- SHEILA * INTERVENES i i STEPHEN MCRENNA is born in Ireland and talks as only an Irish girl can talk." She was quite unmoved by his apostrophe and went on composedly : "Can you say truthfully I don't want to hurt your feelings that your grandfather well, had only himself to blame for what happened?" "That again was his concern." "I know. And there was great provocation, and the man he killed ought to have been killed; and your grand- father faced the consequences like a man and never tried 96 SHEILA INTERVENES to escape. But was it or was it not a just sentence?" Denys shrugged his shoulders. "The law forbids duelling and he killed a man in a duel. Have I swept away the Jacobite charge?" "Quite," said Sheila ironically. "And a good deal more besides. You can take the Oxford appointment with a light heart." "I don't see the connection." "No ? You gave up your Fellowship because you wanted to take up politics and ... oh no, it wasn't a profes- sion and it wasn't a career, it was a faith, a duty, a vision, a crusade What a memory I've got, haven't I? You wouldn't soil your fingers with party politics in their present state. You told me so, didn't you? and the only way you've so far suggested of giving dignity or romance to English politics is to annihilate the English for their past sins. And that you don't want to do, you've no reason for desiring to do, have you? You told me that, too. The lectureship has no rival in the field." She paused to enjoy his discomfiture, and then added: "That was an extraordinarily good summing-up; in my way I'm rather clever. And here's Riversley, just in time to keep you from appealing against the verdict." Denys opened the door and helped her to collect her property. The train had reached Riversley half an hour too late for his peace of mind. "You'll come and see us again before you finally leave town, won't you?" she said, shaking hands with him through the window. "And we'll be friends and I won't tease you." "I don't mind it," he said with an uneasy smile. "Oh yes, you do! You've simply hated this journey and hated me, poor little, rather attractive me, for turn- ing you inside out, and you're only pretending not to be angry because you think your position's quite secure. SHEILA TAKES UP POLITICS 97 So it is. You're so absurd that I must enjoy you by myself; you're far too good to share. I won't tell a soul what I've discovered." "And what precisely is that?" "The dream. It's been puzzling me for several weeks. As a dream it's no sillier than most, but of course if you make the mistake of mixing up dreams with reality, I shall have to take you in hand." Waving him good-bye, she ran along the platform in pursuit of the tall figure of her grandfather. Maurice was pressed into her service as a beast of burden, so that both her hands were free for gesticulation when she came to explain to the collector that her ticket was lost and she had no intention of paying the price of another. The combat was of short duration and ended in the complete rout of the collector. As the train steamed out of the station Denys saw her standing in the middle of the road directing operations, while Maurice endeavoured under a fire of criticism to unpack her dressing-case and discover a motor-veil. She was smiling with a contentment she had every right to feel. In the first place she had satis- fied her curiosity on the subject of Denys, in the second she had scotched the Oxford lectureship. Before he had time to send in his acceptance, her grandfather would have to make a definite and better offer of employment in London. As she pretended to ridicule one article of faith after another and strove to make him deny their weight in his thoughts, she had seen his colour rising, and the fire gathering in his eyes. A modicum of opposition or disparagement was sufficient to bring him to boiling point, and the more she pressed the claims of Oxford, the greater his distaste for Oxford became. He would leap at any proposal that would keep him in London and bring him nearer the soul of politics. With Oxford relegated to the background, her schemes 98 SHEILA INTERVENES for bringing him into touch with Daphne and disposing of Maurice took on their former favourable colours. In a sense she was playing with fire in compassing the union at the price of abetting Denys in his political ambitions, but the danger was remote. Daphne's fervid idealism could be trusted forever to dispel his dream, and if Daphne failed she could rely on herself to find some way of count- 1 ering him. Without underestimating the adroitness of her own attack, it was clear that a man who allowed himself to be as completely riddled as Denys had been that after- noon, was an adversary not deserving of serious atten- tion. As she tied the motor-veil in place and climbed into the car, she reflected that even a railway journey may be turned to profitable account. Denys travelled on to Oxford in considerable discom- fort of mind, feeling like a guilty schoolboy who is un- certain whether the master has detected his guilt. Until his meeting with Sheila no one had troubled to connect him with a man of the same Christian and surname who had died fifty years before: he had never been asked so abruptly how he regarded his grandfather's memory and whether it had any influence on his own scheme of life, consequently he had never been obliged to palter with the truth or evade a direct answer. His whole existence, as he never ceased to remind himself, was one of duplicity, tut the labour of supporting life was so far removed from the object to which his life was devoted that in Oxford or Fleet Street or the City he had never been oppressed with the sensation of occupying a false position. If Sheila had really plumbed his secret and, for all its improbabil- ity, was placing credence in it, the feeling of imposture would be harder to avoid. For the present, however, he was passing out of Sheila's world and moving down to a level from which his goal seemed more than ever inaccessible. He would have to SHEILA TAKES UP POLITICS 99 accept the lectureship and ought to be grateful for the chance that put another position at his disposal the mo- ment he had vacated the last. But for what he conceived to be a religious duty, the prospect would have been en- chanting: Oxford had twined her memories round his heart-strings, and as the well-remembered rickety hansom bore him through the narrow streets to Carfax, his mind went back to the day when he entered into his kingdom with a freshman's eyes for the glories of the city. Could he without ^ fear of self-reproach start afresh, for- getting the cloud that pressed on his father's and grand- father's lives, oblivious of his own struggles and poverty and sacrifices, the world might yet concede to him the same measure of contentment as to others. He was recon- ciled to the loss of wealth and the shrinkage of position: neither was essential; all he asked of life was leisure to continue his work and explore further into the untrod- den regions of the past. If, when he accepted the lecture- ship, he would have leisure . . . but tranquillity of mind would be wanting. He would feel as he had felt once before, that in sitting surrounded by his books, gazing into the flower-decked, sunlit quadrangle, he was deafen- ing himself to the voice of a conscience that bade him go forth and avenge his grandfather's memory. And when that thought rapped at the door, his zest for work flitted tantalisingly out of the window. Leaving his suit-case at the porter's lodge, he wandered back along the Broad, up the Corn and down the High. The new generation exhibited the same glossy heads and vivid socks as in his own day, an occasional Bullingdon tie was as conspicuously hideous as ever. Easter had fallen early, and Eights week was in progress: the same undergraduates seemed to be piloting the same sisters and mothers with the same dutiful reluctance. He turned down Oriel Street, with a sigh for the fruits of Rhodes' bequest ioo SHEILA INTERVENES to his college, across Merton Street and into the Meadows. The Broad Walk was seething with spectators returning from the barges. An occasional don recognised and ac- costed him. Strolling past the barges and round by the Humane Society's punt, he halted by the House ferry, roused a friend from slumber, and accepted an invitation to share and propel a stolen Canadian canoe. The friend was Jack Melbourne, son of an ex-colleague on the Anglo-Hibernian board. As Jack was supposed to be reading for Bar exam- inations in town it was inevitable that he should be found spending a protracted week-end in Oxford, and as races were in progress on the Isis it was equally inevitable that he should be found sleeping three hundred yards away up the Cher. It was Jack Melbourne's first rule in life to ascertain what was expected of him and then do some- thing different. "I hear you've chucked the City and are returning to this agreeable spot," he began lazily. "I'm thinking of it," said Denys. "Well, don't think too quickly, because I'm coming to stay with you in town next week. It's impossible to get any work done at home." "I don't suppose you'll get much done with me." "Possibly not, but I shan't have my father rushing in every five minutes to point the moral. Where are you dining to-night?" "All Souls." "And to-morrow?" "I don't know." "Well, come and dine with the Epicures. I'm staying with Bobby Harland, and as he's taking me he may as well take you too. No, I won't be thanked, it costs me literally nothing." Denys paddled the boat as far as the rollers and then SHEILA TAKES UP POLITICS 101 returned overland to tea in New College. The enchant- ment of Oxford settled soothingly on his spirit and he made up his mind to accept the inevitable with a good grace. Dinner that night at All Souls completed the con- quest: official Oxford was eager and unanimous in press- ing him to take the lectureship. He had never appre- ciated how highly his work was regarded. Sitting at wine and smoking in Common Room, he listened delightedly to the tranquil, unhurried conversation that several years of stress in London had almost driven from his memory. The thought of breathing that atmosphere again and living once more within sight of the Bodleian made him glad that., whatever his ultimate intentions might be, for the present the lectureship was inevitable and without alterna- tive. The following night he dined with the Epicures. It was the revival of a pleasant memory which fitted itself together piece by piece in his mind: the dinner, the drive down the High on an overcrowded tram to the club rooms, the dessert and wine, and speeches and toasts and fines, the loving-cup and rich display of presentation plate. The news of the vacant lectureship had travelled apace, and the secretary offered a flattering welcome to the pros- pective incumbent. Denys replied, more toasts were pro- posed, more speeches delivered, more fines imposed on disorderly members, till at last the time came to stand up and drink the healths of absent members. Then the party dispersed and Denys returned home. The beauty of the city and the charm of its life had not belied his memory and expectations. Before going to bed he wrote a formal acceptance of the lectureship, and then undressed in the undersized bedroom and settled himself in the well-remembered narrow bed. The usual impassive scout called him in the morning, filled the usual inadequate hip-bath, and prepared the usual Gargantuan 102 SHEILA INTERVENES breakfast. On his plate were half a dozen letters, mostly forwarded from London : one had come direct. He opened it first and read with curiosity: "My DEAR DENYS" (it ran), "Sheila tells me you are week-ending at New Col- lege, so I write to you there. I don't suppose you have had time to fix anything up since resigning your director- ship of the Anglo-Hibernian, and I therefore want you to leave yourself a free hand till I have had time for a chat with you. Parkstone (my son-in-law, you know), the chairman of the Birth Rate Commission, wants a man with a ready pen to help him. The evidence is finished this week and they will proceed to consider their report. I am not at liberty to say at any rate on paper what lines the report will follow, but I have urged P. to go a little beyond the customary limits of such reports and bring forward proposals that will strike people's imaginations. As you know, I have always considered your future to be literary or political certainly not commercial, though you were a tower of strength to us on the A.-H. and I was sorry to lose you. P. has read some of your books and wants to meet you. This is not a 'blind-alley em- ployment': I am so convinced that politics are your proper sphere that I am prepared to see you a good distance along the road. I cannot write more now, but shall be glad if you will let me know as soon as you return to town, so that we can meet and talk together. I return on Tuesday. "Yours, "WM. FARLING. "Sheila sends I think it was 'love/ but I'd better make it 'kind regards.'" Denys turned back to the first page and read the letter a" second time. Oxford was blotted out of his mind and SHEILA TAKES UP POLITICS 103 his eyes only saw the words "political future," "I am pre- pared to see you a good distance along the road." Then the last paragraph attracted his attention and made him smile. Sheila sent him her love: no doubt she was still rejoicing over what she regarded as her victory in the train, perhaps wondering how he was facing the disap- pointment of being invalided from active service and sent to recruit his strength in Oxford. And while she rejoiced and sent flippant messages, her grandfather, all unknown to her, was offering to bring him in a moment leagues nearer his goal than he had been able to get in years of unaided striving. The irony of such a postscript being added to such a letter pleased him. He smiled over it as he finished his breakfast, and was still smiling as he lit a pipe and sat down to destroy his overnight acceptance, substitute a re- fusal, and tell Sir William that he would be back in Lon- don at midday on Monday and at his disposal when required. CHAPTER V HOW LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM SHOULD RUN "Sir," said Denis, with the grandest possible air, "I believe I am to have some say in the matter of this marriage. . ." "I am afraid . . . that you do not perfectly understand the choice I have to offer you. Follow me, I beseech you, to this window .... You observe there is an iron ring in the upper masonry, and reeved through that a very efficacious rope. Now, mark my words : if you should find your disinclination to my niece's person insurmountable, I shall have you hanged out of this window before sunrise. I shall only proceed to such an extremity with the greatest regret, you may believe me. For it is not at all your death that I desire-, but my niece's establishment in life. At the same time, it must come to that if you prove obstinate ... if you sprang from Charlemagne, you should not refuse the hand of a Maletroit with impunity not if she had been as common as the Paris road not if she were as hideous as the gargoyle over my door. . . It will be no great satisfaction to me to have your interesting relics kicking their heels in the breeze below my windows; but half a loaf is better than no bread. . " . ' R. L. STEVENSON: "THE SERE DE MALETROIT'S DOOK." "!F I'm coming to pay an extended visit at Buckingham Gate, I wish you could see your way to looking my father up in my absence." Denys and Melbourne were returning to town from Ox- ford, and the morning was sufficiently advanced for Jack to have overcome his constitutional early moroseness and to have grown conversational. "If you'd like to adopt him, you may," he went on. "He has many good points, and I'm sure he'd like you as a son. He always grumbles at me for wasting my time and not settling down to the serious business of life; if he knew you'd chucked up a job in the City on Friday, 104 LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM 105 taken another in Oxford on Saturday, turned it down on Monday, and started yet another on Tuesday, he'd say: 'This young man means to get on.' Think it over; he'd appreciate you." Old Mr. Melbourne's reiterated assertions that it was time for his son to earn his own living awakened no re- sponsive chord in Jack's breast. For twenty-two years he had existed without toiling or spinning, and regarded himself as both too young and too attractive to alter his mode of life. Most men with his endowment of good looks started life with not more than an average amount of original sin and declined gracefully to ultimate damna- tion; Jack had been damned in a previous existence and made no effort to conceal the fact. Largely without morals and wholly without soul, he had brought an urbane and calculated selfishness to the level of a rare and exotic art. Men continued to invite him to their dinners because it gratified them to see his undisguised enjoyment of their wine, their oysters, and their cigars, and he never scrupled to accept an invitation and then not appear; women and angels wept for him because he was so lovable, so incor- rigible, and so entirely regardless of their weeping. If he had been shipwrecked on a desert island with a single companion, and the companion had saved two loaves out of the wreckage, Jack would have stolen one and had the other given him. He was blessed with black hair, black eyes, very long eyelashes, and very white teeth; he did no work, took no exercise, never missed his three Turkish baths a week, and took his first meal of the day in bed at two o'clock in the afternoon. The amplitude of his leisure and the perversity of his tastes might be measured by the fact that he habitually lit his pipe from paper spills of his own making. After failing to secure a degree at Oxford, he had stood for a Fellowship at All Souls. It was never quite clear io6 SHEILA INTERVENES why he was not elected. Since coming to London he had discovered that a man who is still young and unmar- ried can find a sufficiency of mothers with daughters to keep him fed four times a day, supplied with cigars in the intervals of eating, kept au c our ant with all that was best in music-hall and theatre, housed in town, mounted in the country, and invigorated with the open air of Scot- land throughout the autumn. He did not shoot, as it interfered with his luncheon, and he found it more rest- ful to linger over the meal and allow the ladies of the party to wait on him. If there were any remonstrance he would point out that they were ten and he was one. It was a tribute to his personal charm that he was most loved by those whom he most chastened, and his mission in life was to galvanise the bones of the heartless, epi- grammatic 'nineties: he had so far succeeded in reviving a semblance of their brutality without a spark of their brilliance. "How long am I to have the honour of entertaining you ?" asked Denys. "I hope you'll stay as long as you can, of course; but I don't know at present what form my new job will take, or even if it means my staying on in town." "You are not to think of me for one moment " said Jack earnestly. "Busy man, Empire resting on frail, bowed shoulders, and so forth. I shall understand. As long as I've a bed and a latch-key and regular meals and some- thing to smoke I shall be happy. And you must take in the Morning Post, Denys ; I'm not strong enough in the early afternoon to face The Times. As a matter of fact, a little while and I shall be with you, and again a little while and I shall not be with you. I'm spending next week with the Littletons." "Not again !" exclaimed Denys in horror. "But why not?" asked Jack with surprise. The Littletons were neighbours of Lord Badstow's at LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM 107 Riversley, and consisted of a father who had been dismissed each morning to the decent obscurity of Mincing Lane until he had acquired a considerable fortune, a mother who aspired to move in what she described with reverent use of capitals as County Society, and a singularly unpreposses- sing and entirely unmarriageable daughter. The gods with fine irony had suffered Mrs. Littleton to blunder into the possession of a good cook and a husband with a creditable taste in cigars: that explained Jack's frequent acceptance of her hospitality. The curious plainness of the daughter Sibil accounted for the regularity of the invitations, and perhaps too for a quality of wine which neither host nor hostess appreciated. "You're heading straight for the dock," said Denys warn- ingly. "Oh, I think not." "Obtaining meals under false pretences." "But there are no false pretences ; it's the ordinary battle of wits and the old, old struggle for existence. We meet for what we can get out of each other: I've scored a few indifferent meals out of Mrs. Littleton; she's got a blank card at present. She's trying to score a mesalliance out of me. We don't put on any disguises, just covering enough to hide our primitive nakedness. If she prosecutes for obtaining meals under false pretences, I shall prosecute for attempted abduction ; and if either of us downed the other, it would mean the break-up of society: from a private vendetta we snould be driven back to the barbarities of legal proceedings." "Think of Sibil's innocent, girlish dreams." "Sibil's dreams are directly traceable to overeating. I've had the same sort of thing myself. Anyway, a man must live." On their arrival at Paddington the two young men drove tQ Buckingham Gate. Jack then changed into suitable io8 SHEILA INTERVENES clothes for an afternoon at the club, Denys settled down to clear off odds and ends of correspondence and await Sir William's summons to Cleveland Row. By Wednesday morning the preliminaries were complete. "When you've finished breakfast, Sheila, you might see if you can get hold of Denys on the telephone and say I want to see him as soon as possible." Sir William finished his tea and lit a cigarette. "I think I've fixed up everything with Herbert. It was a good idea; Denys is just the man for that report." "That's like you, to take all the credit. Please remember that I suggested your trying to get Uncle Herbert to find him something to do. Ages ago I suggested it, just after you'd put your foot into it on board, long before the row on the Anglo-Hibernian." Sir William drew in the smoke of the cigarette and looked at his granddaughter with a smile. "And ever since that day I've been trying to make out what' devilry you were up to, Sheila." "And you haven't found out, and you aren't likely to.i unless I tell you. I will some day, when you've fixed up this secretary business." Sheila was contentedly lingering over breakfast with her grandfather. The meal had not begun until eleven o'clock because it was a rooted belief in Sir William's mind that a hale and vigorous old age could only be secured by strong- willed resistance to all the seductions of early rising. As Sheila had been dancing till four o'clock she was not dis- posed to quarrel with her grandfather's conviction on this point, and the two of them presented a picture of unex- pected domesticity as they sat in their respective armchairs sipping tea, munching toast, and throwing a leisurely eye over their morning's letters. The lateness and privacy of their breakfast had not led either to depart from an exalted LOVE'S TOUNG DREAM 109 standard in the matter of dress; Sir William wore a grey frock coat, white waistcoat, and patent leather boots, and if Sheila appeared in a tea-gown of grey mousseline de soie it was not because she found it less trouble to put on, but because it acorded an all too rare opportunity for display- ing her unusually small wrists and white arms. "He's accepted provisionally," said Sir William, "and Herbert is now only waiting to meet him and form an opinion of his abilities and I just want to tell him what's expected of him." "What's he living on all this while?" "Practical woman ! I expect he goes to Herbert unpaid, but I'm undertaking to supply him with the sinews of war. I've got great faith in his powers and I'm backing him to the extent of eight hundred pounds a year for five years. If nothing comes of the report, we shall know the worst in six months' time, and for four and a half years he'll find himself provided for. If the report's a success his repu- tation will be made. I am to decide whether he's to stand for Parliament, and if he does, I shall pay his election ex- penses. That's our contract in outline." "Well, look here." Sheila dropped a fresh slice of lemon into her tea. "You're not to work that boy too hard. He's delicate. See ?" Sir William smiled to himself as he had smiled on board in the early stages of the intimacy. It was like Sheila to hold a brief for anyone who was ill or unhappy, but her s. Hcitude on Denys' behalf was something new. "What are you smiling at, Father Time ?" she asked. "Only my own wicked thoughts, my dear. Now ring him up and see if he'll dine here to-night, and if not, say I'll come round to-morrow afternoon." "We're dining out to-night : at least, we're meeting Uncle Herbert and Aunt Margaret and Daphne at the Carlton, and going on to the opera." no SHEILA INTERVENES "Why are we forsaking the homely fireside, Sheila?" "My dear, until we have a cook who's less eccentric than Servan, I can't take the responsibility of giving dinner parties at home." "Well, never mind. See if Denys will join us at the Carlton. I suppose there'll be room for him in Herbert's box ; if not he can have my place. My palate's not suffici- ently vitiated to care much for English opera." Sir William gathered up his letters and proceeded to his writing-table in the window. Though it was June the mornings were chilly, and Sheila had had a fire lit in the large, open grate. Before this she drew up the most spac- ious arm chair in the room and piled it shoulder-high with cushions: then taking the telephone from the mantelpiece she subsided gracefully into the cushions until a pair of small feet encased in grey silk stockings, two white arms struggling free from loose-hanging sleeves, and a little mischievous face surmounted by wave upon wave of soft, black hair, were the only portions of her body which re- mained visible. The telephone is to most people a more or less necessary nuisance, but a few gifted spirits can extract amusement out of anything, and Sheila Farling never raised the smallest of her fingers unless there were some diversion to be won from the action. She settled down to a breezy and intimate morning's conversation, leaving her grandfather to deal with his letters as best he might, which meant, as usual, their speedy abandonment and a running commentary of gentle protest and remonstrance. "Hallo, hallo. Is that Mr. Play fair? Oh, good morning! I say, I hope I haven't dragged you away from breakfast or bed. Oh, all right, you needn't be so stuck-up about it ; some of the best people don't breakfast till eleven. I was dancing till four. Well then, I suppose that means you didn't give yourself a chance. Oh, never mind work, I do hate that damnable word. I shall say 'damnable* if I like, LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM in it's a very good, expressive word. You try. Go on. Oh, that was delicious, I didn't think you could say it. You speak just like a naughty schoolboy. Look here serious business, Denys. Oh, that made you jump, didn't it? Yes, it did, because I distinctly heard you jump, and it isn't polite to start contradicting a lady so early in the morning. Well, it's early for me, anyway. But regarding the jump, you did, you know; but Father Time and everybody calls you Denys, so I don't see why I shouldn't. Oh yes, you were bound to say that ; you're a little obvious in the early morning, Denys. Besides, I don't think you're old enough to be called Mr. Playfair, you're almost an infant in arms still. Anyway, you're not fit to look after yourself. Keep quite quiet, please, Father Time. No, that was meant for my grandfather. Look here, we're talking too much and losing sight of the main issue. Where are you dining to- night? Oh, good guess! but you might have waited to be invited. That's all nonsense, I want you to dine with us. Well you must lump the other party ; we want you to dine with us and the Grayling crowd at the Carlton and come on to the opera. Is that clear? Well, you must give the tickets to someone else and hire a man from a Labour Exchange to take your place. Very well then, all I can say is that you're one of those animals that get possessed of devils and run down steep places into the sea. You know what I mean. No, swine's a horrid word, I only meant pigs, little pigs, little black pigs. What's the attraction, anyway? Oh yes, I knew that, but what's she like ? Of course she's pretty, she always is ; besides, I did give you credit for fairly good taste in looks, Denys, or I wouldn't have honoured you with your present degree of intimacy. Yes, but if you get the other end of the room I shan't see her. How old is she ? O-o-oh ! My dear boy, what possible amusement can you get out of taking a child of eleven to the theatre? You aren't really fond of small ii2 SHEILA INTERVENES children, are you? Oh, but that's rather sweet of you; I didn't know you were so human. No, don't cut me off yet, please, I haven't half finished. Well, Denys ah! you're getting used to it now, you hardly jumped at all that time : the point is that Father Time wants to talk to you and he's thinking of coming round to tea to-morrow. Shall I come too? Oh, that's a lot better; you warm up and get less obvious as the day goes on. Yes, it is a bit of a strain, isn't it? Well, what will you give us for tea? No, I simply loathe India. Well, then, you'll have to make me some coffee, that's all. What's your flat like? Shall I like it? Oh, I daresay, but I want to know if you think I shall like it, I want to see if you take a proper pride in your surround- ings. Hallo, somebody wants to see me, so you mustn't waste my morning any longer." She turned to her grandfather and explained quite un- necessarily. "He can't dine with us to-night because he's taking a child to the theatre, and she's only eleven and very pretty and her name's Margery ; but he's expecting you to tea to-mor- row and I'm coming too to see what his flat's like, and he's going to make coffee for me with his own fair hands, and he doesn't like to hear me use strong language and altogether he's rather a dear. Yes, James?'* This to a footman. "Mr. Weybrook has called to know if anyone is at home." Sir William silently gathered up his papers and prepared for flight. "Here, Father Time," expostulated his granddaughter, "play fair. I'll toss you who has to see Maurice." "My dear, I'm not equal to Maurice at this hour of the morning." "Well, what about me?" "I think you'll be equal to almost anything, judging by your powers over the telephone equal even to seeing that Maurice doesn't stay to lunch." He faded away through LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM 113 one door as Weybrook entered through the other. Sheila weighed the possibility of being able to make sport out of her visitor and decided that his air of dejection was prom- ising. "Well, Maurice," she began, "will you put the telephone back on the mantelpiece? Then we can consider why we are thus favoured. Smoking is permitted." He obeyed her orders and sat down opposite her at one end of the club fender, balancing his hat on his knees and tapping the inside of his left boot with a short, gold-tipped cane. "You look comfortable, Sheila," he remarked. "Yes, Maurice." A pause. "You're a rum kid." "Yes, Maurice." "Can't make you out. You just sit and bubble over. Never seem off colour." "No, Maurice." "Wish I knew how you managed it. Look here, Sheila, what's the matter with Daphne?" "What wrong has she done in her lord's eyes, Maurice?" "Oh, drop rottin'. I can't make her put." "That's the second person you haven't been able to make out in the last two minutes. I'm afraid you're lacking in perception, Maurice." "Dessay, but I'm only in the same boat as everyone else over Daphne. I can't think what's up with her. We used to get on swimmin'ly and now I don't seem able to do any- thing right. God! I've never spent such a week-end in my born days. I sometimes think she's sick of me." "Impossible, Maurice !" "Well, it looks like it." "Have you asked her?" "Yes, that's the devil of it. I put it to her, why was she n 4 SHEILA INTERVENES mopin'? Was she sick of me? Did she want to bust up the engagement? Was it my fault? Had I gone downhill since we first fixed it up ? What was it all about ?" "What did she say?" "Said she wasn't mopin' and that I hadn't gone to rot, but that she felt she was leadin' a pretty useless sort of life, and that she felt she'd been put into the world to do some good of some kind and was blest if she could see how she was justifyin' her existence. That was a week ago, and she's worse now." "How?" "Well, this week-end she says she's livin' with her head in a drain-pipe not those words, of course and knows nothin' of what goes on outside the four walls of Berkeley Square. She's started readin' some joker's 'Life and Labour in Lon- don' and wants to go and do social work. I put it to you, Sheila: what am I to do?" "Why don't you read the same joker's 'Life and Labour in London' and go and do social work with her?" "Think she'd like it?" "I don't know. It would show you were trying to get up a sympathy for what interests her. You haven't done much in that direction yet awhile, Maurice !" "Suppose not. Think I'd like it?" "I'm sure you won't, but I think it will be very good for you." "I dunno. Look here, what I want to know is, how's it goin* to end? If I do the heavy philanthropic with Daphne for six months and at the end of that time I'm laid out stiff, and she's still as keen as ever, things are worse than they are now. It'll look as if double harness was goin' to be a murky sort of buisness for us both." "Well, don't meet your troubles half-way, Maurice Give it a six months' trial and then come back for a fresh dose of advice." LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM 115 "I'm not proud, Til give it a trail ; but look here, Sheila, I wish you'd talk to Daphne yourself and see if you can get any change out of her." "All right. Give me the telephone and I'll get her to come and see me. Now, Maurice, I shall have to turn you out, I've got a lot to do." "You look it." He got up and rammed his hat on to the back of his head. "I say it again, Sheila, you're a rum kid." "Thank you, Maurice." "No rot about your bein' put into the world to do good to your fellow-man." "You ungrateful pig ! When I've wasted the best part of half an hour listening to your troubles and trying to find you a way out of your difficulties." "No offence, Sheila. I mean no rot of Daphne's kind." "No, my task is much harder. I hate seeing people un- happy, so I devote myself to pulling unfortunate youngsters out of the mire." "Well, it's a good Christian work. So long, Sheila." He ambled out of the room whistling to himself, and Sheila once more addressed herself to the telephone, this time to invite Lady Daphne to lunch with her. Sir William was bound for his son-in-law's house to offer suggestions for the lines on which the proposed report was to be drawn up, Sheila would be left to her own resources for many hours, and Daphne would only be in the way if she remained at home, so that everything pointed to the advisability of ac- cepting her cousin's invitation. At two o-clock, accordingly, Lady Daphne arrived, and as soon as luncheon was over both girls retired to the drawing-room and Sheila opened the campaign without further delay. "Father Time's very full of mischief just now," sae re- marked, "and Uncle Herbert is being caught in his toils." "What's happening?" asked Lady Daphne. n6 SHEILA INTERVENES "They're hatching a scheme for bringing out a book on the results of the Birth Rate Commission and, according to Father Time, it's going to start a revolution and break up all the old political parties and make Uncle Herbert the shin- ing light of a New Model Republic or something of the kind. Haven't you heard?" "Not a word." "Oh, well, it's only just been fixed up. Father Time has suborned a clever young friend of his to do the writing of the book; he only heard this morning that the said clever young friend was willing to lend his services to the cause. On closer investigation the chosen vessel turns out to be my friend Denys Play fair, your honorary-guide-to-London- in-the-small-hours." "Oh, what fun ! He's one of the most entertaining people to talk to that I've ever met." She relapsed into a thought- ful silence while Sheila marked with approval the sudden brightness that had come into her eyes at the mention of Denys. "If you're looking out for an opportunity for social work, here you've got it. You'd better help Uncle Herbert and Denys with the report." "Who told you about me looking out for social work, Sheila?" asked Lady Daphne in some surprise. "Maurice. He's quite upset about you, my dear. Called here this morning to know why he was out of favour and what he'd better do to get back into your good graces. Also wanted to know why you'd been bitten with a desire for good works and how long would I give you to outgrow it," "Oh, Maurice!" The brightness faded out of her eyes and Sheila did not fail to notice this change also. "What did you tell him, Sheila?" "I told him to go and do likewise." She paused to enjoy the effect. "Maurice is going to show his mettle: he's LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM 117 going to prove how fond he is of you, and if you ask me how long I think he'll stand it, I should say about a fort- night." "What made you do that, Sheila?" asked Daphne after an interval of reflection. "I wanted to see if Maurice was as unadaptable as he sometimes seems to be. After all, my dear, if you're going to marry him, it's as well to find out if you've got any tastes in common. I think Maurice feels that. He knows his tastes: eating and drinking and smoking, polo, hunting and steeplechasing, the Gaiety and the Empire, Romano's and the Savoy Grill Room. He doesn't know your tastes and doesn't know whether you know. So I've told him to find out. For the next few weeks Maurice is going to slum with you. If you both like it, well and good: if you both get tired of it, well and good also. If he gets tired of it and you don't ..." She left the sentence unfinished. "I told him to come back to me for a fresh dose of good advice." Sheila made her statement sufficiently obscure to give her cousin food for reflection. The two sat in silence for a while till it came into Daphne's mind that she had prom- ised to call for her father and drive him to his club. Sheila accompanied her to the head of the stairs, hoping for some expression of opinion on the subject of her disposal of Maurice's activities for the remaining weeks of the season. None was forthcoming : Daphne merely put her arms round her cousin's neck and kissed her, with the words, "Dear old Sheila," and then ran down the stairs. Sheila was re- duced to refusing tea, sitting at the piano in her drawing-* room and playing somewhat dreamy waltzes until it was time to dress for dinner. Then, when her hair had been brushed and the major portion of her toilette was com- plete, she slipped on a green silk kimono and sat down in an armchair by her bedroom window to await her grand- n8 SHEILA INTERVENES father's return and his invariable visit to her bedroom on his way to dress. She had only five minutes of enforced idleness before he knocked at the door, entered into possession of the sofa, and produced a cigarette case. "Not to-night, Father Time," she said warningly. "I've just had my hair washed, and cigarette smoke doesn't go well with Eau de Portugal." "You've got the makings of a tyrant in you, Sheila," grumbled the old man. "A wonderful aptitude for getting my own way, that's all. I tell people it shows the strength of my character. Well, have you bought your slave?" "Signed, sealed and delivered. I fixed up everything with Herbert and they start as soon as the evidence of the Commission has been circulated." "Well, aren't you going to thank me for finding you the slave?" "I'm waiting to be told the reason of this sudden incur- sion into politics." "Well, I didn't see why I shouldn't have my share of fun out of it. Father Time, what do you think of Denys as a prospective grandson-in-law ?" "You might go a long way farther and fare a good deal worse. By the way, has he said anything on the subject?" "Father Time!" "Well, my dear, you asked my advice." "But not about . . My dear, venerable friend, do you think I should be consulting you on such a subject?" "Again, you might go farther and fare worse." "That's pure vanity; you get much vainer as you grow older, Father Time." . "It's a gentlemanly failing, like avarice." "That's neither here nor there, but for your future guid- ance I will inform you that I'm far too busy straightening LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM n$> out other people's matrimonial tangles to have time to make any for myself, and further, when I do take the plunge I shan't dream of allowing anybody to give me advice on the subject." "That I rather imagined, my dear." "Well, anyway, my point is: how would you like to see Denys as a grandson-in-law and the husband of Daphne? I think there's a good deal to be said for it." "Her mother will find a good deal to say against it. You really are rather an imp, young woman. I suppose all your plans have been laid with the idea of getting those two under the same roof for an indefinite period. As soon as Daphne's mother sees which way the wind is blowing she'll send him packing. I talked to her to-day on the subject of Maurice: from her conversation I was forced to add this to the list of marriages that are laid at the door of a mute, uncomplaining heaven." "Well, I'm only concerned with marriages as they are made in this world." "Practical woman! Incidentally, how are you disposing of Maurice?" Sheila lay back in her chair and gave a little bubble of laughter. "My dear, I've had such a day! First of all, in comes Maurice with a face a mile long and wants me to find out what's the matter with Daphne and why he's so much out of favour. He says she has become suddenly convinced of a serious purpose in life, and as a result she is all agog to cut short her present sinful, wasted existence and start in to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the sorrowful, and free those that are prisoners and captives. Not un- naturally Maurice is a little perplexed and doesn't know how to acquire merit under the new dispensation." "Could you help him?" "Yes, I told him to take up his cross and follow Daphne. ;i20 SHEILA INTERVENES It will do him good and show Daphne he's trying to meet 'her on the subject of her newborn enthusiasm. Father Time, if you leave fat finger-marks on my best silver-backed brushes, you won't be invited again." Sir William replaced the brush with which he had been fidgeting. "Well?" "Then came Daphne and I had her version. It's quite true, she's got philanthropy in an acute form, so I en- couraged her and tried to keep the fever unabated." "Well?" "That's all." "For a woman, perhaps. Not for me. I want to know how Denys comes in, for instance." "My dear, you must learn to draw conclusions. Daphne breaks out as a social worker of a rabid order, and at my advice Maurice follows suit to try and seem sympathetic and anxious to please her. Six months of the treatment leaves Daphne keener than ever and Maurice with his patience in tatters. He recognises that himself. Result: either they both realise that they're not cut out for each other or if Daphne persists in her present absurd frame of mind that she can't throw him over after once accepting him, I am backing Maurice to feel he can't marry the Daphne of the regeneration, and to make tracks for the other side of the world. If necessary I am going to help him by suggesting a few of the delights of bachelorhood, not forgetting to mention that a bachelor has no wife's so- cial and philanthropic schemes to support." "And all this while Daphne is going to have Denys as a counter-attraction ?" "That's the idea." "And what if Denys doesn't take kindly to Daphne?" asked Sir William, who recognised the possibility of hav- ing him as a grandson-in-law, but as the husband of an- other grand-daughter. LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM 121, Sheila shrugged her shoulders. "We must take our chance of that, but I don't think it likely and anyway, the important thing is to knock into Daphne's head the recognition that Maurice is not worth having at any price whatever. I've had a pretty busy day, Father Time." "So it seems. There's not much of Daphne's 'serious mission in life' about you, Sheila." She rose from her chair and walked over to a mirror in order to fix a white rose in the side of her hair. "What brutes you men are," was her tranquil comment* "That's just the remark Maurice made." "Isn't there something in it?" "No." She turned to him quite seriously. "My mission in life is to make people happy and show them what an astonishingly good place this world is. Daphne has the first call on my powers because she's my cousin and I'm very fond of her, and I've had her in hand for some time now. And Denys comes next because oh, I don't know, because he's got a genius for mak -3 himself perfectly mis- erable, and a nice boy with a beautiful profile and magnifi- cent eyes has no business to be perfectly miserable. As it happens it suits my plans to run my two cures concurrently." "Killing two birds with one stone?" "You're extraordinarily inept in some of your metaphors, Father Time." CHAPTER VI CLAY IN THE POTTER'S HANDS "For I remember stopping by the way To watch a Potter thumping his wet clay: And with its all-obliterated Tongue It murmur'd 'Gently Brother, gently pray 1' Ah love ! could you and I with him conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would we not shatter it to bits and then Remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire 1" FITZGERALD: "OMAB KHAYYAM." THE following afternoon Sir William and Sheila drove across St. James's Park to take tea with Denys in his flat in Buckingham Gate. They were informed on their ar- rival that he had just telephoned to say he might be a few minutes late and would his guests excuse his impolite- ness and begin tea without him? The man who gave the message added that another gentleman of the name of Melbourne was waiting in the library. Sheila, as usual, assumed control of the situation and issued a breathless torrent of instructions. "No, we won't start tea till Mr. Playfair comes, because he's promised to make coffee for me and I won't have it from anybody's hands but his; and I don't propose to sit doing nothing while you live on the fat of the land, Father Time. Which is the library, please?" "The first door on the right, miss." "Very well, then, don't you bother about us ; well go and make friends with Mr. Melbourne and brighten him up till Mr. Playfair comes. That is not a bad hall, Father 122 CLAY IN THE POTTER'S HANDS 123 Time : he shows quite fair taste in his oak and his brasses." The inspection concluded, she threw open the library door and stood still for a full minute to take in the effect of the room as a whole. Denys had chosen the flat for love of the library, and it was here that most of his time was spent. The room was more than thirty feet long, with three windows on the left side overlooking the park, and a large open fireplace surrounded by a club fender in the middle of the opposite wall. Every other inch of wall space was covered with carved oak book-cases standing five feet high and surmounted by a collection of valuable bronzes separated from each other at intervals of two yards by cut- glass bowls and vases of roses. The bottom shelves of the bookcases were fitted with locked glass doors through which could be seen choice examples of the binder's most consummate art. There was a double writing-table at each end of the room and in the middle a small, square, four- sided bookcase with a Rodin bust on top. Two capacious armchairs and a Chesterfield sofa upholstered in olive green morocco faced the fireplace, and in one of these, reading an evening paper and nursing a large blue Persian, sat Mr. Jack Melbourne. Sheila gave herself time to notice that he was good-looking, young, and healthy; from the negative evidence of empty plates she judged that he had been hungry or at least passably greedy, then she advanced with outstretched hand. Melbourne was so much engrossed in his paper that she was opposite his chair before he looked up to see a slight, pretty girl in grey, close-fitting dress and large black hat holding out a very small, white-gloved hand and speaking with a look of amusement in her big black eyes. "Don't get up, Mr. Melbourne, please. Oh, I know it's considered more polite, but you should study the comfort of the cat instead of making a fetish of your manners. I'm Sheila Farling, this is my grandfather, Sir William Farl- i2 4 SHEILA INTERVENES ing ; you probably know him, most people seem to. We've come to have tea with Denys and as he isn't here I propose to go for a tour of inspection. Will you come?" "I shall be delighted." Jack Melbourne removed the cat to a neighbouring chair, shook hands with both the newcomers, and awaited instructions. "Are you coming, Father Time?" she asked, rt or shall I give you something to read to keep you out of mischief?" "I've been here before, Sheila. I shall sit and rest, if you'll find me something interesting. See if he's got any of the proof-sheets of his new book on that table." He dropped into an armchair and lit a cigarette while his granddaughter brought him a heavy bundle of proofs from the writing- table by the door. "This will keep me busy for the pres- ent," he remarked. "Now, Jack, I hold you responsible for Sheila's good behaviour, and though you may think it an honour now, when you've known her as long as I have, you'll appreciate why I'm white-haired." "Seventy-three years of thoroughly unprincipled living! It's enough to make anyone's hair white. Perhaps I came on the scene too late to save the body, but I still have hopes of the soul. Come along, Mr. Melbourne, or we shan't have time to get round before Denys comes back." For a quarter of an hour Sheila enjoyed the luxury of unhindered exploration in strange territory and the privilege of uninterrupted commentary. She was growing interested in Denys. He had attracted her on board, and the attrac- tion had by no means come to an end on the discovery of what she conceived to be the cloud that overhung his life and lent an air of mystery and distance to his personality. She had never been able to induce him to talk about him- self, so that it had come as no small surprise to her to be told by a Regius Professor that she had been entertaining a genius unaware. He liked her, apparently, or he would CLAY IN THE POTTER'S HANDS 125 not be at such pains to seek her out and talk to her : on the other hand, he talked as he would talk to a child, teasing and laughing at her, never treating her seriously or admit- ting her to his confidence. She was uncertain whether to be annoyed with him or to relax her present inquisitorial and domineering attitude with a view to winning his sympathy. Finally she decided that it would be time enough to de- termine how to behave towards him when he had con- descended to put in an appearance. In the meantime Mel- bourne was waiting to do the honours of his flat. She stood for a moment to admire the colour-scheme of the library, to inhale the fragrant scent of the great rose- bowls and to enjoy the atmosphere of orderly, warm, sun- lit, soft-carpeted, large-cushioned luxury which the room presented. Then she turned to inspect the contents of the bookcases, from time to time picking out a volume to make certain of its identity or discover the date of purchase : oc- casionally a book so chosen would be placed on one side for future borrowing instead of being returned to its shelf. The library was large and of catholic choice, and as she moved slowly from case to case humming to herself or ex- changing a word with Jack Melbourne she tried to diagnose the literary tastes of its owner. There were rows upon rows of Latin and Greek texts, more than the most studious would normally acquire in an English public school; histories of Europe in every age, with a preponderance in favour of modern England and nineteenth-century Ireland; political economy in stout plenty ; political science in six languages ; monographs on every political question of the day, unbound Transactions of more than one abstruse and learned society, biographies by the score, and innumerable bulky political memoirs. The cases on the side of the library overlooking the park were given up to those standard works of English literature without which so many "gentlemen's libraries" continue still to exist : there were translations of German and 126 SHEILA INTERVENES Scandinavian dramas, and of countless Russian novels, French and Italian in the original tongues, and of modern Irish and English plays enough to fill many shelves. For the first time since she had known him, Sheila was conscious of a feeling of pitying regret that a man whose tastes were so purely literary, and whose instincts were all for comfort and scholarly leisure, should allow himself to be led by a perverse and fantastic sense of duty to undertake work of which every moment must be uncongenial. Aloud she con- tented herself with remarking: "The modern young bachelpr knows how to do himself well. We shall have to speak to him about this, Father Time ; a young man with his way to make in the world has no buisness to be spending money on this scale." "Better not," said her grandfather gently. "But why not?" : "He may feel it's rather more his business than yours." "Yes, but when a young thing like Denys doesn't know how to look after himself and they never do, you know it's time someone took him in hand." Sir William's was not the real reason, as both he and Sheila knew. Any reference to the way he lived sent a flush of anger over Denys' sensitive face: it was an im- putation that the descendant of the oldest landowners in the King's County was unfitted on the score of poverty to surround himself with beautiful furniture or live in presentable rooms. As Sir William knew, the library was like a chapel to him : chairs and tables and book-cases had been bought one by one with the guineas earned in criticism and review articles ; the Rodin bust was the fruit of his first novel, and at one time he had entered in a diary the date of each purchase and the character of the work that had enabled him to make it. And Sir William had been the first to enter the flat when the purchases were complete and the warehouse had yielded up books which CLAY IN THE POTTER'S HANDS 127 Denys had gone hungry to keep from selling. He knew, as no other man knew, the sensitiveness and insanity of Irish pride. With a lingering, fascinated glance round the sunlit room, Sheila strayed into the hall in search of fresh worlds to conquer. Jack, who was resolved that she should miss nothing, insisted on a visit to the bathroom in order to impress upon her that it was the only chamber of its kind in London, where one could be certain of securing hot and cold water, whiskey, cigarettes, and a morning and evening paper at any hour of the day or night. Then, making a judicious exception of the spare room which he was occupying at the present time to the destruction of the otherwise universal tidiness of the flat, he led the way after a cursory inspection of the dining-room to Denys' own bedroom. Sheila entered with undisguised interest and lack of embarrassment. It was a fair-sized room furnished with great simplicity in old mahogany. The wall-paper was white ; the curtains, counterpane, and carpet a deep purple. Sheila made exhaustive study of the brushes, combs, mani- cure-set, razors, powder-box, and other shaving sundries on the dressing-table, sniffed gingerly but with subsequent relief at a silver-topped scent-bottle, and looked at herself approvingly in the mirror. On a small table by the bed' side stood a Japanese steel cigar-box, a Turkish coffee-pot, and a small ebony bookstand. She picked up the books to judge of his taste in night literature and discovered an "Imitation of Christ," Carlyle's French Revolution, Fitz- gerald's Omar Khayyam, an India-paper Browning which opened of its own accord at "Bishop Bloughram's Apol- ogy," the Book of Job with Blake's illustrations, Boswell's Johnson, four volumes of the "Decline and Fall," the Pick- wick Papers, Morley's Life of Gladstone, Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay, the "Bab Ballads," Poe's "Tales of the Gro- 128 SHEILA INTERVENES tesque and Arabesque," and the "Ingoldsby Legends." "A fine confusion," she remarked; "we'd better go back to the library. There's someone getting out of the lift." They just had time to make good their retreat to the library when the door opened and Denys entered. "Punctuality is still considered a form of politeness," began Sheila before he could apologise. "Father Time used to tell me that your manners were irreproachable, and here we have been waiting for twenty minutes with my grand- father indulging in cynical chuckles over your proof-sheets and Mr. Melbourne and me, disconsolate and bashful, sit- ting at opposite ends of the room and not daring to inter- change a word until we'd been introduced." "Anything up -to the point of your sitting silent and bashful I'm prepared to believe. Not that, Sheila." Denys slowly pulled off his gloves and placed them inside the tall hat which he had just deposited on a table by the door. He had come in looking careworn and tired, but "his eyes regained their lustre as they met Sheila's, and Sheila was pleased at the tribute. It was pleasant to feel virtue going out of her, and it gratified her to see that however tired or ill Denys might be looking, he never failed to respond to the challenge of untroubled enjoyment which radiated about her. "Ring the bell for tea, Denys, then set about making my coffee, and then tell me where you've been." "I've been in the ring department of Mr. Aspinall's jew- ellery establishment in Bond Street," said Denys, taking a small copper coffee-pot out of a cupboard under the middle window. "You don't mean to say ..." began Sir William. "Don't be absurd, Father Time," interrupted Sheila, though it took her a fraction of time to make certain of her ground; "did you ever see a man who looked less CLAY IN THE POTTER'S HANDS 129 like it? He only wants to draw attention to himself. Tell us what you've really been doing and why you're late, and whether you enjoyed yourself last night, and how Margery looked oh, and everything else that occurs to you." "But I've told you. I nearly lost my ring this morning through this wasted little finger having shrunk, so this afternoon I had a piece taken out of the ring to prevent it happening again. I must have been pining away since I met you last week, Sheila." "All the arts of the orator, you see, Miss Farling," ob- served Melbourne. "The moment he comes in he makes himself the centre of interest by pretending he's been lured on to the slippery slope of matrimony." "It was a plain answer to a plain question," rejoined Denys. "But very effective, none the less. I do it myself when necessary. On those rare and depressing occasions when I dine with my parents I try to stimulate them by a ref- erence to my possible nuptials. I say, 'Father, how would you like Emily Podge as a daughter-in-law?' And then panic sets in. My father, a most respectable man ask Sir William if you don't believe me gasps out 'Good God !' and subsides into the soup. My mother sobs and squeezes down a lump in her throat. My brother, who's a bar- rister, barks out that I must insist on a settlement. My married sister remarks to the world at large that the men of the Melbourne family were never lacking in blind, un- calculating courage. My young sister heads a flank attack by expressing sympathy with Emily. By that time the conversational ball has been started, and with any luck the fish has made its appearance." Sir William put down the proof-sheets he had been read- ing and looked at his watch. "Denys, you'd better leave those two children to sparkle to each other and come over here as soon as you have J30 SHEILA INTERVENES made tea. I've got to go in a few minutes and I want to have a chat with you first." With all the speed he could summon to his aid, Denys distributed the tea, made coffee for Sheila, poured out a large bowl of milk for the cat, acted as arbitrator in a dispute between Melbourne, who asserted he had had no tea, and Sheila, who asserted he had had too much, and finally drew up a chair next to Sir William. Their con- versation was confined to the subject of the report, the date when Denys was to start work, the controversial areas he would be wise in avoiding, the limits of irrelevance he would do well to observe. Denys was impressed with Sir William's intimate and detached knowledge of politics, the fruit of sixty years' patient observation of men and programmes rather than of the ten years he had actually spent in the House. It was a comfort to Denys that they avoided getting to any closer grips with the subject. With Sheila in the room possibly overhearing their conversation, there was something unexpectedly embarrassing in the perfect con- fidence which her grandfather imposed in him. The years of their friendship had been years of unwearying kind- ness from the older to the younger man: it was easy to speak of a duty which transcended ordinary passions and conventional friendships, but the nearer he approached the goal, the harder his task became. Sir William had chosen him for the work because he seemed the ablest man avail- able: that the proposal had ever been made arose from the old man's misgivings for the future. He deplored the apathy and disorder of the Conservative party as much as he feared the rising demands and increasing consolida- tion of Labour: it was to safeguard the future and protect his property for Sheila's enjoyment that he was employing the services of a paid fighter. And Denys' function was to draw his pay and fire into the ranks of his own army, CLAY IN THE POTTER'S HANDS 131 to foster the apathy of the Conservatives and the con- solidation of Labour until he was ready to desert and lead a united host to plunder the city he had been set to defend. After ten minutes' conversation Sir William looked at his watch, rose from his chair and shook his host by the hand. "Come along, Sheila," he said, "or I shall be late for my man." At the bookcase by the door his flight was intercepted. "You've got to wait five minutes, Father Time," she explained, "till I've chosen the books Denys is going to lend me." "My dear, I'm late as it is. You must choose the books another day." She proceeded with her task of selection, unmoved by her grandfather's words. "If you think I'm going to be hurried, or that my wishes are going to be subordinated to yours well, you've still got an enormous lot to learn about me." She picked out a volume of Maeterlinck's plays. "I would suggest ..." then some essays by Max Beerbohm . . . "that you drive down to the club ..." then a copy of Denys' own first novel . . . "and send the car back for me. Mr. Mel- bourne wants to be dropped in Pall Mall, so you may as well be useful as well as ornamental. Meantime I shall stay and talk to Denys." "My dear, Denys is up to his eyes in work he doesn't want any more of his time wasted." "As if that mattered ! It isn't a question of what Denys wants, it's a question of what I propose to do. Now run along, Father Time, and don't be unnecessarily late." Sir William shook his head sadly, and with a smile of commiseration for Denys took Melbourne by the arm and walked to the door of his flat. "Now I can talk," said Sheila as the door closed. 132 SHEILA INTERVENES "It will be a pleasant change for you," said Denys with a smile. "Have a cigarette?" "No, thank you, and please don't interrupt. First of all, are we friends?" "I hope so." "Honest? Why are you staring at me like that? It isn't polite." "I was thinking." "What about?" "I was thinking how extraordinarily pretty you were looking." "You overwhelm me!" "I'm sorry." Denys spoke with annoyance: the tribute had been wrung from him and he had spoken to himself more than to her. "There, there! And you said we were friends. You have got a dreadful temper. Look here, have you for- given and forgotten all I said in the train the other day?" "Forgotten, no: there was nothing to forgive." "Nothing to rankle?" "No." "And you didn't take the lectureship at Oxford?" "No." "And you're thinking of taking up politics as a . . . ?" "As a what?" "I'm waiting for you to fill in the word. How would you take up politics?" Denys flicked the ash from his cigarette and looked straight into her eyes. "As a faith, a duty, a vision, and a crusade." "Ah!" Sheila picked up a paper-knife and balanced it on her knee. "Wasn't it rather a relief to get that out? You looked dreadfully uncomfortable talking to Father Time. And how does one start?" "One awaits one's instructions from one's principal." CLAY IN THE POTTER'S HANDS 133 "Oh yes, that's wnat the world sees, but the world doesn't know what's at the back of Denys' mind. Only Denys and Sheila know that!" "Does Sheila?" "We'll assume she does, for the sake of argument. How does Denys propose to do his duty and realise his vision and live up to his faith and carry out his crusade?" "Isn't it rather a large assumption?" "Perhaps." Sheila recognised that in his present mood he was not disposed to gratify her curiosity. "Poor Denys," she said in a final attempt, "you've never learned how to tell lies. You'll find it a handicap in the crusade; the moment anyone asks you a question you'll blurt out the truth." "You've found that?" Sheila laughed indulgently. "Sweet creature! It might be twelve by the air of mystery it tries to wrap round itself. Denys, you're looking most awfully ill. I usually see you by artificial light : with the sun on you, you look perfectly ghastly." "I bet I don't look as bad as I feel: however, we shall never be able to decide that point. If you hear of any serviceable new lungs looking for employment you might let me know. I've almost done with mine." "I suppose that's why you smoke without a break from the time you get up to the time you go to bed." "Yes, I'm spreading a deposit of nicotine over the faulty places." Sheila's voice softened and lost its bantering tone. "Why don't you take proper care of yourself? for your own sake. Good heavens ! don't imagine I care what hap- pens to you," she added with exaggerated indifference. "But life's a poor thing for a man if his wife's a widow, and crusades are a little unsubstantial if there are no cru- saders. Why don't you take a rest?" 134 SHEILA INTERVENES "Just when the crusade you assume is supposed to be starting? When a solicitor has no case to go to a jury, he usually goes to the solicitor on the other side and says, 'Let's compromise.' On your own assumption the cru- sade is looking rather bright just now. I'm honoured by your interest in my health, but obviously I can't afford a rest at the moment." Sheila sighed, to cover her annoyance at having her con- cern for his health misconstrued. , "Well, I must be going," she remarked. "Will you do me a favour?" "If it's something quite unimportant and easy." "Denys, when I take the trouble to call on you in per- son . . ." "In a most becoming grey dress and black hat." "Oh, you dear! I'm so glad you like them. Anyway, it's this." She walked up to the mantelpiece, climbed on to the leather cushion of the fender, and lifted down a small old-fashioned oil painting of a young man's head. The face was thin and close-lipped, with the skin drawn tightly over the bones of the jaw and cheek: the eyes had been fixed on the painter in an expression of reproach, and from whatever aspect the portrait was surveyed, the eyes still seemed wistfully and hauntingly to be meeting the gaze of the intruder. As she wandered round the library, Sheila had noticed and disliked this peculiarity: few peo- ple could boast of more untroubled nerves, but she felt any long time spent in the presence of that portrait would be disconcerting. She had no doubt that Denys came under the spell whenever he entered the room, and she considered the influence unwholesome. "And what are you going to do with it when you've got it down?" asked Denys with an amused interest. "Put it in a drawer or anywhere where it won't always CLAY IN THE POTTER'S HANDS 135, be looking at you. I don't like always being watched, it makes me jumpy. And this picture's always watching you." "I know: that's a portrait of my grandfather. We're supposed to be rather alike ; Sir William's often commented on it. I wonder he never recognised that as the man he used to know at Trinity College." "There's a very strong likeness, and when you're look- ing three parts dead and wholly insane as you're doing now, you've got just the same expression in your eyes. Denys, do listen to reason. This is 1913, your respected grandfather died fifty years ago; and all this business about martyrdom in a righteous cause and your carrying on the war in his memory well, bunkum's the only word to describe it. I'm sorry Denys, I know it's very bad taste to talk like this, but you do ask for it, you know. May I?" She was still standing on the fender with the picture in her arms. Denys hesitated for a moment and then relieved her of her burden. "By all means," he said, "let me help you down." "Good! To be quite candid, I didn't think you'd let me." Denys bowed ironically. "You asked so nicely." "It is hard to refuse me anything, isn't it? Father Time finds that." "Also, I didn't want it for the moment. Have you heard that I'm going to stay with your uncle in Devonshire next week, to help him produce a report that is going to catch the votes of all our hungry and discontented democratic groups? Do you know that your grandfather is anxious to send me into Parliament and pay all my expenses?" "Yes, you seem rather pleased about it." She was net- tled by his accents of triumph, piqued to see that at present SHEILA INTERVENES she had won no ascendancy over him. It would have been more gratifying if he had been converted outright to her view of the absurdity of his crusade: she would have liked a little more gratitude when she expressed con- cern for his health. As it was, Denys seemed to be boast- ing of his ability to get on without her and in spite of her. As she picked up the parcel of books and walked with him to the door she turned to ask w^Ji a smile of singular sweetness: "Did my grandfather tell you that I had suggested your going to Uncle Herbert? No?' Isn't that like a man? You're all the same, you sit on the wheel and get whirled round and round, and the faster the wheel turns the gid- dier you get, until you actually think you're turning the wheel. Good-bye, Denys; get rid of that cough before our next meeting." "When and where will that be?" "At Philippi. I don't know when." He accompanied her downstairs and put her safely into the car. The flat on his return seemed unwontedly dark and lonely. CHAPTER VII "THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY" "Yea, I know this well : were you once sealed mine, Mine in the blood's beat, mine in the breath, Mixed into me as honey in wine, Not time that sayeth and gainsayeth, Nor all strong things had severed us then; Not wrath of gods, nor wisdom of men, Nor all things earthly, nor all divine, Nor joy nor sorrow, nor life nor death." SWINBURNE: "THE TRIUMPH OF TIME." "So you've not taken wing yet, Lady Daphne?" said Denys as they walked up and down the broad-flagged ter- race at Parkstone Manor. "Oh no! Not now. This is what I wanted, what I've been waiting for. Just for once in my life I'm going to feel that I'm justifying my existence." "You're going to help me?" "Will you let me? I don't know what I can do . . . I mean I'm rather a useless sort of person, but if it's only sharpening pencils and pinning papers together, that would be something. I should feel I'd had a share in the work," she added with a dimpling smile. "You're going to do much more than that. You're going to read every page as it's written aloud, because it's got to be such nervous, heady, breathless stuff that you can't keep it to yourself. Every word is to be a reproach to you that you have lived complacently all these years while disease, injustice, misery clamoured at your gates . , : :ti 137 i 3 8 SHEILA INTERVENES Your blood is to boil with indignation. When it ceases to do that, when the words fail to grip you, when you find yourself doubting, questioning, arguing, lagging be- hind instead of being swept along blindly, helplessly, on the top of an irresistible wave ..." his voice lost its silvery ring and became conversationally matter-of-fact, "then we shall know there's something wanting, something to be re-written. And you're to be the judge." "But I ..." "Yes, you can. You're the only one that can, you're the only one with faith . . .I'll give you the ideas and the language, but you must give me the inspiration." "But I simply can't !" Denys laughed at her open-eyed perplexity. "I wonder when you'll appreciate your power ... I wonder how you've gone all this time reproaching your- self and crying for opportunities of good work when there's a fire burning within you ..." "But I can't use it." "You can't help using it ; you use it unconsciously, other people use it. I defy a man to spend an hour in your com- pany without feeling the pitiful meanness of his own spirit and wanting to make himself ever so little worthier of you." She flushed with pleasure, then said lightly: "I wonder if Maurice feels that." "He will," said Denys thoughtfully. He had arrived at the little wayside station late that afternoon and motored up the winding, heavily-timbered drive to find Daphne awaiting him at the hall door with a smile of welcome and the announcement that he would have to put up with her sole company for some hours, as her parents were dining out with friends at a dis- tance. Under her guidance he had explored the famous gardens of the manor and wandered through the silent, majestic rooms of a house which had been built out of "THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY" 139 the debris and the wealth of a monastery at the Dissolu- tion. In time it would pass to her, with a fortune large enough to pay for its destruction and rebuilding every sec- ond year: she meanwhile would probably be living in one of the three houses which Maurice Wey brook stood to inherit on his uncle, Lord Badstow's, death. Denys thought of the grey stone castle in Ireland which his father had sold to provide funds for the United Irish and wondered whether the slim brown-eyed girl at his side would ever appreciate the goodly heritage in which her lot had been cast. At dinner they had picked up their intimacy where it had been dropped at four o'clock in the morning on a doorstep in Berkeley Square. Daphne had changed in spirit since their last meeting: the look of wistfulness had gone out of her eyes; the slow, dimpling smile was seen more frequently. He gathered that she had acted on his advice and obtained her father's sanction for a course of social investigation in the East-end: her mother, it ap- peared, had been puzzled but unexpectedly yielding, and any objections to the scheme of solitary exploration had been brushed aside when Maurice Weybrook with good- natured resignation offered his services as escort. Her mind was very full of the work which lay before them, though she preferred throughout dinner to draw Denys out on the subject of his varied life. It was not until they had finished their coffee on the terrace and seated themselves in the pond-garden, so that he might smoke his cigar out of the wind, that she returned to the subject that was responsible for his presence in Devonshire. "I don't feel you're as enthusiastic as you ought to be; you take it for granted too much, instead of feeling like one of the children of Israel in sight of the Promised Land after forty years' wandering in the wilderness. Doesn't it seem worth it now, Mr. Playfair, all the work 140 SHEILA INTERVENES and the sacrifice and the hunger?" His account of the years that had passed since he resigned his Fellowship had evidently touched her imagination. "I've got the feel- ing that now, for the first time in my life, I'm going to be of some use to the world. It was rather depressing at first. I remembered what you said about the 'cost of civilisation,' and it seemed so impossible to do any- thing . . . anything adequate. Then I heard that you were coming to help father with his report, and I felt that if I could do my duty just for a few months pay just a trifle of my debt it wouldn't be so hard afterwards ; whatever I might have to do." For a few moments they sat in silence, thinking what the next few weeks meant for each of them. For Daphne it was to be an achievement, something definitely accom- plished in a good cause before she settled down to a life- time of hollow unreality, a memory to brighten, and per- haps to disturb, the eternity of existence with Maurice Weybrook. For Denys it was the crowning opportunity which was to compensate him for all his hardships, the stripping for that contest with the possessory classes to which two generations of Playfairs had already been sacri- ficed; in a sense it was also a private race with ill-health, an endurance test which was to show whether he could reach the tape before the ultimate and inevitable collapse. Yet as he smoked on in silence, his first enthusiasm grew damp and chill. It had been easy enough to keep his resentment glowing as he travelled down from London ; he had quite convinced himself of an insuperable antagonism to the pleasant, kindly, and rather stupid people who in- vited him to their houses, offered him their shooting, and insisted on his presence at their balls and dinners. It was somehow different when he was alone with Daphne, receiving her whole-hearted goodwill and assistance in his labours. The admiration which he had won from her 1 141 and the influence which he exercised over her had been obtained on false pretences. It suddenly came to him as an unbearable thought that he should take advantage of her confidence and turn her unselfish humanity to serve his vengeful and destructive ends. "You musn't expect anything very great out of this report, Lady Daphne," he warned her at last. "But I do. That's why I haven't run away. I com- pounded with my conscience because I thought the report was going to be " she hesitated for a word. "A short cut to Utopia? It isn't intended to be that. It's a promissory note which we hope we shan't have to meet, a bill we shall be able to renew on easy terms, at all events. I give you your grandfather's views of it with- out comment, Lady Daphne. He wants the report used as a programme for a new Tory Democracy, because the party has no programme of its own; he wants your father to stand sponsor for it because the party has no leader, and he wants me to write it because he thinks I've got the necessary Grub Street facility with a pen, and also well, he thinks I might turn my attention to the House of Com- mons." "And why are you doing it?" she asked gravely. "Do you know a story called 'The Man who would be King'? I want power, I want to organise the democracy and lead it . . ." "But that's what we're all trying to do, even poor little me. I want to help them in some way, to make them happier, and more secure, better fed, better housed " "I shouldn't care if a murrain carried off every man of them," broke in Denys bitterly, "when I've used them and squeezed their votes out of them. I'm playing for my own hand, and any assistance you give will be given to me for purposes of which you know nothing, not to the democracy that you want to elevate." 142 SHEILA INTERVENES She paused before replying. "You don't want me to believe that; there are so many people who take up politics for what they can get out of them. I thought you were different . . . With your power of doing good, too. I've been reading your articles on 'Industrial Death' ..." "They imposed on quite a number of people," said Denys with sombre relish. "But you were in earnest, you must have been; you wrote as if you felt every word of it to be true, as if a solemn sense of duty was forcing you to take up arms against all that suffering. Now I feel I've come into the wrong camp. You've no idea what a burden a conscience can be," she said with a rueful laugh. "I fancy I know it too well." His hand wandered along the stone seat on which they were sitting, until it met an electric switch. He pressed it and in a moment the pond- garden was lit up with tiny lights. The rugged Triton seemed to spring into life under a cascade of white, bubbling water, and for a moment he watched the effect with pleased surprise before plunging the garden once more in darkness. "That was symbolical, Lady Daphne," he remarked, "the disconcerting light which a woman with ideals sheds on the dark counsels of men. It makes it much harder to carry on my scheming if I know you're disapproving the whole time, or if it's going to turn you out of doors to seek sal- vation in ways untrodden by sinful men. That's why I turned the light off." "That's why I'm going to turn it on again," she said with a laugh. "We want all the light we can get. And now we'd better go back to the house. I can hear the car coming up the drive." The following morning Denys started work on the vol- uminous evidence which the Commission had accumulated, and for a week his time was occupied with marking and "THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY" 143 copying the passages which appeared most relevant for his own scheme. The original idea of a minority report had been abandoned, and to the bald and frigid compromise on which the majority of the Commissioners had found tardy agreement, Lord Parkstone was prepared to affix his signature. At Sir William's suggestion he had now de- cided on the publication, simultaneously with the appearance of the Blue Book, of an unofficial manifesto embodying the reflections to which the evidence had given rise. Denys invented the title of "The Trustees of Posterity," and after a week spent in blue-pencilling the opinions of most of the witnesses, the skeleton outline of the book had been sketched, its principal divisions marked out, and its chapters named and headed with appropriate quotations. Of the chief reasons for a stationary birth-rate little was said. The tendency was not traceable among the wealth- iest classes ; it was due to increased love of material com- fort and a consequent deliberate limitation of families in the middle classes. In the ranks of labour there was not so much a fall in the birth-rate as an inverse ratio between the numbers and the quality of the new lives. Children continued to be born into the world in an unbroken stream, but this went on side by side with an emigration movement which carried the healthiest and most independent stock across the seas, leaving the relatively less robust to be the parents of the coming generation. In the introduction to his book Denys took these tendencies for granted and offered no recommendation : it was impossible to suggest to the middle classes any inducement to increase the size of their families and intensify the parents' struggle for exist- ence, impossible to prevail on the enterprising and adven- turous spirits among the working-classes to turn their gaze from the rich promise of Canada and Australia in order to compete in the crowded, inelastic markets of an older civilization. "The Trustees of Posterity" confined itself i 4 4 SHEILA INTERVENES to the rate of birth among the labourers who remained be- hind: its recommendations were directed to securing for these the maximum of health, efficiency, and happiness. Lord Parkstone read the draft of the first chapter with an interested eye, and approved the self-imposed limitation of scope. "It's going to cost a pretty penny," was his com- ment, a criticism later to be taken up and repeated in ac- cents of increasing apprehension. "There's no lack of money in the country," rejoined Denys. "True enough, but sermons from that text are not too well received by my party." "It's the only text that will get you a hearing from Labour," said Denys. Apart from the question of cost there was little disagree- ment between the two men on the main lines of the book, though the older man had sometimes to be dragged into timid acquiescence. Denys devoted an ironical early chap- ter to the "Blessings of Inheritance," in which he painted a haunting and disturbing picture of transmitted scourges and congenital taints of insanity, disease, and criminality. It was an eloquent plea for hygienic breeding and the sterilisation of the unfit which afterwards delighted the hearts of the Eugenic Society. At the moment Lord Park- stone shook his head and read on. "Housing and Sanita- tion" was less controversial, in so far as the ground was more familiar; he was forced to admit that infant life was heavily handicapped so long as it was crowded into costly, airless, lightless hovels; the only question was whether the party which embraced the majority of the landlord class would consent to the radical demolition and reconstruction on which Denys insisted. In the same way, "The Just Reward of Maternity" advocated a policy which had already found acceptance: the act of bringing a new life into the world was already regarded as a service for "THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY" 145 which the mother had a right to demand recognition from the State. The recommendations put forth by Denys only enlarged on a familiar theme. Any real divergence of opinion was reserved for the concluding chapters: "The Security of the Worker" and "The Worker at Play." Denys had skated over thin ice in the matter of "Drink" and "Wages," and Lord Park- stone had raised no protest because he felt that the two subjects would be talked out if the book ever had its de- sired effect of fusing the Tory and Labour parties. It was a different question when he was called upon to bless un- tried proposals for the regulation of industrial disputes. He held the old unscientific and disorderly view that disagree- ments between masters and men must be left to adjust themselves on crude principles of bargaining and threats, superseded in the last instance by arbitration, a lockout, and a symathetic strike. Denys had acted as special correspond- ent at the time of a four weeks' coal strike in South Wales : he had seen the faces of the workers thinning day by day at the pinch of hunger, and the new-born babies, baptised an hour after birth, being carried out in tiny coffins before their mothers were strong enough to walk in melancholy procession to the bleak hillside cemetery. Later in his career he had watched the dropping returns of new business at the Anglo-Hibernian whenever a labour war had been declared. "A settlement is always reached ultimately," he told Lord Parkstone. "You reach it now by force, after a trial of strength which may cripple the resources of both armies for a generation. Why not settle it by arbitration? Why should the whole community be held to ransom and driven to the brink of starvation, when it has the power of en- forcing its judgment on masters and men, by confiscating the mines and factories and rolling-stock of the capitalists, the trade-union funds of the workers, if they will not accept 146 SHEILA INTERVENES its ruling? When men have been made voters, it is a re- lapse into barbarism to make these trials of strength." "I agree," said Lord Parkstone; "but should Parliament be called upon to fix wages, and would the workers on the spot mines or mills or factories feel they had had a fair hearing at Westminster?" "Not under the present electoral laws," said Denys, tak- ing up his pen for an attack on anomalies of registration and a stirring appeal on behalf of proportional representa- tion. "The Worker at Play" aroused fresh misgivings. Denys was firmly convinced that scientific specialisation and rigid division of labour had produced a "heart-breaking monotony which was more potent in impelling manual labourers to a strike than any question of wages or prices or conditions. The one good which resulted from a strike provided it were not too long sustained was a complete mental and physical relaxation; he sometimes felt that labour unrest would be a forgotten nightmare if every worker were given a fortnight's holiday in the year on full pay. The contro- versal chapter advocated a scale of hours to which Lord Parkstone said the manufacturers of his party would never consent. It was finally agreed to leave the point in abey- ance till Sir William paid his promised visit to Devonshire and could sit as arbitrator. The skeleton draft occupied Denys for a week. He hoped that another five weeks would elapse before the official re- port made its appearance, and until the arrival of Sir William and the disinterment of the controversial subjects, he was at liberty to clothe the naked bones with all the whipcord muscle and firm, clean flesh which an unrivalled vocabulary and exuberant imagination could evolve. They were days of great contentment. He rode and bathed with Lady Daphne before breakfast, wrote all the morning, played tennis or walked in the garden till tea-time, and then "THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY" 147 wrote again till it was time to dress for dinner. In the evening he sat on the terrace outside the open drawing- room windows, thinking over the next day's chapter, mar- shalling his facts and coining a mint of incisive phrases. Inside, Daphne would sit at the piano. She had guessed from an unfinished sentence he had once spoken that it soothed and helped him to listen to her playing: the only regret she felt at the time was her inability to do more for the work they were producing. When she had gone to bed, he would retire to the smoking-room and astonish Lord Parkstone with the daring originality and fearless logic of his opinions on politics and sociology. Even Lady Parkstone unbent and assumed the outward garb of humanity in presence of Denys. She was so cer- tain that her daughter would ultimately marry Weybrook, and looked forward so confidently to the publication of the engagement on Daphne's twenty-first birthday, in November, that she never dreamed Denys could offer any counter- attraction. The hours they spent together riding, swimming, and walking, the long mornings through which they sat with touching heads and hands, bent over proof-sheets, the evenings when Daphne lingered at the piano with her eyes fixed on Denys' thoughtful face, all passed smoothly by her without awakening any of the apprehensions which were so frequent before Maurice declared himself. Denys, for his part, made himself both useful and conducive. As a conversationalist he was invaluable for her dinner-parties: he always knew where she had left her embroidery and could walk unerringly to the shelf in the library which con- tained the book of her desire. She regarded him as an able and obliging young man, both creditable and useful to have about the house. Sir William had guaranteed his social respectability by informing her that the Play fairs were a power in the land before the Farlings emerged from their original obscurity. It was careless of them to have 148 SHEILA INTERVENES allowed themselves to have become impoverished, but for once that did not matter. Denys was being useful to her husband, Daphne seemed to like him, and there was now fortunately no opening for an indiscretion. Neither Lady Parkstone nor her husband nor Daphne noticed the change which overcame Denys as the weeks went by. It was not until the last sheets of proof had arrived for correction, not until Sir William and Maurice had come to swell the last week-end party before the Parkstones went north, that the continuous strain of his unremitting labours began to make itself apparent. Maurice, to whom the symptoms were familiar, took him aside in the smoking- room on the night of his arrival. "Look here, old son," he began, "you're simply ridin' for a fall. We must turn you out to grass and feed you up a bit or you'll be all to pieces. Hold out your hand: now look at mine. Mark you, I'm not supposed to be particu- lar steady-livin', but if my hand shook like that, I should expect to be seein' things before the week was out. Turn it down, young feller my lad, before it turns you down. I know what a wearin' business this philanthropy touch is. I tried it with Daphne. Ask her." "It's the last lap, Maurice," said Denys. "I shall have finished in a day or two and then I can sleep on till the last trump or try to," he added. "Sleepin' badly?" "Not particularly well, Maurice, I never do." It was an understatement which the night watchman at the Manor could have corrected. There were few nights on which he did not see Denys retiring to his bathroom to sit with his feet in almost boiling water in the hopes of drawing the blood from his aching head and inducing sleep: and there were few mornings on which Denys, hollow-eyed and cough- ing, did not ask his permission to be admitted to the terraces and the garden as soon as it was light. "THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY" 149 "Any more faintin' fits?" pursued Maurice. "You're getting a most awful bedside manner," said Denys with a laugh. "I shan't tell you." "That means you have, or you'd have been slippy enough to deny it. Drop rottin', Denys. If you don't chuck this business and have a rest ..." "Well?" "I shall have to turn Sheila on to you. She won't stand any truck from you or anybody else." He lowered his voice confidently. "She's the only person her ladyship, my future mother-in-law, stands in fear of. And that's sayin' a good deal. Not half a bad kid, either; only she's too fond of getting her own way. Now you toddle off to bed, old Spot, and sleep on my good advice." The following day Sir William sat in judgment on the disputed questions of policy which had arisen between his son-in-law and Denys. Without exception he decided against Lord Parkstone and in favour of the bolder pro- gramme. "The cost of it!" repeated Lord Parkstone in his slow, immovable fashion. "I shall never get the party to vote all this out of their pockets. Flesh and blood wouldn't stand it" "Then you must find a way of making omelettes that doesn't entail breaking eggs. Or else you must resign yourself to be out of power for the rest of your days. Of course it costs money. That's the price you are paying for purchase of the Labour programme, for the privilege of carrying out their proposals in your way instead of letting them carry out their proposals in their own way. You speak as if the money were being poured into the gutter, Herbert. I regard it as a premium which you are paying to insure against total destruction. It's not an unreasonable figure." Backed by Sir William's support, the final chapter was 150 SHEILA INTERVENES finished two days later. Denys scribbled the time and date on the last sheet and laid down his pen with a sigh of great weariness. The earlier chapters were already set up; in a few days he would revise the remaining proof-sheets, and on the morning when the Blue Book made its appearance, every bookstall and library would be laden with copies of "The Trustees of Posterity." It would bear Lord Park- stone's influential name, with suitable acknowledgment to himself; it would be cheap in price, boldly printed, and filled with those cartoon diagrams from which a nation un- versed in statistics takes its sociological nourishment. At the moment there was literally nothing more to do. He leant his .head on his hands and closed his eyes. The sun had gone down when he awoke to find Lady Daphne standing in a black silk evening dress at his side, turning over the pages of manuscript on the table before him. "Sorry, Mr. Playfair," she said, smiling. "I'm afraid I woke you up by crackling the paper." "Don't say it's dinner-time," said Denys in accents of horror. He was sitting in white flannel trousers and shirt open at the throat, with rolled-up sleeves. The watch on his wrist reassured him. "Oh, I see it's only seven ; you've dressed early, Lady Daphne. Here, take this chair." "Don't get up, please. I'm going in a minute, and mean- while I shall accommodate myself on the table. Sheila ought to be up in a few minutes, so I thought I'd dress first and then go and talk to her. Well, it's finished." "The prologue is." "What do you mean by the prologue?" "Until I know what the play is going to be, I can't answer that. The play depends on your grandfather : he is going to decide on the strength of this book whether he thinks me worth running as a parliamentary candidate." "He's decided already. He says the book far exceeds "THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY" 151 his wildest hopes. When he gets back to town he is going to insist on the first suitable seat being offered you. What are you going to do when you get there ?" "I told you the first night I was here: I am looking for power, and the thought of it has kept me alive when oh, well, I don't suppose I had to put up with any very great hardships, but they seemed great at the time. I want power, and when I've got it I want to fight for my own hand in my own way. It's as much a duty to me as anything you have ever felt tugging inside you." "You must forget it." "Why should I ?" She gave a gentle shrug of her white shoulders and looked away out of the window. "I don't think you realise yourself," she said at last, "you don't appreciate your power, the way you force people to agree with you and do what you want. You don't know what you've put into this book of yours : it's . . . it's won- derful. It's the finest thing you've ever done; you ought to be proud of it and the good it's going to do. And in- stead of that . . . You know, to me it sounds perfectly diabolical. I can't believe you really mean it. It would be so awful." Denys found the steady gaze of her .brown eyes discon- certing. "You're asking me to give up an idea that has become almost a religion to me, Lady Daphne. What do you put in its place?" "The real, sincere spirit behind those words you've writ- ten. If they meant anything to you, I should want nothing more. They must mean something to you, you must believe in them." "I tell you what I told you that other night : if a murrain carried off every soul to whom that book is addressed, I should be none the less happy. What you don't appreciate 152 SHEILA INTERVENES is that I never wrote that book. I'm proud of the penman- ship, all that's best in me has gone into it, and I'm proud to be associated with it. But the fire, the poetry, the hu- manity all that came from you when you sat at the piano, or talked about it, or told me I was getting apathetic or in- human. It's your book: that troublesome conscience of yours has made it what it is. For good or for evil," he added. "For good." She laid her hand appealingly on his. "It's probably the only thing I shall ever ask you to do. You've got the whole world before you, you can do what you like* with your life. A girl can't, you know. That's why I wanted the satisfaction of helping you in some way, so that I might feel I'd made the most of my opportunity, in case it was the only one. It is my only one ; I've had my day's holiday." Denys was touched by the melancholy of her tone and all it implied. "Oh, what a drear, dark close to my poor day ! How could that red sun drop in that black cloud? Ah, Pippa ; morning's rule is moved away, Dispensed with, never more to be allowed! Day's turn is over, now arrives the night's." Daphne smiled and took up the quotation. "Now, one thing I should like to really know : How near I ever might approach all these I only fancied being, this long day: Approach, I mean, so as to touch them, so As to ... in some way . . . move them if you please, Do good or evil to them some slight way." Denys sat with his eyes fixed on the manuscript before him. "Very near indeed," he murmured. "But far enough to miss altogether. Won't you won't you do yourself justice? It would be so wonderful to think "THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY" 153 I'd really influenced you. Otherwise ... we just meet and part, and I go back to my dreadful, wasted life." "Will you?" "How can I help it?" "But your life had altered to some extent between the time I first met you and the time I came down here." "That can't go on." Denys made no attempt to contradict her ; the truth was self-evident: the energy of Maurice's onslaught on the cruelties and sufferings of civilisation had already spent itself. "I should be sorry to think that," he murmured, "very sorry." "But why? I'm resigned to it" "I hope not: resignation means the soul is dying." "Perhaps. What else is possible?" Against his will and despite his struggles Denys was being forced into an impossible position. To sit idly by and allow a sensitive, soulful visionary like Daphne to forget her dreams and sacrifice her ideals in order to marry the man of her promise, was to make himself accessory to a moral suicide ; to influence her against Maurice was an act of treachery to a friend who regarded him with pathetic, dog-like devotion. "I cannot advise you," he said. "You're the only person who can." Denys looked up quickly, but Daphne was gazing out of the window, forget- ful of everything, following out her own line of thought. "I'd made up my mind to it. I didn't think I should bd happy ; but then I don't know that we're meant to be happy. It was when you talked to me and seemed to understand what I was trying to express ... I'd never thought I mattered before, but you made me seem important, some- thing that counted . . . You told me I could inspire people . . . No one's ever said that to me before, no one's i 5 4 SHEILA INTERVENES ever made me take a pride in myself. And I've never dared talk to anyone as I've talked to you they'd have laughed at me. If there's anything in me to lose, anything worth saving, you know you ought to say." "I'm not an impartial judge; you must get someone else to advise you." "There's no one. Father wouldn't understand; I don't think even Sheila would. Granddad would, but he's not an impartial judge either ..." "You're the only person to decide, you're the only one that knows your own feelings, likings, affections ... all that makes for your own happiness." "But it isn't a question of feelings, it's a question of causing a great deal of pain. And it isn't a question of happiness, it's a question of duty." The perplexity and despair in her voice drove Denys from the position of neutrality he had taken up. "But happiness is a duty, the first and highest duty in a life which may be the only life you know. Don't I know that? Don't I know the misery of neglecting that duty? Nothing in the world should drive a woman, or a man either, Daphne, for that matter, to marry someone that they know beforehand will make them unhappy all their lives." Lady Daphne did not answer. She was looking over Denys' shoulder to the far end of the library, where Lady Parkstone and Sheila stood framed in the open doorway. Her mother made no comment : she was too busily engaged in digesting the last fragment of the conversation, the familiar use of the Christian name, and the sight of her daughter sitting on the table hand-in-hand with Denys. Sheila, with a view of saving or enriching the situation, remarked sunnily: "Now, Denys, it's time you went and dressed for dinner." CHAPTER VIII DENYS HAS NO TIME TO BE ROMANTIC " 'Stay, stay with us, rest, thou art weary and worn I* And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay; But sorrow return'd with the dawning of morn, And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away." CAMPBELL: "THE SOLDIER'S DREAM." "ARE you going to stay with the Parkstones in Scotland ?" Sheila asked Denys the second morning after her arrival in Devonshire. "No, I'm going back to town to-morrow. Your grand- father is going to make life a joy for the Central Office till they've found me a seat." "Have you been invited to go north?" "No." "I thought not. My young friend, you've not made bad use of your time up to the present; but are you going to carry it through?" "In what way?" "With Daphne." "Lady Daphne is engaged to Maurice." "Not so much of the 'Lady,' please. It's affectation ; you don't use it when you talk to her and tell her only to marry where her heart is, and other admirable copy-book senti- ments. Why don't you strike while the iron is hot?" "Oh, many reasons, one of them being that I don't care to lay hands on other people's property." 155 156 SHEILA INTERVENES "Property !" She spoke with concentrated scorn. "That is just the way a man likes to look on women. If ever I heard myself described as someone's property ..." "You won't, Sheila. The Married Women's Property Act will be revised to admit of your including a husband in your list of chattels: he won't be allowed to call even his soul his own. However, we're getting away from the main point. There's all the difference in the world between telling Daphne only to marry where her heart is and asking her to marry me." "The one clears the way for the other." "There's still Maurice, who is a great friend of mine, and it's not good form to steal a friend's fiancee any more than to steal his wife." "If Daphne broke it off with Maurice ..." "There would still be a number of minor objections. To begin with, my income is chiefly derived from your grand- father's allowance of 800 a year for five years and an occasional insignificant cheque from my publishers. To that we may add 400 a year if and when I am elected to the House of Commons. A dainty dish to set before a daughter of the Earl, or rather Countess of Parkstone, Sheila. Next point, I have no grounds for thinking Daphne cares two pins for me, and finally I don't at all know ..." He broke off to try and determine what his feelings towards Daphne really were. There was compassion, rev- erence, admiration, a distant awe, but so far no love. "Oh yes, you do," said Sheila quietly, "you know exactly what she means to you. You wouldn't have forgotten your political crusade so quickly otherwise." "I didn't know I had," said Denys. It was the thought of the crusade that had saved him that evening until Lady Parkstone's unexpected entry put him out of danger of (committing himself. "Then you aren't taking the crusade seriously," said NO TIME TO BE ROMANTIC 157, Sheila, with an air of finality. "If you wanted to head a revblution against people like poor Uncle Herbert, you couldn't do it in a way more upsetting to him than by marry- ing his cherished only daughter. Have it which way you like: either you think so little of your crusade that you won't take the first opportunity of striking just where you'll hurt most, or else you think so much of Daphne that you know she'll probably knock the nonsense out of you, and in any case you're not prepared to sacrifice her. If that's the case, don't tell me you 'finally don't at all know. . . . ' You must pull yourself together, Denys ; for 'one of the most brilliant of the rising school of historians' you incline to be muddle-headed." Denys lay back in lazy enjoyment of the morning sun- shine. "If you're really concerned for my welfare," he said, "you'll pick me that rose ; I can't reach it." "I sometimes despair of you men," said Sheila, disregard- ing his request. "I shall take to keeping rabbits, they're just as rational and far less troublesome." "And they eat whatever green stuff you bring them That's their chief recommendation in your eyes, Sheila." "Well, I should only give them what was good for them. What are you waiting for? Is Daphne to throw her arms round your neck ? Can't you see in her eyes ..." "I can see that she's engaged to Maurice. As long as that continues I stand outside the picture." "And when she breaks it off?" "If she breaks it off well, then I may try and find out whether I . . ." "Whether you love her. Yes, you'll probably come to me and ask my opinion. 'Please, Sheila, do I love Daphne ?' I may be old-fashioned, but I should have thought you would have known that for yourself. Anyway, if you don't love her, you shouldn't sit and hold her hand in the library. Remember Maurice! Or if you want to sit and hold her i 5 8 SHEILA INTERVENES hand you shouldn't do it under the nose of Aunt Margaret and half the house-party." Denys filled his pipe and searched through his pockets for a match. "I feel very sorry for Daphne," he remarked reflectively. "Is that going to carry you beyond the point of sitting hand-in-hand with her and gazing into her eyes?" "Not as long as she's engaged to Maurice." "But I'm going to break that off. I've got nearly three months till November, and that ought to be ample time. I should prefer you to save me the trouble, but if you won't I must." "I'm afraid you won't find it easy." "Afraid? Ah, you know, your faculty for giving your- self away amounts almost to genius." Denys laughed at the insult. "I used the word because I didn't like to think how hard you'd have to work to achieve nothing." "The splash you make falling in is only equalled by the splash you make climbing out." "Well, what do you want me to say? I admit straight away that it's a lamentably unsuitable engagement, only I don't think you'll find Daphne breaking it off." "I found that out two days ago. You'll catch up if you persevere. But it takes two to make a match ..." "It only took one in this case," said Denys, with his thoughts dwelling on the forceful personality of Lady Parkstone. "It's only going to take one to break it off," said Sheila, with an upward throw of her determined little chin. "Not Daphne." "There's still Maurice." "Maurice!" Denys burst out laughing. "If you want to rob the Bank of England, there's nothing like going to the governor for the keys." NO TIME TO BE ROMANTIC 159 Sheila disliked being laughed at in her rare moments of seriousness. "You'll have caught up that idea in a few weeks' time," she remarked disdainfully. "We'll meet in town and dis- cuss it. And you tell me if you're feeling any less muddle- headed." Denys got up and faced in the direction of the house. "If the gods have ordained that either Maurice or I am to marry Daphne, I should prefer it to be Maurice. We're both equally unworthy to unlatch her shoe, but I don't think Maurice is as conscious of his un worthiness as I am of mine." "Quite nicely phrased," said Sheila, turning to accompany him, and instantly mollified by a complimentary reference to her cousin. "With all your faults I'm glad to see you do at least appreciate her." The next day Denys returned to town immediately after breakfast. His parting with his host had been cordial; Lady Parkstone's valediction had conveyed an idea of sus- picion tempered by a certain frigid relief. Lady Daphne had remarked conventionally: "Hope to see you again soon." Sir William was bound for the Central Office, and had promised to meet Denys at his club and report progress over a confidential dinner ; so Denys, after calling at his flat for letters, strolled into Pall Mall to see what congenial spirits had been spared to London in the inauspicious open- ing weeks of September. The smoking-room presented a scene of unexpected ani- mation. As a rule it was divided into two rival camps, with one delighted group surrounding Sir William's chair by the window overlooking St. James's Square, the other drawn up in a semicircle at the opposite end, listening to the pearls of great price which dropped from Jack Mel- bourne's lips. Between the two groups lay the fireplace 160 SHEILA INTERVENES and writing-tables, a neutral territory offensively termed the "Home for Lost Dogs," and peopled with the Club Bore, the Club Dyspeptic, and the assorted Club Nonde- scripts who dined in the house each night because they were too dull to be invited elsewhere and too law-abiding to commit any breach of the rules which would lead to their expulsion. Sir William, eternally smoking cigarettes, fav- oured his audience with a running commentary on men and women of the day, couched in the most defamatory lan- guage : the Lost Dogs described their stomachs with graphic realism; Jack Melbourne, soulless, immaculate, and button- holed, discoursed of himself. Occasionally the two groups amalgamated for the purpose of a public debate between the two captains, but, at the moment when Denys entered the room, Sir William's chair was unoccupied, and many of his most regular henchmen were paying temporary alleg- iance to the other leader. After a few words of greeting from various members who had not seen him for a couple of months, Denys crossed to a vacant seat beside Jack Melbourne. "I haven't seen you for months," he began, "though I ran across your father this afternoon." "Not in anything heavy?" asked Jack hopefuly. "Oh, I see, figuratively speaking. You should be more care- ful, you've put me in a flutter." "I asked him if I should see you here to-night, but he thought you were dining with the Fortescues." "They thought so, too," said Melbourne complacently. "They're probably still thinking so. It is only by not dining with people like the Fortescues that one can hope to stamp one's personality upon them. Where have you been hiding yourself all this time?" "I've been down in Devonshire. Don't tell me that you've been working in town all through August?" "I won't ; it wouldn't even be true. I was belched forth NO TIME TO BE ROMANTIC 161 from some hospitable Scotch mansion in time to catch the mail last night, and I got to Euston this morning. After a satisfactory breakfast, I wandered down to the Temple and took lunch off one of those earnest young barristers who come to Chambers three times a week throughout the Long Vacation in the hopes of snatching someone else's brief or intimidating a nervous and infirm attorney. I then watched my father into the Automobile Club and touched him for a whiskey and a real cigar with a band on it. Then I came on here. At the same time, I have been working very hard since I saw you last." "What at?" asked Denys doubtfully. Jack dropped naturally into the honorific plural. "We tried the Bar of England, and decided the Bar of England was not a white man's job. Then at our father's suggestion we dressed the part and tried the City. Cheap- ing-centre of the world, potent deity of insurance, bank- rate, short bills, backwardation, contango which you will be surprised to learn is neither a South American dance nor a sub-tropical fruit. We tried them all at least; when I say all, we spent a few weeks at the hospitable board of the Anglo-Hibernian. Now, that was a soft option while it lasted," he added regretfully. "You just signed things and drew fees, but no sooner could I talk about 'prospects of life at age fifty' and 'average mortality' and 'suicide clause barred,' than the golden dream was dispelled. We've got you to thank for that, Denys; you frightened them into thinking they were unsound. So they were, of course ; but after Sir William resigned there was a gem of a share- holders' meeting. Our father retired from the board and took us with him. We were sorry to go ; it was just as we were leaving finger-prints on the pure, passive face of Finance. Again we have to thank you for that." "You can't blame me if one lunatic on a board persuades a working majority of other lunatics to bring the company 1 62 SHEILA INTERVENES within measurable distance of bankruptcy. You must blame our red-headed friend." "We bear no malice," said Jack suavely, "we extracted amusement even from our red-headed friend, the egregious Wilmot. We returned good for evil, Denys; we worked on your behalf." Denys shuddered. "Let me hear the worst." Jack addressed himself to his audience collectively. "Our friend Denys suffers from an embarrassing popular- ity ; everyone admires his good looks, his subtle and compre- hensive brain; he accumulates friends wherever he goes, their number becomes a nuisance and an obsession. I have been thinning them for him." He rang the bell for fresh stimulus to oratory. "After the shareholders' meeting, and while a committee was sitting to investigate and report on the misdeeds of the directors, we moved for the production of the minutes of that meeting at which you told the shy, bashful Wilmot exactly what you thought of him. You were in a minority then, the board is with you now; we nearly drew up a petition praying you to come back. Little as Wilmot may have loved you before, he loves you less now. There was a moment when his love for me hid itself behind a cloud, but I made the amende honorable. For I have need of Wilmot." "You're the first man that had." "I have need of even the meanest, provided they live at Riversley and are on the register. Listen. Wilmot has taken a summer cottage at Riversley, so I bade Mrs. Little- ton invite me for the week-end and bestow pasteboards on Wilmot." "If you continue to visit at Riversley you'll infallibly end by marrying Sibil. I used to warn you for your own sake : now I warn you for Sibil's sake." The interruption threw him out of his stride and checked the languid but incisive drawl. NO TIME TO BE ROMANTIC 163 "Don't be so needlessly rude, Denys; you're forgetting Wilmot of the Flaming Locks. I've just thrown Wilmot to the wolves." "Do you mean to say ..." "Why don't you read your Morning Post? You miss all the fashionable engagements." "The Eugenic Society will forbid the banns." "The Humanitarian League has publicly thanked me for saving mankind from Sibil and womankind from Wilmot." "Well" Denys lit a cigarette "one good thing is that you'll get no more free dinners at Riversley." "Don't you think it, my boy! I was a bit nervous the first night when the Pol Roger 1904 didn't appear, but there was no mistake about the '87 Dow, and I hear now that the Pol Roger is finished. We're starting the 1900 Perrier Jouet, a bit heavy but good enough for the friend of the family. I'm the Friend of the Family now, Denys." "But why? You've got out of a discreditable business and a dull family with tolerable adroitness. Why not leave them to moulder?" Jack held his tumbler up to the light with an air of pro- found melancholy, as though the bubbles rising and bursting had some personal significance. "We told you we had retired from the City : we have now abruptly recollected a Stake in the Country and a Duty to Society. We spend our spare moments collecting allies. We're going to stand for the Riversley division when old Collison retires. We've had property there for genera- tions, and we're nursing the constituency. 'Nursing the constituency !' We wish our father could hear us say that." "In which interest do you stand?" "We are not sure. You must ask our father, he seems to be making all the arrangements. Hallo, here's Sir Wil- liam looking for you." Denys escaped the later passages of Melbourne's recital 1 64 SHEILA INTERVENES and followed Sir William downstairs to the coffee-room. In the course of dinner he inquired what progress had been made at the Central Office. "It's not as good as I could wish," said the old man, "but such as it is you're welcome to it. There's only one seat likely to be vacant that they know of, and that's the Rivers- ley division of Oxfordshire. Collison certainly won't fight another general election, and he'll probably retire from the House in the course of the next few weeks. If you want to be nominated you can be. It's a fickle seat that has changed hands four times in the last six elections. If you fight it you can work old Badstow's influence for all it's worth and make Master Weybrook canvass for you. I should be inclined to say Tight it.' Even if you're beaten it will do no harm, and they'll give you a safe seat next time." "I agree with you," said Denys, "I don't want to lose any time." That day, without warning or explanation, he had fainted in his library : it was the third time such a thing had happened since the day when he went down to Devon- shire, and the following morning he was due for an ex- haustive examination at the hands of Doctor Gaisford. "By the way, do you know who's opposing me?" "I haven't heard yet." "Jack Melbourne ; so he says, but I don't know whether to believe him. He doesn't yet know in which interest he's standing, and refers me to his father on the subject." "His father is a crusted Radical of the pre-Reform-Bill period. Two ideas, both of them wrong, illuminated by two quotations, both of them misquoted. You needn't be frightened by Jack as a candidate." "He says he's been nursing the constituency," said Denys thoughtfully, wondering exactly how much to believe of the story he had heard. There would be enough public op- position to overcome without importing private animus, NO TIME TO BE ROMANTIC 165 Riversley was too uncertain a constituency to enable him to concede even Wilmot to an adversary. "You'll have to work, of course," said Sir William, sip- ping his sherry. "Even Collison sits by only a small majori- ty. But I've great faith in the book, it'll make a big sen- sation when it appears. Politics were never more barren than at the present time ; it's the golden moment for a man of personality or a man of ideas. You've got both. And you've got friends who'll work their hardest to get you in." Denys sat silent, wishing that the conversation could be turned from politics. It had been hard enough in Devon- shire to allow Daphne to pour forth all the generous en- thusiasm of her nature on his behalf. In a sense he had warned her, any idea that he shared her passion for human- ity had been shattered: but the warning was ambiguously offered and incredulously received; she could not conceive the perversity and malevolence of his purpose. To accept Sir William's assistance and good wishes was even harder : he had never been warned, and there were tangible, bright coins lying at Denys' bank that had been placed there by the man he was deceiving and attempting ultimately to ruin. It was a relief to talk with Sheila and be snubbed by her; his secret became less onerous. From time to time he had wondered why she had thought fit not to communicate it. It was true that such a story promptly denied by him, would gain her more ridicule than credence, but he was fully alive to the difficulty of giving such a denial, and she recognised his difficulty as much as he did. Conversation only became tolerable when Sir William turned from Denys' future to his own past. Till the end of dinner they discussed the men and methods of the Fourth Party, each somewhat agreeably surprised at the other's range of knowledge. At the conclusion of dessert Denys felt a heavy hand laid on his shoulder, and heard a deep 1 66 SHEILA INTERVENES voice addressing him by name. He turned, to find himself looking up into the face of Martineau, Sheila's Regius Pro- fessor, his old tutor at Oxford and the recipient of degrees in every University in Europe. "Eve dining with the Serpent," he said, looking at Sir William. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself, Playfair? Why did you leave us? Why didn't you come back when we asked you? Why do you let an old sinner like this tempt you away from your proper work ?" "Come and help me finish the port," said Sir William soothingly. "Denys isn't drinking, and if he listens to you, you'll only unsettle him. You can get fifty men to write history for one who'll make it. What scope does Oxford offer to a young man ?" "You can get fifty to make history for one who knows how to write it. What scope does Westminster offer to this particular young man ?" "Downing Street and the Abbey," said Sir William com- batively. Martineau picked up a menu and handed it to the old man. "Write down the names of the men who were Prime Ministers of England when Gibbon was writing 'The De- cline and Fall.' " Sir William handed back the menu. "Write down Gibbon's admission of the debt he owed the House of Commons in enabling him to write 'The Decline and Fall.' " "You're hedging," said Martineau triumphantly; "you as good as confess that history's his sphere and the Com- mons are only fit to give him experience." "Put the question to the culprit," said Sir William, point- ing to Denys, whose dark eyes were shining with pleasure at the professor's compliment. "History for choice," he said briefly, "politics of neces- NO TIME TO BE ROMANTIC 167 sity. I feel I have to. That's an answer that pleases no one," he added, with a laugh. Martineau prepared to leave them. "Don't bring him in- to the library, Farling," he said warningly. "You'll lose him if you do." Denys paid the bill and accompanied Sir William to the smoking-room. Over coffee and a cigar he decid'd that, bitter as was his reluctance to continue his present furtive double life, its bitterest feature was the necessity of aban- doning the work which afforded him every prospect of wide and early fame, and in which the ardour and passion of his being lay buried. e A week later found him crossing the park from Bucking- him Gate with the intention of dining again at his club. It was a mild September evening and the only immediate blot on his happiness lay in the fact that as usual he held a cigarette between his lips and as usual he was without matches. Failing to meet even an enemy whose matchbox he could borrow, he was reduced to walking through St. James's Palace in the hopes of procuring assistance from the lift-man at Sir William's flat in Cleveland Row. On approaching the doorway he found a car drawn up with the Farling crest, and a Farling footman standing at the door with a rug over his arm. Then the sound of a soft, eager voice reached him, and Sheila appeared in sight, draped in a scarlet silk evening cloak and followed by Maurice Wey- brook. "Hallo ! Denys," she exclaimed as she caught sight of him. "Maurice is taking me to the theatre. Why don't you join us? We haven't got a stall for you, but you may be able to get one at the box-office. Do come." "Give me a match, Maurice, and then I shall be able to deal with the situation. Sheila, haven't you learnt to rec- ognise the grim, resolute expression on the face of a man 1 68 SHEILA INTERVENES who hasn't dined? I can consider no invitations which deprive me of a much-needed meal." Sheila turned to her escort. "Maurice, I've left my opera glasses upstairs. Will you be a good angel and fetch them? That's better," she went on to Denys as Maurice disappeared into the lift. "Our Maurice is like a legacy, one of the easiest things in the world to get rid of, as a general rule, but sometimes entail- ing grave responsibilities such as going to the theatre," she added. "A good work, but very depressing. I want a lot of cheering up. That's why you're going to have supper with me to-night after the theatre. Homard au gratin, caviar, a wing of partridge, everything that the greedy soul loves. You can go upstairs and ask what I've ordered and order anything more that takes your fancy. I'm in one of my sweetest moods. I'm going to be really nice to you." "Why?" asked Denys blankly. "Because it's your birthday. ..." "But it isn't." "It might have been. It might have been mine, too, only it isn't. What fun if we were twins! Because it might equally well be Maurice's birthday; because it's a good world ; because I love you oh ! what on earth d'you want reasons for? Because I've got a lot to say; because I haven't seen you for a week ; because I've had Maurice on my hands for five mortal days. Any reason you like. About half -past eleven, and I'll never forgive you if you're late, and you're not to smoke over the food if you're there first, and you must send Father Time to bed if he shows signs of being in the way, and don't make a pig of yourself at dinner or you won't be able to eat any supper, and Servan's homard au gratin's simply wonderful. Melts in the mouth. My word, I'm out of breath." She lay back in the car, fanning herself with a glove and bubbling with sheer joy of life till Maurice reappeared. NO TIME TO BE ROMANTIC 169 "Oh, thank you, Maurice," she said. "I'm so sorry to have troubled you. I was quite right, Denys isn't using his spare room next week and will be delighted to have you. I've just asked him. Now we must hurry along or we shall be late. Good-bye, Denys." Her manner to Maurice was so conductive and her refer- ence to the spare room in Buckingham Gate so inexplicable that Denys exhausted every combination of suspicions as he dined and smoked in preparation for their meeting. Since his first meeting with Sheila he had the feeling of being made an innocent and unwitting accessory to a series of extraordinarily elaborate conspiracies of which she alone held the clues. Some day he was certain that she would involve him in serious trouble, but until that came he was forced to agree with the unanimous male estimate of her, namely, that she was very lovable, very pretty, and entirely unintelligible. He had been sitting for ten minutes in the flat in Cleve- land Row when the lift clanged open, a latch-key was tempestuously inserted into the lock of the front door, and Sheila burst into the dining-room. Throwing off her cloak she seized him by the hand, led him to a chair, and sat down opposite. "Now I want to be amused," she began. "Maurice is really depressingly dull; I feel so sorry for you having to put up with him for a fortnight. Oh, I'd better explain about that. The Badstows are shutting up Grosvenor Square at the end of this week and going abroad, so Maurice will be at a loose end till he goes to Oxfordshire. You've got to do your share in the good work, so I've billeted him on you." "What's the good work?" asked Denys humbly. "I like my right hand to know what my left hand is doing." "Caviar, please. Oh, more than that, I'm hungry. Well, you'll have to go without, then, No! I don't want it all. 170 SHEILA INTERVENES And something to drink. I'm sorry, what were you saying? Oh, about the good work. My friend, my youthful friend, my good-looking young friend, my rather-adorable-young friend-if-you-weren't-so-deadly-serious-at-times, give ear: Maurice is seeing life. I accompany him to the theatre to convince him that Daphne isn't the only girl in creation : he goes to stay with you in order to see what a comfortable, untroubled existence the modern young bachelor enjoys. Your flat is quite perfect in its way, Denys; I could live there myself. Yes, don't say it: it's too obvious. Anyway, you're going to be the model host, and you're going to lay yourself out to entertain Maurice. He'll get up in time for lunch at the club, and he'll take gentle walking exercise down Bond Street and the Burlington Arcade, and he'll dine in the Piccadilly grill-room and spend the evening at a music-hall, and then a convivial supper at Romano's. I helped him map it all out. It's the choice of Hercules, that on one side and a day's slumming with Daphne on the other. Oh, and before I forget it, old John Collison is very ill; he's giving up the hounds. It's quite on the cards that they'll invite Maurice to hunt them. It's a hor- ribly expensive hunt, and nobody will want to take John Collison's place in a hurry, but if Maurice's uncle backs him up, there's another nail in the coffin of the Poplar slums. And all this time I'm getting hungrier and hungrier and not a morsel have I had time to eat. Why don't you look after me properly and keep me amused instead of leav- ing me to do all the talking?" "I can't compete when you're talking that pace, Sheila; however, if you'll fill your mouth very full of caviar . . . Has your grandfather told you that I'm going to contest Riversley when old Collison retires? Nod your head if you can't speak. Well, that's the most amusing thing I can think of at the moment. While you've been deceiving Maurice I've been pegging away. You always took a very NO TIME TO BE ROMANTIC 171 flattering interest in my political future, even though you thought a lectureship at Oxford was more my sphere. Well, with anything like luck I shall be in the House before the end of the year. I think the first round goes to me, Sheila." "Have you ever read Von der Goltz on 'War'? Lord! no, / haven't. My dear, do I look as if I read books like that ? Only it's the thing that's always quoted by the news- papers when there's any fighting on. 'Never do what the enemy expects you to do,' or something like that. You're playing into my hands the whole time. I saw that in Devon- shire." "You're nearer the truth than you think," said Denys reflectively. "It was a very narrow escape." "I know. If Aunt Margaret and I hadn't come in at that moment, Daphne would have broken it off with Maurice and you'd have gone riding into the lists with her glove in your helmet. Wouldn't you, Denys ? Own up !" He sat looking at his distorted reflection in the concave surface of a soup spoon. "It was nearer even than that. I almost said I'd deny my gods just to please her, without dragging Maurice in at all, or pushing him out, rather which shows how danger- ous a young woman like Daphne can be in her influence. Then you and Lady Parkstone came in and saved me. There's a delicious irony about it, Sheila. It gives me great pleasure to think of your recommending me as a likely per- son to help your uncle, bringing Daphne almost to the point of robbing me of everything I've struggled for, and then walking in ten minutes too soon and spoiling all your carefully-laid schemes." Sheila placed her elbows on the table and favoured him with a singularly sweet smile. "You don't regret your visit to Devonshire, do you? I shouldn't like to feel that. I should like to think of you going to sleep with Daphne's face to give you pleasant 172 SHEILA INTERVENES dreams, and I should like you to wake up and think of her eyes. They're rather wonderful eyes, aren't they? When you look into them you feel how horribly mean and small you are beside her. And I should like you to eat and drink and smoke and work with the feeling that her eyes are always watching you. And then, just as a test case, I should like someone to tempt you, offer you a bribe to do something you might have done before you met her. Oh, my dear, we're none of us perfect, not even me. And then I should like to see you coming to tell me that it couldn't be done." She paused to enjoy the effect of her teasing. "And so the world wags on. Oh, I never congratulated you on your nomination, or whatever it is. I will now. I hope you'll be elected. I'll come and canvass for you, if I may. And then you can congratulate me on my success with Maurice. When he comes to stay with you, ask him what he thinks of me. Of course you never value me prop- erly, but Maurice will. Well, well, we're not eating. What are you going to have now?" "I have no fault to find with the homard au gratin," said Denys, reclaiming the dish. "My dear, it's frightfully indigestible ; you'll die in silent agony if you do." "Servan will think we're angry with him if I leave any," said Denys reaching for the red pepper. CHAPTER IX THE RTVERSLEY ELECTION "If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, God's blood, would not mine kill you 1" BROWNING: "SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTEK." "DENYS' can't complain that this election isn't exciting public interest," remarked Sir William, turning to the mid- dle page of The Times; "the papers won't leave it alone." "He's a marked man to the end of his days, whether he gets in or not," said Maurice. Lord and Lady Parkstone, Lady Daphne, Sheila, Sir William, Denys, and a number of willing political workers were gathered together in Lord Badstow's house in Oxford- shire, with Maurice acting as host in the absence of his uncle. They would have met there at the end of the month in any case, to be present at the ball which Maurice had obtained permission to give on condition of holding it at a time when his uncle would not be disturbed by furniture- moving. The election had precipitated their arrival. As soon as Parliament met for the autumn session, the long- expected retirement of John Collison had been announced, the writ issued for the election of a new member, and a feverish canvass instituted on behalf of both candidates. As Sir William remarked, the election was exciting un- usual interest, not so much on account of its effect on the Government as by reason of the personality of one of the candidates. A fortnight earlier "The Trustees of Posterity" had been 173 i 7 4 SHEILA INTERVENES flung in the teeth of a world made hungry by inspired para- graphs of a cryptic and appetising savour, and as Lord Parkstone's preface made handsome acknowledgment of the services rendered by Mr. Denys Play fair, "the well- known writer on social subjects," it followed that Mr. Denys Play fair's nomination received unprecedented notice. No one had quite decided what to make of the book. The high Tory organs denounced it as "the betrayal of Con- servatism," their more advanced contemporaries spoke of it as "a courageous and enlightened statement of policy," "a sincere and thoughtful attempt to solve some of the most complex problems of modern civilisation." The Liberal papers headed their leading articles, "The Passing of Ob- scurantism," the Radicals asked with mild and anxious scorn whether Saul also was among the prophets. Sir William, giving full play to his passion for intrigue, directed his attention on the one hand to the attitude of the official Conservative leaders, on the other to the verdict of the Labour Party. No pronouncement was at present forthcoming from the Front Bench, which was divided be- tween admiration of Lord Parkstone's imaginative original- ity and consternation at his audacity. The Labour Party was unequivocal in its support. After formally proclaiming its customary detachment from both the collusive, historic parties, it solemnly blessed the programme set out in the book and promised its unwavering allegiance to the Con- servative Party or any portion of it which rallied round the standard of Lord Parkstone. For three happy weeks Sir William directed, educated, and misled public opinion in London. He was responsible for the anticipatory paragraphs: a ponderous episcopal edict of excommunication was the result of a luncheon at the Athenaeum which he had devoted to explaining that "The Trustees of Posterity" in its chapter on Eugenics in- terfered with the divine monopoly of control in the matter THE RIVERSLEY ELECTION 175 of population. As he told Denys: "You'll never get a re- form carried out in this country till you've made sure of the bishops' opposition." He had contributed at length to a "Symposium of Representative Men" organised by a lead- ing London halfpenny paper, and he hoped to secure a tell- ing cartoon in the influential pages of Punch. Support and opposition were as nothing compared with notoriety: the great thing, he explained, was to get the book talked about ; and by the time he left town for Riversley, the leaders of the party had decided to refrain from active opposition, Labour had announced its intention of voting solidly for Denys, the Liberal press was peevishly declaiming against the invasion of its "corner" in ameliorative legislation, and a deputation of Female Suffrage Societies had almost been beguiled by Sir William's confidential profundity into a belief that their cause was intimately wrapped up with the success of the Conservative Candidate. "I've been through it myself," he told Daphne, "and I've helped others to go through it, so I oughtn't to complain. But how any man can face the pettiness, the vulgarity, the bitterness of a contested election, passes my comprehension. It's all right when you're in except for the people you find there but the getting in ... How Denys must hate it !" The election was not being conducted with any unusual acerbity, the heckling was no more strenuous, the repartees were no cheaper, the personalities no more offensive, but an unpleasant episode had occurred in the early days of the canvass which had compelled Sir William, seasoned as he was to the brutality of electioneering, to take a lower view of the English canons of taste. Denys was making a door- to-door canvass which brought him into the neighbourhood of an extensively patronised public house. A van was stand- ing at the door with the driver on the box refreshing him- self. Catching sight of Denys he put down his mug with the words, "Hi ! look here." Denys looked up and saw the 176 SHEILA INTERVENES whip lash being tied into a knot and slipped over the driver's left thumb. With a jerk of the right hand the lash was drawn taut, and the driver exclaimed, with an intonation of pain, "Well, I'm hanged!" There was an appreciative laugh from a little group of loafters at the door, followed by a derisive cheer, "Vote for Playfair," then a chorus, "Hanged if we do!" At every subsequent meeting Denys could be sure of an ironical interruption exhorting the world to vote for Playfair, and a voluminous determined chorus of "Hanged if we do." Lately the chorus had changed their note and announced that they would be shot if they did. Evidently an unknown friend had given one political argument time to sink in before producing another. Denys bore the attack with more equanimity than his supporters. The story of the double tragedy was set out in black and white : the marvel to him was, not that it had been raked up after so long, but that it had never been used against him before. Lord Parkstone, who had been admitted to the secret before meeting Denys, could only shrug his shoulders and sigh regretfully; Daphne went white with anger when the allusion was made plain to her, and Maurice closed the eye of one opponent and cut the lip of another in the interests of good manners. A note of apology for the methods of his friends absolved Jack Melbourne from complicity but did nothing to identify the originator of the attack. Sheila, holding herself superbly aloof from the whole campaign, neither applauded fior sympathised. "I shall be very glad when it's all over," she remarked with an ill-suppressed yawn. "If this is an average elec- tion, preserve me from politics." "You're hard to please, miss," said her grandfather. "It's very far from being an average election, as you'd know if you came to any of that young man's meetings. They're wonderful performances. It's oratory. Sometimes I get THE RIVERSLEY ELECTION 177 nervous and fidgety in my chair for fear he'll over-reach himself, but he doesn't. He doesn't. He can use language that other men would be afraid to use; they'd be self- conscious. He'll have to restrain himself in the House, they can't stand poetry in a man's speeches there, but for a popular audience it's astonishingly effective. He works them up to extraordinary enthusiasm." Sheila sniffed contemptuously. "Some people might say that you're all a little infatuated about that boy. I should have thought anybody could have impressed the sort of audience you get here." "It's not confined to the audience." "I'm waiting for it to come my way." "Of course you're an exception to most rules," said Sir William banteringly, "but it's something of an achievement to have pumped so much energy and devotion into Maurice. Let alone Daphne," he added in an undertone; "she's a different girl." Sheila looked across the room to a corner where her cousin sat ticking off names in a note-book. Since the election started, Daphne's development had been astonish- ing. Diffidence and timidity had fallen from her like a cloak: the inspiration of working for Denys transformed her. Lord Parkstone raised his eyebrows in mild surprise to see her canvassing and arguing, fearlessly approaching stubborn and discourteous recalcitrants, wheedling the lag- ga^-ds, and from one and all refusing to take "No" for an answer. Lady Parkstone, too, was surprised, and thought it all as undignified as it was unnecessary : nothing but her promise to Sir William restrained her from active inter- ference. Denys was wrapped too deeply in his dream to notice anything. Sheila looked on with the contemptuous tolerance of a god watching predestination at work. "And Denys himself is another revelation," went on Sir William ; "he goes through it all like a sleep-walker. Why, 178 SHEILA INTERVENES I can remember when he was so shy that you couldn't get him to talk till you were alone with him. And sensitive! He was just like a girl. You remember that dreadful night on board, when I got on to the subject of his poor grand- father, he went scarlet and you could see him trembling all over. Nothing moves him now. He's self -controlled, un- conscious of all that's going on round him, in fact, like someone in a trance. He's twice the man he was." "About half, I should have said," commented Sheila deliberately. Sir William drew her on to his knee and captured a hand. "Quarrelling, as usual?" "No." Sheila spoke with a weary effort to seem patient. "Only you're all so busy with this rotten election that you none of you see you're killing him by inches. I mean exactly what I say you've about halved his prospects of life since you got him down here." "He's all right," said Sir William, a shade uneas- ily. "Anyone would think I was the only person in the house with eyes in my head. You needn't believe me unless you like, but I tell you he's dying before your eyes." She spoke in a whisper, with a catch in her voice that her grandfather was careful not to notice. "Oh, don't imagine I care, it's nothing to do with me; but the way you and Daphne and Maurice and Uncle Herbert all fall down and worship and then let him get himself into this state . . . really, you are impossible!" "It's only to-day and to-morrow. Then he can rest as much as he likes. Ask him to come south with us in the 'Bird of Time/" "A day and a half in mid-November, driving about and jumping in and out of a warm car, and getting wet and tired and having to speak, speak, speak . . . ! Oh, let me go, Father Time ! I'm sick of you all." THE RIVERSLEY ELECTION 179 She dragged herself away from him and hurried out of the room. Sir William shook his head in perplexity. Something had come over Sheila the last few days which he frankly failed to understand. It was all very well to accuse him of indifference to Denys, but her own attitude had been freezing. When she condescended to cease ignor- ing his existence, it was for the purpose of inflicting a stab which Denys seemed to bear with exemplary patience. For six months Sir William had suspected something more than mere interest in Sheila's attitude to the boy, but if his suspicions were well founded she had curious methods of engaging his affection. They consisted in going out of her way to be pleasant to Maurice, with intervals of extreme unkindness to Denys. And it was not with Denys that the fault lay: he did all in his power to win her back to the old friendly relationship, and his comparative unconscious- ness of the way Daphne was toiling on his behalf put any idea of jealousy out of the question. Sir William sighed and resigned himself to his usual fate, which was to linger on in patient ignorance until such time as Sheila thought fit to enlighten him. Upstairs in her room, standing at the window with flushed face and bitten lip, Sheila could have told why the world had suddenly grown hateful to her. Half her plans had miscarried, the other half were prospering with a success that was harder to bear than any failure. Daphne was in a state of infatuation, hypnotised by Denys' per- sonality: any idea that she would exert a restraining in- fluence on him was laughable. And Denys was living out his dream and materialising his vision in a way that was hardly credible. Sheila had avoided his meetings, but the reports of them reacched her with the added testimony of those who had sat silent under the spell. His audience lay at his mercy, he could do what he liked with them. It was an empire won not over an emotional, ignorant, i8o SHEILA INTERVENES gullible mob, but over hardened debaters like her uncle and jaded cynics like her grandfather. Her victories brought no sweetness. Maurice had been wooed away unresistingly, contemptibly, but at the price of her own self-respect, and the problem which had faced Daphne in Devonshire had now solved itself. She turned from the window and paced fretfully up and down the room, asking herself why her success brought so little consolation. The answer which rose to her lips and was pressed back with an angry denial, was that she was saving Daphne at the price of losing Denys. And she had sud- denly realised that it was a price she did not want to pay. Downstairs in the hall Sir William and Daphne sat wait- ing for Denys to come in with orders for the afternoon's canvass, and discussing the eternal question of the rival candidates' prospects of victory. "Jack Melbourne is a consummate master of the 'mine de circonstance,' " said Sir William, rising up and standing with his back to the fire. "In less than twelve months I've seen him as the barrister, the man of business, and the parliamentary candidate. Every outward detail was perfect: he would have imposed on a trained detec- tive." "Sounds like Jacky Melbourne," said Maurice, who had just entered the room and dropped into the chair which Sir William had vacated. "It is. I remember meeting him in Middle Temple Lane a few months ago, hurrying along with a pair of spectacles stranded in mid-forehead after the fashion of one King's Counsel, and smoking a nine-inch cheroot immortalised by another. He waved a red silk handkerchief in the manner of a third, took snuff as I remember Russell of Killowen taking it, and stopped me in order to show the precise gesture which an alert junior employs in plucking the THE RIVERSLEY ELECTION 181 gown of his leader to draw attention to an important point which has been overlooked. The whole thing was extraor- dinarily impressive: if I'd been a solicitor nothing would have induced me to retain him." "I liked him as the City Man," grunted Maurice. "Jacky always wanted a fur coat and couldn't find the mug who'd give him one, so when his guv'nor told him he'd got to go into the City, Jacky saw his chance. 'Ten o'clock to-morrow morning,' says father. 'Right,' says Jacky. 'I must get some clothes first,' and my stars! he got 'em all right. Slipped along to father's tailor and told 'em to reach him down the best fur coat they'd got. Then he coveted a diamond ring from somewhere, turned the stone to the inside of his hand, and raided father's cigar cabinet. I saw him the same afternoon at the club. It was a pipin' hot May day, and there was Jacky standin' in a fur coat and a pot-hat, with a pair of glasses on the tip of his nose, wavin' his hands about his head, diamond ring and all, sayin' he was a buthineth man and we muthn't be hard on him. It didn't take father long to see he'd missed his train sendin' Jacky to the City." "How has he got himself up for the election?" asked Daphne. "I've hardly seen him," said Maurice ; "has he come your way, Sir William?" "Oh yes; he asked my advice on the question of dis- guise. He was wearing the fur coat and an expensive- looking orchid, but didn't know how to deal with the collar problem. It was a choice between a low Balfourian type and the cut-away Churchill variety. He compromised by selecting the Churchill collar and always gripping the lapels of his coat when he was speaking. I had to warn him against an eye-glass, however: that's the exclusive privilege of a Tariff Reformer and doesn't look well on the Radical candidate." 1 82 SHEILA INTERVENES "What chance do you think Mr. Melbourne's got, grand- dad?" asked Daphne. "Oh, no chance at all. His whole election has been one long piece of elaborate buffoonery, very funny at times, and I expect he's enjoyed every moment of it, but the electors like to be treated more seriously. Jack doesn't try to hide his contempt for the, whole thing. In some ways I'm glad not to be his father." "They're canvassing very hard for him. The big, red- haired man that you see everywhere, he's called at every house in the constituency." "Wilmot? Yes, it's a heaven-sent opportunity for him. He used to be managing directcor of the Anglo-Hibernian and carried a good deal of weight. Why, I don't know. I tried for five years to get rid of him, but my colleagues didn't share my view. He's gone now, since the last general meeting. When Denys was on board he had the temerity to criticise Wilmot and indulge in prophecies about the position he was getting the company into. Of course there's no harm in prophecy, provided it doesn't come true. Unfortunately Denys' did. There was very nearly a scan- dal, I understand, when the shareholders began to ask questions. For one thing, Wilmot tried to make the directors' report intelligible, and that's against the A.B.C. of shareholders' meetings. Denys warned him that the fat would be in the fire the moment he was betrayed into lucidity. And he was. All shareholders want is the balance-sheet: they hold it upside down and read through the bank balances, and then vote for the adoption of the report without a murmur. Wilmot tried to take them into his confidence and justify himself. Well, as Denys warned him, there were a good many things that simply couldn't be justified. The crash came, Wilmot had to resign, and now he's looking for everybody's blood. It just shows you the danger of prophecy." THE RIVERSLEY ELECTION 183 "They say he's going to heckle to-night," said Daphne, who had developed an unrivalled faculty for acquiring early news of the enemy's movements. "Leave him to me," said Maurice with gusto. "If there's any heavin' out to be done, I'm the man. These elections are too tame for my likin'; there's no scrappin' to speak of. Hullo! here's the candidate himself," he added, as Denys and Lord Parkstone came into the room. "What's the startin'-price, Denny?" "Evens, I should think. I'm ready to start if everyone else is. Can we have the cars at a quarter to eight, Maurice ?" "I'll go and order 'em now. Evens be blowed all the same, Denny, it's goin' to be a walk-over." "It's going to be a very near thing," said Lord Parkstone, taking an unoccupied chair beside his father-in-law. "Maurice is wrong, we shall have to fight our hardest to get Denys in. Melbourne's speeches seem to please his audience, somehow: there's no 'damned nonsense' about politics in them ; just a few good stories to put his house in a good temper with him, and then he proceeds to talk about himself till it's time to go on to another meet- ing." "I've never heard him talk of anything else," said Sir William. "Hallo, Sheila. Are you coming canvassing?" he asked, as she came down the stairs. "No, I'm saving myself up for to-night. I suppose I must attend one meeting, just as a matter of form," she said pointedly, not deigning to look at Denys. "It'll be a great meeting," said Sir William as Maurice helped him into his coat. "We're not inside the citadel yet ; it'll need a big speech to wind up with." Denys walked over to the fireplace to arrange his scarf in the mirror. "That ought to be good news for you, Sheila," he 1 84 SHEILA INTERVENES remarked in an undertone. "Were not inside the citadel yet." "No, and you won't be a penny the better off when you are there," she said, opposing him for opposition's sake. "That we shall see, my friend. I only hope there won't be much more fighting." He sighed wearily, and the sigh turned into a cough. Sheila's voice softened and dropped. "Denys, don't go, I want to speak to you. Did you see the doctor this morning? Well, what did he say ?" "Oh, nothing much." "What did he say?" "He talked about the weather." "Denys, are you going to tell me what he said or shall I have to ask him ?" "Don't ask him or he might tell you, and it would be unprofessional. Like me, he hoped there would not be much more fighting." "And what does that mean?" "It means that if I'm beaten, I shall be beaten by my own rotten organs and not by clever little Sheila's schemings. And it means that I want to go to bed instead of having to make this big speech your grandfather talks about. It means good news all round for you, my friend," he added with the bitterness of extreme fatigue. Sheila got up and began to walk toward the library. Then she turned and said almost in a whisper: "I've had some pretty horrid things said to me in my time, Denys, usually by you, too. But I never thought you could be such a brute as to say that to me." Denys watched her out of the room ; then, fetching him- self a cigarette from the table beside the fireplace, he took his place in the first car. As the rings of blue smoke expanded and dissolved above his head he tried to fathom why a remark of innocent intention should have sent Sheila THE RIVERSLEY ELECTION 185, from the room with tears in her eyes and a sob in her voice. It was the last day of organised canvassing : the morrow would be taken up with eleventh hour appeals to sluggards and waverers, then would come the poll. Both sides were working their hardest, Denys' supporters infected with his own enthusiasm and purpose, Melbourne's endeavouring to communicate something of their own ardour to their can- didate. At Riversley Ford the three cars separated cen- trifugally/ Lord Parkstone and an agent in one, Maurice and another zealous worker in a second, Daphne and her grandfather in a third. Denys had a door-to-door canvass to make in Church Road and was to be picked up at the Victoria Memorial Hall in two hours' time, when Daphne had scoured the out-lying, north-west part of the con- stituency. He knocked at the first door with the reluctance of one who does not relish contact with reality. The public meetings were part of his dream, he had pictured the scene a thousand times: the gaslit hall crowded with white, indistinguishable faces, the first impatient shuffling and whispering, the growing silence, the spreading spell, the rising passion and plastic, melting emotion. He had proved his power till the knowledge made him reckless and con- temptuous; he would pause to make them feel the agony of suspense, or single out one acolyte to be the bearer of his message: a man so chosen would sit fascinated with parted lips and fixed, unblinking eyes till he had ended. It was for this that he had waited and in this way that his vision would be fulfilled. As the tide of human faces receded and disappeared, his own inspiration and power left him. Removed from the atmosphere of expectancy, and without the stimulus of either sympathy or opposition, his imagination went flat and his language grew commonplace. The vision grew blurred when he passed from a windy, rain-swept street into a musty 1 86 SHEILA INTERVENES parlour oppressive with hideous over-ornamentation. Weeks of canvassing left on his mind the impression of countless bare-armed women, deferential, irrelevant, and interminable, uninterested in politics but anxious to oblige; multitudin- ous, inquisitive children, mysteriously appearing and stealthily snatched from view ; husky, confidential husbands, not so anxious to oblige but conscious of their power, aggressive in their dogmatism, and insufferably loquacious. Whales warring with elephants discovered a common battleground more quickly than the generalisations, first principles, and particular instances of candidate and elector. Denys sighed with relief when the end of Church Road was reached and his last canvass was completed. The irksomeness of the work was hardly more irritating than its futility. Promises of support had flowed in upon him, the note book was heavily marked with the red cross that indicated a vote gained; but for the value of the promises he could not speak. Working the same road and six houses ahead of him, he had espied the burly frame and fiery head of Wilmot. Probably Wilmot's list recorded the same number of promises from the self-same voters. With a glance at his watch he slackened his pace and strolled in the direction of the Memorial Hall : the two hours were up, but Daphne's car had not yet appeared, and the steps of the Memorial Hall were occupied by Wilmot and a girl in a long fur coat. He could not see her face and was dawd- ling with a view to avoiding her companion when he heard his name called and discovered that Wilmot's inclined head and affable voice were traceable to the circumstance that Sheila was talking to him. "When's the car coming?" she called out. From her tone he judged that their parting earlier in the afternoon was not yet forgotten. "I've had as much of these slushy roads as I want." THE RIVERSLEY ELECTION 187 "It ought to be here now," he said, coming up to them. "Ah, Wilmot, how are you?" "I'm all right," said Wilmot with easy insolence, keeping his hands in his pockets to discourage the possibility of further advances. "Good canvass ?" asked Sheila with an ill-disguised taunt in her voice. "A fair number of promises," said Denys, pretending to consult his list. "Promises don't cost much," said Wilmot. "God knows you deserve them, after the promises you've made in your speeches. And if the promises you've picked up to-day pan out at the same figure as the promises you've been throwing about the last few weeks, my candidate's got an easy job." "Well, well!" Denys saw no profit in continuing to talk with Wilmot in his present mood. "Coming to the meeting tonight, Sheila?" "Not unless I'm dragged," she answered ungraciously. "Better come, Miss Fading," said Wilmot with a malevo- lent grin. "We're all going to be there; it'll be a bright meeting." "I've had all the politics and speech-making I want up at the house." "Ah, but it's all on one side there; what you want is a question here and there, a little opposition. It brings your fine speakers down to earth, stimulates 'em. Your can- didate'll be worth hearing to-night," he added with sinister gusto. "Please don't call him my candidate. Hullo, here's the car ! No, it isn't, it's Mr. Melbourne." The rival candidate whirled erratically down the street and pulled up more by luck than judgment opposite the hall. "Hallo, Denys," he cried out, "I've been pruning your supporters. We ran over Isaacstein on the way down." 1 88 SHEILA INTERVENES "You don't mean to say you killed anyone!" exclaimed Sheila, roused out of herself by his flippant tone. "I'm afraid he recovered," said Melbourne with detach- ment, "he was the sort of man who would." "I don't think I even know him by sight," said Denys. "You should always know your electors by sight," explained Melbourne, "or else you may run over the wrong man. My father pointed out Isaacstein to me last week at the Cosmopolitan Club. Any of your lot own this car?" "Not that I know of," said Denys. "Where did you get it?" "Down by the schools; there were a lot of them and this seemed an improvement on our father's Jubilee model. Besides, I'm not allowed to drive that. If you see anyone looking for a car, tell him to go on looking." "How's the election going ?" called out Sheila as he hauled Wilmot on board and prepared to drive away. "Election? Election? Oh, Lord, yes, careless of me." Relinquishing the wheel he stood up, removed his hat, and thrust one hand into the breast of his coat. "My country! in what state do I find thee, the Angel of Death is without, if you are going to give a preference to the colonies you must put a tax on food, Protection is not only dead but, no, not before ladies, I bring peace with honour, the resources of civilisation are not exhausted, Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right, every private carries a marshal's baton in his haversack, 1'etat c'est moi, le style et I'homme c'est la meme chose, Wein, Weib und Gesang, Eile mit Weile, lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate, Scots wha hae, delenda est Carthago. I'm having the time of my life. Are you there, Wilmot? you're not to fall out till you've voted. Anyone wishing to propose a vote of con- fidence in the candidate may do so. Good-bye, good-bye! 'Once more into the breach, Wilmot, once more/ Don't forget Isaacstein, Denys; you'll find him a mile or two THE RIVERSLEY ELECTION 189 back on the Elham road, 'a bleeding piece of earth and none so poor to do him reverence.' " "I wonder if he talks to his meetings like that," said Sheila, watching the car disappear down the road with the action of a convulsed crab. "I shouldn't be surprised; you'd better go and hear him to-night." "I think I shall. Oh, good ! here's the car at last." There was no sign of Daphne, and Sir William from the front seat explained that her labours were not yet over and that she was being brought back by her father. "Climb inside, both of you," he said, "and let's be getting home. You must have a lie down before dinner, Denys, or you won't be fit to speak tonight." "Tired?" asked Sheila with a wintry advance towards compassion as Denys lay back wearily in his corner. "Just a bit." Then after a pause he asked humbly: "Forgiven?" "Is there anything to forgive?" "You know best. Why can't we be friends, Sheila?" "Because that's just one thing we can't be," she replied with a significance which was plain enough to herself. Then a gust of penitence swept over her for the pin-prick cam- paign of the last fortnight. "I wonder you think I'm worth it." "Do you?" he asked softly. On their arrival home, Denys was dismissed to his room, and Sir William waited with Sheila in the hall to receive the returned stragglers and ascertain the success of their afternoon's labours. The general opinion bore out Lord Parkstone's statement that the chances were uncomfortably level. "Well, we've done our best, no one can do more," said Sir William. "And we shall all be late for dinner if we don't go and dress." 190 SHEILA INTERVENES Two hours later Denys and his supporters entered the hall where their meeting was being held. The gas-lit, white- washed room served the purpose of a County School by day and retained by night something of the County scholars' bouquet. Texts, maps, and blackboards loomed incon- gruously over the heads of the audience ; a subtle blend of ink and damp corduroy assailed the nostrils of those herded in the back rows ; ink partially drowned in Coeur de Jeanette floated up to the horse-shoe platform from the seats of quality. As they walked up the central gangway Daphne noticed the conspicuous figure of Wilmot reinforcing a familiar group of critics and questioners half-way up the hall. Then the chairman of the local Conservative Asso- ciation opened the proceedings with a colourless, platitud- inous speech of ten minutes' duration: at its conclusion Lord Parkstone from the chair called upon Denys to address the meeting. An outburst of cheering greeted him as he arose and bowed to the audience. Turning half round he bowed to the chairman, singled out Sheila for a bow on her own account, and waited for the stamping and clapping to abate. Sheila watched him with interest : of the hundreds gathered in the hall probably she alone had never heard him make a speech. The platform curved forward on the wings like a half moon. She had seated herself as far as pos- sible from the chair, and at right angles to the speaker and audience prepared to watch the effect of the one on the other. Denys opened slowly, congratulating his audience that they were hearing him for the last time: fourteen days' unmitigated politics were more than enough in a country where it was said the House of Commons was fallen into disrepute, the questions at issue had lost their grandeur, and passion and an over-legislated country yearned for respite and repose. The reforming zeal of the last few years had left no corner unexplored : surely it was a moment THE RIVERSLEY ELECTION 191 when they could sit complacent and compliment themselves on achieving tolerable perfection in an imperfect world. If evils still existed, if hunger pinched or injustice rankled, Parliament would set it right, and the electors who deter- mined the form of Parliament would see that their repre- sentatives were empowered to make the social conscience easy. But first they had a right to insist that a case was made out for disturbing their wonted complacency. His voice fell a tone, and Sheila looked up to watch the method of indictment. Pitilessly and dispassionately he carried them over the ground traversed in the early chapters of "The Trustees," his own restraint and aloof- ness making the accusation doubly damning. The audience grew uncomfortable, their placidity was shaken first by conscience, then by fear. "Manufacturing civilisation is like manufacturing anything else: there is a bill to pay, waste products to be scrapped, profits, perhaps to be drawn. The difference is that men and women are the waste products, the bill is paid in their sweat and blood, not a large share of the profits goes to the workers; some day they will wonder whether the finished article was worth the labour." For five minutes he played with revolution, hinting, intimidating, expounding with ambiguous irony its ease and attractiveness. Sheila watched the faces of those who sat in the front rows and then let her eyes wander to the back benches. Suddenly the voice began to gather speed. Assuming the diseased limbs and gangrened wounds of society, admitting or dismissing the idea of resentment and the possibility of revenge, as human, tender souls dowered by God with love of the beautiful, would they not rouse themselves to purge and adorn the body of which each one of them formed a part? Visionaries, idealists, impracticable dreamers, they would be called all those names by the "plain men," the materialists, the men of the world. Yet . . . history was i 9 2 SHEILA INTERVENES richer for its visionaries . . . Sheila sat forward with eyes fixed on the white, mobile face : he was speaking as she had made him speak when they sat alone under the early sum- mer night and her presence was gradually forgotten. The spell which he cast over her was bewitching an audience of three hundred souls. Dreamily, yet with unfaltering com- mand of glance and gesture, consciously varying the melody of an incomparable voice, he was filching their wills and numbing their power of resistance. Splashed with sunshine and fragrant with flowers, the world of his imagination was made real to them. With kindling passion the words swept on to the climax: then a pause; the voice was silent, the hands still, the blazing eyes half-closed. Painfully Sheila knew how painfully his hearers dropped into reality. "Dreamers, yes." The voice had fallen to a conversa- tional tone. "And a man is never forgotten for seeing visions. You and I may sit hoping and praying for a Golden Age, but we must never visualise it as I have just done. We must never scheme for its accomplishment; we must remember we're practical, hard-headed men of the world, a little higher than hell and a long way lower than heaven. We are children of our generation. And yet . . . and yet . . . wherein are the dreams impracticable? You have power, had you will . . . if it were really worth it! With a little faith, nothing could withstand you." He paused and picked up a flower from the table before him. "Some day when it is too late you will appreciate your power. You who manufacture this civilisation and you who control its making, you have never trusted each other. I had rather offer you an ideal than a threat the ideal of working together for an end which you both know to be just and necessary. If you will not seek virtue for its own sake . . ."he shrugged his shoulders and dropped the flower "you will learn how weak is your power of dis- united defence against attack compared with your united THE RIVERSLEY ELECTION 193 strength in a common onslaught on the admitted common evils of society. Civilisation presses hardest on the inse- cure, lightest on those who have most to lose by social dis- ruption. Unless employers and employed join hands, the employed will take reform into their own control, and of that no man can see the end. It is easier and safer to be an idealist. Labour knows the difficulty of consolidation and hopes for justice without recourse to extremes. If this consolidation were ever proved necessary, Labour would be irresistible : if Labour is forced to organise itself, its terms will rise. You know the relative voting strength : majorities in the constituencies, majorities in the House and short of turning a man into a woman or a woman into a man there is nothing the House of Commons cannot do, nothing it cannot seize, expropriate, tax out of existence at twenty shillings in the pound. They say class-feeling and party-bitterness are rising. I ask for power and au- thority to work for a settlement before the coming cleavage and ultimate appeal to numbers." Once more he paused and glanced at Sheila. She re- turned his gaze and then looked away down the hall. Speak- ing or standing silent he held the audience cowed, tense, expectant. Wilmot and his fellow critics dared make no interruption. She grew suddenly frightened and filled with a desire to cry out and warn them against their fate: the warning, could she have uttered it, would have been wasted : they were tacitly asking leave to grace his triumph. Their votes and influence were his ; she alone knew how he would use them, and the force that was to have restrained him lay more deeply under his spell than the rest. She turned from the hall to the platform. Daphne was sitting three-quarter face to her, wrapped in an ermine cloak, her soft brown hair held down with the curved bar of tortoise- shell, her beautiful pale face turned eagerly towards Denys, her grave brown eyes shining with approval and admiration. 194 SHEILA INTERVENES Sir William lay back in an attitude of critical attention, legs crossed, finger-tips pressed together, watching the speaker; Lord Parkstone gazed with unseeing eyes over the heads of the audience to the back of the hall; Maurice sat open-mouthed, waiting for the next words. Then with throbbing voice Denys approached the pero- ration. In six short, cruel sentences he reproached them for their purple, fine linen, and sumptuous daily fare: in six more, shimmering, exotic, and luxuriant, the vision was recalled and fixed in their memory: then he appealed for power to realise his vision. No longer sparing his strength or husbanding his voice, he urged and commanded with a force that could not be resisted. His hearers were carried out of themselves by the rushing torrent of exhorta- tion; then the speech ended and the wild music was hushed. For a minute there was silence, then the applause broke out. Sitting, standing, jumping on chairs, they shouted and laughed, waved their arms and clapped their hands. The uproar was deafening, and when after three minutes it showed signs of dying down, Maurice gave it fresh life with an ear-splitting view-halloo. After two unsuccessful attempts the chairman contrived to ask if the audience wished to put any questions to the candidate. One or two speakers with logs of their own to roll tried to extort a promise to assist in the rolling; one of Wilmot's satellites embarked on a damaging examination relative to the cost of the proposed reforms, and then artistically left the hall without pressing his advantage unduly; a shrill-voiced woman, tremulous with anticipated ill-usage, enquired what he proposed to do for the women, and was deposited in the snow with the oil-stove, to which she had attached herself, long before Denys could articulate a reply or Maurice hurl himself into the affray. Then Wilmot arose with a handful of notes, placed one THE RIVERSLEY ELECTION 195 foot on the chair which his satellite had vacated, and settled doTm to the congenial occupation of being as rude and disorderly as a nervous chairman would allow. CHAPTER X SHEILA LOSES THE FIRST GAME "I must not think of thee ; and, tired yet strong, I shun the love that lurks i-n all delight The love of thee and in the blue heaven's height, And in the dearest passage of a song. Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden, yet bright ; But it must never, never come in sight; I must stop short of thee the whole day long. But when sleep comes to close each difficult day, When night gives pause to the long watch I keep, And all my bonds I needs must loose apart, Must doff my will as raiment laid away, With the first dream that comes with the first sleep I run, I run, I am gather'd to thy heart." ALICE MEYNELL: "RENOUNCEMENT." "WE'VE all been listening to a very fine speech," he began with the unction of one who has an unpleasant duty to face and relishes its performance. "I expect we all feel rather ashamed of ourselves for going on living 'a long way lower than heaven,' yes, indeed. 'A little higher than hell,' that's something!" Consulting his notes, he treated the audience to a recital of Deny's more exotic flowers of speech, knowing well the element of bathos which resides in all luxuriant imagery, and the intonation of voice and receptivenesss of hearer which are needed to raise it to the sublime. Such irrelevant baiting roused no laughter among those who remembered their own sensations when the words were originally spoken. Wilmot quickly changed his tactics. 196 SHEILA LOSES THE FIRST GAME "I daresay Mr. Playfair's surprised to see me here to- night because to be quite frank I've beeen working against him since the election started. You see, I'm a new- comer to this neighbourhood and well, I try to be broad- minded in politics. I intended to vote for Mr. Melbourne because I've known him since he was a boy and bis father for some years before that. However I'm not bigoted. I'd heard so much of Mr. Playfair's speaking that I said I must give myself the pleasure of hearing him. So here we are." Lord Parkstone half rose from the chair. "Our time is limited, sir. If you have any questions to ask, will you please put them?" Wilmot beamed pleasantly at the chairman. "I'm just coming to them." His notes had become disordered and he set himself with great deliberation to rearrange them. More than one chair creaked impatiently and Lord Parkstone engaged in a whispered consultation with Sir William. Denys was lying back in an attitude of collapse, and Sheila noted the change with interest. As he was speaking she was irresistibly re- minded of that portrait of his grandfather which had hung in the library at Buckingahm Gate; when the speech was ended, the nervous, fervid intensity of expression had de- parted, the dark eyes lost their lustre, and he sat with white, drawn face and trembling hands, hardly heeding the shower of congratulations which fell from his supporters on the platform. A corresponding change took place in her own feelings: his warfare and her counter-warfare were forgotten, the plans she had made for Daphne were driven from her mind, and she only saw a frail figure kept animate by indomitable courage, and a life which had never known the joy and sunshine of her own existence. She wanted to cross to his chair, kneel down and take his hand in her own, to ask him to entrust himself to her 198 SHEILA INTERVENES and suffer her to share with him her own exuberant store of happiness. Then the bitter thought of the afternoon returned to her mind and she saw that by her own contriv- ing it was ordained that she should have no part in his life, and happiness, if it came, was to come from Daphne. At last Wilmot's notes were reduced to order. "I don't know how to vote in this election, and there are a lot of people in the same boat with me. We've always voted Radical before." ("Shame!" from a pig-tailed up- holder of the established order by the door.) "Shame or no shame, we felt we knew where we were ; but the speech Mr. Playfair has just made carries us miles beyond anything we've ever dared advocate in our wildest and most revolu- tionary days." "What on earth's he driving at?" whispered Lord Park- stone to Denys. "Ought I to stop him?" "No, let him have his say ; he's out for mischief and we'd better fight him in the light." "Well, sir, ought I to vote for Mr. Playfair and the new Radicalism, or Mr. Melbourne and the Radicalism I know ?" "Vote for Playfair!" came in a roar from the back benches. "Yes, I know, but . . . who is he? How do I know I can trust him ? On the one hand I see Mr. Melbourne : as I told you, I've know him since he was a small boy; I remember when his father was Radical member for the division and some of you will remember when his grand- father was Radical candidate. There's no doubt about his bona fides. Can we say the same of Mr. Playfair?" Lord Parkstone rose and interrupted the speaker. "It is not in order for you to make a speech, sir ; you can ask any reasonable questions you like, but otherwise I must ask you to sit down." "I am asking a question, my lord, a very important ques- tion if I'm to vote for Mr. Playfair. I want to be sure of SHEILA LOSES THE FIRST GAME 199 your candidate's bona fides. I don't want him to play the confidence trick on me." He paused invitingly. "What evidence of bona fides do you want, sir?" asked Denys. "What evidence of bona fides can you give, sir?" The question was hurled back with extreme truculence, and Wilmot, feeling that he had won the interest and attention of the house, quickened his pace and addressed himself di- rectly to the candidate. "Your speech to-night was an echo, word for word, and sentiment for sentiment, of a book called 'The Trustees of Posterity,' one of the most revolutionary books ever issued in this country. It bore Lord Parkstone's name and he acknowledged the help he'd had from you. That was as it should be. From your speech to-night I should imagine every word except the signature came from your pen. I want to know what a Conservative ex-minister is doing with a book like that? You'd have called it robbery, spoliation, and what not, if I'd written it. You must satisfy me that you're playing straight if you want my vote." Lord .Parkstone fidgeted nervously in his chair and Denys had again to warn him not to give Wilmot an oppor- tunity of saying he had been gagged. "Mr. Play fair asks for power. That was the keynote of his speech power, power, power. What's he going to do with it? What's this new Radical-Conservative party going to do with it? Who are they? If Mr. Melbourne had written the book and asked for power to carry it into effect, he'd have had my vote for the asking. I know him." A pause. "I know his father." Another pause. "And I knew his grandfather. What does anyone here know of Mr. Playfair" pause, and then significantly "or his ante- cedents, before the day when he came carpet-bagging into Riversley as the Radical-Conservative candidate?" 200 SHEILA INTERVENES He ended abruptly and sat down, leaving the audience to make what they could out of his speech. In the silence that followed Sheila looked across at Denys and saw that the fighting expression had settled upon his rigid features: neither of them had any doubt of the meaning behind Wil- mot's repeated contrasts betweeen the antecedents of the two candidates. Then Lord Parkstone rose up, watch in hand. "If no one has any more questions to put to Mr. Play- fair . . ."he began. "Hadn't he better answer the questions that have been put?" Wilmot interrupted. "Since I came into this con- stituency I've heard rumors about Mr. Playfair. Is he going to clear himself? Oh, it's no use shouting 'Order, order.' What does he say about those rumours ? When he comes and says, 'Give me power, give me power!' and doesn't say what he's going to do with it, I've a right to know something of the man before I trust myself to him." "Have you any objection to saying what the rumours are?" asked Lord Parkstone indecisively. "None at all," said Wilmot, with cold, triumphant venom. "I've heard that Mr. Playfair's grandfather was hanged for murder and that his father was shot fighting against British troops. Is that true?" A storm of hooting broke out at the brutality of the ques- tion, but Wilmot stood his ground doggedly and repeated his words when the uproar had subsided. "Is that true, Lord Parkstone? Is that true, Mr. Playfair?" "Perfectly," said Denys, with unconcern. Wilmot considered the answer for a moment. "Thank you, sir ; I only wanted to be sure of my ground." He gathered up his notes and stumbled noisily into the gangway preparatory to leaving the hall. An uncannny silence had fallen on the meeting. The brusqueness of SHEILA LOSES THE FIRST GAME 201 Wilmot's manner of speech had roused the latent irrita- bility of the audience, but their resentment had collapsed be- fore his bombshell. The savagery of the attack appalled them, and before they could recover from their first shock they were faced with an equal surprise in Denys' unmoved admission. References to hanging and shooting in the early days of the election must have been wasted on his regular supporters, or if the reference had been explained no one had foreseen such a frontal attack. For a moment no one could trust his voice. Sir William sat watching Denys: he had been in the House on the night when Piggott broke down under cross-examination and row after row of mem- bers leapt to their feet to cheer the presence of the composed and scornfully unresponsive Parnell. Never since that day had he seen such matter-of-fact absence of emotion in face of moral condemnation or acquittal Denys sat like a figure carved in marble, pale and tense, but collected, contemptuous and superbly detached. Then the spell was suddenly broken: Daphne had risen to her feet and was beginning her first political speech. Standing erect with the ermine cloak open at the throat she spoke with an ingratiating smile on her face and a note of unaffected wonder in her voice. "I hope the gentleman who has just spoken won't go for a minute. It's very stupid of me, but I don't quite follow the purpose of his questions. He seems to have made some discovery which everybody else had made long before the election started. At least, everybody else that mattered, the people who signed his nomination paper and all that sort of thing. I don't see what it's all got to do with our can- didate. This gentleman talks about rumours going round the constituency, and he wants them confirmed or denied. Really ! What the gentleman needs more than anything else is a free library : any history of Ireland would give him the facts he wants and a full account of the trial. There's no secret about it ; it's passed into history. The gentleman 2O2 should get the book and read it ; it's quite cheap. Mr. Play- fair's grandfather was hanged for killing a man in a duel. He fought fair and the other man didn't, but that of course is beside the point unless perhaps the gentleman thinks there is some merit about stabbing in the back. It's just a matter of taste. And then Mr. Playfair's father. The gentleman should read a good standard book on the South African war. He'll see that Mr. Playfair was fighting for the Boers. Fair fighting again; he took his chance of be- ing captured and tried for treason, and he took his chance of being shot. And he was shot, twice in the leg and once in the arm and once in the shoulder and then just once in the lungs. Of course I don't say that it was the right thing to fight for the Boers; I don't think it was, but anyone's at liberty to think differently, and if they think differently and if they set any store by what they think, I suppose they're free to die for their opinions. The gentleman by the door looks a brave fighter; I wonder how many times he'd wait to be shot ? I believe it's a horrid feeling. Well, the gentleman makes these alarming discoveries and he wants a guarantee that our candidate isn't going to play the confidence trick on him. D'you know, I'm afraid I don't exactly know what the confidence trick is. I suppose from the gentleman's speech that it must be a fraud of some kind. Is it? Thank you, I see. You know, that isn't very com- plimentary to the rest of us. I don't think my grandfather would be a party to any fraud, and I don't think my father would either. Of course I don't count, because I'm not a public man; but before the gentleman goes out and takes our characters away and tells the electors we are all leagued together to work the what was it? oh, the confidence- trick, I should like him to believe that even I shouldn't be sitting on the same platform as Mr. Playfair and can- vassing for him if I thought he was the abandoned character that the gentleman seems to imply." SHEILA LOSES THE FIRST GAME 203 She sat down, still smiling pleasantly, while a low ripple of laughter and applause spread over the hall. Men grouped in masses run more quickly from one extreme to the other than men taken singly. Wilmot hesitated and then left the hall without replying. For the moment the situation was saved: if the individual auditors were given time to think out the rights and wrongs of the position, no one could answer for their judgment. Denys suddenly relaxed his rigid immobility of expression and leant over to Lord Park- stone. "She's saved us for the moment," he whispered. "Ask Sir William to propose the vote of thanks to the chairman. Don't ask for the usual vote of confidence in me, whatever you do. I don't know if they'd stand it: they don't know, either. Don't give them time to forget Daphne's speech or to think about Wilmot." Ten minutes later Denys was dreamily handing the ladies of the party into their cars. As he walked down the hall, there had been a half-hearted attempt at applause, prompted more by sympathy than enthusiasm, though when the cheer- ing was taken up by the back benches there was an encourag- ing sincerity which convinced him that though the present election might be lost, he had won the ear of Labour for a future contest. Apart from that he felt it would have been better never to have stood for Riversley. The "big speech" had been completely neutralised by Wilmot's exposure, the timid respectability of the Conservative voters would never admit of their supporting him when they had had time to digest the events of the evening. He stood practically where he was standing six months before, and in the barren con- flict he had sacrificed more vital energy than he dared calculate. His reflections were disturbed by the necessity of finding a vacant seat in one of the cars. Lady Parkstone, who had been dining out and therefore had not been present at the 204 SHEILA INTERVENES meeting, gathered her husband, Daphne, and Maurice into her own car, another was taken up with Denys' agent and three of his most strenuous canvassers, so that he and Sheila were left to take their seats in a small landaulette usually reserved for the use of Maurice's aunt. Denys gave his hand to Sheila, wrapped a rug round her, and sank moodily into his corner. "We've both got something to thank Daphne for," said Sheila when they had driven in silence for three or four minutes. "I hope you weren't bored by the meeting," he said with exasperating politeness. "We laid on rather more variety and excitement than usual." "That didn't prevent me from getting bored," she replied with an obvious yawn. "However, don't let's talk about it. Polling to-morrow, isn't it, or the next day? And then the suspense will be over." "I don't think we need get in a flutter about the suspense. I'll make you a present of the odd trick this time, Sheila. The 'odd trick' that's rather a happy name for it." "I can win without any odd tricks of that kind, thank you. I suppose you think I put the idea into Wilmot's head." "Did you?" "What do you think?" "You're capable of it, you know, if you thought it would suit your purpose. The first time I saw you I said you'd stick at nothing to get what you wanted, though heaven knows what you want or why you want it. I've never seen any reason to modify that view. Look at the way you're treating Maurice, look at the way Daphne's made a pawn in the game." "And look at the way poor little Denys is being ill-used. You're really rather delightful, my little friend. I'll tell SHEILA LOSES THE FIRST GAME 205, you a story. There was once an anarchist who wanted to upset society. He proposed to start by blowing up St. Paul's, so he ordered a nice supply of dynamite. Unfor- tunately the dynamite didn't arrive on the day it had been promised, so our resourceful anarchist brought an action for breach of contract. That's you, Denys, all over. You tell me you're going to have your revenge on all of us be- cause some of our ancestors fell foul of one of your ancestors, and then it's quite a grievance if we stick out our quills and prick your fingers." "I didn't tell you so." "No, but I found out. That's what you've really never forgiven." "You may use what weapons you like against me, but you aren't treating Maurice fairly." "He shouldn't have laid his unclean hands on Daphne. I'm doing her a service, at any rate. And that disposes of them. Any more complaints? You've still got five minutes or so before we're home. Anyone else I've victimised?" "Yes." "Who?" "Yourself." "Me ? Poor little Sheila Farling ? I must look into this. She's rather a dear, only she's not always appreciated. What's the matter with her?" Denys hesitated and then plunged boldly into a warning he had been saving up for several days. "Well, it's just possible that when people see the en- couragement you're giving Maurice, and when they know he's engaged to Daphne, and when they hear the engage- ment's broken off, there will be some spiteful remarks at the expense of your character and designs." "And you wouldn't like that, would you, Denys ?" "No, I shouldn't!" he burst out. Sheila sat silent till the car came to a standstill at the 206 SHEILA INTERVENES door of the house. Then she laid a gentle hand on his knee, and said with a slight quaver in her voice : "That's the first time in your life you've ever thought of anybody but yourself. You have your good moments. It's all right, I can take care of myself. "It's not the first time, it's not all right, you can't take care of yourself, otherwise your statement is fairly accurate. Do try to recognize that you're not a law unto yourself; your venomous sex makes the same venomous remarks about you as about anyone else. Why can't you recognize that?" "D'you think I don't?" she asked bitterly, and then with mocking regret: "Muddle-headed as ever! Sheila missed a lot by being born a girl. Denys, I'm sorry about to-night, it was a devilish thing to do. You don't really think I told him?" "Of course I don't." "Honour?, Right. Friends." She touched his hand with the tips of her fingers, jumped out of the car and ran into the hall, where the rest of the party were assembled. Wilmot's speech had thrown a gloom over the spirits of all, and there was no attempt at the usual discussion of prospects and tactics. Daphne's intervention was the topic of the moment, but though all were amazed at rescue being attempted from such a quarter, none dared hope that it would be successful. Denys drew up a chair next to hers and thanked her for the speech. "I was never so frightened in my life," she confided with unaffected surprise at her own achievement. "It was a fine finish to all you've done in the election. If I get in I shall have you and you only to thank. You've been my best canvasser and my best speaker. Anybody can make a set speech when they're prepared for it, but to get up on the spur of the moment when everybody else sat tongue-tied ..." SHEILA LOSES THE FIRST GAME 207 "I do hope you'll get in," she interrupted, with an obvious desire to leave the subject of her own endeavours. "Don't build too much on the hope," he answered de- spondently. "Even if you don't this time, there'll soon be another seat vacant. Hallo ! everyone's going to bed. Good-night, and good luck!" One by one the guests retired upstairs, until Denys was left alone to finish his cigar and stare into the embers of the dying fire. The butler came to inspect the fastenings of window and door and enquire whether anything more was wanted. Before leaving he placed the evening's mail on a table by Denys' side and mentioned that a messenger had just ridden over with a note which required no answer. Denys took it in his hand, but for the present left it un- opened while he followed out his train of thoughts. What were his present position and prospects? What would they have been if oblivion had descended on his mind, wiping^ out the memory of his grandfather's martyrdom and his own mission, leaving' him to shape his own life and follow his own impulses? As the darkened house settled gradually to silence, his nerves grew tranquil and the old vision gave place to a new one. Temptation, apathy, reaction, be the reason what it might, for the first time in his memory he was dreaming of himself as a man suddenly released from obligation. The first eager steps into forget fulness were familiar: when- ever his mind went back to Oxford and his books, he had played with the idea of what his life might have been made. The fancy had always been discussed as idle and morally corrupting, now he was too tired to resist it. The changing scene of the evening lingered obstinately for a moment the passive, silent audience, the outburst of cheering, the heavy, wicked face of Wilmot, the bombshell, the sudden hush, the shy, unexpected voice of Daphne then passed 208 SHEILA INTERVENES away and left him to continue his dream. Into that dream came the memory of a car running swiftly along a frost- bound road, a white half-circle of light blazing on to snow- covered hedges, two voices : he recognized his own, speaking with a petulance that he regretted, and then Sheila's, speak- ing in a tone he loved to hear, however petulant. The voices softened and grew friendly: then the car stopped, and the lights of the hall, shining through the window, fell on a wistful little face and two large black eyes. There was an expression he had never seen on that or any other face tenderness, humility, and hopeless resignation ; the light had caught her exposing an unknown aspect of her soul. Then the face was hidden as she brushed past him . . . Into the dream came the touch of her fingers on his hand and the sound of a thrilling, eager voice ; then the vision materi- alised into a Sheila of flesh and blood, leaning over the back of his chair in a scarlet silk peignoire, and imploring him to go to bed like a dear, sweet, rational creature. He shivered and came out of his dreams. "Denys, I've come to make peace. We'll finish the rub- ber, if you like, in a month's time, but just at the moment we want a what-do-you-call-it ? armistice, to bury our dead. This is Tuesday : or rather it's Wednesday morning, owing to your unreasonable hours : the ball's on Friday, and on Monday Father Time and I are going south. The 'Bird of Time' is fitted out all ready and we're going a trial trip to Toulon. If we like the weather we shall go on for a few days to the the Riveria and then home again. We want you to come with us, Denys. If you're bored, you can go overland home in twenty-four hours, otherwise come back by sea and support me in the Bay. If you like it and we don't find any holes in the 'Bird of Time/ you can come out to the Pacific with us: if not, you can do the other thing. Will you come?" He threw away the end of his cigar. SHEILA LOSES THE FIRST GAME 209 "What's the ulterior motive, Sheila ?" She drew up a footstool and seated herself at his feet, clasping her hands round her knees. "I wonder if there's anything in the whole wide world I could do to make you think well of me. I tell you it's peace between us and you won't believe me. Listen to rea- son, Denys. Polling's to-morrow: whether you get in or not, the Riversley chapter closes in less than twenty-four hours. Say you're beaten: you can't do anything till an- other seat becomes vacant, so no time's lost for either of us by your coming abroad. Say you win : well, Daphne will have got you in by her pretty little speech to-night and by saying she wouldn't have worked for you if she hadn't trusted you. You'll find it a bit hard to drive the Jugger- naut Car with that speech of Daphne's to explain away. I told you we both had something to thank her for. And meantime you're looking like the end of the world and I want to avoid an inquest in the house. Is that plain enough ?" "Quite. Why this flattering solicitude about my health ?" "What a fool the boy is! Denys, do you think nobody cares whether you live or die ?" "Yes." "Fool! Hopeless, unutterable, stupendous fool! I'm sorry, Denys, I had to say it. / care for one, or else I shouldn't be talking to you at this hour and in these clothes. Do you say you will." "I ..." He paused. "Go on." But Denys had lost the power of speech. His parted lips worked for an instant and then closed in silence; an expression of fear and effort and bewilderment came into his eyes, and his hand worked feebly in the air. "Go on, Denys. I ... Say you will. What's the matter?" 210 SHEILA INTERVENES "What was I saying?" The words came from a distance and he shivered as he spoke. "You started 'I/ and then stopped." "What were you saying?" "My dear, this is waste of time. I'm not going over the whole of our conversation. Will you come?" "Where?" "Denys, aren't you well ?" He got up and stood leaning his head against the mantel- piece. "Some day that will happen when I'm making a public speech, and then I shall be done. How long was I like that, Sheila, not speaking?" "About three seconds." "It seemed like three hours. Oh, my God, it i an awful feeling! Your brain suddenly goes, you can't think and you can't speak, and it seems as if it were never going to end. We'll finish whatever we were talking about to- morrow, Sheila; my nerve's gone." She watched the sudden change with alarm. In less than a minute all the strength had gone out of him, and he stood tremulous and tottering like a child on the verge of tears. "Take my arm and come slowly. Look here, are you fit to put yourself to bed or shall I wake up Maurice? Right. Here are some letters for you, but they'll keep till the morning. There's one marked 'Urgent.' I don't suppose it's anything." He took it in silence and glanced at the hasty pencil- scrawl: then he handed it to Sheila. It was from Jack Melbourne : the point of the pencil had been broken in the first line and for once he was too much roused for posturing. "Mv DEAR DENNY" (it ran), "That swine Wilmot has just asked me to congratu- late him on his performance to-night. Of course you know I had no part in it, and if I'd been present at the meeting SHEILA LOSES THE FIRST GAME 211 I'd have thrashed him publicly. My good wishes for your election! They can't help returning you, because you're the only candidate now that I've retired. At least, I think I've retired, but I've got to find out if it's in order for a candidate once nominated to clear out before the poll. If it is, out I clear : if it isn't, you'll find me among your most stalwart supporters, and Head Quarters can say what they like. "Ever yours, "JACK M. "P.S. A more damnable, cruel trick I've never heard of. J. M." Sheila handed him back the letter. He pocketed it with a smile and pitiful, swaggering attempt to kindle the light of battle in his tired, frightened eyes. "He scored in too much of a hurry," said Sheila calmly, "the odd trick goes to you." "And the rubber." "There's another game yet. You're forgetting Daphne's speech." "It doesn't count now: Jack has wiped out opposition and the game's over." "I'll leave Daphne to discuss that with you. Anyway I've finished with it and perhaps you'll give me a consola- tion prize. I like to get my own way, but I do sometimes have other people's interests at heart. Some day you may believe that." She turned and started up the stairs, weary and crest- fallen. Denys watched the slight figure and bent head for a moment and then hurried after her. Suddenly he seemed to be seeing below the mischievous, laughing exterior, pene- trating to a heart that was soft and all too easily wounded, and identifying the Sheila that he saw with the Sheila he had fancied in his dream. 212 SHEILA INTERVENES "If I could unsay all the beastly things I've said to you since we've been down here together, I'd make you a present of the election and . . . and everything it means to me." She halted on the stairs and looked at his white, eager face. For a moment there was a strong impulse to throw herself into his arms and crave permission to smoothe out the creases in a lonely and joyless life. Then she saw her- self caught in a trap of her own contriving: Maurice would not, abandon Daphne until he had convinced himself that Denys was more acceptable in her eyes ; if Daphne was to be liberated and made happy, if Denys was to be the liberator, there was no room for her in the tableau she had so elaborately designed. She took him by the arm and walked by his side to the head of the stairs. "Some day you'll begin to understand me," she said banteringly. "Sheila may not have a soul to save, but she's feelings to be hurt. Yes, it's all right, you're beginning to see that. Some day you'll remember before you hurt them. But I don't want the election as a present. I told you I'd retired from the game. Let's just be friends ; I can be quite nice to a lot of people I'm fond of. I look after them and take a lot of trouble with them. And you know you're not fit to look after yourself. I told you that the first day I met you. That's why I want you to come to the Mediterranean with Father Time and me : it would do you good. Think it over and tell me to-morrow, and now go to bed and get some sleep. Good-night." For two days Denys kept his room, winning sleep with the aid of veronal. On the afternoon of the ball, Maurice, entering on tip-toe, found him awake. "Feelin' better, old thing?" he asked, sitting down on the foot of the bed. "I've been in to see you once or twice, but you were sleepin' like the proverbial hog. Look here, touch- in' this ball, I'm thinkin' we'd better scratch it ; you're not in a fit state to have the house invaded by half the county plus SHEILA LOSES THE FIRST GAME 213 a band. A little brisk work with His Majesty's telegraph and the thing's done." "It's not to be thought of," said Denys. "I'm coming to it." "No such thing; you're goin' to -lie still and lap up milk every two hours till it trickles down the corners of your mouth, and if you give any trouble you'll be strapped down." "What d'you bet?" Maurice became reasonable in his own way. "Look here, everyone knows that Balaam's prize ass wasn't in it with you for obstinacy, but do try to be sane just for a minute. The damned election's over, the damned candidate meanin' you is entitled to put M.P. after his damned name; you're lookin' rotten, you're as thin as a clothes-pole and as white as a sheet. God! man, look at your arms! they're like a girl's, and a pretty skinny girl's at that. Yes, you put 'em out of sight. Well, goin' back to our muttons, you've just got to take care of yourself. You're one of the things that matter, you've got a head- piece, not like me, and you're about as over-trained as any ugly brute I've ever seen." "But I've never felt better in my life," Denys protested. "Mouldy sort of life you must lead. Honestly you'd better not." "But it's Daphne's birthday, you seem to forget that. So the ball can't be put off, and if there's a ball going I don't propose to miss it. By the way, there's a case on the dress- ing-table I want you to give her from me." "Poor little Daphne !" "Why?" "She's been born into the wrong world." Maurice got up from the bed to inspect the case and the pendant it contained. He had come into the room with a hazy idea of seeking advice from Denys ; reflection showed him that he must depend on himself to work out his own 2i 4 SHEILA INTERVENES salvation or the salvation Sheila had ordained for him. At the moment he would have bartered his hopes of eternity for an excuse to get away from Riversley before the state birthday dinner and ball. "It's a wearin' business bein' host," he remarked discon- solately. "People arrivin' by every post, and my future her ladyship in a temper that'd draw tears from a horse- coper. Wonder what poor old Parkstone did to deserve a wife like that! Jacky Melbourne's comin' for the night, that's one good thing, he'll humble her pride. 'Parently 'our father's' arrangements don't run to givin' Jacky a hot bath after a ball. Hence the honour." Denys sat up and reached for a dressing-gown. "Pull up the blinds, Maurice, will you? Hullo, who's been cutting your head for you?" Maurice's hand went to a star-fish pattern of plaster over the right temple. "That's a political argument," he said with an appreciative grin. "Sheila an' I took our livers walkin' yesterday, and who should we meet but our red-haired friend? He was wearin' a doggy fur coat, so I gave tongue and shouted: 'Off with the coat, Wilmot!' 'What's the matter?' says he. 'Well, it looks a good coat,' I said, 'it'd be a pity to get it wet, and I propose to pop you in the pond.' Wilmot didn't say much, but he looked nasty. He wouldn't take the coat off though, so I tried to help him and got wiped over the head for my pains. Good, beefy man, Wilmot, but no knowledge of the Gentle Art. I got right home on the point of his jaw, and while he was thinkin' what a poor, hard place the earth was, I showed him how much cooler and softer he'd find the water by comparison. We were by the Ford, a perfect godsend. In he went, down, down, down: up he came with his hair full of weed, spittin' and swearin'. I don't know what Sheila must have thought. He'd left his Stick behind as a little keepsake, and whenever he waded in SHEILA LOSES THE FIRST GAME 215 shore I lammed it down within an inch of his carcase. Didn't hit him, of course, just demonstrated the difficulties of landin'. We must have spent ten minutes dancin' up and down opposite each other. I was in a sweat when we'd done. I bet Wilmot wasn't. Finally he waded through to the other side with the stick hurtlin' after him and pickin' him off in the fleshy part of the neck. I thought I'd killed him." "You'll find yourself in gaol for that," said Denys en- couragingly. "Where's the evidence?" asked Maurice with unconcern. "Not even a stick or fur coat concealed about my person, not a soul lookin' on bar Sheila, and she's goin' abroad. It was like the dear old days round Mercury." "What's the time?" asked Denys, getting out of bed. "My watch has stopped." , "Quarter to five. Like some tea?" "I can hang on till dinner. Well, I must get shaved. Are you going? Don't forget the case for Daphne, and tell her I hope she'll have very many happy returns of the day." Maurice's despondency returned with the thought of all the evening had in store for him. "I hope for her sake she won't have any more days like this," he answered darkly. CHAPTER XI MAURICE MAKES A DISCREET SPEECH "Some would know Why I so Long still do tarry, And ask why Here that I Live and not marry. Thus I those Do oppose: What man would be here Slave to thrall If at all He could live free here?" HERRICK: "HESPERIDES." "Ix's almost worth reaching years of discretion, to pick up these elegant and expensive trifles, Lady Daphne." For the first time in his life Jack Melbourne had been de- ceived by the eccentricities of his watch into being dressed a full five minutes before dinner. With the air of a lost soul straying disconsolately round Paradise, he was now soothing himself with a cigarette and affecting an interest in Daphne's coming-of-age presents. "Have you seen the pendant Denys gave me? It's the loveliest thing I've ever had. I wish people wouldn't spend so much money on me." "But why not? There's a great satisfaction in collect- ing widows' mites. He can't afford it or he wouldn't have given it you. When I came of age I was given a bible, a silver pencil-case, and a postcard telling me that I was no longer a minor and that all offers of my hand 216 A DISCREET SPEECH in marriage would be used as evidence against me. Money- lenders' circulars followed in bewildering profusion. Who gave you the pearl dog-collar?" "Maurice." "Why has he scratched 'Lethe' inside the clasp jj" "I don't know. Maurice!" "Don't interrupt him, he's thinking out his speech." "But I want the inscription explained." Daphne also wanted to avoid the subject of the speech. From the time when her mother visited her in bed to be- stow a pecking kiss and a frigid caress, it had been borne in upon her that she was now of full age and of a discretion equal to the task of determining whether her engagement with Maurice was to continue. She had awakened with a feeling of impending doom heavy upon her, and the burden had not been relieved by her mother's unceasing question what if anything Maurice had done to diminish her regard for him? By luncheon time she had argued herself into great clarity of thought and extreme discomfort of mind. The engagement had begun at a moment when her feelings were in disorder: he had saved her life at the risk of his own, she was grateful to him, and above all she was glamoured by the sight of danger light-heartedly en- countered. By contrast with her own shrinking and sen- sitive nature Maurice was attractively strong and reassur- ing. Intellectually he might be commonplace, but the same charge could be brought against most of the young men she met. Since that day what had happened? In tracing the course of the last twelve months she treated herself without pity. Maurice was unchanged: the bluff, good- natured strength and cheery courage which had won her were in no way abated. The change, if change there were, had taken place in herself. For a while her mind dwelt on the first easy, unfettered conversations with Denys, when something in his manner 2i 8 SHEILA INTERVENES induced her to pour out her dissatisfaction with the old, useless existence, and she learnt from him to set a value on herself and see vague, visionary aspirations made con- crete and practical. In "The Trustees of Posterity" he had found a waggon for her star. With the appearance of the book and the return of its author to Parliament her own usefulness seemed to have evaporated. When he was not by to inspire her, she lost faith in herself and -went back to the old attitude of diffidence and self-disparage- ment. Aspirations, dreams, missions, a wider life, the terms rang hollow : her mother and Maurice misunderstood and doubted them till she began to share their doubt. Some- how they seemed a cloak to cover mere restless discontent, and when she charged Maurice with insensibility, the accu- sation seemed not quite just; she was keeping something back. To the best of his ability he had humoured her and tried to identify himself with her interests. But his ef- forts had been robbed of their value and their reward on the day when a brilliant, dark-eyed Irishman had bewitched her ears and flung an unanswerable challenge at Maurice's feet. Outside her window the gardeners were sweeping the snow from the terrace. Passively watching them, she re- called the other terrace which she had paced with Denys in the warm summer evenings, greedily drinking chance tales of a life that realised her own impossible dreaming. The diverse past, the crowded present, the boundless future. She saw once again the pale, thin, animated face, the quick smile, the flashing, deep-set eyes; once more she heard the soft, low voice, gathering gradual speed as his subject gripped him. She remembered the growing hush round the table as one guest after another paused to listen to the coining of magical phrase. His words fell like notes of wild harping, now lulling to slumber, now rousing to frenzy. It was an irresistible outpouring: she did not A DISCREET SPEECH 219 wonder that a tired, indifferent meeting sat spellbound while he spoke, or leapt up with hysterical cheering when he finished. For one, two, three months she had known the joy of working with and for him: she had toiled with- out misgiving: when he told her that politics for him meant mere lust for personal power, she preferred not to take the warning seriously: the tongue which spoke as his spoke and the hand which had penned the haunting pages of his last book could only be inspired by the single love of truth, the clearly heard call of duty, and the appeal of suf- fering humanity. That appeal had roused her to a disgust with her empty parasitic existence: or was it only the con- trast between a meteor and a clod of clay? Her thoughts rushed back and occupied the position she had been defend- ing against their attack ; she was punishing Maurice because she was tired of him, and disguising her motives under the cloak of disinterested duty. "Maurice, I want you to tell me why you scratched 'Lethe' on the clasp of this collar." Jack Melbourne had wandered away to the fire and they were standing alone at the far end of the room. Maurice hesitated and then lowered his voice. "Lethe: it means forgetfulness, Daphne. I want you to forget what a beast I am." "But, Maurice!" She looked up to find he had moved away. The inscription had been the subject of controversy between Sheila, who had put the idea in his mind, Maurice, who was uncertain whether Lethe or Acheron was intended, and Denys, who knew nothing of Maurice's motives but had been called in on a point of scholarship as a man who knew the Greek characters and could, if necessary, rough them out on paper for Maurice to copy. Ever since he had scratched them there, Maurice had been regretting his ac- tion, or rather the whole conspiracy of which this was part. During the past two months he had been brought into 220 SHEILA INTERVENES daily contact with a sympathetic, soft-voiced Sheila who no longer laughed at him or despised him, but talked interest- edly and intelligently on the subject near his heart: cubbing and racing, the reason why Collison had given up the hounds, and his own prospects in taking over the vacant mastership. He felt he had grown older in those eight weeks: previously he had been preoccupied with the idea of marrying Daphne, but he now recognised that there could quite well be other girls as attractive, and far more human, girls who were not obsessed with the idea of sitting on Distress Committees, interfering with the poor and leaving the trail of their philanthropy athwart 'every legiti- mate scent. Daphne was ... oh yes, Daphne was all right, and he was very fond of her, but marriage was a serious business, devilish serious. When he married her . . . that is to say, if he married her, he'd do his best to fall in with her strange views up to a point. A man had himself to consider, too, and as long as his tastes were perfectly harmless and creditable, there was no sort of reason why a man should live in an atmosphere of permanent disapproval and allow himself to be headed off all the innocent amusements a man might fancy. Marriage on those terms simply wasn't worth hav- ing. And to move the previous question, was it necessary to marry at all? Denys seemed to live an extraordinary full and satisfactory life as a bachelor: Maurice had seen that when he was staying at Buckingham Gate ; he knew many worse bachelor quarters than that flat, and he knew many worse models than Denys. At the same time it would probably be rather a blow to Daphne, who seemed as fond of him as ever. He had tested that only a few days before by asking her point blank if she wished to break off the engagement, and she had said "No." In a moment of contrition he had scratched "Lethe" on the clasp of the A DISCREET SPEECH 221 necklace and hoped in this way to make his peace in ad- vance; anyhow, it would break the shock. A man owed something to himself, had to think of his own future. After dinner that night it was expected that he would make a speech proposing Daphne's health and giving publicity to their unofficial engagement, and the next day's papers would contain the announcement and make retreat well- nigh impossible. Maurice was resolved to make his speech : he thought there might be singularly little "copy" in it. for the next day's Court Circular. As he sauntered moodily round the room Denys came in and was made the target for an onslaught of inquiries and congratulations. When the smoke had cleared away, Sheila took him aside. "Do you love me, Denys?" she asked. "In that dress no one could help it." The dress in question was white silk, with a green tunic bordered with fur. In the matter of clothes Sheila's time was spent in eclipsing her own records. "No, but really?" "What do you want me to do for you ?" "Talk, I want you to talk. You're taking me in and I shall be simply speechless. So will everybody else. There's enough lightning about to strike us all into our graves. Aunt Margaret's so jumpy I daren't go near her, Daphne's nearly in tears, and Maurice is like a man who's been sum- moned by the last trump to the Judgment-seat and just remembers he's forgotten to put his tie on. My dear, I'm nearly crying myself." She was strangely excited and unlike herself, talking tremulously and glancing nervously about her. Denys wondered anxiously in what new devilry he was being in- volved. "What's the matter with everyone?" "Oh, I don't know. At least I do . . ." 222 SHEILA INTERVENES Denys lowered his voice. "Has Maurice . . ."he be- gan, looking at Daphne. "Hush ! no. He hasn't had time : people arriving all day and that sort of thing." As Maurice himself had complained that afternoon, a host's duties are wearing. He had been so preoccupied with hospitality that his guests had hardly seen him. Lady Parkstone, after breakfasting in her room, descended with determination in every line of her hard countenance. She wanted to see Maurice; just a word, she wouldn't keep him. It appeared that Maurice was in consultation with the head-gardener on the subject of the evening's decora- tions. At luncheon when a host might reasonably be ex- pected his chair was empty. Sheila made lame reference to a man who had wired changing his train. Maurice, it seemed, had driven in quite unnecessarily to meet a train which was timed for one-thirty and did not arrive till four. For reasons best known to himself he had driven into the stable-yard and gone instantly to ground in Denys' bedroom. Lady Parkstone felt that she, and possibly in a vague, unimportant degree Daphne also, were not being fairly treated. The suspense tried her temper. Daphne waited fatalistically; her meeting with Maurice had told her nothing: six hurried words of good wishes, a morocco case wrapped in tissue paper and he had disappeared as quickly as he had come. "I suppose he'll make the announcement to-night," said Denys. "Oh, sufficient for the day!" said Sheila impatiently. "Dinner's the first thing to be faced. If you or someone don't get things going we shall all go up in blue smoke." "I'll do what I can, but I decline to be mixed up in any of your machinations, and if you've any regard for the advice of anyone you'll throw them overboard and let A DISCREET SPEECH 223 destiny take its course. Are you going to let me take you in to supper?" "Yes, if I'm alive by then." "And dance with you?" "Afterwards, yes. I shall be busy till supper." "I know what that means." "You don't. You simply can't imagine how I hate it_ but it's got to be done. Kismet, Fate. I can't help myself." "I never thought I should hear that from you," said Denys quietly. "I'm fighting for the living; it's for Daphne. Look at her, doesn't she look lovely to-night? Isn't she worth it, Denys ? I adore her more than any soul on earth almost," she added, looking defiantly up at him. "Sheila Farling always excepted." "Oh, Denys, do try and believe I'm not thinking of my- self to-night." The dinner began in an atmosphere of timid reserve which fulfilled Sheila's anticipations; conventional refer- ences to the flowers on the table, conscientious allusions to the election; then the numbing chill of Lady Parkstone's presence communicated itself to her neighbours and spread down the room. Conversation had fallen to a furtive whis- per by the time the oysters were removed, and the soup was eaten to its own accompaniment. At last Jack Melbourne roused himself to the occasion. Accepting the expression of disapproval on Lady Parkstone's face as a challenge, he embarked on a course of paradox and iconoclasm cal- culated to attract a storm of dissent to the head of the speaker. Considering what opinion would be least ex- pected of him, he would fling it at the head of his audience with the weight of unquestioned dogma. Sir William- abetted him from the other side of the table; Lord Park- stone and a dull-witted political agent took it by turns to- be the foil. 224 SHEILA INTERVENES "Every advance in civilisation has been inspired by an unjustifiable motive," said Melbourne when the conversa- tion turned that way. "I think it would be possible to find a good many ex- ceptions to that theory," said Lady Parkstone ponderously. "Possible, but not easy," cut in Sir William encourag- ingly. "Oh, come, come!" objected the agent, "the exceptions outnumber the instances; the theory won't bear examina- tion. Take railways." "Railways won't bear examination," said Melbourne. "What was the beginning of English railway enterprise?" "The line from Stockton to Darlington, I believe," said the agent with modest omniscience. "Exactly," agreed Melbourne, who heard the fact for the first time, "a line built to facilitate entry into Stockton is an enterprise inspired by an unworthy motive." "Any desire to get away from Darlington is praise- worthy," suggested Sir William. "It is a question of mixed motives, I should rather say." Old Mr. Collison leant across the table and addressed Denys. "I must congratulate you on your election, Playfair, but, upon my soul, this new Toryism frightens me. I con- fess I don't understand it. You'd have been court-martialled for Radicalism in my young days." "It's only by outbidding the Radicals that you can get the ear of Labour," said Sir William. "Politics in this country reduce themselves ultimately to addition and sub- traction. Why force them to the ultima ratio in which you are going to be submerged, when you can win over a majority of converts and r help to do the submerg- ing?" "I know. Randolph tried that and failed. I told him he would fail" A DISCREET SPEECH 225 "Randolph never carried his party with him. We shall fail again if we can't do that." "But what do we stand to gain? Robbery by a friend is just as unpleasant as robbery by an enemy. I don't like being flayed, and all you new Tories with your Trustees of Posterity' are going to flay me just as much as the old Radicals and Socialists I've been abusing for a generation." "We shan't skin you as thoroughly," said Sir William soothingly. "Why not leave things as they are?" Collison leant for- ward and sawed the air with his forefinger. "I suppose I'm an individualist, I've always held that a man must work out his own salvation. This book of yours, Parkstone, makes a man something between a convict and a permanent invalid. The state, meaning by that a small army of in- spectors generalled by a parcel of boys in a Government Office, takes a man and nursemaids him: 'Put out your tongue. Only so-so. We'll feed you on slops, and if you're a good boy we'll certify you fit for marriage, provided your wife comes up to the standard in Schedule Z. Now let's look at your clothes. Not hygienic. Weli, well. Go to work. Not more than eight hours, proper holidays; we'll teach you how to employ 'em properly. We'll inspect the factory, and inspect the house you live in, and inspect your clothes, and inspect your children. We'll inspect you out of existence, but we'll make a healthy citizen of you.' What sort of a lame duck will you get with all your inspection? And this comes from the Tory party, who've always rather thought a man might call his soul his own, or any rate go to the devil in his own way!" "With the result that you see in every slum," said Lord Parkstone. "We did get the survival of the fittest." "Did we?" Sir William looked round the table at the 226 SHEILA INTERVENES fittest who had survived. "The survival of the fittest only means the survival of the people with best chance of sur- viving: you, I, all of us here, the people who had to put out our tongues and be examined by the family doctor as a matter of course, and weren't overworked, or underfed, and were always decently housed. No wonder we start life with a better chance of surviving! It's no merit of our own." "It's a merit of our fathers. If they hadn't had the strength to keep from going to pieces, we shouldn't have had the start we did." "Then a man doesn't really work out his own salvation; his father starts working it out for him?" "To some extent. And the sins of the father are visited on the children." "That's an argument the children won't swallow, and it's the children, the present generation in politics, we have to deal with." "You can't treat the children like lay figures, apart from the antecedents and surroundings." "You can alter the surroundings: that's what 'The Trustees' shows you how to do." Collison smiled grimly. " 'The Trustees' was tactfully silent on the point where the money was coming from." "Money comes from where money is." "Me ? The result's the same, whether you call yourselves Tories or Radicals or Socialists. I can't see why you won't leave things alone; I don't like this stirring of class against class. Don't interfere with me and I won't inter- fere with you." For Denys' ears that philosophy never lost its ingenuous freshness. Now in one form, now in another, he had heard it so often and had learned so much from it. With such a frame of mind to contend against he realised the impos- sibility of ever saving his present allies from ultimate anni- A DISCREET SPEECH 227 hilation : they were ci-devants, Bourbons. He saw, further, the vulnerable spot in their armour for the day when he was turned over to the enemy's camp. And he saw in their lack of imagination and inaccessibility to new ideas the ex- planation of his grandfather's tragedy. "Would you hold those 'live and let) live' views on eighteen shillings a week with a wife and family to bring up in a slum, Mr. Collison?" he asked. "Possibly not, but though I don't live in a slum, believe me, I don't like to see other people living there. We bigoted old Tories have done something to make things easier for people less happily placed than ourselves. It was ex- pected of us, and we did it freely and ungrudgingly. What I can't stand is the new idea that other people have got a right to our property." Lord Parkstone took up the running. "In the modern state your rights are limited to what the community in its wisdom or folly allows you. The majority in the state consists of the relatively less-possess- ing; any property that the relatively more-possessing may retain is retained precariously. It can be voted away at an hour's notice : it will be largely voted away as soon as the democracy realises its strength." Sir William helped himself to a salted almond and pointed the moral. "Merely as a measure of insurance, Collison, you should be glad to see Denys returned." Collison grunted and retired from the conversation. "I think we should look at the question from a different point of view," said Lord Parkstone, with a tardy attempt to rescue his ideals. "Leave the aspect of insurance out of account and try to keep abreast of the times. When you read the history of the Conservative Party in this country, you're reading the history of a party that has always been in the wrong. With a few creditable exceptions we've 228 SHEILA INTERVENES always opposed and our opposition has always been broken down in the long run. That is not an encouraging pros- pect. I don't like to think that any part I may play in shaping the destinies of the country will be dismissed in twenty years' time as part of a blind, obstinate opposition for opposition's sake that hadn't even the merit of be- ing successful." "Isn't it time we got back to first principles?" asked the agent. "I take it that the duty of a Conservative Party is to conserve. We moderate, we don't obstruct. When an electrician turns a two-hundred volt current into a hundred volt lamp, the lamp is burnt out unless a re- sistance is put in. You don't blame the resistance for keeping the lamp on short supplies. It's the same in pol- itics." Lord Parkstone weighed the justice of the comparison. 7hen he said: "I don't like your simile. In the one case you've got an ascertained force running through a filament of ascer- tained strength, and to avert a result which you have learnt by experience always takes place, you interpose a resistance of ascertained power. In the other case. ..." "You are dealing with a force which has never been tested or measured. You want a power of resistance equal to all emergencies." "No, you want to discover the nature of the force before you decide if a resistance is necessary. You never try to find that out. You resist by instinct, out of sheer fright. The experimenters get squeezed out of the party, and the result is what I've described; we're written down as ob- structionists. Look at the last century! I leave out the franchise question, but we were wrong over Catholic Eman- cipation, wrong over the Corn Laws, wrong over most of the Liberal Budgets, wrong over Ireland and South Africa. We defended an impossible House of Lords, we starved A DISCREET SPEECH 229 education. It's a melancholy record: do you wonder that the democracy mistrusts us?" Jack Melbourne felt he had been long enough out of the conversation. "There's only one thing worse than a record of failure," he broke in, "and that's a record of success. My party, my late party, I should say we've retired from political life for the present my late party's been right wherever yours has been wrong. Everything that you anathematised we hailed as the dawn of a fresh era of enlightenment. Where has it led us? To an Independent Labour Party which brackets us as fellow-conspirators and distinguishes us Radicals by calling us hypocrites. It's no use trying to be conducive or inspire confidence, you only cheapen yourself. A man remembers you if you insult him or borrow money from him, not if you lend it. Unless you're inaccessible and rude, nobody respects you. Look at our record ! We promised the millennium with every Reform Bill we intro- duced, we promised it again in a free golden age of laissez faire, we promised it when we smashed the lords' veto. On an average we promise it not less than three times a week." Sir William turned to Collison. "You've heard both parties at their examination in bank- ruptcy. Don't you think there's room for a new party which aims at understanding this all-powerful democracy?" Collison traced a deliberate pattern with his fork on the table-cloth. "A man can learn something about horses and he can study the workings of a dog's mind, but the older I get the less I believe an Englishman of one social rank can understand the feelings and the point of view of a man in any other. Frankly, I don't understand your democracy: I see it as a restless, rapacious mob which doesn't grasp the elementary distinction between meum and tuum. Discon- tented, which is healthy enough, but always wanting to 230 SHEILA INTERVENES drag me down to its level instead of rising to mine. Frankly, it doesn't understand me : it sees me as a luxurious encum- brance sitting tight on wealth I haven't earned and don't deserve to keep. Where will you find the pair of spectacles to suit both our sights?" "Dizzy found them," said Sir William. "His outlook was wide enough to see specks even in a millennium. It was no mean feat to preach Empire and Young England to Cobden and the school of laissez faire." "Ye-es." Collison spoke reflectively. "I concede you Dizzy. And he was an alien." The conversation had been monopolised by a few speak- ers on both sides in the middle of the table: their neigh- bours had been well content to listen and be spared the ne- cessity of joining in. Lady Parkstone at one end and Maurice at the other had their own thoughts to occupy them: Sheila and those of the house-party who had lived through the strain and indefinable oppression of the day luxuriated in an almost incredible relief. Then, with ad- mirable intention and singular want of tact, Lord Parkstone dammed the gentle stream. "Really, you know, we owe an apology to the ladies," he said. "We've been getting frightfully political." "It's been very interesting," said Mrs. Collison, bravely, but without conviction. The early uncomfortable silence returned. The men had been thrown out of their stride and each waited for the other to set the pace. Sheila turned half-face to Denys and whispered, "Now!" He looked across to Collison. "I suppose it's a paradox, but I sometimes think that only an alien has the detachment to understand English poli- tics. On the principle that a doctor does not prescribe for his own children." Daphne looked up : he had been sitting almost silent till the mention of Disraeli's name unloosed A DISCREET SPEECH 231 his tongue : now he began to talk as she loved to hear him. Opening diffidently and with full allowance for objections, he gained vehemence as his theme developed. The subject was lifted at once out of the crude generalisations and wearisome commonplaces of political argument: it was treated with a scholar's judgment and knowledge and a philosopher's insight: with something, too, of a prophet's fervour. Sheila listened, but with the misgiving which al- ways assailed her when she saw him talking for conquest: he was holding his audience in thraldom and pledging them to his support. Some of the older men had known Disraeli in later life and were struck by Denys' penetration into that subtle, mystic mind. He was treating the struggle for power as if it had personal application to himself, claiming that as aliens alone understood domestic politics, they alone should be entrusted with their control. He too was an alien, an Irishman. Gathering ammunition from Collison's and Lord Parkstone's admissions of failure, he instanced the age-long misgovernment of Ireland, and with the memory of Wilmot's speech fresh in their minds, some at least of his audience felt that their unimaginative lack of Sympathy had been responsible for the earlier tragedy, and that they owed it to Denys to wipe out the memory of the past. Sheila alone saw in the gentle reproof ominous warn- ing of future vengeance. It is easier to hold a public meeting than a dinner-table: the first has only to re- member not to shuffle its feet ; the second has to forget to eat. Denys held them until the depression of the day had once more been forgotten; then with a smiling apology for monopolising the conversation, he broke the spell and turned to Sheila with the whispered question whether he had sufficiently obeyed his instructions and taken the minds of the party off Maurice's impending speech. There was something cynically defiant in his conscious ability to charm the ears of his hearers at will and she only replied with a 232 SHEILA INTERVENES nod. Sir William murmured to his neighbour that Denys would go far in politics. "Have you any idea where he will stop?" asked Collison, sceptical and unconvinced. Dessert had come to an end and the cigars had been handed round by the time the political discussion flickered to extinction. The ladies were waiting for Lady Park- stone to give the signal for retirement, the men talked monosyllabically until the time should come for a change of position and the opening of new conversational suits. Then an expectant silence fell upon the table and one pair of eyes after another turned in the direction of Mau- rice Weybrook. Denys took the opportunity of studying the expression on his neighbours' faces. Daphne was sit- ting with her eyes turned to her lap, nervously fingering the hem of her napkin; Sheila was looking at Maurice with a slight smile born of confidence or perhaps of despair; Lady Parkstone struggled with the self-consciousness of one who anticipates panegyric and yet has to affect sur- prise; her husband fidgeted unemotionally with a pair of nut-crackers. Anxiety struggled with resignation on Sir Williams's face; Melbourne was apprehensive of emotion and undisguisedly bored ; the other guests knew nothing of the turn Maurice's speech was expected to take and could only imitate the dumb expectancy of the initiated. They were merely conscious of an uncomfortable tension which was at length broken when Maurice scrambled to his feet and stood waiting for the dessert-knives to cease their tat- too of encouragement. "Speech!" called Melbourne as the pause lengthened unduly. "God, no! I'm not going to make a speech." He spoke a little thickly and his face was flushed a brighter red than the normal. "I should have thought you'd had all the speeches you wanted these last few days. Meanin' no dis- A DISCREET SPEECH 233 respect to you, Denys, old son," he added with affability. "Ladies and gentlemen, before we split up to smoke and do whatever the ladies do do when we're smokin', I want to propose two toasts. First of all, there's Daphne, it's her birthday and her comin'-of-age." He paused and caught Sheila's eye, then went quickly on: "And then there's Denys, our new member, and a jolly creditable member too. You know all about 'em both, so I needn't tell you, and you see I'm no great shakes at speech-makin', so the less you have of it the better you'll like it, I'm thinkin'. Ladies and gentlemen! Lady Daphne Grayling and Mr. Denys Play fair, M.P. Daphne, here's to us! Denys, I looks towards you." For an instant the silence of stupefaction reigned over half the room. Then Sheila rose up, pushed her chair quietly back and raised her glass. "Dear old Daphne," she said with affectionate delibera-^ tion. "Many, many happy returns of the day ! Denys, the best of luck ! And don't forget to invite me to your first reception in Downing Street." The toast was taken up first by those guests who had expected nothing and were surprised by nothing. Then the more intimate friends and members of the family joined in, until Daphne and Denys alone remained seated, bowing their acknowledgments. At length, after a half- hearted attempt on the part of the political agent to make Daphne return thanks, Lady Parkstone rustled out of her chair and prepared to convoy her charges to the drawing- room. Sir William moved into the seat vacated by Sheila and set himself to head the conversation off any discussion of Maurice's behaviour. "I was greatly interested, Denys, by what you were saying about Dizzy," he began in clear and penetrating tones. "I remember once I must have been quite a young 234 SHEILA INTERVENES man at the time I was staying with him at Hughenden, and he told me. . , ." CHAPTER XII MAURICE MAKES A LESS DISCREET SPEECH "Answer me, Trilby!" "God forgive me, yesl" Du MAURIEE: "TRILBY." "AREN'T you taking this one, Lady Daphne?" asked Jack Melbourne as he arranged his button-hole and cooled him- self in the draught of an electric fan playing over a draped ice-block. Like an Israelite spy, he had paid a preliminary visit to the supper-room and returned to re- port a land flowing with milk and honey. "If not, may I have it?" "I'm supposed to be dancing this with Maurice, only I don't know where he is. I think I'd better give him a mo- ment or two longer, if you don't mind ; he's taking me in to supper." "Well, let me be useful and find him for you. Denys, will you see where Maurice is ? He's keeping Lady Daphne waiting!" Having demonstrated his powers of vicarious assistance, Jack produced a cigarette case and prepared to get up strength and appetite for a serious attack on the supper. "Have you seen anything of Sheila?" asked Denys as he joined them. "I'm due for supper with her and she's disappeared from the face of the earth." "Find one and you'll find both," said Jack, "they went into hiding about half an hour ago. In the perfect state hunting-men won't be allowed in the same room as people 235 2 3 6 SHEILA INTERVENES who can dance: they make a point of following the line of most resistance. Look at the way that fellow takes his jumps! C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas le valse. Now he's going to take the 'cello. He's down! No, he isn't, only a long stagger. I expect Maurice and Miss Farling are binding up each other's wounds; they were cannoned by that spirited boy over there, to my certain knowledge. Shouldn't be surprised if he savaged them into the bargain. If I find them I'll send them along to you." "May I have this with you till they turn up, Daphne?'* asked Denys when they were alone. "It's no good looking for them, because I've tried every conceivable place, so I suggest we give them till the end of this waltz and if they haven't turned up by then you must let me take you down." As they began to dance Denys recalled the question which Sheila had asked before dinner: "Isn't she worth it? Doesn't she look lovely to-night?" He could answer that question now : he had never seen her look more beau- tiful or more unhappy. She was dressed in white, and the absence of colour seemed to intensify the pallor of her face and enrich the deep brown of her hair by contrast. The large grave eyes were thoughtful and unwontedly troubled: the anticipation of some unknown disaster had bathed them in shadow and dimmed their lustre. He noticed with surprise that the only jewellery she wore was 1 the pendant he had given her that afternoon, and the sight filled him with disturbing wonder and uncertainty. He was as far as ever from being able to define his feelings towards her. Down in Devonshire that summer he had been captivated by her pre-Raphaelite beauty, flattered by the interest and admiration she had shown for his work; above all, roused to a sympathetic pity by her loneliness and monotony of existence. He had awakened one day A LESS DISCREET SPEECH 237 to the consciousness that he was weakening, softening, growing tender behind his friend Maurice's back, and while the informal engagement was still unbroken. He had been glad that the engagement was still there to keep him true to his life's work. When, despite his intention of remaining neutral and leaving her to deal with the en- gagement unadvised, he had found himself forced to advise her, Lady Parkstone's entry into the library had saved him for the service of his vision and spared him the necessity of deciding what to do if the engagement were abortive. He had been within sight of a crisis. He felt sure that he would have asked her to marry him. The un- reality of his crusade would have been overpowering, his penniless condition would have been forgotten. It was more than possible that she would have accepted him; she was one of those who give everything, and he could offer no repayment, even in love. As they danced he was conscious that the arm round her waist was holding her loosely, almost timidly; her left hand rested lightly on his shoulder, he barely touched the finger-tips of her right hand. The attitude was symbolical; he could offer her admiration, worship, devotion, but not love. No other woman had ever impressed him so deeply with her own purity and goodness or made him feel so mean and small beside her. He was unwilling to lay hands on her for fear of breaking, spoiling, or defiling. Then the orchestra slowed their time and his mind was recalled from its wanderings by her voice. "I haven't had a word with you all day," she said as they walked through the hall towards the supper-room. "I want to talk about the election and congratulate you. I haven't done that properly yet." The admission was an unconscious tribute to Lady Parkstone's adroitness in keep- ing them apart. "And I haven't thanked you for getting me in." 2 3 8 SHEILA INTERVENES "I did enjoy it. I wonder if you're as pleased as I am? I don't suppose you are, because it's only one step for you, but it was my only opportunity of striking a blow, and if nothing had come of it I should only have had a failure to look back on afterwards." "What about this table?" asked Denys. He did not want to dwell, or allow Daphne to dwell, on what "after- wards" meant to her. "Denys, you'll have to start very quietly and patiently." "I'm going to. Your grandfather is taking me abroad with him next week to recover from the election." "Was it a great strain? I suppose it must have been; you're looking awfully pulled down. But when you get back you'll have to start quietly; you've frightened people rather, first of all with the book, and then with one or two of the speeches. You heard Mr. Collison at dinner, and a lot of people have said the same thing." Denys listened in silence and presently she went on : "So many people adventurers they are take up politics just for what they can get out of it. Granddad says you'll have to be careful not to be confused with them. He had rather a struggle to get you adopted as candidate and there was a lot of opposition in the constituency. They said it was selling the pass, and pandering to the Labour Party, and why not run a Socialist candidate without more ado? I don't want to lecture you, but it would be such a pity if you started too violently and forfeited everybody's con- fidence." "I know, but I question if it's possible to keep the confidence of an old Tory like Collison and the support of Labour; if one has to go, it will be Collison. He has wealth and position and influence, and he's uncommonly useful as a supporter, but as a voter he's almost powerless. The strength lies with Labour." "But a greater strength lies with a union of forces." A LESS DISCREET SPEECH 239 "If you can keep them united. I'm addressing a big meeting in South London on Sunday night ; it will be a test case. We shall see from Monday's newspapers how I've managed to hold the balance." "Hold it even, Denys; it means so much to to all your friends. There's no need for hurry, you've got your whole life before you." "Yes, but one never knows how long that will be," said Denys, with the memory of his breakdown on the night of the last meeting and the consciousness that he had been torn and stifled by fits of coughing every day since the early spring. Their conversation turned to the cruise in the Pacific which Sheila was going to take in her grandfather's yacht, and they sat discussing it until supper was over and Denys had finished his second cigarette. "I suppose we ought to be getting back to the ball- room," said Daphne. "There's still no sign of our lost partners." "If they aren't in the ball-room you'll have to let me go on dancing with you." At the door of the supper-room they fell in at the rear of a returning satisfied army headed by Sir William and Mrs. Collison. Lady Parkstone followed with her husband, and behind them walked an undistinguished mis- cellany of dowagers. "Does Badstow still go in for orchids?" asked Sir Wil- liam as they approached a conservatory door. "I haven't seen them since the early summer," said Mrs. Collison, "but he had a wonderful show then. If you're interested in them, we might go back to the ball-room through the conservatory." "If the door's not locked," said Sir William. "My word, it's hot in here!" he added, turning the handle. "Margaret, we're going to look at Badstow's orchids. Get 2 4 o SHEILA INTERVENES inside quickly if you're coming; we mustn't let the heat out." Lady Parkstone, Mr. Collison, two dowagers, Daphne, Denys, Melbourne and his partner and Lord Parkstone accepted the invitation, and Sir William closed the door. The conservatory ran round two sides of the house, first as a long carpeted corridor, with staging both sides rising tier above tier to a height of ten or twelve feet: then it turned the corner of the house and broadened into a square winter garden with dwarf orange trees ranged in tubs round the walls. An oblong bath had been sunk into the mosaic pavement, and a slender fountain, copied from the Alcazar, gave forth the gently restful sound of ceaselessly splashing water. Two or three chairs and a divan were distributed under the towering palms and there was a Spanish inlaid table on which Lord Badstow sometimes took his coffee. For the night of the dance the far door communicating with the ball-room had been locked and the use of the conservatory interdicted out of consideration for the orchids. Sir William and his followers walked noiselessly down the corridor; their footsteps made no sound on the thick carpet. The finest of the blooms were over and called for no outburst of admiration. Then the whole party rounded the corner and came to a sudden standstill. On the far side of the bath, and with their backs turned to the corridor, sat Sheila and Maurice, engaged in earnest conversation. One chair sufficed for their requirements, as Maurice had elected to balance himself on the arm to give an effect of greater fervour to his words. What those words were none of the invaders ever knew, but they were at liberty to draw their own conclusions from Shila's reply. "This is all very fine, Maurice," she remarked in ac- cents of amusement, "but you seem to have conveniently A LESS DISCREET SPEECH 241 forgotten that you're engaged to Daphne all the while." Maurice grunted and leant still further into the body of the chair. "I was hidin' in the smokin'-room to-day, to get out of her ladyship's claws, when I came across a book that rather fits the case. I've forgotten the party's name that wrote it, but he was uncommon pithy in places. 'In matri- mony to hesitate is often to be saved,' or somethin' of the kind. I said, 'Maurice, young fellow my lad, that's you!' when I read it." Sheila replied with a ripple of laughter in which he joined : then suddenly the laugh froze on his lips as a half- heard sound behind them caused him to turn round and face the tragic countenances of the orchid-hunters. For a moment there was silence; then Sheila turned to see what had struck Maurice suddenly dumb. The variety in facial expression was bewildering. First of all came Lady Parkstone with burning eyes and set mouth, baffled rage deeply imprinted in every rigid line, then Sir William and Lord Parkstone, helplessly amazed, then Daphne with an expression of incredulous horror. Denys stood in the background, contemptuous and angry. Jack Melbourne pressed forward with a look of eager and undisguised de- light. Mrs. Collison and the dowagers were uncertain whether to be shocked or amused. Sheila glanced rapidly from face to face and then nerved herself for an effort. It was an occasion for sheer au- dacity. "You don't mean to say you've all finished supper," she said with a smile of untroubled innocence. "Denys, I must apologise for cutting you; we had no idea it was so late. Come along, Maurice, and get me something to eat before it's all gone. I won't be longer than I can help, Denys." She rose with a leisurely unconcern that was superb. The 242 SHEILA INTERVENES sunk bath still divided her from her aunt, but Denys felt he could not answer for Lady Parkstone's self-control when once Sheila came within reach. By way of creating a di- version he turned to Daphne, remarking: "I fancy the far door's locked; we shall have to go back the way we came." Two hours later the ball came to an end. The burst- ing of the storm-cloud had been delayed, -as Sheila and Maurice had found it prudent not to appear in public again; but the atmosphere was highly charged, the scene in the conservatory was hungrily discussed in tittering whispers between the dances, and Melbourne brought all the detailed knowledge of the eye-witness to the aid of the imaginative and libellous raconteur. Every embellish- ment of the story gave a further twist to the rack on which Sheila's reputation lay stretched. For the rest of the night Daphne and Denys were left to dance together un- molested. As they left the conservatory he had heard a dry, strangled sob and the words, "Sheila, oh, anybody but Sheila!" and he was filled with the same impotent wrath that comes over a man who is forced helplessly to watch the ill-treatment of a beautiful dumb animal. She was too much overcome with the shock and the humiliation to say more than a few words. Denys was too deeply touched by her suffering to attempt consolation. As they danced he could feel her whole body trembling, she clung to him for comfort or support and her head drooped on his shoulder, brushing his cheek with her hair, in the extremity of weariness and shame. Mechanically she watched the last guests gulping hot soup, muffling them- selves in coats and scarves, lighting cigarettes and packing themselves into their cars. Then with an effort she re- gained her normal voice and said good-night to Denys at the foot of the stairs. "I don't know if I shall see you in the morning, Denys, A LESS DISCREET SPEECH 243 so I'll say good-bye now. Good-night and good-bye." "Good-night, Daphne." He stood still holding her hand and struggling with an impulse which gripped and terrified him. He was being urged to say something he did not mean, something he would ever afterwards regret, some- thing that was for the moment irresistible. He could not leave her without another word; the large, wistful brown eyes would not close that night, and when morning came they would look out on an inhospitable world wherein her friend had failed her when everything had conspired to make his assistance possible, easy, and welcome. There was a gentle effort to withdraw the hand he was holding, and he looked up to find her gazing at him in wonder. Then with his eyes open to the madness of his action he teased to struggle and listened passively to a voice which issued from his lips but spoke words he would have given his life to keep back. "Good night. . . . But we needn't say good-bye, need we? Not now. It's a horrid, cruel word, Daphne; don't let's use it." Her eyes remained fixed on his for the moment of dawning consciousness: then her left hand stole up to her throat and at last there came a little cry between laughter and tears. "Oh, Denys, do you mean it?" "Of course I do, for ever and ever." A party of men headed by Jack crossed the hall en route for the supper-room. Daphne held out her hand to Denys as they passed, then turned and ran up the stairs, leaving him to walk dazedly into the library. "Oysters always make me feel very religious," said Jack Melbourne to the men of the house-party whom he was regaling with a final supper and an unceasing discourse. "It's only when you've eaten a couple of dozen that you 244 SHEILA INTERVENES appreciate the truth of the saying, 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.' Denys, come and have beer and devilled bones. Ordinarily I should recommend poached eggs and a Welsh rabbit, but in the great crises of life nothing less than a devilled bone will support you." "I'm not hungry, thanks." "Of all reasons for eating, hunger is the most com- monplace: it is the excuse of a bourgeois mind. Take a poached egg to put under your pillow. I want to tell you what I saw in the conservatory." "I saw it too ; you needn't bother." "You didn't see what I did. You've no journalistic flair, no imagination. I've been brooding over all the pos- sibilities of the scene till I've worked up a very dramatic picture. First of all there was little Sheila Fading. . . ." "Oh, dry up, Jack. You've been hard at work on her reputation for the last two hours; it's earned a rest." Jack turned to the others with a rueful shrug of the shoulders. "Wasted talent, my friends! A great public speaker, a man of sonorous periods and moving eloquence, but for la vie intime, la chronique scandaleuse, the on dit of daily existence he has no aptitude. He will never be a con- versationalist, he will never Denys, if you won't eat, you might at least have the decency to smoke. Don't lose all your self-respect just because you're a member of Par- liament: it's a thing that might happen to anyone." Denys wandered over to a table by the window in search of matches. He did not want to eat or drink or talk: he wanted to slink away by himself and feed on his anger and amazement at what he had done. There was a vague con- sciousness in his mind that he had committed an irrevoca- ble act of sheer insanity which would alter his whole course of life and stultify his previous existence. He wanted the satisfaction of plumbing the depths of his folly A LESS DISCREET SPEECH 2451 and measuring the completeness of his downfall; and as long as Jack Melbourne remained out of bed, volubly eager to describe and embroider the events of the evening he felt bound in honour to stand by and protect Sheila's name; from his wanton attack. Lighting his cigar, he looked out of the window at the cheerless, frost-bound garden. A full moon was shining on the empty snow- spread flower-beds, a bitter east wind caught up and played with the rustling dead leaves that lay scattered over the shining flagstones of the terrace: it was the coldest night of the year. Then his eye fell upon something white which fluttered in the breeze at the head of a flight of stone steps: it was a girl's dress. The shadow of the house fell over that end of the terrace and made identification im- possible, but he had little doubt that it was Sheila and that she was adding gratutitous pneumonia to her other follies. With a feeling of personal grievance that he had ever been brought in contact with a person who seemed to live for the sole purpose of exasperating him, he hurried out of the smoking-room, gathered a cloak from the hall and joined her on the terrace. "What on earth are you doing here, Sheila?" he asked in a tone of irritation. "You'll kill yourself in this wind." "Hullo, Denys !" All the fire had gone out of her black eyes; she turned to him with the listless indifference of one who is too numbed and bruised to heed any further beating. "It takes a lot more than this to kill me. I'm not trying seriously." "Put this cloak on and come back to the house. You ought to be in bed." "I'm not ready for bed yet. I'm like the unwise king who went to war first and counted the cost after- wards." "I hope you enjoy the reckoning." He had not meant 246 SHEILA INTERVENES to use the whip, but his earlier anger got the better of him. "I do. There's only one thing worse than losing a battle, and that's winning one. I should think the Duke of Wel- lington probably said that. It sounds like him. Denys, your friend Mr. Melbourne has a pleasant flow of lan- guage." "Oh, damn my friend Mr. Melbourne," Denys burst out. "Come out of this wind, Sheila, and don't behave like a spoilt child of ten." "Mr. Melbourne's very instructive. He had all the fun of overhearing Maurice and me in the conservatory, so I've paid myself back by listening to him. I suppose you'll all talk like him now." "Then you're wrong." "Oh, I didn't include you. I warned you beforehand, and besides, you don't think I'm accountable for my ac- tions. But the others! Father Time's taking me away by the first train in the morning; he's stood a good deal from me, but he couldn't stand that. Poor old Father Time! he could hardly speak. And Uncle Herbert and Aunt Margaret! You can imagine what that was like. It was their fault, they brought it on themselves by allow- ing Maurice ever to have anything to do with Daphne." Her voice quavered and sank. "And Daphne says she never wants to see me or speak to me again !" "And what do you think you've gained by all this?" asked Denys, still unappeased but conscious that his re- sentment was languishing for want of a victim. In the castigation of Sheila he had been forestalled. "Oh, a good deal. I've won all along the line. Daphne won't marry Maurice now." She paused and looked away from him. "And I 'fancy I've spiked your gun, my friend." "Meaning by that?' 247 "I saw the pretty way you and Daphne said good-night to each other. You'll find your power of mischief is a good deal hampered." "Wait till you read Monday's papers," said Denys ob- stinately through set teeth. "I'm addressing South London workmen on Sunday night and I'm going to let my- self go." "Bah! you daren't. You're afraid of hurting Daphne." "What do I care what Daphne ..." he began. "Oh, hush, hush! That's blasphemy, and it's rank in- gratitude to me, which is a lot worse, after all I've done for you." "Sheila, do you imagine I'm in love with Daphne?" "Denys, I do." "Then you're wrong. I'm no more in love with her than you are with Maurice, and the high gods alone know how I'm going to escape from the mess you've got me into." "Don't talk such nonsense !" Her voice became suddenly pleading. "You do love her, you know you do. Why, the first time you met her, at their dance in town, you came and raved to me about her. And down in Devon- shire it was the same, only you thought you couldn't do anything till Maurice was out of the way. I've got him out of the way for you ; there's absolutely nothing to stop you. Aunt Margaret she won't like it because she'd set her heart on Maurice, but Daphne's of age and can do what she likes. Oh, don't be silly ! When she comes to you. . . . What are you made of, Denys? It's not flesh and blood. What is it?" "Oh, I don't know !" He clenched his hands in helpless vexation till the nails tore the skin. "Clay and ditch- water, that's why I'm afraid of her. She's made of some- thing different; I could never rise to her heights. I'm of the earth, earthy, and Daphne's I don't know what she is 248 SHEILA INTERVENES or where she comes from. I never realised what a mean, pitiable, shameful thing a man could be till I saw my own dwarfed reflection in those eyes of hers. Oh, Sheila, why did you do it? I suppose it was fair game to put a spoke in Maurice's wheel, though you needn't have done it in a way that hurt Daphne as much as you hurt her to-night. Oh yes, and I suppose it was fair game to try and put me out of action. You haven't, but there was no reason why you shouldn't try. But I'm hanged if it was fair game to make Daphne suffer. You ought to have counted that before you started meddling with destiny for your private amusement." She turned on him with flashing eyes. "Oh, you mean little worm! You think I'd endure what I've gone through to-night just for amusement, just to get my own way. Don't you? You don't think I did it because I cared for people or wanted to make things happier for them? You can't understand me disinterestedly trying to do a good turn to a person without any thought of reward. What do I care for your politics? You'll never harm me. I've just got to let you run for a few months and you'll kill yourself. D'you think I didn't see that the first day I met you? You're killing yourself now d'you think I can't see it, d'you think Daphne wouldn't see it if she weren't infatuated about you? Why do you think I suggested your going to Uncle Herbert? Why do you think I wanted you to meet Daphne?" "I honestly can't see what you hoped to get out of it" "Get out of it? You're past praying for, Denys." She stamped her foot and panted with anger. "When I met you I was amused by you and rather liked you and felt sorry for you. You were lonely and ill and overworked and thought you were under a sort of cloud. I wanted to get you something to do that you'd like and that would lead to bigger things. And I thought I'd bring you and A LESS DISCREET SPEECH 249 Daphne together to see how you got on. You got on very well, so well that you quite forgot you'd a grievance against the world. I knew you would; people only feed on griev- ances when they've nothing better to occupy their minds, and Daphne soon drove that nonsense out of the head. Lord! Why, I could cure you of your grievances in a week if I took the trouble. And now when every ob- stacle's cleared away and Daphne's simply . . . Denys, you don't know how hard I've worked for it and what it's cost me. Remember, Daphne's never going to speak to me again, and I love her more than anybody in the whole world. Please, Denys, I did try to do my best for you !" He stared gloomily at the moonlight on the frozen pond at the bottom of the garden. "It would have been better if we'd never met, Sheila, better for Daphne and better for me. Yes, and after what happened to-night, better for you too. Seven months' work, and you've got two people into an impossible posi- tion and earned the reputation of a heartless flirt for your- self. Your intentions may have been good, but I can't congratulate you on the result." "Was that meant for thanks?" "It wasn't meant for anything: it was just a summary of the situation. Do you want thanks?" "I don't want anything from you. I never want to see you or hear of you again." "I'm sorry; I was thinking of coming with you and your grandfather to the Riviera. Is the invitation can- celled?" "No, you can come or not, as you like. I'm entirely indifferent. You'll have my grandfather to talk to." "Thank you." They had both lost their tempers, but for the moment neither perceived the absurdity of standing lightly clad in a biting east wind at four o'clock in the morning for the purpose of exchanging recriminations. 250 SHEILA INTERVENES Then Denys broke into a laugh : as Sheila's anger had risen, his own had fast been dying. Remembering the look of misery she had worn when he first spoke to her, and the punishments which were still in store when she faced her relations next day, he was sorry for not having kept a bridle on his tongue. "We shall neither of us do any good by staying out here any longer," he said, looking at his stiff, blue fingers. "Let's make friends and forget what we've said to each other. I apologise for losing my temper and I'm glad to find someone else who is of the earth, earthy." "Does that mean that I satisfy your requirements better than Daphne? I'm honoured, but the remark is out of place. You needn't waste your pretty ways on more than one person in an evening." Denys gave up the attempt at reconciliation and they entered the house together. As they walked upstairs the supper-party emerged into the hall, and for a moment Melbourne's flow of words was checked. Then, as they reached the first landing, a remark travelled up far beyond the ears of those who were intended to hear it. "She's not lost much time," was the whispered comment, and an appreciative laugh was hastily converted into a cough. Sheila suddenly caught Denys by the arm, and as suddenly let go. "No, don't do anything," she said in a choking voice. "I deserve it." Then she hurriedly opened her bedroom door, threw herself on her bed without undressing and cried herself to sleep. Denys changed into a smoking jacket and sat down in front of his fire to think out the future and listen to Maurice pacing up and down in the next room. Daphne alone was sleeping peacefully, un- conscious of her neighbours' wakefulness, unappreciative of the irony with which her happiness was flavoured. She owed everything to a cousin whom she had said she would never see again, and while Denys mourned over the failure A LESS DISCREET SPEECH 251 of his schemes, Sheila was crying over the success of hers. The following day saw the resolution of the house-party into its elements : there was a marked preference for early trains and a universal unwillingness to participate in any scenes of leave-taking. Sheila and her grandfather break- fasted alone and left the house unnoticed. Lady Park- stone with her husband and daughter made no ap- pearance until their car was standing at the door, and then accomplished a hurried exit with a bare word of fare- well for stray, embarrassed visitors whose trains left later in the day. Denys remained in his room until the middle of the morning and then returned to London by himself. Jack Melbourne alone was immovable until after luncheon, and even he allowed himself to be packed up and driven away when the bridge-table which he had organised in the smoking-room fell into dissolution. Throughout the day there was neither sight nor sound of Maurice : his guests left the house without knowing whether he had preceded them or was still locked in his own room brooding over the events of the previous evening. No one paid much at- tention to his absence : for most of the party the play was over and the curtain rung down. Sheila, Denys and Daphne were too busily concerned with their private epi- logue to waste thought on Maurice. A fortnight later the episode was beginning to be for- gotten, not through loss of intrinsic interest, but because speculation dried up for want of encouragement. No one knew what the next development would be, and the most ingenious guess-work went unrewarded. Then one of the chief actors was called upon to exhume and defend the past : Lord Badstow, travelling night and day from San Remo, had arrived in Grosvenor Square and invited his nephew to explain his conduct and state his intentions for the future. 252 SHEILA INTERVENES "Ch, for pity's sake don't rub it in!" Maurice ex- claimed at the end of an hour-long summing-up. "I know I've behaved like a sweep, but it beats me what good you think you'll do by repeatin' it over and over again. My stars! if I've earned half the names you've chucked at me everybody ought to be praisin' God with a loud voice and congratulatin' Daphne on gettin' rid of me." "That is neither here nor there, my dear Maurice," said Lord Badstow with purring precision. He was a shrivelled and querulous little old man with white side-whiskers and an asthmatic wheeze. For more than twenty years the thought that Maurice would succeed him had been a source of deep mortification which had been gradually intensified by the knowledge that his nephew was financially inde- pendent and could not be starved into submission. In the circumstances it was a little surprising that Maurice should consent to be terrorised as much as he was, and spoke volumes for his uncle's force of character. "You have got yourself into this disgraceful position and I must ask you how you propose to get out of it. I do not choose to have people saying that a member of my family has conducted himself like a blackguard." "Look here, how did you hear about it?" "That again is quite beside the point." As a matter of fact, Jack Melbourne was responsible for carrying the news to San Remo. He had started out to spend a libel- lous few days in Rome and had shared a compartment on the train de luxe as far as Monte Carlo with an Under Secretary who was bound for Lord Badstow's villa. Had he known the channel of information, Maurice's embar- rassment would have been increased. "The point on which I desire your undivided attention, Maurice, is this. You have behaved scandalously to Lady Daphne, you have brought discredit on my name and you have humiliated the Parkstones, who are old and valued friends of mine. A LESS DISCREET SPEECH 253 What do you propose to do? I must beg you to find an answer without unnecessary delay, as my health will not permit of my remaining in England later than to-morrow morning. I shall be obliged if you will cease fidgeting with that paper-knife." Maurice dropped the knife with a clatter, picked up a pen and dropped that quickly. "What in Heaven's name do you want me to do?" he growled. "I wrote to Daphne and apologised. Had the letter returned unopened: that was her ladyship's doing, I'll be bound. Then I called : 'Not at home.' When Would she be at home? She wouldn't be at home to me, so that finished that. I tried to get hold of the Farlings before they went away. Not much change there; the old man was like a lump of ice, and Sheila wouldn't see me. I like that, after the way . . ." "I think we are wandering from the point, Maurice." "Well, damn it, she was as much to blame as I was, and now she won't speak to me." He stopped with an expression of grievance on his face. "If any of you would tell me what to do I'd do it. But you don't. You just sit and badger me till you're out of breadth, and when you've got your second wind you start in and badger me again." Lord Badstow rose up and rang the bell. "I do not think we can profitably continue the conversation while you are in your present frame of mind." "Same idea struck me," murmured Maurice sullenly. "The next time we meet I expect to hear that you have taken every step in making reparation to the Park- stones." "And you take jolly good care not to tell me how to do it. That's what's so helpful. Good-bye, I'm going to toddle round to Denys Play fair to see if he's got any ideas. He's the only living soul I've had a civil word from since this business started." 254 SHEILA INTERVENES "I can well believe! it. He will be a most suitable adviser." "Well, what's the matter with him?" asked Maurice, stung by his uncle's sarcastic tone. "I have never had the honour of meeting him, so I can only judge by what I read, particularly by the account of a speech he delivered at Lambeth a few days ago." "Don't know anything about that, but he does have the decency not to tell me I'm a forsaken sweep in every sen- tence he speaks. That's somethin' of a consolation these hard times." CHAPTER XIII AN UNPOSTED LETTER "And sometimes, by still harder fate, The lovers meet, but meet too late. Thy heart is mine! True, true! ah, true! Then, love, thy hand! Ah no! adieu!" MATTHEW AKNOLD: "Too LATE." AT four o'clock the following afternoon Maurice walked round to Buckingham Gate to seek counsel and consola- tion of Denys. A private car was drawn up opposite the door, and on reaching the flat he discovered a small girl engaged in conversation with Denys' servant. Her face was familiar, but a moment passed before he identified her as Melbourne's neice, Margery, one of his uncle's youngest neighbours in Riversley and a well-known figure at every home meet of Collison's hounds. She was dressed in a long astrachan coat with muff and round cap to match, and her small face wore an expression of disap- pointment. "If you're looking for Uncle Denys, you won't find him," she informed Maurice. "He's away, out of England, and they don't know when he'll be back. Of course he's not my uncle really, but he won't let me call him Mr. Playfair, and I can't call him Denys, so I call him Uncle Denys in- stead. Hallo! why, it's Mr. Weybrook! I didn't see who you were. You've forgotten me." "Not I, Margery," said Maurice genially. "But this is a 255 256 SHEILA INTERVENES bad business about Denys. Where's he gone to?" he went on to the man. "He went away ten days ago in Sir William Farling's yacht, sir. He was going to the Mediterranean but couldn't say when he would be back, and didn't leave any address for his letters." "Oh, well, the Parkstones will know where he is, Mar- gery, if it's anything that matters." "It's nothing important, but it's rather sickening not finding him. I only got back from school yesterday we broke up early with mumps and Uncle Denys always said I was to come and have tea with him and he would always be at home. And now the first time I come he's away. I call it a jolly shame." "And meantime you're goin' hungry? This must be seen to, Margery. I'm in the, same boat, so I know the old feelin'. Why shouldn't you come and have tea with me? Choose your own place." "We-ell." She considered the proposal with her head on one side. "The only thing is, mother sent me round in the car and said I was to come straight back if Uncle Denys wouldn't have me." "We'll send the car back with a message that we're havin' tea at Rumpelmayer's. She won't mind, Margery; if she does she can ring up and I'll bring you home at once." On these terms the alliance was concluded, the car de- spatched with the tidings and Maurice and Margery set off on foot across the park. Maurice was not particularly fond of children, but his resources were limited, and the last few days had been passed in such loneliness that the sound of any voice was welcome. He cast about for a conversational opening. "What have you been doin' with yourself since I saw you last?" AN UNPOSTED LETTER 257 "School most of the time. I was down at Riversley in the holidays." "Not started huntin' yet?" "I'm going to, at Christmas. I say, who's going to be the new master?" "Dunno, I'm sure?" "Mother said she heard you were going to be." "I thought of it, but I shan't have the time. Jove, but it would have been good fun," he added regretfully. "What are you doing? I mean, why won't you have the time? I didn't know you did anything." "No more I did, till the summer. Then I started to do sojne work down in the East-end and I've taken it up again this week. It's a pretty fair sweat, I don't mind tellin' you." "Why d'you do it?" "Lord knows. I s'pose we all of us have to do things we don't like without knowin' why. Even you, Margery? We're just told it's good for us. Aren't you ever told that?" "Oh yes. Mother's always saying that, and I'm to wait till I'm older and then I shall see why I had to do it. I thought it was different with grown-ups'." "It isn't." "But they can't make you." "Oh yes, they can." "How?" Maurice shrugged his shoulders. Dunno. It's like eat- in' peas with a knife no law against it, free country and so forth, but people don't like to see it. Same here. Free country, I could hunt 'em, but it 'ud mean goin' against a girl I want to oblige. And I never want to set foot in that beastly East-end again, but every mornin' down I go just the same, 'cos I think she'd like it." "Who is she?" 25 8 SHEILA INTERVENES "Ah, that's tellin'," said Maurice, awakening to the fact that he had been thinking aloud. Margery summed up with the deliberate emphasis of childhood. "Well, it's jolly rough luck on you, and I think she's rather a pig to make you." "Oh, no, she isn't," said Maurice gently. "An' she doesn't even know I'm doin' it." They had crossed the park and were standing on the curb outside Marlborough House waiting for the stream of traffic along Pall Mall and up St. James's Street to abate sufficiently to allow of their crossing. "Barrin' Black- friars, this is the most dangerous street in London," re- marked Maurice. "Now then, Margery, here's our chance ; give us your hand." With one eye on a large car which was bearing down on them, they stepped off the pavement and walked quickly in the direction of Rumpelmayer's. Then Margery came to a standstill with the words: "Stop a bit, I've dropped my brolly." As she stooped to pick it up, she glanced past her escort and saw the car within six feet of them. With a cry of terror she jumped forward, hesitated, and then tried to run back. Maurice seized her by the hand and swung her at arm's length out of danger as the driver applied both brakes with all his power. Then he tried to jump after her. It was too late, the car was, almost touching him, and as he jumped the mud-guard caught him in the back and flung him head foremost on to the pavement. Margery scrambled to her knees in time to see a twisted, motionless figure lying with its head bathed in blood; then a shouting, excited crowd sprang mirac- ulously up between them, a policeman loomed head and shoulders above the rest, a terrified chauffeur protested that he was not to blame for the accident, while the white- faced owner forced his way through the crowd, picked Margery up in his arms and carried her back into the car. AN UNPOSTED LETTER 259 For a few dazed moments there was a hubbub of questions and answers, then an ambulance appeared and Maurice was lifted inside it. "Tell me where you live, dear," said the owner of the car. "Eaton No, take me to Lord Parkstone; I must see him." With her face buried in his coat, and gripping his hand with both her own, Margery was driven to Berkeley Square. At the door she got out and the owner drove off to St. George's Hospital, with a promise to return later and report progress. Margery rang the bell and demanded to see Lord Parkstone. "He is engaged at the moment, miss," said the footman. "What name shall I say?" "Oh, but I can't help that, I must see him. Where is he?" She pushed past the man and opened a door at ran- dom: it was the dining-room. "Where is, he? Oh, do tell me where he is!" she cried hysterically, running down the passage and trying another handle. The astonished footman made an attempt to bar the way, but it was too late, and all he could do was to follow the child into his master's presence and stand apologetically at the door, fram- ing an explanation of the unwonted act of sacrilege. Lord Parkstone was sitting at his writing-table with head bent over a pile of type-written letters which his secretary had brought in. For a moment he was too absorbed to notice the interruption, then he looked up to find a small, white- faced child standing at his side with her hand on his shoul- der and asking if he were Lord Parkstone. "I? Yes, yes. Certainly. That is so," he stammered in surprise. "Excuse me, do I . . . that is to say, have we ..." "I want you to tell me Mr. Denys Playfair's address. I've got something I must tell him." 260 SHEILA INTERVENES "Denys Playfair's address ? He's abroad. Let me see- no, I'm afraid I don't know it. He was going to be at Monte Carlo at the beginning of the week, but I don't know how soon they were going to start back. I don't think I can help you." "Oh!" Her face fell and she seemed on the verge of tears. "Wait a bit," he exclaimed hopefully. "Daphne may know. Is Lady Daphne in her room, William?" "Yes, my lord." "Will you ask her . . . ? No, we'll go up to her," he added with an eye on the piled-up writing-table. To the footman's increasing surprise, Lord Parkstone took Margery by the hand and led her upstairs to his daughter's room. Lady Daphne was sitting in an armchair before the fire reading a letter she had just written. It was addressed to Denys, and its composition had brought a happy smile into her eyes. Ever since their parting at the foot of the stairs at Riversley she had been struggling with the problem how she ought to tell her parents what had passed between them. The news would entail opposition, though the opposition would eventually be overcome: since his debut in the political world Densy was regarded with a more approving eye by both her parents. At the same time she shrank from the prospect of opposition. In the letter just written she had procrastinated and shelved re- sponsibility. "Tell granddad," she had written, "but say he's to keep it a secret for the present. I'm sure he'll ap- prove. And then when you get back we must go and tell father together. I simply daren't tell him myself, you know what a dreadful coward I am when there's nobody to support me." Then the letter had passed to more im- portant things. The composition had brought great peace of mind to her, and a reflection of her inner contentment seemed to light up her face. As he entered the room, her AN UNPOSTED LETTER 26! father paused for a moment of half-surprised pleasure at the reflection that this graceful, brown-eyed, brown-haired beauty was his own daughter. He seemed never to have realized it before. Then he came into the room and brought Margery up to her chair. "Daphne, my dear," he said, "do you happen to know Denys' address? Our friend here is very anxious to know it." Daphne turned in her chair. "Why, Margery, this is nice to see you! What brings you here?" "I want Uncle Denys : I want to tell him something." "He's on the high seas at present, Margery, but he'll be back in about seven days' time. If it's anything very important you could write to him at Gibraltar, there's just time to catch him there." "Not for seven days ? But I want him back at once 1" "Is it anything I can do?" "No, no, no! I must see him! You must tell him to come back at once ! A friend of his has just been knocked down by a car and it was all my fault and he's dying, and they've taken him off to the hospital and his head was all bleeding and he wanted to see Uncle Denys because he said so when we met at the flat." Her voice rose in an agon- ised treble and then dropped almost to a whisper. "You must tell him he must come back at once. It was his friend Mr. Weybrook and they've taken him to St. George's Hos- pital. Oh, and he's dying, and it was all my fault." For a moment she stood erect with eager, frightened eyes, her hands clenched, her breath coming and going in irregular gasps. Then the taut string snapped and she dropped in a heap on the floor, weeping with convulsive sobs. Daphne picked her up and carried her back to the chair. "St. George's," she whispered to her father, "go and see what's happened, dad." Then she turned her at- 262 SHEILA INTERVENES tention to the sobbing child, pressing the golden head to her bosom and waiting in patient silence till the paroxysm had spent itself. Gradually the small body ceased to tremble and the intervals between the sobs became longer, until at last she ended with a sigh and raised a tear-stained face to be kissed. "Oh, I've cried all down your dress," she exclaimed in dismay. "It doesn't matter a bit, Margery," said Daphne, survey- ing the damage to the green silk dress she was wearing. "Now let's get comfy and then you shall tell me all about what happened." Holding the child on her knees and running a hand through the disordered tangle of golden hair, Daphne lis- tened to a recital which went back to the day many months previously when she had first met Denys. The ability to prune a story of its unessentials, to come to the heart of the narrative or to start anywhere but at the beginning, is a mark of mature mind not revealed to babes and sucklings. Beginning at the day when Jack Melbourne and Denys had first met at Oxford, Margery proceeded by leisurely stages to her encounter with Maurice that afternoon at Buckingham Gate. Daphne listened half-heartedly to the account of what Margery's mother had said to Margery, what Margery had said to Denys' man, and what Maurice had said to Margery. Then suddenly her attention became alert: the child was repeating their conversation on the subject of the vacant mastership of hounds and the un- congenial work lately resumed in the East-end. A phrase here and there burned itself into her brain. "Then he said, 'I've taken it up again this last week. It's a pretty fair sweat, I don't mind telling you.' And I said, 'Well, why d'you do it?' And he said, 'I should like to hunt those hounds but I can't without going against a girl I want to oblige,' Then he said, 'Every morning down I go just the AN UNPOSTED LETTER 263 same, because I think she'd like it.' And I said, 'Well, she must be rather a pig,' and he said, 'Oh no, she isn't, she doesn't even know I'm doing it.' " Then the narrative swept on to the subject of the accident, and Daphne had to comfort the child again to prevent a fresh outburst of weeping. When the story was over and Margery had been per- suaded that she was not responsible for the accident, a re- action set in and their positions were reversed. It was now Daphne's turn to sit silent and preoccupied while her visitor chattered unrestrainedly and plied her with an un- ending series of questions. Yes, she knew Uncle Jack slightly. Didn't she love him, or did he tease her? Well, she didn't know him well enough to love him. Yes, she had known Mr. Wey brook for some years, and admitted that it was very rough luck that he shouldn't be allowed to hunt the hounds if he wanted to. Yes, she had known Uncle Denys for some time. Foreseeing the inevitable following question: didn't she love him? Daphne inter- rupted by asking if Margery knew that he was now a mem- ber of Parliament. Margery's interest in politics was lim- ited, but the temporary check drove the embarrassing ques- tion from her mind and she applied herself to the discovery of further friends possessed in common. Their conversation was interrupted by the return of Lord Parkstone. He had telephoned to Mrs. Melbourne that he would call for her on his way back from the hos- pital, and they entered the room together. "They wouldn't let me see him," he told Daphne in French. "But he's alive and conscious and they don't think there's any danger. He's very much bruised and cut, though, and they can't say yet how much damage has been done to his back. It's just possible ..." "Yes?" "He may lose the use of his legs." 264 SHEILA INTERVENES Daphne put her lips to Margery's ear and translated freely. "Father's been to the hospital," she whispered, "and he isn't nearly so bad as we thought. I expect he'll be quite ail right in a few days, and I'm going down to see him as soon as they'll let me. Now about Uncle Denys. I don't think we'll write to him, Margery, because it might upset him, and he's been overworking and oughtn't to be wor- ried. Suppose we wait till he's back in England? As soon as he's landed I'll go round and tell him all about it, and by that time we'll hope Mr. Weybrook will be . . ." she was going to say "on his legs again" . . . "quite well. Shall we leave it like that ? It's a- promise, then, and as soon as I've seen Mr. Weybrook I'll come and tell you how he's getting on." She kissed the child again and restored her to her mother. While her father accompanied them downstairs she stood leaning her head on her hand and gazing into the fire. "I'm afraid this has been rather an upset to you, Daphne," said Lord Parkstone on his return. "How does Maurice seem? I should like to go down to the hospital as soon as they'll let me." "I was going to make the same suggestion; I think he'd like it, only you won't be able to go for a day or two. I gather he's . . . well, he's not a pretty sight, Daphne, and it always makes me feel rather sick to see anybody in so much pain. He's bearing it awfully well, though, I was told; just sets his teeth and let's them do whatever they like with him." "Yes, he would." She turned and gazed once more intci the fire. "I think I'd go and lie down, Daphne, if I were you. Yes, William, what is it?" "Are there any more letters, my lord?" asked the foot- AN UNPOSTED LETTER 265 man, who had just entered the room with a salver in his hand. "Mine are on my table downstairs. Have you any you want to go, Daphne? It's a quarter-past six." "No, it's too late now," she said, thoughtfully fingering the letter she had written to Denys. Then she slowly tore it into four and dropped the fragments into the fire. "I've lost the mail, father dear." Nine days later the "Bird of Time" was beating up channel, two and a half days late and with the prospect of further delay before them. Since passing Finisterre they had run into a succession of fog-banks, and their progress was reduced to an hour's steaming at quarter power, followed by two, three, or four hours at anchor in wet, penetrating mist, the air around them filled with the petulant, timid hootings of outward-bound mail-boats. Denys was sitting on deck wrapped in a thick coat and sucking at an old pipe. The three weeks he had spent with the Farlings had been the most constrained and uncom- fortable he had ever experienced. To begin with, he had come into a house divided against itself. Sir William was still far from being reconciled to his granddaughter for the part she had played at the Riversley ball, however much he might approve of the probable result; Sheila was sore and sensitive at the treatment she had received from her relations, exaggerating their antagonism to herself and keeping alive an undiscriminating resentment against any- one who was even remotely connected with the Riversley episode. In the next place, Denys was not at ease with his host. On the day of embarkation the papers had been full of his Lambeth speech. Partly to justify his boast to Sheila, partly to satisfy a nervous anger and impatience, he had as he had promised "let himself go." The La- bour organs were delighted, but the responsible Conserva- 266 SHEILA INTERVENES tive papers wrote of the meeting in terms of undisguised misgiving. It was impossible not to see that their fears were appreciated and to some extent shared by Sir William. There was yet another source of embarrassment. Now that he was far from the memories of his life's work and removed from the excitements of a political campaign, Denys experienced the usual reaction: the unreality of his grievances, the unrighteousness of his crusade were thoughts far more insistent than the old dogged and un- compromising desire for revenge which had kept him alive in the early days of struggle when he had first come to live in London. Never had he been so reluctant to gird himself for battle, never had he dreamed so lovingly of his books, his comfortable rooms, and his unfinished re- searches. He was once more sensible of a rebellious con- science: it seemed intolerable that he should have been launched into politics, that he should at that very mo- ment be financially supported, by a man who had no con- ception of his real aims, a member of those very posses- sory classes which it was his mission to exploit. "Rather different weather, Denys, from what we had the last time we sailed these waters together." Sir William pulled up a chair alongside and borrowed a corner of Denys' rug. "It is. I congratulate you on the 'Bird of Time,' Sir William; she's a beautifully found boat." "I wish you were coming with us. I can't congratulate you on your looks, my boy, and you've got an awful cough still. I'll back the South Seas to cure that." "It's too late, I'm afraid. I'm too deeply committed. If you'd asked me seven months ago, when we were com- ing back from Spain, I'd have accepted it. But now ..." He left the sentence unfinished and followed out his train of thought. It was not only his political engagements which called him to London; Daphne also awaited him. AN UNPOSTED LETTER 267 And it was not his newly-won dignities alone which made it too late for him to think of a prolonged holiday in warm waters; he felt that his heart and lungs had been left to fend for themselves until it was too late to think of patch- ing them. "Don't be in too much of a hurry when you get back," went on Sir William, returning to his chair. "You know, that speech of yours in Lambeth was a fine appeal to La- bour, but it comes too early in the day for our stick-in- the-muds. A few more speeches of the same kind and you'll be disowned. The success of your career lies in driv- ing two parties in double harness: any fool can lead one party more or less and it's not one party we want. You've bridled Labour up to the present, but the Front Bench needs a lot of breaking-in. Old Palace Yard is white with the bones of men who set out to modernise the Conservative Party." He paused to light a cigar. "An- other thing: if you're in too much of a hurry, you'll just break down, and I don't want to have your life on my conscience." "But I'm all right." "You're not, Denys. Excuse my contradicting you flatly, but you're not. I've watched you gradually bending under the strain ever since you started, and it's made me very uncomfortable. I'm morally responsible for starting you in political life, as Sheila never fails to remind me, and if anything happens to you, I shall be held to blame. Here, this is too cold for me." Struggling to his feet from the depth of the deck-chair, he sought the warmth of the saloon. Denys glanced down the deck, wondering if it were a propitious moment for en- tering into conversation with Sheila. For three weeks his relations with her had been unbearable. In every word and act she was bitterly faithful to her declaration that she never wished to see or speak to him again ; and perhaps 268 SHEILA INTERVENES the most exasperating feature of her conduct was that the more she slighted him and the more irreconcilable she be- came, the nearer he was drawn to her and the greater sac- rifices he felt prepared to make for even the smallest crumb of her affection. A dozen times a day he summed up the position and passed sentence on her: he liked her, he liked her very much, he was yes, there was no doubt about it this time lie was in love with her and would do anything for her and submit to any kind of treatment at her hands. She had decided that he was to marry her cousin. Well, he was going to, she had so contrived that there was no escape. Frankly, he did not love Daphne, because well, she seemed too ethereal to mate with com- mon clay. He had said as much, and regretted the hour when Sheila first took it upon herself to play the agent of providence. For that word he had been placed under the ban of excommunication. He jumped up irritably from his chair and went off in search of her. His summings-up always ended in the same way, and were humanly charac- teristic of man's dealing with woman : he found her guilty on every count of the indictment and then hurried to placate her with apologies. "We shall be off Dungeness in half an hour, Sheila," he began. "Then for the blessed sight of English news- papers that is, if the pilot is the man and brother I hope to find him." There was no answer, so he sat down on deck at her feet. "I say, Sheila, we shall be in before evening; you're leaving again in a few weeks' time for goodness knows how long; in the interval I promise not to speak to you or bother you in any way. Do let's be friends for just our last day together. From the moment we land I promise on my honour never to cross your path again." She looked at him absently and then continued to gaze AN UNPOSTED LETTER 269 at the banks of fog which were once more gathering round the boat. The voyage had been a long agony to her. Fully recognising that Denys had in no way injured her and had instead gone out of his way to be agreeable and to effect a rapprochement, she had lost no opportunity of bleeding him to death by pin-pricks. Every morning she met him with the resolution of apologising for her behaviour, every afternoon she insulted him, and every evening she retired to her cabin and whistled loudly to keep from crying over what she had done. He had come on board dark-eyed and hollow-cheeked, torn with coughing and worn out with the strain of the past months: he was coming back to twelve more weeks of winter, if anything rather worse than when he set out. She had never felt so frightened on his ac- count before, she had never so deeply appreciated his win- ning manner and charm of speech, and she had never been so swept off her feet by an uncontrollable frenzy for in- flicting pain. At the bottom of her heart she knew the reason: Denys had been dedicated to Daphne before she knew that she could not bear to be parted from him. If once she relaxed her attitude of inhumanity she dared not contemplate to what lengths she might be carried. "I'm quite willing to be friends," she began rather wearily. "It's only fair to remind you, though, that you told me at Riversley that you regretted the day you ever met me." "I know, and I apologised, and I repeat my apology. I shall never experience anything that would compensate me for some of the days I've spent with you these last six months." "Thank you: perhaps you'd like a spade next time. I don't like half -measures when there are compliments flying about." He resisted the temptation to make a sharp reply. "We've covered a good deal of ground since we sailed 270 SHEILA INTERVENES along this coast six months ago," he remarked thoughtfully. "I was going back then to a directorship in an insurance company, to spend my spare time trying to win my way into politics at the point of a pen, and looking out the while for a wife rich enough to support me in comparative idle- ness. And now," he relit his pipe, "the directorship's gone because I didn't approve of their methods of doing busi- ness, and the company's been running rather quickly down- hill since the last time I crossed their threshold, and I've made a lasting enemy of one of my colleagues. But I've got into the House in spite of that enemy and several others." Sheila rearranged the cushion behind her head. "I see you only dwell on the successes, my young friend." "What else is there to dwell on?" "Well how about the failures? You've been put into Parliament by Uncle Herbert and Father Time and Daphne. Oh, I know you worked hard for it, I've not for- gotten the 'Trustees of Posterity,' but you wouldn't have got in without them, and whenever you think how much you owe them, you begin to squirm. You're squirming now, Denys. Admit it." There was no answer. "Failure number one. And from time to time, say when you're just coming back to England, you think what a ridiculous figure you're cutting and how much happier you'd have been if you'd never given up your Fellowship and left Oxford to preach anarchy And then you squirm again." Once more there was no answer. "Failure number two. At night you lie in bed coughing and thinking what a fool you were to tax your strength making open-air speeches when you ought to have been sitting before the fire drinking hot whiskey and water, or whatever it is one does drink. My dear boy, do you AN UNPOSTED LETTER 271 think I can't hear you? I lie awake at night listening to you coughing. Then you wonder how long you'll be able to last, and you squirm again. And when you've finished squirming over that, you think of Daphne and imagine yourself looking her in the eyes and trying to tell her or hide from her, it doesn't matter which what I found out one summer day when we travelled down to Riversley together. Squirm on, my little friend, it's good for you, it takes the conceit out of you." For the first time since the Riversley ball she had dropped her frigidity of manner and gone back to the easy bantering tone of their earlier intimacy. Denys did not mind the onslaught, he was willing to admit, to himself, the truth of each one of her charges. It was a triumph to have won her back to a mood of good-tempered raillery. "What's your own record, Sheila ?" he asked. "Mine? I won every hand, every game and every rub- ber. I started out to save Daphne from Maurice, and I've saved her," she added between set teeth. "And I started out to show you you must be a good little boy and not indulge in naughty temper because some old ancestor of yours was punished for breaking the laws of the land. Of course I've lost a trick here and there: Riversley 's a closed country to me for some time to come and I've lost you as a friend, which is a pity, because you used to amuse me. But I never undertook to win grand slam in every hand. And so," she sighed as she spoke, "you're just one of the little tricks I've lost." "So the old charge is true: there's nothing you won't sacrifice, not even your friends, to get your own way." "Meaning you? I didn't contemplate losing you when I started to play. I was sorry to lose you, Denys, you were quite a dear at times, but you had to go." "Why?" "Wouldn't you like to know? There was one moment 272 SHEILA INTERVENES when I had the alternative of sacrificing you and winning the game or sacrificing the game and keeping you. Then I thought of Daphne and Maurice and I let you be trumped. I quite felt the loss, Denys ; I feel it still. I shall miss you a lot, because we're never going to meet again when once we're back in England. Yes, you want to know why, don't you? And you're just not going to be told, not if you roasted me over a slow fire. What's all the fuss about up there?" "We're taking the pilot on board." "Well, see if they've brought any papers with them. You were crying out for news a few minutes ago." "That was because you were grumpy. I want to sit and talk, Sheila, if this is really our last day together." "And you want to sit and show me what a beautiful profile you've got. You have, I admit it, so now you can go and look for papers. My dear, London may have burnt down since we left Gib." Denys walked forward and greeted the pilot, a stout man who had to be assisted over the side by means of a line and required five minutes' rest before he had recovered his breath sufficiently to speak. "Good-morning, gentlemen," he gasped. "Papers? Ton my soul, I'm afraid I've forgot to bring any. Not that there's any news worth speaking of the last week or so. But you'd be glad of anything, I suppose. Stop a bit! he thrust a gouty hand into the bottomless depths of his coat-pocket. "I've got this, but it's three days old. If it's any good to you, sir, you're welcome to it." "Let's have a look at it if I may," said Denys, "we've seen nothing since we left Gib." He returned with his prize to Sheila's chair, and for ten minutes they sat conning the greasy pages. Then Denys gave a sudden start and began to read with atten- tion. At the bottom of the middle page, sandwiched be- AN UNPOSTED LETTER 273 tween a wedding and a hunt-ball, was a short paragraph entitled: "Accident to the Marquis of Badstow's heir." He read it and handed the sheet to Sheila with a ringer marking the item. It ran: "An accident of a serious character took place yesterday afternoon at the St. James's Street end of Pall Mall. Mr. Maurice Weybrook, the nephew and heir to the Marquis of Badstow, was crossing Pall Mall in company with a small girl when a private car rounded the corner on its way to the park. The car does not appear to have been driven at excessive speed, but the child seems to have be- come frightened and to have lost her head. Mr. Weybrook succeeded in getting her out of the way of the car but was unable to jump clear himself. The mud-guard struck him and threw him with considerable violence on to the pave- ment. He was at once removed in an ambulance to St. George's Hospital, where he is said to be lying in a critical condition. Mr. Weybrook, who is the only son of the late Lord Arthur Weybrook, and grandson of the fourth Marquis, is twenty-five years of age and until this year held a commission in the Third Grenadier Guards. He is well known in Society and will be the recipient of wide- spread sympathy." Sheila handed back the paper. "Poor Maurice!" she said in a sobered tone. "I almost wish I hadn't treated him like that." "It's rather late in the day to be feeling that," said Denys, thinking aloud. The news of the accident had shocked him and revived the warm regard which he had always entertained for the good-natured, good tempered, blundering, bucolic Maurice. He could never free him- self from the idea that he had all unwittingly been drawn in to play a not quite honourable part in the general 274 SHEILA INTERVENES conspiracy against him. Some part of the remorse which he now felt rising within him he chose jo visit on the head of Sheila. "It is too late in the day to be of much use," she said absently. She too was thinking aloud, though Denys' thoughts and her own ran on widely different lines. If it were predestined that Maurice should be knocked down and killed she could not resist the unchristian thought that he might have been put out of the way six months earlier. Then Daphne's troubles would have been ended without any interference on her part: that hateful evening at Riversley would be a nightmare still in embryo, the last three weeks' mortification of the spirit would have been spared and she would have been relieved of the necessity for reminding Denys that they were spending their last day together. She confessed to herself that it was an un- christian feeling, but at the moment she was concerned less with Christianity than wtih her love for Denys. "Yes," she repeated thoughtfully, picking up the paper again, "I'm afraid it's come too late to be of any use at all." CHAPTER XIV DENYS TRIES TO KEEP HIS PROMISE "Oh, my grief, I've lost him surely. I've lost the only Playboy of the Western World." J. M. SYNGE: "THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD." AT nine o'clock the same evening Denys was sitting by himself at Buckingham Gate. A neglected Westminster Gazette lay beside his plate: several weeks' accumulation of letters stared at him in dumb reproach from the mantel- piece, and after three unsuccessful attempts at friendship the blue Persian had retired to preserve her dignity on the hearth-rug. He was trying to realise his position and what it involved. He would have to see Daphne next day and find whether she had communicated to her parents the terms of their parting at Riversley. It did not matter greatly whether she had or not, save in so far as the nar- ration was likely to involve him in an embarrassing inter- view with her mother. And then but that was the end so far as Daphne was concerned: it would be but a ques- tion of time before he committed the criminal folly of marrying a girl he did not love. His thoughts turned ta his public position: in another six weeks the King would be opening Parliament and the new member would take his seat. On the first suitable occasion he would make his maiden speech and declare himself. Then he would have to face the consequences. He felt he should not mind the official criticism of the party 275 276 SHEILA INTERVENES leaders he was supposed to be following: they had had their warning in the "Trustees of Posterity," and for the present at least he did not propose to advance one inch beyond what he had advocated there. Moreover, the criti- cism would be tempered by the fact that the "Trustees" stood in Lord Parkstone's name: it was impossible to at- tack the agent and spare the principal. With Sir William it was different: to accept his money and support and then attack him with the weapons of his own providing was a prospect which he did not relish. He pictured the expression of lofty contempt on Sheila's face and "squirmed" as she had told him he would squirm. It was true that he would not be present to see, as he had undertaken never to cross her path again: but it would be there none the less, and even when he carried out his intention of refusing all further assistance from her grand- father she would continue to despise him. And if he could dismiss Sheila from his mind and disregard her opin- ion of him there was still Daphne to placate or remain implacable. He would rather lose a year of life than cause her pain. Already he was wronging her sufficiently by marrying her, and yet there was no escape from the dilemma. She would one day wake to find herself the wife of a dangerous incendiary and demagogue, and it was only in this way that he could avenge the memory of his dead grandfather and show himself worthy of his father's name. Lives and houses and land had already been sacrified, there was nothing else left for him to give; but as he stared at the changing colours of the fire he reflected bitterly that his own sacrifice was the heaviest. Leaving his savoury untasted, he was beginning to peel a pear when his attention was attracted by the sound of voices in the hall. His servant was saying: "Mr. Play- fair is now at dinner. What name shall I tell him?" and TRIES TO KEEP HIS PROMISE 277; a female voice answered: "Oh, well, don't interrupt him, then. When he has finished, will you say that a lady would like to speak to him for a moment?" There was no mistaking the soft, grave tones of the voice, and Denys jumped up and hurried into the hall as the man was clos- ing the door after showing Lady Daphne into the library. She did not hear him come in, and stood for a moment enjoying the restful warmth of the deep-carpeted, book- lined room. Then as he closed the door she turned with a little cry of pleasure. "I oughtn't to be here, ought I, Denys?" she said, "but I had to come. There's been some very bad news while you were away and I promised to tell you as soon as you got back." She paused and looked round her as though she were afraid to approach the subject of her visit. "What a lovely room; I've never been here before." "Let me help you out of your cloak, Daphne," he said, "you'll find it hot in here." "Oh, but I mustn't stay, Denys. No, I won't even sit down, thanks. I just want to tell you something and ask you to do something for me and then I must go. No- body knows where I am at present." She walked over to the fire and stood with her arm resting on the mantel- piece while Denys lit a cigar and sat opposite her on the edge of his writing-table. She was wearing a sable cloak, open at the throat, and round her neck hung the pendant which he had given her at Riversley. Her dress was of black silk and seemed to make her usually pale face paler by contrast; the pupils of her dark brown eyes were di- lated with excitement; the quickness of her breathing and the trembling of her whole body gave evidence of the emotional stress under which she was speaking. "Denys, I suppose you've not heard about Maurice?" she began. "Nothing fresh. This afternoon I saw an account of 278 SHEILA INTERVENES the accident in an old paper. I was going to inquire to- morrow. Is he . . ." "Then you have heard." She sighed and then went on. "That makes it easier in a way. No, he's not going to die, they say he's out of danger now, but he may not be able to walk again. I saw him for a few minutes this afternoon." "How did he seem?" "Bad. Oh, he's very bad, but they say he's bea-ing it all very well. He wouldn't talk about himself but he inquired after you. I think he was surprised at my com- ing. In fact, he said he hadn't expected to see me again." She paused again and he watched her in silence. Then she went on quickly: "Denys, I've misjudged Maurice. There's a lot more good in him than I thought. After Riversley I never meant to see him again. He called and I wouldn't see him, and he wrote and mother sent him back his letter. I felt nothing could make me forgive his But I saw him to-day and said: 'Well, Mau- rice, how are you?' and he said: 'Fit as a fiddle, thanks, Daphne/ and then he apologised for for Riversley. Denys, I don't believe he'd have behaved like that if it hadn't been for Sheila. Ever since he came back to town he's been trying to see me to say how sorry he was, and when I wouldn't have anything to do with him, do you know, he went off all by himself visiting in the East-end at the houses where we went together in the summer. He didn't tell me about that, I heard it from someone else. I nearly cried when I heard it. Maurice must have hated it so, and it seemed quite pathetic to think of him doing it just to please me and never expecting I should find out. Maurice is better than I thought." Denys smoked on with his eyes fixed on Daphne's face. He felt that she had not called on him with so much (urgency merely to describe her visit to the hospital, but TRIES TO KEEP HIS PROMISE 279 he had no idea of the climax she was approaching. Then suddenly she lowered her voice and stammered out the announcement which had held her in white and trembling anticipation. "Denys, I ... I feel I can't leave Maurice like this! It would be so mean, so hateful. I know he oughtn't to have behaved like that at Riversley, but he has been try- ing to wipe it out. Mind you, he hasn't said anything to me about it, he didn't make any capital out of lying there swathed in bandages, he didn't try to work on my feel- ings. Just the other way. He said he certainly wouldn't be able to hunt Collison's hounds now, and as a matter of fact I know that he refused two days before the accident because he wanted me to see that hunting wasn't the only thing he cared for. Denys, I do really believe he loves me still!" "I'm sure he does." "Then what ought I to do? At least, I know what 1 ought to do : I want you to agree that I'm doing right." "Do you love Maurice, Daphne?" He waited silently for the answer, and waited sadlj. Now that he was on the verge of losing her, he could ap- preciate the magnitude of his loss. Once before in Devon- shire and once at Riversley he had melted in pity at the sight of the beautiful grave eyes and face of suffering. Now again, when he thought of her life-long bondage in a loveless union, he was irresistibly moved to assert his false claim and spare her at least the appearance of the greater evil. He could never love her, because she lived among the stars and breathed a finer air, but he was never nearer loving her than at that moment, and if he could not offer her love, he could make her sure of solicitude and sym- pathy. For a while she did not reply and he repeated his question. She turned from the fire, weighing her words with a strange mixture of fearlessness and indecision. 2 8o SHEILA INTERVENES "No, I don't." "Then ..." "No!" She seemed to have found the clue to her tangled thoughts. "That's not the right standpoint, Denys. That's what you said in Devonshire, and I think I believed it then. But I don't now. Love isn't everything. I wish it were, but it's only a small part of something much bigger and much more difficult. It isn't just 'Do I love Maurice?' It's 'What is my duty to Maurice?' I've really only seen that this last week. If it hadn't been for the accident . . . I don't know. But I don't feel I ought to leave him now." Denys threw away his cigar and got down from the table where he had been sitting. Standing opposite to her in the firelight and looking into her eyes he began slow- ly and uncertainly to make his last appeal : the same help- less and predestined feeling which had possessed him at Riversley again laid hold of his mind; he was struggling for a prize which he dared not win, and seeking to over- come a resistance which he feared might prove only too short-lived. "It's a question of duty, Daphne," he said. "Yes, I agree. But you're thinking of your duty to Maurice and forgetting your duty to yourself." She shook her head. "There isn't one here." "Oh, but there is! Leave me out of the calculation, imagine you're meeting me now for the first time, and just consider what it will mean if you marry Maurice. You're twenty-one, Daphne, and he's twenty-five. Thirty, forty, fifty years, perhaps, you'll live with him, and not one idea in common. He'll do his best to meet you and see life from your point of view, because he's in love with you. As long as he is in love with you," he added thoughtfully. "And you'll try to meet him and take an interest in his side of life, and you'll both succeed for a month or two. But after that Daphne, you don't appreciate what mar- TRIES TO KEEP HIS PROMISE 281 riage means; it's a life-time, an eternity, perhaps the only eternity we ever know. You can't treat it as if it were a dinner-party, and you were going down with a stranger; you can't exist on polite small-talk, you must have some- thing to fall back on. What have you got in common with Maurice? You haven't the same tastes or manners, you don't read the same books, there's as wide a gulf between you as if you talked a different language. There's no sympathy between your souls; it's an armed neutrality at best. And that's your lot for the whole of life. I hate to talk like this, because I seem to be running Maurice down when he can't defend himself. It's very fine of you to say you can't leave him now that's he's down and broken, but you've a right to consider your own happiness, and I want you to tell me what happiness you think you'll win by marrying a man you don't even pretend to love." "I'm not thinking of my own happiness," she said softly. "But you should be, it's what we're here for. If any- one believed he was put into the world and denied the opportunity of seeking to extract the maximum of happi- ness from an imperfect scheme of things, life would be insupportable; he would commit suicide. It's the deepest instinct of our being. What else have we to guide us?" She passed her hand over her eyes with a gentle sigh. "I've thought all that out this last week: I've been finding answers to a lot of questions that used to puzzle me. Love isn't everything, and our instincts are very untrustworthy guides. If we depended on them, nothing would ever be done and we should be no better than the beasts, hunting and eating and sleeping and hunting again. We're made of finer stuff than that, Denys, and we prove it by the way we take trouble to do things we don't like just because well, because we feel we ought to. Look at father, look at yourself, everyone you know they all behave in a cer- tain way because they feel it's their duty; and now that 282 SHEILA INTERVENES I'm faced with the choice, I've got to do the thing I know to be right." "But, Daphne ..." "Oh, don't make it harder for me!" The words were whispered with a piteous tremble of the voice. Then she came up to him and placed her wrists on his shoulders, clasping the hands behind his head. "You can't picture what I've gone through this last week. I'd written to say you were to tell granddad, and as soon as you got back we were going to tell father together . . . Then I heard about Maurice. It did seem hard ! I thought about it and argued with myself about it and I tried to find a way out, but it was no good. Maurice wants me and I must go to him: it's really, really got to be good-bye this time. You must forget about it all, Denys, and I mustn't see you till till I'm out of harm's way. No! don't say anything to shake me! I'm not strong enough. We must shut the door to-night, re, now !" She laid her cheek against his with a convulsr^fe sob, and then unclasping her hands stepped back with her eyes bent to the ground. "I oughtn't to have done that, but I couldn't help it. Now you must help me, and then we'll say good-bye." "What am I to do ?" he asked in a dead voice. "You remember taking me to that newspaper office in the summer? I want you to go and have an announcement put in for to-morrow. I wrote it out but I don't know if you think it'll do." She took a slip of paper out of the bosom of her dress and handed it to him. Denys read it, altered a word here and there, and gave it back. It read: "Mr. Maurice Weybrook, who met with an accident last week is reported to be progressing as favourably as could be expected. In consequence of the accident, his marriage with Lady Daphne Grayling, the only daughter of the Earl of Parkstone, has had to be postponed. The ceremony was TRIES TO KEEP HIS PROMISE 283 to have taken place in the New Year, and we are informed that the date will be announced as soon as Mr. Weybrook is sufficiently recovered." Daphne read the amended announcement and gave it back with an air of finality. "You'll go round at once, won't you, Denys? I want it to appear to-morrow for Maurice's sake; I was only waiting till you got back. Don't tell anyone till it's ap- peared, or mother will stop it. And that . . . that's all." As she fastened her cloak she looked once more round the room, to take in every detail and stamp the impression on her mind. Then she took Denys' hand and bade him farewell, conventionally and without emotion. He accom- panied her to the door, picked up a coat and hat in the hall, and walked down to the street. Whistling for a taxi, he put her into it, and with a glance at his watch began to walk eastward to the office of the NeuUztter. It was midnight before his mission Was accomplished and he found himself once more sitting in front of his library fire. As he walked back from Fleet Street, he had passed a piano-organ playing a new ragtime that he had not heard before. The air lingered in his memory, and he discovered himself half unconsciously whistling it over to himself. To concentrate his mind on the train of thought which Daphne's arrival had interrupted, he lit a fresh cigar, and as the blue smoke-rings widened and broke he seemed gradually to be piercing the haze and viewing the future in undistorted perspective. Unexpectedly, almost miracu- lously, he had been rescued from the false position in which Sheila had placed him with regard to Daphne. He was surprised to find how little relief he felt at the escape, and how great in proportion were his pity and sense of loss. Something large and vital and palpitating seemed to have been torn out of his life, leaving him chastened, spiritless, 284 SHEILA INTERVENES and lonely. Of course his path had been cleared and straightened: he would go round to Sir William the next day, and on the plea of a desire for greater independence beg that the financial assistance he was at present enjoying be discontinued. And then, forgetting Daphne and Sheila, he would fight as he had never fought before, sword and gun, tooth and nail, until he had made his voice heard and his leadership accepted. It was the only thing that remained to him. Lying back in his chair, he considered at what point he could intervene with most effect and turn the privilege of a maiden speech to most account. He began to review the list of govern- ment measures for the forthcoming session. The Reform of the Poor Law, thai would do : or he could begin earlier and take part in the debate on the Address. And then he found his mind wandering away from Parliament and occu- pying itself with the picture of Sheila Farling. Daphne's retirement from the stage had left him free to play out his drama without hindrance or interruption : he had told himself this so many times that he was coming to regard it as the only change which the evening's events had made in his fortunes. But at the back of his mind he now re- alised that he was free to offer himself to Sheila if he thought it worth while to invite a rejection. He was half glad that she would have nothing to do with him, because that made it easier to pursue his mission with single- minded purpose. But he was more than half sorry that, in the nine months he had known her, he had been unable to win any share of her well-guarded affections or arouse any feelings more intimate than those of amused and con- temptuous toleration. He knew her no better than on the day in early spring when he had walked up the accom- modation-ladder at Gibraltar, to find her standing, slight, black-eyed and mischievous, waiting for her grandfather to introduce them to each other. TRIES TO KEEP HIS PROMISE 285 In the interval much had happened. He counted off each fresh development on his fingers. First he had figured as a legitimate source of amusement to her; then she had decided to employ him as an instrument of providence in freeing her cousin from the unfortunate engagement to Maurice ; then the new combination of forces was to be used to foil the political schemes to which his life had been de- voted. The Riversley ball had been her Austerlitz: every- thing had been staked on it and, whatever its issue, the result for him was the same. If she won, she had no further use for him: if she lost as she had lost her forces were too shattered for a fresh engagement. They would never meet again, even to fight. That disposed of Sheila. His cigar had gone out, and as he relit it he found that he had not disposed of Sheila in any way. At that moment she was probably sitting in front of a fire, soft, warm, intensely human and eminently lovable. She was talking with that delightful rapid utter- ance interspersed with cascades of silvery laughter which he so loved to hear. And he was sitting lonely and cheer- less, separated by the breadth of the park. In a month's time they would be separated by the breadth of the Atlantic ; in six months' time by the breadth of the world and the length of Eternity. It annoyed him to see how firm a grip she had taken of liis thoughts, and starting up from his chair he began to pace up and down the room with his hands locked behind his back. Suddenly he came to a standstill in front of the fire. Above the mantelpiece was a blank space on the wall: the portrait of his grandfather had stood there and he had removed it at her request. There was no reason under heaven why he should regard her requests now, and with a smile of unamiable purpose he left the library in search of the picture. It was lying in the box-room, already deep in dust, and he had to brush the canvas gently with a towel before the lean, drawn face 286 SHEILA INTERVENES leapt out to confront him with its dark, deep-set eyes out- standing cheek-bones, and haunting expression of mute, suf- fering reproach. For a few moments he gazed at it under the spell of a morbid fascination. Then some particles of the long-accu- mulated dust laid hold of his throat and set him coughing. Resting the picture against a chair he started up and walked the length of the library, coughing as though a spirit had entered into him and were tearing his lungs into ribbons. At last the paroxysm spent itself and he sank on to a sofa, gasping and wiping the perspiration from his forehead. Then for no reason but an indefinable fear he put the handkerchief to his lips and gazed with sickening horror at a bright red stain of blood. He had expected it for three years, but every that passed without the fulfilment of his expectation had established him in a sense of uneasy security. With a sudden feeling almost guilty repulsion he dropped the handkerchief into the fire and watched the blood-stain blackening, shrivelling, and finally disappear- ing from view. Then he re-hung the portrait in its old place and stood for a moment to draw inspiration and wrath from the face of sorrow. Then, with the shadow of death at his elbow, he sat down to arrange an appointment with Dr. Gaisford, and deal with the accumulated arrears of correspondence. "If you're not going to follow my advice in any single particular, Denys, I candidly don't know why you troubled to let me examine you." Dr. Gaisford swung round in his revolving, leather- backed chair and faced his patient. "I wanted to know how I stood. May I smoke?" "No. I forbid it absolutely, and if you won't obey me at other times, I can at least get my way in my own con- sulting-room. Well, you know now exactly how you stand. You're touched, but at present it's nothing very serious. TRIES TO KEEP HIS PROMISE 287 If you'll go away at once for six months South Africa or Canada you'll come back cured, and you can take up your parliamentary duties and marry a wife and do just what you please. If you don't, well, it's only a question of weeks, or at most of months, before you get past mending." "I see. Well, it's most satisfactory to know just how much rope you allow me. Good-bye, doctor. We meet on Thursday at the Empire Hotel." "Sit down, Denys. Look here, I'm not talking as your doctor now, I'm talking as a man twice your own age and an old friend into the bargain. What's the matter? I want to be taken into your confidence." "There's nothing the matter." "You may tell that to the marines! I've just warned you that if you don't clear out of England you'll die and no time lost about it. You tell me you won't go. I retort that you're deliberately committing suicide. Denys, is it a question of money? Because if it is, I'll never forgive you for not drawing on me." "It isn't money, and I know I can always turn to you in a difficulty, and you know I know it and that I'm properly grateful. It's just a question of time. I can't run away for the whole of my first session." Dr. Gaisford drummed with his fingers on the writing- table. "Think you're going to make anything of a mark in the House, Denys?" "One hopes so." "Are you going to make it in your first three months?" "That's rather short time, isn't it?" "It's all you'll get. Why not postdate your triumphs for six months and then start to win them with a decent constitution. Life is sweet, my friend Denys." "No, I'm damned if it is," the young man burst out explosively. . "Believe me, you're wrong. I've had nearly twice as 288 SHEILA INTERVENES much of it as you've had, and it grows sweeter every day. And I never had half your brains or a tithe of your good looks. You're out of sorts and down on your luck and you can't judge properly. You must let me judge for you." Denys got up and struggled into a heavy fur coat. "I'll see if life is any sweeter at your supper-party, doctor," he remarked. "I suppose you're not cancelling my invita- tion, are you?" "I ought to. You oughtn't to be out these foggy Decem- ber nights, but if you don't come to me you'll go somewhere else, and I can at least keep you from smoking." "Not if you've got a spark of the old hospitality about you," said Denys with a laugh that ended in a fit of coughing. The following Thursday evening Dr. Gaisford was seated at the head of his supper-table in a private room at the Empire Hotel. It was Christmas Eve, and the hotel had inaugurated a gala night with Christmas trees, ever- greens, a distribution of presents, and a ball starting at midnight. The table was laid for forty guests and the average age was about three-and-twenty. The doctor loved to be surrounded by young faces, and had only overstepped the age limit in one instance by inviting Sir William Far- ling to keep him company when Sheila retired with his other guests to take part in the ball. Supper was just beginning, and the doctor, under cover of examining his own menu, was wondering why Denys had made him alter the disposition of the table in order to separate Sheila and himself. "No trumps," remarked Jack Melbourne, laying down his menu with a sigh of appreciative contentment. "And it looks like forty above for the grand slam. No! I'm defeated: omelette a 1'absinthe beats me. 'Out of the eater came forth meat, out of the strong came forth sweet- TRIES TO KEEP HIS PROMISE 289 ness.' The last time I met that dish I exceeded and was seriously unwell." "There's something unhealthy about your appetite, Jack," remarked his neighbour, "we must get the doctor to ex- amine you and see if you're wasting." "No need, thanks," rejoined Melbourne, "my appetite's only an instance of the scientific principle that nature abhors a vacuum. Have a salted almond and give me time to see who's here." His eye roved round the table until it fell on a young Indian civilian sitting opposite him. "Hullo, Sinclair," he called out, "how long are you home for?" "I'm going back in March. I wondered if I should meet you here to-night." "Where the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together. Been making history in India?" "I've got married, if you call that making history." "I call it a revelation quite unsuited to mixed company !' : "From which I gather you're still unmarried. What are you doing with yourself these times?" "Remaining unmarried. This is the age of specialisa- tion." "But taking your not inconsiderable personal charms into account, isn't that rather a selfish and inhuman ideal?" "Oh, possibly." He turned and addressed his neigh- bour in an undertone. "A most depressing young man, Sinclair. He always fancies one has to be doing something or putting one's shoulder to a wheel of some kind or other. He won every prize at school and at the 'Varsity, and passed into the Indian Civil head of the list. His life is a record of wasted opportunities. Now he's married a a wife and will spend the evening of his declining days in crying over the milk he never had the immoral courage tc spill. You heard him just now asking me what I was doing. He has never studied the modern theory of the division of labour." 2 9 o SHEILA INTERVENES "And what is that?" asked his neighbour, one of those freckled, pale-faced girls who are so plain that they fear no one will ever take the trouble to shock them, but hope on nevertheless. "The theory that some people like work and others don't, and if you leave work undone long enough someone else will do it for you." "We can't all exist on that theory; there must always be a certain amount of give and take." "True, and it requires a very high order of mind to know how much you can take and how little you need give." He swallowed the last oyster with evident regret, and fidgeted discontentedly with his fish-knife till the soup made its appearance. In the meantime, Sinclair returned to the attack. "I believe you used to know my wife Gertrude Ibbet- son she was." "Did I?" He turned to the freckled girl with an ill- concealed groan. "Gertrude Ibbetson. That stamps the man." "But surely you can't ..." "Indeed you can. Nowadays a man is known by the wives he keeps. Talking of which, did you read your Newsletter this morning? I see Lady Daphne's going to marry Maurice after all." "Including Riversley. Yes, I was rather surprised. Have you seen Maurice since the accident?" "Yes, I called round at the hospital to-day. He wasn't a beauty at the best of times, but love must be pretty blind to tolerate him now. He looked like a child's puzzle with several of the principal pieces left out." "Is he going to get all right?" "Oh, I think so. He'll get back the use of his legs, and his head doesn't seem capable of further damage." "How did the Parkstones take the announcement?" TRIES TO KEEP HIS PROMISE 291 "I think they were fairly well satisfied. Lady Parkstone told Sir William that nothing could have been more credit- able than Maurice's apology to Daphne. 'The words came straight from his heart,' she said." "What did Sir William say?" " 'Straight from his head, I should fancy/ " said Jack with a good imitation of Sir William's voice of displeasure. " 'Ex nihilo nihil fit.* And as his daughter doesn't un- derstand Latin, I think the honours rest with him. Miss Sheila's the person I want to talk to. I should like to get to the bottom of the Riversley episode: she doesn't seem half as much cut up as she ought to be, after taking the trouble to be found out so flagrantly. The whole thing offends my sense of . . ." He hesitated for a word. "Morality?" suggested the freckled girl. "Propriety, rather. Morality is the art of being found out at the right time." Having exhausted most of the impromptus with which he had come armed, Melbourne concentrated his attention on wild duck and orange salad and left the conversation to take care of itself. With less acerbity of treatment, the subject of Maurice Weybrook's accident had been dis- cussed from end to end of the long table. He was known to all present, and as four-fifths of the guests had attended the Riversley ball, the announcement in that morning's Newsletter had given fresh life to their reminiscences and conjectures regarding the scene in the conservatory. The only members of the party who refused to join the dis- cussion were Sir William, Denys, Dr. Gaisford and Sheila. Remembering the degree of intimacy which they had achieved on their homeward voyage in the spring, the doctor had originally decided that Denys and Sheila should sit next each other. When Denys begged for a rearrange- ment of the table, he had himself taken Sheila in and given Denys charge of the Indian civilian's wife. His early spec- 292 SHEILA INTERVENES illations on the division between the two young people had been forgotten in the general cares of hospitality : as Sheila talked with an exuberance and abandon which surprised even herself, there seemed little obligation on him to look for broken hearts to mend. She was dressed in chestnut-brown, hemmed with skunk and tasselled with gold. Her black eyes were shining with pure, untroubled joy of existence, and all within earshot took their time from her silvery ripple of laughter. Sir William glanced down the table once or twice, wondering at the sudden change which had come over her. After the night of the Riversley ball, the gaiety had died out of her as though a clumsy giant had crushed the life out of her butterfly body. In a moment, and no later than that same morning, the head had raised itself, the fire had come back to her eyes, and the Sheila that he most loved had been born again. He had noticed the change at breakfast, and since then nothing had had power to ruffle her. Even the definite announcement of her cousin's coming marriage elicited no outburst. She had apparently read it before he could get hold of the papers, but his own caustic com- ments failed to arouse any sympathetic echo. After breakfast she had taken counsel of her familiar spirit. Seated at the piano, she had reviewed the whole situation to a soft accompaniment of certain favourite waltzes. The fight had been manfully fought out, she had spent all her treasure in Daphne's cause, and if Daphne chose to marry Maurice in spite of her sacrifices and en- deavours she could do no more. Yet the sacrifice had not been made in vain: it was only when she seemed to have lost Denys beyond power of recall that she appreciated her need for him. It was worth much to have found that out, it was worth the humiliation at Riversley to have discovered that he did not love Daphne. It had been a narrow, provi- dential escape, and she did not choose to calculate how TRIES TO KEEP HIS PROMISE 293 much she owed to a chance motor accident at the corner of Pall Mall. And now the clouds had rolled away, Denys stood free of the shackles she had riveted on him. Suddenly she stopped playing and walked away to the window. She supposed she was not building without foundations : she was justified in thinking that freedom for Denys meant only a new servitude. He had said nothing to support such a theory in all the time she had known him ; her evidence of his devotion to her was of a flimsy, negative character. She picked up a white chrysanthemum and began to pull it petal from petal, and then threw it impatiently away because she found herself playing the children's game, "He loves me, he loves me not." Of course he loved her : if he did not as she ruefully admitted to herself no man would have endured the slights she had from time to time put upon him. And Denys was the only person whose anger at Riversley had been founded on the injury she was doing to her own good name. Of course he loved her, and it was that thought which sent the blood into her cheeks and the light into her eyes as she looked down the table to the place where he sat in conversation with his vis-a-vis, the clear-cut outline of his features turned to her in profile, the soft, low voice occasionally audible above the gusty, intermittent laughter of his neighbours. All too slowly for Sheila the supper dragged its course, until at last the cigars were reached and her host made his way round the table distributing the presents he had chosen for his guests. With all the patience she could muster, she waited through a seemingly interminable period of smoking until at last the opening bars of the first waltz floated up the stairs from the ball-room. With the regret- ful sigh of the well-fed, the men threw away their cigars, pushed back their chairs, and accepted the programmes which a waiter was serving out. Dr. Gaisford and Sir William retired hors de combat, and Sheila found herself, 294 SHEILA INTERVENES as usual, surrounded by a clamorous throng of admirers. "Four, seven, nine and sixteen, Miss Sheila," began Jack Melbourne. "I suppose there'll be another supper; there ought to be, and I should like it if I may have it. What about eleven and twelve for supper?" "You can't have supper, Mr. Melbourne," said Sheila, "I'm keeping it." "Go away, Jack, you've had more than your fair share," expostulated another admirer. "Sheila, what have you got left in the first half? May I have the first two, and eight, and thirteen, and eighteen, and the first extra?" "Miss Farling, are you booked for six?" broke in a third. "Then may I have it? And nine? Well, who's got nine? he'll have to change. Jack, you've got to swap nine with me." He wandered off to effect a deal with Melbourne while Sheila gazed in dismay at her programme. Half the dances were already gone, and Denys had not even ap- proached her. She glanced round the room and saw him still seated at the table thoughtfully finishing his cigar. "Sheila, what have you got left?" The tumult was breaking out afresh. "Come back in a week's time and I may be clear by then," she cried out in desperation. "I'm in such a mud- dle now that everybody will get everybody else's dances the whole night through." As the circle broke up and faded away in search of fresh partners, she walked to the end of the room where Denys was sitting in lonely enjoyment of his cigar. "I'm rather disappointed in you, Denys," she said gently. He rose up wearily and dropped the end of the cigar into a finger-bowl. "I'm sorry, Sheila, but it really wasn't my fault. If the doctor had told me who was coming, I'd have spared you my presence." "I wasn't meaning that. And you know I wasn't. You TRIES TO KEEP HIS PROMISE 295 don't go out of your way to make yourself pleasant now that we have met." "I'm doing my best. I promised not to darken your path, and through no fault of my own I've broken the promise." "I'll forgive you and we'll lay the blame at the doctor's door. Deny's do be nice to me. I've been keeping 'Douces Pensees' for you, and 'Liebestraum' and 'Reve de Prin- temps,' and you can have some more if you like." As soon as the programmes were distributed he had put on his gloves and scribbled his initials at the top of a card. As Sheila finished speaking he began to unbutton them. "All three of those are good," he remarked critically. " 'Douces Pensees' we danced that together at Lady Park- stone's ball just before you sent me down to Devonshire. And 'Liebestraum' we were going to have that at Rivers- ley, only we missed it. 'Reve de Printempts' I've never had with you, though I remember dancing it with Daphne at Riversley. All three of them revive pleasantly sinister memories. It's very kind of you, Sheila, but I don't think it will help things if we prolong the agony. I apologise for my presence, and I think we'd better say good-bye to each other." "Denys!" She laid a restraining hand on his arm. "Denys, just to please me!" "I'm not dancing to-night, Sheila." CHAPTER XV THE END OF ONE VISION AND THE BEGINNING OF THE NEXT "Behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground." I. SAM. v: "CONGRATULATE you on your speech, Playfair." "Oh, thanks very much." Denys looked up and tried to identify the speaker, one of many hundred strangers confusedly encountered in the lobby or dining-room. He was beginning to remember their faces and constituencies, beginning to feel at home in the House of Commons, and the greater familiarity brought with it a sense of overwhelming disillusionment. A month earlier he had taken his seat: the entry into the House, the cheering, the oath, the introduction, to the Speaker lingered in his mind as the last phase of a life's dream. Then he had gradually, painfully awakened. For a while he refused to admit his own disillusionment: he was not yet reconciled to the strangeness of his new sur- roundings, the formality and circumlocution, the cut-and- dried methods of the Whips' office, the machine-made vic- tories in the lobbies, the disappearance of man as an indi- vidual and his re-emergence as a voter. As he rose to his feet the dream finally melted away. The Government's Electoral Reform Bill was under con- sideration, the House reasonably full and more than usually indulgent to a new member. He had spoken well, earning encouragement from his own side and complimentary words from the Minister in charge of the bill: there would be 296 THE END OF ONE VISION 297 no transference of votes, but he had secured a gratifying amount of lip-homage. Then amid more compliments and congratulations he had escaped, to be alone with his despair. The House of Commons with its jaded audience, its vitiated atmosphere, its artificial forms and style, its hatred of heroics, its spirit of solemn puerility, is a disappointment to most unseasoned members : the greater their seriousness and ardour, the greater will be the sense of bathos. To one whose earlier experience has lain among great popular meetings quick, emotional, and responsive the chasten- ing influence of a House of Commons' audience is almost insupportable. Denys' vision had seemed nearest achieve- ment when he was addressing South London workmen at the Lambeth Public Baths: he had played with them and hypnotised them. The vision was never so remote and unreal as when a succession of well-meaning friends con- gratulated him on the best maiden speech of recent years and prophesied a great political future. Passing by the Local Government Board offices to collect his thoughts, he walked up Whitehall, down the Strand and Fleet Street, up Ludgate Hill and into the City. He was unconsciously bidding farewell to London and the vampires that had sucked his blood for five years. First the narrow, grimy office of the Newsletter, then the pre- tentious, marble-pillared edifice of the Anglo-Hiberian. Walking westward along the Embankment he followed the course trodden eight months earlier with Daphne, past the Savoy, across the Strand, up Southampton Street into Covent Garden, along Garrick Street, through Leicester Square, down Piccadilly to Devonshire House, and so into Berkeley Square. One chapter after another of life lay trimmed and folded, the engines would run on for a few more weeks or months, but there was nothing more tq print. Turning back along Berkeley Street he entered the Green 298 SHEILA INTERVENES Park and walked in the direction of Buckingham Gate. The sight of Stafford House reminded him of a last pil- grimage still to be undertaken, and he entered Cleveland Row. The House of Commons, in robbing him of his vision, had left him purposeless : his health was broken, all that remained was to slink away and die. He wanted to die alone, as he had lived, independent and ineffectual, to cut away the last ties that united him to his fellow-man. On the plea of greater freedom he was calling to say good-bye to Sir William, to thank him for his support and announce his intention of fighting thereafter as a free lance. There was another sub-conscious intention, or at least expecta- tion, in his call. Though he remained obstinately true to his bitter promise and refused to meet Sheila, he was in hopes of catching a last glimpse of her before she sailed. In the pocket of his coat lay a red morocco jewel-case con- taining a gold chain set with pearls: he had brought it as a birthday present, though by the time her birthday was reached she would be among the Coral Islands of the Pacific and he ... No one knew where he would be. "Sir William is not at home, sir, at present. Miss Sheila is in." "Oh, I won't bother her, thank you, Simpson. I think I'll come in and wait till Sir William comes back." He was shown into the library of the flat and provided with cigarettes and the evening papers. A bright fire was burning and he sat down in front of it, shivering even in his fur coat. In another week the Farlings were starting for the South Seas. Yawning cavities in the bookcases and an unwonted absence of papers on the writing-table be- tokened their approaching departure. It was not known how long they would be away, but a minimum absence of twelve months was expected. Another summer, another autumn with falling leaves, shortening days and deepening mists, and then another pitiless winter: ever since his visit THE END OF ONE VISION 299 to Dr. Gaisford a month before, Denys had been watching his symptoms with morbid interest and had convinced him- self that he could not outlast another English winter. And he was afraid to die. Every torment which could be de- vised by a highly-strung, nervous spirit living in loneliness and depression had been put into practice and only super- seded when one of greater ingenuity suggested itself. He had studied the subject of phthisis in an encyclopaedia and marked down cases where a surprising longevity had been attained despite the scourge ; and then he had entered upon the Dther side of the account those classic instances of malignant attacks where death had been sighted at the distance of a few days, almost of a few hours. Without any seriousness of purpose he had once as a matter of interest weighed himself after dinner at the club, and noted the result in his pocket-book. Thereafter it became a fixed habit and well-nigh a religious observance never to leave the club without a visit to the weighing- machine. At times he would be seized with terror when the dial registered an unexpectedly low figure, until the change was explained away by the fact that he was now weighing himself in thin dress-clothes: at times again a passing sense of security would be shattered by the re- flection that he had absent-mindedly forgotten to remove his overcoat. He became obsessed with false shame and fear that everyone was noticing the ebb of his strength: whenever he coughed there was an irresistible furtive ap- plication of a handkerchief to his lips. Despite his promise he found himself praying for an opportunity of meeting Sheila before he left, and asking her in person to accept his present and an apology for his behaviour at Dr. Gaisford's supper-party. The sound of a quick, light step was audible from the adjoining room, but the snatches of song which usually marked her presence were wanting. Then the telephone bell rang out from the 300 SHEILA INTERVENES library and she entered behind his chair. Passing without seeing him, she picked up the instrument. "Hallo! Yes. Sheila. Who? Oh, Denys. He's not come yet, but I'll tell him to stay when he does turn up. My dear, I can't, I'm in the middle of packing and don't in the least want to talk to him. Oh, of course if you want me to, I will. I say, don't ring off yet, Father Time. When will you be back? Then I'd better say we shan't want dinner till a quarter to nine. You'll have to entertain him afterwards, then. I simply must pack, and I don't seem to have any clothes to wear, even in the Pacific. Good- bye." She replaced the receiver and turned to find Denys facing her with his back to the fire. "Hallo," she remarked without embarrassment. "I didn't know you were there. You've just heard me tell Father Time that I don't in the least want you asked to stay to dinner. However, as you are here, we must do our best for you. Been here long?" He glanced at his watch. "About half an hour." "Oh, I was in the next room if you'd wanted to see me. n "I didn't care to disturb you." "No. Well, just tell me if you've got everything you want, and then I must run away and pack. Cigarettes, matches; have something to drink, won't you? And why not take off your coat?" "I'm rather cold." "My dear, this room's like a charnel-house." Denys helped himself to a cigarette, chiefly because he wanted something to do, some distraction to put him at his ease. Sheila was being provokingly polite and 1 matter-of- fact; she showed neither annoyance nor pleasure at seeing him ; he was merely one of her grandfather's guests, to be treated with conventional civility while he remained under their roof-tree. This attitude of urbane aloofness was THE END OF ONE VISION 301 probably indicative of her true relationship to him; he had never been more than an acquaintance of the market-place, and any unbending to closer intimacy had been inspired by detached and remorseless purpose. The deeper his convic- tion, the greater grew his desire to disprove its truth. His hand slipped into his pocket and brought forth the morocco case. "Sheila, I've brought you a birthday present," he began diffidently. "How kind of you, especially as it isn't my birthday for another five months." "I know, but I shan't be within a thousand miles of you then. Have a look at it?" She opened the case and glanced at the chain without taking it out. "It's very pretty." Then she snapped down the lid and handed it back to him. "Hadn't you better keep it for someone who'll appreciate it better? I'm not wearing jewellery these times," she added in a tone that reminded him of his own last words at the supper-party. "You don't mind, do you?" "Not in the least. I say, don't let me interrupt your packing." He leant against the mantelpiece, inhaling the smoke of his cigarette. Sheila lingered in the room, un- willing to leave him, unable to keep command of her tongue and ready to bite it out for the words it had just spoken. They stood for a moment in silence, then the smoke of the cigarette set Denys coughing. The attack increased in violence with every effort to check it, until at last he dropped into a chair gasping for breath, with the veins standing out on his forehead. Through force of habit he pressed his handkerchief to his lips and brought it away stained as on the night when he had bade fare- well to Daphne. Then, recollecting Sheila's presence, he hid it from view and picked up the cigarette from where it had dropped on the carpet when the paroxysm gripped 302 SHEILA INTERVENES him. Sheila watched him for a moment and then sat down in the chair at the opposite side of the fireplace. "I suppose I was meant not to see that," she said in a tone of detachment which was meant to disguise her hor- ror. "How long has this been going on ?" "Oh, not long. Do you know how soon Sir William will be back? I'll leave a note if he's likely to be long." "Have you seen a doctor?" "Yes. May I write your grandfather a line, Sheila?" "No. What did he say?" "A lot of things; doctors always do." "Did he say you ought not to stop in this country?" "Yes. I say, need we pursue the subject? It's not par- ticularly interesting." "It is to me. Why don't you do what he tells you?" "Why should I? What's to be gained by it?" "Well, it might save your life. That's worth think- ing of." "Is it?" "Isn't it? You're just starting your career in parlia- ment ; everybody tells me how promising you are," she added scornfully. "That must be gratifying to you. Good-bye, Sheila: let's be honest for once and admit it when we're beaten. If anyone would take my grandfather's memory and drown it, I should be the first to thank him. I've made my maiden speech and my gods died at the end of it. The fight's over. I'm sick of it, I'm done for." He held out his hand preparatory to leaving. Sheila got up from her chair and took it without letting it go. "Why are you staying, then, if there's nothing to stay for?" "What's to be won by going anywhere else? I know St. Moritz and Davos and Mentone and Egypt. I've said good-bye to so many people who've been ordered south,. THE END OF ONE VISION 303 and I've met so many more who've gone out there to die. I used to think I'd like to finish up in Ireland, but London's the place I know best and love best. And it'll come quickest if I stay here." "Is that an advantage?" Absently he possessed himself of her other hand and swung them gently together. "It's the only satisfactory solution. I've got nothing to look forward to. You don't appreciate what it is, Sheila, to have the bottom suddenly knocked out of the work that's kept you going ever since you can remember. What good is it to me to get patched up and sent back to an existence without any purpose or interest in it? All the time I thought I'd a mission in life, I was fretting and grumbling, wanting to get back to my books. I was beginning to make a name there before I got what I thought was a call. Now that I could go back oh, I'm tired, tired!" "But when you're rested and well ..." He shook his head. "Not good enough. The fight's gone out of me ; there's nothing to come back to. I've got no relations to miss me and not many friends. If you'd tell me a single living soul who cared whether I lived or died, I'd listen to you. As it is, half a dozen people will say 'How sad ! Only six-and-twenty ! Such a promising young man, too!' And there it'll end. Sheila, before I say good-bye I should like to apologise for being rude to you at Gaisford's supper. And I wish you'd take the chain ; you may not care for it, but you can salve your conscience with the reflection that no one else is likely to care for it more. And now I'm sorry, I didn't notice I'd been holding your hands all this time. Good- bye." He turned and walked to the door, leaving her standing motionless in the firelight. His last act had been to place the jewel-case once more in her hand, and she gazed ab- 304 SHEILA INTERVENES sently at it for a moment before ringing the bell to have him shown out. Then, as she crossed the library to her own room, there was the sound of a fall followed by the slam of the front door. She listened for a further sound and was going into the hall to investigate, when the footman entered with a scared expression on his face. "Mr. Playfair's taken ill, miss," he began. "I was show- ing him out when he dropped all of a heap and fell against the door. I think he's fainted, miss." Sheila hurried past him into the hall to find Denys lying grotesquely huddled with his head in the umbrella stand. Motioning to the man to take him by the shoul- ders she lifted his feet and the two of them carried him into the library and laid him on the sofa. Then she dismissed Simpson for water and brandy, undid Deny's collar, and telephoned for Dr. Gaisford. Feverishly re- placing the receiver, she opened the window and sprinkled the passive face with water. After a seemingly inter- minable time she was rewarded with the sight of a faint movement, followed by a weary opening of the eyes. They were instantly closed again and he lay back for a mo- ment with a sigh. Then gradually exerting himself he rose to a sitting posture and gazed unsteadily round the room. "Sit still, don't move, drink this," she ordered, holding a tumbler to his lips. He took the glass in a trembling hand and gulped down the raw spirit. Then breathing painfully he made an effort to rise. "Sit down, Denys," she implored him; "oh, do keep still." "I'm all right, I was only a bit faint. I'm often like that." "Sit down, please, Denys." She put her hands on his shoulders and forced him gently back on to the sofa. "I've THE END OF ONE VISION 305 telephoned for Dr. Gaisford and he's coming round at once." "Bah! what's the good of that? He'll tell me to go to bed, and I won't go to bed. And he'll tell me to go abroad, and I won't go abroad." He spoke with the petu- lance of an angry child. "And he'll say you must take care of yourself to please me," she whispered. "And I ... Oh, thank you, Sheila. I'd already in- cluded you in the half-dozen people who'd say, 'How sad, so young !' " Sheila was too frightened to heed or be hurt by the words. She sat silent, watching the drawn face and closed eyes till a welcome ring announced the doctor's arrival. Gaisford made a hasty examination and then took Sheila outside the door. "Can you fix him up a bed here? Well, get it done at once and I'll put him into it. Young fool! I warned him what would happen. And he's not to get out of it on any pretext whatever till I give him leave. By the way, aren't you just going abroad?" "Doesn't matter, we'll wait." "It'd be better, certainly; if he gets to his own place nobody cap manage him ... I don't know if Sir Wil- liam has any influence with him; he's as obstinate as a mule, I can't get him to listen to reason. Somebody's got to get him out of England and keep him out till he's cured." Sheila nodded without speaking. "Meantime he'll want a nurse. I'll send one in." "No, I'll look after him." "But you don't know anything about nursing." "I'll do whatever you tell me." "It's too much of a strain for a slip of a girl like you." 3o6 SHEILA INTERVENES "Oh, please, please let me!" "You must have relief ; you can't do night and day." "Oh, I can." The doctor patted her cheek and shook his head. "I'll send a nurse round in the morning, the best I can find. She won't be as good as you, but she'll do her best. Now if you'll order the bed I'll move him in." At midnight Denys awoke and tried to remember where he was. He had been undressed and put to bed without resistance and had fallen immediately into a heavy sleep, As his eyes opened and took in first the night-light, then the fire, then the strange wall-paper and unfamiliar fur- niture, Sheila rose from her chair and crept noiselessly to the bedside. He gave an exclamation of surprise as he saw her, then the memory of the evening came back to him and he stretched out a hand and caught hold of her fingers. "You must go to sleep again," she whispered, smooth- ing the pillow with her disengaged hand. He carried the imprisoned fingers to his lips, kissed them and dropped asleep again, smiling. At two he awoke again and raised himself in bed with a painful struggle. Sheila was sitting with the firelight reflected in her black eyes and her hair tied in two heavy plaits falling forward over her shoulders and stretching down to her knees. As he moved she came forward and asked what he wanted. "I was afraid you'd gone," he said. "I won't go." "Never?" "Not till you're all right." "Never?" he repeated. "You mustn't talk, you must go to sleep." "Never, Sheila?" "Not if ... if you want me," she whispered. THE END OF ONE .VISION 307 Denys raised himself further in the bed and looked at her. "Will you get me some water, please?" She filled a tumbler and handed it him. "I've got something to tell you," he said when the water was finished. "Not now, Denys; you mustn't talk, you must go to sleep again." "But it's very important." "It'll keep till the morning. Do lie down again, to please me." "I'm going to get well, Sheila. To please you." "But you won't if you talk now." "I'm going to sleep in one minute, but I must tell you my discovery. It's the greatest thing that's ever happened to me or anyone in the world. It was this evening, yester- day evening, whenever it was. I thought nobody cared if I lived or died. And I was wrong. And I saw I was wrong the last time I woke up and found you sitting there. And I shut my eyes and went to sleep, because I was quite sure it couldn't be true. But it was a lovely dream." Sheila put her hands on his shoulders and made him lie down again. "Dear old muddle-head!" she said with a little sob. "Oh, Denys, what an affliction it must be to be a man! You can't put two and two together unless it's written down in black and white, and then you'll add it up wrong. Didn't you see I cared for you from the moment we met on board? D'you think it wasn't gall and wormwood to me to see the way you admired Daphne? Of course I'd have done anything to get Daphne out of her engagement to Maurice, but why d'you think I ever sent you to her if it wasn't that I thought you loved her and I wanted to make you happy? You'll never know what I went through when I thought I'd succeeded. It's too bad to tell. That night at Riversley it was the first time I ever 3 o8 SHEILA INTERVENES thought you cared for me. And you'll never know what it was like after the engagement was announced. And I waited and you never came near me. And when we met at that supper, and I tried to be friends, you wouldn't have anything to do with me. Oh, Denys, dear Denys, you've got a lot to answer for! And if you want me to forgive you, you must go to sleep at once!" He lay back with one hand holding the two plaits of hair till they formed an oval frame for the dewy eyes and smiling face. "I can't go to sleep unless you kiss me good-night." THE END UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 046 299 4