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 THE AUTHORS AND NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION
 
 
 .&- 
 
 CHLx
 
 UNIV. O? GALIF. LIBRARY. LOS ANGELES

 
 The House of Defence 
 
 By 
 
 d h resf'fr* c 
 
 E. F. BENSON 
 
 Author of 
 
 " The Image in the Sand" 
 
 "Dodo," "Scarlet and Hyssop" 
 
 "Mammon & Co.," "The Cballoners," 
 
 " The Angel of Pain," Etc. 
 
 Illustrated in Water-Colors by H. RICHARD BOEHM 
 
 Copyright, 1906, by E. F. Benson 
 
 GRAND LEADER 
 
 SPECIAL EDITION, 
 
 For Sale exclusively by us in St. Louis. Mo. 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 THE AUTHORS AND NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION 
 
 1906
 
 Copyright, igo6 y by E. F. Benson 
 Entered at Stationer? Hall 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Composition and Electrotyping by 
 
 J. J. Little & Co. 
 
 Printed and bound by the 
 
 Manhattan Press, New York.
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 "And in the West, whither she was journeying, there was still the 
 afterglow of sunset " frontispiece 
 
 "Then, still without looking away from the water she spoke to 
 .hima'^ain" --------- 37 
 
 "You are better already, you know, Sandy," he said 93 
 
 " It is directed to Thurso," she said, "and it is from that chemist 
 in Windsor." --------- 172 
 
 2129130
 
 (FACSIMILE P,.OB OF MANUSCRIPT PROM THE IMAGE IN THE SAND) 

 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 IT was already after eight in. the evening, but 
 here, in these high latitudes of Caithness, since 
 the time of the year was within a fortnight of 
 midsummer, the sun was still some way above 
 the horizon, and shone full, with the cool bright- 
 ness of the northern light, into the window on 
 the seat of which Lady Maud Stratton was sit- 
 ting. Lady Maud was waiting without impatience, 
 for impatience was foreign to her habit of mind,, 
 but with a little touch of anxiety, since affection 
 and all the cares that appertain to it were the 
 constant guests of her heart, for her brother's 
 return. The room was of great extent, and looked 
 larger than it really was because of its half -dis- 
 mantled condition, and the big reflecting surface 
 of its bare parquetted floor added to its apparent 
 dimensions. In one corner of it was the little 
 table, laid for two, where they would dine when 
 he came in; in another was a writing-desk lit- 
 tered with correspondence, while close by the fire- 
 place was a low easy chair with a basket of needle-
 
 '6 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 work beside it, which denoted where she herself 
 had been making her nest, before she had strolled 
 across to the window, ten minutes ago, to catch 
 the last half hour of sunlight, and also to catch 
 sight of her brother as he came up the road to- 
 wards the lodge. Though the season was mid- 
 June, a sparkle of fire, born of a delectable mix- 
 lure of peat and coal, burned on the hearth, mak- 
 ing a pleasant brightness to the eye, and destined 
 after sunset to make a not unpleasant warmth, 
 'for nights even now set in with a certain chilli- 
 ness, and this evening especially, in spite of the 
 hlazing glories of the low sun, there was that crys- 
 talline clearness in the air which usually led on to 
 frost when its direct rays were withdrawn. For 
 the house stood high and exposed on those gray- 
 purple heathered hills of Caithness, not seeking 
 protection from hollowed and sheltered valley or 
 screen of trees, and the rigors of cold and frost 
 were felt there without abatement. 
 
 The table laid for dinner in one corner, a desk 
 littered with correspondence, and a woman's nook 
 near the fireplace, all in the same big room, gave 
 the impression of encampment and of temporary 
 and unexpected habitation, and this was borne 
 out also by the holland sheetings which had not 
 been removed from the big glass chandelier that 
 hung from the middle of the ceiling and still en- 
 veloped the larger articles of furniture. All
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE X 
 
 pointed to a sudden and not abiding stay, as if 
 the occupants of the house were content with the 
 necessities of life and dispensed with its habitual 
 adornments. Such indeed was the case, for Lord 
 Thurso and his sister had arrived here suddenly 
 two evenings ago, preceded by a telegram only 
 to the caretaker to make a room or two no more 
 than habitable, she merely to keep him company 
 and deliver him from the tedium and dejectiom 
 of solitary evenings after what must be anxious, 
 and depressing days. For in the village of Strat- 
 ton, a mile below the lodge, there had broken out 
 a scourge of typhoid, sudden and virulent, and 
 since the village, like everything else within this 
 wide horizon, was part of Thurso 's estate, it had 
 seemed to him, clearly and without question, to 
 be his business to leave town and come up here 
 to see what was possible to stop this pestilence 
 and do what could be done to bring relief to the 
 homes already stricken with it. Lady Thurso r 
 however, though her name and active support 
 were ever at the service of charitable schemes, had 
 not in the least seen her way to accompanying him. 
 If Thurso thought he had better go, why by all 
 means he must do so, but there was clearly no< 
 useful end to be served by her going with him. 
 For herself, she did not see what object was to 
 be gained by his going, since he had already tele- 
 graphed orders to his agent, a careful, sensible
 
 8 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 man, to do all that the doctors wished done, but 
 she was aware that she and Thurso often looked 
 on this sort of question with different eyes, and 
 had no more attempted to dissuade him from 
 going than he had attempted to persuade her to 
 come with him. But it had seemed perfectly clear 
 to Maud that Thurso could not go all by himself, 
 and without in the least criticising either openly or 
 mentally his wife's refusal to go with him, she 
 had merely taken her place. Indeed she had 
 scarcely offered her companionship: she had just 
 joined him at an early dinner before driving to 
 King's Cross to catch the night mail and go north 
 with him. 
 
 The state of things which they had found on 
 their arrival seemed to them both to justify his 
 coming. A panic-terror, such as is only possible 
 among ignorant, uneducated folk, who are natu- 
 rally healthy, and know little of illness and dis- 
 ease, had seized the village at this sudden striking 
 down of the strongest and healthiest among them. 
 Mixed with it, too, was distrust and fear of doc- 
 tors, arising from that same ignorance, and the 
 inability to believe that it could be right when a 
 man was prostrated by the exhaustion of a mortal 
 weakness produced by the fever to deny him a 
 morsel of meat or a crust of solid food. Doctors 
 .were there and nurses, but it was not the medical
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 9 
 
 attendance, but the obedience to the orders of 
 nurses and doctors, that had been so difficult to 
 enforce. And it was for this purpose that Lord 
 Thurso found at once that he had been right in 
 coming, since a word from him did more than a 
 dozen orders from a doctor. For feudal obedi- 
 ence, in spite of distrust of doctors, was on his 
 side, and now that the laird ranged himself on 
 the side of the doctors, who ordered windows to 
 be opened when all folk of common sense would 
 be inclined to shut every chink and cranny by 
 which the air might enter and give " cold " to 
 the patient, and forbade solid food to be given, 
 though " the puir body was crying out half the 
 nicht for a bit of bread," it was necessary to fol- 
 low these incomprehensible decrees, since the laird 
 also enjoined them, though many heads were 
 shaken over treatment which seemed obviously 
 unreasonable. Thurso had brought his valet with 
 him, but otherwise the caretaker and his wife 
 looked after the needs of him and his sister. Up- 
 stairs there was open just a bedroom for them 
 each, and downstairs this one big room half- 
 shrouded in holland sheeting, where they ate and 
 sat. 
 
 Nature had for many generations adopted a 
 very sensible and reasonable plan with regard 
 to the Stratton family. They were extremely 
 prolific, and numbered their cousins by the hun-
 
 10 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 dred, and she had certainly said to herself: 
 " There is not enough beauty to go round, so 
 what shall I do about them! Shall I divide up 
 all the beauty which I can invest in each genera- 
 tion between all the children, or shall I mould 
 and paint it all into one of them and let the rest 
 look after themselves? " She had adopted the 
 second alternative, and now for six or seven gene- 
 rations of Strattons there had always been one 
 perfect and exquisite piece of modelling in the 
 successive families, while the others had to be 
 content with a certain air of distinction and pleas- 
 antness which, however, made their plainness a 
 matter of small account. Sometimes Nature, one 
 could not help feeling, had made an error of judg- 
 ment in investing the beauty of some one genera- 
 tion in a boy and not in a girl, but in this genera- 
 tion she had made no such mistake, and here in 
 the window waiting for her brother was the lucky 
 possessor of the natural fortunes of the rest of 
 her family. Like them all, she was tall, and for 
 once in a way expression and charm were not 
 sacrificed, as so often happens to mere perfection 
 of feature. For violet eyes are so often no more 
 than violet eyes, just pieces of beautiful color, but 
 here the thousand moods of the girl's mind that 
 like clouds and alternate sunshine on some windy 
 spring day chased each other across some azure 
 surface, were reflected from the depths of those
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 11 
 
 violet pools, and through the beautiful windows 
 there looked out a beautiful soul. Humor and an 
 alert sense of the ludicrous, so valuable a weapon 
 in that mental armory with which we have to 
 repel the assaults of adverse and annoying cir- 
 cumstances, were there also, ready to set the 
 mouth smiling; intense and kindly interest in the 
 spectacle of life shone there, and deep down in 
 them you would say that something not yet fully 
 awake slept, and perhaps dreamed, in its twenty 
 years ' slumber. And a man might find the breath 
 catch at the thought of awakening that. 
 
 Like all the Strattons, she was very fair of 
 complexion, but her hair was not of that vague 
 straw-color which loosely passes for gold, but 
 of that tint touched and illuminated by orange 
 color which made it gleam as if the unminted metal 
 shone in it. It grew low on her forehead and 
 abundantly, but not in those excessive quantities 
 that instantly make the observer think of the 
 ladies who stand all day with their backs to the 
 windows of popular thoroughfares in order to 
 display the riotous excess of capillary covering 
 which the use of some particular dressing for the 
 head unfortunately results in. Nor again was 
 her mouth that perfect " Cupid's bow " which is 
 so dear to the creators of feminine perfection. It 
 was not indeed like a bow at all; it was rather 
 large, and rather full-lipped, but, like her eyes,
 
 12 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 or like aspen leaves in spring, it was all a-quiver 
 with response to the mood of the moment. Nor 
 were her lips vermilion, a hue that nature hap- 
 pily does not use on the human mouth, leaving its 
 employment to art, but they were of that veiled 
 blood-tint that speaks of youth and vitality as 
 surely as vermilion speaks only of the desire to 
 appear to be the possessor of these excellent gifts. 
 
 Thurso was naturally of extremely impression- 
 able and imaginative mind, and the day, spent 
 as it had been in going from house to house, find- 
 ing wherever he went the apparatus of illness, 
 or the simpler and grimmer apparatus of death, 
 had been like some real and hideous nightmare to 
 him. Clearly as Maud understood and sympa- 
 thized with his instinct of coming up here him- 
 self, she found herself wondering whether he had 
 been right to come. Then, too, he had tortured 
 himself with a hundred pure suppositions. "Was 
 this epidemic in any way his fault, in that he had 
 not had the water-supply more constantly tested? 
 Clearly, if everything, drains, pipes, water and 
 what-not, had been all in perfect order typhoid 
 could not have come. These were his tenants: it 
 was his business to see that the conditions under 
 which they lived were sanitary. 
 
 Now Thurso was a perfect working-model (as 
 large as life) of the conscientious landlord, and 
 these suppositions, though they seemed terribly
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 13 
 
 real and totally unanswerable to him on his way 
 back to the house at this same hour last night, 
 were but morbid creations of his brain, since all 
 his life he had done all he could to insure the 
 healthfulness of those who were dependent on 
 him, and on these morbid creations Maud, with 
 her sweetness and gaiety of spirit, had acted like 
 a charm. She knew well that Thurso had never 
 been neglectful or culpable, and that being cer- 
 tain, she had addressed herself not to combat his 
 doubts and questionings, but to turn his attention 
 resolutely away from them, just as a wise nurse 
 will not try to convince a frightened child that 
 the dark contains no bogeys, by letting the room 
 continue dark and prove by demonstration that 
 no winged and nailed creature is born therefrom, 
 but will rather quiet its fears by bringing a light. 
 And as the nurse does not reason to herself about 
 the best treatment for childish terror, so Maud 
 did not reason to herself about the best treatment 
 for unreasonable scruples. She only said to her- 
 self, " Darling old Thurso is dreadfully down. 
 So I'll distract his mind by being dreadfully 
 foolish! " 
 
 So foolish she had been, but yet with art, so that 
 it should not occur to him that she was playing 
 the part of nurse, and bringing a light because 
 he was afraid of the dark. And as when David 
 played before Saul to exorcise the evil spirit, so
 
 14 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 she had played till he forgot his imaginary trou- 
 bles in the charm and gaiety which, though she 
 assumed them deliberately, were yet natural to 
 her. 
 
 To-night, however, the obsession of his fear 
 and unreasonable dependency had seemed to de- 
 scend on her, and it needed a strong and conscious 
 effort to dispel it. For this might be unreason- 
 able, too she knew that at the back of her mind 
 she was anxious about him. Terrible as this epi- 
 demic was, it was producing a disproportionate 
 effect on him: he was taking it too hardly, and 
 also too self-consciously. From her intimate 
 knowledge of him, from that blood-instinct also 
 which can enable a sister to know what a brother 
 is feeling, even though a wife does not perceive 
 it, she knew that he was strung up almost to 
 breaking-point. Yet she felt, with a certain secret 
 pride in his courage, that nobody else but she 
 would have guessed that. For from childhood 
 he had always been like that, balanced on an edge, 
 ready to topple over into depths of despondency, 
 but with proper courage he had concealed his pre- 
 carious balance from the world, turning a brave 
 and equable face to it, even though he wore a 
 mask. But for her he wore none: and she often 
 saw his inward torture when others only saw a 
 pleasant, courteous man, not gay, but with a
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 15 
 
 certain high-bred, quiet enjoyment of manner 
 which just now is slightly at a discount in the 
 capital of the dominion of the King. 
 
 Maud got up from her seat in the window, for 
 the sun had wheeled further north, leaving it in 
 shadow, and closed the sash, still looking down 
 the riband of road which ran in whip-lash curves 
 across the moor to the village, allowing herself 
 again another moment for somewhat sombre con- 
 templation. How inextricably soul and body were 
 mixed and mingled together; how intimately and 
 instantaneously they acted and re-acted on each 
 other! Thurso's anxiety for these people, a 
 purely mental or spiritual feeling, had kept him 
 awake last night, and he had come down this 
 morning with one of those racking neuralgic head- 
 aches to which all his life he had been liable. His 
 suffering of mind had made his body suffer, too, 
 and that bodily suffering had reacted again upon 
 his mind and had made the poor old boy so hor- 
 ribly cross. Then, since there was the day's work 
 before him, for the sake of which he had come up 
 here, and in his racking pain he was really incapa- 
 ble of doing it, he had taken the remedy which 
 he had always by him, in case of necessity, but 
 which he disliked taking just as much as Maud 
 disliked his taking it. 
 
 But when after breakfast he had said to her,
 
 " Maud, I simply can't go down there, and if I 
 did, I couldn 't help in any way unless I cure this, ' ' 
 she had agreed that it was an occasion for lau- 
 danum. 
 
 She strolled across to the fire and held out her 
 hands to the blaze, which shone through her fin- 
 gers, making them look as if they were luminous 
 in themselves and lit from within. Then suddenly, 
 with a little dramatic gesture, as if she carried 
 her trouble, a palpable burden, in her hands, she 
 threw it into the fire, and having consigned it to 
 destruction walked back to the window again. 
 Yet she knew in herself that she had not disposed 
 of it, for it went very deep, it was very vital. The 
 sorrow of the world, how to reconcile that with 
 the perfect love that made the world ! Indeed, it 
 needed strong hands or an indifferent heart to 
 cast that away. . . . But there at last was a 
 figure on the road, and without putting on her 
 hat she went out to meet him. 
 
 She saw at once, before she could clearly see 
 his face, but by a certain age and dejection in his 
 walk, that he was suffering, but here, too, it 
 seemed to her that she could help him better by 
 cheerfulness, however vapid, than by sympathy. 
 
 " Dear old boy," she called to him before they 
 actually met; " but have you any idea that it is 
 half -past eight, and I've got such a sinking inside, 
 Thurso, that I don't suppose there was ever such
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 17 
 
 a sinking known. I vote we don't dress, so we 
 can dine at once. I'm sure dinner is ready, be- 
 cause I distinctly smelled soup and something 
 like roast and baked apples all rolling richly out 
 of the kitchen windows. I nearly burst into tears, 
 because I wanted them all so much. And how 
 has the day gone ? ' 
 
 He stopped. David's first strain had not 
 reached Saul. 
 
 " Oh, Maud, it is too awful," he said. " Ten 
 fresh cases to-day. I don't know what to do. 
 And when my head is like this I am perfectly 
 useless. I can 't think ; I can 't face things. ' ' Maud 
 took his arm. 
 
 " You poor old thing," she said. " Has it been 
 bad all day? " 
 
 " No, it was all right in the morning, but it 
 came on again worse than ever after lunch. Well, 
 not exactly after lunch, because I didn 't have any, 
 but after lunch-time. ' ' 
 
 Maud gave a little exclamation of impatience. 
 
 " Thurso, you are too bad! " she said. " You 
 know perfectly well that if you go without food 
 too long you always get one of these headaches. 
 And it's no use your saying there wasn't any time 
 for you to have lunch, because lunch takes ten 
 minutes, whereas a headache takes hours. It is 
 foolish of you, because you suffer, and it 's wicked
 
 1? THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 of yon, dear, because it makes you of absolutely 
 no use in the world." 
 
 He smiled at her; the infection of her energy 
 53 ve a little life to him. 
 
 " Well, I forgot about lunch till the pain came 
 on," he said, " and after that I couldn't eat." 
 
 " If that is meant to mean that you are not 
 going to have any dinner either," she said, " you 
 make a mistake. You are going to have soup and 
 meat and roast apples. And if yon attempt to 
 deny it, I shall instantly add toasted cheese." 
 
 Thurso was silent a moment. 
 
 " Ah, those poor, wretched people " he began. 
 But Maud stopped him, still with art. 
 
 " I'm not going to hear one word about them 
 till you have finished dinner," she said. " After- 
 wards, because you will be better then, we will 
 talk. Don't you remember how, if one wasn't 
 quite well, Nurse always said one would be bet- 
 ter after dinner? And one always was. I wonder 
 whether it was dinner or mere suggestion from 
 a higher power that did it," 
 
 " Dinner," said he promptly. " Oh, d n my 
 head! " he added in a sudden burst of tired irri- 
 tability and pain. 
 
 " Yes, with pleasure, if that will help. But I 
 wonder if it was entirely dinner. You know there 
 is something in suggestion, though I prefer sup- 
 plementing suggestion with something practical
 
 as welL Who are those people who are always 
 quite well because they believe they are! " 
 
 " I should think they are fools," he remarked. 
 "By the way " 
 
 " Well! " 
 
 " No, nothing," he said. 
 
 Maud withdrew her arm from his with dignity. 
 
 " That is extremely ill-bred," she said. " Mind, 
 I don't want to know what you were going to say, 
 but having begun you ought, with decent manners, 
 to go on." 
 
 Thurso laughed. 
 
 " You do want to know? " he said. 
 
 " Well, yes, I do. Please tell me." 
 
 " I shan't. Maud, I think I had better change, 
 as I have been in and out of those houses all day. 
 But you needn't." 
 
 Maud was slightly ruffled. 
 
 " That is kind of you," she said. 
 
 Thurso went upstairs accordingly, while Maud 
 waited for him below. There was indeed no mys- 
 tery or reason for secrecy in that which he had 
 stopped himself telling her; merely he was not 
 quite sure whether he wanted to do that which he 
 had been on the point of proposing, which in it- 
 self was of an absolutely simple and unexciting 
 nature. The bare dull facts indeed were these: 
 He had let the salmon fishing of the river here
 
 20 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 until the end of July to an American, whose name 
 this moment he could not remember, and this 
 afternoon as he came out of one of the cottages 
 he had passed one of his own gillies walking with 
 a young man, of clearly Transatlantic origin, 
 who he felt sure must be the American in ques- 
 tion. The remark then that he had not made to 
 Maud was that it might be neighborly to invite 
 him to dinner. But as he made his hurried toilet, 
 so as not to keep his sister waiting, he found him- 
 self debating the pros and cons of this with a 
 perfectly unwarrantable earnestness, as if the 
 decision, this way or that, was one that could con- 
 ceivably be of importance. On the one side the 
 reasons against asking him were that the hos- 
 pitality that he could offer was of the very rough- 
 est and most plain-cook kind, and that his tenant 
 would probably get a much better dinner at the 
 inn where he was staying; also he had a feeling 
 that if he himself had come up to Scotland to fish 
 he would much rather not be asked out to dinner 
 by his landlord, since such hospitality, if accepted, 
 would mean a curtailment of the cream of the 
 evening rise. So, perhaps, the truer hospitality 
 would be not to burden his tenant with the neces- 
 sity to make excuses. Then suddenly his name, 
 Walter Cochran, flashed into his mind. In any 
 case, he concluded, it would be kinder not to ask
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 21 
 
 Mr. Walter Cochran to come three miles in order 
 to eat Scotch broth with a tired landlord. 
 
 But, on the other hand, he felt a perfectly un- 
 accountable desire to see him. He had just met 
 and passed him in the village street, after coming 
 out from one of those cottages where a strong 
 young stalker of his was lying, it was feared, at 
 the point of death. He himself, too, was racked 
 with this hideous unnerving pain, and at the mo- 
 ment he was feeling utterly dispirited and beaten 
 and hopeless. Their eyes his and Mr. Cochran 's 
 had met for a moment, and just for that mo- 
 ment, by chance no doubt, or perhaps by that 
 subtle intuition which some people possess, Thurso 
 had felt suddenly soothed and quieted. There 
 was nothing particularly remarkable about the 
 other. He was rather tall, young, clean-shaven, 
 with a pleasant boyish face, which had something 
 of the prairie and the open-air about it. Yet at 
 that moment Thurso had felt almost irresistibly 
 inclined to speak to him and thank him, to tell 
 him how his head ached and how miserable and 
 dispirited he felt, to tell him also that he had 
 made him feel better for the moment. That im- 
 pulse had been quite ridiculously strong, but in 
 another second they had passed each other going 
 their respective ways. Yet all afternoon, subse- 
 quent to that chance encounter, the remembrance 
 of Mr. Cochran strolling down to the river, talk-
 
 22 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 ing in a pleasant, friendly manner to the gillie, 
 had never been entirely out of his mind he had 
 seemed so extraordinarily healthy and content, 
 and just now poor Thurso had an immense envy 
 of such gifts. 
 
 He finished dressing without any severe return 
 of pain, but just as he was preparing to go down- 
 stairs, dismissing Mr. Cochran from his mind, it 
 came on again in sudden stabs and flashes of an- 
 guish, so that for a moment he held on with 
 clenched hands and bitten lips to his table, feeling 
 that he must grip hold of something. At the mo- 
 ment his eye fell on the bottle of laudanum which 
 stood by the looking-glass, and though never be- 
 fore had he taken two doses on the same day, yet 
 never before had the pain been so agonizing and 
 so persistent, and next moment he had poured a 
 full dose into his graduated glass and drank it. 
 But the beads of perspiration from the pain were 
 standing on his forehead, he felt faint and sick 
 with it, and sat down for a moment to wait for 
 the blessed relief that would so soon come. On 
 his very sensitive and excitable nerves the drug 
 exercised an almost instantaneous effect, not sopo- 
 rific at all, but tranquillizing, and at the same 
 time stimulating. The pain faded like the melt- 
 ing away of the vapor of breath on a frosty morn- 
 ing, and as it faded a warm, tingling glow began 
 to invade him. It was as if on some bitter, biting
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 23 
 
 Arctic night the sun of the south poured its warm, 
 bracing rays on to his brain; happiness and con- 
 tent were unfolded like a map, the new-born sense 
 of well-being stretched and sunned itself in this 
 luminous peace. 
 
 He had not to wait long. Before the seconds 
 had ticked themselves into a minute this divine 
 remission of pain began, and, with it, the no-less 
 blessed glow of content ; and a couple of minutes 
 afterwards it was not so much in the utter relief 
 of pain that his body revelled as in the ecstatic 
 sense of supreme bodily harmony. And then, as 
 always, this well-being of the body spread, like 
 some warm, incoming tide, to his mind, the one 
 reacting on the other. The horror and suffering 
 of his poor fever-stricken village ceased to weigh 
 upon him and darken the soul with its anguish 
 and his own helplessness. Instinctively his mind 
 ceased to dwell on the thought of the bedside of 
 the stalker whose life was despaired of, but went 
 to another bedside where a life that had almost 
 been despaired of yesterday was coming back from 
 the entrance to the valley of the shadow, and had 
 crawled out to-day from the thorn-hedge of ill- 
 ness, so to speak, on to the high-road of recovery. 
 This case was that of a woman the wife of Dun- 
 can Frazer, one of his fishing-gillies. And in this 
 spirit he looked hopefully forward, while the 
 soothing, stimulating drug made its beneficent
 
 24 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 way within Mm, to further amelioration to- 
 morrow. 
 
 Thurso had sat down for a moment to recover 
 from the faintness that had seized him at that 
 sudden onslaught of pain, but also in order to 
 abandon himself more entirely to the raptures of 
 these drug-effects. Then, after a few minutes, 
 he got up, remembering two things, the first that 
 he was keeping Maud waiting, the second that for 
 the first time he was consciously revelling and 
 delighting in the bodily sensation that the opium 
 produced. Up till to-day he had taken it purely 
 medicinally, in order to relieve pain when the 
 pain was intolerable or paralyzing to exertions 
 that he was called upon to make, and having taken 
 it like a medicine he had done no more than take 
 the medicinal advantage of its restoring qualities. 
 But to-night he knew deep down in himself that 
 he had done something different, had taken it in 
 a different spirit. True, the pain had been very 
 acute, but as he drank he knew that he had wel- 
 comed and waited for not only the remission of 
 pain and the return of energy, but for that glow 
 of seeming exquisite health and harmony of sen- 
 sation that it gave him. Yet though he no longer, 
 as he got up, abandoned himself to this, he was 
 vividly conscious that he had done so. And as he 
 went downstairs a third thought, laudanum-born,
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 25 
 
 occurred to him. He must not let Maud know 
 he had taken it again; he must not let her see 
 how suddenly and completely the pain had gone, 
 for fear that she might guess. Already he was 
 slightly ashamed of what amounted to cowardice, 
 yet . . . yet he felt so brilliantly well that it 
 was impossible to be ashamed of anything. But if 
 she asked? "Well, in that case it would be better to 
 " put the question by." She had no business to 
 ask; whether he had taken laudanum again or 
 not was his affair. Perhaps yes, that was the 
 right plan. He would be silent and quiet till din- 
 ner was nearly over, and then confess that dinner 
 had done him good. She had told him that it 
 would, and indeed the pain often left him as sud- 
 denly as it came on, as if a tap had been turned 
 on or off. 
 
 All this flashed instantaneously through his 
 head. Another thought flashed there too. There 
 was Paradise in that little bottle; whether one 
 was in pain or not there was Paradise there. He 
 felt he would willingly endure tortures, if at the 
 end he could push open those golden gates again. 
 Pain was nothing compared to these pleasures. 
 Surely now and then a half-hour in Paradise 
 could not hurt him. He was perfectly willing to 
 pass through hours of hell in between. 
 
 Soup had already arrived when he came down- 
 stairs, and, according to his plan, he said little till
 
 26 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 he had eaten a couple of courses. Indeed, his first 
 speech was to demand more of the " something 
 roast," and Maud had given him an approving 
 nod. He finished his second helping, and leaned 
 back in his chair. 
 
 " I don't like telling you that you are right," 
 he said, * ' but honesty compels me to. Dinner, or 
 suggestion, or both, have certainly done the trick. 
 They've turned off the tap. Quite, quite off. It 
 doesn't even drip. I will even allow it was sug- 
 gestion, if you like, because I am so pleased that 
 I will allow anything." 
 
 " Oh, Thurso, I'm so glad! " she said. " And 
 I so often wish I could take it for you. ' ' 
 
 " You wouldn't like it when you got it," said 
 he, rather grimly. 
 
 " No, but I should like to take it. I could bear 
 lots of pain if I knew it was otherwise somebody 
 else's. But it must be so difficult if it is only 
 your own. And now you may tell me about to- 
 day. Oh, how wise I was not to let you talk about 
 it before. I'm sure you were taking a neuralgic 
 view. Apple? ' 
 
 ' * Yes, two, please. I was. I was thinking only 
 of poor Sandy, who I am afraid is dying, and 
 not of Duncan Frazer's wife, who appears to be 
 better. Headache made me forget that. But 
 that's not what I wanted to talk to you about. 
 It's this, Maud."
 
 He paused a moment. 
 
 " I know you will feel with me about it," he 
 said, " though I daresay Lily will make a fuss 
 when she knows. I think I must turn this house 
 into a hospital for them. You see, if one case 
 appears in one of the cottages, think what hap- 
 pens ! There are three, or at the most four, rooms 
 in them, and the whole of the rest of the family 
 has to live in two, or at the most three, rooms. 
 The sick-room, too ; twelve feet by ten ! Dr. Symes 
 agrees with me. Look at the big dining-room 
 here. It will hold a dozen beds, and lots of air 
 for them all. Also, up here one nurse can easily 
 look after twice the number of patients she can 
 manage if she has to trot about from house to 
 house. So I have given orders. Any case Dr. 
 Symes thinks he can safely move will be moved 
 up here, and so will all fresh cases. Of course, 
 you will have to go back to town." 
 
 Maud laughed. 
 
 ' ' And you ? ' ' she asked. 
 
 " I shall stop here. I can't leave while things 
 are like this." 
 
 11 Oh, Thurso," she said, " you mar the excel- 
 lent effect of your speeches by talking dreadful 
 nonsense at the end. It's an admirable idea mov- 
 ing them up here, so admirable that I am sur- 
 prised I didn't think of it first. But as for my 
 going back to town. You silly old thing! "
 
 28 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 " But, Maud " 
 
 ' There isn't any ' but, Maud.' 
 
 " But I can't and won't have you in the house 
 with forty or fifty cases of typhoid here," said he. 
 
 " Then turn me out into the cold, bleak night. 
 I came up here to keep you company, and shall 
 continue to do so. So shut up! To begin with, 
 there is no risk of infection, and, to go on with, 
 I shouldn't catch it if there was." 
 
 " Why not? " 
 
 Maud grew momentarily grave. 
 
 11 Why, because I always mean to get through 
 the day's work, and I couldn't if I propose to go 
 to bed with typhoid. Oh, yes, when one has clearly 
 got one's work to do, one is allowed to go and 
 do it. Now, I'll play you at picquet."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MAUD had happened to come across, in a book 
 she was reading on her way up to Scotland, an 
 account of a typhoid epidemic in which the chari- 
 table lady of the piece sat by the bedsides of the 
 patients and fed them with ' ' cooling fruits. ' ' She 
 did not at the time know anything whatever about 
 the treatment or nursing of typhoid, but on arrival 
 it had occurred to her to ask their doctor if she 
 could make herself of any use in these lines, and 
 the excellent Dr. Symes had laughed immoder- 
 ately. 
 
 " You will soon stop the epidemic if you do," 
 he said, " because everybody you feed with cool- 
 ing fruit will certainly die. No, you can't help 
 us down in the village, but you have your work 
 up at the house, keeping Lord Thurso from mop- 
 ing in the evening and making himself miserable. 
 I am very glad you came with him. But all day 
 you can amuse yourself. If I were you I should 
 be out of doors all I could. It tends to tran- 
 quillity. ' ' 
 
 This advice came into her head the next morn- 
 ing after Thurso had gone down to the village, 
 and it was counsel which she could easily put into
 
 30 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 practice, since, according to her view of the uni- 
 verse, the world (especially the world out-of- 
 doors) was full of delightful occupations and pur- 
 suits, than which there was none more entrancing 
 than catching sea-trout with a light rod and light 
 tackle. And since the river Eogan, which ran its 
 short and delectable course not half a mile from 
 the lodge, was one of the finest sea-trout streams 
 in the country, it was not difficult to follow the 
 doctor's advice and amuse herself. She knew 
 nothing, of course, of the fact that Thurso had 
 let the fishing to the American whom he had met 
 yesterday in the street, and he had decided not to 
 ask to dinner. 
 
 Thurso did not intend to come back home for 
 lunch to-day, and as the house would be full of 
 workmen busy shifting furniture and making the 
 rooms ready, under the superintendence of one 
 of the doctors, for the typhoid patients, Maud 
 went off to the river without saying a word to 
 anybody, with a light and exultant heart. Sandy, 
 poor fellow, her special fishing gillie, was down 
 with typhoid and desperately ill, and in this hay- 
 making month all those who in the autumn were 
 stalkers or gillies were busy with their crofts, so 
 she went alone with sandwich, rod and landing- 
 net to spend an enchanted day. 
 
 Maud had in an extraordinary degree that joie- 
 de-vivre which gilded any employment on which
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 31 
 
 3he was engaged, and indeed to go fishing for sea- 
 trout needed no gilding it was golden to her mind 
 already. For hours one might cast one's fly upon 
 the waters, and though catching nothing never 
 lose the confident anticipation that one was just 
 going to ; at any moment the swirl of submerged 
 strength and activity would bend one 's rod to that 
 glorious course that the fisherman knows to be 
 the true and correct attack. Like everything else 
 that anybody finds to be worth doing (except 
 keeping accounts), mystery and romance envel- 
 oped and illuminated the pursuit for her, and as 
 she walked down to the river Thurso's headache, 
 the typhoid, all she was missing by not being in 
 London, were sponged off from her mind. True, 
 dreadful things might be in store for her by the 
 stream ; to fish with a big sea-trout fly might easily 
 attract the attention of the sea-trout's bigger 
 cousin, and then probably good-by to the light 
 tackle. But as it was certainly no fun to catch 
 sea-trout on a salmon rod, Maud took this chance 
 with a light heart. 
 
 The day was one of those gray days (so rare 
 in the North, where " gray day " means usually 
 East wind, which sucks the color from land and 
 sky), with a breeze from the southwest which 
 makes heather and gorse and water all more bril- 
 liant and fragrant than even the sunlight can, and
 
 32 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 preoccupied though Maud was with the prospects 
 of the river, her mind kept paying little flying 
 visits to the beauty of the morning. Five minutes 
 after she left the lodge she was absolutely alone, 
 and the sight of neither human being nor human 
 habitation broke the intense solitude of eye and 
 ear, which, to such as she, is so warm and dear a 
 companionship. For she loved the pleasant things 
 of the earth, the heather and the gorse, and the 
 close, silent friendship of nature, unvexed and 
 undistracted by human presences. To her, as to 
 St. Francis, the trees were her dear brothers, the 
 sky and the river her dear sisters, and somehow 
 also the fish she hoped to slay were her friends 
 and blood relations. She could not have explained 
 that feeling ; she would frankly have told you that 
 it implied an inconsistency; but the fact that she 
 hoped to kill them produced no discordant note. 
 
 And here was the rushing, jubilant river, which 
 a wet May had filled from bank to bank. She 
 struck it at the Bridge pool, over the rapids of 
 which hung a swaying, airy suspension bridge, 
 from which it took its name. Deep water lay on 
 the near side, shoal water on the other, but just 
 beyond the shoal-water, could she but cast over 
 it, ran a little channel she knew well, where sea- 
 trout lay. So she crossed the swaying bridge, 
 debating within her the question of fly. The river 
 was high and the sea-trout would take big flies;
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 33 
 
 but so, unfortunately, would the salmon. How- 
 ever, she must chance that and a possible break- 
 age the big fly was certainly the right game to 
 play. 
 
 Five minutes was enough for the fixing of her 
 apparatus, and with the fisherman's heart, which 
 beats excitedly in the throat, she began casting 
 from just underneath the bridge. But with her 
 longest line she could not reach that channel of 
 deep water ; and if she did not reach that she might 
 as well be fishing in a wash-tub. But there was 
 nobody within miles and next minute she had 
 kilted her skirts till she could wade out over that 
 stupid shoal water and stand where, with the cool, 
 bright water flowing near up to her knees, yet 
 leaving her skirt unwetted, she could reach the 
 deeper water beyond. For well she knew what a 
 wet skirt meant to one who proposed to be fishing 
 and walking all day nobody could strive against 
 that heavy, clinging thing and as she waded out 
 she hitched it an inch or two higher. Then for a 
 moment she had to pause to laugh at the figure she 
 must be inevitably presenting if there was any one 
 present. There was a knitted jersey for her upper 
 half, a cap of tweed, a much kilted skirt, and joy 
 in her heart. Also, she could easily cast into the 
 coveted channel. 
 
 There was a fin and a sort of gulp near her fly, 
 and with another gulp her heart came upward
 
 34 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 from her throat into her very mouth. But the 
 owner of the fin had missed the fly, and the owner 
 thereof was not a sea-trout but a salmon. Then 
 in her the inbred sporting instinct usurped all 
 other consciousness. Light though her rod was 
 and light her tackle, since there was a salmon in 
 the stream that felt an interest in her Jock Scott 
 she must try to catch him. He might break her 
 well, let him. She had no gaff; very well, she 
 must do without. 
 
 She waded ashore, being far too wise in fishing 
 lore to cast over him again at once, preferring to 
 wait a minute or two before she once more tempted 
 him; and as she gained dry land she saw that 
 there was a man half way across the bridge just 
 above the pool. He had a fishing rod (light also 
 like hers) in one hand and a landing-net tucked 
 under his arm. In any case, his rod could not 
 possibly refer to Thurso 's river, and he was prob- 
 ably from Scarsdale, where she knew some new 
 people had taken the lodge. But she gave him 
 only the vaguest passing thought, being far more 
 interested that moment in one particular fish than 
 in any one particular man, and took no further 
 notice of him, except that she unkilted her skirt 
 a little. It showed really too much of what was 
 vulgarly but correctly called ' ' leg. ' ' Then, with- 
 out giving any further glance at the figure on the 
 bridge, who had paused, watching her, she walked
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 35 
 
 some ten yards up from where she had raised her 
 fish, in order to be certain of casting over him 
 again. The unkilted skirt dragged a little in the 
 water, but she would have waded neck-deep after 
 that fish. Also this popped in and out of her 
 mind there was a man watching, and she had 
 no objection to a gallery when she was fishing. 
 Oh, she could fish! 
 
 Yard by yard she moved down to where the 
 dear monster had risen before. That was the 
 spot ! Indeed it was. This time there was no fin 
 to break the surface, but there was the true attack, 
 the suddenly curved rod, the sudden message up 
 the line. At the same moment, out of the corner 
 of her eye, she saw that the man had moved from 
 his place on the bridge and was coming up be- 
 hind her on the bank. 
 
 But that occupied her very little. All she really 
 knew was that she was at present the possessor 
 of a light trout rod, fitted with light tackle, at the 
 end of which for the moment was a salmon. Her 
 landing net was somewhere on the bank, but it 
 might as well have been in Jericho for all the use 
 it could be in this emergency. Anyhow, two or 
 three ecstatic minutes were hers. The fish bolted 
 down stream, and her reel sang shrilly. Then, 
 like an express train, he came back again, and with 
 the calmness of despair she reeled in, thinking 
 that he meant to go up under the bridge, which
 
 36 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 was death, and destruction to her and her rod. 
 But he changed his mind, and once more, after 
 two or three rushes, he was opposite her, shaking 
 his head, so it seemed, for the rod jerked and 
 jumped, yet no line ran out. 
 
 Maud had moved slowly back across the shoal- 
 water during this, so as to gain the shore again, 
 for she knew she must get somewhere where she 
 could run, when from close behind her came a 
 very pleasant voice. 
 
 11 He's well-hooked," it said; " I saw him take 
 it. He'll be off down stream in a minute, and 
 there's a hundred yards of rapid before the next 
 pool. I should be ready to run if I were you." 
 
 Maud still thought of nothing but her fish, which 
 had already begun to bore slowly away into the 
 deep water on the far side of the river, and she 
 knew well what that would lead to. And she re- 
 plied to the voice as if it had been only her own 
 thoughts which were identical with which she 
 was communing: 
 
 " Why, of course he's going down to the next 
 pool," she said. " He's making for the deep 
 water now. There! " 
 
 She splashed her way through the margin of 
 the foot-deep water, and nearly fell over a stone 
 just as the fish felt the full current of the river, 
 and was off like an arrow down stream. Her 
 reel screamed out, and there was a dreadful length
 
 Then, still without looking away from the water she spoke to 
 him again. Chapter II.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 37 
 
 of line between her and the fly. But she was off 
 like Atalanta after him ; and before matters were 
 wholly desperate, a bend in the rapids brought 
 her nearer to him, and, still running, she reeled 
 in. Then oh, blessed haven! he reached the 
 deep water of the pool below, and swimming in 
 small circles near the head of it allowed her to 
 recapture more of her line. Then, still without 
 looking away from the water (for she felt sure 
 that the owner of the voice had come down with 
 her), she spoke to him again. 
 
 11 The humor of the situation is that I have 
 only the very lightest tackle," she said. " But, 
 luckily, the fish doesn't know that. And would 
 you be so good as to get my landing-net! I left 
 it on the bank just below the bridge." 
 
 I i I saw it, and brought it, ' ' said the voice. ' * I 
 should say a butterfly net would be about as use- 
 ful. He's a twenty-pounder! ' 
 
 Maud suddenly laughed. 
 
 II I wonder what is going to happen next? ' 
 she cried. " Isn't it fun not knowing? Oh, 
 look! " 
 
 For the first time the fish jumped so as to 
 show himself properly, and splashed soundingly 
 back into the pool again. 
 
 " Twenty pounds and a few extra," remarked 
 the voice. " I told my gillie to be down here by 
 eleven, and he'll bring a gaff. He ought to be
 
 38 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 in plenty of time. There'll be no gaffing going 
 on yet." 
 
 That turned out to be perfectly true, and a 
 dozen times in the next quarter of an hour Maud 
 knew that she was within an ace of losing him. 
 He behaved like the strong fresh-run fish that 
 he was, making disconcerting rushes down to the 
 very tail of the pool, and running out her line 
 almost to its last yard, before she had time to 
 follow along the stony bank. Then he would seek 
 the very deepest holes, and lie there, shaking his 
 head, and putting the most dangerous snapping 
 strain on her fine gut. Then, with a rush, he 
 would come straight back towards her, so that, 
 do what she would, there were long perilous mo- 
 ments, though she reeled up with lightning hand, 
 when he was on a slack line. But at length he 
 began to tire, and instead of hurling himself about 
 the pool allowed himself just to drift with the 
 stream. That, too, was dangerous, for she had 
 to tow him in towards her with the utmost gen- 
 tleness, since both his dead weight and the press 
 of the water were against her. Then again his 
 savage pride awoke, and he would struggle against 
 this mysterious compelling force, but he was weak- 
 ening. 
 
 Maud felt this. 
 
 " Oh, isn't your gillie here yet? " she asked 
 suddenly.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 3 
 
 " Yes, he came several minutes ago. Shall I 
 gaff him for you, or shall he? ' 
 
 " Who is he? " asked Maud. 
 
 " It's Duncan, my lady," said another voice. 
 
 " Oh, then, Duncan, please," said she. " Is 
 that rude of me? But, you see, I know Duncan. 
 Get further down, Duncan; get below him, so 
 that he can 't see you ! ' 
 
 But there were several agitating moments yet. 
 Each time the fish drifted with the stream she 
 towed him a little nearer to the bank, but though 
 he was very weak now, and his struggles short f 
 he was still capable of unexpected momentary 
 violences. But at last he was a mere log, floating 
 with fin out of the water, and broad silvery side 
 shining. With a quick, crafty movement Duncan 
 had him on the bank. 
 
 ' * Kill him quickly, Duncan ! ' ' she said. ' ' Oh, 
 what a darling! Quite fresh from the sea." 
 
 Then, for the first time, Maud turned to look 
 at the stranger, and found a tall, pleasant, clean- 
 shaven young man smiling at her. 
 
 " I really am extremely obliged to you," she 
 said. " I could not possibly have landed him 
 without your gaff. ' ' 
 
 He laughed at this, showing very white, aven 
 teeth. 
 
 " Why, I think that is so," he said. " But I
 
 40 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 am your debtor much more. I never saw a fish 
 handled so well. Look at your tackle, too! " 
 
 " Oh, I know the water," said she, " and that 
 makes so much difference." 
 
 Then suddenly the conjunction of a total 
 stranger with a rod on her brother's river and 
 in company with one of her brother's keepers 
 struck her as odd. 
 
 " I am afraid I have detained you very long," 
 she said, " if you are going to fish at Scarsdale." 
 
 " No, I am fishing here/' he said. " At least 
 I shall go a mile or so down, and begin there." 
 
 This was more solidly incomprehensible. Yet 
 the man did not look like a poacher, a trespasser ; 
 and how did it come about that Duncan was with 
 him? Maud got just a shade dignified. 
 
 " I'm sure you will excuse me," she said, 
 " but you know this is my brother, Lord 
 Thurso's, river? " 
 
 Again the stranger laughed, with very sincere 
 but quiet merriment. 
 
 " Yes, I know," he said; " but he has been 
 kind enough to let the fishing to me." 
 
 Maud stood quite silent a moment. The horror 
 of the situation that was dawning on her absolutely 
 tied her tongue. Her brother had let the fishing, 
 and here was she caught, a red-handed poacher, 
 by the tenant himself! 
 
 " What? " she said.
 
 The stranger took off his hat. 
 
 ' ' Pray allow me to introduce myself, ' ' he said. 
 " I am Walter Cochran. Excuse me, I really 
 can 't help laughing. It is funny, you know ! ' ' 
 
 Maud, already flushed with excitement and 
 exercise, grew perfectly crimson. 
 
 " Oh, what am I to do? " she cried. "It is 
 too awful! I can never forgive myself." 
 
 She raised her eyes to his again, and saw there 
 such genuine kindly amusement that, in spite of 
 her horror, she laughed herself. 
 
 " Oh, don't make me laugh," she said. " It is 
 too dreadful. Poaching! I thought you were 
 poaching, and it is I. " 
 
 " Yes, it's serious," he said, " and it's for me 
 to make conditions." 
 
 Maud had one moment's fleeting terror that he 
 was going to make an ass of himself, as she 
 phrased it and to kiss her hand, or something 
 dreadful. But he did not look that sort. 
 
 " Oh, my conditions are not difficult," he said. 
 " I only insist on your not cutting short your 
 day's fishing." 
 
 " Oh, don't," she said. " I don't think I could 
 fish any more. ' ' 
 
 " I think you must make an effort. Really, I 
 insist on it. We shan't get in each other's way. 
 I am going a couple of miles down." 
 
 The situation, which five minutes ago was so
 
 42 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 excruciating, had absolutely melted and vanished. 
 Had Maud been told that morning what was to 
 happen to her before lunch she would have felt 
 ready to sink into the earth with shame, while, 
 even two minutes ago, there was nothing so im- 
 possible as to imagine herself continuing to fish. 
 But the man was so unaffectedly friendly; his 
 amusement also at her horror was so kindly that 
 she was no longer horrified. 
 
 " Really, Mr. Cochran, you are too kind," she 
 said. " But you must first put me at my ease 
 about one thing. You do know, don't you, how 
 sorry I am, and that I hadn't the slightest notion 
 that Thurso had let the fishing. Oh, by the way, 
 I am Maud Stratton. ' ' 
 
 " Why, of course I knew all that without your 
 telling me," he said. " So it's all settled." 
 
 She smiled at him. 
 
 " Thank you very much," she said. " I shall 
 love to have this day on the river. ' ' 
 
 " And Duncan? " he said. " Pray keep him 
 if you want him. Otherwise I shall send him 
 home. His wife is ill of this this typhoid." 
 
 " Oh, no, please send him home," said Maud. 
 
 Then Cochran turned to the gillie. 
 
 1 ' Get along home, Duncan, ' ' he said, ' ' and you 
 will find the wife ever so much better. She's been 
 getting better all morning. But if you give her 
 any of that medicine you will be just helping her
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 43 
 
 to get worse again. You understand? If you 
 find she's worse, you can give it her. But she 
 isn't; she's better. Yes, gaff, landing-net, lunch. 
 I've got them all. Keep up a good heart, man. 
 God's looking after her this morning. She's 
 going to get quite well. Don't lose sight of that; 
 don't let her lose sight of it either." 
 
 He had apparently quite forgotten about Maud 
 as he spoke, and had turned side face to her as 
 he talked to the gillie. And, as he spoke, though 
 all the kindliness and merriment that had been 
 in his face when he talked to Maud were there 
 still, yet there shone through all some intense 
 vital seriousness. He had laid his hand on Dun- 
 can's shoulder, and made his little speech with 
 an extraordinary air of authority. Then he 
 nodded to him in dismissal, and turned to Maud 
 again, while Duncan trudged off down the river 
 bank. 
 
 " I'm so sorry for you and Lord Thurso," he 
 said, ' ' and I think it 's downright good of you to 
 have come up, right in the middle of the season, 
 just because your folk here were ill. It's real 
 kind of you." 
 
 Then his eye fell on the fish. 
 
 " Hi, Duncan," he called out after the retreat- 
 ing figure, " take her ladyship's fish up to the 
 lodge. Where are your manners'? ' 
 
 Duncan came back, stuffed the fish into his creel
 
 44 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 and shouldered it. But he paused a moment be- 
 fore he went again. 
 
 ' * But the wife is better, sir ? " he asked. 
 
 u Ever so much better. You know that as well 
 as I do, so don't forget it, since you help to make 
 her better by knowing it all the time. Now, off 
 with you. You've got to look after the baby, as 
 she thinks she can't. Make it happy; give it a 
 real good time, and let it pull your beard." 
 
 He watched Duncan tramp away again with his 
 heavy Scotch tread down the river bank. 
 
 " Dear blind man! " he said, half to himself. 
 " But the light is coming to him." 
 
 Maud was already ' ' arrested ' ' by Mr. Cochran 
 she paid, that is to say, a good deal more at- 
 tention to him than she paid to nine-tenths of 
 casual strangers with whom she was, as now, 
 brought rather intimately in contact. He had the 
 arresting quality, whatever that is, which com- 
 pels attention. It may be called magnetism, but 
 it has not got the slightest connection with love 
 or hate, like or dislike it may, in fact, and often 
 does, co-exist with each and all of those. At pres- 
 ent, it had not occurred to Maud in the remotest 
 degree whether she liked or disliked Mr. Cochran ; 
 she only knew that he arrested her. He was very 
 quiet in manners, quite well-bred, rather good 
 looking, and in all these things he was in no way 
 distinguished from the ordinary world in which
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 45 
 
 she lived. But there was, and she knew it, some- 
 thing that marked him off from all men she had 
 ever seen, and pausing to think for one half -second, 
 she saw what it was. He was so happy. Happi- 
 ness of a sort that was new to her surrounded 
 him like an atmosphere which somehow it was 
 given to others herself, for instance, at this mo- 
 ment to breathe, and it radiated from him, and 
 shone on others. Hundreds of people were happy, 
 thank God that is a very common complaint 
 but never had she seen anyone so consciously, 
 vitally happy. It was as if he had just heard 
 some extraordinary good news, or as if he had 
 once heard news so good that it was ever new 
 to him. Yet it was no retrospective happiness ; it 
 gushed from him as from some eternal spring. 
 
 This impression was made, as all strong im- 
 pressions are made, in an infinitesimal moment, 
 and there was no pause between his parting speech 
 to Duncan and her taking up the casual thread 
 of talk. All the same, was the thread casual 1 ? 
 For his speech to Duncan, which Maud took up, 
 seemed to come from his very heart and soul. 
 
 " I don't understand," she said. " Why did 
 you say that poor Duncan's wife only thought 
 she was ill! " 
 
 The brown, happy, amused eyes looked at her 
 a moment before he replied. 
 
 " Why, doesn't that come somewhere in Shake-
 
 46 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 speare, ' ' he asked, * ' ' There 's nothing either right 
 or wrong but thinking makes it so ; ' or words to 
 that effect? " 
 
 11 Yes, poor soul, but if we take that literally 
 we must conclude that if she thought she was well 
 she would be. It is hard to think that when you 
 happen to have typhoid." 
 
 The brown eyes got graver, but not less happy. 
 
 " Certainly, it is hard," he said, " indeed im- 
 possible, unless you can think right. But when 
 one can do that all the rest follows." 
 
 Maud suddenly felt slightly antagonistic to him. 
 She remembered the few words she had had with 
 Thurso last night about people who are always 
 well because they think so, and his conclusion that 
 they must be fools. She had tacitly agreed with 
 him then, and was slightly vexed with Mr. Coch- 
 ran now because honestly he did not seem to be 
 one. 
 
 " Have you ever had toothache! " she asked. 
 
 " Fortunately not. But if I had, I shouldn't." 
 
 Then the name she had been unable to remem- 
 ber the night before came back to her. 
 
 " Ah, then you are a Christian Scientist," she 
 said. ' ' You think all pain and illness is unreal. ' ' 
 
 He laughed again. 
 
 " I know it," he said. " Now, I am sure you 
 want to get on with your fishing. So there's 
 your rod, and please keep the gaff. You are much
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 47 
 
 more likely to hook another salmon in the upper 
 pools than I am down below. ' ' 
 
 He had changed the subject with such bare- 
 faced suddenness that she could not help remark- 
 ing on it. Yet, abrupt as it had been, it had not 
 been ill-bred. 
 
 " Do you often change the subject as quickly 
 as that? " she asked. 
 
 ' Always, if you won't mind my saying it 
 strangers talk to me about Christian Science. I 
 don't proselytize, you see; I don't think that is 
 the best way to make truth known. Also, Lady 
 Maud, one can't talk about the subject which 
 means more to one than the whole world with 
 people who really only ask questions about it out 
 of a sort of, well, derisive curiosity." 
 
 The words were extremely direct; in ninety- 
 nine mouths out of a hundred they would have 
 been rude. Yet, though Maud felt still antago- 
 nistic, she knew that the most sensitive person in 
 the world could not have suspected a trace of 
 rudeness or offence in them, so entirely sweetly 
 and good-naturedly were they spoken. He made 
 this particularly plain statement without the 
 slightest hint of resentment or fear of arousing 
 it. And Maud, generous and open as himself, 
 gave in at once. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," she said. "You are 
 quite right. There was a touch really not more
 
 48 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 of what you so justly call derisive curiosity in 
 my mind. It was quite wrong of me. But may I 
 ask you a question with that touch left out, hon- 
 estly left out? " 
 
 " Why, of course, a hundred," said he. 
 
 " Then, why don't you proselytize? " she asked. 
 " If you are convinced of the truth of it all, isn't 
 it your duty to spread it ? " 
 
 Walter Cochran let his eyes wander from her 
 face over the hillside, fragrant with heather and 
 humming with bees. Then they looked at her 
 again, and for the first time she saw that they 
 were different to any eyes she had ever seen in 
 the face of woman or man, for they were the eyes 
 of a child, with a child's terrible honesty and 
 disarming frankness. 
 
 " You can spread a thing in many ways," he 
 said. " But preaching was not the primary way 
 He chose. He went about doing good." 
 
 Maud felt suddenly that shyness which is in- 
 stinctive in most Anglo-Saxons when " religion ' 
 comes on the conversational board. With many 
 people, no doubt, reticence on religion is due to 
 the fact that since they have none, there is noth- 
 ing to talk about. But it was not so with her; 
 religion formed a very vital and essential part 
 of her life, but it was not one to be publicly trotted 
 out. So, since the subject had so unexpectedly
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 49 
 
 and profoundly deepened with this last remark, 
 it was she who changed it now. 
 
 " I see," she said, and then paused. " But, 
 please, don't leave me the gaff. I should im- 
 mensely like, since you are so kind, to get another 
 sea-trout or two ; but having poached one salmon 
 without your leave, I really couldn't poach an- 
 other. If I hook another, he shall break me, and 
 so I shall present your river with a fly and some 
 gut by way of amende." 
 
 Then the idea of offering hospitality, which had 
 occurred to and been rejected by Thurso, occurred 
 to her. " And do come and dine with us to- 
 morrow," she said, " and eat some of your own 
 fish. Thurso and I would be delighted. We are 
 just squatters in the lodge, you know eat and 
 live in one room, and have a dreadful cook. Oh, 
 I forgot ; we are turning the house into a typhoid 
 hospital, and by the evening the place will be full 
 of patients. Please say ' no ' point blank, if you 
 don 't like the thought. I shall quite understand. ' ' 
 
 Walter Cochran gave her a swift, admiring 
 glance. 
 
 " Why, that's just splendid of you," he said; 
 ' * and as for coming to dinner, I shall be charmed. 
 We Scientists are often told we are inconsistent, 
 but I guess we're not quite so inconsistent as to 
 mind coming to a house because a few poor souts
 
 50 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 think they are ill. So au revoir, Lady Maud, and 
 many thanks." 
 
 Maud was a girl of great singleness of purpose, 
 and in the ordinary way, when she was out for a 
 day's fishing, the number of thoughts that came 
 into her head which did not bear directly on fish 
 might be counted on the fingers of the hand, while 
 even these were present to her mind in only a 
 very far off and indistinct fashion. But to-day, 
 during the hour 's fishing that she indulged in be- 
 fore lunch, her thoughts were persistently else- 
 where, and when eventually she made herself a 
 windless seat in the heather overlooking the pool 
 which she had just fished, even the brace of sea- 
 trout she had already caught, and the prospective 
 brace or so that she promised herself after lunch, 
 actually occupied a very small part of her reflec- 
 tions. 
 
 1 1 Christian Science ! ' ' She had indeed a ' ' touch 
 of derision " for that philosophy and its philoso- 
 phers, which was not entirely founded on igno- 
 rance. Only last year Alice Yardly, a friend of 
 hers, had joined that church, and Maud had 
 summed up the situation by saying that she had 
 always thought that Alice though a dear was 
 a fool, and now she knew it. Certainly, however, 
 Lady Yardly did not in the least resemble Mr. 
 Cochran either in the matter of folly, because it
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 51 
 
 was impossible to think of him as a fool, or in the 
 matter of proselytizing. For Lady Yardly used 
 to proselytize (quite unsuccessfully) by the hour, 
 pouring out a perfect torrent of optimistic gabble 
 about the non-existence of pain and sickness, and 
 be prostrated next day by one of the nervous 
 headaches to which she was subject. She would 
 call this a false claim (though it was at least an 
 admirable imitation of the true), " demonstrate " 
 over it, which, being interpreted, meant assuring 
 herself that she could not have a nervous head- 
 ache, since there was no nervous headache in 
 Divine Love, after which she would go to bed, and 
 wake up next morning without any headache, con- 
 vinced that her demonstration had banished it. 
 But as these headaches had never been known to 
 last more than one day, its disappearance on the 
 following one did not appear to Maud to be quite 
 so triumphant an instance of the truth of Chris- 
 tian Science as she herself thought. 
 
 And then this dreadful delirium of words, texts 
 torn up from their roots and made to prove any- 
 thing, the flying leaves in Mrs. Eddy's " Key to 
 the Scriptures " for. paragraphs bearing on the 
 point, all to convince Maud, as far as she could 
 see, of what she herself put differently when she 
 said that mind had a great influence over matter. 
 But that proved to be an utter mistake, and 
 wouldn't do for Lady Yardly at all, who insisted
 
 52 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 that there was no matter, and never had been, 
 except through the error of mortal mind. And 
 then it would be time for her to go and dress for 
 dinner, put on what was mistakenly believed to 
 be a very smart white satin gown, and cover her 
 very pretty but entirely unreal neck with a non- 
 existent dog collar of purely imaginary diamonds. 
 Last winter, too, Alice Yardly had a false claim 
 of influenza, and after a week of demonstrating 
 over it and not taking ordinary precautions it had 
 developed into a further false claim of conges- 
 tion of the lungs. Three weeks more demonstrat- 
 ing over congestion of the lungs (combined this 
 time with stopping in bed, though that had really 
 nothing to do with it) had led to her complete 
 recovery, and the subsequent recital of this won- 
 derful cure at a testimony meeting. But when 
 Maud asked her why, if she was going to con- 
 descend to stop in bed at all (especially since 
 stopping in bed had nothing to do with the cure), 
 she should not have done so when she had the 
 false claim of influenza instead of waiting for a 
 false claim of congestion, this led only to the kind 
 Christian Science smile, and a voluble explanation, 
 with torrents of words and texts, to point out once 
 again from the very beginning that she did not 
 have influenza at all. No further progress, in fact, 
 could be made over the argument, for though Lady 
 Yardly did not refuse to answer questions, she
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 53 
 
 answered them with such volubility and with so 
 stern a determination never to be brought up to 
 the point at issue, that it was impossible for the 
 enquirer to proceed. All sickness and illness was 
 inconceivable, so said Lady Yardly, because every- 
 thing was Infinite Mind (mortal mind did not really 
 exist any more than matter), and to state that fact 
 over and over again in a variety of ways was held 
 to answer any question that might be asked, of 
 whatever kind. 
 
 Of course, Lady Yardly was silly ; she seemed 
 sometimes to have no mind, either mortal or any- 
 thing else ; she was always that though a dear 
 and Maud, as she sat here now eating her lunch 
 in this nook in the heather, with the wild bees 
 buzzing about her, and all the infinite beneficent 
 powers of Nature pursuing their way heedless of 
 any interpretations that man might choose to put 
 upon them, felt she had done an injustice in ex- 
 pecting a woman who was, yes, very silly, to 
 answer questions which, though quite simple, were 
 undeniably profound, in that they concerned the 
 origin of things. Lady Yardly had not been a 
 Christian Scientist very long, and Maud told her- 
 self that it was absurd to expect her all at once 
 (she who had understood so little before) to 
 understand everything. But what rather nettled 
 her, though indeed she was not easily nettled, was 
 to find that this same dear, stupid person did pro-
 
 54 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 fess herself able to explain everything mind, mat- 
 ter and God alike. She claimed to have recaptured 
 the faith of a child, and to argue like a theologian 
 about it. Maud herself was a professed and be- 
 lieving Christian, but had a brilliant Atheist subtly 
 questioned her on the doctrine of the Incarnation, 
 she knew quite well that he could pose her, unless 
 she clung to the simple fact, which she believed, 
 that God was made man. She could not answer 
 questions he might easily put her about tran- 
 substantiation and the Presence, but she hoped 
 she would not try by turning a blinding squirt 
 of texts upon him to make him believe that she 
 could explain everything in the material and spir- 
 itual world. She could not certain things were 
 mysterious. But why not say so? That these 
 things were mysterious did not prevent her being 
 a Christian. She believed, too, the root doctrine 
 of Christian Science, that God was the author of 
 the world, and permeated it all. But surely it was 
 simpler and truer to confess that one did not 
 understand the whole working of the world in all 
 its details. For if one did, one could manage it 
 all one 's self. Lady Yardly, Maud felt sure, would 
 undertake it with the greatest pleasure. And a 
 pretty mess she would make of it! thought she. 
 For Alice could never contrive that the carriage 
 should ever call for anybody either at the right 
 time or the right place.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 55 
 
 Yet . . . the law of gravity, so Maud be- 
 lieved, was in sound working order, but if one 
 asked a mere child to explain it, and he explained 
 it wrongly, that should not make one distrust the 
 law, but only the ability of the exponent. And in 
 Christian Science, one person surely knew more 
 about it (or, anyhow, knew he did not know) than 
 another, and she confessed to herself that she had 
 formed her present idea of it on the answers, or 
 want of answers, given her by a Scientist whom 
 she had always thought silly. No doubt there 
 were others who were not silly. But what a pity 
 that the silly ones were allowed to gabble like 
 this! Lady Yardly had tried to proselytize her, 
 and had only convinced her of the absurdity of 
 her tenets. But Mr. Cochran had refused to pros- 
 elytize her, and she would rather like to hear 
 what he had to say about it. 
 
 A great fish jumped clear out of the water in 
 the pool at her feet, a noble silver-sided salmon, 
 which for the moment made her fisherman 's heart 
 leap in her throat. Well, it was no use trying for 
 him a fish that leaped like that never took the 
 fly. Then she smiled at herself, for she knew that 
 though that reason was sound enough, it was not 
 for that that she still sat in her sheltered place. 
 She was interested in something else ; she wanted 
 to think about that. 
 
 Mr. Cochran did not seem silly ; in fact, she felt
 
 56 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 sure he was not silly. What if she asked him 
 when he came to dine to-morrow night a few ques- 
 tions which Alice Yardly had failed to answer? 
 There would be no derision now, for in this half 
 hour of communing with herself she had convinced 
 herself that she wanted to know. There was no 
 such thing as illness he had said that, he had 
 told Duncan that. What then if she appealed to 
 him, told him how many of these poor folk had 
 died, and were dying of typhoid, and asked him 
 to stop it all? Yet that was too much to ask; it 
 seemed profane, as if she asked him to invest him- 
 self in the insignia of Divinity. But might he not, 
 she asked, as she could now ask him, without deri- 
 sion, without, as far as she could manage 'it, un- 
 belief in the huge power which he distinctly pro- 
 fessed to wield, might he not relieve one sufferer, 
 make well one of those forty who would be lying 
 sick in the house to-morrow? But then there oc- 
 curred to her the parrot-like answer of Alice 
 Yardly when she had asked her the same ques- 
 tion. It was parrot-like, glib, and without convic- 
 tion or sense of true meaning, when she had told 
 her that it was wrong to make a " cure " for a 
 sign. How hopelessly she misunderstood ! Maud 
 did not want a sign, she wanted that suffering 
 should be relieved. How was it possible or human 
 to withhold that power simply because she would 
 be interested to see it manifested? It was in-
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 57 
 
 human to withhold it, if its possessor really be- 
 lieved that it was his. 
 
 But there was Thurso. It was better that he 
 should not know that she intended to ask Mr. 
 Cochran to do this, or indeed that he should know 
 that she had asked it. There Alice Yardly's con- 
 tention seemed to her to be possibly true. The 
 presence of unbelief might indeed hamper the 
 power of faith. But if Thurso did not know, there 
 would be no unbelief which could hamper it. She 
 herself did not disbelieve, and, honestly, she 
 wanted to believe. She derided no longer; she 
 was conscious of an open mind on the subject. 
 She believed in the miraculous cures of ancient 
 days ; she saw no reason why modern days should 
 not witness them again. 
 
 Yet why had her mind changed, and the derision 
 vanished? To be truthful, it was because of this 
 man's personality. He seemed wise and gentle 
 and self-reliant in that he relied on an infinite 
 power. He himself entirely trusted in that power, 
 and it was exactly that which made Maud trust 
 him. Then she pulled herself up with a jerk- 
 she had seen this man once for ten minutes, and 
 already she was letting her imagination run 
 riot about him. She took to her fishing instead.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE shifting and removal of furniture and car- 
 pets necessary for the reception of the patients 
 next day, as well as the bringing in of the appli- 
 ances of the sick room, were complete when Maud 
 got home that evening, and she found the doctor 
 who had superintended this just on the point of 
 leaving. He had no very cheering account to give 
 of several of the patients whom Maud asked after, 
 but there was at least this cause for thankfulness 
 in that no fresh case had appeared during the day. 
 
 " And that, too, is rather odd," he said, " for 
 we have not yet been able to discover what the 
 cause of the outbreak was, so that we have not 
 intentionally cut off any source of infection. But 
 I am quite content not to know what it was, pro- 
 vided it is cut off. ' ' 
 
 " Yes, indeed," said she. " And to-morrow 
 you will fill up all the beds here? ' 
 
 ' ' Yes. Of course, one has to take certain risks, 
 and for the sake of the fresher air and better at- 
 tention they can receive here I am going to move 
 some very serious cases. Eeally, Lady Maud, 
 doctor though I am and prescriber of drugs, some- 
 times I wonder whether all the contents of all the
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 59 
 
 chemists' shops in the world have the healing 
 power of fresh air and quiet. ' ' 
 
 11 Oh, do you think that quiet cures as many 
 people as work?" asked she. 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 ' ' Well, work is the best medicine if you are not 
 ill, and rest if you are," he said. " By the way, 
 I should like to say just once how splendid I 
 think it is of you and Lord Thurso to give the 
 house up like this. ' ' 
 
 " It was entirely Thurso 's idea," she said, 
 " and it really seemed so obvious when he sug- 
 gested it. Has he come in yet, do you know? " 
 
 " Yes, he came in half an hour ago, in great 
 pain with one of those neuralgic headaches, I 
 am afraid. He is rather overdone. He wants 
 rest." 
 
 Maud made a little quick movement toward 
 him. 
 
 " Not seriously? " she asked. " You don't 
 mean that there is anything to be anxious 
 about? " 
 
 11 No, but as long as he is continually anxious 
 himself and constantly tired, those headaches will 
 probably be rather frequent. One only hopes he 
 will get rest soon; one does not want them to 
 become chronic. ' ' 
 
 " Chronic? " 
 
 11 Yes, that is one of the penalties of being
 
 60 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 highly-strung from a nervous point of view. His 
 nerves are very easily excited one does not want 
 him to get a habit of that." 
 
 Maud was silent a moment. Then she spoke 
 in a lower tone. 
 
 1 i He takes laudanum when he is in great pain, ' ' 
 she said. " Is that unwise? ' 
 
 " It would be unwise to continue doing so for 
 long together. I did not know, by the way, that 
 he took it. But I hope, and there is reason for 
 hoping to-day, that we have seen the worst of this 
 epidemic. He ought to be able to get away be- 
 fore many days. I tell you frankly, I shall be 
 glad when he does." 
 
 " Ought he to go now, do you think? " she 
 asked. 
 
 Dr. Symes looked at her a moment before reply- 
 ing. 
 
 " No, I think he ought to stop here. He is 
 running a certain risk of producing that chronic 
 condition of irritated nerves, and also a certain 
 risk in stopping the pain by the use of laudanum. 
 But I think, well, his duty keeps him here. Our 
 orders and the nurses' orders are obeyed when 
 they know that Lord Thurso is backing us up. 
 You have no idea of the difficulties we had before 
 you and he came. Well, I must get down to the 
 village again. And, Lady Maud, I like brave 
 people like you and your brother. Good-night!
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 61 
 
 The patients will begin to arrive early to- 
 morrow. ' ' 
 
 Thurso, to his sister's great relief, came down 
 to dinner in the most equable and cheerful spirits. 
 All trace of his headache had vanished, and Maud 
 thought that Dr. Symes must have been mistaken 
 about it. In any case, according to her plan, it 
 was her part to take his thoughts away from the 
 sombreness of the day, and she had the huge 
 comedy of her own poaching to talk about. 
 
 " Thurso, I've done the most awful thing that 
 anyone ever did," she said. " After you went 
 out this morning I went down to fish in the river, 
 and was firm in a salmon when when Mr. Walter 
 Cochran appeared. How could you forget to tell 
 me you had let the fishing? There I was, tied to 
 it, to his fish. And of course I didn't know him 
 from Adam." 
 
 Thurso, for the first moment, was almost as 
 horrified as Maud had been. 
 
 " Good Lord! " he said. " I hope you lost the 
 fish." 
 
 " Not at all. Owing to Mr. Cochran, I landed 
 it. In the nick of time down came Duncan his 
 gillie, not ours at all with a gaff. Mr. Cochran 
 looked on with interest and sympathy. I had 
 only light tackle for sea-trout. The whole situa- 
 tion dawned on me by degrees, but not before I
 
 62 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 had told Mr. Cochran in a rather dignified man- 
 ner that it was your river. But I asked him to 
 come and dine to-morrow night and help to eat 
 his own fish." 
 
 Thurso broke out into immoderate laughter. 
 
 ' ' Oh, dear, oh, dear ! " he cried. ' ' What would 
 I not have given to be there when the situation 
 dawned on you. And to ask him to dinner was 
 to add insult to injury. You are caught poaching 
 poaching, you know and then ask the rightful 
 owner to come and have some. A perfect 
 stranger, too. He will probably cable an exag- 
 gerated account of it to a New York newspaper, 
 or the paper of whatever town he comes from. 
 At least, it can't be exaggerated. Even American 
 ingenuity would be taxed to concoct anything more 
 outrageous than the simple truth. ' ' 
 
 Maud joined in his laughter. 
 
 1 i It is pretty bad," she said. " And then we 
 sat and talked, and really he is delightful. He 
 asked me to go on fishing, too; and you will 
 scarcely believe it, but I did, and caught six sea- 
 trout. He made it quite easy for me to say * yes. ' 
 I couldn't have said ' no.' 
 
 Thurso laughed again. 
 
 " But how could you? " he asked. " I never 
 heard such brazen cheek. ' ' 
 
 " Not at all. When you see Mr. Cochran you 
 will understand how simple it was."
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 63 
 
 " I have seen him. I am sure it was he I met 
 yesterday down in the village. It occurred to me 
 then that we might ask him to dinner. It was that 
 I began to suggest last night." 
 
 " Well, don't you understand then! " 
 
 Thurso considered this. 
 
 " Yes; even though I did not speak to him, I 
 think I do. He does seem to me the sort of man 
 whose sea-trout you might catch after he had 
 caught you poaching his salmon. That's rather 
 a high compliment. It is a great gift to be able 
 to make people not ashamed of themselves. I 
 should have sunk into the earth with shame, but 
 you say that Mr. Cochran would very kindly have 
 pulled me out." 
 
 There was a moment's pause, during which 
 Maud debated whether she should tell her brother 
 that Mr. Cochran was a Christian Scientist. But 
 his remark that it was not his " way " to prose- 
 lytize made her decide not to. Then Thurso spoke 
 again. 
 
 ' ' Do you know it is the first day that I haven 't 
 felt simply overwhelmed with depression and 
 anxiety? " he said. " There has been no fresh 
 case since morning, and Duncan's wife, who, like 
 Sandy, was almost despaired of, has taken a sud- 
 den inexplicable turn for the better. She was 1 
 dying of sheer exhaustion from fever, and now 
 all day she has been gaining strength, gaining it
 
 64 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 quickly, too. I saw Duncan this evening. He 
 really, I wondered whether he had been drink- 
 ing." 
 
 " Drinking? " asked Maud. " Why, Duncan's a 
 teetotaler." 
 
 11 The worst sort of drunkard," remarked 
 Thurso rather cynically. 
 
 " Oh, don't be cheap," said Maud. " Dun- 
 can's as sober as I am. Goon. It interests me." 
 
 11 Well, it all leads back to Mr. Cochran again," 
 he said. ' ' Anyhow, when I looked in to-night be- 
 fore coming up, there was Duncan sitting by his 
 wife's bedside, nursing the baby, who was, with 
 extraordinary gurgles, trying to swarm up his 
 beard. Fancy bringing a baby into a room where 
 there was a typhoid patient ! Of course I got Dun- 
 can and the baby out, and told him that his wife 
 was really on the mend, as the nurse had just 
 told me. I thought he would like to hear that, 
 but apparently he had known it all day. Our Mr. 
 Cochran had told him that his wife was getting 
 better every minute. ' ' 
 
 " Yes, I heard him tell him," said Maud. 
 
 " Well, but how did he know? " asked Thurso. 
 " This morning they thought she couldn't live 
 through the day. And, anyhow, what has our Mr. 
 Cochran got to do with it? And who is he apart 
 from the fact that you kindly poached a salmon 
 of his? "
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 65 
 
 Maud had no reply to this at once. " Our Mr. 
 Cochran " had repudiated preaching on his own 
 account; certainly then it was not her business 
 to preach for him. 
 
 "Anyhow, our Mr. Cochran looks quite all 
 right," she said. 
 
 ' ' I know he does. But apparently if Mr. Coch- 
 ran tells Duncan that his wife is going to get 
 better, when she is in the very jaws of death, 
 Duncan has only got to walk home, and find that 
 it is so. Oh, and another thing. Dr. Symes called 
 there this afternoon on his round, and Duncan 
 kindly but quite firmly refused to let him in at 
 all unless he promised not to give her any more 
 medicine. So he promised, because, as he told 
 me, she was absolutely past hope when he saw 
 her last. Then he wanted to take her tempera- 
 ture, but Duncan, again firmly, threw the ther- 
 mometer into the grate, though it wasn't exactly 
 medicine. That is why I supposed he was drunk. ' ' 
 
 " No, I'm sure he" wasn't drunk," said Maud 
 again. " Go on, dear! " 
 
 They had finished dinner, and Thurso left the 
 table to get a cigarette. 
 
 " That's all," he said. " Dr. Symes tells me 
 he has seen that sort of recovery before, but some- 
 how I feel it odd that our Mr. Cochran should, 
 so to speak, have foreseen it. Is he a crank, do 
 you think? A spiritualist or something of that
 
 66 THE HOUSE OP DEFENCE 
 
 kind? Not that I believe in them, but any quack 
 goes right sometimes." 
 
 Again Maud mentally reviewed her decision 
 not to do Mr. Cochran's preaching (which he 
 would not do himself ) for him. 
 
 " How do you expect me to know? " she said. 
 " I talked to a stranger for ten minutes. But 
 he's coming to dine to-morrow, so you can judge 
 for yourself. And how have you been ? No head- 
 ache? " 
 
 He glanced at her sharply and sideways a mo- 
 ment, as if suspecting something. 
 
 " Headache? " he asked. " I don't seem much 
 like headache this evening, do I? Why? ' 
 
 " Only Dr. Symes said he was afraid you were 
 in pain." 
 
 Thurso shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 11 Lord, how those doctors jaw! " he said. 
 ' * They want everybody to be ill, in order to make 
 them well. Amiable, but rather egoistic." 
 
 Maud asked no further questions about this, 
 nor sought to excuse Dr. Symes 's blunder. But, 
 knowing him, it seemed to her very odd that he 
 should have thought that Thurso had been suf- 
 fering if he had not. For it was only when he 
 was in the extreme of pain that anyone, even a 
 doctor, could guess that he was on the rack, for 
 it had to be much screwed down before he visibly
 
 winced. For one moment it flashed through her 
 mind that he had been in pain and had taken 
 laudanum, and had well, practically lied to her 
 about it, for his answer, though slightly evasive, 
 certainly was meant to bear the construction that 
 he had had neither headache nor drug. But she 
 dismissed that at once, and if Thurso told her 
 anything, or implied it, it was not her habit to 
 question the truth of it. 
 
 The two sat up rather late that night. Maud, 
 like all young strong folk, hated going to bed as 
 much as, if not more, than she hated getting up, 
 and it was usually Thurso who proposed the ad- 
 journment. But to-night he was extraordinarily 
 alert. As he had said, to-day had been the first 
 day in which there had been any break in that 
 tempest of illness which was devastating the vil- 
 lage; to-day also he had been better himself, and 
 spoke of other things than the immediate pre- 
 occupations that surrounded them. Chief among 
 them was London and the reopening of Thurso 
 House. His father, the last holder of the title, 
 had died just a year ago, and next week the house 
 was to celebrate its re-entry into London life with 
 an adequately magnificent ball. His wife, who 
 had stopped in town, was seeing to this, and when 
 Lily undertook to see to a thing, it was unneces- 
 sary for anyone else, however closely concerned,
 
 ^8 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 to feel any anxiety about the completeness with 
 which it would be seen to. 
 
 " I heard from Lily this morning," he said; 
 " at least I heard from her typewriter. She did 
 .not even sign it. She is up to the eyes in a mil- 
 lion things, and really it seems to me as if the 
 most of the festivities as well as all the charities 
 in this world would collapse unless she was presi- 
 dent of them all. The ball next week, too ! I shall 
 go up for the night, of course, though whether I 
 stop depends on how things go here. You will 
 come, won't you? " 
 
 Maud looked at him in studiedly mild surprise. 
 
 * ' Good gracious, Thurso, ' ' she said. * * Did you 
 suppose that Thurso House was going to make 
 its debut again, and me not there! Of course, I 
 shall come. It will be crammed with kings and 
 queens like * Alice in Wonderland.' Oh, Thurso, 
 what a good thing Lily is so smart. I hate the 
 word, but she is, she's magnificent. If you go in 
 for the world, there are only two sorts of party 
 possible, either to have your grand party, as she's 
 going to do now, with kings and queens literally 
 treading on each other's toes, or have quiet little 
 dinners, as she does, with two or three real friends. 
 I hate the middling parties, where a lot of mere 
 acquaintances are asked to meet some Serene 
 Transparency from Lower Germany. Of course 
 you will go, and of course I'll come with you. Do
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 69 
 
 have a special train all the way to London. It 
 will be so expensive. Lily said to me the other 
 day, ' If you don't have a special, go third class/ 
 She is quite consistent about it herself, too." 
 
 " She usually has specials," remarked Thurso, 
 
 " But she does go third class, and talks to the 
 navvy opposite. And on the tops of omnibuses, 
 I have often been with her on the top of an omni- 
 bus. But she doesn't go in cabs; she says they 
 are middling. When the twenty-five million horse- 
 power motor is there, up she gets on the omnibus,. 
 She never stops them either, because of the horses. 
 She runs after them, and gets on quite beauti- 
 fully." 
 
 " Gets on? " 
 
 ' ' Yes, on the 'bus, and with all the other people 
 sitting on the top of it." 
 
 " That's a new game, isn't it! " 
 
 " Yes; it's becoming quite popular, owing to 
 her. She is splendid! I admire her quite enor- 
 mously. ' ' 
 
 Thurso laughed. 
 
 " So do I. And it's something to admire your 
 wife when you've been married twelve years." 
 
 Maud made a little sideways movement in her 
 chair, as if her position had become suddenly un- 
 comfortable. Her brother continued: 
 
 ' ' I don 't believe a woman ever existed who was 
 so clearly admirable, ' ' he said. * ' We went to the
 
 70 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 opera together the night before I came up here. 
 She was going to the Buckingham Palace ball 
 afterwards, and was well, suitably dressed." 
 
 Maud felt, as she always felt when Thurso 
 talked like this, as if a file had been drawn across 
 her teeth. Often as it had happened, she never 
 got used to it. She tried to turn, not the conver- 
 sation, but its tone. 
 
 " Oh, how? " she asked with deep and genuine 
 interest, for, like all healthily-minded girls, she 
 loved beautiful clothes, especially when beautiful 
 people wore them. " She always makes every- 
 body else look dowdy and badly dressed. That 
 must be such fun! ' 
 
 " Well, she had the diamond palisade, as she 
 calls it, in her hair, and the ruby plaster. Her 
 dress? I don't know what it was, but it looked 
 well, you know what whipped cream looks like 
 compared to cream it looked like whipped gold. 
 Sort of froth of gold not yellow, but gold. Melba 
 was in the middle of the l Jewel Song ' when we 
 came in, but at the end of it nobody was paying the 
 slightest attention to her. Every opera-glass in 
 the house was turned on Lily. She applauded 
 Melba vigorously and split a glove. But nobody 
 else did, though she sang divinely." 
 
 He got up and chucked his cigarette-end away. 
 
 11 And she's my wife," he said, and the four 
 words carried tons of irony.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 71 
 
 Maud got up also. She hated this, and she 
 knew it all so well. It was only to her that Thurso 
 talked like that. 
 
 " Oh, it is such a pity," she said. " You are 
 both such splendid people, you know. And 
 and " 
 
 " And I bore her, and she gets on my nerves," 
 he remarked. 
 
 Maud gave a little labial sound of disapproval, 
 which is usually written, " Tut, tut." 
 
 " Don't say such things," she exclaimed. " It 
 is a pity to say them just because they are true; 
 if they weren't true it wouldn't particularly sig- 
 nify. But to say a true thing, when that thing is 
 a pity, only makes it more real. Speech stamps 
 everything. You don't do her justice, any more 
 than she does you justice. You both expect the 
 other to be like them. "What beautiful grammar ! 
 And Thurso, she isn 't happy any more than you 
 are. ' ' 
 
 " Why do you think that? She makes forty- 
 eight hours out of every day, and fills them all, 
 while the world, like you and me, looks on with 
 envious admiration. That is her ideal. She at- 
 tains it always. And Lady Thurso 's husband 
 claps his hands too! ' 
 
 Maud took him by the shoulder and shook him 
 gently. 
 
 " Idiot! " she said. " Idiot! Think it over. I
 
 72 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 am going to bed. Thank me for catching so many 
 beautiful fish." 
 
 "I'm not sure that I thank you for asking Mr. 
 Cochran to dinner to-morrow, ' ' he said. ' ' Maud, 
 I do like these quiet evenings with you. We are 
 not smart. Neither you nor I. ' ' 
 
 ' ' No ; it's our defect, dear. Besides, I am, when 
 I choose. I shall be smart at your ball. Good- 
 night. What a nice day it has been! No fresh 
 case of typhoid to-day for the people, and no 
 headache for you, and a salmon for me. The luck 
 is coming our way ! ' 
 
 The next day was wholly given up to the in- 
 stallation of the typhoid patients. Carpets and 
 curtains had been rolled up and beds brought up 
 .and down from basement and attic, so that the ut- 
 most accommodation might be furnished in the 
 large rooms on the ground floor. Dr. Symes had 
 decided that it was better to run a little risk and 
 move even bad cases up here, for the sake of the 
 more immediate attention and the larger supply 
 of fresh air than was possible when they were 
 scattered about in cottage rooms, and the ambu- 
 lance, going backwards and forwards all day, 
 brought grave burdens on it. But by five in the 
 afternoon the work of transportation was done, 
 and the house was full. Afterwards the doctors 
 went the round of their patients, and such risk as
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 73 
 
 might have been run was well justified by results. 
 Not one apparently had suffered for the move, 
 and now, instead of their being in small, ill-venti- 
 lated chambers, they were airily housed, with 
 every facility for constant supervision from the' 
 nurses. Most, too, were going on very well, but 
 there was one case, that of Sandy, the gillie, which 
 was as serious as it could be. Like many strong 
 men, it seemed as if the fever had appropriated 
 his strength, vampire-like, for its own nourish- 
 ment, and Dr. Symes, before he left, had given 
 orders that he should be sent for at once if any 
 further unfavorable symptoms appeared. Dun- 
 can's wife, it is true, had been in no less perilous 
 a case this very morning; it was very unlikely 
 that two should be snatched from the closing jaws 
 of death. 
 
 Thurso had been in the house the whole day r 
 feeling it conscientiously impossible not to be 
 there, and when it was all over he went to the 
 room in which he and Maud lived, desperately 
 tired, and intending to get an hour's sleep before 
 dinner. But because one has an intention, how- 
 ever innocent or laudable, it does not necessarily" 
 follow that one's best efforts are able to put it 
 into effect, and instead, in this instance, having 
 composed himself to sleep, he felt broadly and 
 staringly awake. As he lay on the sofa, with his 
 face away from the light, his eyes shut and his
 
 74 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 attitude conducive to repose, a hundred vivid pic- 
 tures crossed his brain. An interminable series 
 of stretchers, each with its still fever-stricken 
 burden upon it, came up the uncarpeted stairs, and 
 even as he hoped that their monotonous proces- 
 sion was the precursor of unconsciousness, another 
 image stole in by the back door, so to speak, and 
 diverted his attention. Maud had gone fishing 
 yesterday, and had enjoyed good sport, so the 
 procession of stretchers was interrupted only to 
 make way for the vision of her landing fish after 
 fish, till it seemed that this endless repetition must 
 end in sleep. But the back door opened again, and 
 reverting to their conversation of the night before, 
 Lily stood at the head of the stairs in Thurso 
 House receiving kings and queens, and queens and 
 kings. But the drowsiness produced by that ended 
 again not in slumber, but in something that was 
 very antagonistic to it. There was just a little 
 stab it was hardly pain inside his head, as in- 
 finitesimal as the sound of an electric bell in the 
 basement. Then it was repeated, but louder and 
 more insistently, as if the bell were half-way up 
 the kitchen stairs. Then it was beginning to be 
 pain now it was as if the ringer of the electric 
 bell grew impatient, and left his finger on it, while 
 all the time the bell came closer. He was quite 
 wide-awake now, and opened his eyes. Then he 
 said to himself, " I am in for another."
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 75 
 
 That was perfectly true and the prediction be- 
 gan to be fulfilled at once, a thing that ought 
 to be satisfactory to the prophet. The idea of an 
 electric bell ceased it was pain, quite distinctly 
 and decidedly. It stabbed half a dozen times with 
 a firm, clear touch, and then for the moment it 
 ceased. Immediately afterwards it began again, 
 but differently. Instead of stabbing at the nerve, 
 it laid a cold, steady finger on it, and the finger 
 grew colder and steadier, till something inside 
 his head seemed to ring with it, like a musical 
 glass. Then came a brilliant passage of all sorts 
 of pain, as if the orchestra had begun to accom- 
 pany that dreadful solo; there was a long, cold 
 note held down and wonderful arpeggios of tor- 
 ture crossed it up and down. That was the pre- 
 lude. 
 
 In his room upstairs, which he could reach in 
 four seconds, there stood on his dressing-table a 
 bottle, not very large, which contained not only 
 the antidote and instant cure of his pain, but 
 blissful visions and the gift of ecstatic well-being. 
 But the very fact that yesterday he had so lightly 
 (or so it seemed now) had recourse to that, and 
 had so revelled in the Paradise in which it in- 
 stantly set him, made him this moment utterly 
 turn his back on the idea of resorting to it again. 
 If he had got to bear pain and it really appeared 
 as if he had then he would set his teeth and bear
 
 76 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 it, but he would not, at the cost of the formation of 
 an evil habit, drug himself into remission from 
 the pain, or, what even now while he was suffer- 
 ing tempted him more nearly, into that blissful 
 harmony of being that the drug gave him. 
 
 Then his desire disguised itself and came to him 
 more insidiously : there was a guest coming to din- 
 ner to-night: he could not simply retire to bed, 
 leaving Maud to entertain Mr. Cochran, nor, on 
 the other hand, did it seem to him to be physically 
 possible that he should get through dinner in this 
 state. Besides, the actual pain which was his at 
 this moment was, he knew well, a mere bagatelle 
 to what was coming. It was only the prelude as 
 yet : a remarkably complete orchestra would soon 
 begin. Yet his intention was still firm, he did not 
 propose to seek the relief that was standing ready 
 for him. He knew that his desire for it was so 
 acute, not only because of the cessation of pain 
 that it could bring, but because of the intense 
 physical enjoyment that it gave him. It was there 
 that his danger lay. Then with head splitting 
 and buzzing with pain he went upstairs to dress 
 and make ready to entertain his guest. He had 
 some forty other guests, too, in the house: they, 
 however, were well looked after. 
 
 Breeding, and what is implied by that much- 
 misused word, includes courage of a rather heroic 
 kind, since this sort of courage has no stirring
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 77 
 
 aids, no trumpets and drums to beat it up to its 
 proper level. For it implies a greater command of 
 self, a greater respect for the courtesies of life to 
 be courageous in humdrum situations than in 
 those to which romance and excitement impart 
 stimulus, and certainly to-night Thurso's per- 
 fectly natural and even convivial manner toward 
 his guest and his sister, while he himself was suf- 
 fering pain of the most excruciating kind, was 
 courage that deserved in its small sphere as much 
 applause as some great Victoria Cross deed in a 
 larger one. And though most people have more 
 manliness than they or anybody else would have 
 suspected, when pain has got to be borne or a 
 heart-rending situation faced, yet to have the 
 ready smile, the attentive ear, the genial manner, 
 under such circumstances is a fine test of the 
 courage of high-breeding. All through dinner 
 this was triumphantly achieved by Thurso, and it 
 was through no remission or failure on his part, 
 but by instinct born of intimate knowledge on 
 Maud's, that she knew that he was going through 
 hells of physical torture. Sometimes he just bit 
 his lip for a moment, sometimes in the middle of a 
 sentence he would make a pause that was scarcely 
 noticeable, sometimes he gripped his knife or 
 fork so that the skin over his knuckles showed 
 white, but that was all. He talked quite easily 
 and naturally, made reference to Maud's poach-
 
 ing expedition, and its satisfactory results as far 
 as dinner was concerned, for the salmon was ex- 
 cellent, and went on to speak of the epidemic 
 which had brought him up North. 
 
 11 But at last it shows some sign of abating," 
 he said, " though we are still ignorant of the 
 source of it. In fact, there has been no fresh 
 case either to-day or yesterday." 
 
 Maud looked up at Mr. Cochran, wishing rather 
 intently that he would preach his Gospel. She 
 felt somehow certain that it would do Thurso 
 good, take his mind off the pain that flickered 
 round him like a shower of knives. But the 
 Gospel was veiled, at any rate. 
 
 " I think it's so good of you to bring the cases 
 up here," he said. " Lady Maud told me yester- 
 day that you were doing so. I am sure it must 
 help toward recovery to remove people from sur- 
 roundings which they associate with illness to 
 fresh bright places." 
 
 He paused a moment. 
 
 " One sees that every day," he said. " If you 
 associate a place with pleasure you are pleased 
 to go back. The mind, left to itself, clings so to 
 material things. Because one has been happy in 
 a certain room, one always thinks that those sur- 
 roundings will tend to produce happiness again. 
 It is one of the illusions we get rid of last." 
 
 Thurso began to speak.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 79 
 
 i <. 
 
 You mean " he said, and then stopped. 
 For a moment he could not go on, so sharp an 
 access of pain seized him. " You mean I shall 
 always associate this house with typhoid and 
 sick, suffering people ? " he asked after a mo- 
 ment. " That is not very cheering." 
 
 Walter Cochran's happy, childlike eyes looked 
 at Maud a moment, and then at his host. 
 
 " No, I mean just the opposite," he said. 
 11 You will always associate this house with re- 
 covery, with the sweeping away of illness and 
 pain. ' ' 
 
 Dinner was at an end, and the momentary 
 pause of cigarette-lighting followed. Walter 
 Cochran had taken one as he spoke, but he did 
 not light it, and laid it down on the cloth. Then 
 he got up quickly. 
 
 " Lord Thurso, you are awfully brave," he 
 said. " I am sure you feel in horrible pain. Let 
 me go right away now. I have enjoyed coming 
 up to dine with Lady Maud and you ever so 
 much. ' ' 
 
 For the last minute or two the pain had be- 
 come so much more acute that Thurso 's face was 
 wet with perspiration. All during dinner, too, 
 the longing, the drunkard's desire to get to his 
 room and take a dose from that healing bottle, 
 had been growing. And now when his pain, in
 
 spite of his gallantry in concealing it, was dis- 
 covered, the desire became overwhelming, he 
 could no longer check it. 
 
 "Pray don't think of going away," he said, 
 ' ' but if you will excuse me for ten minutes I will 
 then rejoin you. Pray don't go. I shall be down 
 again in quite a short time. I have some medi- 
 cine that never fails to set me right. Yes, the 
 pain has been pretty bad." 
 
 For one moment it appeared that Cochran had 
 something on the tip of his tongue, for he turned 
 to Thurso eagerly, his mouth open. But it was 
 clear to Maud, when he did speak, that the speech 
 was not his original thought. 
 
 " I shall be delighted to stop," he said, " if 
 Lady Maud does not mind my being on her hands 
 a few minutes. I wanted so much to ask about 
 one or two of the pools on the river." 
 
 He sat down again as Thurso went out, and 
 turned to her with the same eagerness as he had 
 shown a minute ago. 
 
 " I don't ever want to preach," he said, " but 
 I love to practise. I didn't know whether your 
 brother would like my suggesting it, though." 
 
 Somehow Maud froze into herself a little at 
 that. The idea of Mr. Cochran 's " treating " 
 Thurso for his neuralgia was somehow out of 
 the question. She would not think of such a 
 thing, she felt sure, too, it was idle to ask him.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 81 
 
 " Oh, thank you very much," she said, " but 
 his medicine always puts him right," and she be- 
 gan at once, as he had suggested, to speak about 
 the river and certain pools which he found difficul- 
 ty in fishing satisfactorily. 
 
 Thurso meantime had almost run to his room, 
 for he longed for the relief that he knew awaited 
 him there as the desert-parched traveller longs 
 for water. He longed, too, and much more 
 keenly, for the tingling ecstatic sense of well- 
 being that the laudanum produced. All day, 
 even before this racking headache came on, he 
 had been almost unable to think of anything but 
 that. All day he had thirsted, even when he 
 definitely rejected the idea of taking it, for that 
 stimulated consciousness, that huge vivid sense 
 of happiness, which already seemed to him the 
 proper normal level of life. Already, too, he was 
 beginning to be dishonest with himself, just as 
 yesterday he had been dishonest with Maud ; and 
 even as he took it he told himself that he would 
 not have done so had not Mr. Cochran been 
 dining with them. It was impossible to send him 
 away five minutes after dinner: it was equally 
 impossible that he should spend the evening 
 alone with Maud. And though that was true, it 
 was not the essential truth. 
 
 He took the glass in his hand, wishing, now 
 that relief was so near, even as the caged beast
 
 82 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 that has been roaring for its food sits snarling 
 when it has it, before it begins to assuage its 
 hunger-pangs, to prolong for a moment more 
 this stabbing pain, and the anticipation of its 
 ceasing, and he sat down in an easy-chair, put- 
 ting up his feet on another, to make himself quite 
 comfortable, before he drank it. His room looked 
 northwest, and though it was nearly nine o'clock, 
 the sun in this northern latitude still shone in at 
 his window, bathing him in its crystal light. 
 Then he drank. 
 
 Inside his head during this last hour he felt as 
 if a sort of piston-rod had been making regular 
 firm strokes on to some bleeding mangled nerve. 
 The end of the piston rod was sometimes fitted 
 with a blunt hammer, so that it squashed the seat 
 of pain, sometimes with a sharp needle-point that 
 went deeper and seemed to penetrate and reach 
 the very centre of his being. Then perhaps the 
 piston-rod would cease for awhile, and an iron- 
 toothed rusty rake collected the smashed frag- 
 ments of nerve together again, so that the ham- 
 mer should not leave any of the scattered pieces 
 unpulverized, and the rake made a neat pile of 
 the raw tortured bits, so that they might receive 
 the blows of the blunt hammer again. This rak- 
 ing back (the image was so vivid to him that he 
 almost believed it actually occurred) was about 
 the worst part: he knew that the steady squash-
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 83 
 
 ing hammer was coming on again. But now, a few 
 minutes only after he had taken his dose, though 
 the hammer did not cease to fall, its blows ceased 
 to produce pain; they produced instead a warm, 
 tingling sensation like that which one feels when 
 one spreads out icy fingers to a friendly blaze. 
 And that tingling warmth spread slowly through 
 his head, passed down his neck, and flooded his 
 body and limbs to toe and finger-tip. He forgot 
 what pain meant, knowing only what the oncom- 
 ing of this absolute physical bliss was like. The 
 sun that still shone in at his windows burned 
 with a ruddier and more vivid light, the glory of 
 it was soft but incredibly brilliant, and to his 
 quickened sense of smell the air that came in 
 through the open windows was redolent with the 
 honey-scent of warm heather. The blind had 
 been a little drawn down over the top of the win- 
 dow the tap of it flapping against the jamb but 
 whereas, when he was dressing for dinner an hour 
 ago it was a fretting and irritating thing, it 
 now seemed to him to give out flute-like vibrating 
 notes. The present moment, his own sensations 
 were all quickened to the vividness of dream-life, 
 while it was but vaguely that he remembered 
 that downstairs Maud was sitting with a very 
 pleasant American fellow who had come to din- 
 ner ; but with the gates of Paradise here upstairs 
 flung wide to receive him he could not fix his
 
 84 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 mind on him sufficiently to recall much about 
 him. No doubt if he made an effort he could re- 
 member what he was like and what his name was, 
 but an effort was the one thing he certainly 
 would not make, since it might destroy or dis- 
 turb this perfect equilibrium on which he was 
 balanced. Besides, there was really no reason, 
 so it now appeared, why he should go downstairs. 
 Maud and her friend would talk about fishing for 
 awhile and then he ah, yes, Walter Cochran 
 would go away. They would both easily under- 
 stand his non-appearance. He had suffered tor- 
 tures; it was absurd not to grant him this little 
 compensation. 
 
 Then for a moment the habit and breeding of 
 his whole life jerked him to his feet, in order to 
 rejoin them. But the drug he had taken was 
 more powerful than they: it told him that this 
 ecstasy of consciousness would be trespassed on 
 and interfered with by the presence of others. 
 He would have, to some extent, to attend to them 
 instead of being absorbed in the exquisiteness of 
 his own sensations. And those sensations had 
 nothing whatever in common with either sleep 
 or intoxication : he was lifted on to a higher level 
 of perception than the normal: he basked in 
 super-solar sunlight. 
 
 Then, still without any hint of sleepiness or 
 loss of consciousness, the most wonderful visions,
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 85 
 
 or rather the intentional visualization of mag- 
 ically beautiful scenes, passed in front of him.. 
 He, like Keats, was listening to the nightingale, 
 and losing himself in " embalmed darkness " to 
 the music of the song, while all the " weariness, 
 the fever and the fret " were remembered only 
 as the traveller arrived at his long-sought home 
 remembers the weariness of the way. He 
 mounted higher than the blithe spirit of the lark 
 could carry him, and hung in ether so remote 
 that the sun above him and the earth below 
 seemed of about equal size, and the shape of 
 England and the coasts of Europe appeared set 
 in dim sea as in an atlas. Then he turned his 
 eyes away from the earth and looked unblinded 
 into the high noon of the heavens ; and yet, though 
 it was noon, the infinite vault of blue was sown 
 with stars. Sun and stars shone there together r 
 and a slip of crescent moon floated very near at 
 hand. 
 
 Again, still vividly awake and without the 
 least hint of drowsiness, the stars became glob- 
 ules of sparkling dew, and the spaces of ether 
 took shape, until about him that which had been 
 the heavens was transformed into a huge bed of 
 blue acanthus leaves on which the dew of stars 
 was sparkling. The sun was still there, and 
 round it the sky took the shape of petals of a 
 flower, and it, as Browning had said, was the
 
 86 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 " centre spike of gold" in an immense blue blos- 
 som. All this, too, this vision to which sun and 
 stars contributed, was his own, born of the brain 
 which so short a time ago had been stabbed and 
 pierced with horrible tortures. But, indeed, that 
 torture was worth experiencing, if by the aid of 
 a little brown draught he reaped this great com- 
 pensation. The machinery of the universe was 
 subservient to his brain now, the stars made 
 drops of dew on the acanthus leaves of infinite 
 space, and the sun burned as the centre of one 
 unique flower. A few minutes ago he had half- 
 started to go downstairs: now the ravings of 
 some lunatic in bedlam were not more distant 
 from his mind than that thought. He was lost 
 in the contemplation of things as the mind of 
 man can make them. This was the real world, a 
 world so easily entered, while the material world 
 was a vague, pale dream compared to this vivid 
 waking reality. 
 
 Meanwhile, below, Walter Cochran and Maud 
 had for ten minutes talked unmitigated fishing; 
 but Maud, though to talk fishing was in the gen- 
 eral way one of the most enthralling methods of 
 conversation, was giving lip-service only, for in- 
 wardly she regretted the finality of those few 
 little frozen words about Thurso with which she 
 had so effectually dismissed the subject of Chris-
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 87 
 
 tian Science and all they had talked about by the 
 river. For very shame or pride the two so ver- 
 bally opposed are often really identical she 
 could not go back again to the subject she had 
 so unmistakably snuffed out, while he, in his 
 confessed dislike of preaching, was equally un- 
 likely to lead the subject back again. But he had 
 said that though he disliked preaching, he loved 
 practice, and she had leaned forward over the 
 table, her pride in her pocket, to ask a question 
 about this, when an interruption came: one of 
 the nurses entered. 
 
 "I'm sorry to disturb you, my lady," she said, 
 "but I am sure Dr. Symes ought to be sent for. 
 Sandy Mackenzie had high fever an hour ago, but 
 I didn't like his looks, and I have just taken his 
 temperature again. It is below normal, and that 
 is the worst that can happen, suddenly like this. 
 Dr. Symes ought to be sent for immediately, and 
 I didn 't know who to apply to. ' ' 
 
 Maud got up. 
 
 " You did quite right to come to me, nurse," 
 she said. " I will send for him at once. It is 
 very serious." 
 
 " Yes, my lady, it means perforation," she 
 said. 
 
 Maud nodded. 
 
 " I will do everything," she said. " Thank 
 you, nurse."
 
 88 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 The nurse left the room, but Maud did not 
 move at once, for all that she had mused about 
 by the river yesterday came back to her mind 
 with the vividness and instantaneousness of 
 lightning. Only yesterday she had heard Mr. 
 Cochran tell Duncan that his wife was better, and 
 though she had been ill almost beyond hope of 
 recovery, yet all that day and all to-day she had 
 swiftly and steadily been mending. Thurso was 
 upstairs, too: the opportunity she had desired 
 was completely given her. And half-way across 
 the room to the bell she stopped. It seemed al- 
 most as if Mr. Cochran had expected this, for he 
 had wheeled round in his chair, and when she 
 .stopped he was facing her, quiet, cheerful, with 
 those strong, childlike eyes. 
 
 " Mr. Cochran," she began. 
 
 She took a step closer to him. 
 
 11 I don't know whether I am right to ask you 
 this," she said, " but, to begin with, if it is what 
 the nurse thinks, it is quite useless to send for Dr. 
 Symes. But I don't ask you in the spirit of de- 
 rision or of curiosity, for a life is at stake. Will 
 you go to poor Sandy and make him well? If 
 you say ' no,' I shall quite understand that you 
 feel, somehow, honestly I am sure, that it is not 
 right for you to do so. But I ask you ! ' 
 
 " Why, certainly I will," he said. " But if I 
 am to make him better, you mustn't, while I am
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 89 
 
 doing so, whether you think he is coming round 
 or not, send for the doctor. There must be none 
 of that. I will go to him if you wish, but then 
 the case is in my hands : ah, not mine, but in the 
 hands of Divine Love. It may take some hours; 
 I don't yet know how far he has encouraged 
 error, how thick a darkness he has made round 
 him. But if you ask me to make him well, be- 
 lieving that I can, I will do so. But you must 
 trust me completely. You mustn't ask it only to 
 see if I can." 
 
 Maud went through a long moment of dread- 
 ful indecision. She knew she was taking an aw- 
 ful responsibility on herself, for though, if the 
 nurse was right, Sandy was beyond human power, 
 yet it was a serious thing she was doing. And 
 as she hesitated he spoke again, still quite quietly, 
 quite cheerfully. 
 
 " Don't hesitate," he said. " Your choice is 
 quite simple. You choose the direct power of 
 God to make Sandy well, or you reject it. Don't 
 think for a moment that it is I who can make him 
 well. By myself I can do as little as the doctor. 
 So choose, Lady Maud." 
 
 She hesitated no longer. 
 
 " Please go to him," she said, " and, oh, be 
 quick. ' ' 
 
 The human cry sounded there: she was terri- 
 fied at her choice. And this stranger, whom she
 
 90 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 had seen yesterday for the first time, soothed her 
 like a child. 
 
 " Don't be frightened," he said. " You have 
 chosen rightly, of course, but I know the flesh is 
 weak. Or rather our faith is weak, while our 
 flesh is strong; it binds and controls one against 
 one's true will. Let me be silent a minute." 
 
 He moved his chair round again to the table 
 where they had dined, made a backward sweep 
 of his hand, to clear a small space, and leaned 
 his head on his hands, clasping his fingers over 
 Ms eyes to shut out all material things, and 
 brought his whole mind home to the one great 
 fact that he believed, the Presence, the Omnipo- 
 tence, the love of God. From fishing, from all 
 the ordinary preoccupation of life, from Thurso, 
 from Maud herself, he called his winged thoughts 
 home, and they settled in his soul like homing 
 doves. For a minute or two he remained motion- 
 less. Then he got up, and his face, ordinarily so 
 cheerful and content, was brimming over with 
 happiness so that he almost laughed. 
 
 " Come up with me, Lady Maud," he said, 
 " since you have asked me this in sincerity. I 
 should like you to see it since you are ready to 
 believe. Like the Israelites you shall stand still 
 and see the salvation of God." 
 
 Maud did not hesitate now. 
 
 " Yes, I will come," she said.
 
 The whole house, except the few rooms which 
 Thurso and she and their few servants used, had 
 been transformed into an hospital, and Sandy's 
 bed was in the little serving-room outside the 
 dining-room. There was space there for only 
 one bed, and the two under guidance of the 
 nurse passed through into it. Then Mr. Cochran 
 turned to her. 
 
 11 We will be alone here, Lady Maud and I," 
 he said. " Thank you so much for showing us." 
 
 She went out again into the big dining-room, 
 where some twenty beds had been put. Lady 
 Maud had said she would make all arrangements 
 for sending for Dr. Symes, and till he came noth- 
 ing could be done for Sandy, while there was 
 busy occupation for her all night long probably 
 with her other patients. She wondered for a 
 moment who this strong, cheerful young man 
 was, who had said with such assurance that he 
 and Lady Maud would be alone with Sandy, that 
 it never entered her head to question it : she won- 
 dered also, though again only momentarily, why 
 Lady Maud had come up with him. Then since 
 her hands were full with the needs of her other 
 patients, she dismissed the thought of Sandy until 
 the doctor's arrival. 
 
 Maud had never yet in her life seen any to
 
 92 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 whom that great ' ' White Presence ' ' which we call 
 Death has drawn near, but now when she looked 
 at this bed and the face of the man who lay in it 
 she knew that the supreme moment was nearly 
 come. Sandy, the gillie, she had known so well, 
 with whom she had passed so many sunny and 
 pleasant days on the moor or by the river, was 
 barely recognizable: a white pallid mask with 
 skin drawn tight over the bones of the face so that 
 it was scarcely human, was all that was left of 
 him. Both upper and lower lips, already growing 
 bluish in tinge, were drawn back so that in both 
 jaws his teeth were exposed, and his eyes, bright 
 and dry, looked piteously this way and that, and 
 the soul, frightened at this dark and lonely jour- 
 ney on which none could be its companion, sought 
 for comfort and reassurement, but found them 
 not. It was not the delirium of fever that made 
 those eyes so bright; it was fear and dumb ap- 
 peal. His hands, thin and white, lay outside the 
 coverlet, and they, too, were active, picking at it. 
 
 Cochran had seen that before and knew what 
 it meant, and he quickly pulled a chair close to the 
 bedside, leaving Maud standing. 
 
 Maud looked from that mask on the pillow to 
 the man who sat by the bed, and if the one face 
 was dark with the shadow of death that already 
 lay over it, the other was all lit and illumined 
 with life and the thought that inspired the words.
 
 
 'You are better already, you know, Sandy," he said. Chapter III.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 93 
 
 Yet though the evening was cool the beads of 
 perspiration already stood on his forehead. Then 
 Cochran closed his eyes from the glassy, tortured 
 face of his patient and said quietly and earnestly, 
 ' ' God loves you and will heal you, Sandy, do not 
 fear. He is the strength and the rock of your de- 
 fence now. You do not need to suffer." Then 
 sitting down he began his silent prayer. Without 
 once raising his eyes for nearly an hour, Cochran 
 knew silently and confidently that Life is God and 
 cannot be destroyed. 
 
 Sandy soon began to sleep in a quiet, gentle 
 way, and after watching him for a few minutes in 
 silence, Cochran slowly repeated the 91st psalm 
 aloud. 
 
 To Maud this new understanding of God and 
 Life filled her with surprise and wonderment. As 
 she watched Sandy pass from his delirium into 
 a sweet sleep, hope filled her with the buoyant 
 thought that this prayer was being answered now, 
 and that the last enemy had been met and de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 Cochran got up without another word, and in 
 silence they left the room. At the door Maud 
 looked back. Sandy was lying quite quiet with 
 closed eyes and mouth just slightly parted. 
 
 The nurse was moving about from bed to bed 
 in the big ward, and as they went through Maud 
 stopped to speak to her.
 
 94 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 " Sandy is ever so much better," she said. 
 " He has gone to sleep, I think. You won't dis- 
 turb him again to-night, will you! " 
 
 ' ' Not till Dr. Symes comes, my lady, ' ' she said, 
 11 if he keeps quiet. There is nothing to be done 
 by disturbing him." 
 
 Cochran was standing by, and it seemed to 
 Maud as if it was her duty to bear witness here 
 and now to what she had seen, to what she be- 
 lieved. 
 
 " There is no need for Dr. Symes to come at 
 all," she said. " Sandy is getting well. I have 
 not sent for him, and I shall not. ' ' 
 
 The nurse stared at her a moment in silence, 
 then went swiftly to the door of the room where 
 Sandy lay, opened it and looked in. After a mo- 
 ment she came out again, and closed it softly be- 
 hind her. 
 
 11 Why, he's getting some natural sleep! " she 
 said, " and he hasn't slept for the last three 
 nights. Of course, I won't disturb him. Yet his 
 temperature came down to below normal from 
 high fever in a couple of hours. Or could I have 
 made a mistake? ' 
 
 Cochran smiled at her. 
 
 11 Yes, nurse, I think there has been a mistake 
 somewhere," he said, " but it is all right now, 
 
 j 
 
 isn't it? Good-night. Sandy won't wake for 
 twelve hours or more, I think."
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 95 
 
 The two went downstairs again. Thurso was 
 still up in his bedroom, and they stood for a long 
 moment in silence. Then Maud suddenly looked 
 up at Cochran. 
 
 " I don't understand," she said. 
 
 " You did just now," he said, " when you told 
 Sandy the Truth was making him well. It's just 
 the simplest and truest thing in the world. But 
 I'll go now, Lady Maud. I've I've got more to 
 do." 
 
 Maud felt fearfully excited: all her emotions, 
 all her beliefs and aspirations, had been strung 
 up to their highest by what she had seen. Noth- 
 ing seemed to her impossible at the moment. 
 
 " Ah, make them all well," she cried. " Stop 
 this dreadful false idea of suffering and illness, 
 since you say it is false." 
 
 He made a gesture of dissent which she under- 
 stood. 
 
 " No, I don't mean that you can stop it your- 
 self," she said, " but, oh, can't you get God to 
 make them all know what Sandy knows now? " 
 
 He put out his hand to her. 
 
 " Don't you think that He is doing that? " he 
 asked. " You see there has been no fresh case 
 for two days." 
 
 " You mean it is stopping? " she asked. 
 
 " Oh, yes, of course it is! Good-night, Lady 
 Maud."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 IT was June, but no Londoner could possibly 
 have guessed it, because instead of the tempera- 
 ture being absolutely arctic, it was extremely 
 warm, a condition of things which we do not in 
 England associate with June. 
 
 The haze of heat which made a plum of Picca- 
 dilly, which the London County Council, after 
 their instructive visit to Paris, had widened at 
 least six inches, at enormous expense, dealed still 
 more magically, having better material to work 
 upon, with St. James's Park, as seen from the 
 windows of Thurso House, and also with Thurso 
 House and its windows as seen from St. James's. 
 For it was a house that looked as if it had been 
 taken straight off the Grand Canal at Venice, 
 with its stately white walls, its rows of long win- 
 dows and its noble proportions. In front of the 
 dining-room a huge terrace built above the offices 
 thrust out its broad, square front on to the edge 
 of the Park itself, so that the roadway of the 
 Mall was invisible to anybody sitting underneath 
 the big awnings that flapped gently in the warm 
 wind, and the eye looked straight across to the 
 hazy green of the grass and trees and the shim-
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 97 
 
 mering surface of the lake, where ridiculous peli- 
 cans and sea-gulls bickered and screeched over 
 the fragments of bread and biscuit thrown them 
 by the animal-loving Londoner as he passed over 
 the bridge from and toward Queen Anne's Gate. 
 On the other side, the dining-room and the big 
 drawing-room above it looked out over the pri- 
 vate gardens, and beyond a screen of lilacs, over 
 the Green Park, so that the house was planted, 
 even though the whole metropolis hummed and 
 clattered round it, in the centre of green and 
 growing things. 
 
 The dining-room was at the corner of the house 
 commanding both parks, and to-day the windows 
 were open on both sides, so that the lace curtains 
 swayed and bulged in the wind, while the bour- 
 don note of the busy sunny town came in like the 
 sound of great bees burrowing in golden flowers. 
 The room itself was parquetted in oak and wal- 
 nut, and was left bare, as befitted these summer 
 months, except for some half-dozen of silk Per- 
 sian rugs that made shimmering islands on the 
 sea of its shining surface. The two walls which 
 faced the Park were, to tell the truth, rather win- 
 dow than wall, and eight lights on the longer 
 wall and four on the shorter made other adorn- 
 ment, except for the brocaded curtains looped 
 back to allow the greatest manageable ingress of 
 light and air, impossible, but the other two walls
 
 98 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 glowed with the portraits of bygone Strattons. 
 The first Marquis of Thurso was there, a por- 
 trait in peer's robes by Reynolds, who also had 
 done the picture of his wife and the great family 
 group of them with their two young sons that 
 hung over the Italian chimney-piece; the second 
 Marquis, the eldest boy in the family group, was 
 there-, too, grown to man's estate and painted by 
 Gainsborough; the picture of his wife was a 
 Eomney, while Lawrence was the artist for the 
 third generation. Then after a long gap of years 
 came the present Thurso and his wife, two bril- 
 liant canvases claiming kinship by right of their 
 exquisite art with the earlier portraits. 
 
 Otherwise, for nothing could spoil these glori- 
 ous decorations of the walls, or the more smoul- 
 dering brilliance of the moulded ceiling, the room 
 did not at this moment appear to advantage, for 
 its floor was occupied by a multitude of small 
 round tables in preparation for the ball that was 
 to take place to-night, and at the end in front of 
 the chimney-piece was a long, narrow table for 
 the very elect. These were to be very elect, in- 
 deed, and heaps of stars and garters and ambas- 
 sadors would not find a place there to-night, but 
 be relegated to round tables. In any case, how- 
 ever, everybody was going to have proper things 
 to eat and drink, which should be presented to
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 99 
 
 their notice in decent fashion. There was to be 
 no buffet supper, where, as at a railway station, 
 Lady Thurso's guests would scramble for sand- 
 wiches and pale yellow drinks with mint and 
 anise and cummin floating about in them, among 
 footmen who jogged their elbows with plates of 
 strawberries, while the elect, Olympian-wise, re- 
 freshed themselves behind closed doors. To- 
 night, in fact, Thurso House was to be reopened 
 with a proper regard for its stateliness and the 
 huge hospitality that it ought to exercise, after 
 a period, so to speak, of ten lean years in which 
 the late lord had lived alone here with half the 
 rooms closed, a secret and eccentric life. He had 
 not even been wicked, and held infamous revels 
 here; he had only been morose and shut himself 
 up miser-like, and not entertained anybody. He 
 had died just a year ago, and to-night the house 
 was going to be re-launched. Lady Thurso 
 would almost have liked to re-christen it, too; 
 it was associated in her mind, and in the mind 
 of everybody else, with such a very disagreeable 
 old gentleman. 
 
 But Lady Thurso, during these ten lean years 
 in which she and her husband had " pigged 
 along," as she expressed it, in a pokey little 
 house in Grosvenor Square, owing to the tight- 
 ness of the purse-strings, had been far from idle
 
 100 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 in her preparation for the time when she would 
 be installed here. No one had a greater contempt 
 than she for the modern hostess who makes use 
 of her time and money only to give expensive 
 entertainments and to appear at them when they 
 are given by her friends. She had seen during 
 these ten years the invasion of London by those 
 whose sole invasive power was money and their 
 willingness to spend it to any extent in order to 
 be considered what is called " smart," and she 
 entirely disagreed with those conservative and 
 old-fashioned moralists who shook their heads 
 over the capitulation of London to the almighty 
 dollar. London all London that was worth any- 
 thing, that is to say had not in the least capitu- 
 lated to the almighty dollar, and those there 
 were many of them who thought that they were 
 making a great splash in the world merely be- 
 cause they were rich and willing to spend their 
 money on bands, prima donnas, and things to eat 
 and drink, made a great mistake. They never 
 got anywhere really: they never got intime with 
 the society they coveted. They thought they 
 were founding centres of smartness. As a mat- 
 ier of fact, they were only turning their houses 
 into free restaurants for the wealthy unem- 
 ployed, to which, with ordinary common-sense, 
 the world went to be fed. There were, of course, 
 Bothers, who had something else to back their
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 101 
 
 spending capacity, people who were witty, agree- 
 able, with the power to charm. Certainly their 
 wealth helped such of those who yearned for 
 social success, but it was not their wealth that 
 made it for them, but their wit. People would 
 always come to be fed, if the food was decent: 
 then they " wiped their mouths and went their 
 journey," while their poor, self-deceived host- 
 esses thought that they were going hand after 
 hand up the ladder. Lily Thurso being by birth 
 half American was a compatriot of many of 
 these, and her pretty little nose, slightly tip- 
 tilted, instinctively went in the air when she 
 thought of them. You could not get on or really 
 become of any importance merely by spending 
 money. In New York you could, and her com- 
 patriots she thought lacked a proper sense of 
 moral geography. Wealth in London brought 
 to your house the Hon. Mrs. Not-quite-in-it, in 
 shoals, but that was all. Or if you flew a little 
 higher in the way of mere intelligence, eatable 
 dinners would bring to your house the keepers 
 of the smaller national collections, plump little 
 gentlemen, for the most part, of harmless but in- 
 significant nature, who seethed with second-rate 
 and unreliable information both about the world 
 and about their art, and discovered second-rate 
 Titians and things. All that was second-rate, in
 
 102 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 fact, could easily be secured by money, but noth- 
 ing else. 
 
 At this moment she was sitting with Jim Strat- 
 ton, her husband's younger brother, and Ruby 
 Majendie, who, she hoped, was going to persuade 
 Jim to marry her, for the sake of the happiness 
 of them both, having lunch at one of those little 
 round tables, in order to see how the room looked, 
 and that while they ate, since hours were pre- 
 cious, Euby and she could direct the efforts of 
 those who were putting down carpets, bringing 
 in flowers, and decorating tables. Lady Thurso 
 had just given orders that all the hydrangeas, 
 of which a perfect copse had been made at the 
 far end of the room, should be taken away again, 
 for really the Italian fireplace was much more 
 decorative than these blue-blossomed shrubs. 
 
 " Besides, hydrangeas always remind me of 
 Mr. Turner James," she said in parenthesis. 
 
 " And what's that? " asked Jim. 
 
 " Oh, it's a little art gentleman; of course you 
 know him, because he is always the one person 
 there when one lunches or dines out whom one 
 doesn't know. He looks as if he was grown in 
 a pot in a moderately warm hothouse. I don't 
 know why I thought of him at this moment oh, 
 yes, because of the hydrangeas. You know when 
 hydrangeas begin to get stout Yes, take them
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 103 
 
 all away," she called out to the florist, who still 
 appeared to want to leave the " choicest " in the 
 grate. 
 
 The " choicest " were therefore removed also, 
 and while this was being done, they could talk of 
 other things. 
 
 Lady Thurso, inheriting the American love of 
 doing something which had never been done be- 
 fore, a thing which leads to failure in a dozen 
 cases and to brilliant success in the lucky thir- 
 teenth, had never been better inspired, for the 
 staircase, otherwise a rather heavy and not very 
 admirable feature in the house, had been glori- 
 ously transformed by this feathery and rustic 
 decoration. But poor Mr. Hopkinson's ignorance 
 of what wild flowers were, had been capped by 
 his ignorance of how wild flowers grew, and he 
 had begun to arrange the poor dears in neat rows, 
 as in a riband bed. Consequently he and his as- 
 sistant florists had, about twelve thirty that day, 
 to begin all over again, and under Lady Thurso 's 
 direct and mordant supervision, had first " made 
 a salad " of these fragrant hampers of flowers 
 and grasses, and then stuck them properly, that 
 is to say, at random, into the trays of moist clay 
 that lined each side of the stairway, and would 
 keep them alive and bright-eyed till morning. 
 And as soon as lunch was over, she went out to 
 see if poor Mr. Hopkinson had at length under-
 
 104 THE HOUSE OP DEFENCE 
 
 stood. He had : the staircase was a country lane, 
 exactly as she had visualized it. And somehow 
 with this adaptability that was as natural to her 
 as the change of color is to the chameleon, as she 
 stood below a clump of flowering hawthorn, she 
 looked, for all her " air of the world " and ex- 
 quisite rose-colored dress, like some visionary 
 milkmaid. But the milkmaid had the critical eye, 
 and she looked very slowly and carefully up and 
 down this delicious hayfield vista. 
 
 " More buttercups there," she said, pointing to 
 the place, " and one big bough of hawthorn at 
 that corner." 
 
 She waited, sitting down on the top step with 
 Euby till this was done. Then eagerly, though 
 carefully, she looked at it again. 
 
 " Yes, that will do," she said. "But I only 
 hope it won't give Thurso hay-fever. He and I 
 will have to stand at the top of the stairs till the 
 royal quadrille. He and Maud get here this after- 
 noon. ' ' 
 
 11 And the typhoid? " asked Euby. 
 
 11 All this last week there has been no further 
 case," said she, " so I hope it is really all over. 
 I want Thurso to be in town a bit before the end 
 of the season, otherwise I only heard from 
 Maud: she wrote chiefly about a Mr. Cochran, to 
 whom Thurso let the fishing. He is a Christian 
 Scientist, and she said she saw him cure a bad
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 105 
 
 case. It sounds interesting, and Maud never ex- 
 aggerates. I think I shall go in for Christian 
 Science next August." 
 
 " Why August? " 
 
 " Because I haven't got time in July, dear. 
 Oh, yes, Maud did not know that the fishing was- 
 let so like Thurso not to tell her! and was 
 caught by this Mr. Cochran poaching on his river. 
 He wasn't annoyed, it appears. Do you think 1 
 should never be annoyed if I became a Christian 
 Scientist? " 
 
 " I can't say; but I hope you wouldn't get the 
 Christian Science smile. It is particularly fatigu- 
 ing to look at. Alice Yardly has it: that is why 
 I can't look at her." 
 
 Lady Thurso was still not quite satisfied with 
 her staircase, or, at any rate, she wanted to be 
 sure that she was. So she paused a moment, with 
 her head on one side. 
 
 " Oh, be just, Ruby," she said. " Dear Alice 
 was always fatiguing, and I don't know that the 
 fact that she is a Christian Scientist now makes 
 her more fatiguing. It is true that she seems to 
 smile with a purpose, but, if we didn't know, I 
 don't think we should see any difference. She 
 means to be helpful now, but she is about as help- 
 less as before. I think you are uncharitable. Of 
 course nobody really can help one: one can only 
 help oneself. Well, I must go. I think it is
 
 106 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 too charming of you to stay and superintend 
 these stupid people. You won't let them touch 
 the staircase again, will you? It is just what I 
 meant it to be, or so nearly so that one is content 
 to run no further risks. And please throw all 
 gardenias out of the window if they bring any, 
 just as you threw all the calceolarias out. They 
 are what is called so ' powerful.' What a di- 
 vine expression! I'm sure somebody in Birming- 
 ham must have invented it. It is like talking of 
 a carriage-sweep or a soiled handkerchief." 
 
 Lady Thurso would probably have been very 
 much surprised if she had been told that she was 
 a genius, because she had a sort of idea that in 
 order to be, or rather have been, a genius, it was 
 necessary to live a most unsuccessful life, and to 
 die unnoticed (until afterward, when it was too 
 late) in a garret. But if the stock definition of 
 genius was at all correct, she had a very reason- 
 able claim to the title, for her power of taking 
 pains was really infinite. It made no matter what 
 she was engaged on; whatever she did, she did 
 with a transcendent aim for perfection, and 
 whether it was the decoration of her staircase or 
 the speech that she had to make at the Industrial 
 Sale, she bestowed on it the utmost effort of which 
 she was capable. She had another gift also to 
 cap this, which, though almost as rare, is almost
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 107 
 
 as remunerative: for when she had bestowed her 
 utmost pains, she could dismiss the subject from 
 her mind, and not worry any more at all about 
 it. Thus now, the moment that she had left her 
 door, the staircase decoration ceased to exist in 
 her mind, and the speech she was to make in a 
 quarter of an hour from now was non-existent 
 also, since this morning she had thought it over, 
 written it down, and said it aloud to herself until 
 she was perfectly satisfied that she knew what 
 she wanted to say and could say it. This being 
 so, she could and did devote herself as she drove 
 through this blue June of London to the fasci- 
 nating pursuit of simply looking about her. She 
 was the author, in point of fact, of a mot that 
 had gone all round London, to the effect that by 
 driving for an hour during the day, at the right 
 time and through the right streets, you could, 
 without exchanging a word with anybody, know 
 all that had been in the morning papers and all 
 that would be in the evening issues. In the course 
 of such a drive you could see the leader of what 
 had been the Opposition and was now the Govern- 
 ment stepping into a hansom with an elate but 
 anxious face at his door in Belgrave Square. 
 The hansom meant a sudden emergency, and 
 surely the goal was Buckingham Palace, and BO 
 the new Prime Minister was foreseen. Again in 
 Chesham Place you could see the Eussian ambas-
 
 108 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 sador stepping into his motor, with luggage on 
 the top. Clearly, then, there was some ameliora- 
 tion in Russian affairs, since he could not leave 
 town if the crisis was as critical as it had been 
 yesterday. The blinds were down where A was 
 very ill, the blinds were still up where B was 
 supposed to be dying. Therefore A had thought 
 worse of it and died; B had thought better of it 
 and still lived. Then there was a block at Hyde 
 Park corner, and the royal liveries flashed by. 
 She wondered if the new Prime Minister would 
 get to the Palace first. 
 
 For the last two years or so she and her hus- 
 band had been very little together, though they 
 both had the sense to avoid the possibility of scan- 
 dal in their being so much apart, for his short and 
 bitter summary of their mutual relations had been 
 very near the truth : he bored her, and she got on 
 his nerves. And whatever the higher code of 
 ethics might have to say on the subject, she felt 
 convinced that common-sense indorsed the policy 
 that they both pursued, in that they saw very little 
 of each other. Never had she admitted, either by 
 direct word or by unspoken implication, that he 
 bored her, and, to do him justice, never had he 
 admitted except to Maud the incompatibility of 
 their matrimonial association. If idle and stupid 
 tongues wagged about them she had no reason 
 to suppose that they did that was only the con-
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 109 
 
 cern of the idle and stupid, who might say what 
 they pleased. It could not concern any one vitally 
 constituted what suburban minds said to each 
 other when they met, so to speak, in semi-de- 
 tached villas. Much as she valued the world, 
 there were portions of it that she valued not at 
 all, and if the fact that she and Thurso were sel- 
 dom together concerned anybody, it only con- 
 cerned people who were entirely negligible. Re- 
 marks dropped from the garret into the gutter 
 could only hurt those who happened to be sitting 
 in the gutter. What really mattered was his com- 
 parative happiness and hers. She did not want 
 to be bored, he did not want his nerves set on 
 edge by her. She realized his side of the ques- 
 tion quite as keenly as she realized her own, nor 
 did she blame him because he bored her, any 
 more than she blamed herself because she made 
 him, as he would have expressed it, " jumpy." 
 
 Any one as efficient as Lady Thurso certainly 
 was has to march through life without impendi- 
 menta, and all emotional luggage which is not 
 likely to ' ' come in ' ' must be firmly thrown away. 
 She had long ago realized this and had always 
 acted on it, so that it was more from force of habit 
 rather than by any conscious effort that she elimi- 
 nated from her mind any emotion that was likely 
 to clog or hinder her energies. Worry, sorrow,
 
 110 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 regret for what was irremediable, she simply 
 threw away, as one throws the envelopes of 
 opened letters into the waste-paper basket. They 
 were of no earthly use, and you did not want 
 the drawers and compartments in your brain 
 crammed with rubbish like this. Thus it was but 
 very seldom that she let her thoughts dwell on 
 the one great thing that she had lacked all her 
 life. She had never loved. Her marriage with 
 Thurso had been an excellent, sensible arrange- 
 ment, and she had done as she was told and had 
 accepted him. Even as a girl she had wanted the 
 sort of position and opportunity that such a mar- 
 riage gave her, and she had made the most splen- 
 did success of it. She had done her duty, too, as 
 a wife, had given him two sons, and filled her 
 place superbly. But love had never really come 
 to her; that, by no fault of hers, had apparently 
 been left out of her emotional possibilities, and 
 since she was convinced that that omission was 
 not her fault, she did not worry about it. But to- 
 day, though she did not worry, she could not help 
 wondering about a certain time long past in her 
 life. It was conceivable that that time long past 
 would begin to be a factor of her life in the im- 
 mediate future, and as such it occupied her to- 
 day, now that the staircase and her speech at the 
 Industrial Sale were off her mind, somewhat in- 
 sistently. There was no mystery about it all, and
 
 THE HOUSE F DEFENCE 111 
 
 nothing whatever to fear either in the past or the 
 future. But certain dim possibilities interested 
 her. 
 
 Count Villars had just arrived in England, 
 having at an extraordinarily early age, for he 
 could not yet be forty, been appointed Hungarian 
 ambassador to the Court of St. James ; and there 
 were quite a number of people resident in that 
 parish who remembered very distinctly how des- 
 perately he had fallen in love with Lady Thurso 
 twelve years ago, when she had first come out, 
 and, as her mother .expressed it, taken " the 
 shine " out of the rest of the girls of the year. 
 Then, so the world still remembered, rather per- 
 plexing events had happened in rapid succession. 
 Her engagement to Count Villars had been an- 
 nounced, but hardly had that happened when it 
 was contradicted, young Villars, then a junior 
 secretary in the embassy of which he was now 
 the head, had been transferred elsewhere, and 
 immediately afterward Lily Etheridge's engage- 
 ment to her present husband took place, and was 
 followed before the year was out by her marriage. 
 For Mrs. Etheridge had always meant that her 
 daughter should marry Lord Stratton, as he then 
 was, and if anybody thought that her plans were 
 going to be interfered with by any volcanic young 
 Austrian, however brilliant or handsome, who 
 had not a penny of his own, and was half a dozen
 
 112 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 lives removed from the ownership of Villars 
 (those lives certainly made a lot of difference), 
 she would show him his mistake. There were, in 
 fact, many who thought so, but their mistake had 
 duly been demonstrated to them when Lily Ether- 
 idge so soon after became Lady Stratton. It had 
 been supposed, however, that Mrs. Etheridge had 
 experienced a certain difficulty in showing her 
 daughter her mistake in believing that she, hav- 
 ing actually told Rudolf Villars that she would 
 marry him, was going to do so, but that, too, had 
 been done. 
 
 Rudolf Villars, in this long interval of twelve 
 years, had done everything except marry, and 
 Fortune had clearly declared herself to be his 
 parent. His brilliant gifts had reaped their re- 
 ward, relations neither near nor dead had died, 
 and while not yet forty he was next in succession 
 to the large principality of Villars, and ambassa- 
 dor to the English Court. To the world at large 
 the situation which just now was rather largely 
 discussed had elements of interest; it was known 
 of course that Lily Thurso and her husband were 
 not romantically attached to each other; it was 
 conjectured that since Count Villars had remained 
 single he was still romantically attached to her, 
 and it was impossible not to help wondering 
 whether at last Lady Thurso would show signs 
 of being attached to anybody. To the world she
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 113 
 
 was, in one aspect, in spite of her cachet, her 
 brilliance, her charm, a somewhat irritating 
 enigma. All that queenliness of beauty belonged 
 to nobody; she did not care for her husband, but 
 she cared for nobody else. And so many men 
 had been wildly devoted to her, and none had had 
 a single particle of success. She was not shocked 
 at their declarations of love: had she been 
 shocked her attitude would at any rate have been 
 a moral and an intelligible one. But she merely 
 laughed at them, and told them not to be silly. If 
 they persisted she yawned. She forgot all about 
 it, too, a week afterward, even if they had made 
 her yawn very much, asked them to the house just 
 as usual, and was as friendly as possible. 
 
 Lily Thurso, as will have been gathered, did 
 her duty in the state of life to which her mother, 
 in the main, had called her, with extraordinary 
 fulness. She had grasped as soon as she mar- 
 ried almost the sort of life that her position en- 
 tailed if she was to fill it adequately and with any 
 credit to herself, and with all her splendid ener- 
 gies of body and mind, she lived up to a really 
 high ideal of it. Her time, her talents, her money, 
 were always at the service of any scheme which 
 she believed to be one which should be supported 
 by those in her position, and she brought to the 
 task not the bare sense of duty only, but a most 
 warm-hearted kindliness. The sense of duty
 
 114 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 alone is a barren road to tread, but her kindli- 
 ness, her interest in those who were in need, 
 made it for her to break out into flowers. She 
 genuinely cared for the causes to which she so de- 
 voted herself; she wanted everybody to have a 
 good time, and she knew that it was her own tire- 
 less efforts that gave her a good time herself. 
 But this kindliness which pervaded her nature 
 was the highest motive she knew: she did every- 
 thing warmly but nothing passionately, because 
 it seemed as if passion had been left out of her 
 nature. Yet sometimes, as this afternoon, she 
 wondered whether that was absolutely the case: 
 for though she had certainly not felt passion in all 
 the years of her married life, she still remembered 
 that blissful perplexity, which was half -bliss, half- 
 unhappiness, which she had known in those few 
 months which had culminated in her promise to 
 marry Eudolf Villars. Whatever that feeling 
 was, it had been a bud only, and had never ex- 
 panded into a flower, for swift maternal hands 
 had, without any figure of speech, nipped it off. 
 She had been called a sentimental school-girl with 
 such assurance that it had convinced her for the 
 time being. But to-day, when she knew that this 
 evening the man who had at any rate roused in 
 her the sentimentality of a school-girl would after 
 this long lapse of years come to her house again, 
 she wondered (though this was useless emotional
 
 THE HOUSE OP DEFENCE 115 
 
 baggage) what she would feel. She had not seen 
 him since; probably he was rather bald, rather 
 stout, rather of the diplomatist type which seemed 
 to her to be causelessly self-important. Very 
 likely, when his name was announced, she would 
 shake hands with a stranger. She almost hoped 
 that this would prove to be so. For she did not 
 want to feel again that trembling uncertainty, 
 that sense of unknown possibilities of overmas- 
 tering emotion, that she had felt twelve years ago. 
 Her life was very full, she enjoyed it enormously, 
 she was happy, she was nearly content. And she 
 did not, as far as she knew herself, wish to risk 
 terrible agitation and upheaval in order to be 
 possibly quite content. She had seen love, in 
 fact, like distant lightning on the horizon : she did 
 not want the thunder-storm to come closer. 
 
 Yet, yet . . . already in her summer of 
 life, she sometimes asked herself, " Is this all? " 
 It seemed a sorry comedy: to be gifted with so 
 much and to be able to realize so little was a poor 
 task for the appointed threescore years and ten 
 of life. If she had been really tempted to be what 
 moralists called wicked, that would have been 
 something, but she knew quite clearly and calmly 
 that she had never been tempted like that. 
 Frankly, she did not believe in God, in a huge 
 central force that was utterly good, and that being 
 denied her, she felt sometimes that it would have
 
 116 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 been some consolation to believe in the Devil. 
 But she did not believe in him either; the fasci- 
 nation of sin had as little existence for her as the 
 fascination of holiness. She was a strong, healthy 
 woman, with many opportunities for doing good, 
 of which she availed herself nobly, being of a most 
 kindly nature, and of the many opportunities that 
 she also had of being wicked she did not avail 
 herself, because she did not care sufficiently. 
 Morality had perhaps no existence for her, and 
 she was absolutely moral in thought and action 
 merely because she had no temptation to be other- 
 wise. To her, as a married woman, it seemed 
 rather bad form to have a lover. It was not dig- 
 nified: you had to play a part. But she realized 
 that if only she cared for any of those men who 
 certainly " cared " for her, no moral code would 
 have stood in the way of her doing what she 
 wanted. But she did not want : and she wondered 
 whether the failure to want was strength or 
 weakness. 
 
 The Industrial Sale went off with the success 
 that always attended any scheme that she took 
 up, and an hour after she had opened it most of 
 the stalls were nearly empty, though the prices 
 charged and paid for the objects sold were of the 
 most fancy order. She herself had, after she had 
 made the opening speech, sold stockings, nothing
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 117 
 
 but stockings, and all male London, it appeared^ 
 had been in want of stockings. They had been 
 frightfully expensive, but the sense of her own 
 cheapness in making them so was counteracted 
 by the knowledge of the good cause. Irish peas- 
 ants had made them, and she willingly lent her 
 position and her place in order that Irish peas- 
 ants might reap the benefits of what was adven- 
 titiously hers. She was sorry for people who 
 had to live like that: she willingly gave her time, 
 her energy, even her sense of " cheapness," to 
 help them. But before her stall was empty she 
 had seen somebody in the crowd whom she recog- 
 nized, though she had not seen him for so long. 
 He was neither bald nor stout ; he was as she re- 
 membered him. And again the distant lightning 
 flickered on the horizon. 
 
 Apparently, though he had only arrived in 
 England two or three days ago, he had more than 
 two or three friends here, and for half an hour 
 after she had seen him first he was occupied with 
 hand-shakes and recognition-speeches. Then, 
 after her stall, which had been besieged by buy- 
 ers, was bare, he passed and caught her eye. 
 
 " Ah, Lady Thurso," he said, in the accurate 
 foreign speech which she found now that she re- 
 membered so well, " a thousand greetings. I 
 tried to get near your stall, but it was impossible. 
 And one never wastes time in attempting the im-
 
 118 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 possible. But now you have nothing that I can 
 buy ; so I, as a purchaser, am impossible, too ! ' ' 
 
 She tried to say something natural : and since 
 the attempt to say something natural failed, she 
 was natural without trying. 
 
 " Yes, here I am,' ? she said^ " but I have sold 
 everything. You are too late." 
 
 " I was too early once," he said. 
 
 She who was generally so apt of speech, so 
 quick to take up a point, or drop it for another, 
 so as to avoid any pause, which she always said 
 was an insult to the person you were talking to, 
 as well as a dismal comment on the quality of 
 your own intelligence, let a perceptible pause en- 
 sue. For as she stood there, in one moment 
 twelve years had been wiped out of her life, some 
 thrill, some nameless bitter-sweet agitation, again 
 like the distant lightning flickered through her. 
 She was no stranger to that feeling; she had felt 
 it before. But for the moment infinitesimal in 
 duration it tied her tongue: it was like some 
 tune that we have heard in childhood, and sud- 
 denly hear again, so that we must pause and say 
 to ourselves, " Ah, what is that? ' 
 
 Then she recovered herself partly. 
 
 ' ' That is the diplomatist 's duty, is it not, ' ' she 
 said, " always to be a little earlier than other 
 people? "
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 119 
 
 She pulled herself together again, determining 
 on her attitude toward him. 
 
 " And your excellency is coming to our dance 
 to-night, are you not ? ' ' she said. 
 
 A faint smile quivered for a moment on his 
 mouth, and showed itself in his dark eyes. 
 
 " Yes, my lady," he said.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE epidemic of typhoid which had been so vio- 
 lent had ceased like one of Thurso's headaches; 
 it was as if a tap had been turned off, and after 
 the ball he had dropped no word to indicate that 
 he intended to go North again. This quite fell in 
 with his wife's desires, for she wished him for 
 many reasons to be in London and with her for 
 a time, and since the night of the ball an extra 
 reason had been added, namely, that she knew that 
 people were " wondering ' about herself and 
 Count Villars. The memory of the world gener- 
 ally is very short: the events of one week are 
 quite sufficient to put out of its head those of the 
 week before, but when it does happen really to 
 remember a thing its memory has the tiresome 
 tenaciousness of a child's. You may change the 
 subject, you may point to bright objects, you may 
 rattle with toys, but the world, like the child, 
 though it may be distracted for the moment, gets 
 a glassy eye again and says, " But what about? ' 
 The world was doing it now, and she felt that 
 Thurso's presence gave a better chance of dis- 
 tracting the world again than any bright objects 
 she might dangle before it. The ball had been
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 121 
 
 a very bright object indeed; it differed somehow 
 in kind from other functions. Other functions 
 might have all London assembled in a beautiful 
 house, with a beautiful band, with everybody in 
 their crowns and tiaras, but all the world knew 
 that Lady Thurso had hit the very top note that 
 time, the top note that is struck only once in the 
 season. What the top note was it was difficult to 
 say, just as it is difficult to say why the same ingre- 
 dients can make two perfectly different puddings, 
 except that it depends on the cook. That ball 
 anyhow, though perhaps the same people had 
 been to twenty other balls, and that the ingredi- 
 ents were the same, was the ball of the year, and 
 it was useless for others to compete. That huge 
 success, the wild-flower staircase, might have had 
 something infinitesimal to do with it: that glori- 
 ous dining-room, not turned upside down and 
 smothered in flowers, might have helped, for the 
 chic of not decorating a room at all, but keeping 
 it as it always was, so that apparently you could 
 have this sort of entertainment without fuss or 
 bother of any kind, was undeniable. Yet, again,, 
 nobody could turn their staircase into a hayfield 
 without bother. So the upshot was that Lady 
 Thurso alone knew how to do it, what to keep as 
 if " a few friends " only were coming in, what 
 to decorate and how to decorate it, what to say, 
 how to look, what to wear. She had looked, it
 
 may be remarked, magnificent, and wore rubies. 
 The top note had been sounded, as clear as a 
 musical glass. 
 
 But much as the ball was talked about, she knew 
 that Count Villars and she were talked about 
 more. Wherever people met together during the 
 week afterward, the ball of course had to be men- 
 tioned, but afterward an invariable question 
 came, "Is he still devoted to her? ' And the 
 number of comments on that, the interpretations, 
 the guesses, would have satisfied any of those 
 myriad women whose ideal of life is to be talked 
 about in that sort of way. Unfortunately, Lily 
 Thurso did not belong to those ranks; it gave 
 her not the slightest pleasure to know that a situ- 
 ation that concerned her like this, concerned any- 
 body else. Had she, when she had met Count Vil- 
 lars again, said to herself, " Can it be he? I 
 should never have known him! " she might not 
 have cared in the smallest degree what anybody 
 chose to say. But she had not said that ; instead, 
 something within her, independent of her own 
 control, it seemed had said ' ' Eudolf . ' ' The emo- 
 tional history which had been interrupted twelve 
 years ago on its very first page had gone on just 
 where it left off. That vague girlish excitement 
 and troubled joy was hers again. But now her 
 twelve years of womanhood wrote their comment 
 on the text. Passion had not been awake in her
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 123 
 
 then : the potential fire had not been supplied with 
 fuel. But now in this hour of her life was the 
 light of dawn, pale and uncertain then, ready to 
 blaze into mid-day? Already she feared to ask 
 herself that. 
 
 The pretence of playing at being strangers, 
 when she at the bazaar had called him ' i your ex- 
 cellency," had broken down with singular com- 
 pleteness. That very night he had established a 
 footing of old friendship to which, to do him jus- 
 tice, he was perfectly entitled. She could not de- 
 fend herself against -Vat, she could not resent it. 
 Years ago he had loved her, and had asked her to 
 marry him, and if that does not entitle a man to 
 take the attitude of an old friend when next re- 
 lations of any sort are resumed, there is nothing 
 in the world that does. Also and this was not 
 a minor point she had accepted him and thrown 
 him over. Neither by look nor by word did he 
 appear to cast that up against her now. Yet 
 though in the week that had passed he had as- 
 sumed so justly his right of friendship, he im- 
 plied much more. She knew perfectly well that 
 he still loved her, and on the night of the ball he 
 had let her know that, and had then never re- 
 ferred to it again. But as he went away then, he 
 said: 
 
 " They told me you were more beautiful than
 
 124 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 ever, and I said it was not possible. But they 
 were right." 
 
 He was florid perhaps: his manners, excellent 
 though they were, had always been a little florid. 
 But he was always sincere. He felt things vividly, 
 and thus expressed them. 
 
 It was characteristic of her and of the worldly 
 wisdom with which she always ordered her life 
 that she crammed into the week that followed the 
 ball things which would ordinarily have taken 
 even her ten days to get through. She had seen 
 at once that a question of some importance would 
 some time have to be answered, and having made 
 up her mind as to what her answer would be, she 
 also made it impossible for herself, as far as was 
 in her power, to leave herself any time for recon- 
 sidering it. She had, as has been said, no real 
 moral code to refer it to; she had been born, 
 as many people are, without a moral sense, and 
 her upbringing and environment had not spon- 
 taneously generated it. She did not, for instance,, 
 steal, not because it was wicked to steal, and the 
 commandment told you not to, but because it was 
 mean and nasty, like going about with dirty 
 gloves. And as regards other things, no sense of 
 morals dictated decision now. To put it baldly 
 and blankly, as she did to herself, here was a man 
 who had loved her twelve years ago, and she felt 
 certain still loved her. But she was Thurso's
 
 THE HO USE OF DEFENCE 125 
 
 wife. Other wives but she reflected that that 
 was not her business. Worldly wisdom, how- 
 ever, said much more than this to her. It would 
 be absurd to appear to be a stranger to Count 
 Villars; if she avoided him, did not treat him 
 with the friendliness that was only his due, the 
 world would certainly say that she avoided him 
 in public to meet him in private. That, she knew, 
 was ridiculous, since London life was a glass case 
 of publicity, but her correct attitude, obviously, 
 was to be friends with him. It was here that 
 Thurso's presence in London was desirable; the 
 whole affair was delicate, and if he was some- 
 where in Caithness, where there might be typhoid 
 or there might not, her position was more difficult. 
 That the opinion of the world was unduly impor- 
 tant to her was very likely to be true, but she lived 
 in it. 
 
 Lady Thurso had a charming place on the 
 Thames, just below Maidenhead, which had been 
 left her by her mother, and here she often enter- 
 tained from Saturday till Monday, not with any 
 mistaken notion that it was a rest after the bustle 
 of London to get into the country, but in order 
 to bustle more than ever. London, it is true, was 
 bustle enough, but the London bustle did not pub- 
 licly begin till eleven or so, unless she was seeing 
 writers of socialistic articles. Whereas, at Bray 
 Court, the bustle began earlier, since, as this was
 
 126 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 the country, it was necessary to play a round of 
 golf or row wildly on the Thames, or bathe in that 
 long-suffering river before the day began at all. 
 Thurso was coming down with her, and they left 
 Thurso House together after luncheon on Satur- 
 day. Maud had, so to speak, engaged a bedroom, 
 but as she had not appeared when the motor came 
 round, it was obvious that she was going to find 
 her way on her own account. 
 
 11 Well, she's not here," said Lily, as she 
 stepped into the car, " and really we can't wait, 
 Thurso. Unless we start now, people will get 
 there before we do, and you can't do that in the 
 country. ' ' 
 
 11 No, it's as well to be at one's house if one 
 has asked. people to stay in it," he remarked. 
 
 He got in after her, but stood for a moment 
 with his hand on the door, as if waiting to give 
 Maud another minute. Her eye happened to fall 
 on it, and she saw it was trembling. The next 
 moment he sat down, caught her eye and looked 
 away again flushing a little. There was some- 
 thing furtive about the movement, which was un- 
 like him. But all this week she had been a little 
 uneasy about him; he had seemed nervous, easily 
 startled, uncertain of himself. And as they 
 started, though caresses were not frequent be- 
 tween them, she laid her hand on his.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 127 
 
 " Thurso, old boy," she said, " are you well? 
 There is nothing the matter with you? " 
 
 " Perfectly well, thanks," he said. " I don't 
 know why you, ask." 
 
 " You don't look very well. Maud said, too, 
 that you had had several very bad headaches up 
 North." 
 
 ' ' I have had no return of them since I came to 
 town," said he. 
 
 The footman had got up by the chauffeur, and 
 the big Napier car bubbled and whirred to itself 
 a moment, and then slid noiselessly off with rapid 
 but absolutely smooth acceleration of its pace 
 over the dry street. The roadway was very full, 
 but it flicked in and out of the moving traffic, 
 dancing gently on its springs, with the precision 
 of a fish steering between clumps of waving water- 
 weeds. It seemed more like a sentient animal, a 
 horse with a fine mouth, than a machine, or as if 
 intelligence and discernment, a brain of exquisite 
 delicacy, lived in the long bonnet, rather than 
 merely wheels and cylinders. It slackened its speed 
 before it came to any block in the traffic, as if 
 scenting it from far off ; it cut in and out of mov- 
 ing cabs and omnibuses as if possessed of occult 
 knowledge with regard to the pace they were 
 going, and what lay ahead of them ; it foresaw im- 
 pediments to its running that seemed as if they 
 could not be foreseen, and found openings that
 
 128 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 appeared invisible. But all down Piccadilly 
 Thurso seemed very nervous, he could hardly 
 sit still, but kept shifting in his seat, frowning 
 and even once calling out to the chauffeur, who, 
 as a matter of fact, was one in a thousand, bid- 
 ding him take care, and go more quietly through 
 the jostle of vehicles. This, again, was quite un- 
 like him, and his wife watched him narrowly and 
 attentively. But when it came to his calling out 
 to the inimitable Marcel, who would sooner have 
 scraped all the skin off his own hands than let 
 another vehicle scrape one grain of paint off the 
 the splash-board of his beloved car, she could not 
 help protesting. 
 
 11 My dear Thurso," she said, " what is the 
 matter ? He is driving absolutely carefully. ' ' 
 
 Thurso frowned and spoke irritably. 
 
 " I don't think he is at all," he said. " But 
 women are never satisfied till they've had a 
 smash. ' ' 
 
 This again was utterly unlike him : his tone dis- 
 tinctly failed in courtesy. 
 
 11 If you are nervous, I will set you down at 
 Paddington," she said, " and you can take the 
 train." 
 
 " That is absurd," he said shortly. 
 
 They went on in silence for a little and Thurso 
 made a great effort to pull himself together. He 
 knew quite well that his nerves were out of order,
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 129 
 
 and though it was true that he had no headache 
 since coming to town, that was because he had al- 
 ways stopped it coming on by the liberal use of 
 that drug which never failed. Nor had he taken 
 it only for those purposes, and he knew in him- 
 self that he had begun to be dragged into the 
 habit as a man whose clothes are caught between 
 revolving cog-wheels is bound to be dragged in, 
 unless by a superhuman effort he can break away. 
 It was now two days since he had touched it, and 
 he had promised himself as a reward for his ab- 
 stinence a dose of it when he got down to Bray. 
 After that, so he had planned, he would begin to 
 break away from it again: his next treat should 
 be three days afterward : his next four days. But 
 during the last week in Scotland he had taken it 
 every day and sometimes twice. That would 
 never do : he would at once set about the task of 
 breaking himself of it. That must be done by 
 degrees, however ; the intervals between his treats 
 should become longer and longer till he craved 
 for it no more. Craved? How he craved now! 
 It was that which made him so nervous and irri- 
 table. Meantime, it was important that Lily 
 should not think that anything was wrong. So be- 
 fore the pause after his last rather snappish reply 
 to her had become long, he spoke again in a dif- 
 ferent tone. 
 
 " You must forgive me for speaking rudely,"
 
 130 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 he said, " and I am sure that Marcel is really 
 careful. But I had rather a trying time up in 
 Scotland, and Dr. Symes told me my nerves were 
 a little jumpy. But it is nothing. He said the 
 best thing I could do was to come down here and 
 amuse myself, and forget all about the typhoid. ' ' 
 
 " Won't you see a doctor? " she asked. 
 
 " No, there's not the slightest need." 
 
 " But it's so nice to be told there is nothing 
 wrong, ' ' she said. 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 ' l Oh, I am sure of that without seeing one, ' ' he 
 said. 
 
 The house at Bray was long and low and ram- 
 bling, standing in the middle of flower-beds and 
 lawns and stiff box-hedges cut into shape, which 
 screened it from the river, so that the Sunday 
 afternoon crowd could not, as in most of the 
 riverside houses, observe exactly who was there 
 and what they had for tea. Indeed, had it not 
 been for this impenetrable hedge, what they had 
 for breakfast, lunch, and dinner would have been 
 equally clear, for Lady Thurso had built a big 
 open pavilion on the lawn, where, when the day 
 was hot, it was pleasanter to have all meals. 
 Another pavilion on the opposite side of the lawn 
 served as drawing-room or card-room, and often 
 nobody really set foot in the house at all from
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 131 
 
 breakfast till bedtime. A dozen guests were all 
 that the house itself would hold, but if, as often 
 happened, people proposed themselves at the last 
 moment, it was possible to get accommodation for 
 them at a neighboring hotel, where they retired 
 for the night. To-day, however, there was going 
 to be no sleeping out. It was doubtful, indeed, 
 whether the house itself would be quite full. 
 Maud was certainly coming, Count Villars and 
 Alice Yardly and her husband were certainties, 
 as also were Jim Stratton and Ruby Majendie, 
 and a couple of American cousins had proposed 
 themselves, but that only brought their number 
 up to ten. Lily hardly knew whether she was or 
 was not glad of this. For once, it is true, she 
 would have a quiet Sunday, but she was a little 
 worried, not only about the emotional history of 
 her own which has been touched on, but also about 
 her husband, and she was not sure that she would 
 not have preferred rush and bustle. Yet, after 
 all, with only these few people in the house, she 
 could keep herself fairly well occupied. The 
 American cousins, too, a plain elderly millionaire, 
 dyspeptic and rather mournful, with his wife who 
 was young, voluble, and carried about with her, 
 as it were, pails of gross and fulsome flattery, 
 with which she whitewashed everybody, would 
 want a little management. Lily, however, never 
 neglected even the most distant cousins when they
 
 132 THE HOUSE OFDEFENCE 
 
 came to England, for she had inherited from her 
 mother that idea of American hospitality which 
 makes all other hospitality churlish in compari- 
 son, and did not consider her duty as done when 
 she had asked even the most undesirable cousins 
 to dinner. She acknowledged to herself that these 
 particular ones were a little trying, but she ac- 
 knowledged it to nobody else. Silas P. Morton, 
 in fact, and Theodosia, whom he always addressed 
 slowly as Theodosia, giving each syllable its full 
 value, had arrived before they got there, and met 
 them hospitably at the front door. 
 
 " Why, if this doesn't tickle me to death," ex- 
 claimed Theodosia, " to receive you at your own 
 house, Lily; and how are you, Lord Thurso, and 
 my, what a beautiful motor ! Silas and I got here 
 just half an hour ago, and your servants brought 
 us tea right away out on the lawn and made us 
 ever so much at home. But as I'm forever say- 
 ing to everybody, ' Lily Thurso is just perfect, 
 and everything she has is just perfect her hus- 
 band, her houses, her dress, her motor-car.' 
 Don't I, Silas? " 
 
 There was never any silence when Theodosia 
 was present. She was usually talking when some- 
 body else was talking, and she was always talking 
 when nobody else was. 
 
 " Don't you what, Theodosia? " said he.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 133 
 
 " Don't I always tell everybody that Lily 
 Thurso is just perfect ? Why, your ball the other 
 night I've seen a good many balls, but never 
 have I seen anything like that. I guess you're 
 proud of your wife, Lord Thurso. And I guess 
 she's proud of you." 
 
 This was all very pleasant, and Theodosia kept 
 it up. She was never tired or silent, and it was 
 a matter of serious conjecture whether anything 
 known to happen would make her stop talking. 
 She talked all the time she was at a dentist's, even 
 when her mouth was full of pads and gags, and 
 she had once talked without intermission through 
 a railway accident. At intervals the voice of her 
 husband said ' ' Theodosia ! ' ' like a clock striking, 
 but the ticking went on in spite of it. 
 
 " And if that isn't the cunningest yew hedge I 
 ever saw," she said, " with doors cut in it just as 
 if it were a wall, so that you can see the river 
 through it. Lord Thurso, can you see the river 
 through it from where you're sitting? Silas, 
 change places with Lord Thurso, because I want 
 him to see the river through it. My, look at that 
 bug! What do you call them! Oh, yes, butterfly 
 what a beauty! Why, if it isn't going to settle 
 right here on the arm of my chair. Isn't it tame? 
 The bugs in America aren't half as tame as that. 
 Are they, Silas! " 
 
 Lily finished her tea with extraordinary celerity
 
 134 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 and got up. It was she who had asked Theodosia 
 here, and she did not for a moment repent hav- 
 ing done so, but she began to foresee that it would 
 be necessary to provide Theodosia with relays of 
 companions who should take her for little walks 
 and little excursions in the punt and drives in the 
 motor, if she wanted to save her Saturday till 
 Monday from shipwreck. She thanked Heaven 
 that Maud was coming, who was always so serene 
 in dealing with impossible people, and listened to 
 their impossible conversation in a manner that 
 was quite marvellous. Clearly, also, it was by a 
 direct dealing of Providence that Alice Yardly 
 was of this party, for Alice asked for nothing 
 more than to be allowed to talk. She was per- 
 fectly happy sitting opposite somebody who 
 talked simultaneously so long as she was not in- 
 terrupted by violent things like direct questions. 
 Theodosia never asked them. She asked ques- 
 tions by the score, but never required any an- 
 swer. Alice and she talking to each other would 
 be a most happy pair. 
 
 So she took Theodosia now to the river, and 
 punted her about, " punted her around " was 
 Theodosia 's subsequent phrase for it, and when 
 they returned it was to find that everybody who 
 was expected had arrived and had gone to their 
 rooms to dress. The evening was divinely warm, 
 and dinner was to take place out of doors in one
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 135 
 
 of the pavilions. Lady Thurso was a quick 
 dresser, and though everybody else was already 
 dressing, she found that she had ten minutes to 
 spare after she had shown Theodosia her room. 
 So, instead of going at once to dress, she went to 
 Maud's room. Maud was betwixt and between, 
 with a river of hair flowing goldenly down her 
 back, and much excursive geniality. 
 
 " Dearest Lily," she said, " but it was too aw- 
 ful of me, and I hope you didn't wait. I was late 
 for lunch, and late starting afterward, and as 
 there were other people going to Taplow, I mo- 
 tored down with them. Isn't the country look- 
 ing too divine? Did Thurso come with you? Do. 
 stop and talk to me for five minutes. I know you 
 dress like lightning. How many maids surround 
 you? Three, is it? Oh, what fun all last week 
 has been. You really do give your relations a 
 good tune. And it's an old-established custom 
 for you to smoke a cigarette while you wait till 
 it's time for you to dress. Do smoke! ' 
 
 Lady Thurso lit a cigarette, and catching 
 Maud's eye nodded in the direction of her maid 
 and spoke in French. 
 
 ' ' Send her away for a few minutes, ' ' she said. 
 
 Maud gave a little giggle of laughter. 
 
 " What a bad language to choose," she said r 
 " because Hortense is French. Aren't you, Hor-
 
 136 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 tense? Will you go away, please, and come back 
 when her ladyship leaves me f ' ' 
 
 Then Maud turned to her sister-in-law. 
 
 " Now, dear Lily, what is it! " she asked. 
 
 11 Well, first, do be very kind, Maud, and take 
 Theodosia away on all possible occasions, so that 
 she gets on Thurso 's nerves as little as may be. ' ' 
 
 Maud brought a long braid of hair round her 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Then I know what you really want to talk 
 about," she said. " Theodosia first, and after- 
 
 ' ' Exactly. Thurso 's nerves. He was fearfully 
 jumpy coming down, and I 'm sure he isn 't well, ' ' 
 she said. " Has he been having bad headaches 
 up in Scotland? " 
 
 * * Yes, day after day, ' ' said Maud. 
 
 She paused a moment, wondering whether she 
 had better say what was on the tip of her tongue. 
 Then she settled to do so: after all it was her 
 brother's wife to whom she was talking. 
 
 11 He had to get through his day's work, too," 
 she said, " and I think he took laudanum rather 
 freely. I was anxious about that, too. I think he 
 ought to get a doctor's advice about it." 
 
 11 Ah, but his headaches have ceased," said 
 Lily, with sudden relief; " he told me he had not 
 had one since he came to town. ' ' 
 
 "I'm very glad," rejoined Maud, " because
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 137 
 
 Well, it can't be a good thing to get in the habit 
 of taking that stuff, only while he was up there 
 he had to get relief somehow. But of course if 
 he has had no return of them, one needn't be anx- 
 ious any more. ' ' 
 
 Lily looked at her and then spoke quite quietly. 
 
 " You are not telling me quite all," she said. 
 " I think you had better." 
 
 Maud had no inclination to do otherwise; even 
 if Lily had not guessed this, she would probably 
 have told her. 
 
 " Quite true," she said. " And it is this. He 
 has begun to take it for its own sake. Coming up 
 in the train, for instance, he thought I was asleep, 
 and I saw him yes, I spied on him, if you like 
 I saw him go to his bag, take out the bottle and 
 take a dose. He had no headache, he was never 
 better. He wanted the effects of it. It was a 
 big dose, too, double the ordinary one, I should 
 say. ' ' 
 
 Lady Thurso said " Thank you, Maud," and 
 was silent again. " What do you advise? " she 
 asked at length. 
 
 ' ' Get him to see a doctor. ' ' 
 
 11 He won't. We must think it over. Of course 
 it is desirable that I should appear to find out 
 what you have told me for myself find out, that 
 is to say, that he is taking this stuff. ' '
 
 138 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 " You may say I told you, if that will do any 
 good," said Maud. 
 
 Lady Thurso went down the passage to her 
 room. Outside Thurso 's dressing-room was 
 standing his valet, and a sudden thought occurred 
 to her. 
 
 " Is his lordship dressed, do you know? " she 
 asked. 
 
 " No, my lady, his lordship told me he would 
 call me when he began, ' ' said the man. 
 
 She went to the door, tapped and entered. 
 
 " Flynn told me you weren't dressing yet," 
 she said, i l and I wanted to talk to you a moment. 
 I'm afraid you must take in Alice Yardly and 
 have Theodosia next you. But we'll change about 
 to-morrow. ' ' 
 
 Thurso was lying on his sofa doing nothing, 
 with no book and paper near him. He had not 
 been sleeping apparently, for his eyes were wide 
 and bright. He laughed as she spoke. 
 
 * ' Why should we change about to-morrow ? " he 
 said. " I delight in Theodosia. I delight in 
 everything to-night. Is it dressing time? Don't 
 let's have dinner till half -past eight. It is ab- 
 surd dining at eight in the summer, and the hours 
 before dinner are so delicious. I don't feel as if 
 I could dress yet." 
 
 Lily had walked to the window and was observ- 
 ing him closely. He stretched himself luxuriously
 
 THE HO USE OF DEFENCE 139 
 
 as he spoke, and she saw he had a cigarette in each 
 hand, both of which were burning. 
 
 * ' Is that a new plan, ' ' she said, * ' smoking two 
 cigarettes at once ? ' ' 
 
 " Yes, so far as I am concerned, but not origi- 
 nal. Don't you remember the Pirate King in 
 ' Peter Pan ' smokes two, or was it three, cigars 
 together. The moral is that you can't have too 
 much of a good thing : one should take one 's pleas- 
 ures thick, not thin. I am enjoying myself. It 
 was an excellent plan to come down here. How 
 wonderful the light is, how good everything 
 smells! " 
 
 He turned a little on his sofa, so that he faced 
 her as she stood by the window with the light shin- 
 ing on to her delicate profile. 
 
 ' ' And, my God, how beautiful you are, Lily ! ' ' 
 he said. 
 
 She left the window and came and stood close 
 to him. She felt certain as to what he had been 
 doing; she had been with him before when lau- 
 danum gave him relief from one of his headaches. 
 
 " Thurso, have you had any headache to- 
 day? " she asked. 
 
 " Headache? No! I've forgotten what head- 
 aches are like." 
 
 " Then why have you been taking laudanum, 
 opium, whatever it is? " she asked.
 
 140 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 " I haven't," he said, stumbling for a mo- 
 ment on the word. 
 
 She went quickly across to the washing-stand, 
 took up a glass that stood there and smelled it. 
 
 " Where is the use of saying that? " she asked. 
 
 He got up quickly, ashamed of having lied to 
 her, and ashamed of his stupidity in not being 
 more careful. But his shame was infinitesimal 
 compared to his anger with her. She had come 
 in and smashed up all his happiness; instead of 
 that wonderful sense of well-being, of utter phys- 
 ical and mental contentment, he felt only furi- 
 ously enraged against her. He had taken his 
 laudanum, and what right had she to break in 
 upon the divine effects of it, robbing him of what 
 he had bought and paid for? 
 
 " And where is the use of your interfering like 
 this? " he said. " You have spoiled it all now. 
 It would serve you right if I took another dose 
 now and did not come down to dinner. You 
 know nothing about it at all. I was a martyr to 
 those headaches up in Scotland, and I began, 
 yes, I began to get into the habit of it. But I am 
 breaking myself of it. Till to-night I hadn't 
 taken any for two days, and I was not going to 
 take any more for three days, and after that for 
 four. You seem to think ... I don't know 
 what you think." 
 
 She felt more tenderly toward him at this mo-
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 141 
 
 merit than she had felt perhaps for years. His 
 weakness, his voluble incoherent weakness, as of 
 a child making excuses, touched her. 
 
 " Oh, Thurso, you don't know what a danger- 
 ous thing you are doing," she said. "Do be a 
 man, and don't think about three days and four 
 days, but stop it now at once. The longer it goes 
 on the more difficult you will find it. Give me the 
 bottle, or whatever it is, like a good fellow, and 
 let me throw it away. You will be glad you have 
 done so every day of your life. ' ' 
 
 The effect of the drug was still on him, en- 
 hancing the beauty of the light and of the coun- 
 try smells, enhancing, too, her beauty as she 
 pleaded with him. His anger died down, and as 
 for his shame, her appeal somehow mitigated 
 that. The habit he had begun to form was not 
 yet deeply rooted, his will was not yet overcome, 
 and all his best self told him that she was right 
 beyond any need or possibility of argument. He 
 unlocked his despatch box, and took out a bottle, 
 half empty. 
 
 " Yes, you are right," he said; " here it is. 
 Don't despise me if you can help it, Lily." 
 
 " Thank you, Thurso," she said, " thank you 
 most awfully. You will be so glad." 
 
 She went to the window and poured the brown 
 fluid out among the leaves of the creeper. Then 
 she flung the bottle into the shrubbery.
 
 142 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 " I ought to thank you," he said. " And I do. 
 Thank you, dear." 
 
 The evening was extraordinarily warm and 
 windless, and though Mr. Silas Moreton sent for 
 a black and white plaid which he put round his 
 shoulders for fear of chills, no one else felt the 
 necessity of extra wraps, and after dinner a 
 bridge table was started for the two Americans 
 with Euby and Jim Stratton, while the others 
 preferred for the present to wander about in the 
 dusk. The light still lingered in the sky, and the 
 smooth surface of the river lay westward in 
 pools and reaches of reflected sunset. White 
 moths hovered over the garden beds, emerging 
 every now and then from the darkness into the 
 bright light cast by the lamps in the shelter in 
 which they had dined, and the odors of night be- 
 gan to steal about. Lily, when they rose from 
 the table, found Count Villars by her side, in- 
 clined for a stroll, and leaving the others they 
 went down through the door cut in the box hedge, 
 to catch the last of the evening light on the river. 
 Woman of the world though she was, and skilled 
 at directing talk into channels in which she 
 wished it to flow, she still felt a little nervous 
 with him. At dinner he had been the polished, 
 suggestive talker, but it had seemed to her all
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 143 
 
 the time as if he was talking from the surface 
 only, saying the quick, glib things that came so 
 easily to him. And when they had separated 
 themselves from the others, she found her im- 
 pression had been correct. 
 
 " It was so good of you to ask me here," he 
 said, " because that means that you admit me 
 again to friendship and intimacy with you. At 
 least, I take it at that." 
 
 He found and struck a match to light his cigar- 
 ette, holding it in hollowed hands, so that the 
 flame vividly illuminated his face. He had 
 changed extraordinarily little: his dark eyes still 
 had the fire of youth in them, and his face had 
 neither grown stout nor attenuated : his hair was 
 still untouched by gray, and a plume of it hung 
 as she had always remembered it, a little apart 
 and over his forehead. He wore neither mus- 
 tache nor beard, and a very short upper lip 
 separated his rather large and essentially mas- 
 culine mouth from a thin aquiline nose. Then 
 as he chucked the match away, he threw his head 
 back with the gesture she knew so well. 
 
 "Or is that presumptuous of me? " he said 
 gayly. " I charge you to tell me that, and not 
 let me go on being presumptuous uninten- 
 tionally. ' ' 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 " Not in the least presumptuous," she said.
 
 11 One asks any one to one's house if there is a 
 crowd there, for what does it matter who comes 
 in a crowd? But here in the country, one only 
 asks the people one wants to see. And the more 
 one wants to see them, the smaller is the party to 
 which one asks them." 
 
 11 That is encouraging," he said. " It is kind 
 of you. Now, dear Lady Thurso, we have not 
 seen each other for a long time, and though old 
 histories are tiresome, I do want to know one 
 thing. Never mind the history, the events, but 
 are you happy ? Have you been happy? ' 
 
 She paused a moment. 
 
 " Yes, immensely happy," she said. " At 
 least my life suits me, which I suppose implies 
 happiness. I am what is the cant phrase? in 
 harmony with my environment. And you? " 
 
 " Ah, well, I have been ambitious, and I have 
 got what I wanted. I suppose I should be con- 
 tent with that. But when I accepted this post in 
 England, I did it because I wanted something 
 more. ' ' 
 
 " And you have got it? " she asked. 
 
 " You have just promised it me, your friend- 
 ship. I was very anxious about that." 
 
 She laughed again, conscious of a determina- 
 tion not to let the conversation get deeper than 
 this. But for the moment it was out of her 
 hands, for he went on in that cool, quiet voice,
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 145 
 
 separating each word from its neighbor, giving 
 each its individual value. 
 
 " People who have been old friends," he said, 
 " often make a great mistake in thinking over 
 and wondering about the past. I assure you I 
 am not going to do that. I am more than con- 
 tent to take up the present, just as it is, fragrant 
 with the promise of your friendship, and fra- 
 grant, too, with the knowledge that you have 
 been happy. I would have given my whole life 
 to make you that, and now that it has come to 
 you without any effort on my part, why, let us 
 rejoice over the economy of my energy! " 
 
 They had come to the end of the /path by the 
 river, where a gate bordered on the high road 
 outside, and paused a moment before retracing 
 their steps. A big yellow moon had risen over 
 the trees to the east, so that while the western 
 part of the sky still glowed with sunset, the east 
 was flooded with that cold white flame that turns 
 every color into ivory or ebony. And this 
 strange effect was reproduced on his face, as he 
 stood facing north, for the warmth of color from 
 the west shone on one cheek and on the other the 
 white coldness of the moon. And, fantastically 
 enough, she seemed to read his words in a double 
 light: they were cordial and generous enough, 
 but was their generosity that of a fisherman 
 who trails a gift of free food only the free food
 
 146 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 has a hook inside it which will capture and bring 
 his prey to him? 
 
 But then instantly she told herself that she 
 was utterly unwarranted and unjustified in such 
 a conjecture. His words had been absolutely 
 guileless, nor had she the slightest cause for in- 
 terpreting them otherwise. What she had done 
 was to read into them the knowledge that twelve 
 years ago she had treated him abominably, and 
 credit him with a desire for revenge. It was for 
 that reason that she had a touch of distrust to- 
 ward him. She feared him, too. Beneath his 
 quiet, kind words there was a sense of mastery, 
 that he was doing as he meant to do, that, as he 
 had said, he wanted many things and got them. 
 What, then, did he want of her? He had told 
 her: her friendship. 
 
 It was like him, too, like his consummate clev- 
 erness, which it required a certain perception to 
 see at all, so subtle and natural was it, to say 
 these deep and serious things about her happi- 
 ness and her friendship, things which he knew 
 well would remain in her mind, and be food for 
 thought, and round off the sentence with a pure 
 triviality of light conversation about the econ- 
 omy of energy. He dangled it before her, as a 
 rescuing rope may be dangled before some one 
 at the bottom of a deep well, and, exactly as he 
 had intended, she instantly seized it, thinking it
 
 was she who had without transition changed the 
 conversation, whereas it was he who, having 
 said his say, had done so. 
 
 " I really don't know if one ought to rejoice 
 in economy of energy," she said, as they turned 
 to walk back. " There is such an enormous lot 
 of energy in the world, almost a glut of it. I 
 know I have quite as much as I have any use for. 
 I should find more of it embarrassing." 
 
 " You are admirable," he said. " I believe 
 there is never a kind scheme brought before you 
 to which you do not give your real support, not 
 the mere buttress of your name, but your time, 
 your pains, your speech. But you see you econ- 
 omize energy in other directions." 
 
 " What directions? " she asked. 
 
 " Emotional. You never worry, do you? You 
 never regret. You never allow passion of any 
 sort to master you." 
 
 This again was rather more intimate than she 
 liked, yet somehow she did not resent it. Per- 
 haps it would be true to say she could not resent 
 it, for in his very gentleness there was inherent 
 a strength that made resentment futile: you 
 might as well resent the slow moving on of a 
 glacier. It would do no good resenting it, and 
 Lily always set her face against doing things 
 that were no good. 
 
 " No, I don't think I worry," she said.
 
 148 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 Then suddenly she told herself she was being 
 afraid of this man, and her next words, simple 
 and short as they were, required a certain effort 
 of courage, for she asserted herself against him. 
 
 " And certainly I never regret," she said. 
 " People talk of destiny as if it was a force out- 
 side themselves. If I thought that, I should, no 
 doubt, sometimes regret the dealings of destiny. 
 But I don't. In all important decisions destiny 
 is really one's own will. And my will isn't weak, 
 I think. I will what I will. Is that nonsense? ' 
 
 " No, very admirable sense," said he. " And 
 what if another's destiny or will comes into con- 
 flict with yours? ' 
 
 ' ' Oh, then one has to fight, ' ' said she. 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 11 In all your battles may success ever attend 
 the most deserving! " he said. 
 
 11 That is ambiguous," she said. " That may 
 be a curse, not a blessing, on my arms." 
 
 11 You think, then, I am so disloyal as to be 
 able to imagine that any one is more deserving 
 than you? " he asked. 
 
 Again he was a little flowery: he was almost a 
 little fruity. 
 
 " You still delight in phrase, I see," she said. 
 
 11 Phrases are often quite sincere," he said. 
 
 They joined the others after this, and not long 
 after Lily suggested adjournment, as they had
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 149 
 
 all come down to the country to rest, and herself 
 went upstairs immediately. But the rest for 
 which she had come into the country did not im- 
 mediately come to her, and though she was usu- 
 ally an excellent sleeper, first one thing and then 
 another kept her from crossing the drowsy bor- 
 derland. Now it would be Thurso who pulled 
 her back into waking consciousness, and the won- 
 der what was the wise step to take about him. 
 You couldn't play with drugs like that. . . . 
 Yet he had allowed her to throw that bottle 
 away. True, but what if he sent for another? 
 Then her mind went swiftly forward over the 
 events of the next week: it was crammed full of 
 things to do ; she was glad of that, for she would 
 have no time for thought. She did not want to 
 think . . . then she turned on her side and 
 began to do so. 
 
 Why had Rudolf Villars come back to trouble 
 her tranquillity? He said he had come back 
 really to gain her friendship. But what if she 
 could not give it him, what if her friendship 
 meant something more? She felt sure he loved 
 her; she wished she felt sure that she was not 
 beginning to love him. No one else had ever 
 affected her like that. She resented that . . . 
 yet she had said that it was a person's own will 
 which was usually destiny, and her will was per- 
 fectly made up on the subject. But what if it
 
 150 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 came into conflict with another will? She was 
 afraid of him, too ... or, was it of herself 
 that she was afraid? 
 
 Round and round in her head went the inces- 
 santly turning wheel of thought. She thought of 
 Thurso again, and of the danger in which he 
 stood, then again she thought of Rudolf Villars, 
 and . . . did she, too, stand in danger? 
 
 She had drawn back her curtains, leaving only 
 the blind to cover the wide open window, and 
 the moon outside shone full on it, making all the 
 furniture and details of her room vividly visible. 
 The walls were white, the sofas and chairs were 
 white also, and on her toilet-table glimmered the 
 silver of the mirror-frame and the silver handles 
 of brushes and toilet articles. How much or how 
 little these familiar things meant to us! How 
 external sights and sounds and objects could be 
 soaked with emotion, and how again they could 
 be just like dry sponges, hard and gritty almost 
 to the touch. But all she saw here, in this her 
 bedchamber, was no more than dry sponge, no 
 wine or liquor of love had soaked into these 
 things. All her life she had missed that, and 
 how much that was she was beginning to guess. 
 'Arry and 'Arriet in the street, who changed hats 
 and shouted songs, were so infinitely richer than 
 she, in spite of all she had, her position, her 
 beauty, her gifts, her kindliness. All these
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 151 
 
 should have been the trappings and harness 
 of the chariot of love. Without it they were 
 remnants, odds and ends, fit only for a jumble 
 sale. Once she had had, perhaps, the opportu- 
 nity of knowing what it was; but she had been 
 very young then ; she could not guess how all-im- 
 portant was her choice, and at that age her 
 mother's will rather than her own had been her 
 destiny. . But now, she knew, that gift, which 
 she had rejected before, was coming nearer 
 again to her: it would be offered again. 
 
 Yet still her will was her destiny, and sooner 
 than play with these thoughts and admit argu- 
 ment over them, she got up, meaning to read a 
 book till sleep came to her. The book she wanted 
 was on the table in the window, and without 
 striking a light she crossed over to it. The 
 clock on the mantelpiece had only just chimed 
 two, and a light shone from under the chink of 
 the door on the left that led to Thurso 's dressing- 
 room, so that she knew the house was not asleep 
 yet. Also from outside she heard the subdued 
 crunch of gravel underneath the heel of some 
 one who still loitered there, and simultaneously 
 some one (the loiterer probably) began whistling 
 a little tune below his breath, a little Austrian 
 folk-song that she had not heard for years. But 
 that, that simple little melody, was soaked and 
 dripping with emotion for her.
 
 152 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 Lily leaned farther out, her bare white arms 
 crossed on the sill. The glamour of the night 
 whereof that low- whistled melody seemed the key- 
 note and inspiration was strong upon her. 
 
 The moon threw black weird shadows on lawn 
 and shrubbery. Darker than the surrounding 
 shade, his white shirt-front faintly visible against 
 the dense shadow of a clump of yews, stood Vil- 
 lars. In his hand glowed the tip of a half -smoked 
 cigarette. Lily could feel his eyes upon her al- 
 though his face at that distance was but a pale 
 blur. 
 
 And thus they stood, he and she, for perhaps a 
 full minute ; darkness and light barring the stretch 
 of lawn between them; they two alone in all the 
 world. Then 
 
 From the hither side of the line of shrubs rose 
 a faint, crackling noise, as of a twig snapped un- 
 der a stealthy foot. Lily's eyes instinctively fol- 
 lowed the trend of the sound, and rested on a fur- 
 tive, crawling Something burrowing its way on 
 all fours along the hedge. 
 
 Grotesque, amorphic, the Thing progressed; 
 now rising, now flattening Itself against the earth ; 
 constantly pausing to examine various portions of 
 the shrubbery. Breathless, Lily watched It's 
 movements, until, her gaze growing accustomed to 
 the hedge-thrown shadows, she saw that the prowl- 
 ing creature was a man; creeping silently along
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 153 
 
 on all fours, feeling to right and to left as though 
 for something he had lost. Lily's first thought 
 was that the intruder was a burglar and in search 
 of his concealed lantern or kit of tools. If he 
 should come upon Villars standing so unsuspect- 
 ingly, a bare twenty yards away, on the farther 
 side of the shrubbery! She had drawn in her 
 breath for a cry of warning when the cry died in 
 a noiseless gurgle in her throat. 
 
 For the Unknown had momentarily entered a 
 patch of white moonlight, and the rays fell full 
 on his face. He was Thurso. 
 
 The momentary exultation following on the 
 Earl's scene with Lily earlier in the day had 
 quickly faded. All the more quickly when he had 
 realized that by an act that now struck him as 
 madly Quixotic, he had deprived himself of the 
 phial which held such boundless potential sur- 
 cease for him. Ordinarily, he would not have de- 
 sired the drug again so soon; but the bare fact 
 that it was now wholly inaccessible that he could 
 not, if he chose, secure a drop of it so excited 
 his imagination that the craving rushed back on 
 him with tenfold force. 
 
 He could not leave his guests to go or even send 
 to Windsor to the nearest chemist's for another 
 supply ; and when at a later hour he was free, all 
 shops were of course closed. Hence, as the even- 
 ing progressed, the longing fiercer for the in-
 
 154 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 ability to gratify it grew beyond all endurance. 
 He could not sleep. The memory of the precious 
 bottle hurled out into the shrubbery rose again 
 and again before him. Into the shrubbery he 
 remembered that the phial had a narrow neck. 
 The fall, unless the glass receptacle had smashed 
 from impact with the soft turf, could not wholly 
 have emptied it. There must be some at least 
 part of a dose left in it. If only he could find 
 the discarded phial. 
 
 It was absurdly easy to pass unnoticed from the 
 house and to gain the friendly shelter of the shrub- 
 bery. Here somewhere was the bottle. But it 
 is hard to find a missing object, even in a circum- 
 scribed space, by night. Over and over the ground 
 he crept, bruising and cutting his fingers in vain 
 groping for the coveted treasure. He could fancy 
 how its cool, polished surface would feel ; how he 
 would lift it to the light to see how much of the 
 divine elixir remained in it. How 
 
 The brushing of his face against a leafy twig 
 filled his nostrils with the sickly smell of lauda- 
 num. Like a discouraged fox-hound that unex- 
 pectedly picks up the scent, Thurso's spirits rose 
 with a bound. Here, or near here, the phial must 
 have struck; its contents spattering the shrubs. 
 If only too much had not been wasted! 
 
 Disregarding caution, Thurso * ' beat ' ' the sur- 
 rounding turf, fumbling at the roots of the hedge.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 155 
 
 Plunging forward in a momentary loss of balance 
 he threw out his hands to keep from falling. His 
 fingers closed about a damp, chilly surface. In 
 another instant the phial was in his hands. A 
 delicious thrill of relief swept across him, leaving 
 him faint. 
 
 But at the next moment, firm, light footsteps 
 crossing toward him from the farther side of the 
 hedge, drove the blood back in a wave to his heart 
 and set him trembling. If Lily or his sister should 
 have seen him and 
 
 With childish fury he resolved not to be de- 
 prived of the joy that he had so hardly acquired. 
 He lifted the phial to his mouth and swallowed. 
 It contained more of the liquid than he had 
 thought ; more than ever before he had taken. He 
 crouched in the shadows and waited for the first 
 dull sensation of numbness and nervous relief that 
 should herald his approach to Eden. And as he 
 waited the footsteps drew nearer, passed him and 
 moved into the full moonlight beneath Lily's win- 
 dow. 
 
 Thurso looked up and recognized Villars. He 
 remained spellbound and speechless as -his eyes 
 devoured the silent figure and his brain slowly be- 
 gan to grasp the possible reasons for its presence. 
 
 A gust of wrath pierced the sweet numbness 
 that enveloped Thurso 's senses. Staggering to 
 his feet, for he was cramped from long, tense
 
 156 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 stooping, he hurried out into the moonlight in 
 pursuit. 
 
 The double dose of laudanum, following so soon 
 on its predecessor, had already begun to work 
 upon mind and body. It was strangely easy to 
 move. And the night was very beautiful. More 
 beautiful than any the world had ever known. A 
 night of the gods ; and he, a god, in full possession 
 of its glories. He must share its beauties, its in- 
 toxicating wonders, with some one. There was Vil- 
 lars! How opportunely he happened to be there 
 at the moment ! But then, everything was oppor- 
 tune, perfect. 
 
 " Villars," he murmured, touching the other's 
 shoulder, and there was a dreamy ecstasy in his 
 voice that the Count's swift start and look of 
 alarm could not mar, " Villars! Did you ever 
 know there could be such a night as this? You 
 look like a Greek god, posing here in the moon- 
 light. I wonder I never before realized what a 
 classic face and splendid figure you have! Look 
 there to the left. Do you see that bright track 
 over the river, leading straight to within a few 
 feet of the farther bank! I always used to think 
 that track was made of moonlight. But it is not. 
 It is of silver purest silver. And you and I are 
 going to be the first mortals to walk across it. ' ' 
 
 As he had been speaking, Thurso had continued 
 to move toward the river, drawing the dum-
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 157 
 
 founded Villars along with a grip from which 
 there was no escaping. They neared the bank. 
 
 ( ' To think ! ' ' murmured Thurso in utter ecstasy, 
 " that it should have been reserved for us two, 
 of all the world, to be the first to pass along that 
 silver track. Don 't hesitate, man ! It 's the heaven- 
 sent chance of a lifetime." 
 
 For Villars, with his foot on the sloping brink, 
 had sought to draw back. But his strength was 
 puny and useless against the mad power of his 
 guide. 
 
 ' ' Have no fear ! ' ' laughed Thurso, ' ' I will hold 
 you in safety. Come ! ' 
 
 Up to his knees the frightened Austrian was 
 dragged into the cold water. He could not swim, 
 and the black depths before him yawned menac- 
 ingly. The madman, a rapt look on his white face, 
 took no note of the water, but pressed on. A last 
 futile struggle, a gasping cry of horror from Vil- 
 lars, and the river had risen to their waists. 
 
 " Thurso! " 
 
 It was Lily's voice. Standing on the bank, her 
 loose white dressing gown fluttering in the night 
 breeze, she called gently, yet commandingly. 
 
 The Earl turned. 
 
 "It is a goddess ! " he muttered ; ' ; Venus 
 Anodyomene! " 
 
 Releasing the trembling Count, he stumbled 
 blindly back to shore.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MAUD was lying in a long chair on the lawn the 
 next afternoon, defending Christian Science 
 from the tongues of the mockers, of whom there 
 were many. She had an ally, it is true, in Alice 
 Yardly, who in her big hat and white dress with 
 a blue sash, looked like a doubtful Eomney, and 
 was smiling, literally, with all her might. The 
 more the mockers mocked the kinder and wider 
 grew her smile. As an ally, however, Maud for 
 her part would sooner have done battle alone, for 
 Alice was rather of the nature of an ally whose 
 main work was to reveal to the enemy the weak 
 points in the fortifications and the undefended 
 angles. Wherever so Maud felt there was any 
 possible difficulty in " the scheme of things en- 
 tire " Alice Yardly was there waving a large 
 cheerful flag to call attention to it. 
 
 11 No, I'm not a Christian Scientist, Thurso," 
 said Maud, " and I only told you all at lunch, 
 because I thought it would interest you what I 
 actually saw. Sandy, the nurse said, was abso- 
 lutely dying, and though it was really no use, she 
 wanted Dr. Symes to be sent for. Well, I didn't 
 send for him, but I went up with Mr. Cochran,
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 159 
 
 and I saw Mr. Cochran pull Sandy out of the 
 jaws of death." 
 
 "Be fair, Maud," said Thurso; "tell them 
 what Dr. Symes said when he came next morn- 
 ing." 
 
 " I was going to: he said he had known cases 
 where the temperature went suddenly down from 
 high fever to below normal, and it did not mean 
 perforation. It meant simply what it was the 
 sudden cessation of fever and nothing else. ' ' 
 
 Alice Yardly leaned forward. 
 
 " Mortal mind had caused the fever origi- 
 nally, ' ' she said, * * and it was the belief that mor- 
 tal mind had caused it that Mr. Cochran made 
 Sandy perceive. So he was able to throw off 
 the false claim that he had fever, knowing that he 
 couldn't have fever since fever is evil, and Infi- 
 nite Love cannot send evil to anybody. It was 
 knowing that that made his temperature go 
 down, and let him get well. It was only with 
 his mortal mind that the fever could be perceived, 
 since there is no real sensation in matter, just as 
 he had caught it originally through mortal mind. 
 But Immortal Mind knows there is no sensa- 
 tion in matter and so no disease; as David said: 
 ' Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by 
 night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day,' and 
 when Sandy by the truth of immortal mind per-
 
 160 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 ceived that, of course the false claim of temper- 
 ature ceased and it went down." 
 
 Maud gave a sigh, not of impatience but of very 
 conscious patience, which is near akin to it. 
 
 " Darling Alice," she said, " you haven't un- 
 derstood a single word from the beginning; Mr. 
 Cochran didn't make his temperature go down." 
 
 " No, of course not," said Alice, " it was 
 trust in Immortal Mind that did that, for as soon 
 as Sandy perceived " 
 
 Maud sat up and clapped her hands. 
 
 " I will finish one sentence just for once," 
 she cried. " You don't understand: it was the 
 suolden subsidence of temperature that was the 
 dangerous symptom. Mr. Cochran demonstrated 
 because Sandy's temperature had gone down. He 
 had nothing to do with bringing it down. ' ' 
 
 Alice's smile suffered no diminution. 
 
 " Fever cannot be sent by Immortal Mind," 
 she said, " because fever is evil, and the belief 
 in it is a function of mortal mind. No evil can 
 happen to any one who roots out the beliefs of 
 mortal mind, and no drug can have any effect, 
 beneficial or harmful, unless the person who takes 
 it believes with mortal mind in its effect." 
 
 Thurso entered the arena. 
 
 11 Then if I thought that large quantities of 
 prussic acid for breakfast would be good for me, 
 they would be good for me? " he said.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 161 
 
 " If you drink any deadly thing it shall not 
 hurt you," quoted Alice. 
 
 " My! " said Theodosia, " you'd better be- 
 come a Christian Scientist at once, Silas. Silas 
 adores, he just adores, English beer, but it's ab- 
 solute poison to him. Now, Lady Yardly, how 
 did he get the idea that English beer was poison 
 to him? It disagreed with him from the first 
 moment he put his lips to it. ' ' 
 
 " Theodosia," began Silas. But he was not 
 permitted to continue. 
 
 11 Intoxicant drinks are in themselves evil 
 things," said Alice. " You will find that in Mrs. 
 Eddy's miscellaneous writings. I never touch 
 them." 
 
 Count Villars joined in. 
 
 " That is taken to prove it? "he asked politely. 
 " Is Mrs. Eddy always inspired? Cannot she 
 have attacks of error or mortal mind? Is it not, 
 as Oliver Cromwell said, just possible that Mrs. 
 Eddy made a mistake? I should have thought 
 one might find instances where intoxicating fluids 
 had possibly saved life in cases of exhaustion or 
 exposure to cold." 
 
 Maud broke in again. 
 
 " Dear Alice, you are leading everybody away 
 from the point, you know, ' ' she said ; ' ' you really 
 do go on saying ' Cuckoo, cuckoo,' long after 
 the hour has struck. I want to talk about one
 
 1(52 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 thing, and you are encouraging Thurso and Count 
 Villars to talk about others. I did see, and I stick 
 to it, I did see a man, who was past human power, 
 pulled back into life by Mr. Cochran. Also I 
 have only his word for it, but that seems to me 
 a very sound thing, as you would all think if you 
 knew him he told me he was demonstrating over 
 the whole outbreak of fever. Well, no fresh case 
 occurred after he had begun doing that. ' ' 
 
 " My! " said Theodosia again, " I wish he 
 would come to New York when the influenza was 
 about. I guess influenza needs a lot of demonstra- 
 tion. Why, if there isn't the motor coming round, 
 and I'm not ready yet." 
 
 Thurso got up too. 
 
 " Well, who wants to go over to Windsor, and 
 who wants to go on the river, and who wants to 
 do nothing! " he asked. 
 
 This broke up the conference, as it was de- 
 signed to do. Count Villars and Lady Yardly 
 expressed a preference for the river, Thurso and 
 Theodosia with her husband went to Windsor, 
 Ruby Majendie and Jim had already vanished, 
 and Lord Yardly murmured something about let- 
 ters and went toward the house. In consequence, 
 Maud and her sister-in-law, both of whom pre- 
 ferred to do nothing whatever, were left alone. 
 There had been a certain design about this, 
 though successfully veiled, on Lily's part. She
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 163 
 
 wanted to talk to Maud, and very gentle hinting 
 had been sufficient to make other people choose 
 other things. Count Villars seemed disposed to 
 reconsider the respective values of the river and 
 the lawn when he realized what the disposition 
 of the party was, but he was already committed 
 and did not attempt diplomatic evasions which 
 would have deceived nobody. 
 
 The rest of the party dispersed in their vari- 
 ous directions, and it was not till the motor had 
 crunched the drive, and the steam launch puffed 
 its way past the yew hedge, that Lily spoke 
 again. 
 
 " Tell me more about this Mr. Cochran," she 
 said. 
 
 Maud was already half -immersed in her book: 
 she had been quite unconscious of Lily's diplo- 
 macy. She started, however, when the question 
 was put to her, and flushed a little. 
 
 " There really is no more to tell," she said. 
 " I think I have told you all. By the way, he is 
 coming to town some time this month. You 
 could see him if you wanted. He did cure Sandy : 
 also he cured Duncan Eraser's wife. I am con- 
 vinced of those things. Then there is the other 
 fact: the typhoid ceased when he, so to speak, 
 took it in hand. Of course, you may say it was a 
 coincidence: you may say that those cures, too, 
 were coincidences. But when coincidences come
 
 164 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 in a bunch like that, one wonders if there is not 
 some well, some law which lies behind them 
 and accounts for them." 
 
 She paused a moment. 
 
 " A lot of apples and other things fell to the 
 ground, ' ' she said, l ' and Newton deduced the law 
 of gravity from them." 
 
 Lily Thurso lit a cigarette, and threw the 
 match away with quite unnecessary vigor. 
 
 ' * What a fool Alice Yardly is ! " she observed. 
 11 She is, isn't she? Somehow if a person talks 
 such abject nonsense as that about anything, one 
 concludes that the subject she is talking about is 
 nonsense, too. But it doesn't follow. And Mr. 
 Cochran doesn't talk nonsense? " she asked. 
 
 11 No. He isn't the least nonsensical. As you 
 see, he goes and cures people when they are really 
 ill, instead of, well, guessing. He's a very good 
 fisherman, too." 
 
 Lily could not help laughing, Maud had men- 
 tioned this in a voice of such high approval. 
 
 " But isn't that inconsistent? ' she asked. 
 " If you don't believe in the reality of death, it 
 seems to me odd to go and kill things. ' ' 
 
 " Oh, I think it's inconsistent," said Maud, 
 " and so does he. But did you ever see anybody 
 who wasn't inconsistent? I never did. I never 
 want to, either he would be so very dull. Like 
 a chronometer."
 
 " And Mr. Cochran isn't? ' 
 
 Maud raised her eyebrows, and dropped the 
 book she was reading. 
 
 11 Dear Lily," she said, " are you fishing? " 
 
 Lily laughed again. 
 
 " I think I am," she remarked. 
 
 " About me? Of course, I will tell you then 
 and save you the trouble. I am not in the least 
 in love with Mr. Cochran, nor have I the smallest 
 reason to believe that he is in love with me. That 
 was the sort of fishing you meant, wasn't it? 
 Brutally put, was it that? ' 
 
 " Yes, to be frank. Now I want to talk about 
 something quite different. I went straight to 
 Thurso's room last night after seeing you. He 
 had just taken laudanum. Not because he had 
 any pain. He told me so. But he let me pour 
 the rest of it out of the window, which I did. ' ' 
 
 For obvious reasons Lady Thurso omitted all 
 mention of her action's sequel. 
 
 Maud's face, which had been one of amused 
 merriment at her accurate conjecture as to her 
 sister-in-law's fishing, grew quite grave again. 
 
 11 That is something," she said. 
 
 " Yes, it is a bit of cotton wool with chloro- 
 form on it, which you put into a decayed tooth, 
 to stop its aching," she said. " But what after- 
 wards? Something permanent has to be done."
 
 166 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 Lily bent forward and picked up the book that 
 Maud had let fall. 
 
 " Advise me, dear Maud," she said. 
 
 " You are troubled about it? ' she asked. 
 11 You are really troubled? I was too, by the 
 way, but all this delicious week in London made 
 me forget." 
 
 " I am horribly troubled," said Lily. " I I 
 am troubled all round. Do talk do reassure me. 
 You are so simple and straightforward." 
 
 This was quite true. Maud was possessed of 
 a well-spring of transcendent honesty ; sometimes 
 she found that to be a convenient gift, because 
 people trusted her; sometimes it was incon- 
 venient, since she had to live up to it, and at this 
 moment was forced to reconsider a recent state- 
 ment of hers. 
 
 " Oh, Lily, how tiresome you are! " she said, 
 in a tone of deep reproach. " I tell you the 
 truth, as far as I can, then you probe me further. 
 At least I suppose you are fishing again." 
 
 Lily smiled. 
 
 " I was not, but I am," she said. " What is 
 it?" 
 
 " Oh, it's me," said Maud despairingly. " It's 
 me and our Mr. Cochran. Lily, I do like him 
 awfully; I like him most awfully. No one has 
 ever attracted me like that. I I could put all 
 my affairs into his hands with the utmost con-
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 167 
 
 fidence. He is so strong, you know. We women 
 want somebody awfully strong, don't we? Some- 
 body who would make you go on playing Bridge 
 in the middle of an earthquake. Well, he is like 
 that. I said I was not in love with him. I thought 
 it was true but I don't know. Perhaps being 
 in love means that. You see, it has never hap- 
 pened before to me. I can't recognize it, or say 
 ' This is love,' because I haven't seen it before. 
 But you can tell me. When you said you would 
 marry Thurso, was it that, or something like that? 
 Oh, dear, poor Mr. Cochran! He hasn't shown 
 the slightest inclination to ask me to marry him. ' ' 
 
 There was a fine irony about this, and Lily 
 Thurso, despite the previous discussion on Chris- 
 tian Science, felt at that moment much inclined 
 to believe in the inherent malice of chance ques- 
 tions. But her answer was according to the spirit, 
 though not strictly in accordance witE the letter. 
 
 " Give him his chance then, Maud," she said. 
 " I think entirely as you do. It is strength that 
 is to us the adorable thing. And that, ' ' she added 
 with sudden adroitness, " is what bothers me 
 about Thurso just now. It is so weak to allow 
 yourself to make habits that you know all the 
 time are harmful. I always give up anything I 
 want before I want it very badly." 
 
 There was irony about this, too. But it was 
 necessarily unperceived by Maud.
 
 168 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 " You, who get all you want! " she said. 
 
 Lily got up, and began walking up and down 
 the lawn where they sat that bordered the deep 
 flower bed. All June was in flower then, just as 
 in herself all June appeared to be flowering. It 
 was no wonder that Maud thought that. But all 
 the emotional baggage, that she had consistently 
 thrown away all her life, seemed to her to be 
 coming back now, returned to her by some dread- 
 ful dead-letter office. 
 
 " Oh, yes, everybody else always thinks one is 
 happy," she said, " if one has good teeth and a 
 good digestion, and rather more money than one 
 really wants to spend. Do you think I am 
 happy? " she asked suddenly. 
 
 Maud dropped her eyes. 
 
 * ' No, I don 't, if again you fish deep for what I 
 think," she said. 
 
 " Then you are two people," said Lily, rather 
 fiercely. " The superficial Maud, and another 
 Maud who has to be angled for." 
 
 " Yes; just that," said she. " And so are you. 
 And so is everybody who is worth anything." 
 
 Maud paused a moment, knowing that her sis- 
 ter-in-law hung on her words, and wondered. A 
 couple of months ago she would not have known 
 what was meant by there being two Mauds. But 
 she knew now ; those weeks in Scotland had given 
 her the deeper self, without in the least destroy-
 
 ing the more superficial self. She felt the joy of 
 morning and evening, the rapturous expectation 
 of catching sea-trout just as keenly as ever, but 
 an interior life had awakened in her. Lily, with 
 her husband and her children, of course knew 
 that; she had no fear of being misunderstood. 
 
 " I used to envy you so, Lily," she said, " for 
 I thought that the ' you ' which all the world 
 knew and admired was all there was. But since 
 well, yes, since I have fallen in love, I know 
 there is a more real you than that ; a ' you ' that 
 is more essential. I don't think that that part 
 of you is happy, any more than Thurso is happy. ' ' 
 
 Lily sat down again, and before she spoke she 
 thought over her words. 
 
 * ' I would give, or give up, a great deal to make 
 Thurso happy," she said. " But I don't think 
 we are happy together. I get on his nerves." 
 
 Maud looked up at her, as if waiting for more. 
 More came. 
 
 " And he bores me," said Lily. 
 
 There was a long silence; bees visited the flow- 
 ers, making them bend and sway and murmur 
 to their buzzing; a grasshopper clicked and 
 whirred on the lawn, swifts swooped and chided 
 together in sliding companies. Then, such is the 
 tragic habit of the world, it struck them both how 
 unlike themselves, unlike the ordinary present- 
 ment of themselves, that is to say, they were
 
 170 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 being, and simultaneously they swam up out of 
 their subaqueous depths. But the return to nor- 
 mal life was short; they soon went down again, 
 since those who once have met below always go 
 back there. It is only those who have talked in- 
 sincerely on deep matters who prefer to meet on 
 the surface. But a few surface remarks fol- 
 lowed. 
 
 " It is always one's own fault if one is bored," 
 said Lily. ' l It shows only that a bore is present, 
 who is probably one's self. Yet, Maud, if I tell 
 him about all the bazaars and sales and so on, 
 he is bored. And they do make up a big part of 
 my life." 
 
 " On the surface," said she, " if we are being 
 frank. ' ' 
 
 ' ' No, not on the surface ; the deepest and most 
 real part of me is sorry for poor things, and it 
 expresses itself thus. And it is exactly that which 
 gets on his nerves. If I get up from lunch before 
 I have eaten anything, because I have to go to 
 something of the sort, I get on his nerves by 
 doing so. He thinks I am restless. In a way, 
 I am restless. I want to do something for other 
 people rather than eat cutlets myself. What do 
 you want me to do? What does he want me to 
 do? Eat opium instead with him? " 
 
 Maud gave a long sigh. 
 
 1 ' Oh, that was a pity, ' ' she said.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 171 
 
 " Yes, it was a pity; our attitude toward each 
 other is a pity. But let us be practical. I always 
 want to be practical. What am I to do about a 
 hundred things? " 
 
 Lily got up again. She was, as she had said, 
 always practical, and she was always restless. 
 This afternoon, in particular, after her incon- 
 clusive watchfulness of the night before, she 
 longed to pin herself down, or to be pinned down 
 to a course of conduct. She wanted a definite pol- 
 icy, and though she never had consulted Maud be- 
 fore, she had an idea that Maud, as she was now, 
 might perhaps indicate one. And again the bees 
 buzzed and swayed in the flowers. There came a 
 crisper sound, the sound of crunched gravel; the 
 gate swung open, and a dog-cart drew up at the 
 front door, some fifty yards from where they 
 were sitting. There was a young man in it, who 
 held the horse's bridle, while with the other hand 
 he rang the bell. He waited a reasonable time, 
 and then rang again. 
 
 ' ' I will see what it is, ' ' said Lady Thurso, and 
 walked across the lawn to the house. But as she 
 went her heart sank, she already guessed by a 
 sort of intuition, for her guess could be founded 
 upon no process of reasoning what was coming. 
 
 She had a word with the driver, who put a 
 small package into her hand, and touched his hat
 
 172 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 and went off again. Then Lady Thurso came 
 back to where Maud was sitting. 
 
 "It is directed to Thurso," she said, " and 
 it is from that chemist in Windsor." 
 
 Maud did not reply at once. 
 
 " Yes; open it carefully," she said, " so that 
 if it is not what we think we can do it up again. 
 It seems rather mean, but I don't care. I'll open 
 it, if you like." 
 
 Lily seemed to think this unnecessary, and un- 
 did it herself. There was a bottle of dark blue 
 glass inside, with a red label of " Poison " on it. 
 It had a glass stopper, and she drew this out and 
 smelled it. Then she passed it to Maud. 
 
 Maud put the stopper back in the bottle, 
 squeezed up the paper and string in which it had 
 been wrapped into a tight ball, and threw it deep 
 into the flower bed. Then she went to the open- 
 ing in the yew hedge and flung the bottle itself 
 into mid-stream. 
 
 Then she came back to her sister-in-law,, 
 
 " So we've both had a hand in it." she said. 
 " And last night he let you throw the stuff out 
 of the window, and the very next day goes and 
 orders some more. Poor, dear old boy! He 
 must have ordered it when he went in with Theo- 
 dosia after lunch to-day. Oh, Lily, you asked 
 just now what you were to do. There's some- 
 thing for you to do! Somehov stop that! '
 
 "It is directed to Thurso," she said, "and it is from that chemist 
 in Windsor." Chapter VI.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 173 
 
 " How! " 
 
 " I don't know. We must find a way. Any 
 means, fair or foul, is fair. It's ruin, its damna- 
 tion! And that bottle: do we know anything 
 about it or not? ' 
 
 The practical side of Lily came to the fore. 
 
 " The chemist's man will say he gave it me," 
 she said, * ' but there is no reason why you should 
 come into it." 
 
 ' ' Ah, give me my share. Let me help if I can, ' ' 
 said Maud quickly. 
 
 11 Of course, you can help, though I am willing 
 to bear the whole responsibility of what we have 
 done," said Lily. 
 
 ' ' No, I want it to come from both of us, ' ' said 
 Maud, " if you think that is any use." 
 
 The utmost. You have more weight with him 
 than I have." 
 
 " Ah, then let me help," said Maud, " and, 
 Lily, we won't let him find out what we have 
 done. Let us tell him." 
 
 " He will be furious," said Lily. 
 
 " He will be more rightly furious if he is left 
 to ferret it out for himself. Then he will con- 
 front us with what we have done, instead of our 
 confronting him. Besides, we don't want to con- 
 ceal what we have done, even if we could. We 
 are not ashamed of it. We would do it again;
 
 174 THE HOUSEOF DEFENCE 
 
 we would do anything to prevent such bottles 
 reaching him." 
 
 People began to gather again soon after this. 
 Count Villars and his companion returned from 
 the river, Lord Yardly, looking considerably re- 
 freshed, as if his letter-writing had been some 
 unconscious recuperative process, came out from 
 indoors, and a few people from neighboring 
 houses motored or drove over for tea, and when 
 Thurso and the two Americans returned from 
 Windsor there was a considerable gathering on 
 the lawn. He went into the house before joining 
 the others, and was away some minutes, during 
 which they could hear a bell ring furiously within. 
 Lily's and Maud's eyes met over this, and when 
 a few minutes later Thurso came out, again a 
 moment's silent telegraphy passed between them, 
 and Maud got up and went straight to him as 
 he came across the lawn. Lily could not leave 
 her guests and the tea-table, but she watched 
 them. They were not far distant, and Thurso 's 
 face was towards her. She saw it go suddenly 
 white, as it did when he was angry, and then he 
 turned and went back towards the house again, 
 without joining them. He did not go in, but 
 walked down the road that led to the stables. 
 
 Some minutes later Thurso was urging his cob 
 mercilessly toward Windsor. .The first flame of 
 anger against his sister and Lily for robbing him
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 175 
 
 of his latest supply of the drug was fast merging 
 into suspense as to whether the chemist had kept 
 the prescription for it or had returned it with the 
 bottle. 
 
 In the latter case, of course, prescription and 
 phial must have been thrown away together; and 
 the problem of securing a new prescription arose. 
 
 Arrived at the chemist's lie was out of the cart 
 at a bound and, passing under the colored lamp, 
 gained the interior of the shop. 
 
 An assistant hurried forward to wait on him. 
 The Earl glanced nervously about, but the man 
 who had put up the prescription for him was not 
 in sight. 
 
 " Where is your employer? " asked Thurso 
 brusquely. 
 
 " Mr. Deckle? He's at his tea, sir. Can 
 I ?" 
 
 11 I left a prescription with him. Does he send 
 prescriptions with his packages or does he keep 
 them on file? " 
 
 " The originals are sent, sir. But copies are 
 kept on file. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Very good. Please duplicate my 
 
 "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not a prescription 
 clerk. I am not qualified to 
 
 11 Is there another chemist's near here? " 
 
 11 Only one, sir. About a half mile down the
 
 176 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 High Street. But Mr. Deckle will be back in an 
 hour or " 
 
 Thurso did not wait to hear the end of the 
 apologetic explanation. Five minutes later he was 
 at the second chemist's a less pretentious shop 
 in a poorer locality. 
 
 An elderly man with bleared, near-sighted eyes 
 was in charge of the place. It was evident from 
 his greeting that the Earl was a stranger to him. 
 This fact gave Thurso a desire-born inspiration. 
 Fumbling in his pockets he muttered: 
 
 " How very annoying! I've left my prescrip- 
 tion pad in another coat. Give me a blank." 
 
 A less near-sighted or more observant man than 
 the chemist must have noted the furtive, over- 
 anxious look of the pseudo-physician. But the 
 shopkeeper without suspicion laid before his cus- 
 tomer the required blank and fountain pen. 
 
 Thurso, by a supreme effort of memory, recalled 
 the exact terms, phraseology and appearance of 
 his missing prescription, and with laborious care- 
 lessness began to write the duplicate. 
 
 "So you're a physician, sir?" queried the 
 chemist, with the garrulity of an old and solitary 
 man. 
 
 Thurso nodded, relieved at the credulity in his 
 interlocutor's voice. 
 
 " Then," pursued the other, " maybe you 
 wouldn't mind deciding a bit of a dispute me and
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 177 
 
 my assistant had this morning. He's studying 
 surgery and he thinks he knows it all. It's a good 
 many years since I dabbled in anything of the 
 sort, but I fancy I can pose him yet. Now, the 
 point we argued was : is the partial paralysis that 
 sometimes accompanies cerebral typhoid a true 
 hemiplaegia or just a functional symptom of the 
 disease? Now, I claim that it's functional and 
 nothing more. But that thick head of an assist- 
 ant " 
 
 '' You're right. Perfectly right! '' broke in 
 Thurso, his palms and forehead wet with nervous- 
 ness at the dangerous position wherein he found 
 himself. He bent again to the task of writing the 
 prescription, his hand shaking uncontrollably. 
 
 The clamor of fifty voices rising suddenly just 
 outside the pharmacy door completed his confu- 
 sion. He turned peevishly to learn the cause of 
 the trouble and encountered a stream of excited 
 men and boys hastening into the place, all talking, 
 shouting and explaining in fifty different keys. 
 In the midst of the rabble two constables bore a 
 groaning figure on a stretcher. A third was busy 
 hustling the crowd outdoors, where they gathered 
 flattening their noses against the dingy glass and 
 striving to peer through the dim recesses within. 
 
 " Eun over by a motor car on the road just be- 
 low, ' ' reported one of the constables as the chem- 
 ist hurried from behind the counter and began to
 
 178 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 run practised fingers over the writhing navvy on 
 the stretcher. " We sent for a doctor but he was 
 out, and the surgeon down at the station is away 
 on another accident case. So we brought him in 
 here. Any bones broken? ' 
 
 The little chemist had straightened himself up, 
 and now spoke in a sort of pleased excitement. 
 
 " Yes," he said. " Looks to me like a com- 
 pound fracture of the tibia, and it's bad enough 
 to call for immediate attention if he wants to save 
 his leg. You 're lucky, my man ! " he resumed, ad- 
 dressing the navvy, " for there's a physician right 
 here to hand. A good one, too," he added with 
 a smirk and bow to the horrified Thurso, " to 
 judge from his knowledge of hemiplaegia. Doctor, 
 will you look over the case? I've all the appli- 
 ances here for bone-setting." 
 
 The constables respectfully made way for the 
 Earl. The suffering man on the stretcher ceased 
 to groan and turned on him bloodshot eyes that 
 held the dumb appeal and trust of a hurt dog. 
 The look went through Thurso like a white-hot 
 iron. He stood inert, nerveless. 
 
 " Excuse me, sir! " said the chemist timidly, 
 ' * but I think there 's no time to wait. The man is 
 in great pain and " 
 
 Thurso 's first impulse was to declare that he 
 was no physician and that the chemist had been 
 mistaken in thinking he had claimed to be one.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 179 
 
 But there, on the counter, lay the half- written pre- 
 scription to give him the lie. There, too, at his 
 side, were three officers of the law. Of the law 
 that he had transgressed in usurping the right to 
 practise medical lore. His brain went blank. The 
 navvy, reading bewilderment in his glance, broke 
 out again in a series of nerve-wracking moans. 
 The constables looked stolidly expectant. 
 
 For the moment, Thurso's craving for the drug 
 that had led him into such a predicament turned 
 to loathing. He felt like an animal in a trap. 
 
 ' ' Wait ! " he gasped, his voice harsh and life- 
 less. " I I must get my medical chest." 
 
 " There's no need of " began the chemist; but 
 Thurso was gone. Snatching up his half-finished 
 prescription he was out of the door, shouldering 
 his way through the crowd that parted respect- 
 fully for him, gained his cart, and with one leap 
 was on the seat and driving down the High Street 
 like mad. 
 
 Nor did he pause nor look back until he turned 
 the sweating horse over to a groom at his own 
 
 gate. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Maud came back to the tea-table, dropped into 
 a chair next Lily and waited till she could speak 
 to her. 
 
 " He has gone back to Windsor to get some-
 
 180 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 more," she said. " He would not listen to me. 
 He is frightfully angry with us." 
 
 Lady Thurso just nodded, and then, since what- 
 ever private tragedy was going on the public 
 comedy had to be kept up, she devoted herself 
 again to a hostess's duties. 
 
 Meantime the tinkle of drawing-room philos- 
 ophy went on round her, and she joined in it 
 with that facility that was always hers. 
 
 " Yes, it is quite certain we must have some 
 fad which for the time being we take as the most 
 serious thing in the world," she said to Lady 
 Swindon, who had come down the river from 
 Cookham. " Two years ago, do you remember, 
 it was no hats, and that was followed by the 
 simple life." 
 
 Lady Swindon laughed. 
 
 * ' I know, and we gave that up because it proved 
 to be so frightfully complicated, ' ' she said. ' ' One 
 had to provide two sorts of lunches and two sorts 
 of dinners every day, one for the simple life 
 people, who ate lentils and all the most expensive 
 fruits, but no meat, and one for the complicated 
 life, which didn't mind what it ate as long as 
 there was beef. Swindon always ate both, to 
 show he wasn't bigoted either way. Besides, one 
 really couldn't afford it. And what is the next 
 fad, darling Lily? You always are half through 
 a fad before anybody else has heard of it. ' '
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 181 
 
 " Deep breathing I have tried," said Lady 
 Thurso, ' ' but it takes too long. You see you can't 
 talk as you are deep breathing, whereas you could 
 when you were eating lentils. Perhaps it will be 
 Christian Science, though, do you know, I think 
 the real thing is too serious and sensible, and the 
 spurious thing too silly ever to become a fad. But 
 ask Maud to tell you about Mr. Cochran and the 
 typhoid up in Caithness." 
 
 " I will. And where's Thurso? Isn't he 
 here? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, but tea-time isn't his hour. Tea r 
 Theodosia? " 
 
 Theodosia had truly American ideas about 
 being introduced. It was her custom to make all 
 her guests formally known to each other, and she 
 expected the same treatment. 
 
 " Kindly introduce me, Lily," she said. 
 
 " Lady Swindon, my cousin, Mrs. Moreton." 
 
 < l Very happy to make your acquaintance, Lady 
 Swindon," said she, " and don't you think that 
 Lady Thurso 's place down here is just the cun- 
 ningest you ever saw? Why, look at that yew 
 hedge! It must have been planted before the 
 flood to have grown like that. But then all she 
 has is just perfect, isn't it? My! I never saw 
 such a beautiful black pearl as that you're wear- 
 ing. It looks as if it came straight from the 
 Marquis of Anglesea 's tie. ' '
 
 182 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 " Oh, no, I inherited it," said Lady Swindon 
 rather icily. 
 
 " That's what comes of being an English- 
 woman," said Theodosia. " You inherit things 
 and we Ve got to buy them. Silas and I and Lord 
 Thurso drove to Windsor this afternoon. Do you 
 know my husband? Ah, he's talking to Count 
 Villars over there. But we had the loveliest 
 time; I never saw Windsor before, and fancy in- 
 heriting that! But I'm afraid Lord Thurso is 
 sick; he called at a chemist's, and bought some 
 medicine to be sent back here at once. I guess 
 he pined for that medicine. Has he come out 
 here? No, I don't see him. I guess he's taking 
 it now. Lily, I think your husband is the loveliest 
 man! " 
 
 Lily got up ; the whole situation was beginning 
 to get on her nerves most terribly. Theodosia, 
 with her frightfully middle-class manner, was on 
 her nerves; it was on her nerves too that Lady 
 Swindon should think that Theodosia was a typi- 
 cal American, whereas she was a parody, the 
 parody with which Europe (only she would have 
 called it Europe) is most familiar. And Lady 
 Swindon, for all her " darling Lily," was one of 
 those true friends who like knowing your weak 
 points. Theodosia, as she was aware, as she got 
 up to talk to other of her guests, was a weak 
 point; mention of Thurso 's medicine was a weak
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 183 
 
 point; Tlieodosia touched them all with the un- 
 erring instinct of the true bungler. And with the 
 courage that wants not to know the worst, which 
 is so much superior to the cowardice that thinks 
 it is brave when it asks to know the worst, she 
 deliberately moved out of ear-shot. 
 
 Lady Swindon justified her position as a true 
 friend. The fads which she had been so eager 
 to hear about were quite dismissed. She pro- 
 ceeded in the spirit of true inquiry, which wants 
 to know. 
 
 * * What a nice afternoon you must have had ! ' 
 she said. " To see Windsor for the first time is 
 delightful, is it not? And to have Lord Thurso 
 as a companion is delightful at any time. But 
 he is not ill, is he? " 
 
 11 He seemed hungry for that chemist," said 
 Theodosia, " and he seemed just starving to get 
 back here. I'm told you have a speed limit for 
 motors over here, but if we didn't exceed it I 
 don't see the use of your having one." 
 
 Now Lady Swindon was not malicious ; she was 
 also a great admirer of Lily's. But she could 
 not resist her hideous instinct to know, to be 
 abreast of things, which in London ensures a 
 greater success than other and more agreeable 
 qualities give. 
 
 * * Dear Thurso, ' ' she said, ' ' he has such dread-
 
 184 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 ful headaches. No wonder he wanted his medi- 
 cine, if he had one." 
 
 ' ' Silas used to have dreadful headaches, ' ' said 
 Theodosia. " They arose from dyspepsia, to 
 which he is a martyr. But opium always unmar- 
 tyred him." 
 
 " Ah, opium! " said Lady Swindon. 
 
 " Yes. Why, there's Count Villars. Count 
 Villars, I haven't set eyes on you since lunch. 
 May I introduce you to Lady Swindon? ' 
 
 Villars bowed. 
 
 ' ' I think we were introduced some years ago, ' ' 
 he said. " How are you, Lady Swindon? You 
 have come down from Cookham? ' 
 
 Lady Swindon got up, turning her back on 
 Theodosia. 
 
 11 Yes, and I am just going back there, rlow 
 clever of you to remember where we live ! Take 
 me to my boat, will you? Let us walk round the 
 garden first." 
 
 They strolled a few yards down the path be- 
 tween the two tall herbaceous borders before she 
 spoke. 
 
 " And you are staying here? ' she asked. 
 11 How do you find Lily? I am sure you walked 
 together last night after dinner, and joined old 
 memories on to the present." 
 
 But she had met her match this time. 
 
 " Yes, dear lady," he said, " we found that the
 
 THE HO USE OF DEFENCE 185 
 
 two needed no link. We had always been excellent 
 friends, and found that we remained so. As al- 
 ways, I adore her; as always, she receives my 
 adoration from her infinite height. The Madonna 
 still smiles on her worshipper. He asks no more." 
 
 For the moment she was startled from her role 
 of earnest inquirer. 
 
 " Indeed, I thought you had once asked more," 
 she said. " We all supposed so." 
 
 T nere is no limit to what people of bril- 
 liant and vivid imagination may not suppose," 
 said he. 
 
 She could not help smiling; his refusals to give 
 direct answers were always so very silken. 
 
 " And the truth always exceeds one's imagina- 
 tion, does it not? " she said. Then she sank her 
 voice. 
 
 " And Thurso," she went on. " How do you 
 think he is! " 
 
 Villars looked at her in bland surprise. 
 
 " Very well, surely, is he not? " he said. 
 
 Lady Swindon was afraid there was no more 
 to be got there. She made the best of it, however. 
 
 " Oh, I am so glad, so very glad," she said. 
 
 He handed her into her launch. 
 
 ' ' Do come to us one Sunday, ' ' she begged. ' ' I 
 will try to persuade Lily to come also," 
 
 Lady Swindon 's departure had acted as a sig- 
 nal for a general move, and when he got back
 
 186 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 Lady Thurso was just saying good-by to the last 
 of her guests. As the last carriage drove off, the 
 butler spoke to her. 
 
 " His lordship begs that you and Lady Maud 
 will go to his room as soon as you are disengaged, 
 my lady," he said. 
 
 " Tell his lordship we will come immediately. 
 Ah, Count Villars, we were going on the river, 
 were we not? Could you wait a few minutes? 
 Thurso wants to see me about something." 
 
 Maud joined her from the lawn, and they went 
 together to Thurso 's private sitting-room at the 
 end of the house. He was sitting at his table in 
 the window, and with his usual courtesy got up 
 as they entered. On the table in front of him 
 was a package containing a bottle of dark blue 
 glass. He had just finished undoing this when 
 they came in. 
 
 11 A cigarette, Lily! " he said. " I want ten 
 minutes' talk." 
 
 She took one; he waited till she had lit it. 
 
 ' ' Maud tells me that you and she undid a pack- 
 age that arrived here this afternoon, addressed 
 to me, and threw it away. Are either of you in 
 the habit of doing such things, may I ask? Do 
 you open other people's letters? ' 
 
 " Thurso, don't be a fool," said Maud quietly. 
 
 His face went very white for a moment.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 187 
 
 " Maud, I am trying to be courteous. You 
 might make an effort to follow my example." 
 
 " Is it courteous to ask Lily and me if we open 
 other people's letters? " she asked. 
 
 11 It seems to me that your behavior this after- 
 noon warrants my question. ' ' 
 
 11 No, Thurso, it does not," said Lily, " and 
 you know it. ' ' 
 
 He looked first at one, then at the other, and 
 his hand moved slowly towards the bottle on the 
 table. 
 
 " I don't want to make a scene with either of 
 you," he said, " and I don't want to detain you. 
 But I require you both to promise never again 
 to act in such a way. You are absolutely unjus- 
 tified in touching or interfering with my things 
 in this way, from whatever motive. And your 
 interference has done no good, as you see, in this 
 instance, and will do no good in any other. You 
 will merely oblige me to adopt methods as under- 
 hand as your own." 
 
 " There was nothing underhand," said Lily; 
 " we were going to tell you what we had done. 
 Maud did tell you." 
 
 " It was inevitable that I should find out," 
 said he. 
 
 " That was immaterial," said Maud. " Even 
 if you could never have found out otherwise, we 
 should have told you."
 
 188 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 " Ah! " said he. 
 
 Maud looked at him with amazement. She had 
 been told by Lily this afternoon that there were 
 two Mauds ; here indeed was a Thurso whom she 
 would scarcely have known for her brother. He 
 was fundamentally different, while his quiet man- 
 ner and superficial conduct were the same. But 
 this new Thurso was as if a devil possessed him ; 
 she felt, too, that he hated her. 
 
 In his one word of reply there was an ocean 
 of incredulity. 
 
 11 You don't believe what I say? " she asked. 
 
 He was silent, he smiled a little, and raised his 
 eyebrows. There was no need for him to speak; 
 his meaning was perfectly clear. 
 
 " Then what is the use of our giving you any 
 promise for the future, if you don't believe what 
 we say? " she asked. 
 
 " I ask for your promise, however," he said. 
 
 " And if we don't give it you? " asked Lily. 
 
 " I shall merely have to find some other way 
 of getting things delivered, so that you do not 
 intercept them," he said. 
 
 There was nothing more to be said on the sub- 
 ject, and they sat in silence a moment. Then 
 Maud spoke. 
 
 " I promise," she said. " It is no good refus- 
 ing." 
 "" And I," said Lily.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 189. 
 
 Thurso put his hand to his head suddenly with 
 a gesture he could not control. 
 
 " Then shall we agree never to say a word 
 more on this very unpleasant subject! " he said. 
 " And now, Lily, and you, Maud, listen. I am 
 suffering so hideously at this present moment 
 that I hardly know what I am saying agitation, 
 anger, and so on brought on this afternoon the 
 worst pain I have ever had. I very likely should 
 not have taken laudanum from that bottle you 
 threw away; anyhow, I should have struggled 
 hard not to. I struggled yesterday, with the re- 
 sult that I allowed Lily to pour away all I had in 
 the house. But I am not going to struggle now; 
 the pain is absolutely intolerable, and it was 
 brought on, as far as I know, by what you did. 
 Your interference has not done the slightest good ; 
 it has only given me an hour of hell. I have 
 thought and said abominable things of you both 
 in this last hour. My only excuse is that I am 
 in torments. I beg the forgiveness of both of 
 you. ' ' 
 
 Here was the real Thurso again, looking out 
 like a soul in prison, trying to burst through the 
 bars, and it was indescribably pathetic. Both 
 women were melted with pity for him; and Lily 
 got up and came to him. 
 
 " Ah, Thurso, of course we forgive you," she 
 said; " but to-morrow you will go on fighting
 
 190 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 against this, won't you? " and she pointed to the 
 bottle. " It's it's damnation, you know." 
 
 He looked at her with agonized eyes. 
 
 " I will do my best," he said. " Now, go! 
 Make my excuses to the others, if I don't appear 
 at dinner. But I will come if I am fit. ' ' 
 
 The two went out together, but before the door 
 was closed they heard the clink of glass.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 IT was a chill November afternoon in the same 
 year, and Lily was seated in her private room at 
 Thurso House, writing busily and fiercely, as if 
 to absorb herself in what she was doing. Her 
 secretary, to whom she had dictated replies to 
 some fifty letters less private than those she was 
 herself engaged on, had just left her, but this pile 
 which stood by her on her table she felt she had 
 better answer herself. 
 
 The room where she sat was one of her own 
 private suite, which she occupied when, as now, 
 she had come hurriedly to London, meaning only 
 to stop a day or two, and do some necessary busi- 
 ness, and it was not worth while to open the whole 
 house. There was a bedroom and bathroom be- 
 longing to it, and another small sitting-room, 
 where she had her meals. Before that she had 
 been paying visits for a month since she came 
 down from Scotland, and Thurso had as far as 
 she knew been doing the same, though in other 
 houses, and this week she had been here ten days 
 now they were to have entertained at their house 
 in Norfolk. But the party had had to be put off. 
 For on her arrival suddenly at Thurso House,
 
 192 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 she had found that her husband was already here 
 he had been here for a fortnight alone, just with 
 his valet and a couple of maid-servants, one to 
 cook, one to clean up. He had excused himself 
 from the houses where he was to stay, and had 
 come here to live in the hell-paradise of opium. 
 Lady Thurso had telegraphed for Maud, who 
 was more use than anybody else with her brother, 
 and the two had been here now for ten days. 
 
 Since last June the habit had gained on him 
 with awful strides; for a few months after that 
 he had, she knew, made frantic efforts to throw 
 it off. He had seen doctors, he had done all that 
 there lay in his power to do. But with fearful 
 rapidity a sort of atrophy of his will had set in. 
 He had soon no longer wished or desired to be 
 a free man again, and though his will had so com- 
 pletely been dominated by the drug, it had left 
 the calculating, scheming part of his brain un- 
 touched, and in order to obtain the drug, since 
 the chemists with whom he habitually dealed had 
 been ordered not to give it him, he had gone to 
 others. Then, about a month ago, he had made 
 what seemed to be the very last effort of his will, 
 and in Lily's presence had burned the prescrip- 
 tion which enabled him to obtain it. But three 
 days had not elapsed after that before he him- 
 self forged another, and Lord Thurso, calling 
 suddenly at some big pharmacy, in great pain,
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 193 
 
 with a prescription bearing an eminent doctor's 
 name, was naturally not refused the dark blue 
 bottle with its poison label. 
 
 Yet busily as Lady Thurso dealt with her cor- 
 respondence, striving, since at the moment she 
 could do nothing for her husband, to occupy her 
 mind anyhow, rather than let it dwell on the hid- 
 eous reality of what was going on, she was alert 
 for the interruption she expected. For this morn- 
 ing Thurso had suddenly collapsed, and for an 
 hour or two they thought he was dying. But the 
 doctors had pulled him round out of immediate 
 danger, and Sir James Sanderson, after an hour's 
 absence, had come back again and was with him 
 now. He had promised to make his report to Lady 
 Thurso before he left the house. 
 
 Her pen went rapidly from top to bottom of 
 the paper, and envelope after envelope joined the 
 letters already written. Awful as the present 
 was, yet, in a sense, now that a crisis like this had 
 come, it was more bearable in thought than those 
 growing anxieties and torments she had suffered 
 in the past. For with the growth of the habit, his 
 moral perception, like his will, had seemed to 
 leave him. He had conceived wholly baseless sus- 
 picions against his wife; he had uttered them; 
 he had forbidden the house to Count Villars. He 
 had spied on her, he had opened her letters, both 
 those which she wrote and those which she re-
 
 194 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 ceived he who a few months ago had exacted 
 from her a promise not to open his. Then from 
 being suspicious of others himself, suspicion 
 ripening into certainty had arisen against him. 
 He made long absences, when he was not at the 
 house or at his club, and gave palpably false ac- 
 counts of his days when he returned. Finally, 
 he had brought to Thurso House, while his wife 
 was in it, a common woman off the street. 
 
 But the crisis which had occurred this morning 
 the crisis that concerned life and death had 
 mitigated the horror of these things. It had miti- 
 gated also the acuteness of another question. Since 
 June last she had known that Villars loved her 
 now, just as he had always loved her, and though, 
 being a gentleman, to put the matter broadly, he 
 had not traded on her growing disgust at the man 
 who was her husband, it was impossible for her 
 not to know that her lover had moved closer. She 
 had no moral code of defence. There was noth- 
 ing of that kind that prevented her letting the 
 man who loved her and who was, after all, the 
 only man she had ever loved, become in deed what 
 both he and she knew that he was in all else but 
 that. Nothing, except her blind determination 
 that this should not be so, stood in the way. 
 Thurso had taunted her again and again with a 
 lie, he could not taunt her more if it had been a 
 truth. Indeed, to taunt her, as Thurso had done,
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 195 
 
 with what was not true, was more unbearable to 
 her than if it had been. Had Villars been her 
 lover, she almost felt as if she would have hurled 
 the truth of it herself in Thurso's face. For her 
 actions never ran away with her; she was not in 
 the habit of doing what she was ashamed of after- 
 wards, and certainly, so she felt, if she had taken 
 a step, so momentous, so vitally concerned with 
 her life, as having a lover, she was sure that she 
 would not have done so blindly in any heat of 
 passion. Had she meant to live that double life, 
 she would have done so deliberately, and for rea- 
 sons which would have seemed to her excellent 
 firstly, that her husband was opium-drenched; 
 secondly, that she loved Villars, and thirdly, that 
 she would not have believed it was wicked. Had 
 Villars been her lover, it would have been because 
 she did not see any moral reason why he should 
 not be. And though in judging others, as has 
 been said, she had no moral code, yet she judged 
 herself, it seemed, by stricter laws, though all- 
 unformulated, than she applied to her friends. 
 She wanted everybody to have a good time; but 
 she would not take the species of " good time " 
 that others might choose, and make it her own. 
 
 It seemed to her that she had only been sub- 
 jected to the anticipation of the rack; the rack 
 itself was yet to come. For Rudolf Villars was 
 (though he was the rack also) her one stand-by
 
 196 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 in this awful passage through which the inscrut- 
 able Master of Souls was leading her. Maud was 
 splendid, she could not have done without Maud 
 either; but Maud was a woman, and she was a 
 woman and Villars was a man. Therefore, he 
 could help her in a way that Maud could not. For 
 humankind is created male and female, and those 
 of different sex can and must help each other in 
 a manner impossible to those of the same sex. 
 That is the glory of the world, and its shame. 
 
 So day by day she owed more to Villars, and 
 her debt was mounting into huge figures. And 
 though she knew well that to him it was non- 
 existent he never, anyhow, added it up and it 
 was fearfully existent to her. In payment of it 
 she could only give him one thing, herself, and 
 that she would not. But in the intimacy which 
 had shot up again, a mature growth this time, 
 from the root of their boy-and-girl affection, he 
 must have seen, she knew, the apparent incon- 
 sistency of her attitude. She did not judge or 
 condemn, she did not really disapprove in the case 
 of others of that which she refused him. True 
 he had made no declaration of his love for her, 
 but it was only the instinctive knowledge that to 
 do so was quite useless that restrained him. But 
 day by day it was getting harder for him to be 
 silent. And what would happen then? Would 
 she be strong enough to withstand him! For the
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 197 
 
 moment, however, the acuteness of these perplex- 
 ities had lost their point since Thurso's collapse 
 this morning, and, torturing as that anxiety was, 
 it was less wearing than the other. 
 
 But these thoughts, the summary of her inner 
 life for the last two or three months, did not now 
 get between her pen and her paper. She had to 
 answer these letters, inquiring about her husband, 
 regretting her absence from various parties and 
 gatherings, and she had to answer them with the 
 knowledge that the world knew what was the mat- 
 ter with him. Some people thought he had taken 
 to drink, others that he had taken to drugs, and 
 since nobody said such things to her, she had to 
 frame her answers carefully. But it was no 
 longer any use to pretend that nothing was wrong 
 the whole world knew that something was 
 wrong. Thus these letters required a ' ' deal ' ' of 
 answering. 
 
 But the interruption for which she had been 
 waiting soon came, and Sir James Sanderson 
 bustled cheerfully into the room. He looked ex- 
 traordinarily unlike an eminent doctor, but ex- 
 actly like a P. and 0. Captain, dressed rather 
 absurdly. He had a toothbrush mustache, a 
 bronzed, ruddy face, and wore a black frock coat, 
 with yellow boots, and a red tie. He was awk- 
 ward, cheerful and embarrassed, and played golf 
 whenever possible, which was not often, with the
 
 198 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 enthusiasm of boyhood and remarkable inability. 
 But, incidentally, he had saved more lives and 
 restored more health, which he thought far more 
 important, than any other three doctors put to- 
 together. 
 
 He shook hands with Lady Thurso, and sat 
 down on a small chair, which broke into fragments 
 beneath him, leaving him couched among splinters 
 on the floor. He quite distinctly said, " Oh, 
 damn! " aad struggled to his feet. 
 
 ' ' Oh, I am so sorry, ' ' said Lily. ' * I hope you 
 are not hurt. ' ' 
 
 And though this farcical introduction was ut- 
 terly unintended by the doctor, she felt rather 
 more courageous. 
 
 " Not in the least, but the chair is," he said. 
 1 1 Yes, I have been with Lord Thurso for the last 
 hour. ' ' 
 
 He found another seat. 
 
 " Now, be brave," he said. 
 
 Then his skill in dealing with people was ap- 
 parent. There was dreadful news to tell; but in 
 spite of the obsoleteness of the expression 
 " breaking news " news could still be broken. It 
 was wise to stab like that, to say " be brave," 
 and then, since he knew he was dealing with a 
 brave woman, to wait for her recovery, which 
 would come. 
 
 " I know I am allowed to smoke a cigarette,"
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 199 
 
 he said, " though it is most unprofessional. Do 
 take one of mine. ' ' 
 
 There was the moment's pause of lighting. 
 Lily's courage sank away after his first words 
 like the mercury exposed to a temperature of zero. 
 Then, in the pause, she braced herself again. It 
 was that he had been waiting for. 
 
 " Lord Thurso has lived through six hours, 
 when he might have died any moment, " he said. 
 * ' That shows he has a fine constitution. This at- 
 tack of syncope failure of the heart was enough 
 to kill most people. It has not killed him, and he 
 will not now die of this attack. He may have 
 other attacks, but I don't see why he should, un- 
 less he provokes them himself." 
 
 He flicked the end off his cigarette. 
 
 ' ' That is the bright side, ' ' he said. ' i There is 
 the other side. Opium, I suppose laudanum, 
 morphia, it is all one. But, as far as you know, 
 has he lost the power to will? My dear lady, tell 
 me everything. I guess a good deal from what 
 I have seen. And now you must be brave there 
 is nothing which you can tell me which will be 
 worse than what I conjecture." 
 
 But as she spoke, though he attended very care- 
 fully to all she said, he watched her not for that 
 reason alone. It was very likely, he saw, that he 
 would soon have another patient on his hands. 
 
 Then she began. She concealed nothing of what
 
 200 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 was within her knowledge, and she exaggerated 
 nothing. She told of the secret dose which Maud 
 had seen Thurso take in the train, she told him of 
 Maud's previous suspicion a suspicion only. She 
 told him also of the Original cause of his taking 
 laudanum at all namely, those overmastering 
 headaches. At that, for the only time, he inter- 
 rupted her. 
 
 " Quite so," he said. " I gave him the pre- 
 scription myself." 
 
 Then the tale became harder of telling. She 
 told him of the intercepted bottle, of the growth 
 of his suspicions of her, and the certainty of her 
 suspicion of him, of the crowning insult. And 
 when she had finished there was silence. 
 
 She was prepared now there was no reason 
 to break or conceal things. 
 
 ' ' The opium-habit, even when one takes it quite 
 early," he said, " is the most difficult thing in the 
 world to cure give me ten drunkards, and I will 
 cure eight, but give me ten opium-eaters, and I 
 may cure one. God knows why it is so, Lady 
 Thurso, but this particular drug, this poppy of 
 the field, binds body and soul in a way that noth- 
 ing else not alcohol or sensualism binds. And 
 your husband's case has not been taken early; it 
 has been taken, as far as I am concerned, at the 
 last gasp, when he was nearly dying." 
 
 " And now be brave again," he said. " He
 
 might have died this morning. It might have been? 
 better if he had. It might have saved suffering 
 and misery to himself and those about him. Of 
 course one cannot, and I do not, say that any case 
 is incurable, because, thank God, miracles do hap- 
 pen. But as he gets stronger again from this 
 attack, so, too, will his craving for the drug get 
 stronger. Unless you absolutely shut him up, he 
 will find means of getting it, and he will probably 
 begin with small doses again. Then he will in- 
 crease them and increase them till this happens 
 once more." 
 
 " But if one succeeded in keeping him away 
 from it by any means 1 ' ' asked Lily. 
 
 " He would probably go mad. It is not the 
 time for me to keep anything from you, dear lady. 
 Thank Heaven, you are a brave woman, and you 
 are bearing it all as well, as I think we are meant 
 to bear things. We may get white with pain, we 
 may feel sick with the anguish of it all, but we 
 can clinch our teeth at any rate, and the very ef- 
 fort to be decent, to be brave, always and inevi- 
 tably brings its own reward. All such efforts 
 strengthen our characters, just as gymnastics 
 strengthen our muscles." 
 
 Something in this arrested her. She was led 
 away from Thurso for a moment to another mat- 
 ter that concerned her just as vitally. 
 
 " Do you mean that if if we resist anything,
 
 202 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 our powers of resistance are increased? " she 
 asked. 
 
 Sir James took in this also. His eye, trained 
 to observe obscurities, saw she was not thinking 
 for the moment of her husband. 
 
 " Certainly that is so," he said, " just as the 
 absence of resistance, the yielding, weakens our 
 power of resistance. The strong body is built up 
 by resisting, and so I venture to say is the strong 
 soul. ' ' 
 
 She thought about that for a moment, noting 
 down, so to speak, in her mind how it concerned 
 that of which the doctor knew nothing. 
 
 " Tell me all you fear about Thurso," she said 
 quietly. " Tell me what you think the end will 
 be, and when. I gather that you regard him as 
 incurable ; in fact, you have said so. Now I want 
 to hear from you quietly and fully what I must 
 bring myself to expect." 
 
 " I have told you the worst," he said, " and 
 I think you understand it. But more in detail, it 
 is this: He will be very weak for a day or two, 
 and will, of course, have to remain in bed. But 
 I fully expect that his recovery from this attack 
 will be comparatively rapid, because the predis- 
 posing cause, opium, is no longer at work, but as 
 he gets stronger, as I said, the craving will get 
 stronger. ' ' 
 
 " Then you advise "
 
 ' * I advise nothing till I see how he pulls round 
 after this. It is his mind, his will-power, that 
 has been atrophied, made ineffective by this drug. 
 He I am telling you my worst fears, of course, 
 because this is not a time to buoy you up with 
 false hopes he is incapable of resistance, so I 
 fear, from what you tell me. That is the real and 
 fatal danger. Now is there any motive, any 
 thought or desire or aim, that was his, which we 
 can make use of, on which, so to speak, we can 
 prop up and train this will-power which is lying 
 helpless like a creeper that has been torn from 
 its supports? His his devotion to you, for ex- 
 ample? His love for his children? ' 
 
 She shook her head, and the Dead Sea was in 
 that gesture for bitterness. 
 
 The doctor spoke again, gently, tenderly. 
 
 11 Then who has the most influence over him? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " Oh, Maud," said she. " His sister, you 
 know, Lady Maud Stratton. I have no doubt 
 about that." 
 
 She spoke without bitterness, but the simplicity 
 of her tone was more pathetic to the kind man 
 who had to ask these questions, since his business 
 was to cure his patients, than any bitterness could 
 have been. 
 
 " Then may I consult with her before I go," 
 said he, * ' as to any possibility that she knows of,
 
 204 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 of presenting some motive to her brother for liv- 
 ing. He is sinking, he must sink as far as purely 
 medical skill can help him, and so we want, do 
 we not, to throw any life-buoy to him, anything 
 that will keep him afloat." 
 
 " Hypnotism, that sort of thing? " she asked. 
 
 " It is inconceivable that hypnotism or sugges- 
 tion can help him," said he. " There must be 
 something to hypnotize, something to suggest to, 
 and that something is will-power. That, in Lord 
 Thurso, as I feel sure, is practically destroyed." 
 
 Though Lily had taken this all so quietly, her 
 quietude was partly that of some one who is 
 stunned, and now her mind recurred, as she re- 
 covered herself, to the moment when the stunning 
 blow had been delivered. 
 
 " You mean then that it is only a miracle that 
 can save him? " she added. 
 
 " Yes, but I believe in miracles," said he, 
 " though one cannot, unfortunately, summon a 
 miracle to one's aid." 
 
 She got up quickly. 
 
 " How strange you should say that! " she re- 
 marked. " Because Maud believes in them, as 
 you do. Only she no longer calls them miracles, 
 she calls them ' Christian Science.' " 
 
 Sir James could not have looked cynical or 
 sneering if he had tried, and certainly he did not 
 try. But his tone was exceedingly dry.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 205 
 
 " The lady in Boston? " he observed. 
 
 Lady Thurso got up. " No, a man in Caith- 
 ness," she said. " I will ring; she shall come 
 and tell you, if she is in." 
 
 11 Ah, one moment yet, please. I want to talk 
 for a moment about you. Lady Thurso, you are 
 on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I have been 
 looking at you and watching you. You have had 
 a terrible time, and you are not finished with it 
 yet. It has told on you more than you can guess, 
 though you are bearing it with a gallantry that I 
 respect and admire. But are you not taxing your 
 strength more than you need? ' 
 
 Her eyes went to the writing-table, near which, 
 on the floor, was the &ack of her answered letters. 
 
 " You mean I had better sit down and think 
 over all this terrible tragedy, ' ' she said, her voice 
 beginning to break a little, " rather than find 
 relief from it in forgetting, by means of employ- 
 ment? " 
 
 ' ' No, I do not pin myself down to say that you 
 must not answer your letters, but I very strongly 
 advise you to rest yourself as far as is possible, 
 and to avoid anything agitating beyond that which 
 you must bear. There is plenty that you must 
 bear, that you as your husband's wife have got 
 to bear. But if there is anything else, I entreat 
 you don't be at home to it. Exercise your will- 
 power and make it stronger by resistance. Save
 
 206 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 yourself from anything else that may worry or 
 tire you. I speak, of course, quite at random, but 
 I feel sure from your magnificent bravery over 
 what I have had to tell you that you have other 
 worries. ' ' 
 
 Then, quite suddenly, the breaking-point came 
 for her. All these months of ceaseless anxiety 
 about Thurso had worn her nerves to fiddle- 
 strings; all her life, too, she, with her splendid 
 constitution, which never told her how tired she 
 was, had been living on the extreme limits of her 
 powers, and simultaneously with her husband's 
 mental and physical ruin had come the regret and 
 glory of her life. She had loved once and had 
 scarcely known it, she loved now and was loved, 
 and renounced it. 
 
 She gave a sudden shriek of laughter that did 
 not sound like mirth. 
 
 * ' Oh, you conjurers ! ' ' she cried. ' ' Doctors 
 are like X-rays, are they not ? Good Heavens ! I 
 have enough to try me, and you don't guess the 
 half. If it were only Thurso, why, I could bear 
 it." 
 
 Sir James got up quickly, placed himself di- 
 rectly in front of her, and clapped his hands vio- 
 lently close to her face. 
 
 " Now, none of that," he said. " I haven't 
 come here to listen to hysterical ravings. Mak&
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 an effort! Pull yourself together. I'm ashamed 
 of you ! ' ' 
 
 Lady Thurso checked suddenly in the middle 
 of her sentence ; two or three tears, the precursors 
 of the hysterical storm that had been on the point 
 of bursting, had found their way on to her cheeks, 
 and she wiped them off. The attack was averted 
 in mid-career, and she stood silent a moment, still 
 hearing the reverberation of his clapped hands. 
 
 " Yes, quite right," she said. " Thank you 
 very much. ' ' 
 
 Sir James waited a moment till he felt cer- 
 tain of her. Then he took one of her hands and 
 kissed it. 
 
 " You dear, brave woman," he said. 
 
 She was quiet again now, and sat down in the 
 chair from which she had jumped up. 
 
 11 Never mind me," she said. " I can manage 
 my own private affairs. Oh, there are some. But 
 I give you my word I can do it. ' ' 
 
 " Of course, you can. I only warned you that 
 some management was necessary. Now! " 
 
 He paused a moment. 
 
 11 Now about this man in Caithness," he said. 
 " I understand that Lord Thurso was there this 
 summer, and Lady Maud was with him. I am 
 not bigoted. These Christian Scientists have got 
 hold of a big truth, only they mix a lot of non- 
 sense up with it at least some of them do. They
 
 208 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 tell me that if you have a compound fracture and 
 only say to yourself that compound fractures 
 don't really exist, the bones will come together, 
 like the bones in Ezekiel. That is silly. But about 
 this man in Caithness " 
 
 Lady Thurso got up again, quietly this time. 
 
 " I will see if Maud is in," she said. " There 
 was very virulent typhoid up there in the summer. 
 Mr. Cochran is believed by her to have cured one 
 or two cases. In fact, she believes more than 
 that." 
 
 She rang the bell, and in the interval before it 
 was answered only two words were spoken. 
 
 " Spare yourself," said Sir James. 
 
 Maud had come in half an hour ago, but hear- 
 ing that her sister-in-law was with the doctor, 
 had not interrupted them. And, as she entered 
 now, Lady Thurso got up and shook hands with 
 Sir James. 
 
 11 Maud, this is Sir James Sanderson," she 
 said. " He wants to talk to you. Good-by, Sir 
 James, I shall see you, of course, to-morrow 
 morning. ' ' 
 
 She left the room, and Maud was alone with 
 the doctor. She had no idea what he wanted to 
 talk about, and waited, wondering why Lily had 
 gone. Then he told her.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 209 
 
 ' ' Lady Maud, ' ' he said, ' ' I want to hear about 
 Caithness and the typhoid, and Mr. Cochran." 
 
 Here was the directness of the P. & 0. Captain 
 again. It was exactly as if he had given orders 
 to the engine-room. 
 
 " What for? " she asked very simply, taking 
 off her gloves. 
 
 " Your brother," said he. 
 
 Maud told him, as simply as Lily had told him, 
 of the course of Thurso 's disease ; what had hap- 
 pened, as far as she knew, in Caithness. She did 
 not preach about it, she drew no moral from it; 
 she merely said what had happened to Duncan's 
 wife, what had happened to Sandy Mackenzie, 
 what had happened to the whole outbreak of ty- 
 phoid. Then he asked one question. 
 
 " Do you believe it was the direct power of 
 God," he said, " in Whose presence all sickness 
 and illness and pain cannot exist! " 
 
 * ' I think I believe it, ' ' said she. 
 
 " But you are not sure? " 
 
 " Not quite." 
 
 He thought in silence over this for some time. 
 
 " Medical science, as far as I am acquainted 
 with it," he said, " can do nothing for Lord 
 Thurso. If there was a man outside in the street 
 there with a barrel-organ and a monkey, who said 
 that he could cure the opium-habit, I should wel- 
 come him in. I don't believe in Christian Science
 
 for cases of compound fracture or for cases of 
 complete atrophy of the will. But it is my duty 
 to let anything be tried. And now, since I have 
 admitted that, I wish to consult you. You are 
 one doctor in consultation with me, another doc- 
 tor, over your poor brother's case." 
 Maud gave a sudden little startled gasp. 
 11 But I can't " she said. " I know nothing." 
 " Nor do I. At least I only know (and Mr. Tri- 
 ton, whom I had in consultation with me this 
 morning, agrees with me) that it is mere waste 
 of time for us to try to treat this case medically. 
 There are certain things cancer is one, the 
 opium-habit is another, Addison's disease, though 
 you mayn't know what that is, is a third, and 
 there are many more where doctors are perfectly 
 useless. They have been trained also to say, 
 ' This is incurable,' and that, added to their ex- 
 perience that they have never cured it, makes 
 them, if they are honest, not take fees in order 
 to go on visiting a patient whom they know they 
 cannot restore to health. They may still, though 
 their honesty is unimpeachable, then consider it 
 their duty to use drugs or treatment that may 
 prolong life a little. With that I have no par- 
 ticular sympathy. They may also, and with this 
 I am in complete sympathy, palliate, and with 
 all their skill, the sufferings of anyone whom they 
 know must soon die."
 
 THE HOUSE OF, DEFENCE 211 
 
 The dear old sea-captain felt himself much 
 moved. He was spending his valuable time, which 
 might have been remuneratively occupied ; but he 
 somehow regarded that as an offering laid on the 
 altar, a tribute to the glorious bravery of these 
 two women. 
 
 " I will always do that," he said, " and if we 
 are to leave your brother to die, I will make his 
 days painless to him. But the moment I begin 
 to make his days painless, I aggravate his dis- 
 ease. You, Lady Maud, believe that he has a 
 chance. I do not; but since all I can offer to you 
 and him is so much less than what you offer, I, 
 though a professional doctor, say, i Do what you 
 can, and God be with you! ' Now, to descend to 
 practical details, what will you do ? Where is this 
 Mr. Cochran ? But I suppose there are plenty of 
 these healers." 
 
 Maud strove for a moment to separate the two 
 strands of her desires, the one of which was to 
 see Thurso delivered from this drug-possession, 
 the other to see and be with Walter Cochran 
 again. But her answer was absolutely honest. 
 
 " I have knowledge of only one of the Chris- 
 tian Science practitioners whom I really believe 
 in," she said, " and he is Mr. Cochran. I saw 
 him cure, with my eyes I saw him restore to life, 
 a dying man. Of the others there is Lady 
 Yardly "
 
 212 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 Sir James laughed suddenly. 
 
 11 Why that? " she asked. 
 
 " She came to me a few months ago for a 
 tonic," he said. " She had been suffering from 
 general catarrh for some weeks." 
 
 Maud laughed too. 
 
 11 Oh, Alice! " she said to herself. 
 
 " Mr. Cochran has not come to me, however," 
 said Sir James. 
 
 " Well, I believe in him," said Maud. " At 
 least you see I am nearly a Christian Scientist 
 myself. I believe that he can direct the power 
 of God on to people. And that is the biggest thing 
 possible, isn't it? " 
 
 Sir James nodded quietly. 
 
 "It is the only thing possible," he said, 
 " whether you have cancer, or consumption, or 
 a toothache. That I entirely believe, and I be- 
 lieve that if you can get that direct power you 
 have no need of us. And when we the doctors, 
 I mean say we are powerless, get in the man 
 with the barrel-organ. Oh, but compound frac- 
 ture! " he cried suddenly. " What ridiculous 
 nonsense! ' 
 
 He was silent for a moment after this sudden 
 professional burst of indignation. 
 
 " But this Mr. Cochran," he said. " Who and 
 where is he? " 
 
 "He is in America," said Maud. " I heard
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 213 
 
 from him two days ago. He is in New York." 
 
 The doctor was silent a moment. ' ' I have read 
 some of their literature," he said, " and heard 
 about some of their reputed cures, and if you 
 choose if you choose, mind you can send a tele- 
 gram to this Mr. Cochran acquainting him with 
 the state of affairs. You see, I don't think Mr. 
 Cochran can hurt Lord Thurso, and I feel sure 
 that we, the doctors, can't benefit him." 
 
 " Am I to get Mr. Cochran to come here, 
 then! " asked Maud. 
 
 " I think not. In the first place, it is a good 
 deal to ask, and in the second, if only you or Lady 
 Thurso could persuade him to go, I am quite con- 
 vinced that a sea voyage, though of course it will 
 not in any sense cure him, will benefit him. Now 
 do you think it is in your power to persuade him 
 to go? You needn't say anything about a Chris- 
 tian Science practitioner waiting for him at the 
 end, there is no need to mention that, unless you 
 think well." 
 
 Maud thought about this. 
 
 " Yes, I think I might be able to persuade him," 
 she said, " because certainly he used to listen 
 to me when he would listen to nobody else. Would 
 you think it odd if I suggested that he and I went 
 alone, without Lady Thurso, I mean? " 
 
 " I should have suggested it, if you had not," 
 said the doctor.
 
 ' ' Of course, poor Thurso is mad, he is not him- 
 self, ' ' said Maud. ' ' But you know all this month 
 he has been behaving as if he hated her." 
 
 The doctor nodded. 
 
 " I know. She has told me. Now I should 
 advise your putting this plan before your brother 
 as soon as possible to-morrow, perhaps, if he 
 goes on as well as he has done to-day. And now 
 I must be off. I shall be here, of course, to- 
 morrow morning." 
 
 Thurso, for a man who had just passed through 
 so dangerous an attack, weakened also as he was 
 by his opium indulgence, showed extraordinary 
 recuperative power, and next day he asked of his 
 own accord if Maud might come in and see him. 
 
 This Sir James at once allowed. 
 
 " She may certainly come," he said. " I will 
 tell her." 
 
 He waited for a moment, but Thurso said noth- 
 ing about his wife, and shortly after the doctor 
 left him Maud came in. 
 
 " Now, it's only a quarter of an hour, dear 
 Thurso," she said, " that I am allowed to stay. 
 You frightened us out of our wits yesterday, you 
 know, and to-day, why, you look ever so much 
 better." 
 
 Thurso did not at once reply to this; then he 
 spoke quickly.
 
 " I don't want to see Lily," he said. " I think 
 the sight of her would send me off my head. It's 
 she who has brought me to this. It was she who 
 ruined my nerves by always rushing about and 
 flying off in every direction." 
 
 " Ah, never mind that," said Maud. " The 
 only thing that you must do now is to stay quiet 
 and get well." 
 
 But Thurso interrupted her. 
 
 " I've behaved abominably to her, too," he 
 said ; ' ' but she drove me to it. She despised me. 
 I could see she despised me, and so I hit back. ' ' 
 
 " Thurso, you mustn't talk like that," com- 
 manded Maud. " But if you feel that you don't 
 want to see Lily, I've got a plan to propose to 
 you which we might do when you are better." 
 
 11 Well? " 
 
 " Sir James told me yesterday that you would 
 have to go somewhere to pick up again, and sug- 
 gested the sea. Now you and I both like the sea, 
 so why shouldn't we go off together, go to Amer- 
 ica or somewhere, just for the voyage. We could 
 stay at Lily's house on Long Island for a weeK 
 or two if you liked." 
 
 " Without Lily, do you mean? " asked he. 
 
 " Well, she loathes the sea." 
 
 His eye brightened. 
 
 " Yes, I'll come," he said, " if you promise 
 Lily won't. I won't go with her, mind."
 
 216 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 His voice had risen sharply over this, and he 
 was silent afterwards, breathing rather quickly. 
 Then he looked at Maud as she sat beside the 
 bed, and something in her youth and beauty 
 stirred some chord of memory in him, and his 
 mind, which was quite clear, for all the deadly 
 weakness of his body, went back to early days 
 when he and Maud had been together so much, 
 bound together in an intimacy and affection that 
 seldom exists between brother and sister. She 
 had always been such a good friend to him, such 
 a capital comrade, and now, he felt, there must 
 stand between them the horrors of these last 
 months. For the moment he got outside himself 
 and judged himself, and saw how hideous it had 
 all been. 
 
 " I've made a pretty good mess of it all," he 
 said. 
 
 She laid her hand on his. 
 
 " Yes, dear Thurso, but the past is past," she 
 remarked; " and, thank God, it's never too late." 
 
 Then that moment passed. It had been as 
 brief as a sudden ray of sun piercing through 
 some unconjectured rent in blinding storm-clouds. 
 
 " But it's Lily's fault," he said. 
 
 But the ray had been there; his soul, though 
 sick to death, still lived. And that was the only 
 bit of consolation that Maud could carry away 
 with her.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THUESO'S recovery, though he had no relapse 
 and no hint even of a second attack, had been 
 rather slow, and it was three weeks from the 
 time of his collapse when he and Maud were sit- 
 ting together on the deck of the " Celtic," watch- 
 ing the shores of Ireland fade into gray mist as 
 they sank on the horizon. They had embarked 
 the day before at Liverpool, and though they had 
 been at sea only twenty-four hours, already some 
 semblance of color was returning to his face. 
 But if Maud had met him now for the first time 
 in a year, she felt that she would scarcely have 
 known him. Those months of steady indulgence 
 in the drug had made his face look strangely wan 
 and old ; the cheeks had fallen in, crows ' feet had 
 been planted at the outer corners of his eyes, and 
 the lids were baggy and pendulous. But it was 
 his mouth that had changed most; all power and 
 determination had gone from it, it drooped weakly 
 and feebly at its corners, and the lower lip hung 
 loose it was the mouth of a sensual and self- 
 indulgent man. His hair, too, had grown very 
 thin, and streaks of gray had appeared in it. 
 Then, on the top of this rapid physical degenera-
 
 218 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 tion, had come his very severe attack of heart 
 failure; illness as well as deterioration had left 
 its mark on his face. 
 
 Sometimes, when during these last weeks she 
 had looked at him, she had felt her courage and 
 hope for the future almost vanish. Nor was it 
 only his body which had so aged and fallen away, 
 his soul was sick to death. He had fits of black 
 despair and 'depression, when he could bear to 
 see nobody, not even her, and would lock him- 
 self up in his room, giving orders that his meals 
 were to be left outside, and that under no cir- 
 cumstances was he to be disturbed. Then when 
 he began to emerge from these, remorse for the 
 wreck he had made sometimes overtook him, and 
 he would ask her to sit with him, while he un- 
 loaded himself of tons of despair. Half a dozen 
 times he had said that he would not go to America 
 at all; what could a week or two of sea-air do 
 for a man in his case? He felt that death was 
 near; he would die as comfortably as might be 
 in his own house. But then the pendulum would 
 swing further ; his depression would be succeeded 
 by bitterness against Lily, and the settled con- 
 viction that it was she who was morally respon- 
 sible for his downfall. It was that indeed which 
 was the immediate cause of his having left Eng- 
 land ; the day before they were to sail he had had 
 a black day of despair, and had altogether refused
 
 THE HOUSE OFDEFENCE 219 
 
 to go. But when the morning came that had 
 passed, and his one desire was to get away from 
 her, to leave her neighborhood altogether. She 
 was in England, therefore he would go anywhere 
 else. And his last words to her had been, " You 
 are responsible for all this ! ' ' 
 
 It was all black enough, and there had been at 
 present only one ray of comfort. He had not taken 
 laudanum again, nor, as far as could be ascer- 
 tained, had he tried to get any. But Sir James 
 did not let Maud build much upon that. 
 
 " He is still frightfully weak," he had said; 
 ' ' it is when his strength begins to come back that 
 he will begin to crave for it. At present he is 
 not strong enough to want anything." 
 
 He had not yet been told what the ulterior ob- 
 ject in his going to America was, for it was 
 thought that if he knew that he would probably 
 refuse to go altogether. Sir James had had a 
 talk with Maud on this subject shortly before they 
 left. 
 
 " There is a psychological moment for telling 
 him that, my dear lady, ' ' he said, ' ' which has not 
 yet arrived. At present, your brother shows no 
 desire for anything, neither for the drug, nor for 
 any return to health. He does not even, I think, 
 want to die. But as he begins to get back his 
 strength he will begin to desire again he will
 
 220 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 want the drug; he will want to get well also. 
 Then tell him." 
 
 There was a bright winter's sun shining where 
 they sat, and their place was shielded from the 
 wind of their motion by the deck smoking-room. 
 Two days ago there had been a big wind, and 
 there was still a considerable swell. But the huge 
 ship took little account of that, and glided with 
 little motion across this wonderful gray sea, that 
 broke into dazzling white against her burrowing 
 bows. Something of the pale crystalline blue 
 above was reflected in the great joyous hills and 
 valleys of water that streamed hissing by them, 
 and the grayness of the winter Atlantic was shot 
 with delicate azure, as if, though it was barely 
 yet midwinter, there was some promise of spring 
 in the air, and the return to the summer coloring 
 of green and blue. Above their heads the wind 
 thrummed and whistled in the rigging of the 
 masts, and the clean, unbreathed odor of the sea 
 was salt and bracing. In spite of the sun, how- 
 ever, it was chilly to the unprotected, and both 
 Thurso and his sister wore thick fur coats, and 
 were covered in rugs. They had sat some little 
 time in silence, and then Thurso turned to her. 
 
 " I feel better," he said, " and I haven't felt 
 better for so long! ' 
 
 " Ah, you are much better," she said. " You 
 have been mending every day."
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 221 
 
 " But there is a difference between being bet- 
 ter and feeling better, ' ' he said, ' * and the second 
 means more to the man who is ill. Now, I sup- 
 pose we shall have to talk things out sometime, 
 so why not now? I do feel better; I feel as if I 
 could wish to be well again." 
 
 This then was the moment of which Sir James 
 had spoken to Maud, when it would be the time 
 to tell Thurso of the real purpose of their coming 
 to America, and he soon gave her the opportunity. 
 
 " But I dare say I am beginning to wish that 
 too late," he said. " How bad have I been ex- 
 actly? How bad am I? " 
 
 * ' Do you mean your heart attack ? ' ' she asked. 
 
 11 No, the other thing. I may tell you that for 
 weeks before my attack I felt perfectly incapable 
 of resistance. I could no more resist than I could 
 resist breathing." 
 
 " You were as bad as you could be," said she. 
 " Your heart-attack in a way saved your life. It 
 prevented you wanting the stuff for a time." 
 
 " But does Sir James really think that a week 
 or two at sea will cure that? ' 
 
 ' * No ; but he thinks it will do you good. ' ' 
 
 Thurso threw back his head, and drew in a long 
 breath of the cold, pure air. And at the same 
 moment he suddenly felt his mouth water at a 
 thought that had come into his head. He was 
 beginning to want again.
 
 222 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 11 But he has no idea that it will cure me? " 
 he said, with a certain suspicious persistence. 
 
 Then Maud knew that her time had come. 
 
 " No, he never thought it would cure you, and 
 he doesn't profess to be able to cure you himself. 
 But, Thurso, there is another chance, perhaps. 
 He sanctioned our trying it." 
 
 " What chance? Another doctor in America? 
 I'll go to any doctor or any quack you please." 
 
 " It isn't a quack I want you to go to. I want 
 you to see if a Christian Science practitioner can 't 
 do anything for you. ' ' 
 
 Thurso was silent a moment. 
 
 " It has been a plot, then? " he asked in that 
 dreadful cold tone in which he spoke of his wife. 
 
 " Yes, dear, but don't speak like that," said 
 Maud. " You speak as if it were a plot against 
 you, instead of a plot for you. I didn't tell you, 
 because I was afraid you might refuse to come. 
 I have been responsible for it all." 
 
 The mood which she knew and dreaded was 
 gaining on him his face was blanching with hate 
 and suspicion. 
 
 " You assure me Lily didn't have a hand in it," 
 he said, " so that she might be left alone with 
 Villars? " 
 
 Maud made a gesture of despair. 
 
 " Oh, you are mad," she said. " It isn't you 
 speak when you say dreadful false things
 
 THE HOUSE OFDEFENCE 223 
 
 like that, but it's that demon which possesses you, 
 Thurso, that horrible drug. It has poisoned your 
 body, and it is poisoning your soul." 
 
 Then with that bewildering rapidity that she 
 knew and dreaded, his mood changed again. But 
 the change, though he was in the darkness of 
 abysmal despair, was for the better; anything 
 was better than that hate and suspicion. 
 
 " Yes, I am poisoned; I am altogether poi- 
 soned," he said quietly. 
 
 Maud turned an imploring face to him. 
 
 " No, dear, you are not altogether poisoned," 
 she said, ' i and the fact of your saying that shows 
 that there is some little sound piece left. If you 
 were altogether poisoned you wouldn't know it; 
 there would be nothing to tell you what was poi- 
 soned and what was wholesome still. And you 
 feel regret still. I saw it in your eyes just now, 
 and, though it cuts me to the heart, I wouldn't 
 have it there. It is just your regret, your desire 
 to do better, which is the only soil out of which 
 your salvation can come." 
 
 Her voice died on the last words. Then she 
 spoke again. 
 
 * ' Oh, Thurso, if you only knew how I care ! ' 
 she said. 
 
 For that moment he was touched. He looked 
 at her kindly. 
 
 " Poor Maud! " he said.
 
 224 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 " No, never mind that," she answered. " Get 
 well, get the poison out of your soul and body, 
 for your own sake. ' ' 
 
 Once again the genial thrill of convalescence, 
 "I'm feeling better," came over him, and once 
 again his thought framed a further desire. But 
 he detached himself from that, and brought him- 
 self back to her again. 
 
 " And do you really believe that I can be 
 cured ? " he said. ' ' Is an appalling young woman 
 to come and sit by me and sing verses of hymns ! 
 I read something of the sort in a book I found at 
 home the other day. It was yours, I suppose. ' ' 
 
 She almost laughed. 
 
 " No, dear, there are going to be no appalling 
 young women about. You know the practitioner 
 we are going to. And you like him. ' ' 
 
 Thurso frowned; he seemed to be able to re- 
 member nothing; memory was there still, but it 
 was veiled, he could not reach it. 
 
 " That that fellow in Scotland? " he asked. 
 
 Then for a moment memory came back, with a 
 flash, vivid but brief. 
 
 " I met him in the street up there one day," 
 he said, ' ' and he made me feel better. I had an 
 awful headache. I say, that is something gained, 
 isn't it? I never have headaches now. What was 
 his name, by the way? ' 
 
 " Mr. Cochran," said the girl.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 225 
 
 " Yes, of course, I remember. So he is going 
 to sing hymns to me, is he? " 
 
 But Maud did not smile now. Thurso was him- 
 self again in a way that he had not been for 
 weeks. There might only be a minute or two of 
 this; any moment might see him back again in 
 despair and hatred. She wanted to make the 
 most of it ; the creeper his will was in her hand 
 for a second; she might make some attempt at 
 training it up again. 
 
 " Oh, Thurso, pull yourself together," she 
 said ; ' * just make an effort for a moment to real- 
 ize where you stand. Sir James says he is help- 
 less; he says you have no will left which he can 
 attempt to strengthen. I don't believe that. I 
 believe it is there still; and you are going to get 
 God, not any mortal physician, to lay His hand 
 on you. Try to believe, if only for a moment, 
 that all power is His, and that he is all Love, all 
 health, all life. That evil, and illness, and every- 
 thing of that kind cannot exist in His presence. 
 Let yourself be brought to it; do not hang back. 
 You can help or hinder your cure. And, so I be- 
 lieve, we have been hindering it, by trusting to 
 the power of man to cure you. That is all done 
 with. You are coming to God now." 
 
 For one moment, as she spoke, he sat straight 
 up in his chair, looking suddenly awake, revivi- 
 fied. But with that revivification came more
 
 226 THE HOUSE OF. DEFENCE 
 
 strongly than before the revivification of desire 
 of another kind. All day a certain strength and 
 vitality had been returning to him, born of austere 
 sea-winds and Atlantic breezes, but, as must al- 
 ways happen, until the will is set and centred on 
 the higher and immortal mind, and does not, as 
 if through some sieve, strain off and reject all 
 that is mortal and corruptible, this returning tide 
 of vitality made more vital and insistent that on 
 which his habit of mind, his degraded desire, had 
 dwelt all these months. And this time it took 
 more definite shape. He knew that in his private 
 despatch-box, of which he alone had the key, there 
 was a bottle of dark blue glass. He had put it 
 there on the morning of their departure, not ac- 
 tively wanting it in any way, but from habit, as 
 one packs hair-brushes and nail-scissors from 
 habit, knowing one will want them, though not 
 now. But now he began to want it; and though 
 he wanted also to get well, to break this infernal 
 chain that was wound so closely about him, yet 
 that which had been the only real desire of his 
 life for all these months pounced tiger-like on 
 the fresh morsel of strength that had been thrown 
 within reach. The other higher side of him, 
 feebler and indeed almost atrophied, had no 
 chance to reach that morsel before the other. 
 Cunning began to return, too; and already there 
 flashed through his brain the design of when he
 
 THE HOUSE OFDEFENCE 2271 
 
 should be able with safety to satisfy this growing 
 desire. But even as he thought of it, the desire 
 itself swelled mushroom-like. It must be soon, it 
 must be now. Just a taste, a quarter dose, to 
 satisfy himself that there was still something 
 worth living for. That warm thrill and vibra- 
 tion spreading from the head down through his 
 neck, and invading every limb with its harmonies ! 
 Or should he tantalize himself, let himself get 
 thirstier for it, before indulging in it T The more 
 he wanted it, the more ecstatic was the quenching 
 of that infernal thirst. He wanted it, but it was 
 better to want it more. Even the want of it was 
 pleasurable, when he knew that he could satisfy 
 that want when he chose. He felt sure, too, that 
 in moderation it could do him no harm. One had 
 to heal one's self by degrees of a habit of this 
 kind. And then he remembered when he had last 
 said that to himself, the day before that on which 
 Lily and Maud had thrown his bottle away. That 
 had been an unwise move of theirs ; he had fully 
 intended to break himself gradually of the habit, 
 but what they had done had brought on a hideous 
 headache the last, by the way, that he had had. 
 Of course, he had to take the drug to relieve that. 
 Otherwise he would not have taken it that day. 
 But now he had been without it for three weeks. 
 That was an immense gain. But he wanted it 
 now. Yes, now, there must be no waiting for his
 
 228 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 craving to get stronger. That instinctive swal- 
 lowing movement of his throat and tongue had 
 begun, and that was always the signal he waited 
 for. But he must still be cunning, he must pre- 
 vent the possibility of suspicion conveying itself 
 to Maud. That, however, was not difficult. It 
 was as easy as lying; just as easy, in fact; there 
 was no difference whatever between them. And 
 he looked at her, at her big violet eyes just moist 
 with tears, at her mouth just trembling a little 
 with the feeling that inspired her words, and 
 spoke without hesitation or bungling. 
 
 " Yes, I believe that," he said. " I am going 
 to God direct, as you say. I am not a Christian 
 Scientist, but I do believe in His omnipotent 
 power for good, so that nothing evil can exist in 
 His presence. I should probably, as you thought, 
 have refused to leave England if I had known 
 why I was being brought here. But I thank you 
 for bringing me." 
 
 He paused a moment, wondering as a bystander 
 who knew his heart might wonder at the profanity 
 and wickedness of what he was saying, since all 
 the time he was merely disarming her possible 
 suspicions in order to be able to go to his cabin 
 and be alone to unlock the despatch-box. He real- 
 ized, too, that it would require a greater potency 
 than a quarter dose to enable him to forget what 
 he had just said, and slide blissfully off into that
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 229 
 
 state of consciousness which alone was worthy 
 of the name of life. Half a dose surely would 
 not hurt him; half a dose, that is to say, of the 
 bigger doses which he had prescribed for himself. 
 There was, too, a little more to be said yet. In- 
 complete lying was ever a tactical error. And his 
 brain, flaming with desire, should make his next 
 words absolutely convincing to his sister. 
 
 " Sir James is a very clever doctor, no doubt," 
 he said, " but he certainly made a mistake when 
 he thought my will-power was dead, or something 
 to that effect. I am glad he said it, and I am 
 glad you told me, because that sort of opinion acts 
 as a tonic. I will show him if it is dead. And did 
 he really suppose I should consent to go to sea 
 for a week without opium, if I did not mean to 
 be cured in spite of him! ' 
 
 The desire was inflaming his brain more and 
 more every moment, making it supernaturally 
 cunning. He detected a possible error in those 
 last words; he had protested a little too much. 
 But that again was easily rectified. 
 
 ' l I shouldn 't have said ' in spite of him, * ; ' he 
 said, " because that makes it appear as if I 
 thought that, having given me up, he didn't wish 
 me to get well. But, my goodness, how his pre- 
 scription of sea-air is acting already. I was a 
 log when I started ; and now, Maud, am not I dif- 
 ferent! And about your fear that I shouldn't
 
 230 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 have come if I had known what our ultimate goal 
 is, I am more than reconciled to it. I am im- 
 patient to get there. So we have finished our 
 talk, have we not? I have said all I wish to say. 
 My recovery, if I am to recover, is left in other 
 hands, the best, the only ones. I can only say 
 that with all the power of will that is in me, I 
 elect to leave myself there. And if that is not 
 to be, you may know that, though too late, I was 
 willing. ' ' 
 
 Again he wondered at his wickedness, but did 
 not regret it. It was so vastly more important 
 than anything else to be able to get to his cabin 
 without Maud following him, or being suspicious 
 in any way. He could evoke his visions almost 
 at will, and now he wanted to see the sky, as he 
 had seen it up in Caithness, covered with blue 
 acanthus leaves, with the star's dewdrops upon 
 them, and the big sun a golden centre of a blue 
 flower. Nor did Maud's words shake his desire, 
 solemn though they were. They just went by 
 him like a breeze past a well-built house. 
 
 11 Oh, thank God, Thurso, thank God!" she 
 said. " And I have said all, too. You will get 
 well. I know it, since you feel like that. And 
 now let us dismiss altogether what is past. It 
 wasn't you who did all this, it was just evil pos- 
 session. But that is driven out now; your words 
 have told me that. ' '
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 231 
 
 Bells for meals were very frequent on this ship, 
 and Maud, as a matter of fact, was thoroughly 
 well pleased with their frequency, for she had at 
 sea that huge sense of bodily health that requires 
 much to eat and many hours to sleep. The de- 
 sire for sleep was shared by Thurso, and when 
 just as she finished speaking the bell for tea 
 tinkled up and down the deck, she went down to 
 the saloon, and he to his cabin with the expressed 
 intention not to appear till dinner-time, nor in- 
 deed then if he felt disinclined to move. This de- 
 sire for sleep, Sir James had said, was one that 
 should be gratified to the full, and when they 
 parted in the vestibule that led on the one side 
 to the cabins and on the other to the saloon, it 
 was a possible good-night that Maud wished him. 
 His valet would bring his dinner to his cabin in 
 case he did not appear. 
 
 Till that afternoon, when at last Thurso showed 
 that his will was not dead yet, that his face was 
 set forward, that something of spring and the 
 power of rebound was in him yet, Maud had not 
 known how near despair she had been, or how 
 forlorn did she in her inmost self feel that this 
 hope was for which she was bringing him over 
 sea. Slender and dim as it had been, she had still 
 clung to it, and now how strong and firm it sud- 
 denly became, when she knew that Thurso re-
 
 232 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 sponded to it too, and was willing, eager indeed, 
 to put himself into the hands of Infinite Love to 
 work for him the miracle which the finite skill of 
 mortal treatment despaired of accomplishing. In 
 that great upspringing of hope and joy which had 
 come to her that afternoon the confined walls of 
 the dining-saloon could not hold her long; her 
 instinct was to be up again on deck between the 
 huge sea and the huge sky, so as to let her soul 
 go forth without the distraction of near objects 
 and the proximity of other human beings into the 
 presence of Divine Love. All this autumn she 
 had been realizing slowly and dimly (for when 
 evil and ruin were so close about her, it was hard 
 not to believe in the reality of them) that only 
 one power that of God had any true existence, 
 that all else was false. But now that realization 
 was being poured into her in floods, the dawn was 
 growing dazzlingly bright, for already the miracle 
 had begun, already hope had begun to spring from 
 what doctors had declared was soil utterly barren, 
 incapable of bearing fruit. 
 
 The upper deck was quite empty when she came 
 up again, the sun had already set, and in the 
 darkening skies the stars had begun to come 
 forth, and she walked forward to the bows of the 
 ship in order to be quite alone. The very rush 
 of air round her, as the boat hissed forward into 
 the west, where light still lingered, seemed to her
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 233 
 
 extraordinarily typical of what was happening 
 spiritually to her. All around her lay the tossed 
 darkness and billows of the unquiet sea, but just 
 as this mighty ship went smoothly and evenly 
 through them, so through the waves and fretful 
 foam of human trouble her soul went straight 
 towards the brightness in the west. She had 
 doubted before, she had often and often striven 
 to realize what she in her inmost soul believed; 
 but her unbelief still needed help. But now help 
 was brought to it. 
 
 ' ' Yes, it is so ; it must be so, ' ' she said to her- 
 self. " For nothing can exist by the side of the 
 Infinite; all else must vanish." 
 
 She walked back along the decks that were be- 
 ginning to shimmer with dew, unconscious of all 
 else in the wonder and glory of the truth that 
 was falling in golden rain round her. And be- 
 low her feet, a few yards only away, Thurso was 
 lying in his berth, not asleep, but very vividly 
 awake, in his own hell-paradise. He looked no 
 longer on the bare white walls of his cabin, for 
 blue acanthus leaves covered it, and the stars 
 shone like dewdrops on them, and in the centre 
 the sun was the golden heart of an azure flower. 
 It had required a full dose, and no quarter or half 
 measure, to bring him there, but he was there 
 now. One thing only troubled him a little, and 
 that not much, it was only like an echo, not an
 
 234 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 authentic voice, and that was the memory of the 
 words with which he had so comforted his sister. 
 He could not remember exactly what they were, 
 but they were very solemn. Well, that could not 
 be helped now, but he wished he could get rid of 
 the feeling they gave him. He could not abandon 
 himself absolutely and utterly to the bliss of his 
 vision. They came between him and it like a little 
 film of gray. 
 
 As a rule, he slept well, especially after an 
 opium debauch. But to-night, when, soon after 
 he had eaten a little dinner which his valet 
 brought him, he undressed and went to bed, he 
 felt not exactly staring wide-awake, but dully, 
 stupidly awake. It was now about eleven, and 
 since the effects of the opium usually wore off 
 after six or seven hours, leaving him, as the 
 vividness of sensation begun to fade, very sleepy 
 and languid, he could not account for his inability 
 to sleep. Then his disquiet began to take more 
 definite form. He felt as if somebody, Maud, was 
 in his cabin, looking at him with that bright face 
 of thankfulness which she had turned on him at 
 the end of their interview on the deck. This con- 
 viction became so vivid that he spoke to her, call- 
 ing her by name. She did not answer, and he 
 turned on his light to convince himself that she 
 was not there.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 235 
 
 So he put it out and lay down again, but no 
 sooner had he closed his eyes and tried to com- 
 pose himself to sleep when the same feeling of 
 her presence, more definite than ever, again vis- 
 ited him. She was quite close to him, and he 
 knew as well as if she put it into words what filled 
 her brain. It was all about him. She was say- 
 ing to him again and again, " You are feeling 
 better; God is making you better, dear Thurso. 
 You are coming straight to Him, and no sin or 
 evil or sickness can exist in His Presence." And 
 together with this, the memory of his words to 
 her, which had so comforted her, came back with 
 added vividness. He remembered what he had 
 said now; he had used the strongest and most 
 solemn words he could, so that he could go at 
 once to his cabin and do what he had done. 
 
 This lying here grew intolerable, he was getting 
 more acutely awake every moment, and as he 
 grew more awake the more he was aware of 
 Maud's presence. Was it perhaps some warn- 
 ing, did it mean that she was in danger of any 
 kind, and that, as at the hour of death, her 
 soul sought his so vehemently that it produced 
 the hallucination of her presence? The next mo- 
 ment he had jumped out of his berth and put on 
 a few hasty clothes, in order to go to her cabin 
 and see if she was all right. Yet at the door he 
 hesitated. He could not face her; he would be-
 
 236 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 tray himself; his eyes and mouth would betray 
 him, and she would see what he had been doing. 
 But anxiety for her overmastered him, and he 
 went and tapped at her door. 
 
 She answered at once and he went in. She was 
 still fully dressed, and seated on a chair by the 
 bed, her face radiant in happiness. 
 
 " Not in bed yet? " he said. 
 
 " No, I was too happy to go to bed." 
 
 Then as she looked at him she paused. 
 
 * ' What is the matter, Thurso I What have you 
 come to me for? ' 
 
 He could not meet her eye, but looked away. 
 
 " I couldn't sleep," he said. " I kept think- 
 ing you were in the room. I came to see if you 
 were all right." 
 
 She gave a long sigh. 
 
 11 You have been taking laudanum again," she 
 said. " Anyhow, you came to tell me that." 
 
 He looked back fiercely at her. 
 
 " I haven't," he said. " What do you mean? 
 j 
 
 And then his voice failed him ; his lips stuttered 
 over a few words more, but no sound came. She 
 entirely disregarded his denial ; she did not seem 
 even to have heard it. 
 
 " I was in your cabin," she said. " All my 
 soul was there. Oh, Thurso, don't despair." 
 
 Then something seemed to break within him.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 237 
 
 He could not go on telling lies to her; for the 
 moment, perhaps because he was so tired, he could 
 not call up the energy to protest. It was simpler, 
 too, to tell her. 
 
 " Yes, it is hopeless," he said; " it is no good 
 trying. As soon as my strength came back to 
 me a little to-day the craving came back. I 
 brought a bottle of the stuff with me. Oh, yes, 
 I told you I hadn't. I lied. All the time I only 
 wanted one thing, to get away to my cabin. I 
 didn't care what I said. Now I suppose you 
 will want me to give you up the rest of it. Well, 
 I can't. Now that I have taken it again, I find I 
 don't want anything but that. It's no use you're 
 thinking I can get better, or get over it. I have 
 given myself up. You had better do so, too." 
 
 For one moment Maud felt that he spoke the 
 truth he was beyond power of recall. But the 
 next her whole soul and strength was up in arms 
 fighting that thought, passionately reversing it. 
 There was nothing in the world so true as In- 
 finite Love; she had known that this afternoon, 
 and already she was letting error obscure it. 
 Vehemently, furiously she fought it, and then 
 suddenly she wondered what she had been fight- 
 ing. For there was nothing there her blows 
 were rained upon emptiness. It was as if she 
 had dreamed she was fighting. For there was 
 nothing to fight. And she spoke to Thurso as she
 
 238 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 might have spoken to a child who was afraid of 
 the dark. 
 
 " You silly boy! " she said. " What can you 
 mean by such nonsense? How can I give you 
 up? How can I give up my love for you? That 
 is the one thing nobody can give up. And you 
 are frightened, you know. How can you be 
 frightened, when there is nothing in the world 
 to frighten you? You said this afternoon things 
 that made me unutterably happy, and now you 
 come and say they were lies, that you didn't 
 mean them. I am sorry you didn't mean them; 
 but they weren't lies. Perhaps you spoke the 
 truth by accident." 
 
 That sombre smouldering of despair in his eyes 
 faded. 
 
 " Do you mean you can possibly trust me 
 now? " he said. 
 
 Then he added quickly : 
 
 " But I can't give up the bottle to you." 
 
 Maud almost laughed. 
 
 " Well, if you can't, you can't," she said. 
 " And now I'm going to see you back to your 
 cabin, and you are going to bed. You have had 
 a dreadful evening, dear, over these nightmare 
 errors. I am so sorry ; oh, Thurso, I am so sorry ! 
 And if you feel me in the room again, you mustn't 
 be frightened, or think there is anything wrong. ' '
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 239 
 
 He said nothing to this, and they went down 
 the narrow passage to his cabin in silence. 
 
 " And you've had dinner? " she asked. " You 
 won't be hungry before morning? It's only just 
 one, you know. I could get you something." 
 
 " No, nothing, thanks," he said. Then his eye 
 fell on the despatch-box, and he stood looking at 
 it a moment. Then he took a bunch of keys from 
 his pocket, detached one, and flung it on the 
 ground. 
 
 " That's the key," he said, " and it is inside 
 the despatch-box. You may take it if you like." 
 
 That radiance in the girl's face that had left 
 her only for a moment glowed and shone with a 
 double light. But she made no movement to pick 
 up the key. 
 
 " Dear Thurso, where are your manners? ' 
 she said. " That really is not the proper way 
 to give me a key." 
 
 11 I won't give it you in any other," said he. 
 
 She longed to pick it up herself; she could 
 hardly restrain herself from doing so; but she 
 longed also that, strengthened by this first ef- 
 fort, he should make another, give her the key 
 voluntarily. 
 
 11 Then I'm afraid it must stop where it is," 
 she said. " Good-night! " 
 
 He turned with a frown to her. 
 
 " Oh, Maud, you fool ! " he said. " Why don't
 
 240 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 you take it while I can just manage to give it 
 you? " 
 
 " Because you must give it me like a gentle- 
 man, of course," she said. 
 
 Ah, how pleasant and human were the dealings 
 of Love! Half an hour ago tragedy, sordid, bit- 
 ter and heart-breaking, had been hers, and now 
 not only was comedy here, but sheer farce, mirth- 
 ful, productive of silly, childish laughter. Thurso 
 laughed, too, as he bent down and picked up the 
 key. 
 
 " You are an obstinate woman," he said. 
 
 1 i I know. Thank you, darling ! ' 
 
 She undid the despatch-box. 
 
 " Oh, Thurso, what a big bottle! " she said. 
 
 But the sight of it kindled and enflamed him 
 again. 
 
 " Ah, give it me back," he said; " I can't let 
 you have it. I told you I couldn't." 
 
 Maud was nearest the door, and she simply 
 ran out of the cabin with the bottle. She made 
 not half a dozen steps of the stairs that led to the 
 deck, and before half a minute was past a large 
 bottle of laudanum was sinking in a lonely and 
 desolate manner through the abysmal floods of 
 the Atlantic Ocean. 
 
 " That's an end to the harm you'll do," she 
 said to herself, without a grain of pity.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 241 
 
 But in spite of this brilliant victory, she knew 
 well that there must be many uphill battles to fight 
 before recovery could be in sight Walter Coch- 
 ran had told her that in a letter she had received 
 from him just before she left England. He had 
 answered at once to her cable by another, merely 
 saying that " he would cure Thurso," and had 
 written fully afterwards. The letter ended thus: 
 " I know that you believe in the infinite and om- 
 nipotent Mind, which is the sole and only cause 
 of all the world, and though you are not a mem- 
 ber of our church at present, yet since you be- 
 lieve the Gospel on which every cure that Chris- 
 tian Science has ever made is based, begin treat- 
 ing him at once yourself. Combat in your mind 
 every sign of error you see in him, and never be 
 discouraged. Of course, good must triumph, but 
 when error is so firmly rooted in a man it wants 
 some pulling up; it won't come away as a mere 
 shallow-rooted weed will. You will have to face 
 apparent failure again and again, but remember 
 that you are always on the winning side." 
 
 The days that followed amply illustrated this, 
 and there were many hours when she almost de- 
 spaired. Every evil, erring mood that had made 
 up his record for the last six months was crammed 
 into the days of that voyage. Sometimes his will 
 would flicker in a little dim flame, so that she 
 knew it was not yet quenched; but the flame was
 
 242 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 feeble, and the blacknesses that surrounded it 
 were dense. One day he went to the ship's doc- 
 tor, bringing with him the prescription, which 
 he knew by heart, and had himself written out 
 and signed with Sir James Sanderson's name, 
 asking him to have it made up. The doctor 
 read it. 
 
 " Certainly, Lord Thurso," he said. " I will 
 have it sent to your cabin. It is rather strong, 
 you know. You will be careful how you use it. 
 It is to relieve pain, I suppose? ' 
 
 " Yes, I suffer from very bad neuralgic head- 
 aches," said Thurso. " Thank you very much." 
 
 He left the surgery, his heart beating with ex- 
 hilarated anticipation, when suddenly the doctor, 
 who was looking at the prescription again, gave 
 a little whistle, and then called him. Thurso had 
 hardly left the room, and came back at once. 
 
 " Lord Thurso, this is rather odd," he said. 
 " But this prescription is written on the ship's 
 paper. Is Sir James on board? " 
 
 Thurso made a furious gesture of impatience. 
 
 " Oh, for God's sake, give it me! " he said. 
 " I shall go mad without it. It was Sir James's 
 prescription. I I copied it." 
 
 The doctor shook his head, for he saw plainly 
 enough now what he was dealing with. 
 
 " It is quite impossible," he said. " I am very
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 243 
 
 sorry. Of course, this matter shall go no fur- 
 ther." 
 
 Thurso merely walked away; there was noth- 
 ing more to be said, and then suddenly the little 
 flicker of will and of outraged self-respect began 
 to shoot up again, and he saw how mean it all 
 was. He, Thurso, had not only forged this, but 
 he had been caught at it ; it had happened before, 
 too. This powerlessness of his against his de- 
 sire was intolerable; his pride rebelled against 
 the hideous strength of his weakness. 
 
 He leaned against the bulwarks of the ship in 
 despair at himself, yet since for the moment he 
 was ashamed, since he wished he was not such a 
 despicable fellow, the despair was not complete. 
 But perhaps it would be better all round if he 
 ceased to struggle or to be at all. One moment 
 of bravery, one leap into those huge gray mon- 
 sters of waves that were making even this levi- 
 athan of the seas sway and rock, and it would 
 all be over. But he had not, he knew, even the 
 courage for that. No moral quality seemed to 
 be left him; they had all been transformed into 
 this hideous desire, as a cancer turns the whole- 
 some blood and living tissues into, its own putre- 
 fying growth. And what if that doctor told 
 some one? He had said that it should go no fur- 
 ther, but who could resist so savory a bit of 
 scandal? Lord Thurso forging Sir James San-
 
 derson's name in order to get laudanum, to 
 which he was a slave! That would make a fine 
 head-line, if tastefully arranged for some New 
 York paper. 
 
 Or again he would rail at Maud, laying tongue 
 to any bitter falsehood that he could invent, or 
 he would sit in mere idle despair, which she found 
 harder to endure, without suffering herself to 
 despair also, than anything else. It was all error, 
 it was the unreal, the mortal, the non-existent 
 part of him that suffered; but it was very hard 
 to cling to the truth of that, as to the Bock of 
 Ages, and not let the sea of error wash her away. 
 
 But after this not very brilliant attempt to get 
 laudanum from the ship's doctor, Thurso made 
 no further effort in that direction, and now and 
 then there were little rifts in that storm of error 
 that was so dark and gray above him. He told 
 Maud, for instance, about the forged prescrip- 
 tion, a thing which was hard for him to do, and 
 more than once, also, when for an hour perhaps 
 he had sat inventing bitter things in order to 
 wound her, he would stop suddenly. 
 
 " Maud, I'm an utter brute," he would say. 
 " But try to cling to your belief that it is not I." 
 
 Then Maud would look at him with lip that 
 quivered, and eyes that were brimming with un- 
 shed tears. 
 
 " Oh, Thurso, I know that," she said. " And
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 245 
 
 if I forget it now and then, and feel wounded, 
 thinking that it is you who have been saying those 
 things, I I know it is not so really. ' ' 
 
 Throughout the voyage, too, his mere bodily 
 health and strength was steadily though slowly 
 on the mend. He put on a little flesh; there was 
 a little more brightness of eye and clearness of 
 skin than when he left England, and this seemed 
 to her a visible sign of the truth of what she be- 
 lieved. "With all her heart, too, she set herself 
 to reverse and to forget the warning that Sir 
 James had given her that as his strength began 
 to return, so the strength of his craving would 
 return. On the first day or two of the voyage, it 
 is true, that had seemed to be the case, and Thurso 
 had felt it to be so himself, but she had not then 
 set herself, as she did now, hour after hour, to 
 fight and vanquish any such tendency in him. 
 "With heart lifted high with hope and faith, she 
 denied that. She affirmed that his health, being 
 a good thing, it could not let itself be a slave to 
 an evil thing, for thus evil would be stronger than 
 good a thing unthinkable. No, the strength that 
 was coming back to him, slowly indeed, meant so 
 many efforts, so many repulses of that mortal 
 and earthly habit that had become so intimate a 
 guest of his soul. That hideous, dwarfish shape 
 which he had admitted, with its blear eyes, its 
 trembling hands, clothed in the shroud and cere-
 
 246 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 merits of sensuality, was being pushed and 
 dragged out again. It was hard work, none knew 
 that better than she, but failure was impossible, 
 and well she knew that. When at last they got it 
 to the door of his soul, and got that door open so 
 that the sunshine of infinite Love poured in, with 
 what cry of joyful amazement would he see that 
 that dreadful figure that seemed now so real was 
 nothing, that it had no real existence. It was 
 cheating them all the time, she knew ; it was only 
 in the twilight of his soul that what was only a 
 shadow seemed to be real. 
 
 Now and then, too, the real Thurso, the kindly, 
 courteous gentleman who had been to her so well- 
 loved a brother, came back, and he and Maud 
 would talk about old days before ever this shadow 
 blackened his path. 
 
 And they would live over again in that light 
 of memory, which often lends a vividness to that 
 which is remembered which it did not have in 
 life, some windy, notable day on the moors when 
 Thurso shot three stags, or some memorable morn- 
 ing by the river when Maud killed six salmon 
 before lunch. 
 
 " Oh, Thurso, and I should have killed the 
 seventh, do you remember, but I let the line get 
 round that rock in the roaring pool and he 
 broke me."
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 247 
 
 " By gosh, I remember," he said. " You 
 nearly cried. Lord, what good days they were! 
 I was awfully happy all that summer. I had 
 hideous neuralgia, I remember, and it rather 
 spoiled my pleasure, but it didn't spoil my hap- 
 piness. How do you explain that? " 
 
 " Why, nothing can spoil one's happiness," 
 she said, answering his question without thought. 
 " All happiness ' 
 
 But he got up suddenly. 
 
 " I get the heart-ache to think of it all," he 
 said. 
 
 She rose too. 
 
 " Ah, Thurso, it will come back, ".she said. 
 
 He looked at her with a sudden face of gloom. 
 
 "And you?" he asked. "And Lily? How 
 can either of you forget ? It is absurd to say that 
 things can be the same. Not even God can put 
 the clock back, and say it is yesterday. ' ' 
 
 ' f No, dear, ' ' she said, ' ' but the sun rises again, 
 and to-day becomes to-morrow. ' Heaviness may 
 endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morn- 
 ing.' " 
 
 The bitter mood was pouring in on him again. 
 
 " Ah, a phrase! " he said. 
 . " Yes, but a true one," she answered. 
 
 But these hours were short and rare, and it 
 was seldom that he was even able to think regret-
 
 248 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 fully of the past. For the most part he was sus- 
 picious and bitter, or silent, full only of the one 
 deadly desire. All day it was in his mind, and 
 at night he dreamed of it. But as the days that 
 must elapse before they reached New York be- 
 gan to be reckoned by hours, his despair and dis- 
 piritedness were sensibly lessened. Maud no- 
 ticed that, and sometimes he spoke hopefully of 
 the new cure that was to be tried; yet as often 
 as he did this his voice rang as false as a cracked 
 bell, and she knew it was not this that he loo.ked 
 forward to, but to escaping from the prison of 
 a ship, where his desire was denied him, on to 
 the comparative freedom of dry land, where there 
 were chemists, drug-stores. . . . Yet with 
 his returning strength his craving no longer 
 seemed to grow proportionately. There was some 
 check on it, unanticipated by Sir James. He 
 wanted the drug; she knew that, and his brain, 
 she felt sure, was scheming to get it. But the 
 madness and raving of desire had not appeared, 
 and already they were steaming slowly up to the 
 relentless city. 
 
 Thurso and she were standing on deck together 
 as they drew near, on a morning of crystalline 
 brightness. The land was white with snow, but 
 the air was windless, and she felt that even the 
 town, which has the credit of possessing not the 
 worst climate in the world, had its beautiful days.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 249 
 
 Higher and higher rose the huge, many-storied 
 buildings, and from the pale blue of the winter 
 sky they passed into the region of gray smoke 
 that overhung the city. From the wide, tenant- 
 less space of the ocean they slid into more popu- 
 lous waters ; stately liners were leaving for east- 
 ward ports, and in a moment from the desert of 
 the high seas they passed into the crowded water- 
 ways, full of broad-decked ferry steamers, and 
 the innumerable hooting of sirens. Already, be- 
 fore they touched the shore, each felt that stimulus- 
 of air and intense activity which New York ex- 
 hales the atmosphere of continuous, unremitting 
 effort, that makes every other town in the world 
 seem dronish and lazy. 
 
 The huge bulk of their ship moved up to its 
 berth, towed in sideways, like some tired fish, by 
 two or three tiny, bustling tugs. And on the land- 
 ing dock Maud saw a figure she knew, tall and 
 serene, with no great-coat on, for all the chilli- 
 ness of the morning, and across the space of 
 water that separated them her heart leaped lightly 
 to him. She did not consciously think of herself;; 
 it was of Thurso she consciously thought when 
 she saw there the man who had flicked across the 
 ocean the message that " he would cure him," 
 but subconsciously, and not less eagerly, she 
 leaped to him because he was he. Then she turned 
 to Thurso.
 
 250 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 11 There is Mr. Cochran," she said. " How 
 kind of him to have come down to meet us ! " 
 
 It was yet a long time before the ship was 
 berthed and the landing-planks pnt out, and 
 Maud had not known how his heart, too, had 
 leaped on board when he had caught sight of them 
 standing on deck. To him, too, the leap had been 
 double he longed to save the one from mental 
 error, he longed to draw near to the other with 
 that flame of human love which yet has been 
 kindled at the fire which is divine. 
 
 Then they met, all three.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 WALTER COCHRAN had taken them straight 
 across to their house on Long Island, near Port 
 Washington, and had returned in the evening to 
 his own flat in Fifth Avenue. As regards Thurso, 
 the spiritual conflict of the Divine and Infinite 
 over the mortal and finite had begun, and of the 
 ultimate issue of that he had no doubts whatever. 
 But there was another conflict no less hard be- 
 fore him, and as he sat now for a few minutes 
 after eating his one dish of vegetables, which was 
 his dinner, he brought all his force to bear on 
 that. For to-morrow, at the joint request of 
 Thurso and his sister, he was going down to 
 their house to stay with them. That arrange- 
 ment he could not refuse since they were so kind 
 as to ask him. It was simpler and better in every 
 way, as regards the cure he knew he was going 
 to effect, to do so. Thus, all day he would see 
 and be with the girl whom he loved, with that in- 
 tensity which made him the healer that he was. 
 Yet, since, because he would be there simply as a 
 healer, and since except as a healer he would 
 never have been there, he knew that he must en- 
 tirely swamp and drown the desire of his life. He
 
 252 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 must say no word, make no sign. Even that was 
 not enough, he feared. He must school himself to 
 feel no longing, he must drown his love while he 
 was there. For he was there only as one who 
 could bring the power of God to bear on this man, 
 who was obscured by error. That was the sole 
 reason for his presence there. And as he sat here 
 now, he wondered if he was strong enough to do 
 what he knew he must do, or whether it was bet- 
 ter to refuse to go to Long Island at all, but send 
 somebody else. On the other hand, he had him- 
 self promised to cure Thurso ; they had come from 
 England on the strength of that promise. But 
 would it not be better to break that than to lead 
 himself into the temptation of using for his own 
 ends the opportunity that had been given to him, 
 and accepted by him, for the purpose of demon- 
 strating the eternal truth, which was more real 
 than any human love? 
 
 The cold outside was intense; it had come on 
 to freeze sharply at sunset, but he got up and set 
 his window open. The aid it gave him was ad- 
 ventitious only, but he found it easier to detach 
 himself from the myriad distractions of mortal 
 mind, if instead of the closed atmosphere of a 
 room, the taintless air of out-of-doors came in 
 upon him. Very possibly that was a mere claim 
 of mortal mind, but it was better to yield to such 
 a claim when it was clearly innocent, if it told
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 253 
 
 him that the working of the immortal was thereby 
 made easier, than to waste energy in fighting such 
 a claim. And then, as he had done before when 
 he went out to the bedside of Sandy Mackenzie, 
 he called his thoughts home. Thoughts of the 
 day and the sea, and the sunshine and the wind- 
 less frost came flocking back, and went to sleep. 
 Other thoughts, a little more laggard of wing, 
 had to obey, too; he had to forget the book he 
 had been reading during his dinner, the swift 
 hour of skating in the afternoon, the serious doubt 
 whether he had the right to treat as his own the 
 fortune that his father had left him. Then other 
 thoughts, more laggard yet, had to go to roost 
 (and if possible die as they were roosting) his 
 physical disgust for a man who had by sheer 
 weakness and self-indulgence allowed himself to 
 get into the state that his patient was in; that 
 slack lip, that sallow face, the thinning and whit- 
 ening hair, they were all the footprints of error 
 that had been made a welcome and desired guest. 
 He would scarcely have known the man again. 
 But all this had to sleep he had to regard him 
 only in the light of Love, in the spirit of Him 
 who healed the leper's sores. Slowly and with 
 effort that was done, but there was still one 
 winged thought abroad, harder to recall than any 
 Maud. She, too, had to be called home (and the 
 irony of the phrase struck him), her beauty, her
 
 254 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 incomparable charm, must now be all non-existent 
 for him. Whatever power he had must not be 
 spent elsewhere. She must cease all thought of 
 her must cease. 
 
 Then, like the driving-wheel of some engine 
 just beginning to haul its ponderous weight out 
 of the depot, the power of the Divine Mind began 
 to move within him. Once and again the wheel 
 spun round, not biting the rail, for the load was 
 very heavy, but soon the driving power began to 
 move him, the engine, and its dead and heavy 
 weight of trucks. It was dark under the roof of 
 the depot, but outside there was sunshine. The 
 only real force in the world could manage it, but 
 the engine had to strive and strain, and grip the 
 rails. Sometimes it seemed as if the weight be- 
 hind was immeasurable, sometimes it seemed as 
 if the force that drove him was so vast that he 
 must be broken with it. But he knew, that little 
 atom of agonized yet rapturous consciousness, 
 which was all that he could refer to as himself, 
 knew that it, and its freight, were in control of 
 the one thing that cannot possibly make a mis- 
 take. For that one thing is Love, in whose hands 
 alone the whole world is safe and saved. 
 
 The fire had gone out when he got up from 
 his chair some hours later, and the bitter frost 
 had frozen the glass of water he had poured out.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 255 
 
 But he broke the crust of ice on it and drank. 
 And in two minutes he was undressed and asleep, 
 having plunged into bed with a smile that had 
 broadened into the sheer laughter of joy. 
 
 Thurso awoke next morning feeling, so he told 
 himself, the stimulus and exhilaration of a new 
 climate, and the bracing effect of a dry, sunny, 
 frosty morning. After the narrow berth of his 
 cabin, it had been a luxury to sleep in a proper 
 bed again, and it was a luxury also to lie at ease 
 in it now. How well he had slept, too! He had 
 slept from about eleven the night before till half- 
 past eight; slept dreamlessly, without those in- 
 cessant wakings from agonized dreams of desire 
 which had so obsessed him during this last week. 
 No doubt this change from the sedentary life of 
 the ship to the wider activities of the land ac- 
 counted for that, and, anyhow, he felt the place 
 and the air suited him. Yesterday had passed 
 pleasantly, too; he, Maud and Cochran had been 
 for a long sleigh-drive in the afternoon, and 
 there was no use in denying it Cochran was a 
 very attractive fellow. He had the tact, the ex- 
 perience, the manner of a man, and yet all these 
 were somehow steeped in the exquisite efferves- 
 cence and glow of youth. Never had Thurso seen 
 the two so wonderfully combined " youth's en-
 
 chantment " was his still, the eager vitality of a 
 boy. 
 
 When they returned, he had had an hour's talk 
 with him alone, and, at Cochran's request, he 
 had told him the whole history of his slavery. 
 And, somehow, that recital had been in no way 
 difficult. He felt as if he was telling it all to one 
 who understood him better than ue understood 
 himself; one who did not in the least condone or 
 seek to find excuses for the miserable tale, but 
 one to whom these hideous happenings appeared 
 only in the light of a nightmare, as if Thurso 
 had had a horrible dream and was just telling 
 him a dream only. 
 
 And at the end Cochran had still been genial. 
 
 11 Well, now, that is a good start," he said, 
 " for I guess you haven't kept anything back. 
 Sometimes people have a sort of false shame, and 
 won't tell one what perhaps is the very worst of 
 all. Well, how can one take it to Infinite Love 
 to destroy and abolish if one doesn't know what 
 it is? " 
 
 Thurso was possessed of great courtesy of man- 
 ner. 
 
 " Quite so, that is only reasonable," he said. 
 But to himself he thought how odd it was that so 
 straightforward and simple a fellow should have 
 such a crank. Not that he was not perfectly 
 willing to let the crank do what he could for him
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 257 
 
 he would have worn any amulet or charm if 
 anyone seriously thought it could help him. 
 
 " Well, now, before I go back to town for the 
 night," continued Cochran, " I want to start 
 right away with you on this. Remember, first of 
 all, that all that you have been suffering from is 
 unreal. It has no true existence. Try to get that 
 into your mind the more you can make yourself 
 think that, the quicker your cure will be. A 
 patient can help his human doctor by determin- 
 ing to get well, can't he? Well, you can help me 
 by trying to realize that you never have been 
 really ill. There isn't such a thing as real ill- 
 ness." 
 
 " Do you mean that not only are the effects 
 of the drug unreal, but the cravings for it are 
 unreal? One can only judge by one's feelings; 
 one's feelings are the ultimate appeal, and I as- 
 sure you I know of nothing nearly so real as that. 
 If it wasn't real I shouldn't have come to 
 America. ' ' 
 
 " Ah, that's where you make a mistake," said 
 Cochran. ' ' Supposing we all entered into a con- 
 spiracy to play a practical joke on you got you 
 committed for murder and got you condemned to 
 death, so that you really believed it. You would 
 be terrified, and your terror would be the realest 
 thing in the world to you, you would say. But it 
 would be all founded on a lie. And your craving
 
 258 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 is founded on a lie. Such a stupid, transparent 
 lie, too ! As if evil has any power compared with 
 good. ' ' 
 
 Thurso thought this illustration rather well 
 chosen, but he was a little over-done and a little 
 impatient. Also the mention of his craving had 
 stirred it into activity again. He began to won- 
 der if there was any drug-shop near. . . . 
 And that thought made him the more impatient. 
 
 4 ' Excuse me, ' ' he said, i ' but I am not a Chris- 
 tian Scientist, and the method doesn't really in- 
 terest me, since I do not believe in it. ' ' 
 
 Cochran laughed, boyishly, with great good- 
 humor. 
 
 " Oh, we'll soon alter that," he said, " and I 
 am telling you the treatment, just as an ordinary 
 doctor tells his patient the treatment." 
 
 " I suppose I am pretty bad," said he. 
 
 " I should just think you were. Why, you are 
 all wrapped up in error. Have you ever unwound 
 a golf -ball! There's yards and yards of india- 
 rubber, you think it's going on forever. But at 
 the centre there is a core. And there's a core in 
 you, too. But we've got to unwind the error 
 first." 
 
 Thurso got up, he was feeling every moment 
 more fidgety and impatient. He was beginning 
 to want the drug most terribly, his craving was 
 growing with unusual rapidity; yet while Coch-
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 259 
 
 ran was here he felt that his will to get well, his 
 desire to free himself, was keen also. And that 
 gave him an impulse of honesty. 
 
 " I tell you this, too," he said: ''I'm wanting 
 the drug most awfully now. Ah, help me," he 
 added with a sudden wail of appeal, ' ' for I know 
 what I shall do when you are gone." 
 
 " Yes, tell me that," said Cochran. 
 
 " Well, I shall go and see where Maud is, and 
 if she is downstairs I shall tell her that I anx 
 going to sleep till dinner-time, so that I can get 
 away by myself. She trusts me, I think, stilly 
 after all that has happened. Then I shall go to 
 my room and forge yes, forge a prescription. 
 Then I shall send to the stables, and tell a man 
 and horse to go down to Port Washington and 
 say that it must be made up for Lord Thurso. 
 And I shall sit gnawing my nails till he comes 
 back." 
 
 Cochran nodded at him. 
 
 11 Well, you're making an excellent start," he- 
 said, " because you are telling me all. But you 
 know you are just as wrong about what you say 
 you will do as you were about the reality of what 
 you have done. You won't do anything of the- 
 kind." 
 
 " Ah, surely this is suggestion, hypnotic treat- 
 ment," said Thurso.
 
 260 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 Walter Cochran gave one little click of im- 
 patience; then that passed. 
 
 "I'm almost getting fatigued with hearing peo- 
 ple say that," he said. " It's you who have been 
 suggesting things to yourself and imagining them 
 with remarkable vividness. You've got to re- 
 verse all that; you've got to say to yourself now, 
 ' I will do none of those things.' I want to get 
 your will on the right side. So now plan another 
 evening for yourself. Come, what would be 
 pleasant? Don't make a long evening of it; I 
 want you to go to bed before eleven." 
 
 " Why? " asked Thurso. 
 
 " Because I shall be treating you by then," 
 said he, " and I find it's an excellent plan to treat 
 people while their bodies are reposing or asleep. 
 They themselves, of course, their souls, are never 
 asleep, and I guess it's because the body is lying 
 quiet and not suggesting distractions." 
 
 " But Maud tried to treat me once on the 
 steamer," said Thurso, " and the effect was that I 
 couldn't get to sleep at all. I thought she was 
 in the room." 
 
 Although he had said just now that the treat- 
 ment did not interest him, he was talking with 
 genuine interest. There was something so attrac- 
 tive about this big, strong young man, who looked 
 so awfully well and sane, and seemed to diffuse 
 sanity and health. Yet, on this one subject, how
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 261 
 
 fantastically his mind framed itself, and withal 
 how simple and unfantastic he seemed to think it. 
 
 " Why, that was real good of Lady Maud, 
 wasn't it! "he said. " And that feeling of yours 
 that she was in the room was very likely to hap- 
 pen. I'll tell you why like everything else to do 
 with science, it's so simple. The practitioner 
 ought quite to sink himself; he shouldn't be con- 
 scious of himself at all. He mustn't think that 
 he is controlling the working of the power of 
 Divine Love. But that unconsciousness of one's 
 self only comes with practice. At first, the healer 
 finds that his personality obtrudes itself." 
 
 Quite unconsciously Thurso began to be more 
 interested unconsciously, too, and for the first 
 time, the craving for the drug, which had reached 
 an acute point, began of its own accord to grow 
 less keen. The very simplicity of the thing, if 
 only he could believe it was true, struck him. 
 
 " Then why can't you heal me instantly? " he 
 asked. " If error cannot exist in the presence 
 of Divine Love, how is it that time is required 
 for its destruction? ' 
 
 " Ah, you must lose your belief in the reality 
 of error before it can become completely unreal 
 to you," said he; " and your belief, I expect, goes 
 deep, doesn't it? Get Lady Maud to read to you 
 out of the book she is studying. That will really 
 be better for you than writing prescriptions, won't
 
 262 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 it? But now I must go; though there's no such 
 thing as time really, it is still possible to miss a 
 train. ' ' 
 
 " Though there are no such things as trains'? " 
 asked Thurso. 
 
 " Yes, but the false claim of a train is very 
 hard to uproot," said Cochran, laughing.' " It's 
 better to go in them, and save your energy for 
 the destruction of other and worse claims." 
 
 Thurso lay back in his big chair after Coch- 
 Tan had gone, conscious that something else than 
 laudanum had begun to interest him a little. He 
 felt no tendency whatever or leaning towards 
 Christian Science, but he wanted to find some 
 weak spot in the theory, some fatal inconsistency, 
 which must invalidate it altogether. There must 
 "be one, even in the little he had already heard 
 about it. At this moment Maud entered. 
 
 " Maud, give me a Christian Science book," 
 he said; "I'm going to prove it's all wrong." 
 
 Maud laughed. 
 
 " Do, dear. It is the duty of everybody to 
 expose error and falsehood. Shall I read it to 
 you! " 
 
 " Yes, do." 
 
 Then suddenly his craving began to return, 
 growing instantaneously to a hideous acuteness. 
 His mind was like some light vehicle, from which
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 263 
 
 the driver had been upset, galloped away with by 
 the bolting, furious horses of habit. Never be- 
 fore had the stroke fallen upon him with such, 
 suddenness. " A fine first fruit of the value of 
 Christian Science,-' he said to himself. Yet 
 though the reaction made him almost dizzy, he 
 retained his presence of mind and that cunning 
 which seemed to have been developed in him since 
 he took to the drug. He mastered his voice com- 
 pletely, he mastered also that automatic swallow- 
 ing movement of the throat that always accom- 
 panied one of his attacks of desire. 
 
 " Or shall we read after dinner? " he said. 
 " That sleigh-drive made me so sleepy. I think 
 I should drop asleep at once if you began to read. ' * 
 
 Maud looked at him one moment with infinite 
 pity that was instinctive, she could not help it. 
 Then she laughed again. 
 
 " Oh, what an old bungler! " she said. " You 
 want to go to your bedroom, don't you, and forge 
 yes, forge that prescription you forged with, 
 such brilliant success on the steamer, and send 
 it down to the village to get your nasty, beastly" 
 drug? Thurso, it's all very well to forge once- 
 or twice, but you really mustn't make a practice^ 
 of it ; it grows on one dreadfully, I am told. ' ' 
 
 He came towards her, white and shaking. 
 
 " That quack Cochran has been talking to you r 
 has he? " he said.
 
 264 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 " Oh, yes. Why not? And he isn't proved to 
 be a quack yet, you know." 
 
 He laid his hand on her arm. 
 
 " Maud, just this once," he said. " Do let me 
 have it this once! I have never wanted it so be- 
 fore. ' ' 
 
 She took his hand. 
 
 " Thurso, I promise you I will go and get it 
 for you myself at twelve o'clock to-night, if you 
 still crave for it," she said. " Hold on for six 
 hours not so much, five hours and then you 
 shall have a real good go at it. Only in the in- 
 terval you must do your best your best, mind 
 not to think about it. And you must go to bed 
 at eleven. That's not much to ask, is it? ' 
 
 His eye brightened. 
 
 " Why, of course, I can wait," he said, " if 
 you really promise me that. And you won't 
 tell Cochran? " 
 
 " Oh, no, you probably will. Now, if you aren't 
 really sleepy and you don't look it I'll read 
 to you. It will help to pass the time till twelve." 
 
 It had required all Maud's faith to get through 
 with this, but she had understood and agreed 
 with what Mr. Cochran had said before he left. 
 He wanted Thurso to make an effort himself, and 
 believed that at present he could hardly do so, 
 unless he was bribed to. He had suggested this 
 plan, in fact.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 265 
 
 " But if he wants it at twelve? " she had asked. 
 " Oh, but he won't," he had answered. " He 
 can't." 
 
 All this Thurso thought over as he lay in 
 bed next morning, watching his valet put out his 
 things. He had gone to bed, as he promised, at 
 half-past ten, hugging himself with the thought 
 that midnight was coming closer every minute. 
 And then he had simply fallen asleep, and when 
 he woke the pale winter sunshine was flooding the 
 room. 
 
 Yet mixed with the exhilaration of this cold, 
 bracing air, the memory of the pleasant day yes- 
 terday, the sense of recuperation after his ex- 
 cellent night, there came the feeling, as he got 
 up and dressed, turning it all over in his mind, 
 that he had been tricked. He had no idea how 
 the trick was done, or how it was that he could 
 have gone to sleep when, if he had but kept awake 
 so short a time, he would have enjoyed, and that 
 with no sense of concealment or surreptitious 
 dealing, the one sensation that turned life into 
 paradise. Certainly it had been extremely neatly 
 done; Cochran was a finished conjurer, for, as 
 he had said, Thurso had had no sense of his pres- 
 ence or his influence. But the sense of having 
 been tricked somehow piqued him.
 
 266 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 While he was dressing he heard already the 
 sound of sleigh-bells, and guessed that Cochran 
 had come, and when he got downstairs he found 
 him and Maud at breakfast. 
 
 Cochran nodded at him. 
 
 ' l Good - morning, Lord Thurso, ' ' he said. 
 " Now, Lady Maud here will tell you that neither 
 she nor I have spoken a word about you this 
 morning. I know nothing of what happened here 
 since I left last night. I told her, just before I 
 left, to fetch your drink for you, if you wanted 
 it, at twelve o'clock. Now you've come down, I 
 should like to hear from you both what has hap- 
 pened. ' ' 
 
 11 I went to Thurso 's room at twelve," she 
 said, " and knocked. There was no answer, so 
 I went in. He was fast asleep. I tried to rouse 
 him, as you told me to, I called him and touched 
 him. But he didn't awake." 
 
 1 ' And you, Lord Thurso ? ' ' asked Cochran. 
 
 " Oh, this is childish," he said. " Maud, do 
 you swear that that is true? ' 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 11 Well, you or Mr. Cochran must have hyp- 
 notized me or drugged me," he said. 
 
 " I know less about hypnotism," remarked 
 Cochran, " than I do of the inhabitants of Mars. 
 What do you think we drugged you with? ' 
 
 " Well, how did you do it, then? " he asked.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 267 
 
 11 I didn't do it. I had no idea whether you 
 were asleep or awake at midnight. I only knew 
 that Divine Love was looking after you." 
 
 Something rather like a sneer came into 
 Thurso's voice. 
 
 " And how did you know that? " he asked. 
 
 " How could it have been otherwise? He has 
 promised to do anything for us which we ask 
 in faith. You've never seen such a beautiful 
 morning as it is. Cold, though." 
 
 Thurso was undeniably in a very bad humor 
 by this time. He felt sure there had been some 
 suggestive or hypnotic force used on him the night 
 before, but when a man denies it, and simply at- 
 tributes all that has happened to the working of 
 Divine Love, you cannot contradict him. Maud, 
 however, had read to him last night out of some 
 Christian Science book, and he had flattered him- 
 self he had found a hundred inconsistencies in it. 
 Cochran's last words, too, were utterly incon- 
 sistent, simple as they sounded. 
 
 ' ' How can you say it is cold, ' ' he asked, * * when 
 your whole gospel is rooted on the unreality of 
 such things, cold and heat and pain and so on? 
 Or did I misunderstand what we read last night? 
 I certainly gathered that neither cold nor heat 
 had any real existence." 
 
 11 No more it has," said Cochran. 
 
 " Then is it not what was the phrase ' voic-
 
 268 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 ing error ' to allude to the temperature of the 
 morning? ' 
 
 Cochran laughed, a great big laugh of enjoy- 
 ment. 
 
 " Yes, but where's the harm of voicing error 
 as long as the error doesn't do any harm? Sup- 
 posing the cold made me feel uncomfortable, or 
 gave me a chill, then I should deny its reality. 
 But it's a waste of time, isn't it, to spend the 
 whole day in denying the existence of chairs and 
 tables and heat and cold when they don't hurt 
 you? My time is taken up with denying things 
 that do hurt." 
 
 " Though nothing hurts? " 
 
 ' ' False belief does, and its consequences hurt. ' ' 
 
 * ' I was merely inquiring, ' ' said Thurso, rather 
 acidly. His mind still dwelt on the trick, for so 
 he called it, that had made him go to sleep last 
 night. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Cochran has promised to give me 
 instruction for half an hour, Thurso," Maud 
 said, " and after that I vote we go out. There's 
 a lake, he says, not far off. We might go and 
 skate. ' ' 
 
 " And what is to happen to me? " he asked. 
 11 Am I to have treatment or laudanum? " 
 
 "Walter Cochran looked up at him suddenly. 
 
 " Which would you like best? " he asked. 
 
 Then, though the moment was, as measured
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 269 
 
 by time, an infinitesimal one, his soul had thrown 
 itself at the feet of Infinite Love, reminding Him 
 of His promise, calling Him to help. 
 
 The acidity and sneering criticism suddenly 
 died out of Thurso's mind. His moods altered 
 quickly enough; it may have been only that. 
 
 " You know I want to be cured," he said. 
 
 Cochran made a little sign to Maud, who left 
 the room. 
 
 " Yes, I know you do," he said, " and you're 
 going to be. But you can help or hinder. All 
 breakfast-time you've been hindering, you know. 
 You've been asking those questions which I like 
 answering and love to be asked, not because you 
 wanted to know, but because you wanted to catch 
 me out. Why, of course, you can catch me out. 
 I don't deny it for a moment, because I'm often 
 and often bound by error and the claims of mor- 
 tal mind. But how does it help you to do that? 
 Now, what's the trouble? Is it just because In- 
 finite Love came to your help last night and sent 
 you to sleep, instead of letting you drink that 
 poison-stuff? I guess it's that still. Well, to 
 doubt that it was so is error on your part. How 
 often before when you've been wanting the stuff 
 badly, and knew that in an hour or two you would 
 get it, have you dropped off to sleep instead? 
 Why, never. And when did this happen first? 
 Why, when I was treating you, bringing you into
 
 270 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 the Presence of Divine Love, not suggesting 
 things either to Him or you, but just leaving you 
 there. ' ' 
 
 " Ah, but I don't understand," said Thurso. 
 " If you've done that, is it all over? Am I 
 cured? ' 
 
 " No, because you've made a habit of error, 
 and you have to make a habit of giving error up 
 before you are cured. You'll have to put your- 
 self in the hands of Love often and often before 
 you get rid of this. At least I expect that, but 
 one can't know how He will choose to heal you. 
 Why, man, we have to be continually doing that, 
 whether we've made a habit, like you, of some 
 particular form of error, or whether we are but 
 just normal beings. And Divine Love is longing 
 to help us, but we must ask." 
 
 " But why, why? If God is Infinite Love, why 
 does He allow error to bind us at all? " asked 
 Thurso. 
 
 " There is no doubt that it is so," answered 
 Cochran. " Why, He has said so: ' Whatsoever 
 ye shall ask in my name, believing. ' ' ' 
 
 11 But you profess to heal people who don't be- 
 lieve," said he. 
 
 11 I know. Why not? But a man who didn't 
 believe couldn't heal." 
 
 Again Thurso had got unconsciously interested. 
 
 " You spoke of laudanum as poison-stuff just
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 271 
 
 now," lie said. " But if God made everything, 
 including poppies, how can it be poisonous? " 
 
 Cochran laughed. 
 
 " Well, we had better have Lady Maud back," 
 he said. " It was about that very thing I was 
 going to talk to her to-day. Now, if you care to 
 listen to that, since you've asked the question, 
 why, pray do. But if you are not interested in 
 it, why, if you'll read the morning paper, or any- 
 thing else, just for half an hour, we can then all 
 start out skating or whatever else you like." 
 
 " But aren't you going to treat me? " asked 
 Thurso. 
 
 " Oh, I was at it this morning for some time," 
 he said. " I've paid you the morning visit, so 
 to speak." 
 
 Then again some spirit of antagonism entered 
 into Thurso, and when Maud came back he crossed 
 over to the fire with the paper. But the news was 
 of no importance, and by degrees he found him- 
 self attending less to the printed page, and more 
 to the voice that sounded so pleasant and cheer- 
 ful. Sometimes he found himself mentally ridi- 
 culing what was said, but yet he listened. It was 
 arresting somehow, and whether it was only the 
 personality of the speaker that arrested him, or 
 what he said, he found himself, whether approv- 
 ing or disapproving, more and more absorbed 
 in it.
 
 272 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 Cochran spoke first, as lie said he was going 
 to do, about the apparently poisonous or sanative 
 effects of drugs. These he maintained were not 
 inherent in the drugs themselves, but in the be- 
 lief of those who used them. But to use drugs 
 for curative reasons was merely to encourage the 
 false belief that they could in themselves cure; 
 while, on the other hand, anyone who knew and 
 fully believed that they could neither be health- 
 giving nor destructive of health might, if he chose, 
 eat deadly poison and be none the worse for it. 
 But no one who held this belief would do so merely 
 as a demonstration, to satisfy the idle curiosity 
 of those who did not believe. 
 
 Then he passed on to bigger things, and as he 
 spoke his voice grew deeper and more full of con- 
 viction, vibrating with earnestness. 
 
 " But all this," he said, " though, of course, it 
 is perfectly true, is only a detail that follows from 
 the real and vital proposition. How error orig- 
 inally came in, I don't pretend to say; what we 
 have got to deal with to-day is that error is here, 
 and that this error that ascribes to material things 
 any real existence is a very common form of it. 
 But this is, as I said, only a secondary matter; 
 what really concerns us is not to know what doea 
 not exist, but to know what does. And one 
 thing only exists, and that is God in all His mani- 
 festations. The Infinite Mind, the Divine Love,
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 273 
 
 is all that has any real being. But as light can 
 be split up and some of it can appear in any of 
 the hues of the rainbow, so that when you say, 
 ' This is blue, this is red,' you are only speaking 
 of a part of light, so when you say, ' This is un- 
 selfish, this is courageous, this is pure, this is 
 lovely,' you are only speaking of one of the 
 hues of God. It is good for us to contemplate 
 any one of these, for each of them is lovely, but 
 we must continually be pressing them all together, 
 so that they all mingle with each other. And 
 when that is done, when by the power of that 
 little bit of the Infinite Mind that is within us 
 we bring together all we know of Love and purity 
 and unselfishness, then it is God whom we are 
 contemplating. And whenever we contemplate 
 Him like that there is no existence possible for 
 sin and error or any imperfection. They all pass 
 into nothingness, not because we will them to do 
 so, or make any longer an assertion of their 
 nothingness, but because their existence is in- 
 conceivable and impossible." 
 
 Thurso had dropped his paper and was listen- 
 ing, rebelliously, it is true, and antagonistically, 
 but not without interest. Besides, what if it 
 were true? Then indeed his antagonism and re- 
 bellion would be of the nature of some feeble, soft- 
 bodied moth fluttering against an express train,
 
 274 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 and hoping to stop it. There was something au- 
 thoritative, too, about the words. It was not as 
 when Scribes or Pharisees spoke. 
 
 Somehow, also (it was impossible not to feel 
 this), there was the same authority not only about 
 Cochran's words, but about his life. The things 
 which he said were borne out by what he did, and 
 it seemed as if it was not his temperament that 
 determined his words and actions, but as if his 
 words and actions, based on his belief, gave rise 
 to an absolutely happy temperament. Big trou- 
 bles, real anxieties, never came near him, but 
 what to Thurso was almost more remarkable, it 
 appeared that the innumerable little frets and 
 inconveniences which are, he would have said, 
 inseparable from the ordinary life of every day, 
 were unable to touch him. Bound him there 
 seemed to be some atmosphere as of high moun- 
 tain places in which these bacteria of worry could 
 not live ; nothing could dim or speck those happy, 
 childlike eyes. A child's faith, as Maud had rec- 
 ognized last summer, shone there, and it was 
 backed up and supported by the knowledge and 
 experience of a man. Like all faith, it was in- 
 stinctive, and every day of his life proved the truth 
 of his instinct. And if either Thurso or Maud 
 could have guessed how passionate and furious 
 was the struggle going on all the tune within him,
 
 between the desire of his human nature and the 
 absolutely fixed knowledge that he had no right 
 to use this intimacy into which he was thrown 
 with Maud, by this call to cure her brother, for 
 his own ends they would have said that a miracle 
 was going on before their eyes. The waves of 
 desire, the longing for her, and, more dangerous 
 than either, this knowledge that he loved her with 
 all the best that was in him, continually beat upon 
 him, but the abiding-place of his soul was abso- 
 lutely unmoved by the surrounding tumult, and 
 not for a moment was his serenity troubled. He 
 often talked to her alone, and their talk would be 
 of Thurso, or of this treatment under which he 
 was markedly getting better, or it ranged more 
 superficially over the topics of every day. 
 
 It was the third day after he had come to Long 
 Island, and he and Maud were sitting together 
 alone in the hour before evening closed in. The 
 weather this morning had suddenly broken, and 
 instead of the windless, sunny frost a south- 
 easterly gale had set chimneys smoking, ice melt- 
 ing, and drove torrents of cold rain against the 
 windows of the shuddering house. Maud at this 
 moment was wiping her eyes, which the pungency 
 of the wood-smoke had caused to overflow. 
 
 " You were quite right," she said, " when you 
 warned me not to have the fire lit here. And 
 what makes it more annoying is that you don't
 
 276 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 weep also. I think we had better move into the 
 other room, if you will. I can 't stand it. ' ' 
 
 The other room was the billiard-room, where 
 they did not often sit. It was free from smoke, 
 however, and the fire prospered. Thurso had 
 gone upstairs half an hour ago to write letters, 
 and had not come back yet. 
 
 " He is so much better," said she, as she settled 
 herself into a comfortable chair. " His recovery 
 has been quite steady, too. Do you any longer 
 fear a relapse? ' 
 
 ' ' Oh, I never feared it, ' ' said he, * ' in the sense 
 that I ever thought it would baffle us. How could 
 it ? I only told you that when error has gone very 
 deep you sometimes tap a sort of fresh reservoir 
 of it, even when you seem to be coming to the end 
 of it. Of course, that may not happen, but I have 
 seen sudden attacks and onslaughts of a very 
 violent kind, even when I thought that the cure 
 was nearly complete." 
 
 " Four days only! " said Maud. "It is only 
 four days since you really began to treat him. 
 Surely he has made marvellous progress." 
 
 " Oh, he has." 
 
 11 You have looked serene enough," said she. 
 
 11 Why, I hope so. It's by serenity and com- 
 plete conviction of the Omnipotence of All-Power 
 that you fight error. If you abandon that, what 
 are you to fight them with? "
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 277 
 
 He looked at her, and for the moment he felt 
 that his love must betray itself, by word or ges- 
 ture, in spite of himself. And surely there was 
 some answering struggle going on in her. Was 
 it only sympathy, only gratitude for what he had 
 done, that shone in her eyes? But whatever it 
 was, she had it in control also. 
 
 " Won't you tell me some of them? " she said. 
 " I don't think it is voicing error to tell the 
 trouble to some one who believes. Perhaps I could 
 help you to get rid of them. ' ' 
 
 He looked away. 
 
 " Ah, the one that has been worst to-day is an 
 absolutely private affair," he said, " which I 
 can't tell you yet anyhow. Then there is another 
 I have been letting myself be anxious about 
 your brother. When I treated him this morning 
 all sorts of doubts kept coming in. Half the time 
 I was fighting them, instead of giving myself 
 wholly to him." 
 
 " But you never really doubted? " said she. 
 " You never let them get hold of you? ' 
 
 * ' No, but I was feeble. I was a muddy, choked 
 channel for Divine Love to pass through. And 
 I am now. I have to be continually dusting and 
 cleaning myself. I have been having fears." 
 
 " Specific ones? " 
 
 " Yes, of a violent accession of error, and for 
 no reason, either. Because, if it did occur, I
 
 278 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 should know quite well what to do. There couldn 't 
 be anything to fear. I guess he's been getting 
 well so quickly and smoothly that I began to 
 wonder whether it could be true, though I knew 
 it was." 
 
 Maud got up. 
 
 " What would you do if he had a relapse? " 
 she asked. 
 
 ' * I couldn 't say now. But if it came it would 
 surely be made quite clear to me how to demon- 
 strate over it. One is never left in the lurch like 
 that. It's only the Devil who plays his disciples 
 false and gives them fits of remorse when they 
 want to amuse themselves." 
 
 Walter Cochran drew his chair close to the fire 
 with a little shudder of goose-flesh. 
 
 " I was awfully frightened by a storm once 
 when I was a little chap," he said, " and it's left 
 a sort of scar on my mind. I always have to 
 demonstrate over a gale like this; I don't seem 
 to be able to get used to them. Isn't that a con- 
 fession of feebleness? But I don't think you 
 would have guessed if I hadn't told you." 
 
 Maud looked at him with the divining instinct 
 of her love. 
 
 " I dare say I shouldn't," she said. " But I 
 am so sorry. It seems hard that you, who are 
 continually giving your strength to others, should 
 suffer for your generosity. ' '
 
 THE HOUSE. OF DEFENCE 279 
 
 " Oh, it's not quite that," he said. " Whether 
 I was treating Thurso or not, I should always 
 have to tell myself that the gale and this uproar 
 and air and sky are quite powerless to hurt me. 
 There, listen to that! " 
 
 An appalling blast swept by the house, and it 
 seemed as if some door or window must have been 
 opened, for the thick double curtain that com- 
 municated with the hall was lifted and a buffet 
 of cold air came into the room where they sat, 
 making the candles flicker. Cochran jumped up. 
 
 " Something must be open," he said. " The 
 wind has got right into the house." The front 
 door stood ajar. Thurso 's greatcoat was gone 
 from the hall. 
 
 Thurso had crept forth noiselessly into the 
 storm, pausing only to snatch up his greatcoat 
 and a cap that chanced to be in the hall. It was 
 the sight of the door that had given him the in- 
 spiration ; the possibilities that lay beyond it had 
 roused in a flash the erratic craving so nearly 
 subdued of late. 
 
 Once outside he shook himself as does a dog 
 coming out of water. There was a relief in being 
 free from all surveillance, a joy in eluding every- 
 one and in being for the moment at least his own 
 master or his drug's unhampered slave. Bow- 
 ing his head against the rain and sleet, he made 
 for the village. Before he had walked a quarter
 
 280 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 mile his thin evening shoes were soaked through, 
 and he was chilled to the bone. But he gave little 
 heed to such trifles. Ahead of him lay the ram- 
 bling Long Island village and midway down its 
 main street he recollected seeing the red and 
 green lights of a pharmacy. 
 
 It was a matter of five minutes to find the place, 
 and of another ten minutes to convince himself 
 that not only was it closed for the night, but that 
 no one slept on the premises. 
 
 The rumble of a train drawing into the near-by 
 station gave him a new idea. It was but an hour's 
 ride to New York. This must be the 9.30 up-train. 
 A short run brought him panting to the station 
 as the last carriage rolled out. Swinging himself 
 aboard the rear platform, he collapsed in a heap in 
 the ' ' smoker. ' ' 
 
 To a passing guard he handed a five-dollar bill, 
 not noting the amount of change received. As 
 he was about to restore his pocketbook to the side 
 pocket of his greatcoat, a paper fluttered from it 
 to the floor. Thurso pounced on it and restored it 
 carefully to the wallet. For it was his prescrip- 
 tion, the carefully-copied " open sesame " that 
 would at once procure him the drug he craved. 
 
 There had been little silver in the change given 
 him by the guard. Barely thirty-five cents. This 
 he dropped carelessly into the greatcoat's cash
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 281 
 
 pocket and leaned back, peering idly out into the 
 misty blackness of the night. 
 
 In due time the train reached 'its terminus the 
 Long Island Station at Flatbush Avenue, Brook- 
 lyn. 
 
 From the guard Thurso learned that he must 
 there take an elevated or trolley car, which would 
 carry him across Brooklyn Bridge and deposit him 
 near the City Hall of New York. 
 
 As the Earl left the train a very sleepy, very 
 drunk man who had sat across the aisle from him, 
 rose to his feet, lurched forward and collided so 
 violently with Thurso as almost to knock both of 
 them off their legs. The drunkard apologized, 
 mumbled profound regrets and reeled off in an 
 opposite direction until the angle of a wall hid 
 him from his late victim. Then he grew sober 
 with marvelous rapidity, jumped aboard a pass- 
 ing trolley car and was whirled out of sight 
 Thurso 's pocketbook nestling lovingly in his 
 pocket. 
 
 Arrived at the New York terminus of Brooklyn 
 Bridge, Thurso saw at once to his left, on the 
 ground floor of a stately gold-domed building, the 
 bright windows of an " all-night " pharmacy. 
 
 He entered and eagerly accosted the first clerk 
 he saw. 
 
 " I wish this prescription filled," he began, " at 
 once at at ' '
 
 282 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 His voice trailed away into a murmur of amaze. 
 His hands were busy in every pocket of his great- 
 coat. Then the outer garment was impatiently 
 thrown open and his evening clothes subjected to 
 the same rigid search. 
 
 " I I have mislaid the prescription," he mut- 
 tered, " but if you will give me a pen and a 
 blank I " 
 
 He paused in growing alarm. For now he re- 
 called that his missing pocketbook held not only 
 the prescription but all his money with the excep- 
 tion of a little silver. This change, scattered 
 through several pockets, he now drew out. There 
 was less than a half dollar in all. Eemembering 
 the price he had been wont to pay in England for 
 the drug, and noting the prosperous appearance 
 of the shop, he knew, without asking, that his 
 scanty funds were insufficient for his purpose. 
 
 With a mumbled apology he left the place. 
 There surely must be less high-class chemist shops 
 on less imposing thoroughfares, where, perhaps, 
 his small quota of silver might suffice for a phial 
 of laudanum. 
 
 With this idea he turned somewhat aimlessly 
 to the right, and passing the Bridge Terminal 
 walked hurriedly up a brightly-lighted but narrow 
 street, above whose center ran the Elevated road 
 tracks. And, as he progressed, his eyes shifting 
 from right to left for the lights of a chemist shop,
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 283 
 
 he noted that his dilapidated evening attire, which 
 had passed unremarked in the vicinity of City 
 Hall Square, began to draw on him curious, even 
 derisive looks from other pedestrians. These pe- 
 destrians, too, he observed, were of far different 
 character from those whom he had seen near the 
 terminal. A drunken sailor, a bevy of unshaven 
 lads in jerseys and billycocks, a woman or two 
 in cheap, dirty finery these were the prevalent 
 types. The shops, too, that lined the road wore 
 a garish, unprepossessing look. One he singled 
 out as a chemist's and walked in, choking at the 
 odor of stale drugs and tobacco. 
 
 1 ' I wish some laudanum, ' ' he began, addressing 
 a greasy-looking man behind the counter. 
 
 " Where's your p'scription? ' snapped the 
 other, his eyes roving over the richly-dressed, un- 
 kempt figure of the Earl. 
 
 " I am a doctor," lied Thurso glibly. " Give 
 me a blank and 
 
 " What's your name? " 
 
 " Heathcliffe Giles Heathcliffe." 
 
 " Where d'y' live? " 
 
 " I beg pardon? " 
 
 " Where do you live? " 
 
 ' ' On on Twenty-third Street, ' ' replied Thurso, 
 dimly recalling that thoroughfare by name from 
 one of the morning papers. 
 
 " What number? "
 
 284 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 Thurso paused. He remembered hearing of the 
 great length of certain New York streets and 
 jumped to the conclusion that the residence dis- 
 tricts in each would probably be at some distance 
 from the thoroughfare's beginning. 
 
 11 Four seventy six! " he answered. 
 
 " East or West? " 
 
 " East. But my man, I wish " 
 
 11 My man," however, had vanished behind a 
 screen. Eeappearing a moment later with a big 
 brown book between his hands, he thumbed the 
 volume's pages, then remarked sententiously : 
 
 " No Heathcliffe in the Directory." 
 
 11 I moved into town only last month. Prob- 
 ably " 
 
 ' ' What number East Twenty-third did you say 
 you hung out at? ' 
 
 With a wave of nervousness Thurso found that 
 he could not remember the number he himself 
 had named. 
 
 I i I told you once ! " he said stiffly. 1 1 Why do 
 you " 
 
 II Ya-as! " snarled the chemist, " an' you told 
 me a lie! You said 476, East. An' the farthest 
 number East is 444. See? Get out o' here! ' 
 
 " But " began Thurso, his craving rendering 
 him oblivious even to the insult. 
 
 ' ' Oh, I know your breed, you dirty dope-fiend ! 
 I sized you up the minute you come in. You 're on
 
 THE HO USE OF DEFENCE 285 
 
 a spree an' you wanter fake a p'scription an' get 
 the stuff from me, an' when you're found croaked 
 from an overdose there's the bottle with my label 
 on it in your jeans. An' me with only a fake 
 p'scription to flash when the District Attorney 
 asks me questions! G'tout o' here, I tell you, 
 'fore I send for a cop! ' 
 " But I can pay well! " intervened Thurso, 
 
 I t T ) ) 
 
 An evil light sprang into the shopkeeper's little 
 eyes. He leaned across the counter. 
 
 " Not so loud! " he muttered. " Why didn't 
 you say so before? The bottle needn't have no 
 label. Now for a tenner 
 
 Now, in English* slang, a " tanner " is a six- 
 pence. The shopman's drawling pronunciation of 
 the Yankee abbreviation for $10 struck familiarly 
 on Thurso 's ears, even as the latter, at sudden 
 memory of his lost notes, was repenting his hasty 
 offer of a bribe. But if it were but a question of 
 a " tanner " 
 
 In glad relief he tossed a twenty-five cent piece 
 across the counter. 
 
 11 Keep the change! " he said loftily, " and 
 please be quick with the laudanum." 
 
 Really, he had been clever to seek this very 
 cheap street. He chuckled at his own perspicacity. 
 But the grin died on his lips as he met the chem- 
 ist's glance.
 
 286 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 " Wot's this for? " roared the latter, belliger- 
 ently. 
 
 " It's your ' tanner,' and " 
 
 * ' I said a ' tenner, ' you four flush ! Get out of 
 here, I tell you, or " 
 
 This time Thurso obeyed. He wondered dully 
 why he felt no desire to thrash the insolent little 
 cur. But his one desire crowded out all lesser 
 emotions. He wandered on, passing under an Ele- 
 vated station and searching for another shop with 
 red and green lights. 
 
 He accosted a youth with an undershot jaw and 
 banged hair. 
 
 ' ' Can you direct me to a chemist 's ? "he asked. 
 
 11 A which? " 
 
 " A chemist's." 
 
 " Dey don't teach chemistry on de Bowery. 
 Youse must 'a' fell outer your club into de river. 
 You don't belong on dis street no more'n a pair 
 o ' yeller shoes at a dance. ' ' 
 
 " But I " 
 
 " Aw, fade away! " 
 
 A group of idlers had gathered, drawn by the 
 unwonted spectacle of the wet, bewildered man in 
 evening clothes in such a locality. At the under- 
 shot youth's brilliant repartee they laughed 
 loudly. This was too much for Thurso. It pene- 
 trated his concentration of mind and woke in him 
 a sort of blind fury.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 287 
 
 The youth went rolling into the muddy gutter 
 from a well-planted blow on the jaw. But before 
 Thurso could bring his clinched left fist back to 
 his side a half dozen toughs friends and fellow 
 loafers of the undershot lad were upon him. 
 Luckily he was near enough to a wall to find a 
 " back " for himself as they reached him. 
 
 But even this temporary advantage availed lit- 
 tle. For these were not the sort of men to fight 
 fairly. Not an underhand or murderous ruse of 
 street conflict but they knew by rote. Moreover, 
 at the fall of one of their number, the world-old 
 rage of proletariat against patrician flared up. 
 
 They pressed closely on their strange foe, wait- 
 ing the signal for the concerted rush that should 
 wipe out their comrade's grievance and cause one 
 more of many mysterious " assault cases " for 
 Gouverneur Hospital. A rush, a drawing back, 
 and a quick scamper to lane and byway, leaving 
 a huddled, inert heap on the pavement to await 
 the ambulance 's arrival. It would be but the mat- 
 ter of a moment. But the rush was never made. 
 
 A girl, tall, slender, quietly dressed, slipped 
 through the tense half circle and, taking her place 
 at Thurso 's side, faced the toughs. 
 
 "Gee! It's Miss Alstyne from th' Settle- 
 ment ! " grumbled the ringleader. " She's always 
 buttin' in."
 
 288 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 But the rush paused, while the girl was speaking 
 in a calm, well-modulated voice. 
 
 " Patrick Heeney, ' Red' Grier, ' Spike ' Jen- 
 nings, Frank Fogarty," she enumerated, glancing 
 from face to face, " yes, I think I know most of 
 you by name. This won't be one more of your 
 ' mysterious attack ' cases. For I'll see that every 
 one of your names goes at once to Captain Hodg- 
 ins if you lay a finger on this gentleman. Now, 
 go!" 
 
 One by one and with audible comments that 
 sent the blood hotly to the girl's pallid face the 
 toughs slouched away, until, except for the more 
 distant knots of non-combatant spectators, the fair 
 rescuer and Thurso stood alone. 
 
 She turned then and spoke to him for. the first 
 time. 
 
 " I happened to be passing," she said, then 
 stopped. For Thurso was leaning in a state of 
 semi-unconsciousness against the wall; swaying 
 awkwardly forward and back, his head hanging 
 limp on his chest. The excitement, danger and 
 quick action, following on his chilled and over- 
 wrought state, had induced the reaction of utter 
 collapse so common in drug cases. 
 
 " Are you hurt? " she asked in quick sympathy. 
 
 1 i No. I think not, ' ' he replied dazedly, seeking 
 to pull himself together, " I I 
 
 " Don't try to talk. Are you strong enough to
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 289 
 
 come to the Settlement! It is just around the 
 corner. Lean on me. So ! Now if you feel faint 
 again we'll stop." 
 
 Slowly, the Earl shuffling weakly at her side, 
 the Settlement Worker proceeded through the rain 
 until they reached a building whose door lamps 
 flashed hospitable welcome. Up the low, broad 
 steps the two passed and along a hallway. 
 
 * * Come in here, ' ' said the girl, guiding Thurso 
 into a white-walled room whose walls were lined 
 with shelves. ' ' This is our dispensary. Sit down 
 and I '11 bring the doctor to you in a moment. He 's 
 somewhere about the House. ' ' 
 
 She flitted out, leaving him. Slowly his senses 
 crept back toward normality. Then a sight met 
 his eye that banished in a moment all numbness 
 of brain and body. The walls were lined with 
 shelves ; the shelves with bottles. Upon the table, 
 where she had flung her gloves, lay the girl's 
 purse. 
 
 Thurso was on his feet, thrilling with excite- 
 ment, mad with distorted longings and plans. He 
 ran his finger along the various rows of phials. 
 At last with a little gurgle of animal joy he found 
 the bottle he sought. In another instant it was 
 loosely wrapped in a bit of newspaper and thrust 
 into his greatcoat pocket. 
 
 And now to escape. But at memory of his re- 
 cent experiences in the streets of New York, he
 
 290 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 shuddered. No. He must get back to Long Island. 
 There might be a midnight or one o'clock train. 
 He could creep unseen into the house. Maud 
 would have gone to bed and he would have the 
 whole night to himself. Best touch none of the 
 glorious drug till then; so thus to get its fullest 
 charm. The joy of an epicure swept over him in 
 anticipation. It would not do to taste it until safe 
 at home. He needed all his wits just now. He 
 must not befog them. 
 
 Then came a thrill of disappointment. With- 
 out money, how was he to reach the sanctuary of 
 his own room? How could 
 
 Once more his gaze rested on the purse. It was 
 all so absurdly easy. 
 
 ' ' I suppose, ' ' he thought with impersonal calm, 
 11 I suppose this is about the lowest depths to 
 which a white man can fall." 
 
 He extracted a five-dollar bill from the little 
 reticule, then started for the door. On the thresh- 
 old he turned back. With a quick gesture he 
 ripped the two costly black pearl studs from his 
 shirt front, dropped them into the purse, closed it 
 and noiselessly slipped out of the dispensary and 
 
 so to the street. 
 
 ******** 
 
 Cochran and Maud had spent the longest, 
 dreariest evening either had known. They had 
 speedily ascertained that Thurso was indeed out
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 291 
 
 of the house. Maud had suggested that they send 
 a messenger to the village ; but this Cochran had 
 vetoed. 
 
 ' ' He will come back, ' ' he said quietly. His hope 
 and faith were still strong. Yet, at the very mo- 
 ment of apparent victory, this setback for the time 
 almost unnerved him. 
 
 As for Maud, her struggle to fight back the bit- 
 ter tears of humiliation precluded all speech. And 
 thus, for hours, they sat silent, comfortless, dis- 
 trait. 
 
 Midnight was long passed when a faint click at 
 the front door brought Cochran to his feet. 
 
 Maud rose with him, and they went out into 
 the hall. In the corner near the door was stand- 
 ing Thurso, the rain dripping from him, just tak- 
 ing off his coat, with infinite precaution, as if not 
 to be overheard. 
 
 " Why, Thurso," said Maud, " what have you 
 been doing! Where have you been! ' 
 
 He looked from one to the other, and spoke in 
 a voice that did not sound natural. 
 
 ' ' I have been out on business, ' ' he said, ' ' and 
 then and then " 
 
 Maud looked at Cochran. All thought of the 
 gale, and whatever else it was that had been 
 troubling him, had passed from him. His eyes 
 were alight, his face was vital and alert again.
 
 " Yes, and what else! " he said. " There's a 
 packet in your coat ; I can see it. ' ' 
 
 Maud made one exclamation of dismay. 
 
 " Oh, Thurso! " she exclaimed. 
 
 Thurso's hand tightened on it. 
 
 " Yes, I can't help it," he said. " Besides, I 
 am much better, am I not? I must break myself 
 of it by degrees." 
 
 Then he turned to Cochran. 
 
 " Ah, do let me have it just this once! " he 
 cried. " I've been without it a week. I swear 
 to you it shall be a fortnight before I take it again. 
 Don't send me to sleep this time." 
 
 " Let's have a look at the bottle." 
 
 A cunning look came into Thurso's face. 
 
 " Oh, I think not," he said. " You might for- 
 get to give it me back. Look here, I'm going to 
 take it. I'm I'm awfully grateful to you for all 
 you've done, but this once you shan't stop me." 
 
 " I never stopped you before," said Cochran. 
 "And " 
 
 He shut his eyes for a moment, and when he 
 opened them again they were full of serene con- 
 fidence. 
 
 11 And I'm not going to stop you now," he said. 
 " But you opium-eaters are so stingy with your 
 stuff. You never treat another fellow. And I 
 want some of that. Let 's have a jolly good drink 
 together. Haven't you got enough for us both? "
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 293 
 
 Thurso gave a little cackle of delight. His eyes, 
 too, like Cochran's, were very bright, but they 
 were bright with thirst. His mouth, too, so 
 watered that he could hardly swallow quick 
 enough to keep the saliva down. 
 
 " Why, of course," he said. " I don't know 
 what you mean by it, but I '11 do anything if you '11 
 let me take it and not stop me. ' ' 
 
 " Thanks ever so much," said Cochran. " I've 
 often wanted the opportunity to take it. Why, 
 I've got quite a craving already." 
 
 Maud was looking from one to the other, ut- 
 terly puzzled. 
 
 11 Mr. Cochran, what are you going to do? " 
 she said. " Are you mad? ' 
 
 He smiled at her. 
 
 ' ' I am only going to do just that which Infinite 
 Power has bidden me," he said. " You mustn't 
 be afraid, nor must you doubt it. ' '
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THEY passed all three of them into the billiard- 
 room again. Outside the wild hurly-burly of the 
 storm still screamed and yelled round them, but 
 Cochran now was utterly unconscious of it. The 
 clear command had come to his soul; he knew 
 that what he was going to do was right, and he 
 had no fear whatever of the consequences. Con- 
 sequences? The only consequences that there 
 could be, and that there must be, were a demon- 
 stration convincing and conclusive as to the truth 
 of all he taught and believed. As he had said to 
 Maud a few hours ago, he did not then know what 
 he should do if Thurso had a relapse, but he 
 knew now. He was perfectly certain he was doing 
 right. 
 
 He rang the bell as soon as he got in. 
 
 " We want some glasses, I suppose, don't we? ' 
 he said. 
 
 Thurso looked at him furtively. 
 
 11 But the servants mustn't know," he said. 
 
 " Why not? I should like everybody to know. 
 Bring a couple of glasses, please," he said to the 
 man. " Is there anything else? ' he asked 
 Thurso.
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 295 
 
 " I take a little hot water and sugar with it," 
 he said. 
 
 " Hot water and sugar, please," said Cochran. 
 
 Then a sudden distrust came into Thurso 's 
 mind. 
 
 " You are not going to cheat me? " he said. 
 
 Cochran felt one moment of vast pity for him. 
 Ever since they had gone out and found him 
 crouching in the corner of the hall he had felt 
 that it was a different personality from the 
 Thurso of the last three days whom they found 
 there. It was as if he was possessed he was 
 furtive and suspicious, nothing remained of him 
 but Thirst, thirst for that drug that had already 
 dragged him so near to ruin and death, that ex- 
 punged from his mind all sense of honor, all the 
 moral code by which men were bound, all sense 
 that other people were bound by it. 
 
 " No, I'm not going to cheat you," he said. " I 
 suppose you forged the prescription again? ' 
 
 Thurso laughed. 
 
 The man had brought the glasses, hot water 
 and sugar by this time, and Thurso eagerly un- 
 did the bottle. What exactly was going to hap- 
 pen Maud did not know, but she trusted Cochran, 
 and utterly she trusted the Power which he felt 
 sure was bidding him do this. 
 
 Thurso poured some half of the bottle into his 
 own glass and passed it across to Cochran.
 
 296 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 * * I wouldn 't take much if I were you, * ' he said, 
 pouring hot water into his glass, and stirring up 
 a lump of sugar in it. 
 
 " Greedy fellow! " said Cochran. " And is 
 that your dose I Why it 's half the bottle. ' ' 
 
 Again Thurso giggled. 
 
 " I know. It's a regular big dose this time," 
 he said. " I never took quite so much before." 
 
 Once more a moment of weakness came to 
 Maud. 
 
 " Oh, Thurso, Thurso! " she said imploringly. 
 
 But he did not seem to notice her. 
 
 ' ' And then I shall sit by the fire, ' ' he went on, 
 '" and have six hours of Paradise. I shouldn't 
 take more than a teaspoonful if I were you," he 
 said to Cochran; " that's what I began with." 
 
 " Ah, then see here," said Cochran. 
 
 He poured the rest of the bottle into his glass. 
 It was rather more than Thurso had taken. Then, 
 without troubling about hot water or- sugar, he 
 drank it off. Thurso had just raised his glass 
 to his mouth, but he- put it down. 
 
 " Why, it will kill you, it will kill you! " he 
 screamed. " What have you done? You must 
 take an emetic at once. You '11 be dead in a couple 
 of hours. Maud, don't sit there," he cried. 
 4t Send for the doctor. Send for somebody, 
 quick! ' 
 
 But Maud did not move. Cochran looked at
 
 THE HOUSE OF. DEFENCE 297 
 
 her once, and she smiled at him, and he seemed 
 satisfied, as if he had been waiting for that just 
 her assurance of confidence that the smile gave. 
 Then he turned to Thurso. 
 
 " Now, I haven't interfered with you," he said, 
 " and you are not going to interfere with me. 
 What I have drunk will not have the smallest 
 effect on me, because I have done it to show you, 
 when I could think of nothing else that would 
 show you, how you have been a slave to that which 
 had no real power or effect of any kind. It has 
 been your intention, your false belief, your self- 
 indulgence that has brought you to this. And 
 now, at last, perhaps you will see the unreality of 
 it. But you have made it through error so real 
 to yourself that you have become what you are 
 to-day. Just think for a moment what you were 
 a year ago, and think what you are now." 
 
 Thurso walked up and down the room, waving 
 his hands, gesticulating in despair during this. 
 Once he had tried to go to the door, but Cochran 
 had stepped in front of it, and stood there. 
 
 ' ' Aren 't you going to drink that ? ' ' said Coch- 
 ran at length, pointing to the glass Thurso had 
 set down untasted. 
 
 Thurso again did not seem to hear him. 
 
 " Oh, I implore you," he cried. " I implore you 
 to go and take an emetic, and be quick about it. 
 You have taken a fatal dose. You will be dead
 
 298 THE HOUSE OFDEFENCE 
 
 in a couple of hours. And it's my fault. You 
 did it to convince me. Oh, if you'll only go, I 
 will swear to you never to touch it again. As for 
 
 He took his own glass and flung it just as it 
 was into the fire, where, with hissing and a huge 
 cloud of steam and blackening of the wood logs, 
 it passed away. 
 
 11 There, will that convince you? " he cried. 
 ' l And just when I was worked up for it, wanting 
 it as I have never wanted it before. Oh, I im- 
 plore you, go! If you don't, I shall have killed 
 you, and you have helped me so much, so much." 
 
 He flung himself down on a sofa, in a paroxysm 
 of despair, and Maud, though she could not trust 
 herself to speak, else she would have burst into 
 floods of uncontrollable weeping, thanked God 
 for it, telling herself she was not afraid she 
 would not be afraid. For she believed that Coch- 
 ran had done right. God would not play him 
 false, while, as for Thurso, at last he was broken. 
 A thousand times had he fallen and been sorry, 
 and vowed to amend, but he had never been broken 
 like this. This was the utter abandonment, the 
 real repentance. If, as Cochran had said, there 
 was still a reservoir of error, she could not doubt 
 but that its banks were broken now : it was coming 
 out from him in torrents. 
 
 But then Cochran moved from the door, still
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 299 
 
 smiling, still perfectly serene, and sat down by 
 Thurso, as he half lay on the sofa, and laid his 
 hand on his shoulder. 
 
 "I'm glad it has taken you like this, my dear 
 fellow," he said, " and I'm sorrier than I can 
 say for all the anguish you are now suffering. 
 But I saw no other way of convincing you. I'm 
 sorry for the pain you feel now, because it is quite 
 unnecessary. Your fears for me are as false as 
 was your desire for that stuff, which I thought 
 tasted abominable. But I'm infinitely glad for 
 it in another way, because I think you will see 
 now. All that has been doing you so much good 
 these last four days hasn't yet been real to you. 
 But I think it will be real now. ' ' 
 
 " Oh, it's not too late yet," cried Thurso. 
 ' ' But go at once ! ' ' 
 
 " And show you I don't believe a word of all 
 that I have ever said to you and Lady Maud? ' 
 he answered. " You can't seriously invite me to 
 be such a hypocrite as that. Why, anyone of the 
 least spirit would sooner die, as I fancy you still 
 think I shall, than do that." 
 
 Thurso laid an agonized hand on his knee. 
 
 " But have you ever done anything of the sort 
 before? " he asked. " For Heaven's sake, tell 
 me you have, and add that it came all right." 
 
 Cochran laughed. 
 
 " Well, no, I haven't," he said; " and this is
 
 300 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 the opportunity I have long wanted. Now, when 
 is this bad-tasting stuff supposed to take effect? " 
 
 Again Thurso beat the air with his hands. 
 
 ' ' Oh, it 's my fault, it 's my fault ! " he moaned. 
 " Maud, can't you persuade him? ' 
 
 " No, dear Thurso, 7 ' said she rather huskily. 
 " At least, I shan't try." 
 
 They sat in silence after this for a minute. 
 Then Thurso got quickly up and went out. 
 Maud's eyes sought Cochran. 
 
 "Is it all right to leave him? " she asked. 
 
 ' ' Oh, yes. He may have gone for a doctor ; he 
 may have gone, well, to break down all by him- 
 self. But he will not harm himself." 
 
 " You are sure? " she asked. 
 
 " Absolutely. Why, Divine Love is pouring in 
 on all sides to him. He's in safe hands." 
 
 He looked at her for a long moment. 
 
 " He is cured, you know," he said. " And 
 there's no more reason for me to stop here. I 
 think I'll go back to town to-night." 
 
 Then Maud's lip quivered and her eyes brimmed 
 over. 
 
 11 God bless you! " she said. 
 
 She took both his hands in hers for a moment, 
 and then looked at him again. 
 
 " You mustn't think of going up to-night or 
 to-morrow," she said. " You say your work is
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 301 
 
 over. But can't you stay a day or two yet with 
 your friends? " 
 
 44 Is it as your friend that I stay here? " he said 
 slowly. 
 
 " Yes; mine and Thurso's." 
 
 " Your friendship has meant much to me," he 
 said in an earnest tone. He, who had braved 
 death that he might save Thurso from the thrall 
 of opium, felt a strange cowardice choking his 
 every utterance. His heart his whole being 
 clamored madly for speech. Yet his lips in mis- 
 erable fear held back the burning words that beat 
 against them for egress. 
 
 Maud felt, without divining, the constraint in 
 his tone. His words were pitiably formal. The 
 speech was a dash of cold spray in her face. 
 
 " We can never thank you as we should," she 
 replied, and her own voice was unconsciously 
 colder. 
 
 " I have told you it was not I who should re- 
 ceive your gratitude. I was but the instrument. 
 And now, I beg you won't think me ungracious 
 when I say I think it is best that I should not pro- 
 long my stay. ' ' 
 
 The unwonted coldness in her voice had cut him 
 cruelly and, lover-like, he had lost no time in mis- 
 construing it. 
 
 " We would not dream of urging you against 
 your will, ' ' she answered. * ' Of course there must
 
 302 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 be many interests you have sacrificed to come here 
 and " 
 
 ' ' No, no ! "he protested. ' * I have only one in- 
 terest in all this whole world. Only one hope, one 
 aim, one longing. And that lies here." 
 
 She averted her head to hide the hot flush that 
 swept face and brow. She sought to speak, but 
 her voice deserted her. And even so, in the flood 
 tide of his declaration did Walter Cochran 's cour- 
 age depart. For, in his crass ignorance of love 
 and the ways of women he read unwillingness to 
 listen, perhaps even aversion, in her sudden turn- 
 ing away from him. Faith and ordinarily firm 
 nerves are but sorry allies when a tyro at love 
 seeks to propose. In dire fear lest he be thought 
 to press a suit that was patently unwelcome, he 
 added awkwardly: 
 
 " My interest in your brother's case has been 
 greater than you realize. I ' 
 
 A little gasp interrupted him. The girl, her 
 cheeks still flaming, but her eyes no longer 
 averted, faced him. 
 
 11 I think I understand," she said unsteadily, 
 " and I appreciate your interest in my brother. 
 He and I will always remember your friendship. 
 It's pleasant, isn't it," she went on with a forced 
 laugh, " to be able to form a jolly, frank friend- 
 ship with a man? It's more unusual than most 
 people suppose. I am very fortunate."
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 303 
 
 She was carrying it off well. But not well 
 enough to have deceived any less confused mortal 
 than Walter Cochran. Her laugh and careless 
 words grated on his senses like a file. 
 
 " I think I will have just time to pack for the 
 three o'clock train," he said. " You will excuse 
 me if I go up now and begin? " 
 
 " Of course. If you really must leave us so 
 soon," she responded with delightful formality, 
 and turned to arrange some flowers at a table 
 near by. 
 
 Her back was turned to him. He stood dumbly 
 watching her as she gathered up the heap of flow- 
 ers and placed them one by one in a Cloisonne 
 bowl. She knew he was still there and in artless 
 abandon began to hum 
 
 11 Parlate-le de I' amor, 
 Carifior'." 
 
 Not being musical, Walter wholly missed the 
 ironic suggestiveness of the song. But he noted 
 the white slenderness of her fingers amid the crim- 
 son glory of the roses, and the winter sunlight's 
 play upon her soft hair. She thrust one rose 
 through her braids as she sang and worked, ap- 
 parently ignorant of his continued presence in the 
 room. Her whole course of action suggested opera 
 bouffe. But it was that or tears ; and she bravely 
 chose the former alternative.
 
 304 THE HOUSE OF, DEFENCE 
 
 The rose, top heavy and weak of stem, fell from 
 her hair to the floor behind her. Cochran knelt 
 to pick it up. It was warm, glowing, redolent of 
 her sweet personality. Instinctively, her back be- 
 ing turned, he crushed the flower to his lips. 
 
 Then her singing ceased abruptly, even inar- 
 tistically. 
 
 " You are not going away! " she announced 
 with pretty decision. 
 
 " W why not? " he asked in bewilderment, 
 scrambling to his feet. She had not turned. 
 
 " Because," she replied demurely, " because I 
 happened to be looking into this mirror just now. 
 I couldn't see myself. It was at the wrong angle. 
 But but I could see you." 
 
 Now blessed be the man who invented mirrors ! 
 And out upon him who prates against them as 
 useless promoters of vanity ! 
 
 Cochran stared, stupid, dumfounded, for a 
 whole second. Then he regained his sanity. 
 
 ' ' I love you ! " he said. 
 
 That was all. Gravely, simply, like two little 
 children, they kissed each other, while, above them, 
 ungratefully forgotten, the tiny wall mirror blazed 
 
 back the thousand dazzling rays of the winter sun. 
 
 ******** 
 
 Walter Cochran 's suggestion had been quite 
 right, and, half an hour later, Thurso came back 
 drenched with the storm, for he had put on neither
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 305 
 
 hat nor coat, with the doctor from Port Wash- 
 ington. A minute later a highly-affronted physi- 
 cian left again, wondering if it was a form of 
 English humor to drag a man out on a night like 
 this, saying that Mr. Cochran had inadvertently 
 taken a huge dose of laudanum, only to find Mr. 
 Cochran, who, if he had done so, would certainly 
 by now have lost consciousness, looking rather 
 annoyed at the interruption, but otherwise bril- 
 liantly well. But a glance at the face of his com- 
 panion was sufficient to account for his annoyance.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 LILY THURSO was returning home to Thurso 
 House the next afternoon about four o 'clock. She 
 had been lunching out, and people were coming 
 to dinner, but she had a good deal to do before 
 that, and a good deal to think about. Also, there 
 would be for her a telegram from Maud, who 
 cabled to her every day, and she was anxious to 
 see what it was. 
 
 Ever since the departure of her husband and 
 sister-in-law to America her hands had been very 
 full, and she had devoted more time than usual 
 to purely social duties. For she knew quite well 
 that London had talked a good deal about 
 Thurso 's " illness," in that particular tone which 
 means that in public and to her it was referred 
 to as " illness " in the abstract, but when two or 
 three only were gathered together it was dis- 
 cussed far more in detail. With her unerring 
 tact, therefore, and knowledge of the world, she 
 knew that the more she was seen about, the more 
 she entered into the life of the place, the less pub- 
 lic the scandal was likely to be. With all its 
 faults, the world respects bravery and the power 
 of facing things (and certainly she had faced them
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 307 
 
 magnificently), with the result that already the 
 world had begun to think that it was rather a 
 " shame " to talk about Thurso when Lily was 
 so gallant. It would very much have liked to 
 know why she had not gone with him, but still, on 
 the whole, it was a " shame " to talk. And since 
 the memory of the world resides in its tongue, it 
 follows that it soon forgets when it ceases to talk. 
 It was understood, however, that Thurso 's case 
 was hopeless. 
 
 Lily had thought so, too. He had, as has been 
 seen, refused to say good-by to her, but from her 
 window she had seen his face as he got into the 
 carriage which took him and Maud to the sta- 
 tion, and it seemed to her that death was already 
 there, so that she had not, as a matter of fact, 
 expected that he would reach America alive. 
 During those days she had thought more deeply 
 and earnestly about it all than she had ever 
 thought before in her very busy but unemotional 
 life, and with her whole heart she had forgiven 
 him for the sufferings and indignities he had 
 brought on her during these last six months. 
 Whether he would ever read her letter or not, she 
 did not know, but some five days after their de- 
 parture she had written to him, quite shortly, 
 but quite sincerely, bidding him, if any thought 
 of pain or sorrow came to him for the pain he 
 had brought on her, to dismiss it as absolutely
 
 308 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 as she had dismissed any wrong he had done her, 
 and devote himself entirely to getting well. It 
 had cost her a great deal to do that, for just as 
 she was very slow to take offence, so she was 
 naturally very slow to forgive, and the events of 
 these last six months, with that crowning indig- 
 nity, had bitten very deeply into her. 
 
 Then had come the telegram from Maud on 
 their arrival at New York. It told her that he 
 had taken laudanum again, that he had forged 
 ihe name of the doctor, but that he had, after one 
 dose, allowed her to throw the bottle away. His 
 general health, it said, was rather improved. 
 Three more telegrams reporting the events of 
 three more days had come since then, each re- 
 cording improvement, and it was this fourth that 
 she was expecting to find now on her return. 
 
 But, as she drove now through the streets, where 
 the shops were gay for Christmas purchasers, she 
 knew that this was not half the stress of the emo- 
 tional conflict that was going on in her. Matters, 
 as was inevitable, had come to a crisis between 
 her and Kudolf Villars, and two days ago he had 
 declared to her the steadfast and passionate de- 
 votion that he had always felt for her. But he 
 had refused to go on any longer on this present 
 footing of friendship. Should she now definitely 
 reject his devotion, he would not see her again, 
 except as was necessary in the casual meetings,
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 309 
 
 when the world brought them together. And she 
 had promised to give him his answer this evening, 
 
 She had really no idea at this moment of what 
 it would be. Months ago she had determined that 
 she would not herself break that moral law, 
 though she did not really believe in it. But since 
 then much had happened; ruin and degradation 
 had come to her husband; he had offered her the 
 greatest insult that from the point of this moral 
 law a wife can be offered, and, what was a far 
 more vital and determining fact in her choice, she 
 knew now that she loved Rudolf Villars, and with 
 an intensity that she believed equal to his. Could 
 the moral law that tied her to an opium-drenched 
 wreck sever her from this other man? 
 
 And then suddenly she remembered the letter 
 she had written to Thurso. She had told him 
 that the past was utterly blotted out. Had she 
 only said that because she meant to console her- 
 self in the future? Or had she said it because 
 she did not believe he would live? No, she had 
 said it because the best part of her meant it. But 
 just now that best part seemed dwindled to a 
 mere pin's head in her consciousness. Love and 
 life and desire were trumpets and decorations to 
 her; that little gray tattered flag of honor was 
 scarcely visible among the miles of bunting and 
 the blare of the welcome that would be hers if 
 she said one word to her lover.
 
 310 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 Her victoria had already stopped at her door, 
 and the footman had turned back the sable rug 
 to let her get out, but she sat for a moment quite 
 still, for the thought had hit her like a blow. Till 
 it came she had not known how nearly she had 
 decided; now that it had come she could not for 
 the moment estimate how it would affect her 
 decision. Only for the moment it was stunning. 
 She had told her husband that the past was wiped 
 out all that he had said or done which had been 
 unjust and insulting to her she had cancelled, 
 annihilated as far as it concerned her. Was she 
 then going to make a fresh past on her own ac- 
 count? To give him an opportunity to be as 
 generous as she? There was a sort of ironical 
 fitness about this that she could not help being 
 amused at, though it concerned things as vital as 
 sin and forgiveness. 
 
 And as she got out of her victoria and entered 
 the house she endorsed that to herself. She would 
 have written that letter over again to Thurso at 
 this moment, and have expresed it even more 
 strongly. All that was implied in it, too, she 
 would have endorsed. But in spite of the tele- 
 grams of these last three days she did not really 
 believe that he would live. 
 
 There was some dozen of letters for her on 
 the table in the hall, and a telegram lay a little
 
 apart. As she picked all these up she spoke to 
 her major-domo. 
 
 " I shall be in to anybody until six," she said. 
 " If Count Villars calls after that, I shall be in 
 to him." 
 
 11 Yes, my lady." 
 
 There were two little hats and two little coats 
 hanging up in the hall. She looked at these for 
 a moment, feeling that they ought to convey some- 
 thing to her, but she did not quite know what. 
 Then she remembered that her two sons were due 
 at home to-day. 
 
 " Lord Stratton and Lord Henry have come? " 
 she asked. 
 
 ' ' Yes, my lady ; they arrived an hour ago. ' ' 
 
 Again she paused a moment. 
 
 " Let them know that I have come in. They 
 can come and have their tea with me in the draw- 
 ing-room in ten minutes. And a boiled egg for 
 them each," she added. 
 
 She frowned to herself, still not going up that 
 staircase that had been the hay-field of wild flow- 
 ers to her but last summer, wondering at her in- 
 decision. Then she spoke again. 
 
 " I am in to no one but Count Villars," she 
 said. " But toll the young gentlemen to come 
 down and have tea with me." 
 
 The past was dead, she had said that, but there 
 was something in the past, these two boys whom
 
 312 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 she had never found particularly interesting, 
 which the death of the past, in the sense that she 
 had promised it to her husband, made more alive. 
 It was the wretchedness and alienation of the past 
 that she had meant and implied should be dead; 
 she willed it more surely by caring for that which 
 was truly vital in it, by neglecting no longer that 
 and those whom she had neglected too much. She 
 was not sorry for her neglect of them in the past ; 
 but, if Thurso lived, the letter she had written 
 to him had to be fulfilled to its utmost. Even now 
 she recognized that the two children could help 
 to stab the bitterness of the past to death. She 
 was their mother, and though for all these years 
 she had forgotten the joy, just as she had for- 
 gotten the pains of maternity, it was not wholly 
 dead. Yet Villars. Would it perhaps be better 
 not to see him, then? She could hardly do that. 
 She had promised him her answer, and she never 
 shirked a promise. Yet, even now, she did not 
 know what her answer would be. She was doing 
 no more than adding up her accounts, seeing what 
 she owed to everybody all round. 
 
 All this passed very quickly as she went up- 
 stairs. Then she paused underneath the electric 
 light at the top and opened the telegram. She 
 looked first at the end of it, as is natural in read- 
 ing a telegram, and expecting to see Maud 's name. 
 But it was signed " Thurso."
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 313 
 Then she read it: 
 
 ' ' I am cured, and am perfectly well. I humbly 
 entreat your pardon, though your letter so gener- 
 ously grants it. Shall I come back, or could you 
 possibly come out here? I must see you as soon 
 as possible. THUESO." 
 
 She read it once, she read it once more, as if to 
 be sure of the sense of this incredible thing. 
 Could it be a hoax? If so, who could have played 
 so grim a joke? She looked at the hour at which 
 it was sent off, the hour at which it had arrived. 
 Then she read it once more, and folded it up. 
 
 " But it is incredible," she said to herself. 
 " Miracles don't happen." 
 
 She passed into the drawing-room, looking con- 
 sciously round at the tapestries, the brocaded fur- 
 niture, the warm, mellow light of the shaded 
 lamps, as if to assure herself that this was not 
 a dream. She opened a letter or two, but they 
 were quite ordinary and commonplace ; there was 
 an invitation or two to dinner, there were a few 
 acceptances of her invitations, and all were signed 
 with familiar names. Already, too, a footman 
 was laying the table for tea he had drawn two 
 high chairs to the table and had put a plate and 
 an egg-cup opposite each. Everything except this 
 telegram indicated that the world was going on
 
 314 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 in its normal manner. She had ordered a boiled 
 egg, as a treat, for each of the children. There 
 were the egg-cups. 
 
 The children? Whose? Hers and Thurso's. 
 
 Thurso was cured, so he said. He besought her 
 forgiveness. Her children were coming down to 
 tea with her. She expected Villars. That was 
 enough to think about for the few minutes that 
 would elapse before the children came. 
 
 How bourgeois all situations were when they 
 actually occurred ! But how deadly, when it actu- 
 ally occurred, was the struggle between that old 
 fetich called Morality or Duty and and well, 
 anything else. She had really no idea what this 
 fetich was like she had been pure because she 
 had been untempted. Now the fetich was re- 
 vealing its face. But all these years she had been 
 kind ; she had been generous ; she had had the in- 
 stinct for helping what or whoever suffered. 
 That, too, helped to mould the face of the fetiches 
 that were unveiling themselves. 
 
 The message that the children were to come 
 down to tea had not been productive, up above, 
 of immediate rapture. Stratton, aged eleven, 
 had said " Oh, bother! " and Henry, aged ten, 
 had said " Shall we have to stop long? ' Their 
 mother was a radiant but rather terrifying vision 
 to them. She was usually doing something else,
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 315 
 
 and mustn't be interrupted. That summed up 
 their knowledge of her. 
 
 Still, down below there was nervousness also. 
 But she remembered some curious cards that had 
 once produced shouts of laughter, when the chil- 
 dren were playing with their father. They con- 
 cerned Mr. Bones, the butcher, and other legend- 
 ary people. She remembered the day, too, a wet 
 afternoon at the end of July, when they had 
 played with them, and went to a cupboard in the 
 drawing-room where cards could usually be found, 
 and discovered these images of joy. The children 
 were going to have eggs also at their tea. That 
 was a treat, too. 
 
 They came in soon after, rather shy, and very 
 anxious to " behave." But insensibly, with the 
 instinct of children, they saw that ' ' behavior ' ' was 
 really not necessary. That radiant vision begged 
 a spoonful of Henry's egg, and asked Stratton 
 if he could not spare one corner of the delicious 
 toast which he had buttered for himself. 
 
 There was good news also. Father was away 
 and some nameless dagger pierced her as she 
 realized that this was the first they had heard of 
 it and he had been ill. But he was ever so much 
 better, quite well in fact, and soon he was com- 
 ing back home, or else mamma was going out to 
 see him yes, to America, miles away. What 
 ocean? Atlantic, of course.
 
 316 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 Soon there was no thought in the children's 
 minds of how long it was necessary to stop. The 
 wonderful cards were produced, and they all sat 
 on the hearth-rug, and mamma was too stupid 
 for anything " Why, she had the whole suit of 
 Mr. Bones the butcher in her hand and never de- 
 clared it. ' ' So Henry got Mr. Bones the butcher, 
 and with devilish ingenuity retained it, instead 
 of passing it on to Stratton, who might, without 
 thinking, have passed it back to mamma, who 
 might then have seen how silly she had been. 
 
 The game was deliriously exciting when an in- 
 terruption came, and Stratton again said, " Oh, 
 bother! " But mamma did not get up from the 
 hearth-rug. The children, however, were told to 
 do so. 
 
 11 Get up, boys," she said, " and shake hands 
 with Count Villars. But don't let me see your 
 cards. I am going to win. How are you, Villars ? 
 The boys are just home from school. This is 
 Stratton; this is Henry. Do give yourself some 
 tea, and be kind, and let us finish our game." 
 
 Lily Thurso again proved herself a perfect 
 idiot, and Henry threw down his cards with a 
 shriek. 
 
 ' ' All the Snips, the tailors ! " he cried. 
 
 * ' Oh, you little beast, ' ' cried his mother, * ' and 
 I have all the Bones but one! Now, go upstairs, 
 darlings, and take the cards with you, if you like. ' '
 
 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 317 
 
 " And is papa coming home I " asked Stratton. 
 
 " I don't know yet. Off you go! " 
 
 " And are we to say good-by to him? " asked 
 Henry in a whisper. 
 
 " Yes, of course. You must always say good- 
 by when you leave the room." 
 
 There was silence for a moment after the boys 
 had gone. Lily broke it. 
 
 " I have just had a telegram from America," 
 she said. " Thurso sent it. He is better. He 
 says he is cured. He asks me if I will go there, 
 or if he shall come back." 
 
 She was still sitting on the hearth-rug where 
 she had played with her sons. But here she got 
 up. 
 
 " I think I shall go to him," she said, and she 
 raised her eyes to his. 
 
 And then the Adelphi melodrama broke down 
 it began to be played on utterly unconventional 
 lines. He should have been the villain of the 
 piece, and she the guttural heroine. But he was 
 not a villain any more than she was a heroine. 
 
 " I think I have always loved you," she said. 
 ' * But I can 't be mean not intentionally, at least. 
 Thurso appeared to be beyond human .power. 
 But he says he is well. He asks my forgiveness 
 he had it already, but he asks it. So I must go 
 to him. ' '
 
 318 THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE 
 
 He stirred his tea in a perfectly commonplace 
 way, and drank it. 
 
 " Say something," she said. 
 
 Then he got up. 
 
 ' ' I say you are doing right, ' ' he answered. ' ' I 
 came to ask for your answer, and I have got it." 
 
 He moved towards the door. Then he came 
 back quickly. 
 
 " God bless you! " he said. 
 
 Two days afterwards Lily came up on to the 
 deck of the White Star liner on which she was 
 travelling. The sun had just sunk, but in the 
 East the crescent moon was rising, and in the 
 West, whither she was journeying, there was still 
 the afterglow of sunset. She was leaving the East 
 where the moon was, but she was moving towards 
 that other light. And she was content that it 
 should be so she who had schemed so much and 
 planned so much would not have had it different. 
 The West, too, where she was going, had meant 
 so much for Thurso it had meant all for him. 
 It was far easier to weigh the moon than to weigh 
 the veiled light of the sunken sun. She had re- 
 nounced, blindly, it might be. If for her, too, in 
 the West, in the afterglow 
 
 THE END.
 
 Other Works by E. R Benson 
 
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