Novels 
 
 Clu 
 
 w 
 
 theWoi 
 Henstephe
 
 The 
 
 Statue in the Wood 
 
 x 
 By Richard Pryce 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 # Cambrit>0e 
 1918
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY RICHARD PRYCB 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published Apri
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 THE FIRST BOOK 
 
 2137790
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 BOOK THE FIRST 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ON a day of late spring or early summer, when 
 the world was younger by some years, a lady of 
 considerable charm, and of an appearance that 
 demands the word 'fashionable' for its adequate 
 or even natural qualification, was walking through 
 a wood. 
 
 She was not dressed in such a way as a woman of 
 these days would have been dressed for a country 
 walk. She wore, it is probable, many more clothes. 
 She wore silks, moreover; laces. There were forget- 
 me-nots in her hat. She carried a parasol that was 
 somewhat elaborate, and she opened and shut it 
 
 actions which involved many others rather 
 frequently. The wood was hers, but she had an air 
 of exploring it. The spirit of discreet adventure was, 
 indeed, so apparent in her looks and her movements, 
 that the observer if there had been an observer 
 
 must have been very dull to whom it would not 
 have been manifest that the winding path she trod, 
 even as the impulse, probably, which had prompted 
 her pursuit of it, was wholly new to her. Her steps
 
 4 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 were tentative as the steps of one unsure of his 
 ground, but purposeful as those of a pioneer. She 
 looked about her as she walked and stopped often 
 to examine, or perhaps to pick, a flower; or when 
 a branch which must be manipulated blocked her 
 way; or to disentangle a twig or a bramble from 
 skirts which were doing their best, but were wholly 
 unsuitable to their present occupation and environ- 
 ment. As most of these actions entailed the closing 
 of the parasol, which she never failed subsequently 
 to reopen, her progress, whatever her pace, was not 
 quick. She had long hours before her. She was, 
 indeed, in no hurry. 
 
 The day was one of exceeding beauty; the wood, 
 sparse where she walked, but thickening on each 
 side of her, was of a beauty that was vaguely, but 
 palpably also, exciting. Spring had merged into 
 summer, but was present still in the anemones and 
 the wild hyacinths at her feet, and in the love-songs 
 of the birds. Every now and then she heard the note 
 of the cuckoo. This will-o'-the-wisp of sounds she 
 could not locate ; could not even tell of it sometimes 
 from which direction it came to her. It had its part 
 in the beauty of the day. It was of a piece with the 
 tender green of the leaves. It was of a piece with 
 something that stirred in herself. It had been the 
 note of the cuckoo another one probably, but pos- 
 sibly even the same, heard from the terrace as she 
 waited for three o'clock and the carriage that 
 had, as she would have said, 'unsettled' her. The
 
 TIJE STATUE IN THE WOOD 5 
 
 carriage had come round as the hour struck. She 
 had sent it away. 
 
 Hark! There it was . . . and there . . . cuckoo, 
 cuckoo, . . . sweetest (in some sort), as it was most 
 elusive, of all the songs of love ! Sweet as love itself, 
 cruel, too, as love, if you associated it with the re- 
 lentless ways of the singer. Wonderful song if 
 you could call that a song which had but two 
 notes to its sweet interval wonderful, seductive, 
 merciless. Briefest of all love's songs brief as 
 love. Very symbol, then, of love's rapture and 
 anguish, of the surpassing, because the passing, 
 ecstasies of love. Sound calculated to disturb you, 
 indeed, if you were thirty, and a woman, lovely, 
 moreover, without kith or kin to make claim on 
 your affections, and knew that, with rings on 
 your fingers and bells on your toes, with posses- 
 sions, that is, houses and lands and menserv- 
 ants and maidservants, carriages and horses, and 
 much else, in modest proportions, perhaps, as pos- 
 sessions go, but proportions more than sufficient to 
 your needs, you had hitherto somehow missed, or 
 been missed by, the one possession of all. Cuckoo 
 . . . cuckoo . . . the disturbance, whatever its nature, 
 was divine. 
 
 But if she had an air of exploring she had also an 
 air of seeking. She came to a bridle path which 
 cut the wood obliquely, and was plainly uncertain 
 whether to pursue her way as before or to take one
 
 of the alternative routes which now offered them- 
 selves to her. The straight cuttings, clearer of un- 
 dergrowth, appealed to her tried clothes to the 
 parasol which would not there have to be furled 
 and unfurled as on the straggling path she had fol- 
 lowed. But she liked her straggling path, liked, 
 too, because they were unfamiliar, the little incon- 
 veniences to which it put her, and which pointed 
 the adventure of the day. She looked right, she 
 looked left: green glades; shadowed. Ahead, the 
 broken, sun-flecked wilderness with its diversions 
 and its obstacles. The charted, the uncharted ways 
 . . . which? She chose with a vague feeling, per- 
 haps, that what she sought was secret and would be 
 approached, other things being equal, by less rather 
 than more defined ways the uncharted. She 
 would, as it were, stumble upon what she was 
 seeking. That was her feeling. That was, more- 
 over, in her mood of the strange day, her hope her 
 wish even. 
 
 She knew suddenly that she was enjoying her- 
 self greatly. The smell of the woods in her nostrils 
 was like some delicate savour on the palate. She 
 would distinguish some of the ingredients in the 
 pot-pourri of sweet scents. Sweet-briar at a point 
 was unexpectedly one of them, and she looked about 
 her seeking the source of a fragrance that she con- 
 nected only with cultivated land. Yes, here was 
 sweet-briar. She plucked a leaf and held it to her
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 7 
 
 nose, inhaling deeply. Smell of the taste of the apple 
 of your dreams ! The apple of the poet's dream 
 of the Song of Solomon the apple of solace. Or 
 Eve's apple the Forbidden? Either. It was an 
 apple with a taste like the fragrance of sweet-briar 
 that the singer of the Song of Songs had in his mind, 
 she was sure. It was an apple with a taste sharp 
 and sweet, like the biting-sweet fragrance of sweet- 
 briar, in which the white teeth of Eve met crisply 
 as the morsel slipped pricking into her watering 
 mouth. Where, she thought, as she breathed in 
 the pungent essence and smiled happily to herself, 
 where, in these days, was to be found such an apple 
 as that? 
 
 And now the wood thickened. The path which 
 she thought of as uncharted, because, in comparison 
 with the formal cutting of the others, it was so ill- 
 defined, became obscure and obscurer still. Pres- 
 ently, was this a path at all? Had she lost that 
 semblance of a path which had guided her steps 
 hitherto? And at what moment? The wood had 
 become a maze. Was she, too, lost? 
 
 She had closed her parasol. Here in the thickness 
 of the wood she had no need for it. She was in a 
 green twilight the twilight of many trees. Not the 
 religious care of the most delicate complexion in the 
 world would demand the use of a sunshade here. 
 The wood was its own sunshade and hers.
 
 8 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 The ground was now a little damp. Soft mosses 
 carpeted its unevennesses. Little fleckings of sun- 
 light dappled or damascened them with gold. Where 
 such a filtering of light struck the bark of a tree 
 a snail, it chanced, had left a glittering, glistening 
 trail. She took notice of such small things as might 
 serve her for landmarks, if, presently, she should 
 find that she was, indeed, lost. She should, like 
 the children in the fairy story, have brought white 
 pebbles with her to strew as she walked. 
 
 Silence now. In the heart of the wood no birds 
 sang. Yet comparative silence only or silence 
 which was not silence at all, but a thing made up of 
 innumerable small sounds. In it she heard her own 
 footsteps, the cracking of twigs under her feet, the 
 rustling of leaves as her skirts brushed them, the 
 silken rustle of her skirts themselves. These sounds 
 were magnified. Crackle, crackle, swish, swish: they 
 pointed her loneliness. 
 
 She stood still to listen, and they ceased. The 
 wood, nay, the world, seemed to her empty. Did 
 no one use the wood? Were there no cottages in it 
 or on the outskirts of it? Was there no right of way 
 through its leafy fastnesses? It was her own wood, 
 but she did not know. She knew the keeper's house, 
 because a road which she often took upon her drives 
 led you to that. But that was not here. She knew 
 as Lady Bountiful rather than chatelaine the 
 cottages of many of the workmen on the estate,
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 9 
 
 woodmen, hedgers and ditchers, and the like. But 
 not any of these were in the neighbourhood in which 
 she now found herself. Found herself? Found? 
 That was not quite the word. That was not the 
 word at all. No human habitations were here. No 
 footfall but her own broke, or seemed like to break, 
 the silence. She was alone in the wood. She was 
 but very delightfully, very excitingly lost. It 
 had wanted but this, she thought, to complete her 
 adventure. 
 
 Well, whatever happened, she had only to walk 
 long enough in any direction to come out some- 
 where. 
 
 It was as she stood hesitating that she heard, 
 suddenly and just ahead of her, the voice of the de- 
 ceiver. She started at the sound and moved forward. 
 The tangle of the wood was thickest here. Things 
 that had been cut had grown up. A bramble caught 
 her dress and tore it. She freed herself with difficulty. 
 But to do so she had to take off her gloves, and the 
 bramble, baulked of its prey, revenged itself. When 
 at length she was really free, not one only of the 
 hands sparkling with their many rings was bleeding, 
 but both of them. 
 
 Should she have taken warning and turned back? 
 She was half minded to turn, but the thing which 
 had barred her progress, now swaying like the sword 
 that turned this way and that, guarding Eden, 
 blocked her retreat. Besides, under her momentary
 
 io THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 misgiving, she knew that she meant to go on. Deep 
 down in her heart she knew . . . and just then, close, 
 close at hand, the cuckoo's voice again calling, call- 
 ing ... 
 The bramble, disregarded, swayed to stillness.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE clearing, cut as it seemed in the very heart 
 of the wood, was as an island an island set in a 
 sea of leaves. Out of this sea, after battlement with 
 its leavy waves, she suddenly emerged. It was like 
 getting to land. That was why she thought of the 
 clearing as an island. 
 
 She was a little breathless now. In her excitement 
 she forgot the smarting of her hands till she saw 
 that two large drops had gathered, one on each. Her 
 handkerchief a filmy thing of gossamer was 
 tucked, luckily, into the bodice of her dress; thus 
 she was able to make use of it, and with its aid, 
 after a patient minute or two during which the beads 
 formed and re-formed, to stanch the minute crimson 
 flows which threatened damage to her silks and 
 laces. By the sight of the crimson stains upon the 
 white she was reminded again of a fairy story. It 
 wanted but the black of ebony for the infant of the 
 queen's desire to be conjured up before her. Snow, 
 ebony, and blood it was to be compact of these, 
 was it not, the child of the young queen's dreams? 
 
 She did not follow up the thought. It was, indeed, 
 hardly a thought. It lay only behind her other 
 thoughts under the excitement which held her 
 and which caused her heart to beat and her eyes 
 consciously to shine. She stepped into the open.
 
 12 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 The statue stood in the exact centre of the clear- 
 ing, which was a circle. From this circle four paths, 
 cut in the wood, radiated like the spokes of a wheel. 
 Three of them she found later were dummies 
 blind alleys leading nowhither. The fourth led into 
 the bridle path which she had passed upon her way. 
 This fourth, faced by the statue which looked down 
 the long, narrow length of it, was the approach 
 proper to the circle, and on each side of it was a 
 stone seat. In the mouth of each of the other three, 
 using it, indeed, as the niche which in point of fact 
 it was, stood a terminal. 
 
 Why had she never been here before? hardly 
 even known of it? Only to chance words, the ex- 
 pansive excuse of a new maid the evening before, did 
 she owe a realization of its existence. 
 
 "Lost ourselves in the wood, 'm, me and Alice, 
 on our walk, being strange both of us to the country 
 after London. Or else I see now I ought to have 
 waited for one of the others as did know her way, but 
 being Alice's afternoon out and she wanting to see 
 it too . . ." 
 
 "Very well, Branton, very well, don't let it occur 
 again." 
 
 "No, 'm, indeed. Nor it would n't have occurred 
 now, except for the difficulty of finding it being 
 hidden like. Sort of secret as they all said of it. I '14 
 sure I 'm very sorry. When I saw the time I said 
 to Alice, 'Whatever will my lady say and company
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 13 
 
 to dinner and me with her hair to dress and not so 
 much as a pair of stockings laid out on the bed ! ' ' 
 
 'Hidden like.' 'Secret as they all said of it/ Hid- 
 den. Secret. And, 'They said of it.' They talked 
 of it, then? Dim memories had stirred as she sub- 
 mitted herself to the competent hands of the be- 
 lated maid. What was it? What was this spot that 
 they talked of that newcomers wanted to see? 
 She did not remember that her husband had ever 
 spoken of it to her. But she had heard passing al- 
 lusions to it. A guest had spoken of it, or one of the 
 tenants, or some one in the village. It belonged in 
 a way to the youth of her husband to the long, 
 strange bachelor days of the old man whom she had 
 married, but whom, in the eight years of her married 
 life, she had never known. Oh, yes, she had heard 
 of it vaguely even formed a conception of it, so 
 that, from time to time, she had said to herself that 
 some day she must see it. But that day, till this day, 
 had never come. They were comparatively little 
 at Redmayne. There was the house in Charles 
 Street. There was Clanguthrie, which her husband 
 had bought for the fishing and which she later had 
 sold. And, for the last eighteen months of her hus- 
 band's life, there had been the fruitless chase of lost 
 health, abroad. Since his death, two years ago, this 
 was the first occasion on which she had made a stay 
 of any length in her country home. 
 
 So had it come that she had not seen it, and so, 
 for the very indenniteness of her knowledge of it,
 
 14 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 had it come also that, at the back of her mind, 
 mystery all unconsciously had already associated 
 itself with what her eyes were now beholding for the 
 first time. 
 
 Her eyes? More than her eyes. Yes, more, cer- 
 tainly, than her eyes. All her senses seemed to be 
 implicated in the feelings she was experiencing. Was 
 there, indeed, some magic in the spot in the circle 
 itself, in the grouping of the three satyrs round the 
 statue? Benevolent satyrs, as she saw when she 
 came to examine them. No, it was not evil that was 
 in this place. But something was in it. It was as 
 if, as she stepped into the circle, she had come into 
 the range of a spell or an enchantment, or, more 
 aptly, perhaps, within the radius of activities and of 
 influences which elsewhere had been impotent, or, at 
 all events, undiscernible. Once over the border an 
 invisible philtre had been put to her lips, invisible 
 hands ministering, and she had drunk ! The mystic 
 fumes of the potion had mounted, were mounting, 
 not obscuring her thoughts, or confusing them, but 
 rather clearing them, causing them to be crystal 
 clear so that her mind rejoiced in itself, as, suddenly, 
 she knew that her body, under the ridiculous trap- 
 pings of ridiculous clothes, felt itself to be rejoicing. 
 She had never before been so acutely conscious of 
 herself. She had a sense of herself as the mother*, 
 her child at the breast, has sense of herself; or as a 
 child of itself when, rosy, healthy, new-awakened,
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 15 
 
 perhaps, from sleep, it watches intently, curiously, 
 the movements of the dimpled hands and feet which 
 it has come gradually to recognize as under its own 
 control. 
 
 What was this place? What did it signify? To 
 what god was it consecrated? What the mystic 
 incense which went up from its unseen altars? 
 
 She had been standing just within the circle where 
 she had emerged from the wood. Now she moved 
 forward tentatively, deprecatingly even, as if, 
 despite the welcome which the place had given her, 
 and of the sincerity of which she could have no 
 doubt, she yet felt that she was in some sort a tres- 
 passer here, or at most a guest, who, privileged, 
 perhaps, must yet go warily. Her hosts here were as 
 the shy, friendly, unknowable things of the fields 
 and the woods. Their confidence had to be justified. 
 They were elusive; they were unaccountable; they 
 could be it seemed a disloyalty to know it howso- 
 ever deep in your heart ! even treacherous. But 
 if they really trusted you they liked you. 
 
 Let us watch her, as they perhaps watched her 
 if they had any existence outside her imagina- 
 tion and our own! She was tall for those days; beau- 
 tifully made, one could see, and might further guess, 
 under the protuberances and redundancies of the 
 absurd yet becoming clothes. She looked less in- 
 congruous than might be supposed, for the fashions
 
 16 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 of the early seventies echoed grotesquely some of 
 those of eighteenth-century France, and the spirit 
 of the place was the spirit of the Fetes Galantes and 
 the Fetes Champetres of the court painters. Just 
 such a setting as this of the clearing in the wood, 
 with its statue and its three smiling satyrs, and its 
 carved stone seats with the crumbling rams' heads 
 and garlands of flowers, have the dally ings of their 
 lords and ladies. Her incongruities were for the wood ; 
 here, making the tour of the circle and pausing be- 
 fore each of the terminals as she came to it, she 
 fitted into the picture, and by her polite artificiali- 
 ties even completed it. One might see her, then, as a 
 symbol of that which directly enough, at the time 
 when such pictures were painted, had been making 
 for destruction and the horrors of the guillotine! 
 One might see her thus, if one chose to see her, and, 
 dismissing her, miss her altogether. The seeds of 
 rebellion were in herself. They put forth their first 
 shoots, perhaps, as we watch her. 
 
 Wonder was in her eyes. She, like the benevolent 
 satyrs, was smiling. Her smile was lit at theirs 
 maybe. They smiled down on her, yet smiled past 
 her at or, as it were, to the statue. They 
 might have been pointing her to the statue, or point- 
 ing the statue to her. "Turn," they may have been 
 say ing to her. "Turn. See what is behind you." She 
 had an air of saying to them through her smile, 
 perhaps, using it as a vehicle for those words she did 
 not speak that she would not turn yet. It was
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 17 
 
 evident that she did not mean to turn to let her- 
 self turn yet. Or they may have been saying to the 
 statue, "Turn, you. See what has come into the 
 circle ..." 
 
 The statue did not make sign or answer. He had 
 waited. He could wait. 
 
 Yes, it must have been deliberately that she did 
 not turn. Each of the satyrs had her attention. She 
 pulled the strangling bindweed from about the throat 
 of one; using a bit of stick, cleared the dirt of years 
 from the graven features of another; unbound the 
 eyes of the third, which ivy, partially blinding, 
 threatened to blind completely. She ministered to 
 each. 
 
 The wood was encroaching everywhere re- 
 claiming as a possession what had been reclaimed 
 from itself. The deep niches paths as and though 
 they appeared to be were choked with branches 
 and undergrowth; the path, down which the statue 
 looked, choked too. There was a straggle and a 
 tangle of undergrowth in the clearing. What had 
 been turf, maybe, in its day, was now a jungle of 
 weeds and tall grasses. Hemlock was here and 
 campion, ragwort and briony, sorrel, wild garlic. 
 There were brambles, too (sweet-briar amongst 
 them again sweet-briar), which caught at her 
 skirts, like the brambles in the thicknesses of the 
 wood itself. Little trees had planted themselves. 
 Some day, the wood had promised itself, there 
 should be nothing but the overgrown carved stone
 
 i8 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 to show that a clearing had ever been here at all. 
 Circle, statues, seats, all were to have been swallowed 
 up in the green sea of leaves. 
 
 She had left the third satyr now him of the half- 
 bandaged eyes which she had set free and threaded 
 her way to the opening of the path between the two 
 stone seats. She examined each of these before she 
 turned. They were both flaky, weather-stained, 
 battered, but their carvings were fine and were little 
 broken. They had come from Italy, it was probable. 
 She swept the litter of sticks and leaves and refuse 
 of the wood from them, and ran her fingers over the 
 garlands caressingly. She appeared to minister to 
 the carved seats as she had ministered to the carved 
 satyrs. She looked as a woman looks when she is 
 visiting a grave that has been long neglected and 
 does it what little temporary services are in her 
 power. Was she, perhaps, visiting a grave? Was 
 this spot the strange memorial of her strange hus- 
 band? It was, as she had supposed, closely associated 
 with him. It was, perhaps, his most fitting monu- 
 ment. But you do not visit graves with joy, with 
 spftly flushed cheeks, with excitement, an adventur- 
 ous air. 
 
 She turned slowly. She was standing now in the 
 exact middle of the path which faced the statue. 
 
 Afterwards she asked herself whether any of tl^e 
 events of that afternoon had happened at all? Did 
 the place itself exist? Was the whole thing, her pil-
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 19 
 
 grimage, the walk through the wood, the swaying 
 briar barring her way, the sudden clearing, the stone 
 seats, the three guardian satyrs, the very statue 
 was this, were these a dream? If so, who should 
 tell her the interpretation of it? 
 
 No dream. Did she not in her mind's eye al- 
 ready see the place swept and garnished? Not al- 
 tered. Not a thing should be, as we say, touched! 
 But (like the neglected grave, perhaps) the spot 
 should be cleared, cleaned, set in order. Would turf 
 flourish in the heart of a wood, so nearly under 
 trees? No dream, you see, when she could busy her 
 mind with such thoughts and intentions. She had 
 a dozen projects. 
 
 Yet, so passing strange it all seemed when she 
 looked back! What had possessed her? Not that 
 she regretted. The experience had been wonderful, 
 awakening. Had the statue really the qualities with 
 which she had accredited it? Only thus could she 
 account . . . 
 
 A sitting figure of a youth a slave, perhaps 
 leaning slightly forward, his legs drawn up, the 
 left foot advanced a little beyond the other, the 
 hands clasped lightly round the right knee. That 
 was all. But for her as she had seen it in those 
 strange moments of clear sight that does not 
 begin to tell of the beauty which the unknown 
 sculptor had found in the pose and captured in the 
 enduring marble. What in the pose? What of haunt-
 
 20 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 ing, hurting, loveliness? Calm was there, patience, 
 knowledge, but under these, and yet somehow in- 
 forming them, something which she could not define 
 something which may have made for knowledge, 
 but did not make for peace. It was as if on the calm 
 of the relaxed limbs and the steadfast patience of 
 the waiting features the sculptor had left record 
 of his own unrest. Across the centuries he had sent 
 his message, and she, Philistine as she was and 
 even knew herself to be, had somehow received, 
 nay, been able to receive, it. She had a sudden ink- 
 ling of what the search for beauty might mean and 
 as immediate a knowledge that nowhere is it written 
 that those who hunger and thirst after beauty shall 
 be filled. With her joy in the unknown artist's work 
 was a stab at her heart for his wounds. Only out 
 of his suffering could this joy which she felt in the con- 
 templation of his achievement have come to her. 
 The joy had increased as she looked. Presently his 
 suffering did not matter. There are persons in whom 
 the ecstasy produced by the contemplation of 
 beauty holds elements of despair. She was not of 
 those. She could look and rejoice exult. She was 
 absolved by her very Philistinism from participa- 
 tion in any artist's pain as completely, perhaps, 
 as the youth who had sat for this one and whose form 
 and features had been destined to transmit his mes- 
 sage. But the message had its part, too, in affecting- 
 her. Pity was transmuted to a baser emotion. A 
 momentary jealousy stirred in her.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 21 
 
 She need not have been jealous. The artist, giving, 
 breathing life into dead stone, had robbed her of 
 nothing. The emotion was not prolonged. It passed, 
 indeed, in a sharp pang that was like the stab at her 
 heart which had preceded it, and she was in key 
 again with the smiling day and the smiling place. 
 Even the youth seemed to smile in his calm. She 
 could have fancied that his smile was for her that 
 he had been waiting for her, looking always down the 
 long, narrow avenue, telling himself that one day, 
 one day she would come . . . 
 
 Eleven years fell from her as she stood there. She 
 was nineteen again. He was her own age a year 
 older, perhaps yes, twenty. A year older that he 
 might have the male's rightful authority. She had 
 married at nineteen the courtly, polished, hand- 
 some old man who had been her husband but not 
 her mate. Old? Nineteen calls sixty old. Why had 
 she married him? Five out of ten of the girls she 
 knew would have married him; more: not one, 
 perhaps, of her bridesmaids but envied her her grey- 
 haired, upright bridegroom. He was like something 
 fashioned of steel as burnished, as cold. Was he 
 cold? 
 
 No matter. He was old and youth goes to youth. 
 If she had known! She did know suddenly. Her 
 pulses were again the pulses of a girl. Her skin the 
 fine rose-petal skin of a young girl. A flush was on 
 her cheeks. Her eyes were shining.
 
 22 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 She moved forward like one sleep-walking and laid 
 her face against the stone face. Youth to youth. 
 The stone, on which the sun had been shining, was 
 warm. 
 
 Her eyes filled with tears.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SOMETHING had happened to Ann Forrester the 
 day she walked in the wood. She went out one 
 woman, she came back another. So, at least, it 
 seemed to herself. It surprised her that others did 
 not appear to notice any change anything differ- 
 ent even in her aspect. She half believed herself 
 to have been, and still, in some sort, to be, be- 
 witched. How else could she explain her amazing 
 conduct? What she had done was so unlike her. 
 Never in her life had she yielded to strange impulses. 
 It might almost be said that never in her life had 
 strange impulses beset her. Orthodox was a word of 
 those days : she was orthodox. 
 
 Yet the change which she was conscious of in 
 herself she did not wholly deprecate. She had been 
 bound ; she was free. Impossible not to experience 
 some relief at deliverance even from restraints imper- 
 fectly realized. Was she free? She could only have 
 said that she felt herself free. Had there been re- 
 straints? If not, why this sense of freedom? Which 
 was only to argue in a circle as Branton her maid 
 might have argued, or Mrs. Piper in the house- 
 keeper's room. 
 
 She certainly saw things newly. Her boudoir 
 which she even called her boudoir suddenly dis- 
 pleased her. She had been delighted with it up to
 
 24 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 then, secretly preferring it to the beautiful Adam 
 drawing-room which she had always found too aus- 
 tere for her taste. Now she saw her own satin- 
 panelled room as vulgar. All that she had admired 
 in it lost its charm. There was too much of every- 
 thing; too much blue satin, too many sunk buttons 
 in the elaborate upholstery of chairs and sofas, too 
 much gold, too many curves, too many photographs 
 and photograph frames. There was a portrait in 
 crayons on porcelain of herself which had been her 
 special pleasure in evening dress, a fan, a bouquet, 
 white kid gloves. As strange an impulse, surely, as 
 that to which she had so strangely yielded in the 
 wood, sent her hand to the china knob of the bell 
 beside the fireplace. 
 
 A footman answered her ring. 
 
 "Ask Mrs. Piper to be good enough to come to 
 me." 
 
 Mrs. Piper appeared in the course of a few minutes. 
 
 But Mrs. Piper found her in what is known as a 
 brown study. 
 
 "You wished to speak to me, *m." 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. Piper?" she said. She seemed to have 
 forgotten what she had to say. "Oh, yes, to be sure." 
 
 Mrs. Piper, all shining alpaca and chenille, 
 waited. 
 
 "Yes, *m?" But there was no answer. 
 
 Mrs. Piper coughed discreetly; coughed respect- 
 fully. Summer and winter Mrs. Piper had a cough. 
 She might be said to keep one as people keep pets.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 25 
 
 You asked after it, and not so much asked after it 
 as asked for it. "Your cough, Mrs. Piper?" as 
 who should say, "Your dear cough, are we not 
 to have the pleasure . . . ?" 
 
 But Mrs. Forrester on this occasion forgot Mrs. 
 Piper's cough. When she collected herself it was to 
 say again, "Oh, yes, to be sure," and once more to 
 pause. 
 
 She withdrew her eyes from the housekeeper and 
 ran them around the room. They came to a halt at 
 the porcelain portrait on the console table between 
 the windows. 
 
 She had found that she did not know quite how 
 to say that she wanted to get rid of the portrait by 
 giving it to Mrs. Piper, for the housekeeper's room. 
 
 "Oh," she said, "I was wondering whether 
 whether you would care to have this, Mrs. Piper?" 
 
 "That, f m!" 
 
 Mrs. Piper's tone expressed her pleased astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 "Your beautiful likeness in the crayongs, 'm, 
 on porcelain!" 
 
 "Yes on porcelain," Mrs. Forrester said. She 
 closed on the word "porcelain" as if it held for her- 
 self all that she wanted to express. "If you think 
 you would like it for your room. You have the 
 engraving of Mr. Forrester and I thought, per- 
 haps . . ." 
 
 Mrs. Piper forgot her cough forgot even that 
 her mistress had neglected to ask for it.
 
 26 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "But so beautiful, 'm. With gloves and fan. I 
 should know it for your ivory with the chicken skin 
 anywhere, 'm. And the bouquet, so natural. It's 
 too good for downstairs, 'm. It is, indeed, One of 
 the loveliest things in this lovely room. For my- 
 self, 'm? To keep, as it were? Do you really mean 
 it?" 
 
 "I thought, perhaps, it would go on the mantel- 
 piece or anywhere else, of course, that you liked." 
 
 "I shall treasure it, *m." 
 
 Mrs. Forrester took it from the table, looked at 
 it, and put it into her hands. Mrs. Piper bowed 
 over it, renewed her raptures, and withdrew. 
 
 "Now, what's she done that for?" was her un- 
 spoken comment when she had closed the door 
 behind her. 
 
 All the rest of that day Ann Forrester was what 
 the novelists of the seventies the writers of the 
 books which she read called distraite. The fash- 
 ion was still for French words then. Men were 
 distingues, women elegantes. Ann Forrester, ele- 
 gante beyond dispute, was distraite also qualified, 
 as we see, for a heroine's part in any one of their 
 novels. 
 
 One of the effects of the absence of mind that now 
 seized her was that, with the gift to Mrs. Piper, 
 her designs upon the decorations of the room which 
 she had seen newly and which had displeased her, 
 seemed to have spent themselves. She had had
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 27 
 
 vague intentions of beginning the work of demolish- 
 ment at once. She did nothing more did not move 
 a single photograph frame, or sweep away one of 
 the objects which crowded the tables and the shelves 
 and tops of the cabinets. She stood for some time 
 looking out of the window with shining eyes that 
 did not register any conscious impression of what 
 they rested on, and then sat for as long in one of the 
 satin-covered chairs and dreamed. She still felt 
 light as air, still felt as if heavy shackles had been 
 struck off her limbs. A smile played round her lips. 
 
 Mrs. Piper, like her namesake Peter of the Pickled 
 Peppers, proceeded in the housekeeper's room to do 
 things with a P. She put the portrait on the piano 
 and pondered. The piano had itself once graced the 
 boudoir. So had the curtain of heavy faded brocade. 
 So had the pierced steel fender. So had the two 
 slender screens which had given place to the two 
 worked satin banners hanging by an elaborate ar- 
 rangement of folding gilt rods from the mantelpiece. 
 In many instances, if boudoir and housekeeper's 
 room could have known it, it was the housekeeper's 
 room that scored. But neither knew it each 
 blinded hitherto by the ephemeral fashion of the 
 day. Mrs. Piper could understand the discarding of 
 the piano, for the piano was admittedly outworn. 
 She could understand the faded curtains finding their 
 way to her ; the fender since brass was so much 
 handsomer than mere steel; the screens, because
 
 28 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 she thought the adjustable blue satin banners, with 
 their gilt rods and their silken tassels, so exquisite. 
 But the portrait on porcelain to come back to the 
 P's there Mrs. Piper pronounced herself puzzled. 
 
 We may leave the good lady puzzled, and, closing 
 behind us at the top of the back stairs the green 
 baize door which divided the servants' quarters 
 from the rest of the house, return to her mistress. 
 We find her still dreaming. 
 
 To her there entered Whipple the butler to tell 
 her that Mr. Coram was in the library and would 
 like to speak to her. 
 
 " Very well. I '11 be with Mr. Coram in a moment." 
 
 Mr. Coram was the land-agent. The day of the 
 week was Tuesday. Friday was the day when she 
 glanced over his accounts, heard his reports, settled 
 what works or repairs were to be done on the estate, 
 which of the tenants' requests or grievances were 
 reasonable and which were negligible, signed the 
 cheques for wages and so on, and saw generally to 
 the affairs of her property. Half an hour's work on 
 Friday morning completed the business arrangements 
 for the week. It was in no sense indispensable, since 
 it only took place when she was at Redmayne and 
 she was so often away. She enjoyed this half-hour, 
 however, and had got into the way of looking for- 
 ward to it. Mr. Coram, whom she was very careful 
 to call Mr. Coram, but whom she thought of some- 
 times by the Christian name by which, as a friend
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 29 
 
 of his father's, her husband had been accustomed 
 often to address him, and always to speak of him, 
 was a young man with whom most men and all 
 women liked to come in contact. "Timothy has a 
 head on his shoulders," Mr. Forrester used to say, 
 and probably saw quite as well as the women that 
 Timothy had shoulders, to say nothing of a mag- 
 nificent throat, to carry the head on. Brains ap- 
 pealed to Mr. Forrester and witness, perhaps, 
 his beautiful wife not brains only. Timothy 
 Coram was in two senses a man of parts. 
 
 "What does he want?" was Ann Forrester's 
 thought, as, nothing loath, she went her way to the 
 library. 
 
 It seemed that she was not to know. Twice 
 lately in the middle of the week Mr. Coram had 
 come to see her upon matters which, when she had 
 examined them, she found could have waited till 
 Friday. What he said that he wanted, now, was to 
 know whether Williams at the Home Farm was or 
 was not to be allowed a rebate for which from time 
 to time he put in certain pleas. The matter was in 
 no way urgent. 
 
 Mr. Coram, looking magnificent in his leggings 
 and his old rough tweed suit, gave as his reason 
 for troubling her that he had met Williams that 
 morning and, after listening to him, had promised 
 to ( see what Mrs. Forrester had to say. It was very 
 pleasant to hear what Mr. Coram had to say in that 
 pleasant, deep voice of his. When she found that
 
 30 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 he was for refusing, she heard herself whimsically 
 championing her tenant's cause for the pleasure of 
 hearing him demolish her arguments. 
 
 "Williams is as able to pay his way as you are," 
 he said. "He just sees a chance of saving a bit. If by 
 working on your sympathies he can keep in his own 
 pocket what ought to go into yours he is n't above 
 doing it. Not that I Ve a word to say against him. 
 He's quite a decent old chap. He's just a bit of an 
 old soldier." 
 
 "But if he's a decent old soldier." 
 
 She had two ideas: one that he had already re- 
 fused Williams's request as she was quite sure 
 in her own mind, despite her words, that it ought to 
 be refused ; the other, that Williams was an excuse. 
 He had not come to talk to her about Williams at all. 
 Williams was the cover under which he approached 
 her. 
 
 Why? 
 
 As she looked at him, pondering rather the ques- 
 tion which she asked herself than the question which 
 he professed to ask, he began to fidget a little. She 
 had always known, without, as we say, thinking 
 about it, that this big young man was shy. 
 
 11 1 shall tell Williams you won't hear of it," he said 
 jerkily. 
 
 Ann Forrester smiled. 
 
 "I believe you have told him," she said. 
 
 There was a moment's pause. 
 
 "Well, practically I have," he admitted.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 31 
 
 "Then that's all?" said Ann. 
 
 The room was lined with books and had the 
 pleasant smell of books. Behind her preoccupation 
 with Mr. Timothy Coram and what had brought 
 hhn, Ann Forrester, fresh from her criticisms of her 
 boudoir, had a new consciousness of how beautiful 
 the room was, and how pleasant were its influences. 
 It was in the winter, perhaps, and on a winter eve- 
 ning especially, when the heavy curtains were 
 drawn and a fire burned in the grate, that the room 
 was at its best. But it was beautiful at all times. 
 Books and bronzes what better decorations for 
 a room? Her eyes rested absently on one of the 
 bronzes. It was as if, taking them for granted, she 
 had seen none of these things before. 
 
 If Mr. Coram had come to say anything particu- 
 lar he did not say it. He picked up his hat and his 
 driving-gloves. He was going. She had a vague wish 
 to delay him, but found no adequate reason, and 
 let him go. 
 
 Well, that, as she had said, was all. But was it? 
 It was a still more distraite lady who went for her 
 drive that afternoon. 
 
 Bewitched ! There was no other word for it. Be- 
 witched from the moment when she had listened to 
 the cuckoo and started for her fateful walk! She 
 had not been thinking of love. She did not know 
 that she had thought of love since the death of her 
 husband. She did not know that she had thought 
 much about love during his life. No roving eye
 
 32 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 hers. She was not sure even that there had not been 
 times when she had supposed that what she felt for 
 him was love times, that is, when the love at 
 which she merely guessed, and which (in such mo- 
 ments of guessing) she knew herself to have missed, 
 seemed to have place only in the imagination of 
 the poets and novelists who thus, inventing it to 
 begin with, exploited it, used it as part, of their 
 stock in trade, and imposed it upon the imaginations 
 of their readers. She had started for her walk nor- 
 mal, cool, poised, a woman of sound common sense, 
 with, as she would have said, no nonsense about 
 her, nor, as she would have thought, any special sus- 
 ceptibility to vapours, whimsies, megrims, any of 
 those or kindred weaknesses. She had -come back 
 well, as we have seen. She started for her drive 
 in that curious state of abstraction which had held 
 and was holding her so strangely, but heart-whole 
 she would have affirmed, protested, sworn if need 
 be; she came back from it the captive and the victim 
 of love. She came back over head and ears in love 
 with the magnificent Timothy Coram.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN after years when Ann Forrester looked back 
 she knew that what had seemed so sudden had been 
 long preparing. Examined, perhaps no mental crises 
 are really sudden. Manifestations as sudden as you 
 like; processes for the most part gradual. This had 
 been gradual. She had taken Timothy Coram for 
 granted as she had taken the bronzes for granted 
 in the library yes, and the library itself in which 
 the bronzes stood; but Timothy Coram had been 
 there urging his way gently into her life, as the 
 bronzes had been there educating her eye, and it had 
 needed but some such experience as she had been 
 through to enable her to realize him. She saw him 
 newly ; saw him as if she had been seeing him for the 
 first time, and knew that in gaining this fresh vision 
 of him she was relinquishing the old, and with it 
 her peace of mind. 
 
 The servants noticed her abstraction. Mrs. Piper 
 showed the portrait with some pride. She had 
 noticed nothing, she said. Nothing so very unusual 
 in a gift to her was her argument. Wool-gathering? 
 She had seen nothing of the sort. 'Mrs. Piper, I 
 should like to make you a little present' that 
 was her version of what Mrs. Forrester had said to 
 her in the boudoir as a token of esteem, of course,
 
 34 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 clearly implied. She chose to forget that she had 
 had to cough before her presence was perceived, 
 chose to forget her ' Now, what's she done that for?' 
 outside the door. But absence of mind? No hint 
 or sign of any such thing to the best of Mrs. Piper's 
 knowledge. 'I want to make you a little present. 
 Let me have the pleasure of asking your accept- 
 ance of this.' 
 
 Branton, however, told of a very preoccupied 
 lady, to whom you had to put every question twice, 
 and who did not appear to notice what she wore. 
 
 '"Oh, anything, Branton,' she says, 'yes, that'll 
 do nicely,' and could n't have told that from t'other 
 it's my belief when she had got it on as I let her 
 do, though it was n't what I 'd meant her to wear 
 and only herself for dinner. Quite unlike herself, / 
 thought, though I did keep me thoughts to me own 
 mind and pass no remarks quite and altogether 
 unlike herself." 
 
 Whipple told of a lady who practically ate 
 nothing, well, nothing to speak of, at dinner or 
 luncheon for that matter. 
 
 Did n't seem to care where she drove either, 
 Charles, who had been out with the carriage, cor- 
 roborated. " 'Anywhere. About an hour and a half, 
 tell Fenton.' And came back like one in a dream. 
 Seemed quite surprised like when we got home and 
 I let down the steps for her. Sort of 'Oh-do-I-gei- 
 out-here?' 'Is-this-where-I-live?' sort of. 'Is the 
 drive over?'"
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 35 
 
 "Such stuff!" said Mrs. Piper, and went back to 
 her room. 
 
 But Branton hoped her lady was not sickening for 
 anything. Just the way illnesses began an all- 
 overish feeling, crinklings down the spine of the back, 
 and lucky if you were n't in a burning fever by 
 morning. 
 
 " For two pins I 'd have taken upon meself to feel 
 her pulse and advise bed." 
 
 So they talked. Let no one on this side of the green 
 baize door suppose that his or her moods escape 
 comment on the other. 
 
 Ann Forrester, happy and unhappy, shed a few 
 tears in the night. On the whole she was happy, as 
 why should she not be with everything as she might 
 have supposed to bestow? Had she not also the silent 
 implication of those apparently purposeless visits 
 to draw upon for solace if doubt should beset her? 
 Unquestionable that the gentleman had made ex- 
 cuses to see her. What had he to say? What, when 
 it came to the point? She was soon to know. 
 
 The next morning told her. She was arranging 
 flowers in the morning-room or more accurately 
 trying to bring her wandering thoughts to bear 
 upon the arranging of flowers, a great sheaf of 
 which had just been sent in from the gardens 
 when Whipple came to tell her that Mr. Coram 
 was in the library. 
 
 "Tell Mr. Coram," she said, using almost the
 
 36 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 same words as before, "tell Mr. Coram I '11 be with 
 him in a moment." 
 
 But this time she did not follow the servant at 
 once. She needed the moment she had spoken of 
 in which to calm herself and to steady her nerves. 
 Her heart was beating so violently that she could 
 not immediately have trusted her voice, or even 
 trusted her cheeks, to which, when she was alone, 
 and though she was alone, the treacherous colour 
 mounted like the colour of a child. She had been 
 longing to see him and shrank from seeing him. 
 All love's paradoxes and contradictions were there. 
 
 Yet, when at length she was ready, it was to all 
 appearance a normal Ann Forrester who came to the 
 young man in the library. She held out her hand, 
 smiling. His covering clasp of it caused the calmness 
 of her eyes to falter for a second or two, but, after- 
 wards, she had the satisfaction of knowing that 
 from first to last she had betrayed no sign of her 
 inward perturbation. He, on the other hand, was 
 quite plainly embarrassed. 
 
 She waited for what he had to say. He had seen 
 Williams and had convinced him that the rebate he 
 asked for was, as he had told him, quite out of the 
 question. Williams had hummed and hawed, of 
 course ; had not accepted the decision without some 
 attempt at argument. Twinton, of the White House 
 Farm, and Acland, of the Red Bank, had both haci 
 their rents lowered an old grievance. That might 
 be, but what about the new outbuildings which
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 37 
 
 Williams had asked for two years back and which 
 had been conceded? 
 
 Ann Forrester waited smiling even. All this, 
 she knew well, was but to make a short story long, 
 for in his good-tempered way (to which they all 
 responded) he listened to no nonsense from the 
 tenants. He dealt with them easily because, as they 
 knew in their hearts, he dealt with them very justly. 
 None of this was what he had come to say. So she 
 waited, considering even, now that she had control 
 of herself, whether she should help him. 
 
 He stopped suddenly in the middle of a sentence. 
 Perhaps he realized her smile and interpreted it. 
 
 "No," he said, as if answering her thought, "this 
 is n't what I have to say. I hardly know how to 
 begin." 
 
 Ann looked at him. Her face did not betray her. 
 She was sure of herself now. 
 
 "Oh," she said in a matter-of-fact tone, "you 
 know me well enough, surely, Mr. Coram, to say 
 anything to me that you may have to say." 
 
 "Yes," he said, "that's true. It does n't, all the 
 same, make this easy. I've tried more than once 
 and failed gone away, I mean, without saying 
 what I wanted to say." 
 
 "I know," Ann heard herself saying. 
 
 "Well, it's got to be said now." He paused. 
 "What I've been trying to tell you," he said, "is 
 that I want no, that's not it that I have de- 
 cided that I I must go."
 
 38 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "Give up the agency?" 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 What she had expected to hear she did not know. 
 The consternation which she felt, but which she 
 contrived not to show, was evidence, to herself, of 
 how unprepared she had been to hear this. There 
 had always been Mr. Coram, first as pupil to the 
 former agent who had retired in course of time, and 
 then as himself with one assistant pupil of his own. 
 She had taken him for granted more completely 
 even than she had known. 
 
 She found herself listening to his reasons, and 
 trying to understand them. He was telling her that 
 he wanted to travel, see the East, see the world. He 
 had always wanted to travel. Yes, she remembered 
 that he had often spoken of that wish. Well, he was 
 thirty-two now, and since the death of an uncle 
 some ten months back a death by which she re- 
 membered to have heard that he benefited he had 
 found himself likely to be in a position some day to 
 follow his inclination. The settlement of his uncle's 
 affairs had shown them to be in a more prosperous 
 condition than he had dared at first to hope. His 
 future was, thus, modestly assured. If he was to 
 travel at all the time seemed to be now. Every- 
 thing was in order, Bulkley, his pupil, a good man, 
 as she knew, competent, trustworthy, thoroughly 
 conversant with the business of the estate, ready, * 
 if need be, to step into his shoes. All that seemed 
 to hinder now was his own reluctance to sever his
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 39 
 
 connection with Redmayne, where he had spent so 
 many happy years, and where he had met with such 
 unfailing kindness. 
 
 Ann Forrester heard him out. He spoke quickly 
 and yet with difficulty eagerly like a boy asking 
 leave, urging reasons as pleas, pleas as reasons, but 
 diffidently also and with effort. Again she had sense 
 of the room which, associated now in her mind with 
 the weekly half-hours that had imperceptibly become 
 a rhythmic pleasure in her life, now seemed to exist 
 but as a background for her relations with him. 
 What would the room look like empty of him? 
 no, not empty of him (for so little was he there!), 
 but unexpectant of him, not waiting for him as a 
 certainty once a week at least, and no longer liable 
 to receive him at odd moments ! What would it look 
 like ten or twenty minutes hence even, when their 
 present talk should have ended, and, with the 
 knowledge that all their talks were now numbered, 
 she should have seen him go? 
 
 There was silence for only a few moments when 
 he had spoken, and then Ann said : 
 
 "Well, I don't pretend that I shan't be very sorry 
 to lose you. Things have gone very smoothly 
 much more smoothly here, I gather, than with our 
 neighbours, and that, I know, is thanks to you. Then 
 at Redmayne we all look upon you as a friend. Oh, 
 many reasons why we shall miss you ! But, of course, 
 we must n't stand in your way." 
 
 Conventional? Impersonal? Stilted even? It had
 
 40 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 to be these. Only thus, mistress of herself as she 
 was, could she trust herself to speak at all. 
 
 She was standing she perceived suddenly : and he 
 also was standing. In his nervousness for what he 
 had to say he had prefaced his first words to her 
 all those irrelevancies about Williams and the re- 
 bate with an 'I shan't keep you a moment.' It 
 was this, perhaps, which, giving the interview an air 
 of transitoriness, had kept both of them uncon- 
 sciously on their feet. 
 
 Ann sat down now at the table at which they were 
 accustomed to sit, and after a moment or two Mr. 
 Coram followed her example. They sat facing each 
 other across the table. Only that there were no 
 cheques to sign, no accounts to look over, they 
 might have met for the weekly business. 
 
 "When do you want to go?" she asked. It was, 
 indeed, grasping her nettle. 
 
 " I want to talk to you about that consult you. 
 I don't want to do anything that would in any re- 
 motest way be inconvenient to you. I hate the idea 
 of going. It's a wrench. One puts out roots, I find. 
 The very land holds one the soil." ('Only the 
 land?' thought Ann as she listened 'only the 
 soil?') "I shall hate to leave my little house. I sit 
 looking at the crooked floors and the beams. Hate 
 to think of any one else in it even Bulkley if he 
 should take my place and move into it. I believe* 
 I 'm homesick for it already." He broke off. 
 
 "You're not in a hurry to go, then?" Ann said,
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 41 
 
 venturing. But as she saw his face she knew that for 
 all his reluctance he did wish to go soon. 
 
 "No," he said, "not in a hurry. I want to meet 
 your convenience. That 's the first consideration 
 comes truly . . . you will believe this? . . . before 
 anything else." 
 
 "Yes," Ann said, "I will believe that." 
 
 Yet the words hurt her. 'Convenience,' 'con- 
 sideration.' She was not alone in falling short of 
 the personal note! 
 
 "About about when do you think?" she asked 
 him. 
 
 But that was what he wanted her to tell him. 
 
 "It depends," he said, "upon what you decide 
 whether you let Bulkley replace me or whether 
 you would like to look out for some one else." 
 
 Ann felt that Mr. Bulkley would do as well as 
 another. If Mr. Coram went, she felt just then, it 
 mattered little to her who stepped into his shoes. 
 Mr. Bulkley she liked him well enough knew 
 the tenants, knew the place, knew his work. She 
 would, also, still have, in Mr. Coram's pupil and 
 understudy, a man who was a gentleman to manage 
 her affairs. Oh, yes, Mr. Bulkley as well as another. 
 
 "He would be willing, I suppose?" 
 
 " Not much doubt about that. I have n't asked 
 him, of course. I could n't till I had spoken to 
 you. It is time, really, that he was working on his 
 own account. He certainly knows all I can teach 
 him."
 
 42 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "He could begin, then, at any moment?" Ann 
 forced herself to ask. 
 
 "Oh, yes. As far as qualifications go he's ready 
 this minute." 
 
 She would spare herself no pain. She leaned for- 
 ward a little. 
 
 "When do you really want to go, Mr. Coram?" 
 
 " I have said. When it suits you, Mrs. Forrester." 
 
 "If I said that must be when you like?" 
 
 "I think I should be very sorry to hear you say 
 that." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because that would settle it." 
 
 She waited, her heart beating faster. For a new 
 thought had come to her. Could it be . . . ? 
 
 He would surely but the more want to stay. Yet 
 his embarrassment, which was so unlike what was 
 to be expected of him, his obvious reluctance had 
 he not said (nay, had she not seen?) that he had 
 tried before this to bring himself to the point of 
 speaking and had failed? At the least he was torn in 
 two directions. Could it be that he did not want to 
 go at all, but felt that he must? If, without want- 
 ing to go, he felt that he must go, there could be 
 but one reason. Could it be that? 
 
 She felt suddenly that she did not know men 
 that in all her life she had not known them: their 
 seeming simplicity, so much more baffling than all 
 the complexity and even subtlety ! of women ! 
 You did, after all, know where you were with
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 43 
 
 women because their subtleness was inherent, ad- 
 mitted, to be reckoned with. Men were different. 
 For their very serenity you could not know them. 
 
 He was speaking. Sustaining or shattering her 
 sudden hope? She did not know. 
 
 " It's that I feel I must go. I don't want to, but I 
 must. It 's in my blood somehow stronger than 
 I. And it's also that whenever I do go it will be a 
 wrench." 
 
 "You would like to go soon?" 
 
 "If I had only myself to consider." 
 
 "Leave me out of this," Ann said steadily. 
 
 "You mean Bulkley might take up the work?" 
 
 Ann nodded. 
 
 "I could n't go with an easy mind if I thought 
 that the place would suffer. With Bulkley here I 
 should know that it would n't." 
 
 "Well," Ann said, "I am quite willing that it 
 should be Mr. Bulkley. I would rather not have 
 any one that I did not know. If he 's .willing, as you 
 think, we can look upon that matter as settled. 
 Now, Mr. Coram, you are free to go when you like, 
 or stay as long as you like." 
 
 There. She had said it. It was for him now to 
 speak or be silent give or withhold a sign. Was 
 any forthcoming? She could not tell. He seemed 
 at once sorry and relieved. Well, he might conceiv- 
 ably be both, and still be actuated by such motives 
 as she had dared to hope were constraining him. 
 He had already said he would be sorry to hear he
 
 44 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 might go when he pleased. She was, as we should 
 say in the slang of these days, no for'arder. 
 
 He was thanking her now thanking her for 
 what he had said he would be sorry to be granted. 
 Oh, let her not deceive herself! one only asked 
 for what one really wanted. 
 
 " I can't say how kind I think it is of you. I should 
 never be able to tell you how much I have appre- 
 ciated your kindness to me always." 
 
 " But you want to go," Ann was thinking. "You 
 want to go." 
 
 Yes. It was plain that he wanted to go. She 
 leaned back in her chair. The interview was over.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 WHEN he had left her, blankness descended upon 
 her like a cloud. For some moments she could not 
 think; then once more her mind began to work. 
 
 Here, then, as she had foreseen it, was the room 
 empty, but with an emptiness foreshadowing the 
 permanent emptiness that was to be. What did it 
 feel like look like? Her eyes, raking it, searched 
 it for him. There he had sat the chair still askew 
 as he had left it when . he got up. His arms had 
 rested on the table while he talked. She remem- 
 bered that he had played with the pen-tray in front 
 of him, and that at one moment he had broken the 
 point of one of the sharpened pencils which lay in it. 
 She had often watched those strong hands of his 
 sharpening a pencil. They performed actions re- 
 quiring delicacy as well and as easily as those which 
 made demands upon their muscles. How did she 
 know that? Sharpening a pencil meticulously was 
 nothing. How did she know that the strong fingers 
 could do delicate things? In so many and even in 
 such unusual guises could she visualize him, now, 
 that the answer could only be that there had never 
 been a time when she had not been conscious nay, 
 acutely conscious of him. She could see him tying 
 a fly, for instance, though it is improbable that she 
 had often seen him so employed. It was natural that
 
 46 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 she should be able to see him riding, driving, break- 
 ing in a horse, for these, with every sort of outdoor 
 pursuit and occupation, were part of his life. Thus it 
 was that horses and dogs and guns associated them- 
 selves most readily with him in those pictures which, 
 bidden and unbidden, rose before her. But there 
 were less usual aspects in which she could see him 
 very clearly also, and it was those that showed her 
 how closely she must have observed him. Yes, very, 
 very conscious of him under an unexplained uncon- 
 sciousness of herself! She filled the empty room with 
 visions . . . 
 
 Then strange anomaly! the days, leaden 
 hours composing them, took to themselves wings. 
 She did not know how to get through each day for 
 the burden of it, and yet day after day slipped from 
 her. How could that which seemed so unbearably 
 long pass so quickly? For she knew that each day as 
 it went diminished a tale of days that, perhaps sud- 
 denly, would show itself from the first to have been 
 very meagre. She knew that he meant to go soon. 
 Visits, from time to time, to London, told her that 
 he was making his arrangements, seeing to his out- 
 fit, settling his affairs. He meant to cut himself 
 adrift for a time from the land of his birth. He 
 wanted to be free to go where he liked. He had few 
 ties. He was seeing to it, she believed, that when ne 
 went he should have none. 
 
 He talked to her sometimes of his plans and she
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 47 
 
 listened. She gave no sign of the feelings that held 
 her. Her control of herself sometimes surprised her. 
 She could smile as she listened. 
 
 "You think all this childish," he said one day. 
 He had been speaking of places he wanted to see 
 places as far apart as Ceylon, say, and Alaska, or the 
 West Indies and Yokohama. 
 
 " No," she said, " I don't think it childish." 
 
 She was really thinking it boyish adorably boy- 
 ish! and worshipping the boy that she saw in him. 
 
 "I was thinking that I rather envied you," she 
 added after a moment's pause. 
 
 They were walking in the garden. Full summer 
 now June, the month that Ann Forrester gen- 
 erally spent in London. She knew why she was not 
 in London this season. Time enough for London. 
 Time enough for London when a desolate Red- 
 mayne would not be able to hold her. She thought 
 of the busy life of the season without regret. 
 
 "You see I've seen nothing," he said. "I start 
 fair." 
 
 He made it so plain to her that he must go. It was 
 on her tongue to say, "Don't say it again. I have 
 accepted your reasons. You tell me you must go 
 and you are going. I am standing aside." But what 
 she did say was that she could understand his wish 
 to travel; and, even as she spoke, her heart, for her 
 momentary rebellion, melted towards him. He was 
 at once man and boy. But he was wholly male 
 probably, therefore, not very comprehending
 
 48 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 and it was this which she found so baffling. Impos- 
 sible to know or to read him. 
 
 There was little going on in the country just then 
 nothing to divert her incessant thoughts. Most 
 of the big houses in the neighbourhood were shut 
 up, their owners or occupants in London. She had 
 dined out once or twice rather dismally; made an 
 effort and had a few people to dinner. But she was 
 only really alive when, as now, she was seeing him, 
 or when she knew that she was soon to see him. 
 
 "Have you heard again from your friend?" 
 
 He was waiting, she had learnt, but only 
 learnt lately, to know whether a friend would be 
 able to go with him. The friend's name was Master- 
 man, but because upon the movement of this friend 
 depended his movements, she could not bring her- 
 self to speak it. 
 
 " I'm to hear this week," he said. 
 
 That was her doom. She knew it. The friend 
 would be able to go with.him. How could the friend 
 hesitate? How could one so blessed hesitate? To 
 be singled out and not to know! If such a chance 
 had come to her? Yes, to the end of the world, she 
 thought. To the edge of the world, she thought . . . 
 and over . . . perhaps over . . . 
 
 Presently she learnt that the friend had decided 
 to go. The date was all that remained now to be 
 settled. The week had passed and it had not been 
 settled, but everything was ready. The delay was
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 49 
 
 something to do with stocks and shares, she gath- 
 ered. The friend (whom she wanted to hear noth- 
 ing about) was waiting for a favourable moment to 
 realize and so raise the money. He would telegraph. 
 Telegraph ! How Ann hated the friend ! 
 
 Then, when the tension and the resultant strain 
 were most atrocious, when Ann was most at the 
 mercy of her heart and her nerves, news came to her 
 that a friend of her own, one Claudia Nanson, was 
 back from a prolonged sojourn in India, whither her 
 marriage had taken her, and whence her sudden 
 widowhood had sent her home to England. Claudia 
 Nanson had always understood her. Claudia Nan- 
 son must come to her at Redmayne. She wrote to her 
 without delay and received an answer almost by 
 return of post. Claudia Nanson was coming to her. 
 
 She waited with eagerness for the day of her ar- 
 rival and drove to Whitcombe to meet her. She 
 reached the station ten minutes before the train was 
 due, but her impatience took her from the car- 
 riage to the platform. There had been a shower and 
 the sun was shining on the wet platforms and drying 
 them almost visibly. Everything that could shine 
 seemed to be shining the tarpaulins over some 
 trucks in a siding, the stacked coal in the yard on 
 the other side of it, the telegraph wires, and not- 
 ably the double set of lines which looked like silver 
 in their exceeding brightness. Ann's spirits began to 
 rise.
 
 50 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 The train at length came into sight. Presently 
 Ann was welcoming her friend. 
 
 The two ladies declared (and may have thought) 
 each other quite unchanged by the years which had 
 gone over their heads since last they met. Widows 
 wore weeds in those days and Claudia's weeds were 
 voluminous and very becoming. She contrived a few 
 very pretty tears at the meeting, tears that shone 
 like the effects of the recent shower and were quite 
 as evanescent, and remembered from time to time 
 to show a suitable melancholy ; but five minutes had 
 not passed before Ann knew that she was not in- 
 consolable, and ten had not passed before she knew 
 further that she was enjoying her freedom, that she 
 had entered, indeed, into a very delightful rest. 
 
 "Dear Claudia," Ann said then, "it is so good to 
 see you again." 
 
 "Dearest Ann," said Mrs. Nanson, "outside my 
 own family there is no one else in the world that I 
 could have brought myself to stay with in these sad 
 early days. You are so helpful and understanding." 
 
 "We have both been through sorrow," Ann said. 
 
 Neither was conscious of any insincerity, though 
 each read the other. Friendship cemented itself 
 afresh between them. 
 
 Mrs. Nanson put up her veil once more. She had 
 raised it on her arrival to kiss and be kissed and show 
 the pretty tears, but had lowered it almost im- 
 mediately.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 51 
 
 "England!" she said, now, "England!" 
 
 "Yes!" Ann said. She had been right. Claudia 
 would not fail her. 
 
 "England!" Claudia said again. 
 
 "Even after the East!" 
 
 "Because of the East," said Claudia. 
 
 She breathed in deeply the fresh, rain- washed air. 
 Perhaps you used all the obvious similes then. She 
 did not say that it was like champagne, but she did 
 say that it was like a draught of pure spring water. 
 
 "And the green, Ann. The wonderful freshness." 
 
 Ann supposed the East was rather 'parched.' 
 
 "Well, there's the rainy season, you know. Look 
 at that grass! Just look at those trees!" 
 
 She had been to Redmayne before, but only once 
 and not at this time of year. The country was look- 
 ing its best green as she said and fresh, and at once 
 cool and warm also. Everything pleased her. The 
 sky that day was exquisite blue with ^clouds of 
 dazzling whiteness, which cast floating shadows 
 on to the hills and uplands. Her eyes followed the 
 clouds, followed their shadows. Cattle in the fields 
 delighted her; a flock of sheep which the carriage 
 met on the road and through which it passed clear- 
 ing a way for itself; some horses in a paddock. She 
 gave little rapturous exclamations. 
 
 And from time to time remembered. 
 
 Ann, yielding to the influence of her friend's 
 pleasure, felt happier. She in turn remembered 
 from time to time, but while Claudia remembered to
 
 52 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 be unhappy, or that she ought to seem unhappy, 
 Ann remembered how very unhappy she was. 
 
 So occasionally they fell into a silence which the 
 sound of the trotting hoofs broke rhythmically. 
 
 Claudia always recovered herself in a moment or 
 two. Something caught her attention and she forgot, 
 or thought of something that she wanted to say and 
 must say it whether or not it was in accord with the 
 spirit of the previous interval. 
 
 Out of such a silence, when her thoughts were 
 supposed to have fled to the grave in India, she said 
 it with a little spurt of laughter: 
 
 "I know what it was like the waters of the 
 Red Sea." 
 
 Ann was astray perhaps because the Red Sea 
 was itself on the way to India, whither, at the guid- 
 ance of a rather pointed sigh, she had directed her 
 own thoughts. 
 
 "The sheep, you know," said Claudia. "They 
 parted before us even piled themselves up on 
 each side of us, and the carriage, like the chariots of 
 Israel, went through on on dry ground." 
 
 It was the yards of crape that made Claudia so 
 droll. Ann's heart warmed to her. Some one to 
 whom it was conceivable that you might be able to 
 tell the things that you did not tell ! 
 
 "I was right, Claudia. You haven't changed," 
 she said. 
 
 "Ah, I'm older inside," said Claudia. 
 
 They were approaching the house. Just before
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 53 
 
 they reached the lodge gates a horseman passed 
 them. It was Timothy Coram. He looked amazingly 
 handsome. It was inevitable that his appearance 
 should excite comment from the newcomer. 
 
 Claudia, when Ann had told her who he was, said 
 nobody ought to be so good-looking. That it was n't 
 fair. 
 
 "It isn't, is it?" said Ann, glad to be able to 
 speak lightly. "But fair to whom?" 
 
 "To anybody," said Claudia. 
 
 "His rivals?" 
 
 Claudia nodded. 
 
 "Or his victims," she added. 
 
 "Well, both are to be relieved of him," said Ann. 
 "He's going." 
 
 "Going?" 
 
 "Resigning the agency." 
 
 "How can you let him?" said Claudia. Her eyes 
 scanned Ann's face. 
 
 "He wants to travel," Ann said shortly. 
 
 No more was said just then. Soon the carriage 
 had passed in through the second gate, and she was 
 welcoming Claudia to the house. 
 
 Claudia had spent her time in London in buying 
 clothes. She had reached England, she declared, 
 with little more than she stood up in. Two years of 
 mourning were before her: a year of deep mourning, 
 
 such crapes and lawns as she was now wearing, 
 
 to be followed by a year of slowly decreasing woe-
 
 54 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 fulnesses, merging through greys into the mauves 
 and purples which would at length end them. What 
 use, then, to keep what would be old-fashioned long 
 before the prescribed period was over? She had 
 given away almost everything. She made Ann laugh 
 with her descriptions of the varying attitudes of the 
 recipients of her bounty. 
 
 "It was 'Dearest Mrs. Nanson, are you sure you 
 have no use for it?' if it was n't an 'Oh, I could n't 
 think of it!' or an 'Of course, it's very kind of you, 
 but . . .' In the end I was able to persuade most 
 of them, and had even a little difficulty in sticking 
 to what I did want." 
 
 Claudia, then, had a trunkful of new dresses, and, 
 the report of them reaching Ann's ears, Ann, for the 
 honour of the house, but chiefly to please the im- 
 pressed Branton, suffered herself to be arrayed a 
 little more elaborately for dinner than had been her 
 habit of late. It was thus two very 'fashionable* 
 ladies who sat down to dinner that night in the big 
 dining-room, and in the servants' hall it was said 
 that the visitor's arrival had done good already. 
 
 Unquestioning and unquestioned days when each 
 naturally fitted into that state of life to which it 
 had pleased God to call him, and the server took 
 pride in the grandeur of the served! Something to 
 be said for such days. Ann did not question them. 
 It would not have entered her head to question 
 them. Claudia from India certainly did not ques- 
 tion them. It is safe to say it would not have oc-
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 55 
 
 curred to the butler to question them, or to either of 
 the two footmen slipping round the table so noise- 
 lessly and anticipating the wants and requirements 
 of their mistress and her guest sitting up in their 
 glory. Branton would not have questioned them. 
 Piper in the housekeeper's room, with her piano 
 and her brocaded curtains and her portrait on porce- 
 lain, would not have questioned them. Short shrift 
 on the part of Piper for any underling in that house 
 who had dared to question them. Safe, comfortable 
 days before the world worried itself with thought! 
 The best were at the top. 
 
 It was that afternoon, a propos howsoever indi- 
 rectly, that a kitchen-maid had been summarily 
 dismissed for trusting love and a lover over-well. 
 Ann, distressed for the girl's fate, for she had noticed 
 her and liked her, yet distressed in an aloof sort of 
 way, all the same, as one might be distressed to read 
 of a massacre in China, or, more aptly, of the lynch- 
 ing of a negro in a Western State, had concurred 
 in the summariness, nothing doubting. No one had 
 doubted not Piper, terrible in her scandalized 
 virtue; not Mrs. Thomas the cook; not one of the 
 domestic staff; least of all the weeping girl herself. 
 The best were automatically at the top, the law- 
 givers, the served. It was for the rest to minister 
 and to behave themselves. 
 
 "But how comes it," asked Claudia, "that at this 
 time of year you're not in London?" 
 
 Ann had expected some such question, but found
 
 56 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 that she was not prepared for it. So much was in- 
 volved and so little. She had not made up her mind 
 yet whether she had sent for Claudia to confide in 
 her, or whether she wanted her mere company in her 
 loneliness. Meanwhile she took refuge in the truth, 
 knowing that the surest way to conceal it was to 
 tell it. 
 
 " I think it was the cuckoo that was primarily re- 
 sponsible," she said. "I heard him one day or 
 rather I listened to him." 
 
 "The cuckoo?" said Claudia; "what did he tell 
 you?" 
 
 "To open my eyes and look about me." 
 
 "The Serpent's advice to Eve," said Claudia. 
 
 "Nevertheless, I thought I would take it," said 
 Ann after a little pause. 
 
 Had she quite reckoned with Claudia when she 
 had settled that the truth may be counted upon to 
 conceal the truth? 
 
 "After the drive from the station to-day," 
 Claudia was saying, "the beauty of the country 
 and all that it offers, I think I don't wonder that 
 you stayed." 
 
 In the boudoir, whither they adjourned after 
 dinner, the two ladies occupied themselves with 
 their needlework. They were both doing the sa^ne 
 kind of work. The days of the antimacassar were 
 over, and the crochet-hook had gone the way of the 
 tatting-bobbin. Crewel-work had hardly yet ar-
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 57 
 
 rived. In fifty thousand drawing-rooms at that mo- 
 ment ladies, in the same preposterous, yet rather 
 delightful trappings, were employed in the same 
 sort of way. There may have been a name for the 
 lace (was it?) which, in miles that must have been 
 numberless, resulted. A faint blue tracing on paper 
 had its important place amongst the materials in- 
 volved. What was finished of the work accom- 
 panied what was in course of being done in a neat 
 roll which was unpinned from time to time for in- 
 spection, admiration, or comparison. The supreme 
 moment towards which the worker consciously or 
 unconsciously strained was that in which she might 
 tear away the paper scaffolding and display the com- 
 pleted structure. Claudia as she worked bowed her 
 head over her needle; Ann, sitting more upright, held 
 her work nearer to her eyes. 
 
 They worked and talked. The sound of the crin- 
 kling tissue paper, of the clicking scissors, or of the 
 needles and thread passing in and out of the fab- 
 rics, filled the pauses. 
 
 Claudia bit her thread. Ann cut hers. "So peace- 
 ful," Claudia said, holding her work away from her 
 a little, looking at it and pecking at it with her 
 needle. "I'm quite sure that I understand your 
 being here instead of in clamorous London." 
 
 Ann wondered whether she did. 
 
 Claudia pecked a little more at a pucker in her 
 work. 
 
 "That good-looking young man," she said, with-
 
 5 8 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 out raising her eyes from what she was doing 
 "why does he want to travel?" 
 
 "Why not?" said Ann. 
 
 She did not mean to let Claudia force her 
 hand. 
 
 "Oh, well," said Claudia, still pecking. "Agencies 
 like yours don't grow on every bush, do they? I Ve 
 always understood that a good land-agency was a 
 very hard thing to get. People generally have rela- 
 tions of their own younger sons and cousins and 
 things only too glad to be put in. One of my poor 
 Robert's brothers tried for years to get a land- 
 agency. And ended by having to go into an insur- 
 ance office, where he died without having insured 
 his own life I may say! so it is n't a thing to give 
 up lightly." 
 
 "Perhaps Mr. Coram isn't giving it up lightly," 
 said Ann. "He is old enough, anyway, to know his 
 own mind." 
 
 "He is about our age, I suppose," said Claudia. 
 
 "He is thirty- two, if you want to know," said 
 Ann. 
 
 "Yes," said Claudia imperturbably, "I always 
 do like knowing how old people are." 
 
 "And he won't have to look for another berth," 
 said Ann, determining to be generous, partly be- 
 cause she had no particular objection to grati- , 
 fying Claudia's curiosity, but more because she 
 found it did, indeed, ease her to talk of the person 
 in whom all her thoughts centred. "He has come
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 59 
 
 into some money. He is independent of what he 
 may earn." 
 
 That gave Claudia to think not merely because 
 it was more rare to hear of people who came into 
 money than of people who had lost that which they 
 had. What Ann told her put Mr. Coram, perhaps, 
 on a new footing. Involuntarily her eyes fluttered 
 round the room with its rather sumptuous appoint- 
 ments. She Claudia Nanson had not been for 
 a walk in a wood. She had not had a vision of sheer 
 beauty. No inaudible voices had spoken to her. 
 She Claudia Nanson thought Ann's room lovely. 
 Its satins and its gildings delighted her. When she 
 entered the room first she had expressed ecstatic 
 admiration for it, for its arrangement, for all that 
 it held. It was a woman's room and a rich woman's 
 room. What Ann had seen perceived rather as 
 only just on this side of vulgarity, as only saved, 
 that is, from being vulgar, by the intrinsic 'good- 
 ness' of all that it contained or all that composed 
 it, she Claudia Nanson saw as wholly and en- 
 viably admirable. From the Buhl cabinet (which one 
 of these days who knew? might go the way 
 of the porcelain 'enlargement' now in the house- 
 keeper's room) to the hanging satin and bead work 
 screens, with their shining gold rods, Claudia found 
 everything perfect. 
 
 She made no comment upon the information Ann 
 had vouchsafed her, but, bending over her work 
 again, said, "He looks well on a horse."
 
 60 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "My dear, you seem quite interested in him." 
 
 "Yes," said Claudia, plying her needle attentively. 
 "Are n't you?" 
 
 Ann did not answer for a moment and Claudia 
 looked up. 
 
 "Oh, I'm accustomed to him," said Ann then. 
 
 Tea was brought in at this moment and made a 
 diversion. Ann was not sure whether she was glad 
 or sorry. She watched the servants setting the tea- 
 table in order, and when they had done so and had 
 left the room, she took her place behind the urn 
 and busied herself with the cups. 
 
 "This," said Claudia, "is what I do enjoy. My 
 poor Robert had his little economies, and tea in the 
 evening was one of them. I would n't have minded 
 if his economies had been necessary." 
 
 She took the cup which Ann handed to her. 
 
 "Poor Robert," she said, "he never really liked 
 tea." 
 
 Ann did not echo her sigh this time, nor indeed 
 repress a smile of her own. She was beginning to see 
 was surely even intended to see exactly how 
 consolable, or even consoled, Claudia was. From the 
 dimness of her school-days, moreover, a memory was 
 making its way to her, piercing its way through 
 the mists much as the carriage that day to find 
 another analogy for the incident had forged a 
 way for itself through the sheep. She had it now. 
 Half a dozen girls in the senior classroom at Miss 
 Petrie's in Brussels, chocolate-eating, in the tempo-
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 61 
 
 rary absence of the school-mistress, and engaged in 
 a discussion on what they would like to be. As she 
 stirred her tea absently she reconstructed the scene. 
 
 One had said : a famous singer like Patti. 
 
 Another: an eminent painter like Rosa Bon- 
 heur. 
 
 Another: a great writer like George Eliot, or 
 Mrs. Henry Wood. 
 
 A fourth one, Clara Harbinger, the daring girl 
 of the school, wearing her crinoline already with an 
 air, and always alert to shock, or at least to contrive 
 a sort of giggling consternation amongst her fellows: 
 a yes, boldly, brazenly! a King's Mistress. 
 
 Ann remembered that the bomb Clara Harbinger 
 thus exploded had duly had its success, its succ&s, 
 that is, de scandale, but when all was said the real 
 success of the discussion was voted to have fallen 
 not to her, but to Claudia, who modestly wanted 
 to be what was more within the boundaries of pos- 
 sibility. Ann, looking at her from behind the urn, 
 could hear her saying it now. 
 
 "I," had said Claudia, "don't want to be a great 
 anything, but don't on that account imagine that 
 I am without my ambitions. I look round me and I 
 see restraints hemming me in on every side. Here 
 I am called upon to submit to my teachers my 
 pastors and masters. When I leave shall I be free? 
 Not a bit of it. I shall have to go on submitting to 
 my parents and guardians. When I marry" 
 ("//you marry!" from Clara; and, "Let her alone,"
 
 62 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 from the others; "Let us hear! Go on, Claudia. 
 When, as you say, you marry ") "I shall have 
 to submit to my husband. So I know exactly what 
 / want to be." ("What's that?" from every one.) 
 "Why, naturally," said Claudia, "a widow." 
 
 Fourteen or fifteen years back, but Ann remem- 
 bered! 
 
 So it was a Claudia who had her wish however 
 little she had meant her wish seriously! who, 
 while she sighed from time to time, was very plainly 
 enjoying, at any rate, her tea. Ann wondered 
 whether she too remembered. Before Claudia left 
 her, before the visit should be over, Ann 
 thought she would ask her. 
 
 No more was said of Timothy Coram that night. 
 At about a quarter to eleven the two ladies bade 
 each other good-night, Ann having seen her guest to 
 her room, but having declined her invitation to stay 
 and talk, on the plea that she had letters to write 
 when she went to her own. By a quarter to twelve 
 Claudia, in the delightful four-post bed, had pleas- 
 antly read herself ("Ought We to Visit Her") into 
 a state of sleepiness, which, when the effort of blow- 
 ing out the candles had been made and darkness 
 enveloped her, rapidly merged into a state of bliss- 
 ful, untroubled sleep. Ann, after Branton's minis- 
 trations were over, wrote her letters, which had to 
 do with the erring kitchen-maid, whom, though she
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 63 
 
 had allowed her to be dismissed at a moment's no- 
 tice, she did not intend to leave friendless, and 
 sought at length her own couch. Not to read. 
 Not, she feared, to sleep. To think and think and 
 think.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ANOTHER day had gone of the days which she knew 
 only too well were to be few. It had given her one 
 glimpse of the man who had her heart the heart 
 which he did not even know was offered to him. If 
 it was offered to him! Was it offered to him? She 
 herself did not know. It had given her Claudia and 
 the solace, the amusement even, which Claudia 
 funny Claudia! afforded her. She was better for 
 the coming of Claudia. She had got through a cer- 
 tain number of hours tolerably, but by so many 
 hours she always came back to this ! by so 
 many hours were the hours that remained to her 
 reduced . . . 
 
 She made no attempt to fly from love's sickness 
 now. To what end? The poet in his poet's wisdom 
 knew. You were yourself your own fever and pain. 
 The last word was there. There was humiliation in 
 the thought. But there was pride also. If it had not 
 been for the pride that was there, and that turned 
 the humiliation into a sort of glory, she could not, 
 she thought, have borne her suffering. ' Borne ' ? 
 the word was meaningless. There is no escape from 
 suffering. You had to bear what you were sent 
 had to bear certainly what, as in the case of her pres-* 
 ent distemper, you brought upon yourself. 
 
 So, while her guest slept the complacent sleep
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 65 
 
 of her achieved widowhood, she, widow also, but 
 widow who had, perhaps, never really known wife- 
 hood, fought her way through the unendingnesses 
 of the night. Towards morning she slept, and woke, 
 when she did wake, calmer woke refreshed, for 
 no apparent reason unless that for its very acute- 
 ness her unhappiness had temporarily exhausted 
 itself; refreshed, fortified, cheerful even. 
 
 Was she uncertain, variable? Did her moods 
 fluctuate unduly? ebb and flow ungoverned by 
 any moon? St. Paul, who wrote indirectly of love, 
 wrote directly enough of widows. Was his a last 
 word also? Ann was to ask herself that when, at the 
 family prayers which her husband, though he had 
 never attended them, had always insisted should 
 begin the day for his household, she found herself 
 reading, as the portion of Scripture which had part 
 in them that morning, the seventh chapter of the 
 First Epistle to the Corinthians. 
 
 She read without a tremor; nay, with an inward 
 smile. But she was not sorry that Claudia was late 
 for prayers. 
 
 Claudia came into the room as the servants one 
 short filed out of it. 
 
 Claudia looked very fresh and sweet and young by 
 the searching light even of the early day. India had 
 not wholly robbed her complexion of its fairness, and, 
 what India had taken, the becoming contrast of the 
 blackness of her appointments restored in full meas-
 
 66 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 ure. The sun was streaming into the room. As she 
 kissed Ann, who in her cool morning gown of brown 
 holland, looked equally fresh if a little pale after 
 her wakeful night, she seemed, her blacks not- 
 withstanding, a very part of the prevailing bright- 
 ness. 
 
 "It does me good just to look at her," Ann was 
 thinking. 
 
 "Bacon," Claudia said, sniffing deliciously ; "Eng- 
 lish bacon ! And English hot rolls ! And home-made 
 bread ! Smells you don't get in the East. My heart 
 warms to them. How can anybody want to leave 
 England?" 
 
 Already? So early in the day! Had she not parted 
 with the idea all night? Ann had occasion again 
 for her inward smile. There had always been some- 
 thing roguish in Claudia. That, after all, was why 
 she liked her. It was certainly why Claudia just 
 then was so good for her. But she did not mean to 
 be drawn into talking of Timothy Coram yet, or, 
 indeed, before she herself was ready to talk of him 
 
 if, at all, she should be ready to talk of him; so 
 instead of answering, as it was her first impulse to 
 answer, that man did not live by bread alone, 
 home-made bread even, English, and hot with that, 
 
 she contented herself with proposing that, as 
 breakfast was ready and her guest happily hungry, 
 they should fall to. 
 
 "With all my heart," said Claudia. 
 
 "The organ that warms to the smell of it?"
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 67 
 
 "The same," said Claudia, "with the concurrence 
 of one or two others." 
 
 On a light note, then, a cheerful, bantering note, 
 the day began. 
 
 Outside there was not a cloud in the sky. The 
 windows were open to the gardens. Roses looked in 
 roses that asked to be picked and that asked also, 
 so fair were they in their natural setting, to be 
 spared. If you looked very closely you might see that 
 dew in round shining drops was still on the petals 
 of some of them. Ann as she waited for Claudia had 
 seen it and spoken of it. Claudia had to jump up 
 and slip over to the window to see too. She was like 
 a happy child. She gave her little cry of delight. 
 There was only one thing more beautiful than a dew- 
 drop on a rose petal, she declared, as she went back 
 to her place, and that was a dew-drop on a cabbage- 
 leaf a fat dew-drop (a rain-drop might do !) that 
 ran about like quick-silver without wetting the leaf 
 or breaking, and that, for the sheer beauty of it, you 
 wanted to break. 
 
 "A diamond shaped like a pearl more beau- 
 tiful than any diamond, than any pearl. One wants 
 to possess it. So one breaks it." 
 
 Ann was momentarily betrayed into saying the 
 sort of thing that she did n't say or even believe. 
 
 " Possess anything," she said, "and find either that 
 it never was there, or that you have destroyed it." 
 
 Perhaps it was Claudia who was uncertain. For 
 Claudia at once said, "StuffJ"
 
 68 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 Ann considered for a moment. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "you're quite right." And held 
 out a laughing hand for Claudia's cup. 
 
 Perhaps she would tell her. She saw that Claudia 
 at least was ready ready for any confidence which 
 she might concede to her or offer her. There was an 
 'And you know it!' tacked on to the 'Stuff!' Yes, 
 and Ann did know it, her spirits rising. Claudia 
 meant, 'Why should you not want what you want? 
 yes, and get it, and getting it, see that it is good?' 
 She felt that she would be able to tell Claudia. If 
 need should be. Yes, only if need should be. 
 
 Claudia, upon her part, eating a very good break- 
 fast, was not, it was plain, in any hurry either. She 
 laughed and talked, remembering less often to pull 
 herself up, and presenting altogether a less artificial 
 aspect all women were a little artificial in the 
 seventies! than that which may be said to have 
 presented her on her arrival. She had, clearly, a very 
 happy nature. She had very pretty gestures and 
 movements, which Ann liked to watch. Every- 
 thing she did she did neatly. See her now slowly 
 spreading butter on toast, or marmalade on both. 
 Or see her raise her cup to her lips, or put it back 
 into its saucer. Was it the precision of these ac- 
 tions that gave them their charm? She had the 
 alertness of a thin woman with the leisureliness of a 
 fat one. Physically she was between the two; plump 
 and slender.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 69 
 
 "You shall meet Mr. Coram," Ann said later in 
 the morning. 
 
 "Mr. Coram?" 
 
 Claudia pretended not to remember; and then 
 pretended to remember. 
 
 "Oh, yes, to be sure: Mr. Coram." 
 
 "I am asking him to dinner to-morrow night." 
 
 Perhaps because she had pretended, Claudia 
 thought it necessary to demur a little. She mur- 
 mured something about 'just yet* and looked at 
 her mourning. 
 
 It was Ann this time who said 'Stuff!' though her 
 actual words were: "Not a dinner party. Only Mr. 
 Coram and ourselves." 
 
 But Claudia was not really a humbug and it was 
 Ann's implied 'Stuff!' that she chose to answer with 
 a show of her pretty, laughing teeth, though her 
 ostensible answer was, Ah, well, if it wasn't a 
 party . . . 
 
 Ann was delighted. 
 
 " I would n't have her any different," she thought. 
 "She is helping me. I may tell her." 
 
 What she knew in her heart was that if she did 
 tell her it would be on some sudden impulse, in some 
 sudden desperate need. Her respite did not blind her. 
 This was one of those intervals which occur in bodily 
 ailments intervals in which pain is suspended 
 only to return. It would be when the pain was there 
 that she would speak. Yet, even as she knew that 
 she knew this in her heart, she felt that it was not
 
 70 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 inconceivable that in such a moment as the present, 
 when she could think dispassionately and was com- 
 pletely mistress of herself and of her emotions, she 
 might speak. 
 
 A messenger took her note to Mr. Coram's house, 
 and brought back Mr. Coram's answer. He was 
 coming. 
 
 The ladies drove in the afternoon. Claudia was 
 at her best hi a carriage or was she at her best 
 wherever she was and whatever she might be doing? 
 Luxurious surroundings and accoutrements suited 
 her; little grandeurs. An engaging air of having airs 
 though never of giving herself airs was worn 
 gracefully and graciously also. It delighted Ann, 
 though she saw through it. Claudia was accustom- 
 ing herself to what, though she had never had it, she 
 felt herself born to to what, her fulfilled wish 
 notwithstanding, she would certainly have one of 
 these days, and, having, would certainly adorn. For, 
 her two years up, Claudia would marry again and 
 marry well. Ann was as certain of that as if she had 
 seen it inscribed in the Book of Fate. 
 
 As if Claudia guessed her thoughts, Claudia said 
 now: 
 
 "Aren't you a lucky person, Ann Forrester! 
 Have n't the gods blessed you, my dear? I think 
 you have everything the heart of woman could * 
 desire." 
 
 "I ought n't to be discontented."
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 71 
 
 "Are you discontented?" 
 
 Here, if she had been looking for opportunities, 
 was an opportunity. Did Claudia deliberately make 
 opportunities? She herself had made this one. Had 
 Claudia, none the less, contrived it? 
 
 She was, of course, not going to take it. 
 
 "I have," she said with a smile that gave her 
 words the necessary inverted commas, "much to 
 be thankful for." 
 
 Claudia, settling herself amongst the cushions 
 said, "I should just think you had." 
 
 So Ann, eased for the moment, but recognizing 
 her respite as respite, marked time. She could listen 
 to Claudia's chatter and enjoy it, aid and abet it. 
 Her heart was strangely at peace, lulled, soothed. 
 But she never lost sight of the imminence of reac- 
 tion. She was not deceived. Her temporary immu- 
 nity would have to be, and would be, paid for paid 
 for to the utmost farthing. 
 
 "Would you like to have a glimpse of the sea?" 
 she asked Claudia. "We might go round by Fother- 
 ingham." 
 
 The sea! Claudia would like that beyond every- 
 thing. Inwardly she hoped that Fotheringham would 
 prove to be a town. Her delight in the beauty of the 
 country was quite unaffected, but it was nice to see 
 and be seen. The bustle of a country town was 
 always attractive. She looked forward to a drive on 
 an early day into Windlestone, the large town of 
 the neighbourhood; had visions of shopping; bare-
 
 72 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 headed tradesmen at the carriage door taking your 
 orders; or, the steps let down, your own rustling 
 descent into the shops themselves. The spirit of the 
 days of Patronage and of the real splendours still 
 hovered over such shoppings. 
 
 Fotheringham, then, meanwhile. 
 
 "Yes, the sea," she said. "The sea! How I should 
 like to bathe again! I used to be quite a tolerable 
 swimmer." 
 
 "We might even manage a bathe for you," said 
 Ann "some morning when the tide serves." 
 
 "Ah, no," said Claudia. "That wouldn't quite 
 do, would it?" 
 
 But this time she did n't sigh, though she mur- 
 mured, "In such very deep mourning." 
 
 Fotheringham, which proved to be a small town, 
 but still a town, showed considerable signs of life. 
 The big Redmayne barouche rolled importantly 
 through the narrow streets, where hats were raised 
 to its occupants or touched to its liveries. Claudia 
 saw and was seen saw the market-place with its 
 stocks, its sixteenth-century town hall, and its im- 
 posing church ; was seen of all and sundry, and caused 
 quite a little flutter amongst the young gentlemen 
 at the bank, who when Ann, bethinking her of 
 some business she had to transact with the manager, . 
 had gone in came one by one to the window out- 
 side which the carriage was standing to take a peep 
 over the iron blind at the interesting creature in
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 73 
 
 deepest black who sat in it with such a withdrawn 
 expression and such plaintively lowered eyelids. 
 Claudia, the pictured evidence that the exalted have 
 their sorrows in common with ordinary humanity, 
 sighed, enjoying herself greatly. 
 
 Then came Ann (who saw Claudia's sad sweet 
 smile of greeting, gauging its probable inspiration, 
 and was amused) and the drive was resumed. The 
 Sea Front, on to which the carriage emerged now 
 from the huddle of the town itself, was shining hi the 
 bright afternoon sun. Houses flanked it lodging- 
 houses for the most part, with a hotel or two and 
 the usual percentage of boarding-houses. Fothering- 
 ham, at any rate, was not affected by the London 
 season ; had, indeed, a season of its own. The Fother- 
 ingham season in that year of lovely weather might 
 even be said to have begun. The lodging-houses, 
 with their round bow windows, and their balconies 
 with the tin awnings and the slender iron pillars, 
 were already filling up. Fascinating hours had been 
 spent in these windows and on those balconies, and 
 would continue to be spent before walls, windows, 
 balconies, and all should fall to the speculating 
 builder who sooner or later would come along and 
 demolish them. Under those tin awnings the Claras 
 and Floras who had deliciously read "East Lynne" 
 themselves superseding the Emmas and Matildas 
 who had thrilled to the forbidden magic of Lord 
 Byron had given place to the Ethels and Enids
 
 74 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 who now looked up from the pages of the early 
 Ouida to watch the passing of the carriage. 
 
 All was fish that came to the net of the Widow 
 Claudia. She enjoyed the admiring stare of the 
 people on what was known as the 'Promenard'; 
 of the elderly ladies who turned round or craned 
 their necks from the seats and shelters; of even the 
 nurses and children. Nor, her enjoyment of it not- 
 withstanding (no one by the same token, so uncon- 
 scious of it as she!), need we suppose her vulgar. 
 
 The tide was high. People were bathing. No 
 mixed bathing then. A hundred discreet yards di- 
 vided the two sets of machines. No pretty bathing- 
 dresses then for ladies; no calculated glimpses of 
 the human form divine. (The human form feminine 
 released, let us remember, from stays which, if 
 they pulled it in in one part, were bound to push it 
 out in another itself a little less divine, perhaps, 
 in those days!) Voluminous tunics the rigorous 
 order; baggish ankle-long trousers; thick serges 
 trimmed with braid; oilskin bathing-caps of yellow 
 with a narrow edging of crinkly hard red worsted. 
 No; ladies bathing were not pretty in those days. 
 Susannah herself so clad for the bath would have 
 attracted no elders, and the world have lost, thus, 
 at least one moral tale. 
 
 But if bathing was uglier then, it was more amus- 4 
 ing to watch. There was a ritual in which dipping 
 had its part. One bather dipped another. So many
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 75 
 
 dips were necessary bane of the bathing child ! A 
 minimum of three was prescribed. Parents and 
 guardians saw that this rite was honoured. The 
 Bathing Woman in the Leach pictures in "Punch" 
 still survived and ministered. Dipping, one of the 
 duties of her office. There was the ritual of the ring. 
 Small companies of persons ranged themselves in 
 circles and bobbed. There was a little swimming; a 
 good deal of tentative swimming; some floating 
 a friend at hand to support if need be. There were 
 decorous splashings. But bobbings ruled the pro- 
 cedure. Most of the bathers, strange balloony or 
 lank clothes-clogged figures, were content to bob and 
 bob and bob. An innocent diversion. A happy ugly 
 throng. 
 
 The carriage passed on. The view had been tran- 
 sitory, but not unsatisfying. Claudia, however, no 
 longer wanted to bathe. How silly they looked 
 bobbing up and down. She said so. 
 
 "And their clothes. Why do they make themselves 
 so hideous?" 
 
 "Most of them are hideous," said Ann, smiling. 
 
 "But if they were n't they would still make them- 
 selves. I 'm not, and I 'm quite certain you 're not. 
 If one is well made by nature, why should one be 
 ashamed to acknowledge it?" 
 
 Very daring for the seventies ! The body then was 
 hardly supposed to exist. 
 
 "Look," she said vaguely, "at the Venus of 
 Milo."
 
 76 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 That, Ann said, but said, still smiling, for she 
 liked Claudia in this mood and was not the least 
 shocked, that was sculpture; a statue. 
 
 And then as the words themselves, with their 
 sudden thrust to the wood and what it held en- 
 shrined and hidden, caused the smile to falter and 
 die away upon her lips, she had, before she lowered 
 her eyes almost in terror, the briefest but fullest 
 glimpse of a thing that was itself sculpture ; a statue. 
 
 There was an anchored raft a stone's throw from 
 the shore. On this, tilting it a little by his weight 
 and swaying with it to the rhythm of its gentle 
 rocking, a bather stood poised for his dive. The 
 custom which decreed that women should be made 
 ugly in the water by the cumbersomeness of their 
 dress made no such demands on men. Rather, per- 
 haps, did it make less demand than in these days. 
 That the male should, in the words of the Scriptures, 
 be 'girt about the loins' was all that was held neces- 
 sary. Timothy Coram, stripped, outlined in that 
 fleeting moment against the shining sea, was a sight 
 that asked to be perpetuated in marble or bronze.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 NOR was it for nothing that Timothy Coram was 
 cast in the mould of the heroes of ancient Greece. 
 If Ann, his patroness, had not been as innocent fun- 
 damentally as a baby, she must have known it. Her 
 own innocence and perhaps his shyness, something 
 even of an innate modesty in his composition, 
 blinded her. She was as unsuspecting as she was 
 innocent. There were merry wives even in the 
 seventies frisky matrons who lived the life even 
 then. Her dead husband would have known had 
 known. Then as now there were rippling streams; 
 deep pools. It was not at Redmayne only that Tim- 
 othy Coram, the handsome young land-agent, was 
 a welcome guest. He was popular in the county. The 
 men liked him. If the wives and daughters of some 
 of them liked him more than their husbands and 
 fathers knew well, their husbands and fathers 
 did n't know and that was all about it. Not that 
 Timothy Coram was n't to be trusted. Given no 
 Mrs. Potiphars, he was to be trusted absolutely. He 
 accepted a position which was thrust upon him 
 had, perhaps, to accept it. He was as good-natured 
 as he was shy. 
 
 Lady Mallard, that bird of gay plumage and un- 
 ending youth, now, of course, in London, dined 
 often at Redmayne; Ann, often with her at Clois-
 
 78 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 tron. These kissed when they met. Lady Fother- 
 ingham, that engaging, good-looking trollop her 
 lord had other fish to fry and may have winked. 
 Miss Mallinger, lone, thirty, emancipated, cold 
 as a stone in her classical beauty to look at, but 
 warm, it was said, to the touch. These three. There 
 were others. These three of Ann's intimates of 
 that inner circle in which she moved. And Ann, un- 
 awakened, didn't know; awakening even, didn't 
 guess. She was of the kind that gossip does n't reach. 
 She suspected Lady Mallard not at all ; Lady Fother- 
 ingham, despite her exuberance, her raffishness 
 even, as little as she suspected the immaculate, the 
 unsuspectable Miss Mallinger. She knew, moreover, 
 as we have seen, of Timothy's shyness, and thus 
 would not have guessed. She did n't know that he 
 could use it, make it of service to him, find shelter 
 in it, get behind it if need be. When all is said it was 
 his muscles and his good-nature which were his un- 
 doing if he could truly be supposed to be undone! 
 He yielded rather than sought did not, indeed, 
 seek, and may have rebelled sometimes when silken 
 cords threatened to choke him, or even unduly to 
 bind him. The cords may have had to do indirectly 
 with his wish to travel. What bound him to Red- 
 mayne and if she could have known it to Ann 
 herself was that here at least there were no cords at* 
 all. He was really unfeignedly loth to leave Red- 
 mayne and Ann.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 79 
 
 Yet he wanted to go. As he bathed he had a boy's 
 visions of bathing in other seas, warm seas, 
 crystal-clear, coral-floored, or bottomed with golden 
 sand, seas, the dwellers and sojourners on the 
 coasts of which become, by reason of the lure of 
 them, almost amphibious. Yes, he wanted to see the 
 world; wanted the larger freedom of the wanderer; 
 and, in addition to these, did, indeed, want per- 
 haps (less indirectly than we have just ventured to 
 guess at! ... not indirectly at all?) respite if not rest 
 from the Mallards and Fotheringhams and Mallin- 
 gers which here at home had somehow in a very 
 real unconceit he knew not how sprung up about 
 him. 
 
 He stretched his limbs on the swaying raft 
 wanted really to stretch them as wings. The time 
 for migration was at hand. 
 
 He dived for a last swim. He was a strong swim- 
 mer, thrusting his way through the water, pushing 
 it behind him. With clean strokes he cleared a pas- 
 sage for himself through the resisting but always 
 yielding thing which seemed itself to enjoy the con- 
 test as much as he seemed, as a lover, to enjoy 
 enveloping him, holding him, staying him if that 
 could be or could have been. So for a hundred yards 
 he swam enjoying the rapid motion, the push of it; 
 then turned like a seal and made leisurely for the 
 shore. 
 
 Presently, the Redmayne carriage long passed,
 
 8o THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 all unperceived and on its way back to Redmayne, 
 he was splashing through shallowing waters to his 
 machine, and presently with the rough sun-dried 
 towels, which smelled of the sun and the sea, rub- 
 bing himself to a glow on its wooden sandy floor. 
 Even here in the intimacies of the cramped box of 
 a machine, sculpture the last thing that would 
 have suggested itself to his unconsciousness sculp- 
 ture all the time! Sitting on the wooden seat drying 
 his foot, he must, if there had been any there to see, 
 have suggested a prototype larger, of course, 
 maturer of the sitting youth who looks for the 
 thorn. Standing, his legs a little apart, his right hand 
 running over the muscles of his left arm, he was the 
 athlete using the strigil ; and (to race across the cen- 
 turies) stooping as he dried his back, the towel 
 pulled to a rope across his shoulders, and his knees 
 bent with the vigour of his exertion, as he plied it, 
 the Athlete of Leighton, struggling with a Python. 
 
 He dressed leisurely, fetched his horse from the 
 George III in the High Street, and presently was 
 riding back to Lower Redmayne. 
 
 Something was puzzling him. As he rode it was 
 not of Mallards and Fotheringhams or Mallingers 
 that he was thinking. Of these he did not at any time 
 think more than might be. He was thinking of Ann. 
 And he did not know why he was thinking of her 
 that, in itself a part of what was puzzling him. 
 Thoughts of her lately had forced their way into his 
 mind. It was as if they hovered about him, waiting,
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 81 
 
 watching even, for their opportunity to enter. They 
 came to him from without rather than from within, 
 while most thoughts the thoughts of his projected 
 travels, for example came from within. They 
 came to him, however, these thoughts of Ann, and 
 they came persistently. As he jogged home to the 
 pleasant tune of his horse's hoofs on the road, and 
 of the warm creakings of his saddle under him, the 
 thoughts of Ann rode with him. They were pleasant 
 thoughts, yet, partly because they puzzled him, 
 they disturbed him. As she upon her part had 
 visualized him, as we have seen, in the library at 
 Redmayne, so he, in turn, visualized her. What was 
 it in her face that seemed to speak when the lips, 
 perhaps, were silent, that, when she was speak- 
 ing, seemed to speak irrelevantly of anything that 
 the voice might say? What was that which looked 
 at him through, or from behind, the calmness of the 
 eyes? The calmness was unfaltering. Ann had not 
 deceived herself in believing that she had masked her 
 feelings. She had masked them completely. Some- 
 thing may be supposed to have penetrated through 
 the substance and complexion of her mask, but it is 
 safe to say that Timothy Coram, though he was dis- 
 turbed a little himself, had not an inkling, not the 
 ghost nor shadow of an inkling, of her disturbance. 
 What was it, he asked himself, then, that brought 
 her before him? He could only think that it was the 
 knowledge that he was so soon to leave her. Yes; it 
 was of a part with that anticipated nostalgia which
 
 82 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 he had spoken of to her in connection with his little 
 house the very stones and beams of it. Only thus 
 could he account for what would else have seemed 
 unaccountable. 
 
 He saw her in her silks and laces the strange 
 clothes that did not look strange to any one in those 
 days. Such femininity of clothes! clothes more 
 feminine surely than any that women have worn 
 since. He saw her in the cool brown hollands, and 
 the striped or sprigged cottons that she wore in the 
 summer mornings. He saw her in garden hats. He 
 saw belts that she wore one notably, from which 
 hung a 'chatelaine' which clicked and jingled when 
 she moved. The soft jingling had often heralded her 
 approach along the passage to the library where he 
 waited for her. He would hear it, jingle, jingle, click, 
 click, and the door would open and she would ad- 
 vance to him with her gracious smile. 
 
 He saw her in winter things furs; the short 
 sealskin coat of the period. Saw her against a back- 
 ground of snow in the park, her hands in her muff 
 (which was very small) ; scarlet berries in her hat. 
 He saw her driving her own ponies a little parasol 
 in the handle of the whip. He saw her in the big car- 
 riages in which she looked so regal. He saw her in 
 church her prayer-books bound in ivory; book- 
 markers of ribbon, which ended in little ivory bars* 
 or crosses, depending from them. The little bars 
 and crosses clicked, as the chatelaine with clickings 
 jingled.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 83 
 
 He saw her in many guises and aspects, and in all 
 of them she was charming. She was so 'unmistak- 
 able* (as the phrase went then) so unassailably 
 well-bred. And but was it only now that he was 
 discovering this? she was so very pretty. And, in 
 spite of her dignity and her suaveness and her au- 
 thority, so young. He had only lately seen her as 
 young. Was she younger than she had been? Had 
 she some time in the last few weeks even grown 
 younger? 
 
 Puzzlement, it will be manifest, for Timothy 
 Coram, who, his successes his bonnes fortunes 
 notwithstanding, remained a very boy. He was, 
 though he only half knew it, of the kind which expe- 
 rience does not teach ... Or perhaps it was not so 
 much experience that he had that came his way 
 
 as experiences : a very different thing. Be this 
 as it may, he certainly did remain inexperienced. 
 Though he should have Don Juan's own adventures 
 he would die inexperienced if he should live to be 
 ninety. In other words, he was, in a way, as inno- 
 cent as the innocent Ann herself. 
 
 So, puzzled and puzzling, he rode through the 
 green lanes and the sleepy summer afternoon. The 
 stillness of summer had settled now on the land. 
 The birds had nested and ceased their love-songs 
 
 the purpose of their love-songs accomplished. 
 No need to sing when love's work is done. Do not 
 even human beings as much or, shall we say, as 
 little? the female human being, anyway? Celia
 
 84 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 married is it not common plaint? gives up her 
 music! In the bird world, then, only at the beginning 
 and the close of day were the songs heard now. No 
 cuckoo's note to lead pilgrims to the heart of the 
 wood. Who went to the shrine of the waiting youth 
 must find it for himself. 
 
 Timothy Coram, choosing the lanes rather than 
 the dusty highroad, approached Redmayne from the 
 side of the wood. To him the clearing was not a 
 hidden place as it was to Ann. He had always known 
 it. Was there an inch of Redmayne that he did not 
 know? But he had never realized it. It made no ap- 
 peal to him. It was just a clearing in the wood. The 
 statue, just a statue. A forgotten statue, moreover. 
 If he had ever thought about the statue at all, it was 
 to wonder why it was still there why it had not 
 been swept away long ago. He took it for granted 
 and just did not think about it. Woods were n't for 
 statues. Woods were for game. 
 
 He entered the wood by the bridle path which Ann 
 had come across in her wanderings. No ; to him not 
 an enchanted spot, though, indeed, he loved it. No 
 mystery in it or in the long aisles which cut it into 
 unequal sections. For him just a wood which you 
 could see in spite of the trees! and ways through it 
 which you could take on horseback at the trouble of 
 an occasional stooping of the head, or a holding-back 
 of the leafy branches which yet swished about your 
 shoulders and ears as you made your jogging prog- 
 ress.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 85 
 
 The branches had grown since last he had used 
 this path. He seldom used it. No one else, he sup- 
 posed, used it at all. But it should be usable. He 
 must put a man or two to work on it. There was 
 always some one for whom a job had to be found 
 or devised. Here, then, overhead, were loppings to 
 be done, thinnings; below, tidyings, sweepings. The 
 jungle, as we should say now, had been let in and 
 must be thrust back, kept at bay. 
 
 Presently he was conscious of something discord- 
 ant, something out of tune, that is, with the pleasant 
 influences of the place and the hour. He drew rein 
 and listened. The sounds came from the thick of 
 the wood to his right; harsh cries of pain and terror 
 with beatings and flappings of frenzied wings. 
 
 He dismounted and tethered his horse to a tree. 
 He pushed his way through the undergrowth in the 
 direction whence the sounds came to him. They 
 ceased and were renewed, then ceased again, and 
 then, as the noises that his own movements made, 
 snappings of twigs, crashing of little branches, and 
 rustlings of disturbed leaves, preceded him, were 
 renewed more fiercely. 
 
 The bird, a magpie, was caught by the wing in a 
 thicket, as Abraham's ram by the horn. The thicket 
 was one of those which choked the alleys in the 
 mouths of which stood the terminals facing then the 
 statue. Between him and the back of the satyr's 
 head which was towards him he saw a sort of scream*-
 
 86 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 ing welter of black and white which he could not 
 reach. He was looking into the alley from the 
 blocked end of it, and to get at what it held captive 
 he must approach and enter it from the other side. 
 He retraced his steps for a few yards, bore to the left, 
 and entered the clearing at the spot at which Ann 
 had entered it. The swaying briar was there still, or 
 the briar rather which had swayed, for it swayed no 
 longer and was now the core of a rope of growing 
 things stretching across from one tangle to another. 
 He dealt with it summarily with his foot. But in 
 any case it would have held no symbolism for him. 
 
 Thus he entered the circle led thither, after 
 all, like Ann, though all so differently, by the cry of 
 a bird ! 
 
 He passed the smiling satyr. The accident which 
 had made the bird captive could not long have hap- 
 pened when he had heard the creature's cries, for, 
 though the bushes were pied with its feathers, it had 
 still the strength to struggle violently. Fight as well 
 as fear was in its shining eyes as he came near. It 
 flapped vehemently, pecking viciously at his hands 
 with its open beak. 
 
 "Now now now," he said. 
 
 But though it was at bay it meant battle, and to 
 reason with it availed nothing. It spread the wing 
 that was free, the pin-feathers standing out sepa- 
 rately. So angry it was and so frightened so angry 
 because so frightened. It struggled upward desper- 
 ately, only to subside into a huddled yet spread
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 87 
 
 mass of black and white, from which its open beak 
 projected menacingly. All that was unconquered in it 
 was concentrated in eyes and beak remained con- 
 centrated in eyes and beak as, to the wild thumping 
 of its heart against them, it had to yield to the ca- 
 pable hands. Very firmly, but very gently also, they 
 folded the free wing and imprisoned the throbbing 
 body. One of them then, the body held by the other, 
 dealt with the member which was caught. The wing 
 was tightly wedged between two strong twigs which 
 pressed the one against the other. The more the 
 creature had struggled, the more tightly had the 
 wing become wedged. The task of extricating it took 
 some difficult but very patient minutes. 
 
 Then it was that the odd thing happened. So 
 absorbed had he been in his work of rescue that the 
 sounds that must otherwise have apprised him of 
 nearing footsteps had not penetrated to his con- 
 sciousness, and it was not till he stood with the bird 
 free and ready for release, and held for a moment to 
 his breast, like a dove, as the newcomer thought, 
 to the breast of a mediaeval saint, that he be- 
 came aware that he was not alone. It was the Ann 
 Forrester who had so persistently been with him on 
 his ride, rather than the Mrs. Forrester whom he 
 served, who now stood watching him. 
 
 He held out the bird to her. 
 
 "A trap?" 
 
 He shook his head.
 
 88 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "Not one of ours," he said. "Not one contrived 
 by man at all. Nature made the snare that caught 
 this little beggar. I heard him as I was riding through 
 the wood." 
 
 She looked from him to the bird. It was not 
 struggling now. Did it want to go? She may have 
 been wondering that. Could it? She looked away 
 frowning. It was as if the sight hurt her; could he 
 have explained that to himself! Could one subtler 
 than he have been expected even to guess at jealousy 
 of a bird? 
 
 But "Let it go," she said quickly; thickly. 
 
 He opened his hands. For one moment, almost 
 as if, indeed, it did not want to leave its warm prison, 
 the bird did not move. It was at a sudden move- 
 ment on the part, not of the man who held it, but of 
 the woman who only watched, that it spread its wings 
 with a sharp cry and disappeared over the trees. 
 
 They both looked after it, but could not follow its 
 flight. 
 
 The silence of the wood descended on them. 
 
 "This strange place," Ann said nervously. "It was 
 only lately ..." 
 
 She broke off. He looked to follow the direction 
 of her eyes, and saw that one of his hands was bleed- 
 ing.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ANN had come in from her drive restless 
 driven ! a perplexity to Claudia, who mercifully 
 had not ' seen,' and who had thought the drive, as, 
 indeed, she said, a particularly pleasant one. 
 
 "When I am in the country I do love driving into 
 a town." 
 
 ''Do you?" said Ann; but added warmly that she 
 was delighted that Claudia had enjoyed herself. 
 
 On the way home she had hardly been able to lis- 
 ten to what Claudia said. She had had to be on her 
 guard, moreover, or she must have answered her at 
 random. Her unrest had been cumulative. By the 
 time they reached the house Claudia was prepared 
 for some sort of outbreak. None came, but Ann 
 driven, indeed knew that her own safety lay in 
 withdrawing herself. 
 
 Presently, excusing herself she knew not how, and 
 a little angry that she should have felt constrained 
 to excuse herself, she slipped away from the drawing- 
 room leaving her guest to finish her tea by her- 
 self, and leaving her, she knew, to wonder about her. 
 She had not taken off her things and by that she 
 knew that she meant to go out. Claudia would 
 know it, too. Well," what matter? What matter 
 what Claudia knew or did not know, thought or did
 
 90 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 not think? Claudia, of course, was a dear; was her 
 greatest friend ; was a real friend. She cared for her 
 truly loved her, indeed. It was only that at the 
 moment, at the mercy as before of her own nerves, 
 she felt that her observant presence was an embar- 
 rassment. 
 
 Presently she was in the garden presently flit- 
 ting from the garden. In a quarter of an hour she 
 was in the wood. Then she knew. 
 
 Only the statue could help her the waiting 
 youth in his hidden shrine. For his very, silence he 
 would help her. She would tell him, though in tell- 
 ing him she would be telling not him at all, but that 
 other whose burning had expressed itself in the cold 
 beauty of the chiselled stone. No, not cold. Even 
 now she could feel the cheek of the statue warm 
 against her own. She quickened her pace. 
 
 The wood received her. The cool green shade of 
 it soothed her. Very different this time was her 
 progress from that of her first venture. Then she 
 had been a fine lady making a voyage of discovery 
 impeded by her instinctive consciousness of her 
 finery. Actually, perhaps, she was not less ' fine ' now 
 than then, but then her steps had been tentative, 
 and in her aspect as in her actions the furling and 
 unfurling of her parasol had had a part which was 
 significant of her whole attitude towards life. Now, 
 though she carried a parasol, it was from habit only, 
 and she made no attempt to use it. It fell into its 
 place as a wholly unimportant superfluous, even
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 91 
 
 adjunct to her equipment. She was intent on 
 her purpose. As she entered the wood she had 
 gathered her skirts about her high above the white 
 petticoat, and thereafter gave them no thought. 
 
 She found the bridle path which led to the circle. 
 Long before she could see to the end of it, she saw, 
 as clearly as if her eyes were already upon it, the 
 white figure looking down the long aisle. Waiting. 
 Waiting. Always waiting. But it was the waiting of 
 expectation not of hope merely the waiting of one 
 who knows that what he wants will come. Endur- 
 able such a waiting as that. Happy even. Had the 
 unknown sculptor known it? Did she know it? Was 
 it because he had not known it that he had ex- 
 pressed what he did not know, what he was never 
 to know, in the enduring loveliness of his creation? 
 Was that why he would understand when she should 
 tell him when it was to him that she would be 
 speaking, though her words, if she found any, would 
 be addressed to the work of his hands? 
 
 To her also came the sound of the bird's cries. 
 They did not interpret themselves to her as they 
 did to the other who heard them, for to her the cry 
 of snared things in fur or feather was not familiar. 
 For her as for him, however, the sounds were a jar- 
 ring note. In the brooding peacefulness of the wood 
 they spoke of pain and panic. They ceased; were 
 renewed; ceased. Then another sound smote her 
 ear. The soft whinnying of a horse. This startled
 
 92 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 her. A horse here must have a rider. She had 
 thought the wood empty from end to end. Who 
 shared its solitudes with her? 
 
 She was approaching the circle. Now, indeed, she 
 could see the waiting boy. He leaned towards her. 
 Something oddly appealing in the tilt of his body. 
 It was for every one who might come down the long 
 aisle, but for each one it was individual, selective 
 even. Ann in her need was beset by no doubts. It 
 was for her. As she looked she knew that she would 
 find words. 
 
 And then she became aware of another presence. 
 The colour rose in a sudden wave to her face as she 
 recognized the back that was towards her. The tide 
 ebbed as quickly as it had risen and may for a mo- 
 ment or two have left her very white. But she had 
 time to recover herself, for, we know, it was not till 
 he had turned that he saw her. 
 
 The few words that we have heard passed between 
 them. Her emotions were conflicting indeed. The 
 joy that the sight of him gave her was always in- 
 separable now from pain, and the sight of the bird 
 in his arms was more, almost, than she could bear. 
 His tenderness towards it, the contrast of his 
 strength with its weakness, the way that the strong 
 hands enfolded it, something even in its quiescence 
 under their sheltering pressure forced from her the 
 "Let it go!" which was spoken almost against her 
 will. When he opened his hands and it still did
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 93 
 
 not move, her own rustling movement was entirely 
 involuntary. She might be said to have breathed 
 again when the bird rose with its cry. It was as if 
 she too had been freed . . . 
 
 Now the wood seemed, indeed, to hold him and 
 her only. Could it be for nothing that it was in this 
 place of all places that they should meet? The silence, 
 like the surrounding trees, isolated them together. 
 Did he come here knowing its strange influences? 
 Only strange things could happen here. Anything 
 that happened here would be strange different 
 from anything that might happen elsewhere. She 
 was impelled to break the silence, though she prized 
 it. She said, "This strange place," as we have heard; 
 and then, just as she had seen drops of blood upon 
 her own hand on that strangest day of all her life, 
 she saw drops of blood on his. It was as if, asking 
 a sign, or, at least, ardently desiring a sign, a sign 
 had miraculously been vouchsafed to her. Open to 
 us, later, to remember or not as we choose how gen- 
 erations (opposed, let us hope, to individuals!) have 
 been characterized when they in their time have 
 sought after a sign! Ann, however, did not, per- 
 haps, so much seek after a sign as recognize one. 
 We, beginning to know Timothy, shall at least be 
 reminded here of his attitude towards love ! 
 
 A strange moment followed for him astray, 
 perplexed ; for her (unaccountably, surely?) exultant. 
 
 Then Ann remembered that the bird had been 
 a magpie.
 
 94 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 Coram wiped the blood from his hand, looking 
 his bewilderment. Not so distant yet the days 
 when ladies had fainted at the sight of blood. He 
 would have understood if what she had shown had 
 been dismay. It was nothing of the sort. 
 
 But she was speaking. 
 
 "I wish it had n't been a magpie." 
 
 He closed eagerly on what he did understand. 
 Ladies were superstitious. 
 
 '"One for . . .' ? Oh, but I'll show you others," 
 he said, smiling. "There are scores this year. The 
 wood is full of them." 
 
 He was n't telling her that they he and she 
 were not out of the wood yet ! He was not capable, 
 as she would have known if she had thought about 
 it, of such a flight as that. At any other moment she 
 might have felt this to be disappointing. But she 
 was occupied now with the emotions which had al- 
 ready been roused. 
 
 "You shall have your 'Two for mirth,' " he prom- 
 ised her. 
 
 "It's all I ask," she said, smiling in turn. But 
 that was n't all that she asked now and she knew 
 it. 
 
 Silence fell again between them. A big yellow 
 butterfly came flapping over the trees. It alighted 
 upon the head of one of the smiling satyrs and after 
 a moment or two, as if unsatisfied there, fluttered 
 over to the statue. On the sun-warmed surface of 
 one of the resting arms, it spread its wings wide.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 95 
 
 Ann sat down on the stone seat. Timothy Coram 
 had tied his handkerchief round his hand that the 
 minute drops of blood, which (like her own) had 
 formed and re-formed, might be covered. 
 
 "How ungrateful of the little wretch! " Ann said, 
 "how ungrateful to wound the hand that suc- 
 coured him!" 
 
 But she looked pleased. 
 
 "Nothing but fright," said Coram. 
 
 "I didn't say I didn't understand," Ann said, 
 still with the same look of contentment. 
 
 The butterfly shut and opened his wings, turning 
 this way and that in the sun, and then again spread 
 them close, close to the warm stone. 
 
 "Why have I only just discovered this place?" 
 she said then. "Why did n't any one tell me of it? 
 Why did n't you?" " 
 
 "Did n't you know of it?" 
 
 "Of course I've known of it. But why have n't 
 I ever seen it? been made to see it? It only needed 
 to be seen. This is just the second time that I have 
 seen it and it has been here always." 
 
 He looked from her to the statue and then round 
 the clearing itself, his eyes pausing at each of the 
 three smiling satyrs. 
 
 "One goes abroad to see places like this," she said. 
 
 She was falling again under the spell. Her eyelids 
 felt heavy. The butterfly was quite still now, giving 
 itself luxuriously to the sun and the warm stone. 
 There was a drowsy hum of insects. A bumble-bee,
 
 96 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 half drunk with honey or weighted with his load, 
 blundered out of a foxglove on to the seat beside 
 her and rolled over before he found his wings. Gentle 
 lapping influences were here. 
 
 "Look!" Coram cried suddenly as one who cries 
 "Mark!" and Ann, following the indication of his 
 turning head, was in time to catch a momentary 
 glimpse of black-and-white wings. 
 
 Yet it was at this moment that Ann, happy in 
 what the day, nothing-promising, had given her, had 
 her presentiment that mirth was the last thing 
 she could or would, perhaps, even if she could! 
 hope to have reason to express. Love would never 
 be to her a laughing matter. Light love was nothing 
 to her; was not love; did not exist for her. She had 
 a sudden deadly misgiving that love was torment, 
 the surrender of your peace of mind . . . 
 
 The moment passed. The butterfly closed its 
 wings and opened them again to the sun. A second 
 butterfly entered the circle. The first left the warm 
 stone. The two chased each other sporting in the 
 air. The influences of the spot, lulling, deceiving 
 even, reestablished themselves. 
 
 And to Ann it seemed that the spell communi- 
 cated itself to him also. He came over and sat down 
 on the moss at her feet, and, though they talked o* 
 nothing intimate, she felt that a change had come 
 over their relations. He saw, moreover, the beauty 
 of the statue. She could have told almost the exact
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 97 
 
 moment at which its beauty revealed itself to him, 
 though he did not at once speak of it. He had seen 
 this statue a hundred times, she knew, without 
 seeing it at all seen it with holden eyes. Now 
 he saw it. She watched its effect upon him; liked 
 to watch it. She was very glad that he had chosen 
 the ground rather than the seat, for, thus, she need 
 keep no guard over her own eyes. He had taken off 
 his hat. His hair was thick as the hair of a boy. 
 
 "One could swear he was going to speak," he said 
 out of one of the unstrained silences. The easiness 
 of the silences here in the humming silence of the 
 wood was itself notable a source of unconsidered 
 happiness to Ann. Neither felt constrained to break 
 the silences when the silences fell. 
 
 "I think he does speak," Ann said. 
 
 " Do you know what he says?" 
 
 " I think I could hear. I think I came here now to 
 try to hear." 
 
 "Then I ..." 
 
 "No," Ann said. 
 
 In spite of her her eyes filled with tears. He was so 
 near to her. She could have touched his hair. 
 
 Presently Ann rose. 
 "I must go," she said. 
 Timothy Coram rose also. 
 
 They went and stood before the statue. Their 
 joint action was in some sort a leave-taking.
 
 98 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "If he could speak!" Ann said. "He waits here 
 day and night in the loneliness and the silence. Where 
 does he come from? Where did he wait before he 
 waited here? Since I first saw him I have waked in 
 the night sometimes and thought of him sitting here 
 looking down the long path ..." 
 
 Coram looked from the statue to her. New 
 thoughts seemed to be moving in his mind. 
 
 "Night would be the time to see him," he said. 
 "He is stained and weather-beaten. He wouldn't 
 be then. When the moon 's up he would be as white 
 as the marble he was hewn out of." 
 
 Lyrical for Timothy Coram! Assuredly he was 
 under the spell. But Ann did not think of that now. 
 It seemed natural that he should have such thoughts, 
 use such words to express them. When she saw him 
 pluck a leaf sweet-briar and lay it at the boy's 
 feet, that seemed natural also. 
 
 They stood for a moment or two in silence. Then 
 the horse whinnied again. 
 
 Presently they were walking down one of the long 
 paths, he, ahead, leading his horse, she following, 
 her eyes upon his back. He would not ride. There 
 was not room for three, man, woman, and horse, 
 to walk abreast. From time to time he turned to 
 
 speak. 
 
 * 
 
 The twigs snapped under their feet. The leaves 
 swished. Grasses bent and quickly or slowly righted
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 99 
 
 themselves. Long after the little procession had 
 passed, there would be minute rustlings amid the 
 displaced growing things as they straightened or 
 disentangled themselves. Some would never be 
 straightened at all nor released. 
 
 A pheasant crowed and she heard a rush of wings. 
 Ann saw a squirrel looping to a tree. At one point 
 a scent which she did not recognize was the scent of 
 a fox. It had its part in making the life of the fields 
 and the woods seem very near, but very cautious, 
 very shy. What did she want? The Garden of 
 Eden? The lion lying down with the lamb? Condi- 
 tions in which the wild things should seek no covert 
 at your approach, trust you because you were one 
 with them, come to you? 
 
 They emerged from the wood. After its soft green 
 twilight the open light of the unshaded fields was 
 dazzling. Ann blinked her eyes, as the pantomime 
 fairies of one's youth blinked theirs when, from the 
 darkness under the stage, they came up through a 
 trap into the glare of the footlights. She had not ac- 
 customed her eyes to the unshaded brightness when 
 Timothy Coram once more, and as suddenly as be- 
 fore, cried, "Look!" 
 
 Two magpies had broken simultaneously from a 
 hedge. For a single moment at the angle at which 
 Ann saw them one partially obscured the other, so 
 that, to her eyes, already confused by the sun, the 
 black-and-white flappings seemed those of one bird. 
 The illusion lasted veritably but for a heart's beat
 
 ioo THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 or the twinkling of an eye, though in that space she 
 had had time for a ridiculous inward 'That's three!' 
 Then the angle changed, and immediately what had 
 seemed one bird showed itself to be two. 
 
 Thus, the day's harvest was four. 
 
 Ann laughed. 
 
 "You were right," she said; "I needn't have 
 been afraid that I should be left with my 'One for 
 Sorrow. 1 " 
 
 But what she did not notice was that, in the odd 
 way in which the thing had happened, the ' Four ' she 
 was ultimately left with had seemed, as it revealed 
 itself, to wipe out altogether the 'Three* upon which 
 she had closed.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 TIMOTHY came with Ann as far as the gate of the 
 lower garden, where Claudia, from the window of 
 the boudoir, to which idleness had brought her, saw 
 him take leave of her, mount his horse, and ride 
 away. She smiled to herself, and withdrew a little 
 into the shelter of one of the curtains. Ann was com- 
 ing slowly towards the house. She did not look back. 
 Timothy Coram did. He turned in his saddle and 
 followed Ann's retreating form, Claudia observed, 
 till it was out of the range of his eyes. It was then 
 that Claudia jumped to her conclusion to the con- 
 clusion which indirectly, or perhaps even directly, 
 was to have such momentous results. 
 
 Claudia could be as quick in her movements as 
 in her conjectures. She was sitting in the distant 
 library, a book "Red as a Rose is She" in her 
 hands, when, a minute or two later, her hostess, 
 having drawn the boudoir and the drawing-rooms 
 blank, came there to look for her. 
 
 "Oh, here you are," Ann said. 
 
 Claudia nodded gaily. 
 
 "Here I am," she answered, waiting, content to 
 wait, for what Ann should say next. 
 
 Ann came across to her and leaning over her chair 
 laid her cheek for a moment against hers. Claudia 
 in contact with her knew at once that the restlessness
 
 102 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 which had possessed her an hour or two earlier was 
 past. She saw also that a calmed and softened Ann 
 wanted to make amends. 
 
 "Dear Ann," she murmured gently. 
 
 "Was I horrid just now?" Ann said. "I don't 
 know what was the matter with me." 
 
 Claudia thought to herself that she, then, knew 
 very well indeed. But before she had time or need to 
 speak, Ann, bending nearer before withdrawing her 
 face, had added: "You'll make allowances for me, 
 I know. Perhaps some time I shall tell you." 
 
 "Whenever you feel that you want to tell me," 
 Claudia said "if you ever feel that you want to 
 tell me . . ." 
 
 "I think I shall want to tell you." 
 
 Claudia pressed the hand which still held one of 
 hers. 
 
 "Dear Ann," she said again. But as she became 
 aware at the same moment that the book she was 
 holding was upside down, she floundered a little over 
 the "But on no account unless you do feel that you 
 want to tell me," which she had intended should be 
 so disarming in its ingenuous fervency. 
 
 She stole a glance at Ann to see if she had ob- 
 served. Ann's eyes, however, were elsewhere, and 
 Claudia closed her book and put it down. 
 
 The moment passed like the others. Ann did not t 
 speak. But clearly something had happened. Had 
 she gone out to meet the handsome agent? Claudia, 
 though she had not seen the bather, did not think
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 103 
 
 so. The meeting she fancied had been fortuitous, 
 but whatever its nature, whatever the circumstances 
 attending it, its effect upon Ann was palpable. It 
 was as if something had been lifted, or as if some- 
 thing which would not suffer her to rest had been 
 removed. All her gracious serenity had returned to 
 her. 
 
 " Come into the garden for a few minutes before 
 we go up to dress. It is wrong to be indoors." 
 
 Claudia rose at once and with linked arms the two 
 ladies went out into the garden. The sun was lower 
 in the heavens now, but his radiance was undimin- 
 ished. The air was a-hum with wings, and honey- 
 sweet with the scent of flowers. Gardeners were 
 busy watering. A long hose, supported at intervals 
 on little pairs of wheels, which gave it an air of hav- 
 ing legs, lay like some monstrous reptile upon the 
 smooth green turf of a lawn. When from time to 
 time, as the gardeners gave it a tug, it moved its 
 sinuous length across the grass, the illusion of life 
 was heightened. Claudia, despite her preoccupation 
 with the emotions and affairs of Ann, watched it, 
 fascinated. 
 
 "Isn't it like something before the flood the 
 monsters you see pictures of in the magazines ! Do 
 look, Ann! It's running. It does n't really like run- 
 ning, because, though it has legs, it is cursed like 
 the serpent in Genesis and its belly cleaves to the 
 dust. Oh, Ann, is n't it ridiculous when it runs!" 
 
 But it was Claudia who was ridiculous, and Ann
 
 104 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 loved her. She began to know certainly that she 
 should tell her. She wanted to tell her now. She 
 wanted to say: "Claudia, I've seen him. I've 
 seen him. I 've been with him. I Ve been with him 
 in the wood. I've been with him in a wonderful 
 place. I 've made him see beauty. He saw it through 
 me. But for me he would have missed it as he has 
 missed it a hundred times before. But now he sees 
 and he always will see. His eyes are opening, 
 Claudia ..." 
 
 And then, as she thought back to what she herself 
 had seen: "And he is sheer beauty himself ..." 
 
 At that she paused, knowing what she knew 
 knowing that she knew more than Claudia 
 Claudia who had said that no one ought to be so 
 good-looking! Ah, she knew more than Claudia. And 
 then, because she knew him to be beautiful, she 
 felt the colour deepen in her cheeks. Yet why? Why 
 should she not think of that as beautiful which was 
 beautiful? Why not, if she wished, even speak of it 
 in words? What was this fear of the body which 
 (then, at any rate) stultified the meaning and pur- 
 pose of life? What was the purpose of beauty if 
 not that it should be desired? Why had the very 
 flowers scents, colours? There was nothing to be 
 ashamed of. She was not ashamed. Nor was this 
 shame that she was feeling. It was gladness, exulta- 
 tion. And so, though she did not know it, another 
 stage was reached. 
 
 She pressed Claudia's arm and knew, or half knew,
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 105 
 
 that it was for love of Coram that she made this 
 movement of affection towards Claudia. How strange 
 it was! How strange were all her emotions! How 
 changed she was from the Ann Forrester who had sat 
 waiting for the carriage and had heard the cuckoo's 
 note! . . . 
 
 And she knew that Claudia, though she was not 
 watching her, observed her. This did not annoy her 
 or even disturb her. It gave her rather a sense of 
 well-being. Claudia was there, interested, benefi- 
 cent, responsive. 
 
 In the rose garden every rose was a censer sending 
 up its fragrance as incense to the warmth and the 
 light. Here were great red or white or pink roses in 
 which, drinking in their fragrance, you could bury 
 your face. 
 
 Claudia moved about amongst them, saying, 
 "Look!" and "Look!" and "This one!" and "Oh, 
 this one!*' She made it plain, now, that she would 
 make no attempt to force her friend's hand. Ann, 
 therefore, wished to tell her. The one restraint 
 upon her was the thought of the next evening when 
 Coram was coming to dinner. The day passed 
 without her telling her. Claudia's face, like Ann's, 
 was set towards the next evening.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 ANN had a dress which she had never worn. 
 
 The last year of Mr. Forrester's life had seen 
 him the prey to strange moods. He was variable, 
 uncertain, the victim of his nerves. He knew that 
 he was doomed and that protest was vain. He had 
 lived his life and was not dissatisfied, on the whole, 
 with what life had given him. The bill had come in 
 and he was prepared to meet it. But there were 
 days when even to him the price seemed too high. 
 Winton, his man, could have told. Ann, always a 
 little outside her husband's life, though she hardly 
 realized this, knew, rather through Winton than 
 through her husband himself, when the stress had 
 been greatest. Winton adored his master and said 
 nothing. But from time to time a day would come 
 when she, too, had to bear her share, when the irri- 
 tation spread past servants and bath attendants 
 and masseurs to her also. She, to her credit, like 
 Winton to his, understood. She would have under- 
 stood better if she had been allowed nearer, but even 
 as things were she understood. Always after the 
 outbreak came the reaction. The overbearingnesses 
 over, there were tractabilities, gentlenesses, which 
 made up to Winton for everything, tendernesses 
 even. To Ann there were attentions. The dress,
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 107 
 
 like many of her many jewels and trinkets, repre- 
 sented such an attention. 
 
 It was a very simple dress, quite unlike the elabo- 
 rate dresses of those days. Looking for something 
 that should please her, he had found it himself, and 
 had insisted on buying it for her in the face of Ann's 
 argument that its cost, which was considerable, was 
 quite disproportionate to the use which the nature 
 of its fashioning could ever allow it to be to her. It 
 was copied from some mediaeval Florentine gar- 
 ment, and was of a deep sapphire blue the colour 
 of a dark sea or distant mountains. It was woven 
 throughout of silk, which was designed, not so much 
 to fit closely to the figure as to follow its lines truth- 
 fully, and the only ornament which it boasted was 
 the jewelled girdle which fastened it. It had an air, 
 intentioned, in all likelihood, and probably entirely 
 deceptive, of having no other fastening. This, and 
 the condition that it imposed that it must be worn 
 without stays, had slightly alarmed Ann of- 
 fended her even; and it was, perhaps, the perception 
 of the real cause of her demurrings that, half whim- 
 sically, half maliciously, had determined her husband 
 to buy it for her. She had pleaded the number of 
 her dresses. She could not keep pace with them 
 could not wear all she had before they went out of 
 fashion. She should have one dress, he declared, 
 which would never be out of fashion. But, going 
 back to her first argument, when could she wear it? 
 not dining out, not at a party, and it would be
 
 io8 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 ridiculous to wear a dress of the sort when she was 
 alone. Oh, the occasion would come, he said, and 
 moved to prophecy so, mark him, would the 
 day of such clothing! 
 
 "The vision of all you women is so distorted by 
 what fashion decrees for you that you don't know 
 a beautiful thing when you see it." 
 
 Ann had not denied that the dress was beautiful. 
 The point at issue at the obstinate moment was 
 whether it would be of use to her. 
 
 The dress was bought. Ann, perhaps to her later 
 regret, never wore it. Was it by chance that Branton 
 that very day had unearthed it, and had gone into 
 ecstasies over it? Ann had told her to put it away 
 , again, but had found it laid out on the great Empire 
 bed when she went up to dress. 
 
 Branton's deprecating but venturesome smile 
 showed that she expected a tussle. Branton had had 
 all her pleas ready. Such a shame to keep some- 
 thing so exquisite shut away. So exactly the thing 
 for a little intimate dinner; so precisely enough, so 
 to speak, and yet, with just the long string of pearls, 
 not too much. Such a Picture. Really she, Branton, 
 would like Mrs. Nanson to see her lady in this. And 
 the occasion might not occur again so exactly 
 the occasion. 
 
 Ann was conscious that her frown faltered, lost 
 conviction. She was wavering. It was, perhaps, 
 Branton's chance word, evoking memories. It was, 
 perhaps, the memories themselves; one memory
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 109 
 
 woke another. It was the knowledge that her hus- 
 band, though she had not worn it for him, would not 
 have 'minded.' Was she near to understanding him? 
 Had he found it in him sometimes to wish her awake 
 even if it should be for a lover? But it was chiefly 
 because she herself was changed from the Ann who 
 had demurred, and because she had driven through 
 Fotheringham, though she would not have ad- 
 mitted this! and always and always, because she 
 had walked in a wood. She suffered Branton to 
 array her in the garment of dispute. 
 
 When had her husband's taste ever been at fault? 
 Might she not have trusted him? The dress was 
 the beautiful Adam library as all her other dresses 
 were the pretty rubbishy boudoir. The one fly in the 
 ointment was Branton's rapture. That Branton's 
 instinct should have been so sure! She could have 
 wished that Branton, her desire attained, should 
 have been disappointed, should have found the 
 dress, after all, too simple, that only she herself 
 should have seen its perfection. But Branton, with 
 the eye for effect of a born lady's-maid, had seen, 
 even as her husband with his trained eye for beauty 
 had seen, and it had been Branton's mistress who 
 had doubted. 
 
 "Yes, it looks very nice," Ann said. "It will do 
 very well." 
 
 "Well, if that's all you've to say for it, 'm!" was 
 Branton's inward comment.
 
 no THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 But, inwardly also, Ann had more to say for it 
 than that. Her surrender was complete. She wished 
 that her husband could have known. She paused 
 before a looking-glass on her way down and sur- 
 veyed herself. She knew that 'different* as she 
 looked she had never looked better. How different 
 she looked and yet in one way how little different ! 
 It was as if, under the artificialities of her normal 
 dressing, this was what she had always been like. 
 She would go back, of course, to the pretty, fussy 
 clothes again the clothes of which you could never 
 cease to be conscious yourself and to impress con- 
 sciousness on others but it was very good for once 
 to have this delightful sense of freedom, and of a 
 different grace. 
 
 It was a warm evening, and the windows of the 
 smaller drawing-room, where she had decided that 
 they should sit that night, were open to the fragrant 
 garden. She was down first, and she stepped out on 
 to the terrace, where presently Claudia joined her. 
 If she had had any misgivings as to her appearance, 
 which, indeed, she had not, they must have 
 been laid by Claudia's little cry of delight. 
 
 "Ann, Ann," Claudia said, buzzing round her, 
 "where did you get it? What artist conceived it? 
 Paris! Ah, where else? Worth! Ah, who but he t 
 could have dreamt of it?" 
 
 She made little purring sounds. 
 
 "It's the plainness of it the almost severe sim-
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD in 
 
 plicity. The way it falls and clings. How tall you 
 are! I did n't know how tall. You're like the young 
 queen in a fairy story the beautiful Queen who 
 was loved by the Forester who dared not speak. 
 Or, somehow, though I know she would n't have 
 dressed a bit like that, the Sultan's daughter, Ann, 
 the wondrous lovely Sultan's daughter who came 
 to the Fountain. Is there a young Slave, Ann, who 
 daily at the hour of evening . . . ? Is there a forester 
 who must not speak? a young slave who must die? " 
 
 "Claudia, how your tongue runs away with you." 
 
 "Ann, do you know what an adorable creature 
 you are?" 
 
 "Come along in," Ann said, but not quite stead- 
 ily, her eyes suddenly misty. 
 
 Almost as they entered by the window, Whipple 
 opened the door and announced, "Mr. Coram." 
 
 Why, as she saw him, did she know that this 
 evening was to be different from any other evening 
 on which he had dined at Redmayne? She saw that 
 the change in her appearance did not escape him, 
 though there was nothing in his demeanour to show 
 that he had perceived it. As she advanced to meet 
 him she had a curious feeling, half apprehensive, 
 half expectant, as if, indeed, there was something 
 different in this occasion from any other that she had 
 known. Was it partly that she anticipated the news 
 that she was to hear that night divined that it 
 was that night that she was to hear it? Or was it 
 something more than this? a premonition of what
 
 ii2 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 was to happen to her? A premonition, at least, that 
 something would happen to her? 
 
 Outwardly she was greeting him with the quiet 
 smile and introducing him to Claudia. 
 
 "Only ourselves, you see," Ann said, "not 
 a party." 
 
 "I'm glad of that," Coram said. "I don't like 
 parties." 
 
 Ann challenged that. 
 
 "Mr. Coram dines out oftener in six months than 
 I do in a year," she said to Claudia. 
 
 "All the same," Coram said, "I'm glad this 
 is n't a party that it is n't a party to-night." 
 
 He did not say why, but Ann, dreading anything 
 that should confirm her feeling that this evening 
 was not as other evenings, had turned to Claudia 
 and was settling a locket which hung from a slender 
 chain about her neck. 
 
 "It will slip round," Claudia said. 
 
 Dinner was announced a moment or two later, 
 and the three made their way to the dining-room. 
 
 Claudia now began to talk. Perhaps she divined 
 Ann's apprehension. It was apprehension, now, that 
 was uppermost. Coram was inclined to be silent; 
 possibly even Ann herself. But Claudia talked 
 always without appearing to do the talking, and 
 presently the others found their tongues. Ann was 
 grateful to her. 
 
 Claudia at close quarters with Coram wondered 
 less than evei*. Ann, though she should decide to
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 113 
 
 tell her, had nothing to tell her now. The wonder 
 was that the inevitable should not have occurred 
 before. She was watching him also, though her smil- 
 ing eyes when she was animated, and her drooping 
 eyes when the moments came at which she went 
 through her transparent little widowednesses, did 
 not appear to watch. She had, as we know, jumped 
 to her conclusion at the window of the boudoir the 
 evening before. Nothing that he did or did not do 
 but fitted in with that. If he looked at Ann it was 
 because ... If he did not look at her, but kept his 
 eyes fixed on his plate or on her, Claudia Nanson, or 
 on anything or any one else, it was equally because 
 ... If he talked or did not talk, it was because . . . 
 Above all, it was Because, if he ever was shy; 
 and we know that Timothy,* with everything to 
 make him bold, could be shy. Claudia saw con- 
 firmation everywhere ; may have wished to see it ; but 
 really believed that she saw it. Before the fish was 
 over, Claudia was quite, quite certain. If Ann did 
 not tell her, she, greatly daring, would tell Ann. 
 
 And Ann looked superb to-night. What man but 
 must adore her? As what woman, indeed, but must 
 know that she could not with perfect safety, without 
 the risk, that is, of after smartings or achings, let or 
 hope to let an eye rest softly on Timothy Coram? 
 The two were marked out by nature for each other, 
 set apart, proclaimed. Oh, if she had been Ann, if 
 she, just pretty as she was, with no pretensions to 
 anything but fluffmess and feminineness and wiles
 
 ii 4 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 if she had been Ann, she would have known what 
 to do ... 
 
 The servants moved silently with dishes or de- 
 canters. The wines sparkled in the glasses. Napery 
 and silver shone in the light of the candles. The 
 heavy curtains were not yet drawn. The roses out- 
 side the windows sent perfumed messages to their 
 brothers and sisters on the table the free roses 
 outside to the captive roses within. There was a 
 sky of a blue that was almost green, deep, lumi- 
 nous, crystal-clear, and in it, from where she sat, 
 Claudia could see one star. 
 
 " If I could get them out," she thought to herself. 
 " If I could get them walking under a sky like that." 
 
 Aloud she said talking, though it might be (and 
 she knew it), of boots: "It's the wonderful way your 
 days melt into nights your days here in England, 
 I mean, mine, too, I suppose I may say, now that 
 I hope I have done with the East and with travel- 
 ling." 
 
 Ann looked at her quickly. Was it Claudia who 
 was going to precipitate what she knew knew in 
 her bones that she was to hear! She looked, as if 
 for help, at Claudia's locket Claudia's locket by 
 which she had, she believed, diverted the talk from 
 dangerous channels at the beginning of the evening. 
 By chance it had turned itself round again on its 
 swivel and lay with its setting of pearls, instead of 
 its smooth oval back, against Claudia's neck.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 115 
 
 But Coram was speaking. 
 
 "You don't like the East?" 
 
 " I'm very glad to have been there. But, oh, I 'm 
 so glad to be home." 
 
 It was the right note, and Ann breathed again. 
 Claudia at the same moment felt her locket and 
 turned it. Claudia steered clear for the night. 
 
 "Look," she said; "the long, long twilight and 
 then this," she nodded towards the star. "Could 
 one say to-night when the twilight ended? Might n't 
 we sit out after dinner, Ann?" 
 
 "There's no dew," Coram said. "The grass was 
 as dry as a bone as I walked here." 
 
 Ann heard herself saying that certainly they 
 would sit out. She looked at the sky and the single 
 star as she spoke, and she sent a thought piercing 
 its way through the thicknesses and darknesses of 
 the wood to the lonely figure sitting in the dusk. It 
 was a night for out-of-doors, a night, when the 
 moon should have risen, for such a pilgrimage as 
 that upon which she had despatched her thought. 
 
 She gave directions about the placing of the 
 chairs. 
 
 But the silences would fall, though Claudia 
 talked never so gaily, and though Ann was far too 
 good a hostess ever really to lose control of the 
 moment. She bowed, not to any supineness or to 
 any lack of initiative, but to the differentness which 
 insisted on marking the evening. Something hung 
 over it a threat or a portent. It had the sense
 
 ii6 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 of finality of last things last meetings, last ac- 
 tions, last words. It had the quality of seeming to 
 make memories. She could conceive saying of it to 
 one of the other two in the remote future, "Do you 
 remember how we did this or that that night? How 
 we often sat silent, and how then one or other of us 
 talked just to fill up, or to keep the ball rolling, and 
 how sometimes we left long gaps unfilled, or let the 
 ball lie quite still. Do you remember how strange 
 it all felt? or was it, perhaps, only to me that 
 everything felt strange? And was that my gown, do 
 you think? Do you remember I wore an odd gown 
 that Vincent insisted on buying for me years be- 
 fore? Do you remember that I wore it that night?" 
 Or, " Do you remember a locket you wore, Claudia? " 
 
 or, "that Claudia Nanson wore! and that it 
 would turn round? " Or she could conceive of it as a 
 mark in time as a date by which you remembered 
 other things, things antecedent or subsequent to 
 itself. But she did not yet conceive of it as a gulf 
 
 a gulf dividing all that had gone before from all 
 that was to follow after. 
 
 Coram's announcement came when the servants 
 had put the wine on the table and had closed the 
 door behind them. 
 
 He had had his telegram. He was going. He 
 was going to-morrow. . 
 
 Ann had known that his going when he went 
 would be sudden.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 117 
 
 "And that," he said, looking at Ann and then 
 looking quickly down, and speaking huskily 
 "that's what's the matter with me." 
 
 Ann's eyes did not falter, her hands which were 
 clasped across her breast did not tremble. It was 
 Coram's hands that trembled. He put down a peach 
 which he had taken absently, and the knife with 
 which he had been as absently peeling it, and pushed 
 back his chair a little. 
 
 Claudia made an involuntary movement. 
 
 He turned to her. 
 
 "I ought to apologize to you," he said ; " I ought to 
 apologize to you both for for being such a wet- 
 blanket at the feast," he picked his words with dif- 
 ficulty, knowing that he was floundering. "I I 
 just have n't been able to help it." 
 
 "Oh," Claudia murmured vaguely, "no, no," 
 and, "Of course, I understand." 
 
 "Thirteen years, Mrs. Nanson," he said. "It's 
 a good slice of one's life." 
 
 "Thirteen years," Ann said. " Is it thirteen 
 years?" 
 
 She felt as if her mind was wandering. Thirteen 
 or thirty was it? So much or so little! What did it 
 matter how long or how short the period was, since 
 it was over? 
 
 "I got the telegram a couple of hours ago; I 
 found it when I got home. It had been waiting for 
 me." 
 
 He turned again to Claudia and explained briefly
 
 ii8 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 to her, In a sort of parenthesis, what had caused the 
 delays and uncertainties which had come to an end 
 so abruptly; and turned then to Ann. She could 
 hardly attend to what he was saying. She gathered 
 that his friend had but that morning succeeded in 
 settling his affairs. The stock or shares, or whatever 
 they were, had touched the point, or whatever it 
 was, for which he had been waiting, and he was free. 
 Coram, who by agreement with him, as of course 
 with Ann herself, had been holding himself ready 
 to start at a moment's notice, was to join him the 
 next day in London for the final arrangements. 
 Unless anything unforeseen happened to prevent 
 them, they proposed to sail the day after. Ann had 
 known long since that he was going to Amer- 
 ica, first. Berths, it seemed, were available in the 
 Celtic. 
 
 She was not listening. She was watching Co- 
 ram's face, and Claudia's, and the way that the 
 light threw shadows. 
 
 "But even now," Coram said, "if you would 
 rather that I waited that I put off, anyway, for 
 a week, or two " 
 
 "Of course, you must n't put off going," Ann said. 
 "I would n't hear of it. I need n't tell you again 
 that we shall miss you the tenants, your friends, 
 all of us. But there's nothing in the way of your 
 going but our reluctance to part with you, and thai> 
 is purely selfish. You must go, Mr. Coram." 
 
 Claudia now said, "Ann, you and Mr. Coram will
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 119 
 
 have things you want to discuss. Let me leave you 
 for a little and join you later." 
 
 But Ann shook her head. 
 
 "No," she said; "that's all been done. Every- 
 thing is settled. I have been waiting for this tele- 
 gram as actually as Mr. Coram himself. I knew it 
 would come suddenly. That is in the nature of a 
 telegram, is n't it? Shall we go into the garden? 
 But you '11 have some more wine, Mr. Coram. Will 
 you follow us?" 
 
 "May n't I come with you?" Coram said. 
 
 They rose, and as they left the room Ann laid a 
 light but restraining hand on Claudia's arm. 
 
 And in the garden Ann contrived to keep Claudia 
 near her. Twice Claudia attempted to escape, and 
 twice Ann anticipated her intention and thwarted 
 it: once by involving her with the tea-things which 
 had been brought out to a table which had been 
 placed in readiness for them ' Pour out for me like 
 a good woman ' and once, as before, by the light 
 but restraining hand on her arm. Why she did this 
 she could not have said. Was she afraid to be alone 
 with Coram? afraid for the very ardour of her 
 wish to be alone with him? As the darkness fell, 
 secure moreover in the presence of Claudia, she 
 allowed her eyes to rest upon him. She was in 
 shadow; he, just touched by the light from the 
 drawing-room window behind her. Claudia from 
 where she sat could not see her face, but Ann's hand
 
 120 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 rested on the wicker arm of her chair. Presently 
 she felt Claudia's hand take hers. She knew that 
 Claudia was trying to communicate with her, but 
 she ignored her intention. Owls were hooting softly. 
 A bat skimmed by sometimes. There was a night- 
 jar somewhere. 
 
 "So I was glad, you see, that this was n't a dinner 
 party," Coram said. 
 
 "I think I knew what you meant when you said 
 that," Ann said. She was, at least, quite certain of 
 her voice. " I think I knew then that you had come 
 to tell me that you were going." 
 
 She could risk that, too. She might show, even to 
 repetition, that she was sorry that he was going. She 
 had only not to show how sorry. 
 
 He, with nothing to conceal, showed quite plainly 
 how sorry he was to go. 
 
 So they talked and did not talk. A numbness 
 began to creep over Ann. The moments were slipping 
 by. Was she feeling anything? feeling anything 
 really? She had felt more than this, felt far more 
 than this, when she knew only that the day was com- 
 ing when he would go. Now the day had come and 
 the last moments when she could still see him and 
 speak to him and touch him were slipping away. 
 Presently he would make a move. She had heard 
 ten o'clock strike in the drawing-room, and now 
 the clock was striking again. It was eleven o'clock. 
 They had sat out two hours ! Two hours ! It seemed 
 impossible, but also it seemed as if, in this warm
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 121 
 
 night, a very lifetime of hours had passed and was 
 passing. 
 
 And they had said all that there seemed to say, 
 and they had said nothing, and there was nothing to 
 say. And presently he would go. 
 
 She began to wish that he would go. At length 
 he rose. Perhaps because his feelings were acute he 
 became formal. He would have an early start in the 
 morning. He had got some of his packing to do. 
 He had to leave a note for Bulkley before he went 
 home. 
 
 Ann thought: "I'm not wanting to delay you. 
 Goodness knows I don't want to delay you. Go. Go. 
 Please go." 
 
 In spite of herself her manner became cold. She 
 saw Claudia look at her. 
 
 Then everything went awry, got out of hand, 
 missed fire. She had a feeling of looking on help- 
 lessly at herself as she said last words to him. She 
 might have been saying polite things to a visitor. 
 
 She said, "Could n't I send your note for you?" 
 Mr. Bulkley lodged in the village, a mile beyond 
 Redmayne. " It 's so out of your way. You '11 be so 
 late before you get home and you've got to pack." 
 
 "Not if I go by the path and come back this 
 way. Besides, if I find him up, I 'd like a word with 
 him." 
 
 "Yes, perhaps you may find him up," Ann said. 
 
 She could not help herself. 
 
 Claudia showed more warmth than she.
 
 122 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "Good-bye, Mr. Coram," Claudia said. "Bon 
 voyage, and all the very, very best wishes." 
 
 She did manage to slip away then. But there were 
 the servants to say good-bye to, and she doubted 
 now whether Ann and he would see each other for a 
 moment alone. As she went upstairs she heard him 
 taking leave of Whipple, and of Mrs. Piper, who 
 had come from the housekeeper's room to wish him 
 godspeed. She heard their regrets and their fervent 
 good wishes. 
 
 "All but Ann," she said to herself; "all but Ann." 
 
 She meant that every one showed feeling but Ann. 
 
 Ten minutes later she was speaking. 
 
 "Ann, Ann, Ann," was what she said when she 
 had drawn a ghostlike Ann into her room, an Ann 
 who was wide-eyed, and whose teeth were chatter- 
 ing. "Ann, can't you see?" 
 
 "Can't I see what?" Ann said dully. 
 
 "Wait," Claudia said. "May I send Branton to 
 bed?" 
 
 "Yes," Ann said. "Tell her I shan't want her. 
 But why? Why?" 
 
 She seemed glad that Claudia should have thought 
 of that. 
 
 Claudia sped from the room. 
 
 When a moment or two later she came back, she 
 found Ann standing just inside the door and exactly 
 as she had left her. Ann looked at her enquiringly. 
 
 "Can't I see what?" she repeated, as if there had 
 been no interruption. " Can't I see what, Claudia?"
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 123 
 
 "You would n't let me go," Claudia said. " I tried. 
 You knew I was trying. You were horrid to him. 
 You said good-bye to him as if he had been going 
 away for the week-end. You can't let him go like 
 that. You can't. Is it possible that you don't know 
 is it possible that you can't see why he's going?" 
 
 They looked at each other. 
 
 Claudia nodded. 
 
 " It's as plain as a pikestaff," she said; "and he's 
 not going for any silly or romantic reasons, either. 
 He 's entirely matter-of-fact. He 's in love with you 
 and he thinks it would n't Do. Just that. But he 's 
 going because he's in love with you." 
 
 "Claudia, if I thought you were right!" 
 
 It was no ghostlike Ann who said that. 
 
 And Claudia was so certain that she was right, 
 and the moment was big with reaction, and Co- 
 ram would pass through the garden on his way 
 home. . . . 
 
 So it came that to Coram, in an unusual mood, 
 strung up already by the emotions of the strange 
 evening, excited, aching, even, there appeared out 
 of the shadow of the darkened and silent house 
 the surprising sight of the trembling Ann. He came 
 near to her. Each was mistaken. She, of her want 
 of knowledge, of her very innocence; he, of what his 
 experiences had taught him. She stumbled forward. 
 She was near fainting. She had miscalculated her 
 strength, but his natural tenderness would, anyway,
 
 124 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 have disarmed her. And he, utterly misapprehend- 
 ing, proud, but very humble also, as one to whom 
 some amazing honour has unexpectedly been done, 
 knew only one way of dealing with a woman whom 
 he found in his arms. 
 
 Not a hundred words were spoken. Ann always 
 remembered that she had seen tears in his eyes.
 
 THE SECOND BOOK
 
 BOOK THE SECOND 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHEN Ann found that Timothy Coram had gone, 
 that the night before had had no effect upon his 
 plans, plans which he had been speaking of only 
 an hour earlier as alterable if need be, even then, 
 the world seemed like to collapse about her ears. 
 
 "Even now," she could hear him say, "even 
 now if you would rather that I waited that I put 
 off, anyway for a week or two ..." 
 
 And that was before while as yet what had 
 happened had been unthought of, inconceivable 
 even. And the inconceivable had become, not the 
 conceivable only, but the inevitable, the natural 
 consequence, the accomplished; and he was gone! 
 She could not at first believe her ears. 
 
 She had taken it so completely for granted that he 
 would not go believed, indeed, behind that, that 
 now he would not go at all. All the morning she 
 had expected him. No doubt of him had entered her 
 mind, as no doubt of him had had any part soever 
 in such misgivings as had occasionally, but then 
 only momentarily, stirred under her happiness in 
 the rest of the short summer night. She had lain 
 quite, quite still in the silence and the darkness 
 thinking her long, long thoughts. Only towards
 
 128 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 dawn had she slept, and then she had awakened 
 early to happy waking dreams. 
 
 She stole from her room to Claudia's, before the 
 servants were moving, to kiss her and to be held 
 for a few moments in Claudia's arms. She told her 
 nothing. Claudia asked her nothing. There seemed 
 no need of words between them. A few hours later 
 they had met at breakfast, radiant, confident, ex- 
 pectant, and at peace. 
 
 And Claudia had really been wonderful. She 
 was 'there' all the time just 'there' if Ann should 
 want her; and Ann, humming from sheer gladness 
 of heart and unbounded, unquestioning faith, had 
 waited contentedly for the sight of Coram himself, 
 or for Whipple to come and tell her that he was in 
 the library. For very happiness she could settle to 
 nothing. Claudia wrote letters in the boudoir. Ann 
 looked in upon her from time to time, knowing that 
 she would not be questioned, and Claudia did not 
 look up, or looked up and smiled, and talked of noth- 
 ing nearer to the thoughts of either of them than 
 Shakespeare, say, and the musical glasses. In other 
 words, Claudia showed herself to be all that a con- 
 fidante a confidante, moreover, who in a sense 
 had not yet even been confided in should be. 
 Ann was unspeakably grateful to her. But the hours 
 passed. 
 
 At twelve o'clock, Ann, still quite easy, had drawn 
 Claudia from her letters to play croquet. For a time 
 the game held her the odd, wide-hooped, short-
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 129 
 
 malleted game of those days, with its delicious cro- 
 quet ings, one foot on your own ball, a thrill for you 
 in the click which sent your opponent's ball rolling 
 away, leaving your own, of course, steady! and 
 its double hoop in the middle a bell even to tinkle 
 your satisfaction when you had successfully engi- 
 neered it! For a time she played steadily, able, in 
 spite of her preoccupation, to take an interest in 
 what she was doing. But presently her interest 
 began to flag. She would forget her turn. Claudia 
 would have to say, " Black to play," or, "Blue to 
 play," as the case might be. Once Claudia saw her 
 play with yellow, and when she saw that she was un- 
 conscious of her mistake did not draw her attention 
 to it. It did not seem expedient or even worth while. 
 Ann noticed nothing even when Claudia played 
 with the ball which she had herself just struck. 
 It was then, however, that Claudia began to be un- 
 easy. 
 
 Ann looked at her watch. 
 
 "Shall we stop?" Ann said. "We can finish the 
 game after luncheon." 
 
 "Yes," Claudia said, "any time," thinking 
 that it was, indeed, the sort of game that need not 
 be finished at all. 
 
 "The sun is so hot," Ann said. But she did not 
 move out of the sun. 
 
 "I think I'll finish my letters." 
 
 "Oh, need you?" Ann said. "The post doesn't 
 go till six."
 
 130 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 No, Claudia said, there was no hurry. 
 
 She was ready to do whatever might be required 
 of her. Walk or talk or make herself scarce. What 
 did Ann want? Impossible to say, when it became 
 manifest as now began to happen rapidly that 
 Ann did not know herself what she wanted. She was 
 waiting for something or some one; so much was 
 clear. 
 
 They loitered in the garden. Presently Ann went 
 in. Claudia, left to herself, wandered down one of 
 the paths. Five minutes had not passed before she 
 saw that Ann had come out again. 
 
 What ailed her? 
 
 She had come out through the drawing-room win- 
 dow, and was standing now where they had sat the 
 evening before. At the distance from which she ob- 
 served her Claudia could not see her face, but some- 
 thing in her attitude filled her with disquietude. 
 
 At luncheon Ann made hardly a pretence of eating. 
 Claudia, rather hungry herself, curbed her inclina- 
 tions, to cover as far as might be her hostess's lack 
 of appetite. She would have liked another cutlet, 
 but nobly said, "No, thank you," at the sight of 
 Ann's relinquished knife and fork. But as luncheon 
 came to an end Ann brightened. It was as if new 
 hope had come to her. One period was over, another 
 beginning. There was, she might have been think- 4 
 ing, all the afternoon . . . 
 
 "You would like to drive," she said, "would n't
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 131 
 
 you? I think, if you won't mind going alone, that I 
 won't go out this afternoon. Have you any shop- 
 ping to do, or would you like just a drive?" 
 
 Claudia bethought her of this and of that that she 
 wanted. 
 
 "But you're not ordering the carriage to enter- 
 tain me, are you? You know, don't you, that I 
 have n't got to be ' entertained'?" 
 
 ' ' No," Ann said, smiling. ' ' Go for a drive. We 'II 
 finish our game of croquet after tea." 
 
 So at half-past three o'clock, though by that time 
 there were signs that Ann's restlessness was return- 
 ing, Claudia mounted into the great Redmayne 
 barouche and went for her drive. 
 
 In truth, Ann's restlessness was returning. She 
 was looking, as Claudia had divined, to the afternoon 
 to make up for the surprising disappointment of the 
 morning. A hundred things might have happened 
 to hinder Coram from coming to her earlier. The 
 very change in his plans she had still no doubt 
 about that made it impossible that he should 
 come to her before luncheon. He had had to com- 
 municate with his friend. Telegrams probably had 
 been passing between them all the morning. And he 
 would have had to see Mr. Bulkley for whom, by 
 the way, since his promotion would now at least be 
 postponed, she must see that satisfactory arrange- 
 ments were made. Easy enough to account for the
 
 132 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 morning. But three o'clock had come and gone; a 
 quarter-past three; half-past. Would the afternoon 
 pass like the morning? 
 
 It was at a little after four that she saw Whipple 
 crossing the lawn towards her. Her heart bounded 
 at the sight she had been awaiting all day, and it 
 was with difficulty that she prevented herself from 
 going to meet him. If she had moved she must have 
 run towards him. She sat still trembling if he 
 could have seen watching his approach. How 
 slowly he came! She watched the rise and fall of his 
 deliberate feet. He shaded his eyes from the sun 
 with one hand. Could he not speak from where he 
 was speak as he came, and so save time? But he 
 was too well-bred a servant to speak till he was quite 
 near. He need not speak at all if he only knew. She 
 was so sure that she knew what he was going to say. 
 There was only one thing that he could have to 
 say. Now he judged himself near enough. He was, 
 as it were, in the presence. 
 
 "Mr. Bulkley to see you, 'm. He is in the library." 
 
 So prepared had she been for what she had ex- 
 pected to hear, that for a moment she did not ob- 
 serve that what she had expected was not what he 
 had said. 
 
 "Very well, Whipple. Tell Mr. " She got as 
 far as that. She broke off. 
 
 "Mr. Who?" 
 
 "Mr. Bulkley, 'm."
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 133 
 
 "You mean Mr. " 
 
 "Yes, 'm, Mr. Bulkley." 
 
 She looked at him still as if she had not heard 
 aright. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Bulkley," she said at last. 
 
 Whipple, who was waiting, said, "Yes, 'm," 
 again. 
 
 "Tell Mr. Bulkley I will be with him in a mo- 
 ment." 
 
 She sat still then, watching Whipple retrace 
 his deliberate steps. This time she saw that he 
 shaded the back of his head. 
 
 "Mr. Bulkley?" she said to herself. "Mr. Bulk- 
 ley?" 
 
 It was not for a moment or two after she had 
 greeted him, and they had sat down, that Ann 
 realized the purport of his visit. This was his formal 
 call upon taking office a shaking hands, as it 
 were, upon his appointment. 
 
 He may have wondered at a little sudden move- 
 ment that she made. It was with difficulty that she 
 kept a 'But* from an enquiry which yet took the 
 form of an exclamation. 
 
 "Mr. Coram?" 
 
 "He went by the ten o'clock train." 
 
 The ' But ' came from her now, detached ; it began 
 a sentence which never was finished. 
 
 "Oh, you mean he went up to London." 
 
 "Yes, to London."
 
 134 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 For a moment Ann had breathed again, but Bulk- 
 ley had not finished. 
 
 "He had the narrowest shave of missing his train. 
 I saw him off. It was in the station when we drove 
 up. He was delayed, you see, at the starting." 
 
 "Delayed?" Ann said. 
 
 "Such a lot of them to say good-bye to. I don't 
 know how so many of the tenants had time to know 
 that he was going this morning it was all so hur- 
 ried and sudden. But they had known for some days 
 that he might be going at any moment, and I sup- 
 pose news got round last night that he had got his 
 telegram." 
 
 Perhaps what Ann's face showed seemed bewil- 
 derment, for Bulkley now said: "You knew, Mrs. 
 Forrester, did n't you?" 
 
 ' ' Oh, yes," Ann heard herself answering. ' ' I knew. 
 Mr. Coram was dining here last night." 
 
 "I only knew this morning," Bulkley said. "He 
 had left a note for me last night, but I was in bed 
 and he had n't knocked me up. However, I got it 
 at seven this morning, and I was round with him 
 by half-past eight." 
 
 He was gone, then. 
 
 But he could n't be gone could n't really be 
 gone. 
 
 Mr. Bulkley thought he was gone, but he was n't. 
 There was some explanation even if he had let them 
 all think he was gone, even if, as he seemed to have 
 done, he had taken his luggage! She fought with
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 135 
 
 herself for that. Well, then, he had gone up to Lon- 
 don, prepared to go if he must, but he knew in his 
 heart that he no longer intended to go and he would 
 be back the next day. 
 
 But Bulkley's next words shattered even that. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "an awful rush at the end. He 
 left a portmanteau behind him, after all. I 've just 
 had a telegram from him from London. I 'm to send 
 it to Liverpool." 
 
 What Ann felt was a sort of stupefaction. Through 
 it she heard herself and Mr. Bulkley talk on. Though 
 she herself was numb, she seemed to have two or 
 three minds which were able to occupy themselves 
 in separate ways at the same moment. With one of 
 them she talked and listened, never losing sense of 
 what she said. With another she was thinking that 
 Whipple should have shown Mr. Bulkley into the 
 drawing-room and not the library. This was, as she 
 had divined, a visit of ceremony. With yet another 
 she was living through every moment of the night 
 before. Yet, spiritually, sensation was suspended. 
 She was not consciously suffering now. 
 
 Mr. Bulkley presently rose to go. Ann asked him 
 to stay for tea, but he excused himself on the ground 
 of business that he had to see to, and, uncertain how 
 long her immunity might last, she did not press him. 
 
 Only as he was saying good-bye did he make any 
 allusion to the change brought about in his own cir- 
 cumstances by Coram's departure.
 
 I 3 6 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "I hope I shall deserve the confidence you have 
 shown in me," he said. "I want to say, but I can't 
 say, how I appreciate it, and how I appreciate being 
 allowed even to follow a man like Coram." 
 
 That brought it home to her a touch of emo- 
 tion in some one else's voice. Coram was gone.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 CLAUDIA, uneasy as she was, enjoyed her drive. 
 The day, despite the absence of dew the night before, 
 which might have been supposed to presage rain, 
 was perfect. Impossible not to enjoy so balmy an 
 air and such radiant sunshine. Impossible, too, if 
 you were Claudia, not to enjoy sitting back amongst 
 the cushions of the roomy carriage, and, even if as 
 yet there was no one to see you, feeling how very 
 important you looked. She allowed herself to yield 
 to the pleasant influences of the hour. Very soon 
 these had their own influence on her spirits, and, 
 though she was always conscious of an uneasiness 
 under her ease, she was able to keep it in its place. 
 All would be well. All would assuredly be well. 
 When she got home she would find that that 
 well, whatever Ann had been hoping for or expecting 
 had happened. If Ann, as she could not but suppose, 
 had had reason to believe that Mr. Coram would 
 have put off his departure, and it was thus a visit 
 from him that she had been looking for, Claudia 
 would hear on her return from her drive that he had 
 called. If it was a letter that Ann awaited, she would 
 find that the letter had come. All would be well. 
 She was quite sure of it. It would be good to hear 
 that all was well. Meanwhile it was very delight- 
 ful in the big, soft, smooth-rolling carriage. All its
 
 I 3 8 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 appointments pleased her. So did the comfortable 
 servants in their imposing liveries on the box. So, 
 as we may know by this time, did her own mourn- 
 ing appearance. 
 
 Her thoughts, to the tune of the even trotting of 
 the horses and the subdued rumble of the wheels, 
 played gently round Ann's romance as she con- 
 ceived it, and round her own share in it. She could 
 not but know that, whatever check had come with 
 the passing of the morning which had begun so 
 rosily, she had helped Ann the night before. She 
 could only guess at what had occurred after her 
 outburst. But for her "Ann, Ann, Ann," Coram, 
 hero meet for any romance, would have departed 
 would have been allowed to depart in silence. 
 Ann owed her the happiness which had transfigured 
 the face which had bent over her in the early, early 
 hours. Her own face glowed in the recollection of 
 that wordless embrace. Could one, looking at Ann, 
 have guessed that she was capable of such depths 
 of feeling? He probably had not guessed. The key 
 to the whole situation lay there. Ann, ghostlike, 
 wide-eyed, shivering . . . Ann, beaming, radiant, 
 brimming . . . could one have imagined? She let 
 herself construct a picture of what had taken place. 
 Easy to do this from her knowledge of the state of 
 mind of one of the actors (yes, knowledge) had 
 not Ann let her see? could she, Claudia, have 
 avoided seeing? and from her certainty (yes, 
 certainty, certainty!) of the state of mind of the
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 139 
 
 other. The very beauty of the starlit night helped 
 her. Had she not earlier in the evening said to her- 
 self, " If I could get them out if I could get them 
 out walking under such a sky!"? And that was 
 what she had done. The one star had long since 
 given place to many stars. While as yet they were 
 all three sitting out in front of the drawing-room 
 windows, the night had been athrob with stars. It 
 had gained in beauty without losing what the one 
 star had seemed to give it. The night might be 
 counted on to have done its part. She could see 
 Coram striding back. She could think of him as 
 glancing at the spot where that deadliness of con- 
 straint had come over him when he had risen to go 
 half an hour before, paralyzing his tongue, turning 
 his last words to foolishness and his last moments to 
 torment. 
 
 And she could see Ann waiting, trembling, mov- 
 ing forward . . . 
 
 We know how nearly the picture approached to 
 truth. But the picture remained unfinished. Be- 
 yond the point the moving forward of Ann she 
 could not see. 
 
 The carriage was approaching Windlestone. The 
 country roads, dotted with an occasional cottage or 
 farmstead, assumed a more urban aspect. Hoardings 
 began to be seen. Ginnett's Circus was Coming; 
 ladies flying through hoops, or over broad streamers 
 manipulated by grimacing clowns, announced that.
 
 I 4 o THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 Claudia read in passing that the Procession would 
 be a Mile Long and spaced it for herself! "A 
 Woman of the People" held the theatre. Dingier 
 posters, torn now and flapping, or partly pasted 
 over, showed that at some more or less recent date 
 Womwell's Menagerie had paid its visit to this 
 town. A Panorama of the Holy Land was at the As- 
 sembly Rooms. These announcements, with others, 
 made the approaches to the town ugly but inter- 
 esting. So did the small shops that now began to 
 appear ; so did the people who paused to look at the 
 carriage as it passed; so did the busyish railway 
 station. 
 
 Now they were in the town itself a delightful 
 old town once you were fairly in it and Charles 
 was turning for directions. Claudia had to think of 
 what she wanted a glass for her watch. 
 
 1 ' Parless's ' ' Charles to Fenton. ' ' Parless's, 'm, 
 in the High Street" Charles to Claudia. 
 
 A bareheaded young man, and then Mr. Parless 
 himself, bareheaded also and bowing, came out to 
 the carriage. 
 
 A few moments. A few moments, at the outside. 
 Yes, these glasses broke so easily. Then the pleasant 
 little waiting while the fitting was done ; passers-by 
 loitering or turning to look at you. Then the young 
 man again with the watch in silver paper, and the 
 trifling account, and Mr. Parless again bowing. 
 
 The weather was very seasonable, and Mrs. For- 
 rester was quite well, thank you. No, not in London
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 141 
 
 this year. Yes, Claudia agreed, it often did seem a 
 pity to go to London at the time of year when the 
 country was so agreeable. No, that was all, thank 
 you. Good-afternoon from the bowing shop-keeper 
 and good-day from the lady. 
 
 The post-office. Only stamps there, and those 
 Charles could buy for her. Twenty-four penny and 
 twelve halfpenny. The pleasant important wait- 
 ing again. It was very like having carriages and 
 horses and menservants of your own. Yes, Claudia 
 was enjoying herself. 
 
 Charles again waiting for orders, all attention 
 and deference. 
 
 But now Claudia had to think of something to 
 want. Oh, well, you always wanted thread for your 
 work, and you always wanted new patterns. 
 
 A draper's? Elbow and Clinton's in Park Square. 
 No, not, Claudia thought, a draper's exactly. A shop 
 where needlework was sold; materials for needle- 
 work. 
 
 "Oh, Miss Blondin's, 'm. The Berlin Wool Shop." 
 
 That had the right sound. 
 
 "Yes, Miss Blondin's," said Claudia. 
 
 The Berlin Wool Shop, Miss Blondin's, Miss 
 Blondin in full over the door, was in Rochester 
 Street, the oldest part of the town. Claudia, enter- 
 ing Miss Blondin's, and received by the great Miss 
 Blondin herself, had almost forgotten her uneasi- 
 ness. The atmosphere of Miss Blondin's every- 
 thing contributing, the names, the fanlights, the
 
 I 4 2 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 round windows was so exactly in keeping with 
 the spirit of ' her fondest imaginings of what shop- 
 ping should be in a country town, that all that was 
 disturbing was put from her mind. Miss Blondin 
 might have stepped out of Cranford. 
 
 She must have seen the Redmayne liveries from 
 the window, for Claudia had not been a minute in 
 the shop before she contrived to let her know that 
 Mrs. Forrester was one of her most valued customers. 
 Claudia bought her modest threads and proceeded to 
 the fascinating inspection of the patterns. Enthrall- 
 ing to Claudia, who loved needlework, every faint 
 blue tracing. 
 
 "Sweetly pretty are they not, *m?" said Miss 
 Blondin. 
 
 "Entrancing," said Claudia. 
 
 "Such variety," said Miss Blondin, "in the de- 
 signs. They get prettier, I think, with every fresh 
 batch. These came in only last week. That one, 
 now. A sort of Empire design. Swans, you see, and 
 garlands, and laurel wreaths. Oh, no, 'm, not really 
 difficult. The instructions printed, you see, on the 
 wrapper, and quite easy to follow. Miss Dousley." 
 
 "Yes, Miss Blondin." 
 
 "You have the Swan design begun, I think. I 
 should like to show this lady ..." 
 
 Miss Dousley fetched the Swan design begun. , 
 
 "We keep some of these started," Miss Blondin 
 explained in parenthesis. "Now, Miss Dousley." 
 
 Miss Dousley demonstrated.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 143 
 
 "The double loop, 'm, that's where you have 
 to be careful. Watch me. So, 'm. The knot com- 
 pleting the stitch, as it were." 
 
 " I see," said Claudia "or I think I see. Yes, I 
 do see. May I try?" 
 
 She took off her gloves. The rings sparkled on her 
 white hands. 
 
 "Oh, the hands for the needlework!" said Miss 
 Blondin. "The hands for the tambour, or, better 
 still, the lace cushion! Am I not right, Miss Dousley? 
 I yet hope to live to see a revival of lace-making. 
 What more exquisite sight than the play of the hands 
 on the lace cushion?" 
 
 Ann was forgotten; all Claudia's uneasiness. 
 Claudia bought the Swan design, and a design of 
 roses and love-knots, and one in which arabesques 
 entwined themselves a little incongruously about 
 the severer chastities of the Greek key. Beguiled 
 by Miss Blondin she bought a tambour frame, but 
 drew the line at the lace cushion if, indeed, Miss 
 Blondin had one for sale. There was, to be sure, the 
 big Honiton cushion under its glass shade in one of 
 the round windows, but that, of course, was there as 
 a symbol of the shop's intention. Miss Blondin did 
 business in Windlestone, it might be said, At the 
 Sign of the Lace Cushion. 
 
 "No wools or silks or crochet hooks to-day, 'm? 
 These tea-cloths are pretty. Yes, drawn thread. 
 Nor d'oyleys for painting in water colour? Autumn
 
 144 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 leaves, 'm, as you see, and this one a sprig of 
 myrtle." 
 
 Claudia, putting on her gloves, shook her head, 
 smiling. " Not to-day, thank you." 
 
 "Allow me, 'm." 
 
 It was Miss Dousley, returning with the bill and 
 her change, begging permission to button her 
 gloves. The parcel was taken out to the carriage. 
 
 Claudia rose. 
 
 It was then that Miss Blondin, as Mr. Parless 
 before her, asked for Mrs. Forrester. She went on 
 to speak of Redmayne. Such a beautiful place, she 
 had always thought, when she had been privileged 
 to see it. She had been there two or three times in 
 connection with the repair of some of the old chair 
 covers and embroideries. She had been to the Grand 
 Bazaar which had been held in the Grounds (the 
 capitals unmistakable in the reverence of Miss Blon- 
 din's inflections) some years back in aid of the 
 Cottage Hospital, that was and she had been there 
 once even as a Guest. 
 
 " But that was on a very sad occasion the occa- 
 sion of the lamented Mr. Forrester's funeral, when 
 I, in conjunction with one or two others in Windle- 
 stone who had had the honour of serving the family, 
 was favoured with an invitation." 
 
 It was all perfect all so exactly in key. How 
 much she was enjoying herself! Her own becoming 
 crapes and lawns made the mention of a funeral 
 and somehow of a funeral in inferred relation to
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 145 
 
 its importance ! so appropriate. The talk was of 
 Ann, of the concerns of Ann, anyway, but at that 
 moment she had forgotten her. 
 
 "Mr. Coram will be missed, 'm, will he not?" 
 
 Claudia, who had sighed and nodded and was now 
 at the door, stopped abruptly. 
 
 "We were all so sorry to hear he was going. Oh, 
 we all knew Mr. Coram in Windlestone. Off round 
 the world, too! The Grand Tour, as I used to hear 
 it called by old people when I was young. This 
 morning, too! We all hoped it might not be so 
 soon." 
 
 That morning ! He was gone, then ! There seemed 
 no doubt of it. Miss Blondin had heard even that he 
 had nearly missed his train. Mr. Bulkley had seen 
 him off. The platform waving to him. So popular 
 he was. So beloved by every one. There would be 
 sore hearts, too, Miss Blondin dared say! Such 
 a favourite, so to speak, with the ladies. But there, 
 Miss Blondin must n't say too much. Such a favour- 
 ite with every one, young and old. Half the town 
 would have turned out to see the last of him if the 
 hour of his departure could have been known in 
 time. 
 
 It was a conscience-stricken Claudia who took her 
 seat once more in the great Redmayne carriage and 
 said, "Home," to the waiting Charles. Something 
 almost approaching to remorse had part in her 
 abounding dismay. It was as if, while she had
 
 I 4 6 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 been occupying herself with fripperies, vanities, idle- 
 nesses, things, and states of mind of no moment or 
 value, another, unheeded, had been receiving a life- 
 sentence or a death-blow. The knowledge that she 
 was exaggerating, that it was not, nor could be, as 
 bad as all that, availed her nothing just then, partly 
 because she was Claudia and had to exaggerate, but 
 chiefly because of the uneasiness which, all through, 
 had underlain her selfish enjoyment. The visions of 
 the two Anns returned to her persistently. The Ann 
 of last night, ghostlike, wide-eyed, with chattering 
 teeth, and the Ann of the morning, beaming, radi- 
 ant, brimming . . . she did not know or did she 
 know? which smote her with the more pity. It 
 was the thought, anyway, of the second Ann, that 
 filled her eyes with sudden tears. 
 
 And the day itself was changing. The unfaltering 
 sunshine had faltered. Clouds had come up from 
 nowhere, and a breeze with the chill of approaching 
 rain in it was fluttering her veils and draperies.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ANN'S defences were down though not wholly 
 down even yet. She had to let Claudia see, if, for 
 the servants, her indisposition could still be called 
 a headache. 
 
 What it was actually called, in the message with 
 which Claudia was greeted by the solicitous Whip- 
 pie, was, of course, The headache. She had gone to 
 her room with it, it seemed. Whipple thought that 
 the sun was perhaps the cause. 
 
 Claudia closed on that as Ann upon the third 
 magpie. 
 
 "Ah, yes," Claudia said. " Mrs. Forrester felt the 
 sun this morning when she was playing croquet with 
 me. She spoke of it." 
 
 And Mrs. Forrester had been out in the sun 
 again in the afternoon. She had been sitting in the 
 sun when Whipple had gone out to tell her that Mr. 
 Bulkley had called. Yes, Mr. Bulkley had called 
 soon after four that would be. Whipple had not 
 thought her looking quite herself then, though noth- 
 ing to notice. It was about half an hour later that 
 she had gone to her room to lay down. 
 
 "Mrs. Forrester begged that you would have tea 
 without her, and hoped, perhaps, to be well enough 
 to come down for dinner." 
 
 "Would she see me, do you think?"
 
 148 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 Should Whipple ask Bran ton? 
 
 Yes, that would be best. 
 
 Branton was on her way down at that very mo- 
 ment. Mrs. Forrester had heard the carriage and 
 had asked to see her. Would Mrs. Nanson be kind 
 enough to step up when she had had her tea. 
 Claudia wanted to ' step up ' at once. 
 
 "Mrs. Forrester begged you would have your 
 tea first, 'm." 
 
 Claudia submitted. Not many minutes later she 
 was knocking at Ann's door. 
 
 Yes, the defences were down, not a doubt of that. 
 Ann at that moment was past dissembling. It said 
 something for Claudia's perceptions that, in the 
 face of the surrender that she did see, she should 
 have had even an inkling that the surrender was 
 yet not complete. Ann was not crying. That fright- 
 ened her. Ann's eyes said, "You know, so I have n't 
 to tell you." 
 
 "You'll hear from him," Claudia said when she 
 could speak. "He may have had to go. It may n't 
 have been possible to change his plans at a moment's 
 notice ..." 
 
 They had been made at a moment's notice, Ann 
 was able to remind her. 
 
 "But he had pledged himself to that," Claudi^ 
 pleaded. "He was to hold himself ready was n't 
 that the understanding? It may have been because 
 of that. He would have had to see his friend."
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 149 
 
 Ann's own argument, which she had seen herself 
 forced to reject. 
 
 "No, Claudia, he's gone. He has n't gone just to 
 see anybody. He's gone." 
 
 "He hasn't sailed yet, anyway," Claudia said 
 gently. 
 
 Ann broke from her. She had not been lying down, 
 Claudia saw. She could not lie down, could not 
 surrender her driven body to any one position. She 
 went over to the window and stood there with her 
 back to Claudia. 
 
 "He'll sail to-morrow," she said in a strangled 
 voice. "He is going to sail to-morrow. He has n't 
 altered his plans. It's that. Last night hasn't 
 made any difference." 
 
 "Did n't he say anything?" Claudia said at last. 
 
 "No," Ann said. "He didn't say anything. It 
 did n't even occur to me that he had n't said any- 
 thing. And I did n't say anything either. It would 
 n't have occurred to me to say anything about 
 about what I took so entirely for granted." 
 
 She stared out of the window drumming on the 
 pane with her fingers. 
 
 A full minute passed in silence. 
 
 The threatened rain was beginning now. Claudia 
 saw it and wished there might be a thunder-storm 
 anything to break the horrid stillness in which 
 the drumming of Ann's fingers on the glass seemed 
 suddenly to have been going on for hours. She 
 wanted desperately to help Ann, but could not.
 
 150 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 This tense, bitter suffering threw her back upon 
 herself. If it had been a weeping Ann that she had 
 had to deal with, she would have known what to 
 do. She wondered now why Ann had sent for her. 
 
 Ann turned back from the window blankly. 
 Something in the blankness of her face caught 
 Claudia, as it were, by the throat. It was Claudia, 
 to her own surprise, who burst into tears. 
 
 Ann's arms were round her in a moment. 
 
 Presently it was Ann who was crying, and Claudia 
 was just Claudia enough even then to pat herself 
 on the back for a cleverness that had been invol- 
 untary. 
 
 "Oh, Claudia, I'm so unhappy. I'm so horribly 
 unhappy." 
 
 Claudia held her close. Little by little she grew 
 able to talk. 
 
 "Nothing like this has ever happened to me be- 
 fore," was one of the sentences that came from her. 
 " I care so dreadfully," was another. " Is caring for 
 some one always as awful as this?" a third. 
 
 Claudia knew of such suffering; could understand 
 it, even if, as she realized with a sort of little 
 humbled feeling, she was incapable of experiencing 
 it herself. It did not need this, however, to tell her 
 that Ann was her superior had a finer soul than 
 she would ever have or even wish for. Claudia had t 
 no allusions about the plane upon which she lived 
 and moved and had her being. Fripperies contented 
 her, but she could appreciate the bigger things when
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 151 
 
 she saw them. Her love of Ann at the moment 
 amounted to worship. 
 
 And she was able to help her. She helped her as 
 perhaps no one else could have helped her just then. 
 Whatever Claudia lacked, she had no lack of the 
 rare sense we call common. The need of the mo- 
 ment was respite. 
 
 She worked for respite. She fixed Ann's thoughts 
 upon the letter which was still to come. Till that 
 came, everything was conjecture. If the letter failed, 
 she knew herself to be done. But it could not fail. 
 She had been shaken, it is true, by the news she 
 had heard in the Berlin Wool Shop, but her faith 
 in Coram, which was actually her faith in her own 
 perception, in what she so truly believed herself 
 to have perceived, had not suffered any appre- 
 ciable damage. Coram's letter would put every- 
 thing right even if he should still sail on the morrow. 
 That he might intend to sail on the morrow had to 
 be faced. She had to admit to herself, if not to Ann, 
 that everything appeared to point to an unchanged 
 intention of sailing on the morrow. 
 
 Till the coming of the letter, then. To the coming 
 of the letter . . . 
 
 They got through the evening. Ann came down 
 to dinner, pale, frail-looking even, but mistress once 
 more of herself. They sat in the boudoir after din- 
 ner and Claudia managed to induce Ann to play 
 bzique with her. For a time the game held her. 
 Disturbing emotions were kept under by Royal or
 
 152 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 Common Marriages, Fours of Aces or Kings or 
 Queens or Knaves, the hope of Sequence and 
 chance of Double Bezique. Ann gasped for her 
 declarations when the opportunities of declaring 
 declined at the approach of a last trick, or at such 
 moments as demanded the sacrifice of one hoarded 
 possession for another, and counted her tens as 
 eagerly as Claudia. Up to a point. Then, as with 
 the croquet that morning, her attention began to 
 wander. 
 
 At that hour, the evening before, they had been 
 sitting out on the terrace in front of the drawing- 
 room windows. She could see Coram's face as the 
 light just struck it. It came between her and the 
 cards in her hand. 
 
 She gave a little movement and Claudia looked 
 up. 
 
 "I can't goon." 
 
 "Yes, you can. And you're winning." 
 
 "Oh, Claudia, I can't." 
 
 "Yes, you can. I tell you you're winning. Play, 
 Ann. It's you. Have you taken a card?" 
 
 Ann took a card and played. 
 
 " A Royal Marriage." 
 
 "You see," said Claudia. 
 
 "But I don't care," said Ann. "That's forty." 
 She marked it. "What does it matter?" 
 
 "It always matters to win," said Claudia. "At- 
 tend, please. It's you again. Will you remember 
 to take a card!"
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 153 
 
 " I am attending. I can't attend. I don't know 
 what I 'm doing, you cruel woman." 
 
 They played on for a few minutes. 
 
 And Ann had such horribly good luck. 
 
 "There. Sequence!" said Claudia. "Two hundred 
 and fifty. Have you marked it? Well, mark it. You 
 would have missed that if I 'd allowed you to stop." 
 
 "Taskmistress!" said Ann. "You're so hard, 
 Claudia. How can you be so hard?" 
 
 "Play, please," said Claudia. 
 
 And Ann would manage to play again, and then 
 again Coram's face would come between her and 
 the cards. Only last night. A few short hours ago. 
 Where was he now? What was he doing? What 
 was he doing that moment! 
 
 "Oh, Claudia!" 
 
 But they were getting through the evening. 
 Claudia's real dread was for the night. 
 
 Tea was brought in and made a diversion. Ann 
 rose at once to 'make' it, but Claudia did not move, 
 and Ann, as if acting in obedience to a command from 
 her guest, brought the two cups to the card table. 
 
 They played on. Claudia drank her tea and asked 
 for more. Ann left most of hers. 
 
 "What are you?" Ann asked. 
 
 "Six hundred and twenty? What are you?" 
 
 Ann's score was eight hundred and forty. No, she 
 had forgotten to mark ten for the last trick. Eight 
 hundred and fifty.
 
 154 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "Oh," she said, " if I must win, can't we count that 
 I have won?" 
 
 Claudia was inexorable. They played the game to 
 an end. 
 
 But when Ann was free of it, she did not seem very 
 sure of what she wanted to do. She moved from the 
 table where Claudia sat shuffling (quite unneces- 
 sarily) the cards before (also quite unnecessarily) 
 putting them away in their box. Claudia, all calm- 
 ness outwardly, expected her to go out of the room, 
 but she did not. She went over to the piano. She 
 put her fingers on the keys and sat still for a moment 
 or two without striking a note. 
 
 "Play something," Claudia said. 
 
 Ann did not move. 
 
 "Chopin, One of the preludes." 
 
 Ann shook her head. 
 
 "Nonsense, Ann, play." 
 
 "Oh, very well," said Ann. But she did not. 
 Instead she got up abruptly and went over to one 
 of the windows the window from behind the cur- 
 tains of which Claudia had watched Coram ride 
 away. Claudia thought of this now. The thought of 
 it, the thought of what she had seen, renewed her 
 faith that all would be well. She closed the bezique 
 box, pushed it from her, and went over to Ann at 
 the window. 
 
 Outside, the gardens were all dark. The rain 
 was still falling in steady lines now and here
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 155 
 
 the gentle swish of it on the leaves was clearly au- 
 dible. Only as the eye accustomed itself to the dark- 
 ness could even the nearer features of the landscape 
 be discerned. 
 
 "I'm glad it is raining," Ann said. 
 
 "A nice soft rain," Claudia said. "Summer rain. 
 It will be fine again to-morrow." 
 
 But she knew what Ann meant, knew that the 
 night would have been intolerable if it had repeated 
 the loveliness of the night before. She, too, was glad 
 that it did not. Inwardly, though she was so cer- 
 tain that all would be well, she knew that the worst 
 hour for Ann was still to come. That would be the 
 hour which corresponded to the hour the night before, 
 which had held, in the compass of its sixty minutes, 
 her great unhappiness and her great happiness. The 
 very passing of the evening, that 'getting through' 
 upon the accomplishment of which she had been 
 congratulating herself, began to fill her with ap- 
 prehension. 
 
 Ann's eyes and her own eyes glanced from time to 
 time at the clock. 
 
 "Tired, Claudia?" 
 
 "No, not a bit." 
 
 She was very tired. The strain was telling 
 upon her. But Ann was asking her to watch with 
 her. She was sure of it. She would do that gladly. 
 Not one hour, she thought. She would sit up all 
 night if need be. 
 
 "Then we won't go just yet," Ann said.
 
 156 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "Yes; don't let us go up yet," Claudia said. "I 
 shan't want to go for ages." 
 
 "You 're sure?" 
 
 "Of course I'm sure." 
 
 "Then I'll ring and send word to Branton not to 
 sit up for me." 
 
 The bell was rung, the message given. 
 
 And the last hour was the strangest of that strange 
 night. For at half-past eleven the cards were taken 
 out again Claudia had put them away for noth- 
 ing and the two ladies sat down once more to 
 bezique.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 AND so at least the back of the night was broken. 
 It was one o'clock when at length they went up to 
 bed. By then Claudia knew herself to be wan with 
 fatigue, but that was a price to pay cheerfully if the 
 answering signs of fatigue which she saw in Ann 
 promised sleep. The hour which was safely over 
 had not been lived through without wear and tear to 
 the nerves. She had seen Ann's hands tremble, she 
 had seen her eyebrows contract, the eyes beneath 
 them contracting also like the eyes of one racked 
 by physical pain, the stabbing pain, say, of neu- 
 ralgia, and she had seen the teeth set in the reso- 
 lution to endure. Her own support at such moments 
 had been the hope that the very acuteness of Ann's 
 suffering would prove its cure. Worn out then by the 
 sight of what she felt herself powerless to alleviate, 
 she had watched for the signs of exhaustion in Ann. 
 Worn out, but content, she had seen them. Then 
 she knew that she might go to bed. 
 
 She helped Ann to put out the lamps and shut the 
 windows, and only when she was alone for a mo- 
 ment in the hall, whither she had preceded her 
 to light the bedroom candles, did she allow herself 
 at last the luxury of a long and a well-earned yawn. 
 
 Ann, who had stayed to shut the piano, joined her 
 and they went up the wide stairs.
 
 158 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 And so to the darkness. It was perhaps Claudia's 
 very real exhaustion that caused her last waking 
 thoughts to be chilled with what were her first real 
 misgivings. Suppose she had been mistaken. Sup- 
 pose she had misread what she had seen. Sup- 
 pose . . . 
 
 Not to be thought! Not to be thought even if she 
 had not been too tired to think at all. She was thank- 
 ful, however, that she was too tired to think. She 
 fell asleep. 
 
 And Ann in the darkness? Ann slept, too. 
 
 And somewhere else in the darkness Timothy 
 Coram. He perhaps did not sleep? Or, perhaps, he 
 also slept . . . 
 
 And in the circle in the wood all night the soft 
 rain fell on the statue of the waiting boy . . .
 
 THE THIRD BOOK
 
 BOOK THE THIRD 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PHARAOH'S daughter found her adopted son in 
 the bulrushes. We are told so, anyway, and we 
 have no reason to believe that she did not as lit- 
 tle reason, indeed, to believe that she did not as to 
 believe that she arranged to find him there. Ann 
 found, or was generally supposed to have found, 
 hers through an advertisement. 
 
 The advertisement was in the "Times" for all 
 the world to see. True it had not her complete name 
 to it for reasons which we shall learn ; but Mr. Par- 
 giter, of Pargiter and Fosberry, drew it up, and Par- 
 giter and Fosberry, of Windlestone, the Georgian 
 house with the exceedingly beautiful fanlight, nearly 
 opposite to Miss Blondin's, in Rochester Street, 
 were, as every one knew, the Redmayne solicitors; 
 had been the Redmayne solicitors from what Mrs. 
 Piper, when she had occasion to convey a sense of 
 remote periods, always spoke of as "time in me- 
 moriam." 
 
 It must have been about a year after the night 
 when Claudia and Ann kept their vigil and played 
 bezique twice in one evening, that it became known 
 that the lady of Redmayne was thinking of adopting 
 a child. Ann had been away the greater part of that
 
 162 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 year. Nothing new in that. For months at a time 
 Redmayne was accustomed to being dismantled 
 and shut up, and during Mr. Forrester's life often 
 for longer than that. Ann had been abroad Kis- 
 singen first; then Switzerland; then, as the year ad- 
 vanced and the weather grew cooler, the north of 
 Italy. Then, Claudia, who had been with her part 
 of the time, joining her again after a visit or two 
 amongst her own relations, Sicily. Then Italy again. 
 Then, suddenly, Paris. After that, little out-of-the- 
 way places in France. 
 
 It was the tail-end of the season when Ann got 
 back, and as, for the few weeks that she would be 
 in London before she went down to Redmayne, 
 it did not seem worth while to open the house in 
 Charles Street, or bring up the servants, she went 
 to a hotel. She went, as she always went, when she 
 had need of a hotel in London, to the Bath Hotel. 
 The Bath Hotel stood where the Ritz, or rather 
 where a portion of the Ritz, was destined to stand a 
 few decades later, and was at the corner of Picca- 
 dilly and Arlington Street. 
 
 In Arlington Street was the Fotheringham's Lon- 
 don house. 
 
 As Ann stepped out of the hotel on the day after 
 her arrival, she met Lady Fotheringham, who was 
 followed by a footman and half a dozen dogs o/ 
 various breeds and sizes. 
 
 "Mrs. Forrester!" cried that lady, extending both 
 hands and seizing, indeed, the two hands of Ann
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 163 
 
 or as much of each of them as the handle of a para- 
 sol which Ann held in one, and the purse which she 
 chanced to be holding in the other, allowed her to 
 grasp. "This is delightful. I'd no idea you were 
 back. We never meet. I declare we never meet. 
 Are you staying in London? Here? Then dine with 
 us to-night. Only Flora Mallard and come on with 
 us to the opera. Say you will and I '11 let you go now, 
 for you 're going shopping, I can see, and I 'm taking 
 my menagerie for a walk in the Green Park." 
 
 Ann said she would; and so it came that two of 
 her neighbours in the country heard her say that 
 the reason she spent so little of her time at Red- 
 mayne was that she found the place lonely so 
 much so, indeed, she paused and focussed at- 
 tention, so much so that she seriously thought 
 sometimes of adopting a child for company. 
 
 "One can't," she said, "always have people stay- 
 ing with one. And I have n't," she added, shaking 
 her head at Lady Fotheringham, "your passion for 
 dogs." 
 
 "There I agree with you," said Lord Fothering- 
 ham, whose wife's menagerie was a standing griev- 
 ance. 
 
 "My beautiful dogs!" cried Lady Fotheringham. 
 "My angels! But a child?" 
 
 "A child?" echoed Lady Mallard. "Do you mean 
 a child?" 
 
 "A little boy or a little girl," said Ann. "A little 
 boy for choice."
 
 164 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 Lady Mallard, whose growing daughter, though 
 still in the schoolroom, was beginning to date her, 
 said: "My dear, you'd be bored to death. Nurses, 
 nursery-maids! Think! And children have illnesses. 
 Whooping-coughs, measles, chicken-poxes. Any- 
 thing that's infectious and troublesome. Mabel has 
 had measles twice, though I always used to think 
 that was impossible." 
 
 "And yet I don't know," said Ann. "People do 
 adopt children. And I've always thought it must 
 be rather interesting to watch a child develop." 
 
 "One's own child, perhaps," said Lady Mallard 
 doubtfully. 
 
 "That, of course, would be more interesting," said 
 Mrs. Forrester. 
 
 That was all just then. Nobody knew whether or 
 not she was serious, though she seemed serious. The 
 allusion to dogs obscured her purpose. A pet dog or 
 a pet child. Something to keep. How could you 
 tell? Start a rumour, however, and it will grow its 
 own wings. When some one said to Claudia at a 
 party, "I hear Mrs. Forrester talks of adopting 
 a child," Ann knew that this rumour had not only 
 grown wings, but learnt to use them. 
 
 "What did you say?" she asked Claudia when 
 Claudia told her. 
 
 "Oh, that you talked of so many things," said 
 Claudia, smiling. 
 
 "We could go down to Redmayne next week," said 
 Ann. The way, she meant, was paved.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 165 
 
 They did not go, however, till a fortnight later, 
 partly because Claudia (in half mourning) was en- 
 joying London so much, and had earned any grati- 
 fication that Ann could give her, partly to allow the 
 rumour ample time to reach Redmayne itself. 
 
 The rumour duly reached Redmayne a week 
 before Redmayne's mistress. Mrs. Piper heard it 
 from Whipple, who heard it from Fenton, who heard 
 it in the private bar of the Lion and Goldfish at 
 Fotheringham, where he drank a glass of beer, and 
 perhaps two glasses, with Moseley, one of the game- 
 keepers at the Court. Moseley walked out with 
 Lady Fotheringham's maid. 
 
 "Your lady, they tell me, 's looking out for some 
 one to adopt," was what Moseley said. " I says, 'That 
 old tale ! ' " Fenton said to Whipple in recounting the 
 incident; "for I wasn't going to hear Redmayne 
 news from Fotheringham nor nowhere else. Not 
 likely ! But when I 'd said that, I let him talk. Some 
 conversation or the other his Miss Simson had heard 
 or heard talk of. Mrs. Forrester asking Lady F. if 
 she knew of one suitable, from what I made out. 
 If she did, his lordship, I thought to meself, would 
 n't have been very hard put to it to find her some 
 one gentle birth and all, or semi anyway, eh? 
 nor, if what they say 's true, his lordship's lady 
 neither! Nothing in it, I s'pose?" 
 
 "Nothing," said Whipple. 
 
 "So I thought," said Fenton, "or else Moseley 
 he was very circumstahntial."
 
 166 t THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "Nothing in it?" Whipple said to Mrs. Piper. 
 
 "Nothing," said Mrs. Piper. "Bringing their 
 gossip here, indeed! As if we should n't have 
 heard." 
 
 "I don't know how, though," Whipple said 
 "who was to tell us, I mean." 
 
 For Branton was gone. There was no Branton to 
 write such Simson gossip to Redmayne. Branton 
 had not been taken abroad for what, on the other 
 side of the green baize door, was considered the 
 rather inadequate reason that she spoke no foreign 
 languages. 
 
 "How should we have heard unless Mrs. For- 
 rester herself had written to tell us!" 
 
 "If it's true," said Mrs. Piper, "she will tell us. 
 She'll tell me at once, as you tell deaths to the bees. 
 But that Simson of Lady Fotheringham's has made 
 it up out of her own head, you'll see. And that 
 Moseley 's just as bad. Simson, indeed ! Lady 
 Fotheringham never did get a good class of lady's- 
 maid, nor never will. You can judge a maid by a 
 lady as you can judge a lady by her maid." 
 
 "You never liked Miss Simson," was what 
 Whipple said inwardly. Aloud he said that Mrs. 
 Piper was right. If there was any truth in the story 
 Mrs. Forrester would tell her at once. 
 
 The house was ready now for her arrival. On a 
 day towards the end of July she arrived. That very 
 evening it was known that the report was at least 
 not without foundation.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 167 
 
 "Some of my friends advise a little girl and some 
 a little boy. Which do you think, Mrs. Piper?" 
 
 Mrs. Piper said: "Oh, a boy, 'm, for choice and 
 for preference. To be sure, little girls are very nice. 
 But a boy's a boy when all's said and done." 
 
 That was true, Ann said. Still, a boy somehow 
 was more of a responsibility. But either was a re- 
 sponsibility for that matter, and the degrees of re- 
 sponsibility did not, perhaps, come into the ques- 
 tion. Mrs. Piper's feeling was for a boy, then? 
 
 "Oh, yes, 'm, a boy. There's no comparison, to 
 my mind, though female myself." 
 
 "Well, it is all in the air," said Mrs. Forrester. 
 " I may think no more of the idea, or I may consider 
 it in earnest." 
 
 But that she was thinking more of the idea (' ' Such 
 nonsense all the same!" Piper permitted herself to 
 call it, in the extreme privacy of the room where 
 the portrait on porcelain stood on the mantelpiece 
 facing the piano) was borne out by the scraps of 
 conversation that were duly retailed behind the 
 green baize door. 
 
 "Mrs. Nanson she recommends a little girl," 
 Whipple reported one day "says they don't have 
 to go to school like little boys do. Says they're 
 more of companions. Seemed to make Mrs. Forres- 
 ter laugh somehow, that did." 
 
 "She has a comical way, Mrs. Nanson," Mrs. 
 Piper said. 
 
 "Yes. Maybe. She spoke quite serious. A little
 
 168 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 girl with blue eyes, she said, and golden hair. Or, if 
 it must be a boy, a little boy about five years old. 
 Nothing very comic in that, I should have said. 
 But you never can tell, I don't know whether you've 
 noticed, you never can tell what will make them 
 laugh, can you?" 
 
 By 'them' he meant not his excellent mistress 
 particularly dining-rooms generally: the incom- 
 prehensible people who sat at a table as against the 
 normal, balanced, sensible persons whose duty it 
 was, dish or decanter in hand, to walk round one. 
 Yes, .Mrs. Piper had noticed that. They did often 
 laugh, in her experience also, where no joke was. 
 t Not, she said, that Mrs. Forrester was ever given 
 to much laughter. 
 
 Whipple's mistress, indeed, was graver than she 
 used to be, as, if he had been really observant, 
 Whipple might have observed; but she had cer- 
 tainly laughed that day. 
 
 Another day- Whipple's announcement was that 
 Mrs. Forrester was going to 1 advertise for what she 
 wanted. 
 
 Mrs. Piper, not really disapproving on the whole, 
 was a little dismayed at the thought of an adver- 
 tisement. An advertisement seemed to threaten 
 something from goodness knew where. If Mrs. 
 Forrester really wished to adopt some one, would' 
 not the right course to pursue have been to make 
 known her desire to her friends, make enquiries
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 169 
 
 amongst them, if one or another of them might 
 not, perhaps, know of some suitable and avail- 
 able child? But an advertisement! Mrs. Piper did 
 not even approve of advertisements as a medium 
 through which to procure servants. Indoor serv- 
 ants, anyway. Outdoor servants, of course, were 
 different. You might advertise for a groom or a 
 gardener. But even then . . . 
 
 "Dear, dear," she exclaimed, "what is it she 
 really wants?" 
 
 Mr. Pargiter, Whipple said, had been written to. 
 
 That relieved Mrs. Piper a little. 
 
 Mr. Pargiter arrived the next day. 
 
 "I suppose you'll think I'm mad," Ann said to 
 him at the end of a quarter of an hour's talk. 
 
 "Well, it's an experiment," said Mr. Pargiter, 
 "an experiment certainly." 
 
 That, said Mrs. Forrester, was exactly the light 
 in which she desired the matter to be regarded. 
 
 "I don't propose to bind myself till I can see for 
 myself how the experiment is likely to turn out. If 
 I find a child that I like that I can care for I 
 propose to provide for him, or for her, as the case 
 may be. But I don't mean to bind myself at the 
 outset. What I want is to find a child. Of course, 
 I could go to a workhouse or an orphanage, but I 
 have a bias in favour of a well-born child. I have 
 often seen the sort of advertisement that I want 
 you to draft for me."
 
 170 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 Mr. Pargiter drew a sheet of paper towards him. 
 She had received him in the library. 
 
 " The ' Times,' I think," he said " or the ' Morn- 
 ing Post'?" 
 
 "Either. We can see. Perhaps both." 
 
 "The 'Times,' shall we say, to start with?" 
 
 "Yes, the 'Times.'" 
 
 Mr. Pargiter unscrewed his gold pencil; and 
 paused. 
 
 "You have considered the er the possible 
 embarrassment a child might be to you'Jn the the 
 event of your wishing to to " 
 
 Mrs. Forrester helped him. 
 
 "To marry again? Yes, I have considered that, 
 and decided that we need not consider it." 
 
 "Exactly. Exactly. You will, however, I know, 
 pardon me, if, before we proceed to business, I re- 
 mind you as an old man, Mrs. Forrester, that you 
 are a young woman, and that well, ladies have 
 been known to change their minds." 
 
 Mrs. Forrester smiled. 
 
 " In every undertaking one must risk something," 
 she said. "I think we will risk that in this one. I 
 have n't, I may say, any thought of marrying again, 
 or any belief that I am likely to change my mind. 
 You must look upon this, Mr. Pargiter, as the whim 
 of a woman who for that reason sees the prospect of. 
 finding herself one day rather lonely if, indeed, 
 she does not do so already." 
 
 Mr. Pargiter bowed.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 171 
 
 "I am here to take your directions," he said. 
 
 "Well, then, the usual thing. 'A lady wishes to 
 adopt,' and so on. Oh, you know the sort of thing. 
 Healthy. Total surrender isn't it called? Ref- 
 erences. Oh, yes, I suppose a boy. The age? Oh, 
 well, anything up to three. I lean myself towards 
 quite a young child a baby, in fact. But we can 
 
 "And the answers?" he said. "The answers, I 
 suppose, to Rochester Street." 
 
 "No; I propose to put my name to the adver- 
 tisement and to have the answers sent here." 
 
 Mr. Pargiter demurred to that. He demurred 
 very seriously to that. The letters might run into 
 scores, fifties, hundreds even. Mrs. Forrester did not 
 realize what she might be in for. Each inconven- 
 ient boy child in the four kingdoms might be offered 
 to her. Every poor clerk with a growing family, 
 or struggling parson with half a dozen clamorous 
 mouths to feed, must be reckoned with as a pos- 
 sible applicant. The governors of institutions even 
 might write. 
 
 "You don't know, Mrs. Forrester. Believe me, 
 you don't know. Why, you might even see a pro- 
 cession of mothers with their infants trailing across 
 the park." 
 
 That danger could surely be met by the way the 
 advertisement was worded. ' By letter only,' 
 some such clause. The other, she supposed, must be 
 risked like the chance of her changing her mind.
 
 172 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "You really mean that?" Mr. Pargiter said. 
 
 Ann did, it appeared, really mean it. She con- 
 tinued to argue. It was possible, she said, that 
 she might be overwhelmed with applications. She 
 thought it improbable, but it was possible. They 
 would stick to the 'Times,' therefore, a three- 
 penny paper, remember, and so less generally read 
 by what was called the million. The advertisement 
 could be as long as Mr. Pargiter liked, and could 
 thus be made to protect her as far as might be. 
 
 "No; my own name and my own address. I shall 
 like opening the letters. I shall do nothing rash, I 
 promise you. If the correspondence is more than I 
 can cope with agreeably, I shall hand it over to you." 
 
 But Mr. Pargiter demurred and continued to 
 demur so seriously to this part of his client's pro- 
 posal that in the end she agreed to a compromise. 
 It was settled that Ann's full name should not ap- 
 pear, but that replies should be addressed to Mrs. F., 
 care of Pargiter and Fosberry, of Windlestone. 
 
 "We will forward them to you. You shall have 
 the opening of them, Mrs. Forrester." 
 
 "I should like that," said Ann, though the arrange- 
 ment was not quite what she had intended. 
 
 So it came, since Mrs. F. was a sufficiently trans- 
 parent cover, that Ann's world, at least, the 
 world, however, of a tolerably large visiting list, 
 learnt that Mrs. Forrester of Redmayne did, in- 
 deed, wish to adopt a child.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 173 
 
 Ann conceding something for expediency, it 
 was true had carried the advertisement through. 
 Only Claudia, frightened, herself, sometimes, in spite 
 of the ridiculous things which she would say and 
 which Ann on occasion had to rebuke afterwards 
 with a "For goodness' sake, Claudia, don't overdo 
 it," only Claudia, I say, knew what the subterfuges 
 to which Ann had seen herself driven cost her.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 CLAUDIA was amazed sometimes nay, was 
 amazed all the time. Often enough she was sur- 
 prised at herself, but then never wholly surprised, 
 for intriguing, though she had never intrigued other 
 than quite harmlessly, came very naturally to her. 
 She was a minx, in other words, but a good-hearted 
 minx and a very kind one. But Ann! No one so 
 unminxlike fundamentally as Ann. And Ann was 
 carrying things through by such preparations and 
 foreseeings and diplomacies as she, Claudia, would 
 not have been competent to conceive Ann in 
 whose nature intrigue, subterfuge, pretence of any 
 sort, had no part or place ! It was amazing and more 
 than amazing. It was somehow admirable. 
 
 Nothing in the strange year that was over had 
 been more wonderful, perhaps, than the Ann that 
 had emerged from it. A new Ann, yet an Ann not so 
 much born again as, herself , fruitful ; not so much 
 renewed as completed, and, so, equipped. It was 
 her equipment at which Claudia marvelled. 
 
 She had thought of the advertisement. She had 
 carried it through. She would carry the whole thing 
 through. Claudia could claim no more than to have 
 thought of elaborations as, for instance, wheri 
 she had given voice before Whipple and the footmen 
 to the "A little girl with blue eyes and golden hair,
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 175 
 
 or, if it must be a boy, a little boy about five years 
 old," which, making Ann laugh in spite of herself, 
 had called forth the admonition, for goodness' sake, 
 however, not to 'overdo it.' Claudia's elaborations 
 were very valuable, but it was Ann always who 
 thought in the first instance of what Claudia per- 
 ceived would bear to be elaborated. Ann, it was, who 
 had thought of the short visit to Paris, where she 
 had got on to the track of the ultimate little un- 
 likely French town. 
 
 In after years, for both of them, the year that was 
 over, may have seemed and did seem sometimes, 
 like a bad dream; yet, for the achievements which 
 it saw, the mastery of difficulty after difficulty, a 
 dream not wholly bad. For Ann, amid its despera- 
 tions, it held hours of sheer beauty. These compen- 
 sated for much that was even atrocious. But for 
 these Ann thought that she must have given in. Yet, 
 so strong was the spirit of fight raised in her by the 
 very difficulties which beset her, that it is possi- 
 ble that misery might have accomplished by itself 
 what misery, shot with these gleams of unsustained 
 but sustaining happiness, did accomplish. Ann, who 
 had never in her life had to fight for anything, 
 faced suddenly and unexpectedly with the necessity 
 for fighting, if not for her life itself, for a place, at 
 least, in the life of her own community, had devel- 
 oped qualities which had not failed and would not 
 fail her. There were times when Claudia had not
 
 I 7 6 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 been needed, when she could stand aside, as it were, 
 and leave the battle, in the preparation for which she 
 had assisted so loyally, to Ann's unaided competence. 
 
 "I'll manage this," Ann would say. 
 
 Looking back, it seemed to Claudia sometimes 
 that Ann had managed everything. 
 
 The fight was, of course, with circumstances 
 not people; not people yet. The fight was that the 
 fight should not be with people, that it should never 
 be with people. That was the point of it and its su- 
 preme difficulty. It was a fight that must not for a 
 moment be seen to be a fight at all. Never must that 
 enemy people as against circumstances know, 
 or suspect itself, to be an enemy. The unconscious 
 hostility of circumstances was formidable enough. 
 The conscious hostility of people would be ... 
 ah, that was a thought unthinkable! From such a 
 thought from the thinking-out of such a thought 
 even the resolute Ann recoiled. The world was 
 younger then, more stupid, perhaps; the penalties 
 incomparably greater. 
 
 And Ann was so wise. Claudia had been inclined 
 to advise America a continent as against ' the Con- 
 tinent,' a hemisphere as against a country. There 
 was much to be said for Claudia's suggestion, for 
 in those days people did not go backwards and for- 
 wards between Great Britain and the United States. 
 Americans more enterprising than the stay-at-* 
 home English, came to England. England went to 
 America, of course, but had not got into the habit
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 177 
 
 of going to America. Claudia was disposed to be 
 urgent. France, the first thought, had then, to- 
 gether with Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, been 
 discussed and discarded. Paris. You ran up against 
 people at every turn ; London itself would be easier 
 to hide in. London, indeed, was discussed. London, 
 after all, was comprised in an area bounded by a 
 line drawn at a three-mile radius from Charing 
 Cross. Outside that within that also on one side, 
 at least, of the river were whole districts unex- 
 plored, great tracts of crowded streets wherein the 
 foot of any one to whom you were known, or known 
 by sight or by name, was probably never set. But 
 London was too near home and was barred out. 
 Rome? Not to be taken into consideration at all. 
 Every one you knew went there at some time or 
 other. Capitals since at any moment at any one 
 that you could think of somebody was liable to turn 
 up capitals generally were ruled out. Then why 
 not America? There seemed nowhere else left. But 
 Ann was sure that it must not be America. Could 
 not say why exactly, only was sure; and said there 
 must be places less far afield places where you 
 could lie low, where you would be nobody's business 
 but your own. There must be such places, even 
 though every place which suggested itself had for 
 one reason or another been rejected. Time, mean- 
 while, did not stand still. Place after place, place 
 after place, was mooted, determined on even, but 
 always eventually rejected. It was then that Ann
 
 178 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 suddenly moved. Something from the beginning 
 had been left undone. That was one of the moments 
 when of her amazing confidence she said, " I'll man- 
 age this." She meant, in this instance, that one other 
 person must be admitted into the secret, and would 
 arrange it for her. 
 
 Her first thought, France, had been right. Paris 
 itself had been right, but not to stay in, not to hide 
 in. Paris for that one other person he should have 
 been thought of long since! who must be told as 
 much or as little as need be; but just must be told. 
 The consulting-room, when all was said, was sacred 
 as the confessional: one person, of course, must be 
 told. In that discovery she had found wisdom. 
 Claudia admitted freely that she was convinced. 
 
 And having found wisdom she had found not wis- 
 dom only. She found an understanding and a hu- 
 mane as well as a merely trustworthy man. She 
 had found chanced upon, maybe a fellow crea- 
 ture. She had had an idea that these things did hap- 
 pen, were known to happen, and that there must be 
 recognized ways of dealing with them. Her instinct 
 had led her aright. The doctor asked no questions 
 none, that is, but such as might help him to advise 
 her. It was assumed that there were reasons for 
 what was said and what was not said. Ann had no 
 duplicities to practise here; ga s' an anger a the key- 
 note of the interview. All, indeed, in a sense might 
 be said to have arranged itself then and there. Ann 
 came away with the name of the little city of refuge
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 179 
 
 whither in the fulness of time she might repair, and 
 not the name of the place only, but with a letter from 
 the doctor to commend a patient Mrs. . . . ? 
 Mrs. Vincent to a colleague there, who might be 
 relied upon to make all arrangements for her re- 
 ception and her comfort during her stay. 
 
 Ann had but grasped her nettle with the usual 
 resulting advantages. But the courage to grasp it 
 had been there, and Claudia might indeed wonder 
 and admire. 
 
 Backwards and forwards over the year the minds 
 of both Claudia and Ann must have ranged after- 
 wards for many a long day. It may be said at 
 once for Claudia that though she had had a shock 
 she had not been 'shocked.' The knowledge that 
 her own grievous misapprehension had precipitated 
 the catastrophe may have helped her to understand 
 it. She did understand it, and she knew thus that 
 Ann, in spite of everything, was somehow not only 
 unsullied, but in essentials was unchanged, by what 
 had befallen her. As her mind ranged over the year 
 it was always in the light of 'befalling,' of 'hap- 
 pening to,' of 'overtaking,' that she regarded the 
 catastrophe in relation to Ann. Ann herself did not 
 regard it so indulgently. She had been weak past all 
 denying. There were days when she was humbled to 
 the dust. But from such days she uprose strength- 
 ened, steadfast, and always and always with the 
 knowledge that if she had lost something irretriev-
 
 i8o THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 ably, she had gained something else, something per- 
 haps greater than that which she had lost. She had 
 such an understanding now of life with its contra- 
 dictions and its myriad complexities, such a new 
 breadth of sympathy and of pity, as she could have 
 attained to, it may be, in no other way. Impossible 
 that she should view her lapse in its results as wholly 
 evil. Its penalties were none the lighter for a convic- 
 tion that showed itself by degrees to be an acknowl- 
 edgment or an acceptance, but they were certainly 
 thereby made the easier to face and to take up and 
 to bear. 
 
 Goodness! When Ann looked back . . . Good- 
 ness! When even Claudia! 
 
 Timothy's letter, which was to have put every- 
 thing right, had arrived, as Claudia had predicted, 
 the morning after the vigil. Not Claudia herself, if 
 she had seen it then, could have pretended to misun- 
 derstand it. Ann did not misunderstand it. It was 
 not so much the knell of her hopes as the ratification 
 of their absence. She had had no hope. From the 
 moment when she had heard that it was Bulkley 
 and not Coram who was waiting for her in the li- 
 brary, she had had no hope. Earlier even than that. 
 Was there not a point in the unfinished game of 
 croquet that marked the exact moment, perhaps, 
 when hope had failed her? The lover rides away. 
 He loves. Oh, yes, he loves does truly love, as 
 he knows love. The tears that she had seen in his 
 eyes that to her dying day she would remember
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 181 
 
 that she had seen in his eyes spoke to that. They 
 were in his letter, too, these tears, blinding her 
 own eyes with tears as she read. He loves, but he 
 rides away. The chalice the pity and the shame 
 of it were here the chalice not a chalice, but a 
 stirrup cup! And, at that even, a stirrup cup, not 
 so much in the way that it had been accepted (for it 
 had been accepted humbly) as in the way that it was 
 conceived to have been offered. The smart and the 
 sting were there. 
 
 Claudia did not see the letter when it came 
 would never, perhaps, have seen it but for what, 
 unthought of and unthinkable even as it was then, 
 was yet to come. She saw it some weeks later. At 
 the time she saw only its effect on Ann. 
 
 And its effect on Ann was puzzling. Ann was like 
 one who has received some secret wound. She said 
 to Claudia: "It's finished, Claudia. We won't talk 
 of it. I have had the letter you promised me. But I 
 wasn't wrong: he is sailing to-day." Little other 
 things she said. " I 'm not blaming him, understand 
 this. I'm just seeing that the whole thing was a 
 mistake that I was mistaken, I mean." "He 
 doesn't know that I was mistaken. He doesn't 
 know that there was any mistake." To these she 
 added: " So, least of all, did he know that his letter 
 would show me that there had been a mistake. If 
 his letter had been written to tell me that, I don't 
 know what I should have done. But it was n't." 
 
 "But you'll answer it, Ann."
 
 182 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "Yes, I shall answer it, but to make it plain to 
 him that there must n't be any more." 
 
 "Ann, are you sure that that it is finished?" 
 
 "I know that it is." 
 
 "But you'll keep him as a friend." 
 
 Ann shook her head. 
 
 "No; I can't keep him as a friend." 
 
 There was something behind all this. It was evi- 
 dent that to Ann the letter was final. Yet, though it 
 was plain that it had dealt her a blow the mark of 
 which, hidden though it might be, she would, perhaps, 
 carry through life, it seemed equally plain that the 
 blow had been dealt unconsciously. And something 
 else was plain to Claudia as the days passed. The 
 letter which had hurt Ann so grievously had not 
 in itself been such as to disillusion her utterly. It 
 seemed, on the contrary, to have given Ann, with 
 the pain which it had inflicted, some sort of balm 
 or some sort of solace. Ann carried it for a time, 
 Claudia was sure, over her heart. 
 
 Presently in the sequence of events Ann seemed 
 better, became, as we say, more like herself. With 
 a widening sea, and then a widening space gener- 
 ally, between her and the writer of the letter, she 
 gained ease. A page was turned or a door closed. She 
 volunteered nothing, and Claudia on her part asked 
 nothing. So the early days went by ; became weel^. 
 
 Presently Claudia, who by then had paid a long 
 visit to Ann and had judged her sufficiently re-
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 183 
 
 covered now to be left alone, broached the subject 
 of her departure. She had relations to whom visits 
 must be paid. She was able, as we have learnt, to 
 pay these later. Not then, nor for a considerable 
 time! To her surprise, Ann, whom she had thought 
 better, showed herself not to be better at all. She 
 met Claudia's proposal with a reluctance to listen 
 to it that had an appearance almost of dismay. 
 Claudia, seeing that something was amiss, and con- 
 scious in a sort of retrospective way that she might 
 even have observed that something was amiss, with- 
 drew her proposal at once with a warm, "Of course, 
 I won't go yet, dear, if you want me. I'll stay 
 with you as long as ever you like. I only thought, 
 as I 'd been here so long . . ." 
 
 "I hadn't dreamt of your going. It's horribly 
 dull for you, I know, but I hoped you'd stay ..." 
 
 Ann was in an extraordinary mood. There was 
 reproach in her words and her tone. 
 
 "Ann, I love being here. I love being with you. 
 You know I do." 
 
 "But you spoke of going?" 
 
 "I'm not going. I said I would stay as long as 
 you wanted me." 
 
 "I do want you." 
 
 And then, without in the least understanding 
 why, she had a momentary but acute sense of fear. 
 And not her own fear exactly. Fear of a fear that she 
 guessed at dimly? Or fear, perhaps, that she did 
 guess at some fear? Fear very near to her. Fear in
 
 184 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 Ann? Deadly fear in Ann? The moment was horrible. 
 It passed. We know such moments in nightmare. 
 
 When it had passed it had the quality of a mo- 
 ment in nightmare in which a lifetime is compressed 
 into the space between one tick of the clock and the 
 next she did not think of it, could not, indeed, 
 clearly recall it, but did not forget it. 
 
 "Was I cross?" Ann was saying; and Ann was 
 smiling. 
 
 "Cross?" 
 
 "Impatient, then? I didn't mean to be. I do 
 want you, Claudia. Forgive me. I know you '11 for- 
 give me. I behave abominably sometimes, I think, 
 like a spoilt child. No one else would put up with 
 me. I 've been through something. It is that. It 's 
 all that I don't want to talk about. You made al- 
 lowances for me once before." 
 
 "Ann, dear, as if I had to! As if there were any 
 occasion!" 
 
 "But there is," Ann said. "Oh, there is." 
 
 Claudia kissed her. 
 
 "I love being here," she said again. 
 
 "You don't know what it has been to me," Ann 
 said. 
 
 Another week passed. The 'moment' did not 
 return did not repeat itself rather. But some- 
 how there was a menace. Ann was silent, brooding. 
 
 And then it became quite, quite plain that some- 
 thing was amiss. And then came the dreadful 
 when Ann told her.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 KISSINGEN, whither they went first and went soon, 
 was, as will have been guessed, an excuse for the 
 unavoidable parting with Branton. There was 
 otherwise no need for any immediate action. It did 
 not matter where Ann went, would not matter in 
 all probability for half a year, or perhaps longer. 
 One place would do as well as another, but until the 
 days for which thought would have to be taken, a 
 place in the world, as against a place out of it, 
 seemed, perhaps, advisable the main stream as 
 opposed to a backwater. Kissingen, then, before the 
 wanderings. Here the two ladies met several friends 
 and acquaintances, and Ann one of her few relations, 
 her cousin, Lady Trent, who did not think her look- 
 ing well and said so. But Lady Trent was the sort of 
 person who always said that sort of thing, and Ann 
 had no real fear that it would generally be said that 
 she was looking ill. Fear, indeed, for the time being 
 was in abeyance. Something seemed to have hap- 
 pened in the passing of uncertainty into certainty, 
 or perhaps even in the unburdening of her heart to 
 Claudia. 
 
 Claudia came to understand more and more. 
 What she did not yet understand was the part the 
 statue had played in what had happened. Perhaps 
 Ann, even, though the statue was prominent in her
 
 186 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 story, did not quite understand it either. What Ann 
 knew, however, but could not convey to Claudia, 
 was that but for the waiting boy in the wood . . . 
 Well, what? What, after all? She would not have 
 fallen in love with Timothy Coram? She could not 
 say that, for she could not think it, knowing now 
 that she had always been in love with him. Would 
 not have found out that she was (and had always 
 been) in love with him? Not quite that either. She 
 would have found that out when she heard that he 
 wanted to go. What, then? She thought that she 
 meant that, but for the statue, her love for him 
 would have been on a different plane. His form 
 would have meant less to her the unnerving 
 beauty of his lines. The influence of the statue, of 
 the three smiling satyrs, of what she thought of 
 still as the magic circle, was evil, then? She could 
 not admit that ; did not even think of it. What 
 she knew was that the story of her love would have 
 been different, and that she would not (mystery 
 was here) have been in her present desperate case. 
 
 Claudia had not seen the statue. Ann, for some 
 reason which Claudia could not fathom, and which 
 Ann shrank from trying to fathom herself, did not, 
 at that time, anyway, wish Claudia to see it. So 
 things stood. 
 
 Yet Claudia understood how what had happened 
 had happened. She felt sometimes as if she had 
 known all along what had happened, had known* 
 under her complete ignorance, known when she woke
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 187 
 
 to find a radiant Ann by her bedside in the dawn, 
 and to enfold her in her arms and be enfolded by 
 Ann in hers . . . Earlier still? Known what would 
 happen when she had sent the trembling Ann to 
 meet her lover in the starlit garden? Sometimes 
 even that. Actually, of course, she had not known, 
 had not, as we say, had the remotest idea, the ghost 
 of an inkling. And yet in the fulness of her compre- 
 hension it seemed to her sometimes as if she must 
 have known, and once, in the reflected glow of one 
 of those supremely happy hours, which, it has been 
 said, did come to Ann amid the welter of the horrors 
 which beset her, she thought that if she had verily 
 known she was not sure that she would have acted 
 differently. 
 
 She understood Ann then, but I fear me that 
 of her minxishness, this ! she did not entirely fail 
 to understand Coram also. Her eyes were wider 
 open than Ann's . She knew something of men, and 
 knew that, in certain matters, the world asked less 
 of them, and that what the world asked the world 
 generally got. Men as lovers were divided roughly 
 into lovers and light lovers. Difficult often to tell 
 one from the other. Each class comprised number- 
 less grades. Roughly, however, the division held. 
 Coram was neither and was both. He served not 
 God and Mammon which we are told is impossible, 
 but God in a sense at least and somehow a very 
 true sense ! and the god of love. She was con- 
 vinced of the good in him ; she divined also the warp-
 
 188 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 ing, spoiling streak. She guessed, though Ann had 
 not guessed, and perhaps did not even now, at those 
 other persons in his life those persons whom we 
 have come to think of comprehensively as the Mal- 
 lards and the Fotheringhams and the Mallingers. 
 She had nothing to go upon except what she knew, 
 or thought she knew, of men, and the light cast on 
 him by his own action. It may be that a word 
 or two of Miss Blondin's took colour from both and 
 gave colour in turn to her conjecture. "There will 
 be sore hearts," Miss Blondin had said. And, "Such 
 a favourite, so to speak, with the ladies." And, " But 
 there, perhaps I must not say too much!" Miss 
 Blondin, under her air of having stepped (with only 
 slight modifications in the process) out of the pages 
 of "Cranford," had, Claudia was sure of it, the 
 devil's own knowledge of the world . . . 
 
 But though Timothy Coram had failed Ann and 
 in a sense even betrayed her, and though he had so 
 lamentably caused Claudia to make her fatal mis- 
 take, Claudia did not altogether lose faith hi him. 
 His letter shattered Ann's hopes, hurt her grievously 
 by its unconsciousness, but, as Claudia had sus- 
 pected, gave her a sort of negative happiness even 
 in the dealing of its blow. Claudia, when Ann 
 showed it to her, it was necessary to the telling 
 of her tale, saw in a moment why. It was a letter 
 which postulated light love, yet which no real light 
 lover could have written. It was the letter of an 
 extraordinarily ' nice ' man, whatever this nice man
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 189 
 
 had done. But for its takings- for-gran ted, it was 
 such a letter as would have made any woman happy. 
 If it was anything it was a plea for forgiveness. The 
 writer was at his lady's feet and on his knees at her 
 feet. She saw, as Ann saw, that, since he was none 
 the less going, the letter was, as Ann supposed it, 
 'final'; but she saw, as Ann, she gathered, did not 
 see, that he thought he was meant to go. This she 
 did not point out, for it implied, at least as Ann 
 would view it, a yet deadlier blow to Ann's pride, 
 and Ann's pride was already reeling. It was doubt- 
 ful, at that moment of abasement, whether Ann's 
 pride would ever recover itself, and the whole future, 
 Claudia saw clearly, depended upon Ann's pride. 
 Her courage would have its root in her pride, and 
 she would need all her courage. Impossible, there- 
 fore, to do anything that might have the effect of 
 wounding her more deeply where she was most vul- 
 nerable. Claudia forbore then to draw her atten- 
 tion to what was yet so manifest to herself. But 
 though Claudia did not dare to 'speak,' she dared 
 further. The result of her daring was nil ; its effect 
 to burden her with a secret from Ann. For what 
 Claudia had done in the desperation of those first 
 weeks of knowledge was, upon her own initiative 
 and unknown to and unsuspected by Ann, to write 
 to Timothy Coram, herself. 
 
 The recollection of watching the posts loomed 
 very large in Claudia's memories of the early months 
 of the year loomed larger, perhaps, than the rec-
 
 190 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 ollection of things actually more memorable. She 
 would whiten or her heart would thump at the sight 
 of letters lying on a table. Or her heart would 
 thump or seem to stop beating if any one handed 
 her her letters, or if she saw Ann with unopened 
 letters in her hand . . . She learnt the hours of the 
 posts and tried to forestall them to be there to 
 be 'down' or to be 'in* when they were expected. 
 She wondered that Ann did not see her anxiety, but 
 Ann with supreme anxieties of her own did not ob- 
 serve. What caused her still more grievous appre- 
 hension was the thought that a cable might come 
 for her, and that she might be out, and that Ann 
 might open it, or, if she were not out, that Ann 
 might be present when it was delivered to her. In 
 fairly propitious circumstances a plausible explana- 
 tion to fit the second of these eventualities might 
 be counted upon not to fail her; but in the case of 
 the first of them confession would be unavoidable, 
 and then Heaven itself help her! 
 
 But as time went on and no answer came, her 
 apprehensions on these scores died down. She had 
 written her letter to the address given in Coram's 
 letter to Ann, then many weeks old, and she could 
 only suppose that, moving on long since on his 
 travels, he had not received it. No letter came, no 
 telegram, no sign. She continued to watch the posts 
 to the very last to the time, that is, when Ann at. 
 length had to seek the little city of refuge where 
 arrangements had been made for her welfare by the
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 191 
 
 Paris doctor. By then, however, and even for some 
 time before that, the risk of Ann's seeing a letter if 
 it should come had vanished, for, in view of the ap- 
 proach of the day when the concealment of identi- 
 ties would become necessary, all letters, by arrange- 
 ment with Ann's bankers in Paris, were forwarded 
 under cover to Claudia herself, who took little jour- 
 neys to neighbouring but changing posies restantes 
 to receive them. With her anxiety, died her hope. 
 Too late then, any letter that might come; too late 
 Timothy Coram himself, if her letter should have 
 brought him. Too late, everything. 
 
 For a time she worried herself about the fate of 
 the letter itself. The Dead Letter Office had not 
 brought it back to her. It was presumably still in 
 existence. She pictured it lying in the letter rack 
 of some Western hotel, where, following in Coram's 
 wake, it had come to anchor. It was black with re- 
 directions. Some one had not been at the trouble of 
 redirecting it, or, lacking an address to which to for- 
 ward it, was waiting instructions, or merely would 
 not be bothered. Such a one she hoped might even 
 have destroyed it. She had no anxieties connected 
 in any way with the chances, the probabilities of its 
 being read. The few lines it contained would have 
 no inner meaning for eyes other than those for 
 which they had been intended. As time went on, 
 she inclined more and more to the idea that prob- 
 ably it had, indeed, long since been destroyed, and, 
 occupied by so many other distractions, she was
 
 192 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 able presently to banish the whole thing from her 
 mind. 
 
 And, with the passing of time, and the quiet, 
 resolute, successful surmountings by Ann of diffi- 
 culty after difficulty, Coram had become unneces- 
 sary. By the time the advertisement appeared in 
 the 'Times' and every one knew that Ann was look- 
 ing out for a child to adopt, he had become negli- 
 gible. Coram just did not matter. Ann, if she had 
 looked for vengeance, which she did not, must have 
 perceived "that in this she was amply avenged. The 
 woman in the eternal conflict had vanquished the 
 man. She had shown that she could do without him. 
 
 And so to what might have been the greatest 
 difficulty of all. But Ann, handling her preparations 
 for this resolutely also, had robbed it of its power. 
 The advertisement and the judicious dropping (in 
 unpromising quarters) of a " You don't know by 
 chance of a nice healthy child?" or an "I wish if 
 you hear of anything you would let me know," 
 proved all that was necessary in the way of prepa- 
 ration. Ridiculously easy in the end the accomplish- 
 ment of what might have been so difficult. About 
 a dozen and a half answers came, in all, to her ad- 
 vertisement. Ann, opening these as they arrived, 
 handed over the greater number of them at once to 
 Pargiter and Fosberry to reply to with polite de- 
 clinings. Three or four she kept for a day or two to 
 consider, but ultimately forwarded to Windlestone
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 193 
 
 to be dealt with in the same way. With the writers 
 of two one from London and one from near Lon- 
 don she caused appointments to be made. There 
 remained one other. Then, with Claudia, she went 
 up once more to the Bath Hotel, whence presently 
 she wrote letters. One of these was to Mr. Pargiter. 
 The Clapham child would not do at all. She made 
 no further comment on the Clapham child. The 
 Finsbury Park little boy was entirely desirable, but 
 had parents, who, though stress of circumstances 
 had induced them to answer a tempting advertise- 
 ment, were obviously reluctant to part with him. 
 She would not have had the heart to persuade them 
 to give him up, and, when she did not attempt to do 
 so, their relief had been touching. (We may guess, 
 with or without Mr. Pargiter, that she found a way 
 of helping them to keep this little family circle 
 unbroken.) So far, then, her journey to London had 
 been fruitless. She would wait to see one other child 
 about whom she had written. 
 
 And it was this child, the child about whom she 
 had written herself, that she and Claudia brought 
 back with them, together with an elderly nurse 
 (Claudia's find) and a young nursery-maid (the 
 elderly nurse's), a fortnight later to Redmayne. 
 There had been, Mr. Pargiter learned, no arrange- 
 ment to make. Ann had seen the child and had 
 fallen in love with it. A foster mother, who had dis- 
 closed enough of its history to her to satisfy her that 
 it was at least probably of the gentle birth to which
 
 194 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 the advertisement had stipulated, had handed it 
 over to her, and that was all about it. 
 
 It was then that Mr. Pargiter, who had been 
 frowning for some days and had frowned still more 
 over the letter that gave him the details of what 
 he saw he was to regard now in the light of a fait 
 accompli, smiled and (there being none to see) 
 smiled again and again smiled. Mrs. Forrester 
 knew more, he fancied, than she chose to disclose. 
 He realized her suddenly for a very clever woman. 
 Some one was being sheltered. He smelt a rat, in 
 other words. But he, like the monumental author of 
 the most famous, probably, of all the mixed meta- 
 phors that have ever been perpetrated, had, as 
 perhaps he knew then already, seen it "hovering in 
 the air." It was happily not his business to " nip 
 it in the bud." It was happily nobody's business. 
 Why had his client wished her name to appear in 
 the advertisement? Why an advertisement at all? 
 Some one was being very ingeniously sheltered. It 
 was quite, quite plain to him. She was not only 
 a very clever woman, but a very, very kind one. 
 
 It would have amused Claudia far more, it is to 
 be feared, than it would have horrified her, if she 
 could have known whom it was that Mr. Pargiter, 
 jumping to his conclusion, as she had once jumped 
 to a conclusion of her own, supposed to be in the 
 position of being sheltered ! 
 
 So much for downcast eyes, and the willow worn 
 with an air.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 BUT if Mr. Pargiter smiled, he smiled only to 
 himself. He would not have smiled to the wife of 
 his bosom in the sanctuary of his own home. He 
 would not have smiled even to Mr. Fosberry, 
 though if Mr. Fosberry senior, his old partner and 
 his own contemporary, had been living, it is just 
 possible that, under the seal of well, the profes- 
 sional shall we say? he might have permitted 
 himself the flicker of a smile for that gentleman's 
 shrewd and understanding eye. He would have seared 
 his lips with fire rather than have let them show the 
 ghost of such a smile to Ann or to the suspected 
 Claudia herself. He just smiled to himself, and no 
 one else smiled at all. No, not another soul smiled. 
 
 Always, of course, in the sense of which we are 
 speaking, for, in every other, the newcomer was 
 received with nothing but smiles rapturous smiles 
 which, engaging little rogue that he was, he won for 
 himself. 
 
 Ann said more than once, "I might have wished 
 to find some one a little older two would have been 
 the ideal age but when I saw him ..." 
 
 His name? Every one, of course, asked what his 
 name was, but Ann was prepared for that. 
 
 "I shall probably give him my own name later 
 on," she said. "He is called Johnny Smith. I don't
 
 196 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 suppose for a moment that that is his name. I had 
 to take him without too many questions or not take 
 him at all. I took him." 
 
 And since it was nobody's business to question, 
 or even to ask questions, Ann was spared what 
 might have proved embarrassing, if not, indeed, 
 harassing, and had no more to cope with than nat- 
 ural curiosity. 
 
 Extraordinary how easily everything went ! Clau- 
 dia looked on with a sort of sustained wonder. 
 Nothing was going to happen. What, after all, could 
 have been expected to happen? Yet that nothing 
 should happen! Presently it became plain that in 
 all probability nothing ever would happen. Johnny 
 Smith, in other words, was accepted. 
 
 And so life settled back into its old grooves, or, 
 more accurately speaking, slid smoothly on to its 
 new lines. There was no commotion. In a house of 
 the size of Redmayne the apportioning-off of a suite 
 of rooms to Master Johnny and his staff was not a 
 matter that occasioned re-distributions, or even any 
 disturbance of the existing order. Mrs. Piper en- 
 tered with enthusiasm into the carrying-out of what 
 arrangements were necessary, and with her coopera- 
 tion the arrangements made themselves. Friction 
 was not a condition of things that had to be reckoned 
 with in those days. Orders were given and orders 
 were obeyed. But then as now there were at least, 
 currents and undercurrents, which would make their 
 presence felt through any green baize door. And
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 197 
 
 Ann would have known,. we may be 1 sure, if that 
 which showed an unruffled surface had inwardly 
 been troubled. 
 
 All was unbroken calm. Johnny was not ac- 
 cepted only, but welcomed. "A little child shall 
 lead them." It was as if a little child could be 
 counted upon to lead you. It was as if a little child 
 had always been what Redmayne, complete in every 
 other particular, had lacked. It was as if Johnny, 
 in his cradle, or his perambulator, or the arms of his 
 adoring attendants, had been the little child that 
 Redmayne had always lacked. 
 
 Ann allowed herself now to be, if not happy, at 
 least not unhappy. In Johnny himself she was en- 
 tirely happy. The hours that she looked forward to 
 were the hours which she spent in the nursery; the 
 hours for which she planned and plotted were the 
 rare hours in which, by half-hours, perhaps, she 
 could have him to herself. Poulton, who had been 
 Claudia's own nurse, and who had been induced to 
 come out of her retirement in Ann's and the little 
 Johnny's interests, would be told to bring her charge 
 down and to leave him, and fetch him again at such 
 and such a time by the clock. Then Ann could let 
 herself go, and perhaps she did. But she never for- 
 got that it was upon the exact degree of her self-con- 
 trol that her happiness depended. She had no real 
 fear that she would betray herself. She had gone 
 through too severe a discipline for that. It was her 
 intention to be content with as much as she had.
 
 198 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 And she had so much. In those half-hours she knew 
 that she had everything that really mattered. 
 
 Yes, Johnny Smith was accepted. By the face- 
 tious he was called 'Tommy Jones,' of course, or 
 'The Foundling,' or 'Mrs. Forrester's Foundling'; 
 and Redmayne itself was called 'The Foundling 
 Hospital.' These pleasantries were to be expected. 
 They had no significance. They flickered out like 
 ineffectual fires. There was a nine days' wonder and 
 the wonder died down. Ann would send for Johnny 
 to show him to visitors or would not send for him. 
 People asked for him as they asked for any other 
 child in any other house. 
 
 Lady Mallard said: "Well, perhaps I was wrong. 
 Perhaps, in spite of the anxiety they are, there is 
 something about children that makes them worth 
 while. They do certainly wind themselves round 
 one's heart. I think, perhaps, you were wise." 
 
 "I'm quite sure I was wise," Ann said. "I 
 would n't be without him now for anything. I don't 
 think I knew before what I missed what every 
 childless woman misses." 
 
 "You would have liked him for your own?" 
 
 " I mean to make him my own." 
 
 Lady Mallard kissed her. 
 
 Lady Fotheringham said, "No; I quite see now 
 that a dog would n't have done as well." t 
 
 Ann addressed her protest to Johnny. 
 
 "They insist," she said, smiling "they insist
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 199 
 
 on regarding you just as a pet. But you're going 
 to be much more than that to me, are n't you, my 
 darling?" 
 
 "He's a very lucky little boy," Lady Fothering- 
 ham said. 
 
 Everybody said that sooner or later. Every one 
 thought it. Ann could not quite think it, but she was 
 content to hear it said. It made for security was 
 a sort of earnest of her security, and even his. She 
 meant to make up to him for everything to make 
 up to him, as far as lay in her power, for the wrong 
 that had been done him. 
 
 Her first thought was to provide for him. She 
 could do that generously without injury to any one. 
 Redmayne itself with its rent-roll would go at her 
 death to a cousin of her husband, but all else was 
 her own to do as she liked with. Mr. Pargiter was 
 sent for and she made the will which hitherto, de- 
 spite all that he could say, she had put off making. 
 With no one near to her or with any claim upon her, 
 she had really been indifferent as to what became of 
 her possessions. But she knew her own mind now 
 and gave her instructions very clearly. Under this 
 will Claudia also benefited which may, perhaps, 
 have occasioned Mr. Pargiter some wonder; un- 
 der it, Claudia, in the event of the testator's death 
 during Johnny's minority, was appointed Johnny's 
 sole guardian which occasioned the good Mr. Par- 
 giter none. Not many days before all was in order 
 signed, sealed, witnessed.
 
 200 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 Then Mr. Pargiter said, "You'll let me say that 
 he is a very lucky little boy." 
 
 "I think myself rather a fortunate woman, " said 
 Ann. 
 
 Mr. Pargiter thought to himself that he knew 
 another very fortunate woman. But it was none of 
 his business. Everything in the end worked round 
 to that. 
 
 Claudia now left Ann for some visits to her rela- 
 tions. She had made no plans yet for her own future, 
 and Ann urged her to make her home permanently 
 with her. Claudia still clung to the idea, which she 
 had brought home with her from India, of a little 
 house of her own somewhere with a rose du Barry 
 drawing-room and a yellow dining-room ; always a 
 yellow dining-room. But there was no immediate 
 hurry about that. She was coming back, and again 
 she promised to stay with Ann as long as Ann should 
 have need of her. 
 
 "That will be always," Ann said. 
 
 She saw her off at Whitcombe and thought of the 
 day when she had gone there to meet her. A lifetime 
 seemed to have passed since then. She remembered 
 Claudia's ridiculous but also delicious little affecta- 
 tions, and because they meant so little and so much 
 loved her for them. The recollection of them showed 
 her what Claudia had actually done for her. She* 
 had stood by her when there would have been every 
 excuse for standing aside. She had stood by her
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 201 
 
 when a standing-aside, howsoever excusable, how- 
 soever justified even, would have plunged her into 
 despair. She had helped her as no other of her 
 friends, perhaps, would have helped her or could 
 have helped her. Not a reproach nor a protest had 
 come from her, not a hint that too much was asked 
 of her that anything was being asked of her. 
 Claudia", may have wondered at what she thought 
 of as Ann's wonderfulness ; assuredly Ann wondered 
 at the wonderfulness of Claudia. 
 
 The November day was very different from that 
 day of summer when Claudia had gone through her 
 little pantomime and the carriage had cleaved a 
 way for itself through the midst of a flock of sheep. 
 Mists were hanging over the fields. The distant 
 hills were blotted out. The woods, green then, but 
 now, if they could have been seen, a patchwork of 
 beautiful colours, were shrouded. Dampness every- 
 where; the roads and the banks running water, the 
 hedges and the trees adrip. A day for indoors and 
 the fireside. 
 
 Ann thought of the statue. She had not been near 
 it since the day when she had seen Timothy Coram 
 in the circle with the magpie in his arms. But she 
 could not bear to think of it could not bear to 
 think of the stone which she always thought of 
 as warm though for so short a time could it be 
 really warm chilled, as it must be to-day, wet, 
 desolate. She shivered and turned her thoughts 
 to Johnny. But they went back and back to the
 
 202 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 boy waiting in the dreary loneliness of the soaked 
 wood . . . 
 
 Presently she found that her heart was aching. 
 It was as if it had been aching for a long time 
 aching, perhaps, all along and she had just be- 
 come aware of it. Was it that with Johnny secured 
 to her, and her purpose thus achieved, she had, as 
 it were, time to think of herself? While Johnny, 
 unborn or born, had been to fight for, nothing else 
 had had any existence for her. But no, no, no! 
 She would not think of Timothy Coram. She would 
 not. She heard his name, of course, from time to 
 time. People spoke of him asked for him, asked 
 news of him, or asked if she had news of him. She 
 had a formula for such occasions. She had not heard 
 lately, was what she said ; or she had not heard for 
 ages; or her last news of him was from Mr. Bulkley. 
 He was in this part of the world or that. He did not 
 speak yet of coming home to England. It was, per- 
 haps, the dread of hearing of him that had caused her, 
 since her return to Redmayne, to put off and to put 
 off the resumption of any active part in the con- 
 trol of the affairs of the property. She could answer 
 questions without thinking of him. But she could 
 not hear news of him without thinking of him. It 
 was as if, under whatever else had been occupying 
 her mind in the year and a half that had passed 
 since she had seen him, she had never ceased tQ 
 think of him. Had she, as she had believed, suc- 
 ceeded in rooting him out of her life? Or had she
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 203 
 
 only succeeded in rooting herself out of his? She 
 had silenced him effectually with the one letter she 
 had written to him in answer to his own: a letter 
 in which she had made it clear so unmistakably 
 clear that one, indeed, who ran might have read! 
 that that which in a sense had never been begun was 
 ended. She had left him to find explanations which 
 she could not but also could only too well ! 
 have supplied, and she could guess easily enough at 
 the explanations which would naturally occur to him. 
 But now she knew suddenly that deep down in her 
 heart, where the dull aching had never really ceased, 
 she had known all along that for his part also there 
 was an explanation if only she could have guessed it. 
 And as this knowledge came to her, this knowledge 
 of a knowledge that she had had, so to say, unawares, 
 she began to visualize him to make images of 
 him as on that day when she had filled the library 
 with images of him. Not one of the images that came 
 before her now but spoke for the existence of some- 
 thing which would have made comprehensible what 
 as yet was beyond her understanding. She could 
 have forgiven the blow to her pride if she could have 
 understood how the blow came to have been dealt: 
 no, if she could have understood how the blow came 
 to have been unintentional, came not to have been 
 perceived even to be a blow. To understand was to 
 forgive. But to forgive postulated to understand. 
 To forgive without understanding, was that what 
 was being asked of her? Not quite that. To believe
 
 204 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 (as she did believe) that there was something which 
 would make all understandable and so to forgive by 
 faith. 
 
 Who asked this of her? The images crowded upon 
 her. Timothy in the library unable to tell her that 
 he wanted to go. Timothy trying to tell her. She 
 had had to help him. Timothy, though he wanted 
 to go, half hoping that she would refuse to let him 
 go, to hear of his going. His reluctance so unques- 
 tionable. Small wonder if she had been misled! 
 And, persistently, Timothy with the bird in his arms 
 with the bird in his arms by the statue in the 
 circle . . . 
 
 Claudia! She found herself wishing vehemently 
 that she had Claudia back with her. She had an idea 
 now that Claudia partly, at least, understood 
 had understood from the beginning. Claudia had 
 made the great mistake of all the mistake which 
 had precipitated the catastrophe and for that rea- 
 son had felt that any further meddling was barred to 
 her. She had said nothing. But Ann felt that even 
 yet she cherished some sort of belief in Coram, that 
 though she held no brief for him she conceived some 
 sort of a defence for him, or believed some sort of 
 a defence for him to be possible. Ah, if she herself 
 could but think that! If she could but think that 
 there were anything to be said for him anything 
 to show that her trust in him had not been entirely 
 misplaced.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 205 
 
 But she did think it. 
 
 She had just found out that she knew it, that 
 she had always known it. 
 
 The carriage turned in at the lodge gates. Pres- 
 ently she was at home. She wore the look which 
 Charles, describing it once to Mrs. Piper and Whip- 
 pie, had spoken of as expressing an "Oh, is the 
 drive over?" or a " Do I live here?" air of preoc- 
 cupation or blankness. This time, however, Charles 
 did not observe her looks or her manner. He was 
 busy with the heavy fur rugs of winter as against 
 the mere dust rugs of summer, or was not in an ob- 
 servant mood. 
 
 Ann went up mechanically to her room and 
 submitted to the ministrations of Z61ie, the last of 
 Branton's successors. She went then to the library 
 where Johnny was brought to her. 
 
 This was one of the days when she dared not let 
 herself go. It was part of the burden she had to bear 
 that she could not wholly let herself go. She must 
 not cry. Only in the night, when there was none to 
 see tears or the traces of tears, might she cry. But 
 she might strain her son to her bosom and whisper 
 to him what she would. She unpacked her heart now 
 in less than a dozen words. They held all there was 
 to say. 
 
 "I'm so unhappy, Johnny! I'm so desperately 
 unhappy!" 
 
 It was what she had said to Claudia in the early
 
 206 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 days. It was what she had said before the horror of 
 fear and of dismay had fallen upon her. That hor- 
 ror had passed. She had fought that horror down, 
 had had the strength or perhaps been given, been 
 granted even, the strength to battle with her diffi- 
 culties and to overcome them. She had thought 
 herself happy, or at least not unhappy. She was 
 back with the unhappiness of the earliest days of 
 all. 
 
 What did it mean? 
 
 But she had no need to tell herself what it meant. 
 She knew only too well what it meant. Nothing 
 was altered. For all her suffering, perhaps even 
 because of it, she loved Coram still.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 AND so another stage was reached. 
 
 Ann was conscious of a change in herself or her 
 attitude. As she had avoided hearing of Coram, 
 avoided Bulkley even for fear of hearing of him, so 
 now she began to long for news of him. She asked 
 Bulkley to luncheon and led the talk to Coram. 
 Coram was in Ceylon. His friend, whose name 
 Ann would not remember and never forgot, had left 
 him to come home. 
 
 "And Mr. Coram?" Ann said. "Does he speak 
 of coming home?" 
 
 "Not of coming home, but of wishing to come 
 home." 
 
 "Wishing to come home?" Ann said. 
 
 "I think he's had enough of travelling," said 
 Bulkley. 
 
 "Does he say so?" 
 
 "He hasn't exactly said so. I think he has, 
 all the same. I have thought so from the tone of 
 his last two or three letters. I Ve sometimes won- 
 dered ..." He broke off. 
 
 "Wondered what?" asked Ann. 
 
 "Whether he does n't regret having gone at all." 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 "He was so anxious to travel," Ann said when 
 the silence had lasted some seconds.
 
 208 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "While he could n't go," Bulkley said quickly. 
 "I think he shrank from the thought of going from 
 the moment when he found that he could go. I 
 think to the last he half hoped something would 
 happen to prevent, or anyway delay, his going. In 
 the end I think he would have given his right hand 
 not to go." 
 
 Ann heard herself say, "Really?" It was as if 
 some one else spoke. Yet was this also one of the 
 things she had always known? Her heart was beat- 
 ing fast. 
 
 "He knew he would be homesick," she said. "He 
 told me so." 
 
 "He is homesick. That's what's the matter with 
 him. That's what has been the matter with him all 
 the time." 
 
 Again Ann's heart leapt. He was not happy. Use- 
 less to pretend to herself that she was not relieved, 
 glad even. In that moment she learnt another of 
 love's secrets. She could bear her own unhappiness 
 if she knew that he was not happy either. On that, 
 shrinking a little from what it seemed to imply, she 
 paused, turning the conversation to other matters. 
 
 But under whatever they talked of, Ann was 
 conscious of a feeling of exultation. "He isn't 
 happy either," she said to herself. "He is n't happy 
 either." Was it that she wished him unhappy? She 
 did not. She wished him such wishes as a wife 
 might wish for her husband, or a mother for her 
 child, or a lover for a lover. But she was unhappy
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 209 
 
 for him. If she could know that he was unhappy for 
 her . . . and she had learnt that he was not happy . . . 
 
 Bulkley might have observed that at some point 
 her spirits rose. They did rise. A weight seemed to 
 have been lifted off her heart. 
 
 Bulkley asked for Johnny. 
 
 "The jolliest little chap," he"said. "I often meet 
 him in his perambulator about the place." 
 
 "Poulton says he knows you quite well. She 
 speaks of you as the gentleman he always has a 
 smile for." 
 
 "Yes, we're great friends," said Bulkley. 
 
 Ann asked him if he liked children. 
 
 He shook his head, smiling. 
 
 "But I love Johnny," he said. 
 
 And then he said something that caused Ann an 
 emotion which, taking her unexpectedly, she found 
 difficulty to repress or even to control. 
 
 " It was Coram who had the wonderful way with 
 children," he said. "I've never seen any one like 
 him. He could even hold a baby he would, too. 
 And they came to him; held out their arms to him. 
 I used to chaff him about it tell him that was how 
 he managed the tenants. But it was n't. It was 
 just natural to him. He loved children and they 
 loved him. He ought to marry. I've always told 
 him so. There's a father lost in him wasted." 
 
 Long after Mr. Bulkley had gone, the new image 
 that he had called up before Ann haunted her.
 
 2io THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 The substance of what he had told her was not 
 new to her. She had heard often enough from the 
 wives of the tenants, or of the labourers on the estate, 
 of Coram's popularity with their children. But the 
 image which his words had invoked was wholly new. 
 Chance phrases he had used cut her like a knife, but 
 gave her a sort of poignant happiness. "He could 
 even hold a baby he would, too." Something 
 about the ' could ' and the ' would.' ' ' And they came 
 to him held out their arms to him." Their small- 
 ness, his bigness; their weakness, his strength. For 
 the image of Coram with the bird held to him she 
 had the new image of Coram with a child in his 
 arms. But not just a child. The child she saw in 
 his arms, the child that she could see so plainly, was 
 his son and hers . . . 
 
 "I can't bear it," she said to herself, but she 
 did not know whether her eyes were brimming for 
 pain or for ecstasy. " I can't bear any more."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THEN nature protested. 
 
 Perhaps Ann herself did not realize what she had 
 been through. Perhaps Johnny's need of her and 
 her own need of Johnny had kept her going. From 
 the end of November to the beginning of February 
 she was ill part of the time seriously ill. Claudia 
 hurried back from her visits. Redmayne became the 
 Redmayne of the last few months of Mr. Forres- 
 ter's life. Nurses were in the house. The doctor's 
 carriage would wait at the door, or be seen moving 
 up and down the drive, the pacing horse turned by 
 the methodical coachman always at the same spot. 
 Clockwork might have regulated the movements of 
 the doctor's carriage. Whipple and his satellites 
 answered enquiries. Mrs. Forrester was about the 
 same. Mrs. Forrester was just about the same. 
 Mrs. Forrester had had a restless night and was not 
 quite so well. Mrs. Forrester seemed a little easier. 
 No, Mrs. Forrester did not seem to suffer. A sort 
 of nervous breakdown. The illness had begun with 
 a chill, the result of a walk in damp woods. Thin 
 soles, Whipple said, on wet grass. Nothing, so it 
 had been thought at first, to signify. But Mrs. 
 Forrester had not picked up as she should. She had 
 not, Whipple thought, been quite the thing for a 
 long time going on for two years Whipple thought
 
 212 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 and the chill, so to speak, had settled on her 
 nerves. 
 
 Ann, In all her lassitude, might have been amused 
 if she had heard. Claudia, if she had heard, would 
 certainly have been amused, her anxieties notwith- 
 standing. She treasured a word of Mrs. Piper's 
 which she did hear hugged it, hugged herself; 
 retailed it ultimately to Ann on one of her good 
 days, and was rewarded with one of the invalid's 
 rare smiles. Mrs. Piper said, "A chill, and then, the 
 nervous system being run down, complifications." 
 
 1 Complifications' ! The word served as well as an- 
 other for a disorder for which no name was authori- 
 tatively forthcoming. Claudia wondered sometimes 
 whether Dr. Harborough guessed. She had passed 
 through the ordeal of her share of his questionings 
 fairly satisfactorily. She had been away when Mrs. 
 Forrester was taken ill. She knew of no shock that 
 she had lately sustained to account for her con- 
 dition. The servants, she gathered, knew of none. 
 Mrs. Forrester had apparently been in her usual 
 health till the day when she caught cold. One could 
 not think of any troubles that Mrs. Forrester would 
 be likely to have. Certainly no money troubles. 
 Her loneliness Claudia thought did sometimes 
 depress her. Few people were so alone in the world 
 as she. She had hardly a relation living, and since 
 the death of Mr. Forrester she had lived, Claudia 
 thought, too much by herself. She was not the sorf 
 of person who could fill her life with mere social
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 213 
 
 activities, though from time to time she might take 
 part in them. The adopting of Johnny appeared 
 to show that Mrs. Forrester did feel her loneliness. 
 
 Dr. Harborough had said "Ah" to that. He had 
 not looked at Claudia as he said it. He waited for a 
 moment or two, as if on the chance that Claudia 
 would say more. She did not. The pause seemed to 
 her an appreciable pause, but that may have been 
 so only in her imagination. She, like Ann herself, 
 was well schooled too well schooled to flounder 
 or even to attempt to fill it. Ah, well, rest, Dr. 
 Harborough said, was what Mrs. Forrester needed ; 
 rest and, by degrees, the cheerful occupation of her 
 mind. There was nothing organically wrong. The 
 disorder was mental spiritual, he would almost 
 like to say rather than physical. It was possible, 
 he would not go so far as to say that it was probable, 
 that the causes might be traced back across the 
 years to what she had gone through at the time of 
 her husband's illness and death. A breakdown of 
 this sort was sometimes postponed. In the ordinary 
 course he should certainly have looked for causes 
 nearer at hand, some recent stress or strain, but as 
 there seemed to have been nothing of the kind . . . 
 
 Did he guess? Claudia could not tell. She did not 
 feel, indeed, that it mattered very much if he did. 
 He did not question her about the time Ann had 
 spent abroad. It was significant, perhaps, that he 
 did not. It was a relief to her that he did not think 
 it necessary to call in a second opinion.
 
 214 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "You know her constitution," Claudia said. 
 "You have attended her before." 
 
 "Never for anything like this," Dr. Harborough 
 said. 
 
 Yet he did not press Claudia subject her to any 
 exhaustive questioning. She fancied, but may only 
 have fancied, that he saw reasons why a second 
 opinion was to be avoided if possible. It was, how- 
 ever, happily quite plain to her that, as he had said, 
 he did not think a second opinion necessary. 
 
 " I believe he guesses," she said to herself. " Per- 
 haps he even knows." 
 
 But she could never be quite sure. 
 
 Ann lay inert, uninterested, weak, inexpressibly 
 tired. She lay awake, or she slept and woke unre- 
 freshed. There were days when, though it was an 
 effort to her to move, she could not lie still. 
 
 "I am so tired," she said to Claudia. "I'm so 
 dreadfully tired." 
 
 1 ' Rest," Claudia whispered back. ' ' Rest. You Ve 
 to do nothing but lie here and rest." 
 
 "Resting does n't rest me," Ann said. 
 
 One day when they were alone Claudia took it 
 upon her to speak. She chose her moment. The 
 night nurse was off duty. Claudia, coming in to sit 
 with the patient, had sent the day nurse to have her 
 tea with Mrs. Piper. Not the alert, highly trained, 
 educated, experienced, open-eyed young women of 
 these days, with the devil's own knowledge of nerves
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 215 
 
 and nervous maladies and complexities generally, 
 or Claudia might, indeed, have trembled for Ann's 
 secret really have felt the apprehension at which 
 she intended in the interests of Ann's health to hint. 
 Ann's nurses were stolid, unimaginative, comfort- 
 able women who did their work competently enough, 
 taking their directions from the doctor, accepting 
 his pronouncements, and very little likely to attempt 
 any diagnoses on their own account. They came 
 from the neighbourhood one from the County 
 Hospital at Windlestone, the other from the Cot- 
 tage Hospital at Fotheringham. Redmayne was 
 Redmayne. They had known Redmayne all their 
 lives. Mrs. Forrester was Mrs. Forrester. If they 
 hazarded any conjectures as to the nature or the 
 causes of her illness, childlessness Was far more likely 
 to have occurred to them as an explanation of it, and 
 of her state generally, than any vaguest suspicion 
 of the truth. Claudia was not really afraid. But Ann 
 must be roused. January was drawing to a close. 
 Ann had been ill eight weeks. Claudia, to whom 
 a crooked way slightly, harmlessly crooked 
 came naturally enough, could be direct when she 
 chose. As she had been direct on the night when 
 Ann's face had been ghostlike and her teeth had 
 chattered, so was she direct now. No beatings about 
 the bush for Claudia when she had made up her 
 mind to a course of action. 
 
 "I want a little talk with you, Ann Forrester," 
 she said.
 
 216 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 Ann turned wearied eyes upon her. 
 
 "I'm going to be rather blunt, and, as you may 
 think it, just a little bit cruel." 
 
 Ann said nothing, but the eyes opened a little 
 wider. 
 
 "Don't imagine that I don't know what you've 
 been suffering. I know only too well. You 've been 
 very ill, but the time has come when you Ve got to 
 get well, and I am going to tell you why." 
 
 "Got to get well?" 
 
 Ann's lips formed the words. She hardly spoke 
 them. 
 
 "Got to get well," Claudia repeated. "Yes, I 
 mean that. You've got to get well. You needn't 
 look at me reproachfully. You needn't pretend that 
 it is n't in your own power. It is. You 're not try- 
 ing. You go on from day to day. You are just not 
 trying. Can you look me in the face and deny it? " 
 
 Ann's eyes slowly filled with tears. 
 
 "Oh, my goodness," Claudia said, addressing an 
 imaginary witness, "if she does that I shan't be able 
 to go on! But I am going on. She'll be grateful to 
 me afterwards. You Ve got to rouse yourself. 
 You've got to make an effort. You've got to be 
 interested again in life in things outside a sick- 
 room. You've got to wish to get well." 
 
 "It's horrible of you, Claudia. After all I Ve gone 
 through." 
 
 " It 's because of what you Ve gone through. It 's * 
 because of your courage. Not one woman in fifty
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 217 
 
 could have faced what you Ve faced without flinch- 
 ing, and not one in a hundred could have carried 
 through what you've carried through. Oh, don't 
 think that I'm surprised that you are ill. I don't 
 know how you've held out. I do not know, Ann. 
 You've taught me a lesson of endurance that I .shall 
 remember all my life. Surprised! You've earned 
 your illness" ' Claudia paused to smile "you've 
 earned your illness beyond all question. You've 
 every right to be ill. But you have n't every right, 
 or any right, to jeopardize Johnny's well-being and 
 your own and the well-being of every one con- 
 nected with you." 
 
 "What do you mean, Claudia?" 
 
 "Think, Ann." 
 
 Ann may or may not have thought. She appealed 
 to Claudia again. 
 
 "I don't know what you mean. It's no good 
 saying I am to think. You'll have to tell me." 
 
 "Very well," said Claudia, "I'll tell you. Every 
 day that you go on being ill is a menace to Johnny 
 and what you have achieved for him, and what you 
 have achieved for" she paused "for all of us. 
 Nobody lives to himself. (I 'm not preaching. I 'm 
 stating a fact.) We're all involved in this. Red- 
 mayne itself. Even let me say this, Ann ! even 
 your husband. The servants, the people on the 
 estate. The tradesmen who serve you people, 
 even, like Miss Blondin at the Berlin Wool Shop. 
 They look up to Redmayne, these people. They
 
 218 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 have to go on looking up to it. There are places 
 that they don't look up to. Fotheringham is one. 
 Never mind how I know. Perhaps I talk to Mrs. 
 Piper sometimes. Perhaps I should guess without 
 that though nobody could help liking the lady 
 herself. There are others one other, anyway 
 that even you might put a name to, though I know 
 you never see evil anywhere nor believe harm of any 
 one. I don't see why I should n't say Cloistron, 
 though I won't say Cloistron definitely, for I don't 
 like Lady Mallard and I may be prejudiced. (Non- 
 sense, Ann, we 're within four walls.) But Redmayne 
 is different. It is different. And you are different. 
 And what you have done I'm not making light 
 of the Commandments is entirely different. In 
 my heart I can't help feeling that it is because it is 
 so different that you have been allowed no, I be- 
 lieve you have been helped to come out of it all 
 un un oh, what is the word I want?" 
 
 "Don't say unpunished," Ann murmured. 
 
 "I was n't going to say unpunished. I was go- 
 ing to say unvanquished, I think unbeaten. It's 
 more than that really: unscathed. You've come 
 out of it all clean the biggest thing of all. But 
 that, all the same, is not the point. The point is 
 that you've won, and that your illness, if you go on 
 being ill, threatens all that you've fought for." 
 
 She stopped, flushed, a little breathless. It was 
 for Ann to speak now. But Ann did not speak. Sha 
 lay quite still.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 219 
 
 Claudia let a few moments pass and returned to 
 the attack. She must make her meaning plainer, it 
 seemed. So be it. 
 
 "Ann," she said. 
 
 Ann turned her eyes in Claudia's direction. 
 
 "Listen to me. You are in the hands of nurses; 
 does n't that suggest anything to you? any risk? 
 any danger?" 
 
 Claudia waited, but Ann also waited. 
 
 "They've only got to begin to wonder," Claudia 
 said. 
 
 Ann did not move or speak. 
 
 "Nurses, remember. They know something of 
 illnesses. And they are women." 
 
 Silence. Ann gave no sign that she had heard. 
 
 "You go on from day to day. They have only got 
 to think of your illness as mysterious. The word 
 'mysterious' has only got to be applied to it." 
 
 Still silence. Claudia could be very patient. 
 
 "And to get about applied to it." 
 
 She waited again. 
 
 "Mysterious illnesses generally have unusual 
 causes." 
 
 Sibnce. She had not known that Ann could be 
 so obdurate. 
 
 "Very well. Can we afford, here, you, Johnny, 
 all of us, to let people begin to look about for 
 causes ; to wonder even ... to ask themselves where 
 you were" she gathered herself up to strike 
 "from November, say, of the year before last to the
 
 220 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 time when you turned up at the Bath Hotel in 
 London?" She bent over Ann. " To remember the 
 advertisement?" Ann's eyes met hers. "To begin 
 to put together the pieces of the puzzle to know 
 that there is a puzzle to put together? If ever they 
 do begin if ever they suspect that there is any- 
 thing to suspect " 
 
 She broke off. Ann had given a little cry. Claudia 
 relaxed. She sank back. Her task was done. She 
 watched Ann weep. She let her weep. 
 
 Presently she began to relent. 
 
 "I did n't mean to frighten you," she said, but 
 she knew that she had had no other intention. 
 Ann wept on. 
 
 " I can't help it," Claudia said to herself. " It was 
 the only thing to do." 
 
 Poor Ann. After all, she was ill. 
 
 "What a brute I am!" Claudia thought. 
 
 "Ann, Ann, darling." 
 
 And then she was soothing her as you soothe a 
 frightened child. 
 
 "Ann, dearest, it's all right. Nobody suspects. 
 Nobody dreams. Nobody. Not a soul. It's all 
 right, Ann, dear. It's all, all right." Then: "And 
 it's always going to be all right. I feel this. I 
 know it." 
 
 Then, with her arms round her: "You're going 
 to. You're going to, are n't you? You're going to 
 begin to get well to-day." 
 
 A little pause.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 221 
 
 "Are n't you?" 
 
 Ann's sobs were lessening. 
 
 "Promise?" 
 
 Ann caught her breath, sobbed again; but in the 
 end she nodded. 
 
 "There's my good Ann. Now I'm going to give 
 you your medicine and then I'm going to read to 
 you. Yes, I am. 'The Ingoldsby Legends.' Now, 
 Ann! You don't want to get me into trouble, do 
 you? I've made you cry. If that comes out I shall 
 never be allowed to sit with you again. Very well, 
 then, 'The Jackdaw of Rheims.' When nurse 
 comes back from her tea, I want her to find you 
 laughing." 
 
 "If I laugh I may cry," Ann warned her. Was it 
 an admission? 
 
 "No, no," Claudia said, "you're not an hysterical 
 subject." 
 
 "You've been telling me that I am," Ann an- 
 swered. "What else have you been drumming into 
 me for the last twenty minutes? Why else have you 
 been bullying me?" 
 
 "I believe," Claudia said, "I do really believe 
 that you're nearly as clever as I am."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 IN February Ann went to Brighton for change of 
 air, Claudia went with her. There was some talk 
 of taking Johnny. Ann was for taking him, but 
 wiser counsels prevailing (Claudia's), Johnny re- 
 mained with his nurses at Redmayne, where, as 
 Claudia pointed out, his presence and theirs to 
 say nothing of his existence, which elsewhere would 
 have still to be accounted for had ceased long 
 since to attract any attention whatever. Whether 
 or not the unthreatened continuance of conditions 
 so desirable was, indeed, due to Ann's timely re- 
 covery, as engineered by the shrewd and far- 
 sighted Claudia! it is certain that, as Ann did 
 begin to recover from the day when Claudia had 
 spoken, so did she pay increasing regard to Claudia's 
 admonitions or advice. Claudia saw this, we may be 
 sure, but never presumed upon it. 
 
 "Take him about with you when he is five," she 
 said, "the age, as I have always told you, which 
 people expect an adopted child to be. Your friends 
 have swallowed him whole, baby as he is, but 
 strangers, people in hotels, might n't find him so 
 easy to digest." 
 
 Ann said, "Hush, Claudia," though there was no 
 one to hear, but laid Claudia's wisdom to heart. * 
 
 "Besides," Claudia allowed herself to say, though
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 223 
 
 her point was gained, "it would be inexpedient, at 
 least, to let it be thought that you could n't bear 
 to be parted from him." 
 
 Ann said, "I can't bear to be parted from him." 
 
 "All the more reason why you should be," said 
 Claudia. 
 
 Brighton, then, for Ann's recovery. At first she 
 went out in a Bath chair. Daily at eleven o'clock 
 her Bath chair would come round to the hotel door. 
 Ann would appear, followed by Zelie with her rugs 
 and her cushions and Claudia with the "Morning 
 Post," and Ann would take her constitutional, 
 Claudia walking beside her. Ann looked so much 
 better now, that there was no fear that the word 
 'mysterious' would be applied to an illness which 
 was obviously over. Claudia enjoyed the interested 
 looks which never failed to be turned upon them 
 as the chair made its slow progress along the front. 
 Ann was still a little pale, but no longer looked as if 
 she had been (as Claudia put it to herself) 'through' 
 anything. She might safely now take as long as she 
 liked over her convalescence. 
 
 On very sunny mornings, when the day, wind 
 notwithstanding, was said to be warm enough to 
 allow you to sit out, the Bath chair would be drawn 
 up in a more or less sheltered spot, and Claudia 
 would sit on a penny chair beside it. Then, while 
 the Bath chair man, a few yards off, but always 
 within hail, smoked a furtive pipe as he leant against 
 a lamp-post, the two ladies would read the paper,
 
 224 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 dividing it between them, wrestling with the flutter- 
 ing sheets and presently, or even more than once, 
 making a difficult exchange. Claudia always said, 
 "Drat the thing!" when her sheet refused to turn 
 inside out or to fold, and Ann, easily pleased, listened 
 for the words and liked to hear them. There was a 
 day when Ann's portion escaped from her hands, and, 
 eluding Claudia's spasmodic grab, her tentative 
 pursuit, the more whole-hearted pursuit of stran- 
 gers, and seeming, indeed, for its feints and its ruses, 
 to be possessed by some impish spirit of mischief, 
 flapped itself, after making many persons very 
 ridiculous, over the railing and out to sea. Ann's 
 amusement, tempered as it was by grateful polite- 
 ness, was evidence of the progress she had made 
 since the day when she had threatened that if she 
 laughed she might cry. She often laughed now. 
 Brighton kept her amused. There were always 
 people to watch. She and Claudia would watch 
 them frankly. Claudia would say, "Look at this! " 
 as she had said about the roses in the garden at 
 Redmayne. And, "Oh, Ann, this!" and, "Coming 
 along now. Don't look up for a moment. No, not 
 yet. Now!" 
 
 Ann sometimes said, "How can we both be so 
 silly?" half meaning how could they both be so 
 vulgar. 
 
 But she was enjoying herself, and Claudia was 
 enjoying herself hugely. 
 
 "And we're not unkind," Claudia said. "It is n't
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 225 
 
 as if we said unkind things, or let them see how funny 
 they are. They're proud of themselves. They're 
 bursting with pride. Oh, Ann, this, this Bosom and 
 that Waistcoat!" 
 
 "Besides," Claudia generally ended by saying, 
 "it is part of your cure." 
 
 So they amused themselves. 
 
 They met friends and acquaintances. Ann bright- 
 ened daily. She liked to see people now. 
 
 "When we go back," she said to Claudia, "I 
 think I must give some parties." 
 
 That was, once more, a thought that had been 
 forming for some days. Ann, since her husband's 
 death, had on the whole shirked her social duties. 
 She had never greatly cared for what was still in 
 those days called ' Society.' Before her husband's ill- 
 ness altered the conditions of both their lives, they 
 had seldom been alone. At Redmayne and in Scot- 
 land guests had succeeded each other endlessly as it 
 seemed to Ann when she looked back, and the begin- 
 ning of May to the end of July had seen the doors 
 of the house in Charles Street thrown open. The 
 round had been a little wearisome, and Ann had not 
 been sorry to escape from it. But now she began 
 to wish to see people again. A very good sign, 
 Claudia thought perhaps the best sign of all. 
 
 Soon the Bath chair was discarded. Ann found 
 she could walk. She walked with Claudia then. 
 Sometimes they took what they called quite a walk. 
 In the afternoons they generally drove.
 
 226 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 But in all this time one subject was closed be- 
 tween them. Ann, who had regretted Claudia so 
 vehemently on the day when she had seen her off 
 at Whitcombe, for the series of visits which her 
 own illness had cut short, who, but one half-hour 
 bereft of her, had wished her back so ardently, 
 had, once she had got her back, asked her none of 
 the questions which then had clamoured for utter- 
 ance. 
 
 It was, or it seemed to be, as it had been be- 
 fore: enough that Claudia should be at hand for 
 a confidence which always might, but perhaps never 
 would, be made. 
 
 Claudia on her part had a sense of waiting 
 always, under the pleasant calm of the days as they 
 went by, each one so like that which had preceded 
 it, a sense of waiting. The apparent uneventfulness 
 of these days did not deceive her. Not indefinitely 
 would this calm last. It was not that she looked 
 for bolts from the blue, or even for a storm. She 
 scanned no horizons. She just waited, thinking her 
 own thoughts, and increasingly aware of her convic- 
 tion that Coram was not done with, that he had 
 not passed out of Ann's life. One of these days he 
 would come back and then then what? Then 
 . . . what? 
 
 Of one thing at least she was certain. That which 
 would happen then would depend upon Ann. It 
 would depend upon Ann, she believed, far more than 
 it would depend upon Coram. It would depend
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 227 
 
 almost wholly upon Ann unless unless she, 
 Claudia, could contrive that it should depend upon 
 her! 
 
 There Claudia paused, thinking furiously. She 
 had her own theory now, cut, dried, garnered, 
 stacked. Woman, where Coram was concerned, was 
 the pursuer, not the pursued. It amounted to no 
 more than that. But the explanation of the whole 
 thing was there; the answer to every question that 
 the extraordinary situation raised. For that (indi- 
 rectly, perhaps, in one sense, but horribly directly in 
 another) was the rock upon which poor unperceiv- 
 ing Ann had come so unexpectedly to grief. Who, 
 then, so fit to deal with the situation as she, Claudia 
 Nanson, who understood it? And how to let an 
 unconfiding Ann Forrester, an Ann who seemed de- 
 termined to keep her own counsel, know that she 
 did understand it! She could only wait, adding thus 
 another kind of waiting to that of which she was 
 always conscious now, and which she thought of, 
 not as a pause or a lull, but as a marking of time 
 that with the passing of the days had become al- 
 most audible. 
 
 What was Ann thinking? She could not tell. 
 Ann seemed now to be living wholly in the present. 
 She watched for the daily letter from Poulton in- 
 forming her of Johnny's welfare. She appeared to 
 have no other anxiety, and that, set duly at rest 
 by a bulletin, which, so healthy was Johnny, hardly
 
 228 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 varied at all, she was able to interest herself in the 
 day's quiet occupations and amusements. 
 
 But what was she really thinking? 
 
 Or was she just not thinking? 
 
 Or was she, also, waiting? 
 
 Ann was waiting, and knew it. She, like Claudia, 
 caught faint echoes, through the pleasant, unimpor- 
 tant days, of a distant sound of tramping. That was 
 the sound of the marking of time. Events in their 
 march had come to a halt, but the halt was only 
 temporary. Presently the march would be resumed. 
 
 So the sun shone, and the winds blew, and the 
 days passed. 
 
 One night Ann had a dream. She thought she 
 was at Redmayne. She thought she was in the 
 library. But she was not exactly at Redmayne, nor 
 exactly in the library either, for she was also some- 
 how still at Brighton. The Front seemed to run 
 through the library. She could see the furniture and 
 the walls and some of the pictures, notably the 
 Romney over the fireplace, but she could see the 
 railings and the sea and the pier, and she could hear 
 a certain piano organ which haunted the King's 
 Road, and which, though it had, it is to be sup- 
 posed, the usual number of changes to its repertory, 
 always seemed when you heard it to be playing 
 one air from "La Fille de Madame Angot." Tunn 
 turn, tiddle-um; turn, turn, tiddle-um; turn, turn,
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 229 
 
 turn, turn, turn, turn, turn. Well might the tune 
 (as Ann thought even in her dreaming) jig in her 
 head. It seemed quite natural that, though she was 
 at Redmayne and in the" library, she should be at 
 Brighton also. The hands were the hands of Esau, 
 the voice the voice of Jacob, but she felt no surprise. 
 She knew, indeed, that she was dreaming. The 
 room, which was also the Front, was thronged with 
 moving people. They passed her in endless proces- 
 sion. Most of those persons who, by their appear- 
 ance or their demeanour, or who, for this or that 
 reason, had amused or interested her or Claudia, 
 were there. The Waistcoat was amongst them, and 
 the big-bosomed Jewess, many big-bosomed Jew- 
 esses, her eye perhaps habituated to the type 
 and so reproducing it automatically; and a little man 
 who had run after her newspaper and said, "There 
 now!" when it had flown over the railing and out to 
 sea; and her Bath-chair man; and others and others. 
 There were people that she had seen abroad also. 
 The kind Paris doctor. He was walking with Mrs. 
 Piper. But she felt no alarm. She felt no alarm even 
 when as they passed she heard the word ' Complifica- 
 tions.' Nothing was going to 'come out.' Disgrace 
 was not to be her portion. She knew that as Clau- 
 dia knew it knew it sleeping, it seemed, as well as 
 waking, so that if it had been Johnny's foster mother 
 whom she had seen, or some one from the little 
 French city of refuge, and talking, say, to Whipple 
 or to Lady Mallard or to Lady Fotheringham or to
 
 230 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 Miss Blondin, she knew that she still would have 
 felt no alarm. Her dream she thought about it 
 as she dreamt it was not frightening. Presently, 
 as she looked, one figure singled itself out from the 
 rest. This figure, the procession coming to an end 
 as suddenly as it had begun, remained behind. Now 
 there was only this figure a girl and herself, and , 
 as the last of the others passed out of sight, the library 
 became wholly the library, the sea disappearing, the 
 railings, the jutting pier, and Ann knew that she 
 was at Redmayne. 
 
 The girl was Lucy Edget, the kitchen-maid who 
 had got into trouble and who had been dismissed. 
 
 "Now, Lucy," Ann heard herself saying, "I had, 
 of course, to part with you. The circumstances 
 demanded it. There were the other servants to 
 think of, discipline, the example, a dozen things. I 
 could do nothing else. But Mrs. Thomas tells me 
 that up to the time when I parted with you you 
 had always borne a good character. The shock to 
 her and to Mrs. Piper and to all in the house was 
 thus the greater. You were, I believe, a good girl. 
 There are plenty of bad girls, but you were different. 
 You were, were n't you? Now, Lucy, do you think 
 you could tell me how it came that you, a good girl, 
 got into trouble?" 
 
 Ann was waiting for Lucy's answer when she 
 woke. 
 
 But Ann thought of Lucy after she woke. She 
 recalled her very distinctly a chubby-faced girl
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 231 
 
 who had sat at the end of the row of women servants 
 at prayers, where a moon-faced Bessy sat now. 
 Mrs. Thomas, the cook, engaged her own kitchen- 
 maids, and if Ann learnt to know them by name 
 that was as far as she ever approached towards their 
 acquaintance. But for some reason she had noticed 
 Lucy, had spoken to her and had spoken of her to 
 Mrs. Piper. "I like that girl," she had said, and 
 Mrs. Piper had said, "Yes, 'm, a nice well-man- 
 nered young person and very well-behaved, so Mrs. 
 Thomas informs me. Steady, 'm the best quality 
 in young girls." 
 
 Afterwards Mrs. Piper, recalling the incident, had 
 said: "Steady was my word, 'm, if you remember 
 which was, indeed, that every one thought her. 
 But there, 'm, you never can know." 
 
 Ann had agreed that you never could know. But 
 that, as Ann remembered now, was before she herself 
 had known anything. You never could know? No, 
 you never could know! She had not any doubt now 
 that Lucy, who had been thought to be steady, had 
 been steady. 
 
 She lay in the dark thinking. 
 
 What, or rather where, was the actual line be- 
 tween goodness and that which she had always 
 thought of as badness? Was there, indeed, such a 
 line at all? 
 
 She lay very still hi the dark. In it, and in the 
 silence which seemed part of it, she could hear faintly 
 the recurring sound of the waves breaking on the
 
 232 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 shore. Now came the thud, and now, and now; 
 spaced; regular as the beat of a pendulum. She 
 thought of the deserted length of the Front in the 
 darkness; and of Redmayne in the darkness; and 
 the idea of darkness probably contributing its influ- 
 ence of the waiting boy in the darkness of the 
 wood . . . 
 
 Was the waiting boy waiting for every one? For 
 Lucy Edget, as for her? For her, as for Lucy Edget? 
 Waiting in the darkness to leap out of the darkness? 
 To surprise you into deeds which you did not know 
 you had it in you to do? Was the waiting boy in 
 yourself? in each one of us? 
 
 She woke in the morning to the thought of Lucy 
 Edget, and to wish that the question she had put to 
 her so elaborately, yet so clearly, had not remained 
 unanswered. She remembered the exact words in 
 which, summing up what had gone before, she had 
 framed it. 
 
 " Now, Lucy, do you think you could tell me how 
 it came that you, a good girl, got into trouble?" 
 
 She believed that Lucy, if she would, could have 
 told her.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CLAUDIA rose one morning with what she de- 
 scribed to herself as a feeling that something was 
 going to happen. She looked out of her window and 
 saw the sea shining in the sun. The day sparkled. 
 For once nothing flapped. The wind had gone down. 
 What breeze there was did no more than stir the 
 flag upon the flagstaff which Claudia could see from 
 where she stood. She opened her window and knew 
 that the first promise of spring was in the air and 
 that every living thing was in some way responding 
 to it. Birds were twittering. Boys were whistling. 
 The very barking of the dogs sounded different. 
 Even the piano organ of the King's Road, bursting 
 suddenly into the inevitable "Fille de Madame 
 Angot" right under her window, was in key with the 
 joyous note of the day. How the tune, which one 
 could not escape, jigged! How it jigged! Claudia's 
 fingers drummed upon the pane in time to the gay 
 jigging of it. She stayed them suddenly, reminded 
 of other fingers that once had drummed upon a pane. 
 But in a moment or two they were drumming again. 
 She wanted to dance. What a smiling, twinkling 
 day! What a sky little fleecy clouds in it! What 
 a sea little white sails on it ! She dressed leisurely, 
 returning again and again to the window. Now it 
 was a passing luggage-laden omnibus which she
 
 234 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 paused to watch; now a child bowling its hoop; now 
 a riding-master and his pupils. Nothing actually in 
 the day, nothing certainly in the sights which it pre- 
 sented to her, to presage happenings; but she had 
 sense continually of the imminence of change. There 
 had been a standing-still; there was going to be 
 movement. 
 
 All the morning she had a sense of expect- 
 ancy. Ann and she did shopping. Claudia absently 
 hummed little tunes as she walked. 
 
 Ann, noting the humming but not the preoccupa- 
 tion, said, "You're in very good spirits!" 
 
 "Don't you feel something, Ann? something 
 in the air?" 
 
 If she had said 'anything' for 'something' Ann 
 might have looked at her and seen her preoccupa- 
 tion. 
 
 "If one didn't know that March was before 
 one " 
 
 "Oh, I don't mean that," said Claudia; "some- 
 thing more than that. Though that," she added, 
 "may be partly why I was humming." 
 
 Impossible to leave out altogether the influences 
 of the day itself, since these, represented by a soft- 
 ness and a warmth that were yet stimulating and 
 enlivening, marked, or seemed to mark, a turning- 
 point in the year. They had their effect very truly 
 upon her spirits ; but it was not these that gave her 
 the feelings with which she had awaked and which,
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 235 
 
 as the hours went by uneventfully, increased rather 
 than diminished in fervency. Something was going 
 to happen. 
 
 "Now," said Ann, "the Library. Let us go and 
 choose some books." 
 
 Always a pleasure to Claudia the choosing of 
 books at the Library. She like to sit waiting for 
 what should be brought to her of the books on the 
 list, or, better still, to explore the shelves for what 
 should take her fancy. This morning neither she 
 nor Ann had brought a list. It would be a question 
 of choosing from the shelves. Zlie later in the day 
 would return the volumes which were done with, 
 exchanging them for those which should be de- 
 cided upon now, and which would be tied up and 
 put aside in readiness for her. But this morning 
 Claudia could not concentrate her attention even 
 upon the shelves. 
 
 "Ann, you choose," she said. " I don't think there 
 is anything that I particularly want to read." 
 
 Ann went to the bookshelves. The newest books 
 were on a shelf by themselves, but somehow it was 
 not new books that you looked for at this Library. 
 Here at this time were names popular then, almost 
 forgotten now. Here were names hardly known 
 then, to-day acclaimed. Here were names famous 
 then, famous, a few of them, still. In sets of threes 
 the volumes asked your suffrages, some pathetically 
 your sufferance. You said of such and such a book 
 that it was very pretty, of such and such an author
 
 236 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 that he had written himself out. But, on the whole, 
 you were very tolerant. Ann, a little in advance of 
 her times, had discovered George Meredith for her^ 
 self, and, more recently, in "Far from the Madding 
 Crowd," Thomas Hardy. Claudia frankly liked 
 Ouida (who was thought rather shocking and was 
 read stealthily by the young and furtively by their 
 elders) and the author of "Guy Livingstone." 
 
 Claudia left Ann to the shelves. Some magazines 
 lay on a counter and she went over and looked at 
 them: "Temple Bar," "Cornhill," "All-the-Year- 
 Round," "Belgravia," "The Argosy." There were 
 also "The Sunday at Home," "The Quiver," and 
 "The Leisure Hour." Humbler piles showed "The 
 Family Herald," "The London Journal," "The 
 London Reader," and "Bow Bells." An old lady was 
 buying books for her grandchildren. She gave to one 
 "Fern's Hollow," by the author of the "Children 
 of Cloverley"; to another, "The Fishers of Darby 
 Haven"; to a third, "Jessica's First Prayer." 
 Claudia, looking at the pictures in "Bow Bells," 
 found her attention wandering. Presently she was 
 at the door of the shop. Then she was in the porch 
 and looking at a windowful of the black cards with 
 the white designs upon them which just then it was 
 the fashion to illuminate. They, like the novels 
 which you approved, were thought very pretty. 
 There were crosses wreathed with forget-me-nots 
 or convolvulus, or anchors with lilies-of-the-valley 
 or texts in fancy lettering, or mere bouquets of flow-
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 237 
 
 ers. And then she was out in the street itself, and 
 then, quite suddenly and with a thumping heart 
 (and, as she put it to herself, no time to think), she 
 was off off in pursuit of a back which she knew 
 knew in her bones almost before she saw it to be 
 the back of Timothy Coram. 
 
 This was what the strange day had portended! 
 Timothy Coram was home again. Timothy Coram 
 was here in Brighton. Timothy Coram was walking 
 a few yards ahead of her. What was she going to 
 do? 
 
 Speak to him? Yes, she supposed she was going 
 to speak to him. For the moment what she had to 
 do was to keep him in sight. That filled the imme- 
 diate present, for the pavements were crowded. How 
 crowded they were! Brighton was as crowded as 
 London. The sunshine and the mildness had brought 
 every one out. Perambulators ought not to be al- 
 lowed on the footpaths. She begged some one's par- 
 don and some one said 'Granted.' People stopped 
 just in front of you, or people even turned about 
 directly in your way. And what was she going to 
 do? What was she really going to do? She must 
 make up her mind. Yes, speak to him, of course; 
 that was settled. But how in what manner? 
 What was her attitude towards him? What was 
 Ann's attitude? She must not compromise Ann's 
 potential attitude by her own. Goodness! Good- 
 ness! She had had a year and a half for thought and
 
 238 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 she had not thought. She was as unprepared as if 
 there had been nothing to prepare for. She should 
 have sounded Ann. All this time she should have 
 been engaged in sounding her. 
 
 Timothy Coram walked on. Claudia, though she 
 had to walk fast, could have overtaken him if she 
 had been ready. If she was not ready it must suffice 
 that she should keep him hi sight. She saw people 
 she knew, friends of Ann's, bearing upon her. No- 
 body must stop her. But Colonel Worthington-Smith 
 admired her and said, "How do you do?" and Mrs. 
 Worthington-Smith, who was obedient to her 
 lord's smallest wish, said, "How do you do?" And 
 Claudia, in spite of herself, said, "How do you do?" 
 And Claudia, her eye on a diminishing back, said, 
 "Yes, lovely." And, "Yes, like a spring day, is n't 
 it?" but shook herself free with a jerky "I have 
 to hurry on. Mrs. Forrester is waiting for me. You 
 will excuse me, won't you?" Two surprised "Good- 
 byes" followed her. Ann's friends would probably 
 meet Ann. But it could n't be helped. Timothy 
 Coram had made thirty yards by their tiresome- 
 ness. He was crossing the road. A carriage and 
 then a butcher's cart delayed her own crossing. He 
 had made forty yards now, perhaps fifty. Was she 
 going to lose him? 
 
 People turned their heads after the hurrying lady. 
 No. He had paused to look into a shop window. 
 She was gaining upon him. He moved on. It was 
 like the chase of Ann's newspaper.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 239 
 
 And Ann still with the books. Had she missed 
 her yet? What would she think had become of her? 
 Goodness, goodness, as if it mattered ! Time enough 
 for all that. What she had got to think about as 
 the precious moments went by was what she was 
 going to do. 
 
 "Let me get that into my silly head," she said 
 to herself impatiently. "Let me make up my mind 
 if I have one!" 
 
 And somewhere a letter or the dust or the 
 ashes of a letter. And, at Redmayne, Johnny Smith 
 in his perambulator, or Poulton's arms, or his 
 cradle . . . 
 
 And nothing settled. 
 
 She could not think. Her brain refused to work 
 for her. She hurried on, blindly. 
 
 He was turning into the King's Road. She ran a 
 few steps when he had safely turned the corner. 
 
 He was walking more slowly now. Near Mutton's, 
 which she feared he might be making for for an 
 early luncheon, he crossed over to the Front. It was 
 now or never. Claudia hurried on, crossed some 
 little way ahead of him, and was walking demurely 
 and with downcast eyes, when some one, who 
 turned out to be Mr. Coram, hesitated, stopped, 
 and spoke her name. 
 
 "Mrs. Nanson. It is Mrs. Nanson." 
 
 No one was ever more taken by surprise than 
 Claudia! 
 
 "Mr. Coram!"
 
 2 4 o THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 They looked at each other. 
 
 She had made no pretence of not remembering 
 him; he made none of having expected not to be 
 remembered. Each thought, and knew that the 
 other thought, of the circumstances of their last 
 meeting and parting. 
 
 "And you are not the other side of the world!" 
 she said. Something stupid had to be said. "I 
 thought you were in ... where did I think you 
 were?" She gave a little laugh. "I don't know 
 where I thought you were." 
 
 " I got back ten days ago. I have an old aunt here 
 my nearest relation. I came down yesterday to 
 see her." 
 
 "Have you been to Redmayne?" 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 "Nobody knows I'm back yet. I hardly knew 
 I meant to come back, myself, till I sailed. I made 
 up my mind at a few hours' notice." 
 
 "You did something like that once before," 
 Claudia said to herself. 
 
 She thought there was a pause before he said, 
 "How is Mrs. Forrester?" 
 
 "Oh, much better," said Claudia. 
 
 "She's been ill!" 
 
 "Yes, but she's much better. Indeed, she is quite 
 well again." 
 
 She was wondering whether he knew of Johnny 
 whether Mr. Bulkley had told him. But she was 
 wondering so many things: What he was thinking.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 241 
 
 To what extent he supposed her to be in Ann's con- 
 fidence. How, now that she saw him again, Ann 
 could have let him go! (But Ann had n't thought 
 he would go. That was the point. Let her, for good- 
 ness' sake, try to keep to it try to remember.) 
 She had control of her wits now, but not quite of 
 her mind, which, working once more, seemed to 
 work on its own account. 
 
 He was speaking again. 
 
 "You see her sometimes, I suppose?" 
 
 "I see her constantly." 
 
 "At Redmayne, you mean," 
 
 "At Redmayne and here." 
 
 "Mrs. Forrester is here?" 
 
 Something had come into his face, and into his 
 voice. 
 
 " I left her ten minutes ago." 
 
 There was no doubt about the pause which fol- 
 lowed that. Claudia did not break it. She knew 
 now that she had no plan. For the moment things 
 must take their course. 
 
 "Which way are you going?" he said presently. 
 
 "I was only taking the air," Claudia said. 
 
 "May I walk with you a few yards?" 
 
 "Shall we go this way?" Claudia said, turning 
 round. She did not want to meet Ann yet. 
 
 They walked in the direction of Hove. 
 
 Brighton hummed about them. The sea shone and 
 sparkled. Children and their nurses were on the 
 beach. You would not have been surprised to see
 
 242 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 bathers. Claudia thought of the bathers at Fother- 
 ingham. A lifetime seemed to have passed since she 
 and Ann had laughed at their bobbings and dippings 
 and splashings. Something had happened to Ann 
 that day; she had never known what. A strange, 
 restless Ann had come back from a cheerful and 
 apparently uneventful drive. And it was from that 
 day that, gathering impetus like waters nearing the 
 weir, events had hurried smoothly to catastrophe. 
 
 And the man beside whom she was walking did 
 not know of any catastrophe at all. What he did 
 know of he would not, she supposed, look upon in 
 the light of a catastrophe. Her letter, she was sure, 
 had not reached him. 
 
 For a few moments as she walked she was near 
 crying. When she thought of what Ann had suffered , 
 what Ann had faced, what Ann had conquered, she 
 could have screamed. The woman is broken on the 
 wheel and the man goes free. The woman takes up 
 her cross and carries it to her own Calvary and the 
 man does not so much as know that the tree has 
 been planted from which the cross was to be made. 
 For a space measured in time by a few seconds, in 
 action by a few steps, she hated the man and could 
 have killed him hated all men for his sake. 
 
 And if he saw he would know. And whatever 
 happened he must not know. The urgency of the 
 need for self-control helped her to a mastery of her 
 feelings. 
 
 The two walked on. An approaching goat-car-
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 243 
 
 riage on the other side of the railing caught Clau- 
 dia's eye, and she fixed her attention on it while she 
 steadied her thoughts. A boy led the goat. A proud 
 little girl sat in the carriage. A complacent mother 
 walked behind. The little girl, as they passed, 
 grinned in their faces. Claudia felt better. 
 
 Coram was talking, and she began to hear what 
 he was saying. He was talking of Redmayne. She 
 .began to hear names; Bulkley's name, once or twice; 
 Whipple's, Mrs. Piper's. 
 
 "Mrs. Piper still has her cough?" 
 
 She heard that and answered it even contriv- 
 ing a smile. 
 
 "She never forgets it for long," she said. 
 
 " I Ve wished I could hear it again." 
 
 "You will," she said, to her surprise, for it was as 
 if to comfort him that she said that. " It never gets 
 better," she added. Why if she hated him should 
 she wish to console him? And how, or rather why, 
 did she know suddenly that he was unhappy? But 
 she did know it. Even as she knew that, though he 
 talked of Mrs. Piper, it was Ann he wanted to talk 
 of Ann that he really was talking of. He was 
 talking of her when he talked of Piper and Piper's 
 cough, when he talked of Whipple, when he talked 
 of Bulkley. 
 
 "It also never gets worse," she said. "It never 
 will." 
 
 "Nothing is changed." 
 
 But she knew that everything was changed. And
 
 244 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 that brought her again to Johnny. Surely he must 
 know of Johnny. Bulkley, if he wrote to him, must 
 have told him. He probably had other correspond- 
 ents, too, who must have told him. That he did not 
 know who Johnny was, however, she was quite, quite 
 sure. She thought rapidly her mind was working 
 for her obediently now and decided to speak of 
 Johnny at once. On every account she would speak 
 of Johnny, if only to make certain that he knew of 
 his existence. If Ann should see him if she should 
 consent, as Claudia was determined that she should, 
 to see him it was expedient that she should be 
 under no uncertainty upon this point. 
 
 "Oh, one change," she said. "You heard of 
 Johnny Smith? You know that Mrs. Forrester has 
 adopted a child?" 
 
 "Yes. That's one of the things I want to hear 
 about. But I want to hear about everything. I feel 
 as if I had been away a hundred years." 
 
 No, he did not know who Johnny was. 
 
 "I advised it," Claudia said. She felt safe 
 now. "Ann Mrs. Forrester is rather a lonely 
 woman. I think an interest was what she wanted, 
 and Johnny has certainly been a success. She is de- 
 voted to him. He is a dear little boy. She is the 
 sort of woman who ought to have had children. 
 I think, though she did n't know it, that it had al- 
 ways been a disappointment to her in her married 
 life that she had none. It must certainly have been 
 a disappointment to Mr. Forrester."
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 245 
 
 "I suppose it was," said Coram. 
 
 They took a few steps in silence. Claudia allowed 
 herself a glance at his face. She was going to have 
 no difficulty. When he spoke he was following the 
 train of thought upon which she had started him. 
 
 "I suppose it was," he said again. "He was an 
 odd man in some ways. You never quite knew what 
 he was thinking. He lived a sort of separate life. 
 But he must have wished for a son. Every one must 
 wish" he hesitated and resigned himself to a 
 phrase "must wish to hand on the torch." 
 
 She waited for the inevitable question. It came. 
 For once it was welcome. 
 
 "Oh, well," she said, "we have a sort of an idea. 
 We saw it was understood rather that one 
 must n't enquire too closely. There were several 
 answers to the advertisement. We went up to Lon- 
 don and saw two or three children. We both fell 
 in love with Johnny. He wanted a home, and we 
 wanted him. That settled it." 
 
 That settled other things also all that she 
 need do, for example, in the matter of prepara- 
 tion. Nor had she departed by a hair's breadth from 
 the truth, wide of the real truth as was the impres- 
 sion which her words were intended to convey or 
 confirm. She might smile to herself now, and she 
 did, if a little wanly. She had left Ann free to do as 
 she liked to enlighten him or leave him in dark- 
 ness as seemed good to her. Her immediate part 
 was done.
 
 246 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 She felt suddenly tired. 
 
 "Shall we sit down for a moment?" she said. 
 
 "Was I walking too fast for you? I walk so much 
 by myself that I forget sometimes." 
 
 "No ; but we will sit for a little and then I must be 
 going back. What time is it?" 
 
 "Oh," he said, "you don't want to know the time 
 yet Please! There are so many things I want to 
 hear about. I have seen no one from I was going 
 to say home. No one connected with Redmayne. 
 I still think of the little old house there as my home. 
 It was my home for so many years. I still grudge it 
 to Bulkley." 
 
 "Why did you leave it?" Claudia said to herself. 
 "My good man, why did you leave it?" Aloud she 
 said, "What is the time?" 
 
 It was ten minutes to one. 
 
 "Ten minutes, then. And then I must be getting 
 back to Mrs. Forrester, who will think I am lost, 
 and to luncheon. What do you want to know?" 
 
 She could look at him frankly now. He was what 
 the novels of those days, and of many a day after, 
 perhaps, called, and loved to call, 'bronzed,' and 
 Claudia thought him, and admitted to herself, and 
 later to Ann, that she thought him comelier than 
 ever. There was a little network of lines about his 
 eyes that she had not observed before, but this did 
 not make him look older. The eyes themselves had 
 something of the look that sailors' eyes have the- 
 look of having gazed over vast blue spaces. She did
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 247 
 
 not suppose that even a very large proportion of the 
 time that he had been away on his travels had been 
 spent at sea, but the look was there. It, like the 
 little network of lines that yet did not age him, was 
 somehow disarming. She could not hate him. There 
 was a plea somewhere. She could conceive that one 
 might love him very much. And then she felt once 
 more that she had the key to how 'it,' to how every- 
 thing, had happened. 
 
 "What do you want to know?" she said again. 
 
 He startled her with her own word. 
 
 "Everything," he said. "And about everything. 
 "I'm like Rip Van Winkle after his years of sleep 
 in the Kaatskill Mountains." 
 
 "Everything?" Claudia said, "in ten min- 
 utes?" 
 
 He looked at her slowly. 
 
 "What I want to know what I really want to 
 know, you could tell me in less than that." 
 
 The goat-carriage was coming back. Claudia heard 
 the jangle of the goat's bells behind her. She turned 
 her head. The child grinned again, looked from her 
 to Coram, and cried, " Dad-dee!" The mother said, 
 "Hush, darling. That 'snot Papa!" Claudia turned 
 rather quickly and asked Coram what it was she 
 could tell him. 
 
 But he did not seem able quite at once to ask her 
 what he wanted to know. He was probably wonder- 
 ing again how far she was in Ann's confidence, or 
 whether she was in Ann's confidence at all. He upon
 
 248 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 his part, as she upon hers, had to beware lest Ann 
 should be compromised by words which might be 
 admissions indications even. He possibly knew 
 that Claudia was clever. She was clever enough to 
 perceive his difficulty and to help him. After all, she 
 had knowledge which she might own to knowl- 
 edge which was common to them both. She had 
 been present at that last dinner at Redmayne 
 (should she ever forget it?) and had been witness 
 to emotions which, whether she had Ann's confi- 
 dence or not, she had been at liberty to interpret as 
 she would. She might, at least, be supposed to have 
 thought that perhaps he was in love with Ann and 
 prevented (as she had, indeed, thought!) by conven- 
 tional reasons from 'speaking.' She would assume 
 so much, anyway. 
 
 "You want to see Ann," she said, and (the formal 
 seventies not days of Christian names) corrected the 
 Ann, as before, to 'Mrs. Forrester.' 
 
 He responded at once, at once perceiving that 
 what he had been trying to ask which was, of 
 course, whether Ann would see him was to be 
 ignored. 
 
 "I want greatly to see Mrs. Forrester." 
 
 He looked both his relief and his gratitude. 
 
 "I will tell her I met you," Claudia said. 
 
 He saw that she meant that she could not do more 
 than that. 
 
 " I'll give you my address. I am staying in Bruns-' 
 wick Square. No. 99. I '11 write it down."
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 249 
 
 "I shall remember." 
 
 But he wrote the address down on a leaf which he 
 tore from his pocket-book. He folded the paper and 
 gave it to her. His hand trembled. 
 
 Presently they were retracing their steps. They 
 were both almost silent now. Afterwards she re- 
 membered that she had asked him nothing about 
 his travels. Opposite Regency Square she stopped 
 and put out her hand. Something seemed to have 
 been said in the silence nay, by the silence, by 
 the very fact of their joint silence some further 
 point reached. 
 
 "Make her see me," he said. 
 
 One of her rings pressed so deeply into her finger 
 that she nearly squealed. She bore the pain, and, 
 accepting what the silence had shown, promised to 
 do her best. They parted then he to walk over 
 the downs, urged by Heaven knew what of restless- 
 ness and excitement ; she to seek Ann.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 BUT something else had happened. 
 
 Ann met her with a white face, and for a moment 
 Claudia thought that she knew. She seemed to be 
 waiting for her. She was talking to the manager 
 through the window of the office, which faced the 
 door, and had turned at his "Here is Mrs. Nanson," 
 and hurried towards her. 
 
 "Where have you been? I thought you'd never 
 come in. Johnny's ill." 
 
 She thrust a telegram into Claudia's hand, but 
 told her its contents before Claudia could read them. 
 Congestion of the lungs. Johnny's little lungs . . . 
 that baby's ! No immediate danger. But would they 
 have said that if there was n't danger? 
 
 "What would you like to do, Claudia? I 'm going 
 by the next train there's one at three. And Z61ie 
 will follow with the luggage. Will you come with me, 
 or would you rather wait?" 
 
 "Go with you," said Claudia. "Of course I'll go 
 with you." 
 
 They were hurrying across the hall. "I can't go 
 in to luncheon. I 've ordered something some cold 
 chicken upstairs. Zelie will pack for you afterwards. 
 Oh, Claudia . . ." 
 
 Claudia pressed the hand she held, murmuring en-' 
 dearments, encouragements, exhortations. "You'll
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 251 
 
 find he's better, Ann. I know we shall find him 
 better." 
 
 "If I could feel that it wasn't a judgment on 
 me," said Ann "that he was n't suffering for me." 
 She bit her lip to keep back the tears. "That's 
 where I could be hit if I have n't been punished 
 enough." 
 
 "Ann, Ann. It is n't a question of punishment." 
 
 "I don't know," said Ann. 
 
 It was not a moment in which to speak of Coram. 
 Claudia saw that she must wait. She went to her 
 own room, ostensibly to put together what she 
 wanted for the journey, actually to write a note 
 which she must contrive to despatch to Brunswick 
 Square before she left. Poor Ann, poor Johnny 
 poor Timothy also! 
 
 "A telegram," she wrote, "has called us back 
 to Redmayne. The little boy, Johnny, is ill." She 
 paused considering how best to let him know that 
 this sudden move had nothing to do with the events 
 of the morning. To say so was not only to admit to 
 some degree, at least, of Ann's confidence, but also 
 to involve her in a sort of partisanship with his cause. 
 Well, she had committed herself to the first with 
 her "You want to see Ann" (as the later silence 
 had proved), and to the second, though not irrev- 
 ocably, by her subsequent promise. So she stated 
 baldly that she had not been able to tell Ann that she 
 had seen him, and said, wondering a little to what
 
 252 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 further she was pledging herself, that she would write 
 to him again from Redmayne. 
 
 She slipped from her room, managed to get hold 
 of a messenger, and was back with Ann in less than 
 ten minutes. 
 
 The journey was dreadful. Ann spoke or was si- 
 lent. Claudia did not know which was the more 
 dreadful, her words or her silence. She was pos- 
 sessed now with the idea of punishment. The story 
 of David and the child was in her mind and on it. 
 In vain did Claudia point out that Ann had put no 
 one in the forefront of a battle. God loved David, 
 Ann said, but the child died. 
 
 "Don't be silly," Claudia said, goaded to im- 
 patience, though she knew that for the time be- 
 ing Ann was not mistress of her thoughts. "You 
 might as well say that you ought to wear a Scarlet 
 Letter." 
 
 "I think it is because I don't," said Ann. 
 
 They came as near to quarrelling as perhaps they 
 had ever come. But if at the moment, lest her im- 
 patience should get the better of her, she had to re- 
 mind herself of what Ann had gone through, Claudia 
 in her heart understood. The conditions were still 
 those which had caused Ann's own illness. Nerves 
 had been overwrought, strength overtaxed. Who 
 had excuse for unreasonableness, for perversity even, 
 if not poor Ann, who sat looking out of the window 
 refusing to be comforted?
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 253 
 
 Claudia, at the other end of the carriage, looked 
 out of her window. Her irritation soon passed, turn- 
 ing wholly into the pity of which it was more than 
 half composed. She saw houses, trees, fields, sea- 
 gulls, twice, in the wake of a plough, but what she 
 was conscious of was not these, but the forlornness 
 of Ann's attitude. Though she did not look in her 
 direction, nothing of the poignancy of this escaped 
 her. Ann did not move. Her hands lay in her lap. 
 Her stillness was more distressing than any rest- 
 lessness. 
 
 And to Claudia a question thus answering 
 itself for her there was a dangerous quality in 
 Ann's extreme quiescence. It was unnatural. It 
 meant that Ann was not herself restored to health. 
 Nothing was going to be discovered, nothing was 
 going to be guessed or suspected . . . unless Ann 
 . . . Ann herself . . . 
 
 Claudia was back with the difficulties she had 
 thought disposed of once for all on a day when she 
 had 'upped' and spoken. 
 
 If Ann went on like this at Redmayne . . . 
 
 The wheels of the carriage took up the tune. 
 
 The sea-gulls Claudia had seen in ploughed fields 
 gave place to rooks, and rooks moved about the old 
 nests in some bare trees. She imagined but could 
 not hear cawings. The sunshine was thinner now,
 
 254 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 but there was still sunshine. There were lambs in one 
 field. Spring was coming. 
 
 She had it in her power to rouse Ann. Should she 
 use this power which she had? She had but to say 
 that Coram was back and something would happen. 
 What, however, would the something be which 
 would happen? Ann in her present mood was cap- 
 able of anything: of refusing to see him, which was 
 no more than was to be expected, perhaps; of re- 
 fusing to allow Claudia to communicate with him 
 which, as capable of leading to endless embar- 
 rassments, was a contingency not lightly to be 
 courted. No, the time was not yet. She must wait 
 for the right moment. She must hope to recognize it 
 when it came. 
 
 She looked, and knew that she looked, herself a 
 little forlorn now. She half hoped that Ann would 
 see. Her own eyes were turned as despondently as 
 Ann's to the passing landscape, her face was averted 
 from Ann as Ann's from her. Her hands were in her 
 muff. She was as still as Ann. But Ann did not see. 
 
 A dreadful journey. There were two changes, but 
 not even these broke the spell. It was not till they 
 were approaching Windlestone that Ann, racked 
 now by anxiety as to what news might await her, 
 became human. 
 
 With a human Ann Claudia could deal. 
 
 
 
 The brougham was waiting; Charles, the footman,
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 255 
 
 rugs on his arm, was on the platform. A look told 
 her that Johnny was not dead. 
 
 If anything there was a slight improvement, 
 Charles said. The doctor, who had paid his second 
 visit that day, was not coming again till the morning. 
 Claudia rather than Ann asked the questions. Once 
 inside the carriage, Ann cried. There, behind the two 
 backs, Ann might cry as she might have cried in the 
 train. Claudia welcomed the sight of her tears. Her 
 arm went round her and Ann did not draw herself 
 away. 
 
 Here, yes, as much as she liked. Let the easing 
 tears flow. 
 
 "Ann, may I say something now?" 
 
 Ann nodded. 
 
 "I know what it is," she said. 
 
 "I need n't say it?" 
 
 "I 'm his adopted mother." 
 
 "Yes, Ann, that's it." 
 
 "The fears and anxieties of an adopted mother 
 if he lives, and just the amount of grief an adopted 
 mother might be supposed to feel if he dies." 
 
 "Yes, Ann." 
 
 "'East Lynne.' Madame Vine," Ann said. 
 
 Claudia smiled through her own tears. Ann was 
 quite human now. She was not going to do anything 
 foolish. 
 
 Poor little Johnny. Improvement or no, he was 
 pretty bad. He was like some little sick animal, or
 
 256 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 some little sick bird, the beating of whose pulses is 
 visible. He lay, wrapped in shawls on Poulton's lap, 
 breathing fast breathing short and now and 
 then giving a little cough. His cheeks were flushed. 
 His eyes were neither quite open nor quite shut. 
 
 The sight of him wrung Claudia's heart. What, 
 then, must it be to Ann! Yet, if she had still feared 
 for Ann, the sadness of the picture would have held 
 its own reassurance, for so pitiful was the sight of the 
 little child that Ann, she would have perceived, 
 might safely, if she must, have shown her deepest 
 feelings. Ann took Johnny on to her lap from 
 Poulton's. 
 
 Claudia, confident as she was, turned away. 
 
 In the night, when Poulton had with difficulty 
 been persuaded to take the few hours' sleep she 
 must need so badly, Ann sat by the nursery fire 
 with the little child in her arms, and Claudia sat 
 beside her. They talked in low tones, or they were 
 silent. But, though the strain of anxiety was upon 
 them, there was nothing dreadful now in their speech 
 or their silence. Something akin to contentment 
 held them both, and held them together. Claudia 
 had never felt so near to Ann, never felt Ann to be 
 so near to her. Ann, with her child at her heart, 
 anguished for his suffering, but there to minister to 
 him, knew some sort of happiness in all her sorrow. 
 
 "My little boy," she murmured, "my little son." 
 She had him close. She was trying to give her life to
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 257 
 
 him, Claudia trying in her own way to give hers to 
 Ann. 
 
 Sometimes Johnny would stir. He would clench 
 his little hands, and move his head from side to side. 
 Then, perhaps, would come the cough, or a little 
 choking sound. Ann and Claudia each held her own 
 breath till he got his. Ann would raise him. 
 
 The frightening moment would pass. The muscles 
 of the two watchers would relax. The clock, and 
 Ann's watch, which lay on a table beside her, would 
 seem to resume their ticking. 
 
 Sometimes there would be a knock at the door 
 and Claudia would rise and go over on tiptoe on 
 tiptoe rather because it was the middle of the night 
 than because her light footfalls could have dis- 
 turbed Johnny and would whisper to whichever 
 of the anxious servants it might be who had come 
 for tidings, or to see if anything was wanted. Noth- 
 ing was wanted, but it was good to know of the 
 anxiety. 
 
 The nursery-maid came, Zlie, who had arrived 
 in the course of the evening, and, severally, two of 
 the housemaids. At three o'clock there was a fifth 
 knock. Ann looked up from Johnny's face which she 
 was observing closely. Claudia tiptoed once more 
 to the door and opened. Mrs. Piper herself. Mrs. 
 Piper in a pink flannel dressing-gown because she 
 was so anxious and could not sleep. 
 
 Mrs. Piper was admitted. 
 
 "Come in, Mrs. Piper," Ann called to her, and
 
 258 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 when it was Mrs. Piper who tiptoed, Claudia walked 
 in the ordinary way. 
 
 "How is he going on, 'm? I felt I must see." She 
 bent over the child. 
 
 Ann and Claudia hung upon what she should say. 
 
 "Not so flushed," she said, "and, surely, 'm, 
 breathing freer?" 
 
 " You think so?" Ann said. "I've been thinking 
 that, wanting to let myself think it, for some mo- 
 ments. Claudia, I do think he is. Look, he is n't 
 breathing so fast." 
 
 Encouragement had come into the room with 
 Mrs. Piper. Ann felt it. Claudia felt it. Claudia 
 sent a thought flying to Coram at Brighton. 
 
 "You do think so?" Ann said to the pink flannel 
 dressing-gown, and to something else which was 
 vaguely unfamiliar in Mrs. Piper's appearance. 
 
 "Yes, 'm, I'm sure of it. Altogether and easier." 
 
 It was not only an opinion, but it came from out- 
 side. 
 
 "He's going to live," Ann said. 
 
 "Of course he's going to live," said Claudia. 
 
 "I think you're all helping him," Ann said, un- 
 steadily. 
 
 Silence settled down on the house after Mrs. 
 Piper's visit. There had been silence before, but this 
 was a deeper silence. It was like the silence thut 
 comes when snow is falling and that you feel will not 
 be broken. There would be no more visits now till
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 259 
 
 Poulton came back at six o'clock. The room seemed 
 to shut itself off from all the other rooms. Claudia 
 made up the fire. Ann watched her putting on the 
 coal lump by lump. 
 
 "I never knew it was a front," Claudia said, lay- 
 ing down the tongs. 
 
 Ann was astray. 
 
 "Oh, Piper," she said after a moment. "Yes, a 
 front. I don't know that I did either. I suppose I 
 never thought about it." 
 
 She thought about it now. 
 
 "Of course, if I had, I must have known," Ann 
 said, as if there had been no interval. "It hasn't 
 changed in all the years. It has n't grown thinner. 
 It has n't grown grey. Piper must be between sixty 
 and seventy." 
 
 Claudia nodded thoughtfully. 
 
 Presently Ann added: "So that's what it was!" 
 
 Claudia said, "Yes?" 
 
 "The difference," Ann said. "Why she looked so 
 odd. I thought it was the dressing-gown." 
 
 "No, the front," Claudia said. "That was what 
 was so significant." 
 
 Nothing further was said for the moment. Claudia 
 set about preparing Johnny's food, which had to be 
 administered every two hours. She warmed it over 
 a spirit lamp. Ann, rocking Johnny, listened to the 
 soft hissing of the flame. 
 
 Johnny was better, certainly Johnny was better. 
 If only in the way that, this time, he fought against
 
 260 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 his food, he showed himself better. Before he had 
 submitted. His 'goodness,' which was unnerving, 
 had been the measure of his illness. Now he turned 
 his head this way and that, pushed, cried. But at 
 last he was fed, or, at any rate, what he had swal- 
 lowed was held to be enough. He lay crying then in 
 Ann's lap and Ann rocked him, sang to him, soothed 
 him. She smiled at Claudia when at length at 
 very long length he slept. 
 
 "Won't you go and lie down, Claudia? He'll be 
 all right now. And I shall be all right." 
 
 " No, Ann, thank you. I 'm not a bit tired. Why 
 should I be?" 
 
 "You must be worn out." 
 
 Claudia thought of another night when she had 
 watched with Ann, and when she had, indeed, been 
 worn out. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "You wouldn't lie down, yourself?" she said. 
 "Trust him to me? I'd promise to call you if I was 
 the least uneasy." 
 
 But Ann in turn shook hers. 
 
 Another hour passed. Johnny was sleeping quietly. 
 
 Claudia, moving noiselessly, made some tea. She 
 brought a cup to Ann. Something dissolved in Ann, 
 the last remnant of hardness. She drew Claudia's 
 face down to hers, as once she had bent hers to 
 Claudia's. 
 
 "I was so horrid in the train," she whispered. 
 
 "Oh, stuff!" Claudia said softly, her face against
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 261 
 
 Ann's. A moment or two passed. Then: "Drink 
 your tea," she said. 
 
 They drank their tea in silence, but Claudia knew 
 that Ann had more to say and that she herself was 
 waiting. The silence lasted some minutes. 
 
 "I was more horrid than you knew," Ann said. 
 "I can only think now that I was n't in my proper 
 senses." 
 
 She bent over Johnny and then raised her face. 
 "I wanted to hurt myself but also I just 
 wanted to hurt. I 'd made up my mind that if I 
 found my baby dead, I'd acknowledge him then 
 and there, proclaim myself, pull Redmayne down 
 about my ears." 
 
 Claudia nodded. 
 
 "Insane! Stupid!" Ann said. "I see that now. 
 Childish ! I could n't even have done it. It would n't 
 have been possible, for I could n't have proclaimed 
 myself without proclaiming some one else, and how 
 was I to have done that?" 
 
 "Yes, I saw that you couldn't really," Claudia 
 said. 
 
 "Of course I could n't," said Ann. 
 
 "But you made me afraid, all the same," said 
 Claudia. "I admit that, Ann, though I won't let 
 you say you were horrid. The danger was that you 
 might have committed yourself before you saw what 
 it would entail. If just for one moment you had 
 lost your head! Do you see?" 
 
 "You need n't be afraid any more," Ann said.
 
 262 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 There was a long pause after that. Ann looked 
 down again at Johnny. If he had died! The despair 
 which had held her in its grip on the journey, and 
 which she had visited upon Claudia, was past, but 
 black as her mood had been perverse, mad, bad! 
 even now she could understand it. As she looked 
 at the sleeping child and knew him to be restored to 
 her, she could certainly understand it. He for her. 
 His life for her. That was how she must have 
 thought of Johnny's death if he had died. No escape 
 for her from that if he had died, because once 
 before he was born, that was his death, as she 
 had perceived all too well, and as Claudia must 
 have perceived also, would, indeed, have been a 
 solution. Oh, she understood her despair well 
 enough, if, thank God, it was past. She put the 
 remembrance of it from her. 
 
 She looked up. Claudia seemed to have put the 
 remembrance of it from her also. She was speaking. 
 She had gone back to Piper. Ann began to hear 
 what she was saying. 
 
 "Up out of her bed in the middle of the night. If 
 that had been all. But without her front. I don't 
 suppose any one this side of the baize door has ever 
 seen her without it before." 
 
 It was Claudia now who seemed as if she had not 
 done; it was Ann who waited. 
 
 "If we'd wanted proof which we didn't . . . 
 But it's wonderful. Ann, do you see how wonderful?' 
 First what you've done, and then what Johnny's
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 263 
 
 done for himself. Those girls, and then Piper. If 
 he'd been really the son of the house which he 
 is . . ." 
 
 She blazed suddenly. 
 
 "Ann, they'll let him stand for the son of the 
 house. They're ready. They want to. It's for you 
 to complete it. Complete it! It lies with you. Of 
 course, I know you can never really do that any 
 more than you could really proclaim yourself if 
 you wanted to. There'll always be one thing that 
 can't be done for him now. But he's going to live, 
 and there is something that can be done that 
 you can do. Ann, Ann Oh, how shall I put this? 
 there's a way of happiness yet if you'll only take 
 it. Here 's what I mean : whatever it costs you, what- 
 ever it costs your pride, one of these days you'll 
 have to give Johnny his father."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 NOT wholly ingenuous? But so very nearly! 
 Johnny would benefit, if it was Ann primarily (and 
 Romance) that Claudia was thinking of if (though 
 she was not ready quite to admit this) it was, indeed, 
 Coram himself that she was thinking of. Johnny 
 would benefit. No boy ought to be denied a father's 
 care even though his circumstances might be such 
 as to prevent his ever knowing that his father was 
 his father. Besides, Claudia believed in Coram, in 
 spite of the uncanny accuracy of her guesses about 
 him. It was because of her guesses about him that 
 she did believe in him. That, too, was a point was 
 the point, perhaps. Ann's happiness was with 
 him. Johnny's happiness, every possible reservation 
 made, was with him. Johnny's happiness was with 
 them both. Not disingenuous, therefore, though 
 not wholly ingenuous. 
 
 She though, as they talked till six o'clock 
 brought Poulton back to beam over the improve- 
 ment in Johnny, one might have supposed that 
 there would have been nothing left to say she did 
 not say that she had seen Coram. Not when a week 
 was past, and Johnny on the highroad to recovery, 
 had she allowed herself to say that she had seen 
 Coram. She might, to the extent that we have wit- 
 nessed, use Johnny's illness for her own purposes,
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 265 
 
 but she had no intention of using it in the final 
 resort, no thought, that is, of effecting a reconcilia- 
 tion, a bringing-together of the estranged or the mis- 
 understanding, by any such obvious means as the 
 appeal of the sick bed of a little child. The artist 
 in her showed itself there. She did not forget that, 
 as far as Coram was concerned, there was no little 
 child. Ann's secret, moreover, was safe with her. 
 Her letter having miscarried, her part, with regard 
 to the existence of a child, was done. It was for Ann 
 to enlighten him if she chose, or, if she chose, never 
 to enlighten him at all. For him Johnny was Johnny 
 Smith; and Johnny Smith, like "Tom Jones" (whose 
 Life, all the same and Adventures you were hardly 
 supposed in those decorous times to have read!) 
 was a foundling. But she had prepared the way, 
 given Ann something to think about, an idea to turn 
 over in her mind, to get accustomed to as an idea, 
 and that was as far as she could go for the moment. 
 
 She wrote to Coram, temporizing; and waited. 
 
 She half wished that Coram would come down on 
 his own account; and waited. 
 
 Not till she saw that Ann's mind was at peace did 
 she allow herself to speak. 
 
 "Ann," she said, "if Mr. Coram came back what 
 would you do?" 
 
 They were in the garden. Ann had some snow- 
 drops which she had picked, in her hand. 
 
 She looked at Claudia quickly, then at the flowers, 
 and then back at Claudia.
 
 266 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "How do you mean, Claudia? what I should 
 do." 
 
 "Would you see him?" 
 
 Ann did not answer. She looked again at the 
 flowers in her hand, rather, now, as if she did not 
 know what they were, or how they came to be there, 
 and then looked again at Claudia. 
 
 "Why do you ask me?" she said at last. "How 
 can I say? I don't know." 
 
 A snowdrop fell from the bunch. She stooped 
 and picked it up. "Oh," she said, "need we discuss 
 it?" 
 
 "Ann, dear, we must." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 Claudia told her. 
 
 There was a seat near by. Ann moved to it and 
 sat down. 
 
 "Brighton!" Ann said, "Brighton!" 
 
 It was as if she seized upon what she could 
 grasp. 
 
 Oh, Claudia thought to herself suddenly, if they 
 also could but have been still at Brighton! It would 
 have been so much easier there. She lost herself 
 for a moment or two in thinking how much easier. 
 
 Ann could have met him, or kept out of his way. 
 Ann could have been allowed to meet him by acci- 
 dent. If she, Claudia, had done nothing, the chances 
 were that Ann must have met him. It would have 
 been better, perhaps, that she had so met him in thd 
 first instance unprepared, without time to con-
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 267 
 
 sider what she should do. Then would have come 
 Claudia's part. If only, then, it had been Ann in- 
 stead of her who had met him ! But she, Claudia, 
 had not exactly met him. She had seen him, fol- 
 lowed him. Ann, if she had seen him, would cer- 
 tainly not have followed him. It was as likely 
 as not that her impulse would have been to flee 
 Brighton. But there again was where Claudia could 
 have stepped in. That would have been her chance. 
 Oh, why, why were they not at Brighton? 
 
 Ann seemed, for the moment or two in which 
 Claudia was thus occupied, to have no questions to 
 ask. None, at least, came from her, and Claudia had 
 expected so many. 
 
 "He wants to see you," Claudia said. "Oh, Ann, 
 do help me. I could n't tell you that day because of 
 Johnny. I came straight back to tell you and you 
 had just had the telegram. I could n't tell you in 
 the train. I could n't tell you while Johnny was ill. 
 I came as near to telling you as I dared. I had to 
 wait. I see, now, that that makes it look as if I 
 had been plotting." She gave a little laugh. " But I 
 have n't," she said. 
 
 Ann neither assented nor dissented. 
 
 "You do believe me, don't you?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," Ann said absently. 
 
 "She might help me," Claudia thought. 
 
 "He wants to see me?" Ann said. 
 
 "Practically he asked me if you would see him. 
 I had to help him to that. It was very difficult for
 
 268 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 both of us. Neither of us knew how much the other 
 knew, or how much the other might be supposed to 
 know. There was no firm ground anywhere. One 
 thing I can tell you at once. He knows that you 
 Ve adopted a child. I made sure of that. And he 
 has n't, of course, a suspicion." 
 
 Something of the strained look left Ann's face. 
 
 " I had to assume we both had that each of 
 us knew that there was an uncertainty as to your 
 seeing him. That did n't commit either of us. So it 
 could n't commit you. You had forbidden him to 
 write. I, on my part, might be supposed to know 
 that there had been, at least, some sort of check in 
 your ordinary relations." 
 
 "There was certainly that," Ann said. But she 
 did not speak bitterly. 
 
 She laid the snowdrops down beside her on the 
 seat, where, fond as she was of flowers, she forgot 
 them. Claudia found them there, a little bunch of 
 corpses, the next day. 
 
 What was she thinking? 
 
 Some pigeons were on the lawn. Claudia watched 
 them. She found herself watching two particular 
 birds; one of them followed another. The following 
 bird was a male, the followed a female. How persis- 
 tent he was, but equally persistent she! He would 
 follow her with little rapid pink steps. Rookety- 
 koo ! He would get in front of her, bowing, his ches* k 
 puffed out. Always she eluded him. When he got 
 in front of her, she would turn aside. Sometimes she
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 269 
 
 would turn right about and walk quickly in the op- 
 posite direction, pecking at food on her way to show 
 how unconcerned she was. He always followed her, 
 close, close upon her pink heels, bowing, bowing, 
 rookety-koo-ing. Sometimes they would appear to 
 set to each other, like dancers in a quadrille, but 
 she, at such moments, was making feints in this 
 direction or that, and he, anticipating her, barring 
 her path. Always she got away. Ultimately, as, of 
 course, she knew in her little deep heart, she would 
 not get away. But her own ultimate surrender was 
 what she counted upon. He would not tire. That 
 was why she might try him, tantalize him. She was 
 quite, quite safe. Little warm eggs one of these days 
 in the soft warm nest! 
 
 If only human ways were as simple! Ann, in her 
 innocence, had thought that they were. That sup- 
 position indirectly but also directly, indeed 
 had landed poor Ann where she was. 
 
 What was Ann thinking? 
 
 It would have been difficult for Ann, in the first 
 few moments which followed Claudia's announce- 
 ment, to have said what she was thinking, or even 
 feeling. She could not have said, indeed, whether 
 she was feeling anything. She had asked no ques- 
 tions because for the time she had no questions 
 to ask. Her mind seemed to have settled into some 
 little recess, from which it listened, as from be- 
 hind doors or curtains or barricades, to Claudia's
 
 270 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 explanations. But there, shut away, it, if not she, 
 was thinking. It was her ambushed mind that 
 was thinking, not she. Brighton. He had been there 
 while as yet she had been there. He had seen Claudia. 
 They had talked. Claudia had seen him face to face. 
 Claudia had talked with him. Claudia had seen his 
 face. She, Ann, had seen it once very near to her 
 own. She had seen tears in his eyes. Claudia had 
 not seen tears in his eyes. Perhaps nobody else had. 
 Claudia was telling her that she was not plotting. 
 Ann was not accusing her of plotting. But Claudia 
 had said an extraordinary thing that night . . . She 
 had said that Ann must give Johnny his father . . . 
 
 Ann heard herself saying, "He wants to see me?" 
 She said that, but the words even yet did not mean 
 very much. You said words sometimes. She did 
 not know whether she wanted to see him. She had 
 Johnny. Johnny was all that mattered. But Johnny 
 was his, too. 
 
 That was n't true. Johnny was hers only. 
 
 Claudia was telling her, as if to make her mind 
 easy, that he knew of Johnny, but also that he did 
 not know of him. That did somehow make her mind 
 easier in its hiding-place. Her mind peered, as it 
 were, out of its hiding-place. What was there to 
 shrink from? Was it herself that she was afraid of? 
 Her mind emerged into the open. There, the sense of 
 what Claudia had been saying to her was suddenly 
 clear. Timothy Coram was not the other side of the
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 271 
 
 world. She had longed to see him. She might see 
 him if she would. 
 
 She became conscious of the day; of the garden; 
 of Claudia, the sun on her shining hair. 
 
 Now she wanted to ask questions. She wanted to 
 ask so many that she did not know where to be- 
 gin. She wanted to know how he looked. Whether 
 he had changed. Oh, very much whether he 
 had changed. She wanted to hear that he had 
 not changed, and she wanted to hear that he 
 had changed, also. She did not want him to have 
 changed much. She wanted to hear that he was well 
 and happy. But she also wanted to hear that he 
 was not quite happy. 
 
 It was as if Claudia had divined. 
 
 "I did n't feel as if his wanderings had been en- 
 tirely a success," Claudia said. "He did n't say so. 
 He did n't say much about them at all. He just gave 
 me the impression of having been homesick. He said 
 he had been. He spoke of his little house. But I felt 
 it before that. I felt it at once." 
 
 Bulkley, getting his impression from letters only, 
 had said something of the same sort. 
 
 Ann's heart leapt within her. She felt as Eliza- 
 beth may have felt when Mary came to her. 
 
 ' ' Tell me about him," she said, her eyes shining like 
 Claudia's hair. 
 
 "I meddled once," Claudia warned her. 
 
 "Oh, tell me," Ann said. 
 
 11 1 still think "
 
 272 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "Tell me, tell me." 
 
 "Well, I still think it's you." 
 
 "If I thought so, I should think I was 'blessed 
 among women." 1 
 
 Claudia was holding her hands. Her hold on them 
 tightened suddenly. 
 
 "I may have to remind you of that," she said. 
 
 "Of what?" 
 
 " What you Ve just said. 'Blessed among wo- 
 
 men.' ' 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "Nothing, Ann." 
 
 She was smiling. She would not explain. 
 
 " I may not have to," she said, "but I may. Time 
 enough then. Listen to the larks. Did you ever 
 hear such a chorus? And I Ve eaten larks. Is n't 
 that horrible? I never will again. I think he's come 
 back because he could n't stay away. I am meddling, 
 you see." 
 
 "I've been thinking of him all the time," Ann 
 said. "I've been thinking of him when I would n't 
 let myself think of him. When I did n't think of 
 him. Oh, I admit it.ik 
 
 "I knew," Claudia said. 
 
 Three specks on the blue sky and a very flood of 
 song. Already the haze of green over the trees. Soon, 
 soon the thrust, the bursting of the buds, the great 
 liberation. 4 
 
 "He's been thinking of you," Claudia was saying. 
 "I believe he's been thinking of you ever since.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 273 
 
 There 's a chain of thoughts of you round the world 
 this minute." 
 
 Oh, Ann said again, if she could think that! 
 Claudia thought it. 
 
 " I was n't wrong," Claudia was saying, "even 
 that time when I did the awful mischief the un- 
 speakable mischief. What I said was true, though 
 he may n't have known it as true. I knew, when I 
 saw him again, that it was true. I " she paused 
 "just knew." 
 
 "But he went," Ann said. "Why, if it was true, 
 did he go?" 
 
 "Ask him." 
 
 Ann shook her head. 
 
 "Anyway, you'll see him?" 
 
 "How am I to?" 
 
 " If he stayed with Mr. Bulkley the natural thing 
 would be that he should come to see you." 
 
 "Oh, yes, if he stayed there." 
 
 "That's where he would stay, unless he came 
 here." 
 
 Ann felt herself grow white. 
 
 "He could n't come here," she said. 
 
 "No," Claudia said, still smiling. "I'm not sug- 
 gesting it. There are plenty of places he might go 
 to. Cloistron. Lady Mallard would like to see him 
 again, I dare say." 
 
 "Why should he go there?" 
 
 " Fotheringham. Lord Fotheringham wouldn't 
 object."
 
 274 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "Why do you say that, Claudia? Why should 
 Lord Fotheringham object?" 
 
 But there were things, it seemed, that Claudia 
 would say which she would not explain. She laughed 
 and kissed her. 
 
 "There'll be no talk of Cloistron or Fothering- 
 ham," she said. "He'll go, of course, to Mr. Bulkley. 
 He'll be staying there in what he thinks of as his 
 old home when the moment comes for the ques- 
 tion which you will ask him." 
 
 "The moment won't come," said Ann. "I shan't 
 ask him." 
 
 But Claudia knew better. 
 
 "The moment will come, Ann, and you will ask 
 the question. You'll say just as you said just now: 
 1 But you went away. Why did you go? ' If he can't 
 tell you, and it is quite conceivable that he may n't 
 be able to, come to me. It's just possible that, then, 
 I may be able to tell you."
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 CORAM was coming to Lower Redmayne. 
 
 Bulkley told Ann, but Ann knew before that, for 
 Claudia, who had written to Coram, had heard from 
 him. 
 
 "To-morrow," Bulkley said as if the word were 
 not already ringing in Ann's ears! "Mrs. Somers 
 is doing out the room now his old room. If I had 
 n't been first in saying that he was to have it, I 
 think she would have demanded it." 
 
 Ann thought of Mrs. Somers preparing the room 
 for him; airing his sheets (they would smell of 
 lavender); making his bed. It was just like Mr. 
 Bulkley to turn out of his own room for him. She 
 hoped Mrs. Somers would not move too many of his 
 things. She pictured her moving things, emptying 
 drawers emptying more drawers than could be 
 needed. She thought of Coram protesting. He would 
 protest. And Bulkley would laugh ! And Mrs. Som- 
 ers would bridle. They would all laugh. For there 
 was no excuse. There were plenty of other rooms. 
 Coram would say, "It's too bad!" Bulkley would 
 say, "Nonsense, man, why shouldn't I?" Coram 
 would persist ("Upon my word, it's too bad!") 
 would be a little bit distressed even. But it was just 
 like Mr. Bulkley. How much she liked him! She 
 had at once a sort of feeling that she had neglected
 
 276 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 him. Why had she never accorded him his pred- 
 ecessor's weekly half-hour? The weekly half-hour 
 had been entirely unnecessary? The weekly half- 
 hour had been accorded to the man, not the agent? 
 All went smoothly without it. It seemed to have 
 been accorded to the man. More light for her upon 
 the deep places in her soul ! It had been accorded to 
 the man! 
 
 Shame upon her! Was she only now beginning to 
 know herself? And here was Mr. Bulkley turning 
 out of his room that he might give of his best to his 
 friend. 
 
 Vague tendernesses stirred in her. 
 
 "When do you think of marrying?" she said to 
 him. 
 
 Now, what on earth made her say that? She 
 managed not to blush for an impulsiveness which 
 was really really and truly, as she said to herself 
 not a bit like her. She managed to look at him 
 with steady, rather quizzical eyes. So she retrieved 
 her blunder. A young aunt, who might have said 
 just what she said to a nephew of about her own 
 age, might have looked at him just as she was look- 
 ing. 
 
 "How did you know?" he said. 
 
 He was very pleasant to look at as she saw him 
 freshly. He was small-headed, reddish. He was not 
 a bit good-looking, but his face crinkled up delight- 
 fully when he smiled. 
 
 " I did n't know," said Ann. "You '11 have to for-
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 277 
 
 give me. I was thinking of all the nice girls there 
 are." 
 
 "She lives at Winchester," said Bulkley, nodding. 
 "Her father is one of the minor Canons. He has n't 
 quite given his consent." 
 
 "The usual parents' reasons?" 
 
 Bulkley laughed. 
 
 "The worldly wisdom of a very good churchman. 
 He married himself, I may say, on what he won't 
 hear of our marrying on." 
 
 "That's why," said Ann. 
 
 "He may come round. He allowed a sort of un- 
 official engagement when I got my unexpected pro- 
 motion to Coram's post. I 'm not worrying. She is 
 what matters, and there I 'm safe. The nicest of all 
 the nice girls, Mrs. Forrester." 
 
 "I'm sure of that," Ann said, "and, may I add, 
 one of the luckiest?" 
 
 "No," said Bulkley; "it's I who am lucky." 
 
 "Two lucky people, then," said Ann. "He the 
 Canon has named some sort of an income?" 
 
 "Oh, he says " 
 
 "Are you very far short of what he says?" 
 
 " Between us, not so very. We both, happily, have 
 something of our own. Another year or so, if I 'm 
 fortunate enough to go on giving satisfaction here, 
 will see us within well, measurable distance of 
 touching it." 
 
 "You could take a pupil." 
 
 "Would you let me?"
 
 278 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "Mr. Coram had one." 
 
 "Ah, he had been here for years." 
 
 "You're going to be here for years, I hope, Mr. 
 Bulkley." 
 
 "May I think that?" 
 
 "I want you to." 
 
 She would not hear of thanks. The thanks were, 
 she said, the other way. 
 
 "What should I have done without you when Mr. 
 Coram left me?" 
 
 "He would n't have left you," Bulkley said. 
 
 Ann seemed to herself to be back with something 
 there. She did not, whatever it was, follow it up. She 
 was content with the day's contentment. 
 
 "To-morrow," she was saying to herself. "To- 
 morrow. To-morrow." 
 
 "Look out for a pupil," she said aloud. "You 
 would get one easily. And, somehow, we must con- 
 trive to soften or satisfy your Canon. I don't like 
 engagements to be too long." 
 
 Bulkley went home feeling that he would die for her. 
 
 "To-morrow. To-morrow," thought Ann. He 
 was arriving in the morning, and she took that to 
 mean that she should see him in the afternoon. In 
 the ordinary course he would surely have come by 
 the train by which she and Claudia had travelled. 
 That would have been the ' natural ' train to take 
 a train which left Brighton at three o'clock, rather* 
 than a train which started at nine, and to catch
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 279 
 
 which he would have to rise early and swallow his 
 breakfast in haste. He was coming to her hot-foot. 
 The intimation could mean nothing less the 
 mention of trains at all. 
 
 She would be ready for him. She would be wait- 
 ing ... 
 
 She spent the rest of the morning with Johnny. 
 He was out again now, and Claudia and she, Poulton 
 within hail, pushed his perambulator about in the 
 sunshine. He crowed and he wriggled and he laughed. 
 He held out his hands for things, or leaned, bodily, 
 across his strap towards what or whom he wanted. 
 He made sounds that were nearly words; that might 
 at any moment now become words, or give place to 
 words. 
 
 Claudia said, "Ann, he's adorable." 
 
 Any one would have wished to adopt him. Ann 
 knew what she meant. It was true, too. She might 
 show him now to his father, if she would. She might, 
 without fear or misgiving, though he was not five 
 years old the adoptable age! show him to any 
 one, unchallenged, unquestioned. Would the day 
 come when she would really show him to his father? 
 She believed that that day would come, and that it 
 was even at hand. She set herself resolutely, as she 
 had borne her unhappiness, to bear her happiness. 
 
 "This time last year!" she said to Claudia. 
 
 "We won't think of this time last year," Claudia 
 said quickly.
 
 280 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 " But somehow I can now," Ann said. "He will be 
 a year old on Sunday. His first birthday." 
 
 They drove in to Windlestone that afternoon. 
 Ann (since the morning) had business to do at Par- 
 giter and Fosberry's. While she was in there, Claudia 
 bought a woolly ball for Johnny, at Miss Blondin's. 
 It was a disappointment that Miss Blondin, to whom, 
 if she had seen her, she would have deemed it not 
 less than expedient to give the news of Mr. Coram's 
 return, chanced to be out. Miss Blondin would have 
 been excited over the news. Not only back in Eng- 
 land, but expected at Lower Redmayne! There 
 would, indeed, have been news for Miss Blondin 
 and Miss Blondin's customers. Claudia, buying the 
 woolly ball for Johnny's birthday, could picture 
 Miss Blondin's glowings. Whipple and Piper that 
 morning had glowed in their separate, restrained 
 ways. Ann, in her way, in spite of all she had suf- 
 fered was glowing. 
 
 Ann was glowing when she came out of Pargiter 
 and Fosberry's. Mr. Pargiter, bareheaded, accom- 
 panied her to the carriage door. He bowed to 
 Claudia who would have hugged herself with de- 
 light if she could have known why his bows to her 
 were so stiff! She, in her innocence, supposed all his 
 bows to be stiff, like himself. 
 
 "You'll be amused at what I've been doing,'' 
 Ann said, when, after a visit to the toy shop in view 
 of Johnny's approaching birthday, they were on
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 281 
 
 their way home. "At least, you'll be amused at my 
 reasons. I Ve been arranging that Mr. Bulkley shall 
 have a rise a year sooner than he expects it." 
 
 "And now for the Why?" said Claudia. 
 
 Ann, of course, said nothing of Mr. Bulkley's con- 
 fidence to her. 
 
 "Out of his very bed," she said. "Think of it! 
 That Mr. Coram might have his old room. And I 
 know Mrs. Somers will move everything. I declare, 
 Claudia, it touched me to the heart." 
 
 Nothing could have pleased Claudia more than such 
 evidences. Sentiment. It was the one thing need- 
 ful. Everything promised. Everything was right. 
 Ann's face was set towards the morrow, and Claudia's 
 no less. She felt for Ann's hand in the carriage and 
 held it. Now, if only Coram could make out a case 
 for himself. No. Not that. If Ann could be satisfied 
 with the truth, if she could hear the truth, accept 
 it. Once she did accept it, all would be well. But 
 could she? Would she? A shattering of illusions for 
 such as Ann, a pulling-down of much that stood 
 firm. A pulling-down of men, a pulling-down of 
 women Ann herself amongst them. Could she 
 stand that? And keep her faiths? And see (as a 
 worldlier Claudia saw a Claudia with open eyes) 
 that a new faith must rise like a Phoenix out of the 
 ashes of the old, and that the new faith would be 
 what mattered? Ann just did not know. 
 
 "Oh, Ann," Claudia said to herself, "don't ask
 
 282 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 too much. Men are n't saints. Many, many women 
 are n't saints either. You realize the man's appeal, 
 but you don't in the very least understand what 
 it means. That is why what happened to you did 
 happen to you. You Ve only to look at this man to 
 know how life must have presented itself to him. 
 But you have looked at him without knowing. Try, 
 try, try to understand." 
 
 With all the auguries propitious, with happi- 
 ness in the air, with Johnny well and Ann glowing, 
 Claudia had moments when she was frightened. 
 
 "Try," she said again to herself, but apostrophiz- 
 ing Ann. "Try to understand. Oh, be willing to 
 understand." 
 
 Aloud she said, "I've always liked Mr. Bulkley. 
 I always thought you did n't half see enough of 
 him." 
 
 "I mean to see ever so much more of him in 
 future." 
 
 The night came. Ann, as once before, hardly ex- 
 pecting to sleep, slept. She awoke in the morning to 
 another beautiful day. Sunlight edged its way into 
 her bedroom as the housemaid drew the curtains 
 to pour in in full flood as the blinds behind them were 
 drawn up. Through the open window, which she 
 told her not to close, came the songs of birds. They 
 had begun their songs early in that year of special . 
 grace. Soon now they would be in full song. Soon 
 now the cuckoo would be heard again. The wood-
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 283 
 
 land would be green and he would come back, and 
 he would call, here from a copse, there from a copse, 
 you could never say exactly where, but the spring 
 would throb to his note and she would be able to 
 listen. Oh, she would be able to listen this year. 
 Love-songs, this year, love-songs. She would be able 
 to bear them. 
 
 Her room was singing. The silver and the glass on 
 her toilet table were singing in the sun. The stop- 
 per of a cut-glass bottle was a monstrous flashing 
 diamond singing to the new day. Some anemones, 
 red and purple and white in a shining bowl, were a 
 chorus of praise jubilant as the song of larks. Z6- 
 lie appeared now with her morning tea, and Ann 
 watched her as she bustled silently about, a trim, 
 sturdy figure. She, too, had an air of singing. 
 
 "A morning of the South, eh, Zelie?" 
 
 Zelie was Provengale. 
 
 "Truly, Madame, a morning of the South. One 
 would say the summer already." 
 
 There was a sky, Zelie said. Blue but blue! A 
 sky of a blueness! She meant, perhaps, that such 
 skies were rare in England. They were not, Ann 
 thought, smiling contentedly; but if they were, this 
 one was appropriately sent. 
 
 "Yes, blue," Ann said, looking at it from her bed. 
 
 "The blue of the robe of Our Lady," Zelie said. 
 "And what will Madame wear?" 
 
 Ann drank her tea and sent for Johnny. Zelie 
 brought him to her, herself. She came in laughing,
 
 284 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 her head on one side, Johnny, gurgling with mischief, 
 tugging one earring. 
 
 "Ah, ah, ah, polisson! Ss'v! Pauv'e Zelie! Un va 
 lui arracher 1'oreille! Oh, le petit polisson! Voila, 
 Madame." 
 
 Twenty minutes Ann asked for. 
 
 Mother and son. Twenty happy minutes. It was 
 her ears now that Johnny was pulling having 
 learnt a new and delightful game. He could hurt, 
 too, he was so strong. Or he closed his little fists 
 about the two long thick plaits of her hair and 
 pulled till the 'Ah's* and the indrawn 'Ss'vV came 
 from her. Or he stood up tottering and threw himself 
 down upon her. She kissed his neck, burying her 
 face in his shoulder. 
 ' One of these days! One of these days . . . 
 
 She whispered into the warm hollow where her 
 face was hidden : 
 
 "Would you like a father, Johnny, a father 
 of your own? Not quite as other little boys have 
 fathers. But a father who would love you more, per- 
 haps, than other little boys' fathers, and who would 
 make up to you for what it is not in your mother's 
 power, or his, ever to give you. Would you? " 
 
 Johnny did n't know. He wriggled himself free 
 to stagger once more to his laughing feet and throw 
 himself down. 
 
 "Oh, Johnny, it shall be made up to you. It shall. 
 It shall." 
 
 Twenty happy minutes.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 285 
 
 The dining-room was full of sunshine, Claudia, 
 quite out of mourning now (and ready, when Ann's 
 affair should be settled, for any really desirable at- 
 tack upon her widowhood), wore a blue dress. Blue 
 was in the air, Ann said to herself, as she kissed her. 
 But she had no fear of bolts; Claudia, as she saw 
 Ann's radiance, none either. All was going to be 
 well upon this day of days. 
 
 The servants trooped in to prayers. 
 
 Ann read part of the hundred and seventh Psalm. 
 
 "0 that men would therefore praise the Lord for his 
 goodness ; and declare the wonders that he doeth for the 
 children of men!" 
 
 For the sake of the thirtieth verse she had chosen 
 it, but it was with this, the thirty-first verse, that 
 she ended. She was very happy. 
 
 "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the 
 Holy Ghost ; 
 
 " 4s it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall 
 be, world without end. Amen." 
 
 And so through the prayers themselves, praise 
 sounding and resounding, to the final Grace of Our 
 Lord Jesus Christ . . . 
 
 It was then that, in her happiness and her thank- 
 fulness and her confidence also, she remembered the 
 words of comfort and encouragement which had been 
 spoken once to just such a sinner as, at the bottom 
 of her heart, she believed herself to have been. The 
 words had been spoken by One who had boundless 
 understanding. He cast no stones. A new thought
 
 286 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 came to her. A wider light shone upon his under- 
 standing. It was not so much (thus she phrased the 
 thought as if she were arguing) not so much that 
 He had said, ' Neither do I condemn thee,' as that He 
 had taken it for granted that, of those present, not 
 one was in a position to cast a stone . . . 
 
 He expected nothing but humanness of human 
 nature! Human nature unredeemed, of course, un- 
 regenerate, but human nature. 
 
 Ann rose from her knees, puzzling, puzzled. 
 
 Claudia, if she could have known, might have 
 asked herself whether that thought, that argument, 
 though she had not had the good fortune to think of 
 it, was not hers by at least every other right! If she 
 had thought of it and if she had to argue we 
 may be sure that she would have used it. It would 
 have been treasure trove to her. It summed up all 
 her arguments.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 LOWER REDMAYNE was swept and garnished. Mrs. 
 Somers, who had swept and garnished it, was in and 
 out of the room she thought of as the Master's all the 
 morning. The Master was, of course, Mr. Coram. 
 Mr. Bulkley, though she liked him and served him 
 very faithfully, had never been more than the Young 
 Master. Thus, she made her distinctions which were 
 her reservations. It is to be feared that, from the 
 bedroom which she was preparing, she had moved 
 quite as much as Ann, with half-comic dismay, had 
 anticipated. To leave an empty wardrobe and empty 
 chests of drawers for the Master, she had moved, 
 indeed, nearly everything justifying such thor- 
 oughness to herself with the plea that the Young 
 Master in his new quarters would in turn need his 
 things about him. Bulkley on his part, amused in- 
 wardly, had made no protest. Mrs. Somers liked 
 doing it. And it would be Mrs. Somers who would 
 move everything back. 
 
 The fire was laid ready to light in the evening. 
 The boards shone with beeswax and turpentine ; the 
 old furniture shone ; the brasses. The vases of daffo- 
 dils were the final touch. This added, Mrs. Somers 
 surveyed the scene of her labours, and the result of 
 her labours, with satisfaction and pride. Her la- 
 bours were labours of love. 

 
 288 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 She heard the dog-cart come round from the stable 
 to barkings and bayings and to one sustained whin- 
 ing, and presently drive away. Mr. Bulkley had gone 
 to meet Mr. Coram. The one whine died down to 
 silence. 
 
 Coram, stepping out of the train to Bulkley's 
 hearty greeting, must have felt as if he were coming 
 home indeed. Bulkley's announcement to the sta- 
 tion-master had collected a little eager crowd of 
 persons upon the platform: a farmer or two; Mr. 
 Trinden the Vet. come to fetch a dog which had 
 arrived by an earlier train; this one and that; at the 
 outskirts, loiterers, hovering porters. 
 
 Welcome was written on every face. 
 
 "Jove!" Coram said, shaking Bulkley's hand, 
 "it's good to be back." 
 
 "It's good to see you back," said Bulkley. 
 
 "Aye, it is that, sir," said the station-master. 
 
 Hands all round, smilings, greetings. Coram, as 
 they drove through the familiar streets, stopping 
 every few yards as he was recognized and hailed, 
 may have asked himself why he had ever gone away! 
 
 There was Miss Blondin! 
 
 "If it is n't Mr. Coram!" 
 
 Miss Blondin, of the Berlin Wool Shop, unchanged 
 and unchanging, was bobbing and bridling, her long 
 black earrings a-swing. She looked from Coram to 
 Bulkley, from Bulkley to Coram. 
 
 "Well, this is a delightful surprise! Mr. Coram!
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 289 
 
 Well ! Back from his travels. Back from the Grand 
 Tour. Looking so well, too, though a thought 
 thinner. But for a long stay, I hope, Mr. Coram." 
 
 " For as long as we can holdhim," Bulkley laughed. 
 
 "Ah, there'll be willing hands to help you to do 
 that, Mr. Bulkley. Soft hands, too. White hands. 
 Glad hearts in the county this day, Mr. Coram! 
 Well, well, well, this is a delightful surprise." 
 
 Then it was the town clerk and then Dr. Har- 
 borough. A quarter of an hour before they were out 
 of the town. 
 
 He looked about him. Wombwell's Menagerie, by 
 the hoardings, had visited the neighbourhood again 
 lately, and Ginnett's Circus. He felt probably as if 
 he had n't been away at all, and as if he had been 
 away for centuries. Inwardly, maybe, he was nerv- 
 ous. He had been away for centuries and his heart, 
 if we are to believe Claudia, had not stirred from 
 Redmayne. Just as Claudia had said "England!" 
 on a like occasion, so, as he was driven by Bulkley 
 along the greening roads, he said, "England!" 
 
 There was nothing to touch it, he meant. 
 
 "Not a bad little island," said Bulkley. 
 
 "The country to live in," said Coram. 
 
 Claudia would have noticed that he had not yet 
 spoken Ann's name. But she would have seen that 
 he hovered round it, as the porters had hovered 
 about the little knot of persons on the platform at 
 the station. He seemed likely to get no nearer to it
 
 290 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 than Redmayne in the eager questions he began to 
 ask now. He wanted to know everything about Red- 
 mayne the same Everything upon which, in his 
 talk with Claudia at Brighton, Claudia had closed. 
 
 Bulkley spoke it. 
 
 "I saw Mrs. Forrester yesterday. She knows you 
 're arriving this morning." 
 
 "I think I'll call on her this afternoon," Coram 
 was able to say then. 
 
 "How is she?" he asked the next moment. 
 
 His question appeared to fix Bulkley's attention 
 upon something which he had seen without, as it 
 were, observing. She looked splendid, he said, splen- 
 did. There was a 'Now I come to think of it' in the 
 manner in which he added, "I've never seen her 
 look better." 
 
 It was because she had been so anxious about 
 Johnny, Bulkley was thinking, and now Johnny was 
 well. She had looked splendid, radiant. 
 
 But Coram, catching, perhaps, at straws, would 
 interpret in his own way. She could not be hostile 
 and look radiant. Some such interpretation, no 
 doubt. 
 
 "She is the kindest person," Bulkley said. He was 
 thinking now of their talk, and of the interest which 
 she had shown in his affairs. He, like Coram, had 
 his thoughts. She had shown interest! She wanted 
 genuinely to see him able to marry his Stella. He had 
 not yet received Mr. Pargiter's letter which was to 
 tell him of the practical form her interest had taken,
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 291 
 
 and had taken at once. But her sincerity needed 
 no such proofs. He thought again of her face as he 
 had seen it the morning before, and of its notable 
 radiance. 
 
 " It was a lucky day for me when I came to Red- 
 mayne as your pupil," he said. 
 
 "Mrs. Forrester probably thinks it was a lucky 
 day for her," Coram said very heartily. 
 
 Fora few moments, each thinking his own thoughts, 
 the two fell into silence. The faint mist of green was 
 plainly visible over the trees and hedges now. In 
 a week or two, if there were no set-back, the buds 
 would open almost as you watched. Claudia would 
 have seen that Coram devoured the country with 
 his eyes. Every landmark, every yard of the road, 
 almost, must have had its memories for him. 
 
 "By Jove, Juniper!" he said suddenly. 
 
 It was his old mare. 
 
 "And Juno's in the stable." 
 
 They talked horses for the next quarter of a 
 mile, and then dogs. It was no slight to the faith- 
 ful Somers that by the way of the names of these 
 faithful friends they reached hers. 
 
 "She's with you still?" 
 
 "She rules me." 
 
 " Dear old thing! She used to rule me." 
 
 He laughed, but Claudia would have known now 
 that he was nervous. Easy enough to understand 
 that. There was always what had happened, and al- 
 ways the one letter which he had received from Ann
 
 292 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 the letter which had closed a chapter, as it must 
 have seemed, finally. Ann had told him not to 
 write again. It had been then, perhaps, that, having 
 lost her, he had begun to love her? 
 
 Or had he, indeed, loved her always? There had 
 never been a time, perhaps, when he had not loved 
 her. 
 
 They turned, presently, into the lane. As they 
 drew near the end of their drive, his nervousness, 
 though he was still able to conceal it from Bulkley, 
 would have been increasingly patent to Claudia. He 
 was in Redmayne and he was going to see Ann in a 
 few short hours. The day had come to which he had 
 looked from what Claudia always thought of as the 
 other side of the world. He had wondered whether 
 this day would ever come. Time, with Ann's one 
 letter, must have shown him his offence, and the 
 enormity of his offence, since it was an offence. He 
 thought himself dismissed, and Ann had allowed 
 him to come back. Perhaps he did not think of what 
 he should say to her. That, like Claudia's attitude 
 at Brighton, could be decided by perceptions, in- 
 tuitions even, when the moment came. If he did 
 not understand, and we, with Claudia, may sup- 
 pose that he did not, he would trust to understand 
 when he should see Ann face to face. But he was 
 nervous. Yes, he was horribly nervous. 
 
 At the bend in the lane a distant glimpse of the 
 house was to be caught. Claudia would have seen
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 293 
 
 that he bent forward as they approached the spot, 
 and then, when they had passed it, that he leant 
 back, his muscles relaxing. 
 
 A few minutes later they were at Lower Red- 
 mayne, and, to the tune of a wild barking of im- 
 prisoned dogs, he was shaking the hand of Mrs. 
 Somers and being told that he did not look as 
 well as when he went away ! 
 
 "Thinner, sir, that's what you are, though sun- 
 burnt, I grant you. Living on curries, I suppose, and 
 a stranger to good English beef. We'll soon fatten 
 you up again. Won't we, Mr. Bulkley, sir? I never 
 did hold with foreign foods. Tinned, too, I dare say. 
 I know their heathenish messes. Don't tell me!" 
 
 "There is n't much I could tell you about cookery, 
 is there, Mrs. Somers?" 
 
 "Ah, well, plain and 'olesome, that's my motto. 
 But, then, I'm old-fashioned." 
 
 The dogs barked and whined one more than 
 the rest. 
 
 "That's Fanny, sir, yowlhiY' Tom spoke, the 
 smiling stable man, who had smiled and smiled 
 since his old master had wrung his hand. " I've had 
 fine work with her this mornin'. She wanted to go 
 with the dog-cart. I believe she knew you was ex- 
 pected, sir. She 's waitin' for you, any'ow. More like 
 a yuman bein', that dog, than a yanimal." 
 
 Coram strode to the stable to greet his old spaniel, 
 alone.
 
 294 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 Eight hours later he was again in a train. A tele- 
 gram the semblance of a telegram had called 
 him back to Brighton. Brighton or London or 
 Jericho . . . Heaven knew where he was going, but 
 with a yellow envelope in his hand he had said 
 Brighton. Mrs. Somers, her labours of love, love's 
 labour lost, had swept and garnished for nothing; 
 turned out, emptied, moved. The sweet-smelling 
 sheets had not been rumpled, the very fire (the pro- 
 voking day too warm even towards nightfall for 
 fires in bedrooms) had not been lighted. Love's 
 labour wasted truly! Mrs. Somers, like Fanny the 
 spaniel, lifted up her voice in lamentation. The bit- 
 terness of her lamentations she turned first against 
 telegrams (Telegrams! She had always hated them. 
 It was a telegram in the first instance which had 
 called the Master away at all struck the hour of 
 his departure anyhow !) and then against an in- 
 nocent old lady at Brighton. Inconsiderateness was 
 what Mrs. Somers never could stand. Mr. Coram's 
 aunt if she was ill should have put off her illness. 
 
 "I shan't move a thing," she said, "till we see if 
 she does or she does n't get better. If she does I sup- 
 pose she'll have the grace, maybe, to let him come 
 back." 
 
 Bulkley, puzzled himself, forced to smile in spite 
 of his own disappointment, could not say whether 
 Mr. Coram's return was to be looked for; he added 
 quietly (smiling inwardly this time), "You'll do, 
 of course, as I tell you, Mrs. Somers."
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 295 
 
 "Of course, sir! You'll know that I meant no dis- 
 respect. Your pardon, I 'm sure, sir, and the old 
 lady's at Brighton, for I suppose I forgot myself. 
 But, please, please, just for a day or two, you won't 
 tell me." 
 
 They left it at that. 
 
 And what had happened? Claudia would have 
 known what had happened; if Bulkley, his puzzled 
 host, was as much in the dark as the lamenting 
 Somers.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE interview between Coram and Ann took place 
 in the library. Ann had given directions to Whipple 
 that, as of old, Mr. Coram when he called should 
 be shown in there. She felt that failing the one place 
 of all where if there be such a thing as the psy- 
 chological spot in the sense in which, in the jargon 
 of these days, we speak of the psychological moment 
 the meeting should have taken place, the library 
 would afford her, and perhaps him also, the most 
 support in circumstances in which they might both 
 be expected to need all the support which the influ- 
 ences of familiar and friendly things had the power 
 to give. She wanted, moreover, to see him in the 
 old surroundings. He was associated in her mind 
 with the library more intimately than with any 
 other room in the house. But it was not that only 
 which guided her. It was also that it was here that 
 they had been wont to meet in the unmenaced 
 comradeship of those weekly half-hours of shared 
 labours, before the knowledge that she loved him 
 changed everything for her, and charged their meet- 
 ings with the desperate pleasure that is nearly all 
 pain. 
 
 Whipple, with the afterglow of greetings and wel- 
 comings in his face, came to tell her that Mr. Corara 
 was there. Ann wondered how many times to the
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 297 
 
 same announcement she had replied that she would 
 be with Mr. Coram in a minute. 
 
 She experienced now, waiting as she was, a 
 woman for her lover, ready as she was, prepared, 
 eager, a very panic of fear and reluctance. If she 
 could have put her thoughts into words, they must 
 have expressed themselves in some such cry as the 
 supreme cry of all the anguished cries: Let this 
 pass from me! Her head swam. Drops came out 
 upon her forehead. Claudia! Claudia! But Claudia 
 was not there. Claudia had gone out with the de- 
 liberate intention of not being there. She felt alone, 
 deserted. She had never known such a moment of 
 loneliness and isolation. She sank to her knees and 
 she prayed. 
 
 Then, as the terror had come to her, so did the 
 terror pass. It was her lover who was waiting for 
 her. A lover who had come across the world to tell 
 her that he loved her. And her lover was her 
 heart's desire and she loved him. What was there to 
 fear? Did she fear of very happiness? She had said, 
 "To-morrow! To-morrow!" And to-morrow was 
 to-day. Her face had been set towards an hour, as 
 the face of the sunflower towards the sun, and that 
 hour was here. 
 
 For a moment, as she entered the library, she 
 thought it was empty. But Coram, whom she had 
 looked to see in his old seat by the writing-table, or 
 standing, as he so often used to stand, under the
 
 298 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 Romney, and, whether there was a fire or not, with 
 his back to the hearth, had walked (in what was 
 probably restlessness under stress upon his part 
 also of feeling) to the farthest of the three windows. 
 From out of the embrasure he came forward to meet 
 her. 
 
 They shook hands. 
 
 They stood for a moment or two facing each other 
 without speaking. Ann's calmness, when she had 
 real need of it, never failed her, but after the violence 
 of her recent emotion she found herself surprised 
 at the calmness from out of the shelter of which she 
 was able to observe that he was not calm. The hand 
 which had taken her own steady hand was trembling. 
 At that, though she did not tremble outwardly, she 
 trembled inwardly with gladness. Presently she 
 would be telling him, and she could hardly face the 
 gladness that would be hers when she should have 
 told him. 
 
 They were still standing. She remembered a con- 
 versation which had taken place in this room, 
 throughout the greater part of which they had re- 
 mained standing. 
 
 "Oh, let us sit down," she said. It was the first 
 sign that she gave him that she, perhaps, was not 
 calmer than he. She knew suddenly that if she was 
 to remain calm she must sit down. She could trust 
 her face, but not her knees. The chair in which she 
 used always to sit for the weekly half -hours was in 
 its old place beside the writing-table. She sat down
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 299 
 
 on it, hoping that she did not appear to him to sink 
 into it. It gave her strength. It was solid as a 
 rock. It was one of the many valuable things in 
 the beautiful room; made in days when furniture 
 was made for lasting. It gave her of its own 
 strength. 
 
 "It's so wonderful to be back," he was saying, 
 speaking thickly and with difficulty, "and to be 
 here." 
 
 He did not at once sit down himself, though his 
 old chair was there, too, at the writing-table. That 
 had always been her arrangement : that he who had 
 most of the writing to do should sit at the table, she 
 beside it. 
 
 He looked round the room, finding nothing changed, 
 paced a few yards of the floor, looked at her again, and 
 again looked round the room. He might never have 
 been away at all. He came to a standstill beside his 
 chair the chair that she thought of as his. Not 
 two years yet but a lifetime ! 
 
 "I haven't dared to let myself think that you 
 would see me." 
 
 Ann pondered that. Still, he had not sat down. 
 She wished that he would sit down. And yet, deeper 
 in her heart, she did not see how things that he 
 must say, or must have to say, could be said or be 
 taken or be taken! sitting. 
 
 "Time makes things possible," Ann said. "Till 
 lately it's better that I should say it I don't 
 think I could have seen you. That does n't mean that
 
 300 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 I might not have wished to see you. It means just 
 what it says. I might have been wishing to see you, 
 but I should n't have seen you." 
 
 She spoke very gently if she spoke very carefully, 
 weighing her words. She had, at least, broken the 
 ice for him. 
 
 "I couldn't have looked for anything else," he 
 said, "if you hadn't." 
 
 That finished that. It was for him to plunge now 
 and he did not plunge. What he did was to draw 
 the chair round it swung on a pivot and at 
 last to sit down. 
 
 He was not quite facing her and she was able to 
 look at him. She saw the fine network of lines that 
 Claudia had seen about his eyes, and she saw, like 
 Claudia, that these lines yet, somehow, did not age 
 him. He had still his air of being a boy a very 
 big boy. If her heart had been hard, which it was not, 
 that must have softened it. Her heart seemed to swell 
 within her as she looked at him. An extraordinary 
 tenderness rose in her like the gushing waters of a 
 fountain. She wanted at that moment to possess 
 him rather than to be possessed by him. If he had 
 looked at her in that moment, they must have rushed 
 to an understanding of each other. But he did not 
 look at her in that moment, and afterwards of her 
 pride Ann could tell herself that she was glad. Even 
 as the moment passed she knew that there must 
 be no jumping to issues. Everything depended, ana* 
 must depend, upon what he had to say.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 301 
 
 He began to speak. He spoke of Claudia and of 
 their meeting at Brighton. 
 
 "Yes," Ann said, "Claudia told me. It was 
 strange that we should have been there." 
 
 " If it had been you I met instead of Mrs. Nanson, 
 would you have spoken to me?" 
 
 He turned to face her now, the chair moving round 
 a little on its pivot. 
 
 "Yes," Ann said, "I think I should have spoken 
 to you then. That's not very long ago, and time, 
 as I said just now, makes things possible that 
 would n't always have been possible. I should have 
 spoken to you listened to you, anyway." 
 
 It was as if he said, 'That's something.' 
 
 She saw a movement that wrung her heart a 
 movement which passed all over him, his face, his 
 body. He was pressing his hands one against the 
 other, with a force that was convulsive and prob- 
 ably quite unconscious. 
 
 "I don't know how to speak," he said. "I don't 
 know how to begin. It is n't that I don't know what 
 I want to say. I've had what I want to say in 
 my mind for so long that if I didn't speak" he 
 looked round "I feel as if the very stones would 
 cry out. Oh, it is n't quite that either. I want 
 I want" 
 
 He could not go on. 
 
 "Tell me," Ann said. 
 
 He put the hands that he had been pressing to- 
 gether over his eyes.
 
 302 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 That also gave Ann that tender, unnerving pain 
 which the tremor she had seen pass over him, and 
 through him, from his head to his feet, had occa- 
 sioned her. 
 
 "Tell me," she said again, almost inaudibly. 
 
 She could still trust herself, but she would not be 
 able to trust herself for long if his involuntary ac- 
 tions continued to play upon the chords of her very 
 being. At all costs she must not let herself go till 
 she had heard what he had to say. She was sure 
 was n't she, oh, was n't she? that the moment 
 was coming when she might cast all to the winds and 
 let herself go where she would be carried. But first 
 she must hear what he had to say, and what he had 
 to say must, yes, must, tell her what, and what only, 
 she could consent to hear. 
 
 "Don't worry yourself," she said now, still in a 
 low voice, "about how you say it. Say what you 
 want to say in the first words that come to you." 
 
 So much encouragement, at least, she might give 
 him. It was dreadful to her that in some sort she 
 should seem to be judging him. But it had to be so. 
 She had, as it were, to suffer it to be so now. 
 
 "Well, I don't know how I'm to expect you to 
 understand," he said. "I don't, myself, in a way, 
 though I've had time for thinking. I've been 
 alone with with what I have had to think of for 
 nearly two years. I Ve been absolutely alone with 
 it since I got your letter. Thinking, thinking. Ii 
 won't bear thinking of, but I 've done nothing else.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 303 
 
 Oh," he said, "if I could tell you you wouldn't 
 know." 
 
 She could not help him, as Claudia had once helped 
 him. 
 
 "I how shall I put this? I one must speak 
 of what won't bear thinking of. If I could have 
 asked you to forgive me for that, I think I could 
 have borne it, but you told me not to write again, 
 and I did n't. I could n't in the face of what you 
 said. But it pretty well broke me." 
 
 It 'broke' Ann to hear that. She was so ready to 
 hear anything that should give her the assurance she 
 wanted. She looked again at him as again he put his 
 hands over his eyes. Goodness! as Claudia would 
 have said, was n't it enough? The sight of this man 
 suffering for her, the knowledge that he had suf- 
 fered for her in all the time that she had been suffer- 
 ing for him? We may condone Claudia's less exact- 
 ing attitude, surely. We know that Claudia, looking 
 at him with Ann, would have said that if it was n't 
 enough it ought to have been. It would have been 
 in the case of nine women out of ten. But Ann, for 
 her misfortunes, was the tenth woman. It was n't 
 enough. It was n't enough yet, anyway. It was n't 
 enough, that is to say, at the point which Ann had 
 then reached. Ann, in sympathy, might be 'broken,' 
 but something which was still rigid had to be broken 
 in Ann before it could be enough. 
 
 He did not look at her as he began to speak again. 
 
 "Afterwards," he sank his voice so that she in
 
 304 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 turn hardly heard him, "when I knew that 
 that I loved you, and what what that meant to 
 me, I would have given my life to wipe out what 
 I had done. I did n't know till then what the 're- 
 pentance' that the Bible is full of means. I did n't 
 know till then that there could be a changing of one's 
 whole outlook. 'Conversion' is the horrible word 
 for the sort of thing that I mean. There are these 
 things. They are not only a state of religious emo- 
 tion which one associates with revivalist meetings. 
 They are real changes of attitude. From such mo- 
 ments one sees everything newly. I would have given 
 my life. I wanted only one thing in the world from 
 that moment, and your letter told me that the one 
 thing that I wanted I had put it out of my power ever 
 to get. You meant what you said? You meant then 
 you did n't want to hear anything I could say? You 
 meant anything more to do with me?" 
 
 "Yes, I meant that," Ann said. 
 
 As he spoke her heart had been sinking. Was that 
 what he had to tell her? If that was what he had to 
 tell her, if she had not meant then what she had writ- 
 ten, she would have had to mean it, and she would 
 have meant it, now. She heard him in a sort of un- 
 easy, distressing dream, wishing to stop him, unable 
 to stop him. His words fell upon her ears as if from 
 and across an immeasurable distance. Had she known 
 him at all ever known him? He had not loved her 
 till afterwards. His love had not awakened his paS- 
 sion. His passion had awakened his love. What
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 305 
 
 was he telling her, if not this? Oh, other things he 
 was telling her. That he had been faithful to her 
 since? His faithfulness to her since did not seem to 
 her to matter very greatly if he had not been faith- 
 ful to her before if there had been nothing to 
 be faithful to. The world was toppling about her, 
 shaken, it seemed, to its very foundations. 
 
 She had a sensation of physical cold as if the tem- 
 perature of the room had fallen. The fire which, in 
 the ordinary course, had been lighted that morning, 
 before the unexpected warmth of the day had de- 
 clared itself, had been allowed to go out. Ann, look- 
 ing past Coram at the ashes in the grate, thought, 
 behind the tumult of her thoughts, that nothing 
 looked more desolate than a dead fire. It was colder 
 than a fire which has never been lighted. It was 
 also like something which has given up its soul. She 
 shivered in the warm room. 
 
 And then from the hall, down the length of the 
 passage and through the closely fitting door, she 
 heard the faint echoes of a familiar sound: Johnny 
 and his nurses starting for their walk. Her hands 
 lying along the arms of her chair gripped the polished 
 grooved wood. She knew in that moment that she 
 would not, as she had so fondly supposed, presently 
 be telling him. She was not going to tell him. He 
 had made it impossible that he could be told. 
 
 His next words set the seal, if any had been 
 needed, upon the impossibility. 
 
 " I had done for myself, too, by a horrible mistake."
 
 306 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 She may have winced then. Did he see? Did he 
 know that he was done for? He hurried on: "Call it 
 madness. It 's out of the question that I can explain. 
 It was madness. I must have gone clean out of my 
 senses. I ask you to believe that." 
 
 Ann heard him. He had said 'mistake,' and asked 
 her to believe almost the one thing of all that she did 
 not wish to believe. The only more dismaying ut- 
 terance that she could have heard from his lips 
 would have been that he had behaved like a cad. 
 She knew in her heart that such a self-accusation 
 would not have presented the case. She knew that 
 it would have misrepresented it to grotesqueness. 
 She knew that, even as things were, he was, in his 
 unhappiness, misinterpreting it, and in spite of him- 
 self distorting it; but she could not balance her con- 
 victions against the words he had spoken. If he 
 thought he had behaved badly even badly! 
 he had behaved badly; and that was the end of 
 everything. 
 
 He did not say what she dreaded. She was spared 
 that. She had nodded too briefly, perhaps, to his 
 petition. Her acquiescence if it was acquiescence 
 closed what he may have thought of as the intol- 
 erably painful part of those things which had to be 
 spoken between them. 
 
 Much had to be spoken between them, but, for 
 one of them, everything had been spoken when the 
 other had used those words 'mistake' and 'madness'.' 
 Nay, before he had used them. All was over for her
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 307 
 
 when he had used the word 'Afterwards.' Ann was 
 relieved that no sounds came through the windows 
 from the garden. Johnny and his perambulator and 
 his nurses had gone another way. 
 
 Yet she heard all that he had to say. Thus she 
 learnt that but for her letter he had meant to aban- 
 don his projected travels and come back in the first 
 available boat. This gave her her one gleam of con- 
 solation, for it seemed to antedate the 'Afterwards* 
 which she had placed at the exact moment of the 
 receipt of her letter. But he had not come back, and 
 his 'Afterwards' stuck, as it were, in her throat, 
 choking the words which might even then have 
 brought their tried souls to some sort of a mutual 
 understanding. If he had not loved her at the su- 
 preme moment of her life, what did it matter when 
 it was, precisely, that he had come to love her? She 
 respected his obedience to her wishes. She had left 
 him no loophole. She had meant her letter to be 
 the final word from which there can be no appeal. 
 She remembered only too well the desolation of 
 heart and soul and spirit out of which it had been 
 written. Her pride had received what must have 
 been its death-wound if she had spared herself the 
 knife. Even if she had known then what was to 
 happen to her, it is doubtful whether she would have 
 flinched. She could be glad at heart that when she 
 wrote she had not known. 
 
 And something else was between them. She saw
 
 3 o8 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 that he supposed his difficulties to be complicated 
 by their relative worldly positions and even posses- 
 sions. Claudia had known that they were thus com- 
 plicated. As if these mattered ! As if , whatever he 
 could be accused of, he could be so much as sus- 
 pected of fortune-hunting! He, upon his part, knew, 
 of course, that she would not so suspect him, but the 
 mere fact that there was this difference did, she per- 
 ceived, hamper him. Well, was it not the supposed 
 importance of this difference which she herself 
 had once believed to be hampering him, tying his 
 tongue, driving him, in fine, from Redmayne? 
 
 Was it not the conviction that this, in very truth, 
 was so which had sent her trembling, fainting, to 
 the shadowed garden? 
 
 Difficulties for him; difficulties for her; difficulties 
 everywhere. Was it to have been expected that 
 anything would go smoothly? 
 
 But she had said, "Tell me," and "Tell me," 
 while as yet she had thought that what he had to 
 tell her was what she hungered to hear. She had 
 told him not to trouble himself about the manner of 
 his telling, but to speak in the first words that should 
 come to him. And she had consented to see him. 
 And he was there. And the sum of these things 
 though by then he, too, must have perceived that 
 all was going hopelessly awry brought him to 
 the final which was also the primal object of his 
 visit. She saw the effort that he made to get con- 
 trol of his muscles and his voice. He had turned
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 309 
 
 round in his chair and was facing her. It was her 
 eyes that were looking down now, and she felt the 
 steadfast gaze of his through her eyelids. 
 
 "You meant that, then," he was saying; "I 
 could n't have looked for anything else. I don't pre- 
 tend that I deserved anything else. But now? You 
 said time made things possible. If it means any- 
 thing to you to know it, I don't think there has been 
 an hour of all the time I've been away that I 
 have n't been thinking of you. I've thought of 
 you so constantly that I don't know what I have 
 really thought and what I have only desperately 
 wanted to think. I know that I Ve sometimes dared 
 to think that you might care. I've nothing to go 
 upon or only such little things that they amount 
 to nothing. Movings of straws hardly that. But 
 if you knew how I wanted to think that they had 
 any meaning, you'd understand my grasping even 
 at straws." 
 
 "One moment," Ann said: "When was this?" 
 
 "When? All the time." 
 
 " I see," Ann said. " You were looking back." 
 
 "I was looking back for anything that could give 
 me a glimmering of hope. I was raking the days and 
 the years for any sort of confirmation. Oh, there 
 was little enough. I don't mean your goodness to 
 me. There were thirteen steady years of that. I 
 mean anything that might seem to show that you 
 could care for me, or think of me as more than 
 a friend. Two occasions," he paused for the
 
 310 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 word, "do stand out from the rest: the day we 
 stood by the statue in the wood is one of them, and 
 that last evening here is the other. Do you remember 
 the statue? " 
 
 Did she not? Nothing that he could have in- 
 stanced could have come so near to disarming her. 
 Happen what might, some sort of solace would be 
 left to her out of the bitterness of her disillusion and 
 disappointment. He had felt the spell. They had 
 been near to each other that day. Then, at least, 
 they had been near to each other. She saw him 
 again with the bird in his arms. She felt again the 
 unbearable pain of that moment. She saw the 
 bird released, wait, and then fly. She saw herself 
 sitting on the stone seat, and Coram on the ground 
 at her feet. She heard again the soft whinnying of 
 his horse. She saw him next standing beside her 
 in the middle of the circle before the figure it en- 
 shrined. And then she saw something else. She 
 saw him, just before they turned to go, pick a leaf 
 and lay it as an offering at the feet of the waiting 
 boy. 
 
 If she remembered! 
 
 "Then," he said, "that last evening not not 
 only the end of it ... the whole of it: dinner . . . the 
 three of us, you and I and Mrs. Nanson . . . some- 
 thing over us, and over us when we sat in the garden, 
 and most of all when we said good-bye. There 
 seemed to be something that was n't said then, and 
 that somehow could n't be said ..."
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 311 
 
 But that way lay also the madness he had spoken 
 of, and the mistake ! Useless anything that he could 
 say. What Ann saw, to the obscuring of everything 
 else, was that marriage, or even the thought of mar- 
 riage, had not been in his mind at the time of a 
 surrender which she, God help her, had looked upon 
 as her share in a sacrament. The chalice a stirrup 
 cup in very truth nothing more, nothing less. 
 He, in other words, had seen Profane Love where 
 she had seen Sacred Love. That sufficed for her. 
 She asked no questions. She refused him, aware 
 to misery that in so doing she dismissed him. 
 
 So, for the second time, he left her.
 
 THE FOURTH BOOK
 
 BOOK THE FOURTH 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE time had come for Claudia to speak, the time 
 for plain speaking. 
 
 Let be so, then: Claudia was ready. 
 
 They were in the boudoir. Dinner was over. They 
 had got through that mercifully without disaster. 
 Claudia had heard bare facts, nothing more; for, 
 coming in from making herself scarce for the after- 
 noon, a drive to call upon friends of her own on 
 the farther side of the county, she had effected 
 her purpose of eff acement so thoroughly that she had 
 left herself time for no more than a few minutes' 
 talk with Ann before the dressing-bell sounded. 
 But she had heard enough. Her mind was made 
 up. Ann had listened to him and had refused him. 
 The time had come. 
 
 "You did n't ask him?" Claudia said. 
 After all their talk, the admissions of only a few 
 days ago, the wonderful expectation and the active 
 upbuoying happiness of yesterday and of that very 
 morning, Ann had not asked him. 
 "There was nothing to ask." 
 "How do you mean nothing to ask?" 
 Ann looked at her patiently, as if she would say,
 
 3 i6 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "You rather force me, don't you, Claudia?" but she 
 did not, yet, at any rate, look at her as if she chal- 
 lenged her right. Claudia would be patient, too. She 
 intended to be patient. She was prepared even for 
 the need of patience. She was prepared also, it may 
 be, to hear her right challenged. 
 
 "Oh, well, it just wasn't marriage to him," 
 Ann said; "the thought of marriage was n't in his 
 mind." 
 
 "The possibility," Claudia murmured. 
 
 Ann accepted that. 
 
 "The possibility, if you like," she said. She gave 
 a little laugh. "That seems to have come with his 
 discovery that he loved me." 
 
 "Oh, he does love you?" Claudia said. 
 
 " He appears to have found out that he does," Ann 
 said. 
 
 Good Lord! Claudia thought to herself, what 
 more did the woman want! Of her love for Ann, 
 even in her exasperation, she corrected 'woman,' to 
 'dear woman,' to 'dear, good, prejudiced, blinded 
 woman' no, 'blind,' not blinded, and unseeing 
 rather than blind. 
 
 "If he loves you ..." she said. 
 
 "He went," Ann said. "It's unanswerable." 
 
 "He went," Claudia said, speaking low but very 
 distinctly, "because he thought he was meant to go 
 because he did n't know, anyway, that he was n't 
 meant to go." 
 
 "What do you mean, Claudia?"
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 317 
 
 "Just exactly what I say, Ann. He did n't know 
 that you expected him not to go." 
 
 "Not to go! That I expected . . . He he did 
 n't know!" 
 
 Claudia nodded. All the colour ebbed from Ann's 
 face. Claudia looked away. She could not bear to 
 see that. 
 
 "It does n't mean that he did n't care," she said. 
 "He did care. I believe he cared dreadfully. I be- 
 lieve he has always cared. But something was hap- 
 pening which had happened before the sort of 
 thing that did happen to him." 
 
 Ann's scared eyes were on Claudia's face. She 
 did not even yet wholly grasp what Claudia meant. 
 
 Claudia saw that she must be more explicit. 
 
 " It 's we who are to blame," she said "our sex. 
 You know what he's like, even to look at. Is it 
 possible you don't guess that you don't know 
 what life must have shown him? Why, one has only 
 to look at him. I don't pretend to understand these 
 things. They are, and that's all about it. Do you 
 remember" Claudia smiled in all her seriousness 
 "do you remember what I said the first time I 
 saw him? It was the day I arrived. He passed us on 
 horseback, do you remember, when you were bring- 
 ing me from the station. I said no one ought to be 
 so good-looking. No one ought to be allowed to 
 be." 
 
 Ann, in spite of her desperation, or because of 
 it, snatched at a side-issue.
 
 3i8 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "I don't think him so very good-looking. There 
 are plenty of faults in his face " 
 
 "And not one line that any one would wish dif- 
 ferent any woman, at all events. You know as 
 well as I do that it is n't a question of correctness. 
 He's good-looking in the sense that I mean. There's 
 something a quality in his good looks. I '11 grant 
 you, if you like, that good looks are n't necessary. 
 The quality can be there without looks at all. Good- 
 ness! there was a horrible little purser on board the 
 ship I went out in spotty, even ! but he had 
 it, whatever it is, and all the ladies' -maids and the 
 stewardesses were in love with him. I had a maid 
 in those days Boulter and the trouble I had 
 with her! Scenes, tears, whimsies; she was positively 
 ill. No harm came of it, but that was n't poor 
 Boulter's fault. But this is my point no one 
 could have blamed the dreadful little purser if harm 
 had come of it." 
 
 Ann sat quite still, her eyes on Claudia's face. 
 No needlework engaged her fingers that night, or 
 Claudia's fingers either; the occasion, by unspoken 
 agreement, too grave for distractions. There were 
 lines on Ann's smooth forehead. She heard Claudia 
 in silence, her flickering eyelids trying the words as 
 they fell. 
 
 "You asked him nothing," Claudia said, "and 
 so he told you nothing. He might not have been 
 able to tell you if you had asked him. But he might 
 oh, he might. How is it that I see and that you
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 319 
 
 don't? You admit that you care for him, and you 
 don't see!" 
 
 "What is it that you do see, Claudia?" 
 
 "I'm telling you, Ann." She caught her breath 
 and released it with a little protesting sound. "You 
 say he went. Very well, he did go. He went because 
 he did n't dream that you would marry him." 
 
 "But," Ann said in protest, in very stupefaction 
 "but..." 
 
 She did not finish. She could not. 
 
 "Yes, I know," Claudia said. "That's the pity 
 of it and the dreadfulness. But surely, surely some 
 of the pity may be extended to him for what should 
 have made such a thing possible. Where our sex is 
 concerned he's always been the victim of his own 
 appeal. He has n't an ounce of conceit I don't 
 mean that. I doubt whether he even realizes. I 
 don't suppose he argues about it or thinks about it. 
 It's there. We know it's there. Why, if I know it's 
 there when I Ve only seen him three times ... if I 
 knew it was there the first time I did see him . . . ! 
 Something that makes one want to give the de- 
 cent ones among us, that is ! and something that 
 makes the other sort want to get. And I'm not 
 altogether blaming the other sort either. I don't 
 know that I'm blaming any one. It's tragic, but, 
 oh, my goodness! oh, my goodness! it's comic, 
 too!" 
 
 She came to a stop and she laughed ; tears, all the 
 same, as once before, very near the shining eyes.
 
 320 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 Ann shifted her position, but did not speak. Claudia 
 spoke again. 
 
 "And more than half of his appeal is innocent. 
 He's like a big boy. He is a boy whatever his age 
 may be. Oh, he's old enough to 'know better' 
 no one need tell me that! But he is a boy. He'll 
 never grow up. There are men who never do grow 
 up. They grow older and he's grown older (and 
 that's you, Ann!). I saw that at Brighton; a line 
 or two in his face; a look in his eyes but they 
 never grow up and women want to mother them. 
 And that's an excuse, a plea, rather, for them 
 even, perhaps, the other sort. But for the moment 
 it 's not the excuses or the pleas for them that con- 
 cern us. It's the pleas for him. And it is n't exactly 
 pleas, either, that I'm putting forward. It's an ex- 
 planation. All his life a demand has been made upon 
 him. Something has been offered him put in his 
 way. Oh, if it's got to be stated more plainly, 
 thrown at his head." 
 
 Ann drew back with a little cry. She was white 
 now to the lips. 
 
 Claudia gasped. 
 
 "No, no, no!" Claudia said quickly, leaning for- 
 ward as Ann drew back. "Don't, for Heaven's sake, 
 misunderstand me." She caught her hands. " Don't 
 you see what I mean and what I don't mean? Can't 
 you distinguish? Don't you see that it was on a 
 background of that, that you, altogether different, 
 came to him? Altogether different. Ann, you shan't
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 321 
 
 misunderstand me! He knew you were different. 
 My goodness! of course he knew! He thought of 
 you as miles above him. He had n't dared no, 
 that is n't the word. He had n't let himself hope, 
 or even imagine, that you would think of him as a 
 husband. He did afterwards. Oh, he did afterwards 
 when he thought he had done for himself. The trag- 
 edy for you and for him and for me, since I sent 
 you to him was that it was to some one with those 
 experiences behind him that you came that night 
 in the garden. And you were defenceless. You were 
 unprepared ..." 
 
 She broke off, sobbing. Ann was sobbing, too. But 
 Ann was drawing her hands from her. Claudia tried 
 to retain them, but Ann said, "Let go! Oh, let go!" 
 and she released them. 
 
 There were a few moments of sheer dismay when, 
 to all Claudia's attempts to soothe her, Ann with 
 averted face would only answer, "Let me alone! 
 Oh, let me alone! Why can't you let me alone!" 
 
 "But I've hurt you," Claudia said. 
 
 Ann struggled for her handkerchief. 
 
 "Yes, you have," she said. "You may well say 
 that. You've . . . shamed me. I was n't too proud 
 of myself before . . . shamed me . . . humbled me 
 to the dust . . ." 
 
 "You know I did n't want to do that," Claudia 
 said. " I was trying to show you why you should n't 
 be or feel hurt." 
 
 "By showing me, however different you may say
 
 322 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 that I am from the others, that I just did behave 
 like the others." 
 
 Claudia was silent for a moment or two, consider- 
 ing, weighing chances. Then, her own face growing 
 very white, she said steadily : 
 
 "Perhaps it's necessary that you should see what 
 he saw, Ann." 
 
 Her fear was that Ann would get up and go out 
 of the room; refuse to listen; refuse, it might be, to 
 have anything more to do with her. In a throbbing 
 lull when time, measured actually by a few seconds, 
 seemed as in the breathless space between a flash 
 and an explosion, to be suspended or unbearably 
 prolonged, Claudia envisaged what a rupture be- 
 tween her and Ann would mean. The tension was 
 horrible. If Ann moved suddenly. Or if she did not 
 move . . . 
 
 Claudia could have screamed. 
 
 The striking of the clock upon the mantelpiece 
 broke the spell. Simultaneously she and Ann re- 
 membered that at any moment now the servants 
 would come in with the urn and the tea-tray. Claudia 
 breathed again, and, drying her own eyes, quickly 
 but without hurry, saw Ann dry hers. Little beads 
 stood on Claudia's forehead, but she took up a book, 
 and Ann went over to the writing-table, which had 
 its back to the room. A lady reads and a lady writes. 
 It was into an atmosphere of unsuspicious calm,* of 
 normal, unquestionable domesticity, that five min-
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 323 
 
 utes later the servants and the tea-tray symbols 
 of an unalterable routine made their quiet, un- 
 observant entrance. 
 
 Ann, over her shoulder, said, "Make tea for me, 
 Claudia." 
 
 Claudia, not to be outdone, said, "In half a min- 
 ute, Ann ; I must just get to the bottom of the page." 
 
 So they combined to sustain the appearances 
 which were yet quite unmenaced. 
 
 Had the necessities of the moment saved them? 
 Claudia, trembling now, her limbs like water so that 
 her hand would hardly support the weight of her 
 book, did not know. It seemed ages before she heard 
 a sound from the writing-table behind her. Then 
 she heard Ann tearing up the sheet of paper on which 
 she had been writing or pretending to write. The 
 pause gave her time to recover herself. 
 
 Ann came over and began mechanically to make 
 the tea which neither of them wanted. Claudia saw 
 her face, and knew what the effort of the tranquil 
 back which she had presented to the room must 
 have cost her. 
 
 "Are you very angry with me?" 
 
 "I don't know, Claudia. I suppose I've no right 
 to be angry. No, I Ve certainly no right to be angry 
 with you. I've put myself outside the right to be 
 angry at all." 
 
 "Well, don't be angry with me, Ann. You've 
 every right to be, but don't, or we come to a dead-
 
 324 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 lock, and we must n't we must n't. This has got 
 to be talked out. I'm I 'm come here, Ann ! 
 I'm shaking all over. You'll think I'm pretending, 
 for I'm quite capable of shaking on purpose, but 
 I 'm not. I 'm in desperate earnest." 
 
 "Am I such a beast?" Ann said. 
 
 Claudia shook her head, smiling through her 
 tears. 
 
 "It's I that feel a beast such a miserable lit- 
 tle beast! Because I know myself, perhaps. Oh, 
 I have n't any illusions about myself. I do use all 
 our weapons when I have to. I'd use cunning and 
 sophistry and anything that would help me. I 
 was n't born a woman for nothing. I 'd try all the 
 expedients the tricks. It's only you who are 
 above the tricks that could make me ashamed, for 
 in my heart I know I'm quite shameless. But in 
 this I 'm absolutely sincere. Will you listen to me? " 
 
 "You are trembling, Claudia!" 
 
 "I 've taken upon myself. I feel rather like Abra- 
 ham pleading for the Cities of the Plain." 
 
 "It is n't as bad as that!" Ann said. 
 
 Was it tricks? Was it Claudia's abominable clev- 
 erness? 
 
 Whatever the contributing causes, the tension, 
 temporarily, at least, was relaxed. Claudia could 
 speak again and Ann could listen. 
 
 "What I want to know is how you know," Ann 
 said. "Did he tell you all this?"
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 325 
 
 "He hardly said a word." 
 
 "Then you're only guessing!" 
 
 "But guessing right," Claudia answered. "I be- 
 lieve I said that to you once before. I know things. 
 I do guess right. It 's the quality of my defects. It 's 
 my feminineness. It's all that I've just been ad- 
 mitting to you." 
 
 The flicker of humour had passed from Ann's face. 
 
 "Then you don't even know about the others?" 
 
 "Oh, don't I?" Claudia said. 
 
 "About what you called the other sort?" 
 
 "I know about them best of all. Though I don't 
 know in the sense that I have n't a vestige of evi- 
 dence to produce I do know. I 'd stake my life 
 on it." 
 
 "But how do you know?" 
 
 "I just do know. I always know. There are 
 women that you could n't talk to for five minutes 
 without knowing well, that! Oh, you could talk 
 to them for hours and not know forever, perhaps. 
 But I could n't." 
 
 She paused, sorely tempted to use names. What 
 was Lady Mallard that she should spare her? What 
 was that good-natured, likable trollop, Lady Fother- 
 ingham, that she should spare her? Sorely, sorely 
 tempted! For a moment she felt reckless. But she 
 would be wholly unjustified. She had no proofs. 
 She had less than no proofs. She was guessing wildly, 
 if, as she felt in her very bones, she was guessing 
 right. Two light women. Very well, that might be
 
 326 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 so, but on what grounds, what conceivable grounds, 
 did she couple them, light as they might be, with 
 him? They were there. He was there. Flint, steel, 
 the spark? She had not even seen the spark. No, 
 out of the question. But she knew. Oh, she knew. 
 
 "And if it's true," Ann said "if you're right 
 in what you think, am I to take their their 
 leavings?" 
 
 "He's not their leavings," Claudia said. It was 
 almost a cry. She was on sure ground there. "My 
 goodness, Ann! he's not their leavings." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "They're his. That 's what you don't see. They 
 are his leavings. You 've been privileged I will 
 use the word to make them his leavings. They 
 were his leavings from the moment he loved you." 
 
 It was Ann who gasped now. But, in spite of her, 
 her heart leapt. Her eyes, round, still with the ap- 
 prehensive look, and with the traces of tears under 
 them, searched Claudia's face. Claudia's eyes met 
 hers unblinking. 
 
 There was another pause. Now, if Claudia had 
 been wise, she would have retired, leaving this new 
 thought to soak in. She made her one false move. 
 
 "You can't send him back to them," she said; 
 "you can't. It's what you will be doing if you send 
 him away. Back irretrievably this time. And after 
 getting him away. My goodness, Ann! what do vou 
 want? Isn't it enough?" She was carried along 
 blindly by an indignation which she should have
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 327 
 
 known how to control. She said it "wouldn't be 
 fair." She said it would be "downright wicked." 
 She lost her pretty head, in short. "Ann, you must 
 bear with me. What happens with the rest of his 
 life is in your hands. There's a straight line and 
 there's a crooked line, and if he takes the crooked 
 line, it's you who will be responsible." 
 
 Ann clasped her hands. She unclasped them. She 
 moved a cup; pushed it away. Claudia had gone 
 too far. 
 
 "I think I am bearing with you," she said in a 
 strangled voice. "You find plenty to say for him. 
 Oh, I dare say there is plenty. What of me? You 
 forget what I Ve had to bear all along what I Ve 
 had to bear from him and for him. He went away 
 . . . left me ... I was left to to my God, 
 Claudia! I'm only flesh and blood. Can anything 
 more be required or even asked of me? I Ve borne 
 his child.. ." 
 
 The woman truly is broken on the wheel and the 
 man goes free. Claudia, watching Ann helplessly 
 (and perceiving only too well the mistake which she 
 had made), experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling 
 and knew herself at the mercy once more of those 
 thoughts which had possessed her at Brighton, when, 
 for a few ugly moments, she had hated the man and 
 all men for his sake. She set her teeth and watched, 
 enduring what she saw with every nerve exposed, 
 jarred, on edge. And she must begin her labours
 
 328 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 afresh. She had achieved something and lost it; 
 built and knocked down. Well, to her task once 
 more. But she was tempted in another direction 
 now.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 TEMPTED! Her nerves ajar. Tempted! Two birds 
 with one stone! 
 
 She had only for blessings to give cursings; for 
 pleadings, to denounce. Ann would turn then and 
 defend what she herself had denounced. She would 
 defend the man who had hurt her, as a mother de- 
 fends her young. 
 
 So easy a way! Infallible, moreover. The thing 
 was established. It was common experience, com- 
 mon knowledge! Interfere between the wife and 
 the husband who is ill-treating her, and the wife 
 will turn upon you and fight you, fight you for 
 the husband's right to beat her, and, fighting you, 
 be reconciled to him. And Ann representing the 
 wife was in love. If she had said that she was 
 not, and she had not said that, Claudia would 
 still have known that she was in love. She loved 
 the man in spite of the suffering he had caused her. 
 More, she loved him because of the suffering he 
 had caused her. Claudia saw all the weapons ready 
 to her hand (which was her tongue!) if she would but 
 be unscrupulous enough to use them. And, smart- 
 ing as she was, tingling, itching, she longed to use 
 them. She had found, as Ann had told her, plenty 
 to say for him, but if it came to what there was 
 that could be said on the other side . . what was
 
 330 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 there not that could be said against him? The lover 
 who rides away . . . the betrayer . . . There were 
 words for such men . . . crudities, coarsenesses of 
 the Elizabethans and of the Restoration oh, she 
 would find them! It would not be words that 
 would fail her. Nothing would fail her. And, lash- 
 ing him, she would be lashing Ann, and Ann, doubly 
 lashed, goaded, stung, would rise and fight . . . and 
 the end the defeat of Claudia which would be 
 Claudia's victory would justify the means. She 
 could see Coram recalled . . . 
 
 Sorely, sorely tempted, Claudia! She opened her 
 mouth to speak and paused. 
 
 Tricks, tricks, the femininities! And she had told 
 Ann that, though she was capable of using them, 
 she was not using them. And the whole thing would 
 be a lie, grossly unfair to Coram, who trusted her, 
 whose cause lay in her hands; unfair to Ann also. 
 Not thus must these two win to one another. Coram 
 was not what she would have called him. He was 
 not unworthy. It was her part to make Ann see the 
 good which she, Claudia, knew to be in him. She 
 turned from the temptation, relinquishing it, per- 
 haps, rather than thrusting it behind her, but re- 
 jecting it finally. She braced herself anew and let 
 Ann weep.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE urn on the neglected tea-table was still hiss- 
 ing and rumbling. The sound caught her ear and 
 presently her attention. It was as if there was a 
 deliberate intention on the part of the urn to at- 
 tract her notice. If it was her admiration that it 
 wanted, it had that always. Its beautiful lines could 
 not but please the eye, its proportions with their 
 rhythm and balance, its shining copper surface, the 
 gracious hanging rings which were its handles, the 
 cunning workmanship of the little ivory-mounted 
 lever tap . . . 
 
 Hissing and rumbling, humming like a hive . . . 
 
 "Did I not," said the urn, "did I not, by my 
 timely appearing on the agitated scene, save one 
 situation? Might I not be trusted, perhaps, if not 
 to save, at least to ease, another?" 
 
 Claudia arose, understanding at last. Routine to 
 the rescue, commonplaces, the calming influences of 
 the normal, the ordinary. Ann had begun and aban- 
 doned. The water which she had poured into the 
 cups to warm them was growing cold. Claudia 
 emptied and warmed afresh. The tea was made, she 
 found, but was very strong from its long standing. 
 She poured some of it away and filled up the teapot 
 once more, ready now to hear, and, interpreting, 
 to read approval into the pleasant, familiar sound of
 
 332 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 the gurgling fall of the water. Then, as in the night 
 of watching in the nursery, she brought a cup to 
 Ann. 
 
 Ann refused it. 
 
 She stood beside her with the cup in her hand. 
 Her hand was still not quite steady. Ann took the 
 cup from her.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THEY went over the ground again inch by inch. 
 When Claudia softened, Ann was inclined to soften. 
 When Ann softened, Claudia was more than in- 
 clined to soften. Sometimes they both hardened 
 simultaneously. But softening, it may be said, an- 
 swered ultimately to softening. The tensest moments 
 were those in which Ann heard for the first time 
 of Claudia's letter. For Claudia, self-pledged 
 to straightforwardness, made her confession. Her 
 confession ("You'll be angrier than ever, Ann. I 
 wrote to him") constituted the one bit of ground 
 then-to-fore untrodden. Claudia recognized the 
 dangerous nature of that piece of ground as she 
 stepped on to it, but did she not feel herself 
 pledged? it had to be trodden goodness! and 
 re- trodden ! like the rest. 
 
 They came to this new ground by the way of the 
 old. Ann, melted as a woman by the tea, or by the 
 unsteadiness of Claudia's hand, or perhaps ashamed 
 of the cry which she had allowed to escape her, 
 even if, indeed, it had been wrung from her, had 
 held out the olive branch frankly. 
 
 " I believe it's you who bear with me, Claudia!" 
 
 Claudia laughed. 
 
 "We'll say, if you like, that we bear with each 
 other."
 
 334 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 She was prepared for surprises, but hardly for 
 Ann's next words. 
 
 "What do you want me to do?" Ann said. 
 
 For a second or two Claudia almost held her 
 breath. But she was not deceived. She was not ab- 
 solved from her confession. The end was not yet. 
 
 "To bear with him," she said. 
 
 "How can I? How am I to? Claudia, how am I 
 to? I ask you!" 
 
 "You only can," Claudia said, pursuing her pol- 
 icy of inch-by-inchness, "if you can manage to be- 
 lieve in him." 
 
 "But" the old, old ground! "I did believe 
 in him. I believed in him absolutely. Absolutely. 
 That's why I find myself where I am to-day 
 where I was the day after he left me. Oh, Claudia, he 
 left me! It all comes back to that. There's no get- 
 ting away from it." 
 
 "No, there is n't," Claudia said quietly. " I don't 
 pretend that there is. But " Patience ! How many 
 times must she say this? "he did n't know. That 's 
 what you 're ignoring. That 's what it really comes 
 back to." 
 
 She waited a moment, and then said : " If he had 
 known, nothing on earth would have taken him from 
 you. If he'd known afterwards, oceans and conti- 
 nents would n't have kept him from you. Why, 
 they have n't as it is. If only he had known, if only 
 news could have reached him!" The moment had > 
 come. "There's something I 'd better tell you, Ann,
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 335 
 
 while I'm about it . . ." She hardly hesitated. There 
 should be no reservations now. "It is n't my fault 
 that news did n't reach him." 
 
 Other silences had been awful in this room. Only 
 one other, Claudia thought, had been quite like the 
 pounding silence out of which Ann at last repeated 
 her words. 
 
 "You wrote to him!" 
 
 "What was I to do?" Claudia said. "It was in 
 those dreadful days when when we knew and 
 when we did n't know where to go. You had told 
 him not to write. Something had to be done. I 
 thought so then, anyway, for even I did n't know 
 the strength that was in you. Actually nothing 
 was done, for my letter never reached him. You 
 managed without him." 
 
 She looked at Ann now. The red wave which had 
 flooded Ann's face again was again receding. It 
 would leave her whiter than before. 
 
 "Ann, do say something. No, of course, I did n't 
 ask him, if you want to know that. I would n't have 
 asked him in any case, but there was no need. I had 
 only to see him to know that my letter had n't 
 reached him. I don't know what became of it. There 
 was nothing in it that could have enlightened any 
 one else, so it does n't matter what did become of it. 
 I said there were reasons why he would wish to come 
 home no, I said might wish. I told him no one 
 knew I was writing. Give me credit for some dis- 
 cretion, Ann."
 
 336 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "Why did n't you tell me?" Ann said. 
 
 "What would have been the use of that? Would 
 you have let me write? Of course, you would n't." 
 
 Do what she would, Claudia could not altogether 
 keep exasperation out of her voice. 
 
 "It may still reach him," Ann said. 
 
 "That's unlikely," Claudia said, more humbly. 
 "But it's possible. I can't deny that." 
 
 "Then he would know whether I told him or not." 
 
 Poor Ann. She had, indeed, something to get ac- 
 customed to. Never in the days of the years of a 
 sheltered pilgrimage had life shewn itself to her be- 
 fore in such uncompromising nakedness. And she 
 herself, before an inquisitor who was somehow 
 Claudia, her own familiar friend, seemed to be 
 stripped bare also. The inquisitor was kind, but she 
 was ruthless . . . insisted . . . spared her nothing . . . 
 
 "Well, what's done is done," she said at last. "I 
 won't say whether I think you were justified. Things 
 were desperate enough to appear to justify you. 
 There was . . . Johnny, or there was to be Johnny 
 and if you 'd succeeded, Johnny might have been 
 saved, and for that yes, I would have accepted 
 any humiliation. But there is n't Johnny now. Noth- 
 ing can alter his position not all the humiliation 
 in the world. I'm free, Claudia. I'm absolutely 
 free. I Ve bought my freedom and paid for it. I 
 managed without him, as you say. Why should I 
 ask anything now?" 
 
 "You would n't be asking," Claudia said. "It's
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 337 
 
 he who is asking. You 'd be giving. You 'd be giving 
 all through giving Johnny his father, and giving 
 Johnny's father his son, and, more, oh, more than 
 that," she nodded gravely, "much more. Yes, Ann, 
 I am thinking of his case. In some ways his case 
 now is harder than yours." ,< 
 
 "Have I a case at all?" Ann asked. 
 
 "What is he to me apart from you?" Claudia 
 asked harshly. 
 
 There was silence again Ann, pulling up, 
 steadied, and a little ashamed, remembering what, 
 after all, she owed to Claudia; Claudia, the pound- 
 ing of her heart subsiding, conceding readily enough, 
 inwardly, that in the matter of her interference she 
 was being let down lightly by a grievously tried Ann. 
 Each owed something to the other. But Ann, allow- 
 ing herself to remember, knew suddenly that her 
 debt to Claudia was past paying. 
 
 At that her thoughts swung back once more to the 
 Claudia of the thousand engaging affectations who 
 had stepped from the train on a day which seemed 
 now as if it must have belonged to some earlier life. 
 Even then Claudia, though she did not know it, was 
 responding. The very invitation which had brought 
 her was a cry for help. If Claudia had failed her 
 then ... if Claudia had failed her afterwards, had 
 ever failed her . . . 
 
 And what poor Claudia had been let in for ! What 
 she had been drawn into! If it was she who had pre- 
 cipitated the catastrophe, that gave her the more
 
 338 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 rights gave her rights which, but for that (but for 
 what she had spoken of once as her meddling), she 
 would not have had at all. She had rights. Indispu- 
 tably she had rights. Was she, perhaps, even justi- 
 fied? 
 
 Claudia became conscious that Ann again had 
 softened. At once the answering softness made itself 
 felt in her. Another meeting-point seemed to have 
 ,been reached. 
 
 Now, if something would happen! What could 
 happen? 
 
 If Coram would walk in ! If Cbram himself would 
 but walk in there and then! Her eyes sought the 
 clock. The hour it gave her made any such chance 
 unlikely. Yet, if he could but divine that this was 
 his moment. It was his moment. She looked at the 
 door, almost expecting to see it opened and to hear 
 him announced. She listened for the sound of ap- 
 proaching steps . . . 
 
 Nothing happened. 
 
 No help was to be looked for but that which by 
 patience and perseverance she could herself supply, 
 or wrest from a passive Ann. She returned to her at- 
 tack. We may be spared repetitions; Claudia, less 
 fortunate, might not. Inch by inch. Inch by inch. 
 Ann heard her, making no sign. 
 
 Eleven o'clock struck, and twelve. 
 Ann remembered that Zelie would be sitting up 
 for her. This, rather than an arrival at any agree-
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 339 
 
 ment, brought the evening to a finish. Ann put out 
 the lamps. Claudia lit the candles. 
 
 Outwardly, nothing seemed to have been achieved. 
 But two friends had not quarrelled, and this in itself, 
 while it spoke for the qualities of both of them, 
 seemed, to one of them, to mean something more 
 than that the bonds of an old friendship had stood 
 heroic tests. They parted for the night, moreover, 
 upon a note of passable cheerfulness though that, 
 as Claudia perceived, may have had no more to ac- 
 count for it than expediency, since Zelie, yawning 
 for her mistress, was in the room at the door of which 
 they spoke their good-nights. On the whole, how- 
 ever, Claudia was not dissatisfied. She had, at least, 
 contrived to get those things said which it was most 
 important that Ann should hear. On so much she 
 might sleep, and she was so tired, and Ann was so 
 tired, that she believed that, as before, after just 
 such a disquieting evening, they would both sleep. 
 
 Claudia, tired out, slept. Ann, to her own surprise, 
 slept also. 
 
 Was everything to repeat itself in a piling-up of 
 repetitions? The morning brought, not a Coram, but 
 a Bulkley and a Bulkley, if, from his point of view, 
 to pour out his gratitude to Ann for the benefaction 
 of which Mr. Pargiter's letter had just apprised him, 
 from Ann's, for no other purpose than again oh, 
 again! to be the bearer of the news that Coram, 
 whom, say what she would, she had been expecting,
 
 340 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 was gone! That repetition, at least, Ann thought 
 that she might have been spared. She was to be 
 spared nothing, it seemed. 
 f "The third time he will stay," Claudia said. 
 
 "There won't be a third time," Ann said, and 
 closed her lips.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE days passed. 
 
 Ann was unapproachable again. Her attitude was, 
 "We won't speak of it. I have listened to you. You 
 can't say I did n't listen. I Ve done my part as you 
 have done yours. If he had been here . . . but he 
 is n't. That finishes it. Now I am picking up the 
 threads of my life again. You can see that I am 
 not fretting. I'm not even unhappy. There are 
 other things in life besides love. I shall find them. 
 I am finding them." 
 
 Mr. Bulkley, who boasted no superstitions, was 
 to be married in May, and Ann, having constituted 
 herself his fairy godmother, played the part gener- 
 ously. Lower Redmayne was to be overhauled and 
 put in order at once for the reception of the bride. 
 Ann, keenly interested and full of ideas, spent a 
 morning with Mr. Bulkley and Mr. Cranbourn (of 
 Cranbourn and Newington, Builders, Decorators, 
 and Sanitary Engineers, of Windlestone) , going over 
 the house and making many suggestions for the com- 
 fort of its future mistress. In the country compara- 
 tively few of the smaller country-houses had been 
 modernized. Bathrooms were not general then. 
 Bulkley, and Coram before him, and generations be- 
 fore them, had been content to tub in their rooms. 
 Ann was determined that Lower Redmayne should
 
 342 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 have its bathroom. She it was who found the spot 
 where the bathroom could be added. 
 
 "You're bent on spoiling us," Bulkley protested. 
 "The future Mrs. Bulkley has n't been accustomed 
 to such luxuries." 
 
 "Let me have my own way," Ann said, smiling. 
 She was really interested, really, as she had intimated 
 to Claudia, quite happy. She forgot nothing not 
 even to consult Mrs. Somers. 
 
 Mrs. Somers, still sore over her recent disap- 
 pointment, and perhaps too long accustomed to a 
 bachelor establishment to view the prospective ad- 
 vent of a mistress (where she herself had been mis- 
 tress for so many years) with any noticeable enthu- 
 siasm, showed that day her first signs of recovering 
 her normal cheerfulness, and even of melting. Mrs. 
 Forrester suggested a new kitchen range. If Mrs. 
 Somers had a cherished wish, it was for a new kit- 
 chen range. 
 
 "Not," she said, "but what I don't believe, too, 
 in roasting before the fire. Still, an open range is 
 awkward." 
 
 "Tell Mr. Cranbourn exactly what you want," 
 Ann said. 
 
 "They pay for themselves, 'm, do they not, sir, 
 in the saving of coal?" 
 
 Mrs. Somers was to have the range of her dreams. 
 
 Ann, and Bulkley also, looked at the old-fashioned 
 open grate with its glowing bars, and felt a vague 
 regret to know it doomed Ann, though it was she
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 343 
 
 herself who had doomed it. It might be inconvenient 
 but it had its very real part in the beauty of the old- 
 fashioned kitchen. It 'went ' with the ancient dresser, 
 and the willow-pattern plates and dishes, and the 
 shining copper saucepans. It conjured up sounds 
 and savours the ticking and the clicking of a spit, 
 the cracklings and splutterings of spurting fat, the 
 sudden released hiss from an opened oven door, the 
 ecstatic frenzy of the basting; odours of roastings 
 and toastings, of cake-makings and bread-bakings. 
 It stood momentarily to both of them for the symbol 
 of the things that must pass. But Mrs. Somers, in 
 the interests of the bride's housekeepings, and inci- 
 dentally even of the bride (and thus of Bulkley him- 
 self), must be placated. 
 
 "It'll be all as easy again," Mrs. Somers said. 
 She began to look forward. 
 
 So Ann occupied herself. 
 
 Where was Coram? Presently Claudia heard that 
 he was in London. It was from London, anyway, 
 that he had written to congratulate Bulkley upon 
 his approaching marriage. So much Claudia gathered 
 with other matter, such as that his aunt had not 
 proved to be so ill as had been supposed, and that his 
 visit thus seemed to have been needlessly interrupted. 
 Bulkley, though he shared Mrs. Somers's grievance, 
 was now so actively busied with his own happy con- 
 cerns that he could content himself with the thought 
 that his friend should be his and his Stella's first
 
 344 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 visitor after their marriage ; and Mrs. Somers, cheer- 
 ing up, said, "Well, that's something, anyway," if 
 her face fell a little at the recollection expressed, 
 to Bulkley's amusement, and to Claudia's as he re- 
 lated it to her that all the same now she could no 
 longer expect that the Master should be given his 
 old room! 
 
 In London, was he? Claudia had to be content 
 that he should not yet be on his way to Cathay or 
 Kamchatka. While he was in England there was 
 hope nay, though he had been at the ends of the 
 earth, there would have been hope. But her dread 
 undoubtedly had been, and was, perhaps, still, to 
 hear that he had started again on his travels. Some- 
 thing must happen. She was sure of that. Not for 
 nothing could she be so sure. 
 
 She looked at Ann, wondering what went on be- 
 hind the placid front she showed to the world. Im- 
 possible to say. Ann pursued an even way, calm to 
 all appearance, cheerful. She devoted herself to 
 Johnny openly, spending more and more of her time 
 with him. The sight of Ann and Johnny and his 
 nurse or his nurses in the big Redmayne barouche 
 was one to which Fotheringham and Windlestone 
 and the roads of the neighbourhood were evidently 
 to become accustomed. Even Claudia saw that 
 there was now no further occasion for caution. 
 Johnny, it was evident, was unquestioningly ac 
 cepted. His recent serious illness had removed the 
 last need for restraint. To a pet dog so threatened
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 345 
 
 and so saved a fond mistress would have been ex- 
 pected to show an increased devotion. Ann, always 
 wise, might give herself rope and be in no danger of 
 hanging herself. Ann, taking advantage of circum- 
 stances, gave herself more rope joyfully and smiled 
 at Claudia. Claudia smiled back. They could almost 
 be said to be happy. But was Ann happy except in 
 her relations with Johnny? Could she be happy? 
 And Coram? Claudia's heart ached for him also. 
 
 Ann began to talk once more of altering the 
 boudoir. Claudia did not say, "Oh, Ann! This 
 lovely room!" as she had said on an occasion ages 
 ago when Ann had first surprised her with an ex- 
 pression of her dissatisfaction with its decorations 
 and appointments. Her own eye had been trained, 
 maybe, by and to the austerer beauty of those parts 
 of the house (the rest of it, practically) upon which 
 the rather deplorable taste of the period had not 
 worked its meretricious will. 
 
 Ann said, "This satin. All these buttons. And 
 does one ever really use these hanging screens?" 
 
 But there, for the time being, the matter rested. 
 She did not begin the task of discarding. Time 
 enough for that. She wished, perhaps, for a clear idea 
 of what she wanted to construct before she should 
 demolish. The room was, at least, very comfortable. 
 
 Was there an inner life that Ann was leading now 
 a life behind the life which was visible to Claudia 
 who watched and could not help watching? Some- 
 times Claudia fancied that she caught glimpses
 
 346 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 through the veils with which Ann shrouded herself 
 glimpses of what? And what were these veils? 
 And were there veils? Perhaps there were no veils. 
 Perhaps Ann was really calm. Perhaps the revulsion 
 of feeling was complete, and she had not so much 
 put the thought of Coram from her heart as lost in- 
 terest in one who had failed her. Love is liable to 
 such revulsions. Not the least of the tragedies to 
 which love is subject. It might be that Ann, indeed, 
 no longer loved Coram, and if she no longer loved 
 him, if she had reached the stage of indifference, 
 the next stage could only be that of a distaste for 
 him which nothing would overcome. Love may 
 sleep and wake out of sleep, but who shall bring dead 
 love back to life? Was Ann's love dead? Claudia 
 did not think it. Looking at Ann's face, at her tran- 
 quil eyes, at the mouth which showed no bitter lines, 
 Claudia did not think it. 
 
 Then one day something happened. So small a 
 thing. There had been a week of cloudy skies and 
 cold rains. The spring had been, as it were, held up. 
 There had been a setback. All development had 
 been arrested. Snowflakes had fallen and nature had 
 first paused, then retreated. A pinched look had 
 come over the woods and the hedges and the fields. 
 Biting winds nipped buds ready to burst. Tender 
 leaves, tempted out too soon, shrivelled. Sheep 
 huddled together under the lee of a fence or a 
 coppice. In less sheltered places lambs died. For 
 seven days winter reigned. The birds' chorus was
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 347 
 
 hushed, the isolated songs of hardier spirits only 
 serving to point the cessation of the jubilant sounds. 
 Little dead rooks, naked and pitiful, lay here and 
 there under the elms on the cold wet ground. For 
 seven days the sun hid himself. Winter, winter, 
 winter, the lengthened days seeming to lay stress 
 on a universal desolateness. At twilight you were 
 glad to shut out the decline of each cheerless day. 
 
 Then, as suddenly as the temperature had fallen, 
 the temperature rose. The clouds rolled away, the 
 wind fell, the sun shone forth. The sun was hot. He 
 seemed to have stored up heat in his recess. He 
 flooded the land with his warmth. The rush of the 
 spring began that day. Pent saps flowed. You could 
 almost see the leaves unfolding. What you did not 
 see you felt. 
 
 " Look at the green crinkles," Claudia said. "Look 
 at these little, little leaves. Look! creased like a 
 baby's wrists and ankles. Like Johnny's. Don't you 
 want to stroke them kiss them? Ann, I saw one 
 move. I swear it." 
 
 "Claudia, you're ridiculous." 
 
 But Ann liked Claudia's ridiculousness, and 
 Claudia knew it. 
 
 "And the birds," Claudia said. "Listen." 
 
 Solos and a chorus. A chorus and solos. A chorus 
 made up of solos. 
 
 "God is in his Heaven," Claudia said; "all is right 
 with the world." 
 
 "I never doubted it," Ann said.
 
 348 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 Was that an indication, an intimation? Or was 
 it in itself one of the veilings? 
 
 And then, louder than the chorus or how could 
 you have heard it? softer than the chorus for 
 its softness was what distinguished it from the rest 
 another sound. 
 
 Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo . . . 
 
 It was from that day that the watching Claudia, 
 who yet watched so unobtrusively that she did not 
 appear to be watching at all, noticed a difference. 
 Ann became restless. This showed itself in many 
 small ways. Chiefly it showed itself in withdrawals, 
 desultorinesses, breakings-off . She would go from 
 a room and come back to it. She would begin things 
 and not finish them. She would seat herself at the 
 piano and leave it without having played, or she 
 would stop playing in the middle of a bar. She did 
 not, however, seem to be driven, as once she had 
 been driven. It was rather as if she were awaking 
 to some voice whether from within or without 
 Claudia could not tell which laid behests on her 
 that she knew not how to perform or was reluctant 
 to perform. It called her away from whatever she 
 might be doing. It called her often to the nursery 
 and Johnny, but often it only called her, Claudia 
 believed, into one or another of the many empty 
 rooms. It called her into the garden. Claudia could 
 see her really listening, when it was into the gar- 
 den that it called her.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 349 
 
 How the cuckoo called that year! The country- 
 side pulsed with his calling. His calling was as 
 the audible sound of a pulse or of the spring itself 
 breathing. Was it he who was disturbing? 
 
 At that, something tugged at Claudia's mind. 
 Somewhere, somewhen, she or Ann had spoken of 
 the cuckoo. Not lately. Not for a long time. But 
 here, she thought, at Redmayne. When, then? 
 Why? In what connection? 
 
 Suddenly she remembered. Some words of Ann's 
 came back to her with words of her own. She had 
 asked Ann how it came that at that time of year 
 she was not in London. Across a gulf of nearly two 
 years she remembered Ann's answer word for word. 
 
 " I think it was the cuckoo," Ann had said, "that 
 was primarily responsible. I heard him one day 
 or rather I listened to him." 
 
 Ann had distinguished between hearing and listen- 
 ing, and this, perhaps, had prompted Claudia's next 
 question. That, too, she remembered. 
 
 "What did he tell you?" 
 
 How well she remembered ! 
 
 "To open my eyes and look about me." 
 
 "And I said," Claudia said to herself, "that that 
 was the Serpent's advice to Eve, and Ann said 
 that nevertheless she thought she would take it." 
 
 Claudia had it all. How significant these words 
 idle words then seemed now! Ann had lis- 
 tened to the Serpent, indeed. That appeared to con- 
 nect the cuckoo with her first disturbance; it was
 
 350 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 quite plainly the sound of the cuckoo that had dis- 
 turbed Ann again now. 
 
 There was something which Ann wanted to do 
 and dared not do, or was urged to do and shrank 
 from doing. Some call had been made to her in the 
 cuckoo's call. Would she answer it?
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ONE day, towards the end of April, Ann went on 
 a short journey. She did not tell Claudia where she 
 was going, nor ask her to accompany her. 
 
 "Can you amuse yourself to-morrow for a few 
 hours?" she said the evening before. "I have to 
 leave you for the afternoon." 
 
 "My dear, of course." 
 
 That was all. The next day at two o'clock, 
 luncheon having been put forward by half an hour, 
 the carriage took Ann to the station, where she dis- 
 missed it with instructions that it was to come back 
 for her at a quarter to six. Then, the carriage gone, 
 she went into the booking-office and took a ticket. 
 The ticket she took was for Handleton, and Handle- 
 ton was a village some eighteen miles down the line. 
 The clerk in the booking-office, as he gave her the 
 ticket, said, "Handleton, 'm," as if to make sure 
 that he had heard aright. And Ann said, "Yes, 
 Handleton." 
 
 The name, upon which stress thus seemed to be 
 laid, was commonplace enough. But it might have 
 conveyed something to Claudia. It was because, 
 though it might not, it yet equally might, have con- 
 veyed something to her, that Ann had not men- 
 tioned it. Yet (and here was food for thought) she 
 hardly knew why she should not wish Claudia to
 
 352 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 know that her errand was to Handleton. As she 
 waited for the train, she smiled to herself at the 
 booking-clerk's implied surprise. What, it seemed to 
 say, could Mrs. Forrester of Redmayne have to do 
 at Handleton? 
 
 The train came in and she took her seat. She 
 chose an empty compartment, and she let down both 
 windows and sat with the soft but keen spring airs 
 stirring the furs at her throat. She was very simply 
 dressed much more simply dressed than the lady 
 who had once walked through a wood. Her dark 
 clothes were in rather striking contrast to the 
 brightness of the day. But though she had clad 
 herself in sober hues on a day which gave and asked 
 for colour, her mental and spiritual aspect was in 
 no way sombre. She did not look unhappy. She was 
 a little paler than usual, but her pallor was the pallor 
 of intentness, not of unhappiness, and her expression, 
 her general appearance apart, had something that 
 was, indeed, actively reminiscent of that questing 
 lady who, with a beating heart and wonder and an- 
 ticipation in her eyes, had made her fateful voyage 
 of exploration and discovery. 
 
 The train was a slow train or it would not have 
 stopped at the station she wanted. It stopped every- 
 where at Crossway, Landon Stoke, Crown Ash, 
 Medsley, villages which Ann knew on her drives, 
 but to none of which had she ever before gone by 
 train. Her_xlrives in the direction in which she w*as 
 travelling had not taken her beyond Medsley.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 353 
 
 Handleton, when she should reach it, would be new 
 ground to her. This expedition, then, like that 
 other, was one of exploration. 
 
 No one got into her carriage at any of the stations 
 at which the train stopped. Ann would see a single 
 porter, and one or two persons, on an otherwise empty 
 platform. One or two passengers would alight. The 
 porter would shut the doors. From the window Ann 
 would see the passengers who had alighted give him 
 their tickets as they passed. At Crown Ash there 
 were milk-cans which were rolled along with much 
 noise. There was a farmer with a couple of dogs 
 on a leash. There were three women with market- 
 baskets. There was a little girl with toothache 
 a bandaged face. No one she knew. 
 
 She was, as we say in the slipshod way of these 
 days, 'just as glad.' Yet there was no mystery in her 
 expedition. The air of mystery that it seemed to 
 have was due to nothing more than that she had 
 kept its purpose from Claudia. A mistress visits a 
 former servant. What of mystery in that? There 
 was no real reason why she should not have told 
 Claudia. Ultimately, perhaps at once even, she 
 would tell her. Claudia, with her "My dear, of 
 course," had asked no questions. She had said no 
 more, and made no opening for Ann to say more, not 
 wishing, probably, to show that she even perceived 
 the reticence that lay under Ann's announcement. 
 Claudia's tact could be counted on at all times. 
 But, as a woman, Ann could guess at Claudia's
 
 354 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 guessings. The first of them that she, Ann, was 
 going to see Timothy Coram would be dismissed 
 immediately for its wildness; but that her expedi- 
 tion, whatever its nature, was connected in some 
 way with him, would not be dismissed at all. Ann 
 by her very reticence had made this sure. Was it, 
 then, that in her present action she herself saw, 
 and recognized that she saw, the seeds of capitula- 
 tion? Perhaps she did, indeed, see them. The time, 
 anyway, was not yet. There is a long time between 
 seedtime and harvest. 
 
 The train as it left Medsley plunged into a tunnel. 
 The air in the carriage became acrid, and Ann put 
 up the windows. The effort, and the change from the 
 brilliant light of the open day to the comparative 
 gloom of the lamplight, diverted the current of her 
 thoughts. A little pool of oil lay in the bottom of the 
 glass of the lamp, and swayed with the swayings of 
 the train. Ann watched it with the fascinated gaze 
 of a child. It swayed this way, and a little more this 
 way; then that, and perhaps a little more that; and 
 then washed smoothly back again. It was as the 
 outward and visible sign of the train's leanings. It 
 never swayed very far, but it was also never quite 
 still. She watched it, as if its movements held a mean- 
 ing for her. They held no meaning. Presently, con- 
 scious of the strain of looking up, and of the discom- 
 fort of steadfastly regarding a flame, she turned her 
 eyes away.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 355 
 
 A long tunnel; blackness behind the panes, with 
 here and there a glistening where the passing lights 
 caught wet patches; a rushing blackness. The roar 
 of the wheels seemed the sound of the rushing 
 blackness. In the twilight of the compartment which 
 she had chosen because it was empty or, more accur- 
 ately, since many others were empty also, the 
 emptiness of which she had welcomed, she began to 
 feel lonely. She was glad when light showed on the 
 walls of the tunnel, the noise of the wheels taking 
 quite a different sound, as if the roar of them had, 
 indeed, been the sound of the rushing blackness, 
 and after a moment or two of rapidly diminishing 
 darkness, the train emerged into the open. 
 
 She blinked in the blaze of light. 
 
 What did that remind her of? What memory 
 stirred in her? Why, suddenly, did she think of mag- 
 pies? Black, white was it that? The black of the 
 tunnel, the white of the sun's glare? That, yes; but 
 not quite that. The blinking rather than what caused 
 the blinking. She, in her turn, even as Claudia. so 
 recently in hers, traced a memory across the years 
 to its source. 
 
 She was nearing Handleton now, and she saw 
 that the country into which the train had issued 
 from the tunnel was of an entirely different char- 
 acter from that which it had left on the other side of 
 the hill. She had left the oaks and the elms and the 
 beeches of her own country behind her, and was in 
 a wilder country of pine and bracken and furze.
 
 356 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 She was the only passenger to alight at Handleton 
 a little wayside station with its name picked out 
 in white flints, and the usual single porter. 
 
 The porter was at the far end of the platform 
 where stood more milk-cans. He put them into a 
 van rapidly with no unnecessary noise, Ann ob- 
 served and then came towards Ann for her ticket. 
 She had not really been kept waiting, for the gate 
 which led from the station to the road was at the end 
 of the platform where the milk-cans had been stand- 
 ing; but as he touched his cap he said, " Beg pardon, 
 *m," and she understood that he was apologizing 
 to her for having seen to the milk-cans before attend- 
 ing to her. 
 
 " I Ve no luggage," Ann said. 
 
 As he put out his hand for her ticket he withdrew 
 it suddenly, before taking the ticket from her, to 
 touch his cap once more, with another but somehow 
 a different sort of "I beg pardon, *m." Then he 
 remembered the train, shut the door of the carriage 
 from which Ann had stepped, and gave the guard his 
 signal. 
 
 Ann, her attention thus called to him, found her- 
 self considering him. He seemed to have recognized 
 her. He was about twenty-four, perhaps a little 
 older, and what struck you first in his appearance 
 was his firm, upstanding figure. He was unusually 
 well built. You could see that the legs in the rough 
 corduroy trousers were straight and shapely, and 
 that the arms under the sleeves of his porter's
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 357 
 
 sleeved waistcoat were muscular and very strong. He 
 was at once sturdy and lithe. All this she saw, though 
 she only looked, perhaps, at his face. His face was 
 comely and very kindly. He had clear blue eyes, 
 frank in their expression, and a good mouth. He had 
 unusually good white teeth. His attitude was that of 
 a well-mannered, deferential servant. 
 
 "Have I seen you before?" Ann said. 
 
 "Oh, no, 'm. But I come from Fotheringham." 
 
 She supposed him to mean the station. 
 
 "Ah, then probably I have," she said. 
 
 The train had moved out of the station, and she 
 began to walk up the platform towards the gate. 
 
 "Which is the way to the village?" 
 
 "Straight down the road yonder, 'm. About a 
 quarter of a mile. You pass the crossroads, but 
 keep straight on. You '11 see the church, 'm, before 
 you." 
 
 "Ah, it is the Rectory I want," Ann said. 
 
 "That's next to the church, 'm. The only big 
 house. You can't miss it." 
 
 Ann thanked him and passed through the gate. 
 He touched his cap again and went on to the signal- 
 box. She saw him mount the steps. 
 
 She carried a pleasant impression of him down the 
 sunny road an impression of something in key 
 with the sunny day. 
 
 The air was full of the scent of pines. Breathing 
 it deeply into her lungs, Ann pursued her way.
 
 358 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 When Lucy Edget left Redmayne she had gone 
 to her home at Handleton. Ann had written to her 
 mother, and had had some correspondence with the 
 rector of the parish. Through the clergyman she 
 had made provision for the girl's immediate future. 
 There the matter had ended. She had sometimes 
 wondered that, after the correspondence which had 
 passed between her and Mr. Broxley while the neces- 
 sary arrangements were being made, she should have 
 heard no more from him, but, her own desperate 
 troubles supervening, the matter had passed from 
 her mind. From time to time it had come into her 
 mind again. But she had done all that seemed to 
 be required of her, had put the unhappy business 
 into the hands best qualified to deal with it kindly 
 and wisely, and it was not till she was at Brighton, 
 recovering from her illness, that the thought of Lucy 
 had come to her with any real persistence. She had 
 not heard from Lucy herself since an answer she had 
 received from her to a letter which she had written 
 to her, in the very early days of all, to bid her be of 
 good courage and to tell her that Mr. Broxley had 
 promised that she should be looked after. Lucy 
 would not identify her with what Mr. Broxley 
 might do for her, for Ann had desired that her bene- 
 factions should not be associated with her name. 
 It was not to be expected, then, that Lucy would 
 write; but why had not Mr. Broxley written? Since 
 those curious thoughts at Brighton, the wish to know* 
 what had become of her, and to know that all was
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 359 
 
 well with her, had been superseded by one more ur- 
 gent still. This was a wish which, for all its urgency, 
 perhaps even because of its very urgency, she had 
 combated strenuously. She wished to see Lucy. 
 She wished to hear from Lucy's own lips the answer 
 to those questions which she had only dreamt but 
 had so strangely dreamt that she had put to her. 
 For all that it implied she had resisted this wish till 
 she could resist it no longer. Here she was, then, 
 on her way, if not to see Lucy, to discover, at least, 
 where she was to be found. 
 
 She came to the crossroads and passed them. The 
 tower of the church showed then above the trees 
 on her right. A few minutes later she was ringing 
 the bell at the Rectory. 
 
 An elderly maidservant answered her ring, and 
 she asked for Mr. Broxley. She learnt at once why 
 Mr. Broxley had not written. Mr. Broxley had died 
 while she was abroad. 
 
 "Nearly a year and a half ago, 'm. We've been 
 here close on fourteen months. It's the Reverend 
 Sheffield now. The master was appointed to the 
 living when the Reverend Broxley died. Yes, just 
 close on fourteen months we've been here now." 
 
 Ann asked if Mr. Sheffield was in. He was out, 
 she heard to her regret, and not expected in till late 
 in the afternoon. There was no Mrs. Sheffield. The 
 Reverend Sheffield was a widower. Would the lady 
 like to leave any message? 
 
 But Ann had no message to leave.
 
 3 6o THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 "Can you tell me, perhaps, where Mrs. Edget 
 lives?" 
 
 Mrs. Edget? Oh, yes. The Reverend Sheffield got 
 his eggs off Mrs. Edget. Mrs. Edget lived in the cot- 
 tage past the turnpike. The turn to the left at the 
 crossroads. You kept straight on till you came to 
 the turnpike, and then took the lane on your right. 
 How far? About a mile and three quarters well, 
 to be n the safe side, say two miles. Distances 
 were generally greater than one thought for. Say 
 two miles. 
 
 Ann looked at her watch. She could just do it. But 
 she would have no time to spare. And if Lucy was 
 not living at home, she would not see Lucy. She 
 would not be able to wait to see Lucy even if she 
 should find that Lucy was still in the neighbour- 
 hood. She knew suddenly how she had counted on 
 seeing Lucy. 
 
 She thanked the woman and turned away. The 
 circumstances made it inexpedient that she should 
 ask questions of a stranger. She did not know how 
 far the circumstances might be known. As she was 
 here she must go on to Mrs. Edget's, and, if Lucy 
 was not there, leave the seeing of Lucy, if it should 
 be possible to see her, to another day. She should 
 have written to make enquiries before she came. She 
 had acted on an impulse and regretted it. 
 
 She had reached the gate when she heard footsteps 
 behind her. 
 
 "Would Mrs. Tillet do, 'm?"
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 361 
 
 "Mrs. Tillet?" 
 
 "Mrs. Edget's daughter, 'm?" 
 
 Ann's heart leapt. 
 
 "She lives quite near, 'm. Just through the vil- 
 lage. The cottage by the blacksmith's. Any one will 
 show you, 'm." 
 
 "Oh, thank you," Ann said. '"Yes, I will go and 
 see Mrs. Tillet. That may save me the walk. I am 
 very much obliged to you." 
 
 And so, though the fates had seemed against her, 
 her visit was like to be not entirely fruitless. A few 
 minutes brought her to the blacksmith's. 
 
 The cottage just beyond it must be the cottage 
 she sought. It stood back a little from the road, from 
 which it was divided by a wooden paling. The gar- 
 den behind this was very neatly kept. 
 
 Mrs. Edget might have other daughters, but Ann 
 felt sure that in Mrs. Tillet she would find the Lucy 
 Edget she had come to Handleton to see. 
 
 Some one was singing inside the cottage. Ann 
 knocked. The singing did not cease for a moment or 
 two, and then ceased. 
 
 The door opened. 
 
 Ann stayed with Lucy an hour; but in the course 
 of that hour, ten minutes, though they talked much, 
 gave her the answer to all she wished to know. She 
 saw Lucy's boy, and held him in her arms. Lucy's 
 face, by turns white and flushed, flushed with pleas- 
 ure then. Lucy's boy, six months older than her
 
 362 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 own, had, Ann was interested and somehow cordially 
 pleased to recognize, the porter's clear blue eyes. 
 Lucy's face was radiant when Ann welcomed joyfully 
 her shy offer of tea. All but that ten minutes of en- 
 lightenment was, however, beside the point. 
 
 "Oh, 'm," was what Lucy said, "I don't defend 
 myself. I can't. Wrong is wrong, 'm ; I know that. 
 But you Ve seen Tillet, 'm. It was a constant ache. 
 I used to lie awake crying. I 'm a working girl and 
 a lady could n't understand." 
 
 "I think I can understand," Ann said gently. 
 
 "And I was weak, I know. Don't think Tillet was 
 all to blame. An arm round one . . . but here 's 
 where he was n't to blame I I wanted it round 
 me. He was n't so much to blame as me, except he 
 was n't thinking of marriage not then. He was so 
 young like to tie himself up. A woman wants to be 
 bound. It comes natural to a woman, 'm, does n't 
 it? But with a man, sometimes, it will be more of a 
 surrender like. And afterwards, you see, I could n't 
 bring myself to tell Tillet, and he did n't know. 
 That 's how it was. There was no excuse for me. I 'd 
 been brought up different. But, oh, 'm, I did n't 
 seem to care and I was so dreadfully unhappy for 
 him. It was a way ... If I had n't, others would. 
 You've seen Tillet. I wanted him . . ." 
 
 After a long pause. 
 
 "I'm very happy, 'm. Though I suppose people 
 would say that I ought n't to be. And yet I do7*t 
 know. You see Jimmy was born in wedlock."
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 363 
 
 After a longer pause. 
 
 "And Tillet, 'm, he's happy. At rest like. They 
 let him alone. I suppose they wanted him, too. 
 Sometimes I think ..." 
 
 "Yes, Lucy?" 
 
 Lucy dried her eyes. Ann's own eyes were blinded. 
 
 " Tillet 's a good husband. Sometimes I think I'm 
 a very lucky woman."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THREE days later Claudia was writing a letter. 
 She had written one once which had not carried. 
 This one would not miscarry. 
 
 Three things had happened ; one for each day of 
 the three days. She knew herself again to be med- 
 dling, but three things had happened. She smiled 
 to herself at a thought. She had tried straightness. 
 If something that she had done something, 
 rather, that she had not done was not straight, 
 she could not help it ! But about the letter which she 
 was writing she had no misgivings whatever. This, 
 if it was flagrant meddling where she had silently 
 implied that she would meddle no more, was not 
 disloyalty. It was an act of courage if of the 
 courage that you had to take in both hands, shut- 
 ting your eyes, holding your breath, waiting blindly 
 (yet somehow with a twinkle in your closed eyes!) 
 for what might follow. 
 
 Ann, who was proud, had yet no pettiness of 
 pride, and had told her of her visit to Handleton, 
 and what she had learnt there. The first of the three 
 days gave her that, with all which that admitted and 
 implied. Ann need only have kept silence, but Ann, 
 impressed, perhaps, in spite of herself, had let her 
 see; and Claudia, always clear-seeing, had seen.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 365 
 
 The second day had brought her news that had 
 made her heart stand still. She had met Bulkley and 
 heard from him what she most feared to hear. Coram 
 was going abroad. 
 
 "Abroad!" She startled him with the directness 
 of her "When?" She had shot it at him without 
 giving herself time to think. 
 
 "Almost at once. In a fortnight." 
 
 He looked his surprise. As Ann, before her,, had 
 once retrieved what she saw to be a blunder, so 
 Claudia retrieved hers. 
 
 "Before your wedding?" she said. 
 
 "Yes. It 's too bad of him. I can't make him out 
 these times." 
 
 She saw that her red-herring had achieved its 
 purpose. But she must know everything that he 
 might have to tell her now. 
 
 "Abroad?" she said again. "You mean just the 
 Continent Italy or somewhere?" 
 
 She knew that he did not. 
 
 "No," he said. "That's it. Off on histravels 
 again. Japan." 
 
 Japan! What Claudia (with Ann) thought of as 
 the Other side of the World. 
 
 "The wandering spirit, indeed," Claudia said. 
 "He'll come down, anyway, to say good-bye," she 
 ventured, presently. 
 
 But Bulkley shook his head. 
 
 "I don't think so," he said. "I should say not, 
 from what he says in his letter."
 
 366 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 He was plainly perturbed. 
 
 "I can't make him out," he said again. "Mrs. 
 Nanson, does he think, can he think, that I've 
 turned him out?" 
 
 "He could n't think that," Claudia said. "No, 
 you 're strange creatures, Mr. Bulkley, much 
 stranger than we are. Just the wandering spirit. It 
 takes you all sometimes." 
 
 She nodded and smiled and was moving away. 
 
 "The alterations nearly finished? Yes, I must 
 come and see them. I '11 get Mrs. Forrester to take 
 me one day." Then, foresight, or a very inspiration, 
 prompting her: "If Mr. Coram does n't come down 
 we shall have to write him our good-byes. Is he still 
 in London? " 
 
 "Brown's Hotel." 
 
 So much for what the second day gave her. All 
 the rest of it she spent in a fever of perplexity. 
 Whether to tell Ann now, or to wait till Ann heard, 
 and be guided then by what she should see? Ann 
 was melting. Her visit to Lucy had had profound 
 results. Processes were at work in Ann at which 
 Claudia, guessing, hardly dared to guess. But Ann 
 was as strange as Claudia had told Bulkley that 
 only men were. The day passed without her having 
 told her. 
 
 The third day came with its giving. But, for our 
 clear understanding of what the third day gave her, 
 we must know what she had done with the hours of 
 the first.
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 367 
 
 When the carriage had started which bore Ann to 
 the station (Whitcombe, that nearer station which 
 Redmayne sometimes used, and at which she, 
 Claudia, had been met on the day when she arrived, 
 and had seen Coram for the first time), Claudia, 
 already intrigued and excited, but learning now 
 from Ann's directions to the footman, that the 
 mysterious expedition was taking her somewhere by 
 train, went back into the house, making guesses 
 really as wild as Ann's intuitions had divined. Some- 
 thing was happening. Claudia was sure of it. She 
 did wonder for a moment whether Ann was going 
 to meet Coram. This, as Ann supposed, she did re- 
 ject for its improbability, but her joyous excitement 
 did not abate. Rather did it increase. Her thoughts 
 played round Ann, and everything that it was pos- 
 sible or impossible that Ann might be doing. She 
 did not think of Lucy, Lucy's case naturally con- 
 veying nothing to her in its possible bearing on 
 Ann's. But in every other direction her conjectures 
 ranged more and more widely. She gave up her 
 guessings when she perceived that this time she 
 could not guess nor hope to guess, and resigned her- 
 self to waiting till Ann should tell her. If, that was, 
 Ann should see fit to tell her! She believed that 
 Ann would tell her. Meanwhile Whitcombe the 
 name with its associations took her back to the 
 beginnings of things. She remembered something 
 that Ann had told her something which had, as 
 she had expressed it to herself at the time, loomed
 
 368 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 large in all that Ann had told her, but which she had 
 never understood. Ann had spoken to her of a walk 
 which she had taken, and which had been the begin- 
 ning of everything. A wood, a strange place in the 
 wood, a statue in the strange place. What did these 
 things mean? She had never been for this walk her- 
 self, seen the strange place, the mysterious statue. 
 Why, when she came to think of it? It might have 
 been looked for that Ann, as she had spoken of the 
 spot, would have shown it to her. She had not shown 
 it to her, nor suggested that she should visit it. 
 But equally she had not said, had not so much as 
 hinted, that she did not wish her to see it. She had, 
 moreover, indicated its direction when she described 
 it, spoken of the bridle path through the wood by 
 which it was approached. 
 
 Claudia, in her preoccupation, had gone into the 
 boudoir and was standing now at the window from 
 which she had had that glimpse of Ann and Coram 
 which had had such dire effects upon their joint and 
 even their separate destinies. Perhaps if she had not 
 seen their parting then, and the look with which 
 Coram had followed Ann as she left him and came 
 towards the house, she would not have come at all to 
 that fatal conclusion at which, with such momentous 
 and disastrous results, she had then rushed. Useless 
 to conjecture now what would have happened if she 
 had not chanced, or been fated, at a certain moment 
 in her life, and the life of Ann and the life of Coram, 
 to look out of that window. She had looked out of
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 369 
 
 it and what was done was done. But, as she looked 
 out of it now, she knew suddenly whence at that 
 particular moment Ann and Coram had come. She 
 remembered the day so well and something of odd- 
 ness in its happenings. Ann and she had driven to 
 Fotheringham. They had been light-hearted and 
 had laughed at the sight of the ridiculous bathers. 
 Ann outwardly had been as light-hearted as she, 
 though inwardly with a reserve which Claudia had 
 been conscious of rather than had perceived. But 
 without apparent reason Ann's light-heartedness had 
 changed into something that was restless and nerve- 
 racked and disturbed and disturbing. When they 
 had reached home she had slipped away. When next 
 Claudia had seen her she was calm, softened, happy. 
 She remembered Ann's face against hers and the 
 "You'll make allowances for me, I know," which 
 had told her so much. 
 
 What was this spot to which Ann fled for comfort 
 or solace or help? What was the figure that presided 
 over it? 
 
 From wondering to wishing to see was a short 
 step ; from wishing to see to determining to see took 
 less time than it took Claudia to put on her hat and 
 coat. 
 
 So it came that on the day of Ann's pilgrimage to 
 Handleton, Claudia made a pilgrimage of her own. 
 She found the right entrance to the wood, she found 
 the bridle path, and in time she found the circle. 
 She entered with just the faintest sense of awe. The
 
 370 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 place had certainly something which seized upon 
 your imagination, and might even, she could con- 
 ceive, play tricks with it. The spot had an atmos- 
 phere of its own, strange (you could not avoid the 
 word which Ann had used any more than, in the 
 same connection, you could avoid the word ' myste- 
 rious'), subtle, perverse, and yet, somehow, of its es- 
 sence natural, attuned to or in key with Nature her- 
 self. Some words that were not written then, nor to 
 be written for another twenty years, would, if she 
 could have known them, have crystallized for her 
 what she felt. The Law of the Jungle reigned in the 
 circle. The circle knew the Law of the Jungle, which 
 was the Law of Nature, and knew no other law. In- 
 fluences were here that were older than man or man's 
 laws. Claudia, her widow's eyes as round as saucers, 
 understood all that in Ann's story had heretofore 
 puzzled her. 
 
 Like Ann she stood before the Waiting Boy. 
 
 As she stood there something troubled her not 
 the boy's beauty, though that troubled her vaguely 
 a scent, sweet, pricking, passing sweet. She 
 looked about her and saw the sweet-briar, from 
 which, though she did not know this, Coram had 
 once plucked a leaf. The beauty of the boy's pose 
 and poise was troubling, though. It made you want 
 to do homage to it. We know, though Claudia did 
 not, what it had made Ann do. Warm flesh against 
 warmed stone ; Ann's face laid for a moment against 
 the chiselled face that had so troubled her. These
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 371 
 
 were things that you could n't tell reservations 
 even in Ann's story. 
 
 Claudia held some flowers she had gathered as she 
 walked primroses, the wood was full of them. 
 
 Without giving a thought to what she did, but 
 conscious of the need to do homage, she laid them 
 at the boy's feet. The primrose is rather a scentless 
 flower. It was here that the boy must have spoken 
 aloud. Incense was what was demanded; some- 
 thing with a sweet savour. Without knowing that 
 it was he who had spoken or that anything had been 
 spoken, and with no other intention than of sup- 
 plying this fragrance that seemed to be lacking, 
 Claudia added a leaf or two of sweet-briar to her 
 offering. 
 
 What the third day gave her was the appearing 
 of Ann before her with a rapt expression, appre- 
 hensive, frightened almost; deadly pale, though 
 she seemed to have been hurrying, and holding in 
 her hand a withered leaf. 
 
 "Claudia!" 
 
 "Yes, Ann." 
 
 "Claudia!" 
 
 Ann's voice, thick, hushed, seemed to fail her. 
 
 "She knows I've been there," Claudia thought 
 to herself. "What on earth did I put the things 
 there for if I was n't going to tell her? And why 
 did n't I tell her? I knew I was intruding that's 
 why. And she, she thinks I have been prying
 
 372 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 waiting till her back was turned. Oh, what made 
 me?" 
 
 The next moment she was gasping. 
 
 4 ' He 's come back, ' ' Ann was saying. ' ' He 's some- 
 where about." 
 
 Claudia flushed to the roots of her hair. But she 
 did not lose her head. She did some very clear think- 
 ing. She must tell her, of course. But she hesitated, 
 thinking, thinking. The moment passed when she 
 could have told her. She was committed. She saw 
 that she was committed. 
 
 "What do you mean, Ann?" 
 
 She was temporizing, but she knew that she was 
 committed. 
 
 "I found this. It's his sign to me. He put the 
 same sort of leaf smell it, Claudia once before 
 where I found this. It's his sign, his sign." She 
 burst into tears. "And do you know what it means? 
 Yes, in the silly Language of Flowers. There was 
 one, I remembered in the little encyclopaedia on my 
 desk and I 've looked it up like any foolish serv- 
 ant-girl." She smiled through her tears, wringing 
 Claudia's heart. "I'm as foolish as any servant- 
 girl not half as wise as one servant-girl, who did 
 know what she wanted. It means he does n't 
 know to him it's just something that he knew I 
 should recognize it means ... oh, Claudia . . . ' I 
 wound to heal." 
 
 I wound to heal . . .
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 373 
 
 That settled it indeed. Claudia was committed to 
 silence and to the purpose which had come of her 
 thinkings. She was going to stake everything on 
 her faith in Coram, now. She was writing to him, 
 knowing that he would understand, and knowing 
 that he would not fail her or this time fail him- 
 self. 
 
 "If he's been there he will come again," she said 
 to Ann. 
 
 And that though to keep the iron hot for him 
 till he came, she would not if she had conceived it 
 to be necessary, or expedient, have struck even at 
 repeating his ' sign ' for him was as far as she had 
 ventured in guile. 
 
 "You asked me to help you," Claudia wrote. "I 
 am told you are going abroad. If this is so, and if 
 you think there has been any misunderstanding, let 
 me say one word to you before you go. I don't my- 
 self know quite what it means. I give it to you for 
 what it is worth, or what it may mean to you, as 
 the clairvoyant or the medium who says, ' I get so- 
 and-so.' What I get is a Statue yes, and for your 
 guidance, Sundown. Two words I see, as I write 
 them. I repeat I don't know, at least only guess, 
 what one of them means. But if a tangle could be 
 unravelled anywhere, it would be there, at the 
 Statue's feet, and for your guidance again it 
 would be there and soon. Oh, at once if at all! You 
 will act on this, or not act upon it, as you wish. It
 
 374 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 is all the aid (or indication of how you may aid your- 
 self) that it is in my power to give you." 
 
 She did not let Ann out of her sight the next day, 
 nor the next. Ann was restless as a bird kept from 
 the nest. ''Let him wait" was what Claudia hoped 
 Ann might suppose her silent persistence to mean. 
 That would be just such wise advice as it would have 
 been conceived that one so wise (as Claudia knew 
 herself to be!) would be likely to have offered if 
 Coram had been, indeed, there to be waiting. Ann 
 got through two days. On the morning of the third, 
 Claudia then having received the answer to her let- 
 ter, Claudia contrived that Ann should take her to 
 Lower Redmayne to see the alterations. There Ann 
 learnt, as Claudia intended that she should learn, 
 that Coram was going abroad. 
 
 After that nothing would have held Ann. But 
 Claudia, her full purpose achieved, when she had 
 with considerable difficulty buttonholed her till 
 lateish in the afternoon, had no further wish to hold 
 her. She allowed herself to be shaken off, or given 
 the slip, and from behind the curtains of the fateful 
 window of the boudoir, she watched Ann start.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE years fell from Ann as she entered the wood. 
 The weight of the years that fell from her was in sub- 
 stance the weight of the last two years, but other 
 years fell from her also. She was a girl once more with 
 her life before her. She felt like Christian when the 
 burden has fallen from his back. Nothing had hap- 
 pened, but everything has happened. Everything 
 was as it had been, but everything was changed. 
 Coram stood just where he had stood all along, but 
 Claudia fighting his battle for him had won it, the 
 unhappy Lucy Edget, who was the happy Lucy Til- 
 let, helping. The change was in Ann. 
 
 Profound, the change in Ann. Had she, too, under- 
 gone that conversion which though only for what 
 it postulated and perhaps unconsciously implied 
 had so deeply offended her when she had heard it 
 spoken of by her lover, as applicable, with all that 
 it might stand for, to his own state and case? She 
 saw everything newly. She might, indeed, be said to 
 have been born again. For she wanted to give now, 
 and to ask nothing. Pride no longer mattered. She 
 knew, at last, that, ready as she had supposed her- 
 self, she had not been ready at all. She had come to 
 him to receive, not to bestow. She had asked balm 
 for her own wound, seeing only her own wound, 
 ignoring his, and withholding the balm which it had
 
 376 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 been in her power to administer. She walked now in 
 a sort of glad humility, wishing truly not to be 
 ministered unto, but to minister. 
 
 Once more the wood received her. She heard the 
 cuckoo call. The day was athrob with his note as 
 that other day when she had started out, for what 
 was to prove, though she had not known it then, her 
 Great Adventure. Primroses were everywhere. She 
 paused where they grew thickest, picked her bunch 
 quickly, and continued her way. The spring was 
 moving joyously to summer; she with the spring. 
 
 She entered the bridle path. The wood then was 
 piled up each side of her like the waters of the 
 Red Sea to which Claudia had once likened the 
 cloven flock of sheep through the midst of which 
 the carriage had driven on another day which was 
 memorable. Her path she knew it! led, even 
 as the path cleared for the Israelites, to a promised 
 land. 
 
 So she walked eagerly, and though she had set 
 out in fear, and though she hurried still as if im- 
 pelled to haste, she walked without fear. She did 
 not know, as Claudia did know, that she was in- 
 deed going to meet her lover. She felt, perhaps, 
 that she was going to meet him, but it was enough 
 for her, since the peace of the wood had descended 
 upon her and lapped her round, that she was going 
 to give the answering sign to that which she be- 
 lieved to be his. Her flowers, with the sprig of sweet-
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 377 
 
 briar which she should add to them in the circle, 
 would say for her all that was needful. She strained 
 forward. But, under her haste, a peace of mind, the 
 absence of all apprehension, and an upspringing, 
 uplifting, all-pervading sense of security told her 
 that this day for her was to be a day of days. Not 
 years only had dropped from her as she entered 
 the wood. 
 
 Claudia had delayed her. The sun was getting low 
 now in the heavens. The tops of the trees were 
 gilded. 
 
 The moment came when she could see the Waiting 
 Boy. He looked towards her down the long, nar- 
 row avenue. He was waiting as she had so often seen 
 him waiting with the eyes of her body, and as she 
 had so much oftener seen him waiting with the even 
 clearer eyes of her mind. He was waiting for her, 
 whomsoever else he had waited for in the years of 
 all his waiting. 
 
 He seemed to her to lean more intently towards 
 her . . . 
 
 She reached the circle. On the threshold she 
 paused; her breath held; her hands to her breast. 
 The circle was not empty. Not alone the Waiting 
 Boy who waited. Coram was standing where she 
 had seen him stand when it was only a bird that 
 he held. She knew then that she was indeed to 
 see him, with his son and hers in his arms. As 
 he saw her he opened them now. She stumbled
 
 378 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 
 
 forward, swaying almost as before, but this time to 
 safety. They closed round her. 
 Now let the joy-bells ring! 
 
 Up the scale, down the scale, rang the fairy bells 
 in the circle. Every bluebell in the wood might have 
 been swinging his head. The circle was aclang with 
 the fairy bells; loud as the bells of St. Clement's 
 and St. Martin's, deep as the big bell of Bow. Noth- 
 ing was owed any more. The last even of the five 
 farthings paid. Had there been any debt? So the 
 joy-bells rang. But the ringing of joy-bells works 
 up to a clash, and the clash is made up of discords, 
 is, indeed, sweet bells jangled. The clash heard by 
 itself would have a sinister sound to strike terror 
 into the soul. The clash for Coram, came, indeed, 
 as it were, by itself, the deafening, dismaying clash, 
 in the moment when Ann, telling him of his son, 
 lifted perforce the last veil which hid from him the 
 extent of the suffering he had caused her. His pun- 
 ishment, if you demand punishment for him, came 
 then in full measure, pressed down, running over. 
 If a lifetime may be concentrated into the compass 
 of a few moments as we reckon time, he knew then 
 a lifetime of remorse and contrition and self-abase- 
 ment. He floundered in deep waters, sinking, drown- 
 ing. He descended into hell. But Ann was above 
 him, to stretch out her hand to him and, as she had 
 wished, to minister to him. 
 
 "It is over," she whispered to him, supporting
 
 THE STATUE IN THE WOOD 379 
 
 him. " I Ve been able to bear it, and I 'm glad now 
 to have borne it. You would have borne your share 
 if you could. What 's left to bear for there 's some- 
 thing which nothing can undo we 're going to bear 
 together. That's it, is n't it?" 
 
 "Is n't it?" she asked. 
 
 He had had a shock which he would need time to 
 recover from. But that was it, and, knowing what 
 she knew, she had no real fear. The bells, brought 
 to silence by their own clash, would ring out once 
 more. Johnny, as far as he could be safe, was safe. 
 Like Lucy she might allow herself to face an un- 
 merited happiness. 
 
 He wanted to see his son. 
 
 Ann picked up her flowers which lay strewn on 
 the ground where they had dropped from her hand. 
 She laid them at the feet of the statue, adding to 
 them (to his mystification then, but to his subse- 
 quent complete understanding) a sprig of sweetbriar. 
 
 THE END
 
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