THE VOI 
 
 INT fib 
 
 m 
 
 RICHARD BL 
 
 , 
 
CHAUNCEY WETMORE WELLS 
 
 1872-1933 
 
 This book belonged to Chauncey Wetmore Wells. He taught in 
 Yale College, of which he was a graduate, from 1897 to 1901, and 
 from 1901 to 1933 at this University. 
 
 Chauncey Wells was, essentially, a scholar. The range of his read- 
 ing was wide, the breadth of his literary sympathy as uncommon 
 as the breadth of his human sympathy. He was less concerned 
 with the collection of facts than with meditation upon their sig- 
 nificance. His distinctive power lay in his ability to give to his 
 students a subtle perception of the inner implications of form, 
 of manners, of taste, of the really disciplined and discriminating 
 mind. And this perception appeared not only in his thinking and 
 teaching but also in all his relations with books and with men. 
 
/ 7 T--I 
 
 ^-*^Vvv\^v^c-^{<? 
 
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The Voice in the Wilderness 
 
The Voice in the 
 Wilderness by 
 
 Richard Blaker 
 
 Jonathan Cape 
 
 Eleven Gower Street London 
 
First published 1922 
 All rights reserved 
 
 IN ll-r>:ORIAM 
 
 C. VXJ.VXMV 
 
 Printed in Great Britain 
 ty Turnbull &> S fears t Edinburgh 
 
961 
 
 4*\ 
 
 3636 
 
 To My Wife 
 
 86S699 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Book I 9 
 
 Book II 141 
 
 Book III 209 
 
Book One : Chapter One 
 
 i 
 
 /CHARLES PETRIE'S household had . consisted,' : till the. 
 V>< morning of a certain November day aboui thirty jars 
 ago, of his wife, his three daughters and his* aoh; GoiHtfcL 
 
 Petrie himself is omitted from the list deliberately, to 
 indicate that the household was divided, quite patently, into 
 two sections. Petrie's section consisted of Petrie alone. 
 His camp was his bedroom and his study, and it was only 
 circumstances of an unusual and very special nature that drew 
 him out of it. 
 
 His eldest daughter, Sylvia, had that day married the chief 
 Cashier of a Pelchester bank, and had left the parental home 
 for ever. 
 
 It was not that fact, however, that accounted for Petrie's 
 being seated at the kitchen-table. It was another fact ; 
 namely, that winter had not yet been officially recognised 
 and his study fire had not been laid. The evening was 
 surprisingly cold, and the kitchen was the only warm place 
 in the house. Also he had heard his wife going upstairs, to 
 bed. 
 
 Before him, on the table, were a heap of papers and writing 
 materials and a cracked saucer to hold burnt matches and 
 the scrapings of his pipe. 
 
 He leaned back in his chair, with his hands clasped behind 
 his head, his lips twisted into a wry smile about his pipe- 
 stem, and his gaze fixed vacantly upon Cynthia, his second 
 daughter, as she stood at the sink. He stared as a man will 
 stare at the antics of a fly upon the ceiling. 
 
 If he had been studying his daughter instead of the reflec- 
 tions that gave the wry twist to his lips, he would have seen 
 a lithe, graceful girl of eighteen, with his own slender length 
 of form and fine strong hands. From him, too, came the 
 
io THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 luxuriance of her hair and its natural wave, while its flaxen 
 colour was the mother's. He had contributed the large, 
 shadowy brown eyes and finely chiselled nose ; Mrs Petrie 
 had given the small, gentle mouth. Only her chin was 
 distinctively a feature of her own, neither square nor pointed, 
 but already solid and modelled into harmony with her cheeks 
 and throat. As 4 her chin was at eighteen, so it would always 
 , remain. ;Tfkee I was nothing superfluous in the material 
 I -* jrhat irwde : up her face. Therein it was like Petrie's. 
 
 .Th^ distortions o$ his features were no passive result, the 
 .frter.#eiy of "surplus tissue; for he was still well under 
 fifty. They were the active construction of the things that 
 lay within him ; the disdain that spread his nostrils and 
 wrinkled his cheeks by pushing them still higher upon his 
 cheekbones ; suspicion that drew his brows together and held 
 them in a knot ; and bitterness that drew a line of shadow 
 below his tight-shut lips. 
 
 His neighbours in those days were, for the most part, 
 whiskered and moustached ; Petrie was shaved scrupulously 
 clean. They wore vast, cruel collars ; Petrie a soft, negligible 
 one and a bulging, black cravat. That, quite roughly, gives 
 Petrie's estimate of his neighbours. 
 
 His neighbours' estimate of him was, in a word, that he 
 was a musician. Though he no longer lived by the profession 
 and practice of music, but had another and quite definite 
 profession, no one ever referred to him as anything but 
 " Petrie the musician," or " You know that musical chap." 
 
 His neighbours, however, went further than this : he was a 
 failure a dead and utter failure. 
 
 At the age of fourteen he had appeared, with his father, 
 as a prodigy violinist. At fifteen he went to Paris and from 
 Paris to the Conservatoire of Music at Holzgarten. When 
 he was twenty-two he reappeared in London. With him was 
 his wife Elizabeth, whom he had carried off from a Pension 
 for the daughters of English gentlemen. She was already 
 a little afraid of Petrie. She resented the old St George's 
 Hall that kept him out, playing its piano, till one o'clock each 
 morning ; his talk agitated her and his silence got upon her 
 nerves. It was then that Sylvia was born. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS n 
 
 Cynthia was born at Leeds seven years later. The birth 
 of yet another daughter five years after Cynthia only served 
 to confirm the mood of bitterness and general pessimism into 
 which the father was gradually falling. This daughter was 
 Freda. When Conrad was born after an interval of three more 
 years, Petrie had got beyond making any comments upon 
 incidents of this description. 
 
 It was the mother who chose the name for the boy, out of 
 the faint, vague love she had for homogeneity in things. 
 " Conrad " fitted in better with the girls' names than James 
 or Thursby, her father's names. To have called him Charles, 
 after his own father, in addition to being inharmonious with 
 the names of her daughters, would have involved a risk greater 
 than Mrs Petrie cared to take. You never knew, in those days, 
 * where you were ' with Petrie. He had not quite settled 
 down into his coldly cynical phase, and could, at times, find 
 a casus belli in a sunbeam, or the way you stuck a postage stamp 
 upon a letter. He might have seen a gibe in his son's being 
 named after him ; he might have considered it an attempted 
 trespass upon his privacy. You never knew. . . . The fact, 
 at any rate, remains that his boy was christened Conrad. 
 
 The children had had hushed, quiet infancies; for their mother 
 always kept them unobtrusively out of Petrie's way. Conrad 
 alone of the four knew him as one to be merely ignored 
 as one ignores, in practice, the functions of Saturn or the 
 moon. With the girls it was slightly different ; they had 
 known him in a state of transition from rebellious pessimism 
 to his cold acceptance of a futile world and he took his 
 transitions very hard. 
 
 Their early associations of tantrums left a restraint and 
 defiant suspicion which persisted in their dealings with him, 
 even after they knew that he would say nothing at all. Their 
 awe of him, and of everything that distinguished him from 
 other men, was associated in their minds, somehow, with the 
 word ' Holzgarten.' 
 
 He took the house in Pelchester when Conrad was two, and 
 the taking of the house was a symbol of his settling down and 
 becoming a less aggressive and violent, if not more amiable, 
 individual. It was the family's first experience of a secure 
 
12 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 livelihood ; of the difference between a salary and an artist's 
 fees. 
 
 The salary was, at first, a hundred and eighty pounds, 
 that of organist and choirmaster of Saint John's Church. 
 
 Thus established, Petrie signified, in the two local papers, 
 his willingness to take advanced pupils in music (theory and 
 technique). He signified also his reluctance to do so, for 
 the fees he demanded were so enormous, that at the end of 
 eighteen months he had no more than four pupils (and of 
 these only one studied music). 
 
 His failure to establish a teaching connection was not due 
 to the fact that there was no money in Pelchester, or that 
 Petrie's efficiency was ever doubted. There was, on the 
 contrary, plenty of money in Pelchester, and nobody ever 
 thought of questioning Petrie's ability. Many, in fact, were 
 proud of Petrie ; but there was merely no demand in Pelchester 
 for expensive music lessons. The men of Pelchester were 
 tradesmen and their necessary parasites doctors, under- 
 takers, solicitors and vets. They were hard-headed, go-ahead 
 and cheery fellows who all seemed to be about forty years 
 of age, all in their business prime of life, with all their 
 businesses at a critical and absorbing stage of development. 
 In a word, the business renaissance of the Provinces was in full 
 swing, and Pelchester with its hundred thousand or so 
 inhabitants was in the thick of it. 
 
 Petrie first demonstrated, by his own failure, the utter 
 futility of music as a profession, and then demanded for an 
 accomplishment and a mere hobby the price that people 
 might have been persuaded to pay for a career. In music, 
 therefore, he acquired only one pupil the delicate son of a 
 widow. 
 
 It was the manufacture of boots and shoes, by the firm of 
 Pudleigh & Walker that had brought the Mayor of Pelchester 
 a fortune of which the rest of Pelchester was very proud. 
 This firm, at the time Petrie came to the town, was beginning 
 to find a foreign market. 
 
 Petrie, it was said, could speak five languages though few 
 people had heard him speak at all. The Mayor had a son of 
 eighteen, and to Petrie came this son to study French and 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 13 
 
 German. After him came others, and when the boot 
 manufacturer had been out of his civic office a year, it was 
 found that the foreign market for Pelchester boots and shoes 
 was developing more rapidly than Petrie's first pupil's fluency 
 in foreign languages. Petrie accordingly received a letter 
 from Pudleigh & Walker, inviting him for a salary of a hundred 
 and fifty pounds, to undertake the foreign correspondence 
 of the firm. 
 
 He called at the office and enquired how many letters per 
 week he would be required to write and read. He then 
 closed his eyes and made a rapid calculation. With his eyes 
 still closed he said " No," then he opened his eyes and said, 
 " Two hundred." He added that he must be permitted to 
 do the work where he pleased, and within reasonable limits, 
 when he pleased. His terms were agreed to, and either because 
 he was a lazy man, or else, as some said, to avoid cutting his 
 own throat by raising possible rivals in the linguistic arena, 
 he refunded the balance of their fees to his pupils, and informed 
 them that they were his pupils no longer. 
 
 On Pudleigh & Walker's new note paper, under the list 
 of branches and the names of the Directors, there appeared the 
 words, " Foreign Secretary, Charles Petrie, Esq." 
 
 The first result of this legend was a boisterous guffaw from 
 Petrie when at last he noticed it after writing half a dozen 
 letters under it. The second was a letter from Shepherd, 
 Mostyn & Barter, Export and Import Provision Merchants. 
 
 To them, since they required slightly more work of him 
 than the others, he suggested three hundred pounds as his 
 salary, with the same qualifications as to time and place. On 
 being offered two hundred and twenty-five he put on his hat. 
 On being asked what he would do about the Dutch corre- 
 spondence (since a great deal of the business consisted of 
 importing eggs and butter from Holland) he said that he would 
 meet the Dutchmen half way, and give them the choice of 
 either French or German as a medium of communication. 
 
 A memorandum of agreement was drawn up and signed, 
 and on his way home from signing it Petrie called at St John's 
 Vicarage to ask the Vicar to find a new organist as soon as 
 possible. 
 
i 4 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 The Vicar was sorry ; he liked Petrie. He asked him how 
 a natural musician could hope to live without music in his 
 life. The musician replied by asking if he, the man of God, 
 would worship any the worse or any the less if he were to give 
 up boiling the pot by it. 
 
 That, briefly, is how Petrie came to abandon music as a 
 trade, and to have a salary of five hundred pounds for work 
 which he performed in about four hours a day, either in the 
 snug little offices of frosted glass in Highway Buildings or 
 Westridge House, in his study, in his bed, or if there was no 
 other warm room in the house, and the majority of the 
 family had gone to bed in the kitchen. 
 
 The statement that his daughters learnt, at a very early 
 age, to play the piano has been omitted just as naturally as 
 the statement that they learnt to talk ; for, as Petrie himself 
 once remarked, the fact that they could all " play " was no 
 more an indication that they were musicians than the fact 
 that they could talk and read and write were indications that 
 they were Demosthenes or Shakespeare. 
 
 Petrie refilled and lighted his pipe, and fell again to peering 
 at Cynthia through the smoke that curled, undriven, from his 
 mouth and nostrils. 
 
 Peering thus, he seemed for a moment to be conscious of 
 her, to be taking her in ; then again his gaze became detached 
 and sightless. He lowered an eyelid and twisted up a cheek 
 to protect his eye from the slowly rising smoke. 
 
 "... And so," he said, " the game goes quietly on. 
 Same old fight ... in the same old circle. . . . Well, he's 
 a jackanapes, as I said before, so it can't matter a tinker's 
 curse to anyone. . . . She II win, of course ; she's won 
 already." 
 
 Cynthia was piling up plates and cups and saucers. She 
 made no comment. 
 
 " Forgotten ? " Petrie asked. There was a slight difference 
 in his tone just the difference, in fact, that distinguished his 
 practical from his theoretical remarks, which to the rest of 
 the family were negligible. 
 
 " It isn't much after nine yet," Cynthia said, and to prove 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 15 
 
 it she craned her neck to look at the clock on the mantelpiece ; 
 " you've never in all your life wanted it before ten." 
 
 Petrie wrily smiled and puffed. " Well, well, well," he said ; 
 " bless me if you're not all alike ! You win, Cynthia ; win 
 quite easily. But what earthly use is mere victory like that 
 to you ? It isn't that I don't see the thing ; I do perfectly 
 . . . Cynthia assumes the portfolio of chief cook and bottle 
 washer, vice Sylvia, wedded. She intends to have no mis- 
 understanding as to who is c.c. and b.w. She knows that 
 as things begin, so shall they continue. The lawful hour 
 of thirst, authorised and established, is ten o'clock. Hence 
 our Cynthia quenches the first symptom of unlawful and 
 premature thirst with a glance, a superior gesture of confident 
 appeal to the impartial witness that ticks above the hearth 
 and hastens or retards our destinies. Cynthia thus establishes 
 herself. She wins. Why does she want to win ? Simply 
 because she knows she can win. Her method of open, honest 
 truculence may change as she discovers its inadequacy as a 
 weapon, but her motive will remain ever the same to kill 
 for the mere sake of killing. . . . Speak I not words of 
 wisdom, O daughter ? " 
 
 Cynthia shrugged her shoulders. " It's all Double Dutch 
 to me," she said. 
 
 Flights of that sort on Petrie's part were usually described 
 by the younger generation as " trying to be funny." Cynthia 
 therefore continued, quite leisurely, to put away the dishes. 
 
 " Speak I them, nevertheless," said Petrie. 
 
 This was followed by a short silence, which Petrie broke 
 by saying, suddenly, " Tell me, Cynthia will she be 
 missed ? " 
 
 " Who ? " Cynthia asked casually, just to show the stuff 
 she was made of, though she knew who perfectly well. 
 
 Petrie, amused by her antagonism, said, " I allude to my 
 firstborn. I was wondering, for a moment, if you would miss 
 your sister. Your mother, I know, is desolated. She retired 
 an hour ago, under the blow, to bed ; and yet the fact that 
 the girl had attained the ripe age of twenty-five in spinster- 
 hood was always a source of grave anxiety to her." 
 
 He had never alluded to Mrs Petrie like that before. The 
 
16 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 slight did something to Cynthia so that she flushed and 
 trembled. The man was the one thing in her experience 
 of which she had ever been afraid. She turned to him ; and 
 placing her hands on her hips, she slowly drew herself up, 
 as though uncoiling, to her full indignant height. " L 
 let me tell you," she stammered, " mother has a very great 
 deal to put up with." She could not make herself any clearer 
 than that. She had not, in fact, any idea of what she wanted 
 to say ; but she felt, vaguely, that she had said a tremendous 
 lot ; she had said it through a throat parched and choky. 
 
 The wry twist of Petrie's lips melted slowly into a dim 
 but real smile. " Cyn," he said, with a surprising gentleness, 
 " brew a dish of tea for me to consume, even before it is time. 
 I have much of affairs before me to-night, concerning the sale 
 of boots in Paris and Lille and the purchase of butteBm the 
 marts of Rotterdam. Furthermore, I must indite words in 
 dudgeon to a poulterer of Vlissingen, concerning the vintage 
 of twenty-seven eggs chosen at randon from a consignment 
 of four thousand. Difficulties beset me in this ; I am un- 
 accustomed to criticising, in French, the flavour of eggs acquired 
 through the medium of that language. Also, it strikes me as 
 fundamentally unjust, for the shells alone must be worth the 
 miserable price we pay for the complete eggs. My heart 
 will not be in the work ; it will be fiction ; and I am paid 
 for writing letters, not literature another injustice, but we 
 will let it pass." 
 
 Cynthia was again at the sink, swinging some hot water 
 round in the teapot. A lump had followed the dryness and 
 the choking into her throat, and she was indignant with it. 
 It might have been his saying " Cyn " so gently and suddenly 
 instead of ' Cynthia ' that had brought it, for no one had 
 called her by a diminutive before ; it might have been the 
 flicker of a smile with which he said it ; it might, again, have 
 been the way he reverted from that tone to the old one of 
 lifeless banter. Or it might have been nothing of the sort, 
 but only that he had had a tiring day, and being stared at and 
 talked to were putting the finishing touches to her weariness. 
 
 She took the teapot into the larder and there defeated the 
 lump, and also touched her eyes with her handkerchief. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 17 
 
 She made the tea, and in pouring out a cup for Petrie as he 
 wrote, it occurred to her how thirsty she was, and that she 
 might just as well have a cup herself. She took a second cup 
 from the dresser and filled it. Petrie looked up and raised his 
 eye-brows. 
 
 " Observe ! " he sneered ; " the common bereavement 
 draws father and daughter together, so that they scald their 
 sorrow in the humble bowl of tea." 
 
 There was nothing for Cynthia to say. She only wondered 
 why he always, sooner or later, said something of this kind ; 
 and why it was such a pity that he did it. 
 
 They drank in silence and Petrie returned to his papers. 
 Cynthia poured out a second cup for him, and began to set a 
 large square tray on which his breakfast would be carried to 
 his bedroom or his study in the morning, according to whether 
 his boots were still outside his study door or whether they 
 had disappeared. 
 
 While she was counting out the rashers for the morning, 
 Petrie looked up and said dreamily : " So she has a great 
 deal to put up with, has she ? Curious how it never occurs 
 to people that if my ill-humour is unpleasant for them, it's 
 much worse for me. They only get the steam, so to speak, 
 while / am stewing right in the thick of it. Yet I'm quite 
 cheerful as I simmer away, and don't raise many objections 
 taken all round." 
 
 The remark irritated Cynthia, because she knew there must 
 be a catch in it somewhere, and she couldn't see the catch. 
 It impressed her, all the same. 
 
 Upstairs, undressing in the bedroom which till that morning 
 had been Sylvia's, the lump came back to her throat, the 
 moisture to her eyes. 
 
 It was not the going away of Sylvia that saddened her ; 
 for there had never been much companionship between the 
 two. Sylvia's engagement for the last two years had added 
 an official recognition to the superiority of her years. The 
 sisters had either ignored each other or disagreed about most 
 things. By Sylvia's going Cynthia had lost nothing. She 
 had, in fact, gained. She had gained the kudos in the house 
 at which Petrie had jibed, and the comfortable bedroom 
 
i8 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 instead of the stuffy little attic. Yet there was something 
 desolating even about the new bedroom ; she had attained it 
 through the occurrence of a casualty. 
 
 She knew quite well what she would have said to Freda or 
 Conrad if she had discovered them crying as she was, as they 
 got into bed ; and yet she continued to cry, and to yearn 
 in her loneliness for she knew not what for the moon, as she 
 would have told either of the children. 
 
 And she was puzzled by her father. He had appeared 
 astonishingly good-looking in that fraction of a second when 
 he had called her " Cyn " and almost, it seemed, stretched 
 out his hand to her ; and she could not, for the life of her, 
 discover the fallacy in his last remark. 
 
 Then it occurred to her how sodden her mother's hand- 
 kerchief must be with tears, how wet and crumpled her 
 pillow. Forthwith she dried her own eyes and turned 
 resolutely over, to elaborate one or two details of improvement 
 in the scheme of housekeeping as Sylvia had bequeathed it to 
 her. 
 
 Petrie, for his part, did not make any immediate change 
 in his position or expression after Cynthia had gone. He 
 smoked quietly and mumbled unintelligibly. Once only did 
 he deliver a whole sentence, and that he delivered with a 
 thrust of his pipe-stem at a ring of smoke in front of him 
 " So the knaves and the strong men live while the fools ana 
 the weak ones die. . . ." Softly whistling a random bar, 
 he drew a foot out of a shabby slipper and walked to the fire 
 to knock the ashes out of his pipe. Then he straightened 
 up and stretched himself. The way he did this was the way 
 Cynthia had done it from the waist upwards to the broad 
 shoulders and strong neck. Half-way through the gesture he 
 noticed what he was doing, and he smiled. 
 
 " Bless my soul ! " he said, and he completed the stretch, 
 exaggerating it to mimicry. Again he said, " Bless my 
 soul ! . . . * My mother has a very great deal to put up with.' 
 . . . Truculent as a blessed Dago." 
 
 His pipe once more alight, he sat down to his papers. 
 " Confound and damn these eggs. . . . It is indeed more 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 19 
 
 blessed to give than to receive to sell, in other words, than 
 to buy " ; and he began again to write. 
 
 Judging from his expression when he had finished it, the 
 letter he wrote to the poulterer of Vlissingen was a document 
 both subtle and humorous. 
 
 " Really, you know," he chuckled, " I ought to pay to be 
 allowed to do this kind of thing. . . . It's a sense of values 
 that people seem to lack most. . . ." 
 
 2 
 
 Petrie's boots had gone from his study door the next 
 morning, so it was to the study that Cynthia took his 
 breakfast tray. 
 
 He was seated upon the piano stool, staring at some sheets 
 of manuscript propped above the keys. Without looking 
 round he said, " I'll leave this thing on the piano somewhere. 
 It's marked with a * Z ' so that you can identify it. I'd like 
 you to try it over and see what you make of it ; you might 
 have to copy some of it out first, where it isn't very clear. 
 I want the pencilled corrections to stand." 
 
 " I'm afraid I shall be at Melton all day to-day," Cynthia 
 answered, making room for the tray on his desk. 
 
 That, normally, would have ended the conversation ; but 
 Cynthia was not altogether surprised that it did not end it. 
 The talk of the night before, she felt, was an advance of some 
 kind from the old positions. 
 
 Petrie said, " Oh ? ... So Sylvia has bequeathed her 
 clientele to you." 
 
 " Just the Vicar's two girls," said Cynthia, " and Mr 
 Wibleigh. He's doing some Oratorio work. . . ." 
 
 " I'll stay out a little longer then," said Petrie, " so that you 
 will be able to have a look at it after you get in. I'm rather 
 anxious to see if it penetrates easily to the intelligence of 
 people." 
 
 The rule was that the girls could use the piano in the study 
 while Petrie was sure to be out from two o'clock till five. 
 Petrie was calmly proposing an exception to it. " I shall be 
 back about eight," he said. 
 
 
20 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 The advance from the old position now was obvious. 
 
 Cynthia returned to the kitchen and made the tea. Then 
 she called up the stairs, " Break-/tfJ2." 
 
 Conrad replied, " 'bout time too," and made, as usual, 
 more noise coming down the stairs in his stockinged feet than 
 he succeeded in making booted. 
 
 " I do think, Cynthia," he said, looking round the kitchen, 
 " that a fellow who has to be at school by nine might have 
 his boots ready for him." 
 
 16 There's nothing in the world to prevent his getting them 
 ready, then the night before," was Cynthia's reply. " Has 
 mother taken her jug in yet ? " 
 
 Conrad shook his head and knocked the soles of a pair of 
 muddy boots together. 
 
 Cynthia, seeing his headshake, replaced one plate of bacon 
 in the oven ; for outward evidences in that family went a 
 long way towards rendering verbal exchange unnecessary. 
 Thus Petrie's choice of site for his breakfast was communicated 
 not by words, but by the position of his boots ; whether 
 he was in or out, at one or the other of his offices, or out 
 merely for a walk was indicated by the presence or absence of 
 his hat and stick upon the hatrack, or by the presence of one 
 without the other ; for Petrie as surely left his stick when he 
 went out on business as he took it when he went out on pleasure. 
 
 Now the fact that the jug of hot water that Cynthia had 
 placed at Mrs Petrie's door was still there conveyed the 
 message that her mother had had a bad night ; that she would 
 be down to breakfast late, or else not at all. 
 
 Cynthia had toasted only three pieces of bread two for 
 herself and one for her mother. Freda and Conrad in silent 
 dudgeon ate bread untoasted with their marmalade, while 
 Cynthia explained to them that if Sylvia had been so silly as 
 to make toast for them, it did not in any way follow that she 
 was as silly as Sylvia. It was only their haste that held them 
 aloof from argument. 
 
 Just as they were finishing their meal Mrs Petrie came in. 
 
 " Why ever did you bother to come down, mother ? " 
 Cynthia said. " I could easily have run up to you with it after 
 the children have gone." 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 21 
 
 " Children ! " sniffed Freda. 
 
 " Children ! " Conrad echoed. " Too old and mighty to 
 make a fellow a bit of toast in the morning." 
 
 " Oh, my dears," Mrs Petrie said plaintively, " please don't 
 start the morning quarrelling. . . . Thank you, Cynthia 
 darling." 
 
 She settled herself wearily in her chair. 
 
 Conrad and Freda silently kissed her and hurried out. 
 Both their presence and their hurricane departure alike failed 
 to gladden her. She was not a small woman, but the way she 
 carried herself made her appear, unless another normal person 
 were near enough to give her scale, positively diminutive. 
 
 Her watery blue eyes and weary lids bore traces of desultory 
 weeping in the night. Her pale face wore the expression of 
 helpless, pessimistic pity that passes sometimes for kindliness. 
 
 Over her fading light hair she wore a lace boudoir cap, and 
 as though to deny any aims that this touch of finery might 
 possibly suggest, she held together, with her left hand, a shabby 
 flannel garment that had belonged at some time or other to 
 the children. This thing she invariably cast over her shoulders 
 in preference to the perfectly good shawl that hung in her 
 wardrobe beside it. She ignored its little sleeves so that 
 they hung pathetically armless from her shoulders. 
 
 This shift of hers, together with her habit of fastening 
 the collar of her dress with a large brooch till one of the girls 
 tackled and overcame for her the row of beadlike buttons, 
 were symbols of Mrs Petrie's defeat at the hands of life, 
 and her consequent withdrawal from the household's active 
 administration. 
 
 Her attitude in holding this garment suggested that she 
 had just managed to save it, and it alone, to keep warm her 
 narrow shoulders and withered bosom, from the disasters that 
 had bereft her of all else. Her hold upon it was not a firm, 
 defiant one ; it was one of tentative appeal, with a loosely- 
 closed, delicate little hand. 
 
 " Why didn't you stay ? " said Cynthia, " and have a proper 
 rest out ? " 
 
 " Thank you, my dear," said her mother, " but you will 
 have plenty to do now, without spending the morning running 
 
22 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 up and down stairs with an invalid's tray. It was all poor 
 Sylvia could manage, with you to help her. And now you 
 will have no one till Freda is a little older. ..." 
 
 " What possible difference can it make to anyone, whether 
 I put your breakfast on to a tray or on to the table ? " Cynthia 
 asked. " And I've got to go upstairs at least once, and I 
 might just as well not go empty-handed." 
 
 " I know I can't do much to help you, dear," and Mrs Petrie 
 slowly pushed aside her plate," but the little I can do, I shall do." 
 
 " Besides," Cynthia added, " I shall have lots more help 
 than Sylvia ever had. What about Mrs Simpson ? She's 
 coming all day now." 
 
 Her mother did not reply. She drew the shawl-substitute 
 closer, till it became hopelessly entangled in the large brooch. 
 From that moment Cynthia conceived a tremendous hatred 
 for the shabby old flannel thing, and the unfastened collar 
 that gaped about her mother's bloodless throat. 
 
 She squared her shoulders and began to collect the dishes 
 with a dash and energy that would have sufficed for dishes 
 wrought of solid steel. 
 
 Mrs Petrie sat limply back and watched her as she swung 
 and leaned across the table to her task. 
 
 3 
 
 As Cynthia walked to catch the train to Melton, with her 
 music case under her arm, she was getting away for the first 
 time from a home that had become her own individual 
 responsibility. In her hands lay the material welfare of them 
 all ; she would have to buy the coal and food and dish-towels ; 
 she, in future, would have to send for the sweep or the plumber 
 and see that Conrad's boots went to the cobbler in due time. 
 These tasks would be only complicated by Mrs Petrie's 
 criticisms, and an occasional, quite irrelevant suggestion. 
 But that was not all ; the responsibility she felt was something 
 more than that, something which she could not write down 
 on a list to be marked off when done. 
 
 Her ov\n analysis of it as she walked along got no further 
 

 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 23 
 
 n first a feeling of resentment, and then relief at the 
 prospect of getting away from it for about eight hours. 
 
 She noticed, however, that she did not include Petrie in her 
 burden. His aloofness and detachment caused her no distress ; 
 his sarcasm and remarks or scathing silences with his lips 
 twisted up round his pipe-stem, caused her only to shrug her 
 shoulders. He, in a word, was none of her business. 
 
 But she felt it very much her business that Mrs Petrie 
 should wear a casual rag about her shoulders instead of a 
 shawl, that she should hold her collar together with an 
 antiquated brooch. She felt her mother's limpness as though 
 she carried her upon her shoulders ; she had to be carried, and 
 Cynthia was the only one to carry her. . . . 
 
 In the compartment into which she climbed there sat 
 a gipsy girl with a large basket of clothes pegs and some sprays 
 of broom on her lap. Her skin was burnt and weather-beaten 
 to a glowing brown. Her coarse black blouse was stretched 
 tight across her firm, round breasts. Cynthia looked at the 
 blatant strength of her, and saw that she looked out upon the 
 world through fearless, sparkling black eyes. 
 
 " Looking out upon the world " very soon resolved itself 
 into stealing merry glances at the youth who followed Cynthia 
 into the compartment, with a carpenter's bag slung across his 
 broad shoulders. 
 
 He returned the girl's glance with one as playful as her own 
 and said, very brightly, " Mornin'." 
 
 Cynthia wondered, uncomfortably, whether she ought to 
 try to find a seat elsewhere, but was saved the responsibility 
 of decision by the train's starting. 
 
 In the window-pane beside her she could see the carpenter 
 fidgetting about in his seat, smiling at the girl. 
 
 The muscles of his forearm ended in great knots above his 
 wrists. His huge, square-fingered hands were spotlessly clean, 
 and as he stuck his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat 
 and drummed his fingers upon his chest, she could see the 
 pink flesh moving under the skin. The neck-band of his shirt 
 positively cut into the muscles that held up his curly head and 
 tilted it a little towards the gipsy. 
 
 Cynthia slowly turned to gaze at him directly, without the 
 
24 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 medium of the window-pane. When he caught her eye upon 
 him she turned haughtily away, to ignore even his reflection 
 in the glass, and to look through it, out of the window. 
 
 At the next station they moved to get out. Cynthia drew 
 aside her knees to let them pass. The man took the girl's 
 basket and handed it down to her. Closing the door he 
 smiled, rather stupidly at Cynthia, and went off, helping 
 with the basket of clothes pegs. 
 
 She heard him exchange a ' hullo ' and a laugh with the 
 porter who came spinning a milk can down the platform. 
 She saw that the girl, too, had some chaff for him. What it 
 was she did not hear ; and it did not matter. The things 
 that did matter were the lively swing of their stride as they 
 walked along, the youth and the rude vigour of them, their 
 breadth of bosom and shoulder. As she saw them, she saw, 
 too, the picture that she always carried her mother ; delicate, 
 wistful and bent. Life, to her mother, was an intrusion, a 
 joyless burden. . . . And that exasperating flannel thing. . . . 
 
 Gertrude Chill was at Melton, the next station, with the 
 trap to drive Cynthia to the vicarage. 
 
 " You're ever so much younger than your sister," she said, 
 " I shouldn't wonder if you're younger than Mary even ! " 
 
 Mary was her own sister, two years younger than herself, 
 and she could not easily imagine anyone younger than Mary. 
 
 " Are you as clever as Sylvia ? " she asked, as they waited 
 at the level crossing for the train to go out. 
 
 " I don't know if I'm cleverer" said Cynthia, thinking 
 still of the fine resilience of the gipsy girl and the carpenter, 
 " I 'play a good deal better." 
 
 " Gracious ! " said Gertrude Chill. It might have been an 
 advance criticism of Cynthia's ability, or it might have referred 
 to her calm, matter-of-fact estimate of her powers. 
 
 When, however, she had had lunch with them, and gone on 
 to Mr Wibleigh's, the girls assured the Vicar that Cynthia 
 was a perfect marvel ( Genius,' in fact, they were quite sure, 
 was none too strong a word for her. 
 
 The Vicar merely smiled. 
 
 Many years before, with just their naive enthusiasm, he had 
 applied the same word to Cynthia's father. 
 
Chapter Two 
 
 r I ^HE night after her second visit to Melton, Cynthia 
 A took Petrie's tray into the study with his ten o'clock 
 tea, and had the surprise of finding him in a position of actually 
 waiting for her. 
 
 Five times a day (Tuesdays excepted) she usually took a 
 tray to the study. Once a day (at five o'clock) the study was 
 empty, and the other four times the transaction was quite as 
 impersonal as the fifth. Her father would be at the desk 
 bent over his papers, or in the armchair puffing smoke at 
 the pages of a book. He would just barely move and say, 
 "Oh tea" (or 'breakfast' or 'lunch'), and then, purely 
 by machinery, " Thanksverymuch." Cynthia's answer to this 
 was just as mechanical : " It's all there, I think." 
 
 On this particular evening, however, Petrie was actually 
 awaiting her. She felt as awkward at seeing it as she would 
 have felt at finding her mother deep in some occupation 
 of her own, and oblivious of her entry, not waiting for 
 her. 
 
 He was seated, not in the armchair or at the desk, but on 
 the desk chair which he had drawn up to the fire. In his hand 
 he held the manuscript he had asked Cynthia to try over ten 
 days before, the one distinguished from the other papers that 
 littered the piano and the tops of the books in his bookshelves 
 by a large capital Z scrawled across its top in blue 
 pencil. 
 
 He looked up at her and drew a corner of the paper across 
 his rough cheek. " Oh tea ! " he said, from the force of the 
 old habit. 
 
 He motioned her to the armchair, where she sat down 
 with the tray awkwardly upon her knees. " W what did you 
 make of these works that the father visited upon the children 
 head, or tail, or anything at all ? " 
 
 25 
 
26 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Nothing at all," said Cynthia, " till I'd copied it out. 
 It's so smudgy." 
 
 Petrie laughed. 
 
 " Smudgy," said he, " is distinctly good. There are 
 professional critics in London, paid intellectual parasites 
 who would part with actual money for that accidental word 
 of yours, Cynthia. Crooned over and nursed by them, 
 it would become in time what they call among themselves 
 a mot juste. Idiots ! that is as far as their intelligence can 
 carry them. They would use it prodigally at the risk and it 
 is generosity on my part, mark you, to call it a risk of talk- 
 ing nonsense. Nonsense so utter as to be unanswerable. 
 However, in this particular instance I am inclined to agree 
 with you ; it is a little er smudgy particularly just here." 
 With his pipe-stem he indicated a few bars on the third page. 
 
 Cynthia said, " There's a decent copy in my music case. 
 I'll get it." 
 
 She went out and brought it and handed it to Petrie. 
 " H'm," said he ; " and was it as easy as all that to get rid of 
 the smudginess ? " 
 
 There was a line faintly ruled along the top of the first page 
 in pencil, and under it was neatly printed in ink, " Charles 
 Petrie." Petrie pointed to the line and smiled ; " What is 
 that for ? " he asked. 
 
 " The name," said Cynthia ; " what is it ? " 
 
 Allowing the manuscript to fall into his lap, he groaned. 
 " Oh Lord ! < What-w-it,' Cynthia ? What in thunder 
 does it matter what it is ? It is music, my dear girl, not 
 journalism so it has no name, and requires none." 
 
 He picked up the sheets and thrust them towards her, and 
 smacked them. " It is itself ; it is this just this particular 
 set of sounds. If it doesn't tell you what it is, nothing in the 
 world can, God help you." 
 
 The speech seemed to have tired him, for he leaned back in 
 the chair. Shaking his head, he presently continued softly and 
 sadly, " No, it isn't a noise like a cradle or a spinning-wheel or 
 anything of that sort, if that is what you looked for ; there is 
 no rustle of angels' wings in it, or patter of the hind feet ot 
 fauns. Still just for the sake of reference between us (should 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 27 
 
 we ever have cause to refer to it again) it is it is well, what 
 the devil is it ? It is ' Opus Z.' Is honour satisfied ? " 
 
 Cynthia shrugged her shoulders and watched him pouring 
 out a cup of tea. 
 
 " Have some tea," said Petrie. 
 
 There was only the one cup on the tray, so she went out to 
 get another. 
 
 As she crossed the hall Mrs Petrie called down the stairs 
 to her, " On your way up to bed, dear. . . ." 
 
 " I'm not going just yet," said Cynthia, and went into the 
 kitchen. 
 
 She was taking down the cup and saucer from the dresser 
 when Mrs Petrie, the flannel thing over her shoulders, 
 appeared in the doorway. " Dear," she said, " it's getting 
 very late, you have so much to do these days. . . ." 
 
 " Oh in a minute, mother ; don't worry so." 
 
 " Cynthia, you mustn't let . . ." Mrs Petrie began, and 
 then caught sight of the cup in Cynthia's hand. Saying not 
 another word she turned her suddenly frozen face away and 
 went slowly upstairs. Cynthia was left with the feeling that 
 she had done her an injury. 
 
 Petrie was sipping his tea when she returned. " No, 
 Cynthia," he said thoughtfully. " It's just the same with 
 pictures. By pictures I mean, of course, pictures ; not 
 topographical or physiognomical memoranda. They are no 
 more { September ' or ' Portrait of my mother ' than they 
 are Blondin eating Breakfast, or Mr Gladstone playing marbles 
 in the House of Commons. The most you can do by way of 
 classifying and explaining pictures besides, of course, pointing 
 to them is to number them." He looked up and smiled. 
 " Presumably it is a hard saying." He said, " I gather from 
 your look of contempt that you do not see my point." 
 
 Cynthia, as a matter of fact, did faintly see his point, but 
 she did not bother to contradict him. The expression he took 
 for contempt was one of deep, though somewhat bewildered, 
 attention ; for the tone of his voice was something quite new 
 to her. She would have described it as ' natural.' It was 
 unlike the voice which he used in ' being funny.' She felt sure 
 that her silence would not discourage him. 
 
28 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 She was right. 
 
 He looked up at the ceiling and said, " No. It's a perfectly 
 absurd dodge, that effort to translate things untranslatable 
 into journalism." 
 
 " What I really meant, I suppose," said Cynthia, " was, 
 is it meant to go by itself, or are you going to put some more 
 to it ? " 
 
 " Ah," said he, " that's quite fair. No one could find fault 
 with a question like that. Well, what did you think ? Would 
 you call it a i whole,' as the journalists say, or a ' fragment ' ? " 
 
 " I thought it went quite well by itself," she said. 
 
 " Good," said Petrie, " I meant it to stick to your ter- 
 minology to go by itself. I do not, however, like your 
 terminology because of its somewhat optimistic ambiguity. 
 I cannot imagine ' Opus Z ' going anywhere. Let us rather 
 say stay by itself Opus Z ; an artistic whole. By Charles 
 Petrie. Eh. Cynthia ? " 
 
 The * natural ' tone had again gone from his voice, and he 
 was trying to be funny. His lips twisted once more around 
 his gurgling pipe-stem, and he stared into the fire. 
 
 " Shall I run through it ? " Cynthia asked, and leaned forward 
 to take the manuscript. Petrie, however, folded his hands upon 
 it and shook his head. 
 
 She saw that his possibilities as a companion were exhausted, 
 so she gathered the two cups together on the tray. " It's late," 
 he said, apparently realising that he owed a remark. " 
 
 As she picked up the tray, he bent forward and took away 
 one of the cups. The dregs he tossed into the fire, and placed 
 the cup on the mantelpiece. " That can stay here," he said 
 casually ; " it's always as well to have a spare cup about a 
 room." 
 
 Upstairs, her mother's door was, as usual, ajar. Cynthia 
 did not manage to tiptoe past it. Mrs Petrie softly called 
 her, and Cynthia went in, yawning. 
 
 She found her seated before the dying fire, which gave the 
 only light in the room. Noticing first this fact, and its corollary 
 that her mother had definitely abandoned herself to 4 resting ' 
 (which meant moping), she noticed next the accursed flannel 
 thing around her shoulders. It had survived till now, for the 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 29 
 
 want of a pretext for its destruction. Pretext or no pretext, 
 Cynthia decided in that instant the thing must go. 
 
 She took the matchbox from the mantelpiece and lighted 
 the gas at its fullest possible candle-power, so that Mrs Petrie 
 blinked her weak eyes in the glare of it. Then she looked long 
 and searchingly at Cynthia, sadly apprehensive. Something 
 in Cynthia writhed at the futility of the gaze. 
 
 " Are you quite happy, darling ? " Mrs Petrie asked 
 wistfully. 
 
 " Happy ! " said Cynthia ; " of course I'm happy, mother. 
 Why ever shouldn't I be quite happy ? " 
 
 Her mother shrugged her shoulders. " As long as my 
 children are happy . . ." she began, but instead of finishing 
 her sentence, she held out her arms. 
 
 Cynthia bent and kissed her cheek hurriedly, and said, " I 
 want that old dressing-gown of Con's, mother, if you can 
 spare it. I'll get your shawl." 
 
 " Yes, dear," said Mrs Petrie, " yes of course you may 
 have it." But she made no move to give it up. " What are 
 you going to do with it ? " 
 
 Cynthia took the shawl out of the wardrobe. " Oh, it'll 
 come in very handy downstairs," she said, and took away the 
 dressing-gown ; " for for dusters, and fomentations and that 
 and of thing . . . very handy." 
 
 " Fomentations ! " Mrs Petrie exclaimed. " Oh Cynthia 
 my dear ! You are ill. I knew you could not be well ; 
 md you've said nothing. I have known from the very 
 beginning that that Melton journey would be too much for 
 you in all weathers." 
 
 Cynthia, so far, had only been to Melton twice and both 
 times in the same bright, crisp sunshine. She refrained from 
 pointing this out. " Of course I'm not ill, mother ; what 
 should I be ill about ? Only I want this thing." 
 
 She threw it over her arm, placing the b on a fide shawl upon 
 her mother's shoulders. Mrs Petrie did not resist, simply 
 because she never did resist. Her hand, however, remained 
 as though in forlorn protest upon her bosom, her fingers 
 loosely clasped upon nothing, now that the dressing-gown 
 was gone. 
 
30 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Good night, mother," Cynthia said. " Why don't you go 
 to bed ? I thought you were ready over an hour ago." Mrs 
 Petrie kissed her, lingering in the embrace. 
 
 " You will tell me, dear," she said, " when you are unhappy, 
 or troubled. / know how dreadful it is to feel alone." 
 
 " Yes," said Cynthia, " of course I will tell you when I 
 am unhappy." But as she went into her room, the one next 
 her mother's, she knew that it was a lie. Her mother was 
 quite the last person in the world to whom she would go in 
 those circumstances. 
 
 She thought, incidentally, of her father . . . but he, too, 
 was very far away. Even when his sneer did not isolate him, 
 his love of cumbersome, long sentences did. . . . 
 
 She sat down upon the bed and began to tear up the baby 
 dressing-gown. When she had it in five or six strips Mrs 
 Petrie, having heard the sound, thrust her head in at the door, 
 and then came forward in great alarm and placed her hands 
 on Cynthia's shoulders. 
 
 " My dear" she said with rhythmic reproach, " you are 
 ill. I knew it. ... Turpentine. ... I smell it." 
 
 " Then you are very wonderful," said Cynthia ; " for / 
 can't. Mother, please don't be ridiculous. . . ." Then 
 suddenly it all became too much for her and she laughed. 
 " Here you are, mummy. You can have this thing back now. 
 Pve finished with it." 
 
 She handed her the mutilated garment ; but Mrs Petrie 
 did not respond to the laughter. 
 
 " I'm sure I don't know, my dear," she said coldly, " why I 
 should be treated in this fashion." 
 
 Hurt, and utterly bafHed, she went off to bed, absurdly 
 carrying the fragments of the dressing-gown. 
 
 Cynthia closed the door behind her, and then with an 
 impatient gesture, locked it. 
 
 She sat down upon the bed and wondered if everyone in 
 the world were so utterly alone as she ' by themselves ' 
 described the condition she meant better than ' alone.' . . . 
 Sylvia, for instance, who was still away at Brighton with 
 her bridegroom. Was Sylvia, she wondered, alone ? . . . 
 
 But thinking of things was not a particularly strong point 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 31 
 
 with Cynthia. So she stood up and yawned, and began slowly 
 to undress. 
 
 Undressed, she very softly unlocked the door and got into 
 bed. She wished that she had stayed upstairs in the attic. 
 It might have been small and a little crowded, but it had, 
 nevertheless, its points. . . . 
 
 2 
 
 Mrs Petrie had never given the seal of her approval to 
 Cynthia's expeditions to Melton. She had never opposed 
 them, but when Cynthia set out each Tuesday morning, she 
 set out unblessed. She went nevertheless, with head erect 
 and music case under her arm, waving a gay adieu from the 
 gate, refusing to admit that this visit was not the most ordinary 
 and natural thing in the world. 
 
 Yet, for all this nonchalance, she knew, when she caught a 
 cold about a fortnight before Christmas and the cold developed 
 into influenza, that the disaster would be attributed to a wetting 
 she got on the way home from the station on Tuesday, rather 
 than to the fact that she had washed her hair the day before. 
 
 On Christmas Day she lay in bed, imagining the scene 
 downstairs, and glad, on the whole to be taking no part in it. 
 
 On that one day in every year, Petrie dined with his family. 
 Throughout the meal he had always sat, as far as she could 
 remember, in precisely the same way saying very little as he 
 crumbled the bread beside his plate and stared at the children, 
 obviously comparing them with themselves of a year ago. 
 
 George, the new son-in-law, was now added to the specimens 
 under his scrutiny, a scrutiny merciless if not unkind. 
 
 A new person presented to Petrie was like a new conjuring 
 trick presented to an intelligent boy. He did not believe in 
 the magic of it, but he liked to see it. If he stared unduly, 
 it was only because of his interest in the way the trick was 
 done. 
 
 Cynthia could hear the sounds of crockery downstairs, and 
 the sound of a voice which was probably Sylvia's, for Sylvia 
 had a new assurance about her. As she lay and idly listened 
 
32 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 she thought how wonderfully her mother had grappled with 
 the difficulties caused by her own retirement. 
 
 Mrs Petrie had positively bustled about the house with 
 a great sense of her importance and a tight grip on things. 
 The bunch of keys that Cynthia had carried in her pocket and 
 left, on Tuesdays, in the right hand drawer of her dressing table, 
 Mrs Petrie carried proudly, like a professed housekeeper, at 
 her belt. The shawl had gone from her shoulders, for it is 
 difficult to bustle and carry a tray with a shawl on. For 
 two weeks she had had no headache. . . . 
 
 George and Sylvia came up to see her before going on 
 to tea with George's relatives. They treated her with the 
 deference and subdued good cheer due to convalescents. After 
 them came Freda and Conrad ; Freda to remark that Sylvia 
 was more stuck up than ever, Conrad to assert, in vague denial 
 of this, that George had given him half a crown. 
 
 When Mrs Petrie came in with a cup of beef tea, Cynthia 
 said, " Father in ? " 
 
 Mrs Petrie looked at her in surprise. " How should I know, 
 dear ? " she said. " He was in to dinner as usual. . . . Drink 
 that, darling, as soon as you can ; while it's hot." 
 
 " Because, if he is in," said Cynthia, sipping the beef tea, 
 " I think you ought to get out with the children for a little 
 while. It looks perfectly lovely out even if he isn't in, for 
 that matter. I shall be perfectly alright." 
 
 Mrs Petrie visibly altered at this remark. Her brisk, almost 
 soldierly attitude relaxed. She seemed, somehow, to shrink 
 in stature. " Why should I go out, my dear ? " she asked. 
 " You know how nervous it makes me going out, and meeting 
 all kinds of people in the street." 
 
 " Don't go in the street then," said Cynthia ; " go to Wilton's 
 Hill. That's the place to go for a walk an afternoon like this." 
 Mrs Petrie observed the rules relating to the treatment of 
 invalids and convalescents : she did not answer. She looked 
 out of the window. 
 
 Cynthia continued : " It must be two weeks and more 
 since you were outside the house even. You will only get 
 mopey again if you don't take a little change, mother ; and 
 you've seemed so much better lately." 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 33 
 
 Again Mrs Petrie did not answer ; and then Cynthia said, 
 from pure inspiration, " Very well then : if you won't, you 
 won't, and that's all there is about it. You know that 
 the children wouldn't have to go out by themselves on 
 Christmas Day if / wasn't in bed." She turned over to give 
 her speech an ending appropriate to its finality. 
 
 Mrs Petrie said, " Very well, dear. We'll go. Freda can 
 tell your father." 
 
 When the door had banged behind the three, and after it 
 the gate, Cynthia heard her father coming softly up the stairs. 
 He tapped upon her door with his finger-nails and immediately 
 came in. 
 
 He thrust his pipe into his waistcoat pocket and leaned 
 his arms upon the bedrail. " So you did get ill, after all," 
 he said, smiling the smile that automatically left a hole for 
 his pipe-stem. 
 
 George, the brother-in-law, had said not exactly the same 
 thing to her, but just the same kind of thing, and had bored 
 her utterly with every word of it. The remark from Petrie 
 was not the least bit boring possibly because he himself 
 was not bored by it. 
 
 " How did you know I said I wouldn't ? " she asked. 
 
 " I did not know," he said, " I merely made a guess." 
 
 " And did you guess, too," she continued, " that mother 
 said I should be ill ? " 
 
 " No," said Petrie, " I was off it there. I ventured to think 
 that she was sure you would die." 
 
 " Poor mother ! " said Cynthia ; but Petrie said nothing. 
 " And what about you ? " 
 
 " Oh, /," said Petrie. " You have yet to realise that I, 
 Cynthia, am a Philosopher. All my thinking is directed to 
 reality that is, the Human Spirit. I do not waste time 
 speculating about accidents. The only accidents worth two 
 pins are Sound and Colour, and they are not worth troubling 
 other people's heads about. But I must say, since I'm here, 
 that influenza and bronchitis appear to agree with you. You 
 are looking uncommonly well. I suppose you think with the 
 rest of the world that the credit is due to that mossy-faced, 
 
34 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 super-cravatted individual I saw ascending the stairs two 
 days ago a feat made marvellous by the tightness of his 
 trousers. Bah, they're all alike, these doctor fellows barbers 
 every one of them ; barbers through and through ! " 
 
 " I suppose it's George," Cynthia said quietly, " that's 
 upset your apple-cart." 
 
 " And who the blazes," said Petrie, " may George be ? " 
 
 " Good gracious," said Cynthia, " why George, of course. 
 Don't you know George yet ? " 
 
 " Screaming a thing," said Petrie irritably, " is not ex- 
 plaining it. I do wish you would realise that, although your 
 sex is against you." 
 
 " George," said she, " is your son-in-law." 
 
 " Oh, that individual," sneered Petrie. 
 
 "Yes," said Cynthia, " he's upset your apple-cart all the same." 
 
 " Upset my apple-cart indeed ! " said Petrie truculently. 
 " My apple-cart I ... a. fellow like that ! The insolence of 
 such a suggestion, and from you ! As though anyone could 
 upset my apple-cart presuming that ' apple-cart ' is a synonym 
 of yours for ' mental equilibrium.' Look here, Cynthia. 
 Let me tell you that it's their own apple-carts these people have 
 upset ; and they spend their time trying to wheel them about 
 upside down. . . ." 
 
 Thus started, it was inevitable that Petrie should, sooner 
 or later, lose his temper or avoid losing it only by an effort, 
 which was just as bad. Cynthia said, therefore, as soothingly 
 as she could, " How's the Opus Z getting on ? " 
 
 Petrie glared at her. " Don't you ever try the soft, restraining 
 hand on me. I won't stand it. It is a thing I never have stood 
 with a very good grace. . . . As a matter of fact this effort 
 of yours towards it has made further conversation between 
 us impossible for the moment. It it has upset my apple- 
 cart, to put the matter briefly." This quotation of his 
 antagonist's own words Cynthia recognised as the symptom 
 of extremest annoyance. 
 
 He jerked the pipe out of his pocket and jabbed his thumb 
 at the ashes in its blackened bowl. With a purely mechanical 
 movement he shook his pockets to make sure of his match-box 
 and stalked out of the room. 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 35 
 
 He had behaved, now that she came to think of it, exactly 
 as she ought to have expected. Only, lying up there in her 
 room for two weeks, she had come, somehow, to expect other 
 things of him. . . . She was a silly. . . . 
 
 In his study Petrie stabbed at the fire, lighted his pipe and 
 sat down before the piano. " They're all the blessed same," 
 he said aloud, " every mortal one of them. There may be 
 variations of course slight variations, mark you, but the theme 
 is always the same. . . . Anyhow, she has no headache, it 
 appears, and no predisposition to one. . . ." 
 
 He opened the piano and began to play. 
 
 After the first wild torrent of sound his long fingers began 
 gently to caress a melody from the notes the melody that you 
 could have just barely suspected, alive and beautiful, but 
 hidden away in the chaos of the first bars. 
 
 Gradually and very tenderly he laid it bare and set it up 
 alone in its dainty splendour, unveiled and starkly beautiful. 
 He played on to where Cynthia in her copying had deciphered 
 his scrawled ' scherzo.' 
 
 His head was now flung back, his eyes closed. His pipe 
 had gone out, and was gently swaying between his teeth. 
 All the twists were gone from his face, and his lips were parted 
 in a dreamy, far-away smile. 
 
 Cynthia, up in her bedroom, was likewise smiling. She had 
 opened her door to listen, and sat up in bed, her hands clasped 
 tightly round her ankles, her chin resting on her knees. 
 
 She had never before deliberately listened to his playing ; 
 and so she marvelled at that power of his which struck her, 
 because she was now for the first time regarding it as something 
 new and wonderful in him. She saw that she was trembling 
 stirred, not by the fact that he possessed such power, but by 
 the exquisite wonder of the thing itself, the transient magic 
 that brought the smile of tender whimsey to her lips as it 
 brought it to his own. She strained her ears to lose no note 
 of it as gently, and still more gently, he caressed its loveliness. 
 
 Listening thus, tense and quivering with the excitement 
 of what was, after all, a tremendous discovery, she heard 
 the slam of the front gate and the crunch of loose gravel on 
 the path. The knocker banged upon the front door as Conrad 
 
36 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 flung it open with Mrs Petrie's key, and she heard him 
 and Freda shuffling in the semi-darkness of the hall by the 
 hat-stand. 
 
 From Petrie's study came a crash of notes like an explosion, 
 and then the strains of Rule Britannia, in wonderful imitation 
 of the barrel-organ that visited their road on Thursdays. 
 Then, very lugubriously, came the National Anthem, and after 
 it silence, save for the tinkle of the tea things and Mrs Petrie's 
 light footfall on the stairs. 
 
 Cynthia just had time to lie down and cover herself up 
 before her mother appeared in the doorway. 
 
 " My dear," she said, " in a draught ! O Cynthia I 
 suppose your father left the door open on you." 
 " No," said Cynthia, " I did. Had a nice walk ? " 
 " I see he's been in," Mrs Petrie said, for she was looting 
 at the ashes scattered on the bedspread by Petrie's departing 
 gesture. " I hope he didn't excite you that's all. . . ." 
 " Why on earth should he have excited me f " said Cynthia. 
 Yet she was excited, as she had never before been excited in 
 all her life. It was not his talk that had done it, nor yet, strictly 
 speaking, the sounds he had made. It was something more 
 than these and something far less ; it was the mere egotism 
 of the artist, the tingling in her brain and hands and ringers 
 that threatened to give her no rest till she herself should 
 be the one to do the thing that Petrie had done, and to make 
 herself perfect in the doing of it. ... 
 
 A landlady often enough decides to hide a stain over a wash- 
 stand with a text from the beatitudes, and her ' guest ' will 
 read the thing day after day, or even year after year, and in 
 most cases nothing at all happens to him as a result of it. He 
 leaves the house exactly as he came into it a normally religious 
 or irreligious man. 
 
 That is what happens in most cases, but not in all. In 
 the odd case, upon the odd man there will suddenly burst 
 the ' Light ' ; and it will burst upon him through the same 
 old soap-stained and tarnished words that for ages have had 
 no particular meaning for him. Given that the man is odd, 
 he will do what even the day before he would have looked upon 
 merely as making an idiot of himself. He will testify ; he will 
 

 E 
 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 37 
 
 find no rest till he has tried publicly to do unto others as he 
 has been done by in this matter ; such is Genius. 
 
 It was very much the same kind of thing that had happened 
 
 Cynthia. She had heard the same piano played by the same 
 ands for as long as she could remember ; she had played it 
 herself for nearly the same length of time ; but she heard it 
 in that last twilit half hour as she had never heard it before. 
 The hearing had become all of a sudden peculiarly personal 
 to her. Hearing it, however, was not sufficient for her, just 
 as staring at a text is not sufficient for the Salvationist. 
 
 The fever that burnt her was the fever for testimony. . . . 
 
 She was devoutly thankful that she had been taught to play. 
 Nothing mechanical stood between her and the great ones 
 who first thought out the sounds that she should make. . . . 
 
 She could still hear the lilt of Petrie's melody, fresh as the 
 ripple of water, light and frolicsome as butterflies in spring ; 
 but it was too elusive for her as she lay in the darkening room. 
 She could not properly grasp it all, and, think and puzzle 
 over it as she might, she could find no name for it. Then 
 she remembered what Petrie had said about trying to translate 
 it into words. She saw his meaning clearly now. The thing 
 was itself, as he had snapped, and the meaning of that, too, 
 became suddenly clear. . . . 
 
 She gave up worrying about a possible name for it, and 
 registered the discovery that her father had been wonderfully 
 right in what he had said ; he must indeed be an altogether 
 wonderful man. 
 
 3 
 
 On the first morning of Cynthia's return downstairs Mrs 
 Petrie resumed her shawl. Her whole demeanour changed 
 accordingly. Her vitality vanished. It was as though Cynthia 
 and she were seated at opposite ends of a see-saw. 
 
 As they sat down to lunch, the mother took the bunch of 
 keys from her belt and handed them slowly across the table. 
 " You will probably be downstairs, dear," she said ; " you 
 can rest on the sofa in the drawing-room." 
 
38 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Cynthia had no intention of resting, but she took the keys. 
 
 After lunch she waited till she heard Petrie going out 
 through the garden. Then she went into the study with her 
 copy of the Opus Z. 
 
 She sat down and looked through the manuscript. She had 
 played right through it once before, when she had first made 
 the copy. She saw the parts of it that would have troubled 
 a number of people the Chill girls for instance ; but they had 
 not bothered her. She had been quite satisfied with the way 
 she had got through it all. 
 
 She had not then heard her father play it, and that made all 
 the difference. She realised that she had no more played the 
 thing in that hurried running through it than the average 
 curate acts Hamlet at a reading from Shakespeare. 
 
 She saw some bunches of notes and a sudden change of time 
 on the third page that had puzzled her for a short time ; but 
 she saw now that it was not there that the real difficulty 
 lay. It lay in the pages that followed, where everything 
 became simpler, where the rough places became smooth. She 
 remembered how she had sat and listened and smiled three 
 days before, and in remembering she smiled again. Of all 
 the mystery and subtleties that Petrie had made for her, the 
 only indications on the pages were a ' Largo,' a * Scherzo,' an 
 ' Allegro,' a few f s and p's. . . . And these were not much 
 more help to her than a typewriter and a dictionary are to a poet. 
 
 She began to play first somewhere in the middle, at a 
 phrase that she remembered best as she had sat in bed and 
 listened. Then she tried it all through from the beginning. 
 Next, absorbed and tense, she tried it where her father had 
 first leaned back, dreamily smiling. She could not do it as 
 he had done it. Again she tried it, and again ; smiling, frown- 
 ing, pouting, scowling, and again smiling she tried it, and still 
 it would not come. 
 
 Back to the beginning again, and through from the begin- 
 ning to this part that was so hard and so precious. She 
 was getting it now. . . . Soon she would be able to smile as 
 Petrie had smiled. . . . 
 
 Then she heard the tinkle of tea-cups. It was nearly five 
 o'clock ! 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 39 
 
 
 
 What on earth, she wondered, could have possessed her to 
 ' practise ' for three hours ? Never in her life had she un- 
 consciously done such a thing before. 
 
 In the hall she met Mrs Simpson with a small tea-tray 
 in her hands. 
 
 " What is that for, Mrs Simpson ? " she asked cheerfully. 
 " No more trays for me, thank you ! Didn't you know I was 
 going to stay up ? " 
 
 " Yes, Miss," said Mrs Simpson ; " it's for the mistress. 
 She said would you please get on as soon as the children come 
 in. She won't be coming down." 
 
 Cynthia's elation from the afternoon's work immediately 
 vanished. 
 
 " Oh, very well," she said dully. " I'm going upstairs for 
 a minute, I'll take that up. Here come the children, so you 
 can make ours now, and Mr Petrie's. I'll take it in when I 
 come down." 
 
 Ever since the time, nine years before, that the now married 
 Sylvia had become capable of keeping house, Mrs Petrie had 
 enjoyed the freedom of her bed, in such a way that it was recog- 
 nised and accepted without criticism by the rest of the family. 
 Sometimes it was a headache that kept her in bed, sometimes 
 just ' nerviness,' at others it was a nervous headache. 
 
 Cynthia took in the tray. 
 
 Her mother had not, technically, gone to bed. She lay 
 upon the bed, but the coverlet had not been removed, and she 
 was covered only with a rug. Her hair was still done up, and 
 her dress was still on, under her dressing-gown. These facts 
 indicated that she would be down to supper. 
 
 Cynthia knew that even this had not happened all the time 
 that she had been ill. . . . She wondered immediately how 
 long it would be before she could start going, again, to Melton. 
 
 Tea with Freda and Conrad was not a stimulating affair. 
 They had been skating hard on the pond below Wilton's Hill, 
 and they were morose and grim in their taking of nourishment. 
 
 The only conversation beyond that necessary to the exchange 
 of bread and butter and muffins and jam was, " How many 
 headaches did mother have while I was ill, Free ? " and " None, 
 's far as I know. Why ? " 
 
40 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 The t why ' remained unanswered. 
 
 After tea, when the children had gone back to the skating 
 pond, Cynthia went into the drawing-room. 
 
 The fire was nearly out, and Cynthia responded with her 
 weariness and dull depression to the chilly drabness of the 
 room. 
 
 Everything in it was old and worn ; every colour faded. 
 Apart from the set of Dickens that had won and held its 
 place there by the accident of just fitting into a small revolving 
 case, there were no personal belongings in it. It was anyone's 
 room as impersonal and lacking in any signs of intimacy as 
 the waiting-room of a dentist. 
 
 The vases had only once, to Cynthia's knowledge, held 
 flowers. Ever since that occasion, and always before it, they 
 had stood neatly empty upon the mantel-piece and two little 
 tables. 
 
 The vases themselves were just odd things that Petrie had 
 picked up in the course of his knocking about, at Budapest, 
 Dresden, Vienna, Antwerp or Moscow. They might have 
 become, under different circumstances, the treasured finds 
 of an eccentric collector, but now they were only bourgeois 
 bric-a-brac. It is even doubtful whether their makers had 
 intended them to be vases at all ; it is equally uncertain what 
 destiny Petrie had had in view for them when he stuffed 
 them into his luggage ; for they now stood, where they were 
 never beheld by the eyes that had first been caught by them, 
 little spots of colour in the dreariness of an unused drawing- 
 room useless and empty of everything but dust. 
 
 On a little inlaid table, from which year by year more pieces 
 of mother-of-pearl sprang out, there stood the silver coffee 
 set he had brought from Prague. Cynthia had never known 
 it to be used ; she had never known it to be moved more than 
 was necessary for a duster to be passed under it. 
 
 Everything was monumental and static, save for the im- 
 perceptible process of decay. 
 
 She wondered, as she looked dully at these things, whether 
 in, say, five years' time she would still be bound by idle, empty 
 hours to this room. . . . 
 
 Then, hesitating and irresolute, she went into the hall. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 41 
 
 She paused by the hatstand, where her music-case hung ; 
 she passed on, deciding that it would be better to see first if 
 he were busy. Noticing that it was the first time in her life 
 that she had ever thought of doing so, she went uncalled, 
 and without a tray of any kind in her hand to the study, 
 knowing that Petrie was there. 
 
 " Busy, father ? " she said from the door. 
 
 " Even free-lance thinkers," he said without looking up, 
 " are always busy. A thinker who is also a merchant and the 
 scribe of merchants is, at this hour of the day, busy as the devil 
 himself." 
 
 He turned to look at her ; she was glad only that she did 
 not have the "Opus Z" in her hand; that would have humiliated 
 her. As it was, she was not humiliated; she had merely found 
 what she had expected. 
 
 Petrie then looked round at her and smiled. " Feeling 
 better ? " he said. 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Cynthia, " Pm alright again, thanks," and 
 she went out again. 
 
 Standing in the hall she perceived that every door was shut 
 to her ; she was alone ; she fitted nowhere. 
 
Chapter Three 
 
 IT was very much in this frame of mind, still during her 
 official convalescence, that Cynthia went round one morning 
 to see how George and Sylvia were getting on. 
 
 Most of the little houses in Pelchester occupied by couples 
 like George and Sylvia were named * Fernlea.' It was the 
 ' Fernlea ' in Victoria Crescent that they occupied. 
 
 When Sylvia had finished dusting the drawing-room mantel- 
 piece she sat down beside Cynthia on the sofa. 
 
 Suddenly, and very solemnly, she looked her up and down, 
 and said, " We were saying, the other night after you had 
 been here George and I that it is high time you did up your 
 hair, Cynthia." 
 
 " I suppose come to think of it it is," Cynthia agreed. 
 " But I don't see that George and you need worry your heads 
 about it. ... Yes, I suppose you're right though. ... I 
 wonder mother never thought of it, don't you ? It's just 
 the sort of thing she would be likely to start worrying about, 
 though / don't see anything to get agitated over. . . ." 
 
 " It's a great deal to get agitated about," Sylvia said. 
 " There's no reason why anyone should go about looking a 
 freak unless, of course, you prefer to look a freak. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, so I look a freak, do I ? " Cynthia cast her eyes down- 
 wards, in a loyal glance over her long rain-cloak and ankles 
 and heavy shoes. 
 
 " Oh, your things are all right enough," Sylvia conceded ; 
 " it isn't that, my dear. But no one could help looking a freak 
 with the face and figure of a grown-up woman and skirts 
 not quite long enough, and no proper corsets, and hair down. 
 And it isn't as though your hair were not conspicuous, either ; 
 and father isn't poor. You might not know it but there is 
 no reason in the world why you shouldn't dress properly. 
 / always managed to dress well enough. You could look as 
 
 42 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 43 
 
 nice as any girl in the town, you know, Cynthia, if you gave your 
 mind to it a little bit. I could help you at first, to choose 
 hings and that . . ." 
 
 The discussion might have developed quite amiably if 
 >ylvia had not said * and that ' ; but her use of those two words 
 n rounding off most of her phrases had irritated Cynthia 
 or years. If she did not stop to jibe at them in a Conradesque 
 nanner, she could take no further part in a conversation. So 
 he said merely, " Oh, no need to worry about me" 
 
 " I could show you how to do your hair at first," Sylvia 
 vent on. " There are heaps of ways in one of those fashion 
 )ooks of mine." 
 
 " Thank you," said Cynthia, " some time or other . . ." 
 
 But she went one better than that. On the way home 
 he went in to Mr Prout, the " Gentlemen's and Court Hair- 
 dresser," in the High Street, and was late for lunch. 
 
 Mrs Petrie made no exact comment. She looked at Cynthia's 
 lead a moment with her eyebrows raised not evenly, as in 
 mere surprise, but pulled upwards in the middle above her 
 nose slightly more than at the ends, in an expression of per- 
 >lexity with a dash of pain. 
 
 " I wonder who could have put that idea into your head 
 low ? " she said. 
 
 Well," said Cynthia, " I suppose it had to be done some 
 
 Yes," said Mrs Petrie ; then, with a mild sigh, "... time 
 igh." 
 
 id so the vague excitement that Cynthia had felt walking 
 lome from Prout's was knocked, just as vaguely, quite flat. 
 
 When she took the tea into the study, and found that Petrie 
 was already there, she wondered first what he would say, then 
 she tried to slip away again before he could say anything 
 at all. But he turned in his chair as she neared the door 
 and stretched out a hand to her. " Bless my soul," he said. 
 * So the flag's hoisted at last. . . . Well, Cynthia, I trust 
 it be not the old black one with the skull and cross-bones, 
 usually favoured by your sex. . . ." She saw no point in 
 the remark, and therein it was the kind of remark she had 
 expected ; but just as she touched the handle of the door to 
 
 
44 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 let herself out, Petrie said, " But why so high, Cynthia 
 It's much too high, my dear girl. You hadn't thought about 
 it enough, you know. And it is a thing that is decided, 
 normally, not much more than once in a life-time, so it is 
 worth considering more carefully. Let's have another look." 
 
 He stood up, and she walked across to him. He placed a 
 hand on either side of her head, so that the palms rested cool 
 upon her temples, and the long fingers groped through the 
 coils of hair and pressed upon her scalp. 
 
 " H'm," he said very softly ; and smiling, "... Dolico- 
 cephalic." She did not know what he said, but it seemed 
 like a term of endearment, suiting his caress. ..." Dolico- 
 cephalic as a tadpole like the rest of us Petries. . . . You 
 could never get it to stick up there, you know, Cyn, right up 
 on that prodigious bump. ... It must come a good deal 
 lower. . . . And make the coil a good deal looser and flatter. 
 ... I never did care for those compressed fibre effects. . . . 
 Let's see . . ." He took her chin between a finger and thumb, 
 and very gently turned her head so that he saw her in profile. 
 " Yes," he said, " that's it. Lower and a good deal flatter. 
 It upsets your balance sticking out like a handle in that way, 
 and your balance is, after all, the chief thing about you. . . . 
 Try it that way next time, Cyn. . . . There . . ." and he 
 pressed the base of her head to indicate the site. Cynthia went 
 out smiling, wondering why he was not of tener in such a mood. 
 
 She still had other critics to face on the subject of her hair. 
 The first of these was the carpenter, who always touched his 
 cap to her and got into the railway carriage. 
 
 As the train started the following Tuesday she took some 
 pages of the " Opus Z" manuscript out of her case and idly turned 
 them over. Then she looked in the window-pane beside her 
 to see the image of her companion, and to distinguish it from 
 her own and the bleak hedges that swirled by, blotted out at 
 times by a gust of steam from the engine. He sat with his 
 head turned away from her, staring out of his own window. 
 Seeing this, she very slowly turned to study him in the flesh 
 and the flesh of him was worth the studying. Such breadth 
 of chest and shoulder as his, such cables as those that held his 
 head erect, she had never before seen or noticed. The shapes 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 45 
 
 of limb that filled and stretched his garments gave to them a 
 quality of sculpture. His repose was so perfect that only 
 his chest very slightly raised and again lowered his grey flannel 
 shirt. . . . His gaze might have been stupid and vacant, the 
 gaze of a sheep or an ox, but its serenity was colossal. It was 
 something to rest upon, something wherein to repose. . . . 
 She had never seen anyone so perfectly in need of nothing. 
 
 Feeling her eyes upon him, he turned uneasily and smiled. 
 The smile was followed by a startled, baffled look. He felt the 
 responsibility of expression, and shuffled his feet upon the 
 gritty floor under the tremendous weight of it. Cynthia saw 
 that there was obviously one thing that ought to have been 
 said, so she hastened to say it. " I've been ill, you know. . . . 
 Mothing very much, just a little chill after that awful night 
 just before Christmas. . . ." 
 
 " I'm sorry to hear so, Miss." He was easy again, relieved of 
 the onus. Then suddenly he caught sight of her hair. She 
 surprised him in the act of looking at her neck, with the same 
 muzzled, baffled stare. 
 
 He started, tried to look calmly away again, but could not. 
 
 'retence was not in him. He stared at her again, and then 
 
 -gain away, as a flush first bright, and then deep as new- 
 
 ~>aked bricks crept up under his tan. He set the great cords 
 
 >f his throat dancing as he fumbled, furiously, for words. 
 
 Then in utter despair of them he smiled. 
 
 BBeg pardon, Miss," he stammered at last, 
 ynthia put her hand to the back of her head. " Oh that ! " 
 he said. " That's quite alright. . . . I'm quite accustomed 
 :o that, I assure you . . ." but she quite absurdly turned up 
 the collar of her coat. " It it doesn't matter a bit . . ." 
 but she too was blushing. 
 
 She turned again to the music in her hand and he to his window. 
 It struck her in sudden indignation that she must have taken a 
 great deal too much notice of the fellow, that he had been 
 insolent. 
 
 Then it occurred to her that she had, as a fact, taken no notice 
 of him whatever. She could see, too, in her glass, that he had 
 very nearly turned his broad back completely upon her in his 
 effort to look unmistakably in another direction. It was 
 
46 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 impossible, therefore, to charge him fairly with sauciness. . . . 
 To straighten out the matter completely, and to put their 
 acquaintance on a proper footing, she said, after a few moments 
 of hesitation, " I wonder if you would care to do some little 
 things for us later on. A few odd things about the house. 
 ... If you would tell me your name. . . ." 
 
 " Thank you kindly, Miss. . . . Name of Wardrup." He 
 touched his cap and smiled at her. Then, " I'll have to trouble 
 you now, Miss." This was his formula as the train came into 
 Bemerton. As a result of it, Cynthia always drew aside her 
 knees to let him pass. 
 
 He went off with the sunlight twinkling on the golden 
 down that ended in a sharp, straight line across his still glowing 
 cheek. Once more Cynthia felt the sense of freedom, and of 
 strength and strange repose about him, as he swung past the 
 ticket-collector with the grace of a tiger, his bag of tools slung 
 negligently over his shoulder. 
 
 Mr Wibleigh, the old tenor, was the next to criticise. He 
 did so by exclaiming suddenly as he stood behind her with a 
 copy of the " Elijah " in his hand, " Dear me ! dear me ! 
 . . . Who would have thought it ? ... Well, well, well ..." 
 and he stood, gazing at the back of her neck with a slow shaking 
 of his head and a far-away smile. 
 
 The Chill girls were frankly relieved. They had long 
 wondered why Cynthia had not put up her hair before. They 
 explained it eventually as a fad, and had, accordingly, held 
 their peace. 
 
 " But why on earth a fad ? " asked Cynthia. " What sort 
 of a fad ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know," said Gertrude with diffidence, 
 "... one wouldn't be very much surprised, somehow, to 
 find that you had fads. . . ." 
 
 The point of this remark Cynthia never saw. 
 
 2 
 
 This visit to Melton marked the return to the normal in the 
 Petrie household. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 47 
 
 Mrs Simpson gave up the longer hours that she had been 
 >ersuaded to adopt in the emergency of Cynthia's illness, and 
 resumed the old ones of ten to four. Cynthia once more got 
 lie breakfast and had a good deal more to do in the house 
 luring the mornings. 
 
 The afternoons, however, she spent in the study. Her 
 :opy of the " Opus Z " was beginning to show signs of erasures, 
 cribbled notes and pencilled alterations. 
 
 It was the third page, with its sudden break in the time and 
 [change of key, that gave her the most trouble and suffered 
 most from the broken blade of the pocket-knife that she 
 used for scratching out. The scarred old page eventually was 
 taken out completely and a new one put in its place, that 
 (showed, clearly and cleanly, her revision of Petrie's messy page. 
 
 In two days the fourth page followed it ; then the fifth and 
 [sixth and then the last. 
 
 Only the first and second now remained ; and they, 
 battered, stained and crumpled, were not worth leaving with 
 the neat new ones. So before many weeks were past an 
 entirely new manuscript appeared in Cynthia's music-case, 
 z.nd it bore, instead of the blank space at its head, the word 
 * Sonata.' Instead of ' C. Petrie ' under the blank space, it 
 3iad no name at all. 
 
 She opened her case in the Chills' drawing-room one Tuesday 
 morning, and said casually, " Shall I play you my Sonata ? " 
 
 " Your Sonata ? " exclaimed Mary : and Gertrude, " Tour 
 Sonata ? my dear, you don't mean to say you have composed 
 something ? " 
 
 " Well y-yes," said Cynthia, " I suppose I really did 
 compose it. You see, I I mean . . ." but they did not wait 
 10 hear what she meant. Mary ran to the door and called 
 loudly towards the greenhouse, " Dad ! . . . Come and listen. 
 Cynthia's composed a Sonata," and both the girls settled down 
 to staring and to smiling at her. 
 
 Cynthia could not yet explain. Her handkerchief, as old 
 Mr Chill came in, was being pressed for the first time between 
 hands damp from her nervousness. 
 
 " Dear me, dear me, how very exciting," said old Mr Chill, 
 and sat down upon the sofa, turning upon Cynthia the kind, 
 
48 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 impartial smile of extreme short-sightedness. Seeing his smile, 
 Cynthia could only tremble, for she remembered that even 
 her father had referred to Mr Chill as a tolerable musician. 
 (His opinion of him had not, it is true, been a high one ; but 
 then, his opinion of Greig was not specially high, and even 
 towards Beethoven he had phases of truculence.) 
 
 The vicar, continuing to smile, took off his glasses and 
 closed his eyes and Cynthia began to play. 
 
 She saw the girls sitting tensely forward on their chairs, 
 furiously and chaotically thinking. The fact that they were 
 implicated in such an affair was tremendously exciting for them. 
 It was as though a man about to make an ascent in a balloon 
 had turned out to be a relation. 
 
 Cynthia saw their father's smile vary from time to time, but 
 it remained, through all its changes, still a smile. He thought 
 of nothing ; he was merely listening. 
 
 So Cynthia, too, ceased thinking of things, and began only 
 to listen and to play. . . . 
 
 When she saw him very slowly putting on his spectacles once 
 more she was pleased by the movement. It showed that he, 
 too, knew that they were coming to the end ; whereas in the 
 " Opus Z " as Petrie had left it the end came upon you like 
 a blow, a disaster. Proudly now, and glowing in the sense of 
 her achievement, she gave him the last whispering chords 
 chords that she had worked at for weeks, in order to keep 
 flowing through them the melody that Petrie had ruthlessly 
 abandoned chords that Conrad would have described as 
 Pianississi-most. 
 
 Then the girls fell upon her in their excitement ; but the 
 vicar very quietly hurried them away, to ' see about lunch.' 
 
 When the door had closed behind them, he and Cynthia, 
 as though it were the most natural thing in the world for 
 them to do, very solemnly shook hands. 
 
 " Dear me, yes," said Mr Chill. " It is a long way. A 
 long, long way. . . . We contemplate, and meditate, and devote 
 the leisure of a lifetime to it and then where are we ? 
 Nowhere ; absolutely nowhere but the exact spot from where 
 we started. It is still a mystery, and a mystery it must always 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 49 
 
 t did not matter what Mr Chill meant. It was delightful 
 to hear the gentleness and the approval of his words, to feel 
 the pats of his cool, bony hand. 
 
 He opened the door for her. " You must play to me again, 
 my dear," he said ; " and perhaps, as far as it is possible, you 
 would teach this thing to my girls Gertrude, I think, would 
 do it best so that I might hear it often ; for it is only through 
 knowledge that love can come ; real love I mean." 
 
 As they sat down to the table, Mary, still tremendously 
 excited, said, " But, my dear how did you manage ever to 
 think of such a thing ? " 
 
 This was the second chance for which Cynthia was hoping. 
 " Well, as a matter of fact, I didn't quite. It was my father's 
 first. I mean, he wrote it, but it seemed rather choppy and 
 and oh, I don't know what somehow so I just took it 
 and changed it about a good deal. . . ." 
 
 Gertrude and Mary said no more. They visibly withdrew 
 into themselves. (The balloonist had turned out to be a very 
 distant connection not a proper relation.) But Cynthia 
 did not care. 
 
 Mr Chill said, " Yes, indeed, there was a great deal in it to 
 mark you as your father's daughter. A most remarkable 
 character, your father, Miss Cynthia, most remarkable indeed. 
 . . . But do you know, I was just thinking that with very 
 little difficulty you could provide a task for my poor old 
 fingers in it. I mean, it would be very little trouble to you 
 to make a 'cello part for me in your Sonata. I would so 
 enjoy trying to play it with my girls upon my 'cello. . . ." 
 " I'll try," said Cynthia. 
 
 " Please don't think I'm trying to suggest any improvement" 
 he hastened to add. " That isn't what I mean at all. But 
 just well, if you could put it into words of one syllable, so to 
 say, for my poor old fingers, it would be most kind and 
 delightful of you. . . . What do you say, girls ? " 
 
 The girls said, " Oh, yes." Mary added, " But why not do 
 something specially for us, without your father ? I'm sure you 
 ought to be able to." 
 
 "Very well," said Cynthia, "I will. At any rate I'll 
 try. . . ." She was thinking that Mr Chill could not possibly 
 
 P 
 
50 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 have said more than he had said. He had heard it just as 
 she herself had heard the " Opus Z." Hearing it, he wanted 
 to play it himself, just as she had wanted to make it out of 
 the " Opus Z." 
 
 In the train on the way home it struck her how comical had 
 been the way she and old Mr Chill had shaken hands. 
 
 She chuckled over this, and was glad Conrad had not 
 witnessed it. Then it occurred to her that out of some bars 
 that she had discarded from the Sonata she could get a 
 theme for Mr Chill's 'cello solo. She would call it ' Melody ' 
 (spelt ' Melodic '). 
 
Chapter Four 
 
 i 
 
 ON Saturday she had been working in the study for an 
 exasperated hour at the * Melodic.' She thought 
 she would just be able to run through the Sonata before tea. 
 
 The study and the piano would not be available to her again 
 till Monday, and there were one or two things she wanted to 
 make quite sure of before writing out the 'cello part for old 
 Mr Chill. A couple of passages in the accompaniment, too, 
 had to be simplified a little for Mary. 
 
 She had noted these things on her copy, so she got up to get 
 it from the hall. 
 
 Mrs Petrie, in the kitchen, heard the study door opening. 
 As soon as she heard footsteps actually in the neutral zone 
 of the passage she came to the door. " Cynthia ! " she 
 called. " Oh, I'm so glad you've come out a few minutes 
 earlier to-day, dear." 
 
 Cynthia leaned against the doorpost and said, " Whatever 
 have you been doing, mother, to make you look so awful ? " 
 
 " I've just been taking the opportunity, since Mrs Simpson 
 went home early, of going through the things. How do you 
 mean ' awful ' ? " 
 
 " Oh, just simply awful" Cynthia repeated. " Tired and 
 miserable, and so untidy. And what can you have done to 
 get your hands like that ? I've never seen even Mrs Simpson's 
 in quite such a state . . ." 
 
 " If you had seen Mrs Simpson's hands like it a little more 
 often," said Mrs Petrie, " it would not be necessary for me to 
 get mine into such a state. I tell you, my dear, as I have 
 often told you before she is not a woman to be depended on. 
 It's small wonder that you have to keep on buying new sauce- 
 pans all the time. Of course it's the newest one that I find 
 in such an awful state ! It's lucky I did happen to find it, 
 hidden away under the sink. . , ." 
 
 a 
 
52 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Most unlucky, I call it," retorted Cynthia ; " she could 
 and, of course, would have cleaned it on Monday. I really 
 don't see why you fuss yourself so about these things, mother. 
 Have you finished now, so that you can lie down a few minutes 
 before tea ? " 
 
 " No, my dear, indeed I have not finished," said Mrs Petrie. 
 " I thought you could help me a little now that you have 
 come about the cinnamon." 
 
 " What's wrong with the cinnamon ? " Cynthia asked. 
 " Or is there none ? It won't be wanted before Monday 
 in any case, so why do you worry now ? . . . There's something 
 I want rather particularly to finish now, before tea. . . ." 
 She moved to go. 
 
 Mrs Petrie looked at her and sighed. " It's too much" 
 she said, shaking her head. " Altogether too much. You 
 can't expect to do it all, my dear. House-keeping is house- 
 keeping, and people who have so much else to do cannot expect 
 and ought not to be expected to keep house. If only / were 
 a different kind of woman, now. ... If I didn't lose my head 
 so, over things. . . ." 
 
 " Too much indeed ! " said Cynthia ; " of course there 
 isn't too much. That sort of thing doesn't worry me like 
 it does you, mother. I just take it as it comes ; and you 
 needn't think of doing it ; there's no reason in the world why 
 you should." Something in her mother's attitude made her 
 wistful in her loneliness, as she stood tired and dishevelled in 
 the dusky kitchen. 
 
 " Come along, mother," Cynthia said ; " do leave it now and 
 have a little rest. It's very nearly tea-time." 
 
 " I can't leave a thing like that," said Mrs Petrie. " It will 
 be on my mind till it's done. That cinnamon . . ." 
 
 Those first bars of the ' Melodic ' persisted in dodging about 
 in Cynthia. When she left the piano and her pencil, if only 
 for a moment, it seemed that there could be nothing to prevent 
 their getting on to the paper. . . . 
 
 " What can be the matter with the cinnamon ? " 
 
 Mrs Petrie shrank a little before Cynthia's impatience. 
 " Don't you stop any longer, dear," said she, " I can manage 
 quite well. It's nearly done," 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 53 
 
 I" But what is wrong with the cinnamon ? " Cynthia insisted. 
 " Oh, nothing," said Mrs Petrie. " It's alright, dear ; do 
 along and finish whatever you were doing. It isn't only 
 the cinnamon. They're all like it, all the other things. . . . 
 I was just changing the tins they're in. They're all old and 
 kind of rusty, and I didn't know if it was safe to leave them in 
 any longer. It might be like verdigris you know. And it 
 seemed to me that there ought to be some more cinnamon 
 somewhere." 
 
 " But," said Cynthia, " what do you want cinnamon for at 
 this time of day." 
 
 " I don't," said Mrs Petrie ; " I only want to put it away. 
 I ordered some myself one day quite lately, when you were gone 
 to Melton. I wondered if you would know where it is. ... 
 But don't stop now, dear, if you have something you must 
 do. If Mrs Simpson takes things, she must go on taking them, 
 I suppose. . . . Cynthia, don't you think you devote rather 
 more time to your pupils than you need to ? I'm sure it 
 can't be good, having so much to do. Sylvia never spent all 
 that time and energy on them." 
 
 " Oh, my pupils are not much bother to me," said Cynthia, 
 and continued on her way to get her music-case with the 
 Sonata. 
 
 As she got back to the study door, the kitchen door also 
 opened, and Mrs Petrie called, " Cynthia just before you go, 
 dear tell me, how do you spell ' cardamom ' ? " 
 
 " C-a-r-d-a-m-o-m," shouted Cynthia from the study. 
 
 " Oh, wait a moment," said Mrs Petrie, " till I find the 
 pencil. ... All right, dear." 
 
 Cynthia spelt it out again, slowly (having found the word 
 by this time in Petrie's dictionary, to make quite sure). 
 
 " Funny ! " said Mrs Petrie. " I had that, but it didn't 
 look at all right." 
 
 The fact that she lacked a second instrument caused Cynthia 
 no inconvenience. She whistled the 'cello part, and whistled 
 it very well. She had, some years before, heard a man whistling 
 at a concert, but she had not connected his feat in any way 
 with music. Now, as she whistled, she thought again of this 
 man and the way he had whistled. 
 
54 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 The twilight was darkened by leaden clouds, and the only 
 light in the gaunt, untidy room came from the window at her 
 back. The window in front of her, over Petrie's desk, faced the 
 gathering night. 
 
 As she neared the end, whistling lustily the notes that she 
 knew would cause Mr Chill to rub his thin old fingers together 
 and say, " Dear me, yes a lot of practice one wants a lot of 
 practice," she looked up at this window. 
 
 Close against the glass, dimly pale against the shadows of 
 the straggling hedge at his back, was her father's face. His 
 hat-brim covered his eyes ; but the triangular patch of light 
 beneath it was cut across by a broad, jolly smile. 
 
 Cynthia, too, smiled and destroyed thereby the instrument 
 with which she made her music. But she was not to be cheated 
 of her ending by such an accident as this. She sang the last 
 bars of the melody sang right out for Petrie full, happy and 
 triumphant notes such as she had never sung before. She 
 sang the cadenza that she feared would have to be altered 
 before Mr Chill could tackle it, and sang it with all the joy 
 of seeing a smile on the face of another one who had ears to hear. 
 
 She would have hurried away with her manuscript, for it 
 was after tea-time ; but in a single bound Petrie had un- 
 latched his door and stood in the doorway, smiling and excited. 
 " Don't go, Cynthia," he said breathlessly. " I say ... By 
 Jove, you know ..." but thoughts crowded too heavily upon 
 him. . . . 
 
 He quickly lighted his pipe with a shaking hand while 
 Cynthia stood and stared at him. 
 
 He blew out a great cloud of smoke, and smiling through it 
 said, " Well " Then his eyes twinkled at her, and he became 
 composed. "Those, I suppose, who prefer a stronger flavour 
 in the same blend can find it in the ' Opus Z.' . . . Never 
 mind, though, Cynthia ; you have got the right end of the 
 stick. Whether you've got hold of the right stick or not is 
 a different matter, but you have got hold of the right end of 
 it. That I will swear to. ... And let me tell you another 
 thing if you haven't got that rarest thing in all the world, 
 a genuine soprano larynx of the very first water, I will eat 
 my hat. Lord ! what couldn't old Sturmer do with a throat 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 55 
 
 like that ? Why, the old dog made Sebaste herself out of 
 material not to be compared with you, Cynthia. . . . And 
 now, when La Sebaste sings, tears flow from the very souls 
 of the grocers and hairdressers and money-lenders of all the 
 capitals of Europe and America. . . . And Sebaste has never 
 had a note of real music in her. . . . You have. I'm blest 
 if they couldn't do something with you old Sturmer and 
 Dierzo. . . . Dierzo, who plays a piano as other men smile and 
 sigh and swear ; plays it, Cynthia, as though oh lord, he 
 wasn't a man that fellow, ever ; he was always a god or a 
 demon. . . . Damme, Cynthia, we must let them have a 
 try ! ... I promised them something, you know years 
 ago I promised it, and I've never given it to them. . . ." 
 
 Then the amazing fellow seized her and kissed her forehead, 
 and crushed her in his arms, and again kissed her. " But 
 what on earth are you thinking of at this hour of the day, 
 creature ? " he said. " Begone, and get a man his dish of 
 tea. . . ." He swung her to the door, kissed her again, and 
 thrust her out. 
 
 When she returned with the tray he took it as though it 
 were a box of matches from a machine on a railway platform. 
 
 For all the glow of excitement and pride such as Cynthia 
 had never felt before he now had only a dull, stony stare and 
 a belated, listless " Thanksverimuch." He did not even 
 bother to repudiate his excitement of a few minutes before, 
 or his boisterous gaiety. If he had seemed embarrassed or 
 even angry, the existence of a new telationship, a change, 
 would have been admitted. 
 
 But there was nothing at all to indicate any change. All 
 was exactly as it always had been the dismal, darkening room 
 around the pale, bony man who stared so that he saw not, 
 and spoke so that there was no more life or meaning in his 
 words than in the squeaking of his shoes, as he rocked himself 
 from his toes to his heels. 
 
 And yet, as the afternoon wore on, she could not and would 
 not believe that his embrace meant nothing at all, that the 
 status quo remained. The relapse into the old dingy atmosphere 
 that she had found on her return to the study had been as 
 dramatic as the gesture and the breathless word with which 
 
56 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Petrie had first dispelled it, and so it continued to oppress her : 
 the hug and the kiss remained enigmatic, portentous. 
 
 She did not, however, care to see another cold or evasive 
 stare, to hear more icy, meaningless words. So she asked 
 Freda just before seven o'clock to get the tea-tray from the 
 study. 
 
 Mrs Petrie found her seated alone before the fire in the 
 drawing-room, and probably mistook her attitude of pre- 
 occupied idleness for one of doubt as to whether the fire was 
 going to catch alight properly ; for she made no comment 
 upon it. She remarked instead that the spices all had new 
 tins and new labels, and that she had transferred the rice from 
 the Mellin's food tin to a glass jar, so that you could tell at a 
 glance how you stood for rice. . . . 
 
 Cynthia wondered only how she could stand an evening 
 of interruptions such as this. 
 
 " Why not look Sylvia up this evening, mummy ? " she said. 
 " Pve got nothing to do till supper ; I could take you round." 
 
 " Oh, not on Saturday, dear. Another day, perhaps, when it 
 isn't quite so late. I'd sooner make a quiet evening of it 
 to-night. I'll go and lie down for a little while now before 
 getting tidy. Those cupboards have tired me out rather. 
 You could sit and sew or read by my fire, dear, it's a much better 
 one than this. ... I can't think what made you light it so 
 soon ; it isn't needed till after supper. You could just as well 
 have sat by mine." 
 
 " I couldn't," said Cynthia, and stated only the bare truth 
 of the matter ; but the bare truth could not, naturally, be 
 allowed to stand. She added, " I've got some cutting out 
 to do." 
 
 The excuse was good and sufficient ; for, whatever might 
 have been the long-forgotten reason that had originally 
 established it, the fact remained established that serious cutting 
 out of any sort was performed nowhere in the house but on 
 the old gate-legged table in the drawing-room, dragged out 
 from against the wall to the hearth-rug. 
 
 " Oh, have you, dear ? " said her mother ; " must it be 
 to-night ? " 
 
 With an impatient movement that ran down from her 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 57 
 
 shoulders to her hands outstretched to the fire, Cynthia said, 
 " What's the difference between to-night and any other 
 night, mother ? You said * not to-night ' in just the same 
 silly way about going to Sylvia's." 
 
 " Because any other night, my dear," said Mrs Petrie, " I 
 might have been able to help you." 
 
 " Oh, it's nothing at all," Cynthia reassured her, regretting 
 her peevishness. " I can do it quite easily from that old 
 skirt we let down. It's that stuff the Chills' aunt sent from 
 Liverpool or somewhere." 
 
 " Well, don't do anything if you're in doubt," said Mrs 
 Petrie, " it can easily wait till after supper, when I shall be 
 down." 
 
 She went upstairs, and Cynthia, resenting the necessity she 
 had imposed upon herself out of sheer politeness, pulled out 
 the table and set up its squeaky flaps, and fetched her work- 
 basket and the roll of material. 
 
 These she flung upon the table and sat down again before 
 the fire, to think. 
 
 From thinking, she got up again to prepare the supper, 
 impatient that anything whatever the anything might be 
 kept on omitting to happen. 
 
 She asked Freda to take in Petrie's tray, while she went up 
 to * tidy her hair and call mother.' The reference to her hair 
 Freda looked upon as a piece of mere, gratuitous snobbery. 
 However, she carried in the tray. 
 
 Much could be said of Freda, with her pert truculence, her 
 combination of Mrs Petrie's wistful sensitiveness and Petrie's 
 acid humour. Much also could be said of her prettiness, her 
 blue eyes and flaxen hair and the affairs of her heart which had 
 already begun (during the seventeen days of skating on the 
 pond by Wilton's Hill). But her part in this history is the 
 humble and unobtrusive one of the merely younger sister. 
 She serves only to irritate with the obstructionist turn of her 
 mind, with the ' ways ' she picks up at school and with 
 occasional, purely destructive criticism. At times, too, she 
 is there, reluctantly, to fill a breach to carry in, or bring out, 
 a tray. 
 
 She was waiting with Conrad at the supper-table when 
 
58 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Cynthia and Mrs Petrie came down. She jerked her head in 
 the direction of the study and said, " Tea at nine, please, 
 instead of ten. . . . Fve told you now, so you can't say I 
 forgot." 
 
 Cynthia nodded. 
 
 The other three looked at her. 
 
 Petrie did not once in a decade vary any habit that affected 
 his contacts with the rest of the family. Cynthia had the 
 only advantage of being prepared for the knowledge that 
 something ought to be about to happen. She did not 
 return the apprehensive looks of any of the other three. Kisses 
 burned again on her brow, and she felt a vague shame of 
 treachery to her mother. 
 
 Still looking down, scanning the table-cloth as though to 
 see that all was in order, she said, " Well, let's start," and sat 
 down. 
 
 Conrad at length said, " Wonder what's up now ! " 
 
 The others unanimously resented the remark. Each one 
 felt that it demanded censure, though each knew that precisely 
 that remark was the only possible alternative to silence. 
 
 " Don't be such an idiot," said Cynthia ; " what is ever 
 4 up ' ? He might be tired, mightn't he, just like anyone else." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so," Conrad admitted, though no one, 
 as a fact, believed in the possibility of any such thing. 
 
 They fell to work upon the skirt, pinning, chalking, measur- 
 ing and cutting. They talked of hems and pleats and plackets 
 and gussets, and whatever else may go towards the architecture 
 of a skirt ; and Cynthia welcomed it all, just as men, twenty 
 years later, strained their eyes at a game of nap on the fire-step 
 waiting for the crack of Zero. 
 
 The skirt at last cut out and basted and rolled away again 
 into the work-basket, each one of the four looked furtively at 
 the clock. 
 
 It showed a quarter to nine. 
 
 Each one sat back, silent, till five minutes had gone. Freda 
 was curious, and disgusted with the meagreness of her part 
 in the whole business of life : Mrs Petrie was uneasy and 
 apprehensive, for these emotions had for many years taken 
 the place of frank curiosity and unprejudiced expectancy in 
 
. 
 
 HE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 59 
 
 ier : Cynthia was wildly excited ; she was impatient, striving 
 mgrily to stifle the absurd feeling of guilt and treachery, 
 rying hard to convince herself that there was no reason in the 
 vorld why she should not look them all quite fearlessly and 
 lonestly in the face. But she failed. 
 
 She wished only that her mother would go to bed, instead 
 of sitting up till long after her usual bed-time, and saying 
 nothing. She wished she could think of just the right word 
 or two to put an end to Freda's absurd curiosity. . . . 
 
 " The water's stayed nice and hot to-night," she said at 
 last, " if anyone wants a bath." 
 
 No one responded and another five minutes of silence 
 followed the remark. Then Cynthia slowly stood up and 
 stretched her arms. She pushed back the table and picked 
 up her work-basket. " Well," she drawled " I'd better say 
 good-night, mummy. ... I expect you'll all be off to bed 
 before long." 
 
 " But, my dear," said Mrs Petrie, " now ? ... at nine 
 o'clock ? Surely you do not propose to go out anywhere, do 
 you ? You know I'm never asleep before you go by to your 
 room." 
 
 Cynthia did know this very well. " Oh, no, I'm not likely 
 to be going out," she said ; " but I might be some time talking 
 in the study." 
 
 She made the point of saying good-night, removing one 
 reason for being called into Mrs Petrie's room on her way to 
 bed. She said " Good-night ' Free ' ; everything is ready 
 for the morning, so there's nothing for anyone to worry about." 
 
 She stretched her arms again and walked out as though 
 nothing had either happened or was about to happen ; but 
 the fact that she had achieved the mere remark that she would 
 probably be * some time talking in the study ' was itself a 
 happening. 
 
 2 
 
 Petrie was in the arm-chair on one side of the fireplace. 
 On the other side was his desk-chair, and between them he had 
 
60 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 placed a small table for the tea-tray. Upon this table was 
 the cup and saucer from the mantel-piece. 
 
 " I'll continue to sit in this chair," said Petrie, waving 
 Cynthia to the other one. " It would be utterly wasted on 
 you. All chairs are alike to a woman." 
 
 Cynthia sat down and began to pour out the tea. She could 
 afford to wait without impatience of his banter, for Petrie 
 was obviously as nervous as herself. 
 
 " H'm. . . . There are a few things I want to say to you," 
 he said, and stirred his tea uneasily. " Er at least, what 
 I mean to say is that there are some things which I wish to 
 Heaven there was some one else to say to you. But there isn't, 
 so I must. ... At least I think I must, though I am the last 
 person in the world, as you ought to know, to advocate any 
 tampering with sleeping dogs. . . ." 
 
 It was tiresome enough to be talked to like that, but still 
 Cynthia was patient. " Well ? " she said, and smiled up at him. 
 
 " Well . . ." he echoed, and fumbled in a pocket of his 
 waistcoat. Presently he drew from it a slip of paper with 
 numbered memoranda scribbled upon it. " Yes," he said, 
 staring at the paper. He cleared his throat. "... M'yes. 
 Cynthia, you have an ear for music." 
 
 Cynthia said nothing. She sat staring at the teacup in her 
 hand, her hopes gone, all her expectations shattered. For four 
 hours she had been expecting something to happen, something 
 unique and tremendous. What it was to have been she did 
 not at all know, except that it was not to be the information 
 that she had an ear for music. 
 
 " I remarked," said Petrie rather testily, " that you have 
 an ear for music." 
 
 " Well," said Cynthia, dully, " and what of it ? Haven't 
 most people, at any rate millions of people, got an ear for music." 
 
 " They have not," said Petrie. " An ear for music, my dear 
 Cynthia what / call an ear for music, meaning by that the 
 real thing is as rare among people who play upon instru- 
 ments and sing and even among the very best of them, mark 
 you it is as rare, I say as as mathematical genius among 
 bank clerks, as the genius of engineering among engine-drivers, 
 as literature among journalists, as the scientific mind among 
 

 HE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 61 
 
 lispensers. So there \ Let me repeat to you as a merely 
 u'storical fact that La Sebaste herself has no more music in 
 icr than a cow. That is the first thing that I wished to 
 establish firmly between us : that you have an ear for music, 
 md that an ear for music, aforesaid, is an extremely rare 
 commodity." 
 
 " Well, I don't see how you expect anyone to understand 
 .vhat you mean by this fancy ear of yours," Cynthia remarked 
 little morosely. 
 
 " I don't," said Petrie, amiably ; " as a matter of fact, I 
 am not absolutely sure that I understand it myself not 
 in detail. But I'm clear enough for practical purposes. It 
 is curious, though, the way you find an obstacle to practical 
 discussion in what is, after all, irrelevant to the issue." He 
 paused a moment to sip his tea, and then quite suddenly 
 burst out, " Oh, Cyn ! If only your mind was as developed 
 as mine, how we could race along over all this kind of talk. 
 . . . What I meant by * ear ' is something like this : Suppose 
 it were possible to write things down in music. . . ." 
 
 Cynthia's heart sank. He was * off again.' She listlessly 
 nodded. 
 
 " Suppose," Petrie continued, " that music were the only 
 means of writing things down. Suppose, I mean, that you had 
 to keep your accounts and write your washing lists and cheques 
 and receipts and all other purely economic memoranda in 
 music instead of in words. Oh Lord ! I don't for a moment 
 imagine you see yet what I am trying to get at ; it's just some 
 of my nonsense, ... eh ? ... But suppose that all the hard, 
 useless, senseless brute facts that fill the newspapers could be 
 recorded through the medium of music and through no other ; 
 suppose that instead of learning to read from the symbols 
 of words, people learnt instead to read practical, matter-of- 
 fact meanings from sound symbols. Can't you see, then, that 
 though music would have only one value for people in general, 
 as language now has, for you it would have two separate and 
 distinct values ? One of them would be the same that it 
 now has for you, since you have, as I say, an ear for music ; 
 the second significance and value it would have for you, you 
 would share with Mr and Mrs Simpson ancj many others ; 
 
62 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 for through it you would be able to discover from the paper 
 whether that forger fellow was found innocent or guilty 
 yesterday. Now do you see ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Cynthia, " I suppose so. But what of it ? " 
 
 " What of it ? " he repeated, staring at her wide-eyed in 
 his amazement. " Do you mean to tell me you are unaware 
 of the results of such a circumstance ? Take a glance, my 
 dear young woman, at the other arts literature, painting 
 and sculpture. People recognise that there are such arts 
 only dimly, because the purely economic function of them has 
 completely obscured their artistic one. The ease with which 
 you can engage, through the medium of literature, a bed- 
 room in advance, or order a meal ; the ease with which some 
 fewer people can make a note of a railway accident or a prize 
 fight by means of drawing it the preponderance of this value, 
 I say, has obscured and distorted all vision and corrupted all 
 criticism and, damme ! there are individuals trying to-day, 
 at so many ha'pence a line, to do exactly the same thing with 
 music. . . . No, my dear Cynthia, you really must realise 
 the value of word-symbols and colour-symbols and shape- 
 symbols quite apart from their value as devices for memoranda 
 and book-keeping. You have realised it, thank God, with music 
 because music, by the merest accident, has no such secondary 
 and economic value. That it is no more than the merest 
 accident that has saved music I am absolutely sure. And what 
 is more, I can prove it. P-r-o-v-e, prove every step of it. 
 It has taken me years to do it, and you can calmly say, * What 
 of it ?' ... Well, I'm hanged ! " 
 
 " But you said yourself that it was quite irrelevant." 
 Cynthia was delighted with the inspiration that gave her this 
 retort. 
 
 " Yes," said Petrie, with a sudden smile, " and see what 
 they did to Socrates for persistent irrelevance ! However," 
 and he became meditative, looking again at the paper in 
 his hand " no, it was not on the agenda, any of it. Engineer- 
 ing is not, as I said, engine-driving, and it is to the driving 
 of our own especial engine that we must return. ... I think, 
 Cynthia, it would be the most decent thing for me to wait 
 for some suggestion from you. 9 ' 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 63 
 
 he could see a look of bewilderment and hesitation in his 
 half-closed eyes and about his mouth, a look that destroyed 
 and obliterated the whimsical smile, as suddenly as the smile 
 had replaced his detachment. " I suppose . . ." she began. 
 " Well, you see, I've never thought much about it before." 
 
 " Then think, for Heaven's sake, now" The words were 
 suddenly wrung from him. They startled Cynthia, and he 
 accompanied them with a bumping of his cup and saucer 
 upon the table. " Think ! " he said again ; " and think 
 bard t Cynthia, as you have never thought before. . . . And 
 do not only think, but act also. Take your life in your 
 own hands remember that it is your own life, yours every 
 bit of it and nobody else's. And act, my dear girl act like 
 the very devil. . . ." 
 
 He stood up, breathing heavily, as though he had arrived 
 suddenly at the top of a staircase. She could not see his face 
 as he turned to select a feather for his pipe from the little 
 bundle beside the clock, but she could guess at its expression 
 from the white-gleaming knuckles of the hand that clutched 
 the mantel-piece. She caught some of his excitement, but 
 having as yet nothing definite to go upon, she could express 
 it only by a weak, awkward smile. He still fumbled among the 
 feathers and she could get no nearer to him. 
 
 " Cynthia ! " he said suddenly, turning again to her. The 
 entreaty was so solemn, the voice came from such a depth of 
 woebegone sadness, that mysteriously and somewhere very deep 
 within her she was hurt by it. She looked up at him, yearning 
 to be near him, searching to share his burden. " Listen to 
 me," he said slowly. " Listen, for the love of God before it 
 is too late to the voice of one crying in the wilderness. . . ." 
 
 She was one with him in his excitement. She knew that 
 they were coming, at last, to the very root of things. It was 
 only his words that she failed to understand. But his words 
 did not matter. His appeal remained an appeal, and she 
 answered it as best she could. 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders and said, " Well, father, what is 
 it you want me to do ? " 
 
 " What is it / want you to do ! " he groaned. " Lord ! 
 , . . there it is again, the same old canker. ( What is it / 
 
64 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 want you. . . .' It is you that are to appear in this scene, 
 Cynthia, not 7." He shook his head dismally over it, and then 
 suddenly brightened. " Listen ! If ever one human being 
 succeeded in helping another, I will help you now. If it had 
 been in blue lines ruled near red ones that you felt some elusive 
 lure in columns of figures denoting pounds, shillings and 
 pence, like that abysmal fool George Tuke ; if your delight 
 had lain in Totals and Grand Totals and Carried Forwards, 
 what do you think I would have suggested your doing ? . . . 
 Why, in spite of the accident of sex which makes these things 
 unnecessarily difficult for women, I would advise your turning 
 this idiosyncrasy of yours to some account by adapting a pro- 
 fession to it. I would, in short, have urged your studying 
 book-keeping, where you would get your columns and totals 
 and carried forwards, and would get, incidentally, a livelihood 
 out of your joy in them. I would say, * Go, Cynthia, to 
 London or Llandudno, to Bucharest or Buenos Aires, or 
 wherever the mysteries of book-keeping are best understood 
 and best expounded.' But since it is not in these things that 
 you find delight, but in certain arrangements of certain kinds 
 of noise . . . what then ? " 
 
 It was Cynthia's knuckles now that whitened as she clenched 
 her hand upon the arm of her chair. " Oh, father," she said 
 quickly, " you you don't mean Holzgarten, do you f surely 
 you can't. . . ." 
 
 Petrie smiled. " So you do remember my having spoken, 
 some time or other, of a place called Holzgarten ? " 
 
 " Oh, father dear \ " Cynthia sprang up to her feet and 
 stood close to him. She longed to hug him, to tell him that 
 he was the most wonderful man in the world, the wisest and 
 dearest. 
 
 He, meanwhile, had begun to shake his clothes, pocket by 
 pocket, his head bent forward, listening intently to divine 
 the presence of matches. She laid her hand on his arm and 
 said, " I've been wondering ever since tea if that could be what 
 you were going to say. It's been simply awful waiting." 
 
 " H'm," said Petrie, " so our lengthy digression on aesthetics 
 was superfluous after all. . . , And what, may I ask, have you 
 to say about it ? " 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 65 
 
 I Her excitement was checked and stifled, leaving her slightly 
 mbed, feeling a little silly that her hand was still upon 
 his arm. She saw in that moment the' secret of Petrie's 
 strangeness : he talked of near and vital things as though 
 they were distant and abstruse ; of distant and abstruse things 
 he talked as though they were the things that mattered most, 
 as though his very life depended on them. . . . She had no 
 alternative but slowly to sit down again. 
 
 " Well ? " asked Petrie ; but he asked it with gentleness. 
 
 " Well," said Cynthia, " I could never have believed such 
 a thing possible, except in my wildest dreams. My dear, 
 I just ought to be the happiest girl in the whole world. . . ." 
 
 " And you are not happy," said Petrie slowly, " just because 
 you are afraid." 
 
 Slowly he sat down and drew his chair nearer to hers. He 
 took her two hands in his and for a few moments bent his head 
 over them, examining them, turning them over in his own. 
 Then he looked up at her and smiled. So tender was the 
 caress of his strong hands, so gentle the glance of his eyes 
 half closed in the pungent smoke, that Cynthia came near 
 to leaning forward that so she might weep upon his shoulder. 
 
 She was weakened and altogether deranged all at ' sixes 
 and sevens ' as she would have put it by the strain of waiting 
 and of trying to keep pace with his moody reasoning and 
 unreasoning moods, of finding herself suddenly near to him 
 and rinding him again suddenly gone. Him she could never 
 successfully shrug away as she shrugged away all the other 
 phenomena that passed her understanding. With him she 
 felt it seemed now that she had felt it for ages that there 
 was something she must understand, something that she must 
 answer. He beckoned to her, but beckoned only faintly for 
 the weight of some hidden shackles that bound him. 
 
 He very gently pressed her two hands and said, " But do not 
 be afraid, little daughter, I will try to help you. Look ! 
 from the very first I have tried to help. First it was Sylvia 
 . . . and then she married a pair of mutton-chop whiskers 
 with a clerk at the roots of them. Next it was you. . . . 
 Lord, how I did slave to teach you ; and then Freda. I 
 must confess I could not tackle young Conrad ; I was spent, 
 E 
 
66 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 pedagogically, by his time. But you three girls I taught to 
 read music while others were teaching you to read the news- 
 paper. It was to spare you the pain and drudgery of doing 
 it when there were other calls upon your time. And I did it 
 all just because there was a ten million to one chance that to 
 one or other of you it might prove to be a a medium. There 
 was just that single chance that the thing might come off. 
 For that I ruined my temper and my digestion, so that it took 
 years to repair the damage. . . . Lord ! how peevish I used 
 to get. . . . But, Cynthia, Cynthia," and he wrung her hands 
 till she feared she must wince with the pain, " that ten million 
 to one chance has come off in you. 91 
 
 Cynthia could sit up, stiffly composed, no longer. Her 
 memory had sped back to the days when she had looked down 
 upon the front of a white pinafore, her hair in four short plaits 
 that stuck comically out like horns when this infant had gone, 
 hushed, but regularly as clockwork, to the drab and dusty 
 study to climb upon the piano-stool and grope about the key- 
 board, while the tallest, most cadaverous-looking man in the 
 world growled at her with the deepest voice she had ever 
 heard, and pointed as with the hand of doom (and the longest 
 ringer imaginable) at large notes scribbled upon a loose sheet 
 of paper. . . . Sad enough days those, till the dreary, eternally 
 long half-hours had passed and she stole back to her mother 
 in the kitchen or in the bedroom upstairs. . . . And now 
 the same big man sat quietly with her ; the deepest voice in 
 the world spoke gentle, dreamy words to her ; the hands with 
 the strongest, longest fingers she had ever seen caressed her 
 own. She clasped them and said shakily, " Father, dear 
 my dear, dear daddy. . . . Fancy your thinking of that all 
 those years ago ! You are wonderful, simply wonderful. . . ." 
 
 But Petrie rose and slowly laid his pipe upon the mantel- 
 piece. " Yes ; all those years ago," he said ; " . . . fourteen, 
 thirteen, twelve. . . . And to-night, Cynthia, believe me, 
 I have not been idle. To-morrow's Sunday. Everything 
 will be closed ; so I went out after tea to the offices, and 
 and, well, there you are ! " 
 
 With one swift gesture he emptied the contents of a pocket 
 into Cynthia's lap a ragged, bulging tobacco-pouch, a large 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 67 
 
 handkerchief, two bundles of bank-notes and a pair of folding 
 scissors. 
 
 Cynthia, in amazement, mechanically separated the personal 
 effects from the property in her lap and made two heaps of them 
 upon her knees. 
 
 She stared at the money. Even supposing that the notes 
 were all fives, it was a tremendous sum. 
 
 " But, father," she stammered, " I thought we were quite 
 poor ; you know I mean not at all well off." 
 
 " And so we are poor," he snapped, " poor as rats since 
 poverty consists in not spending money. But we've got the 
 stuff, Cynthia. It goes on accumulating, you know, just like 
 rust. We are not rich, of course ; but money, in this present 
 crisis, is er is no object. You see, for nearly fifteen years 
 I have been getting paid five hundred pounds a year, and our 
 standard of living has been far below that of your green- 
 grocer's about like the plumber's, I should say. So it is 
 in obedience to a purely mechanical law that there is lots 
 more where that little sum came from. Lots, too, elsewhere, 
 I should imagine, since your mother is a great exponent of 
 the ' Rainy Day ' school. You, as a housekeeper, know how 
 inexpensive it is to sustain life." 
 
 He stopped, and Cynthia continued estimating how much 
 money her lap contained. Even if the notes were only fives, 
 it was at least two hundred pounds, for each packet contained 
 no less than twenty notes. She still struggled with the vaguely 
 overpowering shock of having a large sum of money suddenly 
 flung to her, when Petrie bent down and took his tobacco- 
 pouch and handkerchief and scissors. 
 
 " Of these," he said, " I am in daily nay, hourly need, 
 and they would be as useless to you as that other stuff is 
 to me." 
 
 Then Cynthia looked up at him, trembling, hardly knowing 
 what to say. " Oh, father," she started, " you surely can't 
 mean . . ." 
 
 " I can," said Petrie ; " and what is more, Cynthia, that is 
 precisely what I do mean. It is the only clean way, Cyn 
 that is why I venture to advocate it. Any other way is slip- 
 shod and morbid and and morally dirty septic." 
 
 
68 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " But, father," and Cynthia stood up and laid the money on 
 the mantel-piece ; " father, dear, can't you see . . ." 
 
 " I can, and do see everything," he retorted fiercely. " You 
 could go to-night now. In three and a half hours from 
 this moment you could be in London, and the hardest part 
 would be over." 
 
 Cynthia was aghast, baffled again and estranged by the 
 extravagance of him and his flourishing gestures. Again she 
 sat down with nothing in the world to say to him. 
 
 He too sat down like a great big boy at her feet. He 
 placed his arms upon her knees and once more took her two 
 hands in his ; caressing their white smoothness he smiled 
 up at her and pleaded. Terribly in earnest he pleaded, softly 
 as some day a lover might plead. 
 
 " Believe me, little Cynthia," he said, " it would be the 
 best way and there is no easy way at all. . . ." 
 
 Cynthia looked down at him, drawn near by the very 
 intensity of his entreaty. 
 
 " Go ! " and again he wrung her hands and strained them 
 to him ; " and go, my dear, at once. . . . Get out of all 
 this mess of smouldering wreckage that you have always 
 lived in. Leave the weeping woman and the crucified man, 
 before you, too, are broken and dessicated. . . . Leave it 
 all and get among the big illusions and the great illusionists 
 and thier songs and loves and laughter. Be brave, Cynthia 
 leave the others to their cooking utensils and the dominant 
 kitchens and and their vinegar. There isn't any help for 
 them." 
 
 His words held her as they would have held her even had he 
 spoken in Turkish or Chinese. All the old leathery lines had 
 gone from the face turned upward to her, and in their place 
 were the lines more delicate and elusive of very present 
 suffering. 
 
 Cynthia saw him terribly humbled at her feet, begging as 
 it were a boon. 
 
 She smoothed the towsled hair away from the brow. " Funny, 
 dear old daddy," she said ; " why is it that you're always 
 trying to make easy things so terribly hard ? " 
 
 " Don't coo at me," said he, and sprang to his feet ; " it's 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 69 
 
 a lie. ... At least, what does that matter ? I even things 
 up ; I insist merely on a sense of proportion. If I make the 
 easy things a little harder, I make the hard things a great 
 deal easier. . . . Only people will never willingly take the 
 simple way. . . ." 
 
 " But there's nothing simple in hurting and frightening 
 people just for nothing . . ." Cynthia suggested soothingly. 
 
 " For nothing \ " exclaimed Petrie ; " for nothing ! . . . 
 it is just by thinking things are * nothing ' at first that you get 
 robbed and cheated of your very soul ! Do you think that 
 the theft and consumption of an immortal soul are completed 
 in a single operation ? Indeed not. The process, believe 
 me, is a gradual, insidious thing. You do not know it is 
 happening, unless you are very much on your guard, till it is 
 completed. Then you wake up with a shock to find yourself 
 as innocent of soul as a damp shirt hanging on a clothes-line. 
 And then what happens ? . . . Why, then, unless again 
 you are very much on your guard, you set to work filling up 
 on somebody else's soul. ... I do not advocate many kinds 
 of fear, Cynthia, but fear of that one thing ye Gods ! well, 
 I am inclined to be timid of that. Yes, Cynthia, I confess it 
 positively timid." He laughed bitterly and shrugged his 
 shoulders. " Well, I have said my say. We need proceed no 
 further with the agenda." He took the slip of paper and flung 
 it in the fire. " If you do not will to do the thing, there is 
 an end on it. It's your will, as I had occasion to remark 
 before. . . ." 
 
 Cynthia stooped first to rescue the paper before the flames 
 could curl round to it. Then, " We might need it," she said, 
 smiling, " another day or night." 
 
 " No," said Petrie, with another weary shrug ; " never. 
 Now or never. If it is too hard for you now, it can become 
 only harder. You are beaten. Throw that rubbish in the 
 fire, and go to bed." 
 
 " Father," she said, " see how hard you're making an easy 
 thing now ; and you're making nothing easy. . . . Nothing 
 in the world could make me happier than going to Holzgarten 
 going, I mean, reasonably and quietly, when arrangements 
 have been properly made and things got ready. . . ." 
 
70 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Things ! " he snorted. " What things ? Holzgarten 
 is ready, I assure you. Perfectly ready. It has been for the 
 last three or four hundred years. . . ." 
 
 " There you are ! " said Cynthia. " Now isn't that just like 
 Conrad ? See how difficult you make it to explain anything 
 even. . . . By * things ' I mean myself, and the house and 
 things there's heaps to be arranged, but it only needs a little 
 time to do it. ... And and there's mother. I know mother 
 will be frightened and upset a little at first. Only you do 
 exaggerate it all so, father. . . . It's all quite simple, I'm 
 sure it's being done every day." 
 
 " Yes," Petrie snapped ; " so is murder being done every 
 day, but that doesn't make it any easier for you and me to go 
 out and cut throats, does it ? ... We are not doing murder 
 every day. If you were getting away from your mother 
 every day it would be different. It would be easy then." 
 
 " Yes, and there you go again," said Cynthia. " You always 
 say something of that sort that sounds so wonderfully true, 
 but I know you've cheated in it jow^-where. . . . What has 
 my going to Holzgarten got to do with committing murder ? " 
 
 " You will soon see," said he quietly. " Before very long 
 you will come to the conclusion that a common or garden 
 murder would be mere child's play with this task of yours. 
 That is, if you persist in wanting to go. . . ." 
 
 " Now please don't say that ; " Cynthia jerked his arm im- 
 patiently ; " surely you can see how absurd it is. ... Don't 
 you know how happy you have made me to-night ? . . . I 
 never dreamt that such a thing was possible. How was I to 
 know that we were so well off and that you were so so 
 Oh, I don't know, daddy everything is so different after this." 
 
 " Meanwhile you leave me standing on the mat, waiting for 
 the second half of an unfinished sentence, the conclusion of 
 a half-expressed thought. . . . You have ' found me to be 
 so ' what ? I shall be interested to hear the rest of that." 
 
 Cynthia had hoped that he would press for it ; hoping, 
 she had not known what she should say. The movements 
 of her fingers upon the lapels of his coat became more hurried ; 
 her eyes shifted from his to his chin, to his shoulder, to his feet, 
 and then to the fire. " W w well," she stammered ; " so 
 
I 
 
 so sor 
 
 
 
 :HE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 71 
 t of kind " (she wanted to say something more, some- 
 thing slightly different, but she left it at ' kind '), " that I was 
 so fond of you . . . and that you were so fond of me, daddy, 
 dear . . ." and Petrie, very slowly said, " What I call senti- 
 
 ental braggadocio, Cynthia, is an appalling vice." 
 
 With all the fury proper to a woman scorned Cynthia 
 jerked her hands away from the contact with his coat and 
 planted them firmly on her hips. With her nostrils quivering, 
 she drew herself up and said, " And who started it, I'd like to 
 know, this sentimental whatever you call it ? Didn't you 
 first take hold of my hands and mumble over them and very 
 nearly kiss them, or did / ? " 
 
 " Don't be ridiculous," said Petrie. " Kiss your hands 
 indeed ! I did no such thing. . . . Or if I did, I shall never 
 do it again in all probability. At any rate, I shall not be 
 drawn into a quarrel over it. Understand that, please." 
 
 " Phoof ! " said Cynthia ; " understand fiddle-sticks." 
 
 On the mantel-piece beside his elbow she caught sight again 
 of two bundles of bank-notes amounting to at least two hundred 
 pounds sterling. They stood there as a monument to his love 
 of her, his hopes and his consideration. 
 
 " Daddy," she said, and again laid her hand upon his 
 shoulder, " we are going to be friends after to-night you and 
 I however hard you may try to make it. ... We will talk 
 for I never have the chance of talking to anyone. You will 
 let us be friends, daddy, won't you ? . . . I never have had 
 any friends, you know not real friends." 
 
 Petrie was obviously puzzled by the question. He put his 
 pipe in his mouth in order to chew the stem and move it 
 about between his teeth. " I can never make out what you 
 mean, you people, by ' friends,' " he said. " And then you 
 try to explain it by saying ' real ' friends ; and that's no good. 
 I've tried often to point out to you I've tried to point out 
 to everyone with whom I have exchanged half a dozen words 
 that vehemence and emphasis are not an explanation. . . . 
 You see, ultimately, another person can never do anything 
 for you. Friendship, logically, is an impossibility. Wherever 
 and with whomsoever you may happen to be living you have, 
 in the long run, to live deep down and far away alone. Every 
 
72 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 action of yours, you have to perform for yourself. There's 
 no dodging that, old Cynthia. We try to dodge it, but we 
 always fail. . . . For instance, I advise you to get away to- 
 night, to Holzgarten. I will the act for you, as far as that 
 is possible ; but you omit to perform it. ... No, Cynthia, 
 the most and the best that one human being can do for another 
 is to sit quite tight, to shut up and to remain perfectly neutral. 
 That much, as a matter of fact, I have always done for you. 
 . . . Look here!" 
 
 She watched him take up the bank-notes and carry them to 
 his desk. He emptied upon his blotting-pad the ounce or so 
 of dusty tobacco that still remained in a long tobacco-tin. 
 He stuffed the notes into the emptied tin and put it in the lowest 
 left-hand drawer, that held already a piece of sealing-wax, a 
 couple of candles, a roll of blotting-paper and some odd bits of 
 string. 
 
 " This drawer," he said, " is never locked. The money 
 will always be there for you, whenever it should occur to you 
 to want it. I am utterly neutral I am therefore your friend. 
 I refrain from adding complications to the complexity of 
 another's^life since I am your friend, and . . . Believe me, 
 Cynthia, if you can bring yourself to believe so hard a saying, 
 that greater love than that hath no man than that he stand 
 decently aside and refrain from thwarting, coercing or cajoling 
 a companion." 
 
 He was standing beside her again and she slipped her arm 
 through his. She did it because the new sense of her freedom 
 to do it thrilled her so to touch his coat or his hands, to feel 
 the wiry strength of his arm between her fingers. " But 
 we will be able to talk," she said. " I have always wanted to 
 talk to you, you know, to ask you all sorts of things. . . ." 
 
 " M'yes," said Petrie, " people do like to talk. . . . But 
 what can you want to talk to me about ? " 
 
 " Oh, no end of things," said she ; " there's music and 
 you and and me. . . ." 
 
 " T'cha ! " he clicked. " Music forsooth. I have tried to 
 talk to you in the only possible way about music : I wrote a 
 little thing and gave it to you, and what did you do ? Did 
 you accept it ? Devil a bit. You sat down and wrote another 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 73 
 
 cap it with. It isn't, of course, so good as mine not near 
 so good ; but it just shows you the old instinct to hasten 
 to cap the other man's yarn before there's been time to laugh 
 his out. . . . You see, you don't care a fig for anything I have 
 
 Kay about music." 
 You know I only did that because yours was so hard," said 
 thia, reassuring him by a squeeze upon his arm. 
 Nothing of the sort. It was because it was me and what 
 you put in in its place is you. That can't be helped. . . . This 
 other thing is just the same. I tell you to go, at once. Do 
 you go ? Again, devil a bit. Because it, too, is too hard ? 
 ... So you think. But it is again because one is me and the 
 other is you ; and it is inevitable, that gulf. . . . What can 
 I tell you about me that could be of any possible service to 
 you ? I could tell you any amount of comical things to amuse 
 and divert you how my luggage got lost one night in Moscow 
 and I had to play in the head waiter's evening suit, while he, 
 poor man, sat and shivered by the stove in my overcoat." 
 
 " Oh, of course I don't mean that kind of thing, silly. I 
 mean what's inside you all the time, making you so funny, 
 and hard and different, and er, now don't go and get cross 
 about it ; but yes, sort of cruel is what I mean. Why are you 
 like that, daddy ? " 
 
 " God bless my soul ! " said he, staring at her. " And what, 
 may I ask, makes the snail so harsh and cruel as to draw in his 
 head and his tail the unmerciful little brute ! at the first 
 sign of some gentle little birdie in search of breakfast ? " 
 
 " There goes another of the things," Cynthia sniffed, " that 
 seem so grand yet aren't a bit true. . . . Surely you will admit 
 that you do frighten people ? . . ." 
 
 " Apparently ! " said he. " Nay manifestly. Yet they 
 quite willingly indulge in my society till the small hours of the 
 morning, and display the utmost nonchalance in doing so. 
 Great heavens, Cynthia ... it is one o'clock. You must 
 go to bed. Tell me, have you ever sat up or stood gossiping 
 till this hour before ? " 
 
 " No," and her glance at the clock gave her a thrill of 
 delight. The hands stood at three minutes to one. " Never. 
 How should I ? " 
 
74 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Not with your sister before she was taken from us by the 
 stalwart George ? " 
 
 " Of course not," and she sounded indignant ; " whatever 
 for ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said Petrie. His thoughts were beginning 
 to stray again from the immediate point. " I thought that 
 that was usual. Look here ! " and he briskly turned, changing 
 the subject, " we'll exchange signals now and again, if you 
 like. That, I presume, is what you mean by being friends 
 real friends. But you will find that it makes very little 
 difference. We will have to go on, as ever, alone unless 
 we start breaking the rules and trying to interfere with each 
 other. But remember, that is infernal insolence, to say the 
 very least of it. Who are you to presume to think that I stand 
 in need of improvement, and that you are the chosen one to 
 effect it ? I won't be interfered with by anyone. You must 
 remember that. . . . You positively must go to bed now. . . ." 
 
 " And now who's having the infernal insolence to inter- 
 fere ? " said Cynthia, joyfully. " And when, may I ask, do 
 I show any signs of interfering with you ? " 
 
 " Always" said Petrie ; " every blessed moment you are 
 criticising criticising, thinking I do not know how to behave 
 myself fairly. You think I talk nonsense, and as soon as you 
 can succeed in getting sufficiently familiar with me, you will 
 actually say, ' I wish you would not talk nonsense.' ' 
 
 " Of course I'll say no such thing. I'm sure I don't care 
 how much nonsense you talk. If you like talking nonsense it 
 is your affair, surely." 
 
 " Then," said Petrie, " I'm blest if I can see what you hope 
 to get out of this vague ' friendship ' scheme of yours." 
 
 " Oh, you can see right enough," Cynthia said, and said 
 it a little sadly, having become suddenly thoughtful. " I 
 only want to be a little bit happier, that's all. You see, father, 
 everything is a little bit dull without anyone to talk to. ... 
 I say, daddy, don't you think you could manage to be a little 
 bit happier, too ? " 
 
 Petrie weighed his answer before giving it. " N-no . . . 
 I doubt it. You see, Cynthia, I have found a modus vivendi, 
 and that is about as much as anyone can hope to achieve. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 75 
 
 Iy change now might involve complications of some sort. 
 lat is commonly called sentiment is highly productive of 
 complications, as a rule. That is why I do not hold out 
 much hope of happiness to you out of a personal alliance of 
 
 K' kind since personal alliances are based usually on 
 timent. . . ." 
 ' I said I didn't mind your talking nonsense as much as you 
 :, and I stick to it," said Cynthia. " But I must say I don't 
 see where Sentiment comes in if we just sit and talk a little 
 over our cup of tea in the evenings. I'm sure I shall be happier 
 for it finding things out. As for you, my dear, you just 
 needn't pretend you're not fond of talking. I know better 
 than that, so it can't possibly do you any harm." 
 
 " Indeed it can," said Petrie, and yawned. " It is doing 
 harm now. You have stayed up till one o'clock." 
 
 " Still one o'clock ? " Cynthia's heart had grown very 
 light in companionship present and in prospect. 
 
 " Getting on for two now," said Petrie. " So off you go." 
 
 " Still that inevitable tendency to bully, coerce and cajole. 
 . . . Same old insolence," she mocked. 
 
 " Don't talk to me in that way of coercing and cajoling ; 
 what I said is gospel, solemn truth," he said. " In that 
 drawer there I have placed three hundred pounds. The 
 drawer is open. You are therefore as free as the sunshine 
 and the air. Free, Cynthia, free, I say. There. . . . Can 
 you grasp that ? " 
 
 She could not. 
 
 The thought, put in that way, amazed her, startled her ; 
 but it did not just then linger. It was altogether too big 
 a thing. 
 
 " All right," she said dreamily, and yawned upon his 
 shoulder. " Yes, I'll go to bed. Good-night, my old daddy." 
 
 She did not, however, move. 
 
 After a few moments, which Cynthia spent in smiling 
 into the fire, and Petrie in gazing down upon the top of her 
 head, he cleared his throat and said, " H'm, yes. . . . Good- 
 night, Cynthia. . . ." 
 
 Still neither one moved, and Petrie again said, " Yes, indeed 
 it is late. . . . Off you go now." 
 
76 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Very calmly Cynthia stifled another yawn and said, " I'm 
 waiting . . . for my daddy to kiss me good-night." 
 
 " Don't be a fool/' said Petrie. 
 
 " Not at all," said Cynthia. " I don't at all mind waiting. 
 I am ever so comfortable. I believe I could actually go to 
 sleep standing here. I can wait. . . ." 
 
 " Don't be a fool ! " he snapped again. 
 
 " And that," said Cynthia, " in spite of all my efforts to 
 point out to you that vehemence and emphasis are never 
 an expla . . ." But she was able to say no more than half the 
 word. Petrie had jerked his arm around her shoulders and 
 kissed her smiling lips. 
 
 " And now get out" he said ; and out she went, ready to 
 cope with the big idea. 
 
 " Freedom ! . . . Free as the sunshine and the air ! . . ." 
 
 Words had a great significance when it was Petrie that 
 spoke them. . . . 
 
 It was a huge idea, the most tremendous and thrilling that 
 she had ever tried to grapple with. 
 
 She stood a moment outside the study door in the darkened 
 hall, her heart and head a tumult in the soundless house. 
 
 . . . The twisting, cobbled ways of dream-built Holzgarten 
 twinkled again to her in the sunlight ; Petrie's words came back, 
 and again she saw the flash of fire that kindled in his eyes as 
 he spoke of the great illusionists with their dreams, their 
 laughter and their loves. But it was 'Freedom' the 
 stupendous, formless idea that dominated all these for Cynthia. 
 This it was that made the tumult in her. 
 
 She went very quietly upstairs. As she passed her mother's 
 door the tumult was stilled. 
 
 The door was shut. Mrs Petrie did not call to Cynthia ; 
 but Cynthia heard her move. 
 
 She was awake. 
 
 Cynthia ought, no doubt, to have gone in to her and said, 
 quite simply, " Mother, I am going to Holzgarten, to study 
 music." 
 
 But she did not go. Some time, and soon, she would have 
 to say it. ... She knew that. But she went very softly past 
 the door, and to bed. 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 77 
 
 As she got into bed she wondered if, even now, she ought 
 not perhaps to go into her mother's bedroom and tell her 
 tell her triumphantly and full of enthusiasm of the grand 
 scheme. . . . 
 
 But she was undressed and the night was bitterly cold. 
 She would be at a disadvantage, undressed and shivering 
 she could not hope, with chattering teeth, to float her mother 
 on a flood of enthusiasm. If she went now she could only hope 
 to go lugubriously, solemnly showing that she was well aware 
 of all the obstacles of detail that existed, even though these 
 obstacles could all be overcome ; she could go in and discuss 
 the arrangements that would have to be made . . . but this 
 did not seem so good a way of approaching the subject as the 
 other. . . . 
 
 Still, she felt rather a fool for having passed the door on 
 tiptoe instead of going in ; it showed that there was at least a 
 grain of truth in Petrie's wild words. . . . 
 
 Then suddenly she found some comfort. She was not a 
 fool. She was perfectly right ; for what would be the use of 
 making a fuss while she was still incapable of going ? And 
 how could she be capable of going till she could speak and 
 understand a little German ? Her father would teach her 
 German. She would ask him the very next day. 
 
 Again she was in a tumult. . . . The cobbled ways. . . . 
 Sunshine. , Freedom ! 
 
 
Chapter Five 
 
 i 
 
 PETRIE was too busy, he said, to start upon the German 
 lessons for a fortnight. So Cynthia had time to consider 
 the adventure before her in all its aspects. She considered it 
 coldly, and she considered it with pulses that throbbed in 
 the excitement and the glamour of it ; and always she was 
 able to see how thoroughly right she had been in her decision 
 to postpone taking her mother into her confidence till there 
 should be more obvious sense in doing so. 
 
 Time enough to talk about the thing when she knew some 
 German or, at any rate, not before she had at least begun to 
 learn it. 
 
 Then, one evening when she took in the ten o'clock tea, 
 Petrie carefully put together a heap of papers and laid them 
 in a drawer. With a flourish of finality he locked the drawer 
 and said, " There ! Finished ! We'll begin having a go at 
 the Deutsch now, Cyn, as soon as you like. Nine to ten in 
 the evening's the only time I can manage." 
 
 She tried not to show him how childishly she looked upon 
 this as a vital thing, and said casually, " Oh, good. . . . I've 
 been wondering about ordering a grammar book. . . ." 
 
 Petrie writhed. " Grammar book ! " he exclaimed. " Lord 
 preservers ! You don't want a grammar book with a man who 
 knows a language, Cynthia as a language. Nobody thinks of 
 learning to wrestle by studying skeletons. . . . Oh no. I've got 
 all the books we shall require, up there." He pointed to a stack 
 of dusty newspapers and some old books in a corner of his book- 
 case. She accepted this remark of his as one accepts a mystery. 
 
 She saw, too, that her story was very definitely carried a 
 step further, and there was no inducement whatever to argue 
 with Petrie on a point of detail. She remembered that he had 
 once been paid for teaching people German, and she gained 
 confidence from the reflection. 
 
 78 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 79 
 
 etrie yawned and said, " Better leave it till Monday now. 
 
 .ere's always some satisfaction in starting things on 
 
 onday. . . ." 
 
 Cynthia went to bed, trying to realise that she was now 
 within three days of the beginning of her adventure ; and 
 she wondered why her mother had not so much as referred to 
 the occasions on which she had come late to bed in that 
 fortnight, after talking to Petrie about Holzgarten. She 
 wondered how much Mrs Petrie had guessed . . . there was 
 nothing to show that she had not guessed it all, and accepted 
 it all without a comment. 
 
 For nearly two days Cynthia speculated with this attractive 
 idea, and on Sunday she said, " Mother, you're beginning to 
 look ever so much better, you know." 
 
 Mrs Petrie admitted that she felt better. 
 
 " Yes, but you must stay better, mother," said Cynthia. 
 " You must, in fact, get quite well" She tried to get all the 
 emphasis and innuendo possible into the words, but Mrs 
 Petrie offered no challenge, no encouragement. 
 
 " Oh, Pm well enough now, my dear," she said. " Don't 
 bother about me. The weather is so much better drier. It 
 agrees with me when it's dry. But you, my dear. . . . It's 
 you I'm anxious about. . . ." 
 
 " Because I am up a little bit late at nights, I suppose," 
 said Cynthia. " Well, I shouldn't worry about that, 
 mother. I've got a great deal to do just now, as a matter of 
 fact." 
 
 " So it would seem," said Mrs Petrie. " I wish I could 
 understand why. . . . Unless, of course, it is that you intend 
 becoming a musician." 
 
 " Becoming a musician ! " Cynthia exclaimed ; then paused. 
 She decided in the pause to give her mother another chance. 
 " Well," she added, " I've been rather fancying, as a matter 
 of fact, that I am already somewhat of a musician." 
 
 " Yes, I know, my dear," said Mrs Petrie, " but I meant a 
 professional musician." 
 
 " But surely I am a professional musician," Cynthia insisted ; 
 " I teach and accompany, don't I and get paid for it ? " 
 
 So Mrs Petrie had guessed nothing at all. 
 
80 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 This, as opportunities go, was not a propitious one for telling 
 her the things that she had not guessed. 
 
 There came from Cynthia the inevitable shrug. " Well," 
 she said, " it's no good worrying. To-morrow I'm going 
 to begin really working. Nine till ten every night." 
 
 " But why must you work in the night ? " asked Mrs Petrie. 
 
 " Because father's busy at every other time," said Cynthia. 
 
 Mrs Petrie said no more. The fact that the work was to 
 be carried on in the study left her nothing more to say. This 
 communicated itself quite clearly to Cynthia. 
 
 She had, however, given a broad and unmistakable hint. 
 
 It ought to be clear to anyone, she thought, that there was 
 a good deal more behind such a hint. . . . Her mother would 
 now have a better chance of guessing the state of affairs for 
 herself, of accepting facts quietly. 
 
 2 
 
 A few days later Cynthia sat in the train, coming home from 
 Melton. Wardrup was in his corner, dozing. 
 
 The day's events (namely, a proposal of marriage and the 
 refusal of it) had given her cause to think, and she was, 
 accordingly, seated forward, her chin in her hand, thinking. 
 
 She had a simple statement of a simple fact to make to her 
 mother, and she had not, so far, made it. 
 
 She was going abroad to study music. 
 
 That was the simple fact. " Mother, I'm going abroad to 
 study music properly . . ." that was all she needed to say, 
 and almost any day in the last four weeks there had been 
 nothing in the world to prevent her saying it. Yet she had not 
 said it. Why ? She simply did not know. 
 
 ... It was silly utterly weak. She would put it off no 
 longer. ' Things ' could conspire only to make it less easy. 
 
 She turned suddenly to the carpenter and said, " I'm going 
 away, you know. . . ." 
 
 He jerked up his nodding head with a start, then said, with 
 perfect composure, " Are you now, Miss. I hope it's nice 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 81 
 
 parts you be going to, I'm sure." Only his instinctive courtesy 
 prevented his again immediately drowsing. 
 
 His calm acceptance of the information reassured Cynthia. 
 He, a perfectly unbiassed judge, saw nothing in the proposition 
 to grow excited or furtive over ; and he did not even know 
 how great were the allurements offered by it. 
 
 Of course, she was merely exaggerating it all to herself ; 
 even the Chills seemed surprised that the mother did not 
 as yet know . . . weak . . . utterly silly . . . she would 
 tell her, quite quietly, that very night. 
 
 But when she got home she found that her mother was 
 in bed, resting, with a headache. She did not come down to 
 supper. She had been in the morning to see Sylvia, and the 
 heat (she had not been dressed suitably for heat) had upset her. 
 Cynthia took her up some arrowroot and dry toast, and saw 
 that their discussion must again be postponed. 
 
 At nine o'clock she went to the study. 
 
 " I say, father . . ." she began ; but Petrie stopped her with 
 a wave of his hand, and said " So ? " as a German word. 
 
 " Oh, in a minute ! " Cynthia said, " only I want to say 
 something to you first. You know old Mr Wibleigh ? . . ." 
 
 Petrie insisted on the observance of their rule. " Herr Vibli," 
 he said, " Herr Vibli von Melton ? Ja gewiss," and he nodded. 
 
 " Oh, very well," said Cynthia, and sat down. " Well 
 I mean wohl . . . Herr Vibli hat heute hat gesacht das 
 verde ich ihr I mean seine frau bekommen." 
 
 " So ? " said Petrie solemnly, " und du ? . . ." 
 
 " Ich ! " said Cynthia proudly. " Ich habe gesacht danke, 
 nein garnicht." 
 
 " And I should jolly well say so," exclaimed Petrie, for- 
 getting the rule. " The miserable old scamp ! Infernal 
 impudence of the fellow ! Thinks it's time to provide something 
 for himself to collapse upon, now that the collapse is fast 
 approaching. . . . Something with which to fill in his vacuous 
 moments. . . . The voluptuous, unscrupulous old dog ! Marry 
 him ! he must be sixty-five ! Suggested buying you, /'// 
 bet. . . ." 
 
 " Well, yes," said Cynthia ; " I suppose you could call it 
 that. . . . One would think I was something to eat. . . ." 
 
82 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Everyone is something to eat," Petrie said testily, " provided 
 one consents to be eaten. Only some are more digestible, 
 more tasty and sustaining than others. Bah ! these cannibals. 
 You look out for these wolves that want to marry you, Cynthia. 
 They're almost as poisonous . . ." 
 
 " And that," Cynthia interrupted, " is what you were going 
 to say about ' sex,' I suppose. It was written on that paper, 
 you know, that you threw in the fire, that first night . . ." 
 
 " Yes," said Petrie, " or words to that effect. . . . The only 
 harmless people, Cynthia, are the ones that don't insist on your 
 spending your life within earshot of them. ' Bekommen ' 
 by the way, does not mean * to become ' ! " 
 
 " Oh, doesn't it ? " said Cynthia. " I do think men are 
 very funny though." 
 
 " Men are not funny," Petrie corrected her. " The joke 
 that's been played on them is humorous enough, but they are 
 only the victims of it. They, personally, get very little out 
 of this great joke of sex. . . . I'm glad, however, that you sent 
 that old idiot about his business. And so we will return to 
 the Tower of Babel." 
 
 He opened a book. 
 
 3 
 
 The next morning passed as most mornings passed with 
 the things to be seen to in the kitchen, the bedrooms, the 
 shopping, and the score of odd tasks that ended abruptly with 
 lunch. It was a half-holiday for the children, and so the meal 
 was a more leisurely affair than on other days. It was no better 
 an opportunity for opening her subject than a great many that 
 had preceded it. But the jar given by old Mr Wibleigh's 
 stammered proposal of the day before to circumstances seemingly 
 static still urged Cynthia forward. She realised that no 
 opportunity was likely to be any better. 
 
 This one had, as a matter of fact, decided strategic points. 
 The presence of Freda and Conrad would, for one thing, 
 impose certain rules of conduct on Mrs Petrie ; and this was 
 decidedly in Cynthia's favour. Secondly, the necessity for food 
 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 83 
 
 keep them all bound to the spot for a definite period ; 
 md lastly, a line of retreat was open to Cynthia herself, whither 
 none could follow her ; for, the moment that the pudding- 
 dish was handed back to Mrs Simpson, she could say just 
 whatever came into her head about * practising ' and disappear 
 forthwith into the study. . . . 
 
 The commencement of the meal led to the discovery by 
 Mrs Petrie that another plate had been cracked by being 
 placed in too hot an oven. Conrad drew air very noisily into 
 his mouth and suggested that Mrs Simpson (or whoever had 
 tried to make the soup) had apparently allowed some of it 
 to get into the pepper. 
 
 Freda remarked that some girl's father had died on Monday, 
 and that some other girl was sure it was due to drink. . . . 
 
 Cynthia realised that nothing under the sun could lead 
 naturally up to her subject. It would have to be thrust boldly 
 and brutally forward. 
 
 " Mother," she said, " whatever possessed you to get so 
 alarmed the other day about my studying music ? " 
 
 " I wasn't alarmed, my dear," said Mrs Petrie, becoming 
 uncomfortable ; " you will do just exactly as you please. I 
 realise that." 
 
 " Well, at any rate, you weren't exactly overjoyed about 
 it. But it isn't as though it was any new-fangled idea. I've 
 always known something about it, haven't I ? " 
 
 " Yes, exactly," said Mrs Petrie ; " that is precisely why I 
 may have shown some little surprise. You do know a great 
 deal about it. You already know far more, I should think, 
 than Sylvia ever did, and she found it quite sufficient for her 
 needs. . . . Unless, of course, you propose taking it up 
 professionally. . . ." 
 
 Cynthia squirmed at the way she said that particular word. 
 They had, however, come to the point at last. " And why 
 shouldn't I think of taking it up professionally ? " she asked 
 quietly. 
 
 Conrad clicked his thumb-nails together, and said, " Good 
 old Beethoven ! " 
 
 " Idiot ! " said Cynthia, but made the mistake of smiling 
 at him. 
 
84 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Vociferous applause," said he, bowing over his soup. 
 
 " Oh, do shut up, boy," said Cynthia. " I rather want to 
 get at this, mother. . . . And is there any reason why I should 
 not take it up professionally ? " 
 
 " And is there any reason why you should, dear ? " said 
 Mrs Petrie, doggedly. Cynthia merely grunted, refusing to 
 grant this retort the status of an answer. Mrs Petrie added, 
 " Sylvia didn't seem to find it necessary, did she, my dear ? 
 And she strikes me now as very happy, Pm sure." 
 
 Cynthia suggested, " Perhaps Sylvia never wanted to be a 
 musician ; there's no knowing. I must say I can't see very 
 much against one's being a musician. Why, mother, you were 
 studying to be one, yourself, you know ; and girls didn't do 
 half the things then that they do now." 
 
 " No," said Mrs Petrie, with great significance, " they 
 certainly did not." 
 
 The irrelevance of this, and the general effect upon the 
 listeners of Mrs Petrie's having scored, dislocated the dis- 
 cussion for a few moments. 
 
 Mrs Simpson came in and placed the rib of pork before 
 Cynthia, and she began to carve. 
 
 When everyone but herself was served, Cynthia said, " I 
 expect the fact of the matter is that you're afraid I might make 
 a mess of it fail." 
 
 " I had never thought about it one way or the other." And 
 Mrs Petrie's tone implied that thinking about it even now was 
 rather a waste of time. " Such a thing would never occur 
 to me." 
 
 " But, my dear mother," said Cynthia, " why ever not ? 
 I should have thought that it would be the most natural thing 
 in the world to occur to you. My parents are both musicians, 
 and Sylvia and I were taught to play before we could walk, 
 almost. ... At any rate, / was, so I don't at all see why it 
 should surprise you. It seems to me the most natural . . ." 
 
 " It is not natural for any girl to be alone in the world." 
 
 " But you were," said Cynthia. 
 
 " That was different," said Mrs Petrie. " My parents 
 expressly wished it. They wanted me to study music. It 
 was, at any rate, a mistake but it was their mistake." 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 85 
 
 " Oh," said Cynthia, " so parents can make mistakes, then 
 
 sometimes." 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs Petrie, turning defeat to partial victory by 
 
 heavily enigmatic tone ; " everyone can make mistakes, 
 
 sometimes." 
 
 
 Cynthia saw that every innuendo of her mother's suggested 
 a side issue, upon which it would be the easiest thing in the 
 world to digress ; but she was not to be diverted. The 
 discussion, too, the actual saying of things, was turning out 
 far easier than she had expected. 
 
 " I suppose," she said, " that you had thought of something 
 for me, mother. . . . now that I'm more or less grown up." 
 
 The atmosphere had grown too heavy for Conrad to use 
 the opening that this remark presented to him. He glanced 
 at Freda, but Freda, too, perceived that gravity was to prevail. 
 
 " And what is there to think of ? " asked the mother. " You 
 have, as you say, grown up, Cynthia. That in itself is enough 
 for the present, surely. . . . Look at Sylvia ; it was not 
 necessary to think of anything for her, once she had grown 
 up. . . ." 
 
 Cynthia knew exactly what she had to say now ; she had, 
 in fact, known it for weeks. Once again she was surprised to 
 find that the saying of it seemed to present so little difficulty. 
 " I suppose," she said, " that you mean we could just wait 
 for some one to marry me ! " 
 
 It was impossible for her to hide the disdain she felt. Freda 
 and Conrad were now very thoroughly attentive. Mrs Petrie 
 noted this and became more uncomfortable. The subject 
 struck her as indecent, but there was no possible retreat (the 
 suet pudding had not yet even appeared). 
 
 " Well," she said evasively, " Pm sure I don't see why we 
 should worry ourselves. You are still very young to think 
 of these things, my dear." 
 
 Thus, by sheer accident, Cynthia found the handle of a 
 weapon offering itself to her. She smiled, and took it. 
 
 " I rise to announce," she said, with Conradesque solemnity, 
 " that I received a very good offer of marriage when I was 
 about twenty-two hours younger than I am at this moment." 
 
 Conrad stated himself to be jiggered. 
 
86 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 The explosive sound from Freda stated nothing so exact ; 
 while Mrs Petrie stared at Cynthia and said, " Cynthia ! how 
 how can you ? " 
 
 " As a matter of fact," she replied, with perfect composure, 
 " I couldn't ; and didn't. . . . Come on, Boyo ..." and she 
 gave Conrad a baked potato, richly browned after his own 
 heart. " But it was a good offer all the same. . . . Money : 
 not a fortune, of course, but quite enough for comfort without 
 luxury and ostentation ; and a very good chance of being 
 left a widow of independent means at an early age. . . ." 
 
 " Cynthia," said Mrs Petrie, looking apprehensively at the 
 astounded Freda, " this is no joke. It is irreverent and coarse 
 to jest upon such a subject." 
 
 " But no one is jesting," said Cynthia, " it's perfectly true" 
 
 " Then your attitude just proves," said Mrs Petrie, " how 
 much too young you are to think and speak of these things 
 at all. And since this thing should have happened on your one 
 day in the week away from home, you ought to be able to see 
 the kind of thing that music as a profession would expose 
 you to every day. . . ." 
 
 " You mean marriage ? " Cynthia asked sweetly. " But it 
 is not their professions or their educations that expose women 
 to marriage it is their sex, mother, don't you think ? " 
 
 She wished that Petrie could have heard her saying that. 
 Mrs Petrie flashed a quick glance at the door which com- 
 municated through the hall with the study ; then she looked 
 down again at her plate. 
 
 " Of course I shall tell you all about it later on, mother," 
 Cynthia said ; " but it's all over and done with. I do wish 
 you would explain now why you don't want me to take up 
 music." 
 
 Mrs Petrie could scarcely sit still. She hated being cornered 
 on such a subject, and she hated the presence of the children. 
 
 " I don't see why there should be all this bother," she said, 
 still seeking escape. " I don't see why you cannot wait a 
 little. . . ." 
 
 " Oh yes," said Cynthia, " for * Mr Right ' to come along, I 
 suppose. I'm sure that's what you mean, though you won't 
 say it. ... Of course, I admit I might fail in music, mother. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 87 
 
 But then, mightn't I fail in marriage just the same ? Heaps 
 of people do, you know." 
 
 This was another remark that she would have liked Petrie 
 to hear. 
 
 Mrs Petrie's lip quivered ; the pallid eyelids drooped and 
 flickered over her eyes. " You have acquired a very strange 
 manner of speaking, my dear," she said coldly, " from from 
 somewhere" 
 
 " I'm sorry, mummy," said Cynthia ; " only it does seem to 
 me high time that we began to think of this. Freda is growing 
 up, you see." The effect of this tactical fluke was instantaneous. 
 Freda came over the border-line of neutrality into open 
 alliance. Cynthia followed it up ; " Freda will finish with 
 school very soon now, and I can be free to to " 
 
 " To what ? " asked Mrs Petrie, de profundis. 
 
 " Well " Cynthia hesitated, " to do whatever's best. I 
 mean, Freda's being at home would make me sort of super- 
 fluous in the house." 
 
 Now she was beginning to find the talk a little less easy. 
 
 " And do you think, my dear," said Mrs Petrie, looking at 
 her very closely, " that a daughter is ever superfluous to 
 her mother ? " 
 
 There, Cynthia saw, was the whole matter in a nutshell. 
 And she had not the heart to crack the nut at a single 
 stroke. . . . 
 
 " I don't mean superfluous exactly," she said, fidgeting ; 
 " I mean I could be spared much more easily to to study, 
 and and all that sort of thing. . . ." 
 
 Mrs Simpson now came in with the pudding. Mrs Petrie 
 astonished her children by getting up and going slowly, and 
 perfectly silent, upstairs. 
 
 Cynthia had suspected not even the possibility of her doing 
 this. She had timed things on her assumption of the stability 
 of rites ; so she now collapsed, overpowered by a general 
 sense of the futility of everything. 
 
 The really big thing the only practical thing, in fact, that 
 needed just a little thought and working out in detail had 
 not even been mentioned between them. After a few pointless 
 generalities and irrelevances her mother had simply gone 
 
88 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 out of reach gone, too, without her pudding. If she behaved 
 thus over matters of fancy, what was to be expected when they 
 came to matters of fact ? . . . Cynthia thought bitterly of 
 her father's suggestion that she should steal aw^y like a thief 
 at the dead of night ; of his melodramatic gestures. She 
 wondered how it came about that there was always good sound 
 truth in the things he said, however wildly and extravagantly 
 he might say them. . . . And she knew exactly what was likely 
 to follow such a scene. 
 
 Freda and Conrad also knew, and Conrad had brought home 
 a word for it, a word which became devoted to this particular 
 thing and used for no other. The word was ' acrimony.' 
 It had acquired a special and individual significance over and 
 above its ordinary literary meaning. It stood as the brief 
 but exact symbol for the silences and inaudible sighs and 
 reluctant footsteps of Mrs Petrie hurt and apprehensive ; 
 it stood for Cynthia's impatience and irritability and for the 
 deft and hurried movements with which she helped to express 
 them ; it stood for Mrs Simpson's grim neutrality in such 
 matters ; for Freda's petulance and for Conrad's own atti- 
 tude in the circumstances a slightly supercilious one vaguely 
 resembling that of a bored master of ceremonies. ... It 
 was, in short, the one word of the language that denoted all 
 the outward and visible signs of discord, when discord pre- 
 vailed in the Petrie household. 
 
 A period, then, of t acrimony ' had unmistakably set in. ... 
 
 " When you've done reading the pudding, sister mine," 
 Conrad said languidly, thrusting his plate towards Cynthia, 
 " you might bowl us another over of it. Eh, Freda ? . . . 
 Not so dusty to-day. . . ." 
 
 Freda said, " You don't mean to let me in for all the work 
 when term finishes, do you, Cynthia ? " 
 
 " Not this term," said Cynthia, quietly. " And, at any rate, 
 there's heaps of time yet before we need to start bothering 
 about that." 
 
 " There didn't seem to be much time to spare a minute or 
 two ago ! " 
 
 But Cynthia was not to be drawn. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 89 
 
 4 
 
 Since nothing but food and foot-gear passed from the 
 
 5t of the household to the study, the acrimony remained 
 outside it. 
 
 And there the stifling atmosphere of acrimony was breathed 
 for three whole weeks, till Cynthia became determined at all 
 costs to clear it. 
 
 For those three oppressive weeks no one had striven after 
 greater brightness than monosyllables. 
 
 Mrs Petrie and the children were already seated at supper 
 when she got home from Melton. 
 
 " Good gracious \ " she said, " I am glad." Even this amount 
 of vivacity seemed to startle them. 
 
 " I shan't even wait to wash my hands," she continued, and 
 sat down. " I don't know when I've felt so hungry ! " 
 
 " You're looking quite flushed," said Mrs Petrie. 
 
 " I shouldn't be surprised at all," said Cynthia, without 
 any of the defensiveness that usually followed such charges. 
 " I'm tired, too dreadfully" 
 
 " An egg beaten up in milk," said Mrs Petrie, " is just what 
 you need." She obviously expected very little to come of 
 the suggestion ; nothing did. 
 
 " I have had such an exciting day," said Cynthia ; " I want 
 to talk it over with you, mother afterwards." 
 
 Freda and Conrad acknowledged the insult offered them 
 by a raising of eyebrows and wrinkling up of noses. 
 
 " Cheer up, babies," said Cynthia, seeing the acknowledg- 
 ment, " you'll hear all about it soon enough. It's nothing 
 very much only I just want to talk it over with mother 
 first." 
 
 She was setting out consciously, and with all the cheerful tact 
 she possessed, to end the loathsome state of glumness on the 
 part of them all. Her mother saw it and responded. 
 
 " Why, of course, dear," she said ; " to whom else ought 
 you to talk about these things, but me ? " 
 
 She was, nevertheless, uneasy ; and the ball, for all 
 Cynthia's cheerful small talk, was just barely kept rolling. 
 
90 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Freda was resentfully confident that not another word would 
 be heard of the thing till the engagement was actually 
 announced. 
 
 Conrad had long been fairly certain that at least half of life 
 is perfect nonsense, and Cynthia's banter only served to 
 confirm this view. 
 
 " Clear away like a dear," she said to Freda, when they 
 had finished. " We'll go into the drawing-room, mother." 
 
 " Oh, do cheer up, mummy," she said, as the door closed 
 upon them, " you'll make me feel I've done something perfectly 
 terrible, when it is the most usual thing in the world. . . . 
 They are such dears, you know. They've asked me to to 
 to I mean they've persuaded me to spend a fortnight with 
 them. The vicar . . ." she stopped and looked at Mrs 
 Petrie. 
 
 She was sitting perfectly silent and still, staring coldly 
 in front of her. " So that," she said slowly, " is what you 
 wished to say to me ? " 
 
 Then Cynthia laughed. " Good gracious ! . . . I suppose 
 it's that absurd Mr Wibleigh business you thought I was 
 going to talk about. Why I had almost forgotten about 
 the thing. . . ." 
 
 But two tears had by this time run down Mrs Petrie's pale 
 cheeks. " So this," she said bitterly, " is the way you have 
 chosen to punish me. I see" 
 
 " Mother" said Cynthia, " I can't think what on earth 
 possesses you sometimes, to talk the way you do. How does 
 it punish you, or anyone else, for me to go away for a few days, 
 to visit friends ? Doesn't everyone in the world do it 
 except us ; because we, of course, never do anything that 
 other people do. . . ." 
 
 " I know, my dear ; that is all perfectly true. But anyone 
 can see why it should come just now after the last few days. 
 It is very unkind of you, Cynthia. There is quite sufficient 
 sadness in the house without our becoming estranged, so that 
 we should seek opportunities like this of retaliation. . . ." 
 
 " But who is estranged ? " Cynthia thrust in ; " what 
 retaliation ? " 
 
 " This," said Mrs Petrie doggedly. " If you were happy 
 
'HE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 91 
 
 at home, my dear, you would not seize upon the first oppor- 
 tunity of going away from it." 
 
 " What nonsense," said Cynthia. " I haven't seized any- 
 thing at all. They asked me, I tell you, mother they've 
 asked me heaps of times. They're not an unhappy family, 
 yet they always go away from their father to aunts or something 
 in Birmingham or somewhere, while he goes fishing in Devon- 
 shire. They're not estranged by it, I'm sure ; so why on earth 
 should we be ? " 
 
 Mrs Petrie only said, " Why indeed should we ? " 
 
 " I'm sure I don't know," said Cynthia ; " I wish I did 
 unless, of course, it's because you're annoyed with me for 
 spending a whole hour every day in the study. ..." 
 
 " My dear" said Mrs Petrie, and sat up very straight in her 
 chair, " that is a thing that you must never say. It is the most 
 cruel thing in the world for children to be torn between their 
 parents." Very sadly she added, " It is always the children 
 that pay." 
 
 The fact that Cynthia had read this in some book or other 
 hardened her, so she only grunted. 
 
 " How was I to know anything about this ? " Mrs Petrie 
 continued ; " you never told me your friends had asked you 
 before. . . ." 
 
 " What would have been the good ? Only now, when you 
 seemed to be keeping so much better, and Freda is older 
 and more responsible, I couldn't see any harm in suggesting 
 it. The change will do me good." 
 
 " You did not tell me that you were not well," said Mrs 
 Petrie ; " though I have thought it myself." 
 
 " Oh, of course, I am perfectly well," said Cynthia wearily, 
 " and you know it, mother. But the change will do me 
 good all the same. Well ? " 
 
 Mrs Petrie shrugged her shoulders. " What is it you want 
 me to say, dear ? " she asked. " I really cannot see why 
 you should bother to mention it to me at all. You seem 
 to have made up your mind." 
 
 Cynthia calmly lied. " Because, of course, I thought you 
 would be so delighted at the idea of my having such a pleasant 
 holiday with my friends ; because I knew that you had been 
 
92 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 worrying about my working so hard, and because I know 
 that you would just love the Chills yourself if you knew them. 
 Only one hates to ask anyone to come here, you make such a 
 fuss about the tea and things, and make everyone feel perfectly 
 awful the way you try to palm off the dry bits of cake and 
 the thick pieces of bread and butter and things on the family. 
 And also, mother, if you really want to know, I thought it 
 would be a good way of ending this this oh, I don't know 
 what to call it of the last few days. It's been perfectly 
 hateful . . . nothing but c acrimony ' ! " 
 
 Mrs Petrie rose. " Of course you must go, my dear," she 
 said : " perhaps it will do you good. I can manage the house 
 perfectly well while you're gone." 
 
 " Manage ! " exclaimed Cynthia ; " what managing is there, 
 except getting the suppers ? and Freda can do that. Mrs 
 Simpson will do the rest. I'll get everything perfectly straight 
 before I go, and I shall be back before you've had time to 
 notice that I'm gone. . . . You might cheer up now, mummy. 
 It's only the next station but two that I'm going to not 
 the North Pole, or anything like that. . . ." 
 
 But Mrs Petrie did not cheer up. " Oh, I know it is all 
 perfectly simple, my dear." 
 
 She implied that there were subtleties and complications 
 and hidden difficulties that Cynthia could not even suspect ; 
 and she went out of the room. 
 
 Cynthia did not particularly want, any more, to spend a 
 fortnight with the Chills. The whole suggestion seemed to 
 be as pointless and futile as the argument with her mother had 
 been. But she resolved to go ; and upon this resolution, though 
 it was now cold and utterly lifeless, she supported herself. 
 
 She had said she would go, and go she certainly would. 
 
 5 
 
 Freda walked to the station with her the following Tuesday 
 morning. As they went along, Cynthia felt a thrill of triumph 
 in having carried this thing through. She felt a sense of 
 initiative, new strength. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 93 
 
 As they crossed the lines for the Down platform, she 
 said, " Mind now, if the Spiers say any more about it, do 
 say you will go as soon as I get back. . . . I'm sure it would 
 be a great deal better if we could all get away for a bit like 
 other people. Mother, too ; it would do her all the good 
 in the world, to get away from the fussing and worrying. 
 . . . And mind, Free, do let me know at once if she is ill, 
 and I'll come back. . . ." 
 
 " H'm," said Freda gloomily. " Isn't she always ill ? " 
 
 " Yes, but I mean ill," Cynthia answered ; " really ill. 
 You will be able to tell : I don't mean just fussy, because 
 she's made like that, I suppose. Still, I've left nothing for any 
 of you to fuss about. It's all in apple-pie order even the 
 meals. . . ." 
 
 Wardrup, the carpenter, followed them down the platform 
 and got into the compartment after Cynthia, mumbling his 
 " G'mornin, Miss, excuse me kindly thank you," and touching 
 his cap. 
 
 Freda casually and cheerfully took his greeting to herself, 
 answered it accordingly, and stood talking to Cynthia over 
 the window-ledge till the train went out. 
 
 Wardrup looked long at the strapped bag beside Cynthia 
 and then said, " Away at last, Miss ? " 
 
 " Oh no. Only for a day or two just now," she answered 
 shortly. The necessity for this answer jarred upon her. She 
 had waved her hand to Freda in triumph. 
 
 Now, with this admission, the illusion of triumph was gone. 
 
 The fellow had annoyed her, too, by the proprietary 
 almost familiar manner of his * good-morning ' and his 
 assured stride to the corner of the compartment ; and also 
 he had offended her by the friendly way Freda had answered 
 him. . . . Then she tried to picture poor Mr Wibleigh, the 
 man who had astonished her by his comical proposal, at 
 Wardrup's age Mr Wibleigh before his skin became porous 
 and blotchy, before the red of his eyelids spread to the dull 
 whites of his eyes, before the four hairs grew out upon his nose, 
 before his hands became purposeless and fat and moist and 
 boneless 
 
Chapter Six 
 
 i 
 
 THE easy companionship of the Chills made her think 
 what a mountain she had made out of this molehill 
 this perfectly simple thing of coming away for a fortnight ; 
 yet when nine days of it had passed, she decided to go home on 
 Saturday instead of Tuesday. . . . 
 
 It would be a pleasant little surprise for her mother ; for she 
 had, after all, cheered up wonderfully before Cynthia left. 
 She had assumed the little responsibilities with a grand little 
 air. She deserved a reward, encouragement. . . . 
 
 It was on Saturday, therefore, that Cynthia went home. 
 
 Turning from Station Road into the High Street she saw 
 Petrie in the distance, coming towards her. She noticed at 
 once how vastly he differed from everyone else on the crowded 
 pavements, though there was nothing striking enough in his 
 dress to distinguish him from the men around him. His collar 
 was low and soft, his grey suit a little worn perhaps, but these 
 were details, and could not set him apart at a distance of a 
 hundred yards. 
 
 What did distinguish him at a glance from other men was 
 the fact that Petrie in his study or his bedroom and Petrie 
 in the High Street were in every detail the same person which 
 is a thing that can be said of not one man in a thousand. The 
 act of stepping from the hearth to the public highway 
 transforms men as by magic. The assumption of a hat still 
 possesses some of its mystical properties, and this phenomenon 
 is not confined to its most glaring examples policemen and 
 tram-conductors. 
 
 With the placing of his hat upon his head whether the hat 
 be a recognised emblem of his office or simple billy-cock or 
 bowler, the individual placer ceases at once to be an individual 
 father with an irritable disposition, a collector of china or butter- 
 flies, a bee-keeper, or a fancier of sweet-peas. He assumes at 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 95 
 
 once his character of a public unit in the public scheme. He 
 squares his shoulders and looks out upon the world with an 
 importance which is neither greater nor less than his domestic 
 importance, but merely differs from it. In dining-room or 
 study the ordinary man is one thing ; in the High Street, 
 hatted and walking-sticked, where the tram picks up people 
 coming from the station, he is quite another : but not so 
 Petrie. This fact alone would have sufficed to win for him 
 the reputation for eccentricity that he enjoyed. 
 
 As he walked along the pavement among the busy shoppers, 
 he might just as well have been ambling from his desk to the 
 piano. The housewives and perambulators in his way could 
 just as well have been intervening pieces of furniture. His 
 nondescript hat was nothing to him, thrust away as it was from 
 his brow to the back of his head. It obviously had not got 
 upon his head in the process of any rite ; it appeared to have 
 got there by the merest accident. His stick remained under 
 his arm also by accident the pressure of his humerus upon 
 his ribs. His pipe hung as ever from his teeth between 
 lips parted in the whimsical smile that now often took the 
 place of the old wry one. Upon everyone who passed him 
 he bestowed the inoffensive stare of an artist, the stare that 
 people other than artists can bestow only upon inanimate 
 objects. 
 
 " Hello, father," said Cynthia, " fancy meeting you" 
 
 " On the contrary," said Petrie, " I am exactly here at 
 exactly this same hour every day. Fancy, / should say, meeting 
 you. I thought it was Tuesday that you returned whither 
 away now ? " 
 
 " Oh, home, of course for some tea," said Cynthia. " Let's 
 take the car I'm sick of carrying this thing." 
 
 " Let us do no such thing," said Petrie. " Let us rather 
 repair to yonder caravanserai named, Heaven only knows 
 why, the ' Bungalow,' and let us there drink our dish of tea. 
 We will leave the luggage of which you so bitterly complain 
 at the aforesaid misnamed ' Bungalow,' and walk as far as the 
 gas works on Wilton's Hill. There we will take the air with 
 our good fellow-citizens of Pelchester." 
 
 " Oh, father ! " Cynthia exclaimed. 
 
96 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Petrie turned and looked at her a moment. " If you have 
 anything else to do, Cynthia," he said very solemnly, " or 
 if you would rather not for Heaven's sake say so. Please 
 don't do anything against your own wishes to meet any imagined 
 need of mine now or at any other time. Remember that, 
 Cynthia, please." His seriousness struck Cynthia, at that 
 moment, as slightly comical. 
 
 She touched his arm. " Indeed I'm not tired, daddy," 
 she said, " or anything else of that sort. . . . It's just . . ." 
 but she did not say what it was, for the very simple reason that 
 it was very difficult to say that kind of thing to Petrie. Her 
 thought was that she had never before, to her knowledge, been 
 out for a walk with him ; that she had "never even considered 
 the possibility of such a thing, and her delight in the prospect 
 had surprised her into the exclamation. 
 
 They left her bag with the woman in the cash-desk, and sat 
 down at a table from which they could see every other table 
 in the room. 
 
 Cynthia hurried over her tea because she was impatient to 
 be off upon the walk ; Petrie hurried because he had hurried 
 over every meal he had eaten in the last twenty years. 
 
 Soon they were upon the road leading out of the High Street 
 and named from the same fantastic lack of all reason that 
 the three-storeyed, party-walled ' Bungalow ' was named the 
 ' Bungalow ' ' Queen's Walk.' 
 
 He was astonishingly gay as they tramped along, fooling 
 almost as she would have expected Conrad to fool. 
 
 Laughing at some silly joke he had made, with an absurd 
 gesture he flicked a broken beer-bottle out of their path with 
 his stick. 
 
 Cynthia, too, smiled at his laughter and at the slanting 
 sunlight on the hill in front of them. She slipped her arm 
 within his and said, " You do love talking nonsense, daddy, 
 don't you ? I do believe you could be quite funny, you 
 know." 
 
 " You are right," said Petrie ; " I could, and can and as 
 a matter of fact I often am. Your brother, too, I find is a 
 humorist though of a somewhat broader school than myself. 
 I had the pleasure of meeting him on the stairs the other day 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 97 
 
 carrying a small new writing-cabinet. I, like a fool, asked him 
 what it was, and he said, with tremendous solemnity, ' A 
 steam roller. Being a gift from Mrs Petrie to her daughter, 
 in brackets Mrs Beethoven.' I'm blest if I can say why, 
 but there was something distinctly comical about the boy's 
 remark. It must have been his dignity, I should think 
 his dignity with me is always colossal." 
 
 Cynthia had stopped following his words ; she was merely 
 waiting for him to finish. 
 
 " I wonder what possessed mother to get me a writing- 
 cabinet," she said, slightly frowning. " Poor mother ! " 
 
 " Never heard of the Greeks, I suppose, when they bear 
 gifts ? " said Petrie. 
 
 She never had, but she knew from the way he said it that 
 it was not said out of kindness. " I do so wonder," she said, 
 " in fact I'm always wondering, what you and mother could 
 have quarrelled about. . . ." 
 
 Petrie said abruptly, " I would have you know that I have 
 never quarrelled with a single soul in all my life." 
 
 " Oh, very well, then," said Cynthia ; " if it wasn't a quarrel, 
 I would like to know what it could have been that happened." 
 
 " Nothing whatever did happen," said Petrie. " That as 
 the phrase goes is just it. The fact of the matter is that your 
 mother, poor woman, has simply omitted to find her modus 
 vivendi. . . . Heaps of people do, you know. . . . Yes, poor 
 woman. . . ." 
 
 " If you're as sorry as all that for her, I don't see why you 
 never do anything for her." 
 
 Petrie laughed. " And why," he said, " don't you ? " 
 
 Cynthia thought a few moments in silence, and then said, 
 humbly, " I know. It is difficult. . . . Poor mother. . . . 
 I do think though, father, that you could be just a little 
 sort of kinder to mother, you know." 
 
 " Then," said Petrie, so calmly that they might have been 
 discussing the time of a train, " you are quite wrong. When 
 once you have taken, let us say, a butterfly away from its 
 proper element and its proper butterfly food when you have 
 once done this, whether by accident or oversight it is utterly 
 impossible to be kind. It is no kinder to offer it venison, or 
 
98 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 game, or even larks' tongues, than simply beefsteak. It is 
 sentimental but it is not the least bit kind. You see, if you 
 have no stock of butterfly food well, what are you to do ? " 
 
 " And was it by accident, then, or oversight that you married 
 mother and brought me into the world ? " 
 
 " H'm," said Petrie, " we parents are a much-abused class. 
 It is most unjust that our offspring should reproach us 
 Bringing them into the world indeed ! As though we forced 
 life upon them ! We merely give them the option of it. ... If 
 you don't like it well," he shrugged his shoulders, " there's 
 hemlock and canals, to say nothing of dozens of perfectly good 
 veins almost on the very surface. You need bear me no malice 
 on that score. . . ." 
 
 " Indeed I do not," said Cynthia. " To tell you the truth, 
 I think I am getting very fond of life. To-day's been perfect, 
 so far. But tell me, why did you marry mother ? " 
 
 " Why shouldn't I ? " he asked. " Tell me, why shouldn't 
 I ? I assure you, / feel no bitterness." 
 
 " I daresay you don't," said Cynthia ; " but what about 
 mother ? " 
 
 " Ah, yes," said Petrie. " Yes, Cynthia, I did her quite an 
 injury. I admit that. Still, if I had not done it, the odds 
 are a thousand to one that some one else would have so I 
 feel no remorse. On the contrary, I am very often intensely 
 happy ; more often than most people, I think. To-day, for 
 instance. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Cynthia ; " do tell me what has put you in 
 such a good temper to-day." 
 
 " A phrase" said Petrie, with great gusto ; " the phrase 
 being ' beauty of function.' ' 
 
 He paused dramatically over the disclosure, and Cynthia, 
 seeing from the pause and the gesture that the disclosure had, 
 in fact, been made, said, " Well, I must say it doesn't take very 
 much to cheer you up." 
 
 " It's not very much," said Petrie, " it's merely a label that 
 is not inconsistent with the rest of my views on the subject 
 of Beauty. It is not very likely to interest you much before 
 you are seventy or seventy-five years of age, for you are not, 
 by nature, what I call a thinker. I am ; and so, having agreed 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 99 
 
 that there is a beauty of form and sound and colour, it is nice 
 to have a name for the thing that preoccupies people who 
 write books and plays and make jokes and that kind of thing. 
 Contemplation of sound makes a musician, and so contempla- 
 tion of function makes a writer and a reader. D'you see ? " 
 Urn," said Cynthia, " yes." 
 
 And so," he continued, " my interest in yourself is due 
 to the fact that you share with the rest of humanity in this 
 business of functioning. ... At the present moment, owing 
 to a few accidents such as your age and sex and your aptitude 
 to contemplate sound, and your ambition and sentimentality, 
 and the relationship of daughters to the mothers, your 
 functioning is made somewhat intense and interesting. In 
 short, Cynthia, you are in a crisis." 
 
 " I don't see anything particularly beautiful about that \ " 
 Cynthia sniffed. 
 
 " N-no," he agreed ; " it is not necessarily pretty. But 
 was the functioning of Hamlet pretty ? . . . However, that 
 is too big a question for the moment. I am, as a matter of fact, 
 most sympathetic with you, Cyn ; I would help you if I 
 could. But there ! I can't, because nobody can. ' The race 
 is run, by one and one,' you know. It's just that that tragedy 
 is made of tragedy, I mean, as opposed to mere blood-letting. 
 . . . But tell me, how far has your crisis got ? " 
 
 Cynthia hesitated before saying, " Well, we've nearly got 
 one dress done. The Chill girls did it with me. . . ." 
 
 A roar of laughter from Petrie stopped her. As he laughed 
 he pressed her hand to his side. " And so," he said, " they 
 appear to encourage the plan ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, they're ever so excited. You see, they think 
 well, they think I'm sure to do wonders. They I mean the 
 girls, not Mr Chill have no what you call ' ear ' for music." 
 
 " And what does the one who does possess an ear think ? 
 Does the possession of it make him any the less enthusiastic ? " 
 
 " Oh, no," said Cynthia ; " but he's a good deal less excited. 
 He seems to have got very fond of me, and oh, I don't know 
 he seems rather worried about it. I think he imagines that 
 I am awfully young, and that it will be very hard not music, 
 you know, but the life" 
 
 
ioo THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Therein," said Petrie, " I venture to disagree with the 
 reverend gentleman. Music, my dear, is much harder than 
 life. Any fool can live. Action, so called, is the easiest thing 
 in the world ; it does itself, usually, if you only let it. Music 
 does not nor does any other form of contemplation, whether 
 it is of colour, form or -function. But let me tell you in 
 confidence, Cynthia what that benign old party is worried 
 about is only your personal beauty." 
 
 " Oh," said Cynthia, looking up at her father, " so you do 
 admit that I am a little pretty ? " 
 
 " God forbid," said he quietly. " You are too big, for one 
 thing, to be pretty yards too big ; physically and spiritually, 
 too big. But to put the matter rather crudely, Cynthia, you 
 have some first-class bait. What the old boy fears is that you 
 might snare something strong and blundering enough to smash 
 up the trap altogether. Of course, you might. But there 
 is nothing to be done about it. He is quite wrong in thinking 
 that a few years one way or the other can make any difference 
 to that. What is summed up as * sex ' is one of the few fixes * 
 in which being forewarned is not being forearmed. Everyone 
 ought, of course, to know the fundamental facts. . . ." 
 
 " And what are they ? " asked Cynthia. 
 
 " Oh, Lord," said he, a little impatiently, " you must know 
 them. You must have known them years ago or rather it, 
 for there is only one such fundamental fact. Briefly, it is that 
 by the laws of nature it is far, far easier for you to become a 
 mother than a musician. It is very alarming, and a great 
 menace to anything else you may plan to do. It is apt to lead 
 you into digressions ; and that is what old Chill sees. It would 
 have saved a great deal of time one way and another if I had sent 
 you forth on this quest of yours cross-eyed and hunch-backed, 
 with the scowl of a hell-hag and a tongue of aloes and venom : 
 but I have, instead, complicated your quest and served the 
 interests of Life, spelt in capitals, by sending you forth a rather 
 magnificent creature an unusual one at any rate, who stands 
 a head taller than most of her fellows, who looks the world 
 in its ugly face with a cheery smile, one with a kind, warm 
 heart and the soft answer which turneth away wrath. Yes, 
 I'm afraid capital Life is served, and Art is robbed. . . ." 
 
HE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 101 
 
 Not even a lover could have given such words the special 
 
 rce that Petrie's coldness and complete detachment gave 
 
 em. He said them without any license whatever, setting 
 them forth as a mere fact, a fact that might just as well have 
 been arrived at with a measuring tape and ' ciljpcrs: . . " . 
 " nd Cynthia breathed deeply of the fine a^rfhut'came froin 
 :award, and the colour rose to her nec&' and cheeks^ ^Tlfc 
 ords he used had a glamour all their owli.' '. . / " Look-' 
 ng the world in its ugly face with a cheery smile. ... A 
 kind, warm heart and the soft answer which turneth away 
 wrath. . . ." He made a great possibility of the ' Life ' he spoke 
 of. He filled her with a sense of the bigness of things, the wonder 
 of them the wonder of herself and him and everyone else 
 who lived the life. He gave her a glimpse of the vague, large 
 adventure that lay before her. . . . 
 
 She only pressed his arm and said, " Well, I don't see any 
 harm in looking fairly nice." 
 
 " Harm ! " said Petrie ; " Lord, I should just think there 
 isn't any harm. It is a public benefaction. But from your 
 point of view it is apt to confuse the issue. . . . About old 
 Chill what does he think of your prospects, professionally ? " 
 
 " Oh, he thinks I'm clever enough and ought to do well," 
 said Cynthia. 
 
 Petrie smiled. " He always was a first-class hoper, poor old 
 chap ! " said he. " Incidentally, he thought I was sure to 
 * do very well " : but that is neither here nor there, for I 
 believe I shall very soon * do well,' as such things go." 
 
 Cynthia did not have time to think over this remark of his. 
 She did not, as a matter of fact, think of it again for several 
 years. Petrie continued, " But you what do you think of 
 yourself ? " 
 
 " How should / know ? " she asked. " I only wish I did. 
 I know I'm much better than the Chills or poor old Mr 
 Wibleigh, but that's nothing. I've got no one to compare 
 myself to." 
 
 " With" said Petrie ; " one compares things with, in that 
 sense of the word. Well, how do you think you stand com- 
 pared with me, for instance ? I'm only an amateur, I know 
 but still . ." 
 
 
102 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Don't be absurd," said Cynthia ; " amateur indeed ! 
 I only wish I knew half as much as you about it, daddy. . . . 
 But well, since you ask me I think your music is like your 
 talk, somehow. It's, well it's wonderful and clever and all 
 that, of'CGuree^-rbnt it's no, not absurd, I don't mean absurd, 
 quite. . . /'- v 
 
 ; Petne-ncdded. -"-Extravagant is what you mean. I know. 
 That's Hbecduse it'? the voice of one crying in the wilderness 
 and crying in the wilderness rather deranges one's vocal organs 
 for conversational purposes. One gets into the way of shouting. 
 I expect John the Baptist was insufferable at lunch. Poor 
 Mrs J. B. . . . But it is the curse of the innate evangelistic 
 spirit. The fact of the matter is that if you tell people the 
 mere truth in a conversational tone, they put you down as a 
 bore. If you want them to listen, you must get hold of some- 
 thing that is only just true and is so very nearly a lie that it looks 
 exactly like a lie people ignore the simple truth of things, 
 only because it is so perfectly simple . . . well, having got hold 
 of the truth which has the attraction of looking like a lie, you 
 absolutely must shout it. Then they will think you very 
 clever, and they might possibly listen. The pathos of the 
 born evangelist is the fact that even if people won't listen, and 
 persist for ever in not listening, the poor fellow goes on 
 shouting even when he is at lunch. That, I think, is why 
 it is sometimes possible to trace vehemence and hyperbole 
 in my own occasional conversations, and in my music. . . . 
 Out of all this we get what my worthy employers describe 
 as a * Business Prupposition.' It is that you should avoid being 
 lured into crying in the wilderness. When you are the com- 
 plete artist, with finished wares to sell, you must not try to sell 
 them to the citizens of Pelchester. It is bread they want, and it 
 is futile trying to put them off with stones even precious stones. 
 You will have to get away from the borough-councillors, for in 
 this place I find that every man, from the moment he draws 
 his first breath, is at heart a borough-councillor." 
 
 At the top of the hill they turned and looked down upon 
 the bricks and tiles and chimneys and corrugated iron that 
 somewhere held the bricks and tiles and chimneys and corru- 
 gated iron that were their home. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 103 
 
 The pavements of the High Street were thronged with 
 >igmy figures, mostly of women intent upon their last 
 loments of shopping. The microcosm upon which they 
 
 )ked was cut in two by the glittering threads of the tram-lines 
 
 it ran from end to end, disappearing at each end into a huge 
 shed. The eye was inevitably drawn away from the tram-lines 
 to the railway station. What drew it was the newly-erected 
 yellow sign the largest sign in Pelchester, and the brightest 
 bearing the words ' Colman's Mustard.' 
 
 Cynthia looked at the sign, and Petrie looked at it. 
 
 " There," said he, " you have below you the achievements 
 of all civilisation. They are set out for you in little upon a 
 stage. Not one whit is missing. Everything to which the 
 world has won its way through centuries of blood and tears is 
 represented for you and displayed, Cynthia : and you will 
 notice at the first glance that all is dominated by locomotion 
 and mustard. . . . Why are we not stirred and impressed by 
 the exploits of our fellows there below us ? Moses saw just 
 such another sight as this from a far mountain, and one other 
 a whole little world ambling along, thoroughly satisfied, with 
 the wrong end of the stick in its hand. . . . Look at them 
 erecting those new wires there in order to talk to people without 
 necessarily seeing them. Telephones ! Bah why can't some 
 fellow devise a way of seeing people without the necessity of 
 talking to them ? . . . O Pelchester, Pelchester, I made great 
 sounds for you once upon a time, and you thought me a futile, 
 noisy fellow ; I piped to you and ye would not dance. . . . 
 And what, Cynthia, does your mother think of the project ? " 
 
 " Eh ? " said Cynthia. She had expected that question 
 twice in the course of their walk and aimless talk, and now she 
 was startled by its suddenness. " Mother oh, I haven't told 
 her yet." 
 
 " Tell me," said Petrie, " purely as a matter of interest 
 is that according to plan, or otherwise ? " 
 
 " Otherwise," said she quite simply. " It is quite as hard 
 to tell her as you said it would be much harder than / ever 
 imagined possible." 
 
 " I suppose," said Petrie, " that you still insist that you 
 must tell her ? " 
 
io 4 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Cynthia with perfect decision. " To-night, 
 perhaps or, at any rate, very soon. It's just got to be done, 
 somehow. But, oh dear, I do wish she wouldn't be so upset. 
 I but what makes you smile in that way, father ? " She 
 drew a little away from him. 
 
 " I was not aware that I was smiling, particularly," said 
 Petrie, and again tucked her arm within his. " It's a habit 
 I seem to have developed recently. You see, Cynthia, I 
 I have had to tell your mother one or two things myself, at 
 different times. ." 
 
 2 
 
 Mrs Petrie was out when Cynthia got home ; Mrs Simpson 
 said she had " run out to do some shopping." 
 
 Cynthia stood in her bedroom, looking at the writing-desk 
 which had been placed in her window. 
 
 As a piece of furniture it was, from every point of view, 
 negligible. In the first place, Cynthia had never felt the need 
 for such a thing, and in the second it would have been quite 
 inadequate for anyone who had felt the need for something 
 like it. 
 
 It was only in the fact that it was symbolic that its importance 
 lay. As a symbol Cynthia smiled at it, and resented it. It 
 marked a development in the relationship between herself 
 and her mother ; for gifts were rare things in the Petrie family. 
 Birthdays and Christmas Day were the recognised occasions 
 for gift-making, and the gifts themselves had acquired a 
 ritualistic uniformity. They had resolved themselves into 
 handkerchief cases, purses and bedroom slippers. Gifts at 
 any other time, and of any other description, were portentous. 
 
 Cynthia tried to estimate the significance of this unusual 
 present. It was one of those old brass-clamped boxes, measuring 
 about twenty inches by thirty. The only thing about it to 
 indicate its intended function was the fact that it opened up 
 obliquely, to form an inclined surface, which people seemed 
 to imagine necessary in those days to the act of writing. 
 There were two little ink-pots sunk in to the top of the desk 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 105 
 
 part ; the other or t lid ' half of the box was fitted with 
 countless little pigeon-holes of different shapes and sizes. 
 The potential secrecy of these little pigeon-holes was emphasized 
 by the huge key stuck in the keyhole. 
 
 Cynthia had never had anything to conceal, never any 
 correspondence to classify in pigeon-holes. She could 
 imagine no circumstances that could make such a thing as 
 that writing-desk necessary to her. . . . Yet she smiled, seeing 
 her mother's motive in giving it to her. 
 
 She meant to show that she realised that Cynthia was, in 
 a word, ' grown up.' She hoped to do this by furnishing 
 her with a brass-bound box and tremendous key. 
 
 Then, smiling, Cynthia suddenly ceased to smile, and 
 frowned. She perceived that she was placed at a disadvantage 
 for the task that lay before her. 
 
 Meanwhile her mother was out and out quite alone 
 shopping. Mrs Simpson had announced it as calmly as you 
 please, as though it were the most usual and ordinary thing 
 in the world, that she had " run out to get in a few things." 
 And, tidying herself, Cynthia remembered the time she had 
 been ill, and how her mother had seemed quite able to do 
 things when there was no one else to do them for her. 
 
 From the window of the hall she saw Mrs Petrie come in 
 at the gate, and went to open the door for her. 
 
 " Why Cynthia ! " she exclaimed ; " whatever is the 
 matter, my dear ? " 
 
 " Matter ! " said Cynthia, kissing her. " Nothing's the 
 matter, of course. I just thought I'd come home, that's all, 
 to give you a surprise." 
 
 " But my dear, you ought never to startle people like that. 
 I couldn't, for the moment, think what had happened to bring 
 you home like this. . . ." 
 
 " And so," said Cynthia, " you're so busy worrying that you 
 haven't even had time to say whether you're pleased to see me." 
 
 She took the countless little parcels from her mother, and 
 tucked them all under an arm. 
 
 " Of course I'm pleased, darling," said Mrs Petrie, and kissed 
 her again. " But I do wish you had let us know. You could 
 have done this shopping on the way from the station. . . ." 
 
106 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 '* Yes," said Cynthia, " so that you need never have gone 
 out at all ! No thank you ; I'm very glad I didn't let you 
 know. I know that it's good for you to get out." 
 
 " It upsets me," said Mrs Petrie ; " makes me so ' nervy.' " 
 
 Cynthia had thought that she looked particularly sprightly 
 as she walked in at the gate. She said, " Well, I shouldn't 
 be surprised if even being upset is good for you, sometimes. 
 But, my dear, more parcels in your bag ? " . . . She gently 
 took the bag and unpacked it. 
 
 She wanted to postpone mentioning the writing-desk till 
 Freda and Conrad should come in, so she said, " I must go to 
 my room now and get a bit straight." 
 
 " Haven't you been yet, then ? " Mrs Petrie asked. 
 
 Cynthia could not imagine how she failed to notice that she 
 must have been, to have taken her things off, and tidied her 
 hair. She evaded the question by saying, " Shan't be two 
 minutes." 
 
 In her room she sat down upon the bed to listen for Freda 
 and Conrad. After a very short while her mother softly 
 opened the door, and smiled. With that smile there came 
 back to Cynthia that vague sense that Petrie had given her 
 on the Hill, of the bigness of things. ' Life ' struck her as 
 something enormous, overpowering and baffling ; something 
 pitifully sad and tragic. . . . 
 
 Tendresse had never been a current coin in the family. It 
 was, no doubt, Petrie that had inclined them all to feel awk- 
 ward and self-conscious when sentiment became insistent in its 
 clamourings for expression : but the appeal of Mrs Petrie's 
 timid, childish smile was more than Cynthia could resist. 
 
 " Mother darling," she said, " how sweet of you ! Thank 
 you ever so much, my dear." She took her in her arms and 
 kissed her, and realised how small she was, how frail and 
 unresisting. Again she kissed her and said, " It's lovely" 
 
 Mrs Petrie looked up and smiled, the same little smile of a 
 delighted child. " So you do like it, then, dear ? " she asked. 
 16 I did hope you would. Though it can be changed, you 
 know, for something else if you don't. . . ." 
 
 " Changed ! " said Cynthia, " I should think not indeed. 
 It's just the very thing ! " 
 
iij 
 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 107 
 
 * You see," said Mrs Petrie, holding up the key, " it locks, 
 ou can keep all your things there, and no one will be able 
 to interfere with you. You can keep it with your things in 
 here, and now that the weather is nice and warm, and a fire 
 isn't always necessary, you can be by yourself in here per- 
 fectly snug and cosy whenever you like." She looked at 
 Cynthia knowingly, and touched her cheek. " / know, my 
 r. . . . You can't tell me" 
 
 ' It's lovely" said Cynthia, beginning to feel uncomfortable. 
 Hers was the one room in the house that soon would need no 
 furniture. But she could not say so then. " Perfectly 
 lovely. . . . But, my dear, I am so hungry. Could we start 
 without the children ? " 
 
 They had barely sat down, however, when the children 
 came in. During the meal the cheerful buoyancy of the 
 others did not tend to relieve Cynthia's uncomfortable know- 
 ledge that she had lost a point. 
 
 " What about the Spiers ? " she asked. Freda had brought 
 in and conveyed a sense of conspiracy that Cynthia resented. 
 The writing-desk had placed her at a disadvantage. She had 
 lost a point there ; but she saw an opportunity of winning 
 another one. 
 
 " Oh, I might go in and see them this evening, now that 
 you're back again," said Freda. 
 
 " I mean, have you arranged to go with them ? " said 
 Cynthia. " Has she, mother ? " 
 
 " Go ! " repeated Mrs Petrie, " where to ? I had heard 
 nothing about it." 
 
 " To the Isle of Wight, or wherever they're going," said 
 Cynthia. " They asked her to go with them." 
 
 Freda was fidgeting painfully with her bread. 
 
 Mrs Petrie astonishingly said, " Well, the Spiers are quite 
 nice people, I'm sure." 
 
 Conrad rhythmically murmured, " Hi tiddley hi ti." This 
 
 as his simplest way of suggesting that the girls were a pair 
 of^idiots. They saw his point. 
 
 Nothing further was said till Conrad spoke again, this time * in 
 clear.' " Since it's settled, then, that we can go," he said, 
 " I'll stroll round with you, Free, as soon as we've done 
 
 
io8 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 grubbing, and tell Spier that I R.S.F.P., accepting with much 
 pleasure, since my other engagements permit. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, Fd forgotten that there's a boy," said Cynthia. " I 
 didn't know they'd asked you too." 
 
 " If I hadn't been able to go," said Conrad, " they were 
 going to take that young Harbottle scion. Spier doesn't 
 think much of him either, but it would have been better than 
 a gang of sisters. You needn't say anything, Free, till I've 
 seen Spier. He didn't want to tell his mater to ask me till 
 he knew I could go, so that she needn't look a fool for 
 nothing. . . ." 
 
 " Conrad, dear," said Mrs Petrie, " I do wish you wouldn't 
 speak in that loose, familiar manner about people. . . ." 
 Mrs Petrie never said ' do this,' or * do not do that.' She 
 always merely * wished.' 
 
 Conrad said, " What I meant to convey, mother, was that 
 seeing that the wind is favourable, I shall call upon my learned 
 and honourable friend, John Spier, junior, and acquaint him 
 of the fact (genitive) that, since the wind is favourable, I 
 snakes ! I've gone and mislaid a verb or something. Ahoy 
 there ! anybody seen my verb ? A pink verb with a narrow 
 stripe set with a diamond and two gules rampant. Reward 
 fivepence. Hours of payment, seven for seven-thirty. Thank 
 you, lidy. . . ." 
 
 Conrad, in fine, was happy. 
 
Chapter Seven 
 
 I 
 
 children had been gone for thirteen days, and Cynthia 
 knew that she must have the talk with her mother while 
 they were still away. She had been waiting for months for 
 something to turn up to help her. The fact that they had 
 gone did not, in fact, either help or hinder her ; but in being 
 alone with Mrs Petrie at every meal she felt vaguely that the 
 stage was set for the crisis. 
 
 There were only two days more ahead of them, when Mrs 
 Petrie said at lunch, " My dear, Sylvia seems to have got to 
 know a great many nice people through George's position in 
 the bank, I suppose. I am quite sure that she would be very 
 glad for you to go about with her and meet them. There is 
 your playing to help you, you know. And in the winter there 
 are lots of dances you could go to." 
 
 Cynthia knew that the crisis approached. She moistened 
 her lips then said foolishly, " H'm ... I suppose there 
 are." 
 
 " And there's bicycling, dear," Mrs Petrie continued. " Did 
 you ever think of bicycling, Cynthia ? I should think it's 
 quite safe, once you get outside the town. You could quite 
 well have a bicycle." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Cynthia, swallowing ; " perfectly safe, I 
 should say." 
 
 She had nothing to say in the pause that followed. Mrs 
 Petrie continued : " You see, dear, you ought to think of 
 moving about a little now, and mixing with young people. 
 All young people ought to. ... You are not happy, Cynthia, 
 as you are. It is such a worry to me. Sylvia has noticed it, 
 too. I am obliged to wonder if it is that that proposal you 
 spoke of so lightly. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, that" Cynthia sniffed. " Good gracious, that's 
 finished and done with ages ago. Old Mr Wibleigh asked 
 
 109 
 
no THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 me to marry him, and I said I wouldn't. There was nothing 
 in that. . . . Oh, yes, I'm happy enough at least I shall be, 
 as soon as the children are home again and I can get on with 
 my work again, with the Chills and Mr Wibleigh and father." 
 
 That was the nearest she could get to the point at that 
 particular moment. It ought to have been simple enough 
 for her to speak, quite quietly, some such words as, " Don't 
 worry about me in the winter, mother ; I probably shan't be 
 here for most of it." But it was absolutely impossible for her 
 to do it. She would do it, she thought, as soon as her pulses 
 ceased their throbbing, forcing the blood mercilessly into her 
 ears, flushing her cheeks so that she was obliged so hang her 
 head to hide them from her mother. . . . 
 
 " Dear ! " Mrs Petrie said, with such intensity that Cynthia 
 was startled into looking up at her. " Cynthia, I want to 
 there's something I want to want to say to you. . . ." 
 So at last she had guessed ! . . . Cynthia braced herself. 
 Her mother went on, " It's not very nice for me to have to 
 say it, dear. It's it's I want you to give up that weekly trip 
 of yours to Melton. I " Cynthia stared at her, aghast. 
 
 " Mother ! " was all she managed to say. 
 
 " Yes, dear," Mrs Petrie went on, reassured, apparently, 
 by Cynthia's response. " Yes, Cynthia, I very particularly 
 want you to discontinue it. You need not think about the 
 money, Cynthia. It you shall have an allowance. That 
 much, surely, your father can be made to do for you. . . ." 
 This of Petrie, who had tossed three hundred pounds into her 
 lap with his tobacco pouch and folding scissors. . . . 
 
 Cynthia said, " The money has nothing whatever to do with 
 it. Of course I could have an allowance if I wanted one." 
 
 " Then, dear," said Mrs Petrie, " there is no reason why 
 you should not give Melton up ; and there is every reason 
 why you should. It is not doing you any good. It is not 
 right or nice" 
 
 Cynthia thought of Wardrup the carpenter, of his throat 
 and square, blue chin. She remembered the meeting between 
 him and Freda. Once more the colour rose to her cheeks, 
 her eyes tingled, and she looked away. But it was surely 
 impossible that Freda could have said anything. . . . What, 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS in 
 
 after all, was there that she could have said ? Then Mrs Petrie 
 reassured her on that score. " I mean, it isn't lady-like to 
 go about like that, dear alone. And it isn't necessary" 
 
 " It is necessary," said Cynthia. The throbbing of her 
 pulse extended to her very throat. She was not eating now, 
 but her throat opened and closed again, upon nothing. 
 " M-mother," she stammered, helplessly, piteously. 
 
 Mrs Petrie had become quite calm again. " Yes, dear," 
 she said, " if it were necessary, it would all be quite different. 
 But it is not necessary, and nothing can make it so. Your 
 father can provide for you, and he shall provide for you. . . ." 
 
 Cynthia only made a gesture, and stared at the vase on the 
 table between them. She heard her mother saying, " It 
 isn't as though I were a strong, capable woman, Cynthia. I 
 do not think I would ask it of you then however much I 
 might disapprove. But I am not strong and capable any more. 
 I am very little use in the house, and I dread Tuesdays you 
 cannot think how I dread them. It might be silly of me. 
 Most people would, I know, say it is silly. . . . But there, my 
 dear, I am what I am weak, and silly. I know I am not 
 strong. I simply hate that having you gone from morning 
 till night. . . ." 
 
 Cynthia could hear no more. Her throat worked so that 
 it seemed to shut her ears. The vase became indistinct ; the 
 flowers mingled and merged into each other, and swam about 
 like the colours in Conrad's absurd old kaleidoscope, till her 
 hot tears fell among the prune-stones ranged along the edge 
 of her plate. She thrust back her chair and hurried away. 
 
 She hurried past the little passage leading to the study, and 
 ran up the stairs to her bedroom. 
 
 She banged the door to, and saw, through the blinding tears, 
 her writing-cabinet lying empty and open upon her little 
 table. That, too, she shut with an angry slam. Then she 
 turned once more to the door and twisted the key round in 
 the rusty lock. After that she collapsed upon the bed. 
 
 " Damn ! " was the only coherent sound she made ; and 
 presently, " Damn. . . . Damnation take and blast it ! " 
 she, who was to discontinue going to Melton in the train, 
 lest it should not be considered strictly lady-like. 
 
 
ii2 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Then she merely wept hot, great tears of anger, pity and 
 remorse. Mostly, however, the tears were of anger anger 
 with herself for having been such a coward and such a fool 
 as to have kept her secret for all those months, anger with her 
 mother for having had her say first, and anger with the writing- 
 cabinet for its share in the business. 
 
 Her pillow became a shapeless, crumpled mass, her hand- 
 kerchief a sodden rag. She did not hear, through her sobs, 
 the faint rustle outside the door, or the foiled, quiet attempt 
 to open it. 
 
 The knocking was, after a time, repeated, and Cynthia 
 roused herself to see the chipped porcelain knob turn and the 
 door move to the extent allowed by the play of the worn old 
 bolt of the lock. And she felt a tremendous satisfaction in 
 the frustration of the one without. 
 
 " Cynthia, dear," her mother said softly, " what is the 
 matter ? " 
 
 " Nothing," said Cynthia. 
 
 " I want to come in, darling." 
 
 " You can't," was the curt reply. " The door's locked." 
 
 " Open it, sweetheart," Mrs Petrie coaxed. 
 
 " Oh, I can't" Cynthia said impatiently. " I'm on the 
 bed. I'll open it presently." 
 
 Mrs Petrie waited. ^ 
 
 Cynthia got up and straightened out the bed-spread and 
 the pillow. The miserable handkerchief she thrust into the 
 writing-cabinet the first thing she had ever sought to hide 
 and got herself a fresh one from the drawer. After quietly 
 sponging her face and tidying her hair, she opened the door. 
 
 Mrs Petrie was still there, waiting. 
 
 She stole wistfully into the room, her hands extended to 
 Cynthia. " My dear" she said, " tell me what is the 
 matter ? " 
 
 Cynthia drew angrily away. " Matter ! " she exclaimed ; 
 " it seems to me sometimes that we're all mad the whole 
 blithering lot of us. ... Oh, yes, I know it is coarse-sounding 
 and offensive for me to say ' blithering.' But that's what 
 the matter is, since you want to know, mother, stark, staring 
 mad. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 113 
 
 Mrs Petrie shrugged her shoulders and sat down upon the 
 bed. " I cannot imagine," she said coldly, " what kind of 
 homes Conrad's friends are brought up in. . . ." 
 
 " Homes ! " said Cynthia. " What does it matter what 
 >eople say or how they say it ? It's what we do that counts. 
 ~ >mes ! we are nice ones to talk of homes. Just look at us." 
 
 " My dear, what can the matter be ? " said Mrs Petrie ; 
 
 what can you have done to upset you so ? " 
 
 " What can / have done ? I like that. Yes, what can I 
 have done ? " 
 
 " Well, what I have done, then ! " said Mrs Petrie, and 
 braced herself upright on the edge of the bed. " What have 
 I done, Cynthia ? " 
 
 Cynthia shrugged her shoulders. She had a fine contempt 
 for passion now that her own was spent. " Oh, nothing," 
 she said. " You have only implored me not to leave you for 
 about eight hours a week, when it's for three years, at least, 
 that I want to be gone. . . . That I must be gone." 
 
 " Cynthia ! " said Mrs Petrie, and again, slowly, " Cynthia 
 . . . my dear child, what can you mean ? Where to ? " 
 
 " Abroad," Cynthia said shortly. 
 
 Gradually, as Mrs Petrie thought about this, her sad, listless 
 expression became chilled into one of fear. Beyond the simple 
 statement that Cynthia was going away from her for three 
 years, nothing penetrated to her consciousness. 
 
 Then, very slowly, she began to wonder. As she wondered, 
 she looked up again and held out her hands, pitying Cynthia 
 for the great trouble that was'so torturing her. 
 
 " Darling," she said, " how should any such thing have 
 happened to you that it should be necessary for you to be 
 away from home -for three years ? " 
 
 " Nothing has happened to me," said Cynthia, " yet. 
 But something is going to happen to me. I am going to 
 become a musician. I am going to Holzgarten." 
 
 It was the fear and pity now that faded from Mrs Petrie's 
 face. She stared at Cynthia. Staring, her mouth hardened 
 and her eyes coldly glittered. " So that" she said very quietly, 
 " is what he has been doing ! . . . I see it all now. Very 
 well, Cynthia I have nothing more to say." 
 
ii4 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 ;< You are talking nonsense, mother," Cynthia said fiercely. 
 " You always do talk nonsense about father, if you say anything 
 at all. He's he's sort of funny, at times, I will admit, but 
 aren't we all a little bit funny, if it comes to that ? That's 
 no reason for saying that kind of thing." 
 
 " I do not propose to say anything at all," said Mrs Petrie 
 coldly. " I have said my say, and more than my say, already." 
 With hands clenched, and head bravely erect, she moved to 
 the door ; but Cynthia could not let her go thus. 
 
 " Don't, mother," she said sharply ; " you don't under- 
 stand a bit. . . ." 
 
 : ' There is nothing more for me to understand," she said. 
 " It is all perfectly clear now, I assure you, my dear. You 
 must go. / will not be accused of standing in your way. . . . 
 If I am ill. . . . Well . . ." she shrugged her shoulders 
 again, then bravely squared them. 
 
 " You know quite well," said Cynthia, " if it was a question 
 of your being ill, I would not think of going. Were you ill 
 while I was away at the Chills ? " 
 
 " What does it matter ? " asked the mother, very coldly. 
 " One cannot allow other people to sacrifice themselves to 
 one's health." 
 
 With r that she went out of the room. 
 
 At four o'clock Cynthia was seated at one of the small tables 
 in the misnamed Bungalow tea-room. She had gone there 
 because she could not accept either of the alternatives open 
 to her if she had stayed at home the alternative of herself 
 taking a tray up to Mrs Petrie in the bedroom, or else of 
 sending it up by Mrs Simpson. The latter would have been 
 too deliberate a slight if she herself had been in the house. . . . 
 
 The thing was done now, she kept telling herself, as soon 
 as Mrs Petrie had gone out of the room. She had said what 
 had to be said, anyway. In that reflection there was tre- 
 mendous relief. The strain was snapped ; the ice at last 
 was broken. Only action now remained. 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 115 
 
 By what seemed to be no less than inspiration she had 
 resolved upon a definite and decided action, and then set out 
 for the Bungalow. 
 
 At the Bungalow she expected to find some diversion in 
 the presence of other people, in the mild gaiety of drinking 
 tea with no responsibility whatever in the getting of it. She 
 had found such diversion when she had been there last, with 
 
 trie. 
 
 But she found none now. 
 
 The place was nearly empty. The three waitresses whispered 
 ether near the cash-desk ; from that point of vantage they 
 looked upon their few premature customers in the light of 
 trespassers. 
 
 Seated by herself at her little table, Cynthia looked about 
 her and could see nothing funny. She looked first at a stout, 
 dowdy, middle-aged woman, whose countless parcels knocked 
 clumsily against every piece of furniture in the room as she 
 came in. From her Cynthia looked at a careworn, bald man, 
 who wrote rapidly in a small pocket-book, with a stylographic 
 pen that leaked over his fingers. At the table next to his 
 there sat a thin, hard-visaged young woman, who treated one 
 of the waitresses to one or two ill-humoured, sarcastic remarks 
 about the hot water. Not one of them had come to the place 
 from any joy of life. They had come only because some 
 accident or other had made it the least of evils for them. 
 The sight of them was sordid. The sound of the crockery 
 was no merry tinkle, as it had been when Petrie sat beside her 
 making a prodigious meal of sugared buns. It was a most 
 irritating noise. 
 
 Cynthia was looking, for the first time, to the world 
 for succour and comfort, and the world was failing her 
 dismally. 
 
 She remained quite alone. 
 
 She sat over her sponge-cakes in her loneliness, thinking 
 her inconclusive thoughts, till the round clock above the 
 cash-desk showed five minutes to five. Then she paid her 
 bill, and walked briskly down the High Street. After a few 
 hundred yards she turned to the left, into a road of detached 
 villas built of yellowy-drab bricks. 
 
 
n6 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 One of these was distinguished from the others by a large 
 brass plate bearing the legend : 
 
 DR DRUCE HARBOTTLE, 
 
 Physician and Surgeon. 
 
 A.M. 9~II. 
 
 P.M. 5-7. 
 
 The two bell-ropes were illogically classified ' Night ' and 
 ' Visitors.' Cynthia, puzzled for a moment, eventually 
 pulled them both, and soon disappeared into the gloomy hall. 
 
 3 
 
 It was well after seven when she got home. She prepared 
 a cup of arrowroot and two pieces of dry toast, which she took 
 upstairs and placed, without a word, on the chair beside her 
 mother's bed. 
 
 Then she carried a large tray into the study and announced 
 to Petrie, " I'm going to have supper in here with you to-night, 
 father. Mother's gone to bed, so there's only you and I to 
 worry about. If you're not ready to have it yet, I can come 
 back again when you are." 
 
 " I'm ready," said Petrie, and pushed his papers aside. " I 
 can ascribe this honour to nothing but a general movement, 
 Cynthia. Am I not right in thinking that there has been 
 some movement ? " 
 
 She hated the words he used, with his absurd pose of detach- 
 ment, but he turned in his chair to look at her, and looking, 
 he smiled. She forgot his silly words, for his smiling face and 
 his gesture of turning towards her were as water to her in her 
 desert of utter loneliness. She gratefully drank of it, and sat 
 down quietly upon the piano-stool. 
 
 Petrie wheeled his chair round so that his head and shoulders 
 were a silhouette against the rosy window-panes. The few 
 silent moments were a taste of rare companionship. The old 
 Chickering Grand lay mute between them, with the mystery 
 of strife and ecstasy and torment it held for them both. . . . 
 
 Thus she sat on, gazing intently at the massive head, for- 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 117 
 
 getful or unmindful that though she could see nothing of 
 its features in the shadow, her own were illumined for him 
 by the twilight. 
 
 In them Petrie saw the loneliness and the weariness of 
 strife ; he saw the peace of submission and the vague, insati- 
 able longing that makes the adventurers, strivers and loafers 
 of the world. 
 
 " And so," he said, " at last we have some movement. . . . 
 Cynthia, old girl, I don't think you will ever understand your 
 mother. It is quite useless your trying." 
 
 " Do you think you understand her, then ? " Cynthia 
 challenged. 
 
 " Yes," said Petrie. " I understand her perfectly." 
 
 " Oh, do you ! " said Cynthia ; " then I don't see why you 
 don't do something about it. For I can assure you," she went 
 on, " that there is room for a great deal to be done." 
 
 " That" said Petrie, quite unruffled, " is exactly the point 
 at which you are wrong. The man who understands the 
 calculus and conic sections is no more able to alter the truth 
 that two and two invariably make four than our Mrs 
 Simpson." 
 
 This type of conversation met no demand that Cynthia 
 made. Whether Petrie told great Truth or talked nonsense, 
 was equally unsatisfying to her at the moment, equally beside 
 the point, and fantastic. She wearily dropped her chin into 
 her hands and said, " Oh dear. It is so difficult, so appal- 
 lingly difficult. . . . If only . . ." 
 
 " Cynthia ! " exclaimed Petrie, " for the love of Heaven 
 don't droop your head like that and whine. Do whatever 
 else in the world you please. Howl aloud, swear, blaspheme 
 anything, anything but that." He composed himself again 
 from this outburst, and continued in his even tones of simple 
 narrative. " The fact of the matter is, Cynthia, that I 
 cannot, at any price, stand whining. My objection to it is 
 not a reasonable, intellectual one. I see the naturalness of 
 whining quite well. I am sympathetic. So its action on me 
 must, I think, be a physical one. It either paralyses me 
 completely, so that I am quite unable to answer the simplest 
 luestions, or else it makes me think, quite stupidly, of some- 
 
ii8 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 thing quite beside the point the price of boots, for instance, 
 or where I could have put those Sullivan manuscripts. It has 
 acted upon me like that for years now. . . ." He walked 
 slowly across the room to her, and laid his hand upon her 
 head. " In other words," said he, " cheer up, Cynthia, 
 and let us quietly have a look at things." 
 
 Instead of cheering up, she drew a deep breath and said, 
 " Oh, well, it's every bit as hard as you said it would be, daddy." 
 
 " For whom ? " asked Petrie, and sat down again. 
 
 " For me, at any rate," said Cynthia. 
 
 " And do you think it is easier for others ? Easier than the 
 sharp, short and sure way would have been ? " 
 
 " Of course, I realised that it would be hard for mother," 
 said Cynthia. " But it's got to be made easier. It's just 
 that that I want to talk to you about, now." 
 
 " Very well, then," said Petrie ; " since you are prepared 
 to do the talking. For I have nothing to say on that score. 
 I have told you all I know about your mother. It cannot be 
 made easier for her. ... An amputation is an amputation ; 
 and the only question possible about it is whether you are 
 going to perform it, or whether you are not." 
 
 " But, father," said Cynthia, " isn't all this talk about ampu- 
 tation and heart-breakings and punishment, and things like 
 that, the most absurd nonsense in the world ? . . . Three 
 years ! Good gracious, why, three years is just nothing ! " 
 
 " Of course it's all absurd," said Petrie, " but it is, none the 
 less, true. You will be amazed, as you grow older, Cynthia, 
 at the number of absurd things in the world that are true. 
 See ! I tell you that your mother will cower in the most abject 
 manner, under the blow of your going away from her. And 
 why ? . . . simply because she is sure honestly and genuinely 
 sure that by going you would commit the basest treachery 
 the world could ever be called upon to witness, on the part 
 of a daughter towards her mother. It is perfectly absurd 
 that she should believe such a thing ; yet it is perfectly true 
 that she does believe it. She believes it so firmly that she 
 could quite honestly declare it, upon her oath, to be the truth." 
 
 " H'm," said Cynthia ; " and talking like that doesn't help 
 to make it any easier." 
 
: 
 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 119 
 
 promised no help," said Petrie, and exasperated her by 
 the lifeless way he said it. She felt as though she could never 
 get to the real point in anything. 
 
 Petrie played, by his utter lack of feeling, on one side of 
 truth ; and Mrs Petrie, by her equal lack of calm, played 
 aimlessly on the other ; but the reality Life, or whatever 
 else you chose to call it Life as indicated by the fine muscle 
 of Wardrup the carpenter and by the sparkle of his skin, by 
 the happy couples on Wilton's Hill, and by something that 
 stirred vaguely within herself Life, they never touched upon. 
 Between it and themselves one of them interposed cold, self- 
 satisfying phrases, and the other . . . 
 
 " The fact of the matter is," said she impatiently, " that 
 you do not realise mother is ill. That is why you can be so 
 hard, and not understand properly." 
 
 " On the contrary," said Petrie, " I diagnosed the case 
 nearly a quarter of a century ago while the patient was still 
 insisting that she was perfectly well." 
 
 She was again stirred up by the priggishness of his claims 
 to such wonderful omniscience. " Oh, indeed ! " she said. 
 " And what, may I ask, was your diagnosis ? " 
 
 " An index of vitality," said he with quiet satisfaction, 
 " even lower than the normally human female." 
 
 " You may have been right," said Cynthia, " twenty-five 
 years ago. But what she has now is Neurasthenia" The cool 
 authority with which she said it was intended to startle Petrie 
 into proper humility of spirit to bring him to her own level 
 of good, cool sense. But he merely shrugged his shoulders in 
 a most exasperating manner. 
 
 " I've seen that," said Cynthia ; " it's written down in the 
 doctor's book." 
 
 " Quite possibly," said Petrie. " It is also written large 
 across my soul. That record, too, you may have seen. It 
 is traced, but only faintly as yet, upon your own and that 
 tracing you have not seen. . . . The distinction, however, 
 between your word ' neurasthenia ' and my own, * psychas- 
 thenia,' is a purely pedantic one. I assure you that there is 
 no difference between my diagnosis and that fellow Bluebottle's, 
 
 whatever else his ridiculous name may be. It simply means 
 
lao THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 that your mother is a chronic social parasite, and there is an 
 end on it." 
 
 " If you think there is any sense in saying that kind of beastly, 
 spiteful thing, you are greatly mistaken," said she. " You 
 said the same thing once before, and I only wished then that 
 you hadn't. All it does is to show that you have a bad temper, 
 and are too selfish to see another person's point of view." 
 
 " Not at all," said Petrie suavely. " Not at all, I assure 
 you. And speaking of tempers, Cynthia well, I wouldn't 
 describe you as being at the moment in a position to throw 
 stones. That, however, I do not in the least mind. I am 
 sufficient of a philosopher now to be upset by no outbursts 
 other than my own. That is a great step I have made, 
 Cynthia. . . . But we digress. I am still waiting for your 
 promised discourse on the emigration of daughters. . . ." 
 
 What he deserved, she thought, was a retort of ' very 
 funny ! ' and a haughty stalking forth from the room. But 
 she had no hauteur now, and she was conscious suddenly 
 that the piano-stool had no back. She made no answer, but 
 sat still, looking at the shadowy, gaunt form of him before her, 
 seeing only from the gleam of teeth that he was broadly smiling. 
 
 " Cynthia," he said softly, and leaned forward. " My dear, 
 do not be such a fool." He took her two hands in his. " So 
 this is your idea of a friend, my little daughter with so much 
 to learn ! Come along, my dear, let us behave like grown-up 
 people, you and I. There's no one else to disturb our effort." 
 He stopped speaking, but his hands remained, caressing. 
 
 " Come," he said again, almost under his breath. 
 
 It surprised her to find that she still had tears within her, 
 after the many she had shed that day. But one splashed down 
 upon his hand. 
 
 He quietly drew it away and examined the drop upon it 
 as though it were a rare gem that sparkled in the dim light. 
 " Do you know, Cyn," he said at last, " it is yes, b' Jove, 
 so it is thirteen years since this particular thing has happened 
 to me. You were fumbling away with your absurd, stumpy 
 fingers at one of those tiny things of Bach's. ... I had tried 
 to show you, perhaps a score of times, how it ought to be done, 
 and that was your answer. . . . Well, at any rate, it is more 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 121 
 
 n twelve, if not quite thirteen." He lowered his hand 
 awkwardly, not knowing what to do to the tear. Finally 
 he did nothing, but replaced the hand gently upon hers, 
 allowing the tear to take its chance. Then giving her hands 
 a final pat, he sat back in his chair. 
 
 Cynthia sat straight up, to check the shiver of weariness 
 that ran down her. 
 
 " I'm sure that mother never gets a fair chance," she said. 
 " I mean she's always so so sort of down-trodden, it seems 
 to me." 
 
 " She's only isolated," Petrie corrected her. " For, as far 
 as I am concerned, I found it necessary to insulate myself. 
 There are people who would, under the circumstances, have 
 failed to insulate themselves and leaked all their current away 
 to no purpose. My life, however, has become a masterpiece 
 of insulation." He threw out his chest in tremendous pride. 
 " By that means only have I been able to live. And now behold 
 me ! Not only do I live, and succeed in doing some tolerable 
 work, but damme ! I am positively happy at times." 
 
 He stopped, with his chest still thrown out, as one who waits 
 for approbation. She had hoped, vaguely, that he might be 
 induced to say the thing that had to be said. But he made 
 no signs of saying anything at all. Desperately, she herself 
 blurted it out : " Mother has got to go too. That is all there 
 is about it." 
 
 " Go ? " said Petrie, " where on earth do you propose 
 sending your mother to ? " 
 
 " Sending her nowhere," said Cynthia, resting her back by 
 clasping her arms behind it and stretching. " She's got to 
 come with me. . . . The doctor said so." 
 
 " The devil he did ! " said Petrie. He said it very quietly, 
 when, by all the rules, Cynthia had expected him to leap to 
 his feet and rail at her. 
 
 He continued undisturbed, merely repeating slowly, " The 
 devil he did. . . . The doctor. . . . H'm. I must say that 
 that solution merely omitted to present itself to my mind. 
 . . . Funny thing, but I never even thought of the possibility 
 of it." 
 
 " No," said Cynthia, tremendously relieved again that what 
 
122 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 she had to say had been said. " It never occurred to me 
 either. . . . And when the doctor suggested it well, it just 
 seemed the most natural thing in the world. . . ." She was 
 thinking of the shock his suggestion had given her ; his calm 
 voice and silly smile as he said, " My dear young lady, a change 
 is the very thing for her and a mother is the very thing for 
 you to have with you. . . ." Truly she had never even thought 
 of it. ... And it was the solution to the whole difficulty. 
 
 She had expected everyone in the world but Petrie to 
 agree that it was the solution, and now even he had not 
 disagreed. . . . 
 
 She thought of the numbed way she had stood at the end 
 of the doctor's road, and of the girls and men, who were so 
 patently a part of ' Life,' walking away from her to Wilton's 
 Hill, leaving her to stand by herself. . . . 
 
 " Yes," said Petrie, " devilish funny. . . . Have you er 
 I mean, what does she say about this ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said Cynthia. " I only made up my mind 
 about it this evening after seeing the doctor. I haven't told 
 her. . . ." 
 
 " H'm ! " said Petrie. He looked at her in the gloom, 
 thinking. The thoughts pulled down his brows and pursed 
 up his lips. They brought his teeth together till the muscles 
 flickered in his blue jowls. " I shouldn't tell her, then, Cyn 
 for a day or two. Not till you've got it all worked out, 
 you know. Sleep on the idea for a bit, I mean. Yes, that's 
 the thing to do. Sleep on it. Let's have some light now, 
 and something to eat. It's been there for nearly two hours 
 waiting for us. ... We must talk of this idea of yours again 
 before you put it to her, Cyn." 
 
 " I'll get some tea," said Cynthia. " Might as well have it 
 now, don't you think, with our supper ? " 
 
 When she had gone, Petrie got up and lighted the gas. 
 " Great heavens ! " he said, and shook his head. " Pluck, 
 they call it. ... Fortitude ! . . . Tcha ! Pshaw ! . . . 
 Idiocy ! Suicide ! Futility ! Lord ! if decent people would 
 only shriek aloud at the first suspicion of pain, instead of 
 suffering it in silence like the fine, graven idiots that we are, 
 I believe the world would be a far more decent place to live 
 
: 
 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 123 
 
 ... It looks as though the girl were a perfect fool after 
 
 , But of course she's young yet. . . ." 
 
 When she returned and they had begun to eat from the 
 little table drawn to the hearth between them, Petrie said, 
 " I take it, then, that there has been some slight interchange 
 of ideas on the subject of Holzgarten." 
 
 " Yes," said Cynthia. " To-day. There was inclined to 
 a bit of a scene in fact only I I bolted." 
 
 " That's right," said Petrie. " Always bolt from scenes, 
 if you can. But be prepared to face the issue if you must. 
 But there usually isn't any issue from a scene apart from the 
 scene's own value, which is purely dramatic aesthetic. How- 
 ever, don't risk another scene not, at any rate, without 
 consulting your friend." 
 
 They ate on in silence for a while, till Cynthia looked up 
 squarely at her father for the first time, and said, " You are 
 a funny man, you know, dad. I thought you would be 
 simply furious about this thing . . . 't seems to me you are 
 furious, only you won't show it. . . ." 
 
 Petrie was a little startled by that. " Of course I am not 
 furious. Why should I be furious over another person's plan 
 for the ordering of her own life ? * Live and let live,' say I, 
 not ' live and force to live in such and such a way.' . . . I 
 I well, to tell you the honest truth, I am not greatly im- 
 pressed by the wisdom of your plan. You will find that hard 
 and conscientious work leaves very little time and energy for 
 social obligations ; and that is probably why I did not immedi- 
 ately advocate your carrying a social obligation with you 
 during a period of work and intensive development. You 
 you must . . ." his voice was beginning to rise in excitement, 
 but by a visible effort he checked it and said quite quietly again, 
 " Let us leave it for the moment. We must think it over. . . . 
 After all, there is no immediate hurry for a day or two. . . ." 
 
 Cynthia yawned as she collected the plates and empty cups 
 upon the tray. 
 
 She had never before lived through such a day. 
 
Chapter Eight 
 
 i 
 
 PETRIE was already in the study the next morning when 
 Cynthia took in his breakfast. He was pacing up and 
 down the room, finishing the pipe he had found half-smoked 
 under his pillow. 
 
 " I say, Cynthia," he said excitedly, " I I didn't hear you 
 talking to your mother last night, did I ? " 
 
 " You may have heard me saying good-night to her," she 
 replied casually. The question, however, on second thoughts, 
 surprised her. " Why ? " said she. 
 
 " Oh, nothing," said Petrie, " nothing at all. ... I just 
 wondered if perhaps you had forgotten about your promise 
 to say nothing till . . ." 
 
 " It isn't likely that I'd choose that time of night for breaking 
 it," said Cynthia, " when mother had one of her headaches, 
 too." 
 
 " I say," said Petrie in some consternation, " you you 
 don't mean that there is any chance of your breaking your 
 promise, do you ? " 
 
 He reminded her of Conrad, the way he nearly pouted over 
 the thought. She smiled indulgently. " Of course not," 
 she said; " old silly !" 
 
 With that she left him staring at his breakfast tray, sucking 
 a dismal tune through the ashes in his pipe. 
 
 He sat down before his breakfast, mumbling and occasion- 
 ally swearing. He drank some tea and tried to eat his bacon, 
 but the stress under which he laboured and fidgeted proved 
 too much for him. Finally he gave up the effort of trying to 
 eat, and lighted a fresh pipe. ( There is no other way, my 
 son," he said, shaking his head. " You know that. You are 
 only funking it. . . ." 
 
 Then, as an artist sets to work upon a canvas, he set to work 
 upon his tray. The bacon he rolled up in several thicknesses 
 
 124 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 125 
 
 paper, and laid in a drawer of his desk with one piece of toast 
 and the boiled egg. Most of the contents of the teapot he 
 emptied into the pot of the palm which was placed every 
 spring in his fireplace. He broke up the remaining piece of 
 toast, and spread crumbs with butter and marmalade upon 
 the plate ; and then he stepped back, still the artist, to survey 
 his handiwork. He smiled his satisfaction, till suddenly he 
 :claimed, " Idiot. . . . Will you never realise that it is 
 tails that make perfection, and that perfection is not a 
 tail ? Even you would not be credited with the eating of 
 egg-shell." 
 
 He promptly took the egg out of the drawer and placed it 
 the egg-cup. Cracking the shell, he softly swore at the 
 ftness of the egg. He looked instinctively to the fireplace, 
 t only the palm and a faded paper screen were there to meet 
 appeal, and deny it. From the fireplace his gaze wandered 
 about the room, but saw nothing that met the situation. He 
 looked at the parcel of bacon, and slowly prodded the yolk of 
 .e egg. It was obviously too soft for a parcel. Then with 
 grunt of discovery he picked up a broad, lacquered paper- 
 knife. With this he scraped a little hole at the roots of the 
 palm, and in it very carefully buried the yolk of the egg. " In 
 our next sojourn on this merry planet," he remarked, " we 
 will be careful to form the habit of preferring our egg boiled 
 hard." 
 
 But he realised that he had, for the last few minutes, been 
 only playing. The realisation that play was now ended 
 brought back the wistful, perplexed look, and again he paced 
 the room, thinking, and jingling the keys in his pocket. Then, 
 when resolution had come out of the perplexity, he softly opened 
 the door into the hall, and leaving it very slightly ajar, sat 
 down at his desk, to wait. 
 
 As he had expected, he heard footsteps, and an unseen hand 
 pushed the door shut. 
 
 " That you, Cynthia ? " he called. 
 " Yes," said she ; " want me ? " 
 
 " As a matter of fact," said Petrie, fidgeting again as she 
 came in, " I do. I am frightfully sorry it is most careless 
 and thoughtless of me, I know very sorry indeed ; but the 
 
 
126 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 fact of the matter is I er I want a note delivered at one 
 of my offices." He looked helplessly at her. " I er . . ." 
 
 " My dear father," said Cynthia in astonishment, " what- 
 ever is wrong with you ? One would think something dreadiul 
 had happened. ... It hasn't, has it ? ... You know per- 
 fectly well that I go out every morning and pass them both, 
 either going or coming back." 
 
 " To be sure," said Petrie, " to be sure ! but I had forgotten 
 it. Clean forgotten it ; and besides, this is a very urgent 
 note. I would like it to go rather before your usual time for 
 going out. I would, in fact, like it to go at once, Cynthia." 
 
 " Well," said Cynthia, " I might just as well go and do the 
 shopping now, and do the other things when I come in. Let's 
 have the note." 
 
 " Oh, yes, of course, the note," said Petrie. " I've not 
 written the note yet. You see, I wanted to make quite sure 
 that you would take it for me, before writing it." 
 
 " Of course, it is such a terrible lot to ask a person to do ! " 
 said Cynthia, laughing. 
 
 " You don't understand," said Petrie. " You don't under- 
 stand at all. It is directly opposed to all my principles, this 
 casual making of casual demands upon other people par- 
 ticularly upon people younger and more vigorous than one- 
 self. It is a filthy habit, and one which I positively abhor. 
 Only the direst necessity could drive me to indulge in it. . . ." 
 
 " Well, if it's as important as all that" said Cynthia, " why 
 don't you come along with me ? We could each take a turn 
 at carrying the letter. . . . It's a grand morning, father. 
 Perfectly lovely out." 
 
 Petrie looked at the sky, dazzling blue, through his window, 
 and at the golden motes dancing in a sunbeam across his desk. 
 ... It was, indeed, a grand morning. Cynthia too looked 
 out of the window. 
 
 The cobwebs in the neglected, overgrown hedge still sparkled 
 with dew. A robin hopped about with an air of tremendous 
 consequence, and stared up impudently with his beady eyes 
 at the two who seemed to prefer dust and shadow to sunshine 
 and free, fresh air. Looking up at them, amazed and in- 
 credulous, he puffed out his throat and sang. An errand- 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 127 
 
 boy in the road, sharing the robin's view of life and sunshine, 
 whistled lustily and scraped his basket along the wooden paling. 
 
 " Come on," said Cynthia, " hurry and get your boots on. 
 I'll be ready in no time." 
 
 Petrie, still looking out of the window, slowly shook his 
 head. " Can't," he said shortly. " I've work to do. Work 
 that's simply got to be done. . . . Yes I'll write the note 
 for you while you get ready. . . ." 
 
 " Ten minutes," said Cynthia, and went back to the kitchen. 
 
 " Now what the devil can I say ? " Petrie mumbled, sitting 
 down to his desk. " And to whom ? . . . Yes, that's much 
 more to the point to whom ? . . ." He paused, listlessly 
 knocking the penholder between his teeth. " What on earth 
 are all those fellows' names ? . . . Blest if I know a single 
 one of them. Oh, yes, I do though Burbage. But which 
 one of them is Burbage ? It doesn't matter, but I believe 
 it's that bald, sandy individual who does the invoices so 
 prettily. He'll do. . . ." Then he began to write. 
 
 ! 
 
 
 " DEAR MR BURBAGE, I greatly fear that I left a pocket- 
 ife upon my table yesterday. Would you be so very good 
 to see, and to hand it, if you are so fortunate as to find 
 it, to my daughter ? 
 
 " I apologise for causing you this trouble, but can say by 
 way of excuse that the knife is an extremely valuable one, 
 and is made even more valuable to me by the association of 
 any happy memories. Yours sincerely, 
 
 " CHARLES PETRIE." 
 
 The letter apparently pleased him, for he smiled as he 
 sealed it. " Ass ! " he chuckled, and drew from his pocket 
 an old knife with a chipped bone handle and one of its blades 
 broken off. The other blade, worn to the shape of a scimitar, 
 often fell open in his pocket. It was the only knife that 
 Petrie had known for twenty years. He grinned affectionately 
 upon it, and again said, " Ass ! . . . Memories indeed ! I'm 
 blest if I know even where or how I acquired you and four- 
 pence, I should say, would very nearly have obtained you 
 even in your pristine glory." 
 
 
128 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 The blade, as he turned the knife over in his hand, fell 
 open. " Treacherous little scoundrel ! I knew you'd get 
 me like that one of these days, except that your time is up." 
 He tossed the knife into the bottom drawer, with Cynthia's 
 money and the sealing-wax and string. " I'll go about without 
 a knife now, till I remember to get me another one. . . ." 
 
 " Ready ? " asked Cynthia at the door. 
 
 " Yes, here you are," said Petrie, and again his smile died. 
 
 She was wearing her large straw hat with its cluster of roses, 
 and in her hand she swung a shopping-basket. Petrie stood 
 at the door and watched her as she crossed the hall. Then 
 he shut the door and sank wearily into his chair. " Lord ! " 
 he exclaimed, " what prey ! . . . She could carry a whole 
 damned household about on those wonderful shoulders of 
 hers, and not know she was doing it till her back was broken. 
 . . . And why the devil can't she see it as I see it ? Why 
 can no one else see it ? ... That fool, Harbottle, for instance 
 confound his frozen little soul. . . ." 
 
 But he could sit still no longer. Hearing the garden gate 
 click behind her, he got upon his feet again and moved about 
 the room. His hands twitched away in his pockets, with his 
 money and his keys. His pipe bobbed up and down as he bit 
 savagely upon its stem. Then he stopped, gazing out again 
 at the sunshine and the robin. 
 
 The robin looked up at him with his chest thrust out, 
 swaggering, challenging. Petrie had forgotten to give him 
 his crumbs, even as Cynthia had forgotten to take away the 
 tray. He fetched a crust from the tray, and softly raised the 
 window. 
 
 " I apologise, old fellow," he said, as he crumbled the toast 
 upon the ledge, at the end of which the robin now sat. " I'm 
 sorry. One ought not, I know, to let these personal incidents 
 come between one and one's public obligations. But it isn't 
 a little thing that I've got on hand. It's a devilish big one, 
 really. The biggest, I think, that ever occurs in a life. . . ." 
 The robin hopped away to grapple with the crumb it had 
 picked up, and Petrie stood looking at it, but thinking very 
 far away. He rested his cheek against the side of the window, 
 looking down sadly, and utterly weary of sadness. " H'm, 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 129 
 
 es, yes, yes." He sighed. " The fact of the matter is that 
 one of them has got to go to the wall for a while at any 
 rate. . . ." The robin hopped up for another crumb. " Ah, 
 but that, believe me," continued Petrie, arguing now, " is 
 where you are quite wrong, my friend. No. She is quite 
 incapable of seeing it for herself. Of course ; I agree : she 
 ought to see it. But there you are ! she carft. Psychasthenics 
 never can. That is the nature of their malady, and that's the 
 very devil of it. ... She isn't to be trusted with a thing like 
 this, you know. . . . Some one else has got to show it to her, 
 and I am the only one who can. . . ." 
 
 He softly lowered the window and stood in utter dejection 
 head bent and shoulders drooping. The robin chirped and 
 hopped about among the bread-crumbs ; then he stopped 
 once more hard by the window-pane, and sang lustily again, 
 right at the man. 
 
 " M'yes," said Petrie sadly. " You know what to do with 
 summer and sunshine, my friend. You fellows never get 
 let in for the things we get let in for. It's our habit of talking 
 that does it, beyond any doubt. You never talk, you see 
 you only sing. That's where it is. ... You have never, by 
 the way, introduced me to your family. I have always 
 accepted that old bachelor story of yours, but, frankly now, I 
 do not believe it. I never have believed a word, of it. . . ." 
 
 Then he looked at his watch. " Ten infernal minutes 
 already ! " he exclaimed. " And even if they keep her half 
 an hour hunting for that ridiculous knife, the odds are that 
 she'll hurry back immediately after." 
 
 With an effort quite visible he pulled himself together, 
 focussing upon the door the gaze that was roving in despair 
 >ut the room. 
 Oh, hell ! " he said softly, and hurried out. 
 
 At Mrs Petrie's bedroom door he stopped and thrust his 
 pipe into his waistcoat pocket the only pocket that held it 
 in position without scattering the ashes. After drawing a 
 
130 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 deep breath of the kind that is expected to steady one for a 
 crisis, he lightly knocked upon the door. 
 
 " Come in, dearie," said Mrs Petrie ; and the grin with 
 which Petrie heard the words was ugly. 
 
 " It isn't Cynthia, I'm afraid," he said, slightly opening 
 the door. " I want to talk to you very particularly, for a 
 few minutes, Elizabeth. . . . It's extremely important. . . . 
 May I come in ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs Petrie. She stiffened as she sat in bed, 
 and drew the clothes about her. It was many years since they 
 had met in the same room, except by accident. " Of course 
 you may come in. Where is Cynthia ? " 
 
 " Cynthia is out," said Petrie shortly. He walked in, not 
 looking at her. He moved to the mantelpiece, staring at the 
 odds and ends upon it : the two miniatures of Mrs Petrie's 
 parents in their tarnished frames, scissors and a small work- 
 basket, the little smelling-salts bottle with a stopper of twisted 
 brown paper. She, meanwhile, moved uneasily in the bed, 
 making futile gestures, each one of which failed of the result 
 she aimed at. She thrust a wisp of straying hair under the 
 lace boudoir-cap she wore, and the wisp immediately fell out 
 again. She folded up the newspaper she had been reading, 
 and it straightway unfolded itself. She drew the everlasting 
 shawl about her shoulders, and the shawl fell apart. . . . 
 
 Petrie moved to the foot of the bed and folded his arms 
 upon the rail. He moved his lips and cleared his throat, and 
 she immediately thrust her hands under the bed-clothes. 
 
 " The the fact is, Elizabeth," he began uneasily, " that 
 Cynthia well, to put the matter quite briefly, Cynthia is 
 as a matter of fact, I know she has most remarkable gifts. 
 She is very anxious no, she has resolved to go to the Con- 
 servatoire at Holzgarten." 
 
 Mrs Petrie looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. 
 " From the way things had begun to go," she said quietly, 
 " I knew that sooner or later you would succeed in doing 
 that." 
 
 " Stuff ! " said Petrie, and again drew the deep, sedative 
 breath. " I wish you would be good enough, Elizabeth, not 
 to interpose nonsensical remarks for a few minutes. What I 
 
. 
 
 have t 
 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 131 
 
 ve to say to you is serious, and I don't know why it should 
 be so infernally difficult for me to communicate a few reason- 
 
 le thoughts to you." 
 " I'm sure I've always shown myself quite ready to listen 
 them," said Mrs Petrie. 
 " Well, listen then," Petrie snapped ; and then immediately 
 he smiled at his ill-temper. " I'm sorry, Elizabeth," he said. 
 " I didn't come and disturb you in order to be merely peevish. 
 The point is, as I say, that Cynthia is going to Holzgarten. 
 Your suggestion that you should accompany her is altogether 
 out of well, it is quite preposterous." 
 
 " My suggestion ! " exclaimed Mrs Petrie softly. " My 
 suggestion ! " and her eyes widened. " I assure you I have 
 made no such suggestion. I have, indeed, made no suggestion 
 whatsoever." 
 
 " Then I apologise," said Petrie quite humbly. " She said 
 that it was not your suggestion, but I am afraid I did not believe 
 her. I apologise, Elizabeth. The suggestion has, however, 
 been made ; but, believe me, it is utterly preposterous." 
 
 " I tell you that I have made no suggestion whatever," said 
 Mrs Petrie proudly. " When Cynthia told me yesterday of 
 this joint scheme of yours I was shocked and upset naturally 
 I was shocked and upset but I did not even oppose it. . . ." 
 
 " No," said Petrie, " I can quite easily believe that you did 
 not oppose it. ... I do not remember your ever having 
 definitely and technically opposed even me and yet . . ." he 
 stopped, staring bitterly at the faded wall-paper behind her 
 head. 
 
 While he was thus staring Mrs Petrie very gingerly said, 
 closely watching him as she said it, " The idea of my going 
 must be Cynthia's own then." 
 
 " That may be," answered Petrie, still looking at the wall- 
 paper, " but it is, let me tell you for the third time, preposterous" 
 
 " But if the girl wishes it . . ." Mrs Petrie persisted. 
 
 " Nonsense," said Petrie. " Enough of that, Elizabeth. 
 It is not to be." He glared at her, grasping the bed-rail in 
 his hands, hissing the words at her through clenched teeth. 
 
 The frail creature among the bed-clothes thrust her little 
 face towards him, cocking up the chin with astonishing defiance. 
 
 
132 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " My dear Charles," she said very quietly, " it has never ceased 
 to amaze me that you do not utterly wear yourself out with 
 that theatrical manner of yours. ... I thought you wished to 
 say a few quiet, reasonable words. The sense of the matter, 
 as it appears to me, is merely this : Cynthia ought to be the 
 chief consideration under the circumstances. /, as you know 
 as you both know do not think that music is a suitable 
 profession for a young lady. I do not think that the loose 
 companionship of the particular type of young person it 
 involves is at all desirable for a daughter. But that, since 
 Cynthia herself is to be the main consideration, is neither 
 here nor there. I do not oppose her if she has set her heart 
 upon it. But if Cynthia has seen of her own accord and 
 you assure me that this is the case the difficulties and pitfalls 
 in her path, and if she has decided to meet these difficulties 
 by the very simple expedient of taking me with her . . . 
 Well . . ." she shrugged her shoulders at him. " Dear me ! 
 . . . what would I not give to have had my mother with 
 me in those Paris days. . . ." 
 
 " H'm," said Petrie. " I thank you. . . . But let us keep 
 our retrospections for another time, as Cynthia will be back 
 very shortly." 
 
 " Well," said Mrs Petrie, " why should she not come 
 back and talk it over with us ? We might then be able to 
 discover what her opinions really are. . . ." 
 
 " Elizabeth ! " said Petrie, so that the appeal in his voice 
 startled her. " For pity's sake, Elizabeth Good Lord ! 
 Can't you see what her opinion must be ? " 
 
 " How should I ? " asked Mrs Petrie with another shrug. 
 " It is not with me that she talks over her private affairs. I 
 assure you I have no idea what her opinion is on this subject 
 or any other. . . ." 
 
 " Then, by the Lord, I'll tell you ! " said Petrie savagely. 
 " You insist on exasperating me ! you have succeeded. Listen 
 then ! She thinks that you're a weak, miserable, rotten thing ! 
 That is all that you have ever given her ground for thinking 
 of you yes, and anybody else upon whom you have been 
 able to cast the burden of your lifeless weight. She is afraid 
 to leave you, lest you should collapse, leaving your blood upon 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 133 
 
 shoulders. You are her cross, Elizabeth." He pointed a 
 ig, trembling finger at her. " And she is courageous enough 
 ind fool enough to try to stumble on, carrying you to 
 
 end." 
 
 Mrs Petrie had very slightly cowered under the torrent of 
 s words ; but when he stopped she braced herself again, and 
 sumed once more the odd, ill-fitting attitude of truculence. 
 Indeed," she said ; and again, " Oh, indeed. I am sure I 
 see nothing to be so agitated about if a girl of Cynthia's 
 sposition and affectionate temperament feels a perfectly 
 natural consideration and love for her mother. If this has 
 prevailed in the face of of influences to the contrary well, 
 so much the more ought it to be respected. Theatrical words 
 and gestures on your part, my dear Charles, cannot in any way 
 alter the facts of human nature not even in your daughter 
 however much they may relieve your feelings." 
 
 " Pooh ! . . . * Theatrical gestures ' indeed ! " Petrie 
 exploded. " That is the worst of teaching catchwords to 
 limaginative people ... to people who think that the 
 ily possible evidence of tragedy is blood spirting, squirting, 
 :icky red blood. . . . But what about the tragedy of souls ? 
 . The miserable, battered, bent and broken souls adrift 
 this absurd world, where it is the lot of the strong to 
 strengthen the weak, and the cankerous habit of the weak 
 to weaken the strong. . . . Yes, even in this futile, guinea- 
 grabbing Pelchester souls gaping and drawn bloodless by 
 parasites with neither blood nor stomach of their own. But 
 you cannot see the tragedy of that ; and just because there is 
 no oozing of vulgar haemoglobin for you to fasten your eyes 
 upon . . ." 
 
 He stopped, breathless. 
 
 Now Mrs Petrie had possessed, in days gone by, a most 
 astonishing quality, a very charming trick. It was the very 
 simple device of meeting vehemence quite coldly, of making 
 a show of quiet dignity miniature, but perfect and tremen- 
 dous and by lighting upon a phrase that hit the nail, by the 
 most casual and unconscious fluke, right upon its head. 
 
 She was agitated now by the breathless excitement of Petrie 
 he strained forward, like a caged animal behind the bars 
 
134 TH E VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 of the bed-rail. But she shrugged her shoulders at him with 
 an air approaching jauntiness, a jauntiness made ludicrous 
 by the little lace cap awry upon her untidy head and by the 
 threadbare shawl upon her shoulders. 
 
 " You are too overpowering, Charles, with your flow of 
 crude, alliterative adjectives," she said. The boredom and 
 hauteur she displayed were no less than a miracle. " More 
 words that you have taught me, you see. But that particular 
 group t battered, bent and broken ' struck me as worn out 
 quite twenty years ago. It struck me even then as almost 
 meaningless in its extravagance." 
 
 The moment, however, that she had said the words she 
 would have given anything in the world to have them back 
 again, unsaid ; for Petrie's eyes were fixed upon her. 
 
 The pallor of his face was strangely dark against the square 
 of light on the faded window-blind. Blacker than his hair 
 and his frayed cravat gleamed his eyes. 
 
 Through her they pierced, looking across the gulf of years 
 at a laughing youth seated carelessly over a little table under 
 the awning of a quiet cafe, and at the slip of a girl who sat 
 with him, laughing merrily at his flow of ' crude, alliterative 
 adjectives,' stopping the flow only that he might gaze at her, 
 astonished and charmed by some such pert and surprising 
 insolence as this. . . . 
 
 His eyes came slowly back from this picture to the weak little 
 woman among the bed-clothes before him, to the parchment- 
 like skin, and pale lips that curled in bitterness and reproach 
 upon him. He continued, quietly staring at the woman who 
 could speak to him thus with a superb nonchalance, and yet 
 had failed failed persistently to cast her bread, with the 
 least show of decent courage, upon the waters. . . . 
 
 She had now attacked him as an artist, and had poured 
 cold scorn upon him. She had exposed his technique, and 
 sought, thereby, to bring discredit upon the greatness of his 
 work. Once, many years before, some obscure individual 
 had done the same thing to him in the columns of the Morning 
 Post. He had never done it a second time. (Petrie had 
 managed to get a few minutes' talk with him at his house in 
 Turnham Green.) 
 
ch : 
 
 pre 
 
 shi 
 
 dr 
 
 
 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 135 
 
 ; 
 
 Mrs Petrie looked up to see him tumble at last into the 
 os of fury and resentment over which he had been so 
 recariously suspended. Her jaunty bravado vanished ; the 
 shoulders fell, the pointed little chin sank. 
 
 This seemed to be the moment she had expected and 
 dreaded all her life. 
 
 /She trembled terribly at the flashing of the cold, unblinking 
 es fastened upon her. Under the bed-clothes she clutched 
 her hands together ; she moistened her lips to speak, to say 
 anything at all to snap the awful tension of those moments 
 wherein the two merely stared at each other but the lips, 
 still dry, could utter not a sound. 
 
 " Adjectives, did you say ? " Petrie asked, with the smile 
 that could twist his face to a shape more grotesque than any- 
 thing normally human. " Well, you shall have adjectives 
 both old and new." He paused a while, as though choosing 
 words and carefully weighing them. But the words he 
 eventually used he need not have devoted much time to 
 finding. 
 
 " Damn you ! " he said simply at last, with no more passion, 
 nor less devoutness, than a monk puts into his paternoster. 
 " Look look what you have done to me \ And you knew 
 not what you did that, too, must go down against you. Blind, 
 miserable vampire that you are, look at me see the boneless, 
 bloodless nincompoop you have made of me. And was there 
 any blood spilt in the doing of it ? . . . Devil a drop." In a 
 funereal undertone he repeated, " No devil a drop ! You've 
 had it all yourself, that's why." 
 
 Mrs Petrie moved uneasily, avoiding his stare. She hated 
 things to be put in a coarse way. " C-Charles ! " she appealed, 
 weakly. 
 
 " Yes," Petrie snapped. " That's just it that infernal. 
 
 ay of yours of saying * Charles.' You are not yet forty-five 
 ears old you are still a young woman as I am a young man 
 and for the last twenty you have been a miserable, whining 
 hag. ... * Charles ' ! " He mocked her appealing tone. 
 " Bah ! just listen to the coarse devices of talk you drive me 
 to me to whom sound is potential music ! To think that 
 anyone should drive me to lay my tongue to vulgar recrimina- 
 
136 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 tion and abuse abuse of a woman as frail as a rabbit. /, with 
 the brains of a Titan and the imagination of the Muses. . . ." 
 
 Mrs Petrie trembled. A leg of the rickety bed slipped off 
 the empty cotton reel that for years had done duty for the 
 missing castor. Petrie did not heed it. 
 
 The jerk merely snapped his teeth together and tossed a 
 lock of hair wildly over his forehead. His chest heaved with 
 the scurrying breaths he drew, his nostrils quivered. 
 
 A new and terrible dread had begun to grow upon Mrs 
 Petrie. The sheer brag of his last sentence made panic of 
 her fear ; for no man not even Petrie in his senses would 
 be likely thus to describe himself in conversation. 
 
 " Charles ! " she tried to scream, but the word only rattled 
 in a hollow whisper. 
 
 " Charles ! " he mocked again. " Ye gods ! . . . You 
 weak ones ! but it is a mighty thing that weakness of yours. 
 You need only to collapse upon one's neck and the trick is 
 done provided you keep on saying your * Charles ! ' at the 
 proper intervals. Nothing is sacred from you. Neither work 
 nor rest ; neither music, nor noise, nor silence. There you 
 stick, insatiable and always empty, whispering or whining, 
 crooning or screaming your * Charles.' . . . Always asking, 
 claiming, seeking, demanding God only knows what ! If one 
 is silent, you ask for one's thoughts. If one has no thoughts, 
 you suspect deceit and treachery. . . . That is what you did 
 to me. You pestered and exasperated me, and when I was 
 fordone exhausted and empty from the sheer drainage of 
 it all there was nothing for your weariness. Then your eyes 
 began to grow round with fear and quaking apprehension. 
 You dogged and haunted all my efforts and my lapses from 
 effort my working and my resting, with your doddering, 
 futile dread of ' failure.' " 
 
 She listened to him, shrinking. 
 
 " Failure indeed ! " he snapped. " And why on earth 
 shouldn't I have failed ? Who were you to dictate success 
 to me, if I preferred decent failure ? . . ." She took a little 
 heart as his tone became more quiet. " But no," he went 
 on. " There was always that hollow, haggard, haunting, 
 hectic ' Charles.' God ! How I used to wish that they 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 137 
 
 named me Nero or Napoleon anything, anything in the 
 
 ole wide world but Charles. Artaxerxes would have done 
 
 mirably. . . ." She looked restlessly about the room, 
 ressing her hands together upon a crumpled corner of the 
 
 d-sheet. Petrie suddenly recalled her by shaking the bed. 
 
 " Listen to me ! " he said sharply. " Attend if you still 
 e the power to attend to anything ! " 
 
 Unwillingly, but meekly, her eyes drifted back to his. " You 
 are not to do it to Cynthia. You are to leave Cynthia alone. 
 First of all, you must realise that you are not ill to require 
 the servitude of a buxom young woman with brains far beyond 
 those of a scullery-wench and chambermaid. . . . Mrs 
 Simpson can minister to all your wants, as she can minister 
 to mine. But you must let even Mrs Simpson live. . . . 
 You have begun to say * Cynthia ' just as you used, till I 
 actually buried myself out of earshot of you, to say ' Charles.' 
 I have heard you doing it. You torment her with your futile 
 anxieties just as for years you tormented me bursting in 
 upon her thoughts, violating the sanctity of her silences. . . . 
 And what are your anxieties, now that you have actually more 
 money than you can spend without effort ? . . . They are 
 pots and pans now, your precious anxieties, and and dish- 
 towels and other laundry problems. That is the kind of 
 refuse you keep slinging into the dreams of an artist ! But it 
 is finished. There is going to be no more of it, do you hear ? " 
 
 She looked helplessly at him, while he repeated, " No more. 
 She is going away to get out of it : to live. She is going to 
 work and to play play the piano, and play the fool if the 
 spirit so moves her. And you are not to follow her. You 
 are to stay here. I myself will take care of you." 
 
 She shivered. 
 
 " And mind you," he added sternly, " not a word of this 
 to Cynthia." 
 
 Mrs Petrie saw exactly how much of truth there was in all 
 he had said to her, and she trembled. She saw, too, his wild 
 exaggerations, and she tried, on the strength of these, to look 
 up at the angular form that towered above her. " Brute ! " 
 she managed to say. " H-heartless brute ! " 
 
 " Brute ? " Petrie repeated, and moved, like a doctor, to 
 
 
138 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 the side of the bed. " Oh, no ! Not that, Elizabeth. Exe- 
 cutioner, if you like referee and possibly executioner." 
 
 With that he pulled his pipe out of his pocket and stalked, 
 still looking at her, out of the room. 
 
 Mrs Petrie remained sitting up, looking at the brass knob 
 of the bed-post, and thinking. 
 
 She sought to quench her thirst with a cup of tepid tea 
 squeezed from the pot on the tray, but the thirst was not to 
 be quenched. The strain had exhausted her, so she pushed 
 the tray as far as it would go upon the bed, and lay back 
 among the pillows. 
 
 The absurdity of his remarks upon the name of Nero caused 
 her to smile, a slightly contemptuous smile, and then the 
 absurdity of his boasting claims, added to this other absurdity, 
 caused the smile to freeze upon her features. 
 
 The fervour the frenzy almost with which he laid claim 
 to Brains and Imagination frightened her, so that his parting 
 word was the only word that could frighten her more. 
 
 Whatever the processes within her might have been that 
 determined it, a cold acceptance of the facts eventually crystal- 
 lised out of them. The facts were that Cynthia would go to 
 Holzgarten and become, for good or ill, a musician. 
 
 Another fact was and this she realised with her pointed little 
 chin thrust slightly forward that ' they should see.' 
 
 They should see whether she was weak and useless and rotten, 
 or whether she could run a house with greater economy and 
 precision than the girls had ever run it. 
 
 So she got up and dressed herself, to face lunch with Cynthia 
 brave and defiant, and astonishingly cheerful. 
 
 Petrie went up to his bedroom for the portmanteau that 
 was already packed. He left a note on the study desk for 
 Cynthia, saying that he had been urgently called away to 
 London for a day or two. Then, taking a couple of bank- 
 notes out of the bottom drawer, and a bundle of paper, about 
 an inch thick, out of the top drawer, he let himself out of the 
 garden door and hurried to the station. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 139 
 
 
 
 Early in the autumn Cynthia, with a small new trunk and 
 a large suit-case, set out for Holzgarten. 
 
 Mrs Petrie, dry-eyed and smiling, gave her a brave God- 
 speed at the gate where the cab was waiting. Petrie, filling 
 the cab with smoke, took her to catch the eleven o'clock 
 up train. 
 
 For the fourth time since the spring he had business that 
 took him to London. 
 
 END OF BOOK I 
 
Book Two : Chapter One 
 
 i 
 
 *HREE years and two months had passed when Cynthia 
 thrust her head out of a railway carriage window as the 
 
 lin drew in to Pelchester. 
 
 She immediately drew it in and sat down with a bump. 
 " Well I never," she exclaimed. 
 
 She was ready for surprise, but not for the particular sur- 
 prise the platform held for her a perfectly ordinary family 
 group, of Petrie, Mrs Petrie, and Freda, standing close together, 
 engaged in a common quest. 
 
 Apart from the fact that he stood thus in the bosom of his 
 family, there was nothing astonishing in the appearance of 
 Petrie. Save for that one thing, he might have been standing, 
 just as she had left him thirty-eight months before, on that 
 very same spot. The same old jacket with its bulging pockets 
 hung from the broad, drooping shoulders ; the same shiny 
 trousers sagged at his knees. His pipe was still out. 
 
 Mrs Petrie, on the other hand, was, quite apart from her 
 context, astonishing. Her attitude was more than merely erect. 
 It had that touch of exaggeration which is usually described as 
 * soldierly ' that slightly theatrical quality which suggests 
 that the spirit is stronger than the flesh. She wore a new 
 coat and skirt, and a prim little black hat with a bunch of large 
 red cherries. She was, in a word, not the same woman. 
 
 Freda, too, had changed. In her dress, and in the style with 
 which she carried her bag and umbrella, she rose to the occasion 
 of having left far behind her the uncomfortable ' where the 
 brook and river meet ' status. 
 
 When she had kissed them all, Cynthia said, " Oh, do let's 
 walk home, it looks so lovely unless mother is tired." 
 
 " No, dear, thank you," said Mrs Petrie crisply. " I am not 
 the least bit tired. I would prefer to walk." 
 
 141 
 
142 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 There was just enough of defiance in her tone to make 
 Cynthia think that it would always be a little out of place to 
 ask that type of question in future. 
 
 Conrad met them not far from the house, and hailed Cynthia 
 cheerily as Mrs Beethoven. 
 
 When, about three hours later, Cynthia saw that Mrs Simpson 
 was laying five places for tea instead of four, she was beyond 
 feeling surprise at anything. The meeting at the station, 
 and the lunch, over which Petrie himself had presided, were 
 a revelation to which it was quite impossible that anything 
 fresh should be added ; and so the spectacle of tea being laid 
 for the complete family at the same board only confirmed her 
 surprise. Yet she could not help saying, " Who's the fifth 
 place for, Mrs Simpson ? " 
 
 " The master, Miss," said Mrs Simpson. Cynthia stared 
 at the tight knob of hair on the head of the woman who related 
 miracles as though they were self-evident facts. 
 
 " Did he say he would have it in here, then ? " she asked. 
 
 " Always does have it here, Miss," said Mrs Simpson. 
 " Shall I wet it ? The kettle does boil." 
 
 li Yes, do," said Cynthia, and went upstairs. 
 
 The Simpson occupation of the attics made it necessary 
 for Cynthia to share her old bedroom with Freda. She found 
 Freda doing her hair. 
 
 " You are a funny thing, Free ! " she said. " Why ever 
 didn't you write and tell me ? Does he have all his meals in 
 the dining-room ? " 
 
 " Yes, rather," said Freda. " Good thing, too. It nearly 
 halves the work. I thought mother would have told you 
 or he, if he ever writes. Besides, I didn't know how long 
 it would last, till I'd got used to it, and sort of forgotten it. 
 Didn't they mention it, then ? " 
 
 " No," said Cynthia, " I had no idea. I wonder what 
 could have possessed him. . . . Tell me, does it work ? " 
 
 " Of course it works," said Freda, proudly managing to take 
 some credit for the success. " Mother's ever so much better, 
 you know. She still fusses about everything, of course but 
 not at meals. . . ." 
 
 " Yes, but is he any better ? " asked Cynthia. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 143 
 
 " H'm ! " said Freda, " I didn't know that there'd ever 
 been much the matter with his state of health. . . . No, he 
 doesn't seem to be any different. He and the boy seem to 
 get on very well together, without noticing anybody else much. 
 They spend all the time arguing about nothing at all. It's a 
 bit tiresome at times, but it's a good deal better than having 
 to think of an extra tray every blessed time." 
 
 Cynthia wondered what, exactly, could be at the bottom 
 of it all ; and she wondered, too, why it should so astonish her, 
 since she might have gathered from their letters that things, 
 vaguely, were getting better at home that everyone seemed 
 to be becoming more sensible, a little more like other people. 
 
 Freda said, " There seems to be a good deal more money 
 flying about from somewhere. / always thought we were as 
 poor as Job's turkey. Where does it all come from, Cynthia ? 
 You must have cost a good bit, but there seems to be more 
 than ever." 
 
 " Oh, I should think there's always been plenty, really," 
 said Cynthia casually. " Only we haven't happened to know 
 it till we took over the housekeeping. ... I suppose mother 
 manages by staying upstairs a good deal ? " 
 
 " Not she," said Freda. " Whatever should she stay up- 
 stairs for ? She is well now, you see." 
 
 It was incomprehensible, but it was wonderful. 
 
 Petrie sat calmly at the head of his table, and consumed 
 hot muffins in amiable competition with Conrad. 
 
 From him Cynthia stole a glance at her mother. If Petrie 
 surprised her, Mrs Petrie utterly baffled ; for the only thing 
 about Petrie was that he was in a new place. Himself, he was 
 quite unchanged the same old lounging figure of the study, 
 except for a few, almost negligible, streaks of silver about his 
 temples. 
 
 So it was not, after all, her father that surprised her it 
 was his new setting ; and the most astonishing feature of the 
 setting was her new mother. . . . 
 
 4 Soldierly ' is, after all, the only word that suggests her 
 bearing. It lacked all repose, and allowed none. At times 
 she was like an athlete, quivering and tense, waiting for the 
 pistol-shot that sets him bounding away. Once the pistol- 
 
H4 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 shot was heard a muffled, meaning-charged sound from the 
 kitchen and she leapt to the door, and through it to the 
 source of the sound. 
 
 It was no less than a marvel. . . . 
 
 She came back with a dish of new-buttered muffins. 
 
 Cynthia stole another glance at her. She tried to find 
 something to say directly to her ; and all she could find was, 
 " How do you manage about supper, Mummy ? I should 
 never have thought it possible to get everyone together at the 
 same time." 
 
 " Pardon me dinner." It was Petrie that answered. 
 " We dine, Cynthia. And what is more, I am a paragon of 
 punctuality. Your brother, I may tell you, is a slight nuisance, 
 for in the matter of interpreting clock-faces he is a born Artist 
 with a big A. But your mother will support me in the asser- 
 tion that / am a paragon of punctuality." 
 
 With a brisk nod and another of her new smiles Mrs Petrie 
 did so. 
 
 Conrad, however, spoke. " Well, it must be fairly easy," 
 he suggested calmly, " to be a paragon of punctuality when 
 you have nothing to do, like the Governor, but wait on 
 the spot, looking at the door-knob and waiting for the next 
 grub-time." 
 
 No subject held their attention for long, and tea was soon 
 finished. Cynthia did not know that it was in them all to 
 enjoy a meal so thoroughly. 
 
 There were a hundred and one questions to be asked and 
 answered, the questions that always beset the returned 
 traveller till Petrie's envelopment in a sudden cloud of smoke 
 indicated that tea was over. 
 
 So her mother no longer objected to tobacco smoke. . . . 
 
 She looked about her at the cretonnes and chintzes that 
 had seemed, four years ago, so dismally faded. She looked 
 at the old vases, festive now with the flowers that Conrad had 
 gone out to get after breakfast, and at the set of Dickens. . . . 
 Then she knew that the others were all looking at her. " Well " 
 she said awkwardly, and stood up ; " so I've come home." 
 
 She could not have thought of any remark more futile than 
 that ; but for an instant she caught her mother's eye, and 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 145 
 
 in that instant she saw what she had been looking for during 
 the last four hours : Mrs Petrie's look of brittle alertness had 
 vanished ; she was smiling, not as she had smiled till now with 
 a deliberate kind of smile, but faintly and a little wistfully. 
 
 " Yes, darling," she said softly. Her eyes twinkled upon 
 them all. "... Loaded with honours." 
 
 What she did next was like the clicking of spurs together, 
 though in point of fact she only reached across the little table 
 for Conrad's plate and cup and saucer. 
 
 She said something about her " busiest time of day," and 
 so indicated to Cynthia that she required no more attention 
 from her. 
 
 Freda said she had to run round to "Fernlea," but supposed 
 that Cynthia was too tired. 
 
 Conrad, who had never represented a social obligation of 
 any sort to Cynthia, merely vanished. 
 
 So she was left alone, and drifted after Petrie to the study. 
 
 " Oh, so you've come to join me ? " said he, waving her to 
 the desk chair which he had drawn up to the fire " in staring 
 at the door-knob and waiting for dinner ? . . . And how 
 do you find the world fits you, Cyn, now that you have had 
 time to try it on ? D'you find it too big, or too small, or 
 anything ? " 
 
 " N-no," said Cynthia. " I think it's just about right. 
 But I wonder what mother can find to absorb her at this time 
 of day ? . . ." 
 
 " I will tell you," said Petrie. " It's those little silver 
 tea-knives. She cannot get Mrs Simpson to believe that 
 water hot enough for the washing of dishes is also hot enough 
 to dissolve the blades out of their green handles. As she never 
 offers Mrs Simpson an opportunity of testing out the theory 
 openly, and since, if Mrs Simpson has tested it out covertly, 
 she dare not admit it, the case has not been proved to the 
 satisfaction of either party. Your mother, therefore, goes 
 into the kitchen every time those knives are used to stand 
 them point downwards in a cocoa-tin that fits them like a 
 glove, and to pour on water of the correct temperature till 
 only the blades are covered by the cleansing liquid. As a 
 matter of fact I very strongly suspect and my suspicion is 
 K 
 
 
146 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 supported by evidence from your astute brother that all the 
 blades have been washed, several times, out of the handles, 
 and have been stuck in again quite satisfactorily with burnt 
 sugar. But we digress from the world, Cynthia, as found by 
 the rising generation of artists." 
 
 " Oh, it's alright," said Cynthia. " Only there's always 
 been a great deal to do. I can't imagine how people like 
 Grendel manage to get everything in. ... Grendel's a perfect 
 marvel. . . ." 
 
 " Grendel, I take it, is your genius of the moment ? " asked 
 Petrie. 
 
 " I should just say he was" said Cynthia. " He went 
 back, as a matter of fact, two years ago to Moscow. It 
 won't be very long before we're hearing of him again. I've 
 brought a copy of his prize quartette that I played in. He 
 gave me one, you know. . . ." 
 
 " We will have a look at it sometime," said Petrie. " But, for 
 the moment, we again digress. What about money, Cynthia ? 
 Was it enough ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Cynthia, " a little more than enough, as a 
 matter of fact. I've managed to save forty pounds, including 
 my singing prize, if ... though Freda says there's heaps 
 of it about here." 
 
 " The devil she does ! " said Petrie, and chuckled. _ "Oh, 
 no. We will manage without your savings, Cyn, I think." 
 
 " Chrissie did all the managing for us, you see," said Cynthia ; 
 " an4 she's a perfect marvel. She has been there for seven- 
 teen years, playing in the orchestra, and ought to know the 
 ropes. She kept us on about fourpence a week." 
 
 " As guests ? " asked Petrie, " or hosts ? " 
 
 " Hosts, I should think, if anything," said Cynthia, " though 
 there was no one really poor in the ' gang ' after old Grendel 
 went. We all helped to keep him going." 
 
 " Well," said Petrie, " and once again we digress. You are 
 satisfied, apparently, with your share of money. The only- 
 other thing that is apt to complicate the Artist's existence is 
 Sex. How do you find your share of sex suits you, Cynthia ? " 
 
 Perhaps it was the companionship of the wonderful Christina 
 Brookes that had educated Cynthia to the point of being not 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 147 
 
 e least disturbed by such a question ; perhaps it was the 
 fact that girls were no longer what they had been ; perhaps 
 it was Petrie's own particular manner of saying these things 
 that led one to think of nothing but the answer. The question 
 had, however, surprised Cynthia, so she was not in a position 
 to make any answer offhand. It was as though she had not 
 been in the habit of looking occasionally at her bank-book, 
 and then, suddenly, been faced with the question about her 
 allowance. 
 
 She hesitated, trying to form a rough estimate. 
 
 Petrie went on, " Of course, I've only been a man, so it is quite 
 possible that I altogether over-estimate the importance of the 
 thing. Also it is rather a futile subject, since no one can alter 
 one's allowance of it, and no one tells the truth but I must 
 say I should like to know, purely for my own information and 
 interest, whether you are satisfied with your allowance of sex." 
 
 " I don't know," said Cynthia ; " it's very difficult to say, 
 since I've never exactly noticed . . ." 
 
 " So I take it you are still what the great middle-class of this 
 country would call * heart-whole.' And that is very satis- 
 factory. ... I take it that you have had no more offers of 
 marriage, then. . . ." 
 
 " No," said Cynthia. " At least n-no. Not exactly. 
 But there's a boy a man I suppose really only he's quite 
 mad. You may have heard of him, he says he's played all 
 over the world. He's Baradjik, the 'cellist. Roumanian, I 
 should think." 
 
 " Good heavens ! " said Petrie, " I've always wondered what 
 becomes of infant prodigies when they grow up. So that's it, 
 is it ? And so you are partly in love with Baradjik the trick 
 'cellist ! Does he still clothe himself in velvet raiment like 
 Little Lord Fauntleroy ? " 
 
 " Good gracious, no ! " said Cynthia. " He's a great big 
 thing as tall as you, nearly. He's got wonderful hands, but 
 I assure you I'm not the least bit in love with him, my dear. 
 He's mad that's all. . . . Chrissie says he ought to have 
 his ears boxed. But everyone agrees he's mad." 
 
 " H'm," said Petrie ; " I suppose no ; supposing's no 
 I daresay your friend Chrissie gave you all the help 
 
148 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 you required in that quarter. She's a paragon of wisdom, 
 apparently. . . . But what of the frau landlady, and her dis- 
 appointing, beer-gathering spouse ? " 
 
 " Oh, he died years ago," said Cynthia. " But Frau Masburg 
 is the same as ever, I suppose perfectly lovely. She's awfully 
 full of you, Dad. . . . She says the one desire of her life is 
 to see you again before her hair is quite grey. . . ." 
 
 " By Jove, yes," said Petrie, " she did have the most won- 
 derful hair. . . . She must be a very good fifty-five now, 
 Frau Masburg . . . And what about that stiff-shouldered 
 youth ? You know the lugubrious individual I mean ; his 
 father had the Post Office." 
 
 "Bluebeard!" said Cynthia. " Herr Golanz ! Oh, he 
 always asks after you too. He spends most of his time with 
 us. He's been awfully good to us, always taking us all out and 
 giving us treats. Of course he's the Director of the Post 
 now. We call him the father of the gang. He sent you 
 all the felicitations imaginable . . . and the Herr Dierzo 
 Monsieur Dierzo, I mean ; but be refused to send you any 
 definite message. He said to tell you he couldn't think of 
 doing such a thing until you had apologised for the insult . . ." 
 
 " Insult indeed ! " Petrie snorted. " I would certainly not 
 think of apologising to the fellow. He deserved to be insulted. 
 He simply drove me from Holzgarten by his stiff-necked 
 obstinacy." 
 
 " Well," said Cynthia, " that is not his account of the 
 affair. He said, though, that I might mention to you that 
 in his opinion, / might get somewhere, some day, because I 
 am willing to learn from my betters, where you were not even 
 willing to listen. . . ." 
 
 " Just like his confounded impudence ! " said Petrie. 
 " Absurd old bandmaster that he is yes, and all the rest 
 of them too. That's all they're fit for, Cynthia to shout 
 their nonsensical pedantry at soldiers, instead of trying to talk 
 on an equality with artists. I say you don't mean to tell 
 me that you didn't shout back at him ? You don't swallow 
 all the nonsense he talks and plays, do you ? " 
 
 Cynthia said very suavely, " I managed to get the Gold 
 Medal all the same." 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 149 
 
 "H'm," said Petrie. "... Poor old Dierzo, he was 
 inclined to be a hide-bound old fossil then, thirty years ago, 
 very nearly. I can't imagine what he must be like now. 
 D'you know, Cyn, I've been horribly tempted to run over 
 and see them all again, before they take it into their heads to 
 admit the facts by quietly dying. . . . Poor old Dierzo ! is 
 there any talk of his ' Odysseus ' now ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, rather," said Cynthia. " He's still at the third 
 act. But I say, dad why ever didn't you come to see us ? " 
 
 " Because I've been so busy, Cyn." He said this in a 
 strangely hushed voice, as though it were in the nature of a 
 confession. " But I shall go one of these days. I would like 
 to see them all. I'm interested in people, you know, Cyn, 
 frightfully interested. That's what we agreed to call ' the 
 beauty of function,' you may remember. . . ." 
 
 " I remember you agreed something of the kind," said 
 Cynthia. " But I was thinking of something else at the 
 time . . . poor old daddy ! " 
 
 " The spectacle of that fidgeting young Golanz, grown, 
 presumably, to beard-hood, directing the local Post and 
 fathering that gang of yours, does, I must say, attract me 
 
 endously. . . ." 
 o they talked on, about the people who were still left 
 
 at had known Petrie twenty-eight years ago, and of the 
 * gang ' and the catch-words that distinguished it from every 
 other coterie that ever had existed, or was ever likely to exist, 
 
 the world of Music and the universe of Art. 
 
 Then Petrie suddenly said, " Yes, Cynthia I believe you 
 e got it after all, you youngsters with your talk of ' melody ' 
 and the importance of your ' lyrical quality,' whatever you 
 may mean by these things and whether even you have the 
 vaguest idea in the world of what you do mean. . . . But 
 stick you to it, my girl, for that is Life, as big as one can ever 
 spell it ! Keep on making, Cynthia, making, making all the 
 time, making. Leave mere doing the shifting of things 
 from one place to another place to the world's great Pel- 
 chestrians and natural coolies. Yes, confound their flat, ugly 
 faces and their broad, hairy hands they have no time for 
 life, except the few odd moments left over to them after the 
 
 
i5o THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 scramble and hurry of living. But, for us it's got to be Life 
 itself making, with our own hands and brains. . . . Eh, 
 Cyn ? " 
 
 It was funny of him to appeal directly to her in that way. 
 She could, otherwise, have ignored the pause. 
 
 His eyes lighted up with memories of the days when Frau 
 Masburg's hair was a mass of spun gold that could tumble to 
 her waist, and when Bluebeard was an awkward youth who 
 feared his father like the Mogul Emperor. . . . 
 
 She noticed the lines around his mouth and eyes, the grey 
 in his hair. The sheer leanness of him gave her a hurt. She 
 had never been sorry for him before, as he had now made her 
 sorry, by talking so joyfully of the joys in which he had no 
 share. 
 
 " My poor old daddy," she said softly, " I I should think 
 it must be very lonely for you at times. . . . Why don't 
 you you ought " 
 
 Petrie interrupted her. Again he behaved curiously, as 
 though he were confiding a secret to her. 
 
 " I," he said, " am very well, thank you, Cyn very well, 
 indeed, I assure you." 
 
 " Yes, I daresay," said she ; " but I don't suppose you ever 
 sound a note. . . . It's all very well to talk the way you do 
 about the life for you and me and all that kind of thing. I'm 
 all right enough ; but there's nothing that you do. There 
 isn't much of making anything about you." She hated saying 
 that, but she felt that it had to be said. 
 
 " My dear girl," Petrie said quietly, " the one thing about 
 you musician people that has always struck me as your most 
 unintelligent trait is that you won't realise that there is any- 
 thing other than sound in the world at all worthy of considera- 
 tion. But do let me assure you that you are quite wrong. 
 There are other things besides sound for an artist to spend 
 his time contemplating and sifting and rearranging. . . . 
 There is a host of artists other than mere sound-collectors, 
 you know. ... In a word, Cynthia, I er well, I too live ; 
 also I might call attention to the fact that I have been taking 
 care of your mother ! I daresay you have commented on the 
 way we all take our food in common now. The experiment 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 151 
 
 proved most successful : in a moment you will hear a bell. 
 
 shall then proceed forthwith to wash my hands, and you 
 
 >urs. When, five minutes later, we hear another bell we will 
 meet together and cheerfully eat. I say ' all,' but I must 
 
 :plain that your brother is excepted for his only laws are 
 dignity and scorn. That double bell idea is a splendid device 
 'hich I stole from the old bootshop. . . ." 
 
 He was interrupted by the tinkle of a bell which Mrs Simpson 
 
 tg in the hall. Petrie smiled and said, " That is the way 
 fprit de corps is made, Cynthia. Simple, isn't it ? ... After 
 dinner, by the way, I should take your mother round to see 
 Sylvia, and make the acquaintance of your seemingly pneu- 
 matic nephew, my grandson, George Charles Tuke." 
 
 Cynthia remained sitting when he got up. " I don't need 
 to wash," she said, " I'm quite ready. But why did you never 
 come to see us ? " 
 
 " Because, as I told you," said he, " I was too busy. Further- 
 more, you were too busy. But I am going. . . . Let's see. 
 . . . Five weeks to Christmas. . . . Hang it, Cynthia ! I'll 
 go next week and see those old duffers. Next week will suit 
 me splendidly, and you will be able to devote the time most 
 profitably to getting to know your family. . . ." 
 
 It had never so much as occurred to her during those three 
 years that Petrie could have been prevailed upon to pay a 
 visit to Holzgarten. She wished some one could have had 
 the sense to suggest it to her. " But, father . . ." she began. 
 
 " Never a but," said he. " I've got to see those old Johnnies 
 again. The sooner the better ; they might die off any winter 
 
 2 
 
 Cynthia returned thereafter to the enigma of her mother. 
 No one could throw any light upon it for her, since no one 
 >med to see that an enigma existed. 
 
 It was from Conrad that she expected most, but Conrad 
 ily said, " Rot, she's as fit as a fiddle. She just goes round, 
 rfing everything up like a jolly old hen but it's keeping 
 
152 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 her up absolutely at the tip-top of her form. It's worth a 
 guinea a box to her, old girl. And as for you good Lord, 
 the way she brags about you to the Spiers dame and Gaffer 
 Harbottle. . . . Well, it makes me feel a perfect idiot at 
 times, positively ashamed of the lot of you. I expect it's the 
 presence of the Governor at grub that's really stuck in your 
 throat, only you don't know it. It stuck in mine, / can tell 
 you, till he began to show that he's quite a sportsman at 
 heart." 
 
 She watched Conrad as he spoke, and noticed the new 
 Adam's-apple that bobbed up and down in his throat over 
 a dignified and very hard collar. . . . 
 
 And so in three years they had all grown tremendously ; 
 it was only she the one that ought to have changed the most 
 that had changed not at all. 
 
Chapter Two 
 
 ILD DIERZO sat by the great tiled stove in the * Leyscher- 
 hof ' one frosty morning in December, waiting. 
 
 If there is one achievement in which the Gaul, and likewise 
 the Teuton, excel all other men, and in which the Gaul or 
 Teuton artist excels all other Teutons and Gauls, it is in 
 the art of sitting at complete ease upon any absurd chair. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon has devised for his leisured youth a seat 
 of woven rushes and bright upholstery a seat as broad as a 
 railway carriage and as long as a coffin. Given this and a few 
 loose, fat cushions, your Englishman can become the most 
 comfortable man you could hope to see anywhere. 
 
 Dierzo had at his disposal nothing but a bent-wood chair 
 about ten inches in diameter and a little marble-topped table, 
 yet never did a flannelled undergraduate, with the longest 
 Minty contrivance and all the cushions in the world, succeed 
 in looking more thoroughly at ease than Dierzo. 
 
 His elbows rested on the table and supported his ample 
 torso, which floated with a t lighter-than-air ' elegance above 
 a tall cylinder of pale, sparkling beer. His stick and hat lay- 
 on a chair beside him, and the silvery locks of hair about his 
 temples moved among the fingers of one hand. 
 
 The expression upon his face, however, gave some doubt 
 as to the completeness of his composure. He frowned from 
 time to time and pursed up his lips, unpursing them again 
 only for the purpose of drinking his beer. 
 
 Another figure passed by the window that gave on to 
 the rough, cobbled street, and Dierzo sighed a sigh of great 
 relief. 
 
 " Come along, Sturmer," he said, moving his hat and stick 
 to another chair. " Sit down, my friend. You must wait 
 and see him too. I would like it and he will be glad to 
 speak to you of his daughter. . . ." 
 
 " But I am to talk with him to-morrow," said Sturmer. 
 
 153 
 
 
154 TH E VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Perhaps this would be intrusion." He sat down facing the 
 window. 
 
 " Indeed no," Dierzo insisted, and held up two fingers to 
 the waiter. " No. It is most fitting that we should talk 
 with him together. . . . Sturmer, I will tell you the truth 
 of the matter ; I am uneasy. He has apologised now, through 
 his daughter to me apologised most amply. And now I 
 see how perfectly true it was, everything he said to me." 
 
 Sturmer took a draught of beer and then said, " Bah ! my 
 dear Dierzo. The insolence of these hysterical boys ! and 
 you to be agitated by such a thing at your time of life, and 
 after all these years ! Fie ! " 
 
 Dierzo only wagged his head. " No," he said. " The boy 
 was right, I tell you. Insolent, if you will but, nevertheless, 
 right. The thing he had the impertinence to bring me as a 
 composition was unmusical and wrong. The whole idea was 
 wrong, and I told him so with appropriate anger. ' Herr 
 Dierzo,' he said, well aware that my correct designation is 
 ' Monsieur,' ' you are only a milestone, after all is said and 
 done. The moss already grows upon you. You are very well, 
 in your place, to indicate the distance covered upon the road, 
 but you make the error of thinking that you are the journey's 
 end. You will do no more,' he said to me. ' In thirty years 
 if I come to you and say, What have you done ? you will 
 only be able to point in answer to your watch-chain, that shall 
 have moved a little further forward from your spine, and say, 
 " I er I have grown a little stouter, and become dyspeptic." 
 He has apologised for it all now, confound his insolence but 
 it was true. Sturmer, I have done nothing. Beyond the 
 ' Odysseus,' which is not yet quite completed, I have done 
 nothing." 
 
 " Bah ! " said Sturmer again. " And what has he done in 
 thirty years that you should be afraid of him ? Have you so 
 much as heard of him ? " 
 
 " No," said Dierzo. " Since he so foolishly went away 
 from Ganz at the St George's Hall, London, I have not heard 
 of him. It is true that he too has done nothing but send us 
 this daughter of his. I, nevertheless, have grown a trifle 
 stouter. I am not, thank God, dyspeptic, but he might see 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 155 
 
 that I am stouter. . . . You, dear friend, have sent many 
 great ones into the world the Sebaste, Peliti, and many, many 
 others. I have sent none. Petrie disappointed me, with his 
 insolence and his stiff neck. Grendel, in years to come, will 
 
 I tain mediocre fame, perhaps. . . ." 
 " Hush ! " said Sturmer, with a gesture. 
 This turn to the conversation was merely the fulfilment of 
 ancient rite, a rite performed solemnly in every vacation 
 under the awning of the Leyscherhof, or by the great tiled 
 stove. " Hush ! " said he again. " Did you not send forth 
 Galph, and Limber, and that other Englishman before Petrie's 
 day Monicombe ? Who are we to say that they are 
 mediocre ? We are not posterity yet no, not by many a 
 day." Suddenly he started up in his chair. " Great Heavens ! " 
 he exclaimed. " Surely there was never so long a man as that 
 one yonder. He is assuredly two metres from his hat to his 
 heels. Look!" 
 
 The man in question was stooping in the doorway, and 
 stood smiling at them. Then he pulled the hat off his head 
 and advanced upon them, his hand outstretched. 
 
 " Maestro," he said to Dierzo, " so you have forgotten a 
 pupil, and it was a boast of yours that you never did. You 
 too, Doctor, have forgotten me. . . ." 
 
 " It is the boy Petrie himself, as I am alive," said Dierzo, 
 shaking him by the hand. " No, indeed, I have forgotten 
 no pupil of mine. My pupil was a swaggering, good-for- 
 nothing lad, and it was for him that I was looking. This is a 
 man we never knew. . . . Why, Herr Petrie, you are an old 
 man one of ourselves now, eh, Sturmer ? Look at the silver 
 upon his temples. ... So, so, so, but we must indeed be 
 getting old. . . ." 
 
 " Old ! " said Petrie, " as though you two could ever get 
 old. You are not one day older. . . . But you seem to 
 have forgotten, Maestro, that the old hatchet is buried. 
 It was never * Herr ' Petrie in the old days. It was just 
 4 Englishman.' . . ." 
 
 " Well, Englishman, then," said Dierzo, and became immedi- 
 ately unctuous, showing that what was about to follow was 
 
 iremonial. He took Petrie's hand again and continued, 
 
156 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " You have most liberally apologised for certain rude words 
 you once spoke to me. In so far as the apology referred to 
 your rudeness, I have accepted it ; but the remainder of the 
 apology I now ask you to take back. Before we may drink 
 a glass of blonde beer together I insist that you take it back. 
 The words you spoke were true. They were a prophesy." 
 
 Petrie shook the old hand that rested in his, a hand that 
 would have been conspicuous among a million others. He 
 felt to put his feelings briefly an ass. 
 
 " Nonsense, my dear sir," he stammered. " Nonsense I 
 mean to say perfect rot, you know n-nothing of the kind." 
 
 " But yes" insisted Dierzo, not to be cheated of his cere- 
 monial. " True, I say. In thirty years I have done nothing" 
 
 " On the contrary," said Petrie, " in thirty years you have 
 contrived not to age by a single day. And that, sir, is work 
 worthy of any artist." 
 
 Honour was satisfied. 
 
 They sat down again to their table, now freshly adorned 
 with beer. 
 
 " It was a wonderfully true saying," Dierzo said. " We 
 are only milestones all we artists. . . . But tell us now, my 
 boy, what mile is it that you register for I know that in thirty 
 years you will have been carried far along the hard, long, 
 endless road." 
 
 Petrie was again feeling awkward, and the awkwardness 
 again made its main attack upon the muscles of his throat. 
 " I er well, as a matter of fact, I gave up music completely 
 some years ago because I had to. Of recent years I have er 
 I must ask you, by the way, to treat this confidence as most 
 strictly confidential. I I began to follow a another art in 
 short. I did not mean to tell this to anyone in the world. 
 . . . But there you are ... damn it ! you have persisted 
 in expecting something of me all these years, and well, I 
 am Harold J. Rockleigh now, of whom you may or may not 
 have heard. There you have it and, 'please^ not a word of it 
 to a single living soul. . . ." 
 
 Sturmer and Dierzo were both perplexed and frowning, 
 and mumbling " Rockleigh ? . . . Rockleigh ? . . ." 
 
 The confession that had cost Petrie so much meant nothing 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 157 
 
 atever to them. He stopped, nervously twiddling his cane 
 and tracing with his thumb-nail an irregular design upon the 
 film of mist that covered his glass. Instead, he threw back 
 his head and laughed. " And that" said he in great delight, 
 
 fame. Never mind though; I am something of a mile- 
 ic in this art of mine. In London I have some fame ; 
 in six months' time I hope to have a great deal more. 
 _r. . All I'm really trying to assure you, for some obscure 
 reason, is that I am, after all, * making good.' ' He stopped, 
 smiling at this analysis. " I might just as well be a twenty- 
 year-old Yankee, with my anxiety to make that clear to you, 
 instead of an aging philosopher ! " 
 
 " Ah, yes, yes, yes," said Dierzo. " But why, my friend, 
 why did you give up music like that ? You were a born 
 musician. I told you so, if only . . ." 
 
 " I know," said Petrie. " You told me all kinds of things, 
 a great many of which were, I think, true. But you tried 
 also to convince me that my stuff was bad, and it never was 
 bad. It was only eccentric. If you had convinced me of 
 that, and of the economic fallacy of trying to sell eccentric 
 music, as of trying to sell boots perfectly good boots, mark you 
 which just don't happen to fit your fellow-citizens, I dare- 
 say I might have had the sense to do thirty years ago what I 
 n to do four years ago." 
 
 " But, my dear boy," said Dierzo sadly, " how long did 
 strive ? What artist ever prevailed without persevering ? " 
 
 " H'm," said Petrie. " And how long did John the 
 Baptist strive ? Just about long enough to make a widow 
 of Mrs J. B." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Dierzo. " Of course. I had forgotten. You 
 rried." 
 
 A hush fell upon the company, punctuated only by a sound 
 of " Teh . . . Teh . . . Teh . . ." from Dierzo, and 
 jerky, reflective little shakes of his head. Petrie appeared to 
 enjoy the situation, for he smiled at the sunlight through his 
 beer, while Sturmer looked about him helplessly, lugubriously. 
 
 " Please," said Petrie again, to break the spell of awe that 
 had fallen upon the two old bachelors, " don't forget that 
 
 r hat I have told you is a secret. It is very easy to let things 
 
 
158 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 out, you know. That is why I have never told anyone 
 before. . . ." 
 
 " But why ? " said Dierzo, with an impatient gesture at 
 the waiter. 
 
 " Well," said Petrie, " I have very sound reasons. But 
 they are mostly private ones concerning the Philosophy of 
 Labour. I do not think they would interest you particularly. 
 You would also think I was talking through my hat if I tried 
 to explain. That is the worst of my philosophy : I seem to 
 be the only person in the world who appears to understand 
 it. ... You two have always lived alone, you see, and are 
 supported by the State to continue in your quiet ways of life. 
 You would not easily understand a man's motive in keeping 
 a thing private strictly to himself. The psychology of 
 ' Secret Bread ' is a thing that has never come your way. . . . 
 Intrusion that is accidental is merely a nuisance ; it never did 
 any harm beyond merely suspending one's functioning. But 
 deliberate intrusion is, believe me, the very devil. . . . But 
 there, I see that my narrative has already ' lost suspense ' ; 
 you have begun to fear that I am talking nonsense. I 
 really came to discuss my daughter with you. I want to ask 
 your advice : you first, Herr Sturmer, if you don't mind. 
 What about her singing ? " 
 
 Sturmer looked very wise and very consequential, but he 
 looked, also, very much cornered. He fixed his eyes on Dierzo, 
 who fixed his upon his glass. 
 
 Petrie would give him no help. At length Sturmer cleared 
 his throat and said, " Your daughter, sir, has a superb voice. 
 Not only is it a superb voice, but it is also a voice of unusual 
 compass. . . ." 
 
 " M'yes," said Petrie, mimicking his consequential, even 
 tones ; " she is also an accomplished musician. But . . ." 
 he added with a laugh that put Sturmer at his ease ; " and it 
 is the ' but,' I assure you, that I am most interested in. All 
 I aim at doing is to assist Cynthia in making reasonably sensible 
 plans." 
 
 " Then," said Sturmer, " I will tell you. Your daughter, 
 sir, is not a singer. I will be frank with you, as a brother- 
 artist since you assure us that you, too, are an artist. Your 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 159 
 
 daughter has been a very great disappointment to me only 
 Dierzo knows how sad a disappointment. I said at first to 
 him, ' Dierzo,' I said, 4 I have another Sebaste here ; but, 
 and furthermore, she is a Sebaste who also has some good music 
 in her.' Then in a year's time I must go again to Dierzo and 
 say, ' No, my friend, she has not got it. She is no Sebaste.' 
 . . . She has the most wonderful vocal organs in the world, 
 she has also great music, as even Dierzo knows, and we and 
 our colleagues awarded her the prize, but but she has 
 not It." 
 
 " And what in thunder," asked Petrie quietly, " might you 
 mean by // ? " 
 
 " It" Sturmer merely repeated, a little irritated by the 
 question. In explanation he moved his hands above his beer, 
 working some imaginary, plastic substance, into an expressive 
 shape. " It. ... Temperament. . . . What you will. . . . 
 She has not got it. She is dumb. Dumb as a lovely violin, 
 a violin with all its possibilities. She can play upon her superb 
 larynx and that wonderfully domed palate of hers, as upon a 
 dead instrument. But she can not she will not sing." 
 
 " I see," said Petrie. " I see, perfectly. It would take too 
 long, however, to explain to you what you mean by ' tem- 
 perament.' We'll agree that she lacks //. And I cannot say 
 that I am altogether sorry. I never could myself work up a 
 complete sympathy with the act of singing. I have always 
 felt a little bit ashamed on behalf of singers. Personally, I 
 would sooner be taken out and shot in perfectly cold blood 
 than made to stand upon a platform and sing even if I had 
 the throat of Philomel herself. This * It ' you speak of, 
 Maestro, is the mental constitution the psychic shameless- 
 ness, so to speak that makes it possible for some people to 
 perform acrobatic feats in a complete state of nakedness. . . . 
 And so, what you call a lack of It, my friend, is merely my 
 daughter's insistence, possibly mistaken, upon spiritual and 
 emotional tights. . . ." 
 
 Sturmer stared at him, while Dierzo banged his fist upon 
 the table and rocked with laughter. " Bravo, Englishman ! " 
 he gurgled. " Bravo ! My poor old Sturmer ! It has made 
 me ten years younger to hear that said to you. . . ." 
 
160 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 :c Then," said Sturmer, with tremendous dignity emptying 
 his glass and rising to his feet, " lest I bring about the 
 calamity of wheedling you completely back to your second 
 childhood, I will leave you to enjoy the society of your 
 friend. . . ." 
 
 " My dear sir," said Petrie, " -please do not go away like that. 
 The truth is almost within our grasp. . . . That figure of 
 speech I used can be paraphrased into the perfectly inoffensive 
 and current phrase, to the effect that my daughter will not 
 * let herself go ' sufficiently to sing. . . ." 
 
 " Hungh ! " was all Sturmer said, and slapped his hat upon 
 his head in emphatic denial of a possible suggestion that he 
 was taking it off. " Adieu." 
 
 " Which is, being interpreted," said Petrie musingly, " ' to 
 God.' " 
 
 " Ah, but please take no notice of Sturmer," said the sur- 
 viving representative of the Grand Conservatoire. " I will 
 make it all well with Sturmer. He is getting old, I fear ; \ve 
 have all noticed it. There once was a silence of three years 
 between me and Sturmer, over the question of a tied semi- 
 quaver. Poor Sturmer ! " 
 
 " I ought to be able to get through all I have to say to you 
 in half an hour," said Petrie. " I hope I shall succeed in 
 passing that time without offending you, Maestro. In case, 
 however, that mishaps should occur, please accept my unreserved 
 apology for anything I might chance to say in the nature of an 
 unfortunate remark. . . ." 
 
 " Pray do not mention it," said Dierzo. " You must 
 forgive Sturmer for his touchiness. At his time of life, you 
 know. . . ." 
 
 " Quite," said Petrie, and filled and lighted his pipe. " Now, 
 sir, let us get to business. The one thing in the world I am 
 anxious to guard against at the moment is my daughter's 
 becoming a chronic student. She has been with you three 
 years, and anyone ought to be able to learn what you er 
 what I mean to say is, that what you cannot teach a person in 
 three years, that person is quite incapable of learning. All I 
 am now concerned with is the turning of music into a pro- 
 fession for Cyn. My object in consulting you is precisely 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 161 
 
 the object certain fond parents have in view when consulting 
 a phrenologist." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Dierzo. " Oh. Indeed ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Petrie. " For who can detect as well as you 
 the significance of artistic bumps ? Were you not right about 
 me ? " Petrie would have been hard put to it to explain his 
 last question, which was merely tactical ; but Dierzo did not 
 ask for an explanation. 
 
 He threw himself heart and soul into the discussion that 
 followed. 
 
 " Commerce, sir," Petrie declared as they proceeded, " I 
 have decided, after many years of thought, is the only ballast 
 of human life. Take away commerce and commercial aims, 
 and ninety-nine per cent, of the living souls in the world would 
 go bucketing about, keel uppermost. No, just as you, as a 
 Master, have made an honourable profession out of your art, 
 my daughter as an underling must make a decent business 
 out of hers. She can have a small orchestra for the purpose 
 an orchestra financed by a friend, and she must be independent. 
 With this orchestra of hers she shall work. Her very existence 
 must depend on it. Commercial failure must be an unthink- 
 able horror to her ; she must recognise it as being the exact 
 symbol of artistic failure. She shall be chained, so to speak, 
 to her guns. . . ." 
 
 " And that," said Dierzo, " is your idea of independence ! 
 You have become a strange man, Petrie a strange artist." 
 
 Petrie frowned at the interruption. Then he smiled and 
 said, " Allow me to quote some doggerel to you : 
 
 * Stone walls do not a prison make ' . . . " 
 
 " No, indeed," said Dierzo proudly. " Indeed not. 
 
 ' Nor iron bars a cage.' " 
 " Quite so. But much more to the point is, 
 
 * If I have freedom in my love 
 
 And in my love am free ' (just to eke out the syllables), 
 1 Angels alone that soar above, 
 Enjoy such liberty.' " 
 
 And this, sir, applied to everyday life means, ' If only I can 
 
 
1 62 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 by hook or by crook ; by means of a small orchestra ; or by 
 the dire threat of financial ruin if only I can avoid making 
 some personal relationship to some other individual my pro- 
 fession, and my raison d'etre there is still some little hope 
 for me. The only slavery in the world, my dear Monsieur 
 Dierzo, you whose thinking has seldom risen even to ledger- 
 lines outside the usual ten, the only slavery in the world, I 
 say, is incessant and exhausting companionship and inexorable 
 spiritual demand. It exists potentially in every relationship 
 aunts and nieces, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. 
 . . . That, sir, is why I insist on your saying nothing of Harold 
 Rockleigh. . . . 
 
 Dierzo shook his head. " No," he said, slowly shaking his 
 head. " She is too young yet too immature for an 
 orchestra. . . ." 
 
 " Well, she isn't likely to mature by becoming a hanger-on 
 at seats of learning" snapped Petrie. 
 
 " She must play" said Dierzo. " She must have experience 
 of ensemble work. There is plenty to be got in London, like 
 I found for you with Ganz." 
 
 " And if you haven't hit the nail right on its head," said 
 Petrie, " I will eat my hat. Of course, that's what she must 
 do. . . . Now let us talk of Music. Forgive me for 
 digressing so ; but when I once see an opening for my 
 Theory of Destructive Dependence, there's no holding me. 
 I apologise. . . ." 
 
 " Not at all," said Dierzo. It was becoming very warm by 
 the stove. Circumstances combined to make him drowsy. 
 He mopped his forehead wearily, and Petrie thought, " Poor 
 old fellow. He must be eighty if he is a day." 
 
 " I was thinking of what you have said," Dierzo continued. 
 " It reminded me of my dear aunt that died in Strasburg. 
 She embittered my early youth by saying merely, ' My dear 
 Franz, what are you doing ? ' . . . Yes, truly that was a 
 destructive companionship. It went very far towards keeping 
 me an unmarried man. Most terribly did her words torment 
 me when I was doing, in fact, nothing." 
 
Chapter Three 
 
 i 
 
 IT was with a shock that Cynthia one morning realised the 
 amazing truth that she had been at home for three whole 
 months. 
 
 It was now the end of February, and she would not even 
 yet have noticed the passage of time had it not been for the 
 arrival of a brown paper parcel and a letter from Grendel. 
 
 " My dear Miss Petrie," he wrote, " I am informed by 
 people in Holzgarten that it is your intention to institute a 
 small orchestra or quartette wherewith to perform smaller 
 compositions. I am sending you, accordingly, some of my 
 few small works of the past three years which might be suitable. 
 I send them because you were kind enough to show an interest 
 in my work, and in very grateful remembrance of the great 
 assistance your wonderful playing was to me in my little Trio. 
 (You will recognise the Trio, somewhat enlarged, in the suite 
 I have called ' Despair.') Also, I hope by my small gift to convey 
 to you my hearty congratulations on your own great triumph 
 in winning both the Singing Prize and the Gold Medal for 
 your Quartette. 
 
 " I sincerely trust that similar success may meet your efforts 
 present and to come. 
 
 " For myself, I am very comfortably situated with an ade- 
 quate little orchestra, as you may have heard. I am at present 
 engaged upon a small Opera, the libretto of which is being 
 made by a poet friend of my youth. . . ." 
 
 Grendel ! There was an Artist for you ! 
 
 The letter gave Cynthia sudden cause to think. After two 
 years he was able to send her a parcel containing " some of 
 his few small works," weighing not less than two pounds. 
 He was now engaged upon an Opera. It was easy enough to 
 estimate, from that, how much Grendel accomplished in the 
 
 163 
 
164 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 course of three months at the same time earning his living, 
 and his old mother's, with his ' adequate ' little orchestra. 
 . . . 'Adequate!' . . . The adjective made Cynthia smile ; 
 it was so typical of old Grendel's solemn earnestness. . . . 
 
 And what had she, Cynthia, done in three months ? Not 
 a single thing. Not an ounce, not the smallest fraction of 
 an ounce and that was the amazing part of it. 
 
 She had not even copied the quartette yet into the Album 
 that Bluebeard had given her for her twenty-first birthday ; 
 and that, at least, she had intended, time after time, to do. 
 
 Three months had gone ! . . . That was the bare fact of 
 the matter. 
 
 But where ? . . . How ? . . . 
 
 She did not know. She tried to account for the wasted 
 moments, but could account only for nine whole days that 
 had not, in fact, been wasted. For these nine days she had 
 spent, three with the Chills at Melton, and six with her mother 
 shopping in London. 
 
 For the rest, the time had just leaked away. 
 
 She had been to one or two absurd tea-parties at Sylvia's, 
 and one futile dance at the Town Hall, where she wished, not 
 so much that she could dance well, as that nobody else bothered 
 about it. Odd hours here and there, on the way to or from 
 casual shopping expeditions (which were themselves, as a 
 matter of fact, superfluous) had also been wasted at Sylvia's, 
 playing with the bouncing nephew, gossiping to no purpose 
 with Sylvia. ... Or else she merely stayed at home. 
 
 And if she stayed at home, what did she do ? Again, noth- 
 ing whatever. Efforts to reduce Mrs Petrie's incessant busy-ness 
 about the house seemed to swallow up a whole morning. 
 
 She would be consulted about the making of a pudding, the 
 mending of a saucepan, the beating or the distribution of rugs, 
 the question of whether the chimneys ought to be swept on 
 Tuesday or whether they could be left till Tuesday week, when 
 Simpson would have a holiday and be free to come and give a 
 hand with getting things straight again after the departure 
 of the sweep. Mrs Petrie would enter into these things with 
 the intensity and zeal of one who is sounding the very Well 
 of Truth at its ultimate source. 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 165 
 
 It amused Cynthia to see her mother thus, it pleased and 
 astonished her. However certainly she might be sure, deep 
 down, that they were talking utter nonsense, that such things 
 did not really matter a fig one way or the other, she was always 
 ready to listen, to give her advice. 
 
 Possibly a recipe would have to be copied out for Mrs 
 Simpson, and Cynthia would copy it (though she could never, 
 for the life of her, see why Mrs Simpson could not be given 
 the print of the Cookery-book or the original newspaper-cutting 
 to work from, like anybody else). But Mrs Petrie always pre- 
 ferred to have them copied into one of three books. 
 
 Perhaps curtains had to be changed, or laundry arranged ; 
 perhaps a forgotten item had to be fetched from the grocer's. 
 It is true that Freda was always somewhere about the house ; 
 but Freda, too, was always busy. ... At any rate, whether 
 she could account for it, or whether she could not, lunch time 
 always arrived to find Cynthia wondering how on earth it 
 had come to be one o'clock so soon. 
 
 As the mornings had gone, so also went the afternoons. It 
 is true that she had read a great deal, but she had read nothing 
 that was of the least value to her nothing that she could put 
 down on the credit side of the account she was trying to render. 
 Only two or three plays that Petrie had given her to look at 
 had borne any serious thinking about or talking over with him, 
 and these had been, on the whole, frivolous things and inclined 
 to be silly. 
 
 Cynthia at last shrugged her shoulders. She could not see 
 by what means she had wasted the time. 
 
 It was useless trying to understand what was beyond her 
 understanding. The thing was a phenomenon, pure and 
 incomprehensible. She could, however, say for certain that 
 this state of affairs was going to end, and going to end 
 abruptly. 
 
 She cut out the Russian stamps for Conrad, folded up the 
 brown paper from Grendel's parcel, and rolled up the string 
 for the cache of these things at the bottom of her mother's 
 wardrobe. Then she looked carefully through the manu- 
 scripts for the suite which he had called " Despair." 
 
 Under the title was written, " To Miss Cynthia Petrie, in 
 
i66 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 grateful remembrance of her superb craftsmanship and un- 
 sparing pains. Vita brevis, ars longa" 
 
 The irony of Grendel's inscription only set the seal, if seal 
 were required, upon her resolution. 
 
 By evening she had spent eight hours with her resolution, 
 and when she went into the study she went excited, wondering 
 what Petrie thought of her for the way she had behaved for 
 three months after certain large talks of hers. . . . She was a 
 little ashamed now of these talks ; Petrie had remarked once 
 that talking about Art was an art on its own account, with a 
 technique all its own, and that it was all very well as long as 
 one was not deceived into thinking that it was the art itself, 
 about which it spent its time talking. . . . 
 
 " I say, dad," she said " if you're not busy what's this 
 about an orchestra ? You must have said something to them 
 in Holzgarten about my having an orchestra." She felt that 
 Petrie could have helped her, if he had wanted to. " It's 
 the first Pve heard about it. ... And here I've wasted three 
 months doing nothing." It had not, somehow, occurred to 
 her before that Petrie had a share in the blame. It was quite 
 obvious now. 
 
 " Oh, come now," said Petrie, " come, Cyn ! Don't say 
 you've been doing nothing. I was under the impression that 
 you had been studying the drama during the afternoons the 
 drama as represented by our great new dramatists. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, dad, I do wish you wouldn't fool about just now. It 
 just makes me shudder to think of all these wasted weeks. I've 
 had a letter and some music from Grendel you know, the 
 Russian in whose trio I played. He is so wonderful. He's 
 doing so well, and / have done absolutely nothing." She 
 looked at him in her despair. 
 
 " Well," said Petrie, " even if you have done nothing in the 
 last three months, you have to-day done something extremely 
 valuable. You have discovered that you are not, constitu- 
 tionally, a parasite ; in other words, that you are obliged by 
 
,. 
 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 167 
 
 r nature, to work. The fact that what you call ' working ' 
 the rest of the world quite deliberately calls ' playing ' has 
 nothing whatever to do with the issue. ... If you feel you 
 must do it work, or play you must. And that is all there 
 is to be said about it." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I know ! " Cynthia was impatient. " But the 
 thing is to get started. Fm not going to waste any more time 
 thinking. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, so you have been thinking then ? " 
 
 " Well, yes I've always assumed that I would try for an 
 engagement to play somewhere like Chrissie, you know, only 
 something better, of course. And then this remark of Grendel's 
 about an orchestra. . . . Whatever you said to Dierzo, when 
 you were there was it just one of your jokes, father ? " 
 
 " Why a joke ? " said Petrie. " Do you think it would be 
 merely jocular for you to have an orchestra ? " 
 
 " But where is it to come from ? " asked Cynthia. " Who's 
 got the money for an orchestra ? " 
 
 " Oh, millions of people have got the money for millions 
 of orchestras," said Petrie. " Don't worry about that. The 
 only difficulty is to get them to give it up. . . . No, the 
 money need not be a serious difficulty. The fact is, I myself 
 er, well, my profession has proved a great deal more lucra- 
 tive than I ever expected, and your mother has great difficulty 
 in spending money on anything but food and shelter. She 
 could be made to spend more, of course, but there would be 
 no point in it. It is a considerable art, you know, spending 
 money without causing yourself any trouble in doing it. ... 
 Also, as a matter of fact, any business man would be willing 
 to put money into a thing that he considered a ' business 
 proposition.' Your orchestra would have to pay, of course. 
 Do you think you could make an orchestra pay F What 
 would you do with it ? " 
 
 Cynthia shrugged her shoulders. " Now, abroad" she said, 
 using just the tone for this word that immediately stirs up the 
 Britishness and loyalty in even the faintest of patriots. 
 " Abroad, people would go to hear a little orchestra." 
 
 Petrie for a few moments said nothing. Then, " Well, 
 even in England in Pelchester, in fact if people were in 
 
 
168 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 sufficient need of a cup of tea, I am sure they would not keep 
 away from a tea-house because of the active presence there of 
 a little orchestra. I notice, by the way, that you always 
 qualify your orchestra as * little.' r 
 
 " You mean play in a tea-house ? " Cynthia showed signs 
 of indignation. " Is that what you suggest ? " 
 
 " I suggest nothing," said Petrie, " I merely record an ob- 
 servation on the British temperament. . . ." 
 
 " Well, what do you suggest that I should do with an orchestra, 
 then ? " 
 
 " Most amiable of amiable young women," said Petrie, " it 
 is your career that is at the moment under discussion, not 
 mine. If you think you can inveigle me into planning and 
 financing a career and offering you the post of Conductor and 
 General Manager, you are very much mistaken you might, 
 of course, inherit the career at my death, but even that is 
 not my idea. You, Cynthia, are by nature an individual, I 
 rather fancy, not a representative. . . ." 
 
 " I don't see why you should object to helping a little, all 
 the same. . . ." 
 
 " And if you're going to get merely and unproductively 
 peevish," said Petrie, " I shall insist on breaking off diplomatic 
 relations with you forthwith. I am helping you, but I shan't 
 do so to the extent of becoming your business manager and 
 representative either. I flatter myself that I, too, am an 
 individual." 
 
 Cynthia was still hot with indignation at the way she had 
 been robbed of three months of precious time. She wished 
 that Petrie would be a little less phlegmatic. 
 
 She said, " Well, suppose I started with a quartette, to do 
 some chamber-music. . . . How much would that cost to 
 run ? To keep the people all the time, I mean, so as to get 
 the work done properly. It would only mean three artists to 
 be paid. . . ." 
 
 " In my time," said Petrie, " it was possible to buy a very 
 fair artist, complete with instrument in good repair, for about 
 sixty shillings per week. Artists with families ran to slightly 
 more than that, but you need not go to the luxury of having 
 families with your three. I am told artists have gone up a 
 
- 
 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 169 
 
 le since those days ; but I daresay four pounds would get 
 you a very good one. . . ." 
 
 He would have continued talking, but Cynthia said quickly, 
 " Three fours are twelve, then. Twelves into forty three 
 and something over. I've got forty pounds left of my own, 
 you know, dad I could keep it going for three weeks and a 
 bit myself. . . . Goodness, one couldn't do very much in 
 
 (ee weeks. . . ." 
 1 And would you give your chamber-music here ? " asked 
 :rie. 
 ' Of course," said Cynthia. " Where else ? I should think 
 people would come." 
 
 Petrie was smiling. " If you can make it * the thing ' for 
 them to do," he said, " you bet they'll come. You could get 
 that fellow who came down to run the advertising for the 
 bootshop some years ago My hat ! he was a genius ! He 
 convinced everyone here in no time that they were social 
 pariahs if they bought anyone else's boots but Pudleigh 
 & Walker's. We'll get hold of him, Cynthia. . . . It'd 
 never be enough to tell our good fellow-citizens that a f Concert 
 will be given,' etcetera. Something must be done to show 
 them that everyone else is going to a concert on a certain 
 date. . . . Even then, you know, Cyn, you must be prepared 
 for a let-down in this place. There are very few households 
 in it that have been at all seriously inconvenienced during 
 your infancy and childhood by the lack of chamber-music. 
 Lord ! it was hard enough to get them to buy the right boots 
 at first. . . ." 
 
 But Cynthia was going beyond these details. " We must 
 go through those things of Grendel's and see what we can 
 find. . . . How on earth does one find a couple of decent 
 violins and a 'cello ? " 
 
 " That," said Petrie, " you will find the simplest thing in 
 the world. You just have to whistle in a London newspaper, 
 and they come from Prague and Pimlico, Paris and Putney. 
 The Pack is raised from Battersea to Buda-Pesth, from San 
 Francisco to Shepherd's Bush. You can take a damp and 
 ill-lighted room there used to be one in Covent Garden 
 to listen to them. You'll find them all waiting for you, 
 
 
i;o THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Cynthia you, I say, for I shall not be there. In my day it 
 used to be with shirtless collars and sockless boots and empty 
 stomachs that flapped about inside like sails in a calm. . . . 
 Anyhow, they will play to you, so that you can choose your 
 artists play, did I say ? I mean, they will fight upon their 
 precious instruments, so that every note will be the snarl of a 
 starving creature. . . . Perhaps it is all changed now, for we 
 have started a new century. But, Lord ! I've had to fight 
 and outsnarl the poor starving wretches for a morsel of flesh. 
 . . . It is a terrible place, Cynthia, that cellar in Covent 
 Garden, and terrible fellows, those that used to be lured there 
 by the chimera of their art. . . . But we digress. I merely 
 intended to state that there is no dearth of quite efficient 
 instrumentalists in the Metropolis who would be glad to 
 accept an engagement at four pounds a week." 
 
 " Could we go up one day soon, and arrange it ? " asked 
 Cynthia. 
 
 " To-day," said Petrie, " is Thursday. You can send off 
 your advertisement to-night, and we can go up on Monday. 
 But you will conduct your audition, if you don't mind, alone. 
 I might be tempted again to digress. I should feel constrained, 
 I think, to deliver an address." 
 
 " D'you mean next Monday ? " Cynthia exclaimed. 
 
 " Why not ? " said Petrie. 
 
 3 
 
 On Monday afternoon Cynthia joined Petrie at one of the 
 tea-tables in the Refreshment Room at Waterloo Station. 
 
 " It was pretty awful," she said. " Such absurd people 
 came, people with no more idea of playing than flying. One 
 was drunk already, and one shivering so much that he couldn't 
 have played a note to save his life. But there was an agent 
 there ; said he knew you, and he had the very people I wanted. 
 The 'cellist isn't bad an old man, English, though he pre- 
 tends to be a Swede. One of the violins is a Jew boy who's 
 just had to leave the College his full of music. The other 
 one I didn't hear, but Mr the agent, yes, Cousins, says 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 171 
 
 :'s good. . . . Oh no, I went to his office in Regent Street 
 to hear them. D'you know, he seemed to be quite hurt at 
 my suggestion that I should want to hear them at all. . . ." 
 
 " And when do these artists appear for duty ? " asked Petrie. 
 
 Cynthia looked at the clock. " In forty minutes," said she. 
 ' They're going down with us. Have you got enough money, 
 by the way ? I'm down to about seven shillings, after paying 
 for that beastly room in Covent Garden and the piano, 
 which I didn't touch, and the stove, that was out. . . ." 
 
 " Yes," said Petrie, " I have enough. But suppose, my dear, 
 that I hadn't ? " 
 
 " Well, there must be heaps of ways of getting it," said 
 Cynthia casually, " banks and things, I mean." 
 
 " Only my watch," said Petrie, " since I observe you're not 
 wearing your bangle. But you are quite right, as a matter 
 of fact you must just continue seeing things in the large, 
 Cyn, and leaving the provision of details to the ravens. . . . 
 It is the right way : it is the only way, of that I am quite sure." 
 
 Before the week was out Cynthia and her three artists were 
 hard at work. 
 
 At a quarter to nine each morning she left home for St James' 
 Parish Hall. There she would find old Froest, the 'cellist, 
 warming his hands, and Marchmont the Jew boy, late of the 
 Royal College of Music, his feet, by the large stove half-way 
 down the hall. The second violin (vague as to nationality 
 beyond the fact that he was a violinist) a drowsy, delicate- 
 looking fellow of about forty usually came in a minute or two 
 after her. The four of them would drag the piano out from 
 its corner nearer to the stove, and by a very few minutes after 
 nine they would be at work. 
 
 It was no inconvenience to Cynthia that she usually had to 
 go to the hall by way of Stamford Road, in order to leave a 
 message at the grocer's or the oil-shop ; or to pick up some 
 fish or a couple of pounds of bacon on the way home. It did 
 not take two minutes, and it might eave somebody else's 
 * running out ' during the day. 
 
 
Chapter Four 
 
 AFTER about three weeks of work she went into the 
 study, to find Petrie at work with a pair of scissors upon 
 some newspapers ; beside him were a scrap-book and a bottle 
 of paste. He seemed to be in high spirits, so that Cynthia 
 was disappointed only by the fact that he was so busy. 
 
 " I would like to know," she said, " what you think you do 
 by chopping up all those newspapers ? " 
 
 " I am interested," said Petrie ; " in fact, I am very deeply 
 interested in the parasite art called criticism, Cynthia par- 
 ticularly * dramatic ' criticism, so called. I am also interested 
 in the work of that fellow whose play we went to see when 
 we were up in town. The critics don't seem able to agree 
 why he isn't a dramatist of the very first water, or, indeed, 
 as some say, why he isn't a dramatist at all. You never said, 
 by the way, what you thought of t The First Refusal ' as a 
 comedy." 
 
 " Well, it's the only one I've ever seen except, of course, 
 abroad. . . ." 
 
 " You could have seen ' The First Refusal ' in Holzgarten 
 last year, as a matter of fact unless it was there during your 
 vacation," said Petrie. " Did no one mention it to you ? " 
 
 " No," said Cynthia. " There isn't anyone who'd be likely 
 to, excepting Bluebeard. He goes, sometimes, to the theatre 
 when there isn't any music. . . . But I wouldn't call that 
 thing a comedy. I always thought a comedy was something 
 to laugh at. I felt much more like crying all through 
 that. . . ." 
 
 " That," said Petrie, " is just what ' F. P. S.' had to say 
 about it when it was produced whoever ( F. P. S.' of the 
 Morning Post may be. ... But I think it was Horace Walpole 
 who made the very sound remark that Life is a comedy to 
 those who think, and a tragedy to those who feel. Comedy 
 
 172 
 
: 
 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 173 
 
 d tragedy are attitudes of mind, Cynthia, not accidental 
 matters of fact chance happenings. Your three musicians, 
 for instance Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego, as your 
 worthy brother calls them. . . ." 
 
 ^" Yes," said Cynthia, " that's just what I'd like to talk to 
 u about, father. They're very much a tragedy at the 
 moment. . . . They'll never do, you know. I had no idea 
 that my quartette could be so hard. Poor old Mr Froest 
 can't get near it as it stands." She sat down in the arm-chair, 
 wearied by the thing that had been troubling her for days. 
 " I say, dad," she said, " I do so wish now that you had heard 
 Baradjik in it. You know the crazy Roumanian boy. You'll 
 never have the chance to hear it now, as I meant it to go I 
 simply can't get those three up to it." 
 
 " Well, let's get your Roumanian over," said Petrie. " It 
 would be worth it. We would have to pay him well, of course. 
 He'd come ; great artists will do anything for money any- 
 thing, that is, but work. What sort of fees . . ." 
 
 " Oh, no ! " said Cynthia. " He seems to have all the 
 money he wants besides, he's not taking any engagements." 
 
 " Wouldn't he come for you ? " Petrie asked casually. 
 
 " I wouldn't ask him," said Cynthia shortly. " Oh no, 
 thank you. . . . We can manage quite well without him. I 
 might have to simplify it a bit in parts." 
 
 " In that case, then," said Petrie, " those things there are 
 not premature." He indicated a roll of brown paper in the 
 corner behind Cynthia. 
 
 She undid it, and found it to contain * double-crown ' 
 posters, printed black on yellow : 
 
174 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 A SERIES OF 
 
 THREE MUSICAL RECITALS 
 
 WILL BE GIVEN BY 
 
 MISS CYNTHIA PETRIE 
 
 (Winner of the Holzgarten Gold Medal and Kastner Triennial 
 Prize for Singing) 
 
 IN 
 
 THE TOWN HALL, PELCHESTER 
 
 ON 
 
 APRIL loth, APRIL 28tb, MAT 17 th 
 AT 7.45 P.M. 
 
 Miss Petrie will be assisted by MM. Froest and Hellier, and 
 Mr Sidney Marchmont, artists well known upon the Concert 
 Platforms of London and the Provinces. The programmes will 
 include performances of Miss Petrie's Prize Work, and selections 
 from the compositions of Ivan Grendel of Moscow. 
 
 Tickets (the price of which it ONE GUINEA for the series of three 
 Recitals) may be obtained from Messrs Tilling & Whale, 180 High 
 Street. 
 
 Cynthia said, " Oh, my dear, I shall hate going out when 
 the town's all plastered over with those things. ... I wonder 
 if anyone will think of coming ? " 
 
 Petrie meanwhile was chuckling. " Genius ! " he exclaimed, 
 " nothing short of genius made the ' One Guinea ' stick out 
 of the surrounding text like that. There's psychology for you, 
 Cynthia." 
 
 " H'm," said Cynthia, " but the whole thing's rather vulgar, 
 all the same. Did you ever allow a thing like that to be put 
 up about yourself, father ? All that about the prizes and the 
 artists from the London Concert platforms and poor old 
 Grendel, as though everyone ought to be quite familiar with 
 him. . . ." 
 
 " No," said Petrie, " perhaps I did not. But then, you see, 
 I had no expert to do these things for me, and there are certain 
 things that one shrinks from doing for one's self. Few people 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 175 
 
 would extract their own teeth, for instance, but most people 
 are quite willing to go to a dentist. . . ." 
 
 " Well," said Cynthia, " I suppose these things will have 
 to do. But I hope the famous artists from ' the London 
 platforms ' won't think that the rest of the bill is as nonsensical 
 
 Bthe part about them" 
 Then one night Cynthia came again into the study and 
 said, " I say, dad, I wonder what you would say if you were 
 to discover that I was in the habit of smoking ? " 
 
 " It would rather depend on what you smoked, wouldn't 
 it ? " said Petrie, after a moment's pause. 
 
 " On what I smoked ? " 
 
 " You see," Petrie explained, " I, for instance, am a pipe 
 smoker, so it is only a matter of form to offer me cigarettes. 
 So, if your smoke is a cigarette, there wouldn't be much point 
 in my asking you to help yourself to my tobacco pouch. . . ." 
 
 And all Cynthia could say in her surprise was, " I say, 
 daddy you are the funniest man. ... I expect mother'd 
 have a fit, though. I'd better smoke only in here." 
 
 " The next thing, seeing that I at the moment haven't one 
 haven't had one, in fact, for twenty years," Petrie went on 
 quietly, " is for you to produce a cigarette for yourself. I 
 will provide the matches." 
 
 Cynthia produced her cigarettes and lighted one. " I 
 suppose heaps of women do smoke nowadays nice women I 
 mean . . ." she said, and blew a very good ring. Then for 
 no particular reason apart from her fairly regular habit of 
 following up statements with the same statement put in the 
 form of a question, she added, " Do you know any nice women 
 who smoke, dad ? " 
 
 Petrie's answer was, " I perceive that we are in a somewhat 
 fidgeting frame of mind this evening, Mrs Beethoven." 
 
 " Oh dear, yes," said Cynthia. " It's only two days to 
 Friday, April the tenth, at 7.45 p.m., and they just haven't 
 got it in them, those three. I can't get them to see it. I've 
 chopped it and changed it and twisted it, but they can't do it. 
 They're hopeless. . . ." She sank, dejected, back in her chair. 
 
 
176 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Never mind," said Petrie. " Don't worry about it. You 
 can only hope to keep your end up, and no more. Remember 
 too that there will be no one there that matters a fig, nobody 
 that knows the difference between a fugue and a fungus. One 
 or two of the parsons might be able to enjoy it for music, 
 curiously enough, is a thing that a few parsons are fairly in- 
 telligent about. But if they know enough to be able to enjoy 
 it, they will also be able to distinguish the good from the bad 
 among you. . . . Besides, you must remember that you are 
 inclined to exaggerate it all. I'd be willing to bet that you're 
 a great deal more satisfied with your colleagues in their efforts 
 on behalf of Messieurs Tschaikowsky and Arensky. . . ." 
 
 " As a matter of fact," said Cynthia quite simply, " they 
 do seem to grasp the Tschaikowsky thing a great deal better." 
 
 Petrie smiled at her the smile he so often smiled now. It 
 made her feel like a very little girl with her hand in the hand 
 of a very big man. It was something that she had never felt 
 in all her infancy and childhood. 
 
 He leaned across the hearth, and patted her head. " You 
 are the most merciless critic in the world, Cynthia," he said, 
 " of the way people play your quartette. For my own humble 
 part, I must say I had scarcely any fault to find with the way 
 you did it this morning." 
 
 She stared at him. " You ? " she exclaimed. 
 
 " Even /," said he, " though I had to sit through it cramped 
 and freezing and miserably tobaccoless behind that filthy roll 
 of carpet stuff, up by the stage. . . . And you, Cynthia, like 
 an idiot, locked the door behind you, so that I had to make 
 a most undignified exit through the window after you had 
 gone." 
 
 Cynthia was still amazed. " But good gracious me ! 
 Why ever didn't you come and sit by the stove ? " 
 
 " Because," said Petrie, " whether you know it or whether 
 you don't, Cynthia, I am a thoroughly sound critic (as far as 
 such a thing is possible), and I did not wish to have the re- 
 sponsibility of criticism inflicted upon me. ... I might have 
 preferred to keep silent. . . ." 
 
 Cynthia sprang from her chair to the arm of his. " It is 
 the first time that you have heard it properly, with all the 
 
:THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 177 
 ruments ! " she exclaimed, " and you think that it will 
 do ! Oh, daddy, if you could only have heard Baradjik and 
 the ' Old Man.' . . . You do, honestly, think that I needn't 
 worry about it then ? " 
 
 " I think," said Petrie, and he laid his hand on her shoulder, 
 " I think well, I am convinced now, little Cyn to use a pet 
 phrase of yours that struck me as rather pretty I am con- 
 vinced that you are ' full of music.' That thing of yours, 
 you know it's it's well, it is music. I can say no more 
 than that ; nor can anyone else who isn't an idiot paid 
 to do so. The paid idiots, newspaper fellows I mean, will 
 be able to say all sorts of things. It's too long, and too 
 short, and too broad and too thick, and heaven only knows what 
 not. . . . And that is giving you all the criticism possible 
 upon a work of art provided that the statements follow 
 the conjunction * b-u-t.' Before this conjunction, to anyone 
 with the faintest suspicion of an ear, that thing of yours is 
 simply and solely good. . . . Even 7, Cyn, expected no 
 better of you. And, believe me, I did not expect anything 
 nearly so good." 
 
 Cynthia looked first at him, and then away from him, hoping 
 that, somehow or other, the trembling of her lips might cease. 
 Part of the thing before her mind was laughable an absurd 
 picture of Petrie's long legs doubled up, knees drawn up to 
 chin, as he sat behind the heap of unused floorcloth in St James' 
 Hall, and listened to the things she said to the others in her 
 efforts to rouse them up into response. . . . 
 
 Silence did not help in the matter of her lips, so she said, 
 " And it's been just horrible. . . . Nobody has seemed to 
 care a rap about it all. Yorfve just paid up all the time, and 
 seemed to think no more about it after that. As for mother 
 and Freda. . . . And all the time you've really been waiting 
 to hear it, and now you'll have such a cold. You heard what 
 that place has done to the piano. . . . Daddy, dear, why do 
 you do such funny things ? " 
 
 Petrie very lightly pinched her nearest ear between his 
 finger and thumb. Then he said, " If you give the slightest 
 confirmation to a suspicion of mine that you are inclined to 
 shed tears, I shall banish you from this fireside without further 
 
 
178 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 delay. Tears, Cynthia, are woman's favourite breach of 
 hospitality. . . ." 
 
 She sniffed and thrust him away. " I wish you would give 
 up airing your wonderful views about women," she said. 
 " One would think well . . . you hadn't really spoken to 
 a woman for twenty years till you got to know me. Besides, 
 / haven't got anything to do with women, daddy : I'm an 
 artist" 
 
 " Are you indeed ? " said Petrie. " God help you then, 
 for you are men, children and women." 
 
 " And I suppose that" said Cynthia, " is one of your epi- 
 grams or something. It's a pity you can't think of some way 
 of using up all your bright ideas about women in a book 
 or something." 
 
 " Something ! " Petrie said. " I wonder if you will ever 
 give up that ten-year-old schoolboy diction of yours, Cynthia ? 
 Book or ' something,' women or ' something,' epigram or 
 * something.' . . . Where, by the way, are you doing the 
 quartette ? At the end ? " 
 
 " No," said she, " in the middle." 
 
 " I'd be inclined to put it at the end," he suggested. 
 
 " I can't very well now. The programmes are printed." 
 
 " Devil take the programmes ! " Then he added, " You 
 see, the programmes won't know. You entice me into further 
 remarks about women when you say things like that. Pro- 
 grammes printed indeed ! Let me tell you something. That 
 closing bar of your quartette depends on nothing in the world 
 but sheer joy of sound. It is a simple, straightforward and 
 exceptionally good sound that can reach nearly anybody. 
 There's no cleverness hiding the sheer beauty of it. Do let 
 the poor beggars in the audience have it to take away with 
 them. . . ." 
 
 " I only thought," said Cynthia, " that perhaps it would 
 look a little bit bumptious to stick my own thing at the begin- 
 ning, or the end. But you're right, of course. Yes, we'll do 
 it at the end. . . ." 
 
 " Good Lord ! " Petrie exclaimed. " Can't you have an 
 opinion of your own on the subject ? I tell you, it is most 
 annoying, to find some one leaning on one like that, . . ," 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 179 
 
 " Oh, there you go," said Cynthia. " Off again ! Now 
 tell me that I'm living on Mr Froest's vitality. That ought 
 to come next." 
 
 " No," said Petrie, " but if you can't see that your only 
 hope is to pull him and the rest of them through on yours, just 
 as you've been doing for the last six weeks, you have far less 
 intelligence than I gave you credit for." 
 
 " Good-bye ! " said Cynthia. " You've gone again. . . . 
 
 t if you're not going to be very long, I'll wait for you to 
 come back. . . ." 
 
 " That's better," laughed Petrie. " It's a much cleaner, 
 more workmanlike method of treating people than the lonely, 
 misunderstood artist act, the gulp in your throat and the ' et 
 tu, Brute.' . . . The next item on the'paper is what do you 
 propose to wear ? " 
 
 "The green thing, I thought," said Cynthia. "The 
 black's inclined to be dowdy." 
 
 " Ask Mrs Simpson what she has done with the parcel I 
 told her to put in your room this afternoon," said Petrie. 
 " It's a reddish, almost wine-coloured affair. You will have 
 all to-morrow for final adjustments, if it needs any." 
 
 " What are you talking about ? " said Cynthia. " Dad 
 you can't mean that you have bought me a dress ? " 
 
 " God forbid," said Petrie, " that I should ever think of 
 doing such a thing. I merely chose one, which I saw in a 
 shop in London, to be sent to you on approbation." 
 
 Cynthia's arms were now round his neck, so that he had to 
 move awkwardly to remove the pipe from his mouth. " My 
 dear," she said, looking at him, " who in the world would ever 
 have expected such a thing from you ? . . ." He smiled 
 evasively, cleared his throat, and said nothing. Cynthia went 
 on, " I don't know though. It is, somehow, just the very 
 kind of thing that one ought to expect of you, and doesn't. . . ." 
 She kissed his lean, tough cheek. 
 
 " I should go," said Petrie, " and try the thing on. The 
 psychological analysis can follow if necessary." 
 
 In twenty minutes she was back again. " Daddy ! " she 
 exclaimed, " it's simply wonderful. . . . My dear, I've never 
 even known anyone who possessed a dress like this. . . . Just 
 
 
180 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 you wait till Sylvia sees it, and the Chills and Freda. . . . 
 And the colour ! I believe it suits me ! " 
 
 She stood before him. 
 
 " I believed," he said quietly, " that it would." 
 
 " And even stockings ! " said Cynthia next. " And such 
 stockings ! " 
 
 " Yes," said Petrie, " and even shoes, that the feet of her 
 may be deftly shod." He pulled open the drawer that once 
 had held two bundles of bank-notes, and produced from it 
 a parcel. 
 
 She slipped on the shoes that the parcel contained, and 
 said, " Dad ! positively like a glove. . . ." 
 
 " And now we will look at you," said Petrie. 
 
 They stood on the hearth-rug, the cold gaslight hissing 
 down upon her white shoulders. " H'm," he mumbled, half 
 aloud. " Man woman and child. . . . The trinity called 
 Artist. . . ." He slowly turned her round before him, and 
 then again stepped away. "... So he isn't such a fool as 
 he looks, your silly old dad," he remarked. " He was right, 
 for example, about that touch of silver. . . ." 
 
 " Silver ? " said Cynthia. 
 
 " Silver," he answered. 
 
 He produced from the drawer another parcel. In it was a 
 leather-covered box, and in the box a great silver clasp, set 
 with green stones. 
 
 " Good gracious," said Cynthia, " if it isn't the old paper- 
 knife done up ! " 
 
 " Yes," said Petrie, " the old paper-knife the gift of a 
 Russian princess to an infant prodigy. It is, incidentally, 
 the finest piece of work in silver that you will ever see." 
 
 He fastened it in her bosom, and looked again at her. 
 " Now" said he, " I think you owe it to your mother and 
 sister to give them a run of criticism." 
 
 She drew close to him and laid her hands lightly upon his 
 collar. " My old daddy," she said, and then smiled up at 
 him. The hurry of the last half-hour had brought a flush 
 to her whiteness. " Daddy," she said again, and fidgeted 
 with his cravat, " you you are the most difficult person in 
 the world to thank for anything, you know. And yet it ought 
 

 
 to be e 
 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 181 
 
 be easy for me you're the only person I've got to thank 
 for anything for everything, as a matter of fact. There 
 even now I haven't managed to say ' thank you ' for these 
 wonderful things. Why is it, I wonder ? Is it because you 
 seem to know all about it already ? You always seem to have 
 been sitting behind a heap of carpets, like this morning, and 
 to have found everything out everything one thinks and does 
 and even imagines. . . ." 
 
 " Yes," said Petrie slowly, and brushed a strand of hair 
 from her brow. " Yes, Cyn, I suppose I do put in a good deal 
 of time behind a heap of carpets, looking on at things, and 
 listening. . . ." 
 
 " And so I say thank you, my daddy, thank you ever and 
 ever so much. . . . There, you see, I did manage to say it at 
 last, even if it did, sound futile ; and I shall manage to kiss 
 your scratchy old face." 
 
 In this she found no difficulty, for Petrie had leaned down 
 to meet her lips. 
 
 " Some day," she said, " I'll show you." 
 
 When she stood away from him, his face remained still 
 lowered as he stared fixedly and intent before him. 
 
 " Father ! " Cynthia exclaimed in startled surprise. 
 " Father ! Don't ! " She roughly shook him by the shoulder. 
 " Good gracious whatever made you look like that ? It's 
 awful. . . . What could you have seen ? " 
 
 " Only the rotten old Tragedy, Cyn," he said, shaking his 
 head. " Some things bring it devilish close to one. . . . Yes ; 
 the Tragedy. . . . You see, we can do these things we can 
 pay these little compliments to each other ; we can caress and 
 smile and try to cheat each other with the lilt of laughter, 
 pretending we're not really alone in the dark. But we are 
 alone. It's only a game of make-believe, this ; we're still 
 alone isolated and alone we've jolly well got to stay. I 
 can toss you a silver brooch, and we can shake hands and wax 
 merry over the transaction but the homage to the Genius that 
 wrought the design, I've got to pay in a solitary cell. The 
 genius himself wrought the design in loneliness, and not a 
 creature could share it with him ! That is the Tragedy, 
 Cynthia. All the big things before us we've got to do alone. 
 
182 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 The real cries the tears and groans and laughter that are 
 wrung from the inmost soul, there are no ears to hear. . . . 
 All we can make heard are the ' how-d'you-do's ' and 
 4 thank-you-so-muches.' . . . We can paddle about like this 
 and play together where it's shallow, but when it comes to 
 having to swim for it or jolly well going down it's alone 
 we've got to swim or sink." 
 
 His voice boomed distantly and hollow on the slowly articu- 
 lated words. He looked, not at Cynthia in her wine-coloured 
 dress, but unseeing, beyond her, his eyes unblinking in the 
 heavy shadows around them. 
 
 A cold shiver ran down Cynthia in her wonderful chiffon. 
 " Oh, daddy ! " she said softly. 
 
 Then he drew near to her and smiled again. He gently held 
 the lobe of an ear in each hand, and tilted her face up to the 
 light. " But none of that means that the ' how-d'you-do's ' 
 and the ' thank-you-so-muches ' are not the pleasantest 
 things in the world and the paddling and playing about 
 together. . . . And, I say, Cyn, I can talk to you about one 
 woman a nice woman, too that smokes." He stooped and 
 kissed her forehead. " Off you go now, my Artist my poor 
 old sort of a soldier an' sailor too. ." 
 
 2 
 
 During the week before the last of her three concerts Cynthia 
 came home from the hall one afternoon, to find that she and 
 her mother were to be alone together for tea. She was glad 
 of this ; Cornad's chaff about Shadrach, Meschach and Abed- 
 nego, as he called the three artists, was apt to pall at times, 
 and Freda's incessant attacks upon his nonsense were as wearing 
 as the nonsense itself. It was good to be in a quiet room, 
 good to be free of the slight constraint that Petrie's presence 
 would have imposed, if he had been there too. 
 
 But he was still away in London. 
 
 Mrs Petrie came in and said brightly, " I wondered if it 
 would go easily enough to-day for you to be back in good time, 
 my dear." She began, deftly, to pour the tea. Cynthia felt, 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 183 
 
 somehow, a greater intimacy with her mother in that moment 
 than she had known since her return from Holzgarten. 
 
 " Well," she said, " it's nearly over. Thank goodness for 
 that, anyway. . . . And then we'll be able to set about getting 
 a few things straight. It's high time you had a little less 
 running about to do, my dear. I can't see where you find so 
 much to do, all the time with Mrs Simpson here. . . ." 
 
 Mrs Petrie said, " It's you, my dear, that ought to be talking 
 of being tired out." There was no trace of the antagonism 
 that there would have been in such a charge four years ago, 
 but it was, nevertheless, an accusation. 
 
 " Oh, well, that can't be helped," said Cynthia. " Anyone 
 would be tired after weeks of trying to get music out of those 
 three. . . Poor things. I can't imagine what they'll do when 
 we finish. . . ." 
 
 Mrs Petrie's little eyes twinkled upon her. " I should just 
 think anyone would be tired, darling," she said proudly. " Nor, 
 my dear, could anyone have done it better. You have put 
 another feather in your cap. Still, thank goodness, it is, as 
 you say, very nearly all over ; and there will be nothing for 
 you to do, but wait for the pupils. There's the study, which 
 your father never uses now except in the evenings, when you 
 would not require it a studio all ready for you, with a little 
 tidying up. Oh yes, my dear . . . I've thought it all out. 
 You need bother no more. The pupils will come of them- 
 selves they're sure to even if it does take a little time." 
 
 Pupils ? . . . 
 
 Cynthia looked at her mother and smiled ; she was so 
 proud, so satisfied and happy ; Conrad would have called it 
 " chirpy to the verge of saying willow." 
 
 Cynthia said, quietly, " It's your house, my dear, that has 
 first to be put in order, after Friday. You've been doing 
 altogether too much, because I haven't had time to stop you. 
 But you just wait till after Friday, and you will see some 
 changes. No more of this frenzied rushing about for you, 
 or we shall just have a bundle of nerves again. ... I know ; 
 I've seen it all the time, only I haven't been able to do anything. 
 Sylvia has seen it too. I wonder she hasn't said anything to 
 you about it, especially as she thinks it's all my fault. But it 
 
1 84 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 isn't my fault that everything in the house has to be done at 
 least three times. First Mrs Simpson does it, then Freda goes 
 to see that she's done it right, and then you go and do the 
 whole thing over again. . . . That's no one's fault ; it's just 
 bad organisation, and it's got to be put right." 
 
 " There is far more in running a large house properly" said 
 Mrs Petrie, " than meets the eye. . . ." 
 
 " Oh ? " said Cynthia, " and what did I do wrong when I 
 was doing it ? / was under the impression that we got along 
 quite nicely." 
 
 " And so we did," said Mrs Petrie. " So we did, dear 
 but you were very young then, weren't you ? Yes, Cynthia, 
 we got on wonderfully well considering. But you need not 
 think you are going to have to start house-keeping again, just 
 because your concerts are over " once more she spoke with 
 pride " you will very soon find your work cut out for with 
 your pupils." 
 
 This time Cynthia had to speak, forced to it only by the 
 old, hard resolve never again to shrink from saying a thing to 
 her mother for the simple reason that she hated saying it. " I 
 hadn't thought of settling down to the teaching of a few pupils 
 in this place, you know, mummy. . . ." 
 
 " A few pupils ! " exclaimed Mrs Petrie, " who said a few 
 pupils, my dear ? You will get them all with a little patience, 
 Cynthia. Everyone says that. One thing very soon leads to 
 another in these matters, you know. All the people who meet 
 you and hear you at Sylvia's teas and if you accept the 
 Harbottles' invitation and play at their * At Home ' they all 
 talk among themselves. And there are musical people in the 
 town the way your concerts are being attended ought to 
 show you that, whatever others might say to you about it. 
 It can't be anything but a matter of time now. All you need 
 for your complete success is a little patience." 
 
 " M'yes," said Cynthia, " but I'm not at all sure that I 
 want any pupils, as a matter of fact. . . . You see, it's not 
 a music-teacher-governess sort of person I want to become, 
 is it ? " 
 
 " Why should you have bothered so, to study music, then ? " 
 Mrs Petrie asked. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 185 
 
 " To become a musician, of course," said Cynthia, " and so 
 it has been nothing but a waste of time and money, giving 
 these silly concerts at all. They haven't led anywhere. Sheer 
 waste of money. . . ." 
 
 " It would be a waste of money," said Mrs Petrie, " if you 
 were to turn away now, without reaping the harvest you have 
 sown. And you have sown a rich one, my dear. You're tired 
 now, and apt to take a gloomy view of things ; but, believe 
 me, no one could have done better." 
 
 " Well, it isn't much money that's been wasted, at any rate," 
 said Cynthia. " They'll very nearly pay their way if not 
 quite. . . ." 
 
 " Then I certainly can't see that you have anything to be 
 bitter about," retorted Mrs Petrie brightly. " You must 
 make allowances for the fact that you are quite tired out, my 
 darling at the end of the course as anyone would be." 
 
 This neat turning of the old tables upon Cynthia tickled 
 her immensely. She smiled and said, " No. You don't quite 
 see what I mean, mother. It isn't pupils that I want. I'm 
 not specially interested in dragging other people as far as I 
 myself have got. It's further that I want to get myself. And 
 this kind of thing is no use to me. It's been just like teaching 
 three children their A B C to get those three to play anything. 
 And then, even when it's done and the work all finished, where 
 are we ? Nowhere. It doesn't matter a fig to anyone here 
 whether we do the thing badly or well. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, my dear" Mrs Petrie remonstrated. " Come ! I'm 
 sure you could not have found anyone in the world more 
 enthusiastic than your last two audiences." 
 
 It was true : but it was also nothing. Cynthia knew that 
 her mother knew no more now of what she had been trying 
 to explain to her than she had known at the beginning. Every- 
 thing she had said seemed to be a repetition of something she 
 had said just before it ; and she could not think of anything 
 but further repetitions. 
 
 " Yes, but it's no use" she said, " no use at all, mother 
 this hanging on here and giving little parlour concerts and 
 things." 
 
 She was glad she had said it. She knew that she had 
 
1 86 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 explained nothing ; but at the same time she had not kept 
 anything up her sleeve. 
 
 Mrs Petrie looked at her a moment, and then looked, un- 
 concernedly, away. " Were you thinking, then, darling 
 she began, talking lightly, affecting a nonchalance that was no 
 less than heroic, " I mean, had you planned to go away from 
 home again ? " The net result of all her brave bluff was an 
 appeal more poignant than she had ever made to Cynthia 
 before. 
 
 " Good gracious, no ! " she exclaimed. " Whatever made 
 you think of such a thing ? I might have to be away for short 
 times, when I have managed to get some engagements and 
 father thinks I might get some now but there's no reason 
 why I should go to stay away. ... I say, mother, besides 
 Pve been thinking about this a good deal lately why should 
 any of us stay on in this place, the way we do ? There's 
 nothing in the world to keep us here, is there ? " 
 
 Propositions always startled Mrs Petrie. 
 
 " What about Sylvia ? " she suggested. 
 
 " It wouldn't hurt Sylvia," said Cynthia, " she's got her own 
 home and everything ; and you could come and see her as 
 often as you pleased ; quite as often as you do now, in fact. 
 . . . No, my dear, London would be the place for us all, if 
 it could possibly be managed. I don't see why. . . ." 
 
 " And what about your father's work ? " 
 
 " Yes, I know," Cynthia admitted slowly. " There is that, 
 of course. But he seems to have saved up some money, you 
 know, mother. And it oughtn't to be very long before I'm 
 doing something fairly good. . . ." 
 
 " And you support the family ? " Mrs Petrie asked tersely. 
 
 " Well . . ." said Cynthia, " no ; I suppose not at first. 
 . . . But I don't see why father should not be able to work 
 in London just the same as here, with all his experience. . . ." 
 
 " Because, my dear," said Mrs Petrie, " appointments are 
 not so easily found by a man of your father's age." 
 
 " Yes, but he already does so much of his work away from 
 here now," said Cynthia, " that it oughtn't to make any 
 difference. Instead of living here and going to London for 
 two or three days in the week, he could live in London, and 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 187 
 le here. It's only two hours' journey, when all's said and 
 
 me." 
 
 
 You never know," said Mrs Petrie. " It doesn't always 
 do to tamper with one's employers. You must remember 
 that he has done very well here, darling. ... A bird in the 
 hand, you know. . . ." 
 
 " Well, it couldn't do any harm to see what he thinks about 
 it, anyway," said Cynthia. " I know he'll agree about my 
 trying to get some engagements. Everyone, even the very 
 best of us, has to do that. . . ." 
 
 " But, my dear," Mrs Petrie interrupted, " since you could 
 so very easily make a very good teaching connection here . . ." 
 she was diffident, hesitating to urge her points. " You see, 
 dear, it isn't like it used to be here, you know. People are 
 becoming musical. There is the Philharmonic Society now, 
 that George and Sylvia have just joined. There was nothing 
 like that even two years ago. . . . I just can't help thinking 
 a bird in the hand. . . ." 
 
 " But still I don't see your objection to living in London," 
 Cynthia urged. 
 
 " But I didn't say that, my dear," said Mrs Petrie. " What 
 I did say is that you never know." 
 
 " No, but there's nothing to prevent our trying to find out, 
 is there ? " Cynthia smiled. " Of course it's nothing to 
 worry about. I only suggest that we all think it over and 
 talk it over together, quietly." 
 
 Mrs Petrie smiled back at her, and Cynthia was delighted 
 with herself for having conducted the discussion so smoothly. 
 
 Mrs Petrie had begun, absently, to gather the tea things 
 together. 
 
 " Now, look at you ! " Cynthia exclaimed. " What's the 
 use of keeping a dog and then barking for yourself ? You 
 are such a funny thing, mummy. Ring the bell, dear that's 
 what we keep Mrs Simpson for." 
 
 " D'you know, I can never remember that she's here," 
 said Mrs Petrie, and she began to replace the things in their 
 disorder. " You weren't thinking of going out, were you, 
 dear ? " 
 
 " Might as well," said Cynthia, " a little walk before supper. 
 
i88 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 I might find father ; he said he'd be back at the office this 
 morning. Can I bring in anything ? 
 
 " Oh no, dear, it doesn't matter, since you're going for a 
 walk. It's not important. Any time will do. It's only a 
 packet of that rennet powder. I thought a little junket for 
 lunch to-morrow. . . ." 
 
 " Well, a packet of rennet powder ought not to prove a 
 heavy load," said Cynthia, " since it's needed." 
 
 " But it isn't needed," said Mrs Petrie, " not before to- 
 morrow. And some one's sure to be going out." 
 
 " I'll get it," said Cynthia. 
 
 3 
 
 This trifling business of the rennet powder, and the way 
 her mother had begun, quite automatically, with the tea 
 things, the moment they had finished their tea, showed Cynthia 
 that Sylvia had spoken the truth. 
 
 Mrs Petrie was undoubtedly getting nervy. They were, in 
 fact, all of them getting nervy. A change would be the 
 finest thing in the world for them. It would be best for 
 Freda and for Conrad. 
 
 The only obstacle that Cynthia could see was Petrie's work 
 at Pudleigh & Walker's and Mostyn's. Yet she could not 
 imagine Petrie proving an obstruction in the way of any plan. 
 Somehow or other, she knew he would adapt himself. . . . 
 
 She had been before to the office of Pudleigh & Walker's, 
 so she went direct, without any. inquiry, to the dingy little 
 door in the yard behind the great shop. 
 
 At the foot of the worn, carpetless staircase she asked a man 
 in a green baize apron if Mr Petrie were still in. For answer 
 the man immediately disappeared through a gloomy doorway, 
 and returned with the bald-headed little fellow whom she 
 recognised at once as Burbage, of the Invoice Department. 
 
 She repeated her question to him, and he said, " It's Miss 
 Petrie, is it not ? I trust you are very well, Miss. . . . No, 
 I cannot say that I have had the pleasure of seeing your father 
 for some little time." 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 189 
 
 " He's not upstairs, you think ? " said Cynthia. " He may 
 have gone straight up without saying anything." 
 
 " Oh dear no," said Burbage. " No one goes upstairs 
 without I know of it. I will inquire with pleasure, though, 
 round the corner. He's far more likely to be in the shop, if 
 he made an appointment to meet you here." 
 
 " Oh no," said Cynthia, " he didn't make any appointment. 
 I only thought I might just catch him before he left the 
 office. . . ." 
 
 " The office ! " repeated Burbage, his eyebrows rising, it 
 seemed, to the apex of his bald head. " Ah, yes, but of course 
 you have been away. . . . No, he hasn't been here for months, 
 Miss. . . . Months, did I say ? Dear me ! how time flies ! 
 Why, it's three years or more since I have been in the 
 Export and that was after he left us three years at 
 Mid-summer. . . ." 
 
 All that Cynthia could be sure of now was her own childish 
 pride, that made her feel foolish for having exposed her ignor- 
 ance to the babbling Burbage. " Oh, of course" she said. 
 " What I meant was he might have looked in just to see 
 some one." 
 
 " Ah yes, quite possibly," agreed he. " Quite possibly 
 but that would be round at the shop. That's where the 
 Governor's office is now. I'll send round, and inquire with 
 pleasure. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, no thanks, don't bother," said Cynthia. " I'm going 
 round that way myself." 
 
 And she went straightway down the High Street, to the 
 shop of Shepherd, Mostyn & Barter, Wholesale and Retail 
 Grocers. 
 
 There she was cautious. " Do you happen to know Mr 
 Petrie by sight ? " she asked a white-coated man who stood 
 near a cash-desk on the ground floor. 
 
 The man did not. 
 
 Nor did the colleague whom he consulted. But a third 
 man, not a colleague but an overlord in a frock-coat and 
 varnished hair, emerged from an inner office whence he had 
 been listening, and, staring at Cynthia, said, " Petrie ? Petrie ? 
 Mr Petrie ? . . . A customer of ours, ma'am ? " 
 
190 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " No," said Cynthia. It was extraordinary how silly she 
 felt talking to these people. " No I don't suppose so. It 
 he's my father, as a matter of fact." 
 
 " Oh," said the man, " I was thinking for a moment of a 
 gentleman who used to be on our clerical staff some years 
 ago. Petrie. The name does strike familiar though. If the 
 gentleman you are looking for is a customer, one of the other 
 departments. ... It would be no trouble, I assure. . . ." 
 
 " No thank you. Please don't bother," said Cynthia ; and, 
 forgetting the powder for the junket, she went home. 
 
 There was no obstacle at all now, as far as she could see, 
 to their going to London. . . . 
 
 Her father was a funny fellow ; but the afternoon had made 
 her instinctively cautious. 
 
 Freda and her mother were in the sitting-room. After 
 remarking casually that she had not, after all, got the rennet 
 or looked Petrie up, she said just as casually : " I wonder 
 where father finds so much to keep him busy these days." 
 
 " There are the two offices, you see, dear," said Mrs Petrie. 
 " There must be a great deal to keep him busy. It was quite 
 soon after you went away that he gave up coming home to 
 his tea regularly, even when he had not been sent to London." 
 
 This very nearly told Cynthia all she was seeking to discover. 
 She merely required confirmation ; she put another question 
 a masterpiece, it seemed, of ingenuity. " I wonder if the 
 offices have moved." 
 
 " Why should they move ? " said Mrs Petrie. " The busi- 
 nesses are expanding, my dear." 
 
 So her mother and Freda did not know ! ... He was a 
 funny fellow ! 
 
 Cynthia smiled. 
 
 54 
 
 She smiled again when Petrie strolled in to supper. 
 
 The astonishing thing was not at all that Petrie should have 
 a casual secret of any kind that was simply the kind of thing 
 one was always expecting of him. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 191 
 
 The astonishing thing was that he should have succeeded 
 in keeping it all that time, when every day held a hundred 
 and one chances that might have discovered it. ... 
 
 He made some amiable, commonplace remark, and yet 
 again Cynthia smiled at the boyish deceit of him. ... He 
 was such a baby, with his curly head flecked with grey. She 
 was beginning to feel that she knew him so well, now that she 
 knew a secret with which she could tease him. . . . 
 
 Anyhow, it meant that the two businesses no longer existed 
 as obstacles to their going away to London. 
 
 She followed him into the study soon after they had finished 
 their meal. 
 
 " Get back in good time, dad ? " she asked. 
 
 " Yes," said he lazily. He was in what Cynthia called one 
 of his ' browsing moods,' lying deep in the arm-chair, with 
 his slippered feet high up by the mantelpiece. His pipe-bowl 
 rested, purring, upon his necktie, and he quietly smouldered 
 rather than smoked. " Breakfast on the train. That's the 
 way to travel. Had some lunch sent in on a tray. . . ." 
 
 " Oh busy as all that ! " said Cynthia. " It occurred to 
 me that we might have gone out for a walk, after you had 
 finished with the office." 
 
 He gave no sign whatever. He simply said, " Why didn't 
 you fix it up, then, before I went away ? There's always 
 something to keep me busy at the office unless we arrange 
 something else beforehand. . . ." 
 
 It struck Cynthia that she was taking a very mean advantage 
 of him, allowing him to go on perjuring himself, to no pur- 
 pose. She gave him another chance. " I suppose it's kept 
 up your French and German wonderfully," she said, watching 
 him intently " I mean, having all those letters to write every 
 day ... I daresay you've improved, if anything." 
 
 " I was not aware," said Petrie with another lazy wreath of 
 smoke, " that either my French or my German ever stood in 
 need of improvement." 
 
 She did not wonder any more that he had succeeded in 
 keeping his secret. Half the art of lying, she perceived, when 
 the art amounts to nothing short of genius, consists in avoiding 
 the telling of lies. She began to wonder, instead, what on 
 
 
192 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 earth the secret could be. It must be something vital, she 
 thought, for him to have kept it so carefully ; then again, it 
 might be absolutely nothing at all. 
 
 However, he was free of Pudleighs and of Mostyns ; that 
 fact remained ; but since even that fact could have no vital 
 import till after Friday, she smiled once more in her triumph 
 over poor Petrie, and went to bed. 
 
Chapter Five 
 
 I 
 
 Saturday morning, after the last of her concerts, 
 Cynthia went out into the High Street. (They had not 
 yet had the junket, as everyone in turn had forgotten, for ten 
 days, to get the rennet powder.) As she came out of the shop 
 she spied Sylvia with her perambulator. She did not par- 
 ticularly want to talk to Sylvia at that moment ; but Sylvia 
 had seen her going into the shop, and was waiting for her to 
 come out. 
 
 " I've finished," said Sylvia, indicating a shopping bag 
 tucked under the feet of her son. " We'll walk back, shall 
 we?" 
 
 Cynthia fell into step beside her. She felt, now that the 
 concerts were over, curiously defenceless. She had always 
 felt a vague menace in Sylvia's smug superiority. Sylvia's 
 house had now had the electric light put in, and main 
 sewage. Sylvia had a new vacuum cleaner, and was going 
 to have a new baby and Sylvia was one of those people that 
 are placed at a decided advantage by having things and being 
 about to have them. She was, moreover, a minister very 
 much with portfolio ; Cynthia was now without portfolio. 
 
 " I should think you'd be glad, my dear, like all the rest of 
 us," said Sylvia, as they turned aside from the High Street 
 at the Tramway junction. 
 
 " What about ? " said Cynthia, knowing perfectly well 
 " I suppose you mean about the Tschaikowski thing. Little 
 Marchmont improved amazingly, didn't he ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Sylvia. " Pity he squints so badly. It put 
 one off, having to look at him. I meant about its being all 
 over, though." They turned into Victoria Crescent, Cynthia 
 helping with the front wheels of the pram crossing from one 
 pavement to the other. " Poor mother will be able to let go 
 a little now. ." 
 
194 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Let go of what ? " asked Cynthia, beginning to bristle. 
 
 " The house," said Sylvia quietly. " Yes, my dear, it 
 must be four years it is four years since she started doing it 
 all. . . ." 
 
 " All what ? " said Cynthia. She did not wish to have a 
 useless quarrel with Sylvia ; and so the only way she had of 
 expressing her annoyance was to obstruct by asking questions 
 to which she knew the answer. 
 
 Sylvia's evasive manner of speaking, her deliberate dullness 
 of tone, had irritated her since infancy ; and Sylvia had devel- 
 oped these, since marrying George, into the utterly lifeless 
 monotones of those who have nothing to express but pity or 
 personal blame of their acquaintances. 
 
 The jolts from the pavement to the street and back again to 
 the pavement had aroused the infant George from his slumbers 
 and he looked up, mumbling bubbles and meaningless sounds. 
 
 " Arnky Tin-tear ! " he gurgled at last, to which she only 
 answered, " H'm ... so you're awake, are you ? " To 
 Sylvia she said, " Well, yes. I suppose there's no reason now 
 why she shouldn't go back to bed and her headaches again ; 
 since you're so sure that it's so much better for her." 
 
 But Sylvia's superiority remained unruffled. " Poor 
 darling ! " she said. " She would be so utterly lost. It 
 would be positively cruel to shut her out of things again 
 altogether . . . such a pity it all had to be so hard . . . 
 altogether too much for her, as everyone sees. . ." 
 
 " Do you find housekeeping so desperately hard then ? " 
 Cynthia asked. 
 
 " It depends a good deal on the way things are done, whether 
 it is hard or not poor ickle backie tired ? Lie down then 
 peshesh . . ." She unfastened a strap and readjusted George 
 at a different angle, hiding his staring eyes behind his nostrils 
 and his bulging cheeks. " Of course, there's an easy way of 
 keeping a house, as well as a hard one. . . ." 
 
 " / didn't find it so precious hard," said Cynthia, " but I 
 suppose I made a mess of it in the easy way. Though as 
 long as everyone had enough to eat and everything was clean 
 well, I don't see what more can be needed in housekeeping 
 than that. ." 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 195 
 
 " Some people think in that way," said Sylvia, " only mother 
 might just happen to think differently." 
 
 They walked on a few minutes in silence, then Cynthia said, 
 " I suppose even you will admit that mother's been better since 
 she's had something to do, instead of just moping about all 
 the time like she did in the old days f " 
 
 " Having something to do," said Sylvia, still without anv 
 emotion whatever, " is one thing. Slaving, single-handed, 
 from morning till late at night, is quite another especially 
 for an elderly body who has never been over strong." 
 
 Cynthia said, " Slaving from morning till night, indeed ! 
 . . . What you don't seem to realise, my dear, is that some 
 people are simply born to fuss over trifles, and they always 
 will do it, whatever anyone else may try to do to prevent it. 
 * Working your fingers to the bone ' seems to agree with you, 
 for instance. . . . Slaving from morning till night. ..." 
 Then she pulled herself up. " Has mother said she's not 
 feeling so well ? " she asked, quietly. 
 
 " My dear," said Sylvia, " one does not need to be told these 
 things in so many words." 
 
 " The fact of the matter is" said Cynthia, " that this place 
 is enough to drive anyone nearly out of their senses. It's all 
 very well for you with your Georges and your house and 
 things to keep you occupied here. But what we want is a 
 change ; and I mean to see that we have it before very long. 
 We will go away. . . ." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Sylvia, eyebrows raised just the faintest shade, 
 " and what about father's work ? " 
 
 So even George and Sylvia did not know. 
 " Oh, father will be alright," Cynthia reassured her. " Don't 
 you worry about father." 
 
 " If you think of going away" said Sylvia, " I should like 
 to know what your idea was in spending all that money on the 
 concerts." 
 
 " Even that I shouldn't worry about," said Cynthia. " We 
 cleared just seventeen pounds on the three concerts." 
 " Then I don't see why you think of going." 
 " Change ! " said Cynthia. " Change / What is there for 
 any of us here ? Me or Freda or the Boy or mother even 
 
196 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 father ? There's nothing in the world to keep us here. Freda 
 wants to become a secretary, or something like that. Good- 
 ness knows what Conrad will want to do ; only I'm sure he 
 won't want to do it here. Father well, father will be alright. 
 Mother will be better for a change of air after all these years, 
 and I shall be able to get engagements ; be in the swim of 
 things." 
 
 : * You could quite easily get the accompanying for the Phil." 
 Sylvia referred thus familiarly to the new Philharmonic 
 Society. 
 
 " H'm," sniffed Cynthia. " Freda could knit a new sports 
 coat and Conrad could go on collecting postage stamps." 
 There was not much point to this remark ; but it was good 
 enough for Sylvia. 
 
 Walking home, she felt that it would take an angel to avoid 
 being rubbed up the wrong way by Sylvia. 
 
 * 
 
 Petrie had gone away that morning, leaving a note to say 
 that he hoped to be back on Sunday. 
 
 Going to bed Cynthia suddenly said, " Do you think that 
 mother's breaking down, Free ? . . . under stress of work ? " 
 
 " Breaking down ? " exclaimed Freda. " She's breaking 
 me down right enough. Positively, my dear, at times I have 
 thought that I couldn't stand it another day. . . . Thank 
 God your shows are over, and you'll be able to take your share 
 of it now." 
 
 This was alarming. Freda often said shocking things, 
 things that offended the ears of Mrs Petrie ; slangy, quite 
 meaningless oaths and imprecations ; but now she called, 
 quite seriously and after due deliberation, upon the Creator, 
 " Thank God." 
 
 She sat, furthermore, upon the edge of her bed, hands 
 tightly clenched by her sides, eyes flashing. Cynthia went 
 and sat down beside her. This was the " little " sister, the 
 tomboy thing that had never shown a petty spirit, howevei 
 petty the crisis. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 197 
 
 " Free ! " said Cynthia, coaxingly ; " you don't mean to tell 
 me that housekeeping's too great a burden for you ? " 
 
 " Housekeeping indeed ! " sneered Freda. " Pooh ! I could 
 run two hotels with far less bother than mother gives over 
 this this desirable, double-fronted residence. . . ." 
 
 " What's wrong, then ? " asked Cynthia, " that you should 
 be so upset ? " 
 
 " Wrong ! " said Freda, " you just wait till you've had a 
 dose of it ! You haven't even seen it yet, my dear you've been 
 so ' gloriously aloof ' with your other fish to fry. It's just 
 nothing but one long fuss, fuss, fuss from morning till night. 
 And all about nothing at all." 
 
 " And so you think it will improve matters for another one 
 to join in ? " said Cynthia. " Me, for instance ? " 
 
 " No. But I do venture to suggest that you should join in 
 to take your share of mother. I've had it for four years now, 
 don't forget ; and I've had just about enough. I'm glad you 
 spoke about it, Cynthia - 7 I thought I'd just wait a day or two 
 and see if you would, before / opened fire. . . ." 
 
 Cynthia thought quietly for a moment, then she moved a 
 little closer to Freda, who still sat stiffly erect, hands tightly 
 clenched. " I say, old Free," she said, " don't think I haven't 
 seen what a perfect brick you've been, old girl. It it must 
 have been a bit dull at times." 
 
 " Oh, I'm not pitying myself, my dear," said Freda, with a 
 toss of her head. " It's been alright, as far as that goes but 
 it's all too ridiculous and and damnably silly. It's all because 
 we're women. I've got some things for you to read, my dear, 
 that will make you just stop and have a little think now and 
 again. Because we're women, people are apt to resist any 
 efforts on our part to exist even, except as mistresses and 
 menials, like Sylvia and me ! Ton, of course, are all right now. 
 But don't for a moment imagine that / don't know how you 
 must have had to fight and push to emancipate yourself like 
 you have. It was^w^." 
 
 Her admiration forced her to turn, so that she looked up 
 at Cynthia, and she repeated, almost inaudibly, through parted 
 lips that were fuller than Cynthia's a medium more plastic 
 for pouting and smiling " Fine." 
 
 
198 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Cynthia did not know this Freda. It was some one between 
 whom and herself she felt an astonishing bond. " / did not 
 have much fighting or pushing to do, my dear," she said. 
 " But I haven't had time to notice much, lately, what a brick 
 you've been." 
 
 " Oh, you don't have to tell me how much pushing you had 
 to do. Don't you forget that I know mother but it's my turn 
 now, since you've finished." She stood up and unfastened 
 her belt. 
 
 " Finished ! " said Cynthia, " indeed I haven't finished ; 
 but that's not going to interfere with you or anyone else. 
 .... What's your programme, by the way, since you seem 
 to have a programme ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, I've got a programme right enough," said Freda, 
 the old, little Freda again, with fluffy hair tumbling down 
 about her shoulders, and head tilted pertly upwards. 
 " Efficiency. That is what / believe in, my dear. It is the 
 first duty of every woman to be efficient. We're a pack of 
 fools, taken all round you're not, of course. You've got 
 your profession, and have shown yourself to be worth your 
 salt. You're a first-class artist, not merely a specimen of your 
 sex, like most of us others. Look at Sylvia and all the rest 
 of them just botanical things merely female ; and poor 
 mother ! I suppose it was all very well in the last generation. 
 But I'm going to become efficient, and what's more, I'm going 
 to look slippy about it. I know you won't stand in the way 
 even if the others do. . . ." 
 
 " Have you been talking to father ? " asked Cynthia, thinking 
 that perhaps she saw a little light. 
 
 " Father indeed ! I shouldn't think there's much change 
 to be got out of talking to a man about these things. Oh no, 
 my dear, I don't look to anyone of the last generation for 
 help, I assure you. It's reading that I've got most of it from ; 
 and a little from from other sources." 
 
 " You needn't bother to go about conspiring where Pm 
 concerned," said Cynthia, recognising again the old Freda. 
 " I know pretty well the kind of thing you mean. Also, you 
 can take it from me that father doesn't belong particularly to 
 the last generation. ... I don't think there can be another 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 199 
 
 man in the world quite like father. There isn't very much he 
 doesn't understand if he ever bothers to bother about it. 
 . . . And what do you propose to become efficient at ? " 
 There was no suggestion of a sneer in the question, though 
 anyone who did not know Cynthia's manner as well as Freda 
 did would have thought there was. 
 
 " Not nursing," said Freda ; " I couldn't stand nursing at 
 any price. And I don't see why on earth it should be nursing 
 either just because every other female who does anything at 
 all does nursing. All I want is competence, Cynthia you've 
 got it, old girl, so why shouldn't I get it too ? just a level 
 head and sound brains in decent working order." (That 
 particular phrase was familiar to Cynthia. She had read it 
 herself somewhere or had Petrie said it ? No. It was in 
 one of those plays he had given her to read. It lost a little 
 value now from that fact.) But Sylvia went on : " And if 
 that isn't enough, as it is in the case of a man just because 
 I happen not to be a man well then, I'll learn to whack a 
 typewriter and write that shorthand stuff and become a 
 secretary or something. I'm sure I'm not in the least particular 
 what it is as long as it's something of my own and not anyone 
 else's. I'm going to break away, my dear, and that is the long 
 and the short of it." 
 
 She was in bed now. Undressing was no great business with 
 her, just a matter of a few quick gestures. " Well ? " she 
 challenged, and flung her scattered hair into a ribbon. 
 
 " Well," said Cynthia ; " so ihafs what's been happening 
 to you in the last few years, is it ? . . . Three cheers for the 
 ' other sources.' But you need not be so excited over it, 
 Christabel. I have a scheme, my dear Has it never occurred 
 to you that we might just as well be living in London ? " 
 
 " How can we live in London all of us, with father tied to 
 his old shops ? " She followed her question with a sniff that 
 is not represented by any literary device. 
 
 Cynthia paused a moment ; decided to wait. " Don't 
 worry about that" she said reassuringly. " Father can make 
 that all right. That's the scheme, my dear London. There'll 
 be nothing to stop your quest of the level head and boiling brain 
 there, my child." 
 
200 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 The light was out and Cynthia, too, was in bed. This 
 banter was only on the surface. 
 
 " Good-night, old Cynthia." 
 
 " Good-night, Free." 
 
 Deep down the bond had been established. 
 
 " Not much point in talking about this thing, do you think ? " 
 Freda asked, diffident and a little sleepy. 
 
 " You mean talking to anyone else ? " said Cynthia ; 
 " shouldn't think so just yet." 
 
 The bond was sealed. 
 
 " Asleep, Free ? " This a few minutes later. " What 
 became of that boy with the funny name who used to be so 
 sweet on you ? You know the one I mean used to wet his 
 hair and plaster it back. You know I saw him kissing you 
 one evening just before I went away." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Freda, " that's a nice question to wake one 
 up to ask. Gerald Lamery he's alright. I hear from him 
 occasionally. He's up at Cambridge now ; I never saw anything 
 specially funny about his name, though. . . . He came down 
 for your concert last night, as a matter of fact. Goes off 
 again to-morrow. He says you're utterly wasted down here, 
 ought to be in London." 
 
 " So ought everyone to be in London," said Cynthia. " And 
 so everyone jolly well shall be, before much longer. Mr Lamery, 
 by the way, isn't likely to be requiring the services of a secretary 
 in the near or distant future, is he ? " 
 
 " Ass," said Freda, turning over. " I bet your past of the last 
 three years or so would make some handsome reading." 
 
 " It's high time, if you ask me" said Cynthia, " that all 
 children were asleep" 
 
 They both very soon were. 
 
 3 
 
 Petrie returned from London just in time for lunch on 
 Sunday, with half a dozen newspapers tucked under his arm. 
 
 " We'll walk up the Hill after lunch, Cynthia, shall we ? " 
 he said, " and have a look through these things ? " 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 201 
 
 On Wilton's Hill he sat beside her on one of the benches, 
 and smoked quietly while she looked through the reports of 
 her Concert in the papers some of them Saturday's and two 
 Sunday's. 
 
 She eventually laid down the last one and said " H'm." 
 
 Petrie said, " Two hums one being mine. But what do 
 you think of it all, old girl ? In my humble opinion that 
 Morning Post fellow is improving ; yes, he is getting distinctly 
 better. And ridiculous as it may seem to you, my dear, there 
 are people who would definitely engage a musician without 
 even bothering to hear her for themselves, on the strength 
 of a paragraph like that. You must cut all these out, you know, 
 and stick them in a book. Then, with the judicious use of 
 asterisks and repeated full stops, we can have them all printed 
 on a single sheet of paper, headed 'A Few Press Opinions,' 
 and and there we are." 
 
 Cynthia again said " H'm." 
 
 Petrie looked down at the papers in her lap, and relighted 
 his pipe. " By the way," he said casually, " what did you 
 think of that fellow ' R.'s ' remarks ? " 
 
 " The one in the yellowish looking paper the Sunday one ? " 
 Cynthia asked. 
 
 " Good Lord, no," said Petrie. " That's that idiot ' Chaf- 
 finch.' I mean the short one in the evening paper. The one 
 who does not waste so much space on what you have already 
 done, as he does on suggesting what, in his very humble 
 opinion, you ought to do next. The fellow who says you ought 
 to get experience experience of Music of thinking it and 
 hearing it and making it ; and that it doesn't matter a fig 
 whether you make it on an orchestra or a fiddle or a concertina, 
 on your throat or a grand piano as long as you do make it. 
 And I think that a piano is perhaps the most convenient 
 as you can already work a piano fairly efficiently. . . ." 
 
 " Now we have come very much to the point, dad," Cynthia 
 said, turning suddenly round to him ; " and I was as sure as 
 I could be that you would agree with me. . . . Engagements. 
 These things here were all very well in their way but they 
 were sort of amateurish, weren't they ? just parlour tricks ; 
 all very well for tickling poor mother and Sylvia ; but I say, 
 
202 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 daddy, you seem to know all about these things how can I 
 get engagements." 
 
 " Some recitals, I suppose," said Petrie. " Nowadays 
 apprenticeships are seldom served in garrets, with empty 
 stomachs and paper shirts. You would have to start with a 
 fur coat and recitals. All you have to do is work. Work 
 like the very deuce till you're ready our hard-earned savings 
 will do the rest the fur-coat effect, I mean. You can have 
 the Study and the old * Chick ' if it's still good enough for 
 you I'll have the rest of my stuff cleared out of the room for 
 you. . . ." 
 
 " But why the study ? " asked Cynthia, " Why this par- 
 ticular study, I mean." 
 
 " Well you could clear out again," said Petrie slowly, " if 
 you prefer to. If you think you would do any better for being 
 by yourself. . . . Only I thought you were getting on fairly 
 comfortably at home. I was under the impression that things 
 were adjusting themselves to you fairly satisfactorily. . . ." 
 
 " Yes, but there's all of us," said Cynthia. " I rather 
 like being at home, you know, daddy and there's Sylvia too ; 
 and it would be just splendid for mother. What I meant 
 was, why on earth aren't we all of us in London ? " 
 
 " Quite out of the question," said Petrie, looking away from 
 her down upon the shining roofs of Pelchester. " You seem to 
 forget that I have obligations in the place paid work." 
 
 Cynthia lost patience. " It's no use playing that game, 
 daddy," she said. " I happen to know all about it. You 
 haven't been to either of the offices for years. So there ! 
 They told me so at both of them." 
 
 " The devil they did ! " exclaimed Petrie, staring suddenly 
 at her, startled and fidgeting with the knob of his walking- 
 stick. " I er what I mean to say is look here, Cynthia ! 
 I should be extremely obliged if you would refrain from 
 meddling in my affairs. . . ." 
 
 " I did not meddle in your affairs," she said. " They just 
 happened to tell me it, when I went looking for you to come out 
 for a walk days ago." 
 
 " Then you ought to have told me about it at once," snapped 
 he. " It isn't playing the game to keep things up your sleeve 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 203 
 
 in that underhand, secretive manner. Any man would know 
 a thing like that instinctively. Your brother Conrad would 
 not play a dirty trick like that, even at his age. . . ." 
 
 " You are a nice one to talk about secretive manners, I do 
 declare," exclaimed Cynthia. " You who've had a thing 
 up your sleeve for years. I do. . . ." 
 
 " Please do not talk such unmitigated nonsense, young 
 woman," he snapped again. " The cases are not parallel 
 in a single detail. You might have landed me in all sorts of 
 perfectly ridiculous difficulties. . . . You could quite easily 
 have undone years of of very careful labour and planning. . . ." 
 
 " Sorry, old daddy," said Cynthia, and gently laid her hand 
 on his knee. She did not know what she was apologising for, 
 how she had hurt him and upset him. 
 
 " Oh that is alright," said Petrie, and touched her hand. 
 " Thai's nothing. . . . Where, by the way, did your in- 
 formation come from ? " 
 
 " Both the offices," said Cynthia. 
 
 " Both the offices ! " he exclaimed, and then laughed a peal 
 of most convincing laughter. " Both the offices ! But, my 
 dear girl, there are not two offices in this great city of ours, 
 there are something like two thousand. Of course I do not 
 go to old Pudleigh's any more, or that other place and that, 
 my dear, is a secret between our two selves. My office is 
 another one. . . . I I. No. I was going to say that you 
 could come and see it one of these days. But I'm sorry. 
 As a matter of fact, you can't. I have a principle. . . ." 
 
 " But, daddy, wherever your office is," she began to argue ; 
 " and I assure you, my dear, I don't want to see your dirty old 
 office I'm not trying to meddle in your affairs but wherever 
 it is, you don't spend a great deal of time in it, because you're 
 in London half the week. If you have to come back here for 
 two or three days in the week and mind you, I just don't 
 believe that you do have to well, you could come." 
 
 " D'you know," said Petrie, and leaned thoughtfully back, 
 eyes half-closed, lips parted in his whimsical smile of con- 
 templation, " that remark of yours about my dirty old office 
 carried not the least offence. The reason for that, I'm sure, 
 is that it was a perfectly childish thing to say, and you said 
 
204 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 it in perfectly childish words. So it was, on the contrary, 
 quite charming. If you had translated it into sober, adult 
 diction it would no doubt have annoyed me. The only way 
 to call a man a clumsy idiot, for instance, without really offend- 
 ing him, is by saying ' Clumsy idiot ! ' If you say, * Pardon 
 me, but I am afraid you are scarcely deft enough to undertake 
 so and so . . .' I have a friend you know, a sculptor fellow ; 
 I suppose it's something like that that he means by ' sense 
 of medium '!..." 
 
 " Yes, but what about London ? " asked Cynthia. 
 
 " Oh yes of course London," said Petrie, and he sat 
 up again, eyes wide open. Suddenly he clutched at her arm 
 and said, " Cynthia, look here, my dear . . . I I don't want 
 to be selfish. God forbid that I should think of playing only 
 my own hand where you or any other artist are concerned. 
 But it never occurred to me honestly it didn't, old girl that 
 being away from London was causing you any hardship or 
 inconvenience. I don't ask very much of people ; I try, as a 
 matter of fact, like the very devil, to ask nothing of them, 
 but but I do ask for London. Don't, please don't make a mess 
 of London for me. . . ." 
 
 She stared at him in utter astonishment. 
 
 " And don't look at me like that" he said with a smile. " I 
 assure you that that isn't the case. You know young Jefferson 
 who came down for all three of your shows f Well, young 
 Jefferson knows more about brains than any other man in Harley 
 Street he's got more, himself, to start with but there's too 
 much of the thinker about him and too little of the grocer to 
 make much of a practitioner of him. Jefferson agreed that 
 I am the sanest man he had ever come across. That was years 
 ago, and I've grown a good deal saner since. You must have 
 noticed that for yourself. Jeff pocketed his five guineas and 
 we became the cronies we have remained ever since. But about 
 this London idea of yours ; do do you think me an unreason- 
 able beast, Cynthia, for wanting to keep London ? Yes. 
 Of course you do." 
 
 " I don't know what you mean," said Cynthia. 
 
 It was half the truth. The other half was that she was 
 surprised and terribly disappointed. Castles in air, that she 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 205 
 
 M 
 
 d been building for the past few days, had got well above 
 the ground floor. They had fallen now, in a sudden heap. 
 
 " Don't don't look like that over it, little Cyn," said 
 Petrie gently. " And above all, for the love of Heaven, don't 
 reproach me with tears. I've done all I humanly could do for 
 you. I I . . ." 
 
 " I know that, daddy," said she bravely, looking away from 
 im and biting her lip. 
 
 " Only this thing's different. You see, it startled me a 
 bit at first, you stumbling in upon it but there ! It only 
 needs a little quiet sense to arrange it. The fact of the matter 
 is well, we can't all go to London. Don't ask me why, 
 Cynthia at least, do ask me if you must, only I shall refuse, 
 flatly, to tell you. The reason is a purely economic one. 
 Incidentally, Jefferson agrees with me. We can't. If I was 
 the stumbling block here, and you wanted me out of the way, 
 I would go away to London or anywhere else. If it is you 
 that must go well, old girl you must go leaving us all here. 
 What's wrong with that for a suggestion ? " 
 
 " Well, there's Freda to be thought of now," she said. " It's 
 her turn." 
 
 " Her turn ? " said Petrie ; " what is it that you want Freda 
 to do ? " 
 
 " Oh, she wants to learn something or other," said Cynthia. 
 " She wants to do something or other ; I forget exactly what 
 she got it out of a play, the idea efficient brains and things 
 wants to be something, of her own. I think she's perfectly 
 right, dad, don't you ? " 
 
 Petrie smiled before he said : " Undoubtedly, there is 
 something in it. . . . Look here, Cynthia. How would you 
 two girls like to keep house for yourselves in a flat in London ? 
 We could stay on here your mother and brother and I. You 
 could visit each other frequently. . . ." 
 
 " The housework's too much for mother ; that's another 
 thing," said Cynthia. " She'd have to come with us." 
 
 " You ask her," said Petrie. " Let her decide for herself, 
 whether she is willing to go away from me now. . . ." His 
 eyes twinkled. " If housekeeping is too much for your 
 mother damme, she shall have a housekeeper. . . ." 
 
206 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Will you come to see us ? " asked Cynthia. " You could 
 stay with us, dad. You're always going to London." 
 
 " I've been going far too often," said Petrie, shaking his 
 head. " You see, Cynthia, I er to tell you the truth, I 
 do not want the fact of this factory of mine here to leak out. 
 Will you try to remember that ? " 
 
 " / don't see anything to be ashamed of in having a factory," 
 said Cynthia. 
 
 " It's frightfully hard to overcome old prejudices, my dear," 
 Petrie said. " Anyhow, you will respect the secret for me. . . . 
 So our Freda has begun to feel the need of the level head and 
 sound brains in decent working order. . . ." 
 
 " How did you know she said that ? " asked Cynthia. 
 
 " Didn't you just tell me ? " said he. She assumed that she 
 must have. " Well, you shall go, then, my two adventurers, 
 and see what the world holds for you in the shape of brains 
 and engagements. And don't you go trying to prejudice your 
 mother against staying here with me. We nearly understand 
 each other now, she and I, and with a very little mutual deceit 
 for example, my factory we get on uncommonly well. 
 / will arrange all that. Just tell Freda to buck up and get her 
 career chosen. You decide what you're going to do for your 
 recitals. We can very soon find you a desirable flat, large 
 enough to take the * Chick ' unless you're going to insist on 
 a new Broadwood. By 'Jove \ " and he filled his chest ex- 
 pansively with tobacco smoke, " what must it be like at twenty- 
 two, with as much money as you require, and a father who does 
 not insist on your being either a nun or an understudy, who 
 doesn't insist, like other parents, on eating you." 
 
 " My dear ! " she exclaimed, cheeks aglow under the hair 
 that had blown across them ; " it's too wonderful for words. 
 Old Free will go off her head with joy. It's wonderful, 
 daddy ! " 
 
 She squeezed his arm. They gathered up the papers and 
 walked home. 
 
 " I say, dad ! " she exclaimed, as they swung along, her arm 
 linked in his. " Suppose I succeed ? really succeed, I mean. 
 You know, something quite huge to astonish you even. What 
 about leaving London to you then ? " 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 207 
 
 " My little share of London," said Petrie quietly, " need 
 not interfere with yours. In fact, I shan't interfere with 
 you in any way at all. I haven't done so yet, have I, old 
 girl." 
 
 His pride in saying this was as boyish as any of Conrad's 
 bragging. 
 
 END OF BOOK II 
 
Book Three : Chapter One 
 
 i 
 
 O LIGHTLY less than a year after this, Petrie sat in the 
 O morning-room of a flat in Hanover Square, arguing with 
 a woman. 
 
 The gurgling pipe and long bony hand that closed over its 
 bowl were those of the old familiar Petrie ; so also were the 
 lean face with jaw set stubbornly and eyebrow whimsically 
 cocked, and the crisp hair very slightly greyer, perhaps, about 
 the temples. For the rest, a shining silk hat on the sofa beside 
 him, a faultless morning coat, and dark trousers with a light 
 stripe and precise creases that exaggerated more than ever 
 the tremendous length of his legs, disguised him almost beyond 
 recognition. 
 
 The flat in which he sat was Madeline Stringer's, and the 
 woman with whom he argued was Madeline Stringer herself. 
 It was she who had for three hundred nights filled the Kingsway 
 Theatre for Harold Rockleigh's tremendous farce, " Strivers 
 All," thus following up her huge success in his comedy, " The 
 First Refusal." 
 
 Caricatures, " full-pages " in the weeklies, an occasional block 
 in the dailies, and countless picture-postcards had made her 
 features as familiar to the British public as those of its monarch. 
 
 Just as a large photograph of the king was used to advertise 
 the excellence of a certain bicycle, so photographs (both large 
 and small) of Madeline Stringer were used to advertise the 
 excellence of a shoe, a soap, a stylographic fountain-pen, a 
 motor-car and a vacuum cleaner. 
 
 Yet she was not, in any sense of the words, a beauty. She 
 was small, to the point almost of insignificance ; her large 
 blue-black eyes made, with her pursed-up lips, the three vivid 
 spots in her pallid face which brought easy guineas to even the 
 worst of the pen and ink cartoonists. At forty her hair was what 
 it had always been, a coil of shimmering, unfaded black. 
 
 3Q9 
 
210 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 She sat forward and upright in the armchair (that could 
 quite easily have held three of her) showing all the outward 
 signs of exasperation, thus suggesting that the argument 
 between her and Petrie was not a new one, nor Petrie a man 
 with whom she hoped for any great measure of success. 
 
 She frowned and shrugged her shoulders and gestured slightly 
 with her hands, and tapped upon the floor with the daintily 
 shod foot that scarcely reached it. 
 
 " It's all very well, my dear Hal," she said ; " but it isn't 
 at all fair to those of us who know that you happen also to be a 
 Mr Charles Petrie of the Provinces. It's perfectly silly. And 
 a nuisance" 
 
 " I don't see it," said Petrie quietly. " I don't ask any of 
 you to do anything. I only ask you to continue not doing 
 anything at all. And that is very little more than minding 
 your own business." 
 
 " It isn't true," she retorted ; " you definitely asked me to 
 go to hear Cynthia at her Recital, and tell you what I thought 
 of her. . . ." 
 
 " Only if you didn't mind," Petrie corrected. " That I 
 did try to make very clear. I did not, in fact, even ask you to 
 go. I merely called your attention to the fact that a young 
 pianist in whom I am very interested, since she happens to 
 be my daughter, was about to give her second recital at the 
 Zephyrian Hall. I did admit that I should be interested in 
 your opinion of this artist and also of her sister. But bless 
 my soul, it never occurred to me that you would be so in- 
 convenienced. ... I don't a bit see why you could not have 
 said that you would rather not go, Maddie. . . ." 
 
 " Oh don't be so absurd. Of course I didn't mind." 
 
 " Then," said Petrie, calmly, " I'm hanged if I can see what 
 you have to complain of." 
 
 This produced another shrug of Madeline's shoulders, 
 another gesture of the hands, and another tap upon the 
 floor. 
 
 " It's all very well for you" she said ; " you never happen 
 to think of a thing. No one expected you till to-morrow, and 
 yet you walk in here, as calmly as you please on the very day that 
 your precious daughters are coming to tea with me. It is 
 
t 
 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 211 
 
 .st by the merest chance that you didn't come to tea as well, 
 they to lunch." 
 
 * Oh come, Maddie. That's an exaggeration, you know," 
 he remonstrated. " I wouldn't think of coming to tea. I 
 never come to tea with you, and I knew you would never ask 
 them to lunch." 
 
 " Well, at any rate," she went on ; " there you sit smoking 
 your pipe when the evidence of that particular pipe would 
 be accepted even in a court of law, and there is no means of 
 ventilation or fumigation in the world that could get rid of it 
 under twenty-four hours." She pushed a box of cigarettes 
 towards him, and he put the old pipe away in a new leather 
 case. 
 
 " I know well enough that you will stick to your idea 
 however silly it may be," she said resignedly and went to the 
 mantelpiece. 
 
 Upon it was a crayon drawing : only an after supper scribble, 
 but it was obviously of Petrie. Obviously, too, it was the work 
 of Owen James, though the name of Owen James meant nothing 
 at all to the dealers in those days. 
 
 Beside it was a little sketch in clay the head no larger 
 than an egg also of Petrie. This was the work of a certain 
 Count Osobisty known to a few choice spirits as " Antipon " 
 who had left his ancestors somewhere about Roumania for 
 Eton, and Eton for Oxford, and had got no farther than Paris 
 in his two attempts to return to the affairs that demanded his 
 presence at home. Now he lived in Chelsea, sketching in wax 
 and clay, marble and wood with a dexterity all his own. His 
 weird, ruthless vision saw human muscles, and especially facial 
 muscles, as draperies stretched and hung upon the structure 
 of bone beneath. So this little head upon the mantelpiece, 
 with its bumps of bone above the slightly puckered brows, its 
 taut strap of muscle from jaw to cheekbone, and its little fold 
 of skin above the large Adam's-apple as the chin turned slightly 
 down towards the left shoulder, had been to him a few hours 
 of tremendous fun. To a few others it was a mystery of 
 impatient genius. To two or three it was more even than this 
 -the head of Petrie. 
 
 Madeline took it and the drawing and put them in a drawer 
 
212 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 of her writing-desk. " This is the sort of thing that I mean 
 you never think of, Hal," she said rather wearily. 
 
 Petrie said nothing. 
 
 She sat down again, and started along a new line. " Even 
 suppose that it was best for this nonsensical secrecy to go on, 
 Hal : my point is that it simply can't go on. I daresay you 
 could go on for ever taking people like Cynthia in, and your 
 wife and a few others. But if you think Miss Freda won't 
 find it out, you're very much mistaken, my dear. She already 
 suspects you of being at the bottom of my going round to 
 see them. I'm sure I don't know why, but I know that she 
 does. I felt it in a moment, and it makes me positively fidgety 
 to think that they will be here in a few hours. Why not have 
 done with it, Hal ? " She had given up arguing now, and 
 was merely coaxing him. " Don't you see, if you don't break 
 it to them gently, they'll find it out for themselves in some 
 utterly ridiculous and farcical way : and and they'll only 
 think all sorts of things that we don't want them to think 
 things there's no need in the world for them to find out ? " 
 
 Petrie was frowning, perplexed, trying to do the best he could 
 with a cigarette. 
 
 She continued : " That girl Cynthia might quite well become 
 as famous as we are in no time now. The * Chaffinch ' thinks 
 she's fine. . . . Oh, I know you think the ' Chaffinch ' a perfect 
 fool, but nobody else does. His opinion may be perfect 
 nonsense, but it has more influence than any other critic's. 
 At any moment now she might appear suddenly in the lime- 
 light, and one glance at her would be enough to show any of 
 the little crowd that knows you whose daughter she is. . . ." 
 
 " I had thought of that," said Petrie. " It's like this, 
 Maddie. No one who knows me will ever go to hear her, 
 except Jefferson, and he already knows. That is why I am 
 singularly fortunate in being mixed up, almost exclusively, 
 with theatre people. They're always rehearsing while musicians 
 give recitals, and performing during concerts. There's only 
 the critics and Antipon and James to worry about. Antipon 
 or James would spot it in a moment, of course, but I cannot 
 imagine any circumstances that could lure either of them to 
 a place of music. As for the critics ? the old ' Chaffinch ' is 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 213 
 
 Ft 
 
 blind as a bat, and the others are bigger fools even than the 
 1 Chaffinch.' The only danger in the world can arise from the 
 exhibition and publication of photographs, which actors and 
 actresses might come across in the search for their own. But 
 even if Cynthia were the prodigy of the age, it would be ten 
 to fifteen years before her picture gets into an illustrated paper. 
 Freda's will, since she is going to be made a secretary or some- 
 thing to that votes for women establishment of yours, and she 
 will, sooner or later, get into scrapes ; but Freda is no more 
 like me than the man in the moon. Then there is the question 
 of my own photograph. That, too, I have catered for, my dear. 
 It is just possible that I might some day be worried for photo- 
 graphs again. Bluitt, the greatest agent the world has ever 
 seen, who is my father and my mother in these matters, tells 
 J em all that I live in Spain and so we haven't been bothered for 
 photographs for nearly three years. Still, if they do bother 
 me again, I am ready." He paused in triumph. " Yes, 
 I am ready for them. . . . From the local photographer 
 (who, incidentally, is a very good one) I have bought seven 
 excellent pictures of the station-master of Pelchester. He looks 
 
 e part far better than ever I should, and everyone would be 
 thoroughly satisfied fine bushy beard and spectacles, massive, 
 bulging torso, and fat, competent hands. Of course I've had 
 to have the backgrounds and one or two details of attire touched 
 up by those people in Bond Street, so that discord and suspicion 
 need not be brought into the domestic peace of the station- 
 master. . . ." 
 
 He was looking at Madeline Stringer as he talked ; and he 
 talked quite seriously, with enthusiasm and great pride. 
 
 " Quite hopeless," she said, and shrugged her shoulders 
 again this time in despair. " Of course you will have your 
 own way. But I hate not being able to understand you, Hal. 
 I wish you could make me agree with you. At the beginning, 
 there might have been a great deal to be said for your motive. 
 . . . Pride and bashfulness and all that kind of thing. . . . 
 Not wanting people to know what you were doing in case you 
 didn't succeed. But now, when you have succeeded so wonder- 
 fully. And think of the good it would do Cynthia for everyone 
 to know that she is the daughter of Harold Rockleigh. . . . 
 
2i 4 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Has it never occurred to you to think that it might really be 
 only selfishness on your part to keep up the secrecy ? " 
 
 " When people begin to talk in that way about things being 
 really only selfish," Petrie said, " they begin to talk nothing 
 but nonsense. . . . Sentimentality, my dear. . . . What 
 possible good could it do Cynthia to have me advertised as 
 her father, and by accident the most popular dramatist of the 
 century ? It could do nothing but impose all sorts of silly 
 obligations upon her. It might, possibly, tickle her vanity 
 a trifle, but that would only be a digression. Just as you are 
 an actress, and I a dramatist, so Cynthia is by nature a 
 musician. The exposure you suggest could no more affect 
 her as an artist than it would affect you artistically to discover 
 that your father was a wonderful jockey, or that your great- 
 grandfather never would eat oysters. Quite seriously, though, 
 the discovery would mean the very devil of a lot of trouble all 
 round. It would mean the reorganisation of a tremendous lot 
 of details, a lot of fuss and shifting things and readjusting to 
 no purpose at all since everyone of us is as happy as they ever 
 can be. Cynthia can't afford to waste time on that kind of 
 nonsense now ; she is at a critical stage of her artistic 
 development. . . ." 
 
 " What about yourself, Hal ? " she asked softly. " Are you 
 quite satisfied with with this ? " 
 
 The smoke from the unaccustomed cigarette was giving him 
 a lot of trouble, tickling his nostrils and burning his eyes. 
 He blinked and puffed and crushed the cigarette into the little 
 brass ash-tray at his elbow. " No," he said slowly, " of course 
 I'm not satisfied, Maddie, with this, or with anything else. 
 Are you ? Have we ever been satisfied with anything ? You 
 know you haven't. But it isn't your fault or mine. It's this 
 particular life of ours that's at fault. It's too small for a whole 
 person. We can't get everything into it. It is, by its nature, 
 pathetic and tragic. We work, you and I, and it isn't 
 enough. We play for a while, and play isn't enough. We love, 
 Madgie and love isn't quite enough. Taken all three 
 together or in turn, it still isn't enough. There is still something 
 in us outside them all that goes on, craving and unsatisfied. 
 It's life, I tell you it just isn't enough you know what I 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 215 
 
 mean, even if I haven't said it with my usual lucidity. What 
 good could it do now for me to revolutionise the routine of 
 half a dozen lives by telling people that a man to whom they 
 are very closely related is not a successful bootseller and egg- 
 uyer, but a successful playwright ? None. It would make 
 t a straw's difference to you, my dear. To me, if you still 
 sist on sentimentality, it would make the very devil of a 
 t of difference. I am getting positive good out of this 
 rangement. I am not in any way ashamed to admit it, 
 ce I am not stealing it from anyone else. I knew I should 
 t it. In fact I set out in the tirst instance to get it. Most 
 eople only manage to get one life out of a lifetime ; I, by a 
 ittle ingenuity, have managed to get three. First, there is 
 ' our Mr Petrie,' who only a very few know left * us ' some years 
 ago to go into ' some other business.' And I say, Madge, 
 you can't imagine how amazingly Mrs Petrie's turned out, 
 with her two grandsons in Pelchester and two daughters in 
 London, her son whose voice is at last settling into the bass 
 clef without undue use of ledger lines, and the husband of whom 
 she is no longer ashamed since he appears to be earning more 
 money than his son-in-law, and more money certainly than she 
 knows how to spend. There is the other life, run by the 
 amazing Miss Stark and her typewriter. Do you know she 
 made me sign seventeen letters before I got away from her 
 this morning ? She also made me go and see Bluitt again 
 about the Spanish copyright of the ' First Refusal.' It's a 
 reat life, you know, Maddie, that one even by itself. And 
 en then there's there's this one to which I always drift 
 ck when the other two have been emptied and this one is 
 never emptied. Lord, my dear, I'm glad though that we never 
 quite lost sight of the fact that work meant so much to us." 
 
 "To some people it is everything," she remarked, with just the 
 faintest suspicion of bitterness in her emphasis of the last word. 
 " Naturally," said Petrie. " To others eating is everything, 
 or collecting postage stamps or butterflies. But to people of 
 sense like you and me, Maddie, it is not everything nor even 
 nearly everything ; it is just the sine qua non. It's the same, 
 I'm as sure as I can be, with Cynthia and that funny little 
 sister of hers." 
 
216 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Well," said Madeline. She indicated that she had no 
 more to say, or that she realised that saying it would be quite 
 useless. " It's time we thought about lunch. I'm sure I 
 don't know what I shall talk to those two about ; Cynthia has 
 so very little to say, and Freda, full of her votes for women, 
 is sure to make me feel perfectly silly with her talk of Harold 
 Rockleigh. She is the one of the two, if you want to know my 
 opinion, who has got the most in her." 
 
 " She simply happens not to be the artist of the two," said 
 Petrie with a smile, " hence my preference for Cynthia, I 
 suppose. I must admit, too, that with Cynthia I have a 
 schoolgirl, sentimental kind of feeling that she is doing for 
 me what I promised to do for myself and didn't. That is 
 why I am so desperately anxious for her to go on, uninterrupted. 
 There's a deuce of a lot to be said in music, you know, Madge, 
 that hasn't been said, and I believe that she might get some of 
 it said. By the way, she ought to have had an offer by now from 
 Wilkes and Toppitt for a little tour. I'd like her to take it ; 
 so you might put in a word if she says anything. There 
 isn't a great deal of money in it, but she would be with good 
 people old stagers. . . ." 
 
 " What would Freda do while she's gone ? " asked Madge. 
 
 " That's just the point," Petrie snapped. " That menage 
 ought to be interrupted for a bit. I was afraid that those two 
 might be getting tied up to their furniture and their flat. 
 That is slavery, my dear girl, and must not be allowed in the life 
 of an artist or striver of any sort. It's just as bad for one of 
 them as it is for the other." 
 
 He stood up and leaned against the mantelpiece. The 
 quiet, meditative tones went from his voice, and he became 
 militant. " What will Freda do ? She can do anything she 
 jolly well pleases except hang on to Cynthia. And you needn't 
 smile like that ; it isn't favouritism I wouldn't suggest 
 Freda's being sacrificed to Cynthia either. Let 'em both be 
 free, Madge free, free" 
 
 " Funny old Hal," said Madge, quietly ; " let's go into 
 lunch, or there will be a risk of their running into you. I 
 didn't mean to stir you up, my old boy. . . ." She slipped 
 her arm into his and led him to the door. 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 217 
 
 " Stir me up ! " said he, smiling down upon her. " I should 
 think it does stir me up ! I only wish it stirred more people up 
 as it does me. You must keep this thing secret. There is 
 nothing in the way of any of us now. We are all free. . . . 
 Free of the carking, cramping anxiety about ways and means, 
 free as possible of each other, and free of other people. Let 
 it go on. Let them have the chance that so many other people 
 miss, the chance of going straight for their objective, my dear 
 there is nothing in the way now. Only bungling on our part 
 can entangle things for them, and make responsibilities and 
 obligations that can be very simply avoided." 
 
 Once more Madeline was convinced that every word he said 
 was true. She knew that when he was gone she would doubt 
 again ; she knew she would agree with Jefferson that it was 
 largely nonsense merely the obsession of an eccentric mind. 
 But she knew that she agreed with him now, and that she 
 always would agree with him, as long as he was there to 
 convince her. 
 
 She also knew exactly how much use there would be in arguing 
 with him, if she did not agree. 
 
 " I've explained all that to you before, though, Maddie," 
 he said as they went into the dining-room. " But what good 
 ever came out of an argument with a woman ? You continue 
 to think that I am a fool." 
 
 " It never even occurs to me to think whether you are a fool 
 or not, Hal," she said. " What does it matter ? / shouldn't 
 be any the wiser. But I would hate to risk going against you 
 in this thing. They shall both have their chance as far as / 
 am concerned ; of that you may be quite sure." 
 
 " That's the kind of remark," said Petrie, " that makes me 
 wonder why you devote so much time to arguing and trying 
 to pick a quarrel with me. . . ." 
 
 ^ 
 
 After about three more weeks of work, Petrie sat one morning 
 and smiled and whistled disjointedly, and idly stared at a page 
 that held only a few lines of his neat handwriting. 
 
218 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 At the end of the last line he very slowly made a full stop. 
 He continued twiddling the pen about upon it, spreading the 
 circumference of the blob till the full stop became a great 
 bead of bulging ink. Noticing the mess he was making, he 
 began, very delicately, to blot it. But it smudged : some of 
 the ink squirted upwards, and one streak downwards. The 
 upward smear he converted with his pen into the semblance 
 of a tall hat, the downward one into a leg. He added a second 
 leg, arms and a walking-stick. But the thing was once more 
 a menace of bulging ink. Petrie stared at it quietly, and then 
 very devoutly said " Damn ! " 
 
 He would not again risk blotting-paper upon it, so he set to 
 work drying it by gentle blowing ; but the task was too long 
 a one. He digressed from it to print, in scratchy, clumsy 
 capitals, the word "CURTAIN." . . . 
 
 Petrie was, in fine, idling ; messing about. . . . 
 
 He had written the last word of the last act of his new play ; 
 and whatever else he might alter or take out or put in, he knew 
 that those last words would stand. So he sat waiting, as it were, 
 for his rifle to cool. 
 
 In the " C " of " Curtain " he began to draw his impression 
 of a cobweb ; then he flung down his pen and said, " What 
 you want, O Dramatist, is a bit of chalk and a nice new piece 
 of fence to make a mess of. You'd better get out before you do 
 some damage." 
 
 He put on his hat, and looked out over the roofs of Pelchester. 
 
 He had been very comfortably established in those two 
 rooms high above a furniture repository in the High Street for 
 nearly four years. The outer room served only as a buffer. 
 It was empty save for the jagged tin lining of a packing-case, 
 into which he occasionally emptied his waste-paper basket 
 and his ash-tray. The inner one, his study, contained a desk, 
 three chairs, a couple of book-cases and a small cupboard that 
 kept all his loose papers neatly out of sight. Everything except 
 the books (which he had carried over two or three at a time from 
 the old study at home) had been sent up from the shop below 
 him, so that the whole move into the place had been accom- 
 plished within four walls. 
 
 There were only two paintings on the walls little things 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 219 
 
 that James had given him, and a medallion sketch of Jefferson 
 by Count Dovod Osobisty. 
 
 The two heavy silver frames on his desk sounded a note, 
 therefore, that was not answered by anything else in the 
 room. A cracked soup plate between them was the receptacle 
 for Petrie's ashes and match ends. 
 
 In one frame was a photograph of Madeline Stringer, in the 
 other, one of Cynthia. He had often placed these pictures 
 side by side and pondered upon the contrast they presented 
 a contrast heightened by the photographs themselves. 
 
 Madeline's was the work of a West End artist with every 
 device of the studio to help him. Every light was softened, 
 every shadow illuminated by reflected lights till every detail, 
 to the very texture of the skin, was there. 
 
 Cynthia's was an enlargement out of a picnic group taken 
 near Holzgarten on her twenty-first birthday, when the 
 cloudless sunshine beat fiercely down upon her forehead and 
 her cheekbones, upon the bridge of her nose and the point 
 of her chin. The rest was sharp, black shadow. . . . Looking 
 at it, Petrie always shook his head, knowing that one day he 
 would let just one man more into the secret of his two lives, 
 and commission Osobisty to do a head of her. . . . 
 
 From the photograph of Madeline, wide-open eyes looked 
 out at him and smiled eyes that had looked out upon life, and 
 learned many things from the seeing. 
 
 In Cynthia's, shadows hid the eyes that had as yet seen 
 
 thing eyes, as far as he had been able to make out, that 
 had no particular concern with seeing things. 
 
 As he strolled across the room, he stopped to have another 
 look at the photograph, and the only thing he could be 
 positively sure of was that he did not as yet understand Cynthia. 
 In fact, he could make neither head nor tail of her. He had 
 taken her to see " The First Refusal " and she had said that it 
 was cruelly sad. He had taken her to " Strivers All," and she 
 had said in exactly and precisely the same tones that it was 
 howlingly funny. 
 
 Madeline never said things in that kind of tone. . . . Madeline 
 had said, incidentally, that Cynthia was rather a stick : and 
 Petrie had asked her, hotly, what on earth she had expected : 
 
 
220 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Cynthia was a bona fide artist, a contemplator of things for 
 the things' sake and not her own : an artist, a contemplator 
 not just a reacter. Madeline had said that that was all very 
 well, but that there were limits. To that no answer was 
 possible. 
 
 Then Madeline had said that she could not, as a matter of 
 fact, imagine what Jefferson could see in Cynthia, when 
 Freda was there actually on the spot : and Petrie had said 
 " Damn Jefferson." But he said it, not peevishly or lightly ; 
 he said it very deliberately and earnestly, for he knew that now, 
 in addition to the enigma of Cynthia which interested him, 
 was the problem of Jefferson that worried him. 
 
 For a whole fortnight it had worried him and it worried him 
 still. 
 
 " Oh damn the fellow ! " he said again, for the hundredth 
 time in those two weeks ; and he smiled at the effigy of 
 Jefferson, the friend he had found just as he had decided that 
 friendship was a logical absurdity. 
 
 From the effigy he looked at the profile of Cynthia that 
 one day he would have to place before Osobisty clean- 
 chiselled, strong, and still as marble at the 'closed lips that 
 said so little, at the eyes that seemed to see not, at the ear half- 
 hidden in a coil of hair the only organ that he could be quite 
 sure functioned lustily. 
 
 Funny creature, Cyn. . . . 
 
 3 
 
 Mrs Petrie and Conrad had started lunch when he got 
 home. His place was laid, distinguished from the other two 
 by a colossal tea-cup ; but his absence from the meal would 
 have occasioned no more comment than did his coming in 
 to it. 
 
 Mrs Petrie smiled placidly and helped him to a piece of 
 steak. 
 
 " By the way, Elizabeth," he said, " I told you, didn't I, 
 that Jefferson will be down to-night for a day or two ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs Petrie, " the room's quite ready. But 
 
I 
 
 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 221 
 
 you haven't forgotten that the girls come down on Monday, 
 before Cynthia goes off on her tour ? ... If Mr Jefferson wants 
 to stay on you could . . ." 
 
 " Oh, he won't want to stay," said Petrie. " We only have a 
 little business to talk over. . . . Gone by Sunday night at 
 the latest I should say." 
 
 They both talked in the calm, matter-of-fact tones of people 
 who have nothing but matters of fact to communicate to each 
 other, and whose time in each other's society is well in excess 
 of the amount of information they have to impart. The tones, 
 in short, of people who have been married (and not uncomfort- 
 ably so) for many years. 
 
 " About the question of a maid, Charles," Mrs Petrie said. 
 
 Now there was, in point of fact, no question whatever of 
 a maid. A maid had never in all their two lives been mentioned 
 by either one of them before ; but that is how Mrs Petrie 
 began the subject, illustrating the perfectly ordinary and 
 even tenor of their existence. 
 
 " You see, Mrs Simpson is not what she used to be. You 
 would think there was little enough for her to do, in all 
 conscience, but the cooking alone is about as much as she can 
 manage now." 
 
 " Quite," said Petrie. " Such consistency as hers is enough 
 to age anyone. I don't believe she's missed a day since . . ." 
 
 " It isn't a necessity" Mrs Petrie went on ; "I don't mean 
 that ; but it would be a great convenience with people dropping 
 in the way they do nowadays. Like Doctor Jefferson. . . ." 
 
 " I shouldn't think you would find much difficulty in getting 
 a maid," said Petrie. 
 
 " I've got my eye on one," said Mrs Petrie, quietly. " I 
 can afford her out of the housekeeping allowance, unless, of 
 course, the girls' place ... I mean, the housekeeping 
 allowance is a great deal larger than it need be, Charles unless 
 we do go in for a maid." 
 
 " Oh, by all means we must go in for a maid," said Petrie, 
 his eyes twinkling through narrowed lids. " Capital piece of 
 beef this, Elizabeth. We I that is to say the firm . . . 
 I've had a rise, you know. At least, I am about to have a rise. 
 We have got into touch with Spain at last," He found it 
 
222 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 tremendously amusing to allude, in this way, to the fact that 
 the Spanish royalties of " The First Refusal " had begun to 
 trickle into Bluitt's office. " Please don't delay unduly in 
 engaging the maid, Elizabeth. I am in a great hurry. I 
 look forward to arousing the jealousy and envy of my son- 
 in-law." 
 
 " My dear," said Mrs Petrie ; " you misjudge poor George. 
 I'm sure you do." 
 
 " It will be huge fun," Petrie continued, chuckling. " We 
 must have them to dine one night, nothing having been said, 
 and we will face them with a maid, all starched up. . . . 
 Poor old George ! I am upsetting all the poor fellow's cal- 
 culations and forecasts. But how soon can you get a maid ? " 
 
 " As a matter of fact," said Mrs Petrie ; " there's a girl 
 coming in to-morrow just to try." She tried to be ever 
 so casual about the statement, but her excitement was patent. 
 Conrad, too, was as negligent as could be of the topic ; but he 
 was interested. 
 
 Petrie sat back in his chair. First he stared at them ; then 
 grinned. Then he said : " Now observe. I am about to 
 trump that. My statement will knock the wind utterly out 
 of your two sails. As for George, well, I shrink from imagining 
 what it will do to George. My statement is this, I propose 
 to buy a motor-car." 
 
 Mrs Petrie just stared at him. If he had said a brace of 
 elephants instead of a motor-car she could not have stared 
 at him harder. (People were still inclined to dress themselves 
 up in those days in fantastic caps and coats and gauntlets 
 before they attempted to drive a motor-car.) 
 
 Finally she said " Charles ! " 
 
 Conrad had not moved a muscle. " Well, young fellah ? " 
 said Petrie to him. 
 
 " What make ? " said Conrad, with astonishingly cold 
 composure. 
 
 " By Jove ! " said Petrie ; " I suppose that is a question ; 
 but I must say it had never occurred to me. I had only 
 considered motor-cars quite broadly as nothing but just 
 motor-cars. I suppose there is something in the suggestion, 
 though. . . ." 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 223 
 
 All Conrad deigned to say was, " I wish / had the selling of 
 this car to you, pater." 
 Petrie bowed to him. 
 " It's a mighty ticklish thing, let me tell you," said Conrad 
 
 ., " the buying of a car." 
 h that's how the effect is got, is it ? " said Petrie ; " by 
 
 ing simply * car ' instead of * motor-car ' ? Yes. I must 
 say that it does give a fine touch of familiarity and ease to it, 
 old man." 
 
 " You can say what you please about a Joynson or any of 
 the other cheap stuff," said Conrad, with a contempt for 
 Petrie's jocularity that was superb. " But if you ask me 
 there is only one car worth having on the market at the present 
 moment. I mean one English car." 
 
 Petrie made another obeisance to him. " O sage," said he, 
 " live for ever. In this matter thou shalt be as my right-hand 
 man, my grand vizier. In fourteen days from hence, or 
 peradventure twenty-one, we shall fare us together to London, 
 to Birmingham or whither else soever are the great bazaars 
 of the chariot-makers. There, with gold we will get us a good 
 chariot both fleet and stout. Together, I say, will we do this 
 thing. But let it be told to us, O sage, whence comes to thee 
 this new-gat chariot-lore ? " 
 
 " There's nothing new about it," said Conrad. He had 
 suddenly become conscious of himself, and confused and 
 awkward. Fidgeting with the bread beside his plate he went 
 on : " and there isn't very much lore to speak of. I I just 
 happen to take a bit of an interest in cars and engines and 
 and all that sort of thing. I thought perhaps, a bit later on 
 I might . . ." He was blushing ; words seemed positively 
 to stick in his throat. Finally, the word " engineer " was just 
 barely distinguishable in his mumblings. 
 
 And then, at a single stroke, Petrie put everything in the 
 world right by saying, " Good for you. ... So now your 
 profession is settled, too. I had hoped that the mysteries of 
 medicine might lure you science ; surgery, to be quite exact. 
 But have it your own way, as long as it's something with brains 
 in it somewhere. ... I don't suppose there's very much 
 difference between the two, after all, . , ." 
 
224 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Then they digressed, talking of Cynthia's tour, of the im- 
 pending birthday present for George the younger, of Freda's 
 appointment, and of the maid. Conrad's complexion became 
 slowly normal again. 
 
 " I say, pater," he said, carelessly departing. " You weren't 
 just rotting by any chance were you ? " 
 
 " I was not," said Petrie. " Give me about three weeks. 
 I'm devilish busy for the next three weeks." 
 
 " Rather ! " said Conrad ; " but this will give young 
 Harbottle some food for whistling, I can tell you with that 
 precious new Joynson cab of theirs. By the way, I've got a 
 few jolly interesting papers and some catalogues and things 
 kicking about in my room which we might have a look at one 
 evening when you've done with this heavy job of yours." 
 
 Petrie said, " Yes, rather. I'll have lots of time quite soon," 
 and Conrad drifted out. 
 
 " Quaint bird, that, Elizabeth," said Petrie, smiling at the 
 closed door. " The quaintest, I think, of the whole brood. 
 I must say he makes a very good show out of the tragedy of 
 being nearly seventeen . . . but where on earth did he get 
 his engineering turn of mind from ? . . . blest if / could ever 
 tell the difference between a spanner and a sprocket. . . . 
 Pity he doesn't want to be a surgeon : still, thank God it's 
 something, Elizabeth some ambition in addition to that of 
 merely growing. . . ." 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs Petrie, " yes indeed we have a great deal 
 to be thankful for, Charles. It is a pity it would have been 
 splendid for the boy to become a doctor. But still, as you say, 
 we must be thankful for small mercies. ... If only it could 
 have been even civil engineering, where he would not have 
 to mix with mechanics and people of that sort. But Charles 
 were you serious, really serious about the motor-car about 
 buying one, I mean ? " 
 
 " Why not ? " asked Petrie with a shrug and a smile. 
 
 " Because . . ." said Mrs Petrie ; " well because it seems 
 such a strange kind of thing to do. 7 should never have 
 dreamt of such a thing. . . . To begin with, it must cost 
 well, to say the least of it, some hundreds of pounds ; you 
 intend, apparently, to buy a brand new one." 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 225 
 
 " A motor-car," said Petrie, " I should say a * kah ' can 
 cost some thousands of pounds." She looked steadily at him 
 while he filled his pipe. Her mood was vague ; she felt a 
 little baffled. He suddenly looked up at her and smiled. She 
 was still baffled, but felt less vague after the smile. 
 
 " You are a funny fellow, Charles," she said, and she too 
 smiled. " It would be so very easy to misunderstand you now 
 the way you just say nothing at all, and then suddenly fling 
 down all this money. It would be very easy to think that you 
 only do it that way to punish me for the way I worried about 
 these things, only I don't think that. You see, you've never 
 been spiteful, Charles. . . ." 
 
 This kind of thing was a surprise to Petrie. He began 
 to feel a little as though he wanted to move about. " No. 
 It isn't spite, Elizabeth," he said, tugging hard at his pipe. 
 " I I'm awfully glad you see that. It's it's nothing more 
 than habit, I think ; just a sort of habit of mind. Just 
 commonsense really. . . . You must face the facts of the 
 case, Elizabeth. It never really worked for you to worry 
 yourself and me about what I was doing. . . ." 
 
 " But I can't help worrying about it even now," said Mrs 
 Petrie. " I try to reckon it all up ... there's the girls' 
 place, and here and all your own expenses ; First Class, 
 some one told George, though George says that in business 
 all travelling expenses are usually more than paid. . . ." 
 
 " They are," said Petrie ; " George is quite right ; they are. 
 One thing I can tell you, Elizabeth. You have nothing 
 whatever to worry about in that way. I would have told you 
 that much long ago only I was afraid that it might worry 
 you. . . . New idea, you know. . . . It's usually when you 
 tell people the full and exact truth if it happens to be at all 
 incredible that they begin to lose faith in you. My work 
 er is remunerative and, it is not hard. . . ." 
 
 " But it is hard," said Mrs Petrie, " and that, too, I worry 
 about. I am forced to worry about it. You take no rest. 
 You are always at work, it seems to me. It it hurts me to 
 see it . . ." Her eyes began to sparkle. " You you seem to 
 have utterly stifled all the music that was in you ; un unless 
 it's / that have done that. I remember what you once . . ." 
 
226 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Please don't remember anything, Elizabeth," Petrie said 
 
 quietly ; " you " He had a piece of deep philosophy to 
 
 give her ; but the way he gave it was, " you must just take 
 things as they come. . . . And don't ever worry about me. I 
 manage, as a matter of fact, to hear a good deal of music in the 
 course of my knocking about. I I in short, Elizabeth, I 
 have a very good time of it. Don't worry about me. If 
 you can manage to have a fairly good time, too, I I should 
 be very much happier. . . ." 
 
 " But I must worry about you, Charles," she said. " It 
 hurts me for you to have to work so. It isn't necessary. We 
 don't need motor-cars and things. There's only Conrad now 
 and a little still needed for the girls. Why not work a little 
 less hard ? I know how you used to be able to enjoy little 
 things. I know how such unremitting work must must 
 go against your grain. . . ." 
 
 Petrie had more philosophy on this subject. The way he 
 communicated it this time was by " Fiddlesticks, Elizabeth ! " 
 Then he stretched out his hand and patted hers. Laughing, 
 he said, " And I wish you would not make me feel such an 
 infernal idiot. Nice thing it would be for Mrs Simpson to 
 come in and find us staring at each other with damp eyes. 
 And what would Conrad think a brace of grandparents, 
 Elizabeth greyheaded ancestors of an apparently inexhaust- 
 ible line. . . ." 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs Petrie, " but " 
 
 " This time," said Petrie, " there are no buts." 
 
 " There is just this one," said Mrs Petrie ; " you need not 
 do so much. It makes my heart ache with bitterness and self- 
 reproach to see how you must have to write and write and 
 write to make so much money. If you are not in your offices 
 here, you are in London, or rushing off to London or rushing 
 back again. I know how miserable just a few hours a week of 
 such work used to make you years ago, and now. . . . Well, 
 at least you owe yourself a rest. You are not exactly a young 
 man still, are you, Charles ? . . . You don't want to wear 
 yourself out. . . ." 
 
 " Because you happen to have grown a good deal younger 
 in the last five years," said Petrie, " there is no reason for you 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 227 
 
 to insult my grey hairs. Besides, I might mention in passing 
 that it is on the quality of my work as much as on its quantity 
 that I am remunerated. And as for making things a little 
 easier that is where the car comes in. . . ." 
 
 He smiled at her again, the smile that cheered and warmed 
 her. She shook her head, and said, " Well, thank goodness 
 that one of us has still got some sense ! I don't mind telling 
 you that with your ideas of housekeeping expenses, I have been 
 able to put away enough to make me feel easy about a rainy day." 
 
 Petrie patted the top of her head as he went out. " If I 
 could be absolutely sure of not distressing you by the in- 
 formation," he said, " I would announce that we shall very soon 
 be beyond the reach of rainy days altogether. When once one 
 begins to do business in Spain well, I'll bring young Jefferson 
 in at about seven." 
 
 4 
 
 At six o'clock, Petrie was seated again in the study above the 
 furniture shop. Opposite him, smoking a pipe as poisonous 
 as Petrie's own, sat the man whom he always spoke of as 
 " young " Jefferson. 
 
 Jefferson was, in point of fact, forty. He looked anything 
 from twenty to sixty clean, careless, and profound. 
 
 His flannel suit and striped necktie linked him with under- 
 graduates ; his lean, chiselled features, his hollow cheeks and 
 high, wide forehead made one wonder which, after all, told 
 the truth about Jefferson his face, or his shoes and trousers 
 and necktie. 
 
 Petrie and he had been arguing about it and about. They 
 had got through three pipes apiece, and had come to no con- 
 clusion whatever. 
 
 " There's only one way of looking at it, Jeff," Petrie said, 
 as he leaned back to fill his fourth pipe. " Every other way is 
 specious and not exactly honest. The thing ought never to 
 have happened, and it never would have happened if you had 
 not been, after all your years of talk nothing but an idiot ; 
 an abysmal idiot." 
 
228 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Rot, my dear fellow," said Jefferson ; " no one would 
 agree with you there not on the simple facts of the case, 
 apart from any personal application of them. You see, you 
 yourself think that Cynthia is the most wonderful woman oh 
 very well, girl then in the world. I merely share your view. 
 Only, not being her father, I am a good deal more excited and 
 enthusiastic over the discovery than you are. There is nothing 
 for me to tell you about my own personal feelings in the 
 matter that you do not already know even though you 
 are incapable of taking a straightforward, level-headed view of 
 the thing, with that infernal bee you have in your bonnet." 
 
 " To blazes with your own personal feelings," Petrie 
 snapped. " Who cares about your feelings. It's the principle 
 of the thing that we are concerned with. And it's a principle 
 with which you have always agreed." 
 
 " As a principle," Jefferson agreed, " as a rule the thing's 
 true enough. But you have always agreed that it's only the 
 fools that can't prove themselves exceptions to principles 
 and rules. Ton have proved yourself an exception, and 
 and Madeline. Does your companionship do her any harm 
 as a personality, as an artist which you are always trying to 
 emphasise so much ? Are you any the . . ." 
 
 " Companionship ! " said Petrie ; " Bah ! we are not dis- 
 cussing companionship, man we are discussing marriage. I 
 wish you'd try to stick to the point." 
 
 " Same idea," said Jefferson. 
 
 " Good God ! " said Petrie ; " and 3;^ a thinker can make 
 a remark of that quality ? Play the game, Jeff, play the game ; 
 be honest, old fellow." 
 
 " Oh, I'm honest enough, Hal," Jefferson said wearily. " I'm 
 in love with Cynthia, right enough ; and I've never for a 
 moment tried to deny that. . . . All the old business 
 insomnia, loss of appetite, restlessness and incessant loafing 
 about in the hopes of catching just a glimpse of her. I allow 
 you all that, old man plans for further loafing, extended as 
 far as provincial concert halls for the next few weeks. . . . 
 I don't deny a word of that, but damn it, man ! look here ! 
 . . . I'm sorry you force one to speak to you like this but 
 what about you and Madeline-? " 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 229 
 
 Twice already he had asked this same question. Both times 
 he had apologised for asking it. Both times he had blushed. 
 Once Petrie had answered, " Why not try to stick to the point, 
 
 Jeff ? " The second time he had said, just as quietly, " Don't 
 e a fool." 
 
 This time he said nothing at all. 
 
 Suddenly, in the silence of gently swaying, blue smoke, 
 Jefferson banged his knuckles on the desk and burst out, " Look 
 here, Hal ! I'll be honest. I'm just as interested in this con- 
 founded principle of yours as you are. You know that and 
 you know, too, where I have always disagreed with you. You 
 think the whole thing is nothing but varying degrees of vitality 
 in people that makes one of them eat up the life out of another. 
 I don't altogether. It's very largely sex to my mind, and 
 nothing more. But what I say now is damn the principle. 
 Damn all principles ; what we have to deal with now is fac t, 
 old fellow, not -principles. The fact we've got to deal with is 
 that I'm just a man, Hal, and that I'm just simply in love with 
 Cynthia. Principles ? Theories ? . . . I'm just a man. 
 I know nothing now about cerebellums and ganglia and nodes 
 and opsonic indexes or sympathetic nervous systems any more. 
 . . . You and your precious theories of the Drama, and the 
 Unity of Art. ... I don't care a fig for a single word of it 
 all. It hasn't anything to do with anything. It's rubbish, 
 sheer rubbish, every bit of it. It's nothing to me. I'm a 
 man. Just a man now." He got up and strode to the 
 window, and from the window to the door. " A man, I said ; 
 did you hear me ? And what's more, I'm a piffling idiot to 
 talk to you about the thing at all. D'you think I'd waste 
 my time and yours doing it if I had any more than about 
 fivepence farthing in the world ? . . . Two hundred a year 
 doesn't go very far even after you've added in the few stray 
 guineas that emerge out of my precious practice. Oh no ; 
 I see the wrong of poverty clearly enough, Hal and that is 
 just where you get me. It's only that that makes it possible 
 for you to highbrow-beat me. If it wasn't for just that well, 
 you would see. . . ." 
 
 " The young people," said Petrie, with a grin, " would 
 doubtless elope." 
 
230 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " It must be easy to sit there being humorous," snapped 
 Jefferson. 
 
 : ' You know," said Petrie quietly, " that you would do no 
 such idiotic thing as elope, old fellow ; and you know that it 
 is not your two hundred a year that is stopping you now. 
 It is just the vestiges that still survive from what was once 
 your common sense. It is the * principle.' You still believe 
 in the principle and you can't, in spite of all your efforts, get 
 away from it. You know it would be wrong fundamentally 
 and utterly wrong for anyone to try to butt in on Cyn- 
 thia now, and to go and harness her personality to another. 
 Why, hang it all you would just have to foist yourself upon 
 her. . . ." 
 
 One of the finest thinkers in England snapped out, " Rot ! 
 Damned rot ! " 
 
 " It isn't rot," said Petrie quietly ; " so just sit down and 
 let us talk the thing over, Jeff. I'm reasonable enough about 
 it. . . ." 
 
 " Reasonable ! " Jefferson exclaimed. " You have talked 
 more nonsense in the last hour than I would ever have believed 
 you capable of. It's nothing but sheer impudence of you to 
 try to lay down the law to me like this. Good Lord, man ! 
 I'm old enough to be a grandfather like you are, and here 
 thanks to principles and a lot of dcssicated rubbish, here I am 
 still a loafing old bachelor dribbling my life away in a lot of 
 worthless gossip with a few artists, actors, and other social 
 parasites. I've omitted even to earn a decent livelihood, to 
 make a place for a grand woman and some kids. You're wrong, 
 Hal hopelessly and fatuously wrong, old fellow." His face 
 sank into his hands. 
 
 A few moments Petrie looked at him, his head tilted back, 
 his chin and lower lip thrust forward to project the clouds of 
 smoke away from his eyes. Then he said very gently, " I'm 
 not envying you this business, you know, Jeff. I know there 
 isn't a great deal of fun in it for you ; I'm no fool as far as that 
 goes. . . . And and I've got the very devil of a suspicion 
 and experience only tends to confirm it that it's a losing 
 fight, this t Life ' business. Winning or losing you're almost 
 bound to lose. . . . Sorry for the snappy piece of dialogue, 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 231 
 
 old man, but it's devilish true. And there's Cynthia : you 
 haven't told me yet I mean, does she really " 
 
 " And how the blazes can I have said anything to Cynthia ? " 
 
 Jefferson sat upright in his chair to say this. " Worthless 
 rotter that I am with my two hundred a year inherited from 
 my old father's business of compiling and printing popular, 
 inaccurate maps. ... Of course I haven't said anything to 
 Cynthia yet. What sort of a fellow do you take me for ? . . . 
 I've been trying to knock a little life into the rotten old practice 
 first. . . ." 
 
 " H'm. . . . General practice ? " asked Petrie. 
 
 " General practice be hanged ! " said Jefferson. " Neurology 
 so-called. I've looked up most of the old crowd, and written 
 to the others, telling them I'm having the old brass plate shined 
 up once more, after several years of study. They've all promised 
 to help and send patients along. . . . Lord ! man, I could have 
 been a biggish swell by now. . . ." 
 
 " You could," Petrie admitted. " But it's not such a highly 
 reputable profession after all. There's a good deal of the 
 tinker in it, you know patching up rubbishy old pots that 
 would be far better scrapped." 
 
 " H'm," Jefferson grunted. " You could quite well have 
 been scrapped some years ago, when you came along with a 
 brain that was just beginning to spring a leak. . . ." 
 
 " If repairing leaky brains consists in swilling pints of beer 
 with the patient and smoking several stone of tobacco over 
 a lot of talk well, all I can say is, that you are a most con- 
 scientious healer. Furthermore, if that is the case, there is 
 something to be said for the trade. . . . But look here, Jeff. 
 I can only ask you one thing. Can you will you wait ? 
 Don't go and upset the girl now. Let her, at least, get this 
 tour of hers over and see what comes of it. Let her get at least 
 an impetus towards fresh work first. Give her a chance. That 
 much I do ask of you." In a few moments Petrie had become 
 merely an elderly man wistful and diffident making a 
 very earnest request. 
 
 " You can rest assured of that," said Jefferson, still bowed 
 over his hands. " You're safe enough there, Hal. I'm dumb 
 till there's some sign of life stirring in the practice. . . ." 
 
232 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Petrie pulled out his watch and looked at it. 
 
 Jefferson pulled out his ; but both of them, as a fact, 
 omitted to notice what o'clock it was. 
 
 Petrie then stretched his arms and yawned. " Well,'* he 
 said, " I got as far as the word * curtain ' this morning." 
 
 " I know," said Jefferson ; " I noticed the sheet lying there. 
 And your printing made me wonder how a man of your in- 
 telligence on most other points should come to have so little 
 idea of design. A barmaid could have done a far more 
 decorative thing than that. One would think that an observant 
 man like yourself would have observed, among other things, 
 that there is an art of lettering. Of course, the old man 
 very early drew my attention to it with his gaudy maps. . . . 
 So it's finished then, is it ? " 
 
 " Well, I've got through to the end," said Petrie. " There's 
 yards to come out yet, and a good deal to go in. It'll take ten 
 days or so hard at it with Miss Stark before it's legible enough 
 for you to have a look at." 
 
 ' 'S it any good ? " asked Jefferson ; " up to expectations ? " 
 
 " There's some first-class stuff in it, Jeff. Some of the very 
 real thing. All tragedy tragedy, every syllable of it, and not 
 a drop of blood either ' on ' or c off.' Madeline will be 
 immense in it you just mark my words, positively immense ; 
 and she's never had a show in real tragedy yet. It only remains 
 to be seen whether the great B. Public can swallow first-class 
 tragedy as it has swallowed first-class comedy. . . ." 
 
 Thus they chatted on for half an hour. 
 
 Petrie gathered up the few sheets that lay loose upon his desk 
 and added them to the pile in a drawer. Then he took out the 
 pile and shuffled it about in his hands, glancing at a page here, 
 turning over a dozen, sketching out for Jefferson's benefit 
 the matter they contained, trying to get Jefferson to visualise 
 the tragedy and grasp it as he himself visualised and grasped it. 
 
 He pulled out his watch, and this time saw that it was after 
 seven o'clock. 
 
 They got up to go. 
 
 Petrie went first ; through the empty (< buffer " room and 
 down the dark, carpetless stairs. Jefferson, carrying his suit- 
 case, followed. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 233 
 
 " Oh, by the way," he said ; " Madeline said to mention to 
 you that old Antipon met Freda the other night at some 
 Cocoa party or other in Chelsea. It was only the merest fluke 
 that Cynthia wasn't there to give your show away with her 
 long hands and her cheekbones and forehead. . . . Oh yes, 
 and the Chaffinch says that that little Spring Song she plays 
 by that Russian Johnnie is nothing but a crib from an un- 
 published thing of Grieg's or some one's." 
 
 " Crib his grandmother ! " snapped Petrie. " That Chaf- 
 finch ought to . . ." But Petrie never finished prescribing 
 a suitable destiny for London's foremost musical critic. Upon 
 the third or fourth step from the bottom, he stumbled 
 awkwardly. He flung out a hand for the banister, but just 
 missed it. His legs folded under him, his arms comically fanned 
 the air, and he came down, with a bump that echoed through 
 the hush of the warehouse, upon the last step. From this he 
 slid to the stone landing. 
 
 Jefferson had dropped his suit-case, and in an instant was 
 beside him. 
 
 " Silly idiot," said Petrie slowly, and then very solemnly, 
 " Damn." 
 
 " How the deuce 'd you manage to do a thing like that ? " 
 Jefferson complained. " People have been known to break 
 their necks. . . ." 
 
 :< You are the best of fellows in a tight corner, Jeff," said 
 Petrie. " Information like that is quite invaluable. Only 
 the scientific mind can grasp such strong stuff as that, and 
 Ooch ! . . ." Wincing, he shot a hand round to the small of 
 his back. " Friend Kimber, my landlord and neighbour, has 
 shod his stairs with tempered steel / ought to know, having 
 sat down on them at thirty-two feet per second per second." 
 
 He sat quite still, till Jefferson stooped a little lower and 
 said : " I believe you have hurt yourself, old fellow ! " He 
 held out a helping hand. 
 
 Petrie waved it aside and said, " With your very kind in- 
 dulgence I will sit where I am for a moment and recover a 
 little of the breath that got pumped out of me. . . . This is 
 all rot, you know ; you are the fellow that ought to have suffered 
 this particular indignity (with impact), after your particular 
 
234 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 mission of this afternoon. . . . There you are ! " Still ignoring 
 Jefferson's hand, he scrambled to his feet, holding on to the 
 banisters. Then he very slowly and deliberately sat down 
 again. 
 
 " Hell ! " he said ; " it did knock the wind out of me." 
 
 Jefferson stared down at him, puzzled. " Better go up again 
 for a minute or two and have a breather. I noticed a bottle 
 of something or other on the cupboard." 
 
 " Capital idea ! " said Petrie. " You trot ahead and light 
 up and pour out. I I'll come along in a minute, when 
 when I've found my stick." 
 
 " Here's your stick," said Jefferson, picking it up ; " and 
 here's my arm. Hang on." 
 
 Together they went up the two flights. 
 
 Petrie sat down at the desk while Jefferson lighted the gas 
 and went to the bottle of whisky that stood on the cupboard 
 with glasses and a syphon of soda-water. 
 
 Pouring out the drinks, he stole a glance at Petrie. 
 
 He was sitting with legs crossed, and head slightly lowered. 
 He drummed with one hand upon the desk-top ; with the other 
 he flicked the dust off his trouser-legs. 
 
 Jefferson placed a glass at his elbow, and raised his own. 
 Well here's to us," he said. 
 
 " Ah -yes" said Petrie, a little absently. " Good luck, 
 Jeff," but he did not immediately move. 
 
 Jefferson said, quite suddenly, " I say, Hal devilish funny 
 the way you just doubled up like that on the stairs ! " 
 
 " Odd sense of fun some people have," said Petrie drily. 
 
 " Joking apart, old man," Jefferson went on solemnly, " what 
 on earth made you do it ? I didn't like it. . . ." 
 
 " Seven pounds, nine shillings and fourpence made me do 
 it," said Petrie, " and I didn't like it either. The fact is that 
 our Mr Kimber downstairs did not like the idea of an ad- 
 ditional premium of seven pounds, nine shillings and fourpence, 
 which he would have had to pay if he had had a gas-jet put on 
 those infernal stairs. . . . Odd how Life Insurance people 
 never go into these details of illumination. . . ." 
 
 " Devilish funny ! " Jefferson repeated absently. " Feet 
 didn't slip, you know . . . they came backwards a bit. . . . 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 235 
 
 A tack sticking up in the stairs would have done it ; or a nail 
 in the sole of your boot. . . . Got a nail or a screw or anything 
 sticking out in the sole of your boot, Hal ? " He stooped as 
 though to examine it. 
 
 Petrie shoved him away. :< Time we were getting along," 
 he said. " I rather pride myself on punctuality at home." 
 
 " Steady just one moment," said Jefferson. He quickly 
 smoothed the trouser-leg over Petrie's uppermost knee-cap, 
 and drew back his hand, hatchet-wise, to strike the cartilage. 
 
 " Don't be such an old woman, Jeff ! " said Petrie. He stood 
 up, resting a hand on the desk. " We'll have to sprint most 
 of the way as it is." 
 
 " Hal^ said Jefferson, " honestly, I didn't like the look of 
 it one bit. Sit down and let's have a look." 
 
 " Ass !" said Petrie. "Tinker! . . . Come along." 
 
 But he remained still, resting his weight upon the desk. 
 Jefferson sprang suddenly to his side and grabbed his arm. 
 
 " Why the hell don't you walk, then ? " he said, shaking him. 
 " Move ! Don't stand there, larking like a fool. . . ." 
 
 He was looking, intently, at his feet and knees. He did not, 
 therefore, see the way Petrie shut his teeth together and stared, 
 unflinching at his Fate. 
 
 In the fraction of an instant it was all over. Petrie lifted 
 his hand from the desk and strode carelessly across the room. 
 
 " H'm," said Jefferson, trying not to feel a fool. " Alright. 
 Come back now. . . . Shut your eyes." 
 
 " Yes," said Petrie, ignoring the last suggestion, " and leave 
 an unfinished drink within striking distance of Billy Jefferson, 
 M.D." 
 
 He laughed loudly at his joke and finished his drink. 
 
 As they walked along the street, Petrie turned suddenly 
 to Jefferson and said : " I say, Jeff, you're not still mumbling 
 to yourself about my cropper, are you ? I mean, well I'm 
 walking perfectly, you see . . . and if I can walk. . . ." 
 
 " Oh Lord, yes," said Jefferson ; " might have hurt yourself, 
 though. . . . Just hang on to this while I get a light." He 
 handed his suit-case to Petrie, and stopped to put a match to 
 his pipe. Petrie swung ahead with the load, and Jefferson, 
 over his sheltering hands, peered after him. 
 
236 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " That's right enough ! " he mumbled ;"...! suppose 
 a man's foot can slip backwards just as well as forwards . . . 
 nothing wrong with that. . . ." He ran up to Petrie and took 
 back his suit-case. 
 
 " Oh no," he said. " I thought for a moment you might 
 have snapped your patella across. . . . It's a jolly easy thing- 
 to do. ." 
 
 Over their night-cap that evening, Petrie said, " What do 
 you know about motor-cars, Jeff ? " 
 
 Jefferson said it was three years since he had driven one. 
 
 " What do you think of a Joynson ? " said Petrie ; " I mean, 
 just as a car" 
 
 Jefferson said, " It was a Joynson that I drove. They were 
 not bad, as things went in those days. But . . ." 
 
 Petrie solemnly nodded. " I know," he said ; " but there 
 is only one car on the market at the present time." 
 
 " One British car," Jefferson corrected him ; and Petrie 
 roared with laughter. " Bless my soul ! " said he, " experts 
 of every blessed kind are made with absolutely the same stamp, 
 the world over." 
 
 " What on earth's the joke now ? " asked Jefferson. 
 
 Petrie told him ; and they agreed to meet, when Petrie was 
 ready, and go with Conrad to buy the car. 
 
Chapter Two 
 
 i 
 
 T was about three weeks later that Jefferson was rung up 
 by Cartwright, who had been at Bart's with him, and now 
 had a practice in Balham. 
 
 He wanted Jefferson to go and see a patient of his, in his 
 home. He apologised for the poverty of the patient. Two 
 guineas was the absolute limit to the fee he was able to 
 pay. 
 
 Jefferson said, " Right. I'll be along in about an hour," 
 and wrote down the address of the patient. . . . He had not 
 seen Cartwright for years, so he smiled at the way Cartwright, 
 true to his old habit, apologised for everything. He apologised 
 first for ringing up at that particular moment of the day, 
 hoping that he had not disturbed Jefferson at anything else. 
 He apologised for the place. ..." Beastly place to get at, 
 I know." He apologised for the smallness of the fee, and he 
 apologised finally for the case itself. ..." Nothing par- 
 ticularly interesting ; it'll be rather wasting your time, I'm 
 afraid ; but I think it would cheer them up to see a specialist." 
 
 The patient's wife answered all Jefferson's questions, while 
 Cartwright stood aside, looking out of the window. The 
 patient himself, propped up on all the pillows that the little 
 brick house could muster, listlessly nodded his assents to 
 everything she said. He had had a c< stroke." 
 
 She had told everything that was likely to throw any light 
 on the case, and was trying to help now by repeating those 
 features that had impressed herself most. "Yes," she said; 
 " just a week ago Saturday. / thought it surely must have 
 kifled him. And I was as sure as could be that it was a nail 
 either in his boot or in the stairs. It wasn't as though he had 
 slipped. He fairly pitched forward. . . . All the world as 
 though it had been a nail catching. . . ." 
 
 A nail catching. . . . 
 
 287 
 
 
238 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Jefferson hurried into the first telephone box he came to 
 and rang up Miss Stark. 
 
 " Oh no Doctor Jefferson, indeed I had not forgotten," 
 said Miss Stark, full of indignation at his suggestion. " The 
 note I made is here before me now ; and I most certainly 
 should have let you know the moment he came. But he 
 apparently isn't coming for some time. I haven't had the 
 revised copy of his play yet, and I'm to do all the correspondence 
 ' per pro,' or else send it over to Mr Bluitt. I'm . . ." 
 
 " The devil you are ! " Jefferson exclaimed. In a confused 
 buzz that Miss Stark could not understand, he said " Good-bye. 
 Thank you," and hung up the receiver. 
 
 At Waterloo he had a few minutes to spare before the train 
 left for Pelchester. He spent the time ringing up his house- 
 keeper. 
 
 He was not due at either of the hospitals till Monday, and 
 it occurred to him that the patients who had managed to do 
 without him for thousands of years would hardly miss him 
 now for a day or two. He also drank a cup of tea in the station 
 buffet. 
 
 The papers he bought for the journey he scarcely unfolded. 
 He sat bunched up in his corner, frowning, whistling, and calling 
 himself a fool, an imbecile, an idiot. He a specialist in 
 Neurology ! . . . Any first year student would have spotted 
 the thing at once. . . . 
 
 2 
 
 Mrs Petrie opened the door for him. She drew back, as if 
 startled, said " Oh," and seemed to hesitate to let him in. " I 
 I don't know if you will be able to see him," she went on 
 to say ; then she turned, looking over her shoulder as if for 
 help. 
 
 Jefferson could only smile at her and say, " I I think I 
 know all about it, Mrs Petrie. I expect it wouldn't do any 
 harm for me to see him." 
 
 " But he said * No one '," said Mrs Petrie. 
 
 " Oh, he said that, did he ? " Jefferson asked eagerly ; " I'm 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 239 
 
 sure he'll see me though. He'll be very disgusted at first, but 
 I shall take care not to do him any harm." 
 
 " He's in the front room," said Mrs Petrie. " I'll show you." 
 
 From the upper landing she pointed to the door and went 
 softly downstairs again. 
 
 Jefferson quietly went in. 
 
 It was Mrs Petrie's old room the sunniest and largest 
 room in the house. All knick-knacks and odds and ends had 
 been cleared away, and the room had been adapted to Petrie. 
 
 It was dark. 
 
 Upon the bed Jefferson could see only the white of pillows 
 and the dark of a head upon them ; the white of sheets and 
 coverlet, and the dark of long bare arms stretched out over 
 them. 
 
 The head turned, and the voice of Petrie said, " Hello, 
 Jeff ! " 
 
 " Hello, Hal ! " said Jefferson. 
 
 Petrie's head tilted back to the old position that it had 
 very slightly left as he spoke. 
 
 Jefferson, who seemed always to have read every word that 
 had ever been written by poet, philosopher, or journalist ; who 
 had seen every First Night for as long as he could remember 
 Jefferson could find, beyond the absurd " Hello, Hal " he had 
 already said, not a single word to say. . . . 
 
 He could only notice that a brass knob was missing from 
 the bed-rail ; and, as he became accustomed to the dim light, 
 that an empty cotton-reel did duty for one caster. 
 
 Simply because he knew that he could not go on for ever 
 staring about the room and saying nothing, he said " Better 
 light up, don't you think, old fellow ? . . . Can't see a damn 
 thing. . . ." 
 
 " No need to light up," said Petrie quietly. " There's 
 nothing to see, and you can jaw just as well in the dark. . . . 
 Sit down and have a smoke." 
 
 " I'm going to light up," Jefferson replied, and did so. 
 
 Then he turned to look at Petrie. 
 
 Petrie looked back at him, blinked at the hissing light. He, 
 too, weakly and very awkwardly smiled. 
 
 This was the very thing he had taken every precaution to 
 
240 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 avoid the showing of Rockleigh brought low, to people who 
 had known Rockleigh arrogant in triumph. 
 
 He accepted his failure, now that it had come, without a 
 word. 
 
 He was propped, half sitting, half lying, upon pillows. This 
 position forced his shoulders as high, very nearly, as his ears. 
 His hair was scattered and hung, clustering, over his forehead. 
 For many days he had not shaved. 
 
 Jefferson pulled pipe and tobacco-pouch from his pocket, 
 and then said facetiously, " What's the idea underlying the 
 whisker, Hal ? For you once told me proudly that you never 
 do things by accident." 
 
 " Shaving's such a fag," said Petrie ; then he added, " You 
 see, time is so valuable to me now." He spoke easily, and 
 without any effort. Yet it did not, somehow, sound quite 
 right. 
 
 Jefferson had been watching him very closely. " Yes," he 
 said, thoughtfully ; " just let your lip go, Hal." 
 
 The left corner of his lower lip Petrie was lightly holding 
 between his teeth. 
 
 " Now you know the real idea underlying the whisker," 
 Petrie said, calmly, but still held the lip. " My dear fellow, 
 why can't you let lying dogs sleep ? " 
 
 Jefferson frowned. " I want to see how far it goes," he said. 
 
 Petrie opened his mouth. The corner of the lower lip 
 immediately drooped down, and the whole lip just per- 
 ceptibly sagged. 
 
 Jefferson studied it intently for a moment. Then he moved 
 forward slightly towards the hand that had lain all the time quite 
 still on the coverlet ; Petrie immediately snatched it away. 
 
 " That looks good, old fellow ! " Jefferson exclaimed ; 
 " devilish good. Look here ! " He searched and found a 
 pin in the lapel of his coat. He held it out, in the palm of 
 his hand, to Petrie. " Pick this up," he said. " No ; not 
 with your nails, with the tips and the thumb." He steadily 
 watched, not Petrie's fingers and thumb as they fumbled for 
 the pin, but his biceps and the muscles of his forearm. 
 
 " Good," said he. " Now have a try with the other 
 hand." Petrie obeyed. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 241 
 
 " Oh yes, that's all right enough," said Petrie. " Now you 
 see that I didn't require a Harley Street man with a rising 
 practice to tell me that only my legs were paralysed. It's 
 only my infernal legs, Jeff. Even the hips seem more or less 
 good at the moment but . . ." 
 
 " Well," said Jefferson ; and he pulled himself together. 
 " Lucky thing you are not the greatest centre forward in the 
 world ! We should have had something to be miserable and 
 inconsolable about then. But since you are only the greatest 
 dramatist, all we need to do is smoke a pipe or two and make 
 some plans. . . . When was it, Hal ? Coming downstairs 
 again f . . ." 
 
 " The day after you saw me," said Petrie. " And it wasn't 
 on any stairs. Sorry ; there was no * suggestion ' about it. 
 It was in the tobacconist's in the High Street. I just crumpled 
 up on the floor, and woke up here with the beginnings of this 
 growth on my face. Nearly three days then it all came back, 
 clear as ever. Never for a moment felt the least bit paralysed, 
 except for this confounded lip. I say, Jeff, is it very obvious, 
 the lip ? " 
 
 " No ! " said Jefferson. " It's only just perceptible to me. 
 I don't suppose I should have spotted it at all if you hadn't 
 drawn attention to it by biting on it like that." He knew that 
 even Mrs Simpson must have detected it ; but the sudden 
 appeal in Petrie's words startled him into the lie. 
 
 " I I'm just going to have a look, Hal," he said. He pulled 
 away the bedclothes and flung them over the rail of the bed. 
 Petrie's legs long and lean and hairy stretched away, motion- 
 less, to the very end of the bed. The heels went beyond the 
 bottom of the mattress, so that the feet wagged inert at any 
 movement of the bed. 
 
 Jefferson fell to work prodding and probing, pinching a 
 muscle, flexing an ankle, pulling a toe. "... Lord, man ! " 
 he mumbled. " I could have brought my galvanometer and 
 needles and things. ... It might have been some use . . . 
 though it never has been yet. . . . Some day perhaps. . . ." 
 
 Petrie had pushed his lip back into place under a tooth. 
 With it thus fixed he smiled at Jefferson. " As a matter of 
 professional etiquette," he said, " I hasten to inform you that 
 
242 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 your arch nerve-cutter, Sutcliffe-Thwaiter Mister Sutcliffe- 
 Thwaiter, as he pointed out to young Conrad who very 
 cheerfully addressed him as * Doc.' Sutcliffe-Thwaiter has 
 done all that. Galvanometers, Half-Nelsons, Clove-hitches 
 and reefs in every muscle. But there is nothing to put the 
 matter quite briefly doing. . . . Dead as mutton, old 
 fellow. Yet they look useful enough on the outside, don't 
 they." 
 
 " Turn over," said Jefferson. 
 
 " There," said Petrie, " is where you have me on the hip. 
 I can't. The weight of the pelvis, you know, and thighs, 
 is so much greater than that of the thorax that it requires 
 leverage from the lower limbs or from a second party to 
 revolve it. . . ." He was looking up at Jefferson, grinning. 
 
 " I wish to God you'd stop chewing that lip of yours," 
 Jefferson snapped. " It's beginning to get on my nerves. . . . 
 Lord, I've seen worse things than that to worry about, so there's 
 no need for mum mawkishness. . . ." 
 
 Quickly and deftly, by means of the flannel night-shirt, he 
 turned Petrie over. The legs tumbled into the new position, 
 the feet wagged and came to rest. He completed his ex- 
 amination and then stood still, frowning and biting his pipe, 
 slowly shaking his head from side to side. 
 
 Petrie, his face in the pillow, said, " Good Alfred I apologise 
 for disturbing your meditations, but as far, at least, as / am 
 concerned this side is quite done." 
 
 Jefferson turned him over. He was still frowning. If he 
 could have been sure that Petrie was not again holding his lip 
 between his teeth, he would have looked at him. Instead, 
 since he could not be sure, he looked out of the window. 
 
 Petrie said, " You are forgetting, Jeff, that first and fore- 
 most you are a doctor of medicine. You must wash your 
 hands. I have never yet heard of a doctor who did not insist 
 on washing his hands, even if he has only looked at a photograph 
 of the patient's grandfather. You will find cold water in that 
 jug on the wash-stand. If you want it hot, you must ring the 
 bell and then go down to the kitchen to fetch it. If you 
 simply ring the bell and don't go down, the immediate result 
 will be three people, each bearing arrowroot and biscuits." 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 243 
 
 Jefferson sat down again on the bed and relighted his pipe. 
 " It's a fall that's done it, Hal. You must have had a fall, at 
 some time or other ; a bad fall, or a nasty knock. . . ." 
 
 " Observe a feature of the scientific mind," said Petrie drily. 
 " If I could assure you that in such a place at such and such a 
 date I fell down upon the floor, you would be perfectly happy. 
 To the scientific mind, a clear statement of any problem is 
 as good as the solution of it. ... Let me assure you that both 
 of falls and of nasty knocks I have had a plenty. But the 
 explanation lies not there. Meditating here, counting my 
 many blessings, I have seen it all. It has occurred to me 
 that I have lived fifty-three years with about six inches too much 
 leg, near and off. Two legs at six inches per leg equals one foot. 
 That equals three hundred and sixty-five feet per year, equals 
 one hundred and twenty-one yards and a bit over. Fifty- 
 three times one-two-one and a bit work it out for yourself 
 and send the result to the Strand Magazine. The Strand 
 Magazine would find that the amount of superfluous leg I 
 have used during my life would reach from St Paul's to 
 Shepherd's Bush or Highgate. . . ." 
 
 " Look here," said Jefferson, " that's all very funny, and 
 but well, you can keep all that for the women if you want 
 it. It would no doubt make them feel fine and throaty. . . ." 
 
 " I only mention it to point out to you that I am now, by 
 being legless for a while, paying back a large overdraft. I did 
 not think you would become maudlin. . . ." 
 
 " Who the hell is getting maudlin ? " snapped Jefferson. 
 He flung off his coat and went to the wash-stand and washed 
 his hands. Likewise he washed his face and dabbed it dry. 
 
 " What about the girls, Hal ? " he asked, as he sat down again. 
 
 " They're very well," said Petrie. " Cynthia's in Dublin 
 this week, and Freda has begun emancipating for eight hours 
 daily." 
 
 "'Y yes but " Jefferson began. 
 
 " No. She didn't," said Petrie, and his grin became, as 
 nearly as possible, the old smile. " She is a most astonishing 
 woman, you know, Jeff ; most astonishing. She divined 
 absolutely divined, old fellow, that I would not want them to 
 be told just now. Imagine that." 
 
244 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Well why " Jefferson hesitated. It was all very well, 
 
 he saw, to go on like that, saying nothings, begging the question 
 just because it was so infernally hard to come to the point 
 with Petrie. But certain things had to be said. ... He tried 
 again. " I suppose, Hal, that you've been thinking all sorts 
 of muck and nonsense, lying here, nursing your scars and 
 feeling damned sorry for yourself. One is apt to, you know." 
 
 " On the contrary," said Petrie, " I have been hard at 
 work upon the tragedy. What do you think of calling it ' The 
 Wolf-Hound's Lord ' ? " 
 
 " Rather too journalistic. I've been having a look at those 
 Sagas again, trying to find something that would do. But 
 hang the name ! " 
 
 He had wondered if Petrie would talk about the play. He 
 was delighted, almost reassured. 
 
 " I say, Hal ! " he exclaimed. " It's going to be immense ! 
 . . . colossal ... an eye-opener. And how the deuce 
 did you manage to see all that for Madeline ? Of course, it's 
 as plain as daylight now. She was just made for such a part. 
 Of course, some idiots will say that the part is only Nicolette 
 cooked up again, some Juliet, and some what's her name 
 but she's much bigger than any one of them or the whole lot 
 of them put together, for that matter. . . . And as for Sir 
 Freddie Winterton. . . ." 
 
 " Lord ! " said Petrie, " won't it be fun to see his fat little 
 legs sticking out under wolf-skins, and his little moon-face 
 under eagle's wings. But he'll try to spoil the whole thing. 
 I wish to heaven we could get him killed in the first act instead 
 of the second. Even that will be difficult enough. Best of 
 all, naturally, would be to have him destroyed shortly before 
 the prologue. . . . How do you think young ' Dizzie ' will do 
 that wine-bibbing sot ? I forget his name for the moment." 
 
 " Oh, Huthlaf," said Jefferson, who had not forgotten it. 
 " I was sure you must have meant that for him. He'll be 
 grand. But Hal, how on earth did you manage to get it all 
 so simple ? I swear there aren't a dozen three-syllable words 
 in all of it." 
 
 " Oh Lord ! " Petrie groaned. " Is it as obvious as 
 that. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 245 
 
 " It isn't obvious just because I was able to spot it," said 
 Jefferson proudly. 
 
 " No," said Petrie. " Perhaps not. But I hope you're 
 not going to start talking about the ' music ' of it, the ' cadence 
 of the dialogue,' like the plump Sir Frederick. . . ." 
 
 " Well, you can say what you like," said Jefferson. " There 
 is music in it, Hal and cadence, in all your stuff, and there's 
 no getting away from it." 
 
 Except for the beard, and the very slightly drooping lower 
 lip, it might have been the old, robust Petrie smiling and 
 talking, and warming up to his talk. 
 
 " It's fine that you've been working," said Jefferson. 
 " There's nothing like work, old fellow, to keep your pecker 
 up when when it's easy for it to get down. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, I shall get this thing done right enough," said Petrie 
 grimly. " Never you fear about that, Jeff. . . . It's almost 
 done now. James has got to design the cave and the rocks 
 in the second act. I shall insist on that at any cost. Somehow, 
 too, I must manage a couple of rehearsals, since I'm apparently 
 the only person in the world who can sit on Freddie at all 
 adequately. . . . But Lord ! Jeff, it's little enough, it's devilish 
 little, when you think that in ten years' time I might have been 
 able to build a real stage and a decent theatre and have done 
 with Master Freddie and his absurd tricks. . . ." 
 
 " Well ? " said Jefferson, " and what on earth is there to 
 prevent you ? You don't write plays and plan theatres with 
 your legs, do you ? " 
 
 Jefferson felt triumphant in the question. He had said 
 the one thing that had, more than any other, to be said. 
 
 Petrie slowly raised his hand. With his pipe-stem he sup- 
 ported his lip and said, very quietly, " Don't let us try to 
 talk like a pair of schoolgirls over this touch of luck, old fellow. 
 You know as well as I do that it's all up. And you know 
 why. ... To try to blink now things that one has believed 
 in all one's life would be nothing but the rotten funk that most 
 of the people who are just barely alive are guilty of. It things, 
 I mean, in general are not even a problem any more. You see, 
 I'm not ' self-supporting ' to use our old catchword not 
 to the extent of moving myself for a single yard. Don't worry. 
 
246 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 I'm not funking it, old man the play has got to be finished, 
 though. . . ." 
 
 " Don't be a fool," said Jefferson. " I never expected to 
 hear you talking such such infernal tripe." It was a lie ; 
 that was precisely the way he had expected him to talk. It 
 was the very thing he had feared in the train, as it crept through 
 the two hours of the journey from Waterloo carrying him and 
 his folded, unread and unreadable newspapers. That was what 
 he had feared or else that Petrie would be able to talk not 
 at all. ..." Don't be a/00/," he repeated, for want of anything 
 better to say. 
 
 There was a creaking on the stairs, a fumbling with the door- 
 handle. Mrs Petrie came in, carrying a huge tray, followed 
 by Conrad with a folding-table. 
 
 " I thought you would just as soon have a little supper up 
 here, Doctor Jefferson," said Mrs Petrie. " So that you and 
 Charles need not stop talking unless you think it would not 
 be good for the patient." 
 
 " You're very kind," said Jefferson, " and I'm sure it won't 
 do any harm. But he's no patient of mine, thank goodness 
 just an acquaintance." 
 
 " Listen to him," said Petrie, " and just immediately after 
 washing his hands, too the sign and official seal of medical 
 responsibility." 
 
 " He's been having just whatever he fancies though that 
 isn't very much," said Mrs Petrie. " The we haven't been 
 dieting at all, you know." 
 
 She had been going to say " The doctor did not say . . ." 
 Jefferson saw this, and smiled inwardly at the human love 
 of detail and form, whatever the crisis. " This is just a cutlet 
 and some jelly," she went on. " Conrad dear, two bottles of 
 ale and glasses I knew we had forgotten something." 
 
 " I should give him whatever he wants," Jefferson said ; 
 and it seemed to him that his words came far short of what he 
 ought to have said to the brave, cheerful little woman and the 
 gallant Conrad, who stood by smiling, hands in his pockets, 
 careless as you please, putting up a fine show that nothing in 
 the world had happened. " Yes, give him whatever he wants. 
 I expect you always have to in the long run ! " 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 247 
 
 " Oh yes, indeed ! He's a terror of a man ! " said Mrs Petrie. 
 Alert, and brightly smiling, she drew two serviettes from the 
 pocket of her apron and placed them on the tray. 
 
 Jefferson, watching and listening, winced at the tragedy 
 and at the comical, facetious way they were playing it. 
 
 Mrs Petrie smiled, but the lips that smiled were parched 
 and colourless ; her eyes shone with the light they had gathered 
 from hours of staring into the silence of many nights ; and the 
 eyes, even while she smiled, glanced furtively at Petrie. 
 
 Petrie, too, smiled, and as he smiled he busied himself with a 
 large handkerchief to conceal his lip that was already dead. 
 In his heart was no laughter, but only anguish at seeing upon 
 her the signs of anxiety and fatigue. His eyes shrank from 
 the sight of her carrying food and drink and comforts for him, 
 who had boasted boasted boasted. . . . 
 
 Jefferson saw all this, and he saw himself cornered. They 
 were in a trap, everyone of them, and he was damned if he could 
 see any way out. . . . Not with Petrie the man he was. 
 
 He knew Charles Petrie as no one else knew him. He had 
 seen him grow from weakness to strength. He had seen ideas 
 growing with him from the size of a single sentence or chance 
 phrase to the three-act plays that were a delight lor the rollick- 
 ing fun and good humour of them, and were a riddle without 
 an answer for the subtle irony that lay behind the humour and 
 the fun. . . . Jefferson knew Petrie, because he, too, had 
 brains wherewith to think and eyes to see. 
 
 Seeing, he saw about a square inch of flesh dead upon Petrie's 
 face. He could see again the long, thin limbs likewise dead 
 dead as the pickled, precious things that he had worked upon 
 eighteen years ago limbs of men so old, limbs so truly dead 
 that even the largest blood-vessels in them had taken a lot of 
 finding. And almost he could see the thoughts that ran live 
 riot in Petrie's brain, thoughts that he himself sane and cold 
 and scientific had always, like a fool, agreed with and 
 encouraged. . . . 
 
 That was the fix they were in, and all he could do was to 
 crack a fatuous joke with Mrs Petrie. And such a poor joke ! 
 . . . not even a joke ; a mere bourgeois commonplace. . . . 
 
 Conrad returned with the beer and the two tumblers, and 
 
248 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 upon Conrad, too, were the marks of tragedy. For all his 
 nonchalance and fine negligence, his hair was brushed till it 
 shone ; his collar was spotless. His eyelids were puffy, his cheeks 
 pale. He had talked with his mother till his throat ached and 
 was dry. He had smoked cigarettes in the darkness of his 
 attic-bedroom till his tongue was a torture when it touched 
 lemonade or bacon or salted fish like that they had for lunch 
 that day. . . . 
 
 He placed the bottles on the floor, the tumblers on the tray. 
 Then, as man to stalwart man, he spoke : " When are we going 
 to have our pow-wow together, doctor ? " But he could not 
 let it go at that. He, too, had to be jocular. He added, 
 " About our present crisis," and jabbed a thumb in Petrie's 
 direction. 
 
 " Oh, we'll have our pow-wow, old chap," said Jefferson, 
 " as soon as I've given the crisis a thorough overhaul. I'm 
 stopping a day or two. I've taken a room at the Station Hotel, 
 but I'd like to spend as much of the time here as your mother 
 and you will let me." 
 
 " Oh, but Conrad must go and get your bag from the 
 hotel," said Mrs Petrie. " Who ever heard of such a thing ? 
 You can have the girls' room. Indeed you must unless you 
 have found it uncomfortable at other times." 
 
 " Well, if you put it like that . . ." Jefferson began, noticing 
 how polite they were being to each other and about a thing 
 of no more consequence than where one of them should sleep 
 for a night or two. He explained that he had not, as a matter 
 of fact, brought a bag ; that he had not actually taken a 
 room. . . . And he saw them all in their trap running here 
 and there and around it, haggard and frantic. . . . 
 
 " Well, we mustn't let the supper get cold," said Mrs Petrie. 
 " Come along, boy. We'll have a talk with the doctor another 
 time. I might as well take the hot-water bottle, Charles, 
 instead of going empty-handed. It'll want filling again by 
 now." She slipped her hand into the bed ; Petrie watched her, 
 saying no word. 
 
 " Those covers will only be in your way, since you're ready 
 to start." She took the two metal dish- covers from the tray. 
 Laden with the covers and the stone bottle, she went quietly out. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 249 
 
 When the door closed, Petrie turned to Jefferson and said, 
 " The simplest plan of all is Conrad's a car at least five or six 
 yards long, in which he will drive me about till Kingdom come. 
 He does not recognise any human need that cannot be met or 
 adjusted by the addition or removal of a horse-power or so." 
 
 Jefferson helped the vegetables on to the two plates and 
 unscrewed the two beer-stoppers. " You've been down about 
 ten days, Hal ; what how exactly do things stand now ? " 
 
 " Between Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, you mean ? " Petrie 
 asked. " Nothing's happened at all. It just goes on ; though 
 I have a devil of a scramble at times to get my play shoved away 
 under the pillow. I don't see much point in keeping it up 
 much longer. We'll let it go till after Cynthia's tour. . . ." 
 
 " We'll do no such thing," snapped Jefferson. " I'm going 
 to have done with that at least to-night. We've no time for 
 that kind of thing any more, Hal. It needn't interfere with 
 Cynthia one bit. We won't let it ; but you've got to try to 
 get things into proportion, old fellow. ... I propose to start 
 by cleaning up the great mystery. There's no point in it. 
 It can't help you at all ; and the rest of the family is very much 
 in need of something to cheer them a little." 
 
 Petrie smiled his smile of digression. " I thought I under- 
 stood people well enough to be surprised or shocked at nothing. 
 But she has astonished me beyond all words. She was wonderful 
 about not letting Cynthia know till I was round. But why 
 hasten disclosures, old fellow ? " It was a new thing for 
 Jefferson to hear a note of wistfulness in Petrie's voice. He 
 wondered what on earth legs had to do with a thing like that. 
 ..." You see . . ." Petrie went on, " I mean, Jeff, 
 you you must think of Madeline. . . ." 
 
 "I've thought of Madeline," Jefferson answered quietly. 
 " The conclusion I've come to is that you need not bother 
 about that, old man. Maddie's full of good sense, and she's 
 reliable for anything. She'll come and see you ; and what 
 could be more natural ? This dramatist business will will 
 explain her like nothing else. . . ." 
 
 " I'm not going to explain her," Petrie cut in. 
 
 " That's precisely what I mean ; she'll explain herself. 
 These things have got to be talked about, Hal." 
 
250 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Very well," said Petrie, " and let me tell you that she will 
 not come and see me till till and she's not going to hear 
 about this for not for some time." Truculently he tucked 
 the lip back under his teeth. 
 
 " Hal, old fellow," Jeff said, " it's no use your being sensitive 
 about that. The odds are that it will stay like that till even 
 the rest has been put right." 
 
 Petrie smiled so that Jefferson snapped out, " You might 
 get better, so what's the use of grinning ? Haven't you ever 
 heard of recoveries ? Of course they're not common, and I'm 
 not such an ass as to try to pretend to you that they are. I 
 don't believe in buoying people up with false hopes, even if 
 they're asses enough to be buoyed up. No, old fellow. You 
 know as well as I do that the odds are some thousands to one 
 against your getting better. At the same time you probably 
 again thousands to one you won't get any worse. That 
 we must face you must face. You're man enough, and 
 you ought to be philosopher enough to stick it out very com- 
 fortably ; to devise means of not losing a great deal by it. 
 You've always talked nineteen to the dozen about a modus 
 vivendi. That's all we've got to get hold of, in a new 
 situation." 
 
 " Yes," said Petrie ; " talk's all very fine when you're not 
 involved, knitted into a tangle of other personalities. Even 
 new situations are impossible under those conditions. Changes 
 are not a new situation then, but only a tear in the old one. 
 Darning it up only makes a mess. No, Jeff, when you're all 
 tied up like that, the only thing to do is to shut up and sit 
 
 tight." 
 
 " I know one doesn't like talking of these things much," 
 Jeff said. " But we're quite old fogies now, you and I, Hal, 
 and we've always tried to do the best that is to be done in 
 the general fix. It'll be a bit hard for everyone to keep every- 
 thing they've got just now, but the great thing is not to get 
 excited and lose focus. Most of what you've got can be saved 
 without much hurt to anyone else. . . . Maddie won't get 
 excited ; she's got brains enough, has Maddie. She'll see 
 everything exactly as it stands. She won't let herself 
 down. . . ." 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 251 
 
 Petrie was saying nothing, and intending to say nothing. 
 He only smiled. . . . 
 
 " Damn it, man ! " said Jefferson, " stop grinning. The show 
 has been run by you all this time and just see the infernal 
 mess you've made it look like. / am going to run it now, 
 my way. You're my patient, helpless as an egg. I'm going 
 downstairs to tell Mrs Petrie as much as I please, of anything 
 I please. She's all right and the boy's a perfect brick. It's 
 impossible to do anything with the obstruction of your 
 ridiculous secret in the way. I am going to clean that up 
 to start with." 
 
 " Well, remember just two points, while these big things 
 are doing." Petrie's listlessness saved the words from the 
 suspicion of being a sneer. " First of all, I've still got a 
 fortnight's work ahead of me ; and secondly, the girls are not 
 to be disturbed and disorganised for another two months at 
 least." 
 
 " On the contrary," said Jefferson. " You have about 
 thirty years' work ahead of you, and secondly, no one in the 
 world is going to be disorganised, except yourself." 
 
 " And you told me that your defeat as a practitioner lay 
 in your lack of bedside manner ! My dear fellow. ..." 
 Petrie drew pipe and tobacco-pouch from under his pillow and 
 they both silently filled up. 
 
 Then Petrie fumbled under his pillow again, this time 
 for matches. He could not find them ; his box had been 
 moved to the little table beside him. He stared at the box, 
 carefully measuring the distance to it. He decided that he 
 could not reach it ; so he did not move. 
 
 Jefferson meanwhile lighted up. He tamped down the 
 tobacco expanding in his pipe-bowl, first with his matchbox, 
 then with his thumb. When he had produced a good, full 
 cloud, he sighed and dropped his matches back into his pocket. 
 
 Petrie still did not move, beyond glancing once more at the 
 matches on the table. 
 
 Jefferson smoked on a few moments in high satisfaction till 
 he noticed that Petrie's pipe was cold and idle in his hands. 
 
 " Don't mean to tell me you've gone off your smokes ? " he 
 asked in surprise. 
 
252 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Smo er no ; rather not," Petrie stammered. " As a 
 
 " Why on earth didn't you shout ? " said Jefferson. " You 
 saw me shoving them back into my pocket." He handed his 
 matches across. 
 
 " Oh, matches \ " said Petrie. " Thanks. I I've got some 
 somewhere." 
 
 Jefferson saw the box on the table, and saw through his 
 patient. ... It was the little things that quietened him, 
 the little and absurd things like not being able to reach his 
 matchbox. 
 
 Petrie said, " Oh, there they are ! " 
 
 Nodding at the box on the table, he furtively shoved 
 Jefferson's under his pillow. Then he said, wearily, " Well, 
 yes, I suppose you might as well tell them. It can't make much 
 difference now." 
 
 " Oh, can't it," said Jeff. " You just wait and see the differ- 
 ence it can make." 
 
 " Well, look here, Jeff." He spoke earnestly now, in a 
 lowered tone. " Be a really good fellow, and and take that 
 tray and stuff downstairs for me. . . . You you might tell 
 them, too, that I'm not to have anything more after that 
 cutlet. Tell tell her I'm devilish tired and must go to 
 sleep. . . . Oh hell, Jeff ! I can't say anything to her to-night. 
 You say you can understand things. I wonder if you can 
 understand all this. . . . That confounded tray. ... I 
 did not think that she could even move a load that size. . . . 
 She is an astonishing woman, Jeff. It it needn't hurt her, 
 telling her this thing, need it ? " 
 
 " Hurt her ! " said Jeff. " I should think it won't hurt 
 her. I don't guarantee, though, that it won't do the other 
 thing. Well, I can squeeze you out just another half-beaker 
 of ale, and there's some more matches. So long, Hal." 
 
 When, with the great, crowded tray in his hands he was 
 fumbling with the door-handle, Petrie called to him, " And 
 -I say, Jeff. . . ." 
 
 " Hello ? " 
 
 " Mind the step, as you go down, old boy devilish tricky 
 things you know steps." 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 253 
 
 3 
 
 Outside the door Jefferson said, under his breath, " Oh 
 Lord ! " 
 
 Half-way down the stairs he said, "... Of all the filthy, 
 rotten, and appalling luck. . . ." He saw the lifeless lip again 
 in the scrubby beard, held pitifully in place under teeth, 
 pushed furtively up with a pipe-stem, or hidden behind a 
 handkerchief. He saw Petrie, shrinking again from the sight 
 of his wife carrying the large tray, shrinking from asking another 
 man to supply the amount of movement necessary to shove a 
 box of matches across a space of three inches, and he wondered 
 what on earth was to be done with a man who thought like 
 that. 
 
 Sitting in the dining-room with Mrs Petrie and with Conrad 
 (who sat between them but aloof), Jefferson felt as he had not 
 felt for a great many years ; not, in fact, since he wore an Eton 
 collar and dined with elders. He felt a fool. 
 
 Yet nothing that had been said warranted the feeling. It 
 was all quite straightforward. 
 
 " The point is," he began, " he's so extraordinarily sensitive, 
 so absurdly sensitive about his helplessness, Mrs Petrie. . . . 
 Being taken care of and waited on by his family. ... He 
 used to be strong, so infernally independent." 
 
 " He always was that," said Mrs Petrie ; " always." 
 
 " With professional nurses and people about him," said 
 Jefferson, " I think he would feel it less." Most amazingly, 
 with a single sentence, he had come to the point. " The 
 the fact of the matter is, I've got a suggestion to make to you." 
 He looked from her to Conrad upper lip straight, head 
 erect and still, hands sunk deep in pockets and he added, 
 " and old Conrad you and Conrad. I you see I am rather 
 hot stuff at least I used to be considered quite good on 
 nervous diseases. This is a nervous disease. My suggestion 
 is that I should take him over. He would be nursed and looked 
 after by people whose profession it is. . . ," 
 
254 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " If it is nursing and care that he requires," said Mrs Petrie 
 quietly, " surely I am the one to give it to him." 
 
 " Quite," said Jefferson, " quite. I assure you I see your 
 point of view most clearly, Mrs Petrie. I can quite under- 
 stand how you must feel. But, you see, you are well and strong, 
 and your feelings must be sacrificed to his." (The brilliance 
 of this stroke delighted Jefferson.) " I'm afraid it's his peace 
 and ease of mind that we must consider most. They are half 
 the battle. He could stay at my place. I could keep an eye 
 on him." 
 
 " You are very kind, Doctor Jefferson," Mrs Petrie said, 
 with perfect composure. " Very good indeed. I'm sure we 
 don't know how to thank you. ... It is most touching. 
 But but I couldn't hear of such an arrangement." It was 
 flat ; definite. She meant what she said. Jefferson saw that 
 they could fool and crack pointless and irrelevant jests in their 
 perplexity ; but serious prevarication was impossible. When 
 they came down to the grim essentials, they could still be 
 polite, but " yea " was " yea " and " nay " " nay." 
 
 " I only want you to think it over," he said. " Give the 
 idea a little time, and think it very carefully over. There are 
 others to be considered in this. Forgive me if I seem to force 
 myself into your confidence, but I am a very old and intimate 
 friend of your husband's. There's Miss Cynthia and Freda 
 and Conrad. Yourself, too, of course. You are all naturally 
 very much on his mind. Of course he hasn't said it to me in 
 so many words, but I know it. He is preyed upon by the idea 
 of disorganising all your lives. . . . With me he would dis- 
 organise nothing. It's my profession, you see. I live by it. 
 . . . Nurses. . . ." 
 
 " I know he thinks I am quite incapable of nursing him," 
 said Mrs Petrie, " but I assure you I am not. He will see. I 
 wouldn't hear of his going into a nursing home. . . ." 
 
 " But it's no nursing home" he argued. " It's my own 
 place. He would simply be sharing my diggings bachelor 
 diggings for the time being. . . . I've yards of spare space. 
 You could always see him, all of you. The only object is to 
 relieve him of the idea that that he is making things difficult 
 for others." 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 255 
 
 Mrs Petrie merely shook her head, very slowly. Conrad 
 just growled, " Difficult ! rot. . . ." 
 
 " It is rot," Jefferson agreed. " But he thinks like that, 
 and there you are. He must be humoured. You yourself 
 will have your work to do other work. As for me, well, 
 it is my work. I'd enjoy it like anything. You see, old chap, 
 we've always been first-rate pals, your pater and I. . . ." 
 
 This was absurd the way he had strayed from the point 
 and had actually arrived at pleading pleading to Conrad. 
 
 He returned to the point. Turning to Mrs Petrie, he said 
 " And another point which you haven't, naturally, considered, 
 is his work" 
 
 " But indeed I have considered it," said she. " The moment 
 I knew what had happened to him, I gave the new maid notice. 
 I knew he would not be able to work ; that we would have to 
 draw in. Well, we can quite easily." 
 
 " But, good heavens," exclaimed Jefferson. " That is 
 exactly what you don't understand, either 0f you. * Draw 
 in,' indeed ! There will be no need for anyone to draw in. 
 He will be able to work. In fact, he must work. I will bet 
 my hat that he is, at this very moment, working at some of 
 the finest work that has been done for ages and ages. He 
 is the only man alive in the world to-day who is capable of 
 doing that particular work, and it could kill him in no time 
 to have to stop doing it. He must go on. Mrs Petrie Conrad, 
 old fellow . . ." He wanted to make the disclosure dramatic, 
 he wanted to give a general fillip to things with it. " He is 
 Harold Rockleigh the greatest dramatist of the century, one 
 of the very greatest artists the world has ever seen." 
 
 " Well ! " said Mrs Petrie, drawing an enormous breath. 
 " Well ! . . . Harold Rockleigh ... I have heard of him." 
 
 Conrad merely stated himself to be jiggered. Then, slowly, 
 he said, " Just like him to get Rockleigh out of ' Petrie.' 
 Anyone but a fathead could have spotted the game ages ago." 
 
 " Harold Rockleigh . . ." Mrs Petrie murmured again. " I 
 
 must speak to to George about it. He usually comes in at 
 
 about this time of the evening for a few minutes. He would 
 
 know. . . ." 
 
 " But 7 know," said Jefferson. " I can tell you all you want to 
 
256 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 hear about Hal Rockleigh. To begin with, he has revolution- 
 ised the drama throughout the civilised world and he is only 
 at the very beginning of his career. He has now, stuffed under 
 his pillow or his mattress or God knows where, the most 
 wonderful thing that ever was conceived. He's great because 
 he speaks to everyone, because he's so utterly simple, because he's 
 as clean as a whistle and funny funny as the deuce. He never 
 told you what he was doing because because, well, you see, 
 he was not sure that it was any good and and whether 
 telling you would do any good. There's never been anything 
 like it before . . . and and we've just got to keep him going. 
 Never mind us and what we think. We are all little. He 
 is great. A great dramatist, and the greatest fellow. . . ." 
 
 Jefferson stopped abruptly. An emotion had been let loose. 
 The fact was startling. 
 
 Mrs Petrie dabbed a little handkerchief into her eyes. Conrad, 
 wagging his great feet about, clenching his hot hands in his 
 pockets and mumbling his new Adam's-apple up and down 
 Conrad too was weeping. 
 
 Jefferson said, quite foolishly, " There you are." 
 
 Mrs Petrie got up to go. Jefferson knew she was going to 
 Petrie and he did not try to stop her. The last few moments 
 had excited the three of them. 
 
 All he could feel was annoyance with Petrie's way of doing 
 things. Petrie had asked him quite definitely not to let her go 
 up to him. For that reason, therefore, if for no other, he let 
 her go. 
 
 4 
 
 She went to her own room on the way, and then went in 
 to Petrie, making a fine show of calm. But it lasted only as 
 long as she said nothing. The words had to come, and with 
 their coming went her calm. " Charles you you never 
 told me. . . ." 
 
 The handkerchief in an instant was out again. " I I 
 know how you hate this? she said. " I'll go in a minute. . . . 
 You you haven't seen me doing it for years. . . . But I 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 257 
 
 must. I can't help it now. You never told me. You just 
 allowed me to go on thinking Oh Charles, I'm sorry. But 
 it was so unfair. You you . . ." 
 
 " My dear," said Petrie, " just come and sit down quietly 
 and listen. It wasn't just to hurt you that I did it. I did it 
 to to oh, I'm hanged if I know now why the dickens I did 
 do it. I couldn't be sure of it, you see, Elizabeth. I had 
 been sure of other things before. Cocksure. And sucked in 
 too. I suppose, really, that I hadn't a great deal of faith in it 
 oh, but that's nonsense, because I always did have faith in it. 
 No, I just didn't expect you to have any. I didn't really see 
 why you should. . . ." 
 
 " But Charles," she said, " I always had faith in you. And 
 you only tried to make it harder for me. You allowed me 
 to think that you were doing nothing, and for all those years 
 you were writing Plays" 
 
 " Oh come," said Petrie. " Play the game, Elizabeth. I 
 never even thought of writing a play till five years ago. And 
 it wasn't to make it harder for you ; it was just to make it easier 
 for myself." 
 
 " But you allowed me to be weak and whining and helpless." 
 
 Petrie winced. 
 
 " You could have stopped it, Charles. I was just ill and 
 frightened for the children. I must have been ill now you 
 will think I am just trying to make excuses. I'm not. Those 
 things you said were all quite true." She put away her hand- 
 kerchief and drew herself up. " But you will see that I am not 
 weak and useless any more. . . . There now ! that dear man 
 has gone and taken down the water-jug with the other things. 
 Never mind." She settled herself again, looking quietly at 
 Petrie and smiling. " Charles, my dear," she went on, so 
 low as to be almost in reverie. " You have nothing to worry 
 about. You need not even miss your legs. I'll do everything 
 for you everything" 
 
 Then Petrie spoke. " Elizabeth," he said, and the lip slipped 
 down. He jabbed it up again. " E Elizabeth. . . . Please 
 don't talk in that way. In fact, the best thing that we can do 
 is not to talk at all. Lord, the way I've talked, and talked, and 
 talked. Let us try to talk no more. All that talking ever does 
 
358 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 is hurt. That is the one and only thing it can do. Every- 
 thing else we can do quite well without it by means of a smile, 
 a nod, a caress. But talking it hurts the talkee (which it is 
 usually aimed at doing) or else it comes back years after- 
 wards perhaps and hurts the talker. Hurts like the uttermost 
 hell. I I'm devilish sorry for the things I've said." 
 
 " Charles," said she, and lightly touched the lean, dry hand 
 that lay upon the coverlet. " You must not talk like that 
 not now." 
 
 " You see," said Petrie, " you agree with me. Talk's no 
 good ; except for making funny plays, and I've done very well 
 out of it in that way. It remains to be seen what kind of 
 a tragedy we make." 
 
 " Tragedy ! " exclaimed Mrs Petrie. " Listen, Charles. 
 I thought, quite naturally till Doctor Jefferson told me how 
 things really are that we were going to be poor again. And 
 Charles, I was glad, positively glad to think that I should have 
 the chance of showing you whether I am weak and helpless. 
 ' Now,' I thought, ' he shall see what I can do.' . . ." 
 
 " Elizabeth, don't," said Petrie. 
 
 " But indeed I shall," she said gallantly. " Now that I am 
 not to have that chance, since we are not going to be so poor 
 again. . . . Well," she shrugged her shoulders, " I can still 
 show you. Dr Jefferson suggested that you should go to him 
 and be taken care of by nurses and servants. As though I 
 should let you go now now when at last you really need 
 me. . . ." 
 
 " Elizabeth," said Petrie, " you mustn't. I don't need 
 anybody. I never shall need anybody." 
 
 " Well, of course," she said, very deliberately, " not being 
 wanted is quite another story. I shouldn't think . . ." 
 
 " Oh hell ! " Petrie burst out savagely. " Just listen to us ! 
 Talking again. Can't you see that it's nothing of that kind ? 
 Can't you see what it really is ? You ought to understand. 
 . . . Oh well ; I wish you would ask young Jefferson to look 
 in again on his way to bed." 
 
 " Very well, dear," said Mrs Petrie. She was in perfect 
 possession of herself now. " I'll ask him to come up. He can 
 bring the water- jug and hot-water bottle. And Charles, if 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 259 
 
 it should be this other thing I mean, if you really would 
 rather not have me with you don't hesitate to to you know, 
 Charles. I am not weak, like you have always thought me. 
 But if it isn't that " and her little face became radiant, " if 
 it isn't that oh Charles, I shall be so happy to have this 
 jportunity." 
 
Chapter Three 
 
 i 
 
 ON the inside of what was known in the Pelchester kitchen 
 as ' the duster drawer ' there was fastened with two 
 drawing pins a postcard. It had been there to witness the 
 coming and the going of many generations of shelf-papers 
 for close on five years. Upon it, faintly now, were pencilled in 
 Cynthia's handwriting the words, " Carpenter. J. Wardrup, 
 1 1 Laundry Villas." 
 
 Mrs Petrie leaned down to make out the address, and said 
 to Mrs Simpson, " There ! I was sure I had seen it some- 
 where. ... Is that the man ? " 
 
 " Not to my knowledge," said Mrs Simpson. " Don't 
 know 'im. There's been no call to have a carpenter in 
 since Mr Steptoe died, two years ago now. Simpson may 
 know this 'n." 
 
 " Ah yes," said Mrs Petrie ; " but, you see, Simpson won't 
 be in till evening, and Mr Petrie wants the carpenter as soon 
 as possible. Master Conrad had better run over at lunch-time 
 on his bicycle and see if this man can come. Miss Cynthia 
 would not have written it down if she did not know all about 
 him from some one." 
 
 Wardrup came before tea, remained closeted with Petrie 
 in the bedroom for half an hour, pocketed his two-foot rule 
 and Petrie's execrable drawing, and went home promising to 
 have the job done by Friday night. 
 
 On Friday night, true to his word, he came. He brought 
 with him four heavy wooden posts and joists and a brown paper 
 parcel. Mrs Petrie and Conrad had gone out to see Sylvia for 
 a few minutes, so it was Mrs Simpson who opened the door 
 to the carpenter and directed him, with his burden, upstairs. 
 
 With nuts and bolts and heavy iron clamps he fixed a post 
 to each leg of the bed. Petrie lay back upon his piled-up 
 pillows, and watched him as he worked. 
 
 260 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 261 
 
 The tops of each pair of posts Wardrup connected by a joist. 
 " Three be two, oak," he commented as he bolted and screwed 
 these into position. 
 
 Thus he rapidly converted the iron bedstead into the 
 semblance of a four-poster, with a horizontal bar above head 
 and foot, and a block pulley hanging from the centre of each 
 horizontal bar. 
 
 Petrie, the artist, leaned back and smiled ; for the thing he 
 had conceived and indicated with pencilled symbols upon a 
 sheet of paper was growing visibly into actuality under the 
 hands of a deft workman. 
 
 Wardrup tested his work by first pulling upon it, then 
 pushing. " 'd take three hundredweight," he remarked, 
 satisfied. " There's the iron pegs and bits of choob I put 
 in, to take the strain off of the three be two's." 
 
 Then he undid his parcel, producing from it about thirty 
 feet of hemp tackle. Fastened by a swivelled " thimble " to 
 the middle of the line was a wide strap, made of the two arm- 
 slings taken from the window-posts of a hansom-cab that had 
 been run into and destroyed by a tram-car in the High Street. 
 Brass eyelets at one end of this strap and a large brass buckle 
 at the other gave a sense of finish to the whole work. 
 
 Wardrup threaded an end of the line through each pulley, 
 and tightened it up till the strap swung in the air above 
 Petrie. 
 
 " How's that, sir, then ? " he asked proudly. 
 
 " Capital ! " said Petrie. " First-rate." 
 
 " I thought these here would be softer for the sling than a 
 bit of hard leather." He touched the cab arm-slings. " A 
 night-shirt's not much padding really, and a hard leather 
 strap 'd gall, come to pull up in it every day four, five and 
 maybe six times. Shall we just give her a try, sir ? . . . See 
 if there's anything wants doing while I'm here ? " 
 
 "N no, thanks," said Petrie. "It'll do splendidly. It's 
 sure to do splendidly. ... If you leave me your account, 
 I'll have it seen to. ... By the way, before you go, you might 
 give me those two ends, will you ? " 
 
 ;< They'll go nicely up here," said Wardrup, and hitched them 
 over the iron rail at Petrie's shoulder. 
 
262 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 The work was complete in every detail, and Petrie, the 
 deviser of it, the artist, once more smiled. 
 
 Wardrup went out, and Petrie the proud and touchy, the 
 broken and sensitive paralytic, looked upon the work and did 
 not smile. 
 
 It was only an effort in his despair to substitute a little 
 cunning for a little strength ; to save him from having to ring 
 a bell, summoning the strength of others to his aid ; strength 
 that he had once reviled and abused as futile weakness, and 
 that now was bonded in slavery to him, who had reviled and 
 abused and boasted. 
 
 He took an end of the rope and slacked it till the hanging 
 strap was lowered into his lap. He took it in his hands and 
 closely examined the stitches, the buckle, and the swivel. They 
 seemed strong enough. 
 
 Grimly, he buckled it round his waist, and slowly turned 
 it till the swivel and line were to the front. Then he 
 paused. 
 
 For hours on end during the last weeks he had sat still, weary 
 of sitting, or had lain, foredone with lying, silent rather than 
 that he should say one word to set the muscles of others in 
 motion to lay him down or seat him up. . . . Every other detail 
 they seemed to notice, every other need they forestalled. Mrs 
 Petrie never went out of the room without first glancing at 
 his table and saying, " Let's see. Yes, it's all there, I think. 
 Tobacco matches water paper pencil ash-tray. . 
 Yes. . . ." Conrad never departed without his equivalent, 
 " Got 'em all, pater ? Baccy, lights, drink, bumph, pencil, 
 muck-heap. Yes ; you're fit for a bit. Shout if you want 
 anything. . . ." 
 
 Petrie would smile and nod to this, and say no word of the 
 agony in his back that was not a pain, but was wearier than 
 pain. He could not speak : for had he spoken, one of them 
 would have called the other, and together they would have 
 struggled with the gaunt, helpless frame : and this, without 
 his speaking, they had done four times in every day, raising 
 or lowering him in the bed. . . . Then Conrad had one 
 morning brought in a yard or so of canvas, ripped out of an old 
 deck-chair, and boiled and scrubbed quite clean. This he had 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 263 
 
 slipped under him, and, with himself on one side and his 
 mother on the other, the task had been made more easy. 
 
 Four times a day they had done this, and each time the iron 
 had entered deeper into Petrie's soul, till at last he had thought 
 of the blocks and tackle that were to free them of the task. . . . 
 
 He pushed down the bedclothes, and winding the slack of 
 the rope that passed from his girdle through the lower block, 
 he pulled upon it with all his might. 
 
 Nothing whatever happened. 
 
 Setting his teeth and gritting them together in the effort, 
 he tried again : and again nothing happened. 
 
 Bitter in his defeat, and breathless from the trying, he 
 mumbled, " Damn ! " 
 
 He slowly unbuckled the broad belt and worked it lower 
 down. 
 
 As far down as he could get it, round his hips, he buckled 
 it once more. Then, after a few moments' rest, he tugged 
 again tugged till the thin ropes cut into his bony hands, 
 till little beads of sweat stood out upon his forehead. 
 
 But he had moved the dead half of him six inches in the 
 bed. 
 
 He loosed his hold, opening and closing the fingers to remove 
 the smarting creases from his hands. Then he drew the sleeve 
 of his night-shirt across his brow and fiercely rested. 
 
 He heaved a great sigh. " Great God ! " he murmured, 
 as he remembered that Mrs Petrie had helped to manhandle 
 that bulk of useless clay punctually to the minute four times 
 in every day ; and done it with smiles and the same little old 
 jokes. . . . 
 
 The extent to which he had succeeded in sliding himself 
 had nearly freed Conrad's strip of canvas from under him. 
 He tugged this out and wound it round his hands. He again 
 took hold of the rope and pulled, and again he moved. 
 
 Another six inches now would do it ! 
 
 One more rest, and a third pull brought him low enough 
 in the bed to lie straight out. 
 
 Breathless, sweating, but triumphant, he unwrapped his 
 hands and thrust the hair back from his forehead. 
 
 Then very solemnly he placed a thumb to his nose and ex* 
 
264 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 tended his fingers till the little one pointed at a fly upon the 
 ceiling. " Put that" he said, " in your pipe and smoke it." 
 
 But the test was not yet completed. 
 
 He succeeded in pulling away the spare pillows that had 
 become crumpled up behind his shoulders, and placing them 
 on the floor beside him. Then he worked the belt round 
 till he could get at the buckle. . . . That, at least, was one 
 improvement that could be made : the swivel and the buckle 
 would have to be put nearer together. . . . 
 
 He rubbed his hips where the belt had chafed him, and 
 worked it up as high as it would go under his arms. 
 
 Turning it round, padding his hands again with the strip 
 of canvas, he pulled upon the other end of the rope. 
 
 This time the protection of his hands was not necessary ; 
 nor, indeed, was the grim setting of his teeth. Being able to 
 raise his shoulders helped, for he moved up quite easily. It 
 remained only for him to grope for the pillows beside the bed, 
 and to stuff them behind him. 
 
 Smiling and perspiring, he stretched out his hand. 
 
 When the bell-rope was already in his grasp he suddenly 
 paused, remembering how much easier it was to pull himself 
 up than down. So he quickly moved the belt down again, 
 gloved his hands in the canvas, and pulled himself down. This 
 time it was easier than the first. He had managed to get the 
 belt lower, and removed the pillows before he began to pull. 
 
 He smoothed out the clothes, tidied his hair, moved the belt 
 up under his arms, and, with tremendous gusto, rang the bell. 
 
 Mrs Petrie came in with a steaming cup on a brass tray. 
 Behind her came Conrad to collaborate in the final " tucking- 
 up." 
 
 She noticed nothing till her feet were almost upon the pillows 
 piled beside the bed. 
 
 Then, in a single, startled glance, she saw it all posts, 
 joists, rope and pulleys. Conrad meanwhile, eyebrows 
 pulled up to the point of disappearing under his tousled hair, 
 was coldly but devoutly stating himself, once again, to be 
 jiggered. 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 265 
 
 Petrie's eyes twinkled upon them both. 
 
 " Oh Charles ! " said Mrs Petrie ; "... what ? . . . 
 how? . . ." 
 
 " How ! " said Petrie. " How, indeed ! Simply with a 
 yo-heave-ho, me hearties. . . . Observe." He took hold of 
 the rope ; up went his shoulders, upwards slithered his body, 
 till his head rested against the iron rails of the bed. 
 
 For the smile of delight and victory that wrinkled up his 
 cheeks and the corners of his eyes, there was, in the other two, 
 no response whatever. 
 
 Conrad dropped his head forward. " Well . . ." said he. 
 " I say . . . " and then no more. He stood watching the 
 heaving of Petrie's chest, and the red stripes on his hands where 
 the rope had cut into them. 
 
 Mrs Petrie saw nothing at all. Her head was bowed, her 
 lips trembled. " Charles . . . Dear ..." was all she 
 said ; and after saying it, she quickly sat down. 
 
 A glance shot from Petrie to Conrad ; a glance from Conrad 
 to Petrie. 
 
 It was altogether too much for the boy in that room 
 looking an idiot ; feeling a fool. " Good-night, Svengali, 
 old sportsman," said he. " Good-night, mummy. I'll shut 
 all hatches below." He went. 
 
 2 
 
 Petrie said, " #V/ Elizabeth . . . I see that to you the 
 romance of discovery and invention . . ." But the words 
 were ridiculous, futile ; that kind of thing simply would not 
 do. Instead of finishing the jocular phrase he had thought of, 
 he said, softly, " Cheer up, old lady." 
 
 Her answer was a jerk of little shoulders, a sigh and a choking 
 sob. The pain of it was dire and unspeakable. Another sob, 
 and she said, " Oh, Charles . . . Charles dear, how could 
 you ? . . . Whatever made you ? . . ." 
 
 All Petrie could say to this was, " Come, come, my dear. . . ." 
 
 The pain he was witnessing was unlike most other pain that 
 he had witnessed ; for somehow he could not look upon this 
 
266 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 as self-inflicted, fictitious merely a wrong attitude of mind, 
 to be attacked by argument, dismissed with a " Tcha ! " or a 
 " Tut ! " 
 
 This pain that convulsed and jerked the little shoulders, 
 that choked the timid voice, he himself had caused. Through 
 lack of understanding he had caused it, through haste, through 
 a needlessly clumsy and careless handling of a few stark 
 facts. 
 
 " E Elizabeth," he said. " It it's just because you don't 
 understand, you know. . . . Honestly, my dear, it it isn't 
 anything but that. . . ." 
 
 " Oh Charles," she said softly ; " it is so cruel. It is as 
 though you didn't believe ... as though you could not be 
 made to believe . . . not with all my trying to show that I 
 that we " 
 
 " It is precisely because I do believe " he said. " No, 
 not believe I know. Lord ! I know just how much you would 
 give, you and the boy. You you would give everything. 
 But, my dear, that doesn't make the taking any easier. Can't 
 you see that, Elizabeth ? It it this, I mean, is a little thing, 
 a devilish little thing ; I know that. But it it sort of just 
 pleases me to do it for myself. It well, it just helps me to 
 cheat myself into thinking that I am not living completely 
 off you two. . . . God knows it isn't true ; I too know it isn't 
 true, for I have always seen the scheme on which humanity 
 is run the way something or other always draws the strong 
 ones together to give what they can to keep the weak ones 
 going each one gives a little, or one gives all. . . ." 
 
 " My dear boy," said Mrs Petrie, very quietly, " you are 
 talking rubbish." 
 
 " I'm not talking rubbish," said Petrie. " You are all doing 
 it and you yourself are doing it all the time. The boy ; 
 and Sylvia tries, and that astonishing fellow George, and those 
 precious kids of hers spoiling every walk of theirs to see how 
 the old cripple is getting on, to fling him a morsel of their own 
 precious life and liveliness to help to keep him going. And 
 you, Elizabeth you every moment . . . day and night, 
 incessantly. ... Oh God ! it's terrible. It's it's driving 
 it's killing me. . . . No. It isn't killing me." 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 267 
 
 " Perfect rubbish,'* said Mrs Petrie again, quite serenely, 
 undisturbed at the point where she had left off. 
 
 " You're doing it nozv" said Petrie. " I whine for a 
 moment in my despair, and you offer me courage the courage 
 distilled by you out of your own vitality." 
 
 " Well ? " asked Mrs Petrie ; " and for how long, may I 
 ask, did I use yours ? " 
 
 " Nonsense ! " said Petrie. " You know that everything I 
 say is perfectly true. Look at young Jefferson, even, who 
 ought to have more sense. When he can't come down to see 
 me, he spends his time writing the most childish letters to keep 
 me amused. As though any work of art could be worth all 
 the twaddle he writes to me about that precious tragedy ! 
 The fellow's like a blessed photographer telling a child to look 
 out for the birdie, in his patent efforts to rouse me up and keep 
 me amused. . . ." He smiled and shook his head. " I dare 
 say that kind of thing works very well with your suburban 
 patients, but it won't work with me, young Jefferson me, 
 my boy, who was the first philanthropist to discover the 
 crime and to expose it. ... No. My dear Elizabeth, it only 
 remains for Cynthia now to begin smashing herself up so 
 as to give me some . . . Cynthia. . . ." 
 
 " And you imagine," said Mrs Petrie, calmly smiling, " that 
 if they can succeed in getting you away from me, that things 
 will be any better ? That / will be any better off ? ... 
 This contraption of yours only shows me . . ." 
 
 " Elizabeth," said Petrie ; " let us be sensible, not senti- 
 mental." 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs Petrie ; and showed obvious satisfaction. 
 " Let us indeed be sensible. You will find me, as a matter of 
 fact, quite sensible. It is some years now, Charles, since I 
 really began to think things out. You will find that I am not 
 such a fool as I look." Petrie smiled, and she smiled. " Very 
 well. I owe my education, in the first place, to Harold 
 Rockleigh, though I did not know it at the time. It started 
 with that lecture you gave me about Cynthia's going away. 
 For nearly two years I thought that you were a perfect brute 
 and that my heart was broken ; and then one day I found 
 Freda reading a play called Hagar something-or-other, by 
 
268 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 some one whose name I did not notice. I felt that perhaps she 
 ought not to be reading things of that sort, so I read it at 
 once ; and there, if you please, was your lecture large as 
 life, and word for word. I only thought then, what a perfect 
 humbug you were to dish up three or four whole pages of a 
 play for my benefit (of course it never occurred to me to 
 notice that the thing was not published till over a year after 
 you had given me the lecture) ; I also thought what a fool I 
 must be to be so upset by something that you had got out of 
 a play. The play was a * Comedy.' And so I began to see 
 the truth of every word you had said to me. You see, Charles, 
 at that point, instead of just jelling I began to think. It was 
 all true. Everything you said about the parasite-system 
 of life is perfectly true. I saw that I was the worst kind of 
 parasite. . . ." 
 
 Petrie winced ; "Elizabeth!" 
 
 She raised her hand ; " Oh please don't think I've finished, 
 my dear. The truth goes a good deal farther than that 
 and since you are a philosopher and a philanthropist, I am sure 
 you can bear to hear it. The point is, not only that I was a 
 parasite, Charles. I still am a parasite ; and my particular 
 victim now, as ever is yourself. That is just, as you would 
 say, a stark fact of nature. Since it is a regrettable fact, I am 
 quite willing to join people in disregarding it if disregarding 
 it can do any good to anyone. . . ." 
 
 " What the devil," said Petrie, pensively, " are you getting 
 at ? " 
 
 " Simply this," she answered quietly. " In the first place, 
 if you are taken away from me by any means, my whole means 
 of subsistence would be utterly cut off from me. That is all 
 very well nothing for anyone to complain about. For 
 years, as a matter of fact, this means of subsistence has been cut 
 off from me ; you have benefited tremendously, the whole 
 world has reaped some benefit from it I daresay and I do not 
 honestly think it has done me a great deal of harm. But 
 now the case is considerably altered. Since you have been 
 obliged to rely on me for your tobacco-pouch and matches, for 
 your breakfast and clean handkerchiefs, I have been coming 
 into my own again without your knowing anything about 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 269 
 
 it. I I've been robbing you again ; and the beauty of it 
 to me is that you have not in the least suspected it. Just 
 because I can walk and hop about and do the things that are 
 done by hopping about, you have been under the delusion that 
 you are taking, instead of giving all the time. But be reason- 
 able, Charles you can think, you know, when you want to. 
 . . . What could you possibly be taking from me ? As the 
 boy would say you can search me. I have nothing to give. 
 When I come upstairs now I come with something that happens 
 to be useful to some one (and the some one happens to be you), 
 instead of walking about the house with nothing at all in my 
 hands, or else with something that's quite useless. No, 
 Charles. I give nothing, simply because I have nothing 
 to give no more than have those ropes and wheels and things 
 that you have had invented for you. . . ." 
 
 "Those ropes and wheels and things," he corrected her, 
 " are entirely my own invention." 
 
 Mrs Petrie did not pause to notice that she had slighted the 
 pride of creatorship. She went on with her statement, 
 " Nothing is so true as that pet saying of yours that all the people 
 living to-day manage to live because some the vast majority 
 manage to derive vitality from others, sponging off them 
 off each other and off the tiny minority of mankind made up 
 of the grand, free, big people who dig their living out of them- 
 selves dreaming, smiling, seeing, creating things. ... I, 
 Charles, am one of the great majority and must always remain 
 so ; one of the parasites. I was forced for years to study 
 music, but it was always terrible drudgery to me, because in 
 myself I had not a single note. . . ." 
 
 She lowered her voice and leaned slightly towards him, 
 confiding. ..." I've got no dreams. I can only wait, hang 
 about on the fringe of those that have them * touting ' as you 
 would say in the hope of catching a glimpse of them. And the 
 only dreams I can hope to catch any glimpse of are are your 
 dreams, Charles dear." 
 
 The thought brought Petrie to the point at which, three 
 months before, he would have shot off upon a walking tour 
 round the room in which he found himself, clucking and jerking 
 his hands about in his pockets. Now he moved by filling out 
 
270 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 his chest with air, by wagging the pipe about between his 
 teeth, by unclasping his hands and laying them down beside 
 him. 
 
 So tenderly that the action was scarcely noticeable, she 
 patted one of them, and said " My poor old Charles ! You 
 feel the loss of your legs almost ridiculously. Suppose you 
 had always had wings, and had suddenly lost the use of them. 
 Though you still had hands and legs left, you would feel just 
 as indignant about it ; but, since you have never had wings, 
 you are not in the least upset by not having them now. . . ." 
 
 She was coming near to one of those old flashes now, one of 
 those happy flukes of expression that had delighted the gaunt 
 boy of thirty years ago. She was talking as she had seldom 
 talked since then. Once more, she was well abreast of the 
 situation in which she found herself not weary and frightened, 
 a little bit behind it, nor breathless and apprehensive, a little 
 bit in front of it. ... The boy of thirty years ago flung 
 back his head that he might hide his face before the courage 
 of her ; in so doing, he pointed towards the ceiling a shaggy, 
 grizzled beard. 
 
 Again, with infinite tenderness, she touched his hand. 
 " You are morbid, my poor boy," she said (thus she had spoken 
 to him of early failures till failures had become the order 
 of the day, the habit of their lives) ; " morbid poor boy and 
 sore about this thing that has happened to you." 
 
 She got up and moved to the foot of the bed, where it was 
 not so easy for him to evade her eyes. She leaned upon the 
 rails, as he had leaned to fasten her with his gaze, to flood her 
 with the bitterness of his reproaches. Between this same 
 rail, with its one brass knob still missing, and the wooden joist 
 of his contriving, she said lightly, " Of course, you carft walk 
 and frisk about any more there's no denying that. But 
 legs or no legs you are still of the minority, still of the great, 
 free, big people ; still a maker and a giver. And I am still 
 a parasite. There." 
 
 The " there " was intended for emphatic punctuation. To 
 mark it still further she moved away from the bed and sat 
 down upon the chair beside it. " You can make what you 
 like oLall that, Charles. Parasites have no right to stand 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 271 
 
 in the path of the others, hindering and hampering them, 
 begging them for glimpses of the dreams that are their life. 
 ... If you miss what I take from you, I am quite prepared 
 to go, like they all say I must. . . ." 
 
 " Who says you must ? " said Petrie. 
 
 " Oh," said she, " it's nothing to get annoyed about 
 everyone. Naturally enough, they think I must get on your 
 nerves and worry you. Quite possibly I do ; but that is for 
 you to say, not them. And before it was possible for you to 
 tell the truth about that, it was necessary for you to know the 
 truth I have just told you the truth that in pulling you up 
 or down in bed with the boy, and in doing the few little odd 
 things that I do do for you, I am giving nothing at all, but 
 taking. . . ." 
 
 " Elizabeth ! " said Petrie, turning his face to her, wide-eyed 
 in astonishment. " Elizabeth. . . . Either either you have 
 become a a most astonishingly efficient liar . . . or or 
 
 or " He shut his eyes together again ; not for the purpose 
 
 of shutting out any vision, but simply for the purpose of 
 squeezing the lids very tightly together. He" left the alter- 
 native unsaid. 
 
 " My dear Charles, let us endeavour not to become senti- 
 mental over this affair," said Mrs Petrie, and drew the chair 
 a trifle nearer to the bed. " This is just a sensible little talk 
 we are having two philosophers man to man. Before, 
 when you just went away and lived unto yourself the way you 
 did, it was different vastly different. It was right for you 
 to do so, and I only got the punishment that all parasites 
 deserve. I had nothing to give in exchange for what I wanted 
 to take from you nothing that was any use to you. I do not 
 know for certain that I have now ; but I think I have, or 
 you would not have gone worrying your head over this clothes- 
 line affair. . . . Anyhow it is just that that makes all the 
 difference now. If I have a little something that I can give 
 you, and if you let me give it well, I get everything in return 
 everything. I have lived more in the last few weeks than 
 I ever lived before. And it is just because I have seemed to be 
 able to come very near to you. . . . You must indeed be a 
 wonderful fellow, Charles, to make'me feel. like that after all 
 
272 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 these years. You see, I am not troubling to lie to you. You 
 are not such a fool that I could say to you, ' I have always loved 
 you.' I haven't ; I had simply forgotten all about that, or 
 at least we got separated by Life. You had to go your way, 
 dreaming your dreams, and I had to go mine cooking and 
 grumbling and waiting ; waiting for you to wake up from your 
 dreams or for something to turn up. Well it. has turned up 
 now for me. I I see a chance of such happiness now, of 
 of . . ." 
 
 " Oh, Betty," said Petrie ; " Betty it's, oh, it's just hell to 
 listen to you. . . ." 
 
 Betty's eyes twinkled upon him and were wet. She said, 
 " Positively, Charles it must sound perfectly ridiculous 
 to you, and would to anyone else but positively you are 
 all the world to me now. . . . When you were nothing to me, 
 there was nothing else either. There is nothing I can do 
 in the world nothing at all except the little things I am able 
 to do now for you. You see, I'm not like Cynthia. . . . Where 
 you go, there must I go also." 
 
 " But, my dear," said Petrie, quietly ; " One cannot talk 
 like that. One cannot just take the life of another. . . . You 
 see, Pm done" 
 
 " Done, indeed ! " she exclaimed. " You have done walking 
 and dancing. But Charles Petrie is still left, and Harold 
 Rockleigh. Just listen to me. You must see that I have quite 
 enough sense to understand most of your ideas, and you know 
 that I agree with them. I know it would not be right for 
 Cynthia, for instance, to give up her life to taking care of 
 another person. But I, you see, have no life of my own. In 
 in very little ways if if it were not a hardship or an in- 
 convenience to you my continuing to do these little things 
 would just give me opportunities of getting a little life. I 
 should like to be allowed to think that I was making up for it 
 to you in in these little ways." 
 
 Petrie was intent, listening to every word she said, weighing 
 it, testing the value of it from its sound and from the look 
 with which she said it. She had not faltered for words, nor 
 yet had she been too easy in their delivery. Petrie peered 
 closely at her, intent only upon the answer to the riddle. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 273 
 
 " If," said he at length, " if you are not trying to cheat me, 
 Elizabeth. If, in short Lord, you are an astonishing 
 woman ! . . . But women are such infernal liars. " 
 
 " Charles ! " 
 
 " Yes. Perfectly appalling liars." 
 
 " If you had not been so absorbed in your own condition," 
 she said with a shrug, " you might have noticed for yourself 
 how happy I have been." 
 
 He looked at her again the truth-seeker, the philosopher 
 wondering. . . . 
 
 " Yes, dear boy," she went on quietly, unflinching beneath 
 his scrutiny. " You have been so utterly miserable ; as 
 though you had been robbed of everything. But think, 
 Charles ; have you been robbed of everything ? Before 
 years and years ago now before we had any real worries, 
 we you were very happy. It was just the difference in 
 our two ways of treating worry, when worries came, that made 
 us unhappy. But before the worries came so thick upon us. 
 . . . What I really mean to say is, that we have no worries 
 now. Also, Charles, when we were happiest when you were 
 happiest you were also laziest. You did not spend much time 
 walking or running or dancing and skipping. You just lounged 
 about, pretty much as you are obliged to do now. Our 
 happiness did not depend on being able to walk then, and I 
 don't see why it should now. . . . But there, I cannot pretend 
 to be a philosopher. I can't argue. . . ." 
 
 Petrie did not answer ; so she stood up, once again marking 
 an emphasis in punctuation. " That, I think, is enough food 
 for thought for one night. I just wanted to give you a side- 
 light in w r hich to think things over." 
 
 Petrie was nodding his head, as he moved the sling slowly 
 down his ribs. " Elizabeth," he said, pausing suddenly in the 
 task, " do you mean honestly to tell me that you actually 
 prefer Oh Lord ! the only possible way of saying this is like 
 a servant girl in the Sunday serial but, I mean, suppose I 
 were to die, Elizabeth ? " 
 
 " Well," she said, as calmly as a gardener estimating the 
 chances of rain, or a farmer judging the possibility of damage 
 to crops or stock other than his own. " Well, in that case, 
 
274 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 I should not be the least surprised to find that I died, too 
 sooner or a little later. Probably it would be sooner just 
 to prove your great theory." 
 
 When Petrie had wound the rope around his hands, she 
 stepped forward, hands outstretched to help, then stood 
 suddenly still. 
 
 He strained the tackle, then let it slack again. 
 
 They realised, both of them, that their handling of those 
 ropes would be something vital : an answer ; an admission. 
 . . . So they paused. Then Petrie said, quite lightly, " If 
 you will take hold of my knees, Betty, and heave-ho when I 
 do, you will see how wonderful this opus of mine really is." 
 
 She did so, and in a single easy movement he was down. 
 
 She whisked away the spare pillows, smoothed the one she 
 left, picked up the little tray and empty cup, and glanced over 
 the table. 
 
 " Everything?" said she. "Tobacco? matches? water? . . ." 
 
 " Yes, everything," said he, " thank you." 
 
 " Good-night, then, Charles." 
 
 "Good-nightBetty. . . ." 
 
 But as she slowly turned to go, he seized her little, blue- 
 veined hand. " I say, Elizabeth," said he, " if if you have 
 been trying to pull my leg, to to well," and he loosed her 
 hand again, " it simply isn't much good trying to pull my leg 
 and bluff me." 
 
 " I discovered that," she said, " very nearly thirty years ago. 
 I am quite sure you will be able to make up your mind for 
 yourself whether I have been trying to pull your leg." 
 
 She lighted the candle and turned down the gas. Passing 
 his bed again, she brushed a curl from his forehead and patted 
 it into place. 
 
 " Sleep well," said she ; and from the door, " do you propose 
 even sleeping in that contraption ? " 
 
 " 'd Lord, no," said Petrie ; " Pd forgotten the thing." 
 
 " Good-night, Carlo." 
 
 " Good-night, Betty." 
 
Chapter Four 
 
 i 
 
 THE next morning, when Mrs Petrie tiptoed to the bed- 
 room door and softly opened it, Petrie was already propped 
 up. In his hands were the large light board of " three-ply " 
 and the stylographic pen that Conrad had brought to him 
 the morning after the disclosure of the " Secret." 
 
 " I shall get this off to Miss Stark to-day," said Petrie, 
 knocking the pen upon the papers that were clipped to the 
 board. He meant so many things by this piece of information 
 that its chief significance was for himself and not for her ; for 
 she could not guess at the vastness of the new problem that 
 awaited his mind and will as soon as he could rid them of 
 the perplexities held within the two hundred crumpled pages 
 before him. 
 
 He worked that morning upon those pages upon their 
 wide margins and between their typed lines, upon their backs 
 and upon clean new sheets from the table beside him as he 
 had not worked in all the weeks since he had found himself 
 suddenly anchored to his bed. 
 
 When, at three o'clock, Conrad strolled into the room 
 for the packet, Petrie was fumbling for the buckle of his 
 sling. 
 
 " Why the deuce didn't you have that fixture put in front ? " 
 asked Conrad. 
 
 " Even /," said Petrie, " wondered that afterwards. So 
 I can concede nothing to you on that point." 
 
 " Easy enough to shift it, then," said Conrad. 
 
 Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he produced from his 
 pocket a small pair of pliers in a neat leather case. Petrie stared 
 as though the pliers were a rabbit or a bouquet being thus 
 casually produced. 
 
 " Well, I'm hanged ! " said he. " What on earth . . ." 
 
 " Handiest things in the world," Conrad explained, " these 
 
 276 
 
276 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 and a bit of wire.'' From his waistcoat pocket there ap- 
 peared a ring of neatly wound wire. 
 
 Petrie watched him as he moved the swivel and the tackle 
 from the centre of the belt to the buckle with a dozen deft 
 jerks and twists. " Conrad," he said solemnly. " Tell me, 
 old fellow. How often in the course of, say a week, do you 
 have recourse to those tools you wear ? On a rough average." 
 
 " On a rough average," said Conrad, " I should say a couple 
 of times a day." 
 
 " Then," said Petrie, " there is no doubt about it. You 
 are a genius. Nothing more nor less than a genius. If the 
 common round, the trivial task will furnish all you need to ask 
 in the way of pretexts for using a pair of pinchers . . ." 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't go calling pKers pinchers," said 
 Conrad. " Pinchers ! Sylvia calls them pinchers * pinchers 
 with those scissory things on them.' . . ." 
 
 " Just give a yank to my knees, old chap," said Petrie, " and 
 we will set the machine in motion for your inspection." 
 
 When he was lying down, he said, " Since we are, for the 
 moment, talking shop, I wish you would tell me what you think 
 of my invention." 
 
 " Not altogether so dusty," said Conrad, looking critically 
 over the thing, and doing it, for the first time, quite openly. 
 " However, if you had put in a couple of decent metal blocks 
 in addition to those squeaky old wooden pulleys, you would 
 have required just one-quarter of the elbow-grease to work 
 it allowing, of course, for friction." 
 
 Petrie whistled. " How on earth do you make remarks 
 of that description ? " 
 
 " How ? " said Conrad. " It's inversely as the ratio of the 
 square ..." Petrie muffled his ears with the pillow. 
 " Hold ! " said he. " Cease and desist, my son. If you 
 develop much farther along those lines, you will soon be forced 
 to purchase hats with a basement." 
 
 Conrad was getting a little old for jests of that broad type. 
 He smiled, however, and grunted, and said, " Chalk that 
 up, old sportsman. Make a note of it for the next dish of drama 
 you present to the world. Meanwhile, I would just like to 
 remark thatjf we had that old car, I could lug you out now and 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 277 
 
 again for a blow of fresh air instead of lying here, moping and 
 fugging. . . ." 
 
 " No time for that kind of thing now, old fellow," said 
 Petrie. He became suddenly serious. " It's time you got 
 to work properly to work, upon your inversed ratios and 
 things." 
 
 " Time enough for that," said Conrad. " When we have 
 moved our tents into a less God-forsaken spot than this. 
 Mother says that won't be so very long now." 
 
 " Oh," said Petrie, " does she ! " 
 
 " Yes," said Conrad, " and I say, pater, what would be the 
 point of my going into diggings with the girls ? It would 
 bore me to death and them too, before very long. I should 
 think the plan is for the three of us to go on as we are-rseeing 
 that we make such a cheery group. And that is why I say, 
 the sooner that comic doctor pal of yours and I go and get 
 that car, aforesaid, the better. I could blow round in it a 
 bit here, before tackling the traffic in London." 
 
 " Conrad, old man," said Petrie, " where did you get the 
 idea that you are about to become a sick man's chauffeur for 
 the rest of your life ? . . . I need no car, old fellow ; and 
 you you have your work to do." 
 
 " Oh don't you just want a car ! " snorted Conrad. " If 
 you think you are going to settle down into throwing up the 
 sponge and doing a ' pitytheporebline ' act, you're making a 
 beautiful and lovely mistake. And if you think that I am going 
 to settle down into digging with a brace of young spinsters, 
 you are making the same type of mistake twice. I'd like to see 
 you in the exclusive society of two women. It's rot, dad. 
 We'd be as snug as anything together as we are, whisking 
 about in that car. It will be the easiest thing in the world 
 to get a body fitted to her that will take a wheeled chair. , . ." 
 
 " Oh, get out ! " said Petrie, " you and your wheeled chairs 
 and fair sexed vehicles. Get out, or you'll miss that con- 
 founded post." 
 
278 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 2 
 
 Having neatly and conclusively despatched one set of 
 problems, Petrie felt inclined for nothing so much as another 
 problem at which to set his mind alert and lively, as Conrad 
 had left it, departing with the manuscript for Miss Stark. 
 
 The talk itself with Conrad, such as it was, had been a 
 summary of the whole problem. Conrad had threatened him 
 only with the thing he had to expect from all of them ; the 
 thing that he had to guard against, to fight and defeat. The 
 fight he had no misgivings on that score would be a 
 terrible, hard one ; a fight of one man against all humanity ; 
 against the impulse of all society to keep weak things alive at 
 the expense of the strong ones. 
 
 So the first vital question, he saw, was whether he was, in 
 fact, a weak thing. Answering this emphatically in the 
 negative, he saw at once that it was not at all a vital question. 
 Whether he was weak as a kitten or strong as a giant did not 
 matter a straw. The point the important point was that 
 they all thought him weak, and wanting something of them. 
 They thought he stood in dire need of them, and so will 
 he, nill he they would strive to give of themselves to him. 
 Like Conrad, they urged him, one and all, to let him waste 
 their time in brooding over his calamity and over the shallow, 
 absurd pretence that no such calamity existed. They wanted, 
 from the old, damnable impulse of all society, to spend their 
 time in staring at his weakness and trying to cheer him up ; 
 to waste their tissue in moving the hulk of him from one place 
 to another, or in shifting things the absurd things that 
 form the furniture of everyday life to within his reach. 
 
 All this he had known for many weeks ; and had dully, 
 vaguely, but with terrible bitterness, thought over it. But he 
 had not, before, come to actual grips with its details. The 
 manuscript disarranged, crumpled, and only three parts done 
 had stood between him and them. He had only known 
 the main facts, and knowing them he had groaned and cursed 
 and thought out the two pulleys and length of rope that now 
 swung above him. . . . 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 279 
 
 It was their pity of his weakness that he found the hardest 
 to bear without full-sounding curses ; their furtive signals, 
 their wistful movements to forestall his wants. . . . 
 
 Then suddenly Mrs Petrie Betty an astonishing, pert 
 little creature of a Betty whom he had well-nigh forgotten 
 had assured him as calmly as you please, that this idea of his 
 about her thinking him weak and needful was utter nonsense, 
 a rotten fiction of his own rotten egotism and sensitiveness. 
 . . . Dimly and blurred by years he saw a long-lost picture. 
 It was of scurrying, fleecy clouds seen through the branches of 
 great trees in the Bois. Beside two people in the shade of 
 these same trees there fluttered the paper from around the 
 good sandwiches they had eaten. He heard the echo of her 
 words. ..." Oh Charles. . . . You are so wonderful. . . ." 
 Ordinary enough words ; trite words. But they had made 
 him feel a tremendous fellow, and that was no trite, ordinary 
 thing ; for he had lived upon that same feeling of tremendous- 
 ness for nearly thirty years. . . . 
 
 Beside this he had another picture, not blurred and dim ; 
 he could hear words that were no dying echo of the dead past. 
 The golden head was fading fast to silver, the little shoulders 
 bravely held up were inclined to droop, but the words 
 remained the same. "... Charles, ... a wonderful 
 fellow. . . ." 
 
 Petrie, broken for many weeks and humbled, was caused 
 to start by them, stirred to rise up again ; to feel, once more, 
 the old tremendous fellow. 
 
 But rise up he could not ; and the reason he could not was 
 that women are such appalling, such accomplished liars. 
 
 If he could be sure that Betty was not lying, not trying to 
 wheedle, to coax, to cheat him. . . . 
 
 So at length it was that that became the vital question 
 indeed, the only question : did Betty truly believe that he 
 was not, now that his knees were loosened beneath him, a 
 poor thing ? 
 
 To answer this question he could only watch, and very 
 carefully listen. 
 
 Listening, he could hear brisk footsteps that bustled about 
 the room below him, and from the room across the hall into 
 
280 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 the kitchen ; he could hear the tinkle of crockery, and some- 
 times he heard a snatch of song hummed, as snatches of song 
 are hummed out of a stout, happy heart, cheerily and with 
 many silent intervals. 
 
 Watching, he saw the well-knit, neat little figure braced to 
 its little tasks. He could look up into eyes that sparkled now 
 with life and purpose ; at the deft, busy little hands and the 
 crisp, workmanlike cuffs at the wrists. He could look into a 
 face that had once been grey and mask-like, but that now seemed 
 alert and was flushed from the exertions of living. . . . 
 
 It seemed alert ; and that was the torment of it. For, well 
 as he might see the face and the sparkle of the eyes, beyond 
 them, into the deeps of the brave or dissembling little heart, 
 he could not see. 
 
 3 
 
 He had been watching her thus for four or five days and 
 listening to her, when she said to him one morning, " Have 
 you nothing on hand that you could be working at, Charles ? 
 You must find the time hang very heavy. . . . Possibly the 
 boy is right after all ; perhaps, if you could get out . . ." 
 
 " We must leave the boy alone, Elizabeth," he said. 
 
 " Some people," she suggested, " don't thank you for leaving 
 them alone. For instance, it's beautifully sunny in this 
 window ; and I'd sooner sit and do my darning here than . . ." 
 
 " Then please do," said Petrie. He wished he could have 
 said it differently. But what else was there to say ? He could 
 not explain that it mattered not a fig to him whether she sat 
 there or in Jericho to do her darning, while he had his thoughts 
 to think. Besides, that would not have been strictly true ; 
 for if she sat in the window, he could watch her, talk to her, 
 try to catch her out. ... He could not change his answer, 
 but he knew what he could do instead. 
 
 " Suppose we drink a cup of tea, Elizabeth ? " he said. 
 
 " Of course we shall," said she, rejoicing or seeming to 
 rejoice to do his bidding. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 281 
 
 In five minutes she had brought the tea, and together they 
 drank it. 
 
 All her casual remarks he answered with mechanical cheer- 
 fulness ; which does not mean that he was cheerless within 
 himself, heavy-hearted. He was neither heavy-hearted nor 
 light. He was merely nothing. The idle deadness of his legs 
 seemed to have spread to his very soul. Only his eyes, his ears, 
 and his tongue seemed to be left alive, to note the things that 
 occurred before him, to make civil answers. 
 
 He saw her tidying up the tray, and settling herself in the 
 chair before the window. He heard her saying, " Now mind, 
 Charles, you must turn me out the moment I begin to fidget 
 you by being here." 
 
 " Why on earth should your being there fidget me, Eliza- 
 beth ? " said he ; " I'm not trying to work. . . ." 
 
 " Why don't you work, my dear ? No inspirations ? " 
 
 He made an effort and said, " Oh yes, plenty of inspirations. 
 I shall work soon enough. I haven't quite got rid of that 
 last thing yet, you know." 
 
 " Finished that book ? " she asked. " Shall Conrad get 
 you some more ? " 
 
 " No, thanks," said he. " Don't bother about me, Betty. 
 I am perfectly happy." 
 
 The fact of the matter, as he discovered, was that he did want 
 a book to read, and wanted it badly. But he could not tell 
 them which book it was. He did not himself know, exactly. 
 He knew only that he could have found one for himself, by 
 glancing along the shelves in the study over the furniture 
 shop, and taking out five or six volumes, one of which would 
 eventually meet his requirements. But how could one ask 
 another person to fetch half a dozen books ? . . . Or which 
 precise half-dozen ? ... It was a thing which no one else 
 could possibly do for him, so he lay still, idle. 
 
 " Is your tobacco all gone, Charles ? " she asked after a 
 while. " Or are you not wanting to smoke so much the last 
 day or two ? " 
 
 " Oh. . . . Plenty of baccy, thanks," said he; but the fact 
 of the matter was that the three pipes on the table beside him 
 had all arrived at the stage where, normally, he would have 
 
282 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 stepped into the clean little shop in Duke Street (or, if he had 
 been at the moment in Pelchester, into the High Street shop 
 where he had had his seizure) and chosen a new pipe for 
 himself. 
 
 Once again he was powerless, and others were incapable 
 of helping him. Conrad could not be expected to get him a 
 pipe of the right sort. Nor could Elizabeth ; her sex was 
 wrong. Jefferson was the only person he could think of as 
 knowing anything about pipes ; and Jefferson had not been 
 near him for almost a fortnight. Something must be wrong 
 with Jefferson. For nearly a week he had not even written. . . . 
 
 There came just then a ring at the front door bell ; and rings 
 at the front door were not so common an occurrence that 
 Mrs Petrie could sit quite unmoving in her chair listening to 
 them. She poised her needle in the air and turned her head. 
 There followed Mrs Simpson's voice in conversation with 
 another in the hall. Mrs Petrie put down her work and stood 
 up. Steps across the hall, the opening and shutting of the 
 sitting-room door and Mrs Petrie went out to the landing. 
 
 Mrs Simpson met her on the fourth stair, and silently 
 handed her a letter. " He would wait," said she. " So Pve 
 put him in the sitting-room, 'm." 
 
 She turned, and went grimly down again washing her hands, 
 obviously, of a thing for which she would take no responsibility. 
 
 Mrs Petrie recognised the writing as Jefferson's, for he had 
 insisted, during his first visit, on giving her a prescription for 
 a tonic. (Since, however, she was done with medicines for 
 good and all, she had destroyed the prescription.) 
 
 Petrie opened the letter and read : 
 
 " Well, old Hal, what do you think of him ? Isn't he 
 superb ? His name is Welmon. You may remember (or 
 probably, being self-educated, you never knew) that he is just 
 precisely what poor Aristotle designed (quite a -priori, since he 
 did not, obviously, think any such thing humanly possible) 
 as the Ideal Slave. 
 
 " He seems quite a cheery thing, too ; and his hideousness, 
 you are bound to agree, is a thing sublime, a joy for ever. 
 
 "Quite seriously, though, having run accidentally across 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 283 
 
 the fellow, and finding that his credentials were excellent, it 
 occurred to me that you might be able to make some use of 
 him ; so I've sent him down for inspection. 
 
 " I have, by the way, been having a few things done to your 
 place in Adelphi, in case you should feel like running up for 
 any length of time anent the tragedy. Sir Freddie is, I'm 
 told, beginning to get a trifle restive for a look at it. 
 
 " Ran up to Edinburgh on Tuesday, as I had some business. 
 Looked in at Cynthia's show in the evening. She's looking 
 very fit, and had a great reception. I was, of course (vide 
 contract) incog. 
 
 " I shall run down to-morrow afternoon and stay the night. 
 Let me know, per Welmon, if there is anything urgent that 
 I can do for you. Meanwhile, smoke a pipe or two over 
 the idea of moving up here. J EFF " 
 
 The letter, in being handed across to Mrs Petrie, folded 
 itself up automatically along its creases. Unquestioning, and 
 making no comment, she laid it down upon the table. 
 
 It was a little enough thing, but it hurt Petrie. 
 
 " It's I I meant you to read it," he said. 
 
 While she read, he looked at her and mused aloud. " So 
 there is a plot ... a definite plot. . . ." 
 
 Disregarding him, she folded up the letter and said very 
 slowly, " It isn't going to be necessary to surround ourselves 
 with a lot of servants and people, is it, Charles ? " But she 
 did not wait for his answer. " I'd better send this man up, 
 hadn't I ? " 
 
 " Might as well," said Petrie. 
 
 Petrie could hear no word between the opening of the sitting- 
 room door and its shutting. None, in point of fact, was spoken. 
 
 His door presently opened, and in walked Welmon a giant 
 negro. Even for a negro he was tall and broad ; black with 
 the lustreless black of powdered charcoal, his flat face cleft 
 across with goodwill and cheer. 
 
 Petrie's impulse was to whistle at the wonder of the creature 
 before him, to gape in amazement at the genius of Jefferson 
 in thinking of such a thing. 
 
 " Won't you sit down, Welmon ? " he said. 
 
 ; g w< 
 
284 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " Thanks very much, sir," said Welmon, and sat first, 
 with great punctilio, pulling up the legs of his beautifully 
 creased trousers. Then he unbuttoned the top button of 
 his coat, allowing his chest to expand to the full. 
 
 His suit was an ordinary, unobtrusive masterpiece of tailor- 
 ing in navy blue serge. His socks were grey, his shoes black. 
 Pictures of the soft collar he wore adorned every carriage in 
 the Tube over the legend, " Comfort with Distinction." 
 
 Welmon placed his bowler hat upon his uppermost knee, 
 and his yellow gloves upon his hat. 
 
 He sat gloriously calm and unperturbed, with his black, 
 tremendous hands folded upon the knob of his cane while 
 Petrie looked him up and down. He was accustomed to being 
 looked at. 
 
 " I I feel obliged to remark that you dress extremely well," 
 Petrie said at length. 
 
 " It's very good of you to say so, sir," said Welmon. " But 
 I'm afraid no personal credit is due to me on that count. A 
 natural taste in sartorial matters is as innate in every negro as 
 the blackness and thickness of his hide. I also learnt a great 
 deal in that respect from the Earl. That appears to be a thing 
 that your aristocracy shares with us. . . ." 
 
 " H'm," said Petrie. " I would say also that you are a 
 student of human nature." 
 
 " Well, yes, sir," he admitted ; " I suppose I am. The fact 
 of the matter is, that at the moment I am doing a course in 
 sociology at night school." 
 
 " Then, what the deuce . . ." Petrie began ; but he stopped 
 suddenly, for Welmon had at last smiled. That is to say, he 
 divided his face at a single stroke, like Gaul, into three parts 
 an upper, a middle (bounded at the top by the wrinkle into 
 which his eyes had vanished, and his mouth), and a lower. 
 
 To himself Petrie said, " Well, I'm damned." To Welmon 
 he said : " You must pardon my surprise. I was led to believe, 
 by the letter you brought me, that you were some sort of man- 
 servant." 
 
 " I am," said he. " A valet, to be exact ; and, if I may say 
 so, a very excellent valet." He produced a leather case from 
 his breast pocket. He handed Petrie two letters from it ; 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 285 
 
 to one of which was pinned a small advertisement cut out of 
 a newspaper. " Perhaps you would care to look at these, 
 in the event of your considering my application at all 
 favourably. . . ." 
 
 Petrie was reading the advertisement pinned to the letter : 
 " Personal Service Literary gentleman, recently paralysed, 
 requires capable, trustworthy, sober manservant. Negro 
 preferred. W. J., 17 A. Harley Street." 
 
 " What beats me," said Petrie, " is why you should bother 
 to consult me at all in the matter." 
 
 " Only, I think," Welmon suggested, " to obtain your 
 approval of me. Doctor Jefferson made it quite clear to me 
 that you are to be saved all worry and responsibility in the 
 matter beyond that. Perhaps I ought not to have handed you 
 that clipping. . . . I'm sorry. But I am afraid that I was 
 led to forget my instructions in that respect by your manner, 
 sir, your your grasp of things. . . ." 
 
 " Welmon ! " Petrie exclaimed quite suddenly. " Do you 
 smoke a pipe." 
 
 " I could very easily refrain from doing so at any time," 
 said Welmon, " if you prefer it ; that is to say, if were you to 
 prefer it, in the event . . ." 
 
 " Let's have a look at the pipe you smoke," said Petrie. 
 
 He produced one from his pocket and handed it to Petrie. 
 
 " H'm," said he, examining it. " I prefer them curved. 
 I should be very greatly obliged, Welmon, if you would take a 
 walk as far as the High Street and get me a pipe. I should 
 look upon it without prejudice as a great kindness. Curved 
 stem, decent-sized bowl, not too heavy. He has some very 
 good ones at eight and sixpence at the corner of High Street 
 and Station Road. When you come back, there will be some 
 lunch for you here, with me, and we can talk things over." 
 
 Welmon looked at his watch. " Thank you, sir. You are 
 extremely kind. I shall be very happy to get your pipe ; but 
 I ought to hurry away and catch a train, to call upon another 
 prospective employer if if you think that the chances are 
 against your engaging me. . . ." 
 
 " The chances," said Petrie, " are very decidedly in favour 
 of it as far as I can see. Though I do not as yet know all the 
 
286 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 details of the scheme. . . . My wife will give you some money 
 for the pipe." 
 
 "Oh, that will do very well when I get back." He re- 
 buttoned his coat and stood up. 
 
 " Perhaps, then, you would be kind enough to ask her to step 
 up and see me as you go down. I think you will meet her in 
 the hall." 
 
 He was right. 
 
 " Elizabeth," said Petrie as she came in, " I believe you are 
 up to the neck in this thing." He was half bantering, and 
 half something she could not understand. " I believe you 
 knew even about this Welmon." 
 
 " I did not," said she. " That is I mean well, he did 
 say it might be a negro." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Petrie, and smiled. " And your innocence 
 has been so perfect. . . ." Suddenly his smile went, and in 
 its stead came a frown. " Betty what is this idea ? . . . 
 Oh Lord! I'm not a child. . . ." 
 
 " The idea," she said very slowly, " their idea is for you 
 to live in a place by yourself, w with no one to worry or fuss 
 you. With just that brute to take care of you and some 
 woman, Miss Stringer no, not Stringer, she's the actress 
 Miss Stark to type your work and your letters for you. 
 That that is their idea. Mine my suggestion, Charles, you 
 already know." There was something fine in the way she 
 squared her shoulders and straightened her lip to get the cold, 
 ordinary quality into the last remark. She would urge or 
 advocate nothing ; she was merely stating facts. 
 
 She was, therefore, unanswerable ; and Petrie had no 
 answer for her. 
 
 He could only smile and say, " That ' brute,' by the way, 
 is a very highly polished person. Incidentally, he is somewhat 
 of a philosopher and he will be back in a few minutes, to eat 
 some lunch with me. What I wanted to ask you is, if sup- 
 posing supposing I were to vouch for his character and all that 
 sort of thing, do you think you could could fit him in with 
 with what you have described as your scheme your idea." 
 
 " Any detail" said she promptly, " can be made to fit in 
 with my scheme." 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 287 
 
 She stood looking out of the window, her back turned to 
 Petrie. Both of them were silent, till she said, quite 
 casually, " Well here is your philosopher back again, with a 
 parcel," and strolled out of the room. 
 
 4 
 
 When Mrs Petrie had taken away the tea-tray, she sat down 
 again in the window to her darning. 
 
 Petrie had spent the three hours since Welmon's departure 
 in writing. He now laid the board down upon the table, and 
 lighted the ashes in his new pipe. 
 
 " ? s extraordinary how that fellow has braced me up, 
 Elizabeth ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 " Not so very extraordinary," she suggested quietly ; " con- 
 sidering that his is the first new face you've seen in weeks." 
 
 The form of Petrie's answer to this observation astonished 
 her. It was a peal of laughter such as she had never before 
 heard in that particular room. Then said he, " Bless my 
 soul ! . . . Here have I been trying for hours to say something 
 about the exquisite hideousness of that countenance and 
 you are quite satisfied to let it go at ' a new face.' You are 
 wonderful, Elizabeth. . . . Why, the spots of high light on 
 his forehead and his cheek as he sat in that window were 
 green. Yes, my dear, green, I tell you phosphorescent and 
 flat and as big as florins." 
 
 She darned away quietly while he smoked, and then she 
 said, " I must say he struck me as very intelligent and civil. 
 I gathered from his having lunch with you that he is somewhat 
 different from the ordinary servant class of person. What 
 exactly do you propose to do with him, Charles ? " She did 
 not seem to be asking these questions easily ; yet they were 
 vital to her, for her needle stopped in the air, though she 
 continued looking at the heel of Conrad's sock pulled tight 
 over the smooth round pebble inside it. 
 
 " I I've been thinking a good deal about that suggestion 
 of yours, Elizabeth," Petrie said slowly. " Confound that 
 fellow, he left the tobacco out of my reach," Mrs Petrie 
 
288 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 came over and handed him the tin, but went immediately 
 back to the window and the sock and the needle that did 
 not move. 
 
 " Yes," said Petrie, " there is a good deal in it to be thought 
 about. As a matter of fact, I hadn't thought of anything 
 in particular very much except keeping Cynthia out of this 
 affair, and oh well, about one or two other things in which 
 no one can be of any help to me. You were perfectly right. 
 I have been just sore and peevish lately." 
 
 " I didn't say peevish," she corrected him. 
 
 " No. Morbid was your word. Well, possibly morbid 
 too, a little. I suppose it would be called morbid, to leave the 
 development of things to chance." 
 
 They fell silent again, and remained silent till the needle 
 once more ceased its plying this time for want of light. Petrie 
 had used his last match, and his pipe was out. 
 
 " Time I was seeing to the supper," she said, gathering up 
 her wools. " Would you like to rest quietly till it's ready, 
 or shall I give you a light ? " 
 
 " No, never mind about the light, Elizabeth," said he. " I 
 should like a match, though, and a quiet smoke." 
 
 When she had handed him a new box from the chest of 
 drawers he looked up at her and said, " We'll move into the 
 flat, Elizabeth, as soon as young 'Jefferson can find some way of 
 getting us into it." 
 
 " Oh, Charles," she said. 
 
 " Charles ! " and her voice broke upon the word, as he 
 snapped for her the suspense she had lived in for five days 
 and nights. ... It was useless for her to try to conceal her 
 tears. The most she could do was say once more, this time 
 in a whisper, " Charles." 
 
 " Betty," said he, very gently, and touched her hand. 
 " You mustn't do that, you know." 
 
 " I know." She fought her tears. " I know. But oh, 
 Charles. . . . I I am so grateful. . . . Letting me try 
 again. . . ." 
 
 " Betty. . . . Really, you mustn't, you know. It isn't 
 like that. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, isn't it ! " said she stoutly. " Well, I mean to try, 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 289 
 
 all the same. And not to fuss or worry you either, poor 
 boy. You will see" 
 
 She dabbed her eyes symbolically, and walked, erect, out 
 of the room. 
 
 5 
 
 After the knock of the evening postman she came up with 
 his post : two or three weekly papers, some odd letters and 
 circulars, and the envelopes from his press-cutting agencies ; 
 it was enough, at any rate, for her to be able to say to him, 
 " Well, there's enough to keep you busy till bed-time, and I've 
 got heaps to do downstairs," to pick up her darning, and to 
 retire, without dishonour or disorder, from the room. 
 
 Petrie picked up a paper and began to read the random 
 thoughts of artistic idlers on works of art (including an allusion 
 to his own art), and the burblings of political idlers on politics. 
 
 One thing that Petrie hated beyond all others was what he 
 called the ' journalistic mind.' He had always subscribed to 
 the weekly masterpieces of journalism, that he might enjoy 
 a weekly orgy of contempt, and know, occasionally, the good 
 fun of writing to one paper a few words about the inanity of 
 another. 
 
 But to-night there was no orgy, no prospect of fun. The 
 stupidity of the fellows was unassailable and could not matter 
 a fig to anyone. He flung down their lugubrious rectangles 
 of thought, divided one from the other by a line of five wide- 
 spaced asterisks, and picked up an illustrated paper, which 
 was (and is) innocent of thought of any description. 
 
 The first picture was of a politician addressing a crowd from 
 the window of a railway carriage. Petrie looked long at it. 
 
 It was not for the politician that he cared a straw, nor for 
 the nonsense that he was in the act (bareheaded) of talking. 
 
 It was the crowd that held Petrie's eyes, till they glowered 
 upon it in lust and hungry longing. 
 
 Movement ! Life ! The jostle of hurrying people, and 
 the sweat of humanity in the strife of daily living. . . . These 
 were of the things he could know no more ; the things that 
 called him from afar, so that he must feign to hear them not 
 
290 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 or else die choked with the tears that could be his only answer 
 to the call. . . . 
 
 Welmon the nigger could hear the call and answer it. Even 
 now he was probably strolling from Jefferson's rooms, down 
 Regent Street to Oxford Circus with its lights and sputtering 
 shadows from the great arc-lamps. Grandly oblivious but 
 one with them all in the might of his limbs he would play 
 his part in the tremendous mystery of life with policemen and 
 prostitutes, politicians and flower-girls, newsboys, waitresses, 
 cabmen, and loafers. . . . 
 
 Petrie bitterly cursed his luck, but in cursing it he said no 
 word. He only thought of the warm, damp London air 
 that playfully smites the face of a loiterer as he rounds a 
 corner. He thought of sunshine beating gloriously upon the 
 head and shoulders of any man who might chance to trudge 
 up the cinder track to Wilton's Hill, of the tightening of 
 muscles as one trudged the last steep bit of path, of the loosen- 
 ing of hamstrings as one relaxed to sit at last upon the 
 bench. . . . 
 
 There was a ring at the bell, an opening and a shutting of the 
 front door ; but there was no hum of voices in the sitting-room 
 below him, so it could not have been George and Sylvia that 
 had rung the bell. 
 
 The picture on the next page was " A New and Charming 
 Photographic Study of Miss Madeline Stringer." 
 
 The words were offensive to a degree, nauseating though 
 they stated nothing whatever but the truth. The study was 
 both new and charming. It was Madeline to the life, as 
 Madeline's press photographs always were lips slightly parted 
 in a smile, eyes wide open and gazing full into the lens of the 
 camera. 
 
 So they gazed now into the eyes of Petrie. As he looked 
 back at her he smiled, till only the glow was left in his eyes 
 from the expression of hunger and longing with which he had 
 looked at the crowd on the railway platform. 
 
 For many minutes he gazed at Madge, smiling and musing 
 at the casual oddness of the chance that brought her picture 
 before him at that precise moment. 
 
 He gazed till Mrs Petrie came in. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 291 
 
 " What's the boy doing to-night ? " he asked. " Still in 
 his precious catalogues ? " 
 
 " N no," said she, with curious hesitation ; " he went out 
 about half an hour ago." 
 
 " Visiting the brother-in-law," Petrie suggested. " It's a 
 great pity that George can't afford to buy a car. That boy- 
 will know no proper sleep till he has persuaded some relative 
 to buy one." 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs Petrie eagerly ; " quite likely." 
 
 She began to gather up and tidy the papers scattered on the 
 bed. 
 
 " Sounded rather like a telegram about an hour ago," said 
 Petrie casually. 
 
 " 'm. . . . Yes. . . . Did, didn't it ? ... Want these 
 again to-night ? Shall I leave them on the table ? " 
 
 " Was it a telegram, Elizabeth ? " 
 
 " Well I believe yes, it was a telegram, Charles," she 
 stammered. " Conrad went to the door, you see. I I 
 believe I hear him coming now." 
 
 She heard, as a matter of fact, no sound at all. It was a 
 mean, deliberate lie ; but she had no alternative. She made 
 hurriedly for the door. 
 
 He stopped her as with a pistol shot. " Elizabeth ! You've 
 got to tell me. Was it Cynthia ? Ill ... or coming home 
 suddenly or anything of that sort ? " 
 
 " No," said Mrs Petrie quietly, and he believed her. " It's 
 nothing to do with Cynthia." 
 
 She went down to the dining-room, and began once more 
 to wait. 
 
 When, a few minutes later, she did hear Conrad, she went 
 to the door to meet him. 
 
 " Well, dear ? " she asked, her hands upon his shoulders. 
 
 " Oh it it took a deuce of a time to get him," Conrad 
 said, " and when I did get him, it was the very dickens trying 
 to hear him." 
 
 " Well ? " she asked again, still holding him. " He he 
 knows, dear. I had to admit it." 
 
 Silently, and deep within himself, Conrad swore a great 
 oath. To her he said quietly, " Knows what ? " 
 
292 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " That there was a telegram, dear. And he must have 
 guessed by now that it was from Doctor Jefferson." She 
 clutched suddenly at the lapels of Conrad's coat, raised her 
 face to his, and said, " Darling boy tell me 
 
 Once more the great oath reverberated in Conrad's soul. 
 For an instant he was baffled, staggered by the demand upon 
 him. Then, with a casual shrug, " We can bluff him easily 
 enough, mummy," he said, wondering how the blazes they 
 could succeed in bluffing him. . . . Suddenly, by the purest 
 chance of inspiration, he lowered his head and whispered the 
 single word, " Car." 
 
 It was a wild lie, but it acted like magic. On the instant 
 she loosed her clutch upon him and stood back. " Oh, dear," 
 she said wearily, but relieved ; " I I do hope it will be for 
 the best." 
 
 They went into the sitting-room, where Conrad looked about 
 him. 
 
 " Nothing to drink, I note," said he. " Thirsty work, 
 sitting in a telephone exchange, staring at two homogeneous 
 young women, and waiting for a trunk call." 
 
 He went into the scullery and drank a tumbler of water. 
 
 " Been"up to see him lately ? " he asked, when he came back. 
 
 " Yes, dear, only a few minutes ago." 
 
 " Was he cheery as ever ? " he asked next, doing all he could 
 to make the question appear to be the merest accident. 
 
 " Oh yes," said Mrs Petrie. " He was deep in his papers and 
 things." 
 
 " Well," said Conrad, then paused. " I I'll tell you what, 
 mother. You just scuttle along up to him and keep him 
 company. I'll come up presently and turn him in. ... 'bout 
 half an hour or so. . . ." 
 
 " But, my dear . . ." she began to protest, a little puzzled. 
 
 " Oh, just an idea I got from young Jefferson," he explained. 
 " If that blighter doesn't marry Cynthia, by the way, I'll eat 
 my hat. You see, the governor might get bored at times, 
 being left alone so much. . . . Must be pretty dull. ... If 
 you go and keep him company for a bit . . ." 
 
 " It always seems to me," said Mrs Petrie, " that he enjoys 
 being left alone ; particularly when he's got plenty to read." 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 293 
 
 " Oh yes, rather," he agreed. " Anyhow, he'll be champing 
 at the bit over this telegram mystery now, so run you along up. 
 You can let on that it was from Jeff contents unknown. 
 I'll find some contents for him." He gave her a knowing, 
 confidential look that sent her smiling from the room. 
 
 6 
 
 When the door had closed behind her, Conrad stuck his fist 
 under his chin and knitted his brows together in uttermost 
 perplexity. " Ker-rist ! " he said wearily. Even to his 
 inmost self Conrad burlesqued, and he burlesqued even his 
 blasphemies. 
 
 When he heard his mother coming out of the bedroom he 
 went in to the old study and furnished his pockets with a 
 screwdriver and an adjustable spanner. Then he went upstairs. 
 
 " And what of young Jefferson ? " Petrie asked as he drifted 
 in. 
 
 " What's all this I'm hearing about young Jefferson ? " 
 said Conrad in his best manner. 
 
 But Petrie remained tiredly serious. " Out with it, boy," 
 he said. 
 
 Conrad very seriously answered. " The silly idiot. I'm 
 blest if I can see why he wanted all the bother and fag of 
 being rung up. He only can't get down till a good deal later 
 to-morrow. Not till till the afternoon, in fact." 
 
 " H'm," Petrie remarked. " I was not, as a matter of fact, 
 expecting him till quite late in the afternoon. Not before 
 six." 
 
 Conrad cursed again, but said, very calmly, " Later than 
 that, I mean. That's just the- point, though. I can't see 
 why he should want to keep a fellow hanging about the post 
 office for nearly an hour over a footling thing like that." 
 
 Petrie laughed. " Poor old boy," said he, with great com- 
 passion. " It is one of the big tragic facts of life that at your 
 particular stage of development, when you feel that you have 
 most to conceal, the technique of deceit and concealment is 
 at its poorest. You fail dismally, and will continue failing 
 
294 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 for the next three or four years. This time, too, you made the 
 elementary but grave error of taking a woman into your con- 
 fidence. . . . What, in short, about the car ? " 
 
 " Damn ! " said Conrad, this time bravely aloud. But 
 secretly he was delighted. The thing was developing splendidly 
 according to plan. He fidgeted with the spanner in his 
 pocket. " Such wisdom," said he, " is thine, O merchant of 
 slaves, that thou canst guess the restest for thyselfest, no 
 doubt." He was beginning to trust more now to the chance 
 turns that conversations had a way of taking than to his own 
 powers of directing them. He drifted across the room and sat 
 down upon the bed. 
 
 The conversation did not develop at all. His eyes, roving 
 aimlessly about the room, rested at last on the wooden joist 
 above Petrie's head. He raised his eyebrows and softly whistled. 
 " Well, I'm jiggered ! " said he. 
 
 He drew the chair up close to the bed and climbed upon it. 
 In an instant the spanner from his pocket was adjusted to 
 the nut that held the joist. " Well, I'm hanged ! " he remarked. 
 " Just as I expected. . . . Cracking like billy-o." 
 
 Petrie was looking up at the wood. " Cracking ? " said he. 
 " I don't see it." 
 
 " Possibly not," said Conrad drily. " But you might 
 admit that even you are not likely to see the crack along the 
 top of a beam when you happen to be lying under it." 
 
 The nut was off by now and in his pocket. He carried the 
 chair round to the other side of the bed, removed the other 
 nut, drew the rope out of the pulley and flung it over the bottom 
 of the bed. Then he lifted off the beam, which was as sound 
 as a bell, and got down. 
 
 " Let's see," said Petrie. 
 
 " Half a jiff," said Conrad. " I might as well take a squint 
 at the other one * while I'm on my feet,' as the poet sings." 
 
 He laid the joist on the floor out of Petrie's sight, and moved 
 his chair again. 
 
 " N no," he said, examining the ends of the bottom 
 joist. " This is not so bad. . . . It'll do for the time being." 
 But quite casually, while he spoke, he drew the rope of the 
 second pulley, made a coil of it and hung it over the door-knob. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 295 
 
 " Let's see the crack," said Petrie. " That carpenter fellow 
 must take the thing back. He swore it could never crack. 
 He put in an iron tube or something." 
 
 " No need for him to have it back," said Conrad. " I 
 can fix it up with a clamp to-morrow." However, he made 
 no move to show it to Petrie, but stayed by the door, his hand 
 upon the coil of rope. 
 
 " I'll tell you what, old fellow," said Petrie, on a sudden 
 inspiration. " I wish you'd move the sound one up to the top 
 here, and push the tackle through again, so that I can hoist 
 myself up in the morning." 
 
 " Oh, I'll hoist you up in the morning, at any time you like," 
 said Conrad. " I shall be getting up at sparrow-cough myself 
 to-morrow." 
 
 Petrie studied him very intently for a few moments, while 
 he as intently studied the name stamped upon the handle of 
 his spanner. 
 
 " Conrad," said he. " I have quite suddenly begun to take 
 a violent and passionate interest in the cracks of that beam." 
 His eyes wrinkled up in the old, whimsical smile. " Show 'em 
 to me, young fella." 
 
 Conrad, bluffing to the last, shrugged his shoulders. " I've 
 had enough of mechanics for one day," said he. " I'm dead 
 fagged off to bed. You can see it all to-morrow." The 
 morrow, he saw, would have to take care of itself. He had, 
 for the moment, achieved what he had set out to achieve. 
 The cord was in his hand. 
 
 So he lighted the candle at Petrie's elbow and turned down 
 the gas. He tucked the joist under his arm, drifted loosely 
 back to the door. 
 
 Before he could open it, Petrie, still smiting at him, said, 
 " Liar ! . . . Poor, miserable, rotten, inefficient liar. . . ." 
 
 Conrad hesitated. But he had got the jolly old beam and 
 the rope ; he kept on reminding himself of this, exulting in 
 it. And he tightened his hold upon them. 
 
 " Come and sit down, old fellow," said Petrie, gently. 
 Then, after a pause, " You can't do it, old man not at your 
 time of life. No man can expect to lie with any hope of success 
 till he is at least forty. Even then, many are called, but, as 
 
296 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 in all art, few very few are chosen. I do not think that 
 even after forty you will be one of them. . . . Too much of 
 the bulldog breed business about you, too little of the Celt. 
 . . . Poor old boy ; I must say I don't envy you the last hour 
 or so. . . ." 
 
 Conrad had nothing to say to that. He stood exactly 
 where he was, fumbling for thought, unobtrusively wriggling 
 his ankles about, but holding, for all he was worth, to the 
 trophies he had won. 
 
 " Sit down, old fellow," said Petrie again. " Sit down, and 
 we will make great sport of young Jefferson." 
 
 " He is a bit of an ass," Conrad admitted. He sat down on 
 the edge of the bed, with the precious joist still under his arm. 
 ;< You you don't mean to say that you were in the least 
 er impressed by the things he said ? " Petrie asked. 
 
 Conrad shook his head. " Didn't see how you could possibly 
 be such an idiot," said he. 
 
 " Precisely," said Petrie. " That is exactly what I meant. 
 Thank you for the tribute. I should like to know, then, why 
 you went to all this trouble of dismantling my machine." 
 
 " The blighter made me promise," came through the lump 
 in Conrad's throat. 
 
 " The blighter," said Petrie, " will experience some minutes 
 of extreme discomfort to-morrow." 
 
 " Yes," snorted Conrad, " and then he will see what a fine 
 mess I made of the job. ... He said it would take some 
 doing to do it properly, without your catching on to it." 
 
 " I wonder what the devil could have put it into the fellow's 
 head ? " mused Petrie. 
 
 " Gitche Manito, of course. . . . That black-eyed Chirgwin 
 friend you were closeted with most of the day ; Whistling 
 Rufus." 
 
 They paused, intent apparently on nothing but each one's 
 evading the other's glances in the nickering candle-light. 
 
 " Well," said Petrie at length. " You can put it back again, 
 now, old fellow, can't you ? " 
 
 Conrad hesitated. He looked up at his father under his 
 lowering brows ; looked down again. " The beggar made me 
 promise," he mumbled. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 297 
 
 " Very well," said Petrie ; " but what about making me 
 promise too ? " 
 
 " 'm," iaid Conrad. 
 
 " To to be perfectly honest with you, old chap," Petrie 
 went on, " speaking now as man to man, I think I'm over the 
 worst of this affair. It's only beginnings that are really hard 
 readjustments. I've done all that now ; got readjusted. So 
 you can give them back to me ropes and staves and all the rest 
 of it. I'd miss my old engine, you see. . . ." 
 
 Still Conrad hesitated. He had won the things very hard. 
 " My hand upon it, Bassanio," said Petrie. 
 They shook hands, and Conrad unfolded himself, and got, 
 once more, upon his feet. 
 
 The situation was tense, too tense to have a prolonged 
 existence with Conrad. He shrugged his shoulders, and 
 summed it all up : " Having made which speech, and feeling 
 to the inmost spine of him a first-prize idiot, the lad climbed 
 very cheerfully to a point of vantage and proceeded to do the 
 old man's bidding. . . . With a nay and a no, and a ninney- 
 ninney-o." 
 
 Petrie watched him upon the chair, tightening up the nuts 
 with his adjustable spanner. " I perceive, Conrad," said he, 
 " that the great secret of Life is already yours namely, to stand 
 slightly to a flank of it, and to meet all its problems in a spirit 
 of benevolent neutrality. ... By the way, I venture to 
 suggest, in the light of recent disclosures, that young Jefferson 
 will be here in time for lunch to-morrow." 
 
 " As a matter of fact," said Conrad, " he is catching the 
 nine-seventeen in the morning." 
 
Chapter Five 
 
 i 
 
 PETRIE argued that since a Venetian palace could be 
 turned into a railway station or a Limehouse dock during 
 the fall of a curtain on a stage, they need have no bother 
 whatever about moving a simple household from Pelchester 
 to Adelphi. Kimber, his landlord in the High Street, would 
 manage it. 
 
 With astonishing dispatch he did so. 
 
 The flat below Petrie's original one had been taken over 
 as well, and prepared for Mrs Petrie, Conrad, and Miss Stark's 
 office. The old flat contained Petrie's bedroom and study, 
 and the dining-room. 
 
 They had been there about a week, when Conrad went with 
 Jefferson to buy the car, and to see what arrangement could 
 be made for getting Petrie's wheeled chair into it. 
 
 As soon as the body had been adapted to their requirements, 
 Conrad insisted on a run. Jefferson suggested that they 
 should try it out for the first time without Petrie, so it was 
 arranged that he and Conrad and Mrs Petrie should go. 
 Jefferson mentioned it casually to Madge, and Madge at once 
 said, " Do stay out a couple of hours or more, Jeff, if you can. 
 I must have a talk with Hal." 
 
 2 
 
 She began her talk by saying, " It's so absurdly hard to treat 
 you as an invalid, Hal ; and still it's quite impossible to 
 talk as though nothing had happened, because so much has. 
 It's just like having to begin all over again it may be only 
 your old beard that makes one feel like that. But but Hal 
 dear, I I've a tremendous lot to say to you." 
 
 He was dressed in the old Pelchester tweed suit with the 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 299 
 
 bulging pockets, seated in his chair in the window of the 
 study. Through the floor came the muffled rattle of Miss 
 Stark and the typewriter. 
 
 Madge moved her chair a little nearer to him, and laid her 
 hand upon his, waiting for him to answer. 
 
 Slowly he raised the hand to his lips, slowly lowered it again. 
 " Dear, funny old Madge," he said, and looked out of the 
 window. Presently he looked at her. " Look at this," he 
 said, and pointed to his feet. 
 
 Madge looked down, only to say " Well ? " 
 
 " Ah," said Petrie, " you do not perceive. As long as I 
 was in the habit of walking, I wore in season and out of 
 season soft, shabby slippers. Now that I have no use whatever 
 for my feet, I take a tremendous pride in wearing boots ; 
 and Welmon takes as great a pride in lacing them upon me. 
 For a space of twenty years as long as I was a provincial clerk, 
 my delight lay in wearing negligible collars and a vast, flowing 
 cravat ; but the moment I became an artist of international 
 repute, I began to adorn myself as a stockbroker. That is 
 a most interesting trait of human nature, and it is to be the 
 spiritual plot of our next comedy. I had just begun to work 
 upon it when you came in." 
 
 " I want to talk to you, Hal dear," she said, a little im- 
 patiently. " About us, I mean ; not, for the moment, about 
 comedies." 
 
 " And can you be so very sure," said Petrie, " that we are 
 not among the comedies, you and I ? " It was not as bright 
 repartee that he put the question ; it was said softly, and quite 
 earnestly, with just a touch of the old whimsy. 
 
 " I don't know," said Madge, " but even if we are, there is 
 no reason for us to be fools over it. ... We had a talk once 
 a big talk, do you remember, about four months ago. . . ." 
 
 " We carried that talk to completion," he said quietly. 
 
 " M'yes," said Madge, " if one ever can carry such talks to 
 completion. But you must remember, Hal, conditions have 
 altered since then. Things have happened." 
 
 " On the contrary," said Petrie, " nothing whatever has 
 happened, Madge." He looked quizzically down at his feet 
 again and added, " Nothing, I mean, that is not merely a 
 
3oo THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 prank. Our means of locomotion have undergone slight 
 modifications, but we are still, essentially, what we were then. 
 We talked then, decently and fairly, and came to a decent 
 and fair decision." 
 
 " Yes," said Madge quietly, " and the decision included 
 certain things. ... I have tried to be decent and fair and 
 generous. I am trying now to play the game by everyone, 
 dear, just as you always play the game, but but I simply 
 must say this thing first, and have done with it. ... I mean, 
 when we decided things as we did decide them that night, 
 I was to have a great deal of you, Hal. I was to have all, in 
 fact, of Harold Rockleigh and Harold Rockleigh was to have 
 all of me." 
 
 " Never did I agree to any such thing, little Madge," Petrie 
 said very softly, stroking her hand and playing with the ring 
 upon her finger. " And never, my dear, would you have 
 suggested it. We were only to love, Madge. We agreed 
 that we were to remain for ever what we were you a poor 
 player upon the stage, and I a jester with my cap and bells. 
 We were to go on playing and jesting, because we could do it 
 so uncommonly well. We were to love but we were to go 
 on laughing and weeping the laughter and tears of the great 
 blind, dumb thing Life that cannot laugh its own laughter 
 and weep its own tears. We loved' and we decided that night 
 to keep Love in our lives as we lived them not to take it away 
 and hide it in a new life in some shady corner of a suburb, 
 or some country stronghold." 
 
 " Yes," said Madge, " but there is no Harold Rockleigh 
 any more. You see oh my dear, dear Hal when we had 
 that talk, it was not a question of choice between me and 
 another person." 
 
 " Is it now, Madge ? " 
 
 " Fes" She became quite calm again. She had gone, 
 time and time again, over every link in the chain of every 
 argument. This, she knew, was an essential point that had 
 to be made. " Yes, it is," she repeated. Then all of a 
 sudden, the lucid arguments became blurred and obscured. 
 All she could say was, " Oh Hal, I am trying to be fair, my dear 
 fair to both of us." 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 301 
 
 Petrie very gently patted her hand. " I think I know the 
 conclusion you have come to, little Madge," he said ; " but 
 let's hear the arguments that bring you to it." 
 
 " There are no arguments, Hal," she said. " It is only a 
 matter of fact. I love you, my dear. For some reason or 
 other, we did not behave about it like most other people would 
 have done. We were just careless and happy, instead of 
 worrying and miserable. Ever since you came into my life, 
 it all changed for me. Art changed for me ; It was only 
 then that I began to but there ; that is nothing but trying 
 to tell you that I loved you, and you know that already. 
 The main thing to consider, Hal, the jac t that I spoke of, 
 is that I am a much stronger woman than your than Mrs 
 Petrie." 
 
 Petrie, taking her two hands in his, laughed softly at her. 
 " Madgie," he said, " you're cheating, you know. You're 
 trying to manage me ; trying to tell me that I should be less 
 trouble to you than I am to her." 
 
 " That isn't what I mean," said she. " At least not 
 quite that. I mean, dear, I am fitter to to I am a fitter 
 mate for you, Hal. One ought to consider that, now that 
 you need . . ." 
 
 " All I need now," said he, " that I did not need before is 
 a negro ; some one who can pick me up in his arms if need be 
 all six feet odd of me, and lift me from one place to another. 
 Such a man is Welmon." 
 
 Madge pondered a few moments, feeling the caress of his 
 cool hands, staring out of the window. It was time, she 
 decided, for her trump card. " Suppose you saw that it was 
 too much for her, Hal ? " she asked. 
 
 Petrie did not immediately answer. His hands continued, 
 listlessly, to caress. He too stared out of the window. " Lord, 
 yes," said he. The faintly bantering tone had gone. His 
 words came listless and weary. " And isn't that the real 
 hell of it ? " 
 
 It was not a question, but it turned her round immediately 
 to face him. " Don't be so absurd," she said. " I only meant 
 that that well, she is rather a frail little person, isn't she ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Petrie, still listless and bowed by the thought 
 
302 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 she had started in him. " You meant, though, that she is 
 looking strained and worn ? " 
 
 " I meant no such thing," she retorted. " How could I, 
 when I have only known her for a few weeks ? I said she 
 looks frail ; and I am very strong." 
 
 Petrie smiled at her, patted her hand, but said nothing. 
 
 " The fact of the matter is, Hal," she went on, " that you 
 are not really trying to discuss this thing, as you did discuss 
 it once before. You don't seem to be in the mood. Perhaps 
 it's the new comedy that's on your mind. . . ." 
 
 " You are not trying to discuss it either, Maddie," he said 
 gently. " And the fact of the matter is that the discussion 
 was over four months ago. You are trying now simply to 
 manage me to reverse the old decision." 
 
 She was silent some moments : then drew her chair still 
 nearer. Her arm stole through his, her head rested on his 
 shoulder. " Facts facts facts ! " she said, contemptuously. 
 " Hal, there is only one fact, dear boy. I love you with the 
 same old greedy boisterous love that came to me in the very 
 first minute that I saw you and heard you speak. It is miser- 
 able being so utterly without you ; and " tears were in her 
 eyes, tears choked her voice ; " and to see you, to think of you 
 stuck away by yourself, wasted on some one who does not 
 who cannot love you as I do. Oh Hal, how can she love you 
 as I do ? It it makes my heart ache to think of you so. . . ." 
 
 Petrie stroked her cheek, felt the tears upon it. " So you 
 are beginning to be sorry for me," he observed. " Well, I 
 suppose, sooner or later, that had to come. . . ." 
 
 " You're just trying to exasperate me, Hal," she said im- 
 patiently, and moved away from him. "Yes. I am sorry 
 for you. And I have told you why. But I am a good deal 
 sorrier for myself. I would not be sorry for myself or for you 
 either, if you had me to to be with you to go on" loving 
 you." 
 
 " And do you think," said Petrie, " that that would be a 
 sufficient profession for a natural artist ? Being with a helpless 
 old buffer loving him ? I say ' an old buffer ' simply because 
 I happen to be one, and a cripple to boot. But it applied 
 just as much when my locomotion was normal. No, dear girl. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 303 
 
 Being near another person is an accident, something like a 
 shower or a burst of sunshine. It is not a profession, a career." 
 
 " Career ! " she mocked. " Profession ! What are they 
 to me ? You have been my career, my profession, ever since 
 the first moment I saw you. Women are like that, you know, 
 Hal." 
 
 " We were speaking of artists, Maddie." 
 
 " I suppose I am not much of an artist, then," she said. 
 " Was I anything of an artist till till five years ago ? I 
 was mediocre, through and through. The only thing that 
 can make a great artist of a woman is being loved by an 
 artist. I am no artist, Hal. I I you are just everything 
 to me. . . ." 
 
 " You are a very great artist," he said slowly, " and so, 
 by the nature of things, nothing in the world is ' everything 
 to you.' Everything is its very own, and that is what makes 
 you an artist." 
 
 For a moment his restraint was gone. He gathered her two 
 hands in his, bent over them as far as the leather strap around 
 him would allow, kissed them and pressed them to him. 
 " Madge," he said ; " little Madge. ... If you only knew 
 what you do to me, with these sacrifices, these offers of life 
 and soul to me. . . . Oh, they are a torture . . . ghastly 
 . . . unbearable. . . . And some of them are so deucedly 
 comic ! Old Jeff with his ' bachelor diggings ' for me ; Conrad ; 
 that blithering George with his spare bedroom ; Welmon ; 
 Miss Stark. . . . Lord ! I thought I had opened the eyes 
 of all of you but you only laughed and went your several 
 w^ys, with your eyes still shut." 
 
 " But to sacrifice, as you put it," she said, " is itself a joy 
 sometimes." 
 
 " And precisely that," he said, " is the uttermost hell of it." 
 Then, bitterly, he continued : " And the responsibility of 
 assigning this joy of sacrifice to a particular person rests upon 
 me ? ... Well, I have taken it." Very slowly he filled his 
 pipe, lighted it, and then went on, smiling upon her through 
 the smoke. " You are a wonderful creature, Madge. You 
 have performed the miracle of making it possible for a man 
 for a man of quite average decency and scrupulousness to 
 
304 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 talk to you, and to caress you so, in this particular room and 
 to hold his head up to himself the whole time. . . . But I 
 just want you to think of another woman a woman of a 
 totally different kind. . . ." 
 
 " As though I haven't ! " 
 
 " I know but think like this. Compared with you she is 
 a very little thing, a pigmy. Unlike you, she is no artist : 
 nothing, I mean, where she is concerned, is its own. Things 
 only exist for her just in so far as they are hers. She is simply 
 and entirely Woman. She began her little life by being what 
 you suggest and what I once suggested your becoming. 
 She adopted me, or rather she accepted me, as her career. 
 However, what I meant to say is, that she knew the lean years, 
 my dear and they were devilish lean. I see that now. She 
 bore them. It might be necessary to admit that she bore them 
 badly ; but she bore them. She also bore, incidentally, four 
 children ; and one of the four will become, I think, a rare 
 musician. . . ." His eyes kindled upon this thought. " That 
 is something," he murmured only half aloud ; " that is some- 
 thing ! " 
 
 Madeline watched him ; then, without a trace of bitterness, 
 said, " I suppose you had to think that of me. But it 
 isn't true. I have thought of her, Hal dear ; but that doesn't 
 make anything easier. Liking her, even positively liking her 
 I cannot help loving you and wanting you for myself. I think 
 of her. I am thinking of her, even when I say this. ... I 
 I don't mean to suggest that we should elope, you and I, 
 and make a tremendous smash. No ; I only mean that we 
 should there, you see, I have no plan, really. But can't we 
 make one, Hal dear ? Something just a little like it was before. 
 I don't know the details, and somehow it's hateful to talk about 
 them. But but, your nearness, Hal ; your mere presence, 
 surely, surely it is more to me than it can be to her. ... I 
 could retire, Hal. It is best that I should retire, now. . . ." 
 
 With a jerk upon the wooden rim of the wheel, Petrie 
 twisted his chair so that he faced her. " Retire \ " he ex- 
 claimed. " My God ! retire ! " and then quietly, " Rot ! 
 Idleness and drift for you ! . . . Listen, Madge. You have 
 heard this before, and you know it to be true. It is according 
 

 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 305 
 
 to the measure of what they are that people do. You are a 
 maker, a creator and so I have loved you, and always must 
 love you for what you are. Can you begin merely to carry 
 and to fetch, now ? to rot, Madge ? I should hate you, and 
 despise you. But you could not do it. You would fail in the 
 attempt to become a coolie, to fill in, with a loose programme 
 of fetching and carrying and a little sewing, the intervals 
 between this vague loving. . . ." 
 
 Suddenly, as he had become fierce and scornful, he became 
 quiet again, and gentle. " We've got to play the game, 
 Maddie. . . . Not only in the boy-scout sense of the word. 
 I mean the game, in the bigger sense : Life. It's a bigger 
 thing, this * Life,' than you and me and little Betty bigger 
 than each of us, and all of us put together. We are really 
 quite little things, we people ; we don't matter so very much, 
 one way or the other. We hop and strut about on our hind 
 legs, till perhaps we are struck down for a while into a 
 sitting posture. . . . But this Life, Madge, this vague 
 something outside us, of which we artists succeed occasionally 
 in catching a glimpse it's bigger, much bigger, and goes on 
 whether we walk or get pushed and pulled about in a chair. 
 And you speak of love, Maddie, as though it were a little 
 thing, a a circumstance as though . . ." 
 
 She laid her hand upon his, stopping him. " I have been 
 afraid, my dear, that you felt at at a disadvantage now. You 
 must know what I mean, Hal. How how was I to know 
 vvhether, perhaps, you wanted me but were afraid, just because, 
 low . . . I just wanted to tell you, to assure you that you are 
 the same to me, and more, my dear. . . ." She dashed the 
 tears from her eyes, and smiled at him. " I could have said 
 that in the first sentence, couldn't I ? " 
 
 Then she placed her hands behind his head and kissed 
 him. 
 
 He closed his eyes, breathing the fragrance of her, drinking 
 of her might and life and vigour. 
 
 And you would be willing to rot," he said softly ; " to 
 rot ; to throw it all up Life. . . . Madge ! would you ? 
 If I would let you ? " 
 
 She smiled. " If it could do you any good, I would be very 
 
306 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 happy to lie in the street and let your Black man drive your 
 new car over my body." 
 
 " But if it could do me no good if it could end only in your 
 own destruction ? " 
 
 " Then," she said, " I suppose I would begin very seriously 
 studying the part you have written for me the greatest part, 
 old Freddie says, that has ever been written." 
 
 " And you would be playing the game ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 Madeline had moved to the window, and was looking out 
 of it. 
 
 " And is it utterly necessary," she asked, " that I should 
 see you no more ? Except at your tea-parties ? " 
 
 " It is not necessary that you should look out of the win- 
 dow," said Petrie, " when you are asking such perfectly civil 
 questions." 
 
 She turned, and leaned upon his desk. 
 
 " I I suggest," he went on, " that you come and take lunch 
 with us, like I came and lunched with you in the old, pre- 
 sedentary days, once a week, and stay and talk to me, Madgie, 
 till whenever you must go." 
 
 She sprang across to him and laid her hands upon his 
 shoulders. " Oh, but could I, Hal ? dare I ? Wouldn't 
 oh, my dear, it would be perfectly hateful for for her to 
 think. . . ." 
 
 " Are you not still a friend of mine ? " said Petrie. 
 
 " Well ! " she said, " I don't feel ashamed of myself. I 
 can't and won't." 
 
 " I am only surprised," said Petrie, " that you should feel 
 called upon to say so." 
 
 " But it would hurt, Hal," she said ; " it would hurt 
 terribly, for for Mrs Petrie to think that I oh, but what 
 is one to do if one loves ? " 
 
 He was silent a moment, looking at her. " That," said he, 
 " is a question that I have failed to answer, even to my own 
 satisfaction. Our present civilisation is an attempted answer 
 and a poor one. . . . But the thing that beats me, Maddie, 
 is the astonishing reasonableness of all of you." 
 
 He was wondering, too, whether she would have been so 
 reasonable if he had been a little less sentimental. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 307 
 
 Madeline burst in upon his wondering. " Reasonable ! 
 D'you think it's reasonableness that makes me agree with 
 you ? ... It isn't reasonableness, my dear it's just what 
 you said about the lean years. It it made me feel so small ; 
 so unfit to demand anything. . . ." 
 
 Petrie slowly shook his head. " Oh no," said he ; " it is 
 what I say your very good sense. You have all been so 
 wonderfully sound. Possibly it is I that have educated you 
 dl. ... At any rate, there is only Cynthia left now. There 
 will be all of you to help with her. We shall see how she behaves 
 over it, in about a month's time." 
 
 3 
 
 A week later, Conrad was about to drive Petrie and Mrs 
 Petrie and Madeline out in what he always called (for fear of 
 exposing his emotion if he used any serious term) the " Jigger." 
 
 As a concession to Mrs Petrie, he was not to take the wheel 
 till the worst of the traffic had been negotiated. A mechanic 
 :rom the garage was to drive them as far as Ealing. 
 
 Half of the back seat of the car was detachable, and Petrie's 
 :hair occupied the spare cubic space into which it is always 
 possible to squeeze the fifth person and the sixth ; so Conrad 
 vas forced to travel to Ealing by train and there await them. 
 
 He came into the study, and Petrie handed him a telegraph 
 'orm. He read, " Petrie Grand Hotel Edinburgh Accept 
 immediately well done Petrie." " Right," said he, pocketing 
 it. " I'll send it from the Strand. So long. A quarter to 
 three, don't forget. And keep the blighter up to it." With 
 that he allowed the spirit to carry him rapidly away towards 
 the District Railway. 
 
 Petrie smiled after him ; then he wheeled his chair into the 
 window, and reread the letter that lay open in his lap. 
 
 It was for the third or fourth time that he was reading it, 
 yet the gestures of his shoulders and the hand that held his 
 pipe, the twinkle of his eyes and the nodding of his head 
 showed a delight that was unlikely to be exhausted by a score 
 of readings. 
 
3o8 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Madeline came in while he thus read and chuckled. 
 
 " My dear girl," said he ; " you would never guess what's 
 happened not in a thousand years. They gave another show 
 at Edinburgh a couple of nights ago, and Cynthia's reception 
 was enormous. And then what do you think ? . . . Old 
 Wilkes has asked her to join his American tour. She'll be 
 with Sebaste, if you please who was my contemporary. 
 Sebaste will make her accompany her. . . . And she's twenty- 
 three ! What do you think of that ? " 
 
 Madeline sat down. " Dear old Hal," she said ; " you must 
 be pleased." 
 
 " Pleased ! " laughed Petrie. " My dear girl, that is lovely. 
 Pleased ! It is like Elizabeth describing Welmon's visage as 
 ' a new face.' Yes, I am pleased. . . . But would you believe 
 it ? She wasn't quite sure whether she ought to accept ! 
 She wondered if she ought not to consider her original work 
 composing. Bless my soul, I believe the only factor that really 
 weighed in favour of the thing is the fee five hundred guineas. 
 I suppose if she had known the black secret of Hal Rockleigh's 
 doubloons, she would have refused it. Imagine that refusing 
 a tour in America with Sebaste at twenty-three ! Lord ! " 
 
 Petrie seldom spoke in italics ; when he did, the italics 
 meant a great deal. 
 
 " Well," said Madge, " possibly it is only the paternal 
 blessing she is after. She probably accepted days ago knowing 
 quite well that she would get it." 
 
 " Rot ! " said Petrie. " I gave her the freedom of of the 
 world, years ago ! She knows that." 
 
 Mrs Petrie bustled in. Seeing the letter in Petrie's hand, 
 she smiled and said, " Oh, so you've heard the news, Madeline ? 
 Good-morning, my dear." 
 
 " Yes," said Madeline. " Isn't this fellow just like a great 
 schoolboy over it ? ... But I'm not surprised. At twenty- 
 three ..." she shrugged her shoulders. " Well, I suppose 
 things come more easily to some people than to others." 
 
 " We must go along to lunch," said Mrs Petrie. " The 
 boy extracted all kinds of promises from me before he went. 
 We must hurry." 
 
 The two women went out, followed by Petrie, his bony 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 309 
 
 hands manoeuvring his chair over the little ramps that Conrad 
 had screwed to the threshold of the doors. 
 
 When Welmon had brought in the coffee, Petrie said 
 suddenly, " I say suppose that girl were to refuse, after 
 all ! " 
 
 " Why should she refuse, my de,ar ? " asked Mrs Petrie, 
 " after your advising her to accept." 
 
 " Lord, don't ask me things like that," said Petrie. " How 
 should I know why people do these things ? " 
 
 " Of course she won't refuse," said Mrs Petrie. " You are 
 just fussing now, my dear. We ought to be hurrying." 
 
 " Yes, indeed we ought," said Madge. " It's me that 
 Conrad will blame." 
 
 " If I had told her to wire her decision ..." Petrie began, 
 but Welmon came in just then to announce the arrival of 
 the car. 
 
 It was on Haven Green that Conrad had arranged to meet 
 them, just beyond the station. 
 
 As the car pulled up, and Conrad lounged upright from the 
 railing upon which he had been leaning, near the cab-stand, 
 Petrie caught sight of a sign that swung over a shop door. It 
 was a small square sign the national coat of arms in red upon 
 a white ground. 
 
 " Just a minute, old fellow," he said to Conrad. " Before 
 you get in, just send off a telegram for me. You've got the 
 address. Just * Wire decision and address.' ' 
 
 " Good Lord ! " grumbled Conrad. " Still worrying about 
 that confounded girl. Just pull her along to the Post Office 
 across there, Smith." 
 
 Madge, seated beside Petrie, took no notice. Mrs Petrie, 
 in front, looked round for an instant. Then she looked ahead 
 of her again. 
 
 Petrie merely pulled out his watch, and saw that it was 
 ten minutes to three. 
 
 " Now," said Conrad, as he climbed into the place vacated by 
 Smith. " You are about to see some dust. We've done this 
 bit of road before. How long did it take us, Smith ? Just 
 
310 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 under the half-hour ? Well, we shall see." He pulled on his 
 goggles. " By the way, dad, you don't want to keep this 
 fellow hanging about here, do you ? Couldn't he just as well 
 meet us at the house ? " 
 
 " Oh, my dear," said Mrs Petrie, " we agreed, you know. . . ." 
 
 ;< You hadn't seen me drive then, mother," said Conrad. 
 
 " Have we now ? " suggested Petrie. " Still, I think we 
 might risk it, Elizabeth. It would be a noble end." 
 
 "Right," said Conrad. " We'll be back at the flat be- 
 tween half-past six and seven, Smith. You've got the 
 number." 
 
 The car moved off, leaving Smith in the forlorn nudity 
 of a mechanic stripped of his machine. 
 
 Now that Conrad was driving, Petrie seemed to take a fresh 
 interest in the affair. He leaned back and began, in high 
 satisfaction, to fill his pipe. 
 
 " This is great, Maddie," he said, turning to her. " Per- 
 fectly great. I could do it for myself, if it was not for those 
 harmonium-pedal things that you have to work with your feet." 
 He stooped forward, pulled up the rug to screen his match, 
 and lighted his pipe. 
 
 Suddenly he exclaimed, " Hang it ! I could do it." 
 
 She only smiled at him, but the smile said, " Poor old Hal." 
 
 " Well, we shall see," he went on. " To the dickens with 
 those pedal-things ! I shall put it to the boy. He will think 
 of a way." 
 
 Then he settled down to quietly smoking his pipe, holding 
 his matchbox over the bowl to keep the sparks from flying. 
 
 He looked at Madge's profile, at Mrs Petrie's ear and palely 
 flushed cheek ; at the little, greying ringlet that fluttered 
 against it. And he looked at the knuckles of Conrad's broad 
 hand upon the wheel ; at the easy, negligent pose of his feet 
 upon the brakes. Once, he looked at his watch. 
 
 With a rattle and change of gears, they took the hill of 
 Harrow. 
 
 Rattling again, and slowing down to the bending road, 
 Conrad brought them at last to rest at the door of the 
 George. 
 
 " How's that ? " said he, glowing. " Isn't she a wonder ? 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 311 
 
 . . . Come along ; this is the spot for us all on the ground 
 floor, and a very fine line in teas." 
 
 He opened the door and fitted the folding ramp in place for 
 Petrie's chair. 
 
 " Why should those confounded things have to be worked 
 with one's feet, Con ? " Petrie asked, as Conrad wheeled him 
 round the car. 
 
 " Always are," said Conrad. 
 
 " Yes, but why ? " 
 
 " Much easier," said Conrad, paying scant attention to the 
 question in the difficulties of disentangling the chair-wheels 
 from the rug. " Got feet, might as well use 'em, I suppose 
 is the theory." 
 
 " Haven't got feet," said Petrie, " can't use 'em. . . . Try 
 again, old fellow. What I mean to say is, why not one's arms 
 or elbows or one's chin in lieu of feet if, for any reason, one 
 preferred it ? " 
 
 " Oh ! " Conrad exclaimed. " You mean by Jove, dad, 
 what a stunning notion ! I don't see a bit why those cranks 
 shouldn't be lengthened out to come up under the arms like 
 crutches no, I'm hanged if I do ! What a perfectly spiffing 
 notion Lord ! what a pity you're such an idiot with 
 machinery, dad ! . . . Remember that typewriter effort 
 of yours ? " 
 
 " Nonsense, my dear fellow," said Petrie. " A typewriter 
 is quite a different story. Putting a typewriter together is 
 work for a watchmaker. This thing is nothing but a har- 
 monium a pair of pedals and a few stops and there you are." 
 They came up with Mrs Petrie and Madge in the porch of the 
 hotel. " You will soon have the pleasure of being driven out 
 by me, my dears," he said. 
 
 Mrs Petrie said, " Oh Charles ! " 
 
 Madge nodded up to a group of boys in their flat straw hats 
 on the road above them. " That is where you ought to be, 
 Hal," she said. 
 
 Conrad pushed the chair across the hall as she and Mrs Petrie 
 went upatsirs. 
 
 When they were out of earshot, Petrie turned and said 
 furtively, " Look here, old chap ; mum's the word but I 
 
312 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 want you to get us back as sharp as you can after tea. It 
 might be necessary for us for me, I mean, and either you or 
 Welmon with me to catch the night train up North." 
 
 " Night train ? ... Up North ? . . ." mumbled Conrad 
 in astonishment. 
 
 " Yes," said Petrie. " Don't bother now, though. Welmon 
 will do if you . . ." 
 
 " Go on ! " said Conrad. " You bet I can come. But I 
 say, aren't you rather ..." 
 
 " I don't think you understand, old man," Petrie said 
 slowly, and in saying it he seemed suddenly old and very tired. 
 " You see, even if she does accept the American thing, she will 
 probably come home before she goes. And and well, 
 you see, you made such a capital job of breaking the news of 
 this silly nonsense of mine to Freda. I want Cynthia to get 
 it the same way even better if possible, because Cynthia is 
 a a little different from the others, you know. The best 
 way w r ould be for me and you to run up together, then she 
 would have to see that everything's alright, wouldn't she ? 
 You you can help me with this, old man. Your vernacular's 
 a tremendous help. . . ." 
 
 Conrad knew instinctively that he would always remember 
 that fragment of talk, that startling glimpse of a weather- 
 beaten man appealing to him a man whom he had always 
 casually assumed to be incapable of appeal to anything. They 
 were at the far end of the hall, in the shadow of the stairway 
 up which his mother and Madeline had gone. In front of them 
 was a palm in a large brass pot upon a mahogany stand ; beyond 
 that a stained glass window. Between himself and this was 
 his father's rugged head, turned round towards him, his voice 
 hushed and conspiratorial. . . . 
 
 " Right you are, dad," he said, feeling that somehow he 
 was more impressed than he need have been, that the thing 
 was not really as important as all that. " We'll tootle off as 
 soon as we get back. What about a wash ? " He pushed the 
 chair round the bend behind the staircase. 
 
 The incident was closed ; the glimpse shut out again. 
 
 " You needn't be afraid of my doing you out of the car 
 altogether, Conrad when I can drive it for myself," Petrie 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 313 
 
 said. " Only it would be such fun to feel that one one's 
 self was making a thing move again, making it skip and bound 
 along the way the car does. Why, boy, you would scarcely 
 believe how great it is to sit even in this old chair that you 
 thought of for me, and to send it bowling across the study 
 floor. . . ." 
 
 Another glimpse. . . . 
 
 " Poor old beggar," mumbled Conrad ; and then aloud, " It 
 will be mainly a question of getting the correct angle on the 
 shafts for your brake and clutch. It might be necessary to have 
 upright spindles as well, and some sort of socket arrangement. 
 But I'll go and see the merchant Jeff and I saw about folding 
 up that back seat and making the ramp. He's got some sense. 
 . . . What exactly is the row about Cynthia ? Couldn't 
 I just run up by myself and save you the fag ? Mother'll 
 kick up a fair-sized dust, you know. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, there's no particular row," said Petrie casually ; " I 
 don't want her to be upset, that's all. Don't let's be late in 
 getting home. We can talk of it in the train." 
 
 Petrie was thoroughly himself again. Conrad wondered 
 what it was that could have impressed him so tremendously 
 a few minutes before. 
 
 They joined Madeline and Mrs Petrie at a table in the 
 large window overlooking the garden. 
 
 " Elizabeth," said Petrie, " Conrad has just designed a car 
 for the use of gentlemen lacking adequate feet. It might 
 require upright spindles and some stockinette. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, shut up," suggested Conrad. " You'd all look rather 
 silly if there's a patent in it, wouldn't you ? " 
 
 The question was treated as rhetorical. Mrs Petrie said, 
 " Charles, you're not serious, are you ? " 
 
 " Indeed I am," said Petrie. 
 
 Madeline said, " What did I tell you about those boys on 
 the road ? We might just as well recognise it. He's a perfect 
 baby." 
 
 Conrad looked at him once or twice, to see him eating toasted 
 scones in the old manner, ravenous as after a swinging stroll 
 to the top of Wilton's Hill ; and he thought of the angle that 
 would be necessary on the brake arm. He heard Petrie'' s 
 
3H THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 nonsensical remarks ; he heard his own grudged laughter. 
 Once he saw him slip his watch out of his pocket and frown 
 over the time, and again there came over Conrad the feeling 
 that had come over him in the hall, the vague feeling of some- 
 thing big and portentous. 
 
 " We must not put too great a strain upon our pilot," 
 Petrie said, openly looking at his watch when they had finished 
 tea. " There is a good deal of traffic between Baling and 
 Oxford Street, Con, and Madge wants to be home in plenty 
 of time. . . ." 
 
 But Conrad was already paying the bill. 
 
 They stopped to drop Madeline at the flat in Hanover 
 Square. " Well done, Conrad," said she ; and then to Petrie, 
 " I should think that you have already learnt everything there 
 is to learn about driving a car, Hal the way you have been 
 watching." 
 
 She ran up the steps, waving her hand to them, and the car 
 swung on. 
 
 Petrie again leaned forward to watch Conrad driving. 
 
 The movements held him fascinated, as they had held him 
 all the way from Harrow. ... It seemed a royal, a splendid 
 use of energy the hairbreadth movement of a hand, the 
 pressure of fingers or thumb that sent a ton of matter leaping, 
 bounding, and swerving ; the almost imperceptible pressure 
 of a foot that checked and reined in the throbbing, mighty 
 force . . . and he would be able to do it he who had not 
 the power in his limbs to carry the weight of his own gaunt 
 frame. ... To Petrie, with his immaculate ignorance of all 
 machinery, it was a mystery, a stupendous miracle. 
 
 Lethargically but magnificently Conrad dropped his hand 
 out over the side of the car. The policeman nodded, and 
 they swung into the Strand. From the Strand, with a clank 
 they swung aside towards the flat. Conrad's fingers moved ; 
 the engine ceased its throbbing, and they trundled serenely 
 down the slope, stopping at their very door. 
 
 Welmon appeared on the instant with the wooden ramp for 
 the four stone steps. 
 
 He pushed the chair up into the hall and came back to 
 Conrad. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 315 
 
 " Miss Petrie is here, sir," he said bluntly, but under his 
 breath. 
 
 Conrad checked the curse that stirred within him. He 
 concentrated on the thought that Welmon was an idiot. 
 
 " You mean Miss Freda," he said. 
 
 " No, sir ; Miss Petrie," said Welmon. 
 
 Well, what if she was there ? thought Conrad. What the 
 devil did the fellow mean by sneaking down to him with the 
 information in that ridiculous manner ? 
 
 But his questionings failed to reassure him. He felt the 
 old feeling again, of portents in the air, of ordinary things 
 charged with extraordinary import. . . . He felt that some- 
 thing was in a mess, or very soon was going to be. ... He 
 ran up the steps to Petrie, waiting in his chair. 
 
 " No need to tear your shirt over catching trains, dad," 
 he said. He hesitated, saw that hesitation was idiotic, and 
 rapped out, " She's here, you see." 
 
 Mrs Petrie hated lifts and had gone up the stairs, leaving 
 Conrad and Welmon to bring Petrie up. Conrad was glad 
 that they had the hall to themsleves. He wished that he could 
 have got rid of his information before Petrie had looked at his 
 watch, which he was slipping back into his pocket. 
 
 " What ? " said he, still preoccupied with making calcula- 
 tions involving minutes, and the distance to King's Cross. 
 
 " Yes," said Conrad ; " upstairs, in the study probably." 
 
 " Cynthia ? " said Petrie, baffled by the incredible thing ; 
 " Cynthia here ? " 
 
 A voice from the landing above them very cheerfully said, 
 " Yes, are you coming up soon, daddy ? ... Or shall I come 
 down ? " 
 
 Petrie looked up for an instant at Conrad. Once more he 
 had that look of appeal that had filled him with so much 
 astonishment. Then he winced, " Oh God," and fumbled 
 with trembling hands to put the rug in order about his legs. 
 
 Conrad usually pushed the chair by placing his hands upon 
 the wicker back of it. This time he pushed by placing them 
 upon Petrie's shoulders. 
 
 Thus they passed, silently, into the lift. 
 
Chapter Six 
 
 i 
 
 /CYNTHIA stood at the grille on the top landing, waiting 
 V^for them. 
 
 First she kissed Conrad as he stood behind the chair, 
 scowling upon her. 
 
 Then she laid a hand upon Petrie's head and stooped, 
 touching his forehead with her lips. 
 
 " Well . . ." she said, holding him thus to her too close 
 to be watched by him. " Well, my dear. . . . You you're 
 a nice one." 
 
 It was dark in the lift and in the landing outside it, and so 
 she tried to linger there. She wanted him to know only the 
 calm of her, the cheerful serenity of her voice. Her face she 
 proposed, somehow or other, to keep hidden from him. It 
 was pale and wan, the eyes sunken and smarting. 
 
 Crumpled in her pocket were the six pages of Sylvia's neat 
 writing ; words that had stung and bitten her with cruel 
 reproach as she had read them, first in the bedroom of the 
 Grand Hotel in Edinburgh, and then, over and over again 
 in the train, till the mere act of looking at them though she 
 knew every pedantic phrase of them by heart was an in- 
 tolerable pain. ". . . Broken, bedridden, and helpless . . . 
 great future before him ... of course it is all gone now. . . . 
 She, poor little soul, after all she has gone through . . . worn 
 to a shred with anxiety and worry . . . the responsibility of 
 my own family and affairs and daily worries ... all we could 
 do, you may be sure has been done by George and myself . . . 
 not the slightest hope ... all the most expensive specialists 
 from London. . . ." And she, Cynthia, had meanwhile 
 been travelling about in first-class carriages, having her break- 
 fast in bed in first-class hotels, grinning back at a thousand 
 idle idiots who grinned up at her and knocked their hands 
 together and stamped their feet upon the floor like so many 
 
 316 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 317 
 
 goats or asses ..."... No hope . . . broken, helpless, 
 bedridden . . . had to face it all quite alone, poor little soul 
 . . . worn to a shred with anxiety, work and worry. . . ." 
 
 But Cynthia had done with thinking about it. The time 
 had come for action. Her eyes were opened now, by Sylvia. 
 . . . Only she did not want Petrie to see her face just yet. 
 
 Conrad growled, " Get your feet out of the road," and 
 shoved the chair along the passage into the light of the 
 study. 
 
 She stood beside Conrad, still and slightly foolish, behind the 
 chair. He for his part would very gladly have kicked the silly 
 handles that stuck out at him from the desk drawers. 
 
 He perceived that this was another of those occasions that 
 could in no way be improved by his presence ; the atmosphere 
 was charged with the very devil of a shindy, though God only 
 knew in detail what the shindy was going to be about. 
 
 " Well I expect Smith's hanging about for his two bob," 
 he said. From the door he added, " Shout if you want any- 
 thing. . . . There's a bell behind you, Cynthia." 
 
 When the door had closed she was beside Petrie's chair. 
 She was glad he did not look up at the pallor and the sunken 
 eyes that belied the stoutness of her heart, the coolness of her 
 perfectly good common sense. 
 
 With her two hands she gently drew his head to her breast 
 and once more kissed it. 
 
 " Daddy dear," she said softly. " You it was very wrong 
 of you to do this. You ought to have told me at once." 
 
 For a while he rested in her caress, silent, his eyes closed. 
 Then he loosed her hands and thrust her gently from him. 
 " We we've got to buck up, little Cyn," he said slowly, 
 without heart, as though he were only an instrument for the 
 speech of another. " You you have got to get back, you see." 
 
 Very calmly she placed her hands upon her hips, drew her- 
 self up, shrugged her shoulders. " My dear," she said with 
 a calmness to suit the langour of her gesture, " I'm not going 
 back. So you need not worry about that again. Not ever." 
 
 " Oh Cynthia." The words were no more than a groan. 
 " You don't you see you must go back ? . . . To-night. 
 At once. ... I was coming up myself, with the boy. I knew 
 
3i8 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 something was. . . . Oh Lord, you don't have to tell me 
 that it was that idiot of a Sylvia. . . ." 
 
 She made no answer. She drew up a chair beside him, 
 then flung down a cushion instead and sat at his feet, her hands 
 clasped upon his lifeless knees. " There would be no point 
 at all in our arguing about it now, daddy," she said very 
 quietly. " I have made up my mind, you see ! " 
 
 Petrie saw that it was true. Wearily he looked into her 
 face, and got no comfort from it. She smiled at him, but 
 there was no hope to be had from the smile, inscrutable and 
 utterly firm. Then he jerked his head aside. 
 
 " Made up your mind ! " he snapped. 
 
 This was the very thing that he had been dreading to fight, 
 simply because he had no weapons whatever for fighting it. 
 To stouten himself, he snapped again, " Made up your mind, 
 indeed ! . . . You have swallowed a lot of hysterical non- 
 sense, poured out over you by an uncommonly stupid woman 
 a woman, moreover, about to have a baby. I knew she 
 would do it confound her meddling, muddling, mumbling 
 imbecility and I could not stop her ! I could only trust to 
 your own good sense. . . . Here ! stop that confounded car. 
 It hasn't gone yet. . . . You must go now, before there's any 
 more . . ." He banged his hands upon the rims of the chair 
 wheels, to swerve himself to the window. 
 
 But he saw her, very lightly, touch his knee ; he saw her, 
 still smiling, shake her head. " It's no good, my dear," she 
 said gently, and his hands fell away from the wheels, helpless. 
 " I couldn't go back not even if I wanted to. Can't you 
 imagine the kind of row I had to have with old Wilkes this 
 morning ? He might sue me, even, for breach of contract 
 or something. I expect I shall have to give up all the fee. 
 But what does that matter, now that I know we are so rich ? 
 You do see, don't you, that I can't think of going back ? " 
 
 She got up and calmly helped herself to a cigarette from the 
 mantelpiece and sat down again. Petrie's face was sunk in 
 his hands. He said nothing. 
 
 " It's no use worrying, daddy dear," she said. " I suppose 
 you haven't got used to it all yet, but I've been thinking it 
 over for a whole night and day. It's all settled. I can go on 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 319 
 
 with my composing ; and you great person that you are 
 can go on with your work. It it will be ever so jolly, dad. 
 You mustn't take things so to heart. Things are no different, 
 you know really. . . ." 
 
 The supreme absurdity of her trying thus to cajole and 
 wheedle him into good morale brought a smile to Petrie's lips. 
 " My dear girl," he said, but the oddness of it was great beyond 
 words. 
 
 " But I ought to be composing working since I've got 
 it in me. . . ." 
 
 " Your apprenticeship is not yet served," said Petrie. " It 
 won't be till after the American tour and a dozen others." 
 
 Again she smiled. " My dear ! Of course the American 
 tour is off too." 
 
 " Lord ! " Then suddenly he sat upright and flung out 
 his hand. " Hand me that thing, quick," he said, pointing 
 to the telephone upon his desk. " If Wilkes is up North still, 
 I might be able to get hold of Toppitt even now they always 
 did hang on to that office of theirs till hours after everyone else 
 had gone home. I'll talk to him : you can still go back." 
 
 He was excited, hot upon a plan. 
 
 Cynthia was startled by the familiarity of that tone in his 
 voice ; but it struck her cruelly that he should be talking thus 
 without stamping his feet by the fireplace, or pacing up and 
 down the room. 
 
 " They he, old Toppitt, might remember me still," he 
 said, his hand still outstretched. 
 
 " He does," said Cynthia, in cold triumph. " And so the 
 less you have to say to him the better, my dear. Have you 
 forgotten that you did exactly the same thing to them twenty- 
 seven years ago, when you had a quarrel with some one, right 
 in the middle of a tour ? Old Wilkes hasn't forgotten it, as 
 he pointed out to me this morning. You see, it's no good, 
 daddy worrying. It's all settled." 
 
 Petrie's hand, from pointing to the telephone, fell limply 
 to his side. " Oh Lord ! " he said. 
 
 Slowly, with head bent forward, he went on reproachfully, 
 " This is not at all the kind of thing I expected from you." 
 Therein he was mistaken. It was exactly and precisely the 
 
320 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 very kind of thing he always had expected from her, ever since 
 the night of Sylvia's wedding when she had drawn herself up 
 from the hips and faced him. It was what he had always felt 
 to be the enigma of Cynthia the potentiality in her of taking 
 up an utterly untenable position and holding it unshaken and 
 quite unshakable. 
 
 Now, therefore, he had nothing more to say. He had 
 already said the extremest thing that lay within him ; the 
 uttermost reproach. 
 
 She, for her part, had expected extreme things from him, 
 so she was quite undisturbed. She stroked his hand, and said, 
 " You see, daddy, you always think you know what's best for 
 everyone. But I know what's best now. You must go on ; 
 and I must go on. The real thing for me is composing I am 
 really a Creative Artist. At least I want to be one. Now 
 that I know what a great person you are, and how well off we 
 are, I mean to try. I know you can make me an allowance, 
 my dear, because you always have." She paused, satisfied 
 with the conviction her arguments carried. To clinch the 
 matter she flung her cigarette-end into the fireplace and said, 
 " I'm sick to death of being a potty concert-artist, a huckster 
 of other people's wares." 
 
 She moved a little nearer to him, looking him in the eyes 
 with the frankness that comes of pride in a fundamental lie. 
 
 " I I could be near you a lot of the time, daddy dear. . . . 
 I could play to you if you felt like it sometimes." 
 
 He could say nothing. As his hand had dropped to his 
 side, so his whole spirit fell flat helpless, listless, after stretch- 
 ing out for things like the telephone, that were no use. 
 
 At last he managed to pull up the rug about his knees, and 
 to mumble inconsequently, " Must be time to get ready for 
 dinner, my dear." 
 
 2 
 
 The days slipped^into weeks. 
 
 Petrie fell into a depression from which nothing in the 
 world seemed capable of rousing him. 
 
 There was, in point of fact, just one thing that could have 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 321 
 
 raised him up again ; but he was the only person in the world 
 who knew of it, and it seemed to be the one thing in the world 
 that he was quite incapable of communicating. 
 
 In an attempt to communicate it at the end of a morning's 
 submersion in this utter gloom, he would say, " Cynthia dear 
 can't you won't you go now ? " But he spoke like a child, 
 appealing hopelessly, to an elder. " Go, my dear, and do what 
 you have to do what you can do so uncommonly well. It 
 is that, and that alone, that people will gladly pay to hear you 
 doing. . . . You are doing nothing at all here. You are only 
 rotting. We are all rotting. ... I am very well. ..." 
 
 She could see only that he was black with depression when 
 he said he was " very well." 
 
 Like the elder, gentle but very firm, she would place her 
 finger to her lips and say, " S-sh ! Enough of that now 
 we've had all that out, you know. I am working working all 
 the time, and when I go home in the evenings, I try it all over. 
 You just ask Freda, my dear ; she's sick to death of it. My 
 head's just full of things. . . ." 
 
 She was, however, lying ; her head was immaculately empty 
 of notes, and the piano in the flat in Chelsea was never opened. 
 But Freda, too, was prepared to lie. They agreed, as they sat 
 at night, and talked it over, that something had to be done ; 
 that it had all been too much for Mrs Petrie, that she was 
 looking run down, worn out. . . . 
 
 Freda saw the difficulty ; she saw the change in Petrie 
 since Cynthia's return. But Cynthia was hopeful ; she was 
 sure it would wear off as soon as he got " used to things." 
 Besides, if she was ever going to be a composer, she might just 
 as well start by being a composer. . . . From such remarks 
 she would drift into reminiscences of evenings when the 
 applause had become measured, rhythmic like the pulsing 
 of one colossal heart. She would tell of the crowds miners 
 in Wales, factory hands in the Midlands, mechanics on the 
 Tyne seething masses of fellows outside the town halls, who 
 pushed off their bowler hats and opened their blue jaws to cheer 
 her passing. She told of the artists with her of those that 
 liked her, and those that obviously and emphatically did not ; 
 of funny old Charlie Wilkes, the ageing, cigar-mumbling Jew 
 
322 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 who shook her hand in both of his, who lauded and applauded 
 till finally he had stamped his feet and raved, cursing her 
 father and her father's father and herself and their seed for 
 ever. . . . 
 
 Thus midnight would come upon them ; and the piano 
 would still be closed and silent. 
 
 Cynthia would say, " If it were not for mother, I could 
 manage it all quite easily, Free. Why he could even come 
 about with me. But there, what's the use of talking about 
 it mother would never hear of it." 
 
 Mrs Petrie added her arguments to Petrie's that she ought 
 to go back to her work. 
 
 She said that she was being very silly and unreasonable ; 
 that she was only getting upon her father's nerves. . . . He 
 was a changed man ; it was a wonder Cynthia didn't see it, 
 as everyone else saw it. Doctor Jefferson was beginning to 
 be terribly worried. He even went so far as to admit that he 
 was beginning to be terribly worried. . . . 
 
 But Cynthia only shrugged her shoulders and smiled. 
 
 " My dear mummy," she would say, " If you would only 
 take a little rest and comfort now that I am here (and I 
 intend to stay) there would be a great deal less for any of us 
 to worry about. If you would only get a little colour in your 
 cheeks. . . ." 
 
 Mrs Petrie would retort, " I have never felt better or happier 
 in my life." 
 
 Cynthia, however, could see only pallor and frailty ; there- 
 fore she shrugged her shoulders and said sceptically, " I am 
 very glad to hear it. But that is not going to prevent my 
 staying and keeping an eye on things. I can do just as good 
 work here as anywhere. . . ." 
 
 3 
 
 Petrie remained glum and morose and utterly cheerless. 
 
 Sir Frederick Winterton came with Madge to see him about 
 the tragedy. Cheery and chubby as ever, he waltzed into 
 the study, with his studied affectations his monocle, his 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 323 
 
 gold-knobbed cane, the colossal gardenia in his button-hole, 
 and his inevitable, " Hello, Hel, Old Artist ! well met and all 
 hail ! " 
 
 The man who answered him, sitting up in a wheeled chair, 
 was not the " Old Hal," angular, drily comic, and leg-pulling. 
 It was a solemn and irritable, but polite, invalid. 
 
 He talked of the play, but not as he had talked of the other 
 plays resenting cuts, refusing to alter, throwing out sly, 
 neat little charges of vanity and silly egotism. He talked as 
 though he were, on the whole, slightly bored by the affair ; 
 as though it were, in fact, some one else's play. 
 
 Sir Frederick left him disturbed and subdued. He shook 
 his head as he and Madge stepped into his car. " You've got 
 to buck up, dear Artist," he said to her heavily, " and do 
 something to our worthy mutual or else, before many moons 
 are waxed and waned, there will be no more high-class drama 
 for you and little Fred." 
 
 But what was she to do ? ... Beyond going to have a talk 
 with Jefferson, she could think, for the moment, of nothing. 
 
 And Jefferson could think of nothing. 
 
 One night, just because he could stand it no longer, and 
 because he and Petrie were alone together after Cynthia had 
 gone home, he turned sharply to Petrie and burst out, " Look 
 here, Hal, you're no fool, and you know as well as I do where 
 this kind of thing leads to. Just you pull yourself together, 
 or its melancholia. You're an ass to let this mooning, Hamlet 
 attitude get such a hold on you. I know what's worrying you, 
 old fellow, but if you would only buck up, she would feel that 
 she could go. ..." 
 
 " What do you mean Hamlet attitude of mind ? " 
 
 " Oh this * Time is out of joint,' rotten, moping business," 
 said Jeff impatiently. " Can't you see that you've given the 
 girl a shock ? She would have a better chance of getting over 
 it if you would only keep your end up a bit better as you did 
 keep it up till she came home. If you would only . . ." 
 
 But Petrie obviously was not listening. He was staring 
 straight in front of him, slowly wagging his head from side to 
 side. " No use at all, old fellow. . . . It's a thing you positively 
 can't outwit. Do what you please, in the end it gets you," 
 
324 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 " What gets you ? " snapped Jeff, exasperated by his 
 lugubrious head-wagging. 
 
 " Same old thing," said Petrie, " the parasite business, I 
 mean. . . . You've got to end your days, whatever else you 
 may do incidentally, living off some one else. I thought yes, 
 I did actually think that we had managed things just a little 
 better here. It seemed to me that little Betty and I had struck 
 a decently fair bargain arrived at some thing like a balance. 
 But Cynthia has gone and upset it. ... Lord, I don't want 
 her life ! but how the blazes is one to get her to believe it ? " 
 
 Jefferson said, " When you have managed to give up soaking 
 in that rotten state of depression you've got yourself into, there 
 might be some hope." He knew that he was saying the wrong 
 kind of thing. He paused only because he seemed to have 
 tried everything else. Then suddenly he snapped, " Look 
 here, Hal ! if you don't do something towards cheering up, 
 I I'll marry Cynthia. I've had enough of this cross-purpose 
 business." 
 
 Petrie did not turn upon him, as he had done once before. 
 Lugubrious as ever, he said, " Well no. I don't think there 
 would be anything in that. . . ." 
 
 Jefferson felt foolish. He knocked out his pipe and said, 
 " All the same I've warned you now. ... I will." 
 
 Having made his threat, he departed. 
 
 4 
 
 Petrie, however, did not cheer up. He remained exactly 
 the same ; idling the mornings away seated before his desk, 
 the afternoons seated in the window with a book. 
 
 Cynthia moved cheerfully about the house, trying by her 
 brightness to brighten the others. She hummed as she sewed, 
 and smiled as she talked, trying to destroy Petrie's gloom by 
 ignoring it. 
 
 One day he said to her, " Come and sit down here, Cyn, 
 and let us talk this thing out. You must see that it can't go 
 on much longer." 
 
 " What can't go on ? " said she, trying, in the manner 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 325 
 
 usually adopted with invalids, to give an air of triviality to 
 everything except the really trivial. 
 
 And, as is usual with invalids, Petrie was irritated by it. 
 " This," he snapped, and waved his arm to indicate himself 
 and her, the room, the flat, and the world in general. Then, 
 more calmly, he went on : " You must face things and realise 
 where we stand. I may last like this for years. I am still 
 a youngish man, and might very well live to the age of 
 eighty." 
 
 " Of course you might, my dear," said she. " Doctor 
 Jefferson says that this kind of thing very seldom affects the 
 general health of a person. But surely there is nothing in 
 that to be miserable about." 
 
 " Don't be a fool," said Petrie wearily. " What I mean to 
 say is, do you propose to go on trying to wait on me when 
 I already have more people than I could possibly require to 
 wait on me for the next thirty years ? You see, Cyn, I am 
 very anxious to understand you and you to understand me. 
 ... Is this arrangement a thing you propose for the next 
 thirty years, or is it to be only an interlude for a little 
 while ? " 
 
 " First of all," said she, " you have got to realise that if you 
 think I am here to wait upon you at all, you are very much 
 mistaken. I am here to work just as much as you are. If 
 I can be a little help to mother at the same time, even if she 
 won't let me do anything, so much the better. . . ." 
 
 " Does she want your help ? " 
 
 " It doesn't matter if she wants it," said Cynthia firmly ; 
 " she is going to get it. You ought to know as well as anyone 
 what mother is, my dear. . . ." 
 
 " Oh yes, I know," Petrie winced, " I know exactly what 
 you are all saying and thinking. ... I am altogether too much 
 for your mother. . . . It's wearing her out. . . . But it's a 
 lie, Cynthia ; before God it's a lie. . . . Ask her. . . . She is 
 very well ; at least " 
 
 " But of course she is very well," said Cynthia, knowing 
 better than to quarrel with a sick man. " No, my dear, it is 
 only for my own sake that I am here to work writing " 
 
 " Writing fiddlesticks ! " said Petrie. " I know just how 
 
326 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 much you have composed in the last seven weeks. . . . Just 
 about as much as I have." 
 
 " Well," said Cynthia, quite unruffled, " who expects a 
 creative artist to keep going all the time at the same speed ? " 
 
 " I wish to the Lord you would not use such nauseating 
 phrases as ' creative artist.' It it is intensely journalistic." 
 He paused, then went on with a sneer : " So that is the way 
 you put it to yourself, is it ? Waiting for inspiration ? Let 
 me assure you that you will continue waiting for some time. 
 But Lord ! I thought you had a temperament ; a tempera- 
 ment in my sense of the word an impulse towards effort that 
 persists in spite of the state of health of a relative, in spite of 
 the chances that make this man or that Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer or Chairman of the South-Western Railway 
 spiritual independence, my dear girl, of the string of accidents 
 that people call facts. . . ." 
 
 Cynthia had not heard him talk in this way for she hated 
 to think for how long. It gave her a thrill of delight to find 
 him reacting so easily to the things she said to him ... he 
 was like his old self again. . . . 
 
 " But even you, my dear," she said quietly, " even you wrote 
 only three plays in five years. . . ." 
 
 " I wrote more like thirty-three" said Petrie. " Though only 
 three were any good as plays, the other thirty or so were fine 
 as work. . . . But all that is beside the point." He became 
 suddenly limp again, and drew his hand across his brow. " The 
 point is, that even if you have nothing to say, you have plenty 
 to do. You have to live your own life. If if you have no 
 music to give the world, you can give it other things. I can- 
 not stand the way you hang about, Cynthia, doing nothing, 
 living nothing, making nothing, futile, sterile " 
 
 " Fallow," she suggested cunningly. 
 
 " Fallow your grandmother ! . . . No, if you cannot or 
 will not be an artist, you can still be a woman. Young Jefferson 
 is very fond of you. I I will let him propose to you." 
 
 " Young Jefferson," said Cynthia, with perfect composure, 
 66 has already proposed to me." 
 
 " The devil he has ! " exclaimed Petrie. " When ? " 
 
 " Five weeks ago," said she. " And four days ago." 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 327 
 
 " H'm," said Petrie, scowling. Then he approached a 
 smile more nearly than he had approached a smile for weeks. 
 " So the beggar has been threatening me with an empty gun. 
 . . . And why, may I ask, was he refused ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know . . ." said Cynthia. " I suppose I 
 I " she looked away from Petrie, and two spots began to 
 glow upon her cheeks. " I suppose I don't love him, daddy. 
 . . . Childishly, like the lank, inarticulate Cynthia of years 
 ago, she added " not properly." Suddenly she stood up and 
 laid her hands upon his shoulders. Stooping, she kissed him, 
 and hurried from the room. 
 
 Things might have turned out differently if she had not 
 done that. 
 
 But the caress was too much for Petrie. 
 
Chapter Seven 
 
 i 
 
 THE next morning was Madeline's day to come early and 
 stay to lunch. Cynthia accordingly was not due till one 
 o'clock. 
 
 Madeline brought her score of the play ; she brought also 
 some note-paper, but she did not look at the score, nor did she 
 write any letters. She sat talking to Petrie. 
 
 " Maddie," he said, " can even you do nothing ? She has 
 refused young Jefferson now." 
 
 " Well," said Madeline, " you expected her to do that. At 
 any rate, you wanted her to." 
 
 " I did want her to," said Petrie ; " but, good Lord, can't you 
 see the difference ? Or are you, too, trying to fool me ? " 
 
 " No, Hal dear," she said, " I am not trying to fool you, 
 and I never have." After a pause she went on, " Well, you 
 would have been saved all this if " 
 
 " Don't," said Petrie ; " for the love of heaven, don't. You 
 you are playing the devil with me, between the lot of you. . . . 
 Why can't you sit down together and explain things to each 
 other ? You all seem to see the point where the other person 
 is concerned, but not in your own particular case. . . . 
 Maddie, why can't you take her aside and make her see ? " 
 
 " Why ? " Maddie asked bitterly. " Because she hates me 
 so, dear and distrusts me. She's so jealous. If I said any- 
 thing at all to her, she would think it was just because I wanted 
 you for myself. I suppose, Hal, that like the rest of us, she 
 thinks that she herself is the best one to make you happy. . . . 
 But, my dear, I do know how it must make you feel you 
 always thought so much of her. Dear I know you won't 
 ever come to me, and I will never speak of it again to worry 
 you but there is one thing I do want to say. I can't bear 
 to see you like this. . . . Why don't you go away from 
 here, with with Mrs Petrie, I mean. She she would let 
 
 328 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 329 
 
 me come and see you sometimes. . . . She likes me, I 
 believe ; and I am quite glad to let her like me, for I've 
 never taken anything that was hers, Hal. That is playing 
 the game, isn't it ? She would let me come and be with 
 you as much as I am now. . . . Why have you never thought 
 of that, dear ? " 
 
 " Isn't that, in effect, what we tried to do here ? " said 
 Petrie. " But it's failed, because Cynthia is really afraid for 
 her mother. Her mother is looking Lord, yes, I can see it 
 myself she is looking tired out and ill. It is too much for 
 her. . . . Any damned cripple is too much for any sound 
 person. / ought to know that. I've been talking it for 
 twenty years. . . . She has not the strength. . . ." 
 
 " 7 have the strength, Hal," said Madeline softly. 
 
 " Yes," said Petrie ; " and you have your work, thank God, 
 to expend it on." 
 
 " My work. ... I have been thinking a lot about my 
 work lately, Hal. I think a woman ought to, when she is 
 forty. ... I must admit that I would like to do this thing," 
 she nodded at the typed play lying upon the desk, " before 
 I do retire. . . ." 
 
 " Retire ! " exclaimed Petrie. " You, Madge retire ? " 
 
 She smiled and moved her chair nearer to him. " I know 
 just what you would like to think about that, my dear," she 
 said, " but it is nothing of the kind. People only work, 
 normally, for money. Thanks to H. R., I have made all the 
 money I am likely to require. I refuse to go on at the old 
 game, like some women do, with creaking limbs and a cracked 
 voice, wreathed in withered laurels. Now is the time for me 
 to leave it leave it for my own sake, in triumph. . . . Then, 
 too, if you did think of going away from here, you and Mrs 
 Petrie, I could be a little nearer to you, dear. She under- 
 stands, I think, a little . . ." Her chair had moved still closer 
 to his. She held his great hands in hers ; she bowed her head 
 to lay her lips upon them. . . . 
 
 The door opened with a click and Mrs Petrie stood before 
 them. Petrie's hands jerked instinctively, then stayed quite 
 still. Madeline's twitched to move away, then stiffened where 
 they were. 
 
330 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Mrs Petrie stopped, hesitating at the door then, smiling, 
 she walked in. 
 
 " Well, my dear," said she to Madeline, her hand out- 
 stretched in greeting. " And how do you find the Im-patient 
 to-day ? " This was her own, her very own, oft-repeated 
 little joke. 
 
 " A perfect bear," said Madeline. She took the hand. 
 Then, without precedent, she leaned forward and kissed Mrs 
 Petrie's cheek. " I am sure he ought to get out ; and so ought 
 you, you know. I must see what our engineer friend is 
 thinking about. Will he come in to lunch ? " 
 
 " He will to-day" said Mrs Petrie with a laugh. 
 
 While they chatted, Petrie sat quietly looking at them, 
 slightly revising the high estimate he had always had of his 
 knowledge of women. At lunch he turned suddenly to Conrad 
 and said, " How long would it take a decently intelligent 
 mechanic to devise those brakes for me, that we spoke of some 
 weeks ago ? " 
 
 ' They have been ready for just a fortnight," said Conrad.. 
 " I've had them out a couple of times. They're first-rate." 
 
 Petrie leaned forward eagerly. " Do you mean to say that 
 I can now drive myself ? " 
 
 " No," said Conrad. " Keep your hair on. But you can 
 start learning to drive, as soon as you care to pull up your socks 
 and wire into it." 
 
 " And how long," said Petrie, trying to control the excite- 
 ment that brought a tremor to the hands that held his knife 
 and fork, " and how long, old fellow, ought it to take a person 
 of average intelligence to master the craft ? " 
 
 " A week," said Conrad glibly ; " but you, with your unique 
 ideas on machinery, ought to break the back of it in a month 
 or so." 
 
 Petrie smiled but said no more. He became absorbed in 
 thoughts of movement of swirling air and scurrying clouds, 
 of the leap of the great car under him, of his own hands that 
 would cause it so to leap. 
 
 " What's wrong with this afternoon for a canter ? " said 
 Conrad. " We could get out Richmond way, and you could 
 have 2 dip at it, if you like." 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 331 
 
 Petrie nodded. Conrad hurriedly swallowed, and rang up 
 the garage. 
 
 During the weeks of his apprenticeship to Conrad, Petrie 
 was once more a changed man. 
 
 Conrad had been enthusiastic enough in learning to drive 
 the car, but he had cloaked his gusto in the absurd dignity of 
 his age, humanising this dignity at intervals with a joke at his 
 own expense. 
 
 Petrie had just the same enthusiasm and gusto, but he did 
 nothing at all to conceal or repress it. On the contrary, he 
 advertised it to the point of bragging. 
 
 His liveliness and persistent good humour were a match 
 for Cynthia's own. Thus they two stood out in relief from 
 the rest of the family. They, of them all, were possessed most 
 strikingly of a purpose that cheered them and gave them 
 energy. 
 
 2 
 
 He spent two hours every morning with Miss Stark going 
 through his papers : arranging, classifying, labelling, and de- 
 stroying. Letters that had remained for months unanswered, 
 or answered only with Miss Stark's masterly evasiveness, were 
 now answered in full. 
 
 Bluitt, his agent, spent a morning with him in his study, 
 explaining his copyrights and foreign royalties to him, 
 mentioning that the new tragedy was already in the hands of 
 four translators, surprising him with the information that 
 " Hagar Bradley," the absurd " First Refusal," and " Strivers 
 All " were still bringing in a substantial income from such 
 places as Budapesth, Sarajevo, and Darjeeling. 
 
 After Bluitt came the solicitor of Bluitt's recommendation. 
 He, with his dispatch-case, accounted for another morning 
 of Petrie's time ; and departed again for the city, a well- 
 satisfied man. 
 
 Sir Frederick Winterton came, and departed with the dates 
 fixed for three rehearsals. . . . 
 
 To drive to the last of these, Petrie himself took the wheel. 
 
332 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 At the door of the theatre, Conrad and Welmon wheeled 
 his chair into a ring of press photographers, commanded by 
 the tripod of a cinematographer. 
 
 " Now" said Petrie, when they were at home again and 
 seated at dinner. " It's done and I can go. * Nunc Dimittis* 
 said I to them all 'damme, I'm orf' photographers and 
 journalists." 
 
 Jefferson and Freda were dining with them. " Off where ? " 
 said Jeff. 
 
 The others said nothing. The announcement in no way 
 surprised them. The last few weeks demanded a climax. 
 This was it. 
 
 Petrie shrugged his shoulders. " Anywhere. . . . Skipping 
 over the country-side, Jeff rilling my lungs with God's good 
 air, cooking myself in His excellent sunshine, moving moving, 
 old fellow." 
 
 " Very sound idea," said Jeff, " after the tales I've heard of 
 the way you've been working of late." 
 
 " Oh, so you've been hearing tales ? " said Petrie. But he 
 smiled indulgently. 
 
 He smiled at most things now. 
 
 After dinner, when the two of them were alone, Jefferson 
 said, " Suddenish idea, this holiday of yours, isn't it ? " 
 
 " No," said Petrie ; " I've been planning it for weeks. But 
 it takes a deuce of a time to get everything in order. However, 
 it's all settled up now, even to the press, to give the puff 
 to the tragedy, when it's wanted. . . . Old Freddie has 
 astonished me, Jeff. He's going to make a first-rate thing of 
 it. James's designs are capital ; a little bit on the lurid side, 
 perhaps, but . . ." 
 
 " When do you start ? " 
 
 " To-morrow." 
 
 " H'm," said Jefferson. " It didn't occur to you, I suppose, 
 to take Mrs Petrie with you ? " 
 
 " No,". said Petrie. " The rest will do her good." 
 
 " Where do you propose going ? " 
 
 " Anywhere ! " 
 
 Petrie was impatient in saying it. " Anywhere at all, so 
 long as there are roads on which it's possible to move. Welmon 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 333 
 
 has been studying maps for the last fortnight East Coast, 
 probably." 
 
 " East Coast would do Mrs Petrie plenty of good," mumbled 
 Jefferson, sucking at his pipe. 
 
 " So you, too, are of the opinion that she is breaking down ? " 
 
 " Don't be an ass," said Jefferson. " But a bit of a change 
 seldom does anybody any harm. ... I should think it over, 
 old fellow." 
 
 " Oh Jeff," said Petrie, and suddenly his tone changed. 
 " I I'm devilish tired of thinking things over. It's move- 
 ment I want. . . . Can't you understand that, old fellow ? 
 Movement just hell-for-leather, belly-to-earth, dust-raising 
 movement. . . ." 
 
 Jefferson looked up to see the dark, sunken eyes fiercely 
 aglow, the knuckly hands grasping the top of the rug, bending 
 it to the shape of a steering-wheel. He smiled at him and 
 mumbled, " Yes ... 
 
 * 'Send the road is clear before you, 
 When the old spring-fret comes o'er you 
 And the red gods call to you. . . .' 
 
 Perhaps she, too, would like it Mrs Petrie, I mean." 
 
 " Good Lord ! " said Petrie ; " never occurred to me in that 
 light before. . . . Perhaps she would. I'll ask her." 
 
 3 
 
 The car sped, humming, along a white dusty road. To the 
 left of it was a line of splendid oaks growing along the ditch 
 of the old Manor House, to the right a meadow of sun-parched 
 grass that began at the road's very edge in the blurred ruts of 
 cart wheels. 
 
 Welmon was driving he usually did in the afternoons, 
 while Petrie and Mrs Petrie lay back behind him. He insisted 
 that the upholstered seat of the car was more comfortable 
 than Petrie's chair, and so, disdaining the aid of ostlers and 
 waiters at the hotel in Cromer, he lifted Petrie bodily out of 
 
334 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 it and placed him in the corner of the wide seat. There, with 
 a leather strap and numberless cushions, he built him into a 
 normal position of comfort. . . . 
 
 Petrie lay back in his corner, smoking his pipe, smiling, 
 looking up at the flashes of sky through the leaves of the great 
 oak trees. 
 
 Mrs Petrie, too, lay back silent and content. To all appear- 
 ances she slept ; or, at any rate, very comfortably dozed. 
 Only occasionally she stole a glance at Petrie, to draw comfort 
 from his contentment and high satisfaction from the speeding 
 hours. . . . 
 
 Suddenly Petrie leaned forward and jerked Welmon's 
 shoulder. " Stop ! " he almost screamed at him. 
 
 Welmon lunged upon the crutches that he, too, used be- 
 cause it took some little time to remove them. Suddenly 
 arrested wheels gritted and crunched upon the dusty road ; 
 Mrs Petrie, startled, was pitched forward ; and the car came 
 to a standstill. 
 
 Welmon twisted his startled face over his shoulder, and 
 said, " Sir ? " 
 
 Petrie smiled at the alarm of them both, and at the absurdity 
 of his having given it to them for nothing. " Er all right," 
 said he. " Thanks, Welmon. . . . I I just thought Pd like 
 to stop a bit and look round." 
 
 It had not occurred to him as he leaned forward to touch the 
 negro's shoulder that he would have to make some such 
 explanation as this. " I I'd like to have a look at all this. 
 ... A silly, sentimental, journalistic nickname it's got. . . ." 
 
 He was making the explanation only because he felt he 
 owed something of the kind. He neither expected nor wanted 
 any answer. " H'm. ... It is the kind of place that would 
 get abused with doggerel and picture-postcards. . . . Lord ! 
 there's a fellow with a camera now. . . ." 
 
 They followed his dreamy gaze : the unfenced meadow 
 stretched from the road's edge to the jagged cliff-top. 
 Between the broken line of this and the mass of the great 
 branches that curved above them were two strips of blue 
 the dull, deep blue of the North Sea and the blue of the 
 dazzling sky that bent to meet it. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 335 
 
 Thrust bravely upward into the blue, breaking it at the 
 clifFs uttermost edge, stood the ruin of a tower. 
 
 Though the tower did still stand, the sky here and there 
 triumphed, gleaming through the cavity that once had been 
 a window and the storm-begotten rifts in the walls. 
 
 Petrie gazed out at the crumbling stone, at the jagged, 
 crumbling cliff's edge, and the field of red wild poppies that 
 stretched away, shimmering in the sunlight, to the walls of the 
 tower and the edge of the jagged cliff. . . . 
 
 Then he realised that the other two were watching him, 
 expecting some comment. 
 
 " H'm," said he. 
 
 The others added nothing. 
 
 " Wonderful cliffs those," he said next. 
 
 Welmon had eaten his lunch with a Guide to the East Coast 
 propped up against his cruet. " Highest in England, sir," 
 said he, " \vith the exception of Plymouth Hoe." 
 
 " Indeed," said Petrie absently. 
 
 " Yes, sir. And every effort is being made to save that 
 ruin." 
 
 "H'm," said Petrie; "it always is." Then he became 
 aware that the engine was purring away softly. 
 
 " Right you are, Welmon," said he. 
 
 He looked back over his shoulder, gazing still at the tower, 
 at the field of poppies, at the cliffs and sea and sky. . . . 
 
 A stout little man, standing in front of another man and 
 two ladies, fiddled with the cuffs of his striped blazer, twisted 
 his body and drove a golf ball towards the fourth hole of the 
 golf links, where a little flag, red like the poppies, fluttered in 
 the breeze. . . . 
 
 The car swung to the left and inland by the gates of the 
 Manor House : sea and cliffs and tower vanished behind the 
 hedge and the trunks of the tall trees. 
 
 Welmon nodded to something in front of them, and Petrie 
 looked up the hill a couple of miles ahead to see the red brick 
 and white woodwork of the hotel where they were to spend 
 the night. 
 
336 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 4 
 
 At a quarter to ten his pipe was glowing in a corner of the 
 hotel veranda. Mrs Petrie had gone upstairs to take her two 
 dresses out of the valise and hang them in the wardrobe, 
 according to her rite of giving them a good twelve hours of 
 freedom in every twenty-four. 
 
 She returned in a few minutes from this task, and drew a 
 wicker chair beside Petrie's. " The tea won't be long now, 
 Charles," she said ; " and then I think you ought to go soon 
 to bed. You seem to be a little more tired to-night. Or 
 perhaps it's just the air up here." 
 
 " Not very late yet," said Petrie, thrusting his watch 
 from the shadow into the moonlight ; " but I seem to do 
 nothing now but wait for such time as we shall be moving 
 again. . . ." 
 
 " Yes, indeed," said Mrs Petrie. " What a godsend that 
 car has been. It does seem to be doing you so much good. 
 You enjoy it so." 
 
 " 'xtraordinary thing," Petrie said, meditatively, " that 
 absurd craving for movement. . . . People who can walk and 
 run have to elaborate the thing into dancing before they get 
 any real fun out of it. For those who can neither run nor 
 walk, bumping and blundering along any old way is good 
 enough. . . . Funny. But it's the only thing that even 
 nearly satisfies, that gives any illusion of freedom and power. 
 It it " 
 
 A waiter blinked from the light of the dining-room into 
 the darkness of the veranda with their tea. Mrs Petrie 
 welcomed him, for generalities were seldom of any comfort 
 to her. 
 
 " You seem to have enjoyed the scenery better than ever 
 to-day, my dear," she said, peering into the cups as she poured 
 out. " You have done nothing but stare at it ever since tea. 
 I don't believe you've read a single word." 
 
 Petrie grunted. 
 
 His eyes were groping again among the distant, misty shadows 
 of the cliff-tops for the tower and the field of poppies. . . . 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 337 
 
 " Charles," said Mrs Petrie, " II'd like to talk to you a 
 iittle, some time when you are not tired or busy or or 
 anything." 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 She hesitated, loath, it seemed, to disturb the peace of his 
 reverie. " It it's about Madeline, Charles dear. . . ." 
 
 " Well ? " said he again. 
 
 " It it well, there isn't very much to say. Only it 
 was that day, you know, that I came in that I first began to 
 think of it. It was very silly of me not to have thought of it 
 before, but but there you are ! " 
 
 Blessed phrase ! it had helped the Petries, old and young, 
 out of many a tight corner. She went on, after using it, a 
 little more easily. " You see, it isn't as though we had all 
 been perfectly happy in London. We haven't. I have seen 
 that as well as anybody. And I said to you d'you remember ? 
 before we left Pelchester when you agreed to let me come 
 with you, that I would not get in the way of anything you 
 wanted. I meant it, Charles ; I mean it still. I never 
 want to hinder you. And when I saw that we that you 
 were not happy in London it has not been quite satisfactory, 
 living in London, has it, my dear ? " 
 
 " It has not, Elizabeth," he agreed. He marvelled at such 
 humility, such gentleness and calm as hers. " It has not, my 
 dear. But but " then his tone changed. He stretched 
 his hand and touched hers. " I believe I am rather tired after 
 all, Betty. I would like Welmon to lug me off upstairs." 
 Again he touched her hand. " You do not stand in my way. 
 . . . Betty, you are wonderful. Wonderful." He said it 
 very low, giving it the quality, not of a mere word, but a 
 profound, actual thought. 
 
 5 
 
 The next morning, as soon as ever they had finished break- 
 fast in the sunny corner of the veranda, he filled his pipe 
 and sent the waiter to fetch Welmon. 
 
 " Get the car out, please," he said, " and get me into it." 
 
338 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Welmon was a little ashamed of himself. " I I'm afraid 
 I'm not quite packed up yet, sir. . . . But it won't take me 
 ten minutes to be ready." He took some comfort from the 
 fact that Mrs Petrie was as yet without her hat and dust- 
 cloak. 
 
 " Never mind," said Petrie. " You can get that done 
 while I'm gone. I just want to take a little run." 
 
 Mrs Petrie got up very quietly and went upstairs. 
 
 " See that there's plenty in her," said Petrie. " Want of 
 petrol is the only thing likely to hang us up, when once you 
 get us started." 
 
 Welmon hesitated. " You've only been out once by your- 
 self, sir. And it was on a fairly full road then, so that you 
 could have got help. . . ." 
 
 " That will be all right, Welmon. You needn't worry. 
 Not very far along the road we came yesterday. . . ." 
 
 " Very good, sir," said Welmon. 
 
 He returned with Petrie's cap and gloves and pushed the 
 chair into the hall, where Mrs Petrie, cloaked and ready veiled, 
 was waiting for them. 
 
 " We're not actually starting yet, my dear," said Petrie to 
 her. 
 
 " I know," she said, " but I just thought I'd like to come 
 too." She looked out at the car, standing in the sunshine. 
 " It's all so lovely." 
 
 " I don't know if it's worth " Petrie began ; but she 
 
 interrupted him with, " But it is so lovely." 
 
 Without another word, Petrie was in the car and Mrs Petrie 
 beside him. Welmon tried the nuts that held the steel 
 crutches to the brakes and clutch. Then he went to the front 
 and cranked up, and the car slid down the slope towards the 
 village. 
 
 No word was spoken till Petrie pulled up at the spot where 
 he had stopped Welmon the day before. 
 
 Then, after listening critically for a moment to his engine, 
 he heaved a great sigh. 
 
 " I had to come back here again, Elizabeth." 
 
 In admitting this, a shyness came over him, and he looked 
 away from her. 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 339 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 " I I'd heard of the place before, you know." 
 
 It would have sounded more like an excuse, if he had not 
 said it so much more to himself than to her. " Some poet- 
 journalist or journalist-poet has called it the Garden of 
 Sleep." 
 
 Another long, deep breath was his only attempt to express 
 the solitude, the immensity and expanse of sea and sky. " But 
 I thought that when I came back to it I should be alone." 
 
 " But why alone ? " said she softly ; " I'm not interfering 
 with you, am I, Charles ? I I try not to." 
 
 He came back to her out of the immensity and expanse ; 
 and with the coming he became weary. Drawing a gauntleted 
 hand across his forehead, he said, " Damn it, Elizabeth, I've 
 got to go, you know. It can't go on not for another moment. 
 Just look at those girls ! " He said it with such a burst of passion 
 that her eyes mechanically followed his across the poppy-field. 
 But she saw no girls only the tower, the poppies, and the red 
 flag on the fourth green. 
 
 " Look at them ! " he continued. " See what they are 
 doing with themselves ; and then look at that rotten old 
 tower standing there. A boy could push it over a thunder- 
 bolt ought to fling it into the sea. And yet it stands there, 
 and stands, and stands crumbling away in tiny, negligible 
 pieces. . . . What is it doing ? Only shutting out the light 
 and air and sunshine from a few little flowers choking them, 
 paling them and stifling them for the few moments of life and 
 colour that could be theirs before they, too, crumble out into 
 the sea. . . . And it is the clinging of their own roots that 
 holds it there. So so the fact of the matter is, Elizabeth, 
 that I've got to leave you it can't go on any more." 
 
 " That is what I meant last night, Charles," she said 
 quietly. " She Madeline is very fond of you ; and and 
 she is young, comparatively. If you feel that you must go 
 to her. . . ." 
 
 " Don't ! " said Petrie. " She too, and you you, Betty, 
 who have been so wonderful, I must leave you too. . . ." 
 He glanced at her, timidly it seemed, and then looked away, 
 shading his eyes with his hand. 
 
340 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 She, with a quick movement, pulled up her gloves about her 
 wrists. " Oh, in that case," she said, as though perfectly 
 ready, " it is all quite easy. I can come too. I only wanted 
 to make sure about Madeline. But I too have thought it 
 silly of us to stop in London. I think myself that it is time 
 we admitted, you and I, that we are getting oldish and ought 
 to take a back seat. ... I was old as soon as I had Sylvia. 
 Most women don't get any older after their first baby either 
 they get old at once like I did, or else they stay young. To 
 me, it makes no difference where I am." 
 
 " Lord, look how it has worn you down," Petrie exclaimed, 
 turning to look again at her. " You you have been such a 
 wonderful comrade to me, Betty even you, I think, don't 
 know how wonderful. Only Jefferson, somehow, does. But 
 what's the good of that ? For your sake now, as much as any 
 of the others, I've got to go ; and I want to go, Betty. I am 
 only complicating the lives of all of you, shutting out the 
 sunshine and the light, hanging on crumbling. . . . Yes, I 
 want to go." 
 
 He looked up at the blue of the sky, at the white of the 
 clouds that raced before it. " Freedom ! " he cried, as though 
 it were a slogan to an army that waited for his word. " Free- 
 dom ! " Then he turned to her to explain. " Yes, Betty, 
 Freedom Life these are universal things ; you and I, in 
 the smallness of our tortured souls, we can only think of things 
 that are personal, accidental. . . ." His voice was beginning 
 to rise again ; she was sure that it could not be good for him 
 to get so excited. She said, " But that is no reason that I 
 should not come with you. If I want to come with you, and 
 if you have no reason why I should not come, surely you are 
 knocking your * Freedom ' idea on the head, if you try to 
 prevent my coming." 
 
 He was struck by this new view of the matter. 
 
 He leaned upon the wheel to ponder it. Then he shook 
 his head and said, " No, little Betty. You would be 
 afraid." 
 
 She moved nearer to him ; placed her little hand upon his 
 arm. " Even if I was afraid, dear boy, I would sooner come 
 with you. But I am afraid of nothing except being left 
 
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 341 
 
 behind. Let us go, Charles, let us go right away from them 
 all together." 
 
 Then, forgetting the crutch to the brake, or knowing that 
 he needed it no longer, he flung his arm about her shoulders 
 and drew her close to him. " Betty, little girl," he said in 
 sudden excitement, " you are right." 
 
 The purring of the engine became a sudden roar, and the 
 car leapt forward. 
 
 The foursome of the day before was again at the fourth tee. 
 It was the Colonel, the Curate, the Curate's wife, and the 
 Colonel's daughter. 
 
 " God bless you, sir ! " said the Colonel, as he saw the bonnet 
 of a great brown car bound out of a dip in the ground, above 
 the parched grass and the poppies of the " rough." " God 
 bless you, sir ! Look at that for an impudent lunatic ! " 
 
 The Colonel was a steward of the club. 
 
 The car headed straight for the fairway, gathering speed. 
 " One of those American Johnnies, sir," said the Colonel, 
 " or I will eat my hat." 
 
 The car bumped, lurched, swerved into the fairway 
 Petrie had been a little afraid that the grass might clog his 
 wheels. 
 
 Two hundred yards of skimming along the close-cropped 
 fairway reassured him. The car had never had such a wonder- 
 ful chance before. ... It did give an illusion of tremendous 
 power, that plunging, leaping. . . . 
 
 He swerved again off the fairway into the rough towards 
 the tower. 
 
 His cap flew off, and the four at the tee gaped astonished 
 into silence at the head of a man flung back in wild 
 delight. . . . 
 
 " Great God in heaven ! " wheezed the Colonel. He saw 
 the danger that leaped towards the car at sixty odd miles an 
 hour: he himself, in his time, had ridden, bald-headed and 
 hell-for-leather at the grinning teeth of death. He gulped 
 for a word of warning, but it froze in his throat ; so that he 
 only whispered " Fore. . . ." 
 
342 THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 The car leaped from the cliff's edge beside the ruin, as a 
 nimble diver leaps from a board. For an instant they saw a 
 flash of sky between its flying wheels and the poppies of the 
 cliff-top. Then they saw no more of it ; they only saw the 
 falling of a little stone that the vibration had shaken loose 
 from the walls of the crumbling tower. 
 
 " Mad ! " mumbled the Colonel. " Mad as a dingo dog, 
 sir ! " 
 
 THE END 
 
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