THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 MRS. VIRGINIA B. SPORER
 
 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 BY 
 
 J. D. BERESFORD 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "THE WONDER," "THE EARLY HISTORY OF JACOB STAHL,' 
 "THESE LYNNEKERS," ETC. 
 
 "... a ben is only an egg's way of making another egg. . . . Why the 
 fowl should be considered more alive than the egg, and why it should be said that 
 the hen lays the egg, and not that the egg lays the hen, these are questions which 
 are beyond the power of philosophic explanations, but are, perhaps, most answerable 
 by considering the conceit of man. . . ." "Life and Habit," by Samuel Butter. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1917, 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 CONTENTS 
 BOOK ONE: THE EGG 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. LITTLE MILTON 9 
 
 II. HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 36 
 
 III. GLADYS 59 
 
 BOOK TWO: THE INCUBATOR 
 
 IV. ON THE GROUND FLOOR 101 
 
 V. THE REST OF THE HOUSE no 
 
 VI. THE NIGHT OF THE Row 123 
 
 VII. MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 140 
 
 VIII. PROGRESS 162 
 
 IX. THE Two AUSTRALIANS 185 
 
 X. JUDITH 207 
 
 XL POOR OLD MEARES 254 
 
 XII. ROSE WHITING , 265 
 
 XIII. AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 284 
 
 XIV. THE LOOSE ENDS 312 
 
 2039153
 
 BOOK ONE 
 THE EGG
 
 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 BOOK ONE: THE EGG 
 
 I 
 LITTLE MILTON 
 
 1 ( 
 
 WE are puzzled by miracles because we watch them 
 from the outside. From that point of view we get 
 an effect of amazing change. Ten minutes ago this slightly 
 damp but apparently complete chicken was seen as a rather 
 dirty egg, that might have been regarded suspiciously from 
 a breakfast standpoint, but was with the one exception of 
 colour precisely like any other egg to be broken on the 
 side of a basin and yield the familiar vision of an apricot 
 wobbling in a mess of thin but sticky jelly. Not that it 
 matters in this connexion just what part expectation plays 
 in our attitude to the miracle. The metamorphosis of a 
 smooth still egg that might be made of papier-mache into 
 a differentiated entity full of passionate activities and de- 
 sires is not less a miracle because it happens every time, 
 or because we have become accustomed confidently to 
 expect chickens from eggs. For just so long as we watch 
 the transfiguration from the outside, the thing remains a 
 miracle even though the failure of an egg to hatch is be- 
 come the surprise and disappointment. 
 
 I want to get this right because certain acquaintances of 
 mine once persisted in regarding me as an egg that had 
 wonderfully and unforgiveably turned into a chicken. They 
 looked upon me with suspicion and distrust, not so much 
 
 9
 
 10 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 because they objected to my being what I was, as be- 
 cause they could not understand the change. In this case, 
 their expectation and sense of consequence had been 
 shocked, one curious effect of which was that they were 
 everlastingly expecting me to become again an egg. (The 
 analogy fails there, indicating, I think, the part played by 
 expectation in our attitude towards the miracle.) But the 
 important point is that they watched the transformation 
 from outside. 
 
 Not that I wish to imply any esoteric advantage is gained 
 by my own view-point. I cannot boast that I have seen my 
 own life from the inside. Looking back, the thought of my 
 experience appears almost purely objective. And I dis- 
 tinctly remember at least one occasion on which the realised 
 change in myself came as a disconcerting surprise. It hap- 
 pened that I was called upon to repeat precisely an opera- 
 tion I had performed many years before. Parkinson had 
 had a fire in his house at Copsfield my first job in private 
 practice and as I had lost the original detail drawings, 
 I had to re-design a gable end from the particulars on 
 the one-eighth scale tracings that Parkinson had kept. And 
 I could not do it. In those years I had become a chicken, 
 and I could not conscientiously repeat the operations of 
 the egg. Not only had my attitude changed towards de- 
 sign in architecture, but my draughtsmanship, also, had 
 been so fundamentally affected that my hand refused to 
 copy the weak curves of that old elevation. I sacrificed 
 my artistic conscience and handed over the drawing to my 
 assistant; but I sat idle for nearly half-an-hour, pondering 
 the miracle. 
 
 Those familiar tracings of mine recalled very vividly 
 the man I was when I first went to Keppel Street; and I 
 could follow that man of twenty-eight steadily back into 
 his past, back to the first faint visions of remembered things, 
 without a break. The sequence of his life was one of 
 expected development; there was no breaking of shells, 
 no emergence of a hungry bird on independent legs. And 
 for one moment I, too, regarded the change in myself as
 
 LITTLE MILTON 11 
 
 a miracle; as a sudden transformation from the inert to 
 the active. I stood outside and compared and wondered, 
 just as Geddes or Kemplay might have done; even, per- 
 haps, with a little uncertainty as to whether I might not 
 eventually revert in some ways to the characteristics of 
 the Wilfred Hornby who timidly enquired for rooms at the 
 door of 73 Keppel Street in the autumn of 1905. 
 
 And now that I want so much for a time to find dis- 
 traction from the horror of recent events, I have decided 
 to attempt some account of my experience just for my 
 own satisfaction and, perhaps, as a sort of note for future 
 reference. It will amuse me to plunge back into the past 
 and follow again the development that was taking place 
 when Fate casually and yet with an air of fastidious pre- 
 cision popped me into the incubator of 73 Keppel Street. 
 (Good Lord, what a house that was!) And to do that I 
 must, to some extent, trace the steady process that was 
 going on underneath the neat shell which any friend of my 
 earlier period would unhesitatingly have declared to repre- 
 sent the actual Wilfred Hornby. I must search the uncer- 
 tain diary of my memory for any indications of growth 
 that were marked at the time by the little glimmer of 
 recording consciousness which seems at the last analysis to 
 be the thing I recognise as my personality. 
 
 What lies still behind that, what inspires and forms 
 it, I cannot pretend to guess. Yet that inspiring, formative 
 impulse surely plays the most essential part in the apparent 
 miracle. But the history of my hatching, so far as I can 
 trace it, is written in my consciousness. I admit that I am 
 quite unable to explain the impulse to germination. So far 
 the miracle remains. But I can, at least, account, ob- 
 jectively, for the emergence of the chicken; the phenom- 
 enon that seemed so incredible to some of my friends. 
 
 ii 
 
 My first great experience came to me when I was eight 
 and a half years old.
 
 12 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 My father was a country parson and I was an only child. 
 Until 1 was eight I was petted and spoiled at home by 
 my father and mother and the too indulgent governess who 
 undertook my early education. But in the spring of 1885 
 I was sent to a boarding school in the cathedral town of 
 Medboro', some nine miles away from home. I was badly 
 bullied during my first few terms at that dame's school. 
 When I went there I was a rather prim, fair-haired molly- 
 coddle, with no conceptions of school-boy honour; weakly 
 resentful of the brutal treatment I received from my school- 
 fellows the oldest of them was barely thirteen but with- 
 out the confidence or, indeed, the temper to defend my- 
 self in any other way than by a whimpering, or at most, 
 peevish, expostulation. No wonder that I was bullied. I 
 remember that in my second, autumn, term, I was once 
 tied to a tree in the playground and pelted with "conks," 
 which is short for conquerors, otherwise chestnuts. 
 
 It was natural enough that I should hate that school 
 during my first term, even if I had not been bullied. The 
 differences between school and home were incalculable. 
 The head-mistress was, I believe, a kind-hearted creature 
 and ready to make allowances for such a tender-skinned 
 product as myself, newly unwrapped and suddenly exposed 
 to all the jostlings of school-life ; but, to her, I was only 
 one little boy among eighteen other little boys, superfi- 
 cially much alike and up till then I had been not "only 
 one," but the one and only boy. 
 
 I do not, now, remember the emotions of joy and ex- 
 pectancy that must have thrilled me at the prospect of 
 going home for my first summer holiday. Those emotions 
 must have been very intense, but they are confused in 
 my mind with the emotions I afterwards experienced on 
 so many other similar occasions. The memory that re- 
 mains is of the experience that was undoubtedly an out- 
 come of my long and ardent anticipations. 
 
 My father and mother drove in from Little Milton 
 to fetch me home, so that my relief from slavery must 
 have been more than an hour old when we arrived at the
 
 LITTLE MILTON 13 
 
 Vicarage, and my former relations with what I regarded as 
 my real and true life firmly re-established. Yet I remem- 
 ber nothing whatever of the meeting with my father and 
 mother, nor of the details of the drive home. The whole 
 of the facts are focussed for me by my sight of the 
 house as we came slowly up the drive, through the avenue 
 of rhododendrons. 
 
 The drawing-room end of the Vicarage was covered with 
 a dark green trellis of woodwork to give a ladder for the 
 tendrilled hands of the purple clematis, which with that aid 
 had climbed up between the two French windows of the 
 ground floor, spread itself across the width of the ele- 
 vation, and now displayed its vigour in a decoration of 
 leaf and flower right up to and, in places, beyond the eaves 
 gutter of the lichened slate roof. 
 
 And the sight of that rich colour, outlining the beauty 
 of form that was so sharply picked out by the direct 
 light of the high sun, stirred me for a moment to a higher 
 consciousness of being. I hovered for an instant, with a 
 keen sense of expectation, on the edge of some amazing 
 adventure. It was as if I had discovered some pin-prick 
 in the world of my reality, a tiny hole that let in the daz- 
 zling light of a richer, infinitely more beautiful world be- 
 yond. It seemed to me that if I could but hold myself 
 intensely still I might peep through the curtain of appear- 
 ances and catch one glimpse of something indefinable that 
 was the fountain of all ecstasy. 
 
 I had no words, nor perhaps ideas, then, for that sudden 
 emotion of happiness ; I am unable, rtow, after many repeti- 
 tions of it, in diverse forms, to express what is in my own 
 mind regarding them; but I know that that experience is 
 my first vivid memory of existence and that nothing could 
 extinguish it. 
 
 And it was broken by my father's voice, saying with a 
 familiar accustomed cheerfulness, "Ah! well; here we are 
 at last." 
 
 At least I presume that was what he actually said on 
 that occasion he always did say it.
 
 14. HOUSE-MATES 
 
 After tea I went out again into the garden, to stare at 
 the clematis on that south wall; and I admired immensely 
 what I should, now, call the design of it, which had, in 
 effect, the feeling of a particularly brilliant cretonne. But 
 there was no return of ecstasy; no peephole; nothing 
 opened. ' 
 
 in 
 
 Other instances occur to me, now, of the same sudden 
 emotion of happiness, combined with or should it be, aris- 
 ing from ? a sense of some amazing comprehension. Some- 
 times that state of rapture followed a dream, apparently 
 meaningless when considered in relation to the common 
 affairs of life, but, to me, charged with a mysterious sig- 
 nificance that endured, gradually weakening, in some cases 
 for years. One such dream that still remains in my mind 
 as a transcendental experience, concerned the slaughter of 
 a lamb, an elephant and a little white bull. They were led 
 on, each by its attendant, across the space of a great arena, 
 on one side of which I stood alone, while on the other 
 an incalculable crowd of vaguely realised spectators were 
 massed along the tiers of a grand stand that must have 
 been built on the face of a mountain. In my dream I knew 
 that the solemn procession of animals, led to formal sacri- 
 fice, was made in order that I might learn to die without 
 hesitation or regret; and for many years after I cherished 
 the thought of some old dignity of mine that had glorified 
 another life lived in the deeps of history. 
 
 I reached my rapture in many ways; along the music 
 of the organ in Medboro' Cathedral; by a glimpse of the 
 cathedral pinnacles faintly lit by the winter sun and pricking 
 up through a lake of mist that drowned the flooded meadows 
 by the river; by a combination of magical green lights, 
 when I stood in a summer wood of young beeches and 
 gazed up towards the brightness of the unseen day; and 
 once, I remember, by the smell and colour and touch of a 
 great Gloire-de-Dijon rose that had flowered just at the
 
 LITTLE MILTON 15 
 
 level of my face on the wall of my father's study. I kissed 
 the velvet of the deep crimson petals, and for a moment 
 I seemed to understand the secret joy of a flower's open- 
 ing to life. 
 
 But I am not going to write the story of my common- 
 place youth. Those transitory flashes of ecstasy were few 
 enough, and did not perceptibly influence the normal course 
 of my thought, which was not more touched by imagina- 
 tion than the thought of the average boy. I never men- 
 tioned those moments of mine to any one, not even to my 
 mother. They were private, delightful experiences, pecu- 
 liar, as I then believed, to myself, and I did not care to 
 confess my peculiarity. When I grew older I drifted into 
 a name for them. I called my state, clumsily, "being exalte" 
 the English word "exalted" meant something quite other 
 to me; it was a Bible word, and all Bible words carried 
 with them some atmosphere of tedium, some association 
 of class-work, or Sunday-school, or dreary hours in the 
 arid solemnity of my father's church. 
 
 I see that I am getting my proportions all wrong. In my 
 endeavour to trace some signs of the change that was going 
 on underneath the shell I have, as it were, turned my egg 
 inside out and exhibited the germinal vesicle under a mi- 
 croscope. (This metaphor of the egg is growing tedious 
 and too elaborate.) And yet I suppose it is impossible for 
 me to show the Wilfred Hornby, assumed by my relations, 
 friends and acquaintances. Incidentally, I wonder whether 
 any two of them made precisely the same assumptions? 
 They would, however, have agreed upon certain obvious 
 characteristics, and when I come to consider that "lowest 
 common measure" of myself I can get no further than the 
 conclusion that I was absurdly mediocre. 
 
 When I went to Oakstone at the age of twelve, I was 
 put in the lower second, and when I left, five years later, 
 I was in the upper fifth with the prospect, if I stayed on 
 at the school, of a move up to the lower sixth and the 
 dignity of becoming a prefect. I occupied a respected place 
 in the first game at cricket, I was regarded as a certainty
 
 16 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 for the eleven next year, and I got my colours for "Rugby" 
 in the last match of the Easter term. I had a bosom friend 
 whom I have never seen since I left school, and I did not 
 achieve the distinction of being either remarkably popular 
 or unpopular. Then, too, in appearance I am neither fair 
 nor dark; and good-looking enough to escape any sort of 
 comment. 
 
 But all these details are without any kind of value. They 
 are just such foolish particulars as a friend may give you 
 when he is asked to describe some one he has met; some 
 one whom, perhaps, you think you know yourself. Such 
 descriptions are a weariness, although they do uphold my 
 point with regard to seeing people from the outside. Until 
 I went to Keppel Street, I should have given some such 
 account of any casual acquaintance. 
 
 The real test for my mediocrity must be applied to the 
 life I lived inside my shell; and, although I still have a 
 doubt whether my "moments" may not constitute a weak 
 claim to distinction, I can find no other grounds for the 
 boast that I was not as other boys. This modesty, how- 
 ever, is retrospective. I am looking back with a cold, de- 
 tached criticism; seeing myself with that uninspired accu- 
 racy of knowledge which we cannot bring to the study 
 of any other human being. It is a knowledge that gives a 
 curious flatness to the image evoked. The romantic possi- 
 bilities of another person's inner life are eliminated. I fail 
 to find, now, any delightful potentialities in the man I was. 
 And yet I am conscious of them in myself as I write, and 
 at any moment in my past the same consciousness was 
 present ; ready to flare up full of zest and confidence at the 
 least provocation. 
 
 As a boy I certainly regarded the religious emotions 
 that first began to shake me when I was coming through 
 the crisis of puberty, as an intensity peculiar to myself. 
 Many boys suffer those emotions in one form and another, 
 but few of them confess their experience at the time. 
 Shame and spiritual pride are common impediments to
 
 LITTLE MILTON 17 
 
 speech, I suppose, but I do not find either very clearly 
 marked in my own case. 
 
 My first serious attack developed quite unexpectedly 
 when I was fifteen. 
 
 I was home for the summer holidays, and the incident 
 that apparently started my fit was a conversation with my 
 father. 
 
 He was a tall, handsome man, clean-shaven except for 
 rather bushy grey side-whiskers ; and he had a manner well 
 adapted to confirm the general impression of a scholar who 
 had settled down to the ease of a University living. He was, 
 indeed, a very sound classic, and his qualifications ke^pt him 
 always provided with the two pupils whose fees enabled 
 him to keep me at Oakstone. He had no scruples about 
 coaching the sons of other men, but he had a queer diffi- 
 dence concerning his ability to educate his own son. 
 
 And it was this subject which led him on, that afternoon, 
 to talk with a most unusual confidence of his hopes for 
 me. He had taken me over to tea at a friend's house some 
 three miles away, across the river, and we had a delightful 
 walk home through the meadows. It was a particularly 
 serene evening in late August, and we had the country 
 to ourselves. No corn was ever grown in that wide stretch 
 of low pasture it was too subject to winter floods and all 
 the life of the neighbourhood had been drawn away to the 
 arable of the higher lands, where the harvest was in full 
 swing. I have a strong impression, now, of the black green 
 of the water under the shadow of the hanging woods on 
 the farther side of the river, and I think that, when my 
 father began so unexpectedly to give me his confidence, my 
 thoughts were at first somewhat distracted by considerations 
 of a likely place for chub. 
 
 He opened familiarly enough with some reference to the 
 peace of the evening, and some phrase he found it was, I 
 think, "otia liberrima" bored me by recalling the associa- 
 tion of the schoolroom. I always regarded him more as 
 a schoolmaster than a father; and I suppose nothing could 
 ever have cured him of his habit of Latin quotation prin-
 
 18 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 cipally Horace. And when he became a little reminiscent 
 and touched on the dreams of his own youth, I was still 
 sheepish and self-conscious. I was quite unable to think 
 of my father as a fellow pilgrim; his calling and age he 
 must have been about fifty-five at that time ranged him 
 too definitely with the pedagogues, with those mechanical, 
 infallible beings who inspired respect but could never be 
 imagined as asking for sympathy. 
 
 My father concluded that wistful survey of his drowned 
 ambitions with a slightly whimsical twirl of his Malacca 
 cane and the inevitable tag of "Pulvis et umbra sumus." I 
 came in happily, sure of my ground for once, with a re- 
 flective "Quo pius jEneas." 
 
 My father was obviously pleased. "Ah! magnificent fel- 
 low, Horace," he said, "one can take him anywhere. I'm 
 glad to find you're already beginning to appreciate him, my 
 boy. But" and he sighed with a sort of spacious reflective- 
 ness "I don't know that I particularly want you to go 
 into the church." 
 
 That suggestion instantly caught my attention. My 
 mother had no ambition for me other than the taking 
 of Holy Orders, and often wearied me with her well-meant 
 advice on the subject. Her chief argument was that the 
 Church, as a profession, was so "safe" ; her regard being for 
 my spiritual and not my worldly protection. She had had a 
 brother who had gone very wild, and she was the more 
 anxious to protect me from similar perils of the soul. 
 
 "Don't you, pater?" I said eagerly. "I thought . . . 
 mater has always said . . ." 
 
 "Not unless you have an urgent call," he returned, shift- 
 ing his ground a little. "In that case, of course, I should be 
 the last person in the world to stand in your way. And 
 your dear mother, as you say ... No, no, all I meant was 
 I don't want you to drift into orders as the easiest 
 leans to a profession if, as I say, you have no particular 
 bias. I myself . . ." But he apparently thought it wiser 
 .o avoid that confession, for he pulled himself up and went
 
 LITTLE MILTON 19 
 
 on : "However, I daresay you hardly know your own mind 
 yet. Time enough in a couple of years. . . ." 
 
 "I think I should rather like to be an architect, pater," 
 I suggested, timidly. This was the first time I had given 
 utterance to that ambition, but it had been my secret desire 
 for two years. I had a natural gift for drawing and the 
 subjects I selected had always been architectural. I believe 
 that I recognised, subconsciously, even as a boy, that the 
 wider powers of the artist were denied to me. I was too 
 Conscientious, or had not enough imagination, to attempt 
 landscape. But I put out my suggestion with considerable 
 shyness and hesitation. I could not, in those days, avoid 
 the feeling that any such proposition of mine must inevitably 
 be, for some esoteric reason, puerile and foolish. 
 
 "Ah!" remarked my father as if he were sampling the 
 quality of a wine, and then added after a moment's con- 
 sideration, "Well, well, it's a very fine profession." 
 
 I was encouraged to enlarge on my proposition, and it 
 was not cunning or dishonesty on my part that induced 
 me to speak almost exclusively of ecclesiastical architec- 
 ture as the object of my dreams. I had been brought up 
 under the shadow of a church, and there were some really 
 fine bits of work in our church at Little Milton the flam- 
 boyant tracery of the three-light west window is illustrated 
 in all the text books of English Gothic. 
 
 My father listened to my boyish enthusiasms with evi- 
 dent pleasure, but his thought must have been engaged 
 with the possibilities of my diances of livelihood, for when 
 he answered me, he began to speak of the difficulties of 
 ways and means. "So few churches are built, nowadays," 
 was one of his objections, a remark that shows how deeply 
 he had sunk under the influences of his provincial sur- 
 roundings. He had forgotten the growth of cities, and 
 was studying the problem from his knowledge of our own 
 neighbourhood in which there had been no new church 
 built within living memory. "Restoration, of course," he 
 put in, continuing his local test, and he brightened up a 
 little with a comment on Truro Cathedral.
 
 20 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "Of course, I needn't do only churches," I reminded him. 
 
 "No, no, of course not," he said, and went on to tell 
 me that he had been at King's with Sidney Baxter, of 
 Heaton & Baxter, the well-known ecclesiastical architects 
 in Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
 
 We had quite decided my future by the time we came 
 to the bridge over the lock, and we stood there for a few 
 minutes, more nearly understanding one another than we 
 had ever done before. The sun was setting blood red, 
 and the slender leaves of a willow on the further bank 
 traced a graceful pattern in dead black against the dying 
 splendour of that indented circle of fire. (Years after- 
 wards I got rather a good design for a wall-paper out of 
 that memory.) 
 
 Perhaps my father had a "moment" just then, and found 
 in his visions for me some vicarious satisfaction for his 
 own failure. I remember that he came out with "usque 
 ego postera Crescam laude recens," which could only have 
 been induced by the thought of some very magnificent 
 achievement. I wonder if I should have got nearer to 
 him if he had not worn that wide-awake and frock coat and 
 "all-round" collar? I suppose not. We have often bathed 
 together, and even in the water one would have known 
 him for a parson. It was not only his whiskers that 
 stamped him; there was something bland and- a little 
 feminine in his face, something that was yet not in con- 
 tradiction to his height and the square breadth of his fine 
 shoulders. 
 
 No doubt I was a little stirred emotionally by that new 
 intercourse with my father, and by the promised effect of 
 what seemed to be the successful result of my argument 
 for architecture as a profession. But the religious fervour 
 which first attacked me that same evening and continued 
 with slowly abating fury for nearly a week, was due almost 
 entirely to my sense of relief, and to the gratitude it en- 
 gendered. Subconsciously I had been aware of my future 
 as the entrance to servitude. I had hardly believed it 
 possible that I could escape that "sacred calling" of my
 
 LITTLE MILTON 21 
 
 mother's ambition, a calling that in my mind was asso- 
 ciated with an endless barrier of self-repression and re- 
 strictions. "Duty" figured so overwhelmingly in her pic- 
 ture of my career, and it was a word that had come to 
 stand as a synonym for all the restraints of school life. I 
 had to become my own schoolmaster and live in a per- 
 petual pupilage to the teachings of the church as expounded 
 and practised by myself. Indeed my mother nearly al- 
 ways referred to life as a school. It is true that I regarded 
 the reward of Paradise as eminently desirable if only 
 as an escape from the horrid alternative of Eternal Pun- 
 ishment that we conscientiously accepted in our evangel- 
 ically-minded household. 
 
 And that, too, had its influence in evoking the strenuous 
 resolves of the period that immediately followed the pros- 
 pect of release. I was suddenly confronted with a new 
 responsibility that I must shoulder for myself. A clergy- 
 man was holy, was "saved" by hypothesis. It was to me 
 incredible that a clergyman should not go to Heaven. If 
 you went into the Church, you had to be good, was the 
 way I argued. The schoolmaster was always with you. 
 But a mere, secular architect had to choose his own path 
 to Heaven. I set about choosing mine at once. 
 
 Yet I do not wish to convey the impression that my 
 little spell of religious emotion was deliberately induced. 
 It was primarily evoked by my sense of relief, and it was 
 to that extent at least spontaneous. Only the expression 
 of it was necessarily deliberate. I had not many sins to 
 recant but I made the most of those I had. 
 
 I made vows of unselfishness, for example, of a more 
 willing obedience to my parents and masters; and of a 
 greater devotion and attention during prayers and church- 
 service. I had not, then, been confirmed, but I was being 
 tentatively prepared for that ceremony and I decided to 
 fix my mind on my final acceptance into the church with 
 a great seriousness. But the true characteristic of my con- 
 version was associated with those sexual yearnings which 
 had just begun to find queer forms of expression. I
 
 22 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 had one or two drawings in my pocket copied from the 
 illustrations of a smuggled copy of "Ally Sloper" which 
 had been privately cherished for a couple of days and 
 then burnt in the kitchen garden under dread of discovery. 
 These drawings would not have shocked the ordinary con- 
 ventional mind. The worst of them presented a chubby- 
 legged young woman in a short skirt, who boasted a turnip- 
 shaped torso not too shamelessly decollete. But to me she 
 represented some mysterious, alluring, quite incompre- 
 hensible sin. She was the emblem of immoral, irresponsible 
 femininity. If I had met her in the flesh in the vicarage 
 garden, I should certainly have fled from her in horror; 
 but the contemplation of her image, very carefully copied 
 on a sheet of my mother's writing paper, had upon me the 
 effect of enjoying a furtive, delightful wickedness. I burnt 
 her with less successful emblems in another specially con- 
 structed bonfire, and added to the pile of copy of Eugene 
 Sue's "Mysteries of Paris," purloined from my father's 
 study. The book had not interested me ; indeed, ( I had only 
 read the first few pages ; but it had an air of being definitely 
 profane and prohibited, and I had sometimes crept up to 
 my own room just to touch it where it lay, carefully con- 
 cealed, I hoped, under a pile of winter vests in my bottom 
 drawer. The very touch of the book gave me the sense 
 of an ecstatic surrender to the delicious wiles of the devil. 
 
 Yet my vows and renunciation of the sinful lusts of the 
 flesh were made without effort. They represented my will- 
 ing offerings in the cause of righteousness, inasmuch as 
 my mood did not arise from any conviction of sin, but 
 from a sudden urgent desire to become what I called simply 
 and effectively "good." It is true that later manifestations 
 were more complex; and some of them more enduring. 
 One that followed a definite lapse from virtue I was about 
 twenty-five at that time lasted for several weeks. But 
 the general effects of them, upon myself, were always much 
 alike. I had a feeling of being singled out from the mass 
 of my fellows; I experienced an uplifting and serenity 
 of mind ; a consciousness of immediate satisfaction as a re-
 
 LITTLE MILTON 23 
 
 ward for the noble resolutions that I was making. It seems, 
 indeed, as if the whole manifestation arose from an egotism 
 that might in extreme cases develop into megalomania. 
 Not that I advance this statement as in any sense an ex- 
 planation of the phenomena. I must leave that to some 
 inspired psychologist of the future. I note it here simply 
 because these religious fits of mine were an essential part of 
 my make-up; and what I have referred to as my emer- 
 gence from the shell seems very closely related to them. 
 And I must insist once again that I was a very ordinary 
 boy. 
 
 IV 
 
 Another piece of evidence which confirms that obstinate 
 affirmation, is to be found in the manner of my first serious 
 love-affair. 
 
 I had earlier fallen temporarily under the glamour of 
 various distant influences. When I was eleven I was des- 
 perately in love for some hours with a red-haired little 
 girl I met at a Christmas party. Three years later I had 
 a shy, adoring passion for the wife of our Squire she 
 was then a big, handsome woman of thirty-five or so, and 
 was afterwards the subject of a surprising scandal in the 
 parish. (I am mentioning only the more outstanding ex- 
 amples of my amorous precocity.) And, at sixteen, with a 
 new boldness, I was seriously contemplating the experi- 
 ment of kissing our exceedingly pretty new housemaid. 
 
 That last affair, however, was somewhat different in 
 kind. It was related to my furtive pleasure in contemplat- 
 ing the figure of the lady I had offered as a burnt sacri- 
 fice, rather than to the spiritual drench associated with my 
 other absorptions. Louisa did not appear to me as a god- 
 dess. She was a dummy, an improved method of por- 
 traiture. I urgently desired to embrace her; in my mind 
 I planned extravagant situations which would give me the 
 desired opportunity; but in my thought of the embrace 
 the object of desire was submissive to the point of dul-
 
 2% HOUSE-MATES 
 
 ness. For some obscure reason I never questioned Louisa's 
 willingness to be kissed, although she never gave me the 
 least encouragement, and I have, now, no doubt whatever 
 that any rash experiment of mine would certainly have 
 ended in my humiliation. 
 
 A further sign of the unworthiness of these longings 
 towards Louisa is to be found in their intermittence. There 
 were days on which I deliberately and with the best inten- 
 tions refrained from looking at her; there were days on 
 which I forgot that she was anything but a domestic 
 servant My worst time was Sunday morning. I do not 
 know whether this was because there was an added wicked- 
 ness in giving thought to my desires on that day, or 
 whether they were not partly induced by the contacts of 
 clean underclothes which always gave me a feeling of 
 physical fitness; but I -remember that the hour or so I 
 spent alone between breakfast and eleven o'clock service 
 was the time when I came nearest to putting my longings 
 into action. I used to go upstairs when Louisa was doing 
 the bedrooms and find some excuse to watch her surrep- 
 titiously while she was at work. At my boldest I may 
 have brushed against her as I passed, but I never attempted 
 to make love to her, nor even to lead up to any familiarity 
 of speech. I did not see the intrigue in those terms. To 
 me she was nothing but a subject for experiment. And 
 I lacked the courage to make the attempt not from the 
 fear of rebuff but because it would in some way have out- 
 raged my own code the code from which I was, never- 
 theless, so painfully eager to escape. 
 
 But what I have called my first serious love-affair killed 
 my shameful longings towards Louisa stone dead. 
 
 The subject of my new adoration was the daughter of 
 a neighbouring rector, and I first saw her when she came 
 over to sing in a concert in our schoolroom at Little Milton. 
 There was certainly good excuse for me on this occasion, 
 she was undoubtedly pretty. That opinion does not rest 
 
 ely upon my own infatuated judgment. During the 
 concert I overheard various comments on her good looks.
 
 LITTLE MILTON 25 
 
 She was probably at her best that night, a little flushed 
 with the excitement of her performance (she had a charm- 
 ing little mezzo-soprano voice and sang with a vivacity and 
 a touch of pertness that were distinctly fascinating), and 
 her blue eyes seemed to me dazzlingly bright. She must 
 have been about twenty, then, but to me she had no age. 
 She was an ideal of beauty, and in my thought she was 
 raised to an extravagant power of femininity that made 
 her something more than mortal. I may add that she was 
 in white that evening, and that the modest exposure of 
 her throat was but the most distant recognition of evening 
 dress. 
 
 The brightness of her, seen in the glamour of those 
 surroundings, would have been enough to enrapture me, 
 and the brilliance of her effect was further heightened by 
 the fact that her family had a certain prestige in the neigh- 
 bourhood. The Lynnekers, without any snobbery, in some 
 way conveyed the impression of breed. The three boys had 
 all been at Oakstone, and the youngest of them, who was 
 two years senior to me, had only left at the end of the 
 previous summer term. He got his first-eleven colours 
 when he was only sixteen, had had a tremendous ovation 
 on the following prize-day, and had always figured to me 
 as something of a hero ever since. He was, in fact, a 
 worthy brother for so adorable a vision as his sister, Adela. 
 Indeed, the circumstances surrounding my new object of 
 worship all helped to put her on a plane recognisably higher 
 than that of the commonplace vicarage of Little Milton. 
 
 She came in to supper afterwards, with her elder sister 
 and a grown-up brother in deacon's orders. I did not 
 actually speak to her, but once she definitely smiled at me. 
 She may have understood the awed rapture of the gaze I 
 could not avert from her as she sat nearly opposite to me at 
 the supper-table, and have accepted my devotion as a modest 
 addition to the many tributes she was receiving that night. 
 
 I only saw her once afterwards. Her father's parish 
 was five miles from Little Milton; and two tremendous 
 excursions that I made the following summer, ostensibly
 
 2 6 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 to study the Norman architecture of Halton Church, were 
 not rewarded by any sight of her. I had not the courage 
 to go up to the Rectory for the church key, which I ob- 
 tained from the sexton down in the village; but I spent 
 an hour on the battlements of the church tower, a point 
 of vantage that commanded a liberal view of the Lynnekers' 
 garden. Possibly she was away at the time. I saw other 
 members of the family from my safe distance. The second 
 time that I caught a glimpse of her was in Medboro'. She 
 was with her father and sister, driving, in a Stanhope ; and 
 she never even saw me. 
 
 She eloped with the son of the village carpenter rather 
 more than two years later. My father was dead, then, 
 and I was living with my mother in London. I had out- 
 lived my infatuation by that time, but the news came to 
 me as a shock, nevertheless. I could not understand how 
 such a young woman as Adela Lynneker had appeared to 
 me, could have married a common workman. My mother 
 was equally surprised. "It will be a terrible blow to the 
 Lynnekers," she said. "I always thought she looked such 
 a nice girl." I often wonder, now, how that elopement 
 came about. 
 
 But my present concern is solely with the effect that 
 that youthful adoration had upon me, an effect which can 
 only be compared with my fits of religious enthusiasm. I 
 was quite beautifully in love, boy as I was, with Adela 
 Lynneker. I was purified. I went about rapt in moods 
 of exaltation. I looked upon Louisa with loathing. I had 
 no obscene material for sacrifices, but if I had had, I should 
 have stamped upon the holocaust with a horrified disgust 
 that had not figured in my earlier burnt offering. In place 
 of that disavowal, I sacrificed all that I found impure in 
 my thought, whispering the wonderful invocation of the 
 sacred name, Adela, whenever I was tempted as, for ex- 
 ample, by the sight of a book of my father's with illustra- 
 tions of Greek sculpture that I had often pored over, on 
 the pretence of studying architecture. And I cherished a 
 copy of the concert programme, as a Catholic might have
 
 LITTLE MILTON 27 
 
 cherished a fragment of the True Cross. To this day 
 there is a certain magic associated with that simple an- 
 nouncement: Song. . . . Die Forelle. . . . Schubert. . . . 
 Miss Adela Lynneker. 
 
 I am quite sure that my first serious love-affair was very 
 good for me. 
 
 My father died when I was seventeen. 
 
 He was apparently perfectly well when we went to bed. 
 It was a Sunday night in the middle of September, and I 
 was going back to Oakstone for my last year at school 
 on the following Wednesday. He had preached twice 
 that day and had eaten a very hearty supper. He always 
 had a healthy appetite, but on Sunday night he ate more 
 than usual. He used to say that preaching gave him "an 
 edge." My mother invariably gave us fish for supper on 
 Sundays. She had some theory as to fish being a "brain- 
 food," a theory founded on some chemical explanation of 
 the properties of phosphorus. Unhappily my father, when 
 he had fed his brain with fish, went on to feed his body 
 with cold roast pork. My mother never attempted to re- 
 strain his appetite. She ate very little herself, but she 
 believed that "a man's frame required meat," as she put 
 it; and often worried me because I was naturally inclined 
 to follow her example rather than my father's. 
 
 I am a light sleeper and I heard my mother come out 
 of her bedroom at two o'clock and go downstairs. I sat 
 up in bed and listened for her return. I had a vague idea 
 that the house might have been burgled, and wondered why 
 my father had not gone instead of my mother. Then I 
 heard her returning. She did not seem to be hurrying. 
 She went back to the room she shared with my father 
 and closed the door gently and deliberately, as if she were 
 afraid of waking the rest of the household. 
 
 I was nearly asleep again when she knocked at my door. 
 She came in without waiting for my reply. A queer little
 
 28 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 figure she looked, in a pink flannel dressing-gown and a 
 white frilled night-cap. She was carrying one of the small 
 bell-shaped benzoline lamps we used instead of candles, and 
 she had turned it too high so that the little pencil of flame 
 wavered up into a thin wreath of gloomy smoke. 
 
 "Wilfred, there's something the matter with your father," 
 she said with a little running anxiety that nearly tripped 
 her speech. "I went to fetch him a mustard leaf and when 
 I got back ... I don't understand what's wrong with him. 
 He's so quiet now. I wish you'd come and look at him." 
 
 I began to ask questions. I think my chief feeling at the 
 moment was one of slight annoyance. I tried to diagnose 
 my father's symptoms before I got out of bed. 
 
 "Has he got any pain?" I asked. 
 
 My mother looked at me as if I had propounded some 
 deeply obscure problem that she was quite unable to grapple 
 with. "I wish you'd come and look at him," she repeated. 
 She was holding the lamp all askew, and the wreath of 
 dark smoke waved a shaky response to the trembling of 
 her hand. 
 
 "I say, mother, is there anything wrong?" I said. Her 
 fear was being communicated to me, but it was for her that 
 I was afraid. She looked so odd, I thought. I was not 
 quite sure whether she was not walking in her sleep. I had 
 no qualms concerning that great strong man, my father. 
 
 "Oh! Wilfred, do some quickly," she said. 
 
 "All right. Look out with that lamp, mother," I re- 
 turned, as I got out of bed. I expected her to go back to 
 her room while I put on my trousers and slippers, but she 
 stood perfectly still in the same attitude, and stared at the 
 bed with the same look of puzzled apprehension. 
 
 "You had better take the lamp, dear," she said, when I 
 had partly dressed. 
 
 "Why? Aren't you coming?" I asked impatiently. The 
 truth is that I was a little frightened of her. 
 
 She held the lamp towards me. "You go first," she said, 
 and she followed me no further than the threshold of the 
 other room.
 
 LITTLE MILTON 29 
 
 My father lay on his back, with his mouth wide open, 
 and I thought that his lips and face seemed a strange 
 colour. His eyes were half-open and the eyeballs horribly 
 rolled up. 
 
 "I say, pater, is anything wrong?" I asked. 
 
 I did not guess even then that he was dead, but I was 
 terrified. I retreated from the bed and looked round for 
 my mother. She was standing just outside the room, with 
 her two hands clasped over her mouth. She looked rather as 
 if something had set her teeth on edge. 
 
 "It's it's some sort of a fit," I said. "I'd better go and 
 get the doctor." 
 
 My mother nodded and took her hands away from her 
 mouth. "Perhaps I'd better call the servants?" she said. 
 
 And then we hung for a moment in a ridiculous sus- 
 pense as to whether we ought to wake the two maids. We 
 did not discuss the point, but we looked at one another 
 with evident hesitation. 
 
 I solved that by putting the responsibility upon her. "Yes, 
 take the lamp, and go up to them," I said. "I must get 
 my things on. And, mother, I think you ought to do 
 something, while I'm gone. Give him brandy or some- 
 thing." 
 
 We spoke in whispers; I from some fear of disturbing 
 the living; my mother from the older, more potent fear 
 of disturbing the dead. She must have known that my 
 father was dead when she came into my room. 
 
 It may appear a little strange that I had not then, nor 
 for the next hour or so, even a passing apprehension of my 
 father's death. But life wears such a different aspect when 
 it is regarded from the cool vantage ground of one who 
 looks back. There in the baffling confusion of the tragedy 
 I had no quietness to weigh an inference, no time to con- 
 sider. And suddenly waked from sleep, as I had been, 
 my mind had accepted without question the first statement 
 my mother had made. There was "something the matter" 
 with him, she had said, and I had understood her state- 
 ment in the terms of my common experience. He was not
 
 80 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 well, I concluded, and my sight of him had only intensified 
 my realisation of his illness. 
 
 "My father has had some kind of fit," was the manner 
 of my announcement to the unqualified assistant who lived 
 in the village. I could get no further than that. 
 
 The boyish impetuosity of my onslaught upon the door 
 of his lodgings had brought Mr. Fernsby to his window 
 with commendable promptitude. He was a queer little 
 hunchback with a big head, who managed a certain effect of 
 dignity by wearing a long beard. The explanation of his 
 failure to obtain a diploma was probably his inebriety, al- 
 though it is true that might equally well have been an effect. 
 He was a shrewd little fellow enough, and all that we had 
 to depend upon in case of emergency; the nearest quali- 
 fied doctor lived at Nenton, three miles away. 
 
 "Apoplexy?" Fernsby asked, exhibiting the same symp- 
 toms of procrastination I had shown when my mother had 
 waked me. 
 
 "I don't know," I said. "He's lying frightfully still with 
 his mouth open and his eyes look awfully funny." 
 
 Fernsby either evaluated that at its full significance, or 
 considered that my unprofessional diagnostics were not 
 likely to help him. "I'll come at once," he said, and with- 
 drew into the obscurity of his bedroom. He had looked 
 quite big and impressive when I saw only his head. 
 
 I waited outside for him. I was afraid to go back to 
 the Vicarage by myself; afraid of my own incompetence 
 to deal with the unknown terrors of serious illness. I knew 
 that my mother and the two maids would depend upon 
 me and I could think of nothing that ought to be done. I 
 was singularly lacking in confidence and independence at 
 seventeen; but then so are the majority of boys. 
 
 Fernsby hardly spoke as he trotted beside me on our 
 way back, but now that I had in tow some more or less 
 dependable expert who would take all the responsibility of 
 decisive action, the excitement that had been subconsciously 
 working m me found an outlet in chatter. I told Fernsby 
 every detail of my conversation with my mother and of my
 
 LITTLE MILTON 31 
 
 brief examination of my father ; I told him the whole story 
 two or three times with improving accuracy. 
 
 Fernsby's single question displayed a shrewdness that 
 seemed to me, then, a trifle callous. 
 
 "What did he have for supper ?" he asked ; and if I was 
 a little offended by what I regarded as an attempt to com- 
 mon the importance of my news, I answered him to the 
 last potato. 
 
 And below all the ebullition of my excited chatter, an- 
 other personality, reserved and timid, held itself aloof, 
 occupied with some general impression of things that had 
 little relevance to all this apparent preoccupation with 
 the new experience I was suffering. When I look back, 
 now, I see that rather fair-haired, callow youth of seven- 
 teen, from outside. Memory recalls a picture of him and 
 the sound of his voice, but nothing of what he felt. I 
 watch him walking beside the queer little image of Fernsby, 
 whose dwarfed figure, ceremoniously buttoned into the 
 ridiculous little frock-coat that was his only wear, makes 
 the boy look unusually tall and graceful. 
 
 But my vision of the boy fades when I recall the beauty 
 of the night; the waning moon with one edge just begin- 
 ning to melt into the deep hollow of the sky; or the rigid 
 solemnity of black trees in the avenue, every leaf stiff and 
 alert in the suspense of an absolute calm. And although I 
 see, then, with his eyes and feel with his senses, I seem to 
 have no part in the conversation he is holding with the 
 little doctor. 
 
 (Was my sight of the boy the vision of a marionette 
 that was the physical expression of myself, constantly 
 changing, dying and being renewed from within? And if 
 so, why did the renewal fall always into such similar com- 
 binations, so that when I look now at a photograph of the 
 youth, I can still recognise his likeness to the image I see 
 in the mirror? This flesh I am wearing is not the same 
 I wore then, but some force (of inertia perhaps?) has built 
 the cells of it always on the original plan. It is possible 
 that if the will were resolute enough, it might change the
 
 32 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 shape of the man's physical expression ! I can, indeed, dis- 
 cern small but characteristic changes in my own features 
 the mouth has altered, and, I think, the eyes and the chin.) 
 
 My mother was downstairs when we got to the house. 
 She took Fernsby up to my father's room without attempt- 
 ing any account of his illness, and returned almost imme- 
 diately to join me in the dining-room. 
 
 "How is he, now?" I asked. My excitement seemed to 
 have withered as I entered the house. Already the first 
 whispers of a dreadful doubt were coming to me. 
 
 My mother shook her head without speaking. She was 
 sitting, very upright, on a chair by the door, and her two 
 hands were up at her mouth again with that same sugges- 
 tion of allaying some almost unbearable nervous pain. 
 
 I turned down the lamp a little and sat in one of the 
 armchairs by the fireplace. The room wore an unfamiliar 
 aspect; it seemed in some way as if it, too, had been dis- 
 turbed in its rest, and was unable to adjust itself to the 
 common appearance of every day. The lamp's steady bril- 
 liance was an unaccustomed intrusion, imposed upon the 
 room by extraordinary circumstances. 
 
 "You don't think it's serious, mother, do you?" I asked 
 after a few seconds of listening silence. 
 
 She nodded and looked at me apprehensively. 
 
 "Very serious ?" I said, approaching a climax I dared not 
 as yet boldly face. And then as she nodded again, I went 
 on: "But I say, mother, you don't mean . . ." 
 
 I do not believe that she could have dared a complete 
 admission of the truth just then, but she was saved from 
 any equivocation by the return of Fernsby. He had not 
 been upstairs more than a minute. My mother instantly 
 got up and met him in the hall. I could not hear what they 
 said, but I knew then. I knew so surely that I did not even 
 seek for any confirmation. 
 
 I heard little Fernsby go out, and then my mother came 
 back to me in the dining-room. 
 
 "I shall go and lie down in the spare room," she said. 
 "Mr. Fernsby says there may have to be an inquest."
 
 LITTLE MILTON 33 
 
 I made no attempt to detain her. We, neither of us, at 
 that moment, sought any consolation from the other. I 
 was self-consciously facing a dramatic situation. I did not 
 know what I ought to do; and it is the truth that I had not, 
 then, any sense either of loss or of sorrow. And my mother 
 was suffering from an immense shock. She had not, had 
 never had, a passionate love for my father; but the sight 
 of him, so unexpectedly dead, had frozen her sensibilities 
 for the time being. 
 
 She had a reaction next day. She collapsed as if the 
 strain had been suddenly released. She was seriously ill 
 for nearly a fortnight, and was unable to attend the fun- 
 eral. . . . 
 
 I fell fast asleep in the arm-chair in the dining-room. 
 For some reason the thought of going to bed again seemed 
 incongruous, and even a little heartless. When I woke I 
 was very cold ; the lamp was nearly out, and the room was 
 taking on its old familiar aspect in the first light of a 
 September sunrise. 
 
 I discovered then that I, too, must have been immensely 
 disturbed by the sight of my father's body. I found that 
 I had forgotten to take off my night-shirt before putting on 
 my every day clothes. 
 
 VI 
 
 The death of my father affected me very deeply when 
 I had had time to recover from the immediate paralysis 
 of the shock; but for a few hours my imagination was 
 numbed, just as the body may be numbed by the concussion 
 of a severe wound. Pain came to me gradually. Even 
 when I awoke in the cold dining-room to an intellectual reali- 
 sation of our loss, I was unaware of suffering, and won- 
 dered at my own indifference. My insensibility seemed to 
 me a horrible thing, and yet I was, in a way, a little proud 
 of it; as if I had come through some great ordeal without 
 hurt. 
 
 The first apprehension of some terrifying injury that
 
 34, HOUSE-MATES 
 
 had been done to me came when I went down to the river 
 to bathe I had no desire to sleep again; it was after six 
 o'clock and the sun was already beginning to shine weakly 
 through the mist. The lawn was white with dew, and 
 as I went down through the garden I repeated a phrase of 
 my father's "a catch of frost at sunrise," would have 
 been his comment on the morning's weather. 
 
 Perhaps that characteristic sentence of his first began 
 to draw my attention to the wound I carried ; and the bath 
 and its associations necessarily confirmed my realisation 
 that the hurt would surely ache. The anaesthesia was pass- 
 ing ; the nerve ends were beginning to smart. 
 
 And as I walked back to the house the very beauty of 
 the morning increased my pain. We were going to have 
 one of those glorious, still days that come only in Septem- 
 ber. The mist was dispersing, and the drenched fields were 
 no longer dead white as if they had been covered with a 
 smooth blanket of thistle-down ; now, each tiny globe seemed 
 to have been miraculously clarified, transformed from milk 
 to crystal-clear water. The smoke from the labourers' cot- 
 tages lifted from each chimney in a perfect, slender column, 
 with never a bend or a break between its base and the 
 feathered capital of its fading dispersion into the hazy sky. 
 The little birds were twittering and peeking from every 
 hedge ; up behind the vicarage the rooks were in full chorus ; 
 and from the glebe farm came the low, monotonous hum- 
 ming of a threshing machine, with its steady rising moan, 
 followed by the sudden fall of a major third as fresh corn 
 was thrown into the feed. 
 
 At that moment I had only a sense of loss. I had not been 
 intimate with my father, I knew nothing of his inner life, 
 but he had been a companion and I missed him. I wanted 
 to find joy in that wonderful morning, and I could not be- 
 cause he was not there to share it. It seemed to me an ir- 
 reparable calamity that he could never again be there with 
 me to echo my delight in the stillness and beauty of a Sep- 
 tember day. My mother did not respond to those influ- 
 ences. She turned them all into a moral lesson upon the
 
 LITTLE MILTON 35 
 
 necessity for thankfulness, and even at seventeen I was 
 dimly aware that while she thanked God with her lips, my 
 father and I thanked him better by the intensity of our 
 enjoyment. We could be glad with the morning ; my mother 
 looked, nodded a perfunctory appreciation and went about 
 her work. If she had so thanked a friend for some price- 
 less gift, she would surely have been accused of ingratitude. 
 
 But it was my own loss that hurt me, then ; the real ache 
 did not come till the afternoon. It was the report of the 
 Nenton doctor that brought home to me the true sorrow 
 of my father's death. There was to be an autopsy, and 
 the thought of that seemed to me quite unbearable. I could 
 not endure the idea that his body should be so irreverently 
 mangled. 
 
 I lay in the woods that afternoon, prostrate with a grief 
 I could not quite understand. I found no consolation in 
 the thought of my father's soul being in Heaven; I could 
 not believe that he would find happiness there. I felt that 
 he must be lonely and suffering even as I was; and the 
 longing to console and help him, and the bitterness of my 
 impotence, threw me finally into an agony of tears. 
 
 And I never found any true solace for that grief. Time 
 slowly took all the sting and the ache out of it; but quite 
 recently I felt again the desire to comfort my father in his 
 loneliness.
 
 II 
 
 HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 
 
 MY Another and I went to live at Hampstead after my 
 father's death. We took a tiny house just off the 
 North End Road, not far from the "Bull & Bush." It had 
 originally been decided that I was to go into Heaton & 
 Baxter's office when I was eighteen, but, now, it was deemed 
 advisable for me to cut my last year at Oakstone and begin 
 to serve my articles without delay. Mr. Baxter was very 
 decent about the affair and accepted 150 for my indentures, 
 a sum that was exactly half the firm's usual fee. 
 
 Our choice of Hampstead was determined by my mother's 
 wish to live near her elder brother the younger one, the 
 scapegrace, had been dead some years. 
 
 This one surviving uncle of mine, David Williams my 
 father had outlived his two brothers was a solicitor, with 
 offices in Moorgate Street. His business was almost en- 
 tirely confined to conveyancing, and although he had, long 
 since, accumulated a respectable fortune, he continued at 
 sixty-three to devote the greater part of his time to his 
 profession. He had a big house with a fine garden, nearly 
 at the top of Heath Street, and drove down to the City 
 every day in his brougham. He and his wife had only 
 one child, a daughter, Gladys, who was four years my 
 junior. 
 
 I had seen very little of these relations of mine before 
 we came to live in Hampstead. Gladys and my aunt Agatha 
 had twice stayed at Little Milton for a few days ; and once 
 
 36
 
 HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 37 
 
 my mother and I had stayed in Heath Street during my 
 one and only visit to London. 
 
 Gladys was a fair, thin child who treated me with a 
 mixture of fear and contempt. I had disliked her quite 
 actively after my visit to Heath Street; she was eleven 
 then, and had given me to understand that she regarded 
 boys as a very inferior creation. 
 
 Our relations were a little changed when I came up to 
 Hampstead to live. I was only seventeen, and still a gauche 
 youth in country-made clothes, with stove-pipe trousers at 
 least a couple of inches too short. But I was on the verge 
 of comparative independence, and I could afford to treat 
 my little girl cousin with an air of tolerance. I was re- 
 lieved to find that I could put on the airs of an adult, and 
 return the snubbing I had received two years before. 
 Gladys's method of reply was to toss her head and look 
 a trifle sulky. Even at thirteen she was too dignified to be 
 pert, or, perhaps, she had not the wit. There was only one 
 thing I liked about her. She had beautifully clear blue 
 eyes ; they reminded me of Adela Lynneker. 
 
 My uncle was a curious mixture of old fashions and 
 new ideas. He was a clean-shaven man with an Early- Vic- 
 torian type of face he could have worn Dundreary 
 whiskers without exciting attention and the cut of his 
 frock-coat and the shape of his top hat enhanced the sug- 
 gestion that he belonged to the 'Forties. When I had stayed 
 at Ken Lodge, I had in my careless, youthful way set him 
 down as a prejudiced old fogey, and had thought no better 
 of him for being a "Radical" in politics. (No doubt some- 
 thing of this attitude was due to my father. I do not think 
 that he and Uncle David were ever on very friendly terms.) 
 But when my mother and I came to live so near her brother, 
 and we saw him and his family almost daily, I gradually 
 changed my opinion of him. 
 
 The discovery that he was not a strict Sabbatarian first 
 inclined me to regard him with more favour. He always 
 attended mattins at the Parish Church, setting out decor- 
 ously with his wife and Gladys, in the approved mid- Vic-
 
 88 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 torian manner. But after that duty had been decently per- 
 formed, he had no prejudices about the keeping of the 
 Lord's Day. Indeed, he frequently had friends in to play 
 whist on Sunday evening. 
 
 My mother regarded this laxity with grave misgivings, 
 but to me it seemed a delightful release. I accepted Chris- 
 tianity, spirit and dogma, without one doubt or question, 
 but the tendency of my youth was towards revolt against 
 all the bigotry of Puritanism. Secretly I threw over Sab- 
 batarianism and the doctrine of Eternal Punishment be- 
 fore I had been in London twelve months ; but another year 
 elapsed before I dared confess my apostasy to my mother. 
 
 Uncle David managed all our affairs for us after we 
 left Milton. My father had left a little money; enough to 
 pay the ecclesiastical dilapidations and the cost of my articles 
 and to purchase an annuity of just over 100 a year for my 
 mother. She protested at first against sinking all the capital 
 in this way, but I took my uncle's part, and persuaded her 
 that I should never need the money. I was young and 
 eager, and the prospect of a possible 1500 coming to me 
 at my mother's death did not interest me nearly so much 
 as the thought of present necessaries for both of us. I knew 
 little enough about the value of money, but I was a little 
 staggered at the idea of living on 2 a week; and if the 
 money were invested in the ordinary way it would, I was 
 told, produce little more than half that amount. 
 
 My uncle's attitude is not quite so comprehensible. The 
 truth of the matter is that he had a vein of miserliness 
 which cropped out on occasions such as this. He knew very 
 well that my mother and I could not live on 100 a year, 
 and had made up his mind to double that income for her. 
 But while he was willing to allow her two pounds a week, 
 he stuck at three. There is no explaining these queer kinks 
 in a man's mind. My uncle died worth 6,000 a year. At 
 the time he promised my mother that he would provide for 
 me later on; but he never put that promise in writing, and 
 I was not told of it until my mother was on her death- 
 bed.
 
 HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 39 
 
 The third person in the Ken Lodge household, my aunt 
 Agatha, was a professional invalid. She never, as far as 
 I knew, was seriously ill at any time, and she is still alive ; 
 but she devoted her best energies to curing various imagi- 
 nary weaknesses in herself, and so dwelt on the thought 
 of her ailments that she was, in fact, never really well. 
 
 ii 
 
 The offices of Heaton & Baxter are in Lincoln's Inn ; and 
 I began my work there on a Monday morning at the end 
 of October, 1894. 
 
 I had been to the offices once before, with my mother, to 
 sign the agreement for my articles; but whether I was in 
 a more receptive mood or more nervous on the second occa- 
 sion, the impression that remains most clearly in my mind 
 is of my timid approach and of the presentation of myself 
 on that Monday morning. 
 
 The offices were on the fourth and fifth floors, a position 
 chosen for the sake of light rather than of economy; and 
 something about the tedious ascent of those eight flights 
 of stone stairs had a curiously depressing effect upon me. 
 The damp smell of the stone, the suggestion of mustiness 
 that came from the solicitors' offices on the way up, a 
 general deadness and moist, cold stuffiness about the whole 
 building gave me the feeling that I was going into a prison. 
 The feeling was not justified. Heaton & Baxter's offices 
 were light and warm, and the routine of work there was 
 certainly not dull. But I never lost my distaste for those 
 stairs. There have been mornings in spring when I have 
 hesitated at the doorway, on the verge of deciding for some 
 great adventure, when it needed but some tiny further 
 inducement to make me throw up architecture as a profes- 
 sion, and go straight away to Australia or Canada, to some 
 place where I might make a living under the sky. If only 
 I could have run away without preparation ; turned my back 
 then and there on those repulsive stone stairs, and taken
 
 40 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 ship East or West or South the same morning, I should 
 certainly have gone; but there was always my mother to 
 be considered. I could not have left her without warn- 
 ing; and when I was at home with her in Hampstead, the 
 impulse to run away appeared wild and foolish. 
 
 A tall, dark young man of twenty-four or so passed 
 me as I was going up on that first day of my pupilage. 
 He was very smartly dressed in a morning coat with braided 
 edges, dark grey trousers, top hat and brown leather gloves. 
 He mounted the stairs quickly but with a curious delibera- 
 tion; he went two steps at a time, emphasising each rise 
 with a nod as if he were counting or marking the beat of 
 some tune that ran in his head. He passed me on the second 
 floor landing, stared at me for an instant as he went by, 
 and then continued his ascent with the same oddly mechan- 
 ical dance. 
 
 I wondered whether he were Mr. Heaton's son. I took it 
 for granted that he was bound for the same destination as 
 myself. 
 
 I was taken to Mr. Baxter's room again when I had been 
 admitted to the office. He was a man of sixty, then, I 
 should imagine ; a big, rather bluff man with a square grey 
 beard that had a distinct tinge of blue in it his hair had 
 originally been very dark and rather humorous brown eyes. 
 The shape of his head and the cut of his beard gave him 
 a recognisable likeness to the late Lord Salisbury. 
 
 He greeted me with a pleasant nod. 
 
 "Well, young man, ready to start work ?" he asked, and 
 got up immediately. I learnt afterwards that he was al- 
 ways nervous with new assistants or pupils. "Let me see," 
 he went on, "you've had no experience, have you? Hm! 
 well, you'd better begin by copying a sheet of building con- 
 struction, just to learn the use of your tools. I'll put you 
 up with Kemplay and Geddes and tell them to look after 
 you. Come along." 
 
 He led the way back into the lobby and then to a little 
 circular iron staircase that ran up out of what once might
 
 HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 41 
 
 have been a deep cupboard a convenient means of com- 
 munication that had been added by the firm when they took 
 the offices. 
 
 "Mind your head," he warned me. 
 
 Geddes turned out to be the smart young man who had 
 passed me on the landing. Kemplay was a man of between 
 thirty and forty, short and thickset, with very curly dark 
 hair and a yellow complexion. 
 
 I was very shy when left alone with them. I felt like 
 a new boy at school and was prepared, I think, for a certain 
 amount of chaff or even bullying. But both Kemplay who 
 occupied the position of "manager" to the firm and Geddes 
 were exceedingly polite, if faintly contemptuous. Kemplay 
 found a drawing of a roof truss, pinned down a sheet of 
 Whatman's paper on a double elephant board, and gave me 
 a few instructions concerning the management of a T 
 square and a scale. After that I was left to puzzle out 
 for myself a method of reproducing the roof-truss. The 
 other two plunged almost immediately into a technical 
 discussion concerning the detail of some plan upon which 
 they were privately engaged in the evenings a set of com- 
 petition drawings for baths and wash-houses in South Lon- 
 don, as a matter of fact. 
 
 Kemplay came over to me once or twice in the course 
 of the morning and corrected my blundering with a sort 
 of official good nature ; but Geddes addressed no remark to 
 me until he was going out to lunch. He had changed his 
 coat and was untying the little cloth apron he wore round 
 his middle as a protection against the edge of the d, r awing- 
 board. He paused by my stool and looked at the brand- 
 new box of instruments my mother and I had bought on the 
 day we had come to sign the agreement. 
 
 "Whew!" he whistled. "Stanley, eh? Swagger!" 
 
 "Mr. Baxter told me to go there," I explained. 
 
 "How much?" Geddes enquired. 
 
 "Five pounds ten," I said. 
 
 "Jolly," was Geddes' only further comment, but I under- 
 stood that he had intended his remarks as an overture of
 
 42 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 friendship, however condescending on his side. I was only 
 seventeen and my dress proclaimed me a provincial; but I 
 was an articled pupil with five pounds to spend on drawing 
 instruments, and must sooner or later be admitted to the 
 fellowship of my social equals. 
 
 Geddes had, also, served his articles with Heaton & 
 Baxter, and was now staying on as an "improver" at a 
 nominal salary of i a week. He was younger than he 
 looked. I discovered later that he was only just twenty- 
 one when I came to the office. 
 
 The afternoon was more convivial than the morning. I 
 had my lunch at an A.B.C. in Carey Street, and when I 
 came back at a quarter to three I found Kemplay at his 
 desk smoking a pipe, and Geddes with a cigarette, standing 
 in front of the fireplace. 
 
 I changed my coat and returned meekly to my job of 
 copying the roof-truss. 
 
 "Do you smoke?" asked Geddes, after a minute or two, 
 addressing me. 
 
 "Not yet," I said, and then, feeling that it was time I 
 did something to assert myself, I added, "I only left school 
 last July." 
 
 "Where were you?" Geddes encouraged me. 
 
 "Oakstone," I told him. "I don't know if you have ever 
 heard of it." 
 
 "Oh! yes, rather," Geddes said. "Pretty decent school, 
 isn't it? I was at the City of London." 
 
 "Were you?" I replied in a note of admiration. 
 
 Geddes completed that paragraph with a nod, and went 
 on. "Jolly office, this. It isn't every office that you can 
 smoke in. We're allowed to smoke after two o'clock. 
 That's old Heaton's doing. You never see him without a 
 pi ? e ' Ba * ter doesn>t smoke he's a bachelor, you know." 
 
 "I see," I remarked, trying to look intelligent. I was not 
 quite sure whether Geddes intended to imply any connexion 
 between Mr. Baxter's two forms of continence. But I was 
 not encouraged to offer any further contribution to the 
 progress of the acquaintanceship. Geddes' glance had sud-
 
 HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 43 
 
 denly gone through me, and he appeared lost in some deep 
 abstraction that engaged his whole attention. He stood 
 gazing at nothing for a moment or two, and then walked, 
 still abstrusely occupied, to his board. 
 
 "Thirteen four and a half," he remarked, addressing his 
 drawing, "with a rise of six and a half, gives twenty-five 
 stairs. . . ." Then he threw the end of his cigarette into 
 the fireplace and plunged into his work. He did not speak 
 again until nearly five o'clock. 
 
 Kemplay visited me occasionally during the afternoon 
 and gave me mild encouragement. The rest of my time 
 was occupied in my mechanical copying, with brief intervals 
 of staring out through the window at the people who passed 
 diagonally across the gardens of Lincoln Inn Fields. Nearly 
 all of them, whether they walked briskly and with obvious 
 intentness, or lounged a trifle drearily, hopelessly, perhaps; 
 nearly all made their way from our corner by the chapel 
 up to the centre, and so far as I could see out at the farther 
 corner towards the Little Turnstile. And when the chil- 
 dren came soon after four o'clock, they, too, ran straight 
 to the centre of the garden and played there among the 
 seats under the trees. It struck me that they were like 
 bubbles drawn to the centre of a little whirlpool. 
 
 Twelve years later I, too, was drawn into that idle nucleus 
 one morning, and realised the attraction of the still centre 
 where one can sit and watch the happy employed go eagerly 
 by in the delight of their steady occupation. . . . 
 
 I saw only one more member of the office staff that day. 
 He was a youngster of nineteen, or so, with brown, restless 
 eyes. He stood at the door for a moment, remarked, "Lord, 
 you swatters," and then vanished. He was dressed for the 
 street. 
 
 Neither Geddes nor Kemplay took the least notice of him, 
 but when he had gone Geddes yawned enormously, and 
 then, turning to me, said, 
 
 "That's our riotous pupil." 
 
 I smiled my acknowledgement of his humorous intention.
 
 44, HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "Perfect young ass," Geddes added. 
 
 "Is he ?" I said. "What's his name ?" 
 
 "Budge," Geddes replied. 
 
 I thought it was a joke, but the pupil's name was, indeed, 
 Budge. 
 
 "Of course, we call him Toddy," Geddes concluded, "when 
 we call him at all, that is. There's a sort of place to wash 
 in downstairs. Have you got your own soap?" 
 
 I blushed at the reminder that I had neglected the im- 
 portant function of washing before I went out to lunch. 
 
 "No ! I didn't know ..." I stammered. 
 
 "You can use mine this evening. Come on," Geddes 
 said. "It's half-past five." 
 
 in 
 
 That day and the two or three days that followed are 
 still very clear in my memory. They were differentiated by 
 their strangeness from all the days that followed. Every- 
 thing was new and remarkable to me, and all my impressions 
 were associated in some way with that Queen-post truss I 
 was copying. I have never had to design a roof with a 
 Queen-post principal; I don't suppose I ever shall have to 
 that type of construction gradually disappeared with the 
 use of rolled steel sections but whenever I happen to 
 see the stock illustration which still holds an important 
 place in all the building-construction books I have a vivid 
 sense of my first reactions to those unfamiliar surround- 
 ings. 
 
 Sidney Baxter figures very definitely in those memories. 
 He had a conscience about his pupils. Many architects 
 take the fee from their articled pupils and allow them to 
 pick up the detail of architecture and building-construction 
 at their own sweet will, while they are serving a useful 
 part in the general work of the office. But Mr. Baxter 
 used often to devote a whole hour a day to my instruc- 
 tions; and he was a particularly able teacher. He would
 
 HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 45 
 
 come up in the morning before we had begun to smoke and 
 stand over my board, and explain to me the reason for 
 the thing I happened to be drawing. I believe I was an 
 unusually apt pupil he more than once assured me that I 
 was but judging from the incompetence of the ordinary 
 architect's assistant, I feel inclined to congratulate myself 
 on having had Baxter for a master. He made one under- 
 stand. Geddes has said the same thing. 
 
 I was eleven years in that office in Lincoln's Inn, and 
 while I often regret that I wasted, in one sense, such a 
 great slice of my life, I certainly learnt my profession there 
 as thoroughly as it was possible for me to learn it any- 
 where. 
 
 Poor old Baxter ! I met him in the "tube" two or three 
 years ago, and wanted to thank him for all he did for me. 
 But he had nearly lost his hearing, and was more nervous 
 than ever. He did not recognise me at first his eyesight 
 is failing, too and then he called me "young man" in his 
 old manner and asked me how I was getting on. I tried to 
 tell him, but the horrible clatter of the tube was too much 
 for us, and as I shouted he evidently grew more and more 
 shy, looking round at the other passengers as if he knew 
 that they must be gathering more from my narrative than 
 he was himself. I did wind up, in desperation, by shout- 
 ing something about "all due to you, sir," but I know he 
 failed to get the gist of that. I believe he got out a station 
 or two before his destination in order to save me from 
 further embarrassment. That is my explanation of the 
 fact that he left me at so unlikely a stopping place as 
 Mornington Crescent. He looked, I thought, very little 
 older the blue had faded from his beard, and even his 
 eyebrows had become white, but he was still wearing the 
 same steel-rimmed spectacles, the solid gold watch chain 
 with the Freemasons' pendant, the same shade of fawn 
 in his spats; and his rather shabby top hat was rammed 
 on the back of his head at the familiar angle; he often 
 wore it in the office he forgot to take it off, I suppose. 
 
 Heaton was a very different type, a withered little clean-
 
 46 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 shaven man, as precise in his professional methods as he 
 was in his dress. He represented the practical side of 
 the firm, and had a fine head for a plan and for economy 
 in construction. Baxter had the genius. All our eleva- 
 tions, and we did many things besides ecclesiastical work, 
 bear the stamp of his personality. I was looking a little 
 while ago at the front of the Pennyfather offices on the 
 Embankment, and thinking what Baxter would have made 
 of London if he could have had a hand in all the new build- 
 ing that is going up. There is a kind of "gentleness" about 
 his elevations. I know no other word for it. 
 
 And yet I cannot say that he markedly influenced the 
 style of the three men from his office who have since made 
 some kind of a mark in private practice. Geddes, Horton- 
 Smith (who came after I had been in Lincoln's Inn for 
 two years) and myself were very much affected by Voysey's 
 work. We admired it from the outset, and allowed our- 
 selves to be carried away by our enthusiasm for the "New 
 Art" style in building and decoration that ran a little to 
 seed just at the beginning of the present century. Geddes 
 had never quite recovered in my opinion. He still carries 
 the "simplicity" idea altogether too far. Heaton used to 
 laugh at us. "Any more toasting forks?" was his stock 
 joke, referring to the conventional design that was almost 
 the only decoration used in the style at that period. "Those 
 infernal squiggles of yours," was a less placid criticism of 
 his that used to annoy Geddes. 
 
 But Geddes was a man with one idea. He deserved to 
 succeed in his own line. He lived for architecture. The 
 contemplation of it absorbed him. When one saw him 
 lost in those fits of abstraction that were so characteristic 
 of him fits that took the form of stopping in the street 
 to wrestle mentally with some problem of building construc- 
 tion, or, as I first saw him, of assisting his calculations by 
 counting the stairs up to our office it was always certain 
 that architecture in some shape was engrossing his whole 
 attention. He would stop in the middle of a game of 
 dominoes to sketch a "toasting-fork" on the marble top
 
 HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 47 
 
 of the table; and I will swear that when he lost his place 
 in the marriage service it was not due to nervousness conse- 
 quent upon the leading part he was playing in the cere- 
 mony, but to some sudden inspiration that had come to 
 him in connexion with his work. During the time he was 
 at Heaton & Baxter's he went in for no fewer than twenty- 
 three competitions (I collaborated with him "in eleven), and 
 he never received the encouragement of so much as a third 
 premium; and any one who knows the enormous labour 
 entailed in getting out a set of competition drawings in one's 
 own time, after working in an office for eight hours a 
 day, will appreciate Geddes' devotion and singleness of 
 purpose. 
 
 The only time I ever saw him depressed was when young 
 Horton-Smith walked off with the Birmingham job his 
 third essay in competition work. "There must be a rotten 
 lot of luck in these bally things," Geddes confided to me 
 on that occasion ; a remark that did not do justice to Horton- 
 Smith's peculiar cleverness. He has proved since that he 
 has the knack of pleasing competition assessors; a difficult 
 knack that has nothing to do with luck. I think Geddes 
 was too conscientious and perhaps too original to win an 
 open competition. 
 
 The only other man in the office who had any sort of 
 influence upon me during those eleven years was Kemplay ; 
 and he was one of those mediocre people who defy descrip- 
 tion. He was married, had two children, and earned 5 
 a week with no hope of ever getting more unless he had 
 young Horton-Smith's "luck." But Kemplay gave up go- 
 ing in for competitions five years or more before I left 
 the office. Fortunately for him, he had a very equable 
 temperament and his marriage was a happy one. To me he 
 looks much the same, now, as he did when I first saw him 
 in 1894, the only striking difference being the vividly white 
 streaks in his black hair. His hair was very coarse I think 
 he must have had a strain of black blood in him, some- 
 where and the first white strand that came showed up like 
 a false thread in some stiff, dark material. That harbinger
 
 48 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 disappeared after a couple of days his wife had pulled it 
 out, he told us. 
 
 Young Budge enlisted in the Yeomanry at the beginning 
 of the South African war, and died of enteric in the spring 
 of 1900. . . . 
 
 Mine was a very uneventful life during those eleven 
 years, and in a sense I, too, was little older at the end of 
 the time. I gained much technical knowledge, but scarcely 
 any knowledge of the world. The routine of the office and 
 the restraint of my home life shut me into a cloister. There 
 were moments when I vaguely resented my confinement, 
 and I plunged into one desperate adventure that would 
 have greatly shocked my mother if she had ever guessed 
 my defiance of her precious belief in the steadily respectable 
 piety of such young men as myself and my colleagues in the 
 office. But for the most part I was tame and compliant. I 
 liked my profession; I was presently earning two, and 
 later three pounds a week; and I always had before me the 
 hope of one day setting up for myself in private practice. 
 I passed my final examination at the Royal Institute when 
 I was twenty-five, and thereafter had the right to the use 
 of the letters A.R.I.B.A. after my name, and an authority 
 for protesting against the state neglect of architecture as 
 a profession. If no architect were allowed to practise 
 until he had passed a qualifying examination, and was there- 
 after liable to lose his diploma for any flagrant breach of 
 the London or provincial building regulations, the various 
 acts that have been passed might really protect the public 
 from the enormities of the jerry-builder. 
 
 I realise, now, that what I missed in those Lincoln Inn 
 days was some near friend. I was intimate enough with 
 Kemplay and Geddes, but neither of them was capable of 
 responding to something in me that was urgently calling 
 for expression. Geddes was a puritan in sexual matters. 
 I remember young Budge coming into our room one after- 
 noon when I had been at the office a few months, and telling 
 us a story that was really funny, even if it was not fit for 
 publication. Kemplay laughed, with perhaps a touch of
 
 HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 49 
 
 self-consciousness; I giggled and blushed; but Geddes told 
 Budge not to be "a dirty little beast." Budge lost his temper 
 and told Geddes that he was a "rotten prig," but Geddes 
 was perfectly cool he had a most annoying way of keep- 
 ing his temper and from his sure and comfortable plat- 
 form of conscious righteousness he was able to maintain 
 a lofty attitude which there was no assailing. "Clean" was 
 the word he insisted on, and poor young Budge getting 
 /redder and more furious every moment had no better an- 
 swer than to swing out of the room and slam the door. 
 
 That incident had a strong effect upon me at the time. I 
 was young, impressionable and innocent ; I had been brought 
 up at home in an evangelical atmosphere, and had naturally 
 found my friends at Oakstone among boys of more or 
 less the same temper ; also, during those first years in Lon- 
 don, I was always under the restraint of my mother's influ- 
 ence ; and, finally, I looked up to Geddes with his technical 
 knowledge and his smart clothes as to a very superior crea- 
 ture. I attribute much of the gaucherie and shyness of 
 my youth to the habit I acquired in those early years of 
 peering at sex with a blush and a sense of shame. 
 
 A friend of the right kind might have helped me, but 
 as luck would have it, no friend came my way until I had 
 left Lincoln's Inn. 
 
 rv 
 
 I was twenty-three when I met Nellie Roberts. 
 
 My mother, my uncle and his wife, the little circle of 
 our rather elderly acquaintances at Hampstead, even the 
 obsessed Geddes, would certainly have regarded that inter- 
 lude as shameful, but I feel no kind of shame or regret, 
 now, when I think of it; although the strong religious re- 
 action which finally terminated my relations with Nellie 
 brought with it a conviction of sin, and a quite definite 
 feeling of remorse. 
 
 I have had little experience of the ways of London's 
 underworld, or of the women who frequent it (unl'ess I
 
 50 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 can count my later observations of the unfortunate Rose 
 Whiting as experience), and I cannot say whether Nellie 
 Roberts was a rare exception from her kind. She was 
 not in the least like the women I have seen at night in the 
 streets off Piccadilly Circus, nor those more successful 
 courtesans I have observed in the promenades of various 
 music-halls. But she may represent a select class, and I 
 can only regard myself as being unusually fortunate to have 
 met so simple a representative of it. 
 
 I met her one Saturday afternoon in August, 1900, near 
 the bandstand in Hyde Park. I was far too shy to be a 
 woman-hunter even if I had dared the thought of such a 
 feral pursuit; and it was the merest accident that I hap- 
 pened to sit down so near her. Only one empty chair sep- 
 arated us. 
 
 The initiative was hers, of course ; but she was not hunt- 
 ing any more than I was. She was there for pleasure, sim- 
 ply, even dowdily, dressed, and with no "make-up" on her 
 face. And when she turned and made some remark to 
 me about the fineness of the afternoon, she had no ulterior 
 purpose in her mind. My bashfulness and embarrassment 
 appealed to her, at that moment; she wanted some one to 
 talk to, and she saw, I suppose, that I was very unlike 
 the sort of young man with whom she was all too familiar. 
 
 When I had partly overcome my first shyness, I en- 
 joyed her company. She had an inquisitive, critical mind 
 and her comments on the passers-by amused me. She was 
 the entertainer; I had nothing to do but express my ap- 
 preciation of her wit. 
 
 And she would have left me without making any further 
 advances if I had not summoned up my courage to ask 
 her whether she often came to Hyde Park on fine Satur- 
 day afternoons. She looked at me suspiciously for a mo- 
 ment, but my ingenuousness was too patent for doubt, and 
 she smiled with the first hint she had given of approaching 
 a flirtation, as she said she would meet me there again the 
 following Saturday. 
 
 I suppose I imagined myself to be in love with her dur-
 
 HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 51 
 
 ing the week that elapsed before I saw her again. I thought 
 of her constantly with a vivid recognition of the fact that 
 I hoped to continue the acquaintance, and I was perfectly 
 aware that the meeting would be considered improper from 
 the Hampstead point of view, an impropriety that had a 
 peculiar attraction from some tendency which stirred within 
 me at that time. I was in the unfulfilled condition of a 
 young man who has no outlet, and my yearning took the 
 form of a desire for the society of young women my 
 cousin Gladys was in Brussels then. In such a condition 
 a man may imagine himself in love with his aunt, and 
 Nellie Roberts was about my own af2, and pretty in her 
 simple, pert way. No doubt, I belie ed myself to be in 
 love with her. 
 
 Our second meeting put the affair on quite another foot- 
 ing. The afternoon was dull and threatened rain, and we 
 presently took a bus up to Piccadilly and had tea together 
 in a restaurant in Panton Street to which Nellie introduced 
 me. 
 
 We were on the verge of parting before she sprang her 
 surprise on me; I had paid the bill and was reaching up 
 for my hat, an action that from some obscure reason gave 
 me the courage to proffer my prepared question: "Shall I 
 see you again, next Saturday?" 
 
 Her face set in a .sudden expression of resolution. "I 
 suppose you know what / am," she said. 
 
 But I had had no intuitions. 
 
 "Do you mean ... ?" I began timidly. I was still stand- 
 ing wedged between the table and the plush-covered seat, 
 and supporting myself with one hand against the wall. I 
 believe my first guess was that she was married, and I 
 looked down, now, for the first time to see if she were 
 wearing a wedding-ring. 
 
 "Oh ! sit down," she said, with a touch of petulance, and 
 then, "You surely don't mean to tell me that you're as, 
 innocent as all that." 
 
 My expression of bewilderment must have convinced her ; 
 she pursed her mouth and seemed to hesitate as to whether
 
 52 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 she would not, after all, keep me a single entry perhaps 
 on her list of innocent men friends. She had had all my 
 history that afternoon. She had prompted me with ques- 
 tions and had appeared to take a deep interest in my willing 
 replies. I was less ready than ever to lose her society after 
 that second meeting. 
 
 "Well, I suppose you know what . . ." She started, 
 broke off with a shrug of her shoulders and said, "Didn't 
 you guess I was a light woman?" 
 
 Even then I was still puzzled for a moment. 
 
 "Do you mean ..." I began again. 
 
 "Well, you didn't think I was a lady of fortune, did 
 you?" she asked. ] believe the temper in her voice was 
 assumed to cover hei awn confusion. 
 
 I understood, then not fully, because my mind had been 
 filled with stories of the bold adventuress who enticed such 
 as I was to strange, secret places for robbery and murder. 
 But my most urgent desire at the moment was to say the 
 "right thing," whatever that might be. 
 
 "I don't know," I stammered I saw I must say some- 
 thing "I thought perhaps . . . you don't look the least 
 like . . ." 
 
 She was brutal. "I don't' look like what?" she insisted. 
 
 "I thought perhaps you were in a shop or something," I 
 said. 
 
 I used to be a hospital nurse," she returned. "I've got 
 a photograph of myself in uniform at home." 
 
 I did not understand her indignant claim to a social posi- 
 tion above the shop-girl class, but I jumped at the oppor- 
 tunity to get to what seemed a safer topic. Her show of 
 temper made me horribly uncomfortable. 
 
 "Why did you give it up?" I asked humbly. 
 
 "The usual thing," she said. 
 
 I said "Oh!" as if I understood, but she saw through 
 my pretence. 
 
 "He was a medical student," she explained. "We're go- 
 ) be married as soon as he can make a living."
 
 HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 53 
 
 I was hopelessly at sea again. I believed her statements 
 which were indeed true even the last one, incredible as it 
 may seem. And I could not reconcile them with the general 
 vague conception I had formed of the "bad women" against 
 whom my mother had once or twice nervously warned me. 
 
 "He wouldn't like it much," I tried, "if he knew that 
 you were having tea with me, would he ?" 
 
 "Well, I've got to live, I suppose," she snapped. 
 
 It was impossible for me to understand all the complex 
 motives and feelings that were disturbing her. Even now 
 I can only guess dimly how she was influenced by a kindly 
 feeling for myself, by a longing to retain some vestige of 
 social dignity ; and by the urgent money troubles that were 
 harassing her that August. I judged her attitude, so far 
 as I judged it at all, from certain general premises partly 
 gathered from romantic fiction I was incapable of allow- 
 ing for the fact that she had twenty-five years of individual 
 life behind her, and that her character, training and ex- 
 perience were all finding expression in that scene with 
 me at the restaurant. My one source of concern, just 
 then, was to regain the pleasant terms of our former inter- 
 course. 
 
 "Of course. Rather," was the form my conciliation took. 
 
 "You don't suppose I like it any more than he does?" 
 she said sharply. And through the density of my ignorance 
 some appreciation of the true state of the ca.se began slowly 
 to filter. Fortunately I was inspired, at last, to a happier 
 response. 
 
 "You see, I'm so fearfully innocent about things," I said. 
 "I've never met any one before who could explain about 
 them to me." 
 
 She smiled. "Innocent !" she said. "Yes, you are that, I 
 must say." 
 
 "Well, when shall I see you again?" I asked cheerfully. 
 
 "Afraid to go out in the evenings, I suppose ?" she asked. 
 
 I admitted that I was. My mother would accept an ex- 
 cuse for my absence on Saturday afternoon, without mak- 
 ing detailed enquiry, but an evening out would necessitate
 
 54 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 some elaborate lie that I was not, then, prepared to fabri- 
 cate. 
 
 "Well, next Saturday?" she suggested. "You can come 
 to my rooms." She looked at me searchingly as she said 
 that. "You're sure you want to come?" she added; and I 
 am not certain that my ready assent altogether pleased 
 her. 
 
 She gave me a card with an address in Paddington. . . . 
 
 She changed her shape for me during the week that fol- 
 lowed. I no longer imagined myself in love with her she 
 was not, for some physiological reason, the type that at- 
 tracted me she gradually assumed the shape of Louisa, 
 the housemaid, and this time there was no vision of a 
 glorious Adela to divert me. 
 
 And I want to confess that I was not ashamed when I 
 returned to Hampstead the next Saturday evening. My 
 chief feeling was one of release. I did not blush when 
 I greeted my mother; on the contrary, I was aware of a 
 new strength and confidence. I felt that I had somehow 
 vindicated myself. 
 
 I met Nellie many times in the course of the next two 
 years. She was my one experience in this kind, and I 
 came to have a very friendly, companionable feeling for 
 her. 
 
 She was a simple creature, and our only quarrels were 
 provoked by her mention of the medical student who had 
 promised eventually to marry her. She saw him every 
 Sunday, and it irked me that she should put him in a class 
 by himself, a class from which I was inevitably excluded. 
 After one such quarrel I did not see her for nearly five 
 months. The man, himself, must forever remain a mystery 
 to me. I never met him Nellie never suggested that I 
 should do that but I have seen his photograph, and re- 
 member it still so well that I believe I should recognise 
 him if I saw him in the street. He had a heavy, rather
 
 65 
 
 stupid face, but he looked honest. Nellie insisted that he 
 was well connected. I should like to know whether he ever 
 married her. . . . 
 
 And not for eighteen months did my conscience begin 
 to reproach me. My cousin Gladys's return from Brussels 
 was the chief cause of that change of attitude. Triad lost 
 the habit of going to Ken Lodge after our first year or two 
 in Hampstead, and I had seen very little of Gladys since 
 she was eighteen. 
 
 I remember going to dinner with my uncle and aunt, soon 
 after she returned, and finding that our alternations of 
 superiority had settled down into son-othing approaching 
 equality. We began to talk about Poelaert's Law Courts 
 at Brussels, a building that had already won my enthusiasm 
 from sketches and photographs. She discussed it very in- 
 telligently, and was evidently delighted to find that I was 
 eager to listen and approve without attempting to contrast 
 some English example. Her three years at the finishing 
 school had given her a proprietary interest in Brussels and 
 so far I was the only person she had met since her re- 
 turn who had been willing to admire her authority. 
 
 And after dinner, when Gladys was singing to us in the 
 drawing-room, I remembered Nellie with a sudden horrible 
 consciousness of the sordidness of that intrigue. Nellie's 
 rooms, her accent, even her simple, honest self seemed so 
 impossible when considered in my present surroundings. I 
 had an unpleasant sense of not being fit company for my 
 own relations. 
 
 I only saw Nellie twice more after that; and the second 
 time definitely closed our intercourse. 
 
 I had grown bolder and less honest, then. I used to 
 tell my mother that I spent the evening with Horton- Smith 
 who, conveniently for me, had rooms not very far from 
 Nellie's. 
 
 I left her about eleven o'clock that night, with no premoni- 
 tion that we should never meet again. Indeed, I was in a 
 boastful mood; inclined to regard Hampstead society as 
 I knew it, with contempt ; and it was mere pride that made
 
 56 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 me go on to the rooms of' Horton- Smith on the chance of 
 finding him still up, in preference to making my way home 
 by the Metropolitan to Gower Street, where I could catch 
 the yellow "Camden Town" bus up to the lower Heath. I 
 knew that I risked missing the last bus, but I wanted to 
 miss it. I felt equal to any adventure; any challenge to 
 respectability. 
 
 And Horton-Smith was up and had two other men with 
 him, one of whom I had met there before, a quiet chap 
 from an architect's office in Moorgate Street. They greeted 
 me with enthusiasm and insisted upon playing solo-whist. 
 They had been playing the three-handed game before I 
 arrived, and were rather sick of it. I was quite willing 
 and we kept it up till past three in the morning, by which 
 time only the quiet man and myself were capable of dis- 
 tinguishing the cards. Horton-Smith and the stranger were 
 hopelessly drunk. I take no credit for my own sobriety. 
 I have never been able to drink more than one glass of 
 whiskey in an evening; the smell of the second always 
 produces a horrible feeling of nausea. 
 
 The quiet man and I left the house together, but he lived 
 at Notting Hill and we parted on Horton-Smith's door- 
 step. 
 
 I was still very elated when I came out into the stillness 
 of the July night all sense of sleepiness had left me about 
 one o'clock. I had been chaffed by Horton-Smith and his 
 friends upon arriving so late in the evening. They had put 
 but one construction on my employment of the time before 
 I joined them, and although I had given them no confidences, 
 I had not denied the truth of the charges they brought 
 against me. I had been, I thought, a man of the world. I 
 was pleased with the part I had played. 
 
 And, now, I wanted to enjoy the sense of my own com- 
 pleteness and well-being. I did not feel the need for any 
 companion; I was in a mood to enjoy my own company 
 and the realisation of my own powers of sensibility and 
 vision. 
 
 London seemed wonderfully opened to me during that
 
 HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 57 
 
 long walk. As I went down Bishop's Road and over the 
 railway bridge, there was a lift in the sky towards the north- 
 west, and the weak reflection of daylight was creeping in 
 to mingle with the clicking violet light of the arc-lamps in 
 the sidings. The night was hardly disturbed by the jolt 
 and clankings of trucks, and by the occasional sound of 
 men's voices, hoarse and distant, shouting unintelligible in- 
 structions in the darkness of an abyss that ran into the 
 mouth of the station. 
 
 But when I had come down the Harrow Road, and 
 through Chapel Street, I found another impression that 
 was better suited to my mood. The light ahead of me was 
 steadily growing so that now the hard silhouettes of roofs 
 and distorted chimneys stood up against the sky. Every- 
 thing here was very still. The town was asleep; and it 
 pleased me to find in it a vision of some place that was not 
 London. 
 
 I walked in an older city, exploring unknown mysteries. 
 Every side turning was an avenue that led to some deep 
 wonder. ... I was a spirit alone and undaunted, come to 
 a place that existed only for me; that was mine to hold 
 and presently to change at will. All the potentialities of it 
 were there, but my strength was sufficient to mould them 
 as I would. I could be at once the explorer and the master. 
 . . . The place was crying to me for release from its own 
 ugliness. Within it was a fugitive soul that knew its own 
 distortion of form, and sought my strength to lift the 
 pressure that had forced it into so gloomy a shape. ... I 
 floated in a calm serenity of power. I was no more aware 
 of myself as an individual presence. My spirit was enter- 
 ing into the body of London, and every brick and stone 
 of her was becoming a cell that would presently reflect the 
 brightness of my desire for beauty. ... I knew that all 
 cities were the expression of men's thought, but whereas 
 my own thought was clear and lucid, able to conceive grace 
 and delicacy of form; this new body into which I had so 
 lately come was the outcome of greed and antagonisms ; of 
 jealousy and mean ambitions; of clumsy, turgid thoughts
 
 58 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 that had no sureness of direction. ... I was filled with a 
 delicious sadness of regret for all the desires of men who 
 had lived and died and found no steadiness of expres- 
 sion. . . . 
 
 I came back to the body of Wilfred Hornby, pacing with 
 sedate regularity along the Marylebone Road, a little to the 
 west of Park Crescent ; and the picture I saw with his eyes 
 at that moment was endowed with the ecstasy of my recent 
 vision. The invisible sun had brightened the east to a hard 
 steel grey, and before me the asphalt shone like silver, steam- 
 ing wet from the foaming whiteness of a great jet of 
 water that lifted in a splendid curve from the nozzle of 
 a black serpentine hose. And the dark figures of the men 
 who moved deliberately here and there were rimmed with 
 the brightness of the morning that shone round them and 
 flung splashes of light from every brimming crease of 
 their spray-soaked oilskins. 
 
 I stood quite still. I wanted to throw up my arms and 
 hail the coming of day with a great shout. . . . 
 
 But afterwards my mood slowly declined and when I 
 stood on the summit of Hampstead Heath and looked down 
 over the blue clearness of London, blown clean of smoke, 
 and sparkling here and there under the vivid newness of 
 the sun, I saw it as one who stands to watch the glint of 
 a sail nearly lost on the horizon. I wa,s separated, a man 
 in the toils of endeavour. I had no supreme power; no 
 insight. 
 
 And then my eye caught the white spire of Highgate 
 Church, and all my mood of the night shrank into a sudden 
 resolution.
 
 MY religious fit lasted for about six weeks, counting from 
 its very definite and sudden access to the last fitful 
 effort, the final desperate convulsive clinging to the skirts 
 of a mood I could not recapture by a deliberate effort of 
 will. 
 
 I call it a mood now ; but the name I had for it at that 
 time was "the Holy Spirit." I believed that I had been 
 "called," that some great destiny of martyrdom was before 
 me. I read the lives of the mystics, and was greatly com- 
 forted to find that some of them, like myself, had been 
 profligates and sinners before their conversion. The one 
 real doubt that had beset me in the first days of my inspira- 
 tion was whether so great a sinner as I had been could be 
 found worthy of saintship. Nevertheless, I believe that 
 the thought of my justification marked the first decline of 
 my endeavour. Perhaps I was too greatly comforted by 
 the recognition of my own worthiness. 
 
 Yet, from the beginning, my emotions were curiously 
 mixed. On the one hand I was filled with a fury of self- 
 abasement. I humiliated myself. I sought methods of 
 discipline, searching out my secret sins and being particu- 
 larly severe with any tendencies towards selfishness and 
 hypocrisy. I even went so far as seriously to consider the 
 necessity of taking orders as a penance ; for through all 
 that mood I persisted in my distaste for the orthodox profes- 
 sion of religion. On the other hand, I was secretly elated, 
 
 59
 
 60 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 full of a sense of power and holiness, proud of the dis- 
 tinction that had been conferred on me. 
 
 And those two violently opposed attitudes subsisted quite 
 equably side by side, reacting upon and stimulating each 
 other ; so that even as I abased myself and considered such 
 forms of discipline as ordination, I sat in pleased approval 
 of my own humility. 
 
 The declination of my spiritual rapture was so gradual, 
 that only in retrospect can I mark the stages of my rever- 
 sion to the normal. But when I, now, consider myself in 
 relation to some memory-stimulating incident of that period, 
 I can clearly discern a difference in intensity between, say, 
 the third and fifth week of my seizure. By the third week 
 there were lapse.s of consciousness; periods gradually ex- 
 tending, during which I forgot alike the splendour and the 
 irk of my religious intentions. For, curious as it seems, I 
 did, in effect, finally forget altogether. I remembered with 
 my mind, as I still remember, all the long diminishing phase 
 of my rapture ; but this intellectual memory no longer awoke 
 my spiritual desires. And after each interval of spiritual 
 forgetfulness, the response to the ideal of sanctity was less 
 spontaneous, more mental, so that towards the end I had to 
 work myself up into a state of devotion by an effort of 
 will. 
 
 I think the last such effort was made about six weeks 
 after my first vision. 
 
 I never made any complete confession to my mother. She 
 guessed something of what was in my mind, and began her 
 approach to the winning of my confidence by looking at me 
 with an encouraging hopeful expression. At last, after 
 some four or five days of my new life, she found courage to 
 put her question into words : "Haven't you anything to tell 
 me, dear?" she asked, and went on, "I have noticed a change 
 n you, lately." She evidently hoped to pave the way for 
 me. She might have been asking me if I were in love. 
 
 I made no evasion on the score of misunderstanding her 
 question, but I would not "open my heart" to her as she 
 presently suggested. "Not yet," was the encouragement I
 
 GLADYS 61 
 
 gave her, implying that her guess was a true one but with- 
 holding all confidence. I was influenced by several mo- 
 tives. In the first place, I was not ready then to share my 
 glory with any one ; I was afraid of diminishing my rapture 
 by trying to express it in words ; and I knew that my mother 
 would, unconsciously, lower the plane of my emotion. She 
 would have seen it all in terms of a "call" to take orders, 
 and that, to me, was but a minor phase of the grand inten- 
 tion. But beyond that sufficiently powerful motive for 
 silence, I was aware of the danger of hypocrisy. I was 
 afraid to proclaim my selection, lest the boa.st should con- 
 demn me. And, again, I believe that I recognised in some 
 dim way the danger of openly making any pledge. The 
 taking of vows reminded me too nearly of my bonfires in 
 the vicarage garden; and at the further heights of my 
 new devotion to holiness I fervently denied the least rela- 
 tion between my present state and those earlier brief con- 
 versions. The precedent was altogether too ominous. 
 
 My mother's prayer with me on that and one or two 
 subsequent occasions confirmed me in my resolution to tell 
 her nothing until I was, as I put it, "quite sure of myself." 
 Her very phrases flattened the wonder of my experience. 
 "Grant that he may be led to serve Thee," was the dominant 
 motive of her request; and that side of me which walked 
 among the stars was, in some odd way, a little offended 
 by the significance of that prayer. . . . 
 
 ii 
 
 All that exciting ebullition had subsided before my mother 
 and I went to Eastbourne for our summer holiday. We 
 were to be the guests of my uncle and aunt, who were 
 already installed in very comfortable furnished apartments 
 when we joined them. This was the first time that I had 
 spent my holiday with the Williams ; and I believe the plan 
 was the beginning of an unostentatious campaign to encour- 
 age a greater intimacy between myself and Gladys.
 
 62 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 I seemed to meet her for the first time that September. 
 Until then she had been nothing more than a cousin, some 
 kind of impersonal Relation, an appurtenance that I had 
 accepted as being in the general scheme of family life. In as 
 far as I had regarded her as an individual, I had, before 
 her return from Brussels, rather disliked her than other- 
 wise. 
 
 She was undoubtedly very pretty. She had the very fair 
 hair, the blue eyes and the delicate smooth features that 
 are often ascribed to the "doll" type of beauty. But she 
 was saved from that inanity by the shape of her face and 
 the thinness of her lips. And her eyes had an intellectual 
 steadiness that regarded everything, including myself, with 
 a questioning criticism; no one could have likened Gladys 
 to anything so insipid as a doll. She inherited her fair- 
 ness from her mother. My uncle's hair still showed its orig- 
 inal warp of black through the increasing silver. His eyes, 
 too, were dark. The Welsh strain showed more domi- 
 nantly in him than in my mother. 
 
 My attitude towards Gladys during that fortnight at East- 
 bourne passed from that of a casual relation into a recogni- 
 tion of friendship. The change came about one morning 
 quite early in the holiday. 
 
 I had had a swim before breakfast, and went on alone 
 to the Parade to read the morning paper, while Gladys 
 had her bath. She never wetted that soft, fair hair of 
 hers in salt water ; and she looked deliciously neat and fresh, 
 when she joined me about half-past eleven. She was wear- 
 ing a frock of blue linen a rather keen blue which she had 
 almost perfectly matched in her sunshade and she gave a 
 definite effect to our little patch of the parade. There was 
 a certain fitness, I thought, about her appearance, there ; I 
 felt that the crowd round us would be aware of a blank 
 in the scheme of colour when she went away. The blues, 
 reds, whites and greens in other women's dresses had a 
 temporary, invading air; Gladys came with an effect of 
 completing her immediate surroundings. She was deco- 
 rative and satisfying to my sense of values. And the blue
 
 GLADYS 63 
 
 lights with which she had surrounded herself gave an added 
 clearness and transparency to her delicate, clear skin ; it re- 
 minded me in those conditions of the soft glaze on some fine, 
 mature piece of china. 
 
 She came prepared, I think, with a plan of conversation. 
 She began at once by reverting to our little discussion of 
 the Brussels Law Courts, and from that we presently drifted 
 into an argument on the merits of design in town-planning. 
 My vision of London on that night in the Marylebone Road 
 had survived, and was now thrusting up through my reli- 
 gious emotions, as the fresh, green shoot of what was to me, 
 then, a new idea. 
 
 "It's this awful haphazard way of building," I said, "that 
 makes places like this;" and I waved a reproving hand in 
 the direction of Eastbourne. 
 
 Gladys considered that for a moment. "Sometimes it's all 
 right," she began, with a little perplexed hesitation; "old 
 Brussels, for instance, the Square, you know, and the way 
 the town clings to the hill." And then she evidently saw 
 the solution she was looking for, and went on: "It's only 
 modern towns that are so ugly, isn't' it? I think I hate all 
 modern things ; they're so crude." *^ 
 
 "Oh! no," I protested; "you can't sweep them all into 
 one heap. There's a lot of good stuff being done." 
 
 "Like the things in the 'Studio'?" she asked. 
 
 I agreed to admit the instance. 
 
 She shook her head fastidiously. "It doesn't mean any- 
 thing," she said. "It doesn't express any spirit. Don't 
 you think that it's all rather artificial?" 
 
 I was not prepared for that flat condemnation. I had 
 never had to defend my theories of a new spirit in archi- 
 tecture against a serious attack. Mr. Heaton's criticisms 
 had no weight, we knew that his strong points were all 
 on the practical side; Geddes dismissed Heaton with a 
 contemptuous shrug. And the only other person who had 
 attempted an argument against us was Kemplay, and he did 
 it for the sake of talking he always ended by admitting 
 that he thought we were right.
 
 64 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "Oh, it does ; it isn't," I protested. I wanted to be very 
 lucid and convincing. I had no sort of doubt that Gladys 
 was wrong, probably through ignorance; and I was eager 
 to convert her at once ; it seemed so absurdly easy ; but I 
 had nothing to say. 
 
 She turned and looked at me, and the blue of her clear, 
 steady eyes shone out at me from the shadow of her 
 parasol. 
 
 "You believe in this . . . this New Art, then ?" she said, 
 and her voice conveyed a faint surprise. 
 
 "Oh ! yes, rather," I affirmed. 
 
 "You think it's going to grow into something ?" 
 
 Her tone flattered me. She made me feel that, however 
 unexpected my view had been, she was willing to defer to 
 the opinion of an expert. 
 
 "I think it is something, now," I said, and catching at 
 some echo of Geddes' creed, I went on: "You see, what 
 we're after is a much greater simplicity, and in architec- 
 ture, anyway, we mean to get more meaning into building. 
 All that old Georgian stuff, you know, and the imitation 
 Gothic is just bad copying. Poelaert was different, but he 
 was an exception. What we've got to do is to express mod- 
 ern city construction in a characteristic er twentieth cen- 
 tury way." (It had been such a relief to us when we came 
 to the end of 1800 and could boast a new era.) "And there 
 are the beginnings of a new style in some of this recent 
 work. Smith & Brewer's Settlement in Tavistock Place, and 
 things like that. They're not properly evolved yet, I dare- 
 say, and some of them have got rather a Byzantine feeling 
 that must be got rid of; but they are, well, pioneers." I 
 paused to find some final example, and concluded lamely: 
 "Don't you like Voysey's stuff ?" 
 
 "Those funny houses with the queer little buttresses?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "Some of them are ripping," I said with conviction. 
 
 "Yes, I think, perhaps, some of them are," she admitted. 
 She still regarded me with that air of poised attention. 
 
 "You're very keen, aren't you?" she continued.
 
 GLADYS 65 
 
 "Oh ! yes," I said. "But what Geddes and I want to see 
 is a whole new town built on those lines ; all planned from 
 the beginning, you know. There is some talk, now, of a 
 scheme to try that as an experiment in housing. . . ." 
 
 She seemed to brood over that for a moment, and then 
 made some comment on the vulgarisation of Eastbourne 
 that was quite beside the point. "I can't think where that 
 type of young man comes from," she said, indicating by a 
 quick turn of her eyes two youths who had been persistently 
 promenading up and down our end of the parade. 
 
 "City clerks," I said. Geddes and I were terrible snobs 
 in those days. 
 
 "They stare so horribly," Gladys replied. 
 
 I had not been displeased by the promenaders' interest 
 in my companion, but I made some expression of disgust 
 at their bad manners. 
 
 "You must tell me a lot more about the new style in archi- 
 tecture," Gladys began again, after a pause. "I'm not quite 
 a convert yet, but I daresay I shall be." 
 
 "I shall certainly do my best to convert you," I said, 
 smiling. 
 
 "Will you?" Gladys asked. "Why?" 
 
 "It would be so jolly if we could talk about it some- 
 times," I said. I was, aware at that moment of stepping 
 over some quite negligible obstacle that I had hitherto re- 
 garded as insuperable. Gladys had taken a new semblance 
 for me during the last few minutes. She had shown in- 
 terest in my opinions; she had by her criticism of those 
 two persistently staring clerks placed me in the privileged 
 circle from which she chose her friends ; and I felt that 
 she and I were forming some kind of alliance against the 
 indifferent crowd who took no interest in the future of 
 Art. Her next sentence warmed me still further. 
 
 "I think you are one of the people who are sure to get 
 on, Wilfred," she said. "You are so keen, aren't you? It's 
 such a splendid thing really to care as much as you do 
 about your work." 
 
 I blushed an invisible blush invisible because like many
 
 66 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 fair people I tan red instead of brown, and my face was 
 then in a transition stage of inflammation that no flush 
 could deepen. 
 
 "I mean to have a gobd try," I mumbled, and then I re- 
 covered my self-possession and boldly stepped over the 
 appearance I had deemed an obstacle into my cousin's 
 friendship. 
 
 "It's a tremendous help in a way," I said, "to have some 
 one like you to talk to, Gladys. In the office the men are 
 all more or less on the same tack as I am. But you've been 
 abroad and got a wider view of things, and you're I don't 
 know exactly what it is I suppose it is that you are not 
 prejudiced." 
 
 She looked at me with a frank, kindly smile she was 
 twenty years older than I was. "You mustn't imagine that 
 I'm an expert," she said. 
 
 "Experts are always more or less prejudiced," I re- 
 turned. 
 
 I expected a further compliment from her, I think. I 
 was certainly conscious of being an unprejudiced expert 
 just then; but it was my cousin's turn for praise and her 
 trap was a better one than mine. 
 
 "But I suppose you often talk to Aunt Deborah about 
 your work and your ideas," she said. 
 
 "Oh ! yes, of course," I agreed, "but . . ." 
 
 "But ... ?" she prompted me; she was determined to 
 enjoy her little triumph. 
 
 "Oh! well, of course, she doesn't really understand," I 
 said. "She listens and agrees with me, but she can't criti- 
 cise, and so on, as you can." 
 
 Gladys gave her sunshade a little spin and watched 
 the slowly revolving ribs with deep attention. "I've read 
 a lot about architecture," she admitted modestly, "but I've 
 never had much chance to apply my reading. Talking to 
 you makes it so real." 
 
 I had had my return and was satisfied with it. As we 
 went back to our rooms for lunch, we were very well pleased 
 with each other. But her pleasure and mine must have
 
 GLADYS 67 
 
 been of very different kinds. Mine was largely due to 
 the feeling that I had found a friend in my cousin. I 
 had come suddenly to an appreciation of her quality. She 
 was, I thought, both clever and sympathetic. I was ashamed 
 of my old dislike for her; and glad that we should have so 
 many opportunities in the next ten days to exchange ideas. 
 One impersonality still remained and, if I had examined it 
 that morning, I should have regarded it as a still further 
 cause for satisfaction. Gladys, in becoming a friend, had 
 not become more sensibly a woman. I admired her. I liked 
 to watch her face and the finished effect of the crisp fair 
 waves of hair over her forehead. I thought her repose 
 and her capacity for stillness very beautiful. I wanted to 
 model her head and neck and cast it in some delicately tinted 
 soft china. But I felt no desire to kiss her any more than 
 I felt a desire to kiss the marble statue of a nymph in my 
 uncle's drawing-room at Ken Lodge. 
 
 And I can only guess what shape her pleasure took. 
 
 "I do so much want to know about these things," she said 
 as we went home. But I fancy that knowledge for its own 
 sake had little attraction for her. It was enough if she 
 could, convincingly, appear to know. 
 
 in 
 
 She must have kept up that appearance most admirably 
 during the Eastbourne time. 
 
 We were free to see as much of one another as we pleased. 
 My uncle only came down for long week-ends he had had 
 ten days' holiday before my mother and I arrived ; my aunt 
 Agatha was just starting a new illness, neuritis, and found 
 that her skin was peculiarly affected by the sunshine that 
 we were enjoying in such magnificent abundance; and my 
 mother very rarely imposed her company upon us. She 
 would come out for half an hour in the morning, after she 
 had done her prescribed course of religious reading, and 
 would then return to sit with her sister-in-law. My aunt was
 
 68 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 not particularly religious, but my mother was a gentle, sym- 
 pathetic creature who seemed capable of enduring endless 
 accounts of the appearance and precise significance of my 
 aunt's more complicated symptoms. 
 
 So Gladys and I spent much of our time alone together. 
 We went long walks to Cuckmere and Pevensey and Bex- 
 hill, which was then in a more or less experimental stage 
 and did not tempt us to repeat the visit. And once we 
 made a day excursion to Hastings by steamer. 
 
 Our conversation during those walks was not by any 
 means confined to the theory and practice of a new style 
 in architecture. Gladys had a way of letting our discus- 
 sions slip into irrelevancy; indeed, sometimes when I was 
 deeply interested in my own subject, she would chill me by 
 an interruption that made me wonder if she had been lis- 
 tening. Yet she often initiated those discussions of ours, 
 generally by asking a question. It seemed as if she could 
 only maintain her interest for a little time; as if our talk 
 of architecture called for an effort that soon tired her. She 
 would come, prepared, to the opening of the day's argu- 
 ment, but when her lesson had been said she would ven- 
 ture no further contribution on the inspiration of the mo- 
 ment. So it usually fell out that we began by sharpening 
 up some point that had been left hanging the day before, 
 and then come to some account of Gladys's experiences in 
 Belgium. After the first two or three days, I had definitely 
 become the teacher in my own subject, and it was only fair 
 to give her an opportunity to play the informant. 
 
 I am putting this all down as I see it now; but as a 
 matter of fact I did not come to any serious reflections on 
 Gladys's intelligence for nearly two years. And during 
 that Eastbourne holiday I only remember one occasion on 
 which I approached anything like criticism. 
 
 We were on the steamer coming back from Hastings. It 
 was a clear, still evening, but after the warmth of the day 
 the air felt cold and the wind of our movement had driven 
 the majority of our fellow excursionists to take up posi- 
 tions aft of the deck-houses. Gladys and I were standing
 
 GLADYS 69 
 
 in the bows staring at the headland which formed the other 
 point of the long, shallow bay we were crossing on the chord 
 of its arc. We could not believe that that point was Beachy 
 Head, it looked so absurdly near, a quarter of an hour's 
 journey, at most, and yet we knew that the distance from 
 Hastings to Eastbourne by sea was fifteen miles. 
 
 "There can't be any doubt about it," I said, at last. 
 "Look, that's the awful Bexhill over there; the half-way 
 mark." 
 
 "It does seem incredible, though, doesn't it ?" Gladys com- 
 mented. We were both a little excited, as people are 
 when they meet some unusual phenomenon of this kind. 
 The sight of an extraordinary meteor, the experience of 
 an unprecedented storm; the realisation of any happening 
 that suddenly contradicts the dull normality of our ex- 
 pectation, puts us for a moment outside physical life. 
 There is something of mystery and adventure in most ab- 
 normalities. I have wondered if the spirit is quickened by 
 a memory of all that lies beyond the logic of natural law. 
 And is not some element of surprise present in every true 
 work of Art surprise that stirs a sense of amazed recog- 
 nition ? 
 
 And then Gladys shivered and snuggled herself a little 
 closer inside the knitted coat she had brought to wear on 
 the steamer. 
 
 "Yes, it is cold, now," she said, in answer to my com- 
 ment. 
 
 "Let's get behind one of the deck-houses," I suggested. 
 
 She looked back along the deck and shook her head. 
 
 "Why not?" I asked. 
 
 She screwed up her nose in a pretty little intimation 
 of disgust. "I don't like the people much" she said 
 confidingly. 
 
 "Oh! I see," was my rather hesitating response. 
 
 "They're dreadfully common, aren't they?" she persisted. 
 
 "Quite clean and sober, though," I admitted. 
 
 She screwed up her nose again. "Oh! yes," she said, 
 "but one doesn't want to be too near them."
 
 70 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 I feebly concurred, preferring to remain in the limelight 
 of my cousin's approval rather than attempt the expres- 
 sion of the thought that had been weakly stirring within me. 
 
 I think I must have been on the edge of a "moment" just 
 then. I knew that the little excitement of watching the 
 phantom headland, so mysteriously near and unapproach- 
 able, had roused in me a feeling of fellowship with hu- 
 manity ; a feeling that had curious-ly enough not been very 
 prominent in my great religious upheaval. And Gladys 
 broke my mood. She interfered between me and some- 
 thing precious that I longed to grasp. For one dragging 
 second of time I was resentful; I had moved beyond the 
 circle of her influence and I criticised her. Then the day 
 enclosed me again and I wondered at my own impulse. 
 
 But of all the surreptitious creepings within the hard 
 shell that still so lightly bound me, this was the first that 
 seems now to have been truly indicative. I think my feath- 
 ers were coming. 
 
 IV 
 
 I became engaged to Gladys the following summer. 
 
 I was cuddling down into orthodoxy, with every hope 
 of establishing myself before long in a comfortable niche 
 that would enclose and protect me from the risks of life. 
 
 My uncle had recently introduced me to his friend, Rollo 
 Parkinson, who was vaguely "looking about for a place 
 down in Buckinghamshire," and had stated his intention 
 of building a house for himself as soon as the ideal place 
 was found. 
 
 I had done a few sketches for him, and he had told 
 my uncle that I seemed "a very clever young fellow," 
 and that he might be able to put a lot of work in my way. 
 
 As a prospect, Parkinson and my uncle seemed to promise 
 better than the competitions Geddes and I so faithfully and 
 fruitlessly entered for. 
 
 I proposed to Gladys one Sunday morning after service. 
 We left her father <md mother and the prayer books at
 
 GLADYS 71 
 
 Ken Lodge on our way up Heath Street, and went on up 
 to the flagstaff. The vicinity of the Whitestone pond, how- 
 ever, was unendurably clamorous with the barking of dogs 
 retrieving, or refusing to retrieve, sticks ; and we wandered 
 down towards the Vale of Health and found a quiet little 
 seat facing over the valley towards Highgate. From that 
 distance I can always deceive myself into thinking of High- 
 gate as a village, and I get a romantic satisfaction from 
 the pretence. For some reason it has always delighted me 
 to imagine parts of London as being something other than 
 they actually are. 
 
 I began to display the fancy to Gladys, but her response 
 did not encourage me. She played the game too intelli- 
 gently; and by recreating the Highgate associated with 
 Whittington, somehow turned my vision into a history 
 lesson. 
 
 I was quite ready for a change of subject when she 
 began to talk of Parkinson. 
 
 "I'm so glad you pleased him, Wilfred," she said. "He 
 has got a heap of influential friends and he may be very 
 useful to you." 
 
 I agreed willingly. My only objection to Parkinson was 
 his obstinate insistence that the Queen Anne manner was 
 the one possible style for the house he had in mind. I 
 had suppled myself to his opinion in the designs I had 
 made, but Geddes had been down on any weakness. "After 
 all, it's his house," I had said; and Geddes had given me 
 a lecture on the necessity for educating one's clientele. I 
 should have liked to see him educating Parkinson. He 
 would have tried, of course, and lost the job. 
 
 "I'm sure, if you once get a start in private practice, 
 that you'll be a big success," Gladys went on thoughtfully, 
 and she turned her eyes from their contemplation of the 
 Heath and looked at me with a gentleness and a shyness 
 I had not seen in her face before. 
 
 "It's ripping of you to take so much interest in me," I 
 said. Her interest still flattered me. If there is a charm 
 to some men in the ideal of an exquisite remoteness, they
 
 72 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 would surely have found my cousin a beautiful object for 
 worship. 
 
 She blushed delicately, her cheeks warming for a mo- 
 ment to the timid rose of a shell. "I have always felt," 
 she said in a low voice, "ever since Eastbourne, that your 
 destiny and mine are mixed up together." 
 
 Before she made that speech I should have regarded 
 the idea of asking Gladys to marry me as nothing more 
 than ludicrous. I had never thought of her as a possible 
 wife. But, now, I knew beyond the possibility of doubt 
 that she intended to be engaged to me ; that she had amaz- 
 ingly offered me this wonderful gift of herself. I felt a 
 little as if some one had offered me a priceless piece of 
 statuary. 
 
 I was dreadfully clumsy over my acceptance. 
 
 "By Jove, have you really ?" I said, and jny tone was one 
 of awestruck wonder rather than rapture. 
 
 "Always," she said. She sat very still and was appar- 
 ently gazing at the south elevation of Highgate Church, 
 starting out clear-cut in the sunshine like a plaster model. 
 
 "But, Gladys," I said, "you don't mean that you could 
 ever . . . that I could . . . ?" 
 
 "Because of our being first cousins?" she asked, without 
 moving. 
 
 "No, I hadn't thought of that," I said. I was paralysed 
 by a doubt as to whether I ought to kiss her. I found an 
 escape from that in the reflection that our situation was too 
 public. I gently touched one of her white-gloved hands 
 instead. The hand was conveniently near mine at the 
 moment. 
 
 "But, Gladys," I repeated, determined to have the con- 
 ditions of my option perfectly clear, "is it possible that 
 you like me enough to marry me?" 
 
 "I have always liked you," she said quietly. Her hand 
 moved confidingly in mine, and she dismissed Highgate 
 Church from her attention and looked at me with the same 
 gentle shyness that had introduced our new relations. 
 
 "It it seems so incredible that you should," I mur-
 
 GLADYS 73 
 
 mured. I tried to look at her and had not the courage. 
 My blush was to hers as the peony to the wild-rose. 
 
 For what seemed a very considerable time we sat in 
 silence, still nervously holding each other's hand. I believe 
 that some obscure corner of my mind was wondering where 
 I should put her. I knew that she must always have a ped- 
 estal. I found my way back to speech by the usual con- 
 ventional suggestion. 
 
 "Do you want me to tell them?" I asked. "Uncle David 
 and my mother?" 
 
 "I don't, see why we shouldn't," Gladys said. 
 
 "You don't think he'll mind; Uncle David, I mean?" 
 
 She smiled confidently. "You can leave him to me," 
 she said, and then added: "Are you so frightened of him?" 
 
 "I am, rather," I admitted. 
 
 "You're not frightened of me, too, are you ?" she asked. 
 
 I found courage to look up at her, then, and her eyes 
 were bright and had in them some light of conquest that 
 reminded me of the eyes of Adela Lynneker. 
 
 "You are so very beautiful, Gladys," I said with a sigh. 
 "In a way, you you do, rather, awe me." 
 
 "How silly!" she commented gaily, but I saw that she 
 was pleased. 
 
 "I should never dare to to kiss you," I said. 
 
 She looked gaily over her shoulder, shifted her sunshade 
 and bent towards me with a quick gesture of invitation. 
 
 My hand tightened convulsively on hers as I touched her 
 soft smooth cheek; and then my other hand clasped her 
 arm and I kissed her lips. 
 
 She permitted me that embrace long enough for my con- 
 sciousness to be aware of her touch, before she jumped up 
 blushing, warmly now, as if she had, at last, felt the pulse 
 of hot life. 
 
 "You soon overcame your fright, dear," she said with a 
 little air of reproof. 
 
 "Let's go and tell them," I said, and I took her hand 
 in my arm and we walked back. I had no doubt, just then, 
 that I loved my cousin to distraction.
 
 74. HOUSE-MATES 
 
 My uncle took me into his study after dinner. They 
 dined in the middle of the day on Sunday and had a cold 
 supper at night. Our talk, however, was the merest con- 
 vention; there was nothing to be said. 
 
 I always think of my uncle as being a little man. He 
 was, I suppose, about five feet seven, or eight, but I am 
 exactly six feet in my socks and apt to forget that my 
 height is something above the average. I cannot pretend 
 that I understood him or his motives. He was just an 
 uncle to me, then; a fact to be accepted as one accepted 
 the usual phenomena of existence. His face was deeply 
 lined, more particularly about the mouth, and he had a way 
 of peering at one with a rather suspicious frown that 
 made some people feel uncomfortable. But I fancy that 
 that was largely an acquired mannerism due to an effort 
 to disguise a tic that perhaps had worried him in earlier 
 life. The facial spasm took the form, in his case, of a 
 portentous wink of the left eye; and no doubt he had 
 had to assume a forced sternness in order to allay the 
 suspicion that his wink might be due to an unprofessional 
 levity. He had, too, a very deliberate habit of speech, 
 filling his pauses with a sound that might be written "er 
 hum er," the "hum" taking the shape of a cough that 
 never went deeper than the back of his throat. It would be 
 too tedious to report him; but the effect he had upon 
 me was chiefly due to these external symptoms which filled 
 me not with laughter, as might possibly be expected, but 
 with an odd sense of apprehension. Whenever he spoke to 
 me alone I felt as if he were preparing the way for some 
 awful revelation. 
 
 That Sunday afternoon I certainly had cause for uneasi- 
 ness. Gladys had spoken very confidently of her father's 
 attitude towards our engagement, but I was painfully aware 
 of ^my own ineligibility when Uncle David began : 
 
 "Gladys has told me er hum has told me er that
 
 GLADYS 75 
 
 you have," and then came a pause for that tremendous wink, 
 "er hum, made her a proposal of marriage." And it all 
 came out in the tone of a speaker who makes a solemn 
 announcement at a public meeting. 
 
 I believe I was in the study with him for the best part 
 of an hour, but, as I have said, neither of us had anything 
 to say. My uncle winked and "er hummed" himself 
 gravely through the ceremony of what he supposed was 
 the inevitable interview, and left me only wiser by the 
 knowledge that I was to make some sort of a position for 
 myself before the marriage could take place. He said 
 something about three years as the probationary period, 
 but he did not make a special point of it. 
 
 I was not at all depressed by the advice that I must 
 be making a living as an architect in private practice be- 
 fore I married my cousin. I meant to achieve that ambi- 
 tion fairly soon in any case, and I could count, now, more 
 surely than ever on my uncle's backing. Also, I was not 
 in any hurry to marry Gladys. It was glorious to be en- 
 gaged to her, but the thought of her affected me with none 
 of the impatience that I had sometimes felt before a visit 
 to Nellie Roberts. 
 
 I was proud of that difference of feeling. I counted 
 it as a sign that my love for Gladys was of the best and 
 purest quality, purged of the physical yearnings that seemed 
 to me at that time horribly gross and material. There 
 was, I think, a great similarity between my emotions dur- 
 ing the first months of my engagement and those I had ex- 
 perienced during my religious fit. Both were etherealised 
 and abstract; they lacked the element of love for my own 
 kind that might have given them reality. If that motive 
 had stirred me during my evanescent worship of some 
 tenuous ideal of purity, I should have certainly taken or- 
 ders and gone out into the world as an evangel, instead 
 of secretly cherishing some pharasaical conception of my 
 own righteousness. 
 
 What would have been the result if Gladys had warmed 
 me to a more urgent desire, I cannot say; but I imagine
 
 76 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 that she would have shrunk from any manifestation of 
 passion. Once or twice, when I kissed her with unusual 
 zeal, she winced a little; and afterwards I felt ashamed, 
 as if I had taken too coarse a liberty with so fine and 
 sensitive a creature. 
 
 Another point of similarity between my spasmodic de- 
 votions to God and Gladys was shown in my desire to 
 cherish the secret of my ecstasy. It is comprehensible 
 enough that I should have said nothing to Geddes or 
 Kemplay; for just as I had known myself unable to ex- 
 press to them my new-found idea of God, so also was I 
 aware of my inability to describe the exquisite quality 
 of my fiancee. But I might have found a confidante in my 
 mother. She was willing enough to listen. I believe she 
 wished to see me married. 
 
 She knew, of course, that she would come to live with 
 us; our relations were such that a separation was incon- 
 ceivable, and we only spoke of that once, when she rather 
 shakily enquired where I thought I should live after my 
 marriige. 
 
 I was of opinion that we could not do better than Hamp- 
 stead or Highgate. 
 
 My mother agreed; those two suburbs were all London 
 to her she very rarely went as far as Oxford Street, and 
 had never been inside a theatre in her life. Then she made 
 her one tentative suggestion by saying: 
 
 "I suppose I could stay on here?" 
 
 I laughed. "But, of course, you'll come to live with us 
 wherever we go," I said. 
 
 "Are you sure Gladys would like that?" my mother 
 asked. 
 
 I had never mentioned the idea to my cousin, but I re- 
 plied without the least hesitation. "Rather. We've never 
 thought of anything else," I said. 
 
 My mother was watching my face with a certain 
 anxiety, but her doubt was not as to my intentions with 
 regard to herself. 
 
 "You might feel that you want to be alone for a time,"
 
 GLADYS 77 
 
 she ventured ; and she knew that she was approaching the 
 subject I dared not discuss, the reality of my love for 
 Gladys. 
 
 "I couldn't possibly marry if you didn't come to live 
 with us," I said. "So we needn't talk about that any 
 more." 
 
 And nothing more was said then. My mother kissed me 
 and thanked God for having given her such a good son. 
 But afterwards she often hovered on the verge of a more 
 direct question. 
 
 I wonder, now, whether she was not divided between 
 her love for me, between her genuine desire for my happi- 
 ness, and something that can only be called jealousy. She 
 had moments when she realised far more of my feeling 
 for Gladys than I knew myself. She was afraid for me, 
 and yet at the same time glad that my devotion to herself 
 was not interfered with. She must have had some crucial 
 struggles with her own conscience, if I am right, for she 
 was extraordinarily honest with herself. 
 
 Perhaps, if I had been equally honest, I should have 
 drawn some inference from the sincere statement of my 
 determination not to marry unless my mother came to live 
 with us. But, if a doubt crossed my mind, I put it away 
 from me at once. I was in love with my enjoyment of 
 life; my chief outside interest at the moment was my 
 engagement to Gladys, and I would not have sacrificed it 
 from any scruple of conscience. I turned my back on 
 my doubts as upon some denial of beauty; or, better still, 
 dissipated them by watching Gladys and thinking myself 
 into a condition of worship. 
 
 VI 
 
 It was a very trivial incident that suddenly woke me 
 from my dream and set me to face what I could only 
 regard as the very difficult problem of my future. 
 
 We had been engaged for nearly eleven months, then;
 
 78 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 and the first fruits of my uncle's influence and backing 
 had matured in the form of a definite commission from 
 Mr. Parkinson. He had at last found a site that suited 
 him, not far from West Wycombe, and I had been down 
 to see it and was getting out drawings for the house 
 he proposed to erect. It was to cost 3,500. My mother 
 spoke hopefully of a scheme to set me 'up with an office 
 of my own. Nothing had been said of that to my uncle 
 as yet, but she believed that he would be willing to finance 
 me until I was earning enough to pay my own way. The 
 corollary to this proposition was an early marriage with 
 Gladys. In my mother's mind the last suggestion figured 
 partly, I think, as an insurance against all possible fail- 
 ures. She knew her brother's weakness with regard to 
 spending money, and wanted to clinch his responsibility. 
 He might find some excuse for neglecting me, but he would 
 never permit his daughter to suffer. 
 
 And, at the time, that proposition appeared to me as 
 just and honourable. It was all in the general scheme 
 of life as I knew it. I had confidence in my own ability 
 to earn a comfortable income as soon as I could make 
 my name known. I had already had designs and articles 
 published in two building papers, and received a few 
 letters concerning them, one of which contained a definite 
 enquiry from a possible client. That was another way 
 of escape from Lincoln's Inn, and it seemed to promise 
 well. I had, indeed, little doubt of my professional fu- 
 ture; and I should, therefore, have had no qualms about 
 accepting temporary assistance from my -father-in-law. I 
 was planning my niche in society just as Geddes or Horton- 
 Smith were planning theirs. We were intent on the com- 
 mon purpose that had been held up to us as the chief 
 object of our lives. We had to mark out our place in 
 the congeries; find security, a home, a limited circle of 
 acquaintances; set a label on ourselves and live within 
 the rule of our class. At twenty-seven I had outgrown the 
 more romantic ambitions of my youth. Cathedrals and 
 great public buildings no longer filled my dreams. I had
 
 GLADYS 79 
 
 discovered my limitations and marked my future place 
 in society. At the best, I saw myself succeeding Norman 
 Shaw as an architect of private houses. 
 
 These anticipations were quite definitely in the fore- 
 ground of my consciousness. If they had been fulfilled, I 
 should have remained a shapely, admirable egg. But, all 
 unknown to me, another spasm was convulsing my spirit, 
 and this time it found expression in a new shape. . . . 
 
 Gladys had always refused to play tennis or croquet 
 with me in the Ken Lodge garden. Games did not interest 
 her, she protested. I should often have preferred tennis, 
 and even croquet, to conversation in the presence of Aunt 
 Agatha I have always been as keen on games as the aver- 
 age young Englishman but none of my tentative efforts 
 after persuasion hud ever induced Gladys to take up a 
 racquet or a mallet. She did not, theoretically, condemn 
 games; she would sit and watch them being played; but 
 she said that she never felt the least wish to play herself. 
 
 I accepted that attitude without resentment or criti- 
 cism. It seemed to me typical of Gladys. It seemed 
 to keep her on the pedestal she graced so becomingly. 
 And then, one Saturday afternoon, I saw her with both 
 feet on the earth, and I could never put her back on her 
 throne. 
 
 I called at Ken Lodge on my way back from the office. 
 I had told Gladys that I should not come that afternoon; 
 I had meant to go home and work ; but as I came up on the 
 bus to Pond Street, I was tempted by the beauty of the 
 day, and I decided to fetch Gladys and go for a walk across 
 the Heath to .Highgate. 
 
 It must have been nearly three o'clock when I came 
 to the house, and the maid told me that my aunt was in 
 bed and my uncle not yet home from the city, but that she 
 believed Miss Gladys was in the drawing-room. I was very 
 much at home in that house, and I walked into the drawing- 
 room unannounced. 
 
 Gladys was not there ; she was playing tennis on the lawn
 
 80 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 outside with a little girl of fourteen or fifteen, the daughter 
 of a Hampstead friend. 
 
 I stood at the drawing-room window and watched them, 
 and all the spell of my engagement was suddenly broken. 
 
 The Gladys I saw was no longer the still, graceful woman 
 who had seemed to me the incarnation of delicate beauty. 
 She was a gawky, clumsy creature, incredibly inept at the 
 game she was attempting to play. She ran awkwardly, the 
 movements of her arms and body were horribly ungrace- 
 ful; and yet she was entering into the game with some- 
 thing of eagerness. She was manifestly doing her best 
 to win. 
 
 And I saw her instantly as a "poseuse." I felt no resent- 
 ment against her for having lied about her distaste for 
 games. She had, indeed, a most excellent reason for lying, 
 since she must certainly have known that the effort could 
 only be made at the sacrifice of her whole effect. I could 
 understand and endure her untruth, even applaud her mo- 
 tive for maintaining it. What released me was my realisa- 
 tion of Gladys's personality. She was, I saw all too vividly, 
 only a semblance. More than once, recently, I had had 
 passing doubts as to her intellectual capacity. We had seen 
 so much of one another during the past twelve months 
 that it was inevitable she should slip sometimes; and she 
 had slipped on occasion quite unmistakably. And I had 
 wondered for a moment and then found half a dozen expla- 
 nations, she was tired, she had been inattentive ; I had mis- 
 understood her. . . . Now, I understood beyond any pos- 
 sibility of doubt. I knew that her interest in Art and 
 Literature was no less a pose than her still grace of move- 
 ment. She affected those interests; she wore them taste- 
 fully displayed in telling suggestions, reserves, and admis- 
 sions of ignorance. One talent she had, and so far as I 
 guessed then, only one : her genius for knowing what suited 
 her. ^ There was a real woman underneath her affectations, 
 but it was not the woman that had won my admiration. 
 
 I crept quietly out of the drawing-room as if I had wit- 
 nessed something disgraceful and obscene. As I walked
 
 GLADYS 81 
 
 home the sight of the gawky girl who was my fiancee 
 haunted me. 
 
 I wanted, now, to confide in my mother; to tell her the 
 whole story of my illusion. I desired her consolation when 
 I was in pain, if I had an instinct to conceal my joys. But 
 I could not tell her about this because I believed that it 
 was a secret I was bound in honour to hide. I had no 
 excuse for breaking off my engagement, and I still meant to 
 carry out my part in the contract ; even to marry the woman 
 who lived under the appearance I had known. 
 
 I 
 VII 
 
 It is quite possible that self-interest played a part in the 
 making of this decision; but the alternative might have 
 daunted a braver, more honest man than I was. Much 
 courage is required to defy the conventions when the de- 
 fiance will make one appear not as a hero but as a fool. 
 The world in which I lived would not have accepted the 
 excuse that I had ceased to care for Gladys. My mother 
 would have been deeply grieved, my uncle permanently 
 offended, all our friends would have thought me dishon- 
 ourable ; and Gladys no, I do not know how Gladys would 
 have been affected. It certainly weighed with me that she 
 might suffer. After my first violent reaction against her, 
 I found something very pathetic in her magnificent effort 
 of make-believe I could not have sustained such a part 
 for a week. And beyond and after these excellent reasons 
 for carrying on the engagement remained a perfectly rea- 
 sonable consideration for my own future. 
 
 I awoke to a depressed struggle with this problem early 
 on Sunday morning, and answered it as most other young 
 men would have answered it. Something must be sacri- 
 ficed, and the offering I proposed to lay on the altar was 
 some vague idea of love or it may be only of emotion. 
 Outwardly the glory remained. None of our friends would 
 know, as I did, that Gladys was a mere simulacrum.
 
 82 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 One more point remained to be settled, and that was my 
 attitude towards Gladys herself. In the course of morn- 
 ing service I had a romantic yearning to be quite honest 
 with her. I saw myself as being rather splendid, and 
 having an effect upon her that amounted to "conversion." 
 I could just see her perfect profile from my seat, and I pic- 
 tured a scene in which Gladys wept honestly but still beau- 
 tifully. I was moved to great tenderness at the thought 
 of her confession. I believed that I might find a way 
 out of all my perplexities by creating a new image of our 
 relations to one another, and she was to be adoring, pliable 
 and grateful. 
 
 That sentimental dream was finally dissipated before 
 dinner. 
 
 We did not go on up to the Heath together that morning. 
 There had been a heavy shower while we were in church 
 and the streets were steaming in hot sunshine when we 
 came out. But wonderful tumultuous masses of cumulus 
 were piled high in the south-west, and Gladys thought we 
 had better not go too far from home; so when she had 
 taken off her hat, we went and sat on the back-lawn where 
 we were not overlooked from the house. 
 
 I was foolishly nervous. Now that I was alone with her, 
 I could not recall the picture of a Gladys either pliable 
 or grateful. She was so amazingly the same as she had 
 always been ; and my memory of her as she appeared play- 
 ing tennis was as the thought of a phantasm that had had 
 no reality. If the initiative had been left to me, I should 
 have made no reference to the previous afternoon ; but she 
 began at once by saying: 
 
 "Ellen says you came yesterday, after all ; why didn't you 
 stay?" 
 
 I looked in vain for any sign of embarrassment as she 
 spoke. There was a shade of asperity in her tone, but she 
 had often censured me recently with just the same sugges- 
 tion of thin disapproval. 
 
 "Oh! I don't know," I said. "I had to go home and 
 work,"
 
 GLADYS 83 
 
 ' 
 
 "But you told me you weren't coming at all," she per- 
 sisted. "Why did you change your mind?" 
 
 I began to suspect an uneasiness underlying her indirect 
 questions, but I had no intention of leading her on when 
 I replied: 
 
 "It was such a jolly afternoon. I thought you might like 
 to come for a walk." 
 
 She frowned without disfiguring the smooth whiteness 
 of her straight forehead just the least puckering of the 
 eyes and a droop of the eyebrows expressed her annoyance. 
 
 "But, my dear Wilfred," she remonstrated, "why are you 
 so mysterious? Really, I don't understand. You came to 
 tell me you had to work, you say, a fact that I knew 
 already, and in the same breath you say that you came to 
 fetch me out for a walk. Now, which do you mean ?" 
 
 "I came to fetch you out, I suppose," I said; and even 
 then she feinted rather than ask me directly why I had 
 changed my mind. I was sure, then, that she knew. 
 
 "You are perfectly incomprehensible at times, dear," she 
 said. 
 
 I felt as if I were doing a very brave thing when I re- 
 plied : "You were playing tennis. I didn't care to interrupt 
 you." I looked away across the lawn with an instinctive 
 wish to spare her. I believed that she would be shamed. I 
 was genuinely astonished when I heard her little tinkling 
 laugh. 
 
 "Oh! Wilfred, I wasn't," she said. "That little Burton 
 child came round and I had to amuse her somehow. You 
 know I hate tennis ; we were only knocking the balls about. 
 I should have thought you would have guessed how thank- 
 ful I should have been for any interruption. You really 
 are extraordinarily dense at times." 
 
 I could not go on with that subject. In a sense I was 
 afraid. I had realised the perfect futility of the dream 
 I had had in church, and understood now, far better than 
 I had the day before, the quality of my cousin's pose. It 
 had crystallised ; taken, as it were, a hard, unvarying sur- 
 face that she could present without effort against any attack.
 
 84 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 Her very personality had in it something of the charac- 
 teristics of the porcelain to which I had so often likened 
 her physical beauty. One might break her by a sudden 
 blow, but she was no longer plastic. Her outline was set 
 and could never be altered. And if one broke her nothing 
 would be left nothing that would be worth keeping. 
 
 "I'm sorry," I said feebly. "I suppose I knew that I 
 ought to be working, and when I saw that you had some 
 one with you ... It wouldn't have been any fun going out 
 with Elsie Burton. . . ." 
 
 She held her advantage. 
 
 "I do wish sometimes that you wouldn't be quite so 
 lackadaisical," she said coldly ; and I saw that it was I who 
 would presently be moulded into a new shape. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The year that intervened between that conversation and 
 the death of my mother must have been a particularly dreary 
 one. Looking back upon it, I have an impression of my- 
 self patiently frowning my way into the acceptance of a 
 future that appeared, even then, to be singularly unin- 
 spiring. I can recall no moments of inspiration through- 
 out those long months. I was resigning myself to the 
 steady contemplation of the commonplace, and my thoughts 
 were blurred by an increasing cloud of depression. 
 
 All the incidents of that time are associated with Gladys. 
 Such small excitements as going to the theatre, or, when 
 Aunt Agatha was well enough, an afternoon on the river, 
 or a little dinner party at Ken Lodge, come back to me 
 now as connected with some further tightening of the chain 
 that I was fitting myself to wear. Only in the early morn- 
 ings was I ever able to delude myself that the future still 
 held some enchanting possibilities for me. I sometimes 
 dreamed then, deliberately reckless of the chain; dreams 
 in which Gladys had no place. 
 
 I have dated this period as definitely beginning with our
 
 GLADYS 85 
 
 conversation on that Sunday morning, and I think I am 
 right in marking that talk as the first indication of a change 
 of relationship between me and Gladys. I knew then that 
 any feeling I had for my cousin was nothing more than 
 admiration of her physical beauty; and after I had seen 
 her gawky attempts to play tennis, even that compensating 
 excuse for our engagement was denied to me. I could 
 not forget that she was only graceful by acquired habit. It 
 was as if I had exposed some fine piece of furniture as a 
 clever fraud. By accident I had chipped away a fragment 
 of veneer and had seen the coarse material below; even 
 the horrible glue that served to maintain the deceit. I 
 tried desperately at times to delude myself that nothing 
 was altered, that the appearance was no less beautiful than 
 before, that even the fraud itself was brilliant enough to 
 demand my admiration. But it was no good. The sur- 
 face remained, the grace of the lines, all the outward evi- 
 dences of beauty; but I could not forget my sight of the 
 deal and the glue; and I saw that, as I had carelessly ex- 
 posed that foundation once, I might blunder into further 
 experiments. I might be tempted to pick again at some 
 tempting edge of what I knew to be nothing more than 
 veneer. 
 
 Gladys's change of altitude was not less inevitable than 
 my own. She knew. I am certain, now, that she knew 
 all I had guessed. How far she deceived herself I can- 
 not say. She would have found a hundred reasons for 
 keeping her own admiration. Nevertheless, I believe she 
 grew to hate me during that next year of our engage- 
 ment, and she may have held me to my promises mainly 
 to support her own pride. If. she had let me go, taken 
 the initiative and thrown me over, she would have admit- 
 ted the fraud; and she may have been honest enough to 
 dread the making of such an admission to herself. And yet 
 I am not sure. I cannot pretend to understand her secret 
 thoughts. Indeed, I have occasionally been driven to 
 the conclusion that she never had any secret thoughts ; but 
 that in some positive, instinctive way she simply persisted
 
 86 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 because she was subconsciously aware that retreat meant 
 some kind of self-revelation. 
 
 Whatever her motives, the effect of them was displayed 
 in what I can only call an increasing cruelty to me. She 
 no longer condescended to any admiration for my work 
 or my opinions, but began quite openly to mould me that 
 I might fit the destiny of her invention. She had our future 
 all cut and dried, and she did not disguise the fact that 
 she meant to rule me. 
 
 I remember, for example, a dinner-party at Ken Lodge 
 that autumn, and the public attack that Gladys made 
 upon me. And the occasion is further remarkable inas- 
 much as that was the first time I saw Morrison Blake, whom 
 I disliked so peculiarly at the time and to whom I had 
 reason later for being so uncommonly grateful. 
 
 He was a man of nearly fifty then, I should say ; a rather 
 stout man, not very tall, but producing an effect of au- 
 thority. He wore a full beard and moustache, the former 
 cut something in the style shown in the Nineveh reliefs, 
 but the crisp curl of the brown hair was not, in his case, 
 artificial. His pate was nearly bald, but the tufts of hair 
 over his ears and along the nape of his neck suggested 
 that originally his hair had curled tightly all over his head. 
 
 I had heard of him by repute as the greatest living ex- 
 pert on antique furniture, and I had looked forward to 
 meeting him. What repelled me from my first sight of 
 him was the too evident delight he took in himself, in his 
 appearance, his opinions, and everything that belonged to 
 him. I have never known a man so overpoweringly con- 
 ceited. He was a great talker, too. He flowed on in his 
 rich tenor, giving us anecdote after anecdote of his experi- 
 ences as an expert and a collector. I will admit that the 
 majority of his stories had considerable point and interest 
 and that he told them well, but he never for one instant 
 attempted to disguise the important part that he himself 
 had played in the revelation of a fraud or the swindling 
 (I called it swindling) of the unhappy, ignorant possessor 
 of some article of virtue.
 
 GLADYS 87 
 
 My uncle and aunt were very attentive to him. He had 
 been a client of my uncles for some years, but this was 
 the first time they had been able to persuade him to dine 
 with them. The only other stranger present was Lady 
 Hoast, the widow of old Sir George Hoast, who made his 
 money in leather ; and she contributed little to the conversa- 
 tion. She was a very tall, stiff woman with a long, thin 
 nose and an air of having always been about her present 
 age. 
 
 Gladys was very charming to Blake throughout the in- 
 terminable length of dinner. She listened to his stories 
 with absorbed attention and laughed with an appearance of 
 abandon that was splendidly convincing. After about the 
 third course, Blake was obviously telling his stories more 
 particularly for Gladys's benefit, although his other listeners 
 were not less attentive than she was. Lady Hoast had a 
 queer, silent laugh that seemed to ripple through her, be- 
 ginning at the head and so trembling down from her shoul- 
 der to invisibility. I imagined it passing away with a final 
 tremor of her feet. There were only the six of us, my 
 mother was even then too ill to come out at night. 
 
 It was in the drawing-room, after we had joined the three 
 women, that Gladys made her attack upon me. 
 
 Blake had been telling a story about a piece of Queen 
 Anne silver, and no doubt the mention of the period re- 
 minded her of my objections to the architectural style be- 
 loved of Parkinson. 
 
 "Do you admire the Queen Anne style, Mr. Blake?" she 
 asked, and I guessed at once what was coming. 
 
 "In silver, certainly, Miss Williams," Blake said, and 
 then, waving one of his exquisite white hands, he went on : 
 "But nearly all the old stuff has the virtue of real design 
 and feeling. It's only the abominable things they make 
 to-day, the defective imitations, or poor, fumbling attempts 
 at originality; it's only these nineteenth century things that 
 I unhesitatingly condemn. I've always been catholic in 
 taste. I have said that you can find beauty in any piece 
 of an earlier date than the end of the i8th century, if you'll
 
 88 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 take the trouble to look for it. I believe that. Real Art 
 died with the French Revolution." 
 
 Gladys looked up at him, demure and yet ecstatic. "Oh ! 
 I do so agree with you," she said. "I have been trying 
 hard, lately, to convert Mr. Hornby. He is an architect, 
 you know, and so obsessed with the idea that the only 
 possible style is this 'New Art.' " 
 
 Blake looked at me as if he had for the first time be- 
 come conscious of my presence; and his glance pitied my 
 profound ignorance rather than my wrong-headedness. 
 
 "I have only two objections to your 'New Art,' Mr. 
 Hornby," he said. "It isn't new, and it isn't Art." He 
 laughed as if he had said something clever. 
 
 Gladys gave me no time to reply, even if I had had any 
 adequate retort to Blake's stale witticism. "I was sure 
 you'd think that," she said, as if no other opinion was now 
 possible. "You must really convert Mr. Hornby he is so 
 obstinate about his theories." 
 
 Blake looked a trifle bored. "Oh! these theorists!" he 
 returned with one of his fat gestures. "They'll recover their 
 good sense if you give 'em time those that are worth 
 bothering about. The others can go mad in their own 
 way; they can't do any harm." He was so superbly confi- 
 dent that opposition failed to make him angry. He looked 
 down on me and my like with good-humoured contempt. 
 He was rich, he was clever, he was handsome in his cor- 
 pulent, curly-haired way, and above all he was treated with 
 the respect and admiration due to a specialist who has no 
 near rival. To him the struggling Geddesses and Hornbys 
 were callow youths whose opinions were not worth one 
 instant's consideration. 
 
 Gladys looked at me with a kind of tender commisera- 
 tion. She had successfully demonstrated in that com- 
 pany the worth of my taste in art. 
 
 And I, poor, drudging creature that I was, exhibited no 
 outward sign of my resentment. I blushed and mumbled 
 and allowed the magnificent Blake to roll over and then 
 forget me in the recountal of another story from his in-
 
 GLADYS 89 
 
 terminable list. I was coiled up so closely within my 
 shell; and my one thought was to reconcile myself to that 
 tight enclosure. I hugged the thought that one day I, too, 
 might be rich and regarded as an authority. My chief 
 desire just then was to stand on my own hearthrug, sur- 
 rounded with the furniture of my own taste, and to exhibit, 
 in his own presence, the poverty of Morrison Blake's truck- 
 ling to the antique. I was hardly aware of any need for 
 inhibiting that desire. I had my model, and if I had 
 any dread of my future it was due to my doubt of Gladys. 
 It is not well to start a collection with a piece that one 
 knows to be fraudulent. 
 
 But I dreamed a new dream as I took my tub next 
 morning we had no bath-room in the little house in the 
 North End Road. I pictured Blake falling in love with 
 Gladys I put it that way because I had no doubt of her 
 response ; she would never be able to resist the glory of 
 such a marriage. And for a moment or two the dream 
 gave me relief. I looked into an unfurnished future that 
 expanded into vague enchanting depths without any kind of 
 boundary. I had come near to the edge of a vision when 
 I found myself facing the dreary stairs of the office in 
 Lincoln's Inn. 
 
 April was coming in and in the Gardens the pressure 
 of young life was thrusting its way to freedom. I would 
 have run away that morning if it had not been for my 
 mother's need of me. I knew that she was failing rapidly 
 and I could not leave her then. 
 
 IX 
 
 I find it impossible even after this length of time to write 
 about my mother's last illness. I cannot explain my reluc- 
 tance. I propose presently to write of something much 
 nearer to the heart of my life than the emotions I experi- 
 enced in the long three months that intervened between 
 our knowledge that her death was inevitable and the last
 
 90 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 gradual slipping through unconsciousness to separation. 
 But that slow parting had a quality that I cannot define 
 in words, and I prefer to leave the description unattempted. 
 She and I came to understand one another very well before 
 her recognition of all material life ultimately failed, some 
 ten days before the obstinate vital functions ceased from the 
 hopeless effort to maintain the form of her body. She was 
 curiously less religious during those last two months. Some 
 certainty had come to her and she no longer grasped at the 
 straw of written words. Her Bible lay always on the table 
 by her bed, but I know that she seldom opened it. We, 
 spoke little in that time. Her certainty must have been 
 so near that she assumed my understanding of her faith. 
 And, indeed, I did understand. There were moments when 
 I was inclined to envy my mother for the speeding of her 
 destiny. 
 
 And the effect of her willing resignation to a change of 
 which she knew neither the manner nor the result has re- 
 mained with me till now, and will remain with me always. 
 After my mother died I was plunged into the turmoil of 
 the world as I had never been plunged before. I have be- 
 come involved in what would be described as material loves, 
 interests and anxieties. I am at this moment intensely con- 
 cerned with the common movement and exigencies of life. 
 But I know that when the warning comes to me I shall 
 receive it without fear or anxiety. I shall have no con- 
 cern, then, with the casting of my moral account with God. 
 A certainty will visit me as it visited her; and I shall not, 
 reach out for the show of repentance nor concern myself 
 with any interpretation of old doctrine. That is what my 
 mother's faith meant to me during her last illness; and 
 that is the faith I have carried since she died. I have 
 never tried to know the Unknowable, I believe in Him, and 
 I am content. 
 
 After the funeral I had an interview with my uncle, 
 and he put my affairs before me in the clearest language.
 
 GLADYS 91 
 
 My capital amounted to just under 200 and the furniture of 
 our little house in the North End Road. My mother had 
 been a, yearly tenant of the house and the agreement had 
 only another fortnight to run. No notice had been given 
 of our intention to leave the place, but my uncle had seen 
 the landlord who was willing to waive that formality on 
 condition that I moved my furniture as soon as possible. 
 My position was clear enough. All that remained was for 
 me to decide what I proposed to do. 
 
 That decision may appear an easy one, but I was ab- 
 surdly perplexed by it. I was still a schoolboy in the man- 
 agement of affairs. Until then everything had been done 
 for me; I had never even lived in rooms; the whole busi- 
 ness of deciding where to live seemed to me full of difficulty 
 and anxiety. 
 
 And I was expecting my uncle to make some offer to 
 provide for me. I had not seriously considered the idea 
 of living on the 3 a week I earned at Heaton & Baxter's. 
 I rather anticipated the suggestion that I should, now, marry 
 Gladys with as little delay as possible ; but I was confi- 
 dent that, in any case, my uncle would allow me an income. 
 I sat in the little L shaped room off the hall, that he used 
 as a study, and waited for the proposition to come. 
 
 Uncle David looked down at the poor little collection 
 of papers that represented all my personal property, rolled 
 out the drum of his sonorous cough and winked prodi- 
 giously. 
 
 "Er hrum-rum-rum," he began, "I should advise unfur- 
 nished rooms as being cheaper and hum, hum likely to 
 give you the best investment for your furniture." 
 
 "For a time, at least," I said, and then by way of show- 
 ing that I was not quite such an idiot as my earlier silence 
 had made me appear I went on : "Some of it might be sold, 
 I think. There wouldn't be enough for an auction; per- 
 haps . . ." 
 
 "I will manage that for you," Uncle David rumbled, 
 winking solemnly at my mother's will. 
 
 I waited for a moment and, as the offer still hung fire,
 
 92 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 I tried the broadest hint I dared to get the affair settled. 
 
 "Of course, it will only be necessary to take rooms for 
 a time," I said firmly. "Meanwhile I might be looking about 
 for a house for Gladys and myself." 
 
 Uncle David's tic became more violent than I had ever 
 seen it. He had to put his hand up to his face and cough 
 himself quiet before he could answer me. 
 
 "Yes, yes," he said. "But I made it clear er-rhum 
 from the beginning that I expect you to be making a decent 
 income before you marry Gladys." 
 
 "That job of Mr. Parkinson's is actually started at last," 
 I put in, but my uncle ignored the interruption and 
 continued : 
 
 "I should expect you to be making an income of of at 
 least 800 a year. When you see your way to that I I 
 should be prepared to make a a a suitable settlement for 
 Gladys. Quite against my principles to to to encourage 
 you in the belief that work is unnecessary." 
 
 "Oh! well, of course," I said. I was annoyed by what 
 I regarded as another exhibition of my uncle's meanness. 
 "The only point is that it is very difficult to get together 
 a private practice when you're working in another man's 
 office. If I could make a start . . ." 
 
 "You've got two hundred pounds," my uncle said with 
 a portentous wink. 
 
 "I suppose that would be enough to start on?" I said in 
 the tone of one making mental calculations. 
 
 "And the commission on Parkinson's house coming to 
 you?" Uncle David continued. 
 
 ''About 180 spread over fifteen months or so," I supplied. 
 
 "I began with less," was my uncle's only comment. 
 
 I got up with an air of having the business settled. "Well, 
 then, I had better see about getting an office," I said. 
 
 My uncle exchanged confidences with the papers in front 
 of him. "I would advise you," he said, "to to to limit 
 your ideas of luxury for the time being. Two rooms would 
 be er-rhum, hum sufficient. In a cheap neighbourhood." 
 
 That idea had never presented itself to my inmost mind.
 
 GLADYS 93 
 
 An office was an office to me. When Geddes and Horton- 
 Smith had left Lincoln's Inn they had both plunged, the 
 former with a couple of rooms in King Street, Cheapside, 
 the latter into a suite of chambers in Verulam Buildings, 
 Grays Inn. 
 
 "Do you mean that I should have an office and sitting- 
 room combined?" I asked. 
 
 "I see no reason against it," my uncle said. 
 
 "Very well, then. That's settled," I returned petulantly. 
 
 "I will manage your affairs for you," my uncle added, 
 as I was at the door. "The proving of the will will be 
 a very simple affair, but I can let you have a little ready 
 money at once if you require it." 
 
 "Oh! that's all right. Don't bother," I said, as I went 
 out. . . . 
 
 I saw Gladys in the garden 'and joined her on the back 
 lawn. My temper was still hot and I meant, for once, to 
 assert myself. 
 
 "I've been talking to Uncle David," I announced, as I 
 sat down beside Gladys on the garden seat. "I've got two 
 hundred pounds and the prospect of another one hundred 
 and eighty from Parkinson ; and Uncle David advises me to 
 set up in private practice with two rooms in Bloomsbury or 
 somewhere !" 
 
 Gladys looked at me in her composed, thoughtful way, 
 and then said: 
 
 "Well? Why not? You must make a beginning some- 
 how, I suppose?" 
 
 "I'm perfectly ready to make a beginning," I said, and 
 found myself quite unable to state my grievance. I was 
 very conscious that I had been hardly used, but I saw no 
 way of suggesting to Gladys that her father was, in the 
 phrase of my thought, "a mean, old skunk." 
 
 "Why are you in such a temper about it, then ?" she asked. 
 
 I fell back on the obvious, which was none the less ob- 
 vious because it was certainly not the true reason for my 
 discontent. 
 
 "I thought we might be married fairly soon, now," I said,
 
 94 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "but Uncle David says he won't hear of it till I'm making, 
 800 a year. And it's all jolly fine," I went on, working 
 myself up and trying to avoid the necessity for becoming 
 amorous or sentimental, "but, starting in two poky little 
 rooms like that, it won't be so easy to work up a practice. 
 People haven't much confidence in a chap who hasn't even 
 got an office of his own." 
 
 "Do you want father to keep you?" Gladys asked with 
 that faint, reproving pucker of her forehead I knew so 
 well. 
 
 "Rather not," I replied, and tried to turn the tables on 
 her by adding: "Are you content to wait for ten years 
 before we can be married ?" 
 
 She looked down at the toe of her slipper, which was 
 thickly embroidered with little golden beads, that shone in 
 the warm September sunlight. "No, I'm not," she said, 
 and I had no sort of suspicion that she was procrastinating, 
 keeping me in hand until such time as she was sure of her 
 game. 
 
 "Well, then !" I remarked. 
 
 She looked up at me with a sudden kindness, as if she 
 were, after all, genuinely sorry for my distress. 
 
 "It will be all right, old boy," she said. "We must wait 
 a month or two and see. Leave it to me." 
 
 And I immediately took heart, so far as my financial 
 prospects were concerned, and at the same moment relapsed 
 into the old depression at the thought of what seemed again 
 to be my inevitable future. I had not been aware until 
 then that underneath my petulance and disappointment there 
 had been some glimmer of relief. 
 
 XI 
 
 I have tried to be honest in describing the kind of young 
 man I was when I left Hampstead and the shelter of my 
 mother's supervision. I was a fair specimen of a cer- 
 tain type, a type that exhibits the usual characteristics of
 
 GLADYS 95 
 
 a public school boy. None of the men I knew during that 
 period would have described me as a mollycoddle. I had 
 the usual accomplishments, I was pretty good at my pro- 
 fession, I was not a prig. Any of my colleagues in Lin- 
 coln's Inn would have described me as "a good chap." And 
 yet when I look back, now, on the way in which I faced life 
 after my mother died, it seems to me that mollycoddle and 
 prig are the only words that fit me. 
 
 I had so little independence of mind. I should have 
 been content to accept an allowance from my uncle with- 
 out a single qualm. Worse still, I was ready to marry 
 Gladys for the sake of an assured future. If I sought any 
 excuse for that dishonesty, it must have been found in my 
 belief that I had a future as an architect. I could not have 
 disguised from myself the fact that I proposed to marry 
 Gladys for the sake of an income and a position; but I 
 forgot to examine that aspect of my intentions in my con- 
 centration on the plan of life that appeared then as my only 
 possible ambition. 
 
 I had chosen my niche, or it had been chosen for me, 
 and I looked for nothing more. I had a profession and 
 I meant to become a professional man. The things I de- 
 sired were a little fame, a reasonable income, and a circle 
 of friends who thought in much the same way as I did. 
 These were the factors which constituted success. Any one 
 of my acquaintances would have agreed in that definition. 
 I thought of the world as a place divided into a thousand 
 compartments that had a definite relation one to the other; 
 and the compartment that chiefly interested me was that 
 in which I hoped to occupy an honourable place. In that 
 world of my imagination everything was relatively settled 
 and accounted for. Science provided one with occasional 
 exciting discoveries ; politics with material for argument ; art 
 with beauty; and religion with a final refuge from all per- 
 plexity. It was, in fact, a nice, accommodating shop of a 
 world, in which everything had its appointed place ; and 
 if you had money enough all the doors of the shop were 
 open to you. I thought that you could, indeed, buy the
 
 96 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 appearance of respect and esteem there, just as you can in an 
 ordinary shop. 
 
 And when I left Hampstead to take two rooms in Blooms- 
 bury, I had no intuition that any real change was coming 
 into my life. I did not go out of my old world, joyfully, to 
 seek adventure; but rather with a sense of depression. I 
 believed that Gladys would persuade her father to make her 
 such an allowance as would permit us to be married. I 
 saw with perfect distinctness a future in which my chief 
 annoyance would be the irk of my marital relations. I 
 dreaded a conflict of wills between Gladys and myself, and 
 the bone of our contentions would be, I believed, the prin- 
 ciple of my aesthetic. 
 
 More particularly I dreaded the influence of Morrison 
 Blake. I had forgotten my dream of marrying him to 
 Gladys; he had come again more than once to Ken Lodge, 
 but I had perceived no sign of any amorous intention on 
 his part. I thought that he was too deeply in love with 
 himself and his celebrity to bother about marriage. I had 
 more than once heard him congratulate himself on his 
 celibacy. And just at that time I should certainly have 
 regarded Gladys's unfaithfulness to me as a great calamity. 
 She stood between me and poverty. I knew, now, that my 
 uncle would do nothing for me, unless his daughter's hap- 
 piness was involved. 
 
 But Morrison Blake's intimacy with the family was a 
 threat to my future happiness. The Williams all believed 
 in him. He was in my compartment and I was not strong 
 enough to assert my aesthetic against his. When Gladys and 
 I were married she would, I believed, continually urge me 
 to change my style in design ; or, at least, to supple myself 
 as I had already done in Parkinson's case to the taste of 
 my client. And some little spark of individuality within me 
 was resenting that interference. The walls of my compart- 
 ment were being raised and strengthened; and, little as 
 I guessed it at the time, my unknown self was uneasily 
 struggling within its hardening shell. . . . 
 
 Such was the egg, labelled Wilfred Hornby, who after
 
 GLADYS 97 
 
 one or two other tentative and forbidding experiments, 
 knocked at the door of 73 Keppel Street on the 23rd of 
 September, 1905. 
 
 It was a wet Saturday afternoon, and I was nervously 
 irritable.
 
 BOOK TWO 
 THE INCUBATOR
 
 BOOK TWO: THE INCUBATOR 
 
 IV 
 ON THE GROUND FLOOR 
 
 A MAN opened the door to me a broad-shouldered 
 squat little man with a bullet head. He was in his 
 shirt-sleeves, but he did not look like a servant. He was 
 wearing what appeared to be an authentic gold watch chain 
 across the width of his dirty but rather ostentatious waist- 
 coat. He had opened the door wide and stood square across 
 the threshold looking at me with a suspicion that was half- 
 defiant. 
 
 "Vat ees your beesness?" he asked. 
 
 "I see that there are some unfurnished apartments to let 
 here," I said, pointing to the card propped on the meeting- 
 rail of the ground floor window. 
 
 The little man resisted the temptation to follow the in- 
 dication of my hand and continued to stare at me. I 
 noticed that his left eye had a tendency to look absently 
 over my shoulder while its fellow kept watch. 
 
 "Ach ! Zat is so," he agreed, making no attempt to move. 
 
 "I'm looking for two unfurnished rooms," I returned, 
 "but if you don't want to let yours ..." I was turning 
 away when he stepped back into the hall and said : 
 
 "Come een. I vill show zem to you." 
 
 I hesitated. I was annoyed by his manner, and had a 
 foolish wish to take some sort of revenge upon him. "Oh ! 
 
 101
 
 102 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 It doesn't matter in the least," I said, shrugging my 
 shoulders. 
 
 The little man's answering shrug showed me how feeble 
 a thing mine had been. 
 
 "Zat ees as you like, of course," he said. "You reeng 
 and go away. Eet happen so more times zan I can say." 
 
 "Are they on the ground floor?" I asked. 
 
 "Zey are on the groundt floor," he said. 
 
 "I'm afraid they might be rather dark," I said. "I should 
 want to use one as a drawing office." 
 
 "So ? An offeece ? You are zen an architect, perhaps ?" 
 
 When I had admitted that I was an architect, the little 
 man finally dropped his last air of suspicion, and I no- 
 ticed that his left eye steadied itself and looked at me with 
 a strict attention to business. "Ach, come and see ze 
 apartment," he urged me. "Zey are very fine apartment 
 and cheap. You would have a sign on the post, yes ?" 
 
 "Have a what?" I asked. 
 
 He smiled at my dulness, came forward and smacked the 
 door frame in a friendly way. "A sign of your name and 
 profession," he said. "In brass, yes?" And he indicated 
 an oblong with a gesture of both hands. 
 
 "Oh! a plate? Yes, I suppose I should have a plate on 
 the door. Do you object to that?" I asked. 
 
 "No, no," he assured me with considerable vigour. "I 
 desire a sign on the door. Eet look very well, zat. In 
 brass, yes ?" 
 
 He was ecstatic over the beauty of the rooms and, in- 
 deed, he had some excuse. No. 73 was one of the older 
 houses that went with the others when Keppel Street was 
 demolished, but it had a claim to consideration. It might 
 very well have come within the recognition of Blake as 
 having been designed and built slightly previous to the 
 French Revolution. The window was rather good. It was 
 in two lights with a heavy architrave and the upper sashes 
 were divided with heavy sash-bars into quite decently pro- 
 portioned oblongs. The cornice was good, too, in that style, 
 and its heaviness was in keeping with the height of the
 
 ON THE GROUND FLOOR 103 
 
 room; but what chiefly interested me was a great semi- 
 circular niche in the wall facing the window. This recess 
 was about twelve feet wide and six deep, framed with 
 squat, Ionic pilasters that carried the bold mouldings of the 
 arch. It was all a plaster sham, of course, and beneath con- 
 tempt as art from my point of view ; but I could not deny 
 that it was effective as decoration. The mantelpiece was 
 later, and too small for the general scale of the room; but 
 the door was original with solid bolection moulded panels 
 and brass furniture. The place looked clean, and its bare- 
 ness was oddly mitigated by two vases and a large clock, in 
 soapstone, conventionally arranged on the mantelpiece. The 
 vases were copies of an Etruscan model and the clock sim- 
 ple enough in design to pass muster. Also it was going 
 and set to the right time. 
 
 "Those are not included, of course," I said, pointing to 
 the mantelpiece. 
 
 The little man put his head on one side, and shrugged 
 his right shoulder. "Zat ees as you vill," he said. "I can 
 move zem or not move zem, as you like. Zey are very fine 
 apartment. You take zem, yes?" 
 
 I rather thought that I should take them. The bedroom 
 was more commonplace, but that did not matter. I had 
 taken a liking to the front room. 
 
 "What about re-papering?" I asked. The sitting-room 
 paper was beastly pale pink flowers on a faded yellow 
 ground. 
 
 "Ah! Zat!" he said, and I saw the pursing of his red 
 mouth through the thicket of his moustache and beard. "No, 
 no !" he went on. "I cannot move the papers." 
 
 "But you wouldn't mind my doing it ?" I asked. 
 
 "You not like ze paper?" he said. "It fade itself." And 
 he rubbed it thoughtfully with a broad and dirty thumb. 
 "Vat paper you like?" he asked. 
 
 There was a picture rail about nine feet from the 
 ground, a poor, Victorian thing as I guessed, but fortu- 
 nately in the right place, not too near the cornice. "I
 
 104 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 should like a brown paper with no pattern," I said. "Not 
 too dark ; and I should distemper the frieze dead white." 
 
 The little man nodded. "Very nice," he said. "You are 
 an artist. I see zat, and you like ze apartment; but, no, I 
 could not afford ze new papers. It ees not possible. I am 
 unhappy to lose you, you are an artist, and zere is also ze 
 sign on the post, but I have not ze house now for so long. 
 For one year more only I have ze house, now. Ze lees 
 give himself up." 
 
 I did not believe that I should want the rooms for so 
 long as that. I looked upon this plan as merely a tempo- 
 rary expedient until Gladys and I were married, but I felt 
 that I could not ask Geddes and Horton-Smith to see me 
 there unless my ideas of decoration were carried out. I 
 have no doubt, now, that my little landlord would have 
 done anything I had asked him. He was merely bargain- 
 ing, preparing the way by his reluctance for an increased 
 rent. But I was as innocent a bird as ever set out to engage 
 in business of that kind and I accepted his statement as 
 final. 
 
 "Well, look here," I said. "I think I'll take these rooms 
 and do the decoration myself. But what about the rent? 
 I can't afford very much." 
 
 The little man again congratulated me fervently on my 
 artistic abilities before he said: "Ze rent is nussing. As 
 I tell you, ze lees run away and I take nussing to prefer 
 a lodger." (I never knew such a man to leap at what he 
 supposed to be an English idiom.) "Ze rent ?" He shrugged 
 his ^shoulders again and made a gesture of immense resig- 
 nation with his hands. "I take one pound each veek," he 
 concluded with the despairing air of a man who accepts the 
 awful inevitable. 
 
 "Does that include attendance?" I asked. I had expected 
 him to ask more. 
 
 "Viz attendance," he admitted gloomily, as one who had 
 been condemned and no longer cared to discuss the details 
 of his fate. 
 
 "Oh! and I say, is there a bathroom?" I added.
 
 ON THE GROUND FLOOR 105 
 
 "Zere ees a barze, you find heem on the entresol," he 
 said dejectedly. 
 
 He had, however, recovered his hope in life by the time 
 I had paid a deposit of a week's rent; he gave me a card 
 with his name, Karl Pferdminger, engraved on it in flourish- 
 ing italics. 
 
 As we were in the passage-hall a woman came down- 
 stairs, nodded to my future landlord, and stared enquiringly 
 at me as she passed. She was young and distinctly good- 
 looking in a smart, rather highly-coloured style, and I 
 looked after her as she went out. 
 
 When I turned my head I found that Pferdminger was 
 regarding me with a hesitating smile I have seen the same 
 kind of a smile on a would-be propitiatory dog and his left 
 eye was again absentmindedly forgetful of its partner's 
 business. 
 
 "She live here," he said. "Mees Viting. She ees an 
 actress." 
 
 I nodded carelessly. I had no intention of becoming in- 
 volved with the other tenants of No. 73 Keppel Street. 
 "Are there many other lodgers?" I asked. 
 
 "Zere ees some ozzers," he said. "Gentilmen, also." 
 
 His last word to me was a reminder about the "sign on 
 the post." 
 
 ii 
 
 I made the announcement of my success publicly, at din- 
 ner, the next day. I described my future sitting-room- 
 orfice in detail. I was warm with the pride of new own- 
 ership; and I had a cowardly hope that I might propitiate 
 Gladys by praising a piece of Georgian architecture. I was 
 conscious of doing something broad-minded and generous. 
 
 Gladys responded graciously, but my uncle had one or 
 two questions to put. The first one was as to the rent, 
 and when I told him that I was to pay twenty shillings a 
 week for two unfurnished rooms, he shook his head. "I 
 presume they are in one of the Squares?" he asked.
 
 106 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 I had not mentioned the name of the street. I had pre- 
 ferred the longer designation of Bloomsbury which had the 
 air of being a fitting address for a young architect. But 
 my temper rose at my uncle's tone of reproof. Since that 
 business interview of ours in his study I resented his inter- 
 ference with my affairs. 
 
 "No! they aren't," I said. "They're in Keppel Street." 
 
 My uncle looked down at his plate and winked profoundly. 
 "Very risky," he commented. "Did you make sure that 
 it was a respectable house?" 
 
 I blushed. All the enigmas of Pferdminger's behaviour; 
 his suspicion 1 of me at my first appearance, his relief to 
 find that I was a professional man, his anxiety to have 
 a brass plate on the door, all these things and the oddities 
 of his manner were instantly explained. In my innocence 
 I had looked no farther than the fact of his nationality for 
 any solution of his queerness, but at Uncle David's sug- 
 gestion I knew beyond all doubt that No. 73 Keppel Street 
 was not a respectable house. 
 
 "Why shouldn't it be?" was all the defence I found. 
 
 "That street has a very bad name," my uncle said. "Two 
 houses there have been raided within the past few months." 
 
 "Oh! Wilfred, do be careful where you go," Gladys put 
 in; and I believe it was her speech rather than my uncle's 
 that put my back up. 
 
 "Of 'course," I said. "The place looked perfectly all 
 right, but- 1 shall make enquires before I definitely move 
 in." 
 
 "It would be advisable," my uncle said gravely, and the 
 subject was dropped for the time. Gladys, however, re- 
 verted to it later in the afternoon, and took it upon herself 
 to reprimand me for my carelessness. "You are so slack 
 about some things," was one of her remarks and it might 
 have stood for the text of her sermon. 
 
 I endured her fault-finding with exemplary patience. I 
 was wondering what she would say if I suddenly confessed 
 my misdemeanours with Nellie Roberts. I was hardening 
 myself against reproof just then, and one effect of that
 
 ON THE GROUND FLOOR 107 
 
 resolve to endure was an alteration of my scale of social 
 values. There had been a time when the thought of Nellie 
 Roberts had seemed a gross outrage on the purity of Ken 
 Lodge ; but that afternoon I was inclined to find excuses, if 
 not virtues, in my old- sins. Gladys was teaching me to 
 resent the formal disciplines of society. Like many women 
 she had a strong vein of the schoolmistress in her. 
 
 And some instinctive reaction against the flat certainty 
 of her social dogmas was undoubtedly working in me when 
 I went down to Keppel Street after tea the same day to 
 make those further enquiries I had promised. 
 
 Pferdminger was not there and the door was opened 
 by his wife, a tall, thin, despairing woman, who evidently 
 spoke from the book of her husband's instructions. 
 
 "Oh! no!" she said it appeared that she was English 
 "we never take any one without making sure. We have 
 a Miss Whiting on the first floor over you, she is an 
 actress, but most respectable." 
 
 "Oh! that's all right, then," I returned. 
 
 "Perfectly respectable we've always been," Mrs. Pferd- 
 minger repeated without the least conviction or fervour, and 
 added, "My husband told you we've only got the house 
 for another year?" There was an accent of dull relief 
 in her voice as she asked the question, that settled any last 
 doubt I might still have had. 
 
 But I was determined to move into the house, neverthe- 
 less. I was even a little elated. I was not sure that I had 
 not some wild idea of making the most of what I believed 
 to be the short remaining period of my liberty. I wondered 
 if "the Viting," as I called her to myself, was indeed in 
 any kind of way connected with the stage. I rather hoped 
 that she might be. The stage gave a flavour of romance. 
 I had never spoken to an actress. 
 
 in 
 
 I moved into my new rooms the following Monday week. 
 After my preliminary instructions, I left everything to
 
 108 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 a man I knew in Berners Street. He was the head of a 
 firm of decorators with which Heaton & Baxter had often 
 done business; and I could trust him to do things decently. 
 He wanted me to have a heavier picture rail put in and 
 one or two other things, but I resisted those temptations. 
 I had the excuse that the sitting-room was to be my office, 
 and ought to represent my taste in decoration, but I had 
 to buy a lot of new furniture and it seemed foolish to 
 spend money on a place that was probably coming down 
 in a year's time. I was sorry about the picture-rail. Be- 
 sides being too light for the style of the room, it cut very 
 awkwardly into the moulding of the arch that enclosed the 
 recess. 
 
 I invited Geddes and Horton-Smith to come round on the 
 Thursday after I had moved in, and they both agreed that 
 the front room was quite effective. The old sideboard from 
 Little Milton that had been such a clumsy obstacle in the 
 North End Road house went into the recess and was quite 
 in keeping with the style of the pilasters and the arch. And 
 one or two other solid pieces we had saved from the sale 
 of the vicarage furniture carried out the general feeling of 
 solidity and mass. 
 
 "Filthily Georgian, of course," was Geddes's summary, 
 "but it's rather good of its kind. You've got the idea of 
 leisure and space anyway. And he went up and down 
 the unencumbered aisles on either side of my centre table, 
 with his queer dancing steps, and then backwards and 
 forwards in the clear space between the table and the recess. 
 "You've sort of modernised it, too, Hornby," he went on. 
 "You've taken an old idea and done it better." 
 
 "He's let his books out, for one thing," put in Horton- 
 Smith, and pointed to the long low book-case that the 
 Berners Street firm had made for me. "In the proper 
 Georgian house there wouldn't have been any books to 
 speak of, and if there had, they'd have been behind glass 
 doors." 
 
 "Oh! yes, Hornby's a modern, all right," agreed Geddes,
 
 ON THE GROUND FLOOR 109 
 
 still prancing up and down. "That's what I mean he he 
 has individualised bad material." 
 
 That point of view did not greatly appeal to me at the 
 time. No doubt I had individualised my room, but I had 
 done it unconsciously. Neither Geddes nor Horton-Smith 
 gave any expression to my real feeling about this new 
 lodging place of mine; and I was too shy to be articulate 
 about it. 
 
 For what that room meant to me was not artistic satis- 
 faction but release. For the first time in my life I was 
 aware of my own independence. I felt bigger and stronger 
 in Keppel Street. I realised a sense of power in myself. In 
 two more days another fetter would have been thrown off. 
 I was leaving Heaton & Baxter on the following Satur- 
 day, and then I should have leisure to do my own work. 
 
 I only had a few "full-size" drawings still to make for 
 Parkinson's house, but I was full of plans. I had ideas 
 for two or three articles on design that I was fairly con- 
 fident would be accepted by The Studio; and I meant, 
 now, to go in for a competition on my own. I believed 
 that in my earlier collaborations the fanaticism of Geddes 
 had hampered me. 
 
 The sense of independence was the dominant motive in 
 the first two or three weeks of my new life. I had not 
 changed my ambitions for the future. I still looked forward 
 to marrying my cousin, and to the enclosing of myself 
 within the little circle of the successful professional man. 
 But meanwhile I was becoming more contented with the 
 idea of making my own way, and as a consequence I lost 
 much of my resentment towards my uncle. . . . 
 
 Gladys and Aunt Agatha came to tea with me on the 
 following Sunday afternoon. They both approved my 
 sitting-room-office; and Gladys was particularly charming. 
 She talked to me as she used to talk before our engage- 
 ment ; and I remembered the Eastbourne holiday with quite 
 a glow of sentiment. I felt hopeful that evening. I be- 
 lieved that our marriage might after all be a success.
 
 THE life of the house began its overtures to me through 
 my sitting-room window. I had arranged my draw- 
 ing board on two stained wood trestles and I stood at the 
 window to work. The light was quite good. My room 
 faced north, and although the street was not wide, the 
 houses immediately opposite were only three stories high. 
 For dark days I had two incandescent gas burners with 
 shades. The house was not wired for electric light. 
 
 The life of the street did not seduce my attention after 
 the first day or two I was interested in my work and 
 was not afraid of distractions. But by degrees, and almost 
 against my will, my attention was drawn to the life of the 
 house in which I lived. 
 
 I heard the footsteps coming downstairs and along the 
 hall, and then the opening and closing of the front door. 
 And inevitably, as it seemed, I always glanced up to watch 
 the departure of my unknown house-mate. 
 
 The early morning traffic was soon resolved into an 
 orderly routine. I came to know the steps and the methods 
 of the four men who left the house between eight-thirty and 
 ten o'clock. Three of them turned east when they went 
 out, and two of those three always left together. The fourth 
 turned westwards towards the Tottenham Court Road, and 
 passed under my window. He was a small, plumpish man, 
 with hair that must have been prematurely grey for he 
 did not appear to be more than thirty. I guessed him to 
 
 no
 
 THE REST OF THE HOUSE 111 
 
 be a German. On wet days he sometimes wore a bowler 
 hat with his frock coat I was not interested in him, but 
 he always looked up at my window as he passed. He did 
 not go out until half-past nine and I had begun work by 
 then ; and when I had learned his habits, I used to step back 
 into the room to avoid meeting his eye. I knew that if I 
 did not he would begin by smiling at me, and that then 
 we should soon be exchanging nods ; and after that I might 
 have to speak to him if I met him in the hall or the street, 
 and so it would come to having him in my rooms. One 
 may go on nodding to a man in a railway carriage, or 
 through a window for years without taking any further 
 notice of him; but if one meets the same man afterwards 
 in new circumstances, it is as if one had suddenly dis- 
 covered a friend. And certainly I did not desire that plump, 
 ill-dressed young fellow-lodger of mine for a friend. I 
 imagined myself to be his social superior. 
 
 If the morning departure of those four men had marked 
 an ebb which receded and left me free from distraction 
 until the uncertain flow began to return at six o'clock, I 
 should have remained forever detached, stranded high and 
 dry, as it were, on the beach of my professional distinction. 
 But that preliminary receding was no more than an uninter- 
 esting preface to the life of the day. I have thought without 
 consideration of the morning signs as a tide, indicative of 
 the broad human movement from west to east that sets 
 with such regularity each week day. That metaphor fails, 
 however, when I look back at the irregular swirls and cur- 
 rents that I presently began to watch with increasing in- 
 terest. 
 
 The first of those other lives that aroused my curiosity 
 was presented to me as a tall, thin, clean-shaven man, who 
 wore a soft hat and walked with a stoop of the shoulders. 
 I originally put him down as an artist. He had dark hair 
 that he wore rather long, and a lock of it often escaped 
 from under the brim of his hat and trailed across his fore- 
 head. His hours were quite uncertain except on Thursday, 
 on which day he left the house about eleven, and returned
 
 112 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 carrying a parcel sometime during the afternoon. On other 
 days he might stay in the house until four or five o'clock, 
 or not go out at all, unless it were that I missed hearing 
 or seeing him. But I knew unmistakably the sound of 
 his going. He always stopped in the hall and went through 
 the letters that accumulated during the day on the yellow 
 oak table that stood against the wall, under the gas jet. It 
 was not easy to read in that hall until the gas was lit. The 
 only light came through the semicircular fan over the 
 hall-door; and the thick wooden bars of the fan impeded 
 some of the light, and the remains of the coloured glass 
 most of the rest. The fan had originally been glazed in 
 dark blue, and only those panes which had been broken 
 and replaced permitted the passage of a thin straggle of 
 white light. The business of sorting the letters on the 
 hall table was often a long one. I do not think I often 
 missed hearing him. 
 
 "The Viting," as I still thought of her, seldom went out 
 until the evening. I only saw her three times in the first 
 two weeks, once through the window in the early after- 
 noon; the next time in the evening, an illuminating vision 
 to which I shall refer later; and once when I deliberately 
 went out into the hall as I heard her coming downstairs 
 she cut me dead on that occasion. 
 
 But there were still three other people, all women, whom 
 I came to know by sight. The capacity of that warren 
 was truly wonderful. 
 
 II 
 
 I am covered with a hot shame, even now, when I re- 
 member my inferences concerning those other three women. 
 I have been tempted to omit any account of my horrible 
 blindness in this particular; for after the lapse of years I 
 still blush uncomfortably at the remembrance; I feel 
 ashamed as if I had been guilty of some unpleasant sin. 
 And yet I can find good excuse for my blunder. 
 
 The nasty truth is that during the first week or two of
 
 THE REST OF THE HOUSE 113 
 
 my observations through the window I imagined those other 
 three women to be following the same occupation as Miss 
 Rose Whiting. I had come to Keppel Street prepared to 
 find it a harbour for prostitution my suspicion concern- 
 ing the important lodger who occupied the rooms above 
 me was entirely confirmed within ten days of the time I 
 arrived. And my expectation hypnotised me. I took no 
 trouble to examine appearances or weigh probabilities. I 
 was an infernal young fool who leapt to unwarranted con- 
 clusions without a particle of evidence. But I cannot write 
 of my mistake without losing my temper; and the object 
 of my indignation is that smug, would-be professional young 
 whelp who stared out of his window. I can regard other 
 aspects of myself in that period with a contemptuous toler- 
 ance; but that short phase of the young Wilfred Hornby 
 fills me with an irritation and disgust I cannot control. 
 
 However, I will begin by giving an account of the inci- 
 dent that confirmed my suspicion of "the Viting." I want 
 to convince myself that I had some excuse. 
 
 I had gone to the window and pulled up the blind about 
 eleven o'clock one night. I had no especial purpose be- 
 yond looking at the weather. It had been raining all day 
 and the street still gleamed in the lamp light, although I 
 guessed from what I could see of the sky that the clouds had 
 broken and the moon was shining. I was not thinking of 
 my fellow-lodgers just then, but I peered down the street 
 when I heard the aprons of a hansom clap together a few 
 doors off. The cab drove away immediately and then I 
 could see the man and woman who had alighted from it talk- 
 ing together. I drew back as they came past my window. I 
 had recognised "the Viting," and I did not want her to 
 think J was spying, but I heard the click of her latchkey 
 and immediately afterwards her voice, making it very clear 
 indeed that she was saying good-night. When she had gone 
 upstairs I looked out again and saw the man walking 
 up and down on the opposite pavement. 
 
 I wondered what he was doing. He had an air that was 
 half furtive and half impatient. He kept looking up at the
 
 114 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 window over mine, and once he evidently saw me, and 
 frowned and moved away as if he were afraid of being 
 recognised. I did not move from my post of observation. 
 I think T had some unlikely suspicion of his purpose. I 
 was certainly astonished when he walked boldly across the 
 road, stared a moment's defiance at me and opened our 
 front door with a latchkey. I heard him go upstairs with 
 the surreptitious tread of a man who attempts to evade 
 notice. And I heard "the Viting's" door close a few seconds 
 later. 
 
 I understood, then, that she had lent him her latchkey, 
 and I had no more doubts as to her profession. The police 
 were levying blackmail very freely at that time, and Miss 
 Whiting's trick to avoid suspicion was, as I afterwards 
 learnt, a concession to the explicit instructions of our land- 
 lord, which were : "No men in ze house. In ze street 
 outside it ees all as you like, but in ze house, No." 
 
 After that incident I was on the lookout for further in- 
 timations ; and I must admit that I hoped to find evidence. 
 I make no apologies for that. After the kind of home life 
 that had always been mine, this plunge into what I consid- 
 ered the lurid wickedness of Keppel Street was immensely 
 thrilling. I wanted to be something more than a spectator, 
 and yet I was afraid. I realised that this occasional pas- 
 sion towards adventure was only a part of me, and that 
 I dared not enter the mysterious garden of pleasure un- 
 less I were sure of a way of escape. I was intimidated by 
 the thought that Miss Whiting might come to visit me at 
 her own pleasure and not at mine. Nevertheless I was 
 tempted. For some reason this game appeared so much 
 more fascinating than my experiences with Nellie Roberts. 
 I pictured entertaining Miss Whiting as a respectable guest 
 in my own rooms. Loneliness excited my imagination to 
 lurid possibilities. 
 
 It was a sudden impulse to drown the tantalisation of 
 thought in reality that sent me out into the hall when I 
 heard "the Viting" coming downstairs a few days after 
 the adventure of the latchkey. I was very nervous but
 
 THE REST OF THE HOUSE 115 
 
 I summoned up enough courage to look at her as she 
 passed me. She returned my look with a contemptuous 
 stare. Perhaps her illicit visitor had reported my vigil at 
 the window. I went back to my sitting-room, humiliated 
 and puzzled. 
 
 ill 
 
 The first of the other three women I soon came to know 
 by sight was rather stout, and I judged her to be approach- 
 ing forty, but she was handsome still and walked with a 
 certain self-confidence and dignity. She was always wear- 
 ing a tremendous fur coat, rather shabby with age, I fancied, 
 but it looked impressive. Her movements were too erratic 
 to suggest any particular routine of occupation, and I do 
 not blame myself severely for my entirely erroneous esti- 
 mate of her virtue. 
 
 The other two almost invariably went out together. I 
 saw them first on the second day of my freedom from 
 attendance at the office in Lincoln's Inn; and for about a 
 fortnight their habits appeared quite regular. They left the 
 house a little before eleven and returned some time between 
 five and seven-thirty. The shorter of the two was rather 
 plain, with dull eyes and a clever forehead ; she would have 
 had a good figure if she had taken any trouble with it. 
 
 Her friend I cannot describe in this detached impersonal 
 way. I only know that one morning she looked up at me 
 as she passed, turning her head with a little quick smile 
 that was not meant for me. Her eyes were bright with the 
 life of youth ; eyes that displayed at the same moment both 
 her sincerity and the eagerness of her spirit. And I did 
 not guess that her smile was not for me. I was unexpectedly 
 flattered and thrilled. I had no time to return her smile. 
 She looked up with one of her eager impulsive movements 
 and looked away again. But she left me changed. 
 
 I thrust the thought of Miss Whiting from me as if she 
 had been in the last stages of leprosy. I forgot Adela Lyn- 
 neker, who had until then filled some blank space of my
 
 116 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 desires, even after her inexplicable elopement with the vil- 
 lage carpenter. And I came back to the thought of my 
 cousin Gladys with a new feeling of despair. She appeared 
 to me, then, as representing all that was tame and dull; all 
 that was in some way stale and exhausted. 
 
 That one gay little smile was indeed responsible for many 
 effects upon me. It certainly added a new tensity to my 
 observations of the household. I knew by then the step for 
 which I waited; but every time the door clanged I hoped 
 that I had been mistaken, that despite the irrefutable evi- 
 dence of my ears I should see the desired figure pass my 
 window and that she would once more turn her head and 
 look up at me. 
 
 She never did. And after the first fortnight of my watch- 
 ing she changed her routine. Her morning departures be- 
 came inexplicably irregular, but for one week she and her 
 friend left the house every night soon after seven and re- 
 turned a little before midnight. 
 
 It was then I wondered and made a fool of myself ; but 
 before that I had been up to Ken Lodge and had received 
 the present of my freedom to love whomsoever I would. 
 
 IV 
 
 I did not go up to Ken Lodge that Sunday morning with 
 any intention of breaking off my engagement to Gladys. I 
 was still held in the thrall of my conventional ambitions. 
 The movement of my thoughts towards Miss Whiting and 
 afterwards towards the unknown girl who had smiled as 
 she passed my window, was indicative of nothing more 
 than a desire to take advantage of the little liberty that 
 remained to me. I had formulated some kind of rash de- 
 termination to taste once more adventure before I settled 
 down for life. That resolve would have appeared very 
 reprehensible to my uncle and aunt and cousin, but as I 
 went up to see them I had no feeling of guilt. Something 
 in me was breaking loose, and the rest of me was temporar- 
 ily incapable of criticism.
 
 THE REST OF THE HOUSE 117 
 
 I went up to Hampstead after morning service. I had a 
 standing invitation to join the Williams at church and go 
 back with them to dinner, and I felt that I was making a 
 mild bid for independence by cutting the first half of the 
 programme. 
 
 The parlour-maid who opened the door gave me the 
 smile proper to an expected visitor. "I think Miss Gladys 
 is in the drawing-room," she said, and I relieved her from 
 further attendance on me with the nod of one who was 
 quite at home in the house. 
 
 I must have made some noise crossing the parquet, and 
 hanging up my coat in the lobby, and I remember that I 
 had a cold and blew my nose quite audibly just outside the 
 drawing-room door. Moreover, I had been standing in- 
 side the room for one of those indefinitely short but con- 
 sciously measurable periods of time, before Gladys dis- 
 engaged herself from Blake's arm and turned to greet me. 
 He may have been too engrossed in his own affairs to 
 notice my entrance he was talking, of course; he was al- 
 ways talking but I am quite sure that Gladys was pre- 
 pared for my entrance, and had preferred to break the 
 news to me in that way rather than by any formal announce- 
 ment. 
 
 As for me, I was too unprepared and too conventionally 
 minded to understand at once the real significance of the 
 embrace I had just seen. I had forgotten my old dream 
 of release by this very agent, and I was confusedly finding 
 some excuse for Gladys; trying to think of Blake's atti- 
 tude as in some way parental he must have been nearly 
 fifty. 
 
 And then I saw that Gladys was covered with a well- 
 assumed confusion. 
 
 "I I thought you were alone," was the idiotic excuse I 
 made, as if I were the culpable person. I had, indeed, a 
 sense of having been guilty of intrusion. 
 
 Blake laughed self-consciously and my cousin took her 
 cue from that, subsided gracefully into an armchair and hid 
 her eyes. I have a distinct impression at this moment
 
 118 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 of 'her white, rather bony hands, pressed against her face. 
 
 "Oh! well, well," Blake was saying with the nearest at- 
 tempt at propitiation he ever showed towards me. "The 
 truth of the matter is, young man, that your cousin has 
 changed her mind. I daresay I took her by surprise." No 
 doubt he flattered himself that the initiative was all his 
 own. 
 
 "Do you mean to say that she has ..." I began and 
 stopped because I could think of no phrase but "she has 
 chucked me for you," a phrase that I instinctively rejected 
 as unworthy of the occasion. 
 
 "Oh! well, these things happen sometimes. No need to 
 make a scene," Blake said pompously. He was obviously 
 bursting with pride at having, by his own personal attrac- 
 tion, snatched a unique possession from another collector. 
 If he had ever had a moment's doubt as to the desirability 
 of Gladys as a property, my claim to prior ownership must 
 have decided him at once and forever. 
 
 "Very rough on you, no doubt," he went on and paused ; 
 perhaps to reject the too blatant expression of what must 
 have been in my mind; the plain inference that I could 
 never have had a chance after he entered the market. "But, 
 well, there you are!" he said, "your cousin will tell you, 
 perhaps, how sorry she is not to have found out her mis- 
 take before . . ." 
 
 I believe he continued to talk in the same strain for two 
 or three minutes. One cannot gauge time in such situa- 
 tions as that. And I was only half aware of him; another 
 side of my mind was bubbling with a mischievous joy at my 
 escape a joy that I regarded from the point of view of 
 Wilfred Hornby in his best Sunday clothes, as quite dis- 
 tinctly the wrong emotion in those circumstances. 
 
 "You needn't have done it in such a rotten hole and cor- 
 ner sort of way," was my long postponed verdict on the 
 affair, and then I gathered courage from the enunciation 
 of what seemed obviously the proper sentiment, and tried 
 to shut Blake down by adding, "I ought to have been told." 
 
 "Pooh, pooh!" Blake said. "I only spoke to Miss Wil-
 
 THE REST OF THE HOUSE 119 
 
 Hams this morning five minutes ago for the first time." 
 And as an amateur in love, who was so superbly profes- 
 sional in all other things, he found it necessary to add "the 
 recognition of each other's feelings er overwhelmed us." 
 
 "You infernal ass," was the unspoken comment of my 
 bubbling sub-consciousness. 
 
 "I ought to have been told," was the stubborn repetition 
 that my conventional self found appropriate. 
 
 And then Gladys came out from the shelter of Blake's 
 importance. "Oh! Wilfred, how could I tell you when I 
 didn't know myself?" she asked, and with an ungainly 
 movement that reminded me of her tennis, she made a 
 little bobbing run past me and left the game to her new 
 lover. 
 
 "Now, be sensible," was his prompt opening, delivered 
 apparently with the certainty of one who usually found 
 that stroke unplayable. 
 
 I am glad that I stood up to him. I think some escape 
 of gas from the secret ebullition that was going on within 
 me helped to inspire the expression of my grievance. What- 
 ever the cause, as soon as Blake and I were alone, I managed 
 to find a statement, however boyish and impertinent. 
 
 "Oh ! of course she changed her mind," I said. "You're 
 rich and famous in a sort of way, I suppose. I don't blame 
 her. But I think it was a dirty game of yours ; coming in 
 and and outbidding me." 
 
 "You'll be sorry for this, Hornby," he threatened me; 
 and his curly moustache bristled truculently in response to 
 the snarl of his lip. 
 
 "Bosh !" I said. "I'm talking to you in the only language 
 you understand. This is just another of your dirty tricks ; 
 the kind of trick you play in your business." 
 
 He scowled furiously, but he had no real courage. His 
 temper was of the kind that finds vent in breaking a not 
 too precious piece of furniture. I had at least four inches 
 the advantage of him in height; I was young and active, 
 and he judged me to be deliriously angry. His scowl no
 
 120 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 more intimidated me' than the bark of a French poodle 
 attempting a dignified retreat. 
 
 "My good fellow . . ." he began. 
 
 "Yes, I hope I am," I retorted, snatching at the sugges- 
 tion, "and that's just what you're not. You don't play 
 the game." All my grievance had found vent in my con- 
 tempt for him and his professional methods. "You're little 
 better than a thief as a matter of fact," I went on. "You 
 cheat people in business, and now you've cheated me by 
 buying Gladys over my head. You needn't imagine that 
 she's in love with you any more than she was in love with 
 me. She doesn't know what love means any more than you 
 do. ..." I felt the anti-climax coming; I had been lured 
 into a bad opening ; and I concluded too boyishly and spoiled 
 my effect. 
 
 "You're just that," I shouted, "an infernal swindler." 
 
 And then, as I turned quickly to make a passionate, door- 
 slamming retreat, I nearly knocked over my uncle who was 
 coming quickly up the room behind me. 
 
 "W Wilfred," he stammered furiously without an in- 
 troductory cough, and nearly winked himself off his feet. 
 
 My long habit of respect for his authority checked me 
 slightly, but I pushed past him. "He'll explain," I said with 
 a gesture of contempt towards Blake. 
 
 The collector had his head back and was most unneces- 
 sarily curling his moustache as I got out of the room. 
 
 It was no kind of dramatic triumph for me, but I felt 
 triumphant as I marched down Heath Street. My face 
 was burning and I felt as if my eyes flashed defiance of 
 the whole world. 
 
 I had not completely recovered when I reached Keppel 
 Street, and it was the last tumultuous intoxication of self- 
 assertion that betrayed me when I unfortunately met my 
 lady of the smile, and her friend, coming out of 73. 
 
 I raised my hat to them and grinned.
 
 THE REST OF THE HOUSE 
 
 I have it on the best possible authority that my grin 
 was one of the worst kind, ingratiating, oily, altogether 
 contemptible ; so I had better put the horror on record and 
 leave it unmodified. I believe I have exaggerated the dis- 
 gust of it in my own mind. I have writhed so often at the 
 recollection that my smile and my attitude at the critical 
 moment have been crystallised into a vision of something 
 obscene and revolting. But I must leave any mitigation 
 of the general impression to those who can find for me an 
 excuse that I will not proffer on my own behalf. For 
 my part, I know that I deserved the snubbing I received. 
 
 It may be that that reply was chiefly responsible for the 
 complete abasement I have confessed. Her look had pity 
 mixed with its scorn. Her companion blushed and ducked 
 her head in the common manner of the timid shop-girl; 
 but she to whom my leer was addressed met my eyes with 
 perfect self-possession. And something in her pitying dis- 
 dain seemed to place me as a horrid little cad who ought 
 to have known better. For one instant I became the thing 
 she had seen. I wilted. I believe if I had had the power 
 of speech I should have murmured, "Beg pardon, I'm 
 sure." 
 
 My recovery a couple of minutes later touched the op- 
 posite extreme. I paced my sitting-room in a fury. I saw 
 a million excuses for myself, but none for her. I found 
 such description for her as "vain little fool" ; I accused her 
 of putting on airs; I hated her with all the vehemence I 
 could muster. 
 
 I am not sure how long I managed to keep my resent- 
 ment against her at that high defensive level. I know that 
 I re-stimulated my anger until I could no longer respond 
 to my determined consideration of her iniquity in first smil- 
 ing at me and then "cocking her head in the air as though 
 she had been insulted." But by tea-time (I had had no 
 dinner) I had fallen into a mood of depression all my
 
 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 worldly prospects were apparently wrecked beyond re- 
 covery. I had outraged my uncle's sense of propriety; 
 the scheming, artificial Gladys had thrown me over for 
 her own deliberate ends; and I had crowned the day by 
 making an ass of myself. I had come to that admission by 
 five o'clock. 
 
 I had a sort of high tea at the Vienna Cafe, but when I 
 went up to the first floor afterwards, the atmosphere of the 
 place revolted me. I went out and walked up and down 
 Oxford Street for a time but when, near the Circus, a 
 woman smiled at me I shuddered and took refuge in a 
 bus. 
 
 I was free, now, but that particular form of celebrating 
 my liberty had lost all attraction for me, and I finally 
 slunk back to Keppel Street, and tried to find distraction in 
 literature. 
 
 Not until I was going to bed did the first gleam of con- 
 solation come to me; and then I reflected with faint glee 
 that Blake had, for once in his life, been done. 
 
 I wonder if he has ever appreciated the irony of the fact 
 that the show piece of his collection is a fraud? 
 
 I saw them at a private view just before the War; and 
 Gladys bowed and would probably have spoken to me if 
 I had given her an opportunity. She had changed very 
 little. I thought she looked thinner and a trifle sharper, 
 that was all. She had her little boy with her ; a peaky child 
 with the thinnest legs I've ever seen.
 
 VI 
 THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 
 
 THE experiences of that Sunday had an immediate ef- 
 fect upon me, but at the time I was quite mistaken as to 
 the nature of the change that was working underneath the 
 appearance. All the week that followed was devoted to 
 strenuous work. I understood that I was not one of Life's 
 favourite children. I could count no longer either upon 
 my uncle's influence or his financial assistance, and I wilfully 
 decided that he had always disliked me. But while I set 
 my teeth and began the effort of practical training by which 
 I hoped to win the little race that appeared as the only 
 goal of my youth, I made the immense mistake of begin- 
 ning in a wrong spirit. 
 
 During that week I was full of resentment against the 
 world. I felt that I had been thwarted and impeded. I 
 worked savagely, obstinately; and my mind was cramped 
 and stubborn. I did not answer the letter I received from 
 Gladys on Monday evening, and I wasted considerable time 
 in dodging back from the window whenever I heard any 
 one leaving the house. Gladys was comparatively negli- 
 gible if she had thrown me over on the ground of our 
 incompatible temperaments, I should have been relieved and 
 grateful but against the girl who had so effectively snubbed 
 me on the doorstep I entertained a definite rancour. Pres- 
 ently I meant to have my revenge, but in the meantime I 
 did not want to see her or to let her see me. 
 
 The odds were too heavily against me in any play be- 
 
 123
 
 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 tween my room and the street. She could walk past my 
 window with a contemptuous disregard of my presence, 
 and I had no possible means of retaliation. I knew that 
 she would not see me. I should never have the satisfac- 
 tion of appearing too engrossed in my work to look up. 
 But I believed that my absence from the window must be 
 noticed. She might never look up, but her friend with the 
 shy mouse-coloured eyes would surely peep and report 
 that I was not there. In time I dwelt on that idea of long 
 abstention, and in some moods I knew in a muddled way 
 that I meant abstention, that I was denying myself the 
 desire to look at her again in time, I thought, I shall have 
 recovered enough dignity to venture revenge; I shall find 
 an opportunity to return her contempt. I never had a doubt 
 that they would remember me. I was too important a per- 
 son in that house. My brass plate shone in unchallenged 
 splendour at the entrance ; and my landlord regarding it, I 
 believe, as the patent of his respectability polished my sign 
 every day with his own hands. No one could enter 73 Kep- 
 pel Street without the staring reminder that the house 
 was primarily the residence of Wilfred Hornby A.R.I.B.A., 
 Architect and Surveyor. And I was equally sure that there 
 could be no doubt of my identity. 
 
 I was right in most of my surmises. Indeed, in only 
 one particular was I ridiculously, grotesquely wrong. Cher- 
 ishing the thought of my own position, I believed that my 
 absence from the window would finally establish my dig- 
 nity ; while the truth was that two young women were smil- 
 ing at my humiliation. T.hey thought that I was, very 
 properly, ashamed of myself. . . . 
 
 I sometimes wonder, now, whether I should not have de- 
 veloped on the same lines, even if I had married Gladys 
 and won to my old ambition of, say, a house standing in 
 its own grounds and the decent complement of servants that 
 proclaims a man's position. The process might have been 
 slower, but surely, I think, some influence must have worked 
 upon me sooner or later, or some accident would have hap- 
 pened to crack the shell of my complacency.
 
 THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 125 
 
 But now that I have re-entered the life of that house in 
 Keppel Street, and am imaginatively living again in the 
 world of its stirring insistence, I feel that no other experi- 
 ence could ever have moved me. The shock and adventure 
 might have come to me by another road, but not the de- 
 mand to associate myself with the common interests of 
 humanity. Even during that week of obstinate hostility 
 to one member of the household, I was aware of something 
 that was drawing me towards intercourse with my house- 
 mates. I remember meeting the man whom I had mistaken 
 for an artist, and being moved by a .sudden desire to speak 
 to him. I came in at the front door while he was peering 
 at the letters on the hall table, and he looked up with a 
 smile as if he would thank me for the gift of light I had 
 brought him. I bowed stiffly and went past him into my 
 own room, but I wanted to speak to him. Inside me the 
 chicken was pecking at a shell just too strong, as yet, to 
 yield to those cramped struggles. 
 
 Then came the end of the week and the great affair of 
 Saturday night. 
 
 II 
 
 Oddly enough Geddes was with me that evening, and 
 Geddes remains still the most shell-bound of my ac- 
 quaintances. His wife had been ill and had gone to stay 
 with her mother in Hertfordshire, and he had been kept 
 in town by a meeting at the Institute. He came in about 
 half -past nine "to talk a little shop," as he explained, but 
 he never talked anything else. 
 
 It must have been after eleven when the row began. I 
 had heard Miss Whiting come in a few minutes before, 
 and it struck me, then, that she must be in a bad humour. 
 She banged the door so furiously that even Geddes paused 
 a moment in the middle of a disquisition on the advantages 
 of a new fire-proof partition material he had just dis- 
 covered. 
 
 I was trying to concentrate my interest on his analysis
 
 126 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 when I heard the dim beginnings of the altercation upstairs. 
 I knew, at once, that the merest echo of it was reaching 
 me "73" was a well-built house and I strained my atten- 
 tion to hear more. That muffled shouting had the urgent 
 quality that gives one a feeling of excited uneasiness. 
 
 Geddes saw that I was not listening to him, and merci- 
 fully cut off his string of technicalities. 
 
 "Saturday night row," he remarked. "Do you often 
 have 'em?" 
 
 I shook my head. I wanted to hear what was going 
 on. I got up and walked towards the door. 
 
 "Take my advice and keep out of it," Geddes said, 
 quietly. 
 
 "Why?" I asked sharply. Geddes harassed me. I was 
 interested, excited and a little anxious. It seemed to me 
 that the sound of those voices was, in some way, im- 
 portant. 
 
 "Never know what you may be let in for in a house like 
 this," Geddes said, and his voice had an effect of being un- 
 naturally audible. Upstairs there was turmoil and in imagi- 
 nation I was straining to enter it. Geddes's calm enuncia- 
 tion was like a voice of disembodied warning urging me not 
 to enter the world. 
 
 Then came the thump of some heavy piece of furniture 
 on the floor above. 
 
 Geddes stood up. "Don't be an ass, Hornby," he said, 
 as I put my fingers on the door-handle. 
 
 I believe he went on urging me not to be an ass, but as 
 I opened the door a crash of broken glass or china drowned 
 his further remonstrance, and my consciousness of Geddes 
 fell into the background. The whole house was suddenly 
 vibrant with the shrill hysterical voice of Miss Whiting and 
 the persistent, monotonous shouting of my landlord. 
 
 "Be kvi-et, I say, you. Vill you be ker-vi-et, I say," he 
 repeated on an increasingly vindictive note of expostula- 
 tion. 
 
 As I mounted the stairs I trembled with apprehension 
 lest the rising anger of Pferdminger might culminate in
 
 THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 127 
 
 some physical outrage. He seemed to be reaching the limit 
 of his self-control. The high screaming of the woman was 
 less terrifying; it suggested the shriek of steam from a 
 safety-valve. 
 
 But Pferdminger had not the quality of a murderer as 
 I knew at once when he grasped at my intervention. He 
 had been standing at the threshold of Miss Whiting's open 
 door and heard me as I bounded up the short flight of stairs 
 to the landing. 
 
 "Ach ! you speak to her," he shouted, "she ees mad." 
 
 Miss Whiting was partly undressed and was still reck- 
 lessly discarding her most intimate garments as I reached 
 the door of her room. Something of her energy must have 
 been exhausted by then, and she was obviously striving to 
 keep the pressure of her fury at its highest point. 
 
 "Turn me out, would you?" she screamed. "Then you 
 can damned well turn me out stark naked, you . . ." 
 
 But I dare not report her speech. The epithet she found 
 for Pferdminger made me wince and she saw that I winced 
 and repeated her obscenity with greater distinctness and a 
 new touch of venom. 
 
 "Be kviet, I say," came the sound of Pferdminger's voice 
 from behind me. 
 
 "Yair!" was the derisive jeer of Miss Whiting as nearly 
 as I can render it ; and she made the sound disgusting even 
 without the emphasis of her gesture. 
 
 She held us intimidated and she knew it. Standing there 
 in her chemise and stockings, confessed as a relatively 
 fragile, weak creature, she dominated us by the recklessness 
 of her passion. She had cast off all the restraints of con- 
 ventional life, touched some absolute of self-expression that 
 was too strong for our divided minds. We were afraid of 
 her because we were afraid of ourselves and of the judg- 
 ment of society. She was, at that moment, a single and a 
 powerful personality. We had to fight ourselves before we 
 could fight her; and with the help of her allies she out- 
 numbered us. 
 
 And as if she, too, clearly understood her advantage, she
 
 128 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 made a demonstration of her impugnity. She snatched a 
 small vase from the mantelpiece, held it poised for a mo- 
 ment, and then dashed it through the window. 
 
 The crash of breaking glass was followed almost at once 
 by the furious ringing of the front door bell, and a clamor- 
 ous knocking outside. 
 
 Little Pferdminger, utterly defeated, crept downstairs, 
 calling upon God. 
 
 "Police," remarked Miss Whiting in a perfectly level 
 voice. "That dirty little has gone to let 'em in." 
 
 "What are you going to do?" I asked. They were the 
 first words I had spoken. For me the tensity of the situa- 
 tion was instantly relaxed. I felt as if I had awakened 
 from some appalling nightmare. The thing I had mistaken 
 for a figure of horror and disgust had taken the form I 
 recognised as human. I was sorry for Miss Whiting. I 
 wanted to advise and protect her. I believed that now she 
 would be perfectly reasonable, tractable. 
 
 The heavy tramp of feet was coming upstairs and we 
 could hear the fretful plaint of Pferdminger's voice assert- 
 ing his respectability. 
 
 "Hadn't you better get something on ?" I said. I had not 
 for one instant forgotten my status in civilisation and I 
 judged her, too, to be within reach of my acceptable stand- 
 ards. 
 
 But during that interval of tremendous quiet she had 
 only been saving herself ; and it may be that having experi- 
 enced the exaltation of power, she desired to reach a still 
 higher climax, in which she might dominate a stronger 
 enemy. For even as I felt the touch of a rough grasp on 
 my arm and heard the familiar gruff, "Now then, what's 
 all this?" of the policeman's voice, Miss Whiting let her- 
 self go again with a horrible scream and made a wild sweep 
 of the ornaments that still remained on the mantelpiece. 
 
 I was beaten and knew it, but the two bluff men who 
 had come in from the street had an experience and an au- 
 thority that I lacked. They did not hesitate. They went 
 straight for her with an intensity that equalled her own.
 
 THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 129 
 
 But the threat of their rush into the room was too much 
 for me. I could not bear it. I shrank back on to the 
 landing. I heard her scream "Don't touch me!" and my 
 feeble hands went up to my ears. 
 
 And then, in the middle of it all, came a queer little inter- 
 lude that I cannot explain. I found myself confronted on 
 the landing by a young man in evening dress with an opera 
 hat cocked jauntily at the back of his head. I do not know 
 if he spoke to me ; and when I had dropped my hands he 
 had reached the door of Miss Whiting's room. 
 
 "Oh! Good Lord!" he ejaculated, and turned away and 
 ran downstairs and, I suppose, back into the street. I do 
 not know where he came from and I never saw him again. 
 At the moment I accepted him as the phenomenon of a 
 dream. 
 
 But his intrusion had snatched my attention from the 
 drama of the open rooms, and when I half-fearfully re- 
 turned to it, the scene was over. Miss Whiting's screaming 
 defiance had changed to a whimper, and I heard a gruff, 
 friendly voice saying: "For goodness' sake, put something 
 on, my girl, or you'll catch your death o' cold with that 
 broken winder." 
 
 I became aware of peace and at the same time of the 
 stirring life of the rest of the house. Up above a door 
 closed quietly as if some listener had crept back, reas- 
 sured. 
 
 I began slowly to descend the stairs. The two policemen 
 and Pferdminger passed me in the hall, and the policemen 
 touched their helmets to me. There was a brief confer- 
 ence in the passage. I inferred that Pferdminger was 
 generous. 
 
 Geddes had gone. 
 
 Presently two of the Germans came in together, rather 
 noisily. My door was open and they looked in as they 
 passed but they did not speak to me. 
 
 A few minutes later I heard the click of the latchkey 
 again, and this time, after a short hesitation, I went out 
 into the hall. I felt that I must talk to some one.
 
 130 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 in 
 
 I found the man whom I had guessed to be an artist turn- 
 ing over the letters that had come by the last post. The 
 gas was still burning, a fact that marked some unusual hap- 
 pening in the house. The dark man looked at me as if he 
 understood at once that I wanted to speak to him. 
 
 "What's happened to Pf erdminger ?" he asked glancing 
 up at the flickering bat's-wing gas-jet. He had a low, 
 resonant voice that I found very pleasing. 
 
 "There's been no end of a shindy," I said, leaning against 
 the door-frame of my room. "The police have been in." I 
 tried to give my opening announcement a dramatic quality 
 that would interest him. I was afraid of losing his at- 
 tention. 
 
 My new friend whistled softly, a low, rich note that 
 matched the tone of his voice. "Fishing?" he asked briefly. 
 
 I understood his allusion. "Not exactly," I told him. 
 "She simply asked for it. She's been smashing up Pferd- 
 minger's property. Didn't you notice any glass on the 
 pavement ?" 
 
 He shook his head. "What began it?" he said. 
 
 "Care to come in for a minute or two?" I suggested, 
 and as he nodded we heard our landlord coming up from 
 the basement. 
 
 A strong sense of excitement was still intoxicating me, 
 and I welcomed Pferdminger almost eagerly. He and I 
 had just come through peril and defeat together, and I 
 felt a new sympathy for him. 
 
 "Come in and have a drink," I said. 
 
 For one moment Pferdminger's weak eyes had looked 
 past me, but when he realised that my attitude was en- 
 tirely sympathetic, the defect in his vision righted itself. 
 
 "She ees mad, that woman," he said, and then, "You haf 
 toldt Mr. Eel?" 
 
 I inferred "Hill." "No, not yet," I said, "I was go- 
 ing to."
 
 THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 131 
 
 Pferdminger shrugged himself comprehensively. "She 
 sink I die afraid of her," he remarked, "but eet ees not so. 
 I tell her she go. Eet ees a great mistake she come here 
 already." 
 
 "Tell us all about it," Hill put in, and we went into my 
 room. Pferdminger accepted whiskey with an air of cere- 
 monious apology, but Hill would not drink anything. 
 
 And then we had the whole story very dramatically told 
 but with little suggestions of the truth peeping out between 
 Pferdminger's inflated statement of his pure intentions. He 
 sat by the table with a great effect of enjoying my entertain- 
 ment. He reminded me of a nonconformist minister pay- 
 ing a formal "visit to a wealthy and important member of 
 his congregation. And he told us with considerable fluency 
 and much reaching out after idiom the full history of his 
 relations with Miss Whiting over a period of three months. 
 
 The greater part of his story was quite manifestly un- 
 true. His pretence of innocence concerning the nature of 
 Miss Whiting's profession convinced us no more than 
 his boast of bullying. He was undoubtedly getting an ex- 
 orbitant price for his rooms, and Hill and I inferred that 
 Miss Whiting had come to "73" as a refuge, from more 
 suspicious lodgings in which she had had difficulties. For, in 
 effect, one of Pferdminger's boasts was nearly true. His 
 house had been respectable, and, now, with the assurance 
 of my plate on the door, he had meant, if possible, to re- 
 gain his honourable name. 
 
 "I belief her when she pretend ze teeatre profession," he 
 repeated many times, and at each repetition gave himself 
 away by adding, "Vith two front floors not let at all how 
 does one do ozzerwise ?" 
 
 "Now," he concluded, "it is bad, eh? Ze police know 
 Zey haf zeir eyes on me. And already tonight before zey 
 come, I haf said to zat damn woman 'I haf you no more. 
 You are too bad for me.' Andt you see, yourself, Mr. 
 Hornby, how she continue." 
 
 He drank whiskey with eclat, tiltimj it abruptly down 
 his throat as if afraid that it might touch his palate.
 
 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "To-morrow she go out wiz- her head in front," he an- 
 nounced, smacking his lips. "I put aside zree weeks of 
 rent zat she owe, and for ze window and ze ozzer sings, I 
 say nossing. But," he got to his feet, "we clear ze air of 
 her, eh?" And then he clicked his heels together, bowed 
 neatly to Hill and myself in turn, and made a very creditable 
 departure. 
 
 Poor little Pferdminger, he was not at all a bad little 
 man, but he was too greedy. It was his love of cash in 
 hand that got him into such serious trouble that and his 
 cowardice. 
 
 IV 
 
 I did not want Hill to go and I began to talk in order 
 to keep him. I had touched, for the first time in my ex- 
 perience, the crude substance of life and all my thought 
 was still tingling with the excitement of that contact. 
 
 "She this Whiting person, I mean was rather mag- 
 nificent in a way," I said. "Pferdminger and I couldn't do 
 anything with her, you know." 
 
 "Swear much?" Hill asked. 
 
 "Oh! all the time," I said, "badly, but it wasn't that." 
 I tried to realise the nature of the power she had exercised, 
 and failing, continued, "Of course, she threatened to un- 
 dress at least, she was pretty nearly stark, and every min- 
 ute we expected the last rag to go. I don't know why that 
 should have frightened us, but it did. It did me, anyhow." 
 
 Hill's smile was, I thought, a little sardonic. "You 
 couldn't face the primitive," he suggested. 
 
 "No, I suppose not," I agreed. "She was most in- 
 fernally primitive savage, even." 
 
 Hill did not respond. He was lying back in my best 
 armchair, apparently attentive, and yet unresponsive. His 
 dark eyes watched me continually, but I could not be sure 
 
 whether or not he was listening with any interest to what 
 
 I. , / 
 
 said. 
 
 "Does all this bore you?" I said.
 
 THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 133 
 
 He shook his head but did not rouse himself. "What 
 about the girls upstairs?" he asked. "Were they there 
 or Mrs. Hargreave?" 
 
 The mention of the "girls upstairs" confused me. I was 
 quite unprepared for it ; indeed, the one girl in whom, alone, 
 I was interested, had occupied such a remote, distinctive 
 place in my mind, that I had not once thought of her in 
 relation to the row on the first floor. 
 
 "Mrs. Hargreave?" I said, instinctively grasping at a 
 cover for my embarrassment. "Who's she?" 
 
 "Stoutish woman. Wears a fur coat," Hill explained. 
 
 "I know her by sight," I said. 
 
 "I wonder she didn't come down," Hill went on ; "if only 
 to defend Miss Whiting against the brutalities of you two 
 men." 
 
 "Woman's rights sort of thing?" I asked. 
 
 Hill smiled as if he were faintly amused at my ingenuous- 
 ness. "You don't know any of the people in the house?" he 
 remarked, and gave his sentence the tone of an assertion 
 that required endorsement. 
 
 "No not yet," I admitted. 
 
 "What made you come here ?" 
 
 "Just accident." 
 
 "Any clients, yet?" 
 
 "One that I brought with me," I said. 
 
 Hill nodded and yawned. "I must go," he said. "I've 
 got a notice to write before I go to bed." 
 
 "Are you a dramatic critic?" I asked. 
 
 "Sometimes," he admitted carelessly. 
 
 I was at once thrilled and astonished. My picture of a 
 dramatic critic had been very different from this. 
 
 "But why to-night?" I asked. "To-morrow's Sunday." 
 
 "I'm never much good in the morning," he said. "And 
 I've got to get the stuff into the office by five o'clock to- 
 morrow. They make up the paper earlier on Sunday." 
 
 He yawned again and got up; but I could not let him 
 go before he had answered one more question. 
 
 "Who are the two girls upstairs?" I asked with an elab-
 
 134 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 orate air of being very casually interested. "Isn't this rather 
 a doubtful house for them to be in?" 
 
 "They're trying to get on the stage," Hill replied. "They 
 were in "The Furnace," that spectacular affair at the 
 Symposium only ran a week, you know. What's the mat- 
 ter with this house?" 
 
 "Well, all those German fellows ..." I began. 
 
 "Oh ! they can look after themselves all right," Hill said, 
 and I knew that he referred to the two girls. "Besides," he 
 added with hi.s rather grim smile, "they're on the top floor 
 next door to Mrs. Hargreave. She's a dragon." 
 
 "We shall be quite respectable again after the Whiting 
 has gone," I remarked by way of concluding the conversa- 
 tion. 
 
 "You think Pf erdy will turn her out ?" Hill said. 
 
 "Rather. Don't you?" I returned. 
 
 "Not if she can find the money to pay up," Hill said. 
 
 He nodded casually as he left the room. 
 
 I could not go to sleep after Hill had gone and as I paced 
 up and down my sitting-room, my emotions drew to a 
 climax. My impressions were extraordinarily vivid. I saw 
 pictures, all a little brighter and sharper than reality; pic- 
 tures that flashed up and gave me a sensation of enjoy- 
 ment, but had no kind of consequence or relation. 
 
 The person of Rose Whiting figured very prominently 
 in that panorama ; and I saw her both glorified and debased ; 
 alternately as a presentation of beauty and vice. The sight 
 of her nakedness that I had feared so much now came to 
 me robbed of conventional suggestions. I saw her mag- 
 nificent as a statue in alabaster. And then I would see 
 her face above, framed in darkness, a face wreathed in 
 symbols of terror and disgust, as if she fought weakly 
 against her own damnation. 
 
 I made no effort, at first, to resist the coming of those
 
 THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 135 
 
 visions and for a time I found a keen pleasure in the 
 magical brilliance of my effortless imaginings. But very soon 
 I began to experience a kind of surfeit, and my repugnance 
 grew until I felt an actual physical sickness, and my visions 
 took on that haunting quality which comes to one in fever. 
 
 I struggled then as if I were fighting for the control of my 
 reason. I was very much aware of my duality; and pres- 
 ently as I began more successfully to defend myself against 
 the invasion of the single image which had nearly obsessed 
 me, my visions took another shape. 
 
 I remembered the night of my father's death, and my 
 walk home with the little deformed doctor through the 
 moonlight ; and more particularly I recalled the clearness of 
 my recognition that there were two Wilfred Hornbys. 
 
 I wanted to pause and consider that curious phenomenon, 
 but I was incapable of deliberate, consequent reflection. A 
 new set of images had been evoked, and they carried me 
 down a long stream of impression which seemed to relate 
 all those moments of ecstasy that had come to me in such 
 queer forms. I experienced again the poised expectation 
 that I had known when I saw the glory of the purple 
 clematis, the cathedral of Medboro' half drowned in the 
 mists, or the silver and ebony relief of the bright dawn in the 
 Marylebone Road. And I tried desperately to remain 
 poised. It seemed to me that now, at last, I should be able 
 to peer over the edge of life and see once, clearly, the 
 beauty that lay beyond. 
 
 I sat down in my armchair and pressed my hands to my 
 eyes. I suppose I must have fallen asleep almost in- 
 stantly. 
 
 . 
 
 VI 
 
 The waking was a very dreary business. I was cold and 
 cramped; and when I tried to get to my feet I collapsed 
 into my chair again ; my right foot was a senseless, useless 
 lump of clay, and I had to endure the tantalising pain of 
 "pins and needles" before I could stand. The time was a
 
 136 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 quarter to five, and my bedroom and my bed felt cold and 
 damp; but I was soon asleep again. 
 
 When I awoke for the second time, Pferdminger was in 
 my room. He often waited upon me, himself, a mark, I 
 believe, of his particular regard for the dignity I had con- 
 ferred upon his house. 
 
 "You sleep a long time zis morning," he remarked, as 
 he struggled with the Venetian blind. 
 
 "What time is it?" I asked. I had realised at once that 
 my landlord and I were on a new footing, but I felt self- 
 conscious and awkward. The incidents of the night before 
 seemed a trifle garish and unreal in the light of morning. 
 
 He told me that it was half-past nine, and added that 
 it was a fine day. He had brought me my hot water, and 
 now pottered uncertainly about the room as if he had still 
 some further service to offer. 
 
 I sat up in bed and tried to be decently friendly. 
 
 "How is Miss Whiting this morning?" I asked. 
 
 Pferdminger shook his head gravely. "Not veil at all," 
 he said. "She was certainly mad last night. But zees morn- 
 ing eet ees all ozzervise. So! She have apologize and say 
 she pay everysing. Eet ees perhaps unfortunate for some 
 vays, but I cannot . . ." he could not find a word suf- 
 ficiently forcible to express the brutal ejection of Miss 
 Whiting, and had resource to a gesture which certainly sug- 
 gested that considerable force would be required. "No, I 
 cannot do so if she pay everysing," he concluded. 
 
 "You might give her notice," I put in. 
 
 "Oh! noteece! Vat is zat?" Pferdminger returned 
 warmly. "She snap her hands at my noteece. And eet ees 
 vinter already." 
 
 I guessed that his last remark referred less to the in- 
 humanity of turning Miss Whiting out into the imaginary 
 cold (it was a particularly bright clear morning at the end 
 of October) than to the difficulty of replacing her at that 
 time of year. 
 
 "Oh! well, as long as she behaves herself," I remarked 
 cheerfully.
 
 THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 137 
 
 "Oh ! she behave herself, now," Pferdminger replied with 
 intense conviction. "No fear, now, zat she behave not her- 
 self. She fear ze police. Zey noteece her always after 
 zis. She die afraid of zem, now." 
 
 I could see that he had supreme faith in that threat of 
 police interference so far as the future safety of his own 
 household goods was concerned. 
 
 "You're not afraid that the police will be down on you?" 
 I asked. 
 
 Pferdminger's left eye suddenly became lost in abstrac- 
 tion. "Zey know I have always the most respectable ten- 
 ants," he said. "For last night? Zat was unlucky. It hap- 
 pen so to any one. Eh?" 
 
 I wondered how Hill had known so well that our land- 
 lord would change his mind. On the previous night he 
 would, I am sure, gladly have seen Miss Whiting carried 
 out on a stretcher. . . . 
 
 Not until I had had breakfast did I become aware that 
 the events of the night had had some very strong effect 
 upon me. 
 
 My first impression was that the lightness of my mood 
 was due to the change of weather. It was one of those 
 still, clear October days that come in late autumn and charm 
 us with an enchanted parody of summer. The night frost 
 had cleansed and re- vivified the London air; and the thin, 
 sweet sunlight that played on the houses opposite seemed 
 to bring the sharp scent of the country into my sitting-room. 
 I could see the stubble fields still wet with frost, and hear 
 the gentle whisper of dead leaves that fell softly through 
 the crisp foliage of the glowing beech woods. I heard the 
 clamour of rooks and smelt the faint sharpness of the 
 pinched hedges. I saw the trail of "old men's beard," still 
 green in the shadows, and the brightness of the lingering 
 sloes and blackberries. And surely there would still be 
 a few late flies low over the river, and the swirl of a chub 
 feeding. 
 
 But when the keen suggestions of the country gave place 
 to my recognition of town surroundings, the sense of pleas-
 
 138 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 ure and anticipation still remained with me. I remem- 
 bered my new freedom. I need not go to church, nor 
 endure the stuffy ceremony of dinner at Ken Lodge. I 
 should not be called upon to chafe through a long after- 
 noon with Gladys. 
 
 And still my feeling of lightness and vitality was not 
 accounted for, and I began to realise that a load of resent- 
 ment and oppression had been lifted from my mind. I no 
 longer nourished any animosity against the girl who had 
 snubbed me on the doorstep. I was sure, now, that she 
 would sooner or later forgive me for my stupidity. 
 
 I walked over to the window and looked out with a new 
 ease. I was not afraid any more of my house-mates. I 
 would have nodded gladly to the little white-haired Ger- 
 man in his frock-coat and bowler. 
 
 Last night the slow process of my development had been 
 wonderfully completed. I had come out of my shell. I 
 had suddenly realised that it is easier and far more in- 
 spiriting to love than to cherish a timid, shrinking animosity. 
 
 VII 
 
 Yet I do not wish to convey the impression that there 
 was anything miraculous in my apparent change of mind. 
 The longing for some spiritual enlargement had always 
 been with me, but all the forces of my training, all the 
 models of my life had withheld me from any expression. 
 I was, I still am, a plastic, adaptable creature, and I had 
 sedulously modelled and enthroned the one ideal that had 
 always been put before me. The profession of becoming 
 a gentleman had been the idol I was taught to worship, 
 and none had ever suggested to me that my idol lacked 
 comprehensiveness. Good form, the esteem of my contem- 
 poraries, a little fame and position, and the getting of as 
 much money as I could honestly acquire, these were the 
 sole objects of social life. Behind them lay the necessity 
 of insuring peace throughout eternity by the careful obser-
 
 THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 139 
 
 vation of certain ritual formalities. No one had ever gone 
 deeper than that with me; no one had ever talked to me 
 of a beauty that was not stereotyped. 
 
 My sudden enlargement had been brought about by in- 
 tense nervous excitement and a new sight of life life 
 unrestrained, passionate, elemental. I had been ready, and 
 the freedom of my loneliness had helped to release me. 
 
 But there was another factor which, however unrealised 
 that Sunday morning, was perhaps the most potent of all. 
 
 For the first time in my life I was beautifully, won- 
 derfully in love.
 
 VII 
 MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 
 
 I COULD not remain quietly in my rooms that morning. 
 The most reasonable alternative would have been to 
 take bus or train out into the country ; to enjoy in fact what 
 I had already tasted in imagination. But I was at the 
 mercy of my new craving for life. The thought of a lonely 
 day in the country was repugnant to me. I wanted to talk 
 to a friend, and my first idea was that I would go over to 
 West Kensington and see Geddes I could tell him of 
 the strange adventure of the night and of the effect it had 
 had upon me. A little reflection, however, soon turned 
 me from that project. Geddes would not be interested; 
 he would cut short my narrative with his advice to have 
 nothing to do with the other people in the house; and 
 then complete his interrupted specification of that con- 
 founded fire-proof partition. No, I did not want Geddes's 
 companionship. 
 
 Nor did the contemplation of an afternoon with Horton- 
 Smith appeal to me just then. He and I knew as much 
 as we should ever know about each other. It was little 
 enough, but I could not conceive of any deeper intimacy 
 between us. If I told him of last night's adventure he 
 would ask me ribald questions about Rose Whiting, ques- 
 tions that would not touch even the surface of my inter- 
 est. He would understand me no better than my Cousin 
 Gladys would have done. Indeed, I could not understand 
 myself. 
 
 I felt a great impulse to talk to some one, but I could 
 
 140
 
 MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 141 
 
 not imagine a conversation that would satisfy me, nor, at 
 the moment, picture a possible companion. I was not at 
 all certain that my craving was not a symptom of mere 
 foolishness that ought to be drowned in work. Possibly 
 the fact that it was Sunday morning alone interfered with 
 me and the resolution to work. I had never, then, worked 
 on a Sunday; and I had a queer, superstitious qualm 
 about it, that even now I have not entirely conquered. 
 
 And when, at last, I boldly conceived the notion of 
 going upstairs to see Hill, I understood that while this was 
 by far the most attractive plan I had yet made, it still 
 lacked. the air of promising a perfect satisfaction. More- 
 over, I was horribly shy of intruding my company upon 
 him. If I had suffered some change of condition in the 
 past twelve hours, the embryo had emerged bearing the 
 authentic stamp of the old Wilfred Hornby. I had the 
 capacity for freer movement, but I was precisely the same 
 chicken that had lain cramped in its shell for twenty- 
 eight years. 
 
 Nevertheless, the desire to go up and see Hill increased 
 as I considered the possibility. I could not say why, but 
 the idea of going upstairs had the quality of an adven- 
 ture. The thought of it enticed me like some delicious 
 temptation, and when Pferdminger came to clear away 
 my breakfast, I asked him boldly as to the exact location 
 of Hill's room. 
 
 Pferdminger was evidently suspicious of my intention 
 and flew his unusual indication of nervousness. He could 
 never have become a successful criminal with that weak- 
 ness of the left eye ; it betrayed him on the slightest occa- 
 sion. He prevaricated, now, by pretending that Hill had 
 gone out 
 
 I contradicted that flatly. Opposition increased my long- 
 ing for Hill's company. But when I had bullied Pferd- 
 minger into giving me the required information, and was 
 actually standing outside Hill's door, I should certainly 
 have gone down again without knocking if he had not called 
 out from within the room.
 
 142 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "Hal-lo!" he said with a little drop in the second sylla- 
 ble. I thought his hail was touched with a note of ex- 
 asperation. 
 
 "Oh! hallo!" he repeated in another tone when I had 
 opened the door and showed myself. "It's you, is it? Come 
 in. I thought it was Lippmann the stout chap, you know." 
 
 I mentally placed Lippmann as one of the three Germans 
 who turned eastwards every morning. 
 
 Hill's room was a litter of books. Most of them were 
 untidily stacked round the walls; but there must have 
 been nearly a hundred volumes, scattered about on the bed, 
 the table, the two cane chairs and the chest of drawers. 
 
 "I'm afraid I'm interrupting you," I said, "but I thought 
 I wanted ..." I found that I had no sort of reason- 
 able excuse for coming. 
 
 "You're not," Hill said, looking at me with a rather 
 whimsical smile. "Come in. Have you seen Pferdminger 
 this morning?" He got up and offered me the wicker 
 armchair, and when I refused that, cleared one of the 
 cane-seated chairs for me by transferring a pile of books 
 to the already overweighted table. 
 
 "I've been sorting out a few books to sell," he explained. 
 "They accumulate at an unholy rate, and it's too much 
 bother to do 'em up." 
 
 "You certainly haven't much room for them here," I 
 said. In my innocence I believed that he was sacrificing 
 his treasures and attempting to conceal his poverty. 
 
 He apparently understood the intention of my polite 
 agreement. 
 
 "All review books practically, you know," he said. 
 "Muck, for the most part, not worth keeping. I get the 
 bookseller to come up with a sack now and again." 
 
 I believe at the moment I was chiefly astounded by the 
 thought that he could have read and reviewed so many 
 works. The accumulation there in his room seemed to me 
 a life's undertaking. 
 
 I began to ask him ingenuous questions about this un- 
 known business of reviewing. I had had some vague,
 
 MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 143 
 
 incurious notion that critics or reviewers I appreciated 
 no distinction between the two titles were all literary men 
 of considerable attainment, men who made the welfare of 
 literature the chief concern of their lives. Hill exposed 
 the foolishness of that idea in a sentence. 
 
 "There are over three thousand books published every 
 year," he said, "and not a dozen of them worth serious 
 attention ; but most of 'em are reviewed." 
 
 "Why?" I asked. 
 
 "To keep the publishers' advertisements," Hill told me, 
 but he had to enter into a fuller account of the commercial 
 aspects of journalism before I could appreciate that simple 
 explanation. 
 
 "It makes one see literature in rather a bad light," was 
 my final comment. His statement depressed me. I had 
 always thought it rather a wonderful thing to write a 
 book. 
 
 "It's a trade," Hill said ; "and it employs a lot of people." 
 
 "Reviewers?" I put in. 
 
 Hill smiled. "And the staff of about eighty publishers, 
 and the printers and binders, and the circulating libraries, 
 to say nothing of the paper-makers and so on," he re- 
 minded me. 
 
 "But who reads them all?" I asked. 
 
 "God knows," Hill said. 
 
 We were still on the subject of making books when some 
 one tapped lightly at the door. 
 
 "Come in, Helen," Hill called out, and then, as the door 
 opened, he got up and said : "I've elected a new member of 
 the Sunday morning club our prize lodger." 
 
 "Oh !" replied "Helen" on a note of apprehension. 
 
 She stood immediately inside the door and looked at me 
 with frowning disapproval, her head ducked a little for- 
 ward, and with something in her pose that suggested an 
 angry hen. She was, indeed, blocking the entrance, and 
 I knew perfectly well that "the other one" was just out- 
 side. I had hardly realised until that moment how com-
 
 144 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 pletely I had come to regard her as being "the other 
 one," in a class apart from all the rest of mankind. 
 
 "Look here, I'll go now," I said to Hill. 
 
 It may sound absurd, but I was actually trembling with 
 fear. I felt that I simply could not dare to meet that 
 other one. 
 
 "Nonsense!" Hill returned, and then he turned to the 
 girl by the door and said : "Come in, Helen. Isn't Judith 
 there? I'll tell you all about that rotten play I did last 
 night." 
 
 Helen came a little further into the room, still brooding. 
 "I don't suppose, Mr. Hornby," she began, and she no doubt 
 finished her sentence, but I did not hear the rest of it, for 
 Judith had followed her friend and had looked at me 
 with, I thought, the faintest suggestion of a smile. 
 
 I remembered then with a flush of horrible abasement 
 all my sulky projects for recrimination. The opportunity 
 had come, now. I could throw up my head and return the 
 snub she had given me a week ago. But never did any 
 man feel more abject than I felt at that moment. 
 
 I dropped my eyes like a shy school-girl. All my being 
 seemed to have suddenly run into a mould of the weakest 
 humility. 
 
 ii 
 
 Hill was laughing, not at me but at the mouse-coloured 
 young woman he addressed as Helen; and my embarrass- 
 ment was by no means relieved when I discovered that he 
 knew the whole story of my attempt to accost the two girls 
 on the doorstep. 
 
 "Don't harbour resentment, Helen," he was saying. "Mr. 
 Hornby was only wanting to be elected a member of our 
 club." 
 
 Helen had sat down on the foot of the bed. Her head 
 still drooped, sulkily, and she did not answer at once. Then 
 she glanced quickly at me with a look of sullen dislike. 
 
 "There are different ways of doing things," she mut- 
 tered.
 
 MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 145 
 
 "Tell 'em your intentions were quite innocent, Hornby," 
 Hill said, turning to me. 
 
 But I did not wish to make my excuses on those grounds. 
 I should have liked to tell them the whole story of that 
 Sunday morning. I held the mistaken conviction that if 
 I could but explain myself fully and truthfully, every one 
 even the moody Helen would sympathise with me. No 
 doubt your average criminal labours under the same 
 delusion. 
 
 "Frightfully sorry," I mumbled. "Rotten mistake of 
 mine, that was all." I dared not look at Judith, who was 
 now sitting by her friend on the bed. 
 
 "You don't mean to pretend you thought you knew us," 
 Helen snapped. 
 
 "It wasn't that ..." I began, as if I were going to ex- 
 plain exactly what it was. 
 
 "Well, then ... ?" Helen prompted me remorselessly. 
 
 "Better make a clean breast of it and get it over," Hill 
 added, smiling encouragement. "The way I had the story, 
 you seem to have broken the table of the commandments 
 on the front steps. Miss Whiting's little affair last night 
 was a trifle in comparison." 
 
 And then, as so often happens, the whole drift of our 
 conversation was instantly directed into another channel. 
 
 "Oh! Mr. Hill, what did happen last night?" Judith asked 
 eagerly. "We do so want to know. We came out on to 
 the landing, but Mrs. Hargreave wouldn't let us come 
 down." 
 
 "Better ask Hornby," Hill said. "He was there. It was 
 all over when I came in." 
 
 "I thought I heard your voice," Helen put in with an 
 accusing look at me, and I realised that I was, now, under 
 suspicion of another offence not less heinous than the 
 first. I felt that this time I must be very convincing. 
 
 "I didn't hear the beginning of it," I said. "I had a friend 
 with me downstairs." 
 
 It was not a fortunate opening. I saw a clear indica- 
 tion of this woman Helen's suspicion of me when I men-
 
 146 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 tioned the word friend. She had made up her mind that 
 I was a professional philogynist, and she was as deter- 
 mined as a savage hen, fully prepared to defend the pre- 
 cious chicken she had adopted. 
 
 "I I wanted him to come up, too," I went on, address- 
 ing Hill, "but he's one of those fellows who is frightened 
 to death of a row. He's always afraid he'll get implicated 
 in some way." 
 
 The sound of my own voice gave me confidence, and I 
 was glad to be able to talk directly to Hill. I wanted 
 some such opportunity as this to give me a chance to 
 there is no other phrase that gives quite the same effect 
 to "show off." All male animals do it. Small boys of 
 seven will become boisterous and foolish when a little girl 
 comes into their game. 
 
 "Architect, too?" Hill asked with a friendly wish to 
 help my explanation. 
 
 I nodded. "We were in the same office together in Lin- 
 coln's Inn," I said. "Well, we heard some kind of row 
 going on and I went up to see if if I could help. Pferd- 
 minger sounded absolutely murderous." 
 
 I glanced at Helen, and saw the signal of her incredulity 
 in the lift of her thick eyebrows she had queer eyebrows, 
 with strong, untidy brown hairs that grew irregularly. It 
 was a surprise to see her dull, mouse-coloured eyes peering 
 out from under that thatch. 
 
 Her obstinate suspicions confused me. I found it very 
 difficult to be convincing while every word I said was 
 weighed with such a jealous distrust. 
 
 "His property was getting smashed, you see," I said, 
 staring my defiance at her. 
 
 "Well, what happened ?" she asked, and her friend helped 
 me by adding: 
 
 "We heard the smashing going on." 
 
 "The whole street heard it," I said. "That was what 
 fetched the police in. She chucked a vase through the 
 window." 
 
 "Why didn't Mr. Pferdminger stop her?" asked Helen,
 
 MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 147 
 
 pronouncing our landlord's name in the English way with 
 a thick "er" sound and a soft "g." 
 
 "Pferdminger," I repeated, correcting the pronunciation. 
 "Oh! he was afraid of her." 
 
 "Were you afraid, too?" she retorted. 
 
 Her remark suggested a change of attitude, but her new 
 attack was more difficult to repulse. I had already told 
 Hill that I had been afraid, and I had a foolish disinclina- 
 tion, now, to repeat the chief reason of Rose Whiting's 
 power to intimidate us. 
 
 "She was so so primitive," I tried, snatching at the word 
 I had used the night before. 
 
 "She swore dreadfully, didn't she?" Judith put in. 
 
 I dared to glance at her and saw that she was leaning 
 forward, listening with a simple ardour to my halting, 
 undramatic account of the highly dramatic incident. 
 
 "I'm telling it very badly," I apologised. 
 
 Hill came to my rescue. "It seems that Miss Whiting 
 had come down to a single garment," he explained; "and 
 she was threatening them to drop that any moment. And, 
 you see, they were a trifle too civilised to risk it." 
 
 I believe I was the only one of the four who felt really 
 uncomfortable, although Helen's air of indifference was 
 rather too deliberate. She pursed her lips with an expres- 
 sion of contempt and murmured something that might have 
 been "poor thing," or possibly "poor things." 
 
 "It was jolly awkward, anyway/' I mumbled, and I have 
 been told since by one of the other listeners that I looked 
 like "a rather nice old maid at a musical comedy." I can 
 quite believe it. I knew that there was no reason for 
 my embarrassment, but I could not appear at ease. Ken 
 Lodge would have been outraged; Horton-Smith and his 
 kind would have made some lewd joke ; and these differing 
 expressions of the same attitude were all the examples I 
 was familiar with. 
 
 Hill evidently found my prudishness amusing. 
 
 "Our new friend Hornby is a model of respectability,"
 
 148 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 he said ; "and our ambitious landlord looks to him to bring 
 salvation to 73 Keppel Street." 
 
 I was glad that the conversation should take that turn; 
 also, I was flattered by the kindly tone of Hill's chaff. 
 
 "The trouble is," I said, "that Pferdminger doesn't back 
 me up." 
 
 The interrogative of Hill's eyebrows encouraged me to 
 explain my remark. He was, undoubtedly, doing his best 
 to help me. But before I could announce my little piece 
 of news as to Miss Whiting's reinstatement, the door opened 
 and the woman Hill had indicated as Mrs. Hargreave 
 came in. 
 
 "I heard you all talking, so I didn't knock," she said, 
 looking at me; and then went on: "You are Mr. Hornby, 
 aren't you? I've seen you working at your window." 
 
 I bowed. 
 
 "There's still one chair left," Hill suggested. "Hornby 
 has been telling us about the row last night." 
 
 Mrs. Hargreave sat down and leaned her elbows on the 
 table. She was a handsome woman, but even on that first 
 morning I was puzzled by something that blurred the intel- 
 ligence of her face I do not know whether it was that her 
 eyes stared too fanatically, or if it were that her manner 
 and general expression hinted at too great a worship of 
 the autocratic ideal. She was wearing the familiar fur coat 
 as a dressing gown; and that, also, helped to produce the 
 effect of a boasting idiosyncrasy. 
 
 "I've been talking to the unlucky girl this morning," she 
 said, taking up Hill's last remark. "I heard how she was 
 badgered and bullied first by Pferdminger and Mr. Hornby, 
 and then by the police; and I've advised her to resist any 
 attempt at ejection." 
 
 I was too staggered by this version of the affair to do 
 more "than stare my amazement, but Hill chuckled as if 
 he were quite prepared for new aspects from Mrs. 
 Hargreave. 
 
 "I heard that Miss Whiting did all the bullying in the 
 first instance," he said.
 
 MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 149 
 
 "How else could she protect herself?" Mrs. Hargreave 
 returned. 
 
 "Against Pferdminger's modest request for rent?" 
 
 "Against his criminally extortionate charges," Mrs. Har- 
 greave corrected him. "It's simply blackmail," she went 
 on ; "he squeezes her for every penny he can. . . ." 
 
 She was fairly under way, sitting very upright, and 
 her hard blue eyes stared defiance of an imaginary audience 
 far larger than the small group of people collected in that 
 little room. But Hill would not permit the argument to 
 become a lecture. 
 
 "Oh ! look at it another way," he put in quickly. "Pf erdy 
 has to take risks on the Whiting, and her extra rent is 
 the premium she has to pay. When he gets a respectable 
 lodger like Hornby, he can afford to let him have the rooms 
 cheap." 
 
 "But he wants her to go," I said. 
 
 "Not he," snapped Mrs. Hargreave. "When I offered 
 to pay him this morning, he simply grovelled." 
 
 "Are you really going to pay for her?" Helen asked with 
 great intensity. 
 
 "As a protest against persecution," Mrs. Hargreave said. 
 
 At the moment I did not believe her. Her circumstances, 
 no less than the peculiarity of her present attire, suggested 
 that, whatever her position had once been, she was not 
 now in a position to pay the 20 which I had mentally fig- 
 ured as the probable amount of Miss Whiting's debt to 
 Pferdminger by his calculation; he would certainly not 
 underestimate the value of the cheap German porcelain she 
 had smashed. Moreover, I had been distinctly offended by 
 Mrs. Hargreave's first remarks. 
 
 "I should have thought it would be better to let her go," 
 I said. 
 
 "Why?" Mrs. Hargreave asked threateningly. 
 
 "Oh! well," I said and shrugged my shoulders. I felt 
 that my reasons could not be discussed in that company. 
 
 "Oh! well," Mrs. Hargreave repeated with a smile and, 
 as I thought, a surprising change of manner. Her imita-
 
 150 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 tion of me was, I must admit, quite reasonably successful. 
 "It's always oh! well, isn't it?" she continued. "That is 
 the comfortable English attitude to all these things; the 
 old maid's attitude to everything that she knows nothing 
 about, and is afraid to enquire into. There are so many 
 old-maidish men of your type, Mr. Hornby. I wonder 
 whether you are only ignorant or really pig-headed." 
 
 I was on the verge of losing my temper when I .suddenly 
 became aware that "Judith" was looking at me with some- 
 thing very like pity in her face. And then I realised that 
 I was behaving like a fool; that in many ways I had al- 
 ways behaved like a fool, wilfully shutting my eyes to 
 one side of life and congratulating myself on my blindness. 
 The realisation came to me almost as my visions had come ; 
 as a piece of strange esoteric knowledge bewilderingly true 
 and real ; or as if for one tiny instant something had opened 
 and I had seen through. 
 
 in 
 
 "Only ignorant," I said on the impulse of the moment. 
 "At least, I hope so." 
 
 Mrs. Hargreave looked at me with a hint of approval. 
 "You seem to have a capacity for looking about you, at 
 any rate," she said, and went on: "So you deny that you 
 bullied Rose Whiting last night?" 
 
 "She bullied us," I returned. 
 
 "But you meant to bully her when you went upstairs," 
 she insisted. 
 
 I looked back at my emotions of the night before and 
 found no trace of any impulse to domineer. 
 
 "No," I said, and as I spoke it came to me that in my 
 experience the bullies had all been women. Gladys had 
 nagged me; my aunt had kept Uncle David in subjection 
 by the constant threat of her ill-health; Miss Whiting had 
 delighted in her power to intimidate Pferdminger and my- 
 self ; and this woman now cross-examining me was the very 
 type of an autocrat.
 
 MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 151 
 
 "No," I repeated quickly, eager to hold the conversa- 
 tion, "I don't think I've got it in me even to want to bully 
 a woman. I told you that I thought Pferdminger's voice 
 sounded murderous. I was a fool, no doubt, but I went 
 to Miss Whiting's rescue." 
 
 Mrs. Hargreave emitted a little hoot of impatience, but 
 I would not give way to her. "It's the women who bully," 
 I said in the warmth of my new conviction, and I heard 
 Hill give a grunt of approval. "Why, you've been trying 
 to bully me ever since you came into the room." 
 
 She ought to have been flabbergasted, but the fault I had 
 accused in her was one that she could never admit. 
 
 "Oh! that goes so beautifully with your 'Oh! well/ Mr. 
 Hornby," she said. "That's always the ingenuous mascu- 
 line way. You're all so gentle and kind as long as you 
 can do just what you like; but directly a woman objects 
 to being treated like a slave you open your eyes in aston- 
 ishment and say that she's bullying you." 
 
 "What about the case in point?" Hill began, but he was 
 unable to stop the flood I had released. Mrs. Hargreave 
 flowed over him with a furious stream of words. She was 
 fluent with all those earlier arguments for femininism that 
 were just becoming vocal at that time, all the foolish, clog- 
 ging stuff that hindered the free expansion of the movement, 
 and remained in many narrow, bigoted minds to the ex- 
 clusion of much that was more rationally to follow. 
 
 The effect of that morning's lecture upon me was unfor- 
 tunate, inasmuch as it prejudiced me for many years against 
 the whole cause of femininism. I had a little sealed com- 
 partment in my mind, enclosing that first instinctive reac- 
 tion against what was once freely discussed as the "sex- 
 war." And the facts I learnt later about Mrs. Hargreave's 
 personal history only served to confirm my unhappy preju- 
 dice against the biased views she so volubly and so un- 
 convincingly as far as I was concerned expressed on the 
 occasion of our first meeting. 
 
 But it may be that 1 am only seeking excuses for my- 
 self; that I am still struggling with the impossible task
 
 152 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 of explanation in the hope of anticipating criticism. For 
 what presently followed does, I admit, seem to indicate 
 that I was still fast within that old shell of mine. 
 
 Mrs. Hargreave, with a histrionic sense for effect, fin- 
 ished on a high note, looked round her audience with 
 slightly dilated eyes, and vacated the platform before the 
 first threat of anti-climax was remotely possible. Her 
 doctrine was too absolute to admit discussion. She could 
 affirm brilliantly, but she could not contain her impatience 
 to argue about this one, fixed, sacred dogma of hers. 
 
 Hill drew a long breath of relief as she went out, and 
 when the door had closed behind her he said: "She's a 
 clever woman, Hornby, but she's got an obsession. I'll tell 
 you about it some time. We try to keep her off it, if we 
 can, but there are occasions . . . well, she was just primed 
 for it this morning by the Whiting episode." 
 
 I was glad that he should bother to explain to me, and 
 I should certainly have taken much less notice of Mrs. 
 Hargreave's outburst if Helen had not found it necessary 
 to take up the cudgels on her behalf. 
 
 "Oh ! well, Mr. Hill, I'm not sure . . ." she began in her 
 hesitating, muffled way; "I do agree with her, really, you 
 know. It's so true that women have been kept down and 
 and sat upon absolutely true." And then, feeling that her 
 own inarticulate rendering of Mrs. Hargreave was a very 
 inefficient expression of all that she wanted to say, she 
 concluded: "I agree with her absolutely." Her drab eyes 
 were glowering a timid defiance at me. 
 
 I had endured Mrs. Hargreave, but I was roused to des- 
 peration by the pin-pricks of this mouse-coloured, elderly 
 young woman. 
 
 "Well, I think it's the most frightful rot," I said. I knew 
 in some way that these two women were standing between 
 me and that other quiet girl sitting on the bed. 
 
 "Of course," sneered Helen, "naturally you would." 
 
 "Why 'naturally'?" I said rudely. 
 
 "Well, we know that you don't like to see women stand-
 
 MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 153 
 
 ing up for themselves," she returned, still with that same 
 air of furtive boldness. 
 
 "I haven't the least idea what you mean," I said. I 
 was quite as petulant as she was, and as inarticulate. 
 
 Then she played a card which she must have known in- 
 stinctively would finally defeat me. She turned to Judith 
 and put her arms round her shoulders. "Aren't you com- 
 ing out this morning, darling?" she asked. "It's perfectly 
 lovely out, and I don't think we shall gain much by staying, 
 now Mrs. Hargreave has gone." 
 
 Judith nodded affectionately and got up at once. She 
 smiled at Hill as they went out, but she did not look at me. 
 
 IV 
 
 "I'm interrupting you," I said to Hill. 
 
 My speech sounded polite and was accepted as a con- 
 ventional insincerity; but I honestly wanted to get away. 
 I think my intention was to go downstairs and commit 
 suicide. 
 
 "You're not," Hill said. "I sha'n't work this morning 
 nor this afternoon either for that matter." 
 
 "Did you finish your notice of the play last night?" 
 I asked. One side of my mind was attending automatically 
 to my companion, the remainder boiled with criticism of 
 myself. 
 
 "Yes, oh! yes," Hill was saying; "and I never told the 
 girls about it after all. You and Mrs. H. were so en- 
 thralling. We clean forgot it." 
 
 "Do they always come to see you on Sunday morning?" 
 I said. The two sides of my mind had come together again 
 in response to his last remark. I was pricked with sus- 
 picion at his casual mention of "the girls." 
 
 "It's a general reception," Hill said. "Usually Lippmann 
 and Herz come, too." 
 
 I hated the thought that those two Germans had full 
 liberty to stare, and bow, and smirk there every Sunday
 
 154 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 morning; and I answered with a little gust of impatience. 
 "Oh! well," I said, "I think I'd better be going now." 
 
 "Just as you like," Hill returned; and then I wanted 
 to stay. His room seemed rich with possibilities. "They" 
 might look in again on their way out. Or failing that, 
 Hill might be induced to talk about them. Downstairs was 
 an arid desert. Nothing interesting could ever happen in 
 that confounded prison I had so idiotically fortified by my 
 little pretensions of dignity. 
 
 I was standing up in front of the fireplace, and I 
 remained there by sheer inertia. 
 
 "Queer woman, that Mrs. Hargreave," I said. I was 
 not particularly interested in her, but I wanted to talk 
 about one of the three women who had just gone, and 
 instinctively I chose the one who was most remote from 
 my thoughts. 
 
 "Shove a bit of coal on, there's a good chap," Hill said, 
 and then began to talk about Mrs. Hargreave. 
 
 I listened with the idea of diverting the conversation 
 to the vital topic as soon as I found an opportunity. 
 
 "She's interesting," Hill said, and I mumbled some en- 
 couragement while I dug into the coal-scuttle with the in- 
 efficient scoop. 
 
 "You'll find your fingers quicker," Hill interpolated. 
 "She's been married for twenty years, and now she has 
 chucked everything position, children, husband, everything 
 one usually postulates as making up a woman's life in 
 order to go on the stage." 
 
 "The stage!" I ejaculated scornfully, wiping my fingers 
 on the hearth-rug. "Why, she must be forty !" 
 
 "Thirty-nine," Hill said, "and her eldest daughter is 
 eighteen." 
 
 "But surely she has no earthly," I remonstrated. 
 
 "Not much, I'm afraid," Hill said. "But she's got tre- 
 mendous perseverance ; what the journalists call an indom- 
 itable spirit, you know." 
 
 "Has she got any money ?" I asked. 
 
 "Some apparently," Hill said. "A lump sum, I fancy, and
 
 MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 155 
 
 she's living on the capital. I'm not sure. She'll talk all 
 night about her revolt from family life, but she doesn't 
 offer confidences about her financial position." 
 
 I was interested now. "But I don't understand why she 
 chucked everything," I said. "Is she stage-struck or a bit 
 off her head?" 
 
 "She makes out a fairly good case for herself," Hill 
 said. "Her point is that she wants independence. Lots 
 of girls are saying the same thing just now our little 
 friend, Judith, for instance but Mrs. Hargreave's case 
 is different, because she's really sacrificing something a 
 good deal, in fact, as one generally counts things. There 
 isn't any adventure, of the usual kind, for her; it seems to 
 be largely a matter of principle when you hear her talk. 
 She's certainly gone the whole hog. You can't help admir- 
 ing that, anyway." 
 
 "No! I suppose not," I put in mechanically. I was try- 
 ing desperately to phrase a comment that would bring him 
 back to that parenthesis about "our little friend." "But 
 these other girls you talk about ..." I began. 
 
 "That's so much more comprehensible," Hill said. 
 "They're out for all sorts of adventure, but the Hargreave 
 revolt can't bring anything but a kind of intellectual sat- 
 isfaction, the way I see it." 
 
 "I don't understand," I began again, meaning to open 
 out another channel, but Hill did not wait to hear what I 
 was going to say. 
 
 "I'll admit it's difficult," he went on ; "but it's worth puz- 
 zling over. I know another case a little like it a woman 
 over fifty, but she was a widow which made some differ- 
 ence. The impulse seems to be the longing for individual 
 expression." 
 
 "Couldn't she have found that at home?" I suggested. 
 "With children and all?" 
 
 "But she really believes she can act, you know," Hill 
 returned. 
 
 "Pretty piffling thing to do, anyway," I said. I had very
 
 156 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 recently decided that the stage was a rotten vocation for 
 women. 
 
 "It is an Art, of a kind, all the same," Hill affirmed. 
 "There really is a technique of acting." He paused and 
 looked up at me I was still standing in front of the 
 mantelpiece as if he were afraid that he might be divert- 
 ing our talk to a boring subject. 
 
 "I don't know much about it," I said. "I'm only the 
 ordinary amateur play-goer; the 'know-what-I-like' sort 
 of ass." I hesitated for a moment and then, as Hill did 
 not reply, I went on: "But I've got a sort of prejudice 
 against the stage as a profession for for women. There's 
 a kind of suggestion in calling a woman an actress that 
 somehow doesn't fit with my idea of ..." I found that 
 I could not complete the sentence I had intended. 
 
 "Of Mrs. Hargreaye?" Hill supplied innocently. 
 
 I had been so near my object that this threat of still 
 another digression irritated me. "Oh ! a woman who would 
 go off and leave her children like that would do anything," 
 I said. 
 
 "She tried to take them with her," Hill put in. 
 
 "And they had the good sense to refuse?" 
 
 "Well, the eldest girl seems to have been bitten with her 
 mother's idea. She comes here sometimes. She wants to 
 go on the stage, too, I believe." 
 
 I sighed impatiently. "What's the husband like ?" I asked. 
 
 "Well-meaning sort of chap, I imagine," Hill said. "Bit 
 on the pious side, and he's got on her nerves evidently." 
 He paused thoughtfully for a few seconds before he con- 
 tinued : "You can say what you like, Hornby ; it is a prob- 
 lem. A woman like Mrs. Hargreave wants an outlet, and 
 it's very difficult to see how she could have found it at 
 home. This feminist movement isn't going to stop where 
 it is. There's real force and reason behind it." 
 
 But I could not follow him, then. I had a sense of some 
 stubborn, tiresome impediment that came between me and 
 my ideal of womanhood; and while I felt that the oppo- 
 sition was foolish and untrue, I had not the patience to
 
 MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 157 
 
 meet it fairly. It seemed to me too silly to need serious 
 attention. I knew it was wrong and I wanted to push it 
 away with one careless effort. I was like a man trying to 
 think a pig out of his cabbages, and when I took up a stone 
 to throw, I threw it passionately and altogether wide of 
 the mark. 
 
 "Seems to me like damned selfishness," I said. "What 
 about the unfortunate husband, anyway? Hasn't he got 
 any sort of claim to consideration?" 
 
 "That's only a particular case, you know," Hill said; 
 "but even so, there's a good deal to be said for her. I 
 gather that Hargreave was a sensualist. . . ." 
 
 "Do you mean that he was unfaithful to her?" I in- 
 terrupted. 
 
 "No, I don't," Hill said. "I believe she'd have excused 
 that." 
 
 "I don't like her," I said, with an air of having deliv- 
 ered an inalterable opinion. 
 
 Hill was smiling. "Perhaps not," he returned, "but it's 
 no use sticking at that like a jibbing mule. You won't stop 
 her by merely saying, 'Don't be silly.' She has got an argu- 
 ment. The movement has got an argument, and if they 
 overstate it, it's only for the sake of emphasis." 
 
 I mentally consigned the movement and Mrs. Hargreave 
 to perdition ; and then, at last, dared what I had been long- 
 ing to say for half an hour. 
 
 "But these two girls," I began resolutely. "I don't know 
 their names . . . ?" 
 
 "Helen and Judith," Hill suggested. 
 
 "Haven't they got surnames?" I asked. 
 
 "Oh ! Helen Binstead and Judith Carrington at least, 
 'Carrington' is her stage name. Her real name is Lillie, 
 but she had to suppress that." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Ran away from her guardian aunts. They still don't 
 know where she is. You were going to say?" 
 
 "Oh ! nothing particular. Are they looking for her ?" 
 
 "The aunts ? Yes, rather."
 
 158 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "But why did she run away ?" 
 
 Hill was watching me with that bantering smile of his. 
 "She had a pretty bad time with them," he said. 'They 
 were early- Victorian and pious, tremendously didactic, I 
 take it. They were so almighty sure, you know, that their 
 manners and methods were the only possible ones for all 
 eternity. And Judith didn't go to them until she was fif- 
 teen, when her mother died; her father had been dead a 
 long time. So, all the restraints of Victorianism came a 
 bit hard on her. However, she endured them for five 
 years." 
 
 "What made her run away in the end ?" I asked, and tried 
 to disguise as well as I could the craving of my interest. 
 
 "Helen, chiefly," Hill said. "Judith met her at the sea- 
 side, and they fell in love with one another in the way 
 girls do sometimes. They arranged the scheme between 
 them." 
 
 "How long ago was that?" 
 
 "Only last August," Hill replied. 
 
 "Do you think the aunts are likely to find her?" I asked 
 carelessly. 
 
 "Doesn't really make much difference if they do," Hill 
 said. "They can't compel her to go back. It's very hard 
 on them, of course." 
 
 "Hard on them?" I ejaculated. "You surely don't think 
 a girl like like Miss Carrington ought to be shut up 
 in that awful old-maidish atmosphere. You don't know 
 what it's like, my dear chap. I've suffered from it all my 
 life, and I've only just begun to realise it." 
 
 "Then you don't think it merely looks like 'damned self- 
 ishness' in Judith's case?" Hill put in slyly. 
 
 "Oh! surely, this is absolutely different from the Har- 
 greave case," I expostulated. 
 
 "Possibly. In some ways," Hill said. "But if there's 
 something to be said for Hargreave, there are points for 
 the aunts, too." 
 
 I was sure he was wrong, but my argument was not a
 
 MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 159 
 
 very sound one. "You're too good for me at dialectic," 
 I said at last. 
 
 "You've got no case," Hill replied. "I don't want to con- 
 found you, you know. I want to convince you." 
 
 I frowned over that for a few seconds before I said: 
 "That woman annoys me. She seems to have been so 
 unforgiveably selfish." 
 
 "But the same thing applies to Judith," Hill submitted. 
 
 "I haven't heard her case, yet not properly," I said. 
 "She may have had all sorts of reasons. . . ." 
 
 "So may Mrs. Hargreave. . . ." 
 
 "She looks an egotist," I retorted crossly. "And a 
 fanatic." 
 
 "Sheer prejudice," Hill returned. "Also, I find virtues 
 in her fanaticism." 
 
 I was annoyed, but not with Hill. There was a sin- 
 cerity about him that appealed to me. Moreover, I admired 
 him aesthetically. His poise was right, in some natural, 
 graceful way even the slight stoop of his head fell into 
 the composition and gratified my sense of appropriateness. 
 And yet the composure of his attitude expressed potential- 
 ity rather than inertia. He was alive. I could picture him 
 moved by a tremendous enthusiasm. His dark eyes glowed 
 with an earnestness very different from the thin, cool flame 
 of Mrs. Hargreave's fanaticism. 
 
 I drew him when I went back to my own room. I am better 
 at caricature than portraits, but that effort was a success. 
 I did it in soft pencil on "hot-pressed" paper, and, as hap- 
 pens sometimes, the thing just came of itself. I could see 
 every pencil mark on the paper before I put it in. 
 
 Afterwards I tried another portrait, a lamentable fail- 
 ure that made me furious with myself for the criminality 
 of the libel. Nothing was right except the delicious curve 
 of the hair over the left ear. And when I had burnt the 
 abomination with a sort of desperate spite, as if I were
 
 160 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 trying to inflict a really effective punishment on myself, I 
 found that my memory was as faulty as my draughtsman- 
 ship. The beautiful line of that one ripple of hair was 
 all that I could visualise. I could remember a host of indi- 
 vidual details and particularly a look of half-timid eager- 
 ness as if she shrank a little from pushing her enquiry too 
 far but the details would not blend into a single picture. 
 
 I tried again after lunch and then went out for a walk 
 down Oxford Street and across the Park into Kensington 
 Gardens. The afternoon was as clear and crisp as the 
 morning had been my father used to call that spell of fine 
 weather we so often get in October, "St. Luke's summer" 
 but the gardens did not fulfil my morning's anticipations 
 of the country. There was a worn and jaded air even 
 in the less frequented depths between the Round Pond 
 and the Serpentine (near the place where Watts's "Physical 
 Energy" now makes one quite sure that Art should never 
 be didactic) ; a feeling of dust and smoke and tired human- 
 ity. Indeed, the last was very much in evidence; and the 
 women especially seemed to me clumsy and tawdry; they 
 were none of them right, and I had a personal grudge 
 against them all for their lamentable failure to conform 
 to my ideal of what they ought to have been an ideal 
 that I could not formulate in words any better than I could 
 draw it on paper. 
 
 I was restless and unsatisfied; and quite unable, still, to 
 picture any single thing that would satisfy me. I went 
 back to my lodging after tea. I hated the thought of sit- 
 ting alone there, with nothing to do, but I could not stay 
 away. Keppel Street had an irresistible attraction for me. 
 I felt that every minute I stayed away from it I might be 
 losing some opportunity for what I had no idea. 
 
 I had not been in more than ten minutes when I heard 
 two people coming downstairs. I knew instantly that they 
 were Miss Binstead and the girl she had persuaded to 
 join her in that doubtful place. And when they paused 
 at the foot of the stairs I suffered an agony of nervousness, 
 fearing that they might knock at my door. My revulsion of
 
 MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 161 
 
 feeling when I heard them go out gave me courage to go 
 over to the window, and I saw them go by in the dusk; a 
 little hurriedly, I thought, as if they were conscious that 
 they might be watched. 
 
 I was very sure of one thing that evening, namely, that 
 I hated Miss Helen Binstead. I knew that she was my 
 enemy, and I loathed the thought that she would be continu- 
 ally construing every action and word of mine to my dis- 
 advantage. If I showed my face at the window, she would 
 report that I leered.
 
 VIII 
 PROGRESS 
 
 A BSORPTION by a single subject is bad for the mind. 
 <* I do not know if other people's experience is the same 
 as mine in this particular, but I have found that, if I study 
 a problem too earnestly, the problem presently takes the 
 upper hand. It begins as a detached thing that I can 
 regard from the outside, and ends by enveloping me. For- 
 tunately I always retain the ability to escape; the small 
 unanalysable capacity that separates the sane from the 
 obsessed. 
 
 The trouble that began to dominate me during the fort- 
 night that followed my Sunday morning in Hill's room 
 was my suspicion of Miss Binstead. I was right about 
 her up to a point, but I allowed my suspicion to grow be- 
 yond all reasonable bounds. I started, sanely enough, 
 by believing that she disliked me and that she meant, if pos- 
 sible, to prevent any intimacy between me and the girl whom 
 she had, in a sense, adopted. But I soon reached the absurd 
 position of regarding her as a kind of female devil, the 
 incarnation of malignancy. 
 
 I admit that my mental processes were all a trifle ab- 
 normal about that time. For one thing, I could not work, 
 and that irritated me. Until then I had always been able 
 to find relief in occupation. When I was most depressed 
 at the prospect of married life with my cousin, my work 
 had afforded me an outlet at the moment, and in my 
 thoughts>it had seemed to be the one thing to which I could 
 still look forward in the future I so gloomily pictured. 
 
 162
 
 PROGRESS 163 
 
 Now, my capacity for concentration had apparently de- 
 serted me. The task of finishing the drawings I was mak- 
 ing to illustrate the article on "The 1,000 House" I was 
 submitting to The Studio had lost all interest for me. I 
 could not lose myself in the detail of design. It was as 
 if some other thought continually besieged me, seeking an 
 entrance into my consciousness ; some thought that I could 
 not define. 
 
 For while I knew, and admitted to myself, that the per- 
 sonality of Judith Carrington had some peculiar and un- 
 precedented attraction for me, I had not reached the stage 
 of understanding that I was finally and irretrievably in love 
 with her. That supposition had an air of being somewhat 
 ridiculous in the circumstances. If I had been consciously 
 prepared to worship some woman, had deliberately sought 
 to involve myself in some romantic entanglement, I should 
 have nursed those first symptoms of mine, and should soon 
 have persuaded myself that I was the victim of a grand, 
 and probably hopeless, passion. 
 
 But, so far from having sought love, I had first seen 
 Judith when I was chafing at the bonds of my engagement 
 to Gladys, when the thought uppermost in my mind had 
 been the thought of cutting myself free from feminine con- 
 trol. During all that time the word "release" had seemed 
 the most blessed ^n the English language. And, no doubt, 
 something of that attitude still persisted. I should cer- 
 tainly have been alarmed at the thought of pledging my 
 freedom to any woman just then. 
 
 The explanation of my uneasiness that I took out and 
 exhibited to myself with a certain plausibility was the neces- 
 sity for vindicating my character. I had been accused by 
 Miss Binstead of being a woman-hunter. Neither Mrs. 
 Hargreave who had called me an old maid nor Hill was 
 the least influenced by that story of my attempt to accost 
 the two women on the doorstep. I was fairly sure that 
 Miss Binstead, herself, attached little importance to it. But 
 I believed that she was maintaining the fiction of my loose 
 life for her own purposes, and although only one person
 
 164 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 was likely to remain under any misconception by reason 
 of that slander, I told myself that I detested the thought 
 that any woman should have such a false opinion of me. 
 If the thing had stopped at the initial charge, I argued, 
 there would have been no reason for my disturbance of 
 mind I could have lived it down. But and it was here 
 that I was most convincing the horrid suspicion of me 
 was being added to, day by day. Whatever I did, could be 
 used as evidence against me. If I took no more notice 
 of Miss Binstead and her friend, it was proof that I was 
 ashamed of myself; if I attempted to explain myself, I 
 should be persisting according to that confounded woman 
 in my original beastliness. 
 
 All this may sound very foolish, but it was uncommonly 
 real to me at the time. The problem of outwitting Miss 
 Binstead began to envelope me. And, as I have said, it 
 interfered with my work. 
 
 II 
 
 During the first week of this growing obsession I looked 
 forward to the next Sunday morning and the rendezvous 
 in Hill's room. I hoped that I might at least have an 
 opportunity, then, to exhibit myself in my natural char- 
 acter. I pictured myself as being very earnest about my 
 profession; making a little dissertation on the future of 
 town-architecture, perhaps; and particularly as being ex- 
 tremely interesting and at the same time almost ostenta- 
 tiously free from any desire that did not tend towards 
 the benefit of humanity. I worked up a few figures about 
 slum property that had recently attracted my attention. 
 
 But Miss Binstead and her friend did not attend the 
 meeting of the "Sunday morning club" that day. They had 
 not gone out. Mrs. Hargreave came down with a mes- 
 sage to say that Helen had a headache and was not com- 
 ing; and Judith was presumably helping her friend to 
 nurse this chimerical ailment. Personally, I had no doubt 
 whatever that Miss Binstead was deliberately avoiding the'
 
 PROGRESS 165 
 
 possibility of meeting me ; and Hill was, I think, also of my 
 opinion. He looked up at me when Mrs. Hargreave deliv- 
 ered the message, as if he were about to make some com- 
 ment, and then one of the two Germans both Lippmann 
 and Herz were there interposed a remark and diverted 
 the conversation. 
 
 The talk that morning was all on the subject of music, 
 even Mrs. Hargreave found no opening and left after she 
 had been there twenty minutes or so. The stout Lippmann 
 was, it appeared, a very creditable performer on the 'cello, 
 and Herz (I found that he was the stumpy grey-haired 
 young man who wore a bowler with his frock-coat), al- 
 though he did not play any instrument, was evidently a 
 keen musician. 
 
 I was interested for a time, despite the acute disappoint- 
 ment and annoyance I was suffering. They were talking 
 of Wagner and of the gradual supersession of the impor- 
 tance of Bayreuth by the Munich performances. But soon 
 they began to discuss technicalities that I could not follow, 
 and when Lippmann went to fetch his 'cello in order 
 to illustrate an argument about some particular passage, 
 I made an excuse of work and went downstairs. 
 
 Little Herz made an apology to me. "You are, perhaps, 
 not interested in music," he said. 
 
 I assured him that I was, and, as a matter of fact, I 
 should certainly have stayed on if I had: not wanted to be 
 alone so that I might consider Miss Binstead's new rebuff 
 and a possible reply to it. 
 
 Herz was not a bad little chap, and I admired him and 
 Lippmann for their knowledge of and interest in music; 
 but directly the keenness of my attention was diverted from 
 their talk, I became restless and depressed; and the loud- 
 ness of their voices they argued the simplest point with 
 tremendous heat distracted and hurt me. 
 
 Nevertheless, when I was alone in my sitting-room, I 
 could almost have welcomed the diversion of their eager 
 argument. I felt so powerless. What could I do to break 
 down the influence of that mouse-coloured Helen? I de-
 
 166 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 vised wild plans to enlist Hill's assistance, and then shrank 
 from the idea of showing him that I cared. 
 
 I think that I came for the first time that morning to 
 the very verge of asking myself why I cared so much. 
 The apparent emptiness of Hill's crowded room was hardly 
 to be accounted for by a mere impatience to justify myself 
 to the absent Helen Binstead. I still tried diligently to 
 lay all accounts to that score, but I found the system in- 
 creasingly difficult. It would not convincingly explain the 
 sudden blankness which had come to me when Mrs. Har- 
 greave brought her message; nor the horrible restlessness 
 that possessed me. I could not think of my work, I could 
 not contemplate any possible or impossible occupation that 
 would afford me the least relief or satisfaction. 
 
 Just for one moment, however, I had a glimpse of some 
 surcease from this torment of unquiet in the thought of 
 paying a surprise visit to Rose Whiting. I pictured her 
 as protesting, antagonistic, even violent, and as setting my- 
 self the task of overcoming her resistance by appealing 
 to her sympathy. The picture had some dream quality, 
 inasmuch as I saw myself immune from ultimate reproach. 
 She was what she was, and, however unwilling to entertain 
 me, she had no drastic resort that could bring me to shame. 
 I should have, as it were, the escape of being able to 
 wake myself at any minute. It was not the contemplation 
 of any sensual satisfaction that drew me, but the longing 
 for some intense struggle of the spirit with a woman. I 
 craved for the expression of brutality. I wanted to hurt 
 Rose Whiting; and it was my understanding of that desire, 
 no less than the fear of my visit being reported on the 
 third floor, that really saved me from putting my mad 
 scheme into practice. A dreadful image of Rose Whiting, 
 smiling, avariciously complacent, set me wondering what 
 awful outlet I might seek for the satisfaction of my brute 
 lust. If her body were nothing to her, she would, at least, 
 defend her life. 
 
 I jammed on my hat and was half-way down the street 
 before I realised that it was raining heavily. I hesitated
 
 PROGRESS 167 
 
 and decided to go back for my umbrella. I could find pleas- 
 ure in the thought of outrage, but I could not face the sus- 
 picion of being eccentric, nor the small inconvenience of a 
 wetting. Civilisation lays such odd little snares for us. 
 
 I returned to the house for my overcoat and umbrella. 
 But when I had them and could face the criticism of 
 returning church-goers without a qualm, I could think of 
 nowhere to go. London on a Sunday and a wet Sunday 
 at that ! offers no temptations to the adventurous. 
 
 The memory of the Germans and their talk of music 
 brought me my first real relief. I had some lunch at Soho, 
 and walked all the way to the Carmelite Church at Kensing- 
 ton. In the evening I went to Farm Street. 
 
 in 
 
 I had succeeded in finding distraction for one day, but 
 the sense of being thwarted returned on Monday morning 
 and grew steadily worse during the week. All my resent- 
 ment focussed on Helen Binstead. She figured in my 
 thoughts as a subtly powerful and malignant enemy, but 
 I must insist that I was not a normal human being for 
 those few days. In my relations with the people I met and 
 spoke to, I was sane and ordinary enough. f I do not sup- 
 pose that any one I saw at that time noticed the least dif- 
 ference in me. I went down to Copsfield, for example, on 
 the Wednesday to measure up some of the work on Parkin- 
 son's house and give the builder his certificate; and while 
 I was occupied on that job, I could attend to it with my 
 usual capacity. But as soon as I was alone, in my rooms, 
 I returned to the contemplation of my grievance which 
 was coming to be the chief essential of the associations that 
 surrounded me in Keppel Street. 
 
 I had a weak, forlorn hope that I might see Helen Bin- 
 stead and her friend on the following Sunday they never 
 went past my window, now, always turning east when they 
 came out and I went up to Hill's room about twelve
 
 168 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 o'clock. I tried to postpone my visit to an even later hour. 
 I had some foolish idea that if by any chance "they" did go, 
 it would be a point in my favour that I should be very 
 late in putting in an appearance. My one idea of diplomacy, 
 now, was to pretend to be oblivious of their existence. And 
 then, after a cold, nervous morning spent in trying to fritter 
 away the time, I was suddenly panic-stricken by the thought 
 that "they" might leave before I arrived. 
 
 I found Hill alone. 
 
 "No meeting this morning?" I asked. 
 
 "Herz came in for half an hour," Hill said. "No one 
 else." He had been reading when I came in, but he shut 
 up his book and threw it on to the table, and I knew by 
 the serious, questioning look he turned upon me that he 
 was ready to talk to me about the one subject I wished most 
 to discuss. 
 
 "I'm afraid I'm the Jonah," I said, as carelessly as I 
 could. "You'd better send a notice round to say that I've 
 been black-balled by the president." 
 
 Hill looked, I thought, a little uneasy. "It's only Helen, 
 you know," he said. "Just a chance the others didn't come 
 in this morning. Mrs. Hargreave is away, and Lippmann 
 has gone to see some musical friends at Sydenham. . . ." 
 His inflexion left the sentence open for my return to his 
 first statement. 
 
 "Yes, she's taken a fierce dislike to me for some reason," 
 I said, and made a foolish, neighing sort of sound that 
 was meant for a laugh. 
 
 Hill frowned. "It's quite natural that you . . ." he be- 
 gan, but I interrupted him with a wilful misunderstanding. 
 
 "Perfectly natural that she should loathe the sight of 
 me," I said, and only just succeeded in cutting off a repe- 
 tition of that tittering laugh. "I'm quite ready to admit it. 
 I only came up to tender my resignation. I waited until 
 I thought they'd be all gone." 
 
 Hill knew that that was a lie, but he evidently found 
 an excuse for me. 
 
 "You seem to have been rather badly hit," he said.
 
 PROGRESS 169 
 
 I really misunderstood him that time. "Oh ! no !" I said, 
 trying to get an effect of contempt into my voice. "It's 
 it's rather riling, that's all. All this fuss, I mean, about 
 nothing. I don't care a curse what Miss Binstead thinks 
 of me I wish you would tell her so but I can't help feel- 
 ing that she's making a ridiculous ..." I could find noth- 
 ing better than my original "fuss about nothing." 
 
 Hill shook his head. , "Don't be an ass, Hornby," he said. 
 "You must surely know that that isn't the point at all." 
 
 "I don't," was all the answer I found. "Really, I don't," 
 I repeated in a cooler tone. Something in his voice had 
 stimulated my curiosity. 
 
 "You must have known that Helen is not that kind of 
 woman," he said, and then added, as it seemed quite a long 
 time afterwards, "normally." 
 
 "Is she ever normal?" I asked. 
 
 "It is this amazing friendship passion that has made 
 such a difference to her," Hill explained. 
 
 "What passion?" I put in. 
 
 "For Judith," he said. 
 
 "I didn't know," I remarked lamely. I had no idea 
 what he meant. 
 
 "It happens fairly often," Hill went on. "At girls' 
 schools it's common enough to be used by novelists as a 
 certain hit; but they're a bit shy of things like this Helen- 
 Judith affair. I don't know why they should be." 
 
 I was still at sea and must have showed it in my face, 
 for Hill laughed and said : "Perhaps your evident failure 
 to grasp the idea is sufficient explanation of the novelists' 
 omission. You're typical, perhaps, of the ordinary reader 
 the reader who pays. It never does to puzzle him. The 
 thing he no, she, I fancy can't recognise at sight isn't 
 true for the purposes of fiction." 
 
 "But but what is it?" I asked, in the tone of one cau- 
 tiously and distantly observing some unpleasant insect. I 
 had an idea that there was a mystery behind all this sug- 
 gestion of Hill's. He had used the word "passion," and I 
 found it horribly repulsive in this connection.
 
 170 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 Hill smiled. "You needn't be upset about it," he said. 
 "It's quite clean; respectable even. You see, Helen is not 
 the type of woman who attracts a man. She's very clever ; 
 if she'd been better looking or a great deal uglier, she'd 
 have made a success as an actress. In fact, she did make 
 some kind of a hit, three years ago, in that thing of Mark- 
 ley's 'The Further Side.' I don't know if you saw it. 
 Well, anyway, she isn't the sort of girl a man falls in 
 love with, and she has been starved, if you know what I 
 mean, on that side. And she appealed to Judith. Judith 
 did fall in love with her in one sense. Helen was new to 
 her in every way; new ideas and so on. And then there 
 was the inevitable glamour of the stage. Judith might 
 have taken to Mrs. Hargreave in much the same way if 
 she'd happened to turn up just then instead of Helen. And, 
 of course, all this devotion and admiration was the purest 
 balm to Helen you can understand that. . . ." 
 
 I was beginning to understand well enough to ask a 
 further question. 
 
 "Yes. That's all right," I said. "But, for the life of me, 
 I can't see how it explains Miss Binstead's loathing for 
 myself." 
 
 "Jealous, my dear chap," Hill said. 
 
 "What?" I gasped. "Jealous? Of me?" Surely, the 
 devotion she had inspired had brought Helen Binstead no 
 such balm as that suggestion brought to me just then. I 
 realised the absurdity of Hill's statement, but it was enough 
 for the moment that he should have made it. 
 
 "Of you or any man," he hedged. 
 
 "Does she loathe you too, then?" I asked, finding new 
 inspiration in his amendment. 
 
 "No, no. She's clever enough to to make distinctions," 
 he said. 
 
 "On what grounds?" I pressed him. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. "Of course she saw from 
 the beginning that you were going to fall in love with 
 Judith," he said.
 
 PROGRESS 171 
 
 "Oh ! bosh !" I ejaculated. "I mean I didn't. I haven't. 
 I I'm not likely to." 
 
 "Well, she thought you were," Hill returned. "And 
 that's the important point." 
 
 I wavered between a desire to repeat my disavowal and 
 an inclination to attack Miss Binstead's premature conclu- 
 sions, before I gave expression almost instinctively to the 
 thought that was now pressing into the foreground of my 
 consciousness. 
 
 "But it's so absurd," I said. "I mean that she Miss 
 Carrington has never given her any grounds for . . . sup- 
 posing that . . ." 
 
 Hill waited for me to finish, and when I resolutely shut 
 my mouth and refused to commit myself any further, he 
 looked at me with that hint of banter in his face he had 
 shown once or twice previously. 
 
 "How do you know ?" he asked. 
 
 I sniffed my claims to recognition out of existence. 
 
 "Why should she ?" I returned. 
 
 "Tall, well-set-up young man, with a touch of the aristo- 
 cratic manner . . . rather appealing blue eyes . . ." Hill 
 was continuing his inventory when I cut him short by ask- 
 ing him not to be an infernal ass. 
 
 "We rather liked the look of you, at first," he went 
 on, "in spite of your brass plate and your haughty air 
 of aloofness." 
 
 "Rot!" I said. "I was confoundedly shy." 
 
 "We hoped it might be that, until the incident on the 
 front steps," Hill replied. 
 
 I was getting a very unexpected picture of Wilfred 
 Hornby. I had never attempted to see myself on broad 
 lines in relation to the other occupants of the house. I had 
 been interested in watching them through my window ; but 
 it had never occurred to me that they were not only watch- 
 ing but also discussing me. And I could not avoid the 
 feeling that what Hill had said had been in some way flat- 
 tering. I took up that rather than his reference to my dis- 
 astrous mistake when I replied :
 
 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "It really was nervousness. I wanted tremendously to 
 know you. I used to watch you going by. I thought you 
 were an artist." That was not quite a true statement, but 
 I made it in all sincerity. I had temporarily forgotten my 
 first resolution to have nothing to do with my fellow lodg- 
 ers. I did not realise how amazingly I had already entered 
 into the life of the house. 
 
 Hill's smile was delightfully frank. "I boasted that I 
 should have you up here before long," he said. 
 
 "And now you're sorry," I put in. 
 
 "Oh ! we must get over this misunderstanding," he said. 
 
 "Pretty difficult," I remarked thoughtfully. "The way 
 you see the thing, it isn't a question of getting over an initial 
 prejudice, so far as Miss Binstead is concerned, so much 
 as ... as ..." 
 
 "Challenging her right to the supreme possession of Ju- 
 dith," Hill suggested. 
 
 "But I don't want ..." I began. 
 
 "No, so you said," he returned. "We'll take that for 
 granted. But there is a way. . . ." 
 
 "Which is ... ?" I prompted him. 
 
 "Get hold of Judith." 
 
 I knew a dozen reasons why that was impossible; but 
 Hill would not listen to them. 
 
 "She's quite an independent minded young woman," he 
 interrupted. "She's quiet, but you needn't imagine that she 
 just sits still and lets Helen order her about." 
 
 "She probably hates me, though," I insisted. 
 
 "She doesn't," Hill said. 
 
 "How do you know?" I begged him. 
 
 "She and I were talking about you at the theatre, last 
 night; Helen wasn't there." 
 
 "And what did she say?" 
 
 "Only that it was a pity Helen had taken such a dis- 
 like to you. As a matter of fact, I believe Helen has 
 made the mistake of overdoing it rather, and put Judith's 
 back up." 
 
 Everything was taking a new shape for me, the house
 
 PROGRESS 173 
 
 and its inhabitants; and more particularly the personality 
 of Helen Binstead. I saw her no longer as an all-powerful, 
 malignant spirit, but with a faint twinge of pity as a 
 rather desolate, desperate woman. 
 
 IV 
 
 Hill did not suggest any method for putting his advice 
 into practice, and I shrank from framing a direct question. 
 I felt that I could not ask him how it would be pos- 
 sible for me to meet Judith without Helen. But when I 
 went downstairs, I went with a light heart. The prospect 
 had been opened for me; it was no longer hidden by the 
 enormous obstacle of my obsession. The figure of Helen 
 Binstead had shrunk to life size. Moreover, she no longer 
 confronted me, as I had fearfully imagined, with all the 
 forces arrayed on her side. Hill was certainly with me; 
 and he had given me a delicious hope that Judith was, at 
 least, not fighting against me. 
 
 I was more or less content to leave my analysis at that 
 point. I would not frankly admit, as yet, that I had any 
 motive beyond the clearing of my character. That mo- 
 tive was quite insufficient to explain my recent emotions 
 or my resolutions for the future, but for a little while 
 longer I persuaded myself that I was a free man. 
 
 As to resolutions, however, I had nothing that could be 
 called a plan. I left the future to Fate ; and Fate rewarded 
 my confidence in her roundabout, unexpected way, by send- 
 ing me a mysterious visitor who seemed to have no sort 
 of connection with my affairs. 
 
 He came about four o'clock that same afternoon. Mr. 
 Pferdminger opened the door and showed him straight into 
 my room with the announcement, "A gentleman to see you, 
 Mr. Hornby." 
 
 He was a well-dressed, professional looking man; and 
 even as I stood up, I tried to soften that "what-the-devil" 
 air which I was so apt to put on with strangers. I had a 
 wild, impulsive hope that this might be an unexpected client.
 
 174 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "Mr. Hornby?" the stranger asked. He was obviously 
 nervous. I recognised his type at once; I had seen his 
 likeness in one of our church-wardens at Hampstead. 
 
 "Yes, my name is Hornby," I said, trying not to be too 
 stiff. "Won't you sit down?" 
 
 He thanked me, fumbled for a moment with his top 
 hat and gloves, and then took a chair by the table. 
 
 I think I had begun to have my suspicions of him even 
 then. His manner was not that of a man who had come 
 to offer his patronage. And I had a queer prejudice against 
 some effect of his clothes. I cannot say quite what it was ; 
 perhaps the stiff straightness of his striped trousers, or 
 the pearl buttons on the cloth uppers of his patent leather 
 boots. 
 
 "You want to see me?" I prompted him. "I don't think 
 I remember you. . . ." 
 
 "No, no, I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you be- 
 fore," he began bravely, supported by the obvious correcti- 
 tude of the opening. "The fact is I'm afraid this is a 
 rather unconventional call. You must forgive me. . . . 
 I ..." He dropped his voice and mumbled something, of 
 which I only caught the word "distressing." 
 
 I did not help him, and he evidently found the task of 
 explaining his call an exceedingly embarrassing one. He 
 looked down, frowned, and tapped with his fingers on the 
 table. He kept his gaze fixed on his finger exercises as he 
 continued: "The fact is ... I don't know if you've been 
 long in this house . . . perhaps you don't know any of the 
 other residents ?" 
 
 He waited, without looking up, for my reply. 
 
 "Some of them," I said. 
 
 "You may have met a Mrs. Hargreave?" he suggested, 
 still staring at the tablecloth. 
 
 "Yes," I agreed tepidly. 
 
 And then the colour of his rather ruddy face deepened 
 to purple, he threw himself on my mercy. 
 
 "I am her husband," he said, and I think if he had looked 
 at me honestly I might have been sorry for him. I had
 
 PROGRESS 175 
 
 certainly championed his cause in that talk with Hill; but 
 he looked so prosperous, and yet so furtive, that I could 
 not, now, bring myself to pity him. 
 
 "I know Mrs. Hargreave very slightly," I said. 
 
 "Oh! precisely, I quite understand that," he returned. 
 "And I don't suppose for a moment that you know any- 
 thing about her history." 
 
 "I know something," I said. 
 
 "You know that she deserted me and our children," 
 he said in a low, solemn voice. 
 
 My annoyance with the man was steadily growing. "A 
 friend of mine told me something of the kind," I admitted, 
 "but really I don't know what it has got to do with me." 
 
 "I suppose she has a great many friends in the house?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "I don't know," I said. 
 
 "Are the other people here mostly women?" 
 
 I believe I had some vague idea of defending the char- 
 acter of the house when I replied: "Oh! dear, no! mostly 
 men." 
 
 Hargreave nodded thoughtfully. "Keppel Street, of 
 course, has a bad name," he said, "but it doesn't follow that 
 every house in it . . ." 
 
 He obviously meant me to help him out of that, but I 
 preferred to keep silence. 
 
 He waited a moment or two before he went on : "I hope 
 you will forgive me, Mr. Hornby; I know how unconven- 
 tional all this must seem to you. I am truly sorry to be 
 disturbing you like this. But would you mind answering 
 one question? Would you mind telling me if Mrs. Har- 
 greave receives many visitors here er in the evening, for 
 instance? I don't mean to imply that you would know 
 such a thing I admit it is impertinent to ask you, at all 
 except for the fact of your your position in the house, 
 I mean . . . your window ... so near the front door, 
 and so on." 
 
 I thought his trouble had slightly turned his brain, but 
 I was still unable to summon up the least feeling of sym-
 
 176 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 pathy with his distress. My only wish was to be rid of 
 him. I stood up. 
 
 "I'm sorry I can't help you," I said. "When I am at the 
 window, I am always working, and I don't keep any sort 
 of watch on the front doer." 
 
 He got to his feet, also, and began to collect his be- 
 longings. "Then you've no idea?" he said, as he began 
 his retreat to the hall. 
 
 "Absolutely none," I said, and showed him out. 
 
 On reflection I decided that the man was jealous; and 
 that was the explanation I put forward when I told the 
 story to Hill, whom I caught in the hall a few minutes after 
 Hargreave had gone. 
 
 Hill was in' a hurry. He was going down to Fleet Street 
 with his notice of the first performance he had attended 
 the night before, and he agreed without consideration. "I'll 
 tell Mrs. H. when she comes back," he said, as he went out. 
 
 I had a re-action that evening after tea. 
 
 I liked Hill, and we had made, I thought, a great ad- 
 vance towards friendship that morning, but I blamed him 
 for being too casual. I began to think over that reported 
 fragment of conversation at the theatre, and wondered why 
 it should have been so inconclusive. If they were agreed 
 that Miss Binstead was being silly about me, why had not 
 Miss Carrington come down to Hill's room? Why had 
 not Hill urged her to come? As far as I could see, the 
 present state of affairs might go on indefinitely. 
 
 Also, for some reason that I did not care to examine, 
 I was a little uneasy concerning Miss Carrington's friend- 
 ship wjth Hill. He seemed to be very much in her con- 
 fidence. Helen Binstead was not jealous of him, but cer- 
 tainly her judgments were not infallible. It was absurd 
 that she should be jealous of me. If she were jealous? 
 After all, it was quite probable that my original judgment 
 was correct, that she had taken a violent dislike to me, 
 and deliberately encouraged her hatred by continually mis- 
 reading my actions and what she judged to be my inten- 
 tions.
 
 PROGRESS 177 
 
 As to the Hargreaves, I was inclined to dismiss them 
 from my thoughts. I had decided, like Alice, that "they 
 were both very unpleasant characters." 
 
 I was back in my shell again that evening. 
 
 I had new lights on the Hargreave case two days later. 
 Mrs. Hargreave came down to my room after tea. I was 
 working, but she made no apology for interrupting me, al- 
 though I stood by my drawing-board, pencil in hand, waiting 
 for her to explain the object of her visit. 
 
 "I hear that my husband has been to see you," she began, 
 and sat down with a confidence that entirely ignored my 
 occupation. 
 
 "Yes, he came in Sunday," I replied snappishly. 
 
 "To ask questions about me?" 
 
 "Yes," I said, and by way of usefully rilling the time 
 I sharpened my pencil. 
 
 "Is your work very important, Mr. Hornby?" was her 
 next question. 
 
 I made a little doubtful noise that might have meant 
 anything. 
 
 "Or were your sympathies engaged by my husband's 
 grievances ?" she went on, with a faint air of chaffing me. 
 
 "They most certainly were not," I replied with emphasis. 
 
 "You didn't like him?" she asked, pretending surprise. 
 
 "No," I said. 
 
 "But you think 7 ought to?" 
 
 I shrugged my shoulders. "I can not see what your 
 matrimonial troubles have to do with me," I said. 
 
 She smiled. "You don't believe in helping other people ?" 
 she remarked, and something in her tone reminded me 
 that I had recently been blaming Hill for not helping me 
 in the Binstead affair. 
 
 "Oh ! well, no ; it isn't that exactly," I said. 
 
 "But . . ." she helped me.
 
 178 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 I was not sure, but it seemed safe to suggest that hers 
 was not a case in which I cared to take one side or the 
 other. 
 
 "I may take it that you didn't answer my husband's ques- 
 tions, then?" she said. 
 
 "I did not," I returned. "I was distinctly rude to him." 
 
 "Yes. I can believe that," she commented thoughtfully. 
 
 "I don't think I'm usually rude to people," I asserted, but 
 she took no notice of that. 
 
 "Did you snub him out of existence at once," she went 
 on, "or did you get any idea of what he wanted to know 
 about me?" 
 
 "I inferred that he was jealous," I said. "He asked me 
 if you had many visitors in the evening and that sort of 
 thing; and I told him I had no idea. He seemed to think 
 that I spend my time watching the front door." 
 
 "He wants to divorce me, you see," Mrs. Hargreave 
 explained. 
 
 I was startled into a new interest. "Well, you wouldn't 
 be sorry if he did, would you?" I asked. 
 
 "How very unconventional of you," she said with a 
 laugh. 
 
 I had not thought of that. "But you want to be free, 
 don't you ?" I asked. 
 
 "Not on those terms," she told me, and then continued: 
 "But as you've said, it has nothing to do with you." 
 
 "I'm interested, nevertheless," I said. 
 
 "You're an odd mixture, Mr. Hornby," she returned; 
 "a cross between a live human being and the bundles of 
 convention that generally try to pass themselves off as live 
 people. Do you think you've a chance of being born soon, 
 or are you trying to shut yourself tighte'r into your coffin 
 or whatever you call it?" 
 
 I found that question worth a moment's consideration. 
 I had not adopted my metaphor at that time, but I was 
 dimly aware of some change that was taking place in me. 
 
 "I think I've altered a good deal since I came to this 
 house," I said.
 
 PROGRESS 179 
 
 Mrs. Hargreave nodded encouragingly. "It's a queer lit- 
 tle world, this house," she agreed. "Queerer than I thought 
 if it's bringing you out of your shell," she added. 
 
 I came back to a contemplation of that remark after- 
 wards, but at the time I was too anxious to divert the 
 conversation from this criticism of myself to take any 
 notice. 
 
 "I don't see why you object to Mr. Hargreave wanting 
 to ..." I began, and hesitated. Any frank statement 
 seemed, I thought, too brutal. 
 
 "To divorce me ?" she put in calmly. 
 
 I nodded. "You want your freedom, don't you ?" I said. 
 
 She had been so sane and quiet up to this point that 
 I had completely forgotten her tirade upstairs after the 
 Whiting business. 
 
 "I suppose men of your sort will never understand our 
 position," she said in a new tone, and before I could cut 
 her off, she began again on the admittedly hopeless task 
 of enlightening me. 
 
 I can understand her, now, but sane and reasonable as 
 her "principle" now appears to me, she was, I must admit, 
 a very unconvincing pleader. She was so dogmatic and 
 so restricted when she mounted that platform. She would 
 not permit the hint of any alternative to her doctrine. She 
 belonged to the older woman's rights school, and was one 
 of those who carried over their fanaticism into the "Mili- 
 tant Suffragette" movement. 
 
 Her "right," as she put it to me that evening, was the 
 right of occupation and self-expression. She had done with 
 child-bearing, and she did not ask for sexual love, or for 
 sexual admiration. She demanded possibilities for the free- 
 ing of her individuality, but she would not accept them 
 at the cost of admitting herself in the wrong. That, in- 
 deed, was her "principle." 
 
 "My husband can only imagine one reason for my leav- 
 ing him," she said; "the only reason that would appeal to 
 him." (Incidentally, I believed that.) "So, now, he wants 
 to make things easy for himself he wants to marry again,
 
 180 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 of course by divorcing me. And why should I confess 
 to a weakness of that kind? I would acknowledge it in 
 a moment, if I had it, but I'm not going to put myself 
 in the wrong just to satisfy his sexual cravings." 
 
 She had no sort of sympathy with her husband, and I 
 still think that she was wrong in that exclusion. She was 
 so fanatic when it came to any attack on that tremendous 
 "right" of hers. She clenched her mind, as it were, in 
 a final resolution never to give one least advantage to all 
 that immense mass of opinion which was embodied for 
 her in the person of Hargreave. She was of the stuff that 
 makes martyrs, but some martyrs are merely pig-headed. 
 
 The effect of her argument upon me was to put my back 
 up. Women were putting men's backs up even then, some 
 years before they made a regular profession of it. And 
 I should probably have attempted some perfectly useless 
 defence if we had not been interrupted by a tap at the 
 door. 
 
 Mrs. Hargreave did not hear it, and it is possible that my 
 "Come in" was also inaudible above the steady eloquence 
 of her exposition, but she stopped when the door opened. 
 I think it must have been the change of expression in my 
 face and attitude that startled her. 
 
 VI 
 
 I received a smile that I counted as my first the other 
 was not meant for me and then she turned to Mrs. Har- 
 greave, who was now looking round over her shoulder, 
 and said : "I suppose you've completely forgotten that you're 
 taking me to the theatre to-night?" 
 
 Mrs. Hargreave got up at once. "My dear, is it so late ?" 
 she said. "Mr. Hornby and I have been arguing." (I had 
 not said a word since she had opened her pet subject.) 
 "Wait for me while I just go upstairs. It will do if I 
 change my blouse, I suppose ? Where's Helen ?" 
 
 "She's up there," Judith said. "We've been quarrelling, 
 rather."
 
 PROGRESS 181 
 
 I had an instant's hope that I was the subject of it. 
 And here was my longed for opportunity: Mrs. Hargreave 
 had gone and I was alone with Judith and free to make 
 any explanation I wished. And I had not a word to say. 
 I had not an idea how to begin the most formal con- 
 versation. 
 
 "She is rather splendid, isn't she?" Judith said. The 
 door was still open and she sat down near it in a desolate, 
 unfriendly chair that had been left alone to furnish that 
 bleak corner. 
 
 "Mrs. Hargreave? Oh! yes, rather," I said. 
 
 "She is so tremendously in earnest." 
 
 I repeated my former remark. 
 
 After that came a silence that began to grow embar- 
 rassing. I was standing up by my drawing-board and the 
 whole length of the room separated us, but I was afraid 
 to move. 
 
 "I'm interrupting you," she said after a tense interval. 
 "Do go on working." 
 
 "Oh! no! I'm not," I said eagerly. "I wasn't working 
 when you came in, I mean." 
 
 She was almost invisible in the shadow of her corner by 
 the door, and I wished that I could get over to the hearth- 
 rug, but I felt unequal to that undertaking. I found some 
 small consolation in the reflection that it was her turn 
 to speak. 
 
 "We're going to see 'Zaza,' " she said. "Do you know 
 it?" 
 
 "No, I don't," I replied. "I've heard it's rather good." 
 
 "Mrs. Hargreave has only got two seats. That's why 
 Miss Binstead isn't coming," she explained inconsequently. 
 
 I made my first sane comment then by saying: "Your 
 quarrel wasn't serious?" 
 
 She laughed. "Oh! no," she assured me. 
 
 It was an opening. I had only to say that I was afraid 
 Miss Binstead didn't like me, and the thing was prac- 
 tically done. Instead of that I said:
 
 182 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "You go to the theatre pretty often, I suppose?" 
 
 "Whenever I can," she replied. 
 
 And the precious remainder of that solemn ten min- 
 utes was spent in bandying the stupid clinches of a suburban 
 tea-party. 
 
 VII 
 
 I was not alone with her again for six weeks. I have 
 a strong inclination to jump that interval. I am hampered 
 again by my characteristic distaste for speaking or writing 
 of things that touch some tender pride of my inner life. 
 
 I could not discuss my brief religious ecstasy with my 
 mother. I was afraid of exposing it to the least criticism, 
 even though that criticism took the form of mistaken praise. 
 I knew that my mother would translate my emotions into 
 the terms of her own worship, and I was as sensitive as 
 any artist who dreads that the meaning of his work will be 
 misinterpreted. I was so keenly aware of the beauty of my 
 own emotions that I dared not express them. 
 
 My disinclination to speak of my engagement to Gladys 
 in the presence of Geddes, or Kemplay, or Horton-Smith 
 was another symptom of the same weakness. I knew that 
 the strained exaggeration of the stereotyped phrases we use 
 to describe beauty would not produce a true impression upon 
 their minds. It was not that I was afraid to do Gladys 
 any injustice, my feeling was still personal ; egotistical per- 
 haps. Her beauty was the thing 7 saw. In a sense I had 
 created it by my vision of her. If Geddes, for example, 
 had met and admired her, he would still have failed to 
 appreciate the work of art I treasured in my own mind. 
 Gladys, however, herself destroyed that illusion and set me 
 free to describe her. After my image had been broken, I 
 saw her with even more critical eyes than Geddes would 
 have brought to his appraisal. In the same way, when my 
 religious ecstasy faded I could smile a little tenderly, 
 nevertheless at my exhausted emotion of worship. But,
 
 PROGRESS 183 
 
 now, I have a treasure of beauty that fills my whole life, 
 and I dread to belittle it by the weakness of my artistry. 
 
 Indeed, I am not a true artist. I have the power of 
 conception, but not of creation. In my drawing, as in my 
 writing, I present but the pale, weak model of my desire. 
 
 And in this thing that I am now stumbling at, there is, 
 in fact, no medium which would portray my thought of 
 Judith clear and whole. I can at the best only suggest 
 an outline which will take shape in the reader's mind as 
 the figure or index of a type. It is so futile to write that 
 the colour of her eyes was a live, clear grey; that her hair 
 was brown with a kind of petulant twist which asserted its 
 individuality against the most patient endeavour of any 
 hair-dresser; that her nose was straight and rather long; 
 or that her teeth were white as the sudden foam on a 
 dark sea. 
 
 Such a foolish catalogue as this, however prolonged, 
 gives no effect of the particular quality her beauty had 
 for me. Another woman might have her features and 
 colouring and fail completely to attract my notice I might 
 even criticise such a woman ; say that she was plain. Per- 
 haps Judith may be plain. If there is some idealised abso- 
 lute of feminine beauty, I can very well understand that 
 she would fail to pass the test such an ideal would im- 
 pose. Men do not turn to look after her in the street. 
 
 But to me, from that moment she turned and unknowingly 
 smiled up at my window, she was the perfect woman. And 
 I knew it without any further possible shadow of doubt 
 from the time she sat on that lonely chair by the door, 
 and the two of us, nervous and trembling, approached the 
 knowledge that this was a meeting beyond any remem- 
 bered experience. We talked nonsense, and I am glad, 
 now, to remember how foolish I was. I had come all un- 
 prepared into the presence of something that was wonder- 
 ful and eternal, something out of space and time; and I 
 feel that it was appropriate that I should have blushed and 
 stammered and confessed my ineptitude. 
 
 And most certainly I could neither have drawn her that
 
 184 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 evening, nor have told the colour of her eyes, nor whether 
 her nose was long or short. 
 
 What could it matter how she looked? 
 
 She was Judith,
 
 IX 
 
 THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 
 
 THE general impression of those six weeks remains in 
 my mind now with something like the effect of a train 
 journey. My attention was continually being snatched by 
 the incidents of every-day life, and some of them come 
 back to me with the vividness of a scene observed through 
 a window. But the dominant effect is of my longing to 
 get to the journey's end. I was travelling towards some 
 goal that I could not visualise, but that was undoubtedly a 
 resting place; and until I reached it all else was nothing 
 but a momentary distraction. 
 
 I cannot, however, fit my occasional sights of Judith into 
 the metaphor. They constituted stopping-places that have 
 no parallel in the tedious movement of a train journey. For 
 it was, indeed, only during those short hours when I was 
 no longer conscious of travel that I made any real prog- 
 ress although there were times when those intervals seemed 
 to indicate that I was flying horribly backwards. 
 
 I was groping, then, in the black darkness that surrounds 
 the unintuitive young lover; or it may be, rather, that I 
 was too intuitive and that my intuitions springing from a 
 purely masculine psychology were, now and then, gro- 
 tesquely false. Certainly, my deductions could not have 
 been influenced by any sane logic. I was immensely en- 
 couraged or disheartened by the most trivial suggestions; 
 and in some instances I completely overlooked indications 
 that had a real significance. 
 
 185
 
 186 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 Helen Binstead was the chief cause of my misinterpre- 
 tations. I had, happily, lost my obsession concerning her 
 omnipotence for evil, but I still recognised that she was 
 my one important enemy and in that inference, at least, 
 I was not deceived. Where I made so important a mis- 
 take was in my failure to understand her relations with 
 Judith. 
 
 Writing, now, with a more or less clear explanation 
 of those once mysterious signs, I can smile at my own blind- 
 ness; but as I enter again into the feelings I experienced 
 during that six weeks, I know that it was impossible I 
 should have interpreted what I took for evidence, in any 
 other way. 
 
 II 
 
 Judith and Helen Binstead were in Hill's room on the 
 Sunday following our first tete-a-tete. I had seen Mrs. 
 Hargreave again in the interval, but she was not there that 
 morning. There were, however, three other people present 
 besides Hill, himself: namely, an actor and his wife and 
 little Herz. The actor I have forgotten his name was 
 playing at a West End theatre, and he had been invited 
 to meet Judith, with the idea as I soon learnt with a 
 strange twinge of dismay of helping her to obtain an en- 
 gagement in a travelling company that was going out after 
 Christmas with the piece that he was playing in at, I think 
 it was, the Criterion. 
 
 The actor was a smallish man with a good deal of man- 
 ner, and I wondered what influence he could possibly have 
 in recommending Miss Carrington. He was quite unknown 
 to me by name, and dropped out of the theatrical world 
 years ago, but it appeared that he was a popular member 
 of a club called the "Green Room" in Leicester Square, 
 and that quite a lot of theatrical log-rolling was done from 
 that centre. 
 
 His wife was a tall, elaborate looking woman with a 
 collection of handsome features that did not harmonise well
 
 THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 187 
 
 when they were seen at close quarters, but might have 
 been effective on the stage. I do not remember that she 
 added much to the conversation, but she went in for ex- 
 pressive gesture on suitable occasions, and had a habit 
 of commenting on Hill's stories he told several that morn- 
 ing a propos of stage life by staring immensely into the 
 circumambient and saying "Isn't that Rich!" in a voice 
 that was meant to exhibit the amazing depths of her 
 appreciation. 
 
 I sat on a pile of books by the wall and said nothing. 
 I was out of my element and knew it, but I was always 
 dumb in Judith's presence after that first bright exception 
 on the day of our introduction. What I longed to say was 
 that life in a provincial touring company was quite unsuit- 
 able for Miss Carrington, but I had not the courage for 
 that. So I kept silence and watched her when I dared. 
 
 Curiously enough my chief source of encouragement was 
 at the same time a cause of uneasiness on another score. 
 Judith herself responded with very little warmth to the 
 actor's bustling assurance that he could certainly get her 
 the part. He pretended a kind of examination, at first, 
 and I loathed the way he looked at her, but he cut that 
 piece of acting very quickly, and came to the part he found 
 more sympathetic : to the playing of the patron and man 
 of influence. (I can see his spruce little figure, now; he 
 was dressed in a grey suit that had an appearance of being 
 sharp at the edges, with a little black and white check bow 
 that perked neatly out of his double collar; and lavender 
 suede gloves that he kept in his hand and used to gesticu- 
 late with. And his boots were quite the richest brown I 
 have ever seen.) 
 
 I was delighted that his boast of patronage produced so 
 little effect upon Miss Carrington, but I wished that her 
 rather cool reception of his assurances had been due to 
 another cause. For after she had thanked him, she made 
 it plain that she would not accept the part unless there were 
 a place for Helen in the same company. 
 
 I wish I could describe the way she spoke. Her voice
 
 188 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 and manner contrasted so delightfully with the glib insin- 
 cerity of the actor and his wife and Helen Binstead, too, 
 had caught something of that theatrical intensity which 
 can give a false value to the simplest expression. But Ju- 
 dith, even then, had an earnestness that showed through 
 her girlish embarrassment. She blushed when she answered 
 the man, and she did not use words like "awfully" or 
 "frightfully." Her speech had been pruned by those two old 
 Puritans with whom she had lived for five years ; and if 
 her zest for life had been strong enough to revolt against 
 confinement within those little spaces to which they would 
 have restricted her, something of their influence, perhaps 
 of their timidity, still remained with her. 
 
 The actor pursed his mouth and thoughtfully smacked 
 his left hand with his gloves. 
 
 "If we could find a part for Miss Binstead?" he repeated. 
 "There isn't one at present, but I might get hold of the 
 author and ask him to write one in for her." 
 
 Helen's eyes glowed at him not less than her speech, but 
 I saw Hill's smile and knew by that how grotesque had 
 been the little man's boast. 
 
 "Get him to write a play for them while you're about 
 it," Hill put in. 
 
 "I happen to know him very well, you know," the actor 
 went on, quite unruffled. "In fact, in a way I discovered 
 him. Gave him his first chance, and he hasn't forgotten 
 it. And, besides that, I've helped him with his stage tech- 
 nique. He's a clever chap, but simply knew nothing about 
 the stage when he began to write." 
 
 (He mentioned the author's name at least four times dur- 
 ing that speech, but I prefer not to repeat it.) 
 
 "If you could find a part for Miss Binstead ?" Judith put 
 in when she found a chance. "Even an understudy . . ." 
 
 "Ah !" the little actor man interrupted. "An understudy ! 
 What do you think, Delia?" 
 
 "For Mrs. Henniker?" his wife answered, as if she were 
 debating a plan to save the nation. 
 
 "For Mrs. Henniker !" he repeated with an air of sudden
 
 THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 189 
 
 conviction. "You've hit it, Delia. We'll put Miss Bin- 
 stead in to understudy Muriel Gordon." 
 
 Judith was warmer in her expression of gratitude this 
 time, but I was not afraid. I had been watching Hill, and 
 guessed that these two engagements would never be made. 
 
 He confirmed my supposition as soon as the actor and his 
 wife had gone. 
 
 "I'm sorry," he said, addressing Helen and Judith; "but 
 I never thought it was much use." 
 
 I expected Helen to resent that. She had glowed again 
 at the little actor, after he had definitely booked her to 
 understudy Miss Muriel Gordon; but she took it quite 
 quietly. 
 
 "Of course they wouldn't take out a special understudy 
 on a tour like that," she said. "Judith would understudy 
 Miss Gordon if she played 'Jenny.' " 
 
 I leant back against the wall in pure amazement. I am 
 not sure that my mouth was not open. 
 
 Hill grinned. "Friend Hornby isn't used to our stage 
 currency," he said. "That's the way we go on, you know. 
 It's a kind of Eastern diplomacy without the dignity." 
 
 I found a voice at last. "He offers you something he 
 knows isn't possible," I said, "and you know it isn't pos- 
 sible. . . ." 
 
 "Yes, and he knows that you know it isn't possible," Hill 
 concluded. 
 
 "And all the same ... ?" I said. 
 
 "We part with a very fine opinion of ourselves and of 
 each other," Hill said. "But, mark one stipulation, all of 
 us here, except Helen, are amateurs. There was a big 
 gallery." 
 
 "Deliver me!" I remarked elliptically and looked up to 
 find that Judith was watching me with, I thought, a distinct 
 frown of disapproval. 
 
 "Don't you ..." I began timidly, but Miss Binstead cut 
 me short. 
 
 "Of course, you're not used to it," she said, glowering
 
 190 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 at me. "I suppose you think I was very insincere to say 
 what I did." 
 
 I was honest enough to shrug my shoulders, and then 
 little Herz came between us by saying: 
 
 "It is the same with artists and with musicians. I have 
 seen it. To keep up the appearance makes so much with 
 them." 
 
 "And don't you think he meant it about my part, either ?" 
 Judith asked, looking at Hill. 
 
 "He meant it all right," Hill replied. "But I don't think 
 he really has much influence. Still, he might work that." 
 
 "I shan't take it," Judith said, standing up; and she put 
 an affectionate arm round Miss Binstead's shoulders. < 
 
 I went downstairs, very depressed. I could not under- 
 stand that friendship, nor the attraction of the stage. 
 Neither accorded with my worshipping of Judith, and yet 
 I worshipped her none the less. I felt that, if only I could 
 talk to her, she would make it all clear to me. Also, I 
 wondered why my criticism of the little actor's insincerity 
 and swagger had offended her. For woven deep into the 
 fabric of my subconsciousness was the certainty that in 
 some way she and I knew each other quite intimately. 
 
 in 
 
 I believe that Basil Meares and his wife must have joined 
 our community just about this time. They took the place 
 of two of the Germans who had shared a bedroom and a 
 sitting-room on the second floor and who had held no com- 
 munication with the rest of us, not even with their own 
 countrymen. 
 
 Meares was a tall, dark, handsome man with a black 
 beard trimmed to a neat point that gave him the look of 
 a naval captain. His wife was a bright little brown-eyed 
 creature, with all too evident false teeth. Hill made their 
 acquaintance before they had been in the house ten days, 
 and I met them in his room for the first time one Sun-
 
 THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 191 
 
 day I think it must have been about the second week in 
 November. 
 
 They came from Australia, and both of them had Aus- 
 tralian accents. Meares had a mining property or an op- 
 tion on one somewhere up country, and had come over 
 to London to form a company to develop it. He was a 
 grave, quiet chap who seemed content to listen to our 
 conversation, and only spoke when he was directly ad- 
 dressed. His wife, however, had an eager flow of chatter; 
 and I remember being struck by her longing to see snow. 
 She often expressed the hope that it was going to be a 
 hard winter. She had lived in New South Wales all her 
 life and had never, as she explained, seen snow falling, al- 
 though she had once or twice seen it, from a distance, lying 
 on the upper slopes of Mount Townsend. 
 
 I thought the Meares a very uninteresting couple at first, 
 but Hill did not agree with me. 
 
 "If only they would tell us something about Australia," 
 I said to him one day, "they might amuse us a little." 
 
 "If they would tell us something about their past lives," 
 he amended. 
 
 "Nothing to tell," I suggested. 
 
 "People aren't usually so careful to hide nothing," he 
 said. 
 
 "Oh! well, do they?" I asked. "They simply don't talk 
 about anything." 
 
 "She does," Hill returned, "and so does he, about his 
 business, when you get him alone try it and see. But 
 neither of them has a word to say about what they have 
 been doing for the last ten years. We don't even know what 
 boat they came over in." 
 
 "Don't delude yourself into finding a mystery about the 
 Meares," I said. "They are as ordinary as I am." 
 
 And presently Mrs. Meares became a kind of ally of 
 mine. 
 
 I did not encourage her at first. I was too shy of any- 
 thing approaching a confidence to take her advice, but there 
 was for a time an unspoken understanding between us.
 
 192 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 She began it by coming down to my room one morning, 
 to ask if I could lend her a sheet of note paper. Mr. Hill 
 was out, she explained, and she did not care to bother 
 the "young ladies" upstairs. I believe the reason for her 
 intrusion was perfectly genuine. She had a colonial free- 
 dom from the conventional hesitations that would have 
 stopped me in such a case. And then, having introduced 
 the subject of the "young ladies," she rattled on without 
 further excuse. 
 
 "Miss Binstead's rather one of the stand-off sort, isn't 
 she?" Mrs. Meares said confidentially. "She scares me. 
 She looks at you as if you were trying to rob her of some- 
 thing. I don't mean 'you' particularly, of course just any 
 one, unless it's Mr. Hill. But then he's so nice with every 
 one. You English people are a bit stiff, aren't you? Not 
 that I'm not English, too, but we're different somehow, in 
 Australia. . . ." She elaborated that a little before she 
 came back to what was the chief intention of her speech, 
 by saying : "But you do agree with me about Miss Binstead, 
 don't you, Mr. Hornby?" 
 
 "Really, I hardly know her at all," I said, trying not 
 to conform too nearly to the type of "stiff" Englishman 
 she had indicated. 
 
 "But Miss Carrington is quite different, isn't she?" the 
 little woman ran on. "I do think she's so good-looking, 
 don't you ? That's the type I admire, and I'm sure you must, 
 too; as an artist, now, Mr. Hornby? I don't say she's the 
 type that takes most men's fancy; but there's something 
 so steady about her, if you know what I mean." 
 
 I was horribly confused and a little annoyed; but at the 
 same time I was glad to have a woman ally. Mrs. Har- 
 greave was not actively against me as an individual, but 
 I was a representative of what was to her the general enemy ; 
 and it was very unlikely that she would do anything to help 
 me in making the nearer acquaintance of the two girls she 
 had accepted in a vague way as disciples. 
 
 I suppose I mumbled some qualified agreement with Mrs. 
 Meares' enthusiasm.
 
 THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 193 
 
 She hesitated a moment as if doubtful whether she could 
 not risk a franker statement and then apparently decided 
 to keep on the safe ground of generalities. 
 
 I did not help her. Mixed with my other feelings was 
 dismay at the thought that my devotion had been so evi- 
 dent. I wondered whether every one in the house knew? 
 I remembered that on one or two occasions I had tried to 
 beseech Judith with my eyes; and I blushed to find that 
 Mrs. Meares, certainly, and perhaps her husband or Herz, 
 had been watching me and had understood. 
 
 My instinctive desire to cover my tracks took the usual 
 form of an attempt to display sangfroid. Mrs. Meares had 
 drifted on into talk about the stage and I cut in by saying 
 that I thought it a very silly profession. I meant to make 
 it quite plain, at least, that the stage had no glamour for me. 
 
 "I know what you mean, Mr. Hornby," Mrs. Meares said 
 with a look that was meant to establish a confidence. "If 
 I'd had a daughter, I should never have thought of letting 
 her be an actress. But it's just a fancy that takes girls 
 for a time." 
 
 "Oh ! I dare-say Miss Binstead and her friend may do very 
 well on the stage," I said, and immediately reproached my- 
 self for having been disloyal. Yet as I spoke I had been 
 proud of being able to throw a slight on Judith's choice of 
 a profession. 
 
 Mrs. Meares screwed up her bright little brown eyes 
 into a smile that indulged my boyishness. 
 
 "I daresay they may if they go on with it," she said, 
 and then began to apologise for interrupting my work. 
 She had, however, a further advance to make, before she 
 left me. It came in the middle of her farewell speech. 
 
 ". . . Meares is very interested in architecture," was 
 the sentence that made the connection, and from that she 
 came to the fact of her husband's reserve being "nothing 
 but shyness. He'd never have come down interrupting you 
 like this," she went on, "but he'd be right down glad to 
 have a talk with you any time, Mr. Hornby, if you cared 
 to come up in the evening."
 
 194 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "I don't see why Mr. Hill should have it all his own way," 
 she concluded gaily. ''We're going to have a club, too." 
 
 I thought over that proposition for the rest of the morn- 
 ing. When a woman draws an inference she accepts it as 
 an ultimate and unchallengeable fact. A man continues 
 to examine his inference at leisure, and usually finds good 
 cause for doubting it. I had been sure at the time that the 
 little Australian was suggesting that I might meet Judith 
 in the Meares apartment; but by lunch-time I was per- 
 suaded that she had meant nothing of the kind. 
 
 IV 
 
 Nevertheless when two days later I received an invita- 
 tion from the second floor, I had no hesitation about the an- 
 swer I returned. Mrs. Meares had sent me one of her visit- 
 ing cards. She had added, "Mr. and" before the engraved 
 "Mrs. Basil Meares," and below it: "At home, this 
 evening 9 p.m. to n p.m. Conversation and good com- 
 pany." I acknowledged the joke by sending up a formal 
 note of acceptance. 
 
 But after I had thus committed myself, I suffered a 
 period of uneasiness and apprehension. I had no confi- 
 dence in the tact of my ally. My first fear was that she 
 might have sent a duplicate of that card up to the third 
 floor; and when I had dismissed that on the ground that 
 such an invitation would certainly have been refused by 
 Miss Binstead, and that Mrs. Meares must have been sure 
 of her entertainment before she enticed me with the promise 
 of "good company"; I had a horrible misgiving that she 
 would do something even more foolish in the course of 
 the evening. 
 
 I pictured her making obvious plans to give me an op- 
 portunity for talking alone with Judith; or, worse still, 
 she might drop some terrible hint to Judith, herself ! And 
 behind those misgivings I had, no doubt, a reluctance to 
 class myself with the Meares or to accept any help from
 
 THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 195 
 
 them. I was still too fresK from Hampstead and Lin- 
 coln's Inn to stand on my own legs, and I was afraid that 
 I might go down in Judith's opinion if I appeared on such 
 confidential terms with the Meares as the demonstration 
 of a mutual understanding would suggest an understanding 
 on that subject above all others! 
 
 My apprehensions were increased when after I had gone 
 upstairs to find Mrs. Meares and her husband alone she 
 gave me a smile that was an unmistakable acknowledg- 
 ment of some agreement between us and said, "We're sorry 
 neither Mr. Hill nor Miss Binstead can come after all; 
 they've gone to a first night together, so there'll only be 
 the four of us !" 
 
 I was on the verge of making some excuse to get out 
 of the room when Judith came in; and for the first half 
 hour or so afterwards I suffered an agony of nervous- 
 ness. I am sure my manner was insufferably stilted, and 
 whenever I looked at Mrs. Meares, my eyes, I have been 
 told since, were "as hard as steel." I certainly remember 
 that the one thought in my mind was to intimidate her into 
 silence on one particular topic. 
 
 Perhaps my evident nervousness had some effect on Mrs. 
 Meares. Her behaviour that evening was certainly above 
 reproach. I still think, however, that my apprehensions 
 were justified. I am sure she was quite capable of mak- 
 ing the mistake I had dreaded, but she was extraordinarily 
 quick in her intuitions, and her little brown eyes took note 
 of everything. 
 
 We were all four a trifle embarrassed during that first 
 half-hour, but afterwards we succeeded in making the 
 Meares talk about Australia. She had quite a lot of inter- 
 esting information, and a fund of little anecdotes about the 
 life inland. Her husband came in now and again with a 
 grave foot-note of corroboration. 
 
 I helped them with intelligent questions as well as I 
 could and tried not to watch Judith too openly. We sat in 
 a semicircle round the fire, and she faced me across the 
 width of the hearth-rug, so that unless I pointedly fixed my
 
 196 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 attention on Mr. or Mrs. Meares, I was conscious of a 
 difficulty in avoiding Judith's glance. I tried staring into 
 the fire, until I saw that she was doing that, too, and I be- 
 came afraid that our unanimity might appear concerted. 
 When I happened to meet her eyes, I tried to make my 
 face blankly inexpressive. / 
 
 But despite my immense preoccupation with the con- 
 sciousness of Judith's presence, I noticed one odd little 
 piece of confusion on the part of Mrs. Meares. 
 
 She used the word "hinterland" instead of "up-country" 
 and I should certainly not have remarked the change of 
 language if she had not underlined it by a most unneces- 
 sary explanation. She pulled herself up in the middle 
 of the sentence, and her false teeth came together with a 
 queer little click. "I got that from my brother-in-law, he 
 was in the Boer War," she said the next moment. Meares 
 said nothing; he was filling his pipe and kept his head 
 down. 
 
 She went on briskly with her story after that interrup- 
 tion, and I thought nothing of it at the time, but later it 
 came to me that she had, for some inexplicable reason, 
 been afraid. 
 
 Presently we were offered biscuits and the choice of 
 cocoa or whiskey. Meares was the only one of us who 
 took whiskey and then Mrs. Meares said that she had been 
 "doing all the talking" and suggested that Judith and I 
 should contribute a little autobiography. She nailed me 
 by way of making a beginning. It was like being asked 
 to sing or recite at a party. 
 
 "Nothing of the least interest has ever happened to me," 
 I protested, and looking back, now, I feel that the state- 
 ment was particularly well justified at that time. 
 
 "Oh! come now," Mrs. Meares responded. "I'm sure 
 you've had your adventures." 
 
 "Absolutely none," I insisted. "Home, school, office, and 
 now an attempt within the last two months to set up in 
 private practice; that's the whole of my adventure up to 
 the present time."
 
 THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 197 
 
 "People alive?" Meares put in unexpectedly in his deep, 
 melancholy voice. 
 
 "My father died years ago," I said, "and my mother 
 last September . . ." 
 
 "Basil ! you shouldn't have asked that," Mrs. Meares put 
 in quickly, and then she turned to me and said, "I am sorry, 
 Mr. Hornby; but of course we couldn't know, could we?" 
 
 "Of course not," I said, and hurried on to cover my em- 
 barrassment by saying, "Certainly I was engaged once; if 
 you call that an adventure." 
 
 "Well!" remarked Mrs. Meares on a note of genuine 
 surprise. 
 
 "But it was the most conventional affair you ever heard 
 of," I went on. I had no intention of leaving my announce- 
 ment unexplained. "She was my cousin, and my uncle 
 and aunt are rather well-off. We weren't either of us the 
 least in love with one another; but we were somehow ex- 
 pected to get engaged and so we did." I stopped abruptly, 
 with a sudden twinge of regret. I remembered that scene 
 on the Heath when I had proposed to Gladys, and the 
 thought of her came back to me as the memory of some- 
 thing that had once been a very essential part of my life. 
 I had undoubtedly been very fond of her, once. 
 
 "And who broke it off?" asked Mrs. Meares. 
 
 "Oh! well, I daresay I wasn't altogether satisfactory," 
 I said, trying to cover Gladys's act of treason. "No pros- 
 pects and so on, you understand. She's engaged to a man 
 called Morrison Blake, now perhaps you've heard of him?" 
 
 "I have. He's an expert in antiques," Meares put iri 
 solidly. 
 
 "That's the chap," I said cheerfully. 
 
 "And you weren't heartbroken?" Mrs. Meares asked, 
 with the excellent intention of reinstating my eligibility, I 
 suppose. 
 
 "Oh! good Heavens, no!" I said. "I admire my cousin 
 very much but . . . but nothing more than that." 
 
 Mrs. Meares nodded. "Just as well you didn't go on with 
 it," she said, and I was afraid that she was going to make
 
 198 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 some gauche remark; but whether because she noticed my 
 nervousness or realised instinctively the necessity for finer 
 tact, she abruptly changed the subject by turning to Judith 
 and saying, 
 
 "Well, now, really it's your turn, Miss Carrington." 
 
 Judith leaned a little forward and clasped her hands to- 
 gether. 
 
 "I think my story is rather like Mr. Hornby's," she said. 
 "All all oh! I don't know how to say it all inside, if 
 you know what I mean." She looked at me despairingly 
 for help and I got in front of Mrs. Meares by saying, 
 
 "That night of the Whiting row began lots of things 
 with me." I looked for some response to that, but found 
 only an appearance of perplexity. "I met Hill that night 
 for the first time," I explained. 
 
 "Meeting Helen made a tremendous difference to me," 
 Judith said, and I felt as if I had been snubbed. 
 
 "Why?" I asked. 
 
 She recognised the note of antagonism in my voice. 
 
 "She was so splendid," she said challenging me. 
 
 "But you don't say why," I returned. 
 
 "Don't you think Helen is splendid ?" Judith said, turning 
 to Mrs. Meares. 
 
 "Well, I hardly know her, you see," Mrs. Meares said 
 tactfully. 
 
 "You know her quite as well as Mr. Hornby does," 
 Judith returned quietly. 
 
 "I don't know that I've expressed any opinion one way 
 or the other," I put in. 
 
 "But you don't like her, do you?" Judith asked. 
 
 "Well, she doesn't like me," I retorted. 
 
 I wish Mrs. Meares had not cut across the conversation 
 at that point. Judith and I were almost quarrelling, but we 
 were really speaking to one another for the first time. We 
 had both admitted so certainly that the animosity of Helen 
 Binstead was an obstacle, and I was hoping to hear some 
 suggestion for surmounting it when Mrs. Meares discon- 
 nected us by saying:
 
 THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 199 
 
 "Well, to me it seems an adventure, Miss Carrington, 
 that you should be living in a house like this. One can 
 see you weren't brought up to it, if you'll excuse my say- 
 ing so." 
 
 "Yes, oh ! yes, that's true ; I ran away," Judith said smil- 
 ing. "I was educated by two aunts, my father's sisters, and 
 we lived at Cheltenham and went to Barmouth every Au- 
 gust for exactly four weeks. It was at Barmouth that I 
 met Helen." 
 
 "Don't your aunts know where you are, now?" I asked. 
 
 She looked at me, rather wistfully, I thought. "Not 
 actually," she said. "They know I'm in London and all 
 right ; but they don't know my address. I'm so afraid . . . 
 I am sorry for them . . . but I couldn't go back. You don't 
 know how terrible it was to be shut in like that." She 
 paused a moment and then, ostensibly addressing Mrs. 
 Meares, she went on, "Do you think I ought to go back ?" 
 
 "Why, no! of course not," Mrs. Meares replied without 
 a moment's hesitation. "Why should you?" 
 
 "It must have hurt them dreadfully," Judith said. "Their 
 letters are so formal, but I can see that they are dis- 
 tressed, very distressed." 
 
 "But they'd no right to bottle you up like that, now, 
 had they, Miss Carrington?" asked Mrs. Meares. 
 
 "I don't know," Judith said. "They thought they were 
 right." 
 
 She looked so little like an insurgent. She had the ap- 
 pearance of being so calm and, as Mrs. Meares had put 
 it steady. And the same thought must have been in that 
 little woman's mind at the same moment, for she avoided 
 the impossible ethical problem that had been set us, and 
 said, 
 
 "Well, if you ran away, Miss Carrington, I'm sure you 
 must have had some very good reason." 
 
 Judith shook her head. "I'm not sure," she said. "I was 
 excited and silly." And then she closed the conversation 
 by saying that she must go. 
 
 The Meares made the usual expostulations, but she slipped
 
 200 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 out of the room with a little smile, while they were still 
 protesting. 
 
 "She'd get her own way with whoever it was," Meares 
 said solemnly. 
 
 I hoped that entertainment of the Meares might be re- 
 peated. I had spoken to Judith for the first time, and I 
 was not dissatisfied with our brief interchange of remarks 
 about Helen Binstead. I repeated to myself Judith's "But 
 you don't like her, do you ?" and found a significance in the 
 sentence that had probably never been intended. I de- 
 luded myself into thinking that her regret (I had distinctly 
 recognised regret in her voice) was due to the fact, so 
 unduly prominent in my own mind, that Miss Binstead 
 was an obstacle. It was impossible for me to realise, then, 
 that she could be an object of worship. 
 
 My depression was all the greater for that imagined en- 
 couragement when day after day went by and I had no 
 further sight of Judith, save the Hrief glimpses of her 
 that I snatched as she went down the front steps with 
 Helen Binstead. They had apparently given up going to 
 Hill's room on Sunday mornings (I endured Mrs. Har- 
 greave with growing impatience on two occasions), and 
 more ominous still, they refused Mrs. Meares's second invi- 
 tation to spend an evening in "good company." 
 
 "I don't know if you would care to come all the same, 
 Mr. Hornby," Mrs. Meares said to me. "Mr. Hill is com- 
 ing, and he's always amusing, isn't he?" 
 
 Of course I had to pretend with redundant assurances 
 that I should, in any case, be delighted to spend an evening 
 with her and her husband. 
 
 We had a very dull evening, but I should have been dull 
 anywhere at that time. Meares and Hill talked politics, 
 discussing the critical election that was to come in Janu- 
 ary. Meares was a staunch conservative and was not to 
 be convinced that a Liberal government under the leader-
 
 THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 201 
 
 ship of Campbell Bannerman had any chance of success. 
 I had never taken the least interest in politics, but I was 
 a conservative by force of habit, supported Meares, and 
 lost my temper with Hill for being so cock-sure that the 
 Liberals would come in with a thumping majority. I had 
 always been led to believe that a strong Radical govern- 
 ment meant the downfall of England. 
 
 Hill only laughed which annoyed me still more, and when 
 we left the room together he seemed to have forgotten our 
 disagreement. 
 
 "Meares said anything to you, yet, about his business?" 
 he asked as we were parting on the landing. 
 
 "No, he has never mentioned it. Why should he?" I 
 said. 
 
 Hill did not answer my questions directly. "He doesn't 
 seem to be doing very well with it," he remarked, hesitated, 
 as if he were going to make some further explanation, and 
 then nodded and went upstairs. 
 
 I remembered that little colloquy a few days later. I 
 came in from the street and found Meares in the hall with 
 his hat and overcoat on. 
 
 "Going out?" I remarked cheerfully, and left the front 
 door open. 
 
 "No, just come in," he said, and I wondered what he 
 had been doing in the hall for the last minute or two. I 
 had not seen him enter the house as I came up Keppel 
 Street, and "73" was about half-way down from Totten- 
 ham Court Road. 
 
 "Miserable weather," was his next opening. He showed 
 no sort of inclination to go on upstairs. 
 
 I agreed and waited; I could not shut my door in his 
 face, and at last, although I did not want him, I asked 
 him to come in and have tea. 
 
 He accepted gloomily, but after a time he cheered up 
 and began to talk about Australia. He was not an articu- 
 late creature, but he interested me up to a point, and I was 
 not, after all, particularly anxious to be alone with my 
 thoughts.
 
 202 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 And then he gradually drifted away from his unilluminat- 
 ing disquisitions on Australian scenery and people into a 
 more technical and far more graphic account of the coun- 
 try's mineral resources. He had been a miner all his life, 
 he said, not only looking for gold, but also working for 
 copper and tin in New South Wales and Queensland. 
 
 "I'm an expert, you see," he explained. "I was offered 
 a job to go out and report on a property only a few days 
 ago." 
 
 In my innocence I thought that ought to have cheered 
 him up, and I asked him why he had not accepted it. 
 
 "I may, still," he said. "It's hard luck on me, but I ex- 
 pect it'll come to that." 
 
 I suppose I looked my perplexity for he threw his head 
 back with the nearest approach to excitement I ever saw 
 him exhibit, and said, "A man doesn't want to take on a 
 job of that sort, when he's got a property like I've got, 
 spoiling to be developed." 
 
 "Oh! yes, I'd forgotten," I said. "I remember, now, 
 Hill told me you had a mine of your own; but why . . ." 
 I knew even less of mining properties than I did of politics. 
 
 Meares scratched his beard and looked at me with just 
 a shade of amusement in his handsome brown eyes. 
 
 "It's not so easy for an Australian like me to raise 
 money over here, Mr. Hornby," he said. "You see, I 
 haven't got the gift of the gab, and I'm not used to the ways 
 of these City sharks." He paused, shook his head solemnly 
 and went on, "But it isn't only that, in this case. You see 
 where it is, is that my scheme don't interest 'em overmuch. 
 They're all on the gamble, the ones I've met, anyway. They 
 want to float a company and sell my rights to the share- 
 holders at a five hundred per cent profit, and I'm not on 
 for that kind of game." 
 
 "I'm afraid I'm very ignorant about things like this," 
 I said. "Do explain it to me." I was really interested, now, 
 not so much in the man's business as in the man himself. 
 
 "Well, it's like this, Mr. Hornby," Meares explained. 
 "All I want is to raise ten thousand pounds to work this
 
 THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 203 
 
 mine. It's an opencast, alluvial deposit, you know -and 
 there's none of those expenses of hydraulic or crushing ma- 
 chinery that run away with so much money in lode min- 
 ing. Well, I won't bother you with that, the point is that 
 these company promoting sharks aren't on to put out 
 money at a modest ten per cent, which is all I care to 
 guarantee out of my property. They want to form a 
 syndicate, buy the mine, and begin working, and then sell 
 to a company." 
 
 "And you won't do that?" I encouraged him. 
 
 "It wouldn't be straight dealing, Mr. Hornby, not in my 
 opinion," Meares said quietly. "I don't pretend that we 
 could show a decent profit on a capital of a couple hun- 
 dred thousand. I know that sort of thing's done every day ; 
 but it isn't my line." 
 
 "Couldn't you find a man to provide the money as an 
 investment?" I asked. 
 
 "They want finding, Mr. Hornby," Meares said, sadly. 
 "I haven't got the right kind of introductions for that job." 
 
 I wanted to help him. I was entirely convinced of his 
 sincerity. But I only knew one person in the world who 
 had ten thousand pounds to invest, and even if I had been 
 on speaking terms with my uncle, I should have hesitated 
 to approach him on such an errand, however sure I might 
 have been of Meares's good faith. 
 
 I was still puzzling over the problem, when some one 
 tapped at the door and Mrs. Meares looked in. 
 
 "Oh! so you're there, are you?" she said, playfully re- 
 proving her husband. "I thought I saw you coming up 
 the street, and when you didn't come up, I supposed I must 
 have been mistaken. And there have I been keepin' your tea 
 waiting for over an hour." 
 
 "I met Mr. Hornby in the hall," Meares explained. 
 
 "Oh ! dear, now I hope he hasn't been bothering you by 
 talking about his business, Mr. Hornby," Mrs. Meares ran 
 on, addressing me. 
 
 "I've been tremendously interested," I protested.
 
 204 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "Well, there's one thing he's never told you about it, 
 I'm sure," Mrs. Meares said. 
 
 Meares rose to his feet with a slightly impatient frown. 
 "Come now, Minnie," he expostulated. 
 
 "I thought not," she exclaimed triumphantly. "Well, 
 then, I'll tell you the truth about it, Mr. Hornby, and it's 
 this he's just nothing more nor less than a child over his 
 old mine. He could sell his option to-morrow, if he liked; 
 but no, he wants to work it himself and nothing else'll please 
 him. Like a child with a toy, I tell him." 
 
 Meares was smiling apologetically. 
 
 "Oh ! come now, Minnie," he repeated. 
 
 She tossed her head with a pretence of despair as she 
 followed him out of the room. 
 
 I had quite a different feeling for the Meares after that 
 incident. I could appreciate his personal interest in the 
 mine, and I saw how that almost childish desire to own 
 a mine and run it himself had lain underneath his bitter- 
 ness against the "sharks/ 5 who only wanted to exploit the 
 property and cared nothing what became of it after they 
 had secured their profit. For him, the word "shark" had, 
 I think, far more meaning than we commonly attach to it. 
 His wife had told us the story of a horrible termination 
 to a boat accident just outside Sydney harbour, and to both 
 of them the shark was the personification of all that is 
 greedy, brutal, inhuman. It was very evident that Meares 
 had no intention of having his beloved mine bolted whole by 
 one of that species. 
 
 And I admired, also, her tenderness for what some women 
 in her position would have regarded as an almost criminal 
 weakness. She was not ready to sacrifice him for the 
 sake of a competence, and I liked her for that. She might 
 make a joke of his foible, but I was sure that they were 
 devoted to one another.
 
 THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 205 
 
 VI 
 
 I gave Hill my impressions the next evening. He came 
 in about half-past nine, and I waylaid him in the hall, and 
 brought him into my room. 
 
 He listened attentively to all I had to say, and then asked, 
 
 "Did he invite you to put any money in his mine?" 
 
 "Lord no ! Never suggested it," I said. "You don't sup- 
 pose I've got ten thousand pounds to invest, do you?" 
 
 "No, I don't," Hill said; "but you might have five hun- 
 dred." 
 
 "Not even that," I admitted. "But if I had, what would 
 be the good of it?" 
 
 "I think Meares has some idea of making up a syndicate 
 of small investors," Hill said. 
 
 I pondered that for a moment, and then asked Hill if 
 he thought that I should not be well-advised to trust Meares 
 with, say, two hundred and fifty. 
 
 He looked, I fancied, rather uncomfortable. "How can 
 I say?" he asked. 
 
 "You seemed inclined to warn me the other night," I 
 reminded him. 
 
 "The point," Hill said, suddenly warming to the discus- 
 sion, "is whether this property of his is any good. He 
 believes it is, I don't doubt that, but he may be quite mis- 
 taken. . . . I've promised him a little, myself, but . . . 
 well, I'm quite prepared never to see it again. And I ad- 
 vise you to go in in the same spirit, if you do go in. There's 
 something about them makes me doubtful." He paused and 
 looked at me with a frown. "You believe in them?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "I like them," I returned. 
 
 "So do I," Hill said. 
 
 I meant to have told him, then, about Mrs. Meares's con- 
 fusion after using the word "hinterland," but something 
 put it out of my head at the moment, and I did not think 
 of it again until the mystery had been explained by an
 
 206 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 agency that we certainly had never anticipated. Indeed, 
 I temporarily forgot the Meares's existence when that period 
 of six weeks, I indicated, was so wonderfully ended the 
 next day.
 
 X 
 
 JUDITH 
 
 I HAVE never pretended that I was a bold lover. I do 
 not, as a matter of fact, admire that type as I have 
 observed it in my own experience. In fiction your bold 
 lover is an unconvincing survival of such romantics as 
 young Lochinvar ; but in life I have only found him among 
 the men with marked polygamistic tendencies and I am a 
 monogamist by instinct. 
 
 I can smile at myself, now, for boasting that I eventually 
 met Judith half-way, but at the time I had to make a great 
 effort to do a thing which seems ridiculously easy when 
 I come to put it down. 
 
 I saw Judith and Miss Binstead go out together about 
 eleven o'clock, on the morning after my talk with Meares. 
 They turned to the right, as they nearly always did, now, 
 and I only just caught sight of Judith's profile as she went 
 down the steps. 
 
 I was a little more discouraged than usual by their care- 
 ful avoidance of me, and I had great difficulty, afterwards, 
 in concentrating my attention on the competition drawing 
 I was engaged upon. Everything, even my chances of 
 winning that competition, appeared so absolutely hopeless. 
 
 And then a little before twelve Judith came back alone; 
 and she came past my window. I was staring moodily out 
 at the dull, grey street, but when I saw her it was as if a 
 curtain had been lifted. The aspect of everything was 
 changed. The familiar houses opposite, the lamp-post that 
 
 207!
 
 208 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 came into my view on the left, the dark, greasy surface 
 of the asphalt roadway, fell suddenly into a pleasing 
 composition ; were sharpened up into an effective and beau- 
 tiful background for the central figure of my picture. 
 
 And she looked up at me as she passed, not with a smile, 
 but with a steady, rather anxious glance that held, I thought, 
 a hint of pleading. 
 
 I felt that her expression was an invitation, and yet I 
 hesitated to respond. Every detail of my first miserable 
 mistake came up before me, recent and vivid as a bitter 
 dream. And if I met her in the hall, now, would she not 
 find new cause to despise me? This might be a trap de- 
 liberately set by my enemy, Helen Binstead. I could imagine 
 her dull, threatening voice saying, "He's only waiting for a 
 chance to find you alone. Try it, dear. Give him the least 
 encouragement and see if he won't insult you again." 
 
 I heard the click of the latch-key in the front door, but 
 it was my thought of Helen Binstead rather than the des- 
 perate clutching at a late opportunity that sent me across 
 the room, with my pencil still in my hand. I was deter- 
 mined to lay the ghost of that old suspicion once and for 
 all; to vindicate myself against the sinister suggestions of 
 my enemy. 
 
 Even then I hesitated with my hand on the door, and 
 when I opened it, my despairing courage had evaporated 
 and I stood there, shamefaced and timid. 
 
 Judith was standing by the hall table, and I was in- 
 stantly conscious of her again as the central figure of a 
 picture. For the first time the fading haze of the blue 
 that fell on the yellow varnished paper near the fan-light 
 appeared to me as being quite a beautiful effect. 
 
 She looked at me bravely and yet, as it were, a little 
 breathlessly. 
 
 "May I come in for a minute?" she asked; and the con- 
 ventional disguise that I hastily assumed in moments of 
 timidity instantly smothered me. 
 
 "Oh ! yes, please do !" I said. 
 
 She came in and stood by the table, with her back to
 
 JUDITH 209 
 
 the door that I had, almost ostentatiously, left open. And 
 now I further underlined my apology for that one gross 
 boldness of mine by standing on the hearthrug, so that the 
 table was between us and the way of escape clear behind 
 her. If this were, indeed, a trap of Miss Binstead's, she 
 should get no satisfaction out of it. 
 
 I could think of nothing to say. Her request to come 
 into my room had startled me, and put our interview on 
 some kind of formal footing. I was desperately consider- 
 ing topics for conversation, but all the polite openings 
 seemed foolishly out of place. The weather, the theatre, 
 Hill, the Meares, the approach of Christmas were all so 
 terrifyingly vacuous. 
 
 And Judith was looking down at her hands resting on 
 the tablecloth, as if she, too, were quite unable to venture 
 on orthodox politeness. 
 
 I was on the verge of asking her if she were going away 
 for Christmas when she spoke. She did not look up, and 
 her voice was so low that I hardly heard her. 
 
 "I wanted to explain," she said. 
 
 I must have realised, then, that this was the opening 
 for which I had been waiting, and that if I were ever to 
 escape from the awful conventional reserve which hid me 
 from her, I must seize my opportunity. 
 
 "There's nothing for you to explain/' I said. 
 
 She looked up with a faint smile as if I had suddenly 
 relieved her embarrassment. 
 
 "Oh! that!" she said, with a touch of contempt 
 
 "Yes, but it was just that," I protested. 
 
 "Was it?" she asked. 
 
 "Well, what else could it have been?" 
 
 She shook her head and looked down again. 
 
 "I mean that that was what put Miss Binstead so much 
 against me, in the first place," I went on. "I can't blame 
 her, in a way. But if you knew how I ... I've kicked 
 myself since . . ," 
 
 "Of course, I know," she said. "I knew at once."
 
 210 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "Perhaps you did," I said. "But she has used it against 
 me. I'm sure she has." 
 
 "Only quite at first," Judith said. 
 
 "But why? . . . Lately?" I asked. "Well, you never 
 come down to Hill's room on Sunday mornings, now, for 
 one thing." 
 " "That was what I wanted to explain," she said. 
 
 It seemed as if we had shared an understanding for 
 months and were at last able to meet and explain ourselves. 
 After that first terrible hesitation we had leaped instantly 
 into an immense confidence. We were talking with the 
 easy elisions that indicate a tried intimacy. We had amaz- 
 ingly and instantly assumed that we had wanted to meet 
 and had been kept apart. 
 
 "I wish you could," I said. 
 
 "Only it's so difficult here," she almost whispered, and 
 glanced quickly at my open door. 
 
 "Perhaps if we went for a walk," I suggested. 
 
 She seemed to weigh that proposition very doubtfully 
 before she answered, and I waited, already thrilled by the 
 sheer delight of anticipation. 
 
 "Where could we go ?" she asked at last. 
 
 "Hampstead! The Heath, you know!" I replied. 
 
 "Oh! yes," she agreed eagerly. "I have never been to 
 Hampstead Heath." 
 
 ii 
 
 We took the yellow buss from Tottenham Court Road 
 to Pond Street, and I believe that during the slow ride our 
 conversation dealt exclusively with means of transport. 
 This was the route with which I was most familiar, and 
 I found matter for all kinds of chatter concerning it. The 
 various destinations of these outwardly similar mustard 
 coloured busses figured quite entertainingly as a beginning. 
 I hinted at the mysterious qualities of such unexplored 
 places as "The Brecknock" and "Gospel Oak." I became 
 informative about the means of distinguishing one "Cam-
 
 JUDITH 
 
 den Town" bus from another and pointed out the plates 
 with initials in the little forward windows below the 
 driver's seat. "H & V" was ours. "There's one coming, 
 now," I explained, "Hampstead and Victoria, and that one, 
 'K T & V,' is Kentish Town and Victoria. They all go 
 to Victoria, except one, that's 'A T & P,' Adelaide Tavern 
 and Pimlico." 
 
 That topic went very well for a time, and then we dis- 
 cussed the future of the motor omnibus. I had actually 
 seen one, not running, it is true, but looking very impos- 
 ing laid up against the curb at Hyde Park Corner in a 
 backwater near the Triumphal Arch, waiting for something 
 to take it home. We were not optimistic about the future 
 of motor buses. 
 
 My third string, the new tube that was building from 
 Charing Cross to Golders Green a place that needed ex- 
 plaining to Judith completed the journey for us, and 
 after that I had to play cicerone as we explored the Heath. 
 We went up the Esplanade by the ponds and then along 
 the cycle track over the bridge, cutting across at the back 
 of the untidy Vale of Health into the Spaniards Road. 
 
 And always we talked superficialities; postponing that 
 promised "explanation," as if it were something that we 
 were afraid to approach. 
 
 We sat down, finally, on that comparatively retired 
 bench under the firs, looking out over the fall in the ground 
 towards the Heath Extension and what was presently to 
 be the new Garden Suburb. 
 
 It was a dull, threatening day, muggy and still, and we 
 had the place to ourselves. 
 
 I had dropped my stream of chatter, and although a 
 very obvious silence fell upon us after we sat down, I 
 made no attempt to break it. I was content to sit there 
 for a time and then return with Judith to Keppel Street. 
 I had been forgiven ; I had, indeed, been granted a wonder- 
 ful mark of favour ; and all I desired at the moment was 
 to prove that I had no intention of encroaching upon the 
 privileges I had been offered. I had temporarily lost all
 
 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 my jealousy of Helen Binstead. I believed that she was 
 no longer an obstacle. 
 
 Judith's first words brought me back to realities with 
 an unpleasant jerk. 
 
 "Of course, you don't understand Helen a bit," she re- 
 marked thoughtfully. 
 
 The reaction jolted me out of my pose of demure hu- 
 mility. 
 
 "Oh! bother Helen!" I said. 
 
 "Aren't you going to let me explain?" she asked, staring 
 out over the path-threaded maze of gorse and furze below 
 us. In any other place we should surely have found some 
 colour in the prospect, but here the whole landscape was 
 done in greys, like a very faintly warmed study in lamp- 
 black. 
 
 "Is it all about Miss Binstead?" I commented, rather 
 bitterly. 
 
 "Why do you dislike her so much?" Judith asked. "I 
 want to know." 
 
 "I suppose it's because she dislikes me so much," I said. 
 "She always has. Don't you remember how she went for 
 me that first Sunday up in Hill's room?" 
 
 "It's all so silly," Judith said gravely. 
 
 "I dare-say," was my moody response. 
 
 "And you can't give any other reason for disliking 
 her?" 
 
 "I'll give you a reason if you can explain her aversion 
 to me," I hazarded. 
 
 A just perceptible warmth crept into her face; it was 
 as if she faced and reflected the pink stain of sunset. 
 
 "Of course, she's just as silly," she said. 
 
 "But why?" I insisted. I saw that I could hold a splen- 
 did advantage by pressing that question. 
 
 She very slightly shrugged her shoulders and then be- 
 gan to take off her little brown kid gloves a purely nervous 
 action that satisfied her craving for some meticulous occu- 
 pation. She scrupulously tweaked the fingers of the left 
 hand in turn until the glove slid away, then she laid it in
 
 JUDITH 213 
 
 her lap and repeated the operation with the other hand. 
 
 "She's jealous of you," she said gravely, bending over 
 her intriguing operation. "It sounds ridiculous, I know ; but 
 then she and I aren't friends in quite the ordinary way. 
 It's something bigger than that. You see, she came into my 
 life like oh ! like the sun coming out of a fog. You can't 
 guess what life with my aunts was like. All the restraints 
 . . . about the way one Sat and Looked and Walked! 
 And I felt it more at Barmouth than at home, because 
 there were other people there who were just jolly and 
 ordinary. In Cheltenham we only knew the people who 
 thought exactly as my aunts did about everything." 
 
 She had forgotten her gloves for a moment, and she 
 looked at me for the first time since we had sat down, as 
 she went on with a little perplexed frown, 
 
 "I suppose it's hardly possible for you to realise the 
 sort of life I led there ?" 
 
 "Oh! I can," I said, with conviction. "You see, my 
 father was in the Qiurch, and my mother was very pious 
 ... in that particular way." 
 
 She shook her head. "But it must have been quite, 
 quite different for you," she returned. "You went to school 
 and to your office. You could get away, sometimes. I 
 couldn't never for a moment." 
 
 Mrs. Meares's comment occurred to me. "And yet you 
 don't look like a rebel," I said. 
 
 She smiled. "What does a rebel look like?" she asked. 
 
 "Well, more impetuous," I suggested. 
 
 "But I'm a very serious rebel," she said, and her earnest 
 grey eyes were full of light and colour. "That's the worst 
 kind, isn't it?" she added, still smiling. 
 
 I had no idea. I was thinking that her face was so 
 absolutely "right." I cannot find another word. It is the 
 word that we always used in the office as the conclusive 
 mark of approval. When a thing was "right" it was 
 beyond criticism. And from the first moment I had seen 
 Judith, that was the only satisfying term I had found for 
 her.
 
 214 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 I suppose she guessed something of what was in my 
 mind, for she looked away and returned to the business 
 of her gloves. I watched her hands with the same sense 
 of satisfaction that I had had in the contemplation of her 
 eyes. Her hands were "right," too; not very small, and 
 certainly not dimpled, but white and firm and steady. 
 
 "If I weren't a rebel, I shouldn't be here," she remarked 
 after a pause. 
 
 I misunderstood that. "But I'm not blaming you," I 
 began. 
 
 "I mean here, now, on this bench, this morning," she 
 interrupted me, and patted the bench as if to make her 
 ultimate meaning quite plain to my dull intelligence. 
 
 "Do you mean that you've rebelled against Miss Bin- 
 stead, too ?" I asked too eagerly. 
 
 "Oh! not like that," she said impatiently. 
 
 I frowned at the furze bushes like a snubbed school- 
 boy. 
 
 "Can't you understand how fond I am of Helen?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "No!" I said sulkily; and in my thought I framed all 
 my indictment of Miss Binstead's character and appear- 
 ance. 
 
 Judith sighed. "Then we might just as well go home," 
 she said, and began to put on her gloves. 
 
 I gave way at once. My fear of losing her far out- 
 weighed my inclination to make a martyr of myself by 
 sulking. 
 
 "You said that you'd explain," I said, "and you haven't. 
 You might at all events give me the chance of understand- 
 ing." 
 
 "I can't explain that" she returned. "One isn't fond of 
 a person because they're well, good-looking or clever at 
 least sometimes one is, perhaps, but there are other reasons 
 . . . reasons you can't quite understand yourself." 
 
 I accepted the evasion with a passing wonder if it 
 were possible that Miss Binsfead looked "right" to Judith. 
 "What was it about then, your explanation ?" I asked.
 
 JUDITH 
 
 215 
 
 "I want you and Helen to try being nice to each other," 
 she said. 
 
 "Did she know that you were going to speak to me?" 
 I asked. 
 
 "Yes ! We had a sort of quarrel about it this morning," 
 Judith said and came at last, I think, to the real essential 
 of her long deferred explanation. "You see," she went 
 on, "I'm not ... I don't want to exchange one sort of 
 slavery for another. I didn't run away for that. And I 
 can't allow even Helen to dictate to me about who I'm to 
 know." She paused and faced me suddenly as if she meant 
 to anticipate my too hopeful inference. 
 
 "It's not particularly because it's you," she said. "It 
 might be anybody." 
 
 "I quite understand that," I said solemnly. "But even 
 if I were willing to be 'nice' to Miss Binstead, would 
 she . . .?" 
 
 "She'll have to," Judith said, and gave me a satisfy- 
 ing glimpse of the different methods her diplomacy was 
 taking. 
 
 "Well, I'll certainly try," I agreed. 
 
 That compact seemed to terminate a period of confidence. 
 Behind all Judith's girlishness and the queer timidities that 
 were the result of her five years in Cheltenham, she showed, 
 even in those days, the strong, firm mould of her own 
 natural character. And that steadiness which I instinc- 
 tively worshipped in her now put and held me at the level 
 )f a friend. Her manner gave me clearly to understand 
 lat our acquaintance would, in future, go in the key of 
 ler acquaintance with Hill or Herz or Mrs. Meares. I 
 lad been peculiarly favoured in as much as she had made 
 :his deliberate approach in face of Helen's violent dis- 
 ipproval, but now that I had been given to understand 
 one drastic sentence that it was not because it was me, 
 that it might have been anybody, she could feel at ease 
 again. 
 
 We talked of the Heath for a minute or two and then the 
 rain that had been threatening so long materialised in a
 
 216 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 misty drizzle and we made our way back by the White- 
 stone Pond into Heath Street and had lunch together at 
 the Express Dairy. 
 
 I looked up at Ken Lodge as we passed, but I saw no 
 one at the windows, and I did not say anything to Judith 
 of my association with the place. 
 
 After lunch we walked back despite the drizzle, down 
 Rosslyn Hill and Haverstock Hill to the corner of Adelaide 
 Road. Our journey ended as it had begun with a discus- 
 sion of London's communications. The hoarding at the 
 corner of Adelaide Road marked, a policeman told us, the 
 site of one of the borings for the new Tube Railway; and 
 as I had recently read an article in The Builder dealing 
 with the method of driving the tubes, I expounded the 
 theory to Judith. She appeared to listen with a highly 
 intelligent interest, but some corner of her mind must 
 have been engaged in debating her own problems, for as 
 we turned into Keppel Street, she stopped me in the middle 
 of a sentence and said without the least relevance: 
 
 "Will you ask us to come and have tea with you on 
 Friday? Helen and me and, perhaps, Mrs. Hargreave or 
 the Meares?" 
 
 "Better not Mrs. Hargreave or the Meares," I said. "If 
 there is to be any chance of a better understanding between 
 Miss Binstead and me, we are more likely to get to it 
 if we are alone." 
 
 "Perhaps you're right," she agreed, and then as we 
 reached the door of "73" she looked up at me with a 
 friendly smile and said, "You're very quick at taking 
 things in." 
 
 That was the only praise I had had from her, but I 
 found it very stimulating. Something in her voice and 
 smile had definitely approved me and I was as pleased as 
 a child that has been praised by its mother. 
 
 "I'll send a note up by the maid," I said as we parted 
 in the hall.
 
 JUDITH 217 
 
 in 
 
 Helen Binstead surprised me considerably at that little 
 entertainment of mine. I had not realised that I had previ- 
 ously seen her always under the influence of a particular 
 mood ; and I had allowed nothing for her ability as an act- 
 ress. I had anticipated a gloomy, resentful attitude, a 
 grudging admission that she and I were temporarily com- 
 pelled by circumstances to tolerate one another's unpleasant 
 company; and I was quite unprepared for her greeting. 
 
 She came into the room with her head up, and a general 
 appearance of being willing to make amends, that com- 
 pletely deceived me. 
 
 "Judith has decided that you and -I are to be friends, 
 Mr. Hornby," she said, holding out her hand. 
 
 "I don't know why we shouldn't be," I replied and shook 
 hands with her willingly enough. 
 
 I was so relieved that I instantly forgot how much I 
 disliked her. I had foreseen so many difficulties, and had 
 wondered if I could bring myself to pretend friendliness 
 for her in the face of the snubbing I had thought was cer- 
 tainly in store for me. And now that I found her pre- 
 pared to meet me half-way, I rated myself as having been 
 suspicious and evil-minded. 
 
 "I'm sure it was all a mistake," she said. 
 
 I did not defend myself. "Quite a natural mistake on 
 your part," I returned. 
 
 I felt a sudden glow of liking for her; and found for 
 the first time that I might be able to understand her. Until 
 now a possible misconstruction of her every action had 
 leaped to my mind whenever I thought of her, and no 
 sympathy had been possible; but the curious feeling of 
 warmth that came with the relief of my reaction brought 
 me a consciousness of release. I was glad that I had been 
 wrong. 
 
 I have often thanked Heaven since then for my 
 genuousness on that occasion. I could never have as-
 
 218 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 sumed that air of friendliness which now was the natural 
 expression of my feeling, and the only weapon that I could 
 have effectively used to defeat Helen's elaborate scheme 
 of defence for the precious thing she would not share with 
 me or with any one. Judith knew that I was honest in my 
 attempt at reciprocity, and it mattered nothing that Helen 
 still believed me a fraud. She was as prejudiced as I had 
 been, and she could find no excuse for me and no sign 
 of any virtue. Hate is always blind; often to its own 
 destruction. 
 
 But certainly she assumed an admirable air of letting 
 bygones be bygones. And if I noticed, now and again, 
 something a little theatrical, a little overdone in her protes- 
 tations, I attributed it to self-consciousness. She must, I 
 thought, be feeling, as I was, ashamed of her past sus- 
 picions. 
 
 Over the tea-table we found a tolerable subject in the 
 discussion of the theatre. I was a neophyte, and she had 
 a lot of information concerning the ways of stage life. I 
 listened with real interest, and Judith was content to re- 
 main in the background. 
 
 Her attitude, indeed, was the only thing that puzzled me. 
 I thought she would be delighted at the wonderful con- 
 ciliation she had effected, but she seemed, I fancied, anxious 
 and worried, and strangest of all, for her, a trifle restless. 
 And it was she who broke up the party much earlier than 
 I judged to be necessary. 
 
 IV 
 
 For three or four weeks after my tea-party, the little 
 community of 73 Keppel Street appeared to have achieved 
 a perfectly happy relation in its social intercourse. We 
 abandoned Hill's room as a Sunday morning meeting place, 
 and every one came downstairs to my more spacious and 
 convenient apartment. I remember that on one Sunday a 
 week before Christmas Christmas day fell on a Monday
 
 JUDITH 219 
 
 that year we had a full assembly of all the lodgers, with 
 the one exception of Miss Whiting. 
 
 She had not been excluded deliberately. Mrs. Hargreave 
 had once definitely invited her to join us, but the invitation 
 had been firmly refused. I believe, as a matter of fact, 
 that Miss Whiting was in funds that winter. She was 
 often away from the house for a week or more at a time, 
 and when she stayed there her conduct was irreproachable. 
 When she went out in the evening she was home soon 
 after eleven o'clock, and always alone. Mrs. Hargreave 
 explained the refusal to join our community on Sunday 
 mornings, by attributing it to a fear of our attitude. 
 
 "She can't trust you to treat her as a human being," 
 Mrs. Hargreave said. 
 
 Perhaps she was right in drawing that inference, but 
 I think Miss Whiting had other reasons for declining 
 to meet us on terms of friendship. 
 
 I look back on that quiet period, now, with some regret 
 and a little wonder. I feel regret because it seems to me 
 that despite the innate tendencies which were presently 
 to destroy us, we really achieved a happy human relation 
 to each other. My wonder is due to the reflection that 
 I should have been able to find pleasure in such a rela- 
 tion at that time. Less than three months earlier I was a 
 solitary, proud of my isolation. I would not look out of 
 the window when Herz was passing because I feared the 
 beginnings of social intercourse with the other lodgers in 
 the house. Some very essential change must certainly have 
 been worked in me during that first month in Keppel Street. 
 Hill deserves some credit as the agent of the magician, 
 but Hill was only an agent. 
 
 He was away for Christmas, as were, also, Mrs. Har- 
 greave, Lippmann and Herz the two latter went home to 
 Germany ; but the Meares, Helen, Judith and I had a festival 
 at Simpson's. The Meares chose the rendezvous; they in- 
 sisted on a real English Christmas dinner. 
 
 I had anticipated some offer of reconciliation from Ken 
 Lodge, but none came; and I decided that my uncle had
 
 220 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 been hopelessly offended by my quarrel with the curly 
 Blake. I never expected Gladys to notice me again; she 
 would think I despised her, and contempt was a thing she 
 could not endure; but I had certainly looked forward to 
 some offer of reconciliation from my uncle. 
 
 And the complete disregard of my existence evidenced 
 by his omission of any Christmas greeting, was certainly a 
 factor in my decision to invest in the Meares enterprise. 
 I had been paid for Parkinson's job, but I had no other 
 decently remunerative work in sight my casual contribu- 
 tions to the technical journals were not well paid and I 
 looked upon them more as an advertisement than as a 
 possible source of income. It is true that my competition 
 drawings were nearly finished, and that there was always 
 a Hope, but I counted very little on that. I knew, now 
 when it was too late, that I had taken a bad line with 
 my plan from the beginning. I had not been at my best 
 when I began those drawings. So, it chanced that the 
 first serious doubts as to my financial future coincided with 
 the temptation to plunge. 
 
 Meares was more cheerful about that time. By some 
 means or another he had obtained promises of various sums 
 that were now mounting up towards the desiderated 10,000 
 he had named as the lowest possible capital he required to 
 work his mine; but, at the same time, he admitted with a 
 hint of chagrin that he had been compelled to forsake his 
 original plan. 
 
 "You see, it's like this, Mr. Hornby," he said one evening 
 in my rooms about a week after Christmas, "you can't very 
 well ask a man to invest four or five hundred pounds at 
 ten per cent. It isn't worth his while." 
 
 "Then what's the idea now?" I asked. 
 
 "It amounts to forming a syndicate, Mr. Hornby," he 
 said very seriously. "I propose to start the mines and when 
 we're turning out the stuff, sell the original shares to a 
 bigger company with the condition that I remain in as 
 general manager on the spot." 
 
 "And the difference is?" I suggested.
 
 JUDITH 
 
 "Well, either the members of the syndicate get their 
 money back in six months with a bonus of two hundred per 
 cent, or they can take up shares in the new company to 
 the extent of four times their original holding." 
 
 Perhaps he still saw some marks of perplexity on my 
 face for he dropped into the personal application that 
 finally settled me. 
 
 ''Well, for instance, Mr. Hornby, you put five hundred 
 into this preliminary company," he went on, "you or any- 
 body, of course; and when we form the larger company 
 in six months' time, you have the option of selling your 
 interest for fifteen hundred cash or taking up two thousand 
 pound shares in the new company." 
 
 I had not five hundred pounds to spare, but I do not 
 remember wincing when I wrote out a cheque for half 
 that sum. Meares asked me to leave the actual payment 
 over until all his promises were obtained and he could 
 realise the full amount he wanted; but I preferred to 
 complete the transaction on the spot. He gave me an 
 elaborately formal receipt, and begged me not to regard 
 myself as finally committed. 
 
 "We've been like friends here, if I may say so," he said 
 with a touch of emotion, "and Fd like to treat this transac- 
 tion as between friends. What I mean to say is, Mr. Hornby, 
 if you change your mind any time between now and the 
 registration of the syndicate, don't hesitate to say so. This 
 money's ready for you any time you want it." 
 
 "Oh! that's all right, old chap," I said genially. 
 
 I believe I had a feeling that my two hundred and fifty 
 pounds might begin to increase from the moment it was 
 in Meares's hands, and I foresaw, already, that in six 
 months' time that increase might be urgently needed. 
 
 Without giving the transaction reasonable consideration, 
 I accepted Meares's optimistic mention of six months as a 
 definite time limit, and mentally reckoned my resources no 
 further than the middle of July. But meanwhile I thought 
 out material for two more technical articles, and entered 
 for the next competition I saw advertised. I received the
 
 222 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 particulars before I had completed the set of drawings I 
 was then engaged upon. 
 
 I must confess that I find it very difficult to give any- 
 thing like a consecutive account of my life through that 
 critical month of January, 1906. The general election that 
 returned the Liberals to power with such a tremendous ma- 
 jority appears now to be the most incidental affair. And 
 yet it certainly effected me; even vitally. 
 
 I remember going down to the Embankment with Hill 
 to see the results go upon a big screen, erected, I think, 
 on or very near the offices of The Daily Mail; and I see 
 myself there as a very perplexed Wilfred Hornby, a little 
 dazed by his detachment from the emotion of the crowd. 
 
 But that election and the conversations I had with Hill 
 broke my automatic acceptance of the Conservative tradi- 
 tion, although I never became a Liberal. When I escaped 
 from my mechanical reservations concerning party govern- 
 ment, I came directly out into the freedom of one who 
 owes no allegiance to either side. 
 
 Yet at the time I did not realise that I was extending 
 my liberty. 
 
 But all the outside influences of that January were col- 
 oured by my relations with Judith. 
 
 VI 
 
 Our movement towards friendship was infinitely slow 
 during the weeks that immediately followed our talk by 
 the Spaniards. We were never alone together, and when 
 we met in the company of Helen, Judith always seemed 
 to me to be nervous and constrained. She used to watch 
 Helen with a look that I felt was in some way doubtful 
 and uneasy, and she treated me on many occasions with a 
 definite coldness that I was sure was a mere assumption;
 
 JUDITH 223 
 
 adopted, perhaps, to modify Helen's marked air of com- 
 radeship. 
 
 And that, also, was a thing I could not understand. For 
 the Helen I saw, after our reconciliation at my tea-party, 
 was a new person altogether. She no longer scowled and 
 brooded when I was with her ; on the contrary, she singled 
 me out for special attention. During our Sunday gather- 
 ings she would ask me questions about the architecture of 
 London or about art in general; questions that appealed 
 to my authority as a specialist and gave me control of 
 the conversation. She flattered me, in fact, by "drawing me 
 out," as she might have phrased it, by the interest of her 
 attention to my opinion. 
 
 I accepted it all in good faith, and responded without 
 effort to her overtures. I believed that she was trying to 
 make amends for her former misjudgment of me, and I 
 did my best to convey that I, too, had been at fault. I 
 lost my mistrust of the quality of the relations between 
 her and Judith; and came to believe that Helen might be 
 made an ally. 
 
 I was not surprised when she came down alone to my 
 sitting-room for the first time one morning, a few days 
 after Christmas. I had been hoping to find some oppor- 
 tunity for a greater frankness than was possible in the 
 presence of any third person, and when she knocked at my 
 door and came in with the excuse of wanting to borrow 
 a book, I jumped to the conclusion that she, also, had felt 
 the necessity for an apology or, at least, an explanation. 
 
 Perhaps I was over-anxious to make a show of welcom- 
 ing her on that occasion, for she was evidently nervous, 
 selected a book hurriedly, thanked me with a queer, little 
 mincing smile, and retreated before I had time to begin any 
 sort of general conversation. I thought that she had, 
 perhaps, meant to make a full explanation of her old 
 animosity and that her courage had failed her when she 
 found herself alone with me. 
 
 But two or three days later she came down again to 
 exchange her book ; and this time she stayed longer. After
 
 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 the new book had been chosen, she went over to my board 
 and began to ask me about my work. I had the block 
 plan of my new competition laid down, and as there were 
 several separate buildings to be arranged on a rather awk- 
 ward site, I had cut out the ground plans of my several 
 blocks in stiff paper to try the effects of their various rela- 
 tions to each other, and the frontage and the fall of the 
 ground. 
 
 "Oh! what are all those funny little things?" Helen 
 asked. "They look like little beetles." 
 
 I explained as well as I could, but she continually inter- 
 rupted me with irrelevant questions about such things as 
 the use of my set squares or spring-bow compasses; and 
 she had an unnatural way of looking at me with a sort 
 of archness that made me feel vaguely uncomfortable. It 
 was impossible to approach any serious understanding while 
 she looked at me like that. I attributed it all to nervous- 
 ness and wondered if her earlier manner might not have 
 been partly attributable to the same cause. If my own 
 feelings were any test, that explanation was certainly the 
 correct one. I found myself inexplicably uncomfortable 
 and ill at ease when I was alone with her. 
 
 And it was this very uneasiness that precipitated the 
 extraordinary situation which finally altered all our atti- 
 tudes and cleared away the uncertainties if not the jeal- 
 ousies that so complicated any intercourse between Helen 
 and myself. I was annoyed by my own ineptitude, and 
 when she came down for the third time I desperately at- 
 tempted to achieve some confidence of manner. 
 
 I realised some change in her appearance when she en- 
 tered the room, and saw almost at once that she had dressed 
 her hair in a new way. She had quite remarkable hair, 
 but she usually dressed it so badly, screwing and plaiting It 
 into a kind of tight helmet, that I had hardly noticed it 
 until then. Now I saw it must be very abundant, if a little 
 coarse in texture, and that there was much more colour 
 in it than I had supposed ; I found veins of deep red browns 
 here and there, almost the tone of old mahogany.
 
 JUDITH 
 
 I essayed a lighter note, at once, by commenting on the 
 improvement. 
 
 "Why don't you always wear your hair like that?" I 
 asked. "You've never done it justice before." 
 
 She had come into the room then, and was leaning against 
 the end of the table, her hands gripping the edge. She 
 had a very passable figure, and she looked, I thought, al- 
 most handsome only the dead slate-blue of her eyes and 
 the untidy coarseness of her eyebrows still repelled me. 
 
 She showed a passing shade of emotion when I praised 
 her. Something that might have been fear or disgust 
 came into her expression for a moment, and then she ap- 
 peared to rally herself and said, again with that detestable 
 suggestion of archness: 
 
 "How quick you are to notice things !" 
 
 "It makes such a tremendous difference in you," I said, 
 still struggling to achieve a light, easy touch. 
 
 "Does it?" she asked. "I'm glad you think it's an im- 
 provement." 
 
 I accepted that as a tribute to my supposed powers of 
 artistic perception. 
 
 "It seems such a pity," I said, "that women should not 
 be as beautiful as they can." 
 
 She looked down and a dark flush crept up under her 
 rather sallow skin. 
 
 "I suppose," she said, "that a woman wants to to have 
 some object." 
 
 "Doesn't Miss Carrington prefer your hair done like 
 that?" I asked. 
 
 "Oh! yes," she said, "but but, well, Judith's approval 
 isn't everything, is it?" 
 
 I thought it was, but I was still trying to propitiate Helen 
 in the vain hope of establishing some kind of sincerity 
 between us. (f 
 
 "What other approval do you want?" I asked, 
 applause of the multitude?" 
 
 She shook her head, stammered something I could not 
 hear, and then changed the conversation by saying,
 
 226 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "You do work very hard, don't you?" 
 
 "It's that competition I showed you a few days ago," I 
 said. "It means a lot of work." 
 
 "You sit up to all hours," she went on quickly, taking 
 no notice of my explanation. "There's always a light in here 
 when we come back from the theatre." 
 
 "I generally go to bed about twelve," I remarked. 
 
 "Do you work all the evening ?" was her next question. 
 
 "Sometimes," I said. 
 
 She was embarrassing me again ; looking at me with that 
 expression which in another woman I might have called 
 coquettish. But that interpretation never occurred to me 
 in connexion with Helen; I only thought that she was still 
 foolishly nervous. I wished she would return to her earlier 
 treatment of me; that, at least, would give me a chance 
 to speak frankly. 
 
 "Judith is going without me, this evening," she said and 
 looked down again. 
 
 "Oh!" was all the comment I found to make on that 
 statement. 
 
 "She's taking Mrs. Meares to the St. James'," she ex- 
 plained. 
 
 "Is she?" I said. 
 
 "So I shall be all alone," she went on. 
 
 I had no idea what she was trying to suggest, but I felt 
 that I must say something. "Oh! well, so shall I," I re- 
 turned with an affectation of gaiety. "Grinding away at 
 these infernal drawings, I suppose." 
 
 "It seems a pity . . ." she began and stopped abruptly. 
 
 "Nothing else to do," I said, pretending disgust. 
 
 That dark flush had come back to her cheeks and she 
 seemed to be struggling with some speech she could not 
 bring herself to utter. 
 
 "Oh! well," she broke out suddenly, "I'm interrupting 
 your work now." 
 
 She went out quickly, without speaking again and with- 
 out taking the book she had presumably come to fetch.
 
 JUDITH 227 
 
 VII 
 
 The house seemed to me unusually quiet and empty that 
 evening. Possibly a large proportion of its occupants 
 chanced to be out, and my feeling may have been justified. 
 But the true reason of my consciousness of a deserted 
 dwelling was the knowledge that Judith was away. 
 
 She had never been down to my rooms after dinner, and 
 I had only once met her elsewhere in the house during the 
 evening. But I loved to know that she was there, near 
 4o me. When I knew that she was away, I felt as if the 
 key of all life had suddenly dropped a third; as if the 
 motive had changed from a brave challenging march to the 
 weary steadiness of a persistent minor. 
 
 It was a little after ten when I heard a cautious step on 
 the long straight flight of stairs that led down to the hall. 
 I was reading with my back to the table, by the light of 
 a lamp I had brought from our house in the North End 
 Road. I preferred an oil lamp for reading, the gas at 
 "73" was ver 7 unsteady. I thought at first that the step 
 must be that of Herz, who had a habit of going out to 
 post letters at midnight; and even when I heard my door 
 being quietly opened I still fancied that it might be the 
 little German come to borrow note-paper or stamps. 
 
 I looked round with a touch of impatience, but the lamp 
 was directly between me and the door, and all I could see 
 was the shining of some pale drapery just over my horizon 
 of the table's edge. 
 
 I jumped to my feet, already a trifle startled by that 
 apparition, to find Helen in a long white dressing-gown, 
 with her hair streaming over her shoulders and down to 
 her waist. 
 
 She shut the door definitely behind her and stared at me. 
 
 "I've come," she said. 
 
 Even then I did not guess. I asked her to come in and 
 sit down. I was finding excuses for her; telling myself 
 that she had undressed before she found that she had
 
 228 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 nothing to read, and that she had hurried down to fetch 
 the book she had forgotten in the morning; and, further, 
 that her association with the stage must be allowed for 
 this visit of hers was no doubt typical of the freedoms 
 that obtain in the theatrical profession. I could find plenty 
 of excuses for her visit in that attire, but I could not per- 
 suade the stiff formal mind of the old Wilfred Hornby who 
 still lived with me; and when she came and sat down 
 opposite to me in the other arm-chair, my prevailing desire 
 was to be rid of her as soon as possible. 
 
 "You've come for your book ?" I said, and tried, perhaps 
 with a grotesque distortion of my intention, to appear at 
 ease. 
 
 "Oh! yes, of course for my book," she echoed in a little 
 hurrying voice. "That will do, won't it?" 
 
 I had been standing by the table since she entered the 
 room, and I walked across to the bookcase. I knew that 
 I could show a more convincing appearance of ease if I 
 did not look at her. 
 
 "Let me see, what did you take last?" I asked, crouching 
 down over the bookcase. 
 
 "Oh! does it matter? Anything!" she said. 
 
 "Anything?" I returned. "Well, Gwilt's Encyclopaedia 
 of Architecture for instance ?" 
 
 "Anything that will do for an excuse," she said. 
 
 I must have been very near illumination, then, for a sud- 
 den rigour of cold nervousness overtook me, but I was 
 hunting explanations again and evaded the truth a few 
 moments longer. 
 
 I came back to my chair with the book still unfound. 
 
 "An excuse?" I repeated. "Wasn't it that you really 
 wanted?" 
 
 She shook her head and her mouth was set and her jaw 
 rigid as if she were clenching her teeth. Then she turned 
 her profile to me and stretched out her hands to the fire. 
 
 I had missed or misinterpreted a dozen clear indications, 
 and it may seem strange that I shotrfd have leapt instantly
 
 JUDITH 229 
 
 to realisation at a sight that might so easily have borne 
 another construction. 
 
 But when I saw that the hands she had stretched out 
 were trembling, that her arms and her whole body were 
 trembling, that if she had not so rigidly locked her teeth 
 they would certainly have chattered I knew beyond all 
 further shadow of doubt that she had come to offer her-, 
 self in order to save Judith. 
 
 I had reason enough for anger, but I felt none. 1 under- 
 stood, now, not only how she had played and pretended 
 with me, but, also, the flat insult of her estimate of my 
 character. She had believed that I was a creature to be 
 tempted by the prospect of any sensual emotion ; that I was 
 the indiscriminate woman-hunter she had judged me to be 
 at our first meeting. And yet, my only feeling for her was 
 one of great pity, of commiseration, of a desire to save her 
 from committing herself. 
 
 "Don't you think you had better go now?" I asked 
 clumsily. 
 
 Her trembling stopped at once and she looked round 
 at me with a quick suspicion in her dull eyes. 
 
 "What do you mean?" she asked. 
 
 I was hardly less nervous than she was and my excuse 
 was heavily inept. 
 
 "I'm rather tired to-night," I said. "I have been swat- 
 ting away at that bally competition until I can hardly keep 
 my eyes open. In fact, I believe I was actually asleep 
 when you came down . . ." 
 
 I should have gone blundering on, but she cut me short 
 by saying, 
 
 "Perhaps you don't understand?" 
 
 I saw, then, how desperate she was ; how she had stif- 
 fened herself, and allowed this one mad idea to dominate 
 her until its realisation seemed her only possible means of 
 relief. 
 
 I do not know what sudden emotion prompted the reply 
 that came to me, but I believe that no consideration could 
 have bettered it.
 
 230 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "I understand how prejudiced you are, how unjust you 
 are to me," I said, and I jumped out of my chair and began 
 to pace the length of the room. "You're blind," I went on, 
 "blind to everything but your jealousy. You're not fair, 
 you're not the least reasonable. Yes ! I have got a griev- 
 ance. I've tried to be fair to you, and you've shut your 
 eyes and clenched your teeth and determined with all your 
 might to hate me whatever happened. You're not the only 
 person who has a right to love Judith . . ." 
 
 "You've no right, anyway," she interrupted me. 
 
 "Why not?" I asked angrily. "Why not? Why 
 haven't I?" 
 
 "Every one knows the sort of man you are," she said. 
 
 She was standing up, now, facing me with a timid de- 
 fiance. I could see that she was afraid of the sound of 
 her own words, and yet she was braced to an immense 
 effort. 
 
 "That's absolutely rot!" I said boyishly. 
 
 She clutched the table and watched me with the desperate 
 courage of the trapped animal putting out its last great 
 effort. 
 
 "I know," she said. "I know about you and Miss Whit- 
 ing. You were in her room before that row began. You're 
 the sort of man who ought to be exterminated." 
 
 I had begun to smile before she reached the end of 
 that accusation and I think my confidence unexpectedly 
 broke her. She gulped and put her hand to her throat as 
 she came to her weak ending; and before I had time to 
 make any reply she burst into violent hysterics. 
 
 I stood there like a fool, fairly beaten, now, afraid to 
 touch her, afraid to speak ; and she swayed and rocked and 
 cried noisily with great hiccoughing gasps that made me 
 feel physically sick. Something within me pitied her and 
 yearned to console and reassure her, but the physical inter- 
 posed between us. I felt unable to approach her. It was 
 as if my spirit lamented but my body refused any kind of 
 response. I tried to overcome and could not overcome 
 my awful repugnance for that dishevelled figure with its
 
 JUDITH g31 
 
 horrible retching, maniacal cries, even though I knew that 
 her spirit, also, stood back, bewildered and grieved, from 
 the clumsy instrument of the flesh. 
 
 I stood stock still like a foolish automaton, and the strug- 
 gle within myself reeled backwards and forwards and found 
 no expression. . . . 
 
 But afte. an immeasurable period of time it seemed as 
 if the storm had swept through her. She dropped to her 
 knees and crossing her arms on the table, hid her face in 
 them. She was almost quiet, now, but ever and again a 
 great sob heaved and broke like a renewed gush of water 
 through an emptying conduit. 
 
 I had a sense of returning peace, even before she spoke. 
 
 "I was so ... so," she gasped without moving her head, 
 and then one of those great gulping sobs broke her sentence 
 and for a moment I hardly understood the whispered 
 "afraid" that followed like the little voice of a distant 
 priest down the remoteness of the abruptly silent nave. 
 
 "Afraid?" I said, and my voice sounded harsh and loud. 
 "Surely, you weren't afraid of Me?" 
 
 She looked up and then dragged herself to her feet. All 
 the emotion was drained out of her but something of her 
 original resolution still showed in her brooding eyes. 
 
 Her voice sounded flat and tired as she answered me. 
 
 "Yes, of you," she said. "If you're not that kind of 
 man, why did you insult us at the beginning?" 
 
 I sighed, considering the hopelessness of any reasonable 
 explanation. 
 
 "I didn't know," I said lamely. 
 
 She seemed to stare at that without understanding it, and 
 then she said, in the same dull voice, 
 
 "Suppose it had been Judith to-night instead of me ?" 
 
 I forgot my pity for her when she said that. There was 
 something infinitely revolting to me in her suggestion. 
 
 "Good Lord! What a beast you must be!" I said. 
 "Judith ! Can't you see that she is the most sacred and won- 
 derful person in the world? Is that all your pretended 
 love comes to ?" My impetuosity choked me.
 
 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "I only wanted to save her," she said with the first hint 
 of personal defence. "I don't care how much you despise 
 me. You can think anything you like about me." Her 
 voice trailed out into the dreariness of sheer apathy, and 
 she took a couple of limping steps towards the door. I was 
 sorry for her, again, but I could find no convincing expres- 
 sion of my sympathy. I thought that she was going at 
 last, but when she had reached the door she seemed to realise 
 the threat of her failure and turned round with, perhaps, 
 a final wondering hope that everything was not absolutely 
 lost. 
 
 "You're quite sure?" she asked simply. 
 
 "Oh! how can you be so silly?" I replied as gently as 
 I could. 
 
 "And, of course, you'll tell Judith all about it?" she con- 
 tinued. 
 
 "I certainly shall not," I said. 
 
 "Why not? You'd better!" she returned. "She'd hate 
 me for it, probably. She doesn't care for me, now, as mach 
 as she used to." 
 
 "I shan't say a word to anybody," I said. 
 
 "Not even to clear your own character?" she persisted, 
 returning to that stubborn suspicion of me, which she was 
 never able completely to conquer. 
 
 "That's merely silly," I said. 
 
 She sighed miserably as she went out. I heard her slow, 
 dejected footsteps tediously climbing the stairs. 
 
 VIII 
 
 All that scene ..between Helen and myself had a strange 
 air of unreality when I reflected on it next morning. I felt 
 as if I had witnessed it from a distance, as if I had played 
 no part in it myself. My thought of it had the same quality 
 as my thought of the moonlight walk with the little doctor 
 on the night of my father's death. On that occasion, also, 
 the physical presentation of myself had been cut adrift from
 
 JUDITH 233 
 
 the emotional, and I had found no possibility of uniting 
 them. 
 
 I had been so reserved, so detached, so inarticulate. The 
 more I pondered my own part in the affair, the more clearly 
 I realised that I had been acting, and that the actress Helen 
 had been moved by genuine, spontaneous impulses. I had 
 admired her effort even when I had been most repelled; 
 but in the morning I found her attempted sacrifice per- 
 fectly heroic. She had dared so much, and her motive had 
 been so disinterested. 
 
 For, thinking over the whole thing that morning, I could 
 only come to the conclusion that she must have taken ac- 
 count of the possibility that if her mad plan succeeded, she 
 might lose Judith's friendship. She had certainly been 
 prepared to risk that issue. "You'd better tell Judith," she 
 had said; "she'll hate me for it, probably." And I could 
 only infer that she would have counted that loss as bearable, 
 if she could know, at the same time, that Judith had been 
 saved from Me. 
 
 I began very seriously to doubt whether I were not some 
 kind of horror that ought, as Helen had said, to be ex- 
 terminated. 
 
 What would happen next, I had no idea, but I was cheered 
 by the certainty that some rearrangement must follow last 
 night's drama. My general feeling was that Helen, having 
 failed, would cease to stand between me and Judith, 
 imagined her dropping to a relative unimportance, and I 
 was sincerely sorry for her. I made foolish plans in which 
 Judith and I recompensed Helen for all the suffering she 
 had brought upon herself by her wrong-headed estimate 
 of me. 
 
 Two possibilities I never considered. The first was that 
 Judith would be told of what Helen had attempted; the 
 second was that Helen might misrepresent _ the facts, 
 trusted her honesty, with a really touching simplicity. . . . 
 
 Little Pferdminger popped in about twelve o'clock, 
 remembered afterwards that he had an unusual air of reso- 
 lution in his bearing, but I scarcely noticed it at the time.
 
 234 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 had settled down in dead earnest to my work after the dis- 
 tractions of the early morning, and I turned upon him, pet- 
 tishly, with a curt, "Well, what is it?" 
 
 His left eye immediately intimated that it intended to 
 take no part in the interview, and then the little man, him- 
 self, also appeared willing to cancel the imperiousness of 
 his entrance. 
 
 "You are occupied?" he said. 
 
 "Yes," I replied. 
 
 "So !" he said. "It vill vait," and went without another 
 word. 
 
 I heard him go upstairs, wondered vaguely for a mo- 
 ment what he was up to, and then lost myself again in 
 my work. I meant to make no mistake about my plan 
 for this new competition. 
 
 I think it must have been nearly an hour later when 
 Hill came in. 
 
 I glanced at him over my shoulder, and waved my hand 
 towards the fireplace. "In one minute!" I said. 
 
 But he would not take that hint. He came over to my 
 board and put his hand on my arm. "Look here, Hornby," 
 he said, "what the devil have you been up to ?" 
 
 I stared at him abstractedly, and saw in that instant the 
 ideal arrangement of my plan I had so wilfully missed 
 during the last two hours. 
 
 "Been up to ?" I repeated automatically and made a brief 
 note of my inspiration on the side of my drawing. 
 
 "If you don't mean to tell me, say so!" Hill went on 
 sternly. "Don't play the fool and pretend." 
 
 I came out of my preoccupation then and stared at him. 
 
 "I just wanted to get this thing right," I said. "What 
 is it you want to know?" 
 
 "I want to know if there's any truth in the confounded 
 row little Pferdminger has been making about you and 
 Helen," he demanded. 
 
 "What?" I said. I was completely staggered for the 
 moment. If Hill had suddenly smacked my face, I could 
 not have been more disconcerted.
 
 JUDITH 235 
 
 Hill frowned. "I can't believe . . ." he began. 
 
 "Well, of course not," I said. "But tell me what he has 
 been saying, anyhow, and to whom?" 
 
 "To Helen and Judith in the first instance," Hill said. 
 'He was foaming and bullying up there until Judith, ap- 
 parently, turned him out ; and then he came down to me full 
 of virtue and tremendously injured." 
 
 "And his story is?" I interposed. 
 
 "That Helen came to you here last night between ten and 
 eleven in her night-dress and with her hair down, stayed 
 with you an hour, and well, he added some very distress- 
 ing details of his observations on your conduct. He could 
 not see anything, he admits, but he heard unusual sounds ; 
 and his description of Helen's return to her own room 
 was graphic beyond the powers of his imagination." 
 
 "Oh! Hell!" was my only comment; I could think of 
 nothing else to say. 
 
 "You don't mean to say that it's true, Hornby," Hill said 
 with a note of something like grief in his voice. 
 
 "The facts are; not the interpretation," I said. 
 
 I am glad to remember that Hill believed me without 
 the necessity for any further protestation on my part. 
 
 "You will have to find an interpretation to stop Pferd- 
 minger's talk," was all he said. 
 
 "Which won't be so easy," I remarked. 
 
 I thought furiously for a few seconds and then I went 
 on : "Of course you know that Helen dislikes me." 
 
 Hill nodded. "She's jealous of you," he said. "I told you 
 that months ago." 
 
 "Well, all that matters," I continued, "is that she came 
 down last night to have it out with me. The night-dress 
 was a dressing-gown, as a matter of fact. She came, I 
 suppose, on the inspiration of the moment. And we had 
 the very devil of a row, which ended in hysterics on her 
 part. I'll admit that she made some very queer noises 
 about that time." 
 
 "I understand," Hill said, "but Pferdminger won't.' 
 
 "He must," I said and rang the bell furiously.
 
 236 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 Pferdminger answered it, himself. He came in with 
 a pretence of bluster, but flying his usual signal of nervous- 
 ness. 
 
 "Shut the door!" I snapped at him. I realised at once 
 that I could do what I liked with him and I felt in a mood 
 to bully. 
 
 "You've come up here to apologise," I said and stared 
 fiercely at his attentive eye. 
 
 "Apologise? No!" he returned. 
 
 I gave him no opportunity to work up his indignation. 
 
 "You have come to apologise," I repeated; "or take the 
 consequences. You've been spreading a grossly impertinent 
 libel about me and Miss Binstead, and now you are going 
 to confess that you are a meddling, eavesdropping, little 
 liar. Do you understand?" 
 
 "I haf told no lies," he said. "I vill not be called a 
 liar." 
 
 "Hold your tongue !" I shouted at him. "If you dare to 
 contradict me again ..." I scowled at him, preferring 
 to leave the unspoken menace as a choice between physical 
 violence and the immediate loss of one or more tenants ; 
 both reprisals were obviously threatened. Then I dropped 
 my voice and went on : "You see, my little man, you don't 
 understand. You've put your own beastly construction on 
 Miss Binstead's visit to me last night. I dare say you're 
 only an ignorant fool and not malicious ; but you've got to 
 realise that you can't go on making that kind of mischief 
 with impunity. This isn't Germany, and Miss Binstead is 
 not the kind of woman you're accustomed to mix with." 
 
 I saw that he was puzzled as well as intimidated. I 
 think the sincerity of my indignation had shaken him. He 
 was rather a low little scoundrel, and I have little doubt 
 that he had hoped to blackmail a few shillings' increase 
 of rent out of us. He had probably calculated on finding 
 us ashamed and humble. 
 
 "But . . ." he stammered, overlooking my long string 
 of insults. 
 
 "But what?" I snapped.
 
 JUDITH 237 
 
 "I did hear . . ." he began. 
 
 I made a sound expressive of disgust. 
 
 "You heard Miss Binstead crying," I said. "What of 
 it?" 
 
 "But vy does she come in her nightshirt?" he asked 
 moodily. 
 
 "She didn't," I said. "She was wearing a dressing- 
 gown." 
 
 "But . . ." he began again. 
 
 I cut him short. "Are you going to apologise ?" I asked 
 viciously. 
 
 He spread out his hands with a gesture of renunciation. 
 
 "Eef I make a mistake . . ." he began. 
 
 "You most certainly have made a mistake," I said. 
 
 "Veil, then, I apologise to it," he concluded. 
 
 "Then go and do it, at once," I said. "Go now, this in- 
 stant, and apologise to Miss Binstead." 
 
 I expected a further demur, but he made none. I opened 
 the door for him and watched him as he went upstairs 
 with a sort of righteous insouciance. 
 
 "Do you think he'll do it?" I asked Hill. 
 
 Hill was grinning. "Oh! he'll do it," he said. "But I 
 say, Hornby, I never guessed that you could be such a com- 
 mander of men." 
 
 "It's easy enough when you've got the bulge, and the 
 men are like Pferdminger," I said. 
 
 "I don't know," Hill returned. "You were so splendidly 
 absolute." 
 
 I knew what he meant and wondered why I was never 
 "absolute" except when I lost my temper. The last time 
 had been on the occasion of my interview with Blake. 
 
 "It's a rotten thing to have happened," I mumbled, re- 
 suming my usual manner. 
 
 Hill made no reply. 
 
 I had left the door open and a minute later we saw 
 Pferdminger returning from his mission. He stopped at the 
 threshold of my room and bowed.
 
 238 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "I haf apologise," he said. "I say no more at all to any 
 one. I am sorry to mistake the affair." 
 
 "That's good," I returned. "Shut the door after you." 
 
 "Can we trust him to hold his tongue?" I asked Hill, 
 after a little pause. 
 
 "Yes," he said confidently. "He has taken his line. He 
 has justified his respectability and now he admits his mis- 
 take. Even if he doesn't believe you, he'll stick to that. 
 I've no doubt he'll apologise to you every morning for a 
 week to come." 
 
 By all of which statements Hill proved himself to be a 
 true prophet. I had no more trouble with Pferdminger 
 beyond the nuisance of his repeated explanations. 
 
 IX 
 
 I thought that some communication with Judith or Helen 
 must follow the events of the morning; and I waited, ex- 
 pecting one or both of them either to come down or send 
 me a message. 
 
 I had a new sense of having been drawn into a close 
 relation with them, of being happily entangled in a new 
 and unavoidable relevancy with the deepest interests of 
 their existence. We three shared, now, I imagined, the 
 secret of Helen's desperate scheme to separate Judith and 
 me, a secret that would surely constitute a wonderful bond 
 between us. I pictured Helen's confession to Judith, and 
 Judith's response. She would .see, as I had seen, all the 
 fineness of the offered sacrifice, and we could find a new 
 source of sympathy in our common gentleness for Helen. 
 I never doubted Judith. I knew that we were friends, tem- 
 porarily separated by the force of circumstances. But I 
 looked forward, now, to a great release. Helen's opposi- 
 tion had been dissipated, she could no longer have any in- 
 fluence. She had gambled recklessly and lost, and now 
 she must throw up her hands. 
 
 Meanwhile I hardly knew how to control my impatience.
 
 JUDITH 239 
 
 I could not concentrate my attention on my work. I en- 
 larged and established the note I had made of my new 
 plan for the competition, but I could not begin the me- 
 chanical work of re-drawing it. Every sound in the house 
 snatched my interest away from my board. I furiously de- 
 sired to begin at once the new relationships with Judith 
 that I imagined Helen's confession would involve. 
 
 And a little after three o'clock I heard footsteps on the 
 stairs that I instantly recognised after all the false hopes 
 of the past two hours as those for which I had waited. 
 I sat quite still, and my powers of hearing seemed to be 
 wonderfully intensified. And I heard Judith and Helen go 
 along the hall without hesitation, heard them go out and 
 close the front door gently behind them. They passed my 
 window, but they did not look up. 
 
 For a moment I felt impelled to rush after them, and 
 demand an explanation. I was filled with horrible fore- 
 bodings. All the radiance of my anticipations had been 
 changed to the deepest gloom of doubt. I was sure that 
 there had been some mistake; that some essential of my 
 last night's scene with Helen had been either concealed 
 or misrepresented. 
 
 Five minutes later I was cursing myself for my failure 
 to follow Judith. I cannot say why I did not obey that 
 immediate impulse. My thought followed her, but my body 
 had not responded. Perhaps, the perverse habit of re- 
 serve I had cultivated since my first blunder had grown 
 too strong for me. 
 
 And now I was faced with the most wearing of all trials, 
 a suspense that could not be terminated by my own effort. 
 At first I decided to wait, at my window, until Judith re- 
 turned, and then to waylay her boldly in the hall and ask 
 her to tell me all that had happened. But I had not the 
 continence to endure that waiting. I put on my hat and 
 went out, not with any foolish intention of trying to find 
 Judith in the wilderness of London, but to seek relief 
 in action. 
 
 I had no hesitation as to my choice of direction. I made
 
 240 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 straight for the seat by the Spaniards. When I am alone, 
 I walk fairly fast at any time, but I fancy that I must 
 have raced on this occasion. I have a memory of seeing 
 surprise on the faces of some of the people I met ; and more 
 distinctly of a small urchin of two or three watching my 
 approach with a look of stupefied awe. He stood in the 
 middle of the pavement in High Street, Camden Town, and 
 stared up at me as he might have stared at the threat of 
 some rushing, unavoidable Juggernaut of a motor. I be- 
 lieve that I stepped over him. He was certainly prepared to 
 immolate himself. 
 
 It was nearly dark when I reached the Spaniards, and 
 the consecrated seat was occupied by two engrossed lovers. 
 I began to debate, then, the advisability of an instant re- 
 turn to Keppel Street, but while my mind occupied itself 
 feverishly with that problem, my legs had carried me on 
 into Highgate Lane, and I continued my walk, still at 
 top speed, down Highgate Village, down West Hill and 
 into Kentish Town. 
 
 I got back to Keppel Street soon after five, wet with 
 perspiration, but immensely determined. I went straight 
 up to the third floor. I had never been up there before, 
 and had no idea which was Judith's room, but I knocked 
 with authority at the first door I came to. 
 
 Mrs. Hargreave's voice answered me and I went in. She 
 was sitting at the table, in her fur coat, writing. 
 
 "Well?" she said, and without waiting for me to reply, 
 added : "You look warm enough." 
 
 The room felt stuffily cold. There was no fire, but a 
 gas jet without a globe was flaming on the wall by the 
 mantelpiece. 
 
 "I've been walking rather fast," I said, and was aston- 
 ished to find myself rather breathless. "Can you tell me 
 which is Miss Carrington's room?" I asked. 
 
 "She's out," Mrs. Hargreave returned coldly. "Can I 
 give her any message?" 
 
 "Are you sure?" I persisted. "I want to see her." 
 
 "She and Helen went out a couple of hours ago," Mrs.
 
 JUDITH 
 
 Hargreave said. "I don't know where they were going." 
 I thanked her and backed out. Through the fury of 
 my impatience I was aware of the suspicion that Mrs. 
 Hargreave, also, had heard some imperfect or untrue re- 
 port of my interview with Helen. 
 
 Pferdminger had attended to my fire while I was out, 
 and the cheerful flicker of it made the room appear more 
 than usually comfortable and inviting. I thought of Mrs. 
 Hargreave and wondered how far she was affected by the 
 discomfort of her surroundings. Hill's room was little 
 more cheerful than hers, except for the companionship of 
 his books, and his fire was always, it seemed, on the verge 
 of extinction my picture of it was of a sullen oozing of 
 yellow smoke through a profoundly mournful pile of slack. 
 But Hill professed to be quite unaffected by the condition 
 of his fire or his room. 
 
 I went over to my board and stared out of the window. 
 I would not light the gas, or my lamp, as they would im- 
 pair my sight of the street, and I meant to watch until 
 Judith and Helen returned. My walk had calmed me. I 
 felt that I could wait, now, with a measure of self-control. 
 The consciousness of tension had relaxed as I had entered 
 the comfort of my room. 
 
 I dare say that I had been standing there twenty minutes 
 or half an hour when I saw Helen coming back alone. She 
 was hurrying, and she looked up as she passed; I knew 
 that she meant to come in and see me. My first feeling 
 was one of bitter disappointment; but that was succeeded 
 by something like relief. I should know now, I supposed, 
 what had happened, and later I should surely see Judith. 
 
 I hurried to light the two gas jets by the window, but 
 left the blinds and curtains undrawn. If I were to see Helen 
 alone, again, I meant to have a chaperon. I would take 
 the street into my confidence. 
 
 Helen came in while I was still lighting the gas.
 
 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 was panting and, after she had defiantly closed the door 
 behind her, she stood just inside the room with her hand 
 to her side. 
 
 "Well?" I said, echoing Mrs. Hargreave's reception of me 
 upstairs. 
 
 "You've won!" she said bitterly. "I want to know what 
 you're going to do. Judith will be here directly. I I gave 
 her the slip." 
 
 "What did you tell her about last night?" I asked. 
 "Pferdminger, of course ... I suppose he came to you 
 and apologised?" 
 
 She sat down on the chair at the end of the table, put 
 her elbows on the cloth and propped her chin in her hands. 
 She looked very weary; even the stimulus of her dislike 
 for me seemed to have left her. 
 
 "You don't know," she said. I do not think she had 
 heard my questions. "And I don't see why I should tell 
 you. I don't want to tell you, but if I don't, Judith will. 
 It has been going on and on all day. Hopelessly. She 
 tried to believe me and she couldn't. She kept coming 
 back to it and asking things." 
 
 She bent her head and pushed her hair back from her 
 forehead with a clumsy movement that made her hat jump 
 with a grotesque effort of protest. The ineptitude of her 
 attitude and gesture made me more sorry for her, and yet 
 I could not help thinking that if she were on the stage, the 
 audience would inevitably have laughed at the bobbing of 
 that apparently resentful hat. 
 
 "Tried to believe what?" I put in gently. 
 
 "I don't know," she murmured, still disregarding me. "I 
 don't know what I could have done. Nothing, I suppose. 
 I suppose it was hopeless from the first. I loathe men- all 
 men it isn't only you all men are exactly the same. I 
 wanted to save her, but she can't understand. She'll have 
 to learn for herself. Perhaps she'll come back to me after- 
 wards when she finds out." She stopped and looked at me 
 and the shadows round her eyes were ringed with stains 
 that showed purple through a grimy black.
 
 JUDITH 24,3 
 
 "You can't believe anything good of me?" I asked feel- 
 ing that I had her attention at last. 
 
 "Oh ! good !" she sneered. "I suppose you're good ac- 
 cording to your lights ; a man's way of being good; I dare 
 say you've felt wonderfully good since you've been in love 
 with Judith. But what does it come to? Nothing. Of 
 course you want her for a time. I was a silly fool to 
 think that you'd look at me when you hoped to get her. 
 I'm too plain. Your sort has no use for plain women." 
 
 She was not deliberately trying to annoy me, but that 
 repetition of the damnable suggestion she had made last 
 night roused me again. I could not bear that attempt to 
 coarsen my adoration of Judith. It was an insult to her 
 no less than to me. 
 
 "What's wrong with you?" I said. "Why do you look 
 at everything from one point of view ? You can't be quite 
 sane on that subject." 
 
 She stared at me in her dull, unseeing way and thrust 
 out her under lip in an ugly sneer. "I'm honest, that's all," 
 she said. 
 
 "Rot!" I returned. "You're merely blind and stupid." 
 
 She gave a little hard laugh. "Merely ugly," she cor- 
 rected me. "That's my real vice." 
 
 I had lost all sympathy for her at that moment. I hated 
 that unreasoning repetition of her obsession. I felt that 
 no one could ever make her understand. She had her one 
 horrible measure of men and it seemed to me that it was 
 the measure of her own perverted mind. But what goaded 
 me to desperation was my inability, any one's inability, 
 to open that viciously locked chamber of her understanding. 
 I had been willing to make a thousand excuses for her, 
 to find fine qualities in her love for Judith ; but she would 
 not grant me the smallest concession. If I had been a 
 typical representative of the woman-hunter she had imag- 
 ined me, surely there would still have been something in me 
 worthy of respect. 
 
 I made a great effort of self-control as I said : "Well, I 
 don't know what you're waiting for. It's quite obvious that
 
 244 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 you loathe the sight of me. Why stay in the same room 
 with me?" 
 
 "I'm waiting for Judith," she said, and then, with an 
 air of gaiety that was quite a despicable piece of acting, 
 she went on : "You see, I tried to make her believe that 
 you, that I was . . . successful . . . last night." 
 
 I went suddenly cold with horror when she said that. 
 "Good God!" I ejaculated. "You dared!" 
 
 She nodded furiously and I saw that she was afraid, too 
 afraid, to speak. 
 
 "Oh, good God!" I repeated in complete disgust, and 
 then : "t)h ! please go ! I I feel as if I wanted to ... 
 to murder you !" 
 
 She stood up and came towards me. "Why don't you?" 
 she asked in a strained voice. 
 
 "You're not worth it," I said. 
 
 "You'd be afraid to do that," she taunted me, coming 
 nearer still. 
 
 Perhaps she hoped, judging me by the measure of her own 
 hate, that I might lay violent hands on her. But as she came 
 within my reach, all that was active in my loathing of her 
 evaporated. I despised her weakness. I could no more have 
 used violence to her than I could have physically ill-treated 
 little Pferdminger. 
 
 I fell back on my cliche of the night before. "Don't be 
 so silly," I said impatiently. 
 
 But she still tried to goad me. "I let her think I was 
 successful," she said and thrust her face quite close to mine. 
 
 "As if you could ever be successful in anything," I re- 
 plied brutally. 
 
 She ought to have thrown herself upon me for that insult; 
 but she had no blaze in her. She had patience and courage, 
 and an amazing persistence, but she was incapable of abso- 
 lute frenzy. I remember when I went with Judith to the 
 police-court a year or two later and tried to persuade Helen 
 to let us pay her fine that she refused with all her dull, old 
 obstinacy; and I have no doubt that she broke her windows 
 and went through the hunger-strike with the same heavy
 
 JUDITH 245 
 
 resolution. She was not typical of the average woman rebel 
 of that time. 
 
 And, now, my taunt did not rouse her to fury. It hurt 
 her, I think, more than any other thing I could have said, 
 but she accepted it with a brooding fatalism, and cherished it 
 as another cause of hatred against me. 
 
 "Oh ! / know, / know," she said. "I care too much about 
 things to be successful." 
 
 I do not believe that that was true. 
 
 Nothing further would have happened between us if we 
 had been left alone; we had used up our exasperation for the 
 moment ; and as she cowered a little away under the sting of 
 my words, we heard the click of a latch-key in the front 
 door. 
 
 XI 
 
 I had a queer interval of uneasiness during the few sec- 
 onds that elapsed between the sound of Judith's latch-key 
 in the lock and her entry into the room. I was not sure 
 what Helen would do. I was overcome by a sudden fear 
 that she might make another attempt to inculpate me, that 
 she might, perhaps, cling to me and play the discarded mis- 
 tress. And I realised that if she did that, I should find it 
 exceedingly difficult to refute her charge. She would be 
 playing a part and I should be speaking the truth, but it 
 seemed to me that her acting would be far more convincing 
 than my innocence. Nothing of the kind happened; but I 
 am sure that the idea presented itself to Helen and that I 
 was in some way aware of her fugitive intention. I can 
 very well imagine how the impulse sprang powerfully into 
 her mind; it may have been inhibited because she, on her 
 part, became conscious that I had read her thought. 
 
 My dread had passed before Judith came in, but both 
 Helen and I were still braced and wary. 
 
 Judith halted at the door as if she were surprised and a 
 shade uneasy. I think the first effect of the antagonism 
 she saw may have suggested confederacy. Helen and I
 
 246 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 were so tensely aware of each other. The rapport was shiv- 
 ered as Judith spoke, but it had lasted quite long enough 
 for her to have felt it. 
 
 "I want to know the truth," Judith said, looking doubt- 
 fully at Helen. 
 
 I could not respond to that demand. In the first place I 
 knew that I must wait to hear what Helen would have to 
 say; and in the second I realised that it would be impossi- 
 ble for me to give a true account of her pitiful attempt to 
 compromise me. 
 
 In the interval of silence that followed, Judith closed the 
 door and came up to the table. She stood there avoiding 
 my eyes and staring with a rather cold imperiousness at her 
 friend. 
 
 "Helen! aren't you going to answer me?" she said. 
 
 Helen shivered and made an odd sound in her throat, 
 that was intended, I think, for a laugh. 
 
 "Don't be so righteous, dear," she said nervously. 
 
 Judith seemed to soften a little. "Will you come up- 
 stairs ? ' she asked. 
 
 I had to intervene then. I saw that if she had this 
 opportunity, Helen would procrastinate a little longer, weep 
 again, no doubt, and throw herself on Judith's pity, leav- 
 ing me still to figure as the villain. I could not bear that. 
 
 "Oh! no," I protested, "that isn't fair. If I'm going to 
 be attacked, I must have a chance of defending myself." 
 
 Judith would not look at me, but she admitted my pro- 
 test by saying, "That's only fair, isn't it, Helen?" 
 
 "To him" Helen said savagely. "You'd be fair to him; 
 why can't you be fair to me?" 
 
 "I am being fair to you," Judith returned gently. "I'm 
 only asking you to speak the truth. That can't be so very 
 difficult." 
 
 "Yes, it is," Helen said. "It's impossible before him." 
 
 She was still maintaining her fiction by referring to me 
 as "him." I might be all that was detestable, but she im- 
 plied that I was no longer a stranger. 
 
 "Why?" I asked sharply.
 
 / 
 
 "I suppose you think I've no self-respect left," she mur- 
 mured. And, indeed, the abandon of her attitude, the limp 
 relaxation of her shoulders, the sulky droop of her head, 
 suggested that her self-respect was at a very low ebb. 
 
 For a moment a feeling of indignant impatience nearly 
 mastered me. I wanted to shake the truth out of her; to 
 shake her until she should reveal the whole shame of her 
 present pose. For it was this present pose that angered 
 me. I was ready to respect her for what she had attempted ; 
 but this futile pretending was contemptible. 
 
 The sight of Judith checked the irritable reply that I was 
 about to make. I looked at her and knew that however 
 shaken the surface of her thought, she had never truly 
 doubted me. 
 
 "Judith!" I said. I had never before addressed her or 
 spoken of her by Christian name, I was as shy of it as a 
 young wife of the word "husband" ; and my very hesitation 
 gave my utterance the quality of an endearment. I had 
 caressed that name so often in my thought that I could not 
 speak it without tenderness. 
 
 She flushed faintly but she would not look at me. She 
 wanted above all, just then, to be fair to Helen, but her 
 desire was not whole-hearted enough to achieve the appear- 
 ance. 
 
 Helen turned her back on us with a disgust that was cer- 
 tainly not assumed. 
 
 "Ah!" she ejaculated on a note of contempt, and then 
 she dropped into the same chair in which she had sat trem- 
 bling last night, and shut out the sight of us with her hard 
 thin hands. 
 
 "I only want to be fair," Judith repeated uneasily, main- 
 taining her unspoken compact of outward aloofness from 
 me, although Helen was no longer watching us. 
 
 Helen made no reply and I could think of no appropriate 
 way to break a silence that seemed likely to hold us inter- 
 minably. The clatter of a heavy van passing up the street 
 was a welcome distraction, but as the sound of it slowly 
 merged into the murmur of the traffic in the Tottenham
 
 248 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 Court Road, the stillness of the room was disquietingly in- 
 tensified. 
 
 Judith felt it no less than I did and her apprehension was 
 greater than mine inasmuch as she foresaw the outburst 
 that was coming. 
 
 "Helen!" she said imperatively, challenging the expected 
 storm. 
 
 Helen dropped her hands, but she looked at neither of us 
 as she said, 
 
 "Oh! what's the good? You'll never believe me" 
 
 "That's absurd," Judith replied coldly. "Haven't I always 
 believed you?" 
 
 "Until he came," Helen said. And the high light of my 
 two gas burners intensified the rusty shadows about her 
 eyes so that they loomed like empty hollows. 
 
 Judith hardened herself. I supposed she knew that Helen 
 had changed her tactics, that she had lost all hope, and 
 meant, now, to wound bitterly if she were able. 
 
 "That's nonsense," Judith said. 
 
 "Is it?" Helen replied. "You've forgotten our first quar- 
 rel, of course after he had insulted you on the door- 
 step? When you talked such a lot of nonsense about . . . 
 Freedom." She spat out the last word as if it offended her. 
 
 "It wasn't the first time I had talked about Freedom," 
 Judith returned without heat. "And you encouraged it as 
 long as it meant agreeing with you." 
 
 "As long as it meant Freedom," Helen said. "There's a 
 difference between freedom and license!' 
 
 The colour was mounting steadily in Judith's cheeks until 
 at last it burned as if she were facing the glow of a clear 
 fire, but she did not raise her voice, nor give any other 
 sign of her hurt. 
 
 "I said what I'd always said," she replied. "It was only 
 when I really wanted independence that you turned round 
 on me. But surely we needn't go into all that again." And 
 the touch of weariness in her voice told me how long they 
 had argued without daring to touch the vital application 
 which Helen, at least, intended to avoid no longer.
 
 JUDITH 24,9 
 
 "Oh ! no, we needn't," she said ; "not all that ! we can 
 speak out, now. At all events I can. We can stop pre- 
 tending about Freedom. All it means is that I've served 
 your purpose and now you want to be rid of me. We've 
 both made a mistake. I thought you were different to other 
 women, but you're not. You've got just the same kind of 
 silly romantic ideas about men that they all have. It's no 
 use our playing at being friends any more. . . ." 
 
 "I don't think it is," Judith put in quietly. 
 
 "I shocked you, I suppose," Helen returned with a spurt 
 of temper. "You think it was a horrible unfeminine thing 
 to do what I did last night. Well, I don't. It wasn't done 
 for my own gratification, you may be quite sure of that. I 
 did it to save you, and you weren't worth it. Even if I'd 
 succeeded, I daresay it wouldn't have made any difference to 
 you." She stopped abruptly, suddenly aware, perhaps, that 
 she had acknowledged her failure. 
 
 The flush had died from Judith's face and left it very 
 white and cold. The horrible suggestion of Helen's last 
 taunt had finally destroyed any chance of real forgiveness. 
 
 And there came to me a vivid recollection of the scene 
 with Rose Whiting a few months earlier. I saw in Helen, 
 now, the same abandonment, the same stripping off of a 
 conventional disguise that I had shrunk from on that night 
 when I first entered the life of the house. Helen, too, had 
 touched some absolute, but it was no longer so repulsive to 
 me. I saw her naked soul, and it seemed to me wounded 
 and bitter and prejudiced; but she had loved with all her 
 being, and only some mis judgment, some feeble narrowness 
 of interest, had marred the quality of her devotion. 
 
 "Oh ! why do you say these things ?" I asked on the im- 
 pulse of the moment. 
 
 She turned her head towards me with a quick movement 
 of surprise. 
 
 "Judith wanted to have the truth," she said. 
 
 "Of course you can't understand," Judith put in. 
 
 "Oh! I do; I do," Helen said, but all the spirit had gone 
 out of her. She stood up and hesitated as if she contem-
 
 250 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 plated some final outburst that would leave her with the 
 show of victory; and then, with a long sigh, walked across 
 to the door and went out without another glance at either 
 of us. But the artificial exaggeration of her feebleness, her 
 clutch at the table as she passed, her gesture in seizing the 
 door-handle, disguised and spoiled the effect of her tragedy. 
 
 XII 
 
 "I hate the stage," Judith said. She had sat down by the 
 table, but she had not yet looked at me. 
 
 "Are you going to give it up?" I asked. 
 
 She nodded emphatically. "I've been thinking of going 
 back to Cheltenham," she said, as if she were laying the 
 plan before me for consideration. 
 
 "But could you bear that life again?" I asked. 
 
 "No, not the same life," she said definitely. "But it 
 wouldn't be the same. I should go back on conditions. 
 They would have to give me my Freedom to a certain ex- 
 tent. I am independent of them, financially. I haven't got 
 very much, but it's enough to keep me." 
 
 I weighed that for a moment. I had formed a mental 
 picture of her two aunts, and I saw Judith in relation to 
 them, much as I see in imagination the completed build- 
 ings I design in two dimensions. 
 
 "Wouldn't it mean constant friction?" I asked. 
 
 "They'd never alter their opinions, of course," she said. 
 
 "And you wouldn't alter yours?" 
 
 "I have altered them a good deal since I've been here." 
 
 "About them ? About your aunts ?" 
 
 "Yes. I'm sorry for them, now. I used to be always 
 criticising them ; hating them for being so narrow. I thought 
 all those Cheltenham people were just blind and stupid." 
 
 "Aren't they?" I asked. 
 
 She began a little nervous smoothing of the table-cloth 
 with her hands. "They're so convinced that they are right," 
 she said, "and so was I and so is Helen and Mrs. Hargreave
 
 JUDITH g51 
 
 and pretty nearly everybody. I don't see why I should 
 criticise them, my aunts I mean, and their friends, any more 
 than I should criticise Helen." 
 
 "But you do criticise her, now, don't you?" I suggested. 
 
 "Yes, I do," she agreed, "but I used not to. I thought 
 she was almost perfect. So don't you see, I feel a little lost, 
 now, and it seems as if I might just as well go back as try 
 to find some one else, and then, come to to criticise them, 
 too." 
 
 I saw, then, the direction in which we were moving. 
 
 In all that conversation with Helen, the quality of Judith's 
 feeling for me had been almost explicit. I had grasped what 
 appeared to be the realisation of all that I had dared to 
 hope. In a way I had never doubted Judith since we had 
 made that journey to Hampstead. Moving in our tem- 
 porarily parallel paths, we were so aware of each other that 
 I was sure we must inevitably draw together. And when 
 none of Helen's definite implications was denied, I had re- 
 ceived what I took to be final, incontrovertible proof. We 
 had declared ourselves through an intermediary none the 
 less definitely because our admissions had all been tacit ; and 
 when we were left alone, I had felt as if our agreement 
 were ratified and needed only the seal. 
 
 Now, she had terrified me with a new fear ; the fear that 
 she had come to doubt herself. I plunged desperately. 
 
 "Do you mean me?" I asked. 
 
 "I suppose so," she said, almost whispering. 
 
 "Do you do you criticise me, now ?" I said. 
 
 She did not answer that directly. "I've been so shaken 
 by all this," she explained in the same low, confessional 
 voice. "I feel that I can't be sure of anything again. I 
 should so like ... in a way ... to be friends with every- 
 body ; and that doesn't seem possible. I'm afraid there must 
 be something wrong with me." 
 
 I checked myself on the verge of beginning an absurdly 
 rational argument, to prove that her fear was the result of 
 a passing emotion. I was slipping into the old duality,
 
 252 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 standing aside and advising myself ; and I made an effort to 
 win my integrity. 
 
 "Judith !" I said, and the sound of my voice compelled her 
 at last to look at me, so that I saw those depths in her eyes 
 which she had tried so long to hide. 
 
 "It may be only another mistake," she said. 
 
 "You know it isn't," I answered with the confidence of 
 my single mind. 
 
 I took a step towards her, but she held up her hands. 
 "No, not yet," she protested. "I must wait. I must think. 
 I want to go back to Cheltenham for a time to think." 
 
 "Are you afraid of losing your Freedom?" I asked. 
 
 "No, it isn't that," she said. "I know you wouldn't bully 
 me and and tie me in, as my aunts did and as Helen tried 
 to do, too. You wouldn't, would you?" 
 
 The thought of bullying her or interfering with her free- 
 dom appeared so absurd to me that I could find no words 
 to ridicule the suggestion. 
 
 "Oh! I know you wouldn't," she went on, "because I'm 
 sure we we think alike about so many things. About the 
 stage, for instance. I knew you hated that, always, and 
 now I hate it, too." She was a little breathless as if she 
 were hurrying eagerly on to make some important statement 
 before she was interrupted; and yet, when I waited at her 
 pause, she found nothing more to say. 
 
 "If you go back to Cheltenham," I began again after a 
 short interval of silence, "you would let me write to you?" 
 
 "Oh! yes," she said. 
 
 "And you would write to me?" 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "And we ... there would be some kind of understand- 
 ing that if ..." 
 
 "I only want to be quite sure," she said. And then, as 
 if she had found her statement, she continued more quickly: 
 "This place has influenced me so. I feel as if I couldn't trust 
 myself here; as if all that has happened here couldn't be 
 quite true. It was such a change to me. Everything is so 
 different. I used to be uncomfortable, at first whenever I
 
 JUDITH 253 
 
 went to Mr. Hill's room with Helen. And I want to look 
 back on it all from Cheltenham before I ... you see, you 
 are so mixed up with it. The only time I've seen you away 
 from this house was when we went to Hampstead. . . ." 
 
 "And then?" I put in. 
 
 She stood up and held out her hands to me. "I do know," 
 she said, "but you must let me go back to Cheltenham for a 
 time." 
 
 I drew her towards me and she offered but the gentlest re- 
 sistance. 
 
 I wanted to hold her there, on and on, for ever. Her kiss 
 had been such peace and gladness, the fulfilment of all my 
 knowledge that she and I had loved one another from the 
 beginning. But she recovered her consciousness of place 
 and time while I was still lost to all sense of anything but 
 her wonderful presence. 
 
 "All your curtains are open, and we are standing in the 
 full light of the window," she reminded me. 
 
 "I had forgotten that there were other people in the 
 world," I said. 
 
 XIII 
 
 She was to go to Cheltenham as soon as she had heard 
 from her aunts. 
 
 She was not sure whether they would want her to come 
 back to them. 
 
 Unhappily for me, they displayed no sign of hesitation. 
 Judith showed me their letter, and through the genteel pre- 
 cisions of their phraseology, I could read an expression of 
 relief that was not quite free from an undercurrent of 
 triumph.
 
 XI 
 POOR OLD MEARES 
 
 AFTER Judith had gone, I settled down to begin life. 
 She had maintained her resolution, but for one mo- 
 ment, on Paddington Station, her intention was nearly 
 broken. 
 
 She had staked a claim to her seat in the train by the 
 usual depositing of impedimenta, and we had walked to the 
 far end of the platform, talking a little aimlessly as people do 
 in those circumstances ; when there is no time to begin and, 
 in our case, a steady realisation that all life is a beginning. 
 
 We had come to a silence as we stood at the extreme of 
 that slender peninsula which, ahead of us, now sloped 
 swiftly down into the dangerous currents of sweeping tan- 
 gled lines all leading out to the great west country that was 
 yet quite unknown to me. 
 
 "I should love to take you to Wales," Judith said sud- 
 denly, answering my thought, "not Barmouth, but all that 
 coast." 
 
 "I wonder why you are going alone ?" I said. 
 
 "I must," she replied at once, as if we were continuing 
 an old conversation; although I, at least, had never until 
 then questioned the inevitability of her going. 
 
 "Why are you going, really?" I asked. "Why shouldn't 
 we be married and go together ?" 
 
 And just for one moment her intuitive purpose was nearly 
 broken by my rationalism. 
 
 But I pressed my advantage too logically. "Is there any 
 sensible, valid reason why we shouldn't be married at once ?" 
 
 254
 
 POOR OLD MEARES 255 
 
 I went on. "If you can give me one, I'll be satisfied, but for 
 the life of me / can't think of any." 
 
 "I dare say not. I don't know any reason," she said un- 
 derlining her last word, "but I must go, all the same." 
 
 "Isn't it only because you can't get rid of the idea that 
 you are going?" I protested. 
 
 "I want to go," she said, and that assertion would have 
 been final even if we had not been startled by what seemed 
 like a distant firing of rapid, consecutive shots. 
 
 "They're shutting the doors," Judith said with an air of 
 positive alarm. "Oh ! come ; we must run." 
 
 And I ran with her as if the catching of that train was 
 a matter of the last importance. . . . 
 
 I remember speculating that same afternoon on the sub- 
 ject of fate ; I did not figure Fate as the awful, threatening 
 figure of Greek tragedy but as the equally inscrutable influ- 
 ence that tweaks some unapprehended control at apparently 
 trivial moments, and alters the whole circumstance of our 
 lives. My instances were recalled from any examples I 
 could trace in my own history; and then I looked forward 
 with a recognisable shade of apprehension to the conse- 
 quences that might follow the failure of my parting attempt 
 to dissuade Judith from going to Cheltenham. 
 
 For I knew, then, vaguely that if I had held her, instead 
 of attempting to reason with her, she would have stayed in 
 London and married me. She would have done it despite 
 her instinctive wish to return to Cheltenham, and I can see 
 no reason to suppose that she would have regretted her de- 
 cision later. But, no! at that critical instant my controls 
 were tampered with. I cannot say why I took a bad line 
 instead of a good one ; the choice seems to have been purely 
 haphazard ; and yet Judith and I had to suffer six months' 
 separation because of that accident. We may have a meas- 
 ure of free-will, but I am sure that we are subject to the 
 queerest kind of interference. . . . 
 
 Judith had intended to stay with -her aunts for a month at 
 longest, but the fate that had determined her going, kept her 
 there for half a year.
 
 256 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 II 
 
 And she had left me to face, although I had no appre- 
 hension of its coming, the darkest, most despairing period 
 of my life. It is true that I was subject, during the first 
 months of Judith's absence, to fits of doubt and gloom but 
 they were all attributable to my loss of her, and not to any 
 prescience of coming trouble. 
 
 Once or twice in February I seriously contemplated the 
 thought of a trip to Cheltenham, and denied myself solely 
 because I counted so surely on her return at the beginning 
 of March. Later there were reasons why such an excursion 
 was inadvisable. My feeling of desertion was not, I think, 
 quite normal. I only realised when I was left alone how per- 
 petually conscious I had been of Judith's presence in the 
 house. I wrote to her every day. 
 
 My misfortunes began in the first week of March, with 
 the announcement that the elder of Judith's two aunts had 
 had a paralytic stroke and that Judith herself would cer- 
 tainly have to stay in Cheltenham for some weeks longer. 
 I could not protest against that decision. We were in the 
 power of the great Autocrat; and although Judith's ser- 
 vices might be useless, she was bound to offer them. We 
 had to pay the tribute of our youth towards maintaining the 
 old. 
 
 On the same day that I received the depressing news con- 
 tained in Judith's letter, I learnt that I had not been placed 
 in the competition I had been working on all through the 
 autumn. I was neither surprised nor, in a sense, disap- 
 pointed; I had foreseen that probability and my study of 
 the winning plans reproduced in The Building News, a 
 few days later, finally convinced me that my own were 
 very inferior. Nevertheless, the knowledge that I had failed 
 did not tend to raise my spirits. 
 
 I had begun to realise, by then, that the prospects of my 
 professional career were not looking particularly bright, 
 and that unless I achieved some success either by winning
 
 POOR OLD MEARES 257 
 
 a competition or getting work by private influence, I might 
 be reduced very soon to seeking a job in an office at a salary 
 which certainly would not exceed four pounds a week. I 
 loathed the thought of that return to slavery, of the eter- 
 nal, mechanical delineation of another man's designs; but 
 I loathed even more the prospect of returning to Ken Lodge 
 and attempting to conciliate my uncle. / Perhaps, I was a 
 little prejudiced; too proud of my independence and my 
 break with the respectable tradition of my youth; but my 
 chief reason for dreading any approach to my uncle was 
 the certainty I had that I should be rebuffed. I could only 
 picture my uncle as I had last seen him, an irrevocably 
 offended man. 
 
 It was somewhere about the middle of March, ten days or 
 so after I had known that there was no hope of seeing 
 Judith again for many weeks, that the next and most seri- 
 ous blow fell. 
 
 in 
 
 I was working at my window about four o'clock, getting 
 my next competition drawings into final shape, when I 
 saw Mrs. Meares come back. She had gone out with her 
 husband an hour or two earlier, and I had thought they 
 looked very bright and cheerful. They had looked up at 
 me and waved, and Mrs. Meares had called out something 
 to the effect that I worked too hard. Now, she was the 
 figure of despair. She was holding her handkerchief to 
 her face and her head drooped as if she could not endure 
 any one to see her. 
 
 I had that instant sense of calamity which is so unmis- 
 takable. I had no thought that it might affect me save 
 through my sympathies, but I felt a cold wave of appre- 
 hension creep through me like a physical fear, 
 quickly out in to the hall and opened the door for her. She 
 was fumbling blindly with her latch-key. 
 
 I think she deliberately pretended not to recognise me at 
 first, hoping, perhaps, that I should ask no questions and
 
 258 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 let her go up and hide herself in her own room. But my 
 tact failed me. 
 
 "Has anything happened ?" I asked. "An accident. . . . ?" 
 
 "Can't tell you now," and something that sounded like 
 "thought we were so safe," was all I could understand of 
 her reply, and the last word came with a tremendous gulp 
 and a fresh burst of tears. She ran up to their rooms on 
 the second floor, fairly whooping with misery. 
 
 I said nothing to any one that evening. She had made it 
 quite plain that she wanted to be left alone. But I will con- 
 fess that through my sympathy for her trouble, whatever it 
 might be, a distinctly apprehensive curiosity began to peer 
 more and more forbiddingly. If anything serious had hap- 
 pened to Meares, my 250 might be in jeopardy. And I 
 had reluctantly come to the conclusion a day or two be- 
 fore, that I must take advantage of his offer, and ask him 
 to return me a part, at least, of my over-rash investment. 
 
 I had to sleep with that curiosity still unsatisfied; and I 
 remember that I did not accept as a good omen the very 
 vivid dream I had that night of winning my competition. 
 Meares was connected with it in some vague way. I fancy 
 that he was, ridiculously, both the assessor and the build- 
 ing contractor. 
 
 I went up to Hill's room directly after breakfast, hoping 
 that he would be able to relieve my suspense, but he had 
 neither seen nor heard anything of either Meares or his 
 wife. I was not sure, then, whether or not Meares, himself, 
 had returned to Keppel Street; and I decided to make an 
 early call on him with the ostensible purpose of asking 
 whether he could conveniently return me any part of my 
 250. Hill's manner had done nothing to relieve my 
 anxiety. He made no reference to his earlier doubt of the 
 Meares, but he looked distressed and uneasy. I wondered 
 if he, too, had put something in the Australian mine. I 
 had never mentioned my own plunge to him and said noth- 
 ing then; partly because I was ashamed of my own in- 
 genuousness, and partly because the admission would sound 
 like a direct charge against Meares.
 
 POOR OLD ME ARES 259 
 
 I received no answer to my knock on the Meares's door, 
 and after a little hesitation I opened the door and looked 
 into the sitting-room. No one was there, but I heard Mrs. 
 Meares's voice calling out an enquiry from the bedroom. 
 
 "Is Mr. Meares in?" I asked, and then had to repeat my 
 question in a louder voice. 
 
 "Is that Mr. Hornby?" was the answer I received and 
 the bedroom door was opened about an inch to facilitate 
 our conversation. 
 
 "I've been lazy this morning," Mrs. Meares's voice con- 
 tinued, much in her ordinary tone. "Meares has gone to 
 see some friends. I'll tell him you want to see him when 
 he comes in." 
 
 "Oh ! thanks very much. It isn't important," I said, and I 
 was going out when Mrs. Meares called after me to ask if 
 Hill was in. 
 
 "Yes, I've just seen him," I told her. 
 
 "I I'd like to see him, too, before I go out," Mrs. 
 Meares replied. "Could you tell him?" 
 
 "Now; at once?" I asked. "Down here?" 
 
 "In five minutes," she said. . . . 
 
 "All right," Hill replied briefly when I gave him the 
 message. 
 
 "I'll see you afterwards," he added, as I still stood wait- 
 ing in the doorway. 
 
 "Yes, I should like to know," I said, and perhaps the 
 tone of my voice confirmed the suspicion he had already 
 formed. 
 
 "Have you got any money in his scheme ?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh ! a bit," I returned. 
 
 "I see," commented Hill, thoughtfully. "I suppose that s 
 why she'd prefer to see me." 
 
 I went downstairs prepared for the worst. 
 lost every feeling of sympathy for Meares by that time. 
 I concluded, very naturally, that he had absconded wit 
 all the money he had been able to collect, and had 
 his wife alone to face the music. 
 
 I heard two people coming downstairs about half an
 
 260 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 later and then Hill came into my room, and I heard Mrs. 
 Meares go out by the front door. 
 
 Hill looked at me thoughtfully for a moment before he 
 spoke, and then he said : 
 
 "They've had the most infernally bad luck." 
 
 "They?" I remarked. "He hasn't done a bunk, then?" 
 
 "Meares !" Hill said. "Good Lord, no. Surely you didn't 
 think he was that kind of chap?" His tone rebuked me 
 for my suspicion. 
 
 "Well, no, I didn't," I admitted ; "but I thought it looked 
 a bit fishy this morning." 
 
 "Oh ! Lord, no," Hill repeated, without noticing my reply. 
 "Poor old Meares isn't that sort." 
 
 "What's the trouble then?" I asked. 
 
 "I. D. B'ing in Cape Town," Hill said. 
 
 I 'had not the remotest idea what he meant. 
 
 "Illicit Diamond Buying," he explained. "They've got a 
 law out there to stop any private traffic in diamonds. It 
 was passed to prevent stealing from the mines, of course. 
 You may search a Kaffir for a month without finding the 
 diamond he's got on him. I'm told they swallow them, and 
 manage to effect a recovery later. In effect, you see, any 
 unauthorised seller of diamonds is convicted of trying to 
 dispose of stolen goods but there are people like Meares 
 who get let in with the very best intentions. When a per- 
 fectly decent fellow comes to you and offers you a dia- 
 mond at about half what's it's worth, you don't feel as if 
 you were committing any awful crime by buying it. It's 
 just a lark." 
 
 "Well, what can they do to him?" I asked. 
 
 "He'll be up at Bow Street this morning," Hill said. "I 
 gather it's a clear case, and in fact, I don't fancy he'll put 
 up any defence over here waste of time and money." 
 
 "Over here?" I put in. "Then will they send him back 
 to South Africa?" 
 
 Hill nodded. "Yes, they'll try him over there," he 
 said. 
 
 "Is he absolutely broke?" I asked.
 
 POOR OLD MEARES 261 
 
 "They're down to about thirty pounds, I believe," Hill 
 said; and he looked at me rather keenly as he went on. 
 "All this money he's been trying to raise has been promised, 
 you know ; none of it has been paid over." 
 
 I turned away to the window to hide the evidences of 
 my indecision. I could not make up my mind whether to 
 tell Hill about that two hundred and fifty pounds of mine. 
 I inferred that he had misunderstood my admission of be- 
 ing committed ; and it seemed fairly certain that my money 
 had already been spent. 
 
 But Hill's next question showed that he suspected the 
 cause of my earlier anxiety and my present embarrass- 
 ment. 
 
 "I say, Hornby, you haven't been lending them money, 
 have you?" he asked. 
 
 "In a way," I admitted. 
 
 "I fancied there was something," he remarked. "The 
 little Meares woman seemed to be hiding something all the 
 time." 
 
 "Oh! well," I said. "I suppose he'll get bail. I shall 
 probably see him this evening." 
 
 But I never saw either of the Meares again. 
 
 IV 
 
 I went to a theatre that evening ; I was sick of my own 
 company and wanted a little relaxation; and while I was 
 out Mrs. Meares came back to Keppel Street, paid all Pferd- 
 minger's claims without demur, and took away her own 
 and her husband's luggage in a cab. 
 
 I have often wondered since whether she would have 
 made a clean breast of everything to me, if I had been in ? 
 She could not possibly have known that I should not be 
 there, and I think she must have come prepared to throw 
 herself on my mercy; and then finding the way .clear, suc- 
 cumbed to the temptation of taking what seemed to her no 
 doubt the safer road of a silent disappearance.
 
 262 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 The letter I received from her a month later, dated South- 
 ampton and posted at Las Palmas, left much unaccounted 
 for, but to my mind it completely absolved her. 
 
 "Dear Mr. Hornby," she wrote, 
 
 "I suppose you have got to think the worst of us so it is 
 no use me trying to explain what I can't expect you will 
 believe. All the same I want you to know that Meares 
 never used your money, and asked me to give it back to 
 you when I saw him before the trial at Bow Street. Well, 
 I did not, so you have got to blame me and not him. If I 
 had not taken that we should have stepped off the boat at 
 Cape Town without a penny in our pockets. 
 
 "Yours very truly, 
 
 "EVELINA MASON." 
 
 Mason was their right name, and perhaps her reference 
 to their alias in the body of the letter slipped in by acci- 
 dent 
 
 I was glad to have that letter and if she had given me any 
 address I should have written to her and wished them both 
 good luck. 
 
 I believe, and so does Hill, that Meares was an honest 
 man, according to his lights ; and as for his valiant, faithful, 
 little wife, no one, I think, would blame her for what she 
 did. 
 
 I am afraid that they failed to "make good" after he was 
 released I learnt from Hill that he received a sentence of 
 twelve months imprisonment I feel sure that they would 
 have repaid me that 250, even after the lapse of years, if 
 they had even had any money to spare. 
 
 I told Judith nothing about my lost capital when I wrote 
 to her. We had never discussed my affairs indeed, we 
 had never discussed anything, and yet our letters show
 
 POOR OLD MEARES 263 
 
 how decisively we understood each other. My reserve in 
 this particular was due to the sense I had of my inability 
 to justify the Meares for keeping that confounded money 
 of mine; and when that was explained, I did not want to 
 reopen the subject. Judith was so distressed about them 
 both; so fervent in her condemnation of the "stupid laws" 
 that had made Meares an almost innocent victim. She 
 agreed with me that his offence must have been peculiarly 
 artless. And I decided to leave her loyalty undisturbed un- 
 til I could explain everything to her in conversation. 
 
 Judith's letters were a great consolation to me during 
 that spring and summer. They had that quality of "steadi- 
 ness" which I have so often referred to in speaking of her. 
 I did not tell her quite the worst of my news with regard 
 to my circumstances, but she knew enough to help me by 
 her expression of complete confidence in our future. 
 
 (I have kept all those letters of hers, but I cannot quote 
 from them here. They were not in the strictest sense love- 
 letters, but they convey a kind of intimacy which I shrink 
 from displaying. And I know that all I have written about 
 her is incomplete and unsatisfactory by reason of that hesi- 
 tation of mine whenever I come to attempt any description 
 of her real personality. I must admit that the thing does 
 not seem to me possible. The touches that might present 
 her, all seem to me to come too near some personal rela- 
 tion between us that is too sacred for this advertisement of 
 writing. Even though I were sure that nobody except 
 Judith and myself would ever see this account of us ; even 
 if I were to write for myself alone with the intention of 
 immediately destroying my manuscript; I could not com- 
 mit my knowledge of her to paper. The very act appears 
 to me as a breach of trust While I could confine my- 
 self to the objective account of our earlier relations, I was 
 nothing more than a reporter of objective impressions. We 
 have laughed together over my stiff, mechanical account of 
 our meetings, and of the more or less invented conversations 
 that I have put down; and on various occasions when I 
 would have destroyed my manuscript in a fit of impatience
 
 264 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 with the hardness and unreality of my history, Judith has 
 insisted that I should tear up nothing until the book was 
 finished. 
 
 Indeed, this whole apology, which must seem a very in- 
 appropriate intrusion into my narrative, arose out of a dis- 
 pute as to the advisability of quoting from the letters she 
 wrote to me while she was at Cheltenham. She is all for 
 frankness and realism. "What does it matter?" she has 
 just said, "no one will know it's us." (How queer this 
 faithful reporting looks!) But some instinct of mine re- 
 volts and will not permit me to be guided by her judgment. 
 I suffer an actual physical nausea when I make the at- 
 tempt; a feeling very similar in kind to that I experienced 
 when I tried to re-design that destroyed Queen Anne gable 
 of Parkinson's. And that instinct is the final arbiter, not 
 because I concede it an artistic validity, but because I cannot 
 write, as it were, against the grain. 
 
 But this apology threatens to lead me into all kinds of 
 discursions, and I must cut it short. I began it to explain 
 why my picture of Judith bears as little likeness to the 
 Judith I know, as did my attempted sketches of her after 
 our first real meeting in Hill's room. Perhaps I have made 
 that clear? If I have, there is no more to be said, except, 
 possibly, to draw the inference, that I am not a literary ar- 
 tist. If I were I should, no doubt, be ready to sacrifice any 
 personal feeling of mine or Judith's in order to present a 
 truth. I am very thankful that no such sacrifices are re- 
 quired by the profession of architecture!)
 
 XII 
 ROSE WHITING 
 
 I SUFFERED the most horrible experience of my life in 
 the May of that year, and yet it was an experience that 
 has no real bearing on the development of my story. Never- 
 theless, I cannot omit some account of that tragedy. In the 
 first place any one who remembers the incident would throw 
 a doubt on my general veracity if it were omitted; and in 
 the second place, although I am nothing more than a 
 spectator, the experience had its effect upon my manner 
 of thought; was an influence in determining the new rela- 
 tions with humanity that arose out of the intercourse with 
 my house-mates at 73, Keppel Street. There were three 
 new members of our community that spring; a doctor, his 
 wife and their little daughter of four and a half. They 
 had taken the two rooms left vacant by the Meares. The 
 room that had been occupied by Judith and Helen was still 
 empty. The doctor was a qualified man, but he was one of 
 those feckless, incompetent creatures who can never keep 
 an appointment. He held some position at a dispensary 
 while he was with us. His wife, who had been a nurse, was 
 a big, handsome, heavy-eyed woman who boasted that she 
 had had to work for her living before she married and had 
 no intention of making any further effort. She stayed in 
 bed most of the day, and allowed her little girl, a pert, 
 rather pinched child, to stray about the streets. Her one 
 explicit instruction was not to bother her mother. Mrs. 
 Hargreave, Hill and I used to entertain the child to the best 
 
 265
 
 266 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 of our ability. After the first week she had the free run of 
 our rooms if she had not had that privilege, her only re- 
 source on wet days would have been the shelter of an arch- 
 way. The name of this family was Bast. They were not 
 immediately concerned with the great tragedy, but Bast 
 was the second person to know of it. 
 
 And apart from that necessity to introduce our new 
 tenants, I cannot avoid this somewhat detailed mention of 
 them. Bast used to come down to my rooms on Sunday 
 morning, and had an admiration for Mrs. Hargreave that 
 she certainly did not reciprocate. He was clever in his 
 own way, but his controls were very ^feeble and he seemed 
 to lack absolutely any faculty for concentration. His wife 
 was anathema to Hill, and has the distinction of being the 
 only person for whom I have heard him express an active 
 dislike. And, finally, the child ineptly christened Aurora 
 which was transformed by Hill into Oracles, a name that 
 still sticks to her has very definitely entered into Judith's 
 life and mine. 
 
 The Basts, however, had not broken through the circle 
 that ringed the one aloof member of our household. Bast, 
 I know, made overtures to Rose Whiting before he had 
 been in the house a week, and she snubbed him so bitterly 
 that he never forgave her. I can understand that. She 
 knew no doubt that he desired a privilege she had neither 
 the means nor the inclination to afford him. 
 
 ii 
 
 Her period of prosperity must have ended, I think, about 
 the middle of March. I am reasonably certain that some 
 man had been keeping her through the winter, and I be- 
 lieve that she was faithful to him. I am almost sure that 
 she brought no man into the house during that time, and 
 I had a curious sense of disappointment when I observed 
 the revival of the old traffic. I am not ashamed to admit 
 that although I had never spoken to her since that very
 
 ROSE WHITING 267 
 
 brief colloquy of ours on the night of the row, I had a 
 distinct feeling of sympathy, even of liking, for her. 
 
 Hill shared that feeling, but I am not using the fact as a 
 defence for with the single exception of his dislike for 
 Mrs. Bast, his attitude towards all humanity was one of 
 singular gentleness. He and I discussed Rose Whiting's 
 problem before she had it so tragically solved for her, but 
 we could only arrive at the inevitable conclusion that there 
 was nothing to be done. Her independent spirit would not 
 have acknowledged the necessity for any reform of the 
 Puritan order, or have accepted support for which she 
 could offer no return. She may have preferred to remain a 
 pariah so far as "73" was concerned, but she certainly did 
 not regard herself as a "lost" woman. 
 
 I could be exceedingly accurate about the date of that 
 event which so disturbed our household for a time, but it 
 is sufficient to say that the thing happened one Saturday 
 night in May. I heard two people come in about midnight, 
 and guessed that it probably was Rose Whiting and a 
 "friend," and I heard the man go out again about an hour 
 later. I was just going to bed, then. I had been working 
 tremendously hard on my new competition which was quite 
 the most ambitious thing I had done, and I was keyed up, 
 overtired, and not in the least inclined to sleep. I looked 
 out of my window and saw the shoulders of the man as he 
 turned eastwards towards Russell Square, but the only fact 
 I could swear to, afterwards, was that he was wearing a 
 bowler hat. 
 
 I suppose the instant sense of horror that assailed me 
 when I saw that man, might be put down to coincidence, 
 certainly found it very difficult to explain, in the light of 
 my admission that the same kind of visitor had been seen 
 by me many times before. And there is undeniably the 
 suggestion of a chance concurrence of circumstances in 
 the fact that on this one night of all others I should have 
 been in that condition of nervous exhaustion which so 
 often gives us the power to transcend our physical limita- 
 tions. For in effect I did that. I shuddered when I had my
 
 268 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 brief vision of those hunched shoulders turning quickly up 
 Keppel Street. I was afraid and full of a horrid appre- 
 hension. Possibly something of the man's own quick terror 
 may have been communicated to me. I was, no doubt, an 
 ideally receptive medium at the moment. 
 
 And I could not shake off the feeling when I had dropped 
 the blind and returned to the rational light and comfort of 
 my own room. I began the usual altercation with myself, 
 but my domineering intellectual side found no adequate 
 reply to the perpetual suggestion that I should go and see 
 if everything was all right. And the queer thing is that the 
 two sides of me shifted so absurdly that I finally went at 
 the command of my practical intelligence. I went at last to 
 demonstrate that my impulse was ridiculous. 
 
 I framed an apology as I reluctantly climbed the stairs. 
 When I knocked at the door, I was prepared with the ex- 
 cuse that I thought I had heard a cry for help. It was a 
 strange excuse to offer, but it did not seem unusual to me at 
 the time. Since then I have often wondered whether some 
 cry had not reached my subconsciousness while I was work- 
 ing. I know the illusion of having heard a cry took such 
 vivid shape in my mind that I had to pause before I an- 
 swered, a few hours later, the inspector's question on that 
 point. And yet, I had no real presentiment of disaster as 
 I went upstairs. 
 
 I can be definite about this last point because I know 
 the exact moment when all my apprehensions ceased to be 
 aspersed as hallucinations by one side of my mind, and took 
 the form of terrifying certainty. 
 
 That moment came when I knocked at Rose Whiting's 
 door and received no answer. * There were possible rea- 
 sons for her silence; she might have been asleep, or she 
 might not have heard my nervous little tapping if she had 
 been in the bedroom. But I knew then, suddenly and ter- 
 ribly, that something awful lay on the further side of that 
 door. There was a quality in the stillness tjiat was like 
 nothing I had ever known. It was the stillness of an im- 
 mense effort that could find no release in movement; an
 
 ROSE WHITING 269 
 
 effort that Was silently clamouring for me to open the 
 door. 
 
 HI 
 
 An absurd impulse that was more nearly modesty than 
 anything, induced me to disguise the truth when I had at 
 last roused Bast. 
 
 He came into his sitting-room in pajamas, dishevelled, 
 sleepy, and looking more unreliable than ever. 
 
 "Some kind of fit?" he repeated, and then he looked at 
 me with a detestable leer and said, "I say, what have you 
 been up to?" 
 
 I scowled at him. I was weak with impatience and I was 
 not afraid that I might be implicated in a charge of mur- 
 der that fear only gripped me once, very briefly, and was 
 dispersed without effort ; but I found that I could not pass 
 his imputations without an explicit denial. 
 
 "Oh ! good Lord, don't be an ass," I said. "It's nothing 
 of that sort. There was some man up there. I saw him 
 go out. I believe she's dead." 
 
 Bast whistled and looked more suspicious than ever. 
 "Hadn't we better leave it alone?" he asked. "Nasty 
 thing to be mixed up with." 
 
 I took hold of his arm. "Oh ! come on," I said fiercely. 
 I was suffering the awful feeling of helplessness that comes 
 in a dream; I felt as if it would take me years to con- 
 vince him. 
 
 And he still continued to parry and evade my urgency. 
 He wrenched his arm away. "I'll have to get some of my 
 tools," he excused himself. 
 
 "For God's sake, make haste, then," I said. I repeated 
 that "for God's sake" continually as we argued. I clung to 
 the phrase as the single form of articulateness that was 
 possible for me. An explanation was too long, but that 
 adjuration gave me a little relief. ^ 
 
 "All this looks damned suspicious, you know, Hornby,
 
 270 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 was Bast's last evasion. "How long had you been with 
 her?" 
 
 And then his wife's voice called complainingly from the 
 bedroom, and I suddenly gave up hope of getting Bast to 
 come down. I walked over to the door with a new inten- 
 tion quite clearly in my mind. 
 
 "Where are you going?" Bast asked. 
 
 "Police Station," I told him with a new sense of relief; 
 and then, with the bitterness of revenge rather than with 
 any further hope of inducing him to come down, I added : 
 "I suppose I may tell them that there was a qualified medi- 
 cal man in the house who refused to render assistance." 
 
 "Oh! I'm coming, man," Bast expostulated. "I only 
 wanted to know what the trouble was. You're so infernally 
 confused." 
 
 I looked back and saw that his wife in her nightdress was 
 standing at the door of communication between the two 
 rooms. She began some shrill interrogation, but I did not 
 want to hear her scolding. Neither did Bast. He caught 
 me up before I had reached the first floor landing. I believe 
 he came as much to escape from his wife as from fear of 
 my threat. He had not, after all, brought his instruments 
 with him. 
 
 IV 
 
 Rose Whiting was lying huddled by the sofa, a white- 
 skinned, stoutish woman up to her neck, and above that a 
 thing of sheer horror. I had not been nearer to her than 
 twelve feet or so, the width of the room, but I might have 
 touched her without noticing the wire that had bitten into 
 her throat, and was completely covered in front and at 
 the sides by the pinched flesh of her neck. 
 
 Bass seemed to guess the cause of death without hesita- 
 tion. He turned the body over, roughly, and then looked 
 up at me with an odd, expressive droop of his mouth and 
 pointed to the loose ends of the wire. They were twisted 
 two or three times and he unwound them without difficulty
 
 ROSE WHITING 271 
 
 and drew the wire out of the wound. It had cut right 
 into the flesh in three places, but no blood was visible until 
 he released the constriction. 
 
 It gave me a curious comfort to see the insouciance 
 with which he handled the body. I had the layman's con- 
 fidence in the expert and was glad to be relieved of re- 
 sponsibility. 
 
 "What's to be done?" I asked. 
 
 "No use trying artificial respiration," he said, carelessly. 
 "She's been dead half-an-hour, at least. I suppose you'd 
 better go to the police station. I'll tell Pferdy. Can't do 
 any good here." 
 
 He appeared to have forgotten his suspicion of me. 
 
 I was glad to get out into the night, but I think I came 
 very near to fainting as I went down Keppel Street. 
 
 I meant to go straight to the Police Station in Totten- 
 ham Court Road, but I met a constable before I reached 
 it and stopped at once. 
 
 "There's been a murder at 73," I announced breath- 
 lessly. 
 
 He thought I was drunk and flashed his bull's-eye in my 
 face. 
 
 "Seventy-three what?" he asked gruffly. 
 
 "Seventy-three Keppel Street," I said. "I was on my 
 way to the police station." 
 
 "What have you got to do with it?" he asked. 
 
 "I live in the same house," I explained. I had lost my 
 feeling of impatience, now, and at the least excuse I should 
 have become garrulous. All the uncertainty was over, and, 
 to me, much of the horror since Bast had made his ex- 
 amination. "There's a doctor with the body," I went on, 
 "but I discovered it. The doctor's name is Bast. I fetched 
 him down." 
 
 "Look here, you'd better be careful," the man warned 
 me. "Don't you say too much till you see the inspector. 
 I'll come that far," he concluded, indicating the lamp of 
 the station, fifty yards down on the opposite side of the 
 road.
 
 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 Neither he nor the sergeant-in-charge at the police sta- 
 tion displayed from first to last the least sign of perturba- 
 tion. I inferred from their manner that they were cau- 
 tiously aware of the possibility that I might be playing 
 some grotesque practical joke upon them. They ques- 
 tioned me gruffly, and as if I were giving them most un- 
 necessary trouble. 
 
 Nothing was quite real to me that night. All my im- 
 pressions were hard and thin, and had a peculiar bright- 
 ness which when I look back on the whole experience pre- 
 sents it in terms of visibility rather than of sensation. 
 After Bast's examination of the body, all my emotion seems 
 to have been spent. I had a feeling of being immensely 
 separated from the doings and sayings of the little fig- 
 ures who continually reached out to me with their distant 
 questions and commands. 
 
 I suppose it must have been somewhere about two o'clock 
 when I returned with an inspector and two constables to 
 "73" ; but there was a little knot of people, a dozen, I dare 
 say, clustered inquisitively about the door. One of them 
 caught me by the sleeve as I passed him. "What's up?" he 
 asked in an eager, excited voice. I took no kind of notice 
 of him. 
 
 We heard Pferdminger's voice long before we opened 
 the door. One of my blinds had been pulled up, the win- 
 dow was open and my room still blazed with light. It 
 struck me that the sight of my room thus displayed was 
 like a hole torn in the decent curtain of the street, and 
 that it exposed the secret organs of life. That revealed 
 interior gave me an impression of depth, as if it were 
 the beginning of an interminable vista that penetrated into 
 the mechanical heart of existence. 
 
 Little Pferdminger was leaning against the table in the 
 hall when we entered. He was extraordinary excited and 
 voluble; and for some inexplicable reason he was wearing
 
 ROSE WHITING 273 
 
 a soft felt hat. Bast, with a shabby dressing-gown over 
 his pyjamas, was sitting on the stairs, listening to him with 
 a grim, critical smile. 
 
 Pferdminger made a sort of rush at us as we entered, 
 but the inspector stopped his flow of quite unintelligible ex- 
 planations with a curt "Which floor?" and then gave me 
 my first feeling of respect for his esoteric knowledge by 
 saying, "Rose Whiting, isn't it ?" I am sure that I had not 
 mentioned her name. All the questions that had been 
 put to me until then had been as to my own identity. The 
 police might, I thought, have been expecting this murder, 
 and now it had come their one real concern was to throw 
 doubt on the integrity of the witnesses. 
 
 I stayed in my own room while the inspector and one 
 of his subordinates (the other had been left outside on 
 the doorstep) went upstairs. In my detached way I was 
 aware of a considerable clamour beating upon the rigid 
 walls that shut in my retired personality. I heard the 
 heavy tread of the men upstairs, the dull murmur of the 
 increasing crowd that mumbled mysteriously in the roadway ; 
 and of a clear-cut, monotonous voice that was apparently 
 delivering a lecture somewhere away in the hidden depths 
 of the house. But all this siege of activity failed to perturb 
 me. I knew that it could not break through the fine de- 
 fences that stood between me and feeling. My mind was 
 working swiftly and accurately, like a precise little mecha- 
 nism of some delicate vivid metal. 
 
 It responded at once when the voice that had been thrill- 
 ing so steadily upstairs came in to my room and dropped 
 a -full fifth to ask me a question. I saw, with a sense of 
 pride in my faculty for seeing, that Mrs. Hargreave was 
 standing in the doorway, dressed mainly in her eternal fur 
 coat ; and behind her hovered a little crowd, Herz frightened 
 and grey; Lippmann rather portentous and looking grossly 
 fat in an elaborate dressing-gown; and the dull, resigned 
 figure of Mrs. Pferdminger, the only one of us, I think, 
 beside myself, who was fully dressed. Little Oracles in a
 
 274 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 plaid shawl was clinging, pert and inquisitive, to the fur 
 of Mrs. Hargreave's coat. 
 
 "Who did it, Mr. Hornby?" was the question that Mrs. 
 Hargreave had put to me. 
 
 "A man in a bowler hat," I said. 
 
 "Then you saw him?" she continued. 
 
 "Only that much. I saw him go out," I told her. 
 
 She appeared to be taking the inquiry in hand on behalf 
 of her select followers, but she was interrupted by the re- 
 turn of the inspector who had now dropped the second of his 
 supernumeraries upstairs. 
 
 "What's all this?" he began, by way of a polite opening, 
 and proceeded to takes the names, including Oracles', of 
 every one present. Mrs. Hargreave wanted to argue with 
 him, but he ignored her. He had little Pferdminger in 
 tow, and referred to him every now and again for veri- 
 fication. 
 
 "Is this all the people in the house?" he asked him when 
 he had written down the names of the group in the hall. 
 
 "Vith zose you already haf, yes," Pferdminger replied 
 sullenly. 
 
 "Better get out of the way, then," the inspector said, 
 and with a gesture he warned them all, including Pferd- 
 minger, out of the room and shut the door on them. 
 
 I dare say that he was very conscious of his importance 
 just then. His manner was very different from that of 
 the policemen who had come in on the night when poor 
 Rose Whiting defied the whole world of convention. 
 
 "I shall be coming with another officer to-morrow morn- 
 ing to take your deposition," he said, looking at me. "Un- 
 til then I should advise you to answer no questions, and 
 generally, well, keep your mouth shut." 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 "This is a very serious business," he added. 
 
 "Very," I said. 
 
 "I must ask you not to leave the house until I have 
 seen you in the morning," he went on sternly. 
 
 "All right," I agreed.
 
 ROSE WHITING 275 
 
 And then he suddenly dropped his official manner and 
 stroking his fine moustache, said, "You're a bit shook up, 
 of course; but we get used to this kind of thing. I was 
 engaged in that very similar case in Bernard Street. Same 
 feller done 'em both, if you ask me. Well, good-night, sir." 
 
 I should have offered him a drink if he had stayed an- 
 other minute. 
 
 VI 
 
 I went to bed as soon as he had gone. I took a book 
 with me as I was quite convinced that never in my life 
 had I felt less sleepy. But as soon as I lay down I col- 
 lapsed almost instantly into unconsciousness. Perhaps I 
 fainted and the faint developed into natural sleep. I re- 
 member that in the moment that intervened between my 
 realisation of complete prostration and the blackness of 
 coma, I made an effort to blow out the candle and was 
 unable to make the least movement. And that uncompleted 
 impulse was still active when Pferdminger determined^' 
 woke me at eleven o'clock the next morning. I raised 
 myself at once, as I thought and turned to the table by 
 my bed. The beginning of realisation came to me when 
 I saw that the candlestick was empty. Not until then did 
 I become aware of Pferdminger. 
 
 "Ze police are in vaiting for you, in zere," he said peev- 
 ishly, pointing to my sitting-room. "Zis is now ze sird 
 time you vill not vake yourself." 
 
 "What's the time?" I asked. I still found it hard to 
 believe that I had been asleep. 
 
 "More than eleven o'clock," he replied impatiently. "I 
 vant to know vat you say to ze police." 
 
 I got out of bed, and my mind working back through 
 recent events picked up a memory of the injunction that 
 had been one of my last waking impressions. "The in- 
 spector told me to keep my mouth shut," I said. 
 
 "But eet ees to me important," protested Pferdminger. 
 
 "Why ?" I returned snappishly, as I put on my dressing-
 
 276 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 gown. I was recovering, then, all the hard, objective im- 
 pressions of the night, and my chief concern at the moment 
 was whether I had made a fool of myself. I could re- 
 member perfectly the parts played by the other actors, but 
 the memory of what I, myself, had said or done or felt, 
 was as faulty as the memory of a book that I had read 
 without attention. I seemed to have "skipped" in places. 
 
 "Zey must not know of men taken into ze house," Pferd- 
 minger was protesting. "Zat is important." 
 
 "Oh ! rot," I said. "They know all that to begin with." 
 
 "No ! no ! ! Zat ees not so . . . " the little man began to 
 expostulate but I cut him short by leaving the room. 
 
 I .found two men, the inspector and a little grey-haired, 
 brown-eyed man in plain clothes, methodically searching 
 my sitting-room. 
 
 "Just a matter of form," the inspector explained curtly, 
 as I stared in astonishment. "Have you got a key for 
 this writin' case?" 
 
 I supplied the key and suffered one of the worst mo- 
 rr-nts of the whole incident, while they opened and glanced 
 mto half-a-dozen of Judith's letters. 
 
 "If you'll be long, I may as well have breakfast," I 
 ventured after an agonised interval. 
 
 The little grey-haired man turned round and gave me 
 a friendly nod. "Do what you like so long as you don't 
 leave the house," he said. 
 
 The idea of going up to Hill's room came to me as of- 
 fering a blessed prospect of relief, and then I remembered 
 that he was away for the week-end. I must, indeed, have 
 been in a queer condition of mind not to have missed 
 him through the events of the night. But I was horribly 
 over-tired and over-strained before the final shock of that 
 awful discovery. And it seems probable to me that the 
 condition I have so inadequately described (I do not believe 
 that it would be possible to describe it convincingly to any 
 one who had not suffered a similar experience), that and 
 the profound sleep which followed it, saved me from a 
 severe nervous disturbance. For an hour or two I had
 
 ROSE WHITING 277 
 
 been protected from all further shock to my sensibilities. 
 If a bomb had fallen at my feet any time after I had left 
 Bast in that horrible room upstairs, I should have watched 
 it with a quite impersonal interest. Something in me that 
 commonly responded to such terrors had been away, or 
 guarded, or perhaps asleep. 
 
 I was almost my normal self again, after I had chased 
 Pferdminger away from the keyhole of the bedroom door, 
 and had had my breakfast. 
 
 The two officials had completed their investigation be- 
 fore I had finished ; and began my examination "taking my 
 deposition," they called it. And it was during this examina- 
 tion that for one detestable moment I was afraid I might 
 be suspected of the murder of Rose Whiting. 
 
 The little grey-haired man asked all the questions, and 
 although his brown eyes had met mine frankly enough 
 when he had given me permission to have breakfast, he 
 never once looked at me directly while he conducted my 
 examination. He did it all with rather a perfunctory air, 
 as if he were thinking of something else. 
 
 "I want you just to give me an account as near as you 
 can of what happened," he began, and he did not inter- 
 rupt me while I repeated, in effect, the impressions I have 
 written here. After I had finished he started all kinds of 
 apparently irrelevant questions about my profession, my 
 family, my knowledge of the other people in "73," about 
 anything but the details of the story I had just told him. 
 
 He gave a sort of inconclusive nod when those ques- 
 tions had been answered, and I thought he had finished. 
 He was looking out of my window when he began again 
 abruptly. 
 
 "Was there a light in Rose Whiting's room when you 
 first looked in?" 
 
 And for the life of me I could not have answered that 
 question without consideration. It is a fact that I was 
 not sure whether or not the gas had been burning. 
 
 "There must have been," I said after a very sensible 
 pause. "I'm sure I didn't light the gas myself."
 
 278 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "Why?" he asked. 
 
 "I should have remembered doing that," I replied, not 
 too readily. 
 
 "You are quite sure you didn't light the gas?" 
 
 "Quite!" 
 
 "But there was a light burning?" 
 
 "I couldn't have seen her if there hadn't been," I said. 
 
 "What did you say the exact time was?" he put in. 
 
 "I think it must have been after one o'clock," I said, 
 again after a moment's hesitation induced by his sugges- 
 tion that I had already made a definite statement on that 
 point. 
 
 "How long had the man been gone before you went up ?" 
 he continued. 
 
 "A few minutes, not longer," I said. 
 
 "Why did you go?" was his next enquiry, and it was 
 then that the dreadful fear of being accused came to me. 
 I could not answer that question in terms that I could 
 expect him to understand; and while I still hesitated he 
 confused me still further by adding, "Did you hear her 
 cry out?" 
 
 I believe I was really in danger of temporary arrest at 
 that moment. I was not absolutely sure whether or not 
 I had heard a cry, and if I had yielded to my craven im- 
 pulse to take refuge in that simple explanation, I should 
 have been open to the gravest suspicion, in as much as 
 it was a physical impossibility for poor Rose Whiting to have 
 cried out after that beastly v:ire had strangled her. But I 
 did not think of that when I answered. I told the truth be- 
 cause among the absurd tangle of motives that influenced 
 my replies I reacted against the one that would have made 
 me attribute my actions to a supernatural agent. For I 
 was aware in some way that if I had heard a cry, I had 
 not heard it with my ears. 
 
 "Oh! no," I said. "I heard nothing," and saw that I 
 was, now, apparently committed to the very explanation 
 I had wished to avoid. 
 
 "Ah!" commented my inquisitor, and I knew that he
 
 ROSE WHITING 279 
 
 was drawing a false conclusion as to the reason for my 
 visit. He wore that detestable smile with which so many 
 men leer at sexual intercourse. His next question con- 
 firmed me. 
 
 "I suppose you were waiting for this chap to go?" he 
 remarked, looking askew at his note-book. 
 
 "Oh! Great Scott, no," I replied fervently. "I only 
 spoke to her once, ever. One night there was a frightful 
 row here." 
 
 "When was that?" he put in. 
 
 "Sometime last October," I said. "Soon after I came 
 here." 
 
 The grey-haired man turned to the inspector. "That 
 right?" he asked sharply. 
 
 "October fourteen," the inspector replied with a nod. 
 
 That little interlude, demonstrative of such careful of- 
 ficial record, made me more determined than ever to keep 
 to the strict truth. That was my one hope of avoiding a 
 trap. 
 
 "Generally work so late as one o'clock?" the enquirer 
 continued. 
 
 "I have been recently," I said. "I am going in for a 
 competition and the drawings have to be finished by next 
 Thursday." 
 
 The grey-haired man sighed and suddenly allayed my 
 fear by dropping his inquisitorial manner and looking- at 
 me with the same direct stare he had given me before he 
 had begun his examination. 
 
 "We've no suspicions of you, you know, Mr. Hornby," 
 he said. "We know more or less who did this, though we 
 mayn't know his name or where to put our hands upon 
 him. But if I might suggest it to you, it would be as 
 well before you answer the coroner just to find out why 
 you did go up to that gal's room at one o'clock in the 
 morning." 
 
 "The truth is," I replied, "that I had a presentiment 
 something was up when I saw that chap go out." 
 
 The little man pursed his mouth. He could believe me
 
 280 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 innocent of murder but his faith in my moral rectitude went 
 no further than that. 
 
 "Bad luck on her, just now, wasn't it?" he remarked 
 casually. The inspector had shut up his note-book and I 
 understood that this was mere friendly conversation. 
 
 "Why just now?" I asked innocently. 
 
 "Well," the little man replied with a shrug. "You saw 
 her, didn't you?" 
 
 "Of course I did," I said. 
 
 "Stark?" he added. 
 
 "Absolutely," I agreed. 
 
 "Well then you know what her condition was?" he said. 
 
 But even then I could not follow him. 
 
 "Her condition?" I repeated vaguely. 
 
 He blew out his lips and winked at the inspector. I had 
 convinced him of my innocence, but I had lost his respect. 
 
 He made a noise as if he were soothing an infant. 
 
 "Sh!" was his comment. "She was four or five months 
 gone, poor gal." 
 
 VII 
 
 I spent the remainder of the morning in writing to Judith. 
 I could not work facing the inquisitive crowd that con- 
 tinually shifted and never diminished, both under my win- 
 dow and in greater force on the further pavement. When- 
 ever I showed myself they stared and pointed at me, and 
 I wondered if they had learnt that I had been the first 
 to discover the body. There was, of course, no report 
 in the early Sunday papers, but the story of the murder 
 had got about in some mysterious way. I saw two or three 
 men who were obviously reporters attacking the stolid 
 policeman who stood four square on our top step. His 
 only reply was to shake his head and wave them away 
 with a powerfully wooden hand. 
 
 Until three o'clock the house was strictly in possession 
 of the police, who were going diligently through every 
 room. I could hear their incessant tramping, and the noise 

 
 ROSE WHITING 281 
 
 of those heavy footsteps got on my nerves after a time 
 the only effect that I could trace of my overstrung condi- 
 tion of the night. 
 
 But at three o'clock we reached a climax with the ar- 
 rival of the ambulance. I detected a different note in 
 the rumbling of the crowd as it drove up, and looked 
 out of the window to see the gaunt horror of the stretcher 
 being lifted out of the waggon by four policemen. And 
 I heard the measured tramp of the men as they came 
 slowly down the stairs, and the strange excited murmur of 
 voices that swelled into a hoarse rattle as the gratifying 
 object of the crowd's curiosity was carried across the pave- 
 ment. 
 
 Soon afterwards the little grey-haired man looked into 
 my room again and gave me an informal notice of the time 
 and place of the inquest. 
 
 "No need for you to stay in, now, if you've a fancy to 
 go out," he concluded. "I dare say you don't find the 
 place any too cheerful." And then he advised me that 
 the reporters would soon "be on my track" if I did not 
 keep my "eyes skinned"; and warned me to give them 
 no information of any kind. . . . 
 
 I had an unpleasant sense, then, and for many days after- 
 wards, of this interference with my liberty. 
 
 The inquest on the following Tuesday was a more bear- 
 able ordeal than I had anticipated, and the coroner never 
 pressed that difficult question of why I had gone up to 
 Rose Whiting's room in the first instance. He accepted 
 my statement that I was alarmed when I saw the unknown 
 man depart, as a perfectly rational cause for making an 
 enquiry. I suppose he had, in that particular at least, 
 been advised by the detective or whatever he was who had 
 cross-examined me. I never learnt his proper status. ^ He 
 did not appear at the inquest ; all his evidence being given 
 by the inspector who had accompanied him. 
 
 But although there was never any question of my de- 
 tention, I could not rid myself for a long time of 
 feeling that I was no longer a free individual. If I was not
 
 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 watched by the police, I was a person of inexplicable sig- 
 nificance to the crowd that for more than a week gaped 
 and gaped about our front door, and found my presence at 
 .the window a source of apparently inextinguishable satis- 
 faction, so that I had to finish my competition drawings 
 under surveillance. I tried working with the blinds down 
 and the gas burning, but I found those conditions even 
 more trying in the bright May noonday than the stupid 
 staring of the shifting, pointing idlers. And the incessant 
 annoyance of their subdued chattering seemed to increase 
 when I shut out the sight of them, as if they found cause 
 for new suspicion in my desire for privacy. I am sure 
 some of them suspected me of making away with im- 
 portant evidence when I took my great bundle of drawings 
 to the stretcher maker on Thursday morning. 
 
 (I am still proud of the fact that I finished those draw- 
 ings in time. It was all mechanical work, then, I admit, 
 and some of it was very hurried, at the last, but they were 
 quite presentable.) 
 
 VIII 
 
 I have nearly finished this unpleasant chapter, and I shall 
 be glad when it is done with all the dreadful sensations 
 of that time have been revived as I have been writing, so 
 that the thing has become very real again to me, even 
 though I may have failed to reproduce a tithe of the horror 
 and strain that I suffered. But before I leave the subject 
 I may as well wind up the incident so that I shall not 
 have to refer to it again. 
 
 The effects that the murder had upon the household 
 at 73 Keppel Street were not important. Lippmann left 
 the house the day after the inquest, but he was the only 
 deserter. And Rose Whiting's rooms remained unlet to 
 the end of the lease. I fancy that Pferdtninger was some- 
 thing half-hearted in his attempts to get a new tenant, and 
 the only applicant I ever heard of was a very queer looking 
 chap who had, I infer, a taste for the morbid. He told
 
 ROSE WHITING 283 
 
 Pferdminger that he was writing the story of a murder 
 and had been waiting for a chance to get the proper atmos- 
 phere. My door was ajar when he came and I heard 
 him talking in the hall. He talked a great deal, in a rapid, 
 high-pitched voice. I received an impression that he was 
 under the influence of drink or drugs. He was refused 
 without hesitation. 
 
 Pferdminger had had a shock and meant to be very 
 careful in the future. He was more restrained after the 
 murder, or that was my impression, but he harboured a 
 grudge against me ; a fact that had, perhaps, a slight influ- 
 ence on my career. I believe he thought in face of all 
 the evidence that he might have pretended innocence of 
 Rose Whiting's profession to the police if it had not been 
 for me. Even at the inquest he took elaborate care to 
 describe her as an actress. 
 
 And the murderer, as every one knows, was never caught. 
 There were many reasons, I have heard, to connect this 
 crime with the one in Bernard Street, and to point to 
 their having been committed by the same person. There 
 was no motive, as the word is commonly understood, in 
 this connexion. Rose Whiting was probably the victim of 
 a violent lust for sexual cruelty, which nothing short of 
 murder could satisfy. So far as society is concerned, that 
 lust may be considered as a form of insanity, and it seems 
 to me that the murderer who succumbed to that lust is 
 not such a reprehensible creature as the man who kept 
 Rose Whiting through the winter and threw her over when 
 he found that she was going to bear him a child, 
 little doubt that that was what had happened. The hypoth- 
 esis so convincingly explains all the known facts, and 
 although the man's name did not appear at the inquest 
 I believe that the> police knew it. And in my opinion i 
 there was to be a hanging, he was the greater criminal of 
 the two, and should have suffered the extreme penalty 
 
 He may be alive now. If he is, I hope he may read this 
 and recognise the story of the woman whom I have calle 
 "Rose Whiting."
 
 XIII 
 AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 
 
 AS my bank balance steadily decreased until the calcula- 
 tion as to how much longer I could afford to remain 
 in Keppel Street became an ominously simple sum in mental 
 arithmetic, so much the stronger grew my determination 
 to "stick it out" to the last possible moment. I had a 
 feeling of unjustifiable pride in that intention to "stick it 
 out." I comforted myself with the phrase. It appealed 
 to some solid English basis in me that I had inherited 
 from my father. 
 
 The principle of my attitude is not defensible in many 
 cases. There are occasions when commonsense is a greater 
 virtue than stolid courage. I have heard how at the be- 
 ginning of the war our gunners would stick to their guns 
 when their battery had been located by the enemy, and 
 how we had to learn from the French that the trained 
 artilleryman is of greater value than many guns and that 
 his duty to his commander and his country is to take 
 cover an(i not to die foolishly and obstinately at his post. 
 But there was a reason in my case for holding on as long 
 as possible. My hope of finding a client was not yet dead. 
 My name was sometimes bracketed with my more suc- 
 cessful contemporaries in articles that discussed the merits 
 of the new school in domestic architecture. And I saw 
 that should a commission eventually come my way, I stood 
 a very good chance of losing it, if I had no office of my 
 own. 
 
 284
 
 285 
 
 That, however, was my one justification of any worth; 
 and on the other side was a whole array of considerations 
 which made it advisable for me to save what I could while 
 had the opportunity. By selling my furniture I could 
 have lived, economically, in one room for another six months 
 at least, while now I risked complete destitution. 
 
 I consoled myself by postulating that at the worst I 
 could always find work as an assistant, but that resource, 
 also, I meant to postpone as long as I could; and mean- 
 while I began present economies by saving in food. For 
 a whole week I had dinner at the inclusive cost of nine pence 
 at a little eating house off the Tottenham Court Road; 
 but one night such a feeling of disgust took hold of me 
 that I could never endure the sight no, I think it must 
 have been the smell of the place again. Afterwards I 
 got much less nourishment for the same price at an A.B.C. 
 or an Express Dairy ; but I suffered less nervously. 
 
 Also, I began to prepare my own breakfast, instead of 
 buying it from Pferdminger, and that saving altogether 
 apart from economical reasons, was another means of pro- 
 longing my stay in Keppel Street. 
 
 Pferdminger, as I have said, had a grudge against me; 
 and as soon as he began to suspect that I was in financial 
 low water, he found occasion to annoy me in small ways. 
 He ceased to wait upon me himself, and the slovenly girl 
 who was the Pferdminger's only servant had apparently 
 been instructed that my bell was the least important in 
 the house. My brass plate was allowed to become so 
 tarnished that I swallowed my pride and polished it my- 
 self every morning; always with the ridiculous fear in 
 my mind that the long expected client might come at last 
 and catch me in the act. But the most pointed of his 
 innuendoes was the sudden solicitude he displayed with re- 
 gard to the payment of his weekly bills. That bill was 
 now scrupulously presented every Saturday morning, and 
 he took the further precaution of coming up with it him- 
 self to avoid any possible procrastination. 
 He must have meant that as an insult; he could not
 
 286 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 have been uneasy as to receiving ultimate payment while 
 he had the security of all my furniture and effects. No, the 
 truth is that he disliked me, and wanted to revenge him- 
 self, not only for the part I had played in the Whiting 
 tragedy but, also, for my treatment of him. I had in- 
 sulted him on the morning after Helen had come down 
 to my room, and for that, and for my general attitude of 
 superiority to him an attitude to which I must plead guilty 
 without the shadow of an excuse he had his knife into me 
 to use the cant phrase. 
 
 He would have given me notice to leave if he had not 
 been afraid of me. Little money-grubber that he was, he 
 would, I am sure, have sacrificed three months' rent in 
 order to be even with me. 
 
 It is curious that I should write so bitterly of him, 
 now. I certainly bear him no grudge. But always as I 
 write I recover my mood of the moment, and I cannot 
 deny that in July, 1906, when I was run down in health 
 and nervously worried, my dislike for Pferdminger was a 
 positive factor in my life. 
 
 And that factor played quite an important part in my 
 determination to remain in Keppel Street until the end of 
 the lease. I would not be beaten by him. I believe it was 
 partly on this account that I relinquished one of the last 
 strongholds of my pride and went out one morning to apply 
 for a job in the office of my old colleague, Horton-Smith. 
 
 II 
 
 It may be thought that I was deliberately courting an 
 additional humiliation by applying to a man who had been 
 my equal in Lincoln's Inn. But apart from the main reason 
 for going to Horton-Smith, I was in a state of mind just 
 then which made the tedious explanations and the demon- 
 stration of my capacity as an assistant almost unbearable. 
 If I must accept degradation, I wished to plunge and be
 
 AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 287 
 
 done with it. Smith knew my abilities as well as I did 
 myself. 
 
 But what I have called my main reason was an emi- 
 nently sound and rational one. Horton-Smith's "luck" had 
 held, and he had won the big competition which had oc- 
 cupied all my best energies for three months, the competi- 
 tion upon which I had toiled so arduously to the accom- 
 paniment of that muttering crowd who had gaped at me 
 after the murder. 
 
 I saw the announcement a five-line paragraph at the 
 foot of the column in the daily paper which Hill lent me 
 after I had cut down the extravagance of a separate sub- 
 scription. Hill knew that I was hard up, but I had dis- 
 guised the real truth from him. He believed that I was 
 merely being prudent in anticipation of future difficulties. 
 He was not a man who could be easily deceived, and I 
 flatter myself that I played my part rather well. 
 
 I was not crushed when I saw that I had failed again. 
 I knew the chances of competition work too well to count 
 upon any probability of winning, and as always happens 
 to me, as soon as my design was finished I began to criticise 
 it. In the six weeks that elapsed between the time my 
 drawings went in and the date of the announcement, I 
 had fairly convincingly persuaded myself that I was not 
 going to win. 
 
 And I accepted Smith's success as an omen. I had 
 been given, I thought, the choice of this opportunity. For 
 I rightly counted it as almost a certainty that I should get 
 a job as his assistant. This competition was the biggest 
 thing he had touched the estimate was for 80,000 and 
 he would need a larger staff. Moreover, I considered it 
 probable that among all possible applicants he would choose 
 me. I smiled at the reflection that it was a Friday and 
 the 1 3th of the month; I included that fact in the general 
 portent of the omen as a mark of my entry into servitude. 
 
 I took the paper up to Hill's room before I went. 
 
 "I'm going out to get a job," I told him. "It means 
 wealth four, perhaps five, pounds a week."
 
 288 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 "How do you know you'll get it?" he asked. 
 
 "I just know," I said. "It's by way of being an after- 
 math." And I pointed out the five line paragraph. "You 
 see, as luck will have it," I added, "Horton-Smith's an old 
 stable-companion of mine. We were in our articles to- 
 gether, sometime last century." 
 
 Hill sat up in bed. "Look here, Hornby," he said; "if 
 it's just a question of tiding over . . ." 
 
 "It's mainly a question of my not being a silly ass," I 
 interrupted him. "Besides which it's a Friday and the I3th 
 of the month. I might get six pounds a week with luck." 
 
 I left him looking puzzled and a trifle downcast. 
 
 in 
 / 
 
 Horton-Smith's offices were still in Verulam Buildings, 
 but he no longer lived there, as he had done when he first 
 started in private practice. Indeed, I found that in addi- 
 tion to the three rooms which composed the suite of cham- 
 bers on the second floor he now rented another room on 
 the floor above as a tracing office. 
 
 He explained all that as soon as I had congratulated him 
 on his latest success. He was a good fellow, and I could 
 make allowance for a slight touch of swelled head that 
 morning, although those symptoms made the offer of my 
 degradation a trifle harder to make. 
 
 "Well, look here, old chap; I've really come to see you 
 on a matter of business," was my method of plunging into 
 his explanation that he would, now, have to get rid of 
 his lease, or sublet his present chambers to take larger 
 offices. 
 
 He looked at me keenly when I said that. I have no 
 doubt my manner put him on the alert. And he was a 
 good business man. He won his competitions on his plan- 
 ning the two things go together. 
 
 "That's good," he commented.
 
 AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 289 
 
 "I want you to give me a job as an assistant," I ex- 
 plained. 
 
 "By Gad, I'm sorry, old chap," he said. "Have you made 
 a mess of it, somehow?" 
 
 "Well, I've got no work in hand," I said, "and I've just 
 failed to win an eighty-thousand pound competition." 
 
 He whistled and tried to cover a triumphant smile. 
 "Great Scott, were you in for it ?" he remarked. "I'm lucky. 
 The drawings are on view this morning, just over the way. 
 Shall we run over and have a look at 'em ?" 
 
 "We'll settle the business arrangement first," I said. "I 
 want to know what you'll give me. I'm not cheap, you'll 
 understand, but I know my value," and I could not resist 
 the temptation to cool him down a little, by adding, "espe- 
 cially to you." 
 
 He smiled rather self-consciously. "Do you?" he said, 
 attempting the air of a thoroughly successful architect. 
 
 "Rather!" I replied. "I'll help you to get a decent ele- 
 vation for once. That's the one thing you can't do." 
 
 He bit his lip and frowned with just the old boyish ex- 
 pression he used to wear when Geddes and I chaffed him 
 about his designs in Lincoln's Inn; and then he laughed 
 good-humouredly. 
 
 "Oh ! well, there's something in it," he confessed. "How 
 much do you want?" 
 
 "Well, you could hardly pay such an expert adviser as 
 I am less than six pounds a week," I said. 
 
 He made a wry face but he did not attempt to bargain 
 with me. "All serene," he said, and added, "I shan't want 
 you for a couple of months, of course." 
 
 I had not thought of that awful proviso; and I dare 
 say he would not have made it if I had not asked so 
 high a salary. In two months I should be on the rates 
 unless I sold my furniture or borrowed from Hill. But 
 for the life of me I could not humble myself further to 
 Horton-Smith. I had reached some barrier that I could 
 not overstep, at that moment. I suppose the easiness of 
 our relations had given me a sense of retaining my equality
 
 290 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 with him in spite of temporary embarrassments., In any 
 case, I could not face the admission that I was almost a 
 pauper. I should have had to plead with him. 
 
 "About the middle of September," I said carelessly. "Do 
 you expect to be in your new offices by then? Of course, 
 if anything turns up to prevent my coming to you, I'll let 
 you know in good time." 
 
 "Thanks! Yes," he agreed; but I saw that he had no 
 doubt of getting me. 
 
 Afterwards we went over to the Holborn Town Hall 
 together and viewed the acres of stretchers that were hung 
 there. If there was anything in the arrangement of those 
 drawings, my entry must have stood well with the as- 
 sessors, for Horton-Smith's, the second premiated design, 
 my own and one other, shared the place of honour on a 
 big screen 'et across at the end of the room. 
 
 I had hopefully and yet sadly adopted the motto 
 "Dumspiro," writing it in one word ; and that, I think, was 
 the only thing I was ashamed of when I saw my drawings 
 again drawings so tragically rich in association ; every 
 line of that hasty "lettering" cried aloud to me that two 
 months ago there had been a murder in Keppel Street. 
 Horton-Smith had unimaginatively signed his work 
 "Munting," a joiner's word for the middle stile, or the 
 mullion, of a framed door. But I think it represented him 
 better than he knew. It so well suggested his conscious- 
 ness of being in the centre of things. 
 
 I had the upper hand in our critical exchanges ; my plan 
 certainly stood the test of comparison better than his eleva- 
 tion. He admitted that, with just a touch of pique, and 
 explained that he had always meant to reconsider the ex- 
 terior if he got the job. And to cover his admission he 
 gave me a lecture on the advisability of being practical 
 in work of this kind. "It's the plan that decides most com- 
 petitions," he said. "Now where I think you went 
 wrong . . ." 
 
 We were absolutely agreed that the second premiated
 
 AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 291 
 
 design the brute who sent it in got 50 was dreadfully 
 poor stuff. That fifty pounds would have helped me to 
 beat Pferdminger hands down. 
 
 IV 
 
 I was crossing Bloomsbury Square when I realised that 
 I was not the least anxious to return to Keppel Street; 
 and I had at the same moment a sense of loss which I 
 failed immediately to understand. I fancied, at first, that it 
 must have something to do with Judith ; but when I thought 
 of her I understood that my love for her was in no way 
 related to my associations with the house in which I had 
 met her. No, so far as she was concerned, my morning's 
 work had brought golden promise. Economically we were 
 free to marry as soon as she could find release from at- 
 tendance on the aunt who still hovered between death and 
 recovery. With my 300 a year and Judith's 200 we could 
 be married in the autumn. For her letters had told me 
 that she had no further doubt of herself. Our correspond- 
 ence had grown more passionate in the last few weeks. 
 We had ceased to disguise our longing for each other. 
 My new employment had, in fact, brought the promise of 
 happiness very near to me, and yet I had a sense of loss. 
 
 And when I recognised it, it seemed at first sight so 
 trivial and absurd that I laughed aloud in the desert of 
 my separation from the casual pedestrians in the Square. 
 I was no longer tied to my rooms by the uncertain joys of 
 expectation. My hope of that dilatory, emancipating client 
 had vanished. I had accepted the choice of servitude, and 
 automatically I was relieved from the pains of indecision. 
 What was there to regret ? I asked myself. For the present, 
 I might sell my furniture and take two months holiday 
 somewhere near Cheltenham I need do no work during 
 that time ; and Heaven knows that I wanted a rest. In the 
 immediate future I might marry Judith and settle down on 
 what was after all a quite sufficient income. And as to the
 
 292 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 dim future that, too, would not be so gloomy. I knew that 
 I was a better architect than Horton-Smith. I could make 
 myself invaluable to him. I might reasonably look for- 
 ward to some kind of partnership with him at no very 
 distant time. 
 
 And then I looked up and saw a strange fascia glar- 
 ing along the whole front of respectable houses that faced 
 me across the Square. "Wilfred Hornby: Failure," was 
 the shout of that great sign and I felt that all London was 
 pointing at me. 
 
 I had given up the fight. I was the man who had ac- 
 cepted security at the price of his individuality. I was 
 ready to take in exchange this partnership with a man who 
 would never allow me a free hand. I knew well enough 
 what that collaboration with Horton-Smith would mean, 
 and most certainly it did not mean the development of my 
 ideals. He was a practical business man with a good head 
 for arrangement and construction. And inevitably he would 
 use me for mere money-making. I should turn my back on 
 ideals and become fat and prosperous. I should creep back 
 into the shell that had, as I thought, been so effectively 
 broken by the passions, terrors and interests that had pierced 
 me in that wonderful house in Keppel Street the house to 
 which I wanted to return no more. 
 
 My body was weak and my mind extraordinarily clear 
 as the result of my recent fasting, and I look no further 
 than that for an explanation of my vivid illusion that the 
 proclamation of my failure was written in fire across the 
 dull solemnity of Bloomsbury Square. I knew perfectly 
 well that no eye but my own could see that denouncement 
 of my insignificance, and yet I crept away shamefaced, as 
 if I were branded with the visible stigma of disgrace. I 
 retreated aimlessly and was hardly aware of my surround- 
 ings until I found myself on the diagonal path that would
 
 AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 293 
 
 lead me to the still centre of the gardens in Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields. 
 
 I found a seat there and rested for a time among the tired 
 driftings of humanity that had been whirled out of the 
 booming tornado of London traffic. 
 
 I wanted to hold my thoughts steady in order that I might 
 make a new inquiry into my position, reconsider my de- 
 termination to sell my artistic ideals; but I found that I 
 had no power of guiding my 'mental processes. I saw 
 clearly, but I could not choose my subject. Nevertheless 
 it seems to me, now, that some control it may have been 
 nothing more than a congruous association of ideas exer- 
 cised a faculty of selection. It was almost certainly asso- 
 ciation that set me thinking of Parkinson's job with its 
 Queen Anne gables. 
 
 I had denied my artistic conscience in that case without a 
 struggle, and I had sneered at Geddes for reproaching me ; 
 but I found no fault with myself on that score. Parkinson's 
 commission had been a stepping stone to private practice 
 and the free hand that was my ultimate goal. And I had 
 not, then, committed myself as I should now commit my- 
 self, forever, by accepting the dictates of Horton-Smith. 
 Moreover, that remote concession was made in the days 
 before I went to Keppel Street. . . . 
 
 I lost sight of the old bargain with my conscience in the 
 new suggestion. I thought of the change in myself. I af- 
 firmed the fact of change with a feeling of satisfaction. 
 And then the panorama of my recent life passed before 
 the background of my mind and temporarily obscured the 
 consideration of my immediate problem. 
 
 I saw bright, fascinating pictures that seemed to con- 
 dense experience into a single movement. 
 
 The figure of the unhappy Rose Whiting danced before 
 me, passing through rapid phases of eagerness, resent- 
 ment and determination before she. slid away cowering, 
 with her eyes fixed in a beseeching stare of horror and 
 dismay. 
 
 Behind her came Mrs. Hargreave, sturdily erect, with a
 
 294- HOUSE-MATES 
 
 fanatic gaze that was fixed too intently on some imagined 
 thing she had abstracted from the great content of life. 
 And behind her the face of her husband flashed up for a 
 moment, like the face of a wild creature that moodily paced 
 a cage it had not the courage to destroy. 
 
 And I saw Helen, absorbed in the contemplation of her 
 own misery ; a drooping, despondent figure, that passed with 
 a moody resentment. 
 
 And then I tried to conjure up a vision of Judith, and 
 the picture broke like an interrupted dream. 
 
 I became aware of the bright July day, and the hissing 
 tremor of the tall trees that responded to a wind of 
 which I was barely sensible. And high up through the 
 leaves I could see the open blue of bright sky, and the 
 bellying sails of majestic cloud, exquisitely white, that set 
 a slow course across the great width of heaven. A little 
 whirlwind of dust leaped and spun for an instant across 
 the gravel playground. 
 
 I felt as if life was momentarily arrested ; as if the wind 
 and the cloud and the dust alone moved, while humanity 
 waited for a new impulse. 
 
 I looked out towards the invisible windows of my old 
 office across the Fields. I had begun there, shaping my 
 desires within the shell. I had touched the need for a 
 larger expression at Keppel Street. And, now, I waited 
 for a fresh impulse. I was in the calm centre of the storm, 
 relieved of the need for volition. Beside me an old man, 
 with a grimy, deeply-furrowed face, stared lifelessly be- 
 fore him, as if for him the need of a new impulse had 
 passed forever. 
 
 I got up impatiently and marched back into the wind 
 and stress of Holborn. My resolve had crystallised into 
 the bathos of an intention to drive away dreams by indulg- 
 ing myself with a sufficient meal. I wanted food and energy 
 to take up the fight again. And, at least, I would not be 
 beaten by Pferdminger. I would stay at "73" until my 
 time was up, cost me what it might. 
 
 I had still two months of hope.
 
 AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 295 
 
 VI 
 
 I calculated that with care I could make my present re- 
 sources last for three weeks. I had closed my banking 
 account and now carried my entire capital in my trousers 
 pocket. When that money had gone, I counted on my 
 watch and my case of mathematical instruments to keep 
 me for another three weeks. The last fortnight must be 
 paid for by selling books or a piece of furniture, unless I 
 could manage to earn something before then by writing 
 another article, for instance. My calculations were based 
 on an outlay of thirty-five shillings a week, of which Pferd- 
 minger took twenty-two and sixpence for rent and gas 
 the latter charge being based on an estimate of sixpence a 
 burner including a gas ring in the bedroom where I now 
 cooked my own breakfast. I worked out this summary 
 of my resources after a really satisfactory meal that had 
 cost me nearly three shillings, and I felt exceedingly hope- 
 ful. Incidentally I included that meal as a part of my 
 capital. I meant to eat no more that day except for a 
 little bread and butter with a cup of tea in my own room 
 before I went to bed. 
 
 That problem of economising in food began to fascinate 
 me in the course of the next two weeks. Now that the 
 period of my poverty was definitely fixed, this game of 
 trying to save something out of the twelve and sixpence 
 left to me for food and washing had no terrors. I looked 
 forward to future compensations and had no feeling of 
 present martyrdom. Indeed, I think that I enjoyed this 
 juggling with small sums of money. The four shillings 
 and sevenpence that I managed to save out of my first 
 week's allowance gave me a delightful sense of living within 
 my means; and I never once reproached myself for past 
 extravagances. 
 
 I saw the announcement of Gladys's wedding on the 
 Tuesday after I had seen Horton-Smith. Morrison Blake's 
 celebrity had earned him a two-inch paragraph in the Daily
 
 296 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 Telegraph. I was surprised that the wedding should have 
 been delayed so long. Whenever I had thought of my 
 cousin since the great row at Ken Lodge, I had thought 
 of her as Blake's wife. But when I came to consider the 
 probable cause of the postponement, I attributed it to 
 Blake's procrastination. No doubt, he had not been too 
 willing to give up the opulent freedom of his bachelor- 
 hood. I wondered whether Gladys had had much difficulty 
 to induce him finally to fix the date? I guessed that she 
 had managed him tactfully but, towards the end, very 
 firmly. 
 
 And it was on the following Thursday that I received 
 a short note from Aunt Agatha expressing surprise that 
 I had never been to see them, referring to Gladys's wedding 
 with a hint of stating a grievance against me for not at- 
 tending it, and asking me if I would not have dinner with 
 them on that day week "just Lady Hoast, and one or 
 two people," she added, probably as a hint that I should 
 be expected to dress. 
 
 My first impulse was to refuse, but after deliberating the 
 invitation over my preparations for breakfast, I decided 
 to accept for two reasons. The first and more important 
 was that I should be able to save at least a shilling, and 
 get a tremendously, reinforcing meal; the second was that 
 since my pride would not be hurt, the offer of reconcilia- 
 tion having come from them, I might as well make use of 
 my uncle if his recommendation were still available. It 
 was just possible that he might have a client in view for 
 me, and that I might at this eleventh hour be saved from 
 Horton-Smith and the expediency of his practical de- 
 signs. 
 
 But chiefly I looked forward to the dinner, and was 
 horribly tempted once or twice to anticipate the spending 
 of that extra shilling. 
 
 The twenty-sixth was an abominably hot day. London 
 was just at the beginning of that heat wave which scorched 
 us in 1906. And although I enjoy hot weather as a rule, 
 it interfered in this case with my arrangements for at-
 
 AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 297 
 
 tending my aunt's dinner-party. I had intended to walk. 
 I was determined not to throw away the cost of half a 
 week's living on a cab. But without an overcoat and in 
 full evening dress I could not face Camden Town High 
 Street ; while, if I wore an overcoat, I foresaw that the heat 
 would be too much for my shirt and collar. I decided at 
 last to take the bus to Hampstead Station, and then walk, 
 very slowly, up the hill. 
 
 I allowed plenty of time, but I was amazed at the ef- 
 fect the heat had upon me. I took off my overcoat as soon 
 as I reached East Heath Road ; but even then I had to stop 
 and rest every minute or two for fear of getting too hot. 
 I remember that I kept mopping my face with my spare 
 handkerchief and commenting under my breath that I 
 seemed to be as weak as a rat. 
 
 When I got to Ken Lodge I was five minutes late, but 
 my shirt front was as stiff as a cuirass. 
 
 I entered the drawing room with quite a gay feeling of 
 lightness and clearness. I greeted my aunt with, I thought, 
 an appropriate ease of manner; and then shook hands with 
 my uncle a little carelessly I meant him to understand 
 from the outset that I regarded myself as the injured party. 
 And I found that I was no longer afraid of him. The 
 portentous wink with which he returned my salutation 
 made me want to laugh. 
 
 There were, I believe, four other people present besides 
 Lady Hoast who was gracious enough to remember me 
 but three of them seem to have made no impression on 
 my mind. I could not be sure, now, whether I had ever 
 met them before or whether they were perfect strangers 
 to me. The fourth was a thick-set, clean-shaven man, witl 
 an intelligent, keen face. He was introduced to me by my 
 uncle as Mr. Henry Graham ; a name that I felt I ought 
 to remember. I thought he stared at me rather curiously ; 
 but I was conscious that both my uncle and aunt, also, looked 
 at me now and again with a kind of quick furtweness. .1 
 peeped down at my shirt-front, afraid that it had, after 
 begun to show signs of buckling; and when Lwas reas-
 
 298 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 sured upon that point I began to wonder if I were not, 
 perhaps, behaving a little oddly. I felt a tremendous con- 
 fidence in myself, but 'I could not be perfectly sure that 
 I was saying the right things. Occasionally I would be- 
 come aware of the sound of my own voice speaking, and be 
 quite uncertain what I had been saying. 
 
 Fortunately dinner was announced almost immediately, 
 and I knew that if there was anything wrong with me it 
 was emptiness. I had had nothing to eat since my bread 
 and butter breakfast. I felt that it would be sheer ex- 
 travagance to eat with that feast ahead of me. 
 
 And, indeed, the soup it was mock-turtle had an imme- 
 diate effect upon me. The slight feeling of being light- 
 headed left me, and I began a perfectly reasonable conversa- 
 tion with Lady Hoast on the subject of motor-traction. 
 She regarded tubes and motor buses, I believe, as being al- 
 most works of the devil. 
 
 "Those awful tubes," I remember her saying, "so noisy 
 and the atmosphere. I thought I should certainly faint 
 the last time I went in one." 
 
 I think I replied that tubes had their obvious disadvan- 
 tages and added very reasonably that the new tube from 
 Charing Cross to Hampstead would nevertheless have been 
 a great convenience to me that evening. 
 
 We had had fish and an entree before I became aware 
 that the heat of the room was getting horribly oppressive. 
 I was wet with perspiration, my heart was beating at a 
 most unholy pace ; and, most curious of all, I was suddenly 
 seized with an unaccountable distaste for food. 
 
 I frowned. It seemed to me that I frowned quite tre- 
 mendously. I was afraid of doing something to disgrace 
 myself. And then Lady Hoast most unexpectedly began 
 to sail slowly up towards the ceiling, and at the same mo- 
 ment I had a blissful sense that it didn't matter a damn 
 what she or I or any one else present was doing. I dare 
 say that the pendulum of my uncle's clock had barely time 
 to swing a full arc between my sight of the ascending Lady 
 Hoast and the moment when I fell into an immense abyss
 
 AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 299 
 
 of darkness ; but in that fraction of a second I was able to 
 realise that I had no further responsibility of any kind 
 towards my partner, my uncle, my aunt, or any one else 
 at the table. They were all phantoms of my imagination. 
 I recognised that they had no relation to me or to the great 
 reality which was sweeping me down into the great void. 
 If they had, I didn't care. 
 
 VII 
 
 When I returned from my unremembered journey into 
 space, and took another peep at the Earth through the 
 vehicle of Wilfred Hornby's senses, my first shocked im- 
 pressions were of an overpowering smell of brandy and 
 an unpleasant dampness; the latter condition being due, as 
 I learnt afterwards, to Lady Hoast's prompt but ineffectual 
 first aid. My next, which succeeded very quickly, were the 
 strange facts that my collar and shirt were unbuttoned, 
 that I was lying flat on the hearth-rug in my uncle's study 
 and that my uncle and Henry Graham were kneeling by 
 my side and bending over me." 
 
 "I'm all right, now," I said. "It was the heat." 
 
 "Hum! Hum! Better lie still till Reynolds comes 
 he'll be here in a moment," my uncle advised me. 
 
 "But really, I'm perfectly all right, now," I insisted. "A 
 little giddy, that's all." But I lay still, nevertheless. I 
 had been impressed by the fact that Dr. Reynolds had 
 been sent for. I was not sure that I might not be much 
 more ill than I felt. 
 
 "What happened?" I asked. 
 
 "You fainted dead away across the table, my boy," Gra- 
 ham answered. "You've been unconscious for the best 
 part of twenty minutes." 
 
 I remembered my vision of the ascendant Lady Hoast. 
 "I say, I'm sorry, Uncle," I apologised. "But look here 
 hadn't you better go back? I shall be all right here till
 
 300 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 Reynolds comes; and as a matter of fact, I'm perfectly 
 well now." 
 
 "What I can't understand . . ." my uncle began, and 
 stopped abruptly to listen to the sound of the front door 
 being opened and the voice of Reynolds in the hall. 
 
 "Well, well, here he is," he continued, and got up to meet 
 the doctor in the doorway. 
 
 Reynolds seemed at first to regard me as a joke. "Fainted, 
 eh?" he remarked when the elements of the case had been 
 presented to him. "Dear me, and what have you been up 
 to, young man? Living too fast, eh?" 
 
 But there was something dramatic in the change that 
 came over him when he began to examine me. The hand 
 he laid first upon my pulse and then upon my heart moved 
 with a sudden quick suspicion to my ribs, and I saw his 
 expression of cheerful banter draw into a puzzled frown. 
 
 "Can you sit up?" he asked, and when I had obeyed 
 him without much difficulty, he helped me to my feet. I 
 felt empty and still a trifle giddy, but I was able to stand 
 without support. 
 
 My uncle had, also, noticed Reynolds's new gravity, for 
 he began to clear his throat heroically, and then came out 
 with, "Nothing serious, Reynolds? Er er nothing very 
 serious, is it?" 
 
 Reynolds looked up with a glance of enquiry at Gra- 
 ham, who was standing thoughtfully in the background. 
 
 "If you'd sooner I went . . ." he replied, and left us at 
 once, but I do not think he had anything to learn from the 
 doctor. 
 
 My uncle had been either less observant, or was deter- 
 mined to disbelieve the evidence of his eyes. He mumbled 
 out something in which the word "heart" was the one clearly 
 emphasised word. 
 
 "His heart's as sound as a bell," Reynolds returned 
 curtly. "My dear Williams, the boy's starving there's 
 nothing else wrong with him. Put him to bed and give 
 him some good beef-tea with a drop of brandy in it. And 
 see that he takes it slowly."
 
 AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 301 
 
 (I never dared to ask; but I am afraid there can be no 
 doubt that the beginnings of that excellent dinner had 
 been wasted so far as I was concerned. I was certainly 
 aware of a great emptiness.) 
 
 I resigned myself to the arm-chair and waited for them 
 to dispose of me. I was full of shame and apology, but 
 I had come to the end of my energy, and the task of ex- 
 planation was beyond me for the time being. Also, I was 
 surprised to find that the anticipation of beef-tea and 
 brandy aroused no sort of enthusiasm. It may be that 
 the reek of brandy still so unpleasantly dominating my 
 every impression had given me a temporary distaste for 
 that medicine. I know that the smell of it filled me with 
 repugnance for months afterwards. 
 
 "No more brandy," I put in feebly, at the first oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 Reynolds nodded. "All right," he said, and then ad- 
 vised my uncle to get me to bed as soon as possible. 
 
 They did not keep me waiting very long for that relief. 
 It seemed that preparations had been begun before 
 Reynolds's arrival. And the beef-tea when it came un- 
 flavoured by any stimulant was quite acceptable. My aunt 
 came up with it, herself, and explained that it had been 
 intended for her own consumption. She was trying a super- 
 feeding treatment, she told me, for some obscure disease 
 of the nerves from which she had been recently suffering. 
 
 I hope that I was politely sympathetic. 
 
 I slept like a child and woke ravenous. 
 
 I had three poached eggs and a glass of milk for break- 
 fast. 
 
 After that I was practically normal again, if still a trifie 
 weak. And neither then nor at any time since have I 
 suffered any unpleasant consequences from the effect of 
 that six weeks or so of underfeeding. 
 
 I do not know if my case was, for any reasons, a 
 exceptional one.
 
 302 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 VIII 
 
 I had to dress in the wrecks of my overnight splendour. 
 I had received no instructions to stay in bed, but I suppose 
 they had been taken for granted. I know that my uncle, 
 whom I found alone in the breakfast-room, looked uncom- 
 monly surprised to see me, and laid great stress on the 
 "inadvisability" of my having got up so soon. 
 
 "Er er, now what do you propose to do?" he asked when 
 I had assured him of my ability to stand. 
 
 "First of all go back to my rooms and change," I said. 
 
 "You're still in Keppel Street?" he asked dubiously, and 
 when I replied that I was, he frowned and winked and 
 hum'ed his sincerest disapproval. "After that terrible case 
 I saw you gave evidence," he scolded me. "Hm! How 
 how you could ever expect a client to come there 
 Absurd." 
 
 "By Jove! that never occurred to me," I ejaculated. It 
 is true that I had given no thought to that obvious con- 
 sideration. 
 
 "You must come and live here for a time," my uncle 
 said. 
 
 I shook my head decidedly. I could not go back to that 
 atmosphere of suburban respectability. I had been alive 
 and free for nine months, and a free man does not will- 
 ingly return to imprisonment. Moreover, 73 Keppel Street 
 had become a home to me, and I meant to stay there as 
 long as possible. Everything that had ever deeply af- 
 fected me was associated with the place. The house was 
 full of my friends. 
 
 "I could not do that," I said. 
 
 My uncle's wink somehow conveyed his deepest sus- 
 picion and displeasure. 
 
 "We we must talk this over, Wilfred," he said. "I 
 I feel responsible. I am not going to the office this morn- 
 ing. You shall have the brougham to take you to to your
 
 AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 303 
 
 lodgings to change. And I should like you to come straight 
 back here the brougham will wait." 
 
 I agreed to that. I was glad to be saved the necessity 
 of travelling by bus to Bloomsbury Street, in evening dress, 
 and with a collar that had suffered severely from brandy 
 and water. 
 
 I found a letter from Judith awaiting me at Keppel 
 Street, and she enclosed postal orders for 5. Hill had 
 written to her and reported that he thought I was over- 
 doing the economy business, particularly in the matter of 
 food. She did not scold me for deceiving her, but her 
 letter was full of anxiety; and she deplored her inability 
 to come up to town and look after me. Her aunt, it seemed, 
 was worse, and might die almost any day. Her final in- 
 junction was that I "must have proper meals," whatever 
 happened. 
 
 I kept the brougham waiting while I answered that let- 
 ter, and I was thankful that I could at least relieve her 
 of all anxiety on my account. I returned the postal orders 
 as an earnest of my newly assured position; and told her 
 that I should certainly have kept them if they had come one 
 day earlier. 
 
 Perhaps it was as well that they did come a day late. . . . 
 
 I found that my uncle had worked up a pretty grievance 
 against me when we had our promised interview. He 
 kept his hurt steadily in the foreground as he talked, harp- 
 ing on the note of an insistent "Why?" Why hadn't I been 
 near them? Why hadn't I explained? And he gave me 
 clearly to understand that he had a grave doubt whether 
 the atmosphere of the house in Keppel Street had not seri- 
 ously impaired my morals. 
 
 Indeed, it was not until I had given him an account of 
 my engagement to Judith that he showed any sign of be- 
 ing ready to condone my manifold errors of commission 
 and omission. And from first to last he never gave me 
 the least hint of the real reason for his long silence. 
 learnt that from Aunt Agatha after lunch. "You see, 
 Wilfred," she explained, "it would have been rather pain-
 
 304 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 ful for Gladys to meet you again before she was married." 
 I wondered if Gladys had been spiteful. 
 
 But after Judith's most reputable ancestry had been re- 
 ported her father had been a colonel in the Indian army 
 my uncle allowed a suggestion of graciousness to become 
 visible through his mannerisms. He had a dry humour 
 of his own and remarked that he had not expected me to 
 find a Lillie in the desert of Keppel Street I had, wisely, 
 I think, suppressed all mention of Judith's brief ambition 
 to go on the stage and her assumed name of Carrington. 
 And, then, having winked himself past that little jest, he 
 opened the important subject of Henry Graham. 
 
 Graham was, according to Uncle David, the ideal, the 
 almost mythical, client that inspires the more brilliant day 
 dreams of the young architect. He represented that won- 
 derful thing Influence. His present requirements so far 
 as they concerned me might possibly be insignificant, but 
 if he "took me up" a quite magical phrase, in this con- 
 nexion there was, I inferred, little he could not do for 
 me. His chief interest was the celebrated Mechanical 
 Waggon Co. of which he was the director and principal 
 shareholder; but he was "in" everything that mattered, my 
 uncle said, and he made no secret of the fact that he, him- 
 self, had long been angling for a share of Graham's legal 
 business. 
 
 And then he went on in his own peculiar unreproducible 
 way to tell me how he had mentioned my name to Graham 
 and given an account of my abilities. And despite the 
 aggravated complication of his mannerisms they were be- 
 coming more marked with age, I noticed I understood 
 how he had wanted to make amends for his neglect of 
 me ; even before he had realised to what straits I had been 
 reduced. He almost apologised, so anxious was he, now, to 
 do what he might have called "the right thing by me." 
 
 Nevertheless when I again refused his offer to make a 
 temporary home for me at Ken Lodge, he displayed the 
 old inclination to hector. Perhaps he was glad of the ex- 
 cuse to cover up the signs of his recent weakness. It was
 
 AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 305 
 
 almost with an air of challenge that he finally announced 
 his intention of financing me until I was firmly on my feet. 
 Afterwards I wondered if his offer of a home had not 
 been made to save the expense of making me an allowance. 
 I hope I am not doing him an injustice in admitting that 
 speculation of mine ; but his queer habit of miserliness was 
 another characteristic that developed very noticeably in his 
 last years. 
 
 IX 
 
 I met Graham by appointment the following week. He 
 had a great block of offices in Victoria Street, and almost 
 my first remark to him was a criticism of their darkness 
 and inconvenience. 
 
 "I suppose you'd like the job of designing new ones for 
 me," he replied with a dry smile; and I made sure that 
 I was going to make a mess of the interview. 
 
 "Well, you certainly want them," I said. 
 
 He looked at me keenly and shook his head. "London 
 wants rebuilding," he remarked, "but it'll have to want, 
 and so shall I. The problem is land, my boy." He gave 
 me no time to answer that not that I had any answer 
 ready for him but went on at once to tell me why he had 
 sent for me. 
 
 "I've put up a little test for you, Hornby," he explained. 
 "You rather took my fancy the other night, but I want 
 to see what you're made of; so I've asked a friend of 
 mine to meet you here. He's going to build what he calls 
 a cottage near Haslemere somewhere, and I'd just like to 
 see how far you're going to be amenable. Look here, now, 
 I'll tell you what I mean. D'you know an architect fellow 
 called Geddes ?" 
 
 "We were in the same office together," I said. 
 
 "Well, then I needn't tell you the sort of pig-headed 
 fool he is," Graham went on. "I put some work in his 
 way a few months ago I'm interested in a good many build- 
 ing projects and he'd have got a lot more if he had been
 
 306 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 reasonably amenable but he was altogether too autocratic. 
 Now, that doesn't do, you understand. A man knows 
 within certain limits the sort of thing he wants. He mayn't 
 know the difference between a Gothic and a Renaissance 
 moulding, but he has a general idea of what style is going 
 to suit him. He's out to buy something, and he's going 
 to buy the kind of thing he wants, and not the kind of 
 thing Mr. Geddes considers to be the one and only perfect 
 design. Your friend Geddes is too arbitrary." 
 
 "Is he?" I said thoughtfully. 
 
 Already my idealist visions of a free hand were dis- 
 solving. The phantom of my ambitions was giving place 
 to the detestable hard outlines of modern realism; and I 
 foresaw that the prospect of working for Graham might 
 not differ so very materially from the prospect of working 
 for Horton-Smith. 
 
 "Now, you strike me as being a practical, capable sort 
 of chap . . ." Graham was saying. 
 
 And were my ideals, after all, worth striving for? was 
 the question I had to answer. 
 
 Graham's friend, his name was George Bertrand, came 
 in before I had had time to settle that problem. 
 
 He was a dark, fleshy man, and I guessed that he had 
 a strain of Jew in him the shape and expression of his 
 eyes were certainly not English. Nevertheless his speech 
 was English enough, and he displayed, I thought, a typically 
 English attitude with regard to architecture. 
 
 For after we had discussed the site and accommodation 
 for his proposed "cottage" he intended to spend 8,000 
 on the actual building he gave me his idea of what he 
 was likely to require in the matter of style. 
 
 "Nothing highfalutin something solid and comfortable 
 and English," he said. "What about Georgian, now ? Some- 
 thing that suggests endurance, eh ?" 
 
 "I agree with solid and comfortable and English," I said, 
 "but Georgian is no more English than the Parthenon." 
 
 "It's been acclimatised," he said, "like the deodar."
 
 AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 307 
 
 "But has failed as yet to accommodate its appearance to 
 the English landscape," I said. 
 
 "Well, it's up to you to make it," he retorted. 
 
 "Then it would no longer be recognisable as Georgian," 
 I replied. 
 
 "What I want is a small English country house," he 
 insisted. "What about Elizabethan if Georgian doesn't suit 
 your ideas?" 
 
 "Why not a twentieth century house that would repre- 
 sent you and your own time ?" I asked. "Why should you 
 want to copy the middle-ages in architecture? You don't 
 wear mediaeval clothes." 
 
 "Meaning you're struck with this New Art fad?" he 
 suggested. 
 
 "No," I said definitely. "I don't want to copy even 
 that. I want to design you a house to live in. You wouldn't 
 like me to make it a copy of an old house inside you'll 
 want bath-rooms and central heating, and electric light, 
 and everything that is modern and convenient." 
 
 "Oh! that's right enough," he put in, with a touch of 
 approval. 
 
 "Then why should you want the outside to be a sham?" 
 I asked. "Why shouldn't the house be your house out- 
 side as well as in ? The house of George Bertrand, Esquire ; 
 designed and built in the year of grace 1906. You won't 
 be ashamed of having built it, yourself, I suppose?" 
 
 Bertrand looked at Graham, winked and scratched the 
 back of his neck. "What do you think, Harry?" he asked. 
 
 Graham was stroking his jaw. He looked at me as he 
 said, "The point is whether we're willing to be educated ?' 
 
 "Aren't you trying to educate people about motor ve- 
 hicles?" I put in eagerly. "Do you find that the public 
 always knows well, what's best for it?" 
 
 "I don't," Graham returned drily. 
 
 "Of course, you don't," I agreed. "You're a specialist. 
 When one goes to a specialist one goes for advice. Well, 
 I'm a specialist, too." 
 
 Graham was smiling. "Here, wait a minute," he said,
 
 308 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 shaking his finger at me. "I'd like just to draw your at- 
 tention to one little difference between you and the other 
 specialists. It's this. If a man comes to me, or to a doctor 
 or a lawyer, we've only got to consider his requirements ; 
 but you and your friend Geddes and the rest of you in- 
 spired architects aren't thinking of your clients so much 
 as your Art. You want to satisfy or to improve the aesthetic 
 of all England. You want Bertrand's house, for instance, 
 to be a bright and shining example of how to do it, for all 
 the country side." 
 
 "Of course, I do," I said. "Don't you, sir?" I added, 
 addressing Bertrand. 
 
 He did not answer me, but looked doubtfully at Graham. 
 I believed that I could manage Bertrand. 
 
 Graham shrugged his shoulders. "The point is whether 
 we are prepared to accept you as an inspired prophet of 
 the new style," he remarked. "We might prefer to put our 
 money on Aston Webb or Norman Shaw." 
 
 "If you come to me, you come to buy the goods I have 
 to sell," I said obstinately. 
 
 "And you won't accommodate yourself to sell any 
 others?" Graham asked. 
 
 "I'm not a specialist in any others," I said. "I shouldn't 
 come to you to buy a stage coach." 
 
 Bertrand was grinning, but Graham leant back in his 
 chair and laughed outright, a good, honest laugh that 
 cheered me immensely. 
 
 "What tickles me, Bertrand," he said, still chuckling, 
 "is that our friend Hornby, here, was pretty well down 
 to his last shilling a day or two ago. And, now, that he 
 gets the chance of his life, he's willing to chuck it for 
 the sake of some ideal of Art. How's that for a business 
 proposition, eh?" 
 
 "Seems to me all right, Harry," Bertrand said. "I'd ex- 
 pect that cottage of mine to be something good, you 
 know." 
 
 "You've got him," Graham said, winking at me. "But 
 now, here's another proposition for you. I'm going to
 
 AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 309 
 
 build new works in Yorkshire before long. What are 
 your ideals about the designing of motor-shops?" 
 
 I saw those works in a flash. "The planning would have 
 to be done very largely by yourself," I said. "For the 
 rest all you want is an effect of stability and grouping, 
 nice, clean outlines as far as possible and the absolute 
 minimum of decoration. What I should try to express is 
 organisation and co-operation, with well-lighted, well-venti- 
 lated buildings simplicity and efficiency, you know. The 
 thing I should try to avoid is that awful suggestion of 
 ostentation and pretending to be something else a chateau 
 for example that you see in the designing of so many 
 works of that kind. I've seen a factory with machicola- 
 tions, as if it were designed to stand a mediaeval siege." 
 
 "You're all right," Graham said, and I knew that I was, 
 indeed, all right so far as my prospects were concerned. 
 But there had been a moment when I had wavered ; when 
 I had wondered if I could face my uncle with the report 
 that I had offended Graham for the sake of some vague 
 ideal. I had given way so easily about Parkinson in the 
 days when I was engaged to Gladys. 
 
 "The difference between you and your friend Geddes," 
 was Graham's last approving distinction, "is that you're 
 broad-minded and he isn't. He's dogmatic. He's only got 
 one idea. If he'd designed those works of mine, he'd have 
 tried to make 'em look like a garden suburb." 
 
 I believe Graham was right in that judgment. 
 
 I ought to have been very elated that evening. 
 
 I had so conclusively beaten Pferdminger that I could 
 afford to forgive him and if he did not forgive me, he 
 reverted very easily to his old air of servility when he 
 learnt that he was again to serve me with meals. And 
 as an evidence of his returned docility, he went out him-
 
 310 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 self the next morning, and diligently polished the "sign on 
 the post." 
 
 But the essential of my victory was that I had won 
 the prospect of independence on my own terms. I knew 
 that in future I would be able to do my own work in my 
 own way. And there was a fair probability that I might 
 presently realise an infinitesimal fraction of the ambition 
 I had dreamed in the Euston Road I might take a hand 
 in the re-designing of London. (As a matter of fact I 
 have already done something in that direction, although I 
 am not going to catalogue my efforts here. I am not 
 writing this book as an advertisement.) 
 
 And yet, I was aware of loss that evening ; of some sacri- 
 fice that I was making in order to accept success. I real- 
 ised that I was no longer a true member of the community 
 at 73 Keppel Street; that do what I would, I must soon 
 lose touch with my house-mates. 
 
 We had been united, all of us, in our common struggle. 
 However diverse our characters or ambitions, we had 
 for the most part achieved sympathy; and even where 
 there had been hate as in the strife between Helen and 
 myself it had had a human, I think I may say an honest 
 quality, that had left no bitterness. Helen and I had in 
 a peculiar sense been equals in our fight for Judith. All 
 of us there in the house had been equals with the one 
 exception of Mrs. Bast, who had from the first put on 
 airs of superiority. 
 
 And this simple realisation of essential equality with 
 the rest of mankind constitutes, I suppose, the change in 
 myself that I have insisted upon from the beginning. All 
 my upbringing had taught me to divide society into cate- 
 gories. People were judged by their position and labelled 
 as eligible or ineligible acquaintances; as people one ought 
 or ought not to know. In Keppel Street I learnt to alter 
 my standard of values. I learnt, before all, that there is 
 not such a creature as a fellow human being I ought not 
 to know; and that just so long as I shrank from sharing 
 the interests of my fellow men, so long must I remain a
 
 AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 311 
 
 mere egg; a cramped, distorted entity, bound within a 
 shell that permited me no true sight of life. 
 
 In retrospect I always think of 73 Keppel Street as a 
 "jolly" house. The epithet is Judith's who adds that they 
 were all such "jolly people."
 
 XIV 
 THE LOOSE ENDS 
 
 A RCHITECTURE seems a very precise art when I com- 
 -^V pare it with story-writing. When I design a build- 
 ing, I come by degrees to visualise the whole of it and to 
 place it, mentally, in relation to its surroundings. One be- 
 gins with a rough plan, and from that everything springs, 
 until at last the visualised thing is created in the solid, 
 compact and whole, and varying only in minor details from 
 the conception one has formed in one's own mind many 
 of the variations being due, unhappily, to the incompe- 
 tences of contractors and workmen. It is so difficult to get 
 away from the rigidities and limitations of the machine in 
 modern building. 
 
 The writing of a novel (I suppose I can call this book 
 a novel?) and more particularly the setting down of a 
 piece of autobiography, is a very different undertaking. 
 I began with some kind of plan in my mind, but I had to 
 abandon it before I reached the end of my second chap- 
 ter. For I intended originally to regard only one aspect 
 of myself, and I very soon found that if I were to confine 
 myself to that, I should be compelled to write an imaginary 
 story to fit it. The experiences of my life have not lent 
 themselves to throwing one aspect into a high light. 
 
 Again, the belief that I was a very ordinary example of 
 humanity, the belief which I clearly stated at the outset, 
 has been severely shaken by the introspection that has been 
 necessary in writing. Indeed, I have been driven to the 
 
 312
 
 THE LOOSE ENDS 31S 
 
 conclusion that the typical in humanity is a mere abstrac- 
 tion. The differences between individuals are so inex- 
 haustible; and the points of likeness furnish so artificial a 
 means of classification. 
 
 But the insuperable difficulty that must confront the 
 writer who would give to his story the neatness and finish 
 of a completed work, is the consideration that life is a 
 succession. The account of an episode may be neatly 
 rounded off, and given an air of completeness; but I can 
 find no stopping place in the story of a life. Even death 
 would not, now, finish the long train of events ; for some- 
 thing of what I learnt in Keppel Street has already been 
 taught to my two children and they in turn may pass on 
 some version of it through unrealisable generations. While 
 even in the ten years that have intervened between my last 
 recorded episode and the present moment of writing, I could 
 find material for another half-dozen books if I cared to 
 write them. 
 
 Nevertheless, when I look back over all this heap of 
 manuscript, I feel that the only year of my life which I 
 have treated in detail, has some special significance; that 
 it forms the nucleus of a story to which my first three 
 chapters were a necessary prologue. And I know that no 
 other period of my life has the same significance. That is, 
 perhaps, some kind of justification. 
 
 But my professional habit will not permit me to leave all 
 the loose ends which seem to me so horribly obvious ; and 
 a few of them, at least, I can and will tuck in with a fair 
 approach to neatness. My chief trouble is to find a method 
 of doing the job quickly. 
 
 It seems fairly clear, in any case, that I must bring my- 
 self and Judith up to date. 
 
 II 
 
 Her aunt died in August, 1906 three weeks after my 
 reconciliation with Uncle David, and left her another 200
 
 314 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 a year. I went down to Cheltenham for the funeral and 
 made the acquaintance of the surviving sister who is still 
 alive and stays with, us now and again. She tolerates me, 
 but I am afraid that we can never be equals. She does not 
 approve my "principles" as she calls them. I feel her watch- 
 ing me with an expression of grave doubt, and know that 
 she is wondering how I, the son of a clergyman of the 
 Church of England, come to have such queer ideas about 
 society. She tries to find excuse for me on the grounds 
 that I am an artist of a kind. 
 
 With that legacy in addition to our joint income, and 
 my professional prospects, there was no reason to post- 
 pone our marriage, and Judith and I spent the necessary five 
 minutes or so before a registrar in the following Septem- 
 ber. I had introduced her to my uncle and aunt but we 
 steadily opposed the suggestion of a public ceremony. Hill 
 and Mrs. Hargreave were our two witnesses. 
 
 We lived in a little villa in the Vale of Health for eigh- 
 teen months after we were married, moved into a house 
 at Northwood when our little boy was twelve weeks old, 
 and finally settled down into this place which I designed for 
 myself on the heights overlooking Wendover, about four 
 years later. 
 
 My uncle died in the winter of 1912, and left me 20,000. 
 I regarded that money as a superfluous responsibility at 
 the time, and I was planning to invest the whole of it in a 
 model-dwelling scheme that was occupying my attention, 
 when the war broke out. 
 
 That cataclysm changed everything for Judith and me. 
 We refer to the new period between ourselves, as the be- 
 ginning of the "third phase." For her life, like mine, has 
 been divided into recognisably distinct phases, which we 
 have labelled for our own convenience as the Cloister, the 
 World and the War. 
 
 My professional prospects temporarily vanished in Au- 
 gust, 1914. In any case, new building operations were post- 
 poned; and two of the jobs I had in hand were hung up 
 at that time by the building strike which seemed so im-
 
 THE LOOSE ENDS 315 
 
 mensely important in July and so utterly negligible a month 
 later. But the chief cause of interference was my imme- 
 diate mobilisation. I had joined the territorials five years 
 before, and held the rank of captain, and Judith after 
 terrible struggle with herself, permitted me to volunteer 
 for foreign service. 
 
 I have written the word "permitted" after a long hesi- 
 tation, and it does, as a matter of fact, suggest the 
 final outcome of the three days' struggle between us; but 
 no single word standing thus alone in this dull, curt record 
 of a time so extraordinarily full of emotion, could give 
 any effect of Judith's submission, or of our relations to 
 one another through the various stages that preceded her 
 decision. She was so furiously opposed to the idea of 
 war, and although she conceded the necessity for me to 
 fulfil the duties I had undertaken as a territorial, she loathed 
 the thought of my killing a fellow-creature hardly less than 
 the thought of myself being killed. 
 
 But I dare not, now, enter into any report of that argu- 
 ment of ours ; in as much as such a diversion would entail 
 an account of our relations to one another and they can- 
 not be explained in few words. For I believe that in some 
 respects our married life has been unique. Judith and I 
 are in many ways so independent of each other ; we have so 
 many separate interests and our opinions as in this matter 
 of volunteering for foreign service do not by any means 
 always coincide. And yet we have kept our love not only 
 sweet, but ardent. Our feelings for one another have deep- 
 ened, but otherwise they are what they were ten years ago. 
 Judith and I have always been, essentially, equals . . . 
 
 I was not sent abroad until the spring of 1915, and then 
 I went to Egypt for four months. I came back from there 
 in September, had ten days leave at Wendover, and then 
 after being five weeks in France, I lost my right foot and 
 four fingers of my left hand in a little affair between Auchy 
 and Vermelles. The wounds might not, in themselves 
 have been so serious, but I was left in a bad position and 
 nearly bled to death before help could reach me.
 
 316 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 the deepest satisfactions of my life is the fact that the 
 little fellow who rescued me, received the Victoria Cross. 
 No face, no, not even Judith's was ever so welcome to 
 me as his. And his coolness and cleverness still seem to 
 me almost supernatural. We were under fire all the time, 
 but he saved my life by putting a tourniquet round my leg 
 before he attempted to move me. 
 
 I was pretty bad for two months after that affair, but I 
 get along famously, now, with an artificial leg the sur- 
 geons were able to amputate below the knee and I go with 
 a scarcely perceptible limp while my left thumb has be- 
 come adapted to opposing itself against the stump of my 
 hand. I can still do most of the things I want to do with 
 that hand. 
 
 I began this book last January as a means of relaxation 
 and forgetfulness. In five weeks of which I spent alto- 
 gether nineteen days in the trenches I had suffered ex- 
 periences that leave their mark for life on a man of my 
 disposition and habit. We were not unusually active about 
 my bit of the line during my time there; our lot compared 
 with that of the men in, say, the Somme advance, might 
 appear a peculiarly easy one; but my wounds and the ill- 
 ness that succeeded them, seemed to have enclosed the whole 
 experience in a ring of agony and terror. Perhaps I was 
 too old, I was some months past my 38th birthday when 
 I went to France or it may be that men of my tempera- 
 ment cannot endure the shock and threat of life in the 
 trenches. I hope in any case that my feelings were not typi- 
 cal. For I can tremble now to think of the horror of re- 
 luctance that might have overcome me if I had not been 
 incapacitated by my wounds; if I had had to go back . . . 
 
 Even now, I cannot describe my experiences to Judith, 
 and yet I have always been conscious that some lurking 
 danger awaits me if I attempt to forget too completely. I 
 am undoubtedly mastering my horror by degrees, and I 
 have had it in my mind to begin a quiet examination of 
 my feelings during these critical five weeks, by writing some
 
 THE LOOSE ENDS 317 
 
 sort of account of them not for publication. After I 
 have done that, I may be able to speak more freely. 
 
 But when I began this book in January, I did it in order 
 to forget. I was in danger of becoming insane, then, and 
 I found relief by plunging myself back into the past. And 
 I can see, though I doubt if any one else would notice the 
 change unless it were pointed out, how my gradual re- 
 covery has effected both my style and my method. I be- 
 gan with almost pure reminiscence and with a strong inclina- 
 tion to trace the subjective rather than the objective trend 
 of my life. But as I grew stronger and less nervous, I 
 began to take a delight in the telling of a story ; I invented 
 conversations to fit my memory of actual events. Some- 
 times I was strongly tempted to invent incidents, also ; and 
 I might have succumbed to that temptation if I had had 
 more confidence in my ability as a romancer. 
 
 One result of this recovery of mine strikes me as worth 
 noting, namely that while I am thankful to have re-achieved 
 a certain normality, I am inclined to regret the lost spirit 
 of my first three chapters. I know that I shall never recover 
 it and I could not wish to pay the penalty that alone might 
 re-induce the nervous sensitiveness which enabled me to 
 write of my more or less transcendental experiences. But 
 I feel that I came nearer to the underlying truth of life 
 when I concluded my earlier history than when I plunged 
 into the realistic account of my year in Keppel Street. If I 
 could have written that, too, subjectively, I might have 
 justified my claim to hatching. 
 
 HI 
 
 To return to my loose ends; Hill did not join up until 
 last April, and he is at the present moment (October, 1916) 
 in Ireland. I hope he may remain there. I believe he will. 
 Since the early days when we lost such men as Rupert 
 Brooke and Dixon Scott, there has been a recognisable dis- 
 position to save men whose services to literature, art and
 
 318 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 science, cannot be replaced. Hill's name would, of course, 
 be known if I described his literary activities during the 
 past ten years; but he has asked me to say nothing that 
 will "place" him, and I must respect his wish. 
 
 Mrs. Hargreave is less easily disposed of. She devel- 
 oped a form of megalomania not long after she left Keppel 
 Street, and her husband, who had completely failed to find 
 any evidence against her that would give him grounds for 
 divorce, had her confined in a private asylum at Chiswick. 
 She was released after twelve months she had grown very 
 stout in that time and lives now on an allowance of 150 
 a year that her husband conceded her. She is certainly 
 not mad, but she is unquestionably eccentric. She still 
 talks sometimes of going on the stage, for example. She 
 took no active part in the militant movement after she came 
 out of the asylum, but she was and is an ardent feminist. 
 
 She stayed with us down here for a fortnight last Au- 
 gust, and her theory of the war seemed to be that it was an 
 interpolation of Providence designed to put women into 
 power. I am willing to agree that the enlargement of 
 women's energies will be one of the war's effects, but I 
 cannot admit that it will be either the principal result or 
 the only one. I feel as if there was some undefinable con- 
 striction in Mrs. Hargreave's mind. I believe that if she 
 could have shaken off that dominating resentment of hers, 
 her life might not have been wasted. 
 
 The same opinion is true of poor Helen. She, too, is in 
 effect, a monomaniac, although she has never suffered from 
 the mania of greatness that landed Mrs. Hargreave at Chis- 
 wick. Helen reverses Mrs. Hargreave's judgment. She 
 regards the war as an intolerable interference with the great 
 militant campaign which was moving in 1914 towards its 
 triumphant achievement. She has been doing office work 
 for the last two years. She had a serious nervous break- 
 down after her last hunger-strike, but she is a perfectly 
 competent secretary. She is working, now, for a well- 
 known woman-organiser, she steadily refuses to take em- 
 ployment under any man.
 
 THE LOOSE ENDS 319 
 
 Herz is interned. He had neglected to take out his 
 naturalisation papers, and applied for them, too late, when 
 he had received his notice to return to Germany for ser- 
 vice in the Landsturm. He preferred internement to the 
 obeying of that summons. I don't blame him. 
 
 Pferdminger had shown greater foresight. He had be- 
 come a British citizen many years before the war broke 
 out. After he left Keppel Street, he started a boarding- 
 house in Torrington Square and succeeded very well. I 
 have not seen nor heard of him since 1912, but I have no 
 doubt that he is surviving the loss of his German boarders. 
 
 I do not know what happened to Lippmann after he left 
 us; and the Meares, as I have already mentioned, never 
 wrote to me after their arrival in South Africa. 
 
 I have left the Basts until the end, and I find some diffi- 
 culty in dealing with them, because Judith and I adopted 
 "Oracles" ; and although I have no intention of ever letting 
 her read this story, I cannot avoid a feeling of distaste for 
 putting down the facts about her father. I picture her 
 accidentally getting hold of the book this manuscript may 
 become, recognising herself under her alias and being hor- 
 ribly confronted by a bald statement of the manner of her 
 father's death. She will probably be told the truth when 
 she is older, but she is a delicate, nervous girl, and I should 
 not like her to receive the news in that way. 
 
 Her mother married again, a moderately rich man, I be- 
 lieve ; but we have held no communication with her for many 
 
 years. 
 
 ****** 
 
 It is quite evident that my story is finished, but I am as 
 loath to leave my manuscript as was Gibbon when he had 
 finished "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." I 
 cannot, perhaps, speak of my book as "an old and agree- 
 able companion," but it has afforded me a very valuable dis- 
 traction from the immense pressure and menace of the 
 war; and I believe that it was largely instrumental in sav- 
 ing me, nine months ago, from melancholia. Little wonder, 
 then that I feel unwilling to write "The End," and put my
 
 320 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 task on one side. And as I have said, a book of this kind 
 can never be finished. 
 
 Only yesterday I found new experience that was like an- 
 other beginning. 
 
 I had been to see a friend in Gospel Oak, a man who was 
 a private in my company, and has since been invalided out 
 of the Army. 
 
 I left his father's house, oppressed by a sense of the 
 narrowness of life. All that quarter is to my mind repre- 
 sentative of the worst of London and of our old civilisa- 
 tion. The slums vex me far less. There I find adventure 
 and zest whatever the squalor; the marks of the primitive 
 struggle through dirt and darkness towards release. In 
 such districts as Gospel Oak, I am depressed by the flat- 
 ness of an awful monotony. Those horrible lines of moody, 
 complacent streets represent not struggle, but the achieve- 
 ment of a worthless aspiration. The houses with their 
 deadly similarity, their smug false exteriors, their con- 
 formity to an ideal which is typified by their poor imitative 
 decoration, could only be inhabited by people who have no 
 thought nor desire for expression. And the boy I had vis- 
 ited confirmed me in that deduction. He had had what he 
 called "good news" for me. The loss of a leg had not in- 
 capacitated him for the office stool, and his employer was 
 taking him back at his old salary with his pension he 
 would be, as he said, "quite well off." Eleven months in 
 the Army had had little effect upon him. Perhaps he was 
 a little coarsened and hardened by his experience, less in- 
 clined to respect the sacredness of life, but in other ways 
 he was the same youth with the same ambitions that he 
 had had before the break came. He talked of being able 
 to save, of setting up for himself a home modelled on that 
 of his father, who had served the same City firm for over 
 forty years. I could detect no sign of any reaching out to- 
 wards freedom in his talk ; and by freedom I mean not the 
 choice of occupation, but the freedom of the mind, of the 
 imagination. But indeed, any freedom of imagination must 
 be almost impossible in those surroundings. The dwellers
 
 THE LOOSE ENDS 
 
 in such districts as those are cramped into the vice of their 
 environment. Their homes represent the dull concession 
 to a stale rule; and their lives take tone from the grey, 
 smoke-grimed repetition of one endlessly repeated design. 
 The same foolish ornamentation on every house in each 
 dreary slab of blank street reiterates the same suggestion. 
 Their places of worship, the blank chapels and pseudo- 
 Gothic churches, rear themselves head and shoulders above 
 the dull level, only to repeat the same threat of obedience 
 to a gloomy law. There is but one voice for all that neigh- 
 bourhood, and its message is as meaningless as the crepe on 
 a coffin. The thought of Gospel Oak and its like is the 
 thought of imitation, of imitation falling back and becom- 
 ing stereotyped, until the meaning of the thing so persis- 
 tently copied has been lost and forgotten. 
 
 I made my way out of it at last on to the spaces of the 
 Lower Heath ; and there I found great depths of cloud that 
 were like the openings of a door into life. Over Highgate 
 and the North the weak blues of the October sky thrust 
 forward rolling piles of cumulus in white and primrose and 
 dusky purples, that stood up gigantic above the little swell 
 of hill and wood. The whole panorama of the Heath 
 seemed small and composed beneath the height of those 
 gigantic clouds; the Earth, I thought, was no more than 
 some wonderful, beautiful sediment at the bottom of an 
 enormous bowl. As I reached the Spaniards Road, a sharp 
 shower drove suddenly out of the South- West, and for a 
 few minutes the promise and contrast of the sky were 
 blotted out in swirls of lowering grey. Then I saw that the 
 horizon was slashed with a yellow band, and presently the 
 curtain of rain was rolled up to discover the deeps of clear 
 sky filmed here and there with drifting scarves of white. 
 And with the return of the sun, the distances were wrapped 
 in that wonderful veil of atmosphere which sometimes trans- 
 figures the Heath, an almost palpable atmosphere that is 
 like thin, clear smoke; that is like the bloom on a Septem- 
 ber plum. The nearer trees in their dark greens and browns 
 and scorched yellows melted back across the valley into
 
 HOUSE-MATES 
 
 lavender grey, and then into a sweet warm blue; and yet 
 the depth of the picture right back over the Middlesex Hills 
 had the appearance of being an effect rather than the pre- 
 sentation of true distance I had a sense that all this beauty 
 of line and mass and colour was in some way composed, as 
 if I myself had created something more Wonderful than 
 any haphazard view of natural landscape could ever be. 
 
 And it may be that the thrill and elation of that feeling 
 made me more susceptible to emotion, when, at last, and 
 reluctantly, I descended from my point of vantage and 
 made my way alone one of the raw brown paths that wind 
 among the silver birches and lead out to the Heath Exten- 
 sion. I know that when I came in sight of the Garden 
 Suburb, grouped about its two churches, I was ready to 
 shout with joy, as if I hailed some great achievement. It 
 seemed to me, then, that these open roads and graceful 
 houses were so infinitely more beautiful than the dying 
 miseries of Gospel Oak. In another mood I might have 
 been critical, but then I rejoiced as if I saluted a new age 
 an age of hope and aspiration and individuality. . . . 
 
 And surely we are moving towards that ; towards a recog- 
 nition of the universal claim to beauty and imagination. 
 Ahead of us lies only too clearly another, and possibly a 
 greater phase of strife. I know that when this war is over, 
 we shall have to face the immense conflict between capital 
 and labour; between the aristocracy and the dispossessed, 
 separated as they are by that dull immobile crowd that we 
 speak of as the Middle-Classes. And I know that it is a 
 conflict that will come all the sooner if we should be blessed 
 by a fruitful unarmed peace. But that struggle is inevitable 
 and in a sense I do not deplore its necessity. It will not be 
 wasteful, but constructive. This contrast of Gospel Oak 
 and the comparatively free suburb cannot be endured much 
 longer. And if we can only find release from all the oppres- 
 sions of conformity and ugliness by revolution, then revolu- 
 tion may be a blessed thing. 
 
 THE END
 
 A 000106690