THE 
 
 BLUE 
 ROOM 
 
 COSMO HAMILTON
 
 r \ L 
 
 n 
 
 .
 
 THE BLUE ROOM
 
 JBy Cosmo Ibamilton 
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 SCANDAL 
 
 WHO CAKES ? 
 
 His FRIEND AND His WIFB 
 
 THE SINS OF THE CHILDREN 
 
 THE BLINDNESS OF VIRTUE 
 
 THE DOOR THAT HAS No KEY 
 
 THE MIRACLE OF LOVE
 
 One more blundering pause, and then the cry, and 
 
 the meeting of lips, and the welding of hearts. 
 
 FRONTISPIECE. Seepage 196.
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 BY 
 
 COSMO HAMILTON 
 
 " Into the Blue Room thou shalt not look." 
 
 WITH FRONTISPIECE BY 
 
 WILSON V. CHAMBERS 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 1920
 
 Copyright, 1920, 
 BY COSMO HAMILTON. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 Published October, 1920 
 
 rr 3 
 
 Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Gushing Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 2136059
 
 4 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 There was a whoop of joy from the telephone 
 closet in the hall, a rush back into the dining-room, 
 and a message read in a young, round voice which 
 trembled with something more than excitement. 
 
 " Embark this morning Leviathan with whole 
 bunch Major Bill Mortimer in charge loud cheers 
 Tom." 
 
 Nearly performing the nose trick with a mouth- 
 ful of coffee, Wainwright set down his cup, sprang 
 to his feet, seized the girl with the dancing eyes and 
 whirled her round the pompous and astonished room. 
 The dead accuracy of banking had not succeeded in 
 drying up the well of emotion in this man's soul. 
 
 Breakfast discarded, train forgotten, conferences 
 left in mid-air, and with a damn-all feeling for the 
 responsibilities of the day in the face of the glorious 
 news of ihis son's escape alive and whole from the 
 great graveyard of France, old man Wainwright 
 with the heart of a boy and the love of a father 
 dashed upstairs to his ailing wife, and shut the door. 
 No one but she could share, or be permitted to see, 
 his utter thankfulness. 
 
 The chauffeur, with his eyes on his watch, sat 
 waiting in the car. 
 
 For a moment, breathless and disheveled, Martha 
 stood alone in the big room with the slip of paper 
 held tight against her heart. But when, with a little 
 dhoking cry, she raised it to her lips it was not the 
 name of her brother that she kissed first but of the
 
 other man, the gallant Bill who had n't the remotest 
 idea that, within a mile of his parental house, there 
 lived a little girl whose constant prayers had helped 
 to keep his name from being stamped upon German 
 bullets. 
 
 At the first warning honk from the car Martha 
 also took to the stairs, nipped up three at a time and 
 tapped on the door which must not, her gift of sym- 
 pathy told her, be opened. 
 
 "Fa-ther!" 
 
 " I 'm not catching this train. Hang work ! " 
 
 Again the honk. 
 
 " Fa-ther." 
 
 " I tell you I 'm chucking the city to-day. Can't I 
 give it a miss in balk once in a lifetime? " 
 
 And then a quiet voice from the bed at the side of 
 which knelt old man Wainwright, not so precious 
 old as all that goes either. " I think you 'd better 
 go, dear." 
 
 " Yes, but Tom 's coming home. My Heaven, 
 what 's the matter with a round of golf with Martha 
 to celebrate? . . ." 
 
 Once more the honk, the last. 
 
 "Fa-ther!" 
 
 " Oh well then ! " He scrambled to his feet. He 
 had intended to go. There was so much to be done. 
 The financial situation in Europe was in utter chaos 
 and it behooved American bankers to shake off pa- 
 rochialism and look across the narrowed Atlantic. 
 But he was n't going to let Martha see his face until 
 he had it under control, or the chauffeur either.
 
 6 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 " So long, Elizabeth. Thank the good God our 
 boy 's coming back ! " 
 
 But after all his head was turned away from 
 Martha as he passed her and went down. A man 
 needs sons and daughters before he can understand 
 the meaning of love. He must also have built up a 
 big business to appreciate the difficulty of letting it 
 run without him. 
 
 From the bedroom window Martha watched the 
 car disappear and lingered there, eyeing the trees in 
 their first faint flush of green, and listening to the 
 mating call of birds. She, too, wanted to let some- 
 thing go out of her eyes before she turned to her 
 mother. She felt that they were blazing like beacons. 
 
 " He '11 be in time," she said. 
 
 " To find me out and about, I trust." Mrs. Wain- 
 wright added up the days of the Leviathan's voyage. 
 Whatever happened she must meet that ship. 
 
 "Martha!" 
 
 Beacons or not that little cry must be answered. 
 . . . They held each other in inarticulate gratitude 
 and wept a little for joy. Those two years had been 
 almost too long. 
 
 " But I must n't keep you, my dear," said the 
 mother at last. " What should I do without you? " 
 
 With visions of a long ordering list, a new cook 
 to diplomatize and the man to see about the new 
 awnings Martha went to the glass to straighten her 
 hair and prepare herself for action. She turned at 
 the door and waved a kiss. She could trust herself 
 now, she thought.
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 7 
 
 Mrs. Wainwright's eyes were very sharp. 
 "What other good news have you heard?" she 
 asked. 
 
 But Martha was out before the question was fin- 
 ished. It 's a trick all daughters have. And before 
 going down to take hold of the reins so often and so 
 fretfully resigned by the delicate woman whose 
 bronchial tubes made her a frequent prisoner to her 
 bed, the girl ran along the passage to her own room 
 and opened the little box in which she hid her se- 
 cret. . . . The snap-shot was of a tall, wiry, dark- 
 haired man in polo kit, with one foot on the rail of 
 a chair and the sun slanting across a laughing face. 
 Photography failed to show the deep tan of the skin, 
 the gray of the eyes or the touch of red in the small 
 mustache. But it captured the virility and strength 
 of the body, the width of chest, and the hardness of 
 a well-developed forearm. It was Bill Mortimer 
 playing the last of a lifetime of games before he got 
 into khaki to play the one whose ultimate goal was 
 set up at the further end of a field of death. . . . 
 
 Not with the skin-deep hero-worship of a child of 
 seventeen had she secured this picture but with the 
 sort of love that takes root in the heart of a woman 
 and if it never bursts into blossom and eventually 
 has by its side another plant remains forever the 
 first and the best. In his father's house away across 
 the meadows and the woods she had met Bill Morti- 
 mer and trembled as the arrow had winged into her 
 heart. Perhaps a dozen times since then she had 
 listened to his laugh, shivered at the careless touch
 
 8 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 of his hand, stored up the easy words that he had 
 said to her (" the little Wainwright kid "), watched 
 him, through a blinding mist of tears, drive off to 
 the city, knowing instinctively that he had been at 
 home to say good-by, and then, without his even re- 
 membering that she lived, patterned the floor of 
 Heaven with her prayers. . . . They had been 
 heard and he was coming back! ..." Hope sees a 
 star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a 
 wing." 
 
 II 
 
 IT was ten o'clock before Martha had set her house 
 in order for the day. The new cook, an Irish 
 woman with antagonistic eyes and the manners of 
 a prizefighter, had demanded an interview. Like 
 many others of the same kind this had taken place in 
 the library where at a desk at a respectful distance 
 from her father's Martha docketed her bills and 
 sorted away her receipts. With a back as flat as a 
 billiard table and a face like that of one of those 
 white horses which hauled great lorries about in the 
 narrow streets in the roaring Forties, this terrible 
 woman with the romantic name of Eileen McCar- 
 row gave out her first list of grievances. Her bed- 
 room was too small and the window faced east. 
 She must have a new set of kitchen utensils and one 
 of those white enamel arrangements full of drawers 
 for tea and coffee and pepper and salt and mustard 
 and flour and a hundred other things which help to 
 decorate a kitchen and are never by any chance
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 9 
 
 used. The waitress might perhaps remain but the 
 rest of the servants and especially the chauffeur 
 must be cleared out at once. " Otherwise, as God 's 
 my judge, I '11 not be stayin', an' that 's flat." 
 
 To all of which, with a deep knowledge of the 
 breed, Martha replied, " There 's a nice train back 
 to town at 12.22. If you will have your trunk 
 packed by twelve o'clock I will have a taxi here for 
 you." Whereupon Eileen McCarrow, a mere com- 
 mon bully like the rest of her type, gave one quick 
 glance at the charming figure with the steady blue 
 eyes, snorted and disappeared into the kitchen. 
 " I '11 be givin' der place a chance," she murmured, 
 as she stumped away. 
 
 After one more visit to her mother to see that 
 she had everything that she needed, Martha went 
 out into the garden. It was grass cutting day and 
 the two gardeners, Tony Caruso and Leonardo 
 Benvenuti, were typical Wops and had a way, when 
 the day was warm and nobody was keeping an eye 
 upon them, of leaving their machines behind a 
 zareba of trees, of making themselves particularly 
 comfortable under their -shade and discussing the 
 virtues of Orlando and the intricacies of the League 
 of Nations while they ate youthful onions newly 
 plucked from the warm earth. It was very human 
 and characteristic, but wages, like everything else, 
 were high, and grass had a way of growing exu- 
 berantly in the spring. Being possessed of an ex- 
 treme amount of moral courage Martha routed 
 them into the open and warned them that if the
 
 10 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 lawns were not properly cut by twelve o'clock there 
 would be two more picturesque Italians looking for 
 new jobs. Both of them had a healthy respect for 
 the girl who used simple words with quiet emphasis 
 and were very well aware of the fact that empty 
 threats were not in her line. It was wonderful to 
 see with what energy these two undersized, un- 
 washed specimens of a sunny country immediately 
 pursued the even tenor of their way. The clack of 
 their two machines inspired all near-by birds to 
 song. 
 
 Armed with the slip of paper which meant as 
 much to Bill's people as it did to herself and her 
 father and mother Martha made her way down to 
 the road which led to the old Mortimer place, the 
 landmark of that part of Westchester. About half 
 a mile from her own house it lay far back from the 
 road surrounded by trees and led up to under a long 
 and winding avenue. Somewhere about a hundred 
 and fifty years old, its numerous windows looked 
 over five hundred acres of woods and farm land. 
 A dear old rambling building upon which the hand 
 of a vandal had never been laid, with a high Co- 
 lonial portico which gave it dignity and charm, it 
 wore an air of extreme well-being and mothered 
 many out-houses and a low stable building with a 
 square courtyard which had obviously been built in 
 the days of coaching. Every inch of it reeked with 
 history and was pervaded with the spirits of those 
 fine Americans who had carried on the traditions of 
 Washington. A sunken rose garden with warm
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 11 
 
 brick paths caught the eye as one approached, and a 
 dozen great oak trees stood sentinel on the edge of 
 a rolling lawn. 
 
 Not altogether with the approval of her good 
 parents, to whom the extraordinary story of the 
 Mortimers was a matter of frequent and rather 
 starchy discussion, Martha had become the affec- 
 tionate and admiring protegee of the distinguished 
 white-haired lady who had been inspired to retire 
 from the world at precisely the right moment. The 
 fascination of spring for autumn and of a young 
 girl for a woman whose life had run its active 
 course, naturally came into this friendship, and 
 hardly a day passed that did not find these two 
 wandering together among the old gardens newly 
 astir and ebullient, the one to listen eagerly to the 
 stories about Bill which the other was only too anx- 
 ious to tell. It was with the utmost pleasure 
 therefore that Martha hurried round to break the 
 good news which had just been received over the 
 cable from Tom. 
 
 To Martha who rose at seven o'clock the day was 
 no longer young. To the Mortimers it was only 
 just beginning. 
 
 A man of elaborate portliness, important pres- 
 ence and canonical dignity was tapping a barometer 
 that hung on a wide beam to the left of the front 
 door as the girl arrived at the house, her butter- 
 colored hair bare to the sun. By the subordinates 
 who were ruled by him with that mixture of ingen- 
 ious blasphemy and autocratic firmness which be-
 
 12 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 longs to drill sergeants Albery was known as the 
 greyhound, because he made a little hair go a long 
 way. The pun was a bad one, but its effect on 
 people who had never heard it before and who mar- 
 veled at the painstaking way in which several 
 strands of black hair were plastered upon an other- 
 wise bald head was an instant gust of mirth. He 
 was one of the last of a breed of butlers who re- 
 gard their work as a vocation and come to it with 
 the tradition of many butler ancestors. 
 
 Hearing a quick light step on the veranda he 
 turned and bowed, with just the faint beginning of 
 a respectful smile. " Good morning, Miss 
 Martha," he said, his voice denoting a lifelong run 
 of enviable wine-cellars. 
 
 " Good morning, Albery. Is Mrs. Mortimer 
 down yet? " 
 
 " Not yet, Miss. Nor Mr. Mortimer neither. 
 And there is breakfast to go, during which I must 
 not allow them to be disturbed." 
 
 " Oh yes, I forgot that. But I 've run over with 
 great news and I thought I ought to give it at once." 
 
 Albery shrugged his shoulders and went so far 
 as to permit himself to chuckle. " It 's as much 
 as my life 's worth to advance a remark during the 
 process of the first meal, Miss, let the news be 
 good or bad. But if you have an hour to spare and 
 would be pleased to spend it in the garden. . . ." 
 
 Martha smiled, nodded, wheeled about and with 
 the precious piece of paper on which she had 
 scribbled Tom's message clasped tightly in her hand
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 13 
 
 went over a clean-shaven lawn and along a wide, 
 tree-shaded road to the stables. She had never 
 ventured to break in upon the almost religious rou- 
 tine of that house so early before and knowing the 
 cut and dried ways of those two old people almost 
 as well as Albery did, appreciated the necessity of 
 elimination without further discussion. There 
 was a whinny of welcome from an old hunter with 
 a white star between his eyes and a series of move- 
 ments in a line of loose boxes. The girl with the 
 soft voice and courageous hand had many friends 
 in that spotless place. She would spend an hour 
 there with delight. 
 
 Ill 
 
 IN the room in which the famous General Bar- 
 clay Mortimer was brought into the world and, 
 eventually, at the ripe age of eighty-four departed 
 from it, and in which Judge William Mortimer, 
 Governor of New York State, fought death for 
 exactly a year before being beaten in a contest 
 which is always an unequal one, Mr. Barclay Morti- 
 mer, ex-commodore of the New York Yacht Club, 
 was making up for breakfast. 
 
 Being now a man of sixty, who had sailed 
 through a gorgeous and much to be deplored life 
 with the face of Adonis and the figure of Apollo, it 
 goes without saying that Barclay Mortimer had a 
 standing grievance against " that damned Anno 
 Domini," as he called it, which had laid relentless 
 hands upon his handsome features and perfectly
 
 14 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 balanced body. With the pathetic reluctance of a 
 woman who has been a celebrated beauty to face 
 the sere and yellow, he made use of every known 
 weapon with which to disguise the brutal and dis- 
 figuring blows of the implacable hand of time. His 
 dressing table was covered, therefore, with bottles 
 whose mysterious liquids were known only to him- 
 self and his valet, dyes and astringents and the 
 rest prepared by ingenious people who catered to 
 the vanity of frail humanity at a profit of several 
 hundred per cent. If the daily process of making 
 up was long and tiresome its effect, in a doubtful 
 light, was to take ten years off Mortimer's appear- 
 ance and give him the supreme satisfaction of say- 
 ing to himself, as he looked at his white-haired wife 
 across the breakfast table, " Either, my dear friend, 
 she must have snatched you out of the cradle or you 
 are her youngest brother." 
 
 At the moment when Martha had arrived breath- 
 less and filled with a generous desire to share her 
 joy with Bill's parents, Barclay Mortimer was 
 standing in front of a pier glass dabbing his well- 
 shaped mustache with an evil smelling liquid which 
 had been poured upon a small sponge. Crouching 
 behind him the faithful Denham was lacing up a 
 pair of stays which, in doing away with a slight 
 rotundity in the neighborhood of the lower but- 
 tons of the waistcoat, gave the elderly victim the ap- 
 pearance of a pouter pigeon. The sunny brown of 
 hair which should have been a benign and woolly 
 white was a shade darker than the mustache, the
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 15 
 
 color scheme of which was to give an effect of sun 
 bleach. The eyebrows matched the hair, whose 
 center parting was continued down to the nape of 
 the neck. The face had been massaged first with a 
 small electrical instrument and then with cream of 
 honey and finally cleaned off with a lemon flavored 
 wash mixed with alcohol. Ultimate powder, neatly 
 applied, had been fanned away. A thousand dollars 
 had been paid to a French beauty doctor in New York 
 so that Denham might achieve the secrets of all the 
 art and craftiness of preservation and disguise, and 
 he performed his daily task with infinite care and 
 affection. He had been twenty years in the serv- 
 ice of " the old buck," as he called him, and it was 
 a matter of personal pride to turn him out looking 
 like an actor manager of ripe age made up to play 
 the part of a leading juvenile. The keen sense of 
 humor that was possessed by them both lightened 
 the hours devoted to this process of camouflage. 
 
 Having risen at eight it was ten o'clock before 
 Mr. Barclay Mortimer regarded himself as finished, 
 and took a last look in the pier glass that stood be- 
 tween the two windows of a bedroom which was 
 the acme of comfort and was filled with delightful 
 old pieces of Colonial furniture. 
 
 Tall and slight and graceful, dressed in a beauti- 
 fully cut suit of Irish homespun golf clothes which 
 gave out a pleasant reek of bog and tobacco, with 
 brown stockings and white shoes with brown leather 
 strappings which required the hand of an artist to 
 clean, the old gentleman whose abominable past
 
 16 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 gave him great joy to contemplate tucked a colored 
 handkerchief into his pocket and turned with a 
 smile. "Congratulations, Denham," he said, "I 
 feel fifty-two and look forty-eight. You actually 
 achieve what Canute attempted." 
 
 " Thank you, Sir," replied Denham, standing 
 back with the air of a portrait painter. He didn't 
 know who Canute was, and didn't care. The re- 
 mark was a favorite one and he understood that 
 it was the last word in praise. It meant that he 
 could now retire to the servants' porch to smoke a 
 pipe and read the morning paper with the complete 
 satisfaction of having done his job for the day. 
 
 At five minutes past ten, as usual, the old buck 
 left his room, went jauntily along the wide corri- 
 dor that was hung with the full length portraits 
 of his deserving ancestors, descended the stairs 
 humming an air from " Sumurun," crossed the hall 
 under the disapproving eyes of Mortimers who had 
 taken life with desperate seriousness, and swung 
 into the breakfast porch to be welcomed by an out- 
 burst of song from innumerable canaries and an 
 enigmatical smile from Mrs. Barclay Mortimer. 
 
 The white haired lady, who was three years 
 younger than her husband, had been down, as us- 
 ual, for an hour. Having wisely decided to let na- 
 ture alone and grow old gracefully she had had an 
 hour to give to the garden, that wonderful and 
 peaceful old garden, and had brought back with her 
 a bunch of lilies of the valley, the most virginal and 
 modest of all flowers. A woman built on noble
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 17 
 
 lines, tall and straight and willowy, there was all 
 about her, despite her snowy hair, that essence 
 of loveliness that a beautiful woman never quite 
 loses if she is content to leave well alone. She had 
 real dignity and charm and kindliness, a low soft 
 laugh in which there was something suggestive of 
 the notes of a harpsichord and at the tail end of her 
 dark eyes a hint of ironic humor. Especially about 
 her hands with their long thin ringers and polished 
 nails was her breeding and fastidiousness to be de- 
 tected. She permitted herself the use of one inimi- 
 table pearl ring, around which there were tender 
 memories. There would have been no breakfast for 
 her if she had known that Bill, the apple of her eye, 
 was aboard the transport that was to bring him, 
 with other members of the Headquarters staff, from 
 Brest. 
 
 They met, these two, more like people who were 
 newly married than those who had been married and 
 almost wholly separated for thirty-five years. Rais- 
 ing her hand to his lips with an air of respectful 
 admiration and courtliness Mortimer gave her his 
 usual greeting. " Good morning, Madame. How 
 charming you look ! " 
 
 To which, with the faintest suggestion of amuse- 
 ment, she replied, " Good morning, Commodore. I 
 return the compliment with interest." 
 
 And then followed the inevitable business, 
 watched with extreme sympathy by the silent Al- 
 bery, of escorting her to her chair, placing it for 
 her and pushing it in, all done with the studied
 
 18 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 gracefulness of old fashioned comedy as though be- 
 fore an audience, as indeed it was. In addition 
 to the many canaries there were, in that glassed-in 
 breakfast porch, a collection of parrots and para- 
 keets, love birds in large cages and a tiny marmoset 
 chained to a perch. 
 
 Then followed the first meal of the day, during 
 which letters were opened and commented upon, the 
 front pages of the papers glanced at and discussed, 
 the morning welcome extended to a couple of ex- 
 tremely well-bred water-spaniels whose silky black 
 curls had been carefully brushed and parted. An 
 hour of a day which had no duties and few occupa- 
 tions was thus delightfully killed. 
 
 The underlying irony in the comedy of this felici- 
 tous scene would have given immense joy to those 
 worldly people who had known the handsome Bar- 
 clay Mortimer in the zenith of his career as a lady 
 killer and sportsman and the lovely Lylyth as the 
 leader of New York society on whose entrance to 
 her box at the Metropolitan Opera House the vast 
 audience had nearly risen to its feet. 
 
 An eccentric but very human couple this, who had 
 been driven by encroaching years reluctantly to 
 retire from a world that was full of things to enjoy 
 and sensations with which to experiment and were 
 now playing their parts sexlessly at the latter end of 
 a marriage which they had never properly played at 
 the beginning of it. They might still have continued 
 separately on their way to the outpost of eternity 
 had they not been mutually bound by two common
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 19 
 
 desires, the one to cultivate each other's acquaint- 
 ance in the old house beloved by them both, the 
 other to bask in the smiles of Bill, whom they 
 adored, delighted in and conspired to marry to a girl 
 young and sweet enough to be the mother of a new 
 line of Mortimers. To this good end, good, that 
 is, from their own point of view, they were the 
 last to take into account the rakish record of their 
 only son, they had their eyes on Martha Wain- 
 wright. In her they saw all the makings of a fine 
 young reviver of their honored but recently un- 
 cared-for name, a girl born of honest and scrupu- 
 lous parents, of responsible and sensible upbring- 
 ing, unspoiled by wealth and fashionable school- 
 ing, who would come to marriage with an old fash- 
 ioned ecstasy and that keen sense of duty which 
 seems to have gone out with the puffed sleeve and 
 the bustle. They divided this supreme ambition be- 
 tween them and while waiting for its fulfillment trod 
 the little private stage of their own with all the zest 
 and whimsicality that hard living had left to them. 
 Follies cease only with the flight of youth, and 
 sometimes not even then. 
 
 IV 
 
 WHEN Mrs. Mortimer rose to say " sweet- 
 sweet" to her pet canary before going up to her 
 boudoir to write her bi-weekly letter to Bill, the 
 Commodore lingered in the breakfast porch. 
 
 Whether he was inspired to a genuine sentiment 
 by the glory of that spring morning, or merely
 
 20 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 grasped at an excuse to see whether he had not 
 wholly forgotten his gift of saying delightful noth- 
 ings to a woman, or felt the faint flicker of his old 
 hot fire of amorousness, no one could have told and 
 he did n't stop to discover. The fact remained that 
 presently he placed himself in his wife's way in 
 front of the door, and put a quiver of emotion into 
 his well modulated voice. 
 
 " Lylyth, my dear," he said humbly and with 
 great tenderness, " let me say for once how greatly 
 I appreciate the privilege of this St. Martin's sum- 
 mer with you." 
 
 Mrs. Mortimer gave one of her low soft laughs. 
 This little outburst was totally unexpected and was 
 like a speech to which no cue had been provided. 
 It did not surprise her, however, or more than 
 lightly touch one of the easily reached spots of a 
 vanity that age had not yet withered. He often 
 said such things at carefully chosen moments. 
 "My dear Barclay," she answered teasingly, "I 
 have the mail to catch and a long letter to write. 
 Please may I go ? " 
 
 " No, no," he said, taking one of her long thin 
 hands in both his own and holding it against his 
 heart, a trick that he had often practised with a 
 certain Italian prima donna away back in '89. 
 " No, no. Stay just for a moment. I am moved 
 to speak sincerely, and surely there is enough room 
 for silence in the grave? " He could just see him- 
 self in an oval glass that hung at the other end of 
 the porch. His attitude pleased him.
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 21 
 
 " Cut it as short as you can then. I want to tell 
 Bill about the new filly and write more tactful things 
 about the future of the family." She let him see 
 that she took his so-called sincerity with a pinch of 
 salt, but made no real effort to go. She owned 
 that there was something curiously intriguing in 
 living under the same roof with a man who had 
 frankly taken his pleasures elsewhere ever since the 
 decline of their honeymoon thirty-five years ago. 
 It was like standing in front of a fire of spent em- 
 bers that was railed off by a guard. 
 
 But Mortimer was not to be put off. He had 
 breakfasted well. He felt fifty-two and looked 
 forty-eight. The fight over the formation of a 
 League of Nations that was to put an end to fight- 
 ing was almost over. Bill must soon be home 
 again. He was well and happy. Under such ex- 
 cellent conditions it seemed a pity not to draw once 
 more upon the fountain of his eloquence, even if 
 it were shrewdly understood and unappreciated. 
 " My dear," he went on, holding his pose, " I know 
 that you have much to forgive and many things to 
 forget. I have not been a good husband to you. 
 Having seen you daily now for several months and 
 discovered in you a host of lovely qualities that 
 escaped me in my riotous youth, I want to say how 
 deeply I deplore my former blindness and how 
 greatly I desire to atone, now that we have come to- 
 gether at last, for my many omissions." 
 
 "You speak like a book, Barclay," said his wife. 
 "If you were always able to command such Ian-
 
 22 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 guage no wonder you were such a success with wo- 
 men. Some of them fall more easily to style than 
 to brute force, Juliet for instance." She laughed 
 again and drew aside. " There. Now you can get 
 a better view of yourself in the glass." It was per- 
 haps a little cruel. 
 
 But still Mortimer was not put off. It is true 
 that for the moment he was peeved at being seen 
 through so quickly, but his irresistible sense of hu- 
 mor came to the rescue. He echoed her laugh, let 
 go her hand and opened the door. " Give my love 
 to Bill," he said, " and tell him that I have lost four 
 pounds by depriving myself of butter. No wonder 
 that you were such a success, Madame. And by 
 the way " 
 
 " Yes ? " She turned at the door. There was a 
 charming note of camaraderie in her voice. 
 
 " Talking of style, I have just finished editing a 
 brief resume of my life for the family records. 
 Shall I read it to you to-night after dinner?" 
 
 " Oh please," she said. " That will be exciting. 
 So much that you have done has only come to me 
 in gossip. Shall I publish it after you have gone? " 
 
 A shudder ran over Mortimer's wasted frame. 
 He hated to hear of death. 
 
 " Oh Lylyth ! " he said, like a man who had been 
 enjoying a bout of fencing and was pricked by an 
 opponent who had removed the button from his foil. 
 
 She threw out a repentant hand to him, touched 
 by his obvious horror. " Forgive me, Barclay. It 
 was a bad joke," and left him alone with the cana-
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 23 
 
 ries, the parrots, the little marmoset and a sudden 
 mental picture of a procession to the old graveyard 
 of his forbears, which made him turn as cold as a 
 fish. He looked every day of his sixty years. 
 
 V 
 
 BUT Mrs. Mortimer's letter was never to be writ- 
 ten. 
 
 Emerging pontifically from a door in the hall 
 .Albery came forward and met her as she was about 
 to go up to her sanctum. " Miss Martha Wain- 
 wright has been waiting for an hour in the stables, 
 Madam," he said as one might make a statement 
 about the weather. Several generations of butler- 
 ship had gone to the making of his perfect lack of 
 interest. He was as a matter of fact intensely curi- 
 ous to know what had brought Martha over with 
 that beacon burning in her eyes, and eager impa- 
 tience had urged him to much scathing and bitter 
 sarcasm in the kitchen. 
 
 " Why? " asked Mrs. Mortimer, sensing that the 
 girl had something important to tell. The late 
 afternoon was her usual time to come. 
 
 " I cannot say, I 'm sure, Madam. But the 
 young lady seemed to be very excited, if I may be 
 allowed the expression." 
 
 " Fetch her at once, no. I '11 go myself. . . . 
 It 's Bill," she added mentally, as she went out of the 
 sun-bathed garden and round the house and across 
 the lawn to the stables, with a quickening of the 
 pulse. " It 's Bill. I know it is. She must have
 
 24 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 been ordained to be the one to bring us news of him, 
 
 we, who have chosen her to be his wife." 
 Reaching the stables she called with all the voice 
 
 that her speed had left her, and drew up short, 
 stabbed by an anguished thought. It might be bad 
 news! Bill might have come to trouble. The pa- 
 per must have had something in it that she had 
 missed. 
 
 Martha heard the cry and came out of the warm 
 harness room that was closely hung with bridles 
 and saddles all of which were oiled and polished. 
 She had been standing there alone for half an 
 hour with the star of hope blinding her with its 
 light. 
 
 " Here I am, Mrs. Mortimer," she said. 
 
 The lady whose face had gone as white as her hair 
 stood very still and upright. If she was to be re- 
 quired to meet a blow she would take it as she had 
 taken all the others, with her chin up. 
 
 " It 's about Bill," she said. 
 
 With a great struggle to show only sisterly joy, 
 
 because her feelings as to Bill must be hidden 
 even from the eyes of his mother, Martha handed 
 over the slip of paper that vibrated with her kisses. 
 " A cable from Tom. It came early this morning. 
 I have been waiting to show it to you." 
 
 As Mrs. Mortimer read the message everything 
 about her relaxed. She gave a little fluttering sob 
 and over her still lovely face crept an expression 
 that was like that of the Madonna. . . . Was it 
 after all curious that although her only son had been
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 25 
 
 born out of love and had turned out to be a modern 
 edition of his father he had always been the one su- 
 preme factor of her artificial life, the apple of 
 her eye? . . . "Thank God," she said. "We are 
 to see him again." And she put out her hands, with 
 a peculiar gravity, and drew the girl into her arms 
 and kissed her. If all her plans ran smoothly and 
 she could lead the harum-scarum Bill into settling 
 down while he was still under the reaction of war, 
 here was the mother of her grandson. 
 
 But she was startled to find herself holding a 
 young thing, a moment ago so cool and aloof, whose 
 whole body shook with a very tempest of tears. . . . 
 This was not the relief that came to a sister, 
 even to one so affectionate as Martha. Then it 
 must be for Bill. It must mean that this little girl, 
 like so many others scattered about the earth, had 
 set Bill up in her heart and, with something of the 
 same love as that of a mother, had also spent those 
 long and anxious months at the feet of God. 
 
 " My darling," she said. 
 
 And for many minutes these two women, bound 
 by a tie that nothing could undo, remained in each 
 other's arms, in mutual thanksgiving. 
 
 At last Martha conquered herself and drew away. 
 No one must share her secret. " Tom and I have 
 always been g great pals," she said, catching her 
 breath. 
 
 " I know, my dear, I know." 
 
 " And he 's . . . , he 's been through some of 
 the worst fighting."
 
 26 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 " I 'm sure he has, quite sure." 
 
 " And he 's the only son, you see, and that 
 means s so much to father and mother." 
 
 " Yes, indeed." 
 
 " And one has had to try to be very brave all this 
 time for their sake." 
 
 " I know." 
 
 " So that 's why I c cried like that." 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 And in the little silence that followed, the girl 
 earnestly examined the woman's face to see if there 
 was the least suggestion of disbelief in her explana- 
 tion, and the woman, who had great sympathy and 
 a keen remembrance of her own heart as a child, 
 never gave herself away. She too had had a secret 
 and the man had never found it out. She would 
 make it her business to see, more now than ever, that 
 Martha should be numbered among the lucky ones. 
 Sooner or later Martha must make some reference 
 to Bill, and she wondered, smiling, in what way she 
 would manage it. 
 
 " It 's just like Tom to cable like that," Martha 
 went on, with all her confidence back. " You should 
 have seen how father took it ! " 
 
 " I wish I had." 
 
 " He whirled me round the room and when he 
 rushed up to Mother the whole house seemed to 
 shake." 
 
 " I 'm not surprised, my dear." 
 
 And then it came, and in so naive a way as to 
 make Mrs, Mortimer want to take the girl once
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 27 
 
 more into her arms and tell her that the secret was 
 a secret no longer. 
 
 " I suppose Tom put that in about Major Morti- 
 mer so that I might come and tell you," she said, 
 standing with wide eyes and a perfectly expression- 
 less face. 
 
 But Mrs. Mortimer did not allow herself even the 
 ghost of a smile. She lived up, in spite of great 
 temptation, to her usual fine spirit of sportsmanship. 
 " I suppose he did," she answered. " It was ex- 
 tremely thoughtful of Tom. Probably Bill's own 
 cable has been delayed somewhere." And that was 
 what had happened. 
 
 " I am glad to be the one to bring you such good 
 news, Mrs. Mortimer." 
 
 " So am I, you dear thing." And one of the long 
 thin fastidious hands rested affectionately on 
 Martha's little fair head. " Let us go together to 
 the Commodore. It will make him feel years 
 younger than he does already." 
 
 And as they went back to the house arm in arm 
 the new leaves on the twisted boughs of the old 
 family sentinels seemed to break into applause, as 
 though they approved of Mrs. Mortimer's choice of 
 the mother of a new generation. And when the 
 old buck, from his place on the veranda, saw the ap- 
 proach of his wife with a girl whose face he could 
 not recognize at that distance, he preened himself, 
 gave a fluke to his mustache and rehearsed a sen- 
 tence appropriate to youth and spring. 
 
 In choosing Martha as the girl to be Bill's wife
 
 28 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 Mrs. Mortimer had told herself and the Commo- 
 dore that the only difficulty which faced them was to 
 arrange a romantic meeting. With the natural 
 conceit of a mother it had never occurred to her to 
 question the fact that Martha would jump at Bill. 
 Bill was Bill and no girl who was n't blind and 
 dumb could possibly resist his attractions. Good 
 Lord, he had had few rebuffs hitherto, the bad 
 boy. But, all the same, how much easier the bring- 
 ing of these two together would be now, with love 
 already on one side. On the other there was, be- 
 cause nature always stood by her precedents, and 
 the escape from death was always followed by a 
 desire to perpetuate, a new sentiment, a hitherto un- 
 required capacity for fatherhood and home-life, 
 and, of course, the legal possession of an adoring 
 wife in the first flush of youth. Mrs. Mortimer, 
 knowing the male species so well, banked on that. 
 The question as to whether it would be fair or wise 
 to give the girl a few hints as to Bill's passionate 
 interludes before she stood with him at the altar, 
 and thus provide her with the chance to draw back 
 in the event of disillusion, had never entered her 
 mind. If the unsophisticated and romantic girl 
 had made Bill her hero, blameless and without re- 
 proach, let him remain so. One of her tenets had 
 always been that into the Blue Room thou shalt not 
 look. And another that a man's life was his own 
 although a woman's must belong wholly to the man 
 who made her his wife. 
 
 It must be remembered that Mrs. Mortimer dated
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 29 
 
 back to that amazing period before woman's rights 
 had been brought forward to make things more 
 difficult. 
 
 VI 
 
 THAT evening, at the time when Martha's daily 
 duties were over and she had gone to bed to dream 
 of the man whose photograph was under her pillow, 
 Barclay Mortimer and the white-haired lady went 
 into what was called the morning room of their very 
 proper house. It might better have been called the 
 all-day room because it was here that a long line of 
 masters and mistresses had always gravitated to 
 read and talk, write letters and play backgammon, 
 cribbage and whist. Long and narrow, with win- 
 dows at both ends and a large open fireplace opposite 
 to the arch that separated it from the more impos- 
 ing drawing room, it had about it an air of comfort 
 and relaxation which made an irresistible appeal. 
 No ancestors frowned down from their faded 
 frames, but every inch of the walls was covered with 
 a valuable and delightful collection of colored 
 prints, corner cupboards filled with old Chelsea and 
 Spode, and gleaming Colonial cabinets behind the 
 glass doors of which stood lines of first editions. 
 The polished floor was covered with the hooked 
 rugs of old New England, their quaint and curious 
 designs in rich colors now dulled by time and use, 
 and every one of the numerous chairs held out stiff 
 though hospitable arms. Handmade fire screens 
 worked with beads, illustrating Biblical scenes or
 
 30 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 representing coats of arms, gave warmth and a 
 little fustiness to various corners, and the mantel- 
 shelf was crowded with delightfully ugly china 
 figures in Sunday attitudes, early Victorian orna- 
 ments with long glass tears, and inimitable old snuff 
 boxes which reeked with history. The whole room 
 cried aloud for crinolines and round bare shoulders, 
 satin beflowered waistcoats, knee-breeches, and the 
 aroma of rose-leaves and hot toddy. 
 
 At that pathetic time of life when meals take on 
 supreme importance as landmarks in a long unoc- 
 cupied day the Mortimers had dined well. A bottle 
 of Veuve Cliquot '06 had given the required fillip 
 to send them through an evening without the stimu- 
 lation of guests. There was also the excitement to 
 Mortimer of reading aloud his carefully written 
 autobiography and to Mrs. Mortimer of listening to 
 a probably biased account of a life in which her 
 particular part had begun and ended with a honey- 
 moon. She looked forward with interest and 
 amusement not only to the references to herself 
 which must certainly come into it but to the way in 
 which Barclay had smoothed over some of the 
 rather doubtful episodes of his one-eyed and amo- 
 rous career. 
 
 " Sit here, Madame," said Mortimer, arranging 
 a nest of cushions at the head of a mahogany framed 
 sofa. " I shall need the reading lamp but I will 
 tilt the shade so that the light may not tease your 
 eyes." He handed her to her place, arranged her 
 skirt about her feet, put a cigarette into her long
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 31 
 
 black holder and gave her a light. He did it all 
 with his usual mixture of courtesy and tenderness 
 and with the air, which gave Mrs. Mortimer agonies 
 of repressed amusement, of waiting upon someone 
 old enough to be his mother. 
 
 " I don't need these glasses," he said, putting 
 them on, " but the light is faulty and my handwrit- 
 ing a little careless." He made the apology more 
 to himself than to his wife. He regarded this aid 
 to failing sight with considerable distaste. Then 
 he mounted a carefully chosen cigar in a meer- 
 schaum holder, pushed a chair a little nearer to the 
 reading lamp, and seated himself with his manuscript 
 on his knees. Anno Domini must have chuckled to 
 see him, in his rather too tight dinner jacket and 
 all the camouflage of Denham's numerous bottles. 
 He might have looked older but he certainly would 
 have been a less unreal figure with white hair and 
 mustache. As it was he bore a striking resem- 
 blance to one of those wax figures of dead celebrities 
 before which one pauses for a moment with a queer 
 self-consciousness as though fearing to intrude. 
 
 " It 's the custom of the male members of your 
 family to write the story of their lives for the pri- 
 vate use of their children, I believe?" asked Mrs. 
 Mortimer. 
 
 "Yes, and not a bad idea either. It insures in- 
 accuracy and makes us quite certain of the admira- 
 tion of those who follow us. I 'm afraid mine 
 won't make such inspiring reading as the rest, 
 though," His gleeful chuckle contradicted the note
 
 32 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 of contrition that he put into his voice. " Bill will 
 enjoy it. I'm sure of that, and so will you, I 
 hope." 
 
 " Does n't that rather depend on what you 've 
 written about me ? " 
 
 Mortimer gave her a little bow. " I could write 
 nothing about you that had n't in it the deepest ad- 
 miration and respect, Madame." 
 
 " Well, I 'm most comfortable and most curious. 
 Please begin." 
 
 Like a professional pianist, hired for a tea fight, 
 who, after trying the instrument, places her hand- 
 kerchief and proceeds to take off her bracelets, 
 Mortimer looked up from the first page. " You 
 must understand," he said, " that the rather pedantic 
 style is in keeping with other such documents and 
 it is written in the third person according to prece- 
 dent." 
 
 " Delightful." 
 
 He touched the shade, drew an ash tray nearer, 
 put his fingers to his tie, and cleared his throat. He 
 was about to have a most enjoyable evening. 
 " ' Barclay Mortimer the third,' " he began, " ' was 
 born to William and Maria Coveney Mortimer at 
 two o'clock in the morning of the 27 of October 
 18 ' " the rest he swallowed. It left a nasty taste. 
 ' ' A bright and remarkably attractive child, he not 
 only received the finest education that his country 
 could give but all the good influences of a home 
 dominated by noble and God-fearing parents ! ' " 
 He turned over a dozen pages and shot out a smile.
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 33 
 
 " I '11 spare you all the details of my life and exploits 
 at a preparatory school and Yale, very enthrall- 
 ing, and come to the time when I began to count." 
 
 Mrs. Mortimer nodded. That meant her en- 
 trance into the story. 
 
 "'At the age of twenty-four, he found himself, 
 upon the lamented death of his father, in possession 
 of the ancestral house in Westchester, a stable full 
 of horses, four old road coaches which had fre- 
 quently rumbled over the English macadam of Pic- 
 cadilly and Trafalgar Square on the way to 
 Brighton and to Dover, the fine acres of park and 
 farmland over which at various times many of the 
 celebrated characters of American history had gal- 
 loped, and a very considerable fortune. A wealthy, 
 high-spirited and uncommonly handsome young 
 man, determined to wring out of life everything 
 that it had to give, young Mortimer immediately 
 followed the example of those whose name he bore 
 by making an early marriage.' ' : 
 
 " Ah," said Mrs. Mortimer, her mind running 
 back to that distant year when she had looked and 
 felt as Martha Wainwright did to-day. It was like 
 the echo of a dream. 
 
 " ' His beloved mother, the reluctant dowager, re- 
 tired to the smaller house on the southwest edge 
 of the estate and brought forward the beautiful Ly- 
 lyth Pellew, whose family, Anglo-Saxon like that of 
 the Mortimers, had settled about the same period in 
 the adjoining state of Connecticut.' ' 
 
 A murmur came from the sofa. " Poor little
 
 34 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 soul, with long legs and long ringlets, a broken ro- 
 mance, and less knowledge of men and life than a 
 newly fledged bird." 
 
 His deaf ear was towards his wife and so Morti- 
 mer missed these words. " The next few sentences 
 I submit to your revision if you consider it neces- 
 sary," he said, " but I will read them as written." 
 
 Mrs. Mortimer waved her hand. She had for- 
 gotten the name of the boy who had not returned 
 her love and which like a worm in the bud had eaten 
 her damask cheek. She had also forgotten the 
 exact quotation, but she remembered the spirit in 
 which she had submitted, with the docility of her 
 time, to be " brought forward." 
 
 " ' Having no one else in his mind, and being 
 anxious to conform to the established rule, young 
 Mortimer quickly led this very suitable young lady 
 to the altar; whereupon, having performed their 
 respective duties by the family after a most discon- 
 certing honeymoon under the roof of the old house 
 and the eyes of numerous ancestors, the young 
 couple felt the need of a change of scene. Mrs. 
 Mortimer went to New York to stay with relatives 
 in Washington Square and Barclay took it into his 
 head to visit his connections in England and hunt 
 with the Quorn and the Bicester . . . .' May I 
 leave it like that ? " 
 
 " How else ? It seems to me to be a masterpiece 
 of tactfulness, a gem of the art of elimination." 
 But into the mind of the white-haired lady crowded 
 memories of a distressingly unsophisticated girl, a
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 35 
 
 man of urgent desires, and a locked door, after 
 an outburst of revolt. . . . How good had been 
 the independence and the freedom of that metro- 
 politan house and the kindness of those dear gay 
 people who had introduced her to the life of New 
 York. 
 
 ' Then occurred the first of those affairs of the 
 heart which this brief narrative must regretfully 
 contain,' " read the Commodore, smiling broadly at 
 the recollection of the amusement he had derived 
 from throwing in the word regretfully. " ' Young 
 Mortimer met and fell madly in love with Diana 
 Conclarty, daughter of the Earl of Portrush, and 
 for a time, it must be said, forgot the beautiful ties 
 of home under the emotion of an episode to which 
 only the flaming pen of a great poet could do justice 
 or the weighty diatribes of a great judge sufficiently 
 condemn ' . . . . That 's pretty well put, I flatter 
 myself," he added, looking up. 
 
 Mrs. Mortimer laughed. " Brilliant," she said. 
 "And so Diana Conclarty was the first, was she? 
 Tell me about her." 
 
 " Red hair, a skin like cream, the spirit of an un- 
 broken colt, the physical daring of a man, the tem- 
 per of the devil and moments of angelic clemency. 
 Hey, what a life she led me, that girl! She 
 caught me when I was just trying my wings and 
 left me an experienced flyer. The last time I saw 
 her she was in Red Cross uniform and the pride and 
 grief of having given three sons to the great sacri- 
 fice was stamped upon her face." He raised his
 
 36 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 hand to his forehead in salute and swallowed a 
 lump that came into his throat. Like all supremely 
 selfish men he could easily afford to indulge in 
 theoretical kindness and sentiment. 
 
 " Poor brave soul," said Mrs. Mortimer, with her 
 eyes on, a framed photograph of Bill. 
 
 " ' Young Barclay's return to Westchester was 
 due to an impending event of supreme importance 
 to the future of his family. He arrived in time to 
 pace the wide veranda of the old house to wait with 
 strange feelings for the appearance of the doctor to 
 murmur into his ear one or other of the two words 
 "boy" or "girl."'" 
 
 " It was ' boy '," said Mrs. Mortimer, throwing 
 a kiss to the tall figure in khaki. 
 
 " Yes, thank God, it was ' boy ', and thank God 
 again that that boy is on his way to us now. . . . 
 * It goes without saying that the proud and happy 
 father stayed long enough in the place of his own 
 birth to add his decorative and debonair figure to 
 the little procession that eventually wound its way 
 to the old Episcopalian Church in the village to the 
 christening ceremony of his son and heir.' ' 
 
 Mrs. Mortimer pressed her handkerchief sur- 
 reptitiously to her eyes. But the Commodore had 
 labored to awaken this emotion and paused delib- 
 erately, very much gratified. Mrs. Mortimer saw 
 all this and laughed away her tears. " Forgive the 
 interruption, Barclay," she said. 
 
 " Not at all, Madame. I am so glad to help you 
 to a pleasant evening. * After which/ " he went on,
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 37 
 
 with more gusto than ever, " ' a friendly discussion 
 was held between the husband and the wife, who had 
 by this time achieved considerable poise and a very 
 direct vocabulary from the broadening influences 
 of New York, and Barclay Mortimer took flight 
 once more, this time to France, which became the 
 scene of his second great passion.' ' 
 
 " What resilience, my dear Barclay ! " 
 
 " ' The dark-haired Bolaire, the young come- 
 dienne who drew all Paris to the Varietes to see her 
 in "La Femme du Monsieur Boc", held him until 
 she saw her way to permanency and the solid bour- 
 geoisism for which her soul had always pined by 
 marrying the proprietor of the Hotel du Chariot 
 d'or at Boulogne.' " 
 
 " H'm, how curious." 
 
 " No, she came from Brittany. Thrift and cau- 
 tion were in her blood. . . . ' Whereupon, the 
 temporarily wounded and disillusioned Barclay re- 
 turned once more to Westchester, filled with an 
 overwhelming desire to put young Bill upon a pony 
 and take a hand in teaching him the ways of a 
 gentleman. It may be added that he hoped at the 
 same time to gain comfort and consolation at the 
 hands of his wife and plant something more fruit- 
 ful in the earth than wild oats. He found that, 
 during this absence of several years, Mrs. Morti- 
 mer had developed into one of the personalities of 
 New York and was the undisputed leader of the 
 most exclusive set in the City, a vivid and beautiful 
 young woman whose doings and sayings were
 
 I 
 
 38 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 chronicled in the newspapers and whose house in 
 Fifth Avenue was the center of attraction.' ' 
 
 " Thank you, Barclay. I could n't have written 
 that better myself." 
 
 " Yes, but wait a minute. Here follows a para- 
 graph which you may wish to take out and of course 
 I shall bow to your decision." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 He read again. " ' He was, however, somewhat 
 piqued to find that she had not been altogether in- 
 consolable at his long and selfish absence and had, 
 indeed, established an interest which made life very 
 desirable and helped her to pass her grass-widow- 
 hood without bitterness.' . . . Shall that stand ?" 
 
 " Word for word, my dear Barclay. It 's per- 
 fectly delicious." 
 
 " ' The death of his mother at this period of his 
 life,' " he went on, " * held Mortimer to America 
 longer than he desired to remain. He was how- 
 ever bound to confess that the sight of his boy, the 
 very spit of himself, touched him on that side of 
 his nature which circumstances had not permitted 
 him to develop. It was then that the seeds were 
 sown of the deep affection which ever afterwards 
 existed between father and son. For the first time 
 the Mortimers made several appearances together 
 in society to everybody's surprise, agreed again to 
 differ on nearly every subject which came up for 
 discussion and separated once more. This time 
 Mortimer spread his wings for Italy. . . .'" 
 
 " Italy, ah yes. The Villa Fiora. Someone
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 39 
 
 sent Bill a series of very pretty water-color sketches 
 of what seemed to be a most romantic spot." 
 
 There came a deep sigh followed by a reminiscent 
 laugh. " ' Here he very quickly found himself in 
 the midst of an intrigue which lasted longer than any 
 of the others. The discretion which had to be ex- 
 ercised with this dear lady taught him most of the 
 rules of diplomacy which afterwards stood him in 
 such good stead. Eventually the little affair was 
 discovered, there was a fracas, Mortimer was flung 
 from a balcony, and as soon as his broken arm was 
 mended, took up his residence in London.' ' 
 
 " Was she worth a broken arm ? " 
 
 Mortimer nodded and closed his eyes for a mo- 
 ment. " She was worth breaking everything for, 
 including the Commandments. A rare and noble 
 character, Lylyth, with a deep streak of piety." 
 
 "Piety!" 
 
 " Paradoxically enough perhaps, yes, though 
 I ought to say that she kept it well in the back- 
 ground. As beautiful as her sunny country, she 
 died of a broken heart and an attack of pleurisy. 
 God rest her sweet soul ! " 
 
 " She certainly had a nice taste for drawing," 
 said Mrs. Mortimer, in a perfectly even voice. 
 " We missed the sketches very much." 
 
 " Thank you," said Mortimer, who felt that these 
 pictures would never have been painted had he not 
 been the Paolo to this Francesca. "And now I 
 think that a little light refreshment has been earned 
 by us both and we will raise our glasses in silent
 
 40 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 tribute to the past that we have unearthed to-night. 
 How true it is that nothing gives to people of ripe 
 age such exquisite pleasure as to gloat over the 
 misdeeds of their youth ! " 
 
 He rose and made a graceful line for the tray 
 which Albery had placed upon an octagonal table. 
 
 And as Mrs. Mortimer watched this man of 
 transparent egotism who took such an artistic pleas- 
 ure in placing himself in the spotlight, she told her- 
 self that she regretted less than ever having been 
 " brought forward " all those years ago, because 
 Bill was her compensation, Bill who was at that 
 moment aboard the ship that was heading for home, 
 and Martha Wainwright. History repeats itself 
 and this girl also would presently be brought for- 
 ward, but not as Mrs. Mortimer had been. Love 
 would make the story a very different one. 
 
 With marvelously steady hands Mortimer 
 brought back two liqueur glasses of green Char- 
 treuse and his wife joined him in drinking to many 
 youthful misdeeds which provided her too with 
 precious memories. 
 
 VII 
 
 AFTER which, with a lubricated throat, the old 
 man continued to enjoy himself. 
 
 " ' Mortimer then commenced to develop the 
 sporting instinct of his many-sided character. He 
 had the leisure to do so because he was for the mo- 
 ment free of women. He became a famous 
 swordsman, a distinguished whip, a well-known
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 41 
 
 polo-player and the owner of a yacht which in those 
 days was called palatial by the little scribblers of 
 society chit-chat. He owned and sometimes drove 
 the road coach which left London every day for 
 Guilford and bought a house in Mayfair to which 
 the young aristocracy of England came at all times. 
 He was ami intime in the most exclusive circles and 
 his colors were frequently to be seen in the races for 
 which he entered his horses. Then came the great 
 scandal of 1899 
 
 " I was looking forward to that," said Mrs. 
 Mortimer. " It seemed to be a little overdue." 
 
 She was thanked by a roguish glance. . . . 
 "'When Colonel Alistair McDuff brought his in- 
 famous action for divorce against Lady Doreen and 
 cited Barclay Mortimer as co-respondent. It occu- 
 pied the attention of the courts when the London 
 season was at its height. The case was tried before 
 Mr. Justice Dearborn, the most advertised counsel 
 took it in hand and the names of the witnesses made 
 a list which would have been epooh-making even 
 when attached to a charity performance under the 
 patronage of Royalty. Lady Doreen put up a most 
 courageous and witty defense. Her cross-exami- 
 nation, during which she lashed the prosecuting 
 counsel with her well-known sarcasm, sent London 
 into fits of laughter. Mortimer also, of course, 
 denied the soft impeachment and being at that time 
 in the very prime of his looks was the object of 
 much admiration. He worked off one or two epi- 
 grammatic remarks which delighted the cynics and
 
 42 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 the intellectuals and caused the Victorians to shiver 
 in their side-spring boots. But his record as a heart 
 breaker was ranged against him and the evidence 
 was too strong to refute. The verdict was in 
 favor of the Colonel who obtained a decree nisi 
 with the custody of the child. Lady Doreen, whose 
 position had hitherto been absolutely secure, sank 
 down to that indescribable set in semi-society which 
 included all the doubtfuls and the also-rans, while 
 Mortimer with his faithful Denham found it ad- 
 visable to dig up his European roots and return to 
 his native land.' ' 
 
 " To my intense regret I missed all that," said 
 Mrs. Mortimer. " The New York papers con- 
 tented themselves with only the briefest accounts." 
 
 " Luckily I have the full reports in one of my 
 scrap-books. I will show them to you." 
 
 " Please do. I find the new novels very anae- 
 mic." 
 
 Mortimer was flattered, bowed his acknowledg- 
 ments and returned to his pages. " ' By that time 
 Bill was a strapping lad of fifteen, who had inher- 
 ited much of his father's good looks and manners. 
 He was the ringleader of all the trouble at Hotch- 
 kiss. Mrs. Mortimer, at the zenith of her loveli- 
 ness, continued to conduct herself with such skill 
 and discretion that her numerous intrigues entirely 
 escaped discussion.' ' 
 
 "I object to the word 'numerous,' Barclay! 
 Oblige me by making it 'occasional.' ' 
 
 "With pleasure," He did so, " ' During the
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 43 
 
 period that followed Mortimer was in New York 
 when Mrs. Mortimer was in the country and in the 
 country when Mrs. Mortimer was in New York. 
 They met from time to time, of course, and having 
 so amicably agreed to differ on every conceivable 
 subject that quarreling was out of the question, be- 
 came excellent friends. It was arranged that Bill 
 should spend the summer holidays with his father 
 and the winter holidays with his mother. The 
 yacht, the lolanthe, was brought into American wa- 
 ters and father and son enjoyed many cruises to- 
 gether. It was during this year that Barclay Morti- 
 mer revived the interest in coaching and to the joy 
 of democracy frequently tooled a spanking team of 
 bays up Fifth Avenue in the middle of the after- 
 noon. With Bill seated at his side with a small edi- 
 tion of his father's white tall hat cocked over his 
 right eye they made a noticeable picture/ ' 
 
 " And away went the last shreds of my maternal 
 influence," said Mrs. Mortimer. 
 
 " And Bill became a gentleman under mine," said 
 his father proudly. " * The backwash of the Lon- 
 don scandal followed Mortimer to New York, and 
 as the scrupulous families failed to include him in 
 their invitations, he became a patron of the drama. 
 It was generally said that the magnet which drew 
 him nightly to the stage box of Wallack's Theatre 
 was a blond small person who called herself Lorna 
 Doone. Be that as it may, this return to the thrall- 
 dom of femininity did nothing to disturb the beauti- 
 ful friendship which had sprung up between Morti-
 
 44 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 mer and his son, and to the credit of the older man 
 it must be said that he endeavored very earnestly 
 to inculcate into his son the principle of " Do what 
 I say but for God's sake don't do what I do." 
 
 " Which did nothing but appeal irresistibly to my 
 poor dear Bill's terribly keen sense of humor," put 
 in Mrs. Mortimer, now well into her fourth ciga- 
 rette. 
 
 " Too true," said Mortimer, with a chuckle. 
 " ' Then followed a time during which Mortimer, 
 having discovered Europe, became the new Colum- 
 bus of America. He spent one winter in Flor- 
 ida aboard the lolanthe, and revelled in the gor- 
 geous beauty of its golden sunsets and sunrises, 
 with Lorna Doone. He was carried away with en- 
 thusiasm for California where he wandered among 
 the old Missions with Lorna Doone. Colorado 
 left him speechless and he was greatly fascinated 
 with Hawaii where with Lorna Doone the pe- 
 culiar sadness of the native music always turned his 
 thoughts to Bill, around whom he began building 
 up many pet ambitions. It was perhaps a sign of 
 middle age that he found himself dwelling on the 
 future of his only son with a growing desire that he 
 should take the name of Mortimer back into useful- 
 ness and carry on the tradition of his ancestors in a 
 manner which he himself had failed to do, and his 
 letters to Bill on his sentimental journey through his 
 hitherto unexplored native land were perfect mas- 
 terpieces of parental excellence. . . .' " 
 
 "Which," interrupted Mrs. Mortimer again,
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 45 
 
 " when read to his Fidus Achates awoke Homeric 
 laughter." She could n't resist the temptation to 
 work in this sentence in the sort of language so dear 
 and so easy to the old buck. 
 
 " How sad ! ... 'In 1902 he escorted Bill to 
 Yale, spent one emotional evening among the mem- 
 ories of his own student days, endeavored to instill 
 into the mind of his son the lofty ambitions which 
 had inspired the boy's grandfather and great-grand- 
 father, and before sailing for Europe settled a nice 
 little pension upon his most recent companion whose 
 new first night he witnessed in New York. There 
 he had the satisfaction of seeing Charles Frohman 
 " present " Miss Lorna Doone in a play called 
 " Goodbye Forever." ' " 
 
 " How appropriate ! " said Mrs. Mortimer. 
 
 " I saw to that, Madame. ... ' Then followed 
 several years during which this incorrigible philan- 
 derer devoted himself almost wholly to racing. 
 He established himself at Epsom, formed a stable 
 expertly selected from the best brood mares of the 
 time and had the satisfaction of winning the Grand 
 National in 1904 with Lysistrata and the Derby with 
 Tacitus. It was at his father's Queen Anne house 
 at the edge of the Downs that Bill made his debut 
 as a gentleman rider and as a man of sentiment. 
 The trainer's daughter, Lilly Hastings . . .' ' 
 
 " Lilly Hastings ! So she was the first ! " 
 
 11 '. . . . was very fair with great blue eyes 
 and a mouth like a rosebudj and the charming idyl 
 that was enacted in and around that old Surrey
 
 46 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 place, which had belonged to one of the partners 
 in Coutts's bank, proved to Mortimer finally, though 
 reluctantly, that his son was a true chip of the old 
 block. The boy was instantly sent back to Yale, 
 and the admonition that he took with him would 
 have done credit to the elder Chesterfield. Hope 
 springs eternal in the human breast, however, and 
 Mortimer, not yet old Mortimer by any means, 
 started again that series of letters to his boy which 
 unfortunately the world will never see, but which, 
 if they had been published in volume form, must 
 have become the text book for the guidance of 
 youth. They were filled with wisdom and sanity, 
 kindliness and fine thoughts.' ' 
 
 " You don't exaggerate, Barclay. Bill showed 
 me some of them. They were masterpieces of style 
 and sentiment. One of them almost spoilt a little 
 affair that I was about to undertake, it was so 
 filled with religious fervor." 
 
 " You 're very generous, my dear Lylyth. And 
 I am all the more happy to ask you to listen to the 
 following tribute. * Mrs. Mortimer, now in her 
 forty-second year, came out of a rest cure in time 
 to be present in the royal enclosure at Epsom to see 
 her husband lead in Tacitus. The drama of that 
 great moment, when Mortimer carried off the blue 
 ribbon of racing, was enhanced by the sight of his 
 wife, slim and sweet and looking not a day over 
 thirty, with the six foot Bill at her side. Morti- 
 mer would have fallen in love with her but for the 
 fact that among the party of friends who had come
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 47 
 
 over with her to London was young Alton Gram- 
 ercy, who seemed to have the right to carry his wife's 
 vanity bag. Nevertheless, Old Court was thrown 
 open to Mrs. Mortimer and her friends, and Bill 
 renewed his riding. Sadly enough Lilly Hastings 
 had become Mrs. Simpkins with several young 
 Simpkinses, but Bill's roving eyes were consoled by 
 the flower-faced daughter of a near-by squire, and 
 Mortimer began to see that his favorite dream was 
 less and less likely to be realized. Bill was evi- 
 dently not going to be added to the family list of 
 gJeat national characters.' ' 
 
 " We '11 see about that," said Mrs. Mortimer 
 to herself. 
 
 " ' Only once between that time and 1914 did any- 
 thing unusual break the delightful equability of the 
 life of Barclay Mortimer. In the autumn of 1909, 
 by which time Barclay was fifty years of age, the 
 hand of fate, which had so constantly left him alone, 
 was stretched his way, and just to show that, after 
 all, there is little favoritism in the world, it caught 
 our good friend by the scruff of the neck and flung 
 him on to the small of his back. Appendicitis was 
 the cause of it. An immediate operation was nec- 
 essary, and for some days Mortimer trembled on 
 the verge of death. At that time he was living in 
 a very beautiful house in the Avenue Wagram, 
 Paris. Bill was in London, having taken over his 
 father's racing stable, and Mrs. Mortimer was in 
 Italy pursuing the curious policy of standing in the 
 footprints of saints.' "
 
 48 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 " Not at all curious. I was just at the age when 
 sinners begin to repent because sinning has passed 
 them by!" 
 
 Mortimer laughed and sighed and continued. 
 " ' Telegrams were sent to them and they rushed 
 to the bedside of one who had hitherto escaped all 
 the ordinary forms of punishment which humanity 
 generally gets when it asks for it and sometimes 
 when it does n't. While the angel of death hovered 
 over that house, quietly and indifferently waiting 
 for orders, the mother and son watched at the bed- 
 side, Bill, who adored his father and treated him 
 more like a boon companion than a parent, with the 
 first prayer in his heart that had been there for 
 many and many a year, and Lylyth, still beautiful 
 and still fighting Anno Domini with every conceiv- 
 able trick that is known to beauty doctors, with a 
 certain small thrill of emotion which came to her at 
 the sight of the man on his back who had always 
 stood so triumphantly on his feet.' ' 
 
 He was obliged to stop for a moment. The 
 tragedy and pathos of all this moved him almost to 
 tears. Also he was a little puffed. 
 
 During the little pause, not unwelcome, the white- 
 haired lady sent her thoughts back to that absurd 
 bedroom with its painted furniture and cupid cov- 
 ered ceiling and the terror-stricken man with several 
 days' growth of red and gray beard on his usually 
 spotless chin, who was so fearful of death. 
 
 ' The natural resilience which had carried 
 Mortimer through all his adventures came to his
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 49 
 
 rescue once more. He did death out of a new vic- 
 tim, made a wonderful recovery, tightened the 
 bonds which existed between himself and his son 
 by several weeks of the closest intercourse and dis- 
 covered many charming characteristics in his wife 
 which he had not taken the trouble hitherto to find 
 out. They were good weeks, those in that Paris 
 house, and anyone seeing those three together as 
 they drove out on fine evenings to dine at the Casino 
 at Enghien would have imagined that the greatest 
 devotion existed between them. Mortimer would 
 have been very happy to have continued this rela- 
 tionship into the future and have become domestic 
 for the first time in his life.' ' 
 
 "I wonder!" 
 
 " Yes, yes, it 's true, Madame, on my oath. . . . 
 ' He was even filled with a warm desire to dig up his 
 European roots permanently and return with his 
 wife to the old house in Westchester, but when he 
 broached the subject to her and was told with a 
 charming smile that there was another inter- 
 est 
 
 " The last, the very, very last ! " 
 
 "'.... he bowed and laughed and said au re- 
 voir, escorted her to the train-de-luxe which left for 
 Italy that night and went back with Bill to the old 
 Surrey house on the edge of the Epsom Downs. 
 Together they continued to race until the great black 
 cloud, about which Lord Roberts had so persistently 
 and so urgently warned the British Government, 
 finally burst on the fourth of August 1914.' "
 
 50 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 " Ah, you Ve come to that awful day! " 
 
 "Just as that awful day will forever come back 
 to us, my dear. . . . ' It was too much for Barclay 
 Mortimer to see his old friends the French and the 
 British on the edge of complete ruin without lend- 
 ing a hand. Instantly, therefore, he established an 
 ambulance unit and devoted his wealth and personal 
 energies to its efficiency. Bill, imbued with the 
 same spirit, collected his mother, took her to Lon- 
 don, got into the stampede of Americans who were 
 anxious to get back, . . .' ' 
 
 " Shall I ever forget that melee, that football 
 scrum ! " 
 
 " ' eventually caught a boat, and being aware of 
 the fact that the United States would not be able to 
 stand aloof from the European cataclysm whatever 
 her present views might be, joined that body of ex- 
 cellent and far-seeing Americans who made the 
 word Plattsburg stand out in golden letters in the 
 history of the United States. Thus, when the hour 
 came for the Stars and Stripes to take its place 
 among the banners of the Allies, Bill and his friends 
 were among the first to be commissioned into that 
 great army which poured in long brown streams into 
 the pock-marked fields of France and turned the 
 scales against Germany.' ' 
 
 "My own dear Bill!" 
 
 ' He sailed in 1917 and served with conspicuous 
 ability and devotion to duty until November 1918, 
 when, unfortunately, the reins were taken out of the 
 hands of fighting men and controlled once more by
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 51 
 
 those very politicians whose lack of vision and pro- 
 fessional selfishness had permitted the black cloud 
 to grow and give the knockout blow to civilization. 
 He remained with the army of occupation, watching 
 with the deepest disgust all the pettifogging parish 
 pumpism which interfered with the triumph of the 
 Allied arms, took the sword out of the hands of 
 Foch and very nearly undermined the superb sac- 
 rifice of fighting men by the attempt to establish a 
 League of Nations before peace had been forced 
 upon Germany. Fretting his soul out on the banks 
 of the Rhine he watched with amazement and cha- 
 grin the substitution of self-filling pens for machine 
 guns, and listened to the cackling of foolish crea- 
 tures blown out like toads with vanity, for several 
 weary months.' ' 
 
 " And the wonder of it was," broke in Mrs. 
 Mortimer, on whom every reference to Bill in this 
 curious document acted electrically, "that his let- 
 ters from Coblenz did n't get him court-martialed." 
 
 " Probably the censor was his friend, Madame. 
 And now for the pages that bring us up to the pres- 
 ent moment. You 're not fatigued, or bored, I 
 trust?" 
 
 " No, no. It is all intensely interesting to me. 
 Please go on." 
 
 " Very well then. . . . ' In the meantime his 
 father, after five years of strenuous work, during 
 which time he had poured his money and his spirit 
 into his ambulances, said good-by to poor broken 
 France, made his way once more across those
 
 52 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 three thousand miles of water which no longer di- 
 vided America from her sister countries and took 
 up his residence permanently under the roof of his 
 ancestors. Here he was joined by the lady whose 
 hair had gone white beneath the uniform cap of a 
 Red Cross nurse, which she had worn from that 
 terrible hour when those gray hordes ran amuck 
 through Belgium and only removed when the news 
 of a false peace burst upon a tired world and set all 
 the bells ringing for something about which there 
 was very little to rejoice. There was something 
 not a little whimsical in the reunion at last of the 
 Old Rip and the woman who had really never been 
 his wife, both of whom had lived up to their tradi- 
 tion under the stress of a huge and beautiful sym- 
 pathy for the people who had shown them friend- 
 ship and for the countries in which they had en- 
 joyed so much happiness. . . .' Do you like the 
 word 'whimsical' there, Madame?" 
 
 " Oh yes, I think so. It would n't be quite true 
 to write 'pathetic', would it? although it might 
 look better to Bill's children, perhaps. Think it 
 over some day." 
 
 " I will," said Mortimer. He read again. 
 
 ' They joined forces finally when both were driven 
 into the realization that they were to be laid on the 
 shelf and wait with becoming patience for that in- 
 evitable hour when death should beckon to them 
 and they would be obliged to follow. It goes with- 
 out saying that they met under the old family roof 
 with much mutual respect In the affair of the
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 53 
 
 war, at any rate, they had played the game, forgot- 
 ten self, laid their little indulgences aside. They 
 saw themselves, luckily, with a certain sense of hu- 
 mor, war-worn and time-worn, and like thorough- 
 bred horses no longer able to join the hunt. They 
 looked at each other from adjoining boxes with eyes 
 full of pleasant reminiscence, unregretful, uncom- 
 plaining, satisfied with having had a devilish good 
 time and very ready to make each other's acquaint- 
 ance, mutually aware of the fact that they had, 
 however, proved themselves worthy of becoming 
 acquainted. Passion had gone out of their lives, the 
 desire to compete with the younger people had 
 fallen like autumn leaves. The world was no 
 longer with them. They had become bystanders, 
 lookers on, critics, not warped and not without 
 sympathy for the others who followed in their foot- 
 steps and occupied their places. The spirit of ad- 
 venture which had pervaded both of them had left 
 them, and they came together at last with an en- 
 forced sexlessness which neither of them regretted. 
 They were in every sense of the word companions, 
 made more companionable from the fact that with 
 the frankness of friends they could compare notes 
 as to their indiscretions, and make plans for the 
 happiness and comfort of their only son, for whom 
 they had reserved the best of all their love.' ' 
 
 He read these last words with a voice broken with 
 very genuine emotion, rose, removed his glasses 
 which were befoggec^ with tears, bent over the white- 
 haired lady who had never permitted the suspicion
 
 54 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 of scandal to be attached to her name, never once 
 attempted to interfere with his philandering or to 
 disturb the precious friendship which had always 
 existed between himself and Bill, and raised her 
 hand deferentially to his lips. 
 
 " Madame," he said, " out of all this one fact 
 emerges like a monument." 
 
 " And what is that, Barclay? " 
 
 " Your sportsmanship, my dear." 
 
 VIII 
 
 IT was not late, but the hour had come for bed. 
 Mrs. Mortimer always read for an hour before go- 
 ing to sleep, and the Old Buck placed himself in the 
 hands of Denham for an anti-rheumatic treatment 
 before a final disappearance for the day. 
 
 While he gathered up the pages written with that 
 characteristic mixture of freely acknowledged ego- 
 tism and persistent satire which he had carried with 
 him always and still clung to as an aid to his bluff 
 of middle-age, Mrs. Mortimer went over to one of 
 the windows and pushed it open. 
 
 The reading of this scenario of her husband's life 
 had set all her memories on the wing like a flight 
 of newly released pigeons. Old half-forgotten 
 scents and scenes and faces, words and places and 
 names had been brought back to her vividly. Men 
 who had once been all-important to her happiness 
 had stood before her again in all the pride and glory 
 of love and youth. Far-away incidents in her long 
 leadership of society, triumphant and envied, had
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 55 
 
 added a beat to her pulse and a touch of color to 
 her cheeks. It had been an exciting evening, a 
 moving picture of people and feelings now lying in 
 the limbo of an unreturnable past. But the image 
 which remained most clearly in her mind was the 
 one of herself, so like Martha Wainwright as to be 
 almost uncanny, being brought forward, the 
 words stuck, to become the wife of Barclay 
 Mortimer, the mistress of his house and the mother 
 of his son. And as she looked out at the dark 
 woods which hid the solid and scrupulous Wain- 
 wright home from her sight she asked herself, for 
 the first time with a sudden twinge of conscience, 
 if, after all, there was not something very cruel and 
 almost criminal in her plan deliberately and in cold 
 blood to place this good little girl in a position in 
 which her story might be repeated, in spite of the 
 fact that Martha would walk to the sacrifice with 
 love in her heart. Here was Bill, " a very naughty 
 boy," older by many years than this unsophisticated 
 child. He would bring to the partnership, if the 
 scheme succeeded, no idealism, nothing of first love, 
 not one atom of freshness. The husks of many 
 affairs with women would hang about him, and as 
 he had inherited much of the susceptibility of his 
 father, there was no guarantee that his domestic fe- 
 licity, so called, would not be forgotten at the sight 
 of any pretty face. Here was this worldly house to 
 which Martha would be brought, utterly devoid of 
 the environment of duty and the example of honesty 
 which pervaded her own home, and here would be the
 
 56 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 Old Rip and his nominal wife conducting a comic- 
 pathetic companionship which must be a constant 
 puzzle to a girl whose own father and mother were 
 on very different terms. It would be like trans- 
 planting a wild rose to a hot-house, or binding a 
 hymn-book in the covers of Boccaccio. . . . With 
 the thought of what she herself might have been if 
 she had married the man of her undiscovered love, 
 the white-haired lady, stirred by the reading of this 
 unmoral history, began to ask herself whether it 
 was fair and permissible to shape things in such a 
 way that this dear sweet girl might repeat the story 
 that she had just listened to, and having given a nec- 
 essary heir to the family, go off on a similar series 
 of tangents as soon as the inevitable disillusion set 
 in. And it would set in, she feared, because, being 
 human, Martha would soon discover the existence 
 of a Blue Room in Bill's life and would find it the 
 one room of all into which she would be most eager 
 to peer. 
 
 Lingering at the window and looking out at the 
 dark quiet woods behind which stood the house 
 which Jonathan Wainwright had built by the sweat 
 of his brow Mrs. Mortimer pictured Martha asleep 
 in her virginal room dreaming of her hero who was 
 blameless and without reproach, and waiting with 
 a fluttering heart for his return, hope seeing a star 
 and listening love hearing the rustling of a wing. 
 But when she turned back into the room and saw 
 Bill's face in the photograph and his careless at- 
 tractive eyes fixed upon her with something in them
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 57 
 
 which she interpreted as a longing to settle down, 
 she threw aside her scruples and her unselfish sym- 
 pathy. " I have found a little wife for you, my 
 darling boy," she said to herself. " Come home 
 and build your nest."
 
 PART II 
 
 HAVING shaken hands with the hall-porter and 
 the elevator man and said cheery things to both, 
 Bill Mortimer stood grinning in the middle of all 
 the kit that had been dumped into his sitting room. 
 And there he remained for several moments won- 
 dering, as he looked about and saw that everything 
 was exactly as he left it, even to the pile of letters 
 that he had put under a small bronze figure of 
 Venus and forgotten to answer, whether the last 
 two years in France had ever happened. This com- 
 fortable and aloof room, filled with permanent per- 
 sonal things, each one of which had its peculiar in- 
 terest, made all the quick-changing incidents out of 
 which he had had the luck to emerge seem to be part 
 of an hallucination. He must have read them all 
 as having happened to some other man or dreamed 
 about them during a much disturbed night. . . . 
 Here, in the same places, with the same air of al- 
 ways having been, was everything that spelt Bill 
 Mortimer. His books and pictures, golf clubs, polo 
 clubs, guns in a glassed-in rack, writing desk all
 
 60 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 untidy as he had left it, huge sofas on the cushions 
 of one of which he thought he could still see the 
 little dent where the golden head of Birdie Carroll 
 had rested a few nights before he sailed ; the framed 
 photographs of several charming girls; the Welsh 
 dresser with its cut glass decanters and boxes of 
 cigars ; the pictures of his race-horses with a collec- 
 tion of rosettes pinned to their frames; the piano 
 over whose keys the soft fingers of Susan Hatch 
 had so often wandered and out of which Jeanne 
 Dacoral had drawn the uneasy music of Heller's 
 " Sleepless Nights " and the gamin stuff of Paris cab- 
 arets ; the full length portrait of his father by Shan- 
 non and his mother by the young Italian artist who 
 had put a bullet through his brain because he could 
 not win her lips, here they all were, as though 
 he had gone away a few hours before, stamped with 
 his personality, docketed in his mind with dates and 
 sensations and sentiments. . . . Was it possible, 
 that he had been away from them all, and all that 
 they meant in his life, for two solid years of kaleido- 
 scopic events, the blurred impressions of which 
 were of indescribable row, of almost comic discom- 
 forts, of chaotic movements, and of men's laughter 
 and screams ? . . . 
 
 He stepped over the shabby fat roll of his sleep- 
 ing kit, which bulged with boots, went to one of the 
 windows and opened it, and heaved a sigh of deep 
 content. . . . New York, with its hum of traf- 
 fic rising up from the polished surface of Fifth 
 Avenue. The Plaza with all its windows gleaming,
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 61 
 
 standing out against the black velvet of the night 
 like the giant's castle of a child's dream. . . . He 
 gazed out at the familiar sight with a curious thrill. 
 In the days that were so amazingly remote and 
 which seemed like yesterday, he never remembered 
 consciously to have noticed this scene, any more 
 than he could say that he had been affected by the 
 song of the traffic and the characteristic scent of the 
 City. It is only after a long absence from a town 
 or a wife that the charm of either comes upon a man 
 with surprise. 
 
 Then he shook himself and laughed a little and 
 turned round to his friend. " Demobilized, at 
 last," he said. 
 
 The other man, on whose slight figure even the 
 beltless, musical-comedy uniform of the Royal Fly- 
 ing Corps looked almost smart, helped himself to a 
 stiff whisky. " In my case, old bean, that 's not 
 the word." 
 
 "What is it then?" 
 
 " Demoralized," he replied, without cynicism and 
 without bitterness, in the same f eelingless tone as he 
 might have said denationalized. And then, with 
 the inimitable indifference of the keenly interested 
 Englishman, he started on a tour of the room and 
 shot out quiet and pertinent comments as he went. 
 ' Tacitus, by Jove ! I won a very necessary 
 twenty quid on that horse when I was a nipper at 
 Eton. A good Derby, that." 
 
 " I was there when my old man led him in. I 
 shall never forget his face," said Bill. " Ever
 
 62 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 imagine the sort of expression a battery major on 
 the verge of shell shock would wear on receiving a 
 chit appointing him to Headquarters Staff ? " 
 
 Teddy Jedburgh shot out an appreciative laugh. 
 He had seen it once. The story of the various 
 rosettes was read in a glance. Then he passed in 
 review the photographs of Bill's little friends. 
 " Very charming bits of fluff, old thing," he said. 
 " Hearty congrats." He paused before the oil 
 painting of Barclay Mortimer in hunting kit. 
 " Who 's the man who ought to have been a 
 Duke?" 
 
 " My father," said Bill, with very real pride.. 
 
 " No wonder you 're such a dashed good looking 
 sportsman, Bill. And the beautiful lady with eyes 
 that would make a saint forget his halo? " 
 
 " My mother," said Bill. 
 
 Teddy bowed to the canvas. " Some jokers have 
 all the luck. Why did you wire to two such unique 
 parents not to meet you in town to-night ? " 
 
 " Selfish reasons," said Bill. " I wanted to save 
 it for the old homestead." 
 
 " I see. Quite. . . . Well, you certainly know 
 how to do yourself proud, old bean. One could be 
 very comfortable here. May I see the rest of your 
 oachelor perch ? " 
 
 With almost boyish pleasure in what he had 
 learned to understand was enthusiasm on his 
 friend's part Bill opened a door. " Dining-room," 
 he said, and led the way through an arch into a 
 booklined cubby hole. " For the education of va-
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 63 
 
 lets. I don't read. And now come along 
 here. . . . My bedroom, with dressing room on 
 one side, bathroom on the other. Here 's your bed- 
 room for as long as you like to use it." 
 
 "Thanks most awfully. And these stairs?" 
 
 " Up to roof garden." 
 
 "Roof garden!" 
 
 " Yes. Come up. Mind your head." 
 
 " Great Scot," said Teddy Jedburgh, drawing his 
 breath. 
 
 The house was high and its roof was neck and 
 shoulders above those of the adjoining buildings. 
 Away below, north, east, south and west lay the 
 great, ugly, fascinating City, a very Gulliver's city, 
 with its other erections vying in an endeavor to 
 stick their flat heads in among the stars. Some 
 were dark blots against the sky, some were fairy- 
 like and almost transparent with a thousand glisten- 
 ing eyes. Alongside the Park, with its intersecting 
 roads and belts of trees, the great Avenue ran, alive 
 with the head and tail lights of what seemed to be 
 fast moving fireflies. An arch across which was 
 stretched a necklace of beads stood a little way to the 
 right under the steady glare of searchlights. It 
 might have been the entrance into the Realm 
 of Moving Pictures erected especially for Theda 
 Bara. 
 
 " You may thank all your gods for the Atlantic," 
 said Teddy, at last. " What an unholy joy the 
 Huns would have taken in dropping bombs on 
 this!"
 
 64 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 " The Atlantic and the British Tommy," said 
 Bill. " Yes." 
 
 He led the way down and back to the sitting 
 room, where they found a Jap valet, with a face as 
 shiny as his alpaca jacket. All that kit lying about 
 meant work and there was a sour glint in his slits 
 of eyes. 
 
 " Shall we feed in or go out somewhere? " 
 
 " Is it all the same to you? " 
 
 " Yes, old man." 
 
 " Then let 's go out. The call of this city is in my 
 blood. Little old New York, eh ? Watch me paint 
 it red. But first I '11 sample your bathroom, if I 
 may. I want hot water, and bath salts, and a mat 
 soft to the feet, and scented soap, and every other 
 little thing like that. After which, having shed 
 uniform for evening clothes I 'm out for caviare 
 and the bubbly and the horrid music of a Jazz band, 
 and if you can put me in the way of a dear sweet 
 thing with a laughing mouth and pacifistic notions, 
 I shall ask nothing more. ... I salute you, Civili- 
 zation." He did so as a veteran pays tribute to the 
 dead, took off his cap and chucked it to the far end 
 of the room. 
 
 Bill grinned again. " Itoto, fix the bath for Lord 
 Edward Jedburgh." 
 
 Teddy waited until the little oily man had oozed 
 his way out. " Major Jedburgh, if you don't 
 mind," he said, with unexpected gravity. " My 
 father has sold all the anchors that held us to a 
 country that 's about to be divided up by the La-
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 65 
 
 bor Leaders. He and I are nomads, like the rest 
 of us. That Lord stuff has been wiped off the face 
 of the earth by old man Krupp." 
 
 II 
 
 BILL chose the Ritz for dinner because there he 
 could show Jedburgh the most cosmopolitan mix- 
 ture of human various to be found in New York. 
 Like the London Savoy it draws people from every 
 grade of life, from the astonishing blondes of mov- 
 ing picture fame to the elaborate cocottes with the 
 manners of grandes dames; from the nice suburban 
 people of transparent rectitude who have come in 
 for the evening, to the wispy debutantes trying very 
 hard to be mistaken for ladies of easy virtue, 
 with some success. 
 
 The band was not Jazz, but an orchestra of picked 
 musicians, and it played delightfully under the lead- 
 ership of a man who used his violin with masterly 
 carelessness and gave the impression of being a 
 high diplomat who had taken up music as a hobby. 
 French, Italian, Belgian and British uniforms were 
 to be seen everywhere, by the side of frocks devoid 
 of backs, and the atmosphere of the room, which 
 struck Jedburgh as being like a great Wedgwood bowl 
 turned outside in, was exactly what his mood desired. 
 
 The two men did themselves well, but as both of 
 them had been up since five o'clock that eventful 
 morning and roof gardens were deserts until the 
 theaters emptied they left at half past nine and 
 walked home along the almost lonely Avenue.
 
 66 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 Bill let himself in to his apartment, but was held 
 up on the threshold by the night elevator man, 
 whose effusive greetings were not, and ought not, 
 to be cut short. And so Teddy Jedburgh went into 
 the sitting room alone. 
 
 His eyes were immediately caught by the living 
 representation of a picture that he had cut out of 
 Le Petit Parisien and tacked to the wall of his 
 quarters. . . . Curled up on the sofa in front of 
 the fireplace, her hat was stabbed to one cushion and 
 her small fair head was deep into another. Long 
 eyelashes made fans upon her cheeks, and between 
 her red lips, which were slightly apart like those of 
 a sleeping child, a row of very perfect teeth gleamed. 
 The fingers of one small hand touched the floor and 
 the other, palm upwards, lay in her lap. The fact 
 that one shapely leg in a black silk stocking was 
 charmingly disclosed made the whole alluring pic- 
 ture French. 
 
 The R. A. F. Major, who had been sent to the 
 United States to assist in winding up the work of 
 the British Mission, imagined for a moment that 
 he was dreaming true, and gazed at the little figure 
 incredulously. But when he heard Bill's cheery 
 " good night " and anticipated the imminent bang- 
 ing of the door with the feelings of a man who hates 
 sacrilege, he tiptoed back and held up his hand. 
 
 " Sssh ! " he whispered, " we 're entertaining an 
 angel unawares." 
 
 Bill needn *t have been surprised, because in the 
 old days before the war he had rarely returned to
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 67 
 
 his rooms without finding one or other, and some- 
 times both, of his latest engrossments waiting for 
 him. At the moment he was, however, unprepared 
 for a visitor and had forgotten exactly who was 
 most likely to have discovered his name in the even- 
 ing paper, upon the list of returning officers. Still 
 wearing his hat he went forward, treading like a cat 
 on hot bricks, with Jedburgh in close attendance, 
 and bent over the sofa. 
 
 " It 's Susie Hatch," he said. " Dear little soul. 
 Is n't it nice of her to look me up like this ? " 
 
 With a twinge of inappropriate jealousy Jed- 
 burgh watched him go down on one knee and kiss 
 the sleeper on the lips. 
 
 The eyelids lifted, two round blue eyes stared for 
 a moment blurred with sleep, a cry of " Bill " rang 
 through the room and a pair of arms were flung out 
 to clasp a willing neck. 
 
 " Lucky devil," said Jedburgh, and walked away 
 to the cigar boxes. 
 
 "Just by accident I saw your name and came 
 round on the off chance. ... it 's like the old days, 
 Bill. ... oh, my dear!" 
 
 " She 's crying," said Teddy to himself. " My 
 God, why was n't I wise enough to tack on to a little 
 human thing whose tears would burst for me? " 
 
 With the delicacy of a man of tradition upon 
 whom even war had not had the whole of its coar- 
 sening effect the man whose father had sold his 
 landmarks drifted quietly out into the hall and shut 
 the door. And there he stood on the cold marble
 
 68 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 facing the elevator shaft with an unlighted cigar 
 between his teeth, for an interminable ten minutes, 
 cursing his pre-war aloofness and determining 
 once again to make up for lost time now that, more 
 by luck than judgment, he had missed the bullet 
 upon which his name had been stamped. 
 
 At last the door opened. " My dear chap," said 
 Bill, ruefully. 
 
 " Perfectly all right, old thing, perfectly all right. 
 Do as you would be done by, eh? How well they 
 build these places here." 
 
 "How well they build some of you fellows over 
 there," said Bill. " Come in and be introduced." 
 
 " I 'd like to." 
 
 The girl was kneeling on the guard that made a 
 seat in front of the fire. She needed the looking 
 glass by which to powder her nose and replenish 
 the health upon her lips. She was a mere slip of a 
 thing, startlingly young to be flying alone, but as 
 self-assured as a quack-medicine merchant among 
 a crowd of village turnips. She had the profile that 
 goes with those boyish erect women who swing 
 along in triumphant procession in Grecian frescoes. 
 
 " Susie," said Bill, touching her elbow, " I want 
 you to know Teddy Jedburgh, a great pal of 
 mine." 
 
 She remained kneeling but swiveled her body 
 round from her plastic waist. Rather disconcert- 
 ingly she said nothing and for several seconds 
 turned her blue eyes on to this new man in the man- 
 ner of a medical officer before whom stood a ma-
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 69 
 
 
 
 lingerer. Then a smile illuminated her face and 
 she held out her hand. 
 
 " How are you, Susie ? " asked Jedburgh, not 
 with anything of impertinence but with the glad ac- 
 ceptance of proffered friendship. 
 
 " Fine. How 're you, Teddy ? Excuse me while 
 I put the final touches to the landscape." 
 
 And all the awkwardness in the situation lifted 
 like a sea fog. The true spirit of camaraderie was 
 here, rare and delightful, in which the eternal sense 
 of sex was absent. Susie Hatch knew that she 
 could, if required, stand in the buff before Bill's 
 pal on the dais of a studio without the flicker of 
 an eyelid. It was instant and instinctive. 
 
 " I wish we 'd known you were coming*, old 
 kid," said Bill. " We 'd have taken you out to 
 dinner." 
 
 " I wish you had," said Susie. " As it was I 
 nibbled bird seed out of my own pan in the glare of 
 the Evening Sun. Bit of luck I did. Otherwise I 
 should n't have seen that your transport was in. 
 But there are going to be lots of little dinners in the 
 future, Bill, as in the good old days." And she 
 slipped off the fireguard, let her simple vanity case 
 dangle from her wrist and put the soft palm of her 
 hand on Bill's mustache. 
 
 " Lots of 'em," said Bill, emphatically, though 
 he added to himself, "But not with me, Susie, my 
 dear. The good old days have died the death. 
 Bill 's going to be a good boy now." (Think how 
 the white-haired lady would have preened herself
 
 70 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 at her accurate knowledge of men if she could have 
 heard that sentiment!) 
 
 " I must push along," she added, collecting her 
 hat, and using the dangerous pin with callous fin- 
 gers. " My coat, Teddy, please. It 's over there. 
 There 's a bite in these April nights." 
 
 He fetched it and helped it on. Without a doubt 
 she could put him in the way of the dear sweet 
 thing with a laughing mouth and pacifistic notions. 
 Splendid. 
 
 " So long, Bill," she said. " God, how I 've been 
 spoiling for this ! " And she stood on tiptoe and 
 pressed her face against his heart. " So long, 
 Teddy. I Ve one or two good pals too." She 
 could easily see the soldier-hunger in his eyes, it 
 seemed. " Let 's see, Jedburgh. Then you 're 
 the Lord Edward Tankarville Jedburgh, son of the 
 Duke of Berkshire, who got a bit of a par all to 
 yourself tonight, Major R. A. F., and a bunch of 
 other letters besides. Eh ? " 
 
 " I was," said Teddy, " five years ago. All that 
 stuff 's a wash-out now." 
 
 "I get you," she answered. "Perhaps it's as 
 well. Jedburgh pronounced 'Jedboro', how 
 often do you have to tell people how to spell it ? " 
 
 " Every time," said Teddy. 
 
 " I love those comic English names that are spelt 
 all wrong." She gave him her hand again. " See 
 you to-morrow." 
 
 " Rather. Cheerio." 
 
 He watched her as she made her way to the door
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 71 
 
 escorted by Bill. A good sort, honest and with a 
 golden heart, he thought, and the spiritual courage 
 of a Red Cross Nurse. 
 
 " Tell me about her," he said, when Bill came 
 back. 
 
 Cigars were lighted and glasses filled before Bill 
 flung himself into the sofa. He was tired but not 
 sleepy. Everything in him tingled at the thought 
 of to-morrow, his people, the old homestead, and 
 peace. 
 
 " I put in to one of the New England harbors on 
 the coast of Maine, August, 1913. One or two 
 hotels about for summer visitors, mostly Cana- 
 dians, a cheery lot who had achieved things 
 but I lived aboard the * lolanthe '. Engine trouble 
 kept us by the leg for a week. ... I watched a kid 
 diving like a mermaid from the end of the break- 
 water, brown as a nut. She swam all round the 
 yacht day after *day as a fish circles something new 
 and enticing. Sometimes she would come close 
 up, catch my eye, and dip away, as shy as all water 
 things. One afternoon I called out and asked her 
 on to tea, never dreaming that she would come and 
 not caring. I simply wanted to give her a little 
 amusement. She came, climbed on like a boy, sat 
 in the sun and dried and said yes and no to me while 
 I talked, not knowing what to say. She was a 
 water baby, the child of the four winds, Nature 
 herself. . . . After that she came whenever she 
 could and we yarned and she painted the monotony 
 of her life, fisherman's daughter, tumbledown
 
 72 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 shack, mother worn out by a constantly increasing 
 family, father coming in and going out. Men must 
 work and women must weep and the harbor bar 
 goes moaning. . . . Half a day out, engines right 
 again, steward reports stowaway. Up conies mer- 
 maid, in a white frock longer at the back than at 
 the front, bare brown legs, foot to make a sculptor 
 fly to clay, hair bleached by the sun, eyes like robin's 
 eggs and a slice of the sky. . . . Serious talk, a 
 frightful passion of tears, an appeal for love that 
 would have wrung the bloodless heart of a stone 
 saint, and Bill the human man. Good God, what 
 else than to help her to life? Eventually New 
 York, an apartment, an allowance, and I give you 
 my solemn word the loyalty and devotion of a 
 stray dog. . . . Teddy, that child has done more to 
 make me respect women than anyone on earth. 
 My mother and Susie Hatch sent me to Plattsburg, 
 not patriotism, not a sense of self-respect. I had 
 to put myself between them and the Huns. . . . She 
 is very happy educating herself and taking lessons 
 in drawing and is the pet of a collection of art stu- 
 dents but she belongs to me, has cleaved herself 
 to me, like ivy to a wall. . . . You saw. . . . 
 That 's the story." 
 
 There was a rather long silence. Teddy sat on 
 the fireguard hugging his knees and looking through 
 the wall and right out into the future. To anyone 
 who could read it there was an appeal in his eyes 
 to be rescued from great loneliness and detachment 
 and the sudden spells of melancholy that crept into
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 73 
 
 his soul. He would give ten years of his life for 
 such an attachment as the one Bill had drawn in 
 his blunt, impressionist way. To have someone, 
 somewhere, who gave a damn to hear his voice, 
 whose exclusive call he would leap to answer, 
 that was what he had come out of death to find. It 
 was the only thing to make the escape worth while. 
 
 " Well," he said, at last, just as Bill was begin- 
 ning to think that he had gone back to one of his 
 stony silent moods, " I need n't ask what you 're 
 going to do, old son. First the old people for a 
 week or so and then Susie and the ' lolanthe ' and 
 the wide stretches of the sea. Is that it? " 
 
 Bill shook his head. " No. ... No. ... I 
 don't know quite what 's come over me, whether 
 this show has aged me or made me less careless, or 
 what. All I know is that I 've come back with the 
 prodigal son's longing to indulge in an orgy of sen- 
 timental reconstruction. Y' see, I Ve laid the red- 
 paint on pretty thick since I was old enough to know 
 anything about colors and now I 've got a pathetic 
 eagerness to turn over a new leaf and build a church 
 out of the ruins of my past, so to speak." 
 
 " Marriage and kids, eh ? " 
 
 " Yes, that 's the notion. ... A flower ef a girl, 
 with the dew on her and a morning hymn in her 
 eyes, all to myself, to treat right, and play the 
 good old game by, and a young Bill and a tiny Ly- 
 lyth, the country year in and year out and home. 
 Get me?" 
 
 "Why not Susie?"
 
 74 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 " Susie? ... I dunno. But does one marry 
 Susie?" 
 
 "Perhaps not. Cursed shame. The inevitable 
 swing of the pendulum has taken you back to the 
 conventions. It always happens." 
 
 " Does it ? Yes, I suppose it does. What about 
 you?" 
 
 " Me? ... It 's not the same thing. The after- 
 math of this bloody war hits me differently. I had 
 the home idea pretty strong five years ago and was 
 the ordinary British landowning cove who shot his 
 birds, and played his cricket, and rebuilt the cot- 
 tages of his tenants, was quiet and orderly and even 
 a bit idealistic, believing in God and the Consti- 
 tution and myself, as one of the men born to take a 
 hand in the destinies of the British Empire, and all 
 that. You know the type, title, houses, horses, 
 London, the country, a nice girl of my own tradi- 
 tions, marriage, kids, the House of Lords, duty and 
 a muscular old age, inspiring my son to walk the 
 narrow path, take the jumps, play with a straight 
 bat and carry on as per." 
 
 " Well ? What 's the matter with all that now ? " 
 
 " All over, old thing. Dead as a skinned rabbit. 
 I 'm a Dodo, like the rest of my class. Labor has 
 us by the throat, the land and the money bags. Be- 
 sides which I Ve come out of a long game of touch 
 wood with death and obeying orders blindly, many 
 of 'em absolutely crass in their stupidity, with no 
 longer any faith in God, not a farthing's worth." 
 
 "How's that?"
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 75 
 
 " Well, it 's difficult to explain. I believe it 's be- 
 cause I resent this war as something so fiendish, so 
 crooked, so purposeless that if there 'd been a God 
 he would never have let it happen. I don't say that 
 I didn't enjoy it all after I got used to it. I did. 
 I had the time of my life, but it swung me into 
 a new way of looking at things and it 's left me with 
 faith only in the men who did the dirty work with 
 jokes on their lips, the women who patched them up 
 to do it again and the beardless sky-larking boys 
 who went up in the air and did n't give a curse if 
 they never came down again. My faith is in hu- 
 manity now, and in humanity as the opposite of 
 God, as a mass of small creatures with a limited 
 time out of which to snatch all the happiness that 's 
 going, to love and play the giddy ox and go on the 
 loose. Why not ? As there 's no God there 's no 
 need to earn a safe seat in Heaven. The narrow 
 path is no thoroughfare and rectitude's a waste of 
 effort. So I begin where you leave off, Bill. 
 That 's the way it 's hit me, and while you 're putting 
 up the stones that are going to make your church, I 
 pull my church down and hide the stones in wild 
 oats. I 'm here, in a country that 's not so blood- 
 drained and twisted into knots as my own, to take 
 on a Susie Hatch. I give myself extended leave. 
 I 'm going to pay myself back for five years of 
 close attention to the job we all had in hand by get- 
 ting even with my old idea of God. . . . There you 
 have me, as far as I know myself." 
 
 There was another silence, during which Bill
 
 76 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 looked closely at the tall, spare man who sat nurs- 
 ing his knees on the fireguard, the man built on 
 the clean, thoroughbred lines of a race horse, with 
 a high and thoughtful forehead, wide apart gray 
 eyes, fair fine hair that went into natural kinks 
 when allowed to do so ; a straight nose, a small fair 
 mustache over a mouth that was devoid of sensu- 
 alism but not of the desire to kiss, and a lean jaw. 
 A distinguished soldier, with the knack of getting 
 men to work against the grain and follow him into 
 feats of unbelievable courage, with a sense of dis- 
 cipline that had sent him back to his command after 
 three separate doses of shrapnel that would have 
 put many others on a cushy billet behind the 
 lines. . . . He knew him for all that. The rest 
 came as a surprise, because during all the monoto- 
 nous hours of the voyage home the fourth wall had 
 never been let down. . . . Krupp had blown his 
 God out of Heaven, it seemed, and given shell shock 
 to his sense of law and order. 
 
 Bill got up and stretched himself and pitched the 
 butt of his cigar into the fireplace. He under- 
 stood, though in the light of his own point of view 
 he was sorry. It was not for him, of all men, to 
 moralize. 
 
 " Well, good luck, Teddy," he said. 
 
 " The same to you, Bill," said Teddy. 
 
 And they turned in for the night, to follow their 
 diametrical paths when the new day came.
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 77 
 
 III 
 
 THE message that Bill had sent over the wire to 
 his mother, asking her not to meet him in the City 
 but to let him find her among her flowers in the old 
 garden with his father, was received the evening 
 before the transport put into the river and edged 
 its cheering way through a misty day to dock as 
 the sun went down. Martha was with her at the 
 time, with a hammering heart, inarticulate under 
 great waves of emotion, in which gratitude to God 
 for prayers so fully answered clashed with the 
 impending joy of seeing her hero again. 
 
 Both the Mortimers were relieved in being spared 
 the effort of a long and early drive to a City full 
 of Dead Sea fruit, and they were equally touched 
 by Bill's desire for a reunion under the roof of the 
 old house in which he had been born and to which 
 they themselves had retired. It proved to them, 
 too, as nothing else could have done, the accuracy 
 of their contention that the reaction from war would 
 find Bill in a domestic mood. If he had asked them 
 to come up to meet him, had dined with them, sent 
 them home and plunged into the current of his old 
 life with his old friends, their pet scheme, in which 
 Martha Wainwright was to play the leading part, 
 must have crumbled like paper at the touch of a 
 lighted match. 
 
 Mrs. Mortimer had read the telegram aloud to 
 the eager slip of a girl and had watched the flame in 
 her eyes and the rush of color to her cheeks with her
 
 78 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 usual imperturbability but an excitement very .diffi- 
 cult to conceal. She would go happily to what- 
 ever was waiting for her on the other side if she 
 could leave Bill married and settled down with this 
 most suitable girl. 
 
 The whole of the next day was a series of broken 
 precedents. Routine was shattered. The studied 
 equability and smoothness of meals was replaced by 
 an electrical snappiness and even irritability. The 
 Old Buck was on the tips of his toes. He could 
 hardly bear to sit down even for five consecutive 
 minutes. To the extreme annoyance of the house- 
 keeper and Albery he insisted upon superintending 
 personally every detail in the preparation of Bill's 
 suite of rooms. He trotted about the house to make 
 sure that everything was in the pink of order, he 
 inspected the garden with the anxiety of a Colonel 
 anticipating the visit of a Brigadier General, snap- 
 ping absurd orders to gardeners which left them in 
 a condition of mental chaos, and by his repeated in- 
 terference reduced the head coachman to the verge 
 of blasphemy. Even the faithful Denham, with 
 whom he was, as a rule, on terms of intimate friend- 
 ship, fled at the sound of his parade rasp, and as- 
 sured the kitchen that if " he had much more of this 
 he'd either kill the old devil by giving him a dose 
 of hair dye or go back to England by the next boat 
 and buy that there pub in his native village." Fi- 
 nally, very tired and irascible, he retired early in 
 order to undergo an extra dose of face massage and 
 electrical treatment and heard the conscientious
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 79 
 
 clock on his mantelpiece strike every hour until five, 
 when he fell into the sleep of a schoolboy on the 
 verge of his first summer camp or a young girl be- 
 fore her initial dip into the world. If anyone had 
 told him that even the return of his beloved Bill 
 would so far have flung him out of balance he would 
 have sent out a scoffing laugh and told him that 
 "nothing upsets me, my dear fellow. I am the 
 original egotist." 
 
 The white-haired lady was moved to precisely 
 the same degree but to more useful results. With a 
 song on her lips .and a mother-smile on her again 
 beautiful face she quietly and surreptitiously fol- 
 lowed the Commodore from upset to upset, spread- 
 ing oil on troubled waters and placating a distraught 
 menage with soothing and serviceable words. She 
 got Martha to pick a bunch of early spring flowers 
 and spent an hour of the most exquisite happiness 
 arranging them on the massive pieces of colonial 
 furniture in Bill's bedroom and the low-ceilinged 
 sitting room which connected with it. And all the 
 while her mind was flooded with memories of a little 
 boy and his needs and stories and precious posses- 
 sions, and the odd sweet things that he used to say 
 in those far distant hours when he would sit on the 
 floor with Robinson Crusoe and keep up a constant 
 prattle while her hair was being done for dinner. 
 Once more she felt the fresh healthy cheek pressed 
 against her breast and the strong young arms about 
 her neck. " Oh God," she cried out aloud, as she 
 stood looking with wet eyes at a little photograph
 
 80 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 of herself with the chubby Bill on her lap, "if only 
 my dreams had come true and I had been permitted 
 by Fate to marry where my heart was. Bill would 
 have been a different man to come back to me ! " 
 And it was at that moment that the second twinge 
 of conscience attacked her as the vision of Martha 
 Wainwright stood momentarily before her, slim and 
 virginal and trusting. But once again, because 
 Bill was bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh, she 
 dismissed pity from her mind. For all his frail- 
 ties, Bill was a man that any woman should be proud 
 to possess. 
 
 But it was Martha who caught the first sight of 
 Bill. 
 
 Standing among the same belt of trees on the hil- 
 lock at the bend of the road from which she had 
 watched him drive away, she waited hour after hour 
 until, at last, she was rewarded by the flash of his 
 profile as a car flicked past. He saw the young 
 figure against the appropriate background of silver 
 birches, recognized in her the pretty child whom he 
 remembered having seen in the garden with his 
 mother, and brought his hand up to the peak of his 
 cap. She waved back and he took away with 
 him the memory of a smile which rang a little bell 
 in his soul. What was her name ? Bainbridge 
 Waterhouse Goodfellow? Something like that, 
 something which carried with it a sense of integ- 
 rity and honest effort, of a building planted on 
 solid foundations by people of sound constitution 
 and God-fearing spirit. Although he had never
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 81 
 
 given her a thought, it came back to him that he had 
 seen her standing on that same small mount among 
 the rocks and trees when he had been driven the 
 other way to probable death and he was glad, in 
 that throe of sentiment, to see her there again. It 
 gave him a feeling of returning to find things unal- 
 tered, untouched, of having been overlooked by the 
 devil's eye and left undesecrated by the ingenious 
 weapons of destruction. 
 
 He little knew with what an exquisite pang of 
 joy Martha cried out to herself " He remembers ! 
 He remembers!" or how she took back to her 
 duties at home a love which burgeoned in her heart. 
 
 IV 
 
 THE Old Rip, deaf to all suggestions, unamenable 
 to any change in his definite program, and as 
 peppery as an Anglo-Indian Colonel before an in- 
 spection by the Commander-in-Chief, arranged the 
 household on the steps of the portico a good twenty 
 minutes before Bill's car was timed, bar accidents, 
 to arrive. Made up as the country gentleman in 
 one of those stunted top hats of brown felt which, 
 according to " Punch ", are worn by squires at prize 
 cattle shows, a pepper-and-salt coat with large flap 
 pockets, and riding breeches with doeskin gaiters, 
 he took his place on the bottom step with the white- 
 haired lady. He had finally arrived at this costume 
 after several complete changes, and his nerves were 
 almost as frazzled as those of Denham, who had 
 brought the indecision as to appropriate garments
 
 82 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 to an abrupt and icy ending by flinging up his hands 
 and crying out, " I hope the Lord will send a 
 bloomin' angel after me before I dribble into this 
 'ere kind of second childhood ! " 
 
 In the order of what he chose to consider their 
 importance the Commodore had, after much bick- 
 ering and many stamps of the foot, arranged his 
 staff, as he suddenly took it into his head to call it, 
 on the upper steps. By insisting on placing Mrs. 
 Porter, the shapeless housekeeper, in front of Al- 
 bery, he had given mortal offense to the pompous 
 butler and rendered poor little Mrs. Porter tremu- 
 lously fearful of her future. She was beyond the 
 time when she could stand without hysterics the 
 biting sarcasm of that gobbling turkey, as she had 
 mentally labelled Albery. Another crassly inju- 
 dicious act had been performed by Barclay Morti- 
 mer, the after-effects of which would make bad 
 blood in the servants' dining room for a consider- 
 able time, by his ordering Denham to stand below 
 Tasker, the head coachman, who had been with the 
 family man and boy for fifty years. " The derned 
 valet, by gosh," was fully alive to the fact that he 
 had been forced into an invidious position against 
 his better judgment, and being already in a state 
 of absolute disruption, after several unholy hours 
 with the Old Buck, could hardly listen to the long 
 string of murmured insults from the irate old man 
 behind him without blowing up. As to Mrs. Fos- 
 dick, the cook, one glance at her crab-apple face was 
 enough to indicate the gross indignity which had
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 83 
 
 been put upon her. Just because Ada, the compar- 
 atively new waitress, possessed the come-hither in 
 her bold brown eyes, wore skirts which showed a 
 little more than the flutter of neat ankles and had 
 russet hair in which there were streaks of copper, 
 the master had told her to stand in front of the eld- 
 erly dame who had been the queen of the kitchen for 
 so many years. It was enough to make a body 
 prance out of the house without giving notice and 
 leave the ungrateful family to the tender mercies of 
 a slap-dash Irish woman who only knew how to 
 cook for a priest, that it was. The remainder of 
 the menage, consisting of the gardeners, maids and 
 stable-hands, stood under the portico in any order 
 they chose, but the amazing blunders in servant 
 precedence thus willfully committed had left them 
 stultified and surly. There were more than ample 
 grounds in all this for the Trades Union of Con- 
 descending Helpers of the Household to order an 
 immediate strike. 
 
 From time to time, during the period of waiting, 
 the Old Rip wheeled around and glared at the dis- 
 satisfied group of muttering people behind him and 
 brought about a temporary stoniness by shouting, 
 with his best parade rasp, " Let there be silence, 
 please." And all the while, completely indifferent 
 to the clash of temperament that was all about her, 
 the white-haired lady waited, with a little smile 
 playing round her mouth, to feel, once again, the 
 strong arms of her only son. 
 
 Old Glory floated above the house in Bill's honor,
 
 84 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 side by side with the banners of the Allies, and a 
 dozen Boy Scouts of all sizes were drawn up on the 
 lawn to cheer themselves hoarse. It was a terrible 
 but well-earned ordeal through which Bill was to 
 be forced to go. 
 
 As the car came through the old gates and bowled 
 along the wide road, the boughs of trees under 
 whose protecting shade the spirits of departed Mor- 
 timers seemed to hover, bent to welcome the one 
 to whom they looked to perpetuate the name, and the 
 air rang with the thin cries of the lads on the lawn. 
 
 Bill gave one quick nervous glance at all this 
 ghastly fuss for which, knowing his father, he was 
 partially prepared, thanked all his stars that he had 
 been spared the village band, sprang out from among 
 his baggage, caught his mother in his arms and held 
 her tight. Then he turned to Barclay Mortimer, 
 whose over-massaged face was twisted with emo- 
 tion, flung an arm round his shoulder and kissed 
 him as he had always done when, as a boy, he had 
 joined him for the holidays. The old man tried 
 to utter the opening sentences of a well-prepared 
 speech, stammered, stumbled, and burst into tears. 
 In all his reprobate life never before had he felt so 
 genuine an acknowledgment of God's goodness as at 
 that moment. The boy loved him and he gave 
 great praise. 
 
 And then, facing the old house which had never 
 amounted to a row of beans before but which, in 
 his new mood, stood for home and a wife, a young 
 Bill and a tiny Lylyth, Bill's face broke into its
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 85 
 
 usual sunny grin, and he mounted the steps, with his 
 arm round his mother's waist, grasped one after 
 another of the eager hands that were stretched out 
 to him, indignities forgotten for the time being, 
 achieved the hall and finally the drawing-room and 
 stood alone once more with the white-haired lady 
 whose peccadillos he knew and condoned, whose 
 former beauty and invincibility he had admired and 
 marveled at, and whose deep love and services he 
 could never, never forget. 
 
 " Mum," he said, " my own darling Mum." 
 
 And they stood and whispered broken words to 
 each other, under the eyes of dead Mortimers, while 
 the Commodore, himself again, doled out dollar 
 bills to the uneven Boy Scouts, the beaming and be- 
 nign Squire to the life. 
 
 And in the house of honest effort away behind 
 the trees, Martha Wainwright, marked out to be 
 "brought forward " as the mother of a new genera- 
 tion of Mortimers, wrote out her list of groceries 
 with little pearls of joy dropping on the slip. 
 
 And so wags the world. 
 
 V 
 
 " You have had the extreme privilege of lead- 
 ing your mother to her after-dinner resting place, 
 my dear fellow," said the Commodore, "but I'll be 
 damned if I '11 forego my right to arrange her 
 cushions." 
 
 With that low soft laugh of hers which, in the 
 old days, had more than once made Barclay Morti-
 
 86 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 mer too keenly aware of the fact that he stood be- 
 fore her stripped of his poses, the white-haired 
 lady turned from her son to her husband. " How 
 nice to be fought over by two such handsome men," 
 she said. 
 
 Whereupon Bill gave her up and backed away 
 laughing. It was an utterly new thing for him to 
 see his father and mother permanently under the 
 same roof and behaving like elderly lovers in a 
 Sheridan play. It gave him great amusement as 
 well as, he had to confess, an odd sensation of pain. 
 
 In return for her flattery Mortimer bowed pro- 
 foundly, as profoundly, that is, as his stays 
 would permit, raised her hand to his lips, and, 
 with more than his usual mixture of courtesy and 
 respect, piled cushions at the head of the Colonial 
 sofa. He was in the highest spirits and so frankly 
 happy in this reunion that he radiated good humor. 
 His hair had been waved for the occasion and his 
 mustache curled back with a hot iron. The rib- 
 bon of the Legion d'Honneur made a red spot on 
 the lapel of his tight fitting dinner jacket. 
 
 Mrs. Mortimer allowed herself to be placed upon 
 the sofa and smiled up at Bill over the shoulders of 
 the Old Rip as he bent to arrange her skirt about her 
 feet. This was one of the good moments to which 
 she had been looking forward during every one of 
 the long hours of two desperately anxious years, 
 and her heart seemed still to float in tears. 
 
 " Sit near me, Bill," she said. 
 
 " We will both sit near you, Madame. I decline
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 87 
 
 to be made to agonize under the pangs of jealousy 
 by this intruder to our Paradise." And the old man 
 guffawed at the joke none could appreciate so fully 
 as those who knew him so well. They were his best 
 audience. 
 
 " I '11 just dash up and get my pipe," said Bill. 
 " I can't smoke anything else." 
 
 And the instant that he left the morning room 
 and went whistling to the stairs a change came over 
 the father and mother. Dropping their artificial 
 spirit of comedy and badinage they drew instinc- 
 tively together, alone for the first time since the 
 return of the one person on earth who united them 
 in unselfishness. 
 
 " Lylyth, you were right. He 's not the same 
 man," said Mortimer, eagerly. 
 
 " Sssh ! lower your voice. . . . Yes, he 's al- 
 tered. A hundred little things that he has said 
 make it plain. His very look proves it. But 
 don't let him guess that we Ve been planning for his 
 future or making a scheme to lead him into mar- 
 riage. Promise me that." 
 
 :l You have my word, my dear. Men hate to be 
 discussed and coerced. We must let him appear to 
 work out his own salvation while we pull the 
 strings unseen. Already I can hear the creaking 
 of a cradle." 
 
 " Yes, but I have one great fear, Barclay." 
 
 "Good God, what?" 
 
 " That girl, Hatch. He has come back full of 
 generosity and sentiment. It is n't at all impossible
 
 88 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 that he may want to do what you men in his mood 
 have often done before and make her a good wo- 
 man, as it 's called." 
 
 Mortimer stood aghast. " An appalling 
 thought," he said. " What on earth has put it into 
 your head ? " 
 
 " A knowledge of your sex. History reeks with 
 instances. Therefore we must go warily. If he 
 has built a romance round Susan Hatch we must 
 undermine it not by arguments but by apparent 
 agreement and the production at the right moment 
 and in the right manner of the girl who has always 
 been good. He comes to us inspired to regenera- 
 tion. Only by virtue can this be achieved, and 
 if this is not in his mind we must put it there. . . . 
 How . . . how good to have him home again ! " 
 
 The Commodore, forgetting that he had learned 
 the gesture from his Italian inamorata in the Villa 
 Fiora, raised his hands to Heaven. " Whatever 
 else I omitted to give him," he said, " I was lavish 
 in the gift of looks. . . . We might easily be taken 
 for brothers, don't you think, Madame ? " And al- 
 though he chuckled away the edge of this conceit he 
 squared his shoulders and puffed out his chest and 
 gave a fluke to his absurd mustache. Then, with 
 a sudden return to seriousness and in a voice quiv- 
 ering with a kind of pathetic eagerness he added, 
 " I leave the matter of Bill's marriage entirely in 
 your hands, Lylyth. For God's sake see that I 
 have the joy and satisfaction of riding a grandson 
 on my knee before I answer to the summons."
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 89 
 
 " It is the last object of my life," replied Mrs. 
 Mortimer. "I will leave no stone unturned, no 
 trick untried, no diplomacy unexercised to achieve 
 it. Rely upon me. . . . Talk about something else, 
 quickly. He is on the stairs." 
 
 The Old Buck rose to the occasion. " It was King 
 Edward who sent for me to his box in the Royal 
 Enclosure at Ascot that year," he said loudly, as 
 though in the middle of one of his anecdotes, " and 
 in that inimitable way of his congratulated me on 
 the .... Ah, here you are, my boy. I wish I 
 could join you in a pipe. I have never managed to 
 achieve the habit." He gave a side glance at his 
 wife to catch her look of appreciation and lowered 
 himself carefully into an arm-chair. An artist in 
 worldliness he was, and so remained, he thanked his 
 stars. 
 
 Bill beamed first at one and then at the other, and 
 so that there might be no jealousy at his favoritism 
 of either took up a stand in front of the old fire- 
 place, with his back against the mantel-board. 
 God, how often, out there in that waterlogged funk- 
 hole, he had longed for this moment, and wrapped 
 his parents and his home about with a veil of ideal- 
 ism! ... A simple soul, this Bill Mortimer, 
 loving happiness and ease and the game of life; 
 without an ounce of guile, perfectly ready to pay 
 and pay generously for whatever gave him pleasure ; 
 a heart instantly moved to sympathy and kindness 
 towards women and men and beasts, susceptible to 
 beauty to a degree even beyond that which had car-
 
 90 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 ried his father into similar feminine embarrass- 
 ments, and so good-natured that it was as easy to 
 lead him by the nose as any school-boy. Deep 
 down in his soul, too, there was a sense of poetry 
 and a definite ache for permanency which, awakened 
 by all that he had seen of death and destruction, 
 made him almost as pathetic a figure as the two old 
 people who had been forced to slip into the back- 
 waters and who had utterly lost the chance that re- 
 mained to him, if he knew how to take it, of twist- 
 ing his rudder into mid-stream and turning his 
 pleasure craft into a cargo boat. 
 
 " I love this room," he said, running his dark 
 eyes over the things among which he had grown up. 
 " And how corking all the old stuff looks. I hope 
 I have the luck to bring home the sort of girl who 
 won't call it junk and want to pitch it neck and crop 
 into the garden." 
 
 The Old Rip and the white-haired lady exchanged 
 a quick signal. Away went their anxiety as to the 
 Hatch person. He had built up a picture of an un- 
 known girl. 
 
 " Bill ! . . . Surely you are not thinking of be- 
 ing conventional at your age?" Mrs. Mortimer 
 asked the question with the most perfect simulation 
 of lightness, to hang on his answer with held 
 breath. Little he knew how splendidly he helped 
 the great plan by touching so soon upon the sub- 
 ject of it. 
 
 ' Yes, as a matter of fact I am," he said simply. 
 
 " My dear fellow," cried the Old Rip, " if you
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 91 
 
 flung a bomb in our midst you could n't surprise us 
 as much." He was a master in the art of picking 
 up cues. 
 
 " I suppose not," said Bill, watching his smoke 
 filter into the air. He made a fine figure in his 
 uniform, in spite of its high collar and lack of belt. 
 " But I may as well be frank with you right away 
 and get it over. Bill 's going to be a good boy now 
 and play the little old game of domesticity. That 's 
 the truth. So find me a wife, Mother, and I '11 
 show you how serious I am." 
 
 It was almost too good to be true, well and 
 shrewdly as she had banked on this change of mood. 
 " My dear Bill," she said, controlling the ecstatic 
 Commodore by raising one long finger, " is n't that 
 rather a large order? Who do I know now that I 
 am out of the world? Besides, there are compli- 
 cations in the shapes of Susie Hatch, Birdie Gar- 
 roll, Jeanne Dacoral and the rest." 
 
 " A washout," he said. " Bill 's plumping for 
 respectability these days. He 's all for being the 
 little gentleman now." It was an amusing habit of 
 his to refer to himself in the third person as he had 
 done as a youngster. 
 
 The two great sighs of relief of the disrespectable 
 parents joined forces in mid-air and went paradox- 
 ically to the gates of Heaven. 
 
 " It 's like this, my dears," he went on before 
 they could play-act again. " One had a certain 
 amount of time for thinking out there, and pretty 
 straight thoughts at that. I saw myself with a bit
 
 92 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 of a shock with the best half of my life behind me 
 and nothing but a record of darned good times to 
 show for it. And at the end of it all, and durirfg 
 those days after the armistice when a sort of let- 
 down feeling crept over us all, and playing the vic- 
 tor business began to pall like the devil, I put to my- 
 self this question. What in fairness are you going 
 to do, Bill, old son, to show your gratitude for hav- 
 ing been let off? And the answer was obvious. 
 Go home, and if luck's still with you hunt about for 
 the sort of dear sweet soul who will fit the bill ac- 
 cording to mother and you, Dad, and the old gentle- 
 men who have frowned down at me from these 
 walls ever since I was a nipper. And so I Ve come 
 home with nothing in my mind except this new job, 
 the peace job, and now that I'm here and the 
 whole atmosphere seems to egg me on to it I want 
 you to help me, because I 'm a boob at the business 
 and 'pon my soul I hardly know how to begin to 
 say things to Miss Respectable. Wait a second. 
 Let me get the rest of it off my chest before I get 
 self-conscious and do the clam act. You mentioned 
 Susan Hatch and the rest, Mother, and I said that 
 they 're a washout. That 's so. They belong to 
 the good old days. But, and this is what sticks 
 in my gills, is there a Miss Respectable knocking 
 about who will take me on when I play honest and 
 tell her the Story, however Bowdlerized? And 
 that 's what I shall be expected to do, I take it ? " 
 
 He came to an end and looked from one eager 
 listener to the other with a very apparent desire to
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 93 
 
 be encouraged in the matter of his leaf -turning and 
 discouraged on the question of his scrupulousness. 
 
 At once he got what he wanted on both counts. 
 
 Barclay Mortimer struggled dramatically to his 
 feet and put his hand on his son's shoulder with 
 spontaneous affection. " God bless you, Bill," he 
 said. " It was only necessary for you to tell us this 
 to make to-day the happiest of my life." 
 
 The white-haired lady rose too, and slipped one 
 long-fingered hand through her son's arm. " I 
 echo that, thankfully, my dear, and of course I will 
 help you, though at the moment my mind is a 
 blank, and as to the need for you to worry about 
 certain chapters in the book as you have written it 
 there is none. Let the dead past bury its dead. 
 More harm than good is done by taking a young 
 thing with her eyes on the future for a gloomy visit 
 to the catacombs. Besides, this is the twentieth 
 century, and the modern girl does not demand per- 
 fection. Egotistical confessions of youthful follies 
 made to Innocence in discreetly lighted conserva- 
 tories went out with the stuffed canary and the 
 draped Venus. It would be received to-day with a 
 peal of laughter and an outburst of chaff." 
 
 " Oh," said Bill. " Well, that 's the best thing 
 I 've heard for a long time. It puts my tail up no 
 end." And he whistled the first few bars of an old 
 regimental song as much to show his relief as to 
 bring the blood pressure of the room back to nor- 
 mal. He had never seen his father so parental be- 
 fore. He realized with deep regret that age had got
 
 94 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 hold of him, in spite of his bitter fight. Nor had he 
 ever seen his mother so confident, so electrical, and 
 so supremely a mistress of life. He was glad that 
 he had pulled down his fourth wall at once and let 
 them see into the sanctum of his heart. 
 
 " Mind you," he added suddenly, " don't run 
 away with the idea that I 've got to fall passionately 
 in love and that sort of thing, and am going to be 
 difficult to please. I 've been through that phase, 
 I 'm sorry to say, sorry because I can't look for- 
 ward to it as something not yet done, if you know 
 what I mean. I shall be so grateful to the right 
 little soul who will do me the honor to become my 
 wife that, although there will be no first lover stuff 
 about me, there will be a frightfully keen desire to 
 make her happy in every other conceivable way. 
 Having turned over a new leaf I '11 see that I do my 
 derndest to make it a good 'un. I want you to get 
 that. In other words, I 'm so bursting keen to 
 settle down at last and play the game for all I 'm 
 worth that it 's it 's pathetic." 
 
 He was glad of the excuse to cross the room for 
 a match. In his jerky colloquial way he had let 
 himself go and there was something suspiciously 
 like a quiver in his voice. 
 
 And so the first evening of Bill's home coming 
 was brought to an end with everybody's cards on 
 the table, except the one on which Martha Wain- 
 wright's flower-like face was painted. And this the 
 white-haired lady held up her sleeve for future use, 
 in what she conceived to be the right way.
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 95 
 
 Barclay Mortimer, seeing his chance to improve 
 the occasion with a few well-rounded platitudes of 
 the kind that he had written to his son in his fa- 
 mous series of letters, Emerson, Ruskin and de la 
 Rochefoucauld had been his inspirers, would have 
 taken the stage had he not received a quick signal 
 from his wife. With an unselfishness that was so 
 new as to be startling he took the hint, saved his 
 remarks for a more propitious occasion and let 
 well enough alone. It was a gigantic triumph of 
 matter over mind. Instead, being on his feet, he 
 pom-pomed about the room so that Bill might ad- 
 mire his slimness. Things looked good and he was 
 as proud of his wife's perspicacity as he was of his 
 power to back her up. He was, also, eternally 
 grateful to the war for its putting him in the way of 
 becoming a grandfather, the one remaining am- 
 bition of his life. 
 
 " Well," he said finally, " bed 's a good place, I 
 think, eh Madame ? " 
 
 " I think so too," replied Mrs. Mortimer. 
 
 " I '11 go out and walk up and down," said Bill, 
 "if it 's all the same to you. I want to taste the 
 old scent of the garden and make certain that this 
 is not one of my dreams. Good night, Mum dar- 
 ling. You '11 work things right. You always did. 
 Good night, Dad, old man. Take me on to-morrow 
 for a round of golf and beat me." 
 
 Golf ! He had n't touched a club for five years, 
 and he could n't do much more than touch one now, 
 trussed up in those stays of his, But the sugges-
 
 96 . THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 tion that he was still a hefty fellow, by Gad, pleased 
 him beyond words and he threw himself into a Braid 
 attitude before an imaginary ball and laughed. 
 " Eleven o'clock on the first tee," he said, " with all 
 the pleasure in life." It would be easy to tell Den- 
 ham to come after him and fetch him back on a 
 matter of the most urgent importance. Anyway, 
 that wonderful suit of golf clothes would get an 
 airing. 
 
 The white-haired lady kept a perfectly straight 
 face. 
 
 " Oh, by the way," said Bill, " what 's the name 
 of that charming little girl who used to come and 
 see you before we went into the old push ? " 
 
 It was a question that caused the old people al- 
 most to jump out of their skins. Surely there must 
 be something occult in all this. 
 
 "Do you mean Martha Wainwright?" asked 
 Mrs. Mortimer, hiding the gleam in her eyes by 
 bending over the sofa. 
 
 "That's it," said Bill. " Martha suggestive 
 of pansies and sweet-williams, and Wainwright of 
 an anvil, hit hard and well. By Jove yes. That 's 
 it." 
 
 "Why do you ask?" Old Mortimer touched 
 the cheeks of a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley to show 
 that he was only faintly and politely interested. 
 
 " I saw her standing on the hill at the bend of the 
 road after I 'd said good-by, and she was there 
 again to-day when I drove up. The last and the 
 first. Somehow she made me feel that I 'd come
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 97 
 
 back to find nothing changed here. I liked it aw- 
 fully. Does she still come over sometimes ? " 
 
 " Every afternoon," said Mrs. Mortimer. 
 
 " Oh, good." 
 
 Good? It was astounding, thrilling, full of a 
 predestination that made Bill's search for a wife 
 almost an accomplished fact. . . . Good Heavens, 
 what an effort it was for the Old Rip to hold his 
 tongue. Sooner or later, before he went to bed that 
 epoch-making night, something had to go, and 
 it went as soon as he stood with his wife on the wide 
 corridor at the top of the stairs. 
 
 " My love," he whispered, " the fairies were 
 abroad when you were born," and he kissed her on 
 the cheek. 
 
 " Bad fairies," thought the white-haired lady, but 
 she smiled and bowed. 
 
 And when Bill, standing on the road in the magic 
 of the moon, breathed in the familiar scent of pines 
 and maples and looked about him at the old scene of 
 his boyhood, it was in the direction of the Wain- 
 wright house behind the woods that his eyes turned 
 unconsciously. 
 
 Martha was asleep, dreaming dreaming. And 
 under her pillow, as usual, was the photograph of 
 Bill. Miss Respectable. . . .
 
 PART III 
 
 IMBUED with a sense of comfort that was far too 
 good to be true, Tom Wainwright opened one eye 
 slowly, cautiously and with great suspicion. Catch- 
 ing sight of a large airy bedroom hung with photo-, 
 graphs of himself taken in every Harvard attitude 
 and filled with solid pieces of furniture that ap- 
 peared to him to give it an atmosphere of almost 
 painful luxury, he immediately shut it. ... It was 
 a dream, the old familiar frequently recurring 
 dream out of which he had come daily, at unearthly 
 earliness, for nearly two years, to find himself in 
 the rough quarters of a camp, the unspeakable filth 
 of a dugout or rolled in a sleeping bag out under 
 the stars. That idiot phrase " the glory of the 
 trenches " which had made so many men blaspheme 
 came back ironically into his mind. 
 
 He opened the other eye and recognized his bed- 
 room, his own old bedroom of pre-war days, alive 
 with memories of school and college and all the 
 things of peace that had been knocked edgeways by 
 the hideous cataclysm which had sent the whole
 
 100 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 world reeling and staggering and left, it is to be 
 hoped, a mark on every individual member of Euro- 
 pean governments by which they may be identified 
 for Hell. " Theirs the blame, and theirs the shame 
 and theirs the ultimate tears." 
 
 Was he home again? Could this be that honest- 
 to-goodness house in which he had lived through 
 years of unbelievable comfort? . . . From Camp 
 Upton and all its chaos and cloying sand to a troop- 
 ship packed like a grotesque box of sardines; from 
 troopship to debarkation at the back-end of muddle ; 
 from mud, rain, growling and little flares of mu- 
 tiny; forced marches, bedraggled train journeys to 
 rear lines marked with the remainders of previous 
 regiments ; front line funk-holes, monotonous vistas 
 of pock-marked earth and battered barbed-wire 
 poles, blind rushes through the shambles of death 
 to ruined villages ; finally the utter boredom of Ger- 
 man billets to what? It had been a long, long 
 way to Tipperary, the Tipperary which was that 
 very house, that very room with the mementos of 
 the best of his days, and downstairs his people. . . . 
 
 Fully awake, but spiritually afraid to open both 
 eyes at once in case he might find that his furtive 
 glances had shown him something not yet achieved, 
 Tom Wainwright lay very still. His hands were 
 flat out on the sheets. " Now then," he said to him- 
 self, " get on to it. Pull yourself together. What 
 happened yesterday?" He set the machinery of 
 his brain at work and in a series of moving, 
 strangely moving, pictures saw himself undergo the
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 101 
 
 emotional welcome of father and mother and sister, 
 the return home to a wonderful dinner with grin- 
 ning servants coming in and out of a well-known 
 room, and an evening during which he answered a 
 fire of questions and thrilled, as any boy would, at 
 the hero-worship that was given to him. And as 
 he got these things and fixed them one after another, 
 and caught the sounds of birds singing outside his 
 window, of the breeze making its friendly rustle 
 in the trees that he had climbed, and of a grass-cut- 
 ting machine somewhere near giving out that steady 
 whir, which, like nothing else, seems peculiarly to 
 belong to peace, confidence came and funk left. It 
 was all true. This was Tipperary. ... And as he 
 sat up, tousle-headed, and looked about him with 
 affection, he saw a man in a dressing-gown shaving 
 in front of a, looking glass, a tall, square-shouldered 
 man with his grey hair unbrushed and something 
 about the back of his neck that belongs only to those 
 who have kept their chins high in the struggle to 
 live. 
 
 " Damned nice of the old man to come in and 
 shave and not wake me up," he thought, and catch- 
 ing his father's eyes in the glass gave him the sort 
 of salute that he reserved especially for Brigadier 
 Generals. 
 
 " Hello, Dad." 
 
 " Hello, Tom." 
 
 And they grinned at each other from opposite 
 ends of the room, saying in the eloquent silence of 
 father and son all the affectionate things which
 
 102 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 both had been hoarding up for two years and could 
 no more put into words than fly over the moon. 
 
 It was Tom who was the first to master his voice. 
 Thank God he had had the luck to do one or two 
 things of which that good old Dad would not be 
 ashamed. " Got to go up this morning? " he asked, 
 casually. 
 
 But Wainwright beat him. No one could have 
 told by his tone that this was not the most ordinary 
 of mornings. " Yes, but I 'm coming down on the 
 1 :52. If you 've nothing better to do, we might 
 put in a round before dinner." 
 
 " There is n't anything on earth better to do," 
 said Tom, leaping out of bed. He found it neces- 
 sary to make a dash for the window to hide the sud- 
 den twist of his mouth. 
 
 And old Wainwright, who was n't old, smiled. 
 It was a thing like that which made his la- 
 borious days worth while. " A good glass, yours," 
 he said. " I often came in here to shave when you 
 were on the other side." 
 
 " Fine," said Tom, who never by any chance used 
 it for such a purpose. He could only see one side 
 of his face in it. But the enormous compliment 
 which had been paid to him by its use went all the 
 way home. " I don't think I '11 come up with you 
 this morning, unless you want me. I think I '11 
 slack for a bit and be domestic for a change. 
 Mother and Martha might like it, don't you think 
 so?" 
 
 " Good Lord, yes. I don't want to see you near
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 103 
 
 the office until you 've found your feet, old man. 
 Play around as long as you feel like it." But the 
 subtle hint which his son had given him of a desire 
 to put his shoulder to the civil wheel again was 
 worth a million dollars. 
 
 He had seen and heard of men, innumerable men, 
 upon whom the effects of war had reacted very 
 differently. Some of them returned to their old 
 haunts with what appeared to be an utter incapacity 
 to adjust themselves to pre-war conditions. They 
 shied at the thought of sedentary work and regular- 
 ity. They had patience for nothing unless there 
 was a girl in it. If also there was music so much 
 the better. But the former there must be, pretty 
 or not pretty. Others brought back with them such 
 a sense of tragic rage and disillusion at the unutter- 
 able futility and waste of their patriotism and ef- 
 forts, both physical and spiritual, that they went 
 about under a continual mental shell-shock, out of 
 which they emerged infrequently to curse the glib 
 and ignorant politicians who had already forgotten 
 the war and its causes and left the incapacitated 
 men to the charity of the public. Dangerous men 
 these, imbued with the sort of thoughts that are 
 parochially placed under the heading of Bolshevism. 
 Men who did not intend, without a grim and bitter 
 struggle, to permit their country to indulge in the 
 old tyrannies of government without the consent of 
 peoples, the old Fetish worship of hatred masking 
 under the divine name of Patriotism. There was 
 that other set, too, who, not intellectual enough to
 
 104 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 look back at the causes and forward at the results 
 of the war with anything but a sense of bewilder- 
 ment, sneered at all talk of readjustment, went 
 about saying, " Hell, we paid, who 's going to pay 
 us ? " and scoffed at the suggestion that they must 
 return, if anyone would take them, to their old dull 
 jobs. They demanded the fat of the land. They 
 had earned it. They stood about with an expec- 
 tant and rather ugly grin waiting to be spoiled. 
 There were very few whose normality had not been 
 jerked out of balance or who, like young Tom 
 Wainwright, were ready to resume old ways with 
 the same eager boyishness as before. How should 
 there be? No wonder, therefore, that this father 
 left for his business with thankfulness in his heart 
 and a joyful surprise. 
 
 II 
 
 THERE were several eye-openers in store for " my 
 boy Tom " that morning, and all of them gave him 
 a very new and wonderful insight into the ways and 
 hearts of parents, jerking him into a realization of 
 the fact, very vaguely appreciated up to the time 
 of his getting into uniform, that a son, when his 
 people happen to be the Wainwrights of the earth, 
 occupies the star position in the house. 
 
 He had left his civics in a condition of wild 
 chaos and thus he expected, unimaginatively 
 enough, to find them. Instead of which he discov- 
 ered them, with a sort of shock, in the most perfect 
 order. His socks and golf stockings had not only
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 105 
 
 been mended but rolled up separately and arranged 
 in platoons in his drawers. His suits, brushed and 
 ironed, hung primly in the closet, winter to the 
 right, summer to the left. Shoes, treed and glis- 
 tening, pointed their toes at him from a shelf. His 
 modest collection of ties hung decoratively all across 
 a bar. In fact, all his possessions, even his pipes, 
 told the tale of tender attention and gave him a 
 picture of his mother working over his things again 
 and again in order to get something from them and 
 to give something to him which is necessary to the 
 maternal instinct. A queer moment for this hith- 
 erto scatter-brained lad, who had given and taken 
 lightly and never stopped to look for anything that 
 was n't on the surface. He chuckled at all this as- 
 tounding neatness and wondered how long it would 
 be before the old chaos reigned again, but, able now 
 to understand the meaning behind it, he metaphor- 
 ically took off all his hats to his mother in absolute 
 unsheepish gratitude. " Gee whiz," he said, " some 
 Mother, and Martha 's in on this too. I '11 have to 
 do something for them both." And when finally he 
 surveyed himself in pre-war clothes, having chucked 
 his uniform into the farthest corner of a man-sized 
 closet, the one ambition that loomed up at the back 
 of his mind was to prove to the women of his fam- 
 ily his deep sense of appreciation. All the fun to 
 which he had looked forward like a school-boy on a 
 holiday should be shared with these two who, dur- 
 ing his absence, had shown their devotion in the 
 Madonna-like manner of women.
 
 106 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 Whatever the war had succeeded in developing 
 in other men who had escaped, it had awakened in 
 the cheery Tom something which would make him 
 both happy and miserable in his future life, imag- 
 ination. It had dug under that casual acceptance 
 of things which belongs to youth and brought out 
 the sensitive faculty of looking over the wall and 
 putting himself in other people's shoes. And this 
 meant the end of his old detached manner of taking 
 life and the supreme individualism and gross selfish- 
 ness which is the prerogative of all young people. 
 His two years of service added to his conscious 
 nearness to death had raised a curtain that would 
 never be lowered again. He had put his feet over 
 the boundary line between undergraduatism and 
 manhood and was thus able to get from all his 
 things that were so neatly arranged the essence of 
 those prayers that came to him like scent. . . . 
 
 He drove his father to the station and stood about 
 with him, close, talking golf and banking in jerks, 
 away back on the platform. He could go through 
 the " Well-well " stuff with the nobs of the neigh- 
 borhood some other time. He was like a young 
 brother; he tried to be. But the grip that he gave 
 to the banker's hand and the glint that was in his 
 eye when he said " I '11 meet you. Don't forget 
 our match now," sent the old man up to the City 
 with a warm feeling about the heart which nothing 
 else could have achieved. Driving the car as 
 though it were an aeroplane he went back to the 
 house to show his mother what he thought about
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 107 
 
 her. To anyone who had made a close study of 
 youth in all its honesty and naive conceit it would 
 have provided a vast amount of amusement to watch 
 this boy in sudden realization of his potency, to see 
 him under the new emotion of responsibility, the 
 state of being answerable to his people for the 
 proper and immediate discharge of expressed devo- 
 tion which would clinch their happiness. It had 
 been growing and taking shape ever since he got up. 
 It put his chin high and puffed out his chest. It 
 made him feel years older. It put the badge of 
 high rank on his shoulders. All the same it came 
 up against a huge diffidence and a worrying eager- 
 ness to do it all without letting it be seen that he 
 was conscious of the duty part of it. He did n't 
 knock on the door of her bedroom in the grown-up 
 way. He deliberately banged up against it and 
 shouted " Mum " as he had been in the habit of 
 doing in the old days before dashing off to school. 
 
 He won the old answer. He was betting on it. 
 " Oh Tom dear, do be careful," and went in 
 laughing. 
 
 Mrs. Wainwright had breakfasted in her room, 
 after a night distressed by bouts of bronchial cough- 
 ing. She had the inevitable appearance of the in- 
 valid, and the manner of the ill person who has be- 
 come unable to look at anything without turning 
 it to herself. Her symptoms were the all absorb- 
 ing facts. Her face was pale and her eyes tired and 
 little blue veins marked her temples. But she had 
 expected this visit and so had arranged herself on
 
 108 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 the sofa at the foot of the bed in a new and becom- 
 ing dressing gown. Her hair had been as carefully 
 brushed and done up as though she were going to a 
 dinner party. She wore several of her best rings. 
 The room had been tidied and put in order under 
 Martha's energetic direction and the various vases 
 had been filled with newly-cut flowers. There was 
 something in this touch of maternal vanity and the 
 desire to rise above invalidism and " receive " with 
 consideration that made Tom feel that the days of 
 his rowdy boyhood were a very long way behind 
 them both. 
 
 " Rotten bad luck," he said to himself with a 
 feeling of almost feminine sympathy and went for- 
 ward not as " Tom-dear-do-be-careful " as he had 
 wanted to do, but as Tom the Man who had to be 
 treated as such. " How are you, mother," he 
 said, and knocked out his pipe on the creeper that 
 grew up to the window sill. Always before he 
 had smoked in that room as in every other and 
 filled it with clouds of tobacco in the usual boy 
 manner. 
 
 " Oh, don't do that," she said. " You can smoke 
 here if you like." 
 
 And this gave him his first chance. He went 
 over to her and kissed her. " Not now. I 've 
 learnt a few things since I went away," and had the 
 infinite satisfaction of seeing that his point went 
 home. 
 
 After that, talking hard, about her things and not 
 his own, he remained for a solid hour, although the
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 109 
 
 sun called him and he was consumed with a desire 
 to get round to the garage and tinker on his car. 
 He did n't walk about the room either, taking things 
 up and putting them down again, being there merely 
 as a matter of duty. He sat tight in the same chair 
 as though a willing fixture and to every one of her 
 appeals not to waste his time paid no attention. It 
 was a masterly piece of work, performed with the 
 most sympathetic artfulness and without the small- 
 est possible degree of filial condescension. His 
 mother should see unmistakably that he liked to be 
 with her, that he chose to be with her, that he in- 
 sisted on being with her, that he would, in fact, 
 rather be with her than with any other person 
 under the sun. And she got it as he hoped that 
 she would, and together they made that hour 
 one of the triumphs of her life, those rare, 
 beautiful, maternal triumphs which so few 
 mothers ever enjoy until their children have got 
 children of their own and thus are able to appreciate 
 the fine points of parenthood and to understand 
 how deeply the small and apparently trivial things 
 in the relations between child and parent count in 
 the scheme of life. 
 
 And not once during the whole of those sixty 
 minutes did Tom permit himself to talk war or his 
 part in it. He talked father, Martha, the black cat, 
 the local gossip, servant stuff and home generally. 
 He touched also on the future and the fact that he 
 was going to knuckle down to work as soon as he 
 had had a bit of a holiday. And then he got up
 
 110 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 and apologized for staying so long and said: 
 " Cheerio, Mother. The house won't be the same 
 until you come down and show me what you 've 
 done in the garden." But he reserved his big point 
 for the moment when he turned with his hand on 
 the door. " I 've never seen anything like the way 
 you 've made my clothes look, Mum. What can I 
 do to spoil you for a change ? " 
 
 He left behind him a quiver of electrical emotion 
 which made his little mother clasp her hands to- 
 gether and put up her face and say to herself, " I 
 have a good boy, a very good boy." 
 
 Ill 
 
 BEFORE going to the garage Tom decided to hunt 
 up Martha, and, if he could work it in somehow 
 with any luck, to say something to his kid sister 
 which would give her also an inkling of the present 
 state of his feelings. It was a far more difficult job 
 than the one that he had just performed. It was 
 easier to say things to a mother than to a sister any 
 day. What he would have given a great deal to 
 be able to do was quite out of the question. There 
 was something about Martha now which made it 
 impossible to march up to her, kiss her soundly and 
 put in words any of those things that were in his 
 mind, bang out. Then too, the last two years 
 had taken the kid part away from her. She had ac- 
 quired that touch of dignity which made him hesi- 
 tate to prove his affection in the old way by chuck- 
 ing something at her, yanking her hair, chasing her
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 111 
 
 about the house and pinning her up against a wall 
 until she cried Pax and looked humble. Absence 
 and Anno Domini had made some new way neces- 
 sary, he did n't quite know what. 
 
 He heard her telephoning in his father's den. 
 With a perfectly natural self -consciousness he drew 
 up short at the door and took several turns along 
 the hall and back trying to get up a few sentences of 
 most affectionate gratitude in which sloppiness 
 should be totally absent. The things that came 
 into his mind were too stilted to consider. He 
 washed them out as idiotic. They would only make 
 her laugh at him. Better be sloppy than pedantic. 
 The sort of thing that was permissible between a 
 brother and sister of her age and his must be sug- 
 gested rather than put into so many blunt words, 
 he felt. They were n't Latins, able to emote with- 
 out effort and revel in it. Their Anglo-Saxon 
 blood and tradition boxed them in. He knew jolly 
 well that she loved him, there had been hero-wor- 
 ship in her eyes the night of his return. And he 
 knew that she knew he loved her because when she 
 had flung her arms round his neck at the first sight 
 of him he had held her frightfully tight and choked 
 a little. At the same time all the rules of the game 
 demanded some sort of spoken recognition of her 
 loyalty to his mother and to himself and of the long 
 drawn out anxiety which she had confessed to in 
 her letters. . . . Great Scot, how was he to get it 
 off his chest? 
 
 He was inclined to continue on his way to the
 
 112 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 garage and the self-indulgence of pottering at his 
 engine. Mafiana. But the discipline which had 
 been ground into him during the last two years 
 brought him back to the door. " No shirking," he 
 said to himself. " Get it over. It 's got to be 
 done," and he went in. 
 
 Sitting on one side of the big flat-topped desk, 
 with her feet dangling above the floor, and her 
 young profile silhouetted against a square of blue 
 sky made by the open window, she was grasping the 
 telephone in both hands and holding her daily con- 
 versation with the grocer. Amazing to think that 
 only the other day she was sliding after him down 
 the banisters with bobbed hair and bloomers. 
 
 " How much do you say they are this morning? 
 Two cents more than yesterday? Then don't put 
 them on the list, Mr. Budel. We shall have to live 
 on our own potatoes if you go on like this." She 
 threw a glance of welcome at Tom, whom she had 
 been longing to see alone, and hurried to an end. 
 " Must you go on sending me that mussy looking 
 sugar ? . . . Very well then, do. But you or some- 
 one will be responsible for driving the servants 
 away, I tell you that. Oh, and now that my 
 brother 's back yes, last night I must have 
 some marmalade. . . ." 
 
 " Great work," said Tom. On his father's side 
 of the desk there was that snapshot of himself taken 
 in a funk hole by Pot Stevens, the last he ever 
 took. Good old Dad. 
 
 " And do you still like jam, Tom ? "
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 113 
 
 He ran his hand circularly over his diaphragm. 
 
 " Yes, strawberry, Mr. Budel. ..." 
 
 " And how about some of those almonds and 
 raisins ? " 
 
 She made it so. It seemed like the old holidays 
 again. " And don't forget the ginger ale." 
 
 " Imported," said Tom. 
 
 She shook her head, murmured " H. C. L.," 
 added the word " domestic," closed with a cheery 
 " Good morning," and hung up. " Now I 'm 
 through," she said and slid off the desk. He had on 
 one of the shirts that she had mended. If it had 
 been too tight under the arms then what would it 
 be now ? He looked inches broader. She was glad 
 that he had n't had his hair cut by one of those bar- 
 bers who ought to be allowed to shear nothing but 
 sheep. How awful those poor boys looked with 
 what appeared to be a toupee balanced on the tiptop 
 of a head otherwise bald. Could anybody call him- 
 self a barber because he owned a few pairs of clip- 
 pers and reeked of onions ? She sensed that he had 
 come to say something and longed for him to say 
 it. 
 
 And so there was an uncomfortable pause. 
 
 " Some room," said Tom, striding about. He 
 might have been talking to 'a junior officer. 
 
 " Yes. I love it." 
 
 " You camp here now, I see." 
 
 " I do mother's job now that she can't. I keep 
 all the books here and the wages and all that. And 
 when I telephone I 'm not overheard. The daily
 
 114 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 wrangle with the grocer and butcher, trying to keep 
 the bills down." She laughed and spoke lightly 
 in order to camouflage the slight unsteadiness in 
 her voice. To have him back, to see him doing 
 precisely what she had dreamed that he would do, 
 and look exactly as she had prayed that he might 
 look! . . . Suppose she went over with a rush and 
 put her face against his chest ? Would that help ? 
 
 He met her eyes and drew up short. 
 
 But she felt self-consciousness rise like a fog be- 
 tween them, and sat down. 
 
 "How damned silly!" thought Tom. "If she 
 were a girl I 'd met a week ago and proposed to 
 before I could clap a hand over my mouth I 'd be 
 talking poetry to her by this time in a chair only 
 large enough for one." He loaded and lighted his 
 pipe, perched himself on the edge of the desk and 
 sent out a cloud of protective smoke like a Zeppelin 
 in trouble. 
 
 " Father looks great," he said. 
 
 " He is," said Martha. 
 
 " I 'd give a million if someone could put Mother 
 right." 
 
 " So would I." 
 
 " How about our painting the old town a bit next 
 week and seeing the best of the shows ? " 
 
 "Oh, Tom, I'd love to!" 
 
 " Pick 'em out and let me have a list and I '11 
 fix it." " Bad work," he added inwardly. 
 
 " But have n't you anyone else you 'd rather 
 take?"
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 115 
 
 Here was a chance ! He was going to say " I 'd 
 rather take you, old girl, than any other feller's 
 sister within a thousand miles," but what he did say 
 was, " No, not just now," and metaphorically of- 
 fered himself for court-martial. 
 
 But Martha, who knew brothers backwards and 
 Tom like a book, had got by this all that she needed 
 from him. Whatever he had managed to say about 
 his shirts and however bookishly he had said it, it 
 could n't have conveyed half so eloquently the things 
 he had come to tell her. In the meantime he was 
 itching to use his hands on something, that she 
 knew. And she was keeping him, she could see. 
 So she got up, energetically threw several trades- 
 men's books into a drawer and slammed it hard. 
 
 Tom jumped at the hint. " You 're busy," he 
 said. " I '11 push off." 
 
 Her fountain pen had rolled off the desk. They 
 bent down together to pick it up. Their heads 
 met with a bang. She snatched a quick kiss and 
 they laughed. 
 
 It was all over. There was nothing more re- 
 quired. He knew that she knew and away went 
 self-consciousness. 
 
 " I 'm going to function on my old engine," he 
 said. 
 
 " All right. I '11 come and have a look at you 
 when I 've got things going." 
 
 " Fine." 
 
 And then Biddy, obviously Connemara via 
 Brooklyn, came in with a letter.
 
 116 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 " From Mrs. Mortimer," she said. 
 
 And as Martha took it her face flamed like a 
 peony. 
 
 Tom wheeled round. " Oh, you know the Mor- 
 timers, don't you ? " 
 
 " Yes," she said. 
 
 " I '11 introduce you to Bill when he comes home. 
 Some Major 's old Bill, my dear. The finest sol- 
 dier in the Army." 
 
 "Is he ? " Luckily she was near enough to the 
 desk to lean over it and put the blotting pad straight. 
 Her secret was in her eyes. There 'd be a burst 
 of brother stuff if he saw it there. 
 
 " Well, so long, young 'un." 
 
 And she was alone with the letter against her 
 heart. But she kissed her hand to the closed door. 
 Tom had paid her the priceless compliment of in- 
 viting her to the theater and he had said what she 
 most wanted to hear about Bill. 
 
 A wonderful brother, Tom! 
 
 IV 
 
 SHE ran to the window and watched him go out. 
 He swung by with his face alight and his shoulders 
 back. The boy whom she had delighted to fetch 
 and carry for and interrupt, tease and go about with, 
 had grown into a man. She thrilled with pride at 
 his fitness and strength. He gave her a sense of 
 personal satisfaction at having had a share in the 
 war, an intimacy with the Thing, the Menace, which
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 117 
 
 had suddenly died, enabling the world to open its 
 windows and begin to tidy up. 
 
 And then, flooded with the emotional intimations 
 that she had grown into a woman, she opened Mrs. 
 Mortimer's letter. It was beautiful writing, clear 
 and large and flowing, suggestive of the type of 
 woman who can wear a tiara without appearing to 
 know it and manage a train without making men 
 dance on hot bricks at her heels. " My dear," it 
 ran, " I want you to come to the top of the hill, 
 where the Seven Sisters are, at three o'clock this 
 afternoon, exactly three o'clock. My love. L. M." 
 That was all. There was nothing about the man 
 who had haunted her dreams and filled her days 
 with strange and wonderful thoughts that came to 
 her like bars of music blown upon a breeze. There 
 was no hint in these few equable lines that she was 
 to see and speak to the man about whom she had 
 woven the glamour of first love and whom she had 
 protected with the armor of a girl's prayers. Mrs. 
 Mortimer had sent many such notes before during 
 the two long years which were over. But this one 
 had been written in such excitement and eagerness 
 that it sent a quiver of expectation all through 
 Martha as she read it. She got from it something 
 that told her that she was to see Bill, not any longer 
 as the Wainw right Kid, the big-eyed, inarticulate 
 girl to be treated as a flapper, but as a grown person 
 who had earned the right to be taken seriously, a 
 young Eve on the verge of womanhood, a com- 
 petitor in life.
 
 118 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 The note had been written by Mrs. Mortimer 
 with Bill's statement of his feelings still ringing in 
 her ears. It was the first step in her campaign to 
 bring Martha forward, to plan a meeting that should 
 be accidental and romantic, up on the hill above the 
 rolling country, under the arms of the seven trees 
 that were a landmark for miles around. Her plan 
 was to be taken by Bill up to this spot from which 
 the old house and all its property could best be seen 
 and leave him with a prepared excuse to be found 
 by the girl whose picture he had painted as the Miss 
 Respectable of his responsible years. Better that 
 they should meet like that, she thought, applying all 
 her feminine cunning to the fulfillment of her last 
 ambition, alone and apparently by chance, than for- 
 mally on the veranda with a tea table between them 
 and the Commodore near by with a tongue that could 
 not be guaranteed ogling and roguish and full of 
 innuendoes. Let Bill fall into the belief that he was 
 choosing for himself and not being coerced into a 
 cut and dried scheme. Self-consciousness would 
 thereby be lessened in his plan of attack, if it came 
 to that, and Mrs. Mortimer was gambling that it 
 would, knowing Martha and having listened to Bill. 
 There was about all this a predestination that made 
 a marriage inevitable, but Bill, simple for all his 
 sophistication, must not get any inkling of the fact 
 that he was being " worked." It might make him 
 refuse, like a horse ridden at a hurdle. There was 
 no time to be wasted in mistakes. Mrs. Mortimer 
 thanked her stars that no clever manipulation was
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 119 
 
 needed so far as Martha was concerned. The child 
 had unconsciously confessed, the rest was merely, 
 under the circumstances, a matter of propinquity. 
 Thank God it was springtime, when from every 
 bird and bush the urge to love and mate was diffused 
 into the air. Everything was on the side of those 
 two old schemers whose one remaining effort was 
 to secure the future of the family. The possible 
 danger of the Blue Room was minimized by 
 Martha's love. 
 
 " Walk into my parlor," said the spider to the 
 fly 
 
 Going to her side of the desk, with all its evi- 
 dences of domestic management, Martha wrote her 
 acceptance to the invitation. " Dearest Mrs. Morti- 
 mer, expect me at three o'clock, exactly three 
 o'clock to the second. Thank you. What a lovely 
 day!" 
 
 And having sent it out to Carlo Cazazza, cousin 
 of one of the Wops whose mowing machine clacked 
 beneath her window, Martha stood for a moment in 
 the middle of her father's den with life at full flood 
 in her veins, ready and eager to meet the exquisite 
 and significant experiences, strange and wonderful 
 and intimate, which had arranged themselves like 
 phantoms all through the vague years of her girl- 
 hood. Her thoughts danced wildly in front of her 
 like fairies through a wood of silver birches. They 
 led the way to the man whose photograph had been 
 slipped beneath her pillow every single night for two 
 tormenting years, the man she had waved to as
 
 120 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 he had gone away like a knight and waved to as he 
 came back with the laurels of victory round his 
 head. They beckoned her to follow "them out of 
 dreams into reality, singing as they went . . . 
 
 But she dared not move. With a thumping heart 
 she stood very still and fearful and tremulous. He 
 might not like her. He might think that she was 
 just a homely little person, looking wide-eyed at the 
 world as a newly fledged bird does. The fact that 
 she was one of the quiet ones who did domestic 
 things might bore him. He might prefer, especially 
 now, fresh from active service, the nippy little de- 
 butante, with a well-planned disclosure of bosom 
 and calves, who talked like the front page of a news- 
 paper, who darted like a fish, or, when jazz was ab- 
 sent, sat about like an ancient sphinx in lepidopter- 
 ous attitudes. If she had had a close friend to 
 whom she could have poured out all her doubts and 
 fears she would have added something else. She 
 would have said that if Bill didn't like her she 
 would still keep his photograph under her pillow and 
 go to the grave a spinster. Coming from a girl of 
 not quite nineteen whose chance to see and mix with 
 men had been small owing to the responsibilities 
 thrown upon her by a constantly ill mother and the 
 fact that she lived beyond the line of the ordinary 
 commuter, this statement would probably have been 
 received with the usual grain of salt. The first love 
 of most girls is a mere preliminary canter round the 
 ring. They force themselves to fall in love as they 
 force themselves upon the inadequate dancing space
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 121 
 
 at the fashionable hotel, there to be jostled and 
 wounded by a jam of wriggling lunatics. It is the 
 desire to be smart, the force of example, the ina- 
 bility to refrain from imitation. They can be in 
 love with several men at the same time. It is all a 
 part of the inevitable growing pains of youth. But 
 Martha was not in love. She was one of those odd 
 little girls who are constitutionally unable to be 
 merely in love. The Joan of Arc stuff was in her 
 blood, and there was poetry in her soul. She had 
 really and truly and greatly given all her heart to 
 this man. He was her hero, the epitome of her , 
 dreams and desires. Already he had had three 
 years of her freshest life. He had been taken into 
 the inner chapel of her spirit. She had given him 
 the concentrated essence of devotion that had in it 
 the element of motherhood that belongs to everlast- 
 ing love, and without which marriage has a pretty 
 poor chance of working right. She was, if you 
 like, old-fashioned. She had been born out of her 
 time. And beyond everything she had not under- 
 gone, owing to family circumstances, the shallow- 
 ing process of a modern girl's school. What she 
 was she had remained, unthumbed, unsystemized, 
 unsophisticated, Martha herself. More herself 
 for the constant association with a father who took 
 life seriously though with eager joy and a mother 
 whose duties she had had to take upon her shoulders. 
 Miss Respectable according to all Bill's innate ideas.
 
 122 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 BIDDY flung open the door of the den. 
 
 " Humphrey's killin' Tony," she screamed. 
 " He 's killin' him, I tell yer," and rushed out again, 
 skidding on the rugs in the hall, upsetting a large 
 pale vase that was relegated to sticks and umbrellas 
 and sending the sleek cat upstairs with her tail in 
 the air and every hair on end. 
 
 Accustomed to the daily dramatization of small 
 events which is ingrained in the childlike nature of 
 the Irish, Martha followed the girl calmly into the 
 garden. If Humphrey O'Brien was playfully chas- 
 ing Tony Caruso with a wood chopper, and being 
 the bigger man he frequently indulged in this hobby 
 in his many hours of leisure, that was probably 
 all there was to worry about. 
 
 But when Martha joined the still screaming maid 
 on the terrace above the sloping rock-garden what 
 she saw was this. The bandy-legged Tony, dodg- 
 ing and jumping like a squirrel, was frantically es- 
 caping from the stones hurled at him by the Irish- 
 man who, with a face scarlet with rage, was run- 
 ning him hard. Frightened out of his wits, the 
 little Italian swung behind bushes, scampered up the 
 incline of lawn, leaped from the ground with a hand 
 clapped upon a wounded spot, turned to the slope 
 that ran down to a wide potato patch, caught his 
 foot in a tussock of grass and went rolling all the 
 way down to the bottom. Here, hopeless and in a 
 dire funk, he sent out shrill staccato sounds of oper-
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 123 
 
 atic terror, while the chauffeur, flatfooted and 
 flabby from little exercise and the habit of eating 
 everything in sight, bore turgidly down upon him. 
 And as he landed his first kick in the ribs of his vic- 
 tim, Biddy's scream was taken up from the apple 
 orchard by the cook, from the scullery window by 
 the kitchen maid, and from behind the woodpile by 
 Leonardo Benvenuto, whose loyalty to his friend 
 did not urge him with any success to desert his 
 policy of valorous discretion. 
 
 It was a most enjoyable break in the monotony 
 of the day's routine for all, except Tony. 
 
 And then Martha did things. With the sure- 
 footedness of a mountain goat she leaped from 
 stone to stone of the rock-garden, made small work 
 of lawn and slope, and finally flung herself full tilt 
 against the bulky chauffeur, whose right foot was 
 raised to kick. Down he went like a log and there she 
 stood like a young Diana, the blubbering Wop on his 
 back on one side, the blaspheming Irishman full- 
 sprawl on the other. 
 
 Startled out of his oily concentration by all these 
 female screams Tom had darted out of the garage 
 in time to see this gallant work, and in a flick of an 
 eyebrow had joined the group, with smudges all 
 over his grinning face. " Pretty good stuff," he 
 said. 
 
 " All right, Tom," said Martha. " Leave this to 
 me. I 'm used to it. ... Now then, get up, you 
 two. A nice sight you make, I must say. I don't 
 want any explanations. I can guess what hap-
 
 124 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 pened. You called Tony a dirty little Wop and he 
 said that most Wops had to be dirty through fighting 
 the Germans while the Irish looked on. And you 
 had to prove what a fine fighting man you are by 
 going after somebody half your size. If this hap- 
 pens again, Humphrey, you go, quick. Is that 
 understood? And as for you, Tony, cut more 
 grass and do less talking and you won't have so 
 many dramas to act to your wife. That 's all I 
 have to say, this time." 
 
 She treated them like children, and they took it, 
 though differently. The Wop rubbed his hairy arm 
 over his face and brought forth a sheepish smile. 
 He thanked his patron saint that Missa Martha had 
 come to his rescue. By the grace of God he could 
 go on cutting the grass, which meant a roof over 
 his wife and food for his ever-increasing brood. 
 He had not dared to say as much to thata dog Irish- 
 man as the younga lady. He could laugh. So he 
 slanted his shoulder and murmured things and with 
 a twinkle in his brown eyes went off, plucking high 
 weeds on his way back. O'Brien got up slowly, 
 with his lower jaw stuck out, humiliated to the very 
 quick to have been found at full length by the son 
 of the house to whom he had already been telling 
 fairy tales about his great courage. "If I 'd a' bin 
 over there I 'd 'a shown 'em somethin', sure." The 
 usual stuff. He wagged his head from side to side 
 and spat, after the most appalling preliminaries, to 
 show that he was as good as annybuddy ; and started 
 to whistle while he dusted the dry earth from his
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 125 
 
 breeches. It was all very clever, according to his 
 bog-headed way of thinking, and by the time that 
 he had lurched halfway up the hill towards the 
 house he was accepting as a fact the unholy lie 
 that he meant to spread about after he had done, 
 Irish to the backbone. 
 
 Tom and Martha made their way back arm in 
 arm. 
 
 " A big order, running a house these days, 
 young 'un." 
 
 She laughed. " I should think so. Fine train- 
 ing as a supervisor of a lunatic asylum. Honestly, 
 if things get much worse we shall have to be our 
 own servants and rely on community kitchens. 
 Wages go up as loyalty and intelligence go down, 
 and why does a man like O'Brien have to behave 
 himself when all he has to do is to walk into the next 
 village and get another job with higher wages? 
 And do you think he ever condescends to work on 
 the engine if anything 's wrong with it? Not he. 
 Away goes the car to the repair shop and up comes 
 a nice big bill. He only washes the car and cleans 
 the windows on Saturdays so that it looks smart 
 for church for himself and the maids." She pulled 
 up short in what was about to develop into a long 
 and detailed account of the whole servant problem 
 and laughed again. " I talk like an old married 
 woman, don't I ? And now I 'd better go up and 
 put mother out of suspense. She 's probably ex- 
 pecting a gruesome story of murder after all that 
 screaming."
 
 126 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 And away she ran with a backward wave, the 
 note from Mrs. Mortimer burning a hole in her 
 pocket. 
 
 VI 
 
 MRS. WAINWRIGHT'S mood when Martha made 
 her report was that of every other woman of her 
 type under similar circumstances. A born house- 
 wife who had been in complete control until her 
 bronchial tubes had gone back upon her, she bit- 
 terly resented the fracas that had occurred in the 
 garden. Those screams damaged the dignity of her 
 home and, if there had been any near neighbors, 
 would prove to them a certain inefficiency for which 
 she was not responsible. Luckily and naturally, 
 however, there was mixed with this feeling one of 
 extreme self-satisfaction that no such outbreak 
 could ever have occurred had she been at the wheel. 
 She was able, therefore, to listen to Martha's swift 
 account with sufficient tolerance to enable her to 
 keep a curb upon her tongue. Martha was a good 
 girl. She was doing her best. She was inexperi- 
 enced, of course. The gift of controlling such ut- 
 terly different people as the Irish and the Italians 
 was not given to everyone. She was carrying on 
 with an amount of pluck and unselfishness that was 
 remarkable in one so young and so full of life. To 
 criticize her efforts unfavorably would be unkind 
 and ungrateful. Mrs. Thompson's Enid, it must be 
 remembered, played bridge all day and danced all 
 night. And Mrs. Warner's Vera commuted to
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 127 
 
 New York every morning to lunch at the Ritz and 
 fox-trot at the Plaza. And both would have fainted 
 at the mere idea of giving an order to the grocer. 
 These facts must be borne in mind. Martha was 
 indeed an exceptional girl, a chip of the old 
 block. ... So Mrs. Wainwright made allowances. 
 She simply clicked her tongue and shook her head 
 and murmured something about " these dreadful 
 people." And the incident passed, with no small 
 credit to the lady who fretted terribly at being 
 temporarily deposed. 
 
 All the same the little interview between the 
 mother and the daughter was not allowed to end 
 as well as it began. The trouble was the old one of 
 Mrs. Mortimer and her friendship. It cropped up 
 again as it had often cropped up before during the 
 last three years. 
 
 " My dear," said Mrs. Wainwright, putting aside 
 a tin thing with a tube in it out of which she had 
 been absorbing benzoin, its pungent smell rilled 
 the very precise room, "I think you had better 
 mark the new towels this afternoon. Tom will 
 need them, and it 's a nice day for marking towels." 
 
 Martha repressed her laugh and also her urgent 
 desire to ask what the weather had to do with that 
 all-important job. " All right, Mother," she said. 
 
 " Bring them in here about three o'clock and I '11 
 show you how I like them done." 
 
 " Three o'clock, exactly three o'clock," 
 with the hope of meeting him. 
 
 " Won't six o'clock do as well, Mother ? "
 
 128 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 " No, dear. I shall be fresh from a nap then and 
 I can give my mind to it. Father will be here at 
 six o'clock to tell me all about the game with Tom. 
 It must be three o'clock." 
 
 " The glass is set fair, Mother. It '11 be just as 
 good for towels at three o'clock to-morrow." 
 
 Mrs. Wainwright looked up sharply. She was 
 unaffected by the slight touch of humor. Her an- 
 cestors had been of the Dr. Johnson variety of Eng- 
 lish and she had inherited a certain contempt for 
 what she called mere humorous persons, as he did. 
 She was quick to suspect that the white-haired lady 
 who had no right to be so beautiful or so urbane 
 after the sort of life that she had led, was at the 
 back of this little argument. That absurd old man, 
 too, with his wild record. They were both quite 
 unfit for the society of a nice girl. Tom had men- 
 tioned Major Mortimer. Everyone had heard the 
 gossip about him and his affairs with women. . . . 
 At the same time something had been coming over 
 Martha, a sudden closing-up, a quick flash of un- 
 expected independence, which warned her that 
 she was on ground marked " No Trespassers," a 
 startling and disconcerting notice for a mother to 
 come up against. 
 
 "I would much prefer to-day, dear," she said, 
 going carefully. "And surely you haven't made 
 any engagements to take you away from home on 
 the first day of Tom's return." 
 
 " Hardly away from home, Mother. Only across 
 the brook."
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 129 
 
 Then it was Mrs. Mortimer once more, in spite 
 of all that had been said. What could Martha, who 
 was so sensible and forthright, see in this always 
 half smiling woman about whom seemed to cling 
 the echo of applause as it did about a retired actress 
 of many dead triumphs? What queer influence 
 was being exerted on her girl to draw her so fre- 
 quently into that atmosphere of banished royalty? 
 To the perfectly direct and simple Mrs. Wainwright 
 to whom life was as cut and dried a thing as a 
 draught board, these Mortimers, who had moved 
 with such an adventurous disregard for the conven- 
 tional rules from square to square, seemed to be 
 rather dangerous people, flippant, grotesque, freak- 
 ish and neurotic, almost foreign. It was a con- 
 stant source of amazement and anxiety to her that 
 Martha with her traditions and example could bring 
 herself to like them. It seemed to prove the exist- 
 ence of a kink somewhere. There was in it, in- 
 deed, something as unexplainable to her as there 
 would have been to a New England Baptist Minis- 
 ter whose impeccable wife showed an irresistible 
 desire to fox-trot with a professional dancer from a 
 Broadway cabaret, a lack of fastidiousness, a dis- 
 regard of hygiene almost, that was very strange. 
 " We are simple people," she said to herself, over 
 and over again, " who work hard and are honest 
 and have no shams. We fear God and keep our 
 powder dry. Martha is essentially one of us, think- 
 ing the same thoughts, striving to the same ends, 
 eating the same food, wearing the same clothes,
 
 130 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 made on the same model. There must be some un- 
 natural and unhealthy magnet that is drawing her 
 into constant association with that woman who is as 
 much out of place in the everyday life of America 
 as a nude bronze in a collection of Massachusetts 
 china." . . . Poor little good lady! If she had 
 been able to imagine that the key to her puzzle was 
 Love the revolutionist, she would have needed the 
 immediate services of Church as well as Science ! 
 
 But, the time had gone when she could take 
 a stand and say, " Martha, I will not have this and 
 I will not have that," and that new time had arrived, 
 so bewildering to a mother, which had brought with 
 it the inevitable notice board of " Private Road, 
 no trespassers." 
 
 She sat confused and nonplussed. The child 
 was fearless and frank. She offered no deceit. 
 She intended to go across the brook, and the 
 towels would not be marked at three o'clock, nice 
 as the day was for that important piece of domestic- 
 ity. 
 
 " Very well, dear," she said. " Have your own 
 way. All I trust is that you will not live to regret 
 it." 
 
 Martha knew very well that this enigmatical re- 
 mark, hard to bear, referred to her friendship with 
 the white-haired lady and not to her postponement 
 of towel marking. If her mother had been on her 
 feet, well and strong, she would have let herself go 
 and taken up the cudgels on behalf of the woman 
 who was so wonderful as the mother of Bill and
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 131 
 
 whom she admired and esteemed as a sweet and 
 rather pathetic figure, united to her by their mutual 
 love for the returned soldier. But invalidism 
 raised a protective trench round her mother and she 
 held her peace. She simply told herself that her 
 mother was prejudiced and, by the taking up of a 
 book, took her dismissal without anger although 
 with the natural impatience of youth. She liked 
 the Mortimers and found them charming and un- 
 expected. She was fascinated by their warm old 
 house which reeked with history. She was ap- 
 pealed to by their wanting to know her and by 
 their graciousness and manners and, above all, she 
 went to them for the sense of comfort and con- 
 solation that she needed as one who loved without 
 return. 
 
 " All mothers are like this, I suppose," she 
 thought, and went on to the next job, with the song 
 of fairies in her heart. 
 
 VII 
 
 " COME on, Tom." 
 
 " Coming, Dad." 
 
 The boy swarmed upstairs for a pipe and to stick 
 his head into his mother's room for a moment. It 
 was a beastly shame that she was caged in at such 
 a time. 
 
 So Jonathan Wainwright went out to wait in the 
 garden. His new suit of golf clothes made him 
 feel a trifle self-conscious. He had never taken the 
 trouble to dress himself up. It was rather nice
 
 132 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 though. And after all Brown, Jones, and Robinson 
 got away with it. ... 
 
 The car was at the door with Humphrey in 
 charge full of cutlets and potatoes, his face cleaner 
 than usual and the same old grin at the corners of 
 his mouth. He was a different man when the men 
 of the house were about. But the belt of bushes to 
 the left of the house made a good screen, and behind 
 this the man of fifty-two, most of whose good 
 muscle had been devoted to business, slipped out of 
 view and made thirty-six attempts to touch his toes, 
 tummy a bit in the way. Curse fifty-two. 
 
 The strange trickle of excitement that he had 
 taken with him to town was strong enough now to 
 send sparks from the tips of his fingers. ... A dozen 
 times during his morning's work, pushing everyone 
 hard and putting an amount of pace into his staff 
 that left them a little breathless, the trickle had made 
 him leap to his feet, forget what he was dictating, 
 grip an imaginary driver, take a firm and proper 
 stance in the middle of his room and beat a meta- 
 phorical ball clean through the office window to 
 bounce from one Gargantuan building to another 
 and fall away down into the narrow slit that called 
 itself a street. ... He had been early for the home- 
 ward train, but this thing in his veins, playing up 
 and down his spine, had sent him down the steps to 
 the Lower Level of the swarming Grand Central 
 like a boy let out of school. He was stealing an 
 afternoon for the first time in memory. It was 
 epoch-making. . . . Time after time on the journey
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 133 
 
 through the parterres of the City the words of his 
 paper had slid off the sheet in a heap and he had 
 been surcharged with a passionate urge to sway 
 along to the engine room and give the driver a 
 thumping bribe to send the train into the air. It 
 was a gorgeous day with a warm sun and a sky as 
 clear as crystal. Was he going to be able to keep 
 his end up against that boy of his who was so fit and 
 confident and well oiled and prove that although he 
 was now a man of fifty-two, office-stiff and unexer- 
 cised, he had enough kick left to drive as far and 
 take the hills without panting? It was absurd. A 
 man could n't have worked like a traction engine for 
 thirty-five years and do those things. He must 
 take two strokes and follow round, halving a few 
 holes at the best. . . . Amazing to think that this 
 was the lad who, apparently a few years ago, had 
 looked up to him with round admiring eyes as one 
 unbelievably out of reach, the lad he had carried 
 on his back, lugged along on a sled and left after 
 many holidays on the steps of the prep school, a 
 sturdy open-faced boy putting up a grim fight to 
 keep a stiff upper lip. How many yesterdays had 
 slipped away since he had heard the incoherent pat- 
 ter that used to be called prayers and issued the ul- 
 timatum in his den to the little scamp with the dirty 
 face and a hole in the seat of his pants ? . . . Hey, 
 Hey, Hey, twenty-five and fifty-two, and 
 here was this Tom of his, over whom he and his 
 wife had had many fits because of such crises as 
 whooping cough and measles and broken ribs, fresh
 
 134 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 from rubbing shoulders with death and shell shock 
 and trench fever, to all of which they had sent him 
 forth with pride. . . . Amazing, and very good. 
 
 It was behind the bushes that Martha found old 
 man Wainwright pretending to be deep in the study 
 of rose bugs. She straightened his slightly cock- 
 eyed tie and gave him a kiss. " Show him the way 
 round, Dad," she said. 
 
 " Impossible, honey, unless he 's off his game." 
 
 " Well, he will be. He has n't seen a club for 
 ages." 
 
 " There 's something in that ! . . . But I 've only 
 had Sundays all my life. I 'm a boob at the game. 
 Walk round with us, Pansy face? " 
 
 " I 'd have loved to, Dad, but I have to go and see 
 Mrs. Mortimer." 
 
 " Have to ? Is it an order ? " 
 
 Mother had been talking. " No, but I like her, 
 and . . . ." She did n't dare to trust herself. 
 
 The parental arm went round the young shoul- 
 ders. " Well, go easy, honey. It would be imper- 
 tinent to interfere, you, as trustable and full of 
 sense as your mother, and that 's going some. 
 The only thing is, is n't this good lady a bit out of 
 our scope? She won't unsettle my little girl, will 
 she, with her stories of society triumphs, and all 
 that ? That 's the only thing that worries me a 
 little. You can't go on the bat and do what you 're 
 doing at the same time, you know. I wish you 
 could, sometimes, when I see some of those elderly 
 kids get on the train, dressed up to the eyes, and
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 135 
 
 then I look at them again and draw comparisons and 
 I don't know what I wish." 
 
 Martha put her hands on his chest and looked him 
 full in the eyes. " Have you ever heard me 
 grumble ? " 
 
 " No, honey." 
 
 " Do you ever think you will ? " 
 
 " No, honey." 
 
 " Then what 's the idea, Dad ? When I 'm sick 
 of trying to be as much like you and Mother as I 
 can that '11 be the time for me to cut loose and paint 
 my face. And before I do I '11 give you a month's 
 notice so that you can look out for somebody else 
 to do my job. Is that fair?" She held out her 
 hand. 
 
 And he caught it and yanked her into his arms 
 and kissed her. He was a lucky man in his chil- 
 dren. He had n't worked to the almost total ex- 
 tinction of muscle and all that keeps it up for noth- 
 ing. And he said so, stumblingly and rather 
 shyly, the slight, frank, flowerlike thing in his 
 arms, warmly, the fourth wall of both being wide 
 open for once. " And don't think," he wound up, 
 " that because Tom 's in the limelight he 's the 
 only hero in the house. He is n't, my dear, and 
 don't I know it! There ought to be a string of 
 ribbons on your chest and there are when I look 
 at you." 
 
 And a wonderful look gleamed in the girl's eyes 
 and a little tremble ran over her lips. But she 
 laughed as usual as she said, to bring things back to
 
 136 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 normal, " We 're a nice little family, we are, are n't 
 we, Dad?" 
 
 And out came Tom. 
 
 VIII 
 
 MARTHA waved after the car. 
 
 The young soldier and the man with white hair 
 and many lines looked like brothers that afternoon. 
 Good fighters, both. 
 
 She went upstairs. Tom's whisper on his way to 
 the car made her as proud of him as of anything 
 that he had done, and gave her an almost blinding 
 insight into his newly developed imaginative side. 
 " I 'm going to be off my game. Dad 's got to win 
 this time. He needs the tonic." 
 
 This, the little emotional talk with her father and 
 her own pulsing excitement at the prospect of see- 
 ing and speaking to Bill Mortimer made the inti- 
 macy and quietude of her own room desirable and 
 necessary. It was good, as it had always been 
 good, to shut life out sometimes and stand hedged-in 
 privately in the small oasis where she could be and 
 look and think her very own self among her very 
 own things. Here she could let herself down, loosen 
 the strings that had always to be at concert pitch and 
 be precisely as her mood made her feel. At that mo- 
 ment her mood was composed of several emotions, 
 joy at the happiness of having Tom back, su- 
 preme pride in her father's recognition of her efforts 
 and a strange sense of fear at what the meeting on 
 the hill might lead to. It was the last of these that
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 137 
 
 hurried her to her glass and caused her to examine 
 herself with a new sort of criticism. If she were at 
 last to be put to the test to which all her dreams had 
 led, and she wanted this unendurably, could she meet 
 it with any hope? . . . 
 
 Deep down under all her capability and steadi- 
 ness there was the vague urgency for passion and 
 romance, the love-hunger of a girl trembling 
 on the edge of womanhood, something that sent the 
 blood flying to her cheeks but left her unashamed. 
 She was loved by father and mother and Tom. She 
 had the supreme assurance of being trusted and re- 
 lied upon. She could imagine no home that of- 
 fered her greater security, a dearer anchorage. 
 But her secret estimate of life was incomplete with- 
 out just that one human being who needed the touch 
 of her, to whom she was the one dominating fact, 
 who could be drawn by her magnet from the center 
 of a crowd, and to whom she could answer with the 
 whole strength and steadfastness of a soul utterly 
 delivered up. And this meant that while she stood 
 in the heart of a home she was homeless because 
 only with Bill could she win the completion that 
 made home of wherever he was. Untrifled with 
 and unfrittered, the vague urgency was a stronger 
 one for being concentrated. Bill or no one was her 
 watchword, and it rang through her body, like the 
 reverberation of a bell. . . . 
 
 She saw a slight young figure, not tall and not 
 short; held well, with straight back and shoulders 
 set square; an oval face with large wide-apart eyes
 
 138 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 like those of a deer and with the same straight soft 
 look; a nose that showed character and sensitive- 
 ness; a large full-lipped mouth with a tendency to 
 laughter; fair hair in which there were touches of 
 bronze. Nothing arresting and beautiful as she 
 would have liked; a good deal, in fact, like that of 
 hundreds of other girls of her class and breeding, 
 health and cheeriness and an unpreventable normal- 
 ity all about her, unmistakably of the country. 
 Nothing either romantic or picturesque, but tidy 
 and neat and even ordinary. . . . But what she 
 failed to see was the spring-look of girlhood, the 
 white fire of youth, the glory that makes all young 
 things the masters of life, the freshness that be- 
 longs to the morning. . . . 
 
 So she turned away dissatisfied and humble. 
 She would never do. " A smudge of a thing," she 
 told herself, " not a bit like the sort of girl that he 
 could love." But with quick deft fingers she started 
 to re-do her hair and presently, everything going 
 wrong, to change her frock, instinctively entering 
 into the competition of Eve, hope seeing a star and 
 listening love hearing the rustling of a wing. Not 
 daring to give herself a final look of scrutiny for 
 fear that she might turn coward and stay away, she 
 stood for a moment with the photograph pressed to 
 her lips passionately, all-desiring, and fled. 
 
 Past mother's room on tiptoe, her nap was so 
 important; down the stairs with a complete familiar- 
 ity with those that creaked, across the hall that was 
 a& supremely conservative as the rest of the house,
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 139 
 
 and out into the sun, warm and electrical. The 
 scent of spring met her and the sweet smell of new- 
 cut grass. The petals of apple blossoms volplaned 
 in the light breeze. Birds piped and bees went 
 hunting with the indefatigable optimism that be- 
 longs to them, and to collectors of old furniture. 
 With a trained eye on the borders which those two 
 slipshod Wops were never loath to miss, down she 
 went to the road, and over this expensive item to the 
 wood whose red carpet was alive with sprouting 
 green. And then out into the sparkling open to the 
 bridge across the brook which divided her father's 
 property from the old Mortimer place, lingering 
 a little and depressed. 
 
 At three o'clock, exactly three o'clock, she climbed 
 the hill on which the Seven Sisters stood grouped 
 affectionately and conscious of being seen the year 
 round, bare or leaf-laden, from far and near. 
 
 Mrs. Mortimer was unpunctual. She had ex- 
 pected to find the white-haired lady standing, a 
 gracious figure, cut clear against the sky. But it 
 would be helpful to be alone for a little, to draw in 
 the air. She went slowly towards the bench be- 
 neath the trees, the old meeting place. A crowd of 
 memories rose to meet her. How often they had 
 sat there, hand in hand, those two, the woman whose 
 life was all behind her and the girl who had not 
 yet broken through the hoop, and in long silences 
 listened figuratively to the roar of guns which put 
 the lives of their two men in constant jeopardy. 
 How often they had whispered of what they would
 
 140 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 do and give up if only God saw fit to let these two 
 men off and send them back safe and well. How 
 often their united prayers had gone up from that 
 little hill like a thin trickle of smoke to the gate of 
 Heaven. . . . 
 
 The virile undergrowth had covered the path that 
 her feet had made and she went forward with hardly 
 a sound. But a twig snapped, and someone, lying 
 full stretch with his hands under his head, sat up 
 quickly and watched her come, Miss Respectable. 
 
 It was Bill. 
 
 And down below, the white-haired lady, having 
 played her first card in the last and biggest of her 
 schemes, returned to her garden, smiling. 
 
 IX 
 
 " THE flower of a girl, with the dew on her and 
 a morning hymn in her eyes, all to myself, to 
 treat right and play the good old game by, and a 
 young Bill and a tiny Lylyth, the country year in and 
 year out, and home." . . . Those were the words 
 that he had used to Teddy Jedburgh in his rooms 
 the night of his return when he had confessed to 
 the prodigal son's longing to indulge in an orgy of 
 sentimental reconstruction. . . . And here stood 
 the Wainwright Kid, the memory of whose wel- 
 coming smile still rang like a little bell in his 
 soul. 
 
 Bill scrambled to his feet and put up his hand 
 to take off the hat that was lying in the grass. 
 
 " You came to meet Mother, but she had to go
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 141 
 
 back to the house for something. How do you do ? 
 I 'm awfully glad to see you. Will you wait until 
 she comes up again? Do sit down somewhere. 
 On this bit of rock. It's dry. . . ." What on 
 earth was he saying? If this had been Susie Hatch 
 with her free and easy way, or Jeanne Dacoral with 
 her gamin stuff and her comic nose that was as ar- 
 tificially white as a marshmallow, or any of the 
 other little things of the stage and semi-society who 
 had made his rooms their happy hunting ground, 
 there would not have been any of this ludicrous con- 
 straint about him. He knew their language and 
 their way of looking at things, what alone was cal- 
 culated to amuse them, City pigeons, supreme ego- 
 tists all. But this child-woman, with eyes as clean 
 and sparkling as the waters of a trout stream, who 
 stood as erect as a daffodil, disconcertingly digni- 
 fied . . . this young country thing who had 
 emerged from girlhood but was still a girl, who had 
 no tricks, who did n't burst, open-mouthed, into 
 meaningless laughter or a greeting of the latest 
 slang, but who remained, very quiet and friendly, 
 supremely simple, meeting his eyes fully, smil- 
 ing. . . . 
 
 He had told his people that when he met Miss 
 Respectable, if .ever he did, he must translate him- 
 self and even think in different words, and here 
 she stood like another and a baby sister of those 
 seven trees. Good God, it was going to be diffi- 
 cult. ... It is n't to be supposed that never on his 
 way through the good old days had he had any
 
 142 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 dealings with young women of his own class, 
 that he had clung entirely to the stables and the 
 stage. It came easier to him to herd with the nat- 
 urally unnatural little people of these sets than with 
 the unnaturally natural products of wealth and so- 
 ciety. It called for less effort and he had been 
 born lazy. He preferred not to work if he could 
 help it and to be amused rather than to be amusing. 
 He had taken dozens of the Miss Respectables into 
 dinner all over the world and to dances and all that 
 in the usual way, but they were the sophisticated 
 Miss Respectables who would have taken the term 
 as the worst kind of opprobrium and turned an icy 
 shoulder. They were not his own idea of Miss Re- 
 spectable, dug out from under a pile of years from 
 one of early idealisms, epitomizing just such a girl 
 as Martha Wainwright with her tradition and en- 
 vironment and example and responsibility and dig- 
 nity and simplicity monumental and unconscious 
 simplicity, who was as much of the country as 
 apple blossoms and lilies of the valley, and here 
 she stood, come true, a living dream, a thing of 
 thought created into flesh and blood, a new Gala- 
 tea. ... It was a big, startling, uneasy, emotional 
 moment for Bill, who was going to be a good boy 
 now. 
 
 And when she said " Thank you " and sat down 
 on the chosen stone, patterned with the patches of 
 sunlight that came through the branches, he did n't 
 lie at her feet and gaze up at her as was his wont; 
 he sat some little distance away and nursed his
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 143 
 
 knees, hunting about the stretch of valley for some- 
 thing to say, and say right. 
 
 And the thing that Martha hoped above all others 
 was that he could n't hear the thumping of her 
 heart. 
 
 It was a difficult silence to break. 
 
 Martha made a tremendous effort. " Tom has 
 been telling us about you," she said. 
 
 Her brother ! It had n't occurred to him all that 
 
 X 
 
 time. The boy assumed a sudden importance. - 
 " Good chap, Tom Wainwright. Steady and re- 
 liable, born soldier. His cheerfulness made him 
 worth an immense amount to the regiment." He 
 did n't know that he was capable of talking stuff 
 like that. . . . Sweet thing. She had eyes like a 
 deer, and charming little wrists. Go easy, now. 
 
 " He said those things about you." 
 
 " Did he? That was nice of him." 
 
 If only the photograph could have smiled like 
 that ! . . . " He 's playing golf with father this 
 afternoon." It was very handy to have Tom. 
 
 " Hope he '11 play with me. There was n't a 
 man out this morning." Would there ever be that 
 light in her eyes when she talked about him ? What 
 on earth had his mother meant last night when she 
 had said that her mind was a blank ? Was n't 
 Martha a little pal of hers? He had described this 
 very girl in every detail. It was perfectly amazing. 
 
 " He '11 be at home every day," she said. 
 
 " Great. I '11 hike him out." 
 
 After which, Tom having been used to bridge the
 
 144 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 first surprise, things began to go a little more 
 smoothly. Bringing all her pluck to her rescue, and 
 all that she had acquired of self-restraint to the pre- 
 vention of any signs of the excitement that surged 
 over her, Martha managed to talk about the weather 
 and the country and the Seven Sisters and the Mor- 
 timer house. It was well and splendidly done, al- 
 most amazing in one who had had no training in so- 
 cial camouflage, in the art of making bricks with 
 straw. Had Mrs. Mortimer been in the position 
 of eavesdropping she would have conferred upon 
 her protegee the Order of Social Merit. All that 
 Bill had to do was to interject the necessary 
 " Reallys " and " Yes, indeeds " to make things al- 
 most easy. And this he did, finding new points 
 to admire in this charming child who babbled so un- 
 affectedly and who more and more fitted into the 
 empty niche in his mind which the reaction of war 
 had made it so vital to fill. 
 
 It was an epoch-making afternoon for them both, 
 the girl of first love, and the man who believed 
 that he had frittered love away but wanted to re- 
 spect and possess. And finally, the shadows length- 
 ening, it was she who got up to go home, duties call- 
 ing. And she, the steadier of the two, although 
 the beating of her heart seemed to echo among the 
 trees, who held out her hand to say good-by, 
 triumphant and despairing in never once having 
 said a single thing to help her cause, or give an ink- 
 ling to her emotions. But there was something to 
 build on in the grip that he gave her hand and in
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 145 
 
 his stumble of words. " You were the last to wave 
 me away and the first to wave me back. When can 
 I see you again ? " 
 
 And as she went over the bridge that divided the 
 two properties, the fairies were all about her, sing- 
 ing and dancing, hope had seen the first faint glim- 
 mer of a star and listening love had caught the rus- 
 tling of a wing. 
 
 The Commodore and Mrs. Mortimer had risen 
 to dress for dinner, late and a little flustered and 
 filled with speculation, when Bill burst in. 
 
 " I 've met her," he said, " I 've met her." 
 
 "Who, my dear?" As if they didn't know, 
 those two old schemers. 
 
 " Miss Respectable. ... It 's ... absolutely 
 . marvelous."
 
 PART IV 
 
 I 
 
 IT was June. 
 
 In Mrs. Mortimer's old garden, all the roses that 
 she had collected and imported and nursed so ten- 
 derly through the younger months were in their 
 first and freshest blooms. It was a sight to awaken 
 optimism in a scientist. 
 
 Free of all the hard and fast conservatism that 
 clings to most garden-makers the white-haired lady 
 had planted her roses quite irrespective of their so- 
 cial status. An old Dundee Rambler whose for- 
 bears had been happy enough to cluster yearly over 
 a disused gate in an English lane had rushed up and 
 broken out among the branches of a tall stiff Holly 
 tree which stood in the middle of a bed within 
 speaking distance of a group of Mesdames Lam- 
 bard. A Maiden's Blush from Sussex, as crowded 
 with small blossoms as the steps of a village Sunday 
 school with little girls in their best white frocks,, 
 drew in the aristocratic scent of the Viscountess 
 Folkestone. A fountain of cabbage roses, sweetest 
 of all sweet things, looked down without a tremor 
 upon the lovely Celeste, and the Himalayan Rosa
 
 148 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 Brunonii with her long blue leaves flirted with a 
 Papa Goutier brought from a garden that over- 
 looked the Seine at Caudebec. Among the collec- 
 tion of Tea Roses all carefully tied down to trellis 
 rails the Bouquet d'Or gleamed like the morning 
 lights in a Florida sky and all down the side that 
 was nearest to the house great bushes of Rosa Poly- 
 antha made a screen that took the breath away. 
 
 Made-up for riding, although he no longer dared 
 to risk a shaking in the saddle, Barclay Mortimer 
 walked about the stable square flipping his boot, 
 and thinking back to the good old days when he rode 
 forth every morning to watch his string of thor- 
 oughbreds file out for exercise. They were the 
 times, damme. The air crisp, the early sun setting 
 the smooth backs of the rolling Downs alight, the 
 ring of many hoofs on the dry turf, a lark throb- 
 bing his way to the sky, and the dear lady getting 
 color into her cheeks as she rode at his side, 
 one of the several dear ladies. Curse Anno Dom- 
 ini. 
 
 Bill had gone out on one of the Irish hunters, and 
 the Old Rip, dressed horsy even if his horsy days 
 were over, waited for him, while Martha and Mrs. 
 Mortimer sat among the roses. ... It had been the 
 devil's own job to get his boots on. Denham was 
 undergoing a rest cure before he tackled the busi- 
 ness of pulling them off. Language had been flung 
 about, and nerves torn. But the result had been 
 worth it. They were good legs for boots, and even 
 the much-tried valet had to confess that the old
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 149 
 
 gentleman looked pretty 'ot stuff as he swaggered 
 out in his tight-fitting coat of huge checks, his white 
 stock with its little diamond fox, and his brown 
 bowler cocked over his ear. It was a dog's life, 
 with the Major back, what with making up for golf 
 that never was played, and for tennis, just to look 
 on while Bill and young Wainwright covered the 
 court, and for tea to which Miss Martha dropped in 
 nearly every afternoon. ..." Somethin' doin' in 
 that direction," if Denham could feel the way the 
 wind blew. " Only 'ad to cock an eye at the Major 
 to see that. Sloppy, that 's what 'e was." And he 
 did n't wonder. A reg'lar flower of a girl. Far 
 too young for that chip of the old block, she was, 
 though. A beastly shame. Still, it was none of 
 his business. Nor Albery's neither. And after all 
 Bill was being a good boy now all right. Put a pa- 
 per weight on that there new leaf, from the look 
 of it. A bit of a blow for them bits o' fluff in 
 town, he 'd bet. Well, well, there were changes in 
 the air, that was certain. The war had a lot to 
 answer for. . . . The eyes and tongues of the serv- 
 ants' quarters had let nothing go by. 
 
 For two reasons which seemed to him to be good 
 Bill cut his ride short. One was that Teddy Jed- 
 burgh was expected at the house that afternoon for 
 a fortnight's visit, and the other that Martha was 
 due to tea, having missed the previous day. He 
 chuckled when he found the immaculate old man 
 hanging about the yard. He was in too beatific a 
 mood to be impatient of being constantly dogged by
 
 150 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 his father. It was good to be able to provide the 
 dear old boy with means, however childish, of break- 
 ing the monotony of his daily round, and he re- 
 joiced in the fact that there was enough vitality left 
 in that once active body even to affect activities of 
 which it was incapable. 
 
 The sweating hunter was led away, with flicking 
 tail. 
 
 " How do you like him, Bill? " 
 
 "One of the best. Goes like a bird." He 
 caught sight of Martha in the heart of the garden. 
 It seemed right that she should be there. He had 
 missed her yesterday, strangely. " No sign of 
 Teddy yet?" 
 
 " Not yet. He 's not due for half an hour. The 
 car was timed to leave your rooms at half past two. 
 It 's a good two hours' run. Walk round the 
 stables with me." The old man was a little jealous 
 of his wife and even of Martha, much as he wanted 
 to see the fulfillment of his last ambition. 
 
 Having imagination Bill knew this and took his 
 father's arm. But he threw a quick surreptitious 
 glance towards the garden. He had said, in pulling 
 down his fourth wall, " that there could be no first 
 lover stuff about him in his reconstruction plan, that 
 he had n't got to fall passionately in love, and that 
 sort of thing." A month ago he did n't honestly 
 think that he was capable, after having distributed 
 his love so lavishly, of reviving the divine spark. 
 But this child, with her large steady eyes and vir- 
 ginal simplicity, had stirred other and rarer emo-
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 151 
 
 tions than those of passion. Her youth and trust- 
 fulness touched all his sense of respect, her sudden 
 flashes of love-hunger startled him like a crash of 
 cymbals in a minuet, and her strength of will and 
 power of presenting an attitude of impersonality 
 that made her a little sister of the roses put him on 
 his mettle. She was interesting, unexpected, brave, 
 practical, wistful and as guileless and aboveboard 
 as a spring morning. 
 
 The Commodore beamed. Had he exaggerated 
 in the description of his close relationship with his 
 son Bill in that delectable memoir? Let anybody 
 take a look at them now. ... It was the tenth time 
 that Bill had been walked round the stables. It 
 was, therefore, the tenth time that he had been 
 obliged to listen to exactly the same anecdotes about 
 the various horses and the way in which they were 
 bred. But it was in front of the loose box of 
 " Beauty Boy ", an old and bony hunter with four 
 white stockings and a wall eye, that the longest story 
 was sprung. He had been in the habit of carrying 
 a certain lady a year or two before the war and for 
 that reason would be treated with every considera- 
 tion until such time as he gave his final kick. 
 " The last of 'em, Bill, the last of my loves, my boy. 
 And what a dear beautiful creature, eh. You 
 remember her, of course. The old house at Epsom 
 appealed to her and racing was in her blood. . . . 
 Not altogether gone, those happy days. The lamp 
 of memory lights me through my dullest hours." 
 Bill led him away. Not for the first time the
 
 152 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 irony of all this hit him pretty hard. While his 
 father delighted to bask in the pale glory of his 
 past misdeeds he, on the contrary, was eager to for- 
 get the past and push his foot into the door of the 
 future. And the difference in the point of view 
 lay merely in a matter of age. 
 
 Knowing that the old man intended to make an- 
 other change of clothes before he dressed for din- 
 ner, in order to keep up the pretence of being hot 
 from riding, Bill escorted him to the house. 
 Martha waved from the garden and both men re- 
 plied. 
 
 " A charming girl, a delightful girl," said the 
 Commodore. " Eh, Bill, eh, my boy ? " He was 
 under a most solemn promise to the white-haired 
 lady to let things run their course without putting 
 his ringer on the pulse. But it was permissible to en- 
 deavor to find out the state of Bill's feelings by 
 dropping a fly now and then, just a blue Jock Scott. 
 
 And that afternoon Bill, like a hungry salmon, 
 swallowed it whole. He had been curiously shy 
 for the past month. " She 's the girl, Father," he 
 said gravely. " She 's so utterly the girl and I love 
 her so much that I 'm in a dead funk about trying 
 my luck.". . . And he wheeled round and marched 
 off to where his mother sat with Martha. 
 
 The old man watched the tall figure until it be- 
 came blurred against the background. His sight 
 was far from good. There was a smile of huge ex- 
 citement on his over-massaged face. In the few 
 words that he had drawn so unexpectedly out of his
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 153 
 
 son there was enough news to fill his wife with joy 
 and triumph. Her propinquity scheme had worked 
 to perfection, it seemed to him. He might, even 
 yet, make queer grandfatherly noises at a little 
 bundle of humanity that guaranteed the future of 
 his house ! 
 
 Denham, with the irritating air of one who knew 
 his duty, was waiting for him in the dressing room. 
 
 " A red tie, Denham, a red tie," he sang out. 
 " T'lis is a red-letter day, you much-tried worm." 
 
 II 
 
 BARCLAY MORTIMER was right, for once, in be- 
 lieving that he had a piece of news for his wife. 
 As a rule his great discoveries were like taking coals 
 to Newcastle or imparting the headlines of yester- 
 day's newspaper to a diligent student of current 
 events. This time, however, he had got hold of 
 something that would send all her worries flying and 
 bring back her peace of mind. 
 
 During the month that had slipped quietly away 
 since Mrs. Mortimer had brought Bill and Martha 
 together so cunningly, she had received two dis- 
 tinct shocks. She had considered herself to be 
 quite certain of Martha. Under the girl's naive 
 dignity it was easy to see the flutter of her heart 
 when Bill was near, easy to read, behind her mask 
 of lightness, the all-consuming hope that burned in 
 her eyes. The little defenses erected by her protegee 
 in order to protect her secret fell before the white- 
 haired lady's knowledge of human nature. Hith-
 
 154 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 erto, however, she had looked upon Martha as 
 merely a sweet, fresh girl, most suitable as the fu- 
 ture mother of Mortimers. She now had to con- 
 fess, after these days of closer examination, that 
 she was not just the pliable, malleable little person 
 of her supposition, to be " brought forward " at the 
 right moment and willingly sacrificed on the altar 
 of the Mortimer ambition. With some concern 
 she had discovered that the child, as she had per- 
 sisted in regarding her, had grit and courage, and, 
 what made her plan less easy, the sort of pride that 
 demanded a full and complete return of the love that 
 she had nursed during those three anxious and de- 
 plorable years. And the shock came from her 
 knowledge of the fact, most surprising and disturb- 
 ing, that Martha was not the sort of girl who had 
 anything whatever of the martyr in her constitu- 
 tion and could not be brought forward, under any 
 pressure or persuasion, unless in Bill's proposal there 
 was all the fine fervor of a lover. Pride? The 
 child had as much of it as there is steel in a sky- 
 scraper. It was her backbone. 
 
 That shock received, with its subsequent food for 
 thought and consternation, the other one was al- 
 most immediately provided by Bill. Being her son 
 he had been easier to read than Martha. There is 
 never anything very complex about a man. The 
 romance with which she had taken care to flavor 
 that first meeting had worked. Lill had come back 
 from it as pleased as Punch. Here, by the grace of 
 God, was Miss Respectable, Things looked good,
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 155 
 
 But there was a humbleness and a lack of confidence 
 about him which, instead of fading out under the 
 influence of propinquity, as it generally does, grew 
 stronger. He talked about his age. He began to 
 throw stones at himself for his youthful ubiquity. 
 And the more he found in Martha to respect and ad- 
 mire the more doubtful he became of the honesty of 
 asking her to marry him, when he had so little to 
 give in return for all that she 'would bring him. 
 Honesty, think of it ! The free and easy Bill, 
 the complete man of the world, was not to be found 
 in this new and irresolute Bill who put himself in 
 the scales with a dear nice girl, and was completely 
 outweighed. That was the shock. That was what 
 gave the white-haired lady a series of sleepless 
 nights. It must be remembered, also, that Bill had 
 said that there could be no first lover stuff in this 
 matter of marriage and reconstruction and Mrs. 
 Mortimer was no believer in miracles. It was al- 
 together too much to hope for. She did not read 
 into Bill's queer moods his sudden desire to be 
 alone for hours at a time, his long silences in the 
 drawing-room after dinner, his restlessness and ob- 
 vious discontent with himself that he had fallen 
 headlong into love. If she had she would have 
 ceased instantly to worry, knowing from long expe- 
 rience that love eventually carries even honesty be- 
 fore it and would provide Bill with all the excuse 
 he needed to go in and win. If he could give 
 Martha love, he would presently argue, he could 
 offer her everything that he had and under those
 
 156 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 conditions his conscience would lie easy and his 
 Blue Room remain locked. 
 
 Teddy Jedburgh was coming down, it was pretty 
 obvious, to a set of cross purposes and curious tan- 
 gents of temperament that might make him regret- 
 ful to leave the city. A mother who seemed to see 
 her pet scheme in jeopardy, his pal who was so much 
 in love that he was afraid of being refused, and a 
 girl whose pride was so strong and unbendable that 
 she would love and lose rather than love and be 
 sacrificed. 
 
 And it had all looked so easy. 
 
 Ill 
 
 " WELL," asked Bill, " how are you to-day? " 
 
 Martha smiled up at him. " As well as ever," 
 she answered. 
 
 Throwing a quick glance from one to the other, 
 Bill pretending to be as off-hand as though talk- 
 ing to a sister-in-law, Martha acting the part r I a 
 girl who was obliged to be civil to this man because 
 she was a friend of his mother, Mrs. Mortimer 
 was seized with a spasm of disappointment, not un- 
 mixed with irritation. Good Heavens, what were 
 they playing at, these two? Already a precious 
 month had fallen from the calendar and the much- 
 to-be-desired marriage was no nearer than it had 
 been. Queer creatures, human beings, with all the 
 handicaps of pride and conscience, vanity and tem- 
 peramental kinks! 
 
 " I see Albery fluttering on the veranda," she said.
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 157 
 
 " I am probably needed to speak to someone on the 
 telephone." And she rose, smiled an apology and 
 left them together. It was not up to her usual 
 form. It was indeed the work of an amateur. But 
 for the moment she had lost her touch, being non- 
 plussed at the criss-cross way in which things were 
 going. She was human too, even at her time of 
 life. 
 
 Bill watched her go, grateful for her sense of 
 sportsmanship but depressed beyond words that he 
 was unable to take advantage of it. What on earth 
 could this epitome of everything that was sweet 
 and springlike find in him? It was an impertinent 
 idea. Nineteen and a battered thirty-four. It was 
 absurd. 
 
 Martha made room on the stone bench. How 
 well he looked in riding kit. She loved him best 
 like that. He brought her photograph to life. But 
 what was the use ? He did n't care. She was only 
 the kid from the house on the other side of the 
 brook. " How did ' White Star ' go? " she asked, 
 casually. 
 
 " A good beast," he said. " Absolutely wasted 
 here. He ought to be hunted three days a week. 
 Jogging along a bridle path bores him stiff. Hard 
 luck." What a darling she was in that jolly little 
 frock ! 
 
 " When are you going to exercise your polo 
 ponies ? " 
 
 " Oh, I dunno. One of these days, I suppose." 
 
 He was getting as bored as " White Star," it
 
 158 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 seemed to her, and for much the same reason. 
 There was n't anything to keep him in that quiet 
 place, now that he had given a month to his people. 
 She dreaded the moment when he would say that 
 he was going off somewhere to do things. Sitting 
 about among flowers did n't suit him. But his 
 friend was coming to stay, and that meant another 
 few weeks of him, at any rate .... Dreams never 
 came true ! 
 
 A strained silence came upon them. 
 
 Bees carried on, and a big robin hauled at a 
 worm with which to fill a red and gaping mouth 
 and the scent of roses cloyed the warm air. What 
 a place and what a month for love, the one real 
 thing that life could give. 
 
 Martha made another effort. " Are you going 
 to write a book about the war, Major Mortimer? " 
 
 Bill darted a look at her. Was this a joke ? No, 
 she was quite in earnest. But she won a laugh and 
 that was something. He seemed to have forgotten 
 how to laugh lately. " I should n't know how to 
 begin," he said, " or how to go on if I did. A 
 couple of pages of slang and bad spelling and I 
 should be through. I 'm not an educated man. 
 I 'm only a polo player." He was considerably 
 flattered at her question, all the same. " And talk- 
 ing about war books," he added, " I got on the 
 phone to Brentano's the other day, to order a war 
 book by a British officer who was attached to us for 
 a bit, an awful good chap who had .seen the whole 
 show and been wounded three times. They told
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 159 
 
 me that war books had dropped dead twenty-four 
 minutes after the armistice was signed. Can you 
 believe it? It reminds me of the women's shops on 
 Fifth Avenue that display bathing dresses with the 
 snow on the ground. Millions of men died so that 
 the good old crowd might continue to swarm in 
 Fifth Avenue, and what do they care? The war 
 is n't over yet by a long chalk but it 's the next sen- 
 sation that everybody 's waiting for. Memory 's 
 the shortest thing there is, these days." 
 
 She had set him going. And it did n't much mat- 
 ter what he said. It was his voice that she wanted 
 to hear. 
 
 And catching something of her sympathy he went 
 on, glad enough to empty the accumulation of some 
 of his silences. " It 's pretty natural, I suppose. 
 All bands play lively tunes on the way back from 
 funerals. One down, t' other come on. There 's 
 the mopping-up process to begin, the reconstruction 
 business. And that 's all I 'm thinking about. The 
 new start, beginning all over again, setting the house 
 in order after the debauch, so to speak. That 's the 
 next job plain enough and I wish it w r as as easy as 
 it looked." He was thinking aloud rather than 
 talking, worrying the thing that was uppermost 
 in his mind; going over the old arguments, in his 
 doglike way, in the hope of coming out at the right 
 place. He had not bothered to use his brain much. 
 It was completely out of practice. " Here 's the old 
 house and all that it stands for. And here are my 
 father and mother with the sands running out,
 
 160 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 It 's up to me to take myself by the scruff of the 
 neck and become serious. But who 's going to take 
 me seriously ? That 's the point. I want to plant 
 roots and settle down and take a wife and all that. 
 Who 's wife? It 's going to be mighty difficult to 
 find a girl to become Mrs. Bill Mortimer, I mean 
 the girl. I 'm not like Tom Wainwright, in the 
 first flush of giddy youth and all that. I 'm in the 
 middle of things, with precious little to show for 
 the beginning . . . ." 
 
 Someone laughed. He dried up instantly, sur- 
 prised and self-conscious. He looked round and 
 caught a pair of brown incredulous eyes filled with 
 amusement, frank and unmistakable amusement. 
 Good Lord, what had he said that was so infernally 
 funny ? 
 
 Martha had her laugh out. It came to an end 
 with a ring of impatience. " Who 's going to take 
 you seriously?" echoed. "In the middle of 
 things, you ! Why is it going to be mighty 
 difficult?" And then pride holding up its huge 
 hand, she dried up, just as she was about to knock 
 all her walls down and stand among the debris, ut- 
 terly exposed. ... If she had possessed even half 
 the knowledge of men that belonged to the vast 
 majority of the girls of her age she would have 
 been able to see in the mood of this man, in his 
 humbleness and depression, the fact that he only 
 wanted one kind word to stumble into a confession 
 of love. And in her eagerness and joy she would 
 have given him not one kind word but a hundred,
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 161 
 
 and in less than two minutes have been hiding her 
 face against his shoulder. But what did she know 
 of men other than a father and a brother and Wop 
 gardeners and Irish chauffeurs, and the ice-man and 
 grocers' assistants, the piano-tuner and the memo- 
 ries of Tom's inarticulate schoolfellows who had fol- 
 lowed each other about like geese during holiday 
 visits ages ago. But in Bill's mention of a vague 
 girl that he had to " find " she saw herself as an in- 
 tangible thing still who had failed to come through, 
 who had not materialized. It was a devastating 
 shock. 
 
 And under the sting of the laugh that would have 
 told any other man all that he wanted to know, Bill, 
 going about like a cat on hot bricks in his dealings 
 with this Miss Respectable, felt like a yawl that had 
 suddenly lost the wind. She thought him funny, 
 and no wonder. He was a laughable object to a 
 young thing to whom he must appear to be in the 
 veteran class. A nice damn thing for a champion 
 philanderer to find that the first real love of his life 
 was as far out of reach as the sun ! 
 
 He got up with an absurd attempt at a grin. He 
 was not going to open himself up for another such 
 laugh if he knew anything about it. " Tea 's about 
 on," he said. " Shall we go up ? " 
 
 " It 's the only thing I 'm thinking about," she 
 answered, and led the way up along the narrow 
 rose-lined path, with her chin in the air.
 
 162 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 IV 
 
 A CAR drove up to the house as Bill and Martha 
 joined Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer on the veranda. 
 
 With the instinct of that true and delightful hos- 
 pitality that is so essentially American the Old Rip 
 and the white-haired lady hastened with Bill to greet 
 their guest on the threshold. 
 
 "Hello, Teddy!" 
 
 " Hello, Bill." 
 
 Jedburgh gave a fleeting but appreciative glance 
 at the old house before getting out of the car. Hav- 
 ing come straight from his work on the British 
 Mission he was in uniform, and ugly as its color was 
 it was well cut and well ironed. In any clothes he 
 was the sort of man who held the eye because of his 
 height and slightness and a rather rare grace that 
 suggested a reincarnation from the white wig pe- 
 riod. 
 
 " Mother," said Bill, " let me introduce my friend 
 Major Jedburgh of the Royal Air Force." 
 
 " You are very welcome, Major Jedburgh." 
 
 Teddy gave her a ceremonial salute and bent over 
 her hand. " You are most kind," he said. 
 
 " My father." 
 
 " Welcome to my house, Major Jedburgh." 
 
 The salute was repeated. " Thank you, Sir." 
 
 " You are just in time for tea," said Mrs. Morti- 
 mer. 
 
 Whereupon recovering his cap, the Major gave 
 his arm to his hostess and led the way to the table,
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 163 
 
 which was surrounded by chairs. Albery, who had 
 watched all this Elizabethanism with unctuous ap- 
 preciation, bore down upon the car. 
 
 " Miss Wainwright, Major Jedburgh." 
 
 This was not a bit like the man that she had ex- 
 pected to see. 
 
 " A primrose," thought Teddy, catching his 
 breath. And during the buzz of talk that followed, 
 for some of which he was responsible, he examined 
 Bill's good-looking face with a sort of reluctant 
 eagerness. Was it with this slice of spring that he 
 was going to build a church out of the ruins of his 
 past ? . . . Some men had all the luck. He caught 
 on again in time to say " I remember very well " 
 to the old man's statement that they had met before, 
 years ago, at a hunt breakfast at his father's place 
 in Leicestershire. He had clean forgotten the in- 
 cident. He must have been six at the time. 
 
 " Your mother dined with me in London during 
 the Coronation season," said Mrs. Mortimer. " I 
 shall never forget her beauty. I hope that she is 
 well." 
 
 " She is dead," said Teddy. " But I hope so too." 
 
 The disconcerted murmur was relieved by the 
 pontifical presence of Albery, with a plate of hot 
 muffins. 
 
 And during all this Martha had watched and 
 made notes. . . . She could n't see this man, with the 
 poet's forehead and the eyes of a humanitarian, 
 leading a squadron of death birds to drop bombs on 
 enemy troop trains, and dive out of the clouds, with
 
 164 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 roaring engines, to give battle to a flock of Huns. 
 She looked at the long line of ribbons on his coat, 
 and the wound and service stripes on his sleeve. 
 But it was the lines round his eyes that told the 
 tale. . . . Somehow he made the war that was sup- 
 posed to have ceased stand out with peculiar crudity 
 as the most gigantic paradox in the history of 
 crime. . . . She could see him playing with children 
 under old trees and sitting with a smile on his lips 
 in a house of peace. He had killed and offered 
 himself to death for the protection of the young 
 and the old, the pawn of bad men and poisonous 
 fetishes. But she called it patriotism, not knowing. 
 
 The same thought had come to Mrs. Mortimer. 
 And when the Commodore gave her the chance, 
 the sight of this Englishman had opened up many 
 memories and recollections of mutual friends, 
 she leaned forward. " Tell me why you, of all 
 men, joined the Flying Corps ? " 
 
 " It 's extraordinary how many people have asked 
 me that," he said, looking at Martha because he had 
 seen that it was her question too. " To answer you 
 properly I 'm afraid I '11 have to go into the psychol- 
 ogy of the two sorts of men who seized the chance 
 of going up into the air. There were only two 
 sorts, as I have made it out, and I think they were 
 pretty equally divided. My sort, to take that first, 
 was made up of men who had been trained to dis- 
 cipline, but who detested the idea of red-tape and 
 the necessary but irritating system of carrying out 
 orders that percolated down through a dozen au-
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 165 
 
 tomata from the hide-bound and generally unimagi- 
 native High Command. We jumped into the Fly- 
 ing Corps in the hope of escaping from the irrita- 
 tion of all that and because we saw in it the one 
 opportunity to free-lance, to use our own initiative 
 and to get out of the daily routine of trench life. 
 We argued that as we were pretty certain to be 
 killed we might as well die for a sheep as a lamb. 
 We exchanged from other branches of the service 
 at the earliest possible moment and made a scientific 
 study of the new art as a sort of mental refreshment. 
 Don't imagine that the danger or the so-called ro- 
 mance appealed to us. None of us wanted to com- 
 mit suicide or die before our time. What we did 
 want was a certain independence of action, and the 
 brief possession of our own souls between quick 
 bursts of duty. Some of us were poets, some 
 fathers, and nearly all of us loathed war and the 
 politicians. The other sort was composed of very 
 young men, almost boys, who had not only never 
 been trained to discipline but who had deliberately 
 gone out of their way to ignore all forms of law 
 and order, who broke speed limits for the sheer joy 
 and mischief of the thing and who were never likely 
 to find themselves on earth. To these fellows, care- 
 less and gallant, and wholly imbued with the spirit 
 of adventure, the air was a new and appropriate 
 element, devoid of policemen, magistrates, Dons, 
 Stop and Go signs, and all the rest of the excres- 
 cences of civilization, as they regarded them. They 
 held their lives on a thin string and although they
 
 166 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 did n't enjoy killing there grew up in them the spirit 
 of competition which made the downing of enemy 
 planes the essence of the game. They came to the 
 Flying Corps like homing pigeons certain of finding 
 kindred spirits, and they lived in a continual chaos 
 of practical joking and larkiness into which no seri- 
 ousness was ever permitted to put its foot for more 
 than ten seconds. Whether any of them found 
 themselves in the air I don't know. I think they 
 had to die for that. And they did die, in the great 
 winnowing of youth, in shoals, but there seemed to 
 be an unlimited number to take their places. The 
 ones who came out alive are dancing now and back 
 at their old tricks with added zest. The dead ones 
 are finding out what it is to be understood for the 
 first time and are very happy, according to them- 
 selves." 
 
 He gave a little laugh and a gesture of apology 
 for having monopolized the conversation. There 
 was a complete silence. 
 
 The two old people, to whom the last sentence 
 opened up an amazing possibility, gazed with a 
 great wistfulness at the quiet graceful man who 
 seemed to have looked at life and death from a 
 higher altitude than that of their own, and each 
 made a mental note of an eager desire to get him 
 alone for further questioning. 
 
 Martha had begun to listen to all this with keen 
 interest, held by Jedburgh's eyes, but when, because 
 of his characteristic courtesy, he turned from one 
 to the other of his listeners, she seized the oppor-
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 167 
 
 tunity to watch Bill who sat looking at his friend 
 with a sort of school-boy pride. And as she did so 
 only the smooth sound of the English voice came 
 to her. She lost the meaning of the words under a 
 sudden fever of love, an agony of isolation. . . . Bill 
 wanted to " plant roots and settle down and take a 
 wife and all that." It was going to be mighty 
 difficult to find a girl the girl. Which proved 
 that during the whole of that month he had been 
 looking through her and searching. It made her 
 miserable beyond words, and angry too and humil- 
 iated. If she had known enough to have tumbled 
 to the idea that she was being deliberately left alone 
 with Bill, brought forward for his consideration, 
 she would have bolted and disappeared, or, more 
 probably, being necessary at home, flared out into a 
 little burst of redhot words and told Bill to go and 
 look for this girl and not waste his time on her. 
 And if, knowing everything, the whole selfish 
 scheme, she were asked by Bill to be his wife and 
 were not supremely satisfied that he asked for love, 
 she would, though wholly his, consign him to the 
 devil in the honest Wainwright English picked up 
 from her father. That was the Martha who was 
 just beginning to be discovered by the white-haired 
 lady, to her surprise and dismay. 
 
 Everything had slipped into a pretty hopeless 
 mess because conscience and a lack of confidence had 
 been added to Bill's other difficulties in dealing with 
 Miss Respectable.
 
 168 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 V 
 
 THE one good thing about uniform was that it 
 saved a man from the fag of changing for dinner. 
 
 But Bill dressed quickly. Martha had gone 
 home, but was to return with Tom Wainwright to 
 dine. It was Mrs. Mortimer's idea to have a little 
 party for Teddy Jedburgh. So she said. Her real 
 wish was to keep Bill and the child as much as pos- 
 sible together. The Commodore had given her his 
 bonne bouche and her hopes ran high again. If 
 Bill continued to hang back much longer she would 
 give him the necessary courage to propose by tell- 
 ing him what she knew of Martha's feelings. But 
 this must be, she argued, her last card, her great 
 desire being to keep as much romance in her scheme 
 as she could. Her conscience pricked sometimes, 
 too. 
 
 Martha had refused hitherto to leave her father 
 in the evening. It so happened that this was the 
 night of an annual banquet of bankers in town. 
 And so she could get away, mother having to 
 keep to her room still. 
 
 Jedburgh was sitting at the open window of his 
 bedroom when Bill went in. He was reading a thin 
 book of poems and smoking. One long leg was 
 crossed over the other and that faint indefinable 
 smile was playing round his lips. 
 
 " Good for you, old thing," he said. " What 's 
 the news ? " 
 
 " Nothing here. What 's yours ? "
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 169 
 
 " Well, a certain amount of quiet work with those 
 very excellent fellows in Whitehall Street, a thor- 
 ough exploration by day of the obvious parts of New 
 York, the amazing city, and some rather disturbing 
 evenings at your very nice apartment with Jeanne 
 Dacoral, Birdie Carroll and Susie Hatch, especially 
 Susie Hatch." 
 
 " How do you mean, disturbing ? " 
 
 " Well, one or other of them, sometimes two and 
 once or twice all three, have come up most nights in 
 the hope of seeing you. Don't imagine for a mo- 
 ment, my dear chap, that I use the word disturbing 
 in a personal sense. I like them, especially Susie 
 Hatch. And Jeanne is a dear little soul who makes 
 the piano speak her thoughts. And Birdie Carroll, 
 with her round face and her urgent need of seeds 
 and sugar, lives up to her name, except that thank 
 Heaven she does n't carol." 
 
 Bill laughed. " You 're right," he said. " She 's 
 in musical comedy." 
 
 Teddy Jedburgh marked the point with one of 
 his airy waves of the hand. It was n't a Latin 
 gesture. It was Oxford. 
 
 " What I mean is, they 're worried about you, 
 old thing." 
 
 "Me? Why?" 
 
 " Well, where are you ? That 's the question they 
 keep asking. * Where 's Bill, and what the hell 's 
 he playing at ? What 's come over the man ? We 
 want him. How much longer is he going to keep 
 up this old-home week? Has he turned good and
 
 170 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 gone into hair shirts? Is he shaking us', ad- 
 mirable expression, ' and left you behind to let 
 us down easy ? ' 
 
 Bill worried his brush-like mustache. " Um 
 ... I see. You must have cursed those rooms a 
 bit. I 'm darned sorry, Teddy." 
 
 " No, no, no, really. They 're the only home 
 I Ve got, and your young friends have protected 
 me from an overwhelming loneliness. Of course 
 I said nothing about your what did you call it? 
 orgy of reconstruction and all that. I had n't 
 your permission. I knew nothing except that you 
 wanted naturally to give yourself to your people 
 and so forth and played host. Very instructive. 
 My education has been greatly improved. But in 
 going back to Susie Hatch, Bill, well, I think you 
 must use imagination and immense sympathy. At 
 once. She would n't open up and show her little 
 soul to me to save herself from torture. You know 
 that. But she 's hurt, old son, deeply and badly 
 hurt. You haven't even written her a note since 
 you left town and she 's like a flower in a drought." 
 
 Bill worried more. " Damn everything," he said, 
 obviously moved. He began to stride about that 
 neat, quaint, very perfect room with its Colonial 
 bed and tall-boy, writing desk and dressing table, 
 all rosy like the face of an old apple woman. . . . 
 The admirable expression to shake could n't be 
 linked on to the word past, it seemed. Not that, 
 with second thoughts, it mattered much. Martha 
 had laughed, But, thinking again, Bill was going
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 171 
 
 to be a good boy now anyhow, and how about 
 Susie Hatch, to say nothing of the other wild oats? 
 He had n't, in his absurd ecstasy, made the remotest 
 attempt to cut them down. In cutting Susie there 
 would be blood on his scythe. " Damn every- 
 thing," he said again, " especially me." 
 
 " Yes, but speaking frankly," said Jedburgh, 
 " that does n't achieve much, old thing. I think 
 you ought to see her and let her into your new plans 
 as gently as you can. I would have been glad 
 enough, a few weeks ago, to have taken Susie off 
 your hands, and been very good to her. She could 
 have married me if that would have appealed to her 
 peculiar sense of humor." 
 
 " Good Lord," said Bill. 
 
 " Why? This is an age of revolutions. I 'm no- 
 body. She has youth, that 's the New Aristoc- 
 racy. But I found that tradition dies hard and 
 ideals have a knack of appearing to be dead with 
 their hearts still beating. I don't want a mere 
 temporary passion that ends in a sordid settlement 
 and a sense of shame. I want love and a home and 
 she can't give me these. Neither can I give them 
 to her, much as I like her. So I 'm still on the look- 
 out, but with my feet too deeply planted in old 
 dreams to be satisfied with the sort of philandering 
 that I discussed with you. Mental shell shock 
 has lifted a bit, you see. Things have become diffi- 
 cult as a result." 
 
 " I '11 go up and see her to-morrow," said Bill. 
 
 And then Jedburgh put the question that had been
 
 172 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 in his mind since the moment that he had caught 
 sight of the primrose. A flower of a girl with the 
 dew on her and a morning hymn in her eyes. That 
 description fitted her like a glove. Was she to be 
 asked to follow after Jeanne Dacoral, Birdie Car- 
 roll and Susie Hatch, especially Susie Hatch ? 
 And the others ? He was Bill's friend. He under- 
 stood the need of the man with the pathetic eager- 
 ness to turn over a new leaf. All the same .... 
 
 " Tell me about Miss Wainwright, Bill." 
 
 " There is n't anything to tell, Teddy. You see 
 what she is, and how exactly she fits into the niche 
 where I would put her. I 've spent a month trying 
 to make her like me, but it 's not coming out right. 
 She laughed this afternoon when I roughed out my 
 idea. As you say, youth's the New Aristocracy. 
 Without any of your traditions I 'm on the lookout 
 too. Reconstruction is n't so derned easy as it 
 seemed." 
 
 And Jedburgh inwardly confessed to a reluctant 
 sense of relief. The primrose deserved better than 
 to have a Blue Room in her house. Youth to 
 Youth, it was the old good story. 
 
 " Better luck, Bill," he said. 
 
 It was the same old world to which they had both 
 come back. 
 
 VI 
 
 THE wine cellars were well stocked in the Morti- 
 mer House. Teddy Jedburgh and Tom Wainwright 
 paid proper tribute to the Veuve Clicquot '09 and the
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 173 
 
 priceless Napoleon brandy. The only satisfaction 
 Barclay Mortimer got out of it was in watching the 
 enjoyment of his guests. To his eloquently ex- 
 pressed regret his drink was barley water, 
 " ghastly stuff, my dear Major, as joyless as a rainy 
 day." 
 
 As soon as the men left the dining table for the 
 drawing room, never dreaming that even at that 
 moment certain sly fanatics were at work with 
 bribes and blackmail to put the country under the 
 heel of a law that would sweep away the effects of 
 education and self -discipline because the vast mi- 
 nority forgot both, Bill shut himself up with the tele- 
 phone. As good as his word, he was going to make 
 an appointment to see Susie Hatch in the morning. 
 He hated the idea of her being hurt, although he 
 didn't see what he could do to make things any 
 better. He knew Susie. 
 
 Mrs. Mortimer's high spirits were contagious. 
 The Commodore, wearing again the ribbon of the 
 Legion d'Honneur, was in his best mood. His 
 stories were delightful, and told with more economy 
 of detail than usual. They were new to Jedburgh 
 and Tom Wainwright and went well. The only 
 thing new in them to the white-haired lady and Bill 
 was the way in which they were sprung. But they 
 both laughed at the right moment with more loyalty 
 than is generally shown by members of much tried 
 families to the chestnuts of the heads of them. 
 With a sense of appreciation in which there were 
 both humor and pathos the old boy thanked them 
 
 -
 
 174 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 for this as soon as he could. His manners were of 
 the old ripe school. 
 
 Tom took the place on the sofa by Mrs. Morti- 
 mer, so Jedburgh availed himself of the chance to 
 lean over the piano and get a few words with 
 Martha, who had been playing. She had a pretty 
 touch. 
 
 " You must be very proud of your brother," he 
 said. 
 
 Martha's smile was exactly what he hoped to see. 
 It added to his feeling of " not belonging," though, 
 to an infinite loneliness. " We are," she said. 
 
 " I came over on the same ship. His eagerness 
 to get back added a beat a minute to the engines. 
 A born soldier, as he showed by his imaginative 
 treatment of his men. He ought to sacrifice his 
 career and stay in your army. He '11 be needed 
 again sooner or later." 
 
 " You don't believe in the League of Nations 
 then?" 
 
 Jedburgh waved his hand. " Human nature 
 can't be altered by a set of rules, nor can the millen- 
 nium be achieved on this planet by anything that 
 we can do. ' A Man's reach must exceed his grasp 
 or what 's a Heaven for ? ' 
 
 " That 's an awful thing to say to women." 
 
 "Why to women?" 
 
 " We have to stay at home and eat our hearts 
 out." 
 
 " If you did n't it is doubtful if there 'd be any 
 men to come back to you."
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 175 
 
 She got up so that her face should be out of the 
 spread of light. This man could easily read her 
 secret, she felt. 
 
 " Don't go," said Jedburgh. "Sit here and I '11 
 play you the story of this war, I mean if you 'd 
 care to hear it." 
 
 Martha sat down and leaned forward. Play and 
 fight, and read secrets, what else could he do? 
 
 Jedburgh drew up to the piano and held his hands 
 over the keys for a moment. 
 
 They came down with a crash of discords. The 
 Old Rip nearly jumped out of his shirt. It was fol- 
 lowed by a great burst of drums and bugles, a med- 
 ley of the Wacht am Rhein, the Marseillaise and the 
 Braban^onne, and after a moment of chaos and inde- 
 cision of God Save the King. Then the music 
 swelled into a broad tremendous swing with an un- 
 dercurrent of running feet, children's whimpers, 
 women's urgings and the pathetic grumbling of old 
 people, the explosion of guns, queer laughter, pierc- 
 ing screams, the rumble of retreating wagons and 
 the faint persistent singing of " Tipperary," " Old 
 yer 'and out, naughty boy," and the Russian Na- 
 tional anthem. There was a scrambling of high 
 notes, rush, ecstasy, effort, a deep booming in the 
 bass, strong, dull and death dealing, and in it all the 
 wail and stumble of crowds hurrying. Then a 
 series of melodies, sometimes sweet and cathedral- 
 like, sometimes grossly banal and of the music-hall 
 and the cafe, sometimes all queer and out of time, 
 then drab and in the minor and always with the old
 
 176 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 boom and shatter. Sometimes an ecstatic burst of 
 the Marseillaise would sweep out again, urging and 
 appealing, running into Tipperary with little flares 
 of the Brabanc.onne and the distant suggestion of 
 Russian music, the hoarse roar of the Wacht am 
 Rhein, renewed monotony and through it all boy- 
 laughter and the tang of wires against the wind. 
 And again the dull and banal and the monoto- 
 nous with the steady boom and shatter, edging some- 
 times on the satiric but never again touching the 
 ecstatic or the religious and with no suggestion of 
 the anthems of the nations except for a quick break 
 into that of Italy. And so it went on, with a brief 
 clang of quarrels, mutinies, lunatic cries, stern or- 
 ders, grim steadyings, an undercurrent of synco- 
 pation and the swirl of dancing feet. Airs that be- 
 gan as hymns ended as fox-trots, the boom and 
 the shatter prevailing. And then came a new and 
 curious twist of angry protest at once subdued, of 
 cynicism and argument, which was drowned by the 
 clatter of kettle-drums, the splitting of air bombs, 
 the tang of wires, women's moaning, the glib chat- 
 ter of politicians and falling rain. Monotony, 
 monotony, tinged with yet another new thing, 
 atheism, but still the same old boom and shatter. 
 And then, suddenly, panic, chaos, unholy fear, an 
 onward rush, jeers and laughter and yells, the ut- 
 ter disappearance of jazz, once more the organ 
 notes in terrified appeal, the awful nearness of the 
 boom and shatter, the blare of the Star-Spangled 
 Banner, a change into another medley of national
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 177, 
 
 melodies, the gradual fading of the roar of guns 
 and silence. But only for the edge of a moment. 
 Jazz came again, jazz, loud and persistent, jazz and 
 the swirl of dancing feet and women's laughter, the 
 moaning of great ships and cripples, the idiotic 
 jabber of political voices, the hoarse triumph of 
 Bolsheviki, the satirical questioning of atheists with 
 pens, the swirl of dancing feet. . . . 
 
 " Good God," gasped Barclay Mortimer, drawing 
 two fingers across a wet forehead. 
 
 But Teddy Jedburgh did n't leave the piano. He 
 sat with his hands on his knees, pale, and looking 
 through things with that faint indefinable smile on 
 his lips. Presently his hands touched the notes 
 again and out into the room floated the sound of 
 " Should auld acquaintance be forgot " 
 
 But he stopped abruptly in the middle of a bar 
 because Martha burst out crying and ran into the 
 moonlight. 
 
 VII 
 
 MRS. MORTIMER would have given a great deal 
 for Bill to have been in the room when this hap- 
 pened. At a sign from her he would have followed 
 Martha out. A woman's crying, according to her 
 experience, had one of two different effects on a man 
 in love. Both caused him to lose his head, but one 
 made him curse and the other gave him courage to 
 take her in his arms. She would have gambled on 
 the latter. But he was trying, at the moment, to 
 persuade a telephone operator to get the number
 
 178 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 that he required instead of the one she considered 
 that he ought to have, and the great opportunity 
 passed. A chat with a blind beggar on his way to 
 the House of Commons once brought about the 
 downfall of a Prime Minister. 
 
 And so Barclay Mortimer performed the act of 
 consolation in his best manner. He was a master 
 of the art. His dear Italian had often wept for no 
 apparent reason and the little lady who had hunted 
 Beauty Boy had had a most disconcerting way of 
 bursting into tears at the most inconvenient mo- 
 ments. It was, and always will be, woman's rudi- 
 mentary method of claiming the undivided atten- 
 tion and the reassurance of love that she needs so 
 often. 
 
 Martha was laughing when she was escorted back 
 to the drawing room. She said that she had cried 
 for all the boys who had been killed. She was 
 obliged to offer some excuse. But she knew, and 
 Mrs. Mortimer guessed, that she had suddenly lost 
 her self-control, under the effect of Jedburgh's im- 
 pressionistic sketch, as the logical outcome of a 
 month of many emotions. 
 
 The evening ended early because Martha had is- 
 sued solemn warnings as to the Mortimer habits. 
 The alacrity with which the Commodore sprang to 
 his feet when Tom made the first tentative move 
 confirmed his sister's knowledge. Denham had al- 
 ready been waiting for fifteen minutes with all his 
 paraphernalia. 
 
 Bill and Teddy walked a* far as the brook. It
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 179 
 
 was a very perfect June night, still and warm, and 
 so white and clear that the trees threw shadows and 
 some of the daisies had forgotten to close their 
 eyes. A full moon occupied her cold impersonal 
 place among the uncountable lights of the islands 
 of the sky. Bill's soul had not been in the habit of 
 bothering him on his easy way through life. But 
 that night, for reasons that had been piling up re- 
 cently, he felt a longing to stand on some high place 
 and look down upon the earth, to take a glance 
 back and to gaze into the future. And what better 
 companion could he have on this brief excursion 
 than the ex-flying man whose feet were planted 
 deeply in old dreams, and whose ideals had not, 
 after all, been left among the mud and bones of 
 Flanders. And so he led the way up to the Hill of 
 the Seven Sisters and sat down with Teddy on the 
 bench which had been the prie-dieu of his mother 
 and his girl. 
 
 Away below, all lucent under the white light of 
 the moon, lay that great stretch of peaceful country, 
 a panorama of slanting valley and sleeping trees, of 
 small villages winking a few tired eyes, a wide lake 
 glistening like a looking glass, and a range of hills 
 in the distance that made a rolling smudge against 
 the sky. 
 
 " Oh, my God ! " he said involuntarily. 
 
 And Teddy nodded. " A cathedral, roofless, 
 echoing with the passing feet of worshipers, and 
 the song of understanding of the survivors of 
 death."
 
 180 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 And after a long pause Bill began to talk. " I 
 wish I 'd come across you before, when I was a bit 
 of a boy." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " There 's a lot of stuff in you that I 've never 
 known about. I have traditions, you 've seen 
 the walls to-night. But somehow, Teddy, I never 
 caught their meaning. You caught the meaning 
 of yours and you might have explained them to me 
 to soak into my imagination. There 's just a chance 
 that I should n't have had to feel so cursed sick of 
 myself as I do to-night, and have done since I 
 began to think." 
 
 " Maybe," said Jedburgh. " What I call tradi- 
 tion led me through school and college with a pretty 
 firm hand. But when I came over here, homeless 
 and with the dust in my eyes that rose up from the 
 debris of the old order of things, I regretted that 
 I had been so much a prig as to have missed the 
 human links that you have made. There is n't a 
 living creature to catch a signal from me, no 
 Susie Hatch to light up my rooms with a blaze of 
 love. There are no memories in my isolation, Bill. 
 And what after all has my tradition done for me ? " 
 
 " Left you without a Blue Room, old son." 
 
 " But is n't it better to have a Blue Room than no 
 rooms at all ? " 
 
 " No. You can build a new house and leave all 
 the doors unlocked." 
 
 " That 's true. . . . The past has an ugly knack 
 of running ahead of the present and turning round
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 181 
 
 to grin. Quaint thing that we have come out at 
 the same place by such different paths." 
 
 Bill heaved a sigh that seemed to come up from 
 his boots. " Well," he said, " I don't know which 
 way to go, now that I 'm here." 
 
 " Neither do I," said Jedburgh. Loyalty to his 
 friend put up a huge wall in front of a picture that 
 had been filling his eye persistently all the evening, 
 the primrose in a garden that he had made. 
 There was something quite devilishly ironical in the 
 fact that in Martha who was loved by Bill he had 
 found the one girl who had done strange things to 
 his heart. 
 
 " Let 's go home," said Bill. 
 
 It was an enviable home in spite of its Blue Room. 
 The first that Jedburgh had known since the war 
 began its demolishment. They went down to- 
 gether, leaving the Seven Sisters to gossip about the 
 things to which they had just listened. " Are you 
 going up to see Susie Hatch to-morrow? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes," said Bill. " She 's coming to my room 
 for lunch." 
 
 What he called tradition urged Teddy to play the 
 straight game. " Don't go back on your tracks, 
 Bill. You know those lines about rising on step- 
 ping stones. Give yourself another chance with 
 Martha. If you have the luck to make her love you 
 you can board up that old Blue Room of yours. 
 It 's been done before." 
 
 " If I could make her love me I 'd never give her 
 time to pry about. I 'd make every other room too
 
 182 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 attractive. But it is n't on the cards, Teddy. She 
 laughed this afternoon." 
 
 " Never mind. Do nothing to-morrow to make 
 reconstruction impossible. You were born under a 
 good star." 
 
 "You advise that?" 
 
 " I do. And then come back and go to work 
 again. The odds are all in your favor ". . . He 
 was no poacher. Nor had the utter demoralization 
 that followed war changed his ideas of friendship. 
 His feet were deeply planted in old dreams and he 
 could n't pull them out. Only if Bill failed would 
 he scramble up and climb over that infernally high 
 wall. It would be fairer than to try and win this 
 primrose for himself. 
 
 VIII 
 
 THERE was precious little conceit about Bill. 
 The usual amount of egotism, of course, the de- 
 sire for comfort and the incurable habit of believing 
 that the world revolved around himself, without 
 which nature would not be human, but none of the 
 preening sense of being indispensable that goes with 
 women's men. Bill was not a woman's man. He 
 was an outdoor man who liked to see a woman in 
 his house when it was necessary to go in. It was in 
 the winter that he had mostly been caught. Wo- 
 men meant more to him, therefore, than to one 
 whose only hobby was to pursue, and if he had ana- 
 lyzed his state of mind during his bad weather in- 
 terludes, a thing he never did, he would have
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 183 
 
 assured himself that he had been the one who had 
 been hit, though not very hard. He had been ac- 
 cepted, he had always considered, for the good 
 things that he had gone out of his way to give and 
 afterwards had continued to be looked up from time 
 to time because relations had warmed into friend- 
 ship. Jeanne Dacoral, Birdie Carroll and the 
 others, dear little souls, had gone on with light 
 hearts to other interests. He had delighted in see- 
 ing them whenever they had had nothing better to 
 do and had taken a keen pleasure in proving his 
 gratitude whenever they had thrown out a hint, 
 often before. His hand went to his pocket without 
 an effort. 
 
 But the case of Susie Hatch was different, and 
 this he knew. She was n't a City bred child, born 
 sophisticated, who realized the asset of sex as a 
 perfectly natural thing, and never allowed herself 
 to take her lucky strikes too seriously. She was a 
 sea-flower, born during the drive of a storm to the 
 cantata of tumultuous seas and catastrophic winds. 
 Her heart had been blown clean by salt breezes and 
 her soul filled with faithfulness by the wonder of 
 the skies. She had watched the faint horizon for 
 the ship of her dreams, had recognized its lines in 
 the yacht that Bill had owned and known in Bill 
 her master and mate. He had given her life and 
 affection in return for the loyalty and devotion of a 
 stray dog. She belonged to him, had cleaved to 
 him, like ivy to a wall. If he threw her back into 
 the sea ehe might have forgotten how to swim. If
 
 184 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 he cut her down among his wild oats there would be 
 blood on the scythe. . . . 
 
 Difficult ? Good Lord, yes. He did n't love her 
 and he did love Martha, and even if he had loved her 
 could he take her home to those two fastidious 
 people who were thinking of his wife as the mother 
 of his race? 
 
 The car landed him at his apartment twenty min- 
 utes too early for his appointment. But when he 
 let himself in she was kneeling on the window seat 
 with the sun in her hair, as lonely as a sea gull 
 perched on an isolated rock. " Use imagination 
 and immense sympathy," Teddy had said. " She 's 
 hurt, old son, deeply and badly hurt." If he let her 
 into his plans, however gently, what would she do ? 
 About any other girl he would have used the word 
 ' say '. 
 
 "Hello, Susie!" 
 
 The color rushed into her face as she wheeled 
 round. It was a thin face, he noticed with a qualm, 
 with eyes that told of sleepless nights. But the 
 veneer of self-assurance and almost insolent cool- 
 ness behind which she had found it necessary to hide 
 was instantly assumed from force of habit. In all 
 cities there are men among whom the unprotected 
 girl must stand in armor. Bill had been away for 
 a month and had never written, a line. 
 
 " I did n't believe you 'd come," she said. 
 
 How she reminded him of Martha by the angle of 
 her chin. " Have I ever been late before? " 
 
 " Before 's so long ago I almost forget." But she
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 185 
 
 went closer, step by step, like a child who loved in 
 spite of punishment, and put her face against his 
 heart. After all it might only have been his people 
 who had kept him away, and he hated writing let- 
 ters. 
 
 Bill was at an utter loss for words. From his 
 point of view and that of his father and mother ex- 
 cuses were only to be made as a matter of form. 
 He had no remote idea of getting out of his respon- 
 sibilities towards this girl, and it was his plan to 
 double the income that was paid to her by his law- 
 yers. From her point of view, as he could see, he 
 had been cruel and neglectful and she ached to hear 
 that he was sorry. Anyone less soft-hearted than 
 Bill would have been able to deal with the situation 
 without blundering, in a perfectly matter-of-fact 
 way. Conditions had changed. New plans had 
 to be made. Lawyers had been instructed on the 
 question of money. Good memories would always 
 remain and friendly relations continue, with due 
 care for the conventions, and that sort of 
 thing. . . . Not so Bill. He had tried to rehearse 
 the gist of all this on his way to the City and had 
 succeeded in putting together a sort of statement in 
 which the sordid and the cold-blooded were alto- 
 gether absent. But the sight and the touch of this 
 sea-child confused him and put him in the wrong 
 and sent all his sentences into a muddle of letters. 
 
 " Damn the war," he said, with not so much ir- 
 relevancy as one might think. 
 
 And she jumped at it as the thing that was wholly
 
 186 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 to blame, and held up her face as she had done the 
 day of her discovery as a stowaway. 
 
 Bill was going to be a good boy now, according 
 to himself, but he kissed her, and she was happy 
 and forgave. All the black thoughts that had come 
 to her in sleepless nights lifted and disappeared. 
 Bill had come back. Everything was good once 
 more. 
 
 " Come and sit down and tell me everything," she 
 said, and ran him to the big settee, plumped him into 
 it and curled up at his side with her arms round his 
 neck. 
 
 How on earth was he to do this thing? Recon- 
 struction? It was easier said than done with Miss 
 Respectable on one side and Susie Hatch on the 
 other. " I wish to God I loved you," he said to 
 himself, looking into the girl's devoted eyes. " I 'd 
 take you home whatever they said and there 'd be no 
 Blue Room there for you, my dear." 
 
 She read it as she wished to read it and snuggled 
 closer. Good times had come again. 
 
 " Your father and mother have made a great fuss 
 of you, eh ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Of course they have. And it was just you, Bill, 
 to give them all these weeks. And now the ' lo- 
 lanthe ' and the wind and salt and me. Is that the 
 scheme ? I 'm starving for the lap of water and 
 the mewing of gulls and you." 
 
 Good God ! 
 
 " Don't let 's take Teddy Jedburgh. I like him,
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 187 
 
 he 's a fairy tale, but let 's go off alone. Let 's 
 go back to the old places and pretend the war was a 
 nightmare. I have n't been tanned for years." 
 
 " I 've sold the ' lolanthe,' " said Bill. 
 
 " What ? . . . Well, buy another. There are lots 
 to be had. It 's June, Bill, and the sun 's warming 
 up." 
 
 " It can't be done, Susie." 
 
 " Oh Bill ! . . . Well then, find a cottage all by 
 itself on the dunes and let 's be sand boys. Nothing 
 matters but the sea and you." 
 
 The thing had to be faced. " Would it be the 
 same, or something like it, if you took Jeanne or 
 Birdie, or anyone else instead ? . . ." 
 
 Her laugh rang through the room, went flying out 
 of the window and was caught in the breeze that 
 carried it away over the Plaza. "How you love 
 to tease me, don't you ? " she said, tightening her 
 clasp. 
 
 That cursed scythe. How he detested to have to 
 use it. " No, I 'm dead serious," he went on, like a 
 bull in a china shop. " You 've got to count me 
 outj Susie." 
 
 She put her head back so that she could examine 
 his face. " I don't get you," she said, her smile 
 going out. She began to look thin again. 
 
 " I don't see why you should. I 'm no good at 
 things like this. It 's not in my line. But if I 
 could begin to tell you of the sort of mood I came 
 back and went home with, knowing that I 've played 
 about long enough, and then finding my father and
 
 188 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 mother pretty old, Susie, and mighty keen for me 
 to cut bachelor stuff and settle down and take a 
 wife . . ." 
 
 She withdrew herself, slowly and coldly, and 
 stood with her foot on the bear's head and her back 
 to the empty firegrate. Behind the armor into 
 which she had dived again her young body was all 
 bruised by this blow. " Don't worry about all the 
 rest of it," she said. " I can guess, Bill. Why 
 didn't you write it? It would have saved you 
 coming up and having to stumble it all out." 
 She was n't sarcastic. She was perfectly cool 
 and self-assured, even kind in a desire to help 
 him. 
 
 Bill was a little shocked. "Don't you care?" 
 he asked, getting up. 
 
 She heard the sea calling like a mother. Born 
 in its tumult and catastrophe she must go back to it 
 for peace. " Yes, Bill," she said. 
 
 " And do you understand ? Do you see the thing 
 that I 've got to do ? Marriage and children and 
 responsibility and all that?" 
 
 " Yes, Bill," she said. 
 
 He went up to her and put his hands on her shoul- 
 ders. She was so quiet, there was such a queer 
 look in her eyes. ..." What are you thinking 
 about?" 
 
 " You," she said, " and what you 've got to do. 
 Good luck, Bill." 
 
 ' You '11 go on with your work in the studio and 
 when the right man "
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 189 
 
 She shook her head. " It 's good-by to the right 
 man." 
 
 Emotion surged over him. This water-babe who 
 had given him the love of a wife. . . . Oh, curse it! 
 How sorry he was. He wished to God that he 
 loved her. "Why good-by? Shan't you let me 
 see you sometimes? " 
 
 She shook her head again, but her mask fell for 
 a second. 
 
 On the thin face, that was as white as foam, he 
 saw that queer look that had struck fear into him 
 before. There was more in this than being honest 
 and drawing blood. There was the sea in her eyes. 
 If he didn't work on every shred of her devotion 
 his Blue Room would contain a slight dead figure 
 washed up by the tide. 
 
 He caught her in his arms. " Not that, Susie. 
 You would n't punish me all the rest of my life by 
 doing a thing like that. There 's the family to con- 
 sider and what I 've brought out of the War. I 
 wish like hell I 'd never been in it and was all alone 
 in the world. It would all be easy then. But 
 things have got to go this way and you won't be the 
 one oh Susie, not you to put the stain of your 
 blood on my soul." 
 
 She looked up into his face, not quite the same 
 face that she had seen from the sea, and saw that 
 his lips were trembling and his eyes full of the sort 
 of appeal that there must once have been in hers, 
 that time when she had begged for life and love out 
 on the yacht. And a great pity came he wanted
 
 190 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 the right girl she was n't the right girl and 
 children, and she stood on tiptoe, flung her arms 
 round his neck and kissed him. 
 
 Itoto slipped in to lay the table, and they 
 walked over to the window. 
 
 " What you gave me I give you," she said. 
 " Life. Make the most of it. And to prove that 
 you 've made me master the old sea-feeling I '11 not 
 listen to the call. I '11 be an artist instead and paint 
 the love of you into my pictures. You may trust me." 
 
 Poor old Bill. He did n't know what to do or 
 say to thank her. He was n't a woman's man. But 
 his inarticulation was understood by Susie. Ivy 
 knows the oak and she knew Bill. . . . Would any- 
 one else ever know him so well ? 
 
 IX 
 
 ALBERY was taking a nap on the veranda when 
 Bill got back that afternoon. With a bandana 
 handkerchief over his face to keep the flies away, 
 the pompous person who had made a vocation of 
 butlership was enjoying what he considered to be 
 a very honestly earned rest. He justified his use of 
 the Commodore's chair on the part of the veranda 
 that was sacred to tea by the fact that his faithful- 
 ness had made him almost a member of the family, 
 or at any rate the sort of member who came into 
 the open when the family was out. His feet, with 
 boots laced only halfway up, and pointing east and 
 west, had been placed on another chair. The mas- 
 sive recumbent figure, with hands clasped upon the
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 191 
 
 central mountain, and clad in garments of excessive 
 excellence, could not be a thing of beauty, but it was, 
 and would always scrupulously remain, the symbol 
 of service. 
 
 But Bill wanted to know something and wanted 
 to know it quickly. All the way home he had put 
 himself up as the champion cad of the world and 
 chucked great lumps of rock at his body. He was 
 feeling both bashed and impatient. He stamped 
 about like a fussy man shaking snow from his boots. 
 A long and luscious snore issued. He drew a 
 wicker table up and down twice, thereby making the 
 sort of squeak that jerks the fillings out of teeth. 
 Nothing happened. There was obviously only one 
 thing left to do. He did it. A resounding bump, 
 a roar of oaths, a slow but dignified rise. . . . 
 " Good afternoon, sir." 
 
 "Good afternoon. Where's everybody?'* 
 
 " Madam has driven over to the nurseries, sir, 
 to see about those Japanese maples." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " John is driving the Commodore and Lord Ed- 
 ward in the opposite direction, sir, to take a look at 
 the country." 
 
 " Not Lord Edward. Major Jedburgh. He 
 wishes it." 
 
 Albery's eyebrows rose slightly and with them 
 went his shoulders and then his hands. " Very good, 
 sir. But can the Ethiopian change his skin or the 
 leopard his spots ? " 
 
 " What 's to stop him? " said Bill, " It 's a free
 
 192 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 country. . . Where 's Marth I mean Miss Wain 
 oh, it does n't matter." The screen door came 
 back with a whang behind him and he stamped up- 
 stairs to his rooms. It 's curious how a man feels 
 impelled to make a tremendous noise after under- 
 going a bout of mental humiliation. Reaction 
 brings with it, probably, a sort of " Now then, who 
 the devil says that I 'm taking this lying down. 
 Hear me about unless you 're deaf, can't you ? " 
 
 " H'm," said Albery to himself, as he replaced 
 the furniture with minute accuracy, " Bill 's bumped 
 up against a bit of the past to-day, that 's certain. 
 Don't I know the feeling? " A little smile fluttered 
 over his face. 
 
 Bill got out of his clothes and stood under a cold 
 shower until every suggestion of the City was 
 washed away. Then he dried his hair to re-wet it 
 with a stinging hair-juice, and got into a pair of 
 loose knickerbockers, a soft shirt with a small low 
 collar, an easy coat and shoes a size too large. His 
 mind could become even more hopelessly disorgan- 
 ized if his body were completely comfortable. . . . 
 Susie loved him. Martha did n't. He did n't love 
 Susie and he did love Martha. He was wretched, 
 he 'd had to make Susie wretched and if he could 
 make Martha wretched that would be fine, that 
 is, oh curse. . . . And having made Susie desper- 
 ately unhappy and dashed her hopes and put bad 
 thoughts into her mind, to say nothing of having 
 made himself an infernal cad by his clumsy way of 
 breaking things up and hinting at class differences
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 193 
 
 and that stuff, if he had loved her would that 
 have mattered? What he asked himself now was 
 " Is it worth it ? Is n't this reconstruction business 
 nothing but a dream? Can the Ethiopian change 
 his skin or the leopard his spots ? They 're not wild 
 oats that I planted. They 're mustard seed. Cut 
 'em down, burn 'em out and up they come again. 
 Susie is just as much mine now as ever she was. I 
 took her and she 's permanent. No Blue Room 
 can shut her in. She 's alive and about and will 
 have to be watched. No one could keep her word 
 better, but will painting do the trick? . . . Martha 
 laughs. That 's over. I cling to this pathetic idea 
 of beginning again and playing up to mother and 
 the old Dad and the traditions and start on the 
 hunt for Miss Respectable. If I find her, or 
 Mother produces her, and she 's fool enough to take 
 me on there 's Martha stuck in my heart. ... It 's 
 no good. I must chuck it. The whole damned 
 thing is n't honest. I can't reconstruct. I 've missed 
 the chance of playing the game. Bill just can't be 
 a good boy now and that 's all there is to it." 
 
 But when he wandered out and kicked himself 
 from one lonely place to another, more depressed 
 than ever because there was n't a soul to make as 
 wretched as he was, he thought suddenly of the 
 bench beneath the Seven Sisters which was Martha's 
 favorite place, perked up at once and went off in 
 long strides to see what he could do in that direction. 
 She might laugh at him, and she was perfectly justi- 
 fied. But perhaps there was something that he
 
 194 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 could say, with any luck, to give his depression to 
 her. 
 
 Yes, there was Martha. The primrose, as Teddy 
 called her. He was good at exact descriptions. 
 But she was n't sitting on the bench as he had seen 
 her so often, apparently waiting for something, as it 
 had vaguely seemed to him. She was standing clear 
 cut against the sky on the edge of the hill, straight, 
 slight and gloriously young, without a hat, her hands 
 clasped behind her back. She might have been 
 throwing out a speech to the listening valley with 
 words of scorn and impatience about Life. It was 
 not a bit of good to her and she didn't care who 
 knew it. 
 
 She heard him coming but made no move. Her 
 heart jumped. That was all. He left the shade 
 of the Seven Sisters and went out into the sun by 
 her side. There they stood, with the world at their 
 feet, silently. 
 
 She had been thinking too, and was angry. Why 
 was he hanging about the garden and the hill and 
 fastening himself on her, when all the while his 
 thoughts were far afield, searching. Pride did n't 
 permit any more of this humiliation. It must be 
 brought to an end. " Well," she said, looking out 
 at the procession of hills away in the distance. 
 " Have you been to town to find a girl, the girl ? " 
 
 " I don't have to go to town to do that," he said 
 sharply. A nice lookout when she began to rot 
 him right away. 
 
 She turned, as cool as a fish, and ran her eyes over
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 195 
 
 him. Good Lord, how she reminded him of Susie 
 Hatch by the angle of her chin. " Is that so ? It 's 
 none of my business, but you can't be said to show 
 much keenness to see her, can you, never leaving 
 this place? " 
 
 He hurled the ball back. " Why should I leave 
 this place? She doesn't." 
 
 The lurking smile went out of her eyes. What 
 did he mean? There was no girl, no other 
 girl. . . . And then all the fog that had come be- 
 tween them lifted and in the golden clearness of 
 that afternoon she saw the man she loved and hun- 
 gered for in all his humbleness and lack of courage. 
 The air was rilled with the rustling of wings and 
 over the sinking sun the star came forth. ... It 
 was for her to make him speak, and the woman in 
 her reveled in the chance. He should pay a little 
 for all her hours of anguish. 
 
 " Perhaps she only comes out at night, like the 
 moon ? " 
 
 " Don't let 's talk about it," he said. " It won't 
 do any good." 
 
 He was n't to be allowed to get away like that. 
 " But you mystify me," she said. " Only yesterday 
 you asked who was to take you seriously and talked 
 about the difficulty of finding the girl. And now 
 you say she 's here. What exactly do you mean? " 
 
 Instead of infecting her with his depression he 
 had made her gay, it seemed. Something had set 
 her alight. She looked taller and behind the laugh 
 in her eyes there were burning fires. He had never
 
 196 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 seen her look like that or felt so strongly the vitality 
 of her youth. 
 
 All right. He would tell her and the thing would 
 be ended. His fatuous scheme of reconstruction 
 would fall like an empty shell. " I mean what I 
 say," he said, smarting under her levity. " She is 
 here. She was here when I went away. She was 
 here when I came back. I loved her when she came 
 up to this hill. I 've loved her more and more ever 
 since. But she does n't give a single curse about me 
 and that ends it. I wanted to settle down and plant 
 roots and take a wife but as she won't have me I 'm 
 homeless and the thing 's a dream." He turned 
 away like a boy. 
 
 And she put her hand on his arm and turned him 
 back. " How do you know it 's a dream ? How 
 do you know she does n't give a single curse if 
 you have n't spoken to her ? " 
 
 He stared in amazement. 
 
 And she threw out her arms with her face held 
 up. He loved her as she insisted on being loved. 
 Pride was n't in this. " Speak, speak," she cried 
 out, stamping her foot. " Why waste this precious 
 time?" 
 
 One more blundering pause, and then the cry, 
 and the meeting of lips, and the welding of 
 hearts. . . . 
 
 Honesty? The hidden key of the Blue Room? 
 Bosh! She loved him. She loved him. What 
 had happened till then was his. What was to hap- 
 pen from that hour onward was hers, everything.
 
 PART V 
 
 AT ten o'clock that night Bill Mortimer stalked 
 into the drawing-room of the old house. 
 
 To the white-haired lady, the Old Rip and the 
 British Major who had been waiting for him without 
 impatience, he looked rather like a sheepish boy. 
 He was still wearing the clothes into which he had 
 changed that afternoon. His dark crisp hair 
 seemed still to have in it the breeze of a three hours' 
 exultant drive in an open car. His eyes were 
 sparkling, and round his mouth there was the smile 
 that is only to be found on the face of a mere lad 
 who has just kissed his first sweetheart. 
 
 In no mood for anything so prosaic as to sit down 
 to dinner he had almost taken a flying header from 
 the hill of the Seven Sisters as soon as Martha had 
 torn herself away; left a message with Albery that 
 he would be back before ten and driven himself 
 about the surrounding country with a total and 
 reckless disregard for speed limits, going almost 
 indeed as fast as his thoughts. Only by the luck 
 of lovers and drunkards had he escaped arrest and
 
 198 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 accident. And now, here he was, with his head in 
 the clouds and his feet nowhere near the earth, to 
 break the momentous news to his family of his 
 engagement to Martha. 
 
 The whole fun of the thing lay in the fact that, 
 unknown to the ecstatic Bill, the family and Teddy 
 Jedburgh knew precisely what he had come to tell 
 them. It had happened that Mrs. Mortimer, on her 
 return from the Nurseries, had climbed the hill and 
 seen Martha in Bill's arms, making a picture up there 
 against the sunset which had filled her with inde- 
 scribable joy. She had crept away, performed a 
 feat of self-restraint unique in the history of 
 women by bottling up her news until dinner was 
 over and then sprung it upon the Commodore and 
 Bill's pal in the seclusion of the drawing-room. It 
 must have been a sight to see the effect of it on the 
 Old Rip. Regardless of corsets and forgetful of 
 gout the ancient but elegant roysterer had sprung 
 to his feet and executed a delirious pas-seul in the 
 middle of the room. He had danced until his 
 breath had given out. He had then skidded on one 
 of the rugs and, before he could be caught by Jed- 
 burgh, had measured his length on the floor with 
 the latter half of his body well under a china cabinet. 
 It was one of those horribly comic incidents which 
 draw a scream of laughter but leave a sense of 
 consternation. Finally, peace restored, and the re- 
 covery assisted by a nip of rare old brandy, the two 
 excited conspirators had taken Jedburgh into their 
 confidence and had laid all the details of their little
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 199 
 
 plot bare before him. He had listened to the story 
 of their one remaining ambition with mixed feel- 
 ings, because Martha was the only girl who had 
 done strange things to his heart. Homeless him- 
 self, but with the home feeling strong upon him, his 
 sympathies were all with the old people and Bill, 
 who had achieved, as usual, whatever luck was 
 going. In his characteristically generous and loyal 
 way he rejoiced in Bill's success and refused to al- 
 low himself to look through the narrow window in 
 his high wall at a long vista of lonely years. 
 
 Mrs. Mortimer, so happy that the abominable 
 ravages of time had faded temporarily from her 
 face, had taken charge. " Now, Barclay," she had 
 said, " keep up the good work, my dear. I am 
 proud of the masterly way in which you have stood 
 aloof all this month. When Bill comes in continue to 
 know nothing. Let him go on believing that Martha 
 is his own discovery and that we have had noth- 
 ing to do with this matrimonial scheme. Do every- 
 thing you can to preserve the bloom of this romance 
 of his, which means so much to the poor old boy. 
 We will all profess the surprise and delight that he 
 will expect us to show, although not, perhaps, to the 
 extent of indulging in another imitation of Nejin- 
 sky. That 's a little too expensive." 
 
 " You 're right, my love," the Commodore had 
 replied, laying a rueful hand on the small of his 
 back. !( You shall see me act instead. I will give 
 you a dash of Guitry, Hawtrey, and Henry Miller. 
 I never conceived the possibility of Bill's taking
 
 200 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 himself so seriously. It 's exactly what we 
 want, of course, but is it war, middle thirties, or 
 what?" 
 
 "All three, and a combination of several other re- 
 actions, and all of them have played into our hands. 
 By the grace of propinquity we may now be able to 
 listen to the lusty cries of a grandchild before we 
 make room for the next occupants." 
 
 " By the grace of God," the Old Rip had corrected, 
 with that extreme of reverence that goes with men 
 who take to kneeling only when it does n't matter 
 how much their trousers bag. 
 
 Bill caught the three pairs of deliberately incuri- 
 ous eyes, gave his inevitable grin and took his place 
 with his back to the empty fire grate. All about 
 him still were the thrill and passion and surprise and 
 wonder of the moment when he had looked down 
 into the face of that young sweet thing and found 
 her eyes so dark with the depth of her love that 
 he had faltered and stood humble. He had caught 
 her as she had almost fainted with emotion and 
 kissed the color into her cheeks and held her tight 
 so that the fire of his blood should warm her back to 
 life. The scent of her hair clung to him and her 
 little cry still rang in his ears. He did n't try to 
 speak lightly because he knew that what he had come 
 to say meant almost as much to the old people as it 
 meant to himself. 
 
 " I 'm sorry I could n't join you at dinner," he 
 began. 
 
 " Not at all, my dear fellow, not at all," said the
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 201 
 
 Commodore, catching a yawn. That was his Haw- 
 trey touch. 
 
 " We missed you, Bill darling," said the white- 
 haired lady. 
 
 " But it gave me. the opportunity of blowing a 
 trumpet about your soldiering," put in Jedburgh. 
 
 There would have been a short silence but for the 
 raucous chorus of near-by frogs. 
 
 " I have something to tell you," said Bill, " that 
 will amaze you all." 
 
 " You don't say so," said the Commodore, lean- 
 ing forward with his hands on his knees in the 
 Guitry manner. 
 
 Mrs. Mortimer steadied her voice. " My dear 
 Bill, what can it be ? " 
 
 " Break it to us, old thing," chimed in Jedburgh, 
 playing up. 
 
 " Martha and I are engaged to be married," said 
 Bill, coming to it full tilt. 
 
 There was a beautiful pause, the tjiree listeners 
 acting the amazement which Bill was so keen to 
 achieve with a quite professional sense of drama. 
 With a huge effort the Old Rip held himself in to 
 allow his wife the first expression of congratulation. 
 He knew women and was a gallant fellow. Drop- 
 ping her camouflage the mother rose, fluttered 
 across the room to her big foolish boy, put her arms 
 round his neck and kissed him. The month's sus- 
 pense and anxiety and impatience had culminated 
 in success. It was a great moment. Unable to 
 trust himself to speak Barclay Mortimer grasped
 
 202 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 his son's hands, and turned to his wife. For once 
 he was unable to translate himself into a little 
 flowery speech, but in the deep bow that he gave 
 her all his thanks and admiration were laid at her 
 feet. 
 
 Finally Jedburgh went forward. " I 'm very 
 glad, old son," he said simply. " I hope you will 
 both know nothing but happiness." 
 
 Martha, the primrose, the incarnation of his 
 dreams. . . . 
 
 II 
 
 ONCE more, these two men who had come out of 
 the shambles of death to make the most of the life 
 which they had been permitted to retain, the one 
 eager to go straight, the other unable to go crooked, 
 sat late. 
 
 The irony of the fact that Bill loved and was 
 loved by the girl who alone could have given Jed- 
 burgh the home that he pined for was not brought 
 out. All that was an accident, a trick, one of those 
 damnable tangents which Fate delights in turning 
 life into from time to time, just apparently to make 
 things more difficult. Or, perhaps, in order to test 
 character by offering temptation and to strengthen 
 the spirit by giving pain. Who can say? It was n't 
 for Jedburgh to drag in himself and his feelings. 
 In any case Martha was in a preserve into which he 
 had no right to trespass. So he put the primrose 
 into his heart and locked her in. 
 
 " If you were the ordinary cove," said Bill, re-
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 203 
 
 loading his pipe, " you 'd have a fit at all this emo- 
 tion-stuff." 
 
 " Why, my dear old thing? " 
 
 They were in the morning room now. It was 
 smaller and less formal than the drawing-room, more 
 in the nature of a den. Few men can get down to 
 things and find anything comfortable to sit on in a 
 drawing-room. To smoke a pipe in such a place, 
 even if it consents to draw there, is as bad as laugh- 
 ing in church. 
 
 " Why, it probably would seem that we were 
 making much ado about very little. A man gets 
 engaged to a girl, it 's done every minute of the 
 day. It's one of the popular pastimes, and either 
 leads to a light-hearted marriage that can be broken 
 at will or goes no further than a few kisses, a few 
 , presents and a fairly quick awakening. And in any 
 case I suppose lots of people would burst into 
 hoarse laughter at the sight of a house of three 
 worldlings elevating love to a position of supreme 
 importance at a moment when the whole earth is 
 going from bad to worse under the misdirection of 
 the same damn fool politicians whose impotence 
 brought about the war." 
 
 "Yes, but for all the laughter of jackasses love 
 is a matter of supreme importance whatever may be 
 the state of the world. The poor old world would 
 very quickly become normal if that point were gen- 
 erally realized. The one great philosopher taught 
 us the simple truth pretty well at the beginning of 
 things and died on the cross to prove it. Don't be-
 
 204 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 come self -analytical, Bill. Thank your stars that 
 everything is going well, see that it continues to go 
 well and let the hoarse laughter of cynics blow away 
 like smoke." 
 
 Bill got up and began to walk about. " I can't 
 help being self-conscious about all this," he said, 
 with a deep line of worry on his forehead, " because 
 I want things to continue to go well so frightfully 
 much. It 's true that Martha loves me, a thing 
 it 's pretty hard to realize. But what are her people 
 going to say ? I 've got to march into the Wain- 
 wrights' house and get the once-over from a couple 
 of anxious parents, Teddy. There I shall stand, 
 quaking like a criminal, trying to look ten years 
 younger than I am and putting on the air of some- 
 one just out of the egg. Wainwright will have a 
 perfect right to put me through the third degree. 
 If he 's anything like the father he 's made out to be 
 he probably will. That means that I shall have to 
 dodge his questions and go forward through a 
 jungle of lies or own up and either get told off or 
 marry Martha against the wishes of her parents. 
 See that? It's natural enough for my people to 
 pooh-pooh all this, and even to contend that the 
 modern girl is inclined to think all the more of a 
 man who has knocked about. Their one remaining 
 ambition is to secure the future of the family at any 
 cost. I believe that, if things go through, I can 
 make Martha so happy in the present that she won't 
 want to go foraging into the past. All the same, 
 there is a new and upsetting germ of honesty in the
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 205 
 
 back of my brain that persists in telling me that I 
 am taking advantage of Martha's love and putting 
 her to a very obvious sacrifice. I 'm a battered 
 thirty-four and she 's a perfectly spotless nineteen. 
 She has nothing to remember or regret and I have 
 a cursed Blue Room full of memories, and the out- 
 standing point is that she is not the average sophisti- 
 cated unserious girl of whom my mother speaks. 
 In a sort of way she's a freak, as girls go to-day. 
 She's been brought up off the map among exactly 
 the same traditions that have made you what you 
 are. That 's great, and I 'm thankful for it. I 
 don't look at marriage with the eyes of a bachelor. 
 My wife has to be unlike any girl I Ve ever met, 
 Miss Respectable in fact. But is that fair? " 
 
 He came to a halt in front of the sofa upon which 
 Jedburgh had made himself comfortable. He had 
 jerked out all these sentences on his to-and-fro prowl. 
 And now he came to the big point, the sum total of 
 the thing that had put that deep line on his forehead. 
 
 " Shall I play the game according to Hoyle or 
 not? Shall I make a clean breast of it to Martha 
 and run the risk of smashing her illusions or let 
 things go ? That 's what I want you to tell me, 
 Teddy. Yesterday you advised me, to board up my 
 old Blue Room and said that it had been done be- 
 fore. I know it has. But I want you, knowing 
 everything from our point of view, to take the 
 Wainwright side. You 're the only man whose 
 final judgment is any good to me." 
 
 This was a mighty large order. . . . There was
 
 206 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 no man alive whom Jedburgh liked more than Bill 
 Mortimer. He knew him for a first-rate sportsman 
 and one who had taken into his war service a consis- 
 tent cheeriness and an utter disregard for self that 
 had acted like magic on his regiment. He had 
 found him out to be a kind-hearted, generous, 
 simple-minded, homogeneous fellow, with all the 
 normal weaknesses of sound and healthy men and 
 one or two facets to his character, such as sentiment 
 and a longing for children which, if properly de- 
 veloped, would put him up several pegs. He had 
 seen him under the influence of what he had called 
 the prodigal son's longing to indulge in an orgy of 
 reconstruction, to build a church out of the ruins 
 of his past. And he was in deep sympathy with all 
 that. But he was now asked to sit in judgment of 
 a case which affected the whole future happiness of 
 a girl whose love he would have given some years 
 of "his life to have won, a girl who had earned 
 the right to be taken into marriage by a younger 
 man with no Blue Room in his house, and he could 
 only do so by totally eliminating himself, which was 
 not easy. But he would do his best and give Bill 
 the advice that he needed from the ordinary sane 
 point of view. 
 
 " I don't see that you will achieve anything by 
 making a clean breast of it, except to hurt Martha," 
 he said. " She loves you and will marry you in 
 spite of everything. Much better let the dead past 
 bury its dead and leave your romance undamaged. 
 You will pay your bill in regrets. Why ask her to
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 207 
 
 share in the payment? Let her off, my dear chap, 
 and. see to it that you devote the life that you make 
 over to her entirely to her happiness. You can't 
 do more than that. Cease feeling your own pulse 
 and go ahead healthily. Your new leaf is clean and 
 full of promise. That seems to me the normal way 
 to look at it." 
 
 Bill heaved a big sigh of relief and sat down. 
 The worried line faded away. He had asked for 
 advice and received the only kind that he recognized 
 instantly as good because it was precisely what he 
 desired to have. He had not been wrong in bank- 
 ing on Jedburgh's wisdom and friendship. 
 
 " Thanks, Teddy," he said. " And now things 
 shall begin to move. I am going to wangle things 
 so that the marriage shall take place within a month. 
 You '11 be my best man, of course? " 
 
 " Of course," said Jedburgh, without the flicker of 
 an eyelid. 
 
 Ill 
 
 THINGS began to move the following evening, 
 which was Saturday. 
 
 Bill escorted his mother into the drawing room 
 after dinner, made her comfortable on her favorite 
 sofa, waited until the old man had settled down to 
 listen to one of Jedburgh's outbursts on the piano, 
 and then bent over the white-haired lady. 
 
 "So long, Mum," he said. "If you'll excuse 
 me I 'm afraid I shall have to leave you for the rest 
 of the evening."
 
 208 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 Mrs. Mortimer smiled and put his hand against 
 her cheek. 
 
 " No, nothing so good as that," he said, catch- 
 ing in her eyes a picture of the hill and of Martha 
 with her head on his shoulder. 
 
 "What then?" she asked. 
 
 " Nothing can go at my pace until I 've asked the 
 father's permission to marry his daughter in the 
 good old way. So I 'm off to the house to get it 
 over." He made a most rueful face. 
 
 This time Mrs. Mortimer laughed. How like a 
 boy Bill looked, standing there in a blue funk. She 
 did n't see anything to be nervous about. Was 
 there a father on earth who would n't jump at her 
 son as a husband for his daughter ? She would like 
 to see such a man. " I had forgotten all about that 
 ceremony," she said. 
 
 " I know. But I took the idea of it to bed last 
 night and have been worrying out the proper speech 
 the whole blessed day. Everything I Ve rehearsed 
 will fly out of the top of my head the minute I stand 
 on the mat, though. Whoo, but I 've got the needle. 
 However, I called up Tom Wainwright this morn- 
 ing and put him wise. He 's been playing golf with 
 his father all the afternoon and swore that he 'd 
 boost me a bit, of course not saying a word about 
 the engagement. It may make things a bit easier, 
 don't you think so ? " 
 
 The white-haired lady put her lips to the hand 
 that had clutched her ringer in the days when she 
 was not much older than Martha, the memories of
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 209 
 
 which had come back to her very strongly and 
 sweetly during the last month. It was nothing new 
 to play second fiddle to another woman. Bill had 
 replaced her very early in his career. But some- 
 how, at that moment, after having enjoyed his 
 affection and dependence for a whole month, she 
 could n't help feeling jealous of this girl who had 
 brought him to his knees, unreasonable as it was. 
 The whole scheme had been hers, the necessary 
 step to the fulfillment of her last desire. " Poor old 
 mother," she whispered, turning a sob into one of 
 her soft laughs. 
 
 Bill did n't understand. He thought that age 
 was being resented, and as this was one of his own 
 grievances he bent down again and left on the 
 withered cheek a kiss that was very full of sym- 
 pathy. And the poor old mother interpreted this in 
 the way it read best to her and was humbly grateful. 
 The rewards of motherhood are like the rewards of 
 fighting men, afterthoughts conferred reluctantly. 
 
 The Old Rip, looking startlingly young in the 
 Cathedral light at the piano end of the drawing- 
 room, was absorbed in Jedburgh's improvising. He 
 had got up and was leaning on the instrument, a 
 graceful if somewhat too waisted figure. The false 
 brown of his hair and mustache appeared to be less 
 dead at that distance and his skin less meticulously 
 tightened up by astringents and the energy of Den- 
 ham's fingers. So Bill went out without disturbing 
 him. " Good God," he thought, passing through 
 the scented garden, " shall I have to make myself
 
 210 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 look like that at his age? Martha, the old man's 
 darling! . . ." 
 
 However, as Teddy Jedburgh had advised, he was 
 not going to feel his own pulse or go forward with 
 his eyes turned over his shoulder, in the manner of 
 Lot's wife. He was determined to go straight 
 ahead, with a rush, carrying Martha with him. The 
 new leaf was clean and full of promise. It was his 
 business to see that good things only were printed 
 upon it. He ran across the frontier of the two 
 places, the irresistible Bill Mortimer grin on his 
 good-looking face, his teeth gleaming under his 
 small mustache. Thirty- four? What of it! He 
 was utterly young, absurdly young, and sound in 
 wind and limb. He felt like a first-year undergrad- 
 uate keeping tryst with his best girl. But he 
 slowed down and felt the needle again, sewing him 
 through the solar plexus, when he came into the 
 lights of the Wainwright house. 
 
 And he drew up for a moment, not quite sure 
 that he would n't bolt back and send a letter instead. 
 The house struck him as being disturbingly Wain- 
 wrightian, forthright and upstanding, new and with- 
 out anything to hide. Its architect was an old 
 friend of Wainwright's. He had consciously de- 
 signed it to fit the character of its owner. It had 
 no frills. He had worked in no period stuff, given 
 it no broken roof line or rounded corners ; indulged 
 in no narrow and suspicious front door with a queer 
 knocker ; no slit windows with bottle glass. He had 
 set it down, in a wide bare space, frank and uncom-
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 211 
 
 promising, square, large, and defying criticism, its 
 wide bald front door led up to by wide bald steps. 
 It was essentially a house rather than merely a home, 
 the house of a man who had no broken roof lines or 
 rounded corners in his life, who had nothing to hide 
 behind period stuff and bottle glass windows. . . . 
 A victrola was at work. The tune of a lilting fox- 
 trot came through one of the open windows. The 
 click of billiard balls came too. ..." Now then, 
 Bill, you blighter. No jibbing. Take the jump 
 with a bit over." He hunted for the bell, a thing all 
 architects take a mischievous delight in hiding in 
 the most unlikely place. And it seemed to ring and 
 reverberate through the world. None too quickly 
 the door was opened by a resentful girl brought 
 away from a game of " Old Maid " with the gro- 
 cer's delivery man. Martha halted on the stairs, 
 with her heart in her mouth. . . . He had come to 
 ask father, and mother was in the billiard room 
 and they were both stiff-backed about the Morti- 
 mers! 
 
 Bill was shown into the drawing-room, but before 
 he could give himself another mental jerk lips were 
 on his lips and arms clasped tightly round his neck 
 and a little heart thumping against his chest. " Oh 
 Bill, you darling ! " 
 
 " I 've come to do it," he said. 
 
 She caught something of his nervousness. 
 "You're not afraid?" 
 
 He put his mouth to her ear. "Babe, I'm in 
 the bluest funk of my life."
 
 212 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 And they stood, close together, like the children 
 in the wood, seeing vague shapes of trouble, until 
 Martha caught the comic side of it all and threw 
 back her head and laughed. Major Bill Mortimer, 
 hero, knight, lover, come to ask for the Wain w right 
 kid and afraid ! It was too funny for words. 
 
 Then Tom dashed in and found Bill examining 
 the contents of the Atlantic Monthly and Martha 
 putting a photograph straight on an octagonal table. 
 
 " Oh hello, Major," he cried out, his round face 
 shining. " This is the best thing that ever hap- 
 pened. Come along to the billiard room and 
 meet . . ." 
 
 "Right," said Bill. "Wait a second. Er . . . 
 did you manage . . ." 
 
 " You bet I did. It 's easy. It 's a walk-over. 
 Come on." And as Martha led the way, with her 
 eyes like stars, her lips a little apart and her young 
 breast rising and falling, Tom clutched at her hand 
 and gave her an emotional wink. If he had been 
 given the choice of every man alive as the one to 
 take his sister he would have plumped for good old 
 Bill. Didn't he know him backwards . under con- 
 ditions that find out the sort of stuff a man is made 
 of? 
 
 Down for the first time for some weeks, Mrs. 
 Wainwright sat with a rug over her knees and a 
 shawl round her shoulders. She might have been 
 twin sister to the model who sat for the woman in 
 Millais' pictures. All about her there was the air of 
 a Madonna who knew the price of eggs and had
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 213 
 
 no intention of being " done " by anybody. Her 
 face grew a shade more pale as the son of those 
 blameworthy Mortimers came in with her two chil- 
 dren. Something in Martha's eyes made her catch 
 her breath. 
 
 " Bother, you know Major Mortimer? " 
 
 " No. I have not had that pleasure." The little 
 woman had the fighting spirit. 
 
 Bill bowed over her hand and murmured a stere- 
 otyped phrase. Here was antagonism. 
 
 " Dad, you 've met " 
 
 Wainwright held out a cordial hand. " Never," 
 he said. " I much regret to say. But I am ex- 
 tremely glad to do so now. You know my daugh- 
 ter, Major Mortimer?" It was a perfectly guile- 
 less lapse of memory. He had forgotten for the mo- 
 ment that Martha and Tom had recently dined at 
 the Mortimer house and all that. 
 
 But it staggered Bill. Great Heaven, what a 
 jump he had to take. He might have fallen from 
 Mars. The only bright speck on the horizon was 
 provided by Tom, who stood beaming upon him. 
 Martha fluttered about, trying to hide excitement 
 under a mask of casualness. 
 
 Bill could see, plainly enough, that although Mr. 
 Wainwright accepted his visit in the friendliest way 
 and without any suspicion of its object, Mrs. Wain- 
 wright's eyes were upon him like those of a mother 
 fox at the approach of a hound. Intuition had told 
 her that he had come after her girl. All over her 
 pretty pale face was the question, " How far has
 
 214 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 this gone?" Bill would have preferred to have 
 been under the bombs of enemy aircraft, even. 
 
 The room was a large one, cheerful and comfort- 
 able, a combination of sitting-room and billiard 
 room. It boasted one of those huge uncompro- 
 mising stone fireplaces with which nothing earthly 
 can be done and a collection of very red and white 
 pictures of the Pickwick period, with fat horses, and 
 rosy maids, and waggling cobble-stones and three- 
 bottle-men illustrating the good old times in a bland 
 and childlike manner that had its charm. 
 
 Tom rushed chairs forward, cigars and cigarettes, 
 and for a long half hour there was general conversa- 
 tion which went from the golf course to weather, 
 from President Wilson to the League of Nations. 
 When Bill faltered under the minute examination 
 of Mrs. Wainwright Tom plunged in like a porpoise 
 and away it went again, Wainwright more and more 
 taken by the visitor's good looks, modesty, and de- 
 lightful though only occasional grin. And all the 
 while Martha continued to flutter, now sitting on 
 the arm of her mother's chair, now standing with her 
 hand on her father's shoulder, saying nothing but 
 looking a dictionary. 
 
 And just as Bill was coming to the conclusion that 
 he would have to perform a strategic retreat and 
 write a letter under the supervision of the Old Rip, 
 Tom, a born soldier, acted on his own initiative and 
 created a diversion. He sprang to his feet. " Dad," 
 he said, " how about taking the Major into your den 
 for a bit. I was telling him of the war relics that
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 215 
 
 you Ve collected. He 's frightfully keen to see 
 them." 
 
 Mr. Wainwright was up at once. He was proud 
 of his German helmets and iron crosses and always 
 glad to show off the room that he considered to be 
 the nicest in the house. " Come along then, 
 Major," he said. " No doubt you 've seen a better 
 lot than I 've been able to get together, but one or 
 two of the things are interesting, especially the diary 
 of a Hun flying man that was given to me by a 
 nephew of mine who found it in No Man's Land." 
 
 Bill followed him out, giving Tom one quick sig- 
 nal of thanks, but not daring to look at Martha. 
 Mrs. Wainwright's eyes were still upon him. Here 
 was his only chance. If there had been the rudi- 
 ments of ordinary social hypocrisy in his soul he 
 would have begun by saying, " Ah, this is a corking 
 room," and insisted on inspecting the den from 
 corner to corner with growing enthusiasm. Also, 
 he would have made several not too subtle refer- 
 ences to his host's high reputation and dragged in a 
 purely imaginary tag of conversation overheard at 
 the Country Club as to the excellence of his golf. 
 All this to prepare the way for his bolt from the 
 blue. But Bill was not made of this stuff. He had 
 never played the lap dog or picked up the tricks of 
 the glib society parasite. So what he did was to 
 close the door, plant himself in front of Martha's 
 father, give himself a metaphorical jab with the 
 spurs, and blunder head first into the thing that sat 
 so heavily on his chest.
 
 216 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 " Mr. Wainwright," he said, putting his hands in 
 his pockets and holding on to the floor with his feet, 
 " I love Martha most awfully and I want you to be 
 good enough to let her marry me. I ought to say 
 that I 've spoken to Martha and that she 's ready to 
 take the risk I mean willing to undergo 
 the ..." The Bill grin followed on the heels 
 of a wave of color that ran up to his forehead. 
 He cleared his throat and took the finish hard. 
 " In fact, she loves me and if you 've no objection 
 we should like to make plans to be married right 
 away." 
 
 An equally simple man, devoid of social veneer, 
 Wainwright gasped. This was indeed a bolt from 
 the blue. It had occurred to him vaguely at odd 
 moments that Martha would one day be carried out 
 of his life and home and he had turned cold at the 
 thought of the appalling gap that she would leave 
 in them. But this was sprung so suddenly, without 
 a preliminary hint. He knew nothing of this man 
 except that he was a noted polo-player, Tom's Major, 
 the son of two notorious people whose lives had run 
 on totally different rails from his own, that he 
 was, although palpably a gentleman and a very win- 
 ning person, years older than his little girl. . . . 
 
 " Good God," he said, standing aghast. 
 
 And there was one of those strange silences dur- 
 ing which it is popularly supposed that an angel 
 passes over the grave of a seaman, though why 
 a seaman necessarily nobody seems to know. And 
 during this the two men held each other's eyes, the
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 217 
 
 one deeply disappointed at the reception given to his 
 question, the other trying to find himself in a blank 
 maze among all the windings of which Martha, the 
 cheerful dependable Martha, the apple of his eye, 
 was missing. 
 
 " You don't like the idea," said Bill, finally. 
 
 And that brought Wainwright back into the pres- 
 ent with a thud. Good Lord, what had he said? 
 " I never suggested that," he answered, nervously. 
 " You caught me in the wind, I think. Honestly, 
 you 're the last man " 
 
 " Say it," said Bill. 
 
 "Well, then, with apologies, you're not my idea 
 of the man Martha would come to me about, Major 
 Mortimer. When I thought about it at all, which, 
 selfishly enough, I 've tried not to do, I saw a young, 
 a younger fellow, the son of a man of my own 
 class, in business, building up a career, and all that. 
 You don't work I 've got to say this and my 
 wife will be afraid that the example of the Commo- 
 dore No, I can't go on." 
 
 Good Lord, he was going to ask for the key of the 
 Blue Room ! . . . " Yes, go on," said Bill. 
 
 " Sit down," said Mr. Wainwright. He pointed 
 to a chair and placed another near by ... With- 
 out trying this man made himself liked. He had 
 straight eyes and was a sportsman. He made it 
 possible to talk the A B C of things without jug- 
 gling with words. He certainly could offer Martha 
 pretty well everything there was from the worldly 
 point of view, money, leisure, travel, and pres-
 
 218 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 ently the old house. Tom was crazy about him, and 
 he ought to know. He had been a fine soldier, up- 
 holding the honor of the United States. . . . 
 
 " I 've just this to say, and nothing else really 
 matters." A little tremble crept into Wainwright's 
 voice. " Martha has n't known any men, living out 
 here, beyond the commuting lines. She was barely 
 seventeen at the time we went into the war, two 
 years late, and with Tom in it and his young friends 
 joining up, she had less chance than ever to measure 
 men and come to conclusions. Then you come 
 back, Tom's Major, of whom he had written in 
 glowing terms, and find her in a state of khaki 
 ecstasy, and it may be and I'm afraid of this, 
 deadly afraid, Mortimer that unless you give her 
 time to get back to normal she may wake up when 
 it 's too late. I have to speak like this. She means 
 I can't say how much to me. But if her love for 
 you is the big thing " 
 
 " Ask her," said Bill, eagerly. 
 
 After a moment's hesitation, Waimvright got up, 
 went to the door, called, came back and stood look- 
 ing at Bill in a curious half wistful half resentful 
 way, hoping that he was all right for Martha's sake, 
 feeling that he had come to steal the most precious 
 thing in that house. 
 
 Martha flew in like a bird, shut the door, went 
 straight to her father and put her face against his 
 shoulder. There was a strong light on the banker's 
 fine, well-balanced face, too deeply lined and too 
 white at the temples for a man of his years.
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 219 
 
 Bill was up, waiting. He was without fear. 
 Yesterday, on the hill, as the sun was going down, 
 there had been something in Martha's eyes that al- 
 lowed him now to stake his soul on the depth of her 
 love. 
 
 But before Wainwright could find further words 
 the door was opened again, and his wife came into 
 the room, paler than ever, but with a firm step and 
 the halo of motherhood about her pretty head. 
 
 " Why am I left out? " she asked. 
 
 In three strides Bill was at her side. He drew 
 her hand through his arm and led her down. 
 
 " Mother," said Wainwright, " Major Mortimer 
 has come to ask us for Martha. I called her in to 
 tell me if she is quite certain that he is the man for 
 her, absolutely sure of herself. If so there is noth- 
 ing for us to do to keep her, nothing for us to say, 
 except good luck." 
 
 Mrs. Wainwright gave a strange cry, freed her- 
 self from Bill and held out her arms. It was not 
 the mother who held her child, but Martha who held 
 the little delicate woman whose work she had done, 
 whose prop she had been, and who, in the nature of 
 things, must do without her soon when the nest was 
 deserted. 
 
 And all three listened to an outburst of young 
 lyrical passion that shook their hearts and stirred 
 their blood. 
 
 " He is the man for me, the only man in this 
 world. Night and day for two years, night and 
 day, I Ve loved and waited and prayed, in agony and
 
 220 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 anguish, and if he had never come back I should 
 have loved and waited and prayed again, night and 
 day for the rest of my life. And if he 'd come back 
 and passed me by I should have gone on doing my 
 job, but in agony and anguish, night and day, for he 
 is the only man in this world for me." 
 
 And then, kissing her and clinging for a moment 
 in a sort of despair, Mrs. Wainwright turned to 
 Bill and stood back as white as a lily. " She is 
 yours," she said. 
 
 And Bill looked at Wainwright, who nodded and 
 tried to smile. It was a poor effort. The den must 
 lose its partner. 
 
 And like a bird again Martha flew into Bill's arms 
 and held up her face. 
 
 And the mother went to her husband for com- 
 fort. 
 
 IV 
 
 AFTER that Bill continued his policy of wangling 
 with an amount of nervous energy that put both 
 houses into a fever of movement. Having obtained 
 the consent of the Wainwright parents to his en- 
 gagement, a tremendous step in the right direc- 
 tion and one that left innumerable bunkers behind, 
 he decided to strike while the irons were hot and 
 bring the date of the wedding nearer by two weeks. 
 This was not going to be an easy business, because 
 Mrs. Wainwright held old-fashioned ideas on the 
 question of a trousseau, and having faced the in- 
 evitable might insist upon indulging in an orgy of
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 221 
 
 sentimental femininity which could only be satisfied 
 by a riot of dressmaking and a long list of visits to 
 department stores. 
 
 Martha was willing to walk out at any moment, 
 find a church and get married. Had n't she been 
 waiting for two years and a month? And Bill, to 
 whom every moment had become precious, would 
 have urged this easy course but for the advice of his 
 mother. " Dear Bill," she said, with the impatient 
 man pacing the room and wrecking the peace of the 
 old quiet house, " we must consider the feelings of 
 Mrs. Wainwright. She has inherited a certain Jane 
 Austenism from her Boston relatives and won't be- 
 lieve that this marriage is made in Heaven unless 
 Martha has at least four full trunks of perfectly new 
 things. Once Boston always Boston, you know 
 that. She has only just recovered from a long ill- 
 ness and is still delicate and frail. On top of this 
 she has been suddenly tossed into a state of mental 
 chaos, at the bottom of which there is a very natural 
 fear as to the wisdom of letting her little girl slip 
 out of her righteous home into that of those wicked 
 Mortimers. A month must seem to her to be al- 
 most indecent haste. What the poor dear lady 
 will say to a fortnight I really dare not think." 
 
 "Well, can't you see her," said Bill, "and get on 
 her soft side by saying that July honeymoons are 
 lucky, or something. She may be superstitious. I 
 am and so 's Martha. We 're frightfully nervous 
 about August, and of course September is simply 
 asking for it. Martha has two absolutely new
 
 222 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 frocks, she tells me, and loads of the other things. 
 She could dash into town and fill a van with clothes 
 in three hours. I 'd go with her and help her 
 choose them." 
 
 " A most immoral idea. For pity's sake don't 
 suggest such a proceeding. Besides, why give away 
 the fact that you know anything about what girls 
 wear? Leave it to me, Bill. Mr. and Mrs. Wain- 
 wright are coming to dinner to-night with Tom and 
 the dear child and I will see what can be done to 
 what 's the word that you Ve brought back ? 
 wangle things your way." 
 
 "Great work!" said Bill, and disappeared at a 
 run. He was going riding with Martha in half an 
 hour. There was no time to lose. 
 
 It was lucky for the Old Rip that he had stopped 
 for a moment to admire himself in the glass in the 
 hall. Otherwise there would have been a collision 
 at the door. He had just performed his morning 
 two-mile walk up and down the long drive from the 
 house to the gates, followed under protest by his old 
 water-spaniel which took no further exercise for the 
 day on any pretext. Made up for a warm morning 
 in a blue flannel suit with brass buttons and brown 
 and white shoes that were the bane of Denham's 
 life, the Commodore did not feel as cool as he 
 looked. The routine had gone to the winds. The 
 beautiful regularity and smoothness of pre-Bill days 
 had been suddenly shattered. That boy, being 
 officially engaged, now broke all the laws, had come 
 late to breakfast, left before it had run its courses,
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 223 
 
 and was more like a kite without a tail than anything 
 else. " It is appalling," the Old Rip said to himself, 
 "and completely undermines all Denham's work on 
 my face. However, it is for the good of the family, 
 and it 's about time I placed that before mere per- 
 sonal comfort. My reformation is complete." 
 
 Mrs. Mortimer welcomed him with a smile of 
 quite genuine admiration, and, it being desirable to 
 cajole him into his best temper for the trying even- 
 ing that was to come, translated it into words. 
 " My dear Barclay, you really are a most wonderful 
 person. I thought Bill had come back until I real- 
 ized that you alone among men wore clothes so 
 well." 
 
 The old fellow preened himself at the double 
 compliment. Nothing could have given him greater 
 delight. He raised his wife's hand to his lips as 
 only he, and the unessential husband of the dear 
 dead Italian, could do it. But the last remnants of 
 <i never very keen sense of humor bubbled up un- 
 expectedly. "My love," he said, "continue to say 
 those charming things to me, but accept my promise 
 at once to face our exemplary neighbors with the 
 utmost tact and diplomacy. In one evening I guar- 
 antee to prove how cruel and wicked is the tongue 
 of gossip. If Mrs. Wainwright does not take home 
 with her a new opinion of me that will make her 
 deeply regret her preconceived ideas I will eat my 
 Panama hat cooked as a cereal." He chuckled like 
 a sardonic parrot which had spent most of its re- 
 ceptive life in the cabin of a sea captain,
 
 224 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 The white-haired lady gave a little laugh. " As 
 I have often said before, Barclay, you ought to have 
 been either a bishop or an ambassador. I think that 
 if I wear my plainest dress and no jewelry, we tell 
 Albery to serve nothing but a little Burgundy and we 
 both refrain with grim determination from talking 
 of anything but purely local things there will be a 
 chance of our getting through the evening by the 
 skin of our teeth. The last time I played the part 
 of Plain Woman was at the house in New York 
 when as Chairman of the Society for the Propaga- 
 tion of the Principles of Moral Conduct among the 
 Mixed Choirs of the Country I entertained the 
 members at tea." 
 
 And then, by mutual consent, these two people 
 who had been forced to become mere observers of 
 life and could very easily see the end of the road 
 when they had the courage to look in that direction, 
 dropped artificiality. In a sort of way they went 
 together from the metaphorical stage on which they 
 did their daily stunts for each other's entertainment 
 and sat in a room behind the scenes perfectly 
 natural and human creatures for a brief space, anx- 
 ious to do everything to push forward the marriage 
 that was so vital to their plans. 
 
 " I 'm scared about to-night, Lylyth," the old man 
 said. " I want desperately for everything to go 
 without a hitch. I hope to God I shan't say or do 
 anything to jar Mrs. Wainwright and make her put 
 a spoke in the wheel. Do you think I 'd better be 
 unwell and spend the evening upstairs ? "
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 225 
 
 "But why, Barclay? You wouldn't desert me, 
 surely?" 
 
 "Good Lord, no. Only, well, to tell the bit- 
 ter truth, my dear, I caught something that was 
 said about me at the Country Club yesterday by a 
 man of the Wainwright type, I mean the hard- 
 working, self-made, backbone-of-the-country man 
 who has an absolute and perfectly natural contempt 
 for one who never did a stroke of work in his life 
 except in the way of enjoyment. ' God/ he said, 
 hardly waiting for me to pass, ' what a comic.' 
 H'h .... Well, it might do Bill and the cause a 
 service if I withheld myself from this first meeting 
 and left you to do the honors and break down the 
 prejudices. Tell me frankly, Lylyth. Never mind 
 my feelings, my dear. I 'm all out for Bill." 
 
 But Mrs. Mortimer had none of the deadly hon- 
 esty that goes with the power to hurt. The absence 
 of this falsely youthful man with the elaborate man- 
 ners of a former generation would certainly help 
 things. He must inevitably seem to the narrow 
 Mrs. Wainwright to be the epitome of rips, and fill 
 her with apprehension at the thought of his effect 
 on Martha. From what she judged of the child's 
 mother she did not possess the imagination to see 
 in Barclay Mortimer not a comic but a tragic figure, 
 clinging pathetically to life and imbued only with 
 a touching eagerness to welcome a grandchild be- 
 fore his summons came. So she lied with her 
 usual charm, as all kind women should, and took a 
 chance.
 
 226 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 "Bill and I would never forgive you if you left 
 us in the lurch," she said. " Before the end of the 
 evening Mrs. Wainwright will be finding excuses 
 for your gallant history and putting the blame on 
 the sirens who led you astray." And she kissed her 
 hand to him. 
 
 Poor old fellow, brought back to childhood by 
 the degenerating hand of age. His mouth did 
 strange things and his eyes flooded with tears. 
 "You you have a golden heart, my dear," he 
 said. " I wish that I had been a better man to 
 you!" 
 
 It might have given some satisfaction to them 
 both to know that the Wainwright parents were 
 equally scared at the evening which faced them, 
 equally anxious to make a good impression. Martha 
 loved Bill in a way that carried all before it. And 
 Bill, it was perfectly plain, returned it in kind. 
 Who were they, then, to punish these two for the 
 sins of their parents ? What else could they do but 
 accept the inevitable with courage and prayer and 
 be as nice as they could to Bill's father and mother 
 for Martha's sake? 
 
 " The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good 
 and ill together." 
 
 Bill escorted his mother's guests as far as the 
 bridge, walking with Mrs. Wainwright. Jedburgh 
 followed with Martha, telling her a story of Bill's 
 coolness under fire which made her eyes flame with 
 pride. Tom and his father brought up the rear,
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 227 
 
 arm in arm. The boy would marry some day, and 
 then what? 
 
 There were several moments of acute jealousy 
 and startling realization of the change that had 
 taken place in their lives when Mr. and Mrs. Wain- 
 wright walked on without Martha, seeing the pic- 
 ture of her in Bill's arms through the back of their 
 heads. 
 
 It was not late, but with the feeling that to-morrow 
 would be the first of a short series of crowded days 
 no one stayed up. Wainwright unhooked his wife's 
 frock. He had n't the remotest idea how she felt 
 about the evening and being a wise man left it to 
 her to express herself without questions. " Those 
 Mortimers " had often been the subject of shocked 
 conversation during the last two years, and Martha's 
 friendship with the white-haired lady had caused 
 much heart-burning. What now? He himself 
 had been completely won over by Mrs. Mortimer, 
 had found the Commodore, after the first shock, 
 most kind and delightful and had never been in a 
 house that he liked so much. Would his wife have 
 the moral courage to eat her words and own up to 
 a new point of view, he wondered ? If so, he would 
 be considerably surprised and very proud. A 
 woman who could alter her mind could alter any- 
 thing. 
 
 " How did you like the dinner service ? " she 
 asked, doing her hair and coming to the Great 
 Question in her own way.
 
 228 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 "Stunning," replied Wainwright, who hadn't 
 noticed it. 
 
 " I wish we'd bought some of those hooked rugs 
 at Kennebunkport last year. They go best, of 
 course, with Colonial furniture, but they would have 
 looked nice in this room. I saw several to-night 
 that made my mouth water. It 's a very wonderful 
 house, you know, John." 
 
 " Is it? " He showed no enthusiasm. 
 
 " Well, could n't you see that it was ? History, 
 atmosphere, refinement and everything so spotlessly 
 clean and well kept. It 's like one of the old famous 
 show houses in England. It 's a very fine family." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so." 
 
 " You suppose so ? * -But, my dear John, did n't 
 you see the story of its achievements in those beauti- 
 ful portraits? The Mortimers have been making 
 American history since the earliest days. Where 
 were your eyes, John ? " 
 
 But Wainwright had been married too long to 
 permit himself to laugh. V I was looking mostly 
 at Mrs. Mortimer," he said, taking out his studs. 
 
 " John, it 's my opinion that Mrs. Mortimer, like 
 other women who have taken leading positions in 
 society, has been maligned. There is a sweetness 
 about her, and .... and a simplicity that could 
 not belong to any woman who had not lived and 
 thought well, and I very soon noticed that her 
 love for Bill, from the way she looked at him, was 
 much too great to go with the the flightiness of 
 which she has been accused."
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 229 
 
 Bill, how easily she had achieved that name. 
 Unexpected creatures, women. He was so con- 
 sumed with curiosity to hear what she would say 
 about the old man that he put the question. It was 
 his first mistake. 
 
 "I don't like him," she replied. "Like all men 
 who dye their hair he looks a little unearthly. I 
 don't mean angelic, but weird, grotesque. One ex- 
 pects him to fall to pieces and sits on tenterhooks. 
 He looks like an actor leaving a theater after a mat- 
 inee in his make-up. Not that I 've ever seen one. 
 All the same, he must have been very handsome 
 when he was young, and I always think that noth- 
 ing is a greater handicap to a young man than that, 
 especially when he begins with too much money and 
 nothing to do. I don't withdraw my opinion of the 
 Commodore. He has done things that must make 
 his ancestors, and do make, he told me so, look 
 down upon him with anger and contempt. But, 
 and this he told me too, he has suffered great re- 
 morse and is a changed character. And he gave me 
 one beautiful and moving thought, John. He said 
 that Bill had done a great deal in his war service to 
 wipe the stain from the family but that it was to 
 Martha that they all looked to place the name back 
 to where the late Mortimer men had left it, to 
 our little Martha, John. Think of that, dear." 
 Her voice broke. 
 
 Wainwright had been thinking of that all the 
 evening, and, he had to confess it, without over- 
 whelming satisfaction. He did n't honestly give
 
 230 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 a tinker's curse about the glory of the name of 
 Mortimer. His one intense anxiety and concern 
 was for Martha to be happy with Bill. The more 
 he saw of Bill the more he found him a good sports- 
 man, and a most likable fellow, cheery, sincere and 
 without side. His baby, his dear pal-daughter, who 
 had stuck to home and played the game with such 
 pluck and made herself a place in his house and 
 heart that would be cold and empty when she had 
 gone, she was his one consideration and her hap- 
 piness his only thought. Never mind Bill's people. 
 Was Bill all right? He was thankful to believe 
 that he was. . . . When was his wife coming to 
 Bill, by the way, the one who really mattered? 
 
 But before Mrs. Wainwright brought Bill into 
 her summing up of that epoch-making evening, she 
 went round by the silver and Albery, the unostenta- 
 tious meal and wine, the length of the drawing- 
 room, the size of the closets and the quietness of 
 Jedburgh. "I like Bill," she said finally. "He's 
 he 's such a boy. I 'm thankful to be well again, 
 John. There are only two weeks in which to get 
 Martha's trousseau together." 
 
 All of which, especially the last remark, went to 
 prove that the white-haired lady's promise to wangle 
 things had been very well kept. 
 
 V 
 
 THE excitement of the following days was added 
 to by the extraordinary publicity that was given 
 the announcement of tbe forthcoming marriage.
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 231 
 
 Martha had never dreamed of finding her name and 
 photograph in the papers and was, as might be ex- 
 pected, utterly unaware of the fact that this is an 
 almost too easy feat to achieve. You might have 
 supposed that the Mortimer- Wainwright wedding 
 was almost as important to the public as the many 
 grave problems which followed upon the heels of 
 the war. The history of the Mortimers was 
 dragged out of dusty pigeonholes and printed on 
 front pages, hashed up in society columns witt 
 spicy comments and inaccurately referred to b} 
 paragraphists in the Women's Sections of evening 
 papers. Strings of male and female reporters in- 
 vaded the quietude of the two houses with the in- 
 evitable camera, and privacy was debauched. 
 
 But through it all Mrs. Wainwright drove to 
 town daily with Martha, ticking off items on an 
 ever lengthening list. It was not easy to buy sum- 
 mer clothes in shops which in their race to be ahead 
 of time were already given over to autumn wear 
 and furs. As to all good mothers, this was a time 
 of exhilaration and pain, and Mrs. Wainwright, 
 swept out of the individualism of the sick woman, 
 enjoyed both sensations fully. 
 
 Wearing an engagement ring upon which Bill had 
 spent deep thought and much money Martha fol- 
 lowed her mother from shop to shop as in a dream. 
 To see her standing among deft-fingered dressmak- 
 ers with a genius for placing pins, far away, a little 
 odd smile on her lips, not knowing or caring whether 
 the things being made for her were good or bad, for
 
 232 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 night or day, must have been a little irritating to 
 those concerned. 
 
 " Do you like that effect, darling? " 
 
 "Yes, Mother." 
 
 "But don't you think it would be better with 
 this piece brought round like this instead of like 
 that?" 
 
 "Yes, Mother." 
 
 " And are you quite sure about the color? " 
 
 " Yes, Mother." 
 
 " You don't think you 'd like a little relief at the 
 waist?" 
 
 " Yes, Mother, I mean no, Mother." 
 
 Whereupon Madame would shrug her Fifty-Sev- 
 enth Street shoulders, and Mrs. Wainwright, dis- 
 appointed but remembering her own far-off days of 
 first love, would go back to her trousseau-collecting 
 with a renewed sense of responsibility. 
 
 It was during this period of bustle and fluster and 
 continually arriving boxes from New York to a 
 house left more or less to the untender mercies of 
 his servants, that Wainwright was brought face to 
 face with the problem that has to be solved by all 
 men who live to give away their daughters in mar- 
 riage. Lunching at the Bankers' Club in the middle 
 of the week, one of those over-breezy smack-you-on- 
 the-back men went up to him, gave his usual hearty 
 and meaningless laugh and proceeded to say all the 
 wrong things in quick succession. " Marrying off 
 the daughter, eh, Wainwright? Be a grandfather 
 before you know where you are, haw-haw. Bit
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 233 
 
 of a sport, Bill Mortimer, reg'lar chip of the old 
 block. About time he settled down and became 
 domestic. Always had a soft side for the ladies, 
 that chap, and picked some fancy ones too, as I 
 know. Envied him the blond angel that was 
 with him on his yacht when he put into Bermuda 
 the winter before the war. I '11 say she was 
 some peach. Congratulations, old man. It 's a fine 
 family. . . ." 
 
 Wainwright lay awake that night, with the old 
 and almost inevitable problem weighing heavily on 
 his soul. Hitherto, in his desire to deal bravely and 
 unselfishly with the loss of his little girl, he had al- 
 lowed himself to consider nothing but the question 
 of her immediate happiness. She had loved Bill 
 Mortimer for two years, and had consecrated her 
 prayers to his safety from the day that he went away 
 to the day that he came back. In the right romantic 
 spirit of all young things who have not undergone 
 the flattening-out process of boarding-school sophis- 
 tication she had exalted this man to the rank of a 
 hero, enrolled him among the gods. He was and 
 must be without fear and without reproach. In her 
 outburst of love and triumph that night in the den 
 which had carried Wainwright and his wife off 
 their feet, these facts were established beyond argu- 
 ment. The mother, like Wainwright himself, had 
 been swept before the tidal wave of Martha's un- 
 questioning faith into a blind acceptance of Bill at 
 his face value. Their prejudices had crumbled 
 shamefacedly after meeting and feeling the charm
 
 234 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 of the Mortimers in their rare old house. They had 
 not allowed themselves or been allowed time to con- 
 sider the moral side of Bill's suitability. The mate- 
 rial side was so obviously right. In one moment, 
 however, Slap-you-on-the-back had thrown down 
 the screen and disclosed the evidences of a Blue 
 Room in Bill's life. And now, with his house chok- 
 ing with trousseau, the papers reeking with an- 
 nouncements, and only a few days remaining be- 
 tween the power to act and the tying of the knot, 
 Wainwright lay stark awake in the middle of the 
 night. And the problem that had to be solved was 
 this, older than the hills : was he to exert all his in- 
 fluence to save the daughter whose life and mind 
 were as spotless as the heart of a rose from the 
 hands of a man who had been " a sport " and " a 
 chip of the old block," or fall back on the usual mas- 
 culine line of argument in such a case, shrug his 
 shoulders, say men will be men, and let it go at 
 that? . . . For something over eighteen } r ears this 
 child, his only girl, the apple of his eye, had belonged 
 wholly to him and his wife, tended and cared for, 
 protected and inspired. Suddenly, simply for the 
 reason that a total stranger had touched a chord and 
 filled her heart with music, was all this to go for 
 nothing, was she to be delivered over without a 
 word? The blond angel of the Bermuda episode 
 alone made Bill unable to hold his rank among the 
 gods. It was implied that, as " a sport," he had 
 other disqualifications. Were this child's love and 
 faith to be left unshaken, or was it Wainwright's
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 235 
 
 duty as a sane man and owner by all the rights of 
 fatherhood to hold up his hand, even now, and cry 
 out " This man is unfit ? " 
 
 Wainwright's own life had been as clean as a new 
 slate. He had begun to earn his living at the age 
 of fourteen. So fully occupied had he been with 
 his day's work and his evening classes that there 
 had been no time left for looseness, and no spare 
 money. There had been nothing of the saint about 
 him, nor did he whip himself along the straight path 
 with the lash of religion. Ambition and the infi- 
 nite capacity for taking on all the work that he could 
 get had kept his nose to the grindstone. He had 
 marked out a goal for himself and gone for it. He 
 had been young when he married, and with the added 
 load of a young wife on his shoulders work had to 
 become a greater fetish than ever. His inclinations 
 had been divided equally between ambition and 
 home. He had been blessed with a temperament 
 which had no artistic tangents. It was nothing to 
 his moral credit, but wholly to his business one- 
 eyedness that when the ordinary self-indulgences 
 called they were unheeded. He did n't say to him- 
 self now, " You are a good man, Wainwright, a bet- 
 ter man than others," and advertise his rectitude in 
 the market place like a prohibitionist and a Pharisee, 
 made up for the part in the ill-fitting self-conscious 
 clothes of a crank, ostentatiously subscribing to one 
 or other of the numerous creeds through which it is 
 difficult to find any real religion. He was not one 
 of those grossly pure men to whom everything is
 
 236 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 indecent, the self-appointed censors of life. He 
 had preserved his sanity and his sense of humor, 
 had grown in sympathy and tolerance and fully rec- 
 ognized the fact that he had himself escaped from 
 the penalties of human weakness only because he 
 had had no time and no money with which to make 
 hobbies of them. When, therefore, he rose in the 
 morning, tired but clear-brained, the conclusion that 
 he had arrived at was this. Somewhere on earth 
 there might be and probably was the man who was 
 fit in every respect to be the husband of his beloved 
 Martha. If he could be produced it was a hundred 
 to one against her falling in love with him. Here, 
 however, was Bill who adored her and whom 
 Martha adored, a simple, likable, boyish fellow, who 
 had been a first-rate soldier. He had already paid 
 certain installments for his mistakes. Everything 
 has to be paid for. It was probably true that in 
 some way in future, as his wife, Martha would be 
 called upon to pay the balance. But she loved 
 him, and that was part of the willing price of 
 love. All Wainwright could do was to be thank- 
 ful for small mercies, hope to God that Bill's love 
 for Martha was big and fine enough to make 
 him go straight from now on and leave it at 
 that. 
 
 VI 
 
 " TEDDY, old son," said Bill, one fine morning be- 
 fore breakfast, as they turned their horses' noses 
 stablewards after taking them over the jumps that
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 237 
 
 had been put up in the fields to the west of the house, 
 " everything 's going my way. It 's marvelous. I 
 can hardly believe it." 
 
 " Why ? You were born under a lucky star. 
 Has n't everything always gone your way ? " 
 
 " Yes, but this time, the one time in my life when 
 if things don't go my way they put me into an un- 
 holy smash, I Ve been afraid to rely on my good old 
 star. I don't mind telling you, old man, that the 
 last ten days have been the worst I Ve ever been 
 through. During every hour of 'em all I 've been 
 haunted with the fear of coming up against the little 
 devil who potters about the earth waiting his chance 
 to play his fiendish tricks with the plans of mice and 
 men." 
 
 Jedburgh ran his eyes over the good-looking face 
 of the bare-headed, sun-tanned man who rode at his 
 side. The happy-go-lucky expression which had 
 first attracted him to Bill when they had hunted to- 
 gether in England before the war was no longer 
 there. Nor had it been since he had arrived at the 
 house. Worry had drawn several lines under his 
 friend's eyes, and sleepless nights had left behind 
 them a nervous tension of which he had been pecul- 
 iarly free. Men of magnificent health who fall ill 
 for the first time imagine that the world has turned 
 upside down and see Death lurking at the foot of 
 the bed. Anxiety, which had been an utter stranger 
 to Bill, had hit him harder than it does the man who 
 had had other doses of it. " Well, there are only 
 three days more," he said, " and away you go on
 
 238 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 your honeymoon. I don't see what the little devil 
 can do now, Bill." 
 
 " I don't, either." But all the same he darted a 
 look from side to side and rapped his knuckles 
 against a branch. " The trousseau is more or less 
 all in. Martha is going to town for the last time 
 to-day. Mrs. Wainwright was very cheery with me 
 last night, almost motherly, in fact. And Wain- 
 wright, who 's one of the best, has dropped looking 
 at me as if I were a thief who had stolen Martha. 
 Tom is a boy one will like most awfully to have as 
 a brother. He 's a corker. One way and another, 
 then, there is n't a cloud in the sky and only three 
 days to go before I have the chance to show every- 
 body concerned that Bill's reconstruction is going to 
 be a lasting one, and that Martha, please God, shall 
 never regret taking him on for good and all. I 
 wish I could see you as happy as I am, old man." 
 
 Jedburgh wrinkled up his eyes. " Impossible, 
 Bill," he said. " While we 're indulging in a burst 
 of ego I '11 tell you something. The bloody war, 
 which people are gulling themselves into thinking is 
 over, has dug into my system. It 's in me like a 
 cancer. I don't believe there 's a dog's chance of 
 my getting cured and settling down somewhere to 
 breed horses or something, because every time I take 
 up the paper and see that all our work has gone for 
 nothing blasphemy rises to my head and I 'm an ill 
 man again. It 's no good your saying, ' Why take 
 it seriously ? What the devil 's it got to do with 
 you ? ' My answer is, it 's got over four of the
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 239 
 
 best years of my life to do with me, my home and 
 future, and all the dead bodies that I have only to 
 close my eyes to see lying about in vast heaps, for- 
 gotten, chucked into that massacre in vain. . . . 
 One came out of this orgy of lunacy, I mean we, 
 the older men, hoping with a great intensity that 
 the lessons of the war would be made immediate use 
 of and that its horror and madness would have 
 shocked some sort of unselfishness and nobility into 
 the souls of the creatures who ran us into the mess. 
 But, by God, that hope is a vain and foolish one, as 
 every single day goes to show. The men who are 
 misrunning the Peace show are the same political 
 muddlers who misran the war show. Without any 
 sense of shame they are in their same old jobs, 
 fighting and struggling for personal triumphs, ad- 
 vertising and misdirecting in the same old way. 
 They have come out of their funk holes to stand in 
 the limelight and take the bow with the same old 
 effrontery and cynicism, laughing like the devil 
 at ' those fools the people.' They have been per- 
 mitted to retain their hold of the various govern- 
 ments by us, you and me and the other fellow, be- 
 cause we don't care. They are perfectly safe to go 
 on drawing their salaries and being promoted every 
 time they fail and playing merry hell with all the ap- 
 palling problems their own particular war has left 
 in its wake. Each gang has its papers to boost them 
 and undermine their rivals and every single thing 
 they are doing now is not for the good of their 
 particular country but to strengthen their political
 
 240 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 party and consolidate themselves. The Govern- 
 ments are like a lot of backyard cats fighting for 
 bones. It 's a sight that must make every dead man 
 writhe in his grave, if he 's got one, and every 
 wounded man vow never again to allow them to 
 move him one inch. But all the same we shall con- 
 tinue to leave them where they are, because it 's too 
 much fag to organize against them, and they '11 mess 
 up the Peace as they messed up the war and go on 
 blundering and bleeding the people till the end of 
 time. It 's nobody's fault but ours, yours and 
 mine and the other fellow's. We '11 pay any price 
 to buy even half the right to look for happiness, 
 and snatch the sunny moments when they come. But 
 if we all cared about the universal happiness we 
 would n't let things remain as they are or leave our 
 fate to the tender mercies of the professional politi- 
 cians who have run civilization into its present 
 chaos." 
 
 He rode his horse into the yard, dismounted, gave 
 the bridle to a boy and with a look of apology to 
 Bill for his outpouring, walked off to be alone. His 
 crlse de nerfs demanded either solitude or mul- 
 titude. 
 
 Bill watched him go, asking himself who there 
 was to give his pal the right sort of tonic. He was 
 indulging in the most pitiable of all forms of fool- 
 ishness. He was kicking his foot against the 
 pricks, by which he achieved nothing but very sore 
 toes. Bill did n't mind being lumped into the " us " 
 who " did n't care," He frankly did not care.
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 241 
 
 The be-all and end-all of his hopes and desires was 
 to be safely and happily married to Martha and 
 wash out his past record by playing the game. For 
 the rest, well, yes, let Teddy place him among the 
 other fellows. Things seemed to come out pretty 
 right in the long run, in spite of the rotten politi- 
 cians. . . . He wondered whether Teddy Jed- 
 burgh would have flung more than an occasional or- 
 dinary curse at the heads of the old Bad Men if, 
 like himself, he were on the verge of marriage with 
 such a darling as Martha. 
 
 The same speculation entered Jedburgh's head as 
 the scent of the roses smoothed out his rage. He 
 would have rejoiced to believe that he had become 
 normal enough to let the earth stew in its own 
 grease till the crack of doom if Primrose were going 
 to be his wife. But he had come to realize the truth 
 of his malady. It was a cancer, as he had told Bill. 
 He was one of the numerous victims of permanent 
 shell shock caused by the sight of blood and blun- 
 ders whose soul contained the germ of revenge and 
 to whom happiness was no longer within reach. 
 Sooner or later he would have to go forth and speak 
 his thoughts aloud to crowds, and his friends, rais- 
 ing their eyebrows in horrified surprise, would say, 
 " Good God, Jedburgh 's gone dotty. He 's become 
 a Bolshevist." 
 
 VII 
 
 CUTTING breakfast Bill hurried to keep an ap- 
 pointment with Martha before she made her last
 
 242 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 trip to town. The path in the lengthening grass 
 from the bridge to the Wainwright garden had been 
 made by him since the day of hjs engagement. The 
 rolling field was alive with wild flowers, white and 
 yellow and purple streaked with the curious red of 
 sorrel. Half-tame squirrels, looking out wholly 
 for themselves, as usual, darted inquisitive looks at 
 Bill as he passed. Sunlight shimmered over every- 
 thing. 
 
 Dressed for the journey Martha waved her hand 
 when, from the flat rock on the crown of the in- 
 cline, she saw Bill waiting for her in the usual meet- 
 ing-place. She danced all the way down like a 
 wood nymph who had stolen conventional clothes, 
 her teeth gleaming and her eyes alight with the sheer 
 joy of being alive. And he caught her and swung 
 her off her feet, her laughter floating into the air 
 like blown petals. There was little of the diffident 
 lover about Bill these days. 
 
 It was only between kisses that she was able to 
 find out his plans for the day. " Please, please, 
 Bill. I Ve only two minutes." 
 
 " I 'm in a foursome this morning," said Bill. 
 " After lunch I shall be in town too." 
 
 " Meet me somewhere at five o'clock and drive 
 me back. Mother won't mind. Oh, Bill, you 
 must." 
 
 " I 'd love it, my sweet, but I have business to see 
 to that '11 keep me in town. I 'm going to dine in 
 my rooms and sleep there and see my lawyer again 
 in the morning."
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 243 
 
 If he had looked quickly behind the nearest tree 
 he might have seen the little devil lurking, with an 
 evil leer on his face. 
 
 " And you won't be here to-night ? What an aw- 
 ful blow ! This is the last time I shall see you then 
 until I stand trembling at the altar." 
 
 "Good Lord, why?" 
 
 " It 's Mother's idea. It is n't conventional for 
 us to have anything to do with each other during the 
 three days before the ceremony, she says." 
 
 Bill gave a perfectly sincere imitation of mental 
 collapse. 
 
 " But there 's the telephone, Bill, and here 's the 
 chance for you to write me letters and tell me prop- 
 erly all the things you 've forgotten to say. 
 Exactly how much you love me, you 've never 
 really told me that?" She crept as close as she 
 could and held up her face. 
 
 " It is n't easy to tell you that," said Bill. " I 'd 
 have to be a poet. And if I tried to write it, it 'ud 
 take all the rest of my life. And then someone 
 would have to edit my spelling." But the kiss he 
 gave her told more than all the volumes in the Pub- 
 lic Library. 
 
 " The last touches to my wedding dress to-day, 
 Bill," she whispered. 
 
 "What's it like, Babe?" 
 
 " White, I believe, but does it matter? " 
 
 " Nothing matters except the band that binds 
 you to me, darling." 
 
 There was a loud woo-hoo.
 
 244 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 " That 's Tom," said Martha. " I asked him to 
 let me know when the car came round." 
 
 " Oh, hang the car." 
 
 " No, I must go. It gives Mother ten fits to be 
 late for an appointment. Good-by, Bill." 
 
 " Not Good-by. I hate your saying that." 
 
 " So long, then." She flung her arms round his 
 neck. " I love you, I love you, I love you," she 
 said, " and then I love you." 
 
 " And I don't just love you," said Bill, wishing to 
 God that those words had never been on his lips be- 
 fore. " I adore you, my dearest. You are every- 
 thing in life to me. I only want the chance to show 
 you what I mean by that." 
 
 Once more the loud woo-hoo. 
 
 Martha broke away and up the hill she went, 
 turning for a moment at the top to wave her hand 
 again. 
 
 Bill went slowly back to the bridge, the brook 
 singing its merriest song to the trees under whose 
 crowded branches it ran and to the wild flowers that 
 watched it from the banks. But he did n't go home 
 at once. He went up to the hill of the Seven Sisters, 
 and sat there for a while, looking across the placid 
 valley to the smudge of hills beyond. His soul was 
 stirred to the exultation that comes to men who love 
 beyond expression and who realize, with joy and 
 amazement, that they are the master of a young and 
 exquisite life, that it is their almost divine responsi- 
 bility to act and speak and think in such a way as 
 that they shall inflict no bruise, however slight, no
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 245 
 
 disillusion, however fleeting. To this simple, hith- 
 erto happy-go-lucky, easily led man there came the 
 glorious feeling of having received permission to 
 begin life all over again, this time not for his own 
 pleasure but so that he might give unblemished hap- 
 piness to a little partner whose utter faith in him 
 was wonderful and awe-inspiring and the infinitude 
 of whose love filled him with a deep determination 
 to forget self and give everything. Overwhelmed 
 with a sense of gratitude for this favor he laid 
 himself, in spirit, at the feet of God and vowed, out 
 there under Heaven, to dedicate all the rest of his 
 years to the child whose heart had been placed in 
 his care and to justify himself for having been per- 
 mitted to go untouched by the hand of Death so that 
 he might be worthy of his trust. 
 
 God would not be God if He were not accustomed 
 to be forgotten except in moments of great pain or 
 great happiness. 
 
 VIII 
 
 BILL'S lawyer belonged to the old dignified school 
 of the Eighties, now almost extinct. His office 
 of many discreet and comfortable rooms was in one 
 of the old buildings in Union Square. Three part- 
 ners composed the firm, and each one sat in seclusion, 
 cheerful, urbane, and leisurely gentlemen whose 
 time and perspicacity were wholly at the disposal 
 of every individual client. Not for them the mod- 
 ern methods of unconcentrated rush, the pernicious 
 telephone, undammed in the outer office, which dis-
 
 246 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 turbed consultations with irritating persistence 
 nearly every two minutes. Not for them the dis- 
 cussion of other people's business with interrupt- 
 ing clerks nor the straining of voices above the con- 
 stant ticking of typewriting machines. In a per- 
 fectly quiet room, furnished like a study and with 
 an air of aloofness that inspired confidences, Bill 
 signed his will and testament and the papers relat- 
 ing to his marriage settlement, made an appointment 
 for the following morning, received the hearty con- 
 gratulations and good wishes of his friend and ad- 
 visor, and walked uptown under the waning light of 
 the afternoon sun with the complete satisfaction 
 of being one up on Fate. 
 
 The only evidences of war that still clung by ac- 
 cident to Fifth Avenue were Thrift Stamp posters. 
 If people looked at these at all it was with the quite 
 natural resentment that followed on the heels of the 
 revelations of the Government's colossal waste, ex- 
 travagance and mismanagement and with the sense 
 of anger at having mortgaged their income to take 
 up Liberty Bonds which, if they were obliged to sell, 
 gave them a loss and made them feel, rightly 
 or wrongly, that they had been " used " as pa- 
 triots, a most unfortunate reaction. The amaz- 
 ing Avenue had, otherwise, superficially recovered 
 itself. Its great business houses were under- 
 mined by strikes and a shortage of labor and 
 commodities, but outwardly they were as they had 
 been before Germany deliberately raised the lid 
 of Hell.
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 247 
 
 On his way to his apartment through the un- 
 countable crowd, each unit of which struggled ea- 
 gerly to escape from the City for the few short hours 
 before the equally eager struggle to reinf est it began, 
 Bill's eyes were on the future, the honeymoon, the 
 return to the old house, the quiet routine of a home 
 life that had never before been known to him. In 
 the first series of pictures that he conjured up 
 Martha was the dominating figure, young and sweet 
 and laughing, the hope of his family, the core of 
 his life and interests. And as these slipped away 
 they were replaced by others in which a new and 
 tiny presence came, the sight of whom did some- 
 thing amazing to his heart. And as he crossed 
 Fifty-Seventh Street with his eyes far ahead and a 
 smile on his lips a taxi was stopped suddenly on the 
 west side of the Avenue and two girls hurried out, 
 one paying the driver, the other making a fish-like 
 dart across the street to plant herself in front of 
 Bill. 
 
 " It is you," she said. " You looked so like St. 
 Anthony passing through the rude world that I 
 could n't believe it. Marry first and then become a 
 minister. Is that the great idea? " 
 
 From the future to the past and back with a jerk 
 to the present. " Oh hello, Birdie," said Bill. 
 " How are you? " 
 
 " So surprised that you remember little me, my 
 dear, that I don't know how I am. You Ve been 
 doing the aloof stunt pretty successfully since you 
 got back, have n't you, Bill ? "
 
 248 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 Susie Hatch came up and held out her hand. 
 
 " My dear Susie, where have you dropped 
 from ? " He looked round to see how many more 
 of the occupants of his Blue Room were going to 
 descend upon him. 
 
 The nimble-minded musical comedienne with the 
 plum-colored lips, the rouged cheeks and the thin 
 line of eyebrows which, having recently been 
 plucked, left her with a disconcerting expression of 
 permanent surprise, gave a gurgle of mirth. 
 " Don't be nervous, my dear," she said. " We 're 
 the only two. We spotted you from a taxi and just 
 had to hold you up to mingle tears. They 've been 
 washing your family linen pretty well in the papers 
 lately, eh?" 
 
 The look in Susie's eyes took Bill all the way back 
 to his cabin on the " lolanthe " and those days when 
 he had carried the sea-maid into life. 
 
 " Come along to my apartment," he said, " and 
 let 's have a yarn, if you can spare the time." 
 
 Susie shook her head. Her face was very white. 
 " I can't," she said, quickly. " I 'm sorry, but I 
 can't." 
 
 Bill understood and would not have pressed the in- 
 vitation. Not so Birdie, who had chirped her way 
 through several affairs since her interlude with Bill 
 and would probably chirp through several others 
 before her feathers began to fall. "Oh, Susie," 
 she said. "Don't talk that way, honey. This 
 means a whole lot to me. And I shall have plenty 
 of time before I have to do my bit to-night. Thank
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 249 
 
 you, Bill dear. We 'd love to look at the old place 
 once more, and wish you luck. Be a sweetie, 
 honey." 
 
 In the manner of all young women who belong to 
 the baby type and make an asset of a soft and cling- 
 ing irresponsibility she gained her point. Beneath 
 what Jeanne Dacoral called her pussy-purr-purring 
 there was a tremendous amount of will power. If 
 she did n't get what she wanted at the very moment 
 that she wanted it something snapped. 
 
 The apartment was in apple-pie order. Itoto had 
 been notified of Bill's intention to spend the night 
 in town and had used unaccustomed elbow-grease. 
 There was a rumor in the house that the rooms were 
 going to be sub-let and the furniture removed. 
 Itoto was playing up to be kept on. He wore a 
 photographic smile and bobbed about like an air 
 bubble in a bottle of cod liver oil. 
 
 " Ah, these dear, dear rooms," cried Birdie, 
 clasping her hands together and posing, devoid of 
 the elementals of sincerity, for sentiment. A 
 pretty, plump little person, with a tiny nose and 
 round chin and large blue eyes, she might have 
 looked charming and attractive but for her ineradi- 
 cable belief that it did n't matter how comic and im- 
 possible she made herself so long as the clothes she 
 wore had been declared " smart " by the ladies' fash- 
 ion papers. To see her standing in Bill's masculine 
 sitting room in a silly skirt that foreshortened her 
 body, mounted on the high heels of blunt-nosed 
 French shoes with laces wound up to her calves, with
 
 250 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 a string of pearls on an ample display of bosom and 
 an ugly little hat out of which, like a danger signal, 
 a yard of costly feathers stuck at a most absurd 
 angle, was enough to draw a gasp of derisive laugh- 
 ter from any stone gargoyle. And yet she was 
 blissfully satisfied at her appearance because it had 
 cost some thousands of dollars to achieve and was 
 quite the latest thing. Poor dear pathetic women, 
 how many of them eagerly sacrifice self-respect 
 on the comic altar of smartness. 
 
 Susie shuddered at the sight of the place which 
 stood for home and went over to the familiar win- 
 dow seat for the last time. 
 
 Far from happy or even comfortable, Bill opened 
 a box of cigarettes. He would have given a good 
 deal to have escaped from these sudden reminders 
 of dead days. 
 
 With a long-drawn sigh Birdie kissed her hand to 
 the sofa and the pictures and the old familiar sport- 
 ing trophies and forced a tear or two without any 
 serious effort. But her brain was working and a 
 new scheme taking shape. " Bill, dear/' she said 
 tremulously, " I must use the telephone. Excuse 
 me for a moment, will you?" She disappeared 
 into the familiar bedroom, shut the door and called 
 up Jeanne Dacoral, whom she had just left. The 
 number was provided with unusual alacrity. 
 " Jeanne ? Susie and I are at Bill's place. Come 
 over right away, my dear. I 'm going to make him 
 crack a bottle or two. He shan't be let off without 
 a touching scene of farewell and a little speech. It
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 251 
 
 would n't be right. Come right over quick. It 's 
 only a step." 
 
 It was only a step. Jeanne's apartment was in 
 Fifty-Eighth Street, west of the Plaza. 
 
 "Well, Susie, how goes it? " asked Bill. 
 
 " Fine," said Susie, in armor from head to foot. 
 
 "How's art?" 
 
 " Fine." 
 
 " That 's good. Where are you going for the 
 summer? " 
 
 " Haven 't decided yet, Bill. Somewhere with 
 Birdie within commuting distance. Rye, perhaps. 
 Her play looks like running through. She can drive 
 out after the show." She smiled up at him and 
 gave no sign of the ache that was in her heart. But 
 the hand that touched Bill's as he lit her cigarette 
 was as cold as ice. ... A very different girl this 
 from the one dressed in a faded blue suit of boy's 
 bathing clothes with her hair bleached almost to sil- 
 ver and her eyes as empty of man-knowledge as 
 those of a sea-gull. In the awkward pause that 
 came upon them >ill asked himself whether the life 
 that she had begged so intensely to be given was not, 
 after all, better in its effects than the inevitable pov- 
 erty and roughness and early loss of beauty that 
 must have been hers had she stayed in that sea- 
 sprayed village on the coast of Maine, to be the wife 
 of a fisherman, and the mother of a school of beach 
 urchins. Here, in the city, in spite of her wounded 
 heart, she had elbow room for her soul, means with 
 which to cultivate her artistic gifts and none of the
 
 252 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 sordid struggles to wrench a little peace, a little 
 comfort and an hour or two for dreams out of the 
 daily drab monotony to which he must have left 
 her. 
 
 He preferred, at any rate, to believe these things, 
 and, man-like, argued with his qualms of conscience 
 in favor of this view. 
 
 IX 
 
 "WELL," said Mrs. Wainwright, "that's over. 
 The wedding dress is finished." And in contra- 
 diction of her tone of emphatic relief she heaved 
 a sigh of perfectly natural feminine regret. No 
 words could describe the emotions of those busy 
 trousseau days. They had given her a renewal of 
 her youth. To women who have lived through the 
 great adventure of marriage however happily there 
 must always be much that moves to pity as well as 
 to excitement in the wedding preparations of their 
 daughters. The chances are all in favor of dis- 
 aster. 
 
 " Yes," said Martha. " That ' over." But she 
 was thinking less of the wedding dress than of the 
 hours during which she had been concocting a plan 
 whereby she might escape from her mother and see 
 Bill, and the rooms in which he had spent so much 
 of his life before it became hers. She had made one 
 up and it now remained to be seen if she could, to 
 use one of Bill's frequent words, wangle it success- 
 fully. 
 
 They passed down the wide stairs of the pompous
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 253 
 
 building of the celebrated and exorbitant milliner in 
 Fifty-Seventh Street, up which so many women 
 hurried daily with sheeplike eagerness to be made to 
 look ridiculous in return for great gobs of other 
 people's gold. 
 
 A man in the coat of an Admiral, the trousers of 
 a General, the cap of a Field Marshal and the face 
 of an excellent specimen of protoplasm went off to 
 retrieve the car. He moved like an amateur, one 
 who had taken on the job for a joke, or whose sense 
 of democracy made it necessary to prove that, al- 
 though he chose to be a car-runner, he was just as 
 good and probably a darned sight better than his 
 employer and her customers. So Martha had 
 plenty of time during which to spring her little sur- 
 prise. 
 
 " You know that Elizabeth Bartlett had arranged 
 to come to us to-morrow to stay over until the wed- 
 ding, Mother." 
 
 " Her room 's ready. I hope she has n't altered 
 her mind. As your oldest friend . . ." 
 
 " No, no, Mother. Nothing like that. Elizabeth is 
 going to leave even her husband to be with me these 
 next few days. The only difference in the arrange- 
 ment is and I 'm sure you won't mind, that 
 she drives home to-night instead of to-morrow, after 
 she and I have had dinner in town." 
 
 " Which means that I have to make this long 
 journey alone." 
 
 " Yes, Mother, just this once." 
 
 The subtle change in the tone of the girl who
 
 254 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 until that moment had been the loving and dutiful 
 daughter and who had never conceived the possibil- 
 ity of doing anything without a preliminary consul- 
 tation came upon Mrs. Wainwright like a thunder- 
 clap. They had changed places in the scheme of 
 things. The young wife came first now, and the 
 elder lady must accept her altered position as " just 
 mother ", an institution, one who had served her pur- 
 pose in life. ... A tiny smile stole over her deli- 
 cate prim face and she bowed to her little girl with 
 just the suggestion of irony. 
 
 " Very well, darling," she said. " But try not to 
 be very late. I would like to get to bed in good 
 time after a tiring day." 
 
 This unexpected humbleness startled Martha and 
 for a moment shook her desire to dine alone with 
 Bill in his bachelor rooms. " What a beast I am," 
 she thought, " and how I hate to deceive her like 
 this. But she would think the world was coming to 
 an end if I told her what I want so awfully much 
 to do. and go home miserable. So it can't be helped. 
 Poor little mother ! She 's lost me at last." She 
 put her arm round Mrs. Wainwright's shoulder and 
 kissed her. " You are a brick," she said. 
 
 At last the car was brought up. " I '11 drive you 
 to East Sixty-Fourth Street, darling." 
 
 That was awkward. Martha had telephoned to 
 Mrs. Bartlett to expect her at nine o'clock. There 
 would have to be explanations if she turned up at 
 six. The dinner engagement was a myth. Above 
 all things she wanted to enjoy the thrill of this ad-
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 255 
 
 venture, her first effort at complete independence, 
 as a secret, something about which she and Bill 
 might talk in the future as a special romance of their 
 own. 
 
 " No, thank you, Mother. " I '11 walk," she said. 
 " It 's only a few blocks and I want the air after 
 being shut up all day." 
 
 Never before had this child been allowed by her 
 father and mother to go alone in the streets of New 
 York. But once more that little smile flickered and 
 Mrs. Wainwright bowed again. Youth had come 
 into its own. Her day was over. 
 
 Martha shut the door of the car, kissed her hand 
 and watched it edge its way out into the moving 
 traffic, a girl on the very verge of womanhood. 
 And the little mother, still in the middle forties, sat 
 all alone, very upright, with her chin high and her 
 hands clasped and the smile playing round her lips. 
 But two hot tears rolled down her pale cheeks and 
 in her heart there was the pain of a pricking needle. 
 
 " I won't go to Bill's rooms until half past six," 
 thought Martha. " I want to find him there. I 
 want him to spring up when I am shown in and rush 
 forward to meet me. I want to hear him cry out 
 ' Hello Babe ' and catch me in his arms as though 
 he had n't seen me for ten years. I want him to 
 take me all round and tell me the history of every- 
 thing and make me feel that all the years I have 
 missed with him are mine just the same. I want 
 him to be excited and merry and tender, and feel 
 that we 're stealing two hours out of convention and
 
 256 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 to sit opposite to him at his dinner table as though 
 we had been married a long time and feel like a per- 
 fectly calm woman of the world with the slips of 
 foreign hotels all over my luggage. And then I 
 shall not want to go and he won't want me to go 
 and he '11 hold me tight and kiss me and whisper and 
 I shall cling and cry a little and tear myself away 
 and drive home with Elizabeth with birds singing 
 in my head and my heart in my mouth to wait until 
 he puts the ring on my finger and we are never to be 
 apart again, never, never." 
 
 And to keep pace with the thoughts that made her 
 eyes sparkle and her breath come quick, the soon-to- 
 be-bride went swiftly not up past Bill's rooms and 
 the Netherland Hotel but down past the Gotham 
 and the University Club and the beautiful church 
 that should have been standing alone in the middle 
 of a square as a landmark for all people who had 
 found life out and wanted to kneel alone beneath the 
 echoing arches and cry in their souls " Lord, I be- 
 lieve. Help thou mine unbelief.". . . The last 
 of the sun glorified the tops of the higher buildings. 
 A new moon hung white and shy against a sky as 
 clear as crystal. The Fifth Avenue busses, loaded 
 with workers going home, dominated the proces- 
 sion of traffic which oozed from block to block, on 
 the way uptown. Among the few cars that went 
 Martha's way there was that of the new breed of 
 scavenger who hugged the curb and rolled his las- 
 civious eyes and invited unaccompanied girls to 
 "Come along in," coward and pesterer, fit only
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 257 
 
 for the lethal chamber. And there was one other 
 but invisible creature who dogged Martha's steps, 
 and that was the little devil of Bill's imagination 
 who had accepted his challenge and was working 
 to prove to him how dangerous it is to stand up in 
 willful confidence and say, " Nothing can break my 
 happiness." He was presently to head Martha to 
 the Blue Room into which she ought not to look, 
 and go on his diabolical way, laughing. 
 
 Turning at Forty-Fourth Street Martha seized the 
 chance to cross the road and swung up again, dart- 
 ing an unseeing eye at pictures and silver and curios 
 and carpets and motor cars, with which the East 
 Side shops are full. She sang beneath her breath, 
 and from time to time she shut her eyes as they were 
 flooded with the waves of love. Her faith in the 
 man for whom she had sent her prayers to heaven 
 was a passionate intuition. In her childish hero- 
 worship she thought of him as a Knight Crusader 
 who had fought his way through all temptation to 
 stand unspotted at her side. Always in search of 
 her he had passed through avenues of women with- 
 out having been held by even a single glance. And 
 as she entered the building which looked out upon 
 the Plaza it was with the unshakable belief that she 
 would find him standing in a room hung with 
 frames which had been empty until he had seen her 
 face. This was to be the last time that they were 
 ever to say good-by, and with his kisses on her lips 
 she was to go away as in a dream, soon, very soon, 
 to be kissed back to wakefulness.
 
 258 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 There was a curious smile on the face of the man 
 who took her up in the elevator. She was the 
 fourth young woman who had gone up to the rooms 
 of Major Mortimer. " You need n't ring," he said. 
 " You can let yourself in." 
 
 She let herself into the hall, her heart as full of 
 song as a young spring morning. She heard Bill's 
 voice, speaking, she thought, to his valet. She tip- 
 toed to the curtain that covered the arch, and peeped 
 inside. . . . 
 
 Bill was standing with a glass in his hand, the 
 well-known grin on his good-looking face. With 
 her usual display of stockings Birdie Carroll had 
 possessed herself of the sofa, her teeth that were al- 
 most too perfect to be true gleaming in the light of 
 the lamps. Jeanne Dacoral, like a drawing by He- 
 rouard in La Vie Parisienne, was riding a chair, 
 man-wise, with her arms across the back, her black 
 silk legs all glistening. Susie Hatch sat with bent 
 head on the guard in front of the empty fire grate, 
 holding a glass in both her hands. Several bottles 
 stood on the writing table and the air was festooned 
 with cigarette smoke. 
 
 Bill had almost arrived at the end of his speech. 
 
 ". . . . A good boy now and the old days are 
 over. When you go by this building you won't see 
 my lights in these windows. Some other poor devil 
 of a bachelor will be killing time as I did. But I 
 shan't forget the jolly old times we 've had here, my 
 dears, or the tunes you used to play for me and the 
 songs we sang. Bill isn't ungrateful. . . ."
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 259 
 
 Springing to her feet, with a burst of mimic tears, 
 Birdie flung her wine into the air and her arms 
 round Bill's unwilling neck, kissed him on the mouth 
 and slobbered on his shoulder. And then, with a 
 wail of despair in which there was more than a little 
 of genuine feeling, she had adored " Le Morti- 
 meur " as she called him Jeanne bore down upon 
 Bill, took his face between her hands and between a 
 series of resounding kisses cried out endearing 
 words. Holding 'her distance and playing Canute 
 with her tears Susie held her glass as high as she 
 could, shaped her trembling lips to the words " Good 
 luck, Bill," drank and dropped, her self-repression 
 swept before a tornado of weeping. 
 
 And Martha, tottering beneath the broken roof- 
 beams of the world, let fall the curtain of the Blue 
 Room, fumbled her way to the staircase,- went down 
 and down until she reached the foyer and the street 
 and passed into the Valley of the Shadow.
 
 PART VI 
 
 TEDDY JEDBURGH had driven to town that day 
 with Bill. He intended to buy a wedding present 
 for Martha, Primrose as he always thought of 
 her, dine with the British Assistant Provost 
 Marshal at the Ritz and catch the ten-o'clock train 
 home again. He had spent half an hour at Car- 
 tier's, had finally chosen a flexible diamond and plat- 
 inum bracelet, a graceful little thing of beautiful 
 workmanship, and with this in his pocket and envy 
 of Bill in his heart had gone downtown to the 
 offices of the British Mission in Whitehall Street 
 through the swarming financial district of New 
 York, whose narrowest parts, where they were de- 
 void of sky-scrapers, bore a brotherly resemblance 
 to Threadneedle and Throgmorton Streets in the 
 city of London. Here he found that his friend the 
 Colonel, who had been badly wounded in the neck 
 during the first year of the war and had done very 
 brilliant work in the Secret Service until he had been 
 placed in charge of the British Military Mission in 
 this country, was up to his eyes in business. He re-
 
 262 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 luctantly would not be able to keep his engagement 
 to dine. 
 
 And so by subway to Forty-Second Street, hang- 
 ing to a strap in a jam-packed sardine tin which 
 rattled and shook and swerved, he found himself 
 back on Fifth Avenue, at the moment when Bill was 
 making his farewell speech to three of the girls who 
 had helped him to escape from boredom in those 
 careless days of his before the war, when he had 
 outdone the example of the amorous Commodore. 
 
 With the sense of extreme isolation which comes 
 upon a man when he is among a great crowd he 
 walked aimlessly up the Avenue, at a loose end. By 
 the kindness and hospitality for which America is 
 famous he had been made a temporary member of a 
 dozen clubs, and intended presently to choose one of 
 them in which to eat a solitary meal, with the Even- 
 ing Sun propped up against the water bottle. 
 
 His thoughts were of his equally lonely father 
 who, at that very minute, was probably taking a nap 
 in the quiet reading room of Arthur's in St. James's 
 Street, three thousand miles away, dreaming, maybe, 
 of the " good old days " during which the Bad Men 
 of British Liberal politics, by their willful determi- 
 nation not to recognize in Germany's immense prep- 
 arations the menace which lay over Europe, drugged 
 his country into a false security and refused to lis- 
 ten to the inspired warnings of the old warrior 
 which would have taken the sword out of the mailed 
 fist. 
 
 The family house sold to one of those vile and
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 263 
 
 vulgar dogs who had grown rich on the blood and 
 bones of his countrymen, and now taxed to the teeth 
 by the very men who had been too fearful of losing 
 public support and popularity to levy taxes for Na- 
 tional Service, he could see the old Peer wandering, 
 a pathetic and paradoxical figure, the representa- 
 tive of a time completely out of date and a class 
 almost wiped out of existence, from his rooms in 
 Bury Street to his club in St. James's and back 
 again, a poor and homeless man. He could imagine 
 his father watching the frantic struggles of an effete 
 Government to reconstruct a Constitution which 
 they had themselves permitted to be smashed to 
 pieces, listening to the ugly and perfectly natural 
 growls of a people demoralized and denuded, and 
 reading, with a faint sarcastic smile, the long and 
 frequent honor lists which bestowed new titles upon 
 people who would endeavor to build up a new aris- 
 tocracy upon the ruins of one whose gallant heirs 
 lay beneath the little crosses in France. At the age 
 of sixty-three his father, like many other men of his 
 kind, had had to give up his ancient and beautiful 
 house to spend his remaining penurious days within 
 the four walls of a club and bring them to an end 
 in a small bedroom in a street of bachelor lodging 
 houses. He and they, as well as the rest of his na- 
 tion, had been sacrificed on the altar of Liberalism 
 by a dozen selfish and unpatriotic Cabinet Ministers, 
 backed by their sycophantic party political news- 
 papers all of which had shrieked with terror when 
 they saw that Lord Roberts was right and had ad-
 
 264 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 vocated, with trembling knees, that Great Britain 
 should ignore her treaty with France. Liberalism 
 to the wth degree. 
 
 And as Jedburgh walked up the great Avenue 
 that was so typical of the energy, daring and initi- 
 ative of a great country still in its youth he asked 
 himself what he was to do to make a living as soon 
 as his present job came to an end and he had put 
 aside his uniform for civilian clothes. He believed 
 that the writing was even then on the wall for an- 
 other and a more disastrous war within the next ten 
 years. He believed that Germany would wait only 
 until the Allies had scrapped their fighting machines 
 and turned entirely to commerce before taking her 
 revenge with a great army gathered and trained in 
 secret. She would catch her enemies unprepared 
 again and swipe them hip and thigh. The blood 
 lust was ingrained in her body. He told himself 
 that if he were called upon to fight again he would 
 refuse, his patriotism killed. But he deceived him- 
 self, as did the vast majority of his countrymen who 
 had come back to life, disgusted and with wounded 
 souls. He would go back from whatever part of 
 the world in which he was trying to earn his bread 
 and once 'more offer himself to Death for the Cause, 
 the pawn of the same politicians who had battened 
 on the blood of his dead brothers. It was inevi- 
 table. 
 
 He now looked back at his talk with Bill the night 
 of his arrival in New York with a sort of astonish- 
 ment. What a fool he had been to lay the blame on
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 265 
 
 God for a war with which He had had nothing to 
 do. As well lay the blame on the sun for a blight 
 on the crops. What a pathetic result of shell-shock 
 it was to imagine that he could do anything but hurt 
 himself by pulling down his Church and hiding the 
 stones in wild oats. The demoralization into which 
 he had hoped to plunge was impossible to one of his 
 inherent decency and fastidiousness, to say nothing 
 of ideals. Even war did not alter a character such 
 as his. Training and tradition stood for too much. 
 They might be shaken and broken like the walls of 
 a cathedral by shells, but the foundations remained. 
 His month in Bill's rooms had proved to him that he 
 was mentally and physically incapable of finding any 
 sort of pleasure in the society of women represented 
 by Birdie Carroll and Jeanne Dacoral. The more 
 alluring they endeavored to make themselves the 
 more they froze his blood. And as to the night life 
 of New York, the crowded dancing floors of the 
 hotels and restaurants seemed to him to epitomize 
 lunacy, and the wailing of Jazz bands filled him with 
 an overwhelming depression. His reaction to his 
 old desires for wife and home and the decencies of 
 life was instant and immediate. Then he had met 
 Martha and his cure had become complete. The 
 irony of the fact that she had been marked out for 
 Bill gave him reason to believe that he was not on 
 terms of friendship with luck. He would see his 
 friend married, rejoin the Mission and wind up his 
 work. Then what ? It was a question that he was 
 utterly unable to answer.
 
 266 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 He had walked as far as Fifty-Seventh Street, 
 his height and slightness emphasized by his uniform, 
 a noticeable figure in any crowd by reason of his un- 
 conscious distinction and thoroughbred profile, to 
 say nothing of the story of his gallantry which was 
 told by the long line of ribbons on his chest, when, 
 with a leap of the heart, he saw Martha facing him 
 on the other side of the street, waiting for a line of 
 cross-town traffic to come to a momentary end. He 
 was astonished to see that she was alone, this 
 country primrose, and by the utter whiteness of her 
 face and the agony in her eyes he sensed at once that 
 something was wrong, that she had been hurt by one 
 of the cursed and indiscriminate cruelties of life. 
 He dodged between a motor lorry and a taxi cab, 
 being missed by the latter by the eighth of an inch, 
 and stood in front of her. 
 
 " What 's the matter? " he asked. 
 
 There was no recognition in the first look that 
 Martha gave him. Her eyes seemed to be turned in- 
 wards. Her lips were trembling. She looked like 
 a flower washed colorless and almost uprooted by a 
 thunder-storm. 
 
 " It 's Jedburgh," he said, strangely anxious. 
 " What are you doing here alone ? " He had an ex- 
 aggerated notion of the danger of the streets. 
 
 Like a sleep-walker who suddenly regains con- 
 sciousness Martha gazed about her for a moment, 
 focussed Jedburgh with awakened eyes and put 
 out her hand with a touching and almost childlike 
 eagerness for protection. " Oh, Teddy," she said,
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 267 
 
 with a great shaking sob, " take me away, take me 
 home." 
 
 Forcing back a thousand questions, Jedburgh 
 hailed a taxi which followed at the tail end of the 
 line of traffic, his one idea being to get Martha off 
 the street and out of the range of inquisitive eyes. 
 And as it drew up at the curb he opened the door 
 and handed her in. 
 
 "Up the Avenue," he said sharply. "I'll tell 
 you when to turn." 
 
 As the cab moved off and almost before he had 
 settled in his seat Martha put her face against his 
 shoulder and broke into a fit of dreadful weeping. 
 
 II 
 
 WONDERING what dire thing could have hap- 
 pened to the sunny girl, the first sight of whom had 
 revived his dream of home, Jedburgh put his arm 
 tenderly about her shoulder and let her cry the pain 
 out of her heart. He could only think, in his en- 
 deavor to find a reason for this startling breakdown 
 when everything looked so well, that she had sud- 
 denly been told of the death of a precious friend. 
 Children, it seemed to him, only wept like this when 
 death had stalked into their lives, and to him Martha 
 in her freshness and simplicity was still little more 
 than a child. It never occurred to him, even re- 
 motely, that Bill was the cause of these broken flood- 
 gates. 
 
 And when, presently, the cab having carried them 
 past the Metropolitan Art Museum, Martha pulled
 
 268 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 herself together and sat upright with her hands over 
 her face, he got nothing from her except "I'm 
 sorry, Teddy, I 'm sorry." Her loyalty to Bill was 
 too strong to permit her to draw a picture of what 
 she had seen in the Blue Room, and it remained, like 
 a canker,, in her soul. 
 
 Jedburgh would have given all his hopes of 
 Heaven to have taken Martha in his arms and let 
 the cab drive them far out to some quiet place where 
 he could keep her all to himself till the end of time, 
 to love and cherish and protect. But Bill was his 
 friend and was enthroned in the heart of this girl; 
 there was no room in it for anyone else. Brother 
 was the only part that he could play, and being Jed- 
 burgh, the man who stuck to the rules, he would 
 play that part well. 
 
 "What am I to do with you, Primrose? " 
 
 Martha saw, with astonishment, that they were 
 passing into that part of the Avenue which dwindled 
 into a slum of tenement houses and small shops. 
 She was alive after this death wound, she found, 
 and must catch on again to its obligations. " We 
 must go back," she said. " I am to call for Eliza- 
 beth Bartlett at nine o'clock. She is going to drive 
 me home." 
 
 Jedburgh looked at his watch. It was only a 
 little after seven. He put his head out of the cab 
 window. " Go back to the Plaza," he said. 
 
 The Plaza! It was within a mere stone's throw 
 of the rooms that she wished she had never entered. 
 " No, not there."
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 269 
 
 " But you must have dinner. Where else would 
 you like to go ? " 
 
 " Anywhere else." 
 
 Once more Jedburgh spoke to the solid indiffer- 
 ent lump on the box, who cared nothing for the men- 
 tal perturbation of his fares so long as his meter 
 continued to click. Why should he? 
 
 "The St. Regis." 
 
 And so it was in the beetle-browed building of old- 
 fashioned architecture which had retained its at- 
 mosphere of red plush dignity despite the time's 
 subjection to the twin-devils of crudeness and jazz 
 that Martha pretended to have dinner with Bill's 
 pal, the other man who loved her. She ate little, 
 though, with the courage and grit that was in the 
 Wainwright blood, she smiled and kept the conver- 
 sation from flagging. All the time the picture of 
 Bill being kissed by those two exuberant and over- 
 dressed girls never left her. It sent constant waves 
 of agony all over her body and turned her hot with 
 jealous anger, and cold with an overpowering sense 
 of disillusion, by turns. But it was the sight of 
 Susie's tragic face and the sound of her deep an- 
 guish that hit her hardest. Bill's life had not beer 
 hers, as she had believed in her young and simple 
 way. He was coming to her not as an original, un- 
 read, and untouched, but as a much thumbed book. 
 It staggered her. It shook her faith in everything 
 that was good. 
 
 As for Jedburgh, who congratulated himself on 
 having been able to cheer Martha out of what in
 
 270 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 the light of her recovery he conceived to be a very 
 natural crise de nerfs she was not in the habit of 
 being left alone in that swarming city and had prob- 
 ably been frightened he rather pathetically en- 
 joyed this unexpected opportunity of having his 
 Primrose to himself for a while. He had never 
 had the luck before. And he made the best and the 
 most of it in his characteristically British manner. 
 He treated her as though she were a little princess 
 placed temporarily in his care. He strained every 
 Anglo-Saxon effort to be merry and bright in his 
 quiet, ungestured way, and must have appeared to 
 anyone interested enough to watch him to be a 
 town uncle attempting to amuse a country niece, or 
 a big brother entertaining a young sister whom he 
 had not seen since she had left the nursery. He felt 
 rather like both these people during the even course 
 of this slowly served meal in that religiously lit 
 room with its dark wood and red velvet, its innu- 
 merable tables of people who liked to get away from 
 the heterogeneous crowd and eat without syncopa- 
 tion. And once or twice, as he watched Martha and 
 realized how young and ingenuous and spring-like 
 she was, sitting opposite to him, he felt queerly 
 old and inappropriate and out of her generation; 
 curiously unelastic and set. Even if she had 
 never loved Bill, so different from himself, who 
 had succeeded in coming out of the war with 
 all his old gaiety and love of life, could he ever 
 have stirred this charming thing to interest or 
 touched her heart with the warmth of his first love?
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 271 
 
 He thought not, and felt humble and out of every- 
 thing. 
 
 Altogether it was a brief sad interlude, a little 
 oasis of companionship which had in it nothing of 
 mutual understanding, that both would remember in 
 after years. Ever, probably, it would be associated 
 with dark wood and red velvet. 
 
 At a quarter to nine, the last of the diners, he 
 looked at the watch by which he had timed so many 
 of his adventures with Death. " We had better go 
 now," he said. "Where did you say your friend 
 lived?" 
 
 With the most intense feeling of relief Martha 
 rose. "East Sixty-Third Street," she answered. 
 
 "Will you walk or drive? " 
 
 " Oh, walk, please. It 's no distance." 
 
 It was one of those warm still nights which steal 
 quietly on the heels of a hot hard-working day. The 
 sky seemed abnormally high and clear, pitted with 
 the lights of the cities of the spirits. The tall 
 houses appeared to be short beneath it, and even the 
 Plaza, with its tiers of golden windows, looked 
 like the house of Lilliputians. It was with 
 averted eyes that Martha passed Bill's apart- 
 ment. Jedburgh had no inclination to look up 
 at the familiar windows either, that time, or 
 make any reference to the man who had all the 
 luck. Instead, he ran his hand through Martha's 
 arm. 
 
 " I want you to promise me something," he said. 
 "Will you?"
 
 272 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 " Anything," she said. This man was very kind. 
 He rang as true as a bell. 
 
 " If, before you are married, you feel you have to 
 cry again, choose my shoulder once more. It 's the 
 least I can do for you, and I 'd like to do so much." 
 
 Martha did n't laugh. She looked up at the man 
 in whose eyes there was a curious yearning and 
 tightened her arm on his hand. " I will," she said, 
 wondering if she had any more tears to cry. 
 
 " I shall probably not see you again to talk to," 
 he went on, quietly. " I shall come back to town as 
 soon as you are off on your honeymoon and after 
 that I don't know what. So this is good-by. I 
 wish you a thousand joys." 
 
 " Thank you," she said, choking. Joys after 
 what she had seen ! 
 
 They turned into East Sixty-Fourth Street in 
 silence, both on the wings of different thoughts. 
 An opulent car was waiting outside number eleven. 
 The well-fed chauffeur was humming the air of a 
 Winter Garden tune, easily recognizable from its 
 peculiar banality. 
 
 " Thank you again," said Martha. 
 
 Jedburgh rang the bell that he found on the right 
 side of a glass door covered by a screen of wrought 
 iron. It might have been in the Avenue Haus- 
 mann. 
 
 " Won't you come in and meet Elizabeth? " 
 
 " No, thanks. I have to see a man at the Lotus 
 Club." He had n't. He did n't know a single 
 member of it. Two was company and Mrs. Bart-
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 273 
 
 lett, he imagined, was also a believer in that axiom. 
 And so he took the little outstretched hand and held 
 it for a moment. " Good-by, then. God bless you, 
 Primrose," he said, gave her the sort of salute that 
 he had reserved for Field Marshals, wheeled about 
 and walked away. 
 
 Life, like a jig-saw puzzle, is only perfect if all 
 the pieces fit. He could never make his picture 
 complete now. 
 
 Could she ? 
 
 Ill 
 
 MARTHA was afraid to turn out the lights. She 
 felt that the bedroom in which she had dreamed 
 nightly for two years, and from which she was to 
 go forth so soon as the bride of the man who had 
 fallen from his pedestal, would be peopled by those 
 three girls, come to jeer at her for her hero-wor- 
 ship and scream with raucous mirth at her unso- 
 phistication. She sat for hours with her face in her 
 hands, a little figure of misery, with Bill's words 
 ringing in her ears, "a good boy now and the old 
 days are over. But I shan't forget the jolly old 
 times we 've had here, my dears, or the tunes you 
 used to play for me and the songs we sang. Bill 
 is n't ungrateful. . . ." 
 
 Over and over again, remorselessly, she saw 
 Birdie spring to her feet, with a burst of tears, fling 
 her wine into the air and press kiss after kiss on 
 Bill's mouth. Over and over again, with ever in- 
 creasing agony, she saw Jeanne Dacoral get up from
 
 274 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 the chair that she was straddling with her careless 
 display of legs, bear down upon Bill with a wail of 
 grief and possess herself of his lips. And over and 
 over again the picture of the girl with the golden 
 hair and the tragic face who raised her glass and 
 dropped like a bird with a bullet through its breast 
 flashed in frightful clearness before her eyes. The 
 rest was a blur, her stumble, filled with dreadful 
 thoughts, into the street, her faith all smashed; her 
 meeting with Jedburgh ; the dinner at the St. Regis ; 
 the long drive home with Elizabeth Bartlett, whose 
 merry tongue never ceased to wag; her smiling 
 good-nights to her family, to whom of all people she 
 would not confess. All those things were vague 
 and shapeless like the unfounded suspicions that 
 pass through a brain under an anaesthetic. The hor- 
 rors disclosed by her peep into the Blue Room were 
 stamped indelibly on her mind, to recur again and 
 again through the quiet hours of that tortured night 
 and to uproot her passionate and long-cherished 
 trust in Bill, which had been as perfect as her faith 
 in God. 
 
 It is true that if she had been less proud and less 
 loyal and had taken her trouble to Elizabeth Bart- 
 lett, who answered in every detail to the white- 
 haired lady's definition of the modern girl, she would 
 have been told that she was making too big a moun- 
 tain out of this very ordinary molehill. The girl 
 who was married to young Bartlett was one of those 
 ultra-modern persons, who stepped into the world 
 from a fashionable school with nothing to learn and
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 275 
 
 so little self-respect that she could regard marriage 
 as lightly as a game of cards, as the first stepping 
 stone to a series of experiences which would leave 
 her unaffected and unperturbed. " Anything once," 
 was Elizabeth's unhygienic motto, and in that spirit 
 and with the example of so many easily broken 
 marriages before her, she had run off to a registry 
 ofHce with Bartlett after a week-end acquaintance, 
 rather proud of the fact that he had been very " hot 
 stuff." He had plenty of money, danced like a 
 streak and gave her a free hand. That was all she 
 cared about. If anyone else came along who had 
 more money, danced better and gave an even smaller 
 damn for anything under the sun, Bartlett could be 
 chucked, because divorce was as easy as falling off a 
 log. If she had been in England during the war 
 she would certainly have been numbered among 
 those highly civilized children who, widowed twice 
 in three years, were married for a third time while 
 still in the early twenties. She had all the assets 
 that went to the making of such a feat, a pretty 
 face, a slim figure, a command of slang that put the 
 great masters into the shade, the staying power of a 
 camel, and the quiet disregard for underclothing 
 that had been achieved only by the most finished 
 Greeks in history. 
 
 " My dear," she would have said, utterly satis- 
 fied with the decadent effect of her black chiffon 
 pajamas, " Bill Mortimer is thirty-five. Does he 
 look like the sort of small-town boob who has neg- 
 lected all his chances in order to cultivate sweet peas
 
 276 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 and quote Elbert Hubbard to the elderly spinster 
 who runs the village Library ? He's one of the 
 best-looking things in trousers and has had the run 
 of the world. He 'd be a freak if he had n't played 
 the good old game for everything it 's worth. And 
 now you have the luck to catch him on the rebound 
 at the moment of his life when he '11 make the ideal 
 husband and go to heel humbly whenever you crack 
 the whip, so what 's the grumble ? Drag him to the 
 altar, gold dig systematically while the going 's 
 good, and when he 's doddering into nervous dys- 
 pepsia shake him and begin all over again with a 
 man of your own age. That 's the great idea, 
 dearie." 
 
 But being herself something of a freak in these 
 most civilized days and the daughter of Wain- 
 wrights, Martha said nothing and retired into the 
 secrecy of her room to tremble under the effects 
 of this earthquake, this upheaval of her illusions, 
 to suffer from that form of soul-shock which only 
 attacks those of our girls who have not grown with 
 the times. 
 
 The unheeded hours slipped away while the moon 
 and stars kept vigil and still Martha sat with her 
 face in her hands, a little figure of misery. But 
 when the day broke and the earth stirred and life 
 rose from its bed to resume its duties, she got up, 
 tired and aching, dressed and crept downstairs. 
 The Seven Sisters seemed to call her with the prom- 
 ise of sympathy, and she went through the dew- 
 spangled garden and along the path through the lush
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 277 
 
 of grass to the hill from which she had so often sent 
 up her prayers to Heaven for the safe return of Bill. 
 Here, in this roofless cathedral, with the matins of 
 the birds in her ears, she went down on her knees 
 once more and asked for help and guidance, be- 
 cause she found herself stumbling blindly in a maze 
 of doubts, the only way out of which seemed to her 
 to lead away from Bill, even although her wedding 
 dress was ready, the ring waiting for her and the 
 two families within two days of standing before the 
 altar. 
 
 But no help came. Instead, as she strained into 
 the future, she could see the figures of those girls, 
 and there might be others, intruding into her 
 life, springing up, not in flesh and blood perhaps, 
 but certainly in imagination, to stand, in crucial mo- 
 ments, between herself and Bill. Also she could hear 
 her inward questions as to whether Bill's endearing 
 words had not all been said before, shallow repeti- 
 tions of former love affairs, and feel the awful sus- 
 picion that in his moments of silence or his dreams at 
 night he might be living over again the old days for 
 which he was not ungrateful, in the Blue Room that 
 he imagined was locked against her. 
 
 She rose from her knees and turned to the Seven 
 Sisters, whose old arms seemed to be straining to 
 touch her. " I can't go through with it, I can't go 
 through with it," she cried out. " I can't. I can't. 
 It 's broken my heart and killed my faith. I wish 
 I had died believing."
 
 278 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 IV 
 
 ALL that day and the next saw bustle and excite- 
 ment in the two houses, the old and the new. It 
 had been decided that the ceremony should not take 
 place in the village church but in the drawing room 
 of the Wainwright house. It was to be a quiet 
 affair witnessed only by the members of the two 
 families and performed by the minister before whom 
 Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright had stood all those years 
 ago. From the white-haired lady's gardens masses 
 of ravishing flowers were sent over, all of them 
 charged to waft on their scent to the little bride the 
 affectionate good wishes of those that remained un- 
 plucked. 
 
 Wainwright gave himself two days' holiday os- 
 tensibly to lend a hand with the preparations, in 
 reality to see the last of Martha as his own particu- 
 lar property before he handed her over to her hus- 
 band. In a state of inarticulate emotion he de- 
 voted the first of these days to driving her about the 
 country, giving her lunch at one inn and tea at 
 another, saying not one single thing with which his 
 heart was full but doling out to the girl with the 
 queer look in her eyes an intimate dissertation on 
 the intricacies of banking which gave her no clew as 
 to how to make her escape from the now meaning- 
 less ring. If it was a painful duty to them, it was 
 at any rate all the more useful to Mrs. Wainwright 
 because of their absence from the house in which, 
 as it was, Tom and Elizabeth Bartlett got badly in
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 279 
 
 her way. She had her own views as to how things 
 should be done, and since, without her, this marriage 
 would have been impossible, she intended by hook or 
 by crook to do them according to those views, Tom 
 and Elizabeth notwithstanding. Discovering this 
 early in the proceedings the giddy Bartlett led Tom 
 to the tennis court and reduced him to a pulp. The 
 smile on Mrs. Wainwright's face as she saw their 
 strenuous white figures out in the sun must have 
 stirred the sympathy of all departed housewives. 
 
 In the Mortimer house, Denham, directed by the 
 Commodore, took charge of Bill's packing, while 
 the white-haired lady and Bill endeavored unsuc- 
 cessfully to put in a spoke. Anyone would have 
 thought from the Old Rip's excitement that he was 
 to be the happy man and that Bill was his ancient 
 and senile parent. The comedy of it all was 
 brought up to a quick and pulsating moment of 
 drama when the old devil, as Denham called him, 
 suddenly wheeled round upon his wife and son and 
 cried out, " For the love of Heaven give me my 
 head. Do you suppose that I shall leave anything 
 out after having packed my things for at least a 
 dozen honeymoons? My God, you two, use your 
 imaginations and permit me to finish my job in 
 peace." 
 
 Whereupon Bill escorted his mother to the hill 
 of the Seven Sisters with a lunch basket, a box of 
 cigarettes and a tin of tobacco, and lay for hours 
 with his head against her shoulder painting pictures 
 of a golden future, the past forgotten, while Lylyth,
 
 280 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 the mother, old now and nearly ready to say good- 
 by to a life which had had many compensations, 
 let her thoughts stray back to the far off time when 
 she too had been brought forward to enter the mar- 
 riage state. 
 
 The superfluous Jedburgh wandered out alone, 
 looking no further forward than the moments when 
 he would fulfill his duties as Bill's best man and 
 watch his friend drive away, later, with the Prim- 
 rose. He took with him, on his aimless walk, a 
 new and growing belief that he had been strangely 
 lacking in perception to have dismissed Martha's 
 tornado of tears as the mere reaction from girlish 
 fright in being left by herself in the crowded City. 
 He was anxious, for Bill's sake. 
 
 It was in the lane that led to the stone erections 
 on each side of the driveway to his house that Wain- 
 wright took a leap out of his shyness and let Martha 
 see into his warm and simple heart. He stopped 
 the car suddenly at a place where the bald house was 
 hidden by a group of Christmas trees, and put his 
 arms round the precious child who had played 
 straight and shared his den and become the living 
 embodiment of his domestic dreams, the reward 
 for his ceaseless efforts to make good. " You won't 
 forget your old father," he said, in a voice that shook 
 with emotion. " You won't forget me, darling." 
 
 And Martha, who knew that she must go as soon 
 as she had found a way, hid her face against his 
 chest. It would have been better if she had never 
 seen Bill and loved him so much.
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 281 
 
 " I shall miss you, oh God, I shall miss you, 
 my pet. It had to come, I know that. Parents 
 only bring up their children for other people to take 
 away. That 's the law of life and I 'm not grum- 
 bling. But it 's happened before I was quite ready 
 to give you up, and I shall be a sort of of 
 cripple when you Ve gone." 
 
 He held her with a kind of passion, while the 
 tears that he had kept back since the night that she 
 had gone into Bill's arms streamed down his face. 
 
 And Martha, afraid to let him see the trouble in 
 her eyes, put her hand on his lips. If only he would 
 spare her by forgetting to wish her the happiness 
 that she could never enjoy. She could n't bear to 
 hear that. She could n't. She could n't. 
 
 But he did, as he was bound to do. " I like Bill," 
 he went on. " As your mother says, he 's just a 
 great boy, eager to make a home for himself and 
 settle down. Not because he told me so, but from 
 everything about him I know that he loves you as 
 you deserve, my sweetheart, and you '11 have a 
 splendid life and bring that old family back into 
 fineness again. I wish you every joy and I ask 
 God to bless you. But you '11 remember the old 
 man, sometimes, and come and sit on the other 
 side of the desk again, won't you, for auld lang 
 syne?" 
 
 Martha had wept her tears away, but she crept a 
 little closer to that good and guileless man who had 
 made it possible for her to erect a pedestal for Bill, 
 made of the solid rock of faith, and trembled.
 
 282 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 And they sat in silence, in the exquisite sympathy 
 of father and daughter, and clung to each other for 
 a little while, before parting. 
 
 When, presently, the car was driven under the 
 porte-cochere and Martha ran up the steps, Wain- 
 wright pottered about the garage for half an hour 
 so that he might present his ordinary face to his 
 wife and son. Thank God, his boy would stick to 
 the nest for a bit and was to join him in his business. 
 
 Bill, in his dressing gown, long after everyone 
 had gone to bed, was marching up and down his 
 room in the old house that night, thinking of Martha 
 and trying to find uncolloquial words with which 
 to offer up thanks for his reconstruction. He was 
 moved to a mixture of joy and solemnity. His 
 Miss Respectable was the most adorable thing that 
 the angels had ever watched over. He loved her 
 like a father and a mother and a lover all in one. 
 She held him in the palm of her hand. He was, 
 being the Bill Mortimer who had come back from 
 the shambles and the Bill Mortimer who had rotted 
 in his youth, painfully and even tragically depend- 
 ent upon her. She stood for all that he hoped and 
 intended to become. She was purity that demanded 
 all the best and the most tender of him. She was 
 youth that was to make him young again. She was 
 rectitude that was to call out of him the example and 
 tradition of his forbears, hitherto ignored. She 
 was courage that would set him in step with her 
 along the path to fatherhood. She was pride that
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 283 
 
 ^ 
 
 would demand for her truth and cleanness and re- 
 spect. 
 
 These were great and uplifting hours in the life 
 of this man Bill, who had come out of all his self- 
 indulgence with a surprising naivete, a tremendous 
 desire to remake himself and a sensitiveness that 
 was as keen as a woman's/ And he enjoyed them 
 and the ecstasy that they gave him, for all the sense 
 of unfitness which crept up behind them, and per- 
 haps a little more because of that. No man, if he 
 deals honestly with himself, wishes to say, on the 
 verge of marriage, that he is up to the standard of 
 the girl that he has won.. A man's reach must 
 exceed his grasp, or what 's a Heaven for. To be 
 unworthy not too much but a little makes his 
 success so much more worth while, so much greater 
 an achievement. It is an inspiration, an urge. It 
 elevates marriage far above the ordinary run of 
 great adventures. It places it among crusades. 
 It puts the glamour about it of high romance, 
 of personal amazement, and makes a man say 
 to himself, with a rare humility, " Please God, 
 I shall be deserving." And what more hope- 
 ful beginning could there be in the working out of 
 the everlasting problem so seldom solved than 
 that? 
 
 It was two o'clock when Bill's door opened very 
 quietly and the white-haired lady stole in. Unable 
 to sleep for the flights of thoughts that circled about 
 her bed like swallows, she had risen to put her lips 
 to the forehead of the man who once had been her
 
 284 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 very own, the lad all dependent, to whom she had 
 been Queen. 
 
 " Bill ! " she said, and drew up short, disappointed. 
 
 "Anything wrong?" Bill was immediately at 
 her side. 
 
 " No, indeed," she said. " Everything is very 
 right, my dear. I tiptoed in expecting to find you 
 fast asleep, and to put the clock back to the time 
 when I was the only woman in your life. What 
 you call an orgy of sentimentality, Bill. That 's all. 
 Very forgivable under the circumstances." She 
 spoke lightly and gave one of those soft laughs of 
 hers. She had become an adept at hiding her feel- 
 ings. Her hair was hidden beneath a lace cap and 
 she wore a clinging peignoir of an egg-shell blue. 
 Imagination, reversing the perspective of her senses, 
 had made the past the present, Bill a few years old 
 and herself a girl once more. Beauty had come 
 back to her face and figure for a moment. 
 
 An orgy of sentimentality? He had preened 
 himself on having used a clever phrase. But there 
 was no affectation of fine feeling about all this, 
 his desire to reconstruct, his love for Martha, the 
 ambition of his old people to hear the pattering feet 
 of young Mortimers, the emotion of the Wain- 
 wrights, the birth of Martha's star. It went to the 
 making of the first exquisite reality of his life, he 
 knew. And he knew, also, as he looked into his 
 mother's eyes, the magic of the moon on the 
 sleeping earth, that she had come to his room to 
 stand for a little while in a waking dream that gave
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 285 
 
 him back to her, the boy who had never deeply real- 
 ized her mother passion or put into words his grati- 
 tude for her love. 
 
 He put her into a chair, and letting down his 
 fourth wall, knelt at her feet, with his arms round 
 her waist. " Mum," he said, " I wanted you to 
 come to-night. I wanted to tell you that it 's all the 
 you in me that 's come to the top at last and is going 
 to help me to be a good boy now. I wanted you to 
 know that I have n't played the fool all these years 
 quite as unkindly as I might, because of the things 
 you said over me when I slept here as a kid. That 
 is n't much to say, but it 's something, and it goes to 
 show that the careless devil in me was n't able to 
 let me forget altogether the effect of your love. 
 I 'm awful sick at having gone back on you, Mum 
 darling. If I had my time over again I 'd try 
 mighty hard to live up to your standard. But 
 what 's done is over and can't be altered. The 
 future 's mine though, and I want you to be very 
 sure that whether you 're here or not I '11 take you 
 with me through it all to keep me straight and 
 faithful and make me come out at the end as the 
 son you would have had me be from the beginning. 
 So help me God." 
 
 The little cry that broke from that woman's heart 
 must have made the angels weep. 
 
 And all that day and the next the sun shone and 
 the birds sang and peace hung over the land, and not 
 one of the people in this human comedy ever sus-
 
 286 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 pected that the dea ex machina, the little leading 
 lady, the young bride to be, was trying, like a pris- 
 oner condemned to death, to find a way to live, to 
 break from a bond which, although to be blessed 
 by the church, had become unholy in her eyes. 
 
 V 
 
 BARCLAY MORTIMER, made up for a wedding and 
 entirely outside himself, according to Denham, 
 put the bridegroom through a close inspection. 
 
 " Um," he said, walking slowly and disconcert- 
 ingly round the nervous and jumpy Bill. " I sup- 
 pose you '11 have to go like that." 
 
 " What 's the matter with me ? Oh, curse this 
 collar." 
 
 " My dear fellow, why did n't you take me to 
 that damned tailor of yours ? He 's waisted you 
 too high. He 's cut your tails in the appalling mod- 
 ern way that allows them to bulge open at every 
 movement you make. He 's given you two buttons 
 too many at the top of your waistcoat " he called 
 it westkut as you may suppose " and he 's skimped 
 on your trousers in the German American manner 
 that puts some of the men of my country among the 
 comics." 
 
 " I took what he gave me," said Bill, with a val- 
 iant effort to retain his temper. 
 
 " I see that, my boy," replied Barclay Mortimer, 
 dryly. " But don't you know that the only way to 
 get civilized garments from a tailor is not to let 
 him make what he wants but what you intend to
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 287 
 
 have, if necessary, at the point of a revolver? 
 There's not one thing right about you, Bill, I re- 
 gret to say. You don't look remotely like a gentle- 
 man, my dear fellow. Thank Heaven it 's to be a 
 family affair from which the evil eye of the camera 
 will be absent. Scrap those dreadful things as soon 
 as you can get out of them, but don't give them to 
 Denham. He knows clothes." 
 
 Denham bowed to hide his chagrin. Having the 
 run of the Commodore's wardrobe and everything 
 that he discarded he certainly would not have been 
 seen dead in Bill's things. He could have sold the 
 damned things to the village undertaker, though. 
 
 Bill was no pacifist. He had been struggling for 
 two days to say nothing to hurt the old man's feel- 
 ings, but this was the limit of his endurance. " I 
 know I look like a cursed cow-puncher in. Sunday 
 reach-me-downs," he said, " and I 'm as nervous 
 as a cat now. Why go out of your way to make me 
 worse? You want me to get married, don't 
 you? It won't amuse you if I can the whole show, 
 will it ? Because that 's what I shall do if you pick 
 on me any more." He turned savagely on a hat 
 box and let out a kick that sent it into the middle of 
 next week. 
 
 There was a cry from Denham and a groan from 
 the Commodore. A new and glossy hat was in that 
 box. A nice-looking thing it would be after this 
 brutal treatment. 
 
 And then Bill burst into a great laugh and put his 
 arm round his father's shoulders. " Good Lord,"
 
 288 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 he said. " Anyone would think to see all this tem- 
 perament that we were long-haired musicians or 
 something. After all, Dad, I 'm going to be mar- 
 ried, not buried. Let 's be cheerful. Let 's see it 
 through with a grin." 
 
 For the first time for forty-eight hours the old 
 man's sense of humor came through. " The size 
 and shape of my grandchild don't depend on the 
 cut of a coat," he said, with a touch of coarseness, 
 and joined in the laugh. Whereupon the heat of 
 the atmosphere became normal once more and busi- 
 ness proceeded without further hitches. 
 
 It was true that there were a number of bad 
 points in Bill's appearance, but they couldn't take 
 away from the excellence of his tall wiry figure, his 
 well-cut, sun-tanned face or the expression of boyish 
 excitement in his large dark eyes. On the other 
 hand, the absolute perfection of the Old Rip, who 
 might have stepped out of the pages of a book of 
 English fashion plates, served rather to call atten- 
 tion to the sadness of his dyed hair, the pouter pi- 
 geon effect caused by his corsets and the general ap- 
 pearance of pathetic time-wrestle that was all about 
 him. Life is very just in its compensations. 
 
 In the meantime the white-haired lady, all ready 
 for the ceremony, had driven unnoticed into the 
 village, spent ten minutes on her knees in the quiet 
 church and returned to walk among her roses, with 
 a little smile on her face. Her scheme to bring 
 Martha forward, the last and most urgent of all 
 her schemes, had worked with amazing smoothness,
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 289 
 
 she thought. By the grace of God she would not 
 now pass out of life without having the joy and de- 
 light of welcoming a grandchild to the old house. 
 And she congratulated herself on what she looked 
 upon as her master-stroke as she passed slowly from 
 rose to rose in that charming garden of hers. 
 
 Little she knew, poor lady, of the cruel and shat- 
 tering plan that Martha was just then making to 
 punish Bill for his Blue Room. 
 
 Jedburgh was reading out in the' sun when Bill 
 burst upon him like a tornado. " Have you ever 
 been to a wedding in a drawing-room before, 
 Teddy?" 
 
 " No, never." 
 
 " Great guns ! " 
 
 "Why, what's the trouble?" 
 
 Bill answered the question by asking another. 
 Everything may be excused in a man on the verge 
 of being married. " Will you do something for me? 
 Will you go over to the Wainwrights' and interview 
 the padre ? The old boy stayed there last night and 
 will be hanging about doing nothing. Ask him the 
 routine for me, Teddy. Get him to tell you when T 
 march in and how, and where I stand when I get 
 there and all that. I 'm awful sorry to work you, 
 old man, but I don't want to make any bloomers and 
 look a bigger boob than I feel in these frightful 
 clothes, and Mrs. Wainwright will throw a fit if I 
 stand on the wrong side of something. If you get 
 all the dope you can prime me up when I drive
 
 290 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 round with mother and the old man. I 've tried to 
 get it from him, but he 's almost as fluffy-minded as 
 I am to-day, and mother says she could n't venture 
 to suggest the Boston way of doing this thing. 
 Hang about on the steps and pounce when you see 
 me. It 's frightfully important, old son, or I 
 would n't ask you to do it." 
 
 " It is frightfully important, Bill, and must be 
 done," said Jedburgh, gravely. He had never seen 
 his friend in such a condition of mental and 
 physical frazzle. He had obviously to be humored. 
 "Can I take a car?" 
 
 " Take the lot. You 've got the ring all right ? " 
 
 " Rather." 
 
 " Sure, Teddy ? Absolutely sure ? " 
 
 Jedburgh brought it out to prove the fact. 
 
 And Bill heaved a sigh of relief. He was a very 
 worried Bill. " I don't know what I should do 
 without you, Teddy. You 're like one of the lions 
 in Trafalgar Square. God bless you, old man." 
 
 " God bless you, old man, and the little bride." 
 And they shook hands as though they were about to 
 part for many years. 
 
 But the car had only gone halfway down the 
 drive when there was a tremendous shout. The 
 chauffeur clapped on the brakes. Bill came along- 
 side under the old trees, breathless. 
 
 " Did I ask you if you had the ring, Teddy? " 
 
 " No," said Jedburgh, more gravely than before. 
 " But I have." And once again he held it out to 
 prove the fact.
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 291 
 
 And this time the old grin spread itself over Bill's 
 face, and he gave a gesture with which to express 
 his honest belief that he was as near protoplasm as 
 a bridegroom can get and his profound apologies 
 for the very natural mishap. And then he walked 
 back saying aloud hoarsely the responses that would 
 be presently demanded of him. Married, and to 
 that bewitching girl with her flower face and the 
 honesty of a lighthouse. It was inconceivable. If 
 the men of his old regiment had been able to see 
 him then they would have blinked in amazement. 
 They would n't have recognized the old cool, light- 
 hearted Bill. 
 
 In the blue sky there was a cloud a good deal 
 larger than a man's hand. 
 
 Jedburgh interviewed a garrulous maid in the 
 hall of the Wain w right house. The drawing-room 
 door was closed. But everywhere there were flow- 
 ers. He was told that Miss Martha had been 
 dressed some time, that Mrs. Wainwright and Mrs. 
 Bartlett were now dressing and that the gentlemen 
 were downstairs in the billiard-room having a cock- 
 tail. Would he go down ? He would. And he was 
 left because someone called from the dining room, 
 in which he could see a beautifully decorated table. 
 Not knowing the geography of this house, in which 
 he had never been before, he went to the end of the 
 hall and opened a door that he imagined would 
 lead downstairs. It gave out, on the contrary, to 
 the deserted piazza, at the back, across which he
 
 292 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 saw a girl creeping on tiptoe with a face as white 
 as a white rose, dressed in everyday clothes and 
 carrying a small bag. . . . Good God, it was 
 Martha ! 
 
 And then, as though a shutter had opened in his 
 brain, he knew that Bill had been the cause of those 
 dreadful tears and that look of agony over which 
 he had puzzled by day and night. In an instant he 
 was out and with arms outstretched in front of the 
 escaping girl, blocking the way. 
 
 " Let me pass," cried Martha. 
 
 " Not in this world," said Jedburgh. 
 
 " Let me pass, I tell you." 
 
 " I tell you, no." 
 
 There was a dive, a scuffle, a little heartrending 
 cry . . . and Jedburgh, gripping Martha tight by the 
 wrist, drew her into a glassed-in sun-porch and shut 
 the door. 
 
 " Now tell me," he said. " Quick." 
 
 " I can't go through with it, I can't. I Ve waited 
 till now, hoping that I could stay to spare mother 
 and father, but I can't. Oh, let me go." 
 
 " You don't know what this would mean to the 
 two families, and I 'm the only living man who can 
 tell you what this would mean to Bill. It can't be 
 done. It's too late." 
 
 The bag fell with a clatter and Martha's hands 
 went up to her face. 
 
 And Jedburgh put his arm round her shoulder 
 and drew the trembling thing against his heart. 
 " What is it, Primrose ? Tell me."
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 293 
 
 There was a rush and tumble of words, like a fall 
 of pent-up water. ..." I love him and believed in 
 him and thought he had never loved or kissed any- 
 one but me. He never told me when he came back, 
 and all the time he 's been away I 'd been building 
 a mountain of faith on which he stood. I went to 
 his rooms that day in town, to see him in them be- 
 fore he came to me, to see the emptiness of his life 
 until I filled it with my love and Oh, I can't go 
 on, I can't go on." 
 
 " Go on," said Jedburgh, although he believed that 
 he could guess. " Into the Blue Room thou shalt 
 not look ! " 
 
 And without tears, for they had all been wept, 
 but with a voice shaking with jealousy and anger 
 and grief and broken faith she painted the pictures 
 that had never ceased to pass across her brain and 
 which had driven her to this, after two days' agony 
 of struggle, and from a marriage into which they 
 would follow her and divide her like walls of doubt 
 and suspicion from happiness and security. And her 
 last words were difficult to refute, difficult to argue 
 against. " It 's unfair," she cried out. " It 's un- 
 fair. . . . Let me go. I can't go through with it. 
 I shall never forget." 
 
 And there was half a moment of silence in which 
 Jedburgh also saw the picture that he had painted in 
 his dreams by night and day, home, with a prim- 
 rose in its garden. It came and went, like a mirage, 
 like a dream. But he took her hands from her face 
 and looked deeply into her eyes.
 
 294 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 " Do you love Bill in spite of what you have dis- 
 covered ? Tell me that." 
 
 "Yes," said Martha. 
 
 " And will you never marry any other man if I 
 let you go ? " 
 
 " No," said Martha, " never." 
 
 " Then go up to your room, my dear, and get 
 back into your wedding dress. Of all the people 
 alive you are the last one to usurp the punishment 
 of God for what Bill has done before he found you. 
 Only from the moment that he came to you have 
 you the right to his life. That 's yours, and because 
 he loves you it will be worth having, worth shaping, 
 worth building up into a good and blessed thing. 
 Let the dead past bury its dead. It 's a gruesome 
 trick to fumble about among the gravestones. He is 
 your man. You love him. Without him you will go 
 barren through life. It 's not yours to forgive or to 
 forget. It 's not yours at all. It 's his, to regret 
 and to pay for in remorse. You have no share in 
 his bills until to-day. You may see them all from 
 now on, because he loves you, and for your sake 
 they will be honest and mutual. Do you under- 
 stand?" 
 
 The color had come back to her face. She 
 stood upright once more as though a crushing 
 weight had fallen from her shoulders. And in her 
 eyes there was fire again and something that 
 only comes to youth in moments of sudden under- 
 standing. And she took his hand and pressed her 
 lips to it.
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 295 
 
 He had prevented a catastrophe and trans- 
 lated pride into humbleness. "Come quick," he 
 said. 
 
 He opened the door, gave her the bag, and led her 
 into the house, made sure that nobody was about, 
 and let her go. She flew upstairs to her room on the 
 wings of love. 
 
 Did he believe in all the arguments that he had 
 used to bring her back to sanity ? Yes, because Bill 
 was his friend and his feet were deep in traditions. 
 No, because Martha was in his heart and the word 
 * unfair ' was right. 
 
 But once again the picture of his dream flashed 
 across his mind as he stood at Bill's side, before the 
 altar of flowers, with the ring between his fingers, 
 miles away in loneliness. And very faintly the 
 grave and lovely words of the marriage service 
 came to his ears, binding Bill and Martha with 
 a bond that only death could break. The ring 
 delivered up, he saw the look on Bill's tanned 
 face that made him rejoice for the future happi- 
 ness of the little girl whose love was like a star, 
 and when he saw the tears spring to her eyes 
 he was glad for the accident which had made 
 him open the door to the piazza, which was 
 not an accident, for God is very good to His 
 children. 
 
 And as those two, for better or for worse, stand- 
 ing among the parents to whom they meant so 
 much, came finally together, he turned away quietly 
 and went out into the sun.
 
 296 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 " In the world of dreams I have chosen my part, 
 
 To sleep for a season and hear no word 
 Of true love's truth or of light love's art, 
 Only the song of a secret bird." 
 
 THE END
 
 Books by Cosmo Hamilton 
 
 SCANDAL 
 
 "From the first to the last there is never a decline, never a wavering, 
 never a false note in his portrayal of one of the most luminous, sparkling 
 and thoroughly human characters in contemporary fiction." New York 
 Tribune, Illustrated. 
 
 THE BLUE ROOM 
 
 In this powerful plea for the single standard of morality Cosmo 
 Hamilton has done his best work. Frontispiece. 
 
 HIS FRIEND AND HIS WIFE 
 
 A forceful novel based on the theme that no unrighteous act against 
 the established social code can be committed, without the price being paid 
 as dearly by the innocent as by the guilty. Illustrated. 
 
 WHO CARES? 
 
 "This is the most artistic novel Cosmo Hamilton has written." 
 Philadelphia Press. Illustrated. 
 
 THE SINS OF THE CHILDREN 
 
 An American novel dealing with the relationship between father and 
 son and the problems of youth. Frontispiece. 
 
 THE DOOR THAT HAS NO KEY 
 
 A story of married life which tells what happens when a man gives 
 a woman his name, but has never found the key to her mind. 
 
 THE MIRACLE OF LOVE 
 
 The story of an English Duke who came to America in search of a 
 wife with money. 
 
 THE BLINDNESS OF VIRTUE. A play in four acts. 
 
 The drama of two girls' careers, showing how silence_on sex subjects 
 on the part of parents threatens ruin in their children's lives. 
 
 THE BLINDNESS OF VIRTUE 
 
 Mr. Hamilton's play in novel form. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN & CO., PUBLISHERS, BOSTON, MASS.
 
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