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 " FRANK DANBY^
 
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 ■''M> ^Q4i f)^
 
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 By FRANK DANBY 
 
 Pigs in Clover 
 
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 ing piece of fiction of the year." 
 
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 PUBLISHERS PHILADELPHIA
 
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 BY 
 
 FRANK DANBY 
 
 ADTHOB OP "PIG8 DJ CLOVEB," " BACCABAT," ETC. 
 
 The Wheel ts come full circle." 
 
 PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 
 1914
 
 COPTRIOHT, I914, BT 3. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 
 PTTBLISHED MAECH, I914 
 
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 AT THE •WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, U. 8. A.
 
 DEDICATION 
 
 TO 
 
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 WHOSE EXCEPTIONAL FACE AND FIGURE I HAVE 
 SOMETIMES BORROWED TO DECK A HERO OR 
 ADORN A '\T[LLAIN, BUT WHOSE FINE LOYALTY 
 AND GENIUS FOR FRIENDSHIP I HAVE ALWAYS 
 ENJOYED WITHOUT ATTEMPTING TO CHRONICLE 
 
 09001 i
 
 FULL SWING 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Agatha Wanstead was barely ten years old when the great 
 orchid, secured from the Brazils after infinite tribulation 
 and almost unimaginable expenses, arrived at Marley. She 
 saw the long-expected treasure unswathed from its packings, 
 wondering at her father's excitement. Big, bulbous and un- 
 beautiful, it showed no promise of efflorescence, appearing 
 dry, unwieldy and ill-shapen. 
 
 " At last ! At last ! " cried her father exultingly. " This 
 will astonish them! The Odontoglossum Coeleste at last! 
 Absolutely the first to arrive in England ! We shall have it in 
 flower for the Horticultural Show." 
 
 Sanders came with it, the young Scotch gardener who 
 was for the future to have charge of all the orchids, to 
 reign, with such supremacy as Squire Wanstead should per- 
 mit, over the quarter of an acre of glass that furnished prize- 
 winners for all the flower-shows in England. A space in one 
 of the houses had been reserved for the new-comer, and there 
 through the autumn and winter it hung quiescent in its new 
 home. 
 
 The attention of the whole household, indoors and out, 
 was concentrated upon the plant, and when spring came 
 Agatha heard Sanders tell her father that it was putting 
 forth signs of growth, that it was "plumping up." But his 
 reports varied and anxiety deepened. Already April had 
 come, when the child, motherless, a little lonely and neg- 
 lected, but never without knowledge of the high position into 
 which she was born and the desire to be worthy of it, began 
 to doubt whether the plant was properly treated. She heard 
 her father talking about it constantly, questioning this or 
 that. Surely what applied to growing children applied to 
 
 7
 
 8 FULL SWING 
 
 growing plants. Fresh air was the one thing upon which 
 the new doctor who had just settled in Great Marley insisted. 
 His advice had been taken. She was no longer cooped up in 
 the school-room for lessons, but all .day long was in the 
 garden or the "woods. Already she was better, knew she too 
 was " plumping up," and felt the spring in her veins. 
 
 Poor plant! She thought of it by night and by day, of 
 liow it was hanging up in the steaming house, stifling, unable 
 to breathe. She herself could hardly breathe in that hot, 
 moist air. How wonderful to be able to help it, to help lier 
 father to a great Joy in its growth, to help Sanders! Thus 
 thinking, she at last put thought into action, waking up in 
 the middle of the night, conscience-stricken at her own 
 supineness in the matter. The bed was warm and comfort- 
 able, and for a few minutes she lay and wondered whether 
 the morning would not be time enough for action. But it 
 was not her disposition then, or ever, to do the easy thing. 
 She got out of the warm bed hurriedly, dressed as well as 
 she was able in the limited illumination of the night-light, 
 ran downstairs, and fumbled open the locks of the big front 
 door. Then she went swiftly down the steps and across 
 the grass to the hot-house. That, too, was locked, but she 
 knew where the key was kept. She found and fitted it, opened 
 the door; the hot, steamy air rushed out convincingly, and 
 the stifled plant had fresh air at last. 
 
 She slept well when she got back to her own room. Less 
 well the next night, when the heinousness of her conduct was 
 brought home to her. All the orchids in the hot-house were 
 dead or dying, the new Odontoglossum amongst them. She 
 slept less well, not that she was conscious of, or admitted, 
 guilt, not because she was scolded or punished, but because 
 she was perj^lexed that one could do good and evil could come 
 of it, because already she felt dimly that the right path might 
 not always be easy to find. 
 
 Agatha's conscience was ever her torment and her un- 
 doing. At fifteen years she was almost overpowered by the 
 sense of her responsibilities; awed by the knowledge that she 
 was Miss Wanstead of Marley, the last descendant of the
 
 FULL SWING 9 
 
 ancient house. She tried to talk to her father about it, but 
 he responded lightly. She was already uneasy that her father 
 took hia business as a magistrate and a great landowner too 
 carelessly, that he devoted too much of his time to horti- 
 culture, and especially to orchids. When, he became fully 
 aware of her solicitude for him, he sent her to boarding school, 
 where she was homesick and miserable, realising that her own 
 blundering had brought about her banishment, but not more 
 reconciled to it on that account. 
 
 True, his hot-houses, warm-houses, cool-houses, his 
 Dendrobiums and Odontoglossums, Vandas and Cattleyas 
 were more important to Squire Wanstead than Marley or his 
 young daughter. He was the first of the orchidaceans. What 
 began as a pastime ended as a passion. Far and near he 
 sought for rare specimens. His experiments in hybridisation 
 were the talk of the horticultural world as early as 1863. He 
 had neither time nor inclination to discuss ethics with his 
 young daughter, it was easier to rid himself of her. 
 
 One experiment he made of a culture less exiguous. In 
 his sixtieth year, Agatha still at school, he became besotted 
 over a pale English rose, importing it hastily to the terraced 
 garden of the Court, where, like so many of his other impor- 
 tations, it failed to flourish. He and his daughter were alike 
 impulsive, and came into sad conflict over this ill-considered 
 action. 
 
 When Agatha returned from school, full of desire to be 
 a companion and help to her father, to take her place as lady 
 of the manor and be a benefactress to all Marley, she found 
 herself confronted by a young stepmother about to bear a 
 Marley heir, and by a father comparatively indifferent to 
 the greatness of his position and completely oblivious of hers. 
 Little Marley interested him very little, and Great Marley 
 not at all. 
 
 The young stepmother wanted smart clothes and jewellery, 
 a house in town, new carriages and liveries, more horses. 
 Squire Wanstead's hobby was an expensive one. And at 
 Little Marley cottages were in need of repair, the sanitation 
 was considerably worse than primitive; there was no district
 
 10 FULL SWING 
 
 nurse or cottage hospital. Agatha's sense of duty burned 
 hot within her; she was young and spoke in season and out 
 of season. " They are our people, Marley people ; they look 
 to us for help, and we are doing nothing for them. . . ." 
 *^ou are a bore, Agatha; nothing but a bore," was her 
 father's final and irritated answer. " Damn the cottages and 
 Little Marley. Great Marley, too, if you like. Can't you 
 leave things alone ? " 
 
 " The rain comes through the roofs, the woodwork is 
 all rotten; they ought to be rebuilt. No money should be 
 spent until that is done," she persisted. 
 
 " I believe she grudges me the very food I eat, the clothes 
 I wear," complained her stepmother. 
 " I grudge you nothing." 
 
 Agatha saw right and wrong in unshaded lines of black 
 and white. She was conscientious and utterly honest, without 
 guile. 
 
 "But we are not doing our duty, not doing the right 
 thing by our people." 
 
 The doctor from Great Marley had convinced her that 
 something should be done, and she spoiled the dinner, as she 
 had spoiled the luncheon, by talking of drains and diphtheria, 
 water and germs. 
 
 " Such talk is so bad for me," pouted young Mrs. 
 Wanstead. 
 
 " Can't you see you are upsetting her ? " said the squire 
 angrily. 
 
 "Dr. Eeid says I am not to be agitated," echoed the 
 expectant mother, plaintively. 
 
 Agatha took life seriously, and wanted to do her duty 
 in a properly feudal manner. There was hardly a truce in 
 the arguments that ensued between her and her futile, ex- 
 travagant stepmother, between her and her irritated father. 
 Her desire for justice and sense of responsibility were streaked 
 with periods of doubt, fears lest she lacked filial piety. 
 Although she could not help criticising her father, she had a 
 . deep-seated respect for him as the head of the house. She 
 would have cared for him but that her heart had not begun
 
 FULL SWING II 
 
 to grow; it was so overladen with conscientiousness. Yet there 
 was undoubtedly a substratum of tenderness in it, and when 
 her feeble stepmother was ill and nervous, she made tenta- 
 tive, a little awkward, and somewhat pathetic, efforts toward 
 reconciliation. 
 
 The moment was inopportune for the expected event. 
 The threatened diphtheria at Marley made its appearance 
 in the form of one mild case of endemic typhoid. But in- 
 stead of new drainage, there was a hasty exodus to London. 
 That it was the season for Messrs. Protheroe and Morris's 
 auction sales of orchids may have influenced Squire Wanstead, 
 but he never admitted this, nor that the season's gaieties, too 
 much dissipation, and many imprudences were responsible 
 for the disastrous result. The baby girl was bom into a 
 motherless world. There was no male heir to unentailed 
 Marley, there was only a little stepsister whose birth cost 
 her mother's life and left Squire Wanstead, his mind stag- 
 gering a little under the blow, more unreasonable than before, 
 and with a perpetual grievance, a grievance that he nurtured 
 until the end. He was convinced that Agatha had driven 
 them from Marley, and was responsible for her stepmother's 
 death. 
 
 Squire Wanstead was never the same man after his second 
 wife died in childbirth. He became querulous and always 
 more exacting and unreasonable, accepting many sacrifices 
 from his elder daughter, but never forgiving her ; dying with 
 a dim idea that it was her fault, too, that the Odontoglossum 
 Cceleste showed leaves but never a spike. 
 
 Agatha suffered his reproaches, believing sometimes that 
 they were deserved. For, incidentally, it has to be admitted 
 that no infection spread, the sporadic case of typhoid having 
 no successor. The form her remorse took was the care she 
 gave to the bereaved baby. Her troublesome conscience made 
 it inevitable. 
 
 Suitors came to Marley after her father's death. She had 
 as much of good looks as was compatible with complete indif- 
 ference to them, owing nothing to dress or cosmetics. Her 
 skin was clear and her eyes bright; she was accounted some-
 
 12 FULL SWING 
 
 thing of an heiress. Sir John Campden came from Denham 
 with the lure of adjoining land; Lord Deerhaven, from 
 Amherst, with a pedigree as distinguished as her own, and, 
 surprisingly, Andrew McKay, the family lawyer, familiar to 
 her and valued, but not associated in her mind with courtship. 
 
 But she would have none of them, more serious things 
 than courtship absorbed her. At three-and-twenty she was 
 mistress of Marley, her little stepsister Monica, and the wel- 
 fare of all the tenantry. 
 
 There had been a gathering of orchidaceans at her father's 
 funeral and handsome tributes in the Press, and she deter- 
 mined to sustain the reputation of the Marley Court hot- 
 houses and her father's culture. She was full of good reso- 
 lutions, and if she magnified her own importance in the 
 scheme of creation, she was nevertheless, and secretly, some- 
 what diffident of her capacity to fulfil her obligations. Her 
 father's attitude toward her had cut away some of her self- 
 esteem and implanted a deep-rooted shyness. Marley, of 
 course, was the capital of the universe. She saw Little Marley 
 redrained, schools built, public-houses banished and clubs 
 substituted. What she never saw at all was Andrew McKay 
 looking at her with appreciative eyes. 
 
 Three generations of McKays had kept the dusty archives 
 of Marley. Andrew knew everything that was to be known 
 about the history of the family, could advise about leases and 
 forfeitures and the powers of local government boards. He 
 could talk, too, about orchids, and had, indeed, a taste for 
 horticulture. 
 
 He came to her a month after her father's funeral, a strong, 
 reliable man, with a slight Scotch accent and a Scotch inten- 
 sity of purpose, a few years older than herself, and with no 
 idea that she looked upon him as anything but her equal. And 
 why not ? The small landed gentry, and it was amongst these 
 that the heiress of Marley was placed, held no undue impor- 
 tance in his mind. He had ample means, a fine county busi- 
 ness, and a high reputation. It was time he took a wife, and 
 Agatha was the wife he wanted. 
 
 For a month he had been coming and going, making his
 
 FULL SWING 13 
 
 meaning clear. So he thought. But Agatha had seen only 
 in his attentions the little business matters that he had used 
 as excuses; the proving of her father's will and satisfaction 
 of the claims of the Inland Revenue, the transfer of farms 
 and resettlement of tenures. She "was always glad when he 
 came. He was sympathetic with all her views, clear-minded, 
 sound on sanitation and the better housing of the agricultural 
 labourer. Unlike her father and the majority of her acquaint- 
 ances, he did not say it was no concern of hers, nor show by 
 disapproval that he thought her interest in such things 
 unwomanly. 
 
 But, nevertheless, on the day when he pushed the papers 
 on one side, and abruptly, without any preamble, asked her 
 if she would marry him, she was dumbfounded. At first she 
 thought she could have been no more astonished if Sanders 
 himself had asked her. But she quickly recognised the 
 absurdity of the parallel. When she remembered that Andrew 
 McKay was her equal in everything but blood she grew hot, 
 for she was not really a snob, only somewhat overburdened 
 by her lineage. 
 
 She answered hastily that it was impossible, then, quite 
 seriously, that she never intended to marry. Her flush 
 emboldened him. 
 
 "It will take me years to put the estate in order," she 
 said breathlessly, and to gain time. 
 
 " I could help you." 
 
 " I don't want any help." 
 
 He pressed his suit, and she took refuge in phrases that 
 even to her own ears began to sound empty and meaningless. 
 Although she was seeing him in a new aspect, she could not 
 deny that she had always liked him, and sometimes listened 
 to him. Sir John Campden was red-haired, with white eye- 
 lashes, and coarse, freckled hands. It had cost her nothing 
 to refuse him, although their lands lay in a ring fence. Lord 
 Deerhaven was a delicate decadent, talking culture, but need- 
 ing money to patch up his broken fortunes. She had sent him 
 away without a qualm. Neither of them had spoken a8
 
 14 FULL SWING 
 
 Andrew McKay was speaking now, nor looked at her in the 
 same way. 
 
 He got up from the table and came over to her. 
 
 " I thought you knew I cared for you." 
 
 " Oh, no ! " 
 
 "I told your father of my wish before lie died, and he 
 was quite content." 
 
 "My father!" 
 
 " That surprises you. I don't know why." 
 
 " Only because — ^because " But she could not tell him 
 
 why. He would have taken her hand, but she put it behind her. 
 
 "I ... I don't like that sort of thing," she said. 
 The blood was hot in her cheeks. 
 
 "What sort of thing?'' 
 
 " Love making." 
 
 He was sorry for her flush and awkwardness; thinking 
 it virginal, not unseemly, part of her unique charm. 
 
 "Then I won't make love to you." He added quietly, 
 " Not yet." At which she reddened more and thought it 
 was from indignation. " I have to persuade you first to 
 marry me. Will you talk it out with me? " 
 
 It was difficult for her to refuse when he stood so close 
 to her, clear-eyed and strong, rugged yet purposeful, quite 
 new in this aspect. 
 
 " You can say what you like ;" and then added quickly : 
 " but my mind is quite made up." 
 
 " Against matrimony, or against me ? " he asked. 
 
 " Matrimony — you — ^both." She found it difficult to 
 recover her self-possession. 
 
 " Because of your responsibilities and duties here ? " 
 
 " Yes, partly. And Monica." She was hard pressed for 
 excuses ; she had not guessed she liked him so well. 
 
 " A husband and children are the best responsibilities for 
 a woman." 
 
 " I don't think so ; not for a woman in my position. The 
 idea is old-fashioned." She was standing up, speaking a 
 little more quickly than was usual with her.
 
 FULL SWING 15 
 
 " Perhaps it is old-fashioned to want you for my wife. 
 But I do." 
 
 What was in her eyes and voice made her fearful of herself. 
 
 " If you will take me for a husband you will take a man 
 who cares for you more than he can tell." 
 
 " I don't want a husband," she answered abruptly, redden- 
 ing again, as any girl who was not a Miss Wanstead of 
 Marley might have done. 
 
 " You don't know what you want. How should you ? " 
 he said tenderly. His arms would have gone about her, but 
 she was holding herself too upright. " Let me teach you. I 
 understand you better than anyone else has ever understood 
 you, or ever will; the hard surface and difficult softness 
 beneath ; how dogmatic you are, and yet impulsive ; how easily 
 moved and quickly ashamed of it." 
 
 "I hate being analysed. I am not at all easily moved." 
 
 But he could see her uneasiness, and was encouraged by it. 
 
 " You will not admit it, but you are moved now. Perhaps 
 you like me better than you know." He went closer to her. 
 
 But he was employing the wrong methods. Agatha was 
 not really like other girls and women. She had a sense 
 rudimentary or lacking, stumbling through life, therefore, as 
 a lame man walks. She resented Andrew McKay's advance. 
 Finding herself breathless, as if she had been running, she 
 was angry with him, with herself, and with the circum- 
 stances; she was sure it was only anger she felt. 
 
 "You can't mean to send me away, to say 'no' to me. 
 There is nothing you want to do in which I could not be of 
 use to you. No woman is fit to stand alone, you least of all." 
 
 Her instinctive sex-antagonism took quick refuge in 
 exclamation, denial. 
 
 " I ! I am not fit to stand alone ! I want no help from 
 anyone." 
 
 " It is not true, dear, it is not true." 
 
 And when he called her " dear " her heart shook, although 
 outwardly she was still rigid and unconvinced. He went on, 
 although perhaps with less confidence, for he had hoped by 
 now to find her in his arms.
 
 16 FULL SWING 
 
 " For all you are so strong, you are weak ; your heart is 
 soft under that surface hardness. Your father imposed upon 
 you; the baby does so already; other people will. You don't 
 know yourself." 
 
 " Xobody can impose upon me ; it is not true." 
 
 " You need someone to care for you, to see you make no 
 bad mistakes, help your folly to wisdom, your dear conscien- 
 tious follies. I love you." He may not have been a good 
 wooer, but he was an earnest one. 
 
 When Andrew McKay said he loved her, notwithstanding 
 her missing sense, right in the soft core of that small, hard 
 heart of hers Agatha was conscious of a vibration, something 
 that in an ordinary girl might have brought them together. 
 But the vibration inspired Agatha with fear, and she defended 
 herself from him hurriedly, impetuously, and so well that he 
 retreated from her, chilled, disappointed. 
 
 " You will think differently some day," was the last 
 thing he said. " I can wait." 
 
 Having brought him to this she may have repented, but 
 she succeeded so well in disguising it, resuming their business 
 talk as if nothing had interrupted it, that he became reluc- 
 tantly convinced she meant what she said, that she would not 
 marry, that under the clear skin and bright eyes she was not 
 a woman at all, but only a syllogist. He asked her the same 
 question again, nevertheless, on several occasions. But, true 
 to her want of temperament, the more she inclined to him 
 the greater seemed the necessity of retreat. And in the end, 
 his heart not caught in the rebound, but feeling the necessity 
 of a home, he found a more amenable, if less rare, woman, 
 proposed to her, and was gladly accepted. 
 
 Andrew McKay married. And that was the end of 
 Agatha's girlhood. He had come to mean so much more to 
 her than either of them knew or guessed. She had said 
 " no," and " no " again to him, but never thought of him 
 marrying elsewhere. Perhaps he realised it when he made 
 the announcement and saw the sudden pallor of her cheeks. 
 But he may well have thought, even then, that he had been 
 mistaken. For she congratulated him with apparent sin- 
 cerity, and said, with all her young dignity vibrant, that she
 
 FULL SWING 17 
 
 hoped ills marriage would make no difference in their business 
 relationships. 
 
 " I have come to rely upon you," she went on, and 
 smiled condescendingly, or, at least, he read that small forced 
 smile as condescending. 
 
 He replied soberly that he was glad of it. 
 
 " You will not abandon Marley — or me ? " she Eidded, 
 more naturally. 
 
 " Marley and you will always be my first interest." 
 
 It was true. Andrew McKay married, making his wife 
 a good and affectionate husband. But Agatha Wanstead was 
 his first and only love. No one ever saw her with the same 
 eyes as he did. After his marriage, and notwithstanding his 
 loyalty to his wife, they grew in intimacy and understanding. 
 He was lawyer to the estate, and spent much time in repairing 
 her mistakes.
 
 CHAPTEE 11 
 
 There are Great Marley, and Little Marley, and Marley 
 of the Woods. In the first, strikingly incongruous with the 
 new shops and houses, the bank and the brewery, the red 
 brick town hall and adjacent police station, there stands, 
 together with an ivy-grown parsonage of questionable date, 
 the famous old church that attracts tourists and sightseers 
 from all parts of the world. The church, with its frescoes 
 and stained-glass windows, its monuments and brasses, the 
 chancel dated 1519, the screen and christening font, was 
 "restored'' in the year 1794. Time has hallowed these 
 restorations. A monument by Nollekens to the memory of 
 '' Hannah Wanstead and her nine children," and a medallion 
 by Flaxman, compete now in interest with the sixteenth 
 century brasses. 
 
 From the old church, leaving the new town behind, is 
 the beautiful walk to Little Marley, through the natural 
 avenue of wych elms, their huge trunks spreading from a 
 single stem, umbrageous and cool in the summer, weird and 
 wonderful in the winter. Little Marley is hardly more than 
 a hamlet, a single street of thatched, half-timbered cottages, 
 with a stream running along one side of it, a stream that 
 eventually winds its way back to the Thames. 
 
 Beyond the gorse-clad hills lies Marley Chase, three 
 separate woods, where high amid the encompassing pines the 
 old house shows, E-shaped and grey, as when James I. was 
 king. 
 
 Here, as piously as modem conditions allow, Agatha 
 Wanstead prepared to sustain the feudal traditions for the 
 sake of which she had rejected Andrew McKay. 
 
 In Great Marley she had some small property, besides 
 the family brasses in the old church. Little Marley and 
 " Marley of the Woods " were her own, together with a few 
 outlying farms and the Chase. 
 
 18
 
 FULL SWING 19 
 
 In the management of this estate during the years that 
 followed her rejection of Andrew she made every mistake 
 that is possible to feminine ignorance and inexperience. 
 She built elaborate model cottages that no workman would 
 occupy, established a system of drainage at Little Marley for 
 which there was no outlet, was sympathetic and indulgent to 
 bad tenants, and bent on forcing the good ones to new and 
 costly agricultural experiments. She was at first unpopular 
 with her neighbours, but when they understood the motives 
 that actuated her, the most intelligent amongst them forgave 
 her methods. She made good and even enthusiastic friends. 
 Colonel and Mrs. Metherby, for instance, who lamented her 
 independence; the vicar and his wife, who realised her gen- 
 erosity; Sir John Campden's wife, who was perhaps grateful 
 to her for having refused him, and Dr. Eeid. 
 
 Outwardly, at least, as the years progressed she appeared 
 satisfied with the conditions under which she lived. There 
 was nothing too great or too small for her restless energies. 
 To all the household of the Court, outside and inside, she was 
 an exacting but considerate mistress. In Little Marley she 
 was Lady Paramount, dispensing beef tea, blankets, bibles, 
 advice. She told herself often that she had been right in 
 refusing to marry, that she needed no husband; her life was 
 full. And she learned her work, repairing her mistakes when 
 they were brought home to her, always self-conscious but 
 never self-satisfied. 
 
 With the land it was comparatively easy, although expen- 
 sive. Sanders was a canny Scotsman. When he thought 
 she might be right he followed her instructions ; at other times 
 he followed his own. The orchids, therefore, continued to 
 flourish after Squire Wanstead's death, winning prizes still 
 in London and at all the local shows. Agatha pursued her 
 father's hobby at first from a sense of duty, but presently she 
 fell under the fascination of the exotic blooms. That was 
 the most dangerous time, but Sanders won through, making 
 only permissible experiments. 
 
 She learned to manage Marley and the orchids, but 
 Monica, her little wayward stepsister Monica, who was her
 
 20 FULL SWING 
 
 only relative and greatest responsibility, she never learned to 
 manage. 
 
 Agatha, when she was little more than thirty, dressed as 
 if she were fifty, and had few apparent feminine weaknesses 
 or tendernesses. Yet, for all her certainty that the Wanstead 
 tradition and reinstatement of the ancient glories of Marley 
 were enough to fill any young woman's life. Nature taught her 
 differently. 
 
 Monica, for instance, found a dozen chinks in her 
 armour, and was always creeping through. 
 
 The real truth was that this shy and enigmatic young 
 woman, who had thrown away her chances of happiness 
 through reserve and supersensitiveness, pride and indefinite 
 feminine unreasonableness, felt her heart growing when the 
 time for other growth had passed. Conscience and conscien- 
 tiousness were there, water-logging and clogging it. But 
 there wa-s also this inconsistent weakness. 
 
 Before Andrew's marriage the child and her duty 
 towards her had been one of the excuses she made to herself 
 for having rejected him. And after Andrew's marriage she 
 came to believe it true. Monica was coaxing, a little sly, not 
 straightforward and truthful like herself. She was often 
 troubled by her, but her love grew as she felt the child's 
 need. Nurse and the household watched and said, " Miss 
 Monica has the length of her sister's foot — can wheedle her." 
 But Agatha felt in the wheedling and little crooked ways a 
 continual appeal. 
 
 The child was idle and averse to lessons; when she was 
 nine years old she could neither read nor write. 
 
 " I wonder you are not ashamed," Agatha said to her, 
 when the governess came to her in despair, complaining of 
 persistent idleness. 
 
 " I am ashamed, sister." 
 
 Monica came nearer, caught hold of her hand. "Don't 
 be angry with me. I only want to be with you." 
 
 " Will you try and learn if I give you your lessons ? " 
 
 " I am sure I could learn if you taught me." 
 
 And they began the very next day. This was in the
 
 FULL SWING 51 
 
 seventies, and the higher education of women only in its 
 infancy. The first thing Agatha tried to teach her little 
 sister was to count. 
 
 "You will have to help me with the accounts of the 
 estate when you grow up." 
 
 " I shall like that." 
 
 " Well, we will begin with the tables. Eepeat the figures 
 after me. Twice one are two." 
 
 Monica repeated them obediently, and up to twice five 
 are ten. 
 
 Agatha was proud of her success, praising her. 
 
 " You will soon be quite a scholar. Twice six ? " 
 
 " May I sit on your lap ? " 
 
 " Not now. This is lesson time." 
 
 "If it was my own mother teaching me, she would let 
 me rest on her lap," Monica said plaintively. 
 
 " Not in lesson time," Agatha repeated. 
 
 " My head aches so." 
 
 " It would ache no less if you were sitting on my lap." 
 
 " I believe it would. I love sitting on your lap." 
 
 " Not now." 
 
 "When I had the measles you took me on your lap." 
 
 " When you have the measles I will again. Go on. Twice 
 six are twelve." 
 
 Monica began to cry. 
 
 " I wish I had a mother all my own, like other little girls. 
 Janey Reid's mother nurses her all day." 
 
 The tables went on. So did the tears. And when twice 
 six had been acquired it appeared that twice two had been 
 forgotten. Agatha, so conscientious and strict when super- 
 intending the village school, could not bear to hear this child 
 cry. Monica knew it; also that her stepsister winced when 
 she spoke of other little girls with mothers of their own. 
 Agatha was never without the remorseful remembrance that 
 her father thought it was she who was responsible for her 
 little sister being without a mother. She wavered and said : 
 
 " If you really think you would do better " 
 
 Monica climbed quickly to her knee. A woman as any
 
 22 FULL SWING 
 
 other, although reluctant to her womanhoocl, Agatha liked 
 the little form upon her knee and the curly, satisfied head 
 against her breast. 
 
 " You really are a very naughty girl." 
 
 "But you'll always love me, whatever I do?" 
 
 "Nobody can love an ignoramus." 
 
 Monica's tears broke out again. 
 
 " What are you crying for now ? " But her arms tightened 
 involuntarily. 
 
 " Because you won't love me if I can't learn my tables, 
 and my head does ache so when I try. And there's only you 
 and me." 
 
 This was a plea Agatha could not withstand. It was so 
 true. This little girl was all she had to make a home of 
 what was otherwise only an estate. She held her more closely, 
 dried her tears, said crossly, of course, she would always love 
 her, whatever she did or left undone. 
 
 Already Agatha saw the spectre of loneliness, for all her 
 independence. Whether she admitted it or not, she knew 
 she had made a mistake. She was not meanly jealous of 
 Andrew, with his wife and children, or the Campdens with 
 theirs, but she had a sudden pang sometimes when she saw 
 them. She never thought of herself as a wife, but often as a 
 mother. And then it seemed to her that Monica was her 
 own. More and more she came to think it as the years went 
 on. The child required care, was exacting, and would have 
 no tendance but her sister's. Agatha's thoughts and ambi- 
 tions, once the estate was in order, began to concentrate on 
 the girl. Of course she spoiled her, taking her love speeches 
 very seriously, regretting her own strange inability to respond 
 in words as warm; mothering her, not too wisely, perhaps, 
 but with all her heart engaged. 
 
 " You will learn to do everything I do, and to keep up 
 all the traditions of Marley. Marley will be yours one day," 
 she told Monica often, endeavouring to interest her in the 
 village, now become a model, and her many charities at Great 
 Marley. 
 
 Thus, when fortune flung another opportunity to her, she
 
 FULL SWING 2Z 
 
 seemed too deeply committed to take it. She said she had 
 given the girl her promise; Monica was to be the heiress of 
 Marley. It was of Monica's marriage and not her own she 
 was thinking when Andrew came to her again. 
 
 *' You said ' no ' to me fourteen years ago," he reminded 
 her, " I don't suppose you like me any better now that I'm 
 grizzled and have three children.'' 
 
 " It is no question of liking." She had foreseen ever since 
 his wife died that he would reopen the question. She could 
 not deny, even to herself, that she was glad of his freedom, 
 glad she need not think of him with another woman. She 
 believed, nevertheless, that it was only his friendship she 
 prized. " I have always liked you." 
 
 " Will you marry me now ? " he asked a little bluntly. 
 " Marriage is the only life for a woman." 
 
 He knew now no better than before how to woo her. 
 
 " I have been very content." 
 
 " That is because you have known no better." 
 
 ** Marriage has no attraction for me," she faltered, per- 
 haps disingenuously. 
 
 " That is your ignorance. You don't like marriage because 
 you don't know it. Try it with me. Aren't you lonely some- 
 times?" 
 
 *^I have always Monica. No, I don't think I'm lonely." 
 There was something staid and sedate about her, and yet 
 remote, reserve was what the world called it, but it was more 
 than that. 
 
 " Never distrustful of yourself or your capacity to stand 
 alone?" 
 
 " I should not be less distrustful of myself if I said ' yes ' 
 to-day, after having said * no ' fourteen years ago. And I am 
 too old to change now, too fixed in my habits." 
 
 " You'll never be too old. You'll die young enough still 
 to believe that Marley could not exist without a Wanstead 
 at her Court. Men and women were never made to live alone ; 
 haven't you found that out yet? There is everything in 
 favour of a marriage between us, and nothing against it. I 
 don't know you any better than I did, for I always knew you
 
 24 ' FULL SWING- 
 
 through and through. I can't woo you passionately, we've 
 passed that age." 
 
 He had, perhaps ; for her it had never dawned. Yet she was 
 curiously wounded by his tone and strengthened in her resolve. 
 
 " It is quite impossible," she said, and added quickly, 
 "You say yourself you have outgrown your feeling for me." 
 
 Before he had time to grasp her meaning or realise what 
 lay beneath it she went on even more hurriedly : 
 
 " I have so many interests ; I know every cottage on the 
 estate, every villager." 
 
 *' I know as much of Marley as you do. We'll come down 
 as often as you like. London is not in my blood as it is with 
 some people. I have a good business, but I'll give it up if 
 you ask me ; I can afford to do so. On Campden Hill I have 
 a house I care for almost as much as you love Marley, but 
 that shall never be put before my liking for you. Be honest 
 with me. What is standing between us ? " 
 
 "I will tell you the truth." She flushed in telling it, 
 for though it was the truth it was not the whole truth. " No 
 one, not even you, could be to me what Monica is. And she 
 depends on me. I will not put anything between us. I mean 
 her to have Marley. I owe it to her." 
 
 "^ There need be nothing to prevent Monica inheriting 
 Marley," he said dryly, 
 
 " It is possible that I might " 
 
 And then she broke off, her cheeks crimsoning for all her 
 thirty-seven years. Andrew's eyes were whimsical, 
 
 " Of course you might," 
 
 " But it was not only that," she went on, hoping to con- 
 ceal her embarrassment with rapid talk. " In a way I have 
 given her my promise." 
 
 ^' You owe her nothing. It is she who is in your debt. You 
 are the most generous and least selfish of women, but you are 
 obstinate and not very wise for all your intelligence. Per- 
 haps that is why I care for you so much. There might have 
 been an epidemic of typhoid, and there wasn't. That's the 
 beginning and end of what you are blaming yourself for. 
 You say yourself that Monica's mother was delicate. You
 
 FULL SWING 25 
 
 were not responsible for that, I suppose? You are sacrificing 
 yourself for an idea." 
 
 " I am not sacrificing myself." 
 
 " That is all you know. You don't realise what sort of a 
 husband I should make you." 
 
 "I don't want to know/' she said hastily, surprised to 
 find him all at once so near her. 
 
 "Don't you? Don't you? Then how wrong you are." 
 She shrank back from him. 
 
 "It is too late; I am too old; I have outgrown the time 
 for marriage," were the phrases with which she defended 
 herself. Never dreaming what the future held for her, nor 
 how she would blunder into the estate she had said so often 
 was not for her. 
 
 He told her again that she was obstinate, but only suc- 
 ceeded in confirming her in it. 
 
 " Have it your own way then," he said in the end, almost 
 irritably, but his irritability was due to his disappointment. 
 " I can't compel you to marry me, although I know it would 
 be a good thing for both of us. You are building on a quick- 
 sand if you are reckoning on ending your days here with that 
 girl. Isn't she to marry either? You are so young, for all 
 your years, that when you talk of the future it seems to you 
 so far off that it's not worth reckoning with. You and your 
 Monica! Two old maids together, opening bazaars; the 
 Misses Wanstead, of Marley ! " He was angry, or he would 
 not have spoken like that. He had come here to-day full of 
 hope, and was going away without any. " I don't know where 
 your sense has got to. And what after — what after? Is 
 Monica to have a husband, and is he to live here with you ? " 
 
 " If she marries suitably. This is her home." 
 
 "I've no words for your foolishness." He was too exas- 
 perated for courtesy. 
 
 Afterwards, and not very long afterwards, both knew that 
 there had been indeed no words to cliaracterise her folly. 
 
 Andrew was sent away again to bring up his babies as best 
 he might. Agatha persisted that Monica was all the children 
 she would ever have.
 
 26 FULL SWING 
 
 She was not unconscious of what she was giving up, but 
 was of a nature to whom sacrifice came naturally. The more 
 she gave up for Monica the more she cared for her. It was 
 true, as Andrew said, that the future and Monica's marriage 
 seemed very far off and hazy. 
 
 At seventeen Monica was very pretty and very light, and 
 although she loved her elder sister as well as she was capable 
 of loving anybody but herself, she had a half-contemptuous 
 pity for her because she was an old maid. Every man who 
 came to the Court, young or old, and in whatever station of 
 life, was Monica's admirer. Monica demanded admiration 
 and received it. She had a way of looking up from under her 
 lids, and of smiling. Agatha was uneasy about her, although 
 she understood her so little. The very word flirtatiousness 
 was unknovni to Agatha, but she had her standard of good 
 manners. She thought there was something a little vulgar 
 or imworthy about Monica's pleasure in compliments and 
 her way of receiving and talking about them. Monica, on 
 the other hand, deemed her elder sister a little prudish, a 
 little priggish, old-maidish, and found it difficult to keep 
 her opinion to herself. Finally Agatha made up her mind, 
 but not without mature and anxious thought, that until the 
 day came for the girl to be presented, to take her place in 
 Society, by which time she might have acquired decorousnese 
 and the knowledge of what was expected of a Miss Wanstead, 
 of Marley, she must no longer be allowed to appear at dinner 
 or garden party; she must be kept in the background. She 
 was a little too old and a little too young to be with grown-up 
 people, lacking dignity, almost decorum. 
 
 Monica was furious at being told she was to be 
 banished to the nursery or schoolroom, deeply resentful of 
 the slightest remonstrance as to her behaviour. Yet Agatha, 
 so outspoken, frank and almost curt with the rest of the 
 world, was gentleness itself with this wayward one. But for 
 a short time, and until Monica learnt to evade her restrictions, 
 relations were strained between them, and nothing Agatha 
 yielded availed to put them right.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 In her eighteenth year, with the least possible excuse, Monica 
 the cherished, the spoiled, the girl for whose sake Agatha had 
 refused Andrew for the second time and turned her back on 
 personal happiness, ran away from home, from the Marley 
 that was to have been her life work and inheritance. Basil 
 Fellowes was the companion of her flight, a son of the bank 
 manager at Great Marley, a young fellow of twenty, recently 
 gazetted second lieutenant in a line regiment, Agatha scarcely 
 knew his name. 
 
 The girl was missed at lunch-time; by four o'clock in 
 the afternoon the whole household was in alarm. If anyone 
 guessed the truth no one told it, and Agatha would never 
 have believed it. All night they sought for her; they searched 
 the Chase and dragged the river, Agatha, imagining every 
 disaster but the real one, distracted and beyond reason, sent 
 in the end for Andrew, although she had averred so often that 
 she needed no man's arm on which to lean. 
 
 Andrew's coming synchronised with Monica's belated tele- 
 gram. Of course, he triumphed at seeing his predictions 
 come true. And Agatha was so wounded, so hurt in all her 
 pride as well as in her hidden tenderness, that his triumph, 
 his smiles, and his " What did I tell you ? " drove her mad 
 with pain. She must have been mad in the months that fol- 
 lowed; nothing else can account for her actions. Andrew 
 saw Monica's letter, smiling at that too. He still wanted 
 Agatha, and Monica's flight seemed to deliver her into his 
 hands. 
 
 "Darling Sister, 
 
 " Don't be angrier with me than you can help. I wanted 
 to tell you, but I knew you wouldn't understand. Basil and 
 I are simply mad about each other. And you've never had 
 
 27
 
 28 FULL SWING 
 
 a love affair at all, nor been mad about anybody. Basil is 
 sure his father will make him an allowance if you'll do the 
 same and see him for us. We used to meet in the Chase. I've 
 only kno^vn him six weeks altogether. I wanted to tell you 
 ever so many times, but you think such a lot of birth and that 
 sort of thing, I knew you wouldn't hear of my getting married 
 until I was eighteen, and neither Basil nor I felt we could 
 wait. At first we thought we'd just get married and come 
 back home, and tell no one until his two years in India were 
 over. He's got to go there next month. But after we were 
 married and had lunch — I want to tell you everything, but, of 
 course, you've never been married and I don't suppose I could 
 make you understand — we simply couldn't be parted. I know 
 you'll think we might have waited. . . /' 
 
 There were incoherent pages of excuses, but no word to 
 show she knew what she had done. 
 
 Agatha did not reason about it at all, she was too greatly 
 hurt. Andrew's tender triumph — he meant to be tender with 
 her — ^was like a blow on the head after concussion of the 
 brain, unbearable. 
 
 "You made a mistake, that was all," said Andrew con- 
 solingly. " You mustn't take it too much to heart ; the girl 
 was never worthy of all you lavished on her." He wanted to 
 comfort her, and was ready to show her how to fill her life 
 afresh. 
 
 Friends came in sympathy or surprise, in condolence or 
 condemnation ; it was impossible to hush the matter up. One 
 said the girl had had too much freedom ; another said she had 
 had too little. Agatha was accused of having spoiled her, 
 and then told she had been too austere. Everybody was sorry 
 for her, but some of her friends blamed her and said or 
 implied that the girl had been brought up badly. 
 
 The time came when Agatha found herself unable any 
 longer to bear her neighbours' criticism or comment, Andrew's 
 gentleness and triumph, or her own thoughts in solitary hours. 
 Later on she might be able to face it, but not now. 
 
 She saw all her mistakes so much more clearly than they
 
 FULL SWING 29 
 
 did. But it was not her conscience that suffered, it was her 
 heart. She had thought that Monica loved her, could not do 
 without her. But in the watches of the night it seemed that 
 no one loved or needed her. And she was nearing forty, incon- 
 ceivably lonely, too old to reconstruct her life. Who now was 
 to inlierit Marley? Not the bank manager's grandchildren. 
 She hardly knew her own next of kin, but must make search. 
 
 Andrew, for her own good and because he could not bear 
 to see her look so unhappy and forlorn, chaffed her about the 
 girl's flight, took it for granted that now she would listen to 
 reason — what he called reason. Not even Andrew realised 
 her sensitiveness, nor exactly how she was hurt. Often the 
 girl had slept by her side; always her heart had been full of 
 her. She had been bent on her welfare, planning for her. 
 Not a day or a night could she remember for all the years 
 since her father died that she had not planned for Monica or 
 Marley. Never a selfish thought had come to her. People 
 called her proud, standoffish. Perhaps that is how Monica 
 regarded her. Love words had come to her with difficulty; 
 but she had held this little sister in her arms and against her 
 breast, denying her nothing. It was a psychological time with 
 Agatha, and she saw youth behind her and loneliness in 
 front — loneliness, or Andrew telling her of her many mistakes. 
 
 There were hours when she had an immense antagonism 
 toward Andrew, when he seemed an enemy to her, glad of her 
 pain. She had the sense to see she must get away from him, 
 from all her surroundings, until she was in better humour. 
 
 Eound and ridiculous in figure, ill-dressed always, and 
 intermittently philanthropic, Alice Metherby had nevertheless 
 the human touch. She was in London when she heard what 
 had happened at Marley Court. 
 
 " Come to us for a few weeks," she wrote to Agatha ; " it 
 will be a complete change for you; the Colonel and I will 
 be so pleased to have you. You've never been in London 
 during the season, and there will be nothing to remind you 
 of anything you want to forget. You can be as quiet as you 
 like, or as gay. The great thing is that everything will be 
 different."
 
 30 FULL SWING 
 
 The great thing wa5 that everything would be different. 
 How different she never dreamed. She felt she must get 
 away from Marley, from Andrew's weekly visits and proprie- 
 torial air, from the house that echoed no longer to the child's 
 pattering feet, to the girl's chatter or wayward affection, away 
 from the woods where she must walk alone, and from all the 
 associations. 
 
 She drew a long breath when she was in the train, and 
 thought that now the pressure on her head and heart would 
 lighten, her brain would grow clear again. She would make 
 new plans. 
 
 Andrew was satisfied that Agatha should be in London 
 for a time. He thought it best for her to have a change of 
 scene. The distance between Eaton Square and Campden 
 Hill was not unsurpassable. Colonel Metherby was the best 
 of good fellows, the youngest colonel in the British army, with 
 Afghan medals and reputation. She would see people, get 
 used to being without the girl, come to a different way of 
 thinking about things. Andrew was ever an optimist; he 
 saw Agatha and himself together, and the wedding bells ring- 
 ing. It was time his children had someone to look after them ; 
 Agatha would soon find her life full again. So he argued, 
 and, although the distance from Campden Hill to Eaton 
 Square proved longer than he expected, he lived in his fool's 
 paradise until half the season had gone by. 
 
 Campden Hill and Eaton Square are only twenty 
 minutes apart as the cab flies, but there was a whole quarter 
 of social circumstance between them. The Metherbys lived 
 in one set, Andrew McKay in another. They could have 
 managed to meet, of course, but Agatha had no inclination 
 to meet Andrew. 
 
 In London she got a little outside her pain, the pain of 
 failure and loneliness; she went to receptions and dinner- 
 parties and theatres, made new acquaintances and renewed 
 old ones, talked more than she had ever done before, and with 
 authority, perhaps gave a false impression of importance, 
 making somewhat of a figure. In those days it was a little 
 uncommon that a woman should talk freely and well of agri-
 
 FULL SWING 31 
 
 cultural conditions and farming, the labourer and his housing. 
 She talked from the standpoint of experience. The tale of 
 her wealth grew, and the number of her acres. Although she 
 was in her fortieth year she looked younger ; her hair was thick 
 and abundant, her eyes were unwrinkled, her complexion was 
 clear. Her fine hands and arched instep were hereditary, and 
 she carried herself as a Miss Wanstead of Marley should. 
 
 It was the Hon. Mrs. Dacre who first conceived the idea, 
 Lord Grindelay's sister. Lord Grindelay was the talk of 
 London that season, and his sister was half proud and half 
 ashamed of him, knowing more than the world knew. 
 
 In London, early in the July of that year, there was 
 political talk that no woman in the Metherby world could 
 hope to escape. There were fierce party cries and disruption, 
 partisajiship and appeal to national passions and posses- 
 sions. It was the year when Parnell was fighting with his 
 life's blood for a country that threw him' aside like a dead 
 dog on the first trivial excuse. It was a year of aggressions by 
 the Land Leaguers, of maiming of cattle and murder of land 
 agents. 
 
 The Lockhara incident will not have been forgotten, 
 although the feeling it aroused is perhaps difficult to recall. 
 Ulster then, as now, was steady and staunch. There was a 
 meeting of Land Leaguers advertised for a certain date, 
 and a manifesto headed " God Save the Queen " was issued 
 by Lord Grindelay, of Languedoc, asking Orangemen and 
 Loyalists to prevent it taking place. The two processions 
 started, came into conflict at Lockhara, and there was some 
 loss of life. There was a great outcry in London and in 
 Dublin as to who was responsible, and to satisfy a section of 
 the voters at Westminster it was Lord Grindelay who was 
 finally indicted. The trial was several times postponed, and 
 Lord Grindelay became the hero of the hour. He may have 
 been a patriot and a hero, but that he was also a scamp who 
 loved a row was well known to his sister and her intimates. 
 Also that he could hardly afford to defend himself. 
 
 Agatha Wanstead was not aggressively religious, but she 
 went regularly to her parish church, and hated Eoman Cath-
 
 32 FULL SWING 
 
 olicism traditionally and instinctively. Loyalty to the Crown 
 was part of the family history of the Wansteads, and since 
 the Eestoration they had never swerved from their Protes- 
 tantism. This excuses, if it does not explain, Agatha's interest 
 in the man who was ready to face imprisonment or impeach- 
 ment in defence of either. 
 
 It does not explain all her blunder, although perhaps the 
 beginning of it. 
 
 For the rest, there was the reasonless reaction from 
 Andrew, who had predicted her betrayal and now showed his 
 readiness to take advantage of it. 
 
 "I told you so. Foolish creature, dear foolish creature, 
 I have told you so often you needed someone to take care of 
 you. For the future I will do it. You have no excuse now 
 for not placing yourself in my hands. I don't care for you 
 as I did when you were a girl, but I will look after you. . . ." 
 
 These were the things Agatha heard Andrew say, resent- 
 ing them in the watches of the night, always. 
 
 Lord Grindelay was then fifty, his hair still curly and his 
 eyes blue. There was no doubt he was a favourite at Court, 
 and that his misdemeanour made no difference as to his recep- 
 tion at Marlborough House. Dinah Dacre exploited liis popu- 
 larity for all and more than it was worth. He went every- 
 where, and, of course, to the Metherbys. It was in the 
 brougham, after a dinner-party there, that the great idea 
 struck Dinah. She hit Mm on the back and said : 
 
 " That woman with the short hair, now, Agatha, they 
 called her, she that talked about loyalty; she's as rich as 
 Croesus, they tell me. Why don't you go in for her ? " She 
 doubled herself up with laughter at the idea. " She thinks 
 you are a hero, that you marched those poor devils to Loekhara 
 for the Queen and country. She told me any one of her ovm 
 people would have done the same." 
 
 " You think she took a fancy to me ? Did she like me 
 singing ? " 
 
 Pat could sing Irish ballads, besides other songs, but he 
 sang only Irish ballads at the Metherby dinner-party. 
 
 " Of course she did, for all that she's an old maid ; a nice
 
 FULL SWING 33 
 
 creature, too. They'll be making you bankrupt, you know, 
 and wliat will become of you then ? " 
 
 " And is it love-making I'm to be at with an old maid ? " 
 
 Lord Grindelay was apt with his Irish phraseology, and 
 he said one or two things about old maids, in the brogue, that 
 made Dinah laugh. He had buried his first wife long enough 
 to have forgotten how unfit he was for matrimonial ties. 
 
 Dinah Dacre's sense of humour started the scheme, Pat's 
 vanity made it feasible, the utter incongruity of such a match 
 presently made them all keen for the fun of it. His family 
 and his Irish friends applauded and urged him on. Most of 
 them knew the inconvenience of perpetual bankruptcy. Even 
 Royalty was understood to express an amused approval. 
 
 Pat rushed at his love-making, carrying Agatha off her 
 feet. At first his wooing was half in fun, just to show what 
 he could do and to amuse Dinah. He was told that the rent 
 roll of Marley was large enough to flood the depleted 
 exchequer of Languedoc. 
 
 " It's a great wife she'll make me," lie said, with his 
 tongue in his cheek. " She'll believe every word I say." And 
 he told of stories she had swallowed whole. 
 
 It was true that Agatha believed everything he said. With 
 all her disappointment, she was ever conscious of her posi- 
 tion, and could not conceive that anyone should make fun of 
 her. She was a new and strange specimen of humanity to the 
 wild Irish peer, who had not known women with a rare sense 
 of duty and none of humour. 
 
 For the moment Agatha's reasoning powers were at their 
 lowest ebb. Pain had always that effect on her reasoning 
 powers, as the strange sequel to her story proved. Now she 
 was all unused to it. She wanted to get away from herself 
 and all her associations, to reconstruct her life. There could 
 not be a greater change than this gay Irishman, who had 
 made every sacrifice for his country and bore his position, 
 lightly. His lightness and gaiety were so strange to her ; they 
 were not among the characteristics of her Buckinghamshire 
 neighbours. Yet her engagement came upon her as a sur- 
 prise; he kissed her without asking her leave, and said she 
 3
 
 34 FULL SWING 
 
 was " the girl for him " before she had time to assert her 
 dignity. 
 
 " Begod ! she didn't know whether she was standing on 
 her head or her heels," Pat told his sister. " A few kisses 
 carried her away. She came fresh to it, too, an' you'd think 
 she was seventeen from her blushing. I'll be tied up before 
 I know where I am; an' what'll I do with her, God knows, 
 for she thinks I'm a saint an' a hero, an' I'll have to be on me 
 best behaviour all the time." 
 
 The Metherbys were hypnotised by Pat's honhomie. 
 Young Lady Dorset had a great weakness for her uncle, and 
 told Agatha what a fine shot he was, and what a great rider, 
 and how kind he had been to her and her brother when they 
 were children. Agatha's generosity, no less than her impul- 
 siveness, helped to her undoing. The inquest on the Lockhara 
 victims was adjourned and adjourned again. Lord Grindelay's 
 trial was yet to come. 
 
 " I'll not have you make any promise until they've found 
 whether I'm a murderer or not. Maybe I was responsible for 
 those poor fellows' deaths, and not the murdering Land 
 Leaguers at all." 
 
 Agatha was not the woman to wait until he was in safety. 
 
 On July 27, 1878, without settlements or public announce- 
 ment, at St. George's, Hanover Square, in the presence of the 
 Metherbys and a whole crowd of Irish relatives of the bride- 
 groom, the amazing marriage took place. Andrew knew 
 nothing about it until it was all over, and he saw it chronicled 
 in the Morning Post. 
 
 " On the 27th inst., at St. George's, Hanover Square, by 
 the Eight Eev. Bishop of Bath and Wells, assisted by the 
 Eev. Septimus Black, Patrick Canning Warner Foulds, Lord 
 Grindelay, of Languedoc Castle, co. Fermanagh, Ireland, to 
 Agatha, elder daughter of the late Archibald Wanstead, of 
 Marley Court, Bucks." 
 
 He could not believe it at first, although it stared at him 
 in solid print. Agatha married — Agatha! And not to him! 
 He knew at once what a bad mistake she had made, and how
 
 FULL SWING 35 
 
 chajacteristic. He blamed himself then and often for his 
 patience with her. He went about for many days with a 
 heavy heart. She was so sure of her strength, yet no woman 
 of his acquaintance was more in need of a man to guide her; 
 and that he should have been the man he had no doubt. 
 When, for Agatha's sake, he began to collate facts about Lord 
 Grindelay and to leam his reputation, his heart grew heavier 
 still. He knew she had blundered again, badly, irretrievably. 
 
 At her own liome in Marley, and in Buckinghamshire 
 generally, when they read the announcement, they thought 
 she had done very well for herself, very well indeed. 
 
 " She must be forty if she's a day, and no beauty at any 
 time. And she has married a peer ! " In Buckinghamshire 
 in 1878 they still thought something of a peer, and the fact 
 that Agatha would go in to dinner before Lady Campden. 
 
 As for Agatha herself, during those few days before her 
 hurried wedding, and even on her wedding day, she thought 
 of nothing but that she need not go back yet to the grey, 
 silent house, to find herself without the footfall beside her 
 own, or the girlish laughter in her ears, to be haunted by thin 
 arms about her and light kisses on her cheek. She need not 
 return so soon to the sympathy of the neighbours and the 
 talk of the villagers. She was starting on a new life with a 
 man who adored her; a good man, too, who had served his 
 country and stood even now in peril for the cause. She could 
 help him in his campaign, share his danger, find a whole new 
 set of interests. She even thought vaguely that she might 
 give up Marley and make Ireland her home. She would do 
 anything to save herself remembering how Monica had 
 deceived and run away from her and Andrew McKay been 
 justified in his prognostications.
 
 CHAPTER ly 
 
 The Ireland in which Agatha pictured herself making a new 
 home was the Ireland of the new Celtic movement, of Clarence 
 Mangan, and Aubrey de Vere, of William Allingham, and 
 Sir Samuel Ferguson. The Ireland in which she found 
 herself was that of Lever's novels. Languedoc was " Castle 
 Eackrent," but without any quality of romance. She might 
 have got over that if her husband, if this good man to whom 
 she had tied herself, this impetuous lover to whose adoration 
 she had succumbed, had remained on the good behaviour he 
 had promised his sister, until at least she had acclimatised 
 herself. 
 
 As it was, within a week, the dirt and the debt and the 
 disorder seemed no less part of him than of his castle. To 
 say he shocked her delicacy every hour she passed with him 
 in the familiarity of married life is to gloze over the truth. 
 She knew, as soon as she knew anything at all, into what a 
 morass she had stepped. " Morass " was the only description 
 she could apply to Lord Grindelay's mind. She conceived an 
 absolute horror of liim before, according to his own way of 
 thinking, he had done anything to deserve it. The stories 
 he told her — and telling coarse stories was his idea of honey- 
 moon entertainment — filled her with disgust. He jested with 
 his servants, and she thought that he drank with them. Cer- 
 tainly he was on terms of boon companionship with the boorish 
 neighbours who called upon her, who drove over in side-cars 
 with their incredible womenkind. 
 
 The castle was three parts in ruin, and the very decencies 
 of life were lacking in its fumishment. She made an honest 
 effort to put things on a better footing. She did not give in 
 all at once, nor for many a weary disgusted day. But when 
 she would have introduced reforms she was met by an opposi- 
 tion of idleness and inertia, humour and stupidity that proved 
 completely baffling.
 
 FULL SWING 37 
 
 " An' where'll the hot water be comin' from ? " Biddy 
 asked her with apparent curiosity. Lord Grindelay had told 
 her it would be a mistake to bring an English maid with her, 
 and that Biddy or any of the servants would be glad to wait 
 upon her. Biddy's own position in the house was never 
 explained. There seemed to be dozens of servants, no one of 
 them with defined duties. A greater change from her own 
 ordered English household it was impossible to conceive. 
 
 " Is it a bath yer wantin' ? Sorra fut, but it's in England 
 ye ought to have stayed. I'll get ye a can of water, maybe, 
 but not at the early hour ye name. What! an' will ye be 
 after wasliin' yesilf all over, an' you wid never a spot on ye 
 that anyone can see ? " 
 
 "Is it yer dress I'm to fasten behint, an' me wid me 
 hands shakin' from carryin' up that great can ? " 
 
 Larry, who was Pat's body serv^ant, and Biddy, who was 
 possibly the housekeeper, had a way of wondering open- 
 mouthed at her requirements — admiring and wondering. 
 
 " It's the gas ye have at home, an' the gutterin' candles'll 
 be lavin' yez in the dark. I'm tellin' ye we're lucky to git 
 them candles, forbye they're the same Father Ralph uses." 
 
 " Clanin' the room ivry day are ye manin', an' wid visitors 
 comin' an' all ? " 
 
 " It's the cookin' ye're not satisfied wid, an' didn't Norah 
 kill the best fowls in the run with her own hands, barrin' 
 one that was a cock, an' that not an hour since ? ' Anythin' 
 to plaze ye,' she said. Tough was it they were ? Maybe ye're 
 right, but she's a grand cook for all that, an' her own mother's 
 cousin an O'Donoghue." 
 
 Soon she found herself confronted by an ever-growing, 
 although subtle and unexpressed, opposition. Her manner 
 towards Lord Grindelay, her obvious distaste of his coarse 
 joviality, aroused their antagonism. Agatha could not dis- 
 guise her feelings, there was not an hour of the day or a 
 circumstance of her present life in which they were not out- 
 raged. 
 
 " It's a squeamish old maid ye are," her husband said to 
 her within a week of their marriage. He still treated her
 
 38 FULL SWING 
 
 with good-humour, and laughed at her flushed remonstrances. 
 But the time came when she irritated him. He was not used 
 to criticism, and if she resented his jesting with the servants 
 or drinking more whisky than was good for him, he would 
 retort : " Sure a man's master in his own house ? As for 
 Biddy, Biddy was there before you were, wasn't she? And 
 what if I did chuck a colleen under the chin or pass her a kiss ? 
 Do you think you're the soft companion for a man, that he'd 
 be looking the other way when a pretty wench came in 
 sight?" 
 
 Things grew worse between them very quickly. Agatha 
 was horrified to hear that there had never been any real fear 
 of Lord Grindelay's trial for manslaughter, and that he had 
 only used it as a lever to hurry on the marriage. He thought 
 nothing of the deception he had practised upon her, nothing 
 of telling lies, or drinking too much whisky, or philandering 
 with the maids. He subjected her to every possible indignity. 
 So she said when the inevitable end came. He never saw 
 that she had anything against him but her own. want of 
 adaptability. " Didn't he live the life of eyerj Irish gentle- 
 man of his own age and standing ? " he asked. If he did, 
 Agatha thought it was a dreadful thing for Ireland, and 
 accounted for the lack of prosperity. She felt the humiliation 
 of the conditions under which she was placed, was too intel- 
 ligent, when once her reasoning powers returned, not to 
 realise them, and too intolerant to submit. Her high recti- 
 tude and aloofness helped to her ever-growing unpopularity. 
 She imported English servants, and neither they nor she could 
 obtain service in Languedoc, More than once she threatened 
 to leave. But for a few months her strong sense of duty 
 kept her from carrying out her threat. 
 
 When, however, she found she was about to become a 
 mother she knew she could not face what was before her in 
 such surroundings. To separate herself for a time at least 
 from Lord Grindelay became imperative. He let her go 
 without any opposition. None of her ways or talk suited 
 him, and he told his friends that he was glad 'Ho see the 
 back of her." The marriage was a complete failure. He com-
 
 FULL SWING 39 
 
 plained that Dinah had landed him with a wife who would 
 not even sign cheques without exacting absurd promises. 
 Promises, however, that were broken as easily as made. 
 Before the end came she would not sign cheques for him at 
 all. He called her mean, although never had there been a 
 woman more generous. But she was essentially just. The 
 tradesmen for whom she had written cheques, poor men who 
 ought not to have been left without their due, came again 
 lamenting that nothing had been given to them. She never 
 arrived at the smallest comprehension of Lord Grin delay's 
 ways or his carelessness in money matters. To her he was 
 simply a dishonest person. 
 
 At Marley, back again into the atmosphere of respect, 
 esteem, ordered ways and appreciation, back to her position 
 as Lady Paramount and Lady Bountiful, she found no haunt- 
 ing ghost of Monica in wait for her, but only her renewed 
 sense of personal dignity and high position. Very quickly 
 she recovered her equipoise. The future must be faced, of 
 course. She knew already that she could never return to 
 Ireland or to Lord Grindelay, although it was not necessary 
 all the world should be informed of it. 
 
 Lady Grindelay kept her own counsel perhaps too well, 
 and it was Dr. Eeid who, later on, took the responsibility of 
 telegraphing for her husband. She was not young ; he antici- 
 pated trouble, and thought her husband should be there. 
 Dr. Eeid practised in Great Marley, where it was the custom 
 for husbands to be within call on such occasions, particularly 
 with a first baby. This was to be more than a baby ; it was to 
 be an heir. 
 
 Lord Grindelay came at the call. The end of the hunt- 
 ing season left him with time on his hands, and his irritation 
 against his wife subsided. He was the easiest of men to live 
 with if one did not question his ways. He said so himself, 
 therefore it must have been true. 
 
 In his cups, the night liis son was bom, he hiccoughed it 
 all out to Dr. Eeid. He said " she was so damned particular, 
 nagging me, wanting me to put things in order that never 
 would be in order, never had been."
 
 40 FULL SWING 
 
 " She took against me, doctor ; no reason or rhyme in it. 
 Wasn't I attentive to my duty to her? " One can leave a little 
 hiatus there in his talk. " Wouldn't I have kept her amused 
 if there had been any spirit in her? I'm good company, 
 doctor; there's not a soul but has always said so — you ask 
 my sister Dinah. I'm good company, but not a thing could 
 I say or do to please her. Me singing, now, wasn't it good 
 enough for Marlborough House and the Prince? Stiff as 
 buckram she is, more English than you'll find in London." 
 
 He trolled out a stave about a noble lord who had taken 
 advantage of a serving wench: 
 
 ' He sold her to his servant 
 An' he gave them twenty pound. . . .' 
 
 " The fuss she made about that song, and the moral of 
 it — ^the moral of it ! When it comes to talkin' of the moral 
 of a good song ! " 
 
 He had his grievances, but he was quite good-humoured 
 over them, prepared to forgive her. He thought she would 
 come to a better knowledge of his world in time. " It's a 
 difficult thing, perhaps, for an old maid," he said in exculpa- 
 tion of her. 
 
 Dr. Eeid already realised he had perhaps made a mistake 
 in sending for Agatha's husband. "When he came to tell him 
 that he was the father of a son and heir, he found him asleep 
 on the sofa, the whisky bottle empty. 
 
 Agatha's weary time of convalescence was diversified by 
 stories of her husband's conduct. Any chance of reconcilia- 
 tion between them was lost by his behaviour. The neighbour- 
 hood, hearing Lord Grindelay was at Marley Court, and in 
 accordance with precedent at such a time, called upon him and 
 invited him to dinner. He got drunk in their houses, told 
 his coarse stories, sang his coarse songs, was soon ostracised. 
 He might have been accepted among sporting men or in a 
 sporting neighbourhood, although he was so completely out 
 of date. But among Agatha's friends he had no place at all. 
 He was horribly bored, too, and took his revenge by shocking 
 them, exaggerating his brogue and his stories. When he 
 visited Agatha in her bedroom he upset the nurse and sent
 
 FULL SWING 41 
 
 up the temperature of her patient by recapitulating these 
 exploits. It was difficult to keep him out of the sick-room, 
 because, strangely enough, and to add to his many incon- 
 sistencies, he displayed great interest in his son. It was a 
 red-faced baby with black hair, who screamed a great deal. 
 'Agatha was unable to nurse it, and it is possible it did not 
 like the artificial food provided. On the rare occasions when 
 it opened its eyes, they were seen, to be blue, like Lord Grinde- 
 lay's own. 
 
 "It's the livin' image of me," he said, almost awed. 
 Agatha thought he spoke the truth. The child made no appeal 
 to her. If it were possible for so dutiful a woman to be want- 
 ing in right feeling, one would have to admit that she dis- 
 liked the child. She said once that '' he screamed in Irish." 
 But Lord Grindelay would dandle him on his knee, talking 
 baby talk as to the manner born. 
 
 "We'll teach you to laugh, won't we, old man? Is it 
 dribblin' you are, bad cess to you, though why you shouldn't 
 dribble if you want to I'm sure I don't know. He's wonder- 
 fully strong, isn't he, nurse? Listen to the voice of him! 
 There's lungs for you. He'll sing like his father, won't ye 
 now, and have all the maids running after you ? " 
 
 He could not help being reminiscent. Agatha dreaded 
 him in her room, dreaded to hear him talk to the baby or the 
 nurse, was always afraid of what he would say next, and 
 doubting his complete sobriety. 
 
 Lord Grindelay had a way of rocking the baby in his 
 arms, tossing and talking to him, that drove her almost dis- 
 tracted. 
 
 Once it was sick over his coat, bringing up that half- 
 digested artificial milk. Even that failed to upset Lord 
 Grindelay's good temper. 
 
 "Here, take him away and empty him, nurse. Bedad, 
 but he's his father over again. I'll not think any the worse 
 of him for that ; he's had a drop more than he can keep down." 
 
 Agatha thought the incident quite disgusting; she was 
 intolerant of both father and son. 
 
 The baby's christening kept Lord Grindelay at Marley.
 
 43 FULL SWING 
 
 Although it was against her wishes, in the end it was Lord 
 Grindelay who chose the name. He had his rights, and so far 
 as his son was concerned it appeared he meant to exercise 
 them. 
 
 " He'll be Desmond O'Rourke Warner, like his grand- 
 father." 
 
 " He should have my father's name." 
 
 "An' what might that be?" 
 
 " Archibald ! " 
 
 "Archibald, now! To think of it! Is it Archibald he 
 looks like, or Reginald? Is it an Englishman he is at all? 
 Look at his eyes now, blue as me own, and the black hair of 
 him. My mother was an O'Rourke, an' I'll give him her 
 name and Desmond. There were Desmonds at Languedoc 
 before the flood. It's only meself they called Patrick because 
 my elder brother was alive when I was bom, and we couldn't 
 all be Desmonds." 
 
 She gave way to liim. The baby was christened before 
 it was a month old, for Agatha thought Lord Grindelay 
 would go back to Languedoc or up to London when he had 
 seen his wishes carried out. But he lingered on, disorganising 
 her household, disturbing her peace. The baby allured him ; 
 there was never a day when he failed to ask of his progress, 
 taking him from the cradle or the nurse's lap; he was very 
 handy with him, more so than Agatha herself. 
 
 " We'll make a boxing man of liim ; see him doubling up 
 his little fists?" 
 
 Agatha's convalescence was a long one, and, of course, 
 Pat could not sit in her room all day, or with the baby. 
 He was horribly bored at Marley, although pleased with the 
 new sensation of fatherhood. He was really not half such 
 a scoundrel as he appeared in Agatha's eyes. With a woman 
 like his own sister Dinah, for instance, who would have 
 laughed with him and drank with him, coaxed and rated him, 
 understood and managed him, he might have been made into 
 a tolerable semblance of a husband at tliis juncture. For he 
 had always been fond of children, as they of him, and to have 
 one of his own, this one, who held on to his thumb and began
 
 FULL SWING 4S 
 
 to gurgle and "wriggle and smile crookedly when he tickled or 
 tossed him, almost made a new man of him. Almost, not quite. 
 
 He was over fifty and had been for years a toper. He 
 could not sit all day long in his wife's bedroom playing with 
 the baby; he had to find some entertainment for himself. 
 There was a billiard table at the Court, but he preferred the 
 one at the " King's Arms " in Great Marley, where his pic- 
 turesque language drew a whole admiring company about 
 Mm. He was extraordinarily popular at the " King's Arms," 
 and with the London people who lived in the new villas at 
 Great Marley; which, coming to the ears of his wife, made 
 matters no better with her. To be popular with billiard-room 
 loungers, tap-room loafers, and even the wives of stockbrokers, 
 proud to entertain a peer, who was also the husband of one 
 of the great local magnates, debased him further in Agatha's 
 estimation. When she heard that he could tell a good story, 
 she knew by experience that it was a bad one they meant. He 
 said openly that her friends were " damned dull and too 
 strait-laced for him ! " He did unheard-of things, things 
 unheard of, at least at Marley, inviting people to the Court 
 to dine or drink with him who should have stood, hat in hand, 
 in hall or library. 
 
 She and her pride suffered from him. It is certain that 
 he was little more pleased with her. " To hell with changing 
 my habits ! " was the least of his refusals to see her point of 
 view. They had no common ground on which to meet. 
 
 Although he had a certain insolence of rank, he had no 
 sense of its duties or responsibilities. "Whatever he does, 
 he is always a gentleman," said the admiring stockbrokers' 
 wives to whom he made careless love in his cups. But to 
 Agatha it seemed he was always a blackguard, and that her 
 duty to herself, her neighbours, the estate and her son de- 
 manded that she should rid herself of him. 
 
 When she was well again, and went about the house and 
 village, she found some of the conditions that prevailed at 
 Languedoc were being reproduced in Marley. Certainly, 
 Lord Grindelay was no example for a model village. Her 
 troublesome conscience was brought to bear on the situation.
 
 44 FULL SWING 
 
 If she had made a mistake, others must not suffer. Lord 
 Grindelay was a spendthrift in addition to all his other dis- 
 abilities, and Marley, if not herself, must be protected. For- 
 tunately, she had not put it out of her power to do this. She 
 overcame her reluctance in the end and sent for Andrew. 
 
 Perhaps that was one of the worst moments in her life. 
 His strong sense and warnings, his contempt and love for 
 her, all he knew and all she had not forgotten, made a meet- 
 ing between them under these new conditions fraught with 
 humiliation. But it would be more impossible to talk to a 
 stranger. Perhaps, too, she felt she had wronged Andrew, or 
 that he was part of the Marley life to which she had returned. 
 
 When Andrew came at her summons he found the way 
 to make things easy for her. He had gone through his own 
 bad time and that may have taught him to assuage hers. The 
 past might never have been; the tender or proprietorial air 
 no longer existed. He presented himself now only as an old 
 friend, a middle-aged law}^er here on business. He knew 
 better than to sympathise with Agatha. In no time at all, 
 and without a word to establish it, a new understanding was 
 between them, and she could speak to him more plainly and 
 undisguisedly than to anyone else. 
 
 What Andrew McKay thought of the position can be imag- 
 ined, and his quick decision as to how it was to be met. Yet 
 it was doubtful if he could have succeeded in extricating her 
 but for the elderly scapegrace himself. It appeared that Lord 
 Grindelay was quite willing to meet their views — would agree 
 to a separation on terms. By this time Agatha was ready to 
 give him almost any terms he asked, for the scandal was ever- 
 growing, destroying her influence, making her a byword. She 
 was so impatient that Andrew had much trouble to get a 
 proper agreement drawn up. She would have sacrificed half 
 her fortane to rid herself altogether of the merry Irishman 
 with the roving eye. But divorce was out of the question, for 
 he had neither deserted nor been legally cruel to her. 
 
 Lord Grindelay refused to give up his paternal rights. 
 Andrew McKay had to meet his lawyers, to make conces- 
 sions. And when he would make no further concessions,
 
 FULL SWING 45 
 
 counsel was consulted, and finally the matter went before a 
 judge in chambers. There the Solomon-like judgment wa^ pro- 
 nounced that the custody of the child should be vested equally 
 in mother and father. The boy was nearly a year old before 
 this decision was arrived at, and already the dual ownership 
 had offended and estranged the baby's mother. Lord Grinde- 
 lay came backward and forward to Marley whilst the lawyers 
 were at work. Perhaps this accounted for her accepting the 
 decree. 
 
 Her acquiescence may also have owed something to the 
 bad news from India that came to hand about the same time. 
 
 When once she recovered from the first shock of her anger, 
 Agatha had found herself unable completely to repudiate the 
 claims of her runaway step-sister. Marley was not entailed, 
 but for generation after generation it had descended in the 
 direct line. After her baby was bom Agatha was the more 
 sorry for Monica, because she had lost her inheritance. In 
 fact, she had every excuse but the true one ; the true one being 
 that her little sister had stood so near her heart that she 
 could trample upon it, and the footprints were ineradicably 
 there. 
 
 And Monica, as if unconscious of her disloyalty or 
 duplicity, had never ceased to write. Whether Agatha an- 
 swered or not, she wrote. 
 
 " I wish I had never left Marley," was the beginning of 
 one of these early letters. And after the first time she wrote 
 it often and passionately. The marriage, of course, proved a 
 failure. Two selfish young people, inconsiderate as these had 
 proved themselves, living in a tropical climate, with limited 
 means, soon found matrimony anything but an ideal state. 
 
 Agatha, after she had made her own inconceivable mar- 
 riage, softened wonderfully toward the girl. She began to 
 send her money, clothes, and sympathy. Did she not herself 
 know how unhappy an unhappy marriage could be? Monica 
 had been little more than a child when she made her mis- 
 take; she herself was nearly forty! She read of broken 
 health, isolation in the dreadful up-station where Basil's regi- 
 ment was quartered, the terrible home-sickness that was the
 
 46 FULL SWING 
 
 note of all the letters. The last one led to her precipitate 
 action : 
 
 " Darling Sister, — I wish I could feel you forgave 
 me. Always when I have my worst bouts of malaria, in 
 the shivering stages, I feel that nothing but your arms 
 could ever warm me. Do you recollect how often I used 
 to come into your bed? I know I shall never see you 
 again, and you can't tell how I long for you. Do the 
 trees still rustle in Marley Chase, and does the cool 
 river run? I want the beeches and elms, and to hear 
 the birds sing after rain. All the vegetation here seems 
 hot and reeking of the natives. How I hate all their 
 black faces and the smell of everything. I have had 
 three disappointments. I don't think I've ever been well 
 for a day since I've been here. If this baby that is coming 
 could have been bom at Marley! 
 
 I had to put down my pen when I thought of it; 
 the wide, welcoming hall, and you; the sunken garden 
 where the violets grow. I want to lean against the old 
 sundial, to see the leaden figure of Pan piping — I want 
 the scent of the roses where we used to sit in the pergola 
 and look upon the woods, where you told me stories of 
 the dear dead Wansteads and their worth. I used to be 
 bored with it then, and your seriousness about the family, 
 but I wouldn't be bored now with anything you said. 
 If only I could hear your voice! Every day and hour, 
 and desperately in the nights, I want you ; your strength 
 and courage. You don't love me any more, do you? 
 But I want you to be sorry for me, to forgive me. I 
 don't believe I'm going to live through it, I am dying 
 of home-sickness. Be a little sorry for me. — ^Your loving, 
 loving Monica." 
 
 This letter came when Agatha's own baby was but a year 
 or so old. She had not yet forgotten what she had gone 
 through, even at Marley, in her large cool bedroom, from 
 whose windows she could see those green and distant woods.
 
 FULL SWING 47 
 
 She had not yet forgotten what she had borne, with all the 
 alleviations that money and modern science could give her. 
 
 She cabled that Monica was to come home at once; no 
 expense was to be spared. She began to make preparations 
 without delay. Already she saw herself caring for her; she 
 would make the girl feel this was indeed home to which she 
 had come. There must be no scene of reconciliation, but 
 Monica should understand how welcome she was. 
 
 Her own baby had in no way replaced her sister's image. 
 At present he was no more to her than a tempestuous child 
 craving violent movement, of a sex toward which her inherent 
 antipathy had deepened — the heir to Marley. Not at all like 
 Monica, who had wheedled an irresistible way into her heart. 
 He was something strange and alien, from which, if the whole 
 truth were known, she shrank a little. With Monica it had 
 always been so different. She gave orders which room was 
 to be prepared, and even talked matters over with Dr. Eeid. 
 
 The answering cable upset all her plans, distressed and 
 disappointed her. 
 
 " Doctor forbids travel. Very grateful and lonely.'* 
 
 "And lonely!" 
 
 It was those two words that did it. She was never at ease 
 after that. She felt impelled to go, and this although her 
 own freedom was not complete and the lawyers were still at 
 work. Lord Grindelay carried his son off triumphantly to 
 Languedoc when Agatha, hurrying through her preparations, 
 went out to India. Biddy proved a better nurse to little 
 Desmond than she had been a maid to his mother, but of this 
 more presently. 
 
 Agatha went out to India, and up to that lonely station. 
 
 Monica's trembling impassioned greeting, tears and peni- 
 tence, the way she clung to her as if she could never let her 
 go again, broke down utterly in her arms, and said how in- 
 credible and impossible it was that she was here, and that she 
 had never thought to see her again, and was dying for the 
 need of her, made her captive again to the girl. 
 
 In India Agatha spent many weary months, fighting 
 climate and a weakened constitution. In the end she was
 
 48 FULL SWING 
 
 worsted by Death. But her own courage came back to her 
 during those months whilst she fought for her sister's life. 
 And when slie returned to Marley she had her last gift in her 
 arms to anchor it. 
 
 " Take my baby back to Marley with you, be to her what 
 you were to me, only that, sister. I know now, if I never knew 
 before, that I deserve everything that has happened. I give 
 you my baby for your own — for your very own. Love her for 
 me as well as for yourself. Take care of her like you did 
 me — promise, promise." 
 
 Dying lips cannot be denied. The promise was given, and 
 kept rarely. If it was kept mistakenly, that is because it was 
 ingrain in Agatha Wanstead to do the wrong thing.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Agatha came back to Marley, bringing her sister's legacy 
 with her. Basil Fellowes made no objection. Unlike Lord 
 Grindelay, he had no feeling for children, nor had he much 
 for anything else except "pegs" and polo. He was glad to 
 be free, and never disputed Monica's right to give away that 
 which belonged to them in common. Agatha brought the baby 
 back to Marley, the small pale baby with an Indian ayah. It 
 needed so much care and nursing, and was so fragile a blossom 
 that more than once it seemed impossible it could survive the 
 voyage. The more need it had of Agatha, the stronger became 
 its claims ; it was as if Monica herself had been restored to her. 
 
 When she rea<?hed home, to find her own young son not 
 there, she almost forgot to miss him, to recall him. 
 
 Lord Grindelay did not carry out very honestly the con- 
 tract into which he had entered. Neither he nor Biddy wanted 
 to part with the boy, and when, at Andrew's instigation. 
 Agatha insisted upon her rights, the pleasure proved very 
 questionable. Biddy brought, him over, and was almost as 
 distracting to the household as Lord Grindelay himself. 
 She quarrelled with Eunice's nurse, arguing the superiority 
 of her own charge. Desmond had grown into a fine sturdy 
 child, not much better-mannered than his nurse. He refused 
 his mother's lap, walked about by himself, defied nursery 
 authority, said his few words in the broadest of brogues. 
 Biddy was so shrewd and volubly reticent that, to use the 
 language of the servants' quarters, " no one could come out 
 with her." When she went back, taking the little boy with 
 her, it was a relief to everyone. By this time Agatha had 
 settled down again. This little girl was so like the other little 
 girl her father's death had left to her, that sometimes it seemed 
 as if the pendulum had swung back and her youth had been 
 restored to her. 
 
 But when Desmond was in his seventh year Andrew spoke 
 seriously to her of her duty towards her son. 
 4 49
 
 50 FULL SWING 
 
 " He is having no education, running wild with the ser- 
 vants, and without any control. The other day, in Dublin, 
 Lord Grindelay was heard to boast that, although his son 
 was only seven, he could smoke a pipe without being sick, 
 and * drink his glass like a man ! ' You have your duty to 
 him ; you can't let things go ! " 
 
 When Agatha knew her duty she did it, however reluc- 
 tantly. Again she asserted her claim, and again Lord Grinde- 
 lay complied unwillingly, taking his own measures to circum- 
 vent her. 
 
 " She'll get tired of you ; she likes her own. way, and 
 mind you don't give it to her. Languedoc's your home, and 
 don't you forget it! You're an Irishman, it's the fools of 
 lawyers that send you to Marley. Make her sorry when she 
 gets you there ! " 
 
 The little boy he addressed was devoted to his father, 
 like all of them at Languedoc. Lord Grindelay roared at 
 his son's worst misdemeanours, and encouraged him in his 
 naughtiest exploits. He had his own way in everything, pos- 
 sessed a pony, and even a gun. He was told that in England 
 he would have none of these things, but would be expected to 
 mind his " p's " and " q's," be on his best behaviour. Every- 
 thing English was represented to him as implying restraint. 
 He had his hints from Biddy and Larry as well as his instruc- 
 tions from his father, and these were all to the effect that he 
 " wasn't to make them anxious to keep him." 
 
 This time Lady Grindelay had insisted the little boy was 
 to come alone, without Biddy or her influence. She agreed 
 with Andrew when he pointed out to her that she had to 
 combat his father's influence and exert her own. Andrew 
 spoke seriously. His own young Michael was a scholar of 
 Winchester. Agatha's son must not be allowed to run wild 
 any longer. 
 
 The boy came, and proved as amenable as a fox in a farm- 
 yard. He got into the stables, rode the horses without saddle 
 or bridle or permission, ran riot in the garden and green- 
 houses, could not be brought to punctuality at meals, could 
 not be coaxed or persuaded to cleanliness, while he generally
 
 FULL SWING 51 
 
 defied authority. This rough little fellow, with curly black 
 hair and blue eyes, of whom one heard nothing but com- 
 plaints, who used bad language, ran away at her approach, 
 was nothing but a stranger in his mother's house. He was 
 Lord Grindelay's son. If at this time Agatha had any love for 
 him at all, the form it took was an unrest which she was 
 for ever trying to subdue. Her conscience troubled her; she 
 could never bring herself to punish, hardly even to admonish 
 him; she felt there was something she had to make up to 
 him ; that it was not his fault he was as he was. She let him 
 go with a groom to the local hunt, sent him up to London 
 one day to see a circus, was half ashamed of herself for want- 
 ing to conciliate or win him, but made attempt after attempt. 
 
 Children have an instinctive sense of justice. This was 
 not the mother little Desmond had been led to expect. There 
 were things about her he could not help liking, although he 
 tried to be loyal to his father. Already in his young groping 
 way he was trying to reach to some knowledge of her. The 
 position between them was strange ; he was only a shy young 
 animal, bolting at her approach, coming back to see what 
 had alarmed him, sniffing the air about her. And Agatha 
 was almost as uneasy as he. 
 
 All his wild childhood was difficult and distracted by his 
 ignorance and lack of understanding, of what lay between 
 his parents. The law was to blame; the position was alto- 
 gether untenable. After six months as Marley, Lord Grrinde- 
 lay demanded the boy back. But he had been at Languedoc 
 five and a half years out of his seven, and Agatha would not 
 let him go. In the rain of lawyer's letters the boy suddenly 
 disappeared. In other words. Lord Grindelay, or his myrmi- 
 dons, abducted him ; he was battledoor and shuttlecock between 
 his parents. Two long years passed before he was restored 
 again to Marley. 
 
 All this time Eunice was outgrowing her delicacy, and 
 developing beauty and charm. She was truly an exquisite 
 little creature, with the sweetest nature; it had been impos- 
 sible to spoil her. If she had not entirely taken Monica's 
 place with Agatha, no one but Agatha guessed it.
 
 52 FULL SWING 
 
 Eunice was seven and Desmond was nine when the boy 
 was again at Marley. Agatha spoke of him to Andrew, again 
 a constant visitor and now her most intimate friend. 
 
 " I feel less able than before to influence him. The long 
 interval since he was here has been used only to poison his 
 mind against me. I don't know what is to be done." 
 
 The little girl was on Andrew's knee. He pulled her curls 
 and asked her: 
 
 " What do you say, little maiden, is to be done with this 
 young ' Struwwelpeter ' ? Shall we dip him in the ink ? " 
 
 " We mustn't be cwuel ! " the little one answered gravely, 
 
 " Well, what are we to do with him if he won't do as he 
 is told — if he will be a naughty boy ? " 
 
 " We must love him and cuddle him, and then he'll be 
 good," she said confidently, having known nothing but cud- 
 dling and the smallest of nursery peccadilloes. 
 
 " You hear that, Agatha ? What do you think of the pre- 
 scription ? " 
 
 " She will have to do it herself, then," answered Agatha 
 quickly, with a strangely rising flush. Andrew put the child 
 down. 
 
 " Run and fetch him, I want to see him. We shall have 
 to go to the court again, I expect," he said to Agatha. " You 
 say he can barely read and write, and he's nearly nine years 
 old ! We shall have to get an order to send him to school." 
 
 " There isn't a decent school that would take him," Agatha 
 answered, ""nor keep him if they did take him. He is as 
 ignorant as a peasant." 
 
 And yet with her bitterness was something that made 
 Andrew look at her keenly. 
 
 " You care for him more than you know," he said. And 
 with more truth than he knew. 
 
 4: 4: * 4! * 
 
 To find Desmond and bring him into the drawing-room 
 Eunice went to the edge of the wood, sending her voice before 
 her. 
 
 " Desmond, Desmond ! Where are you, Desmond ? " 
 She knew most of his haunts; it is harder to keep children
 
 FULL SWING 53 
 
 apart than their elders know. He had not been encouraged 
 in the nursery, for none of his ways were nursery ways, but 
 he had been there all the same. Eunice knew all his haunts 
 except a new one he had found only that afternoon, on the 
 branch of a tree. Save that he became sorry for her searching, 
 and because his heart was soft, although so few at Marley 
 guessed it yet, she might never have discovered him. 
 
 " Silly Billy ! Where's your eyes ? I've been here all the 
 time. What's up ? What for are you wanting me ? " he called 
 out. 
 
 " Oh, Desmond, what a lovely new place ! " 
 
 " Come along up ; there's room for two ! " 
 
 " Me ! " 
 
 " Why not ? You're afraid of tearing your muslin pinny. 
 What a baby you are ! And there's a hole in it already, so 
 there ! " 
 
 But there was no hole, it was white and immaculate as 
 when she left the nursery. He knew how to tease her. 
 
 " Who wants me ? What's afoot now ? Aren't you coming 
 up?" 
 
 " I don't know how." 
 
 " Don't know how ! " he mimicked her. " Don't know 
 how to climb a tree, don't know how to sit a horse, don't 
 know how to drive him, or hold the reins, or set a ferret! 
 Too nice, how nice, Yewnice! That's the way to say your 
 silly name. Aren't you ashamed of being only a silly girl? 
 Listen. I'll pretend I'm a thrush." He mimicked the 
 long sweet note. " I'm coming down to help you up. Look 
 out ! I'm going to jump." He swung himself from the 
 branch and dropped at her feet. 
 
 There were less than three years between them, and, of 
 course, she thought him wonderful. She knew he was a rough 
 boy, because Nurse said so, but there was no better companion, 
 and he was never really rough with her. He knew ever}'thing 
 about animals, could imitate birds, make the hares in the 
 woods come to him. 
 
 " What do you want me for ? " he asked when he stood 
 beside her.
 
 54 FULL SWING 
 
 " Auntie wants you. Uncle Andrew's in the drawing-room 
 and he wants you. You'll come, won't you ? " For even she 
 knew how difficult it was to get Desmond to come at a call. 
 
 She slipped her small hand confidently in his as he stood 
 beside her. 
 
 " No; I shan't come. Why should I ? He isn't my Uncle 
 Andrew. I shall stay where I am." 
 
 " And auntie would like you to look your best. He hasn't 
 seen you for such a long time," she coaxed. 
 
 "You'd be having me put on a velvet suit and a lace 
 collar ! " he scoffed. 
 
 " Just wash part of your hands." She was coaxing him, 
 she did not mean to be funny, only to let him down easily. 
 
 " I'll race you from here to the end of the lawn ; you can 
 have three-quarters' start. I'll go in to the old gossoon if you 
 get there first." 
 
 "And if I win, you'll wash?" She was quick to take 
 advantage of the opening. 
 
 " That's for the seeing ; it isn't you that'll be winning. 
 Start now, and when you get to that copper beech you can 
 run, I'll call out to you." 
 
 Long-legged, slender, her fair, well-tended curls floated 
 behind her, she ran gracefully and swiftly. More stockily 
 built, very little taller for all his additional years, he had 
 over-handicapped himself, and reached the lawn a second 
 later than she did. She was panting, out of breath, already 
 almost sorry she had won. 
 
 " I believe I began to run before you said ' off ! ' " she said 
 breathlessly. 
 
 He was annoyed, but not unfair. 
 
 " I'm going round by the stables. Say I'll be there in ten 
 minutes." 
 
 She knew he would keep' to the terms of the wager although 
 he had not ratified it, and she went contentedly in search of 
 Nurse, who would smooth her slightly disordered curls, adjust 
 the blue bow, and remove the white pinafore in which there 
 was no hole, uncovering the soft white frock of silk and 
 Valenciennes lace. Agatha, who disguised her femininity in
 
 FULL SWING 55 
 
 tweeds, coats and skirts and felt hats of the masculine shape, 
 spared nothing in Eunice's adornment. She was dressed like 
 a young princess. 
 
 "It was too bad sending you after Master Desmond. I 
 suppose he led you a dance ? " Nurse grumbled. 
 
 '^ We had a race. And it's all right, he's gone up to dress. 
 I liked racing with him, he gave me a long start." 
 
 Nurse kissed her; it was a way people had with Eunice. 
 Not only because she was so fair and soft to kiss, but because 
 even before she could reason she had the instinct to wish every- 
 one to be happy. From the very first she had that gift of 
 loving tact. Nurse must not feel her work had been wasted. 
 Uncle Andrew would see Desmond in the drawing-room look- 
 ing so that Auntie could be proud of him. 
 
 " If only he gets his parting straight ! " 
 
 That was the thought in her little mind as she stood before 
 the drawing-room door. 
 
 The large drawing-room, half dark, was full of heavy 
 walnut furniture, the chair seats were all thickly embroid- 
 ered, and so were the heavy curtains; the work of dead and 
 forgotten hands. Great cabinets of china stood like sentinels 
 against the walls, throwing into shadow the family portraits, 
 dingy landscapes and religious pictures. On round tables 
 stood Oriental bowls, full of potpourri. From the conserva- 
 tory — almost large enough to be called a winter garden, came 
 the chirping of the varied plumage birds that swung among 
 the palm trees. This was the right setting for Agatha; her 
 ancestral surroundings gave her the self-confidence she some- 
 times lacked. 
 
 The little girl went into the room, sure of her welcome, and 
 stood at Agatha's side, placing a hand on her knee. No one 
 else put a hand on Agatha's knee, she was not a caressing 
 woman, and did not inspire demonstration. Andrew McKay 
 thought that Eunice had taken Monica's' place, keeping the 
 boy a little out of his own, perhaps. 
 
 "Is Desmond coming?" 
 
 " He will be here in a minute. You're not going to scold 
 him, auntie."
 
 56 FULL SWING 
 
 " No ; I'm not going to scold Desmond. Has he done any- 
 thing to deserve it ? "' 
 
 "He never means to do anything bad." She hesitated. 
 " He does just what comes into his head." 
 
 " Not unlike his mother/' interposed Andrew quizzically. 
 
 Agatha gave a quick gesture of dissent. She saw no like- 
 ness between herself and her son. 
 
 Desmond was a boy of his word. He had washed not only 
 his hands but his face. But he was not a picture-postcard, 
 velveteen-and-lace-collar boy. He wore a knickerbocker suit 
 of worn tweed and a turndown collar in its second stage; his 
 boots were irregularly laced, and his stockings not properly 
 pulled up. His hands were rough and ill-kempt; one wash- 
 ing had been obviously insufficient for them. There was a 
 watermark between his chin and a red ear that some teased 
 beast had bitten ; he had what his mother called " a game- 
 keeper's complexion"; the crooked parting Eunice had feared 
 showed irregularly in the crisp black of his hair, a front tooth 
 had been chipped. Only his blue eyes were beyond criticism. 
 
 Andrew had a son of his own now, older than this boy, 
 and being very carefully reared. He had not seen the Marley 
 heir for nearly two years, and, after greeting, began almost 
 immediately to question him. Andrew had but one standard 
 of education, and Desmond fell hopelessly below it. 
 
 He had not begun Latin or French ; as for his arithmetic 
 there was not a question Andrew put to him that he an- 
 swered correctly. He shuffled on his feet, resented the exami- 
 nation, became dogged and sullen. 
 
 " It is even worse than I anticipated," was Andrew's con- 
 clusion. " There is no doubt something must be done," he 
 said to her. " You ought to be at school, you know," he told 
 the boy. " You would like to have companions, be with other 
 fellows of your own age ! " 
 
 "No, I shouldn't!" Desmond said bluntly. "I don't 
 want to go to school in England." 
 
 Agatha had invited her friends' sons to play with him, 
 the boys from Denham and Amherst. He had nothing in
 
 FULL SWING 57 
 
 common "with, these English boys, dressed in black cloth and 
 Eton collars, from high-class preparatory schools, who talked 
 of cricket or football, who could not imitate the notes of 
 birds, or ride bare-backed ; boys as clean as Eunice, unfriendly 
 to him and curious. 
 
 " I am not wanting to be with English boys." 
 
 Having thus answered, and shown that her consideration 
 in providing him with playmates had been wasted, the boy 
 flushed and glanced at his mother. He had done every con- 
 ceivable tiling that had been forbidden in the last forty-eight 
 hours, and now he showed his ignorance and ingratitude. He 
 was ashamed that there were no consequences to be faced. 
 Agatha never punished him; she was always pursuing her 
 extraordinary inoperative methods towards gaining his con- 
 fidence. He guessed they had been talking about him, that 
 it was on his account the man was here. He knew that each 
 visit to Marley Court showed him up more unfavourably. He 
 told himself he did not care, that his home was in Fermanagh 
 with his father, the home that was one day to be his own, the 
 pile of ruins called Languedoc Castle, the uncultivated acres 
 and wild tenantry, freedom. 
 
 " I want to go home ; I don't want to go to school here ! " 
 he burst out. 
 
 " But you know this is your home," Andrew interrupted. 
 " I think he should fully understand that," he said to Agatha. 
 
 " I'm going to live always with my father when I'm grown 
 up," Desmond answered, flushed and dogged. 
 
 " You really want to grow up unlettered, uncultured, igno- 
 rant? " Andrew ask him satirically. 
 
 Desmond had known all this was coming, his father had 
 prepared him. They wanted to pen him up in a boarding 
 school, to make him learn Latin and Greek. His father had 
 incited him to rebellion. 
 
 " They want to cheat me of my six months, my boy, that's 
 what they mean to do; put you in a livery with a high hat on 
 like a groom ! " For Eton had already been discussed. 
 
 The discussion was continued this afternoon. Andrew 
 wanted to see if Desmond had imbibed anything of the Marley
 
 58 FULL SWING 
 
 Court atmosphere, if he had any appreciation of the refine- 
 ment and beauty of his mother's mode of life. If it were so, 
 he was unable to elicit it. The boy was armed on all points ; 
 he spoke in his father's words, or in Biddy's. He thought he 
 was being loyal, yet watched his mother's face. If he were 
 defiant there was a strange undercurrent. 
 
 All the time the lawyer spoke Desmond was sick with his 
 own sullen and dogged replies. For somewhere in his secret 
 heart he did want to go to school and grow up like other 
 boys, not to be ignorant and rough, so that his mother should 
 be ashamed of liim. 
 
 They let him go presently. If they had to act for his 
 benefit, they saw they would have to do without any help 
 from him. Lord Grindelay had used his opportunities well, 
 apparently better than Agatha had used hers. 
 
 " How does he impress you ? " she asked, after Desmond 
 had left the room, slamming the door behind him, with a nod 
 for "good-bye," and as if he were glad to be off, and had 
 settled the question of his future. 
 
 " He only wants training/' Andrew answered consolingly. 
 " You know that as well as I do." 
 
 Whatever she felt about him, Andrew could read it was 
 not quite what she expressed. She was jealous of his father's 
 influence upon him, although too instinctively reticent to 
 show or even admit it. She was hurt that he would rather be 
 at Languedoc than Marley; seeing that now Marley was all 
 that an estate should be, and Languedoc but a ruin and a 
 nightmare.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Andrew McKay's efforts were successful. The Court, or 
 the Judge in Chambers, agreed that the heir to Marley and 
 Languedoc must certainly be educated. Lord Grindelay could 
 not seriously oppose it, and there were no Protestant schools 
 in Ireland whose claims he could reasonably urge. Desmond 
 was therefore sent to a private tutor, and ultimately to Eton, 
 where in an astonishingly short period of time he became 
 completely reconciled not only to what his father had been 
 pleased to call " the livery,'' but even to the discipline and re- 
 straints. For this probably the games were responsible. From 
 the beginning fives and football appealed to the wild little 
 Irish boy, and the enchanting river. From fives he graduated 
 to racquets, and from sculling to rowing. At eighteen he had 
 established an athletic, although not a scholastic, reputa- 
 tion, was in " Pop," the team for Queen's, and, after having 
 been for two terms in the boats, had a chance for the boat, 
 a distinction with a difference that Eunice knew now as 
 well as himself. 
 
 Desmond's first year at Eton had been made remarkable 
 by the appearance of Lord Grindelay on the fourth of June 
 in a white hat of astonishing antiquity, a loquacity that defied 
 even Dr. Warre, and an evening mood after the procession of 
 boats and fireworks that inclined the boy's housemaster then 
 and always afterwards to be sympathetic, and as far as pos- 
 sible even compassionate, to his shortcomings. " He has 
 had a bad example, poor fellow; we must not be hard on 
 him," explained "me tutor's" mental attitude after seeing 
 the effect of a long day's thirst upon the Irish peer. 
 
 Desmond had been ordered to pass half his vacation with 
 one, and the remainder with the other, of his irreconcilable 
 parents. He and his father remained good friends, and there 
 was sport enough in Fermanagh with the dogs and the horses 
 to keep him entertained, even when he grew old enough and 
 sufficiently sophisticated to miss the physical comforts or ener- 
 vating luxuries of Marley. 
 
 59
 
 60 FULL SWING 
 
 What he missed most at Languedoc, however, as the years 
 went on, was the devoted service and admiring hero-worship 
 of the little girl who, from cleaning his gun to disentangling 
 his fishing lines, was never happier than when waiting upon 
 him. Between his mother and himself there was the barrier 
 of his father, although now and again it did not seem insur- 
 mountable. 
 
 Agatha watched Desmond for hereditary vices, yet always 
 with a growing anxiety to find him a Wanstead and not a 
 Foulds. He knew he was watched, feeling sometimes a dumb 
 resentment. The mothers of his friends loved their sons un- 
 critically. He felt a mother-want about the world, it brought 
 him closer to his father, with whom at least he was sure of 
 his footing. 
 
 At the end of his last year at Eton, however, Desmond 
 had taken on much of the colour, and many of the character- 
 istics, of the school, toning better, therefore, with the Marley 
 background. This year, and of his own choice, he lingered 
 through the Easter vacation at Marley when he should have 
 been at Languedoc. Biddy could no longer be sent to fetch 
 him ; he was too old for force, the time had almost come when 
 he must make a personal selection between his parents. 
 Agatha, for ever watching him, growing more exacting as she 
 grew more fond, vexed herself lately over his reports, and 
 could not understand his lack of ambition, his low place in 
 class. 
 
 "There's no good my swotting," he said easily. "It 
 isn't as if I was clever." He was quite satisfied to be allowed 
 to remain on, and not to be superannuated. 
 
 " What does she mean with her ^ studying ' ? " he said to 
 Eunice. " I'm not a tug. Isn't she pleased that I'll have a 
 chance for the eight ? " He had an almost imperceptible ac- 
 cent, an occasional turn of phrase or thought that seemed 
 un-English to his mother. Everything that was Irish held 
 pain for her; in hiding this pain she hid herself from her son's 
 eyes, and perhaps a little from her own. But if their neu- 
 trality flashed sometimes into what looked like antagonism, 
 many times now it had another aspect.
 
 FULL SWING 61 
 
 'Now, sometimes, "when Eunice kissed her, coming to her 
 for love or mothering, she had a spasm of desire, of heart- 
 ache that the caress or appeal had not been from him. 
 
 Nevertheless, this Easter that Desmond lingered in ]\Iarley 
 when he should have been at Languedoc was among the hap- 
 piest times she had ever spent. Unconsciously she began to 
 build castles. They were children yet, but one day they would 
 grow up. 
 
 But still, true to herself, she would not encourage her 
 dreams. She reminded herself continually of her promise to 
 Eunice's mother. This was the first time she began to realise, 
 however diml}^, that Eunice was her duty, and Desmond her 
 son. That he had also a father she wished now to be able to 
 forget, to put away from her whenever possible. 
 
 Lord Grindelay had grown worse as the years went on. 
 Now he was almost a monster in Agatha's eyes; her own 
 connection with him well-nigh unbearable. Disgusting, but 
 never incredible, tales surmounted the difficulties of the Irish 
 Channel, and were wafted to Marley, scandalous tales of 
 drunken orgies, loose women, looser language, of a mode of 
 life always more out of date. 
 
 Therefore, when the telegram came from Languedoc an- 
 nouncing that Lord Grindelay was dead, her first emotion 
 was one of overwhelming relief. It seemed almost too good 
 to be true; an end of all the scandals. She had lain awake 
 at nights thinking how to avoid exposing the adolescent lad 
 to his father's contaminating company; how to prevent his 
 listening to his dreadful stories, perhaps finding pleasure in 
 his pleasures. 
 
 She was so relieved in knowing there was now no reason 
 why her son should not grow up into that innocent and 
 immaculate manhood of which all mothers dream, that she 
 never paused to think there might be another aspect to the 
 question. She was glad, thankful. It never struck her that 
 Desmond might think differently about his father's death. 
 
 Desmond was out when the telegram came. He and 
 Eunice had gone together to a tennis tournament at Denham 
 Place.
 
 62 FULL SWING 
 
 Agatha thought of sending for him, but it was a long way 
 off, and they might have already started for home ; it was only 
 an afternoon affair. She felt extraordinarily content as she 
 waited to tell Desmond that his father was dead, quite obliv- 
 ious of any point of view but her own. She really felt that 
 Lord Grindelay had been an encumberer of the ground. She 
 did not know that her ever-growing abhorrence for his views 
 had been deepened by their dual proprietorsliip in their son. 
 She did not know how the slow growth of her feelings was 
 rooting them. 
 
 Desmond had put off his visit to Languedoc, trying to 
 explain himself in his letters to that ever-indulgent father 
 with whom he was so much more intimate than with the mother 
 he always, in some curious and unacknowledged way, felt him- 
 self unable to satisfy. 
 
 *' Dear Dad, do you mind if I don't come for a few days 
 yet? Marley is so wonderful just now. You may be guessing 
 why I can't tear myself away ; it's not because I don't want to 
 be with you. . . ." 
 
 His father knew more about him and Eunice than he did 
 himself, although they had hardly spoken of it. Desmond 
 was only at the beginning of things, inarticulate. 
 
 " Dear laddie, the houri before the horses for sure," Pat 
 wrote cheerfully, " and haven't I been there myself ? " Larry- 
 told Desmond later on what Lord Grindelay had said when 
 the letter came. 
 
 " He said he wasn't forcin' you to come over, although you 
 were the light of his eyes, much more to him than you iver 
 was to your foine English mother who had Marley and the 
 gurl and her blarmed orchids.'^ 
 
 " Please yourself when you come," wrote his father, when 
 again Desmond postponed his return. " I can guess well 
 enough what's keeping you, but don't let it be too long, don't 
 throw me over altogether. It's longing to see you we are here, 
 and I've a hunter ready for you that will take you all you 
 know to get over the fences. He is too much for me alto- 
 gether. . . ." 
 
 Poor Pat ! he was going downhill fast, and wanted the boy
 
 FULL SWING 63 
 
 badly, but when Desmond asked permission to stay away he 
 could not bear to say " no " to him. He, too, had his pride. 
 
 Desmond never read the note of loneliness in the letters, 
 nor dreamt his father was missing him. Desmond's feelings 
 were deepening, but the depths were only in one direction. 
 Three-fourths of him were still schoolboy. Yet he knew in 
 these holidays that Eunice was not his sister, and that when 
 his hands touched the silk of her hair, or she put her sweet 
 lips to his for the good-night kiae as she had done all her life, 
 his heart shook, and he was her champion. That was all he 
 thought, that he must defend her, not yet knowing from what, 
 and that it was from himself. 
 
 This afternoon, as they had driven together in the old- 
 fashioned family barouche to Denham Place, he sat by her 
 side hardly speaking. She rallied him on his glumness, and 
 he gave her the first reason that came into his head. How 
 could he tell her what he hardly knew himself, that it was 
 because she was sitting so near to him and his blood was 
 rising? 
 
 "It's my father I was thinking of," he answered. "I 
 ought to be in Ireland now. He wrote I was to take my own 
 time, but he expected me by the 12th, and now it's the 20th. 
 I can't think what's keeping me here." 
 
 And at that he looked shyly at her, and his heart pounded. 
 She was quite unconscious of it, being in all essentials still a 
 child. She gave his arm a little squeeze and said : 
 
 " Oh, don't go ! It's so lovely to have you here. I wish 
 you were here always." 
 
 " He looks forward to my coming ; there are few friends 
 of his own age and standing left now." 
 
 Presently he blundered out that he was sorry he was going 
 away from her, but covered it up with more talk of his father; 
 all to excuse that he was tongue-tied because he was sitting 
 beside her and she looked so wonderful in her white dress and 
 hat with the black ribbon and pink roses. Her hair was un- 
 plaited to-day, and the scent of it caught his breath. 
 
 He talked about his father to cover his silences. Although 
 he was reluctant to leave Marley just now, it was not for lack
 
 64 FULL SWING 
 
 of affection toward him. The drunken old reprobate, so un- 
 fortunately mated, had won more love from his son than 
 Agatha had up to the present, more conscious love, at any 
 rate. The adventurousness of Lord Grindelay's spirit, and 
 his sense of humour, the never-failing indulgence, had won 
 him his son in babyhood. Marley had become home too, 
 now, and about his mother was something that, up to late 
 this very afternoon, was indefinitely, if reluctantly, calling 
 to him. But he did not care for her as he did for the old red- 
 faced father who had taught him to ride when he was four 
 years old, to shoot before he could hardly carry a gun; who 
 had always treated him like a man, neither watching nor 
 doubting him ; incapable of criticising, but not of hugging him. 
 
 Desmond loved his father with something of pity and 
 something of understanding. He knew he drank; if there 
 were other things he did there was an undefined suspicion in 
 the boy's mind that the marriage of which he was the issue 
 might have been responsible for some of them. He felt the 
 differences between his parents ; reproaching himself now and 
 again, and calling himself a snob because he liked to bring 
 his Eton friends to Marley, and never took one to Languedoc, 
 although he knew their welcome would be warm. He could 
 see, even if it were dimly, how out of place his mother must 
 have been at Languedoc. But he, too, was sensitive of criti- 
 cism about it, could realise his father's irritation with an 
 English wife there, seeing the unfriendliness of her eyes and 
 all their cool appraisement. 
 
 That afternoon, at Denham Place, Desmond however put 
 all such thoughts away from him. They had helped to quiet 
 his heart and to keep him from telling the girl anytliing at 
 all of the sudden wish he had had to put his arm about her 
 waist, and explain to her what had come over liim. 
 
 He and Eunice carried off all the honours of the tourna- 
 ment that afternoon. Afterwards they had a gorgeous tea, 
 all the boy and girl competitors together, chattering like mag- 
 pies, with their young dignity gone down before the whole- 
 some excitement of the exercise. When he and Eunice drove 
 home they were no longer alone; they had Jack Keid and the
 
 FULL SWING 65 
 
 Amhurst boys with them, and Desmond's mood was altogether 
 different. Jack was the son of the Great Marley doctor, already 
 at Cambridge. He talked animatedly of rowing, and what 
 he meant to do later ; of Blues and bumps. One Campden boy 
 was still at Eton, the other was at Sandhurst and urging Des- 
 mond to follow in his footsteps. They were all full of the 
 afternoon match, and what a "fluke" the Marley Court 
 ■victory had been. Challenges were laughingly exchanged, and 
 it was agreed that Jack Reid and the younger Campden 
 should take on Eunice and Desmond the next day or the day 
 after. They were very gay and happy. There was nothing 
 to prepare him for what was immediately in front. 
 
 They dropped the three boys at Great Marley. At the 
 lodge gates of the Court they heard that Lady Grindelay had 
 sent out a message that they were not to loiter, but to come 
 straight to the house. They had a habit of avoiding the long 
 straight drive, and strolling home through the woods. They 
 wondered perfunctorily what was up, and were disappointed 
 at the tame end to their afternoon. Of course, they had meant 
 to walk. Desmond, when they drove up to the door, got out 
 quickly. 
 
 " Tell her I'll be with her in ten minutes. I must change. 
 I never can make out how you manage to keep tidy, whatever 
 happens." 
 
 " I don't feel tidy." 
 
 Desmond, once difficult to persuade to common cleanli- 
 ness, was now very particular about his clothes, and had a deep 
 interest in his tailor and hosier and the colour of his ties. 
 
 Eunice did not wait to change, but went straight to her 
 aunt. 
 
 "But it was not you I wanted, it was Desmond," Lady 
 Grindelay exclaimed. 
 
 " You often want Desmond instead of me now, don't you ? " 
 Eunice pouted. She needed affection as flowers need water, 
 and bloomed in it. 
 
 "Do I ? But Desmond is my son." There was a new 
 thrill in the word as she said it. 
 
 " Well, I am your daughter, aren't I ? " She threw herself 
 6
 
 66 FULL SWING 
 
 on the stool beside her, fondling her. " Desmond will be here 
 in a minute. We've had a perfectly lovely afternoon. We 
 won the tournament, and we've each got a new racquet." 
 
 She poured out all her news. Lady Grindelay listened, 
 keeping back her own. She liked the young confidence, was 
 fond of the child, very fond, and meant to do well by her. 
 It had been gradually and imperceptibly that the two had 
 changed places. Nobody but herself knew, and she only half- 
 consciously, that Desmond was now in the foreground. 
 
 " Oh, auntie, how I wish Desmond need never go away ! 
 It's so different when he is here, going about with him in- 
 stead of Miss Stacey." Miss Stacey was Eunice's governess; 
 Eunice was a better pupil than her mother had been, but little 
 fonder of her lessons. " AVe do have such lovely times. He 
 was talking this afternoon of going to Ireland again. Do stop 
 hSm—do!" 
 
 Lady Grindelay answered quickly: 
 
 '' Many more impossible things have happened than that 
 Desmond should remain here altogether." 
 
 " Not go to Languedoc at all ! But how ripping ! " 
 
 " I would like you to avoid the habit of talking slang." 
 
 ** But it would be ripping, wouldn't it ? I can't think of 
 another word. Is it true, is it really true? Needn't he go 
 at all?" 
 
 Desmond's entrance interrupted her questions, but she con- 
 veyed the news to him instantly. 
 
 " You are to stay here." 
 
 "What's up?" 
 
 Desmond had grown more in height than in muscle, in 
 grace rather than strength. He was a handsome boy now, with 
 his blue eyes alive and alert under his dark lashes, and any 
 mother might have been proud of him. Agatha felt a thrill 
 of satisfaction in knowing that he had become wholly hers. 
 
 " What is it ? What's this about not going to Lan- 
 guedoc ? " He looked from one to another. " Of course I'm 
 going, I wrote to father yesterday. I only put it off for a 
 week." Now he forgot what had detained him, and thought 
 of nothing but Pat waiting for him. " Is he angry ? "
 
 FULL SWING 67 
 
 " No/' she answered shortly, with a swift pang of jealousy, 
 seeing the change in his face, his anxiety. 
 
 The boy was quickly apprehensive of disaster, fearing he 
 knew not what. Behind that low forehead where the dark 
 hair curled crisply, at the back of the rebellious turmoil of his 
 childhood and the athletic prowess of his youth, lay an ever- 
 acute, if hidden, sen»itiveness. Instinctively he braced him- 
 self. If there was a blow coming he must not show he felt it, 
 not to his mother, anyway. 
 
 " Father isn't ill ? " he managed to ask. 
 
 « He is dead." 
 
 Agatha held out the telegram. In justice to her it must be 
 said she never believed anybody could really care for Pat 
 Grindelay. She could not keep the note of satisfaction from 
 her voice ; she said it as one who said, " Now you are free." 
 But Desmond heard the words as a wash of water in his ears, 
 felt a pain as of drowning, a rush of feeling so strong that it 
 nearly swept him from his feet. He was conscious of hating 
 her for telling him, of an overwhelming resentment towards 
 her. He could not trust himself to speak. The words rushed 
 about his ears like dead wreckage; he felt utterly forlorn, 
 drowning. His father was dead, his dear father, who' loved 
 him. 
 
 Eunice saw the dreadful change in his face. She was by 
 his side in an instant, her soft hand slid into his, he felt the 
 softness of the hand through his stunned consciousness, and 
 kept his grip upon it. Agatha knew that she had given her 
 news too abruptly. 
 
 "The telegram says very little. Perhaps you would like 
 to see it." 
 
 She held it out to him, but he made no movement toward 
 her. He was thinking that he hated her for not caring, and 
 that he would never forgive her. His father ! He was swim- 
 ming alone, with the waters rising, dead wreckage beating 
 about him, an unbearable pain in his heart. Eunice kept tight 
 hold of his hand ; she understood. 
 
 *^ Poor Desmond, poor, darling Desmond ! " Although she 
 had never seen his father, and knew nothing of him but vaguely
 
 68 FULL SWING 
 
 that he had made auntie unhappy, her S5Tnpathetic tears began 
 to fall. "Don't look like that; we'll comfort you — auntie 
 and I." Her tears fell, "Won't we, auntie?" 
 
 " You had better sit down." Agatha paled at the sight of 
 his pale face, " I am sorry you are so distressed," she went on 
 compassionately, " We shall have to think what is to be done. 
 It may be advisable we should go over." 
 
 She did not know what to say. It seemed to her such a 
 good thing that Lord Grindelay was dead, the unhappiness of 
 her son's face hurt her, 
 
 Desmond did not sit down; he stood still and fought for 
 his self-command. 
 
 " I can catch the night mail," he got out presently, 
 
 " To-morrow, or even next day, will be time enough. I 
 have already telegraphed to Andrew McKay. He will see 
 that proper arrangements are made." 
 
 Desmond felt very cold, and physically a little sick as he 
 disengaged his hand from Eunice's, The sickness was of 
 longing for his father, for the red face and Irish accent, for 
 the warmth of his greeting and the hearty hand upon his 
 shoulder. Was it true that he would never see him again? 
 "Father! " And she was glad, glad — he saw it in her eyes. 
 Resentment swelled in his swelling heart, and pain stifled the 
 sob in his throat. " Father! " He could have cried the word, 
 and for all the remembered kindness! He went from the 
 room quickly, for neither of them must see his eyes. He must 
 see his father once again, must get to him, and to the warmth 
 of those Irish servants; to the '^Is it yersilf thin, Mr. Des^ 
 mond ? " of Larry and the rest ; to Biddy's arms and sympathy, 
 since his mother could only look wonderingly at him. 
 
 He was upstairs in his room, flinging his possessions to- 
 gether, opening disordered drawers, cramming underclothes 
 and overclothes into one distended trunk, seeing nothing for 
 the tears that were falling, before Agatha fully realised that 
 he was suffering. 
 
 " Go after him ! " she said to Eunice. " I did not think 
 he would be so distressed." 
 
 Eunice was quick to obey her, quick to understand. After
 
 FULL SWING 69 
 
 all, Lord Grindelay ivas Desmond's father, although he wore 
 a white hat and sometime8 drank more than was good for liim, 
 and kept Desmond from them. 
 
 " He was dreadfully upset." 
 
 "I am afraid I broke it to him too abruptly. It never 
 struck me that he could care." 
 
 The mistress of Marley so seldom saw there were two 
 sides to any question, her own and the other person's. Of 
 course, she had not wanted to wound the boy, but it had seemed 
 so wonderful that just at the most important moment of his 
 career he should be without that which might impede it. 
 
 " Go after him ; tell him I am sorr^^ I broke it so abruptly. 
 Let him know he is to do just as he likes about going over." 
 Eunice had already gone. 
 
 But Desmond would have done just as he liked without his 
 mother's message. And that was to get to Ireland as quickly 
 as train and steamer would carry him, with or without her 
 permission. He did not want Eunice to comfort him, nor that 
 she should see he had been crying. He locked his door against 
 her, commanded his voice enough to call out to her that she 
 was not to bother him, tKat he was packing. 
 
 " Get the dog-cart round ! Look up the trains ! " 
 
 " Can't I help you pack ? " she asked through the door. 
 " Let me in, Desmond. I want to be with you. I'm so sorry." 
 
 " I've no time for talking." 
 
 And no inclination. He wanted to be alone. When she 
 came back to tell him about the trains he still did not unlock 
 the door. She had to call out to him through it that he would 
 be able to catch a train for London in time for the Irish mail 
 if he could be ready in fifteen minutes. 
 
 " All right ! " was all the answer. He did not want to see 
 anyone with tiiis desolation upon him, and the tears he could 
 not keep from falliug. Why had he lingered on here? What 
 he wanted to do now was to get out of the house, to be on his 
 way to Ireland, that no one should speak to him. 
 
 And he accomplished it, or very nearly. Eunice, lying in 
 wait, gave him a hurried kiss, and whispered :
 
 70 FULL SWING 
 
 " I'm sorry if you're sorry, Desmond. I wish I were com- 
 ing with you to help and comfort you." 
 
 His mother was in the hall when he went through. She 
 knew now the less she said to him the better. The dog-cart 
 was at the door. 
 
 " Put my bag in front." 
 
 He was hurrying through; he did not want to speak. 
 
 " You will need money." 
 
 He had not given it a thought. It flashed through her 
 mind then that in some ways he was like his father, and the 
 knowledge was like a flame in the love that was beginning to 
 bum her. But for her forethought he would have gone to 
 Euston without the means to go farther. 
 
 "It is all I have in the house, but I think there is 
 enough." 
 
 He was not grateful ; he only wanted to get away from her 
 and that she should not see his red eyes. He said hastily : 
 
 " Thanks. I shall have to drive him all I know." 
 
 He did not stay to say good-bye to her or Eunice, but was 
 out of the door and in the dog-cart, had gathered up the 
 reins and was off, before it seemed possible.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 It was 'Andrew McKay's opinion, expressed in a carefully 
 worded letter arriving in Marley the next day by the hand 
 of a special messenger, that Lady Grindelay should go over 
 to Ireland for her husband's funeral and be present at the 
 reading of the will, if there were a will — in any case, be on 
 hand to assert her rights to the guardianship, not only of 
 whatever property may have been left to her son, but of that 
 young man himself. Andrew McKay offered to accompany 
 her. She could take twenty-four hours to make up her mind, 
 he wrote, or even more. The funeral would not in any case 
 be before Friday. 
 
 The messenger who brought the letter was his own son, 
 young Michael McKay, just graduated in Edinburgh, and 
 already in his f atlier's office. 
 
 Lady Grindelay made the young man welcome, but took 
 time to consider the unpalatable advice he brought. Mean- 
 while Eunice did the honours of the house, and so well that 
 young Michael thought then, and never ceased to think in 
 the years that followed, that a sweeter chatelaine, or one more 
 fitted for the post she occupied, had never been. She took 
 him into the rose garden, and where the cultivated violets lay 
 at the foot of the sundial among the old lead figures; to see 
 the new puppies and Desmond's black mare. Michael had 
 been here as a boy with his father, but a series of accidental 
 circumstances had kept him away during the last three or 
 four years. Eunice and he renewed their acquaintance almost 
 as strangers. 
 
 Eunice understood her aunt wanted solitude and was to 
 be relieved of the young man. At lunch she heard he was 
 to stay the night, and that her aunt would go to London 
 with him in the morning. A telegram had already been 
 dispatched to his father. 
 
 After lunch she took him on the river. 
 
 71
 
 72 FULL SWING- 
 
 It was so early in the spring that they had the river to 
 themselves. In many places it had overflowed its banks ; here 
 at Marley it was wide and full. They stood and watched it 
 together a little while when they came back from their row, 
 and Eimice thought of Desmond, and what a dull companion 
 Michael was in comparison. Then she was suddenly filled 
 with compunction lest she should fail in kindness towards 
 her guest. There was a climb before them, and a long walk 
 to the house. This part of Marley Wood sloping to the river 
 was far-lying. 
 
 " If you think you will be tired we can telephone from 
 the boat-house to the stables. Perhaps we had better; it is 
 getting late." 
 
 Michael was in the mood to accede to anything she pro- 
 posed. They waited on the banks for the carriage, and she 
 tried to make conversation for him. 
 
 " There is a notice up about picnic parties and boats not 
 trespassing, but they come all the same in the summer and 
 tie up under the trees. I think it is nice to feel we are giving 
 people shade or shelter. I want auntie to take down the 
 notices, to let them land, and spread their teas, and walk in 
 the woods." 
 
 "But you would not know what sort of people might 
 come," he objected; "people from the East End of London, 
 trippers. You would find soiled paper lying about, and 
 empty bottles." 
 
 " I don't think that would matter at all. They could be 
 cleared away. And the poorer the people were, or the smaller 
 the homes they came from, the better it would seem to them 
 to be here." 
 
 " But you would not be able to come out alone." 
 " I never do come here alone as it is. When Desmond isn't 
 here, my governess comes with me, or auntie." 
 
 It seemed to him very fitting she should be so well chaper- 
 oned and guarded. At six and twenty, Michael was something 
 of a prig, thinking all his prejudices were principles. A tall 
 and well set-up young man, nevertheless, whose gravity be- 
 came him. He wore an eyeglass, but only because the sight
 
 FULL SWING 73 
 
 of one eye was really defective. It represented, nevertheless, 
 his outlook on life. It was all in tin boxes and iron safes, 
 docketed and labelled. 
 
 At dinner-time, however, he noticed that the girl's com- 
 plexion looked even fairer in the evening than by daylight. 
 He saw her small and slender hands, her instinctive grace, 
 the sympathetic way she looked at Lady Grindelay. The 
 occasion was a solemn one, or at least serious; the note of 
 the dinner-table fitted it, being subdued and quiet. So was 
 all the service, suiting his taste. He tried to remember her 
 age. She wore her hair down, but surely she must be seven- 
 teen. He began to think of his own age, and of all the exami- 
 nations he had passed so brilliantly, and to plume himself 
 on his LL.B. and gold medal. 
 
 He had not intended to marry until he was at least thirty 
 and a partner in the firm. But when he went to bed that 
 night he reconsidered the question. Twenty-seven was surely 
 a good age for matrimony. He would be out of his articles 
 next 3'ear; and there was his mother's money waiting for him. 
 So thinking, he fell asleep to dream of Eunice; the first of 
 many such nights. 
 
 He escorted Lady Grindelay to London next morning. 
 She had to get mourning, prepare for the ordeal in front of 
 her, although she did not guess what an ordeal it was to prove. 
 
 " Tell your father I will meet him at Euston. He is not 
 to bother about me until then. I have plenty to do." 
 
 " He told me to ask you if you would lunch with him in 
 the City or at home — I've only to let him know. Perhaps you 
 would allow me to give you lunch at my club ? " 
 
 " I should prefer not to make any appointments. It is 
 very kind of your father, and of you. I am quite all right 
 alone." 
 
 "And for lunch?" 
 
 "I shall get something to eat when I have finished my 
 shopping. There are plenty of places." 
 
 " Until to-night, then." 
 
 " Yes, if you are seeing us off." 
 
 Lady Grindelay bought mourning; she knew what was
 
 74 FULL SWING 
 
 the right thing to do. She might feel glad, inexpressibly 
 relieved, but she must not show it. She bought a widoVs 
 bonnet with long streamers, white lawn collars, cuffs and 
 caps. Now it was comparatively easy for her to pay respect 
 to her husband's memory. Whilst he was alive respect was 
 impossible. It was Andrew McKay's advice that slie should 
 go to Ireland for the funeral, but it accorded with her own 
 sense of the fitness of things. 
 
 It was perhaps unfortunate that his advice and her views 
 were the same. It would have been so much better had she 
 stayed at Murley, better for herself as well as for Desmond 
 if she had never attended the obsequies of that deceased, 
 somewhat beloved, but never respected nobleman, Patrick 
 Canning Warner Foulds, late Lord Grindelay. 
 
 What she found at Languedoc Castle, besides the corpse — 
 which to the great scandal of the household and outdoor ser- 
 vants, and the tenantry who got to know of it, she never 
 visited at all — was very much what she had left in high 
 disgust some twenty years before. Dirt, disorder and 
 discomfort beyond the telling. Wild trees unpruned, great 
 hedges undipped, cattle straying up to the very door where 
 the dilapidated coach and odd horses drew her and Andrew; 
 fallen masonry outside, and inside, bare walls and oddly 
 carpeted floors, upholstered furniture in the first stage of 
 decay and carved furniture in the last stage of ill-treatment, 
 and absence of baths or even hot water, of light other than 
 guttering candles, of servants other than garrulous or sullen, 
 of service, in the way she understood the word, trained and 
 competent; of even decency in a house of mourning, as 
 decency is understood on the other side of the Channel. 
 
 But there was worse than that, infinitely worse, that neither 
 she nor Andrew had anticipated. 
 
 They had thought to be met by the new Lord Grindelay, 
 by Desmond. Eton and Marley must have acquainted him 
 with the proprieties. She anticipated, and Andrew also, that 
 the boy would stand between her and the humours or ameni- 
 ties of this out of date Irish household. 
 
 But neither on the night she arrived nor the next morning
 
 FULL SWING 75 
 
 was anything to be seen of Desmond. '' Mr. Desmond, God 
 bless him," was there, so she was told, but no one " would be 
 for fetchin' him from his father's room." " It's not himself 
 he is entoirely," was a euphemism she did not understand. 
 She was outside her son's mind, knowing nothing of the 
 agony of self-reproach that had accompanied him here, 
 nothing of the thirty-six hours he had spent in the chamber 
 of Death, almost without sleep, listening to the story of how 
 his father's end had come about. He was young and impres- 
 sionable, remorseful, miserable. She thought him wanting 
 in respect, affection, because he neither met her at the station 
 nor came to her when she arrived. She was hurt, and thought 
 she was angry, speaking bitterly of him to Andrew and of his 
 father's influence. But it was not that he lacked respect or 
 affection, only that she was not in his mind at all. 
 
 His father had asked for him all those three days of his 
 illness; he could have been there, seen him once more, heard 
 his last words. But he had stayed away. He even forgot what 
 had detained him, and could remember nothing but that he 
 had been thoughtless and selfish. Biddy, who had been his 
 own nurse, and Larry, who was Lord Grindelay's body- 
 servant, tried to console him. 
 
 " An' didn't we kape tellin' him if ye'd only known, ye'd 
 have bin over any minit, an' that it wasn't you didn't care 
 for him nor the want of the warm heart. But nothin' served. 
 I saw the tears row! down his cheeks. * I shan't see him agin,' 
 
 he sed. ' She's got him, the ; an' she'll kape him, bad 
 
 cess to her.' But I mustn't tell ye the words he put to yer 
 lady mother. It wasn't him that was mealy-mouthed, as you'll 
 remimber. * She's got him an' she'll kape him,' he sed; 
 * there's no use telegraphin'. Though me eyes are achin' for 
 a soight of his face, she'll not let him come.' He was begin- 
 ning his dyin', thin, but as clear in his mind as you or me. 
 ' She'll sind it up to the law3^er'8 office, an' all I'll get '11 be 
 printin' from Andrew McKay, God curse him,' he said." 
 
 " You might have wired." 
 
 " An' so I might ; ye're right there. But it all came about 
 so quick, an' me fingers had got soddened with the powltices.
 
 76 FULL SWING 
 
 The bit of a girl at the post office would maybe have written 
 for me, but I was hearin' she wasn't there any more by ray son 
 of them havin' got a bhoy instid, an impident bit of a clerk. 
 We were cheerin' him an' tellin' him to give over talkin' and 
 coughin', an' we'd pull liim through, an' there'd be the foine 
 toimes you an' he'd be afther havin' together whin ye did 
 come. An' whiniver the docthor wint away we jist give him 
 the whisky, an' hoped for the best." 
 
 And then Biddy would start wailing, and Larry would 
 join in, so that Mr. Desmond would not know what a sad 
 best it was, this death the whisky could no longer keep away. 
 
 " Shure he jist hiccoughed himsilf into hell — as Father 
 Malone would have it," Larry sobbed at the end of the telling ; 
 *' cursin' your mother, an' himsilf because he was gettin' out 
 of the way, an' she'd have ye to hersilf whin he was gone. 
 He knew the hatred she had against him, the foine, liberal, 
 noble gintleman that he was." 
 
 The boy was red-eyed from want of sleep, from crying, 
 and because of his remorse. 
 
 " It wasn't she that kept me ; it was for my own pleasure 
 I stayed away." But they did not believe him. 
 
 " What are ye afther tellin' us ? Don't we know it's here 
 ye had the foine times? At the very last his moind was 
 wanderin'. He kep' sayin' she'd turned you aginst him, an' 
 that you'd grow up a wather dhrinker, an' not be able to 
 hould yer glass, nor tell a story, nor sing a song, an' that 
 it was not an Irishman ye'd come back at all, at all, wid no 
 love in yer heart for the ould place nor the ould ways. But 
 we didn't belave him, did we, Biddy ? We kep' tellin' him to 
 have done, an' givin' him the whisky." 
 
 But Biddy and Larry were not only repeating their late 
 master's words. With national craft and an eye to the future, 
 they poured out their voluble patriotism. What was to be- 
 come of them all if it were true that the new Lord Grind«l«.y 
 was taken up with English ways? 
 
 Larry and Biddy touched all the chords in Desmond's 
 sensitive and ravaged heart, found where he was tender, and 
 struck the tenderness to sound as if it had been a harp and
 
 FULL SWING 77 
 
 theirs the fingers that could play upon it. Desmond spent the 
 first night here on his knees by poor Pat's coffin; he hadn't 
 to hide his eyes from these old servants nor show any self- 
 i^estraint. Travel-stained, exhausted with tears and remorse, 
 truly he was not himself. He sobbed that he was an Irishman, 
 and that everything for which his father cared he would care 
 for too and preserve. 
 
 "An' God bless ye, Mr. Desmond — milord, for it's a 
 thrue Foulds ye are an' yer father's son, for all yer foreign 
 trainin'." 
 
 Biddy brought him the food that choked him to eat, and, 
 when he put it on one side, coaxed him to his milk and 
 potheen that went down so much easier. 
 
 « « « « « 
 
 There was a constant coming and going in that great room 
 where the coffin stood on its high trestles, the old servants 
 keening and crying, and the black bottle going round. A 
 disgraceful scene, some would have called it ; but the note of 
 grief was genuine, and the boy found comfort in it. His 
 brain grew confused, but his trouble was solaced. Everybody 
 here loved his father. He could not face his mother's indif- 
 ference or coldness. Not Just yet. He had not been with his 
 father when he called for him, but he would stay with him to 
 the end, and among these dear familiar people who were keen- 
 ing for him. 
 
 It was true that he was not himself on the day of the 
 funeral. Women with streaming eyes and aprons thrown over 
 their heads, men in scarecrow clothes, ragged girls and boys, 
 murmured their sympathy. The house was full on the morn- 
 ing of the funeral, when his mother saw him for the first 
 time. He had been beside the coffin until then, in the darkened 
 room. 
 
 Lord Grindelay was to be borne to his last resting place 
 by none but those who loved him. There were more than 
 enough to be found in Languedoc, friends and neighbours. 
 Desmond was to walk at the head of the procession. Lady 
 Grindelay, who had been informed but not consulted as to the
 
 78 FULL SWING 
 
 arrangements, was impatient of it all, of the dreadful memories 
 that came to her. Time had obscured them, hut now they 
 thronged about her again. Every day of her married life 
 here her sensitiveness had been shocked, her taste violated, 
 her traditions outraged. She wanted the funeral to be over, 
 to get away, to take Desmond vrith her, and forget he had ever 
 had another parent than herself. In the future there would 
 be no one between them. 
 
 Desmond was not in the great hall when, in her conven- 
 tional widow's weeds, she came down from her bed-room. 
 Andrew, from an indistinguishable crowd of people, curious 
 or resentful, came forward to meet her; but Desmond was not 
 there. The hall door stood open, and beyond it, in the driz- 
 zling rain, were people and yet more people, a black and 
 moving crowd. She could see the coffin and clergy; men in 
 high hats, women with aprons over their heads, everyone but 
 her son. 
 
 Andrew offered her his arm. 
 
 " Tliey are going to start." 
 
 " And Desmond ? " 
 
 " Desmond is one of the bearers. I haven't been able to 
 speak to him ; he is out there with the others." 
 
 She went on Andrew's arm to follow the procession that 
 had already been formed. But it was not until they were half- 
 way to the mausoleum that she saw Desmond. 
 
 Could that be Desmond? Her Desmond? The young 
 Etonian who had left Marley in his clothes made by Brown, 
 and his straw hat with the blue and black ribbon? He was 
 dressed in mourning, shiny and ridiculous, hastily made by 
 the village tailor. His shoulder supported the comer of the 
 coffin; he looked neither to left nor right, plodding on with 
 the others. 
 
 The whole scene was strange, the slow-moving procession, 
 the shiny black hats in the rain, the tramp of many feet, and 
 the voices of the wailing women. It seemed endless hours 
 that she walked, too, her hand on Andrew McKay's arm, but 
 never speaking to him. Alien to them both was the scene, 
 the prayers and the wild cries when the coffin was placed in
 
 FULL SWING 79 
 
 the mausoleum, the funeral service sounding strange in the 
 brogue, the immediate change of mood when it was all over; 
 the almost festive air of the now straggling multitude. 
 
 " Are they all coming back vrith us ? " she asked Andrew 
 in dismay. 
 
 "There is a big feast spread in the dining-room; they 
 seem to have been busy at it for days. Many of the neigh- 
 bours come from a long distance," he added apologetically. 
 
 " You know I have not seen Desmond since I have been 
 here. He has never been near me." 
 
 '^He is surroimded now by his father's friends and re- 
 tainers." 
 
 He wanted to prepare her. But no preparation could dis- 
 guise the truth. Andrew had seen that Desmond stumbled 
 as he walked, the coffin resting on his shoulder. But there 
 were nine others to support it, and Larry was by the side of 
 his dead master's son. Andrew still hoped Agatha had seen 
 nothing. 
 
 Lady Grindelay, apart from the mourners, in her well- 
 cut black, veil down, a black-edged handkerchief in her hand, 
 was dry-eyed, as everyone could see. There was a feeling 
 against her in the crowd that overflowed the grounds, 
 although it was kept from breaking into demonstration by 
 the occasion. But here a word and there a word escaped, and 
 they were loud in Desmond's ears. 
 
 "An' he might have bin alive if she'd had the warmth 
 in her heart to warm him." 
 
 " He was a fine jintleman, an' not a tear in her eye for 
 him." 
 
 Desmond felt that which kept him from going to his 
 mother, although he was in no condition for thinking. Andrew 
 went to him when they got back to the house, and tried to 
 draw him apart. 
 
 " Will you come with me now to your mother ? She has 
 gone to her room." 
 
 Larry whispered, " She's goin' to tell ye not to fret for 
 him." 
 
 " Perhaps it would be better if you sat quietly with her
 
 80 FULL SWING- 
 
 for a little, if you did not appear in the dining-room." 
 Andrew had not guessed Desmond to be so far gone as now 
 he saw him. " Will you come with me ? " 
 
 " I suppose you think I'm drunk ? " said Desmond sud- 
 denly and unexpectedly. " There is nothing at all the matter 
 with me." He pushed away Larry, who was standing close 
 beside him. 
 
 "Be aisy, thin." 
 
 Desmond stood upright, but lurched and laid hold of him 
 again. " I'm not drunk. I've had no breakfast this morn- 
 ing." He was defending himself stupidly. 
 
 *' I am sure you are not drunk." 
 
 " Of course I shall go into the dining-room." 
 
 "It's not in respect for Ms mimry ye'U be wantin'," 
 Larry interrupted admiringly. 
 
 " I'll speak to my mother now." His condition gave him 
 courage. " Wliere is she ? You come too, Larry. Of course 
 I'm going into the dining-room." 
 
 Andrew could not control, he could only follow, him, 
 hoping to soften or shorten the impending scene. 
 
 Lady Grindelay was in her own room, and now he was 
 here at her door. She saw him, where so often his father had 
 stood to laugh at or insult her. Desmond was red-eyed, dressed 
 in those horrible village-made clothes, his hat had streamers. 
 But it was not the village-made clothes nor the streamers 
 that sent that hot and surging anguish through her, that 
 shock of remembrance. 
 
 " Mother ! " 
 
 His voice was thick, his feet unsteady as he lurched for- 
 word towards her. " McKay says you don't want me to dine 
 with my father's friends " 
 
 " I never said so." 
 
 " You need not put out your hands to keep me off." She 
 had not done so, but he read in her face, for all he saw so 
 unsteadily, that it was revulsion he roused in her. He was 
 not of an age, nor in a condition, to know that the root of 
 the revulsion was love — love, sick and shaken with shame. 
 Agatha wanted to put her arms about him and hold him,
 
 FULL SWING 81 
 
 hiding him from all the world. But instead of him it was 
 herself she hid. 
 
 " I'm not coming near you. I shall pay him the last 
 respect." 
 
 "Of imitation ? " she said, unhappily. He was not too 
 far gone to understand her meaning. 
 
 " You think I'm drunk/' he answered unsteadily. 
 
 " To be shure an' you're not/' said Larry, supporting him. 
 " It's the throuble he's in," he said to Agatha. She put her 
 hands before her face. No one could guess what the shock 
 was to her, seeing him like this, and what dreadful memories 
 were evoked. 
 
 But the difference was that she loved this slender, swaying 
 figure and the thick voice. Her conscience seared her and 
 told her all the fault was hers. He was the fruits of her 
 incredible marriage — like this from no fault of his own. 
 Love, pity and remorse overwhelmed her, she covered her 
 face with her hands. 
 
 Then every'thing he had heard about her came into Des- 
 mond's fuddled mind, and he forgot how differently he knew 
 her. There came upon him the garrulity and loose speech of 
 the half-intoxicated, denials, excuses, explanations, and even 
 reproaches. 
 
 " You never understood him. There's a gulf between the 
 English and the Irish. If he drank it was out of the light 
 heart. I know what I'm talking about. I'm not drunk, what- 
 ever you may think. You never cared for him ; he often told 
 me you'd set yourself against him." In the loosened speech 
 were tears. " I'll be lonely in the world without him. Didn't 
 he love me with the great warm heart of him, and never a 
 word of criticism? I'm not clever enough for you, but he 
 didn't care what I did. . . ." 
 
 If there was arraignment there was also appeal. He was 
 lonely, death had shaken him. The mist between them, 
 through which they could not see each other's face or heart, 
 was the mist of tears. Her heart was crying for this poor 
 son, and yet she could not answer him. So he went on, mis- 
 judging her. 
 6
 
 82 FULL SWING 
 
 " You are as cold as ice to me/' he cried. " I'm not as 
 bad as you think ; it's only because I've had no food. If you 
 looked at him like you're looking at me now, is it a wonder 
 he was unhappy, and — and bitter ? I've had no sleep since I've 
 been here for hearing him calling for me, while only the ser- 
 vants were with him when he died. What are you looking at 
 me for ? I've seen people drunk, so you needn't think I don't 
 know. There's nothing the matter with me." 
 
 " I have not said you are drunk," she faltered. And then, 
 because the very word sickened her she caught at her mantle 
 of reserve and wrapped herself in it. ^'Will you go now? 
 You would be better alone, perhaps. . . ." 
 
 He resented that, and poured out more fiery incoherent 
 words, under which she grew whiter, but less able to reply. 
 Larry had the sense to see the scene must end, and led or 
 coaxed him away. She heard him talking to himself as he 
 went downstairs, holding to the stairs and saying he was " as 
 right as rain — quite all right — but the stairs were so un- 
 even." She would have held him in her arms and hidden him, 
 but her lack of love-words came between. She heard after- 
 wards of his condition at the funeral feast, and that eventually 
 he was helped from the dining-room, as his father had been so 
 many times. 
 
 In the morning, recovered and miserably conscious of 
 offence, without quite remembering its heinousness, Desmond 
 sought out Andrew, and begged him to tell his mother how 
 it had come about, to plead for forgiveness for him. That 
 was a mistake. He ought not to have called upon anyone for 
 help, but have thrown himself on his knees before her. She 
 would have lifted him up. She had come slowly to her mother- 
 hood, into her woman's kingdom of pride and pain. He did 
 not know she was there, nor what her reign might mean. He 
 was half afraid of her, thinking her austere and rigid. And 
 so he made his submission through Andrew, denying her 
 rights. 
 
 She answered Andrew coldly, covering up her heart. And 
 Andrew urged her, knowing no better. 
 
 " Have a little tolerance, hear at least what he has to say
 
 FULL SWING 83 
 
 in excuse. These young things, they bear pain so badly ! He 
 is only a boy; not the first boy who has taken more than is 
 good for him. Don't set up an impossible standard and expect 
 him to conform to it. These Irish servants of his have been 
 plying him with whisky and milk and tales. He should have 
 been here on the 12th.' He is unhappy at having lingered at 
 Marley." 
 
 So Andrew pleaded, and tactlessly added: "And in his 
 case, of course, there is hereditary disposition to overcome. 
 You ought to make allowance for him, Agatha. You make 
 mistakes yourself." 
 
 " At least I never get drunk ! " she was goaded into retort- 
 ing. And because he was pleading for her son, for whom 
 no plea was needed, she put up her shield so that neither 
 Desmond nor Andrew could seQ what lay behind it.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 When Lady Grindelay went back to Marley, Desmond re- 
 mained at Languedoc. Andrew thought it was better so 
 under the circumstances. He misread Agatha's silence, and 
 thought she would be more likely to forgive the boy if there 
 was a temporary separation between them. He came late to 
 a real understanding of her feeling for Desmond, which is 
 perhaps not surprising. 
 
 At Languedoc, his father's friends attentive, and the old 
 servants solicitous, Desmond's thoughts followed his mother 
 to Marley, and he wondered miserably what she would tell 
 Eunice. He had said unforgivable and unforgettable things 
 to her; he had been drunk at his father's funeral. He dwelt 
 upon the condition of affairs between her and his father, and 
 told himself wretchedly that because of it she had never cared 
 for him. In a way his feeling for her had been growing with 
 his years no less than hers for him. But he had never known 
 it until now. He did not want forgiveness from her; he 
 wanted love, comprehension; he felt very lonely and aban- 
 doned, and cried often for poor Pat. He could not take con- 
 solation from the attentions and solicitousness that were shown 
 by those around him, because he was conscious of disloyalty 
 to them, and to Languedoc. 
 
 In sight of the mountains and sea, the coastline, jutting 
 headland and weathered rocks, the great sweeps of dark moor- 
 land, he had an unspeakable longing for the green woods of 
 Marley and the grey house upon the hill, for the murmuring 
 sedges where the river washed the banks, the velvet lawns and 
 cut yew trees. 
 
 Eunice could not guess why Desmond lingered in Ireland. 
 She wrote : 
 
 "Why are you staying away? Marley isn't Marley 
 without you. I'm sure auntie wants you back as much as 
 I do, although she hasn't said anything. She isn't as in- 
 
 84
 
 FULL SWING 85 
 
 terested in me or my lessons as usual; whenever I speak 
 to her she seems to be thinking of something else, but not 
 something nice. I believe she is unhappy. If you have 
 quarrelled "with her, do come home and make it up, or 
 write her a loving letter. Whatever it is, if you say you 
 are sorry she won't think anything more about it. She 
 is always like that, you know; she never holds things 
 over us." 
 
 There followed a page about matters that were full of 
 interest to them both, of the dell with a trickle of water in it 
 that tasted as if it came from the sea, of a fox's lair that was 
 a secret from all the world. 
 
 " I went on the river with Michael McKay yesterday, 
 Uncle Andrew's son. He's got a glass in his eye that he 
 used not to have when he was here before. But I like him 
 all the same. You haven't quarrelled with me, so mind 
 you answer m}"- letter. I'm longing to hear from you. 
 Never mind about the spelling" — (for it was one of the 
 jokes between them that Desmond was ever a bad corre- 
 spondent because of this). " I promise you not to notice 
 if you put ' beleive ' instead of ' believe.' Dear Desmon<i, 
 I do long for you so." 
 
 And he ? Was he not longing for her ? 
 
 " My mother doesn't want me at Marley, or I'd come like 
 a shot," he replied, when he could bring himself to reply 
 at all. 
 
 Eunice showed the letter to Lady Grindelay. Agatha said 
 at first that she did not want to read it ; that to show another 
 person's letter was a breach of confidence. 
 
 "At least his spelling has improved," she said noncha- 
 lantly, when she handed it back. But Eunice noted her 
 expression, and went on: 
 
 " You haven't forgotten it's my birthday next week ? " 
 
 "No; I have not forgotten," Lady Grindelay answered. 
 But she had. The girl's place with her had altered since her 
 return from Ireland. She had to consider her, to consider
 
 86 FULL SWING 
 
 her above all things, because she was a sacred and precious 
 trust. But now she resented it, she could no longer think 
 of Eunice and Desmond together, her scheme must be aban- 
 doned. She had to guard the girl, protect her, give her to no 
 young drunkard, however dear. 
 
 " Auntie ! " The ready arms were about her, the coaxing 
 voice in her ear. " May Desmond come for my birthday ? 
 Desmond has been here so many of my birthdays." 
 
 " I have not told him to stay away." 
 
 "He says he'll come like a shot if you want him. He 
 thinks you don't want him. He always thinks you don't care 
 about him like you do about me. Desmond is so sensitive." 
 
 " He might have written to me himself." 
 
 " He's so afraid of his spelling. And it's just the same 
 if he writes to me ; he knew I should show you his letter." 
 
 " I will think it over." 
 
 But she had thought of little else since she had left Ireland,' 
 and how to save him. Her conscience was as troublesome at 
 sixty as it had been at sixteen. Why had she not warned him, 
 spoken openly to him, and thought not of her own humilia- 
 tion, but only of his good. 
 
 " Write to him, then," she said suddenly. "' Tell him about 
 your birthday, and that — that I shall be glad to see him." 
 
 Eunice hugged her and ran off to do it, lest her aunt should 
 change her mind. 
 
 He must come back; some occupation must be found for 
 him, some way of strengthening him. It had been planned 
 that he was to go to Oxford when he left Eton, but now Agatha 
 was doubtful if the Oxford atmosphere would not prove too 
 enervating. Perhaps she should keep him under her own 
 eye. But when she thought of that, she rejected it at once, 
 because that was what she would have liked best. 
 
 Of one thing, however, she was quite certain. The very 
 pain the certainty gave her, proved the necessity. Any talk 
 or thought of love-making between the two of them, between 
 Eunice and her poor boy must be abandoned. Monica's child 
 must not suffer as she had done — must not be sacrificed. 
 
 In order that she should not weaken about this, for she
 
 FULL SWING 8? 
 
 had it in her mind that she could refuse him nothing for 
 which he might plead, she spoke to Andrew. Eunice was on 
 the river with Michael ; yesterday, too, had been spent in the 
 same way. 
 
 What she said to Andrew made his response easy. 
 
 " She is too young to be talking or thinking of marriage." 
 
 " I don't think so. I should like to feel that her future is 
 secure." 
 
 " There is no hurry, surely. She is barely seventeen." 
 
 They were in the library as they had been nearly thirty 
 years ago, and again fourteen years later. The lawyer could 
 forget neither occasion. He walked towards the window, 
 looked out on the fair and lovely prospect, the rolling lawns 
 and the great woods that stretched to the river. He could 
 not command himself to forget. 
 
 " He said half a word to me. It had better stop now if 
 it has to stop. I thought you had other views for her." 
 
 " If I had, I have them no longer." 
 
 He wheeled round swiftly. 
 
 "Why? You don't mean because of what happened in 
 Languedoc you would not give her to him ? " 
 
 " I hold her in trust." 
 
 " You never change from these quick decisions, from being 
 impulsive. There is nothing the matter with the boy." 
 
 "Eunice must take no risks," she said dully. He could 
 see she had been suffering, and forbore to argue with her. 
 He had accepted her view of the late Irish peer, and perhaps 
 not unnaturally agreed with her as the possibility of Desmond 
 inheriting his proclivities. 
 
 And, then, there was nothing he wished more than that 
 Michael should woo and wed Agatha's niece. Having missed 
 his own happiness in life, he was anxious Michael should not 
 do the same. He knew already how it was with Michael. 
 
 " You won't change your mind again ? " he asked Agatha. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Michael is reliable, steady, straightforward." 
 
 There was more said between them, a great deal more, 
 but on the same lines. Such a marriage would heal any old
 
 88 FULL SWING 
 
 soreness between her and Andrew; there should never have 
 been any between them. She knew her folly by now, and 
 that if she had to marry any one, he should have been the man. 
 " I believe in young marriages," said Andrew, when the 
 preliminaries had been arranged. 
 
 " I do not see anything for which they need wait," answered 
 Agatha, thinking only of Desmond, and that she could devote 
 herself entirely to him when she had no one else. 
 
 Andrew sounded a note of warning, but when had she 
 listened to Andrew? If she gave up her dream, and suffered 
 in its relinquishment, did not that prove she was right? And 
 Andrew sounded his warning note but softly. He, too, thought 
 it would be for the girl's happiness. Michael was such a 
 good fellow, so steady. 
 
 No grass was allowed to grow under their feet. Before 
 Desmond came back— tacitly between Andrew and Agatha, 
 openly between Michael and his father, but with few words 
 as became them both — it was understood that Michael had 
 the freedom to woo, that his suit met with the approval of 
 the elders. He knew nothing about the plan that had been 
 before; nothing about what had been destined for Desmond, 
 Poor Michael ! He conducted liis wooing with such cir- 
 cumspection, was so considerate of her tender years that 
 Eunice never even guessed the meaning of his tortuous 
 speeches, never looked upon him as anything but a young 
 man with dull, admiring sisters who bored her by singing 
 his praises whenever they came to Marley or she went to 
 Campden Hill. 
 
 Her heart was full of Desmond's coming, humming within 
 her like a bee honey-laden. There was a little awkwardness the 
 first evening of his arrival. 
 
 Eunice heard the wheels of the carriage coming back 
 from the station, and rushed out impetuously into the hall. 
 She flung herself into his arms, kissing him, exclaiming: 
 
 " Oh, Desmond ! I'm so glad you've come. Oh, Desmond, 
 
 you've grown, and I think you're more handsome than ever." 
 
 Desmond returned her kiss warmly, and then was startled 
 
 at what came over him, and had not recovered when she led
 
 FULL SWING 89 
 
 him into the dining-room. He was travel-stained, and felt 
 himself at a disadvantage. The table "was spread with flowers 
 and silver and glass; Michael's sisters were in white shim- 
 mering evening dresses; Michael, tall and correct, with stiff 
 white shirt and eyeglass. His mother would think him half 
 a savage to be coming among them like this; he could not 
 meet her eye — stammering out his excuses. 
 
 " I don't want anything to eat." 
 
 For they would have made way for him. He did not 
 know whether to kiss his mother or not. She was at the end 
 of the table. She had risen agitatedly when she heard him 
 in the hall, but had resumed her seat before he came in. 
 
 " Here he is, auntie. Hasn't he grown ? I do believe he's 
 got a moustache coming ! " 
 
 Agatha was not thinking of the things her son suspected, 
 only of the emotion his coming gave her, and that she must 
 not betray it. 
 
 " John will bring back the soup. "We have only just be- 
 gun." She gave him no formal greeting, and spoke as if 
 nothing had been between them. 
 
 " I can't sit down like this." 
 
 " Oh, yes, you can," Eunice interposed quickly. " You 
 look as well as anything. None of us mind. Auntie ordered 
 whitebait because she knew you liked it. We talked over the 
 menu ever so long this morning. Don't let everything get 
 spoilt." 
 
 " I hope you still like whitebait ? " Lady Grindelay said. 
 
 He saw she meant kindness, and took the indicated place, 
 ate with them, talked of the journey. The sense of home- 
 coming was strong upon him as the evening wore on, and an 
 intimate pleasure in it swelled in his voice as he talked. 
 
 He had not kissed his mother before the McKays, and the 
 servants in the dining-room, in front of everybody. But he 
 lingered in the drawing-room until all had gone to bed but 
 the two of them. When Lady Grindelay got up and said : 
 
 " I think we ought to be following our guests," he seized 
 the opportunity — shame-faced, nervous.
 
 90 FULL SWING 
 
 "I want to thank you for letting me come back," he 
 
 began. 
 
 She was ever inarticulate in emotion, and hurried her 
 
 answer. 
 
 " It is Eunice's birthday to-morrow. You have been here 
 for nearly all her birthdays. You will have to go up for your 
 examination next week. You had no books with you." 
 
 No maid with her lover could have been more shy than 
 Agatha with her son. She wished that he would kiss her, 
 but gave him no opportunity. 
 
 Desmond felt a little hurt, thrown back upon himself. 
 
 " Good-night, then," he said awkwardly. 
 
 " Good night," she answered. There was not even a kiss 
 between them. He had been full of penitence and gratitude 
 to her for letting him come here, of pleasure at being home 
 again. But now he felt something of reaction, and thought of 
 his father, to whom she must many times have been cold like 
 this. He never guessed that she was more glad than he in 
 his home-coming, half ashamed of what she only half realised, 
 young passion in an old heart, a dry old heart that had not 
 known it before. So few sons know how their mothers love 
 them. And this one less than any other, because of the cir- 
 cumstances that had kept them apart. 
 
 Perhaps naturally, it was not of his mother Desmond 
 thought when he went to bed without kissing her, but of 
 Eunice. She had greeted him as a sister, warmly, lovingly; 
 she had not omitted to kiss him. " But she isn't my sister, 
 and thank God for that! " was his last waking thought. He 
 was very happy. 
 
 The next day and the next Eunice hung about him, told 
 him everything that had happened during his absence, even 
 about the Orchid and a belated spike. 
 
 " Auntie is sure it's going to flower now. Sanders says 
 ' it's wakin' up to its work.' Jack Eeid is coming over this 
 afternoon. Michael's sisters, and me, and the two Campden 
 boys make five ; there's you and Michael, Billy Norland, and 
 two boys from the vicarage. Can't we have a tournament on
 
 FULL SWING 91 
 
 Saturday, Desmond, like we had at Denham ? We've only got 
 a few more. Isn't it lucky we've got an asphalt court ? " 
 
 "Billy" Norland was the Eev. William Norland, curate, 
 supposed to be casting sheep's eyes at one of the McKays. 
 Eunice told Desmond about it. To her it did not appear 
 romantic or sentimental ; it was only funny. She was younger 
 even than her years, and less developed. 
 
 "We are going to have a picnic to-morrow; that's what 
 I chose for my birthday, although Auntie said no one had 
 ever heard of a picnic in March. We are going to have it in 
 the woods — our woods ; but we could have the tournament on 
 Saturday. The McKays are staying till Monday. After that, 
 Desmond, after that we'll go together to all our old places." 
 
 She hung about him, talked, made plans. But, except on 
 that first evening, she had not kissed him. There was no 
 reason why she should not, no reason in her own mind. Per- 
 haps Desmond thought he was too old for kissing. She had 
 instincts, although she was without reason. She was satisfied 
 to have him there. 
 
 The house was full of guests those few days; luncheon 
 parties, dinner parties, continual games. Lady Grindelay 
 wished to put off for the present the talk she thought inevit- 
 able between herself and her son. He was never out of her 
 mind. 
 
 He was anxious to propitiate her, intermittently attentive. 
 But, of course, she was not his first interest, if he was hers. 
 She would not have believed it if she had been told she was 
 jealous of the girl's place with him. She thought she was only 
 intent on carrying out what she had decided was her duty and 
 inevitable, fulfilling her trust. 
 
 " You must not neglect your other guests for Desmond," 
 she told Eunice. " Desmond is at home here." Eunice had 
 come into her room before she was up, to ask if she and Des- 
 mond could go on the river before breakfast. 
 
 " If you do go, take Michael with you. Michael is fond 
 of rowing." This was on Saturday. 
 
 They did not go, for the presence of Michael would have 
 spoiled everything. They would wait until Monday, until he
 
 93 FULL SWING 
 
 ■went away again. Eunice and Desmond liked best to be alone. 
 Eunice, at least, had always knoMoi that. Yet those seventeen 
 years, all warm and sunlit, had been so guarded that there 
 ■were no seeds so"wn, and none could sprout, of comprehension 
 of that -which "was so near her, making every day more beau- 
 tiful than the last. 
 
 The full days fled. The picnic was a success. The tennis 
 tournament took place.. Michael and Madge Eeid "won it. 
 Desmond had never played so badly. 
 
 " You're out of practice," Eunice said to him consolingly. 
 Desmond knew better, but he -was in no mood to question -why 
 it -was he missed ball after ball, -why his muscles were relaxed 
 and he -wanted to dream, not to play games. 
 
 On Monday the McKays -were to go. Lady Grindelay, at 
 the last moment, suggested Michael should prolong his holi- 
 day. Andrew must go, the office called liim, he could not be 
 alone in that big house in Campden Hill. The girls had their 
 various avocations, their housekeeping, sewing classes, -what 
 not. But Michael, conscientious Michael, -who had so few 
 holidays, could surely prolong this one. Never had there been 
 a March so like May, one could see a misty veil of green already 
 on the trees. 
 
 Michael -would not stay, -would not neglect his father or 
 his -work, but said that if Lady Grindelay permitted he -would 
 come up and do-wn daily. It was only an hour from to-wn, 
 the trains "were good. 
 
 Michael -was satisfied that his wooing progressed, although 
 he felt the time -was not ripe for speaking. Perhaps it would 
 ripen -when the spring ■was fully here. He never thought of 
 Desmond as a rival, no more than if he had been Eunice's 
 young brother. Desmond -was not yet twenty, and had not 
 started on a career. In Michael's well-ordered mind these 
 were sufficient reasons to deter him from thinking of love or 
 marriage. 
 
 Michael "went regularly up to to"wn, and Desmond and 
 Eunice spent the lengthening days together. They -wanted 
 nothing more than to be left alone. Desmond ■was alive, 
 although timid, to -what it meant — this happiness in being
 
 FULL SWING 93 
 
 together with Eunice. She believed it was just as it had 
 always been, no different. She had never had a companion 
 who could compare with Desmond. He was quieter than he 
 used to be ; she liked being with him even more. 
 
 Again they sat on the mossy ground, under the spreading 
 branches of some old tree, bird-haunted in the summer, bare 
 now, but familiar. Again she went with him on the river, 
 one day even as far as the raits at Dawney. It was holiday 
 tixae at Eton, and the shouting boys in their shorts were 
 absent, but the atmosphere remained and reminded him. He 
 \isited all the Eton tradesmen, gave liberal orders, was quite 
 a boy that afternoon. 
 
 They resented the evenings when Michael followed them 
 to the billiard-room, or sat with them in the conservatory; 
 the week-ends, when he was with them all the time. 
 
 " He's so much nearer auntie's age. I wonder he doesn't 
 keep more with her," Eunice complained. Michael was 
 twenty-eight ! But they were well-bred young people, good- 
 natured, and sorry for him because his life could not be passed 
 like theirs. 
 
 " I wonder he can stand being in a stuffy office ten months 
 out of every twelve. I should think he'd get blue mould on 
 him. But I suppose he likes it." 
 
 " Perhaps he did it to please his father," she suggested. 
 
 " I'd as soon be an undertaker as a lawyer." 
 
 ** You ! But you're so different, Desmond. I think we 
 ought to be very nice to him, to try and make things up to 
 him." 
 
 " So we are. Aren't I teaching him to row, although he 
 has no more muscle than a tadpole." 
 
 " You will go on being nice to him ? " 
 
 '' Of course I will, if you want me to, although he's a 
 nuisance." 
 
 That was what Desmond said at first, until he saw why 
 Michael came. 
 
 " He is so pleased always to be here, and he says such 
 nice things to me." 
 
 "What sort of things?"
 
 94 FULL SWING 
 
 " Things out of books, and that I'm like a flower." 
 
 " He has sense enough to see that." 
 
 Their eyes met; she coloured, but did not know why, and 
 laughed for the same reason. That was when Desmond began 
 to suspect why Michael came so often. 
 
 Michael, liking to be with them, meaning to fall in with 
 their ways, wishing to be as light as they, although natural 
 gaiety was foreign to his temperament, let Desmond teach him 
 to feather his oars, bend his knees, throw back his shoulders, 
 while Eunice instructed him in wood lore. Michael, most 
 estimable of young men, tall and stiff and a little Scotch, with 
 his eyeglass and unblemished record, his high degree and 
 medal, was not a good wooer, could not have been, or Eunice 
 would surely have perceived his intentions. She classed him 
 with the Odontoglossum and other things that interested 
 her aunt. 
 
 It was not until she and Desmond quarrelled about him, 
 until she had to defend him, that she really began to think 
 about him at all, and then it was in anything but the way 
 he would have wished. 
 
 " He says the same things over and over again," she told 
 Desmond. *' When he said : 
 
 * Even the weariest river 
 Winds somewhere safe to tea' 
 
 this aitemoon, I nearly laughed. He said it last Saturday 
 and the Saturday before." 
 
 " Couldn't he see we don't want him ? I wonder how long 
 he is going to come up and down. Why doesn't he stick to the 
 office?" Desmond asked, forgetting but a few days ago he 
 had been sympathetic with Michael's mode of life, willing to 
 lighten it for him. Eunice reminded him : 
 
 "But it must be so wonderful for him to be here after 
 sitting in an office all day. We've got to remember that, to 
 go on making it as pleasant as possible." 
 
 " I don't suppose he would have sat in an office unless he 
 wanted. He has always been a sap. And he is so cursed 
 polite."
 
 FULL SWING 95 
 
 " Well, you're not," she answered merrily. They were on 
 the river together, and there were hours before Michael would 
 appear again. "You were very short with him yesterday, 
 and said he would never be anything of an oar." 
 
 " Why should I be polite to him ? It isn't me he wants 
 to be with ; it's you." 
 
 She laughed, a young, incredulous laugh. 
 
 " He likes to be with us both, it's because we are gayer 
 than he is. It doesn't matter which of us it is, as long as he 
 hasn't to discuss orchids or the village schools, or the new 
 drainage, with auntie." 
 
 She believed every word she said. A few days later Des- 
 mond broke out again: 
 
 " Why does he call you my ' sister ' ? It's cheek of him." 
 He mimicked the words. ' Perhaps your sister will do me the 
 honour to play with me next Saturday instead of with you? 
 Miss Reid, I am sure, will be proud of your partnership.' 
 What does he mean by interfering? We'll play the same 
 match or not at all." 
 
 " It would make a better game if I played with Michael. 
 You are so out of form, and I was never very good." 
 
 Desmond argued the matter, spoke insultingly of Michael, 
 called him a Cockney, alluded to his tactlessness. " Shoving 
 himself where he wasn't wanted." Eunice defended him 
 wonderingly. It was strange for Desmond to be ill-tempered 
 with her. 
 
 The match was played as Michael proposed. Desmond 
 recovered his form on that occasion, and Mary Eeid played 
 up to him. \ They won easily. After it was over, Desmond 
 said, rather more exultantly than the occasion demanded : 
 
 " You didn't do so well without me, after all, did you ? 
 It wasn't such a walk-over for you and McKay. You'd better 
 stick to me another time if you want to win." 
 
 Michael answered for her, answered quickly • 
 
 "I am sure your sister — I am sure Miss Eunice doesn't 
 mind being beaten." 
 
 " Can't she speak for herself ? "
 
 96 FULL SWING 
 
 " What is the matter with you, Desmond ? " Eunice asked. 
 
 " Nothing is the matter with me." He spoke furiously. 
 
 Michael put in another word, intended to be conciliatory. 
 Desmond replied intemperately, and they all decided he was 
 better left alone. 
 
 "We'll play the final another day," Michael said sooth- 
 ingly, as Desmond left the court. But Eunice went after him, 
 slipping an arm into his. 
 
 " Why are you so cross, Desmond ? I didn't do it on pur- 
 pose. Did you think I wanted you to win ? I really did play 
 my best." 
 
 " What does he mean by calling you my sister ? " Desmond 
 answered savagely. "What does he mean by telling me 
 whether you care or not about being beaten? Don't I know 
 you better than he does ? Why is he always interfering between 
 us?" 
 
 " Why shouldn't he call me your sister ? " 
 
 " He's trying to make up to you, bringing you boxes of 
 sweets, books you don't read '' 
 
 " Yes, I do ; really I do, some of them." 
 
 " When mother insists." 
 
 " Auntie never insists," she answered quickly. 
 
 " I believe she's throwing you at the fellow's head." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 But he had no explanation ready, and was sullen half 
 the day and during Sunday, until Michael went away on 
 Monday morning in fact. 
 
 The next evening he began again on the same subject. It 
 was wet. Michael had telegraphed that business detained him 
 in town, and they had the billiard-room to themselves. They 
 were not playing, because whilst Desmond had been away 
 things had got into disorder, and he had all the cues to mend, 
 the tops had dropped off many of them. They had been talk- 
 ing of the cues. Without anything to lead up to the subject 
 he began again about Michael. 
 
 " I believe he does it on purpose. ' Your sister and your 
 sister and your sister.' He knows we're only cousins. Hardly 
 that, for your mother was only my mother's stepsister."
 
 FULL SWING 97 
 
 " Does it matter ? " she asked wonderingly. " We've 
 always been the same." 
 
 "But we are not brother and sister," he said doggedly, 
 not meeting her eyes, going on with the cues. " Where's the 
 glue? I wish you'd pass it me. It's in the fireplace." She 
 brought it over to him, remaining by his side. 
 
 "We are practically no relations." 
 
 " It's just the same." She came a little closer to him. 
 
 " It isn't." 
 
 " I couldn't be fonder of you if I were your real sister." 
 She was holding the glue-pot, but found her heart beating 
 more quickly than usual. 
 
 " Are you fonder of me than you are of Michael McKay ? " 
 
 " I shouldn't care if I never saw Michael McKay again. 
 Go on with the cue. Why are you stopping ? It wants holding 
 down — pressing." 
 
 " I'm not in the humour for it, I'm sick of it. I suppose 
 he'll be coming down again to-morrow — standing between 
 us." He spoke gloomily, and she answered quickly, her cheeks 
 flushing. 
 
 " As if anything could come between us." 
 
 " You mean it ? " 
 
 " Of course I do." He meant to have gone on, to have 
 asked her how much better she liked him than she did 
 Michael. But now, as once or twice before, he became tongue- 
 tied by her nearness ; his beating heart stopped his words ; he 
 could not bear her so near Mm. 
 
 " As if we could ever like anybody better than we do each 
 other ! " she said. And then an extraordinary silence fell 
 between them ; she felt her cheeks burning. 
 
 "Let's go out on the terrace; it's left off raining." She 
 wanted the darkness of the terrace that he should not notice 
 her cheeks burning or her voice trembling. Neither of them 
 was ready for that whicfi was so near them. It was quite in 
 his accustomed manner he said : 
 
 '^All right. Just wait until I put these things away to 
 dry. I'll have another go at them the next wet day."
 
 CHAPTEE IX 
 
 Nothing in nature stands still, least of all young love between 
 a girl and a boy. 
 
 Lady Grindelay knew so many things — rose and orcMd 
 culture, drainage, what standard a little girl of seven should 
 have attained, and that she should wear her hair in a neat 
 plait; knew about silos, Berkshire pigs and Aldemey cows. 
 She prided herself upon the variety of her interests, upon 
 keeping abreast with the times, sympathising with the 
 Women's Movement, still in its infancy, trying to understand 
 Socialism and the trend of politics. The only thing completely 
 hidden from her was the human heart, even her own. A 
 misgiving she may have had, but now that she had decided 
 Eunice should marry Michael, she would not allow herself 
 to dwell upon it. Eunice was one of those girls for whom 
 marriage was indicated. Why, then she should marry 
 Andrew's son, and the sooner the better. A sexless woman 
 lives in a perpetual twilight, with no dawn of roseate sun to 
 lighten it. Love! The word was even strange on her lips. 
 She was not prudish, only ignorant, with a sense lacking. 
 
 Eunice should marry, since she already showed an inclina- 
 tion for it. But not Desmond. Agatha's conscience held the 
 reins of her intelligence and drove her unceasingly. Day 
 and night she thought of her son, and of what she could do 
 to cure him of the desire for strong drink. Her tenderness 
 tunnelled deep, until all the foundations of her strength 
 were shaken — shaken, but still standing. He must be dis-' 
 ciplined, strengthened, helped. It was the task for a mother, 
 not for a gentle girl like Eunice, Eunice was to be guarded 
 from trouble. 
 
 Lady Grindelay, planning for both of them, abandoning 
 what had been her dearest wish, and without a doubt that she 
 was doing right, never saw that this early spring was different 
 from all the springs of Desmond's and Eunice's childhood. 
 The woods held their secret^ the sap rising in the pines 
 
 98
 
 FULL SWING 99 
 
 scented their path, the chaffinch sang- early on the elm, the 
 blackbird on the thorn, the March winds blew as softly as if 
 it were May, and all for them. 
 
 Michael came steadily wooing, and everybody knew it but 
 the subject of his attentions. 
 
 Lady Grrindelay was without a doubt that as she and 
 Andrew had settled it so it would come about. Her feeling 
 towards the girl had ebbed a little, leaving dry places, Michael 
 would be kind to her; his character was steady, his principles 
 were high; he was the husband she needed. Lady Grindelay 
 planned in her twilight. What was between Desmond and 
 Eunice grew in the sunshine under budding leaves, or where 
 the river washed the banks among the reeds. 
 
 There came a day when it broke into words, an eventful 
 day ; but it was Lady Grindelay who hastened the speaking. 
 
 Desmond, because as yet nothing different had been de- 
 cided, went as arranged to Oxford for his examination. He 
 was away only the inside of a week, but he grudged the time, 
 grudged every minute he was not feeling the pulsing strength 
 of his growing manhood, the love that was not part, but the 
 whole of it. Because his heart was so full — not, as the exam- 
 iners thought, because his mind was so empty — he failed to 
 pass, to answer the questions put to him, to concentrate on 
 them. He was ploughed for his " Little Go." 
 
 The news came to him at breakfast. He opened the letter, 
 exclaimed at its contents, put it at the side of his plate, went 
 on eating. Eunice wondered a little at the way Desmond 
 took the news, admiring him for his calnmess. Lady Grinde- 
 lay said nothing. 
 
 " After all, I don't think I should have cared much about 
 Oxford," he said carelessly. " Pass the marmalade, Eunice. 
 It's not as if I was going into a profession. I don't see 
 what I should have done there." 
 
 Lady Grindelay got up from the breakfast-table without 
 comment. She was not entirely unprepared for what had 
 happened.
 
 100 FULL SWING 
 
 Later on Eunice found her in the drawing-room, engaged 
 in needlework. 
 
 " I'm going into the town, auntie. Desmond wants some 
 fishing-lines. We are going to row down and have the car- 
 riage to meet us at the lock. Is there any shopping you 
 want done ? " 
 
 Lady Grindelay was sitting at her frame. The Wansteads 
 had all been famous for their embroideries, and Lady Grin- 
 delay, notwithstanding her many interests and occupations, 
 had always found time to exercise her gifts of even stitch and 
 unbroken patience. It was her answer to Tolstoi's ^^what is 
 Art ? " — ^the expression of her limited lyricism. Perhaps the 
 happiest hours of Agatha's life had been spent translating 
 rare orchids in water-colours, and thence to silk or satin by 
 orderly stitch, 
 
 Eunice repeated her question. 
 
 " Didn't you say you wanted another skein or two of the 
 yellow?" She was interested in her aunt's work, and bent 
 over the frame. She, too, worked sometimes, copying needle- 
 work pictures, keeping up the traditions of the house. " It is 
 getting on wonderfully. You ought to show it to Sanders." 
 
 " It " was a mauve and yellow orchid with a purple lip, 
 and they spoke about the needed silks for a few moments. 
 Lady Grindelay made a French knot or two, put her head on 
 one side and examined the effect. Then she said : 
 
 " I should like to speak to Desmond before you go. You 
 are not in any immediate hurry, are you ? " 
 
 Eunice hesitated. 
 
 Lady Grindelay laid out her silks in order, straightening 
 the skeins. 
 
 " You are not angry with Desmond, are you ? " She hesi- 
 tated, but went on : " It wasn't Desmond's fault ; he couldn't 
 help it. He would have passed all right if he had gone up 
 before he left Eton." 
 
 " It is quite possible." 
 
 " Are you going to say anything to him ? " She made a 
 tentative effort to help with the sorting. " You are short of 
 the darkest purple, too."
 
 FULL SWING 101 
 
 " I want to know what he is going to do, what are his 
 plans." 
 
 Desmond, following the girl into the room, for he could 
 not bear just now that she should be out of his sight, answered 
 for himself lightly : 
 
 " My plans are to get down to the boat as quickly as pos- 
 sible. As it is, we shall hardly get back in time for lunch." 
 
 " I should like a few words with you," His mother was 
 still handling the silks. 
 
 " Won't it do after lunch ? It's getting so late." 
 
 " Just as you please ; but perhaps " 
 
 They did not allow her to finish her sentence; they were 
 off before she found the shade of purple of which she needed 
 another skein. 
 
 " All right, then. Come on, Eunice." 
 
 Eunice bade her a hasty good-bye, and went so quickly at 
 Desmond's impatient bidding that she forgot the pattern 
 altogether. 
 
 " We won't be late," she called back from the door. " I'll 
 make him hurry." 
 
 Lady Grindelay disliked unpunctuality, as she did any 
 other form of disorder. The years had fixed her in her old- 
 maidish habits. 
 
 All the morning she spent by herself, embroidering, going 
 over the lines of that conversation she must have with her 
 son. Some occupation must be found for him, and he would 
 have to be persuaded to it. One in which there were few or no 
 temptations. In none of the professions was teetotalism a 
 qualification. But she racked her brains to think of one in 
 which strong drink would be contra-indicted. There was 
 the Church. But she could not picture Desmond in canon- 
 icals. All the time she was considering the Bar, the Church, 
 farming in Canada, or representing his county in Parlia- 
 ment, at the back of her mind was the knowledge that there 
 was only one profession for such as he. All the time, too, 
 her heart contracted, and she feared that to which she must 
 persuade him. He must be a soldier, disciplining himself 
 first, then others. But what she wanted was to keep him near
 
 102 FULL SWING 
 
 her. Because she wanted it she must not do it. Perhaps in 
 the years to come, the far-distant years. . . . She pictured 
 him disciplined, and even distinguished, returning to Marley. 
 Then she would walk proudly, holding on to his arm. She 
 habitually forgot her age, feeling still young and vigorous, 
 as if her days would never end. 
 
 In the afternoon, when Desmond, as arranged, came in to 
 talk to her, she had it all fully planned. He suggested 
 lightly that Eunice should Join their conference, but Lady 
 Grindelay decided otherwise. 
 
 " Michael will be down at five. Eunice can go in the car- 
 liage to meet him. You might go a little earlier, and get me 
 the silk you forgot this morning," she said to the girl. It did 
 not seem suitable she should stay while Desmond's future was 
 being discussed ; it was better she should go to meet her own. 
 
 " I am sorry I forgot the silk." Eunice Avas really con- 
 trite, anxious to make amends for her forgetfulness. " If I 
 go now there will still be light enough." 
 
 " We shan't be very long over our talk, shall we ? " Des- 
 mond asked. " She can wait, can't she, and then I can drive 
 in with her ? " 
 
 " I don't think she had better delay ; the dusk falls early." 
 
 " Of course I won't wait for Desmond. It was horrid of 
 me to forget it this morning. I'll go now." 
 
 But when she had left them, Lady Grindelay seemed in 
 no haste to speak. Desmond watched his mother for a few 
 minutes, wondering about her. Agatha retained her figure, 
 she had grown old in the way trees grow, was mature and 
 without a sign of decay. Her hair was grey, but it was a wiry 
 and vigorous grey; although there were fine lines about her 
 eyes, the eyes were still young. Mothers and sons should not 
 wonder about each other; they should know. Desmond knew 
 little of his mother, except that she was for ever surprising 
 him, and, he thought, perhaps criticising him. She had never, 
 for instance, said one word to him about his behaviour at 
 Languedoc. Perhaps, after all, she understood. She had 
 always been generous to him, never nagged him, like other 
 fellows' mothers, but then she had never — —
 
 FULL SWING 103 
 
 Desmond actually flushed when he thought how different 
 other fellows' mothers were from his. Lady John, for in- 
 stance, rumpled up Edric's hair and scolded him, kissed him 
 before everyone. Jeffrey Campden thought nothing of putting 
 his arm round his mother's waist or about her shoulders, and 
 anyone could see how well she liked it. Mrs. Reid never 
 talked of anyone else but Jack, and all the examinations he 
 passed, what his tutors wrote about him. She cackled about 
 him, Desmond thought, like a hen with one chicken. Up at 
 the parsonage, too, where many of the children were still 
 small, Mrs. Montgomery was never without one clinging to 
 her skirt or in her arms. When the big ones came back from 
 school ot university, she could not make enough of them. 
 Of course, he knew how superior Lady Grindelay was to 
 Lady Campden, or Mrs. Eeid, or Mrs. Montgomery. Still, 
 there were times when what a fellow wants from his mother 
 is not superiority. Then he had one sickening moment of 
 remembrance and longing for his father, for poor old drunken 
 Pat and his ready sympathy. Before it had died away he 
 began to speak hurriedly. 
 
 Agatha was still embroidering. She drew a long thread 
 through the taut silk on the frame, and held her needle 
 poised again whilst she listened. Her own opening she had 
 not yet decided upon. 
 
 " Mother, you wanted to speak to me. But there is some- 
 thing I want to get in first. I suppose you are sick over this 
 exam.? It was only because I got thinking of something 
 else. . . ." 
 
 She laid down her needle, and looked up at him. His face 
 had grown thin and the light in his blue eyes was restless; 
 his colour came and went. All of a sudden he had made up 
 his mind to tell her, if he could get it out, to ask her sym- 
 pathy, show her what was in his heart. After all, she was 
 his mother. Somewhere out of sight and deep down he had 
 an idea she was but unlike those other mothers on the surface. 
 He was her only son. 
 
 " After all, you know, I don't really want to go to Oxford.
 
 104 FULL SWING 
 
 What's the good of attending lectures and all the rest of 
 it ? " He spoke a little nervously. 
 
 "No?" she said inquiringly, "No? Then what is it 
 you wish to do? That is what I detained you to ask. It is 
 time we spoke of it. But you are beforehand with me. Tell 
 me what you have in your mind." 
 
 Thinking she understood, would meet him half-way, he 
 said boldly : 
 
 " I want to stay on here." 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 " And that is what I, too, should like best." He returned 
 her smile. " But is it best for you ? That is what we have to 
 think. Your education still incom]3lete, no definite occupa- 
 tion. . . ." 
 
 " Couldn't I look after the estate, hunt and shoot, do what 
 other fellows in my position do, even if it is a little earlier ? " 
 
 " But you are not quite like other fellows." Her sigh was 
 involuntary. He paid no heed to it, 
 
 " Oh, that's nothing. Because I've got a title ^" 
 
 *'I was not thinking of your title." She was astonished 
 that he should think of that. To her it seemed that to be 
 Lord Grindelay was so much less than to be a Wanstead, 
 Squire of Marley. 
 
 " Mother ! " 
 
 He stammered, stopped, and she looked at him in sur- 
 prise, then dropped her eyes, for she thought he was going 
 to say something of what was between them, of his sottish 
 father and his own weakness. When the words came from 
 him they came like a torrent, but not at all what she ex- 
 pected. At first she could hardly gather what he was saying, 
 he spoke so quickly. 
 
 "I want to stay here and marry Eunice. I know I'm 
 young and all that. I don't mean at once. But other men 
 are after her, I can't be forestalled. There's Michael, now, 
 Michael McKay. He's fooling about, and it's easy to see 
 what he wants. I'm not going to stand it." He spoke with 
 a kind of furious, agitated heat, went on pouring out his 
 grievance and his desire.
 
 FULL SWING 105 
 
 "It isn't as if she's even grown up. It's not the right 
 thing to do ; it's a rotten shame. I've never said a word to her 
 myself. He makes eyes at her, pays her compliments, says 
 she's like a flower." The fluctuating colour now burned more 
 steadily. " It isn't fair ; it's beastly. I want him to know ; 
 
 I want you to tell him that Eunice and I — Eunice and I " 
 
 He ran short of words, his eyes pleading and bright, his heart 
 knocking. 
 
 " Eunice and you ? " She repeated the words after him 
 almost mechanically. " Eunice and you ! But that is im- 
 possible. I dare not . . . you must not . . ." 
 
 " I know I've got to wait. I haven't said anything to her, 
 but no one else must interfere between us. What's he hang- 
 ing about for, if it isn't that? You see for yourself I can't 
 go to Oxford, or leave her, whilst he's hanging about." 
 
 She tried to thread her silk, although her hands were 
 shaking. 
 
 " You think I'm too young ? " 
 
 " No, it was not that." Her tongue was dry, she had not 
 thought it would be necessary to explain tilings to him. 
 
 " What is it, then ? " 
 
 *'You are so untried. . . ." She could not hurt him or 
 speak more freely. " Perhaps if I had known of this wish 
 
 of yours before " She hesitated, the truth was impossible 
 
 of utterance. " Now I have given my promise to Michael." 
 
 " To Michael McKay ? " he replied incredulously. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I suppose you never thought of me at all ? " he said 
 furiously. " I suppose I don't count ? " 
 
 She could not bear to feel his young fury turned against 
 her. 
 
 " I had to think of her." She was not speaking with 
 authority, but hesitatingly, almost incoherently. 
 
 " Why shouldn't you ? " And then he stopped abruptly. 
 '^ You've been holding that — that time at Lauguedoc against 
 me?" 
 
 " I have not been holding it against you. I had to think 
 of what was right. You are so young," she faltered.
 
 106 FULL SWING 
 
 He broke in : 
 
 " There is one thing — ^she ■wouldn't look at him." 
 
 She was struggling against a force she did not under- 
 stand, as unwilling to speak to him of his infirmity as if she 
 had to break to him that he was deformed or disabled. 
 
 " He is very steady and reliable." She was very sorry for 
 Desmond, and distressed. But her conscience stifled her heart, 
 and, although she would give him everything, she knew she 
 must not give him Eunice, not the girl to whom now she felt 
 curiously cold and estranged, but who had been left in her 
 care, and whom she must protect. 
 
 Doggedly, for now he caught a glimpse of the high wall 
 of her resistance, and meant to climb it, he went on : 
 
 "I am going to marry Eunice." His face went pale. 
 " You can't prevent me. I can do what I like when I am of 
 age." 
 
 She began a sentence about a woman's needs, and that she 
 should be able to look up to her husband ; of how awful it is 
 when a woman must submit herself to her husband, despising 
 him ; she got out a desperate half word about what it is to be 
 a wife and see a man you have sworn to love and obey reel 
 into your room. 
 
 He gazed at her in surprise, then gathered she was speak- 
 ing of his father. 
 
 " I must protect her," she said painfully. " You must see 
 that." Desmond resented the allusion to his father, that he 
 should be dragged in. He answered rudely, but quickly and 
 without thought : 
 
 " You won't make her do it, for all you say. She doesn't 
 care for Michael any more than for a dead dog. She'll never 
 marry him." 
 
 " I am sorry," Lady Grindelay began, and stopped. 
 
 " I don't want your pity. Why should you be sorry for me ? 
 There is nothing the matter with me." 
 
 "I know it is only weakness. You vnW be cured — ^you 
 shall be cured." 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 It choked him to say the next words; he had never said
 
 FULL SWING lOr 
 
 them to Eunice, nor she to him, the words in which he must 
 make his mother understand. His voice was husky and his 
 eyes suffused. 
 
 '' "We — we care for each other." 
 
 He walked into the conservatory after having said it, stay- 
 ing there to recover himself. When he came back into the 
 room his mother was sitting as he had left her. He came 
 swiftly to her, stood close beside her. 
 
 " Mother, you don't mean to keep us apart ? I know, of 
 course I know you were unhappy with my father ; but because 
 of that you don't want me to be unhappy ? " 
 
 He could hardly hear her reply; the pale lips formed the 
 words, but he could hardly hear them. 
 
 " No, I do not want you to be unhappy. I could not bear 
 that you should be unhappy. But you and I — we have not 
 only ourselves to think of. We must make sacrifices." 
 
 " Not this ? " His own voice was low. 
 
 " We have to think of her — ^you and I. It is dreadful for 
 you, I know, to — to give her up." 
 
 " I am not going to give her up. Mother, I — I love her." 
 
 But he felt despairingly that his mother did not know what 
 was this love of which he was telling her, how it paralysed 
 his tongue and made his mouth dry, how beyond words it was. 
 
 She would have come into all the kingdom of her mother- 
 hood with one touch of comprehension, one half word of 
 sympathy. In the silence he began to hope. Never before 
 had he appealed to her, not in this way, not in words, only 
 dumbly or sullenly, and she had never quite heard or under- 
 stood the call ; there was so much between them. Now, having 
 spoken, hope rose, poised like a butterfly wing on his dry lips. 
 
 " I want Eunice. I — I want her for my wife." 
 
 She would have given her to him, thrown her to the 
 wolves, for that was the way she regarded it, only for her 
 conscientiousness, her sense of duty that was no sense at all. 
 
 ^' I want you to send Michael away — to help me." 
 
 She knew — she knew already that she loved him better 
 than anything on earth, and would have given him her own
 
 108 FULL SWING 
 
 heart to play with. But not Eunice's. She had to be true to 
 her trust. 
 
 "I cannot send Michael away." Her voice was low. 
 " There is nothing I would not do for you, nor give you." She 
 who had not known what passion meant felt her heart beating 
 passionately now. Memories of past shame and humiliation 
 scorched her cheek, burned in her eyes. " Only not Eunice. 
 I — I dare not. I promised her mother to guard her." 
 
 " And why not ? Why not ? " he cried. 
 
 It was she who appealed to him now. 
 
 *^ How can I let her bear what I have borne ? I promised 
 her mother to take care of her. You say I must not pity you. 
 But if the time came when I must pity her, and know that it 
 was I who had connived at her unhappiness ! How could I 
 bear it ? She is not as strong as I. Yet I, with my strength " 
 — he saw the colour flush her, as if she were suffering still — 
 " could not endure it, was compelled to leave him — my self- 
 respect. . . ." 
 
 "But I — I " His voice was incredulous. "What 
 
 has that to do with it? " 
 
 She could hardly speak, but knew she could only help him 
 by telling him what it was he had to fight. He stood before 
 her, flushed and incredulous, angry. In her heart she was 
 rocking and soothing him, for all she was so inarticulate. 
 She wanted to dull and still the pain of the things she must 
 
 say. 
 
 "I will help you, help you all that is possible, against 
 yourself. But you must understand ; I have never spoken of 
 this before, but now you force me. Already, as with him, drink 
 tempts you, and you yield. You say you must have her — 
 you must! He was like that, without principle or self- 
 restraint. What he wanted he — he took . . ." 
 
 "But I am not like that." He was angry, very angry, 
 but because he saw she suffered he kept a restraint over 
 himself. 
 
 " You don't know yourself. How should you ? But that 
 was what he did — drank, and took what he wanted , . ." 
 Her voice failed; she was remembering dreadful things.
 
 FULL SWING 109 
 
 " I am not like that — and I don't believe he was either/' 
 he repeated, almost to himself. 
 
 " You came to me drunk — drunk, on the day of your 
 father's funeral ! " 
 
 '"It was the first time in my life — ^the only time. I 
 thought you had forgiven me." 
 
 " Forgiven ! I had not to forgive you, only myself, that 
 I had given you this inheritance, this father. Loose living, 
 
 loose thinking, jesting about vice " There was a sob in 
 
 her throat. 
 
 "Don't, mother, don't!" 
 
 She was ashamed — ashamed of his shame and humilia- 
 tion. But he ? There struggled through his anger something 
 of exultation. If it was from those things she would protect 
 Eunice, he was with her heart and soul, he was with her in 
 desiring it. He was hot to tell her he was no drunkard, and 
 for loose living or loose talk he had as great an abhorrence 
 as she, that he knew no kisses but those from the soft lips 
 of his cousin. He wanted that all these things should be clear 
 to her, that she should know his reverence for the girl, how 
 he cared about her. He was shaken with the thought of 
 the greatness of his love, and drew nearer to his mother. 
 In another moment he would have told her, or tried to tell 
 her. 
 
 But she gave him no time. Already the interview had 
 touched deeper issues than she had been prepared for. She 
 got up now, abruptly, before he had time to speak or ap- 
 proach her. 
 
 "We won't speak of it any more, if you don't mind. 
 Not yet, not until you have thought things over. You tell 
 me you have said nothing to her. You will not do so now ? " 
 
 Thrown back upon himself and silenced, in the reaction 
 and surprise he answered quickly: 
 
 " I am not going to make any promises.'^ 
 
 "I think I hear the carriage. Isn't that the carriage 
 coming back ? " 
 
 It was impossible to say anything further then. Eunice
 
 110 FULL SWING 
 
 was in the hall, and Michael with her; their voices could be 
 heard, and Eunice's laughter. She broke into the room. 
 
 " I've got the silk and Michael." 
 
 She looked quickly from one to another. 
 
 " There is nothing the matter, is there ? " 
 
 "What should be the matter?" Lady Grindelay asked, 
 and welcomed Michael fittingly. Desmond found it more 
 difficult to regain his self-possession.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 This was in the spring of 1899. There was great unrest in 
 South Africa, and for some time past Kruger had been 
 making the position impossible to Englishmen. He had 
 been showing his teeth, and everywhere but officially, in the 
 War Office, it was known he had also been buying guns. We 
 were displaying our usual official urbanity, and certain parlia- 
 mentarians were under the impression that the situation 
 could be cleaned up with soft soap. Diplomacy might still 
 have succeeded, but faddists on both sides of the House hung 
 on the arms of negotiators, impeding progress, delaying 
 everything but the preparations of the Boers. Our army, of 
 course, was unready. When is the British Army ready for 
 war? is a conundrum to which the answer has not yet been 
 found. But young officers at all stations were becoming hope- 
 ful of opportunity for showing their quality. That there 
 might be an insufficiency of these was a contingency that was 
 slowly stirring up the stagnant minds of the old dotards at 
 the War Office. That spring there was already a sensible 
 augmentation in the ranks of the probationers, who were 
 rushed through a short course of training in riding, shooting, 
 and musketry practice, tactics, and what not. The diploma 
 of a commission was given readily to youth and ignorance. 
 The effect was not fully known until a series of disasters, 
 holocausts of soldiers, began to bring it home. 
 
 This, however, is only incidentally concerned with the 
 story of Desmond and his mother. 
 
 Lady Grindelay, of course, did not believe in the war. 
 Few English mothers did at that time. But when, at dinner 
 that evening, Michael spoke of the talk at the London clubs, 
 how everyone thought the old man, Oom Paul, should be 
 given a lesson, and what a difference it was making in the 
 number of recruits, Lady Grindelay noticed how Desmond's 
 eyes lit up and how, now and again, his colour rose. Although 
 throughout her life she made so many sad and irretrievable 
 
 111
 
 113 FULL SWING 
 
 mistakes, she was not dull witted. This seemed to her to be 
 a way out of the immediate difficulty. If Desmond could be 
 led or persuaded to enter the Army, the rest would happen 
 naturally. Michael could be trusted to make good his oppor- 
 tunities. And Desmond would be under discipline. This 
 was what he needed. The late Lord Grindelay had been his 
 own master from early boyhood; uncontrolled at the most 
 critical period of his life. It was imperative Desmond should 
 be differently placed. Therefore, she encouraged Michael to 
 talk of the war that was coming, admitted that she too saw 
 there might be no other way out, and expressed the opinion 
 that all the young men who had not yet chosen a profession 
 would make a rush for the Army. 
 
 " The Campdens are fortunate with their sons. Edric has 
 his commission, and Jeffrey is already at Sandhurst." 
 
 " I suppose you are sorry now that you were not in the 
 Army Class at Eton?" Michael asked Desmond. Except 
 when it was a question of sport or field-lore, it was in the 
 foreground of Michael's mind that Desmond was a boy still, 
 many years younger than himself. 
 
 Desmond, antagonistic towards him, contradicted him 
 without hesitation. 
 
 " No, I'm not. It is a rotten way to get into the Army." 
 
 " Desmond is not anxious for military glory," Lady Grin- 
 delay said, always with the same objective. 
 
 " I shouldn't mind going into the Army," he answered 
 her, a little sullenly. 
 
 "At least, you have never shown any strong leaning 
 towards it." 
 
 " Yes, he has. Over and over again he has said he would 
 like to be a soldier," Eunice put in eagerly. 
 
 " That was before there was any talk of war," Michael 
 answered, with an attempt at humour; and quoted, according 
 to habit, "'1 was with Grant, the stranger said, two years 
 before the war.' " 
 
 " I suppose you would chuck the law if there was any 
 chance of fighting ? " Desmond retorted. 
 
 "Michael has his father to think of. Your father tells
 
 FULL SWING 113 
 
 me he leaves much in your hands already/' Lady Grindelay 
 put in^ to cover her son's aggressiveness. 
 
 The next day and the next the possibilities of war were 
 discussed. Another tennis tournament was held, and while 
 the youngsters played, the fathers and mothers sat in the 
 drawing-room, or walked in the garden, or round the hot- 
 houses, and spoke of little else. Lady Grindelay, without any 
 belief in the probability of our great country being defied 
 or drawn into battle by a handful of Dutch farmers, con- 
 cealed her opinion, and spoke of the duty of being prepared. 
 Desmond, sauntering into the room when all the guests were 
 gone and his mother and Eunice sat together, showed he 
 was at the point to which she had led him. 
 
 "All this war talk is jolly rot — a handful of Boer 
 farmers! If I thought there was anything in it, I'd have a 
 shot for the Army myself." 
 
 " You'd look splendid in a uniform. Lady John showed 
 me Edric's portrait. You'd go into the Guards, wouldn't 
 
 you 
 
 ?» 
 
 "I never saw anything like the fuss you all made of 
 Edric to-day," he answered. "I'm too old for Sandhurst," 
 he added inconsequently. 
 
 "I don't think so," Lady Grindelay answered quietly, 
 
 " Then you wouldn't mind ? " Eunice cried. 
 
 " I should not like to think of my son hanging back if 
 his country had need of him." 
 
 " Nobody is braver than Desmond." 
 
 Lady Grindelay smiled, smiled because Eunice was so 
 quick in his defence. Desmond thought she smiled because 
 she doubted that too. He was little more than a boy; he had 
 not yet come to his full height, the stature of his wisdom, 
 or the measure of his ambition. Yesterday he could think 
 of nothing but Eunice and the sweetness of her, of his own 
 throbbing pulses and restless nights. To-day, at the thought 
 of "those beggars, the Boers, forbidding Englishmen in 
 Johannesburg to bear arms," his blood fired. If there was to 
 be a war, he was not the one to stay at home and read about it. 
 
 8
 
 114 FULL SWING 
 
 When he was alone with his mother he said, a propos of 
 nothing : 
 
 "I don't suppose I could get into Sandhurst without a 
 coach ? " 
 
 " There would be no difficulty about that," she answered. 
 
 " If it were not for Eunice " he began again. 
 
 " I should have thought that was an additional reason." 
 
 She meant that because he could not marry his cousin, 
 it would be a good way of putting her out of his mind if he 
 decided even now, late though it was, to try to get into the 
 Army. He needed discipline. She did not believe there 
 would be a war. 
 
 It came about quickly. Afterwards Lady Grindelay knew 
 she forced it to come about. She managed that Michael 
 should not come down again whilst Desmond was still unde- 
 cided. When she saw that Desmond thought she doubted 
 his courage, and that it helped to his decision, she was careful 
 not to reassure him. She told everyone of his decision before 
 he had made it. 
 
 " My son thinks if there is any chance of a war, he must 
 at least be in a position to take part in it." 
 
 She had no misgiving, only a great throb of gratitude 
 to the Jameson raiders and Kruger for having forwarded 
 her plana. She would take Eunice abroad when Desmond 
 was with his coach in London. Michael's wooing would be 
 done as well at Aix-le-Bains or Dinard as here. Desmond 
 had said Eimice knew nothing of his feelings for her, and 
 Lady Grindelay decided it was best she should never know 
 them. She thought she was acting in Desmond's best interest, 
 and yet not neglecting her duty to Eunice. Eunice must be 
 safely married, or at least engaged to Michael McKay, whilst 
 Desmond was learning to be a soldier. He would get over 
 his wish to marry Eunice ; it was only a boyish fancy. Boyish 
 fancy ! That was the phrase with which Agatha masked her 
 ignorance, with which she set herself to circumvent that 
 which was as capable of circumvention as the winding of a 
 river to the sea. 
 
 When she heard that Blathwayt Bird would take Des-
 
 FULL SWING 115 
 
 mond, and that there were ways and means of getting over 
 the fact that he would be a few months over age at the time 
 of the examination, she professed astonishment that Desmond 
 still hesitated. 
 
 "I thought you had quite made up your mind; but, of 
 course, if you prefer the Bar " 
 
 " Not me ! " 
 
 " I thought I was carrying out your views ! No doubt Mr. 
 Bird can get someone in your place. But it is running it a 
 little close ; the term begins in a week " 
 
 " In a week ! I can't leave here in a week." 
 
 ''Why not?" 
 
 "You can't kick me out like that." 
 
 " Kick you out ? What an extraordinary way you have of 
 talking! I really understood it was your desire to be with 
 your friends, that the probability of having to go to South 
 Africa was not a deterrent to you." 
 
 " Of course it isn't." 
 
 "Then?" 
 
 " Oh ! I'm going right enough." 
 
 His temper was uneven, he was not always quite respect- 
 ful ; he was really torn this way and the other, and undecided. 
 But Michael stayed away, and Desmond was fairly sure of 
 Eunice. If he had not set them in motion, at least he 
 acquiesced in the arrangements that were so quickly made 
 for him. 
 
 Harried and driven, with the parting so near at hand, 
 the promise he had never given became at all hazards the 
 one he must break. He was not going away from Eunice for 
 six, or it might be eight, months without speaking to her; 
 not going to leave the way clear for Michael McKay or any- 
 body else. 
 
 His mother, having brought him to the point she desired, 
 had nothing more to do but keep the young people apart. He 
 saw what she was about, and that in these few hurried days 
 he and Eunice were never alone together, were like driven 
 partridges before her.
 
 116 FULL SWING 
 
 Love did not laugh at locksmiths on this occasion; love, 
 exemplified by Desmond, was in no laughing mood. He 
 watched and waited, looking for opportunity; but in the end 
 had to make his own, finding he had hesitated long enough. 
 
 Eunice was quite satisfied that Desmond was to be a 
 soldier, picturing him in his smart uniform, calling him 
 " Colonel," and teasing him. She was still quite happy, just 
 as she had been all the summer, with a throbbing and excitable 
 happiness. 
 
 It was a bore that her aunt was always with her and 
 Desmond now, but, of course, it was natural, since he was 
 going away so soon. She made innocent little efforts to 
 dodge her, but they came to nothing. She did not understand 
 she was being guarded, nor why they were never alone. 
 
 On Tuesday Desmond was to go to London, and already 
 it was Sunday — the last Sunday of all. 
 
 On Sunday, in Marley old church, undismayed by the 
 brasses and monuments of his ancestry, Desmond smuggled 
 her a pencilled note, as he had done so often under the e5'es 
 of governess or tutor in more childish days. She read it as 
 she knelt; the irreverence of it was nothing to the fun of 
 feeling like a child again; she even smiled her appreciation 
 to him, under the cover of her kneeling. 
 
 "We never get a chance by ourselves now. Get up 
 at six to-morrow, and meet me in the spinney. I'll forage 
 a basket, and we'll get lost in the woods. It's our last 
 chance." 
 
 His last chance of meeting her alone, telling her what 
 was in his heart. But it was not only the telling he had in 
 his mind. He was not even quite sure what he would say, 
 recognising the lingering quality of childhood in her. But 
 he must warn her against Michael; that at least he was 
 entitled to do. 
 
 They would have their last day in the woods together 
 alone, visit each remembered haunt, be as they had always
 
 FULL SWING 117 
 
 been. He fretted under surveillance, and was upon his mettle 
 to evade it. 
 
 He would go into the Army, for there was a chance of 
 active service, but before he went he must say a word to 
 Eunice, or half a word ; he might get a promise from her. 
 
 At breakfast on Monday they were both missing. 
 
 Lady Grindelay was not in doubt of what had occurred, 
 for Eunice, never negligent or careless, had left a little note : 
 
 '' Desmond and I are going to say good-bye to every- 
 thing. We've taken lunch with us. I know it's rather 
 awful of us to run away like this before anyone is up, 
 but we did so want to be alone." 
 
 Lady Grindelay disguised her dismay, hoping for the best. 
 
 " It is natural they should want to go round all their 
 haunts; they have so many hiding-places in the woods, tame 
 squirrels to feed, the boats to put away." She kept reassur- 
 ing herself, although with difficulty. If she could only have 
 seen the boy without that which was really no part of him — 
 his father's vices — she could have acknowledged what he had 
 become to her, perhaps even shown it. As it was, she was 
 half glad he should have this day, and half ashamed, because 
 she thought Eunice might suffer through it. She spent the 
 day trying to forget all the horrible things her husband had 
 told her about men who had been alone with young girls, com- 
 forting herself by thinking how different her son was to his 
 father, and still young, that perhaps the stories his father had 
 told her had not been true ; having faith in him, only doubt- 
 ing herself, and whether she should have kept them apart 
 more strictly. 
 
 Out of doors since six o'clock, drinking in the fine fresh 
 fragrance of the early day, Desmond and Eunice revelled in 
 their stolen freedom. They were on the river for half an hour 
 before the sun was high, having it all to themselves, the 
 broad, silver surface and dappled silence. They were again 
 in the woods before noon, the food Desmond had foraged out-
 
 118 FULL SWING 
 
 spread ; nothing between them and complete happiness but the 
 consciousness of to-morrow and the parting. 
 
 When lunch was over, they wandered under the green 
 veiling of the interlacing trees, a little tired, their spirits a 
 little overcast, talking of the days they had spent here in 
 childhood. Desmond spoke of his unhappiness when he was a 
 little boy, of his old home-sickness for Languedoc. 
 
 " Now it's Marley seems home to me," he added. 
 
 "There's no place like Marley." 
 
 " That's true ; but it was you taught it me." 
 
 " You weren't happy here at first ? " 
 
 " Not until you made me so." 
 
 "Did I make you happy? I always wanted to. I knew 
 you felt strange and shy." 
 
 " Was it shy you thought me ? " 
 
 "Wild. I remember when you first came, and Uncle 
 Andrew said you were like Struwwelpeter." 
 
 " No, that was the second time. The first time I had 
 Biddy with me, my Irish nurse. She thought you were all 
 against me — criticising me." 
 
 They talked of young memories, sentimentalising over 
 them, perhaps. Their mood was sentimental, subdued. 
 
 " I shall often think of this day when I am away." 
 
 " So shall I." 
 
 "Will you?" 
 
 He was hardly conscious of what he was saying, for he 
 had said nothing to her of what he had in his mind, and the 
 time was getting late. 
 
 " Of course I shall." 
 
 "But you are going abroad; you'll see many new sights 
 and people. You'll have a lot to think of besides me." 
 
 "I always think of you when you're away; I did when 
 you were at Eton. Lately, too, when you stayed at Lan- 
 guedoc, and I knew you and auntie had quarrelled. I still 
 think sometimes that you and auntie don't understand each 
 other as well as you and I, or as well as auntie and I." She 
 flushed a little when she had said that. " I used to cry about
 
 FULL SWING 119 
 
 it sometimes. It is so sad, because she is really your mother, 
 and not mine." She paused, and added shyly, sweetly, " You 
 won't think unkind things of her whilst we are away, will 
 you ? You used to think she did not care about you ; you re- 
 member saying that. But it isn't true, Desmond. Auntie is 
 all tender and loving inside, not a bit like she pretends to 
 be. Besides, mothers must love their own children." 
 
 " Must they ? " And then he added hastily, " I dare say 
 you are right ; I'm sure you are right. But she's got a funny 
 way of showing it." 
 
 " She said whatever allowance the other young men had at 
 Mr. Bird's, Uncle Andrew was to see you had as much or 
 more. You were not to want for anything. She is going to 
 open a banking account for you. I heard her talking about 
 it. You know she's awfully generous." 
 
 " She'd give me anything but what I want most." 
 
 " What do you want most ? " she asked quickly, looking up 
 at him. She must have read something in his eyes, for the 
 faint flush came again, and she did not press for a reply. 
 
 " Let's sit down here." 
 
 They sat on the gnarled roots of an ancient oak, and a 
 silence fell between them, a silence like a shadow. But she 
 could not long be shy with Desmond. She came near to him 
 until their shoulders were almost touching. 
 
 " Don't be sad, Desmond. I can't bear to think you are 
 going away sad. You always said you wanted to be a soldier. 
 Yet, since this has been arranged, you haven't seemed a bit 
 happy. Of course, it can't be because there may be a war " 
 
 " Did she say that to you ? " he asked hastily. " Is that 
 what she thinks ? " 
 
 " I don't know. Of course, if there was really a war we 
 should neither of us want you to go." 
 
 " You'd have to put up with it then. No, it isn't because 
 there might be a chance of active service. That's about the 
 only inducement." 
 
 " What is it, then ? I know you're not happy." 
 
 "Do you think Michael McKay will come out to you at
 
 120 FULL SWING 
 
 Aix or Dinard?" he asked irrelevantly and in a different 
 tone. 
 
 " I know he will ; I heard her ask him. What has that to 
 do with it?'' 
 
 " Nothing. Only I wanted to know. Tell me again. You 
 missed me when I was away, used to be unhappy about me ? " 
 
 *' Yes, and about you and auntie not loving each other. I 
 used to cry about it when I was alone in my bedroom at night, 
 cry myself to sleep/' 
 
 "You cried about me?^' 
 
 "Yes. I never told anyone. But now everything is so 
 different. You are going to learn to be a soldier, and you 
 know you always wanted to be a soldier — you remember we 
 used to play at soldiers? If it isn't the war, is it being in 
 London, or the examination?" 
 
 She saw that he was unhappy as he had been in child- 
 hood's days, and crept nearer to him. The green shadow 
 from the trees or some other shadow was upon his face, and 
 she wanted to comfort him. 
 
 " Tell me why you look uphappy. I want you always to 
 tell me everything." 
 
 « I will. I want to." 
 
 "We've always told each other everything — except about 
 my crying in bed." 
 
 "Not quite, not lately. I've wanted to tell you some- 
 thing. It's — it's about Michael McKay. You haven't guessed, 
 have you ? " 
 
 " Guessed what ? " 
 
 " Why Michael hangs about. Why he is coming out to you 
 at Aix or Dinard. Why she has invited him." 
 
 " No." But she was apprehensive, the flush again staining 
 her cheek. 
 
 " She wants you to marry Michael." 
 
 " Me ! " She was amused, but her breath came quickly, 
 smiling and a little derisive, but not utterly without belief. 
 He put his arm about her. 
 
 " You never guessed ? "
 
 FULL SWING 121 
 
 " It's so ridiculous ! " 
 
 "Ridiculous, is it? I believe it is. You'd never marry 
 anyone but me, would you ? You'll wait for me, won't you ? " 
 His arm was about her, but her face was quickly hidden against 
 his coat, and he had to stoop his head to hear her answer. 
 
 "They'll try and argue with you — persuade you. She 
 said we were just like brother and sister.'* 
 
 " We're not ? " Her voice was stifled. 
 
 "That's why I was angry with Michael for saying it. 
 It's not true at all." She had to hide her face deeper. He 
 whispered: "Tell me you're as glad about that as I am." 
 She made no answer this time, her burning face was hidden, 
 her beating heart frightened her. 
 
 " It's not that way I'm caring for you, nor you for me, 
 is it? Tell me, tell me ! " 
 
 She could not answer, sitting there in the encircling ten- 
 derness of his young arm, sweetly startled, sweetly afraid. 
 Her heart was knocking out the answer all the time as if it 
 were a spirit at a table-turning seance. But it was hardly 
 her time to love ; a minute ago she had been a child. 
 
 "I don't know, Desmond, I don't know," she faltered. 
 "I'm afraid." 
 
 " You mustn't be afraid." He felt that she clung to him. 
 " It's true then — that's all that matters. Is it true ? " 
 
 An awe of it came upon him. It was true that they loved 
 each other, and it was wonderful. They sat for a minute or 
 two, holding each other. At last she raised her face to him, 
 her child-lips trembling. His eyes were full of tears when he 
 kissed her — so were hers — quickly. A thousand memories 
 were between them in this surprising moment, childish mem- 
 ories. She had often cried in his arms or against his shoul- 
 der, been comforted roughly or tenderly. She had cried for 
 a grazed knee, or a fall; a broken doll or some nursery 
 tragedy ; because he was going away to school, or he had said 
 a hasty unkind word. These tears were different, he kissed 
 them, his arms shook as he held her. She clung to him and 
 her words were almost wild.
 
 122 FULL SWING 
 
 " Oh, Desmond ! Is it true — is it really true ? " 
 
 He saw how young she was, hardly old enough to hold 
 this great truth. And then it was he proved himself a fine 
 gentleman, not wild or undisciplined as his mother thought 
 him, but a fine gentleman, chivalrous, sensitive, restrained. 
 Her lips were there, but for all the temptation it was not there 
 he answered her. His arm was about her waist, but he never 
 drew her to him, for all his sudden hunger for her. He 
 steadied himself and answered as soberly as if he were 
 Michael. 
 
 " It is true. You won't forget it whilst I am away ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " You won't marry Michael ? " 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 " Promise ! " 
 
 " I promise." 
 
 " You'll never marry anyone but me. You'll wait for 
 me?" 
 
 " I promise." 
 
 " Honest Injun ! " 
 
 " Honest Injun," she repeated. 
 
 It was the old childish oath that had never been broken, 
 that was as solemn as a sacrament. They looked at each other, 
 half laughing, but there was a solemnity about their laughter, 
 and a difference. Then she said hurriedly, a little confused : 
 
 " It's getting late. Oughtn't we to be going back ? " 
 
 *' There's no going back on this," he answered agitatedly. 
 
 " I know." 
 
 She was as one caught unawares, her young feet unsteady 
 in this radiant path; she wanted to hide, to get to shelter. 
 And because of his chivalry and fineness, because he would 
 as lief prize open a money-box, or open a letter not addressed 
 to him, as force the emotion upon her that was making his 
 own colour come and go, unsteadying his voice, he said no 
 more to her. And soberly, for all he was so secretly thrilled 
 and elated and sure that they understood each other, he agreed 
 that it was getting late, and that their truant holiday was 
 over.
 
 FULL SWING 123 
 
 Afterwards they spoke of trivial things, of the boxes that 
 must be packed, and what he would take with him and what 
 leave behind; in whose keeping he would leave the care of 
 dog or ferret. It was not until they were in sight of the 
 house, not until in the distance he saw his mother on the 
 terrace, that he said to her again in that low, unsteady voice : 
 
 " You won't forget ? " 
 
 The strange new shyness with him broke like a flower in 
 her heart into a too poignant sweetness. She shook her head, 
 and that was all. But he took it as the ratification of her 
 promise, following her with his heart lightened.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Blathwayt Bird, whose famous cramming establishment in 
 Netting Hill had been selected for Desmond, was a man with 
 a history. Men, no less than countries and women, are gen- 
 erally better without one, and Blathwayt Bird was no excep- 
 tion to the rula He had been in Parliament, and might have 
 made a figure there, for he had great debating gifts and that 
 intolerance of other people's opinons and feelings whicli dis- 
 tinguish proletarian leaders of men. At the commencement 
 of what promised to be an interesting career, however, a 
 slight accident combined with some hereditary delicacy to 
 make a lifelong cripple of him. Henceforth the heated brain 
 effervesced in a shrunken and impotent body. Some spinal 
 trouble developed, and he never recovered the use of his legs. 
 
 Unable to debate, he was still able to instruct. His first 
 pupil was the son of one of the Liberal Whips. The boy had 
 been a conspicuous failure at his public school, but after six 
 months with Blathwayt Bird he passed a brilliant examina- 
 tion for the Indian Civil Service. The next was the son of a 
 South African millionaire, and the result was the same. 
 Blathwayt Bird's reputation as a coach sprang, mushroom- 
 like, in a single night. Before he had learned to accommodate 
 himself to his invalid chair, he had more work than he could 
 get through. As a teacher he proved himself truculent, 
 effective, arresting. He took a house in Notting Hill, and 
 people rushed to secure his sendees for their sons. His 
 pupils headed the lists for Sandhurst, Woolwich, the Indian 
 and Home Civil Services. He enlarged and enlarged his 
 premises, increased his st-aff, was both conscious and vain of 
 his success, but never became reconciled to his condition. 
 
 Wheeled into the dining-room, where he had meals with 
 his pupils and fellow-teachers, he talked Atheism and de- 
 pravity, giving classical examples in praise^ not only of 
 drunkenness, but debauchery. He set the tone of his house, 
 
 124
 
 FULL SWING 125 
 
 defending himself when attacked, and repudiating respon- 
 sibility callously and cynically. 
 
 "I am here to pass men through examinations, not to 
 dry-nurse them. If they want dry-nursing they must go to 
 a mealy-mouthed parson. I'm an immoralist, a free thinker. 
 Damn it, look at me ! Am I an object lesson on the goodness 
 of God?" he shouted. 
 
 The unwieldy establishment — three houses and a dis- 
 organised control — was dominated by the personality of the 
 head, and from the first Desmond found it difficult to accom- 
 modate himself to its ways. 
 
 Blathwayt Bird was a Radical, a Socialist, a Home Ruler, 
 everything to which the young landowner's sympathies were 
 most diametrically opposed. For Desmond was a landowner, 
 although those acres of his paid little or no rent, and what 
 money was allowed to filter through to him was absorbed by 
 payments to the mortgages. He never understood that the 
 wild and heated talk here was half artificial, and only the 
 work was real. Desmond at first tried to argue, and so came 
 under the scathing satire of the cripple's coarse tongue. An 
 injudicious letter from his mother failed to improve matters. 
 Knowing nothing of Blathwayt Bird save that he was a suc- 
 cessful coach, she thought it her duty to write to him about 
 Desmond. Agatha never failed in duty, though her per- 
 spective might be awry. She was anxious not to prejudice Mr. 
 Bird against Dfesmond, and wrote carefully: 
 
 "You will find my dear boy somewhat excitable and 
 impulsive. It would be better, perhaps, if you used your 
 influence to persuade him to abstain entirely from wine 
 and spirits. . . ." 
 
 Blathwayt read the letter aloud, mockingly, at the dinner 
 table. 
 
 "You are to drink milk and water, I understand. I 
 wonder she doesn't send you a bottle. I suppose that's what 
 you've been brought up on, why your brain hasn't developed." 
 What he added made the boy's cheeks redden; there was
 
 126 FULL SWING 
 
 nothing Blathwayt minded saying to these young men, no 
 decencies he did not enjoy outraging. 
 
 Desmond soon became something of a butt to him, and 
 to show he was not the effeminate fellow his tutor thought 
 him, he did and said things to prove his manhood which 
 only proved the contrary. 
 
 All tlie atmosphere was bad for him. Lady Grindelay 
 came to a faint misgiving about it, but not until it was too 
 late for her to make a change. Mr. Bird wrote as he talked. 
 He ridiculed encouraging Desmond to teetotalism, and said 
 he was pleased to discover in him a dawning palate : 
 
 " My dear Madam, — I can report that your son shows 
 a happier aptitude to distinguish between Chateau Yquem 
 and Veuve Cliquot than he does to differentiate his Greek 
 roots. It would be a pity to discourage the only talent I 
 have observed. . . ." 
 
 When, in alarm, she wrote again, hoping that Desmond 
 had not proved intemperate, he replied that if she wished to 
 take him away she could, but, if he remained, it would not 
 be as a Sunday school scholar. 
 
 Andrew McKay saw the correspondence, and tried to 
 explain Blathwayt Bird to Agatha. She did realise the im- 
 portance of the examination, was made to understand no one 
 but Bird could get the boy through, and reluctantly agreed 
 to write him no more letters, not to interfere with him, 
 
 Andrew's house in Campden Hill was open to Desmond, 
 but he did not often take advantage of the hospitalities 
 offered. He could not bear to meet Michael. At Whitsuntide 
 he heard Michael was again at Marley, whilst he was bidden 
 to remain on grinding at Notting Hill. His mother tried 
 to soften the position. 
 
 " It will be better for you to remain where you are. Mr. 
 Bird tells me you will need every minute if you are to get 
 through. I will come up and stay near you for a few days if 
 it will make things any better for you." 
 
 He refused the offer. Sometimes now he was conscious
 
 FULL SWING 127 
 
 of a growing resentment against his mother and what he was 
 beginning to think of as her " damnable kindness." He was 
 not yet keen on his prospects, and the getting up the various 
 subjects demanded was thoroughly uncongenial. So was the 
 whole life, with its surroundings. 
 
 Eunice wrote, too, but her letters said nothing to him. 
 They seemed to be written under constraint; they were full 
 of what she was doing, never of what she was thinking, dif- 
 fering in some vital essential from the letters he had always 
 had from her. He could not know it was her new shyness 
 that cramped theiii. The remembrance of their wonderful 
 talk in the woods seemed to him at times only a dream. 
 
 It never struck him that she, too, had some reflection of 
 this feeling, that the old, unrestrained intercourse was ob- 
 scured, without, as yet, giving them a new and more perfect 
 intimacy. She seemed farther off from him than she had 
 ever been, inaccessible. Often now he wished he had said 
 more. Yet he never wrote it, for the vein of chivalry in him 
 prevented this. He thought sometimes that everything would 
 be different if he could pass this " beastly examination." 
 
 But in the meantime he resented Michael having the op- 
 portunities denied to himself, and went rarely to Campden 
 Hill. 
 
 Of course he made friends. He had passed through Eton 
 unscathed, but here he could not hold himself aloof, nor live 
 differently from liis fellows; not ostentatiously differently. 
 There were few restrictions and little restraint. As long as 
 the work was got through, nothing else mattered. Desmond 
 went with others of the pupils to theatres and music halls, 
 talked with barmaids and promenaders ; " saw life," a sordid 
 life, of which he always remained, however, something of an 
 outsider. He did his best to work, although work was so 
 against the grain. Blathwayt Bird called him milk-bred and 
 mealy-mouthed, until he became more reckless and played at 
 being the man of the world, not condemning that which never- 
 theless he did not copy. He was sometimes persuaded of his 
 own unworthiness, and thought that Eunice might also be, 
 and that she would give him up; he had at these times no
 
 128 FULL SWING 
 
 armour to buckle on, no shining armour of love and faith 
 such as is girded upon boys whose young mothers watch and 
 pray by their bedsides. He was defenceless against any temp- 
 tation that might come. 
 
 Michael came to see him on his return from Marley, bring- 
 ing messages. Desmond misunderstood all the messages 
 Michael brought, resented hearing of Eunice through him, 
 was almost rude, and said he did not want to hear any more. 
 Michael thought Desmond had deteriorated, and held anxious 
 consultation with his father, hoping he was not getting under 
 bad influence. They tried to get him to go more often to 
 Campden Hill, but after he heard that Michael was going 
 with Lady Grindelay and Eunice to Cornwall at midsummer, 
 and from his mother that he was to join Mr. Bird's reading 
 party, Desmond refused to go at all to Campden Hill, putting 
 forward his work as an excuse. 
 
 The McKays heard of him at music halls and feared for 
 him. But they need not have feared. There was no coarse 
 fibre in the texture of his mind, and if he had no armour, he 
 had at least an amulet. 
 
 He went down to Marley for the August Bank Holiday. 
 This was to be practically his good-bye visit. The foreign 
 travel had fallen through for the moment, and Lady Grinde- 
 lay was taking Eunice to Cornwall. The McKays would be 
 of the party, whilst Desmond was to suffer the uncongeniality 
 of Blathwayt Bird and his most backward pupils. Then back 
 to Netting Hill until it was time to go up for the examina- 
 tion. After which, if he was fortunate, there would be Sand- 
 hurst. If not — well, that he did not care to contemplate. 
 
 He was very much disappointed to find that even during 
 those few days he and Eunice were never alone. His mother 
 had arranged that the Campdens should be there, and one or 
 two cadets; she wished to make Desmond in love with his 
 new career. Everything was designed to that end. 
 
 Having cut the ground from under his feet with Eunice, 
 she was anxious to compensate him for all of which she had 
 deprived him. Not knowing that its name was Hope, the 
 spring of life and high endeavour, Agatha was satisfied with
 
 FULL SWING 129 
 
 all she had done and was doing for her son. She talked to him 
 of his career until he was sick of the word, and praised him 
 because he took no more champagne than the others with 
 his meals. 
 
 Eunice had blossomed into some new beauty, whilst he, 
 emerging from that coarse atmosphere at Notting Hill, had 
 perhaps some new reticence. Lady Grindelay noted with sat- 
 isfaction the manner of the young people toward each other. 
 As a matter of fact, Eunice hardly knew this changed and 
 silent Desmond, who was so abrupt and strange, cool or in- 
 different. She began to think she had mistaken what he said 
 to her that day in the wood, or that he had changed his 
 mind. She began to feel estranged from him, ashamed of 
 all she had dreamed. It seemed as if the old intimacy was 
 gone, as if they no longer understood each other. And yet, 
 and yet — she was not sure. There were moments when she 
 thought differently, when his eyes met hers in sudden recog- 
 nition, when she found herself moved to flush and confusion, 
 and some strange flutter of pleasure or poignant pain. 
 
 Lady Grindelay filled the time with engagements, enter- 
 tainments, keeping the house full, arranging that the two 
 young people should be kept apart. It never struck her that 
 secretly, strangely, shyly, the two she wished to keep separate 
 were abetting her in her endeavour. Eunice and Desmond 
 had no talk together at all. He saw her wooed by all the 
 young men about her, and felt himself strangely and inex- 
 plicably debarred. Sometimes he wondered if his mother was 
 right about him, if it was true he was unfit for her. The 
 humility of his spirit was the measure of the greatness of his 
 love. The girl had suddenly become mysterious. To him 
 she represented the whole soul of womanhood. He thrilled 
 with her nearness, and was silenced by it. He felt stained 
 by the knowledge he had acquired, her virginal innocence 
 made him ashamed. If only they had been left alone! But 
 Lady Grindelay shepherded them carefully, conscientiously 
 doing what she believed to be her duty to her dead sister's 
 child. 
 
 9
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Michael's wooing was little different in Cornwall from what 
 it had been at Marley, 
 
 Eunice was adroit in contriving that they were never alone 
 together, in avoiding sentimentality and substituting exercise. 
 They were staying at the gayest and most-frequented hotel 
 in Newquay; there were tennis and croquet and golf, and at 
 one or the other of them the girl could always be found. She 
 made friends easily, was always in request for this or the 
 other game. She included Michael in her arrangements, but 
 that was all. He was quite satisfied with the progress he was 
 making; knowing nothing of what was behind her anxiety 
 to avoid being alone with him he put it down to natural girlish 
 shyness, and found it wholly charming. They were to be away 
 six weeks altogether. Before three of them were gone, she 
 complained of being bored with the place, of finding every- 
 thing tedious; she lost interest in games. 
 
 He could not know she was wearying for her boy cousin, 
 for the letters that said so little when they came; that she 
 was counting the days to the time when they were to go back 
 to Marley, home-sick in the simshine for the shadow of Marley 
 Woods, home-sick beside the changing sea and jagged coast- 
 line for the grey river and the banks where it lapped among 
 the reeds. She did not avoid Michael; she went with him 
 willingly on this excursion or the other, preferring him to the 
 strangers from the clubs or hotel, hungry for the talk that 
 led sometimes to Desmond. Michael was ready to tell her of 
 Desmond, unlikely to say anything to wound her. If he had 
 fears or misgivings that the boy was not as steady as he should 
 be, and kept bad company in town, Eunice was the last person 
 in the world to whom he would convey it. He was the type 
 of young man, the best type, steady and definite, who thought 
 women should know nothing of the underside of life, should 
 be kept sweet and ignorant in their guarded homes. 
 
 There came a day when he knew he could wait no longer. 
 It was the end of August, and his holiday was coming to an 
 
 130
 
 FULL SWING 131 
 
 end. That morning, dressing deliberately and carefully in 
 his grey suit and brown tie, he made up his mind that the 
 time had come when she might know he had her aunt's per- 
 mission to address her, his father's approval. He meant also 
 to tell her he loved her, but in all the years to come he would 
 show her that. He saw her as his wife, the mother of his 
 children ; his hand shook a little when he had finished tying 
 the brown bow. 
 
 He meant to keep himself well in hand, not to startle her. 
 He was full of tenderness and consideration and certainty, 
 knowing how well he would care for her. 
 
 Having made up his mind to speak to-day, Michael would 
 speak, whether the occasion offered or not. The occasion did 
 offer. Lady Grindelay, divining what he had in his mind, 
 sent them out walking together soon after breakfast, saying 
 she had letters to write. 
 
 They went along East Pentire toward the Gannell River, 
 Eunice talking as usual, as if there were nothing to differen- 
 tiate this day from any other. 
 
 "Don't you think the sea looks quite different on the 
 English coast from the way it does on the French ? We were 
 at Paris Plage last year, and it was so much quieter, better- 
 mannered, as if it had lessons in deportment — French lessons." 
 
 When with Michael she always felt she must entertain him 
 and talk her best, although listening was more to her taste. 
 
 She had brought bread with, her, and now they stood to 
 feed the seagulls. Her undeclared lover expatiated upon the 
 birds' ill-considered habit of circling over refuse. They 
 stood where at low tide the salt river ran almost dry; the 
 harvest was late, and fields of golden corn swayed on either 
 side; the green hedges marked the boundaries. Far in the 
 distance they heard the swell of the Atlantic. Where they 
 stood the birds circled in their hundreds. 
 
 " The gulls are trying to teach the Gannell how to play, 
 saying ' Come on, show a little spirit ; send up some waves 
 and foam, don't you know you're a part of the sea ? ' " 
 
 "I had not observed that; it had not struck me in that 
 way."
 
 132 FULL SWING- 
 
 She threw more breadcrumbs to the birds, and they rose 
 and cawed, circling with pathetic, weakly legs hanging down, 
 and swaying wings. 
 
 ^' We never do see things the same way, do we? " she said 
 unreflectingly. 
 
 " I should be sorry to think that," he answered gravely. 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 " It isn't surprising. You are older than I am, and you 
 know so much more." 
 
 " I am sure you know all that a girl should." 
 
 " Do I ? I feel very ignorant sometimes. I always hated 
 lessons. Auntie and you know a hundred thousand things 
 more than I do. You and she agree about everything." 
 
 Dark and purple was the distant sea, and the sky a wind- 
 swept blue. 
 
 " I should be sorry to think we differed on any essential 
 points," he began. 
 
 She laughed again, mocking him a little in her quick 
 change of mood. 
 
 " How solemn you are to-day ! We differ about the gulls, 
 don't we? You think they flock here to feed on impurity, 
 because the drains attract them. I think they are having a 
 party, playing games, hide-and-seek and puss-in-the-comer, 
 dancing." 
 
 " You are fanciful about them." 
 
 " You are never fanciful, are you ? " 
 
 *' I had hoped you found me companionable." 
 
 She was shocked at the hurt tone in his voice, and hastened 
 to reassure him ; she would not for anything have been found 
 lacking in courtesy. 
 
 " Of course I do. You know that. I was only joking 
 about the seagulls. We have had some nice talks; of course 
 I've found you companionable." 
 
 He had determined to speak to her to-day, to-morrow or 
 the next day he must go back to town. He cleared his throat, 
 took the opening and said almost the words he had prepared 
 before he came out, appropriate words. 
 
 " I am glad of that — more than glad. You say you have
 
 FULL SWING 133 
 
 found me companionable in a short holiday. I hope, on a 
 longer road, you would not find me less congenial." He fal- 
 tered before the puzzled surprise in her eyes, paused. His 
 stiff and formal words misrepresented his feelings. He really 
 loved her well and truly. She could see some emotion in his 
 face, and wondered at it; then had the quick intuition that 
 the moment she had instinctively avoided was upon her. She 
 flushed quickly, and would have interrupted with light or 
 trivial speech. 
 
 " We've been a much longer road than this. We walked 
 to the Mawgan the day before yesterday." 
 
 " You will listen to me, won't you ? " He was almost 
 humble. " You know what I want to say, although I may 
 be saying it badly." 
 
 " Saying it badly ! " Poor Michael, who had ever dis- 
 tinguished himself at the Union or lesser debating societies! 
 The very doubt made for grace. 
 
 " Your aunt has given me permission to speak to you. 
 My father and sisters would welcome you. Don't turn your 
 head away. Leave off feeding the gulls." 
 
 She threw her last crumb and the paper bag to them, 
 and turned at his request. His voice said more than his words, 
 and it was his voice she answered impulsively, her cheeks 
 flushed. 
 
 ''Don't say any more, please; don't say any more, 
 Michael." 
 
 " I must." 
 
 " But I don't want to hear." 
 
 "You know I am asking you to marry me — not at once, 
 not until you are ready. But to say one day you will be my 
 wife." 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! It's impossible ! " Never had she looked 
 fairer, nor her flushed face sweeter. " I am so sorry, Michael, 
 more than sorry. Why did you say it? You know I don't 
 want to marry you. I can't." 
 
 " The idea is new to you, strange." 
 
 " No, it isn't." The flush deepened. " I knew you were 
 going to ask me. I wanted to prevent you."
 
 134 FULL SWING 
 
 " Why ? " He was really a bad wooer. " You haven't 
 anything against me, have you ? I can't take ' no ' for an 
 answer, I really can't, I have had this in my mind so long. 
 You say you've known it." 
 
 "I tried not to — not to believe it." 
 
 " But now that you know it is true." He burst into truth, 
 or what he thought was truth. "I love you. I can't live 
 without you." 
 
 Now he pleaded, pleaded as well as he knew; she could 
 not silence him, although she tried. She resented the circum- 
 stance, resented with a new and sudden irritability that he 
 was here at all, telling her that he loved her. What had lain 
 warm and quiescent all these months in her girlish heart was 
 again like an expanding flower. Her colour came and went, 
 her breath was uneven, but not for Michael or his pleading. 
 
 " Your aunt and my father are old friends. In every way 
 it would be suitable." 
 
 " Don't talk about it, please don't talk about it any more, 
 Michael. I don't mean to marry, at least not for years and 
 years. I don't want to leave auntie." Any excuse must 
 serve. " Do leave off talking about it." 
 
 " But if she agrees, if she herself tells you it is her wish ? " 
 
 "Nothing could make any difference." They stood side 
 by side in silence for a moment or two. Then he broke out in 
 phrase less stilted than he had used up to now, more natural 
 altogether. 
 
 " Give me any reason — any real reason. You must leave 
 home one day. Marley will belong to Desmond. There isn't 
 anyone you like better than me, is there? I'm going home 
 to-morrow ; I can't go away and feel you have decided against 
 me. You can't have decided against me. Speak freely, we 
 have been good companions, the only differences between us 
 are the differences between any man and girl. You are more 
 imaginative, poetic." He was becoming desperate. " I know 
 I'm more matter-of-fact; I'll try and alter." 
 
 " It isn't that." 
 
 " What is it, then ? I have never looked at another girl ; 
 you are the uttermost perfection to me, the sweetest. . . ."
 
 FULL SWING 135 
 
 His voice went, but came back. " Don't think I don't know 
 I'm unworthy. Any man is unworthy of such a girl as you." 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't say such things." 
 
 " I must. I don't think you understand. I must make 
 you know what this means to me. For over a year now I've 
 thought of little else. Don't send me away, you don't dislike 
 me, do you ? You said you found me companionable." 
 
 " That isn't enough ! " 
 
 Her eyes were averted from him, she was looking across 
 the sea to the horizon where the sun illumined the dark 
 waters, and there were visions, vistas. 
 
 " It isn't enough, Michael ! It isn't enough ! " she re- 
 peated, and now there was something wistful in her eyes, pas- 
 sionate in her speech. 
 
 " What more is it you want ? " And his words, too, were 
 passionate. *' 1 love you with my whole heart." 
 
 " But I don't love you," she answered. " I can't help it. 
 I know how good you are, and kind, but love — love is differ- 
 ent." She knew so well, young as she was, she knew. '' Don't 
 look like that, Michael. What can I do? Love and liking 
 are so different." 
 
 Mystery and enchantment were in the words he said : " I 
 love you with my whole heart." But as she listened and felt 
 the thrill of them, it was not Michael who was saying them. 
 She heard another's voice. Her eyes grew soft and filled, 
 her heart remembered and beat quickly. Kone of the glad- 
 ness and glow was for Michael, though he went on telling 
 her how greatly he cared for her. She was hardly listening, 
 she was vaguely sorry for him, but hardly listening. Her 
 heart was awake, clamouring, although as yet she hardly 
 knew for what. 
 
 " Won't you give me some hope ? When you are older — 
 next year, perhaps? I know how young you are, I am quite 
 content to wait." 
 
 It was so unlike Michael to plead ; his pleading seemed to 
 deprive him of dignity. She was sorry for him and for his 
 lost dignity.
 
 136 FULL SWING 
 
 *' I couldn't feel any different if you waited a hundred 
 years; really, I couldn't." 
 
 " You are not kind ! " He felt more than he could express, 
 but her quickened sympathy heard the falter in his voice. 
 
 "I don't mean to be unkind. Oh, Michael, forgive me; 
 don't be angry with me ! I could never marry you. I can't 
 even bear to think of your wanting me to. Don't you see, 
 don't you understand ? I don't mean ever to marry, but if I 
 did it would be because, because" (the colours in her cheeks 
 and eyes were beautiful and changing, reflections of the sea 
 and sky) " because I cared for someone so much that — that I 
 never wanted to be away from him." 
 
 " You can't imagine yourself feeling like that with me ? " 
 
 But he knew the answer before it came to him, low-voiced. 
 There was nothing more to be said. They stood where they 
 were a little while, still watching the gulls. Michael felt 
 cold, and spoke of the change in the weather : 
 
 " One can never rely upon the temperature at this time 
 of year." 
 
 "It's time we turned back, nearly lunch time, isn't it?" 
 
 The matter was ended; they talked of other things per- 
 sistently until they reached the hotel. Michael was striving 
 to recapture that lost dignity of his. His pride was wounded, 
 but he vrished and struggled to hide his wounded heart. To 
 be a rejected suitor was hard to bear, he, with all his gifts. 
 But to be what he was — a rejected lover — ^hurt him a thousand 
 times more. She did not need his love, would have none of it. 
 
 The alteration that knowledge made in Michael McKay 
 was not a thing that showed at once ; it might have left him 
 drier, drained him of feeling. Instead it flowed inward, deep- 
 ening and enlarging him. 
 
 To face Lady Grindelay with the story of his defeat was 
 difficult, and he winced under her sympathj. When she told 
 him that Eunice was too young to know her own mind he 
 shook his head. He knew better. She was looking to life 
 not only for love, but romance. Something beneath his dry 
 surface thrilled and taught him.
 
 FULL SWING 137 
 
 His had been no figure of romance for her. He began 
 to see that was so, wishing that no one else need know. All 
 his need now was to hurry back to the office, and bury his 
 pain and discomfiture in legal tomes and papers — to hide 
 himself. 
 
 Lady Grindelay was full of sympathy for him; her own 
 disappointment counted less than his, for she at least was 
 still able to hope. Just as Michael looked now, Andrew had 
 looked over thirty years ago, surprising her, for he, too, had 
 a cold manner and Scottish caution. But Eunice would be 
 guarded from such an error as she had made in rejecting 
 Andrew and marrying Lord Grindelay. 
 
 " It will come right, Michael. Give her time, leave me to 
 talk to her about you. See how different she will feel after 
 I have talked to her." 
 
 But Michael packed for London that night; he did not 
 wish to see either of them again for a time. 
 
 As for Eunice, she was glad when Michael was gone. She 
 did not want to speak of what had happened. It seemed such 
 foolish talk. She and Michael ! She remembered Desmond 
 had warned her, and the promise that had been so unneces- 
 sary. She thought how young and foolish she had been a few 
 months ago, and blushed in remembering what else Desmond 
 had said to her when they were under the trees at Marley. 
 It had been hibernating in her heart all that summer, and 
 could never sleep again. 
 
 Lady Grindelay waited, and in the end forced her con- 
 fidence. Eunice did not want to speak, was not ready for 
 speech. And the confidence that was forced was only a half 
 confidence; her speech closed down again like the leaves of a 
 night flower forced open by some rude hand before the dark- 
 ness comes. 
 
 " Poor Michael ! His holiday was cut sadly short. You 
 were not very kind to him, I fear." 
 
 " He was silly." 
 
 " I told him you were still young, you might change your 
 mind."
 
 138 FULL SWING 
 
 " I couldn't marr}' Michael/' Eunice said hurriedly, 
 shamefacedly. " I could never marry Michael." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " It's impossible ! " She did not want to explain. 
 
 Lady Grindelay spoke of Michael's high character, fine 
 qualities. Eunice grew hot in saying that had nothing to 
 do with it. She was sure Michael was all that her aunt said. 
 Agatha wanted to get into the girl's mind and guide it. She 
 was a little jarred and repelled by what she was being told. 
 
 " Congenial tastes, characteristics, sympathies are what 
 make a happy marriage." 
 
 " But there is something else. . . ." 
 
 "Tell me what is in your mind against this marriage. 
 To have won Michael's regard, his great regard, is something 
 of which to be proud. Are you not proud of it? You are 
 little more than a child. Michael is a good man." 
 
 " I want to stay with you," there was quite a pause, and 
 when she added two words her voice was low, "with you 
 and Desmond." 
 
 " With you and Desmond ! " 
 
 Lady Grindelay could have won the confidence she would 
 have forced. She had but to yield her prejudices, open her 
 eyes to what was before her, and open them wide and toler- 
 antly. One word now, and all the unhappy future could 
 have been averted. What her son had told her the girl at her 
 knee was repeating. She need do nothing, only stand aside, 
 let them take their own lives in their own hands — follow 
 nature. 
 
 But she deemed her conscience and her duty were in- 
 volved. "Intolerant Agatha" her husband had often called 
 her. She had not grown less so as the years rolled on, con- 
 firming her in place and power. " With you and Desmond," 
 the girl whispered. 
 
 Why not? What could have been better? The girl for 
 whom she had made herself responsible to stay for ever in 
 the home she loved with the son who should inherit it ! But 
 she had decided that Eunice should marry Michael. She 
 owed his father that, and to Monica's child safeguarding from
 
 FULL SWING 139 
 
 danger. Love was almost a myth to her — sex love.. Desmond 
 was too young to know his own mind. Her husband had told 
 her how often he had been in love. 
 
 "I don't suppose Desmond will come back to Marley for 
 any length of time, at least. You can stay on with me, of 
 course, always, if you don't wish to marry. But Desmond 
 will, I hope, be with his regiment." 
 
 The low voice persisted. The girl had been forced into 
 speaking, and now she could not be silent. 
 
 " But when he is older ? When he comes home for good ? " 
 
 Eunice could not say all there was in her mind. She was 
 too shy, and he had given her no title to speak. At Whitsun- 
 tide he had been quite different. But she never faltered in 
 her allegiance to Desmond. She began to speak again pres- 
 ently, hurriedly, to defend, to explain him. 
 
 Agatha said, a little coldly, that there was no doubt 
 Eunice thought she knew Desmond better than his own 
 mother did, and had a spasm of pain lest it might be true. 
 
 But Eunice's love was young and tender and defenceless; 
 she could not even talk about it. He had given her no title ; 
 he had said nothing at Whitsuntide. Agatha went on, half 
 hurt, and half because she knew no better. 
 
 '* Give up any idea of Desmond, be guided by me, you 
 may be sure I have only your interest at heart. You must let 
 me judge for you." 
 
 There may have been jealousy in it, a natural jealousy; 
 but if so, she was unaware of it. She thought only that it 
 would be years, if ever, before Desmond would be fit for 
 responsibility, and that it was she who would guide him all 
 these years. Eunice must marry Michael because the promise 
 had been given to Andrew. But she did not wish the girl to 
 be unhappy or feel ill-used, meant to be kind to her. She 
 thought Eunice would be easy to persuade, it was Eunice 
 herself who gave her that impression. 
 
 Whatever the girl's feelings were toward her cousin at this 
 time they were immature feelings, young and tender, igno- 
 rant, half-ashamed. She could not argue with her aunt, nor 
 express herself clearly.
 
 CHAPTEE XIII 
 
 Whilst Michael was conducting his ill-fated wooing' in Corn- 
 wall, Desmond was spending his monotonous six weeks at 
 Bognor. 
 
 Anyone who knows anything ahout reading parties knows 
 that they are not exhilarating. Blathwayt Bird managed to 
 get a certain amount of work done, but he was suffering from 
 one of his recurrent attacks of ill-health, and left his five or 
 six young men very much to their own devices. Pretty poor 
 devices they were: ogling young ladies on the sands; going 
 aimless walks; playing nap; taking part in a weekly cricket 
 match where the local clergyman umpired, and looked after 
 his local team so well that the stumps had to fly before the 
 batsman retired. Everyone was glad to go back to town, 
 Desmond no less than the others. 
 
 In London he had a hurried glimpse of his mother and 
 Eunice. They stayed in London one night on their way from 
 Cornwall. They were not returning to Marley, but going 
 to Biarritz for the month of September and part of October. 
 " You'll have passed by the time we get back.'' 
 " Anyway, the beastly examination will be over." 
 He dined with them at their hotel, and saw them off from 
 Victoria the next day. He had nothing to say to Eunice, 
 apparently, nor she to him. If they had, there was no oppor- 
 tunity. Lady Grindelay talked of Cornish scenery, and of the 
 new travelling maid she had secured — a treasure who spoke 
 several languages, and could be trusted to see them through 
 the various custom-houses. She lamented that Eunice spoke 
 no Spanish, and hoped her French would prove useful. She 
 gave Desmond a handsome cheque and told him he was not 
 to grudge himself anything, suggested he should buy a horse, 
 and ride in the Park in the mornings. 
 
 " We shall be back before you go to Sandhurst. You must 
 keep yourself well." 
 
 140
 
 FULL SWING 141 
 
 She seemed to have no doubt he would get through. 
 Affairs in South Africa were farther than ever from a settle- 
 ment. 
 
 Desmond did manage to ask Eunice if McKay had been in 
 Cornwall all the time they were there; and, of course, 
 interpreted the blush and hesitation of the affirmative reply. 
 He thought she had forgotten all they had said to each other 
 in the wood. She thought he had. But neither of them was 
 quite sure. He asked his mother if Michael McKay was to 
 be at Biarritz, and she replied without reflection : 
 
 "Very probably." 
 
 But this was after she had taken her seat in the railway 
 carriage, and was testing the value of her new treasure, who 
 had actually given her a cushion for her back, the tea-basket 
 as a footstool, and was inquiring if she would like a book or 
 a paper. 
 
 When he walked out of the station Desmond had the idea 
 that if he failed to pass he would not face them; he would 
 either enlist or cut his throat. He had the feeling his mother 
 was standing successfully between him and Eunice, that he 
 was as much under her sway as the servants at Marley Court, 
 the villagers at Little Marley. He owed her even his income. 
 Languedoc was only an expense. He hated his dependence. 
 
 Very soon, too, he heard how well Biarritz suited them all, 
 and that they were going on to San Sebastian when the 
 weather grew cooler. 
 
 His own letters were short. He said he was busy working, 
 and for a short time after their departure this was true. 
 Even Blathwayt Bird was heard to say young Grindelay was 
 waking up ; if he could catch the examiners napping, he might 
 get through, that is, if he could keep it up. But he doubted 
 that, and the doubt was not helpful to Desmond. Neither 
 was the weather, it was very damp and muggy, raining con- 
 tinuously, affecting his spirits. It should have been a time 
 of growth with the boy, but all the growth was blocked and 
 stifled. 
 
 Two weeks before the examination he caught cold. When 
 the cold was pronounced influenza., he was glad of the excuse
 
 142 FUMi SWING 
 
 it gave him to remain in bed. Blathwayt would " rot him " 
 about staying in bed for a cold, however badly his head 
 ached, or his limbs, but an attack of influenza justified him. 
 Besides, the doctor insisted, and he had neither the power 
 nor the inclination to resist. 
 
 There was no one in the house whose duty it was to attend 
 to Desmond. Blathwayt Bird never thought anyone could be 
 ill but himself, or that it mattered if anyone else should be. 
 Influenza was a trivial complaint, almost childish, an affair 
 of forty-eight hours. Nevertheless, in accordance with his 
 duty, he wrote to Lady Grindelay, making light of the attack. 
 
 " He will be all right in a day or two, no doubt ; in any 
 case, I think Ave are through the worst." He was alluding 
 to the coaching and not to the illness. " I think he will get 
 through, although it has been a hard fight; he has shown 
 himself much more industrious lately." 
 
 Desmond, on the third or fourth day of his illness, asked 
 if his mother had been written to. The doctor was able to 
 assure him this had been done. It was after the symptoms of 
 pneumonia developed that he got a letter from her. It urged 
 him to make a last effort. 
 
 " Mr. Bird writes me that the next fortnight is all-impor- 
 tant. I hope you have thrown off your chill and are working 
 with all your power." 
 
 " Wire her I'm all right," he said feebly to the nurse, only 
 installed a couple of hours. '"Tell her I won't write again 
 until after the examination. I can't have her bothering me 
 now." 
 
 The nurse soothed him, thought already it was impor- 
 tant he should not be bothered, wrote out the telegram accord- 
 ing to his wish, signed it with his name : 
 
 " Getting on all right. Writing later. — ^Desmond/' 
 
 It seemed inadequate, but he was unable to think of any- 
 thing better to say. He was running into illness — serious 
 illness, and already his mind was a little obscured. 
 
 Under the circumstances, Mr. Bird wrote again to^rard
 
 FULL SWING 143 
 
 the end of the week. But he still did not believe that young 
 Lord Grindelay was really ill. He thought the doctor was 
 probably desirous of running up an account. 
 
 "Influenza is rife in London at the moment. Desmond 
 has had a sharp attack, apparently, but when this reaches you 
 he should be well on the road to recovery." 
 
 She telegraphed when she got this letter, and also to 
 Marley, directing that hothouse grapes and other fruit should 
 be sent to Lord Grindelay. By this time Nurse Radlett had 
 listened to the young Irish peer in delirium, when his mind 
 was wandering. It may be supposed that she had formed 
 her plan, or some plan. Already she knew she wanted no one 
 to come between her and her patient. Again she sent a reas- 
 suring telegram. And Agatha was reassured, taking it for 
 granted Desmond was back at work; the test time was 
 imminent. 
 
 Nurse Radlett informed herself that Desmond, Lord 
 Grindelay, was an only son, and that the Languedoc acres 
 were many; as to their condition or value, she made no in- 
 quiries, taking them on trust. She had the young man en- 
 tirely to herself, to nurse or influence. The institution 
 hummed with industry as the final days approached, rustled 
 with papers and the loud voice of Blathwayt Bird. No one 
 had time to think of the doubtful pupil, who might have got 
 a place, though only a low one, reflecting no credit on the 
 establishment. He was important to no one in Netting Hill 
 but Nurse Radlett; to her he was of ever-growing interest 
 as the days went on. 
 
 Desmond's temperature went up and up, and in low mut- 
 tered delirium Nurse Radlett heard of Eunice and Michael, 
 of his mother's bad opinion of him, and his own self-doubt. 
 Desmond, usually so reticent and reserved, in his delirium 
 let that ultra-intelligent nurse into many of the secret places 
 of his wounded sensitiveness. 
 
 Nurse Radlett, red-haired, and attractive in her white cap 
 and apron and neat uniform, thoroughly capable and certif- 
 icated, sat up with Desmond at night and tended him by 
 day, proving herself not only competent but indefatigable in
 
 144 FULiL SWING- 
 
 attention, unwearyingly kind. She could hardly be per- 
 suaded to her daily walk, and came back bringing a bunch of 
 violets, or a newspaper, oranges that suited him better than 
 the Marley grapes, stories to beguile the weary hours. She 
 relieved his pains with poultices and steam kettle, his sleep- 
 lessness with drugs, his weakness and depression with many 
 nursing expedients. He had had no illness before this, except 
 infantile ones under Biddy's care. Nurse Radlett was much 
 more competent than Biddy, as he remembered her nursing. 
 Desmond was really very ill for a short time, was nearer to 
 danger, and even to death, than anybody but the nurse and 
 doctor ever knew. Desmond himself knew it only when the 
 danger was past. Then he heard that no one had inquired for 
 him, that no one had been interested in what became of him. 
 No one but Nurse Eadlett ! It was already September when 
 he was well enough to realise this. There was no question 
 now of his being well enough to go up for his examination. 
 But Blathwayt Bird was so busy putting the final polish on 
 those boys who were sure to do him credit, and keep up his 
 average, that he even forgot to write to Lady Grindelay. She 
 took it for granted Desmond was up at Sandhurst plodding 
 through his papers. 
 
 Nurse Radlett, quite aware of what was in her patient's 
 mind, why he inquired for letters so constantly and was 
 depressed and cast down by their absence, asked him one 
 day carelessly if Miss Eunice Fellowes was not a cousin of 
 his ; told him, as if she knew no better than that it was good 
 news, that she had just read the announcement of her 
 engagement to a Mr. McKay. 
 
 " I should have thought your mother would have looked 
 higher for her. He doesn't seem to have a country place at 
 all. It only gives a London address — Campden Hill — it 
 doesn't seem he is anyone in particular." 
 
 Desmond, laid very low by the influenza and subsequent 
 pneimionia, never asked her in what paper she had seen the 
 announcement, never asked to look at it or for confirmation 
 of the news. She had reckoned on this. He went very pale 
 when she gave him the news, and she took the pillow from
 
 FULL SWING 145 
 
 under his head, made him lie flat, and talked about the heat 
 of the room. 
 
 He never doubted the story, never dreamed his good, 
 kind, attentive nurse could so deceive him. He had been very 
 ill, and nobody had written or inquired for him. Much that 
 happened in those worst days of his illness was always con- 
 fused in his mind. He only remembered the chill sense of 
 desolation that fell upon him then, heralding a sharp relapse. 
 
 Afterwards he knew Nurse Radlett was always there, soft- 
 handed and gentle. One day he saw that she was crying, and 
 lay wondering feebly as to the cause of her tears. He asked 
 if he was going to die. She hesitated before saying " No," 
 came over to the bed, and put a hand on his pulse. He could 
 see her eyes were moist. 
 
 " I can't bear to see you so weak." 
 
 Desmond had no idea how weak he was imtil she told him 
 of it. 
 
 She made the pillows more comfortable, lifting him so that 
 his head lay against her breast a moment. 
 
 *' You are not to worry about what I was crying for. Who 
 told you I was crying ? " 
 
 "I saw you. Am I going to die? Tell me the truth. 
 I don't care. Nobody cares." 
 
 Every day he asked, and every day he was told nobody 
 had inquired after him — that there .were no letters from 
 Biarritz. 
 
 " I'm not going to let you die if I can keep you here." 
 
 " I am very bad, then ? " 
 
 ''You must not talk." A cool, soft hand was laid upon 
 his hot forehead and over his fevered eyes. " I am going to 
 pull you through if I have to watch day and night. You 
 won't die for want of care." 
 
 He lay and thought what would happen if he were to die. 
 It seemed an easy way out of his troubles. He would never 
 pass any examinations, he could not retain names or dates in 
 his woolly head; he was no good. He felt very tired, and it 
 seemed that nothing mattered. But Nurse Radlett let him 
 see, never ceased to let him see, that to her at any rate he was 
 10
 
 146 FULL SWING 
 
 all-important. They were alone together all the time save 
 for the visits of the doctor and short ones from one or another 
 of the boys or over-worked teaching staff. The house emptied 
 suddenly, and now everyone was at Woolwich or Sandliurst, 
 Oxford or Cambridge, or Burlington House. Nurse Eadlett 
 had no one to interfere with her. Desmond for the moment 
 was without spring or initiative, his vitality low. His treat- 
 ment had been old-fashioned. He had been given too many 
 drugs, too little air and food and moral stimulant. It suited 
 neither nurse nor doctor that he should get well too quickly. 
 They were not in league, but their interests were identical. 
 
 " Tell me about your troubles ; I am so sick of lying here 
 thinking of my own." This was a few days after he had 
 watched her crying and inquired, stupidly enough, whether it 
 was because he was going to die. His mind was clearer now ; 
 he knew what an absurd hypothesis that had been. 
 
 " I've seen you crying more than once. Is anybody you 
 care about ill ? I've been awfully ill, haven't I ? Neither my 
 mother nor cousin has written or sent. Is someone ill belong- 
 ing to you? Tell me about it." 
 
 " You know nobody could have been worse than you were 
 — nobody who has ever got better." 
 
 "It wasn't about me you were crying that night. Who 
 were you crying about ? " 
 
 " Why shouldn't it have been about you ? " 
 
 She was standing by the side of his bed. There had been 
 nights, or hours, when he could not bear that she should 
 stand anywhere else, when she had been his only hold in a 
 world that swayed deliriously about him, with voids into 
 which he sank, sick darknesses when the cold sweat broke out 
 upon his forehead, and he swung breathless over fathomless 
 pits. He only felt safety when he found her wiping the 
 sweat from his forehead, when he found himself clutching 
 her dress or apron. 
 
 "Why shouldn't I have been, crying about you?" 
 
 "Were you?" 
 
 It seemed wonderful. No one else cared. He could still 
 hardly move in bed. She stooped even now and raised him
 
 FULL SWING 147 
 
 in her strong, helpful arms, pillowing his head more com- 
 fortably. 
 
 " Don't you think one can get fond of a patient ? " 
 
 "^ Not of one like me." 
 
 " Why not of one like you ? " 
 
 " I'm not much of a fellow." 
 
 " You haven't had a good time ? " 
 
 " Rotten." He spoke shortly. 
 
 " Poor boy ! " She answered briefly, but there was a world 
 of sympathy in her voice. " I knew you were unhappy," she 
 said under her breath, as if she were guessing and sorry to 
 have guessed right. 
 
 " Bid you ever see anyone as lonely in a bad illness as I've 
 been ? " His voice choked ; he turned his head away from her 
 and hid it in the pillow. On the pretence of moving him 
 into a more comfortable position, she rested his head on to 
 her breast. 
 
 That night, when she lay on the sofa in his room in her 
 blue dressing-gown, her red hair unbound — an aureole, as it 
 were, about her — she began to talk about loneliness; she said 
 she could imderstand so well what he was going through, 
 having suffered herself. 
 
 He was restless that night and could not sleep. The night- 
 light burned low, and the fire, too. They were intimately and 
 extraordinarily alone in the stillness of the night. Nurse 
 Eadlett began to tell him the story of her life. He listened ; 
 he could not sleep, and anything was better than going over 
 and over again the reasons that had led Eunice to leave off 
 writing to him, to engage herself to Michael McKay. Of 
 course, she would never marry Michael ; he had her promise. 
 She had engaged herself to him to please his mother, who 
 had persuaded her to it. It would be all right if he passed 
 his examination; not that he would ever pass. Better than 
 such thoughts as these, coming and going, keeping him from 
 sleep, making him turn over and then back again in his hot 
 and restless bed, was Nurse Radlett's talk. She seemed to 
 have had a rotten time too. He began to listen, even to be
 
 148 FULL SWING 
 
 interested. Anything was better than lying here thinking 
 of Eunice and Michael. 
 
 There were many nights before he heard the worst thing 
 that had befallen his good nurse. By the time he learnt this 
 he was already overwhelmingly sorry for her. He could not 
 read, he was sick of his thoughts, the days were longer than 
 the nights. He missed her when she was out of the room, 
 when she went for her daily walk or rest; there was nothing 
 to do when she was not there. She offered never to go out, 
 said she wanted no rest. He began to realise that she had 
 grown fond of him, to be glad about it — grateful. She kept 
 him partially drugged, having the doctor's authority for this, 
 since these restless, wakeful nights, as she described them, 
 were retarding his recovery. So she said, and the doctor 
 thought it more than likely. Veronal, chloral, the various 
 bromides were tried. Desmond's brain did not gain in lucidity 
 under the treatment. 
 
 " You are lucky in having such a devoted nurse," the 
 doctor told him. 
 
 " I know I am," he answered gratefully, weakly, indefin- 
 ably moved. 
 
 He knew it. She stopped awake at nights to talk to him 
 and hardly left him in the day. He owed his life to her; his 
 own people had not cared. Talking of her troubles because 
 he begged her to, saying it took his mind off his own, she 
 began to tell him something of the perils to which young girls 
 were exposed when they were trying to earn a living for them- 
 selves, told him of temptations, enlarged upon them, stirred 
 his quickening sympathy, his imagination. 
 
 The warm room, lit by the night-light and the low fire, 
 became full of man's unbridled passions, woman's defenceless- 
 ness. She talked from the distance of the sofa at the foot 
 of the bed, but the time came when she had to give him 
 food or medicine, when she went over to his side, sat there, 
 and after she had taken glass or cup away, went on talking. 
 In her blue dressing-gown, with hair unbound, she looked 
 like a girl — one of those girls of whom she had been talking. 
 
 "What would you think of me, what would you say of
 
 FULL SWING 149 
 
 me, if — if ? " Her head went down on the quilt, and he 
 
 heard her asking him what he would think of her if she had 
 been like one of those girls, had been tempted, fallen. He 
 caught the sob as if it were in his own throat, put a weak hand 
 on her soft hair; only to comfort her, only to tell her he 
 would think no worse of her, to remind her of what she had 
 been to him, of his gratitude that nothing could ever alter. 
 
 " I was too young to protect myself." 
 
 Then he heard from her of temperament, of what girls 
 suffered; it was new talk to him. She made him go red in 
 the dusk. 
 
 One night was like another, only her talk became less and 
 less restrained. He discovered in himself the restlessness of 
 which she spoke, turning the current of his thoughts by the 
 things she told him. He left off thinking of Eunice, pur- 
 posely left off. She was not for such talk as this, nor for such 
 restlessness. He began to understand better what Gabrielle 
 meant by " temperament " and " suffering." She asked him 
 to call her Gabrielle. There seemed no harm in letting her 
 lie beside him as she talked, her red hair fragrant and soft 
 against her face. She made no secret of having got to care 
 for him, she played her part with adroitness, subtlety, and a 
 knowledge of men not gained in one adventure, but in many. 
 Yet to stir his blood was difficult. To move his pity, his 
 young chivalry, was easier; and it was on that she concen- 
 trated presently. The time came when he told her he would 
 never be like other men, never take advantage of her defence- 
 lessness.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Desmond "was nursed into convalescence by Nurse Gabrielle 
 Radlett. She went with him to Torquay when the doctor 
 agreed with her that change of air was necessary for the 
 patient. 
 
 Yet, when during that October, war was declared, and 
 Lady Grindelay and Eunice came hurrying back from Biar- 
 ritz, nothing had happened that was irrevocable. Eunice 
 was not engaged to Michael, had not even seen him since they 
 parted by the Gannell River, nor was Desmond so entangled 
 with Gabrielle that he could not have freed himself when he 
 knew it. His mother's hands were to rivet the chains upon 
 him — ^her nervous, bungling hands. 
 
 Desmond was not at the station to welcome them, nor at 
 the furnished house Lady Grindelay had rented for the 
 winter. In some anxiety the day after her return Lady Grin- 
 delay drove up to Notting Hill. And there she heard with 
 astonishment, which rapidly gave way to indignation, of how 
 much more serious Desmond's illness had been than she knew, 
 and that he had been sent to the seaside with a nurse by the 
 doctor's orders. Blathwayt Bird was callous to her indigna- 
 tion. He was satisfied the boy had not the opportunity of 
 failure. Another coaching genius had appeared on the 
 horizon, and the two of them were racing for averages. 
 
 Lady Grindelay was the very type that aggravated Blath- 
 wayt Bird's socialism into extravagance and unreason. Not 
 only did she bear about her an indefinable air of birth and 
 good breeding, but she had the absurdity of a title, and the 
 reputation and appearance of wealth. He thought her manner 
 patronising, and now she had the impertinence to upbraid 
 him. 
 
 " I understood from you my son's illness was only slight, 
 that he had recovered two weeks ago," Lady Grindelay ex- 
 
 150
 
 FULL SWING 151 
 
 claimed when she was told Desmond was not there, but in 
 Torquay with a nurse. 
 
 " Did I tell you so? Well, I didn't think it of much im- 
 portance," Blathwayt answered calmly. He had been wheeled 
 into the room in his invalid chair, and pretended at first to 
 have forgotten what had become of young Lord Grindelay, 
 and whether he was in the house or not. " See what the young 
 rip is doing/' he said to his secretary. " Oh, I remember 
 now ! " 
 
 He behaved outrageously, as was his wont when the 
 humour seized him. When his interlocutor expressed her 
 indignation his behaviour became worse, for he suggested 
 that Desmond had prolonged and exaggerated his illness to 
 avoid his work. And he added, with something of a chuckle, 
 that there might be more in it than met the eye. 
 
 "He's got a pretty, red-haired nurse, the young rascal, 
 and they've gone off to Torquay together. I shouldn't send 
 after him if I were you; I should wait until he came back. 
 He's not the first lad to cut loose from his mother's apron- 
 strings." 
 
 Agatha could not even wait to hear more. She was worse 
 than angry at thinking she had placed Desmond in such 
 hands. 
 
 Dr. Ashford put a different complexion on the matter, 
 and showed a series of temperature charts. He said he 
 understood that Lady Grindelay had been kept informed, 
 although on one occasion he had suggested a telegram being 
 sent to her. 
 
 "One lung haa still a little delicacy, a little dullness. 
 Certainly, I advised he should go to the sea. As for the nurse, 
 she is a most able young woman. He was quite unfit to be 
 alone." 
 
 She telegraphed immediately to Desmond at Torquay, 
 announcing their return, and that she was ready to come to 
 him. He replied that he was completely recovered, and would 
 prefer to Join them in London. 
 
 When, after further delay, he came, she found him grown 
 and very thin. He was impatient, and even a little irritable
 
 153 FULL SWING 
 
 when questioned about his health, and with difficulty she per- 
 suaded him to allow his lungs to be examined. 
 
 " There is nothing the matter with me/' he said. And, 
 indeed, the eminent specialist she consulted could find little 
 to justify Lady Grindelay's anxiety. He said Desmond had 
 perhaps overgrown his strength. 
 
 " We never thought he was going to be so tall, did we ? " 
 Eunice said when she heard the favourable report. 
 
 " Desmond is going to more than justify all our hopes," 
 Lady Grindelay answered, trying to chase the gloom from his 
 face. 
 
 " Like getting into the Army," he scoffed. For now that 
 war was declared he hated himself for being outside. 
 
 Desmond, just now, was suffering from a horrible sense 
 of unworthiness. He knew that Eunice was not engaged 
 to Michael. But he could scarcely bear to look at or speak to 
 her. Gabrielle Kadlett was between them; what in him had 
 been plastic to her moulding was something with which 
 Eunice must not be soiled. His unhappiness at the position 
 was perhaps excessive. For it was not too late to extricate 
 himself, in this first week of his mother's and Eunice's home- 
 coming. He realised this presently, and made a desperate 
 attempt to avert the doom that was settling over him. But it 
 was like the forlorn hope he was to lead later, and to meet 
 with no better result. Only here his mother was his enemy, 
 a friendly and diplomatic foe, most difficult to fight. 
 
 Desmond seemed rather to avoid Eunice than otherwise. 
 His mother could scarcely bear him out of her sight. She 
 was desperately concerned about his health, and when the 
 doctors had reassured her, yet more desperately concerned 
 about his happiness. She became convinced that it was his 
 failure to pass into the Army that was on his mind, and 
 decided that something must be done in the matter. She came 
 to that conclusion one night, when, on the advice of an old 
 lady who ought to have known better, she took the two young 
 people to the Palace music-hall, to convince themselves of 
 the patriotic feeling that the declaration of war had aroused. 
 
 It may have been true that the music-halls were full of
 
 FULL SWING 153 
 
 this note of patriotism. But it was music-hall patriotism- 
 vulgar, blatant, without endeavour or personal sacrifice. A 
 little drawf, with misshapen limbs and deformed fingers, who 
 was a great favourite with this particular public, was dressed 
 in uniform and paraded the stage singing a lyric entitled " A 
 little British Array goes a damned long way," telling an over- 
 whelmingly enthusiastic audience that one British soldier 
 could " down " ten foreigners of any nationality. There 
 were comic lines in the song about " Dutch courage." A 
 pori^rait of Kruger drinking coffee was thrown on the screen 
 and duly hissed. This was followed by one of Sir George 
 White that was duly applauded. 
 
 Eunice said to Desmond as they drove home : 
 
 "I felt very excited when they unfurled our flag. You 
 did, too, didn't you, Desmond ? I saw you get red." 
 
 " I wish to God I was out there," answered Desmond 
 gloomily. 
 
 And that decided Agatha to call on the Metherbys. It 
 has to be remembered that at that time few had any idea 
 save that the war would be a small affair, short-lived. Among 
 Lady Grindelay's friends the impression prevailed that the 
 youngsters who got out in time to see something of the fun 
 would be lucky; it would be little more than a picnic. All 
 the young men in their own particular sets were keen on 
 going, and all their relatives were proud of their high courage 
 and handsome uniforms. There were no misgivings. 
 
 Lady Grindelay came home to lunch a few days after the 
 visit to the music-hall in great good humour. She had found 
 there were ways and means of giving Desmond his heart's 
 desire, or what she thought was her heart's desire. Through 
 Colonel Metherby's influence at the War Office she had ac- 
 complished her object. Desmond was to have a commission 
 as second lieutenant in the militia battalion of Colonel 
 Metherby's regiment. If the war went on, he would be 
 attached, and subsequently transferred, to the regular bat- 
 talion. He might even go out to South Africa . . . She had 
 the tribute of Desmond's startled attention, Eunice's excla- 
 mation.
 
 154 FULL SWING 
 
 "Even in these degenerate days there is something to be 
 done by friendship." 
 
 Lady Grindelay meant patronage, but said friendship. 
 She was elated at her success, there was to be no delay. She 
 neglected her luncheon whilst she talked, sending away the 
 truffled eggs and lobster salad in the excitement of her news. 
 Colonel Metherby or his wife had posted her, and she was 
 full of detail. 
 
 *' There is any amount to do. You can go to the Army 
 tailor's this afternoon.'' 
 
 She produced a list of the tradesmen he was to patronise, 
 of the regimental tailors, saddle-makers and others. She 
 took the paper out of her purse and passed it to him before 
 she tasted the marango de veau. 
 
 " No claret, thank you. Pass this to his lordship." 
 
 After lunch she asked Desmond to go up with her to the 
 study. Perhaps she looked forward to hearing him express 
 his gratitude, to hear him say how wonderfully she had found 
 out what ailed liim, and so quickly relieved it. He was to pass 
 into his chosen profession without examination. She never 
 noticed the irresolution with which he followed her, but was 
 disappointed when the expressions of gratitude and surprise 
 failed to come from him. He still looked unhappy. She had 
 the intensest desire to solace him, to make him know that was 
 her desire. 
 
 " You vsdll be pushed on as quickly as possible. Mrs. 
 Metherby and I are old friends, and Colonel Metherby has 
 great influence at the War Office. There is no doubt of your 
 commission." 
 
 He tried then to make the response expected of him. He 
 saw the kindness of her intention. 
 
 "It's awfully good of you to have taken so much 
 trouble." 
 
 " I don't want any thanks." 
 
 She was hurt by his manner and the way he was taking 
 her news, and went on shortly : 
 
 " Let us make a list of what there is to do. Get a pencil.
 
 FULL SWING 155 
 
 There is paper in that, drawer. You might go to Sandros this 
 afternoon to be measured." 
 
 Now she was at her writing-table, her pencil suspended 
 over the paper. 
 
 " Shall I have to go away at once ? " 
 
 "To Hythe or Aldershot. Yes, I think almost imme- 
 diately. Why?" She looked inquiringly, surprised — looked 
 up to find his blue eyes misty and miserable and his lips a 
 little tremulous. 
 
 "You haven't changed your mind about what we spoke 
 of before ? " he said desperately. 
 
 She put down her pencil and looked at him inquiringly. 
 
 "What was that?" 
 
 He flushed furiously. 
 
 " About Eunice. If it hadn't been for what you said " 
 
 But he did not finish the sentence. He was going through 
 a bad time at the hands of a clever, unscrupulous woman. 
 Sometimes he was sorry for Gabrielle Eadlett; sometimes he 
 hated her, and always himself for his weakness. Sin had 
 little attraction for young Lord Grindelay; there was more 
 of his mother than his father in him. Already what he had 
 done was hot coal in his breast. And yet it was not irre- 
 trievable. 
 
 "What I said?" 
 
 She had really half forgotten; the boy-and-girl love be- 
 tween him and Eunice was so much less than her own feeling 
 for him that it had ceased to seem of importance. But now 
 that she remembered she was only anxious not to estrange 
 hinL " I hope I was not harsh or inconsiderate ; I was think- 
 ing for both of you." 
 
 " I know as well as you do I am not good enough for 
 her." 
 
 " Perhaps by now you have learned self-control," she be- 
 gan hesitatingly. 
 
 "No, I haven't, I'm not a bit better than I was; I'm 
 worse.'' 
 
 " You wrong yourself. I'm sure you wrong yourself." 
 
 "Don't you believe it?"
 
 156 FULL SWING 
 
 She wanted to tell him she too had had periods of self- 
 distrust, to draw him closer to her by her confession; she 
 wanted his confidence ; and then, suddenly, she dreaded it. 
 
 " I — I'm in a ghastly mess." 
 
 " Not — not what that horrible man hinted ? '' 
 
 The blood rushed into her face; she conjured up a dread- 
 ful thing. 
 
 " You don't mean Bird guessed ! " Desmond was startled 
 into answering. " What did he tell you ? " 
 
 "That your nurse — that you and your nurse " She 
 
 could not go on. 
 
 " Cockieolly told you that ! " 
 
 " Is that what you called him ? " she said mechanically. 
 
 " Cockieolly Bird. Yes. I wonder how he knew ? " 
 
 " It is true, then ? " she gasped. 
 
 " It depends what he said." 
 
 He was longing for the relief of confession. His mother 
 was old, experienced, he even thought at the moment she was 
 a woman of the world. He needed advice, help. 
 
 '' I suppose it's what you would call true ? " he said sul- 
 lenly; but only the manner was sullen, hiding anxiety, even 
 hope. 
 
 "But . . . but you care for Eunice," she said with 
 difficulty. 
 
 "What's that got to do with it?" 
 
 She had no answer ready, and he went on : 
 
 "There is nothing to prevent my marrying Eunice, if 
 you will give your consent." 
 
 " How can I ? How can I ? " 
 
 Lord Grindelay's stories came rushing into her mind, 
 all of them at once. Seduction and intrigue, licentiousness 
 and intemperance ; all the dreadful things men do, 
 
 " You took advantage of her position ! " 
 
 He could not see into her mind, nor that she pictured 
 Nurse Radlett as his victim, caught unawares whilst tending 
 him. She saw dreadful pictures. 
 
 And but a few hours ago, divining his ambition, she had 
 counted herself happy. He was England's soldier and her
 
 FULL SWING 157 
 
 son. She •was sending him forth, as so many Wanstead 
 mothers had done. Now he was hardly fit to go. He saw 
 how her face had changed, the grey disappointment in it. 
 
 " You may say anything you like to me. I suppose you 
 think I'm outside the pale, that this makes it more impos- 
 sible than ever. But if I had been engaged to Eunice it 
 couldn't have happened." 
 
 " You ought to have thought of her." She did not know 
 ■what to say. 
 
 " I'm no worse than other fellows." 
 
 " God help their mothers and wives," she whispered. 
 
 « That's rot." 
 
 For all his unhappiness he had not got quite out of per- 
 spective as she had ; he was better informed. What had driven 
 him to his half confession he hardly knew. It was really his 
 honesty, because he wanted to speak of Eunice before he went 
 away and make a last effort for her. 
 
 " How about Eimice ? " 
 
 " But if — if your honour is already pledged ? " 
 
 " If s nothing of that sort," he answered hastily. 
 
 She was afraid of what more she might hear, literally 
 afraid. Since the day, nineteen years ago, that she had left 
 his father, her ears had been closed against such stories as 
 these. She found herself no better able to bear them now 
 than she had been then. 
 
 "Don't tell me, I am trying not to be intolerant. Don't 
 tell me more than you are compelled." 
 
 " I'm not compelled to tell you anything. I wish now I 
 had not spoken at all." 
 
 Lady Grindelay said quickly that she, too, wished it. She 
 had an extraordinary physical repulsion from him, only mo- 
 mentary, however. 
 
 "You'd rather see her dead than give her to me now? 
 You'd put the world between us if you could ? " Desmond 
 said angrily. 
 
 " I can't let you wrong any woman. You must let me 
 think. . . ." 
 
 She was flushed inside and out with the shame of what
 
 168 FULL SWING 
 
 he had done. To her it was as bad as if he had been a girl. 
 She could see little difference. But that was her folly, her 
 altruistic folly. She almost knew it, and that she ought never 
 to have been the mother of a son. 
 
 When Desmond found himself alone he knew he had made 
 an ass of himself. That his mother was a good woman he had 
 no doubt. But he had made a mistake in thinking her worldly 
 wise. He felt very miserable. 
 
 " Was there ever such a mother ? I can't be myself with 
 her at all," his thoughts ran. " One minute she'll be for 
 giving me the earth, and the next for kicking me out. What 
 does she know about temptation? Why, just nothing at all. 
 And how can I explain it to her." 
 
 " Oh, Desmond ! " Eunice came in breathlessly. " There's 
 Lady John downstairs and the Metlierbys. I'm going down 
 to pour out tea. You'll come, won't you ? They'll be wanting 
 to see you." 
 
 "No." He actually could not even face Eunice at this 
 moment. Turning his back to her, he stared out of the 
 window. " No. I haven't got much time, and I can't waste 
 it on outsiders." 
 
 She went over to the table. 
 
 "Are these the lists? Are these all the things you've 
 got to get? What a quantity! You and auntie have been 
 talking for a long time, haven't you? " she» added innocently. 
 
 He came away from the window abruptly, inconsequently, 
 came to where she stood. 
 
 "Perhaps you'd like to hear what we've been talking 
 about?" he asked her. He seemed quite angry and unlike 
 himself. " It was about you." 
 
 "Me?" 
 
 " Ymt/' 
 
 She met his eyes with surprise in her own. Then hers 
 went down, and she heard her heart beating so fast that 
 she thought he too must hear it. 
 
 " You haven't forgotten what I said to you under the oak 
 at Marley ? " he went on. He was in for it now, and a little 
 reckless. " Have you forgotten ? "
 
 FULL SWING 159 
 
 "No." 
 
 " I was right about Michael McKay wanting you, wasn't 
 I ? " He came a step nearer to her. " Wasn't I ? " he repeated. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "What did you tell him?" 
 
 "I told him " 
 
 " Go on." He was very near to her, and she had the 
 habit of candour with him, 
 
 " I told him about you and me," she faltered. 
 
 " You told him that ! You hadn't forgotten, then .'' But 
 you've been so different to me." 
 
 " I thought you'd been different to me." 
 
 " What do you think now ? " 
 
 " I think you are the same." 
 
 A thousand memories were between them and about them. 
 Words were almost unnecessary, because the memories were 
 as loud as words. He had his arms quickly about her. 
 
 "Darling!" 
 
 " Is that what you and Aunt Agatha were talking about ? " 
 she whispered, 
 
 " She won't hear of it. She's quite right, too. I'm not 
 good enough for you, not nearly good enough. I'm as bad 
 as bad can be, or I'd not be talking like this to you now. 
 But I'm going away, and I love you. Whatever I've done, 
 I've never left off loving you." 
 
 "What have you done?" she asked innocently. "I am 
 sure it has been nothing very bad." 
 
 "Yes, I have. How can I tell you? I won't tell you. 
 Eunice, she'll never give her consent. She is too old to un- 
 derstand. Can't we do without it? Let's throw everybody 
 overboard. Have you got the courage ? Do you care enough 
 about me? I'm in such a devil of a mess. I want you so 
 badly. Come away with me." 
 
 His eyes were bloodshot. He did not mean a word of it ; 
 never held her more closely nor entreated her as if he had been 
 a man, or an3rthing but the unhappy and distracted boy he 
 found himself. "Marry me at once, with or without her 
 consent."
 
 160 FULL SWING 
 
 " But she's always been so good to me — to us," she faltered 
 out, in astonishment. " How can I ? You don't mean it." 
 
 " And wouldn't I be good to you ? Who wouldn't be good 
 to you ? What is she to either of us compared to what we are 
 to each other. Come away with me, Eunice. I don't know 
 what I'll do if you don't." For now he felt the down of her 
 cheek against his own and the softness of her lips. Both 
 their hearts were beating fast. 
 
 " What is she to either of ils compared to what we are to 
 each other." 
 
 Those were the words Lady Grindelay heard as she stood 
 on the threshold of the room. From time immemorial 
 mothers have listened or heard the same, but to this one they 
 seemed unbearable. Moved to sudden anger and unreason in 
 pain, the words rushed from her, the words that should never 
 have been spoken. 
 
 "This is how you intrigue against me, while I — I have 
 been only planning to help you, to do you service. You are, 
 after all, nothing but your father over again, treacherous, 
 cruel, unfaithful " 
 
 Eunice came swiftly to her, would have pleaded, but 
 Lady Grindelay put her on one side. 
 
 " Have you told her that you are not even free ? Is no 
 woman safe from you?" 
 
 " It's a lie. She isn't in danger from me." 
 
 " Don't say unkind things to Desmond, auntie." 
 
 " I know what to say to Desmond." 
 " But she knew so little what to say to him, and said it so 
 badly that when he left her he believed himself to be un- 
 worthy and tainted, that it did not matter what became of 
 him, that he had no chance of winning Eunice. 
 
 And it was all because she loved him and had never learnt 
 the language of love; because of her ignorance and want of 
 reasoning power.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 The next day and the next the girl hung about her with 
 question in her eyes, but Desmond stayed away. The weeks 
 passed. Then they heard he had joined his regiment, and 
 suddenly, without any preparation at all, that he was going 
 out to South Africa! Lady Grindelay herself had made it 
 possible, but no one was more stunned than Lady Grindelay. 
 There was a great shortage of officers. Colonel Metherby had 
 influence at the War Office, and Agatha had asked him to 
 use it. He had used it so well that after only six weeks' 
 training, and with only his commission in the Militia, Des- 
 mond was to be attached to the battalion Colonel Metherby 
 himself commanded and to go out with him. 
 
 Letters went to and fro between mother and son — strange, 
 strained letters. She wanted his forgiveness, but did not 
 know how to ask for it; to keep him in England, but knew 
 that there was no longer the possibility. He wrote her that 
 everything she had said to him was justified, he begged her 
 not to oppose or throw obstacles in the way of his going away, 
 to let him have this chance. Her two wooden idols, duty and 
 conscience, still stood upon their altar; now she hung her 
 maternity upon the crucifix between, and sacrificed to that 
 also. 
 
 She stipulated that he was to come to Marley to bid them 
 good-bye, and he came down in time for lunch. Any strange- 
 ness or strained relations between them were covered by the 
 circumstances and the shortness of his stay. Everything was 
 being hurried in the general unpreparedness, in the face of 
 ominous rumours. She could think of nothing but that she 
 was sending him into danger, perhaps into death, that it was 
 to this her mother-love had brought him. 
 
 As for Eunice, she thought little of the war and a great 
 deal of what Desmond would say to her about the future. 
 She knew he cared for her, and wanted to hear him say so 
 
 n 161
 
 163 FULL SWING 
 
 again. There had never been anybody for her but Desmond, 
 and since he had spoken to her in Grosvenor Street, she 
 knew without any shadow of doubt that it was the same with 
 him. She thought that her aunt opposed a marriage between 
 them because they were both so young. She thought that 
 everything would come right when Desmond came home 
 again, and hoped for the opportunity to tell him so. 
 
 "When she knows how we feel about it, when she sees 
 how much we are to each other, it will he all right. She loves 
 us both. You have always thought she did not love you, but 
 I know better. She has that cold manner, but it doesn't mean 
 anything. I saw her looking at that portrait you sent us, the 
 one in uniform. She said to herself, ' That is my son, my 
 only son.' I saw her trembling lips saying it." 
 
 This is what Eunice meant to say to Desmond. She made 
 up her mind she would not be shy with him; but would tell 
 him, too, what she had not told in the library that afternoon 
 in Grosvenor Street, that she loved him completely, thought 
 of him by night and day. She flushed warmly two or three 
 times during luncheon at the thought of what she would say 
 to him when they were alone together. 
 
 But she never told him. 
 
 There was business talk from which she was excluded. 
 Lady Grindelay had been generous in making provision for 
 her son, and he spoke feelingly of her generosity, thanking 
 her for it. His gratitude, or the expression of it, was like 
 a reproach to her. She liked to give, and it seemed to her 
 now that she had given him so little — only the right to leave 
 her in this way. She was nevertheless somewhat surprised 
 to find him business-like in his talk of money, and anxious 
 that his allowance should be paid into a London bank, quar- 
 terly and in advance. 
 
 Afterwards they sat m the drawing-room together, the 
 three of them, making talk. It seemed unnatural, unreal, 
 that they should be sitting like this. And the talk was unreal, 
 too, jerky, superficial, almost stupid. 
 
 "We might have gone to Southampton to see you off, 
 if we had thought about it in time."
 
 FULL SWING 163 
 
 "I'm glad you didn't," he said hastily, and added: " I'm 
 sure you'd have hated it." 
 
 " I don't suppose you will be gone very long. I should 
 not be surprised at all if the war was over before you got 
 out." 
 
 " I hope not." 
 
 " You might come back without an arm or a leg, like the 
 heroes in fiction," Eunice heard herself saying. 
 
 " Or still without a moustache," Lady Grindelay added 
 with that stiff lightness that was all of which she was capable. 
 She had had all his childhood and youth, and let them go 
 past her unheeding. He had hardly seemed hers before ; now 
 none of her possessions counted but him. 
 
 She had never held him in her arms, strained him to her 
 heart, and she knew she could not do it now, that there would 
 be no scene of reconciliation between them nor emotion. She 
 could not be other than the woman she was, incapable of 
 demonstrativeness. Yet he stood now upon her heart, and it 
 was pain made her speechless. 
 
 " Well, I must be going," he said at length, rising. " I 
 said the dog-cart was to be round at three." 
 
 " Can't we go to the station, auntie ? " 
 
 Eunice said " we," but meant " I." 
 
 " The barouche is already ordered." 
 
 " Can't we walk ? " poor Eunice stammered out. It was for 
 that she had been waiting, but Desmond had made no move. 
 Nothing had come about as she had expected; they had not 
 had one word together. And he had hardly looked at her. 
 All his constrained talk had been for his mother, although 
 she herself had always been first with him. Her heart 
 swelled, but the sweetness of her disposition prevailed and 
 acknowledged his mother's right; she, at least, had never 
 doubted that Desmond's mother loved him. Desmond him- 
 self did not doubt it to-day; he hardly remembered that 
 there had been anger between them. 
 
 At the station Lady Grindelay's self-possession was a 
 defence, her strength and hardness but an outpost. She 
 spoke hurriedly and impulsively, said the absurd thing.
 
 164 FULL SWING 
 
 " You will take care of yourself. You will remember you 
 are my only son. You will not expose yourself unnecessarily 
 to danger?" 
 
 " I'll be all right," he answered awkwardly. 
 
 When the train was in, and the last moment had come, 
 she kissed him as she had never kissed him before. She kept 
 her arm about him a minute. 
 
 " Only come back to me," she said. 
 
 When he returned her kiss, that too was with a difference, 
 and there was something very like a sob in his throat. 
 
 "You've been awfully good to me. I wish I'd been a 
 better son." 
 
 " Come back, only come back, and everything will be 
 different." 
 
 " You won't think worse of me than you can help ? " His 
 voice was husky. 
 
 " I shall remember only that you are my son." 
 
 " You'll — ^you'll tell her nothing ! I may never come back. 
 I — I couldn't get out of it." 
 
 It seemed as if he would have said more, but they were 
 at cross purposes. He was everything to her, but to him she 
 was only his mother. 
 
 He did not kiss Eunice, he hardly even said good-bye; 
 it would have seemed he did not see her on the platform. 
 Only at the last, at the very last, when she stood there, 
 stunned with the fact that he had gone, gone without a 
 word, she met his eyes through the window of the carriage, 
 and saw that there was yearning and misery in them. She 
 knew then, instinctively, that it was not because he did not 
 care for her that he had not kissed her good-bye. 
 
 Poor Desmond! He was alone in the carriage, and if 
 either Eunice or his mother had seen him when the train 
 steamed out of the station, they would have been satisfied he 
 was not parting from them coldly or callously. He broke 
 down when he found himself alone, cried, not like a soldier, 
 but like a child. He never thought to see them again ; almost 
 hoped he never would. He knew now he might have won
 
 FULL SWING 165 
 
 Eunice as well as his mother, and that he had only himself to 
 blame because it was impossible. 
 
 He had made an irreparable blunder. If he had told the 
 truth he might never have got his commission. If he came 
 back it would be to face a situation that already seemed 
 unfaceable. He was going out to fight the Boers, not with 
 the fear of death, but with the hope of it. He was married 
 to Gabrielle Radlett — married! And there was not a fibre 
 of his heart that was not entwined round the girl to whom 
 he had not dared to say good-bye, whose hand he had not 
 dared to touch. 
 
 Eunice and Lady Grindelay drove back to Marley Court 
 in silence. Desmond had gone. There was no more to be 
 said ; there was only to wait until he came back — a short time. 
 
 "He will remain in the army, I suppose, until he gets 
 his captaincy ; then he will come back and settle down," Lady 
 Grindelay said as she got out of the carriage. " I should not 
 look so forlorn about it if I were you." 
 
 " It's such a long time." Eunice's lips trembled. Each 
 of them wanted solitude, the old one not less than the young, 
 and that the other should not see her tears. 
 
 By dinner-time they were calmer. Both of them really 
 believed in the legend of Boer farmers armed with Bibles, 
 both of them were possessed by a vague idea that if there were 
 to be serious fighting it would be done by the soldiers in the 
 ranks, that officers were practically immune; that they 
 shouted orders and awaited events at a safe distance. 
 
 " It is not as if it were India or Egypt ; there is no native 
 treachery to fear. I don't suppose the troops will ever have 
 to go beyond Cape Town," Lady Grindelay said during dinner. 
 
 It was not only on that evening Agatha reassured Eunice 
 — and perhaps herself. As the troopship with Desmond on 
 board neared the Cape reassurance became necessary. 
 
 The morning papers came late to Marley. Long before 
 Desmond went they had been impatient for their arrival, 
 following the progress of the war, surprised, incredulous that 
 the Boers were not already on their knees suing for peace;
 
 166 FULL SWING 
 
 conscious already, although neither voiced it, of a faint and 
 dawning anxiety. 
 
 There had flashed along the cables news of the engage- 
 ment at Talana Hill. It was accounted a victory, the begin- 
 ning of the end. The correspondents reported that when our 
 troops came back from that pyrrhic victory, soddened with 
 rain, plastered with mud, dog-tired, but in the best of spirits, 
 they marched into Ladysmith with colours flying, amid the 
 cheers of their comrades. Into Ladysmith! But that was 
 in October, 1899. 
 
 The anxiety deepened all the time, but they disguised it 
 from each other. 
 
 He will be disappointed if it is all over before he gets 
 there," said Lady Grindelay, when she read of the marching 
 into Ladysmith. 
 
 Flashed through the cables the story of Percy Scott and 
 the guns at Ladysmith. What did it mean? Surely those 
 naval guns would not be needed. In a week now, six days 
 now, to-morrow now, Desmond would be at Cape Town. And 
 still the Boers had not laid down their arms ! 
 
 How absurd it seems in retrospect, how incredible! Yet 
 all through the country there was the same opinion, the same 
 optimism, the same expectations that sons, husbands and 
 fathers were only out on parade. For a short time, a very 
 short time, those at home were only proud, not afraid. Then, 
 one after another, from here and there and everywhere, from 
 places that had never been heard of, from men whose names 
 were unknown, came stories of disaster and blunder — incon- 
 ceivable, unbelievable stories. English officers taken pris- 
 oners with all their men, laying down their arms; English 
 officers surrendering with their troops ! 
 
 The mistress of Marley and Eunice read with amazement, 
 read with bewilderment, read with hot shame and pain, as 
 thousands of others were reading. They could hardly face 
 each other's eyes ; began to be afraid to speak, yet hardly con- 
 tent out of each other's sight; dreading the long hours 
 between the posts, dreading the posts even more. 
 
 Before they realised what was occurring, what manner of
 
 FULL SWING 167 
 
 men were these Boer farmers, there flashed along the cables 
 casualty lists from Elandslaagte, from Rietfontein. The 
 poor, proud women in their English homes read of the blunder 
 of Nicholson's Nek, the catastrophe of Colesberg. 
 
 Now the women no longer sent out their beloved gladly 
 and proudly, but hung upon their necks begging them not to 
 go, imploring, praying. And now they were unheeded. Story 
 after story came through, setting men aflame. 
 
 *^It was our young captain. Father, father, we'd rather 
 have died than surrender, if it had been left to us," cried a 
 passionate Irish Fusilier to his priest. The Times printed 
 the story. 
 
 Here, in England, grey old men flushed with shame as 
 they read, and rushed to the War Office begging, praying for 
 employment, to be sent out, at their own expense, in any 
 corps, with any rank, only to wipe out the stain on the flag. 
 Young men laid down fishing-rod and golf clubs. Stock Ex- 
 change lists, measuring tapes. Office boy and clerk, drapers' 
 assistants, and even those young men whose recreation it was 
 to watch other people play cricket or football, awoke shame- 
 facedly to their country's needs, and volunteered in great 
 squads of awkwardness and incapacity. The War Office was 
 besieged, overwhelmed, and in alarm and non-comprehension 
 of what was required, took everybody who applied, hurriedly 
 fitted up, hurriedly sent out, incapable braves, lacking arms, 
 horses, accoutrements, constitutions; added muddle to 
 muddle, courting disaster. An old story now, a sad old story, 
 illustrated with sad old graves, with hearths made for ever 
 desolate. Most of us have forgotten; a few of us can never 
 forget. 
 
 Now neither Lady Grindelay nor Eunice could hide her 
 anxiety — anxiety that amounted sometimes to anguish, that 
 made their nights sleepless and their days one long apprehen- 
 sion. They could not stay at Marley waiting for the belated 
 posts. They moved back to London, took another furnished 
 house, waited for news. Here they were surrounded by 
 friends in like case, their hearts sick with fear, faces pale 
 with watching, many already in mourning. Here, fortunately.
 
 168 FULL SWING 
 
 too, they found there was work they could do. Disaster after 
 disaster fell on the bruised national spirit, until London, at 
 least, was all one ache — work the only emollient. There were 
 bandages to be made, comforters knitted or sewn for field- 
 hospital or ambulance, charity concerts or matinees to be 
 organised. Lady Grindelay braced herself with such things, 
 maintained an appearance of courage as a Wanstead should. 
 She had learned her lesson well by now, and what it was to be 
 the mother of a son ; the knowledge came to her so late, and 
 with more than birth-pain. It became a physical thing, this 
 pain, and the memory of Desmond and the wasted days when 
 she had not cared for him. As the days wore on the pain 
 concentrated in one place in her side. Night and day it ached 
 there. 
 
 Agatha, although she was nearly sixty years of age, was a 
 strong and vigorous woman at the beginning of the Boer 
 war. Before the end of it she had grown into old age. She 
 never disguised from herself that it was she who had sent him 
 out. Not her reticence, but the poor remnant of her self- 
 confidence forsook her. There were times when she could 
 only cry for him, others when, iu the solitude of her bedroom, 
 she would pray wildly. 
 
 Desmond was "slightly wounded" at Magersfontein. 
 This gave her temporary release from the worst of her anxie- 
 ties. They heard that he was in hospital, and hoped that 
 he would be invalided home. Eunice and she had their short- 
 time of indomitable hope, when every hour might bring the 
 news that he had embarked. There were names among the 
 fallen that made their gratitude humble. There was no heir 
 now for Denham, and none for Eversleigh. But Desmond 
 was coming home. 
 
 Never in her young days had Agatha known love. Now 
 it came upon her like a wild beast hungered, hot breathed 
 and panting, the unsatiated passion and pain of her late 
 maternity; all the knowledge she had avoided, from which 
 her dignity and her position were alike powerless to protect 
 her. She could put her hand now to where the pain burned 
 always. Already she suspected the hurt was to death.
 
 FULL SWING 169 
 
 Eunice hardly knew what ailed her the night she went 
 from her own room to her aunt's. But at the thought that 
 Desmond was on his way, and might be home any day now, 
 a sudden intensity of longing for him seized upon her. It 
 had lain in wait for her all day, and in the night it rose until 
 a moment when it became unbearable — unbearable, that is, in 
 solitude. She woke to a sudden craving, she wanted Des- 
 mond as starving men want food, as brown grass needs rain, 
 as panting animals crave for water. The rush of longing 
 for him, burning her cheeks, inflaming her blood, and ham- 
 mering in her brain, was the end of a dream; it flooded her, 
 came and came again. She had no knowledge to make her 
 ashamed of this intolerable thirst; when she began to think 
 coherently it seemed there was nothing between her and the 
 assuagement of it, but Lady Grindelay's opposition. Before 
 Desmond came home she must get her aunt's promise that she 
 would no longer stand between them. He might be here any 
 time now. Perhaps he had already started. Nothing must 
 be between them when he came. 
 
 She started up in bed when this thought came to her; 
 she could not go on lying there in the darkness. She did 
 not stay to reason, she was driven by her thirst. Swiftly, in 
 her white nightgown, barefooted, she slipped out of her warm 
 bed, paused an irresolute moment, then was through the door, 
 along one passage and across the other, knocking at her 
 aunt's door, and in the room without waiting for an answer 
 to her knock. 
 
 Lady Grindelay was hardly startled. She, too, was awake, 
 reading by candle-light. 
 
 "Come in. Shut the door." She never even asked if 
 there was an3rthing the matter. 
 
 " I had to come," Eunice began falteringly. 
 
 "Without a dressing-gown?" But the rebuke was per- 
 functory. 
 
 "It's quite warm. You don't mind? I didn't wake 
 you?" 
 
 "No; I was not asleep."
 
 170 FULL SWING 
 
 Agatha was glad of company, and looked round for cover 
 for her. 
 
 " Wrap yourself in my dressing-gown — there it is, hanging 
 over the chair." 
 
 Eunice disregarded the suggestion, standing hy the side 
 of the bed, shivering a little. 
 
 " I couldn't sleep.'' 
 
 Neither had Agatha been able to. 
 
 " The days and nights are long. Come under the quilt, 
 you may be able to sleep here." 
 
 Eunice lay beside her aunt, but sleep was far from her. 
 
 "I want to talk about Desmond," Eunice whispered 
 presently. 
 
 " You have been lying awake, thinking of him ? " 
 
 " No, sleeping and dreaming. I'm glad you put out the 
 candle. Auntie, don't you want to talk about him? He is 
 on his way home. You will never be angry with him about 
 anything again ? We've known what it is to be without him." 
 
 " You blame me for sending him ? But he would have 
 gone anyhow when it came to this." 
 
 "How could I blame you? I know he would have gone 
 anyhow. He always meant to be a soldier." 
 
 "Did he? He never told me." How little he had ever 
 told her ; how little she had encouraged him to talk ! 
 
 " When he comes back we shall both be older. I know it 
 was because you thought we were both too young. You'll say 
 * Yes ' when he comes back. It was because you thought us 
 too young, wasn't it? But I'm not too young now, — I want 
 him/' 
 
 "I want him, too," Agatha answered, forlornly, and in- 
 deed her hunger for him ached within her. 
 
 *' He always loved you, and wanted you to love him. When 
 he was little — always," Eunice said consolingly. 
 
 " I think it is true ; sometimes I think it is true. Inci- 
 dents occur to me." It was a relief to speak, to unburden 
 herself. 
 
 " Tell me about them, I can't sleep ; I want to talk about 
 Desmond. Tell me stories about him."
 
 FULL SWING 171 
 
 " What am I to tell you ? How hard and cold I must have 
 seemed to him always, the pain I have in recalling it? " She 
 had forgotten to whom she was speaking, she was talking to 
 herself. 
 
 " He'll never rememher it when he comes back, when you 
 tell him that everything is — is all right for us." 
 
 " I always failed him ; I know it now. When he was quite 
 a little fellow, about seven years old, never at ease with me, 
 never as he was with that old Irish nurse of his, he came 
 through the window of the drawing-room with a bunch of 
 flowers in his hand, daisies and marigolds. They were for me, 
 I know now they were for me. I don't know what I said, 
 something about coming in by the door, or muddy boots, 
 although I liked to see him there, although my heart beat 
 faster for seeing him there. But I was bom dumb, like that, 
 and everything has passed me by. He threw the flowers at 
 me, fled away, was rude and sullen afterwards, defiant. My 
 son, my little son ! And now I am an old woman, and 
 alone " 
 
 " Go on, go on," Eunice said softly. She was calmer now. 
 Her thirst had left her. She only wanted to talk of him, 
 of all he had ever said or done. Agatha went on slowly, 
 her conscience was very oppressed and clamorous to-night, 
 but talking eased it. 
 
 " Once, when I was lying on the lawn — he must have 
 thought I was asleep, because my book had fallen, and my 
 eyes were shut — he crept near me, stood there, then quite 
 hastily picked up the rug to put over my feet, and ran away 
 lest I should see him." 
 
 " Go on." 
 
 *' I said cold things to him, cold, reasonable things always. 
 I kept him at arm's length." 
 
 "He loved you," whispered Eunice comfortingly. "All 
 his rough shyness was because he loved you. I knew it, but 
 we never spoke about it in actual words. When we were little 
 I used to say, ' Why don't you climb on her knee ? Why don't 
 you kiss her like I do ? ' " 
 
 " I didn't want to be kissed. I never cared for kissing-."
 
 172 FULL SWING 
 
 A thrill ran through the girl, a happy thrill; and 
 although it was dark she hid her head. 
 
 " I do," she whispered, " I do." 
 
 Her cheeks were flooded ; but she was not really ashamed. 
 
 " Desmond and I like kissing." 
 
 "1 never did," Agatha answered. "I don't know why, 
 but I never did." 
 
 Then quite suddenly she found herself antagonistic, 
 strangely and inconceivably antagonistic. The girl would have 
 nestled against her, gone on talking, but she sent her away 
 as soon as possible, told her she must go back to bed, and to 
 sleep, she must not encourage herself in such feelings as she 
 described.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Desmond did not come home; he had apparently no thought 
 of home-coming. He wrote a hurried line — hurried lines 
 were all they had from him — saying that his wound was 
 almost healed, it had only been a scratch, and he was being 
 attached to one of the Mounted Infantry Corps. 
 
 It had all to be gone over again, the watching and the 
 waiting. They read of Spion Kop and Pieter's Hill, heard 
 details and envisaged them. 
 
 From their window in Grosvenor Street they saw, under 
 blue and alien skies, the English soldiers moving slowly over 
 the veldt in close formation, while the distant guns or the 
 spitting pom-poms raked their thinning columns, and from 
 the sheltering kopjes, the Transvaalers, with their deadly 
 rifles, picked off the officers still conspicuously accoutred. 
 And always under helmet or cap, they saw Desmond's face, 
 smoke-begrimed, hard-set and determined, his eyes blue and 
 alight, marching to danger or to death. 
 
 Desmond was mentioned in despatches. Michael came 
 to them with the news. Michael was proving himself in these 
 days. Like every other Englishman from public school and 
 university, he was ashamed to walk the streets of London 
 in a black coat; his arms ached for a gun, and his heart for 
 his country. Duty held him here, his father was getting an 
 old man, and had no other son. Michael was as brave at his 
 post as our soldiers at theirs, although his post was only an 
 office. Lady Grindelay and Eunice had not to wait for the 
 newspapers. He haunted the War Office, was often before the 
 evening papers with news. 
 
 There was no meanness in Michael. He loved the girl in 
 her pallor and anxiety better than he had loved her that 
 sunny day in Cornwall, and he knew his love was for ever. 
 But her heart was with Desmond. That, too, he knew now, 
 and he brought her the tale of his bravery as he would have 
 
 173
 
 174 FULL SWING 
 
 brought her his heart's blood if it would have helped her pale 
 anxiety. The tale of Desmond's bravery was one of many 
 that helped to cover the incompetence of our generals, the 
 failure of our Intelligence Department, the insufficiency of 
 our cavalry. 
 
 In one of the little engagements, when the order to retreat 
 was sounded, young Lord Grindelay disregarded it. He gal- 
 loped forward to the help of a comrade, caught at the horse's 
 bridle, held up the wounded man, and cantered back calmly, 
 through a dropping patter of bullets. There was no Victoria 
 Cross for such a deed, there were too many of them. But he 
 was mentioned in despatches, was recognised as a promising 
 young officer. 
 
 Again they hoped. Surely the end of the war was in sight. 
 Any day the news of the relief of Ladysmith might come and 
 that would mean the end. 
 
 " Lest we forget/' 
 
 So much has been forgotten, but never this, surely never 
 this. The appalling day when there brooded over London, over 
 the country, a fear that knocked like a li\dng* thing at every 
 heart, when every face one met in the street was a grey mask, 
 and men walked hurriedly past their fellow-men that they 
 should not see what it hid. 
 V Would White surrender ? Must White surrender ? 
 ) In big black type, on poster and paper, on men's brains, 
 and fear-parched hearts, the words were printed. 
 ^■ 
 
 ATTACK CONTINUES ; ENEMY REINFORCED 
 
 ATTACK RENEWED 
 
 VERY HARD PRESSED 
 
 The heliograph broke off here. Men were stark with ap- 
 prehension and walked the streets that day as one walks in 
 the valley of the shadow of death ; death and humiliation. 
 
 But Desmond was not in Ladysmith. The two women 
 who loved him had that with which to comfort themselves. 
 A small, dry comfort at best, and one that lasted but a brief 
 time. It was difficult to follow the movements of the units.
 
 FULL SWING 175 
 
 difficult to understand the plan of the scattered campaign. 
 They thought him still in the region of Magersfontein, or 
 perhaps nearing Kimberley, when Michael came to them un- 
 expectedly and in haste, with a face that showed them before 
 he spoke that it was not good tidings he bore. He could keep 
 nothing back from them because in less than an hour from 
 the time he came it might be shouted in the streets. All the 
 bad news was shouted in the streets. To those with dear ones 
 out there in the fighting line there was no respite, the taut 
 nerves were jangled a dozen times a day. 
 
 Again a small reconnoitring force had been sent out, this 
 time imder the leadership of Lord Grindelay, had unex- 
 pectedly met the enemy, and been overpowered. The enemy 
 were in shelter, the small reconnoitring party was within a 
 couple of hundred yards of them when they opened fire. A 
 Kaffir guide had led them straight into the ambush. The 
 rifles blazed out, the men fell like birds in a drive. It was 
 one of a hundred such stories. Lord Grindelay was reported 
 missing. Missing. Michael could tell them no more than 
 that for many a long day, although he haunted the War 
 Office. When he heard more, he could hardly bear to tell 
 them. Yet always it seemed better he should be before the 
 newspapers. 
 
 Lord Grindelay was reported missing because his body 
 had not been found. He had led his men into the ambush. 
 One of them, who crawled back to camp, gave the cabled 
 account of what had occurred. 
 
 "We were marching along when, without any warning, 
 there came a devil's hail of bullets and our men began to 
 fall. Lord Grindelay rallied us and we returned the fire 
 as well as we were able. Not that we'd anything to shoot at; 
 they were hidden behind kopjes or entrenched in pits. I shot 
 every round I had with me before I came away, but I never 
 saw one reach its billet. They called out to us to surrender; 
 there was nothing else to be done. But young Lord Grinde- 
 lay, he wouldn't have it at any price. I saw his horse shot 
 away under him and that they'd shattered his arm. ' Sur- 
 render be damned, surrender be damned ! ' I heard him call
 
 176 FULL SWING 
 
 out all in a rage. He kept shouting to the men to keep 
 together and blazing away until the last. Fair riddled with 
 bullets he was when he fell. . . ." 
 
 "Lord Grindelay reported missing," was the War Office 
 statement. They hoped, they hoped until this tale came 
 through. 
 
 Then they went back to Marley to get through their days 
 as well as they were able. Agatha's pain grew sometimes to 
 flaming agony when she thought of her ravaged motherhood, 
 when she could not get away from the knowledge that she 
 had sent him to his death. 
 
 She went back to Marley, took up her life as before, her 
 strangely altered life. She had once thought she loved her 
 home, thought that Marley and her responsibilities there 
 would suffice her. Now the grey house and green grounds 
 were empty and drear: the days passed heavily. Kemorse 
 gnawed at her dully and continuously, until all her pride was 
 eaten away and her strength with it. 
 
 When Monica ran away she had been unhappy, but looking 
 back she remembered how much younger she had been and 
 better able to bear it. That she had blundered in her mar- 
 riage seemed nothing to her now, for the blunder had given 
 her a son. She had not dealt wisely with him, not under- 
 stood what had come to her until it was too late, but now he 
 filled every cranny of her mind. He had asked her for Eunice, 
 and she had refused; but if he had been given back to her 
 she would refuse him nothing. 
 
 She and the girl sat in the drawing-room at the work that 
 had superseded their embroidery; becoming adepts in knit- 
 ting stockings, experts in making bed-jackets, flannel coats 
 for hospital patients, wristlets, mittens, all the stores that 
 our field-hospitals lacked. It was true that Lord Grindelay 
 was reported "missing"; his name was not on that long 
 endless roll of the honoured dead. But how could hope sur- 
 vive the scene they saw in waking or sleeping hours? The 
 useless arm, the shot horse falling under him, the hail of 
 bullets and the defiance ringing out, " No surrender," on his 
 desperate lips as he fell. They knew now that many had
 
 FULL SWING 177 
 
 been buried where they fell, the Boer leader reading the 
 burial service over them, no means of identification left. 
 If Desmond had been alive he would have been held for ran- 
 som or exchange; news of him would have come through. 
 
 Yet some dim hope still smouldered, although it was but 
 as a guttering wick that flickered and went out sometimes as 
 the slow days dragged on. Talk was difficult between them 
 at first, for something lay behind speech. Jealousy, perhaps, 
 and on the girl's part in those early days a faint resentment, 
 resentment that could not last, for soon she saw that Lady 
 Grindelay's suffering was beyond her own, although so 
 speechless. 
 
 " Whatever had happened he would have gone to the 
 war," she burst out one day, in the midst of turning a heel, 
 counting stitches. 
 
 " I made it easy for him," Lady Grindelay replied, speak- 
 ing her thought aloud. "But for me he might never have 
 gone." 
 
 " Don't feel like that, don't make it worse," Eunice cried 
 out and went over to her desperately. "Don't let us be 
 silent with each other, auntie. Sometimes I can't bear to see 
 your hopeless face." 
 
 She knelt beside her, hiding her own. 
 
 Agatha went on knitting, the click of the needles never 
 stopped. 
 
 " Leave off working, I can't bear the sound of the needles, 
 I can't work any more. What's the use of it? What's the 
 use of anything ? " the girl sobbed weakly. 
 
 " The soldiers are without stockings." 
 
 "I don't care, I only pretended to care. I was only 
 working for Desmond and Desmond's men, all the time. 
 
 Every stitch I poit in was for him. Now he isn't there " 
 
 She couldn't speak for crying. She had not meant to say 
 this, but to comfort her aunt in some way, to break the silence 
 of her sorrow. 
 
 " Sometimes I don't believe it, I don't believe he is dead," 
 she went on through her tears. 
 12
 
 178 FULL SWING 
 
 "Don't buoy yourself with false hopes. What hope ia 
 there ? " Click, click went the needles. 
 
 " I make stories, dream he has escaped or was taken pris- 
 oner, was nursed by a Boer woman and restored to us ; it helps 
 the days and nights." 
 
 " How long can you go on dreaming ? " 
 
 " Until the war is ended, until all the prisoners are re- 
 leased. Then — then '' 
 
 " Speak out. What have you in your mind for when the 
 war ends?" 
 
 The click of the needles helped the harshness of her voice. 
 
 " Then we might go out together, you and I, see the place 
 where he fell, put up a cross. But it won't happen, I know it 
 won't happen; he can't be dead, our Desmond." 
 
 And then she cried more violently. 
 
 " You at least have nothing with which to reproach your- 
 self," Lady Grindelay said, with dry lips, going on mechan- 
 ically with the violet woollen muffler, her hands stained from 
 it. That was what she spoke of presently. She could not 
 afford to break down, much of her time was spent in hiding 
 her agony of mind. 
 
 " I must try and find some wool of which the colour is 
 fast." 
 
 The sound of Eunice sobbing went to that place inside 
 her where the pain was always; adding a little to it. But 
 her voice was steady, and there was no pause in her knitting. 
 
 Many days there were like these, many hours. Lady 
 Grindelay seemed to grow grey and cold as the steel pins that 
 went in and out the wool; unapproachable. Eunice solaced 
 herself with dreams. 
 
 Meanwhile in London something was happening that was 
 to affect them both, something which even now Andrew and 
 Michael were on their way to tell them. 
 
 Michael, perhaps with the same hope that Eunice cher- 
 ished, still went daily to the War Office, still tried to believe 
 Desmond was only missing, not dead, that there would yet be 
 news of him. 
 
 He came back one day from that fruitless visit, hot foot
 
 FULL SWING 179 
 
 to his father. Andrew was at work as usual. The world went 
 on although to many it seemed as if it were standing still 
 everywhere but out there in South Africa. But in the 
 McKay office leases were still being prepared, and assignments, 
 even marriage settlements. Andrew put his pen down when 
 he saw Michael's face. 
 
 " You have news ? " 
 
 " Father, is there any other Lady Grindelay but the one 
 we know?'' 
 
 "Than Agatha?" 
 
 « Yes." 
 
 " Of course not ; why do you ask ? How could there be ? " 
 
 " There couldn't be ? You are sure ? " 
 
 " Quite sure." 
 
 " There is another Lady Grindelay, or a woman who calls 
 herself so, asking daily at the War Office for news of Des- 
 mond. I heard a rumour of it once or twice but did not credit 
 it, thought there had been some mistake. But I have just seen 
 her; spoken to her." 
 
 " Spoken to Lady Grindelay ! " 
 
 " To a woman who calls herself by that name." 
 
 "What is she like?" 
 
 '' Good-looking, in rather a common way ; a woman of 
 about four- or iive-and-thirty." 
 
 " Not more ? You are sure she is not more ? " 
 
 " About that I should think, certainly under forty. Why? 
 Have you anyone in your mind, any idea? I was startled 
 by the incident, wondering who she could be." 
 
 "I was thinking of Biddy Malone, Desmond's old nurse 
 from Ireland. She would do anything, impersonate anybody, 
 to get news of him." 
 
 "This was not Biddy Malone. This was a woman with 
 red hair and thin features, a good-looking woman, not quite a 
 lady, but not of the servant class, nor an Irishwoman." 
 
 " Did you question her at all ? " 
 
 " I had no time. She spoke to me. ' You also are inquir- 
 ing about Lord Grindelay ? Alas ! there is still no news,' she 
 said, passing me swiftly. But she was dry-eyed, the 'alas'
 
 180 FULL SWING 
 
 sounded like affectation. I made inquiries, they told me she 
 had been there every day." 
 
 Father and son looked at each other; there fell a short 
 silence between them. Then Andrew spoke slowly. He said 
 only one word, but he said it deliberately : 
 
 "Desmond?" 
 
 " Impossible," answered Michael hotly. 
 
 " Nothing is impossible." 
 
 " That would be." 
 
 " Why ? " The question shot out. " Desmond is not very 
 steady. We saw little of him while he was at Bird's ; he came 
 seldom to the house. What makes you say it is impossible that 
 this woman has anj'thing to do with him, that he did not 
 become entangled ? " Andrew thought he knew more about 
 the ways of young men than his son. 
 
 " I am sure of it," Michael answered doggedly, loyally. 
 
 "Because?" 
 
 It broke from him then: 
 
 *' Because Desmond was in love with Eunice." 
 
 "With Eunice?" 
 
 " It was only Desmond's mother who stood between them. 
 Eunice told me herself. . . ." 
 
 He spoke with some difficulty. 
 
 " Then that was why " 
 
 The enlightenment, the exclamation fell from Andrew 
 involuntarily. Michael turned his back on his father. 
 
 " Yes, that was why I failed with her. We won't speak 
 further of it if you don't mind." 
 
 Andrew had never understood why Michael came back 
 from Cornwall without any announcement to make. He had 
 been disappointed, but vsdse enough not to show it. He knew 
 if there was anything to hear he would have been told. Now 
 he began to understand. He would have liked to say a word 
 of sympathy, to have reminded his son that the girl was still 
 young, Desmond dead. But he refrained, thinking it was 
 better to say nothing, to go on with the matter in hand. 
 
 " You heard no more about this woman than that she had 
 been there every day ; not where she lives, nor anything else ? "
 
 FULL SWING 181 
 
 " Nothing." Michael was recovering himself, grateful to 
 his father because the words of sympathy had not been spoken. 
 
 " You must go again to-morrow, make a point of speaking 
 to her if she is there. If not, try to find out where she comes 
 from, whether anyone knows anything about her." 
 
 " I had first to make sure there was no one else entitled 
 to bear the name, no other branch of the family." 
 
 " No one but Desmond's wife, if he had one, could be 
 entitled to call herself Lady Grindelay. This is either an 
 impostor, or — God grant there is no more trouble coming to 
 that poor woman ! " 
 
 " I feel confident ahout Desmond." 
 
 " I wish I did," his father answered dryly.
 
 CHAPTEK XVII 
 
 Gabrielle had no longer any object in concealing Desmond's 
 secret, or her own,^ rather she had everything to gain by 
 betraying it. She told Michael the whole story the very next 
 day when they met at the War Office, with complete candour, 
 brutal candour. He apologised for addressing her. 
 
 ''I understand that you are inquiring for Lord Grin- 
 delay?" 
 
 " Oh ! yes. I am Lady Grindelay, that is my name. I 
 have seen you here before, you are perhaps a relative of my 
 husband's?" 
 
 "Your husband's?" 
 " You are a relative of Desmond's ? " 
 " JSTo ! " Michael was startled, uncertain what to say, 
 shocked. "I am — we are — my father and I are the family 
 solicitors." 
 
 " Then you must be ' Michael ' ? Of course I have heard 
 him speak of you. There is no news again to-day. It seems 
 as if we never shall have more news now. I have quite lost 
 hope." 
 
 She was dressed all in black, but there was no sign of 
 mourning in her face. When Michael first spoke to her she 
 had smiled, and shown her teeth, small, white, even teeth, and 
 the smile was attractive. Her smile was for any man, for 
 all men, even this stiff young lawyer. But now she altered her 
 tactics. 
 
 " You are surprised to hear of Desmond's marriage ? It 
 was he who wanted it kept secret, not I," she said quickly. 
 " He told me he would not be sent out, he might not have got 
 his commission if he had been known as a married man. He 
 was so keen to go to the war." 
 
 She was full of explanation, too full, too ready altogether 
 to talk and explain and admit his right to question her. 
 Michael resented her smile, her voluble talk, everything about 
 her. 
 
 182
 
 FULL SWING 183 
 
 When she saw how unappreciative he was she changed 
 her smile to a sigh. 
 
 " Poor boy ! And now it seems he will never come back ! 
 He will never see his little daughter." 
 
 " His daughter ! " Michael exclaimed, unable to disguise 
 his disgust, 
 
 " It was bom before its time " 
 
 She may have reddened, Michael was not sure. They 
 were standing together on the steps of the War Office, and 
 the sun was in his eyes. 
 
 "You can, of course, give proof of what you are telling 
 me ? '' He was beginning to recover himself. 
 
 She glanced at him, she was taking his measure. Can- 
 dour suited her purpose, she had no longer anything to gain 
 by concealment. 
 
 " Of course. Do you doubt me ? I am not lying to you. 
 We were married at the Notting Hill Eegistry Office a week 
 before he sailed. You can see the entry." 
 
 When they went down the steps of the War Office, she 
 suggested that Michael should walk home with her. 
 
 " I can show you letters from him. He made a will before 
 he left. I have that too, perhaps you would like to see it." 
 She was quite malicious now, and seemed to have pleasure 
 in giving him proof of her statement. 
 
 " You say you have a child by him, that she is some weeks 
 old!" 
 
 "Bom prematurely." There was no blush about her, 
 and her step by his side was quite brisk. Michael thought 
 her utterly shameless and was quite revolted by her, although 
 he went on mechanically walking by her side. He had not to 
 use any skill in cross-examining her, nor any detective quality 
 to understand that she was admitting the reason Desmond 
 married her before his departure. He went in at her invi- 
 tation when they reached the flat, and saw the marriage cer- 
 tificate, the outside of the will. He even heard the cry of a 
 b?,by from some inner room. ISTothing was wanting for his 
 enlightenment. 
 
 The flat was in Buckingham Palace Gardens. The sitting-
 
 184 FULL SWING 
 
 room into which Gabrielle took Michael was handsomely fur- 
 nished, full of flowers, heaped with disorderly expensive 
 things, redolent of scent, suggestive. Only the cry of the 
 baby was incongruous as it came through the wall. 
 
 "I can't go on like this any longer," she told Michael 
 after she had shown him her proofs. " I have waited as long 
 as I am able. If he had not been killed I would have kept 
 the secret until he came back, but as it is, what is the use ? " 
 She shrugged her expressive shoulders. ^' One cannot live 
 without money. If you had not spoken to me to-day I should 
 have had to look you up." 
 
 Michael saw for himself that she could not go on living 
 in this way without money. 
 
 Now Desmond was no longer there to draw against it, his 
 allowance was not paid into the bank. His mother's allow- 
 ance to Desmond had been a liberal one, and had provided all 
 these luxuries. 
 
 "If you will read his will" — Michael had the document 
 in his hand but had not opened it — " you will see that he has 
 left me everything he had." 
 
 " Desmond had nothing to leave." 
 
 Michael was embarrassed at the position in which he found 
 himself, explaining to this woman of whose very existence he 
 had been unaware four-and-twenty hours ago, that practically 
 Desmond had been dependent upon his mother's generosity, 
 that the Languedoc estate brought in nothing. But she was 
 not embarrassed, nor backward in examining him quickly, 
 cleverly, closely. Desmond had told her something of his 
 dependence upon his mother, but she wanted it confirmed. 
 
 " In any case, there will be my pension." 
 
 Michael got away from her as soon as he could, as soon 
 as she would let him. She was a new experience to Michael, 
 and one with whom he felt himself unable to cope. He went 
 back to his father when at last he made his escape. 
 
 " You must see her, father. I can hardly convey to you 
 her self-assurance, want of taste or feeling, her manner gen- 
 erally. She seems utterly callous to his fate, thinking only 
 of what provision there is for her. She assumes quite coolly
 
 FUIyL SWING 185 
 
 that Desmond's mother will accept her story ; that we shall. I 
 don't see what else we can do. I have never met anyone at 
 all like her. There certainly was a baby — I heard it. It 
 seems incredible. I am afraid you will have to see her your- 
 self." 
 
 Andrew questioned him, letting all other work stand over 
 while he considered this. 
 
 " You say she Is four or five-and-thirty, twelve or fourteen 
 years Desmond's senior. "Where did they meet? How long 
 had they known each other ? " 
 
 " I didn't ask, I was so overwhelmed. You had suggested 
 the explanation of her calling herself Lady Grindelay, but 
 when I spoke to her I still did not believe it; I thought it 
 impossible." 
 
 " We can't do anything without consulting Agatha. I 
 don't think we can move without that. But I will see the 
 woman myself first, as you say, question her, make certain. 
 I suppose you have seen the original of the certificate ? " 
 
 " I went up to the registry office on my way here. Every- 
 thing is in order; the clerk witnessed, he remembers it per- 
 fectly." 
 
 " Has she got a telephone ? Get on to the telephone and 
 ask for an appointment for me. We mustn't waste time. We 
 can't risk Agatha hearing of this from anyone but us. Let 
 me see, to-day is Thursday. If she must be told, if the in- 
 credible story is true, we had better go down to Marley on 
 Saturday. We must break it gently if it has to be broken. I 
 shan't wire, but just write a line offering ourselves for a visit. 
 It's a dreadful business. Twelve or fourteen years older than 
 he is ! Not a word to anybody ! What could the boy have 
 been thinking of ? I'll write Agatha a line myself. It will go 
 hard with her if this woman is all you describe. Not that 
 there is ever any saying what Agatha will feel called upon to 
 do. She may think she is bound to adopt the baby, open her 
 house to the woman. I'm sure I don't know what she will 
 do." But he was filled with sympathy for his old friend. 
 
 Gabrielle Radlett was quite as frank with Andrew in their 
 interview as she had been with Michael, more so perhaps.
 
 186 FULL SWING 
 
 In some ways she had always found old men more easily dealt 
 with than young ones. Michael had been very stiff and re- 
 served with Gabrielle. Andrew, recognising^ in less than ten 
 minutes where she stood in the kingdom of women, met her 
 there, displapng no distaste, encouraging her to talk, getting 
 from her one or two clues that were useful to him later on. 
 She compared him favourably with his son, thinking to please 
 him, saying she was satisfied to leave her affairs in his hands, 
 that he must get what he could for her from Desmond's 
 mother if it were true that Desmond's own estate would really 
 be so small. He learnt now that she had nursed Desmond 
 through his illness. 
 
 " I am sure you will do the best you can for me," she said 
 with emphasis. 
 
 It had been her trade to flatter men, she had no reason to 
 think this grizzled one was an exception. 
 
 Andrew's face was grave when he left her. She was so 
 much worse than he had expected ; so entirely beyond the pale. 
 He could not see Agatha accepting her son's wife, nor him- 
 self advising her to. But he knew Agatha's sense of duty, 
 and how impossible it was to influence her. No one, not even 
 he, could be sure of how she would act. 
 
 He went down to Marley on Saturday, full of misgiving. 
 Michael was with him, each with his heart full of the two to 
 whom they were not taking solace, but something worse than 
 grief. The train went on and they read their newspapers; 
 there was little they could say to each other. Michael allowed 
 himself to dwell on what might happen when Eunice knew of 
 Desmond's marriage. He was really delicate-minded, and 
 when he believed Desmond was dead, he had respected her 
 grief, not hoped, nor thought of himself at all. But this was 
 different. Desmond married was less a rival than Desmond 
 dead, and Michael allowed himself to dream on his way to 
 Marley. 
 
 The brougham was waiting for them at the station. Lady 
 Grindelay and Eunice met them at the lodge. Somehow or 
 other, perhaps because Gabrielle had worn black, they were 
 glad to find neither Agatha nor Eunice in mourning. Eunice
 
 FULL SWING 187 
 
 was pale in her white summer skirt and pink shirt. Lady 
 Grindelay had not abandoned her old-fashioned clothes, but 
 now they seemed becoming and appropriate to her. She was 
 over sixty and had no wish to disguise her age. She wore a 
 tailor-made coat and skirt; no hat was on her grey hair that 
 had been allowed to grow and was now in a smooth knot ; her 
 figure was still slender and upright, the instep' still high and 
 well booted. She was careful about her hands, and wore wash- 
 leather gloves. Her complexion had faded, but there were 
 few wrinkles. This was the first visit the McKays had paid 
 to Marley since Desmond went away, and all of them wanted 
 to avoid remembering it, to keep from any untoward allusion 
 or remembrance. As they walked through the garden to the 
 house Andrew heard about the erratic Odontoglossum. They 
 spoke also of the roses and their late flowering, of the scents 
 from the herb garden. 
 
 , All through luncheon they kept up the pretence that 
 nothing had changed since they were here before, speaking 
 again of the orchid and the changes in orchid culture. Andrew 
 told of his triumphs in the small Campden Hill hothouse. 
 Lady Grindelay said that if the Odontoglossum were to 
 flower now, it would seem like a miracle, as if the clock had 
 been put back. All of them knew the story of how she had 
 opened the door of the orchid house when she was a child 
 because she thought that plants, like children, should have 
 fresh air. She promised Andrew a cutting. 
 
 Over their coffee Michael commented intolerantly on the 
 incompetence or folly of this or the other general, spoke of 
 the growing enteric lists ; Andrew talked of the various organi- 
 sations of which Lady Grindelay was the president or 
 patroness, and of how funds and offers of help were coming 
 in, Eunice was enthusiastic about Eudyard Kipling's lyric 
 appeal. 
 
 Instinctively Agatha knew Andrew had something to tell 
 her; they had been friends for so long that she could read 
 him through. She knew that when he talked so freely it was 
 for concealment. What he was not saying was what she
 
 188 . FULL SWING 
 
 wanted to hear. It could not be good news, or he would have 
 told her at once. 
 
 " May I take you out on the river after lunch ? " Michael 
 asked Eunice when they could no longer linger over their 
 coffee. 
 
 Eunice looked questioningly at her aunt, and Lady Grin- 
 delay answered quickly: 
 
 " That is a good idea of yours, Michael. Eunice does not 
 go out nearly enough. She thinks it her duty to sit with me." 
 
 " I don't do it for duty." 
 
 Agatha, ignoring the interruption, went on : 
 
 '*" You need not hurry back. Your father and I will find 
 plenty to say to each other." 
 
 Eunice went out with Michael at her aunt's bidding. 
 Whenever the McKays came down, there was an hour or so 
 of business talk ; it was nothing unusual to leave her aunt and 
 the old law;>'er together to talk business. Agatha knew in- 
 stinctively that this occasion was different. When the hall 
 door closed behind the young people she asked him at once: 
 
 *' What have you come to tell me ? " 
 
 " So you guessed ? " 
 
 *' It would be strange, after all these years, if I did not 
 know when you had something on your mind." 
 
 He did not attempt to contradict her, to say that he had 
 nothing on his mind. They were still in the dining-room, 
 and now he held the door open for her, 
 
 " What is it ? " she asked him. 
 
 *' Wait until we get into the library," he answered. He 
 was in no hurry with his news. 
 
 The library, with high, mullioned windows, walls rich with 
 heavy tomes in leather bindings, had an air of great seclusion, 
 calm remoteness. He thought he would find it easier to tell 
 her there. She seated herself at one of the tables, but he 
 remained silent, hardly knowing in what words to clothe his 
 news. 
 
 " Surely you are not afraid to tell me ? " For he was not 
 speaking. "Is there more trouble with the Irish tenants?
 
 FULL SWING 189 
 
 Are they boycotting me ? Or has one of my investments gone 
 wrong? " 
 
 She thought nothing he could tell her could affect her 
 greatly. The news he was bringing her could hardly be from 
 South Africa. She knew the worst there was to tell from 
 there; she had abandoned hope, even if Eunice had not; she 
 could not solace herself with dreams as the girl did. 
 
 " Don't be afraid to tell me. What could have happened 
 that would distress or move me now?" She gave a short 
 sigh. " Don't look as if the world had come to an end, speak 
 out, you will find I can bear anything you have to tell me. 
 What is wrong in Languedoc or Marley ? " 
 
 Andrew always took her affairs seriously and with Scotch 
 caution. An unlet or boycotted farm, a drop in the value of 
 a security, never seemed of small importance to him. But 
 she cared so little, so much less than ever. 
 
 On Andrew's table, the big library table always known as 
 Andrew's, where many documents of the estate were kept, were 
 parcels ready packed and addressed, big, bulky paxcels. 
 
 Andrew stood and looked at them. 
 
 " You must have been working very hard, you and Eunice. 
 I should think you were working too hard." 
 
 Now that he looked at her, he saw that her colour was 
 grey, that she had grown thin. 
 
 " Have you been ill, Agatha ? " he asked abruptly. 
 
 "Nothing to speak of — nothing that matters. Go on 
 with what you have to say to me." But he would not accept 
 her answer. Perhaps he was glad to put off telling his news 
 a little longer. 
 
 " Have you seen a doctor? Has Eeid been up? " 
 
 "You have something to break to me, then — something 
 very bad and bitter ? " They knew each other so well. " My 
 health is well enough to stand it ; go on ! " 
 
 " Sixteen parcels altogether ! I've been counting them. 
 Stockings and mufflers for an entire regiment. You have 
 been doing too much." 
 
 " We had a working bee. This is not all Eunice and my- 
 self. What is the trouble, Andrew ? What news can there be
 
 190 FULL SWING 
 
 that is not from South Africa, and that you are hesitating so 
 to tell me ? Have I lost money ? A great deal of money ? " 
 And then she added with some bitterness : " What do I want 
 money for now ? Eunice has enough, and I have no son ! " 
 Then she added quickly, rising from her chair as she spoke : 
 
 " Your news is about Desmond ! " 
 
 " Sit down — sit down." 
 
 " What news have you brought me ? " 
 
 " Bad news ! " he said briefly. 
 
 " About Desmond ? " Her courage broke. " Not disgrace, 
 Andrew ; don't tell me it is disgrace ! Leave me my pride in 
 him, let me think that he died like an Englishman, like a 
 hero; don't tell me differently." Now she was gripping the 
 edge of the table, and there was fear in her eyes ; always she 
 saw the spectre of his drunken father. What could it be that 
 Andrew found so hard to tell her ? " You have heard a dif- 
 ferent account of his death ? " 
 
 " So far as I or anybody else knows, Desmond fell as an 
 Englishman should, calling out ' No surrender ! ' with his 
 dying lips." 
 
 "Thank God! Thank God! Then you can tell me 
 nothing to hurt me." She put her hand to her side and sat 
 down abruptly. 
 
 " I am afraid the news I bring is going to hurt you." 
 
 " I can bear anything since he died like that. Go on." 
 
 He spoke briefly, curtly, since she had to know. 
 
 " There is a woman who has been haunting the War Office. 
 Michael met her there several times, inquiring for news of 
 Desmond. At my suggestion he spoke to her. She told him, 
 as she had told the War Office authorities, that she was Lady 
 Grindelay." 
 
 He let this sink in, then added, after a short pause : 
 
 " She claims to be Desmond's widow ! " 
 
 " Desmond's widow ! " 
 
 The words were strange. She repeated them : " Desmond's 
 widow ! " 
 
 And then it was he, not she, who was surprised, for she 
 added :
 
 FULL SWING 191 
 
 " He married her ? He did what was right ? " Her face 
 was illumined. '* My son!" The words were whispered, 
 but he heard the pride in them, the utter pride. 
 
 Astonished and incredulous, he exclaimed: 
 
 " Then you knew ? " 
 
 "I was in his confidence." She was glad to be able to 
 say it. 
 
 " You knew he was married ? " Even now Andrew was 
 incredulous. 
 
 " That it was possible." 
 
 "Perhaps, too, you are acquainted with the lady?" he 
 asked satirically. "Perhaps you approved of her as a 
 daughter-in-law ? " As he had told Michael, there was never 
 any way of counting upon Agatha or foreseeing where her 
 distorted conscientiousness would lead her. 
 
 " Ko, I don't know her," Agatha answered slowly. 
 
 "Well, that's one good thing," he exclaimed, brutally 
 enough. " If he married with your consent, you gave it at 
 least with your eyes shut — as usual," he added as an after- 
 thought. 
 
 " Why ? " Her question shot out. 
 
 " Because she is a common " He had the grace not to 
 
 say the word. " And ten years his senior at the very least ! " 
 
 The question had shot, out, but the answer was a bullet that 
 reached its mark. Before the smoke of it had passed away 
 he was by her side in alarm; he was asking if he should get 
 brandy for her, ring for her maid. The pain had gripped 
 her suddenly. 
 
 "Don't ring!" she got out faintly. "It is nothing — it 
 will pass ! " 
 
 He waited, stood by her side and waited for her to recover 
 herself. He was acutely sorry for her; wished she were less 
 reserved, more like other women. He stood irresolutely, seeing 
 now how ill she looked, and altered, wondering what she 
 would say or do, 
 
 "You have no doubt she is of the class 3'ou describe?^' 
 she asked him, after a pause. 
 
 "None at all," he answered.
 
 192 FULL SWING 
 
 " Tell me all you know." 
 
 " Don't you think we had better wait a little ? You don't 
 look fit to hear it. You must recollect you are not so young 
 as you were." 
 
 But she was indomitable. 
 
 "I shall never be any younger. Go on, please — go on, 
 tell me all you know." 
 
 " Well, if you insist. . . ." 
 
 He began to tell her everything that the woman who 
 called herself Desmond's wife had told him, and the little 
 they had learned to supplement it. When he would have 
 paused, she made him go on, nor would be let off anything; 
 it was not her way to evade pain. 
 
 " And now the question is : what are we going to do ? " 
 he said, when he had finished. He wondered of what partic- 
 ular folly she would be guilty; made sure she would wish to 
 reform the woman, adopt the baby, or take some course 
 equally inadvisable. But Agatha could still surprise him. 
 
 " I suppose it is quite certain that my son is dead ? " she 
 asked heavily. 
 
 " I'm afraid there is but little hope," he answered sadly. 
 
 " Then she must be bribed to remain silent," she said sur- 
 prisingly. 
 
 Lady Grindelay was not thinking now of the woman who 
 called herself her son's wife, of the child, or of herself. Her 
 son had loved Eunice, and she him. Eunice was all that was 
 left to her to shelter. The girl had come to her room in the 
 dead of night for comfort or assurance. She thought of that 
 other time when, with her head in Agatha's lap, Eunice had 
 sobbed out how she could not believe that Desmond was really 
 dead, lost to them ; how she still saw him in dreams ; how, in 
 happy dreams, he came back. Those dreams must not be 
 spoiled. 
 
 " We must keep this from Eunice. Eunice must never 
 know ! " 
 
 " But how on earth is it to be kept from her ? " 
 
 " You must think of a way," she repeated. 
 
 " It is quite impossible."
 
 FULL SWING 193 
 
 " Nothing is impossible. You say she wants money ? " 
 
 " I say she is Desmond's wife — or widow." 
 
 Never yet had Agatha acted as other women did; it ap- 
 peared she would not do so now. 
 
 " You need not go on sajdng it. That does not help at 
 all. Eunice must be allowed to keep her ideals, her dreams, 
 for a little while — at least for a little while. Andrew, don't 
 oppose me; think of how to help me — there must be a way 
 out. Andrew, you have guessed right. I am ill, how ill they 
 don't know yet. I saw Dr. Reid yesterday. He wants me to 
 have a man down from town. He thinks — ^well, there is no 
 doubt there is some sort of growth — tumour, cancer — some 
 sort of growth. Don't look like that ; I am over sixty. Death 
 must have some excuse, 3^ou don't expect you are going to live 
 for ever, either, do you ? The girl is fond of me, I believe." 
 Agatha's voice did not falter. " She is all I have left. I am 
 not going to have her hurt. She must not have everything to 
 bear at once, my illness and this news. The woman must be 
 bribed to remain quiet. I may get well again, I am almost 
 sure to recover from this first operation. Andrew, I have not 
 asked often for help ; help me to keep this from her ! " 
 
 She had shown no sign of weakness until she made this 
 appeal. And then, of course, Andrew could not resist her. 
 He thought it all wrong, wi'ong and foolish, and that the 
 secret would be sure to come out. He thought that if Eunice 
 knew now that the cousin to whom she was so attached had 
 deceived her and tied himself to another woman, pride would 
 come to her aid, pride — and Michael. Michael would console 
 her. But what Agatha had told him overwhelmed him, made 
 it impossible to oppose her. 
 
 " I suppose you must have your own way," he said in the 
 end, when he had exhausted his arguments. " You always 
 have your own way." He refrained from telling her where 
 that way had so often led. He was so sorry for her; he had 
 never known her ill, and this was such a dreadful illness. He 
 yielded his Judgment, promised her that so far as he and 
 Michael were concerned the secret should be kept. 
 13
 
 194 FULL SWING 
 
 Agatha, strangely enough, was concerned only for Eunice. 
 The news had not affected her in any other way. She felt 
 that she had driven Desmond to this marriage, and that all 
 that mattered was that Eunice should not know it, and his 
 memory should not he besmirched. 
 
 " I will make any sacrifice of money. The woman you 
 describe can surely be tempted with money? Make it clear 
 to her that Desmond had nothing to leave, but that I will 
 give her what I would have given him — even more, that I 
 will give her anything in reason if she will cease to call her- 
 self Lady Grindelay, if she will keep the whole affair a secret 
 for the present — at least for the present. If I get well '' 
 
 " Of course you will get well.'' 
 
 " I think I shall, I don't feel that my time has come ; 
 there is still work for me to do, and Marley. . . ." She 
 paused there, the tears were too deep to rise into her eyes, 
 but they were in her voice. " Not my son, but the girl he loved 
 will inherit Marley. She will hold it in his memory; she 
 must hear nothing, nothing of this news you have brought 
 me." 
 
 Andrew wanted to know what surgeon or doctor was 
 coming to see her, what arrangements had been made. Agatha 
 did not want to talk about her illness ; she made light of it. 
 
 " I dare say I shall be as weil as ever in a few weeks. But 
 it is such an inconvenient time." She would only admit to 
 inconvenience, not to pain or danger. 
 
 Andrew was very doubtful of the wisdom of the course 
 upon which they were to embark ; he saw possibilities of com- 
 plication, of blackmail, knowing that if Gabrielle were in 
 truth Desmond's widow it was not right she should be bribed 
 not to bear his name, not to claim her rights. But Agatha 
 was ill, and obstinate. She reiterated that she would not 
 have the girl's mind disturbed, Andrew yielded; Agatha, 
 weakened like this, had become too strong for him. 
 
 " Only until I get better — at least until I get better she 
 is not to use Desmond's name. Everything must go on as 
 before. Eunice is to know nothing. I am sure I am right.'*
 
 FULL SWING 195 
 
 " When have you doubted that you are right ? " he asked. 
 But he could not argue with her. 
 
 " I am sure he would not have wished her to know. Let 
 me do this one thing for him ; let me keep his secret.^' 
 
 " I will do what I can. I don't think there will be any 
 difficulty." 
 
 The conversation had to be adjourned. Visitors were an- 
 nounced. Neither Agatha nor Andrew was sorry that their 
 tete-d-tete was broken in upon.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 If she had not been Agatha, Andrew would have said that 
 she was trying to do a wrong thing, that the woman had her 
 rights, that it was not only Eunice whose feelings should be 
 considered. But she was Agatha, and he could only carry out 
 her instructions. He told Michael of her decision on their 
 journey up to town on Monday morning, briefly and 
 abruptly, but in a way that showed Michael it was past argu- 
 ment, Michael thought the idea of keeping the marriage a 
 secret, concealing the whole story from Eunice, buying 
 Gabrielle off, even more foolish than his father did, and more 
 reprehensible. He did not think it fair to himself; then 
 flushed, and was ashamed that he should be thinking of him- 
 self at such a time. For he heard that his father's old friend 
 and client had an operation in front of her, that the issue was 
 uncertain. 
 
 " I don't think at the moment she is as clear-minded as 
 usual. She does not see the possible consequences of this 
 concealment." 
 
 Michael could see how moved his father was, and refrained 
 from pressing home his views. But his father would have to 
 interview Gabrielle and bribe her to silence. He, Michael, 
 admitted himself incapable of it. 
 
 " It is not fair to any of us," he was driven to say. 
 
 " Agatha is our client ; we have to carry out her instruc- 
 tions," Andrew answered. " Poor Agatha ! " he added. 
 
 Andrew was distressed at the prospect of Agatha's peril. 
 Michael had nothing to do but show his filial affection, help 
 him into his coat when the train stopped, find a cab, be 
 assiduous in attention. 
 
 Gabrielle proved herself amenable, more amenable than 
 could have been expected. Andrew went to her in the after- 
 noon, and told her he had seen Lady Grindelay, told her that 
 Desmond's mother would do nothing for her if there was any 
 publicity or any announcement of the marriage. But that 
 
 196
 
 FULL SWING 197 
 
 if she would live quietly and call herself by another name, she 
 would have a liberal allowance, a sum down — any reasonable 
 claim would be met. 
 
 " It is true that you are entitled to Languedoc when Lord 
 Grindelay's death is proved, but not before. There will be 
 delay; there is bound to be a long delay. You know your 
 resources — what are you going to live on meanwhile? When 
 eventually you are in possession of Languedoc, you will find 
 it is an expense, not an income. Your pension, too. Des- 
 mond's death will have to be proved before it is paid, the body 
 found, or an eye-witness who saw him after death. And it 
 will be a very inconsiderable amount, scarcely worth claiming 
 for a woman like yourself. It is better you should be quite 
 clear about your position. Perhaps you would like to confirm 
 what I am telling you with your own lawyer or one of your 
 friends ? " 
 
 Whether he thought her wise or not, he fought well for 
 his client. And when Gabrielle gave in, when she began to 
 bargain, he knew he had achieved his object. Agatha could 
 go through her ordeal without Eunice's distress to deepen it. 
 Eunice could still cherish Desmond's memory. 
 
 Gabrielle was persuaded to move from her present quar- 
 ters, where she was known as Lady Grindelay, to others 
 where she was unknown. Andrew McKay made no stipulation 
 as to where she was to go. It seemed of no consequence. Not 
 the liberal allowance, but a sum down* was the crux of her 
 bargaining. Fifteen thousand pounds, she asked ; but Andrew 
 got her down to five thousand pounds. She spoke of debts, 
 mysterious debts and expenses. Afterwards he wondered at 
 his own blindness, that his suspicions were not more quickly 
 aroused. For the moment he was only concerned to know that 
 he had succeeded, that Agatha's illness or convalescence 
 would not be troubled, that he had carried out her wishes. 
 
 Matters were very expeditiously arranged when once the 
 terms were agreed upon. Before the two nurses were installed 
 at the Court, before the surgeons had made their appoint- 
 ments and the news of what was to be done had been broken 
 to Eunice, Gabrielle Eadlett and her child had left the Buck-
 
 198 FULL SWING 
 
 ingham Gate flat. If Andrew had had misgivings before, his 
 last interview with Gabrielle did nothing to remove them. 
 
 " I didn't want the title," she said. " It is no use to me 
 where I am going. I've booked to South Africa as Nurse Rad- 
 lett — my old name is good enough for me. I'm off next 
 week. I was only waiting for the cash." 
 
 "To South Africa!" 
 
 " To Cape Town. Why not ? I'm a fully qualified nurse. 
 Quite a number of us are going." 
 
 "And the child?" 
 
 They were in the office ; the flat had been abandoned, all 
 her preparations made, and the money was in her possession. 
 
 " Oh, the child ! " She laughed ; she had the impudence 
 to laugh. " I wrote to Desmond's old nurse, to Biddy Maione. 
 It was Desmond's idea that Biddy should take care of his child 
 if he never came back. I wrote and told her so. I found 
 someone to take the kid over. She is quite safe at Langue- 
 doc. The old woman was glad enough to get her, I can tell 
 you. It seems she cherishes some old grudge against Des- 
 mond's mother. She seems to think she will get even with 
 her by keeping Desmond's child. I'm not going to interfere, 
 they can settle it between themselves. I don't suppose I shall 
 come back for a year or two. I might marry again — there 
 is no knowing." Her laugh rang out again. " There will be 
 plenty of chances. There is nothing about marrying again 
 in that agreement you made me sign." 
 
 She had outwitted him, kept to the letter of her agree- 
 ment, regained her freedom, and with more money and greater 
 independence than she had ever had in her life. She was an 
 adventuress, and this adventure had brought her in more than 
 she had anticipated. She had no love for Desmond, for the 
 difficult young man she had entrapped. She was glad to be 
 rid of him and his child. And at such a good price. 
 
 Lady Grindelay heard nothing of what had occurred, 
 nothing of what had become of the adventuress who called 
 herself her son's wife, nor of the child who was doubtfully his. 
 She relied upon Andrew; once Andrew had undertaken to 
 carry out her wishes she refused to give the matter any further
 
 FULL SWING 199 
 
 thought. Agatha was now in the hands of doctors and nurses. 
 Andrew could not break in upon them to tell her of his 
 doubts or misgivings. He was glad of the respite, not proud 
 of the way he had conducted the negotiations. There was 
 something about Gabrielle Eadlett when he saw her for the 
 last time in his office, after the agreement had been signed, 
 that excited his tardy suspicion. Now, when it was too late, 
 he put detectives on her trail, set himself and them the task 
 of piecing out her histor}', discovering everji;hing that should 
 have been discovered before that five thousand pounds had 
 been thrown away. 
 
 Gabrielle Eadlett had no claim to call herself Lady Grin- 
 delay. She was already married when she went through that 
 ceremony with Desmond. The story those detectives unrav- 
 elled was commonplace enough; it lay quite on the surface. 
 She was known to the police, known at Scotland Yard. Her 
 husband was even now at Dartmoor, serving his time for an 
 offence for which they had been tried together, of which she 
 had been acquitted, many years ago. His time was nearly up. 
 It was not likely he would have enough money when he came 
 out to follow her to South Africa. She had no fancy for a 
 domestic life with ex-convict No. 3734. 
 
 Andrew learnt all this from Detective Grose of Scotland 
 Yard. Everything about her was on record; he need only 
 have inquired earlier and in the right quarter. 
 
 At fourteen she was sent to a penitentiary for petty pil- 
 fering in the common lodging-house where she had been 
 employed as a general servant. Yet she was not a victim of 
 conditions, but of character. At the end of her detention a 
 benevolent old lady took a fancy to her, and paid for her 
 education and training as a hospital nurse. She could have 
 retrieved her past ; she had capacity, even talent. But before 
 the end of her training she was in the thick of an intrigue 
 with one of the young hospital doctors. He abandoned her, 
 and to conceal her condition she went through a hasty mar- 
 riage with a sympathetic and plausible scoundrel, who saw in 
 her profession a means he could use in his own more nefarious 
 one. They soon began to understand each other. The sen-
 
 300 FULL SWING 
 
 tence he was serving was for forgery and attempted blackmail. 
 Gabrielle had nursed the man whose will was forged. She 
 had been one of the witnesses, but at the trial it was said she 
 was acting under her husband's influence. Her youth and 
 good looks appealed to the jury, and, as has been seen, she 
 was acquitted. She resumed her profession; she had always 
 her attractive manner to secure the suffrages and recommen- 
 dations of doctors. Lord Grindelay was not the only patient 
 who had had to rue her ministrations. 
 
 This was, in brief, the story Inspector Grose had to tell. 
 He was very terse and direct. The only detail Andrew wanted 
 was the date of the marriage, and the proof that her first 
 husband was still alive, and neither was difficult to obtain. 
 Andrew was very much out of conceit with himself for having 
 become suspicious so late. 
 
 "Who could dream she was risking a prosecution for 
 bigamy ? " 
 
 " Well, you know, we are not criminal lawyers," Michael 
 said to him consolingly. 
 
 " I feel I was criminally negligent over those five thousand 
 pounds," Andrew replied ruefully. " Of course, she was 
 delighted to find we wanted the matter hushed up." 
 
 Still, there were compensations for his over-haste and 
 lack of caution. Desmond was not married; he had left no 
 heir. There was no one who was entitled to call herself 
 "Lady Grindelay" or disturb Eunice's mind. He knew 
 Agatha would think five thousand pounds not too much to 
 pay for the knowledge. 
 
 It was some time before he was able to see Agatha, but 
 he wrote her a brief letter that everything had been done as 
 she wished, and that the marriage of which she had been 
 informed had not proved a legal one. "There will be no 
 further trouble from that quarter," he added, knowing no 
 better. 
 
 Before Andrew's letter reached Marley, however, gi'eat 
 news came to hand, news that made its contents comparatively 
 unimportant, although later the importance became more 
 significant. But that was not yet.
 
 FULL SWING 201 
 
 Michael came late to the office the very day the letter was 
 dispatched, with a pale and agitated face. 
 
 "Have you heard what they are crying in the streets? 
 Roberts has marched into Pretoria, finding and releasing a 
 large number of prisoners who had long been given up as 
 
 dead. There are names amongst them " Their eyes met, 
 
 his father caught his excitement, answering it. 
 
 " Kot Desmond's ? Not Lord Grindela/s ? " 
 
 " They say so. ' No Surrender Grindelay amongst the 
 prisoners' is on all the placards. I am just going round to the 
 War Office. I only called in to tell you." 
 
 " Good God ! Good God ! If it should be true ! " 
 
 " I think it must be true. Here's the paper. It is circum- 
 stantial enough. I can be down at Marley before the even- 
 ing papers get there. You don't mind if I don't come back 
 here?" 
 
 " You won't be able to see Agatha." 
 
 " I can see Eunice. I should like to tell her myself. I 
 
 was so often the bearer of bad tidings " He halted in his 
 
 speech, but it was easy to see what he had suffered in carry- 
 ing it. " I should like to tell her this myself," he said. " Do 
 you mind if I go ? " 
 
 " Of course not." His father understood, showed his 
 sympathy by his silence. " You can call at the War Office, 
 and still be in time to catch the five o'clock train. Perhaps 
 you'll be able to let me know ? " 
 
 " It will be too late to come back if I am to catch the five 
 o'clock." 
 
 "Be careful what you telegraph. You know what they 
 have been going through." 
 
 " They are sure to have arranged that no telegrams are 
 taken up to the sick room. I shall simply wire for the 
 brougham to meet me." 
 
 "They'll guess. The girl never believed he was dead. 
 Agatha told me so." 
 
 " I know," Michael added simply. " She told me so her- 
 self." 
 
 Neither of them spoke of Desmond's wife, who was no wife.
 
 203 FULL SWING 
 
 The lesser news was swallowed up by the greater. Desmond 
 was alive. 
 
 The War Office confirmed the news that was in the papers. 
 Prisoners of war had been released by Roberts in Pretoria, 
 and Lord Grindelay was amongst them. There were no 
 details to hand as yet, only the bare fact. 
 
 Michael caught the five o'clock train. He would be in 
 Marley before the news. His telegram was a little more ex- 
 plicit than his father had advised, and it was sent to Eunice. 
 
 " Arriving six-fifty, bringing news." 
 
 He wanted to see her at the station when he got to the 
 end of his journey ; he wanted to see her face brighten when 
 he told her, although the brightening would not be for him. 
 He had suffered in seeing her suffer, in his helplessness to 
 help her. If he had thought of what she might say or do 
 should she ever hear of Gabrielle Eadlett, he put it on one 
 side now. She might never hear of that, she would never 
 hear of it from him. He was the bearer of good news. 
 
 Eunice had been through a strenuous time, months of 
 anxiety and the crushing sorrow from which she had emerged, 
 to hope still. Then the shock of Agatha's illness ; the anxious 
 hours when the surgeons were with her, days and nights of 
 nursing. 
 
 At the station Michael told her nothing and she was 
 afraid to question him. Now in the darkness of the evening 
 they were in the brougham; the two lamps cast their light 
 only on the road, and she heard the regular trot of the horses' 
 feet. 
 
 " Desmond is alive," Michael said then, briefly, curtly. 
 " You were quite right. Eoberts found him in Pretoria, 
 among the wounded." 
 
 " Desmond is alive ! " When Michael said that, her heart 
 gave a great bound, then was in her throat, impeding words : 
 " Desmond is alive ! " 
 
 The carriage rolled on. She could not speak; she knew 
 she must thank Michael for coming to tell her. She put out 
 her hand for his, and he held it. Then, after a minute, she 
 burst out crying. He had not thought she would take it like
 
 FULL SWING 203 
 
 this. His arm went round lier, his awkward, unaccustomed 
 arm. Now she was crying on his shoulder, saying : " Oh, 
 Michael ! " and " Is it really true? " " Oh, Michael ! I am 
 not crying; only so glad and — and grateful." " Oh, Michael ! 
 I thought it must happen. I've only been half alive without 
 Desmond, I knew he couldn't be dead." 
 
 Michael, with his arm about her, set his teeth and bore it. 
 He had come down to tell her, wanting to see the grief vanish 
 from her face, to see it bloom again in smiles and happiness, 
 to hear her say " Oh, Michael ! " and thank him for bringing 
 the news. He had not thought of what would happen then, 
 or afterwards; only that he would take her the good news. 
 Now she was crying on his shoulder, and for the first time 
 his arms were round her. Perhaps he had not known how 
 much he loved her until he held her in his arms. There was 
 a moment in which he wished the marriage had been legal, 
 a moment in which he wanted her to know that Desmond had 
 not been true to her, a savage, unworthy moment, succeeded 
 by a great and overwhelming tenderness. 
 
 " There is no doubt at all about it. You must not cry," 
 he said stiffly. 
 
 " I'm not crying ; only it's so wonderful ! " 
 
 "You never believed he was dead." 
 
 " Not in my dreams, nor in the bottom of my heart. But 
 sometimes — often — I thought it true. I could never bear 
 it when I thought it was true ; I used to feel sick and faint. I 
 wouldn't believe it." 
 
 " You care for him so-much ? " 
 
 "It's always been Desmond and me — me and Desmond 
 — ever 'since we were children — always." 
 
 She recovered herself very soon, left off crying, sat up. 
 She forgot Michael's arms had 'been round her, that she had 
 sobbed on his shoulder. She forgot Michael McKay loved 
 her, and had told her so. Michael never forgot, but Eunice 
 did. He wore an eyeglass, "used legal phrases. It seemed of 
 little consequence at any ftime that he loved her, of none now 
 that Desmond was alive. She began to talk to him soon of
 
 304 FULL SWING 
 
 what her aunt would say, of how long it would be before the 
 doctors would let her be told. Michael used the jejune 
 phrase, he said : 
 
 " Joy does not kill." 
 
 Perhaps he had had a wild idea that theirs was only 
 cousinly love, that it had weakened in Desmond's absence. She 
 had been very kind to him, sweet and gentle, in London, and 
 ever since Desmond went away. He may have had hope ; hope 
 is so hard to kill. But when he dined with her that night, 
 seeing her radiant face, he had again no hope except that 
 Desmond should prove worthy of her, tliat her happiness 
 might be completed. For all his staidness, there was a wild 
 pain at his heart. He stifled it by reiterating to himself that 
 all he wanted was her happiness. 
 
 '^ He will come home now ? After being wounded and 
 imprisoned, and wounded again, they will be sure to send him 
 home. How proud we shall be of him ! ' No Surrender Grin- 
 delay ! ' That's what the men called him, you told me that." 
 
 He had tried to comfort her with it when first they heard 
 Desmond was missing, when he and everybody but the girl 
 who loved him thought that Desmond was dead. 
 
 " He might be on his way home now." 
 
 She was almost awed with the greatness of that possibility. 
 In the face she turned to him for confirmation he saw, by 
 the heightened colour and the shining eyes, her new glad out- 
 look on the world. It was all for Desmond. He tried to meet 
 her spirit, but as the dinner went on, when all the household 
 had been told and were rejoicing with her — the old butler 
 with his filled eyes, the young footman who had permission 
 to go down and tell the village — Michael played his part so 
 indifferently well that when he went away, for he would not 
 stay the night although she pressed him, she found her great 
 joy a little dimmed, found herself a little sorry for him, 
 vaguely, and with that comforting sense that he never could 
 have really hoped for anything different. It had always been 
 she and Desmond — just she and Desmond. 
 
 Perhaps she thought him a little unfair, a little ungener-
 
 FULL SWING 205 
 
 ous, to let her be sorry for him to-night, to cloud her wonder- 
 ful happiness. Yet such a lover had he become, this prig of a 
 Michael, with his gold-rimmed eyeglass, in his stiffness and 
 want of humour, that before he got back to town he had for- 
 gotten himself again; he was only thinking she must never 
 hear now of Gabrielle Eadlett, that they must shield her — 
 he and his father and Lady Grindelay, He dared not think 
 how she would feel if she knew that there was another woman 
 who had a claim upon Desmond — a child !
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 The doctors would not allow Lady Grindelay to be told for a 
 day or two; but they, too, agreed that joy did not kill. Eunice 
 was instructed to break it gently, to speak of hope, not cer- 
 tainty. 
 
 But Eunice's face broke the news before she did. She 
 could not constrain her face, and Lady Grindelay's intelli- 
 gence had not yet suffered in her illness. 
 
 " You look very gay this morning," she said to the girl. 
 
 " That is because you are getting well," Eunice answered 
 quickly. 
 
 " Turn your face to the light." She lay still for a few 
 minutes, her eyes on the girl's face. Eunice turned away from 
 the scrutiny, but there was a warm, wild rose flush in her 
 cheek, and a light in her eyes. 
 
 " If it were not so impossible . . ." Lady Grindelay began. 
 
 " Oh, auntie, why do you look at me like that ? " she said 
 agitatedly. And then added absurdly: "They said I must 
 not tell you." 
 
 " It is true, then — the impossible is true ? " The invalid's 
 face flushed, her breath came quickly. 
 
 "You've guessed?" 
 
 "Your face is illuminated, what else could light it so? 
 My son was dead and is alive ! My son ! " 
 
 The red flushed her old cheeks, the pulses beat danger- 
 ously. 
 
 Nurse came running with smelling bottle and brandy, 
 speaking in the manner of her kind to Eunice, for all her 
 sympathy, and though her uniformed heart went out to them 
 both: 
 
 " You oughtn't to have told her like that. I'm surprised 
 at your knowing no better than to tell her before she was up 
 or had anything done to her." 
 
 " I couldn't help it ; she guessed," sobbed Eunice. There 
 were tears in the nurse's eyes for all her indignation. 
 
 206
 
 FULL SWING 207 
 
 "Upsetting you like this, and before you've had your 
 breakfast.'* She was inconsistent, it is difficult even for a 
 hospital nurse to be consistent on such an occasion, " I knovc, 
 milady ; we all heard it last night, and there was great rejoic- 
 ing in the household. Miss Eunice sent word up and down." 
 
 "Take it away, I don't want brandy or smelling salts 
 because my son — is alive." The last words were faint, 
 whispered. 
 
 She had to take the stimulant, her heart nearly failed. 
 As always, she overrated her strength. But it was because the 
 memory of Gabrielle Radlett came to her suddenly, weaken- 
 ing her, that she lay back, pale, with her heart failing. It was 
 only physical weakness ; her will was as strong as ever. Even 
 before she read Andrew's letter she had made up her mind 
 Eunice must not be told — not now, certainly. Something 
 must be contrived. Of course, after she read Andrew's letter, 
 which she was able to do in another hour or two, she knew 
 there was no " not yet " about it. Eunice need never know, 
 must never know, unless perhaps some day, in the intimacy 
 of married life, Desmond himself might tell her. 
 
 " The intimacy of married life ! " 
 
 Agatha lay and thought about that in the weary hours of 
 her convalescence. " The intimacy of married life" 
 
 Memories intruded upon her, flushing her thin old cheeks. 
 She thought that if Lord Grindelay had told her nothing, 
 had kept his secrets, she would have suffered less. But Des- 
 mond was different, he had only this one secret. The girl 
 must never turn from and resent him. His mother could 
 not bear to think of it; the secret must be kept. 
 
 And then she lay and built her air castles. They would 
 live here at Marley ; she would see him every day. He would 
 be grateful to her for having kept his secret, for everything 
 she was going to do for them. He would forgive her for not 
 being demonstrative, come to some understanding of her love 
 for him; she was an old woman now, and could not change 
 her ways. There would be nothing of his father left in him 
 after the purification of the war. He would be all Wanstead. 
 So many of them had served their countr}^ Then she thought
 
 208 FULL SWING 
 
 she would ask him to give up his tarnished title, and call 
 himself Wanstead. She would give him so much, surely she 
 might ask that. 
 
 She regained strength slowly, spending the next few weeks 
 listening whilst Eunice chattered about Desmond, adding 
 her own voice sometimes, arranging what was to happen when 
 Desmond came home. There was much to be thought of now 
 that Desmond was coming home. Lady Grindelay had neg- 
 lected Marley a little of late. There were more new cottages 
 needed. Desmond must superintend the new cottages. 
 
 " He will find plenty to interest him." 
 
 Eunice never doubted it. 
 
 Andrew came down to see her as soon as he was allowed. 
 Michael would not accompany him; he could not trust him- 
 self with Eunice again just yet. Andrew went up to Agatha's 
 bedroom, the big room with the great bow-window looking 
 over the gardens to the green woods, the room with its four- 
 poster bedstead and antiquated walnut furniture. It moved 
 Andrew to see Agatha on the sofa, so unlike herself in her 
 lace cap and wrapper. But he controlled himself well. 
 
 " I didn't die, you see," she began. 
 
 " The world would have been an empty place for me if 
 you had." His voice was husky. 
 
 He held her hand a moment longer than was necessary, 
 and it seemed to rest in his. 
 
 " I've given you a great deal of trouble one way and 
 another," she said. 
 
 " I've never grudged any trouble I took for you." 
 
 " I know." 
 
 Then there was another moment in which neither of them 
 spoke. There was much to say, some of it that would never 
 be spoken. 
 
 Perhaps it was not only of her son she was thinking in 
 that moment of silence. But when Andrew relinquished her 
 hand and sat down beside her, when they were both them- 
 selves again, she spoke of Desmond. 
 
 "It seems incredible even now. I am glad I got better.
 
 FULL SWING 209 
 
 I have not been a very good mother to him, Andrew. But 
 there is time still. . , ." 
 
 " No woman is fit to bring up a boy. She can't make 
 him, and she may mar him." 
 
 " I sent him out to the war." 
 
 " You've been eating your heart out ever since. I've little 
 doubt it was that brought on your illness." 
 
 " Perhaps." 
 
 *' Now he'll be coming home, thinking of his cousin again. 
 Have you told her about the woman ? " 
 
 " Not yet." 
 
 " She will have to know some time ; better get it over." 
 
 " Andrew, I've been thinking " 
 
 " A thing no woman should be allowed to do. She always 
 thinks wrong, generally illogically." 
 
 He wanted to rouse her to argument, he could hardly bear 
 to see her lying like this. 
 
 " Sometimes I wish I had been more like other women," 
 she said, a little sadly. 
 
 He put his hand on hers again. 
 
 " I shouldn't wish that," he said, " if I were you. I like 
 to think of you as you are." 
 
 " Andrew," she said again, after a pause. " Nobody need 
 ever know of this — this abortive marriage." 
 
 " Not if you don't wish it, not if you think it best." 
 
 "I don't want Eunice to be told. I will explain why — 
 I will try and explain why. But first tell me all you found 
 out — everything there is to know." 
 
 He told her a great deal, not everything, but a great deal. 
 They were early days, and she was still weak. He gave her 
 an outline of Gabrielle Eadlett's history. But he did not 
 tell her then that Gabrielle had gone out to South Africa to 
 nurse the wounded or amuse herself. And he did not tell 
 her, not then, that she had sent Desmond's child — if the child 
 were Desmond's — to Languedoc. He thought he should be 
 able to get it away from there before Desmond came home. 
 They would, of course, provide for it suitably; some good 
 woman could be found to rear it. When Agatha was quite 
 14
 
 210 FULL SWING 
 
 herself again it would be time to remind her that they had 
 not quite done with Gabrielle Radlett or the consequence of 
 Desmond's folly. 
 
 Now he agreed with Agatha that the whole thing should be 
 hushed up. Desmond was not the first young man to fall 
 into such a trap. The trap had opened; he had escaped. 
 There was no need to take the world into their confidence, to 
 show how ingenuous the boy had been and easily netted. The 
 lawyer thought that nobody need be told but Eunice. But 
 Agatha said that Eunice should be the last person who must 
 hear. 
 
 Eunice came in whilst Andrew and Agatha were talking. 
 He saw how her beauty had bloomed, and although he wanted 
 her for Michael, he knew how suitable would be a marriage 
 between her and her cousin. They would hold Marley in com- 
 mon, there was Wanstead blood in both of them ; the old place 
 would stay in the old family. As for Michael, Michael must 
 get over it. But when he said that, he felt doubtful and sad- 
 dened. Had he ever fogotten, although he had taken a wife 
 to himself? Was there anything in his life as strong as his 
 feeling for the mistress of Marley? He knew there was not. 
 Michael himself would not stand between him and any service 
 he could render her. 
 
 The weeks passed. Lady Grindelay rid herself of the 
 nurses, went about the house again and into the garden, 
 wrapped in her shawl ; went again to the village, to the school 
 and the model laundry, resuming her old place. 
 
 She had been missed. Everyone learned her value whilst 
 she was away from them, lying up at the big house between 
 life and death. If her words had been few, her hand had 
 been open. They welcomed her back warmly, and she was 
 touched by their welcome. Now she had a new understand- 
 ing of childhood's magnified small troubles, every child was 
 some woman's son or daughter, the tragedy of motherhood 
 hung over everything. 
 
 Little Marley was proud of " No Surrender Grindelay," 
 and Great Marley was proud of him and the many men they 
 had sent to the war. There would be a great reception for
 
 FULL SWING 211 
 
 them when they came home. Already it was being planned. 
 Sir John Campden came from his own desolate home to 
 tell her how glad they were that she, too, was not bereaved. 
 He had lost both his sons, but to Agatha he only spoke of 
 Desmond's bravery. 
 
 " He was always a fine lad. Cedrie and Jeff were devoted 
 to him, my poor wife too. When he comes back he must come 
 to us sometimes, though the house is dull now — empty." 
 
 His voice faltered, but he had not come to Agatha to 
 speak of his own troubles. He had come to tell her he re- 
 joiced in her joy, that the whole county rejoiced with her, 
 was proud with her. Perhaps he remembered he had wanted 
 Agatha at Denham, that she might have been the mother 
 of those dead boys of his. But he was glad that her own son 
 was alive, truly glad. 
 
 Eunice's heart swelled when men, and women too, talked 
 of Desmond. She went with Lady Grindelay everywhere, 
 attending on her, solicitous for her, but listening always, alert 
 to the last word. 
 
 " ' No Surrender Grindelay ! ' * Surrender be damned ! ' 
 he said to them Boers, good luck to him ! " 
 
 " * Come on ! ' sez he. It's an Englishman I am, a Marley 
 man. Surrender be damned ! " 
 
 Such phrases were repeated again and again, with com- 
 ments and local pride. Eunice was never tired of hearing 
 them; always her heart swelled, often her eyes filled. But 
 she had long known that Desmond was brave, that he would 
 be a hero. It was not so new to her to be proud of Desmond 
 as it was to the others. 
 
 From South Africa the news came slowly; there was an 
 accumulation, and it filtered through in driblets. Lord 
 Eoberts had marched into Pretoria with flying colours, had 
 released the prisoners. The war was over, so it was supposed. 
 We know now that it was nothing like over, that De Wet had 
 to be reckoned with, and his picked band of sharpshooters; 
 that if the war were over the country was still in arms. These 
 were the days immediately before the block-houses and the 
 two years' guerilla warfare. It was only the first part of the
 
 212 FULL SWING 
 
 campaign that was over ; we had still to conquer the so-of ten- 
 conquered country; two more long blood-stained years had 
 yet to pass. 
 
 A cable was sent to Desmond as soon as communication 
 could be established, telling him of his mother's illness, asking 
 him to return as soon as possible. The reply was from head- 
 quarters. Lord Grindelay was ill, not recovered from his 
 wounds, had fever, was in hospital, unable to travel. 
 
 Before they had time to be alarmed his own letter came. 
 In the sun of the sunken garden, where the roses filled 
 the air with sweetness, throwing out largesses of scent, and 
 the bees came droning for honey, Agatha and the girl read 
 it together. To them it seemed as if now it would always 
 be summer: 
 
 " Deae Mother, — The post is just going. I hear we 
 were all reported dead. I'm sending you a line to tell you 
 I'm all right. I've had some fever, been pretty bad. I 
 hope you have not been anxious about me. I can't help 
 thinking it would have been better if I had not pulled 
 through. I dare say by this time you know why I 
 think so." 
 
 The letter was blurred and ill-written, ending abruptly. 
 The intelligent orderly who sent it had, however, added 
 a line or two on his own account : 
 
 " Hoping you won't think it a liberty, I let you know 
 your son has had a bad bout of fever as well as his wounds, 
 and can't use his arm very well, and is down on his luck. 
 But he will come all right, as his constitution is sound, 
 and we shall cheer him up, for we are proud of him, and 
 hope to serve under him again." 
 
 ***** 
 
 Over the grass and into the rose garden came Andrew and 
 Michael McKay, two black-coated town figures, never more 
 eagerly welcomed. 
 
 " He is ill, Andrew." 
 
 " Michael, Desmond has written, but he is ill."
 
 FULL SWING 313 
 
 They both spoke at once, and Lady Grindelay held out the 
 letter. But the men had come down that afternoon, fully 
 informed, and with a proposition that they opened almost 
 as soon as they came in sight. 
 
 " I'm going out to him." 
 
 "What do you think of Michael fetching him? " 
 
 Eunice was immediately all excited question and answer. 
 But Andrew went on speaking to Agatha, and let Michael 
 attend to her. 
 
 " We hear he is ill and unable to travel. It is Michael's 
 idea to go out and bring him back. If you agree he can 
 catch Saturday's boat. The long vacation is coming on, I 
 can spare him easily," he added. 
 
 " Another sacrifice you are making for me ! " Agatha said. 
 
 " Not at all ; it is no sacrifice. He wants to go ; the 
 change will do him good." 
 
 Michael and Eunice were talking together, apart from the 
 others. 
 
 " It is a good thing in every way that Michael should go 
 out; there are things one cannot write." 
 
 Andrew began to explain himself more fully, but Agatha 
 caught his meaning quickly. 
 
 "That woman?" 
 
 " She is out there — nursing." 
 
 "Not in Pretoria?" 
 
 "No; not in Pretoria, so far as we know. The nurses 
 go to Cape Town in the first instance, then they are drafted 
 to Pretoria or one or the other of the field hospitals. We've 
 been making inquiries, and that is what we've ascertained. 
 We don't want to take any risks." 
 
 " You think she ma}' seek him out ? " 
 
 " It is not unlikely. Michael would stand between her 
 and any fresh influence she sought to establish." 
 
 " If I were stronger, surer of myself " 
 
 " Of course, if you had not been ill, you would have been 
 there before now. Numbers have gone, some to help, many 
 to be in the way, some because all the best of our young men. 
 are there ^"
 
 214 FULL SWING 
 
 " That was probably her motive," she interrupted. 
 " Possibly. As I said, we don't want to take any risks. 
 He will hear all we have learned; of your illness too, and 
 your desire that he should return as quickly as possible. He 
 may not be well enough to travel alone. Michael is very 
 able — gentle, too." He urged his point, but it needed little 
 urging. 
 
 " It is hard on Michael," she suggested doubtfully. 
 Now they remembered their talks about Michael and 
 Eunice. 
 
 " We are not doomed to be successful in our love affairs, 
 Michael and I." He spoke with a wry smile. " But we are 
 happy in serving." 
 
 " You have a genius for friendship, both of you," she an- 
 swered, with emotion. 
 
 It was decided that Michael should go on Saturday. All 
 the evening they calculated times and distances. They agreed 
 that they ought to be back, Michael and the invalid, in seven 
 weeks. Eunice and Michael said seven, though the elders 
 were a little doubtful. In any ca^e Michael would be lavish 
 in cables, letting Desmond know at once that he was on the 
 way to him. 
 
 " He might come as far as Cape Town to meet you ; that 
 would save three or four days," Eunice said hopefully. 
 
 Details were happily discussed, many messages entrusted ; 
 one that was never put into words. 
 
 " Tell him, tell him — he is to come back quickly." 
 That was all Eunice's special instructions, given with glow- 
 ing eyes and flushing cheeks. 
 
 " I understand," Michael answered in a low voice, adding, 
 " He shall understand." 
 
 He covered up his own hurt. It was true, as Lady Grin- 
 delay had said to his father, they had a genius for friendship. 
 What more can a man ask than to bring happiness to the girl 
 he loves, be able to help her? Since it was Desmond she 
 needed for her happiness, he would bring Desmond to her, 
 tell him of his freedom, make the way easy for him.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 Desmond was not amongst the first batch, of prisoners whom 
 Lord Egberts, marching into Pretoria with colours flying 
 after all those desperate daj^s of disaster and death, had found 
 and released. Neither was he with those who, indifferently 
 well cared for, lay under the shadow of the church where 
 Kruger had officiated week by week, preaching his distorted 
 patriotism and the gospel of peace that had bespattered two 
 continents with blood. It was at Waterval young Lord Grin- 
 delay was discovered. The Boers, retreating in disorder be- 
 fore our advancing army, had these last prisoners with them, 
 prisoners held, perhaps, for ransom or reprisal, many of 
 them dead or dying of fever or gangrened wounds, faint with 
 famine or parched with thirst. They had sad stories to tell of 
 outrage and insult, neglect or ill-treatment. 
 
 But Desmond had no story to tell ; he was long past talk, 
 unrecognisable for many da5'S, until, in the quickly impro- 
 vised field hospital, one of his own men saw him, called others 
 to confirm, and finally spread the incredible news. He came 
 very slowly to the knowledge of his rescue. One arm had been 
 shattered by rifle shot; he had more wounds than, according 
 to the doctors, could be shown by any other living tribute to 
 the accuracy of Boer marksmanship. He had lain for many 
 days in the bosom of King Death, looking into his cold eyes, 
 feeling his hypnotic breath, without the strength to struggle, 
 or perhaps the desire. He was so weak he wished that Death 
 would clasp him closer. But the doctors wrested him away 
 against his will. Out of reach of that hypnotic breath he 
 became only conscious of pain, physical and mental pain, of 
 hopelessness. His fever had been haunted by the swaying of 
 boughs, visions of moss-clad roots of trees in the cool woods 
 of Marley, by mirage of the gleaming river in green leafy 
 distances. When his intervals of consciousness came now, 
 there were no green woods, but canvas walls, the dry dust of 
 the sun-baked veldt blowing through the flapping door, and 
 
 215
 
 216 FULL SWING 
 
 near him, so uear that he could have touched her, Gabrielle — 
 Gabrielle Eadlett ! — she who stood for ever between him and 
 the woods. It seemed impossible that she should be here, 
 incredible. 
 
 It was not delirium, not another fevered dream, and pres- 
 ently he understood she was speaking to him. 
 
 " You did not expect to see me here, did you ? Can't you 
 make an effort — pull yourself together ? " 
 
 " You have come out to nurse me ? " he said faintly. 
 
 She laughed ; he hated that light laugh, and shut his eyes. 
 
 " Don't you flatter yourself it was only for you I came. 
 You were supposed to be dead, you know." 
 
 "I don't understand," he said feebly. He wished she 
 would go away. 
 
 " There's nothing to understand. I'm not here as Lady 
 Grindelay; I am here as Nurse Eadlett. You mustn't give 
 me away." 
 
 " Give you away ? " 
 
 She would not explain, nor let him talk just then; she 
 was quite a good nurse, and recognised he was not yet in a 
 condition even for listening. She was hot in pursuit of a 
 quarry even more promising than he had been, when, hearing 
 of his resurrection, she had hurried to his side. She wanted 
 secrecy from him, and was annoyed to find him in no condition 
 for argument or compromise. She reckoned on his not having 
 yet heard from England; on his being in ignorance of that 
 which by now she knew the McKays had discovered. She had 
 no time to waste. The new quarry lay in Cape Town at the 
 mercy of her ministrations. But she had many rivals, ladies 
 fair and ladies frail, and she wanted to get back to her post. 
 
 "I wish now I had thought of some other name," she 
 said reflectively, as she lifted Desmond's head and put the cup 
 to his lips. 
 
 She meant that in such case she need not have come to 
 Waterval; Lord Grindelay would not have known she was in 
 South Africa, could not have interfered with her. With the 
 strange inconsistency of her kind, she had no mind even now 
 to tell him that he had no right of interference.
 
 FULL SWING 217 
 
 " You lie still and get well, that's what you've got to do," 
 was her answer to the inquiry in his fever-dulled eyes. 
 
 " Do they know ? " he asked. 
 
 She lied convincingly. 
 
 " Nobody knows, nobody has got to know — mind that." 
 
 It seemed to satisfy him, and afterwards he rested fitfully. 
 
 Freedom had come to her since she had been out here. 
 Convict No. 3734 was dead. But young Lord Grindelay had 
 not known of his existence. She had to make her plans before 
 he was better informed. She had to vamp up for him some 
 tale of irregularity in the ceremony they had gone through. 
 There would be no difficulty in making him repeat it. She 
 knew the nature of his chivalry, and how to play on it. The 
 child was a great asset. But she had much bigger game on 
 hand, ever so much bigger. She was clever and daring; the 
 Earl of Montressor weak, dull witted and amenable. Without 
 the chain of convict No. 3734 dragging beliind her there was 
 nothing of which she did not feel capable. But she would 
 k,eep this other string to her bow as long as possible. She had 
 got that five thousand pounds so easily that it seemed to her 
 there must be much more behind where it came from. There 
 was money to be made, too, from the earl, even if he broke 
 away. She wanted all she could get. She was typical of the 
 class of women, not voluptuaries, but mere traders, who grow 
 greedier as they grow older. 
 
 " I've got to get back in a few days," she told Desmond. 
 ** You and me have got to have some talk. But not yet, not 
 until you are better, buck along up, now." 
 
 There was something about which he wanted to ask her, 
 but he had forgotten what it was. In semi-delirium it came 
 back to him, and that night he caught at her skirt to detain 
 her, only to find it was another skirt he held; then again he 
 relapsed into unconsciousness. Doctors and nurses came and 
 went in that hasty but admirably organised field hospital, 
 Nurse Eadlett evadingly among them. 
 
 Letters from home were on the way, delayed here and 
 there by the exigencies of the war. The first thing that came 
 was Michael McKay's cable.
 
 218 FULL SWIN(^ 
 
 Michael was coming out to him. He wondered why, not 
 wanting Michael, nor anybody, only to be allowed to be still, 
 to drift out through the swaying door. His wife was here 
 somewhere. He should be grateful, but he shrank from her 
 weakly, flesh and spirit shrank. He had a dim, sick man's 
 insight sometimes into Gabrielle's mind; she said strange 
 things — strange, impatient things. The intermittent fever 
 came and went. In delirium Eunice would float in some- 
 times, put a cool hand on his forehead, say " Yes " or " No " 
 soothingly in response to his gabble, to the disjointed words 
 he poured out, in which he tried to tell her how it all came 
 about, how little it meant, that he had never cared about any- 
 body but her. He called out her name, then woke, sweating 
 and afraid lest Gabrielle should have heard. 
 
 Gabrielle was tired of it, bored with the field hospital, 
 with Desmond. She wanted to go back to the variety and 
 colour of Cape Town, to the languishing earl. But after 
 Michael's cable came she dared not stir. She had three 
 weeks before her, three weeks in which to make her choice. 
 She was distracted with it, like the dog with the big piece of 
 meat in its mouth and the reflection in the water. She could 
 make Desmond marry her again, she had no doubt about that, 
 if she could concoct a story for him before Michael got in with 
 his. But Desmond was surrounded by his friends and com- 
 rades, too ill to assert himself; he was under their protection. 
 And she had just such another young fool in tow. She was 
 undecided, fearing to miss the substance for the shadow, 
 delaying Desmond's recovery by the turmoil in which she kept 
 his mind. For in his weakness it but reflected her own. And 
 he did not know what she wanted of him ; only that she stood 
 between him and Marley. He improved very slowly, almost 
 imperceptibly ; he seemed to make no effort. 
 
 " There must be something on his mind," said one doctor 
 to another. 
 
 " We must get him away as soon as possible." 
 
 They tried the experiment of telling him that he was 
 going to be sent home, and were astounded when he answered 
 agitatedly in that weak voice of his that he could not go, that
 
 FULL SWING 219 
 
 he wished to stay "where he was. His fever flamed higher after 
 that ; he responded less well to their drugs or their efforts. In 
 the end the offices of the army chaplain were invoked. And 
 the army chaplain wasted few words. It did not seem to him 
 to be the time for them, nor for texts, other than one he did 
 not preach, but proved. 
 
 " You've something on your mind, Grindelay ; you are not 
 making the progress they expect of you. Is there anything I 
 can do for you — that you'd like to tell me ? We're proud of 
 you, but you're disappointing us." 
 
 "I don't see there is anything to be proud of," Desmond 
 answered wearily. " I made a mess of an expedition, led my 
 men into a trap, cost a lot of good fellows their lives." 
 
 " Is that what's troubling you ? " 
 
 He' was without fever at the moment, but also without 
 interest or energy. This was when he wrote that letter to his 
 mother. His v^dfe had not been near him for days now; he 
 did not know what had become of her. But he knew all 
 about what he had done. Married a woman he could never 
 take home, forfeited home, Eunice, all for nothing, for a 
 woman who mocked him and would not answer a question. 
 Michael was coming out to him, perhaps to tell him that his 
 place was filled. Young Lord Grindelay turned his face to 
 the wall ; he did not wish to get better or well. 
 
 " Is it the loss of your men that is troubling you ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 "What is it, then?" the parson repeated gently. "If 
 you cared to tell me I might be able to help." 
 
 "No one can help me," Desmond said weakly, with his 
 face to the wall, 
 
 "Home troubles?" 
 
 " Nothing I've not brought upon myself." He moved rest- 
 lessly in the bed. " Don't bother about me." 
 
 " You are disappointing the doctors, who have taken end- 
 less trouble over you," the parson persisted. 
 
 " I wish they hadn't ! I wish they'd let me die ! " 
 
 "It has been almost a miracle that your arm is saved. 
 You are not grateful for that ? "
 
 220 FULL SWING 
 
 " No ! " shortly. 
 
 " Well, you ought to be, that's all I can say." 
 
 The parson was rebuffed, a little offended, perhaps, getting 
 up as if to go away, then changing his mind and coming back 
 to the side of the bed. "You've been kept secluded, with 
 this screen round you. They are taking it away presently. 
 Look round you then, thinJc. You have some trouble, some 
 private trouble. I see that, and I wish I could have been of 
 use to you, but you won't let me try. I'm going to say one 
 thing more to you " — Desmond's face was still averted — 
 " whether you wish to hear it or not. There is only one way 
 to lighten a heavy heart ; take another's burden on it. Blend 
 the two with sympathy; you'll find the sympathy acts like 
 yeast. Well, good-bye. I see you don't want to talk to me. 
 When you do, you will find friends around you. They will 
 preach to you better than I can." 
 
 He spoke to dull ears. Desmond could think of nothing 
 but his wife. For days now she had not been near him. But 
 she had impressed secrecy upon him, spoken of an irregu- 
 larity in their marriage, hinted at things to be set right. He 
 was so much less a man than he had been, by reason of his 
 pain and wounds and recurrent fever, that he could not face 
 his future with her at all. Michael was coming, and he would 
 have to speak of her to Michael, hear what happy news he 
 brought. Never in the worst agony of pain and fever had he 
 longed for water as he longed now for Marley or for Eunice, 
 even sometimes for his mother. He had thrown everything 
 away. 
 
 Yet something of the Rev. Alan Hodder's words must 
 have penetrated. For the day after his visit, the screen re- 
 moved and all the tented bareness of the room revealed, 
 Desmond found himself no longer with his face to the wall, 
 but lying on his back, seeing many pallet beds and strange, 
 unshaven faces. Before he had time for recognition one 
 from the bed beside his own called out : 
 
 " Hullo ! " 
 
 This was not a man, but a boy, quite a young boy he 
 seemed, and one strangely familiar.
 
 FULL SWING 221 
 
 " Hullo ! " Desmond answered vaguely. 
 
 " Getting better ? " 
 
 The question brought no ready answer. Desmond stared 
 at "his interlocutor, and his interlocutor gazed back at him. 
 Neither of them moved; one of them because he could not, 
 the other because he had not the energy or the desire. 
 
 " I don't believe you know who I am." 
 
 " I am not sure ; we're all ghosts, I suppose. Did I know 
 you when we were alive ? '* 
 
 " I'm Thwaites." 
 
 "Thwaites?" 
 
 " Jimmy Thwaites ! " 
 
 « Jimmy Thwaites ? " 
 
 " Eton. You can't have forgotten. I say, you must have 
 been thundering bad. This is the first time anyone has seen 
 you since you were brought here. There was a screen round 
 your bed. But you are better, and that's good news. Isn't 
 it rum that there are three of us here. Three O.E.'s ! " 
 
 " You're Bunny ! " Desmond exclaimed. 
 
 " Bunny I am, what's left of him ! " 
 
 It was the same old Bunny, his little pal from Eton, 
 whimsical, with his gutta-percha face and wide smile. 
 
 " You've come to it now. And ' Paddy from Cork ' you 
 were. But now you're * No Surrender Grindelay ! ' and 
 there'll be medals for your breast, my bhoy ! " 
 
 He imitated the brogue as he had oft«n done before, and 
 some of his boyhood, of which this young Bunny had been a 
 part, came dully back to Desmond. 
 
 " You haven't lost your impudence," he answered. 
 
 He had said they were all ghosts, and it was but the 
 ghost of a smile he had for the imitation. But even that 
 cleared his mind and his sight a little. 
 
 " Same old Bunny ! Wlio are the others, who else is 
 here ? " he asked. 
 
 " We're the others. Elphinstone is here." 
 
 " Elphinstone ! " 
 
 The conversation ended then. An orderly came round. 
 Desmond had to be fed, his restored arm was still useless.
 
 222 FULL SWING- 
 
 When he wanted to talk again, but that was not until a few 
 hours later. Bunny was asleep. He himself slept better that 
 night, better than he had done since they brought him here. 
 And in the morning he seemed to have a new interest in life. 
 
 " Bunny — it is you, isn't it, I didn't dream it ? " 
 
 " The top of the morning to you. I've been wondering how 
 much longer you were going to lie there like a log. I'd have 
 thrown a wet sponge at you, but there isn't- one handy. I 
 haven't been called Bunny since I left Eton. They called me 
 ' The Kid ' at Sandhurst." 
 
 " You bounded, I suppose." The old jokes came back to 
 him, the old slang. 
 
 " Wrong again, it was because I was so expert at a bottle. 
 I say, hasn't this been a rag? We've busted their old com- 
 mandoes sky high. I wouldn't have missed it for anything. 
 I only wish I wasn't going home. There's lots of fun to 
 come." 
 
 " Why should we go home ? We can get leave to rejoin, I 
 suppose ? " 
 
 " You can, lucky beast." But it was quite a cheerful 
 grumble. 
 
 "Well, why can't you?" 
 
 Bunny Thwaites looked healthy, although smaller- than 
 ever, shrunken a little. But what they had all gone through 
 at the hands of the Boers would account for that. His blue 
 eyes were still alight with fun, and his boyish spirit shone in 
 them. 
 
 " Why can't I ? Well, for one thing, because they've shot 
 off both my legs, bad cess to them ! " 
 
 Desmond went quite white, Jimmy's sharp eyes saw it. 
 There was no one near either of them. 
 
 "You're not going to faint away like a bally girl, are 
 you ? " he asked anxiously. " I shouldn't do that if I were 
 you. It's the fortune of war." 
 
 Desmond could not answer. Bunny, little Bunny 
 Thwaites, the readiest and most alert of fags, and such a fives 
 player !
 
 FULL SWING 223 
 
 " I'll be about on my stumps before you know where you 
 are. What's a leg or two ? " 
 
 He was brave — too brave. When he saw tears rolling down 
 Desmond's cheeks, and that he was trying to wipe them away 
 or hide them with his red flannel sleeve, his own voice faltered. 
 But he went on after a minute. 
 
 "What's a leg or two, Paddy? Don't take on. I'll get 
 about with cork ones, get a bigger pair than I ever had of my 
 own, and look quite a fine fellow. Don't howl, Paddy." 
 
 " I'm not howling." 
 
 " I'm only half as badly off as Elphinstone." 
 
 "Who is talking about me?" came a cheery voice from 
 the other comer of the ward, two beds away from them. 
 
 Jimmy answered ; Desmond could not command his voice. 
 
 " Paddy from Cork ; he's come to life again." 
 
 " What? ' Ko Surrender Grindelay ? ' That's good news. 
 
 " ' Surrender be damned ! ' was what he said. You remem- 
 ber what a foul-mouthed brute he always was." 
 
 " Glad you've come round, Grindelay. You've been pretty 
 bad, haven't you? We've all been anxious about you." 
 
 " It's awfully good of you." 
 
 Elphinstone had been a very big pot at Eton; captain of 
 the Top, captain of the boats; in the Sixth. Desmond turned 
 his head away from poor Jimmy and toward Elphinstone as 
 he spoke. He had hardly recovered from the shock of hearing 
 about Jimmy's legs ; he could not bear to look at the bed. 
 
 There was little to be seen of Elphinstone but bandages. 
 
 " You've been knocked about, too ? " he said. 
 
 " Shut up ! " broke in Bunny shortly, quickly, under his 
 breath. 
 
 " Why should he shut up ? I wish all you fellows wouldn't 
 think I'm sensitive." The clear voice cut across to where they 
 lay through the odour of iodoform and disinfectants. " I'm 
 blind, Grindelay ! I can hear you talk, but I can't see you." 
 
 " Oh, my God ! Not blind — not for always, Elphie? " 
 
 " Dear old boy ! Don't be too sorry for me. There's lots 
 worse off than I am. You'd be surprised how keenly I hear, 
 better every day. I shall be able to row, you know, and lots of
 
 224 FULL SWING 
 
 other things. There is nothing to prevent my riding. Poor 
 old Bunny, now — the poor Kid ! " 
 
 Desmond, all his limbs intact, even if for the moment 
 his right arm was stiff and useless, heard later on that Elphin- 
 stone had had the top of his head blown off by a shell, and 
 both his eyes with it. Elphinstone ! They had walked down 
 the High together, arm in arm, iu their silk hats and exclu- 
 sive waistcoats. They had cheered their House at football 
 matches. It was Elphinstone who had got him into the boat. 
 
 Before Elphinstone and Jimmy and their courage, the lost 
 woods of Marley grew faint and blurred, and Desmond be- 
 came ashamed of his self-absorption. There came an esprit 
 de corps into that canvas tent, with its row of pallet beds — 
 something of the old school spirit, when they knew better 
 than to cry out when they were hurt. There were other men 
 there, eleven altogether; some from other big schools, one or 
 two from the colonies. Jimmy said they ought to get up a 
 cricket match, and suggested himself as "stumper." 
 
 But Elphinstone was the life and soul of the ward. He 
 chaffed the nurses ajid even flirted with them. Notwithstand- 
 ing that he must always wear a bandage because of his dis- 
 figurement, and that so little time ago he was the handsomest 
 of lads, he talked as if little was altered. It was pitiful, but 
 it was fine. He was for ever testing his increasing sharpness 
 of hearing, " swaggering it," Bunny said. Bunny and all of 
 them were benefited by Elphinstone's fine courage and the 
 way he bore his trouble. It was as if he was still the head 
 of his House, his influence telling. He was grateful for the 
 gift of life that Desmond had been for abandoning. But, 
 then, he came of a family of Christians, and had the light that 
 helped his blindness. Desmond's troubles began to look small 
 even to himself. The parson's text was working. 
 
 It was wonderful, although it was so pitiful, to see the 
 cheerfulness of that hospital ward as the days went on. Stories 
 were told and songs were sung. Cruelly marred and blasted, 
 mere remnants of men, they jested about their misfortunes, 
 gloried in their comrades' successes, extolled Eoberts or com- 
 miserated Gatacre, were grateful for the comforts that came
 
 FULL SWING 235 
 
 to them, looked forward to going home, but envied those who 
 could remain here, their spirit whole in their marred bodies, 
 oflScers and gentlemen in their red jackets and unshaven faces. 
 
 By the time Michael McKay got to Pretoria Desmond was 
 nearly well. He had heard no more of Gabrielle. Hurriedly 
 as she came, so hurriedly had she gone. Sometimes now it 
 seemed as if it had really been a dream, or a nightmare; 
 that she had been here, urging him to silence, threatening 
 he knew not what. . He knew he must seek her out before he 
 went home, settle things up with her, and ask her that ques- 
 tion which now seemed part of his delirium. He would accept 
 all Ms obligations. But for the moment the greatest of them 
 was to take his share in keeping up the spirit of the ward — 
 " keeping up the tone of the house," as Jimmy called it. 
 
 When Michael came, term was nearly over; they were 
 breaking up. Some were to be drafted to Pretoria, to find the 
 superior accommodation and treatment the Pretoria hospital 
 afforded; others were to go to Cape Town and thence home. 
 
 Desmond, his arm still in a sling, his blue eyes sunken in 
 his thin brown face, met Michael outside the hospital tent. 
 Michael, incongruous among the tethered horses on the 
 pawed ground, the baggage waggons and men in shirt sleeves, 
 was inquiring his way. All v,^as cheerful haste, for they were 
 to be up and moving before dawn. 
 
 " The field hospital ? Just in front of your nose." 
 
 " Lord Grindelay ? Oh, yes, he's there right enough, unless 
 he's walking about somewhere." 
 
 " I saw him ten minutes ago, over there with tlie horses." 
 
 Michael did not recognise Desmond when he did see him 
 — not for the moment. More than his expression had altered. 
 There was little of the boy left in him, for all he was still 
 so young. He had seen sights that had put chasms between 
 himself and boyhood. 
 
 " Who was inquiring for me ? Why, it's Michael McKay ! " 
 he exclaimed, flushing, holding out his hand. 
 
 " Desmond ! It is Desmond, isn't it ? " 
 
 Michael exclaimed, and then explained, all in the tradi- 
 tional Michael manner. 
 15
 
 226 FITLL SWING 
 
 " A year is a long time. You've been away the best part 
 of a year. And then, of course, you must have been exceed- 
 
 ingly ill." 
 
 " You need not apologise for not knowing me," answered 
 Desmond with a laugh. " I hardly know myself." 
 
 But after that, and Michael's protestations that it was 
 only in the first moment of coming upon him unexpectedly 
 that he had failed to recognise him, there was not quick or 
 complete ease between them. 
 
 Desmond showed Michael the camp, made him free of its 
 hospitality, thanked him for coming up. But when, later on, 
 they spoke of Marley and those who had sent him, they spoke 
 with constraint. 
 
 They were at Cape Town waiting for the steamer before 
 the constraint loosened. The steamers were all over-crowded 
 and the hotels full to their utmost capacity. All had been 
 bustle and confusion on the way down from Pretoria, and 
 there had been little opportunity for private conversation. 
 Michael had taken an intelligent interest in all he saw, 
 although his intelligence was often clouded by his pity, when 
 he became silent and tried to hide it. Wounded men and 
 officers were still pouring into Cape Town — the wastage of 
 the army. And there were mothers and sisters, sweethearts 
 and wives waiting, some of them in hastily-donned black, 
 Elphinstone's mother was amongst them. Michael saw her 
 meeting with her son, and other cruel meetings 
 
 He saw harpies also. Women in smart clothes, here on 
 the pretence of helping, or being near their husbands, but 
 swooping for pleasure amid the carnage — vultures to their 
 filthy feast. And Gabrielle Eadlett was amongst them. 
 Gabrielle's name was the first to break the constraint between 
 the young men. 
 
 Desmond was not yet aware that his mother knew of his 
 marriage. He would not go home without her knowing it, 
 home to Marley and Eunice, for all the loving messages 
 Michael brought. He had been still weak when he left Water- 
 val, with recurrent bouts of malaria, and he had even now 
 but limited movement in his arm.
 
 FULL SWING 227 
 
 " If it were not for that I'd ask for leave to rejoin," he 
 said almost inadvertently to Michael, as they sat smoking in 
 the hall of the hotel. There were gay ladies going up and 
 down the stairs, lingering in the vestibule, traffic passing 
 between them and the men who but yesterday had gazed at 
 death. 
 
 " The war is not over. No one who has been with those 
 fellows as I have can believe thejr'll give in all at once." 
 
 " Your mother wishes you to come to Marley as quickly 
 as possible." 
 
 Michael had been, as his father predicted, very helpful 
 and attentive to Desmond these last few days, guarding him 
 from fatigue, remembering when it was time for his medicine 
 or tonic, saving him every possible inconvenience of the hot 
 and tedio^^s railway journey. 
 
 " I told you already in Waterval, you remember, that Lady 
 Grindelay wishes you to come back as speedily as possible." 
 
 " She doesn't know," Desmond began dully. 
 
 "There is nothing she doesn't know," Michael answered 
 ponderously. 
 
 That was the moment when Desmond became aware of 
 Gabrielle coming down the stairs with shrill talk and laughter, 
 Gabrielle with undraped shoulders and a light scarf, and a 
 young man in attendance, a young man with a loose mouth 
 and retreating chin, who answered her sallies. 
 
 " They don't know I'm married," he blurted out, and then 
 went on desperately : 
 
 " That woman over there is ... is my wife ! " He ex- 
 pected an exclamation from Michael. 
 
 " She is nothing of the kind," Michael answered with 
 decision. 
 
 Gabrielle's shrill voice came to them. In evening dress 
 she was so much more vulgar than in nurse's costume; she 
 was painted and her red hair brighter than he remembered it. 
 
 " I married her before I came out," Desmond repeated. 
 Gabrielle had not seen them. And again Michael answered: 
 
 " No, you didn't. You thought you did. Perhaps I ought 
 to have told you before," he went on, " but we seem to have
 
 228 FULL SWING 
 
 had so little time for talk. That is what I came out to tell you 
 — the chief reason. My father and I found out she was already 
 married when she went through that ceremony with you." 
 
 Desmond dropped into his seat. The slightest agitation 
 brought back the throbbing in his arm, a sickening disability. 
 In the distance he could yet see Gabrielle and her companion. 
 They were going out together ; cloaking her was the man with 
 the under-hung chin and the familiar manners. 
 
 " I can't understand what you are telling me. How did 
 you know ? Does my mother know ? " 
 
 Desmond's brain was not acting well. The first shock of 
 the news found him without the capacity to understand its 
 full significance. There was a rush of pleasure, incomprehen- 
 sible pleasure, then doubt and bewilderment. He had mar- 
 ried Gabrielle from a sense of duty, because of something she 
 had told him, and what his mother had said. Could it be 
 true that she had already a husband? What had become 
 of And then he left off thinking and looked at Michael. 
 
 " I may be an awful fool. I don't understand a word you 
 are telling me. Fact is, I am not quite myself. You say you 
 know all about my marriage, and that everybody knows, that 
 it isn't legal; but " 
 
 " Shall 1 begin at the beginning and tell you all we 
 know ? " 
 
 "I wish you would. My head is so woolly to-night; I've 
 got no brain." 
 
 But it came back to him when Michael told him of his 
 meeting with Gabrielle at the War Office, and of all that 
 followed, or of much that followed. Desmond listened in 
 bewildered silence. 
 
 " You told my mother ? " 
 
 "We had no choice." 
 
 "What did she say?" 
 
 " My father told her. I was not there ; but I understand 
 it was not a great surprise to her. She seemed to think in 
 some way she was herself responsible. Her great anxiety was 
 that your cousin should know nothing, be told nothing. It
 
 FULL SWINGS 229 
 
 was just before her operation; she had just heard she must 
 undergo an operation." 
 
 Desmond had already been told of his mother's illness. 
 
 "She did not wish her niece should have this further 
 trouble." It was difficult for Michael to say that Lady Grin- 
 delay wished to spare her niece the knowledge of Desmond's 
 marriage because she knew how unbearable it would be to the 
 girl. He stopped. 
 
 " But afterwards, when everything was known ? " Desmond 
 persisted. 
 
 "Afterwards? Well, quite soon afterwards we knew it 
 was no marriage at all. Then came the operation, and the 
 news that you were not dead. There was no object in telling 
 Eunice." 
 
 Michael's steady voice had a break in it; but Desmond, 
 listening avidly, never noticed it. Not only was he free, but 
 Eunice knew nothing of his folly, madness, wickedness. 
 
 « Go on." 
 
 Michael had to tell him that at first Lady Grindelay 
 would not have Eunice know because it would add to her 
 grief. Eunice was to continue to deck her altar to him with 
 flowers, to keep his memory beautiful and sweet. And that 
 afterwards she would not allow her joy in the news that he 
 was not dead to be clouded by hearing that he had not been 
 all she thought him. 
 
 Everything was for Desmond, whilst he, Michael, who 
 loved her so much better, and had never faltered in loving 
 her, was only here to tell the tale, to bring them together. 
 He felt the bitterness of it as he went on: 
 
 " That is Lady Grindelay's great desire, her most urgent 
 
 message to you. She insists upon secrecy, Eunice " 
 
 Desmond had a spasm of jealousy, he did not know that 
 Michael had the privilege of her name. " Eunice is to know 
 nothing. Your mother thought you might be writing to her. 
 But you are to tell her nothing, except" — again Michael 
 paused for an imperceptible second — "except that you are 
 coming back to her as quickly as you can travel. I have a 
 letter that I am not to give you until you are in full posses-
 
 330 FULL SWING 
 
 sion of all the circumstances ; but I know what the gist of it 
 is, and I am to tell you verbally, as Lady Grindelay told it to 
 me, that you are to consider the incident closed, to be for- 
 gotten. We paid five thousand pounds." 
 
 " My mother gave her money ? " he stanmiered. 
 
 " She made ample provision for the woman and her child. 
 She did not hold you entirely to blame in the matter. She 
 urged me to tell you this. All she asks in return is secrecy." 
 
 " But I must see Gabrielle." 
 
 " Why ? Cannot I see her for you, if there is anything 
 to be gained by it ? There is nothing more to be said. We 
 have our proofs." 
 
 " I insisted upon marrying her, she told me she was going 
 
 to have a child " Desmond spoke hesitatingly, in a stifled 
 
 voice. 
 
 " That has all been arranged," Michael answered hastily. 
 There seemed an indelicacy, an impossibility of pursuing the 
 subject. 
 
 Michael knew he was also expected to make it clear that 
 Lady Grindelay's opposition to a marriage between Desmond 
 and his cousin had no longer to be faced, that she was eager 
 for it now, urgent even. He could not speak of Desmond's 
 child and of Eunice in the same breath. Michael thought he 
 never could have done such a thing as Desmond had. All his 
 friendliness was an effort. 
 
 Desmond had a recurrence of fever that night. Michael 
 shared a room with him and tended him well, covering him 
 with blankets in the shivering stage and administering 
 quinine. When in the early morning Desmond lay exhausted 
 and sleeping, Michael went downstairs to breakfast, and made 
 the daily inquiry about steamer accommodation. So many 
 were hurrying home. But there was one whom it was impos- 
 sible to hurry, and when he embarked his voyage would be a 
 longer one. Michael, when he heard that Eric Elphinstone 
 had had a sudden attack of heart failure, that neither his 
 mother nor he would be using their berths, hurried round at
 
 FULL SWING 231 
 
 once to see if it were possible to obtain the reversion of them. 
 It was soon arranged. Lady Elphinstone saw him, and her 
 eyes were illumined with something deeper than grief, and 
 steadier, 
 
 " Eric has spoken so often of Lord Grindelay ; he will be 
 glad to know you are to have our berths," she told Michael. 
 "^ He does not want our dear ones at home to see him as he is. 
 I think it came to him as a relief when he was told yesterday 
 evening that he was not to go. * Not yet,' the doctors said ; 
 but he understood " 
 
 She broke off, Her pride shone in her eyes, but her grief 
 was grey in her cheeks and grey on her lips. 
 
 Michael looked out of the window as she spoke to him. 
 The bay was full of shipping, painted funnels and white sails 
 under the blue skies. Many sounds came up to him where 
 he stood. But the sound of sobbing was louder than any of 
 them. It was not in the room, nor from her ; it was following 
 the army home. Her voice had been steady, and his own 
 words showed no feeling, even if his eyes could not face hers. 
 
 " Then we can have the berths ? " 
 
 Not a word of sympathy could he get out, although, as 
 they went through the little necessary business, his hand 
 shook so that he was unable to sign the transfer. Cool, pre- 
 cise Michael came away all unnerved from that interview. 
 He never told Desmond whose berths they were that he had 
 secured. They were in England again before Desmond knew 
 that " Elphie " had gone home, in his mother's arms, and so 
 gladly.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 All through that voyage, whilst Desmond was regaining his 
 strength, growing healthily bronzed, discovering an appetite, 
 Michael controlled his feelings and played the part he had 
 been sent out to perform. 
 
 He "took care'' of Desmond, saved him from impru- 
 dences, reminded him of liability to cold, urged the continu- 
 ance of the quinine. He forced himself to talk of Marley, 
 and those whom Marley held, when Desmond walked the 
 deck by his side or started the subject when they were undress- 
 ing in their cabin or lay in their bunks. Desmond was never 
 tired of hearing of Marley. Every hour was taking him 
 nearer to his home. He was obeying his mother's message 
 literally, forgetting the past. Michael had executed his com- 
 mission faithfully, however resentfully, omitting nothing. 
 Desmond heard how Eunice had grieved for him, how his 
 mother had despaired ; that he was going back now as a hero, 
 that there was nothing that would be denied or withheld from 
 him. He had been a prisoner — not only of the Boers. He 
 felt free, and every hour more lighthearted ; a boy again, but 
 happier than he had been as a boy. Then, perhaps uncon- 
 sciously, he had been under the shadow of his parents' dif- 
 ferences; now he was going back into sunshine. Michael 
 thought no better of him because he obeyed his mother's com- 
 mands so literally ; he could sometimes not command himself 
 sufficiently to remain with him. 
 
 "What a restless fellow you are," Desmond said on one 
 of these occasions. " I'd no idea you were like that. I used 
 to look upon you as so steady and staid. It's past eleven, 
 and you want to go on deck again. Can't you go to sleep? 
 We've had a good old jaw." 
 
 As the ship neared Southampton it became increasingly 
 difficult for Michael to talk with Desmond about Marley or the 
 future. He had carried out all Eunice's wishes, her spoken 
 
 232
 
 FULL SWING 233 
 
 and unspoken ones, as well as his instructions from Lady 
 Grindelay. They would have had no anxiety; he had cabled 
 from Pretoria, from Cape Town, and lastly from Madeira. 
 They knew Desmond was better, that he was coming to them 
 as fast as steamer could carry him. 
 
 Michael thought they would be met at Southampton, that 
 Eunice might be there. It is one thing to carry out one's 
 commission faithfully, another to see the girl you love in 
 another man's arms; a man so unworthy! It was natural 
 Michael should think Desmond unworthy of Eunice, for all 
 the glamour of his wounds. Michael felt he could never have 
 done what Desmond had, that no woman, however adroit, 
 could have lured him to infidelity to Eunice. And perhaps 
 it was true. The difference was in their ages and tempera- 
 ments, as well as in the manner of their quixotry — in the 
 Irish as opposed to the Scottish blood. Desmond talked to 
 everybody, took part in all the impromptu gaieties that were 
 got up on board. It was difficult for Michael to believe this 
 gay, light-hearted youngster was the same person as the 
 invalided soldier with his arm in a sling whom he had met out- 
 side the hospital tent at Waterval. Michael did not take suffi- 
 ciently into account the fact that Desmond had been a pris- 
 oner and now was free. He was drawing long breaths, filling 
 his lungs with air, unconsciously rejoicing in the strength 
 that was returning to him, not reasoning but feeling. All 
 his fetters had been struck off at one blow. 
 
 Tlie sea flung its spray upon the deck and the sun shone. 
 The wind was a following one and helped them along. The 
 young people forgathered and behaved as young people do 
 under such circumstances. They sometimes danced and they 
 sometimes sang, taking a lively interest in one another. 
 Young Lord Grindelay was the recipient of much attention, 
 and he was no anchorite or churl ; he had nothing of Michael's 
 stiffness. 
 
 As they neared their destination everj^one began to talk of 
 " home," to search the horizon for coast-line or cliff. It was 
 only Michael who was in no hurry. He thought it possible 
 Eunice might be at Southampton, and he knew for how little
 
 234 FULL SWING 
 
 he would count in her life after Desmond had been restored 
 to her. He saw those days of rejoicing at Marley, and the 
 wedding that would so quickly follow. He alone watched 
 not eagerly for cliff and coastline. The speeding ship, as it 
 cut through the waters, was carrying him to nothing but lone- 
 liness. In bringing Desmond home he was doing the last 
 thing he might do for her. 
 
 As he had anticipated, she was on the landing-stage, wait- 
 ing. He saw her before Desmond, or anybody else, could 
 distinguish one face from another in the crowd that stood 
 on the quay as the ship came nearer and nearer to its moor- 
 ings. Handkerchiefs were being waved and there was shout- 
 ing. The last hour seemed the slowest of all the voyage. 
 There was Eunice, with her waving handkerchief, and his 
 father with her — two familiar figures. He pointed them out 
 to Desmond presently, when he could command himself. 
 Together he and Desmond watched them coming nearer and 
 nearer. It was as if the platform was moving, and not the 
 ship. At last they were near enough for the recognition to 
 be mutual. When the stage was thrown out, Desmond was 
 the first to step upon it. All that Michael had feared he saw. 
 There was no holding back, no concealment. His father was 
 wringing his own hand, welcoming him. But Eunice — 
 Eunice was in Desmond's arms. They stood as if they were 
 alone. He could see that it seemed to both of them as if 
 all their days had been but to this end. 
 
 The train stood still in the station whilst luggage and 
 passengers were promiscuously harried and delayed. There 
 were other people in the compartment with them, but Michael 
 saw no one but Eunice ; the gauze twisted round her hat, her 
 eyes alight and dancing, her cheeks flushed. 
 
 "He doesn't look a bit like a hero," she said gaily to 
 Michael, whom she had forgotten to greet. " I don't believe 
 he has ever been as ill as they said." 
 
 She was too happy to be serious. Desmond and she had 
 hardly spoken to each other, but he had held her in his arms, 
 his lips had touched her cheek, he was here. It was not her
 
 FULL SWING 235 
 
 lover, but her cousin, she was seeing in him just now, the boy 
 with whom she had been brought up, her inseparable, beloved 
 companion. 
 
 She had no girlish flutterings, surrendering to his kiss 
 and returning it, but with an emotion no different from what 
 it would have been had she been his sister. This was Des- 
 mond. It did not go beyond that for the moment. All the 
 rest was to come. It throbbed in her heart and glistened in 
 her eyes, but it was not for now. She was full of excited talk. 
 
 " Michael has nursed me like a brother," Desmond told 
 her. She even forgot to thank him. 
 
 " I suppose you had a wonderful time out there ? " she 
 said to Michael almost carelessly, with unconscious cruelty. 
 It was such a little while since she had seen Michael. " He 
 was dying to go," she explained to Desmond, turning again to 
 him. There were endless things she had to say to him — 
 endless. 
 
 " Aunt Agatha says you are not to think she did not come 
 to Southampton because she was not well enough. She is 
 ever so well ; she walked to the village yesterday. She won't 
 come to the station either. She's waiting for you at the 
 hotel. We are staying at the Buckingham Palace. We are 
 going to be a whole fortnight in town. She said you were sure 
 to want clothes." All her talk was for Desmond. 
 
 They were off at last. The guard waved his green flag, 
 and the whistle of the engine was shrill and loud. All the 
 luggage and passengers were in, and their compartment was 
 crowded; suit-cases and portmanteaux on the floor, in the 
 overcrowded racks, everywhere; umbrellas and rugs, strapped 
 together, intruded on the seats. The train moved slowly out 
 of the station. It was no moment for sentiment. Yet it 
 was the only time when Michael became an individual in her 
 eyes. Desmond was standing up to make safe the many pack- 
 ages over her head, and she had time to see Michael. 
 
 "You look worse than Desmond, Michael, although you 
 were not in the war. Have you been sea-sick?" 
 
 Desmond dropped into his seat beside her again, and she 
 did not even wait for the answer.
 
 236 FULL SWING 
 
 During the next hour and a half Desmond and Eunice 
 talked to each other in eager whispers, and Michael heard all 
 the office news from his father. 
 
 " I've missed you, dear boy," Andrew said affectionately. 
 He, too, saw that Michael was not looking well. " You have 
 found it very fatiguing, I dare say." Michael admitted to 
 feeling fatigued. 
 
 "That will wear off in a day or two. There were so 
 many new impressions " 
 
 He spoke carelessly, but his father was scarcely deceived. 
 He also noted the two in the corner, their eager whisperings. 
 Michael listened with sufficient interest to the relation of 
 what had been done in the matter of Seeker v. Seeker, and at 
 what particular phase the case of De Plevens v. the London 
 and North Eastern Eailway had arrived. But the only ques- 
 tion he put was hardly one of business at all. 
 
 "Is Lady Grindelay really quite well again? You say 
 she is in London." 
 
 His father had taken to spectacles ; he took them off before 
 he answered: 
 
 " She will see a specialist in a day or two. Dr. Reid is 
 coming up to town to meet him. She has not quite recovered 
 from the operation." 
 
 " Recurrence ? " 
 
 " There seems some doubt. But she wishes Desmond and 
 everybody to believe she is quite well. They are going to 
 give him a big reception at Marley — Desmond and all the 
 Marley men who have come home. The Lord Lieutenant and 
 the Mayor and the local volunteers are to be present, and the 
 place will be decorated. You know the sort of thing. If 
 Agatha is well or ill, whatever verdict the specialist has for 
 her, nothing is to be discussed or known until after Desmond 
 has gone home to Marley in state. After that, I suppose there 
 will be the wedding." 
 
 He relapsed into silence; so did Michael. But Desmond 
 and Eunice were still talking animatedly. 
 
 At Waterloo the party was to separate. Desmond sug- 
 gested that Michael should look after Eunice whilst he col-
 
 FULL SWING 237 
 
 lected the luggage. When they were standing alone Eunice 
 told Michael that Desmond could not say enough about his 
 kindness. Michael answered : 
 
 " You told me to bring him back to you." 
 
 Eunice glanced at him, looked away again, flushed, under- 
 stood. 
 
 " You see how it is/' she went on irresolutely ; she was 
 sorry for Michael. " It has always been like that." 
 
 " I know." 
 
 " Desmond and I " 
 
 " I know." 
 
 " He has not altered. You don't think him altered ? " 
 
 " I think he is just the same." 
 
 Then she could not think of anything more to say. Des- 
 mond seemed a long time with the luggage. 
 
 "Auntie will be getting anxious, the train, was late as 
 it is." 
 
 "Would you like me to go and see if I can find him — 
 hurry him?" 
 
 " Oh, no ! " And then there was a pause. But she forced 
 her thoughts away from Desmond, and set herself to be nice 
 to Michael. Later on, when they had all calmed down, when 
 she had become used to having Desmond at home again, and 
 they were all at Marley, there were many things she would 
 like to hear from Michael. How Desmond had been found, 
 and what his brother officers said of him, and everything; she 
 knew Desmond would never talk of his own exploits. 
 
 " You'll come down to Marley when we go back ? " she 
 said, in the effort to be nice to him. In the mirk of the 
 railway station she looked more beautiful than ever. Poor 
 Michael could hardly bear it. 
 
 " No ; I don't think I will come to Marley ; at least, not 
 just yet. You haven't forgotten what I asked you in New- 
 quay, have you ? I don't think I want to see you and Desmond 
 together." 
 
 He was, oddly enough, suddenly angry. Of what did she 
 think he was made ? But, of course, she had not been thinking 
 of him at all.
 
 238 FULL SWING 
 
 " You are angry with me ? " she said, in surprise. 
 
 Michael had never been like this while they were uncer- 
 tain of Desmond's fate. She had not forgotten what he said 
 to her by the Gannell Eiver ; girls do not forget such things. 
 But she thought, since he knew about her and Desmond, he 
 had not wished that either of them should remember. Now 
 his manner made her uncomfortable. 
 
 " Of course not." But he said it stiffly, with difficulty 
 and an absence of colour. " I am sorry if I spoke abruptly." 
 For he saw her face had changed. 
 
 What he had in his mind one cannot know completely, 
 but it may have seemed possible to him, even then, that the 
 future might hold pain for her, or trouble. Michael thought 
 Desmond unstable. 
 
 " There is nothing I would not do for you, you know that," 
 he began again. 
 
 " I shall always be glad of your friendship, of course " 
 
 She hardly knew what to say. 
 
 " You can call it friendship if you like," he said almost 
 sullenly. 
 
 " I wish it were friendship. Oh, Michael, can't we just be 
 friends ? " she cried. 
 
 " My feelings can never change," he answered. 
 
 She moved a step away from him, then nearer again, for 
 she did not want to be unkind. He saw that she looked dis- 
 tressed. 
 
 " I know you don't want to hear it," he went on ; " that 
 my love is nothing to you, Desmond's everything. But a 
 
 time might come " He broke off. " And if ever you did 
 
 want help " 
 
 "I am sure you would do anything for me," she said 
 hastily. 
 
 " You will never forget that, will you ? " 
 
 He saw that Desmond was coming towards them, following 
 a porter with a loaded trunk. 
 
 " You will think of me if you ever need help, or, or a 
 friend. I will be anything to you that you wish. I shall never 
 alter, I shall always be waiting."
 
 FULL SWING 239 
 
 " Oh, there you are ! " Desmond's voice reached them. 
 " Come along, I've got a cab. Your father has got your things 
 together. Jolly good plan your having them marked like 
 that." 
 
 Desmond hurried Eunice away, Michael had to look for 
 and find his father. 
 
 " What was it he was saying to you ? " Desmond asked 
 her when they were in the cab. But he did not wait for the 
 answer. He was looking at her, and said all at once : 
 
 " Isn't it wonderful ? " 
 
 Then he took her hand, and Michael might never have 
 existed at all for either of them. 
 
 They sat hand in hand all that slow way from Waterloo 
 to the Buckingham Palace Hotel. But they hardly said a 
 word except " Isn't it wonderful ? " They seemed to have a 
 complete understanding of each other, although nothing had 
 been said of more moment than that. He had kissed her 
 when he came off the boat, but it had been her cheek and not 
 her lips that he had taken. Now they sat hand in hand and 
 felt how wonderful it was. 
 
 Lady Grindelay met them in the hall of the hotel. She 
 had been watching for their cab to drive up, and now stood 
 in the hall. 
 
 " Here he is, auntie ! Did you think we were never 
 coming ? " 
 
 " I was content to wait." 
 
 Desmond thought her unaltered, saw no reflection in her 
 of his own agitation. He had a rush of feeling as he kissed 
 her, remembering all she had done for him. He flung his 
 arms about her. 
 
 " Mother, darling ! " 
 
 She adjusted her cap, and said : 
 
 " You are as impetuous as ever, I see." 
 
 That was all she said, and yet she was much more moved 
 than he, the mere sight of him was a vision of splendour, 
 almost incredible, blinding in its effulgence; the touch of his 
 yoimg lips on her cheeks sent fire through her, stopping lier 
 breath.
 
 340 FULL SWING 
 
 They went up in the lift, leaving the luggage to follow. 
 She remembered to tell the hall porter to pay the cab. Des- 
 mond said hastily he had plenty of change. He was thrown 
 back upon himself, chilled by her reception. 
 
 The lift took them up to the sitting-room, and Desmond 
 saw that it was full of flowers. Reynolds, his mother's in- 
 comparable maid, came out of the bedroom and said a respect- 
 ful word of welcome. 
 
 " The flowers came up from Marley after you left," Lady 
 Grindelay said to Eunice. 
 
 " I hope you haven't been tiring yourself arranging them." 
 
 "No; Reynolds did that."
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 Not until after dinner did mother and son get any nearer. 
 Before Eunice left them together they talked only of the 
 war. Desmond was modest, as Eunice had expected, about 
 his own exploits, but her eyes glowed when he told of gallant 
 actions he had seen or of which he had been told. Her eyes 
 glowed, but presently her cheeks paled, and her aunt said the 
 girl looked tired and should go to bed early. Eunice's imagi- 
 nation realised these scenes he was depicting; she saw him 
 in the forefront of them all. How wonderful that he should 
 be here, talking of it, restored to her! Throb after throb 
 of thanksgiving made her colour come and go emotionally. 
 
 "It's impossible to think you will be here in the morn- 
 ing," she said, with a laugh that had a sob, when, in obedience 
 to Lady Grindelay's suggestion, she rose to go. 
 
 "To-morrow morning, and all the other mornings," Des- 
 mond answered in a tone that matched her own. 
 
 They were all a little constrained. Eunice kissed her 
 aunt, and gave her hand to Desmond. 
 
 " Good night." 
 
 He opened the door for her. 
 
 "I am sure you must be too tired for any more talk," 
 v^as the first thing his mother said when they were alone. 
 
 " I am not tired at all. But you — ought you not to rest ? " 
 
 "I am tired of resting. I shall have time enough for 
 resting." 
 
 She had so much to say to him, and such a difficulty in 
 saying it. There had been nothing but misunderstanding be- 
 tween them, and now all was to be made clear. She would 
 give him Eunice, let him see that she was proud of him and 
 the reputation he had made. It was difficult. Easy perhaps 
 to make up her mind that it had to be done, but almost im- 
 16 241
 
 242 FULL SWING 
 
 possible to do it. There was no intimacy between them. 
 There had always been something to keep them apart. When 
 she had thought him dead she wanted only his forgiveness. 
 She craved more than that now, a son's love she would have 
 from him, but thought it beyond her reach. She had ever 
 shown herself cold and unloving to him. Even now she could 
 not voice what she felt at his return, her pride in him. She 
 could only sit erect and drop out her words as if they were of 
 little importance. Outwardly she was little altered. 
 
 "I did not want you to go to bed to-night, your first 
 night in England, without knowing that you are quite free 
 as regards Eunice." The next sentence came more slowly: 
 "I know that I misjudged you. ..." 
 
 He was confused, anxious to avoid anything in the nature 
 of a scene. But not as unloving as she thought him. He 
 had always known he cared for her, and now he would have 
 liked to tell her so. 
 
 " You didn't misjudge me. I made an awful fool of 
 myself." 
 
 He came nearer to her. But she sat quite erect, and he 
 thought she seemed to wish to keep the distance between them. 
 
 ''We have agreed — haven't we? — that that particular in- 
 cident is to be forgotten." 
 
 " I — I can't quite forget it," he said huskily. 
 
 "That is the one thing I must ask of you." Then she 
 went on less steadily : " You will promise me that, will you 
 not ? I do not wish you to be less than a hero in her eyes, in 
 anyone's eyes." In a lower voice she added : " I want your 
 happiness to be untroubled, complete." She stopped. 
 
 Desmond was greatly moved. 
 
 " I am not fit for her," he broke out. 
 
 She had that throb of pride, that passionate contradic- 
 tion, but no words to tell him of it. Eunice no longer counted 
 in comparison. 
 
 " She need never know that," was all she could get out. 
 
 " I will do anyihing you say, mother." He felt the ten- 
 sion behind her limited words and began to speak agitatedly.
 
 FULL SWING 243 
 
 " You know how I regret everytliing, everything I have ever 
 done to vex you. Mother, can't we be different together?" 
 he said, rather desperately. 
 
 Poor stiff-tongued Agatha ! She put out her hand to him 
 uncertainly and he took it in his. 
 
 "I hope everything will be different," she said. 
 
 How could he guess that under her breast her breath 
 came as if her heart was but a bruise beneath it, that to 
 solace her pain he had but to lay his head there and say: 
 "I love you, mother. Put your hand on my head and say 
 3^ou love me, too. I've longed to do it so often." 
 
 He kissed the hand that lay in his hurriedly, half ashamed, 
 and she withdrew it, a faint flush on her old cheeks. 
 
 " I'll try to do everything you say. If Eunice's happiness 
 depends on me, I'll try to be what you both wish me. If you 
 think she ought not to know, I won't tell her. I don't know 
 whether it's right " 
 
 "There are stories girls may not hear, temptations of 
 M-liich one must not speak to them." 
 
 "I should hate to tell her. So if you really think she 
 ought not to know " 
 
 "I am sure it is unnecessary for her to know of these 
 temptations, of any evil," she said with agitation. "We 
 women, wives, are best left ignorant ^" 
 
 " I'll make her happy, I know I can make her happy." His 
 face flushed and he spoke huskily. "But you? Is there 
 nothing I can do for you ? " 
 
 " I want you to be happy." She wanted him to love her, 
 but that she could not say. " You will care for Marley, 
 hold your inheritance as a trust, remember you are a Wan- 
 stead? . . ." 
 
 But he did not want to hear of his inheritance, nor she 
 to talk to him of what would happen when she was gone. 
 Something of his happiness she wanted to see, to stay and see. 
 
 " I know now what a suitable and appropriate thing a 
 marriage between you and Eunice will be. I want to see your 
 unclouded happiness "
 
 244 FULL SWING 
 
 Her maimer touched him, that change of which Michael 
 had spoken was so obvious, and yet not complete. 
 
 " And everything between us two will be different ? " 
 " I hope so." 
 
 Everything between them was different, although without 
 words or caresses to establish the change. Eeynolds, that 
 wonderful, understanding maid, knew that if a wrap were 
 needed. Lady Grindelay liked her son to lay it across her 
 shoulders. Then, when Desmond came into the room to bid 
 her good morning or good night she detained him as long as 
 possible, and when he was in the room with her, her eyes 
 dwelt .upon him. Eunice now took second place. Eunice knew 
 this, and Desmond too, vaguely. He kissed his mother night 
 and morning, asked how she had slept or how she felt, brought 
 her roses and was awkward when she thanked him. " As if I 
 could ever do enough for you ! " 
 
 " But I have done so little for you." 
 
 In a way their positions were reversed, she felt she was in 
 his debt, dwelt all the time upon her sins of omission, and 
 tried to make up to him for them. 
 
 The fortnight in London passed very quickly. The war 
 was by no means at an end. De Wet and liis guerilla troops 
 had begun to prove it. 
 
 " I never should have come home if you had not sent for 
 me," Desmond told his mother. 
 
 " You are content ? " she asked anxiously. 
 
 "Eather," he answered, smiling. 
 
 Agatha, too, was content, although the report of the 
 specialist had not been too favourable, and already there were 
 disquieting symptoms. No one but herself and Dr. Keid 
 knew this, and it was to be kept from everyone else. 
 
 After Desmond had sat with his mother, visited his tailor, 
 done the hundred and one little things demanded of him by 
 friends or circumstances, he was free for long hours with 
 Eunice. They were neither of them London bred or bom, 
 and they found it a delightful place for wandering. They
 
 FULL SWING 245 
 
 were sufficiently unsophisticated to find the Zoological Grar- 
 dens entrancing, and Hyde Park a never ending delight. 
 They visited the museums and the National Gallery, and did 
 not even disdain Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's. Lady 
 Grindelay saw no reason why they should not go to the the- 
 atre together, and many evenings were spent at the play. She 
 put forward no claim to their companionship, happy in their 
 happiness, wishful only to add to it. She did not want them 
 to see or notice into what invalid ways she was growing. 
 Everybody was in the conspiracy to keep them from know- 
 ing ; Dr. Keid and Andrew, and above all, Eeynolds. 
 
 " She's had a tiring morning, people coming in and out, 
 letters to write," Eeynolds would tell them, " perhaps it would 
 be better to let her have a sleep after lunch. I'll tell her you 
 came in to see her." 
 
 There was always some excuse or good reason why Lady 
 Grindelay should be allowed to rest. Neither of the young 
 folks ever saw her during the attacks of pain that were return- 
 ing with alarming frequency. She always seemed well enough 
 to sit up to dinner, to question them as to what they had seen 
 or heard, to be interested. 
 
 '^ She looks at you all the time," Eunice told Desmond, 
 " I hardly count with her now." 
 
 "You are not jealous?" 
 
 "I can't tell you how glad I am. I always knew you 
 would understand each other one day." 
 
 But she and Desmond understood each other even better. 
 They knew they were never to be separated again. The 
 flaming, inevitable moment had not come yet, but it was 
 always in the background, warming and exhilarating the days. 
 They talked of their intimacy, sometimes Desmond had a 
 sudden qualm of misgiving. 
 
 " We have never really been apart except that horrid war 
 time and when you were a prisoner. Tell me about it again. 
 I hate there to be anything you have seen and done that I 
 haven't shared," Eunice said, more than once. " We seem 
 to have been always together except then." 
 
 He told her of the red and rolling veldt, of sunsets over
 
 246 FULL SWING 
 
 lonely farms, of dust and the whizzing of bullets. He told 
 her of long and lonely marches, of brave men and blunders, 
 sniping shot that reached its billet, and of empty saddle. He 
 told her of the hospital at Waterval; could speak to her, 
 although with difficulty, of Jimmy Thwaites and Elphie. 
 
 "I seem to see it all as clearly as if I had been there. 
 We'll make Jimmy come to Marley, won't we? He can be 
 wheeled about the grounds. We could take him on the river." 
 
 " Eather ! He's with his people now, but they are not very 
 well off. I'd like to do something for him, look after him." 
 
 She pressed his arm. " So would I. We always want the 
 same thing, don't we ? " 
 
 ***** 
 
 There came an hour when speech between them grew a 
 little frayed or fretted. They had had a long day together, 
 there were only two more before they would be again at 
 Marley. Eunice knew of the welcome that awaited Des- 
 mond, but the preparations were being kept a secret from 
 him. He could never agree that he had done anything de- 
 serving of admiration in letting his men be cut up, in refus- 
 ing to surrender. He was very silent about the whole episode, 
 not caring to hear it alluded to. He knew what had lain at 
 the back of his courage, why he had been so ready to give up 
 his life. He was trying to forget, but it was not easy. Eunice's 
 happy confidence that she knew everything about him some- 
 times sent a qualm through him. He could not talk of the 
 Waterval hospital and forget Gabrielle had been there, nor of 
 Cape Town, without seeing her go out of the door of the hotel 
 with undraped shoulders, laughing and talking with her com- 
 panion. He did not want to remember, but he did. 
 
 "I think we shall have to leave off talking about South 
 Africa," he said when they drove back to the hotel that after- 
 noon. '■' I was so far away from you, desperately home-sick 
 at times, not very happy. I'd like to forget it sometimes if 
 you don't mind." 
 
 " And I have been talking of notliing else all day."
 
 FULL SWING 247 
 
 " I know. And just begun again/' She was surprised to 
 see how nearly irritable he was. 
 
 "Why did you not tell me so before?" she exclaimed. 
 If he did not care to talk about South Africa, of course, they 
 would talk of other things. But she could not think of many 
 others at dinner time, and it was her aunt's favourite topic too. 
 
 Desmond could not escape all the consequences of his 
 sobriquet, and the story that had been in all the newspapers. 
 He was lionised a little, invited out to dinner, made rather a 
 fuss of. He refused as many invitations as his mother would 
 allow. But when their own friends made a point of his pres- 
 ence at this or the other entertainment, when Eunice was 
 invited with him, and there seemed no reasonable excuse that 
 he should stay away, Lady Grindelay pointed out to him that 
 he must not get a reputation for exclusiveness or eccentricity. 
 
 " You will have to take your place in Society when we go 
 back to Marley. There is a certain duty we owe to our neigh- 
 bours. You will have both to dispense and receive hospi- 
 tality; it has always been expected of us, and I think fulfilled. 
 
 I have not given balls, but ^" And she told of garden and 
 
 dinner parties, fetes, and when the gardens had been illu- 
 minated. Some of these entertainments both Eunice and 
 Desmond could remember. 
 
 To-night, therefore, because Lady Grindelay thought it 
 the right thing, they were going to a dance, a dance got up in 
 Desmond's honour by the Fevershams. The Fevershams had 
 a house in Great Marley, although they were in London now. 
 They were not exactly County, but Mrs. Feversham was a 
 distant, very distant, cousin of their nearest neighbours, the 
 Campdens. 
 
 Desmond thought he had never seen Eunice look prettier 
 than she did to-night, in the white evening frock, with the 
 string of pearls round her neck, and her fair hair snooded 
 with its blue ribbon. He could not make out what had made 
 him suddenly irritable or impatient with her a little while 
 ago, he was now full of remorse. 
 
 When they were in the brougham, on the way to the Fever- 
 shams, he began to tell her so.
 
 248 FULL SWING 
 
 " I was rather a brute this afternoon, wasn't I ? " 
 
 " No, of course j^ou were not. How many dances are we 
 going to have together ? Auntie says we are not to make our- 
 selves too conspicuous." 
 
 " Do you want to dance with anyone else ? " 
 
 " You know I don't." 
 
 He had never actually asked her to marry him. Now 
 suddenly he felt he must make sure. He put out his hand to 
 possess himself of hers. 
 
 " You don't want to dance with anybody but me ? " 
 
 *' Our steps go so well together." 
 
 " I wasn't tliinking only of that." 
 
 " You're crushing my dress ; can't you move a little ? " He 
 did not stir. " You are not cross again ? " 
 
 " I'm not cross, I'm impatient, that's all." 
 
 " To get to the Fevershams ? " But she knew better, for all 
 the innocent way she said it, and her heart beat a little faster. 
 
 " I don't care if we never get there at all." 
 
 " But I look so nice. You told me yourself I looked nice." 
 
 *' You look like an angel. But I'm not sure I want anyone 
 else to see it." 
 
 She laughed happily. 
 
 " Auntie will want to know if anyone took any notice of 
 me. I believe she thinks I am a little country-cousinish to 
 go about with you. It is you everybody really wants, not me. 
 You will have to be introduced to all sorts of people to-night. 
 Do you want me to sit in a corner all by myself whilst you 
 are dancing and being lionised ? " 
 
 *' I don't want to be lionised." 
 
 They were already in Eaton Square. The sound of the 
 string band came to them. Eunice was young enough and 
 gay enough at heart to feel the call of the music. 
 
 " You'll have to wait until we get inside, you know." 
 
 He saw her eyes dancing, and that her feet wanted to 
 emulate them. 
 
 In another five minutes his arm was round her waist and 
 there was not a handsomer couple in the room. The mere 
 joy of the valse filled her, and they were exquisitely in step.
 
 FULL SWING 249 
 
 " I haven't forgotten how to dance, have I ? " 
 
 " We couldn't be better together." 
 
 To-night, to-night he knew he would tell her what he 
 wanted of her. She must be his wife as soon as possible. He 
 could not wait any longer. She was fond of him, but he 
 wanted more. His blood was tumultuous to-night, and she 
 was so cool and smiling. 
 
 " Don't hold me so close," she breathed, for his hold had 
 tightened suddenly. 
 
 " I shall hold you as close as I like," he answered, disobey- 
 ing her. She laughed lightly. 
 
 " I'm out of breath." 
 
 One last turn and it was over ; they were in the stream of 
 the others going towards the refreshment room. 
 
 " You want an ice ? " 
 
 " No, I don't. I want to sit down." 
 
 " We'll find a place." Her hand was on his arm. " Come 
 in here." 
 
 " Here " was a conservatory full of exotic plants and 
 palms, chairs arranged in twos, many of them occupied. Now 
 she no longer held his arm but followed where he piloted her. 
 When they were in the shadow of the deepest greenery, he 
 stopped abruptly. They were really alone for the moment, 
 their pulses throbbing from the dance. 
 
 " I can't let you dance with anyone else to-night," he said 
 unevenly; and then put his arms about her. She stood in 
 his embrace, hex heart beating, strangely excited. " You know 
 why, tell me you know why ? " But she did not speak and 
 he went on : " I know you're fond of me. How fond are you ? 
 That's the question." His arms tightened about her and she 
 went a little pale. " Do you love me better than anything 
 in the world ; as I love you ? " He sought her lips now, and 
 she yielded them to him at first, but then would have drawn 
 back, resisting. He would not let her go, startling her. 
 
 " Do you understand ? You often say we understand 
 each other. I want you for my wife, my wife." He strained 
 her again to him. She put out a tremulous, restraining hand 
 and went paJe.
 
 250 FULL SWING 
 
 " What a brute I am ! I'm frightening you. You don't 
 know how I feel to-night, how I've been feeling all day. I'll 
 be gentle — don't be frightened. Darling ! But kiss me. Oh ! 
 my darling, darling ; how I've longed for you ! " 
 
 " You do love me ? " he asked hungrily, 
 
 " I have always loved you." 
 
 " You couldn't dance with anyone else to-night, nor have 
 anyone else's arm round you ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 "You imderstand now how I love you?" He held her 
 close. " I love you in every way, in ways you don't dream of. 
 I'm desperate because I know I'm not good enough for you. 
 But you'd forgive me anything, wouldn't you? That is the 
 sort of way you care for me, isn't it? Say it is; that it 
 wouldn't matter what I did." His lips seemed insatiable for 
 hers. 
 
 She thought he meant that it would not matter what he 
 did to her. She muttered that she did not care what he did. 
 She wanted to run away from him, yet to stay with him, to 
 hide her head, and to go on looking at him, to feel his arms 
 about her. She wanted him to know how she loved him, then 
 her cheeks crimsoned, her eyes were lowered, and she was 
 ashamed of the flooding crimson of her love for him. 
 
 " It will never the same between us again," he whispered. 
 " Not after this." 
 
 It would never be the same. And yet she felt that it had 
 never been different, although so deep down. 
 
 " Tell me again that you love me." 
 
 « I— I can't talk." 
 
 Neither could he. He laid his lips on hers again. What 
 was so wonderful was that this Desmond was still the other 
 one, her brother and companion, her intimate. 
 
 " You did not always love me like this ? " she said f alter- 
 ingly. 
 
 " Yes, I did, but I held myself back. You were little 
 more than a child. You are still so young, and innocent, and
 
 FULL SWING 251 
 
 ignorant. Oh, Eunice, my love, my little love, I wish I had 
 never been away from you," he cried. He wished he could 
 have come to her as she to him. "If only I were more worthy 
 of you," he said. 
 
 " Perhaps we should not have known how we cared for 
 each other if we'd always been together," she said. She 
 spoke low, and the flush was lovely in her cheeks and glowing 
 eyes. What had flamed between them had made everything 
 dift'erent, it was as if she had come into a fortune, the future 
 was golden with promise. 
 
 " I've always known of it," he answered. 
 
 When they got back to the drawing-room, Desmond was 
 impatient of the people who spoke to him, who wanted to 
 shake him by the hand, and tell him what they thought of 
 him ; he wanted to do nothing but sit beside Eunice, or dance 
 with her. 
 
 " I wish we were in the conservatory again." 
 
 But she had got back something of her self-possession, for 
 all that she was so gloriously happy. Her lips throbbed from 
 his kisses, and her shoulders were warm where his arms had 
 lain, but she was not Agatha's niece for nothing, she knew 
 how to behave. 
 
 " You must not stay here, everybody wants to talk to you," 
 she told him. 
 
 " Do you want to talk to me ? " 
 
 " We have all our lives before us," she answered happily. 
 
 " They won't be long enough." 
 
 "But Just to-night, because auntie will want to hear of 
 everything, you must not stay beside me. The party was 
 given for you. Go and be congratulated, made a hero of '^ 
 
 " I've nothing to be congratulated upon except that you 
 care for me." 
 
 " We ought to pretend." 
 
 " We ought to do nothing of the sort." 
 
 " Auntie would not like us to make ourselves conspicuous." 
 
 "As if you wouldn't be conspicuous anyhow. Don't you 
 know how pretty you are ? " 
 
 "Am I?"
 
 252 FULL SWING 
 
 " Are you ? Don't you know you are ? " 
 " I am glad you think so." 
 
 "Come along; they are striking up again. I must have 
 one more dance." 
 
 4: « ^ 4: « 
 
 In the brougham going home he said that he wanted her 
 to marry him as soon as it could be arranged. 
 
 " I don't feel sure of you. So many tilings might happen." 
 
 " What could happen ? " 
 
 "You might change your mind, take a sudden dislike to 
 me." 
 
 " Haven't I known you all my life ? " 
 
 " But you didn't know this." 
 
 She answered him low, when her lips were free, when he 
 would listen, that in a way she too had always known it. She 
 let him see right into her pure, yet passionate heart. She 
 might not know all the song of love; but she was familiar 
 with the melody, for it had sung between them always. 
 
 " You don't know all that love means, love like ours, 
 he whispered. 
 
 He could make her blush and edge away from him; he 
 could lure her back until she lay again close folded in the 
 shelter of his arms. But he could not make her falter in her 
 belief that she had nothing more to learn of her love for him. 
 
 " I knew you were not dead, I felt you were alive all the 
 time. I told auntie I should know if anything had happened 
 to you. I am so much more intimate with you than she has 
 ever been, I know all you do and even think " 
 
 He was quieter after she had said that, he did not even 
 kiss her again. She ought to be told. He had no doubt she 
 ought to be told. She did not know all he had done, nor all 
 that had led up to his folly. He could not tell her now; 
 but even now he wished that she knew. He had got to that 
 already. He wished he had not agreed to silence. He knew 
 that one day he would ask his mother to release him from his 
 promise. But not yet, not until Eunice was his wife.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 " Mother, you won't make us wait ? " Desmond asked when 
 he told his news. Lady Grindelay no longer felt jealousy, and 
 as for misgiving, it was impossible. She could see no fault 
 in him, 
 
 " Only sufficient time to make proper preparations," she 
 answered. 
 
 " Must there be a fuss ? " 
 
 " We have our duty to our neighbours," she said again. 
 " The Wansteads of Marley cannot get married as if they 
 were the Joneses of Nowhere." 
 
 But she was almost as anxious as he, for she knew that her 
 days might be few. But that was a small matter. There 
 would be Wansteads of Marley for all time, and everything 
 had come right. Desmond would keep up the hot-houses, 
 she made him promise that, and build more cottages. He 
 would have promised anything. 
 
 " You will be satisfied if I can arrange the date a month 
 from to-day ? " she asked him. 
 
 " I'd be better satisfied if it were a week." 
 
 " Give me a little time. Let me arrange matters properly 
 for you." He kissed her. 
 
 *' Of course, I know you'll do your best for me, mother 
 darling." 
 
 And the " Mother darling " showed how everything had 
 changed between them, the kiss too. He had got to know tliat 
 his caresses, though never invited, were nevertheless not un- 
 welcome to her. To-morrow they were all going down to 
 Marley together. She knew what awaited him there, and lay 
 in bed all that day to rest herself for the coming emotion and 
 fatigue. 
 
 " You and Eunice must amuse each other to-day. Rey- 
 nolds won't let me get up. Reynolds is growing into a 
 tyrant. I have given in to her too much, but I will change 
 all that when we get back to Marley." 
 
 253
 
 254 FULL SWING 
 
 Desmond thought she remained in bed because she wanted 
 to leave the sitting-room of the hotel free for them, it was a 
 wet day and they did not need to go out. 
 
 At Marley great preparations were being made. Andrew 
 came up to the hotel in the afternoon and told her all the 
 details. Already the town was decorated, and the village gay 
 with bunting; triumphal arches had been erected and the 
 carriage would be drawn up to the Court by men, not horses. 
 
 "He knows nothing about it?" Andrew asked. 
 
 " Nothing definite. I think a liint may have reached him, 
 for he suggested just now we should go by the morning instead 
 of the afternoon train." 
 
 Then she told her good news. 
 
 "We planned and planned, like fools. But Providence 
 planned better." 
 
 Andrew did not think they had planned like fools, Michael 
 would have made a good husband to the girl, and looked after 
 the estate. 
 
 " She will never know anything of that episode in his life," 
 Agatha went on contentedly. 
 
 " You still think that wise? " 
 
 "You should see their happiness together. Then you 
 would not question the wisdom. If she thought she had not 
 always been first with him " 
 
 " But supposing it came out ? " 
 
 " It never will come out. The woman was well paid, she 
 has nothing to gain by revealing it. Besides, they will settle 
 down at Marley. She will never seek him out there." 
 
 Lady Grindelay was impatient of a doubt cast upon the 
 wisdom of her decision, and Andrew had no desire to vex her. 
 She told him of Desmond's wish, and her own, that there 
 should be no undue delay, and gave him promptly, and as if 
 she had it all cut and dried, the instructions for settlements. 
 Desmond must, of course, be master of the estate, but Eunice 
 was to have her jointure. 
 
 " You seem to have thought it well over.'' 
 
 Andrew was struck by her precision, by the clearness of 
 her instructions.
 
 FULL SWING 255 
 
 " I have thought of nothing else since I knew he had been 
 found." 
 
 They went dovra to Marley the next day. In the train 
 Lady Grindelay told Desmond something of what he might 
 expect on his arrival, she did not wish him to be wholly un- 
 prepared. He had been already struck by the number of 
 Marley faces he had seen on the platform at Paddington, and 
 the way they had seemed to surround them. He fumed over 
 what she told him nevertheless, and said " What rot ! " 
 
 "I am sure you will bear yourself becomingly, if your 
 tenants or your neighbours wish to do you honour.'^ 
 
 " It is such avrful rot," he repeated. 
 
 But Eunice agreed with his mother that it was only fitting 
 a reception should be given him. 
 
 " I am not expected to make a speech, am I ? '' 
 
 " If there is an address you will certainly have to reply." 
 
 " Good lord, mother, you don't mean to say there is likely 
 to be anything of that sort ! I feel like dropping out of the 
 train before it gets to Marley. I had no idea — ^you'll stand 
 by me, won't you? It's worse than going into action." He 
 got quite red. 
 
 And notwithstanding all they told liim he was not pre- 
 pared to find the station hung with flags and decorated 
 with bunting, to see the mayor in his robes on the platform 
 accompanied by a deputation, to have a little girl dressed in 
 white, the daughter of one of the town councillors, holding 
 out a basket of flowers to him shyly. 
 
 " But this isn't for me ? " he said. 
 
 She was small and bewildered, standing there, holding 
 the flowers out to him. He took the offering and passed it 
 on to his mother. 
 
 There was quite a crowd on the platform, and that seemed 
 the signal for a burst of cheering. All at once he found him- 
 self listening to that address he had feared; his mother and 
 Eunice on either side of him, and the men he had seen at 
 Paddington formed up behind him. The address was very 
 short. The mayor said his fellow-citizens had turned out to 
 welcome him home, because he had not only " covered himself
 
 256 FULL SWING 
 
 with glor}% but had brought honour to their town." Then he 
 said a word about those who had been left behind. 
 
 A sudden thought of Eric Elphinstone came to Desmond, 
 and he brushed his hand against his eyes. 
 
 " Those who had been left hehind." 
 
 He did not hear much more of the address after that. 
 He caught a word or two about his mother, and what she 
 represented, the old order that was passing away; feudalism. 
 The mayor and Lady Grindelay had met over many a relief 
 fund and work of charity; feudalism was the root word in 
 their vocabulary of social service. 
 
 "Little Marley is a model village; Great Marley owes 
 much to her benefactions. You are the worthy son of a most 
 worthy mother. She must be proud of you, and we, too, are 
 proud that you are our fellow-citizen. . , ." 
 
 Now Desmond found himself stammering out a few words 
 of thanks. He caught sight of Sir John and Lady Campden. 
 If it had not been for that, he thought, he could have ac- 
 quitted himself better. He would never see their cheery boys 
 again. 
 
 " I didn't do anything different from the other fellows, 
 I only had better luck. If I've been any good at all to — ^to 
 the Empire, as you say, it's because of my mother. She — 
 she always thought such a lot of England." He knew he was 
 making an unmitigated ass of himself. He turned to the 
 men behind him in their khaki uniforms. " The honours, and 
 all that, should be for these chaps, not for me, not for the 
 officers. They followed us anywhere we led and fought like 
 heroes. It was they who did all the fighting." 
 
 " If we'd always had leaders like you ! " one of the men 
 said grufHy. 
 
 " I needn't say any more, need I ? " Desmond asked his 
 mother quickly. "We can get on now, can't we? Thank 
 you, and thank you again." 
 
 He drew her hand through his arm, and tried to pass. But 
 everyone wanted to shake hands with him, to say a personal 
 word. In his blue serge suit, with his bronzed face and blue 
 eyes, he looked very young and embarrassed as he tried to get
 
 FULL SWING 257 
 
 through the people who said they were proud of him. Lady 
 Campden, in her deep mourning, held her handkerchief to 
 her eyes; he caught the sound of her sobbing. One of the 
 boatmen from Eton rafts thrust his way to the front and 
 insisted upon shaking hands. 
 
 " God bless you, milord. You'll recollect my boy Jack, 
 who went out with you ; his last letter was full of your kind- 
 ness to him. His mother wanted to come up with me to 
 thank you. But when the time came she couldn't face it; him 
 being left behind. But I was to tell you she was grateful." 
 
 " That's all right, Evans. I'll come and see her one day, 
 tell her so." 
 
 He remembered young Evans, who went down at Magers- 
 fontein; the last he saw of him was bloodstained and be- 
 grimed, wounded to death, trying to raise himself, to pull a 
 trigger, to have one last shot at the enemy. 
 
 Desmond knew he should disgrace himself before all these 
 people if he began to think how many he had seen the last 
 of, and how they fell. It was all very well out there, but here 
 at home they were no longer only soldiers, these lost com- 
 rades of his, they were sons and brothers, sweethearts, hus- 
 bands. He could not face the womenfolk, he was seeing battle- 
 fields, the cries of the wounded came to him. 
 
 But his mother would not let him hurry. Many eyes were 
 wet with tears, but Lady Grindelay's old eyes shone as if they 
 were young again. This was the happiest hour of her life, 
 the proudest. 
 
 Outside the station there was a great crowd waiting. 
 Entrance to the station had been by ticket, and they were a 
 picked and decorous crowd. But outside there were the towns- 
 people and villagers, and many from Amersham and Beacons- 
 field, and the adjacent towns. When they caught sight of 
 Desmond they broke into cheering. 
 
 " * No Surrender Grindelay ! ' Three cheers for ' No Sur- 
 render Grindelay ! ' " 
 
 Hats were thrown in the air, voices shouted, the flags 
 floated in the breeze, and the military band played " See the 
 conquering hero comes." 
 17
 
 258 FULL SWING 
 
 They had difficulty in getting to the carriage. The horses 
 had been taken out and men were harnessed to it. The 
 procession formed and followed them, the soldiers in khaki, 
 the blaring band. All the slow way to the Court crowds were 
 cheering, bunting was flying, and they passed under triumphal 
 arches bearing legends, " Welcome Home ! " " England wel- 
 comes her heroes ! " " Long life to Marley Warriors ! " 
 
 Eunice's eyes were wet and misty. Agatha sat erect, 
 bowing right and left as if she were a queen. The scene may 
 have been a little ridiculous to anyone who did not know its 
 significance. Agatha felt a queen to-day, among her own 
 people, with this fine young son of hers beside her. It seemed 
 fitting they should all turn out to do him honour. 
 
 As for Desmond, he was very uncomfortable and supremely 
 embarrassed, and would have given anything to have been 
 able to escape. 
 
 At the village of Little Marley there were more speeches. 
 Little Marley could not boast a mayor and councillors, but 
 there were the schoolmaster and the oldest inhabitant, school 
 children and the rest. This time Desmond could only stammer 
 out that it was awfully good of them, that he was sure he 
 didn't deserve their welcome. He would not even stand up in 
 the carriage. Lady Grindelay felt impelled to take the task 
 out of his hands. When they saw she was going to speak, they 
 crowded round; but she was quite unembarrassed, and sat 
 well forward. 
 
 *' My dear son is too much moved by his reception to be 
 able to respond as he would wish. He bids me tell you that if 
 he fought well it was because he was fighting not only for 
 England but for Marley. There have always been Wansteads 
 here, as you know. And many of them have fought for their 
 country. His gallant brothers in arms, these Marley men," 
 she looked at them, " rode by his side, and 30U know how 
 they acquitted themselves. If you and they are proud of 
 him, you can guess how much prouder I am — ^his mother." 
 She stopped there a minute, and they cheered her. 
 
 " Good old Polly Providence ! " one shouted. 
 
 " And there is another proud one here," she indicated
 
 FULL SWING 259 
 
 Eunice, "almost equally well known to you all, a Wanstead 
 too, who is soon to be his wife " 
 
 She was not allowed to go on. 
 
 " Long life to them both." 
 
 She wanted to make her announcement at that dramatic 
 moment, and they caught her intention quickly. It had 
 always been expected, but they cheered and cheered. Eunice 
 was a little overcome, and Desmond, seeing her turn pale, 
 bent forward from his seat and took her hand. They cheered 
 that too, and he relinquished it quickly. 
 
 There seemed some little confusion or disorder at the back 
 of the crowd. They caught a glimpse of a woman without a 
 bonnet, red-faced and dishevelled, with grey hair. Then the 
 crowd closed up and shut her out from their sight. 
 
 " She's drunk his health once too often," one of the men 
 beside the carriage said, laughingly. "There'll be many of 
 them in that way to-night." 
 
 Lady Grindelay motioned to the men to go on after she 
 had made her speech. 
 
 "You did not mind my speaking for you?" she asked 
 Desmond. 
 
 " Good heavens, no! Isn't the thing nearly over? Can't 
 we have the horses put to, or get out and walk ? Haven't we 
 had enough ? " 
 
 " Don't be ungrateful. It is only for a little while longer. 
 Be patient." 
 
 They were drawn right up to the lodge gate. Desmond 
 could not be restrained then, he jumped out. 
 
 " Come along," he called to Eunice. 
 
 " May I ? " she asked her aunt, but hardly waited for the 
 answer. There were flags on the lodge too. 
 
 Late that evening, after dinner, when all had been dis- 
 cussed, the arches and speeches admired, and every incident 
 remembered and magnified, all to Desmond's honour, Eunice 
 said: 
 
 " I wonder what became of that poor woman, the one they 
 said was drunk, I hope someone took care of her, that she
 
 260 FULL SWING 
 
 wasn't crushed or trampled upon. I wonder who she was? 
 I seem to remember her, to have heard her voice before." 
 
 Neither Desmond nor Lady Grindelay had seen or heard 
 anything but a slight scuffle or confusion. 
 
 " I'll go down to the village if you like, after dinner," 
 Desmond said, " and inquire." 
 
 " The club house is to be kept open until twelve. We are 
 entertaining the men there. They would appreciate your 
 visit, you would have quite an ovation." 
 
 " Then I'm hanged if I go. I've had enough of ovations," 
 he added hastily, " unless you want me to go ? " He spoke 
 to both the women. 
 
 Eunice was not anxious he should leave the house unless 
 she went with him. Lady Grindelay thought it permissible 
 that Desmond should remain quietly at home with them that 
 first evening. As for the woman of whom Eunice spoke, 
 nothing serious could have happened to her or they would 
 surely have heard. 
 
 " Her voice was strangely familiar to me," Eunice said 
 again. "And yet I don't seem to have heard it for a long 
 time. She seemed to be angry about something, or scolding. 
 It was as if I remember her always scolding or grumbling." 
 
 But the impression was a faint one, and faded quickly be- 
 fore Lady Grindelay's next speech. 
 
 " Those children will have to be marshalled differently 
 before the wedding. They just stood about anyhow and stared. 
 They must go in twos, dropping flowers." 
 
 She began to plan the wedding festivities. 
 
 " I shall do it all from Marley. The marquee on the lawn, 
 and the refreshments."
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 Desmond and Eunice pleaded for a holiday when the morrow 
 came. They wanted a day by themselves, a day in the woods, 
 to be let off all visits of ceremony and echoes fi-om yesterday's 
 fete. Lady Grindelay was doubtful, and thought it a little 
 irregular. People might call, and Desmond ought to be there 
 to receive them. But she could deny Desmond nothing, was 
 unable to say " No " to him. 
 
 The next few days hardly need chronicling. Lady Grin- 
 delay was kept up by circumstances. Everything seemed to 
 be shaping to her wishes. Even the Odontoglossum showed 
 symptoms of flowering, and Sanders was watching it by night 
 and day. All the preparations were being pushed forward. 
 Desmond had persuaded her to shorten the waiting time by a 
 week. She had attacks of pain, but her courage overrode them. 
 Dr. Eeid was in constant attendance; but he and Reynolds 
 kept the secret well. The young people were to go to Switzer- 
 land for their honeymoon. Lady Grindelay promised to nurse 
 herself wliilst they were away. If a second operation were 
 unavoidable, she would go through with it then. Their 
 home was to be at Marley, of course. A suite of rooms was to 
 be re-fumished, bathrooms were to be added; already work- 
 men were coming and going, measurements being made, papers 
 and tiles being chosen. There were to be modern comforts, 
 but without any alterations in the main features of the rooms. 
 There was talk of an electric installation; but carvings and 
 mouldings had to be considered. 
 
 And, of course, there was the trousseau. Boxes of under- 
 clothes came down from town, and all the needle-women in 
 the village were already employed. Madame Pariset herself, 
 with two assistants, came from London, and took orders for 
 twelve dresses, the wedding-gown amongst them. 
 
 Lady Grindelay saw to all details herself; there was no 
 end to what she wished to do for them. She asked whether 
 
 261
 
 262 FULL SWING 
 
 they liked this or that, approved of this or the other. Her 
 anxiety to please them, or rather Desmond, was touching. 
 But they only really wanted each other, to enjoy together the 
 days in the mellow woods, or afloat on the quiet river. They 
 were so happy that they could hardly speak of the future. 
 The woods were a cathedral where their love became sanc- 
 tified. Oak and ash and elm interlaced their boughs and 
 soughed in benediction, fluttering down their leaves. The 
 birds delayed their flight, twittering wedding songs, and the 
 skylark sang its psean over their heads, pouring it out like a 
 triumph. The long days were all too short. Each night when 
 they parted his eyes said that such partings would soon be at 
 an end. And hers downcast, or the faint flush that came into 
 her cheek, or the way her hands clung to his, answered that 
 she too knew it. And Agatha watched them. Whether they 
 were in her sight, or by themselves in the woods, or on the 
 river, she watched them. She had made so many mistakes. 
 Looking back, it seemed her life had been one long mistake. 
 Her conduct to her step-mother, her rejection of Andrew, the 
 way she had failed in obtaining Monica's confidence, then her 
 own hasty and ill-considered marriage. But now, now every- 
 thing was coming right, and when her time came she could 
 go in peace. 
 
 She would not have the announcement of the engagement 
 in the London papers. Andrew believed she had a vague idea 
 that Gabrielle Radlett might see it there, and he found occa- 
 sion to let her know that Gabrielle Eadlett was still in South 
 Africa. 
 
 There is no doubt she is feathering her nest well out 
 there. I hear she has the Duke of Illminster in tow now. 
 Some South African paper announced an engagement be- 
 tween them. His mother is hurrying out to them.'* 
 
 " But the woman's husband is still alive ! " 
 
 *' No. He died in prison a few weeks before his release. 
 But you need not have any misgiving. She is flying at higher 
 game now than Desmond." 
 
 Agatha said indignantly that she had no misgiving, never 
 had had a misgiving. Nevertheless, the preparations were
 
 FULL SWING 263 
 
 hurried on, and, through that conversation with Andrew, 
 Desmond secured his extra week. Three altogether, and one 
 and a half of them were already gone, when, at the dinner 
 table, Eunice, like a stone into still waters, dropped her 
 irrelevant remark. 
 
 " Oh, Desmond, I forgot to tell you, I have remembered 
 whose voice that woman's reminded me of. Isn't it funny? 
 I dreamt of her last night. And when I woke this morning 
 I remembered quite well. Didn't Desmond have an Irish 
 nurse, auntie; when he was quite a small boy? Usen't she to 
 quarrel with mine? It was of Desmond's old Irish nurse 
 she reminded me." 
 
 " What, Biddy ! You can't remember Biddy. She hasn't 
 been here since I was seven years old." 
 
 He appealed to his mother. 
 
 " She can't remember Biddy, can she, mother ? She 
 couldn't have been more than four years old at the time. I 
 wrote to poor old Biddy from South Africa, she was awfully 
 devoted to me. Mother, it wouldn't be possible, would it? 
 If it were possible I'd like to have her and Larry at the wed- 
 ding. It wouldn't be too much of an undertaking for them 
 to come over, do you think ? Biddy must be nearly seventy. 
 A good old sort." 
 
 "I believe she is here, that she came over to see your 
 triumphant entry. I'm sure I knew her voice," Eunice in- 
 sisted. 
 
 " Eunice certainly could not remember Biddy — a drunken 
 and disreputable old woman." Lady Grindelay spoke with 
 unusual difficulty, and both of them looked at her with sur- 
 prise. She tried to command herself. " She had a very bad 
 influence on you." 
 
 Desmond caught her meaning and flushed. So much had 
 been forgotten, now it seemed that that scene at Languedoc, 
 at his father's funeral, was still remembered. But he could 
 not be disloyal. 
 
 " It wasn't Biddy's fault," he said quickly. 
 
 " I never want to hear her name again," his mother an- 
 swered heavily. And then, noting his expression, added : " I
 
 264 FULL SWING 
 
 would rather not send for any of your old Irish pen- 
 sioners " 
 
 " Of course not, not if you don't want to. I'm sorry I 
 mentioned it." He was surprised at the way she had met his 
 request, quite an idle one. He never guessed what was at the 
 back of her refusal, or, if he guessed, he guessed wrongly. 
 He thought the memory of his conduct at Languedoc still hurt 
 her. He was angry with himself for having revived the past, 
 and showed his regret all through the evening by being almost 
 demonstratively affectionate. 
 
 It was no reminiscence of Languedoc or his father's funeral 
 that had distressed Lady Grindelay. But Andrew had told 
 her Gabrielle Radlett's baby had been sent to Biddy ! An 
 indefinable fear seized upon her. Afterwards in the big 
 drawing-room with the William and Mary furniture, embroid- 
 ered covers, and heavy curtains, she regained her self-posses- 
 sion. Biddy could not be at Marley, impossible that any 
 danger could threaten ! Only nine more days to the wed- 
 ding. Yet, for the first time, a doubt assailed her. Why had 
 she been so anxious Eunice should know nothing of Des- 
 mond's story? The girl would have some day to bear her 
 woman's burden of disillusionment. Should she learn it 
 now, at this late hour, her trust complete and her faith un- 
 bounded, would it not be more painful than if she had known 
 it when his absence had invested him with so much romance 
 that in the blaze of it even this might have been obscured? 
 In any case, it was too late now. She had imposed her will 
 upon both Andrew and Desmond, and if she had any mis- 
 giving neither of them must know it. 
 
 " I am sorry I had to oppose you about having your old 
 nurse over," she said to Desmond after Eunice had left them. 
 Desmond answered quickly : 
 
 " Never mind, mother. Don't give it another thought." 
 
 " I don't want you to think me prejudiced, but she was 
 always very difficult, and not sober." 
 
 "I know. I wish I had not asked it; it was only an idle 
 thought. Forget it, mother. You've been so good to me, and 
 you've forgotten so much."
 
 FULL SWING 265 
 
 " You were so young/"" she said. 
 
 " Everybody is so good to me. Sometimes it seems impos- 
 sible I can be so happy," he broke out, surprising her by his 
 impetuosity and emotion. But he was convinced now of her 
 sympathy. " I want to call in the whole world to see. But 
 not Biddy, or Larry, if 3^ou don't wish it." He put his hand 
 on hers. " I'm growing more what you wanted me to be, 
 mother, aren't I ? " His tone asked that her emotion should 
 meet his, her sympathy overflow in words. 
 
 " I have no fault to find with you." 
 
 " I'd like to make up to you for everything." 
 
 " There is very little for which you have not compen- 
 sated me," she answered. And she had hardly before said so 
 much as that to him, although she had known it so well. 
 It had been for him, more than for Eunice, that she had im- 
 posed secrecy upon them all ; that no one should find fault 
 with or condemn him. 
 
 " Have I ? Have I ? When we began to talk of Biddy it 
 reminded me. . . ." 
 
 '' Of what neither of us wished to remember." He caught 
 the agitation in her voice. 
 
 "We won't talk of it again, then. But it was curious 
 that Eunice should have thought she recognised Biddy's 
 voice, wasn't it ? " 
 
 " Very strange." 
 
 " Not possible, you tliink ? " 
 
 " Quite impossible." 
 
 And then that faint, indefinable misgiving came over her 
 again. 
 
 " I cannot bear to think of her in the same town with you, 
 with either of you," she said involuntarily. 
 
 Desmond did not, of course, know the secret of her intol- 
 erance' of Biddy's presence in Marley. 
 
 " You're not going to have- a bad night, are you ? There's 
 no need. Biddy can't be at Marley without our knowing of it. 
 Eunice is imaginative, she often had strange dreams, you 
 know. She thinks of me all the time. Mother, isn't it beau- 
 tiful the way she thinks of me, and knew I should come back
 
 266 FULL SWING 
 
 although everybody else thought I was dead ? I m not nearly 
 good enough for her. I'm so glad now that you wouldn't let 
 me tell her about — about that. She could never have under- 
 stood. She's so innocent, living here all her days by you, and 
 in the woods. Oh ! mother, if I should fail her ! " 
 
 " You won't fail her." 
 
 " I failed you both once." His voice was low. 
 
 " She will never know." 
 
 " If the McKays had not found out that it was no mar- 
 riage ! " 
 
 " Be thankful they did. Forget it ! " 
 
 " I've never been anything but thankful ; overwhelmed 
 sometimes when I think of what might have been. I couldn't 
 face life without Eunice, I want her in every way. Some- 
 times I can't believe it is true, that in nine days we shall 
 be married, that we are going away tc^ether. How good you've 
 been to us ! " 
 
 She had never been gentler, nor spoken to him more 
 openly than to-night. 
 
 " I am being good to myself too, I want you both here. 
 It seems like a dream to me, too, sometimes. Such a good 
 dream to stay with me whilst you are honeymooning. Mar- 
 ley, with both of you to come after me ! You will have chil- 
 dren. I want to see your children running about in the 
 garden. It seems only yesterday when you and Eunice played 
 there. I did not understand having a son then." 
 
 " I wanted to climb into your lap sometimes, like Eunice 
 did. When I was disobedient and defiant it was because I was 
 miserable. I thought England was going to be a dreadful 
 place, all laws and restrictions; and that you'd hate me. But 
 you weren't a bit like what I expected, and I couldn't bear to 
 think of you hating me. You don't know how strange it was. 
 I wanted to kick and scream to see what you'd say or do. But 
 what I wanted most of all," he was fingering her dress and 
 telling her these strange things with a far-off wistful look, 
 *' was that you should snatch me up, and kiss me, or that you 
 should soften down on me with one of those smiles you kept 
 for Eunice."
 
 FULL SWING 267 
 
 " Do you wonder I cannot bear to remember those days — 
 Languedoc or Ireland, with those old servants who set you 
 against me?'' she interrupted agitatedly. 
 
 She was not consciously disingenuous, but greatly moved 
 and unwilling to show it. 
 
 " Things were better after I went to Eton, weren't they ? " 
 
 " It is best of all now." 
 
 " It will be better still when we come back."
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 Biddy could not have been at Little Marley without either 
 Desmond or his mother knowing it. But she could be, and 
 was, at Great Marley, laid up in the hospital since the day 
 of Desmond's triumphant entr}\ She had a burden in her 
 arms when she was brought there. Biddy had not been in- 
 jured by the crowd, she had no broken limbs, nothing but a 
 bruise or two. But Biddy had been drinking for years, and 
 that, with the excitement following close on her journey, a 
 little rough usage, perhaps from the crowd, and the ungov- 
 ernable rage into which she had fallen when her way to the 
 carriage wasi impeded, had brought on what the hospital 
 matron called " D.T/s," and the young house surgeon, " cir- 
 rhosis of the liver." 
 
 The diagnosis or prognosis is unimportant. All the after- 
 noon of Desmond's home-coming she had drunk and maudled 
 and cursed, and in the evening she had been brought here. At 
 first she was violent, disturbing the other patients by her 
 cries, and her removal to the infirmary ward of the workhouse 
 had been discussed. This would have been en route to the 
 county asylum. But they wanted to see if she would improve, 
 and be able to give some account of herself and the baby she 
 carried in her arms. 
 
 " She's too old for it to be her own child. And it was 
 dressed in fine clothes, although they were so dirty." 
 
 " Well, nurse, we'll give her another twenty-four hours," 
 the visiting doctor said cheerfully. " But I can't have her dis- 
 turbing the whole ward. I've given her bromide, and I'll see 
 her again to-morrow. Perhaps then she will be able to tell 
 us something about herself and where she comes from. There 
 were a lot of Irish over for the harvest. She may have been 
 left behind." 
 
 No one connected her with the great house, with Marley 
 
 268
 
 FULL SWING 269 
 
 Court, or dreamed the child she carried was grand-daughter to 
 Lady Grindelay. 
 
 Biddy had a fine constitution for all her drinking habits 
 and the pitch to which they had brought her. AVhen her brain 
 began to clear she held her tongue and pretended to have 
 lost her memory. 
 
 " Don't be moidering me/' s.he would say, when they ques- 
 tioned her. She was quite cunning and full of blarney. She 
 had money with her, wrapped up in the comer of an old 
 red handkerchief. 
 
 " It's grateful I am for all your kindness ; I won't be 
 troublin' much longer. I'm feelin' much stronger this after- 
 noon." 
 
 Ten days she had lain in delirium, and at first was too 
 weak to put her feet to the ground. They brought her the 
 baby, but she could hardly hold it. 
 
 " I'll be betther whin I've tasted the air. Will ye hould 
 her for me, an' let me get out for a spell ? " 
 
 They would not at first, but afterwards they yielded to her 
 desire to try the strength that was returning. They kept the 
 handkerchief with the money, as well as the baby, hostages, 
 as it were. The rules of the new hospital at Marley were not 
 nearly so inelastic as those at London — Guy's or St. Thomas's, 
 for instance. 
 
 " She can keep the bed for a day or two. Let her go out 
 for an hour since she's so anxious for air. A queer old thing ! 
 She can't get any drink if you don't let her have her money. 
 She won't beg, she's not that sort." 
 
 The first day Biddy had permission to go out she came 
 back to the hospital in less than an hour. She had had to 
 cling to the railings, and recognised her own weakness. They 
 let her keep her bed; there was no other applicant, and her 
 case interested them. The baby, too, through cold or expo- 
 sure, developed iritis and justified itself as an in-patient. 
 
 The day Biddy Malone felt equal to the purpose that had 
 brought her to England was just three days before the one 
 on which Desmond and Eunice were to be married. Biddy 
 knew nothing of the marriage. She thought Desmond was
 
 270 FULL SWING 
 
 already married to the mother of the child that had been sent 
 to her to care for. She had no doubt it was a secret marriage, 
 that he feared his mother's anger. There was nothing too bad 
 or too incredible for Biddy to think of Lady Grindelay. 
 
 " I'll not be trustin' the child to her, she'd be for makin' 
 away wid it. It's Mr. Desmond himsilf I've got to see. He'll 
 be wantin' his child, an' the mother of it in hidin' belike." 
 
 Her brain was still not very clear, but something of this 
 sort was in her mind. The day of the procession she had the 
 baby in her arms, and tried to hold it up for Desmond to see, 
 but the crowd prevented her; she had fought with them and 
 been knocked down. To-day she was quite sober, although 
 a little weak. 
 
 As she turned into the High Street, the carriage and pair 
 from the Court came past, the old-fashioned barouche with its 
 greys, the coachman and footman on the box, with their early 
 Victorian hats adorned with gold braid and acorns. They 
 were driving slowly, but their slow drive took them out of her 
 sight before she had done more than see her "bhoy," and 
 with a " foine young lady " by his side. She started to run 
 after them, but tripped and nearly fell. 
 
 "Where are you going to, mother?" A kindly young 
 milkman held her up; the cans in his cart jingled, but the 
 pony stood still. " You nearly went under their feet. Lucky 
 for you I'd just got out. You mustn't run about the roads 
 like that." 
 
 " An' who was ut that was passin' ? Shure an' didn't I 
 see him with her by his side ? " She gasped out her inquiry, 
 she was quite oblivious of her danger from the horses' hoofs. 
 " Young man, can ye say who it moight be ? " She was almost 
 dignified, although anxious, laying hold of his arm. 
 
 " You must be a stranger in these parts, or you'd have 
 known that was the Court carriage, the young lord in it, and 
 her he's to wed on Thursday." 
 
 "To wed is ut?" 
 
 " Where have you come from not to know ? " 
 
 " An' where'll they be goin' to now ? "
 
 FULL SWING 271 
 
 Her Irish wits were returning to her; the young man was 
 stolid and slow in comparison. 
 
 "Going to?" 
 
 " Where will they be drivin' ? " 
 
 " How should I know ? To the station most likely." 
 
 " An' they'll be eomin' back this way ? " 
 
 " What a one you are with your questioning. What other 
 way could they come ? " 
 
 He got into the cart again, gathering up the reins, making 
 a noise the pony seemed to understand. 
 
 " I'd advise you to keep on the pavement," he called out. 
 And then " Milk ho ! Milk ho ! " came from him monot- 
 onously. 
 
 Biddy Malone stood stock still where he had left her, a tall, 
 rather picturesque figure in her shawl and uncovered head. 
 She took his advice about the pavement for the moment, but 
 she meant to go back into the road later. 
 
 " Cock him up, indade ! He'll be seein' me a long way 
 off. An' she — she'll be glad to be hearin' of her baby, an' 
 seein' it, maybe ; if that's hersilf wid him ! An' what for are 
 they wantin' to kape it quiet. 'Tis something that ould divil's 
 up to, belike. But I'll hear what my bairn says. Maybe he 
 knows nothin' at all about it, and ut's a conspiracy." 
 
 The carriage was on its way to the station as the milk- 
 man had surmised. There was no Madame Pariset for Des- 
 mond, to come down and fit him with clothes for his wedding 
 journey. Desmond was going up to town for a final trying 
 on, and Eunice was seeing him off. He was not coming back 
 until the next day. There was a bachelor dinner to be given, 
 a farewell dinner. 
 
 " I'll get the fitting through this afternoon, and catch the 
 9.40 to-morrow morning. I grudge every minute I'm away 
 from you," he said, with one foot on the step of the railway 
 carriage. 
 
 " It will be the last time," she reassured him, smiling, 
 blushing. " It's only for a few hours," she said again, after 
 that long, last kiss. 
 
 But she felt, as she went out of the station, that the hours
 
 373 FULL SWING 
 
 would seem too many. Of course, Desmond must give this 
 dinner party. It was to men he had been with in South 
 Africa, his brother officers, school friends. Jimmy Thwaites 
 was to be the gxiest of the evening. Eunice, as she drove off, 
 pictured Jimmy being carried to his seat at Desmond's right 
 hand. Her heart was warm to Desmond for having insisted 
 on it. It was so like him. She was still thinking of Des- 
 mond and his many perfections as she drove down Marley 
 High Street. The horses were pulled up with a jerk, the 
 footman jumped down and came to her side. 
 
 " Beg pardon, miss, but there's a woman in the road. 
 She won't move." 
 
 " Won't move ! Where is she ? " 
 
 " It's here that I am." Biddy answered for herself. When, 
 she had achieved her object, and stayed the progress of the 
 carriage, she came slowly to the door. '' It's mesilf that's 
 here." 
 
 And then, for Eunice was gazing at her in surprise, and 
 the footman was waiting for instructions, she added: 
 
 " I'm thinkin' ye'd like to have a word wid me." 
 
 " Do I know you ? I seem to know you," Eunice asked 
 wonderingly. 
 
 " It's Biddy Malone I am, from away over." 
 
 " Then I was right, after all ; you were in the crowd that 
 day. You are Desmond's old nurse ? " 
 
 She leaned forward impulsively, the encounter seemed quite 
 natural to her, natural, too, that Biddy should want to see 
 her nursling now that he had become a hero. 
 
 " He has just gone up to town. I am so sorry. I know 
 he would have wished to see you." 
 
 She would have liked to have bidden her get in, driven 
 her to the Court, there to await Desmond's return, but she 
 remembered how strange her aunt had been about this woman, 
 and hesitated. Biddy saw the first impulse and the hesitation. 
 
 " Won't ye be gittin' out ? " she wheedled, adding in a low 
 voice : " There's somethin' I'm wishful to be tellin' ye." 
 
 There was only one person in the world for Eunice. This 
 old woman had nursed him when he was a baby, been with
 
 FULL SWING 273 
 
 him all through his early years. Eunice was never tired 
 of hearing about Desmond and those early years, 
 
 " I should love to hear. You can drive on, John. Pick 
 me up at Layton's ; I shall have tea there." 
 
 Layton's was the principal confectioner's in the town. 
 Eunice and Desmond often went there for tea or ices. John 
 thought it was rather " a rum go " to take the old woman 
 with her, but charity covers a multitude of eccentricities. 
 
 Neither John nor the coachman recognised Biddy. 
 
 " Spun her a tale no doubt. It's no concern of ours," the 
 coachman said, when John repeated that it was " a rum go." 
 " She's growing like her aunt. Any beggar can get hold of 
 them if they go the right way to work. We'll get along to 
 the ' Arms.' " 
 
 Biddy stalked, tall and picturesque, by Eunice's side. 
 
 " We'll not be talkin' just yet," she said mysteriously. 
 
 Eunice was in no hurry. 
 
 " You'll have a cup of tea with me, and tell me all you 
 can remember. He is coming back to-morrow. You want to 
 see him, don't you? He has never forgotten you. Where 
 are you staying ? Why haven't you been up before ? " 
 
 " Is ut to the Court I'd be comin' to see hersilf ? " 
 
 Eunice had no thought of disloyalty to her aunt, but she 
 knew Lady Grindelay was a little hard on the outside, and was 
 deemed intolerant by tliose who did not know her. 
 
 " She would have understood you wanted to see him again, 
 and arranged something. I'll tell her when I go home." 
 
 " You'll be tellin' her ! " 
 
 Biddy stopped still in her astonishment. 
 
 " She won't mind," Eunice answered confidently. " Here's 
 Layton's. We'll go upstairs, there is a nice quiet room. You'd 
 like eggs with your tea, wouldn't you ? " 
 
 She gave her order. They knew her quite well at the 
 shop, and asked after Lady Grindelay, and if her health was 
 keeping up. 
 
 " This is Lord Grindelay's old nurse. We are going to have 
 tea together. She has come all the way from Ireland to see 
 him. Mind you send us up a nice tea." 
 18
 
 274 FULL SWING 
 
 Biddy followed Eunice upstairs slowly. She was shrewd, 
 and began to have her doubts. Eunice looked very young in 
 her light clothes and wide hat ; kindness was in her blue eyes 
 and fresh young voice, she seemed frank, not as if she had a 
 secret to hold. 
 
 In the quiet room upstairs, with its white-topped tables, 
 whilst they waited for their tea to be brought, Eunice began 
 at once to question Biddy. 
 
 " Tell me everything you remember about him. Begin at 
 the beginning, when he was quite a tiny baby." 
 
 " Is ut of Misther Desmond, God bless him, ye're wantin' 
 me to tell ye ? " Biddy said slowly. 
 
 " Who else should it be ? " Eunice laughed merrily. 
 " Here comes the tea ; they haven't kept us waiting long, have 
 they ? I'm going to wait upon you, to pour out. I expect the 
 scones will come later; they're cooking them. You'll begin 
 with the bread and butter." Eunice knew how the old women 
 at Little Marley liked their tea. " I'm just going to sit and 
 listen, you must do all the talking." 
 
 She had no misgiving. This was something of an adven- 
 ture, something to tell Aimt Agatha over dinner, something 
 to chaff Desmond about. She would hear when he first spoke, 
 and the things he said, anecdotes of his babyhood. 
 
 " Go on, I want to hear everything. I recollect how dis- 
 obedient he was, and that my nursie called him ' a limb.' He 
 began to ride when he was three years old, didn't he? You 
 must have been afraid every time he was out of your sight." 
 She was encouraging her to talk. 
 
 Biddy stirred her tea, and poured it out into the saucer 
 slowly. 
 
 " Go on," said Eunice; " begin." 
 
 "Is ut of Mr. Desmond ye want to hear? Not her I've 
 brought wid me ? " 
 
 " Whom have you brought with you ? No, of course not ; 
 it's only of Desmond. Is Larry with you ? Desmond has told 
 me about Larry." 
 
 " It's not Larry I've got wid me. Is it you that's goin' 
 to marry himsilf in three days time, thin?"
 
 FULL SWING 375 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " An' your aunt, her up at the house, she's led ye on to ut ? " 
 
 " She is quite pleased." 
 
 " I recollect now. It's you was the child in the white frock, 
 her that had never got to get her feet wet, that stood before 
 my lambeen bawn, before the own son of her." 
 
 The old woman raised her voice. Eunice thought she 
 seemed to be angry, and tried to soothe her. 
 
 '• But all that's a long time ago. Desmond comes first 
 now." 
 
 " Ah, does he ? An' she's made up tliis f oine match betune 
 yez, f orcin' him to ut belike ? " 
 
 The old woman certainly seemed angry. She was not 
 drinking her tea, but sat staring at the girl, her dark eyes 
 fierce. 
 
 " She is not forcing him to it," Eunice answered, smiling, 
 dimpling, but a little afraid nevertheless, wondering whether 
 she had been too impulsive, now that it was too late, wondering 
 if her guest were drunk or mad, whether anyone would* come 
 if she called. The thought of the scones comforted her; they 
 would be here soon, and Mrs. Layton, stout, motherly Mrs. 
 Layton, with them. 
 
 " He wants to marry me. You mustn't think auntie has 
 arranged it." 
 
 " An' how about his wife an' child ? How about his wife 
 an' child ? " Biddy asked fiercely. She banged the table with 
 her fist. " Tell me that. What^s to become of the child ? Is 
 ut the dirty suck she'll be puttin' on ut ? " 
 
 Of course she was mad, stark, staring mad. Desmond's 
 " wife and child ! " The phrase flushed her. She was so soon 
 to be Desmond's wife. The mere thought of a child, a baby, 
 Desmond's and hers, brought the flush hot, and she made no 
 answer to this mad woman. Now she only wanted to get 
 away from her. 
 
 " I'll go down and see Mrs. Layton myself, she is such a 
 long time coming." 
 
 She rose, but Biddy rose with her, tall and menacing. 
 
 " You'll not lave this room. I don't belave ye know a
 
 276 FULL SWING 
 
 word about it. You've got to hear. An' to think of the 
 wickedness of her ! An' him with a wife an' child already." 
 
 Biddy was pouring out fierce, incoherent words. 
 
 " Let me go, you are making a mistake, you must tell him 
 to-morrow." 
 
 Eunice was startled and alarmed, did not know what to 
 say, how to make her escape. Of course tlie woman was mad. 
 She ought to have known it before, when she saw her standing 
 in the road. 
 
 "You think you're the first wid him; that ut's his wife 
 ye'll be ! " Biddy spoke more slowly now, and with less inco- 
 herent vehemence. She could see well enough now that it was 
 news she was breaking to the girl. " The wickedness of ut! 
 You that's little more than a cliild yersilf ! They haven't tould 
 ye a word about ut, nor Desmond himsilf belike. I misdoubted 
 whin there was no word of ut in his letter. Ye don't belave 
 what I'm tellin' ye? An' haven't I got the bit uv writin' in 
 me pocket ? " She produced a worn letter. " Here, take ut, 
 an' read for yersilf." 
 
 Because now she was more than a little frightened, not at 
 what she was saying, but by the woman herself, this mad 
 Irishwoman, and did not wish to irritate her further, Eunice 
 put out her hand for tlie paper. Her eyes fell perfunctorily on 
 the page, the letter could be no concern of hers. But her eyes 
 having fallen on the page remained there, fastened on it. 
 
 "This is to Biddy Malone, Desmond's old nurse. 
 I am sending you his hahy as he desired. You're to care 
 for and keep it until either o-r both of us co7ne hack from 
 South Africa. The ivoman who brings him to you can, 
 stay a night or two I suppose. She's an old friend of 
 mine, and I've given her all instructions. 
 
 " (Lady) Gabrielle Grindelay." 
 
 " Gabrielle Grindelay! " 
 
 Eunice's eyes clung to the page, coming away slowly. 
 " An' what do ye think now ? " Biddy said triumphantly. 
 " It isn't true ! " Eunice answered unsteadily. " I know it 
 isn't true."
 
 FULL SWING 277 
 
 " Perhaps ye'll be readin' it agin." 
 
 " It isn't true ; you're a wicked woman. No, I don't mean 
 that, but you've been deceived." 
 
 There was a constriction in her throat, and she felt as if 
 she would like to cry. She had not known there were such 
 wicked people in the world. The full sense of the letter had 
 hardly come to her, but she was ashamed, as if she had 
 stumbled into sometliing unclean, and shocked, but, above 
 all, incredulous. She wanted to get away from this old woman 
 and her dreadful words, her stupid letter. 
 
 " Not thrue, thin, is it ? An' her the livin' image of her 
 feyther. Do ye remimber the curly head ov him, and the 
 bonnie blue eyes ? I've the child wid me at the hospital. Per- 
 haps ye'd like to see her. She's not so big, but she's the mole 
 on her arm an' all, the livin' image ov him, the darlint." 
 
 " Be quiet, be quiet. I won't listen." 
 
 She felt she must get away, out of the room, away from 
 the shop, away from tliis disreputable old woman and the 
 horrible things she was saying. 
 
 " It's no marriage at all ye're goin' through," Biddy said 
 solemnly. " I don't know what lies they've bin tellin' you 
 nor him. He'll be thinkin' he's free, surely; it's not him 
 that ud be playin' the trick on ye." 
 
 Mrs. Layton came in with the hot scones and stopped short 
 at the door. Eunice was white and her eyes were frightened. 
 Mrs. Layton had known Eunice since she was a child ; she put 
 the plate down and went to her. 
 
 "■' Why, Miss Eunice ! " She looked suspiciously at BidSy. 
 " What's she been saying to you ? Is anything the matter ? " 
 
 " There's notliing the matter." The girl held up her 
 head and maintained her courage. " Wliat she's been saying 
 to me has to be proved." She met Biddy's eyes and went on 
 defiantly : " She has told me a stor}', and I am going to see 
 if it is true." 
 
 " It's thrue enough," Biddy put in. 
 
 Mrs. Layton stood irresolutely. 
 
 " I never did hold with them Irish," she said. 
 
 Eunice felt that it was for Desmond she was fighting.
 
 278 FULL SWII^G 
 
 The room vras very dark and swa}'ing about her, and inside 
 she was trembling. But now it seemed to her that she must 
 fight for Desmond, for his honour. Someone had been writing 
 lies about him, wicked, incredible lies. He would not be back 
 until to-morrow to defend himself, but she would defend him. 
 
 " I will drive back with you to the hospital and see this 
 child. You will have to give me that letter. I can't think who 
 wrote it; it must have been some wicked, wiched woman. 
 There is no other Lady Grindelay but Aunt Agatha." 
 
 The carriage was already outside; she heard it drive up, 
 saw it from the window. The back of the coachman gave 
 her confidence, a sense of solidity came back to her, the room. 
 ceased to sway. 
 
 " If you have finished your tea,'' she said to Biddy, all 
 her young dignity in arms, " we will go now." 
 
 Already she was imagining herself telling Desmond of this, 
 saying : " Of course I never believed a word of her story, never 
 for a single instant." 
 
 The stairs were uneven and close, and the shop smelt in- 
 tolerably warm and nauseating. She was glad to find herself 
 in the carriage, with Biddy beside her. 
 
 Biddy sat with set face, malice or triumph in the dark 
 eyes. It was of Lady Grindelay she was thinking, " the foine 
 English lady who had thought herself too good for them all 
 at Langucdoc ! " Whatever she had meant to do, she, Biddy 
 Malone, would get even with her now. 
 
 " Was she thinkin' me such an ownshuck that it was easy 
 to throw dust in me eyes ? " she thought. 
 
 " To the hospital, to Marley Hospital," Eunice told the 
 footman. 
 
 " I think you ought to give me that letter," she said, after 
 they had been driving a few minutes, when the air had revived 
 her. 
 
 " I'll give it up to thim as had it wrote to me." 
 
 " You'll give it up to — to Lord Grindelay ? " 
 
 " He'll not be wantin' it," she answered dryly. *' It's him'll 
 be knowin' what's inside." 
 
 Eunice did not speak again ; she could not.
 
 FULL SWING 279 
 
 When they got to the hospital, Biddy got out nimbly. 
 
 " You bide there, I'll bring her to you." 
 
 Eunice was glad to be alone, if one can apply such a word 
 as gladness to the state of her mind. She knew that it was 
 all untrue, that there was not a word of truth in what had 
 been told her. But for all that, the wild beating of her heart 
 had given her a dreadful pain in her back, her limbs were 
 trembling, and she felt sick and faint, almost incapable of 
 movement. If anyone she knew passed her she would be un- 
 able to speak to them or explain. She knew she was being a 
 coward, that she would not feel like this if she were not a 
 coward. Yet she held on to her faith like a heroine. " Not a 
 word of it is true, I can tell him I knew that all along," she 
 kept saying to herself. 
 
 Biddy reappeared. 
 
 " They won't let me bring her out. You'll have to come in." 
 
 Lady Grindelay subscribed generously to the Marley Hos- 
 pital, but Eunice had never been there. From all sickness 
 and sorrow, from pain and the knowledge of it, Agatha had 
 protected the girl. Matron and nurses glanced at her when 
 she went through. Her head was erect, but her face pale. 
 Perhaps they wondered or surmised a story ; not the true one, 
 but a story. 
 
 "Here she is, thin." 
 
 Eunice sat down on the chair beside the cot; she was 
 unable to stand. The baby lying in the cot had blue eyes, 
 and dark hair like Desmond's. They were Desmond's eyes 
 that looked at her or at Biddy. Eunice was .not going to faint; 
 she forgot everything else now but that she must not faint. 
 Biddy took the infant up in her arms. 
 
 " Look at the darlint now, an' the bright blue eyes of 
 her!" 
 
 " You must not do that," The nurse came forward. " She 
 must stay in her cot." 
 
 " Arrah thin, an' don't be interf erin' wid me." Certainly 
 there was a note of triumph in her voice. "I'm showin' 
 the lady the birth mark of her." She pulled up the sleeve of 
 the pink flannel nightgown. " On the inside of the arm now.
 
 280 FULL SWING 
 
 An' another she's got on her leg, an' your aftlier tellin' me she's 
 not belongin' to his lordship ! " 
 
 Eunice was of high heart and courage. She had made up 
 her mind to believe nothing. All the time it was in her mind 
 that she would be able to tell him she had believed nothing. 
 But the blue eyes, and now the little mole on that baby 
 arm . . . 
 
 When Desmond rowed and she steered for him she had 
 seen just such a one. Now she heard the plashing of the oars, 
 the sound of many waters in her ears, she thought she was 
 drowning. 
 
 When she recovered consciousness, in not more than a 
 few seconds, she was lying on the floor, and the matron was 
 kneeling beside her. 
 
 "Give me those smelling salts ! Don't be frightened, my 
 dear, lie still ; you only came over a little faint. If s the first 
 time you've been in a hospital, perhaps? You'll be all right 
 in a minute or two." 
 
 She looked such a child, her face and lips had grown 
 chalk-coloured, her lips trembled, but she did not answer. 
 
 " Fetch up Dr. Eeid. He is still downstairs," the matron 
 said hurriedly to one of the sisters. 
 
 Eunice managed to say that she did not want a doctor, 
 that she was getting better. A little colour was coming back 
 to her cheeks, and she tried to get up. 
 
 " Drink this, drink it up ; it won't harm you." 
 
 The matron gave her sal volatile, and she took it grate- 
 fully. Now she felt only that nobody must know. Some ter- 
 rible disgrace had fallen upon them, upon them all. For the 
 moment she could hardly remember what it was. She wanted 
 to get home, to be with Aunt Agatha. Nobody must ever 
 know. Slie could not collect her thoughts, but Biddy, with 
 the baby in her arms, spoke to her again. 
 
 " Ye'll belave it now," she said. " Mind ye, if s not him 
 I'm blamin'." 
 
 " Make her be quiet ! " 
 
 She did not know to whom she was speaking, but she
 
 EULL SWING 281 
 
 knew she would faint again if another word was said, she 
 could not bear another word. 
 
 " Make her be quiet," she said again, with* her white lips. 
 
 The matron told Biddy to be silent, spoke to her sharply. 
 The scene drew Avondering eyes, the matron was aware of it, 
 and half-led, half -carried the girl to her own sanctum. 
 
 Eunice was grateful for the quiet. She felt* extraordinarily 
 shaken and ashamed, the vertigo preventing her thinking 
 clearly. 
 
 " You are coming round nicely now." 
 
 " You — you won't let her come in ! " 
 
 " Nobody can come in here ; you lie down a bit on the 
 sofa. You're coming round, getting better, you know. Did 
 she startle or frighten you? "We don't know an}i;hing about 
 her here. She was brought in the day Lord Grindelay came 
 home." 
 
 Eunice shut her eyes. 
 
 " That's right, rest. You would feel quite* different if you 
 could sleep for five minutes. Come* a long way, have you ? " 
 
 Quite a capable and good woman this hospital matron, 
 but on fire with curiosity, simply on fire with it. 
 
 " I want to get home," Eunice said piteously, after a few 
 moments. She found herself crying, tears oozing through her 
 shut eyes. She wanted her aunt; nobody but Aunt Agatlia 
 could tell her what to do. To this girl Lady Grindelay must 
 have been something of a mother, for now all she wanted 
 was the shelter of her arms, to creep into them, whisper her 
 dreadful story, be told that the meaning of it was not what 
 it seemed.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 Lady Grindelat was just coming out of the hot-house, 
 wrapped in a shawl, with Reynolds as well as Sanders in 
 attendance. There was no doubt now about the Odonto- 
 glossom; the plant was full of spikes, the miracle had come 
 to pass. For years they had thought it dead; then it seemed 
 to be only asleep. Every spring after that there was sap in the 
 stem ; with the winter the living moisture dried up. Now, all 
 at once there was definite promise of flower. 
 
 " It will be in full bloom for the wedding," she was saying 
 to Sanders when the carriage stopped at the lodge. 
 
 " In blue flower, such a sight as never was seen," Sanders 
 answered, almost awed at the greatness of their good fortune. 
 " There's not another specimen in England." Sanders was 
 growing old, as she was herself. He was garrulous about his 
 successes, and detained her to talk of them. He had had 
 many prizes and triumphs, but this would top them all. 
 
 " I hear the carriage returning with Miss Eunice ; I will 
 tell her at once. There may be a spray, perhaps, to lay on 
 the wedding cake." 
 
 That sometliing was wrong she knew in a moment. In- 
 tuition told her even before she saw the matron in her nurse's 
 bonnet beside Eunice in the carriage coming up the drive. 
 
 " There has been an accident! My son!! " 
 
 Sanders put out an arm, but Reynolds was hefore him. 
 
 " Don't you agitate yourself, milady ; she is sitting upright. 
 It can't be anything. I'll go." 
 
 Reynolds thought of nothing but her mistress ; she tried to 
 keep her back. 
 
 Reynolds was beside the slow-moving carriage, the matron 
 was already explaining, before Lady Grindelay, proceeding 
 more slowly, got up to them. 
 
 " It's all right ; there has been no accident," Reynolds called 
 out. 
 
 282
 
 FULL SWING 283 
 
 "It was the first time she had been in a hospital," the 
 matron told Keynolds. " She fainted right away. I thought 
 it better to bring her home myself." 
 
 " It was very kind of you to do so. We will take charge 
 of her now; I am sure it is nothing." Lady Grindelay heard 
 the explanation and replied with dignity. 
 
 She pretended to believe that a first visit to a hospital had 
 brought that scared and piteous look into tlie girl's eyes. 
 
 " Auntie," the voice was tremulous, appealing. If the 
 matron was curious, Lady Grindelay did not intend that her 
 curiosity should be satisfied. She knew Eeynolds was to be 
 trusted. She directed her to take the matron away to the 
 morning-room, and look after her. Her own curiosity or 
 anxiety could wait. Waiting is a lesson old people have 
 learned. 
 
 " We will go into the drawing-room. You shall tell me 
 what has happened." She spoke soothingly ; she saw the girl 
 had been badly frightened or shaken, not hurt. 
 
 " Can't we be alone, auntie ? We must be alone." 
 
 Now she was in the drawing-room, no one tliere but herself 
 and her aunt. 
 
 " Don't try to talk yet." 
 
 " Auntie ! " She did not know how to begin. 
 
 " I am here beside you." 
 
 " You won't leave me ? " 
 
 " Of course not." 
 
 Now that she was lying on the sofa, with Aunt Agatha 
 beside her, Eunice began to feel better. She had never fainted 
 before. 
 
 " It was so dreadful." She put out a shaking hand, and 
 Agatha took it, held it in her own that had suddenly grown 
 chilled. 
 
 " Perhaps it will not seem so bad when you have told me." 
 
 " I can't tell you, I can't ever tell you." 
 
 " Something has shocked or alarmed you ? " 
 
 The girl was ashamed to speak. It could not be what she 
 thought or feared. She hardly knew what she feared. Auntie 
 would know, but could she tell her — could ehe?
 
 284 FULL SWING 
 
 " There is no hurry." 
 
 Agatha kept herself well in hand, although already she 
 was afraid, desperately afraid. 
 
 " It was after Desmond left you ? " 
 
 Eunice answered, after a pause : 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 What a long time it seemed — what a long time since she 
 had stood on the step of the railway carriage to kiss Desmond 
 good-bye ! 
 
 " After you left Desmond " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Someone met you, or spoke to you — frightened you ? " 
 
 A fear of the truth came to her, not the whole truth, but 
 a fear that from the quarter she had dreaded trouble it might 
 have come. Where the pain in her side was always, it deep- 
 ened ; the fear seemed to fasten there like the teeth of a rodent. 
 It was hard to sit upright, hard not to call out. For such pain 
 as this she had her morphia draught; but she must not move 
 or leave the girl until she knew the truth. Eunice had said 
 they must be by themselves. Not even Eeynolds must come 
 with the draught until she had heard what it was. 
 
 She had not long to wait. Once Eunice began she could 
 not leave off, pouring out a torrent of words, holding on to 
 Agatha's skirt presently as if she had been a child again, 
 hiding her face in her skirt. 
 
 " Of course I don't believe it. I know it could not be true. 
 I don't know why I fainted. I don't believe a word of it. 
 Desmond could not have a wife, and — and a child, could he, 
 auntie? Why does it look like him? What does it mean? 
 Be angry with me; tell me I ought not to have listened. As 
 I'm telling you it is all becoming unreal. Desmond has never 
 loved anybody but me, never. He couldn't have, could he? 
 Why am I shaking with terror ? Wliy aren't you answering ? " 
 
 Agatha put her hand to her side where the pain was. 
 
 " You don't think you could ring for Reynolds, do you ? " 
 She spoke faintly. Eunice caught a glimpse of her face, got 
 quickly to her feet and to the bell. 
 
 There was silence until Eeynolds came nmning; the
 
 FULL SWING 285 
 
 draught was quickly administered. Lady Grindelay stayed 
 quietly in her chair, detaining Eunice, sending Reynolds away 
 again quite soon. 
 
 The draught did its work. Eunice had hardly time to be 
 frightened. Eeynolds was a soothing and tactful person; 
 there never had been, and never will be again, a maid like her. 
 She knew there was something lying between these two just 
 now, that Lady Grindelay needed strengthening for it, and 
 that she must leave them alone. 
 
 " I am all right now, or I shall be in a few minutes. Do 
 not go, Eunice; do not be afraid — it is nothing. What you 
 have told me startled me a little, that was all. Eeynolds may 
 go. Lie down again; I shall be able to talk to you in a 
 minute or two." 
 
 Lady Grindelay sat still until the morphia began to do its 
 work; thinking what to tell the girl, how much, or how little. 
 In three days she would be Desmond's wife — in less than three 
 days. It was she who had insisted upon secrecy, and brought 
 them to this pass. She only thought now how to satisfy Eunice 
 without injuring Desmond in her eyes. 
 
 " There is certainly some truth in the story Desmond's 
 old Irish nurse has told you," she began. 
 
 " Some truth ! " 
 
 Beside her aunt, in this quiet drawing-room, Eunice had 
 begun already to discard, to disbelieve the story. ISTow the 
 colour flooded her, and her heart began pounding again. 
 
 "You will be married to him soon now; perhaps it 1=5 
 as well you should know. You must listen sympathetically, 
 try to understand. Boys and men are not sheltered like girls 
 in their homes. They have temptations ; there are bad women 
 in the world — women with whom you have never been brought 
 into contact." 
 
 " But Desmond, Desmond! " 
 
 Poor Agatha felt the difficulty, the impossibility of ex- 
 plaining what she herself so little understood. Yet she had 
 to explain. 
 
 " Desmond met one of these bad women — one of the worst 
 of them "
 
 286 I'UI^ SWING 
 
 " Is it true that Desmond is married ? It isn't true. Mar- 
 ried!" Her eyes were piteous with incredulity, bewilder- 
 ment. 
 
 " No, it is not true ; of course it is not true," Agatha an- 
 swered dully. " Since you and Desmond are to be married 
 in three days' time ! " 
 
 The colour rushed hot to the girl's cheeks, and she was 
 ashamed even to face her aunt because she had asked such a 
 question. She was on her knees now, her face in her aunt's 
 lap. Lady Grindelay strove for the right words, the words 
 that would explain and at the same time exonerate him. 
 
 " It is dreadful — ^but not as bad as you think." 
 
 " It was not — it was not his baby ? " Eunice stammered out. 
 
 " There comes a time when a girl has to learn of such 
 things, of the difference in men's temperaments from ours." 
 The poor woman remembered how she had learnt it, with how 
 little knowledge or preparation. "I have tried to keep you 
 ignorant, innocent; perhaps I have succeeded too well. You 
 must not take it hardly; you are not thinking unkindly of 
 Desmond, are you? You know how much he cares for you; 
 he told me so when you were little more than a child. You were 
 then, you are now, so much more to him than I am " 
 
 " It was not his ? " Even the delicate ears were crimson, 
 and the words were breathed, hardly spoken. 
 
 " It may be ; it is possible." Agatha could not answer more 
 definitely. It was difficult to answer at all. 
 
 " You must not judge him without knowing more." 
 
 She paused. Some of her life she must unveil — the dese- 
 crated places. 
 
 " Desmond has not been imfaithful to you. This hap- 
 pened at the time when he had no hope of winning you, when 
 I was standing between you. During my own married life I 
 
 learnt that wives have to be tolerant " But she had not 
 
 been tolerant, and hardly knew liow to urge it. 
 
 Eunice could not bear to hear the words to which she was 
 listening. 
 
 " You — j'ou knew ! " It was incredible, worse than every- 
 thing else.
 
 FULL SWING 287 
 
 " It has to be forgotten. We never meant you to hear of it." 
 
 " Desmond never meant that I should know ? " Her voice 
 was strangled. 
 
 " No ; we thought it better. It is an ugly story, and I 
 have tried to keep the ugliness of the world from you. The 
 woman and her child have been provided for. If Biddy came 
 here to make trouble between you two, she must not succeed. 
 She must be sent away again at once, the child with her, before 
 Desmond comes back. Nothing must come between you two 
 any more," she said slowly. The drug was working. 
 
 Eunice got to her feet. She looked pale, and she could not 
 speak. She was overwhelmed, she still felt sick, but no longer 
 faint. 
 
 Lady Grindelay went on: 
 
 " That is right ; you must be brave. It has been a shock 
 to you ; it was a shock to me when I first heard. If you must 
 speak to Desmond, wait until after you are married, until 
 after Thursday. You will understand better when you are a 
 married woman ; you can hardly mention it to him until then. 
 He will be distressed to learn you know, and I am sure you 
 would not wish to distress him. They shall be sent back. You 
 must not think of it again ; there are such stories in most men's 
 lives. Desmond was hardly to blame, it ... it is the 
 woman's child." 
 
 Very white were Eunice's lips. 
 
 " And — and Desmond's ? " she asked. 
 
 " You must forget it." 
 
 "I shall never be able to forget." 
 
 Agatha was getting a little drowsy. 
 
 " He will explain everything after you are married." 
 
 Eunice's lips trembled. 
 
 " I can't marry him. You know I can't marry him, after 
 this," she broke out desperately. 
 
 Her aunt did not know it. 
 
 " Yes, you will, it must not make any difference. I can't 
 talk to you — not just now, but you must be guided by me. 
 The fault was mine; I stood between you " 
 
 " Desmond himself is standing between us."
 
 288 FULL SWING 
 
 She knelt again suddenly. 
 
 " Auntie, I haven't got anybody but you. Help m^. Send 
 me away somewhere ; let me go. I can't meet him, I don't know 
 what to say to him." 
 
 " Don't say anything." 
 
 '' Oh, I must— I must." 
 
 " You will forget it. You will be as happy as ever in a 
 few days, happier than you have ever been." 
 
 " It is impossible — ^you must know it is impossible ! Oh, 
 auntie, help me ! I don't even want to see him." 
 
 " You must say nothing, think nothing, feel nothing, until 
 after Thursday." 
 
 " Not on Thursday, at least not on Thursday," the girl said 
 wildly. " I— I can't bear it." 
 
 Agatha struggled against her drowsiness; she sat bolt 
 upright. The pain that the morphia smothered had been very 
 bad, almost unbearable, a death pang, perhaps. She must see 
 everything right between them before she went; repair her 
 mistakes. The wedding must not be postponed, not on any 
 account. Her anxiety mastered pain and drug. She wanted 
 to speak firmly, but to the girl she seemed to speak harshly, 
 inexorably. 
 
 " Nothing must prevent the wedding taking place on 
 Thursday."
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 Pekhaps Lady Grindelay was too old to realise what a girl 
 feels when she sees sin for the first time; not vaguely and 
 far off, as kneeling in church and praying to be forgiven for 
 something that is only a word; but close and concrete, out- 
 raging and shocking delicacy. Perhaps Agatha's experiences 
 with Lord Grindelay had unconsciously, and notwithstanding 
 herself, coarsened her a little, so that she did not see how 
 such a thing as this would appear to a girl like Eunice. 
 
 Eunice made no further appeal. Agatha drowsed a little 
 in her easy chair in the drawing-room. When she roused 
 herself, to find Ee}Tiolds waiting to take her to bed, the girl 
 had gone. 
 
 "Where is she?" 
 
 "Miss Eunice? She has gone to her own room. She'll 
 come and say good-night to you when you are settled up." 
 
 She came. Her good-night was close and tender, more, 
 not less, loving than usual. Agatha detained her. 
 
 " You are going to do what I tell you ? " 
 
 Eunice kissed her again, but her manner was evasive. 
 
 " Can't Desmond's baby come here ? You say that — that 
 the mother left it, will not come back, isn't good or — or true. 
 But the baby is not wicked " 
 
 The big bedroom was very dark and quiet, and Agatha 
 could not see the pale determination of the girl's face nor the 
 likeness to herself that showed now strongly upon it. 
 
 " It ought to come here," she continued. 
 
 Agatha was as sure as that once; Agatha, too, had been 
 certain that right and wrong were colours as clear as black and 
 white, that there were no greys nor drabs nor indefinite, inde- 
 cipherable shades in either. 
 
 " It is your children who must be here — yours and Des- 
 mond's," she answered. " But do not let us talk about it any 
 more," she added, as if the matter were closed, as if, when she 
 was satisfied, Eunice must also be. 
 19 289
 
 290 FULL SWING 
 
 The exertion of coming upstairs had restarted the rodent; 
 again the teeth were gnawing, and she wished the girl to go so 
 that she might groan, so that she need not hide her pain. 
 
 "We will talk of it again, when you come home from 
 your honeymoon. I thought like you once." 
 " It isn't right." 
 
 " Leave me to know best, to act for the best." 
 Eunice kissed her again, and left her afterwards without 
 another word. 
 
 That night, for the first time, the morphia failed, and at 
 two in the morning Dr. Eeid was summoned. 
 
 " She is taking the most terrible risks," he told Keynolds 
 before he went upstairs. " The operation should have been 
 done last week, when she was in town. I have never seen such 
 obstinacy." Such courage, he meant, for he knew the reason 
 for it. 
 
 " You will have to patch me up until after the wedding," 
 she gasped, even to-night. " You must keep me going until 
 after Thursday." 
 
 He said he would do his best. His best sent her to sleep 
 about six in the morning, and the orders were that she was 
 not to be disturbed for anything. 
 
 Eunice came irresolutely to the door about half-past eight, 
 stood outside, listening. There was no one to see her. She 
 knelt before the shut door, and sent a kiss or a prayer through ; 
 her throat was contracted with the sob she held back. 
 
 " Good-bye, auntie, good-bye ! " she whispered. " I must 
 go — I must." 
 
 She went along the drive presently, one of the gardener's 
 boys carrying a bag or parcel for her. But there was little 
 unusual about that; there were always parcels going to Little 
 Marley or to the Guild in London. 
 
 The order had been given overnight, and when the carriage 
 went to the station at eleven to fetch Desmond, Agatha was 
 still sleeping. But she heard it return. The first words she 
 spoke showed she had wakened with her mind alert. 
 
 " That is the carriage coming back from the station. Are
 
 FULL SWING 291 
 
 you there, Reynolds ? " The room was still in darkness. " I 
 am very thirsty. I am sure he gave me too much morphia. Get 
 me something to drink — ^tea, or lemonade, or ice. But look out 
 of the window first; tell me if they have come back together. 
 Did she go to the station to meet him? I want to see him. 
 I shall get up presently. Have you anything to drink there? " 
 
 The lemonade was by her side, Reynolds handed a feeding- 
 cup to her before doing anything else, and she drank thirstily. 
 
 " Do you see them ? " 
 
 When Reynolds pulled aside the blind, whoever had occu- 
 pied the carriage was already out of sight; the carriage was 
 empty. 
 
 " Find out, will you ? Find out if they came back to- 
 gether." 
 
 It needed all Reynolds's tact and intelligence when she 
 returned from her errand to keep back the result from her 
 mistress. Young Lord Grindelay had come back alone, and he 
 was fretting and fuming, questioning everybody to know what 
 had become of Miss Eunice, why she had not been at the 
 station, where she was to be found. Already there was doubt 
 in the air of the house — uncertainty; it was extraordinary 
 how quickly the household knew that there was something 
 wrong. 
 
 '' Miss Eunice went to meet him ; she went quite early," 
 was all Lady Grindelay heard until she had been given her 
 breakfast. She insisted then upon getting up and dressing. 
 Reynolds stood waiting upon her, not arguing or contradicting, 
 for she knew it would be no use. 
 
 " Only one day more," Lady Grindelay said ; '^ you won't 
 have to worry about me after that." She knew by the way 
 Reynolds was looking at her that she showed the effort it was 
 to stand up and dress, to sit in her chair before the glass and 
 have her hair done. " After to-morroAv there is only Thurs- 
 day.J 
 
 " If you can keep up until to-morrow," said the maid 
 doubtfully. 
 
 " I can keep up well enough." 
 
 " You won't go out ? "
 
 292 FULL SWING 
 
 *^ No. I'll go into the drawing-room. I suppose yon will 
 be satisfied if I lie on the sofa ? " 
 
 " You'll only do that if you can't stand up ! " Reynolds 
 grumbled. 
 
 Lady Grindelay finished dressing, and then went down- 
 stairs, Eeynolds carrying a shawl. She had managed to keep 
 anyone from breaking in upon tliem until then. Inquiries 
 were being made in all directions. 
 
 Miss Eunice was not at the station ; she was not in the 
 house; she had gone out early, taking a bag with her. Whis- 
 pers were gathering ominously. The housemaid found a letter 
 on the dressing-table when Desmond sent her up for the third 
 time to see when Miss Eunice went out, whether she had on 
 walking or garden shoes. Already he was beyond impatience. 
 The letter was handed to him. The housemaid did not know 
 why she had not seen it before. She added, looking at him 
 curiously, tliat the waste-paper basket was full of torn papers. 
 " Miss Eunice must have sat up half the night writing." 
 
 The letter was bulky, and when Desmond had it in his 
 hand it seemed at once to weigh on his heart. He was walking 
 up and down the drawing-room when Agatha came in, and he 
 went to her swiftly. 
 
 ^' What does it all mean, mother ? What does it mean ? " 
 
 ^' Her ladyship has not been very well in the night." Eey- 
 nolds tried to avert any shock from her, to soften or stay 
 his unheeding impetuosity. 
 
 " Where is Eunice gone ? Why isn't she here ? She prom- 
 ised to meet me." 
 
 "' Not here ! Eunice not here ! Where is she then ? " 
 Lady Grindelay asked. The exertion of coming downstairs had 
 tired her, and her wish, of course, was to hide it from him. 
 But she need not have feared ; he never gave her a thought. 
 
 " She went out early. She wasn't at the station. She left 
 a letter on her dressing-table." 
 
 " A letter ? You can go, Eeynolds. Give it to me," 
 
 *' Mother, what does it mean ? " 
 
 ^' Give me time, Desmond ! Give me time." 
 
 " Open the letter. Perhaps there is one for me inside.
 
 FULL SWING 293 
 
 Where has she gone ? Why ? She can't have heard — it isn't 
 that! Mother?" 
 
 " She heard it yesterday. I thought I made matters all 
 right ; but I've been ill." Her hand went to her side even now, 
 and the letter dropped from it. 
 
 Desmond picked it up. He thought her maddeningly slow 
 in opening it. 
 
 " There is one for you too." She handed it to him. 
 ***** 
 
 When Reynolds went out of the drawing-room she saw 
 a woman standing in the hall, a woman with a baby in her 
 arlns, arguing with the butler, asserting doggedly that she 
 would see his lordship, that she was going to sit there till he 
 came, that she wouldn't go until she had seen him. No one 
 had been able to manage or move her, not the butler nor either 
 of tlie footmen. Eeynolds coaxed her away. What those 
 two were saving to each other she did not know, but she knew 
 they must be undisturbed. She coaxed Biddy away from the 
 hall, praising the baby and talking to it, promising that Lord 
 Grindelay should not leave the house without being told. 
 
 " You come up to my room, where you can watch the front 
 door. He's engaged now, very particularly engaged, but you 
 shan't miss him." 
 
 While the bright-plumaged birds were flitting about in the 
 conservatory, uttering now and again their strange cries, in the 
 adjacent drawing-room Agatha sat upright on the sofa and 
 read her letter. Desmond stood beside the mantelpiece and 
 read his. Afterguards there was silence, quite a long silence, 
 between them. 
 
 " She has left us," she said at length. 
 
 " There does not seem to be any doubt about that." Des- 
 mond's tone was very bitter. " She won't have anything to do 
 with me." He crushed the letter in his hand, his face was 
 very white. 
 
 He had a moment's irrational and overwhelming rage, as 
 the young are liable to when things go badly with them or they 
 feel they are suffering under an injustice, and it had to find 
 vent.
 
 294 FULL SWING 
 
 "It's all your fault," he said savagely. "You wouldn't 
 let me tell her." 
 
 He crushed the letter and spoke out of his misery and 
 biterness. 
 
 " She says I've deceived her. It was you made me deceive 
 her." 
 
 " I know, I am sorry. May I see your letter ? " She held 
 out a tremulous hand for it. 
 
 He sat beside her whilst she read it, already he was ashamed 
 of his words. 
 
 " I didn't mean that, mother. I don't know what I'm say- 
 ing ; I'm wild with thinking what she must have felt about it. 
 Of course, I didn't mean to reproach you." 
 
 Agatha read the letter witliout answering, perhaps witliout 
 hearing. That he was sitting beside her was all she knew. 
 
 " It will come right," she said, " you shall not be unhappy, 
 I will put things right between you. Have confidence in me." 
 
 ''I saw the letter your wife wrote to your old nurse 
 hefoi'e she went to you in South Africa. And I've seen 
 your hdby. You never told me about either of them. 
 It makes no difference to ms if you loere not married to 
 her; it's just the same. You were deceiving me all the 
 time — I always told you everything, even my thoughts. 
 I am too unhappy to write, hut I never want to see you 
 again. I could never believe anything you said. I don't 
 want anything more to do with you." 
 
 It had been easy to write those few lines to Desmond in the 
 white heat of her revulsion from him. But to write to her 
 aunt had not been easy. 
 
 " You tried to Tceep everything from me always, but I 
 am not so innocent or ignorant as you suppose; that's 
 why I am going away. I couldn't bear to marry Desmond 
 now, and I know if I stay you would persuade, or make 
 me. You think of nothing but tvhat Desmond wants. 
 I am not ungrateful, I know everything you have done
 
 FULL SWING 395 
 
 for me. I don't know how to leave you, to go away. But 
 I must. I can't meet Desmond. We've always told each 
 other everything, that's ivhat I thought, and this makes 
 everything he has ever said seem untrue. Auntie dear, 
 let me go, don't try to folloiv or find me. Take Desmond's 
 haby instead — it is a darling. If I had not felt so dread- 
 fully, I could have taken her in my arms, and kissed her, 
 ■the poor Utile haby! She ought to he at Marley instead of 
 me. She tvould he there if it ivasn't hecau^e you. want me 
 to marry Desmond and live at Marley. She isn't wicked; 
 she hasn't done anything wrong. It is all so dreadful, 
 hut the ivorst is about the hahy. I am sure you will have 
 her if I stay away. You'll get to care for her, like you got 
 to care for Desmond. You care for him more than you do 
 for me. I'm glad about that and that he loves you. I 
 know you are ill and trying to hide it, I have known all 
 the time how brave and great you are. But I can't stay 
 in the same house with Desmond and his hahy; the haby 
 ought to be at Marley. This is such a stupid letter; I 
 seem to say the same things over and over again, but I've 
 been all night trying to write it. I wish I knew you 
 wouldn't miss me, and then I don't wish it; I couldn't 
 bear to he forgotten. I know it was all kept secret for my 
 sake — by you, at any rate. I seem to understand every- 
 thing and to forgive everything except Desmond. I hate 
 even to think of him and all that we were to each other. 
 
 The letter broke off abruptly. Desmond refused to read it. 
 
 " What's the use ? I don't want to read that she hates the 
 sight of me. What am I to do ? How can I make it right ? " 
 
 Just as it had been necessary to vent his first anger, so 
 now it was necessary to have a confidant for his grief. He was 
 appealing to her, and the appeal shook her. 
 
 " I can't bear it. Mother, we must get her back, you will 
 get her back, won't you ? I must try and explain it to her." 
 
 " I will do my best." 
 
 " You will make her forgive me."
 
 396 FULL SWING 
 
 " Or me ! My poor son, it is all my fault. I see now, 
 it was my mistake, not yours. I was short-sighted, impulsive, 
 but I thought only of you — you believe that ? " 
 
 " I can't bear it. What must she be thinking of me ? " And 
 she felt that a sob tore her breast. She wanted to put her 
 arms about him, gather his head to her breast. But always 
 her words came with difficulty. She was filled with tenderness, 
 shaken with it, but all she got out was : 
 " It will all come right ; it must." 
 
 " Where do you think she has gone? What are we to do? " 
 He was ashamed of his breakdown, and got up from her side, 
 from the sofa. " We must do something." 
 
 " Is anything known in the house ? " Agatha asked. 
 "Jane gave me the letter, said she must have sat up all 
 night writing. Mother, how did it all happen ? How did she 
 get to know ? Who told her ? It must have been someone who 
 hated me — us. I would have told her myself one day, you 
 know I would, when we were married. She'd have forgiven 
 me; I know it. I'd have made her. Gabrielle is married, 
 Michael McKay told me so last night." 
 
 " It was the child, your old nurse Biddy showed her the 
 
 baby. It seems there is a likeness " 
 
 Lady Grindelay spoke slowly, with difficulty. She found 
 it unbearable to think it was she who was responsible for Des- 
 mond's pallor, the ravage his sudden trouble had brought 
 upon the young face she loved. She felt that if she were in 
 health she could comfort him, help him. If only the pain 
 would leave off gnawing at her for a moment so that she might 
 think ! 
 
 Desmond went on unhappily : 
 
 " I know why she ran away ; it isn't only my not telling 
 her. She's got it into her head I've neglected the child, Eunice 
 adores babies." A flush dyed his forehead. " I know what 
 she'll have been thinking. She's right, too. Only it isn't 
 exactly as it seems. He was exculpating himself, now he no 
 longer wished to blame anybody else. " I never thought of it 
 at all, that's the truth of it. When Gabrielle told me it was 
 coming, I made her marry me. I thought I might be killed,
 
 FULL SWING 297 
 
 and then — I forgot all about it. It wasn't there, you see." 
 He paused, and his mother watched him, following his argu- 
 ment, feeling with him, suffering with him. " And she never 
 said a word about it to mc when she came to Waterval. Do you 
 think you'll ever be able to make Eunice understand ? " 
 
 "You have very little for which to blame yourself," his 
 mother answered. " I, too, never gave the child a thought ; 
 you seemed to me as if you were still little more than a boy 
 yourself." 
 
 " Mother, help me to find Eunice, to speak to her face to 
 face. I may be able to make her understand." 
 
 " We will find her." 
 
 " But if we can't find her? " 
 
 " Don't look so unhappy, I cannot bear it. There are only 
 one or two people to whom she can have gone." 
 
 " You'll get her back to-day ? " 
 
 " To-day or to-morrow ; soon." 
 
 " To-morrow is Thursday — our wedding day ! It must 
 be to-day. You don't know how I feel about it." But his 
 eyes and voice told her. 
 
 " I will do my best." 
 
 " I want her." 
 
 "I am afraid the wedding must be postponed," Lady 
 G-rindelay said uncertainly. 
 
 " I didn't mean that. But I must find her, see her, speak 
 to her. Nothing ought to have prevented my telling her." 
 
 " It was all my fault. I wanted her to see you as I do now, 
 as I ought always to have done, without flaw. My son " 
 
 " I could have persuaded you, I can't humbug myself, I 
 know I could have persuaded you. I didn't want to. I didn't 
 want her to know," 
 
 After a little further talk Lady Grindelay began to plan 
 how to account for the postponement of the wedding, what 
 explanation must be given to the neighbourhood. 
 
 " I think it had better be given out that I have been taken 
 ill." 
 
 He cared nothing at all for what the world might say.
 
 298 FULL SWING 
 
 " But you're not ill," he objected. " Keynolds said you had 
 been, but that was only her fuss, wasn't it? You look all 
 right." If he had looked at her more closely he might have 
 thought differently. " I shall want you to help me with her." 
 She was well enough at least to be glad he needed her help. 
 
 " How could I be ill if you need me? But I hear Dr. Eeid's 
 brougham. I think I can manage to persuade him that I am." 
 
 " It will come right, mother ; say you think it will come 
 right between us." He was so desperately in need of comfort 
 that she had to tell him again. 
 
 " I am sure of it. Leave me now, I must talk to Dr. 
 Eeid. Don't be out of reach. Telegraph to Andrew McKay, 
 advising him of the delay, giving my health as the reason. I 
 don't think he will be surprised. And — and — Desmond, I 
 think you will have to speak to this woman " 
 
 " Biddy will do anything I tell her. If only I'd seen her 
 before! But I can't do anything till I know where Eunice 
 has gone, until I've seen her," he cried out. " You said she can 
 only have gone to one or two people ? " 
 
 " Hush ! " For now the doctor was in the room, and Lady 
 Grindelay was steady in her intention that no one must know 
 what had occurred, steady in her belief that she could minimise 
 its seriousness. " I have been telling my son of that attack 
 last night. Do you think I am fit to go through the fatigue 
 of the wedding? You may speak candidly. If it has to be 
 put off, he will face it. He wants to do whatevei* is best for 
 me." 
 
 " I think you ought to have been in bed the last fortnight," 
 the old doctor answered gruffly. " You know it as well as I do. 
 You don't mean to say you've grown sensible at last, that I can 
 send for Sir Simeon ? " 
 
 She silenced him hastily. 
 
 " We can talk about Sir Simeon afterwards. I only wanted 
 to tell you that my son will make the sacrifice. They must 
 have a quiet wedding later on. Shall I go back to bed again ? 
 Is that what you advise ? " 
 
 " You ought never to have got up."
 
 FULL SWING 399 
 
 Desmond thought she was liumbugging tlie doctor. That 
 is, if he thought ahout her at all, 
 
 "Very well, then. Perhaps you are right; even doctors 
 are right sometimes, I suppose. I Avill give in to you just this 
 once. And Desmond " — he was leaving the room, but she 
 called him back — " don't go away for a moment. Don't omit 
 to wire Andrew McKay to come down. He will help you with 
 the necessary arrangements for the postponement. And go 
 up to the station. My niece has gone to London," she said 
 quite caJmly to the doctor ; for all that her eyes and her face, 
 to anyone who knew her, belied her calmness. " They missed 
 each other. My son has only just returned. He caught the 
 early train." 
 
 Desmond thought she was very wonderful; she seemed 
 to think of everything. All he could do was to follow her 
 instructions. She had said she was sure it would all come 
 right, and his misery was a little assuaged by her assurance. 
 
 As he came out of the drawing-room, leaving his mother 
 with the doctor, Reynolds met him. 
 
 " Can you come upstairs a moment ? " she asked him 
 respectfully, a little mysteriously. 
 
 " I'm just off to the station. Is it anything special ? I've 
 got a telegram to send, too." 
 
 " It is rather special, if you could spare a minute." 
 
 Reynolds was a privileged person. 
 
 " What is it ? " he asked as he followed her. 
 
 She told him about Biddy and her pertinacity on the 
 way up. 
 
 " She wouldn't go imtil I promised you would speak to 
 her; it was the only way to quiet her. We don't want to set 
 the household talking. She is in my room, if you don't mind 
 stepping up." 
 
 " The marriage is to be put off ; I suppose you've heard ? " 
 His heart was so full that it overflowed. 
 
 " It won't be for long, milord ; I'm sure it won't be for 
 long. Miss Eunice is so attached to you, if I may be allowed 
 to say so."
 
 300 FULL SWING 
 
 " Yfas, you mean. Hallo ! " 
 
 Biddy flung her anns about liim and began to pour out a 
 torrent of half-incoherent Irish. 
 
 '^ An' didn't I say you'd never be turnin' me from your 
 door. An' me with your child in me arms. Carried her in 
 me arms I did, ivrj- step ov the way, to hould her up so she 
 should see her Da come back from the wars wid the glory on 
 him. An' thin I heard you was to be married. I thought at 
 first it was to the mother ov her, but sorra a bit. The wicked- 
 ness of ut ! Look at her ! " The baby was crawling on the 
 floor, and she caught her up. "Whin I saw what was the 
 truth of ut, that niver a word the young lady knew, nor you 
 belike, that maybe ye thought they were both dead — is it 
 dead she looks, the darlint ? An' where's her mother I don't 
 know. But I brought the child to her Da, so she'll have her 
 rights ; an' I towld her, the bit ov a pale-faced girl, who ut was 
 was the feyther ov ut. I towld ut all to her " 
 
 " You didn't do me a good turn, Biddy." 
 
 " An' didn't I, thin ? But it's sorry I am." 
 
 He turned away from her and the child, and she looked 
 at him anxiously. 
 
 " An' will I be goin' away agin', thin, me and her. It's 
 you that's first wid me, an' what you say I'll do, if it's trampin' 
 the streets wid her." She was as wily as ever. " Is it goin' 
 I'll be ? " She made for the door. " An' her Da to niver so 
 much as look at her," she said to the baby. 
 
 "Wait; don't be foolish. Of course you're not to go; 
 you can't go like that." He was distracted ; tears were not far 
 from his eyes. "I must get off. Wait until I think. Eeynolds, 
 can they stay here ? Is there anyAvhere I can put them until 
 I get back?" 
 
 " An' her the image ov you. It's the cowld street he'd be 
 afther turnin' ye into." 
 
 "Eeynolds?" 
 
 "Of course, milord, if you wish it, if you think it best." 
 Reynolds was doubtful, anxious to do what she could for him. 
 " There are the old nurseries."
 
 FULL SWING 301 
 
 " The very thing. Take them up there. Let them stay 
 until I come back, until I've seen my mother again." 
 
 Biddy held the child up to him as he moved* to pass. 
 
 " An' won't ye take her in yer arms ? " 
 
 He took the child hurriedly, and it was true that he was 
 strangely moved. It was so small and helpless, by the con- 
 traction of his heart he knew what Eunice must have felt. 
 Eunice ! He must find her, tell her, explain, 
 
 " I must get off. Look after them until I come back," he 
 said to Eeynolds brokenly. He was not going to abandon them^ 
 to turn them into the streets ; he flushed when he thought of it. 
 
 "Whatever sort of a blackguard I've been, I'm not that 
 sort of blackguard," he thought, with that sob in his throat 
 and strange emotion as he hurried down the stairs. How 
 small it was, and helpless ! His own child ! It seemed 
 incredible. 
 
 The next hours were spent in sending telegrams and dis- 
 patching messages in all directions. He went back to the 
 station, and heard that Eunice had gone to town by the 10.17, 
 Saying to the stationmaster that there had been a mistake, 
 that they had missed each other, seemed to make it true, or 
 possible; seemed to bridge the distance between them. Com- 
 ing back he met Dr. Reid, and Dr. Reid stopped to speak to 
 him. 
 
 " This is a great blow to you, I am afraid." 
 
 " Oh, that's all right," Desmond answered hastily. 
 
 " I have just wired for Sir Simeon Greenlees," Dr. Reid 
 went on. 
 
 " For Sir Simeon ? " Desmond stood still, " Whatever 
 for?" 
 
 " The symptoms are becoming hourly more serious. The 
 delay has been most unfortunate. She has been brave — too 
 brave," 
 
 Desmond remembered in time that he must not give away 
 his mother's secret; he must carry out her instructions. She 
 seemed to have persuaded old Reid without any difficulty that 
 the wedding was put off because she was ill.
 
 302 FULL SWING 
 
 He knew now Eunice had gone to London, that she was 
 not far away. His mother would know where to look for her, 
 to which of their friends to apply. But Desmond had a new 
 twinge of distress in remembering that neither of them had 
 had any intimate friends ; they had only been really intimate 
 with each other. 
 
 " I must get back, I suppose I can go up to her? " 
 " She ought not to be left alone. I shall send in a nurse 
 for to-night. Eeynolds can't be in attendance night and day." 
 Desmond was fidgeting to get away, hardly listening. Dr. 
 Eeid thought the young man callous or indifferent. He hoped 
 his own son, Jack, would have taken the news of his serious 
 illness differently. He was sorry for Lady Grindelay. " The 
 war made them callous," was the excuse he found. 
 
 "You think I must have acted well?" was Lady 
 Grindelay's comment when Desmond told her she was to have 
 a nurse, that Sir Simeon Greenlees had been sent for ! " Never 
 mind what he said ; I made the most of it. I shall have to 
 stay in bed a few days, I suppose; I must give some colour 
 to the story. Now, tell me your news; all you have done. 
 You have got hold of x\ndrew, I see ; his answer seems to have 
 come very quickly. Have you had any lunch? " 
 
 He had forgotten lunch, but she persuaded him to eat. It 
 was already late. He forgot also to tell her about Biddy 
 and the baby, and that they were under the same roof with her. 
 " Come back to me after you have eaten," she called out 
 to him. In truth, she could hardly bear him out of her sight. 
 It seemed there was not so much time before her as she had 
 supposed. 
 
 When he came up again, two steps at once, and his mouth 
 still full, she began again about Andrew's telegram. 
 
 " What time- did you telegraph to him ? I see tliis was sent 
 off at eleven." 
 
 Andrew had wired : " Coming by two-thirty." 
 " Have you ordered the carriage ? " 
 
 " I told John to meet every train, to stay in Marley, put 
 up at the Arms. I couldn't bear to think of her finding no 
 one at the station."
 
 FULL SWING 303 
 
 " You did quite right. What time did you send that tele- 
 gram to Andrew ? " 
 
 "You mean — you think " He caught her meaning 
 
 quickly. 
 
 " I think he was coming down in any case, it is not your 
 telegram that is bringing him, he has news for us. . . ." He 
 sprang to his feet. 
 
 " Of course, you're right. What an idiot I am ! Of 
 course, that's what it is. Eunice went to him, and he's bring- 
 ing her back. I'll go down and meet them. There's just 
 time. She'll be here in less than an hour." 
 
 " Don't be too sure." 
 
 Her warning was in vain ; he was already out of her reach. 
 There was only the dog-cart in the stables, but he could get 
 to the station in less than three-quarters of an hour. 
 
 He accomplished the task, turning in at the station as 
 the engine, with its blue smoke, rounded the comer. The 
 carriage was there, too, and the footman to catch the reins as 
 they were flung to him. Desmond was on the platform when 
 the train came in. He had buoyed himself up with hope. He 
 felt sure Eunice would be there. And once he saw her he 
 thought he could persuade her; that at least she would not be 
 so hard on him. He was on fire to see her, to try to put him- 
 self right in her eyes; or, if not right, at least to make her 
 think him less black than she thought him now. He had 
 recovered from her letter a little; he was no longer in utter 
 despair. He would see her, persuade her, explain. 
 
 But the lawyer got out alone. Desmond had a quick, sick- 
 ening sense of disappointment. 
 
 " Eunice ? " Question and answer were quite simul- 
 taneous : 
 
 " Is quite safe." 
 
 "She isn't with you?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Where is she?" 
 
 " With the girls and Michael at Campden Hill." 
 
 Andrew was sorry for the boy; anybody who saw his face
 
 304 FULL SWING 
 
 would have been sorry for him. Outside the station he said 
 dully: 
 
 " The carriage is here. You don't mind my going in the 
 dog-cart, do you ? " 
 
 " You don't want to hear what I've come to tell you ? " 
 
 " Not just now ; not if you don't mind." 
 
 " I warned your mother, you know." 
 
 But Desmond was already out of hearing.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 Lady Grindelay bore herself badly when Andrew came to 
 her in her room. She sent down word that he was to be 
 brought up directly he came. She had already heard to whom 
 the girl had gone. 
 
 " I suppose you have come to gloat over me, to say ' I 
 told you so/ to say how wise I should have been to have been 
 guided by you. That is what you have come to say, isn't it? " 
 she began. He was shocked at her appearance, and answered 
 gently, coming up to the bed, standing beside it. 
 
 " I've not come to gloat. How could you think it ? I've 
 come to see what I can do for you." 
 
 " What does she say ? She has not come with you, I hear ; 
 the dog-cart got here first. Wouldn't she listen to reason ? " 
 
 Eunice had been waiting in Andrew's office when he ar- 
 rived that morning, the dingy office in Bedford Eow with its 
 law books, littered desk and faded Turkey carpet where so 
 much big business was transacted. Michael had an appoint- 
 ment to see a client, and was coming down later. For half an 
 hour Eunice sat with Andrew, telling her story. He was firm 
 with her, hardly sympathetic, pointing out how foolishly she 
 had acted in leaving Marley in this way. Then Michael came 
 in, and she turned from Andrew to him. 
 
 " You said if I ever wanted help I could call on you," 
 she burst out passionately. 
 
 And Michael, guessing at once what had come about, an- 
 swered soberly but without hesitation: 
 
 " I meant what I said. Tell me what you want me to do." 
 
 Andrew, after a few words of explanation, went out and 
 left them together. Half an hour later Michael came to him 
 again, and, on the strength of what he told him, Andrew lost 
 no time in looking up a train to Marley, sending his advance 
 telegram. 
 
 20 305
 
 306 FULL SWING 
 
 " You go down, father, and tell them what she wishes." 
 
 " It is a sad business," Andrew replied. 
 
 " Eunice has appealed to me. I know she is overwrought, 
 has not given the matter sufficient thought." Michael spoke 
 as if he were out of breath. " I should not, of course, take 
 her at her word, take advantage of what may be only a mood, 
 something said in anger," 
 
 "What she said to me was that she would have nothing 
 more to do with Desmond, that she would not go back; she 
 was unpersuadable. Is that what she told you ? " 
 
 " One must wait," Michael answered oracularly, but still 
 in that breathless way, his face a dull red. 
 
 " She had found out, after all, that you are more reliable." 
 
 " I don't know, I think it is only her anger speaking ; she 
 is very unlike herself. It has obviously been a great shock to 
 her. I am not going to take any advantage of it." 
 
 " You still care for her? " 
 
 " That has nothing to do with it," the dull red deepening. 
 " All we have to think of is what is best for her. She is very 
 agitated " His father could see that he, too, was suffer- 
 ing under a great stress of emotion. " I shall do nothing 
 hastily, not let her bind herself in any way, I think she 
 knows what I feel about it. You will telegraph and say you 
 are starting at once, to relieve their anxiety." 
 
 " You want me to tell Lady Grindelay everything you 
 have just told me? " 
 
 " At any rate you must tell Iier that she will not come 
 back, will not meet Desmond again." 
 
 " You'll take her up to Campden Hill when I have gone — 
 to the girls.'' 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Here, by Agatha's bedside, Andrew was doubtful how much 
 or how little he should tell her. He temporised. 
 " She is very overwrought." 
 *' How long does she mean to remain away ? " 
 " I don't know ; I can't say at all."
 
 FULL SWING 307 
 
 " I forbid you to harbour her." 
 
 " Don't be absurd, Agatha. You had better hear every- 
 thing." 
 
 " That is what I am waiting for. The great grievance I 
 suppose is that she was not told ? She must absolve Desmond 
 from that; he did it for me." 
 
 " That's not the great grievance ; it is one of them, but not 
 the greatest. He was callous as to the child's welfare; he 
 made no inquiries " 
 
 " How does she know that ? " 
 
 " The old woman told her." 
 
 " Did you let her know that I paid the child's mother to 
 look after it?" 
 
 " Did you ? " asked Andrew dryly. " Did you ? I thought 
 you paid her to keep out of the way. But that's not the point, 
 the main point. Apart from her own personal feelings towards 
 Desmond, and naturally they are very shaken, quite altered, 
 she tells me she feels that if she were to put them to one side, 
 let you persuade her to such a marriage, she would come 
 between you and your grandchild. She is quite as strong 
 upon duty as you used to be; she thinks the baby should be 
 here." 
 
 " Doesn't she understand the child is illegitimate? Didn't 
 you tell her so ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I pointed that out to her, and she seemed to' think 
 it of no consequence. I couldn't press it; she had seen the 
 baby, and that made all the difference. What we see is so 
 different from what we hear." 
 
 " You ought to have brought her back with you. I could 
 have talked to her." 
 
 *' That's what she fears most, why she came away. She 
 is so afraid you will talk her over. And she dreads seeing 
 Desmond." 
 
 " That, at least, is a good sign. She cannot stay away 
 altogether. Where is she now ? " 
 
 " I left her with Michael. He will take her up to Campden 
 Hill presently ; the girls will look after her. They are devoted 
 to her, you know."
 
 308 FULL SWING 
 
 " You left her with Michael ? " Agatha said, her eyes 
 doubtful. 
 
 " She asked for Michael. She didn't come to see me at 
 all ; she came to see Michael." 
 
 *''You had better tell me what you have in your mind, 
 Andrew; what j^ou have come to tell me? I can see there is 
 something." 
 
 " Don't you think you can guess ? " He spoke quietly. 
 " After all, it is not quite new to you." 
 
 *' Go on, please go on." 
 
 " Well, if you will insist, she says that if Michael still 
 cares for her, if Michael will take her, Desmond and Des- 
 mond's child can be at home here, where they belong " 
 
 ''Michael!" 
 
 " A short time ago you had no objection, you were even 
 anxious for it. Don't get excited." For he saw how she 
 flushed. " Michael is the best of sons ; he will make her a 
 good husband ; he has always cared for her." 
 
 " For Marley ! " 
 
 " That is not fair, Agatha, not true, and you know it. 
 What I can give Michael would buy Marley and leave some- 
 thing over. Besides, Marley is for Desmond, for his chil- 
 dren. Eunice is full of Desmond's child and her rights. She 
 knows how greatly Michael has always cared for her; she 
 offers to marry him without delay. She thinks that will 
 make the road clear for you, and settle things here." 
 
 " You are mad, mad; all of you. Desmond will never 
 give her up. I am not going to have him disappointed. This 
 will blow over." 
 
 " It will have to be a strong wind to blow away the child. 
 That's a concrete fact, 3'Ou know." 
 
 " When was all this spoken of ? " 
 
 " In my office this morning." 
 
 " And you have come away and left them together ? " 
 
 "It was Michael sent me to you. You can trust him; 
 he won't let her do anything rash." 
 
 *' She does not know what she is contemplating. Mar- 
 riage — without love ! "
 
 FULL SWING 309 
 
 For an instant each of them thought of their own mar- 
 riages. 
 
 " When one cannot get cake, bread is very satisfying," 
 said Andrew dryly, quietly. " You had no appetite at all " 
 
 "Andrew, you are playing me false; you are intriguing 
 against me, you have always wanted Eunice for Michael." 
 
 She was becoming agitated. He could see her laboured 
 breath, her feebleness and bad colour, that she could hardly 
 express herself. He turned away from her, speaking huskily. 
 
 " I never wanted what you did not." 
 
 She was overcome by physical weakness, but her mind re- 
 mained clear. She began again, with hardly a pause. 
 
 " It is quite true, you have been a good friend. You have 
 been right all through." She found it hard to say it. "I 
 have not stood alone as well as I thought. If I had only said 
 ' Yes ' to you at the beginning ! But we are old people now. 
 Andrew; I cannot die before I have seen the boy happy. I 
 have misunderstood him, not acted in his best interests. I 
 must make things right before I go. Help me ! You see how 
 I am, half dead already, unable to act for myself." 
 
 " I am here, Agatha," he answered quietly. 
 
 " You won't go against me." 
 
 " How can you think it ? " 
 
 "Bring her back to us. She is for Desmond. Act for 
 me — help me ! " 
 
 He was greatly moved ; she was so much stronger in her 
 weakness than ever she had been in her strength. 
 
 " I will not fail you." 
 
 " You have a genius for friendship ; I have always known 
 it, a genius for friendship. You will not let all my hopes be 
 balked?" 
 
 "I'll do my best, whatever I may think; hold a brief 
 against my own son." 
 
 " Send for her, make her come back here at once. Michael 
 is not like Desmond; Michael will get over it. Besides, she 
 belongs to Desmond ; they have always cared for each other — 
 always, since they have been little children. If I had not
 
 310 FULL SWING 
 
 come between them, putting my duty to her before my duty 
 to him. . . ." 
 
 " As long as you live you will blunder. . . ." 
 " That is not going to be for very long, Andrew," she an- 
 swered, with her eyes closed, more quietly. " Not for long." 
 " Do you think that makes it any better for me ? " he an- 
 swered harshly. 
 
 They began to talk over what was to be done. Andrew 
 urged that the girl should be allowed to stay at Campden Hill 
 for the present. 
 
 " He must know where she is." 
 " I've already told him." 
 
 "Yes, I know, I had forgotten. I've not been as ill as 
 this before. I was not telling you the truth when I said I 
 was feigning, to account for the postponement of the wed- 
 ding." 
 
 " I feared it." 
 
 " You will make her come back at once ? " 
 Andrew promised that. The woman he had loved all his 
 life lay here, old and broken, pleading with him. For her 
 he disregarded the claims of his own son. 
 
 When he went downstairs he told Desmond briefly that 
 Eunice wished to stay away for a time, to remain with them 
 at Campden Hill, but that Lady Grin delay would not hear 
 of it. 
 
 " I'll go and fetch her," Desmond answered quickly. " We 
 can get back to-night." 
 
 " No, no ! That would not be at all a good plan." 
 " She is too angry with me, too bitter against me ? " 
 " You must give her time." 
 
 " If only I had told her myself," he said miserably. 
 "Your mother wished you to keep silent," Andrew an- 
 swered briefly. 
 
 He, too, had been unable to go against Agatha's wishes; 
 that was the trouble. Now, notwithstanding he still thought 
 Eunice would be safer with Michael than with Desmond, he 
 intended to carry out his promise, he meant to lose no time in 
 returning to town, have the necessary interview with Michael,
 
 FULL SWING 311 
 
 persuade or entreat the girl to reconsider her determination, 
 and give her aunt the opportunity to speak once more with 
 her. 
 
 But he did not carry out his intention. 
 
 Sir Simeon Greenlees came down by the afternoon train, 
 and Dr. Raid brought him to the Court, Dr, Eeid knew of 
 the old friendship between Lady Grindelay and the laAryer 
 and begged him to await the result of the consultation. 
 
 " I hear that she has other anxieties now, when her mind 
 should have been completely at ease." 
 
 Dr. Reid was even better informed than Andrew ; he knew, 
 for instance, that the child was actually in the house. His 
 son. Jack, was on the staff of the Marley Hospital. In a 
 small country town news spreads like fire. Jack had told him 
 of the old Irishwoman and the baby she brought with her, of 
 Eunice's visit to the hospital and her fainting fit. He had 
 not to put two and two together to make four; the figures 
 stared him in the face. Dr, Reid was too old to be curious; 
 lie remembered Desmond's father, he was neither curious nor 
 shocked. His patient seemed the only thing that mattered 
 just now. 
 
 " Stay until we hear what Sir Simeon thinks. I'm afraid 
 it is too late for the operation he advised. She would not 
 listen to him in London, insisted on waiting until the boy 
 came home, until she had witnessed his triumphal reception 
 here, until the wedding was over. Sir Simeon is washing his 
 hands now; then we are going in to her. But I'm afraid it's 
 too late," Dr. Reid was nearly eighty, and death was a 
 familiar sight to him ; but his old eyes were rheumy when he 
 added : 
 
 " She may wish to see you again." 
 
 « * H: :|: 4i 
 
 The doctors were with Lady Grindelay the best part of an 
 hour. When they left she asked that Desmond should be 
 sent up to her. Dr. Reid told her that the lawyer was still 
 in the house, and she sent down word that she wished him to
 
 312 FULL SWING 
 
 remain. The doctors could talk to him, and whilst they were 
 talking, Desmond was to come up. 
 
 " What have they told you ? '' was her first question to 
 her son. 
 
 " That she's at Campden Hill." 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 She had not meant what he had been told about the girl, 
 but about herself. He added then, a little remorsefully : 
 
 " What did the bigwig say ? Did he spot that you were 
 putting it on a bit ? " 
 
 " No — no. He didn't say that exactly. . . ." 
 
 "What did he say, then?" 
 
 " You need not believe what he says. Doctors often make 
 mistakes — nearly always." 
 
 "He doesn't think there is anything really wrong with 
 you, does he ? " 
 
 She lay quiet a minute, and then answered : 
 
 " He thinks my time has almost come ; that I am not going 
 to get better." 
 
 " What — what ? Mother ! It isn't true — say it isn't true ! 
 I can't- bear it; mother!" His voice broke, he forgot his 
 own trouble. 
 
 " Is it such a surprise to you, then ? " 
 
 He threw himself on his knees beside the bed. The soft 
 spot in him, the Irish heart that came from Pat, cried out : 
 
 "•I can't do without you ! Say it isn't true ! " 
 
 His words were sweet for her to hear; they were like the 
 scent of flowers in the room, or warm, healing waters. She 
 heard him sob as he knelt beside the bed. 
 
 " I've been such a bad son, I want to be better to you, to 
 have time. . . ." 
 
 " You have not been a bad son. You have been one who 
 called and had no answer ; you have had a dumb mother, not 
 deaf, but dumb. Don't cry; you must not grieve, I can't 
 beajT it; it is all right, everything is coming right for you. 
 Tell me you know you are going to be happy when I'm gone, 
 I must hear that. I've wronged you. . . ." 
 " Mother, it isn't true, mother! "
 
 FULL SWING 313 
 
 " Do you care ? How wrong of me to be a little glad that 
 you care. I am not going to get well, but I am not as bad 
 as they think. I know much better than they do. I have seen 
 death so often. This is not death ; it is not very near. Before 
 then I shall have lost hold. I have seen so many people die, 
 and it is always the same ; they let go of this world when they 
 are in sight of the next. I have not come to that yet. I want 
 to see you and Eunice happy before I die. I want you to go 
 up to London and fetch her. To-morrow morning will do; 
 there is no need for you to go to-night. Why should Andrew 
 put my son before his own ? Why should I ask it of him ? " 
 
 Again she lay still. Desmond had risen to his feet; he 
 was standing beside her now. She opened her eyes and looked 
 at him. Tall he was, and delectable to her eyes, and the 
 sound of his sobbing had been like violets in the room; she 
 saw that his eyes were swollen with crying. 
 
 " My son ! how .good it is to see you there. I have never 
 told you . . . my son, how much I have cared for you ; heart of 
 my innermost heart, my son. I have nnade so many mis- 
 takes. Forgive me, forgive me everything, Desmond ! " 
 
 " Mother ! You'll try and get well." 
 
 " I must see you and Eunice married before I go. She 
 is your heart's desire, isn't she ? I must give you your heart's 
 desire." ^ 
 
 " It's to see you better," he broke out. 
 
 " You must bring her back. Tell her, and that I want to 
 bid her ' good-bye.' " 
 
 " Do you think she will come with me ? " 
 
 " Don't leave her too long with Michael." 
 
 "With Michael?" 
 
 " Michael has always cared for her. In her anger against 
 you she has gone to him. She must come back." 
 
 " She wouldn't look at Michael," he said hastily, as he had 
 said once before. 
 
 " No one can tell what foolishness a girl may commit. 
 Think what I did !" 
 
 " Eunice would never look at Michael," he repeated. He 
 would have been angry if he had not been too unhappy for
 
 314 FUUj swing 
 
 anger. " You don't know Eunice. She may hate me, but she 
 would never put anyone else in my place." 
 
 " So she would have said of you. ' Desmond would never 
 look at anyone else.' Can't you hear her saying it? That is 
 the trouble — her faith in you, now yours in her. You must 
 go to her." 
 
 Because she wanted him here she was sending him away. 
 She went on talking as if she wercfctalking to herself : 
 
 "The wheel has come full circle! We women ... so 
 unfit to stand alone, so quick in seeking to cure one pain with 
 another. I was forty, forty years of age when I married your 
 father because Eunice's mother hurt me ! " 
 
 " Eunice is different." 
 
 "We are all different and all foolish. Go now. Send 
 Andrew to me. Keep him here to-night. When it is a ques- 
 tion of our sons we must trust no one. . . ." 
 
 Desmond was glad to get out of the room. He thought 
 nothing of what she told him about Eunice and Michael. 
 Eunice and Michael ! It was unthinkable. But he wanted to 
 find someone to tell him his mother was not as ill as she 
 thought herself, that there were years before her in which he 
 could show his affection. He had to hope. 
 
 To Andrew she began much as she had begun to Desmond. 
 
 " They have told you, I suppose." 
 
 " They have told me." 
 
 " I have refused the operation, or to see anyone else." 
 
 « So I have heard." 
 
 " And I have told Desmond he is not to leave Eunice to 
 you or to Michael; he is to fetch her himself; to tell her I 
 wish to bid her ' good-bye.' " 
 
 " You might have trusted me." 
 
 " Andrew, are you crying too? " 
 
 He had kept his voice under control, but she heard the 
 tears in his controlled voice. 
 
 " Andrew ! " 
 
 " Well, well, what's the next ? You wouldn't trust me to 
 put Michael's, or my own, interests on one side, to act for 
 you."
 
 FULL SWING 315 
 
 "You are hurt?'' 
 
 " Wasn't that what you intended ? " 
 
 " Andrew ! " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He stood beside her now, looking down upon her. She 
 was not a grey and shrunken oki woman in his eyes, she was 
 the girl he had asked in marriage, the only woman he had 
 loved; difficult, impossible, obstinate, the Agatha who should 
 have been his. And she looked back at him. She knew now 
 how much his friendship had meant to her, she had ever a 
 sense lacking, but it was not the sense of gratitude. 
 
 " I did not tell Desmond to go because I did not trust you. 
 I gave him that reason, but it was not the true one. I wanted 
 you beside me at the end. Will you stay with me, Andrew? " 
 
 " Thank you for wanting me."
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 Lady Grindelay was right and the doctors were wrong. She 
 was not going to die just yet. But Desmond knew nothing 
 of that when he went up to town the next day, leaving Andrew 
 at Marley, and uncertain what he might hear when he got 
 back. Hopeful, but uncertain. That he was going to see 
 Eunice again was the principal thing. However she might 
 greet him, he was going to see her. When he remembered 
 that but for untoward circumstances she would be already his 
 wife, he went hot all over; she would remember it too, he knew 
 that. His mother's illness was no longer in the foreground. 
 He was going to give her message, tell Eunice she was dying 
 and wished to say good-bye ; but he no longer quite believed it. 
 He had seen her this morning, and she looked much as usual. 
 
 When he got to Campden Hill he sent up his card, with 
 the words " / mn^t see you " scored and underlined. 
 
 Eunice sent back her reply verbally. She refused to see 
 him. Mary and Martha McKay, good girls both of them, 
 tried to get her to soften the message, to let one of them 
 be the bearer of it, but she was inexorable. She was also 
 frightened, but they did not know that. They had not under- 
 stood why Michael had brought the girl here, or why the 
 wedding was put off, the wedding for which their new dresses 
 were already in the house. They were full of curiosity, of 
 sympathy, of excitement. Eunice had not come down to 
 dinner, she had stayed in her room until now; they were sit- 
 ting there with her when Desmond's card was brought up. 
 Michael had told them not to ask any questions. Neither 
 Michael nor their father had slept at home last night. It 
 was very hard not to question, but they were good girls and 
 devoted to their brother; also to Eunice, of course. Michael 
 had been there that morning, but he had not asked to see 
 Eunice. He said she had better be undisturbed; they were 
 to tell her he was coming home to lunch, that he hoped to see 
 
 316
 
 FULL SWING 317 
 
 her then. He showed them a paragraph in the Morning 
 Post which he thought would be sufficient explanation for 
 them. It was not, but that is an unimportant detail. 
 
 "In consequence of the alarming illness of Lady Grinde- 
 lay the marriage hettveen Lord Orindelay and Miss Fellowes 
 is unavoidably postponed." 
 
 "But if Lady Grindelay is alarmingly ill, surely Eunice 
 would be with her ? " 
 
 " There are reasons " 
 
 But he would not give them. He went away, saying he 
 would be back to lunch ; they were to tell Eunice so. 
 
 When Desmond heard that Eunice would not see him, he 
 asked if Mr. Michael McKay were at home, and was almost 
 ashamed of his question, hot for the answer, nevertheless. 
 
 " He's coming in to lunch," the maid answered, going be- 
 yond her instructions. 
 
 "Then I'll wait imtil he returns. Perhaps Miss Mary 
 would see me, or Miss Martha ? Otherwise I'll wait until Mr. 
 Michael comes back.^' 
 
 There was no immediate hurry, for all his quick heart- 
 beats and overwhelming impatience, Desmond knew there was 
 no hurry. From Campden Hill to Paddington is only a few 
 minutes, and there was no train until 2.5. " Tell her I'm not 
 going away." 
 
 The message was brought up to the room where the three 
 girls were sitting together. Eunice sprang to her feet, paling 
 and startled, saying: 
 
 " Oh, he must go ; tell him he must not stay here." 
 
 Martha and Mary exchanged glances. 
 
 " Shall I go down to him? " 
 
 " Or I ? " 
 
 "I don't want him to meet Michael; he mustn't meet 
 Michael," Eunice answered agitatedly. "Oh, what shall I 
 do ? Won't he go away ; can't you make him go away ? " 
 
 The parlourmaid stared at her; Mary and Martha, with 
 more delicacy, looked away."
 
 318 FULL SWING 
 
 "We'll do anything you wish/' they said almost simul- 
 taneously. 
 
 " I — I can't see liim." 
 
 They had never heard of anything so strange. 
 
 " Michael will know what to do when he comes," they said 
 in chorus. In that house it was an axiom that Michael always 
 knew what was to be done in any emergency ; there had been 
 only small emergencies until this one. But Eunice knew that 
 she did not want the two men to meet. In a sudden and 
 unexpected revulsion of feeling she felt that she had been dis- 
 loyal to Desmond. She had asked Michael to marry her, let 
 him put his arms round her. Her cheeks flamed. All at once 
 it seemed to her it was a dreadful thing she had done, dread- 
 ful and inexplicable. Desmond was downstairs and she could 
 not face him. Just at that moment it was not because of 
 what he had done, but because of what she had. She was 
 drawn to him by cords stronger than she could resist ; she had 
 pulled against them and now fell ])ack, trembling, unnerved. 
 
 " Wliat am I to do ? " she said again, despairingly. They 
 heard a cab in the street; it pulled up quickly; there was the 
 sound of a key in the latch. 
 
 " Here is Michael." 
 
 He had been unable to wait until the usual time. He had 
 not taken her at her word yesterday, when she had thrown 
 herself on his protection or chivalry. He had kept his self- 
 control; he must feel sure she would not regret her impulse 
 to come to him, that she meant she could never forgive Des- 
 mond, never look at him again. He was a man, but a chiv- 
 alrous one, and he had lived without hope. He knew what 
 she felt for her cousin; she had never disguised it from him. 
 All night he had lain awake, thinking what it would mean 
 to have her for his wife, to care for her. He wanted to be fair 
 to lOesmond, but he forgot Desmond once or twice in the con- 
 templation of what might come. He thought he could make 
 lier happy; at least he would have no secrets from her. If 
 she felt the same to-day as sha did yesterday, he would take 
 her at her word; he* could resist no farther. That is what he 
 thought when he put his latchkey in the door. She had had
 
 FULL SWING 319 
 
 time enough for thinking; he had left her alone on purpose. 
 If she felt the same to-day he would take her at her word. 
 
 Desmond, fuming and on the watch, heard the hansom 
 drive up as quickly as they did, and he was in the hall when 
 Michael opened the door. All Michael's dreams were shat- 
 tered when he saw Desmond. He matched himself against 
 him in that moment, the choice was for her to make. He was 
 not unconscious of his worth, and yet his dreams were shat- 
 tered. 
 
 " You here ? '^ he said. 
 
 " It wasn't likely I'd be anywhere else," Desmond answered. 
 
 " She won't see you." 
 
 " She will have to see me." 
 
 Michael hung up his hat mechanically. 
 
 " If she does not wish to see you, you cannot force her." 
 
 " Can't I ? You see if I can't." It wa^ not the way he 
 had meant to speak, but Michael's quietude and assurance 
 angered liim, and the remembrance of what his mother had 
 hinted. " I'm going to see her. I'm not going to leave this 
 house until I have. You don't think you can prevent me, do 
 you ? " he said, advancing threateningly. 
 
 " Don't be childish. You are not a boy. This is not a ease 
 for fisticuffs. If she does not wish to see you, I shall protect 
 her from intrusion, this is my father's house; violence will 
 have no effect on me." 
 
 Desmond dropped his hands. He had no quarrel with 
 Michael, and felt no jealousy now that he stood before him. 
 Eunice had always laughed at Michael, at his eye-glass and stiff 
 manner. Michael had looked after him when he was ill, 
 shown himself a friend. He was ashamed of his first instinct. 
 
 " Will you bring her down to me ? Will you tell her that it 
 is vital I should see her at once ? " 
 
 "But is it?" 
 
 Michael knew nothing of what had been occurring at 
 Marley, of Sir Simeon Greenlees and his verdict. 
 
 " She has broken off her engagemenfi to you, and does not 
 wish to be importuned." 
 
 " I won't importune her, you can tell her that. I will ncft
 
 320 FULL SWING 
 
 even speak of what is between us — at least, not yet. But I 
 have a message from my mother. I must see her face to face 
 and give her my mother's message." 
 
 " Give it to me." 
 
 " No ; I'm going to give it to her. What are you afraid 
 of?" 
 
 " Of not carrying out her wishes," Michael answered. 
 
 But it was not quite true. Desmond may have looked 
 little more than a boy, but it was folly to deny that he was a 
 handsome one, with grace and glamour about him. Michael 
 stood irresolutely. He did not want them to meet. Yet 
 if she were not strong enough to resist him now, she would 
 never be strong enough. It was a test. If she saw him and 
 said to his face what she had said behind his back — that she 
 hated him, and would have nothing more to do with him — ; 
 then — ^then he might dismiss his scruples. Desmond went on : 
 
 " I give you my word I won't even talk to her about 
 myself — not yet, not now. You can be there if you like." 
 He could afford to be generous ; this could be no rival of his, 
 this slow, impeccable Michael. " She needn't see me alone if 
 shei doesn't want to." 
 
 " Very well, then. Wait here. I'll go up." 
 
 Michael went slowly, deliberately, not as Desmond would 
 have gone to the girl he loved. All Michael's methods and 
 his manners were different. 
 
 He called his sisters out of the room and said quite calmly 
 that he wished to see Eunice alone. He even waited to wash 
 his hands and make his hair smooth before he went to her. 
 
 But when he saw her pallor and distress, and noted her 
 irresolution, liis heart sank. Not like this had she been yester- 
 day. Yesterday she had clung to him, urged him. 
 
 " I don't feel safe without you," she had said. " Michael, 
 save me, help me ! If you don't marry me, I don't know what 
 I shall do." 
 
 Michael had refrained as far as possible from letting her 
 know what her appeal to him meant, how it affected him. He 
 had reassured and soothed her, promised he would stand, if 
 necessary, between her and Desmond, between her and her
 
 EULL SWING 321 
 
 aunt, that nobody should force or over-persuade her. His 
 heart had swelled with tenderness; he had desired her above 
 everything. But what was essential was her happiness. In 
 the night he had thought he could give it to her. This morn- 
 ing he looked upon her face and his heart sank. 
 
 " Do you feel better this morning ? " was the way he began. 
 Yesterday she had sobbed in his arms — in his arms ! But she 
 never knew they were around her. He knew even then how 
 impersonal it had been, that to her he was not a man at all, 
 only a shelter from this evil thing that had come to her, from 
 the sight of Desmond's child. 
 
 " You know that Desmond is downstairs ? " 
 
 " I know." 
 
 " He is very urgent about seeing you — insistent. He says 
 he comes from your aunt." 
 
 Her lips trembled. Desmond was downstairs; the cords 
 were pulling, pulling all the time. Perhaps he could explain. 
 She felt her owti weakness, and knew that no explanation was 
 possible. The flush rushed to her face; and the flush heated 
 Michael's slow blood, 
 
 " I — I can't see him," she faltered. 
 
 Michael went a step nearer to her. 
 
 " You need not, I will take care of you, since you have 
 given me the right " 
 
 Given him the right ! Michael, Michael McKay ! He saw 
 her eyes dilate. But for the moment he was less master of 
 himself than usual, 
 
 " I have thought it over. I know now there is no other 
 way, you were quite right, he will never leave you alone ; they 
 will never leave you alone. But if you were my wife — when 
 you are my wife " 
 
 " Oh, Michael, don'ir— don't" 
 
 He' would have put his arms round her. She shrank from 
 him. He saw the revulsion in her face and her dilated eyes, her 
 retreat. 
 
 " I — I didn't mean it," she faltered. Now Michael went 
 as pale as she. 
 21
 
 323 FULL SWING 
 
 "You said you wished to marry me to-day, as soon as 
 possible 
 
 " I— I didn't think of— of- 
 
 Of kissing me ? " He went as red as he had been pale. 
 Is that it ? " He stood quite near her, but he did not touch 
 her. " You had not thought of that? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Yet it has to be thought of." He could only woo her in 
 his own way. 
 
 " I didn't think of that." She was panting, frightened, 
 
 shrinking. 
 
 " Think now." 
 
 " I couldn't— couldn't '' 
 
 " Bear me near you ? " He spoke low. His arms ached 
 for her, literally ached. His heart ached too, but to that he 
 was accustomed. 
 
 " You said you wished to marry me." He repeated it, 
 but he knew how long ago that seemed, how far away, that now 
 she could not bear him to touch her. 
 
 " I know. You'll never forgive me ; I know you can never 
 forgive me." 
 
 " It's not a question of forgiveness." And then he was 
 silent. " It is no question of forgiveness," he said again. " I 
 was there for you to use. I am here for you to use. I only 
 want you to be sure this time. You don't want me " 
 
 " I do want you." 
 
 She was ashamed of herself now, and sorry, very sorry for 
 Michael. She could not let him kiss her, she could not bear 
 his arms round her ; she could never care for Michael like that 
 
 never. She saw his eye-glass and smooth hair and bony 
 
 hands ; all her body shrank from him. 
 
 " Not for your husband ? " The crimson flooded her. the 
 blood beat in her temples. 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! " She said she was sorry, but his hurt went 
 deeper than she could know. 
 
 " Do forgive me," she asked again. 
 
 " It doesn't matter," he answered stiffly. He turned away 
 from her; he did not want her to see what it meant to him
 
 FULL SWING 323 
 
 that she shrank from liis touch, cowered away from his kiss 
 as if from a blow ; that to-day she could not even bear to think 
 of liim as her husband. " It doesn't matter." Then he pulled 
 himself together, speaking in a different tone. He had to face 
 the position, and face it so that she should not know the cost 
 to him. Yesterday she had cried on his shoulder; yesterday 
 she had asked his protection. Well, she had had it. And the 
 night had been his own. He had had that night of dreaming. 
 
 " Will you see your cousin ? " he asked, as if yesterday she 
 had not said she would never see him again. " He says he 
 comes from your aunt, bearing a message from her." 
 
 "Ought I to?" 
 
 " How should I know ? " He spoke roughly, but recollected 
 himself, and went on more quietly, " What is your own feel- 
 ing ? " She answered truthfully : 
 
 " Frightened. I am frightened." 
 
 " He has promised not to importune you." Her flush was 
 painful. 
 
 " You'll stay, won't you ? You'll stay here if I have to 
 see him ? " 
 
 " I shall do whatever you require." 
 
 "He is not to talk to me; he is only to give me tlje 
 message." 
 
 " I will tell him." 
 
 Michael knew — he knew before he went to fetch Desmond 
 what she feared. It was herself. Eeaction had been succeeded 
 by reaction, and to-day she did not hate Desmond any more. 
 How could she, after those long years ? She was one burning 
 flush, inside and outside, when she thought of him, and that he 
 had been untrue to her. But she did not hate him. 
 
 Michael delivered her message accurately, and Desmond 
 gave the required promise. Eunice tried to be dignified when 
 he came in — dignified with Desmond ! She would not look at 
 him. Her eyes could not meet his, and his, too, were averted. 
 
 " You have a message ? " She meant her voice to be very 
 cold and dignified, but it was only faltering. 
 
 " From my mother." 
 
 "What is it?"
 
 324 FULL SWING 
 
 " She is much worse." 
 
 "Not— not ?" 
 
 " Dr. Eeid and Sir Simeon G-reenlees say so. She wants 
 you to come back — to come back at once with me. She wants 
 to say good-bye to you." 
 
 There was a break in his voice. Her quick tears rose, her 
 face paled, her voice stammered. 
 
 " You — you are sure I shall be in time ? " 
 
 " We must catch the two-five." 
 
 They were only conscious of each other. Eunice had a 
 faint disloyal doubt whether it was a ruse, a ruse to get her 
 back. But she wanted to go. Oh, how much she wanted to 
 go ! There, at Marley, was home. Here was Michael with his 
 reproachful face. Was it reproachful? She could not see 
 through the tears that gathered, when she said again : 
 
 "You are sure — ^you are sure that I shall be in time?" 
 
 " She was sure." 
 
 In the cab on the way to the station she stole a glance at 
 Desmond, and saw his eyes were swollen. She wanted to put 
 her hand in his ; they had always comforted each other. But 
 she refrained, remembering that he had deceived her, and that 
 there had been another woman and a baby. In the railway 
 carriage, on the way to Marley, they hardly spoke' to each 
 other, or spoke as strangers. It was so unusual, like some- 
 thing that could not be happening. She pretended to look 
 at the pictures in the illustrated papers, and he looked out 
 of the window. Only as they neared Marley, when they were 
 within a minute or two of the station and the speed was 
 already slackening, he spoke : 
 
 " You said I wasn't to speak to you, but you've got to hear 
 this. They — she," he blurted it out, " Biddy and the baby are 
 at the Co^^^t. My mother does not know, and it is to be kept 
 from her. I suppose that will make your coming back worse 
 than ever. I can't help it — I can't turn them away." His 
 voice lowered. "I suppose you hate to be under the same roof 
 with her, that you hate the very thought of her." His voice 
 was not only lowered, but broken.
 
 FULL SWIXG 325 
 
 " I don't hate her, I don't want her to .be anywhere else. 
 She has the right to be at Marley." 
 
 " If nothing had happened, it is you who would have had 
 to decide who should or should not be at Marley. We should 
 have been married by now. And if mother was too ill to say 
 what was to be done, you'd have had to say it." 
 
 Her heart fluttered; that Desmond should be speaking to 
 her like this was unreal. Desmond ! Whenever he had been 
 in disgrace or distress she had comforted him, helped him. 
 Now, when he looked more unhappy than ever he had done 
 before, she had nothing comforting to say to him. 
 
 " I never thought of hating the baby. Of course, it ought 
 to be there," she said violently, and then stopped, flushed. 
 " I'll never forgive you for not having told me," she went on 
 vehemently. " I wish you wouldn't speak to me; I don't want 
 to talk to you. I had to come back because you said she wanted 
 to say good-bye to me. . . ." 
 
 " You don't seem to care how unhappy I am." 
 
 " It's your own fault." 
 
 " Do you think you need remind me ? " 
 
 '^ I don't want to remind you. I don't want to speak to 
 you." He opened his mouth as if to remonstrate or plead, 
 but thought better of it. He had promised not to importune 
 or hurry her, she was coming back to the Court, it was impos- 
 sible to think of her as being like this wnth him always. 
 
 In an unnatural silence they completed their journey, 
 driving to the Court as they had driven to Paddington, without 
 words, but acutely conscious of each other's proximity.
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 But once she was back at the Court it was as if she had never 
 left; they all combined to make her feel it. Michael's father 
 met them at the lodge gate and praised her, saying slie was a 
 good girl to come. Desmond, before she went np to her aunt's 
 room, contrived to say: 
 
 " I'll keep out of your way as much as possible." 
 
 Lady G-rindelay's first words were : 
 
 " Was the train late ? " as if she had been watching and 
 wearying for her. There was no allusion that day to the 
 reason for her going nor the necessity for her return. 
 
 An operation might have hastened the end. Without 
 it the patient lingered. Andrew went back to town, but came 
 down every evening, sleeping in the house, at Agatha's request. 
 There were a few days when she suffered intensely, and every- 
 one, even the nurses, hoped the agony would not be prolonged. 
 
 " Such a long passage, such a long and difficult passage," 
 she was heard to murmur. Death came slowly; she was very 
 brave, but she did complain sometimes that it came slowly. 
 
 The question of the operation was raised again, but she 
 was steady in refusing it, and in saying that she would die a 
 natural death. Dr. Eeid and his son Jack, who were both in 
 attendance now, took different views. Dr. Eeid upheld her, 
 Jack argued all the time. He thought nothing was being done 
 that ought to be done. A dozen new scientific experiments 
 occurred to him; he was idtra-modem, up to date. The old 
 man knew that when the fiat has gone forth neither drugs nor 
 the surgeon's knife can avail. 
 
 " Leave her in peace, cease arguing with her," he told Jack. 
 " Is it worth while to give her a few weeks longer, or even 
 months ? She is beyond cure." 
 
 Jack thought differently. He was seven-and-twenty, and 
 had learnt everything the London and Paris hospitals could 
 teach him, he had also been to Berlin and Vienna. Death 
 
 326
 
 FULL SWING 327 
 
 seemed almost an incredible thing to .him ; there were so many 
 new weapons with which to fight it. 
 
 Jack had another patient in the house just now. Biddy 
 and the baby remained, and Jack tried many of his experi- 
 ments on the baby. If it thrived it was in spite of them. 
 
 Lady Grindelay knew now of these strange inmates in her 
 house. How she came to know was difficult to decide. But 
 one day she said : 
 
 " It is that woman's child I hear, I suppose ! Is it because 
 of her you will not marry Desmond ? " 
 
 Startled, Eunice answered quickly: 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 But it was not true. If it had been it was so no longer. 
 She had heard Desmond's story by now. Living in the same 
 house, often in the sick room together, where Lady Grindelay 
 summoned them in her intervals of consciousness, it had been 
 impossible to avoid him. They both cared for this old woman 
 who lay dying. They cried about her sometimes, thinking 
 it terrible she should have to suffer so cruelly. Their tears 
 brought them together. 
 
 " Poor auntie," Eunice would say pitifully, 
 
 " Isn't it awful ? " Desmond would reply, his eyes wet. 
 
 " Can't anything more be done for her ? When I see her 
 so brave, and then hear her moan, I'm beside -myself. I 
 sometimes think I've only just got to care about her, to 
 understand her." 
 
 Eunice had to comfort him. Just as he had to try and 
 explain the past to her, for all she had told him she did not 
 want to hear. He could not tell his story very well, nor 
 convincingly, but haltingly and lamely. How could he ex- 
 plain Nurse Eadlett to the girl ? He could not explain her to 
 himself, nor how he had fallen. 
 
 " She is married now, anyway. I shall never see or hear 
 from her again. She wrote that to the McKays, and that I 
 was welcome to the child. Don't yooi think it awful when 
 a baby has neither a father nor a mother — only Biddy? I 
 suppose I ought not to be mentioning her to you at all. I 
 wish you didn't feel so badly about her," he said unhappily.
 
 338 FULL SWING 
 
 Nobody knew, least of all Desmond, that Eunice did not 
 feel badly abont the baby nor resent her presence. 
 
 Often, so often, without Desmond or anyone knowing 
 of it, she had stopped at the nursery door, gone in, seen the 
 baby girlie lying on a rug, crowing or trying to talk ; so often 
 she had taken it into her arms ! All her instincts should have 
 been against the child, but they were not, they yearned to 
 her in tearful tenderness. But in secret, always in secret. 
 She was for ever telling herself that she was no longer in love 
 with Desmond, he had deceived her, kept things from her. But 
 now her anger had died down, and she believed her aunt was 
 responsible for his reticence. She did not allow her mind to 
 dwell upon the woman, married now and out of his life. In 
 secret, and half ashamedly, she haunted the nursery, found 
 herself unable to keep away, crying over the baby sometimes 
 because it was motherless and without anyone to love it. Such 
 a darling baby, too, so small and sweet, a cuddly baby. It 
 learnt to know her, held out appealing arms, gurgled at her. 
 When she held the little one in her arms it was difficult to 
 put her down again. 
 
 There are born mothers in the world as there are born 
 poets, and Eunice was one of these. Day by day this baby 
 found a way into her heart. Many and many a time when 
 she stole into the room to see the child undressed, she forgot 
 everything concerning her except that she was a baby, soft to 
 touch and sweet to hold. Eeynolds as well as Biddy knew of 
 these stolen visits of the girl. No one else, not Desmond, 
 nor, of course, the dying woman. 
 
 There came a day when there was a cessation in Lady 
 Grindelay's constant pain, some new era or change took place 
 in the disease. The great weight of disaster was lifted tem- 
 porarily from the home, the head of the household was not 
 going to die, she was getting better. We have all seen such 
 deathbed revivals, and only the young and inexperienced take 
 hope from them. Eunice and Desmond were both. Lady
 
 FULL SWING 329 
 
 Grindelay, although she knew hotter, led them on. She 
 crowed over nurses and doctors. 
 
 "Didn'^t I tell you so?" she said. "Didn't I tell you I 
 was not going to die yet ? " 
 
 The improvement in her health had its inevitable conse- 
 quence. The reins had slipped, not fallen, and now she was 
 for gathering them up again. 
 
 " How are matters between you and Eunice ? " she asked 
 Desmond when he was alone with her. 
 
 " In a way we are friends," he answered hesitatingly. 
 He was sure and unsure. She avoided him, ran from him, 
 but he had once made her admit tliat she did beliefve he 
 had never cared for anybody else. " It is only the child that 
 is between us," he told his mother. 
 
 " I must see you married before I die. You can be married 
 here, by my bedside, you can wait for your honeymoon until 
 I'm gone. I want to see you happy." 
 
 "You'll never persuade her, I fear. If you only could ! " 
 
 After that it was easy to see the dying woman thought of 
 nothing else. It was wonderful how her brain still worked 
 in her tortured body, how nothing counted with her now but 
 her son's happiness. 
 
 " You shall neither see nor hear of the child. Of course 
 it ought never to have been brought here — would not have 
 been but for my illness. I will provide for her. Do not be 
 obstinate, Eunice. Desmond has done nothing to excuse you 
 behaving so badly to him. Every man has some such history 
 in his life. My poor boy must not suffer because there are 
 bad women in the world, and one met him when he was weak, 
 a Delilah against whom he was never warned. I ought to 
 have warned him. I sent him away from me without a safe- 
 guard. He must have a wife, I understand that now. You 
 must not think only of yourself." 
 
 " I'm not thinking only of myself." 
 
 " The child will be provided for." 
 
 " I don't care for Desmond as I used.'' 
 
 " I can't leave him in loneliness." 
 
 " I don't want to marry him."
 
 330 FULL SWING 
 
 Lady Grindelay deemed that was of little consequence, 
 one has to remember she had been a long time under drugs. 
 She told Desmond to get a special licence, she thought the 
 opportunity for using it would come. Her whole mind was 
 set upon how to bring about the marriage. 
 
 The last time Eunice told her aunt she would not marry 
 Desmond, that nothing would induce her to, that she did 
 not care for him any more, was the day when the revival of 
 Lady Grindelay was at its height, and even Reynolds began 
 to think a miracle might be wrought. Desmond was full 
 of hope, his spirits rose unconsciously. He talked with his 
 mother, in her new and strange recrudescence, about what 
 was to be done with Biddy and the child. Whatever it was to 
 be, must be done quickly. He would not forget his obligations, 
 but both he and Lady Grindelay agreed that it must be sent 
 from Marley, away for the moment from the girl's sight. 
 
 " She must be brought to forget it. When you have the 
 licence I will make the opportunity for you to use it. She 
 will not disregard my last wish, my dying wish." 
 
 " But you are getting better.'' He was sitting by the bed, 
 and he put his head on the pillow beside her own. " You 
 don't know how bad it wasi when you were in pain, mother; 
 you'll get well now? Everything will come right if you get 
 well." 
 
 To have him lying there, his handsome curly head so near, 
 his loving words in her ear, was wonderful to her, a happiness 
 she must deserve. 
 
 " I will get well if I can. There are so many things I 
 want to say to you. You came to me when I was already old, 
 I knew so little about boys and men. And men ! I have never 
 cared for any man but you. Other women are not like that, 
 and I ... I found it out too late. Lying here, I see 
 so many of my mistakes. Andrew was right; I ought never 
 to have tried to stand alone. I want to put everything right 
 before I go, I want to see you married." 
 
 "Dear old mother ! " 
 
 " You must have someone to care for you when I am gone.
 
 FULL SWING 331 
 
 There are women who sliould never marry. I was one of 
 them, but Eunice is different." 
 
 " If you had never married there would never have been 
 me. Say you are glad I am here." 
 
 " I am only thinking how I can make up to you for all 
 you have missed." 
 
 " I haven't missed anything." 
 
 " Only a mother," she said rather pitifully, her old lips 
 aquiver. " But I will give you a wife. Go and talk to her 
 now. I want to be alono " 
 
 When he found her, he began gingerly. Eunice was not 
 as even-tempered as she had been; she flamed out on slight 
 provocation. She who had once been content to fetch and 
 carry for him, now eluded and evaded him, would sometimes 
 speak to him and sometimes not, keeping him humble. 
 
 "Will you come and see the orchid with me? Mother 
 wants us to report upon it to her. Sanders sent up word to 
 say that all the spikes are in bloom." 
 
 Eunice made one excuse or another, said she had to go 
 to the town, she did not want to go out, that it was not neces- 
 sary they should visit the orchid house together. But when 
 he met excuse after excuse and persisted, she yielded, not 
 with a good grace, but impulsively, becoming silent after 
 she had agreed to go with him. 
 
 When they were going towards the hot-house he said 
 tentatively : 
 
 " She is going to sleep until four ; Reynolds is darkening 
 the room ; she wants to be alone. When we've seen the orchid 
 we might go into the woods." 
 
 " I don't want to go into the woods/' she answered hastily, 
 "not with you." 
 
 "Never?" 
 
 " Never ! " She quickened her step. 
 
 There was no doubt about the orchid or the correctness 
 of Sanders' report. From the glass roof of the steaming 
 house there hung down great masses and clusters of bloom.
 
 332 FULL SWING 
 
 shy, still in their sheath of green, but giving rare promise. 
 They gazed at it in wonder, it was a thing for anyone to 
 wonder at. Fifty years it had hung there, dry and arid, then 
 green, but never like this. 
 
 " If she could only have seen it ! " 
 
 When they spoke of Lady Grindelay, and the improbability 
 of her seeing it, their hearts grew tender. She had been such 
 a force about them, her influence the most dominating thing 
 in their lives, her kindness unending. They began to talk 
 of her illness, to say she might yet see the flowers, to remind 
 each other that a week ago she could hardly talk to .them, was 
 always under morphia, but that to-day she had sat up in bed. 
 
 Talking, they moved out of the steaming house. Now they 
 were in the air again, feeling the slight chill. But the sun 
 shone, the afternoon sun. 
 
 " We've got to face it," he began suddenly, a little des- 
 perately perhaps. " Look here, Eunice. What's the good of 
 going on like this, hiding our heads? We've got to talk it 
 
 out." 
 
 " I don't know what you mean." But she did. " I'm going 
 
 back to the house." 
 
 " No, you're not," he caught hold of her arm. 
 
 " You're hurting me." 
 
 "And don't you think you're hurting me? What do you 
 imagine I'm feeling day after day, when you hardly look at 
 me? I thought we'd made it up." 
 
 Made it up! The old childish phrase. How dared he? 
 She shook herself free from him, or she would have done, but 
 he held her fast. 
 
 " I'm not going to let you go just yet. I'm not a criminal 
 You may not care for me any more, but I am not a criminal." 
 
 Her heart was water and ran to him, but her words were 
 hail and M\ upon him. He could not see her heart; he sur- 
 mised, but could not see it. 
 
 " I don't care what you are, you are nothing to me." Her 
 flush belied her words. " What is the use of pretending we 
 are intimaies, or friends? I should always feel now that you 
 were keeping things from me."
 
 FULL SWING 333 
 
 " No, you don't, you know I'm not, that I never would 
 again. Come into the woods." 
 
 " I don't want to talk to you." 
 
 " I know, but you must ; we must do something, arrange 
 something. She talks of nothing else, nothing but you and 
 me together here. She wants me to get a special licence, that 
 we should be married by her bedside." 
 
 " She doesn't know what I feel about it ; neither do you, 
 I believe. When I think about marrying you, or she speaks 
 about it to me, I — I can't bear it." There was an indignant 
 sob in her throat. " I get hot and angry, I can't say the words 
 I mean. You know yourself it's impossible." 
 
 " No, I don't. I've never cared for anyone else." 
 
 " Not even for your poor little baby ? " 
 
 " You think of her all the time, brood upon her." 
 
 " I don't brood upon her." 
 
 "You're first with me, you'll always be first. I can't 
 argue with you. Come into the woods, let us talk. You and 
 I can't go on like this, half -strangers ; when it used to be so 
 beautiful between us. I want to know all you are thinking, 
 everything that is in your heart about me." 
 
 She went with him ultimately, feigning reluctance, per- 
 sisting that she had nothing to say to him. He led her, not 
 without design, perhaps, to that oasis in the woods where 
 reigned the giant oak whose leaves had rustled above them the 
 first time that he told her it was not as a sister he loved her. 
 He could not guess how often she had sat there since, her heart 
 full of him. Here she had dreamed her dreams, wept for his 
 wounds, sat agonised when there came no news of him, felt 
 his presence when he was not beside her. This was his tree 
 and hers, always she had thought of it so.. 
 
 " Eunice," his voice pleaded, " how often we've played 
 here. You haven't forgotten it, have you? You don't really 
 hate-me ? You can't. We could not feel differently about each 
 other — not really differently. However bad you thought me 
 you'd always remember our good days together." 
 
 Tears were rising, not in her eyes, but in her heart.
 
 334 FULL SWING 
 
 " You used to love me, not like I did you, but so sweetly. 
 And I meant to teach you better." 
 
 How well she had loved him, a thousand times more than 
 he could ever have loved her. The tears began to fall. 
 
 " Let me look at you, don't turn your face from me." 
 But she leaned against the tree, and he never saw her tears. 
 " Well, look away if you like, but you've got to hear what I 
 say; I'm almost at the end of my tether. We ought to have 
 been married three weeks ago, we should have been married 
 if it had not been for this. I should have told you every- 
 thing, I should have told you on our wedding-night. Now I'm 
 desperate and half afraid ; but you've got to hear it." There 
 was a pause, and then he began again. " I was little more 
 than a boy, I'd been ill, was feeling neglected ; you both stayed 
 away, although I was at death's door. The thing one must 
 not say, that I ought not to say, I am going to say to you, 
 because" — his voice faltered — "because you were so nearly 
 my wife." 
 
 " But she was — she was quite your wife." 
 
 " That's cruel, don't be cruel, Eunice, it isn't like you. 
 I can't sleep and I can't eat; you can see it for yourself. I 
 act before my mother, but I can't go on acting much longer, 
 and besides, she knows how it is with me. What I am telling 
 you now is what no man should tell anyone, except, perhaps, 
 his wife. And I'm not sure he ought to tell her. She . . . 
 she offered herself to me." 
 
 His voice fell, his face and eyes flushed. 
 
 " I ought not to say it, but I must, I — of course I ought 
 to have resisted; I did resist at first. I was only a boy — 
 Eunice, my love, my sweetheart, my little innocent. Oh, 
 God ! how can I make you understand ? " There were beads 
 of perspiration on his forehead. " I was only nineteen. She 
 came to me " 
 
 He broke off, he could not go on. But presently she found 
 herself in his arms, their tears mingling. 
 
 " Don't tell me any more." 
 
 " Forgive me, forgive me. I've never loved anyone else." 
 
 " Let me forget it — make me forget it."
 
 FULL SWING 335 
 
 "I will. I swear I will. Kjss. me. Say everything is 
 
 as it used to be " 
 
 " Oh ! Desmond ! " she said wildly. 
 
 ***** 
 
 He told his mother that evening what he understood, or 
 misunderstood himself. That it was all right between them, 
 but Eunice had better not be hurried. The baby must be 
 got out of the house, she must be given time to forget. He 
 could wait now, now that he knew she still cared for him 
 and would never leave them again.
 
 CHAPTEK XXXI 
 
 Later on, after Lady Grindelay had been settled up for the 
 night, and Desmond and Eunice were both happily asleep, 
 dreaming, perhaps, of each other, two things happened under 
 the roof that sheltered them; two unrelated things. 
 
 Biddy, who for an unwonted time had kept sober, got 
 drunk. She drank steadily all through the day and night, 
 and at daybreak lay in a drunken sleep. That was the first. 
 
 The second was that Lady Grindelay, about three 
 o'clock in the morning, suddenly, and for no ostensible cause, 
 found herself broad awake, with the knowledge, cold and in- 
 controvertible, that the end was in sight. She was not in 
 pain, although pain lay in wait. But she was dying — dying. 
 The world was to go on without her ; her charities at Marley, 
 all she had done and left undone; Desmond. Dying! How 
 strange it was, and dreary and cold; the cold was perhaps 
 the worst. 
 
 She was very tired, exhausted with her long struggle, 
 needing rest. She looked at pale Death and smiled. Only 
 for a moment; then her face changed. Through the lethargy 
 that had almost fallen upon her broke that familiar call of 
 conscience. Her work was not done. Here there was nothing 
 waiting for her but pain. There, with Death, was rest. But 
 she could not go. 
 
 She began to think of her son, and, strangely enough, 
 of Andrew McKay. Both of them had asked gifts from her 
 and both she had sent empty away ; she, Avho loved giving ! 
 For Andrew it was too late, there was no use thinking about 
 it. But Desmond ! She owed him so much, she had not 
 been a tender or comprehending mother in those early days. 
 Now he seemed to fill the world. She had loved no man until 
 this one grew to manhood. And she knew now, although it 
 was so late, what love meant, what was the fulfilment of it. 
 
 "My son!" 
 
 336
 
 FULL SWING 337 
 
 Into the words had come passion; they were like a new 
 and passionate prayer on her dying lips. She must do some- 
 thing for him before she went. There was nothing else in 
 her mind. For herself she wanted neither salvation nor 
 solace; she desired only to give him a last gift before she 
 died. She would live until the next day, see them married 
 by her bedside, leave someone in her place to care for him. 
 She was resolute to stay until she had done this. 
 
 At three o'clock the nurse brought her medicine; a morphia 
 cachet to be dissolved in lemonade. She had already deter- 
 mined she would not take it; knowing it dulled her mind 
 as well as her body. Pain or no pain she would keep her 
 mind clear until she had arranged for Desmond and Eunice 
 to be married by her bedside, and so had given him his bride. 
 
 Her hands were swollen and a little stiff ; the night nurse 
 was yawning and unobservant. Lady Grindelay took the 
 cachet, and let it fall into her lemonade. When the nurse 
 held the glass to her lips, thinking she had swallowed it, she 
 moistened her lips only, then watched the white envelope 
 melt and sink, discharging its contents. 
 
 The nurse went back to her sofa, and Agatha lay and 
 thought of her son. The first tiling in the morning she would 
 send for a clergyman, not to absolve her, there was no time, 
 and she was not thinking of herself, but only of her son, 
 and his young, yearning manhood, of how little she had ever 
 done for liim, of all her mistakes. In the morning the clergy- 
 man should marry them by her bedside, then there would be 
 nothing to keep her here, she could rest. 
 
 Slowly the dawn crept into the room — the night nurse 
 slept peacefully and well. Agatha lay awake and suffered. 
 
 She thought it was the presence of the baby upstairs that 
 kept Eunice so reluctant and shy of Desmond. It ought never 
 to have come here, never to have come to Marley. 
 
 WTien she repeated that to herself she heard the baby cry- 
 ing; crying in the night. It was a dream, of course, a dying 
 woman's dream. She was sensible enough to know that. For 
 the child was a long way from her, in another wing of the 
 house. 
 22
 
 338 FULL SWING 
 
 The light grew stronger. Not the light at the end of the 
 channel where pale Death stood to welconae her, but the dawn 
 in the room. 
 
 At seven o'clock the night nurse yawned and stretched 
 herself, and woke again. Meeting Lady Grindelay's eyes, she 
 
 said: 
 
 " You've had a nice sleep, haven't you ? Shall I make you 
 a cup of tea, or will you have your lemonade ? " 
 
 In the lemonade lay her surcease from pain, the end of 
 the conflict. 
 
 " I will have the lemonade later. Pull up the blinds, find 
 out if Miss Eunice is up, I want to see her as soon as she is 
 dressed." She wanted to tell Eunice what she had planned. 
 
 " I don't think anyone in the house is up yet, it is very 
 early," yawned the nurse. She was hardly awake. She had 
 slept all the afternoon and most of the night, and was still 
 sleepy. 
 
 "I hear them stirring," Lady Grindelay persisted. But 
 what she heard was the baby crying, as she had heard it these 
 last two hours. 
 
 This time it was not a dream, it could not be a dream, a 
 baby was crying outside her room, and she heard Eunice too, 
 and voices raised as if in altercation, Eeynolds's voice, and 
 Eunice's. 
 
 " What is the matter? " she asked. " What is the matter? 
 Open the door." Pale Death had vanished from the room. 
 She was back here in Marley, in her own bedroom, with work 
 to do. 
 
 Eunice was outside, sobbing and excited. Eeynolds was 
 trying to prevent her coming in, was arguing with her. Lady 
 Grindelay heard what they were saying. 
 
 " She was sitting up yesterday. I'm sure she won't mind 
 my going in ; I know she is awake because I heard the blinds 
 being pulled up. She must see baby ; she will know what we 
 ought to do. Let me pass." 
 
 " Come in, come in," the weak voice called out. The nurse 
 opened the door. " What is the matter ? " 
 
 Eunice had a screaming baby in her arms. From where
 
 FULL SWING 339 
 
 Agatha lay, grey among her pillows, feeling the cold creeping 
 to her, she saw them both. 
 
 Her aunt might have been better or worse; it was true 
 that yesterday she had been sitting up. Eunice had really no 
 eyes for her, she was completely absorbed in the baby. 
 
 " I heard her crying and crying, I listened at the door in 
 the night and heard her crying. I couldn't make Biddy hear. 
 She was snoring, lying on her back. I took baby away into 
 my own bed, and tried to comfort her. But she got worse 
 and worse." Her tears were falling on the baby's convulsed 
 and twitching face; "Auntie, there is something the matter, 
 I'm sure she is in pain, I don't know what to do." 
 
 " Come nearer." 
 
 " Eeynolds said I was not to disturb you, but no one else 
 knows what to do for her." 
 
 " You were right to come." 
 
 Eeynolds interposed that she had already sent for the 
 doctor. 
 
 " He can't be here for an hour," Eunice answered. 
 
 On a wave of semi-consciousness, with pain as an under- 
 current, Agatha became confused as to what was happening ; 
 the room seemed over full of people from Little Marley and 
 Great Marley, coming to her for help — a great concourse of 
 them. She brought herself back with an effort, and now all 
 she heard was the girl crying over the baby, Desmond's baby. 
 That was why she had not married Desmond. Was that why 
 she was crying? Eunice went on talking, coming nearer to 
 the bed, but looking only at the baby in her arms, never at 
 her aunt. 
 
 " She is so fearfully restless, I can hardly hold her. I 
 gave her a teaspoonful of milk, and she sucked and sucked 
 the spoon ; her throat and eyes seem parched, and she screams 
 or moans all the time." 
 
 Eeynolds, full of concern for her mistress, would have 
 taken the child, but Eunice resisted. 
 
 " Give her to me, don't trouble your aunt, Miss Eunice — 
 the doctor will soon be here.'' 
 
 " Lay it beside me."
 
 340 FULL SWING 
 
 Of course her mind was not in a normal condition, it was 
 floating somewhere on the borderland, as it had been these 
 last few hours. 
 
 Eunice laid the baby gently beside her. 
 
 " I was right to bring her to you, wasn't I ? Jack Eeid 
 can't be here for an hour. What do you think it is ? I didn't 
 startle you, did I? I knew you were awake." 
 
 " You were quite right." 
 
 Eeynolds, now that the matter had been taken out of her 
 hands, began to retail the child's symptoms. She, too, had 
 always depended upon Lady Grindelay. Neither of them 
 noticed the change in her. 
 
 Eunice only said again : 
 
 " Can't you do something, auntie, before the doctor 
 comes ? " 
 
 Eunice was almost beside herself in face of the inarticu- 
 late suffering and her inability to assuage it. 
 
 Agatha lay still whilst Eeynolds told of the strange symp- 
 toms. Her mind was not quite there, although they thought 
 she was listening. 
 
 " I must say I've never seen anything like it. She seems 
 not to see what's before her, to be wandering, and then 
 excited. Her cries are hoarse, but it isn't croup. And look 
 how thirsty she is. Miss Eunice gave her milk, but I let her 
 sup a little water. Look at her now." 
 
 The baby tried to sit up; the excitement of which Eey- 
 nolds spoke was in the scarlet cheeks and groping arms and 
 cries. 
 
 " That's your lemonade she's after now. Poor lamb, she's 
 parched with thirst." 
 
 The dying woman was swaying on those waves of semi- 
 consciousness, the pain almost submerging her. 
 
 " It's your lemonade the poor little thing is after." 
 
 " Give it to her." 
 
 " I need not give her your lemonade ; I'll get some water," 
 Eeynolds answered. 
 
 " There's a fresh jug outside," Eunice said quickly. She 
 took up the cup. " Shall I give it to her, auntie ? "
 
 FULL SWING 341 
 
 " Give mo the cup." 
 
 Two red spots burned now in her grey cheeks. In the 
 lemonade was surcease from pain ; she would give that, or 
 anything, that Eunice should not cry, should give herself 
 happily to Desmond, should not cry about his baby. "Let 
 me give it her myself." 
 
 Reynolds supported Lady Grindelay, helping her trembling 
 hands when she tried to give the cup to the baby. The baby 
 seized upon it as if it had been her bottle, only that at first 
 her hands were like the hands of the blind, groping, and she 
 caught the sleeve of Agatha's nightgown instead of the cup. 
 But when the cup had been guided to her mouth she drank 
 and drank thirstily, sucking it down; they could not get the 
 cup away from her, she sucked and sucked. When she had 
 finished all there was in it she let go, not until then. Eey- 
 nolds laid Lady Grindelay back, and the baby beside her. The 
 baby had grown quieter immediately. It was only then Eey- 
 nolds saw how ill Lady Grindelay looked. She thought the 
 exertion had been too much for her, that she had fainted. 
 
 "' Oh, my goodness, look at her. Give me the smelling 
 bottle — quick, nurse. Have you the brandy? Get the 
 brandy ! " 
 
 "I think she's better; I really think she seems easier," 
 Eunice said, bending over the quieted baby. 
 
 Nurse came quickly at Reynolds's call, and she and the 
 maid exchanged glances. 
 
 " You'd better take the child away," the nurse said hastily. 
 Reynolds was holding the smelling salts; Agatha's nostrils 
 were pinched, and her breath was fluttering. *' You have sent 
 for the doctor, haven't you?" she added in a low voice to 
 Reynolds. " I do believe she's gone," the nurse said a minute 
 later. "I can't feel her pulse." They could not get the 
 brandy down. 
 
 Eunice went away as she was told, carrying the heavily 
 breathing child. Vaguely she knew that her aunt had fainted, 
 but it was for the baby she was concerned. 
 
 Dr. Reid came, and Jack with him. There were strych- 
 nine and ether, a cylinder of oxygen. Lady Grindelay was
 
 342 FULL SWING 
 
 not to be allowed to die. Science and the young man decreed 
 it, and the old man could not restrain them. They succeeded 
 in reviving her, and the first faint words they heard her say 
 were: 
 
 " Did the clergyman come ? " 
 
 Nobody knew she had asked for a clergyman. Nobody 
 had thought of such a thing ; it was so unlike Lady Grindelay, 
 unexpected. 
 
 "We will send at once." It was Jack who answered. 
 " You will rest quietly until then." 
 
 They gave her brandy and Valentine's juice, and another 
 injection of strychnine ; they would keep life in her. 
 
 She was very drowsy. " He won't be long, will he ? " 
 
 " No, he won't be long." 
 
 But when the hastily summoned vicar arrived they would 
 not disturb her. She was sleeping, her breathing calmer, 
 the pulse improved. Jack Eeid had justified himself. 
 
 Late that afternoon, when she woke to something more 
 like consciousness, Andrew McKay was sitting by her side. 
 The doctors were gone; they were still in the house, but all 
 she knew was that they were not there, and that she and 
 Andrew were alone. 
 
 " That is you, isn't it, Andrew ? " 
 
 Her voice was very faint; it seemed to come from a long 
 way off. Her lover, faithful, although unfulfilled, answered 
 softly : 
 
 " Yes, Agatha, it is I. You've been asleep ? " 
 
 " You know I am dying ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Don't be sorry. I'm glad to go." 
 
 He could not speak at that moment, and she seemed to be 
 thinking. 
 
 "What is troubling me, Andrew?" she said again; she 
 seemed to be confused. "It isn't the orchid, is it?" 
 
 He answered quietly: 
 
 " The orchid is in full bloom, glorious bloom." 
 
 " The blue flower." And she added, drowsily : " I never 
 found it!"
 
 FULL SWING 343 
 
 He took her hand, the hand that lay outside the counter- 
 pane, no longer beautiful and slender, but heavy and swollen. 
 He kissed it, nevertheless. Andrew, the staid and grizzled 
 lawyer ! He to be kissing her hand ! Something like a smile 
 seemed to drift over her face. 
 
 " You have been very faithful ! " 
 
 He did not answer that. 
 
 " Is there anything I can do for you, dear ? " His voice 
 was stifled, speech was difficult. 
 
 " You would like a cutting. Tell Sanders I said you were 
 to have a cutting." 
 
 He had been sitting there a long time, ever since the doc- 
 tors had left. There was nothing more to be done, they had 
 brought her back, but only for a short time ; the light was on 
 her face, the opalescent, unmistakable light. Andrew sat 
 beside her and watched, but the nurse was within call. 
 
 " Desmond ? " she asked presently. 
 
 " I will fetch him." He rose heavily, he was even now 
 only second with her. ^'^I'll fetch him." 
 
 She called him back ; he heard that faint voice, a whisper 
 from her would have reached him, but this was a call ; hoarse, 
 urgent. 
 
 " Stop — ^wait, Andrew ! Andrew, what have I done ? " 
 
 He came back; her breathing was quick, but it was her 
 eyes that startled him ; they had been dying eyes, half-closed 
 and looking into the distance, now they were open and there 
 was terror in them; Andrew thought it was terror. "My 
 draught ! I gave her my draught, so that Eunice should not 
 cry. What have I done ? Is it dead ? Desmond's child ? " 
 
 She asked it twice. And because it seemed she had con- 
 sciousness enough left to wish to know, he answered her out 
 of the depths of his wisdom, wisdom only of this world, but 
 out of his love and comprehension of her also. He answered 
 gently, and with her poor hand in his. As he spoke he felt 
 a sudden quickening of that poor hand, a spasm. 
 
 " And if it be dead, Agatha, it is better so. Poor mite ! 
 She could never have been anything but a complication and 
 a difficulty. She had no place here, no real place, nor any-
 
 344 FULL SWING 
 
 where! You're not distressed about anything, Agatha, are 
 
 you 
 
 ?" 
 
 "How?" The word came out. None followed, but her 
 awakened and dying eyes implored an. answer. 
 
 " How did it die ? You want to know how or why the 
 baby died ? Perhaps it was the Lord speaking. . . .'' 
 
 He paused; Andrew McKay had always been a religious 
 man. He thought now of the wisdom and goodness of God. 
 
 " Biddy has confessed," he continued. " The child was 
 poisoned; it was an accident." 
 
 " Poisoned ? " 
 
 Agatha's eyes were wide open with a terrified question. 
 He answered soothingly. 
 
 " It is all right. I will see that the best is done for 
 Biddy." 
 
 All the pangs of death assailed her; the shallow breath 
 and faintness, the heart that beat and stopped, the desperate 
 sickness, but she fought them all. 
 
 "Tell me." 
 
 "Biddy has confessed. Young Eeid thought there was 
 something the matter with the child's eyes; he was testing 
 them with atropine. Biddy had orders to drop it in the 
 eyes, one drop in each. Instead she gave it as medicine, the 
 whole bottle. She has been crying and raving ever since, 
 accusing herself." 
 
 " She didn't do it, Andrew; / did it ! " 
 
 Agatha's voice was very faint. He thought she was wan- 
 dering, and soothed her. 
 
 " Perhaps it was the Lord speaking. A good thing, per- 
 haps. Don't dwell upon it." 
 
 " Andrew ! " 
 
 "I'm here, dear." 
 
 " Andrew, help me ! " 
 
 He went down on his knees, his stiff old knees ; he thought 
 it was help through the passage she wanted. His voice shook : 
 
 " Give her comfort and sure confidence in Thee, Iceep her 
 in perpetual peace and safety, through Jesus Christ."
 
 FULL SWING 345 
 
 "Leave off praying, it is too late. I killed Desmond's 
 child." 
 
 Andrew stood up. 
 
 " I did it, Andrew. So that Eunice should not cry ; I did 
 it for Desmond. I don't know why I did it. ... I can't 
 remember. Write it down. There's no barrier between them 
 now. I did it for my son, for my Desmond, so that he should 
 have his heart's desire. Now I can't die. . . ." 
 
 She left off speaking, but had not strength to close her 
 eyes. Under the half-closed lids they were still alive and 
 dreadful. 
 
 "You don't know what you are saying." 
 
 " I killed it, I know. I did it on purpose. . . .*' 
 
 " No, Agatha, no ; don't say so. It isn't true ! " 
 
 " It wasn't Biddy," she said again. 
 
 The words came through, jerkily, and with difficulty, but 
 they came through. 
 
 " The morphia was in the lemonade. My son, I was think- 
 ing of you, Eunice must not cry . . . you will be married 
 this morning." 
 
 She went on murmuring, saying the same words over and 
 over again. 
 
 The blood hammered in his head ; phrases beat about, legal 
 
 phrases. 
 
 "Misadventure; death by misadventure!" was the chief 
 
 of them. 
 
 " It wasn't Biddy, Andrew. Write it down." 
 
 It might be true; he knew it was true. But what then? 
 What then? Well, that he must save her from the conse- 
 quences, save her memory. For soon that would be all there 
 was left to save. He bent over her. 
 
 " Lie quiet, then ; lie quiet, Agatha. I'll do what is right. 
 You hear, don't you ? " 
 
 She murmured something; he thought it was her son's 
 name, that she said it was for him. When he went out of 
 the room he walked like a very old man. He had to think 
 what was to be done, how her secret was to be kept. But 
 Biddy must not suffer. He must do the right thing. He
 
 346 FULL SWING 
 
 knew that what she had told him was true, and that she had 
 blundered for the last time. He knew the child had been 
 taken into her room that morning. Agatha! She had com- 
 mitted the dreadful irrevocable deed, and said it was on pur- 
 pose, that there should be no barrier between Desmond and 
 Eunice. There was blood on her hands. Agatha! Impos- 
 sible to picture his agony of mind. 
 
 The old doctor met him outside the door of the sick-room. 
 
 " No change ? " he asked. 
 
 Andrew stopped short; he did not know what he was 
 going to say. 
 
 " I think there is a change," he said then, slowly. 
 
 "For the better?" 
 
 " Perhaps ; she is not fully conscious, does not know what 
 she is saying." Andrew would take no risks. " I don't think 
 she knows what she is saying," he repeated. 
 
 " I am surprised if that is so. She was quite clear when 
 I saw her last. I thought she would go out like that. A dear, 
 good woman, her hand was always open. We shall miss her 
 here in Marley." 
 
 He went in, closing the door behind him quietly. 
 
 Andrew stood still a minute. What was the best thing 
 to do? She must make no confession, he had her reputation 
 to guard, her high repute. 
 
 As he stood there in thought Desmond came down the 
 stairs. 
 
 " I'm just rushing off to the chemist. Jack thinks now 
 the child is coming round, reviving. Keep Biddy from going 
 to the police station, will you ? We don't want a scandal." 
 
 "Biddy?" 
 
 " She wants to give herself up." 
 
 " But that mustn't be allowed." 
 
 " I knew you'd agree about that." 
 
 Even now Andrew did not understand. If Biddy had not 
 given the baby the wrong medicine, why had she confessed to 
 having done so? Every step was a step in the dark, and his 
 heart was aching. He went slowly upstairs, and Biddy's 
 voice broke on his ear.
 
 FULL SWING 347 
 
 " An' didn't I have to coax and coax the darlint to ut, an' 
 she, as if she knew, turnin' from ut apn an' agin, an' crym' 
 out an' fightin'. Och, but they'll be hangin' me in me grey 
 hairs. Ochone ! ochone ! " 
 
 Biddy was rocking herself to and fro, scarcely recovered 
 from her debauch, red-eyed and dishevelled. Reynolds was 
 plying her with more brandy, wisely. 
 
 "You won't let her leave the house?" the lawyer said. 
 Reynolds reassured him. 
 
 In the day nursery, where Andrew went next, Eunice sat 
 on a low chair, with the baby girl in her arms. It did not 
 seem like a dying child, only a sleeping one. And she held 
 it as if it were an inestimable treasure, closely, with wet, 
 thankful eyes. 
 
 Jack Reid leant against the mantelpiece, watching them 
 with a gloomy face. 
 
 " I can't make it out," he said. " If Biddy had told us 
 earlier I could have given an injection; now, of course, it is 
 too late." 
 
 Eunice, speaking very softly, answered: 
 
 "Didn't Dr. Reid say you had better do nothing? She 
 is sleeping so beautifully, little darling ! " 
 
 But young and scientific doctors never do nothing. Nature 
 belittles their learning, puts them to shame. 
 
 " I shall try an injection of morphia when Desmond gets 
 back with it. The atropine bottle is empty." 
 
 "Biddy may have spilled some," Eunice suggested. 
 "Baby may only have had very little; the bottle wasn't 
 empty." 
 
 "But think of those symptoms you described. They'll 
 come on again. This is only a breathing time; you'll see, 
 she'll wake thirsty and confused." 
 
 That the baby should get well without treatment made 
 the young doctor gloomy and doubtful. All the time he 
 stood there he complained of the inaction to which his father 
 had urged him after Biddy's confession. 
 
 "It's absurd to be doing nothing. I've half a mind to 
 try mustard until Desmond comes back from the chemist."
 
 348 FULL SWING 
 
 Eunice held the threatened baby close. She was glad 
 when Jack Eeid went out of the room with the old lawyer. 
 
 Jack talked to Andrew as he went. 
 
 '^I can't make it out at all. Biddy must have given the 
 child, according to her own account, and judging from the 
 state of the bottle, at least a twentieth of a grain. And that 
 ought to have killed it ; it was practically dying when I came. 
 We lost between four and five hours through not knowing what 
 had happened. Now it is sleeping calmly, pulse and breath- 
 ing regular! Can there be anything in her constitution, I 
 wonder, some abnormality?" 
 
 He had all his degrees, and began to talk scientifically 
 about abnormal persons and their idiosyncracies, using 
 strange-sounding words such as " idiopathy." Andrew lis- 
 tened with half an ear. 
 
 " I had made up my mind to give an injection of mor- 
 phia. That's the antidote, you know. There is only one 
 antidote. But I've run out of it. And then, what d5es the 
 little beggar do but fall asleep ? Now, father urges me to wait ; 
 but I think it is an awful risk. . . ." 
 
 Andrew was an intelligent lawyer, and, although he was 
 so disturbed, his faculties were not obscured. 
 
 " The only possible antidote ? " he said quickly. " The 
 only possible antidote to what Biddy gave her?" 
 
 " That's so, there's nothing abstruse about that. It is in 
 all the text books. ' In case of atropine poisoning, give 
 morphia.' " 
 
 It was as if a weight were rolling off him, as if he could 
 breathe again, and freely; as if the goodness of God were 
 again made manifest. 
 
 " That explains everything," he exclaimed — " every- 
 thing ! " 
 
 " Explains everything ! " Jack repeated, staring at him. 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " The baby lias been given the antidote." 
 
 "Wliat antidote? Who has prescribed for it? There has 
 been no one here but my father and myself." 
 
 ''No one has prescribed it," Andrew said solemnly.
 
 FULL SWING 349 
 
 "By the mercy of God, ])y His great goodness, a mistake has 
 been made." 
 
 " A mistake ! " repeated Jack again, stupidly. 
 
 " The child has had the antidote. She was taken into Lady 
 Grindelay's room this morning, as you know. She was given 
 her lemonade to drink. There was a morphia cachet dissolved 
 in. the cup." 
 
 " Good God ! " 
 
 " One of Lady Grindelay's morphia cachets." 
 
 " Good God! " Jack said again, and stared at him. After 
 a moment's pause he added : 
 
 " Then I was right all through." Andrew never knew 
 how he arrived at that conclusion. 
 
 " A quarter of a grain ! I shouldn't have given her quite 
 so much as that myself, though." 
 
 Back to Agatha's room again, and as swiftly as possible, 
 went Andrew, 
 
 " Her vitality is extraordinary," the old doctor whispered 
 as he met him. " She spoke of the orchid, said a spray was 
 to be laid on her coffin. * Mind Andrew has a cutting,' she 
 said twice. She took me for Sanders, I suppose. She spoke 
 of a magistrate ! Do you think she could want to see Camp- 
 den ? They are old friends, I know. If so, he should be sent 
 for without delay ; the end is very near." 
 
 " No, she doesn't want to see Campden." 
 
 He Avent in, stood again beside the bed Agatha's e^^es 
 were still alive under the drooping lids. 
 
 " Is it Desmond ? " 
 
 "It is Andrew." 
 
 " What will they do to me ? " 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 "Has Desmond married Eunice? I can't remember — I 
 can't remember anything. Does he think I did it on purpose ? 
 I wanted him to be happy, to help him ! " She was very rest- 
 Jess, talking quickly and sometimes incoherently; he had to 
 stoop to hear her. 
 
 " There is nothing between them now. What does it 
 matter about me? Let Eunice stay with you a little while —
 
 350 FULL SWING 
 
 with you and your girls. Then they can get married, and 
 come back here. She would never have taken him with the 
 child between them. I am glad I lived long enough to make 
 
 everything right " Her voice trailed off. "Is there 
 
 blood upon my hands ? Is this the end ? " In her dying eyes 
 were tears, the saddest, most dreadful sight. " My son, my 
 little son, my strong, brave son, it was for you. . . ." 
 
 " You didn't kill the child, Agatha. Grace has been given 
 
 you — ^grace " He wanted to tell her about the goodness 
 
 of God, but a sob choked him. "You did not kill her, 
 Agatha. You saved her life." 
 
 t( T » 
 
 " The great and wonderful goodness of God saved her 
 and you. You've no blood upon your hands. These dear 
 hands have no stain upon them; try to listen, to understand. 
 He would not let you do this wicked thing. He knew you 
 were not yourself, dear — not yourself. You, who have been 
 so good always, and charitable. He would not let you do 
 this thing." 
 
 She said something indistinguishable, and he went on : 
 "You gave her lemonade, and the morphia was in it. I 
 know, dear, I know. What you gave her was the antidote — 
 the antidote to what Biddy had administered in error. The 
 antidote. You understand, don't you? You saved her life — 
 under God : in His mercy. You saved her life." 
 
 Agatha opened her eyes; and it was upon Andrew they 
 rested, for the last time. 
 
 " Did I ? Another blunder ... the last. . . ." 
 She spoke her own epitaph. The end had come, although 
 the breathing went on for a long time. Jack Eeid gave a 
 name to it, and aired his knowledge. He said it was " Cheyne 
 Stokes breathing." But it did not matter what he said. 
 Neither of the old men would let him disturb her. She had 
 made her last mistake. 
 
 When Desmond came back with the medicine he went up 
 to the nursery in his old way, two steps at a time. He stopped 
 short when he saw Eunice there with his child in her arms.
 
 FULL SWING 351 
 
 The baby was held close in her arms, and she was crying; 
 they were tears of thanksgiving; a minute ago the baby had 
 opened her blue eyes, and smiled. Eunice was kissing the 
 little soft face when Desmond stopped short at the door. 
 
 " You're crying ! " 
 
 " She is better," she faltered. 
 
 He came over to her. 
 
 " But, Eunice, Eunice, you can't care " 
 
 " I do — I do ! I love her ! " She held the infant closer. 
 
 " Then " He fell on his knees beside her. " And the 
 
 father of her? " he asked softly. 
 
 " You won't send her away ? " 
 
 " I'll not take anything from you that you want." 
 
 He was kneeling, but the chair on which she sat was a 
 low one, and he could wipe away her tears with his hand- 
 kerchief, 
 
 "I may, mayn't I?" That, too, he had done before, 
 when they were children, when she had fallen and hurt her- 
 self, and at all times of her young, light griefs or disappoint- 
 ments. 
 
 " You've forgiven me even this ? " 
 
 "I want to be her mother, she shall never know any 
 difference." 
 
 And she kept her word in the happy days that came, long 
 after Agatha had been buried, a spray of the wonderful blue 
 orchid on her coffin, and, more wonderful still, her memory 
 for ever emblazoned and irradiated because, as Andrew 
 McKay told them, at the end, out of the greatness of her love 
 and generosity, and to crown her beautiful and unselfish life, 
 she had given the draught that was to .have eased her last 
 pangs, her death pangs, to quench the baby's thirst, saving it 
 thereby. 
 
 That was the way Andrew told the story, the way he came 
 to believe it.
 
 7 000 05^^^^ °