always 
 will be. Why it ain't much longer ago than 
 yesterday you was that pink and small I couldn't 
 tell one end o' 'ee from t'other, your little face, 
 from your little behind." 
 
 The eldest Thoughty One rose and left the 
 cottage without a word, his countenance a stag- 
 nant purple hue. Gimlet and Pepper joined him 
 a few minutes later, and all three boys walked 
 with long strides towards the other side of the 
 world, coming at last to the sea-shore. 
 
 "Let us steal a boat and get out of this," said 
 the eldest Thoughty One. 
 
 They did so, and shipped two days' provisions 
 and the breech-loader on board, the stable-bucket 
 for water-cask, and the cat as live stock. They 
 tore up Doozle's black velvet frock for a flag 
 and cut a skull and cross-bones out of the tail 
 of Pepper's shirt, and then, just as the sun began 
 to set, they sailed away. 
 
THOTTGHTY 235 
 
 "Oh, where are you going to?" cried Doozle, 
 who was left behind to play the woman's part, 
 and be ready waiting to hear all about things 
 afterwards. 
 
 "Out beyond the other ships," said Pepper. 
 
 "Oh, tell me what it will be like?" cried 
 Doozle. 
 
 "You couldn't understand if we told," said 
 Pepper. 
 
 "Oh, please, please tell," cried Doozle. 
 
 "It is the feeling," said Pepper, and hoisting 
 sail the Thoughty Ones sailed away, out beyond 
 the other ships, just the Thoughty Ones, the 
 boat, and the feeling and not a soul beside. 
 
BOOKS BY "ZACK 
 
 Each I2mo, fl.SO. 
 
 The Roman Road 
 
 THREE stories, two of which are novelettes in 
 length and form, are comprised in a new 
 volume by " Zack," whose " Life is Life " and sub- 
 sequent books have made the author widely and 
 favorably known. 
 
 They are: "The Roman Road" a story of an 
 English manor-house and its inmates, in a vein 
 entirely new for this author; "The Balance" 
 which touches life at many points and in unusual 
 ways; and "Thoughty" an original story of the 
 youth of two boys. 
 
 Tales of Dunstable Weir 
 
 " We are most grateful of all for the true sense of art, 
 which, scorning poetic justice and such romantic fare, 
 keeps sternly to the probability of each story." -London 
 Saturday Review. 
 
 " Full of clever strokes and genuine human nature. 
 Decidedly high in literary merit, being restrained in 
 manner, and dashed off with wit and humor." Chicago 
 Record-Hera Id. 
 
 " Told with perfect pathos, and the relief of humor Is 
 never wanting." London Spectator. 
 
BOOKS BY "ZACK 
 
 Each 12mo, $f.50. 
 
 The White Cottage 
 
 " A sure test of the literary intelligence and judgment 
 of its readers and a positive revelation of the genius of 
 its author." RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 
 
 "There is something large and majestical, as of 
 granite and the sea, in these characters ' Zack ' has drawn 
 for us. . . . Her work is stimulating and wholesome, 
 full of zest as rough weather, near to the earth, dealing 
 with lowly types without being flippant or sordid." 
 
 BLISS CARMAN. 
 
 On Trial 
 
 " It seems impossible that this simple story of Devon- 
 shire folk shoulol fail to arouse enthusiasm among students 
 of good fiction. Its inspiration is so ample, vigorous, and 
 fresh, and its execution so masterfully free. ... As 
 you read ' Zack's ' pages you feel, beneath the surface of 
 expression, the strong, easy, leisurely pulse of an imag- 
 ination calmly exulting in its own power." Academy. 
 
 Life is Life 
 
 "The stories are full of power. They are poignant. 
 They possess a quality of tragic and dramatic force." 
 
 The Spectator. 
 
 "There is a flavor of originality which is never miss- 
 ing. ' Zack' will take rank as a strong writer." 
 
 New York Tribune. 
 
 Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 
 
RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 
 
 TO ^ 202 Main Library 
 
 LOAN PERIOD 1 
 HOME USE 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 
 1 -month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405 
 
 6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to Circulation Desk 
 
 Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 
 FORM NO. DD6, 60m, 12/80 BERKELEY CA 94720 
 
 $ 
 
 LD 21-100m-7,'33 
 
U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY