8ERTRAND SMITH'S 
 "ACRES OF BOOKS" 
 
 33 MAIN ST. 
 CINCINNATI, - - OHIO
 
 THE HOUSE ON 
 CHARLES STREET
 
 THE HOUSE 
 
 ON 
 
 CHARLES STREET 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DUFFIELD & COMPANY 
 1921
 
 Copyright, 1921, by 
 DUFFIELD & COMPANY 
 
 Printed in U. S. A.
 
 SRLF 
 URL 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 PAOE 
 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING .. . , 1 
 
 BOOK II 
 NEW TRAILS . 41 
 
 BOOK III 
 ADVENTURE 91 
 
 BOOK IV 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END . 215
 
 BOOK I 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 MOST of us who had read our lives by the dying 
 sunset of the nineteenth century, probably accepted 
 the generalizations that after evolution comes dis- 
 solution, and after intellectual advance there is bound 
 to be emotional reaction. But none of us expected 
 to witness this dissolution, or to experience this re- 
 action. Crises have a way of diffusing themselves 
 so that they are only recognized after they arc 
 passed ; and few societies in the world's history have 
 had self-consciousness enough to realize the signi- 
 ficance of what befell them. Once or twice, how- 
 ever, in human affairs, it has been otherwise: and 
 mankind has undergone an unforgettable crisis in 
 beholding with complete realization of what it 
 means the portentous operation of Natural Law. 
 In this vast convulsion all human atoms are affected, 
 many are engulfed, many shaken from the place 
 where they had clung like limpets to the rock, to be 
 whirled about, hither and yon by the upheaval, never 
 knowing when or where they shall be stayed. 
 
 Sometimes the expected happens. In this beauti- 
 ful high valley there was only one sign of it, only 
 one visible token that this day was not as other days. 
 It was a Sunday afternoon in midsummer, clear and 
 hot. After weeks of icy showers, the weather had 
 settled and only a few wisps of vapour clung to the 
 heights, above which there hung the dazzling white- 
 ness, the immutable frozen cloud of Mont Blanc. 
 The blue of the sky above that again was the blue 
 of the high Alpine passes. There was no wind. A 
 regiment of pines stood motionless, in rows, and 
 seemed to look over each others' shoulders down
 
 4 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 into the valley beneath, where two broad highroads 
 run, a strip of meadow-land between, lying like a 
 green carpet on each edge of the stream. The moun- 
 tain wall on either hand takes its magnificence from 
 abruptness; it rises at a definite angle like the wall 
 of a house. Overhead hang the great glaciers im- 
 minent and terrifying, cataracts suspended at a fro- 
 zen breath, grey curtains of ice. When the valley 
 was full of cheerful noises, feet clattering, cow- 
 bells jangling, life moving on full current, busy and 
 gay, one hardly noticed them; to-day they brooded 
 like a curse over the valley, sinister presences, which 
 repeated exorcism with bell, book, and candle, had 
 not dispelled. 
 
 There was one token that this day was not as 
 other days, and that was its complete, strange silence. 
 Had it been England, one would put it down to Sun- 
 day but France holds the Sabbath as a day of pic- 
 nics and expeditions, a day of music and of merry 
 voices. On this Sunday the highbroad was unmarked 
 by a vehicle, no one walked in the fields, or climbed 
 upon the cliffs, or stood knitting at the cottage door- 
 ways. The voice of the Arveyron, swollen by re- 
 cent rains, roared along its bed. Even the cattle 
 on the high pastures remained silent, not even shaking 
 their great bells. 
 
 On that stretch of which runs from Argentines 
 to Chamonix, two moving dots made their appear- 
 ance, raising, as they advanced, a little cloud of 
 white dust to hang in the motionless air. As they 
 drew slowly nearer the only living things in that 
 apparently empty landscape they were seen to be 
 the figures of two young women, each of whom car- 
 ried a suitcase, overcoat, and umbrella, while in ad- 
 dition they carried a third bag between them. 
 Burdened thus heavily, their progress could not be 
 rapid, but it was steady and determined and made
 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING 5 
 
 evident that their goal was the railroad station. 
 The stillness everywhere, with all its sinister quality, 
 had exerted its influence upon them, and they spoke 
 rarely together. Words seemed for the moment to 
 be quite useless; and all that torrent of anxiety, 
 fear, and conjecture which had possessed them dur- 
 ing the past few days, had ceased to flow. One of 
 them, if she had felt like talking at all, would have 
 simply given vent to the reiterated amazement, and 
 repeated stupefied questioning of a person quite ig- 
 norant of the causes of anything. To herself she 
 seemed to be the spectator of an universal madness, 
 which must pass; or the dreamer of a dream 
 too hateful and too vivid to last. The other who 
 was the more sensitive and the more imaginative 
 was sunk in a different kind of silence; the silence 
 of a person who is conscious of certain stirrings in 
 her own soul movements which, while new, are yet 
 very old cares and fears dimly held and, as it were, 
 remembered. These had as yet no vocabulary, but 
 one was forming fast, the faster that the state to be 
 expressed was not a novel one but one already 
 familiar. 
 
 They had reached the outskirts of the little town 
 without encountering a single human being. Dur- 
 ing all that walk the voice of the Arveyron, angry 
 as it seemed and threatening, had been the only 
 clear sound. Now they became aware of another 
 sound that mingled with it, sometimes afar off and 
 stifled, sometimes nearer as if just around the corner, 
 but ever the same thin, desperate sound, that of 
 women weeping. By a common impulse the two set 
 down the bag they carried, and turned to each other. 
 
 "Crying!" saia the elder in a subdued voice, "Cry- 
 ing: all of them I It is true then . . . and last 
 week they were all so happy I" 
 
 The two girls Elizabeth and Sydney, whose holi-
 
 6 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 day in Savoy had been so strangely cut short, 
 possessed one great advantage over three hundred 
 and fifty thousand American tourists all undergoing 
 at that moment similar experiences. They were far 
 from rich ; the trip had been a great event, carefully 
 planned for," and it had involved travelling light. 
 Therefore, at that same hour when the three hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand were frantically packing 
 their trunks or filling the telegraph offices with piles 
 of never-to-be-sent messages, these two were already 
 at the railway station, already at the "guichet," 
 already in the train. Inexperience also having made 
 them nervous, the first rumour of the money panic had 
 sent them flying to the bank. "C'est une panique 
 epouvantablef" said the grey-haired little banker at 
 Chamonix ; but he paid the modest sum they asked in 
 good silver and gold. Poor, anxious Madame Du- 
 clos of the pension had promised to forward the trunk 
 to Geneva when things should be easier they had 
 been tres sympathique , and it was always well to 
 oblige Americans. As the train moved away down 
 the Valley, leaving the pines, the great glaciers, the 
 empty roads, and the noisy Arveyron her face rose 
 up before one of the two girls, that fat, silly face, all 
 smeared with tears and marked with suffering. "Oh, 
 Mademoiselle I" she had wailed "Et mon mart, qui 
 a du partir ce matin!" and again the younger woman 
 had been aware, in the very heart of all this stupefy- 
 ing sorrow that it was not new, not new, even to 
 her. 
 
 The valley wound and unwound its green, sun- 
 shiny stillness, broadened and turned, so that the 
 two were able to look back for one long, satisfying 
 moment on the vast bulk of Mont Blanc, buttressed 
 with snow, spanning the world, looming over it with 
 an aloof magnificence which was somehow or other, 
 comforting. One of our travellers at least felt it
 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING 7 
 
 so; the other was too much occupied with her own 
 perplexities, beating vainly against movements which 
 did not seem to have taken account of her at all! 
 
 If the country around seemed silent, this could 
 no longer be said of the stations or of the train. 
 It became very crowded with an animated and poly- 
 glot crowd, to whose voices panic had lent an addi- 
 tional shrillness. Our travelers had a small stock of 
 American-French, but not enough to help them under- 
 stand the rumours which flew about those crowds or 
 the remarks that were shouted significantly from one 
 to another. It was not without a dim apprehension, 
 however, that they noticed the bulk of the travelers 
 to be men, grey-faced for the most part and not at 
 all young; while the women with children clinging 
 around them had come only to see them depart. The 
 two American girls had kept up between them a cer- 
 tain pretence of indifference and a constant repeti- 
 tion of the idea that these matters did not affect 
 their affairs; and this pretence had been a comfort 
 and a stay hitherto. But with each passing station, 
 with each larger and more anxious crowd, each suc- 
 cessive group of weeping women, their own disquiet 
 grew and grew. As the train neared Geneva, men 
 in uniform began to dominate the crowd; with here 
 and there groups of boys gathered together in atti- 
 tudes of utter fear and misery and with even more 
 sickening evidences of a sudden and overwhelming 
 terror. 
 
 On the frontier, the train made a long stop, and 
 all the travellers crowded to the windows. Anne- 
 masse station presented a spectacle sufficiently alarm- 
 ing. Irritated authorities, both French and Swiss, 
 whose nerves had been stretched to breaking-point, 
 strove to cope with clamouring travellers of every 
 nationality, all moved by one herd impulse which 
 stampeded them to their homes. The mobilization
 
 8 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 of the Swiss on their frontiers, added to the confu- 
 sion every available man who might have been other- 
 wise called upon to control it. Voices of newsboys 
 brandishing the "Journal de Geneve" only four 
 sinister paragraphs on one sheet of children scream- 
 ing and of men heatedly disputing, rose from the 
 platform. 
 
 A heavy train rolled into position and stopped. 
 Sydney watching from the window noticed that it 
 was in every way finer than the one she was in, with 
 carriages well upholstered, and a dining-car filled 
 in every seat. Along the tops of the carriages were 
 the names of German cities. A large fat man with 
 a napkin tucked under his chin, leaned out of the 
 window of the restaurant car and looked up and 
 down the platform. At the sight of his spectacles 
 and red, pendulous cheeks, a group of scarlet-trou- 
 sered soldiers nearby made a rush to the window 
 with a snarling cry having in it a note of fury. The 
 German's face disappeared as by magic; an official 
 rushed up and hustled the soldiers away. But our 
 travellers looked at one another with darkening 
 eyes and a touch of pallor. It was their first glimpse 
 of the passions which underlay all this confusion, 
 of the forces which were to move life to new ends, 
 and to turn the countenance of the world into the 
 face of a stranger. They returned to their seats in 
 a sort of stupor. The train once more moved on.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 M. PAYOT, the kind little banker at Chamonix, 
 had given good advice with the gold pieces he had 
 handed over three days before. "De I' or, Made- 
 moiselle," he had said significantly, "Poyez-vous, 
 c'est toujours de I'orf" And the recipient, although 
 she had scoffed at the time, recalling the sacred green 
 paper of her native land, had cause to bless M. Payot. 
 For it was only the sight of those gold pieces, pay- 
 able in advance, which procured our tired travellers 
 a decent lodging that night in Geneva. They had al- 
 ready chosen their pension and sent a telegram. 
 It would undoubtedly be a little costlier than they 
 had expected at this stage in the trip, but then Eliza- 
 beth had settled the whole matter with the shrewd 
 good sense which had already saved them more than 
 they knew. It was Elizabeth who had insisted on 
 their leaving Argentieres at once for Geneva; and 
 now it was Elizabeth who grasped fully that, so far 
 as pleasure went, the trip was at an end. 
 
 "Even if they fix it up between them now," she 
 had argued with a knowledge of effects, if a lament- 
 able ignorance of causes, "everything and everybody 
 will be demoralized for months. No, my dear, 
 home is the place for us, whatever happens. The 
 U. S. A. is good enough for me I've had enough 
 of foreign travel! We'll just go home as quickly 
 as we can get there." 
 
 "Perhaps that's easier said than done," replied 
 her companion, with a doubt born of a more far- 
 reaching imagination. "Suppose they begin to 
 fight?" 
 
 "Well, suppose they do?" Elizabeth scornfully 
 
 9
 
 retorted. "There is always at least a month al- 
 lowed for non-combatants to get out of the way, 
 isn't there? And nobody fights against women that 
 I've heard of!" 
 
 Poor Elizabeth I There came a time when she 
 might have laughed at herself for thinking that the 
 warring countries of Europe were going to wait, 
 like armies on the stage, until all the American tour- 
 ists had collected their belongings, paid their bills, 
 and betaken themselves comfortably homeward. But 
 this fiction was not peculiar to Elizabeth and it 
 saved a lot of panic. 
 
 "Lucky for us that we've got our passage and 
 paid for it," she pursued. "It's the getting to Eng- 
 land that's going to be expensive. It'll be worth 
 everything to us to be among nice people; perhaps 
 they'll know more what to do." 
 
 The telegram when they reached the pleasant 
 little hotel had, needless to say, failed to arrive. 
 Even if it had, the proprietress hastened to assure 
 them with a note of scorn in her voice , her rooms 
 were already filled. But Elizabeth was not to be 
 balked; she was pleasant; she was firm; she was not, 
 apparently, in the least bit of a panic; and she laid 
 the gold for the first week carelessly on the table. 
 Certainly, she was not in the same category as those 
 exhausted, hysterical, nasal-toned persons who filled 
 the pension's best rooms and announced themselves 
 destitute. So the proprietress reflected and the gold 
 did the rest. 
 
 "We're awfully lucky!" declared Elizabeth, as 
 she surveyed the fourth cab-full of disconsolate trav- 
 ellers drive away from the door. "We need only 
 stay quietly here a few days and then go right on, 
 when we're rested!' Thus serene in their appalling 
 ignorance, the pair dined with youthful enjoyment, 
 and slept well, notwithstanding the glare of electric
 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING u 
 
 lights which beat unmercifully up from the margin 
 of the lake. 
 
 Weeping . . . the sound of women weeping 
 in the dawn . . . and marching feet, ever more 
 marching feet. . . . These were the memories of 
 Geneva, which the younger girl carried thereafter 
 in her heart. The skies were clear and steadily 
 blue. It was hot and people streamed restlessly to 
 and fro because they were caught and couldn't get 
 away; because they couldn't get home. From this 
 restless sea waves of terror rose and beat and beat. 
 No one knew what was happening; no one knew any- 
 thing. First telegrams stopped ajnd then trains 
 ceased to run. Were the Germans bombarding 
 Basle? No, it was the French who were crossing 
 to attack Alsace. Rumours rose and ebbed; no one 
 knew whence or how. 
 
 The' English fleet had attacked Hamburg and 
 burned it ... All the banks in America had 
 failed in one tremendous crash. The United States 
 Senate had passed a vote of sympathy with the Ger- 
 man Government. This was a strange thing to hap- 
 pen, but with so many stranger things happening no 
 one thought enough to deny it. .. . . And all 
 the while no money. 
 
 The bank failure story really worried Elizabeth. 
 She had gone early to Cook's on Monday morn- 
 ing and had stood in line behind a fussy gentleman 
 from Milwaukee, who protested at receiving nothing 
 smaller than fifty franc notes. Elizabeth's consider- 
 ate manner and quieter voice moved the unfortunate 
 paying-teller to express himself. "Him and his 
 small change!" he cried, "Why, compared to what 
 it is going to be this is perfume!" And Elizabeth 
 found that he was right. The next day and many 
 a day after there was no use in going to Cook's 
 or to any other bank. Elizabeth and her compan-
 
 12 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 ion were well provided for the present but suppose 
 that it were to last ? With a curious gregarious- 
 ness, which grew with panic and perplexity, the two 
 girls joined the restless crowds, while a pause of in- 
 action settled upon their days. In the morning they 
 paid a visit to the bank and a visit to the consulate. 
 Sometimes a stroll followed to divert their minds 
 in the older quarter of the town, and, as the heat of 
 day declined, that endless procession of nationalities 
 across the Pont des Alpes drew them irresistibly to 
 the consideration of their fellow-prisoners. 
 
 On a certain bench in the shade, not far from 
 where the black and white swans gathered to be 
 fed, Elizabeth and Sydney sat day after day as at 
 a show. It was a long bench and by the third or 
 fourth occupation, the girls became aware that an- 
 other person had formed the same habit a slight, 
 elderly woman with blonde-grey hair, large, mild, 
 blue eyes, cut steel earrings, long and dangling, and 
 several lengths of gold chain wrapped, by way of 
 ornament, about her neck. She wore each day the 
 same dress of black silk, quaintly puffed, which re- 
 minded Sydney of certain of Du Maurier's drawings, 
 especially in the way the feather of her little hat 
 drooped down over her hair. Acquaintances are 
 readily made under such circumstances, but it was 
 characteristic of both parties that nearly a week 
 passed before they exchanged more than a greeting. 
 The stranger, while realizing at once the nationality 
 of the two girls, was yet struck by something cool 
 and untouched in their attitude for their independ- 
 ence and self-sufficiency had not brought that free 
 and easy manner which she associated with young 
 women from the States. The girls talked in voices 
 rather high, perhaps, and accents unmistakable yet 
 not unpleasant, while hardly noticing the quiet little 
 lady, until that afternoon when everyone took to
 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING 13 
 
 wearing the small paper flags of their country, when 
 she began the conversation. 
 
 "You are wearing your colours, I see," glancing 
 at Elizabeth who had attached a miniature Stars 
 and Stripes to her buttonhole. Both Americans 
 smiled and the younger somewhat eagerly responded, 
 "Everybody is doing it today, and it seems to make 
 us feel better. . . ." 
 
 "In that case," replied the stranger, "I must buy 
 one too" and she called a boy to her and purchased 
 the Union Jack. 
 
 "Do you think we shall get away from here soon?" 
 Elizabeth ventured, pushed on by her anxiety which 
 was keen that afternoon. 
 
 "So soon as the mobilization is over, then there 
 would be no harm trying," the lady rejoined, "but, 
 of course, you saw the notice in the Consulate tell- 
 ing us all to remain quite quiet until it was well for 
 us to move?" 
 
 The girls had seen a similar notice, couched in 
 terms of entreaty and signed by Mr. Bryan, but 
 it had never occurred to them to pay any attention 
 to it, and they said so. The other was surprised, 
 even shocked, though she did not show it, merely 
 adding a trifle coldly: 
 
 "Of course you want to go home everybody 
 does. But I was thinking today that of all people 
 here the Americans are the most fortunate. The 
 American women are sure of seeing their men alive 
 and well when they do get home." 
 
 This was a new idea and the two digested it in 
 silence. 
 
 "Then why don't the English rush home at once?" 
 Sydney cried! 
 
 "You saw the notice," answered the other with 
 finality. "We are ordered to stay I" 
 
 Later in her life, Sydney was to realize that the
 
 i 4 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 difference in point of view was national. At the 
 moment she thought that Englishwomen must be 
 rather poor creatures. At the same time she wished 
 to disclaim for herself and Elizabeth any particular 
 sense of hardship. 
 
 'Tin rather glad, Bess," she said meditatively, 
 "that I haven't anybody at home who is upset and 
 worried by all this." 
 
 Elizabeth's expression was impatient. She was 
 by no means a selfish person, yet her feeling if ana- 
 lysed really was that if nations all went mad to- 
 gether, they must expect such tragedies. If Europe 
 was really so impossible as to begin universal war 
 for "no reason," as she put it, of course their people 
 must suffer. But why couldn't they let the Americans 
 who were so much more sensible and self-con- 
 trolled get out of their way first? 
 
 "I should have thought somehow that England 
 might have managed to stay out!" she remarked. 
 
 "On the contrary," replied their acquaintance still 
 quite tranquilly, "we were all of us most dreadfully 
 afraid that she might and thankful beyond meas- 
 ure that we are able to look one another in the face." 
 
 Unable to cope further with the conversation, 
 Elizabeth murmured something and was silent. The 
 stranger turned to Sydney with some observation 
 about their trip, and Sydney was glad enough to 
 leave the outbreak of war and all the ignorance of 
 which it convicted them, for something pleasanter. 
 By and by she proffered their names and heard 
 the elderly lady's. She was a Miss Violand Miss 
 Helen Violand, lived in London, quite alone; and 
 for many years had been accustomed to spend Whit- 
 suntide in France. 
 
 "But this year," she concluded, "I thought I would 
 try Montreux for a change. Wasn't it odd ?" 
 
 "Luckily, we too gave up Germany," Sydney said,
 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING 15 
 
 wondering when Whitsuntide was and not daring to 
 ask. "We came to Switzerland because I did so 
 want to see the Alps." 
 
 She looked across the lake to where the rosy cloud 
 of Mont Blanc lifted like some distant flower and 
 her eyes dreamed upon it. Miss Violand studied 
 the two young faces. At first sight she had thought 
 that one was pretty and one was plain ; at the second 
 she decided that one was pretty and the other full 
 of an exotic quality hard to define, which had a 
 beauty of its own, charged with sensitiveness and 
 vitality. 
 
 By the next afternoon she had drawn their story 
 from them it was highly typical and to Miss Vio- 
 land's experience, entirely strange. Elizabeth 
 Chapin and Sydney Lea had met and become friends 
 at college. The elder was from the west: the 
 younger from New England. Both had sprung 
 from families knowing a regularity of life and ease 
 of circumstance ignored by the novelist a part of 
 the firm underlying texture of the American social 
 fabric. The father of Elizabeth was in business; 
 he was amply able to support a daughter, but he 
 was neither grieved nor surprised to find that his 
 daughter had no desire to be supported. They were 
 on excellent terms; but Mr. Chapin's second mar- 
 riage had given Elizabeth a sufficient excuse to 
 prolong her college career into a fellowship. Her 
 father had been entirely willing that she would take 
 the European journey which is held to be the birth- 
 right of every American girl. Elizabeth carried 
 with her on her travels, if she had but known it, an 
 atmosphere which enfolded her as completely as a 
 diver's helmet, which kept the significance of all 
 she saw, in its broader aspects, at least, from reach- 
 ing her mind or adding to her stock of convictions. 
 She was not provincial more than was natural; she
 
 16 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 had kept a certain womanly freshness and added 
 it to practical shrewdness and common sense. But 
 her profound feeling that Europe was "different" 
 was not accompanied by any knowledge of the differ- 
 ence, nor any wish to possess such a knowledge. 
 Born in society where, if her name was Chapin, the 
 names of her friends were as likely to be Mosen- 
 heimer or Caporetti ; Elizabeth was not apt to have 
 that strong sense of nationality which might have 
 better explained the present situation to her. The 
 Mosenheimers, Chapins, and Caporettis were all 
 good Americans up to the present, that is. How 
 then was Elizabeth to understand the blind forces of 
 race? Her twenty-four years had been spent very 
 largely among persons of her own age and sex. She 
 had advanced views of the suffrage question but 
 was not militant. Elizabeth's strength lay in her 
 courage and efficiency, and, if her mind was closed 
 to a good many subjects, life was thereby made much 
 simpler for her. 
 
 So Sydney often reflected with a touch of regret. 
 Her own situation was very different and it had 
 not so far been made easier by the restlessness of 
 her imagination. She had remembered no parents 
 both had been killed in an accident, when she was 
 a little girl, and the only picture that her mind 
 retained at all, was of a man, quite vague in per- 
 sonality, who read or recited poetry to her on winter 
 evenings. Most of her girlhood had been spent 
 at school, with holidays at an aunt's. A college 
 course was the normal career for a girl of her pas- 
 sionate interest in books; the trustee of her father's 
 estate had never discouraged it, because, although 
 it left Sydney with a thousand or two less, it was 
 education, and nobody supposed that she ever meant 
 to be idle. In truth, that came near to being what 
 Sydney had meant. Despite her New England up-
 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING 17 
 
 bringing and her consciousness of vague and ven- 
 turesome stirrings, she had as yet felt no desire for 
 a career of any sort. She had read both widely and 
 thoroughly, and in her present mood, she was by 
 way of feeling that all her time and energy were 
 needed to relate this mass of reading this vica- 
 rious experience contained in literature to the real 
 experience of life. She found herself perpetually 
 noting and comparing and trying to understand; 
 being intensely elated when this process brought 
 a result, and proportionately puzzled and distressed 
 when it did not. A nature like Elizabeth's, moving 
 on well-laid rails of training and purpose toward 
 definite ends, became more and more of a marvel 
 to her, although it was a nature to be respected and 
 loved. 
 
 In her classes, Sydney's work had been erratic 
 and unequal though at times remarkably brilliant. 
 Over her classmates she had obtained a strong in- 
 fluence, of which the cause seemed chiefly to lie in 
 her penetrative imagination. On the whole, the 
 four years had not satisfied her as it had Elizabeth; 
 and Sydney had regarded them much more in the 
 light of preparation than of an end in themselves. 
 The society of her own age and sex left her cold 
 a coldness of which she was secretly ashamed. How- 
 ever she had graduated well enough to secure a posi- 
 tion on the staff of a woman's paper in the college 
 town, and she had spent more money not without 
 protest from her trustee this time in a course of 
 Stenography and typewriting. This position she 
 had held till a lucky encounter had led to a better 
 opening in no less a place than New York. Such 
 an exciting prospect as this took her breath away 
 and justified every rashness of a trip across the sea. 
 Her trustee pointed out that such a journey would 
 reduce Sydney's fortune to a very few thousand dol-
 
 i8 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 lars far too few to live on as her father would 
 have wished. But the trustee was soft-hearted and 
 her daring had its appeal; if she chose to sell a bond 
 or two and spend the proceeds in this manner, who 
 could blame her? Moreover, his recollection of 
 Edmund Lea, the girl's father, with his courage and 
 daring, love of poetry and love of experience, made 
 it quite certain that he would never have denied her. 
 Such were the simple histories which Miss Vio- 
 land heard in several instalments, and simple as they 
 were, yet in their independence and activity, their 
 absence of any deterrent authority, the attitude to- 
 ward money "quite as though it didn't matter 
 and one could always be sure of getting it!" as 
 the hearer told herself she felt them as absolutely 
 novel. Not the two travelling alone puzzled her, 
 ever so many English girls went about alone, 
 although not generally in their early twenties or on 
 a journey of three thousand miles but it was the 
 curious professional way it was done. "And not 
 a bit like Daisy Miller 1" she inwardly commented.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 "You look tired, both of you," said Miss Violand 
 sympathetically, as her friends came toward her 
 and dropped upon the bench by her side. 
 
 "I should say we were !" declared Elizabeth. 
 
 "We have been hearing those everlasting women at 
 the consulate. They are twin sisters English only 
 one is married to an American, and they insist on 
 travelling home together. But of course the mar- 
 ried one thinks that she ought to travel with the 
 Americans, and the English one is equally firm about 
 travelling with the English. They spend all their 
 time in going from their consul to ours and arguing 
 it out until everybody is sick of them. Neither one 
 will give in." 
 
 "Well, on my part, I have more cheerful news," 
 said Miss Violand. "I heard from a friend who is 
 likely to know that the trains to Paris will probably 
 begin running the day after tomorrow. That means 
 money, I should think. You both have your pass- 
 ports?" 
 
 "If sitting in the consulate for days and days," 
 replied Elizabeth, "can give them to us why yes!" 
 
 "Well, I was going to ask you a favor," the elder 
 woman continued, "that when the time comes to 
 move, you will let me go with you. You see I am 
 not overstrong and my friend will not be able to 
 travel for some time longer. I am very anxious, too, 
 to get home." 
 
 So it was arranged. They were to meet and re- 
 port progress every afternoon, and to move on just 
 as soon as the re-opening of the banks made the jour- 
 ney possible. Elizabeth was frankly skeptical about 
 when that would be and her companion's compara- 
 tive indifference irritated her at times. "Sydney's 
 
 19
 
 20 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 too unpractical," she told herself with impatience, 
 "she doesn't seem to realize or to fear anything." 
 
 Realize what? Fear what? These questions the 
 younger girl was continually trying to answer. The 
 waves of terror which rose from that heterogeneous 
 crowd vibrated in her soul and her nerves but had 
 no definite origin to her mind. She felt them every- 
 where at the doors of banks where grey-faced men 
 stood as if helpless at telegraph offices where 
 women lingered in tears in the parlours of the 
 Grand Hotel. 
 
 "I wouldn't care a bit if I could only get away 
 from here," she heard one woman miserably say to 
 another. "It's the being shut up like rats in a trap 
 that makes me so nervous, Minnie. If we could 
 only just get some money!" 
 
 "But there aren't any trains," Minnie reminded 
 her, unsympathetically. 
 
 "There may be a train tomorrow!" 
 
 "What good is that to us?" rejoined the exas- 
 perated Minnie, "when we have no money!" 
 
 The sagacious Elizabeth announced that she pro- 
 posed to form her plans without anybody's advice or 
 assistance. "Of course they want to keep one here 
 as long as possible," she scornfully remarked, "until 
 we're all starved out or the Germans have settled 
 down to besiege the town- Why on earth don't the 
 people at home do something?" 
 
 "Because we're all so awfully unimportant," her 
 companion answered. "What does it matter if the 
 Americans get home comfortably or not?" 
 
 Elizabeth stared at her. "I think it matters a 
 great deal," she said with impatience. "You're so 
 funny, Sydney! What is it to you if Europe has a 
 war or not? . . . You know what the President 
 says we read it today: aren't you a neutral?" 
 
 Sydney wasn't, but she didn't push it.
 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING 21 
 
 "Of course, if you bad a family at home, you'd 
 be in more of a hurry to get there," Elizabeth ac- 
 knowledged. "I expect Father is perfectly wild." 
 
 Miss Violand was not the only acquaintance they 
 had made in Geneva this week, because everybody 
 at the pension Voltaire talked to everyone else. 
 There was a young man of Balkan nationality with 
 a name sounding like Crackerbox, who joined Eliza- 
 beth on the street on one occasion and made himself 
 very agreeable. That the occurrence had more signi- 
 ficance for him than for her, was shown on the next 
 day when he smilingly suggested getting a friend, 
 and all four going off somewhere for several days 
 together, pour faire V amour as he put it. He 
 was not only disappointed, but distinctly surprised at 
 the way his plan was received. 
 
 "Mais Mesdcmoiselles sont seules!" he added 
 in explanation; and Elizabeth could not deny it, 
 though angry none the less. 
 
 There was a Greek lady who held Sydney spell- 
 bound all one evening with an impassioned narrative 
 in a French, little better than her own, which finally 
 turned out to be the history of the very striking 
 misconduct of her own grandmother! Elizabeth 
 was highly indignant with Sydney because she was 
 not shocked, only very much amused. Sydney, Eliza- 
 beth felt, was developing the strangest states of mind 
 and the most unaccountable re-actions. A trip 
 to Europe was a journey in order to behold the 
 monuments of History and the masterpieces of 
 Art and Nature; one's chief business was to survey 
 the Alps, or the Tower of London, or the Mona 
 Lisa. But whereas Sydney had considered the 
 Alps, the Tower of London, the Mona Lisa with an 
 attention which held in it something coolly imper- 
 sonal, yet she had been thrilled to the soul by trifles 
 merely curious at least in her companion's opinion.
 
 22 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 A skylark, which, springing up from her feet, had 
 lost itself, singing in the blue; a London policeman 
 standing impassive in the evening mist; a Savoyard 
 woman, knitting, as she walked behind her cattle 
 these had been the sights which had brought delight 
 into Sydney's eyes. And now now when the whole 
 continent had suddenly turned itself into an assem- 
 blage of dangerous lunatics and the sensible thing 
 to do was to get back as quickly as possible to the only 
 country where people were still sane now was the 
 time Sydney became really interested and began to 
 encourage all these extraordinary people in their 
 disgusting conversation I 
 
 Meanwhile the sun blazed on the lake all day and 
 the electric lights beat upon it all night. Mont 
 Blanc bloomed at sunset on the eastern sky like a 
 great rose; the restless, variegated crowd surged 
 back and forth with chattering lips and anxious eyes. 
 The tall lady with white hair wearing a long white 
 cloak, whom they had nicknamed "The Duchess of 
 Alba," still fed the swans from the parapet; while 
 around the He Rousseau clustered other swans in 
 a neat black and white costume suggesting the most 
 distinguished French taste. 
 
 Sydney wondered what was happening behind the 
 barrier of Alps what hurrying, what struggle, what 
 agonies of farewell, what suffering 
 
 Then suddenly it all vanished. Suddenly, Geneva 
 its lake, its crowds, and its imprisonment, slipped 
 over the edge of time and was gone. Reality passed 
 in a few hours into memory. 
 
 Elizabeth had awakened with a headache, so it 
 was Sydney who set forth on that morning's weary 
 errand to the bank which had become merely per- 
 functory. But the moment Elizabeth heard her re- 
 turning step, galloping up the stairs she knew that
 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING 23 
 
 something had happened. Her friend entered, 
 waving over her head a bunch of dirty banknotes. 
 
 "Lucky, was I? Every sou we've got and don't 
 lose it! The man at Cook's advised me to draw it 
 all out when I had the chance. . . . Yes, the trains 
 are running again though it's a beastly journey. But 
 he says we'd better take it because the Germans are 
 trying to get to Paris, just as they did in 1870." 
 
 Then, as Elizabeth sat up, her headache gone 
 as if by magic, Sydney pursued . . . "The mob was 
 simply awful, but I was among the first . . . there 
 was a brute of a man who tried to push me aside 
 and get my place at the window, only an Englishman 
 leaned forward and got me back into line ; that 
 is I thought he was an Englishman until he spoke 
 to the creature in some sort of a beastly language 
 and it crumpled him up so the nice man put me into 
 the line as quickly and as neatly as possible. Any- 
 how I got the last French bills there were and 
 the Russian or Greek or whatever he was was 
 furious. Now shall I go and sec Miss Violand?" 
 
 Later in the day, two cables arrived, one from 
 Elizabeth's father, the other from Mr. Hansell, 
 who acted as Sydney's trustee. Both urged an im- 
 mediate return, via England, and Mr. Chapin spoke 
 of money which would be sent there, to await their 
 arrival. Miss Violand, too, had received some mes- 
 sages. Neither of her young friends at all grasped 
 what one of them at least meant to her, when she 
 folded it with the quiet remark: "As I feared, I 
 shall be too late to see my nephew. He has left 
 for France." 
 
 ^ While packing in the strained hurry of a dream, 
 Elizabeth had one conversation which she did not 
 mention to Sydney, all the more because it gave 
 her a thin chill of fear. It was with the inn-keeper, 
 a gruff, harassed little man, whose hesitation to re-
 
 24 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 ccive her payment changed into protest when he 
 heard her plan. The journey was impossible 
 Mademoiselle had not realized that she would be 
 wiser to stay where she was for the present. He 
 would do all he could to make her comfortable and 
 if money were the question, why, he could wait if 
 necessary; Americans could be trusted. When Eliz- 
 abeth, smiling and shaking her head, moved away, 
 quite determined; he spoke more plainly. "The 
 jtraan goes very near to the German frontier 
 dangerously near did Mademoiselle know what the 
 Germans were? News had come through from 
 Belgium . . ." and Elizabeth, her large, steadfast, 
 and ignorant eyes fixed upon the man's face, heard 
 his plain statements, and realized in utter stupefac- 
 tion that he was even offering to furnish her with the 
 means of swift and certain death. How she thanked 
 him and declined she hardly knew; it was all con- 
 fused and alarming and must not be dwelt upon. 
 
 "The things these foreigners think of!" she said 
 to herself as she raced upstairs to her packing.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THERE was probably no event in the lives of these 
 two young women which they were to remember 
 more vividly in after years than the journey from 
 Geneva to London, in mid- August, 1914. Yet those 
 memories were probably very different; a crisis is 
 ever Janus-faced, and in this particular case a jour- 
 ney which represented to Elizabeth the end of a 
 holiday and the release from terror was to Sydney 
 the beginning of an era, if not the beginning of life. 
 And it began, as life must begin, in a sort of chaotic 
 confusion in the dark, a departure from the Pension 
 Voltaire just as the lamps were paling in the dawn. 
 Although they were two hours ahead of the scheduled 
 time for starting, yet the station was already a mob 
 of people and their seats, in a sort of rough corridor- 
 car, were widely separated. Later in the day, at the 
 first change of trains, all three were fortunate enough 
 to get places in the same carriage, but for several 
 hours Sydney was wedged in the midst of a family 
 who ate at strange foods, and piled knobby packages 
 against her legs. 
 
 Against the shrill background of their foreign 
 chatter, however, she became conscious at moments 
 of an English voice, which seemed not quite unfami- 
 liar, and on turning cautiously around she saw that 
 it was indeed the Englishman whose quickness had 
 helped her into the queue at Cook's and whose 
 lean activity of frame and somewhat unusual features 
 had stamped themselves upon her memory. He was 
 ensconced in a corner, in conversation with a man 
 much older, his face, full of expression, vividly dra- 
 
 25
 
 26 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 matized their talk, of which scattered sentences 
 reached her ears. 
 
 "Yes, by Jove, of course one took a risk, but the 
 chance was perfectly splendid . . . and then the 
 consul was a friend of mine . . . no, an American 
 and a ripper ! But for him I never would have done 
 it. He knew all the paths and I didn't want any 
 sentries poking into my pocket-book; you may be 
 sure of that." 
 
 Sydney heard the elder man ask something con- 
 taining the words "Foreign Office." 
 
 "Well, you sec I can't tell till I get there .... 
 one never knows what they're going to want . . ." 
 Here a whistle from the engine drowned out the 
 last sentence and she only caught the very end of 
 some rather long statement "... So you see, one 
 can't tell, but whatever it is, I know I shall be fright- 
 fully keen on it." 
 
 The words stuck in her memory; she wondered 
 what the man had been doing and why the American 
 consul knew all the paths and why the man wanted 
 to avoid a sentry and where . . . till drowsiness 
 clouded it all over in a veil. 
 
 The chilly dawn gave way to bright morning and 
 that in turn to a hot noon and afternoon. At inter- 
 vals one changed trains, but the crowd, the pressure, 
 the haste, the anxiety, one never changed. Miss 
 Violand, who was looking very white and fragile, 
 dozed as well as she could in a corner. Elizabeth 
 tried to read. 
 
 Paris. ... At this point both of their memories 
 became confused. To Elizabeth, Paris meant long 
 waits at Consulates and banks and money-changers ; 
 anxious consultations over the French for this and 
 that and the concentrated pre-occupation of every- 
 body; war-bread, and the general feeling, as she ex- 
 pressed it that " the heel of Europe was in her back."
 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING 27 
 
 To her friend, Paris was the memory of something 
 dauntless and beautiful, a city which blazed with 
 flags, whose pavements glittered with August sun- 
 shine; whose taxis went faster around corners than 
 taxis ever went before; whose people hurried with 
 smiling lips and anguished eyes. 
 
 It seemed to Sydney as though new ideas and im- 
 pressions, new values in life, began to come faster 
 and faster, so that she could hardly keep pace with 
 them . The quiet small hotel to which Miss Violand 
 had taken them for Elizabeth had early avowed 
 her ignorance of Paris hotels held more English 
 people than Americans. But they had both fallen 
 into conversation that first evening, with a charming 
 girl from New York, whose acute appraising eyes 
 had made more of them than ever they made of her 
 exceedingly smart clothes, narrow shoes, hand-made 
 blouses, little watch crusted with diamonds and pic- 
 turesquely simple hat. 
 
 "She's lovely," Elizabeth had declared in re- 
 sponse to Sydney's enthusiastic admiration, "but 
 really all that sort cares for in France, is the jewelry 
 and clothes." 
 
 Later on their way into the street, the two met 
 Miss Lispenard in the full uniform of a hospital 
 nurse. She extended her hand with a smile. "I'm 
 afraid I won't be here tomorrow to wish you a 
 Bon Voyage" she observed with a nod toward her 
 suit-case, "You see I'm off in half an hour my base 
 is Amiens." 
 
 "Then you're not going home ?" Elizabeth's voice 
 showed amazement "but I thought " she paused 
 in confusion. 
 
 "To America I? Oh, dear, no why, what 
 made you think so?" said the other, opening her 
 eyes. "I never intended to sail for a moment. There's 
 too much to do here."
 
 28 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 "But then you're not afraid? They say that the 
 Germans " and once more Elizabeth paused be- 
 fore the steadiness of the other's eyes. 
 
 "I'm not in the least afraid, thank you," said 
 Miss Lispenard with her cool little smile; and she 
 shook hands and bade them both good-bye. 
 
 "Well, of course it's all very fine," was Elizabeth's 
 comment as she walked with Sydney into the street, 
 "but I should think her place would be at home in- 
 stead of getting herself mixed up with things which 
 are none of her business." 
 
 "I think she's perfectly splendid," Sydney answer- 
 ed, shaken with the intensity of her own voice and 
 manner. 
 
 "To my mind, home is good enough for most 
 people in times like these," persisted Elizabeth, 
 "and there's plenty of work to be done there too 
 only, of course, it's not so picturesque as nursing 
 soldiers and all that. I think it's the duty of every 
 American to go home as f ast as he possibly can and 
 remain neutral, as the President asks us to do." 
 
 "There's no use arguing with you, Bess, when 
 you're speaking in that voice," Sydney answered, 
 "but you're talking nonsense and so is he." 
 
 "I'm not talking nonsense. All this seems to have 
 unbalanced you. You know perfectly well what I 
 mean. That type of society girl who spends all her 
 time over here, doesn't represent the American point 
 of view in any way. I don't object to her nursing 
 only she's not wanted you can see for yourself that 
 the French don't want us, can't you? It's no affair 
 of the United States. Even George Washington 
 said that " Elizabeth alleged triumphantly. "You 
 don't seem to be patriotic in the least." 
 
 "Well, if the Ajnerican woman isn't going to do 
 her part in this war," Sydney replied, "then I'm 
 ashamed of her, that's all."
 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING 29 
 
 It was not the last time that she was to experience 
 the curious disappointment and disillusion in respect 
 to the point of view, not only of Elizabeth, but of 
 the more educated and cultivated members of society 
 generally, whether of her own or of other countries, 
 or to learn how badly the intellectuals as a body were 
 to fail the world at this crisis. It was not the last 
 time she was to note the ignorance of the well- 
 informed; the indifference of the sensitive; the nar- 
 row-mindedness of the cosmopolite; the savage 
 ferocity of the civilized; and the purblind dullness of 
 the farseeing. On the other hand, she was to find 
 these things offset by phenomena just as curious; by 
 the devotion and self-sacrifice of the self-indulgent; 
 by the admirable co-operation of the untrained; by 
 the deep piety and religious fervor of the fool who 
 continued to say in his heart that there was no God; 
 by the heroism of the frivolous; and by the idealism 
 of the materialist. Elizabeth's passionate desire for 
 home, Sydney could not resent, although she did not 
 share it but it was a shock to find that she dis- 
 paraged those who were not running away from the 
 spectacle of human suffering and death, and that 
 she took refuge in Presidential catchwords in order 
 to justify her own evasion. That was a shock; and 
 one which must not be talked about. This universal 
 pain, grief, and effort which wrung Sydney's heart 
 and strained her nerves yet added a terrible fascina- 
 tion to the spectacle of life how could Elizabeth 
 patronize them as she did with her little air of 
 inward exultation at the security of home? How 
 could she talk as she did about trunks, passports, 
 and the rate of exchange, and the necessity of get- 
 ting a lot of idle tourists out of the way? 
 
 "We don't matter at all not at all unless we 
 help!" she broke out fiercely, as her gaze fell on a 
 notice fastened to the closed shutters of a shop win-
 
 30 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 dow: "Ferme; le personnel est sous les drapeaux." 
 "Of course we will help," her companion hastened 
 to rejoin, not unmoved by the emotion in her friend's 
 voice. "You remember what we heard at the Em- 
 bassy that everywhere we were opening bureaus 
 for relief already. . . . You mustn't think, Syd, 
 that I don't admire that girl for laying aside her lux- 
 urious habits and working hard, no doubt for the first 
 time in her life. It will be a great experience for her 
 though naturally they don't send nurses anywhere 
 near the danger." 
 
 Fortunately for Elizabeth, she was not a person 
 to contrast her own preconceptions with the facts. 
 Her enlightenment came in time, as did the world's. 
 No doubt there were many intelligent Americans and 
 even some English who visualized the same sort of 
 orderly battle, in which certain bodies of neatly- 
 dressed men attacked one another with artillery in 
 an honourable and perfunctory manner, at the end 
 of which, if the Germans, let us say, were the victors, 
 they entered the disputed village and remained there- 
 in, in the role of careful guests or benevolent police. 
 This vision had been a good deal coloured by the 
 insistence on the German army as a scientific and 
 well-trained body a description interpreted by the 
 entire United States, with the utmost naivete, accord- 
 ing to its own conception of these terms, and the 
 scientific and well-trained persons it happened to have 
 known. English people also shared these extra- 
 ordinary delusions and regarded the actual concom- 
 itants of German invasion either as the invention 
 of the yellow press or the exhalations from unbal- 
 anced minds. Not the French they had seen 1870 ! 
 Therefore, one should not laugh at Elizabeth's 
 view but wonder, rather, why her companion, with 
 just as little knowledge, was so absolutely certain 
 that it was wrong.
 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING 31 
 
 Paris seemed to contain almost as little author- 
 itative news as Geneva, but the atmosphere was 
 not reassuring and clouded the last half of their jour- 
 ney with depression. Miss Violand said little; her 
 blue eyes seemed anxiously fixed upon some distant 
 vision. Her two companions were on a sudden very 
 tired. Elizabeth had felt the strain more acutely 
 and so much so that she could hardly rouse from her 
 fatigue at the sight of the channel, or the cliffs of 
 Dover white with tents, or the scouting aeroplane 
 which dipped and rose over the sea. England, where 
 her language was spoken and where the people were 
 calm and showed no panic, seemed to her like a 
 house of a friend.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 ELIZABETH did not throw off the fatigues of the 
 journey as quickly as usual, and instead of rushing 
 around the next morning to Cockspur Street, to 
 see about their sailing as she confidently expected to 
 do she preferred to rest. 
 
 But London, immovable as law and eternal as the 
 stars; London, more full of activity than in most 
 Augusts, perhaps, but wearing still a homely and 
 familiar face, expressive of order and power Lon- 
 don was not a place in which to feel panic, and Eliza- 
 beth soon recovered from hers. The lodging-house 
 where they had stayed earlier in the summer was 
 much the same. Only the sea voyage, into which, 
 it is true, a thought of enemy raiders might intrude, 
 lay ahead, with home at the end of it. 
 
 Her preoccupation with her own thoughts and 
 relief was so great that Elizabeth failed to notice 
 the absorbed state of her companion. Since their 
 argument in Paris over the duties of the American, 
 Sydney had avoided all discussion of the subject. 
 Her mind was occupied in straining over the prob- 
 lems new to it and her gaze seemed to be turned in- 
 ward. She gladly took her share of the tasks which 
 had earlier fallen to her more practical fellow- 
 traveller; she attended to formalities; sent cable- 
 grams; and did errands in the City. She also made 
 certain inquiries and completed certain arrange- 
 ments respecting which she said nothing to her com- 
 panion. 
 
 Their cabin was secured on the small Cunarder 
 expecting to sail on the last day of August; and on 
 the first day she felt able, Elizabeth went to the 
 United States consul, who chanced to be an acquain- 
 
 32
 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING 33 
 
 tance of her father's, and had a long conversation 
 with him. He was very patient and kind, advised 
 her on no account to give up her carefully chosen 
 cabin for the makeshifts which would be the only 
 possibility; and succeeded in convincing her, that, 
 however black things looked and he could not say 
 they looked well there was small chance that the 
 German army could get to England in time to pre- 
 vent her leaving by the last of August. Then he 
 turned his attention to the next terrified or worried 
 person whose ticket or passport he must look at, or 
 whose vacillations he must set at rest. 
 
 "There ought to be a special suite in heaven set 
 apart for consuls," she told Sydney when she joined 
 her. "Did you get your vise?" 
 
 Sydney shook her head. "No, Bess," she an- 
 swered very gently, "I didn't; because, you see, I've 
 decided not to go home after all." 
 
 For a moment Bess was dumb. "You are going 
 to stay?" she repeated incredulously. 
 
 "I am going to stay." 
 
 "In England?" 
 
 "In London, for the present." 
 
 "But, Sydney, your work your position!" cried 
 poor Elizabeth. 
 
 "I have already written to them giving it up 
 and by the same mail I wrote to Mr. Hansell " 
 then, seeing her friend's distress and dismay, she 
 continued, "You must not be angry with me, Bess 
 dear I simply had to do it. It's not the same at 
 all with me as it is with many people. You know 
 how very alone I am there's nobody to whom it 
 would matter really, whether I live in England or in 
 America. I know we haven't felt at all the same 
 about this war not from the first. Europe did not 
 interest me much before it happened; it seemed just 
 like a series of vast galleries and museums rather
 
 34 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 wearying but now! There's so much to be done." 
 "But Sydney, you mad, mad creature! You 
 haven't thought! You can't afford it what arc 
 you going to live on how are you going to live?" 
 
 "Well," answered Sydney composedly, "yester- 
 day I sold my passage ticket to that nice Miss Vin- 
 cent at our lodgings she's crazy to get home on 
 account of her mother. That's 25. Then there's 
 ten or fifteen pounds left on my letter of credit, and 
 you said didn't you ? that of the money your 
 father sent, ten pounds had been added by Mr. 
 Hansell for me. That 50 ought to do for the 
 present until he gets my letter." 
 
 This evidence of thought and careful calculation 
 stabbed Elizabeth like a disloyalty. The friendship 
 of these two had a very real foundation; no one 
 knew Sydney's possibilities better than her friend, 
 whether of mind or of character, and the last two 
 weeks had not been without their effect. Yet that 
 Sydney should remain alone in London, through all 
 the sinister chances of the future, was something to 
 which Elizabeth could not consent without a 
 struggle. She changed the tone of the protest, how- 
 ever, and no longer spoke of the plan as though it 
 were a foolish caprice. Rather she argued against 
 it seriously and steadily, using all her battery of 
 common sense and prudent counsel. But the girl 
 was not to be shaken. Elizabeth never knew, never 
 was to know, how much contact with herself and 
 other fellow-Americans since August first had in- 
 fluenced Sydney's decision not to return. To the 
 younger girl, the outbreak of war had been some- 
 thing intense and crucial a trumpet-call to every 
 emotion, to every energy of her being. Not only 
 that, but in this spectacle of the suffering and terror 
 of the humble, in the universal self-sacrifice and 
 courage, she seemed to draw a deeper compre-
 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING 35 
 
 hension, a more profound inspiration. The change 
 in her, the call to her, can only be described as re- 
 ligious. And at the same moment as this suffering 
 side by side with this greatest of all sacrifices, 
 she had beheld Elizabeth and her fellow country- 
 men generally, busied about their personal safety, 
 occupied with their insignificant comfort, panic- 
 stricken, credulous, thanking God that they were 
 not as other men ! Return to that atmosphere 
 when every day the invader drew nearer never! 
 
 She brushed most of her friend's arguments 
 aside, therefore, with a manner which showed as 
 nothing else could have done, their differing sense of 
 values; but when it came to the practical aspect of 
 her project, her answers were perfectly clear. As 
 regards work, she had already secured it, and was 
 to begin to-morrow. 
 
 "It was on one of those streets near the Park 
 Mayfair, they call it, don't they? and I was walk- 
 ing along thinking what I could do. One of those 
 big houses had evidently been opened as a hospital 
 there was a flag over the door and a Red Cross 
 sign. Just as I passed they were lifting a man into 
 the hall-way from an ambulance. The nurse came 
 running; she looked awfully tired and confused. 
 The driver had evidently spoken to her about keep- 
 ing the wounded man waiting and I heard her 
 answer." 
 
 "Well?" Elizabeth interjected, breathless. 
 
 "She said, 'Of course ; there should be someone in 
 the office to attend to this I know that as well as 
 you do! But we haven't found anyone yet and 
 what can I do? I am leaving a bad case as it is!' 
 So after the man had been carried upstairs, I went 
 in and offered mvself." 
 
 "Sydney, you didn't! Well, what did she say?" 
 
 "She was so overcome that I think she hardly
 
 3 6 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 heard what I was saying but she jumped at it. 
 You see, they had just moved in and already the 
 beds were full. Most of the nurses were lady- 
 amateurs in high-heeled slippers and strings of 
 pearls. She and another woman were the only pro- 
 fessionals and they had not taken off their clothes 
 for three nights." 
 
 "But still," Elizabeth said incredulously, "were 
 they willing to take you in out of the street, like 
 that?'" 
 
 "Oh, I showed her my passport, and told her our 
 consul would answer for me (you'll have to see to 
 that, Bess) and I told her that I could typewrite. 
 There was a machine there very old-fashioned. 
 She just said, 'Quite so' and 'Oh, yes,' but I'm 
 sure she would have taken me if I had been a circus- 
 rider. So I took off my hat and spent a couple of 
 hours there trying to get order out of chaos. You 
 never saw such a muddle in your life doctors 
 coming and going, supplies arriving, and the tele- 
 phone. . . . ! When I went, she thanked me and 
 said, 'You really will come to-morrow? Americans 
 are splendid !' ' 
 
 "And you are going to work there every day for 
 nothing?" 
 
 "For the present, anyhow." 
 
 "I shall insist," said Elizabeth, "in your writing 
 about it to Miss Violand I wish she were in Lon- 
 don!" 
 
 Sydney did so and answer came in due course, but 
 Elizabeth was forced to acknowledge that it was of 
 little service. Miss Violand wrote warmly of 
 Sydney's sympathy and wish to help; she knew that 
 they could always "count on the Americans." At 
 the same time the idea of any young lady following 
 such a course was evidently to be regarded with 
 caution. Girls were so independent these days;
 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING 37 
 
 no doubt the war would make a great deal of dif- 
 ference in the matter of chaperonage. . . . She 
 hoped Sydney would do nothing rash. As a matter 
 of fact, this letter in the eyes of Miss Chapin, 
 English reader at Chillingsworth College for 
 Women, had exactly the opposite effect to that in- 
 tended, and after reading it Elizabeth practically 
 withdrew her opposition. The "young lady" and 
 the adjective "rash" were sufficient to show the 
 difference in their points of view. To her mind, 
 Sydney was relinquishing a promising career for a 
 wild scheme born of war-excitement, but the inalien- 
 able rights of the American girl could not be affected 
 by any talk of young women and their chaperons. 
 
 "They're miles behind us, aren't they?" was all 
 she remarked. 
 
 Miss Violand's letter did not arrive until Sydney 
 had been at work in the hospital for several days. 
 As she said, there never was such a muddle; indi- 
 vidual muddle super-imposed upon a muddle which 
 appeared to be national and of which nobody 
 seemed ashamed. Patients had been accepted be- 
 fore the equipment was complete, and the zeal of 
 volunteer nurses only added to Sister Lucy's per- 
 plexities. There was no proper filing system, 
 whether of records or supplies; and every form of 
 preparation looked forward only to the next week. 
 Sydney's position was hardly defined; at first she did 
 a little of everything that the nurses had no time for. 
 She ordered supplies; she ran errands; she impro- 
 vised a card-catalogue in paste-board boxes; and she 
 filled in forms for the helpless young volunteers in 
 high-heeled slippers whose will was so much greater 
 than their knowledge. It was she who ran out into 
 the street and guided the stretcher bearers into the 
 house. It was she who answered the telephone 
 and the trembling questions which came out of it.
 
 38 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 Later on, the visiting relatives of patients became 
 her especial charge, a task which she prepared for by 
 intelligent attention to what the surgeons said. Little 
 by little it was to her they chiefly talked; of all mat- 
 ters, that is, with which Sister Lucy should not be 
 bothered. Sydney's unusual quickness, her college 
 training, stood her in good stead now. 
 
 Even Elizabeth began to be interested. She too 
 ran errands, she gave advice, and she did not appear 
 to be sorry when word came that her ship had delayed 
 its sailing for a few days. Also, she had no return of 
 panic, although during all this crowded time the news 
 grew graver, hour by hour. 
 
 Sydney never afterward recalled the retreat from 
 Mons but as a chaotic haste and muddle of tasks, 
 one never finished before the next must be begun. 
 Hurry, suffering, pain, grief, and hurry again; burn- 
 ing feet and aching head, the smell of ether and 
 iodoform, stretchers and surgeons and more stretch- 
 ers these things stumbled and trod over each other 
 during the hours. Perhaps there might be a moment 
 at night to run back for a word to Elizabeth, with 
 gratitude that she was still there; but on the whole 
 one's heart and thoughts were concentrated on that 
 slowly retreating line in Flanders, of which the white- 
 faced women, the surgeons, and the stretchers seemed 
 actually to form a part. 
 
 The days fled on, the time of parting came at 
 last . . . the great shed at Euston, the noise, the 
 confusion as they clung together, Elizabeth's arm 
 around her, Elizabeth's warm, wet cheek against 
 her own . . . and then, no more Elizabeth. . . . 
 
 Sydney walked out of the train-shed into the street 
 and stood for a moment. The pale September sun- 
 shine lay on the roaring London pavement; the sky 
 was full of small high clouds. Today was the open- 
 ing of a new chapter, and the girl drew a long, reso-
 
 THE END OF THE BEGINNING 39 
 
 lute breath as she turned her steps toward her work. 
 And then, as she crossed over to the corner where 
 she must' take her 'bus, she became suddenly aware 
 that the people who waited were all buying papers or 
 opening them eagerly, that there was a stir and a 
 rustle all down the street and a quickening of steps 
 an animation and a fresh current of life, heightened 
 by the sudden clamor of newsboys' voices. The 
 battle of the Marne had begun.
 
 BOOK II 
 NEW TRAILS 
 
 41
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SIR THOMAS EASTERLY, of Easterly Park, Herts, 
 was member of Parliament for a Conservative 
 borough which had survived all the changes and up- 
 heavals of the Gladstonian epoch. Sir Thomas him- 
 self had in his youth been numbered among that 
 group known as "Dizzy's young men" ; he could look 
 back upon actual strolls with the Tory chieftain down 
 St. James's street or along Pall Mall and he could 
 remember occasions when a walk through the Green 
 Park with "Monty" Corry, marked the turning point 
 in a man's political career. The traditions and ideas 
 born of such beginnings had crystallized and stood 
 firm within him against all the shocks caused by the 
 Liberal uprising and its successes. Dazzling as these 
 had been, they had never tempted him to widen his 
 bounds, although he realized that the broadest Tory 
 of his youth could not hope to reach the limits set by 
 the narrowest Unionist of his middle age. Politics 
 are as much an affair of temperament as of convic- 
 tion, and Sir Thomas Easterly's temperament was 
 eminently conservative. He looked just what he was, 
 a healthy, out-of-doors man ; a sound, safe man what- 
 ever his party, with the steadfast eye and deliberate 
 speech which served to free him from any undesir- 
 able imputation of brilliancy. 
 
 The time was to come when Englishmen of his 
 generation were to look back upon life as they had 
 lived it in their youth, with an amazement which 
 bore with it moments of positive revelation. The 
 security, the fullness, the honour of the Victorian age, 
 wore to their minds that pleasant aspect which a safe 
 harbor, shining in sunlight, wears to the captain of 
 
 43
 
 44 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 a ship whose every anchor is dragging in the storm. 
 Many of them may have felt that it was to their 
 own or their father's unconscious actions they owed 
 it that cables were rusty and anchors inadequate when 
 the gale broke, but this Thomas Easterly personally, 
 could not feel. He and his were sprung from the 
 soil, they were a part and parcel of things as they are. 
 His grandfather, even in bad years, had made the 
 Easterly Estate pay. His father had been a pillar 
 of the Squirearchy; and Sir Thomas, if too busy a 
 politician to be prominent as a sportsman, yet had 
 done all which could be done, in that connection, by 
 marrying a wife from the same county, and bringing 
 up his family in the country. The Easterly boys 
 were to be seen on their ponies almost as soon as they 
 were out of their perambulators ; and the family cir- 
 cumstances partook of that large ease and com- 
 fortable outdoor activity which was still to be en- 
 joyed by the English gentleman in the latter quarter 
 of the nineteenth century. Life, to the Easterlys, 
 had presented itself in an unbroken series of small 
 successes ; it had so far could they but have realized 
 it, far more satisfaction and far fewer contentions 
 than was general even then and it all took place 
 tranquilly, comfortably according to tradition and 
 behind high walls. At the outbreak of the War 
 the head of the family was in his sixtieth year, 
 a large, fresh-coloured solid, serious man with an im- 
 movable face and grey hair. His wife was large too, 
 full-bosomed and deep-voiced, with a straight back, 
 placid eyes, a steady mouth, and hair dressed a la 
 reine Alexandra. 
 
 The troubled Parliamentary session of May-July 
 1914 kept Sir Thomas in London, where his strong 
 Unionist influence made him exceedingly busy, so 
 that his family lamented loudly when he could not 
 manage to get down to them in the country for even a
 
 NEW TRAILS 45 
 
 week-end. The Irish situation, however, created by 
 "obtuse blindness" as Mr. Balfour put it, had sud- 
 denly revealed such an acute weakness in the Govern- 
 ment, such a chaos of conflicting parties, that any 
 sensible and steady man found himself both alarmed 
 and confused. But the alarm and confusion of mid- 
 July respecting Ireland, deepened suddenly into 
 horror and bewilderment respecting the Empire it- 
 self, when the tragic developments of the last week 
 swept all party politics off the stage. 
 
 No man had a deeper seriousness regarding the 
 situation on August first, than Thomas Easterly, and 
 this seriousness joined as it was to firmness, with- 
 stood ministerial vacillations and brought him an 
 accumulation of responsibilities, as such qualities 
 were bound to do. The tenth of August found him 
 Chairman of several important Committees; he 
 seemed a rock which supported not only the more 
 nervous elements in his own party, but notable 
 Liberals as well. The crisis undoubtedly called for 
 individuals of his stamp of that class which was less 
 suggestible and less susceptible to panic than were 
 the more flexible and excitable politicians who had 
 come to the fore during the Liberal regime. A re- 
 crudescence of large, stolid, elderly Englishmen was 
 to be seen in high places whence they had been 
 conspicuously absent and they formed in politics 
 these old Contemptibles, a bulwark against which 
 weakness strengthened itself and terror gave way to 
 steadfastness. 
 
 This was a heavy task but there was more. The 
 three Easterly boys were all in London, clamoring at 
 the door of the War Office, and composing frantic 
 epistles on which their father must immediately give 
 his advice. They ran in and they ran out and they 
 shouted each other down on the hearth rug with all 
 the energy of their youth. So little time seemed to
 
 46 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 be left for any real discussion of their various abili- 
 ties and suitabilities. Middleton was for the Artil- 
 lery, and Tom had already joined his regiment by 
 virtue of his work as a Territorial. Hugh, the 
 youngest and in his second year at Oxford, must 
 needs go in for this new-fangled flying business a 
 very doubtful and risky branch of the service, his 
 father thought, but there was no time to consider 
 the pros and cons of the matter with the impatient 
 lad. Sir Thomas, as he sat there noting as never 
 before, their keen faces, straight limbs and bright 
 eyes flashing now with excitement, dully wondered 
 why it was that not one of the three had ever even 
 remotely considered the Army as a career. Tom 
 cared about nothing but the country life and had 
 already acted as his father's agent. The Bar, with 
 politics as a future, had been Middleton's intention 
 ever since he left Eton whereas Hughie well, 
 Hughie was artistic and spent a good deal too much 
 time and money, in his family's opinion, on very 
 modern verse and his violin. And to hear him now! 
 
 Ten days later, Sir Thomas in his large, dignified 
 limousine, drew up at the door of Easterly Park, 
 which was opened to him in a manner of respectful 
 concentration by Smith, his butler. Sir Thomas 
 alighted, heavily and wearily, and entered his own 
 house. He was not imaginative, but he did remember 
 having left it, some weeks before, seriously worried 
 about the state of Ulster ! . . . 
 
 He stood still, looking about him and Smith ad- 
 vanced to take his coat. Smith was Smith, and Sir 
 Thomas was Sir Thomas, but their eyes, meeting at 
 that instant in a long look, were the eyes of two Eng- 
 lishmen who were friends. 
 
 "James 'ave left to join up, Sir Thomas," Smith 
 observed in a low confidential voice; (James was the
 
 NEW TRAILS 47 
 
 gamekeeper and his son) "and so 'as William, so we 
 are a bit short 'anded at present." 
 
 His master digested this information in silence, 
 with a nod of approbation. 
 
 "And in the village?" 
 
 "Several of the lads are off already, Sir Thomas. 
 Old Parkin and Dewey 'ave been up to talk with 
 you about their sons. I think old Dewey is outside 
 now, Sir Thomas, 'earing you was expected." 
 
 "I will talk to him later." 
 
 "Very good, Sir Thomas. Her Ladyship is in the 
 morning-room." 
 
 His master nodded again. As he passed the draw- 
 ing-room door, he noticed in a strange sort of way 
 which yet held no surprise, that the furniture was 
 in Holland covers instead of its bright colors, that 
 the carpet was rolled back and the centre of the 
 room occupied by a long table at which stood his 
 daughter Jane, wearing an apron, and armed with 
 a pair of shears. Sir Thomas mounted the stairs 
 with these and other changes in mind, yet taking 
 pleasure as he never failed to do, in the fresh order- 
 liness of his home, in the flowers and the silver and 
 the mauve and white chintz of his wife's favorite 
 room. After the tension, the pain of this last fort- 
 night he felt it anew as a refreshment and longed 
 suddenly for her presence as part of it all. 
 
 Lady Easterly's life had held so far few disap- 
 pointments, but had flowed evenly on the full tide 
 of affection, respect and ample means. Her sons 
 and their career; Middleton's tendency to shirk re- 
 sponsibility, Tom's delicacy in boyhood, Hugh's 
 vacillation between verse and violin, had been only 
 ripples on this current. Janey like many English 
 girls, presented no problems; she was no beauty, but 
 she had rosy cheeks and a docile manner and craved 
 neither the vote nor the tango. Really, it was
 
 48 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 rather absurd, at least her brother Hugh thought, 
 how little Janey coveted a latch-key in Chelsea or 
 a studio in Hampstead she was entirely vieux 
 jeu. She suited her mother, needless to say, ex- 
 tremely well. Sir Thomas's political career had 
 not required of his wife any higher degree of 
 energy or intelligence than she possessed by nature. 
 Lady Easterly was hospitable, but their dinner-par- 
 ties had no need to be sparkling and her husband 
 had never expected her to act as a party hostess. 
 She fitted in; and that was about all that could be 
 said, except by those who loved her that is, she 
 had fitted in up to the present, and her husband per- 
 sonally never doubted the future for an instant or 
 that her serene middle-age had reserves both of stead- 
 fastness and strength. It is doubtful if he had ever 
 more sincerely admired her, even during her slim 
 girlhood than he did this afternoon as she rose 
 from her desk to greet him, her mouth smiling below 
 her darkened, anxious eyes. 
 
 "My dear!" was all he said for the moment as 
 he held her hand "My dear!" 
 
 "I got Hugh's telegram an hour ago," she began 
 in her deep, untouched voice. "Of course, I quite 
 expected it and nothing would have kept me from 
 running up to town again, as you know, only he did 
 not seem to know exactly where he would be. Then 
 the village people kept coming to talk it over, and 
 many of the women were dreadfully upset. Janey 
 and I got up a work-party at once and I went in 
 this morning to St. Albans for the materials so we 
 can start tomorrow. It will steady them down it 
 is the only way. You saw Hugh?" 
 
 "Only for a moment: he was very much excited. 
 He will be sent to a place to train first, of course. 
 I confess, Ada, it bothers me I have no such con- 
 fidence in this air business, as he seems to have."
 
 NEW TRAILS 49 
 
 "I know." 
 
 "Middleton sent love to Janey and you. There 
 was no time to write before the battery left for 
 France just when, I don't know." 
 
 "And Tom?" 
 
 "There was some medical question, I believe, but 
 Menzies saw to it and he came through all right. He 
 was much less excited than the others so far as I 
 can see. But then, I've had so little time. The 
 muddle has been tremendous, dear, even worse than 
 I feared and you know just how I felt after those 
 fellows resigned. Whigs never have known the 
 first thing about war." 
 
 "But do we either about this kind of war? I 
 doubt it. . . . Have you seen Adrian?" 
 
 Sir Thomas had lowered himself comfortably in- 
 to the armchair which best fitted his large frame 
 and already his face began to relax its strained lines. 
 He laid his head back and his eyes happily rested on 
 his wife as he answered her question. 
 
 "Yes, I dined with him last night and went on 
 to the House. We had a long talk; I cannot say a 
 reassuring one. You know Adrian's Olympian way; 
 but even his judgment, which surveys things from 
 so high up, is not satisfied with them." 
 
 "He surely does not doubt that we shall win?" 
 
 "Ultimately, no : we must. But who can trust this 
 crew, Ada? Even Adrian though he claims to be 
 Liberal has no real confidence in their ability to put 
 the right men at the head. Haldane is a brilliant 
 fellow, but imagine considering him even for a mo- 
 ment as Minister of War! Adrian simply went to 
 the Palace, and made the little man insist." 
 
 "And Adrian himself?" 
 
 "Later, if there's a Coalition, he thinks he is fairly 
 sure of being asked to join the Cabinet."
 
 50 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 "She will love that, won't she? How we shall 
 all suffer!" 
 
 "She won't matter as much as usual. And Adrian 
 is wonderful. The only thing is he works best, 
 unhampered by the public eye so he may not ac- 
 cept after all." 
 
 "Surely that would be a great mistake," said Lady 
 Easterly with conviction. 
 
 "Not if he can accomplish more. And in this 
 present muddle. 
 
 "Is it so very bad?" Ada Easterly touched the 
 bell, turning her face eagerly toward her husband, 
 while he talked as a man talks who has seen things 
 go wrong and yet kept silence. Then tea came in and 
 Janey ran upstairs to give her father a kiss and tell 
 him what the villagers said and thought about it all. 
 Sir Thomas felt comforted by these sweet habitual 
 things, as he drank his tea. They spoke about the 
 boys and asked him questions and during the pauses 
 he tried to persuade himself that the absence of the 
 drawing-room carpet and of William and James were 
 due to natural causes. 
 
 Odd how the tension affected one! Sir Thomas 
 found himself noticing for the first time that Janey 
 had inherited her mother's tranquil blue eyes and 
 also finding himself suddenly very glad indeed that 
 there was a girl. This was not due to sentiment 
 merely; but when one recalled the three boys tramp- 
 ing about the dining-room at Charles Street and 
 pouring out thir plans in a stream of eager talk 
 why, one was glad of Janey, that was all. That 
 chill contraction of the heart which he must not 
 mention to his wife grew less because Janey was 
 there.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 DURING those few days at home, Sir Thomas 
 found himself better able to visualize the situation 
 than he had been in the chaos of town. His doubts 
 and fears also began to take definite form. Not that 
 he had for one instant doubted the necessity for 
 War; but in his slow way, he had a certain foresight, 
 and he was wholly at variance with his colleagues 
 who thought the whole business was going to be all 
 over in a few weeks. The Government's unwilling- 
 ness to face conscription was not excused to his mind 
 by the flood of recruits which so stimulated the pub- 
 lic during those first months; and the posters which 
 met his eye everywhere he turned were a poor sub- 
 stitute for firmness. He saw the departure of his 
 own and his friends' sons with a misgiving which 
 no confidence in the War Office could lessen; and, 
 the graver grew the news, the stiffer became his de- 
 termination and the deeper his sense of national in- 
 adequacy. 
 
 "it's going to be the hardest pull we've ever had," 
 was his prophesy. 
 
 For the Easterly family, it was a very hard pull 
 indeed. Tom was killed at the very end of the 
 Marne battle; and two months later the news came, 
 in the same week of Middleton's wound and of 
 the accident to Hugh. The elder son's case turned 
 out to be unimportant; he was back after awhile on 
 sick leave, looking pallid and different somehow, 
 and very bitter against the way things were being 
 
 51
 
 52 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 run by his superiors. But Hugh's injury was an- 
 other matter. He had fallen in his machine at Dun- 
 kirk; his head was badly cut with severe concussion, 
 and there were doubts about the spine. . . . For 
 weeks it seemed impossible that he should live . . . 
 and then weeks in which one could only hope that 
 he might not. 
 
 It was in November that he was brought to Sis- 
 ter Lucy's hospital on Great Stanhope Street a 
 limp, wasted rag of youth in whose eyes was no de- 
 sire of life. 
 
 Sydney Lea, seated at her desk in the offifce, 
 marked the upright figure of the elderly gentleman 
 as he went in and out to see his son. She had heard 
 about the case from Sister Lucy; told in those stac- 
 cato sentences and with that wry twist of cynical 
 mouth that was Sister Lucy's way. Sydney made 
 it a point to leave a bunch of late violets on the 
 boy's pillow and ask him how he felt. The unfami- 
 liar intonation had brought his gaze to her face for 
 a second with a faint gleam of interest which yet died 
 out in a moan. On that very bad afternoon when 
 it semed for a time as if he were lapsing into a 
 last unconsciousness, Sir Thomas felt suddenly, on 
 the stairs, too tired to leave the hospital. He turned 
 aside mechanically into the office, sought the chair 
 that stood there by the hearth, fell into it, wiped 
 his forehead and stared into the fire. The silence 
 which he carried with him told far more than any 
 words and caused Sydney to glance at him in compas- 
 sion. What she saw took her out of the room for a 
 few minutes; and when he became aware of her re- 
 turn, she was standing before him, a cup of tea in her 
 hand. 
 
 "You must be very tired," she said, in a matter-of- 
 fact voice; "won't you have this?"
 
 NEW TRAILS 53 
 
 The tea was just what Sir Thomas needed and 
 he was grateful, thanking her in his correct, see-saw 
 intonation, in which was no trace of any emotion. 
 As he drank it, he glanced about him at the business- 
 like orderliness of the room, at the typewriter 
 and the files, at the precision and quickness in the 
 movements of the girl at the desk. She was here; 
 she was there ; she was answering the telephone ; she 
 was speaking to Sister Lucy at the foot of the stairs, 
 she was checking hot-water bags or surgical bandages 
 or writing receipts for them and all this without 
 bustle or asking questions. Sir Thomas had seen 
 something lately of Government offices and he mar- 
 velled. There was something unfamiliar about the 
 slender alertness of her figure; the face with the 
 dark and intense eyes, the narrow hand, and the 
 tasteful plainness of her dress. 
 
 "You are surely not English?" he asked her sud- 
 denly and Sydney told him her story. 
 
 "Well, well !" remarked Sir Thomas, "and so you 
 are staying on to help us very gratifying, I call it, 
 and I hope it means that your country in general 
 feels the same way." 
 
 "I am sure it does !" she cried loyally, but yet she 
 was not sure. 
 
 "It would make such a difference to us if we felt 
 that but of course you have a great problem in your 
 foreign population" continued Sir Thomas, largely 
 because it rested him to take his mind from the boy 
 upstairs. Just then an enquiry came over the tele- 
 phone and Sydney was at her files and back again 
 to answer it in less than no time. So he asked her 
 about her method setting down his tea-cup, and 
 Sydney felt inclined to laugh when she saw how her 
 answers amazed him. 
 
 "All that you were taught in the States ? How
 
 54 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 very remarkable ! We have certainly much to learn 
 from you there," observed Sir Thomas, thinking of 
 the slow muddle in which his Oxford-bred secretary 
 had involved his affairs. He bade Sydney a formal, 
 grateful farewell and went out into the fog and 
 she knew that he was wondering if the boy would 
 be alive when next he returned. He had not men- 
 tioned where he lived, of course; but directories are 
 plenty, and when the surgeon came later that eve- 
 ning and seemed to feel a shade more hopeful, Sydney 
 took it upon herself to telephone the encouragement 
 to Charles Street. The fresh girl voice that replied 
 to her seemed so relieved; and hoped "Dad and 
 Mum would get some sleep tonight," and Sydney 
 was more than glad she had thought of it. 
 
 These and similar incidents filled her days and 
 often kept her at work long after hours. The 
 women who did the actual nursing were far too oc- 
 cupied to answer telephone enquiries; perhaps it was 
 but natural that they should come to regard the 
 patients' relatives as a whole in the light of an un- 
 necessary interruption. Miss Lea, having made this 
 her task, through it probably learned more about the 
 English temperament than she could have acquired in 
 any other way. Particularly she learned not to expect 
 any changes of expression in the faces or voices of 
 these suffering, frightened people trained to wooden- 
 ness. 
 
 Hugh Easterly had rallied a little in a day or 
 two, and his father stopped by the desk in the office 
 with a stately word of thanks for Sydney's con- 
 siderate message. He asked her a few questions and 
 their conversation freshly surprised him. He did 
 not look for so quick an understanding in a person 
 holding such a position and he returned home medi- 
 tating on the changes in the world.
 
 NEW TRAILS 55 
 
 "You seem to be rather fortunate in that Amer- 
 ican young lady," he observed to Sister Lucy, on 
 his way out. 
 
 "Miss Lea? Why, we simply couldn't carry on 
 without Miss Lea!" was her answer, which the 
 more impressed Sir Thomas, as Sister Lucy at no 
 time was given to enthusiasm.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IN one of the pleasantest streets of Mayfair, 
 there is a front door which has lost its house. Lon- 
 don is full of houses which have lost their streets 
 and cannot make up their minds whether they really 
 belong to Bedford Gate or to Pelham Terrace. 
 There are streets whose houses have deliberately 
 strayed around the corner; and there are streets 
 so old that they have forgotten their own names 
 after a square or so. Not far from a great Railway 
 Terminal, for example, there stands a row of man- 
 sions proclaiming themselves on a black and white 
 signboard as belonging, let us say, to Brant Place; 
 while a similar row exactly opposite on the other 
 side of the street, quite as firmly announces that its 
 address is Sussex Gardens ! 
 
 The front door we have just noted, in all the 
 glory of its white paint and its brass knocker, has a 
 reckless air of being off on a jaunt of its own. Pas- 
 sers-by, on a foggy afternoon when the lights are 
 lit, can see how the drawing-room of No. 20 extends 
 over it to meet the drawing-room of No. 22, leaving 
 No. 21, as it were, without any raison d'etre. As 
 a matter of fact, this lonely doorway is a hundred 
 years old and dates back to a little incident before 
 the battle of Waterloo. It is concerned with a 
 young couple, poor, but highly connected, who went 
 off together to make their fortune in the golden 
 East. A son came to them, and following the cus- 
 tom even then, they wept over him and packed him 
 back to English air with an ayah in a sailing-ship, 
 to the care of a gentle, middle-aged cousin who might 
 have been (but wasn't,) Miss Martha Honeyman. 
 
 56
 
 NEW TRAILS 57 
 
 In a year or two, the East had claimed them and 
 they never saw the boy again. By this time, through 
 a series of chances, he had become a rather important 
 boy, although he clung the more closely to that kind 
 adopted mother, that retired elderly lady with whom 
 he spent the holidays. Years came and he grew from 
 a rather important boy into a very important youth 
 indeed, and in due time came into a title and a rent- 
 roll, of all of which his father had never more than 
 dreamed. Among his new acquisitions was a fine, 
 four-square, Georgian town-house having at the back 
 a garden in the good old Mayfair way. And be- 
 cause he was an affectionate boy, he built a little 
 house back of his garden, running its front-door, by 
 means of a tunnel, out beside his own; and put the 
 dear old lady into it that they might be near to- 
 gether. So here, in great content, she lived and died. 
 Such was the story of her own great-grandfather 
 and his affection for his old relative, which Miss Vio- 
 land told to Sydney Lea on the autumn afternoon 
 when the girl went first, a little diffidently, to seek 
 out her English acquaintance. She was conducted 
 along the panelled tunnel, hung with old prints, by 
 a large, fair, solemn, elderly person in a cap and a 
 tight-waisted stuff dress, of a cut she had never be- 
 fore seen. A small, square hall opened out before 
 them, wherein tapestry hangings, rich in color and 
 old brasses polished into mirror brightness, reflected 
 the glow of the red-firelight. The newel-posts of 
 the steep, twisting staircase were enriched with fine 
 carvings: there was a lacquered cabinet, which 
 would have made an antiquary's mouth water. Syd- 
 ney only felt that it lent the little place the dignity 
 of an audience chamber. The drawing-room whose 
 windows still looked upon the Baronet's garden, was 
 panelled too in a fine stately design ; and was carpeted 
 and curtained and hung in a certain shade of wonder-
 
 58 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 ful deep blue only to be found nowadays in older 
 houses. 
 
 Miss Violand was sitting by the fire, in front of 
 her laden tea-table, and Sydney noticed that she 
 wore just the same black silk dress with little ruffles, 
 and lengths of gold chain twisted around her neck 
 as she had done on their first meeting. Otherwise 
 she looked shrunken and aged, and her misty, blue 
 eyes were anxious. She kissed the girl gently. 
 
 "So you are staying here to help us," she said. 
 "My dear child, how splendid of you !" 
 
 They had a long talk over their tea which was 
 quite the most substantial meal Sydney had seen in 
 England and included eggs, five sorts of bread, and 
 cake, and three kinds of jam. It was brought in and 
 offered and taken out by the solid person, who gave 
 her opinion freely when asked, and was plaintively 
 addressed by her mistress to Sydney's vast amuse- 
 ment by the name of Giddy. Giddy arranged mat- 
 ters according to an immemorial ritual which included 
 placing muffins on the hearth until an exact moment 
 in the ceremony had been reached, when she made 
 Sydney eat them. Giddy also studied the guest and 
 did not leave the room, until she had been, in a man- 
 ner, introduced. When Miss Violand observed: 
 "This young lady, Giddy, is from the States." Giddy 
 replied "You don't say so, m' !" and regarded the 
 outlander with unaffected interest. 
 
 Miss Violand wished to hear all about the hospital 
 and Sydney Lea had the gift of vivid speech, so that 
 she made a veritable picture of the place and its in- 
 mates, the ignorant lady-aids in their pearls and high 
 heels, the brave boy-patients, and all the rest. Miss 
 Violand had heard of Sister Lucy: "A fine woman, I 
 am sure," she said, "if not quite a Florence Nightin- 
 gale." 
 
 She asked minutely about Sydney's way of living,
 
 NEW TRAILS 59 
 
 and shook her head over the lodging-house in Blooms- 
 bury, adding vaguely that "of course I really do not 
 know anything about such places." But she was 
 greatly startled, terrified even, when Sydney went on 
 to say, very calmly, that she did not believe she could 
 possibly afford to work all winter at the hospital for 
 nothing. 
 
 "Oh my dear, you must not!" she cried, "beggar 
 yourself to help us that would never do!" 
 
 Sydney replied that she supposed they would pay 
 her something when she asked them; and her confident 
 manner caused the vague blue eyes of the elder 
 woman to rest on her with wistful amazement. The 
 girl seemed to carry with her such a fine resiliency and 
 courage that it brought Miss Violand a breath of 
 that outer air of youthful effort which was begin- 
 ning to blow through the world. 
 
 Sydney went back to her dingy room with a warm 
 and renewed sense of home and thereafter she drop- 
 ped in often at the little, tucked-away house in May- 
 fair. She came to tell Miss Violand the result of 
 her talk with Sister Lucy, which had been entirely 
 frank. Expenses were mounting up and moreover 
 Mr. Hansell's letters from home had been strongly 
 marked with disapproval. Sydney must be earning a 
 little or she could not stay on, and she did want to 
 stay on. Sister Lucy could not hesitate, she knew 
 that she could never hope to replace Miss Lea. So 
 it was arranged she was to keep her position for the 
 present at a salary of three pounds a week for 
 which she was to assume longer hours and heavier 
 responsibilities than arc generally attached to such a 
 post. 
 
 All during October and November the excitement 
 about the Belgian refugees was at its height. Eng- 
 lish people who had all their lives dwelt behind nine 
 foot walls with glass on the top, suddenly felt com-
 
 60 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 pelled to open their hearts and houses to the riff-raff 
 of Brussels, with the most unforeseen results. Even 
 Miss Violand could not escape the appeal and tor- 
 tured herself about her duty toward these unfortu- 
 nates until she could hardly sleep at night. But as 
 weeks went by, the money situation, followed by the 
 rise in prices and taxes, so much diminished her small 
 income that she began to wonder whether she and 
 Giddy could go on living behind the lost front-door. 
 As for a Belgian family that was clearly impossible. 
 She talked about it a great deal, though, and very 
 regretfully, at the work-party she attended in St. 
 James Palace; and she talked there also about her 
 young American friend, "such a wonderful child!" 
 living and working so courageously in a strange 
 country. 
 
 "Why don't you take her in with you?" suggested, 
 with her usual bluntness, the red-faced Countess of 
 Welden. "It seems to me that would be a great deal 
 more to the point than the Belgian family you arc 
 thinking about for you, I mean." 
 
 "I had not even thought of such a thing," Miss 
 Violand replied, truthfully. 
 
 "Well, if I were you, I should think of it," Lady 
 Welden paused by the table, gathering the big roll of 
 gauze into her arms. "If the girl is working for us, 
 it's very sporting of her. We ought to do all we can, 
 y'know to keep the Americans in with us. Welden 
 says it may make all the difference . . ." and she 
 turned away, her arms laden, and the scissors clank- 
 ing by her side. 
 
 Miss Violand went home in a state of inward ex- 
 citement and broached the matter to Giddy. There 
 were few things she did not discuss with Giddy, since 
 they had both been young and slim, thirty years ago. 
 Giddy had been dead set against the idea of a Bel- 
 gian family "a jabbering lot of none-knows-who,
 
 NEW TRAILS 61 
 
 if I may say so ;" but she had been favorably im- 
 pressed with Sydney Lea, whom she thought "sweetly 
 pretty" and "quite the lady." She regarded the whole 
 proposition in the light of an eccentricity of her mis- 
 tress, born of all this "unsettlement," but still, if 
 Miss Helen really must harbor a foreigner like the 
 rest of the gentry it had better be a foreigner 
 whose language one could understand. "And besides, 
 Colonials, they belong to us, like," was the form in 
 which she gave her final consent. 
 
 Miss Violand, thereupon, sent for Sydney. Her 
 manner was impressive, never had a Violand even 
 remotely contemplated such a step; but these were 
 times of change. She felt that she was in the move- 
 ment; and it cannot be denied that she was a good 
 deal daunted by the matter-of-fact manner in which 
 her young friend received her suggestion. Sydney 
 was certainly both grateful and pleased; the prospect 
 of living behind the lost front-door delighted her, 
 but there was nothing in the least startling or novel 
 about the idea, to her mind. She knew lots of fami- 
 lies in New England who found some such arrange- 
 ment convenient and pleasant, and Miss Violand's 
 solemnity about it surprised her. She was completely 
 firm, however, that if she came she must pay her way, 
 and she made her reasons so strong that after somr 
 protest Miss Violand yielded. There was no doubt 
 that, where the margin was such a narrow one, even 
 this little sum coming in every week made a differ- 
 ence, and gave Miss Violand too, another attitude 
 toward life. She took Lady Welden aside at the 
 next meeting of the work-party, to narrate with all 
 gravity how she had taken her advice; and she was 
 pleased that Lady Welden approved and thought it 
 "a sensible arrangement."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 "On dear Bess," wrote Sydney to Elizabeth, "I 
 am now all moved and settled into the funniest little 
 room you ever saw. My window has a glimpse of 
 garden and my bath room is a tin tub and a can of hot 
 water. Giddy brings them every morning and tells 
 me that the weather is Very stuffy' ... I sleep 
 in a single four-posted bed with red curtains and my 
 room is done in faded blue and red chintz with lovely 
 poll-parrots on the pattern. The whole house is 
 filled with wonderful old furniture and china, which 
 is kept speckless as if it were a museum. The parlor 
 (I beg its pardon drawing-room!) is crowded 
 with puffy chairs and Battersea boxes and Stafford- 
 shire goats, and silver polished until it shines . . . 
 Miss Violand is a dear and so anxious to like 'the 
 States,' and so are her friends who look exactly 
 like her. . . . They sit around at tea and ask me 
 things (when I'm there which isn't often,) and they 
 always end up with a sigh and say: 'I suppose your 
 German-American population would rise in a body 
 and massacre everybody if you were to come in?' 
 And it always puzzles them because I laugh. . . . 
 Giddy is a flawless person, she is a real experience. 
 She has been Miss Violand' s housekeeper and maid 
 and cook for years and years and she always calls 
 the King and Queen 'their Majesties.' Notwith- 
 standing her name, she is solid and immovable and 
 perfectly obstinate: and she rules Miss Violand with 
 a rod of iron. She is very bitter against the Kaiser: 
 'who didn't ought to have had the notice taken of 
 him in the past as was taken if I may say so 
 by her late Gracious Majesty!' She approves of 
 
 62
 
 NEW TRAILS 63 
 
 me because I am working for 'our brave soldiers;' 
 but also I worry her at times by my ways, and because 
 I don't own all the things 'which young ladies should 
 have when in London, if I may say so.' I always 
 hear from Giddy what 'we do' ; and what 'isn't done 
 leastways in London.' We do wear white gloves it 
 appears: (I don't!) and we don't carry packages: 
 (I do!) but then much is forgiven 'Colonials;' 
 which she persists in calling me. Giddy doesn't know 
 a word of American. Yesterday it seemed colder; so 
 I asked her 'What's the thermometer?' and she 
 coughed behind her hand and answered, 'I believe 
 Miss, it is an instrument for registering heat and 
 cold!' . . . 
 
 "We are desperately busy at the hospital, all the 
 beds are filled but the telephone works, at last, 
 and my records are in order. 
 
 "The volunteers are simply too ignorant for words ; 
 and the doctors, (or so it strikes me,) are rather 
 more pompous and self-important than ours at home. 
 They don't like to explain and so the confusion at 
 times is dreadful. I don't sec how Sister Lucy stands 
 it: but I begin to realize that if the English had 
 the nerves we have, they would have rid themselves 
 of their muddling habits long ago. They flourish 
 in a chaos which would send an American into an 
 asylum. They seem to take pride in their lack of 
 system; and I rage because the boys suffer unneces- 
 sarily. We've had one case here for weeks, that I 
 wish we could ship home ! An aeroplane fall caus- 
 ing a frightful condition, and nobody seems to be able 
 to help him. Do get that nice nerve-specialist cousin 
 of yours to send me over some books or suggestions. 
 The boy suffers terribly. . . . His father comes to 
 see him every day such a darling old person; and 
 somebody-or-other in Parliament, I believe. Yes- 
 terday I thought he was going to faint; but he has
 
 64 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 that wonderful self-control they all have and which 
 so often seems mere stodginess. He has lost one son 
 already, and now this poor boy won't see his mother 
 and sister because they were so upset at his suffering. 
 The father just comes and goes with that immovable 
 face: only on very bad days he sits awhile in the 
 office and talks a little with me." 
 
 Elizabeth answered: 
 
 "I never told you in my first letters what a dread- 
 ful time I had with Mr. Hansell, my dear. He 
 even called me up on the long-distance telephone to 
 scold me for not bringing you home as if I could ! 
 He raved about siege and starvation and horrors 
 generally until I felt as if I were back in Geneva. 
 You'll have to smooth him down somehow, Syd, or 
 else come home : I can't help wishing it would be the 
 latter. There's lots of work here, if that's what you 
 want, you quixotic creature! Everybody is doing 
 some war work. May Palmer has gotten up a class 
 in social psychiatry and Julia Teiners has taken up 
 occupational therapy: which she tells me is fascina- 
 ting and very useful for cases of shell-shock. She 
 expects to go out to France later on, attached to the 
 Woman's Hospital Unit. I'm on the Belgian Relief 
 Committee and it takes every minute of my time. . . . 
 Last week, I gave a talk at college, all about our jour- 
 ney, and we made $300 for the Red Cross. How's 
 that? You are so clever at all that sort of thing . . . 
 you really ought to come home. There's a great deal 
 of ignorance about the causes of the War, I find, and 
 many people talk as though Germany was beset by 
 a ring of enemies. Very few try to follow the Presi- 
 dent's example and be really and truly neutral . . . 
 Yes: I'll get my cousin to send you some books on 
 these latest treatments for nervous injuries 
 there's a wonderful something or other called the 
 Weisler treatment which everybody is talking about
 
 NEW TRAILS 65 
 
 and they say is very successful. But what do you 
 know about nerves and shell-shock, my dear? It 
 sounds to me just a little absurd !" 
 
 "Wait and see what I know about shell-shock, you 
 dear old thing!" wrote Sydney, "and don't waste any 
 more paper asking me to be neutral I go in for 
 righteous wrath. You and your busy ladies and your 
 Belgian Relief are all very well, but the only relief 
 for Belgium that I can see is to kill the Germans. 
 And somehow, Bess, I can see a time coming when 
 the United States is going to agree with me."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 "AND so that dear boy at the hospital who is so 
 bad, is Thomas Easterly's son?" said Miss Vio- 
 land. Sydney looked up from the life of Disraeli 
 she was reading. The two were sitting by the fire, 
 while the thick stillness of a Mayfair winter evening 
 enfolded them. Far away sounded a taxi-horn, other- 
 wise, as Sydney often reflected, she had known it 
 noisier in a New England forest than here in the 
 heart of a city of seven million people. 
 
 "Yes:" she replied, then with grave satisfaction 
 at using a pure Briticism, "he's better that is, he's 
 not so bad as he was." 
 
 "I heard his father once at the House: he spoke 
 very strongly against one of those iniquitous Home 
 Rule measures when he was quite a young man. 
 He had sound common sense and was not too clever," 
 said Miss Violand tolerantly, giving Sir Thomas the 
 highest praise she knew. 
 
 "Certainly he is not too clever . . . and he's 
 very quaint and quite simple ... I wonder are 
 they alllike that?" 
 
 "I should hope we all had true simplicity of man- 
 ner, Sydney . . . but I don't know what else you 
 mean." 
 
 "Well, when Sir Thomas says beans he means 
 beans, that's all " she broke into laughter at her 
 friend's mystified face and hurried on. "Never mind 
 it's just my barbarian way of talking ... I do 
 like Sir Thomas and he likes me, I'm sure, ever since 
 I took him that book on the Weisler treatment for 
 nerve-shock. He showed it to Sir Andrew Spencer, 
 and that Weisler treatment really has done the boy 
 so much good. It has quieted him and he sleeps better 
 
 66
 
 NEW TRAILS 67 
 
 and suffers less. . . . Sir Thomas simply chuckled," 
 Sydney went on, laying aside her book and clasping 
 her hands over her knee, "because, you see, I warned 
 him it would never do to let the surgeon dream who 
 suggested the idea ... it would set them dead 
 against it. He said I had a head on my shoulders." 
 
 "You are very clever, Sydney, but " 
 
 "If you knew Sir Andrew Spencer, dear, you 
 wouldn't wonder at me ... he thinks he got a title 
 merely for sticking to his own opinion and maybe he 
 did. Anyway, do you think he would have even 
 looked at Weisler's book if he knew who had brought 
 it to his notice? But I coached Sir Thomas I told 
 him not to mention Hugh or his symptoms but just 
 always to infer that Sir Andrew knew all about the 
 Weisler treatment and leave the book lying around 
 on Hugh's bed, if he could work it. ... Sir Andrew 
 did know the book that is, the outside of it! So 
 back he came to Sister Lucy, swelling like a turkey- 
 cock and saying 'eh-ah,' he thinks it might be worth 
 while to try that new American treatment on Hugh 
 Easterly . . . that eh . . ah . . Weisler treatment,' 
 you see? So they did. And when the boy got some 
 real sleep the first time why, Sir Andrew beamed 
 like the sun. 'Very few practitioners are aware of all 
 these new discoveries !' says he." 
 
 Miss Violand smiled, but looked doubtful. She 
 was always afraid of novelty. 
 
 "Ever since that day Sir Thomas comes often into 
 the office and looks about," Sydney pursued, "he's 
 interested in my files and records and he gives me 
 tests 'Now, Miss Lea, how quickly can you give me 
 such-and-such information?' Today, I did it for 
 him and a friend in three minutes by his watch, and 
 he was so proud I 'Splendid system, Romeyne, you 
 seel' he said." The name caught Miss Violand's in- 
 terest.
 
 68 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 "Was that Adrian Romeyne, by any chance?" 
 
 "That was his name ... I looked him up in Who's 
 Who at once. He came to see Hugh." 
 
 "How interesting of course, he is a dreadful 
 Liberal but then I understand he is quite a person- 
 age, a rising man. What was he like?" 
 
 "Well, he was a real man not a stuffed shirt. He 
 has big eyes and talks from away 'way up'." 
 
 "Good heavens! my child what expressions 1" 
 Miss Violand underwent severe shocks whenever her 
 young friend gave utterance to these candid opinions 
 in picturesque vernacular. This dauntless audacity 
 of youth had not touched her horizon for many years. 
 She looked across at the girl's slender figure with a 
 sense of bewilderment. What sureness of poise they 
 had nowadays, and what energy ! Imagine herself at 
 the same age announcing that a prominent member 
 of the Government was "not a stuffed shirt!" And 
 then always a book, always study it was very re- 
 markable. 
 
 "I never met Mr. Romeyne but I believe he is 
 considered to have a political future," she observed. 
 
 "He is a man with brains. I liked him," said 
 Sydney serenely: then she continued with her eyes 
 on the coals: "He said Mr. Romeyne said, that 
 Disraeli's career was the triumph of intellect over 
 personality and I said that it seemed to me rather 
 the triumph of personality over principle; and he 
 smiled. Then he and Sir Thomas talked a little about 
 politics and Asquith and so on. ... It was 
 very interesting." 
 
 "It must have been, indeed." 
 
 "That is a very fascinating world " the girl 
 went on. "I wonder if one read and studied a lot, 
 would there be any chance of getting a glimpse of 
 it?" 
 
 "How do you mean, my dear?"
 
 NEW TRAILS 69 
 
 "Well, as somebody's secretary for example. I 
 should love it. And I'd work hard." 
 
 "No one would employ a girl of your age in 
 such a capacity," was Miss Violand's opinion and 
 Sydney was silenced. Giddy came in to bring her 
 mistress a hot drink, to rake down and cover the 
 fire, and to remark that tomorrow was going to be 
 "a rough day." 
 
 Sydney Lea kept her vague dreams to herself there- 
 after; but in her hospital office she became aware of 
 currents of change which kept her from accepting 
 her elderly friend's convictions. She worked and 
 read and studied; and she was ever conscious of the 
 fuller currents of sympathy and intellectual energy, 
 to which she lent herself. Yet all the while she never 
 lost the sense that individual interests and efforts 
 seemed to be swamped by the collective need of the 
 world, swamped in universal suffering. Pain and 
 death : death and pain : had society any other aspect? 
 She was soon however to behold one : Miss Violand's 
 nephew came home for a short leave. This was the 
 first soldier Sydney had met in health that is 
 and holding the normal place in the vast machinery 
 whose vibrations filled the whole world. 
 
 Eric Violand was a personable fellow ; he was tall 
 and yellow-haired, with grey eyes and a very valuable 
 lack of imagination. He talked about life "out 
 there," somewhat vaguely, and with an apparently 
 deliberate evasion of its dramatic aspects. This Well- 
 ingtonian tradition of the British military attitude 
 was very prevalent that first winter when the whole 
 army repeated the Duke's famous remark "By God, 
 it would not have done if I had not been there!" 
 Eric was exactly like that : he answered "Oh yes !" and 
 "quite so" and "rather," to his aunt's questions; he 
 spoke respectfully of the enemy and so-so about the
 
 70 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 Belgians. Already, in those few tremendous months, 
 the affair had come to wear in his mind the familiar 
 countenance of duty rousing neither enthusiasm nor 
 dislike ; already, the horror and strain and danger 
 had become a humdrum natural part of life, already 
 he welcomed a turn of the talk toward other sub- 
 jects. Sydney Lea termed him inwardly "Peter Bell" 
 and marvelled at him. Bovine, animal were they 
 merely? And yet splendid the saviours of the 
 world ! 
 
 Miss Violand's eyes were full of affection when 
 she looked at her dear boy. He on his part, sur- 
 veyed the new inmate of his aunt's house with ap- 
 proval, though with no idea of what was really pass- 
 ing beyond what he called the "ripping" eyes of this 
 young lady. He went on to talk, gayly and simply, 
 of France and his amusements when at rest "behind 
 the lines" and from there to the subject of the United 
 States concerning which his ignorance was naif and 
 profound. 
 
 "You people are really wonderful," he remarked. 
 "Do you mean to say that you decided to stay in 
 England merely because you were interested?" 
 
 "I am quite alone, you see," she answered; "there 
 is nobody really to care. It meant a change of work 
 nothing more." 
 
 "Well its magnificent so I think and so does 
 Aunt Nelly. Of course we know, in France what 
 the Americans are doing. I wish the Huns would 
 stir up that wasp's nest and no doubt they will. 
 
 But, I. say, aren't we going to the play?" 
 
 The three of them set forth in high spirits to the 
 theatre. Miss Violand sat silent and content. Syd- 
 ney noticed that she had added a collar and cuffs of 
 fine ivory lace to her black silk dress which she wore 
 with a persistency unknown to the American woman,
 
 NEW TRAILS 71 
 
 and also had twisted a third gold chain around her 
 neck in honor of the occasion. 
 
 London's darkness during the first winter was no- 
 thing to what it became later, but the streets pre- 
 sented a marked contrast to the time Eric had last 
 beheld them, and one of which he greatly disap- 
 proved. 
 
 "What do they think is going to happen?" he 
 said scornfully. "I call it shameful letting the 
 enemy see how his threats affect us." f 
 
 The musical comedy greatly pleased him and some 
 score of other young officers like him; and during 
 the entr'acte he chatted with Miss Lea. 
 
 "It's a very great departure for Aunt Nelly to 
 have asked you to stay with her," he observed reflec- 
 tively. "She has always been to me just a delicious 
 bit of Victorian bric-a-brac stuck away in Mayfair." 
 
 "And I am the bull in the china-shop?" 
 
 "Not at all. You seem to fit in jolly well. But 
 it's true she never was one to go in for Americans," 
 he rejoined, with characteristic frankness. 
 
 "I say, Aunt Nelly, she's a ripper your young 
 lady," he said to his aunt next afternoon over their 
 tea; "and a good sort, I should think." 
 
 "Sydney is a dear, and with all her independent 
 American ways quite startling though they are to me 
 sometimes yet she usually does the right thing and 
 she is truly devoted to the Allies," said Miss Violand, 
 much gratified. Her nephew, whose vocabulary was 
 as limited as is usual with his type, repeated that 
 Sydney was a "good sort." 
 
 "I'm so glad you approve, darling" his aunt con- 
 tinued in a burst of confidence. "I was worried about 
 taking such a step, at first, but then everyone was 
 doing something of the kind and Lady Welden ad- 
 vised me very strongly. Somehow, I couldn't )>ring
 
 72 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 myself to take in a Belgian family the language 
 and all that. If one must take in a foreigner, this 
 seemed so much better!" 
 
 "I should rather say so," her nephew replied 
 shortly, and changed the subject.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 "AND what did you think of the House?" asked 
 Sir Thomas Easterly. 
 
 The month was March, with a pale sky, frost, and 
 a nipping wind. Sir Thomas had paused for a mo- 
 ment in the office as his way often was before going 
 home. He stood, square-faced and ample, in front 
 of the fireplace and directly interrogated the young 
 lady at the desk. 
 
 "Well it seemed to me on the whole," she an- 
 swered him slowly, "to be rather lacking in dis- 
 tinction." 
 
 Sir Thomas chuckled. He was given to these di- 
 rect questions and apt to chuckle at her answers. 
 
 "Quite so quite right so it is. The Liberals 
 take 'em as a body, have energy but no knowledge of 
 war. We have the knowledge some of us ! but no 
 energy. We stick in the mire of tradition; while 
 they splash their ignorance over the nation." 
 
 "But Mr. Asquith, surely ?" 
 
 "No party can get along on one man's brains, in 
 war time. Besides you know what my friend Ro- 
 meyne said about the P.M.? That he had all the 
 qualities of a great statesman, except resolution 
 whereas Lloyd George had none of the qualities of 
 a great statesman except resolution!" 
 
 Miss Lea smiled appreciatively, and as Sir Thomas 
 moved toward the door, she asked after his son. 
 
 "Hugh is infinitely better thanks to all of you 
 here and in particular to you, Miss Lea. The way 
 you handled Spencer over that Weisler treatment 
 was wonderful. I know Spencer clever fellow 
 
 73
 
 74 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 but vainer than a peacock and never accepts anybody 
 else's ideas on principle. How did you do it?" 
 
 "Oh, just a little indirect suggestion," said Sydney 
 gravely, but her eyes laughed. 
 
 "Well now we shall get the boy down in the 
 country, they tell me, by another fortnight. I left 
 him reading and quite comfortable and they even 
 hope to get him on his feet again one of these days." 
 
 "I'm awfully glad," said the girl warmly and 
 turned once more to her work. But her share in 
 poor Hugh's improvement stuck in his father's mind 
 as he put his latchkey into the door at Charles Street, 
 and he spoke to his wife about it. His account of this 
 young ally interested Ada Easterly a good deal; 
 so she and Janey dropped in one afternoon and said 
 a kind word to the young secretary. Her appearance, 
 tall, pale and quiet, favorably impressed them, and 
 undoubtedly also the fact she was staying with Miss 
 Violand, which Lady Easterly quite frankly, if not 
 bluntly, ascertained by direct questions had its ef- 
 fect. Yet it is perfectly true that when she asked 
 Sydney to tea, Lady Easterly was influenced almost 
 wholly by the profound changes in the status of 
 the individual which the War had brought about 
 and which had suddenly cast down as by machine 
 guns the barbed-wire barriers of centuries. 
 
 Sydney went thought they were very kind and 
 pleasant and thought little more about it. What did 
 interest her, was the appearance at tea of Mrs. 
 Romeyne to whom Lady Easterly felt conscien- 
 tiously obliged to pay some sort of periodical atten- 
 tion. Sydney sat very quietly in her corner, and 
 looked at Mrs. Romeyne; and wondered what hid- 
 den streak of vulgarity there must be in the man 
 with the big eyes which could have responded to this 
 creature. She did, of course, like all Americans, 
 base her conceptions of marriage on love. Of the
 
 NEW TRAILS 75 
 
 other motives which might exist for it she had no 
 idea whatever. She had no estimate of the influence 
 which might lead a brilliant man, hampered in that 
 great world for means with which to push his ambi- 
 tion, to marry a totally unsuitable woman for that 
 reason: and still less had Sydney any knowledge of 
 those underlying assumptions of English society, 
 which exist to mitigate, for any man who makes 
 such a marriage, its worst results. In her scheme of 
 things, all marriage meant an intimacy which if un- 
 pleasant might be terminated by divorce but which, 
 while it existed, deprived either one of the sufferers 
 from a similar intimacy with anyone else. The fact 
 that for some centuries marriage for the man at 
 least in England has been granted an amelioration 
 in fact, which it has been hard to secure by law is 
 a very startling circumstance to a young provincial. 
 So Sydney sat and regarded Mrs. Romeyne's purple 
 and scarlet frock and henna-tinted hair with philo- 
 sophic and very naive reflections. She also regarded 
 Janey who though nearly her own age and evidently 
 very capable and busy, seemed to her like a being 
 from another sphere. Janey was tall and rather 
 clumsy in build, her round, rosy face and large placid 
 eyes had little beauty, though set in a mass of won- 
 derful copper-brown hair. She spoiled the effect of 
 her plain, useful frock by adding one color too much, 
 purple for choice, and she was singularly lacking in 
 grace or graciousness. Yet Sydney felt strongly that 
 there lay a real charm in her direct frankness. 
 
 Meanwhile, Janey in her turn was studying the 
 guest deciding that she was lovely looking with 
 that pale face and dark hair, and that she dressed 
 vaguely well and that she had an astonishing as- 
 surance of manner. Were Americans always so much 
 at ease? Of course nowadays one took people more
 
 76 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 or less at their own valuation, but this "Princess in 
 disguise" bearing was the last she had expected. 
 
 Sydney's absence of class consciousness stood her 
 in good stead in their encounters in a new world. 
 Since she herself was aware of no social difference 
 between her own position and that of these kind 
 people they also ceased to be aware of it. The fact 
 that she worked for her living had not made her 
 unsure. But all this might have counted less with her 
 hostess than the strange combination in Sydney's per- 
 sonality at this time of qualities both sexless and 
 feminine. An English mother of sons is quick to 
 detect signs of the predatory woman for whom she 
 is especially apt to look in the ranks of the typist, or 
 the trained nurse and of whom she is brought up to 
 beware. In Lady Easterly this suspicion was coun- 
 teracted by great natural kindness, as by the absence 
 of Middleton in France. But it existed nevertheless ; 
 it caused her to watch the girl narrowly under cover 
 of her talk with Mrs. Romeyne, and what she saw 
 pleased her and warmed her interest. She bade Syd- 
 ney good-bye with cordiality; hoped they would see 
 her again, thanked her heartily for her part in the 
 boy's improvement, and sent her out into the empty 
 world with a new and pleasant sense of friendliness. 
 
 At the end of the month Eric Violand came home 
 on a few days' leave, and showed very plainly the 
 attraction which his aunt's guest had come to have 
 for him. Those long and bitter weeks in the trenches, 
 during which imagination had furnished the only 
 relief, had brought him many pictures of Sydney 
 sitting by the fire with the light on her shadowy hair, 
 or coming in, from the black streets with her swift 
 step and her smile to narrate with vivid speech and 
 gesture, the little encounters of her day. 
 
 At first, he met her with the shy stiffness and cau- 
 tion which is habitual to an Englishman whenever
 
 NEW TRAILS 77 
 
 he is conscious of any heightened feeding. This 
 caution has been evolved as a means of self-defence 
 among an inflammable race and one whose mating 
 instinct is less idealized than in certain other societies. 
 Moreover, in these tense war-times, emotions were 
 easily roused and quickly killed; men snatched at 
 happiness under the very wings of the dark angel 
 and no man's wedding-feast escaped the death's head. 
 Those desperate issues which were being fought out 
 on the front had brought a heightening of all primi- 
 tive impulses had turned the balance in favour of 
 the animal. Hence just as Boccaccio pointed out 
 many centuries before , there had arisen sudden 
 matings and sudden dissensions swift and evanes- 
 cent passions: love affairs that had a fatal lack of 
 permanency or seriousness ; and were often carried to 
 fruition wifh an extraordinary cynicism. Young peo- 
 ple met and married on the wave of pity or of high 
 heroic feeling; flirtations flamed up suddenly into 
 passions, which died out after a brief indulgence and 
 left only wreck behind. The current of tension and 
 of suffering with which society as a whole was 
 charged; drew its atoms irresistibly together in con- 
 nections as capricious as brief and the elder world 
 no longer seemed to have the power, as heretofore, 
 to punish the wrong-doer by its frown. 
 
 Young Eric Violand was of course quite unaware 
 of the forces which drew him to the stranger and 
 was very distrustful and decidedly reserved. But 
 the girl herself was so frank and gay and she met him 
 with such a comradely unconsciousness that this could 
 not long continue. It soon gave way indeed to be- 
 wilderment at her way of treating his advances: for 
 she took quite as a matter of course the small atten- 
 tions which to an English girl would have seemed full 
 of significance. 
 
 "Why, I almost as good as proposed last night
 
 78 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 But she never seems even to see it !" thought the 
 young man discontentedly and with a feeling of 
 wonder. 
 
 "You don't appear very glad to see a fellow on 
 leave," he remarked. 
 
 "You are interfering with my work," she replied 
 severely. This was at the hospital, where Eric had 
 dropped in to suggest a walk in the park before tea. 
 
 "Well, I can't see why you should kill yourself. 
 Besides you ought to do something for a chap on his 
 leave." 
 
 "There are loads of people quite ready to do 
 that, it seems," Sydney answered severely; "there's 
 Miss Guest." 
 
 Miss Guest was the daughter of a neighboring mag- 
 nate to whom the War furnished a justification for 
 her more predatory instincts and who exercised them 
 unblushingly. She bobbed her hair and wore a uni- 
 form and came to the hospital to walk out with the 
 convalescents and there her activities ceased. To 
 Sister Lucy and those strained, devoted women whose 
 days and nights were one long fight against suffer- 
 ing in its bitterest form, she was a torment and a 
 reproach. 
 
 "I don't know Miss Guest and I don't want to 
 know her," replied Eric doggedly and he did not 
 move. 
 
 Sydney turned away from him to her telephone. 
 She answered the enquiry of some anxious person who 
 found her American intonation hard to hear clearly 
 and resented the fact; when that was done, she sent 
 another message on her own account. Sister Lucy 
 appeared in the doorway, with a crisp 
 
 "Miss Lea that last iodine. . . . when did 
 we get it and from whom?" And Sydney was at her 
 files in an instant and her reply: 
 "March 3rd Burroughs and Wellcome" was as
 
 NEW TRAILS 79 
 
 crisp as Sister Lucy's. There was nothing to do for 
 the young officer but to take his leave and he did so, 
 comforted perhaps by the kindness of her glance. At 
 the same time, he reflected, walking slowly homeward 
 there was no reason to be so business-like as all 
 that. The women were a great help no doubt but 
 this independent manner about it he vaguely resented. 
 
 Sydney was very nice to him when she came home 
 that evening, and at dinner she told them how much 
 better Hugh Easterly was, and that Sir Thomas had 
 dropped in to tell her how the boy enjoyed being at 
 Easterly Park and to give her the name of a book 
 on the history of political parties. 
 
 "What in the world?" Eric asked. "You're 
 hardly likely to need that information." 
 
 "That or any other information," she replied 
 gaily. "I have my ambitions I'm not going to stay 
 on at the hospital all my life." 
 
 "I should say not!" Eric's view was that women 
 were doing magnificent work during the War, but 
 that as soon as the War was over they should be in- 
 vited in quite unmistakable terms, to step back into 
 the shelter of the home; "but I don't quite see as 
 you're not a suffragette, are you? what you would 
 have to do with politics." 
 
 "Women in this country seem to have a lot to do 
 with them. I'd like to work for awhile in a Govern- 
 ment bureau and see how it's run." 
 
 Eric laughed with the least touch of patronage. 
 
 "To release a man for the Front, is the proper 
 expression nowadays," he said. "I don't deny tnat 
 you could do it and very well, too. But honestly now, 
 wouldn't it be chiefly the excitement that attracted 
 you?" 
 
 "What attracts me is the work," she answered 
 simply. Eric did not understand this. 
 
 "But what sort of work?" he persisted.
 
 8o THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 "Head work for instance don't you think I 
 might make a good secretary to a political man or a 
 Cabinet Minister or something really important, like 
 that?" 
 
 She spoke playfully and yet seriously, appealing to 
 Miss Violand, who looked perplexed. 
 
 "They always seem to have elderly men for that 
 position," she observed doubtfully. 
 
 "Doddering old chaps with one foot in the 
 grave," said her nephew cheerfully. 
 
 "What would Mr. Lloyd George or Mr. Bonar 
 Law be doing with a lovely young lady secretary 
 from the States?" 
 
 Sydney smiled. "But I never thought of them. 
 . . . There was one man whose secretary I'd 
 love to be." 
 
 "Who's that Asquith?" 
 
 "Don't be absurd no. Mr. Adrian Romeyne." 
 
 "Personally, one of these politicians is just as much 
 a name to me as another," remarked the young man, 
 with true military condescension.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THAT remarkable man, Adrian Romeyne, later 
 to be known as Lord Waveney, was forty-five or 
 thereabouts at the beginning of the War. He was 
 a man quite unknown to the public, nor had he up to 
 this time held any salient post which would have been 
 likely to increase their knowledge. When he received 
 the appointment he now held a minor but import- 
 ant position in the Foreign Office the world knew 
 of him only as a useful person of large experience 
 and of unusual judgment and initiative. But he was 
 more than this. No one who threaded that complex 
 political maze of the years 1914-1917 but was con- 
 stantly being reminded of the existence of Adrian 
 Romeyne. His influence was never merely taken for 
 granted. There was hardly one of His Majesty's 
 Government Offices whether the War Office or the 
 Admiralty, whether the Home Office or the Colonial, 
 without some important functionary who owed his 
 situation there directly or indirectly, to Romeyne. 
 There were few of the big men and this was a 
 fact independent of party, who, at one time or an- 
 other, had not been under an obligation to him. Long 
 before he was ever made a Privy Councillor, it might 
 have been truly said that he headed a small Privy 
 Council of his own. He was not a Cabinet Minister 
 but he was often present at Cabinet meetings, and 
 he never missed those small private gatherings of 
 four or five or six men at Sir Edward Grey's house 
 or the P.M.'s where things were talked over and 
 determined in freedom; and moreover on such occa- 
 sions, it was usually his mind that gave the guiding 
 touch. And if it were not, if Romeyne's judgment 
 
 si
 
 82 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 were overruled and if hesitation and procrastination 
 carried the day, the result was generally unfortunate 
 enough to heighten his power on the next occasion. 
 The delicate and intricate ramifications of his influ- 
 ence spread in a fine web through the Banks and the 
 Bench and the Board of Trade; it was felt in neutral 
 countries and it was dreaded by the enemy. He was 
 indeed a master diplomat, his manner was at once 
 authoritative and persuasive ; and when he fixed those 
 large, calm eyes on one one became convinced that 
 his suggestion was the only course possible. Much 
 of his power was due to the fact that he had an in- 
 fallible instinct for success, that he never wasted a 
 second of his time on a lost cause and never used his 
 influence except where that investment was likely to 
 increase his capital. He was no idealist but neither 
 was he a cynic. His genius lay in making people think 
 that what he wanted them to do was what they most 
 desired themselves and he was a consummate master 
 of the obscure and difficult art of psychological sug- 
 gestion. If there was a Swedish Minister whose 
 amour propre must be soothed, (the Swedes were a 
 terrible problem for the Allies during these years,) 
 an Irish Bishop to be conciliated, a big man from the 
 Colonies or the States to be made to feel his import- 
 ance the person appointed to the task was almost 
 always Adrian Romeyne. He stood in the centre of 
 all the antagonisms and clashing social interests which 
 the War had created, and he seemed to know instinc- 
 tively how to reconcile them, how to get men of oppo- 
 site parties to pull together, and how to bring in touch 
 the elder aristocratic body with the new powers which 
 the Government had, reluctantly enough, called into 
 being. 
 
 That he did not accomplish more during these 
 years was due to the fact that he was only one man 
 and that the Philistines were many. One man to be
 
 NEW TRAILS 83 
 
 intelligent and clear sighted where hundreds were 
 stupid and purblind; one man to be firm and calm 
 where thousands were nervous and fidgety; one man 
 to persuade, to conciliate a neutral country into 
 friendship, while all the rest, blatant with arrogance 
 and self-importance, were piling up enmities against 
 themselves and their Government. One man who 
 walked free of muddle and whose imagination fore- 
 saw a world existing after 1915 while the entire 
 political system of the country based itself on and leg- 
 islated for a time no further than week after next! 
 No: one man was not enough, and, but for the fact 
 that with Romeyne serene philosophy took the place 
 of cynicism or depression, he could never have taken 
 heart for that Sisyphaean task. 
 
 "They have the idea," he told his friend Easterly, 
 "they have the idea of passing a measure which 
 will carry on and pacify the public until next Mon- 
 day and then on Monday they will pass another to 
 carry them till Thursday and so following." 
 
 "Swine !" muttered his irritated friend, but Adrian 
 never smiled. 
 
 "Not swine sheep," he said gently, and then after 
 a pause again to speak in that manner of quasi Olym- 
 pian detachment, which was so characteristic. 
 
 "This morning I had to go to see that traitor 
 Anstyce " 
 
 "But, Romeyne, is he really -" 
 
 "Anstyce is not a member of the Government and 
 so he made a prophecy that the Government will fall. 
 And as he has made a prophecy that the Government 
 will fall, he is anxious to see his prophecy fulfilled. 
 And as he wishes his prophecy to be fulfilled, so he 
 wishes the Government not to succeed in winning the 
 War. And as he wishes the Government to fail in 
 winning the War then he is a traitor."
 
 84 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 "You put it with a deadly clarity. I know the man 
 and of course he does not think he is disloyal." 
 
 "He does not think at all : his mind is filled with his 
 own importance to the exclusion of all thought. Be- 
 ing so self-important only an equal self-importance 
 can make any impression on his mind. And the only 
 self-importance equal to his today is Germany's. But 
 one could forgive that one could forgive that. What 
 one cannot forgive is the lack of faith. He and his 
 clique spend all their days in terrified rushing to and 
 fro to spread panic and distrust. You know how 
 they go on?" 
 
 "I know." 
 
 "We cannot have conscription labour won't stand 
 for it nor Home Rule Ulster won't stand for it 
 nor Nationalism the Sinn Fein won't stand for it; 
 nor Indian troops in Mesopotamia the Moham- 
 medans won't stand for it. And the sum of all these 
 negations is zero." 
 
 "And what can we do about it?" 
 
 "That takes reflection," said Adrian, using his pet 
 formula and in this case repeating it, before he 
 
 changed the subject: "that takes reflection . How 
 
 does Hugh go on?" 
 
 "Infinitely better, thank God! It will be a long 
 pull, but we have hopes at last. That new American 
 treatment for nerve-shock has done wonders in his 
 case. He sleeps now; has gained weight and his man- 
 ner is natural once more." 
 
 "You were lucky in your Vet. As a rule they are 
 not partial to foreign treatments." 
 
 "We don't owe it to Spencer at all though he does 
 not know it," and Sir Thomas proudly told the story 
 of the management of Sir Andrew. It interested 
 Romeyne. 
 
 "You mean that tall, pale, quick girl who was in 
 the Hospital Office the day I went in to see Hugh?
 
 NEW TRAILS 85 
 
 I seem to remember." As a matter of fact, he never 
 forgot anyone. "She must have a head on her 
 shoulders." 
 
 Sir Thomas heartily agreed. "She's very clever. 
 They are wonderful those people in some ways 
 badly as I think they are behaving just now. But 
 this young lady. . . . The other day I dropped in 
 on Hugh just before a debate and she heard me say 
 that I wished there had been time to get up some in- 
 cidents and analogies from speeches in Parliament 
 during the Franco-Prussian War. No more than that 
 y* understand? Just that mere suggestion. The 
 next day she handed me this." He laid a typewritten 
 sheet before Romeyne, who examined it. 
 
 "Remarkable, very remarkable and in the exact 
 type and arrangement to catch the eye quickly . . . 
 in requisite order, too," he observed, returning the 
 paper to its owner. 
 
 "If Bolder had had half that system and reading 
 I should be lucky," Sir Thomas said regretfully 
 "the fellow seems to be of no use at all and now he's 
 going to join up and I must be looking for another 
 muddler." 
 
 "But why? It seems to me you need look no fur- 
 ther," Romeyne rose and picked up his hat and stick. 
 
 "But surely you can't mean ." 
 
 "After that slip you've just showed me? My dear 
 chap I'd jump at it. The good secretary is born, 
 not made." 
 
 "But a woman 1" 
 
 "Pooh, pooh, Easterly, in these days!" 
 
 "And an American besides surely people would 
 talk for my work it would never do." 
 
 "I can't see why not. An American who stays on 
 here to work for the cause is hardly a neutral. And 
 apart from that apart from that, it might be very
 
 86 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 useful. I should think of it, if I were you I should 
 think of it." 
 
 Romeyne left his friend's house and turned his 
 steps toward Berkeley Square. It was late April; 
 the first green hung like a mist over the trees, but the 
 air was raw and the sky full of watery clouds. As 
 he walked on in his absorbed way, that large engine 
 his mind moved steadily on in its task of sorting and 
 measuring, of generalizing and planning. But as he 
 knew, there was a little place outside the engine-room 
 where his spirit often rested, and this afternoon it 
 took pleasure in the young buds and in the coming of 
 Spring. His thoughts began to play about the con- 
 versation he just had and that led him to comparisons 
 between the woman who helped and the woman who 
 hindered between the woman who understood and 
 the woman who didn't. Astonishing, that he of all 
 men should have failed to realize the importance 
 and extent of this difference and should have placed 
 mere money, and what he supposed to be docility, 
 above it. Were such talents as those of this casual 
 young American really so rare that he could not have 
 hoped to secure something like them in his own wife? 
 He drew a sharp breath, pricked by a renewed con- 
 sciousness of stupidity and failure; for Romeyne knew 
 perfectly well that there is small excuse for marrying 
 the wrong woman. 
 
 In his case the choice had been largely the result 
 of his early surroundings. His father had been a 
 hard-working Q. C. and his mother had died too 
 early for him to have had any ideal of home life 
 whatever. His had been a boyhood of schools and he 
 knew not what to look for in a home except money 
 and means to push a political career. With a failure 
 of judgment, which was the more extraordinary be- 
 cause it happened so seldom, he had married the first 
 eligible girl for whom he had felt any inclination and
 
 NEW TRAILS 87 
 
 who seemed likely to assist his fortunes. It was a 
 casual mating and was punished as such are punished. 
 Romeyne's wife turned out to be as stupid as a sheep 
 and as obstinate as a mule it mattered little that she 
 was also a loyal wife, for she was neither a pleasant 
 nor a helpful one. Romeyne spent two very trying 
 years during which he gave her every chance, and then, 
 quite characteristically, he detached himself, as it were, 
 from the whole business; gave it up as a frank failure 
 and summoned to his relief that routine which English 
 society has created to handle these little situations. 
 Divorce in that country being difficult, separation is 
 proportionately easy, and the large size and comfor- 
 table plan of English houses makes it both dignified 
 and convenient. Romeyne and his wife met perhaps 
 twice or thrice a week : at slightly longer intervals they 
 had quite amicable business interviews and there it 
 ended. The situation was by no means unique; 
 Romeyne had a friend who went and drank tea most 
 politely with his wife and daughter every month or 
 so. Life being so individually ordered, poverty is 
 the only raison d'etre for divorce. Romeyne knew 
 that his wife was too dull to suffer and that the posi- 
 tion he gave her was compensation sufficient. For 
 himself, he had suffered very much and he would 
 suffer again; but he was not only rather too fastidious 
 to take the passing consolation, but more and more he 
 had come to rely upon his equipoise, his serenity: he 
 was not going to risk these by any love-affair. It 
 pleased him to feel that women were not in the least 
 necessary to him either sensually or spiritually; and 
 now that the War had come, every energy of his be- 
 ing had been absorbed in it and many fresh ones 
 created. He had put that whole part of life as con- 
 temptuously on one side, as if he had been an ascetic 
 which he was not in the least. So, in his own serene 
 manner, he was by no means discontented, except per-
 
 88 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 haps on such a spring day as this, when the buds were 
 green and swollen and he had just heard something 
 to suggest the "might-have-beens." As it so often, 
 happened where Romeyne was concerned, he had let 
 drop an idea which was later to bear fruit. Sir 
 Thomas Easterly went to the next Debate in the 
 House with the slips which Sydney Lea had typewrit- 
 ten for him, in his vest pocket; and he was congratu- 
 lated on the vigour and aptness of some of his points, 
 on the pertinency of his examples. He came home 
 in better spirits than for some weeks and his cheery 
 face brought a smile into that of his son when he went 
 down into the country for the week-end. 
 
 When Sir Thomas got back to Charles Street on 
 the Monday, it was to face an accumulated muddle 
 left by Bolder, plus a layer of fresh work and unread 
 reports on the top of it, the very look of which struck 
 him with dismay. 
 
 "I've never had this place kept in decent order 
 since old Wilton died," was his inward comment; 
 "and now what is to be done?" 
 
 Sir Thomas was a Conservative by temperament 
 as by conviction and such men do not change their 
 convictions in a hurry. But he was in desperate need ; 
 and he had never yet found it a mistake to follow out 
 any suggestion made by his friend Romeyne. What 
 he did was to compromise. He called up Sister Lucy 
 on the telephone and begged the loan of that clever 
 Miss Lea for a few days "just to get things straight- 
 ened out a bit and until I get a regular secretary if 
 is not inconvenient, that is." 
 
 It was inconvenient, of course, and Sister Lucy 
 knew very well what it meant. But one cannot lightly 
 refuse the Sir Thomas's of this world, at least not 
 while there are so many things needed for one's hos- 
 pital. Moreover she liked her young assistant and 
 she had seen that the girl was getting a little restless.
 
 NEW TRAILS 89 
 
 "It is the sort of work she ought to do," Sister 
 Lucy reflected, as she hastened from bed to bed. So 
 she called Sydney and told her and had she not been 
 Sister Lucy, she would have laughed when she saw 
 the gleam in the girl's eyes. 
 
 "Don't forget to call him Sir Thomas and not Sir 
 Easterly," she said very seriously and smiled when 
 Sydney replied, "I assure you I've not studied the 
 Peerage for nothing!" 
 
 The next night Sydney wrote to Elizabeth : 
 
 "Do you know, I feel just like the Duke's daughter 
 who became chauffeur to a Cabinet Minister. 'You 
 must remember to call me my Lord,' said he, very 
 sharply; and the story is that she replied: 'Certainly; 
 and you will remember to call me, my Lady.' 
 I have had the most awful day like the first chapter 
 of Genesis but oh Bess, I feel sure that I am going 
 to love it!"
 
 BOOK III 
 ADVENTURE 
 
 91
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SYDNEY did not leave her work at the Easterly 
 house when those few days were ended. Sir Thomas 
 capitulated. He had seen order created out of 
 chaos, sluggishness give place to activity; consum- 
 mate tact ruled his engagements, he had not been so 
 comfortable in years. The new secretary was inex- 
 perienced, of course; there were quaint mistakes at 
 first. It takes time to learn the intricate formulae 
 by which this social order has been determined since 
 the Middle Ages, and whose knowledge is requisite 
 to the understanding of its complicated evolution 
 both of classes and persons. Sydney must learn the 
 distinction between Lady Jones, the Lady Jones and 
 the Hon. Lady Jones; the difference between the 
 two Lords Curzon, between Lord Grey and Sir 
 Edward. There clung to her in the beginning, a 
 certain attitude of amused detachment toward these 
 questions, which her employer found novel and dis- 
 trusted. But this mattered little because Romeyne 
 was right; she was a born secretary and the technique 
 of her profession, its traditions and details, were 
 very quickly learned. 
 
 Sir Thomas could only be thankful to have on 
 hand someone who did not need to be told the spell- 
 ing of "hegira" or the meaning of "apocalyptic"; 
 who used in se, or per contra correctly; who took 
 only an hour for luncheon and fifteen minutes for 
 tea; whose smile made his own tardiness or haste 
 less noticeable to his constituents ; who had read Mor- 
 lev's Life of Gladstone and Greville's Diary; and 
 or whom one rarely asked a date or a quotation in 
 vain. His notes for the House were handed him 
 
 93
 
 94 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 each afternoon arrayed for instant reference, in dif- 
 ferent types and on slips cut to fit his pocket and his 
 hand. Never had he been better equipped, and more- 
 over a subtle feminine appreciation governed his days 
 and contributed to his well-being. He throve: he 
 took on several new Committees, and the resourceful 
 Miss Lea was kept busy obtaining statistics of sugar- 
 crops or investigating the dossiers of interned enemy 
 aliens. She worked early and she read late; she 
 studied movements and Blue-books; she formed her 
 own opinion of leading personages. She had an in- 
 fallible flair for the tendencies of the Press. When 
 she said "There is an important speech by Senator 
 Lodge in the Daily Telegraph, Sir Thomas," or 
 "Colonel Repington in today's Times is less sugges- 
 tive than usual," her employer knew that he must 
 read the one and need not read the other. But above 
 all she was faithful and tactful, and on fidelity and 
 tact much of a political career depends. Sydney 
 never let in the wrong man ; she never mistook a La- 
 bour Member for the plumber. In a remarkably 
 short time she came to know various personal idio- 
 syncrasies that Adrian Romeyne never talked over 
 the telephone, and that another of Sir Thomas's in- 
 timates, on the contrary, had not written a note since 
 that instrument had been available. She knew one 
 prominent M. P. who always said: "We Hamiltons 
 never take a 'bus !' ", and the other prominent M. P. 
 who had equally strong reasons for never taking a 
 taxi. She knew that the old gentleman who wore a 
 black satin stock and lace-ruffles was not a moving- 
 picture actor, but a functionary in the House of 
 Lords. She knew that the other old gentleman who 
 wore a white high hat and sat in a victoria on Charles 
 Street, holding an umbrella over his head as a shield 
 against the first pallid rays of spring sunshine, was 
 not a valetudinarian, but a remarkably hardy and
 
 ADVENTURE 95 
 
 hard-working member of the Cabinet. She came 
 to know the Red Cross Peeress from the Dancing 
 or Tableau Peeress; the lady who begged Sir Thom- 
 as's contribution to a fund to teach the people how 
 to cook rice, from the lady who offered to introduce 
 him to the spirit of his dead son in a seance. 
 
 It is not to be surprised that our heroine justified 
 herself in her new position before some weeks had 
 past. There had been opposition on Lady Easter- 
 ly's part, to the choice of a woman secretary. She 
 felt it to be undignified and complained that it made 
 her house look like the Ministry of Shipping. Also 
 she still retained a dread of the predatory woman 
 somewhat intensified, in the present case by the fact 
 that the woman was an American and attractive. 
 
 "She's a quiet, good girl, I can see," she protested, 
 "but everybody knows what these Americans are. 
 I told Adrian that people from the States tell me its 
 impossible to keep that kind of a girl in her place." 
 
 "And he answered . . . ?" 
 
 "That it depended on where the place was and 
 it seemed usually to be the Peerage!" 
 
 "Now, Ada, do be reasonable. You have seen 
 for yourself what Miss Lea is like. Personally, 
 I've never seen a young person so . . .so entirely 
 devoid of selfconsciousness or coquetry. She is simply 
 clever and competent and very useful to me." 
 
 "But the boys, my dear!" 
 
 "Hugh is at Easterly, isn't he? And how much 
 time is Mid. likely to have on leave to philander 
 with my secretary?" argued Sir Thomas, and his 
 wife seeing his earnestness, was shaken. Certainly, 
 it was a great thing to have his affairs so well run, 
 and he looked undoubtedly the better for it. She 
 would just have an eye on Miss Lea and see how it 
 went. From time to time, she dropped into the 
 office unawares, always with her kind smile and watch-
 
 96 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 ful eyes, to see if Miss Lea was comfortable, as she 
 said or to suggest that if the day was very bad she 
 would send in the tea. But she never found any- 
 thing to alarm her. Sydney's manner toward her 
 employer was all his wife could have asked and dur- 
 ing his absences she seemed so very busy the type- 
 writer sounded steadily; and the girl sitting before 
 it merely turned toward Lady Easterly a friendly 
 and preoccupied smile. So different from Bolder, 
 idly lounging about the room with a cigarette hang- 
 ing out of his mouth ! So Lady Easterly's nervous- 
 ness vanished, and it was only now and then when 
 she caught glimpses of the fact that the secretary 
 did not regard herself au fond as in any different 
 class socially from her employers, that she felt a 
 return of uneasiness. 
 
 The room where Sydney lived and worked was on 
 the left hand of the front door. It was large and 
 square with two big windows on the street and 
 warmed by a coal-fire, which left always a trace of 
 sooty smell in the air. This was surrounded by a 
 high sitting fender on which Sir Thomas's friends 
 were wont to perch like birds on a wire. There were 
 large, high bookcases filled with pamphlets and re- 
 ports all now catalogued in neat rows. The walls 
 were hung with a miscellany of old prints, signed 
 portraits, snap-shots of pet horses and cartoons of the 
 past political events. The Secretary's desk and type- 
 writer and telephone stood between the windows. 
 There were big leather chairs, in one of which Sir 
 Thomas sat while he dictated, unless he called his 
 secretary into the inner room his library, where 
 his own desk and books were kept and which opened 
 into the "office" by double doors. 
 
 Beyond these two rooms Sydney rarely penetrated. 
 She had an impression of a vast house full of spa- 
 cious chambers a dining-room with dark paintings
 
 ADVENTURE 97 
 
 and shining silver; a drawing-room with photographs 
 signed "Maud" or "Alexandra," full of flowers and 
 amazingly quiet. The quiet of the whole house was 
 wonderful to her after the hospital the servants re- 
 pressed steps and voices, the subdued exit and en- 
 trance of many persons on many errands. All that 
 summer of 1915 the family spent most of their 
 time at Easterly Park with Hugh; but their comings 
 and goings in London were always accomplished in 
 a sort of low-toned and orderly tranquillity. 
 
 The master of the house, however, was not able 
 to take any holiday beyond an occasional week-end; 
 and his secretary never missed a day at the office, 
 feeling her new responsibilities, feeling as well those 
 currents which vibrated through Charles Street and 
 whose source was in Flanders or in France. Their 
 fascination and horror gripped her; she felt that only 
 by hard, necessary work would she be able to keep 
 her head for these were days in which an awful 
 incredulity descended upon men and women alike 
 when they saw the Gods of things as they are Gods 
 to which they had entrusted their lives suddenly 
 start mauling their civilization into pieces. This 
 mauling was something at which one must not look, 
 if one was to keep one's hope, one's sanity. There- 
 fore, Sydney concentrated her thoughts upon the 
 daily task, and on the rather complicated routine it 
 necessitated. 
 
 During this summer she first tasted one keen plea- 
 sure. She came to know Town; to know her Lon- 
 don; to take recondite joy in the atmosphere of this 
 most reticent of cities. London gives its charm, its 
 excitement little by little; but to those who read, it 
 soon becomes the only possible place to live. Syd- 
 ney had read ; she soon found that spiritually she was 
 a born Londoner. At a chance name on a sign- 
 board, something within her thrilled in welcome. All
 
 9 8 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 the different quarters, each with its own marked in- 
 dividuality, Chelsea, retired within its blue mists; 
 the City, with its roaring streets, sharp lights and 
 black shadows, power streaming through it swift 
 and terrible, as water pours over Niagara; Mayfair, 
 touched with wealth and stateliness, though wearing 
 these today with an air of apology; the parks, 
 crowded in all their open spaces, above them a pale, 
 wide sky, blown upon with faint clouds; Soho, sin- 
 ister and romantic at once sordid and gay, all 
 these she came to know and love. She took a never- 
 ending pleasure in the tiny, independent shops, each 
 subsisting by a few old customers and suspicious of 
 any new. Above all was she awed by, and conscious 
 of that enormous reserve power, that stable and en- 
 during mass which strengthened the whole vast com- 
 munity, which meant the Empire. This was the 
 burden of that Babylon, as it was beheld of the 
 prophet; and there were moments when, as she hur- 
 ried through the restless and swollen streets, she 
 recalled the wild words of the prophecy, and shiv- 
 ered. Was this also to pass? Was it "to become 
 heaps?" as in the old poet's words, or "one with 
 Ninevefi and Tyre," as in the words of the new? 
 The very confidence, the very steadfastness of the 
 people, their refusal to be shaken or to be alarmed 
 or be worried or to be changed held at times for 
 her, a certain doubt and terror. 
 
 Such thoughts and feelings brought with them a 
 new sensitiveness and a new quickening of the spirit. 
 
 Outwardly, the days moved steadily one after the 
 other, warm and still. Miss Violand paid her usual 
 visit to Yorkshire leaving Giddy in charge of Miss 
 Lea; to the latter's profit and delight. Giddy by 
 this time had adopted the American girl into the 
 family, with all the scoldings and cossetings which 
 that adoption implied. Both she and her mistress
 
 ADVENTURE 99 
 
 had been much impressed with the heightened con- 
 sequence of Sydney's new position in the world. 
 
 "It is amazing, mem," as Giddy said "what young 
 ladies will be doing with themselves!" And Miss 
 Violand agreed that it was indeed amazing. She 
 regarded her young guest with new eyes; asked her 
 opinion of political events and heard the chance ru- 
 mours which eddied through the corridors of West- 
 minster Hall, with a respectful attention. 
 
 Nor did she resent it, as she might once have 
 done, when her nephew began to pay the American 
 girl somewhat decided attention, even though Miss 
 Violand could not forget that earlier in his career, 
 young Eric had made a markedly unsuccessful at- 
 tempt to fill a position similar to the one Sydney 
 was now holding. The girl did not suffer by com- 
 parison, and Miss Violand was not unwilling when 
 she went about with the boy a little and met some 
 of his friends. One of these was a handsome girl 
 named Hilda Fredericks who interested Sydney be- 
 cause she was a musician, had her memory well filled 
 with poetry, and seemed altogether cultivated and 
 charming. Some weeks after young Violand had 
 returned to the Front, Miss Fredericks made Sydney 
 a visit, during which she talked very graciously; and 
 soon afterwards there came from her an invitation 
 to dinner.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 SIR JACOB and Lady Fredericks lived in Portland 
 Place, fairly near to Regent's Park, and thither 
 Sydney found her way on the appointed evening. A 
 subdued Orientalism made itself felt in the decora- 
 tions; there was a drawing-room done in the Moorish 
 manner, with doorways copied after the Alhambra, 
 the effect somewhat marred by the introduction of 
 obese blue satin furniture. There was a marble hall 
 filled with artificial plants ; and the newel-post was a 
 Moor of carved ebony, dressed in silver and hold- 
 ing an electric light. On either side of the dining- 
 room door there were stands of stuffed pheasants 
 under glass, with a plate bearing the inscription that 
 they had been shot and presented to the owner of 
 the house by the late monarch Edward VII. Syd- 
 ney was to learn, as she went on, very much to the 
 credit of that tactful sovereign, whose habit it was 
 to leave such relics of himself among many similar 
 , families. Was it his association with Royalty which 
 made Sir Jacob so very guttural? Such things had 
 been. A certain waving gesture of Queen Alexandra's 
 has been adopted by hosts of elderly ladies wearing 
 tangled auburn fringes and dog-collars of jet or dia- 
 monds, as their means permitted. Sir Jacob wore his 
 greyish beard trimmed to a point: he had small, 
 twinkling, very shrewd eyes under drooping lids, and 
 he chatted to the girl who sat beside him at dinner, 
 with childlike bonhomie and overflowing kindness. 
 The dinner was Edwardian : there was lace and pink 
 ribbon and pink candles on the table and the food 
 came in on a series of little objects, like a collection 
 at a museum. When you thought you had made an 
 
 100
 
 ADVENTURE 101 
 
 end with pudding, you were daunted by an ice in a little 
 cup ; and when that was over you, apparently, took a 
 fresh start with some hot grated ham. Although the 
 party consisted only of one other guest besides her- 
 self, her host, his wife and family, yet they solemnly 
 entered the dining-room in procession and the little 
 dabs of food pursued their appointed path into eight 
 or nine courses and were served by a butler named 
 Beresford and a footman named Wilhelm. Then the 
 cloth was removed and cigars and liqueurs brought 
 for the gentlemen, while the ladies retired to music in 
 the drawing-room "all in the good old English way," 
 as Sir Jacob put it. 
 
 During dinner he talked about the War and his own 
 patriotic views thereon ; shooting at the secretary, now 
 and again, little questions which vaguely irritated her. 
 "Sir Thomas must be very busy these days. Had he 
 much trouble with these dangerous aliens? ... It 
 was indeed a pity that England had ever allowed her- 
 self to be dragged into Continental quarrels. England 
 for the English is my dictum ! If I could, I would 
 build a ten foot wall around the whole Island 
 already "and so on. 
 
 These were the days when England regarded the 
 Germans in her midst as one regards a friend whose 
 mother has suddenly developed homicidal mania 
 that is to say, as sufferers whose misfortune one must 
 endeavor to alleviate. So there was nothing about Sir 
 Jacob or his conversation to which Sydney felt she had 
 any right to object. Many people besides the Ger- 
 man-English were "little Englanders" and it was not 
 expected of the Fredericks family that they should 
 feel any especial sympathy for France. She had heard 
 that the man beside her had been most generous in his 
 gifts to War Charities and she kept telling herself that 
 she had no right to be so irritated. Yet she was ir- 
 ritated, and her replies grew so brief, that Sir Jacob
 
 102 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 put her down as frightened by the company in which 
 she found herself; and, so being very kind hearted and 
 jolly, he took her himself to the cases of pheasants 
 and the portrait of their slayer wearing a kilt, and 
 side-whiskers, and beautiful, shining boots and ex- 
 plained to her all the graciousness of that great and 
 good potentate. 
 
 Lady Fredericks wore a stiff, high-necked frock and 
 had evidently not been able to learn from her husband 
 any of thejaisser-aller of the '80s. Her daughter 
 Hilda, who was handsome as well as intelligent, made 
 a display of shoulders for both. Her son Hugo was 
 not in khaki : Sir Jacob hinted vaguely that he had "a 
 weakness" and he himself told Sydney that, while it 
 was true the Board had deprived themselves of his 
 services with the utmost reluctance, yet they had un- 
 animously agreed that unless the crisis grew more 
 acute it would be suicidal to deprive the nation of 
 his abilities in business. 
 
 "He works ever so late," said his mother gently, 
 "and he has given up his golf already." 
 
 Hugo himself brushed aside these sacrifices as of no 
 moment, but his eyes, behind the gold eye-glasses were 
 full of weariness. The other person present beside 
 a silent little sister with a fair plait hanging over her 
 shoulders, was a young man also not in uniform. 
 His name was Gualtier Delaplaine (not Walter, as 
 he carefully explained to Sydney), and he also con- 
 veyed to her that the various fragments of verse which 
 she might have noticed in the periodicals (but hadn't 
 under the signature G. D.) were none other than his 
 own. He had a round, flat, smooth face and a mild 
 lisping voice; lived in Hampstead, and was "trying 
 very hard," as he said, "not to allow himself to be- 
 come unbalanced by the present crisis." She received 
 the impression that his efforts had been crowned with 
 complete success.
 
 ADVENTURE 103 
 
 He talked a good deal, and very well, in a drawling 
 monotone gathering up into his conversation some 
 of the literary and academic flotsam and jetsam which 
 had been uprooted by the storm and lay tossing on 
 these great tides, temporarily quite disregarded and 
 he had the effect of making Sir Thomas's secretary 
 feel very uncultivated and provincial. If one men- 
 tioned Ypres he said only that he was disappointed. in 
 the French, the War had made them banale. If one 
 spoke of Italy he was glad to quote d'Annunzio's 
 last gorgeous ode: but if one alluded to Belgium then 
 he was either altogether silent in a superior manner 
 or joined with his host in deprecating the sentimen- 
 tality of England which had led her into the quarrel. 
 Once or twice he alluded to the United States of 
 America as a country which lamentably failed to ap- 
 preciate the vital importance of Chinese lacquer, 
 and in a manner so openly contemptuous that Sydney 
 found it hard to bear. The novelty of her sensation 
 caused her to realize that this was the very first time 
 she had met with the arrogance, which she remem- 
 bered having read and heard of as typically English; 
 and she bore Mr. Gualtier Delaplaine no good-will 
 for the introduction. Later in the evening, she learned 
 to her stupefaction, that he had been born and 
 brought up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 
 
 The atmosphere of the talk and of the house was 
 entirely different to that which she had become ac- 
 customed at the Easterly's or Miss Violand's and 
 which regarded the War as the great raison d'etre of 
 existence. To tell just where this difference lay was 
 not so easy, but chiefly in the fact that in this house 
 the War was not the raison d'etre of existence but 
 rather a catastrophe which had broken an important 
 friendship, interfered with vital plans, and might 
 have been avoided for the quixotic ignorance of a few 
 Englishmen, who had not had the superior advan-
 
 104 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 tages of birth and education enjoyed by Sir Jacob 
 himself. This appeared to be an intellectual convic- 
 tion rather than anything more personal; but it was 
 also true that in finding England to be an entirely 
 separate and distinct country from that Germany 
 from whom she had been content to take her rulers 
 for several generations had been a real shock to Sir 
 Jacob, who had honestly regarded the two nations as 
 practically one. If this were true, then to his mind 
 the disloyalty was England's or as he preferred to 
 say, very handsomely, the Government's. 
 
 In all this there was not a word which could offend 
 anyone like Sydney whose feelings were more ig- 
 norant and conventional and there was certainly no 
 hint of hoping for a German victory. Peace by ar- 
 rangement between two great nations who had 
 nothing to gain and much to lose by stupidly con- 
 tinuing a fight which chiefly concerned their lesser and 
 unimportant neighbors ; peace by arrangement making 
 for a durable future alliance this was the Fredericks, 
 ideal and even this was very mildly advocated so 
 that it had the effect of apparently turning anyone 
 who opposed it into a bloodthirsty rattlepate. So at 
 least, the young American felt. 
 
 After dinner they went into the Moorish drawing- 
 room, opened the piano, and then Hilda with her 
 sister, their brother with his violin, made the loveliest 
 music together. It was played with such simplicity 
 and skill, with such enthusiasm for the works of art 
 they interpreted, and such an absence of self-conscious- 
 ness as to be altogether delightful. The pleasure 
 which this performance gave to the parents was no less 
 agreeable to witness. Sydney Lea enjoyed it all in- 
 tensely; and it was certainly odd that as she went 
 homeward on top of a bus through the pale summer 
 night, the Chopin phrases still sounded in her ears 
 she should have told herself that nothing would in-
 
 ADVENTURE 105 
 
 duce her to visit the house again. She mentioned the 
 occasion to Sir Thomas next morning and he looked 
 at her, over his eye-glasses to ask "And what did you 
 think of him?" 
 
 "I thought him perfectly detestable 1" she replied 
 with vigour, and her employer gasped and murmured 
 "Oh did you, really?" in a tone suggestive of disap- 
 proval. Owing to this feeling, Sydney certainly re- 
 ceived no impression that she had exercised any at- 
 traction for Mr. Gualtier Delaplaine, and she was 
 distinctly surprised when he called on her one Sunday 
 afternoon a week or two later. However, she pre- 
 sented him to Miss Violand who received him 
 graciously and asked him to stay to tea. He talked 
 in a lively anecdotal fashion about Bernard Shaw and 
 George Moore and James Joyce, and the illness of 
 Mr. Arthur Symons and the mistaken absorption in 
 War work of many promising writers; and he pro- 
 nounced the house and interior "most wonderful," 
 congratulating her on her setting and atmosphere 
 which "in London," he declared, "is more than half 
 the battle." In fact, he made himself very agreeable 
 and showed nothing at all of that disbelief in the War 
 or in England, which had jarred on her at dinner and 
 which would have infuriated Miss Violand. He was 
 tactful and amusing: but at the same time, after he 
 had departed, Sydney was conscious of a certainty that 
 he had come with a purpose although that purpose had 
 not been mentioned. She forgot him altogether with- 
 out the slightest difficulty, until one hot afternoon a 
 fortnight later as she took a turn in Kensington Gar- 
 dens after her work was done, when he suddenly 
 appeared out of nowhere and joined her. The round, 
 flat face and lisping voice of this strange Pennsyl- 
 vanian puzzled her not a little, but he talked to her 
 gaily and pleasantly as they strolled along under the 
 great trees.
 
 io6 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 "So you are the very remarkable young lady every- 
 body is talking about," remarked Mr. Delaplaine 
 after a pause. She was amused. "Am I really and 
 in what way?" 
 
 "Oh, secretary to an influential M. P. you know!" 
 
 "That isn't remarkable when one thinks of what 
 women are doing." 
 
 "They say he never makes a move without your 
 advice!" 
 
 "Who says so?" 
 
 But Mr. Delaplaine did not choose to answer that 
 question. "It must be exciting to have any influence 
 nowadays and I think you're awfully lucky," he con- 
 tinued half-enviously. "It is a job I should have 
 been very glad to have myself, let me tell you, if only 
 I had known how to set about it but these English 
 are so clannish!" 
 
 "No doubt you could, if " her politeness failed 
 her for the moment, but he never noticed her hesi- 
 tation. 
 
 "Oh, of course there's no doubt of my fitness for it 
 I assure you" he hastened to tell her. "I'm a grad- 
 uate of Lehigh . But its meeting that sort of people 
 How in the world did you manage it? How did 
 you first get hold of this old chap?" 
 
 She had delicate fibres, had Sydney, fastidious, in- 
 visible antennae which touched something in this 
 speech and put her, inexperienced as she was, wholly 
 on her guard. So her answer was rather vague she 
 didn't know she had heard that Sir Thomas needed 
 a typist and so on. Silence followed for a moment. 
 They walked on in the level sun rays that pierced be- 
 tween the tree-trunks and Mr. Delaplaine appeared 
 to consider the beauties of nature. 
 
 "I don't suppose he pays you very much," was his 
 next observation. 
 
 "Not very much."
 
 ADVENTURE 107 
 
 "Well, that's the custom, you know, in this 
 country," explained he, waving his stick at a mild 
 faced sheep standing contemplatively in their path; 
 "they never pay high salaries for this kind of a job 
 because there are so many perquisities attached to 
 them." 
 
 "Perquisites?" she repeated, puzzled. 
 
 "Yes perquisites, privileges, extras fees ar- 
 ranged for by custom, you know!" 
 
 "It's hard to see what perquisites there could pos- 
 sibly be to a post like mine." 
 
 Mr. Delaplaine found her ignorance naive indeed. 
 "My dear Miss Lea you need instruction," said he 
 lightly. "You don't know England yet do you? 
 Tradition has settled all this for generations. Else 
 how could clever men University men afford to 
 take such positions ? Had you ever thought of that ?" 
 
 "Not in that light, I confess." 
 
 "Well now you understand. It is all quite above 
 board and understood quite expected. Indeed it's a 
 part of the game." 
 
 "Still, I don't quite understand ." 
 
 "Ah but it's easily explained," he began to enlighten 
 her "You see the secretary is there to come in con- 
 tact first with everybody who sees the M. P. She 
 hears what is wanted and all that. Well, of course, 
 she makes up her mind whether it's a good thing or 
 not; so then she can easily persuade the M. P. Sir 
 Thomas, for example, to see the thing as she does. 
 Naturally, she should expect to be paid for her 
 trouble." 
 
 "Oh I see! Yes, I know that's done in Russia." 
 Her tone was enigmatical and some quality in it 
 caused her companion to glance at her and to repeat 
 that this custom was sanctioned by tradition. 
 
 "It isn't like Russia in the least because the peo- 
 ple are different," he proceeded. "A great deal of
 
 io8 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 the actual work falls on the secretary and this is 
 simply a means of payment like a commission in 
 business. They make salaries low to allow for it. 
 I've a friend named Belby, for instance whose chief 
 has a portfolio in the Cabinet. He gets a mere trifle 
 but the perquisites make Belby's post worth 
 while." 
 
 "Evidently," said Sydney with a smile, "I have 
 wasted many opportunities out of ignorance, haven't 
 I?" 
 
 Mr. Gualtier Delaplaine was a great amateur of 
 irony, on paper, and had been know to declare that 
 Gibbon and Swift were the passion of his life. But 
 he had formed an opinion of this somewhat reserved, 
 though charming young countrywoman, which did not 
 admit of his recognizing it from her lips. Hilda 
 Fredericks had told him that Sydney though clever 
 was extremely American, with small knowledge of 
 the great world. In Mr. Delaplaine's opinion, his own 
 knowledge of that great world was immeasurable and 
 complete. He walked on for a few paces and then 
 changed the subject. 
 
 "Charming people, the Fredericks?" 
 
 She agreed. 
 
 "So musical so up in everything! And rich!" 
 he drew a breath of exhilaration at the very thought. 
 "Awfully generous, too, Sir Jacob always is. There's 
 a man I'd like to oblige, let me tell you. He never 
 forgets a favor." 
 
 "I've heard," replied Sydney, "that he has given a 
 deal to the Red Cross." 
 
 "And to everything else. Belby tells me that 
 Rounceton's private secretary has been made for life 
 by just helping Sir Jacob over a matter in the city, 
 they say he has been set up for good and all but here 
 we are at the Dairy is it too late for some tea ?" 
 
 "I fear so," she looked at her watch and then at
 
 ADVENTURE 109 
 
 her companion regretfully. "I must, unfortunately get 
 a 'bus back there are letters to go before the evening 
 post. I'm so sorry!" 
 
 Those invisible guardians had warned her not to 
 snub the man and she obeyed them, though it took 
 self-control. She left him, standing with a smile on 
 his flat face, and as she hurried down the path two 
 spots of angry red burned in her cheeks. . . . Per- 
 haps one should not exaggerate, however. ... "I 
 suppose," she thought, "he's just a common man who 
 knows no better. I must try and forget his friend 
 Belby and all the rest of it." 
 
 It was for a short time only, however, that she 
 succeeded.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 FORTUNATELY for Sydney, this strange talk with 
 Mr. Gualtier Delaplaine in Kensington Gardens was 
 not the only reminder that the position of private 
 secretary to a man in political life has its own dig- 
 nities. Under peace conditions, Sir Thomas would 
 unquestionably have selected for such a post, the son 
 or the nephew of a friend or colleague some charm- 
 ing boy, with a delightful profile and the cultivated 
 drawl of his caste, who would have regarded it as 
 the starting-point of a political career, and whose 
 leisure would have been much occupied with social 
 engagements, among which dinners at his Chief's 
 house would have been prominent. 
 
 Now, this side of life came late into Miss Lea's 
 experience, partly because she in no way assumed or 
 expected it and partly because, when he made the de- 
 parture and engaged a woman, Sir Thomas had acted 
 under pressure of the hardest bout of work he had yet 
 known, and all subsidiary aspects had sunk out of sight 
 for the time being. Sydney's predecessor, the well- 
 connected Charles Bolder, had been a congenital in- 
 competent, who, but for Sir Thomas's dislike of 
 change, would long ago have been obliged to seek an- 
 other employment. The reaction toward training and 
 practical sense which had led Sir Thomas to choose 
 Miss Lea for her present position, had been too 
 strong to take anything else into consideration by 
 comparison. In Sydney's American view, a secretary 
 was no more than a sort of confidential upper clerk. 
 The conversation in the last chapter had been a great 
 surprise to her as well as a disagreeable shock; and it 
 showed her the importance which many people at- 
 
 110
 
 ADVENTURE in 
 
 tached to her present work. The effect of it was to 
 make her become rather more conscientious than be- 
 fore. Certainly she was the last person to feel that 
 she should be included in any entertainment, although 
 it was natural for her to enjoy such a chance, if it 
 came. 
 
 By reason of her evident unconsciousness of such 
 things and no doubt because things were so different 
 since the War and entertaining from the classic stand- 
 point had all but ceased the occasion was long in 
 arriving. Lady Easterly held a reception to some 
 visiting French Committee of Women War Workers, 
 at which Sydney made herself exceedingly useful. A 
 certain quality of fineness in her personality met with 
 an instant response among the Latin guests, set them 
 at ease, and lightened the hostess's burdens. With all 
 the will in the world, Lady Easterly had never found 
 it an easy or congenial task to entertain foreigners, 
 who had such a perplexing way of looking baffled or 
 discouraged just because one's expression of face did 
 not change; and the more Lady Easterly felt this, the 
 more wooden she became. Her graciousness and 
 kindness, which were very real, seemed absolutely in- 
 capable of expression ; and so she was very grateful to 
 Miss Lea. She noted how Sydney flitted lightly hither 
 and yon with a smile sparkling in dark eyes and lifting 
 a delicate lip, never at a loss for some phrase of 
 amateur French, for which the humour in her face 
 more than atoned. 
 
 "She was of the greatest use to me, Thomas," Lady 
 Easterly assured her husband. "Of course you know 
 the Americans are much more like the French than 
 we are and they get on with them somehow " an 
 opinion she continued to maintain against her hus- 
 band's rather warm disagreement. 
 
 It was several months after this reception that 
 Sydney received her first formal invitation to dine af
 
 ii2 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 the Easterly's. She was interested in hearing from 
 Janey that both Mr. and Mrs. Romeyne were coming 
 this being one of the few houses left in London 
 which kept up the pretence that they lived together 
 "which Mother does" Janey added, "because she's 
 fond of him and afraid of her." 
 
 Miss Lea had no preconception in the matter of 
 English dinners and it will be recalled that so far her 
 life had held few dinners of any description. Once 
 she had made her slightly timid entry into the spacious 
 and sacred drawing-room that stretched all across the 
 second floor of the 'house, she was content to become 
 a quiet observer of this new scene. The lack of any 
 kind of introductions which so often outrages Ameri- 
 can feelings particularly when they take this custom 
 of the country for a personal slight immensely sur- 
 prised her, for she seemed to herself to have entered 
 the wood in Alice where nothing has a name. Since 
 perforce she held the naive view of the new world 
 that such gatherings as these were primarily intended 
 for pleasure and social intercourse, she was perplexed 
 at the persistence of a custom which so interfered with 
 this end. Later, she came to realize that they are 
 nothing of the sort and no more designed with a view 
 to mutual enjoyment than is a church service. 
 
 Such ritualistic assemblages as it was Sydney's for- 
 tune to witness were effectually brought to an end later 
 on in the War, by the food situation, and came to be 
 replaced by small gatherings of intimates. By this 
 means the stiffness of centuries was done away with in 
 six months or so, and the English nation became as 
 simply and spontaneously gregarious as if it had never 
 known the infliction of those solemn parties which 
 even Thackerayan satire had failed to kill. As Miss 
 Lea, then, was presented to nobody, save the man who 
 sat on her left hand at the table, she had an uninter- 
 rupted chance to survey the room. She had heard a
 
 ADVENTURE 113 
 
 good deal of lamentation about the necessity of simpli- 
 fying both the food and the decorations, together with 
 complaint that nothing could be done as it ought; 
 but to her provincial view the standard remained that 
 of the utmost opulence. Smith and the two assistant 
 parlour-maids, the flowers sent down from Easterly 
 Park, and when she sat down to it the wines and 
 the dinner scarcely needed apology, unless it were 
 ironical. They all represented a scale of living which 
 was hard to reconcile with what she knew to be the 
 devoted patriotism and honest desire for self-sacrifice 
 of Sir Thomas and his wife, whose minds simply 
 were unable to adjust themselves other than very 
 gradually, to the irresistible logic in the situation of 
 a beleagured England. Parlour-maids instead of 
 footmen, five or six courses instead of ten, four wines 
 instead of a dozen were in their view a revolutionary 
 programme but one that bore small relation to what 
 the secretary felt might have been done. Sydney 
 meditated over all this, and came to the conclusion 
 that whereas luxury was greater in her own country, 
 yet it was not taken for granted, as in England, but 
 remained always an extra. Won by somebody pre- 
 sumably the master of the house, such opulence in the 
 States may be more vulgar, more self conscious yet 
 always remains luxury and is not, as here, masked un- 
 der the habitual guise of necessity. 
 
 With these thoughts in her mind, Miss Lea admired 
 the fine proportions of the room and its air of dignity 
 the lights, set in tall vases of Chinese crackle; the 
 furniture, which was of a type that only needs re- 
 covering once in a generation; the pictures of one 
 or two by-gone Easterlys with ruddy 18th Century 
 faces; and some rather painful watercolours by Janey, 
 who had devoted herself to the art until laughed out 
 of it by her brother Hugh. In this setting the guests 
 tranquilly disposed themselves. She saw the
 
 114 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 Romeynes, the wife dressed in vivid green, veiled with 
 sequins and wearing a collar of opals set in rubies, her 
 dark red hair swathed in a tight green bandage which 
 threw into relief 'her heavy, unamiable features. The 
 husband stood on the hearthrug beside his host, cool, 
 aloof, talking behind his moustache in a way he had 
 which Sydney knew meant that he was not pleased. 
 
 In conversation with Lady Easterly were Mr. and 
 Mrs. Pember Ohyne. He was a tall man with an 
 able face, melancholy eyes under heavy brows and a 
 white beard trimmed to a point. His very low Oxford 
 voice prevented most people from ever hearing the 
 end of his sentences. An editor of one of the impor- 
 tant Reviews, he had resigned at the beginning of 
 1915 to take a position under the Minister of Agri- 
 culture. His wife was a tiny woman, whose vivid, 
 irregular face sparkled with animation, and whose 
 soft, ejaculatory voice held notes like those of a bird. 
 With her black frock she wore a set of delicate seed- 
 pearl ornaments long dangling ear-rings, a brooch, 
 a necklace intricate and subtle in their design to 
 suit her personality. Her quick movements, the mo- 
 bility or her fine face and expressive hands, gave 
 Sydney a fascinated sense of watching some master- 
 piece of art; yet Rhoda Pember Chyne was the most 
 unaffected of women and one who fulfilled herself to 
 the delight of a large circle of friends. She bore so 
 plainly the Celtic imprint that no one save perhaps 
 an American but was aware that she was Irish. She 
 turned from her hostess to greet a youngish man 
 named James Spangler, who was a Labour Member, 
 had large feet and hands, and spoke with the utmost 
 deliberation in the broadest Yorkshire. Sydney had 
 been present during a discussion concerning him which 
 had preceded his invitation and which had much 
 amused her. She felt she knew exactly why he was 
 there.
 
 ADVENTURE 115 
 
 It was with more interest that she beheld the arrival 
 of Lord and Lady Welden, who were the next to 
 appear although she had no idea that it was to Lady 
 Welden's word in season she owed her home with 
 Miss Violand. Lady Welden was indeed an im- 
 portant person, than whom no one could be crisper 
 over the telephone, more energetic in her own war- 
 work or more peremptory in her demands on others. 
 Of all the tribe of War-Working Peeresses, she was 
 the most driving and the most efficient. No doubt in 
 times of peace, the Countess may have been trying to 
 the nerves of a good many leisurely people, who were 
 glad to acknowledge now that she was probably the 
 hardest-working woman in England. Her broad, 
 crimson face and blunt manners were certainly far 
 from attractive and the importance of her many 
 tasks justified her according to her own mind at 
 least in the habit of never listening to the end of 
 what anybody said. 
 
 That she cast her Lord into the shade, he was at 
 moments irritatedly conscious. Owing to his uncom- 
 promising past Toryism, Lord Welden had not been 
 given any War post. It was reported of him that he 
 had been more often turned down for a job than any 
 member of the Peerage and the reason given by 
 Romeyne was that he was an ass "not a silly ass, but 
 a clever ass!" His appearance was striking a huge, 
 bulky man, whose flaming, twyform beard lent him a 
 semi-heroic aspect, increased by his long, wine-col- 
 oured curls, giving him a hirsute look among that pal- 
 lid clean-shaven generation. The theatricality of Lord 
 Welden's personality was hardly lessened by his 
 clever, half-shut narrow eyes and his long waving 
 hands, nor by the fact that he wore a black satin stock 
 instead of the conventional tie. He was one of the 
 few people in the room to drop his gs in the Victorian 
 manner; and, during the pauses in the conversation,
 
 ii6 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 Sydney could hear his voice telling Mrs Romeyne 
 what he was doin' and where he was goin' and how 
 he was feelin' about the Western Front. The lady's 
 flattered and fawning laughter was immediately re- 
 sponsive. 
 
 The remaining couple were the Hon. Folliot Caird 
 and his wife he, a rising barrister, legal adviser to 
 the Foreign Offce, had recently spent some months in 
 Washington. Sydney had met them both before, at a 
 War Fete, where Caird had talked to her with a good 
 deal of interest. She was very ready, therefore, when 
 he appeared to take her out to dinner, to continue 
 their talk, even though it took the form of a catechism 
 on his part concerning things American. 
 
 "How many men do you think the Germans can 
 get together against you at home in case you decide 
 to come in?" was one question, and this was easier 
 to answer with a vague guess, than the next; "I 
 imagine that it would take the States at least three or 
 four years to form an Army, anyhow?" which she 
 rather indignantly refuted by a reference to the Civil 
 War. 
 
 Mr. Caird had heard of the Civil War, although it 
 remained hazy in his mind as an inconsiderable sort 
 of row, not to be compared with such an example of 
 the real thing as, let us say, the Indian Mutiny. He 
 confessed to have been a little surprised when in 
 America to find that it had left still perceptible traces. 
 He remembered that the cotton-spinning industry had 
 been affected by it ; but certainly, he had not expected 
 to find that there were more monuments to its soldiers 
 in the States, than exist, in his own land, to those sol- 
 diers who died in South Africa. What 'had most im- 
 pressed him about Sydney's country was first, its 
 wealth, and second, the fact that this wealth was so 
 frequently expressed in terms of ready money. He had 
 met lots of men there, "successful men, splendid fel-
 
 ADVENTORE 117 
 
 las" who seemed content to have their one home in a 
 town house, or even a flat, who had no desire what- 
 ever for what he would have called "an establish- 
 ment" ; and who never seemed to feel that their wealth 
 required anything of that type from them. They 
 lived as it pleased them to live, they didn't bother; 
 and nobody thought them eccentric. 
 
 This flexibility of the family budget and of life 
 generally, had enormously appealed to him, who was 
 still in the stage of forming a fortune and yet who 
 was always finding his expenditure determined by 
 position rather than by income. The scale of living 
 in England, he explained, was set for one, by a sort 
 of unescapablc tradition, making one the slave of 
 public opinion. These facts made him envious of the 
 superior opportunities, the freedom of American life. 
 
 "And then," he added, "we're not adaptable the 
 way you are, I'd like to see my wife get along, as 
 your women do when their husbands chance to have a 
 bad year two or three servants, look after the chil- 
 dren yourself, and all that, y'know!" 
 
 "I am looking at her across the table," said Sydney, 
 "and I feel quite sure she could." 
 
 Mr. Caird shook his head, and then, harking back 
 once more to the subject which had the real interest 
 for him, asked, "Do you think that by any fluke the 
 Kaiser could buy up some of your prominent men, and 
 so keep you out of it?" 
 
 Her sense of intense anger and insult lasted by a 
 flash, when she noted the unconsciousness and absorp- 
 tion of his face. After all, how could he know? 
 Moreover, such questions, when they came from in- 
 telligent people, or those predisposed to like and ad- 
 mire the States, were of value in educating her to the 
 condition of mind which existed, she felt, among the 
 large class entirely lacking such sympathy. 
 
 Mr. Spangler, the Labour member, sat on her other
 
 u8 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 hand. Not only did she find his Yorkshire accent dif- 
 ficult to follow, but she soon began to feel as though 
 the act of conversation with him resembled that of 
 tending a machine. She fed into this machinery a re- 
 mark or a question, which disappeared into its 
 recesses; then she found she must wait a perceptible 
 interval before an answer was produced in a slow, 
 reflective grumble. These responses took so long to 
 evolve that any note of playfulness always natural 
 to one of her nationality became grotesque. The 
 light touch was evidently unknown to Mr. Spangler. 
 Rather desperately, Sydney asked him about the food 
 situation, which was then beginning to be discussed. 
 Her observation was received in silence, and, some 
 minutes after she had begun to wonder whether the 
 man was deaf, he suddenly began to deliver a well- 
 considered review of the subject, with statistics as to 
 crops, reserve stores, available tonnage for transpor- 
 tation and estimated loss by submarines a lecture oc- 
 cupying him for ten minutes or so. At its conclusion 
 she thanked him warmly and felt free to turn her at- 
 tention back again to Mr. Folliot Caird. 
 
 The barrister was the type which one knows to be 
 that of a Londoner, as distinguished from the country 
 bred and ruddy land owner, like Easterly or Welden. 
 Pale and professional-looking, with a thin face and 
 eye-glasses his countenance seemed well fitted for the 
 framework of a wig. His wife was a pretty young 
 woman, whose violet eyes and smart French clothes 
 belonged to the modern generation and set her apart 
 from Lady Easterly or Mrs. Chyne as completely as 
 though she were of another nationality. The exotic 
 quality in Sydney Lea's dress and appearance inter- 
 ested Mrs. Caird, to whom the other people present 
 far more picturesque and individual though they were 
 had become an old story. To her mind an Ameri- 
 can woman stood, if not in this particular case for
 
 ADVENTURE 119 
 
 money, yet always for liveliness, novelty and chic. 
 After the women had ascended to the drawing-room, 
 she seated herself by the secretary to ask her all about 
 New York and its wonderful theatres, cabarets and 
 dance-places, which she longed to see. 
 
 "But I've only been there once in my life 1" cried 
 Sydney laughing, "and that was when I sailed for 
 Europe." Mrs. Caird sympathized. 
 
 "It's beastly to be poked off into the provinces," 
 she remarked. "I had to stay in Worcestershire until 
 I married, with only a fortnight every spring in town. 
 Fancy ! And I was jolly well sick of it, I can tell you. 
 Did you live on a ranch?" 
 
 That misconception by which the Londoner re- 
 gards every American as hailing from New York, 
 while retiring at intervals to an orange-plantation in 
 southern California or a ranch in Wyoming, had be- 
 come so familiar to Sydney Lea by this time that she 
 had ceased making any effort to correct it. She 
 answered only, therefore, that her home was in Mas- 
 sachusetts, but that she had expected to be at work in 
 New York, had she not decided to stay on in England. 
 Mrs. Caird thought it was "awfully sporting" of 
 Sydney to relinquish her New York position and her 
 tone held both sincerity and heartiness. She told 
 about her children a boy at school and two little 
 girls named, quite inevitably, Moira and Eileen. 
 Meanwhile, on the sofa before the fire, Lady Welden 
 was giving Mrs. Pember Chyne a frank account of 
 her difficulties with the Government, in her organiza- 
 tion of the Woman's Food and Fuel Defence League, 
 to which the other listened with vivid sympathy 
 depicted on her mobile face. Mrs Romeyne was 
 talking to her hostess. 
 
 "Very darin', I call it to have that American girl 
 in the house," she was observing. "First thing you 
 know, she'll be goin' off with one of your boys."
 
 120 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 "Not at all ! Not at all !" said Lady Easterly has- 
 tily. "She isn't that sort in any way." 
 
 "Those people make one think What they wish," 
 the other drawled. "She's much too good-lookin' in 
 my opinion." Here Mrs. Romeyne lifted her ruby- 
 studded eye-glass and surveyed Sydney Lea with dis- 
 approval. "Not that she's really handsome y'know: 
 too washed-out. But men like them. I'd never let her 
 be my husband's secretary although he never notices 
 'em. He's really not a man at all it's like bein' 
 married to a stick of wood." 
 
 Mrs. Romeyne's habit of assuming that because 
 her husband was indifferent to her, he was therefore 
 insensible to the charms of all women, had become 
 well known to her large circle of female enemies, and 
 Lady Easterly had no desire to make trouble for 
 Adrian by combating it on this occasion. She turned 
 the subject not very adroitly but she did it; and con- 
 soled herself by the reflection that she need not ask 
 Mrs. Romeyne to her house for another year at least. 
 
 "Really, the woman's too dreadful," was her in- 
 ward comment. "How can Adrian bear it?" 
 
 At that moment Romeyne entered the room, his 
 clear, carrying voice just finishing an observation con- 
 cerning a Cabinet Minister: 
 
 "The man's mind," Sydney heard him say as he 
 passed her chair, "the man's mind is so full of his 
 own importance that it hasn't room for an idea !" 
 
 Both Caird and Pember Chyne followed him 
 eagerly to the 'hearthrug to continue their discussion, 
 which lasted until Lady Welden rolled up Her knit- 
 ting, arose and shouted out in her resonant voice that, 
 as she had to be up at seven next morning, washin' 
 dishes in her canteen she must be gettin' to bed. She 
 bore off her flamboyant Earl looking like a Beowulf 
 who had somehow strayed into modern life: and
 
 ADVENTURE 121 
 
 shortly afterwards the Romeynes also took their 
 departure and the party broke up. 
 
 Mrs. Caird, as she rose, gave Sydney a smiling invi- 
 tation to come in to tea on Sunday and see the babies; 
 and the secretary saw her leave with the pleasant 
 sense of future possibilities in the way of friends. She 
 was more surprised, though none the less delighted, 
 when a low voice called her by name, and, turning, 
 she looked down upon Mrs. Pember Chyne, who was 
 in the act of asking her to call. The little lady's deli- 
 cate face and ruffled grey hair gave the girl a keen 
 stab of artistic pleasure, in contemplating anything so 
 picturesque and charming. 
 
 "You will come to see us, won't you? Lady 
 Easterly has been telling me all about you and I'm 
 always at home on Thursdays for tea even nowa- 
 days, because my husband likes it." 
 
 "I should love it!" Sydney cried "although my 
 time, you know, is not my own." 
 
 "I know. We will ask Sir Thomas. I want to 
 hear all about your wonderful country. And you are 
 fond of books, too, are you not? I feel sure of it. 
 We will have a good talk," nodded Mrs Chyne and 
 moved away. 
 
 Sydney betook herself homeward through the 
 ominously empty streets, bearing with her the recol- 
 lection of a kindly glance and a word "And how are 
 you, Miss Lea?" from Romeyne, as he passed out. 
 
 The Folliot Cairds was the first young household 
 that Sydney saw in England; and it gained much in 
 her eyes from that fact. Edith Caird was many 
 years younger than her husband and was a good deal 
 absorbed in her nursery and in her girl-friends so 
 the War shadow did not brood over her home as over 
 o many others that Sydney had seen. It was, indeed, 
 a menage in the full sunshine of youth, health and suc- 
 cess, very pleasant to behold. They lived in Hans
 
 122 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 Place gayest and most smartly modern of squares, 
 in a house that was quasi-American both in size and 
 appearance and that within doors held a piquant vivac- 
 ity of colour and decoration. The pretty parlour- 
 maid, who admitted Miss Lea, wore a crimson frock, 
 with an apron and Alsatian cap of pleated black net; 
 and the room into which she ushered the guest was all 
 Hone in black and white stripes against which cush- 
 ions and draperies of strong orange, blue and scar- 
 let, made a vivid effect. It was very gay and striking, 
 and Sydney complimented her hostess, who made a 
 deprecating gesture. 
 
 "I'm glad you like it, Roger doesn't;" she candidly 
 admitted, "he says it's like living on the stage in a 
 decor du theatre Antolne. So he won't sit in it, and 
 after dinner I always have to have my cigarette with 
 him in his dreadful, messy little den. "Ah! here 
 come the children." 
 
 The door 'had opened to admit two little girls of 
 five and three under the guidance of a severe person- 
 age, who left them to their mother with the manner 
 of one making a great concession. Pretty creatures 
 both, with thick mops of hair, large starry eyes and 
 bare legs, the children conducted themselves with 
 that air of fulfilling an expected routine, which is so 
 amazing to the stranger in English nurseries. They 
 curtsied to the visitor; they each received a cake, 
 which they sat on two chairs to nibble, and occasion- 
 ally replied in monosyllables to l her friendly attempts 
 at conversation. In her heart, Sydney thought, that 
 handsome as they were, they had rather an air of w"!l 
 trained animals than of human beings. But their 
 brother surprised her even more. The girls had a 
 look of stolidity and physical perfection, in singular 
 contrast to the boy, who was as thin and pale as if he 
 had been born across the Atlantic. Mrs. Caird ob- 
 served that he was 'home from his preparatory school
 
 ADVENTURE 123 
 
 on account of not being quite well and he struck 
 the visitor as being physically both ill-nourished and 
 over-repressed. At nine, Jack Caird had all the poise 
 and subdued effect of a blase little man of the world, 
 and caused Sydney to reflect that in this country, child- 
 hood ended early for the male. He gave evidences 
 of careful training as to manners and personal ap- 
 pearance ; while at the same time, the latter bore wit- 
 ness to an unheard-of neglect. His teeth needed clean- 
 ing af\d straightening, and he had a slight, but percep- 
 tible defect of vision; while his repression and reti- 
 cence went beyond mere shyness and seemed to hint 
 at sinister influence. Sydney, with memories of a boy- 
 cousin of the same age, with his radiant friendliness, 
 bubbling spirits and restless vitality felt at a loss 
 how to deal with this critical and tranquil little gentle- 
 man. She thought to herself that she had never seen 
 a young creature so lacking in joyousness and so afraid 
 to express either interest or pleasure. 
 
 By this time two or three young women in uniform 
 had gathered about the tea-table and talk grew ani- 
 mated. But Sydney did not give up her efforts to 
 draw the boy out, so long as she thought there was any 
 hope. If he had the usual childish liking of novelty, 
 he had long been schooled not to show it, so she found 
 herself groping through an empty little mind, in which 
 every idea had long since been stereotyped. It was 
 a strange experience to find an English boy reproduc- 
 ing in his person some of the worst faults to be found 
 in American education fifty years ago, by English 
 critics namely the loss of childhood but it was 
 one often to be repeated. Her reflection as the 
 door shut on the three children was, that if the new 
 generation of Englishmen was to exhibit the strongly- 
 marked individuality of the past, it must develop late, 
 and this was followed by another to the effect that 
 the system of forbidding any expression of feelings,
 
 i2 4 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 soon resulted in the child's having no feelings to ex- 
 press. 
 
 "Now, Miss Lea!" her hostess cried gaily, "you 
 can pay some attention to us." 
 
 The gaitered young Rosalinds around the tea-table 
 ate with frank appetite, smoked with gusto and talked 
 with candour. They had broad faces and long legs, 
 large eyes and splendidly abundant hair. They bore 
 to Sydney a breath of high courage and young achieve- 
 ment; and she was soon chatting and laughing tell- 
 ing, perhaps, an American story or two with an 
 exhilaration that she had lost during War-time but 
 which brought vivdly back to her, the green of her 
 college campus, and its overhanging elms, her long 
 talks with Elizabeth in the days when life was an in- 
 dividual matter and one's ears were not filled day 
 and night with the cry of -a world in pain. 
 
 In none of these young girls did she find the mental 
 alertness to which she Was accustomed. One and all 
 of them seemed to have been imperfectly educated, 
 to be both impervious and indifferent to ideas. Their 
 vocabularies were astonishingly narrow; their views 
 of life were, (apart from fheir work) quite frankly 
 greedy and even sensual; in their attitude toward men 
 coquetry and sexual appeal had ceased to be uncon- 
 scious or spontaneous, and had become quite direct, 
 studied even, candid to a point which took the Ameri- 
 can's breath away. Man was still, in the England of 
 1915, the only possible purveyor to woman of all that 
 made life worth living; the great prize; the giver of 
 that physical passion which was the underlying pre- 
 occupation of her existence and of the luxury by 
 which it was expressed and crowned. Woman was 
 here the hunter, who must match her cunning against 
 the superior strength and position of her prey. This, 
 at least was the assumption. Sydney Lea, fresh from 
 a world less coarse and senual, although perchance,
 
 ADVENTURE 125 
 
 more hypocritical and anemic, had never before come 
 into contact with this War between the Sexes; in her 
 dim, young imagination marriage had been expressed 
 in terms of a sublimated comradeship; it was a species 
 of emotional co-operation. The Woman Question 
 had never interested her in the least, but she began to 
 realize that the claims of the English feminists were 
 based on reality. War had made a sudden demand 
 upon the powers of these vigorous female creatures, 
 which was changing, though it had not yet wholly 
 changed, their attitude toward these things. If not 
 they, at least their daughters, would have opened to 
 them in future so many doors into the wide world, 
 that man would cease to be the only possible purveyor 
 of all that made life worth while, and woman might 
 once again resume her ancient place of hunted rather 
 than of huntress. 
 
 Surely, Sydney thought, she deserved it after such 
 self-devotion; and she glanced across the room at 
 one rosy and long-limbed Amazon, whose eight hours 
 of truck driving per day, were taken for granted as 
 gayly and simply as was her candidly-expressed de- 
 termination to get a husband out of it, somewhere en 
 route, "Because, y'see, in a year or two there won't 
 be enough men to go 'round, and then, not havin' a 
 bob, I shall never have an earthly!"
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE variety in London houses was a delight to 
 Sydney Lea, who found nothing so picturesque as the 
 contrast between the lively modernity of the Caird's 
 and the vague, dingily-impressive spaces of the region 
 around Russell Square. Moreover, the moment she 
 entered the Pember Chyne's, her heart leaped with 
 joyful recognition of an interior already loved. A 
 house lined and walled with books, exhaling the rich- 
 est sense of the life of and for books, was something 
 she too, remembered. 
 
 Her hostess, bending over the fire, looked like a 
 brownie or a fairy godmother. She wore her grey 
 hair puffed and tied with ribbon like an eighteenth 
 century portrait, while her slight shoulders were en- 
 veloped in a wrap lined with fur. Sydney's pleasure in 
 their meeting was so visible that it was an inspiration 
 to Rhoda Pember Chyne, who had found such sensi- 
 tive response rare among the youth of her day. She 
 had often commented that Americans tended to be 
 old-fashioned in regard to their love of the literary 
 background, and this girl's enjoyment of it, caused 
 the elder woman to sparkle with anecdote; to pour 
 the rich wine of her experience "with beaded bub- 
 bles winking at the brim" more gaily and freely as 
 she afterwards declared, than she had done for 
 months. 
 
 She told Sydney war-stories, political stones; she 
 repeated bans mots of the past. It gave her particular 
 joy to recall that when in the first months of the War, 
 the Admiralty spread oil upon the waters of Margate 
 Bay, in order to trouble enemy submarines, the town 
 
 126
 
 ADVENTURE 127 
 
 of Margate put in a claim against the Admiralty for 
 spoiling the sea-bathing! She chuckled at the reply 
 made to a Royal host, who was assuring his guests 
 that in event of an air-raid, the cellars had been made 
 ready, by a bon vivant Minister, who did not like 
 the new regime of barley-water; why not go there 
 now, Sir?" Had Sydney ever heard what Jowett 
 said, when someone, forgetting he had been recently 
 made a widower, met him on Piccadilly and asked 
 "When's your wife coming up?" " 'She comes up at 
 Easter!' " was the immortal answer. 
 
 Then she talked about a walk with Tennyson under 
 the great oaks; of an evening, when, curled up on the 
 sofa, she heard Swinburne recite Laus Veneris, his 
 hair flaming in the firelight; of an amusing encounter 
 between Huxley and Renan, where the humourous and 
 impatient energy of the one was contrasted with the 
 suave and pontifical gravity of the other; and of her 
 own battle royal with Oscar Wilde when Irish wit 
 met Irish wit and the woman came out the victor. 
 
 It was to Sydney like the unrolling of a tapestry, on 
 which were woven many shining figures, although, 
 now and again, Mrs Chyne would repeat, with a sigh, 
 in her soft voice: "Oh how long ago that seems 
 how quite done with how ended !" 
 
 Then some memory would bring back her bubbling 
 laughter and she was off once more with description 
 of the view of the river from the windows of the 
 Pennell's flat in Buckingham Street, or of Whistler 
 and Henry James, both of whom she had disliked; or 
 of Walter Pater, whom she dearly loved and went 
 to visit every year; or of walking home under arc 
 umbrella, with a serious, blue-eyed army officer, who 
 talked about the Bible and whose name was Gordon. 
 All these vignettes which might otherwise have been 
 mere futile reminiscence were backed solidly by a 
 mind holding well-considered impressions and critical
 
 128 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 values, which it had registered concerning these inter- 
 esting figures. Nor were these all necessarily flat- 
 tering. Mrs. Chyne would not have been herself 
 without a caustic candour which pierced many illu- 
 sions and set many a hero tottering on his pedestal. 
 This was particularly true of War celebrities, whose 
 evanescent glory gave one of her type only a sense of 
 pain, by contrast with the weightier minds of the past. 
 
 "Although, I do believe " she nodded her small 
 head, "that we may expect a great deal from Mr. 
 Romeyne who was dining at the Easterly's that 
 night you remember? I am usually dreadfully dis- 
 appointed in these new men especially Liberal poli- 
 ticians but I am agreeably surprised in him and so 
 I told Walter. He is distinctly in the grand style 
 his mind has the quickness and the serenity. We may 
 look to him, I feel sure." 
 
 Sydney was very much interested and inclined to 
 agree ; but just then the master of the house came in 
 for a cup of tea and the subject was dropped. Mr. 
 Chyne appeared war-worn and weary more so, to 
 the secretary's eye, than were those professional poli- 
 ticians whom she saw continually and who carried 
 their cares more lightly. His wife's gaze rested on 
 him with a shade of anxiety and she seemed to read 
 between the lines of his low-toned observations 
 most of which the visitor's ear could not even catch. 
 She did gather that he looked forward to the ap- 
 proaching winter with little confidence. 
 
 His arrival was followed by that of two or three 
 others: a young Japanese attache, whose politeness 
 was as exquisite as his mental dexterity both of 
 them seeming equally exotic: a Serbian priest, with 
 bare feet and high fur cap, whose curled black beard 
 gave him the look of a sculptured Babylonian mon- 
 arch come to life; and shortly after, Sydney took 
 her leave. It was not however these exotic personal-
 
 ADVENTURE 129 
 
 ities that peopled the smoky streets for her on her 
 homeward way, but the talk with her hostess, and 
 this she resolved should be often repeated. 
 
 Thus Thursday afternoon came to have for her a 
 new and pleasurable significance. Very seldom did 
 she encounter at Rhoda's hearth anyone of her own 
 age, but England 'had taught Sydney a new interest 
 in the intercourse with her elders a joy far too little 
 understood in her own country, where the ages are 
 kept rigidly separated into different social strata. 
 Women she met at the Chyne's were apt to be plainly 
 dressed; their low-voiced chat was full of spice and 
 flavored with an exotic Victorianism. The men were 
 always men of parts. Journalists or politicians or 
 diplomats or scholars came most often, even those 
 who went nowhere else. Once Sydney was asked to 
 luncheon and found herself the only woman beside 
 her hostess, and her place on the right hand of her 
 host. That day, Walter Pember Chyne was inclined 
 to be more cheerful and talkative than usual. Upon 
 this subdued temperament the War 'had laid an abso- 
 lutely crushing hand; widening the sphere of his anx- 
 ieties from the personal to the general; disrupting 
 his whole existence and shattering the quiet of his 
 study. His wife had felt able to continue her liter- 
 ary work, but not he. However, today he shook 
 on his depression; he revealed to his young guest his 
 store of learning, topped with a delicate superstruc- 
 ture of fine and discriminating taste, and expressed 
 with a flavor which Sydney did not know enough to 
 recognize as savoring of the donnish. 
 
 Of the two other men present, one, named Perciyal 
 Burghley, a member of a great family, was working 
 with quiet self-devotion in a branch of the Intelligence 
 Department. He was an ascetic-looking person, with 
 a scared eye so diffident as to make it hard for a 
 chance acquaintance to profit by his real talent and
 
 i 3 o THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 cultivated sensitiveness. He talked little; but he 
 listened with palpable delight to his hostess's stories. 
 
 The name of the other man, who chanced to sit 
 beside her, Sydney did not at first catch. Even in 
 this land of marked individualities he was probably, 
 she decided, an oddity. He looked like a gypsy, short, 
 dark and quick with pointed, obstinate features and 
 the softest, mildest, gentlest little voice that ever was 
 heard to issue from a by-no-means gentle mouth. 
 Over his fatigued, lack-lustre eyes he wore powerful 
 lenses, his back was bent; his hands stained with 
 chemicals. In strange contrast, he had the muscles, 
 the reach, the torso of an athlete or a wrestler, and 
 his round head was covered with thick, black hair 
 standing upright, like the fur on a creature of the 
 wild. Indeed, his whole personality had about it 
 something inhuman, like a wild thing that might re- 
 veal itself perhaps charmingly enough and then be 
 startled back into cover. She soon gathered that his 
 work was that of an investigator among high explo- 
 sives; that he lived daily, hourly even, in danger of 
 swift and terrible death death more sure, more ter- 
 rible than that which stalked the trenches; death 
 which would crush him out of life as he might put 
 his ^oot on an ant in the path. 
 
 The talk fell as it was so apt to do during these 
 autumn months, on the jealousies and incompeten- 
 cies of men in high places and it was evident from 
 the host's manner that this particular guest had been 
 a victim. Pember Chyne directed the comments to 
 him as to one who had had a significant experience. 
 
 "It's a bit hard on a chap, isn't it?" he answered 
 Sydney's glance of enquiry. "Especially, when he 
 knows ways and means. Yes : I did have a row with 
 the W. O. ; but I was only twenty-five its nearly 
 ten years ago now. They kicked me out of my post 
 at Woolwich, because I had my own opinions and
 
 ADVENTURE 131 
 
 stuck to 'em. Well and you see now I After all, 
 I have worked in the great German chemical labora- 
 tories and I know some of their little ways." 
 
 "Yes: I want you to tell Burghley about that," 
 Pemberton Chyne observed; but the other blinked, 
 smiled and went on addressing his remarks, in a very 
 low voice, to the American lady, rather than to Mr. 
 Burghley. 
 
 "One would like to use their own science against 
 them. But those duffers won't hear me they hate 
 me." 
 
 "But why should they hate you?" 
 
 He raised his eye-brows and shook his head. 
 
 "Because a bureaucracy always hates you if you 
 show it up. There is only one thing they value 
 their own importance. They want to think I'm done 
 with." 
 
 "Evidently, you're not, however." 
 
 "No: but one loses time valuable time. My 
 invention this new flashless powder, is needed now 
 this very day." He gave a shrug. "You see, I 
 showed them too plain that I thought them a set 
 of inefficient fly-blown, pride-begotten formalists. 
 They'll never forgive me." 
 
 "Not when they need your ability?" 
 
 "Oh no. Mustn't be clever in this country, you 
 know." 
 
 "Must never show it, you mean," Sydney rejoined, 
 interested, and thinking of Romeyne. 
 
 "Exactly! But its odd you should know it. . . . 
 Do the red tape artists worry you in your job, now?" 
 
 She confessed to a feeling of irritation at the self- 
 importance of authority generally, but supposed it 
 was due to her American training. The somewhat 
 naive way in which Sydney made this acknowledg- 
 ment caused a smile to go around the table. 
 
 "And yet from all I hear," Percival Burghley ob-
 
 132 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 served, "I should say that we are much greater stick- 
 lers for our individual liberties here than in Miss 
 Lea's country, where co-operation is the order of 
 the day. Authority doesn't seem to worry them in 
 the States !" 
 
 "They are lots of reasons for that. . . . You see," 
 Sydney answered eagerly, "it is more temporary and 
 it's the result of the effort of a special person or a 
 special group. We feel it to be due to the expert. 
 . . . Here it's vested in certain classes and certain 
 families, whether the individual representing them at 
 the moment be worthy to handle it or not." 
 
 Percival Burghley nodded. He knew this to be 
 true of his own experience as well as that of the great 
 and influential family of which he was a member. 
 Still, it was interesting to have it so aptly analysed. 
 
 "And you mean to say that after all these years 
 you can't get a hearing before the War Department?" 
 he asked the inventor, with a shade of incredulity 
 in his well-bred voice. 
 
 "Apparently not." 
 
 "Surely," Sydney cried, "they're not all like that! 
 Why, I have many times heard Sir Thomas talk about 
 these different men officials on the staff. He gave 
 me the impression of very brilliant, broad-minded 
 men!" 
 
 The little inventor laughed. "I should not like 
 to destroy that impression. ... A professional sol- 
 dier is a routine-bred creature who is almost never 
 broadminded. . . . And our Staff is provincial, 
 narrow-minded, jealous of the French who really 
 know what they are doing. I could give you instances, 
 plenty of them; but what's the use? We prefer 
 muddlers in this country." 
 
 "But not all of them!" Sydney persisted. 
 
 "All but one or two. There is one man I should
 
 ADVENTURE 133 
 
 like to talk to and I must try. They say he's intelli- 
 gent and that he will really listen to one." 
 
 "Which man is that?" she asked. 
 
 He smiled at her insistence. 
 
 "Sir Hector Menzies." 
 
 "Oh but I know him very well !" Sydney remarked 
 serenely. "I was thinking of him as you spoke. He 
 is an intimate friend of my Chief and comes to the 
 house very often." 
 
 The inventor's eye lost that politely perfunctory 
 interest and studied her face more seriously. 
 
 "I've forgotten your Chief's name if I ever knew 
 it?" 
 
 "He's Sir Thomas Easterly." 
 
 "The M. P. ? Oh, of course I've met him. A 
 charming man very sound. And you say General 
 Menzies is a friend of his?" 
 
 "They have been friends all their lives. ." 
 
 "Ah, indeed . . . !" 
 
 "If you cared if you thought it worth while," 
 Sydney said with friendly frankness, "I could speak 
 to either one of them . . . ?" 
 
 "You are too good." His manner was hesitant and 
 stiff. Quite evidently he was at a loss just how to 
 take her suggestion. Mrs. Chyne at that instant rose 
 from the table and Sydney followed. As the door 
 closed after them, it cut short her host's voice say- 
 ing: "Listen, old chap, I want you to tell Burghley 
 just what . . ." 
 
 The two women went into the study. "Who is Mr. 
 Liston?" Sydney asked, when they were settled on 
 either side of the fire and Rhoda was opening her 
 knitting bag. 
 
 "The most wonderful little man, my dear ! Walter 
 thinks everything of his talent. He's a chemist . . . 
 one of the few we have who know the Germans and 
 their ways. . . . Unfortunately, as you heard him
 
 134 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 tell, he got into trouble with the Ordnance people, 
 years ago when he was quite a lad. And it seems 
 he can't get anyone to listen to him now." 
 
 "So he said. It seems to have gone very deep." 
 
 "It did. In fact, I think his career was all but 
 ruined. He wasn't respectful nor in the least disci- 
 plined. . . . Oh, I know he probably was very un- 
 wise . . but still ! Walter thinks that now their 
 differences should be forgotten, in view of his new dis- 
 coveries. He has several inventions apparently and 
 one in particular, which they ought to try." 
 
 "He wants to meet Sir Hector Menzies. Perhaps 
 I might be able to manage it." 
 
 "It would be splendid if you would!" Mrs. Pem- 
 ber Chyne relinquished her knitting for a moment in 
 her earnestness. "All the men whose opinion is worth 
 anything believe in Ernest Listen. Even the Ger- 
 mans seemed to give hearing always to their men of 
 genius. Only we refuse with us jealousies and rival- 
 ries seem to prevail. ... I wish you could manage 
 it, my dear!" 
 
 "Then I shall try at least," said the secretary, "but 
 what a queer fellow he is!" 
 
 "Just like a little furry, wild animal," Rhoda 
 agreed. "I always feel that he would turn and bite if 
 he were vexed. . . . Still he has ideas and just now 
 when we are all so discouraged, that means a great 
 deal." 
 
 But the situation puzzled her friend. "It ought 
 to mean everything. What earthly difference does it 
 make after all if 'he quarrelled with somebody or other 
 ten years ago? The personnel of the Department 
 must have changed 1 ?" 
 
 "Completely, of course. All that was in Lord Hal- 
 dane's day And as a matter of fact, I believe he 
 stood by poor Ernest and did all he could for him.
 
 ADVENTURE 135 
 
 Because you see, my dear, the point is that Ernest 
 was right." 
 
 "That is just what I can't understand. . . 
 Then how can it affect him now?" 
 
 Rhoda looked at her. "But the Department is 
 . . . well, the Department ! The man may change 
 . . . but the policy must be supported." 
 
 "You mean the Department has got to go on stand- 
 ing for its own mistakes? I suppose so. . . ." 
 
 "Well, then," cried Sydney, vigorously, "I must 
 say I do sympathize with Florence Nightingale 1" 
 
 Her friend laughed merrily. "You'd have hated 
 her ... I did . . . To meet, I mean. She was 
 an odious woman. . . . But there, I understand 
 you. . . . And you will not forget, poor Ernest, 
 will you?" 
 
 "You may be sure I shall not, if I ever have a 
 chance"
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 WHEN Thomas Easterly was a clever young under- 
 graduate at Cambridge, Hector Menzies was a clever 
 and younger cadet at Sandhurst. Separated though 
 they were in years, the two became close friends, and 
 maintained that friendship when they went their sev- 
 eral ways in the service of the Empire. Age and ex- 
 perience brought a difference of outlook as it had de- 
 veloped a difference in temperament, but the congeni- 
 ality and affection remained, and whenever the soldier 
 was in England, he saw much of the Easterly house- 
 hold. The boys were devoted to him and owed it 
 to his aid that they so rapidly reached that active 
 service which had ended the life of one of them and 
 the career of another. 
 
 Hector Menzies had always been a lucky man. 
 Promotion had come to him rapidly; some people 
 said more rapidly than he deserved. In the beginning 
 he had been strapped for money, but a prudent mar- 
 riage had settled all that on the right side, and done 
 him the further benefit in the eyes of society by pro- 
 viding him with a wife whom nobody ever saw, and 
 whom no one ever thought it necessary to invite along 
 with her husband. Just before 1914 he had become, 
 in due course, Sir Hector, and was beginning to think 
 about the retired list and a life of rather more domes- 
 ticity than heretofore; sweetened, no doubt, by occa- 
 sional visits to town, where he could make his head- 
 quarters at the United Service Club and lighten the 
 burden of formal, "great" parties by an elderly, not 
 too assiduous devotion to the prominent hetairai of 
 
 136
 
 ADVENTURE 137 
 
 the moment. But 1914 postponed these visions and 
 substituted a more active role in the greatest drama 
 on any stage, than Menzies had ever anticipated. 
 He was a man of exceptional abilities, erratic and un- 
 even at times in the execution of his ideas, but always 
 mentally quick and dominating. 1915 found him on 
 the General Staff, and in that position regarded by a 
 large number of people as representing the British 
 Army at its highest pitch of perfection. 
 
 Nothing could be more natural than that such a 
 personality, attached to such a personage, should be 
 of interest to Sir Thomas's secretary. Sir Hector 
 was a superbly handsome man, a high type of physical 
 beauty even in middle-age; astonishingly fit still, 
 though a trifle empurpled after dinner; always keen; 
 mentally, and corporeally energetic, full of ideas and 
 of affability. His knowledge of the other sex, formed 
 after a somewhat wide experience, lent his manner 
 toward any subordinate females he might encounter 
 in the course of his day, a sort of caressing condescen- 
 sion which was never undignified, but very glorious. 
 He set much store by the accessories of his high place, 
 which his private means enabled him to heighten in 
 a befitting manner. His car was the powerfullest, 
 the shiniest, the raciest in London; his chauffeur-or 
 derlies were the most erect and wooden-faced in the 
 Army; and his own tall figure carried its gold and 
 scarlet trimmings more impressively than any other 
 on the Staff. 
 
 A social system of unknown complexity being, bit 
 by bit, revealed to Sydney Lea, her whole attitude 
 toward life was altered and colored. Not only had 
 she come better to understand her own place therein 
 and that of her work for Sir Thomas, as she came 
 better to understand this world which made its back- 
 ground, but the people moving around her gained 
 in picturesqueness. Sir Thomas's friends became the
 
 i 3 8 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 dramatis personae for whose entrances and exits 
 she looked, as she sat in the theatre of her office, 
 and whose parts were played out in a vast daily 
 drama. General Menzies was inevitably an import- 
 ant member of the cast, more important, Sydney 
 sometimes reflected, than his past achievements would 
 seem to warrant. She had often heard him talk 
 about his views and plans to 'his friend he talked a 
 great deal. He had a resonant high-pitched, jolly 
 voice and never hesitated. He was one of those nat- 
 urally indiscreet men that women love; and he man- 
 aged to convey the impression that his talk was an 
 overflow from a limitless reservoir of vigorous and 
 active intellection, and from a store, deep and full, of 
 vital ideas. There were times when the quiet observer 
 wondered if the reservoir was really there, or if the 
 stream was not perhaps, shallower than was supposed. 
 However, Sir Hector was on the Staff : that was the 
 main point, the one which recurred to her mind the 
 day after her luncheon at the Pember Chyne's, and 
 her talk with that odd creature, the inventor, Ernest 
 Listen. 
 
 Somehow or other his estimate of Menzies, as a 
 man broadminded, neither petty nor fearful of 
 new ideas, had been a surprise to Sydney. From such 
 a source, from a man who had come into contest with 
 officialdom and had been broken by it, that attitude 
 seemed to her decidedly unexpected. She kept won- 
 dering if his estimate was right. 
 
 When she returned to Charles Street from White- 
 hall that afternoon, whither she had carried some 
 document for Sir Thomas, it was to find, as often be- 
 fore, the General's large and shining car standing at 
 the front door. Voices, intermingled with laughter, 
 sounded first from the dining-room and then from the 
 study. Presently the three men came into the outer 
 room the third being Adrian Romeyne, who was
 
 ADVENTURE 139 
 
 looking as nearly bored as he ever permitted himself 
 to look. Sir Hector topped his two tall companions 
 by a half-a-head. He seemed actually a radiant 
 blaze of scarlet and gold braid, of decorations and 
 good-nature. His breathing was a trifle perceptible; 
 but then Sir Thomas's brandy was famous. Sydney 
 thought his uniform was beginning to look a little 
 stretched at the seams. Before her inner visions, 
 arose a clear picture of the man with the strange, 
 determined face and mild, little voice, who had 
 expressed such hope and faith in this dazzling being. 
 
 Sir Hector did not forget, in his meteoric passage 
 through the room, to throw the young lady a breezy, 
 kindly greeting. She smiled back, in honest pleasure 
 at the fine head, the regular, strong features, the man's 
 very real beauty. But for the others, Sir Hector, 
 seeing her smile, might have lingered. But he knew 
 Easterly "Dear old Tom!" as his thoughts indul- 
 gently termed his conventionally-minded friend, and 
 so he passed on to the street the other accompany- 
 ing him affectionately to the very door of his car, to 
 finish their chat. Sir Hector took his seat, very beau- 
 tifully as if Royalty were watching. Sydney marked 
 the wooden-faced stiffness of the orderly at the wheel. 
 When she returned her glance into the room, it was 
 to encounter that of Mr. Romeyne who was seated 
 on the fender as his way often was when finishing his 
 cigar. Something in his eye encouraged her to ven- 
 ture a question : "Is the General really a very brilliant 
 mind?" 
 
 "Who, Red Tabs? Red Tabs? What makes 
 you ask that? Why the invidious doubt? He's very 
 splendid this afternoon at all events." 
 
 I was meaning his work on the Staff. I had 
 
 "Yes: you had heard . . .?" 
 
 "... That he was the only one of them who was
 
 i 4 o THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 open-minded and free from petty personal jealousies 
 . who was capable of new ideas, who had not 
 let officialdom cramp his energies. 
 
 Romeyne smoked on contemplatively. 
 
 "Did you really? All that? How very interesting 
 to find such an opinion ! I think it is probably quite 
 just. Yes : I feel sure it is right. Menzies has never 
 been a narrow man, nor unduly arrogant, nor jealous 
 of his authority." She wanted to ask: "Then why 
 do you so dislike and distrust him?" but knew she 
 must not. Instead, she uttered a gently-interrogative. 
 "Ah!" and waited till he continued: 
 
 "He is certainly supposed to do good work on the 
 Staff and that takes brains. Many people will tell 
 you that he would do even better in France. I do not 
 deny it: I do not know. Only there are moments 
 when one feels " 
 
 He broke off his sentence to watch the subject of it 
 straighten in his corner of the motor and' become, ap- 
 parently, at once absorbed in great plans. The car 
 slid off and Sir Thomas turned back to his house. 
 Then Adrian finished: "When one feels that some- 
 how Red Tabs is too good to be true." 
 
 With Easterly's return, the two men went back 
 into the library and closed the door. Miss Lea was 
 left in silent possession of the darkling office and her 
 own reflections. These were to the effect, first, that 
 Romeyne had expressed! her own impressions to a 
 fine shade; and second, that in all probability Fate 
 would before long furnish her with a means of putting 
 these impressions to the proof, and of testing whether 
 Red Tabs was really too good to be true, or not. It 
 would be no difficult matter to introduce the subject of 
 Ernest Listen and perhaps to arrange later on, a care- 
 fully casual meeting. 
 
 The opportunity did not fail to present itself be- 
 fore many days, although in an unexpected form. A
 
 ADVENTURE 141 
 
 question was to be asked in the House and Sir 
 Thomas turned to his friend for certain of the requi- 
 site information. The reply, forwarded promptly, 
 and containing data full, succinct and satisfactory 
 in its arrangement, unquestionably roused the secre- 
 tary's professional admiration and shook her doubts. 
 Here was no muddler. The postscript contained a 
 paragraph as follows: 
 
 "It is perfectly true and disgraceful in my opinion 
 that there has been no attempt at all to go on with 
 the experiments on a flashless powder, which every- 
 one was so keen about. The young fellow at work 
 on it ten or twelve years ago got into a row with the 
 chap at the top, who seems to have been a peculiarly 
 vicious example of mutton-headed autocrat. The 
 investigator showed up his incompetency but got 
 kicked out in doing it; and the matter has stood still 
 ever since. So far as I can find out it was a serious 
 loss, since this chap had been educated in Germany 
 and should have been employed by us. They say he's 
 kept on privately working at it and by now has the 
 stuff perfected. I want to get hold of that chap, un- 
 officially, if I can. His name is Listen." 
 
 "How very odd, Sir Thomas," ventured the secre- 
 tary, as she entered the library, looking very trig in 
 her blue serge, to lay these letters before her chief; 
 "how really odd that I should have talked with this 
 very Listen, of whom Sir Hector writes!" 
 
 Sir Thomas, who was deep in a paper as she spoke, 
 replied "Ah yes," absently enough. But Sydney knew 
 his ways. A certain time must elapse before her in- 
 formation would sink into his mind and connect itself 
 with the matter in hand. As a matter-of-fact, it was 
 the next morning before she was summoned to the 
 library to find him attentively conning his friend's 
 postscript. "Did I understand you to say, Miss Lea,
 
 142 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 that you were personally acquainted with this- er- Mr. 
 Listen?" he asked her. 
 
 "I met him at luncheon a few days ago." 
 
 "And where, may I ask?" 
 
 "At the Pember Chyne's, Sir Thomas." 
 
 "Quite so. You are sure that it was the man Sir 
 Hector mentions?" 
 
 "There was no doubt about it. We talked freely 
 of this whole matter." 
 
 "I see. Now what impression did he make on 
 you?" 
 
 Sydney liked that particular question, which her 
 employer often used and in which she felt a subtle 
 flattery. This time she answered it warmly: 
 
 "He is evidently a remarkably able man." 
 
 "Did he mention this quarrel with the Ordnance 
 Department?" 
 
 "Quite freely; he evidently regretted it very 
 much." 
 
 "Did he seem to feel bitter or ill-used?" 
 
 Sydney hesitated. "Hardly that, I think I no- 
 ticed no special bitterness. I think he was just 
 exceedingly sorry not to be of use." 
 
 "And do you think he would have been?" 
 
 "I do honestly. He has brains and ideas. And 
 then," concluded Sydney adroitly, "he spoke of an 
 invention which he had perfected something to do 
 with powder, but, of course, he went into no details." 
 
 Sir Thomas reflected a moment. It was by these 
 interrogations that he slowly built up the materials of 
 judgment. 
 
 "Did he strike you as er discreet?" 
 
 "That is a little 'hard to say," observed the secre- 
 tary with frankness, "he is a reticent type of man, I 
 should say." 
 
 "I understand. And do you think you could reach
 
 ADVENTURE 143 
 
 him in case- er- Sir Hector wanted a word with him 
 here?" 
 
 "I think so, Sir Thomas." 
 
 "It must be a quite private and unofficial meeting. 
 By chance, you understand? He might just stop in 
 and sec you here casually, you know." 
 
 "Yes, Sir Thomas. You think that there are other 
 officials who might resent Sir Hector's communicating 
 wjth Mr. Listen after what has passed?" 
 
 "You have my meaning," answered Sir Thomas 
 with just a shade of reluctance at having to be explicit, 
 and the subject was closed. 
 
 The following letter was written to Ernest Liston 
 that afternoon. 
 
 "Dear Mr. Liston: 
 
 Do you remember, in our talk together at 
 Mrs. Chyne's table, your telling me of your desire to 
 bring the matter of your invention to the attention 
 of Sir Hector Menzies? Well, I happen to have 
 learned that he has heard about it and might perhaps 
 like to meet you. If you care to drop in to see me 
 here on Thursday week at about four, I think there 
 is a chance that he might look in just before tea. 
 This is all unofficial but no doubt you understand. 
 
 "Yours very sincerely, 
 
 "Sydney Lea." 
 
 "A very proper note very cautious indeed !" was 
 Sir Thomas's comment when this letter was laid be- 
 fore him, and he looked at his secretary with an eye 
 that faintly twinkled. 
 
 "What born diplomats women are !" was his reflec- 
 tion. 
 
 Miss Lea as she posted it on her way home was by 
 way of thinking: Now, Red Tabs, we shall see if 
 Mr. Romeyne is right."
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 ERNEST LISTON was very much surprised at receiv- 
 ing this note from the young lady with whom he 
 remembered chatting so sympathetically at luncheon. 
 He had an Englishman's rooted distrust of feminine 
 advances and this, made as it was in so impersonally 
 friendly a manner, had an exotic quality which he 
 could not understand. His experiences of women 
 thus far had only brought him into contact with their 
 cruder methods of attack, while of comradely kind- 
 ness free of coquetry, he knew nothing. 
 
 Who was the lady? What would she want of him 
 in return? Why should she scatter largesse in the 
 shape of coveted interviews? to take place, too, in 
 just such surroundings, private and intimate, which 
 were all he could have desired in the way of atmos- 
 phere, wherein both he and the potentate he was to 
 meet might express their ideas with ease and frank- 
 ness. He hastened to Mrs. Pember Chyne in his 
 perplexity, only to find that it made her both amused 
 and indignant. 
 
 "My dear boy this is too much! Haven't you 
 been crazy for six months to meet this man? Surely 
 you are not going to quarrel with it now I" 
 
 "Not at all ... not in the least ! But why should 
 she put herself out? What return will she expect . . . 
 I have neither time nor money to be paying her atten- 
 tion I I am nothing of a ladies' man." 
 
 "Attention? In return for this . . .? But why 
 should you ?" 
 
 "Well, she will expect some return will she not? 
 Else why single me out?" 
 
 144
 
 ADVENTURE 145 
 
 Rhoda looked impatiently at him as he ran his 
 fingers boyishly through his furry hair. 
 
 "Why? First, I suspect because you are a friend 
 of Walter's and mine and because I spoke to her 
 about you. Second, because you are striving to make 
 your way in the world just as Sydney herself, and that 
 is all the way she thinks of you as a fellow-worker, 
 in the American sense 1" 
 
 "The American idea must be very different from 
 ours then I" 
 
 "I think it is ... the relations between the sexes 
 at work is different. Men and women are much more 
 on an equality, and their attitude toward one another 
 is apt to be much more comradely. The idea of sex is 
 not so eternally uppermost as it is with us. ... 
 When I was in the States people told me that some- 
 times it was not enough uppermost. . . . You know 
 what we are " cried Rhoda in her fiery, little way. 
 "Englishwomen do a man a favor for only two rea- 
 sons to get his money or to rouse his passions. . . . 
 A Countess will not hesitate to do both." 
 
 "And as Miss Lea is not a Countess ?" 
 
 "You are a horrid little man, Ernest, . . . I've 
 no patience with you. You are more insular than I 
 dreamed I" 
 
 "In spite of your hard names, I am impressed by 
 what you tell me. You think that because she is 
 ambitious herself, she had a friendly feeling toward 
 me?" 
 
 "I am sure of it." 
 
 "And she's not coquetting? Not trying to hook 
 me?" 
 
 "No more than if you were another girl." 
 
 "Well, we shall see," said Liston; but he did not 
 look convinced. Fate decreed however that the girl 
 herself should drop in that afternoon, quite inno-
 
 146 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 cently. She greeted her friend with affection; and 
 extended her hand to Listen with a smile so wholly 
 free from any self-consciousness that he felt ashamed 
 of his earlier suspicions. 
 
 "My dear Ernest thinks " said Rhoda giving 
 Sydney a cup of tea and a little pat on the shoulder 
 as she did so "that you haven't any reason for being 
 so nice to him as you have been." 
 
 "Oh well, I don't know," turning her head with a 
 smile "after all, aren't we both trying to make our 
 own way in this world? I'd do the same for any girl 
 or man I know at home. . . . When he's a great 
 power in the land perhaps he'll know of someone wiio 
 needs a secretary." 
 
 "Do you expect, then, to leave your present posi- 
 tion?" asked Ernest Listen, who was not a perceptive 
 or quick man, after all. 
 
 "Not at all, if I can help it. But Sir Thomas may 
 not want to keep me, you know!" 
 
 He was still in the mood to demur a little. "I 
 really hardly like to put myself under such an obliga- 
 tion to you when I am quite unable to " 
 
 "To what? Why, you're not doing that in the 
 least!" she cried, genuinely surprised and opening her 
 large eyes at him. 
 
 "The calling on me is just a pretext in order to 
 satisfy Sir Thomas. Why, I may not even be there !" 
 
 Liston was silenced, and with the consciousness 
 that here was a new kind of a person. Relief and ex- 
 citement at thought of the long desired interview 
 which was to be his, took entire possession of his mind. 
 He stayed only a few moments longer. 
 
 Of the meeting thus planned, the secretary need- 
 less to say, saw nothing but the introduction. She 
 thought that the General, very gorgeous and very 
 affable, noted with a glance of real penetration, the 
 characteristics of the small-voiced and spectacled
 
 ADVENTURE 147 
 
 younger man. The inventor's manner was a trifle shy 
 and stiff. They went into the study and half an hour 
 later, Liston came out with a quick step and a hopeful 
 ring in the voice that repeated :- 
 
 "Thank you, sir 1 I shall be there !" 
 
 He only bowed to her as he hurried away, but she 
 was satisfied. A few minutes later, Easterly and his 
 friend came into the office and continued their talk. 
 
 "There is evidently a good deal in it and the mat- 
 ter should be taken up by us without delay . . .The 
 question is how. ... A thousand pities the fellow 
 got himself in wrong as he did . . . .it complicates 
 everything. I shall have some enquiries made at 
 Storey's Gate and then I can talk to the Minister 
 myself. ... I can't imagine what our people can be 
 thinking of to let all these ideas get by them !" 
 
 "My dear chap, you know what they arc. And 
 one can see that this fella is a damned independent 
 sort of a fella " 
 
 "What does it matter what sort of a fella he is 
 if he has the brains we need?" declared Menzies, 
 with just a touch of impatience. At that instant, he 
 observed that the eyes of the young lady at the desk, 
 'large, handsome eyes too were fixed on him 
 with approval. 
 
 "Well, well, Miss Lea I" he remarked, showing a 
 row of white teeth, "does that remark of mine sur- 
 prise you?" 
 
 Sir Thomas turned also, and Sydney flushed a 
 little, as she answered : 
 
 "I was only so very glad, Sir Hector, to hear you 
 say so when brains are so much needed . . . and 
 when all the others. . . . P* 
 
 "Pretty personal in their quarrels, eh?" 
 
 "It seems to me so." 
 
 "Perhaps they are some of 'em at least. But 
 whatever this whats-his-name said or did in the year
 
 i 4 8 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 1905 ought to make no manner of difference if he 
 has the ideas we need in 1915." 
 
 "Quite so, Sir Hector," the secretary murmured, 
 conscious of a shade of disapproval on Sir Thomas's 
 brow. She bent again over her work and did not lift 
 her eyes from it, as the splendid, soldierly figure that 
 seemed to radiate energy, success, good-humour, left 
 the room. 
 
 "Clever gal, that Tom eh?" said Menzies 
 beaming, as he stepped into his car. 
 
 One of those most unsatisfactory things in a secre- 
 tary's life, Sydney reflected, was that it was so often 
 concerned merely with beginnings. After awhile, 
 things slipped away from her into limbo and she heard 
 no more about them. True, a month afterwards, Sir 
 Thomas told her that the General ha.d been much im- 
 pressed with the tests of Ernest Liston's new powder 
 which had taken place at Newcastle for his benefit. 
 They were to be repeated officially, and Menzies was 
 preparing to press the matter on the attention of the 
 War Department. 
 
 Three weeks slipped by and she heard nothing 
 more. Sir Hector went to France and returned. He 
 was very much occupied. As for the inventor, he 
 was so busy, that his visits to the Pember Chyne's 
 were rare. 
 
 At last, after a long time, she did encounter him 
 there and thought that his eyes looked more weary 
 and lack-lustre than ever. He was willing to talk 
 but had nothing to tell her of but delays. 
 
 "There is so little news our people are incredibly 
 slow they madden me. Some tests have taken place 
 and others are to follow. I should despair if it were 
 not for Menzies. He is splendid and so confident." 
 
 "Hew confident, then?" 
 
 "Oh absolutely! Of course, my previous record is
 
 ADVENTURE 149 
 
 against me and it is a hard struggle. But then he's 
 a powerful man." 
 
 His low tones lightened, thrilled a little. Evi- 
 dently, the good-looks, the splendor of the elder man; 
 the dazzling, easy kindness which springs so readily 
 from having everything one wants, had won him 
 wholly. Was not this usually the case with a person- 
 ality so attractive ? Too often the case perhaps, with 
 the glamour of a high place, in a country where such 
 glamour still brings reverence? 
 
 She recalled that faint curve of the lip with which 
 Adrian Romeyne had alluded to Red Tabs, and her 
 doubt rose to the surface. 
 
 "If only he stays with you and sees it through " 
 
 He looked at her askance, that shy wild-animal 
 glance of his, which this time had shock and dislike 
 in it. 
 
 "Why should he not? He's too big a chap to be, 
 what you call in the States a quitter. What makes you 
 think so?" 
 
 "I hardly know. . . . Sir Thomas trusts him I 
 know, almost as much as he does Mr. Romeyne." 
 
 "Almost but not quite?" 
 
 "No, not quite," she answered, colouring faintly as 
 his ironical inflection raised her doubt into higher 
 relief, "but then General Menzies is not a statesman, 
 but a soldier. It is not his business to know so much 
 about character. . . . Then you do not expect a 
 decision for some time?" 
 
 "Not before Spring, I fear." He had lapsed into 
 his mild, indifferent manner; and Sydney, when they 
 parted, had the feeling that this only half-human 
 creature had as it were crept back into its cover and 
 was not likely to show itself again.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE months, great wheels, crushing life and hope 
 beneath them, rolled on. Another year of War had 
 gone by. Prophets and philosophers alike derived 
 very little comfort from the events that had occurred 
 and the world as a whole lived but for the day. 
 The Easter Rebellion in Ireland strange spectacle 
 of violence and hysteria on both sides came and 
 passed together with the amazing finale, when the 
 Prime Minister made to the rebels a pilgrimage 
 of apology and pardon. This was an incident that 
 reassured nobody. Adrian Romeyne had run over 
 to Dublin and returned more depressed than his 
 friend Easterly had yet seen him, although it 
 is true that long before the Irish Rebellion both 
 of these men had expressed to each other if 
 not to the world at large their lack of confi- 
 dence in the present Government. "Of course," 
 as Romeyne said, speaking with deliberation, "loss 
 of confidence in Government during a War is tradi- 
 tional but in this case it seems to be more than 
 usually justified." 
 
 Meanwhile conscription had come and men were 
 slowly but surely disappearing from the London 
 streets. Life held a pressure and a pre-occupation 
 which were in themselves new and unpleasant to an 
 unhurried and leisure-loving generation. Things hap- 
 pened. Fear took possession of existence, although 
 the populace showed it very little, yet slowly it began 
 to transform their habits and lend uncertainty to their 
 plans. Incidents occurred which brought home to the 
 English people, living safe and sheltered in their smil- 
 
 150
 
 ADVENTURE 151 
 
 ing country, the fact there was a novel and malign 
 activity in the universe, which threatened their classic 
 security. Tragedy seemed to stalk across the stage, 
 not singly, but in procession. Men died. One 
 opened the newspaper day after day and there was 
 but one word written on its page. Lord Kitchener, 
 like one of the heroes in Homer, passed to his terrible 
 and mysterious end in his going, strange and enig- 
 matical as he had lived. There were one or two naval 
 engagements and death, too, was busy on the North 
 Sea. This was familiar and expected by most people, 
 who were graver in their attitude toward the first 
 Zeppelin raids an earnest of what was to come and 
 ominous to many who yet affected to regard them 
 lightly. Following them, 'had come a great outcry 
 for defence and reprisal workmen and soldiers 
 busied themselves with strange machinery in various 
 parts and parks of London; while the evening dusk 
 was stabbed by shining swords of light. In France 
 and in Flanders the duel of millions swayed to and 
 fro. In London, huts and buildings sprung up and 
 blotted out the turf; red crosses marked many stately 
 doorways; hotels were turned into hospitals; motor- 
 trucks ran about the streets; foreign uniforms in- 
 creased, and one-legged men increased; and hospital 
 blue alternated with the dominant khaki color at every 
 street-corner. In Parliament Square, Big Ben was 
 voiceless; and inside the Abbey, mothers came at noon 
 to pray, and great-limbed Colonial soldiers to stare 
 and wonder. Up and down Whitehall, women of all 
 ages ran about with their hands full of papers. Yet 
 who could say that this month of June, 1916, was any 
 nearer to the end? There seemed to be no individual 
 life, or pursuits or ambitions there was only the 
 War. Men felt as if they had been born with the 
 War, that only since the War had they been sentient 
 beings and that life before the War that life of
 
 152 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 leisure, and pleasure and personal hopes and fear* 
 and avocations, was something which they had read 
 about in the yellowing pages of ancient books. The 
 machinery of the War here in London at least, filled 
 the air with its clamor and drowned out every other 
 sound. 
 
 Yet Sydney had never had more individual per- 
 plexities. One of them concerned Hilda Fredericks, 
 who sought her society persistently, especially since 
 Sir Thomas had been made the Chairman to the 
 Aliens Internment Committee. The other concerned 
 Eric Violand. The young officer had been slightly 
 wounded and on leave during his convalescence, and 
 it was not unnatural that he should expect to get 
 everything he wanted. That he should have taken 
 this occasion to fall in love with his aunt's guest was 
 probably not unnatural either, but it filled the object 
 of his admiration with impatience. Just when one 
 was so busy and with matters of real importance, to 
 have this silly boy turn jealous and sulky. It was 
 really too much! 
 
 The result had been a real quarrel, during which 
 poor Eric had accused her of heartlessness and ambi- 
 tion, and then, seeing her stand there so cool and 
 untroubled, had rushed on into saying unforgivable 
 things. 
 
 "Oh I know its because you think you're running 
 the whole show ! You'd be kind enough to me if you 
 thought I was going to help you on. You'd be soft 
 enough if you thought I was an important political 
 chap, or an M. P. or something like that. You'd 
 stroll across the Park with me if you thought I was 
 worth while. You're not heartless to that fellow 
 Romeyne ." 
 
 He checked before the sudden blaze in her eyes, 
 and as she left the room she saw the remorse in his 
 face, but she did not stay for his low call. In the
 
 ADVENTURE 153 
 
 street she had to stand an instant to control her 
 breathing. 
 
 As to what Eric meant she knew very well, although 
 it seemed sheer cruelty to give a name to that figure of 
 her dreams. . . . There had been many times 
 when she had to see Romeyne during the past year 
 occasions in which something he said, something she 
 replied, had brought their eyes to meet, subtle sym- 
 pathy in her gaze and in his a surprised response. . . . 
 Eric could not know of these meetings. But about a 
 fortnight ago, when hurrying through St. James Park 
 past the new concrete Lake Building, she had encoun- 
 tered Romeyne walking slowly in the direction of 
 Westminister and he 'had for five minutes, fallen into 
 step beside her. He tucked his stick under his arm 
 and clasped his hands behind his back and moved with 
 that air of leisurely deliberation which only he among 
 busy men could have at eleven in the morning. He 
 talked; and she remembered every word. A brief 
 estimate of the day's news, a hint as to what was 
 likely to come out in the evening papers; comment on 
 Sir Thomas's part in the debate last evening, with a 
 faint subtle flavor of flattery in it for his secretary; 
 an enquiry as to her reading she had not forgotten. 
 Then at the corner of Bird Cage Walk, he turned to- 
 ward Queen Anne's Gate and their eyes met. . . . 
 What splendid, intense eyes the girl hadl Romeyne 
 was conscious of a thrill of surprise -a surprise 
 which brought with it a touch of disquiet. 
 
 Sydney went on to Westminister in a daze. . . . 
 These golden moments . . . that life should hold 
 theml She had never even seen the young officer 
 with his blue band, seated on a bench, and when he 
 mentioned the fact at lunch-time, she underwent 
 marked vexation. She had not wanted any eye to see, 
 she alone wished to mark the passing of that golden 
 moment.
 
 154 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 Her mind had played over it and the other mo- 
 ments of the same kind which the Spring had brought 
 her. Romeyne had much need of consultation with 
 his friend Easterly in the library at Charles Street. 
 Long quiet talks followed, during which their voices 
 reached the secretary only as a dim murmur. But 
 there would be that instant when the doors were 
 opened, when he came out. Once or twice Romeyne 
 had been conscious not pleasurably, but yet keenly 
 conscious, of the woman's face, with great eyes turned 
 toward his entrance. 
 
 Golden moments to remember were these. A 
 courteous greeting, perhaps; then she would rise, 
 tap on the panel. 
 
 "Mr. Romeyne, Sir Thomas!'' 
 
 "Oh come in, my dear chap!" and the door closed. 
 . . .Then sometimes, Sir Thomas would be late; 
 and his friend, awaiting him, perched on the fender 
 reading the newspaper, perhaps making some com- 
 ment as he read. Once or twice, he even talked 
 freely, picturesquely, in his best vein and it was sur- 
 prising how what she replied seemed always to make 
 him feel in his best vein. 
 
 "That American secretary of yours," he remarked 
 to Sir Thomas, "has the great gift of making a man 
 feel how clever he is." 
 
 "She is very discreet," said Sir Thomas hastily, 
 and Adrian smiled secretly and said no more. 
 
 What was it? the eyes and mouth, the face so 
 expressive of intensity, of power? Once or twice, 
 Romeyne found his mind over occupied with specula- 
 tion on the subject. Perhaps had he been a younger 
 man he told himself he might have tried to deter- 
 mine the quality and depth of that store of talent and 
 temperament. . . . Then the curtain of cyni- 
 cism descended upon such thoughts. This was only, 
 after all, the charm of the barbarian of the stranger
 
 ADVENTURE 155 
 
 woman from beyond the seas. It was well no doubt 
 that work and ambition placed him out of all danger. 
 
 Sydney, bending over her typewriter, tasted a subtle 
 exultation of which the sources were as yet youthful 
 and imaginative only. The courteous deference, the 
 winged words these things she cherished in her 
 heart. Maybe some slight service had been asked of 
 her, "Miss Lea perhaps you would know ?" And 
 that would be dreamed over, its full joy savored in 
 memory. 
 
 All these things had remained vague, intangible, 
 clouded in the silver veils of youth's reticent imagina- 
 tion. Immaturity, ignorance of life, loneliness, hero- 
 worship these were some of the elements which time 
 might disperse as harmlessly as they came, or which, 
 on the other hand At any rate, self-consciousness 
 brought pain with it and embarrassment and strong 
 resentment. As Sydney hurried to her work she felt 
 a fierce anger against Eric Violand.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 LUCKILY, her tardiness that afternoon did not mat- 
 ter, as Sir Thomas was not likely to be soon released 
 from the speeches at the end of luncheon. Someone 
 was waiting for him, however, a tall, cavalry officer, 
 whose tunic bore a long row of war ribbons, and who 
 turned towards her with a cat-like swiftness of move- 
 ment which seemed somehow familiar. His dark 
 face broke suddenly into a smile. 
 
 . . . So you did get safely to England 
 after all I By Jove, you know, I've often won- 
 dered!" 
 
 Sydney had not forgotten. It was the man who 
 had helped her to regain her place in the queue at 
 Cook's in Geneva, and whom she had seen afterwards 
 in the train. She had never lost the impression of 
 his personality. The face, however, which smiled 
 down on her now was thin and worn. 
 
 "And you say you are secretary to an M. P. by 
 Jove, what a turn in fortune's wheel, eh? I say, 
 mustn't we be introduced?" 
 
 "We must indeed my name is Sydney Lea." 
 "And I'm Harry Ashburnham." 
 "Not really not the Col. Ashburnham ?" 
 "Well, I don't use the little article, myself." 
 "But surely, the world does I" the girl sat down, 
 her hands clasped on her knee: "Isn't this the most 
 extraordinary meeting ? You came to see Sir Thomas, 
 of course ?" 
 
 "Yes, I've an appointment with him. r A friend of 
 mine arranged it, who's a Trien'd of his. A 1 chap 
 named Romeyne, quite a wonderful cHap." 
 
 156
 
 ADVENTURE 157 
 
 She nodded eager agreement. "I'm afraid Sir 
 
 Thomas will be late ... if you don't mind waiting. 
 
 . And I do so want to hear all about you 
 
 . you know we were in the same train leaving 
 
 Geneva." 
 
 "I didn't know it how odd !" 
 
 "But I never dreamed of seeing you again nor 
 that you were in the army. You didn't wear a uni- 
 form then." 
 
 "No, and for the best of reasons. You see the 
 truth was that I had been in Germany and had a 
 narrow squeak getting out. I'd have been there yet, 
 interned or dead, but a countryman of yours the best 
 ever ! He was consul at a little place on the border 
 and he knew a path in a thick wood which had been 
 overlooked. I lay all night in a thicket and slipped 
 over the border in the dawn. A stray sentry shot 
 at me on the Swiss side, too, by the way but he 
 missed and didn't try again. I'd a long scramble for 
 my breakfast and the woods were beautiful." 
 
 "And the breakfast?" 
 
 "Georgeous, really, when I finally got one." He 
 laughed; his face full of light. 
 
 "And then? I mean, since that time?" 
 
 "Oh well just the usual thing " 
 
 "Very unusual, the newspapers thought," said 
 Sydney, "but do tell me about it." 
 
 He told her : he was still telling her when Easterly 
 came in at a quarter to four and he broke off and went 
 for a long conference in the library. When he came 
 out an hour later, Sydney was not alone in the office. 
 An elderly person was seated there waiting, a man 
 with a heavy face, protruding lips and drooping eye- 
 lids, whose clothes were suggestive of the fashions 
 during the reign of King Edward. He blinked at the 
 tall officer and rose: the secretary formerly ushered 
 him into the inner room. Ashburnham heard the
 
 158 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 name: "Sir Jacob Fredericks, Sir Thomas " and 
 then the door closed upon guttural greetings. He 
 strolled across to the girl's side, smiling. 
 
 "I say," he said, lowering his voice, "isn't your 
 friend a Hun?" 
 
 Sydney gave a perceptible shudder. "I don't know 
 oh, I suppose not " she spoke confusedly as 
 though the idea discomposed her; and the soldier in 
 his quick way, changed the subject. 
 
 "Well let's not waste our time on him. We must 
 arrange to finish this talk. Fate has evidently meant 
 we should be friends and we mustn't disappoint her. 
 May I come and see you some evening?" 
 
 He was so gay, so spirited and friendly, so lacking 
 in those cautions and reserves which she had come to 
 look for among his countryfolk, that Sydney's heart 
 warmed to him. She gave him her address, and she 
 watched him passing down the street with his un- 
 deniable touch of swagger wondering whether he 
 would turn up again. When he did, it was with a 
 manner to suggest that they were already old friends, 
 a manner quite devoid of the condescensions of his 
 sex. He puzzled her and she gave utterance to it in 
 a way that much amused him. 
 
 "Surely you're not wholly English?" at which he 
 threw back his head and laughed. Then, finding her 
 interest real and being eager to talk, he gave her some 
 account of himself opening a new world to her. 
 This narrative occupied many interviews walks and 
 talks in the Park when the evening band played, tea 
 up the River on a Saturday or Sunday, a play or two. 
 And always Sydney was conscious of no strain in 
 talking with the man, who accepted her ^work, her 
 place in the world and herself, with a simplicity which 
 came from a wide experience of life. 
 
 Harry Ashburnham was a North countryman. He 
 came from a Cumberland family of fighters, lean,
 
 ADVENTURE 159 
 
 Drown active men as keen and brilliant as their own 
 sword-blades. From the first year of his service in 
 the Indian Army, he had distinguished himself by 
 personal and mental qualities of a high order. Not 
 only had he dash and resource in the field, but his 
 physical vitality and energy kept him at work while 
 other men rested, so he came to have a stock of very 
 special knowledge of great value to his superiors. 
 Cultivating a natural facility for languages, he grew 
 to attain fluent ease in Russian and Persian and many 
 Hill dialects; and even a smattering of Turkish and 
 Chinese. After a wound on the Afghan border, he 
 had been transferred from active service to the In- 
 telligence Department, where his talents were of 
 special use. For several years, his time was spent in 
 strange tasks and travels; and he labored, always in 
 some danger and in dark and devious underground 
 ways. It was said he had been to Lhasa, but how, 
 never was told nor did he tell Sydney Lea. Also, 
 that he had been the only Englishman present at a 
 singular interview between the Tashai and the Dalai 
 Lamas, at which various explorers have hinted, but 
 of which nothing was really known. He had been 
 sent on special missions into Mongolia and to Persia; 
 he had disappeared for months, wearing the yellow 
 robes of a holy man ; or turning up on a tramp steamer 
 bound for Trincomalee. The outbreak of war had 
 found him in Germany; and it was altogether charac- 
 teristic of the man that even in mid-career of narra- 
 tive, when she ail-innocently questioned him as to his 
 reasons for being there, he merely raised an ironical 
 eye-brow and curled a lip at her. But he never 
 answered a word. One felt that the flexibility of this 
 nature was that of steel. 
 
 On mobilization, at his own request, he rejoined 
 his regiment and was sent to France with the first 
 detachments of Indian troops. Soon after, a feat of
 
 160 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 remarkable personal daring lengthened the strip of 
 gay colors which adorned his tunic and brought his 
 name for the first time before the public. It was a 
 feat important enough to overcome in his case, the 
 hostile jealousy with which the Indian Army was 
 regarded by the British Army and the War Office, 
 an hostility dating from a cleavage of a century ago, 
 but which effectively deprived the officers of the 
 Indian Army from a chance of distinction. Ash- 
 burnham's second exploit, in no way less daring than 
 the first, made his name familiar to the whole Empire 
 but it well-nigh cost him his life and he was months 
 in recovering. These were important months because 
 they altered and shifted the balance of power at the 
 War Office, they marked the passing of Kitchener 
 and the end of the voluntary system. 
 
 By the time Colonel Ashburnham was on his feet 
 again, the Indian troops had been transferred to the 
 forlorn hope of Mesopotamia. Although he was still 
 in his thirties, he was no longer a boy, and his severe 
 wound had had its effect. The Medical Board re- 
 fused to pass him for the Mesopotamian campaign. 
 Hence he felt he must find something else to do, "un- 
 til" as 'he put it, he could "convince the Johnnies that 
 they were asses." He did not say what the "some- 
 thing" was to be; but there seemed little doubt that 
 a man with so many honours to his credit, even 
 though he chanced, unfortunately for him, to be an 
 Indian Officer, would probably get what he wished. 
 So Easterly must be consulted, and Romeyne, "the 
 dynamo that runs the plant," would set the needful 
 forces into operation. 
 
 All this was very fascinating to hear and Ash- 
 burnham, as a narrator, had an especial vividness in 
 play of lip and eyebrow and eloquent gesture particu- 
 larly his own. He was a strange fellow. At moments 
 no one could be more childlike, his energy overflowing
 
 ADVENTURE 161 
 
 into wild spirits like a schoolboy, his mind running 
 over with ingenuities and his speech with ejacula- 
 tions. Beside him she felt utterly staid and middle 
 aged like an elder sister. He was not in the least 
 like Eric Violand or General Menzies and the other 
 soldiers she had met matter-of-fact about War and 
 its risks. He was not matter-of-fact about anything 
 which he enjoyed so intensely. He found all danger 
 "perfectly splendid;" from a night sortie on die 
 German trenches to killing a tiger single-handed in 
 the jungle "the only really decent way." There 
 were moments when she looked at his thin face with 
 its big, high nose, its brilliant eyes and the swift exul- 
 tation of its expression, with a sort of terror, terror 
 of the things which for him made life, just as they 
 had made up life for the soldier of a thousand years 
 ago.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THEY became, in a few days, very great friends in- 
 deed, and as Ashburnham was not given to conceal- 
 ing his feelings unless 'his work was involved, his part 
 of this friendship became plain for all to see. 
 
 "And so," remarked Romeyne, as he held his stick 
 across his knee, waiting for Sir Thomas, "you have 
 made friends with my beau-sabreur?" 
 
 His voice, as usual was non-committal, but Miss 
 Lea detected, or thought she did, an undercurrent of 
 amusement. She straightened the sheet of paper on 
 her typewriter and asked quietly: 
 
 "Who told you that?" 
 
 "I did not need to be told. He is very much 
 taken" the slight rising inflection in this sentence 
 roused her pique just a little. She did not look up. 
 
 "I couldn't believe he was English," she observed, 
 "he is so different from the others I have met." 
 
 "Ah you do not know us yet. I can tell you where 
 to find a whole group of Ashburnhams ... in 
 the picture gallery at Hampton Court. There they 
 are, the fighters of Elizabeth's day lean and fierce 
 and swift . . . he is a survival." 
 
 He paused, drew out his cigarette case and lighted 
 a cigarette with deliberation. Then he continued: 
 
 "I've known him ever since he was a lad. We met 
 in China where he came to my rescue once, when I 
 ran some risk of being mobbed. Then later 'on, I 
 was able to help him in some work he was doing for 
 the Intelligence Department. He is a true Duguesclin 
 is my beau-sabreur. Of course the Ashburnhams 
 never had any money and that stands in his way. 
 
 162
 
 ADVENTURE 163 
 
 TKere were years and years when he kept after some 
 woman whom he couldn't possibly marry. I rather 
 fancy he thought he could induce her to take the 
 chance. I wonder if he still does?" 
 
 The telephone-bell rang. Miss Lea, as she lifted 
 the receiver, was saying to herself: 
 
 "He never does anything without a purpose. Why 
 did he tell me that? I wonder." Out of the struggle 
 at the telephone came finally the voice of Hilda 
 Fredericks. 
 
 "That you, Miss Lea? . . . you see, I knew 
 where to find you . . . father told me . . . 
 won't you dine with us on Sunday? . . . Oh do 
 . . . we'll have some music . Hugo has a new 
 and very old violin . . . yes, one needs cheering up 
 . . . these dreadful days. . . . This set in the 
 Government, who think it helps things on to lock up 
 a lot of people perfectly harmless most of them 
 . . . Oh I know, but anything to end this horrible 
 War!" 
 
 Sydney hung up the receiver and glanced at her 
 companion, who had every air of savouring the 
 moment's quiet and his cigarette. 
 
 "Mr. Romeyne, of course you know Sir Jacob 
 Fredericks?" 
 
 She had bent forward towards him, her brows 
 drawn together and her eyes both intense and sombre. 
 
 "I do, yes: what of it?" 
 
 "That was his daughter. They have been very 
 hospitable to me very kind. They have asked me 
 there a number of times. I don't want to seem un- 
 grateful but ?" 
 
 "I am sure you could not be that, but ?" 
 
 "Sir Jacob worries me," she spoke frankly, "and 
 I can't make up my mind whether to bother Sir 
 Thomas about it or not. . . . It is not only that 
 he is constantly asking me questions. ... . . He was
 
 1 64 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 in here a few days ago the same day that Colonel 
 Ashburnham came and it was very difficult and 
 most disagreeable. He has a friend a German, on 
 Sir Thomas's list for internment and he hinted that 
 if I could somehow manage he didn't say how, to 
 get his friend's name taken off that list there would 
 be a nice 'present' for me." 
 
 Romeyne's face was impassive, only it seemed to 
 stiffen, and he puffed a trifle jerkily at his cigarette. 
 "What did you reply to that proposition?" 
 "Why I did not know what to say I was com- 
 pletely taken aback. I must have stammered and 
 seemed very confused." The blood rose in her face 
 at the recollection. 
 
 "You have not mentioned this to Sir Thomas?" 
 "Not yet I wished to ask your advice about that." 
 "Well?" It seemed as though he wanted to hear 
 all that was in her mind before in any way commit- 
 ting himself to an opinion. 
 
 "Well, you see, Sir Thomas dislikes melodrama 
 intensely. Over and over again I have heard him 
 speak most severely of people who go off at half-cock 
 and get up an excitement. This incident may really 
 be less important than it seemed to me at the time. 
 If he thinks me the sort of person to take what he 
 would call a 'yellow-journal' point of view, I think 
 he would not trust my judgment in future." 
 
 Romeyne did not answer, at once; then he spoke 
 slowly. 
 
 "I am inclined to agree to think you are right. 
 My advice would be to say nothing for the present. 
 I reason this way ... I reason this way. As you 
 say it may mean little it may have been only. a 
 slip on Fredericks' part; one which he perhaps already 
 regrets and will not repeat. You know how people 
 are not all are as fastidious as you and I. His mind 
 is not remarkably well balanced. If this is so if it
 
 ADVENTURE 165 
 
 is only talk then there will be nothing gained by 
 noticing it. If not if there is purpose, then there 
 are bound to be other incidents and you will have a 
 stronger case to lay before Sir Thomas." 
 
 She nodded to show her agreement in his view. 
 
 "But remember, you must let me know at once, if 
 anything does happen?" 
 
 "Indeed, you may trust me." 
 
 "By the way," Romeyne went on after a pause, "I 
 wondered if you had heard that the War Depart- 
 ment is not likely to do anything with that invention 
 of your friend Liston." 
 
 Sydney looked up with a shock. 
 
 "You can't mean it ? Then the tests were a 
 failure?" 
 
 "On the contrary, I believe the tests were a suc- 
 cess." 
 
 "But I don't understand I" 
 
 Romeyne shrugged very lightly. "The man is 
 persona non grata, I am told. Years ago, he came 
 into conflict with the W. O. and he showed those 
 chaps up before certain people as so hopelessly inef- 
 ficient that he made real trouble for them. They are 
 never likely to forget it." 
 
 "But General Menzies has he no power? In 
 the case of a matter so vital." 
 
 "Menzies has a great deal of power." Romeyne 
 was speaking in his level voice, which always to 
 Sydney's mind had a capacity to convey shades of 
 ironical meaning which was delicately indescribable. 
 "Menzies has they tell me pressed the matter 
 rather far. But Menzies is very anxious for a front 
 command." 
 
 "Which he is not likely to obtain if ?" 
 
 "Which he is not in the least likely to obtain if 
 he uses his influence on behalf of Liston instead of 
 himself."
 
 1 66 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 "And they have kept the man dangling all winter, 
 never meaning I" Sydney choked with indignation. 
 
 "You see they go on the theory they go on the 
 theory that if they put one off without a decision 
 long enough, in all likelihood they will not have to 
 make any decision at all. That is just what has 
 happened in this case. I heard the matter discussed 
 at dinner last evening, and I recalled your interest 
 in it." 
 
 "My interest in it," she hastened to tell him rather 
 coldly, "was because I thought the invention might 
 help us to win!" 
 
 "Very possibly it might." 
 
 Romeyne rose : threw away his cigarette, and spoke 
 in another voice. How slight were always the 
 changes in his tone and how significant he managed 
 to make them ! 
 
 "That fiery look in your eyes makes me ashamed. 
 I know what you must be thinking of 
 the mandarins, and no doubt you are right no doubt 
 you are right I But Red Tabs is a broken reed for 
 any cause, he has intelligence, but he is impetuous, 
 he hates detail ; and 'he wants a great deal for him- 
 self. He will get a front command." 
 
 "And Ernest Liston?" 
 
 "Ernest Liston must wait or sell his brains to 
 your fellow countrymen." 
 
 While they had been talking the soft summer dusk 
 had closed down upon them. Romeyne wandered 
 over to the window and stood there looking out. 
 A delicate mist floated along the darkening streets. 
 Suddenly, the arch of sky above their Tieads was 
 crossed and recrossed and glorified by amethyst and 
 aquamarine bands of light. They sought the zenith 
 and rested there, in an ecstasy. 
 
 "What a sight 1" he murmured, "how full of 
 beauty!"
 
 ADVENTURE 167 
 
 "And danger," she added. 
 
 "And danger," his voice had become uncertain 
 and his gaze turned from the searchlights to rest 
 upon her face. There was silence. Then Romeyne 
 moved quickly away and laid his hand on the electric 
 button. Fantasy and emotion vanished out of the 
 room as it sprang into full light. 
 
 "You have done very well, very well indeed, about 
 Sir Jacob. I hope we shall not have to speak to Sir 
 Thomas. There he comes. Ah Easterly, you are 
 late. I have been waiting some time."
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 MEANWHILE, Sydney's perplexities had not been 
 lessened by the attitude of Miss Violand in regard 
 to her nephew. Poor Eric had been forgiven who 
 could do otherwise? But the appearance, on Syd- 
 ney's horizon, of Colonel Ashburnham was the 
 means of rousing in him another jealousy much 
 more serious and depressing. Here was a rival whom 
 no one knew better than Eric there was every pos^ 
 sible reason to dread. That is, if he were a rival 
 indeed. But was he? To Sydney's mind Ashburn- 
 ham's interest in her society never overpassed the 
 bounds of that camaraderie which she had known 
 between boys and girls in her own home. He was 
 not conventional; he brushed easily aside the var- 
 ious questions of expediency which, to an Englishman, 
 are involved in paying attention to a woman. Like 
 Sydney herself, he kept his mind on essentials. He 
 wished to see her, so 'he saw her. He came to the 
 house and set Giddy into a twitter of excitement 
 with his name and his War ribbons. Giddy was an 
 ardent reader of the Daily Pictorial and she knew 
 the names of all the heroes of all the investitures 
 by heart. He held Miss Violand spellbound with 
 his talk and his gayety and he never even noticed 
 that her nephew sulked in the background. Eric 
 hated him fiercely not only because Sydney liked 
 him, but because of what Eric called "the damned 
 patronizing air, of the professional soldier to- 
 ward the new army. This air as a matter of fact, in 
 Ashburnham's case, did not exist; but Eric called 
 him a "bow and arrow soldier," and sneered at him 
 
 168
 
 ADVENTURE 169 
 
 and vowed that he and his like would lose the War 
 if they could. 
 
 Ashburnham never even seemed to see young Vio- 
 land. He continued to take Miss Lea for Saturday 
 and Sunday walks and out to dine and to the play. So 
 full was he of vitality mental and physical, that her 
 own eagerness and vitality responded. He poured 
 out a breathless stream of ideas, hopes and plans; 
 and if she did not understand them, he promptly 
 set to work to teach her. He had books, languages, 
 studies to suggest enough to make her head swim and 
 he seemed to take the capacity for granted. Life 
 wore to him the aspect or perpetual adventure and 
 though he had a peremptory, hot temper, at least 
 one rarely saw him out of humour. Yet with all this, 
 the girl realized that there were reserves of strength 
 under the glitter and she never asked him for counsel 
 without receiving a store of wisdom, having its foun- 
 dation in courage. Ashburnham was under no illu- 
 sion as to success, he enjoyed it, but never depended 
 upon it for his inward satisfactions. One of the 
 things Sydney best liked in him was that he took 
 her work for granted as utterly as he took her ability. 
 All work was '"perfectly splendid," and it was only 
 the dull who thought otherwise. 
 
 "You know that dear Miss Violand and her 
 nephew," she confided to him, "always treat me 
 as if I were a trick-dog." 
 
 "Forever walking on your hind legs? By Jove! 
 I know. My people were like that: but the race is 
 dying out. That boy should know better." 
 
 Sydney felt guilty about the boy, but she was not 
 prepared for his next sentence: 
 
 "Perhaps that is because he is in love with you, 
 and that is hard on him. If you don't mean to take 
 him and I gather you don't you ought to put a 
 stop to it."
 
 170 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 "What makes you think ?" she paused em- 
 barrassed. He raised his mobile brows and smiled 
 unconcernedly down on her. "Well, of course it's 
 true; one can never tell, but somehow I don't think 
 you'd court a deliberate disaster. You and young 
 Violand don't seem to run on the same track." Then 
 he added with some gravity: "But indeed, you must 
 take it in hand. It's bad for you, because it feeds 
 your vanity, and its very bad for him. Nothing 
 does a chap so much harm as to dangle on after a 
 woman, with the hope that some day she may change 
 her mind. Particularly because sometimes she does. 
 And then !" he made a gesture, "what sort of mar- 
 riage would that be?" 
 
 Sydney did not answer and he continued: "You 
 see, I know because for years, I did it." 
 
 "You mean you married like that?" 
 
 "No: Fate spared me that or rather, poverty 
 saved me. It was someone I met in India. We were 
 quasi engaged 1 you see, for six years after I was 
 twenty-two. I had nothing but my pay. She 
 wouldn't risk it and take me; but she wouldn't let 
 me go either, and it was in every kind of way bad for 
 me. It kept me restless and excited and unhappy; 
 until I finally broke loose." 
 
 "And since?" 
 
 "Oh since, I have had my work and I've been 
 happy, of course. There is always something glorious 
 to do in my job, you know." 
 
 His companion wondered if everyone would have 
 thought so. 
 
 "Tell me some of the more glorious." 
 
 To speak of the waste spaces of the world, he 
 never needed urging. As he talked, ejaculating, gesti- 
 culating, enacting the scene, he called up pictures of 
 wide horizons and great heights and vast forests. 
 The tiny caravan of men that wound over some
 
 ADVENTURE 171 
 
 snowy pass, or crawled through some steaming jun- 
 gle or came slowly into the view of some deserted 
 city in Ceylon perhaps, or Burma, had always to 
 her vision that lean, quick figure at the head. Lon- 
 don, England, the Island seemed very small and 
 unimportant somehow, by contrast. They were the 
 Office but not the Works. What mattered was the 
 Empire the wild wide spaces of earth opened, and 
 the savage peoples tamed, and order established . 
 What mattered now in this W'ar was the Empire 
 and the men who made it the men who had been 
 the self-constituted bearers of the greatest civilizing 
 influence that the world has ever known. 
 
 "And you will be going back, I suppose?" 
 
 "Oh yes, I shall be going back not to uninhabited 
 countries but rather it will be to some country 
 rapidly growing uninhabited from the War." 
 
 "It will be soon," she ventured. 
 
 "I rather fancy it will be soon." He evidently 
 had no wish to talk about it, for he changed the 
 subject gaily, as they came in sight of home. 
 
 "Don't forget we are going to the play next 
 week, mind! By Jove, I shan't let you forget 
 I'll get the tickets tomorrow." 
 
 He wrung her hand and left her, swaggering off 
 down the street. Sydney looked after him smiling 
 and musing. Such men made Easterly and yes! 
 even Romcyne, seem like the merest office clerks.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 MR. ROMEYNE'S private secretary was an old man 
 named Parker, who had been a clerk in his father's 
 office and was devoted to his master. This devotion, 
 as Romeyne often said, was absolutely his only quali- 
 fication for the post. Mr. Parker professed a com- 
 plete ignorance of shorthand, bookkeeping, typing, 
 filing, languages and geography and if indeed there 
 was anything else which he ought, as a private secre- 
 tary, to have known, one may be quite sure he did 
 not. His lack of business and technical knowledge 
 was in truth so profound that he was almost fitted 
 according to prevailing standards, to be an Ambas- 
 sador. Mr. Parker could write an exceedingly well- 
 expressed note with jet black ink, in a very gentle- 
 manlike hand, on thick, cream colored Foreign Office 
 note paper, and he was an adept at sealing the huge 
 envelope with a discreet dab of sealing wax. His 
 personality was marked by a dignified precision,_but 
 at the same time he possessed the knack of disap- 
 pearing into the background whenever .necessary. 
 One was very apt to forget about Parker and in 
 this manner he was by way of learning a number of 
 things which were extremely useful to his employer. 
 There were two young persons under Parker, one of 
 whom was a shorthand typist; but he let no one 
 touch Romeyne's desk but himself, and that desk 
 had never been seen to have an accumulation of 
 papers on it. In fact, any superficial observer who 
 came into Romeyne's office would have set him down 
 as the idlest man in London, for he seemed to spend 
 most of his time in looking out of the window. 
 
 172
 
 ADVENTURE 173 
 
 It was a hot summer afternoon in which the languid 
 air barely stirred and the sky lifted and broke into 
 a foam of little clouds. Romeyne at the window, 
 looked tired and pale. He had just been having 
 one of those sharp reminders that he was married to 
 a fool, which perpetually brought him up at a round 
 turn whenever the future seemed definitely to smile 
 on his ambitions. His wife had spent some time in 
 visits to a fashionable clairvoyant, who had been 
 shortly afterwards apprehended for some minor in- 
 fringement of the Defence of the Realm Act. Mrs. 
 Romeyne had evidently chattered: "What about, 
 God knows" said her husband wearily, to himself, 
 "for she knows nothing!" However, she had chat- 
 tered to such purpose with the crystal gazer, that 
 the frightened Witch of Endor had appealed to 
 her, rather frantically, over the telephone, in terms 
 under which there lay the shadow of a threat. Mrs. 
 Romeyne had sought her husband in a panic, and he, 
 well aware that every man these days must be in 
 the position of Caesar's wife, had to pull a great 
 many newspaper wires which he would far rather 
 have let alone. The whole incident had been dis- 
 tasteful and depressing, and every fastidious nerve 
 in the man revolted, as he stood looking gloomily 
 out upon the new buildings which were going up 
 opposite Storey's Gate. Parker entered noiselessly. 
 
 "The lady, sir," he said, "whom we understand 
 is acting as secretary at present to Sir Thomas East- 
 erly, desires to see you for a moment, if you are 
 disengaged." 
 
 "Oh ? Eh yes very good," said Romeyne. 
 
 "Show Miss Lea in here." To himself he added: 
 "Fresh troubles, I suppose!" 
 
 Sydney made her entry, not without nervousness. 
 Mr. Romeyne set a chair for her and seated himself 
 in another, with that complete immobility and ab-
 
 174 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 sence of restlessness which one always noticed about 
 him. His mind seemed to move more swiftly and 
 surely when his body remained still. 
 
 "I should not have troubled you," the girl began, 
 "only you told me to be sure and let you know at 
 once if " 
 
 "You mean, Sir Jacob?" 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "Tell me, please 1" 
 
 "It was only this morning. You know Sir Thomas 
 has only been at Charles Street for a few hours 
 each day. He has been very busy with Committees, 
 and the House and his son in the country. He 
 made an appointment with Sir Jacob yesterday, for 
 half-past eleven today. He certainly told me eleven- 
 thirty and so I have it written on the tablet; bur 
 Sir Jacob appeared nearly half-an-hour earlier and 
 seemed rather put out. Well he asked if he might 
 wait in the library and of course I could not refuse. 
 Also, I was glad because I was afraid that if he 
 stayed in the outer room he might say something 
 more about " 
 
 "I understand. And then?" 
 
 "You know that inner door leading from the 
 library into the dining-room? I had occasion to go 
 in there and that door was not quite closed. I 
 could see plainly. He was standing at the desk 
 reading Sir Thomas's papers. It is true I caught 
 only a glimpse but I oannot be mistaken. That is 
 what he was doing." 
 
 "What papers were on the desk?" his voice, low 
 as it was, leapt at her, but her answer was quick: 
 
 "Nothing whatever of importance. I have always 
 made a practice of putting everything into the safe 
 whenever Sir Thomas is out of the room." 
 
 "You are sure about that?" 
 
 "I am absolutely sure. As a matter of fact, Sir
 
 ADVENTURE 175 
 
 Thomas returned a few moments later, and imme- 
 diately rang for me to get out a letter which he 
 wished to read to Sir Jacob. I looked then and 
 everything was in order." 
 
 "Is it just an ordinary despatch box that one 
 could lift without your hearing?" 
 
 "No: it is a regular fire-proof office safe with a 
 combination lock. Sir Thomas bought it after I had 
 pointed out to him the disadvantage of the usual 
 despatch box, which might be secretly removed and 
 returned. . . . After both of them had gone 
 out, I went over everything on the desk most care- 
 fully. There was nothing whatever . . . esti- 
 mates for mending the hothouse at Easterly Park, 
 correspondence about a dog; Red Cross Appeals; 
 Lady Tyrwhitt's matinee, and so on." 
 
 She fancied that he drew a breath of relief, but 
 his face and voice never changed. 
 
 "Of course, taken with the other incident I feel 
 that Sir Thomas should know, but I hoped that 
 you" 
 
 "Quite so. We shall tell him together. What time 
 does he come tomorrow?" 
 
 His manner was very gentle, if a little abstract 
 and he shook hands with her at parting as with a 
 friend. Sydney, running up the Duke of York's 
 steps with a lighter heart, felt remorseful that only 
 a few days ago she had called him an office clerk. 
 After all, what would the Empire be without the 
 Office? 
 
 Next day, she told what she had seen Sir Jacob 
 do and what he had said in her hearing, to her em- 
 ployer, with Romeyne sitting by, smoking and' in- 
 wardly admiring the way she did it. This admiration 
 he did not however exhibit, any more than Sir 
 Thomas exhibited his very real dismay and alarm. 
 The interview lay throughout within the strict limits
 
 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 of their business relations ; and Sydney was thanked, 
 her discretion commended and she was dismissed 
 to her typewriter, without a ray of change having 
 shown itself on the faces of the two men. A very 
 long interview in the library immediately followed 
 and the secretary noticed that Sir Thomas cancelled 
 one or two appointments for that afternoon. She 
 waited with a beating heart for him to come out of 
 the study, but when he did it was only to accompany 
 his friend to the waiting taxi. If he said anything 
 stronger than "Can it be possible?" it was not in her 
 hearing. 
 
 As to Sir Jacob Fredericks he seemed, as it were, 
 to disappear from the horizon of Charles Street, 
 and his daughter Hilda ceased to invite Miss Lea 
 to dine or to call her up on the telephone. From 
 that day, a vague portentous opposition raised itself 
 to block every move of Sir Jacob's existence, and 
 to affect every plan made by himself or his family. 
 Nothing definite was said; but people shook their 
 heads when his name was mentioned, and "John 
 Bull" fulminated an article about "Huns in Our 
 Midst" which pointed unmistakeably in one direc- 
 tion. It became convenient for the Fredericks' to 
 remain all the year at their place in the country, and 
 although no actual charge was formulated against 
 them, yet disloyalty was more than hinted, and it 
 was openly said that they were "under observation."
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 WHEN the time came for leaving his aunt's house 
 and receiving his final answer, Eric Violand be- 
 haved very well and Sydney's heart was lightened. 
 She had been troubled concerning Miss Violand's 
 feelings in the matter even to the point of hinting 
 that perhaps she had better seek another lodging. 
 Miss Violand's gentle expression at this had looked 
 truly grieved so that the sentence had ended in an 
 embrace. When Giddy entered her room next morn- 
 ing with a hot water can, she took occasion to re- 
 mark: 
 
 "We 'opes Miss Helen 'opes, Miss, that you 
 won't think of moving, as we're very lonely now that 
 Mr. Eric 'ave gone pore young gentleman." 
 
 The vanishing from her horizon of the Fredericks 
 acquaintance had given her a little more time for 
 other people. She went occasionally to the Pem- 
 ber Chynes and was often rewarded by an hour in 
 which the dark curtain of the present seemed to be 
 lifted, revealing the shining mise-en-scene of the 
 more peaceful past. 
 
 A talk with Rhoda Pember Chyne was often like 
 looking through a volume of du Maurier's drawings. 
 Unquestionably, Sydney drew from this source a 
 knowledge of the social and literary backgrounds 
 by which the Twentieth Century was related to the 
 Nineteenth; she came to have deepening compre- 
 hension of the influences which had surrounded the 
 formative period of such people as the Easterlys 
 and General Menzies, Lord and Lady Wclden, Miss 
 Violand, Romeyne himself, or even Harry Ash- 
 
 177
 
 178 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 burnham. She saw this England of the 80's and the 
 90's suddenly faced with catastrophe and strug- 
 gling with a new danger and a new order. She 
 came to realize that what attracted her in these older 
 people was just that background and that she could 
 never find the same interest in the present generation 
 which lacked it. Eric Violand, the Cairds and those 
 tall young girls she met at Edith Caird's tea-table, 
 had by no means the same individual charm. 
 
 She hinted some of these thoughts to her friend 
 Ashburnham the evening they went to the theatre 
 together, and found him curiously responsive. 
 
 "I read in a French book while I was in the hospi- 
 tal," said he, "that the world is paying for an excess 
 of individualism, so that now we are roused by danger 
 to just this one overwhelming collective feeling. We 
 are the herd stampeded by the invasion of another 
 herd. It must have been so in the Middle Ages 
 when the Huns first came out of their forest. Do 
 you remember a little sketch by Anatole France, in 
 which some Italian shepherd in the hills, sees first 
 that long line of barbarians wandering through the 
 valleys . By Jove it is wonderful!" 
 
 Sydney promised to read it: but added with a half- 
 sigh, that books, except in the line of her work, had 
 lost interest. 
 
 "You must not let that happen," was his posi- 
 tive answer. "It never does to slacken up brainwork 
 during a time like this. I shall send you some and 
 quiz you on them, too, by Jove." 
 
 "I don't know which is worse," said the girl, "in- 
 difference to books or indifference to suffering. At 
 first I could hardly bear it but I seem to be grow- 
 ing callous. Perhaps that's Nature's respite, I hope 
 so. At the moment, the main thing seems to be to 
 keep steady, unaffected by all this horror, at what- 
 ever cost." Ashburnham understood.
 
 ADVENTURE , 79 
 
 "Yes, the War will blunt one's feeling if one 
 lets it," he observed; "that is the chief danger. It 
 dwarfs the human atom till he forgets that he is 
 after all charged with force, and that but for that 
 the whole enormous thing couldn't have happened." 
 
 Sydney considered. "Sir Thomas was raging yes- 
 terday against Mr. Anstyce for saying to him that 
 we would have to live with the Germans after the 
 War and Mr. Romeyne answered, so tranquilly: 
 'My de-ah Easterly it is for you and your Com- 
 mittee to see that he does I . . . Then he went 
 on to discourse about all these people in the Govern- 
 ment and what each man stood for and how 
 hollow he rang and he ended up by saying 'Para- 
 doxical as it may seem all these negatives make a 
 positive force and it will disrupt the Empire, if 
 we give it time.' So he agrees with you." 
 
 "I doubt it he's a wonderful chap, Romeyne 
 but much too cynical in his outlook, in my opinion." 
 
 The curtain rose on his last words and Sydney was 
 prevented from disagreeing with this verdict. She 
 meant to continue the topic during their walk home 
 but was oddly prevented. No sooner had they 
 emerged on Shaftesbury Avenue and turned their 
 steps toward Piccadilly Circus, than it became evi- 
 dent that some excitement moved the crowds of 
 whom they formed part. Everyone was staring; 
 groups standing about with their faces upturned to 
 the sky. 
 
 "What's the matter, officer?" Ashburnham asked, 
 and the man touched his cap. 
 
 "The Zeppelins are out tonight, sir," he replied. 
 "You had better get under cover ... ah, there 
 it is agajn!" 
 
 A slight distinct sound like the popping of a 
 cork was followed by a dim, roaring crash. It gal- 
 vanized the crowd into terrified movement and a
 
 180 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 woman screamed . . . Ashburnham made no 
 comment. Through the masses of people who still 
 for the most part stood about gaping as if fas- 
 cinated he swung his companion forward, dex- 
 trously making use of every eddy in the crowd. 
 Those nearest, seeing the tall officer, instinctively 
 gave way before him and in a few moments he had 
 piloted her into the shelter of a near-by vestibule 
 the entrance, so it appeared, of the Imperial Res- 
 taurant. They paused, and then glancing at his com- 
 panion, he pointed upward to the sword of light 
 which swung across and across, piercing the heavens. 
 A babble of voices sounded in the street. The sword 
 of light steadied and there, suddenly, floating in it, 
 far down on the horizon, Sydney beheld something 
 which looked like a tiny silver fish. ... It 
 was motionless. . . . Was that another crash? 
 
 "It seems to me they ought to bag that fellow," 
 she heard Ashburnham saying; and then came an- 
 other voice. 
 
 "So it's you, my dear chap, is it?" 
 
 Romeyne, standing beside them on the curb was 
 looking up also. He was in evening dress and he 
 carried his coat over his arm. She thought, in these 
 queer lights his face looked drawn. The eyes rested 
 on hers with a strange steadiness. . . . She was 
 not sure if she were glad or sorry that he was there. 
 . She stood, watching the Zeppelin, in sil- 
 ence. . . . She was not afraid, but it was nat- 
 ural that one's heart should beat beat a little faster. 
 
 There were not many people inside the Imperial 
 Restaurant. A word from Romeyne and they were 
 seated at table "because it's obviously the best thing 
 to do," as he said. Waiters hurried about; every- 
 one looked a little nervous and alert, Sydney thought, 
 except her two companions. The lights in the room 
 seemed very big and bright. None of the restless-
 
 ADVENTURE 181 
 
 ness of the streets penetrated to where they sat. One 
 could not be sure even, that one heard another crash. 
 She tried not to think what that noise really meant 
 the deliberate dealing of death, the purpose behind it. 
 
 . . . A wave of fury passed over her and the 
 quiet room seemed to vibrate with her emotion. 
 How fantastic, how bizarre it seemed! 
 
 She became aware that her host was looking at her 
 with a touch of concern ; and she answered the look. 
 "No: I am not; afraid but I am so angry ! . . . 
 Are they human beings as we are?" 
 
 "Devils gone mad," cried one man. "Products of 
 science without character" added the other, yery 
 quietly, "but Ashburnham, you were saying? " 
 
 "I was saying that Miss Lea and I had been talk- 
 ing about the causes of the War earlier this evening, 
 and I wondered what your idea was?" 
 
 Romeyne smiled his slow smile. "Among the 
 causes I've heard considered," he said, "I remember 
 an excess of individualism and an excess of the other 
 thing; a scientific reaction and an emotional reaction; 
 an economic collapse or an economic rivalry; the 
 intrigues of politicians and the will of the people. 
 Do you want any more? Because Miss Lea is trying 
 so hard to choose between these explanations that she 
 is forgetting to eat." 
 
 Sydney recalled herself with a start. "It wasn't 
 because I was trying to choose," she protested; "it 
 was rather that I believed in all of them but was try- 
 ing to decide as to the proportion of each." 
 
 He made a gesture. "Do not try for who are 
 we to decide? As Ashburnham says we are only hu- 
 man atoms in the grip of this tremendous current of 
 crowd feeling. That is the real cause of the War; 
 that we are human atoms and that there is this herd 
 emotion. . . . Generated in one great impulse,
 
 1 82 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 it sweeps over the world and we are not ourselves 
 until it is passed." 
 
 "But if that is true," the girl asked, "what is to 
 prevent it from starting again? What is to make this 
 the last War ? or to keep us from having other Wars 
 in future?" 
 
 Romeyne was amused. 
 
 "Whoever suggested that there would be no other 
 Wars in future?" he said, looking at her. 
 
 "I told you, Miss Lea," said the soldier, "that he 
 was perfectly cynical." 
 
 "It seems to me" said Sydney, absorbed, "that I 
 should make it the duty of the future to see there 
 could not be ! If I were a statesman, I should mould 
 my policy to that end and if I were a writer, I should 
 make that my one theme. Our ideas about these 
 things do change and improve our convictions!" She 
 glowed with an enthusiasm very rare in her which lent 
 her face an intensity admired by both her companions. 
 
 "You are an idealist," said Romeyne gently, "like 
 all Americans." 
 
 "I am beginning to believe that Colonel Ashburn- 
 ham is right and that you are a cynic !" 
 
 "I am in the employ at present of His Majesty's 
 Government," he tranquilly asserted. 
 
 They were both speaking with a certain directness 
 having a background of earnestness, which denoted 
 a change in their attitude. Sydney was not wont to 
 speak to Romeyne as an equal and in the light touch 
 and freedom of her speech there was no trace left of 
 the secretarial manner. Harry Ashburnham, watch- 
 ing her, drew his expressive brows together, half per- 
 plexed, half admiring. She bent her dark gaze 
 straight into Romeyne' s, and held him. At the mo- 
 ment he did not seem able to take his eyes away. 
 
 "They say that it is Mr. Romeyne who forms the 
 Government's policy on most subjects."
 
 ADVENTURE 183 
 
 "Ah? And they say that Sir Thomas is much 
 influenced by his private secretary I" 
 
 The little duel ended in a laugh and Sydney 
 turned her smiling eyes away. Ashburnham broke in 
 seeing his chance u By Jove then I wish you'd 
 form it to some sense about the East 1" and Romeync 
 took up the challenge. 
 
 The two men were soon deep in talk each accord- 
 ing to his manner; the statesman wise rather than 
 brilliant; the soldier brilliant rather than wise. The 
 girl, as she listened, seemed to be carried in an aero- 
 plane over wide continents to far horizons. Romeyne 
 knew Europe from Land's End to the Golden Horn 
 and Ashburnham knew Asia from Tokio to the Urals. 
 Personalities, as diverse as picturesque, stood out on 
 their geographical background. Then Ashburnham 
 launched into vivid narrative about the Indian troops 
 and their strange devotion and though he turned his 
 face toward his host, yet he drew her attention by 
 the tail of his eye. . . . The lights in the room 
 were still big and bright, but they swayed no longer. 
 She bent toward the narrator a face 
 whose pallor and modelling seemed overnight to have 
 achieved beauty, distinction. 
 
 "She's always intense," thought one of Sydney's 
 two companions; "tonight in her attentive stillness, 
 she has become beautiful." 
 
 A waiter came up to their table . . . Ro- 
 meyne recalled himself from the talk with a start 
 . . . it was closing time. 
 
 "The trouble seems to be quite over, sir," the 
 waiter said as they rose. 
 
 The streets were emptying fast, the faint starry 
 sky was pure and untroubled, as they came out of 
 the restaurant. A cool little wind had arisen. 
 
 "I hope," the girl said anxiously "that Miss Vio- 
 land has not been worried."
 
 184 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 "You will reassure her in a few moments" said 
 Romeyne, as he bade them good night. "Fortunately 
 for myself on these occasions," he added, on an im- 
 pulse for which he found it afterwards hard to 
 account, "there is no one to be worried in the least 
 about me." He turned quickly toward Piccadilly 
 and was lost to view. 
 
 "You know that's very odd I never heard him 
 even distantly allude to that before," remarked the 
 soldier as they crossed Regent Street. "He and his 
 wife for years have been practically strangers." 
 
 Sydney murmured something. 
 
 "Of course it is his own fault, but still " 
 
 "I don't see why you think that," the girl spoke 
 quickly, indignantly. "I have seen her she is per- 
 fectly odious." 
 
 "Quite so but she did not propose to him you 
 know. Responsibility always must be the man's. 
 I knew her at one time, and even I only a lad then 
 knew she was the wrong woman. She had money 
 . . . and he had no ideals. ... It never 
 does, believe me," the soldier continued, "to marry 
 a fool." 
 
 He began to speak of something else and she was 
 glad, because the picture of Romeyne's empty house 
 and the vacant face and tasteless appearance of 
 the woman she had seen gave her a feeling of dis- 
 turbance. 
 
 Romeyne, meanwhile, walked rapidly in the direc- 
 tion of his house in Smith Square. He was very 
 tired, he told himself, and strung up after a hard 
 day or he would never have said,,that. 
 When one was so tired ... it was hard to 
 keep from feeling lonely. . . . It is not good 
 for man to be alone . . . particularly in war- 
 time. He tried to change his thoughts back to gen-
 
 ADVENTURE 185 
 
 eral matters, but the personal kept intruding. How 
 beautiful the girl was tonight the jewelled eye 
 and eloquent lip, the whole face, vibrant, bent on his 
 own I ... Odd, he had not noticed it before. 
 . She must have improved. Until recently 
 he had just approved of her as very clever, and tact- 
 ful and hard working now, her personality had 
 suddenly sprung into vividness in his mind, so that 
 he kept seeing her face and movements with a keen- 
 ness that was like pain. Clearly, it was because he 
 was overdone overworked; he must go away. He 
 dallied with this idea for an instant only to thrust 
 it savagely from him, he knew he would not go away. 
 And then Ashburnham, was he very much attracted? 
 He, Romeyne, had always liked and admired Ash- 
 burnham had pushed him forward whenever pos- 
 sible, but now was it because of nervous fatigue that 
 he had become conscious of resenting Ashburnham? 
 What a pity if that talented girl should become inter- 
 ested in a man whose life was so uncertain and haz- 
 ardous subject to all the chance of war and his own 
 temperament. And he had no money it would 
 never do! The life she should have he knew very 
 well and how she would become it he could imagine 
 how she would develop; what a hostess she would 
 make with her gift of attention, how she would 
 throw herself into a man's affairs, and above all, that 
 rich intensity . How on such a night as this, per- 
 haps, when he returned late and there had been 
 danger she would be waiting there on the stairs 
 no doubt, with glowing eyes and parted lips, and he 
 racing upstairs, his whole thoughts would be turned 
 toward what awaited them that heady joy. . . .^ 
 Romeyne put the key in the door as he reached this 
 point and the silence of his house struck the vision 
 away as with a blow what a sickening mess life
 
 1 86 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 was ! And how unstrung his nerves must be. After 
 all, why should the affairs of Ashburnham and Syd- 
 ney Lea matter to him ? He stood for an instant in 
 the hall and then went into his library and turned on 
 the lamp.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 "Mv dear," Edith Caird greeted her friend, "I've 
 asked your man!" 
 
 "My man?" Sydney repeated, mystified. 
 
 "Yes. ... I mean Colonel Ashburnham. 
 Roger has known him a long while, but I met him 
 for the first time last night. We had a little party 
 at the Cafe Royal. . . . My dear, he's a won- 
 derful man quite fascinating and evidently awfully 
 taken with youl" 
 
 "Just the same, I don't like that possessive pro- 
 noun I" 
 
 "But why, my child? Isn't he your man of the 
 moment? (I'm so glad you put on that American 
 frock this afternoon. It's so becoming . . . 
 how wonderfully they do that kind of thing over 
 there!) One has to have a man of the moment and 
 you never talk any more about that queer little crea- 
 ture who used to make high explosives. You've 
 given him up." 
 
 "It's the other way about; he's given me up. Ever 
 since Sir Hector Menzies went off to his command in 
 France, Ernest Listen has avoided me. He doesn't 
 want to talk about being thrown over and he knows 
 I had my doubts from the first." 
 
 "Doubts of his horrid old T.N.T.?" 
 
 "No, Edith: doubts of that that flamboyant 
 General 1" 
 
 "Menzies is very highly thought of, my dtear. 
 They say his division is to be in this new offensive, 
 though I will say that Roger is not enthusiastic." 
 
 "Well I am not surprised." 
 
 is?
 
 1 88 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 The drawing-room at Hans Place was cool and 
 fresh. Midsummer sunshine lay on the grass of the 
 square without and gave brilliancy to the red striped 
 awnings and to the painted garden chairs. Within, 
 the black and white walls were refreshingly neutral 
 and Edith had hidden her brilliant winter colourings 
 under the summer dress of pale lavender chintz. 
 
 "Since we have to stay in town so late," she de- 
 clared, "we will look as summery as possible." 
 
 "And don't you miss your inventor?" she went on, 
 to tease a little; but Sydney's eyes were sombre. 
 
 To her mind the Liston case had an aggravated 
 injustice in that the only black mark against the man 
 was that he had been proved right! . . . And 
 Menzies that splendid figure, that tall, smiling, gor- 
 geous embodiment of the man at the Top how he 
 had fulfilled himself in her eyes! These thoughts 
 stayed with her and made her a little absent and 
 silent all during Ashburnham's visit though he was 
 more interesting than ever. She kept thinking how 
 he too, but for a fortunate chance, might have beaten 
 his wings against the bars until all that fine, spirited 
 vitality had become broken and embittered . As 
 for him while he jested in eager conversation with 
 Edith Caird, his quick glance travelled now and 
 again to his friend's face, and noticed the cloud upon 
 it. They left the Caird's house together and stepped 
 into the sunshine, which "summer time" had deluded 
 into lingering upon Sloane Street. Ashburnham sud- 
 denly broke forth: 
 
 "It is an awful thing this Menzies fiasco." 
 
 "This what?" 
 
 Her voice and face were surpremely startled, so 
 that he made a sound of vexation. 
 
 "I thought you knew there ! I felt you seemed 
 thoughful this afternoon and that Sir Thomas had 
 told you. ... I am sorry I"
 
 ADVENTURE 189 
 
 "Sir Thomas has been out of town for three days. 
 
 . . I have heard nothing. What is it?" 
 
 "An ugly story. I got it at the Club . . . 
 but it must be all over London by now. 
 The same old error of giving a Front Command to 
 a man who has done good work at a desk in White- 
 hall! Menzies was a brilliant chap but " 
 
 "Is he dead?" 
 
 "Not that I know of." She could see that he 
 hated the subject, but could not leave it alone. They 
 crossed Knightsbridge and entered the Park before 
 he explained and even then it was with reluctance. 
 To himself he said that there was nobody else to 
 whom he could talk on a subject so painful but Sydney 
 Lea was a wonderful friend. There was no sense of 
 her being an alien to trouble this intimate moment 
 only a deeper consciousness of sympathy. 
 
 "Well you have been hearing on all sides that 
 an offensive was planned ? The way everybody talks 
 about these things is perfectly appalling . 
 no wonder the French think us naif. ... At 
 all events, the offensive was planned to start off yes- 
 terday with an. attack by Menzies' division . 
 I can't give you details and there are all sorts of ru- 
 mours flying about, but so far as one can tell he omit- 
 ted the most elementary precautions in supporting his 
 attack balled up things behind the lines into a 
 hopeless mess, and wound up by turning the bar- 
 rage fire on our own men." 
 
 She fixed her eyes on him in a pale horror. This 
 bald account of indescribable confusion, rout, defeat, 
 betrayal, death, what a picture it raised in her 
 mind! 
 
 "And then?" came her low question. 
 
 "Then the Huns came back they were quite 
 ready you may be sure. Luckily, the French v^ere 
 just around the corner . . . nothing very im-
 
 i 9 o THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 portant has been given up, but of course some terrain 
 had to be sacrificed." 
 
 "But General Menzies ?" 
 
 "Relieved of his command and recalled. There 
 will be an investigation and lots of talk after the 
 harm has been done." 
 
 "And then what will happen?" 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 "You mean " 
 
 "Just what I say nothing! That's what always 
 happens in England." She heard him draw a moved 
 breath and add as if to himself ". . . Thank 
 God ! I shall soon be out of it all !" 
 
 By the impatience and pain which the subject 
 roused in him, the dramatic intensity of his expression 
 was heightened. He looked more than ever like some 
 fierce restless bird just plumed for flight. She felt 
 vibrantly how he longed to take wing; to be again on 
 active service and out of this heart-wringing chaos of 
 offices and bureaux. 
 
 "Don't let us talk about it ... ," he burst forth 
 impetuously, "it's too horrible ... I'd never have 
 mentioned it to you but that I was sure you knew it 
 already from Sir Thomas !" 
 
 "Poor Sir Thomas !" Sydney murmured. Her 
 companion made a gesture of finality and assent. 
 
 She felt the blow to her employer's pride was the 
 blow to her friend's also. So she changed the sub- 
 ject by referring to the grace of a passing child, who 
 danced upon the path, and the soldier's eye was 
 soothed. He looked at her gratefully. His was a 
 nature consistent in its simplicity and very much under 
 the influence of anyone to whom he may once have 
 given his confidence. 
 
 During the next week she had another reminder, if 
 such were needed, that she was not in her own coun- 
 try. Sir Thomas returned to his work in due course :
 
 ADVENTURE 191 
 
 she waited for him to say something about the down- 
 fall of Sir Hector, but he never did. The incident 
 caused him an acute pain, sc that he never of his own 
 motion alluded to it again. Many months afterward, 
 when he went away for a week, he gave his secretary 
 without comment, the address of Menzies' house in 
 Scotland and she knew by that only, that he held to 
 his old friendship. At the time, she noticed that his 
 face looked a trifle less calm and ruddy than usual; 
 she thought that he stooped a little. What a toll 
 these three years had taken out of his life, his secre- 
 tary reflected, watching day by day the work of this 
 high-hearted and steadfast gentleman, the fate of 
 Tom, the fate of Hugh, and now, worse by far than 
 invalidism or death, the fate of his best friend! 
 
 Sir Thomas went about his daily task slowly, 
 steadily, powerfully, like the Englishman he was, 
 carrying his head just a trifle higher for each fresh 
 strain, loss, disappointment, that he or his country 
 met. If no danger could make him hasten his pace, 
 neither could it make him relax his routine. If he 
 and his like were insusceptible to new ideas, they were 
 insusceptible to panic also. If he was slow to change 
 his methods, he was slow also to lose confidence. He 
 stood, in Sydney's mind, representative of that Eng- 
 lish morale, the most unconquerable quality of the 
 human spirit, by whose aid he would continue all his 
 life the task of making bricks without straw. 
 
 The Menzies debacle emained one of the heaviest 
 blows which had befallen him ; but in the next few 
 days, this, and all other anxieties were swept aside by 
 the news of the Somme offensive and the hourly 
 danger to his son Middleton, in France.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 A WEEK later, when all the world was hanging on 
 the news of the battle, and when to the Easterly 
 family, Middleton's brief letters from the Front con- 
 stituted the hope by which they lived on from day to 
 day in the midst of this racking suspense, Harry 
 Ashburnham came to Sydney to bid her good-bye. He 
 did not say where he was going or on what mission, 
 and he spoke most vaguely of his return. It was 
 evident that he was glad to be off. He was a fine, 
 eager creature, any inactivity chafed him. She gath- 
 ered, however, that the job was the one he had 
 specially desired and that he owed it to Romeyne's 
 influence. He said he would write to her if possible 
 but feared he would be cut out of the way of the 
 mails for a long time. One was not even to know 
 if he were going North or South, East or West, nor 
 what the day nor which the railway station. It was 
 "orders" that he should depart as mysteriously as he 
 came. 
 
 Sydney was sorry to have him go. They had 
 been such "pals" as he called it, their talks had been 
 so unconstrained, she knew she would miss that 
 friendship. There had always been something strong 
 and helpful about the man ; she had felt toward him 
 almost as toward! a fellow countryman. Suddenly, in 
 that London world she began to feel lonely. 
 
 "And so you miss the beau-sabreur?" asked 
 Romeyne, in that intonation whose very unmoved 
 suavity held a touch of irony. 
 
 "Very much, indeed." 
 
 "Ah you are not a philosopher about such encoun- 
 
 192
 
 ADVENTURE 193 
 
 ters, I fear. Life is made up of meetings and partings 
 of people who come into one's existence and then 
 go which is bad; and of people who come into 
 one's existence and then remain, which is worse I" 
 
 "You speak very bitterly." 
 
 "I have cause I have cause," he answered 
 rapidly as though hurried along by some unexpected 
 impulse into candour. He was standing by her desk, 
 frowning, and she saw him make a distinct effort to 
 recover that measured calmness of speech which was 
 his and she saw him fail. "I am feeling particularly 
 bound harassed just now my house oppresses me 
 I envy Ashburnham that he turns his face toward 
 freedom he turns his face toward freedom, while 
 I am in this squirrel cage !" 
 
 "I am very sorry," was her low rejoinder. 
 
 "Are you really are you really sorry?" 
 
 The contrast between his own moved utterance and 
 his past somewhat sententious habit of speech seemed 
 to strike and shock him. He straightened himself 
 and the second effort to be usual, succeeded. 
 
 "But don't let yourself miss the beau-sabreur too 
 much, he is an uncertain creature and he moves 
 hither and yon at the whim of the heartless War- 
 Office. Your happiness does not lie there." 
 
 "Why should you concern yourself about my hap- 
 piness?" She raised her eyes and they rested, steadily 
 on his own. 
 
 "Why I wonder?" 
 
 There was an instant's silence in which she felt 
 that one must go on speaking yet knew not what 
 to say. Finally some banality about Ashburnham's 
 being so like an American 'came to her rescue. There 
 was relief in the half-laugh with which it was re- 
 ceived, and which seemed to restore the normal vibra- 
 tions of the atmosphere. Sir Thomas came in just 
 then with Middleton's last letter in his hand and the
 
 194 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 two men plunged immediately into earnest talk. 
 Sydney bent over her typewriter and told herself that 
 for once in her life she felt really tired. 
 
 These last weeks had been very full. Sir Thomas 
 had been both troubled and anxious. His boy's 
 danger, the blow to his pride in the fall of General 
 Menzies had made him worried and discouraged. 
 He had come to depend upon his secretary more and 
 more the duties which she now undertook for him 
 were far heavier and more important than those 
 which Bolder had ever even attempted. They re- 
 quired skill and penetration which she herself could 
 not have possessed a year ago. On the impressions 
 which she received of people and the estimates of 
 character she formed, her employer openly relied. In 
 all that labyrinth of party politics and national 
 muddle, where democratic principle struggled with 
 aristocratic privilege, where passionate individualism 
 opposed itself at each turn to collective effort, Sydney 
 journeyed, keeping her hand on the thread of char- 
 acter and circumstances. Her reports were couched 
 in terms as candid as they were shrewd, Sir Thomas 
 read them with a twinkle in his eye. Sir Thomas 
 rarely laughed, but he frequently twinkled at his 
 secretary's opinion of people and things. When 
 Sydney wrote of one elderly functionary: 
 
 "A nasty old man he would have massacred the 
 Armenians if they had only been heathen!" or of 
 another in a phrase borrowed from Romeyne: 
 
 "The sort of bureaucrat who thinks that if he only 
 puts off deciding anything long enough perhaps he 
 may escape having to decide it altogether." Or of 
 a third : 
 
 "He is a combination of pompousness and sen- 
 suality ; which would do credit to a Zulu !" 
 
 Sir Thomas raised his eyebrows, but he believed 
 her.
 
 ADVENTURE 195 
 
 "I am not at ease about this young man who has 
 applied for the post of special clerk to the Com- 
 mittee," he might observe, when she presented her- 
 self before him in the morning; "it is not clear how 
 and why he claims exemption and someone says his 
 mother was Austrian. Do you think you can find out 
 the real state of affairs for me?" 
 
 Miss Lea replied that she could, and set to work 
 in the slow, quiet and diplomatic manner by which 
 alone she came to know such things were to be 
 ascertained. A careful, chance encounter with an 
 affable underling in some accessible bureau a 
 pleasant word in passing, with old Parker, while one 
 was waiting in the outer office for Mr. Romeyne's 
 signature perhaps, a respectful enquiry of the fellow 
 Committee-member who had strolled into Charles 
 Street for a word with his colleague these bits of 
 information could be fitted together so as to form a 
 dossier to be laid before Sir Thomas. 
 
 Since the incident of Sir Jacob Fredericks, it was 
 evident that she had greatly risen in her employer's 
 estimation. Moreover, English confidence once 
 given is given without reserves. This added to her 
 responsibility and there were moments in Sydney's 
 day when she was both terrified and exhilarated at the 
 trust reposed in her. The War, and all of Sir 
 Thomas's work which had any connection with or 
 bearing on the War had an intense fascination for 
 her seeming to change the face of the so-called 
 stable universe while she looked. Sydney was al- 
 most ashamed of this excitement, but it existed and 
 in more mfnds than her own. 
 
 She was pleasantly aware, too, that Lady Easterly 
 had come to share her husband's attitude. He had 
 told his wife the Fredericks story and she was appre- 
 ciative, showing it to the secretary in a hundred ways,
 
 i 9 6 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 chiefly by treating her as a valued member of the 
 family, to be consulted at every turn. 
 
 "Americans are such a help!" she would say; 
 standing in the doorway with that imposing erect- 
 ness and splendid, elderly good-looks which Sydney 
 found so attractive. She would even call up on the 
 telephone from the country to ask about her husband, 
 "Was he all right, or did Miss Lea think he was 
 overworking? Would she not use her influence to 
 make him come home for a week-end?" And so on. 
 
 On a rainy Saturday evening at the end of July, 
 Sydney sat resting and reading in the little drawing- 
 room. Miss Violand had gone to spend a few days 
 at the sea near to the coast town where her nephew 
 was stationed. Sydney slipped into a house frock; 
 she dined alone, chatting with Giddy, and she wrote a 
 letter to Elizabeth. It was delightful to be able to 
 sit down to one's book for a long peaceful evening, 
 well-earned. She did not hear the door-bell ring, and 
 she looked up in surprise when Giddy entered the 
 room bringing her a note. Giddy's ample form shook 
 from her haste there was a man, she said, who was 
 waiting for an answer. The envelope was in Sir 
 Thomas's hand and its contents ran as follows : 
 
 "Dear Miss Lea: 
 
 "You have so many times during the past month 
 given me proof of your fidelity and devotion to our 
 cause, that I do not hesitate tonight to ask of you a 
 very special service, which in no sense comes under 
 the head of your secretarial duties. The reason I ask 
 it is because of my confidence in you, but you are in 
 no way bound to accede to my request. If, however, 
 you are willing, as I hope, to be of very great service 
 to the country at large, as well as to myself, please 
 accompany the bearer of this note as quickly as you 
 can to the place where your task is to be performed.
 
 ADVENTURE 197 
 
 He is a subordinate and must not be questioned. The 
 matter is too grave for me to be more explicit in this 
 letter; you will of course receive a full explanation in 
 due time. You must prepare to be absent from your 
 lodging until tomorrow. I feel sure that I can count 
 on you : as on your complete silence respecting this 
 communication. 
 
 "Yours very sincerely, 
 
 "Thomas Easterly." 
 
 She read this astonishing note carefully twice. 
 
 "Will you tell the bearer," she asked Giddy, "that 
 I shall be with him in a few minutes?" 
 
 "But you will never be going out this rough night, 
 Miss?" was Giddy's exclamation; and Miss Lea 
 laughed and said "Orders, Giddy!" as she held Sir 
 Thomas's letter to the candleflame and watched it 
 consume. 
 
 Her preparations were brief. She changed her 
 dress for a street frock of serge and she put a few 
 necessaries into the big pockets of her service over- 
 coat. Somehow, the tone of the message gave her a 
 feeling that bed, that night at least, was not to be 
 her portion. There was work to be done what 
 work? where? As she descended the stair the clock 
 marked a little past eight. Giddy, leaning over the 
 balustrade, watching her depart with flurried anxiety. 
 
 The messenger, standing just inside the passage, 
 wore a chauffeur's cap and a long black mackintosh. 
 To her few words that she was ready, he bowed in 
 silence, and preceded her with alacrity and deference 
 to the street, where a large and handsome car stood 
 drawn up to the curb. He opened the door for her 
 and then, after wrapping a heavy rug about her knees, 
 he slipped into his place beside a second man who was 
 driving, and in a breath the whole equipage glided 
 off into the wet night. A turn they passed Berkeley
 
 ig8 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 Square and turned up Davies Street, a twist, they 
 had crossed Oxford Street and were running north. 
 In the thick soft rain and darkness Sydney saw but 
 little, she knew only that presently the motor settled 
 down to that hum of steadily maintained speed which 
 showed they must be travelling on one of the main 
 arteries of London. 
 
 The incident had passed so quietly, so swiftly, that 
 she felt as if in a dream. Darkness had covered the 
 insignia upon the panels of the car; but it was a large 
 limousine, and she knew that such cars were growing 
 fewer every day. She searched inside for some hint 
 as to the owner, but there was none. . . . The two 
 men sat like wooden figures on the other side of the 
 glass pane. 
 
 What a strange adventure . . . Damp mist-filled 
 air, raw, rather than cold, blew against her face. By 
 and by, it bore country odors, rising from wet earth 
 and dripping hedgerows, fallen roses and the pungent 
 later-blooming flowers. 
 
 What was likely to be required of her? She specu- 
 lated in vain, as they ran on, and on. That even, 
 purring speed of a powerful engine moved them, 
 noiseless and effortless, pausing perhaps at some 
 cross-road, only to spring forward again. Mile after 
 mile; on and on; London is vast indeed; but even 
 London was left behind. They were in open country; 
 running between high hedges or past darkened cot- 
 tages. The rain diminished, then ceased; the pure 
 sky shone out, with a faint star or two glimmering 
 and a church steeple piercing it here and there. The 
 air became warmer, perfumed, pleasant; she began 
 to grow uneasy, troubled, because they went on so 
 fast, so steadily. ... A long time passed. Then a 
 slowing down and a sudden turn to the right, with 
 a flying glimpse of huge iron gates topped with 
 armorial bearings, . . . made her heart beat. They
 
 ADVENTURE 199 
 
 were running under the trees of an avenue. Nearby 
 were shrubs: pungent, aromatic. The horn blew. 
 There was an instant only to glance around her 
 and then the car slowed and stopped before a house 
 which stretched out into long wings and white arcaded 
 terraces, with tall vases on them. Scarlet geraniums 
 overflowed these great vases with a flame of colour. 
 . . . The front-door opened and light streamed on 
 the steps. The chauffeur opened the door of the 
 car and helped Sydney to alight. 
 
 An elderly, wooden-faced man servant standing 
 before her, indicated that she was to follow. She 
 obeyed, noticing that he limped a little. They stood 
 in a long hall which traversed the building, and was 
 distinguished by one of those curved and hanging 
 staircases to be seen only in houses of a certain period. 
 Rugs lay on the marble floor, masses of flowers stood 
 about. The furniture was heavy and huge. She was 
 struck by the silence of the place ... it seemed 
 absolutely still. . . . The butler preceded her, 
 limping, to the other end of the hall and knocked at 
 a door. Then opening it, he ushered her within, an- 
 nouncing her by name. The room was small and 
 square, lined with books; there were lamps, a little 
 fire took away the dampness from the air. A man, 
 who had been sitting beside it, rose and came eagerly 
 to meet her from the shadows of the room but this 
 man was not Sir Thomas Easterly. It was Adrian 
 Romeyne.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 "You I" she cried, bewildered. 
 
 "Yes, but do not look so troubled. ... Sir 
 Thomas understands; it was his idea that we should 
 ask for your help. . . . It is all right. Come, sit 
 down put your coat there are you chilled with the 
 long ride?" 
 
 He took her hands in his and drew her gently to 
 a chair near the fire. His face was moved, stirred, 
 as she had never seen it. The touch of strain, of ex- 
 citement in it communicated itself to her own. 
 
 "What has happened? Where is Sir Thomas?" 
 
 "You shall hear all as soon as I can tell you. Are 
 you comfortable, meanwhile? Would you like a 
 glass of sherry, a sandwich perhaps?" 
 
 She shook her head with a gesture of impatience : 
 and Romeyne, walking up and down the room as he 
 talked, but keeping his voice level and aloof, began 
 to explain. His explanation was long and deeply in- 
 teresting, so concentrated was she that her eyelids 
 never quivered as she listened. Through it all, she 
 was intensely conscious of the intimacy of the 
 moment, that he turned to her and laid the matter 
 before her; that it was she he desired to help him; 
 that it was she who actually was helping him. That 
 was the vibrant background to his story. 
 
 Romeyne said that upstairs in a room of this great 
 house there lay a woman v r ho had been found guilty 
 irremediably and avowedly guiltv of treason and 
 betrayal. She was a young woman hardly more than 
 a girl, but, young as she was, her life had been already 
 indelibly scarred with the tragedy of folly. Daughter 
 
 200
 
 ADVENTURE 201 
 
 of a well-known man holding distinguished political 
 office, she had made, just before the outbreak of War, 
 a marriage regarded as entirely suitable, with the son 
 of another prominent family, a boy of her own age. 
 The suitability had been chiefly material, but there 
 had not been time for her to be very bored with this 
 rather dull young man before the hour came for him 
 to go off to France. At first, the emotions of that 
 time, his danger and the like, seemed about to avert 
 the catastrophe which their friends had seen pre- 
 paring, and perhaps if he had been wounded and re- 
 turned-^ a fresh current of sympathy and affection 
 might have brought them together again. But he was 
 not wounded, and early in 1915 a year or more ago 
 this young woman went off for a week with another 
 officer, in one of those casual connections, rootless and 
 brief and sensual, which seemed, in her parents ap- 
 palled eyes, to link her with the bensts that perish. 
 
 The husband was young and loyal; her betrayal 
 had been base. Proceedings were at once started for 
 a divorce, and while they were pending, the name of 
 the co-respondent one day headed the list of killed. 
 Perhaps if he had lived and cared for her per- 
 haps if her mother's final illness had not been hast- 
 ened by shame and sorrow the last act in this drama 
 of horror and despair might never have taken place. 
 At it was, the girl found herself tossing like sea-weed 
 on the wildest waters ; for her father, rigid and unfor- 
 giving, marked his displeasure by cutting down her 
 allowance and seeing her as seldom as possible. The 
 London world not unnaturally followed his lead and 
 the sinner suffered an ostracism which she found piti- 
 fully incomprehensible. If her allowance of money 
 had been larger, she might have bought toleration, but 
 there is small place in society for the woman who is 
 both besmirched and poor . Gambling might be a 
 diversion, but it did not tend to increase one's income
 
 particularly, when among the people with whom 
 she played and to whom she lost most frequently, 
 was a certain South African gentleman claiming to be 
 of an Amsterdam family, and known as Mr. Ludwig 
 Leo. 
 
 Mr. Leo was not a diamond king; in fact his 
 means of livelihood were not clearly defined; but he 
 was very well aware that the girl who looked so 
 frightened when she lost, was the daughter of an Ex- 
 Minister and the niece of a Minister in power. Mr. 
 Leo saw possibilities in the acquaintance and he was 
 very good-humoured indeed. He tore up one of her 
 little I. O. Us. with that pleasant smile of his; and 
 she was so much relieved that, when he telephoned 
 the day after and asked her to find out a trifling mat- 
 ter for him from Uncle Jack just to settle a bet 
 she really could not refuse. So she found it out from 
 Uncle Jack without very much trouble, and passed 
 on the information to Mr. Leo. It was a trivial de- 
 tail concerning some battleship or other; and Mr. Leo 
 was so grateful at winning his bet, he made such a 
 matter of it, that one quite liked him evidently, 
 though vulgar, he was a good creature. Mr. Leo 
 continued to be grateful, and one afternoon, find- 
 ing out how things were, he insisted on lending her 
 a little money till next quarter-day. As he said, she 
 had already done him a favor and one good turn de- 
 serves anoher. So one simply couldn't refuse, after 
 that, to help him by finding out some little thing 
 whenever he asked it. 
 
 Unbelievable that this had gone on for weeks and 
 the fish had not felt the hook ! When the demands 
 grew more insistent and brought uneasiness by that 
 time, the girl was deep, deep in a morass to which 
 there seemed no way out. One must go on, because 
 one could not turn back, Mr. Leo saw to that. Mr. 
 Leo commanded a complete submission to her father,
 
 ADVENTURE 203 
 
 which softened him sufficiently to lead to a visit home 
 especially as he saw how pale and strained the girl 
 was from remorse, and how sleepless. Once she was 
 at home, Mr. Leo found little things that she might 
 do for him every day or two, and if she objected 
 there were always reminders of what had been done, 
 and of the money owing, and of the newspapers 
 all of it in a kindly sort of way of course; but the 
 suggestions in themselves were enough to send one 
 into a chilly shudder of fear. Sleep went; and the 
 nerves went, and the drugs one took revenged them- 
 selves next morning. And the thought of Mr. Leo 
 stayed with one every moment of the day and night . 
 
 "Don't look so distressed," said Adrian, stopping 
 at this point to look down on the girl in the chair, 
 "your eyes are so big its a horrible story, I know." 
 
 "Have they caught the man?" 
 
 He made a gesture of despair. "Alas, no! He 
 must have slipped away to Holland when he found 
 the thing could not be kept up any longer. Some 
 minor member of the gang got into trouble and Leo 
 had to run for it. We don't know how exactly but 
 it is supposed a Dutch trawler picked him up from 
 somewhere on the coast. He was only one of a 
 group the cleverest and they had been very well 
 organized. But when the cog slipped then this 
 came out and that brings me to the point." He 
 paused, looking about him for a chair, then drew it 
 near to her and lowered his voice. She kept her eyes 
 upon his own. The house enfolded them with an 
 absolute, palpable stillness. 
 
 "We know that all their plans must have been 
 admirably laid. They had many sources of informa- 
 tion, just how many remains to be discovered and 
 they covered their tracks so well that Scotland Yard 
 is not very sanguine. If it had not been that^ one 
 man became frightened an Austrian portrait-painter
 
 204 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 with an Irish wife, whom the P. M. refused to let us 
 intern, if he had not suddenly taken fright and given 
 out a clue, why it might have gone even further. 
 And as it is, it is bad enough. . . . 
 
 "So of course they sent for you ... ?" He 
 threw out his hands with a little gesture. "Think I 
 Think what it is ! The people who own this house, 
 her father, her uncle. . . . Think what this 
 must mean to them ! Already her uncle has gone up 
 to Town, and his resignation -will be in Government 
 hands tomorrow. ... As for her father, how 
 can he ever hold up his head again?" 
 
 "They are trying to save her ... ?" 
 
 "They cannot possibly save her and they know it. 
 It is not that. But there is the scandal, the news- 
 papers, the political situation generally. ... I do 
 not need to tell you, to tell you how very shaky the 
 Coalition is, and how restive the public how dissat- 
 isfied. . . . An incident like this, if it becomes 
 known, means a crash . . . and we are in the midst 
 of a terrible battle in which our losses have been ap- 
 palling. Think of our Allies, of France, of the ter- 
 rible blow to confidence at home !" 
 
 "I understand." 
 
 "You would, I know. I do not exaggerate, I do 
 not exaggerate when I say, that this occurrence may 
 do more harm than the Irish Rebellion ... if 
 it becomes generally known." 
 
 "But if the woman is punished," Sydney said, her 
 voice falling softly on the strained anxiety of his, 
 while his gaze sought comfort from her face, "how 
 can it possibly be helped ... ?" 
 
 "Ah, there are ways. . . . There are penal- 
 ties and penalties. Her father and uncle may have no 
 wish to save her from the consequences of her crime, 
 nor to save themselves, but I have pointed out to 
 them, (they are both old friends of mine,) I have
 
 ADVENTURE 205 
 
 pointed out that they must save the country. . . 
 I came down here early this morning and we have 
 been conferring. ... I believe now I have 
 most of the threads in my hand and can control the 
 situation, except " 
 
 "Except . . . ?" 
 
 "That is where you come in, where my confidence 
 in you comes in. You remember I told you she was 
 but one of many victims? We know that and we 
 know that others are involved. To save a crash we 
 must get hold of the rest of these traitors at once." 
 
 "This woman then?" 
 
 He was standing beside her chair with his hand 
 on the back of it. No stolidity or serenity could hide 
 the pain in his face or the trust in the eyes he bent to- 
 wards her. Her own exquisite response quivered 
 to meet it. 
 
 "She has been keeping up chiefly by chloral and 
 brandy, and she has no nerves left. She lies upstairs 
 in utter collapse, a whimpering, shrieking, hysterical 
 wreck. How to get out of her what she knows? 
 We've tried all day, but she clings to her silence. This 
 man, Leo, must have frightened her so thoroughly, 
 her sick mind can hold no other idea. 
 And you see how vital it is. ... And time is 
 flying, a whole day has been lost. We know that in- 
 formation, of one kind or another has been steadily 
 trickling through them. It is believed that even per- 
 haps K. " 
 
 The idea smote Sydney with such horror that 
 Adrian, noting it, paused a moment. Then he went 
 on: 
 
 "Every hour, every moment adds to our danger; 
 and to the chance that they may all escape. Yet she 
 will not speak. So they came to me and told me how 
 they had failed because of her condition, and also 
 they felt that she must have a nurse, lest she kill her-
 
 206 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 self before she speaks. And that must be preven- 
 ted, though I for one could not blame her." 
 
 "Nor I." 
 
 "An ordinary nurse was not to be thought of. 
 Then I had an inspiration the thought of you. So 
 you see. I told them I would provide someone whom 
 we might trust. I called up Easterly and after some 
 persuasion he was willing to write you the note. It 
 was the only way." 
 
 "I am to persuade her to speak? But " 
 
 "Persuade, threaten, anything. Alone with you 
 a woman surely, she will yield. Time is the only 
 thing I fear that tomorrow will be too late." 
 
 "She must speak tonight?" 
 
 "She must speak tonight." 
 
 "Then let me go to her at once." She saw his face 
 lighten and was repaid. Their hands clasped, 
 
 "You are splendid as I knew you would be," was 
 his low answer. 
 
 The butler with the grave face and the slight awk- 
 wardness of gait was standing in the hall as they came 
 out. Romeyne addressed him with an impressive 
 authority of voice and manner. 
 
 "Morton, can I count on your help, tonight?" 
 
 "To the utmost of my power, sir." 
 
 "Very good. You must remain here in the hall- 
 even if it be all night until Miss Lea calls you. 
 You can arrange a chair and rug?" 
 
 "Quite easily, sir. And when Miss Lea calls?" 
 
 "You are to come for me at once. I shall be 
 dressed waiting in my room. But you must not 
 leave the hall on any pretext whatever." 
 
 "I quite understand, sir." 
 
 "Have you given my orders that no one is to ap- 
 proach or to leave the house?" 
 
 "I went to the lodges myself, sir, and the gardener 
 with the two old fellows will be on guard all night."
 
 ADVENTURE 207 
 
 "And the telephone in case his Lordship calls 
 up?" 
 
 "They will keep the exchange open all night, sir, 
 and report the line 'engaged' to anyone except his 
 Lordship." 
 
 "Excellent. You can take Miss Lea to her room." 
 He turned to Sydney. 
 
 "You will find a nurse's uniform there. Ask for 
 anything you may need." 
 
 She bent her head in assent and followed Morton 
 upstairs. Romeyne stood below in the hall, his eyes 
 fixed on her his face drawn and white in its anxiety. 
 Sydney's chief feeling was that of exhilaration.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 ^ THE whisper from the bed died out in a moan. 
 The nurse bent down, straightened the pillow, un- 
 clasped the clinging hands, wiped the wet forehead, 
 repeated, for the hundredth time: 
 
 "If you would tell me if you would only tell me." 
 
 "Oh God, God!" the moan came as before, and 
 then again and again, "Oh God I" 
 
 How long the night seemed . 
 the peaceful, perfumed night. . . . Fresh airs 
 came in at the window, a bird stirred sleepily, calling 
 to its mate. She could hear so many soft, delicate 
 sounds intermingled on that background of exquisite 
 silence the drops from a distant fountain fell, one 
 after another, in a musical, monotonous patter re- 
 peated hour after hour as her question was repeated. 
 
 "If you would only speak they all want you to 
 speak. Will you not speak and save yourself ?" But 
 only the Name, so far, for answer. 
 
 The room had been shrouded in greyness when she 
 entered: and it remained in greyness. All beyond 
 the circle cast by the little night-light was in shadow. 
 It seemed vast, with vague corners and menacing 
 shapes of furniture. It must be luxurious. That 
 pallid square over the mantle was a mirror, the smal- 
 ler objects nearby evidently photographs. A ward* 
 robe stood open with vague draperies falling out of it 
 once the nurse had stumbled over an open 
 dressing-case evidences of a sudden mad impulse to 
 flight. . . . One could picture that frenzy, and 
 the steps in the hall outside, and the pause, and the 
 knock loud, peremptory, like doom. Had she 
 
 208
 
 ADVENTURE 209 
 
 shrieked out at its coming? Or had she stood, 
 frozen, the eyeballs gleaming like those of a trapped 
 rabbit, while their burden slipped out of the futile 
 hands? Sydney turned her gaze from this dreadful 
 vision to look out upon the sky which showed in- 
 finitely pale and clear, not dark, only dimmer than the 
 stars. The trees moved on the norizon, like sea- 
 weeds in a current. . . . But one must not 
 linger . . . the night was hurrying on. . . . 
 
 That object against the window was the toilet-table. 
 There were all sorts of small things on it owned by 
 the girl who babbled and moaned on the bed. Just a 
 young girl after all, piteously young. She lay there 
 as if every bone in her body was broken. In her in- 
 coherent despair, she turned her head from side to 
 side and long shudders went over her body. . . 
 She had shrieked until she had no strength left to 
 shriek. . . . The saliva dribbled out of the 
 corners of her mouth. Yet she resisted terror kept 
 up her resistance; and from some inner store of 
 strength she resisted, hour by hour. . . . 
 
 It was cruelty nothing but cruelty to torture her 
 so ! Sydney felt a wave of nausea at this spectacle of 
 suffering increased suffering which she must not 
 alleviate, but renew. The perpetual slow rack of 
 questioning iteration, repetition, threat, persuasion, 
 command ; vitality beating against vitality, will clash- 
 ing on will. . . . 
 
 When the victim did not call on God, she begged, 
 sobbing, for silence, for rest. . . . And she 
 could have no rest. . . . 
 
 The house seemed to hold its breath . . . the 
 night seemed to race on soundlessly, inevitably. Yet 
 Sydney felt dawn could not come, in all its purity and 
 inspiration, while that woman lay upon the bed ; she 
 belonged to night, she was a part of night. . . 
 
 "if you will only answer me, then you shall sleep!"
 
 210 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 Still the head mechanically shook ; moans and cries 
 came from the lips, the limbs were twisted almost as in 
 a convulsion . . . was she becoming uncon- 
 scious? The nurse bent over her, soothing, steady- 
 ing; and the eyes that met hers still held knowledge, 
 resistance. She gave a dose of stimulant, and sat 
 silent, holding the girl's hand in her own. 
 
 This then was Evil. This was in the realm of 
 Satan. One had imagined somehow that the Devil's 
 Kingdom had vanished into the shadows of medi- 
 eval superstition, together with other terrors of the 
 past. Wickedness was disease : it lay in the province 
 of specialists and one was to regard it with pity. 
 Wrong was simply the negative of right: the other 
 side of the same picture, having its roots in these 
 complicated social and political injustices which legis- 
 lation would in time simplify and adjust. Wrong 
 was perhaps another point of view about things 
 such as the German idea of War. 
 
 The world was full of light. There may be dark 
 corners still, but only the sick lived in them. . . . 
 Such had been her code. But now! She saw that 
 these things actually were that these horrors existed. 
 This woman lay on the rack where weakness, and 
 disloyalty and vice and brandy and chloral had 
 brought her! She was not diseased her resistance 
 proved that she was uncommonly strong and well. 
 She had all the education and protection and care and 
 affection possible to give. She had no abnormalities, 
 but there she lay in the power of Satan. This then 
 was Evil and it was not an imagination. It was a 
 terror and a peril which were incredibly and awfully 
 real. 
 
 "You must tell me for your own sake. It 
 will help to atone it will rid you of this dreadful 
 secret then you can sleep !" 
 
 Sydney's own voice sounded harsh to her ears. The
 
 ADVENTURE 211 
 
 woman answered her, praying for morphia, for 
 brandy, for something to dull the fear, to veil the 
 sharpness of despair. She turned her face to the 
 nurse like a child and begged. She whimpered. She 
 knew nothing she said nothing at all . The 
 nurse held up before her the hypodermic syringe 
 which the doctor had left she bent over the bed. 
 She poured upon the poor creature all the concentra- 
 ted power of her own vitality to compel. 
 
 "You will tell me? You will tell me everything?" 
 
 Not yet. The woman feigned deafness or pre- 
 tended unconsciousness. Her lips were obstinately 
 shut. . . 
 
 Were those steps outside the door, that paused, 
 that moved away? Romeyne perhaps, growing im- 
 patient: one must not disappoint Romeyne. He had 
 said that the morning might be too late. . . . 
 After all Romeyne and Sydney were working to- 
 gether for England, fighting with her back against 
 the wall England betrayed. What young lives may 
 have been uselessly spent because of the girl's sin? 
 Sydney's heart stiffened. One should not think of 
 the girl she must yield. One must remember the 
 baseness of disloyalty toward a tradition and an in- 
 stinct sprung from the essential stuff of humanity. 
 The struggle must go on. 
 
 Hours passed. Steadily now the pressure of Syd- 
 ney's voice, of her demand, beat the other down. 
 
 . . Pauses fell, pauses of exhaustion for them 
 both. . . . Vague indefinite movements sounded 
 from within the house ... the air from the 
 window grew chilly. Surely, the sky above the trees 
 was lighter translucent silver? 
 
 And then, in the dawn, she spoke. 
 The words dropped from her lips in faint gasps. 
 Sydney, standing by the window with pad and pen- 
 cil wrote steadily. There were names she asked to
 
 212 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 have repeated. The narrative filled her with hor- 
 ror, so that her fingers shook. She questioned: 
 writing the answers. 
 
 . . "You met them at Leo's once? twice? 
 "That telephone number was? . 
 "You felt convinced that she had been 
 caught as you had been? 
 
 "Mostly through your uncle's secretary, 
 Mr. . . . Belby, did you say? 
 
 "Yes? I didn't catch that. . . . 
 
 The voice ceased. Sydney lifted the girl in her 
 arms and thrust a pen into her fingers. Then lay- 
 ing her down, she pressed the hypodermic needle 
 mercifully home. The tortured sobbing slowed, died 
 away, the clutching hand relaxed. Silence. Grey 
 dawn filled the room, and when she looked out of 
 the window, she heard the thrushes beginning their 
 song. 
 
 Was she in time? She left the room holding the 
 paper tightly in her hand. 
 
 The long corridor blazed still with electric light, 
 and Sydney blinked as she fronted it. ... 
 With an indescribable shock, she suddenly became 
 aware that a man was standing a few feet off, star- 
 ing at her. He was an unknown man; slight, pale, 
 in evening dress, and his face wore a fixed, dis- 
 quieting smile. She noticed that he moistened his 
 lips before speaking. 
 
 "Has she told? Has she told everything?" 
 
 At the words he made a panic step toward her 
 terror and cruelty shone in his eyes. She made a 
 spring and raced for the stairs, the paper held to 
 her pounding heart, the nurse's veil flying from her 
 shoulders. . . . In an instant she stood beside 
 the sleeping servant and shook him by the arm. 
 
 "Mr. Romeyne! Get Mr. Romeyne quick, 
 quick!"
 
 ADVENTURE 213 
 
 He was not gone five minutes, but Sydney strung 
 to the pitch of terror unspeakable kept her eyes 
 fixed on the stairs. Would the man come down it? 
 No. When Romeyne appeared, the stillness broke 
 into sudden activity, confusion, sentences begun, not 
 finished, begun again. . . 
 
 "There was a man!" . . . 
 
 "What man?" 
 
 "But I do not know he tried to take the paper 
 from me he looked like murder." 
 
 "The paper you mean she has confessed?" 
 
 They were standing again face to face in the" 
 small room which they had quitted some hours be- 
 fore. Romeyne almost snatched the confession from 
 her hand and she heard him give a stifled groan as 
 his eyes ran down the list of names. 
 
 A moment later ... he had moved to the 
 telephone then he was in the hall, giving instruc- 
 tions to a footman. She could hear the answer. 
 
 "Very good, sir: I'll take my bicycle 
 
 Sydney found her way to a chair. She felt shaken 
 and weak, so laying back her head, she merely 
 waited. The house moved now, pulsed; doors 
 banged, steps hurried down the corridor. Romeyne 
 was still at the telephone. Someone knocked and 
 entered. It was Morton the butler, and Sydney 
 noticed that he was trembling. 
 
 "We went to Mr. Belby's room, sir. But he was 
 not there he'd shot himself sir, just outside the 
 dining-room window." 
 
 "Is he ?" 
 
 "He is dead, sir." 
 
 Romeyne set down the telephone receiver. 
 
 "Poor devil," he said, and then, "Do what you 
 can, Morton: I'll be there in a few minutes but 
 I must speak to his Lordship first, yes, operator 
 don't they answer?"
 
 214 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 He was back again at the telephone before the 
 butler left the room. ... So the man had 
 killed himself, had he? He must have been the 
 secretary from whom so much that interested Mr. 
 Leo had come. Had she not heard his name be- 
 fore? She thought vaguely for the recollection but 
 failed to find it. She could not seem to feel the 
 horror as she ought . . . she was too tired. 
 
 But when Romeyne finished the call and came to- 
 wards her, she stood up as a private comes to atten- 
 tion in his officer's presence. Her face quivered. 
 Romeyne's pupils were dilated and he gathered her 
 icy hands into his own. 
 
 "I knew it! I knew you were wonderful! What 
 can I say how thank you for this night's/' work? 
 Yes: it was in time I feel sure of it no one in 
 the world but you could ever have carried it 
 through." 
 
 She tried to reply, but she was overdone and for 
 a breath the room spun and she was in danger of 
 falling, but for his arm. His eyes were looking 
 deep, deep into her own ... his mouth quiv- 
 ered. What wave engulfed her at his touch sweep- 
 ing her close into his arms, against his heart, while 
 his voice called brokenly upon her name? Always, 
 in that passionate moment, she was conscious of 
 novelty of bewilderment. 
 
 A sound of a door closing upstairs. 
 Steps in the passage the whirling room steadied. 
 Romeyne released her and she saw that the exulta- 
 tion in his face had given place to pain: embarrass- 
 ment. He made a gesture half of despair, half of 
 dismissal, and she instinctively obeyed, moving to 
 leave the room just as Morton limped back into 
 it. On the threshold she looked back. Romeyne 
 stood by the mantelpiece, his face hidden in his 
 hands. The telephone bell rang loudly. . . .
 
 BOOK IV 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 
 
 215
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 HUGH EASTERLY, passing his thin hands over the 
 wheels of his chair, moved himself into the shade 
 of the giant cedar that shaded the terrace. The 
 August afternoon was full of warm breeze which 
 seemed to exhaust the boy more than actual heat; 
 and he put his head back on the cushion with a 
 movement of restless impatience. Overhead, an 
 aeroplane circled in the sunshine, humming, and 
 Hugh, as he looked, knew just how it felt to guide 
 the 'bus on a day like this just what it meant to 
 shut off power and slide down the long slopes of 
 air. That's what he himself might have been do- 
 ing, this very afternoon if . 
 
 Through the glass door of the morning room his 
 mother came out on the terrace and walked towards 
 him, in her black dress. Before his injury, Hugh 
 had not been given to noticing things about his par- 
 ents, but at that moment she seemed to him very 
 straight and imposing, very splendid altogether, 
 though certainly since Tom's death her hair had 
 grown whiter and her step slower. She drew her 
 chair near to his in the shade and took up her knit- 
 ting. 
 
 "Dad come yet?" Hugh asked. 
 
 "I've just been speaking with him on the tele- 
 phone," said Lady Easterly, "he will be here for 
 tea, I hope. But he's very much put out because 
 the invaluable Miss Lea has broken down and gone 
 away to rest." 
 
 "How very boring for him. I can imagine how 
 he hates it. I thought Miss Lea was supposed to 
 
 217
 
 218 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 be one of those wonderful Yankee machines that 
 never run down." 
 
 "On the contrary, to my eye the girl has been 
 looking badly for some time. I told your father 
 so, only last week, but he would not listen to me. 
 He's very dependent on Miss Lea and says she is 
 the best secretary he has ever had and of course he 
 is overworking himself as well. But at all events, 
 she has had to go somewhere into the country, I 
 believe, for a fortnight or more." 
 
 "Perhaps," Hugh suggested yawning, "it will 
 force him to rest too." 
 
 "That's what I hoped. . . . But at the mo- 
 ment there seems to be something on and he's very 
 much upset. ... I don't think he's quite been 
 himself, Hughie, since Hector Menzies . 
 Well, and now a Minister has resigned and a great 
 many rumours are flying about ... he said 
 he would tell us more when he came home." 
 
 "It would be a deal better for the nation if the 
 jolly lot of them resigned, I think," was Hugh's 
 verdict. 
 
 "Well, you know, dear," said Lady Easterly 
 mildly, "most of us don't think so. There ! that's 
 the telephone again?" 
 
 She hurried into the house and it was ten minutes 
 before she reappeared. 
 
 "That was Dad once more," she began looking 
 troubled, "he won't be out after all, until tomor- 
 row." 
 
 "Did you ask him what the row was about?" en- 
 quired her son. 
 
 "Yes: but you know he never talks about such 
 things over the telephone. But he 15 put out. He 
 tried to get hold of Adrian, and Parker tells him 
 that Adrian went last night to France." 
 
 "Some F. O. job, I suppose."
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 219 
 
 "Quite so: but your father doesn't understand 
 it. He said Adrian ought not to be absent at this 
 time. ... It appears there is something ser- 
 ious, some scandal in this resignation. He spoke 
 very gravely, and of course he complained that it 
 was frightfully inconvenient to carry on wlithout 
 Miss Lea." 
 
 "Damn Miss Lea," said Hugh violently; "I wish 
 she wasn't an American!" 
 
 "But my dear boy, why?" 
 
 "Oh, mum, because I do think they are behaving 
 so very badly. After the Lusitania, we all thought 
 that they would do something, but they go on just 
 the same filling their pockets and taking kicks from 
 the Kaiser. People of our blood and speaking our 
 language and thinking only of the dollars they 
 can make! It has made me simply sick!" 
 
 "I agree at the same time there is no reason at 
 all for feeling that way toward Miss Lea," pro- 
 tested his mother, "especially when she has proved 
 that she feels just as we do about it. She stays in 
 England for no other reason, she told me as much. 
 And lots of nice Americans over here feel the same. 
 You haven't seen as much of them as your father 
 and I have. In the Red Cross and all that why 
 they're wonderful. Janey told me that when Mrs. 
 Willoughby Kent sent a request to New York for a 
 subscription for her work shop making those pa- 
 pier mache moulds, you know, for facial cases 
 they cabled her a thousand pounds like that ! With- 
 out even a question!" 
 
 "I don't think that makes it a bit better." 
 
 "We don't know all about the political situation 
 there, either, remember. Things in the States are 
 different they've a very large foreign population." 
 
 "That's why I don't trust any of 'em. Once a
 
 220 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 Hun always a Hun and once an American always 
 an American." 
 
 "Well, but, Hughie, once an Englishman always 
 an Englishman, too, I hope!" 
 
 Hugh only grunted. He had these sudden irri- 
 tations nowadays caused perhaps by the neutrality 
 of the United States perhaps by the disobedience of 
 his Aberdeen terrier. Any opposition caused them. 
 The doctors said it was a phase of his nervous condi- 
 tion, that it would pass as he grew stronger. Ar- 
 gument and so on should be avoided. 
 
 His mother glanced at him in concern. There 
 he was, after all, alive and though the face was 
 pinched and the eyes pain-darkened and the wheeled 
 chair held legs almost useless still, yet he was there, 
 he was alive and at his age the doctors held out 
 hope of a complete recovery with time. She changed 
 the subject and although his replies were listless, yet 
 he did not utter any further fulminations against 
 the Americans. Lady Easterly had rather intended 
 to remind him of what he owed to the suggestion 
 of one American and the treatment invented by a 
 second with a Hun name, too! but thought bet- 
 ter of it. Moreover, she had a leaden feeling that, 
 in Hugh's opinion, nervous invalidism in a wheeled 
 chair might not be the same subject for congratu- 
 lation as it seemed, at times, to his mother. 
 
 Shadows lengthened as they sat together. With 
 the tea-tray and in the wake of Smith who bore it, 
 Janey appeared, very tired, but quite cheerful, after 
 a long day of hospital scrubbing. She brought a 
 newspaper, wherein the Cabinet Minister's resigna- 
 tion, for that issue, took precedence even of the 
 Somme offensive. Certainly, there were a great many 
 rumours afloat and it was even hinted, as Hugh read 
 aloud, that a member of the Minister's own family 
 was involved in his fall the same member at whose
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 221 
 
 divorce proceedings a year ago, the presiding Justice 
 had made, from the Bench, some unusually caustic 
 comments. Hugh speculated and seemed interested, 
 and even Janey who knew little about politics and 
 cared less asked questions, but Lady Easterly did 
 not enlighten them. She knew about the girl of 
 course, but she had always thought it a horrible 
 story.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 SYDNEY, too, read about the resignation of a Cab- 
 inet Minister, as she lay out in the fields on that 
 same soft and breezy August afternoon. She was 
 still living in the strangest bewilderment; conscious 
 only of a profound sense of illusion, moving, speak- 
 ing, thinking in its penumbra as a person who has 
 been insensible moves and speaks before the full 
 return of consciousness. She was completely dis- 
 oriented: her mind occupied with certain memories, 
 visions, ideas, so new, so poignant, that it was filled 
 to the exclusion of everything else. Her old self 
 seemed pushed, as it were, to the door-step, and the 
 door shut. There was another occupant within. To 
 a girl of her type, the upheaval caused by sex emo- 
 tion is far greater, because it has not been waited for, ' 
 expected, taken for granted, as it is with many wo- 
 men. Sydney had had no masculine relations in her 
 life which in any way differed from feminine rela- 
 tions. Her dreams on this subject had been very 
 vague. She belonged to that group of young Ameri- 
 cans who make a cult of comradeship. The girls 
 are proud of being "friends" of the boys: the 
 boys arc proud of feeling "no nonsense," about the 
 girls. Marriage is rather assumed to be an exten- 
 sion, qualitative and quantitative, of that ideal. 
 
 Nor had there been anything in Sydney's exper- 
 ience to prepare her for this revelation. Certainly, 
 Eric Violand's half sulky, rebellious affection held 
 no enlightenment. Her friendship with Ashburn- 
 ham had not been touched with emotion at all; if it 
 had, she would have enjoyed it less. In regard to Ro- 
 
 222
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 223 
 
 meyne there had been a long and subtle prepara- 
 tion of hero-worship and admiration; the delicate 
 flattery of his appreciation, the melodrama of the 
 moment, the task which she had performed with 
 him and for him, responsibility, secrecy shared be- 
 tween them, strain, hour, touch, passion. The tide 
 that had swept her into his arms, seemed still, to her 
 imagination to beat and to harry the poor fragments 
 of her self-control. But if she felt the tossing of 
 these broken fragments in place of her steadfast 
 and continuous will, what about Adrian? She had 
 one letter from him, a letter showing in its incohe- 
 rence, its pride and its uncertainty, the humiliation 
 of a man who knew he had lost control. It was not 
 a letter hoping anything or asking anything. He 
 took upon himself all the blame for that sudden out- 
 burst "which, from one placed as I am to you, 
 was nothing less than an insult," and he craved for- 
 giveness. She thought too, reading between the 
 lines, that he craved oblivion. 
 
 "I refuse the responsibility of spoiling your life; 
 mine is already spoiled" he wrote; and again: "I 
 cannot claim that I feel the slightest sense of obli- 
 gation or of loyalty toward the woman who bears 
 my name but I cannot pretend either, that I feel 
 no loyalty toward my work, toward the position I 
 hold in the world. You are not one of the women, 
 nor I one of the men to whom passion is every- 
 thing. At such a time as die present, individual 
 happiness simply must not count renunciation is 
 a matter of noblesse oblige." 
 
 She knew he would not have been Adrian Ro- 
 meyne if he had not seen the barrier of class, of 
 caste and of tradition which lay between them. Also 
 she knew, she had been more than a year in Eng- 
 land that it was not marriage, however obtained, 
 that Adrian meant when he spoke of renunciation.
 
 224 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 Strange it was, the recurrent thought always, that 
 it was his work that lay between them ! How had 
 she changed from the old days! What would her 
 aunt, Mr. Hansell, Elizabeth have thought? It 
 was the fact of marriage alone which would have 
 counted in their eyes; and she had moods of despe- 
 rate humiliation that she could not feel as they did ; 
 as they would have expected her to feel. 
 
 She was young and she suffered; the revelation 
 thrilled her soul; passion was keen within her, she 
 suffered. Adrian, with just instinct and wisdom, 
 had written the truth and she clung to that truth. 
 She was not the woman nor he the man to whom 
 passion was everything. Ambition and love of power 
 were the ruling forces of his life; mental activity, 
 independence, order, were more to her than to the 
 majority of women. The only companionship which 
 they could hope for was one bound to thwart the na- 
 tures of both. Tolerant as his world was of evil, 
 it was quite intolerant of imprudence. Whatever 
 you did in your private hours, you must not afficher 
 yourself. Being the creatures they were, they were 
 certain to afficher themselves, and his career would 
 suffer. "It is better as it is!" she would tell herself; 
 and then longed fiercely for whatever misery life 
 might bring, if it brought only love. She could do 
 nothing as she lay upon the grass, but pray for the 
 passing of that agitating vision. 
 
 She tried to divert herself with the countryside, 
 that country, which for centuries, has interpreted 
 painting and vitalized poetry. Beautiful it was, 
 though drooping as it had not drooped for a thou- 
 sand years. The empty villages seemed to await 
 the return of their sons; the little churches, holding 
 aloft their appealing spires, bore on their walls a 
 shining brass tablet, fixed above the stiff effigy of a 
 Crusader, to witness the passing of his descendant,
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 225 
 
 a Crusader no less glorious. On the outskirts, chil- 
 dren and reservists worked at their allotments in the 
 abundant harvest. In every field, one could watch 
 the building of fat, golden ricks, the flocks of 
 crows quarreling over the stubble, and the young 
 Rosalinds of the land army bending to their tasks. 
 The "glory of the garden" was but dimmed; and for 
 the first time Sydney seemed to feel the roots of her 
 own being stretch down deep into its soil. From 
 this parcel of earth she drew those obscure vital 
 forces which alone count in the ultimate destiny of 
 human beings: those forces of race and nationality, 
 of hereditary tendency and custom, which make civ- 
 ilization. 
 
 The thought had a soothing quality, and soothing 
 also it was to drink in this pure soft air, watch the 
 slow passing of sunshiny hours and walk about the 
 quiet meadows, while she strove to regain the self- 
 control and security of mind, that had been so vio- 
 lently twitched out of the grasp. She tried to read, 
 to study, but with less success ; books, at the moment, 
 had lost their power. 
 
 But life, though its pages are so often left un- 
 finished, has a way of adding a paragraph later on, 
 putting in long afterwards a detached sentence, so 
 that finis to an incident is really never written. Fate 
 thus threw in Sydney's way an encounter which 
 would have been purely amusing, if her whole nature 
 had not been so profoundly stirred and tense that any 
 touching of those strings brought pain. 
 
 She had been strolling through the village to which 
 Long Green belonged and she noticed a cyclist stand- 
 ing at the door of the Cross and Keys. Something 
 about his figure, which was strong and pudgy, his flat, 
 round face and sharp eyes, seemed familiar but 
 only when he came forward and greeted her in a cor- 
 dial, if lisping voice, did she realize it was none
 
 226 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 other than her countryman, Mr. Gualtier Delaplaine. 
 
 "Why, Miss Lea ! Whoever would have thought 
 it I England is surely the most amazing island and 
 the most romantic!" 
 
 "There's no romance about me," said Sydney smil- 
 ing, "at least, at the moment," she added. 
 
 "Is there not? Well, I'm not at all sure " said 
 Mr. Delaplaine, "Are you living here? I didn't 
 know Sir Thomas's place was hereabouts." 
 
 "It isn't. I am here resting at a farmhouse." 
 
 "And your M. P. ? How does he get along with- 
 out you?" 
 
 "Quite well, I assure you. But you are you still 
 successfully keeping the War from disturbing your 
 peace of mind?" 
 
 There was just that delicate chill about her ques- 
 tion which he remembered and remembered also, that 
 he had decided she was a person with whom it was 
 best to be frank. 
 
 "Not so successfully," he observed, tilting his bicy- 
 cle inside the iron fence and turning so as to fall into 
 step beside her, "in fact, I have about made up my 
 mind that it is a mistake to try." Sydney felt her dis- 
 like of the man somewhat lessened by the speech, but 
 she was by no means convinced. 
 
 "Really? And to what extent?" 
 
 "To the extent," rejoined Mr. Delaplaine, clasp- 
 ing his hands behind his back and speaking confidenti- 
 ally, "that I've applied for a job in the munitions 
 
 factory Oh I've changed," he added "quite a 
 
 little since I talked with you. At one time I thought 
 of going home to the States but then I felt sure 
 from all I was hearing from my friends there it 
 would jar, so instead but listen, are you busy? Or 
 may I walk with you ? Because there's a great deal I 
 have to say." 
 
 Sydney acquiesced. She was reluctant, but curious
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 227 
 
 as to what this strange individual might have in his 
 mind. They strolled on together, leaving the road 
 at the next stile and crossing the field into the shade 
 of a wood. Although Mr. Delaplaine had declared 
 he had so much to talk about, yet he apparently 
 found it a little hard to begin. 
 
 "Our friends the Fredericks seem to have come a 
 most awful cropper, haven't they?" he said at last 
 somewhat abruptly. "Apparently, they can't even 
 leave their place Have you seen Hilda at all?" 
 
 "Not at all," she answered and went on clearly 
 and slowly. "It became so very plain, you see, why 
 they had made friends with me Sir Jacob made so 
 many advances and attempts beside those which they 
 had made through you; that I didn't feel as I should 
 have felt to real friends in misfortune I felt merely 
 glad to be rid of them !" 
 
 Her reply seemed to embarrass him and his flat 
 face turned red. "What do you mean advances 
 through me?" he proffered awkwardly. 
 
 "I think you forgot that I was a compatriot," Syd- 
 ney said gently. 
 
 "I always felt that Hilda underestimated you," he 
 finally acknowledged with candour. 
 
 "Both of you all of you did that." 
 
 "But you're quite wrong, Miss Lea, when you say 
 'all of you' as though I were one of them. I never 
 was. Sir Jacob had been awfully decent to me, and 
 its true that but for him when the War came and the 
 Aesthetic Review ceased paying, I'd have been down 
 and out. Hilda, too, she was a good friend to me. 
 I told them, and kept telling them I thought^ they 
 were mistaken about you, y'know; and I didn't be- 
 lieve you were the kind they thought, but I couldn't 
 refuse just telling you what they wanted when they 
 asked me. ... Of course, I never dreamed
 
 228 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 why, and I never thought it would lead to all this." 
 
 "That I quite believe, Mr. Delaplaine." 
 
 "I suppose you think I'm a perfect Hun, and God 
 knows what?" 
 
 "No," she answered, "I think only that, like too 
 many other writing people, you've refused to realize 
 this War at all the danger we are all in we Ameri- 
 cans most of all." 
 
 "I never was pro-German !" 
 
 Sydney very rarely allowed herself the luxury of a 
 quotation, but in this case she knew how to meet Mr. 
 Delaplaine on* his own ground. 
 
 "Non ragionam di lor" she murmured, "ma 
 guarda e passa." 
 
 Mr. Delaplaine nodded, almost meekly, and they 
 walked on for a few yards in silence, while he evi- 
 dently digested his mortification. That this was 
 honest she could not doubt; and yet she was by no 
 means fundamentally reassured. 
 
 "Well, I only want you to know that I knew no- 
 thing about what they were after," he repeated, as 
 one repeats an apology. "I could see nothing dis- 
 loyal about the Fredericks, and I rather supposed I 
 was putting a good thing in your way." 
 
 "Such a good thing, for example," she swiftly and 
 sweetly answered, "as that pistol which your friend 
 Mr. Belby put to his ear in the dawn?" 
 
 This observation had an absolutely stunning effect 
 on Mr. Gualtier Delaplaine. He stopped dead 
 still in the path, turned entirely white, and when he 
 walked on again, it was with the mechanical and ir- 
 regular step of a man who has received a severe 
 shock. 
 
 "Miss Lea," he said in a breathless voice "how, 
 in the name of God, did you come to know that about 
 about poor Belby? I could have sworn that not a 
 human being in the United Kingdom but myself knew
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 229 
 
 the manner of his death! It has been kept a dead 
 secret." 
 
 "I know. I was there." 
 
 "Where where he died?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 He muttered a "My God!" and wiped his damp 
 forehead. His companion was however already re- 
 penting having said so much, and for other reasons 
 than because she was convinced that his emotion was 
 sincere. She spoke more kindly. 
 
 "I ought not to have said that no doubt. Yes: 
 I feel sure that you had no part nor parcel in the 
 doings of Mr. Belby. But you did admire him, when 
 you should have known better. I'm glad you are 
 going into the munition factory, Mr. Delaplaine." 
 
 "I am glad myself," he replied, a trifle hoarsely. 
 "If I had my doubt this talks ends it." 
 
 They had come in sight of the cottage gate by this 
 time and Sydney held out her hand to him. Mr. 
 Delaplaine shook it, but his own trembled. 
 
 "I am inclined to think, 1 * he observed, "that you 
 are a remarkable young woman after all 1"
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 THREE weeks rest and change of air accomplished 
 their purpose ; her nerves steadied once more and she 
 began to sleep again. A letter from Sir Thomas 
 showing his real need, found her ready. 
 
 After all, work is the only true sedative. The 
 only safety and health for the soul was to throw one- 
 self once more into that intricate and incessant ma- 
 chinery. . . . She knew work would never seem 
 quite the same. Life was full of these unfinished 
 pages, and there were times when Sydney felt that 
 Destiny was turning them a little too breathlessly. 
 
 Sydney arrived at Easterly Park, and was met by 
 Janey with the dog-cart, and that shy friendliness 
 which was so particularly Janey's, and which also, 
 joined as it was to reticence, made her the most Eng- 
 lish member of her family. The two girls were de- 
 cidedly curious about one another. Sydney, wonder- 
 ing if Janey ever spoke what was in her mind ; Janey 
 wondering about the conversation she had heard that 
 morning between her parents. 
 
 "I suppose," her mother said, "that Miss Lea, 
 being an American, will dine with us?" And Janey 
 had been rather glad when her father answered, "Oh 
 yes, of course, quite so, " because that prevented 
 Miss Lea from having her dinner on a tray sent up to 
 the nursery, as her governess used to do. At the 
 same time, she had been a little perplexed as to why 
 being an American made such a change in these estab- 
 lished customs. So she asked Sydney direct and cau- 
 tious question about that supposed paradise of young 
 women the United States. To some of which Syd- 
 
 230
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 231 
 
 ney, laughing, answered that she could not pretend 
 to answer. They got on very well on that occasion, 
 and Janey was glad the secretary had arrived. 
 
 Tea was in progress on the terrace, when several 
 hours later, after finishing some letters, Miss Lea 
 came out a little shyly and joined the group. Lady 
 Easterly smiled at her over her knitting. Janey sat 
 near Hugh, who, bending forward in his chair, was 
 teaching his dog to beg for bits of cake. Very pleas- 
 ant to look on was the emerald turf; the comfortable, 
 low-windowed, ivy-draped house, the brilliant flow- 
 ers, the dark shade of the great cedar. A bluish mist 
 veiled the outlines of the trees on the edges of the 
 park, and a couple of swallows did what Hugh called 
 "aeroplane stunts," skimming low over the lawn. 
 Sydney drank her tea, feeling the restful leisure of it 
 all. In her white dress and her pale face, with her 
 dark hair and darker eyes, she herself looked like 
 a black and white sketch in the midst of all that 
 color. 
 
 "Really, the girl is lovely." Lady Easterly re- 
 flected and could not help glancing, somewhat anx- 
 iously, at Hugh. Presently Sir Thomas came out, 
 waving the Evening Standard in one hand and the 
 Westminster Gazette in the other, and they saw that 
 he had good newjs. 
 
 /'The D. S. O. ! Donald has the D. S. O. !" he 
 cried and saw the color deepen in his daughter's 
 cheeks. Donald was the young Master of Lochiel, 
 whose interest in Janey Easterly had recently been 
 rather pointedly ignored by her parents, because they 
 had fear in their hearts. Everyone in the family was 
 delighted to hear of Donald's luck and Sir Thomas 
 read aloud the notice in his precise voice, with 
 his eye-glasses very far down on the end of his nose. 
 
 "It's just too splendid," declared his wife, but her 
 hand sought her boy's for a moment and in that
 
 232 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 pressure was a sympathetic comprehension which he 
 valued the more because she showed no trace of it 
 in her voice. 
 
 "By the way, I heard something else today which 
 is not yet generally known," remarked Sir Thomas. 
 "Of course it is not unexpected. Adrian is to be in 
 the next Honour's List he is to have a Peerage. I 
 lunched with him today just before he left for Scot- 
 land." 
 
 "Not really? How very interesting ! What title 
 will he take?" asked Lady Easterly, much interested. 
 
 "It is a Barony, I believe, and he will be Lord 
 Waveney." 
 
 "Why, but then," said Hugh, "he will have to 
 go into the Lords. Beastly shame, I call that its 
 the back shelf, covered with dust." 
 
 "Not at all not at all!" asserted his father 
 warmly; "the Lords have been the only active cham- 
 ber during the War. It is ridiculous the way you 
 younger men talk and think about them." 
 
 "Maybe, but it's true," Hugh rejoined coolly, help- 
 ing himself to cake. "I believe in aristocracy, you 
 know, Dad, and I want the world made as unsafe for 
 democracy -as possible " this with a side-glance at 
 the American present "but the aristocracy I want 
 has got to be a younger and more active body than 
 the Lords. I'm truly sorry for Adrian and I'm sur- 
 prised too. No doubt they put him where they think 
 he'll be out of the way." 
 
 "The present Ministry will not stay in power for- 
 ever. And Adrian has always had the confidence of 
 both parties. I don't agree with you at all about 
 shelving him," said Sir Thomas, "but we must wait 
 and see." 
 
 "Dad has become the perfect Asquithian lately," 
 said Hugh, but he laughed a little and the sound 
 brought relief into his mother's face. If only he
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 233 
 
 would not argue with his father 1 She put her knit- 
 ting away and rose. 
 
 "I must go and write to Adrian," said she, "also, 
 I suppose, to Lady Waveney." 
 
 "Lord, how she will lap it up," Hugh chuckled 
 "Move my chair into the shade again, mum, will 
 you?" 
 
 She complied, shaking her head at him. "You do 
 feel stronger today, old son, don't you?" she asked 
 fondly. 
 
 "I feel strong enough to write myself to Adrian 
 and urge him to get a divorce," answered Hugh 
 flippantly. "It was never in the bargain that Leila 
 should be a peeress." 
 
 Lady Easterly disappeared into the house and 
 Janey, murmuring something about a letter, followed. 
 Sir Thomas put on his glasses and reopened the pa- 
 per. Sydney, from her chair, watched the gyrating 
 swallows with idle intentness. . . . After all, 
 this title was just another door shut between them, 
 making it easier for her to stay on the oustide of any 
 career that he would have in future. She repeated 
 Hugh's phrase "the back-shelf." Perhaps Adrian 
 was tired and the back-shelf appealed. . . . 
 Perhaps. 
 
 "If you are ready, Miss Lea, I should like to get 
 those letters off by this post," came Sir Thomas's 
 voice and Sydney rose obediently. 
 
 Her stay at Easterly Park lasted a week and 
 brought certain other aspects of the changed country 
 life before her eyes. Not that these changes were 
 very observable there, since Sir Thomas was a rich 
 man and his house was neither an old nor an incon- 
 veniently large one. Except in the matter of luxuries, 
 therefore, flowers and hot houses and so forth, things 
 at Easterly were much as usual. But when Janey 
 took her off on a bicycle into the surrounding country,
 
 234 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 then Sydney saw how the stately and ordered exis- 
 tence which had been for centuries the envy of the 
 world, was passing, had passed. The great houses, 
 in vast parks, stood untenanted, save where the Red 
 Cross floated over them and men in blue bands 
 limped about the weedy gardens, or up and down the 
 mossy terraces. Cattle and sheep browsed unre- 
 buked on the very lawns, while an aristocratic white 
 peacock raised a shrill protest. Trees lay where 
 they fell, walls lay where they fell, gardens remained 
 weed-grown, unplanted. Within doors, in a few 
 rooms, some grey-haired straight-backed, splendid 
 woman, fetched and carried, and worked, in frocks 
 which a few years ago her own cook would have dis- 
 dained. One afternoon, the two girls turned their 
 bicycles between a pair of high ornamental iron gates 
 and pedalled smoothly along an avenue which to 
 Sydney semed, in a vaguely painful way, to be fami- 
 liar. Suddenly, they came upon a house, which 
 stretched out long wings into white arcaded terraces 
 with tall vases on them. The vases overflowed with 
 scarlet geraniums and Sydney felt for an instant 
 as though her heart had stopped beating. 
 
 They alighted from their bicycles and sat by the 
 roadside; Janey was a little concerned at her com- 
 panion's white face. Sydney looked long, long at the 
 house, and the arcaded terraces and at the vases 
 which seemed to be filled with blood. Then they 
 remounted their bicycles and rode home, Janey quite 
 triumphant that after all Miss Lea had affirmed of 
 an American summer, yet she should be so plainly 
 feeling the heat. 
 
 That afternoon was however unusually "close and 
 stuffy" as Lady Easterly said; and Hugh felt it very 
 much. He had been irritable, excited and argumen- 
 tative all day, and his mother finally felt it best to
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 235 
 
 leave him alone in his chair, where Sydney from her 
 window, as she was changing her dress, saw him. 
 Something in his weary attitude and restless move- 
 ments filled her with pity. Poor lad, was he maimed 
 and paralyzed in soul? Was there nothing one 
 could do? 
 
 A few minutes later she was standing by his side, 
 a violin case in her hand. Hugh opened his eyes 
 fretfully and they did not brighten when he saw who 
 it was. 
 
 "I wondered," Sydney asked holding out that vio- 
 lin-case, "if this was yours?" 
 
 A faint interest came into the boy's eyes. 
 
 "That's mine right enough," he said, not very 
 pleasantly, "where did you get it?" 
 
 "It was in the cupboard of my room. I wondered 
 if you'd mind," she went on briskly, "showing me 
 something about the E-string I began to fiddle a 
 little some years ago, but I will have forgotten it 
 all by now." 
 
 Half an hour later, Lady Easterly heard the 
 faint, familiar sound of one of Hugh's favorite airs, 
 and looked out in surprise. He sat alone in his 
 wheeled chair and his head was bent happily over the 
 violin. When she joined him, a little later, she saw 
 with relief that his face was full of peace. 
 
 "Where did you find your fiddle, dear boy?" she 
 asked. "I had forgotten it." 
 
 "Oh, Miss Lea found it somewhere and brought 
 
 it out here to ask me something. Look here, mum," 
 
 he suggested, "couldn't you get me that teacher who 
 
 used to be at St. Albans? I believe I'd take it up 
 
 again a bit. It would be something to do." 
 
 "No doubt I could I'll find out at once that is 
 if you think you are strong enough " she answered 
 gratified.
 
 236 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 "Oh well, if I'm not, as Miss Lea said, I can stop 
 whenever I like," replied Hugh tranquilly while his 
 bow drew out long and comforting harmonies. "I'll 
 not be so cross if I have something to do, mum," he 
 told his mother, and she assented.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 ROMEYNE remained in France and Switzerland for 
 nearly a month. He was very busy; he went from 
 Paris to Tours and from Tours to Berne; his tasks 
 took him as far as possible from the Front and yet 
 it seemed to him as if the roaring of the guns was 
 never out of his ears. In his talks with this man and 
 with that, he became constantly called upon to deal 
 with the situation created by an apparent military 
 deadlock and by a series of diplomatic entanglements, 
 complex beyond precedent. At these he laboured, 
 not without result, but all the while his mind re- 
 mained cool, untouched, and not very hopeful. His 
 judgment retained its clarity; and on the long journey 
 homeward his generalizations and deductions fol- 
 lowed one another with their usual accuracy and 
 force. Sitting in the slow, French train, with his ci- 
 gar, his eyes following mechanically the stiff rows of 
 poplars and the never ending line of camps, his mind 
 gave steady consideration to the vital problems con- 
 fronting his own country in its passage toward bu- 
 reaucracy; while his power of reflection so rare 
 during those hectic days of the Somme enabled him 
 to look forward as well as back. 
 
 The English system, superb in its capacity for the 
 slow building of empire, had never been well fitted 
 to cope suddenly with such a crisis, involving its very 
 existence. What had been in the first months of the 
 War the desparate struggle of a few individuals to 
 handle the Day of Judgment, had, by 1916, deve- 
 loped into an equally desperate struggle to prevent 
 all action from being stifled by the sheer numbers of 
 
 237
 
 238 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 people required to perform it. That small heroic 
 band of civilian men and women, who from August 
 to December 1914, had, by the sheer, dogged per- 
 sistency of their effort, acted as barriers against the 
 crushing weight of disaster was no longer there. 
 By their sacrifices they had created energy and sys- 
 tem out of chaos ; they had accomplished the impos- 
 sible as England has so often accomplished it. From 
 their single effort had sprung those Committees and 
 sub-Committees a pullulating mass of the untrained, 
 who could not make up in zeal what they lacked in 
 intelligence. To Romeyne's mind the body politic 
 seemed to lie like some huge giant, bound by pygmies, 
 and buried under a steadily drifting accumulation 
 of data. From beneath an immense heap of records, 
 forms and requisitions, the giant made occasional 
 spasmodic convulsions, which resulted in action; but 
 usually he lay inert, his movements but faintly dis- 
 cerned, if discerned at all. At this spectacle the Na- 
 tion gazed, respectful if depressed, while only the 
 Army and "Punch" showed impatience. The gen- 
 eral effect of such bureaucratic complexity and mul- 
 tiplication of powers was to bewilder the well 
 intentioned and furnish the incompetent with fresh 
 justification for their incompetency. No man could 
 possibly know all the people who were in all the other 
 departments, and some took pride in not knowing, in 
 trying to run what was essentially a cooperative busi- 
 ness without any attempt at cooperation. 
 At this point in his reflections Romeyne sighed: but 
 the difficulties remained in his mind, so that when 
 he lunched, the day after his return with his friend 
 Easterly at the Club , he gave that further form 
 and expansion to his ideas which is always to be 
 gained from a contact with a sympathetic listener. 
 Leaning back in his chair he discussed, in measured
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 239 
 
 terms as his way was, the new aspect which his jour- 
 ney lent to things at hand. 
 
 "The Government?" he said, in answer to his 
 friend's question "Oh, so far as I can see they are 
 sliding to dissolution down the slope of their own in- 
 decisions. .. * . You know how it has bejen. 
 
 . When in doubt create a new Department: 
 and each one of these Departments seems to contra- 
 dict and interfere with the operation of some other. 
 
 . There's a Ministry of Information to ac- 
 quire knowledge and to withhold it from the Ministry 
 of Propaganda, who were created to make use of it. 
 
 . There's a Department to stimulate Food 
 Production and a Department to regulate prices, so 
 as to prevent that stimulus from taking effect. You 
 think I am exaggerating? By no means! There's 
 the Committee to induce the Public to invest in War 
 Bonds, and the count&n-Committee on Taxation, 
 which is careful to see that the Public shall have no 
 money to invest! You have seen it in action." 
 
 "I have indeed," assented Sir Thomas ruefully; 
 and Romeyne, half like a man talking to himself, 
 continued to analyze the situation. 
 
 "Besides the automatic check which these Depart- 
 ments tend to impose, the one upon the other, there 
 has grown up an indefinite hostility between them. 
 
 . At dinner at the Welden's, the week before 
 I left for France she said that England reminded 
 her of a house where the cook will not speak to the 
 butler and the housemaids are at loggerheads . . . 
 because if one Department grants a permit for any 
 purpose, then the next Department will immediately 
 revoke that permit, if only to demonstrate its own 
 importance !" 
 
 "Very acute, Lady Welden always is but rather 
 too critical for these times, in my opinion," said Sir 
 Thomas.
 
 2 4 o THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 "She had my sympathy she had my sympathy," 
 rejoined Romeyne, with more personal earnestness 
 and less aloofness than was his habit. "You see, 
 Easterly, there are dangers which you fellows in 
 the House fail to realize. Procedure has become 
 complicated just when it ought to have been simpli- 
 fied. You have no idea how the City feels it how 
 the manufacturer feels it, how the whole question of 
 raw materials, of munitions, is hampered by it. For 
 example," he settled himself deeper into his chair 
 "this is what I heard yesterday at Storey's Gate. If 
 the High Explosive Department needs to purchase 
 some raw material, from the States, let us say; first, 
 its experts must convince the Ministry of Munitions 
 and the War Department of the necessity, then the 
 censorship must be argued with in order that the 
 cables concerning this transaction should not be drop- 
 ped into the waste-paper basket as being the machin- 
 ation of an unscrupulous neutral! If an agent be 
 sent over to complete the purchase, his credentials 
 cannot be too elaborately worded or he will be held 
 up on landing while the Alien Officer and the Port 
 Officer discuss whether a letter declaring that he may 
 land, means that he should land. Weeks pass : the stuff 
 is ready to be shipped if the Ministry of Shipping 
 can be persuaded to grant a permit and finally, when 
 it arrives the War Trade Department is so terrified by 
 its scientific name, that it is promptly refused admit- 
 tance to the country! Meanwhile, ... the 
 German guns are shooting it or something better 
 still for the purpose at Middleton, in France." 
 
 "This is appalling," said Sir Thomas and Ro- 
 meyne shrugged assent. 
 
 "That's why I am going to take a rest in Scot- 
 land," he remarked, "but I had to have my grumble 
 out first." 
 
 "If we go on like that, we shall lose the War.'*
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 241 
 
 "That is not a possible phrase for England, my 
 dear chap. Every man at the head of these multi- 
 farious monuments of bureaucratic red-tape has, like 
 yourself, a son at the Front or a son who will not 
 return from the Front. With all our faults of sys- 
 tem, there is no forgetting the fact, and where I 
 have been on the Continent I was still more struck 
 with the force of our invaluable national lack of im- 
 agination. When the French and Italian nerves are 
 quivering with the possibilities of German success 
 we thank God ! never admit it. ... But must 
 you be off?" 
 
 "I've just time to catch my train I fear. Miss Lea 
 broke down a month ago and I've been carrying on 
 without anyone she's back again and is to arrive at 
 Easterly today so I've much work." 
 
 "Ah?" said Adrian vaguely; and bade his friend 
 farewell. He sat for a few moments after Easterly's 
 departure, preoccupied with the effort to close again 
 the door of his consciousness which a name had 
 opened. That power of will, which enabled him to 
 live, as he put it, in water-tight compartments, had 
 never been more valuable. In these days he managed 
 to inhabit with comfort only the office part of him 
 to exist wholly in that bare, cold, business-like apart- 
 ment of his official position, with its rather depressing 
 outlook. Another door, into the richer quarters of 
 life, must be kept shut at all hazards.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 SYDNEY returned to London after the week at 
 Easterly Park with steadiness regained. The inci- 
 dent which had meant so much in her life seemed 
 closed, yet she had the feeling that this was only 
 seeming: the future would determine. Such service 
 as she had rendered to the Empire is not one that can 
 be recognized; she had joined for that brief space a 
 band of heroes who toil in darkness and are never 
 thanked; and the hand-clasp which Sir Thomas gave 
 her, with a few mumbled words, was more than most 
 of them receive. Sometimes she wondered half- 
 whimsically, half-bitterly, what he would have 
 thought had he known all! Her reward lay in a 
 sense of his complete confidence in her work, in the 
 increased dignity of her position, and the knowledge 
 that in a crisis, so much had depended upon her. For 
 the rest, the affair could not be talked of, she must 
 hear in silence the vague gossip, the rumours, which 
 clung about the political downfall of a great family, 
 whose tragedy she had witnessed; whose pain was 
 bound up with her own. 
 
 She was very much alone that autumn. Sir Thomas 
 did not come up every day and Miss Violand was 
 making her September visits in Yorkshire. The Pem- 
 ber Chynes and Cairds too, were out of town. There 
 was no lack of work, but she could' do it at her own 
 hours. Thus she had more leisure to note the changes 
 that were taking place in the world around her. 
 
 By the autumn of 1916, the War had settled 
 upon London like some monstrous growth, spread in 
 all directions, affecting all districts; swallowing up 
 
 242
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 243 
 
 vast blocks of building; choking the dry bed of the 
 lake in St. James' Park with a fungus of concrete 
 offices;, covering the turf of squares with huts; de- 
 vouring overnight whole rows of private houses; 
 breaking down the economic tissues of trade and ab- 
 sorbing its vitality; turning that city of eight million 
 inhabitants into one single factory and that factory 
 but one of a thousand such factories, in the most 
 gigantic business enterprise that the world has ever 
 known. For the first years, the streets had retained 
 their look of solid power and of immutable wealth 
 their air of indescribable permanency, which is Lon- 
 don's pride, and though the current that poured 
 through them had changed its tint to khaki brown, 
 there seemed to be no lessening in volume. Then the 
 lights began to be withdrawn; after the first raids, the 
 town became at dusk a place of mysterious blue dark- 
 ness pierced with dimmed taxi-lamps; a cloud of hur- 
 rying shadows, lit only by the bewildered stars or by 
 the guardian search-light, like a sword in the hand of 
 an arch-angel. About this time, especially in the 
 Parks, appeared the hospital blue, always recalling 
 the hue of the Madonna's robe in some primitive 
 Italian painting. Next, the uniformity, the stolidity 
 of the streets began to give way. For a long time the 
 populace had ceased to notice the woman in uniform, 
 just as they ceased to notice the trained nurse, but 
 now they never even turned to look at the trousered 
 woman. Girls with brown cheeks, short hair, strong 
 straight legs, whirled deftly to the curb huge vans 
 full of precious war supplies and emptied them of 
 their contents. The neat chauffeuse passed by, run- 
 ning a Government car; or the tall girl footman stood 
 by the carriage door, her bright hair coiled under her 
 high cockaded hat. 
 
 When the khaki began to diminish on Piccadilly 
 other Allied uniforms replaced its tan the French
 
 244 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 officer, with his pale blue cloth and dashing air; the 
 poilu, small, smiling, soldier-like. Bearded Russians, 
 Serbians, Montenegrins, Italians, wearing their 
 graceful grey-green cloaks, filled War Department 
 cars or jostled privates in uniform, among the crowds. 
 Colonial troops were everywhere; huge Canadians, 
 Australians, New Zealanders, marked with harlequin 
 spots of colour sprawled on the grass in company 
 with young women, wearing white boots. Ambu- 
 lances, motor-lorries, motor-bicycles, tore up Park 
 Lane. The royal equipages passed by, carrying the 
 wounded for an outing or bearing the King, the 
 Queen, or the Queen mother, to the conscientious 
 performance of their duties in hospitals and camps. 
 The crowd, seemingly apathetic to this spectacle, 
 looked dully on Royalty, but was roused to interest 
 by foreign notabilities. The native Indian chieftains, 
 who wore their khaki with a difference, were always 
 sure of a gallery; and there a group invariably gath- 
 ered to watch Sir Pertab Singh that splendid war- 
 rior as he cantered his chestnut in the Row, his 
 turban end streaming in the wind. 
 
 All this formed a pageant in variety seldom 
 equalled and in size surely never surpassed in history. 
 Special occasions called forth special colour; flags flut- 
 tered overhead ; women in brilliant dress sold trinkets 
 on the pavement. If at first sight this seemed a 
 pageant of empire, of rejoicing even, one had but to 
 move in the crowd, to note their expression of rest- 
 less excitement and to see how strain or loss had dark- 
 ened their eyes with its purple shadow. Like the 
 pageantry of the New England hillsides in autumn, 
 marking the passage of the year this too, was a 
 pageantry of change and death, and in the shifting 
 crowds, like blown leaves, as in their blaze of colour, 
 one marked the end of an era, the passing of a world. 
 
 Then the sky began to change. ... To
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 245 
 
 Sydney this change seemed the most awful, the most 
 significant of all. That man's rage should challenge 
 and defile the very face of heaven, the divinity which, 
 for unnumbered centuries had bent above him its eter- 
 nal peace, which his curses had never moved, which 
 his prayers had never reached, which had been the 
 very symbol of inaccessible immutability. Now it had 
 become the animated and terrible medium of death, 
 full of malign activities. Against the crescent moon, 
 that sinister goddess, women drew the blinds with 
 a shudder, holding their children close lest her rays, 
 falling on them, should cast on them her ancient 
 spell. Men, who in all their trials had lifted up 
 hearts and eyes to heaven, now cowered under its 
 mysterious betrayal. 
 
 The sky filled with strange movement. 
 From the first months of War, aeroplanes had filled 
 the summer days with their ceaseless humming. Each 
 morning now, two or three, great, round observation 
 balloons drifted over London from south to north, 
 gilded by the sunshine into delicate, fantastic bubbles. 
 A dirigible, a long, sinister, silvery thing with clatter- 
 ing engines, dodged among the chimney-pots. Always 
 on the horizon, four or five sausage balloons hung at 
 the oddest angles, while now and again in some re- 
 mote quarter of the Park, one came upon them at 
 rest in their lairs, two or three perhaps squatting 
 thereon, like big, tan-coloured elephants, quiet in 
 sleep. . . . Did one for a space forget these things, 
 one was sure to come upon high fences and patrolling 
 sentries, guarding from view London's defences 
 newly erected against the terror which flieth by night. 
 Vague, distant explosions shook the air, followed by 
 the thin notes of a bugle. . . . This was by day, 
 while at night, there was the ominous darkness. 
 Surely, mankind had lost the sky forever . . . 
 even although it had revealed a new and strange
 
 24 6 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 beauty. One night, Sydney was rewarded by a sight 
 well-nigh miraculous for she watched the search- 
 lights seeking to and fro for a patrolling aero- 
 plane . When their rays found and enveloped it 
 there it hung in the heaven, sparkling all over like 
 some golden bee and she drew breath sharply that 
 such passionate beauty should grow out of evil cruelty. 
 
 Her mind, remembering past things, travelled back 
 over the centuries in quest of comparisons and 
 found them not. Picture after picture might unroll 
 itself of battle and siege and sack but these, at 
 the worst, had never lacked the peace of nature. 
 How could man have risen to any achievement, had 
 he not felt the secure heaven stretched over him be. 
 neath which his weakness seemed so natural which 
 ever remained pure and untouched from his iniquity? 
 The very worst the medieval imagination could do 
 had not defiled the symbolism of the universe, had 
 not changed the music of the spheres to this daily 
 and nightly hum of death. Even Dante had come 
 forth from his dreadful pilgrimage once more to be- 
 hold the stars. Surely, the primal curse had never till 
 now been fulfilled. 
 
 One mild golden afternoon, as she rested awhile 
 on a bench near Stanhope Gate a van stopped near- 
 by, and three soldiers, alighting, began to release 
 some flocks of carrier-pigeons. The birds were con- 
 fined in shallow baskets and when these were opened, 
 their occupants crowded to the edge, paused, pecking 
 and glancing, then spread their wings, rose. The 
 flock circled about as if seeking some mysterious trail 
 and moved with one accord now soaring up into the 
 sunlight and above the trees, now swooping down 
 almost on the heads of the crowd. Always each time 
 it rose a little higher, a little further into the sky, 
 beyond the roofs. Then the instant came when in- 
 stinct took the helm the entire flock, as one bird,
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 247 
 
 wheeled, darted, disappeared. . . . Sydney liked 
 to think of the gallant creatures, soaring straight- 
 away across the fields and woods, stayed neither by 
 gun-fire, nor foul, factory smoke, nor poison gases, 
 "unhasting, unresting " swift to their home. 
 
 She questioned the soldiers in charge, who told her 
 that these were young birds, not yet fully trained, but 
 given a systematic series of flights, each one longer 
 than the last. When the final flock had flashed away 
 and vanished, she noticed that one bird had been 
 left behind. Bewildered, he had not taken flight with 
 the others, but had turned back into the shelter of the 
 cage. The soldier, pulled the young bird out and 
 held it kindly, soothing it, stroking its wings. "E's 
 just a bit afryde," said the boy grinning, "but e's a 
 fine bird, e' is!" 
 
 Such a still, sunny afternoon it was. ... As 
 Sydney walked slowly homeward, the dull, yellowing 
 leaves drifted down on her head and brought irresis- 
 tibly before her inner vision the glory of the New 
 England autumn. Dreamily, the pigeons in flight 
 moved through that vision spreading their wings, 
 darting through the splendid forests going home. 
 Her heart gave a sudden beat of longing; she seemed 
 to behold the sea and the great westering ships, with 
 their prows turned homeward. 
 
 As she came in sight of her own front-door, she 
 saw that there was a woman in uniform standing on 
 the step, quite an unfamiliar uniform, dark blue 
 with touches of crimson and a soft, jaunty little cap. 
 But was the wearer unfamiliar? Suddenly Sydney 
 gasped, and began to run. She ran wildly down the 
 sedate Mayfair Street and when the uniform turned 
 at her hurrying step she cried out: 
 
 "Oh Bess! Oh Bess!" 
 
 It was indeed Elizabeth, smiling, unruffled, com- 
 petent as of yore, her glance possibly a little more
 
 248 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 certain, her mouth even firmer. They held one an- 
 other like a couple of children ; they laughed together; 
 and Elizabeth kept repeating that she hoped her 
 friend liked the surprise. She would have written, 
 of course, but passports were so difficult and uncer- 
 tain, and sailing a matter of doubt until the very last 
 moment. . . . They went in together Giddy, 
 much impressed by Elizabeth's uniform, gave her 
 welcome as if she had been an old friend of the family 
 and they talked and talked together until long after 
 nightfall. 
 
 Such a wonderful Elizabeth! Her friend had 
 hardly been prepared for the change by her letters, 
 although these had lately held a note of doubt and 
 even of restlessness. There had been suggestions of a 
 great current moving Elizabeth, with other American 
 youth, in the direction of suffering and those vital 
 tasks which it creates. Sydney recalled sentences of 
 doubt regarding neutrality, regarding one's personal 
 responsibility toward Belgium, toward France and 
 she remembered feeling glad as she read. But there 
 was nothing doubtful about this Elizabeth there 
 was rather a fundamental certitude concerning her- 
 self, her mission and the whole United States. From 
 the most conscientious of neutrals, Elizabeth had be- 
 come the most aggressive of pro-Allies. Her mind 
 lived in a large, well-stocked apartment filled with 
 new opinions in packages, and entirely oblivious of 
 any room which it may previously have occupied. 
 She selected these packages and thrust them at you, 
 exactly as she had done with earlier ones, such as the 
 Monroe Doctrine, the ideal of Presidential neutrality 
 and the duty of being too proud to fight. She was 
 now primed with Lord Bryce's report and the Lusi- 
 'tanla medal; so that Sydney was seized with a wild 
 desire to laugh. 
 
 As to France no words could describe the com-
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 249 
 
 placency, the affectionate patronage of Elizabeth's 
 attitude toward France. There was nothing ap- 
 parently in the soul of France concealed from her. 
 It mattered little that her previous estimate of the 
 country was one where disapproval struggled with 
 admiration for a culture of which she understood 
 nothing except its value to certain important minds. 
 All that had now quite vanished, and the suffering 
 of France had given her a claim upon Elizabeth an 
 actual claim. Elizabeth felt that she understood 
 France particularly since having passed through it 
 in 1914. She knew all about the beauty of French 
 family life; the custom of the dot; the advisability of 
 light wines; and "our obligations to Lafayette." When 
 she spoke of France, her manner was maternal. 
 
 She had joined a college unit of the Red Cross, 
 formed three months earlier with a view of engaging 
 in reconstruction work. Just what this plan really in- 
 volved Elizabeth was not yet clear, but both her abili- 
 ties and temperament assured her an important place 
 therein, and her absorbed, afairee manner testified to 
 the spirit she brought to it. Her soul seemed to have 
 put on uniform as well as her body. After their first 
 greetings, she surveyed her friend with a shade of dis- 
 appointment and remarked that she had hoped by this 
 time to find Sydney engaged in war work. 
 
 "Organization of individuals in the present crisis 
 is really the only thing that counts," said Elizabeth 
 firmly; and again the younger girl was seized with a 
 wild impulse toward laughter. As they sat together, 
 the two years of separation seemed, in a vague way, 
 greatly to have marked the difference between them. 
 Elizabeth, with one neatly gaitered leg over the other, 
 her bronze hair just showing under the cap and her 
 general air of martial efficiency, was far from being 
 the Elizabeth who had fled in 1914 from that out- 
 break of lunacy known as the Great War. She was
 
 250 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 now perfectly in the movement and it was evident that 
 she had expected to find Sydney also in the movement 
 and was puzzled. 
 
 "I can't say I think you are looking well, you 
 know," she remarked in a dissatisfied way. "You're 
 rather pale and thin it seems to me." 
 
 Sydney brushed this view aside. "I was rather done 
 out in the summer and had to go away and rest," she 
 answered; "but I seem to be all right now." 
 
 "You seem to me different somehow," said her 
 friend and studied her in silence. Just exactly wherein 
 the difference lay she found it troublesome to say. 
 Sydney seemed taller, slower in movement, her thin 
 dress was more feminine, her voice was lower in tim- 
 bre and held unfamiliar notes. Her face was more 
 definite in modelling and the sensitive mouth had de- 
 veloped a certain strength her glance also seemed 
 to have more reserve and there was a quiet poise 
 about her which Elizabeth felt to be somehow un- 
 American. One felt there had been influences 
 but what caused them? Age, perhaps or work? 
 But what could there be in the routine of a private 
 secretary which lent one that air of having lived? 
 
 "I never quite understood from your letters just 
 why you left Sister Lucy," Elizabeth said. "1 should 
 have thought you would be so much closer to things 
 in the hospital to the War, I mean." 
 
 "Well, there are a great many sides to the War 
 r . . perhaps, if I had been a nurse I should 
 have felt so but you know I've never had any tal- 
 ent for nursing. And I am useful to Sir Thomas." 
 
 "What sort of things do you do for him?" Eliz- 
 abeth asked curiously. "Write his letters and so 
 on, I suppose?" 
 
 "Oh the usual secretarial work and keeping his 
 appointments and affairs in order; getting up reports 
 for him on Committees, when he can't be there;
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 251 
 
 and collecting his notes for use in the House," re- 
 plied Sydney, serenely, and somehow once more Eliza- 
 beth felt baffled. 
 
 "You like it?" 
 
 "Very much: and they're the kindest family in 
 the world." 
 
 "Well it seems to me dreadfully hole and corner; 
 and outside of everything," declared Elizabeth. "I 
 think you'd much better join the Unit and come 
 with us to France." She fully expected to have this 
 view met in the old way, by a vehement outpouring 
 of denial and assertion but Sydney at first remained 
 silent, then when pressed, simply said that she didn't 
 feel that way about it and changed the subject. 
 They talked almost entirely thereafter about Eliza- 
 beth s affairs and prospects and that conscious- 
 ness of profound change and reserve, continued pres- 
 ent to the elder girl. 
 
 The unit remained in London only long enough 
 to obtain the proper permits and during this time 
 they saw each other daily. Elizabeth was very much 
 absorbed in her unit: she was always a community 
 person ; one inevitably thought of her somehow as a 
 part of some organization. To be in London, in 
 uniform, a member of that philanthropic crusade 
 which she felt to be the great miracle of the time 
 this was wonderfully satisfactory to Elizabeth and 
 she was sorely tried by the fact that it seemed to 
 impress her friend so little. The younger girl was 
 troubled by her own lack of frankness it savored 
 of disloyalty. Yet how was it possible to pluck up all 
 her experiences of the last months and lay them be- 
 fore Elizabeth's inflexible gaze? She knew what 
 her friend's views were, and a contest with emotion 
 which was unremitting though successful was not 
 likely to gain much sympathy. Above all she could 
 never have yielded up the chief offender to Eliza-
 
 252 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 beth's wrath . . . which would have taken all 
 sorts of forms, drawn from novels. She could imag- 
 ine her friend's raised eyebrows and positive re- 
 probations and warnings against the immorality of 
 English aristocrats ; the idea made her writhe, though 
 all the while she agreed. So she said nothing; she 
 let Elizabeth go without letting her know anything 
 of importance about her own feelings. But she loved 
 her dearly all the while; and she felt desperately 
 the blackness of the day when Elizabeth departed 
 into that cloud of horror, from which came the 
 incessant grinding and roaring of the wheels of War. 
 It was worse, far worse, than their first parting.
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 TEN days later, Elizabeth wrote saying that she 
 was hard at work, that conditions were far worse 
 than she or anyone else, could have dreamed, that 
 the suffering was as far beyond her power to de- 
 scribe as she feared it might be beyond her power 
 to alleviate. Certainly, there was no complacency 
 in that letter, and the one or two following it soon 
 showed that her natural strength and capacity had 
 fully risen to the task. Then fell silence, and, for 
 Sydney, all of life once again became centered in 
 the room at Charles street, in typewriter and tele- 
 phone, in reports and blue-books, in measures and 
 debates. There was very little that autumn to di- 
 vert her mind beyond an occasional encounter with 
 some interesting stranger at the Pember Chyne's on 
 Thursday afternoon, or a romp now and then with 
 Edith Caird's babies. An unusually long stretch of 
 golden weather gave way at last to an unremitting 
 drizzle, varied by perpetual fog. These were even 
 welcomed since they brought some relief from the 
 menace of air-raids, one or two of which, that Octo- 
 ber were severe. 
 
 Miss Violand, urged by both Sydney and Giddy, 
 postponed her return to town until the danger from 
 them was lessened. She had not a very strong heart 
 and there was no doubt but that these alarms were 
 harmful to her, all the more because of the daunt- 
 less courage which allowed her to make no sign. 
 But her companions noted the blue lips and nervous 
 tremor with disquiet and were decidedly relieved 
 when she finally consented to remain away. Her 
 
 253
 
 254 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 conscientiousness took a great deal of argument to 
 combat and Sydney could not help wondering if 
 there were many elderly ladies in her own country 
 who would feel themselves obliged to remain in 
 danger for the reason purely of noblesse oblige; 
 because they did not wish to appear driven away! 
 Miss Violand stiffened her delicate head and ob- 
 served that she could not leave Sydney and Giddy 
 to face bombardment alone. 
 
 "But its bad for you, and Giddy and I don't 
 feel it a bit!" the girl urged for the fiftieth time, 
 "it isn't either as if you had any work to do about 
 it, dear!" 
 
 "I have work, Sydney, to show the enemy how 
 we feel. You know that's what he is trying to do 
 after all, to frighten us, the civil population, by these 
 attacks. If a person in my position runs away " 
 
 "How can you be running away, Miss Helen, 
 when all the world knows you always used to be 
 spending your autumn in the country, with the rest 
 of the gentry?" Giddy here indignantly inter- 
 posed. "Before the War, was you ever in London 
 in October, I ask you, mem?" She turned to 
 Sydney, her honest fact flushed, "Wasn't this 
 always the month for my cleaning and freshening 
 and painting? And now you are going to give the 
 Huns a chance to say they changed all your habits, 
 ay, and your father's habits and the whole family's ! 
 I don't know how you can bring yourself to do it, 
 mem!" 
 
 "You see how Giddy feels," Sydney joined in, 
 but Miss Violand only set her lips and shook her 
 head. Fortunately, an appeal to the doctor was 
 not without its effect and his opinion was final. Miss 
 Violand must return to her brother in Yorkshire and 
 that without delay, and from this decision there was 
 no further appeal.
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 255 
 
 Sydney and Giddy therefore, watched out the 
 raids alone. Sitting quietly together in the dark- 
 ness, they heard the sinister humming, the crash of 
 the falling bomb. Giddy knitted, her face finely 
 steady, her lips moving in prayer. The younger 
 woman, hot with rage and shaken by excitement, 
 yet drew calmness and strength from this com- 
 panionship which often in her after life meant 
 "England" to her mind, and nothing less. All the 
 while, her imagination played to and fro, touched 
 with wonder. That this should be her life, the 
 life of millions of people this incredible horror; 
 "the terror that flyeth by night"; and that men 
 and women alike should meet it with such uncon- 
 querable courage! She kept thinking of the people 
 she loved, those at home, then of Elizabeth, of 
 Adrian . . . was he safe? Flashes lit up the 
 little room, outlining against the window the old 
 woman's indomitable head. 
 
 November came, Miss Violand returned, Syd- 
 ney's days became once more still and regular. She 
 had many quiet evenings, reading aloud to her hos- 
 tess or anxiously discussing ways and means; rising 
 prices and falling comforts; food, fuel, clothes and 
 such details. Life kept steadily growing more ex- 
 pensive, more restricted within the sheer limits of 
 the possible. How were they best to meet this? 
 Forgotten economies of an hundred years ago be- 
 came in daily use. Miss Violand took to making 
 paper spills to replace matches for the coming win- 
 ter; she turned each envelope inside out and used 
 it twice. When she and Sydney dined alone, they 
 kept a bare table and used napkins made of paper. 
 Although omnibuses were scarce, and the women 
 who conducted them were rough, yet no taxi could 
 be used unless it were question of a journey. 
 
 Fires became a problem; so they shut up the
 
 256 
 
 drawing-room and sat in the dining-room. The 
 char-woman who had been Giddy's assistant, be- 
 took herself off and the old servant did her work 
 alone. This, she assured her mistress, was no 
 hardship, but there were other changes that upset 
 her more. She used to return from her marketing 
 with her mouth pursed into a grim line, and her 
 skirts, no longer stiffly starched, bristling with 
 indignation. The price of food was "just a fair 
 outrage." In Giddy's opinion this was all the fault 
 of "they profiteers" and she had no manner of use 
 for the present Government. "Indeed, I wonder, 
 mem," was her invariable conclusion, "whatever we 
 will be coming to?" And "I wonder too, Giddy" her 
 mistress would echo with a sigh. At desperate 
 moments such as when finding eggs 6/6 a dozen, 
 Giddy would not hesitate to prophesy revolution. 
 
 In December, the Government fell. Sir Thomas 
 had never ceased being a Conservative but he was a 
 Conservative with a difference, and he had felt the 
 weakness of the existing Coalition to have been 
 worse than the weakness of Asquith. Tory though 
 he was, he had one very strong bond of sympathy 
 with Mr. Lloyd George. Both of them were bent on 
 winning the War. Therefore like some other Conser- 
 vatives, Sir Thomas Easterly drew a long breath, shut 
 his eyes, swallowed hard, shut the door of his mind 
 on certain inconvenient recollections, and set himself 
 to work to support the new regime with all the 
 strength that lay in him. Change of Government 
 brought change of tasks, both to him and to his 
 friend, JLord Waveney. The latter, in particular, was 
 increasingly occupied and therefore no longer able 
 so he said to drop in of evenings for long talks in 
 Easterly's study. He was over-worked, he declared; 
 everybody was over-worked except the thousands of 
 workmen who did the least possible labour for the
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 257 
 
 shortest possible hours and preferred striking to 
 standing by the Nation and their necessary tasks. 
 
 Just after Christmas, there reached Sydney a long 
 letter from Harry Ashburnham, a letter written in 
 some remote district of southern Russia and for- 
 warded to her, thus escaping censorship, in the Em- 
 bassy bag. It was a brilliant account and characteris- 
 tically gave an analysis of the whole situation, politi- 
 cal and military, which presupposed in the recip- 
 ient a fair knowledge of the subject. She noted too, 
 with a smile, that he suggested two or three books for 
 her immediate reading such as Alexinsky's "Russia 
 in Europe" Tchekov's Comedies and certain 
 works by Stephen Graham. As a postscript, he put 
 these words: a l am adding some sheets which are 
 wholly separate from this letter, but which I wish 
 you to read carefully and give yourself, personally, 
 to Romcyne. They contain observations on the 
 trend of events here. There is no use in my sending 
 to the W. O. or to the F. O. to be snowed under 
 on their desks. I prefer not to do so. Although it 
 may be indiscreet to address myself to Romeyne 
 yet he is the only one of them who knows anything. 
 Moreover he likes you he will be inclined to favour 
 me on your account. I hope I am not a bother, but 
 I know he comes in often. . 
 
 What he enclosed was a close and succinct report of 
 a situation, which even Sydney could not read with- 
 out realizing its significance. Evidently, English 
 opinion had been wholly misinformed, since Ash- 
 burnham was so plainly convinced, not only of the 
 imminence of Russian revolution but also, what was 
 yet more vital to the Allied cause of the imminence 
 of separate peace. His analysis of the Russian char- 
 acter showed how its Slavonic dreaminess and fun- 
 damental mysticism had made the necessary war-dis-
 
 258 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 cipline difficult while maintaining all military effort 
 under an increasing strain. 
 
 Then followed a narrative of the writer's journey 
 from the Caucasus to the Urals, and beyond, into 
 Siberia, for the purpose of ascertaining the attitude 
 of these outlying peoples in event of Revolution. 
 Ashburnham felt that the people whose country lay 
 along the Don River might have a greater steadfast- 
 ness and vigour than he had been able to find in the 
 rest of Russia. The result of his travels was to con- 
 firm his opinion that the future lay here. Even now, 
 he believed, it was not too late for a concerted Allied 
 policy to control the situation for the present and to 
 guide its future. When the revolution did come, 
 Siberia would certainly hold a stable government, and, 
 federated with the tribes of the Don Valley, form a 
 great, new Nation, which should have every reason to 
 ally itself with the Entente. A bulwark might be 
 built against German influence, which outlasting the 
 present War, would transform, in time, the face of 
 Asia. 
 
 Upon the details of how best this dream was to 
 be realized, Sydney did not linger. She noted with 
 pride that they assumed for himself a task nothing 
 less than heroic. This was like Ashburnham, and 
 thus he fulfilled himself in her eyes, demanding for 
 his scheme, wide imagination in the conception and 
 tireless energy in the execution. One beheld him 
 linked to a long line of men who have carried their 
 torch into the far corners of the earth Clive, Cecil 
 Rhodes, or even, tremendous in failure, Gordon. 
 Under the breath of this inspiration, the secretary 
 forgot that the payment England most often exacts 
 of her empire-builders is that of disinheritance. Per- 
 sonal repudiation, personal failure even, have been 
 the most common reward of all those men from
 
 259 
 
 Columbus to Gordon whose task has been to remould 
 the world nearer to the heart's desire. 
 
 Naturally, Sydney was not insensible to the com- 
 pliment of such a letter. In Ashburnham's eyes she 
 was evidently a mind to aid, a personality to con- 
 sider, someone who counted, someone who dis- 
 tinctly counted. In these years she had learned, she 
 had thought, she had lived. She found that her 
 mind played about the contents of his narrative, with 
 flexible criticism and comparison, even with a touch 
 of philosophy. 
 
 Was this letter, she meditated, to prove in future, 
 just another expression of that eternal conflict be- 
 tween the English genius and the English character, 
 such as she had already encountered in the case of 
 Ernest Liston? Was she again to see individual in- 
 itiative fighting bureaucratic inertia? Would the 
 "mandarins" believe Ashburnham? 
 
 She spoke to Sir Thomas. 
 
 "What is your feeling, Sir Thomas, about the Rus- 
 sian situation?" 
 
 "About Russia? The reports are, certainly not 
 satisfactory, but I'm inclined to think them too pes- 
 simistic." 
 
 Sir Thomas did not think it necessary to tell his 
 secretary that the Government policy in regard to 
 Russia had been exactly as shifting, stupid and 
 muddle-headed as it had been In regard to some other 
 countries which he could name. He was not proud 
 of it; and moreover, he had grown a little cautious of 
 exposing the defects of the bureaucracy to the clear, 
 uncompromising and rather intolerant young woman, 
 whose mental grasp frequently amazed him. Youth 
 has often such an inconvenient habit of simplifying a 
 problem, causing questions of expediency to show up 
 in an uglier light . . . The Russian situation 
 called for a firmness and faith which the Foreign
 
 26o THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 office altogether lacked. Therefore, tapping his eye- 
 glasses reflectively upon his finger-tips, Sir Thomas 
 delivered a little lecture upon the need of a conserva- 
 tive foreign policy and the danger of taking too ex- 
 clusively the military point of view. Soldiers were 
 apt to rely on action, and thus lead the country into 
 trouble and expense. Sir Thomas had, it is needless 
 to say, perfectly recognized the handwriting of the 
 closely-written sheets lying on Miss Lea's desk. Miss 
 Lea listened with even more than her usual close atten- 
 tion to his remarks, 'but later in the day, on his way to 
 the Carlton Club, Sir Thomas wondered that she did 
 not mention this document and its contents,
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 So completely was she carried away on the cur- 
 rent of Ashburnham's enthusiasm, so absorbed by his 
 ideas and the possibilities they evoked that it was 
 some hours before she began to realize what it was he 
 asked her to do. . . . How, after what had 
 taken place, could she seek out Romeyne? The mere 
 thought sent a stir along her nerves, reviving all that 
 miserable restlessness and disquiet which she had be- 
 gun to calm. Yet to refuse Ashburnham outright was 
 to stifle his plan unheard. Sydney went out and 
 walked the streets, moving in the crowd as among 
 shadows and recalling how much she owed to Ash- 
 burnham's comradeship, to his colourful nature, to 
 his dauntless and spirited attitude toward life. After 
 all, the other page was ended; neither of them wished 
 to turn back to it. She returned to the office and 
 wrote : 
 
 "Dear Lord Waveney: 
 
 "A letter has come today from Colonel Ashburn- 
 ham, with an enclosure which he asks me to give you 
 personally, since it contains information of great im- 
 portance for your private reading. No doubt he will 
 be satisfied if Mr. Parker were to deliver it to you; 
 so that I have it here ready sealed for htm whenever 
 he calls. 
 
 "Yours very sincerely, 
 
 "Sydney Lea." 
 
 Waveney came on the following afternoon. She 
 heard his voice at the front door. "Yes, I know I 
 shall come in and speak to Miss Lea, for a minute." 
 
 261
 
 262 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 There was a hurried interchange between them 
 . . . both speaking at once. 
 
 "I came as soon as I received your note." 
 
 "I had hardly expected it would reach you so 
 quickly. 
 
 Then silence ... no expression of any kind 
 showed itself on the man's face ; the woman standing, 
 above her typewriter looked very tall and white. 
 . She handed him the letter and then seated 
 herself at her desk while he read it to the end. The 
 concentration of his attention gave her a renewed 
 sense of security the buffeting of her pulses ceased. 
 
 "What an imagination the fellow has!" he mur- 
 mured, turning the last page. "I wonder, now I 
 wonder, if he is right?" 
 
 "I feel sure he is !" 
 
 "You would you would, of course " he paused 
 walked to the fireplace and sat down on the fender, 
 while he continued. 
 
 "Just at the moment, I am out of touch with the 
 mandarins on this question. There has been other 
 work to do. I have been twice in France then, on 
 account of my wife's illness I have had to be in 
 Bournemouth. So it has been a broken autumn, alto- 
 gether, and I am out of touch. I must talk to Cecil 
 yes, I must talk to Cecil, and then there is 'Miche 
 Miche' he ought to know something ." 
 
 Her grave eyes lightened with a smile to hear him 
 use, as of old, the pet name of the Grand Duke 
 Michael of Russia. 
 
 "Surely," she ventured, "you will support him?" 
 
 "Who?" quickly, "the beau-sabreur? Ah, that de- 
 pends, I am not a Menzies y'see I never push a 
 lost cause." 
 
 "I never classed you with General Menzies for an 
 instant! . . . But is this a lost cause?" she
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 263 
 
 spoke with fire. "When one thinks what is at 
 stake I" 
 
 "He has more confidence than I in the result. 
 Moreover I have none in the ability of the present 
 mandarins. We're a slow and blundering nation and 
 our genius if any seems to lie in the forlorn hope. 
 If all Ashburnham predicts comes true and Russia 
 goes out of the War then we may be able by some 
 miracle of doggedness to save ourselves and France. 
 That would be like us. But prevent the misfortune 
 by the exercise of intelligent foresight and so on ? 
 No!" 
 
 Her tone became as ironical as his own. 
 
 "Then you believe only in muddling through?" 
 
 "Not exactly " he turned toward her for the first 
 time and spoke with more animation, tapping his em- 
 phasis on the fender's edge with a long forefinger. 
 "But it is true that we rise to our full power only 
 when things go against us only then do we co-or- 
 dinate, act. Over and over again, I have seen this 
 happen and in it lies all my hope for the future. 
 We shall beat the Germans but only because they 
 will come near to beating us. Every time they make a 
 fresh move the Zeppelins, the gas, the submarine 
 they rouse anew that force of resistance. Their 
 weakness lies in their logic; they reason: 'If we ter- 
 rify them sufficiently, they will lay down their arms.' 
 And we, illogically, never see it that way. If they 
 could leave us alone well, you know I have always 
 felt that we carry the seeds of disintegration within 
 us, and we are naturally a pacific people. But to get 
 back to Ashburnham. What would you do?" 
 
 She smiled a little at the question, but his face was 
 wholly serious. 
 
 "I think," Sydney said slowly, "that first, I should 
 go quietly about finding out what the real current of 
 opinion in the government was on the subject and then
 
 264 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES ' STREET 
 
 as they probably have no policy, for they rarely have, 
 on any Eastern question, so far as I can see, I 
 should set to work to form one for them. You have 
 done that before. . . . 
 
 "Oh, have I?" 
 
 She disregarded his interjection. "And you can do 
 it here, because this Government is a new broom. 
 There are the newspapers Lord Northcliffe will do 
 a great deal for you, if you wish, you know and of 
 course, one would have to find out how opinion goes 
 in France what Lord Bertie thinks. You might 
 send Parker to Sir George Buchanan." 
 
 He almost laughed. "I might. And then?" 
 
 She turned over the sheets which he had laid back 
 on her desk. 
 
 "Then there is the military program. 
 That would have to be determined . . . and 
 surely the War Office could find for you some men 
 who speak Russian? But you are laughing at me ." 
 
 "No!" he answered with vehemence "on the con- 
 trary you have my admiration. It doesn't matter 
 that your ideas are not immediately practicable the 
 point is that you have ideas. It is wonderful you 
 have my admiration. . . . And you have fore- 
 cast my plan of campaign exactly if." 
 
 "If?" 
 
 "If I saw any hope in Ashburnham's scheme." 
 
 "Then you see no hope in it?" 
 
 "It takes reflection," Adrian repeated, rising. "I 
 wonder what the Germans are doing there by the 
 way does he mention it?" 
 
 "Much the same thing, but more energetically than 
 England; and they are playing for the revolution." 
 
 "Well, one must wait and see how it turns out." 
 
 "I confess," said Sydney steadily, "that I am disap- 
 pointed." 
 
 "In me you mean?"
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 265 
 
 "I think in you." 
 
 "You expected me, I suppose, to catch fire from 
 your friend's letter?" 
 
 "I did not expect you to be cold and doubtful to 
 be on the side of Wait and See." 
 
 "Perhaps," he remarked in his quite unruffled 
 voice, "it may be for the best that you should see me 
 as I am." 
 
 She hastily turned the conversation away from the 
 personal to the general. 
 
 "I should have thought that by this time after 
 more than two years England would be tired of 
 muddle and willing to use foresight. Antwerp, Gal- 
 lipoli, Mesopotamia, Roumania what an indictment 
 what a list of failures!" 
 
 He made a gesture, but it was evident that the in- 
 dependence of her judgment was a new sensation to 
 him, and their eyes met, for the first time chal- 
 lenging, as strangers. 
 
 "Turn your mind then," he said, "and consider 
 the German successes. . . . Belgium's conquest 
 raised the moral protest of the whole world an im- 
 mense force, let me tell you ! The submarine warfare 
 will bring down upon the Kaiser's head the gigantic 
 weight of your country, of the United States. . . . 
 Believe me there is no failure like a German success 
 and there is no success like an English failure." 
 
 "Lord Waveney that is an epigram." 
 
 "You always stimulate me," he rejoined, then 
 with a change of tone "Don't let us misunderstand 
 one another, you and I. I have not condemned Ash- 
 burnham's scheme off-hand. I shall go over his letter 
 on the lines you so admirably indicated a minute ago. 
 . . . I shall think about it. Will that satisfy 
 you?" 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 "You admire and like Ashburnham, do you not?"
 
 266 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 "Very much but that has nothing to do with 
 it-~?" 
 
 "I am not so sure. I shall do my best for him, for 
 you both." He moved to the door of the room and 
 paused there, looking at her as he held the knob in 
 his hand. . . . 
 
 "I did not come, you know, to get his letter," he 
 said, quietly "but I made that an excuse. I wanted 
 to see you again." 
 
 Then, without further word, he went out.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 THE winter dragged on in long, grey weeks. 
 . . . Letters reached Sydney from Elizabeth, 
 short, hasty, horrified, written from nowhere and in 
 the midst of hard work. They filled her friend with 
 restlessness and discontent. Why stay on helping Sir 
 Thomas and contemplating the bureaucratic mud- 
 dlers, when there were children to be fed, babies to be 
 saved, hope brought to the living and graves digged 
 for the dead? This urge toward a vital task grew 
 strong in her surely, it would serve to quiet that 
 inner tumult. She hinted as much to her employer, 
 but Sir Thomas looked so horrified and distressed and 
 implored her so earnestly not to give away to unthink- 
 ing conscientiousness tha? she had not the heart to in- 
 sist. After all, perhaps it was true that others could 
 do reconstruction work as well as she. 
 
 Ashburnham wrote several times, full, long, inti- 
 mate letters, opening before her wide prospects and 
 talking simply of large things. . . . Then a 
 time passed ; they reached her at longer intervals and, 
 when opened, were found to be full of ominous muti- 
 lations. Where was Ke, that eager soldier? Was he 
 flying over the steppes in a sledge ? Or climbing some 
 mountain pass in the very Heart of the world? Or 
 bringing courage and order into the lives of strange, 
 helpless, barbarous peoples? Whatever he might be 
 doing, she knew Ke th'ought it "perfectly splendid." 
 Sydney found herself missing him very much and 
 eagerly looking for his return. For some weeks she 
 waited feverishly for word as to the fulfilment of his 
 hopes and plans. But Waveney made no sign. 
 
 267
 
 268 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 At midwinter came Janey's marriage to Donald 
 Lochiel ; one of those hurried characteristic Christmas 
 weddings, planned to take advantage of the young 
 officer's leave. Janey's mother felt a little dazed by 
 the whole thing and the contrast with what should 
 have been no engagement to speak of, no trousseau, 
 no plans; just a few hurried preparations no time 
 to think. What could one make of such a nuptial, 
 with its tragic undertone of parting ? Lady Easterly's 
 heart ached as her thoughts flew back to her own 
 wedding, with its delightful, leisurely hospitalities 
 and rejoicings traditions and preparations and con- 
 gratulations; their dressing the village church with 
 flowers, the household ball, the homecoming her 
 bridegroom, rosy and radiant beside her in the lan- 
 dau, as they passed under the triumphal arch with 
 "Welcome to the Bride" on it, at the gate of Easterly 
 Park. "Plenteousness and peace'" . . . the 
 words repeated themselves over and over to her mind 
 as she bowed her grey head in the dusky little London 
 church where the candles seemed unable to dissipate 
 the darkness which pressed in from the foggy streets. 
 "Plenteousness and peace" plenty of food, of 
 money, of land, of honorable tasks, of responsibilities, 
 and later, of young life in the house how little 
 had she realized these things ! Women of Ada East- 
 erly's class and type are not given to analysis, but she 
 spoke her thoughts to her husband in the car on their 
 way home. 
 
 "We did not appreciate what we had, I fear. 
 . . . We took all our blessings far too much as 
 a matter of course. When I looked at Janey ." 
 
 She did not finish, and Sir Thomas, his ruddy face 
 a trifle pale, nodded a silent assent. 
 
 These thoughts acheingly recurred to Janey's 
 mother during the rest of the day : when she saw the 
 bright haired maidens, her daughter's friends, gath-
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 269 
 
 ering around Hugh's wheeled chair; or when, that 
 evening, she came upon Weston, blubbering with her 
 head in the clothes cupboard because she could not 
 go as maid with "Miss Jane" on her brief honey- 
 moon. Janey had dispensed with Weston's services 
 since the War began; indeed, Lady Easterly herself 
 had practically dispensed with them, making use of 
 Weston as buyer to her work-party and knitter in 
 general to the mine-sweepers on the North Sea and 
 nobody took maids on their honeymoons nowadays 
 but still ! Weston's mistress dismissed her to her bed, 
 in that dignified and final manner which left no open- 
 ing for lamentation; but Weston was right, when she 
 said that "Her Ladyship felt it, felt the difference as 
 anyone could see." Her Ladyship felt it and Sir 
 Thomas felt it, but being what they were they said 
 nothing further to each other. After the sacrifice of 
 Tom's life and the sacrifice of Hugh's health what 
 was the sacrifice of Janey's wedding? After all, they 
 both came to feel that it was much to have Janey back 
 again in her old room poor Janey, with only a new 
 name, a new ring and the memory of a rainy week at 
 Bournemouth, to remind her of her changed estate. 
 However, she was radiant, very busy with her war- 
 work and her letters and docile as of old. 
 
 Sydney took a great interest in the wedding and 
 gave herself and her help freely. She had carefully 
 studied the bridegroom, a very solemn, very simple 
 Scottish boy, with a mind as childishly direct and little 
 cultivated as that of his bride, and he filled her 
 modern eyes with amazement. There was in 
 Donald's philosophy the simplest belief in things as 
 they are and a total absence of ambition. If heaven 
 spared his life it was not hard to see just what would 
 be after the War; a careful, well-regulated outdoors 
 existence, for a large part of the year, in a bleak and 
 remote part of Scotland, and an economical holiday in
 
 270 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 town in the Spring. It would all be arranged, or- 
 derly, planned out, to an unheard-of degree and 
 Janey's life would be the same. Incidentally, Janey's 
 son, if she had one, was practically certain to in- 
 herit a property improved by care and foresight. 
 This estimate comprised really all that one could 
 say of Janey's husband. 
 
 "Would you like to see our friend Waveney take 
 his seat in the Lords' tomorrow afternoon, Miss 
 Lea?" 
 
 "ISir Thomas?" 
 
 The question startled Sydney; a rare colour came 
 into her face. 
 
 "Why not? The ceremony is picturesque, a bit 
 of delightful medievalism. It will be certain to in- 
 terest you. I can easily arrange for you to see it if 
 you like," observed Sir Thomas, kindly, from behind 
 The Times, and the level unconsciousness in his tone 
 brought reassurance to the girl. Of course she 
 would go. 
 
 "I should be exceedingly glad to see it," she replied 
 truthfully. 
 
 . . . Why was it that everything connected 
 with the life of Adrian Romeyne should savor of un- 
 reality to her mind always excepting the few times 
 they had been together? Why was he so distant, 
 while so near? She could not discuss the feeling that 
 his personality in the world of which she caught 
 these echoes and glimpses was an illusion. The 
 man she loved, and in whose eyes she had read love, 
 seemed to have been created on that instant this 
 other man had wholly alien traditions, surroundings, 
 education the one was poignantly real and close to 
 her the other was like an admired figure in a book. 
 Better close the book and put it away on the shelf, 
 rather than continue to dream over the page. 
 
 Sydney had been to Parliament Buildings before ;
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 271 
 
 at her last visit, the Lords had been crowded for an 
 important debate. Now, the Chamber was all but 
 empty, throwing into relief for this reason, the warm 
 tone of the oak, the gilding, the crimson benches, the 
 lights, the embroidered canopy of the throne. . . . 
 A number of ladies occupied the galleries: she her- 
 self shrank into a sheltered corner. The three central 
 figures on the Woolsack were full of dignity except 
 that the Lord Chancellor's three-cornered hat seemed 
 to sit awkwardly on his big wig. . . . He was a 
 man with a wooden countenance; but the tall peer 
 who sat at his side with a reddish moustache had a 
 face full of humourous intelligence. . . . 
 
 A picturesque bit of ceremonial enough 
 the new peer between his sponsors Garter King at 
 Arms looking like the most gorgeous knave of hearts 
 conceivable, the risings and bowings and all the rest 
 of it. Waveney looked rather thin and worn; his 
 face seemed bloodless against the massed scarlet of 
 his robes. Sydney kept thinking of the trial scene in 
 "Alice" ; but it was plain that everyone else, including 
 the neophyte, took it very seriously. Evidently they 
 wrapped you up rather gorgeously when they laid you 
 away on the back shelf. The procession filed out of 
 the Chamber and from behind her back came the 
 voices of two men,, 
 
 "Yes, a charmin fella and all that. . 
 Splendid work during the War. . . . She's the 
 stumbling-block, I hear, otherwise it might have been 
 a Viscountcy." 
 
 "Likely enough to be removed before long, she's 
 very bad, they say. . . . 
 
 "Good thing too if she's as impossible as some 
 of 'em. With the right -marriage he'd make a real 
 thing of it." 
 
 "Oh, trust him for that!" 
 
 As she passed through the gallery and into the
 
 272 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 large entrance hall with its stone floor, there were 
 several Members of Commons standing about in 
 groups colleagues of Sir Thomas. . . . One 
 bowed to her vaguely. A little newspaperman came 
 up and shook her by the hand. Was that Waveney 
 himself who stepped for an instant into the hall? 
 She was not sure. 
 
 The Square and Whitehall were a swirling cloud of 
 blackness that January blackness, which seems 
 nothing less than an emanation from the pit, and in 
 which all the horrors of attack from the air seemed 
 to be intensified. One thought of the Germans as 
 part of that dreadful night as rejoicing in it as 
 turning the age-long picturesqueness of the London 
 dusk into a sinister shield for destruction. Her foot- 
 falls sounded in her own ears as she hurried through, 
 past Storey's Gate to the Park. Other footfalls came 
 up behind her and Waveney, suddenly and solidly 
 resolved out of the fog, fell into step at her side. 
 
 "So it was you. How odd !" 
 
 "Yes it was I. Sir Thomas told me it was an in- 
 teresting and picturesque ceremonial which I must not 
 miss." 
 
 "And did you find it so?" 
 
 "I thought your obsequies were truly glorious." 
 
 "But it is not that!" he cried, with a touch of an- 
 noyance in his tone. "Other people may think so, if 
 they like but not you !" 
 
 Her spirits had risen to the exhilaration of his 
 presence and there was pure playfulness in her answer. 
 
 "Then I will say instead that your new House is 
 commodious : in the best situation in London : it might 
 even be made comfortable with modern improve- 
 ments, which I believe you could put into it! And 
 certainly the view from its windows is over all the 
 kingdoms of the earth." 
 
 "But you think it is my final dwelling the grave,
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 273 
 
 just the same?" he questioned, half-responsive to her 
 mood, and half-serious. 
 
 "People say so : they say Requiescat in pace." 
 
 "Let them wait until I have given them another 
 word: Resurgam! Yes, it is delightful to find you 
 like this, particularly when I have bad news for you." 
 
 "You mean about Ashburnham ?" 
 
 "I fear his plan is hardly practicable at present. 
 The situation in Russia is exceedingly confused and 
 his opinion differs from that of many others. Whether 
 or no it is because his idea involves action, which they 
 detest I find that the powers that be are not at all 
 disposed to take his view. You know, I was not en- 
 tirely convinced myself." 
 
 "I remember." 
 
 They were walking through the Park toward the 
 dim, distant line of lights and roar of traffic which 
 defined Piccadilly. The Mall lay behind them, a gulf 
 of blackness, swarming with the small red lamps of 
 the taxicabs, like insects with luminous eyes. His 
 voice was warm and confidential and his coat brushed 
 her dress as they moved together. . . . Some- 
 times out of the darkness he saw her eyes shine. He 
 had not ever before thought of her as young and 
 merry as now when he saw her smile after the playful 
 words, or heard the vibrant response in her tones. 
 This youth touched him, too, and lightened his spirit. 
 He talked quickly, easily. 
 
 "Though not wholly convinced, yet I was struck 
 by what you said and I pushed Ashburnham's side 
 whenever and wherever possible; first, because I have 
 confidence in your judgment and then because I saw 
 you wished it." 
 
 "You are very good." 
 
 Nothing could be more conventionally decorous 
 than her answer; and he had a wild impulse to put 
 his arm about her shoulders and turn her face toward
 
 274 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 his to see if there was laughter in her eyes. They 
 moved on a step or two in silence and when he spoke, 
 his manner was as usual. 
 
 "By the way, what do you hear from the States? 
 You have seen the news?" 
 
 "I hear very little nowadays, but I saw about the 
 break of relations. . . . Ah, if we had only 
 come in a year ago !" He answered her, as English- 
 men were answering their American friends all the 
 world over, "But I understand so very well why you 
 could not." 
 
 The fog was lightening, had lightened; revealing 
 each more clearly to the other, more clearly also to 
 the passers-by. Once Waveney raised his hat, and 
 with the act, that sense of their being alone vanished. 
 On Piccadilly the traffic was heavy and they must 
 stand for a long moment, waiting their chance to 
 cross; smiling and talking happily together. Was it 
 Destiny that commanded the one motor in all Eng- 
 land to draw up at the curb? A face, pale and dis- 
 torted, thrust itself from the window, caught Sydney's 
 eye and held it; so that in the recognition she drew a 
 frightened breath. Where had she seen that face? 
 Where, but in a grey, terrible dawn, and when it was 
 white, as the pillow it lay on ... only, then, 
 the gaze fixed upon her had been desperate and plead- 
 ing, which now was intense with hate. 
 
 She stood suddenly frozen, so that Waveney 
 turned and saw. "Steady!" breathed his voice in her 
 ear, for she had plucked him by the arm. Someone 
 in the motor leaned over and pulled down the shade. 
 He guided her steps across the street, and when she 
 could look at him, she saw that he was biting his lip. 
 She asked tremulously; 
 
 "But, I thought they had locked her up?" and he 
 replied unwillingly, "So did I." 
 
 Then he went on to speak reassuringly; yet always
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 275 
 
 conscious, exquisitely conscious, of the memory they 
 held between them, and of her troubled face. The 
 memory, the memory of that night, did it stir her 
 pulses too? His words faltered into silence; and 
 when Sydney spoke, she was the calmer of the two. 
 
 "Do you think she recognized us both?" 
 
 "Suppose she did, what does it matter?" He spoke 
 with an indifference he was far from feeling. Noth- 
 ing, as a matter of fact could be more unfortunate 
 than such a contingency, it meant a link supplied he 
 had hoped forever broken. . . . Who else was 
 in the car, he wondered? The father? Or perhaps 
 only a nurse. But of this he said nothing to his com- 
 panion. A few minutes later they parted, and 
 Waveney betook himself up Bond Street, walking 
 rapidly, with thoughts more disturbed and rebellious 
 than usual. Surely he need not blame himself ; he had 
 been kind, even detached; surely, he had atoned for 
 that instant of passion I Yet the keen pleasure of the 
 talk held danger; he had never felt more aware of 
 her mental attraction for him, of their real con- 
 geniality. . . . He found himself asking, if the 
 door of release in his life ever opened, 
 whether such a marriage would be foolish after all? 
 It would have the durable foundation of an intellec- 
 tual comradeship and stimulus, and were such things 
 not worth a little gossip? What had the more 
 wordly-wise union brought him, that he should value 
 its standards? And what woman he knew approached 
 her, in exotic charm? 
 
 Yet, it was true, the matter still shaped itself to his 
 mind in the form of a question. . . . And then, 
 there was Ashburnham. . . . He would soon be 
 returning and he had every advantage, for the door 
 was still closed. 
 
 The soldier's name brought with it a strong reac- 
 tion, and Waveney sighed irritably, wearied of the
 
 276 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 struggle of these last months. . . . No; it was 
 folly, sheer folly to be thinking of her; and in view of 
 such chances as today's encounter, worse than folly to 
 keep on seeing her. She had done harm enough to his 
 life by upsetting that spiritual equilibrium he had been 
 so proud to keep; she threatened now to do more 
 harm still. If the faintest suggestion reached Lord 
 Beauvray that Adrian had any personal interest in 
 the woman to whom he had entrusted their secret 
 . . . it was not to be thought of. He must reso- 
 lutely avoid her in the future.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 ON a certain afternoon in April, Sir Thomas en- 
 tered his house on Charles Street with an unwonted 
 alertness of step; and his secretary lifted her head in 
 surprise to hear him call to his wife and daughter in 
 joyful impatience from the staircase. 
 
 "Ada! Janey! It is all right: the President has 
 asked for War." 
 
 "Oh Thomas!" 
 
 "Yes, yes, he has indeed and unmistakably. 
 . . . I came home to tell you at once. We have 
 been waiting all of us in a group at the Carlton 
 Club for the news to come through. . . . Yes, 
 we cheered together when we heard! A splendid 
 address, you must read it carefully." 
 
 "But does he decide it? I thought ." 
 
 "Congress will vote, of course, but the result is in 
 no doubt. ... I must write at once to Mid, 
 you know, I suppose what it means?" 
 
 "I hope so; and I am deeply thankful," said his 
 wife, "because, I have always felt that in case of a 
 separate peace in Russia ." 
 
 "There will not be a separate peace in Russia," said 
 her husband impatiently, wishing no cloud on his hap- 
 piness "you know that the Revolutionists have 
 every cause to hate the enemy as much as ourselves. 
 . . . But this news, today, means certainty it 
 means we can't lose, though God knows we've tried 
 hard enough !" 
 
 "I don't think you ought to say that, Dad, with 
 our magnificent men!" put in Janey her soldier hus- 
 
 277
 
 278 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 band never far from her thoughts, and her father 
 smiled. 
 
 "Donald and his like were not in my mind Janey, 
 you may be sure. . . . But I am so relieved 
 after these black months of discouragement! . . ; ., 
 They say conscription will come there at once, and 
 they have millions of men and never beaten in any 
 war ! Then you know how I have always hoped for 
 close friendship between ourselves and the States an 
 alliance between us means peace for the whole 
 world." 
 
 Sir Thomas spoke with animation and his eyes were 
 alight. "Oh . . . and by the way, my dear 
 you had best stop at Smith Square this afternoon to 
 enquire. They say she is very bad and not at all 
 likely to get well." 
 
 "Was Adrian at the Club?" 
 
 "No, I have not seen him. Some one else had 
 heard that there was another relapse. Of course she 
 pulled out of that last one in January, and she may 
 out of this. . . . The men at the Club were all 
 saying her death would make a great difference to 
 Adrian." 
 
 "Poor soul," sighed Janey, kindly. 
 
 "I think it is very remarkable that Adrian has 
 never consoled himself elsewhere," observed Lady 
 Easterly, over her knitting. 
 
 "Too busy " replied her husband shortly, "and I 
 don't think Adrian has ever been interested in women. 
 . . . But of course, a proper marriage would be 
 just the thing to help him on. He never could do any- 
 thing with her. . . . She always said sharp 
 things to people and was vulgar, otherwise made his 
 pathway difficult. Now I fancy, she is likely to hang 
 on indefinitely just when all of us would be glad 
 to see her go." 
 
 "You are very harsh, I think, Daddy."
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 279 
 
 "My dear child, why should I pretend any interest 
 in a vulgar woman, who personally never lost an op- 
 portunity to be disagreeable to your mother and my- 
 self? I am no hypocrite," declared Sir Thomas truth- 
 fully ; and then turning happily back to the great event 
 of the day "you will tell Hughie when he comes in, 
 Ada? He will be anxious to hear." 
 
 "There is one person we know who will be de- 
 lighted," said Janey, as her father moved to the 
 drawing-room door "and that is Miss Lea. She 
 will be pleased." 
 
 "I am going to tell her now " said Sir Thomas, 
 and hastened downstairs. 
 
 The news did make Sydney happy; evxerything 
 about that day made her happy. She liked Sir 
 Thomas's half-paternal, half-formal words of con- 
 gratulation. "And I want you to believe Miss Lea, 
 how much we appreciate the fact that you were our 
 first Ally!" She liked the bunch of flowers, which 
 Hugh, dragging weakly along on his crutches, laid on 
 her desk in silent apology for his past sulkiness. She 
 liked the greeting which Smith brought solemnly up 
 from the world below stairs: 
 
 "So being as now the States is one of us, as I may 
 say the 'ole 'ousehold wishes you to know how glad 
 they was !" 
 
 She liked the embrace in which Miss Violand en- 
 folded her that evening, when she returned home, and 
 her tremulous "Oh Sydney, my dear your wonderful 
 President! But then, I always said he would." She 
 even liked Giddy's smiling remark that "It stands to 
 reason the Colonies would never go back on the Em- 
 pire !" even though it brought to her a fresh realiza- 
 tion of the fact that Giddy with many thousands of 
 her country folk had forgotten the little unpleasant- 
 ness of 1776. 
 
 Life has so many unfinished pages, one strained
 
 28o THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 hard to read to the end before Destiny turned them 
 with an inevitable finger. Sydney again felt that the 
 brief flowering of individual experience for her was 
 once more blotted out and lost in the collective experi- 
 ence. Days rushed on; big with possibility, and 
 events vital to her brushed by and were gone, as it 
 were, over the edge of the cataract. The Russian 
 Revolution had brought hope to many people, 
 though not personally to her after her reading of 
 Ashburnham's letter. As the situation there grew 
 more and more chaotic, she had become anxious, very 
 anxious, about her friend's safety. One letter had 
 reached her from him since the upheaval in March 
 and it bore a closer, a more personal note than his 
 letters hitherto. 
 
 . . . "I always think of you," Ashburnham 
 wrote "as a type of your country . . . first 
 the watcher, neutral, puzzled as you must have 
 been back there in Geneva then led by suffering and 
 your sympathy to throw yourself into the task to 
 help. And then, roused to all your energy riding 
 forth, bow in hand 'conquering and to conquer!' 
 That, if I read America aright, is what she is going 
 to do just as it is what in your own way, you have 
 been doing." 
 
 He was wonderful Ashburnham in the way he 
 understood. But the page of life on which his name 
 was written was succeeded by long blanks in which 
 only her imagination could follow him through that 
 welter of anarchy and blood. 
 
 There were other pages . . . but the name 
 she loved best to read had not made its appearance 
 thereon for a long time. Lady Waveney was desper- 
 ately ill, was dying, was better, relapsed, had all but 
 died, had rallied again. . . . Sydney could not 
 help hearing this from the family talk at Charles 
 Street, hearing also the unsympathetic and impatient
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 281 
 
 comments with which such news would be accom- 
 panied. She dreaded the subject, dreading that tu- 
 mult of the spirit which lay in recalling their happy 
 walk together months ago the blackness of fog pro- 
 tecting them. Had that poor soul whom they all 
 wished dead had she suffered from the breach with 
 her husband was she tasting the bitterness of going 
 out of life unloved? There were moods when Syd- 
 ney's pity for her was intense, when she longed to 
 hear better hopes because there came to her own 
 soul flashes of clear foresight moods in which she 
 realized that there might be a far worse wretchedness 
 of separation in store than that caused by the wife's 
 existence. What would that be in comparison to the 
 bitterness which might come from his deliberately 
 not seeking her when he was free to do so? 
 
 These personal pages were so blurred, so hurried 
 to be skimmed hastily, because they appeared to 
 lack reality in these great days. One's consciousness 
 paused only at certain episodes in which it was linked 
 with the rending forces at loose in the world. 
 
 The day came a hot, summer day, when she 
 stood at a window, to see all about her hanging 
 alike from Parliament Buildings, and from the but- 
 ton hole of a street urchin her own flag. Below 
 her surged an excited crowd, which agitated special 
 constables strove to keep to the confines of the side- 
 walk. There rose a noise and clamor of cries and 
 voices she herself was sunk in a silence which came 
 of hope fulfilled. 
 
 From far down the street came a deep growl of 
 cheering English cheering, so different from the 
 shrill yelp of the American or French. The soldiers, 
 her countrymen, that earnest of the power to come, 
 must have started on their way. She clasped her 
 hands tight together. Strange how at this instant 
 one thought of little things ! They floated up to the
 
 282 THE HOUSE ON CHARLES STREET 
 
 surface of her imagination like bubbles and vanished. 
 . . Memories of the past three years the 
 journey from Geneva Paris the hospital on Great 
 Stanhope Street Sister Lucy's anxiety about the 
 iodine . . . the Zeppelin raid and Ashburnham 
 guiding her by the elbow through Regent Street 
 the long motor ride into the country that horrible, 
 moaning figure on the bed and the man with the 
 uneasy smile on his lips and murder in his eyes 
 Elizabeth in uniform standing on the doorstep. Per- 
 sistently, too, there recurred to her the picture of the 
 frightened pigeon refusing to take flight with the 
 others and the grinning kindly face of the boy who 
 stroked it. 
 
 The growling cheers came nearer and nearer. . . . 
 They meant the future, and that was all today that 
 mattered. Strange that on this very morning a cable 
 had reached her from Ashburnham in Stockholm. 
 He was on his way home and she could look for- 
 ward to his coming with pure happiness with more 
 happiness, taking it all in all, than the note from 
 Waveney, giving her the same news and adding in 
 postcript, hastily, as one who writes against his will, 
 that he wished to see her . . . ? How? 
 Where? Why? She read these words as in a flash, 
 and then quickly folded the note away trying not to 
 think of it trying to push its contents out of mind. 
 Odd that one felt these things at all in so vital a 
 moment of emotion. . . . 
 
 They were coming now. They were coming up 
 the street those tall, straight serious men, her coun- 
 trymen. Her heart went out to them life lost its 
 individual confines at the sight, to become merged 
 in that deeper and obscurer current whose shifting 
 has well-nigh shaken down civilization. They were 
 America she was America. The idea which moved 
 her, moved them ; the force that was their birthright,
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 283 
 
 was hers also. Indifferent as her countrymen might 
 be by nature, blind, or narrow, yet one knew them 
 honestly striving toward an ideal ill-defined, and hav- 
 ing once tested and rejected it setting up another with- 
 out loss of time, turning to assume without by- 
 thought gigantic tasks. Today the world beheld 
 them roused in unimaginable strength, setting forth 
 across the earth in their millions, conquering and to 
 conquer, a pilgrimage of wrath and hope such as no 
 Nation had ever undertaken before. . . 
 
 Would they be in time those marching men? 
 they must they must be in time ! 
 
 She leaned out of the window and cheered and 
 cheered. 
 
 THE END
 
 FfZThi
 
 pun 
 
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