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 THE OLD 
 MADHOUSE 
 
 • • • 
 
 WILLIAM DE MORGAN
 
 4, V" 
 
 LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 RIVERSIDE ^
 
 ^
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE
 
 THE NOVELS OF WILLIAM 
 
 DE MORGAN 
 
 Uniform Edition. Crown 8i;o. In 7 vols. 
 Each vol. 4s. 6d. net. 
 
 ALICE FOR SHORT 
 
 AN AFFAIR OF DISHOSlOUR 
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 JOSEPH VANCE 
 
 A LIKELY STORY 
 
 SOMEHOW GOOD 
 
 WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 BY 
 
 .d 
 
 WILLIAM, DE MORGAN 
 
 99 ii 
 
 AUTHOR OF JOSEPH VANCE, ALICE-FOR-SHORT, 
 
 " SOMEHOW GOOD," ETC. 
 
 n 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN. 1919.
 
 TO ALL OUR AMERICAN FRIENDS 
 
 WHO BY THEIR NEVER FAILING SYMPATHY 
 
 AND GENEROUS APPRECIATION OF HIS WRITINGS 
 
 WERE A CONSTANT SOURCE OF PLEASURE 
 
 AND GRATIFICATION TO MY HUSBAND 
 
 I GRATEFULLY DEDICATE THIS BOOK. 
 
 E. DE M., 1917.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Very near the end of last century there was a house in Maida 
 Vale which had a garden in front, where arbutus and laurustinus 
 leaves got very dusty in the summer, because of the traffic. The 
 traffic has changed its mind now, and kicks up no dust. But 
 the stench of its petrol baffles language to describe. 
 
 Are we the better or the worse off by the change? The 
 Optimist says better, the Pessimist says worse. I think the 
 present writer must be sitting on a fence — a pejorist, suppose 
 we say, since jargon is in vogue nowadays — as a clean-leaved 
 garden always puts him in a good humour, till a depraved 
 motor-car comes, belching out its hideous stench as it petrollicks 
 down the road. Then he cries aloud to the dust that is gone for 
 ever, to come back and bring with it the musical hoof of the 
 horse, and even what a euphemism of that date referred to as 
 the condition of the roads. 
 
 But that is neither here nor there. The arbutus and laurus- 
 tinus leaves at this front garden in Maida Vale were very dusty 
 at that date. As this was equally true of every other garden 
 on the main road ; you could not have identified the house. You 
 might have knocked-and-rung at a dozen houses before the ser- 
 vant who opened one of their doors admitted that it was i\Irs. 
 Frederic Carteret's; or that she herself would see if that lady 
 was at home; that is to say, would ascertain her readiness, or 
 otherwise, to receive a visitor. 
 
 That, also, is neither here nor there. The house was there; 
 and was Mrs. Frederic Carteret's, who was a widow, and on the 
 way to fifty. There were many more remains of a beautiful 
 woman about this lady than there were of a fine sample — accord- 
 ing to Mr. Bailey — about ]Mrs. Gamp. In fact, all but the whole 
 of one was left. The colour of her hair wasn't grey yet, and her 
 beauty was still a topic of conversation at afternoon teas in 
 St. John's Wood and thereabouts. So was her handsome son of 
 twenty-two, about whom all were agreed — always had been — that 
 if Frederic would only concentrate, he would make his mark, and 
 thereby justify his existence. 
 
 If every one of us had to justify his existence, or be shot, 
 what a scanty population of survivors would be left, and how 
 
 3
 
 4 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 detestably conceited they would be ! This, however, is most cer- 
 tainly neither here, there, nor anywhere else. Forgive and over- 
 look it. 
 
 Frederic didn't concentrate — wouldn't concentrate ! It was 
 not the verdict of his family alone ; it was the voice of humanity, 
 whenever it came across Fred. It may have had a doubtful 
 sound noAv and then about what would come of concentration. 
 The making of a mark was not always the end to achieve. Some 
 said, with moderation, that we should hear more of that young 
 man — you see if we didn't ! — while others discerned that he 
 would be in Parliament before we knew where we were. He was 
 certain, according to some, to make his way in the world ; accord- 
 ing to others to set the Thames on fire. He himself seemed to 
 be content with anticipating a curious delight, that of aston- 
 ishing the Natives. But all, except himself, disallowed these 
 triumphs except he fulfilled the condition precedent of con- 
 centration. 
 
 " You'll see. Uncle Drury," said Fred's mother to her bald 
 and dignified old brother-in-law, as she sat and chatted with 
 him one Saturday after lunch in her drawing-room at Maida 
 Vale, " that dear Fred will be all right when he's married. He 
 only wants time to turn round and settle down, and then you see 
 if he doesn't concentrate. Cinty will keep him steady. He will 
 always have an object before him. Depend upon it, there's 
 nothing like a wife, for keeping an Object in view." 
 
 Uncle Drury weighed eighteen stone, and always rumbled in 
 his chest before he spoke, like the works of a big clock before 
 it strikes. Then he made an exclamation, which perhaps should 
 be written " 'pshaw ! " as you would have said he was a likely 
 old gentleman to say 'pshaw ! But then nobody knows, nowa- 
 days, how it was pronounced in the days of port wine and 
 walnuts. A neophonetic system must be followed here. 
 
 " Charchar ! " — that was what it sounded like — " Charchar ! 
 Don't tell me about Wives and Objects. If a wife makes her 
 husband concentrate, well and good ! If not, she may just as 
 well be at Jericho. You are quite at liberty to tell her I said 
 so, if you like, Emilia. Jericho! " Uncle Drury repeated the 
 word forcibly, as though it had a strong geographical pungency, 
 and was fraught with alienation to a greater extent than 
 Coventry, or even Blazes. He then blew a sostenuto blast on 
 his nose; it ought to have heralded a proclamation, and the 
 silence that followed was a disappointment. 
 
 " You are always hard on the boy, Uncle Drury," said his
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 5 
 
 sister-in-law. And as this didn't seem to arise strictly from the 
 conversation, it may be assumed that it was a family remark, 
 liable to be encountered in the course of any communion between 
 the speakers, sooner or later. This time the headmaster oJ^, 
 Vexton Stultifer school — for the Eev. Dr. Carteret had that 
 degree of importance — seemed inclined to follow it up. 
 
 " Not at all so, Emilia, not at all so ! It is unfair to say so." 
 He intensified his meaning with a frown and a forefinger, as soon 
 as the hand it was on had stowed away his recent pocket-hand- 
 kerchief. " Most unfair ! When — your — boy, Emilia, was in 
 the first form, I said the same about him that I say now. Simple 
 lack of concentration! And I can tell you this, Emilia — and 
 you may just as well listen. ..." 
 
 " I know perfectly well Avhat you are going to say." 
 
 " Perhaps you do. Perhaps you don't. An3'how, if that boy 
 had been left in my hands, to manage my own way ..." 
 
 " He was a boy in your school. Why didn't you manage him 
 your own way ? " 
 
 " You are quite right, Emilia. I used the wrong expression. 
 I did not mean to suggest the least that you impeded or encum- 
 bered my management of him. On the contrary, you kept 
 loyally to your undertaking to give me a free hand. What I 
 meant to say was ..." But it seemed to call for a little recon- 
 sideration, for the Doctor paused over a pinch of snuff to amend 
 it for publication. " I should say perhaps that what I ought 
 to have said was that, all the circumstances taken into considera- 
 tion, I was the wrong tutor for him. A brother's son is not like 
 another boy, nor perhaps ..." He stopped abruptly, as a 
 speaker stops who knows what he is going to say, but leaves 
 it unsaid. 
 
 " You know that I don't agree with you about that. Was it 
 not his father's wish that you should always take charge of 
 the boy?" 
 
 " Yes — yes — that was so. Was so certainly, I should say. . . . 
 Yes — what were you going to say ? " 
 
 " Nothing. Only that we have said all this before, and I see 
 no use going over it again. We shall never agree. Let us talk 
 of something else. Besides, it remains to be seen that my boy 
 Frederic will not distinguish himself." 
 
 " I shall be very happy to hear of it, when he does." 
 
 " Now you are speaking as if you doubted his ability. We had 
 better not talk about him. It always puts you out when I speak 
 of him."
 
 6 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " You know perfectly -svell, Emilia, that that is not the case. 
 But, as you say truly, we gain nothing by pursuing this con- 
 versation. Let us speak on some other subject." 
 
 " By all means. Let us." But neither did. It is very diffi- 
 cult to make arbitrary choice of a subject of conversation. 
 
 It took time — not much, but some — for this slight threatening 
 of a breeze to die down. During its subsidence this lady's face 
 certainly looked comely; indeed, under the stimulus of a momen- 
 tary vexation, it looked more. It looked, and was, beautiful. 
 But there was no one there to see except the reverend head- 
 master, and he was not concerned with such matters. Besides, 
 he had known her over thirty-five years, and she was his brother's 
 widow. So he took snuff and looked at the fire, not at her. His 
 face had claims too, and meant to have more when he grew still 
 older and whiter. It was massive and commanding anyhow, and 
 the sneeze that followed a pinch of snuff shook the glass vases 
 on the marble top of the curvilinear chiffonier at the far end of 
 the Victorian drawing-room where they sat, and made them ring. 
 He appeared to wait for the echo to die ; and then, as though it 
 had asked for the right time, looked at his watch and said 
 twenty-to-three. 
 
 " Must you go? " said his sister-in-law. " I don't mean must 
 you go now if that train is to be caught. I suppose that's in- 
 evitable. I mean wouldn't to-morrow do as well ? " 
 
 " No, hardly — hardly ! I want a few hours to read through 
 my letters. JBesides, I've told them at the hotel. However, I 
 needn't go for a few minutes. I shall find a cab on the stand." 
 
 Evidently, a short chat would fill out those few minutes, v»'itn 
 a further oblivion for the tiff. " You always make a great point 
 of the first day of the term, Dru," said the lady, as keynote for 
 such a chat. "But an hour or so late wouldn't matter, if 
 vou went on Monday morning. I see that you have to be 
 there." 
 
 " Absolute necessity," said the headmaster. " Abso-lute 
 necessity! "\^niat would happen if I were not there, when the 
 boys assemble on ]\Ionday, the Lord only knows ! " He seemed 
 to be picturing to himself a Chaos in the school at his defection, 
 and to be amused at it. " To do the boys justice, I believe they 
 would be as much upset at the incident as it is in the nature 
 of boys to be at anything. If they could make me miss my train, 
 themselves, they would regard it all as strictly in order, and 
 rather a lark, in their phraseology. But, for the thing to happen 
 of its own accord ! Never do — never do at all ! "
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 7 
 
 "If they were set to scour the country to find you, they would 
 appreciate that." 
 
 " Bless my soul yes, that they would ! But then, after that, 
 they wouldn't be contented unless a master was missing every 
 day." He seemed enormously amused at the picture that this 
 developed in his imagination ; probably that of a school subject 
 to the daily deficit of an important master, under these condi- 
 tions. But he enjoyed it in silence, with a twinkle on his face; 
 and this fragment of chat having served its turn as an antidote 
 to whatever there was controversial in the previous one, the lady 
 thought it unnecessary to say anything further. 
 
 A cat on the hearthrug, that had slept through the conversa- 
 tion, thought the silence a good opportunity to stretch itself and 
 turn round. A dachshund, that had been grilling inside the 
 fender, came over it suddenly as to a business appointment, smelt 
 the cat carefully, decided that no steps could be taken at present, 
 and went back. A little quickstep gold watch on the chimney- 
 piece kept well alongside the solemn pace of a neighbouring clock, 
 but made no effort to fall in and keep time. The post came, and 
 the lady said Lipscombe would bring it in; but it wasn't till 
 Lipscombe had brought it in, and she herself was biting a 
 thoughtful lip over its contents, that the reverend headmaster 
 said, as one who sums up Time-to-date : — " Well — all very good, 
 so far ! And now I must be off, or I shan't have time to see over 
 this house. It's a perfectly crazy idea to take such a huge place, 
 but I can't veto the scheme without seeing it." 
 
 " How long will it take you to drive there ? " 
 
 " In a cab? Over an hour." 
 
 " And when you have seen the house, you will have to drive 
 to Wimbledon. How long will that take ? " 
 
 " I shall not keep the cab. I shall walk to Wimbledon. I 
 shall catch the five-thirty from Waterloo. But I haven't too 
 much time. ... Oh yes — time enough, but not too much." He 
 declined to have a four-wheeler sent for, and was heard talking 
 to himself down the stairs, or replying to their creaks as they 
 acknowledged his eighteen stone. His sister-in-law listened to 
 his exit, and returned to her letter. 
 
 She expected to see the old boy again shortly — at her son's 
 wedding at any rate, if not earlier — and the sHght asperity of 
 their recent talk was not of a sort to call for a reconciliation; 
 scarcely a tiff, in fact. But she was mistaken, for she never saw 
 him again.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Sometimes summer is in such a hurry in England that it 
 comes in spring, and finding it too cold goes away disgusted and 
 never comes back. It had done so this time, as far as the pre- 
 mature arrival went, and the bicycling season had set in early. 
 Cinty Eraser and her sister Elbows were bicycling up from Gipsy 
 Hill, Upper Norwood, to lunch at Mrs. Carteret's and go to the 
 Sunday afternoon service at St. Paul's at three o'clock, with Fred. 
 And of course they were not obhged to go to church in the morn- 
 ing, too. Anyhow, they weren't going, that was fiat ! 
 
 Cinty's real name was Cintra, not Cynthia, and her sister's 
 wasn't Elbows at all. It was Ann; or, for speech, Nancy. The 
 name Elbows was not known to either Cintra or herself. But 
 she was known by it to Fred, who was engaged to her younger 
 sister; and spoken of too by it by his intimate bosom friend 
 Snaith, whenever he honoured her by mentioning her to that 
 cheeky young upstart of an attorney. This was the way in which 
 Elbows, or Ann, spoke of liim. She may have had some sus- 
 picion of the way in which he spoke of her, and it may have 
 vitalised her epithets. She certainly was hardly a beauty, 
 though her face was very refreshing; and she was angular. But 
 she could bicycle. 
 
 " Of all the sickening neighbourhoods," said she to her sister. 
 She seemed to think the sentence would do, with no further 
 addition. They were in a suburban desolation, a district of 
 Estates that had matured, and were ripe for building, but looked 
 as if they would disagree with the stomach of the metropolis 
 that was going to assimilate them. Estates on which an in- 
 fatuated anticipation of a beery world had planted, with feverish 
 haste, at the street corners of its credulity, ginshops and pot- 
 houses deserted by hypothesis, but nursing a belief that trade 
 would look up. Fields were there, or places where there had 
 been fields, overrun at right angles by roads, or places where 
 there were to be roads. , Old suburban homes were there, trying 
 to forget the voices of their last tenants — trying to make believe 
 that others would be found to come and take them at a rental 
 that would console the maturity of their estate for the loss of so 
 
 8
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 9 
 
 much valuable frontage to the main road ; murmuring to them- 
 selves, in the person of the young man from Smith's the house- 
 agent, that they were really in substantial repair, and only 
 wanted a touch of paint and repapering throughout, and maybe 
 the shutter fastenings would want looking to, while as for the 
 drains the last tenant had had them overhauled quite lately, but 
 you could see for yourself. 
 
 Such a house was The Cedars^ a derelict in a desert, a close- 
 shuttered survivor of the years gone by; a courageous adventurer 
 into its Future of change — change for the worse ! If the two 
 trees it had its name from ever spoke of their past to each other, 
 it must have bc^?n to say that their worst anticipations were come 
 true. For the rooms that had looked out upon them in the days 
 when their lawn was a mowing-machine's delight, when the great 
 iron gate you could see them through now could really be un- 
 locked with a key to let your carriage in, and its wheels could 
 sound its expectation of hospitality awaiting you over a gravel 
 path clean-weeded day by day — those rooms were eyeless now 
 to see them as of old, and tenantless within. Even the rats had 
 fled to seek unconsumed larders elsewhere. Xothing was left 
 to interrupt the leisurely Decay ; to interfere with the worm's last 
 supper on the mouldered joist, the last nibble of the half -starved 
 mouse from the fallen wallpaper strip upon the floor. And in 
 the garden the dandelion, and a blue corncockle here and there, 
 meant soon to have the lonely place to themselves, till the 
 polygonum should come and take over the inheritance. But for 
 many seasons after the big gate was last locked you might have 
 looked through it and smelt the roses as they made their fight 
 for life against the weeds; while field and garden without fell, 
 year by year, to the coming town, and the pothouse-spotted 
 desolation grew. 
 
 Through this desolation rode the bicyclists, and the younger 
 one made no attempt to defend it. On the contrary, she seemed 
 quite prepared to endorse it. — '' This is the very sickeningest," 
 said she, completing her sister's unfinished comment. She had 
 to shout loud, because she was in front, as she continued : — " But 
 you know Freddy and I are in love with The Cedars. We are 
 sure it must be haunted. Only — the roof ! And the floors ! ! 
 And the sewers ! ! ! " 
 
 " Is that where the child's toy was ? " 
 
 " My stars, Nancy, how you do remember things ! A doll 
 stuck through a broken drum. From last time it was a nursery. 
 You're touched, I suppose? "
 
 10 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " You're an unfeeling little pig. Go on if you're going on. 
 Or else let me pass. ..." 
 
 "•' There's no room. You'll be in the ruts. Or knock me in. 
 And it's wet clay. ..." But in a few seconds clean dry 
 ground was reached; and Nancy, far the better bicyclist, came 
 up alongside, enabling her sister to drop her voice to normal. 
 " I am all for taking The Cedars. But they want fifteen hun- 
 dred for the twenty years unexpired. And it will cost every 
 penny of four to put it in even decent repair." 
 
 Nancy had a matter-of-fact, confiding nature, which had given 
 way to the spoiled self-assertion — called pertness by Fred's uncle, 
 and cheek by his friend Mr. Snaith — of her pretty younger 
 sister Cinty. So she accepted that young monkey's statement 
 that four hundred pounds would repair The Cedars with a full 
 belief in some qualifying experience, acquired Heaven knows 
 when, of prices per foot-super of slates and flooring, and paint- 
 ino; and glazing and whitewashing and " sanitation." All of 
 which Cinty really knew nothing about. She enlarged upon the 
 su])ject nevertheless, and the dexterity with which she paraded 
 her few data imposed on her sister's simplicity, and prompted 
 the latter, in the present case, to say : — " What a lot you have got 
 to know about it, Cit ! " And Cit responded : — " As much as 
 most people, I suppose " — rather scornfully, and made Elbows 
 feel that she was behind the times about sanitation. 
 
 " You never told us, at home, about The Cedars, Cit," said 
 she, rather reproachfully. For the Fraser family were old- 
 fashioned, and all of them told their day's story over the evening 
 dinner-table to all the others. 
 
 "Yes, I did — where the child's toy was. ..." 
 
 " Oh yes — you told us that. But not about the repairs and 
 the estimate, and all that sort of thing." 
 
 " Well — there wasn't any estimate. It was all vague." Per- 
 haps Cintra then felt she had been talking at random, for a 
 semi-self-exculpation followed. " Besides, there's lots of places 
 we've looked at I haven't told you about. I can't remember 
 them all." 
 
 They then rode on side-by-side along the level road. Nancy 
 felt rather chilled and crushed by hearing that information had 
 been withheld; perhaps had a foreboding of the family-disrup- 
 tion-feeUng that was to come with the wedding. This does not 
 dawn because of a mere betrothal, which may be forgotten to- 
 morrow. But when it comes to house-hunting . . . ! 
 
 However, Nancy was not badly chilled, only a little. Not so
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
 <( 
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 11 
 
 little though but what her sister knew all about it, sisterwise, 
 and fashioned her speech towards amends-making. 
 
 " Of course one means to tell, and then one doesn't. There's 
 such lots of things. However, 1 did mean this one — so you 
 needn't look so glum, Nancy dear. ... Here's a motor coming ! 
 Look out ! " A whirl, a roar, two pair of goggles, a dust-cloud, 
 and a stench one hopes Chemistry is ashamed of ! " Oh dear ! — 
 what I was saying has gone out of my head. That beastly 
 thing ! " 
 
 "I'm not glum. Oof! — wait till this stench is done. . . . 
 There! Now tell. Wasn't the house too big, apart from the 
 repairs ? " 
 
 Well — you saw it." 
 
 Yes, and it looked too big. It's five windows wide, and a 
 sort of schoolhouse — built on to it." 
 
 " It was a school, you know. ..." 
 
 " Cinty dear, aren't you rather a goose ? " 
 
 " I don't see it. What for?" 
 
 " Why ! — to so much as think of taking a great huge house 
 with eighteen bedrooms ! You are a goose." Nancy seemed 
 to think there was no doubt about it. 
 
 " I don't see it. Half of it would let. The annex-building 
 would always let. And the large room at the back would do 
 for Frederic's workshop." Cintra had sometimes a tendency 
 to drop " Fred." She had a sense of the coming dignity of 
 real marriage, and this was a tribute to it. She continued : — 
 " And the side drawing-room with the handsome mantelpiece 
 for Frederic's library. And the little off-room on the stairs for 
 a sort of Office. There wouldn't be any rooms going begging. 
 You may be sure of that." She continued developing the sub- 
 ject, suggesting to her hearer more and more the idea that she 
 had given up the prospect of life at The Cedars with reluctance. 
 
 But then, Nancy reflected, she had been quite as keen yester- 
 day about a flat in Westminster with a beautiful view over the 
 park. If Nancy had had more experience of young couples 
 nesting, she would have known that they all go through an 
 ecstatic period of house-inspection, and that while the fever is 
 on them the object of life is not to arrive at a decision, but 
 to see new premises; that the obvious unsuitability of each new 
 find only acts as a stimulus to closer examination of it on its 
 merits; and that the raising of the expectations of lessors and 
 vendors to the highest possible pitch is a delirious joy, which only 
 reaches its climax after repeated visits by appointment and inter-
 
 12 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 views with builders and surveyors^ when it becomes manifest that 
 if only the north rooms had looked south and the south rooms 
 north, or there hadn't been any rent to pay, to speak of; or if 
 it had been on gravel instead of clay, or five miles nearer town — 
 why, then they would have taken it at once, but as it is can only 
 decide in the negative and enjoy the execrations of their victims, 
 and go away and see still more premises, and more, and more. 
 Miss Cintra Fraser and Mr. Frederic Carteret were in fact — 
 over and above being in a seventh heaven of Love — in an eighth 
 or ninth or tenth heaven of almost solid air-castle building, with 
 real live proprietors and house-agents worked in, who experienced 
 real annoyance when their bubbles burst; and who, as their 
 tormentors stirred up the soap for a new one, made real reso- 
 lutions that they would never be taken in in the same way again, 
 and were. 
 
 " Yes," said Cintra, as they drew near to a main road with a 
 stream of traffic, where conversation was going to be impossible, 
 " it's very trying having to give up the idea of The Cedars, 
 when I know it could be made do. And you know, Nance, you 
 could have a room there to do your enamels, and a gas-furnace, 
 and come every day, and we could work it all together. . . . 
 Oh, how I do hate this dreadful road ! Three snorters already ! " 
 
 " You can always catch hold of the handles," says Miss Xancy, 
 whose normal form on a bicycle is to put her hands behind her 
 back or in her pockets, except when she is promoting intercourse 
 between her nose and her pocket-handkerchief. Or, of course, 
 when she wants to romp along the road like a Demon — this 
 expression is borrowed from a young friend of ours, a bicyclist. 
 But when crawling seven miles an hour, Xancy could read net 
 six-shilling volumes as easily as not. 
 
 The two young ladies arrived an hour later at Maida Vale, 
 without casualt}'. Both said, as they alighted: — "Saved our 
 lives ! " 
 
 Cinty said to Xancy : — " That was a near squeak between the 
 'bus and that red horror." And Nancy replied that if you were 
 going to fuss about that sort of thing you had better give up 
 riding at once. '" Perhaps I had, dear," said Cinty. 
 
 The little dachshund answered the bell, and had the street 
 door and garden gate opened. He then overhauled the bicycles 
 — attended to the tyres and the lubrication — till his attention 
 was called away by some friends across the road. 
 
 " Has Mr. Frederic come, Lipscombe ? "
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 13 
 
 " I believe not. Miss." Lipscombe leads a life of cautious 
 reserves, behind a white apron. She takes sixteen pounds, and 
 might even ask eighteen if she were just an inch longer. But 
 it is just that inch that makes the difference, in a parlour maid. 
 She sheds bitter tears over that missing inch, and often prays 
 for a high fever that she may grow it in a week. But no burning 
 quotidian tertian comes to Lipscombe's rescue, and she remains 
 five-feet-four. 
 
 " I hope nothing's hai^pened to Fred." Cintra, who speaks, is 
 unconsciously swayed by a great natural Law — the one which 
 makes us alt believe we are safe because wo are not somewhere 
 else. Other people are, and you never know what may not have 
 happened. Kow, Cinty and Nancy, between Gipsy Hill and 
 Maida Yale, had been twenty times within an ace of death — 
 especially that time when both were between a tram going one 
 way and a Daimler going the other — and Mr. Fred had only to 
 come from his chambers. Safe enough, in all conscience ! But 
 then these girls, in their relation to themselves, were on the spot, 
 and knew all about it. So Cintra hoped, conversationally, that 
 nothing had happened to Fred, and exposed herself to the 
 derision of her sister. 
 
 Nothing had happened; and the young man himself, arriving 
 close on their heels, had evidently not been uneasy about them. 
 He was quite full of a New Idea, an awfully good one. He 
 always was, but this time it was an awfully better than usual 
 one. ' And he shut out the returning dachshund unfeelingly, he 
 was so full of it. 
 
 "I think it's the best notion yet, far and away," said he, 
 exultingly. " It came into my head over that ship-propeller 
 business, and really I've been awake all night thinking it out. 
 I've got it now, down to the ground." 
 
 " You are so clever, dearest ! " said Cintra. 
 
 " But you've shut Liebig out," said Nancy. For that was 
 actually the name of this dog, and he was dabbing the gate and 
 singing a most pathetic song about a little black dachshund that 
 got shut out of a front garden in Maida Yale. Miss Nancy 
 carried him upstairs, going on in front of the lovers ; but whether 
 to give them greater latitude or because she was not exactly nuts 
 upon her future brother-in-law, who can say ? She certainly had 
 used that expression about him, in confidence to friends; also, 
 she was sure he spoke of her disparagingly to that odious Snaith 
 creature. Only she didn't know that he called her " Elbows." 
 
 Of course Miss Ann, or Nancy, Fraser was rather a plain girl, 
 
 2
 
 14 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 and at tliree-and-twenty was not likely to be anything else. But 
 she made no claims, and was to all appearance content without 
 admirers. So she had a right to ask to be exempt from over- 
 hauling and classification, horsewise. Surely when Amaryllis 
 isn't asking you to sport with her in the shade, you needn't go 
 out of your way to call her gawky. If Neacra has not placed 
 the tangles of her hair at your disposal, but brushed them fiat 
 and screwed them up tight, it isn't fair to reflect upon their 
 quantity; when, for anything you know, there might be heaps 
 if it was let out. Nor to ascribe motives to Neacra because she 
 doesn't dress in a low neck. Until you've seen her in a low 
 neck, or at least a V, you really can't tell. And the expression 
 " collar-hones " is inexcusable in any case, because they are a 
 bone which is never imperceptible, except in Dowagers of full 
 habit. But admirers who w^ere not so narrow-minded as to be 
 susceptible only to mere impact, might have inserted a note of 
 admiration after Nancy's eyes. Surely they were the very 
 frankest eyes that you never cared to examine carefully enough 
 to see if they were grey or hazel. 
 
 We are saying all this to counteract, if possible, an impression 
 you must have derived from the detestable epithet " Elbows." 
 It would have been much fairer to say at once that Nancy was 
 a reasonably comely girl who held her possibly bony self up- 
 right; had smooth brown hair, a slightly warped nose and 
 pleasant eyes, and could whistle like a boy — and then allow Mr. 
 Fred's disparagement to do its worst. And it would have 
 saved time, which is very necessary now that we are not mid- 
 Yictorians. 
 
 Nancy's indifference to her ov/n looks may have been somehow 
 connected with her susceptibility to beauty in other women. 
 Nancy was always in love. She would lie awake like an over- 
 excited boy after an evening at the play or the opera, quite upset 
 by Columbine or the prima donna. She bought and stored 
 photos of celebrated beauties whom you wouldn't have wished 
 fier to make bosom friends of. She would recognise fascinating 
 exteriors in carriages when she was out biking with her sister; 
 and when the latter asked her how she knew, replied that she had 
 cut Lady Clachandrumdalloch out of the Graphic, and she was 
 quite sure it w^as her. But she did not adore Beauty in its 
 Zenith only. Age could not wither it, nor custom stale its 
 infinite variety, for her; and although Frederic's mother was in 
 her fifties, it may easily be that its dignified remains in her 
 were what made Nancy love their owner better than her pending
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 15 
 
 brother-in-law. Anyhow, Mrs. Carteret — freely spoken of as 
 *' the mother-hen " by her hcte-noirc, Snaith — was the reason why 
 a visit to ]\Iaitla Vale was always welcome to Cinty's sister; and 
 this time she felt very content to leave the two spoonies to a 
 prolonged stairclimb, and to hurry up to the lady of the house 
 in the drawing-room. 
 
 The mother-hen was recently back from church, and seemed 
 distraite over some botanical incident in the greenhouse above 
 the projecting street-door block. The sweet air of the premature 
 summer morning brought in a smell of warm red geranium 
 plants; not a smell of flowers certainly, but something that was 
 just as serviceable towards an impression that to-day was like 
 when one was a child, and was taken walks and bowled one's 
 hoop. 
 
 " I suppose it's almost lunch. I must go. . . . Is that you, 
 Cintra? . . . Oh no ! . . . Miss Fraser, is it? " For Xancy 
 was Miss Fraser, and there were two between her and her sister ; 
 one dead, another married and gone to live at Brighton. Miss 
 Fraser was allowed to kiss Mrs. Carteret, and was glad. The 
 dog, Liebig, tried to mix himself up in this affair, and got 
 checked. 
 
 '' I'll put him down, Mrs. Carteret— he'll tear your voile — it's 
 lovely! " But Liebig is conscious of a cat, and is keen to abolish 
 or adjust it before he reaches the ground, and bursts away with 
 a wriffsle. The rescued lavender net is a cloud over lavender 
 silk, and the gloves Mrs. Carteret is rolling up are lavender. 
 Her eyes are not exactly lavender, but they are of the same school 
 ^ as the voile and the skirt and the gloves. After a short ac- 
 quaintance, one feels that Mrs. Carteret's name, Emilia, is a 
 lavender-coloured name. She is a sensitive person about dress, 
 who always smells of new gloves, and now she is anxious to get 
 those bicycle-things ofE those two girls before the second luncheon 
 bell. 
 
 " You'll find everything ready upstairs." She is referring to 
 non-bicycle skirts, prearranged. Lipscombe sees to all that. 
 
 " I'll go. I shall be quicker than Cinty. I always am. 
 We've had a delicious ride." 
 
 " Which way did you come ? " 
 
 " I don't know how to describe. Not the straight way. We 
 came round to get a sight of a house. One of the houses Cit 
 and Fred want to take. A lovely old house to look at, outside 
 — only so big ! We hadn't time to stop and go in." 
 
 "Not The Cedars?"
 
 16 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Yes, that was the name. Such a dear old place with two 
 great Cedars of Lebanon on the lawn, and all going to decay. 
 A perfect place to live in." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret smiled sedately ! " Just the place for a young 
 couple with a small income! It's the place my boy is always 
 raving about — the madhouse, that was." 
 
 "Was it a madhouse? Cit never told me that." Nancy's 
 voice shrank, conscious of the horror of madhouses. 
 
 " Perhaps she doesn't know. Fred may not have told her." 
 
 " She won't want to live there when she does know. A mad- 
 house ! " 
 
 "Oh, as to their taking it, of course that's absurd! His 
 guardian would never consent to anything so ridiculous." 
 
 ''Of course he wouldn't!" Nancy felt safe, directly, as an 
 image of the liev. Drury passed across her mental retina. " If 
 he were to see the place only from the outside, he would 
 put liis foot down at once. I'm sure he would." 
 
 ■• Oh, for that matter, he lias seen it. At least, I believe so. 
 He went straight away to look at it after he was here to lunch 
 yesterday, and 1 hope he caught the five-o'clock train. Now, my 
 dear Miss Fraser, do forgive me ! But really it's ten minutes 
 to one, and remember you have to be at St. Paul's by three." 
 
 '• All right, Mrs. Carteret. I shall be ready before Cit You 
 see if I'm not." 
 
 ■• Oh — such a disappointment ! " Thus the bride-elect to her 
 elector, awaiting her in the drawing-room. The bicycle skirt has 
 disappeared, and the limbs it almost made a parade of — certainly 
 was not sensitive about — have retired into private life. Cintra * 
 is a young lady again ! 
 
 "What's the disappointment?" savs Fred. 
 
 "The Cedars." 
 
 "What about The Cedars?" 
 
 " Your Uncle Drury says it's too big. I suppose it is." This 
 is said most ruefully. 
 
 " Oh rot! Besides, Uncle Drury hasn't seen it. How can he 
 tell?" Cintra, keeping rueful, checks false conclusions with a 
 corrective headshake, and says: — "He lias seen it. He went 
 there after he came here on Thursday. And he says it's too big. 
 Heaps! Besides, it was a madhouse. It was, wasn't it? You 
 said so." This is addressed to Nancy, who is bringing up the 
 rear, re-skirted up to Society point. 
 
 Nancy is truthfulness itself, and won't stand inaccuracy or
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 17 
 
 exaggeration, " Yes — that's all right ! " says she. " About the 
 madhouse. But I didn't say Dr. Carteret said it was too big 
 after he'd seen it. He said that before. Then he went away 
 to look at it, and catch the five-o'clock train." It speaks 
 volumes for Nancy's veracity that she adds : — " If possible." 
 " What did he say after? That's what I want to know." 
 " Nothing — at least, I don't know. You must ask Mrs. 
 Carteret." At this point Mr. Fred, who has remained outside 
 the discussion with visible mistrust in his eye of all young ladies' 
 testimony on all subjects, appends a side-note. Yes — that's the 
 idea ! Ask his mother, who is just coming downstairs. 
 
 But that lady has after all nothing to tell. " ily dear 
 Freddy," she says, shrugging her shoulders with a slight action 
 of hands that lay an indisputable truth open to Heaven and 
 Earth: — "You know your Uncle. Is it likely he would write? 
 He said positively the house was far too big — so it is! — but he 
 supposed he must see over it, as a matter of form. Then he 
 went away, and no doubt saw over it. I don't expect to hear 
 from him yet and very likely he won't write at all." 
 
 " Yes ! " said Mr. Frederic. " That's just like Uncle Drury." 
 " Perhaps," suggested Cintra, " it made him change his mind." 
 " Not he ! " replietl Fred. " He is Obstinacy itself, like the 
 Pyramids." Nobody quarrelled with the metaphor, but that 
 may have been because Lipscombe said lunch was on the table. 
 The little dachshund pretended that he had said it, and went 
 down first to the dining-room. 
 
 Pending his particular concession of roast mutton, invariable 
 on Sundays, Mr. Fred had an item of news to tell. Who did 
 the public generally think was engaged to be married? The 
 public guessed wrong, and gave it up. Why — Charley ! The 
 public was incredulous, on the ground that no one of ilr. 
 Snaith's personality could possibly have engaged the affections 
 of a sex whose good taste is proverbial. " He is engaged, for all 
 that ! " said his friend, not without a certain triumph in his 
 voice. " And, what's more, to a very pretty girl. He's en- 
 gaged to a Miss Hinchliffe." Incredulity seemed abashed by so 
 circumstantial a name. It might have ignored or slighted 
 Smith or Brown, but Hinchliffe was a name to make you sit up 
 and think. !Mrs. Carteret went the length of wondering whether 
 the young lady was one of those Hinchliffes. Her son said he 
 thought she was — he didn't know. But there was money. She 
 said thereon that then it was pretty sure to be those Hinchliffes. 
 Miss Nancy said you might trust Mr. Snaith for that, and Mr,
 
 18 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Fred said : — " No — really Charley's not that sort of fellow." 
 Public opinion turned favourably for Mr. Snaith, and silenced 
 Miss Nancy. Then the tendency of this new fiancee to occupy 
 a place in History was nipped in the bud by Mrs. Carteret sud- 
 denly recollecting that those Hinehliffes were not Hinchliffes, 
 but Hinchclift'cs. It took time to reinstate Mr. Snaith's ]\Iiss 
 Hinchliffe after this shock. But it was done, and Mr. Fred 
 stuck to the money, which saved her from extinction. 
 
 Then that young gentleman announced that his fertile brain 
 had conceived a ripping idea. 
 
 " Well ! " said Nancy. And the others said :— " Well ! " to 
 encourage the ripping idea, as the young gentleman seemed to 
 have announced its existence before maturing it. 
 
 " What's to prevent the Hinchli'ffes ..." 
 
 " Mr. and Mrs. Nosey, I suppose," interjected Nancy. 
 ■ " Why — of course ! Who else could they be ? " 
 
 " Don't squabble with Nance, Fred. Go on. ' What's to pre- 
 vent?' you were saying?" Cintra knew it was best to nip dis- 
 cussion of this sort in the bud. 
 
 " What's to prevent The Cedars being made two houses of, 
 and them having one and us the other? " 
 
 " Of course ! Perfectly splendid ! The very thing ! "\Miy 
 did we never think of it before ? " Cintra laid down her knife 
 and fork to think of it now. 
 
 Fred proceeded to elaborate the ripping idea. There were two 
 staircases, and the way in which one of the rooms would lend 
 itself to conversion into a second entrance-lobby and a convenient 
 annex was little short of miraculous — could only be accounted 
 for on the supposition that Destiny had foreseen the present 
 conjunction of circumstances, and had lent herself to their 
 development. He was able to locate the new kitchen in the 
 more modern wing of the house, without trenching on its 
 resources of space. In fact, whatever you did, there would still 
 be unlimited spare rooms. His faith in the inexhaustible re- 
 sources of the mansion naturally provoked reference to the fact 
 that but a few minutes ago he had been discussing it as suitable 
 for one young couple to begin life in, with margins no greater 
 than prudent foresight demanded. 
 
 " I must say," said Fred's sedate mother, from her pinnacle 
 of toleration for these crude young people's wild schemes, " that 
 I do not think Uncle Drury was so very far out when he con- 
 demned the house as absurdly large. Absurdly ! " 
 
 Her son hastened to explain that his own cautious tempera-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 19 
 
 ment had in fact long since forced him to this conclusion, and 
 that he had virtually negatived the idea unless some such scheme 
 of partition should suggest itself. He wondered that this one 
 had not occurred to him immediately on Charley's announcement 
 of his felicity 3-esterday. But really his head had been so full 
 of his new Anti-Vibration Duplex Engine that he could think 
 of nothing else. 
 
 " You are so clever! " said his fiancee, with reverent eyes fixed 
 on him, awestruck at this last new outcome of his genius. His 
 mother took absolutely no notice of the Duplex Engine. It was 
 only one of a thousand schemes, behind each of which stood 
 Opulence, painted full of dividends, only waiting concentration 
 on the part of its originator. There now ! — if Fred would only 
 concentrate ! 
 
 Mrs. Carteret ignored the Duplex, and passed to another topic. 
 Who was it said this house had been a madhouse? She asked 
 the question, but got nothing for answer except repetitions. 
 Who was it? 
 
 Cintra recollected. " Stop, I know! " said she. " It wasn't 
 the dried-up caretaker. And it wasn't the old husband. It must 
 have been the agent's where we got the order to view — the first 
 time we went." 
 
 " Not very likely," said Fred. " He wants to let the place. 
 Besides, I remember what he said. He said it had been a 
 doctor's private residence till seven years ago, and we were not 
 to take anything for true that the old woman said, because she 
 was half-witted, and her husband little better." 
 
 " I think," said Mrs. Carteret, addressing Fred, " I can see 
 where the madhouse story came from. Your tlncle Drury 
 repeated to me all that — about the doctor — and then said, in 
 his positive way : — ' A madhouse, of course ! ' You know your 
 uncle's positive way ? " 
 
 " Eather ! " said Fred. Then he appeared to recollect for a 
 moment, and ended by saying : — '' Yes — that was how it was. I 
 told him about the doctor, and that the agent said he and his 
 father before him had had the house for over sixty years, and 
 then Uncle Drury said : — ' I see — madhouse, of course.' I 
 thought he must know, somehow or other." 
 
 " But you never told me," said Cintra. 
 
 " Because you're a delicate young female," said the youth, 
 somewhat on his defence, but brazening it out. " Delicate 
 young females don't take to madhouses and horrors." 
 
 Then he changed his tone, to keep on safe ground. " No — I
 
 20 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 thought it would only give you the creeps. Besides^ perhaps it 
 wasn't true." 
 
 *'■ I prefer being told things," says the young beauty, a little 
 '^^tiffly. " Whether they arc false or true." 
 
 •'Even if it's ghosts?" 
 
 " Certainly. Even if it's ghosts. So now you know, and 
 mind you don't do so any more." The young gentleman 
 expresses contrition and docility, as a discreet lover, and the 
 lipple (lies on the waters. 
 
 " Keconciliation and forgiveness ! " says Nancy, illustratively. 
 For her part, she added, she thought Fred had been very good 
 and considerate, and Cit might think herself in luck. And as 
 for ghosts, they v.-ould be interesting and not a drawback, unless 
 they were the sort that broke things. Perhaps, however, these 
 last" would rank as phenomena, not ghosts. 
 
 ^Mrs. Carteret dissociated herself from such a trivial, mock 
 scientific tone. " I think it quite possible," said she, " that your 
 Uncle Drury won't write. If he does not, you may take it for 
 granted that he thinks The Cedars out of the question. I feel 
 
 sure." 
 
 Said Mr. Fred, thereon : — '" Of course I can't write to him 
 about The New Scheme without sounding Charley about it first." 
 
 " And Miss Hinchliffe," says Cintra. She looks after the 
 interest of brides. They are not to be cyphers. 
 
 "' Of course Miss Hinchliffe. They'll settle it between 'em. I 
 say, Cit, wouldn't it be rather a lark to get them down to the 
 house for them to see — without telling them anything, you know 
 — and then spring The Scheme on them suddenly?" 
 
 " Oh do ! — to-morrow if you can. Don't let's lose an hour. 
 The place may be taken any minute." This is Cintra. Her 
 sister had been very reserved since Mr. Snaith was imported into 
 the air-castle. Then when a provisional forecast is made of an 
 excursion in force to The Cedars on Thursday, she says she 
 thinks the Metcalfes are expecting her on Thursday. She has 
 already said : — " Eather Miss Hinchliffe than me ! " in an under- 
 tone to her sister, apropos of some supposed contingency involv- 
 ing that young person and her adorer. Fred says to Cintra 
 afterwards : — " I shall convert your ferocious sister to Charley 
 for all that, some day. You see if I don't! "
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 "■ That's what some do say it was — a madhouse. Others 
 says it was a Loonattick Asylum." This is what the deaf old 
 woman in charge of The Cedars said to the Eev. Drury Carteret, 
 when he had shoiited three times: — " Is this The Cedars?" and 
 once, when he found this form of question fail: — "Is this the 
 madhouse ? " 
 
 The old woman showed no alacrity to open the gate, and raised 
 an ohjection. Had the reverend gentleman an order to view? 
 Ino, he had not, but he had a shilling. He showed it, and it 
 caused a smaller gate lower down to be opened and admitted him 
 to the garden. 
 
 He looked very overpowering and important as he crushed the 
 gravel ahead of his conductor. She flagged in his rear, rapid 
 progress being incompatible with the secretion of the shilling in 
 an old purse that would not shut. He turned, on arriving at 
 the Tuscan portico, whose silvery Portland stone, rich with moss 
 and sionecrop, had seemed alone worth the rent to the infatuated 
 young couple who were rebuilding the house as an air-castle. 
 The old woman seemed to have said something, and to be saying 
 it again, for the first words the Rev. Drury distinguished were : — 
 " I was a saying would you mind being kep' a minute while I 
 go round to undo the door? . . . Xo — I never come out at it. 
 This last is in answer to: — " I suppose it has blown to with the 
 wind. Yes, certainly — certainly!" He waits, interested in a 
 hole his stick's ferule fits into, until the sound comes of shooting 
 bolts and a rattling chain, and the door opens. The caretaker 
 perhaps interprets her visitor's severe aspect as provoked by this 
 detention on the doorstep, for she is voluble in apology, catching 
 up a clue from her last words. 
 
 "' No — I never come out at this door, bein' it's none so easy 
 to open, owin' to the 'andle being loose, and indeed not kep' in 
 the door by reason of falling out when not held, so put on the 
 winder-seat on the left when not wanted, and as like as not a 
 mistake all the while. I just stepped out by the side entrance, 
 and was a going to the side gate, only I see you pay the cab." 
 A little attention will connect the ideas in this sentence. She 
 went on to a second chapter. " Excusin' for not asking you 
 
 21 
 
 »
 
 22 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 round, but sech a way and no time saved, and indeed only 
 through the sleepin' apartments and not fit. And on'y the other 
 day Grewbeer was a complainin' about how slovenly." 
 
 " Grewbeer being . . . ? " His interrogatory stop is good 
 for pupils in a viva voce, but quite useless with an old deaf 
 woman. 
 
 " Hay? " This is all the questioner gets^ in a tone suggesting 
 that he is needlessly obscure. 
 
 The consequence is a sound of aggressive toleration in his 
 voice, and an olfensive mechanical clearness in his manner. 
 " Who — is — the — person you are referring to ? Your hus- 
 band?" 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 "Very good. Then you are Mrs. Grewbeer. Now — where's 
 the drawing-room ? " His headmaster deportment seems to 
 suggest — as the position of a cross-examiner — that the old 
 woman has been keeping back her surname, which he has 
 " elicited " against her will ; and that she has been delaying his 
 introduction to the drawing-room, from malice aforethought. 
 
 The consequence is that Mrs. Grewbeer is nettled, and remains 
 nettled, in spite of that shilling. She withdraws the loose handle 
 from the socket it had been held in to open its hasp, and then 
 restores it to its window-seat after slamming the big door so as 
 to wake the echoes through the empty house, and shows him 
 into the drawing-room, saying combatively : — " There ! There's 
 your drawing-room for yer. Now how many shutters do you 
 want set open? Have 'em all if you like. You've only got 
 to say." 
 
 " One's enough. That'll do! " 
 
 " You can have 'em all if you like." 
 
 "One's cnovgh, I tell you!" He raises his voice, as though 
 to a neoph3-te who has been guilty of a false quantity. 
 
 " You've no call to fly out. There's your one window." He 
 surveys the old wainscoted room, and appears to disapprove of 
 it. The old woman remains with her hand on the shutter till 
 leave comes to close it; then, as she does so, mutters what seems 
 like : — " 'Ollerin' at one as if one was a 'orse in a cart ! " Then 
 the inspection of the house proceeds on the same terms, though 
 rather more peacefully. 
 
 Uncle Drury certainly did his duty conscientiously. He 
 examined every room in the huge mansion, and apparently de- 
 cided, of each in turn, that it was unfit for human occupation, 
 The only exploration he omitted was that of a straight passage,
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 23 
 
 without door or turning on either side^ ending in a glass door 
 which suggested a conservatory beyond, and was offensively filled 
 with blue and red diamond panes. ''Where does that go?" he 
 asked, and shouted the question twice. 
 
 " That don't lead nowhere. Only the garden. Through the 
 green'us." 
 
 " Front or back garden ? " 
 
 " Front garden. Through the green'us, like I told you." 
 
 " Well — we won't waste any more time on that." He looked 
 at his watch, and visibly thought it time to be off. He re- 
 pocketed it, and then assumed an incisive air of business, to be 
 transacted promptly. " Now, ma'am ! " said he. " Perhaps 
 you'll be so obliging as to answer me one or two questions." 
 
 " Hay ? " Question repeated. " Suppose you was to ask 'em 
 and see, master ! " 
 
 Dr. Carteret accepted the suggestion. " First, what was the 
 name of the doctor who lived in this house ? " 
 
 " Couldn't rightly say. Choker, or Jolter." 
 
 " Are you sure it wasn't Aytcholt ? " 
 
 " Might have been ! — Yes — that was it ! Aytcholt." 
 
 " I thought so. I needn't ask the other questions. Hadn't 
 you better answer your bell?" For a distant bell had pealed 
 furiously twice during this conversation. 
 
 The old woman took the hint and departed through the house. 
 The last image on her mind of the Rev. Drury was massive, 
 clerical, talking to itself and adjusting its coat and comforter to 
 forestall the cold of the evening air. Her reflections on the 
 interview, as she retrod the passages they had come through, took 
 the form of a prediction that she would know the reverend gentle- 
 man if ever she come to see him again, anyhow ! 
 
 But she never did, and no man or woman born ever saw 
 Uncle Drury again alive. 
 
 The old woman went the quicker for a third pull at the bell, 
 which was so vigorous that it had not knocked off work when 
 she went out at the side door, and was still good for a parting 
 clang when she reached the gate. 
 
 " You ain't in any hurry, missus," says the driver of a cart 
 standing outside. " Howsomever, now you're on the job, maybe 
 he'd better be got down and into the house. Lend a hand, 3'oung 
 Toadstools ! " This is to a youngster who is conversing with 
 the horse, through the nose of the latter, as though it were an 
 ear.
 
 24 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Lard's mercy ! " says the old woman, seeing but not liearing. 
 " Who've you got in that cart? " For a figure is crumpled up 
 in the bottom of the cart, on some sacks which recently made 
 claim to contain a chaldron of coke. 
 
 *' Couldn't say, myself. My idea is you better cast 3'our eye 
 on him afore we shift him out, for fear he's the wrong man. 
 He give me this address prettv plain. The Cedars is right, 
 ain't it?" 
 
 " Oh lard yes ! — that's here. It's my old man, if he said The 
 Cedars. Tell me what's come to him^ afore I look at his face." 
 
 '' Oh, he ain't dead, if that's what you're a thinkin'. I'll go 
 bail for that. Come along here and make sure." 
 
 ]\Irs. Grewbeer follows his finger to the cart-back, and he 
 loosens the tilt to let her look in. Oh yes — that's her old man. 
 
 But she is visibly relieved when it becomes clear that though 
 tliere has evidently been some mishap — enough to cause traces 
 of blood and a plastered head — still a great deal of its owner's 
 collapse is due to another cause. For he appears to be lodging 
 a protest against the overmuch loquacity of his contemporaries. 
 
 " Let me up out o' this " — wrongly described — " cart, and shee 
 if I don't larn some of you to poll-parrot, the wrong side o' your 
 mouth. Nothin' but tork, tork, fork, nowadays ! " 
 
 " That's him, for sure ! " says his wife, recognising a familiar 
 thesis of the speaker, through his half-articulate mumble. 
 "Whatever have you been a taking of? He's fell down, I 
 suppose ? " 
 
 " That's about it, and the other old chap on top. Couldn't 
 say how much they'd drunk between 'em — not to a harf a pint." 
 
 The manner of this speech implies that sentiment would be 
 wasted. The old woman becomes alive to the fact, saying: — 
 " You never mean he's been fighting, at his time o' life ? Come 
 along out, Benjamin ! " The coke-dealer answers, as he helps 
 the wounded man to his feet: — "Just a turn-up, not a set-to. 
 Ah — he'll walk enough to get himself indoors ! I'll lend a hand 
 across the garden, and my son here he'll see to the horse. As 
 you say, missus, he's getting on in life, for this sort of thing." 
 
 Some assistance is necessary ; whether on account of contusion, 
 or drunken helplessness, is not very clear. Probably the latter, 
 as the coke-dealer sees the case. He goes away, after helping the 
 old woman ; probably because the injured man is intoxicated, not 
 because he has a broken head ; enjoining sobriety on his son, in 
 a slight homily suited to the occasion. " You lay the warning 
 to heart, young Toadstools, and don't get outside of a quart.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 25 
 
 Inside of a quart — outside of the station 'us I That's the maxi- 
 mum for the guidance of the young. You keep to the figger 
 when you're growed up ! Just for now, bein' small, you don't 
 hold above a harf a pint, and allowance is accordin'." 
 
 The postscript was no doubt due to a fear that the maximum 
 or maxim, whichever the speaker meant, should have been worded 
 differently for ears that were still in their early teens. 
 
 The condition of the old woman's husband, though not a 
 novelty to her as far as Bacchus was concerned, was — so she 
 said afterwards — plenty to make her forget all about the old 
 parson, as she called the Eev. Drury. Indeed, it was not till 
 next day, when her patient had slept off his drunkenness, and 
 waked to find himself a mass of bruises and penitence, dominated 
 by a stupendous headache, that she mentioned her clerical visitor, 
 having all but forgotten him altogether in the interim. 
 
 '■' Where was he when I see the last of him?" she said, reply- 
 ing to a thrice-repeated question. '" Wh}' — in the passage over 
 again the window-door of the green'us. Where the red and blue 
 squares o' glass is. Just off to go, he was. I had to 'urry off 
 for the bell." 
 
 '' If he followed on, after you, how come you not to see him 
 pass you, through the gate? " The old man asks this question 
 after a good deal of reflection. 
 
 '• Lard, Benjamin, how was I to have my eyes two ways at 
 once? I'd all my work to do, lookin' after you. He ain't in 
 the house now. vou mav take your oath of that, any day of the 
 week." ^ ^ - . . 
 
 '■ I ain't a fool, Alison. In course he's out o' the house by 
 now. What I'm enquirin' of, now, is — when did he go out, and 
 wha see him ? " 
 
 The old woman seemed to try to resolve this problem for the 
 first time. " I should have let it stand," she said, " if you 
 hadn't a arsted me, that he 'ung on like, seein' this and seein' 
 that, till I was inside of the house, and then out o' the front 
 door. And I don't see no other way now." 
 
 '• Then Pritchett see him. go — him as rode me home." 
 
 " He see no more than I did. He was in here till I got you 
 lyin' down, and then I see him out and locked the gate." 
 
 "• Then his young nipper see him ! " 
 
 '' That's as might be. A boy's a boy, and some on 'em takes 
 notice. Some shets their eyes, or won't tell. You can't place 
 no reliance.'^ 
 
 " I never let nothing slip by me, when I was a boy. He see^
 
 26 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 him fast enough, I lay. And he'll up and tell if he don't think 
 I want to know." Which showed knowledge of human nature. 
 So did a remark which followed : — " In course the old party he 
 was very 'appy to see no more of you, for to save his pocket. 
 You may go bail he made very free with the money he'd have 
 giv' if you'd 'a been there to take it. Only you wasn't." 
 
 The old woman, as soon as she had heard and understood, 
 hastened to refute the accusation of illiberality. " Why — he'd 
 giv' me a shilling in hand at the first go off," said she. 
 
 " What — and him a parson ! To run to a shillin' ! But there 
 you are, ye see. In course he wouldn't stop, only to say good- 
 €venin'! " So it remained provisionally understood that the 
 reverend gentleman had slipped out somehow, between the time 
 when Mr. Grewbeer was assisted into the house and the departure 
 of Mr. Pritchett's coke-cart. 
 
 This theory was destined to be disturbed next day, when Mrs. 
 Grewbeer was in conference with a handy young man who at- 
 tended to small jobs in the way of repairs to the houses in charge 
 of the agency which had appointed Mr. and Mrs. Grewbeer to 
 the caretaking of The Cedars, years since. It had heeded her 
 complaint of the ill-convenience occasioned by the loose door- 
 handle, and her representation that it was really a locksmith's 
 job, or Grewbeer could have made shift to attend to it. Mr. 
 Grewbeer had, when appointed, claimed universal mechanical 
 genius, and could turn his 'and to most anything you might 
 name. But evil-disposed persons had thrown doubts on Mr. 
 Grewbeer's attainments, and he had unfortunately not supplied 
 his friends with precedents to quote in his favour, having made 
 a nice 'ash of more than one undertaking; ascribing his failure 
 in all cases to a lack of proper tools. Why, he couldn't — they 
 said — so much as 'ack out a broke pane of winder-glass, much 
 less shove in a new square and putty up ! He alleged in reply 
 that, if so be the agency aforesaid would advance him the price 
 of a second-hand diamond, he would exhibit a rare and unparal- 
 leled skill in the glazier's art. But the agency had allowed 
 itself to be influenced by interested advisers, and had entrusted 
 its repairs, when nothing out of the way, to the 'andy young man 
 just referred to. Thus it came about that, two days after Mr. 
 Grewbeer had got that upset by the bad beer supplied by 
 Sowerby's Entire to The Three Magpies, this young man, having 
 took a shave off of the bottom of the dining-room door so it 
 shouldn't stick, presented himself at the door of Mrs. Grewbeer's 
 apartment and asked what was the next job. Being informed,
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 27 
 
 he said : — " 'Andle ofE the front door — is that it ? W^iere shall 
 I find the 'andle?" 
 
 " Where it belongs — only stood in loose, the screw bein' lost 
 down a crack in the floorin'." 
 
 "'Tain't in the door!" 
 
 " Then it's fell out and rolled on the ground." 
 
 " 'Tain't done no such thing. I ain't blind. The floor's 
 there, missus. You can see for 3-ourself." 
 
 The old woman finished peeling a potato, or rather, converting 
 it into an irregular polyhedron, and threw away with the skin as 
 much as she kept. Then she arose; and, brushing her apron, 
 followed the handy young man to the floor that had not run 
 away. His statements were obviously correct. No handle ! 
 
 Then she looked puzzled, and well she might. For she had 
 not been near that door — as it chanced — since she admitted the 
 Eev. Dr. Carteret, two days since. She began to cogitate over 
 her last dealings with that door. Of course — she had it, clear 
 as daylight! She recalled that, when she closed it, she had 
 replaced the handle on its window-seat, but had left the door 
 unbolted. And then she had forgotten all about it, and no 
 wonder ! 
 
 A moment's thought, and a clearness came upon her. To be 
 sure! — that was how the visitor had departed, through the door 
 she had left unbolted. But — but — another moment's thought 
 brought a new puzzle. He could not open the door, without 
 the handle to pull back. Then, when he pulled it to behind him, 
 it was bound either to retain the handle, or jerk it out on the 
 floor. In neither case would it have got back to its place on 
 the window-seat. 
 
 She explained her difficulty to the handy young man. Handy 
 3'oung men do not lightly admit they are at a loss. This one 
 said : — " I don't take much accord o' that. This here old cock 
 he's a careful sort of beggar, he is — hold-maidish, as they say. 
 He says, says he, this here handle's a going to jump out when I 
 slams, he says. So he just opens the door as quiet as a dormus, 
 he does, and he outs with the 'andle and lays it on the shelf, he 
 does. And then he bangs to the door and makes his lucky." 
 
 The intrinsic improbability of this defies belief, especially as 
 the character ascribed to Dr. Carteret quarrels with the old 
 woman's experience of him. But she does not see a way To 
 refuting it on its merits, and raises a new issue. " 'Tain't any so 
 easy to slam this door as you think, young man," says she. 
 '' Just you try it ! "
 
 28 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Easy enough if you ketch hold onto the knob outside. . . . 
 Oh, there ain't no knob ! Well — the old party ketched hold on 
 the letter-box." 
 
 " Just you ketch hold on the letter-box, and try." The young 
 man complies, and once, twice, three times, bangs to the door, 
 shaking the house. That is enough. The hasp is set so that it 
 overshoots the striking-plate — you know how that happens in a 
 door? — and it will not go home of itself. The problem is more 
 insoluble than ever. 
 
 The old man, in the further part of the desolate mansion, 
 heard the concussions, and appeared on the scene in the course 
 of time ; not over quickly, because the handy young man had 
 made good the defective handle — a short job — and was prepar- 
 ing to depart. The old woman's wits were still at work on the 
 unsolved problem. How did the reverend visitor of two days 
 since contrive his departure? She told her husband the incident 
 of. the door-handle, and explained the noises. Old Grewboer 
 affected sagacity, expressed contempt for all judgment but his 
 own, especially his wife's, and certainly started a new hare. 
 '' Wliere did you see him last, did you say — hay ? " he shouted 
 to his wife. She replied as before — that the visitor was standing 
 at the entry of the long passage with the glass door at the end. 
 " Very well, then ! " said her husband. " There's where he got 
 out. 'Cos why? 'Cos he didn't get out anywheres else. You 
 can't get over that, try your 'ardest! " Mr. Grewbeer was not 
 the first person in the world to advance a variation of a state- 
 ment as a reason for its truth. 
 
 •" What — through all them empty flowerpots! Gone silly you 
 are, Grewbeer, that's the truth. And how was he to get through 
 that door without opening of it? " 
 
 " It's only glarst." This is too feeble to be worth an answer. 
 
 The young man contributes a remark, showing zoological 
 study. " Glass doors keeps elephants out, where they ain't 
 allowed to break 'em." He prepares to go, but has a parting 
 word of advice. " I should make a p'int of keeping my doors 
 locked and bolted, if 1 was you. But of course I ain't, if you 
 come to that." He departs through the door he has been at 
 work upon, closing it gently from without, to show how it has 
 benefited by his attention. 
 
 The old couple, instead of making for their own quarter, go 
 away in the opposite direction, apparently by tacit consent. On 
 the way, the old woman says : — "" It's no use your goin'. I tell 
 you it's locked." Her husband pays no attention, but stumps
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 29 
 
 on till he comes to the long passage, and so to the kaleidoscopic 
 doorway. He open? it easily, and turns to his partner trium- 
 phantly. " Now, what did.. 1 tell ye ? " says he. " Who's the 
 fool now? " But his triumph is short-lived, for further explora- 
 tion shows that the door of the greenhouse outside is so locked 
 and bolted and the fastenings so immovable, that even in coun- 
 tries where elephants are given carte-hlanche, a lazy one might 
 have been discouraged from an attempt to open it. 
 
 Nevertheless, the old man considered that he had scored. He 
 appeared to have taken up an attitude which a cultivated mind 
 might have described thus, if not interrupted by the lower orders. 
 Let X be the probability that a clerical gentleman can get 
 through a conservatory, Y the number of its doors that are 
 closed, and Z the number open. Then when Z = 0, X also = 0. 
 But when Y ^=^ Z , clearly X is an even chance. The attitude 
 was fallacious, as a single elephant-proof door remains a fixed 
 integral. Mr. Grewbeer, however, hugged his opinion. Having 
 imagined the passage of a kind of Bishop, in an apron, passing 
 through the one door, he conceived that he had a sound ground 
 on which to ignore the impossibility of the other. So it was 
 with confidence that he approached the youthful son of the 
 coke-merchant Pritchett, when a day or two later that advocate 
 of sobriety looked in again at The Three Magpies, and abstained 
 from the whole of its stock-in-trade except a quart of four-ale, 
 minus the fraction he conceded to his offspring, who may, or 
 may not, have been christened Toadstool Pritchett. 
 
 " I never see no helderly buffer," said Toadstool, in response to 
 an enquiry from Mr. Grewbeer, which took the subject for 
 granted, and sought to knoAV whether that subject had departed 
 up the road, down the road, or acrost the building land towards 
 the rope-works. For the questioner had deemed it more subtle 
 to take this line of examination, as leaving less latitude to the 
 capricious inventiveness of boyhood. This boy seemed truthful. 
 '•' And what's more there warn't none," said he. ''' I'd seen hira 
 if he'd been there, fast enough ! " 
 
 " Who did you see, then? Don't you inwent! " 
 
 " I ain't inwentin'. I see a blind chap, feeling of his way 
 along with a stick. And he got in the mud and they got him 
 out and started him on again, down the road. He'd got a dorg 
 — wanted for to bite some of 'em for gettin' of him out. You 
 don't mean him? " 
 
 " In course not. If I'd a meant a dorg, I'd have said a dorg. 
 Wlio else did you see ? " a
 
 30 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 "' I see a young lady a walkin' out with a wolunteer. And 
 he advised her to keep her hair on, he did. About a gurl by 
 the name of Hemmer, he did. Y^u don't mean neither of 
 them?" 
 
 " Nouther the one nor yet the other. And not likely. They 
 warn't gentlefolk. This here old cock was " — he paused for a 
 phrase — " middlin' parlour-company, you might say. Soap afore 
 dinner — that sort. And a clean pocket-'ankercher, as often 
 as not.'*' 
 
 The last particular seemed to locate the quarrelsome couple 
 socially, in the boy's mind. " They wasn't that sort," said he. 
 " And as for the dorg's blind man, he was just a cadger. No 
 — I see nobody else. Only them." 
 
 " "WTiat — see nobody come out at our gate ! Then you wasn't 
 looking." 
 
 " I was. I never took my eyes off of that gate, all the time. 
 Nor yet off of the 'ouse gate, 'igher up. Nor yet off of any of 
 the doors or winders or chiraley pots. And if anylpod3''d a 
 come out of ere a one of 'em, I'd have took stock of 'im. / never 
 see nobody." 
 
 Mr. Grewbeer nodded shortly at intervals, as though to put 
 on record his incredulity of each separate statement as it came. 
 Presently he addressed the boy's father, offering him, as it were, 
 the sound advice of age and experience, not to say of a family 
 friend. 
 
 " You larn your young customer here, while he's young 
 enough, for to speak truth and put the Devil's nose out of 
 j'int." 
 
 "'What lies has he been a parmin' off on 3-ou, neighbour? 
 You come out, young Toadstools, and say 'em all over again, 
 for me to know how much licking you want." 
 
 Young Toadstools flashes out. " I arn't been a telling of him 
 any lies," says he. And his manner is that of maligned honour 
 refuting slander. An episode of repetitions follows, in which 
 he stands to his tale, while old Grewbeer remains doggedly in- 
 credulous, supporting himself by a priori reasoning. " That old 
 party," he says, " must have come out somewheres, and there 
 warn't anywheres else except he flew off out o' window, like a old 
 blackbird." This omits an ill-chosen epithet, applied to the 
 blackbird. 
 
 " You come out, young Toadstools," says the father, as before, 
 " and stand in front of me with your 'ands behind your back. 
 . . . Now look me in the heye ! " The boy complies, promptly
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 31 
 
 enough. " Now then ! Who come out o' that there front 
 garden between when I went in and when I come out ? " 
 
 " Nobody come out till you come out, or I'd 'a seen 'em." 
 
 " And no lies? " 
 
 " No— just like I tell you ! " 
 
 The father turns to the old man, who seems to be on the 
 point of repeating his doubts. " You give attention, neighbour, 
 and hear me telling of you. My boy he says he saw no one, 
 looking me fair and square in the heye. And I say he's spoke 
 the truth. So any party as says he hasn't, calls me liar. Now 
 what 'a you got to say to that ? " 
 
 Mr. Grewbeer seemed disconcerted. " Well, master! " — he 
 said at last — " in course after sich a good turn as you done me 
 Thursday afternoon, I'm bound to believe 3'our son, and I do so 
 accordin'. I can't say fairer than that. And whatever you like 
 to put a name to, I'll stand." 
 
 But Mr. Pritchett's quart, backed by his principles, stood in 
 the way of his putting a name to anything. Possibly his dis- 
 position towards a loving cup with old Grewbeer was small ; or 
 he might have felt that the latter's views of the plasticity of 
 belief — though at one with the religious world's — would not bear 
 examination. Anyhow, he excused himself and went his way, 
 leaving the old man in a perfectly genuine state of bewilderment. 
 For his undertaking to " believe " what he had been convinced 
 was false was made with a misgiving that perhaps that convic- 
 tion was itself unsound.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Fred lost no time in propounding The Scheme to his friend 
 Mr. Snaith, who at first only saw lions in the path. In the end 
 he admitted its fascinating character; saw that objections — 
 obvious enough — to a common household might be met by divid- 
 ing the house into two domiciles, without so much as a door 
 between. Hostilities are impossible through a nine-inch parti- 
 tion wall. He conceded, with some reluctance, that it would be 
 practicable to form a company to take over a square mile or so 
 of the neighbourhood and erect thereon a few luxurious resi- 
 dences, to be held at a rent high enough to justify the allotment 
 of four-fifths of it as parks and gardens. He saw no objection 
 to the place having been in use as a madhouse.. If you insisted 
 on a sanehouse you condemned yourself to dwell always in a 
 house that had not been previously occupied. Was Fred going 
 to maintain that any house he himself had occupied for six 
 months could rank as sane? At least in this house the patients 
 had been under treatment, whereas in ordinary residences they 
 were all at large. \\Tiat was Fred engaged upon at that mo- 
 ment? Drawing details of an engine that was to work without 
 vibration ! 
 
 But there was one objection that seemed to him fatal — the 
 distance from town. Distance was unchangeable. Xothing 
 could make it shorter or longer. He was well aware that we 
 have not a particle of evidence either that visible creation 
 always remains the same size, or varies continually — multiplies 
 itself by N for that matter — every three seconds or so. There 
 was any amount of elbow-room in space, and for all he could 
 see the Universe could go on at that game indefinitely. But 
 a mile v/ould always be so many yards, and if one yard-measure 
 took to multiplying itself by N, every other yard-measure would 
 do so likewise, and every healthy cube would remain as broad 
 as it is long. The distance between human wickets would 
 always be exactly so many circumferences of a cricket-ball. 
 Similarly, it would always be the same journey from The Cedars 
 to Wimbledon, from Wimbledon to Waterloo, and from Waterloo 
 to Lincoln's Inn Fields. He could not put it at less than an 
 hour- and a- quarter, try as he might. 
 
 33
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 33 
 
 But Fred had recent experience, to show against this estimate. 
 He had made a trial trip to the house the day before, and had 
 timed everything. " Nothing is more misleading than Time, 
 Charley," said he. " I assure you, I walked from the house to 
 Wimbledon in eighteen minutes quite easily, got to Waterloo in 
 another fifteen, and was back here in time to dress for dinner 
 by six-thirty. As it was a trial trip to see how long it took, it 
 wouldn't have been fair to hurry. So I took it easy, and that's 
 what it worked out at — forty-eight minutes all told ! If I had 
 taken a hansom at this end, it would have been thirty-eight. 
 Simply nothing ! " 
 
 " A bagatelle ! " said the young man addressed, who was en- 
 joying a small morning cigar in the rooms of his friend Fred 
 Carteret, overhead. It was the third day after the Sunday 
 lunch, and Fred had been taken the evening before to be pre- 
 sented to the Miss liinchliffe to whom his friend Charley Snaitli 
 was affianced. The visit had been a great success, and every- 
 one had found everyone else charming. 
 
 " Well, but it is a bagatelle," said Frederic rather impatiently, 
 as though he doubted his friend's bona-fides. " Wliat makes vou 
 think it isn't?" 
 
 " I didn't say it wasn't. I said it was." 
 
 " Yes, but you didn't mean it. You're a scoffer, Charles ; 
 that's what vou are. I hate chaps that are not in earnest. . . . 
 Yes, but really, old chap, thirty-eight minutes is an awfully 
 short time — you know it is ! " 
 
 " Dcosid short time in itself. Good job it isn't thirty-five 
 minutes shorter — for it ! " 
 
 " It's no use trying to make you serious, so I shan't talk about 
 it. ..." He changed the topic. " I say — look here ! Ought 
 I to call your young woman Lucy ? " 
 
 " Very rum circumstance ! She wants to know whether she 
 ought to call you Fred." 
 
 '^ What did' you say?" 
 
 " Said she ought to. Said you expected it." 
 
 " She didn't begin. She ' ^Ir. Cartereted ' me, all the evening." 
 
 " She couldn't begin, bang off! " 
 
 " Well — I can't begin ' Lucying ' her, bang off ! " 
 
 " It's a devil of a fix. You'll have to settle it between you, 
 somehow ! " 
 
 " But how am 1 to ' Lucy ' her, till she ' Freds ' me ? " 
 
 " Very rum again ! That's just what she said. How is she 
 to begin ' Fredding ' you till you've ' Lucied ' her? "
 
 34 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Frederic seemed absorbed in thought, but not upon the 
 machine he was drawing. Presently his thoughts took form, 
 and he said :— ''It's all very fine, Charley, but I do not see why 
 you are to call Cinty Miss Cintra and I'm to call your girl 
 
 Lucy." 
 
 " Because Elbows comes in." 
 
 " Nobody wants you to call her ' Elbows.' " 
 
 " Of course not. That's in camera. But if I ' Cinty ' Miss 
 Cintra it would sound rum to ' Miss Eraser ' Elbows." 
 
 " Well— call her Nancy." 
 
 "My wig! Shouldn't I catch it hot! Why, she wouldn't 
 call me ' Charley,' if the Devil was behind her with a bradawl." 
 
 " Anyhow, you've got to work it out somehow. Unless you 
 ' Cinty ' my Cinty, I can't ' Lucy ' your Lucy. Twig? " 
 
 The young lawyer rubbed the nose that had been discussed 
 and condemned at Mrs. Carteret's, and shook the head it adorned, 
 to express perplexity; but seemed to see a way out of the diffi- 
 culty. " My young gal," he said, " will have to begin ' Fredding ' 
 you, on her own hook, and that'll square it." He then smoked 
 peacefully, while Fred became absorbed in his drawing. 
 
 An engineering problem was evidently vexing the draughts- 
 man. He erased something petulantly, saying : — " No — that 
 would never do ! " 
 
 " What's the rumpus ? " said Mr. Charley, unfeelingly. 
 
 "Only a beastly mechanical fact. You see, I've got the cyl- 
 inder all right, with the pistons working in opposite directions, 
 and I fancy the condenser's all right ..." 
 
 '' Well, what more do you want ? " 
 
 " I want the two pistons to work exactly alike, only opposite 
 ways, as if one was the other in a looking-glass." 
 
 " Why shouldn't they? Let 'em ! " 
 
 ''Why shouldn't they, indeed? Why— see what happens! 
 One turns the main driving-pulley one way, t'other t'other. 
 Then they stick." 
 
 " Well — then vou stoke up, till they go." 
 
 " They don't go." 
 
 " Then what happens? Something happens." 
 
 " You generate steam. Boiler bursts, if you don't take care. 
 Shut up while I think." Mr. Snaith complies, and presently 
 Fred resumes, as one who states a case clearly. " Three courses 
 are open to me : one, a cross-strap, and I hate a cross-strap. 
 Another, an idler. . . . Let's see now ! How would an idler 
 work? Suppose I employ an idler?"
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 35 
 
 " If he won't work, give him the cross-strap. That'll make 
 him work, if anything will." 
 
 " Nothing will make you serious, Charley, so I shan't try. 
 But I must say I am surprised that you do not see the enormous 
 importance of the points at issue. Just consider — no vibra- 
 tion ! " 
 
 " Well — nothin' would ever set one's teeth on edge. I see 
 that." 
 
 " It's more than that, Charles. Just consider it this way 
 now. I only put a hypothetical case. Suppose you could gen- 
 erate a thousand horse-power in a room with a thin partition, 
 and not wake up anyone in the next room ! " 
 
 " I shouldn't do it." 
 
 "But why not?" 
 
 " I should be afraid of getting in a row." 
 
 Fred despaired visibly of his friend's intelligence. "By 
 hypothesis," said he, kindly but firmly, " there would be no 
 vibration. ^A^ly, then, hesitate to generate a thousand horse- 
 power . . . ? " 
 
 Mr. Charles interrupted him. " It would be upstairs," said 
 he, irrelevantly. " I shouldn't want to. But of course some 
 feller might go to sleep downstairs, on a sofa." 
 
 Fred made concession. " Suppose we make it downstairs, and 
 a sofa. If I am right, a duplex engine of the construction I 
 propose would develop no vibration, whatever the number of 
 horse-power. Each motor would be the exact counterpart of 
 the other, only t'other way round. . . . " He went on for some 
 time with this sort of thing, as he was in the habit of doing 
 with one remarkable invention after another, but received no 
 attention from his legal friend, who appeared to regard his case 
 as one of harmless monomania. Xo doubt if Fred had ever 
 concentrated, the world would have been the richer by one or 
 other of his brilliant discoveries. 
 
 The disquisition on the Xew Duplex Non-Vibrator had to 
 stop when Mr. Snaith threw the end of his cigar in the fire 
 and said now he must be off. There was, however, still an un- 
 settled point to pause over before he took his departure. " We 
 haven't settled," said he, " what day we are to go to The Cedars." 
 
 " Why, no — we haven't. You see, I'm all in favour of getting 
 the whole scheme in black and white before taking it to my 
 uncle. I can't act without him; because, you see, he's my 
 guardian and trustee and all that sort of thing — has control of 
 the purse-strings, don't you know ! We haven't heard from him,
 
 36 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 but we know he went to see over the house — last Saturday 
 week." 
 
 " Hasn't he written to say what lie thought of it?" 
 
 " No — he hasn't. But there's nothing strange about that. 
 He's — he's — Well ! — he's Uncle Drury. That's all one can say. 
 My mother agrees with nie that it's better to leave him alone 
 and have patience. You'll see he'll write in a day or two." 
 
 " And squash the scheme ? " 
 
 '• Probably. He'll say the house is too big. Of course it is 
 too big — for us alone. But then of course we must write and 
 say how true that is, and how we feel we must defer to his 
 better judgment, and give up the idea. With tears, of 
 course ! " 
 
 '• 1 see the dodge. And then ..." 
 
 " And then of course we spring the joint-stock scheme upon 
 him." 
 
 " \Miat an artful card you are, Frederic ! . . . I say — I 
 must bo off. There's a chap coming to the office to see me at 
 eleven-thirty. Ta ta ! " 
 
 Cintra had come to stay with Mrs. Carteret for a few days, so 
 Fred passed his evenings at his mother's, or took the two ladies 
 out into Society, or to see or hear a performer. The little dachs- 
 hund was under the impression that Miss Fraser had come to 
 stay with him, and seemed sometimes doubtful whether he ought 
 to sanction tlie visit; smelling the young lady stispiciously, and 
 sometimes barking suddenly, as if he had seen through some 
 conspiracy, and wasn't going to stand it. He accepted flattery 
 as his due, although now and then bystanders would remonstrate 
 with the extravagant forms it took in the mouths of his female 
 admirers. One of these ascribed to him omniscience, combined 
 with a rare modesty, hesitating to seek publicity for sound 
 opinions based upon it. 
 
 " Did he think his Uncle Drury would write in a day or two, 
 and say the house was a bargain and could always be disposed 
 of, so that it would always be a sound investment? And had 
 he no jiatience with his papa for fidgeting?" Cintra spoke, the 
 same evening, after a light early dinner, which would allow the 
 three of them to get to the Princess's in time for the chief piece, 
 although of course it was a pity not to see the little Japanese 
 thing that came first. 
 
 " Um not fidgeting," said Fred. " Only you know it loill be 
 /xasperating if some idiotic Institution cuts in and gets the place
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 37 
 
 under our very eyes. And all because of Uncle Drury and his 
 love of power. That's what it is — his love of power." 
 
 " Fred ! " This is remonstrance^ or arrest of misjudgment, 
 from the young man's mother. 
 
 "What, ]yiother! . . . Oh— I know! Uncle Dru has all 
 the Christian virtues, and a few thrown in. But nobody can say 
 he isn't fond of power." 
 
 " I am not going to say so. I am not going to say anything. 
 Isn't it time for her to go for the cab? Look at your watch. 
 The clock's slow. . . . Yes — we haven't too much time." She 
 is leaving the room for finishing touches, in Cintra's wake, as 
 that young lady has vanished upstairs, when she repents of her 
 Spartan resolve to abstain from speech, and turns at the door 
 to say : — " You know you would be very sorry to hear that your 
 uncle was ill." 
 
 " But he isn't ill." 
 
 " Not that I know of. But suppose he were — and you know 
 it is a little odd, his not writing — you know you would be sorry 
 you had said that about him. Because you are good-hearted 
 underneath, although you talk great nonsense sometimes. Now 
 1 must go, child, or the cab will be here." 
 
 The son is beginning: — "But you don't think . . .," some- 
 what uneasily, when the sound of a four-wheeler arriving at the 
 front gate hastens his mother's departure. She responds, how- 
 ever, to a mi?^giving or alarm in his voice by an ill-considered tone 
 of reassurance, probably the surest means of creating the anxiety 
 it is intended to allay. Oh dear no! — she has not the slightest 
 reason for suj)posing his uncle to be in other than perfect 
 health. Has he ever been otherwise? Is not his robustness 
 a sort of fundamental principle of Nature? Don't be a ridicu- 
 lous boy and fuss ! 
 
 Cintra appears, resplendent from the finishing touches, and» 
 is critical about his handling of her overmantle. Will he never 
 learn to make himself of use? He is enslaved, but puts none 
 of his slavery down to the finishing touches. Was ever lover 
 shrewd enough to draw the natural inferences when Love's lamp 
 burns the brighter for a superadded gewgaw, or dwindles at 
 sight of a misfit? Those finishing touches make the youth very 
 loverlike; and as there is no fear of Lipseombe, who is helping 
 her mistress towards completion upstairs, the pair have the stage 
 to themselves and take advantage of it until "Mrs. Carteret ap- 
 pears, temperately dazzling — but dazzling! Then they hurry 
 into the cab and are off. The little daehshund has to be dis-
 
 38 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 abused of an idea that his family have been dressing to take 
 him to the play, and cannot help thinking there is some mistake. 
 
 Fred did not accompany his mother and fiancee back to Maida 
 Vale, but went to his chambers. There was no reason why he 
 should not live at home, and go to town every day, except that 
 chambers convince their occupant of his importance, and make 
 him feel professional. It had seemed conceivable that concen- 
 tration might ensue, as their result. But this expectation had 
 been doomed to disappointment from the beginning, and Fred 
 became more diffuse than ever. His chambers became as it were 
 the vortex of a whirlpool of inattention to objectives, and pur- 
 poses gone astray, with a helpless victim in the centre under the 
 delusion that he was stability itself, and needed only to stretch 
 out his hand to recover any one of them. 
 
 The victim, as he walked from the Princess's after packing off 
 the two ladies in a hansom, pictured himself to himself as the 
 most fortunate of Consulting Engineers, in spite of the fact that 
 nobody to speak of had consulted him up to date; the most 
 ingenious inventor, in spite of the fact that no one of his thou- 
 sand schemes had taken concrete form ; and incidentally, by way 
 of a side-compliment to Cintra, as one of the happiest of men. 
 It wouldn't do to leave her out. How much more fortunate he 
 had been in his choice than Charley, whose love had the mis- 
 fortune to be a dark beauty. He admitted the beauty, but took 
 exception to her complexion. He and Charley had been quite 
 unanimous in praise of blondes, up to date. 
 
 The streets were settling down to silence and would soon enjoy 
 it, disturbed only by stray gusts of valediction from host to 
 friend departing into the night, or the heartfelt cries of the 
 "latter to the first hansom seen on the horizon, which might be 
 the last. The bells of St. Clement Danes may have said oranges 
 and lemons earlier in the dav, but their meaning on the last 
 stroke of twelve was plainly — " Go to bed ! " Fancy may have 
 imagined in their tone a satisfaction that till two o'clock they 
 had only to strike one, but the prosaic mind — Fred's in this case 
 — only looked at its watch and found it slow. He was thinking 
 of the Duplex Non-Vibrating Engine, and how he could just 
 insert a trifling modification he had thought of and yet get to 
 bed by one. 
 
 He had not yet arrived at that happy stage in the life of a 
 letter-recipient when nothing surprises, because of the risk of 
 throwing good surprise away on what might prove an advertise- 
 ment. There are some among us so hardened by the constant
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 39 
 
 plethora of our letter-boxes that a glance at the direction is 
 all a letter gets, even though it is visibly a warning from a secret 
 band of assassins, with a skull and crossbones, and Beware ! — 
 written large on the cover in a big round hand, the handwriting 
 of a professional homicide. But Fred was still such a novice 
 that he felt quite curious to know what the messenger-boy had 
 come for, of whom the gatekeeper reported as an enquirer for 
 Mr. Frederic Carteret's chambers, not long before the arrival of 
 their occupant. '* I shouldn't wonder if you came across him," 
 said the gatekeeper, " considering that I saw him come in, and 
 never saw him go out. He hasn't flew away over the roofs, I'll 
 pound it." He had not, and Fred found him on the lowest step 
 of the stair that led up to his chambers on the third floor and 
 Mr. Snaith's on the second. 
 
 " You've got something for me — letter or parcel ? " said he. 
 
 The boy seemed to be a boy of strong character. " Easy does 
 it," said he. " 'Urry don't. I've got a letter for Frederic 
 Carteret, Esquire. P'raps you ain't him. Who's to know ? " 
 
 As chances to more folk than not, Fred, though well on in 
 his twenties, never happened to have been called on for proof 
 of his identity. He felt for the first time how helpless the 
 position would make him, if he were thrown fairly on his own 
 resources, like the little woman who was so maltreated by a 
 pedlar named Stout. However, as he knew he could refer to the 
 gatekeeper — besides, was there not Snaith? — he felt it safe to 
 treat the question as an open one. 
 
 " Perhaps I'm not him," said he. " I have nothing but my 
 own personal convictions to go upon, and it's a subject in which 
 one isn't free from prejudice. \\'liat's to be done? Suppose we 
 refer to the official who let you through? Official testimony is 
 always trustworthy." 
 
 The boy rejected it, for all that. " I'd as soon trust your word 
 as his," said he. " ^y^j — he hasn't got a sound tooth in his 
 head ! " This showed that he was an observant boy, although 
 he was evidently ill-read on the Foundations of Belief. He went 
 on to propose a condition. " Look here. Governor," said he. 
 " If your latchkey fits the 'ole and lets you in, I'll 'and you this 
 'ere letter and take my chance. We've no call to bust our bilers 
 over it." His governor replied : — " Suppose we don't ! Come 
 along ! " and led the way upstairs. The Yale lock acknowledged 
 his touch, as an intimate friend's, and the boy having conceded 
 the letter departed, whistling louder than the circumstances 
 appeared to warrant.
 
 40 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Fred watched the exit of the whistler, not altogether sure he 
 ouglit not to shout a remonstrance after him, and then returned 
 to examine the letter, which had puzzled him, as he saw on it 
 the image and superscription of Shortage's Private Hotel, the 
 pied-a-terre of his Uncle Drury when in town. He knew that 
 his uncle had left London for Yexton Stultifer nearly a fort- 
 night since, and why he should have come back again without 
 communicating his movements to Maida Yale was more than his 
 nephew could imagine. But then the letter was not directed by 
 his uncle. 
 
 While he is opening the letter, and pooh-poohing a misgiving 
 that something has gone wrong, let the story note the reverend 
 gentleman's arrangement with Shortage's Hotel, which was 
 special and ]ieculiar, based upon the fact that his patronage was 
 a valuable asset to Shortage, who had said of him : — "■ The 
 reverend and learned Doctor's weight and respectability would 
 nootralise a 'undred 'ooligans in any establishment, apart from 
 the Management's wish to be accommodatin' witliout fear or 
 favour." Therefore Dr. Carteret's terms were kep' down to 
 what you might call zero, and a bedroom practically reserved for 
 him which took his fancy, in view of the spacious houtlook, 
 because you see right acrost the Square. In his bedroom was a 
 cupboard, believed by other guests of the hotel to contain its 
 skeleton, but really only a deposit for duplicates of Mr. Carteret's 
 wardrobe, to free him from the necessity of carrving luggrao-c 
 every time he came to town. It was this liberty which left it 
 open to him to walk from The Cedars to Wimbledon station, 
 that day when he went to inspect the Old Madhouse. 
 
 Now, Fred had every reason for expecting a letter from his 
 uncle, so his handwriting on Shortage's note-paper would only 
 have been surprising in so far as it would have been evidence of 
 the writer's return to London unexpectedly. The oddity of the 
 thing lay in the fact that someone else had written to Fred from 
 his uncle's peculiar hotel, where no one else who wrote letters 
 to him — so he thought — ever would or did go. He cancelled 
 before its birth an idea involving the forwarding of a letter to 
 him by Shortage. No such contingency could arise. 
 
 \Miy is it that when one receives a letter which one knows all 
 about beforehand, one tears it open promptly, and reads it all 
 through to confirm one's certainty of its contents? WTiy, on the 
 other hand, when we have no idea of them, do we contemplate the 
 envelope doubtfully and say what on earth can this be about? — 
 when the obvious course is to read it and see?
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 41 
 
 This may be an exceptional experience of the writer's. Any- 
 how, it was Fred's course with this letter. He hung fire about 
 opening it, so completely at a loss was he as to its possible con- 
 tents. Yet he did not at that moment anticipate any evil. He 
 was face to face with the inexplicable — that was all ! 
 
 \Mien he ultimately opened it he found two letters; — one to 
 his uncle, unopened, directed in a woman's hand; the other to 
 himself, from Shortage. The latter had thought it best, for 
 various reasons, to depart from his instructions about letters 
 received for Dr. Carteret during his absence, which were to keep 
 all letters at the hotel, pending instructions to send chem on. 
 Mr. Frederic Carteret would note that the envelope was stamped 
 at Vexton Stuitifer with yesterday morning's date, and also on 
 the envelope with the name of the school. 
 
 '"Well — what of that?" said Mr. Frederic Carteret aloud to 
 empty space. " ^^^lat's Shortage in a pucker about ? " He was 
 not the least alive to anything unusual. 
 
 Presently it dawned upon him, uncomfortably. It certainly 
 was singular that a correspondent should write to his uncle, in 
 London, from the school itself. It looked as if the headmaster 
 was not there. But he was there — Fred knew that. . . . Stop 
 a moment though! How did he know? 
 
 Well — he didn't know, exactl3^ But it was as good as knowl- 
 edge. Had not his uncle driven away from his mother's house 
 ten days or a fortnight since, certainly meaning to go and 
 inspect The Cedars; that was to be relied upon, surely! Did 
 he go there though, or did he change his mind and go some- 
 where else? Very odd. but not absolutely impossible I It would 
 account, too, for no letter having come about the house. Yes — 
 that had something to do with it. But wherever he went, that 
 would throw no light upon his absence from the school just at 
 the beginning of the term, with the boys returning from their 
 Easter holiday. It was such an incredible shortcoming in the 
 most rigid of headmasters. W[\at would the boys in Fred's 
 time have thought of such an irregularitv? The end of the 
 world! 
 
 Pondering over an anxiety alone in the silence of the night 
 does not relieve it. It grows and grows. The various possi- 
 bilities of accounting for that inexplicable letter, lying unopened 
 on the table, grew less and less tangible with every new effort. 
 It was a letter — so ran surmise — posted long ago, overlooked by 
 the functionaries at Vexton Stuitifer, and sent at last with an 
 overdue stamp. What nonsense ! Well then ! — it had been
 
 42 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 jiiisdated by accident^ a slip of the stamp, and detained at the 
 office to gloss over the blunder, sent on, that is, as soon as its 
 date warranted it. An idiotic idea ! It was an escapade of the 
 boys — some irreverence to the headmaster they thought to escape 
 suspicion of by sending it to be re-forwarded. Rubbish out- 
 right! As if any boys would not know what postmarks meant. 
 Better to acknowledge the insolubility of the problem at once 
 than make it the subject of such abortive solutions ! 
 
 It would ratify a renunciation of further speculation to put 
 on a working jacket and turn up the cuffs. Fred did so, and felt 
 satisfied. He could make that slight modification of the Non- 
 Vibrator and get to bed, and place the riddle before his friend 
 Charley's legal mind at breakfast. These young men had con- 
 tracted a habit of breakfasting at each other's rooms alternately. 
 It was Mr. Snaith's turn to come to him to-morrow, and he could 
 possess his soul in peace till then, subject to the duplex action 
 of that engine, which its inventor could almost feel not vibrating, 
 as he thought of the enormous horse-power it was going to 
 develop. 
 
 Not but that, if that was the sound of a legal mind coming 
 up the stone stair-flight by fits and starts, he might just as well 
 hear its opinion before going to bed. The stillness of the night 
 made all things audible, even a footstep through a street door. 
 Fred went out and called over the hand-rail, as soon as he was 
 certain it wasn't Upstairs, who was just as likely to be coming 
 in late as the First Floor: — "Is that you, Charley?" Which 
 was an absurd question, as its form implied that the answer 
 was known. 
 
 " Suppose it is, why shouldn't it be ? You're up late, young 
 feller. . . . All right — I'll come up." 
 
 " Something I want you to look at. . . . No — certainly 
 nothing wrong. Only something I can't make out. Clck ! " 
 This is the only known way of spelling an exhortation freely 
 used to horses. 
 
 " Coming — coming — coming! " says that horse, with as much 
 of remonstrative impatience as a real quadruped would often 
 express, granting speech. " Why this unseemly haste ? I say, 
 Fred, I've got a message for you, from a lady." 
 
 " I want you to look at this letter I can't make out. Who's 
 the lady? What's the message? " 
 
 " Give us the letter-." The conversation intersects, as much 
 talk does. Fred, less interested in the message than in the 
 letter, drops the former, and hands the latter to his friend, with
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 43 
 
 its companion, for explanation. " That's from the hotel-keeper 
 wliere my uncle puts up," says he. 
 
 Mr. Snaith took the open letter, and read it with the respon- 
 sible air of one who legally advises legion. He was cultivating 
 a professional tone, and this letter brought with it an 
 opportunity. 
 
 " Now the other," said lie, after two readings. 
 
 " It's not opened," said Fred. " But you can see the out- 
 side." 
 
 " I suppose that means I'm not to open it. Why not?" 
 
 "^ Well — it's a letter to somebody else." 
 
 " Then forward it. \Miere is he ? " 
 
 " My uncle ? At the school — must be ! " 
 
 " And where did the letter come from ? " 
 
 " The school ! That's the fix ! " 
 
 " That is the fix." Mr. Snaith is turning the unopened letter 
 up and down, over and under. Presently he sees his way to 
 something. " Got any methylated ? " he asks. 
 
 " 1 thought you would be at that game," says Fred. But he 
 produces a phial bottle, with a very little spirit at the bottom. 
 There is only Just enough to moisten the direction side of the 
 envelope, and the transparency is only temporary. But both 
 have read something before it evaporates. 
 
 " "What did you see? " says Fred. 
 
 " ' Scarlet fever.' " 
 
 "So did I." 
 
 "What else?" 
 
 "'Ought to go home?'" 
 
 "So did I. But what came before — before 'ought'?" 
 
 " ' Boy '—or ' boys.' " 
 
 "Ah — but which?" The point cannot be settled, and all the 
 methylated is gone. 
 
 The young men look blankly at one another, and the message 
 from a lady is quite forgotten. 
 
 It was horribly clear that scarlet fever had broken out in the 
 school, and that the patient or " the boys " would have to be 
 packed off home. And this was apparently written to the head- 
 master under the impression th;:^.t it would find him at a London 
 hotel where he had certainly not been for a fortnight. 
 
 "Where the dickens is the old buffer?" said Mr. Snaith, 
 disrespectfully. He was yawning, too. But this was a source 
 of comfort to Fred, who was becoming painfully alive to the 
 inexplicable character of the case; for it was clear that Charley
 
 44 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 had no missivino-s about the safety of the reverend Doctor. He 
 never would have called him an old buffer, otherwise. 
 
 Fred affected indifference, and overdid it. " Oh — the old 
 bo3''s all right, or we should have heard." He put side on; but, 
 for all he was so confident, he considered details necessary. 
 '• I expect it's his father's old friend, Lord Ownership, who's 
 dying. Nothing more likely than that he should have Uncle 
 Drury sent for. And suppose he didn't die, but hung on. . . . 
 Well — what could my uncle do? He couldn't say he was forced 
 to be at the school, because he isn't. He's got a regiment of 
 under-masters and a live matron, who he says can manage the 
 school better than himself. The letter's from her. Must be ! " 
 
 Then Mr. Snaith undid the good effect of his expression " old 
 buffer," and seemed to doubt the validity of Lord Ownership. 
 " Isn't a fortnight rather a large order?" t^aid he. 
 
 " Not if you take it in driblets. ' One day more won't matter ' 
 — don't you knov/? — that sort of thing! It soon mounts up." 
 And no doubt Fred thought this contributed to explain the 
 position. He had his reservation, however. " I must say it was 
 rather strange, though, that he never wrote to Mrs. What's-her- 
 name at the school, to say where ho was." 
 
 '•' He may have done so. How do we know ? " 
 
 '• My dear Charley, where is your legal acumen? If Mrs. 
 Orpen — the name's Orpen— knew where he was, why on earth 
 should she write to him at his London hotel?" 
 
 Mr. Snaith saw the force of this for a second, then perceived 
 a means towards reinstating his professional reputation. '* Why, 
 of course she would, if he wrote to tell her to do so. That 
 squares it all up. He meant to come back to London, and wrote 
 to her to let him have news by the way. He was delayed a day. 
 You go to the hotel to-morrow, and you'll find him there. The 
 whole thing is nothing but the blunder of the hotel-keeper, who's 
 an officious ass. You do as I say. Go to-morrow and take him 
 his letter back. ... 1 say, Fred, it's to-morrow already — ha,s 
 been, for two hours and more." 
 
 Fred was immensely relieved by this new theory, and went 
 so far as to wonder why we had not thought of that before. Yes 
 — that was the best thing to do. He would go straight to the 
 hotel, and no doubt would find the old gentleman there. Of 
 course there may have been a hundred reasons, of which we knew 
 nothing, for his return to London. Besides, he was a peculiar 
 old cock. 
 
 Fred would have had to sleep soundly on the strength of this
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 45 
 
 fact — for nothing need surprise us in the ways of peculiar old 
 cocks — -if he had not had the additional assistance of his friend's 
 last thcor}^, which really was very plausihlo. It provided a fore- 
 cast of a programme for next day, which included an image of 
 the Eev. Drury, denouncing in terms scarcely clerical the 
 presumption and impertinence of Mr. Shortage and his kind, 
 not without — so Fred hoped — some recognition of his own dis- 
 cretion and promptitude in returning the letter without delay. 
 In fact, Fred fell asleep while this image was saying, with 
 knitted brows : — " Very proper ! Yes, nephew, you acted quite 
 rightly to bring it back at once. No serious mischief is done 
 now; but it might have been — might have been!" At which 
 point Fred dropped asleep and the image became merged in that 
 of a scarlet fever patient, who worked both ways and conse- 
 quently developed no vibration. 
 
 But he was not destined to see the image in the flesh, or any 
 version of its original, confirmatory of its accuracy or otherwise.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Me. Snaith used to shave, for in his day beards were no 
 longer in a majority, and he considered that a smooth chin 
 would inspire confidence in clients. So he was getting round a 
 careful corner when Fred came in to breakfast next — or later 
 on the same — morning. 
 
 " Don't agitate a feller," said he in reply to a question. He 
 negotiated the last bar of his shave, and came out of his bedroom 
 using two hairbrushes with no handles. " What's that about 
 a lady?" 
 
 " The lady. The one that sent me a message. You never 
 gave it. Who's the lady ? " 
 
 '■ Why — Miss Hinchliffe, of course ! I put your point to her 
 about how I was to address your young woman, and she was 
 down upon my view — said I was making difficulties. But she 
 declined to give a final opinion without seeing the parties. 
 Especially Elbows. So she says when is she to have the pleas- 
 ure? That's the message." 
 
 Fred reflected on the remaining days of the current week, by 
 name, giving each one time for consideration. "' Thursday — 
 Friday — Saturday! " said he. " No — I'm fixed for every after- 
 noon. But couldn't we make it Sunday lunch at my mother's? 
 I could give up going to Upper Norwood, and the girls could 
 bike over to Maida Yale instead. They would just as soon." 
 
 " That'll do, prime ! Only I say — look here ! Elbows is of 
 the essence of the contract. She's got to come." 
 
 " All right ! I can let you know to-morrow. Anything in 
 the paper ? " No — there was nothing in the paper ; only the 
 usual political rot. This was Fred's report, after a very short 
 glance at the vital columns of the Times. Further, there was no 
 occasion to hurry breakfast on his account, as his uncle would 
 not be visible if he went too early. 
 
 When he went to the hotel, the reason that he did not see his 
 uncle was that his uncle was not there, not that he was tech- 
 nically invisible. This was not reassuring, but Fred affected to 
 make light of it. He told Mr. Shortage that although he had 
 had no letter from Mr. Carteret, he was quite satisfied as to the 
 causes of his non-appearance at the school, and repeated the con- 
 
 43
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 47 
 
 jecture about the dying nobleman. Mr. Shortage, impressed by 
 the peerage, perceived in this incident a means of accounting for 
 almost any departure from custom. Still, he was a little inclined 
 to justify his own unusual procedure, in sending on that letter 
 the night before. " It is now twenty years," said he, " since 
 Dr. Carteret first made this hotel his 'Ome when visiting the 
 metropolis — for I can find no name more sootable than a 'Ome 
 — and never have I made bold before now to depart from his 
 instructions, namely, to keep all correspondence till wrote for. 
 This doo to his uncertainty in coming and going, mainly the 
 result of parents and guardians. And I venture to think, Sir, 
 that if you take in consideration all the circumstances ..." 
 
 " I'm not finding any fault, Mr. Shortage," .said Fred. " In 
 fact, I don't see what else you could have done. It was such a 
 queer turn-out." He was rather impatient of the hotel-keeper's 
 loquacity, which he knew of old, and wanted to abbreviate. 
 
 But Mr. Shortage did not want to be abbreviated. " Queer 
 indeed, Sir," said he. " But I have my doubts — asking your 
 pardon for interruptin' you — if you realise how queer. Excuse 
 me if I take the liberty of appearing prolix. But ..." 
 
 "Something you haven't mentioned?" said Fred, and settled 
 down to listen. 
 
 " Only this. Sir. The reverend gentleman left this house by 
 the very same door you come in at just now, on Saturday week. 
 His last words to me was : — ' I shall lunch at Maida Vale ' — at 
 your respected mother's, Mr. Carteret — ' and shall go back 
 direct.' Those were his words, and not 'earin' anything to the 
 contry, was I wrong to take for granted he arrived at his 
 destination ? " 
 
 " Well — probably he did. WTio says he didn't ? " 
 
 Mr. Shortage's rhetorical manner became more impressive, as 
 he leaned forward to say in a deepened voice, behind an upraised 
 finger : — " Judge of my surprise, Mr. Carteret, when three days 
 since Mrs. Orpen, the writer of this unopened letter, as I think, 
 calls at this hotel enquirin' for the reverend gentleman. And 
 what gives me a kind of turn " — at which point the speaker left 
 rhetoric, and became more natural — " she says the headmaster 
 has never been back, and this was ten days after he had wrote 
 to say have a chop ready at seven forty-five. He never came 
 and he's never come, and he's not there now, except he's got 
 back since Mrs. Hoe's letter was posted." He spoke of Mrs. 
 Orpen by her initial, and overdid it. 
 
 Mr. Snaith's Lord Ownership theory had not necessarily in-
 
 48 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 volvcd Dr. Drury's non-return to the school. It only sought 
 for what would cover the matron's letter, and account for his 
 not being at the hotel when it was delivered. It was not unrea- 
 sonable to suppose that he had gone to see a dying friend some 
 days after arriving at Vexton, and written to the matron that 
 he was returning to London, where a letter would reach him as 
 usual at his hotel. But to vanish for a fortnight and communi- 
 cate with no one ! Fred's alarm of last night came back, when 
 Mr. Shortage produced this incontestible evidence that his uncle 
 had never been at Vexton. 
 
 Naturally he relieved his feelings by finding fault. " Do you 
 mean to say," said he, " that that fool of a woman actually knew 
 Dr. Drury had started for the school and had never arrived, and 
 yet never came to tell us ? " 
 
 " I made that suggestion. Sir, to Mrs. Hoe, and she did not 
 see her way to acting upon it, not wishing to give unnecessary 
 alarm. Likewise, she said she could 'ardly claim acquaintance." 
 " What the devil did that matter?" 
 
 " Nothing, if a certainty." Mr. Shortage seemed rather at a 
 loss to explain his view of the matron's position, ])Ul decided 
 on : — " But if convinced that, when a 'eadmaster, accidents do 
 not happen, the contry is the case. Likewise, as she said, if the 
 Doctor had come back 'ome in her absence, she shouldn't know 
 which way to look." 
 
 " Of course he might. And he may have done so now, for 
 that matter, since she wrote that letter." 
 
 " He may have," said the hotel-keeper. But there was some- 
 thing in his manner that Fred found not reassuring. He 
 thought it wisest to set this down to a nervous temperament in 
 Mr. Shortage. He was still well able to pooh-pooh the idea 
 that anything was amiss. 
 
 " Weil ! " said he. " I quite expected to find him here. I 
 suppose he changed his mind and went straight back. But per- 
 haps he didn't. If so, he'll be here in the course of the day. 
 Send me a wire to my chambers when he comes." 
 
 He did not go back to the Temple, but after walking about 
 musing over a question he asked himself and could not answer, 
 he turned into the telegraph office in Fleet Street, and wrote 
 a telegram to Mrs. Orpen at the school. The question had 
 been : — If a member of your family were to disappear, and could 
 not be accounted for, how long a time should you allow to pass 
 before making enquiries? He shrank from phrasing it men- 
 tally : — " Before going to the police." The telegram was
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 49 
 
 simply: — "Is Dr. Carteret at the school? Eeply to 17 Maida 
 Vale, Carteret.'^ 
 
 The answer to the telegram might arrive at his mother's 
 before he did, unless he looked alive. He did so, to the extent 
 of climbing up on the front seat of what proved to be a Bays- 
 water bus, not going the whole way. He felt that he wanted to 
 talk about unexplained disappearances, but did not see his Avay 
 to introducing the subject to the driver; and he could not turn 
 round and speak of it to a man on the seat behind him with a 
 basket of fish, whose identity, concealed from the eye by news- 
 papers, betrayed itself by its smell. This man and the driver 
 lived in a world of their own, from which they rather pointedly 
 excluded passengers on the front seat. The conversation was 
 one long enigma, which Fred tried to solve in vain. 
 
 " Anythin' doin' your way?" said the driver. 
 
 " ''Orkins is orf," said the fish unit. " 'Arrison's made his 
 lucky, and they talk of makin' it fourteen 'underweight instead 
 of diwision. Others is in favour of the system, all round, and 
 leaving off on Thursdays. I don't put my money on neither." 
 
 " What's become of old Isaacson ? " said the driver. 
 
 ''' He's a bit off his chump, they do say. Bein' took proper 
 care on, in the manner o' speakin', in one of these 'ere hear- 
 sylums. Ah — there was a man now ! He'd never have stood 
 any of this here finickin' round, not he. He'd have had some 
 of 'em to rights long afore this, I lay." 
 
 "' Trust him ! " said the driver. " Why, I've known that man 
 'old his tongue by the hour together. And when he said five 
 pound, he meant five pound. ..." And so the conversation 
 proceeded, without its hearer being able to attach any meaning 
 whatever to it, until he disembarked at the Marble Arch. 
 
 The mystery of Hawkins, Harrison, and old Isaacson, was so 
 inscrutable that it kept possession of his mind, as an insoluble 
 enigma, almost to the point of his arrival, on a second bus, at 
 the gate of 17 Maida Vale. What a relief it would be to him 
 if a yellow paper had come for him to say, for instance : — 
 '• Arrived last night all well am writing Carteret." For his 
 imagination supplied the exact wording of a welcome telegram. 
 
 At any rate, unless he found the telegram there already on 
 his arrival he would say nothing to his mother. He very often 
 dropped in to lunch. No exi)lanation of that was necessary. 
 And why need she know anything about his alarm — probably a 
 groundless one — if his uncle's absence was accounted for? Be- 
 hind his scare lay the knowledge that his mother would be much
 
 50 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 more concerned than himself if " anything " had happened to the 
 ohl boy. Not tliat he was without affection for him, but that his 
 affection had in it an element that played towards it the part 
 that discretion plays to valour. 
 
 His pause at the front gate after ringing, with the little dachs- 
 hund within dabbing at it and addressing him through it, leaves 
 time for a word or two on the relation of Mrs. Carteret to her 
 brother-in-law. 
 
 The manner of it had been thus. Forty years ago, she had 
 been one of the prettiest twelve-year-olds that ever a fifteen-year- 
 old fell in love with, boy-wise, over the wall that parted his 
 parents' garden from hers. The respective owners of the 
 gardens laughed, and said : — " Let them ! '^ It would all die 
 out and be forgotten in due course, like a thousand other flames 
 warranted to burn for ever. WTiat did it matter to what degree 
 of distraction young Fred Carteret and Emilia Stacey loved 
 each other? Each of them would probably live to love some 
 other — some half-dozen others — to distraction, before finding out 
 that married bliss has its seamy side which seldoms sees the light. 
 At least, leave the flowers in Hope's garden to live their natural 
 life and die! 
 
 But the buds of Fred's and Emilia's flowers were not destined 
 to be nipped. They were to bloom and blossom and end as 
 fruits ; sweet or sour as might be, but still the consummation of 
 the tree's growth. Seven years found the lovers of the same 
 mind, in spite of the occasional stirring of little tiff-ripples on 
 the sea of their contentment. By the time their joint ages had 
 passed forty years, matrimony had ceased to be an air-castle — 
 had in fact for the past two years been admitted to come within 
 practical politics. Marriage followed at the ideal ages of twenty- 
 tvro and nineteen. There was not a cloud on the horizon. 
 
 Xot a visible one, at any rate. But invisible because no one 
 looked towards its quarter of the heavens. All took for granted 
 that Fred's grave elder brother had no reserve in his rejoicing 
 at the wedding festivity. And it must be admitted that what- 
 ever that young parson concealed, he made the concealment 
 effectual. No one dreamed that years had passed since a dis- 
 cipline had become a part of his life, enjoining one suprem^e 
 duty — he must not love Emilia; that day by day, his earliest 
 word at sight of her, his latest at parting from her, was that 
 injunction to his soul — his soul that resented its necessity — 
 " You must not love her ! " He locked his secret in his heart, 
 with a dead weight in it that made his utterance of the wedding-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 51 
 
 service — for he had to marry them — a penance never to be 
 forgotten. 
 
 Xo one who had to do with the Eev. Drury Carteret in 
 after years ever imagined that he had a story — a love story — 
 in the background of his life. And the worst sort of love story 
 — a record of love-hunger whose satisfaction was by hypothesis 
 impossible; of which the mere disclosure, even to the soul that 
 had to bear it, was a thing to recoil from and resent. Folk 
 generally thought the headmaster of Vexton a hard man — 
 almost harsh — and certainly a stranger to any passion that 
 deserved the name of tender. But he was only what a constant 
 tension on his life had made him, and one of the most painful 
 features of it was that he was forced — as it were in self-defence 
 — to show this disciplinarian or repellent side of his character 
 to his still beautiful sister-in-law. Even now, the slightest 
 yielding to his repressed impulse seemed to him a step over a 
 precipice. Five-and-twenty years of this position had made him 
 what the story saw him, that day a fortnight since, when he 
 went over to inspect the Old Madhouse. 
 
 Eemember that we live in a world full of commonplace people, 
 negative people; flat, stupid, uninteresting people, every one of 
 whom has, behind a personality which does not appeal to us — 
 important us — a story of some sort, and often one worth the 
 telling. And remember that what we have seen of them, and 
 have called by their names, has not been really thcm^ but only 
 evidence of their existence. To which we have paid no atten- 
 tion. 
 
 However, that's Philosophy, so called. It is not worth keep- 
 ing Fred Carteret any longer standing at that gate, to indulge 
 in Philosophy. To say nothing of that little dachshund's im- 
 patience, which is threatening to rend his soul by the time 
 Lipscombe comes to open it. 
 
 His impatience does not seem well-grounded when the gate is 
 opened, for his object in rushing out seems to be to inspect and 
 deal with the two corners of the gate-piers. After which he gets 
 upstairs as quick as may be, with his toes turned too much out, 
 and presumably informs his mamma that her human son is 
 following him. Or, she may have recognised the voice below, 
 telling Lipscombe that cold mutton is all the speaker wants. 
 Probably the latter, as otherwise her remark as she greets her 
 son lacks meaning : — " There is sure to be fish enough." An 
 afterthought causes misgiving : — *' Unless Cit's coming." For 
 the two young people are quite inconsiderate enough to come
 
 52 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 plunging in without notice. This was Nancy's expression, ap- 
 plied to a case in point. 
 
 "Oh no — she's not coming. At least, I haven't asked her." 
 Fred adds, and believes, that " anything will do " for him. 
 Other young men may have thought the same, cceteris 'paribus. 
 
 "Is anything the matter?" His mother asks this suddenly, 
 as though she had heard something in the tone of his voice- 
 something amiss. 
 
 Oh dear no ! Nothing was the matter. Nothing was ever 
 further from being the matter. The freedom from cloud of the 
 heavens, at all points of the compass, was in fact phenomenal. 
 Of course, Fred overdid it. His mother only looked at him 
 attentively for a moment, then decided in her mind that he and 
 Cit had been tiffing! Never mind! He would confess directly,, 
 and then the tiff would blow over. That was what tiffs did, 
 of this sort. 
 
 However, nothing transpired. On the contrary, when, after 
 some delay owing to a slight intensification of lunch to cover the 
 incoming of a second constituent, they found themselves at a 
 board enriched with unexpected soup, what seemed to be exer- 
 cising Fred's mind was tliat knotty point about what he should 
 call ]\Iiss Hinchliffe. He sketched the position for his mother's 
 benefit, and she appeared to weigh the questions involved with 
 all due gravity. She remarked that, in her youth, Christian- 
 naming was much more common than nowadays. This delusion 
 is so strong at all times of the world that it may be safely 
 referred to the same cause in all cases — the fact that 3-outh is 
 the age of Christian names. What is the value of infancy's im- 
 pression about what grown-ups arc calling each other? Mrs. 
 Carteret was not sure that had not something to do with it. 
 " However," she said, " 1 quite see your friend Mr. Snaith's 
 point of view. Of course he cannot call Cit ' Cintra ' and her 
 sister ]\Iiss Fraser. It would make a formality. And, on the 
 other hand, he could only address her as Nancy by express 
 invitation. It might have been different with another name; 
 Eliza for instance, or Gertrude. But there is something flip- 
 pety-skippety about ' Nancy.' I suppose it's because ' saucy ' 
 ends in cy." 
 
 " Shouldn't wonder ! But I see the fix in this light. If 
 Charley Snaith were my brother ..." 
 
 " But he isn't your brother." 
 
 " No — I know. Bi;t suppose he were ! " 
 
 " Well— what then? "
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 53 
 
 " He'd be in for Christian-naming all round." 
 
 " I don't see that. He would call your wife Sarah or Martha 
 or Penthesilea — anything her name happened to be — and she 
 would call him Charles. Because of consanguinity. But he 
 wouldn't call her sister anything but Miss Smith — or Jones or 
 Montmorenc}' — M'hichever it was." Fred looked doubtful, and 
 Mrs. Carteret continued. " Yes — I'm perfectly right. Mr. 
 Snaith is not your brother, so Cintra is not going to be his 
 sister. Of course he can Christian-name her by special arrange- 
 ment. Only, he must call Nancy Miss Fraser, unless she con- 
 sents to be ' Nancied ' by him." Fred still looked doubtful. 
 '' ^^^ly, my dear silly boy, don't you see it's exactly the 
 same with his Miss Henchman — Hinchliffe — what's her 
 name . . . ? " 
 
 '' Lucy. Lucy Hinchliffe." 
 
 '•' If Miss Lucy Hinchliffe had a sister, and Mr. Snaith were 
 your brother, you would call her Lucy as a matter of course. 
 But you would have to ' Miss ' her sister, all the same, — unless 
 she was married. ..." 
 
 '•' I don't see why." 
 
 '' Stupid Fred ! Can't you see that you could marry her, 
 while if Mr. Snaith departed this life ever so, you couldn't marry 
 his widow — not if he were your brother." 
 
 " I s-see. It's a matter of consanguinity." Fred appre- 
 hended slowly. " It's the same thing as . . . " Something 
 stopped him, and not only did his mother know what it was, 
 but he himself knew she knew it a moment later, and felt he 
 would have liked to have his last words back. But, after all, 
 did it matter? For, consider, how senior his mother and his 
 old uncle were ! How could the subject be what his mind classed 
 as a ticklish one, in the face of such seniority? 
 
 He could quite understand that delicate considerations were 
 involved in the important question of whether he could address 
 Miss Hinchliffe as Lucy; because how could the position be other 
 than delicate, looking at all the points involved? Looking espe- 
 cially at the young lady's eyes and lips, which Fred found he 
 recollected. In the early twenties one cultivates susceptibilities 
 to which a previous generation may always have been strangers, 
 and certainly must have become insensible to by now. Or, if one 
 grants a certain latitude of humanity to one's ancestors generally, 
 one must needs draw a line at mothers and uncles, still living. 
 Nevertheless, Fred elided the rest of his speech, and turned it 
 into a remonstrance with the little dachshund, whose whole
 
 54 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 attitude was a reminder that this was his lunch; as well as, if 
 not more than, that of his betters. 
 
 It is the business of a story to look into the minds of its 
 characters, and this one may hold noteworthy a fact in that 
 of Mrs. Carteret. She had never asked her son if he had yet 
 heard from his uncle, which may have been either that she was 
 satisfied that nothing was wrong in that quarter or that she 
 had misgivings that something was, and shrank from suggesting 
 alarms. But the thing this effect of consanguinity was " the 
 same thing as," brought him into court — the court of her con- 
 sciousness — and warranted an enquiry about his odd silence. 
 She brushed aside as contemptible and ridiculous — with her own 
 son — a momentary reluctance to risk showing that he had been 
 so brought into court, and made no more ado, but asked her 
 question. Had Fred had no letter from his uncle? She even 
 began it with '' By the by," almost acknowledging what had made 
 her think of him. 
 
 " Well — the fact is . . . " Fred began, and hung fire over 
 it. He ought to have said merely : — " No — have you? " 
 
 '' Is anything the matter ? " 
 
 " Oh dear no ! \Yhat made you think so ? " 
 
 " Only vou looked so . . ." 
 
 "So wiiat? I didn't look anything. . . . Well— I'll tell 
 you. The fact is, I came here to-day to see if you had . . . 
 had heard from him, I mean." 
 
 " I have heard nothing . . . Fred dear! — don't look so un- 
 comfortable." Mrs. Carterest paused an instant, then said ear- 
 nestly and quickly : — " Do tell me if anything's the matter." 
 
 " Well — no — nothing's the matter. . . . However ! . . . 
 Well, I suppose I may as well tell you. I can't exactly make 
 out where Uncle Dru is." Under the circumstances, it was not 
 an easy thing to say in an unconcerned way. Fred failed 
 signally. 
 
 " '\\^y not at the school, as usual? " 
 
 " Would the matron be writing to him at Shortage's, if he 
 were ? " 
 
 'MMiy — no! But has she written? What has she written? 
 How do you know ? " Fred told how he knew — told the whole 
 story. He ended with his sending of the telegram to Mrs. 
 Orpen, and how he was momentarily expecting its arrival. He 
 did not intend to be the least astonished if his uncle was not at 
 the school, and of course that would account for a letter coming 
 for him in London. Neither would he feel the slightest surprise,
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 55 
 
 if enquiry showed that the old boy had not reappeared at Short- 
 age's. His attitude was, that nothing should be regarded as 
 improbable except that " anything had happened." 
 
 As his mother seemed still uneasy and dissatisfied, he pro- 
 duced his friend's theory, which had had such a soothing effect 
 the night before. " I fancy Charley may be right," said he. 
 " Ten to one Lord Ownership's people have sent for Uncle Dru. 
 You know how thick they were, and now the old man's dying, 
 nothing is more likely than that he should send for him. Old 
 college chums, don't you see? It would have to be something 
 serious to make him chuck the school, just at the beginning of 
 the midsummer term. I expect it will turn out to be that." 
 
 '' Is Lord Ownership dying? " 
 
 " / don't know. The newspapers said he was." 
 
 " Are you sure it didn't say he was going to be married ? " 
 
 " Quite sure. Dying. He's been ill ever so long." 
 
 Now, the fact was that Master Fred knew nothing whatever 
 about his lordship, except that he and Uncle Drury had been 
 at Balliol together, and were, as he said, " very thick." All the 
 rest was newspaper. 
 
 " Of course," said Mrs. Carteret, welcoming any plausible 
 theory, " that would go a long way to account for it. I know 
 your uncle would be very much upset. But I can't help think- 
 ing if Lord Ownership had been dying, I should have heard. 
 Your uncle would have mentioned it." 
 
 Well — he is dying. The Times says so. May I smoke ? " 
 Of course you may. ... It isn't strong, I suppose?" 
 N-no. Only one of these little bouquets. . . . Never 
 mind ! I'll smoke it later, and have a cigarette now." 
 
 " Nonsense, child ! How particular we are, all of a sudden ! 
 Besides, I'm going upstairs directly, and you can have it all to 
 yourself." From which it is clear that lunch is on its very last 
 legs. In fact, coffee is pending. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret went upstairs directly, and her son had it all 
 to himself. He had nothing to do but pooh-pooh his alarm 
 about his uncle, so he employed himself that way; also he 
 admitted to his mind a speculation as to whether Cintra would 
 " get on " with Lucy. H'm — Lucy ! Well — Miss Hinchliffe 
 then. This was a concession he made to a remonstrance from 
 himself. He must fix up that appointment for the two young 
 ladies to be made known to one another. Wouldn't do to forget 
 that! 
 
 He had great faith in Cintra's common sense. No girl could 
 
 « 
 
 a
 
 56 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 be freer, for instance, from any trace of nonsensical jealousy of 
 another girl. There were girls like that, he knew; girls who, 
 if they could read their husband's or lover's minds and found 
 in them so much as a recollection of what colour another girl's 
 eyes were, or of the mere outline of her lips — with that little 
 dimple, don't you know, coming and going — would fly into an 
 awl'ul rage directly. Cintra was not that sort. Besides, her 
 faith in him was perfect. Of course, it was natural that it 
 should be, being so well-grounded. There were fellows, whom 
 he knew, who were not to be trusted. However, they generally 
 cottoned to girls of that other sort; so it was diamond-cut-dia- 
 niond. He then derived a marked satisfaction — or said he did, 
 in his own confidence — from the happy choice his friend had 
 made, complexion perhaps apart. 
 
 Lucy — h'm ! He tapped the ash off his bouquet, a long ash 
 that left almost no cigar behind, and remarked to himself what 
 a fortunate chap Charley Snaith was to have won the affections 
 of a girl v/ho could see below the surface, who was not taken in 
 by mere superficial appearances. Fred could not disguise from 
 himself the fact that Charley was not exactly an Adonis. But 
 did he try to? He finished his cigar, and was departing to join 
 his mother upstairs, when he heard her coming down slowly. 
 She was looking at a newspaper as she came, to judge by a 
 rustle; one that outclassed the rustle of her silk dress. 
 
 " I was sure I was right," said she. " Lord Porchisthorpe's 
 dying — not Lord Ownership at all ! Read that." 
 
 Fred took the offered Times, and read the indicated para- 
 graph. It appeared that the former nobleman had not main- 
 tained his slight rally of yesterday, and his medical advisers gave 
 little ground for hope. So the worst was feared and the Count- 
 ess was sent for. Fred didn't see what Lord Porchisthorpe had 
 to do in the matter. "Wasn't Lord Ownership dying too? 
 
 " Certainly not. He's going to be married, to the Honour- 
 able Miss Somebody Something, a Maid of Honour. , . . Xo 
 — he's not there. He's in ' Court and Society.' " 
 
 Fred found a statement to this effect as indicated, and seemed 
 to accept it on reading the full name of the fortunate lady. But 
 he said : — '*' I don't see what Lord Porchisthorpe has to do with 
 it. He's dying on his own account." 
 
 "Foolish boy! Don't you see that you muddled the two 
 names together? Or Mr. Snaith did." 
 
 " I don't see that they are so much alike." 
 
 " Yes, they are. At least they are the sort of names that
 
 THE OLD >IADHOUSE 57 
 
 get mixed up. If you forgot both, you would be just as likely 
 to remember one as the other. But, Fred ! " 
 
 ''But what?" 
 
 "Where is 3'Our uncle?" Her alarm was unconcealed now, 
 and panic was growing in her voice. 
 
 Fred cast about for some new pretence that all was well. A 
 feeble attempt to connect his uncle's absence with the aristo- 
 cratic wedding failed miserably. He ended by an unreasonable 
 assumption that his uncle must have arrived at the school, by 
 now, or he would have received an answer to his telegram. 
 
 " What nonsense, Fred ! As if ]\[rs. Orpen would delay her 
 answer because he was there ! " And it was nonsense. 
 
 He who knows the miseries of doubt about an absent person 
 may be able to picture the growing anxiety of Fred and his 
 mother as time passed and no telegram came. Xeither sug- 
 gested that this uneasy vigil might be cut short, and the telegram 
 left to appear as it listed. Least of all did Fred entertain any 
 idea of going away and awaiting its appearance elsewhere. He 
 paced restlessly about, looking from the window for an exj^ected 
 messenger boy on a bicycle, and seeing none. 
 
 An unfeeling clock struck three, and no telegram had come. 
 Then presently a knock made Fred jump and begin to say : — 
 " There it is ! " But he did not finish his statement, for the 
 knock, which began staccato, and might have been a telegram, 
 ended in a trill and was a visitor — a double-dyed visitor. Mrs. 
 Carteret knew who it was — that tiresome Finch Elliot woman — 
 and she supposed she must be at home. Fred deserted her 
 basely, leaving her to deal with the Finch Elliot alone, and read 
 the first book he chanced on in the back-room — Pepys' Diary, 
 as it happened. But he found Pepys palled^ even when he 
 and Mrs. Pepys whipped the servant girl and shut her in the 
 cellar. He could fix his mind on nothing. 
 
 Was that confounded Finch Elliot woman never going? Her 
 genial manner, audible through the closed folding door, was 
 exasperating. Her intermittent sudden laugh, like the chatter 
 of some bird Fred had heard at the Zoo, always in anticipation 
 of her audience's recognition of her own humour, was like the 
 waterdrop of the Inquisitorial tormentor. He knew by the tone 
 of her voice when it was going to come, and it came — always a 
 descending arpeggio landing on a squeaky jerk, like a note of 
 interrogation, at the end. 
 
 He could not make out what it was all about. But there was 
 a Committee ; that was something to know. The Committee
 
 58 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 was at loggerheads; that was natural — Committees always are! 
 There was an obvionsly right course before it — or them — and 
 the Finch Elliot woman was on the side of the right. One's 
 informant always is. Did anyone ever yet communicate with 
 a person who Avas in the wrong? There was a hcte-noire, Fred 
 gathered from the frequent repetition of a half-heard name in a 
 particular tone of voice. But was it possible that he heard it 
 right? He listened afresh, every time it came, hoping to cor- 
 rect his first impression that it was Stems. But the Finch Elliot 
 woman gave no quarter, and he had to accept the name, incredu- 
 lously. Would that idiot of a woman never go? She and her 
 Committee ! 
 
 At last she said with a pounce that she really must go. She 
 had to be there — somewhere or other — at five. Fred thanked 
 the Divine Disposer of Events from the bottom of his heart. 
 She was going and went, with voluble recapitulation to the last 
 moment. Fred listened through his own door, furtively opened, 
 and had the satisfaction of hearing his mother hope that Sir 
 Thomas would give in, throwing a light on Stoms. Then the 
 Finch Elliot woman vanished at last, and Fred went out into 
 the relieved atmosphere to find his mother asking a question of 
 Lipscombe, over the banisters. ^Yhat was that? . . . Bring 
 it up here, then ! 
 
 A telegram for Mr. Frederic, and the boy was waiting ! Why 
 in Heaven's name then, Lipscombe, bother about the silver tray 
 to put it on? But Lipscombe was a trained parlour maid, and 
 would not bate a jot of etiquette. The yellow envelope came 
 upstairs on its proper conveyance, and usage was not outraged. 
 
 "Now, at any rate, we shall know something." Jlrs. Car- 
 teret's fingers were agitated over the envelope, and not at their 
 deftest. Fred said, without reason : — " She's sure to have heard 
 of him. Most likely he's there by now," and waited. 
 
 But what he waited for did not come — only silence and knowl- 
 edge why he had no answer. For there could be no doubt of 
 the meaning of his mother's strained look as she read the tele- 
 gram, and re-read it. " Let me look," said he, and took it from 
 her. He followed her into the drawing-room as he read, half- 
 aloud : — " The Doctor has not been here since he went to London, 
 no news of him has come and no letter. Orpen." 
 
 ]\rr?. Carteret had fallen into a chair when her son looked 
 up at her from the telegram. " \Miat can it mean?" said she, 
 and her voice came short of its intention, and died out. 
 
 Fred saw he must plead in arrest of judgment. " Come, I
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 59 
 
 say, Mother ! " said he, " we mustn't allow ourselves to be run 
 away with by ..." 
 
 "By what?" 
 
 " Well — we mustn't get in a stew because ..." 
 
 " Because what? " 
 
 " Well — you know what I mean ; we need not conclude that 
 Uncle Dru has . . . come to grief of any sort, simply because 
 he disappears for a week or so." 
 
 " What — not with all the boys just coming back to school 
 you know how particular he was." 
 
 "'' Ye-es. Of course I know all that." 
 
 " Has he ever been known to miss the first day of a terra ? " 
 
 '■ Wh}^ — no — perhaps not! " 
 
 " Certainly not. It was one of his strong points always. Oh, 
 Fred, something is wrong. I'm sure of it." 
 
 " Don't let's be in too great a hurry ! " 
 
 " I am not in a hurry. But something must be done." 
 
 " Something must be done. Yes — but what? That's the 
 point. Look here, Mother ! Let me speak to Charley about 
 this, before we do anything." 
 
 "Yes — speak to Mr. Snaith. Speak to his partner, Mr. 
 Trymer. See what lie says." He was a consolatory man, this 
 Mr. Tr}Tner, cool and professional, with an accurate unimpeach- 
 able hat. He was the sort of man feebleness at a loss looks to 
 as a magazine of hidden resource : and is, to say the truth, as 
 often as not disappointed in.
 
 CHAPTER YI 
 
 ''* I SAT, Charley, this is a devil of a bad job." 
 
 "What is?" 
 
 "^ My uncle can't be found — anywhere." 
 
 Mr. Snaith, on the lower landing of their common staircase, 
 looks up at Fred, who has been anxiously awaiting him. The 
 clocks are striking midnight, each at a time of its own selection. 
 "How do you know?" says he, pausing, latchkey in hand. 
 
 " I mean — we can't find out where he is. Come up and I'll 
 tell you." 
 
 Mr. Snaith puts away his latchkey and comes up, making the 
 face of one who whistles, inaudibly. They go into Fred's 
 domicile, and that young man gives a brief account of the events 
 of his da3\ '' I hung on at my mother's till quite late," he says, 
 concluding it, " because she has no one with her, and of course 
 she's getting in a stew. I don't see that there's anything I 
 could have done." 
 
 "You haven't communicated with the police?" This is mere 
 orthodoxy on Mr. Snaith's part — a thing to be said, no more. 
 
 "How the dickens can 1? Just think, suppose the old boy 
 turns up as right as a trivet — and he may, any minute, — think 
 what a nice rage he'd be in with us for not minding our own 
 business ! " 
 
 " I see your fix. But how long are we to give him ? " 
 
 "Blest if I know! He's had a fortnight already — all but! " 
 Master Fred has implied, by the way he spoke of his mother, 
 that he himself is not in a stew. But he is, for all that. 
 
 His friend gets through a few bars of that inaudible tune; 
 then says suddenly, as one who means business : — " ^Vho sav/ 
 him last? " 
 
 " My mother, certainly. I've made that out. He left our 
 house in a growler last Saturday week, to go back to Vexton 
 by the five o'clock from Waterloo. ..." 
 
 "Then we must see the station master at Waterloo. ..." 
 
 " Easy a minute ! I was going to tell you. He didn't go to 
 Waterloo. He went to Wimbledon, taking that house on the 
 way— OM/- house, you know— The Cedars. At least, he said he 
 should." 
 
 60
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 61 
 
 "In a growler?" 
 
 " So I understood." 
 
 " Then we must find that growler." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "Advertise for it. Growlers don't take fares all the way to 
 Wimbledon and forget it, in a fortnight. The cabby will 
 remember." 
 
 Fred looked uncomfortable. "But suppose my uncle's all 
 right, and sees the advertisement? There'll be a pretty how- 
 do-you-do ! " 
 
 " Very well, then ! Stand the cabby over for a day or two. It 
 won't make any difference. But look here — here's another idea. 
 Why not go down to the house and see if he ever went there ? I 
 expect you would find he didn't. Then, after that, fish out the 
 cabby, and find where he did go." 
 
 " I'm afraid it won't be any use. There's only an old care- 
 taker there, and she's half-witted. She has an old husband who 
 boozes." 
 
 '^ Caretakers have. But it doesn't matter how great an idiot 
 she is. We only want to know whether he's been there or not. 
 That's not much to recollect." 
 
 " I tell you what, Charley. I vote we go to-morrow to the 
 agent at Wimbledon. My uncle must have gone to him first, 
 to o-et an order to see the house. He'll remember fast enough. 
 My uncle isn't like everybody else." 
 
 Thus it came about that next day saw Fred and his friend 
 interviewing the house-agent at Wimbledon. This gentleman 
 suffered from an obliging disposition, showing itself in an idea 
 that it was his duty at all costs to supply an answer in the 
 affirmative to Fred's enquiry whether two Saturdays ago an 
 elderly clerical gentleman had come in a cab for an order to 
 see The Cedars at Merton, and had driven on to see the said 
 house ; that being the only theory that held water, as it seemed 
 improbable that his uncle would drive all the way to the house 
 without some security that he would be shown over it. Now 
 this obliging disposition of this house-agent, who had no recol- 
 lection of such a visitor, prompted him to negotiate for a change 
 in the identity of the Eev. Dr. Carteret, in order to get a 
 ground for an affirmative answer. 
 
 He could remember nothing unassisted about the second pre- 
 vious Saturday — or indeed about any past incident, so vast and 
 varied were his business transactions — without referring to a 
 liugc folio volume, which seemed to contain all contemporary
 
 62 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 history. His forefinger, travelling up and down entries, stopped 
 now and again as though it had a bite from one of them. Once, 
 to say : — " Certainly — certainly — here we have it. Clerical 
 gentleman and young lady, enquiring for residence to suit re- 
 quirements as follows ..." But Fred nipped him in the 
 bud, saying that no young lady could be entertained in this 
 connection. And then presently : — " Ah now ! — this will be 
 correct, no doubt. ' The Rev. Samuel Smallwood . . .' That 
 ivas the name, I believe. Sir ? " 
 
 " No — that it wasn't ! The Reverend — Drury — Carteret. 
 Nobody else will do." 
 
 The house-agent looked as though, if he had not been a meek 
 house-agent, he would have protested, and pointed out the un- 
 reasonableness of not being content with the Rev. Samuel Small- 
 wood. Being meek, he had to acquiesce in being damped down 
 in this way, and only said sadly : — " Possibly another gentle- 
 man." He continued, in spite of this unfair discouragement, 
 to explore the folio with his forefinger, now and then uttering a 
 new name tentatively, as though to soften the heart of his 
 applicant and bring about a compromise. But Fred was un- 
 yielding. He declined to vary the identity of the person he 
 sought in order to accommodate his description, and the house- 
 agent had to acknowledge the circumstance was too strong for 
 him. " No — no such a gentleman ! " was his final verdict, and 
 he refused to countenance, as almost irreligious, the idea that 
 anyone should presume to view The Cedars without a permit. 
 
 " That proves nothing, Fred," said Mr. Snaith, when they had 
 left the agent's, and were pausing to consider the next step to be 
 taken. " Nothing but that he didn't come here first. He may 
 have gone straight to the house. Even if he didn't see over it, 
 he may have gone there. But if he went, he saw it, why 
 shouldn't he? Caretakers are not tip-proof — very much not." 
 
 " We may just as well go and see, to make sure," said Fred. 
 An elaborate description of the whereabouts of the house was 
 wasted on an old fly-driver at the railway station opposite, who 
 listened to it sceptically; consented to accept the Job, grudgingly; 
 and took the nosebag ofl' his horse, autocratically. Then when 
 he had wrapped himself in a horse-rug of the date of his vehicle, 
 he turned to say to Fred : — " Any name to this here house? " 
 
 " Yes. The Cedars. Big old house— to let." 
 
 " If you'd 'a said The Cedars, you'd 'a saved yourself a lecter. 
 I wasn't brought up to talkin', myself." 
 
 " But you know the house ? "
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 63 
 
 " I ought to it. I was as good as born there. Anyways, my 
 father died there, and that runs us werry close." 
 
 A more liberal education — so Fred thought — might have 
 spoiled this man, whose delicate sense of an antithesis was a 
 thing to cultivate. He ventured on a surmise. Was the nativity 
 of the speaker by any chance somewhere in the near neighbour- 
 hood? No, — not to say near. It was, in fact, if you went in 
 for being particular, at Basingstoke. But a party being born in 
 Basingstoke was no drorback on his father dying anywhere you 
 might name. It was open to him to die in 'Ackney, Camberwell, 
 'Oxton, or the West Ingies if you come to that. As a matter of 
 fact this fly-driver's father had died at this very house. The 
 Cedars ; and there was no use saying he hadn't. 
 
 Mr. Snaith showed an interest in this man. " I like the old 
 cock," said he, sotto voce, to Fred, " because he's so combative. 
 What would he say if he knew how particular we have to go in 
 for being in our profession? Try and get out of him what was 
 his father's status or capacity at The Cedars. He wasn't a 
 patient — I'm clear about that. . . . ^Vhy? because patients at 
 private asylums like this belong to the Better Sort. I don't 
 suppose this man's father had property." 
 
 " I hope he wasn't a patient, because I can't ask if he was," 
 said Fred. He decided on finding some elliptical form of 
 expression, to deprive his enquiry of any invidious character. 
 He addressed the native of Basingstoke as soon as the latter had 
 succeeded in reaching the person of an invisible boy, who was 
 hanging on behind, with his whip-lash, and had disconnected 
 him effectually. " I've been told the house belonged to a cele- 
 brated doctor, who took in nerve-cases. Your father wasn't a 
 nerve-case, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Not he ! He knoo better. His horfice was to look after 
 these here nerve-cases. Only that warn't the name he called 'em 
 by. Looneys was what he put it at, and I've an idea he was 
 right, myself. He used to give 'em treatment." 
 
 " What sort of treatment ? " 
 
 " Toko, I reckon. In course he gave 'em what-for, to recollect 
 him by, when they got houtrageous. But this here treatment 
 was reg'lar downright Science, and no 'umbug. He wrote a 
 parmphlet. Dr. Aytcholt did ..." 
 
 " Was that his name? Say it again." 
 
 "Haytch. Holt. Got it? . . . Well, this here parmphlet 
 was consarnin' of The Use of Anti-Irritants in Mental Cases. 
 Some on 'em would 'a made you larf."
 
 64 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " \^niieh? Tell us cabout the Anti-Irritants." 
 
 " Well — there was the Mutule Aggerawation Treatment. For 
 to perdoose the wery maximum of hirritation and bring it out 
 like. Like a hee-ruption." 
 
 " How did he do it? It must have been fun." 
 
 " That's accordin' as you look at it. I can tell you how he 
 done it. He took a couple of extra-violent patients, and put 'em 
 in adjinin' apartments with a winder between, plate glass a 
 hinch thick it was, so they could see each other but not hear 
 a sound. Then each o' these here two violent patients, ye see, 
 took it the other was a kicking of him^ and flowed at him in 
 pursooancc of the idea, and hit hisself against the glarst of the 
 winder. Good job there was no neighbours handy in them 
 days ! " 
 
 " Because of the noise. I see. But was the treatment a 
 success? " 
 
 "■ Warn't it ? — if the doctor warn't a liar. All the patients 
 was completely cured, barring one who killed hisself against the 
 jrlarst. Soo-icide while of unsound mind was the werdict. 
 Because the doctor he p'inted out that the treatment was 
 Scientific." 
 
 The fares were rather sorry the journey was so short, as 
 further facts might have come to light concerning the cure of 
 insanity by Dr. Aytcholt. But they had arrived at the desolation 
 that was ripe for building, and there was the house, and there 
 the trees it took its name from. The old deaf woman Avas at the 
 gate, looking up and down the road with a jug in her hand. A 
 vanishing potboy, who could whistle through his front teeth, was 
 departing, and the old husband was visible at the side door of 
 the house, at the end of the gravel pathway. When he saw 
 the visitors, he turned his back and disappeared. 
 
 The old woman did not seem very communicative, when Fred 
 had stated the object of his visit. Perhaps he was in too great 
 a hurry with it, and that made her " suspicious." Persons of 
 her sort require delicate handling. "Old gentleman? No! — 
 we don't have no old gentlemen come here, or very seldom." 
 
 " That's absurd," said Fred in an undertone to his friend. 
 " As if people looking over premises went by ages and sexes ! " 
 " She has had an old gentleman here, or she wouldn't have 
 said she hadn't," said Mr. Snaith, astutely. 
 
 '* Right you are, Charley ! Nothing like the legal mind, after 
 all ! . . . Look here, missus ! You scrape your intelligence 
 together. . . . Oh, can't you hear as loud as that? Then I
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 65 
 
 must sho*ut louder. ... He had on a parson's costume, this 
 old gentleman, and it was Saturday fortnight, about four in 
 the afternoon." 
 
 " "What did you say he had on ? " 
 
 " A parson's costume." 
 
 "What's that?'"' 
 
 " A clergyman's dress." 
 
 Xow, by this time Mrs. Grewbeer had collected herself, and 
 had also recognised Fred as a previous visitor. She saw her 
 way to surrendering her little attitude of reserve — which may 
 have been produced by Fred's evident anxiety to get an answer — 
 and at the same time of imputing obscurity, a great delight with 
 the uncultured, as well as the cultured, mind. Said she : — 
 " There now, if you'd 'a said he was dressed like a clergyman, 
 then I should have knowed." But having made this admission, 
 she was seized with a perverse desire to vary the day. Yainly 
 did Fred say that if she was referring to his old gentleman, it 
 must be Saturday fortnight ; on no other day in the calendar 
 was he a human possibility. The reply was : — " I think you'll 
 find you're mistook, but my old man he'll know." 
 
 " Let her have her own way, Fred," said Mr. Snaith. " Whar 
 does it matter ? " And they followed the old woman to the 
 house. 
 
 Referred to for confirmation, Mr. Grewbeer was disappointing. 
 He declined to commit himself to anything. " Ye see, gentle- 
 men," said he. " I never see the party. I only heerd tell ol" 
 him next day. He was here when I come, I take it, but I never 
 set eyes on him myself. I wasn't by way of taking notice much, 
 by token I'd met with an accident, being fetched home in a 
 gentleman's cart, who's in the coal and potato line. My old 
 woman she see the party, and what she can't tell you, there's 
 no use asking." 
 
 "But you know which day it was, as you had an accident. 
 That's something to recollect by." But Mr. Grewbeer seemed 
 to evade admission that it was Saturday, no doubt disliking any- 
 thing that threw a light on the nature of his accident. He 
 conceded the point, however, indirectly. He couldn't be par- 
 ticular to the exact day, but next day was Sunda}', if you came 
 to that. 
 
 " As we do come to that, Charley," said Fred, " it must have 
 been Saturday. Now what I want to find out is, which way did 
 my uncle go wAe?! he left ..." 
 
 " Stop a bit, Fred. Let me do the interrogation. And don't
 
 €6 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 yon bo in too great a hurry. Let's hear the good woman." 
 And tlien Mr. Snaith " elicited/' in approved style, that the ^ 
 clerical gentleman had come in a four-wheel cab, which he dis- 
 missed, and had been admitted to see the house. At this point 
 the old woman become suddenly communicative, having lighted 
 on a rich vein of irrelevant matter, and insisted on giving the 
 fullest particulars of everything her hearers did not want to 
 know. Fred showed impatience, but his friend said sotto 
 voce: — "Bottle up,, Frederic: she'll tell us more if we give her 
 her head." 
 
 Carefully recalled to the point more than once, Mrs. Grewbecr 
 was induced to admit that she had let Dr. Carteret in through 
 the front door, her introduction of him to each room of the 
 house in turn, his dissatisfaction with them, not without dra- 
 matic reference to his condemnations — in which Fred could 
 recognise his uncle's identity, — and finally the fact that she 
 had not seen his departure from the house, being called away. 
 Here she showed a strong tendency to dwell upon the treatment 
 of wounds and bruises, and to leave her visitor unaccounted for. 
 Fred's impatience got the better of him, and made him interpose 
 on this. 
 
 "Yes — but what we want to know is, which way did he go? 
 Back to the station, or . . . ? " He stopped at a glance from 
 his friend, which he knew meant : — " Don't suggest ! " 
 
 " I never see no more of him." 
 
 " Do you mean that when you went to look for him you 
 couldn't find him ? " Xow the story knows that the old woman 
 did not go back, and practically forgot all about her visitor. 
 
 " I never went to look for him till he wasn't there, next day. 
 I'd my hands full, and plenty to see to, without showing parties 
 out. Lard ! — he'd only got to stand the door open and walk 
 through the front gate." 
 
 "Did nobody see him go? That's what I want to get at?" 
 This questioning was of course Fred's, and showed impatience. 
 
 Old Grewbeer, having been drunk, and knowing it, was at 
 some disadvantage in taking the tone of superiority to feminine 
 weakness of Judgment which he would have affected another 
 time, as a matter of course. But he felt that a hint in this 
 direction would not be misplaced. "' Ye see, master," said he, 
 in confidence to Fred ; " the missus was a bit upset. That's 
 what she was. Females is. .But I tell ye this much, for all I 
 was knocked a bit silly by this here mishap o' mine, that young 
 Pritchett, the son of the party I named to you just now, he was
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 6T 
 
 out at that there front gate, a seein' to the 'orse, and he see 
 the old gentleman come out, and walk away towards Wimbledon." 
 
 " AMiat's that 3'ou're a sayin', Grewbeer ? " The old woman 
 interrupted him tartly, whereupon he repeated this little effort 
 of fiction, louder. " I thought you said young Pritchett said he 
 see no one." 
 
 " That's as may be," was the reply. " But I said he was a 
 young liar. And a young liar he is. ^^^l3^ — in course he saw 
 the gentleman come out, 'cos he must have come out. And 
 where would you expect him to go, barring the station ? T'other 
 road don't lead nowhere, not even to the moon." 
 
 " You now perceive, Frederic — I hope — the difficulties that 
 beset the collection of evidence. Thank Heaven, my friend, that 
 you are not a lawyer." Mr. Snaith followed this up by remark- 
 ing that Mr. Grewbeer had imputed to an habitual liar the 
 statement that he would have made, had he been truthful in 
 accordance with his — Mr. Grewbeer's — own conceptions of what 
 " must have been " the truth. 
 
 " Well then," said Fred, " the long and short of it is, that no 
 one here saw my uncle go, whatever Pritchett Junior says he 
 did or didn't see." 
 
 " He says he didn't," said the old man doggedly. " And bein' 
 a liar by natwr' — and all boys is as ever I had to do with — you 
 may take it from me he did. I can't say no fairer than that." 
 
 " I'm afraid, Charley," said Fred, " the obstacles to the col- 
 lection of evidence are so strong in this quarter that — well ! — 
 we shan't get at anything worth having. He came here though ; 
 that's something." 
 
 " I expect the old chap may be right, though he's a fool." 
 Short of whispering, side-speech in confidence did not reach its 
 subject, so Mr. Grewbeer remained unconscious of this descrip- 
 tion of him. " Your uncle came here, and walked away to 
 Wimbledon. We'll see the station master. ... Be easy, old 
 chap! — we shall solve the mystery — most likely find a letter when 
 we get back. They'll have heard from him at the school. He'll 
 be all right." But Fred looked very unsettled, for he knew his 
 friend would affect confidence, however little he felt it. 
 
 Being here, would it not be as well to take another look round 
 the house? It was Mr. Snaith's suggestion, made with an idea 
 of diverting his friend's mind from an uneasiness he thought 
 exaggeratecl. It was very effective, as Fred quite became him- 
 self again over the new entrance lobby, rendered necessary by 
 the proposed bisection of the house. It was to be made by throw-
 
 68 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 ing a small room into the passage from which rose the present 
 back-staircase. The room so thrown was to recover its footing 
 and do duty as a spacious entrance hall, having led a humble 
 life as a sort of pantry in past ages. But the transformation 
 of the stairs was the thing to look forward to. 
 
 " I tell you what, Charley, if you have this half, I shall envy 
 you your stairs. Look at that balustrade ! Did anyone ever 
 see such a finial as this on the corner post? " 
 
 " Very good, old chap ! You shall have this side. I'll take 
 t'other. Subject, of course ! " 
 
 "Subject to what?" 
 
 " Subject to my young woman, of course — Lucy. She'll have 
 to go up and down stairs — up and down those very stairs. Or 
 the other ones, as may be. I say, Fred, what a lark it will 
 be!" 
 
 All of us have an undercurrent self, that we have to ignore 
 very often ; because, if it got the bit in its teeth, it would put us 
 in such an absurdly false position. It is that self whose in- 
 tensely cryptic cliaracter — whose invisibility, inaudibility, intan- 
 gibility — is so often a source of satisfaction to us. How often 
 has each of us said to himself — his everyday self, just below the 
 surface : — " Thank God that you and I have this mischief-maker 
 well in hand, and can ignore him ! Let's ! " How often has 
 this everyday self exclaimed thereon, with marked indignation : — 
 " What — that impostor again ! Crush him, silence him, stamp 
 him out ! Or, as you can't do that, at least cultivate — with me 
 — a disbelief in his existence. Shut the door of his cellar, and 
 forget him. All the visitors to Our house are shown into the 
 drawing-room. No one ever explores the back-yard or the base- 
 ment." And you have slapped your everyday self on the back, 
 and said — somewhat on the lines of Little Jack Horner — what a 
 good, upright, honest, wholesome-minded fellow he was ! 
 
 It was that undercurrent self, this tale suspects, to which Frcd 
 Carteret said at this moment : — " I hope this ]\Iiss Hinchliffe — 
 Lucy, h'm ! — doesn't mean to be so confoundedly pretty when slie's 
 going up and down those very stairs." x\nd to this his every- 
 day self replied : — " Pooh — rui)bish ! Wait till you see her again, 
 and yoii will see that she is mere dead-sea fruit compared to your 
 Cintra. Wait till you see them together, anyhow!" ^Vhere- 
 upon Fred went through the form of perceiving that it was his 
 truer self that spoke. 
 
 All this is an attempt at analysing the protoplasm of Fred's 
 mind during the three seconds, at most, that passed betv/een
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 69 
 
 his friend's apostrophe about the propitious future, and his 
 reply: — "Won't it? Xow suppose we have a quiet run over the 
 house and get some measurements . . . Oh yes ! — I've got my 
 little foot-rule. J\ly dear boy, I never move without it." 
 
 They walked about the empty rooms, shadowed by ]\Irs. Grew- 
 beer Avith keys, in her character of caretaker. Wbat she was 
 protecting, and against what, was not clear. But it was tacitly 
 admitted that something would have gone wrong, some un- 
 pardonable neglect of her pledges to that agency would have 
 been committed, if she had not kept a watchful eye on Fred's 
 measurements, and rigidly checked ]\Ir. Snaith's entries in his 
 pocket-book, which v/ere to be the basis of a rough sketch.-plan 
 of the requisite alterations. Needless to say, Fred conceived 
 himself competent to assume the character of an architect, on 
 occasion shown. Indeed, it was only modesty thrown in, gratis, 
 that induced him to say, at times, that of course the builder 
 would have to make a working-drawing of this or that. 
 
 Mrs. Grewbeer, however, did not coiitribute speech to this 
 forecasting of modifications in the house. She ke])t an oblique 
 eye askant, like that of the little pig Horace sacrificed, on the 
 actions of her two visitors, and seemed to be assuming they were 
 machinations till the contrary was proved. If a semblance can 
 be compounded from that of a Eed Indian waiting to scalp a 
 victim; a pew-opener waiting to lock up, after showing you an 
 interesting church ; and perhaps a touch of the mute who occurs 
 on your doorstep after your decease, you may safely ascribe 
 that semblance to Mrs. Grewbeer. 
 
 " Galoptious room for a dance, this, Fred!" said Mr. Snaith 
 in the large drawing-room five windows Ions;. " Lucv will have 
 to borrow it if it's yours, and your missus will have to borrovr 
 it if it's ours." 
 
 " We shan't quarrel over that, Charley," said Fred, pretending 
 to be the older and wiser of the two. " Seventeen-foot-nine 
 inches exactly from the recess of the window." That was the 
 depth of the room. Mr. Snaith made an entry, and Mrs. Grew- 
 beer's appearance was of disbelief in its accuracy. 
 
 There was a kind of pleasure in this methodical collection of 
 data; which, with the natural builder's estimate to follow, con- 
 stituted a sort of official oblivion of every contemporary un- 
 pleasantness; chiefly of course the painful doubt about the 
 whereabouts of the all-powerful Tnistee, without wliose signature 
 every scheme must be abortive. It was as though each of the 
 two young men said to the other : — " Please don't suppose that I
 
 70 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 am the least uneasy about the absentee. He is going to turn up 
 all right. That's arranged." Each of them, to convince the 
 other, made a parade of deliberation over these preliminary- 
 notes ; and only laid himself open to suspicion by overdoing the 
 assumption that the destiny of the premises was as good as 
 settled. 
 
 " And what did the old gentleman say about this room ? " said 
 Fred, suddenly taking Mrs. Grewbeer into the confidence of the 
 discussion, as she prepared to " shetter to the window now you 
 had seen all you wanted to." These were her own words. But 
 she did not hear the question, or she would not have shouted 
 " Hay ? " with the undisguised violence of a high explosive. 
 Fred repeated his words in short articulate groups. 
 
 " Ho — the old clargyman ! Somothin' I didn't ketch. That's 
 what lie said. . . . "\^Tiat was my idear what he said, do 3^ou 
 mean? He warn't satisfied. Can't tell you no more. I didn't 
 arst him what he said. . . . Ah, yes, — he'd 'a told me fast 
 enough if I'd 'a arsted him. But I didn't arst him." 
 
 " You would not presume on your position, Mrs. Grewbeer. 
 Was that it?" Mr. Snaith repented of this word by the way, 
 for the old woman insisted on knowing what the other gentle- 
 man was a saying of, and received a revised version with sus- 
 picion. This, however, was soothed, and she said : — " Ho 3^es — I 
 know my place, if that's what you mean. But he warn't satis- 
 fied, by reason of the size of it." 
 
 " Xot room enough ? " A joint-stock question, from both, 
 which has to be repeated be3'ond the claims of any reasonable 
 deafness. 
 
 However, there was a ground for this. " Lard bless you ! " 
 said the old woman. " I didn't say smallness. I said size. If 
 I'd said smallness now, you might have talked." 
 
 " She evidently would take exception to geometry, over the 
 word magnitude" said Mr. Snaith, secure of inaudiJDility. 
 
 Fred nodded assent. " But it's not such a very big room, 
 Charley," said he. " Only twenty-eight by seventeen ! " 
 
 They went room by room over all the upper stories, though 
 each was waiting to welcome any readiness on the other's part 
 to get back to the railway station and interview an imaginary 
 station master with a keen memory. But inner conscience de- 
 ciding that it was desirable to avoid showing anything but pro- 
 found indifference, they overhauled the house with a thorough- 
 ness it might have waited for in vain under other circumstances. 
 In time, however, every dimension was on record in Mr. Snaith's
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 71 
 
 book, and they came down the main stairway qualified to suggest 
 drastic alterations in the upper floors. 
 
 '' ISTow, don't you he in any hurry, Charley. The cab will 
 wait. It's that sort of cab. I want to take a good look at that 
 new square room, because I've got an idea." 
 
 " Oh ah, yes — in the new part of the house. We mustn't for- 
 get that. Let's see ! — that's the square room over by the . , . 
 over by the ..." 
 
 " Over by the long passage into the greenhouse. Gee-up ! 
 Cut along ! " 
 
 " Do not be impatient, Frederic. The cab, as you say, will 
 wait. How about the dimensions of this room ? " 
 
 " Corresponds with the one on the other side. Cut along ! " 
 
 Mr. Snaith complied with the spirit of this direction, and 
 they arrived at the door of the square room. The lock wanted 
 oil — wouldn't act, and provoked comment. A\^iile jMrs. Grew- 
 beer reasoned with it, the young men went three paces and stood 
 where the Eev. Dr. Carteret had stood when last seen. 
 
 " This passage ends in the green'us, Frederic. You don't 
 want the dimensions of the green'us. You know you don't." 
 
 " I know nothing of the sort, Charley. I know I do. You 
 lawyer chaps always want to do everything by halves. Wait till 
 you're an engineer — that'll make you sit up. . . . jSTo — the 
 door isn't shut. It's open. May as well have a look round ! " 
 This was the greenhouse door, which had been found unexpect- 
 edly open by the caretakers when last examined, and left un- 
 locked when the substantial closure of the further door into the 
 warden had been established. 
 
 " I don't see much here," said Fred, after a glance round. 
 " Let's go back to the square room and settle that." So they 
 went back. 
 
 Now, it chanced that the lawyer-chap, perhaps to prove that 
 his profession had been unjustly censured, delaj^ed a little to 
 make sure that that door was properly secured, so far as cir- 
 cumstances permitted. When he liad done so he followed his 
 friend, but was met by him returning, as though to look for 
 him, at the corner of the passage. 
 
 " WTiat made you sing out ? " said Fred. 
 
 " I didn't sing out." 
 
 " Well — I heard you pretty plain. ' Come back, Fred ! '" If 
 this had implied merely that the speaker had thought he heard 
 speech but must have been mistaken, probably his hearer's sur- 
 prise would have stopped short of a shrug. Mr. Snaith's went
 
 72 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 beyond shrug-point. " I say, Fred," said he, " don't go dotty, 
 that's a good feller! Consider Miss Fraser. 1 never sang out 
 ' Come back, Fred ! ' " 
 
 "You never sang out 'Come back, Fred!' Wliy — I lieard 
 you." 
 
 " I say, Frederic, this is getting alarmin'. I tell you what it 
 is, old chap. It's the looneys. It's the atmosphere of the 
 asylum." 
 
 " Well — you may ehalT ! But I did hear you. ' Come back, 
 Fred.' Just like that ! " He imitates the tone of the words 
 he ascribes to his friend. 
 
 " ^^^lat — like a drill-sergeant? I never speak like a drill- 
 sergeant. It's not professional. Shut up rot, dear boy, and 
 come and measure walls and chimley-places. Come along! " 
 
 " I tell you what, Charley," says Fred, still puzzled, " It's 
 a parrot. There's a parrot somewhere. They'll pick up a phrase 
 and repeat it, so that it sounds like your own voice. Depend on 
 it — it's a parrot." 
 
 " Frederic, your theory won't hold water. A parrot will not 
 utter what he does not know, and when have I said * Come back, 
 Fred' in the hearing of a parrot? Or anywhere else, for that 
 matter ! Shut up — you and your parrot ! " 
 
 But Fred will have that voice accounted for, and clings to 
 his parrot. The old woman, influenced maybe by the perplexity 
 visible on his face, and tracing it to his friend's words, asks : — 
 " What is the gentleman saying, mister ? " 
 
 " Says you haven't got a parrot." 
 
 " No nearer than my kitchen. Does he want a carrot ? " 
 
 " Not carrot — parrot. Par-rot ! He says you don't keep 
 one." 
 
 " Xo more I don't. I ain't partial to birds." But her 
 curiosity seems aroused, for she goes on to say : — " What put 
 the gentleman onto parrots?" Shouting details into deaf ears 
 is not inviting, but for all that Fred seems to find it a satis- 
 faction to make some sort of reply, rough-sketching the incident. 
 To the surprise of both, the old woman lays claim to having 
 heard " a soomat " and, being pressed to be more explicit, de- 
 scribes the soomat by admitting that she had thought the young 
 gentleman a bit hasty-tempered. For she too had supposed Mr. 
 Snaith to be the speaker. He seems inclined to become a dis- 
 ciple of Mr. Grewbeer's school of Logic, and to claim audibility 
 by a stone-deaf person as a direct proof that nothing has ever 
 been uttered. Fred ascribes this to his legal mind, and they
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 73 
 
 discuss the nature of evidence as he takes his last measurements. 
 But nothing casts light upon the sound he mistook for his 
 friend's voice. He admits, however, that he did not identify it 
 as his by the sound, but by the impossibility of its being any- 
 one else's. 
 
 Then they depart, both being really glad to do so now that 
 deliberation has been emphasized sufficiently. 
 
 Fred's sanguine disposition had, by the time they got back to 
 the railway station, filled his mind with the image of an im- 
 probable station master, able to remember all passengers for a 
 month past. He was disillusioned, on enquiring of the actual 
 functionary whether he had chanced to notice, last Saturday 
 week, an impressive ecclesiastic who booked for Exeter, by the 
 five o'clock from Waterloo. The momentary hope held out by 
 the enquiry: — "■ AYhat class?'-' — which seemed to show a con- 
 scientious keenness for accuracy — was damped by the sequel : — 
 " No — I couldn't speak to anyone in particular, short of 
 Bishops. You can't make it a Bishop, I suppose?" This was 
 impossible, and further enquiry showed that the inferior clergy 
 would come fifty in a lump, like aunts on an aunt-hill. No — 
 that functionary could supply no information, and felt that 
 candour had better say so at once, and be done with it. His 
 abilities did not lie in the direction of cooking up, and where 
 would be the object of it, if they did? Misinformation could 
 be made no use of, to any good purpose; and a humane dis- 
 position would keep in check the propensity to tell unprovoked 
 lies common to all humanity. 
 
 "■ Anyhow," said ]\Ir. Snaith consolatoril}^, as they rode back 
 to Waterloo, " that's better than remembering distinctly that no 
 such person has ever been at the station. Never mind, Fred! 
 Ten to one when you get back you'll find your mother has had 
 a letter. The Divine Ordainer of Events enjoys nothing better 
 than upsetting one's equilibrium, and then deriding one for be- 
 ing in a fuss."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 " What a very extraordinary thing ! " said Cintra Fraser to 
 her sister Nancy, reading letters at breakfast two mornings later. 
 Only she did not say what the extraordinary thing was, but went 
 on reading, with an animated face, in which her sister's e3fc, 
 waiting for further ^particulars, could detect as much anxiety 
 as amusement. 
 
 " Don't hurry ! " said Nancy, pouring coffee. Cintra went on 
 to the next page, and said : — " In a minute." 
 
 A very small boy, who gave the impression that he was over- 
 fed, but too elastic to burst, laid down conditions under which 
 he would accept a change of diet. " If I put'th in the thooger 
 mythelf," he said. 
 
 " Very well," said Nancy. " You shall have bread-and-milk 
 instead of porridge, and shall put in the sugar yourself." This 
 was treachery, because the young lady knew perfectly well that 
 her half-brother regarded free access to the sugar-basin as part 
 of the treaty. Her apology to her conscience was sufficient. He 
 was a Young Turk. 
 
 Cintra read on a page or two. Then the interest seemed to 
 flag, and she laid the letter aside, and asked how many spoonfuls 
 her sister had put in the teapot. Being answered : — " Plenty," 
 she seemed to doubt her informant ; for she said : — " Very well 
 then, I shall wait, or it will be hot water." Then waiting, she 
 harked back to her first remark. " Well — it really is very 
 extraordinary. Fred's uncle has vanished." 
 
 " Wliile they were looking at him? " , 
 
 " Nonsense, Nancy, you know I don't mean that." 
 
 " How was I to know ? " 
 
 " Don't be a goose. Now you may pour my tea. Only stir it. 
 Of course Dr. Carteret's gone somewhere, only it is very odd that 
 nobody knows where. And all the schoolboys waiting for him ! " 
 
 A younger brother — a whole brother this time — who had be- 
 come far advanced in breakfast while his sisters still lingered 
 on the outskirts, said in one sentence : — " Won't he wollup it 
 into 'em when he does come back shouldn't wonder if I had some 
 more bacon after all ! " He proceeded to commandeer the bacon 
 without any appearance of wonder, 
 
 74
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 75 
 
 Said Nancy: — " ^Vhat a horrible boy you are, Eric! You 
 never mean to say the arrears mount up ? " 
 
 "The what?" 
 
 " The arrears mount up. All the floggings together, in one ? " 
 
 " Oh — I see what you mean ! Don't I neither though ! They 
 do like that at our school, only it's impositions. One of our boys 
 has twenty-four thousand lines of the Odyssey to say before he 
 gets off, and everyone knows there are not twenty-four thousand 
 lines in the Odyssey. Young Samuels says there are, but he's 
 an ass." 
 
 Nancy ignores the ingenuous youth's prattle, and goes back to 
 the lost thread of the conversation. '• But isn't it serious. 
 Git?" 
 
 "Isn't what serious?" 
 
 " Dr. Carteret." 
 
 " His not turning up ? Why, no — because how can anything 
 have happened to him? He's all right. Most likely he's there 
 by now. Is that papa coming down ? " 
 
 The story follows this trivial conversation thus closely that its 
 reader may concept — and that's a very good word, whatever he 
 may say to the contrary, — what a slight impression was pro- 
 duced by the first hearing of Dr. Carteret's disappearance. One 
 thing was the intrinsic impossibility of anything having hap- 
 pened. Another was the fact that he belonged to a previous 
 generation, and was uninteresting. That weighed with these 
 girls, at any rate. It may be that Nancy got on the edge of 
 an uneasy feeling about him, owing to the fascination Fred's 
 mother exercised over her. That enchantment must have ex- 
 tended to her dry old brother-in-law, and was it possible that 
 it would be a matter of indifference to her if he was run over 
 by a railway train, or murdered by a professional? But Cintra 
 dismissed Uncle Drury easily. He was all right ! ! 
 
 Moreover, there was other matter in the letter to think of. 
 Cintra introduced it tentatively by saying, in an unexplained 
 way, merely the words " Miss Lucy Hinchliffe," and then going 
 on reading to herself. 
 
 " What about Miss Hinchliffe ? " Nancy asked the question 
 sternly, and repeated it when her sister ignored it and went 
 on reading. . 
 
 " Will we — us two — go to lunch on Sunday to meet Mr. Snaith 
 and his Miss Lucy Hinchliffe ? Fred wants to know, by return." 
 
 "Very well, then — say 7io!! At least, you may go if you like, 
 of course. That's your own lookout. But I distinctly wont!"
 
 76 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 "Oh — well! — if you want to be disagreeable^ of course!" 
 
 " I don't want to be disagreeable. But I draw the line at 
 Mr. Snaith." 
 
 Cintra shrugged her shoulders, to express to the Universe that 
 her sister could scarcely be held responsible for her actions, and 
 that she herself was a rare example of patience under trials, 
 especially those incidental to dealing with persons of unsound 
 mind. Presently she collected herself for speech, and faced the 
 subject; not unconciliatorily, but decisively. " I cannot under- 
 stand your prejudice against Mr. Snaith, Xancy. He is not 
 Adonis, I admit. But so many men are not Adonis. Nothing 
 is more misleading than externals. And Fred says there are 
 few more rising men than Mr. Charles Snaith." Cintra felt 
 that she had spoken on behalf of her lover's friend in well-chosen 
 language. 
 
 It did not impress Miss Nancy, who only said drily : — " I'm 
 glad you admit that Mr. Snaith is not Adonis, Cit. But, any- 
 how, I don't want to lunch with him; or his nose; or his Miss 
 Lucy Hinehliffc." 
 
 Cintra, going back on her letter, was aware of a postscript 
 overlooked. " Here's a message to you from Fred's mother," 
 said she to her sister. " She says do please come, because she 
 wants you to talk about serious things to, while we chatter. 
 There now, Nance, you'll have her all to yourself." 
 
 Nancy wavered, and then made concession. She wouldn't 
 promise, but would think about whether she would come. Only 
 it mu.^t be distinctly on condition that she shouldn't have to 
 speak to Mr. Snaith or his Miss Hinchliffe. And she would 
 write to ]\Irs. Carteret explaining that if she saw Mr. Snaith's 
 nose at lunch she would be unable to eat anything. 
 
 This debate and decision was intersected a good deal by the 
 father of the family, Professor Fraser, who would meddle with 
 the establishing of breakfast on a tray for the mamma of the 
 small half-brother, who was an invalid upstairs. He never 
 would be satisfied that proper attention was being given to the 
 wants of that excellent lady. Perhaps they were not. The 
 Professor had rashly adventured on secondes noces in order that 
 his little girls might have a mamma, and his little girls had 
 grown up, and were in revolt against ex post facto parentage. 
 Tliey forgave their half-brother, on the ground that, at the period 
 of his entry into this world, he appeared too young to be held 
 answerable for it. Moreover, whereas in his very earliest youth 
 he struck the observer as amorphous, purple, and ill-tempered.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 77 
 
 his comparative maturity at this date was succulent and pulpy- 
 It was Nancy who remarked that, bad as was the heart, and low 
 as were the morals, of this Young Turk — he was between two and 
 three at breakfast that morning — you might wallow in the back 
 of his neck with advantage. Cintra tolerated him also, on the 
 score of texture and consistency. 
 
 Neither of these young women extended their leniency to the 
 Turk's mother. It is true that they complied with the Dictates 
 of Christianity, one of which is — or may be; for the story is 
 out of its depth on this subject — that you should send your 
 enemy his breakfast on a tray when he is indisposed, and see 
 that the toast is fresh made. But they disallowed even the most 
 formal official maternity to the fast-breaker in this case, and 
 the Professor had given up any attempt to use the designation 
 " your mamma " in face of the severity and chilliness with which 
 they had received it, shortly before the date of this present writ- 
 ing". In fact, there was the unsubsided ripple of a last night's 
 ruction on this very subject when the Professor made his appear- 
 ance at breakfast. He had to wrestle with serious difficulties 
 when he spoke of his wife to his daughters, as there was abso- 
 lutely no name to call her by. To call her " your stepmother "■ 
 would have been to throw up the sponge. And to call her '• Mrs. 
 Pauncefote Fraser " was impossible. He had only one resource 
 to fall back upon, and he flew to it. 
 
 " Your-Aunt-if-you-persist-in-calling-her-so-Felicia's breakfast, 
 are they going to take it up ? Because she's ready for it. . . . 
 Yes — tea and one egg — three minutes and a half; not more! 
 Good-morning, child ! " This was to Nancy, with whom he was 
 never on very bad terms. Her kissing him softened away sur- 
 viving consciousness of the feud overnight. 
 
 Cintra dissociated herself from this conciliatory attitude. 
 " Yes — she can have the pot now as far as I'm concerned — 
 Stilzchen's mamma, I mean. Why doesn't Fisher bring that 
 egg?" It was difficult for the Professor to lay hold of this, 
 having recognised this name — short for Rumpfelstilzchen, the 
 dwarf in the German fairy story — as a fit and proper name for 
 his youngest son, and there being no doubt of his parentage. He 
 shied off the subject, and considered his own breakfast. Fisher 
 came with the egg, and bore the tray away to the unpopular 
 stepmother. 
 
 A door slammed afar, and was interpreted as that boy Eric, 
 just off to school. His father remarked that he would be late,, 
 probably truly; and opened letters. Throughout the whole of 
 
 6
 
 78 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 these incidents the three-year-old continued to tranquilly assimi- 
 late bread-and-milk without turning a hair, or showing the 
 slightest disposition to leave off. Pie illuminated the proceed- 
 ings with occasional remarks, usually introducing topics of per- 
 sonal interest quite foreign to the subjects under discussion. 
 
 " I has the scrope-dish in my barf," he said suddenly, neither 
 soap nor soap-dishes having been referred to. No one paid the 
 slightest attention. He turned .to another matter : " Nurse's 
 toofs won't boyt scrust, only scrumb." Nancy said that, accord- 
 ing to her experience, good little boys devoted themselves to 
 eating their breakfasts, and abstaining from conversation on 
 abstract subjects. Conrad — that, it appeared, was his name — 
 seemed to think the two things compatible. He would take some 
 strobbry dam, helped wiv the big spoon. 
 
 " V»^ell — and what's the news ? " said the little Professor ; as 
 a stimulus to interchange of thought, rather than from anxiety 
 for information. " Who's married? Wlio's murdered his wife? 
 Who's murdered himself? What's the latest intelligence?" 
 
 " Tell him about your Fred's uncle, Cit." 
 
 "What — Dr. Drury Carteret? He hasn't got a wife to mur- 
 der, poor fellow! Perhaps he's going to be married? That or 
 suicide — which is it?" 
 
 " Nonsense, Papa ! — how can you ? Fancy ' Uncle Dru ' going 
 to be married ! " Cintra seems so amused at this idea that she 
 ignored murder and suicide. 
 
 " Well — what is it, then ? Have they made him a Duke ? " 
 
 " No — guess again ! Go on guessing." 
 
 " Have they made him a Marquis?" 
 
 " That's silly. Guess reasonable guesses ! " 
 
 " No, I can't. Give it up ! What's come to the Keverend ? 
 . . . Yes — another half-cup, only not too much milk. And 
 your half-roll you haven't devoured. . . . ^^^lat's happened to 
 the headmaster ? " 
 
 " He's disappeared — vanished ! . . . No — I'm in earnest." 
 
 The learned Professor fixed an astonished eye on his speaking 
 daughter, Cintra, and left his knife at pause half-way through 
 the captured roll. Nancy, purveying the requisitioned half-cup, 
 said : — " Bead him the bit of Fred's letter with it in it. . . . 
 There's only one lump of sugar, but it's a big one." 
 
 Cintra read : — " ' It's very odd about Uncle Dru — he never 
 went to the school at all last Saturday fortnight — he went to 
 see the house as he said he would, and went on to Wimbledon — 
 we know that — Charley and I went there to find out — but they've
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 79 
 
 heard nothing of him at the school — and it fidgets my mother 
 a good deal — with all these stories about people who forget their 
 identity — I'm not uneasy myself — no more is Charley — but any- 
 thing of this sort is always odd and uncomfortable.' That's all 
 — all he says about his uncle. It is odd, isn't it? I suppose 
 he'll be all right, somewhere or other." 
 
 " Somewhere or other," says the Professor. '' Or somewhere 
 else. Bather funny though ! " 
 
 " I shall go to Maida Vale this afternoon, and see what I 
 can hear." Thus i^ancy. And then her sister asks her 
 abruptly: — "Does she bother much about the old gentleman? 
 I mean, suppose anything happened? " 
 
 " My dear Cit, he's her husband's brother, and just like 
 her own." 
 
 " Well — I know ! Only one can't help getting the idea with 
 some people that they wouldn't cry their eyes out if . . ." 
 
 " Oh no — nothing of the sort ! What an unfeeling little beast 
 you are ! But there isn't the slightest reason to suppose that 
 anything has happened to Dr. Carteret, merely because ..." 
 
 "= ■\Vell — of course one quite understands tltat." Cintra 
 quashes every unpropitious contingency with decisive tartness, 
 and the Professor embarks upon a sort of soothing chorus: — 
 " Oo — noo — no ! No necessity to suppose any such thing ! Peo- 
 ple always disappeared — been at it ever since I v/as a small boy ! ! 
 Always turn up again — always turn up again ! " 
 
 Master Conrad, or Stilzchen, strikes into the conversation with 
 the lip of his bread-and-milk basin in his mouth. Being in- 
 structed that this is not a courtly practice he discontinues it, 
 and pursues the thread of his remarks ore rotundo, to the effect 
 that his nurse — whose absence for a holiday seems to be the 
 reason he is breakfasting outside the nursery — has countenanced 
 his spitting in the fireplace, under reservations. " Only not two 
 times, nor free times, nor sisk times, nor teng times, but wunth," 
 summarises the terms of a treaty which the public feeling of his 
 hearers condemns as an outrage on civilisation. It is impressed 
 upon him that no little boy of a pure taste and right feeling ever 
 spits at all, in the fire or elsewhere. He distorts the conversa- 
 tion to his own advantage by a claim to logical consecutiveness 
 at variance with fact, saying as an irresistible conclusion to these 
 injunctions : — '" Yen you must dive me two coyks, wiv jam 
 insoyd." 
 
 ""What am I to say to Fred about this Miss Hinchliffe? " says 
 Cintra to her sister, to arrive at a definite arrangement.
 
 80 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Well — I'll come. Only I'm not to have to speak to 
 Mr. Snaith. Remember ! " Nancy's voice is one of solemn 
 warning. 
 
 " Very well, dear ! — you shan't speak to Mr. Snaith. Only 
 you've got not to be rude to ]\Iiss Hinchliffe." 
 
 " As if I didn't know how to behave myself. . . . No, child ! 
 — you are not to have any more of anything. You — have — had 
 — your breakfast ! Now be good and perhaps I'll take you for a 
 walk. Oh, you little ducky I " 
 
 " How you do spoil that child, Nancy I " 
 
 " How did you find Mrs. Carteret, Nancy? As lovely as ever, 
 I suppose ! " 
 
 " Yes — but worried ! Worried to death over this plaguy old 
 gentleman. I really have no patience with people who disap- 
 pear. . . . Oh yes ! — I know. He may be dead — but he isn't. 
 Trust him ! " There are two schools among the constituents 
 of absentees; their relicts, so to speak. The one believes them 
 maimed or dead until they come galumphing home: the other 
 pictures them in the enjoyment of robust health and congenial 
 society, until their fragments are carried up to the front door, 
 held precariously together by first-aid bandages. Nancy be- 
 longed to the latter persuasion. 
 
 '• I wonder what has become of him?" 
 
 " I shouldn't if I were you. It's very easy. He had -to go 
 away somewhere and wrote to say so, and it never reached. 
 Good gracious me ! — don't letters get delivered at the wrong 
 house and the people never give them back to the postman?" 
 
 "Yes— but a fortnight!" 
 
 " A fortnight's nothing ! Didn't a letter of Papa's go to the 
 Filipopulos' down the road and they waited six weeks for us to 
 send for it? And didn't that nice old Mr. Filipopulo bring it 
 to us himself at last and it was only Coals — Lowest Summer 
 Prices? That's how people do. They'll have heard when v^^e 
 go on Sunday. Y'ou'll see ! " 
 
 This fragment of conversation followed Nancy's visit to Mrs. 
 Carteret, that afternoon. She had found her still courageously 
 ready to pooh-pooh the idea of " anything having happened " to 
 her brother-in-law. But her courage had broken down as her 
 visitor's own misgivings became manifest. For of course Nancy 
 Frascr's bluster about miscarriage of letters was the merest af- 
 fectation, and she was a very poor adherent of her own philoso- 
 phy when she thought to herself what was meant by a head-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 81 
 
 master's unexplained absence on the first schoolday after tlie 
 Easter vacation. 
 
 Moreover, she and !Mrs. Carteret had closely analysed the posi- 
 tion, and had come to the conclusion that the tracing of the 
 missinsr man to Wimbledon station had made matters worse 
 instead of better. From Fred's report it was practically certain 
 that he had departed by the five-o'clock train for Vexton Junc- 
 tion. And how he could be deflected from his destination on 
 such an old familiar route was beyond mortal comprehension ! 
 Nothing short of being murdered and thrown out on the line 
 could have done it. Their conversation had been haunted by a 
 grisly phantom of a corpse in a tunnel, overlooked in the dark by 
 passing trains, and a more probable — and rather less discom- 
 forting — one in a ditch at the bottom of an embankment in a 
 cleverly schem-ed invisible corner. These phantoms never took 
 actual form for either, but each was aware of their possibility 
 in the mind of the other. As far as speech went, each stoutly 
 maintained an attitude of confidence that, though one could not 
 see why a bad disaster was intrinsically impossible, there could be 
 no serious doubt that it was so. To waver on the point would 
 have been a concession to Despair, waiting to pounce on strag- 
 glers on the very doorstep of Hope. Their last tribute to this 
 confidence was a pretence that they could dismiss the gruesome 
 subject from their minds and talk about something else; for in- 
 stance, the Miss Hinchliffe who was to be on view next Sunday. 
 
 "You mustn't repeat it to a living soul, dear Mrs. Carteret, 
 and I know you won't . . . will you? " Nancy stopped for a 
 confirmation. 
 
 " I think it ought to depend a little on what it is, oughtn't 
 it?" said Mrs. Carteret. "However — I'll risk it, and promise. 
 Go on." 
 
 " Well— it is that 1 detest Snaith. Unjustly, no doubt. The 
 fact remains, that detest him I do, and always shall. But it 
 makes me all the more curious to see the girl .who can . . . 
 well — to put it plainly — let Snaith kiss her. You don't mind 
 my putting it plainly?" Nancy was sketching Mr. Snaith's 
 nose on the hearthrug with her parasol. 
 
 " Not at all. It seems to me that all parties will have to look 
 the fact in the face, sooner or later — the kissing, I mean. And 
 it's their lookout, you know, not yours. ... 1 wonder where I 
 put it, that ..." Mrs. Carteret was looking for something. 
 
 "Anything I can find?" 
 I think not. H's a photograph Mr. Snaith lent Fred. I 
 
 a
 
 82 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 put it away to be safe. Oli^ here it is ! — with her name written 
 underneath. Lucia Hinchliffe. It's her signature." 
 
 Nancy left the nose unfinished, and took the photograph in 
 her hand. It seemed to disconcert her — to throw her out of 
 gear. "Well!" slie said, with empressement. "1 only hope it 
 isn't like her. That's all I can say." 
 
 "For Mr. Snaith's sake?" 
 
 '•' No — — — ! — quite the other way round. For her own 
 sake. Fancy a girl like that throwing herself away on . . . 
 Oh dear!- — this sort of thing would have made one ask for smell- 
 ing-salts if one had been one's great-grandmother. Now, do 
 looh at her, dear Mrs. Carteret ! — and saij if I'm not right." 
 
 "• I see an oval face with large dark eyes and plenty of eyelash 
 — hair on the forehead very pretty — separate threads. Lips a 
 little apart as if they were waiting for an answer. Hands and 
 throat very pretty, as though they would show blue veins in the 
 reality. But it may bo all the photographer's doing. At the 
 same time it may not. Suppose we give her the benefit of 
 the doubt. We shall see on Sunday." 
 
 " Perhaps she won't be half as pretty. I devoutly hope not." 
 And Nancy remained with her own candid hazel eyes fixed on 
 the dark ones in the fascinating photograph, till Mrs. Carteret 
 applied for it, saying she must put it away safe because it didn't 
 belong to her. 
 
 When Nancy got home to her sister, she mentioned that she 
 had seen a portrait of the Miss Hinchliffe Mr. Snaith was 
 engaged to, whom they were to meet on Sunday. But she gave 
 no details. 
 
 Sunday came, and the Miss Hinchliffe Mr. Snaith was en- 
 gaged to drove him over, or was driven over with him, in her 
 mother's brougham, to Maida Vale. Eemington the coachman 
 was told he would not be wanted again, and touched his hat. 
 Miss Hinchliffe's desire was that she and Mr. Snaith should be 
 free lances, and it was complied with, metaphorically. Free 
 lances in those days took hansoms and always had change to pay 
 the fare. Nowadays they whistle for motors — which don't come 
 — or are the cause of whistling in others. 
 
 The two young ladies from Gipsy Hill bicycled up to the house 
 just after Kemington had touched his hat, and just before Lips- 
 combe opened the garden gate. The dachshund, believing the 
 carriage had called for him, rushed out and established himself 
 on the back seat before the door could be shut, and had to be 
 extracted and apologized for. It was the guilelessness of his dis-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 83 
 
 position, and he was shown to have bitten no one for a very long 
 time; quite a geological period. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret was able to interleave an almost momentary 
 interview with Nancy into her phases of satisfaction at wel- 
 coming Mr. Snaith and his fiancee into her house. It was never- 
 theless long enough to communicate that no news had come, no 
 light had l)een thrown on her brother-in-law's disappearance, and 
 — what should have been a comforting consideration, but seemed 
 the reverse — that Fred had gone to Scotland Yard to lay the case 
 before the Authorities, and that no doubt that was what had 
 made him late. It was a formidable and oppressive fact that 
 seemed to leave no further room for evasion of the main issue; 
 no chance of not looking the ugly realities in the face. Mrs. 
 Carteret showed Nancy how completely upset she had been by 
 this step towards a public recognition of them, and how thin her 
 pretexts of confidence had been in a satisfactory explanation of 
 the mystery. Still, she kept her uneasiness in abeyance before 
 her visitors, and showed a fine discipline. Indeed, of the two, 
 Nancy seemed the more perturbed. And this being visible to her 
 sister, a rapid sotto-voce communication of Fred's mission re- 
 sulted, and produced in her also an appearance of disquiet. But 
 everyone pretended successfully that nothing particular was the 
 matter. 
 
 Naturally, this pretence involved a specious assumption of 
 general joyousness — of reciprocities in universal congratulation 
 on Heaven-knows-what-felicities afloat in Space. That is merely 
 the common form of Society's demeanour until some of its 
 members have been individualised down into the hctes-noires of 
 others. This little company was all smiles, as due. Even when 
 the hostess, hearing an entry at the garden gate, said she thought 
 that must be Fred, and went out to meet him, no one took any 
 notice of a sudden tension in her face, unless it were Nancy. 
 
 That young lady heard the fag-end of the mother's interview 
 with her son as she came upstairs. She said : — " Then we must 
 wait and hope to hear more." And he replied : — " That's about 
 what it comes to. They'll do their best." Then the exigencies 
 of visitors to luncli banished the subject, to remain in abeyance 
 till the coast should ])e clear again. 
 
 " You've been introduced, I suppose," said Fred to the fiancees, 
 conjointly. Oh dear yes ! — they had indeed. And a species of 
 gush testified to the triumphant thoroughness of the introduc- 
 tion, and its success. This implies nothing artificial in the 
 character of either. It v.'as merely the demeanour in such a
 
 84 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 case made and provided b}' the Canon Law of Society. No 
 more than that! 
 
 " How do I like her ? " said Mrs. Carteret to her son, that 
 evening. " Charles Snaith's young lady. How do I like her?" 
 She laid the case seriously before her judicial faculties, and 
 .seemed to await the coming of some witness whose subpoena had 
 been delayed. 
 
 Fred assumed an apologetic tone; quite suddenly, without 
 apparent reason. " I had to be very attentive," he said, *■' be- 
 cause of Charley." 
 
 " Oh, I quite understand," said his mother. A sub-smile that 
 was indeterminate upon her lips wavered a moment. Then 
 decided on expansion. "■ It didn't seem . . . exactly a sick- 
 ening job " — she said. 
 
 " Oh, not the least — not the least ! " said her son. " ^^^ly 
 should it? In fact, I liked her. Yes, I decidedly liked her!" 
 He hung fire a little before adding: — " Cintra doesn't. I sup- 
 pose you saw that." 
 
 " Oh ye.s — / saw ! " ]\[rs. Carteret's manner may have meant 
 that her son need not suppose she did not see things. However, 
 she crossed Cintra off, and went to another item. '' Only I must 
 sav that that dear girl, my particular friend ..." 
 
 ■"Elb— Nancy?" 
 
 "Yes — Xancy. Not Elbows! Oh, I know the ridiculous 
 name you boys thought fit to call her by. . . . Well — she was 
 very ..." 
 
 "Very what?" 
 
 Mrs. Carteret reflected, gravely, handsomely. " Well — sup- 
 pose I say half-and-half, about this Lucy girl ! Yes — Nancy 
 was half-and-half. What a very dear girl she is ! " 
 
 " Oh ves — Nancy's all right. Very fond of Nancv. So she 
 didn't take to . . \" 
 
 " To . . . ? " Was his mother bent on making him say the 
 name ? If so, why ? " 
 
 "To Miss Hinchliffe?" 
 
 " Were you not to call her Lucy ? T thought it was decided." 
 
 Fred answered with an uneasy half-laugh : — " It hasn't been 
 publicly discussed, you know. She knows nothing about it." 
 
 " Oh, I've no doubt it's all right. Now tell me what Mr. 
 Snaith's partner said." Her interest in the new fiancee had 
 been only skin-deep. 
 
 "Trymer? Trymer said we had only negative evidence to 
 look to, so far." Fred reported this as if it was a substantial
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 85 
 
 contribution to the solution of the question under discussion. 
 But he added that Mr. Trymer had emphatically welcomed an 
 appeal to Scotland Yard. '' So I went straight there, and saw 
 the boss." 
 
 " And what did he say ? " 
 
 " He was consolatory, as far as he went." 
 
 " And how far did he go? " 
 
 " Well — it was something. He said that cases of the sort were 
 simply innumerable, and that only one in a thousand didn't fall 
 through. He meant that when the people turned up, the case 
 lost its interest — for Scotland Yard. Then he said there was 
 very seldom a case where it wasn't a woman somehow." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret smiled coldly : — " And wlien a woman disap- 
 pears, isn't it a man ? " She was always on the lookout to give 
 the same sauce to geese and ganders. However, it was beside the 
 mark at present. " There is no woman in this case," said she. 
 " I suppose you gave him every particular? " 
 
 " Absolutely everything. And we shall hear at once if they 
 get any clue. He was against advertisement — at least for the 
 present. If the person advertised for wanted to keep out of the 
 way. an advertisement of his appearance would only show him 
 what he was not to look like. I told him that my uncle's want- 
 ing to keep out of the wav was absurd." 
 
 "^Miat did he say?" 
 
 " He said everyone said that, in every case of an unaccount- 
 able disappearance. He told me queer stories of disappear- 
 ances." Fred went on to repeat some of these. 
 
 His mother listened to one or two, and then said : — " But there 
 is no resemblance in any of tliese cases. That man who dressed 
 up as a woman was not over six feet high and weighing twenty 
 stone.. Absurd! " Slie thought, however, that this official's con- 
 viction that Dr. Carteret had never gone to Wimbledon had some 
 value, because he was absolutely unable to assign any reason for 
 it. All opinions the holder cannot account for should be listened 
 to, she said, and all logical deductions — of experts, at any rate — 
 systematically discountenanced. Fred felt bound to protest 
 against these views, as weak and feminine : but he had under- 
 doubts of whether there was not something to bo said for 
 them. 
 
 ''Which sort of way shall we go now?" said Mr. Snaith to 
 Miss Lucia Hinchliffe when they had watched the two young 
 lady bicyclists out of sight, and said farewell to Fred at the gate
 
 86 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 of his mother's residence. He seemed a little anxious to get 
 back to her. 
 
 " Any way you like. I don't care. Don't you think one place 
 is exactly like another ? " 
 
 " Can't say I do." Mr. Snaith's beaming smile as he gazed on 
 his beautiful companion was a set-off to the eyeglass he saw her 
 through, and the nose that was so obnoxious to Miss Nancy 
 Fraser. 
 
 " Well — settle any place you like. I'll go." But when a 
 speaker expresses complete subservience to your will, she should 
 not at the same moment stop a yawn behind the finge-rs of a 
 straw-coloured glove, size No. G. Complaisance should be recog- 
 nised by its recipient. The little account of its executant should 
 not be presented for cash across invoice. 
 
 " I say, Lucy, you're getting bored. Can't stand that! Never 
 do — never do ! " This most amiable of lovers spoke in a tone of 
 real alarm. 
 
 The young lady thought it incumbent on her to relent. She 
 smiled as from a zenith. " Suppose we were to go to — to — 
 Hampstead Heath?" said she. "Like a Sunday out, don't you 
 know? I think I should like that." 
 
 " By George, what a ripping idea ! Hampstead Heath. Only 
 I can't see any liansom. . . . No — we won't take that one. It's 
 not our sort. We must walk to the stand." They did so, and 
 the discountenanced driver of the wrong sort of vehicle lurched 
 by, with a new thorn in a misanthropic heart. " He saw us 
 mean to, and change our minds " was a thought that flitted 
 through them, and found its way to the young lady's lips. 
 " How he hates us! " said she. 
 
 The air that day thought spring was coming in earnest, but 
 hesitated over saying so. They reached a cabstand that con- 
 sisted of two cabs of the right sort, one driver, one waterman, 
 four tubs, and an iron post that yielded water to possessors 
 of its secret. 
 
 " How long shall we be getting to Hampstead Heath ? " His 
 meaning being obvious, Mr. Snaith's simplicity expected a direct 
 answer. 
 
 But the London cabman is — or was — an inscrutable being. It 
 was impossible to be even with him. This one said merely: — 
 " Walkin'? " and waited for an answer. 
 
 Mr. Snaith re-framed his question so as to exclude ambiguity. 
 The cabman referred to an authority — the waterman. " How 
 long do you make it, Heverett, to drive this here lady and gentle-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 87 
 
 man to Hampstead ? " indicating them as a cargo whose weight 
 had to be considered. The waterman, alive to responsibility, 
 replied : — " That's aecordin' to the road yon take, Samuel. You 
 go round by Bermondsey, you won't git up there not afore dark. 
 You leave your horse alone, and he'll git you there in twenty 
 minutes." This seemed satisfactory, and the lady and gentle- 
 man reached the Lower Heath in about that time. 
 
 " Who is Uncle Drury, and why are they making such a fuss 
 about him?" Thus the young lady, with a languid interest, 
 after learning without any at all that that was Harrow, and the 
 horizon was in Hertfordshire. 
 
 ''Are they making a fuss about him?" asked the young 
 gentleman, discreetly. 
 
 " Yes — at least, no one said anything to me about it. But 
 I could see there was a fuss. What is it ? " 
 
 Discretion dictated professional reserve. " Well — I suppose 
 I may mention it to yon. Only don't say anything to any- 
 one. I know they would rather not have it talked about. ..." 
 
 " Oh, don't tell me, if it's a secret. I hate prying into other 
 people's affairs." 
 
 Nevertheless Mr. Snaith, thinking he detected in his adored 
 one's voice a trace of readiness to be offended with a lover who 
 did not share all his confidences with the chosen of his hearty 
 considered it safest to do so in this instance. " I expect it's all 
 a false alarm," said he. " But, for all that, the old boy hasn't 
 been seen for three weeks past, and he went off to go straight to 
 his school — he's a headmaster of a big school in the West of 
 England — where his presence on the first day of the term was of 
 vital importance, and ho never arrived." 
 
 " Never arrived ! " Miss Hinchliffe's languor became vivid 
 interest suddenly. Her dark eyes, somewhat bored before, 
 flamed with a very becoming animation. " Why — he may have 
 been murdered ! " 
 
 "May have been. Anything may have been. Only one 
 doesn't rush to the conclusion that a man has been murdered 
 without strong evidence." 
 
 " That sounds true and prosy. But what has become of this 
 old gentleman?" She waited for an answer, and spoke again 
 before her companion could concoct one. " Was he, perhaps, the 
 sort of old person that one isn't sure one couldn't do without 
 him? . . . That's not right — I mean I've got the words 
 wrong. ..." She ran through the words again, and ended: — 
 " I see. Leave ' him ' out and it's all right."
 
 88 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Oil ah! — that's prose composition, isn't it? I'm not a dab." 
 Mr. Snaith polished his eyeglass to see the young lady clearer, 
 and repeated her words. " ' The sort of old person that one isn't 
 sure one couldn't do without!' Sounds all right! Well — I'm 
 not sure that he was the sort of person one was sure one could 
 do without. Can't fill out the order better than that at present." 
 
 " You said * was.' " 
 
 " Well— suppose I did?" 
 
 " Tluit means you think he's been murdered ! " 
 
 " Come ! — I say ! Draw it mild." 
 
 " I wish you Avould tell me what you really think." 
 
 Now, this young solicitor, although sorely exercised in mind 
 about the disappearance of his friend's relation, was encourag- 
 ing professional exercises on the subject, and throwing wet 
 blankets over spontaneous ignitions of common sense. He had 
 been fostering that curious condition of mind to which we are 
 all reduced if we burn our fingers with percentages. Was it not 
 clear — did not a work on Crime and its Detection tell him so? 
 — that a ver}^ minute percentage of Disappearances could be 
 traced to Murder, and only a slightly larger one to Suicides; 
 about the same to sudden mental affections, loss of memory and 
 so forth ; but a huge slice to the spontaneous volition of the ab- 
 sentee, who turns up in the best of health and spirits some weeks 
 or months later, at which time another absentee, of the opposite 
 sex, is usually accounted for. This overwhelming percentage 
 was a vast comfort to him. And though the reputation of the 
 Rev. Drury Carteret was unassailable, it was to be noted that 
 the more unsullied the reputation, the more necessary would de- 
 materialisation — as good a word as another — be, if the unblem- 
 ished repute felt its proprietor's natural lawlessness was groMung 
 too strong for it. 
 
 Therefore ^Ir. Snaith, thus adjured by the Mistress of his 
 Soul, was rather at a loss to say what he really thought. He 
 assumed a judicial aspect — which is one we all assume when we 
 mean not to come to the point — and looked so solemn over it 
 tliat she may have really believed he was going to say some- 
 thing. 
 
 "I think," said he, *' that this is a well-marked instance of-a 
 case that calls for suspension of opinion." 
 
 " Oh," said the young lady, veiy succinctly. And she said 
 nothing else. 
 
 Her lover seemed dissatisfied. 'MVell?" said he inter- 
 rogatively.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE . 89 
 
 " I want to know what your opinion is. Suspend it by all 
 means, but say what it is." 
 
 " That's a rum way of looking at it. However, of course I 
 can tell you my idea." 
 
 " That's rigiit. Tell me your idea." 
 
 " Dr. Carteret met a friend in the train . . . No — not a 
 lady ! . . . going to Southampton. Some very old friend he 
 hadn't seen for years. Then he missed his station to change at, 
 and thought he might just as well go on, and see his friend off. 
 Then he went on board the tender, and didn't get off in time. 
 Then the tender left him on the ship. Then his only chance 
 was to come away with the pilot." 
 
 "And why didn't he?" 
 
 " Did you ever see the pilot get off a ship into his boat, off 
 The Needles, in a strong sou'wester, such as we were having three 
 weeks since? Tf you ever have, you'll know why he didn't, 
 without telling." 
 
 '■' Then you think he's been carried away to Cape Town, or 
 somewhere ? " 
 
 " To Madeira. He might have to wait a week for a return 
 boat. That and another week for the journey makes him three 
 weeks away. That brings him to now, accidents apart." 
 
 " Stop a minute, Mr. Cleverness. You've forgotten some- 
 thing. Why didn't he write, or telegraph, to say where he 
 was ? " Mr. Snaith had to invent reasons, lame enougli but not 
 absurd, to meet both objections. Feeling their insecurity, he 
 tried for another topic. How did his fiancee like the young lady 
 of his friend's choice? Oh — she was all very well. Very nice 
 and all that. But wasn't she rather . . . ? " 
 
 " Rather what ? " 
 
 '' Well — I suppose it isn't fair to say commonplace. No — not 
 commonplace exactly! But considering what an interesting man 
 she's going to marry, isn't she just a little — young-ladylike ? " 
 
 Mr. Snaith's generous heart — for he had one — was hurt that 
 his friend's lady-love was not meeting with appreciation. Even 
 his keen sympathy with the panegyric of his friend did not con- 
 sole him for this cold douche on his sanguine anticipations of 
 the result of this introduction. He had looked forward to see- 
 ing these two girls rush into one another's arms. And here was 
 his, saying that Fred's was " not commonplace exactly." He 
 broke into an extravagant eulogium of Cintra — extravagant con- 
 sidering what his knowledge of her amounted to — representing^ 
 her as consisting almost entirely of intrinsic virtues witliout
 
 90 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 external manifestation. It was impossible to overestimate their 
 value. 
 
 "• Oh," said Miss Lucy Hinchlifie. 
 
 " We ought never to let ourselves be deceived by appearances." 
 
 " Oughtn't we ? I always do." 
 
 " Don't believe you ! " 
 
 " Very well — don't ! . . . Now, if it had been the other 
 girl ..." 
 
 "Elbows?" 
 
 "What do you call her? . . . Oh— Elbows! But why 
 Elbows?" 
 
 Mr. Snaith was not prepared to stand an examination on this 
 subject. He backed out. " Only a name we call her by ! Just 
 a name ! " said he. 
 
 " You did not call it her without some reason. What was 
 your reason ? " 
 
 " A — well — I don't know that we had any reason in par- 
 ticular. . . . P'r'aps because she left an impression of elbows ! " 
 
 " On whom ? " 
 
 " On both of us. A mental impression, I mean." 
 
 " So I understood. But what I want to know is why didn't 
 Fred Carteret propose to . . . to Elbows?" She accepted the 
 name without laughing over it. 
 
 " Eidiculous idea ! " And Mr. Snaith evidently thought it so. 
 Why should such a really brilliant and promising fellow as his 
 friend throw himself away on a — on a — well! — on a dowdy? 
 " A girl with no looks to speak of — the sort of girl I should call 
 a chap more than a girl. ..." 
 
 " Are chaps dowdies?" A question asked very coldly. 
 
 Mr. Snaith relented, not feeling secure. " No — really — I 
 don't mean to say Elbows is a bad fellow. But you must admit 
 that she's not the sort of girl a man wants to marry." 
 
 " Why does your friend want to marry the insipid sister?" 
 
 " I say, you're incurable. Oughtn't we to be on the move ? 
 It's going to begin to get dark." And thereupon this pair of 
 lovers started to return home, having all but fallen out over what 
 was reall}^ the rearrangement of other people's affairs, suggested 
 by the one who had the lesser- right of the two to interfere with 
 them. 
 
 The stor}^ feeling inclined to know something of what the 
 young ladies under discussion thought about the newly made 
 acquaintance who had formed such decisive opinions of them.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 91 
 
 will follow the bicyclists, and overhear as much as it can of 
 their conversation. 
 
 "Well! — what do you think?" This was Cintra, coming 
 alongside of her sister, who was given to sudden sprinting, and 
 had shot ahead. " Don't rush on so. I want to talk." 
 
 Nancy slows down. " About which ? " says she. 
 
 " About which whats ? " 
 
 "Which of the things?" 
 
 " You know what I mean perfectly well." 
 
 " No, I don't." 
 
 " Weil — if you will have it, about that detestable girl ! " 
 
 " I thought you might mean the disappearance." 
 
 "The disappearence? Oh yes, the old schoolmaster uncle!" 
 Cintra does him the honour of a moment's consideration, before 
 disposing of him. " No — lie'll be all right, you'll see. You 
 know Fred's and Charley Snaith's idea ? " 
 
 " I don't know any of Mr. Snaith's ideas, and what's more 
 I don't want to." 
 
 " Well then ! Fred's idea without Mr. Snaith. Do you want 
 to know it, or not to ? " 
 
 " To." This monosyllable — perhaps the shortest answer of 
 which the language is capable — produces a rjsume of the 
 Madeira theory with which the story is already familiar. It only 
 elicits another monosyllable from its hearer — the one usually 
 written " H'ni ! " Which, however, has no meaning, or may mean 
 anything. 
 
 " I don't see the use," Cintra says, " of pretending to be a 
 Sphinx. . . . What do you think though, Nancy dear?" 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. How should I ? I've hardly so much as 
 spoken to the old gentleman. He may be the sort that gets 
 carried away on ships to Madeira, for anything I know. What's 
 the other thing? " 
 
 " Wh}^ — that odious girl, of course. What should it be?" 
 Then both these young women feel that they have reached the 
 tlieme of their duet; having only, so far, dealt with the pre- 
 lude. 
 
 The first phrase is in Nancy's part, and is emphasised. " She's 
 fascinatingly beautiful, anyhow. You must admit that, Cit." 
 
 " Oh dear ! I didn't think so at all ! " Cintra is chilling. 
 " Of a commonplace type perhaps. How exactly like you, 
 dear ! " 
 " \\nrat's exactly like me ? Her ? " 
 " No, thank Heaven ! I mean discovering beauties."
 
 92 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " I should have thought ^ho didn't want much discovering. 
 You ayk Fred what lie thinks ! " 
 
 " I shall do nothing of the sort." Cintra's own comeliness, 
 which is not of an iincommonplace type, is enhanced by the 
 animation with which this is spoken. Indeed, she flushes 
 slightly over it. There is no doubt that she is rightly considered 
 the family beauty. Why is there always one among English 
 sisters who fills the post? She adds after a moment: — *' Fred is 
 not likely to be taken with every insipid chit." 
 
 Says Xancy : — "■' Men are, sometimes." Then after reflec- 
 tion : — " But this chit's bespoke." For the loyalty and order of 
 fancy's soul do not admit vagaries on Cupid's part in reputable 
 modern life; where no man ever covets his neighbour's wife or 
 sweetheart, any more than his ox or his ass. 
 
 And Cintra, this chapter supposes, may have cancelled such a 
 thought in its birth, as one cancels the poisonous fly as he inserts 
 his proboscis — usually ten seconds too late. But there was some 
 undercurrent discomfort in her thought, to judge by the tone in 
 which she began to say : — '' It's all very well for you, Xance, 
 but ..." and stopped short. 
 
 ■'■ What's all very well for me ? " 
 
 " You won't have to live in the same house." 
 
 "' Why do you speak as if it was settled? She hasn't even seen 
 the house. Besides, after all, it wouldn't be the same house. It 
 would be next door." 
 
 " Well — you won't have to live next door. Y^ou know you 
 won't." 
 
 '• I don't see why you any more than 711 c. Y'ou've only got to 
 know your own mind. Tell Fred you won't live next door to 
 Mrs. Nose}', to please him or anyone." 
 
 " Couldn't I put it on something else? Suppose I was to say 
 it had been a madhouse, and 1 didn't like madhouses?" 
 
 '' Just as you please. / should say — tell him the truth! Only, 
 remember you've only just seen her. How do you know you 
 won't think her ducky in a week ? " 
 
 Cintra flashes out. " The idea I I know — I tell you I know 
 — I shall always detest her." Her bicycle wavers in a rut, and 
 she has to negotiate it out. She does not forget her indignation 
 when she gets straight again, but adds a corollary to it. '* An 
 artiflcial minx, if ever there was one I " 
 
 Says her sister, unmoved to sympathy : — " The artificial minx 
 is sweetly pretty, anyhow. The most appealing eyes I ever saw 
 in my life ! "
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 93 
 
 » 
 
 " Appealing eyes indeed ! Oh yes — one knows the sort. . 
 But we shan't agree, dear, so we'd better not talk about it. 
 Her laugh, as she says this, is just a little strained. However, 
 Xancy only says : — " Perhaps we hadn't," and the subject drops. 
 
 Mention has been made of Miss Fraser's habit of passionate 
 admiration of her own sex, so her estimate of the beauty of 
 the artificial minx may have been exaggerated.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The authorities at Scotland Yard communicated in due 
 course with Mr. Frederic Carteret. And due course was a week 
 or more. During that week Fred sounded every depth in the 
 ocean of his ingenuity, until it resembled the best investigated 
 of seas in the most recent of Admiralty charts, to find fishing 
 orrounds for new theories to account for his uncle's absence, and 
 keep despair at bay in the mind of his mother. His draughts 
 of fish were unsatisfactory, mere tittlebats and minnows — t 
 theories that would not bear handling. And then came an 
 emissary from the Yard, to report progress, or the absence of 
 progress; half an hour's conversation with whom went far to 
 dash the hopes that every day without news was already making 
 smaller. No doubt this well-meaning official believed that his 
 exhortations to Fred not to lose heart had some efficacy against 
 despair, however little. But their effect was really depressing. 
 
 Every means of tracing the missing man — so he said — had 
 been taken, regardless of expense; except indeed advertisement 
 in the Press, which often did as much harm as good in the early 
 stages of an enquiry. He had himself twice visited The Cedars, 
 the house where the Rev. Dr. Carteret had been last visible to 
 the eyes of Recollection, and had endeavoured to induce that 
 Divinity, or Principle, who has as many eyes as Argus for what- 
 ever she chooses to look for, to open one or two of her closed 
 ones on the landscape of the Past, growing dimmer day by day. 
 But her eyesight, if her only agents on the spot were to be 
 trusted, could detect nothing of the old boy of a satisfactory 
 nature, since Mrs. Grewboer left him, conversing with himself, to 
 answer the gate-bell, and had her attention effectually diverted 
 from him by the plight of her old husband. 
 
 " I expect," said Fred that same evening to his friend Charley, 
 conversing with him at his chambers shortly after the departure 
 of the police-officer, " I expect this chap — Manton's his name — 
 has scared those two boozy old Grewbeers out of their five 
 wits. . . . Wliat do you think he went and said to them? " 
 
 "Give it up!" 
 
 " Clean out of their five wits — if they have five ! He told 
 them they would be held accountable." 
 
 94
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 95 
 
 'MVliat for?" 
 
 " I don't exactly know. Of course it was only to frighten 
 them and make them tell . . . whatever they had to tell. I 
 don't see how they could know anything more than they have 
 told. Unless they are liars. They may he, like the boy — the 
 costermonger's boy. Manton saw him." 
 
 "What did he say?" 
 
 " Said he saw nothing of my uncle — stuck to his story. I was 
 going to tell you about Manton."' 
 
 " Go ahead ! " 
 
 " He trotted those two old gaffers over the house — made them 
 show him everything, down to the cellars. He regularly made 
 my flesh creep " — here Fred wriggled uneasily — " by describing 
 how he looked behind the coals in the cellar. And how he went 
 over the garden, and examined every inch of the ground, to see 
 if any of it had been disturbed. But he saw nothing. Of 
 course not ! " 
 
 " Thought your uncle had been murdered for his valuables, I 
 suppose. Well — such things have been. Empty houses have a 
 bad name. I expect Mr. ]\Ianton was very much put out at 
 finding nothing." 
 
 " I thought he did seem a little disgusted. But with Fate — 
 Providence. Not with my uncle. F[e made every allowance for 
 the views of the proposed victim. Still, he could not conceal his 
 professional disappointment. The same when he told me of the 
 search along both sides of the railway line, Avith dogs. ' We shall 
 go over the ground again,' he said, ' though I can't say I've any 
 hope in that quarter.' I found myself getting quite grieved on 
 his account, and tried to hold out hopes of — of success — in some 
 new untriecl quarter." 
 
 '' Then he must be hoping your uncle is alive, if he despairs 
 of finding him dead." 
 
 " Well — yes ! Or fearing he is alive. Of course our interests 
 differ." 
 
 In talking to his friend at this time Fred kept up a faux air 
 of confidence that nothing " could have happened " to his uncle, 
 by an affectation of cold blood in discussing the possibility of his 
 having been murdered. One would have thought, to hear him 
 chatting over it with his friend, that they were hardened cynics, 
 and that the vanished man was a special object of their indif- 
 ference. With his mother, Fred cast aside this mask of assumed 
 callousness, and showed his real self. 
 
 Under the circumstances, and in view of the visible anxiety that
 
 9G THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 was constantly wearing at her heart and depressing her spirits, 
 he made a point of spending hi.s evenings with her, and doing the 
 best that was in him to stave otf despair of his uncle's reap- 
 pearance, alive and well. But the task grew harder and harder. 
 
 Her greeting to him on the day after his interview with the 
 emissary from Scotland Yard was what it had come to be, 
 evening after evening, whenever he a])peared at Maida Vale. 
 She only looked into his face steadily, v.itli a tension on her own 
 that spoke of the waiting for news of which this was the climax; 
 and said interrogatively: — "Well?" 
 
 He had learned that it was best to damp all hope first; and 
 then to bring forward what ho had to tell, if anything, that 
 would revive it. So his first answer was to shrug his shoulders 
 and shake his head, and make the word '" nothing " with his lips. 
 Then, when a stifled sigh had made its record of her disappoint- 
 ment, he brought forward his alleviation, for what it was worth. 
 " However, I have seen the man from Scotland Yard. He called 
 this afternoon." 
 
 "Oh — and what did he say?" The expectation of a new 
 possibility was in her voice. 
 
 " It didn't come to much. But it does seem as if we might 
 put aside any idea of — of anything — between the time of his 
 leaving The Cedars and his arrival, or what should have been his 
 arrival, at the school that evening." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret reworded his speech more clearly, and did not 
 flinch from its real meaning. " That is to say, we may feel sure 
 he was not murdered on the way home. How can they tell 
 that?" Fred gave the particulars already given, and she 
 added: — "Well — that is something, at any rate!" 
 
 Fred felt he need not tone down this much encouragement. 
 " My own belief," said he, " is that everything points to the 
 miscarriage of some explanatory letter — one that would have 
 cleared up everything, and told us where he is now. Probably 
 he would write to Mrs. Thingummy at the school — not to iis. 
 I can imagine a hundred contretemps that might make him 
 change his plan." 
 
 " 1 can't." Mrs. Carteret spoke with a quiet decision, and 
 Fred, on reflection, was obliged to admit to himself that the 
 contretemps he could imagine were less than a hundred. The 
 Avorst of it was that the probability of every expedient of this 
 sort diminished by leaps and bounds, and the time was at hand 
 when baffled Invention would have to throw up the sponge. 
 
 Fred's mother was not always so self-contained — so secretive
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 97 
 
 about the degree of her apprehension. This evening she inter- 
 rupted his reading aloud of some interesting adventures in 
 Thibet, to say: — '' I can't listen — my head goes . . . But wait 
 a little." He waited, and took note of an aimless wandering in 
 her hands, that seemed to come at times and would not let them 
 rest. " I can't help it," she said presently. " I know I exag- 
 gerate. But think what the possibilities are! All last night I 
 was imagining horrors." 
 
 Fred saw his way to a form of solace which has its recom- 
 mendations as a means of sootliing other folks' fears, however 
 well grounded. " My dear Mother," said he, "" if we were always 
 to be thinking what horrors are possible, only people with very 
 strong nerves would remain sane. Or perhaps with no imagina- 
 tion at all." 
 
 " I wish I had no imagination at all." 
 
 Fred persevered. " Do just consider," said he, "' how excep- 
 tional this case is. We may almost be said to know, for certain, 
 exactly when — wliere it would have happened if . . ." 
 
 " If he had been murdered. Say it out ! That is what you 
 meant? " 
 
 " Well, I suppose I did. Anyhow, knowing this, we know too 
 that after the closest examination by exports ..." 
 
 " Aren't they the people that make the mistakes ? " 
 
 Fred took no notice, but continued : — " Not the smallest trace 
 of any kind has been found to justify such a suspicion. It is 
 not as if we could not identify every spot of ground he must 
 have stood on between The Cedars and the school-gate." lie 
 paused a moment, to accumulate weight for his next decision, 
 then continued : — " I consider it as good as proved that — that 
 no harm came to him in the train. So does Charley." 
 
 " Because the police-officers had dogs, I suppose. Dogs are 
 so convincing, somehow. I like dogs." Fred was conscious that 
 he too had felt heartened up when he heard of the dogs, although 
 he was quite uninformed, either way, as to their efficacy in such 
 a case made and provided. But he had a suspicion that his 
 mother was alive to the fact of his juniority, and was indeed 
 nettled at her confounded female shrewdness — a quality re- 
 sembling ''instinct" in animals, and quite inferior to human 
 reason, an attribute essentially male. Also, his mother did not 
 seem to him quite alive enough to the cfficiencv of Scotland 
 Yard. 
 
 To impress her with this, he dwelt upon the thoroughness of 
 the officer's search through the old house near Wimbledon. She
 
 98 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 seemed unimpressed, and even disposed to call some points of it 
 in question. "Did your — Mr. Manton was it? — turn the coal 
 over? You said ' looked behind it.' " But she saved Fred from 
 havino- to confess that he had never asked to know, bv adding : — 
 " It doesn't matter. Two old caretakers would only have coal 
 by the hundredweight." So he got away to another topic. 
 
 " By-the-bye," said he, as though it had just occurred to him, 
 " he says — Manton does — it would be as well to word the ad- 
 vertisement at once . . ." 
 
 "Goon. Why do you stop?" 
 
 " Why did you say ' oh dear ! ' " For his mother had uttered 
 this exclamation, sharp on tlie word ' advertisement.' 
 
 "■ I knew it was coming." 
 
 What occurred to Fred as reasonable to say was: — ''Then 
 why did you say ' Oh dear ! ' ? " But he did not say it. He went 
 on with his main theme. " As well to word the advertisement 
 at once, to have it ready in case it should be decided to use it," 
 said he. 
 
 " Oh — then he still thinks it may not be wanted? " 
 
 " Oh dear ves ! This is onlv what the doctors call proph}'- 
 lactic." 
 
 " I see. What does your police friend suggest? " 
 
 " Just the usual thing. Missing from his home So-and-so, 
 since such a date. Then full particulars of his age, dress, gen- 
 eral appearance and so forth, with a word or two as to special 
 habits, if any. He recommends that nothing should be said 
 about the manner of his disappearance. If we send all par- 
 ticulars, he says they will word the advertisement, and see to its 
 insertion. We need know nothing ab6ut it." 
 
 " I should prefer to see how it is worded." 
 
 " Verv well. Their suggestion was onlv to spare need- 
 less . .■ ." 
 
 " Needless pain to friends and relations. I understand." It 
 was noticeable that Fred often flinched from the position while 
 she faced it. But his cowardice was on her behalf, more than 
 his own. 
 
 " They have nearly everything already," said he. " I took 
 them all the photographs I could find at the first go-off. There 
 may be others." 
 
 " He Avas not very fond of being photographed. Eather the 
 other way. I don't think it is any use writing for more. I 
 wrote to Mrs. Orpen to send any she had, and she sent a more 
 recent one — a very good snapshot, taken by the daughter of one
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 99 
 
 of the masters. I forget her name." Mrs. Carteret left her 
 chair by the fireplace to find it, and brought it from a drawer 
 in her writing-desk. " I don't think I told you. It's like, isn't 
 it ? " said she, and sat down again as before. 
 
 Fred could not take that photograph so calmly. 
 
 " Very good — very good indeed ! " said he ; but uneasily, as 
 the thought crossed his mind : — " What and where is he now, who 
 was then accepted monarch of all these boys ? " For the picture 
 showed some melee, unexplained, with the headmaster in the 
 midst; descending on a culprit, to all seeming. " Do you know 
 what it was? " Fred asked. 
 
 " He caught two boys fighting, ]\Irs. Orpen said in her letter. 
 She did not say how this Miss — whatever her name was — came to 
 be there. But there she was, and there's the snapshot. Yes — I 
 think it particularly good." She spoke with perfect equanimity, 
 as though nothing unusual were afoot. 
 
 So much so that Fred thought the moment a good one for 
 touching a point he had fought shy of, without analysing his 
 reasons. " There is one thing I promised to write about," said 
 he. " Uncle Dru's exact age. What . . . is it? " The cause 
 of his wavering over these last two words was unfortunately 
 clear. He had all but said : — " What was it ? " Then, having 
 nearly made the mistake, he was far too transparent to show no 
 consciousness of having done so. He was a very transparent 
 young man, was Fred. 
 
 His mother's " never mind ! " had no logical place in the con- 
 versation, but each knew the other's thought. She did not mean 
 that the age was of no importance — only that we need not pick 
 and choose words in face of the facts. 
 
 "■ It would be better to have the exact age," he said. " If we 
 have anything to go by. If not, they say the age he looks would 
 be the best. I told Manton sixty-one or sixty-two." 
 
 " He was more than that," said she, and he noticed the past 
 tense of her verb. " He was twelve years your father's senior, 
 and your father would be over fifty now." 
 
 He had risen from his chair and was walking about the room 
 — it may be that wrong tense needed a change to slur it over — 
 and the way that she reversed liis corrected form of speech 
 stopped him. He felt he must rebel against this assumption of 
 — or acquiescence in — his uncle's death. 
 
 "Mother! For God's sake don't— rfon^/ " 
 
 " Don't what ? . . . But I know. Why should I pretend 
 not to know ? You mean, why do I believe him dead ? "
 
 100 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 "' Well — yes ! Why do you ? Why sliould you ? " 
 
 '" Is it not pnougli tliat for thirty years he has always been 
 in his place on the first day of term? He was proud of it — 
 spoke of it to me that last time, the very last time I saw him. 
 Not only since his headmastership — fifteen years ago that was — 
 but the whole time, since he became Latin master. Is not that 
 enough — at least to make one fear . . . ? " 
 
 '' Fear — 3'es ! But to jump to a certainty — no ! " 
 
 She did not quarrel with his overstatement of her position, 
 only saying :- — " It is hard to tell fear from certainty sometimes 
 — fear enough! Perhaps I am cowardly. I hope so." Then, 
 as he said nothing, she continued : — " Do what 1 will, I cannot 
 remember a word he has ever said — about friends, I mean — to 
 warrant your idea of the intercepting passenger on the rail. If 
 such a person had existed — a person who could influence his 
 return to the school at such a time — he must have mentioned 
 him, to you or to me." 
 
 " Or her." He was only speaking of a supplemental possi- 
 bility. 
 
 But she had a tired smile for this possible her, as too great 
 an absurdity. "■ I wish 1 could think it was . . . that kind of 
 thing," said she. " But — vour uncle I " 
 
 " I didn't mean that." 
 
 " You might have. Age is nothing." 
 
 " I know age is nothing. But I was not thinking of that 
 kind of thing at all. My idea was some old friend he hadn't 
 met for years. It need not have been the boat. You know that 
 idea. I told you ? " 
 
 " Oh dear yes, / know. But it's impossible — that's all I can 
 say. You see he was talking, that Saturday afternoon, of the 
 absolute necessity for being in his place on ^londay. You did 
 not hear him. 1 did." 
 
 Fred felt that speculation only made matters worse. It never 
 bore the light of day. But he would have given a world, had he 
 possessed one, to see the strain of anxiety pass from his mother's 
 face. Changing the subject to something quite different struck 
 him as out of })lace — probably also impossible. The nightmare 
 of uncertainty, in its worst form, had possession of them; and 
 timid remedies were worse than none. He could not sit still 
 and say nothing, yet he could only speak of his tmcle. What did 
 this leave him, now that nothing was to be hoped for from new 
 surmises about the mystery? \\ltat was it safe to talk about? 
 
 Something crossed liis mind — a question he had often thought
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 101 
 
 to ask his mother, but never ventured on. He could see no reason 
 why he should not do so, now. He threw out an initial: — "I 
 wonder wdiy ..." and stopped short. 
 
 '' You wonder why what, Fred dear ? " 
 
 " I wonder why Uncle Drii never married." 
 
 "•' Are you sure he never did? " 
 
 Fred started. " I thought everyone knew he never did," said 
 he. "But did he?" 
 
 "' I don't know." This answer, quietly given, with perfect 
 self-command, took Fred very much aback. His mother con- 
 tinued : — " You needn't look so dumbfoundered. Ecmembcr 
 that your uncle was quite old enough to be a widower when 
 your father's family came to live next door to us. I got to 
 know them over the wall. But I was the merest child then — 
 a chit under thirteen. However, I don't believe it was then, but 
 later. Only I knew nothing about it." She paused a little, 
 and then said suddenly: — "Only remember — I can't answer for 
 it that he was ever married. Or never. I can't answer for 
 anything either way. I don't know." Here Fred said : — " Oli, 
 I see," and something in his tone made her reply rather short 
 and decisive. " No — I'm not sure that you do. It was a love- 
 affair." 
 
 Fred hastened to disclaim any intention of suggesting that he 
 had inferred an irregularity, and his mother let the point pass. 
 But an irregularity would have accounted for silence and oblivion 
 a generation later, and tliere seemed no reason for veiling a 
 blameless passion that had ended in frustration somehow or 
 other. So Fred's curiosity was roused, and after one or two not 
 very successful attempts to get at this love-affair that might or 
 might not have ended in a marriage, he asked his mother point- 
 blank what his father's version of the story had been. He 
 must have known all about it. 
 
 " I never spoke a single word to him on the subject," was 
 the reply. But she showed her consciousness that this answer 
 might be incredible. " Better ask whv, Fred. You know vou 
 mean why," said she after a pause. 
 
 " Yes — I mean why," said he. " But I should not have said 
 it, because ..." 
 
 " Because you didn't want to say your mother told stories. 
 Good boy ! " He had suspended an uncertain walk about the 
 room, and was leaning on her chair back. She turned round and 
 kissed him, for approval or forgiveness ; then resumed : — " But 
 I'll tell you why. There was a good reason — an exceptional
 
 102 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 one. My motlicr, wlio told mc, made me promise not to speak 
 of it to a living soul. You were not born or thought of when 
 she told me. So you don't count." 
 
 " She may have meant any living soul present or future." 
 
 " She may have. I know what I meant when I made the 
 promise. An3diow, I see no reason for not telling you, now. 
 What can it matter, when he . . . ? " She left this unfinished, 
 but Fred knew her meaning. " I saw it was your father she 
 was thinking of, and I kept my promise. For I never said a 
 word to him about it, nor he to me. I doubt if he ever knew." 
 
 " You haven't told me exactly what grandmamma said. 
 Perhaps you would rather not ? " 
 
 " I cannot see Avhy 1 should not. 1 feel so very sure the 
 prohibition applied to 3^our father." But she seemed still in 
 doubt whether she might break her promise. 
 
 He felt he could not help to a decision, either way. So, not 
 to sit silent, he said : — " Grandmamma and Uncle Dru were 
 very great friends ? " 
 
 " Yes — he told her everything. That is how he came to take 
 her into his confidence about this ... I think I may tell 
 you." 
 
 " Yes — but not if you ..." 
 
 " I think I may. It is all to his credit. He fell desperately 
 in love with a very young girl, and thought he was bound to wait 
 till she was old enough — for him to speak, I mean. In the mean- 
 while she naturally got herself appropriated by some other man, 
 who wasn't so scrupulous. Knowing your uncle as I did, I am 
 "hot the least surprised at his taking his disappointment so bit- 
 terly to heart. Some men are like that, and they are the best 
 men. But it's a pity." 
 
 Fred embraced the opportunity of showing his wide knowl- 
 edge of Man and Woman, and the ways of those strange crea- 
 tures. " Not by any means an uncommon case ! " he said, 
 nodding sagaciously. 
 
 His mother pursued the theme. " One thing did surprise me 
 though — that he took no warning from what was going on under 
 his very eyes. Surely your dear father and I were young 
 enough— couple of young monkeys ! — when we began. No — age 
 has nothing to do with it. Nothing whatever ! " 
 
 Fred could not associate ideas of youth and romance, dawning 
 passion, jealousies, reconciliations, and so forth, with those 
 prosaic things people's parents; especially his own. The story 
 believes this frame of mind to be not infrequent in youth. It
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 103 
 
 had its share in causing this young man to abstain from 
 comment. 
 
 " ^STothing whatever ! " his mother repeated^ after a pause. 
 '•' This must all have taken j^lace in the first year of my ac- 
 quaintance with your father. At least, your grandmamma said 
 nothing of the exact time, but I had the impression it was about 
 then. He did not tell her— so she said — till some time after we 
 were married. I cannot imagine why she was so anxious I 
 should tell your father nothing about it. But she was so very 
 emphatic that I actually did as she wished, and held my tongue. 
 It wasn't easy." 
 
 "No, by George!" said Fred; but seriously, for the circum- 
 stances were against trivial speech. " Didn't she — or perliaps 
 she did and you wouldn't like to tell me— tell you ^^'ho the girl 
 was ? " 
 
 Mrs. Carteret shook her head. " She refused to. Said it was 
 absolutely out of the question that I should know. She wouldn't 
 say why. But of course there may have been many reasons." 
 Many indeed, and the most incredible one of all more credible 
 than the true reason ! Never had the mind of a woman been 
 more unsuspicious, or through a longer term, than that of this 
 unsuspecting lady. 
 
 And indeed her son was just as unsuspicious of the truth as 
 she. So much so that his mind, restlessly on the alert to discover 
 causes of his uncle's disappearance, jumped at this incident of 
 thirty-odd years ago, and connected the two things together. 
 What his mother had just said was so true — that age was noth- 
 ing. If he could only find out who that girl was ! 
 
 " Mother ! " said he, abruptly. 
 
 " Yes — my dear ! " 
 
 "Have you no guess who she was? I have a reason for 
 asking." 
 
 " What is your reason for asking ? " She spoke sedatel}^ with 
 something of fatigue. But were not the clock-hands near on 
 midnisrht ? 
 
 " She might have something to do with it — this girl." 
 
 " With what? " 
 
 " With Uncle Dru's disappearance." 
 
 " Wliat nonsense ! " 
 
 " No — don't say that. Think it over. How old would she be 
 now . . . ? Within a year or so will do." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret thought. " Between forty-five and fifty, some- 
 where," said she.
 
 104 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Well — that would do ! Then, suppose her husband has died 
 suddenly ! " 
 
 '• You can't work it that way. She is a widow — if she is 
 living — has been a widow for years. I can tell you that much." 
 
 " How do you know ? " 
 
 '* My mother said so the last time we spoke of it. I remember 
 lier saying so distinctly. Mamma has been dead seven years. 
 Yes — let me see I Your father has been dead eleven vears, and 
 it was in the time between. I recollect thinking to myself: — 
 ' Now here is a chance for a little happiness! ' I said so to her, 
 or something like it." 
 
 "And M-hat did ^he say?" 
 
 " I was trying to think. . , . Xo — she said nothing except 
 that it was absolutely impossible. I think I tried then — j'es, I 
 did — to <]:Qt from her who she was. I had some crazy idea that 
 if I could only get at her, even then, I might do something to 
 bring it about. But she would say nothing, except that it was 
 quite out of the question, and I had better give up the idea. I 
 cannot understand how she could be so positive on the point. 
 But she was." 
 
 " No — that's a puzzler. How could grandmamma know ? " 
 Fred racked his brains in the pause which followed, and could 
 think of only one solution. " The widow must have got herself 
 fixed up with some other man. That's the only way out." 
 
 " No — it wasn't that. I can't say why exactly. I put it down 
 to something your uncle had said to her — someihing about his 
 own feelings. You see, she knew him so much better than I 
 <lid. So much better than anyone ! " 
 
 Fred would not give it up. " Suppose Uncle Dru's ideas had 
 changed ! " said he. 
 
 " After all these vears ! Whv not when her husband died, if 
 at all?" 
 
 Fred could not utilise his uncle's individualities, strong as 
 they were, beyond a certain limit. The time was too long. But 
 he had not run through all his possibilities. '" Suppose the lady's 
 ideas had changed?" he said. "I mean, suppose she stuck out 
 at first, and gave in in the end?" 
 
 " That niiglit be,"' said his mother. But the way she yawned 
 showed that this new theory had very little weight with her. 
 
 H hung about Fred's mind, nevertheless. 
 
 And the next morning, at breakfast in his friend's chambers, 
 he broached it as promising, if not one to lean heavily on. 
 Certainly not a broken reed — he would go that far !
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 105 
 
 Mr. Snaith seemed impressed, but could not shut liis eyes to 
 the mimber of improbal)ilities we had to swallo'tv in order to make 
 this theory wash. Perhaps had he been talking to one of his 
 partners he would have mixed his metaphors less. But Fred 
 didn't matter ! We had to suppose, he said, either that Dr. 
 Carteret's fidelity to his first love had had a very intermittent 
 character, or that her own has shown a miraculous stability. 
 He was not going to pretend that instances were not common 
 — indeed, we heard of cases every day — of widows who kept the 
 memory of their late lamenteds alive to the end of their own lease 
 of life.^ What seemed to him so unlikely was that if it lived for 
 twelve or fifteen years of this period it should not last out the 
 rest of it. He altogether scouted the idea that Dr. Carteret 
 would keep silence — his expression was " bottle up " — all that 
 time. The reasonable course for him would have been to post- 
 pone his suit no longer than was due to the bare requirements of 
 respect for the departed. 
 
 Fred quite acquiesced in this, but " pointed out " that 
 although his grandmother, their only informant, knew that this 
 lady had lost her liusband, there was nothing to show that she 
 had not married again, and lost her second husband recently. 
 To account for anything so contrary to experience as the dis- 
 appearance of his uncle, we were driven to improbable supposi- 
 tions; not to impossible ones, he admitted. One of the least 
 improbable seemed to him to be that which connected this dis- 
 appearance somehow with this romance of his uncle's early life. 
 Detailslnight stand over. The young man seemed rather re- 
 lieved to let them do so. 
 
 His friend seemed only half convinced. '' What does your 
 young woman think about it ? " said he. 
 
 " I haven't seen her." 
 
 " Poor beggar ! Of course seeing her means a railway jour- 
 ney. I see mine every day, pretty nearly. P'r'aps I'm tempting 
 Providence." 
 
 " How do you mean ? " 
 
 "Well — every day is coming it rather strong, isn't it? She 
 don't say so, you know. At least, only in jest of course. I know 
 when she's in jest, and when she's in earnest." In spite of which 
 knowledge, he seemed to think a word of confirmation not mis- 
 placed : — " I know she's in earnest this time by the way she talks 
 about you and Miss Fraser. Of course she talks more freely by 
 hooking it on to third parties."
 
 106 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Fred shovv'ed an aroused interest. " Wliat does she say about 
 me and Cintra? " said he. 
 
 "^ Well — about this very matter of being so far off. I was 
 telling her what a devil of a distance off you were, and she really 
 seemed to think it a worse Job than I did, myself. Quite took 
 it to heart, don't you know? " 
 
 " What did she say ? " Very much interested indeed, was 
 Frederic. 
 
 '' I don't suppose Cit cries her eyes out about my not being 
 there every five minutes. Anyhow, I'm due there on Sunday. 
 Just lately, I've made a point of being with my mother a good 
 deal . . . you understand? One must." 
 
 Mr. Snaith hastened to show appreciation of his friend's filial 
 devotion. He saw, old fellow, — of course, of course ! 
 
 " Besides, the fact is . . . " Fred glanced at a door no 
 human creature could possibly have come in at, to express 
 exclusion of the outer world from a solemn confidence. " The 
 fact is . . . only you quite understand, Cbarley, I wouldn't 
 say this to anyone but you ..." 
 
 " I'm mum." Mr. Snaith touched lips closed for the purpose 
 with a resolute forefinger. 
 
 "■ Well, the fact is, that at The Jessamines — that's the name 
 of the Professor's house, you know — the family is rather heavily 
 in evidence." 
 
 " I understand." ^Mr. Snaith commiserates his friend. 
 " Like to have her rather more to yourself." 
 
 " Ye-es ! — that sort of thing. I must confess, Charley, to 
 tliinking you a lucky beggar. Only one solitary maternal parent 
 to keep at bay! " 
 
 Charley seems to make some mental reservation. " She's — 
 she's an awfully capacious one," he says, rather ruefully. 
 
 Fred is not disposed to make allowances. '' I would sooner 
 have any amount of capacious mothers than a little snippy 
 tweetly stepmother, always ailing. That's what she is — always 
 ailing. And as if that wasn't enough, she's unselfish and con- 
 siderate." 
 
 '' Knits you comforters. I know." 
 
 " Exactly. Then there's her cub, who has been promised to 
 be allowed to sit on your knee — as likely as not. Then there's 
 an older cub, a school-cub, whose aunt gave him a watcb, and 
 he immediately took it to pieces and put it together 
 again." 
 
 " That doesn't hurt you."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 107 
 
 " It wouldn't, if he didn't want me to make it go. He thinks 
 — in fact Cit does, and they all do — that an engineer ought to be 
 able to make watches go. I can't. And the Devil himself 
 couldn't make this one go." 
 
 " What sort of chap's the Professor ? " 
 
 " I don't half dislike the Professor. Only I wish when he 
 sees me he wouldn't always say : — ' Well, Mr. Frederic, any new 
 patents ? ' " 
 
 " What harm does that do you? " 
 
 " Well-1-1 ! Doesn't it rather seem to imply that I'm throw- 
 ing away money on patents ? " 
 
 '"' It might bear that interpretation." 
 
 Fred got away from the subject. '' Then of course there's 
 Elbows. Candidly, Charley, I shouldn't be able to stand Elbows, 
 if my mother wasn't so fond of her. I really shouldn't. I 
 should strike." 
 
 " So should I, mother or no ! Beast of a girl ! " 
 
 " You see, what's so irritating about Elbows is that with so 
 many people — my mother's only one instance — she passes for a 
 nice girl. And when people are like that it's perfectly useless to 
 reason with them." 
 
 " Perfectly." Mr. Charley was qualifying a small morning 
 cigar for its mission in life, which made his speech brief. As 
 soon as he had lighted it and was convinced it would draw, he 
 appeared to feel that he ought to make up for lost time, and 
 contribute to the conversation. He began : — ''' What a man 
 notices, about a girl ..." and was arrested by the fact that 
 he had not thought of what he was going to say. 
 
 Fred guessed. "Way she does her hair?" A soito-voce 
 interjection, as though he knew perfectly well what was coming. 
 
 But he guessed wrong. For his friend shook his head with 
 the air of the best authority, and corrected him. '•' Wasn't going 
 to say that," said he. " I was going to say that what a man 
 notices about a girl is her attitude. Particularly about chaps. 
 See what I mean? " 
 
 Fred said he did, but he didn't. A remark he made, to the 
 effect that they — girls, to wit — were very sharp, did not seem to 
 satisfy his hearer, who proceeded to elucidation. " When 1 say 
 attitude/' he said, "I refer to the sort of thing which — the sort 
 of thing which is perhaps best described by indicating Miss 
 Eraser's as a case in point." 
 
 " I should let it go at that, Charley, if I was you," said Fred. 
 " You see, whenever I go to The Jessamines I have to be civil
 
 108 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 to p]]bows, who really is — who really is — exactly like what you 
 say. As to my mother, it's a clear case- of infatuation. That's 
 what it is — just simple infatuation. But women arc always the 
 worst judges of women. . . . Let me see — what were we talk- 
 infj about? " 
 
 This could only refer to the last topic but one. Mr. Snaith 
 located it. '' Your last theory about your uncle. I asked what 
 your young woman thought. It's important to know what the 
 women think about things of this sort. leather their line." 
 
 " I shall see her on Sunday. Meanwhile . . . Well, of 
 course you won't talk about it ? " 
 
 "Oh no — YOU can rely on me. But ..." 
 
 "What?"^ 
 
 '•' Nothing." 
 
 " You were going to say something ? " 
 
 " Xo, 1 wasn't ... at least — it certainly did just cross my 
 mind. Would you particularly object to my mentioning it to 
 Lucy? In the strictest confidence, you know." Fred looked 
 doubtful. " You've no idea what a — what an instinctive shrewd- 
 ness she has about things of this sort! A kind of insight. It's 
 quite phenomenal. . . , However, not if you don't like ! " For 
 the uncertainty lingered on Fred's face. 
 
 Was a phenomenal insight into " things of this sort," by a 
 young lady he had only seen twice, a sufficient reason for taking 
 her into the inner sanctum of a chapter of private family history 
 which his mother had kept silence about for years? Surely not, 
 said common sense and experience. Fred took exception to their 
 decision, on the grounds that the young lady had a slim but 
 well-rounded figure, expressive black eyes, and a faultless set of 
 pearly teeth. Not that he admitted that he was under tlie 
 influence of these items of her total. They were merely present 
 to his imagination when he decided that he might rely on his 
 friend's judgment, and his guarantee of strict confidence. After 
 all, he would have to take someone into his confidence. Were 
 the detectives of Scotland Yard alone worthy of admission into 
 its precincts? 
 
 He hesitated where hesitation makes a change of mind impos- 
 sible. The slightest wavering, once interpreted into concession, 
 may not be harked back upon. Fred made matters worse by 
 suggesting conditions. " You'll take care of that. . . . Miss 
 Hinchlilfe thoroughly understands that it isn't to be mentioned 
 to a living soul. You are sure she's to be trusted? " 
 
 '■' Oh dear yes — she's Secrocv itself. As safe as the Lord
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 109 
 
 Chancellor." Would Fred have felt reassured by this if it had 
 not been for those qualifications the story has just inventoried — 
 those eyes and teeth and so forth? Probably not. Fred was 
 much readier to credit this young lady with every virtue her 
 lover chose to vouch for, than — for instance — his own fiancee 
 would have been. 
 
 Indeed, when Fred came to think it out, he saw that it would 
 be almost impossible not to talk over this new way of accounting 
 for the mystery to Cintra, and very difficult to keep her ob- 
 jectionable sister from the knowledge of it. 
 
 His mother had seen the desirability of a reserved statement 
 of the new suspicion to the official investigators, and Charley had 
 recommended a full one. So Fred's clear course was to seek out 
 Mr. Manton at Scotland Yard and put him in possession of the 
 facts. He did so, and was not a little disgusted to find that the 
 facts, all told, amounted to so very little. All that had made his 
 last solution of the mystery seem so plausible when his imagina- 
 tion v/as free to run riot among mere possibilities, became thin 
 and vanished when he was face to face with the task of wording 
 a written memorandum of it for official use. He was reminded 
 of the way in which some of his mechanical inventions had 
 shovv'n their weak points when put to the test of a full specifi- 
 cation. What had he to tell, after all, that added anything to 
 the facts already in possession of the detectives? Nothing but 
 that his mother knew that his uncle had been in love with a 
 girl early in life, and had apparently never contemplated mar- 
 riage later; that this young lady had married, had become a 
 widow, and might or might not have married again. It 
 amounted to nothing. We did not know — did not even suspect 
 — who the lady was. If we had known, and had found on 
 enquiry that she too had disappeared at about the same time, 
 there might have been reason for connecting the two things to- 
 gether. As it was, in Mr. Manton's opinion, Mrs. Carteret's 
 information about her brother-in-law's early love-affair left us 
 exactly whore we were before. 
 
 " I must mention to you, Mr. Carteret," said the detective, 
 when he had made a note of all that Fred had to tell, except a 
 good many of that young man's inferences, " that in my own 
 opinion the old advice to look for the woman at the bottom of 
 any mischief ..." 
 
 ■" I know," said Fred, " ' Cherchez la femmel ' " 
 
 "■ I believe that is the French for it," said Manton, not with- 
 out commiseration for a race condemned to the use of such a 
 
 8
 
 110 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 language. He picked up his last sentence: — ". . . At tiie 
 bottom of any mischief. Well — it doesn't hold good." 
 
 " Doesn't hold good ? " 
 
 " Not in this case, at any rate. Consider the motives of the 
 parties concerned. Here we have your uncle, an old gentleman 
 of absolutely unblemished reputation. ..." 
 
 " Absolutely ! " 
 
 " Clerk in holy orders — that sort of thing — and at the head of 
 an establishment that would be simply ruined, perhaps perma- 
 nently, by the very smallest slur upon his moral character. ..." 
 
 " Quite an impossibility ! Thing couldn't be." 
 
 " Right you are. Sir. But how about his motive for secrecy, 
 if there was nothing to conceal? " Mr. Manton made a marginal 
 note with a pencil on an open paper before him, as if he had 
 some time to spare before Fred answered. 
 
 He had, for it was quite fifteen seconds by the clock-tick before 
 that young man said : — " I see. Concealment would do him 
 double the harm of publicity, in any case one can imagine." 
 But Fred would not give it up altogether. Might there not be 
 some reason on the lady's side, he suggested. 
 
 " To conceal what ? A marriage ? I think you'll find that 
 idea won't bear handling, ]\Ir. Carteret." 
 
 Fred did, apparently. At least, he made no attempt to handle 
 it. He produced the photograph his mother had given him, 
 which interested Mr. Manton. He remarked that it was " a 
 good job for the big 'un " that the headmaster happened to 
 come by, insomuch as it was evident that " the little 'un was 
 going to lick." Fred could not help thinking that the detec- 
 tive's interest in the case had flagged since the chances of a 
 murder had been minimised. 
 
 However, he handed him such additional particulars for the 
 advertisement as had arisen from his conversation with his 
 mother, and went his way. He felt very desoeuvre and purpose- 
 less as he sauntered up Whitehall. Justifiably so ; for is any end 
 looser than his who is brought to a standstill in a search for one 
 who has vanished and left no clue? The fear was beginning to 
 grow on him tliat a month hence — a year hence perhaps — would 
 find this terrible search as fruitless as it had been hitherto. It 
 seemed now as thous-h the searchers would be reduced to the 
 pitiful inactivity of waiting for something to turn up, with such 
 consolation as was derival)le from the consciousness of an adver- 
 tisement at stated intervals. 
 
 A hideous thought struck him. The last insertion of that
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 111 
 
 advertisement must come. It could not go on for ever. Could 
 any excuse for discontinuing it be found that would not also be 
 a confession that the case was hopeless ? 
 
 Eeturning restlessly to Maida Yale in preference to making 
 a pretence of work at his chambers, he found there visitors : Mrs. 
 Orpen, the matron of the now headmasterless school, and the 
 second master, a pallid gentleman who looked as if he had been 
 shut flat between boards, and been ill set up by a miracle which 
 had not done itself justice. As for Mrs, Orpen, any widow of 
 forty-odd is buxom, until the contrary is stated; and this need 
 not be done, in her case. Neither need corpulence be ascribed 
 to her. She was the very person you would have jumped at for 
 a housekeeper, had she come to enquire about your place. Fred's 
 mental note about her was that she was exactly like his recol- 
 lections of her nine years ago when he said farewell to the 
 school and schoolbojdiood. To his dissatisfaction, she made this 
 same remark about him before he had arranged a way of saying 
 it to her without personality. He resented it as patronising, but 
 was unable to protest. There is a flavour of Olympus in the 
 personnel of all our schools, even its matrons, which no late- 
 acquired maturity on our part can ignore. Fred felt helpless, 
 and junior, in the presence of Mother Orpy Porpy, as she was 
 called in his time, and would have felt more so if during the 
 last year of his pupilage he had not been a, sixth-form boy. 
 That just saved his dignity. 
 
 On the other hand, nothing could exceed his contempt for the 
 pallid gentleman, who had come in at the school since his time; 
 taking the place of a truly great creature, who had accepted the 
 headship of a collegiate institution, in Canada. Both were 
 mathematicians, certainly, and both high wranglers. But the 
 fact that old Skinner Street — the name by which Mr. Stilling- 
 fleet, the Canadian, had been known to the boys of Fred's day 
 — was two places lower in the Tripos than this flat man, Threep- 
 well, was as nothing against the fact that Fred had studied 
 geometry and algebra under the auspices of the former. That 
 is what had made him great in Fred's eyes, and that is what 
 makes all the instructors of our own youth great in ours. They 
 have instructed Us — or have failed in the attempt, as may be. 
 Anyhow, Fred almost ignored Mr. Threepwell. To be sure, his 
 upper front' teeth stuck out like tusks, and that may have had 
 something to do with it. 
 
 Fred came in on a conversation conducted in undertones. For 
 the shadow of the cause of this visit hung heavy over it.
 
 112 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Go on, please," said his mother to Mrs. Orpen, when his 
 incoming had subsided. " Where you left off, you know. You 
 were just saying he had spoken of coming back on the Saturday 
 when he came up to town a week before." 
 
 " He did so. And he was most emphatic I should forward 
 no letters after the last post on Thursday. Last Easter a letter 
 was delayed till a late delivery on Saturday, and did not reach 
 the Doctor till Monday afternoon. He was wishful to guard 
 against such a thing happening again. His very last words to 
 me were: — 'Remember, Mrs. Orpen! Nothing after the last 
 post on Thursday this time ! ' " 
 
 Could anything be more prohibitive of theories based on a 
 supposition that the Doctor had changed his destination at the 
 last moment? As though she were aware that such theories were 
 afloat, Mrs. Orpen added : — " And besides, there was his letter to 
 me on the Saturday saying to have a chop ready." 
 
 Mr. Threepwell had something to say, apparently, and in 
 answer to Mrs. Orpen's : " Yes — read your letter," produced one, 
 evidently in the Doctor's handwriting, and read the passage: — 
 " ' I am sorry to be unable to get back earlier on Saturday, and 
 must leave the arrangements to you.' That only refers to some 
 small matters I wanted him to discuss with me. This is the im- 
 portant part . . . h'm — h'm : — ' I have promised to look over 
 a house my nephew wishes to take, and shall have no oppor- 
 tunity except on Saturday afternoon. It will make me late.' " 
 
 " Go on reading," said Mrs. Orpen. For the gentleman was 
 folding up the letter to put it in his pocket. 
 
 " I doubt Dr. Carteret having intended that what follows 
 should be read to ... to his family." 
 
 " Now you must read it, having said that, or what will Mrs. 
 Carteret and her son think ? " 
 
 Both agreed to this, conjointly. And Mrs. Carteret observed 
 that she was sure her brother-in-law would never have Avritten 
 anything about his family that he would not have said. " I 
 assure you," said she, " that my poor brother was not in the habit 
 of softening things to spare his hearers. He was always most 
 plain-spoken. Pray read all he said about us." It was pain- 
 fully noticeable that she alone spoke of the vanished man as 
 if he must be dead; one quite passed away, though not to be for- 
 gotten. She had made up her mind, that was all. ' 
 
 " You have the right to decide this point, and it is not for 
 me to dispute it." The flattened gentleman did not say these 
 words, but his bowed acquiescence as good as said them. He
 
 TPIE OLD MADHOUSE 113 
 
 reopened the letter, and went on reading : — " ' Will make me 
 late. Probably it is so much time wasted, as my nephew is an 
 unstable youth, quite as likely to fall in love with a new sweet- 
 heart as a new invention. But a promise is a promise, and I 
 must go and see this place. However, you may rely on finding 
 me at home the next day, if you do not object to talking business 
 on Sundays.' You will observe," said Mr. Threepwell, who had 
 read tlie passage he had wished to omit with an air of stony 
 protest, to disclaim responsibility for it, " that Dr. Carteret 
 makes a distinct appointment with me for Sunday." He waited 
 for answer or comment — so Fred thought — exactly as he would 
 have waited for a questioned boy to reply in a viva-voce exam- 
 ination. An incessant schoolmaster carries the marks of his 
 daily employment about with him almost more than any other 
 man. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret said in an undertone, for her son's ear only : — 
 "You see how it is?" meaning that this letter almost put an 
 end to speculations such as his had been. He, at odds with its 
 reference to himself, asked: — "About my instability?" Tc . 
 which his mother rejoined : — " iSTo, silly boy ! " with a shade of 
 impatience. Then no one spoke. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret broke the silence. " Do not let us have any 
 false hopes," she said. " You need not wonder that I can bear 
 to speak of the terrible truth. My brother-in-law is dead — yes^ 
 murdered. We shall all have to think so before long, and I 
 have been convinced of it for weeks. It is a hideous thought 
 and a dreadful word to say. But what do we gain by keeping 
 our eyes shut; each of us pretending not to see, to keep up a 
 false courage in others? Let us look the fact in the face, that 
 there is no way but one of accounting for his disappearance." 
 She spoke, to all seeming, with a perfect self-command, but 
 her face had gone ashy white, and the hand on which Fred laid 
 his own, in something of mute remonstrance, was cold. 
 
 He found his voice to exclaim : — " Mother — Mother — do not — 
 do not . . . ! " and lost it again with his speech unspoken. 
 
 " Yes, my boy ! Do not what? " 
 
 " Do not give way to ... I mean do not let yourself be- 
 lieve anything so horrible, without proof. Remember that we 
 have not a particle of proof." 
 
 " What proof have we got of anything else ? " 
 
 On an ordinary subject, and at any ordinary time, Fred would 
 have been pat enough with the vernacular speech usage has 
 bestowed on us. He would have told his mother this was " femi-
 
 114 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 nine reasoning." As it was, his answer was approximately sane, 
 under stress of the occasion. " None whatever, dearest Mother," 
 said he. " But why form a belief at all, when we know nothing 
 — absolutely nothing ? " 
 
 Mrs. Carteret said quietly : — " Beliefs form themselves, if 
 nothing comes to check them." 
 
 Mrs. Orpen had a vague sense that this lady's belief that her 
 relative had been murdered was somehow impious; but, to do 
 her justice, she made no attempt to substantiate this impression. 
 There was, however, a sound of protest, as of one scandalised, in 
 her voice : and a shade more colour in her face, as she said : — 
 '' Well — / shall go on hoping for one." 
 
 ]\Irs. Carteret's reply was : — " Thank you ! " which sounded a 
 little odd to her son. Probably it meant : — " I am grateful to 
 others who keep hope alive. I can do nothing to that end 
 myself." 
 
 He changed the conversation — made the school its topic. An 
 old scholar always finds plenty of questions to ask about his 
 school, and there was nothing to be gained by mere aimless 
 speculations about the fate of the headmaster, especially in 
 view of Mrs. Carteret's confession of despair. She remained 
 silent, and the same hush and undertone continued to haunt the 
 speech of the others, as though the depression of the cause of 
 their meeting was too heavy to shake off. This was so marked 
 that even when they discussed the snapshot of the Doctor de- 
 scending on the fighting schoolboys, Fred did not dare to refer 
 to the detective's comment upon it. The trenchant attitude of 
 the minute pugilist, sparring up to a stupid boy half as big 
 again as himself, was not a thing to discuss without a smile; 
 and smiles, then and there, were things of the past or the future. 
 The shadow of the terrible present was over. all. 
 
 Can anyone, who has not experienced the anxiety occasioned 
 by the unaccountable disappearance of a friend — even of one who 
 has not been an object of vital solicitude — be fully alive to the 
 pain and stress of life it occasions? Some wdio have had this 
 experience, ending in discovery of a corpse long dead — in some 
 cleft rock on a desert coast, or bleak moorland solitude, where it 
 has lain unknown till almost past recognition — have spoken of 
 this revelation of death as a gain, as a release from tension 
 almost too great to be borne. The worst is for those who never 
 know, who are doomed to a lifelong doubt. Death is a thing 
 to be resigned about; for we have—have we not? — the consola-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 115 
 
 tions of Eeligion ? Or, should we say — of a choice of Religions, 
 one apiece? We know — or if we don't we ought to — that the 
 dead are in the hands of God, while we are still shifting for our- 
 selves; " on our cwn," as speech goes nowadays. Or, if not that 
 yet-a-while, that they are reposing beneath the sod, happily un- 
 conscious of the coming Resurrection, with its embarrassing re- 
 distributions of matter laid claim to by a throng of its former 
 possessors. Or if not that either, that they are Ee-incarnate, or 
 have 'joined the Choir Invisible, or — Well, something satisfac- 
 tory anyhow ! But — the man who has vanished ! What of him? 
 Asic yourself — would you not rather know that he is dead ? 
 
 Mrs. Carteret believed her brother-in-law dead. How she had 
 acquired such a fixed idea, without a particle of evidence to go 
 on either way, Heaven only knew ! Probably she could scarcely 
 be said to have known herself. It was no doubt that bias of 
 the mind her own words had just now hinted at, the growth of 
 belief on the line of least resistance. Fred, on the other hand, 
 was fighting against this bias because he had made up his mind 
 not to give up hope ; and the sappers and miners of despair were 
 getting — day by day, hour by hour, — nearer to the fortress he 
 was refusing to surrender. His was really the more painful 
 position of the two, subject of course to allowance for the differ- 
 ence between their relationship. The Doctor was, after all, only 
 Fred's uncle. Think what an old memory he was to his mother 
 — what a friend he had been to her from her girlhood on- 
 wards ! 
 
 The visit of the matron and the edge-faced Mr. Threepwell 
 came to an end, the necessity to catch a train being rather wel- 
 come than otherwise. Mrs. Carteret was white, depressed, and 
 silent; leaving comment on her visitors to her son, if he chose 
 to make it. 
 
 " Can't congratulate the school on its new second master," 
 said he, feeling that any indifferent topic might relieve the ten- 
 sion of the position. He thought at first his mother was not 
 going to answer. 
 
 But she did in the end, saying wearily : — " You don't like 
 him? Why?" 
 
 " Chop-jawed idiot ! " said Fred, using language rather at 
 random. " Besides, he wants to build domiciles over half the 
 playing field. He as good as said so. You heard him." 
 
 " I think he did say something about it." She spoke very 
 absently, and was turning the leaves of a book, evidently without 
 reading it.
 
 116 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 '' I wonder Uncle Dru should ..." Fred stopped. Was he 
 to say ''should take" or '"should have taken"? That was his 
 choice. 
 
 " Should what? " She still spoke in the same absent manner. 
 
 Fred tried another way. " I wonder at Uncle Dru taking such 
 a miserable idiot into his confidence." 
 
 " Did he take him into his confidence? " 
 
 " Well— you heard his letter." 
 
 " I was not listening very closely. Could you remember the 
 words ? " 
 
 " Not word for word. But the sense was — that he thought I 
 might change my mind ..." 
 
 " I don't think," his mother replied after a pause, " that your 
 uncle looked upon it as more than a chance remark, that he 
 might have made to anybody. It makes me think of something 
 he once said to me, about young people's love-affairs and 
 marriages." 
 
 " What was that? " Fred seemed vitally interested. 
 
 " ' Xever believe in a marriage till you see the couple coming 
 away from the altar.' " 
 
 "What did he mean by that?" 
 
 " Xothing but that there is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the 
 lip. We all think so, and say so. It is little more than a 
 truism." 
 
 Had it not been for the terrible uncertainty whether he would 
 ever hear his uncle's voice again, Fred's answer to this would 
 have been an angry protest. As it was, he choked back a resent- 
 ment he would probably not have felt had his confidence in his 
 love for Cintra been wrought of oak and triple brass, and merely 
 answered, with an uneasy laugh : — " I shall tell Cit he said that, 
 when I Gee her on Sunday." 
 
 " Why not ? " said his mother. And indeed there seemed no 
 reason why two affianced lovers, strong in the certainty of an 
 imperishable affection, should treat the academical cynicisms of 
 an old bachelor as of any weight. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret seemed to accept this view of the question, only 
 replying: — " Are you going there on Sunday? Then I shall not 
 have you to lunch." 
 
 Fred's conscience glanced reproachfully at him. " Isn't there 
 someone . . ."he began. 
 
 " Who would come and keep me company ? " She completed 
 his question for him. " Xo — I would sooner be alone. 1 can- 
 not talk to outsiders about it. Never mind me ! I shall do."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 117 
 
 Fred didn't like this. "There's El . . . There's Miss 
 Fraser," said he, changing the designation midway. 
 
 " I should like her. But it isn't fair." 
 
 " What isn't ? " 
 
 " Well — bringing her into such a gloomy atmosj^here." 
 
 " Oh — be blowed ! She'll like it. You've no idea what nuts 
 she is on you. Look here ! — suppose I write a line to Cit, and 
 say she's to come. She'll come, fast enough. Trust her ! " 
 
 " She's a dear girl. Write — yes. But no ungraciousness, 
 please, foolish son of mine ! Say that it will be a real kindness 
 to me." 
 
 " All right ! — I'll say all the things." With which assurance 
 Fred sat down and wrote a really loverlike note to Cintra, on 
 his mettle perhaps after the recent conversation. In order, so 
 to speak, to emphasise the thoroughness of their mutual confi- 
 dence, he referred to his new theory about his uncle's possible 
 revival of a very old love-affair, as being at the bottom of the 
 unsolved mystery. How jolly it would be if it were only that ! 
 But Cintra must be very careful not to say a word about it. He 
 added an effusive message from his mother to the elder sister, 
 inviting her to lunch, and dwelling on the satisfaction it would 
 be to him to think that she would not sufEer by his desertion. 
 
 But neitlier of them referred to the confirmation their recent 
 visitors had brought them, of the settled determination of the 
 missing man to be in his place at the time appointed.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 The Jessamines was looking its best, that fine Sunday morn- 
 ing in spring, when Fred Carteret rang its bell and was told by 
 the servant that Miss Cintra was expecting him in the small 
 parlour. 
 
 The Jessamines' best was always at a disadvantage, owing to 
 the close competition — semi-detached in one case — of near neigh- 
 bours with more or less similar ideals. Inniskillen hadn't got a 
 crenellated turret, like The Jessamines; but it had an elm, which 
 once stood in the fields and didn't know the meaning of the word 
 " suburb," but had been spared by some woodman whose musical 
 associates in youth it had sheltered, and had been built into 
 the parapet of the front garden, whose ornate cast-iron railings 
 longed for each other in vain, on either side of it. Lyndhurst 
 hadn't got three laburnums like The Jessamines, nor a hedge of 
 veronica which often flowered, nor sculpture above an arched 
 gateway you rang at and put your card in the letter-box if nobody 
 came — excuse style ! — nor so many red geraniums all at once. 
 But Lyndhurst had a puzzle-monkey, in which it took a proper 
 pride. So that really none of the villas all down the row could 
 afford to give themselves airs, if you came to that. The story 
 has been led, by the momentary presence of the young lady who 
 opened the gate to Fred, to embody some of her ways of looking 
 at life and her surroundings. 
 
 It may go further, and note that when she said that Miss 
 Cintra was expecting Mr. Carteret in the small parlour, a some- 
 thing of sympathy in her voice, as of one that had a young man 
 herself, carried the implication that ]Miss Cintra was alone, and 
 the small parlour to themselves. Fred could not resent this 
 attitude of sympathy, but he scarcely welcomed it. He saw his 
 position and its publicity, as it were, reflected in the twinkle on 
 Annette's comely face, heard it in the gleeful satisfaction of her 
 voice, in the honeyed tones that announced that he was Mr. 
 Carteret, Miss; and felt that he could lend himself to any ar- 
 rangement by which he and his fiancee could have their seventh 
 Heaven of bliss to themselves, free from either the derision or 
 sympathy of the outside world. 
 
 118
 
 THE OLD MADPIOUSE 119 
 
 Cintra, visible and tangible, ^vas an antidote to his morbid 
 introvisions, which he felt at a loss to account for. "\ATiy should 
 not his meeting with his love be replete with the joyousness of 
 their old thoughtless happy time before this horrible nightmare 
 Avas sprung upon them? For he laid it all to that. If the 
 thought entered his mind that any other malign influence had 
 crossed his love for Cintra, he simply felt exasperated with it 
 and drove it out. He hnew he was master of himself. ^Vlly — 
 see ! Could he not — calmly, mind you ! — make comparison be- 
 tween this rounded face and mass of soft brown hair, these 
 reasonable everyday eyes with nothing telling or dramatic about 
 them, nor anything unusual in the way of lash and lid; and, 
 " for instance " — mark that " for instance," please ! — any other 
 girl's face he had seen of late? He could, and could decide to 
 love this round face better than that oval one; this sufficiency 
 of brown hair better than that superfluity of black; these honest 
 English eyes — his inner soul used both epithets — rrather than 
 the witchery of those dark orbs which owed so much to the 
 veined lids and long soft lashes that shaded them. He even 
 went so far as to decide that his lot, compared with his friend 
 Charley's, was enviable ; much safer, at any rate. Was Charley, 
 after all, safe to trust his heart in the keeping of a girl of that 
 sort? He felt better, stronger in his own position, after a con- 
 sciousness of solicitude for his friend's welfare. 
 
 He managed all these thoughts — it is wonderful how quick 
 thoughts can be managed ! — during a first embrace of greeting 
 which helped him to their conclusion quicker than any logic. 
 A good long kiss carries more conviction to the soul than any 
 logic that ever was chopped. It is the bumper of good liquor; 
 and Ethics, Law, and Theology are the Justice, Judge, and Vicar. 
 This lover and his lass were quite happy, for the moment, seated 
 on the sofa in the little parlour at The Jessamines, slowing down 
 to everyday life after the raptures of reunion following a week 
 or so without an interview. 
 
 "Well, Fred darling! — and what's your news? Good, I 
 hope ? " She waited, anxiously. 
 
 Fred shook his head, slowly at first, to express reluctance to 
 tell it; then more quickly to accentuate its trustworthiness. 
 " I'm afraid — bad ! " said he. " No sign of him." He ran 
 through the events of the last few days — told what had been 
 done, and what was still to do, exaggerating possibilities of 
 hope in the latter. 
 
 " What a horrible thing ! " said Cintra. She said it twice,
 
 120 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 making more of the adjective the second time. It may be she 
 had never till now grasped the full honor of the thing. 
 
 " What's a horrible thing ? " said the Professor, coming in 
 without ceremony. " Oh — it's our great inventor, ^^^lat's the 
 latest patent, Master Fred? " This was his invariable style, and 
 Fred had to accept it with a cordial shake of the hand as a set- 
 off. He continued, re-asking his first question with a very slight 
 concession of manner, amounting to an admission that one of his 
 daughters might actually utter a sane word : — " And what is the 
 horrible thing — eh?" 
 
 "There seems to be no doubt ..." Cintra was beginning, 
 but Fred cut her short, with : — " We cannot get any news of my 
 uncle — you know he has been missing? . . . Well, we have not 
 had any news of him." This was in answer to a deprecatory : — 
 " H'm — surely . . .!" from the Professor, who was looking 
 serious. 
 
 A second report was necessary, which Fred went through 
 patiently enough. The Professor listened, with an analytical 
 countenance ; checking off the progress of the narrative at stages, 
 and twice calling out to a complaining noise outside : — " Yes — 
 I'm coming ! " It was the obnoxious stepmother, who was in- 
 festing the entrance-hall with a view of being taken for a short 
 walk, while the sun was out, by her devoted better half. Terror 
 crossed Fred's mind when she intruded meekly, just as he was 
 winding up, lest he should have to tell it all over again; espe- 
 cially as the Professor said : — " Come in — you must hear this, 
 my love ! " But he was spared this by a curious astronomical 
 fact, new to him but known to this excellent lady, that the sun 
 would not stop out unless they went at once. This caused the 
 Professor to fly, firing Parthian expressions of sympathy and 
 concern at the news he had just heard. She herself came in to 
 shake hands with Mr. Carteret, and to say meekly that she was 
 afraid she could not stop to hear now, but she should see him 
 at lunch. Then the street door closed on them, and the garden 
 gate confirmed their departure, and Fred breathed free. 
 
 But only for a moment, for an instant later a large hairy dog 
 stormed into the apartment, causing Cintra to say : — " Oh — you 
 darling dog, they've left you behind," and to direct her lover to 
 go out and open the garden gate and whistle for him and he 
 would run out. This was avoided, because the brother, whose 
 name was Eric, appeared suddenly from nowhere, saying 
 sternly : — " Ajax is not to go out, because he's been washed, 
 and is not to get dirty again till he's dry. How-de-do ! I say.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 121 
 
 when two magnets won't stick together, is that because of the 
 poles?" Fred explained that whatever happened in Science, it 
 did not become the enquirer to repine, as it would probably turn 
 out that it was governed by Law. Eric felt enlightened, and 
 took Ajax away, by request. 
 
 Then peace reigned, and Fred and Cintra occupied the sofa, 
 as before. There was a topic he wished to approach, not con- 
 nected with the cloud that was keeping the days dark for him; 
 but it was a delicate topic, and he feared to burn his fingers with 
 it— hoped in fact that Cintra would be the first to allude to it. 
 Eemember that they had not met since the luncheon at Maida 
 Vale, which had been organised expressly to bring the two 
 fiancees together ! Cintra had written more than one letter since 
 then — more than two — and yet had never made mention of the 
 other bride-elect, except in the most general terms. 
 
 She nevertheless was keenly curious to know something of 
 liow this wife that was to be Fred's friend presented herself 
 to him. For was not a scheme afoot for domiciling them, if not 
 actually in the same house, at least as next-door neighbours? 
 And that too neighbours in a single large house, arbitrarily split 
 into two small ones. Fred would be sure to talk about her. He 
 was bound to do so in the end. She was not bound to inaugurate 
 that topic, so kept silence about this Miss Lucy Hinchlitfe. 
 
 Perhaps it was anxiety to approach the dangerous ground 
 that made Fred unresponsive to her first bars of their duet. 
 
 " You'll have to keep your eyes open, Fred dearest," said she, 
 " with Steppy Weppy, or she'll be down on you Avith her 
 Nicholls. Mind you don't give her a chance, or she'll take it ! " 
 
 Fred knew that Steppy Weppy was a derisive name for the 
 stepmother, but Nicholls was new to him. "With her ivliat?" 
 he asked. 
 
 • " With her Nicholls. Her Emma C. Nicholls. She's a cJair- 
 voyante. Whenever Steppy Weppy goes up to town, she goes to 
 see her." 
 
 " But what about her? How does she come in? " 
 
 " You foolish young man, don't you see that she'll want you 
 to consult her about ..." 
 
 " About Uncle Dru ? Well, let her want ! I won't consult 
 ariy Miss Nichollses. She may consult her herself, if she 
 likes." 
 
 " She'll trot her out at lunch. You see if she doesn't." 
 
 " How does she hit it off with your governor, about her Miss 
 NichoUs?"
 
 122 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " They agree to differ. She says he's a hardened sceptic."' 
 
 " What does he say ? " 
 
 " Says he doesn't mind being called a sceptic, as long as he 
 isn't spelt with a K, like in America." 
 
 " The Greeks would have spelt him with a K, and they knew 
 something about their own language. I'm not sure Uncle Sam 
 isn't right, for once." 
 
 " I don't see that it matters. Anyhow, papa flatly refuses to 
 believe in Miss NichoUs till she telJs him the number of a bank- 
 note in a sealed envelope. He's to put it there, you 
 know." 
 
 " Of course ! I understand that." 
 
 " I tell papa that's no use at all. She's sure to be able to do 
 that by conjuring." 
 
 " Most likely. These things are easy when you know how." 
 Fred spoke with a tranquil conviction. Was he not giving ex- 
 pression to a creed that will outlive all other creeds, faith in the 
 omnipotence of our Maskelynes and Cookes? Besides, he felt 
 correct, as the words passed his lips. Moreover, his mind was 
 harking back to a conversation elsewhere, in which this vexed 
 question of clairvoyance had been discussed. Could he not refer 
 to this conversation? Why hesitate? He was angry with him- 
 self for doing so — then indignant at his own anger. Why should 
 hairs be split over so simple a matter? He could disperse such 
 questionings by speaking boldly of it. But he had to admit to 
 himself that there were obstacles, and he ended by the mistake 
 of speaking timidly. " However, I must admit I was told some 
 very curious things by . . . by a young lady I was talking to 
 — a — the other day." 
 
 "Who was she?" Cintra drawled or lengthened this out, to 
 express that, whoever she was, she was of less importance than 
 the absence of a coal-scuttle, just noticed. She rang the bell' 
 for a domestic, producing Annette, who was told to tell Jane she 
 had forgotten the coals. \Yhen Jane had subsided, Cintra harked 
 back. Who was this young lady? She could pay attention to 
 her now that all that coal-fussing was over. 
 
 Fred had half an idea of inventing another young lady to do 
 instead of Miss Lucy Hinchliffe; for it was she whom his tongue 
 faltered over. That was cowardice. Besides, Miss Hinchliffe 
 would have to be brought up for discussion in the end. " The 
 young lady ? " he said, pretending he had forgotten her. " Oh — 
 about the clairvoyance! Yes — that was Lucy Hinchliffe. She 
 told me some very odd things — very odd things indeed! — hap-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 123 
 
 pened to herself." He did not look round at Cintra as he spoke. 
 If he had, he would have met suspicion in the two eyes that 
 turned suddenly on him. 
 
 As it was, he only heard it in her voice. " And did you believe 
 the very odd things ? " said she drily. 
 
 " Why — did you think she looked like a liar ? " 
 
 " I don't think anything about her." 
 
 Fred glanced up furtively. There was no doubt about it. 
 The young lady's face was paler than when he looked last, and 
 she was playing an uneasy tune with the fingers of her left hand 
 on the sofa-cushion. She was looking at these fingers, not at 
 him. 
 
 Now this appeared to him entirely unreasonable. After all, 
 whatever impression Miss Hinchliffe had produced on him, it 
 was known only to himself. Official knowledge of this shade of 
 sentiment — which, by the way, he denied the existence of — was 
 simply impossible. Not only did no such feeling exist, but he 
 was absolutely certain he had never shown it. That describes the 
 paradox of his mental attitude to a nicety. 
 
 " Cintra ! " said he in a half -remonstrating tone — not a strong 
 one. Then he didn't see his way, and said weakly: — "I 
 say ..." and stopped. 
 
 " What do you say, Fred ? " 
 
 " I mean — you mustn't think, you know . . . You mustn't 
 faijcy ..." 
 
 " I'm not fancying anything." 
 
 " Well — look at what you said ! " 
 
 " What did I say ? " This question was fraught with embar- 
 rassment to Fred, who on reilection was unable to remember that 
 the girl had said anything at all. 
 
 He could not evade answering somehow, and nothing presented 
 itself but a sudden candour. " I see you hate Lucy Hinchliffe," 
 said he. "But — what for?" 
 
 " I never said I hated Miss Hinchliffe. I hardly know her. 
 I only said that I didn't know anything about her." 
 
 " But you know what that meant ! " 
 
 "What did it mean?" 
 
 Fred felt his position bettered. " It meant," said he, " that 
 you have taken a perfectly unwarrantable dislike to this young 
 lady, who really is — " here Fred assumed a man-of-the-world air, 
 implying unlimited possibilities of critical admiration of Woman, 
 quite free from the trammels of passion — " who really is a very 
 superior young woman. I assure you, my dearest girl, that when
 
 124 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 YOU come to know her you will be one of the first to acknowl- 
 edge ..." 
 
 " Go on! Talk like a book." 
 
 " Perhaps I had better go ! " 
 
 " Yes — go away to your Miss Lucy Hinchliffe." Cintra had 
 risen from the sofa ; and, leaving her lover sole occupant, was 
 making a pretence of looking out of a window. 
 
 This was getting serious. Fred also rose, and stood wavering, 
 with a consciousness on him of the door he had been told to go 
 out at. He had not the slightest intention of availing himself 
 of it, but he felt that it had been, so to speak, mooted, and that 
 its white china handle was aggressively in evidence. 
 
 Now it happened, fortunately for the resolution of this dis- 
 cord, that the three-quarter back view of Miss Cintra Fraser was 
 one of lier strongest points. It laid stress upon the mass of 
 warm sunny brown hair which as good as said : — "' Thick as I am, 
 I am tight-packed, and all real ! " and the soft whiteness of the 
 neck below it which had equally said : — " Kiss me ! " since it was 
 a baby's ; and had added : — " Provided you are a near relative," 
 since the owner became a person. It laid stress also on the 
 rounded flow of a mere morning garment, that but the other day 
 was nineteen and elevenpence-three-farthings, a bargain, in a 
 plate glass den filled with motionless loveliness, sometimes end- 
 ing in a point. There is room for a good-sized volume on the 
 influence of skirts. 
 
 Anyhow, it had its way, this particular aspect of a too sus- 
 picious young lady, who to tell the truth was also wilful and 
 rather spoiled. Her lover, instead of going away, as bidden, to 
 his Miss Lucy Hinchliffe, approximated naturally to his regis- 
 tered fancee, and got his arm round her waist without more than 
 a shrinklet of protest on her part. " Cintra dearest," he mur- 
 mured. "Do tell me what all the row is about !" 
 
 " Well — you know you hadn't any eyes for anybody else, all 
 through lunch." 
 
 " Why — of course she's a jolly pretty girl, and all that sort 
 of thing. But one has to be civil, you know, when . . . Well — 
 consider ! — it was her first visit at my mother's house, and she's 
 going to marry Charley Snaith." 
 
 '' Oh — it was civUity. I see." Here a slight recrudescence 
 of protest — spinal rigidity in revolt against the encircling arm, 
 which tightened. 
 
 "Cintra! — what else could it be? Besides, you must re- 
 member this — that my mother had been very much upset by this
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 125 
 
 affair of my uncle, and I had only just told her what they said 
 at Scotland Yard. I really was afraid she might not seem sweet 
 enough to her visitor, and Miss Hinchliffe would feel a little — 
 well! — not exactly de trap, don't you know! ..." 
 
 Cintra helped him. "■ Xot being made enough fuss over. I 
 see." 
 
 '•' Well — not exactly that. Xor exactly out in the cold. But 
 vou understand. I felt I was bound to be as agreeable as 
 possible." 
 
 " You did your best." Cintra's manner is chilly, and it is not 
 clear that Fred's last apology — which indeed he had thought of 
 for the first time — had done, him any service. The dissension 
 might easily have recrudesced ; but, as often happens, the fresh 
 air brought in by an incoming third party helped to disperse 
 it. Xancy, or Elbows, in her bicycle things, hurried abruptly 
 into the room, to say good-bye. '* I'm off to your mother's," said 
 she to Fred. " I'm" late." 
 
 " She'll wait for you, any time," was his response. Then the 
 bicyclist departed. But not immediately, for she put her head 
 back into the room, to say: — "1 hope you're not quarrelling?" 
 
 "No — why should we be quarrelling?" Both spoke, frag- 
 mentarily. 
 
 " Because I didn't hear you begin again. Good-bye ! " And 
 off she went, ringing her bell conscientiously along the road, and 
 turning cofners carefully. 
 
 Fred was in no humour for further words about j\Iiss Lucy 
 Hinchliffe, so he postponed reference to the great scheme of 
 The Cedars, which he had been quite full of when he reached 
 The Jessamines. Presumably, the couple " began again " where 
 they had left off before Miss Hinchliffe came into their conver- 
 sation; for when the second luncheon-bell rang they presented 
 themselves in a temperate frame of mind, ready smoothed for 
 Society, and accepting outsiders with rapture, however cordially 
 they wished them somewhere else. 
 
 They may have felt that the outsiders were welcome, as that 
 class of persons draws a veil over family ructions of every sort, 
 and the violence thereof subsides before the veil is removed. Fred 
 felt what one always feels, when one is told, where one is lunch- 
 ing out, that the So-and-so's are coming, whom of course one 
 knows, so there is no need to introduce. He felt that he wished 
 it had been somebody else, newer and more interesting than the 
 Munby Morings. Nevertheless that most respectable couple were 
 good as come-betweens — really the end they served deserves a 
 
 9
 
 126 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 word invented for it — and helped whatever was left of that 
 lovers' tiff of the morning to become a thing of the past. Also, 
 Mrs. IMunby Moring, a very interesting person, would talk to 
 Steppy Weppy about Psychical Research and keep her quiet. 
 Besides, they were very well connected. These last advantages 
 were mentioned by Cintra to Fred, to palliate the Munby 
 Morings, whom he seemed to resent. 
 
 " Bother the Munby Morings ! " said he, rudely. " Anyone 
 else?" And then when he was told that Emily might come in, 
 but she wasn't certain, he made a face expressive of exception 
 taken to Emily. " I know you hate her," said Cintra, "■ but 
 you'll have to put up with her this once." 
 
 Fred said : — " Then if you put me next her at lunch, she must 
 be on my right, so that 1 may not see the mole." Cintra 
 promised to attend to this, but only just in time. For Annette 
 the parlour maid threw the door open all its width as if to admit 
 a van, and said " Miss Skinner " with decision. Miss Skinner, 
 who was also Emily, could have come through a door ajar, as 
 far as width went. 
 
 She submitted the cheek that hadn't the mole to Cintra, for 
 pecking ; saying considerately : — " Don't kiss me in front, dear, 
 or you'll catch my cold." Because she was an unselfish person, 
 who alwavs thought of others before herself. 
 
 " I was afraid you wouldn't be able to get away," said Cintra. 
 
 Then another knock proved to be the Munby Morings. The 
 female one was ample, fully justifying the open door. But her 
 hat, an ill-considered hat, of the sort that was likened to a pork- 
 pie some years ago, was held to one side of her head like a 
 limpet, or the cap of the military in days of yore. Now Miss 
 Skinner's hat, being as it were her only cnance for horizontal 
 expansion, was a Gainsborough hat with a feather, like in a 
 portrait. It is impossible to avoid reference to these hats, as 
 they had come to lunch, and meant to remain on at table. 
 
 Mr. Munby Moring was a thin grey short-sighted man whose 
 collars held his chin up. It did not do to speak to him suddenly, 
 because then he lost his eyeglasses, and had to find them before 
 he answered you. His name, over and above the two already 
 given, was Octavius, and he was spoken of thus behind his back 
 by friends, in recognition of its use by his wife. It was, however, 
 no fault of hers that he had no convenient abbreviation. How 
 could the wife of a Government official — that is what he was — 
 speak of him as either Ocky or Tavy? And what other choice 
 was there?
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 127 
 
 " So sorry ! " said the Professor, coming in late ; but antici- 
 pating his wife, who was later still. " Mrs. Fraser was unwill- 
 ing to lose the sun ... Oh no — no indeed ! — we didn't hurry 
 back. Indeed, the sun began going in. So we came in." The 
 ninety millions of miles off, which popular Astronomy regards 
 as a feather in the cap of Phoebus, were interposed between him 
 and Gipsy Hill in vain. He was treated like any other neigh- 
 bour. And yet Cintra's father was Professor of Applied Physics 
 at his College. 
 
 A few moments of consciousness that lunch was lying in wait 
 for its victims in an adjoining room — for at The Jessamines all 
 the rooms but the breakfast-room were on a level — elapsed before 
 the lady of the house appeared. Then everyone affected a de- 
 light that nothing in the circumstances accounted for, talked at 
 the same time, didn't wait for anyone else to finish speaking, 
 and laughed gaily without provocation^ In short, it was like 
 when there's company. Because there was company. 
 
 Fred, for his part, would have been much better pleased if 
 there had been no company. He would have been well content 
 to chat with the Professor alone about the nightmare that was 
 haunting his life and his mother's ; for he really thought his 
 intended father-in-law a sensible man, though he disagreed with 
 him generally about Dynamics and Physical Science. He was 
 feeling about in the dark for someone of the everyday sensible 
 type, with a good digestion and no nerve to speak of, to pooh- 
 pooh his alarms and predict the sudden reappearance of his 
 uncle in the best of health and spirits, greatly surprised that his 
 letter explaining — for instance — his sudden departure for ISTova 
 Scotia had never reached the school or his family. His future 
 father-in-law would have been just the man. And not only was 
 he deprived of this possible anodyne, but he was destined to 
 suffer at the hands of the company, or at least the male part of it. 
 For when the ladies had retired, that the gentlemen might 
 smoke, Mr. Munby Moring, who had very soon cast aside the 
 mask of hollow cheerfulness which one owes to Society, and 
 devoted himself to eating too much, roused himself from a torpor 
 which was due to Sunday joint, and said to Fred : — " Carteret. 
 C.A.E.T.E.R.E.T. . . . That your name? Any relation 
 to man in newspaper — Daily Telegraph, yes'dy morning — man 
 disappeared. Headmaster big school out near Exeter? . . . 
 Oh — beg pardon! — no idea ! ..." For Fred had replied that 
 the subject of this newspaper notice, which he had not seen, was 
 his uncle.
 
 128 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 This was discomposing; but as the offender had the sense to 
 make no serious attempts to extenuate his blunder, it was easy 
 to pretend that it wasn't. Apologies would have been fatal. In 
 fact, it would have been better not to add even : — " Beg pardon ! 
 Stoopid of me ! Ought to have known." He had broken his 
 molasses jug. 
 
 The Professor ignored it ; walked round the spill, so to speak. 
 " The Engine ! " he exclaimed suddenly and irrelevantly. 
 " How's the Non-Vibrating Duplex ? " Then he proceeded to 
 explain the principle, and Mr. Munby Moring was only too glad 
 to pretend he understood him, to distract attention from the 
 molasses. 
 
 " A . . .Oh yes ! I understand," said that gentleman, 
 when the Professor paused. " Vibration and Friction prac- 
 tically same thing ! V'course, of course. Quite understand ! 
 Does Mr. Carteret great credit." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said the Professor, anxious to clear his 
 character. " I fear I am not making myself understood. Vi- 
 bration and Friction can scarcely be considered ^precisely the 
 same thing." 
 
 "^ A . . . yes! WTiich is which?" said Mr. Munby Moring. 
 '' 'Fraid not exactly a dab at these matters. Very interestin', 
 ihough." But this was only to extenuate ignorance and make 
 the conversation plausible. Fred was glad that modesty en- 
 joined silence on his part. 
 
 " Friction," said the Professor, " is the resistance offered by 
 the spontaneous adhesion of surfaces in contact. Vibration is 
 the movement of the molecular structure of a solid body due to 
 the elasticity of its particles." 
 
 " I say ! " said the boy Eric, who had been at liberty to have 
 more for lunch than anyone else, because it was his dinner. 
 
 " What do you say, ' Ric ' ? " said the Professor benevolently, 
 as from Olympus. 
 
 "Is it the same in class and out of class?" 
 
 "Is what?" 
 
 " Is vibration? " 
 
 The Professor seemed alive to the necessity for caution in deal- 
 ing with his son. " That depends," said he. " Depends on the 
 preceptor. A certain latitude is permissible to definition when 
 used for educational purposes. Now how does your master, Mr. 
 . . . Mr. . . . What's-his-name . . . ? " 
 
 "Old Scrumpy?" 
 
 "Well — Mr. Crump. How does he define vibration?"
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 129 
 
 " Says it's a property inherent in atmospheres thus Sound is 
 attributable to the vibrations of atmospheric air and Light to 
 the vibrations of sther." Master Erie said this sentence rather 
 as if it had been one long word. 
 
 A\Tiat Mr. j\Ioring was going to say turned out to be : — " Must 
 c'nfess — was under the impression vibration was a sort of jiggle. 
 Comes from next door — gets in the furniture and things. Gets 
 on your nerves. Mrs. Moring couldn't stand it when they set 
 up a gas-engine at the Institution near us. Had to complain. 
 Threatened 'em with my lawyer. That's the best course to p'soo 
 when it's vibration. Just you threaten 'em with your lawyer. 
 That'll shut 'em up ! " It will be seen that Mr. Moring did not 
 look on vibration as a Scientific Phenomenon, but as an indict- 
 able nuisance. He enlarged on the subject. " \Yhen it's music 
 it's no use. There was a f'ler in our Department had bought 
 his house and paid for it, and a girls' school took next door, 
 Practisin' — practisin' all day — I assure you ! Xothin' but prac- 
 tisin', practisin' scales. And he could do nothin' ! ... Oh 
 yes! — he took 'em into Court, fast enough. But could do 
 nothin'! Had to pay the costs himself. Now, if it had been 
 vibration ! " 
 
 " I say," said Eric, with the animated face of Science when it 
 gets a certainty, " if old Scrumpy's right and the governor's 
 wrong, it ivas vibration. Sound is attributable to the vibrations 
 of atmospheric air and Light to those of aether." 
 
 " We had some of it in a bottle — stoppered bottle," said Mr. 
 Moring. ''"' Mrs. Moring always reminded of Browning by it. 
 Can't say why — all correct, no doubt ! " He looked resignedly at 
 his cigar, and seemed to decide that the ash was not long enough 
 yet. 
 
 " But I say," said Eric. " Look here ! Isn't practising 
 sound?" This was admitted. "Very well, then — there you 
 are! " he added triumphantly. Clearly, if practising was sound, 
 and sound was vibration, practising was vibration, and action- 
 able. 
 
 The Professor, who had retired when Applied Law was intro- 
 duced into Applied Science, was a higher mind looking down on 
 mortals. " I am afraid," said he, sedately, " that an action 
 would hardly lie. We are not sufficiently advanced in Science." 
 
 Eric's candid eyes looked attentively at his father, and per- 
 ceived a fact. " Don't you believe the governor ! " said he, 
 chiefly to Fred. " He's only humbugging. I always know when 
 the governor's humbugging bv the look in his eve." 
 
 O DO O w •■
 
 130 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 The governor laughed, as did his company. " Suppose now," 
 said he to his son, "" you were to go and make some valuable 
 remarks on things in general in the drawing-room ! " 
 
 " All right," said the youth, with perfect serenity. " I'll say 
 you told me to." He left the room, and a sense of grownupness 
 developed in it as he went along the passage whistling. Mr. 
 Moring talked about the crying necessity for more appointments 
 at higher salaries in his Department — the Supertax Department, 
 was it? The story isn't sure. The Professor's attitude was one 
 of welcoming a higher salary for all his friends, and deprecating 
 a rise in everyone else's; this he called retrenchment. He then 
 looked premonitorily at his watch, and said : — " You know my 
 way, gentlemen? Always an experiment going ! It is now three 
 o'clock, and at seven minutes past I have to add a hundred and 
 forty-three grammes of dinitro-methylate of toluol to a solution 
 of potassic bichloride in . . . But I need not trouble you with 
 details. I shall be back before you have finished your cigars." 
 And he fled to attend to what his daughters spoke freely of as 
 " papa's messes." For even the blessed Sabbath was no check 
 upon the continuance of such complications as the one given, 
 probably inaccurately, above. 
 
 The door had hardly closed on him when Mr. Munby Moring 
 embarked on speech as if he had something to say. " Can't tell 
 you how sorry I am, Mr. Carteret, for putting my foot in it 
 as I did just now — awfully sorry." Fred of course made light 
 of the blunder, and was thinking how oblivion could best be 
 developed in the interest of Mr. Moring's conscience, when that 
 gentleman continued remorsefully : — " Awfully sorry, I assure 
 you. But — similar case ! Thought I'd better tell you, because 
 you might like. to know." 
 
 " Eh — what's that ? " said Fred, on the alert in a mo- 
 ment. '' A case of disappearance, within your own knowl- 
 edge ? " 
 
 Mr. Moring disposed of his cigar-ash, now at a daagerous 
 maximum, with the deliberation of a man who knows the value 
 of what his tongue is keeping back, and said after a pause: — 
 "■ My own father. Sir ! Yes — he disappeared for two whole 
 years, and reappeared just where he was last seen. But he could 
 give no account of himself. None whatever ! " 
 
 " But — bless my soul ! " Fred exclaimed, taken aback. " Wliat 
 a very extraordinary story ! " 
 
 " Yes — and perhaps the most extraordinary part of it is, that 
 that is the whole of the story. We have never been a penny the
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 131 
 
 wiser. I mean by ' we/ his family — brothers, sisters, cousins, 
 the whole kit." 
 
 " But — how extraordinary ! . . .Do you mean to 
 say . . .?" 
 
 '' I've really said all there is to say. I'll give you a few 
 details, which I suppose belong. But they are not in any way 
 essential. It was thirty-three years ago, in Rome. I was at 
 college in England, at Oxford . . . Merton, I was. Got a 
 letter from my mother, saying my father had vanished, and she 
 was frantic. He had been seen last at a cafe in the Piazza 
 di Spagna, sitting at a little marble table peacefully smoking. 
 He was a sort of habitue there, well known to the waiters. He 
 said to one of them : — " Bisogna ritoniare in casa. Son infred- 
 dato. You know what that means? " 
 
 " I can go as far as that. He thought he had better go home. 
 He was catching, or had caught cold. Go on! " 
 
 " The man turned his back to give a customer change, and 
 when he turned round, my father's table was empty. No one 
 saw him go. He never went home. And didn't appear again 
 till two years after." 
 
 " And then knew nothing of what had happened ! Well — that 
 is a queer story! Then, you said, he reappeared in the same 
 place ? " 
 
 " In the same place, two years after. Another waiter — not 
 the same man, a new one — saw him at the same table, but had 
 not see him come in. He said: — 'Gaffe nero, Signore? ' and 
 my father said he had had his coffee. Then he said to this waiter 
 exactly the words he had said to the other two years before: — 
 ' Sono infreddato — bisogna andare in casa,' and got up and went 
 home. I was in London that time too — Just got my appoint- 
 ment at our office. But my mother has often told me how the 
 dogs barked when the bell jangled, and she said to my sister — 
 Lady Storrar she is now : — ' What on earth is making Leone 
 bark so?' Of course the dog knew it was the ■padrone back 
 again. They do, somehow." 
 
 Fred assented. "Wasn't it very rum for your mother?" he 
 asked. 
 
 " Well — of course — when she'd had time to recollect." 
 
 " I don't understand." 
 
 " Why — just at first he was so like himself it quite took her 
 in. Fact ! Then he took hold of her dress, and said : — * What's 
 all this black for ? ' Then my sister screamed and went off 
 fainting ! She's not strong."
 
 132 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " But it was such a smasher!" said Fred, feeling this fainting 
 fit was excusable. " What happened then?" 
 
 "Well — you see — I wasn't there! Only, as I understand, it 
 was the dooce's own delight to convince him what had happened. 
 He didn't know he hadn't Just come home two years ago. 1 
 don't know that he ever was projjerly convinced. But these are 
 the facts." 
 
 '•'Your mother was like mine. She persists that my uncle 
 must be dead — won't hear of his being alive." 
 
 "Without positive proof?" 
 
 " Oh — no proof at all, at present. The bare fact that he has 
 not been seen for a month ! I was not in favour of the adver- 
 tisement, but I left it with Scotland Yard — police authorities, 
 you know. 'No doubt they know best." Fred didn't seem quite 
 happy about it thougli. 
 
 Mr. ]\foring seemed to be feeling about for something on his 
 chin, but with his eyes on Fred, and a slightly puzzled wrinkle 
 round them. It became more decisive as he closed his lips tight 
 and apparently pounced on the something and held it. 
 
 " It wasn't an advertisement," said he. " A paragraph." 
 
 "' Well now ! — I wonder who the devil did that ! " said Fred. 
 
 "' Never can tell, when it's the Press," said Mr. ]\Ioring. 
 " You may break your heart over trying to get two lines in 
 that you want jniblished. Wlien you want to keep somethin' 
 out, in it goes of its own accord. . . . However, don't you let 
 your mother fret about this old gentleman. Tell her tlie story 
 I've told you. I shouldn't have raked it up, only for the cir- 
 cumstances. We don't dare to talk of it, because it brings 
 Societies down on us — people with an interest in Phenomena. 
 They want to know whether my father drank. Anyhow, it's 
 true! So don't you go and believe your uncle's dead, till you 
 know it." At which point the Professor came back, and they 
 went into the drawing-room to the ladies. 
 
 Fred felt grateful for any excuse for hoping, and dispersing 
 the cloud upon his mind. He did not believe the story he had 
 just heard — because it was impossible — but he made use of it 
 as a jurymast, to rig up the sails of Hope on; and he meant 
 to pretend he believed it, for his mother's sake. He even recon- 
 structed the narrator a little in imagination, with a view to 
 laying stress on his responsible character and obvious veracity. 
 What did it matter how true or how false the story was, so long 
 as it could be used to shake that obstinate impression of his 
 mother's that his uncle was dead, and dead by foul play? He
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 133 
 
 put it by for the moment, as valueless, per se, with a comforting 
 sense of how he would utilise it, in the near future, as an 
 anodyne to his mother's anxiety. 
 
 He wished he could do the same with that other piece of 
 information Mr. Moring had just given him, about the paragraph 
 in the Daily Telegraph. He could not bring himself to believe 
 that it had got into the newspaper of its own accord. For one 
 thing, it could not write itself — there must have been some 
 penny-a-liner at the bottom of that. It might be that Scotland 
 Yard had chosen this course in preference to inserting the adver- 
 tisement. But why act with such promptitude while deprecating 
 immediate publicity, as Mr. Manton had done? Surely all the 
 gossip and annoyance that might be occasioned by an advertise- 
 ment v/ould be as nothing to what would result from a para- 
 graph, perhaps a conspicuous one, in the one or two pages of a 
 widely circulated journal which its advertisements bury and 
 conceal. For does not the public struggle madly to get at this 
 pith and marrow of the daily Press, and fling aside the reams of 
 misstatements about the qualities and advantages of motor-tyres, 
 corsets, cigarettes, and so forth? May not insertion of a fact in 
 the advertisement columns of a big newspaper be considered 
 almost a sort of transitive way of keeping it secret ; the intransi- 
 tive way being the old-fashioned one of holding one's tongue 
 about it? Anyhow, it seemed incredible that Manton should, 
 without consulting him, resort to an expedient likely to displease 
 relatives infinitely more than the simple official formula they 
 had agreed upon. No ! — some fool or busybody had done that. 
 But who gave him or her the information? It was not likely 
 to be anyone who had an interest in keeping the thing quiet, as 
 for instance those connected with the school, Mrs. Orpen and 
 the chop-jawed senior wrangler, for instance. Whom had he 
 spoken or written to about it — Charley of course excepted — other 
 than Cintra herself? He could think of nobody. Well — there 
 icas, certainly . . . ! However, his imagination did not men- 
 tion her name; but her countenance — eyes, pearly teeth, and all 
 — floated swiftly across the proscenium, and vanished easily. 
 Because Charley, you see, had made himself responsible for her. 
 
 The Munby Morings had departed, and Fred was hoping that 
 Miss Skinner would follow their example, when Cintra dropped 
 an extinguisher over the flame of Hope. Emily had consented 
 to stay, and was apparently going to stay in her hat. Cintra 
 explained aside to Fred that he wasn't to get furious, because 
 poor Emily got away so seldom. As it was, she would have to
 
 134 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 tear home immediately after tea; and was it worth unpinning 
 her hat, and all the plague of pinning it up again, just for such 
 a little time? So Fred had to pretend he was delighted, and 
 really he did it very well, considering. 
 
 Nevertheless he Avished the Gainsborough hat, its feather and 
 its wearer, hadn't stayed. And if they had gone home, he would 
 have been able to go for a short walk with Cintra, or get a quiet 
 talk with her about their future in some quiet corner. Anyhow, 
 he would not have felt that he could retire and look for that 
 paragraph in yesterday's Daily Telegraph, which he thought he 
 identified on a side-table. 
 
 But it wasn't yesterday's, nor any day's Daily Telegraph; only 
 some provincial paper that looked just like it. Whereupon Fred, 
 being thrown off his guard by a question as to what paper he had 
 expected it to be, said he had wanted to find something in 
 yesterday's Daily Telegraph, but it didn't matter. 
 
 Now, unless you are sure there are no obliging people present, 
 the fewer things you ask for the better. Make this a guiding rule 
 of life ! Fred should have recollected, before he admitted his wish 
 to see yesterday's Daily Telegraph, what a very obliging person 
 his fiancee's stepmother was. The moment she overheard it, she 
 was seized with a feverish anxiety to gratify that wish. He con- 
 tinued to protest vainly that it didn't matter in the very least, 
 that it was not of the slightest importance that he should ever 
 see the paragraph he had wanted to hunt up, and finally — in a 
 sort of despair — that he should account it on the whole to his 
 advantage if he never saw another number of the Daily Tele- 
 graph at all. No representation of his own wishes and interests 
 availed to head off the obliging disposition of his hostess, and 
 even a well-meant attempt on Cintra's part to stem it was swept 
 away by the torrent of the good lady's willingness to comply with 
 the wishes of her guest. 
 
 " No, my dear Cintra, don't talk, but go into the hack room 
 and look in the ottoman 7iear the window, and on the left-hand 
 side you will find all the Daily Telegraphs for a fortnight." 
 Cintra went to look, and Fred went to help. The speaker con- 
 tinued, plaintively, addressing Miss Skinner, who was watching 
 viciously for an opportunity to be of use : — " I would go at once 
 myself, only for my leg." She filled in the absence of the searcher 
 with a brief account of her attitude towards the daily Press. " I 
 never alloAV a newspaper less than a fortnight old to be destroyed 
 in this house. Then and not before, they may have them for 
 the kitchen. They are all kept, even the advertisements and the
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 135 
 
 City articles. Professor Fraser is Method Itself, and I need not 
 say his wish is my law." 
 
 Fred kept his counsel about the paragraph he wanted to find 
 in the Daily Telegraph, and was glad he had done so when he 
 found it. For it was this : — " Mysterious Disappearance — Friends 
 and admirers of the well-known and much-beloved headmaster of 
 Vexton Stultifer School will be concerned to hear that fears are 
 entertained for his personal safet3^ It appears that he has not 
 been seen since the thirteenth of last month, the Saturday pre- 
 vious to the Monday on which that ancient and celebrated 
 scholastic establishment reopened its doors after the Easter 
 holiday. On the afternoon of that day he left the house of 
 his sister-in-law, a widow lady residing at Maida Vale, intending 
 to return to the school without, delay, according to his invariable 
 practice at the beginning of every term. It seems that he shared 
 the objection so many religious persons, however liberal, still feel 
 about Sunday travelling." Fred felt very indignant at this 
 absurdity, knowing that his uncle's reason for wishing to return 
 on the Saturday was that he might have the Sunday undisturbed 
 for correspondence. He went on reading : — " However this may 
 be, it is certain that he left Wimbledon station by the five p.m. 
 for Exeter, having in the interim transacted some business in the 
 neighbourhood, on account of which he had preferred to join his 
 train at Wimbledon rather than to start as usual from Waterloo, 
 It is practically certain that he did not arrive at Exeter, where 
 he was personally known, and where his familiar and command- 
 ing figure could not possibly, in the opinion of the railway staff, 
 have escaped observation. Conjectures are afoot that he may 
 have been inveigled from the train between Wimbledon and 
 Exeter, but these theories do not find favour with those who 
 knew the resolute and shrewd character of the missing gentle- 
 man. On enquiry at Scotland Yard, our messenger found the 
 police officials very reticent on the subject, but we understand 
 that they are in possession of a clue, of which no doubt every 
 advantage will be taken." 
 
 Fred had remained in the back drawing-room to read this, 
 and Cintra had rejoined her friend in the front one. As he sat 
 on the ottoman in the window reading the foregoing, his indig- 
 nation at its impertinence did not prevent one of his ears hear- 
 ing the Gainsborough hat's frequent reference to " him and her " 
 — some extraneous him and her — in a narrative clearly full of 
 dramatic interest, judged by Cintra's reception of it. He was 
 conscious — or rather, convinced — that the reason her obliging
 
 136 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 stepmother was silent was because she was leaning back in her 
 armchair for barely three minutes with her eyes closed. It did 
 her so much good that sometimes you would not have known lier 
 for the same person. Outside on the landing he could hear the 
 Professor, returning from a second collision with dinitro-methy- 
 late of tuluol, or something equally disastrous, in a colloquy Avith 
 his youngest son, whose loquacity was excessive. It was the sort 
 of time when he was allowed down from the nursery, and on 
 these occasions it was impossible to hear yourself speak for him. 
 The story is availing itself of the methods of speech of its 
 informants. 
 
 The stepmother woke with a start just as Fred was about to dis- 
 turb Miss Skinner's narrative with an enquiry about that number 
 of the Daily Telegraph. Oh dear— she had been asleep! Then 
 she became aware that he was asking if the number was wanted, 
 or might he cut something out of it? iShe was immediately 
 seized with a desire to supply a tool for the purpose. Cintra 
 must forthwith look in the side-drawer of her writing-table, and 
 be very careful to pull only the right-hand knob, because the left 
 one came out. There she would find, palpable to the naked 
 eye, her pair of scissors with the real morocco leather on the 
 handles. These might be used, only carefully, to cut out a para- 
 graph from a newspaper, even the Daily Telegraph. Fred vainly 
 endeavoured to evade these scissors, representing that his pocket- 
 knife was especially suited for the cutting of paragraphs out of 
 daily papers. Had the excellent lady been Atropos herself, and 
 the loan of the accursed shears been in question, it would not 
 have been more difficult to escape from thom without giving 
 offence. He was compelled not only to submit to the obligation, 
 but to appreciate the boon; which was the more difficult l)ecause 
 the red morocco handles were curly, the rings too small for his 
 fingers, and the clip-screw loose. How he wished he had thrust 
 the paper bodily in his pocket, and kept silence about it ! 
 
 However, he made use of the scissors a conire-camr, and had 
 just got through his difficulties when the Professor entered, with 
 his son on his shoulder, still conversing fluently and intelli- 
 gently on several topics. His nursemaid's raiment was the one 
 that engaged his attention at the moment. 
 
 " Marfer has holes in her tockings, and I putted my fum in 
 ve big hole." This appeared to exhaust that portion of the 
 subject. " O'ym royd'n on parpar like oy rode ve donkey when 
 we wented to Lamsdick, and I wasn't frightened. Ve little durl 
 was took off because she tried. I didn't tried, because I was a
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 137 
 
 big boy. Vere was swimps that kicked because they wasn't 
 boiled. And there was a scrab wiv sisk legs and two sclaws." 
 At this point these recollections of Ramsgate were interrupted by 
 his detecting the scissors with the red morocco handles, on the 
 writing-table. He showed decision. " I wants vose iidders ! ''' 
 he said. " Yere my marmar's, and oy wants 'em to cut elephants 
 and gooses out of paper." 
 
 " Easy — easy — easy, young man ! " said the Professor, en- 
 deavouring to moderate an eagerness to descend perilously up- 
 side down. " You shall have the scissors and cut out geese and 
 elephants — only, don't be in a hurry ! Whatever you do, do it 
 gently. ]VAa^, my love? " 
 
 His better half was intoning to herself passages from a kind 
 of Litany of unobtrusiveness and humility : — *' If I could be 
 heard — but I cannot raise my voice. I know I shall not be 
 listened to — so it is useless for me to speak," and so forth, as a 
 means of getting possession of the rostrum. Having succeeded 
 in this object, she enacted that persons of tender years should 
 not be trusted with scissors, or other deadly weapons on wliich 
 they might impale themselves. "■ But," she said, falling back on 
 the Litany, " whatever I say, I know beforehand that no atten- 
 tion will he paid to it." 
 
 " Lord, my love," said the indulgent Professor. " I shall be 
 close to him, and see that he doesn't cut himself. He shan't 
 spoil your scissors. Besides," — he added, as a motive of self- 
 interest — " if he doesn't get them, he'll howl." 
 
 " I was not thinking of the scissors, though they belonged to 
 ray great-aunt Mary." This was said in a freezing tone, followed 
 by a resigned one : — " But, whatever happens, I shall have done 
 my best. He is your child. Professor Fraser." She spoke as 
 though she were responsible for several families imputable to 
 departed or divorced male parents. Meanwhile her established 
 offspring had possessed himself of Aunt Mary's scissors, and 
 was applying to Mr. Tarcrick — his name for Fred — for the 
 concession of the newspaper from which he had just made a 
 cutting. Fred considered — as he supposed the paper would 
 hardly be wanted — that the safest course all round would be to 
 take this precocious child upon his knee and cut him out an 
 elephant. 
 
 The Professor was much interested in this concession of his 
 intended son-in-law, who went up in his good opinion. He 
 watched with satisfaction the evolution of a single elephant 
 and hailed its image as a work of Art. He held it up against
 
 138 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 the light. " Quite a splendid elephant ! " he said. " Now, 
 Conrad, if you're a good boy and your father's own son, j^ou 
 will thank Mr. Tarcrick cordially for all the trouble he has taken 
 in your behalf. Elephants indeed! " 
 
 But Conrad's haughty spirit resented any idea of gratitude. 
 An unholy expression of defiance and rebellion stole over his 
 countenance. " I sarn't fank no peoples," he said, contuma- 
 ciously. 
 
 " Very well," said his father. " Then you shan't have your 
 elephant back." But Conrad simply traversed this statement, 
 without emotion. " I sail," said he. Whereupon the Professor 
 decided to fold up the elephant, and put him in his pocket. 
 
 Now, it chanced that on the line of the elephant's back, just 
 where his howdah would have crossed it, was a portion of the 
 name and date of the newspaper. And as the Professor was 
 folding him somewhat slowly and ostentatiously, his eye was 
 caught by it, and his fingers arrested. He exclaimed : — " But, 
 my love, this is yesterday's paper ! This — is — tlie paper, or I'm 
 very much mistaken, containing that letter of Schreichlichreicher 
 of Berlin about the employment of minute quantities of chloride 
 of gold as a manure. I particularly wanted that letter kept." 
 
 His lady yielded herself a prey to despair. " I have so many 
 things to think of," she wailed, collapsing. 
 
 " Well, well, my dear ! I daresay I was impatient. But the 
 mischief isn't done — isn't done. Schreichlichreicher's letter 
 hasn't run away. ... Oh no — I'm sure it was in this paper, 
 yesterday morning." He went on to examine each column, to 
 find it. 
 
 Fred picked up the elephant and overhauled his flanks, which 
 were all servants seeking places on one side, and estates with 
 shooting on the other. " There, there ! There he is back 
 again ! " said he. " Spraddle out his legs and he'll walk ! " 
 This was to pacify Conrad. He then helped in the search, tak- 
 ing another sheet. The innocent prattle of ]\Iiss Skinner, with 
 its slight flavour of the Sexes, reached him from the window- 
 corner, where it was absorbing Cintra's attention. 
 
 " No, Cit dy'a ! He never did. That's just where I blame 
 him. He took ahsoJutehj no notice of her letter. She came to 
 me naturally for advice; and, Cit dy'a, I do hope you will agree 
 that what I said was wisest under the circumstances. . . . Oh 
 yes, my dy'a, I spoke quite plainly, and I'm sure she understood. 
 There could be no mistake. I said ire must have the laundress 
 girl's own statement, before forming any opinion. ... Oh yes
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 139 
 
 — I asked about her looks . . . well — the sort of girl that sort 
 of man admires. You know. I don't think her being on the 
 chorus at the Proscenium has anything to do with it. Besides, 
 I am told that all the girls there have the liighcst character; 
 curates' daughters, I believe ! So I spoke plainl3^ ' You know, 
 my dear,' I said to Apollonia, ' it all turns on whether the packet 
 of soap was paid for, and how long it lasted. There can be no 
 possible reason for keeping anything back. So I should just 
 write and say so to his half-sister, and tell her to mind her own 
 business.' Of course^ Cit dy'a, 1 don't know exactly what she 
 said, or how she said it. But the fact remains, that he has 
 taken ahsohdehj no notice. And as for the door having been 
 left standing open, that remains exactly where it was. ..." 
 
 And so on. Fred and the Professor finished their exploration 
 in the Daily Telegraph about the same time, and each admitted 
 his failure to the other with a shrug. " But,'' said the latter, " is 
 it certain the letter isn't on the back of the piece you cut out ? " 
 Fred was nearly sure that was a law- report, something about the 
 salvage of a ship. He had looked to see. The Professor referred 
 to the gap of excision, and found confirmation. Possibly, a long 
 ship case ! " Very funny ! " said he. " I must have mistaken 
 the day. Friday's paper, no doubt! Don't hunt for the cutting. 
 It doesn't matter." Fred accepted this easily, as he wished 
 to keep his own paragraph in the dark. 
 
 Miss Skinner was obliged to rush away, as it was past half- 
 past five. She did so with a tempestuous vigour that seemed at 
 odds with an expressed desire to mar no tranquillity; to be, as 
 it were, a cypher in daily life. It would have been as easy to 
 credit with sincerity a whirlwind's apologies to the sands of 
 the desert. However, she did go, and peace reigned. Fred 
 assuaged Conrad with profiles of animals to order, cut from the 
 newspaper, even as the inhabitants of storyland had to keep 
 Dragons satisfied with Princesses. Cintra, over Fred's shoulder, 
 observed the operation with suggestions. ]\Ieanwhile her father, 
 at ease about the morals of his youngest, who was being good, 
 chatted before the fire about the use of chloride of gold as a 
 manure; she offered to hunt up the newspaper containing the 
 missing letter. " It won't take five minutes to find, you foolish 
 old Papa," said Cintra. 
 
 " Oh no no no no no ! " said he, disclamatorily. " Not the 
 least necessity ! Doesn't matter having it now. Only see that 
 it's not thrown away." He revised the merits of the German 
 Professor's proposal, and her stepmother thought it becoming to
 
 140 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 profess an interest — though, a patronising one — in manure gen- 
 erally, and a specially respectful one in chloride of gold for its 
 own sake. " It certainly appears to me," said he, " that Schleich- 
 richreiclicr may bo right; that is, if his datum — which 1 gather 
 has the authority of Nichtraucher of Leipzig — is correct about 
 the percentage of gold required, to sterilise the bacillus of his 
 newly discovered microbe, bacteria nonconformis. He places it 
 at one ten-thousandth of a gramme for every cubic metre of 
 arable soil. This would be at the rate of one-tenth of a milli- 
 gramme for each cubic metre, or say one milligramme to ten 
 cubic metres. ... I know it works out in practice at about 
 b.rcnty pounds worth of gold to the square mile." 
 
 " But, my love," said his lady-wife, addressing him from an 
 elevation, but with exemplary patience ; " have j^ou considered ? 
 Think what the farmer could buy with that twenty pounds, if he 
 devoted it to the purchase of necessaries for his household, in- 
 stead of squandering it on filthy manure. I cannot persuade you 
 to ihink. Fancy twenty iclwle pounds spent on manure! " 
 
 " My dear Felicia, it's no use saying have / considered. Have 
 you considered? Work it out at per acre ! " The Professor pro- 
 ceeded to show that, supposing the bacillus of bacteria noncon- 
 formis died childless, the value of the crop of each acre would be 
 doubled, showing a net profit of Lord-knows-what. 
 
 Felicia replied that it was useless to talk to her about net 
 profits, because her poor head could not endure such things ; but 
 one thing she must say, that gold was gold, and money was 
 money, and it was sinful to thiow either of them away. She 
 confessed herself surprised at Science, and — briefly speaking — 
 "wondered it was not ashamed to talk such nonsense. 
 
 The Professor smiled as one who could afford to smile, and 
 said magnanimously : — " It is only fair to observe that our 
 friend Schleichrichreicher is a Socialist, and sees in this method 
 a means towards the Eedistribution of Property — of the most 
 obnoxious form thereof; in fact the one which is responsible for 
 the existence of Persons of Property. I must allow in fairness 
 that I think him plausible on this point." 
 
 "How does he manage that?" said Fred. He was just com- 
 pleting an elephant with several legs like a centipede, by re- 
 quest. The centre of gravity of the first elephant had, by reason 
 of the size of his head and trunk, crept in front of his forelegs, 
 so that he fell forward at intervals. Conrad's excitement threat- 
 ened to become uncontrollable. 
 
 " Don't kick, darling ! " said Cintra. " Or Mr. Tarcrick will
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 141 
 
 have to put jou down. . . . Yes, Papa dear! — how does the 
 German with the long name manage that? . . . You said jou 
 
 thought him plausible." 
 
 " Schreichlichreicher — oh yes ! — I think him plausible. His 
 Tiew is that this employment of gold in the form of chloride 
 will be so profitable that all the gold will be withdrawn from 
 circulation to sterilise his bacillus. It will be distributed 
 through the world's arable land in such minute quantities that 
 the recovery of it will be commercially out of the question. 
 Five shillings worth of gold will cost five pounds to recover." 
 
 " I see. But then we shall have to go without food and 
 clothes. . . . Yes, we shall, if we have no money to buj 
 them ! ! " Cintra said this. 
 
 The Professor admitted difficulties ; but then, said he, no 
 entirely new scheme is without its difficulties. We must remem- 
 ber that no two advocates of Socialism were agreed about itf 
 details; or, he might add, its fundamental principles. But he 
 agreed with Schreichlichreicher this far, that his system would 
 very soon diffuse the whole of the available gold in the world 
 through the soil of its agricultural districts, doubling its output 
 while absorbing the present currency. '' However," said he, con- 
 sulting his watch; "I must be off or I shan't catch Hopkins.'* 
 As the story has no need to know who Hopkins was, nor why thi 
 Professor wanted to catch him at that late hour on Sundaj 
 afternoon, it has made no enquiry about him. 
 
 11
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 " I HOPE they hadn't been quarrelling," said Nancy to herself 
 as she slowed down for the first turning after leaving The Jessa- 
 mines. For it is not until your female bicyclist, or anybody's, 
 is sure she is started, and that her brakes are working right, and 
 her skirts graciously disposed, that she can begin to soliloquise. 
 Or rather, perhaps, to think what she would say if she did 
 soliloquise. 
 
 So suppose we say this was what Nancy thought to herself. 
 Anyhow, it was followed by the thought that she wondered what 
 liad made her think so. One can't always account for one's 
 impressions. But, if they were quarrelling, she knew what it 
 was about. Sure of that! Well — come now! — she would be 
 candid with her own conscience and word her knowledge other- 
 wise. She knew ivho it was about. There now ! Was Con- 
 science satisfied? Yes — Conscience was, not being hypercritical 
 •about grammar. 
 
 She and Conscience between them dramatised the incidents of 
 her sister's welcomiC to her lover which took place half-an-hour 
 before she looked in to say how-do-you-do and good-bye in one 
 to him. First there would be questions to answer about his 
 uncle ; a matter of course ! But what would come next ? Well 
 — naturally — the new fiancee, Mr. Snaith's. They had never 
 talked her over, unless it were by letter. Nancy felt sure that 
 Cintra had never deliberaialy written to Fred such a fulmination 
 against the beauty as she had indulged in as they rode home after 
 meeting her. Suppose that "Jie had given Fred a like dose of 
 her first impressions that morning. Plenty of materials for 
 " words " there I 
 
 Consider how hand-and-glove these two young men were — 
 " never out of each other's mouths " was a curious expression 
 she herself had applied to them — and, apart from that, how 
 favourably impressed Fred had seemed to be about his friend's 
 lady-love. For that was the way she and Conscience agreed to 
 describe the effect produced on him by that young beauty. It 
 was part of the crystal purity of this young woman's soul that 
 she would put each pair of declared lovers in a ring-fence. Her 
 convicfion that no one of them could ever, in the nature of 
 
 142
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 143 
 
 things — among decent people, that is — be found inside another 
 ring-fence than his or her own, was unshakable. Fred was 
 assigned to her sister and the beauty to Mr. Snaith, and the 
 state of things so constituted was unchangeable. As to any 
 possibility that this Miss Lucy Hinchliffe might herself be un- 
 stable, that did not form part of her reflections. According to 
 Nancy, beauty and goodness always went hand in hand. More- 
 over, how could devotion to anything so ugly as Mr. Charles 
 Snaith be founded on anything short of Predestination ; soul 
 meeting soul, and so forth? What better test of the reality of 
 Love could there be than the repellent ugliness of one of its 
 objects? Two human monsters — such, for instance, as Mr. 
 Snaith and a feminine equivalent — might be drawn together by 
 sympathy for each other's misfortune. But Beauty and Beast 
 could only become bride and bridegroom when Beauty had some 
 clue to the Beast's soul other than his personal appearance. On 
 the whole, Nancy felt glad she herself was lacking in spiritual 
 insight. Who could say what sort of a guy this mental short- 
 coming might not save her from? For she clung to — or rather 
 was clung to by — an idea that she should marry, as other girls 
 did. It was rather an expression of acquiescence in Destiny 
 than either a creed or a hope. 
 
 These points occupied her mind as far as Streatham Common. 
 There, the arriving at the turning she and her sister took when 
 they went to look at the Old j\Iadhouse, and the fact that this 
 time she did not turn down it, set her a thinking of the inex- 
 plicable vanishment of Fred's uncle. Of course she was not 
 touched personally — only just seen him, no more — and had not 
 thought him lovable exactly. " Eather a peremptory sort of old 
 gentleman," was the way she had described him afterwards. It 
 was only when she came to know of this painful occurrence that 
 she had resuscitated the slight memory she had of him. 
 
 She was so detached from him that she scarcely rebuked her 
 inner consciousness for wondering whether his disappearance, — 
 in view of its probable action as a skid on the wheel of the 
 lovers' eagerness to possess The Cedars — ought not to be con- 
 sidered a godsend. But it was a nasty selfish idea, and she told 
 it so. Poor old Dr. Carteret ! Who could be sure he was not 
 lying dead under a hedge somewhere? Not that she was going 
 to believe that till she was forced to do so by revealed facts. 
 There jnust be some solution of the puzzle short of murder or 
 suicide, some unturned stone in the desert where it was hidden. 
 
 She racked her brain to devise a possibility to fit the occasion.
 
 144 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 but without much effect. Admitting murder, it was easy to 
 imagine any number of methods to which an able-bodied and 
 resourceful murderer might resort. But her object was to ex- 
 clude murder altogether and find another solution ; one that 
 would admit of a reappearance of the Doctor in the flesh. Kid- 
 napping sounded well, but did not bear examination. Her recol- 
 lection of the massive figure, over six feet high, made her ask 
 herself how a kidnapper would have gone about his job. How 
 would you kidnap an elephant? She had read somewhere of 
 subterranean bakehouses in ancient Rome, which used to catch 
 the public through trap doors, and compel it to make bread for 
 ever against its will. But she found that she only believed that 
 story because it was ancient Eome, and History. She felt 
 certain no such trap doors existed in England, now. She didn't 
 see either that the victims in these cases were so much better 
 off than if they had been honourably murdered. 
 
 She was driven back as a last resource on the theory that he 
 had fallen asleep in the train, slept through all the stations in 
 Exeter, and waked to find himself in Cornwall. She remem- 
 bered with what horror she had looked down the shaft of a 
 disused tin mine, and the obvious ease with which an adven- 
 turous stranger might climb the paling that kept cattle off, and 
 pitch himself headlong to the bottom. She constructed a wildly 
 improbable episode of the recovery of the Doctor's mangled 
 corpse from such a trap, its slow resuscitation at a neighbouring 
 farmhouse, and any amount of ditficulty in establishing the 
 whence and wherefore of a man without anything to identify 
 him in his pockets — here the theory showed weakness — but with 
 insensibility enough for its purpose, that of disestablishing 
 speech or writing. She worked this idea all the way to Tooting 
 Common, always with a painful sense of imaginary investigators 
 — police or others — only failing to track the object of their 
 search from sheer stupidity. She was compelled in the end to 
 leave that hypothetical corpse at the bottom of that mine, prob- 
 ably under water. For she knew that disused mines become 
 reservoirs. 
 
 She was not, however, so very long over any of these specula- 
 tions, for she was scorching recklessly to be in time for lunch. 
 Hov.'ever, Chelsea clock was still clear that it was ten minutes 
 to one when she was crossing Battersea Bridge. Plenty of time ! 
 She brought her speed down to reason, and sounded her bell 
 religiously. 
 
 Well, she could not be expected to feel Dr. Carteret's disap-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 145 
 
 pearance as she would no doubt have done had she known him 
 for a long time, but she could and did feel it deeply on his 
 sister-in-law's behalf. She had seen how powerfully it had af- 
 fected her friend, and something in the way that friend had 
 spoken of the missing man had reached her imagination, and 
 made her think that the ordinary cordiality of feeling for a hus- 
 band's brother had gone near to becoming that of an actual 
 sister, and an affectionate one. Of course the sheer horror of it 
 — for nothing can ever surpass that of the unaccountaljle disap- 
 pearance of a perfectly sane man — outweighed everything else 
 while the thing was still so recent. Nancy could see that plainly. 
 Still, the way Mrs. Carteret had spoken of him was nearer what 
 Nancy would have expected had he been an own brother. That 
 was all she could say to herself as she turned into Kensington 
 High Street, and had to suspend reflections for a moment be- 
 cause of the traffic. 
 
 The dignified repose of Palace Gardens — where Nancy believed 
 herself a trespasser, but knew no gate-warden could catch her — 
 brought back the lost thread. It made no pretence that it had 
 not had a business consideration in view all the time; namely, 
 the delay which would probably occur in settling that co-tenancy 
 of The Cedars. Perhrps it would bo better, on the whole, if all 
 the four of them would give up the idea, and try to find reason- 
 able domiciles apart. For was not the whole thing founded on 
 the cedar trees; the large garden; the great drawing-room; the 
 staircases and their magnificent black balustrades; and above all 
 on the stonecrop, moss, and lichen, which had maintained their 
 fascination even when visited in the depth of winter, but which 
 the builder would destroy the moment he was left alone with 
 them? Nancy resolved that she would use all her influence with 
 her sister to induce her to relinquish the preposterous scheme. 
 Cintra was the only difficulty. Fred might be relied on to feel 
 lukewarm, at least, about it unless — as Nancy fervently hoped 
 had happened, and that she was just going to hear of it — the 
 missing man should turn up alive and well, and fuming with 
 indignation at the non-delivery of some letter, essential to the 
 explanation of the mystery. That was really the most probable 
 end of it all. People were always getting in a fuss about 
 nothing. 
 
 How to keep up to a mile in four minutes, through continuous 
 traffic in crowded streets, drove everything out of her head till 
 she reached the railway-bridge-land wliich separates two nations, 
 unlike one another in all essentials^ though superficially alike
 
 146 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 in some respects. A dweller in the St. John's Wood zone makes 
 an outward show of being a fellow-creature of a resident in 
 Bayswater proper — though all Bavswater is proper, for that 
 matter — but is at heart another personality. Try being both, 
 and see ! Nancy, happening to have no N.W. connection except 
 this one, resulting from her sister's engagement to Fred, always 
 felt on the railway-bridge as though she were passing a frontier, 
 and that really there ought to be gendarmes. This time another 
 feeling crept in. Say what you might, human affairs were jolly 
 unstable. Suppose her connection with N.W. was hanging in 
 the balance, and this was her last bridge crossing ! But really 
 — stop! They were not quarrelling, and there was no reason 
 why they should quarrel. All the same, she wished she had not 
 caught herself noticing that they were at peace. 
 
 Anyhow, she was not going to have her adoration of the young 
 gentleman's mother interrupted by any foolish lovers' quarrels. 
 Why — they would make it up again, as like as not! And how 
 then? The thought scarcely found words as definite as these. 
 They might have done so though, had she not arrived at her 
 destination. 
 
 " Well ? " This was exclamation and question in one, neck 
 and neck with her entry into the well-ordered drawing-room, 
 sweet with the zest of its window conservatory, through which a 
 south wind was saying something about the spring; and that it 
 was like this last year, and the year before. 
 
 " No — we have heard nothing. And shall hear nothing un- 
 til .. . But you know what I think. Don't let's talk about it." 
 All the weariness and the pain of the prolonged anxiety was in 
 her words. But the tempestuous bicyclist, coming in after a 
 final rush against the wind, seemed good for her. " How fresh 
 you are, Nancy dearest! " said she, inhaling the freshness during 
 a kiss. It reached her heart through her lungs somehow, and 
 made it happier. She interrupted an apology for lateness. " Oh 
 no — that's all right! I very seldom get lunch till a quarter 
 to two." 
 
 Then Nancy asked again, timorously, for possible news, and 
 was again met with :—" Nothing — nothing — don't let's talk 
 about it ! " somewhat impatiently. 
 
 So she went off candidly to generalities. " I had the most 
 delicious ride. ... Oh yes — Fred liad come. I left them in 
 eacli other's arms all right. At least " — Nancy added, pouring 
 out more fizz-water to quench an overwhelming thirst; for this 
 was in the dining-room, later; or perhaps we should say in the
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 147 
 
 breakfast-room downstairs, which was more convenient for the 
 waiting — " they were all right then. But I fancy they had had 
 a little tiff. . . . Well — yes — they had had time. Fred had 
 been there half an hour before I came in." With this girl, the 
 slightest suspicion in her own mind that she was keeping any- 
 thing back was an instant signal for saying it. You saw that in 
 her eyes. So she was unable to be silent about that passing in- 
 sight as she left The Jessamines. 
 
 " They are a rather quarrelsome pair of turtledoves," said 
 Mrs. Carteret, equably. " That's their way. But they always 
 make it up. I am never uneasy about lovers that kiss and make 
 friends. If they do it once, they may do it a hundred times. 
 . . . New potatoes — yes ! They are the first this year. I 
 always welcome the new potatoes." 
 
 " i only meant that sort of thing," said Nancy. " The lovers, 
 not the potatoes. They will pass their lives quarrelling and 
 making it up again. Everyone to his taste — or hers if she's a 
 her. It would bore me to death." 
 
 " You are quite unlike your sister. Only I'm not sure that I 
 know her well enough to say so. It's an odd ignorance to 
 confess to, as she's to be my daughter-in-law. I shall know her 
 in time — perhaps." 
 
 Nancy laughed. " That sounds so funny," said she. " She 
 seems to me easy enough! She's just — she's just Cintrn. 
 Nothing else ! " 
 
 " Why, of course ! Just what she was in the nursery. People 
 are, to their sisters. It's extraordinary how usual one's belong- 
 ings are." A short discussion followed, owing to the persistent 
 refusal of wine by the bicyclist, who, however, consented in the 
 end to pour a glass of Zeltinger into twice as much Apollinaris. 
 " Now I hope that will satisfy you," said she. " I can't tell what 
 people want with wine, when there's water." Which concession 
 having been made, Mrs. Carteret went back to the previous ques- 
 tion. " Yes — you are very unlike your sister. Now, if . . . 
 but I'm afraid you'll be shocked if I say what I was going to 
 say." 
 
 " No, I shan't. Say it." 
 
 " Well — suppose I put it this way ! If it were you that was 
 going to halve a house with a friend and his wife — you and your 
 husband, you know ..." 
 
 " I thought the idea was to split it into two houses." 
 
 " That doesn't matter — it comes to the same thing." 
 
 "Well?"
 
 148 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " I phovildn't foel the least uneasy about . . . about its 
 answering. 1 am not sure that 1 don't, with Cintra." 
 
 Cintra's sister looked at her friend in a candid, puzzled way. 
 " Why," said she, " there won't be any housekeeping to fight 
 about." 
 
 " No, that is so. That will be a great advantage." But the 
 iiandsome eyes remained at rest on that utterly unsuspicious face, 
 as though their owner had left something unsaid; something 
 she felt in doubt of wording rightly. 
 
 Nancy caught their import. " Well, but what else is there to 
 5ght about? " 
 
 Mrs. Carteret seemed to decide against saying it. " Very 
 likely nothing else," said she. " We must hope so." 
 
 But to ask this young woman to relinquish a doubt unsolved 
 was like asking an arrow to stop and talk. " No, but what did 
 you mean, though ? " said she. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret confessed to the truth of what was left unsaid. 
 " I changed my mind about saying it," said she. " But what I 
 meant was that other things than housekeeping may upset har- 
 mony, between young couples." She looked straight into the. 
 frank, enquiring eyes fixed on hers, to see the idea fructify. It 
 took time — not much — but enough to wait in. 
 
 Then it dawned, and was laughed to scorn. " I see now," 
 said Nancy. *' Just like me not to, good gracious me ! — why, 
 only fancy ! Jealousy like in Browning, and people one knows! 
 Oh no — it isn't Venice nowadays. I wish it were; it would be 
 so much less stuffv. Fancy a toccata of Galuppi's with Mr. 
 Snaith in it ! " 
 
 " How you do despise that most estimable of young men ! " 
 
 " Oh / know — he's worthy ! But — his nose ! " 
 
 " My dear, he can't help his nose. But haven't we wandered 
 from the point ? " 
 
 "Perhaps we have. It wasn't his nose. What was it?" At 
 this juncture Lipscombe was allowed to take away and put the 
 other things on the table, and then she might go. In the lull 
 which followed, Nancy consented to countenance lemon-sponge 
 and even Madeira cake. Then she picked up the thread of 
 conversation : — " What was it — the point? " 
 
 " Whether it's altogether wise for these two young couples 
 to come to an anchor so very close alongside." 
 
 Nancy reflected. " I hadn't thought of it. Perhaps it isn't." 
 
 " I am quite sure it isn't. Only 1 shouldn't be really so certain 
 if ... if my daughter-in-law were more like her sister."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 149 
 
 "Can't alter it now! Sorry Cit's not so superhuman as I 
 am. May I have the little dish of chocolates at this end of the 
 table, to take as many as I like ? " 
 
 "Certainly, dear! Eat them all up . ; . I didn't exactly 
 mean it that way. I meant that in the exact position that will 
 be created, if these geese go and live at the Old Madhouse, Cintra 
 may not suit the situation." 
 
 "Cintra particularly?" 
 
 ^frs. Carteret gave no direct answer, but continued: — "I only 
 go by my knowledge of Fred, and general observation. Perhaps 
 a little special observation the other day, when you were all here 
 at lunch." 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 " Why do you say ' Oh ' in that . , . well — drastic sort of 
 way ? " 
 
 " Did I? T suppose I did. But it was because of something." 
 
 " Naturally. Because of what? " 
 
 The story has seen that Nancy had no idea of reserves or 
 secrets. So it does not wonder at her answer. " Because Cit 
 was so ... so nasty about that beautiful Miss What's-her- 
 name, that's to be Mrs. Nosey — Lucy Hinchliffe. Don't you 
 think her ducky ? " 
 
 "Beauty apart — or no?" 
 
 " Both ways. Any way. Do say you love her ! " 
 
 "How if 1 don't?" She laughed out at Nancy's enthusiasm 
 " You are the most susceptible . . . youth, Nancy dear! " said 
 she. 
 
 " Well — why shouldn't I be ? Why are the boys to have it all 
 to themselves? Anyhow, I thought her absolutely lovely." 
 
 " So did my son, I think." She spoke drily, or was it only 
 fatigue? Nancy's eyes, frankly fixed on her, asked which, as 
 plainly as words. She answered the implied question : — " Yes 
 — I meant that I thought he was . . . impressionne." 
 
 "Why shouldn't he be?" 
 
 " No reason in life. At least, as long as your sister doesn't 
 misunderstand him. That's all I meant to say. Fred is like 
 that. Only it means nothing. Shan't we go upstairs? It's 
 comfortabler. Lipscombe will bring coffee up." Lunch had 
 died away. 
 
 All the way upstairs — and from the breakfast-room it was 
 quite a climb to the drawing-room — Nancy was silently thought- 
 ful, and seemed to be embarrassed by a nascent idea. It had 
 become clear enough to talk about by the time Lipscombe had
 
 150 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 adhibited the coffee, and withdrawn. " I see what you meant," 
 she said. " I'm not sure that the idea hadn't crossed my own 
 mind and gone out on the other side. Only I had nothing tO' 
 go upon, you know ! " Then instinctive veracity prompted a 
 correction : — " Except perhaps Cintra flying into such an awful 
 rage about Miss Hinchliffe when we were riding home." 
 
 " What did she say about her ? You can tell me safely. I 
 shall not repeat it." 
 
 " Called her an odious girl, I think. . . . Yes, I'm sure of 
 that. Then that she was a commonplace type, and an insipid 
 chit. I call that flying into an awful rage." 
 
 " Call it legitimate indignation, a little overdone ! Did she 
 say anything else ? " 
 
 Nancy reflected. " Said it was easy for me, but I shouldn't 
 have to live in the same house. . . . Oh yes — she called her an 
 artificial minx." 
 
 " I see, at least I think I do. But I may be mistaken. We 
 shall see how it works out. There is some chance — some chance, 
 not much— of this beautiful Lucy girl taking a dislike to the 
 house when she sees it. There was something — Fred told me — 
 about their going down to-day to look at it." 
 
 " Have you seen any more of her ? — seen her again since 
 then ? " 
 
 " She called, with her mother. A prodigious lady, who flashed 
 with rings, and diffused a scent." 
 
 " What sort of scent ? — patchouli ? " 
 
 " Oh no — a much nicer scent. It made mo think of Nepaul, 
 but I don't know why. I've never been there." 
 
 " I know what Nepaul smells like. The inside of old boxes 
 — cedar wood, that sort of thing ! But of course I've never been 
 there, either." 
 
 " Well — she was like that. You know the sort. They were 
 very civil. ... I feel it's ungracious not to say kind and sym- 
 pathetic. Perhaps I ought to? Only I was a little surprised 
 that they should know so much about this ..." She flinched 
 off giving it a name. 
 
 " I know," said Nancy. " Dr. Carteret. But I see why. 
 Fred keeps nothing from Mr. Snaith, and Mr. Snaith tells her 
 everything." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret thought a little over this, and then said : — " I 
 suppose it doesn't matter very much. It will be in all the 
 newspapers very soon." She of course knew nothing of the 
 paragraph in the Daily Telegraph of two days since, and her
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 151 
 
 anticipation referred to the police advertisement, which she knew 
 was imminent. 
 
 Nancy harked back suddenly, more suo, to a previous point in 
 the conversation, wliich had weighed on her mind. " Why did 
 you say legitimate indignation? " said she. 
 
 " Because I might have felt exactly as your sister felt, in the 
 same position." 
 
 " You wouldn't have said insipid chit and artificial minx." 
 
 " I don't know. 1 should have felt hurt, certainly. A young 
 lady in love cannot be philosophical always." She paused, con- 
 sidered, and added : — " I'm not sure that it wasn't a little my 
 fault." 
 
 " How could that be ? " 
 
 " I mean for letting you rush away like that. Fred and Cit 
 should have had half an hour alone together to work it off — 
 to snap and snarl for twenty minutes, and bill and coo for ten, 
 and then it would have been all right. Only, to tell the truth, I 
 was longing to get rid of you, to talk to Fred about what he 
 had just heard. ..." 
 
 " I know. I expect that was why he let us go so easily. But 
 it was really her fault, for being such a fool about riding in the 
 dark. As if it mattered. I mean to stop here ever so late — if 
 you'll have me ..." 
 
 " Of course I'll have you." 
 
 "... And ride home in the pitch-dark, in the middle of 
 the night. I think it's fun, because the traffic's gone to bed, and 
 you can scorch to your heart's content." 
 
 " Cintra's frightened ? " 
 
 "Well — she is.' And that's the truth." Then Nancv's ruling 
 passion of veracity got the better of her. " I shouldn't pay any 
 attention to her nonsense, only for papa. He fusses. Says I 
 may break my own neck if I like, but not my sister's. All 
 Scientific men are nervous." 
 
 "Is that the case?" And indeed it did seem too broad a 
 generalisation. 
 
 Nancy got back to her base. " Anyhow, I must pay attention 
 to papa; he's such a dear good old fussy-wussy. Him and his 
 messes ! " This was not an expression of contempt for Eesearch, 
 so much as of affectionate leniency to a human parent's weak- 
 nesses. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret transposed the key without apology. " You 
 don't . . . get on . . . with your stepmother," she said, feel- 
 ing her way through the question.
 
 152 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Nancy wrinkled up her eyes slightly, to express caution against 
 over-statement, and Justice. " I don't think one ought to say 
 quite that," she said. 
 
 " How far are you inclined to go ? " Nancy thought she saw 
 amusement in the beautiful eyes that were fixed on her, but no 
 smile endorsed it on the lips. It was the weight of the sad time, 
 dictating obedience. 
 
 She answered the question. " We don't spit fire at one an- 
 other — not now. I should say we were friendly. A sort of per- 
 petual truce." 
 
 "Is that all?" 
 
 " I can't do any better than that. However, / shan't quarrel 
 with her, because of Conrad. At least, not so long as he keeps 
 kissable. They go off, you know." 
 
 " I know. But I thought he was such a troublesome 
 child." 
 
 " So he is. He is simply as bad as ever he can possibly be. 
 He's detestably overbearing and argumentative, and greedy be- 
 yond belief. But the back of his neck's delicious." The young 
 lady's face as she said this might have been — but for organic 
 differences — that of a well-disposed vulture, happy at the thought 
 of entrails. 
 
 Her hostess seemed to find these domestic particulars a pleas- 
 ant distraction, to judge by her amused face. " Have you set- 
 tled what to call your stepmother? " she asked. 
 
 " Well — no — we haven't ! It's a fix. ' Mamma ' of course 
 continues out of the question. And we can't possibly call her 
 ' Steppy V/eppy ' to her face." 
 
 " Do I know her name ? I think not." 
 
 "Her Christian name? Felicia. She was called after Mrs. 
 Hemans. So her American Miss Nicholls, who's a dairvoyante, 
 wants her to turn Reincarnationist, because then she'll be able 
 to believe she was Mrs. Hemans and her great-aunt Mary was 
 Mary Queen of Scots." 
 
 " I thought ^Irs. Hemans hadn't been long enough dead." 
 
 "What for? Oh — for anyone else to be her! I don't think 
 there's any rule. You have to be born after the person dies, 
 that's all. Mrs. Hemans was quite dead, anyhow. Of course 
 it wouldn't do if they overlapped. By-the-by now, how odd that 
 I've never thought of that! Was Mary Queen of Scots Mrs. 
 Hemans's great-aunt?" 
 
 "Not that I know of. Why?" 
 To make it fit — don't you see? Steppy Weppy was her 
 
 (< rp
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 153 
 
 great-aunt Mary's great-niece, so Mrs. Hemans ought to hare 
 been Mary Queen of Scots. To make a job of it." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret went as near a smile as the shadow on her 
 mind permitted ; more at lier young friend's serene unconscious- 
 ness of anything unusual in her speech, than at the substance of 
 it. "■ Mary Queen of Scots," said she, " seems to be rather a 
 popvdar sort of person to have been. I once knew two Reincar- 
 nationist ladies who had both been Mary Queen of Scots." 
 
 " Didn't they fight? " 
 
 " In the end, yes. One of them asked the other to come and 
 meet her — the asker's — former husband, and when she came, 
 introduced a gentleman who had been Darnley. Or Bothwell — I 
 forget which. That parted them, I believe." 
 
 They chatted on, thus or otherwise, till the Sunday afternoon 
 had worn itself out, and was of the mind to become a Sunday 
 evening. It was a chat with a drawback — the exclusion from it 
 of a topic. Could any talk be other than a makeshift, with the 
 consciousness of its dark background, ever present to the girl's 
 eyes in the fixed sadness of the older woman's face ? It had been 
 easy for Nancy to tell herself, as she spun at fifteen miles an 
 hour over Streatham Common, that she had only just set eyes 
 on old Dr. Carteret, and therefore his disappearance, to her, was 
 like a thing in a newspaper, matter for the tearless lamentation 
 due to perfect strangers in trouble. But here by the fireside, in 
 the very presence of another's sorrow, and that other the object 
 of one of those impulsive outbursts of affection to which she was 
 subject, that sorrow became her own. She wished that her friend 
 had not headed her off the tragedy at the outset, leaving her 
 bound in honour to be silent. Not that she could do any good. 
 
 However, a continued silence about it was not in the nature 
 of things, and Nancy's uneasy sense of their mutual conscious- 
 ness was destined to end very shortly. Nothing unlocks speech 
 like tea, or even a sound prospect of it. And the advent of 
 Lipscombe as its harbinger — a benevolent Angel bearing a white 
 damask flag of universal truce — had cut across the topic of the 
 moment, and left a blank space for whichever of them chose to 
 embark upon a new one. The tea, made but not poured, must 
 have been impatient for its destiny by the time its maker broke 
 upon the stillness quite suddenly, to say to her young friend: — 
 " You know what I think it was. He was killed, and we may 
 never know how. Until we know, we cannot call it ..." She 
 stopped abruptly, and then continued: — "But one shudders to 
 speak the word. I won't if you don't like."
 
 154 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Nancy answered: — "I know what you mean. But why not? 
 What do we gain by not calling it . . ." But she flinched 
 from the word itself. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret supplied it quietly. " By not calling it murder." 
 
 " If it is . . . " Nancy began. But again she fought shy of 
 those two ugly syllables. 
 
 " If it is murder? " said Mrs. Carteret as before, with the same 
 absolute self-command. " I am convinced of it. But I should 
 be hard put to it if I had to give reasons that would convince 
 anyone else. I believe my reasons are no reasons. But I am 
 convinced of it." Her hand was cold and shook, though her 
 voice was so calm and self-possessed. Nancy knew this, for she 
 had left her seat to stand nearer the fire, and now she went over 
 to her friend and kissed her, being at a loss what to say. She 
 sat on a stool at her feet, and held her hand so that she knew 
 that she was cold. 
 
 " Why should you be so convinced? " said she. " Where 
 — when — how could it have been? He must have been 
 found ..." 
 
 " Does it follow ? They say they have searched. But what 
 is their searching worth? When Fred asked the Inspector if all 
 the ponds along the line had been dredged, what was the answer ? 
 There were no ponds ! I know one — a big one. Out near Farn- 
 ham, I think it is." 
 
 " I remember. But is it deep enough ? " 
 
 " It may be, or it may not. I know nothing about the pond. 
 Only it shows what their search is worth, that they have not 
 dredged it. It is on the line, and one stone unturned takes the 
 edge off the whole. But that is not quite ..." 
 
 Nancy waited, and then said: — "Not quite what?" 
 
 " Not quite what I wanted to say. If I say it, you will think 
 me superstitious — whatever that means." 
 
 " Shall I ? I don't believe I shall." 
 
 " Yes, you will. I should think myself so, only I believe 
 there are ways — reasonable ones — of accounting for dreams and 
 second-sight . . . and all that sort of thing." Mrs. Carteret 
 was one of those who want to run with the hare and hunt with 
 the hounds; to scoff at bodies like ourselves for being supersti- 
 tious, but to call in Natural Law to protect their own phe- 
 nomena. For there is never a soul but keeps one, somewhere. 
 
 Said Nancy, curiosity all aflame : — " It icas a dream or a 
 second-sight, then? You will tell it me, won't you?" 
 
 " I don't at all mind telling you, because I think the thing
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 155 
 
 -can be accounted for quite reasonably, without bringing in any 
 nonsense. ... I must pour the tea, or it will get cold. I'm 
 sure your father talks about molecules." 
 
 " Well — he does. And I always hope he understands what he's 
 talking about. But do go on. Come to the second-sight ! " 
 
 " I will directly. . . . Here's your tea. . . , Has he told 
 you that every molecule in the Universe has an attraction for 
 every other molecule ? " 
 
 " I think he has mentioned it, and I suppose he knows. Only 
 there are sucli a lot of them." 
 
 " I believe it is a Scientific fact. However, I'll toll you the 
 second-sight if you like, and leave the molecule alone." 
 
 " Go on your own way, and I'll listen." 
 
 " Well — I thought it showed ... a sort of Compliance with 
 Natural Law. But I'll tell you. It was on the same day — at 
 least, that night. I mean the night before you both came to 
 lunch, three weeks ago. It was like this. I woke in the middle 
 of the night with a start, and the room was light. It didn't 
 last long, but long enough for me to see ..." 
 
 "See what?" Nancy asked this because the narrative 
 paused. 
 
 " See a figure kneeling. Exactlv like him! With the hands 
 up." 
 
 " With the hands up ? " Nancy did not quite see how. 
 
 " Yes. I did not understand it then. I saw afterwards. The 
 hands were up . . . " — it cost her an effort to go on — " to ward 
 off a blow, and the head was down." 
 
 Nancy shuddered. " W^iat did you do? Were you not terri- 
 fied ? " she said. 
 
 " Not in the least. Dreams often hold on after one wakes, 
 long enough to count a dozen. I just went to sleep again, as 
 soon as I could. Remember, that then we knew nothing." 
 
 " I should have been frightened. . . . Well — upset, then." 
 
 " No, you wouldn't. I went to sleep again, and thought noth- 
 ing of it. Then when I woke by daylight, I saw it again — a 
 dark silhouette in the same place, exactly." 
 
 " And did not that upset you ? " 
 
 " No — the other way round, if anything. It showed that it 
 was me — in myself, I mean. For it died away into the wall be- 
 hind it. And then I saw that it was the pattern I had been 
 looking at; a bit the same shape as the figure, that my eye had 
 picked out. Did you never have that happen to you? " 
 
 " I can't say I ever did."
 
 156 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " That's odd. It docs, to me. I thought nothing of it, and 
 indeed forgot all about it." 
 
 '' Why shouldn't you ? He was all right then, so far as you 
 knew ? " 
 
 " Of course he was. But I remembered it later, when we came 
 to know. And 1 am conrinced that — that 1 saw what had ac- 
 tually happened, and that it will prove so." 
 
 Discussion followed, the older lady pointing out the possible 
 analogy of an experience of this sort to the connection between 
 molecule and molecule at infinite distances apart. If mere mole- 
 cules could act sympathetically under such a drawback, surely 
 our more delicate organisations would show a sensitiveness at 
 such a very short distance. Nothing, she said, would shake her 
 belief in this dream or vision, except the reappearance of her 
 brother-in-law in- the flesh, alive and well. She seemed, however, 
 always anxious to be rational, and to bring it into conformity 
 with some received opinion, no matter what. 
 
 Nancy, on the other hand, although the daughter of a Pro- 
 fessor of Applied Science, seemed to think we had better be 
 honestly superstitious, or discredit evidence altogether. " Only 
 I do tliink, dear Mrs. Carteret, that your brother-in-law might 
 walk into the house at any moment — or more likely into the 
 school, — and the whole thing be explained. But what a parcel 
 of fools he would think us, for getting in such a stew about 
 him ! " Mrs. Carteret said : — " No one would be so glad to be 
 thought a fool as I. But it won't be that way, Nancy dear. 
 You will see that I am right. That is too nice a thing to 
 happen in a world like ours."
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Man, according to the ratiocinations specious of Aristotle or 
 Smiglesius, is a thing endowed with reason. This story hopes 
 that the ratiocinations of those philosophers are at least specious 
 in their answers — if any — to the question why Man accepts the 
 disappearance of his fellow-man into the absolutely unknown 
 with greater complacency than a suspension of his visible audible 
 and tangible presence, which may be only temporary, within the 
 presumed limits of known existence. Do they consider it an 
 evidence of his rational endowment that he looks on his own 
 absolute ignorance of what and where the thing is that his 
 deceased neighbour once called ego, as a distinctly better position 
 than uncertainty of what has become of the only evidence he has 
 ever had of that ego's existence? The story does, and further is 
 grateful for the knowledge that his dead neighbour, wherever he 
 has gone, has loft behind him the thing he used to suffer with. 
 He has shuffled off his mortal coil. Was the author of the 
 Christmas mummers plav inspired, when he invented '•' Little 
 Devil Doubt " ? 
 
 It is one of the crudest things, in disappearance without 
 warrant of death, that Grief must, as it were, hold her hand. 
 Tears may long to come, but dare not. Lamentation can find no 
 word that may not have to be unsaid, and the evil chance grudges 
 the survivor the poor consolation of eulogisms on the vanished 
 man — the man who may not have departed. Which of us hag 
 not felt glad at heart that the assurance of death has gagged, 
 the tongue that would speak ill of some very human friend, and 
 has left us free to magnify such redeeming features as our 
 imagination can assign to him? Devise, if you can, an attitude 
 for his mind who knows not if his friend be dead or living. 
 The epita})h's license of praise is not allowed him; and yet, until 
 he knows, he has to provide oblivion for shortcomings that may 
 reappear with their proprietor, till there is a guarantee that he 
 is safe on the other side of the Styx. Poor Tom or Bob or Jim, 
 who drank, goes God-knows-whcre, and the haunts of men — of 
 you and me, that is — know his incoherencies no more. Is it 
 safe, yet-awhile, to pretend that Tom — or Bob, or Jim — was 
 sobriety itself, when he may come back drunk at anv moment^ 
 
 157 \^
 
 158 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 to throw doubt upon the well-meant fib? You would welcome 
 him drunk — true enough. But how about your own well-pre- 
 served charatcer for veracity? 
 
 But then in such a case as Tom's — or Bob's or Jim's — there is 
 
 compensation, say what we may. We shall never again have to 
 
 send for a cab to take him safe home, after a noisy postscript at 
 
 \)ur table to the expansive geniality — no more — that he brought 
 
 with him, perhans from the nearest pothouse. We shall never 
 
 %ave to practise legerdemain again, to keep the bottle from him 
 
 '■^t that table, and to acknowledge ourselves beaten. We shall 
 
 %ever have to pretend that he is sober, terribly handicapped by 
 
 %is endeavours to help our pretext; praying any unseen agency 
 
 ^hat is well-disposed towards us to make him hold his tongue. 
 
 ^es — there is a good side to his disappearance, if we can only 
 
 %e guaranteed against his resurrection; and we may feel happy 
 
 %bout it to the extent of not fretting. Or, if we think that that 
 
 Inuch selfishness will lower us in our own good opinion, we may 
 
 perceive how great an anxiety he was to his poor wife ; and, if 
 
 the guarantee is a strong one, go to the length of hoping that 
 
 Mrs. Tom or Bob or Jim will get over his loss, and marry again, 
 
 ■and do better next time, and all that sort of thing. Because 
 
 that is consistent with altruism. 
 
 But this did not hold good of Mrs. Carteret's grief. The 
 sting to her lay in. the dumb uncertainty of what was coming. 
 ■■Her curious confidence that her brother-in-law lay murdered 
 •somehow, somewhere, may have driven all other speculations out 
 of her mind, but the dire revelation of the manner of his death 
 was still to come. Wliat could she look forward to till it 
 "should come, but a terrible silence of the mind, a stupid hunger 
 to know more, with a gruesome fear of the form that it might 
 take? This, and a misgiving at times that she had no right 
 to trust her own conviction, kept her whole soul on the strain, 
 and while she longed for sympathy, she felt she had no claim 
 to throw the full shadow of her apprehension over a young mind 
 like Nancy's. Yet she had not been able to resist the tempta- 
 tion to declare her belief that the thing was murder, and to talk 
 of the odd dream incident that was its cause; or, but for the fact 
 that it happened before it was known that Dr. Carteret had never 
 reached his destination, might have been its result. 
 
 The •s'fOry sees, in this reluctance of Mrs. Carteret to show the 
 -full depth of her depression, how she came to be able to theorise 
 .about the sympathies of distant molecules and so forth. It was
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 159 
 
 not merely a wish on her part to disclaim superstition ; it was to 
 suggest that behind her personal conviction of the disaster was a 
 readiness to admit the possibility, at least, of her brother-in-law's 
 reappearance alive and well. So when she said that was too nice 
 a thing to happen in a world like ours, she meant Nancy to 
 understand that her disheartenment was short of despair. The 
 girl accepted her words in that sense, but was quite alive to the 
 misery and tension of the prolonged doubt, which to her thinking 
 was as bad as the worser certainty. 
 
 Nancy tried her best, by advancing possible improbabilities 
 that would cover the mystery, to undermine that verdict of 
 murder against some person unknown; but without success. 
 Perhaps, had any of her theories been more ingenious than that 
 one about the disused Cornish mine, she might have scored. 
 But as a matter of fact it was far and away the best of them. 
 
 That wild hypothesis of Fred's briefly referred to by him in 
 his letter to her sister, had of course been passed on to Nancy, 
 with whatever seemed wanting to its completeness supplied by 
 the narrator. Could she dare, in view of the seeming establish- 
 ment of a confidence already near high-water mark, to ask her 
 friend if that tale had any foundation? Why, no — not if there 
 was to be any tact or caution in the asking; that was not her 
 line. She could keep off people's corns altogether, but she could 
 not go over them on tiptoe. 
 
 Need this be a corn at all ? Nancy answered this in the nega- 
 tive, before saying, without reserve : — " Is there anything in that 
 story of Fred's, about Dr. Carteret's early love-affair, that might 
 have had something to do with it? Or is it only romance?" 
 
 Mrs. Carteret said : — " I never gave the boy leave to publish 
 that I" 
 
 Nancy said : — " Cit told me. Do I matter ? " 
 
 " No — my dear ! You don't matter. . . . But, however ! — 
 I suppose I must learn to be more discreet now I have a son 
 engaged. I never had one before. I might have known he 
 would repeat everything to your sister. He lost no time, I must 
 say." She was not displeased — so Nancy thought — that so un- 
 reserved a confidence should exist in that quarter. It sounded 
 real. 
 
 " I didn't see the letter it was in, and that was all she told 
 me — that he thought the two things might have some connec- 
 tion. ..." Nancy wanted to explain something in three 
 words, and became a little complex. " I didn't know it wasn't 
 a thing he hadn't always known," said she.
 
 160 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 C( 
 
 Oh no — I had just told him. He knew nothing about it. 
 It was before he was born or thought of — when I was a little 
 girl. I don't the least mind telling you." She then repeated 
 all she had told Fred, in nearly the same words. 
 
 "■ Why did Fred think that would throw light on this ..." 
 
 " On this business? It won't. He got some crazy idea that 
 this lady — I never knew who she was; my mother would never 
 tell me — had come on the tapis again; as a widow, I suppose. If 
 she had lost her husband lately, of course the thing would not 
 have been out of the question ; though even then I don't know 
 why it should have worked out this way. ..." 
 
 " No — why there should be any mysteries and secrecies. It 
 seems so needless." 
 
 " Absolutely. It would have been all the other way. Fancy 
 the effect on the school ! Fancy a headmaster wlio neglected 
 his school without notice, to negotiate a secret wedding! Such 
 an uncalled-for escapade ! "' 
 
 " I should have taken my boy away, and sent him to another 
 school." This imaginary family would have provoked a smile 
 at any other time. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret went back a few bars. '' But she had not lost 
 her husband lately. For my mother told me this much about 
 her, that she was a widow, years ago. Why — my mother has 
 been dead seven years ! And it was a long time before her 
 death, because she certainly was not completely paralysed when 
 she told me." 
 
 '*' Five years — suppose ? " 
 
 "•' More than that. Indeed, I fancy it was not far short of the 
 time my dear husband died. But I couldn't say for certain. 
 Anyhow, one can only make it possible by supposing she had 
 just lost a second husband. Does it seem likely ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I can't say it seems to make so very much 
 difference — to me." 
 
 " Well, perhaps not." Mrs. Carteret seemed to assent be- 
 cause she was thinking of something else. It could not be in 
 the fire, still welcome in the evening, in May's early snap of 
 cold ; although a coal, that volleyed out a tar-blaze by fits and 
 starts, was doing its best to attract attention. No — her mind 
 was trying back for dropped fragments of the past. At last it 
 came, as though she roused herself to speak. " I was trying to 
 recall exactly what my mother said. But the time makes it so 
 difficult. I do remember this, though — that when she told me the 
 lady was a widow, I naturally suggested that they might be
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 161 
 
 brought together again. She became very emphatic, saying sev- 
 eral times over : — ' It would be impossible — impossible — impos- 
 sible!' I can remember the difficulty she had in saying it, 
 because the stroke had affected her speech. I can't be sure about 
 what else she said. But I did catch some of itj certainly." 
 Nancy held her tongue and waited, feeling she had no claim to 
 know more, until Mrs. Carteret spoke again, almost as in response 
 to her thought. " Well — it scrunded like ' It would have been all 
 right before her marriage,' which seemed nonsense. It does, 
 doesn't it? . . . What's that?" For the girl had started, and 
 the start had been felt by the hand that held hers. Mrs. Car- 
 teret took a cause for granted. " These coals are nothing but 
 slate," said she. " They spit horribly ! " 
 
 " It wasn't a coal," said Nancy. " Only an idea in my head." 
 But she didn't say what it was, except that it was nothing. Mrs. 
 Carteret did not press for it, only looked in an affectionate 
 amused way at the heightened colour and animated eyes this 
 " nothing " had had the power to produce. Possibly a pull at 
 the visitor's bell below was responsible for this, as an incursion 
 seemed imminent. 
 
 The little dachshund, who had passed a profitable afternoon 
 inside the fender, asleep with the cat, heard incident afoot and 
 came hurriedly to attend to the matter. He got out of the room 
 and downstairs to see that the visitors belonged to a class he 
 could sanction, and was — so to speak — heard smelling them 
 below, while Lipscombe reassured them by a report of the date 
 when he had last bitten the unoffending Public. They were the 
 Bagster Sutclift'es, or some equivalent thereof; and why they 
 need come so late Heaven — according to the ladv of the house — 
 only knew! She was sorry now that it was too late, that she 
 hadn't told Lipscombe to say not at home. It certainly was too 
 late, for the Bagster Sutclifl'es were upon us. 
 
 It was impossible to distinguish one from the other of them, 
 and their plurality was indeterminate of that account. Nancy 
 afterwards told her sister that she had not the slightest idea 
 whether there were three or five. From the moment of their 
 entry they all spoke at once, and their apologetic geniality — 
 which never wore out the topic of the lateness of their visit — 
 was as a whirlwind strong enough to knock down ornaments, 
 break piano-candles, and sweep away antimacassars. At least, 
 there was food for apprehension on this score. But the Bagster 
 Sutcliffes had one very high quality. They had had tea. 
 
 It was a visit, not a riot — whatever you might have thought.
 
 162 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 No Visit Act exists, or they might have been dispersed before 
 seven o'clock. As it was, a species of gush had to be maintained 
 in the interests of Society, until quite suddenly it dawned on all 
 the Bagster Sutcliffes at once that it was time to go. They 
 exclaimed simultaneously that they were paying " an uncon- 
 scionable long visit." But they did not act on the discovery. 
 On the contrary, they seemed proud of stopping longer still, and 
 not in the least ashamed. No one had thrown doubt on their 
 statement ; but they had determined, apparently, to be on the safe 
 side, so stopped longer. After this had occurred once or twice, 
 a change seemed to come over them, and they exclaimed dis- 
 jointedly that they really must go, and got up and sat down 
 again at intervals. 
 
 Even so — in quite another connection — sea-birds on the sands 
 seem to suggest flight to the community by little musical cries, 
 far apart; while daring spirits, one by one, fly a few flaps over 
 their reflections, to the same end, the import of each short span 
 of wingcraft being clearly : — '* This is how it's done, like this. 
 You do it too, all of you ! " Then in the end all rise together, 
 and they and their reflections are gone, and we are the worse 
 thereby. After each Bagster Sutcliffe had shown its kind ten- 
 tatively how to go, the whole number of them took flight, like 
 the birds. 
 
 AYhereupon Mrs. Carteret, so far from seeming the worse, 
 said : — " Oh dear ! — I thought those people were never going 
 to go. What were we talking about, dear ? " But Nancy had 
 quite honestly forgotten about the idea in her head that wasn't 
 a coal, nor could she have formulated it afresh at a moment's 
 notice. So she said she had forgotten, and — to soften off the 
 Bagster Sutcliffes — ^^said that the smallest one was rather pretty, 
 and that the plump one was rather silent, and that the mother 
 had an interesting expression. To which Mrs. Carteret assented 
 perfunctorily, seeming much more alive to the fact that it was 
 time to get ready for dinner. 
 
 The incidents of the day have been followed thus closely to 
 account for Mrs. Carteret not having seen that announcement 
 in yesterday's Daib/ Telegraph. The story knows so far, that it 
 had been overlooked at Nancy's own home, and it has now been 
 seen that it could not have transpired at Maida Yale except 
 through the Bagster Sutcliffes, or Mrs. Carteret reading it in 
 the Dailjf Telegraph. When a paragraph occurs in one journal 
 only on Saturday, it may, or may not, be in the Sunday papers. 
 As it chanced, this paragraph about Dr. Carteret's disappearance
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 163 
 
 was copied into the Observer. But Mrs. Carteret did not see it. 
 She was at church in the morning, and in the afternoon pre- 
 ferred talking with her young friend to any newspaper. So the 
 Observer lay neglected — perhaps too proud to complain. At any 
 rate, it did not. 
 
 Now, it would have been the merest affectation in Xancy to 
 make any pretence of preparation for dinner. Her bicycling 
 dress was at odds with ideas of the sort, and the absence of com- 
 pany — for the Bagster Sutcliffes were callers — not company — 
 warranted its retention. So soap-and-water and a brush-and- 
 comb exhausted the subject in five minutes, and she was back 
 in the drawing-room some time before her hostess reappeared, 
 more completely groomed. Under such circumstances it is nat- 
 ural to feel at a loose end, and one usually opens a book to make 
 it a fast one. Nancy looked for a book of the right sort — her 
 right sort — one that you were not obliged to begin at the begin- 
 ning, but might go on with from just anywhere. She made a 
 mental stipulation to that effect before picking samples out of 
 the expansible slide on the table, and found nothing that com- 
 plied with it. Then her eye was caught by the uncomplaining 
 Observer, on a most uncomfortable chair with feet like Liebig 
 the dachshund's, an ogee back, and a siege so rotund that it was 
 a wonder the Observer hadn't slipped off; a chair that brought 
 to Nancy's mind an acrobat who stood on the Terrestrial Globe, 
 and made it climb the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle. 
 She decided that she might make bold to open that 
 Observer, seeing that it wasn't done up in a wrapper, only 
 folded. 
 
 She did so, and the first words that caught her eyes were: — 
 " Mysterious Disappearance." She had never known or been 
 near anyone who had been in a newspaper, and believed that only 
 a particular class — not hers — were allowed that privilege. 
 Whence the first effect of these words upon her was to make 
 her think Coincidence was busy on disappearances, and it was 
 very odd. And so deeply ingrained was her belief, that the first 
 words of the paragraph only pointed to the fact that Coincidence 
 was going strong. It was odd that two headmasters should 
 disappear simultaneously. But when it came to Vexton Stul- 
 tifer School, a belated light broke upon her, and showed her 
 the identity of the two cases. She supposed Mrs. Carteret knew 
 all about the paragraph. She mmt. And yet ! — how about the 
 wording of it? She read it twice, and did not find it improve 
 on re-reading. Of course this sort of thing might suit " the
 
 164 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 people in the Newspaper " — her mind found this phrase for them 
 — but how about human creatures? Then she read it a third 
 time, and on reflection was obliged to confess that she did not 
 see how else they could have expressed it, with some slight 
 exceptions. Probably any newspaper statement, written journal- 
 wise, always has the same appearance to its subjects, when they 
 do not court publicity. 
 
 She concluded, therefore, that she would make no critical 
 comment on the paragraph; but treat it as the usual thing, and 
 to be expected inevitably. But she would like to know about 
 the clue the police had. She had heard of nothing. 
 
 If it had not been for this, the evening might have passed 
 without revival of the subject, for she had made up her mind not 
 to refer to it again unless Mrs. Carteret did. She left the 
 Observer, folded, where she had found it, and seeing no disposi- 
 tion on her friend's part to disturb it, said nothing of what 
 she had read in it. The continued presence of Lipscombe during 
 dinner, also, which dated from her announcement thereof two 
 minutes after her mistress appeared, stood in the way of any 
 camcrie intime. They could and did, however, get back to Tlie 
 Cedars, but only as premises. The contingencies of the two 
 menages were not for Lipscombe. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret had never seen the place, and had very little 
 curiosity about it; it had seemed, as she expressed it, such an 
 unmitigated castle-in-the-air. So far as she could make out, not 
 a single difficulty in the way of the scheme had been fairly looked 
 in the face. Supposing that the whole of what might be called 
 the social difficulties — Lipscombe was outside at this moment — 
 could be overcome, how about the cost? That was what she 
 looked at. As far as she could make out from Fred, the very 
 lowest figure for barely making the place livable was four 
 hundred. And here were these young people devising all sorts 
 of imaginary alterations and additions to a house which was 
 really too large already. She only went by what she was told. 
 Fred admitted that we should probably have to make up our 
 minds to a thousand, and fifteen hundred was the price asked for 
 the remainder of the lease, which was only twenty years ! What 
 was twenty years? Young people thought it was really a long 
 iime, but that was a complete mistake. " Ask any old stager, 
 well on in the seventies, how long twenty years is — see if he does 
 not say five minutes ! " So said Mrs. Carteret. 
 
 Kancy was inclined to espouse the cause of twenty years 
 against this attack. *' Well ! " said she. " 1 don't know. I've
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 165 
 
 lasted twenty-three years, and three times twenty-three is prac- 
 tically seventy. At that rate — I mean doing it by arithmetic — 
 I ought to think twenty years a quarter of an hour. That's all 
 fair and no cheating." 
 
 "Because of three times five minutes. Is that it?" 
 
 " Yes — to make it fair for both. If your old stager has a 
 right to think twenty years five minutes, I've a right to think 
 it a quarter of an hour. It stands to reason ! Well, / think 
 twenty years is quite twelve years morally, if not more." 
 
 " I'm afraid I'm unphilosophical — or un-something. Because 
 I can't reckon it out that way. Besides, there's the way esti- 
 mates jump ; that has to be considered." 
 
 " Make allowance for the jumping — a good big margin. Add 
 fifty per cent. . . . how much is that? . . . Anyhow, add 
 plenty per cent." Nancy fought shy of figures. 
 
 "•'It wouldn't be of any use, dear! Whatever allowance you 
 make, you have to pay more. The man at the office — what's he 
 called : cashier? — makes a bigger allowance and beats. You have 
 no chance, because he refers to entries." 
 
 " 1 know, and if you stick out, he finds he's made a mistake, 
 and charges more. It's like that with boots. You are told 
 twelve shillings or thereabouts, and they come to fourteen-and- 
 six. It doesn't do to say ' suppose we say so much ' because that 
 gives them a loophole to cheat through. If you allow fifteen 
 shillings, they come to se-venteen-and-six. 
 
 " It's exactly the same with big jobs — houses and things." 
 Both ladies reflected on business matters, and Lipscombe re- 
 curred. Mrs. Carteret apologised for the smallness of the Sun- 
 day menu, and Nancy said it was heaps. Mrs. Carteret consoled 
 herself with the reflection that she knew Kettering could make 
 mayonnaise sauce, and the fish was very good yesterday. She 
 continued to chat on abstract points, perhaps because of Lips- 
 combe. You can't talk before servants, and you know you can't 
 — not about your Will, for instance. But you can about Number 
 or Magnitude. This lady said : — "' I daresay you've noticed, 
 Nancy dear, what an inaccurate science Arithmetic is." 
 
 " Oh dear yes ! " said Nancy. " It's never the same two 
 minutes together." 
 
 " That's exactly it. If a sum would only remain the same, 
 nothing could be more accurate. But somebody is sure to get 
 at it — when you've got to pay, that is! When it's to be paid 
 you, they take something off. You can't say anything. If you 
 try, they take off more. But what the claim of Arithmetic is
 
 16G THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 to be considered an Exact Science — at least while it's done by 
 other people — Heaven only knows ! " 
 
 Nancy was pleased that her friend should run on like this; 
 although to do so she was very negligent of the fish mayonnaise. 
 But it implied that her mind was free for the time being; the 
 nightmare was in abeyance. Nancy resolved that it was best 
 not to recur to it, although she was keenly anxious to know what 
 that clue could be that the newspaper alleged was in the hands 
 of the police. 
 
 So they chatted on the subjects of the day. As for instance 
 Psychical Research, which Mrs. Carteret said reminded her of 
 Edie Ochiltree and " Ye are gude seekers but ill finders," when 
 he helped Herman Dousterswivel to dig for treasure. Or the last 
 new bacillus discovered in Berlin, who was going to be an antidote 
 to drunkenness and insanity, as well as tuberculosis. Nancy had 
 heard of him at first hand, so to speak. " Papa was quite elo- 
 quent about him, bless his little heart ! " said she, '"' after he met 
 Professor Grockstroysch, or some such name, at the soiree in 
 Albemarle Street." Mrs. Carteret wanted to know how this 
 Professor came to know anything about him; but explained, 
 after elucidations, that she thought Nancy might be speaking of 
 her little brother, and apologised for inattention. Professor 
 Gutturals — that was the nearest she could go — was very inter- 
 esting. But wasn't it rather . . . she wouldn't say disrespect- 
 ful. . . . Well — suppose she said open to misinterpretation ! 
 ... to bless her father's little heart ? " 
 
 Nancy had to think back, to get the clue to this. " Oh — I 
 see," she said. " It must have sounded exactly like that. Bless 
 papa's little heart by all means ! But I meant the bacillus. 
 Why, he's only decimal ought-ought-ought something of a milli- 
 gram long. I forget exactly what, but I know he's Jolly small." 
 This and remarks of a like sort would force a smile from Mrs. 
 Carteret, more at the unconscious gravity of the speaker than the 
 substance of what she said. As for Nancy, probably this was 
 only her trivial treatment of the topics of the passing hour, a 
 little exaggerated by a desire to avoid the subject in the back- 
 ground of the minds of both. But it hung on her lips, watched 
 in corners of her mind for moments when no other thought 
 occupied them ; would not be gone and leave her free. Especially 
 those last words of the newspaper paragraph haunted her, about 
 the supposed success of the police. Mrs. Carteret must know 
 what it was surely, if the Observer did. 
 
 Curiosity, backed by a feeling that each knew the other was
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 167 
 
 beset with silence about a thing that defied forgetting, got the 
 better of Nancy, and she was -the first to speak, taking for 
 granted her friend's knowledge. " I wonder what the clue is ? " 
 said she. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret understood her to mean, — what clue would be 
 found ultimately? There was no clue at present — she knew 
 that. Her reply was — " Yes — I wonder, dear ! " 
 
 "But don't you ktiow?" 
 
 " How do you mean know, dear? " 
 
 " Haven't the police told you ? " 
 
 " I don't understand." The way she looked round showed 
 that she did not. 
 
 " The paragraph in the newspaper. The clue the police have. 
 It said they had. ... At least, I'm almost sure." Was it a 
 mistake of hers? She rose and took up the Observer- from the 
 curly chair. Yes — there it was — sure enough ! '* Look here ! " 
 she said, and handed the open sheet to Mrs. Carteret, with her 
 finger on the paragraph. 
 
 " I have never seen this," said that lady. She took it and 
 read it, but did not seem disturbed by it at the moment. She 
 seemed to read it twice through, carefully ; then folded the paper 
 and put it aside on the nearest table. "■ I wonder who wrote 
 that," said she. " The police have no new clue — at least, they 
 had none when Fred saw them yesterday, or Friday was it? 
 Besides ..." 
 
 " Besides what? " 
 
 " No one that knew anything about it would have written 
 that nonsense about Sunday. The idea of stopping at home 
 because it was Sunday never would have crossed my brother-in- 
 law's mind. Now who ever wrote that nonsense? No one 
 knows anything about it except the people at the school. And 
 the police, of course." 
 
 Nancy jumped to a conclusion. " Then it must be the people 
 at the school," said she, confidently. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret considered dreamily, with her eyes on the fire. 
 
 " It is certainly not Mrs. Orpen. Nor the boys, because she 
 has told them Dr. Carteret has been sent for on important busi- 
 ness, and she says they are quite satisfied. Nor the masters, if 
 the one that came here is a sample. If ever I saw ... a 
 patch of discretion, it's that man ! Besides, how about the 
 Sunday nonsense? They all knew him better than that." 
 
 " Then it must be somebody else." 
 
 " That seems reasonable. But who ? That's the point."
 
 168 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Fred must have told somebody." 
 
 *' He says distinctly that he hasn't. . . . Well — except of 
 course Mr. Snaith." 
 " Why, of course? " 
 " Won't you allow him his ' of course.' 
 
 *' I won't allow Mr. Snaith anything, with 
 
 » 
 
 I know what you were going to say." For Nancy had pulled 
 up short. 
 
 '* What was I going to say? " 
 
 " ' With a nose like that.' " 
 
 " 1 wasn't," said Nancy, emphatically. But her ingrained 
 truthfulness called for qualification. " At least not exactly that! 
 I do wish he was better looking though, if he's to be told things. 
 And after all, I only said I didn't see his ' of course.' The 
 police of course, if you like; but why Mr. Snaith of course? 
 His nose doesn't come in." Mrs. Carteret explained that this 
 gentleman, besides having been at school and college with Fred, 
 was his legal adviser, and under a professional obligation to his 
 clients in all matters of confidence. He certainly would not, 
 without consulting Fred, have sanctioned the insertion of this 
 paragraph, or any paragraph, in the daily Press. She was con- 
 vinced that Fred had not seen it, or he would have told 
 her. 
 
 A short interruption here was caused by the appearance of 
 Lipscombe, who was due about ten o'clock to induce Liebig and 
 the cat to retire for the night to their proper sleeping quarters. 
 It would have been shorter still if Liebig had been convinced 
 by repeated experience that endeavours to sleep in the drawing- 
 room were useless. He clung to the idea that craft might suc- 
 ceed where reason failed. " I think," said Mrs. Carteret when 
 Lipscombe appeared, " that the dog is behind the curtain this 
 time." He was, and was deported. The cat, less inventive or 
 more orderly, accepted the position without protest. Lipscombe, 
 who seemed to think she might be somehow essential to the 
 bicyclist's departure, was told she need not wait up, and went to 
 bed. Then the two ladies were left to themselves to have a 
 short chat more before parting. 
 
 Nancy had got a very thoughtful look upon her, with her grave 
 frank eyes on the fire, as though something she wanted to know 
 lay hid there. Mrs. Carteret acquiesced in silence when she did 
 not break it, and seemed to find the sight of her young friend a 
 distraction from the tension of her thoughts, for she still kept 
 looking at her. Presently she said — "Yes — what?" not in
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 169 
 
 response to anything her companion had said, but to an inflec- 
 tion of countenance that looked like speech. 
 
 " Only," said Nancy, slowly and something doubtfully. She 
 ended abruptly : — " Only something I was going to say." 
 
 "Well— what was it?" 
 
 " If I had said it, it would have been ..." 
 
 " Would have been what ? " 
 
 " But, you see, I changed my mind and didn't say it. I'm 
 not sure that I ought to." 
 
 " I can't tell without knowing what it would have been." 
 
 " It's only an idea, you know." 
 
 " All right. Go on." 
 
 " Mr. Snaith is engaged to Miss Lucy Hinchliffe." 
 
 " Suppose he is ! " Mrs. €arteret looked amused and puzzled. 
 
 "We knoAV he is, don't we? Well, that girl could wheedle 
 anything out of me. She could wheedle the clothes off my back." 
 The speaker felt that this was at least inartistic, and hastened 
 to adjust its accuracy. " Only mine are too large for her. She'>- 
 smaller than I am." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret laughed outright, for the first time. " Mr. 
 Snaith," said she, " isn't such a susceptible young chap as you 
 are! Why, my child, do you suppose that any sensible man of 
 the world, in Snaith's position, would allow a little monkey like 
 that to twist him round her finger ? " 
 
 Nancy nodded several times, with gravity. " She could me," 
 she said. " Why not him ? — when he's in love with her, all 
 square ! " 
 
 " Are you in love with her all, zigzag? Or how? " 
 
 Nancy dwelt on the problem a moment before answering: — 
 " It doesn't work out that way," said she evasively. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret gave serious thought to the main question. 
 " I'm sure you're wrong, Nancy dear," she said. " Unless Fred- 
 eric asked him to talk to her about it, he would hold his tongue. 
 He was bound in honour to do so." 
 
 Nancy seemed to have a violent fit of insight upon her. She 
 said : — " Fred wouldn't ask him to talk to her about it — why 
 should he? But if he asked Fred if he might, Fred would be 
 weak, and say yes. Men are like that — they cave out." She 
 had a very low opinion of male stability. Her friend only 
 laughed at her, and said she was nonsensical. But she was right 
 all the time. 
 
 Still though Mrs. Carteret discredited Nancy's conclusions, she 
 was amused at her positiveness, and seemed to find a pleasure in
 
 170 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 wondering what new perversity was hatcliing in that foolish 
 young brain. She went back to a chance of conversation that 
 had almost become prehistoric — anyhow, the Bagster Sutcliffes 
 had happened since — and wanted to know what some thought 
 was that Nancy had kept to herself. It was an elusive thing to 
 ask after, and she had to consider what was possible. She de- 
 cided on: — " What was it that wasn't a coal? " 
 
 Nancy had not the slightest idea what this meant, and thought 
 it was a conundrum. She said : — " Now, don't hurry me, and 
 perhaps I shall guess it. I hate giving them up." 
 
 "What can the child mean?" said Mrs. Carteret. Then, 
 suddenly enlightened : — " Oh, I see ! No, I'm not asking you a 
 riddle, dear ! I mean before those plaguy people came. You 
 said an idea came into your head. What was the idea ? " 
 
 Nancy looked very uncomfortable. Another girl would have 
 said she had forgotten the idea. And it must be admitted that 
 most folks would consider one had a prerogative of oblivion of 
 one's own ideas — for are they not one's own, if anything is? 
 But by this time she had remembered both the coal and the 
 context. And it was equally impossible to reveal the idea and 
 — for her, she being herself — to fabricate evasions. So she 
 said : — " Dear Mrs. Carteret, would you mind my not telling 
 you what it was? I would so much rather not." ^Vhy — of 
 course ! But Mrs. Carteret was very curious, for all that. 
 
 This must have been about half-past ten o'clock. And though 
 Nancy talked very big about her recklessness of riding in the 
 dark, she knew her family would begin to be uneasy before 
 midnight. She could not understand why they should be more 
 imeasy after midnight than after midday. But one has to accept 
 one's family as it has been supplied by Nature. 
 
 So as a preliminary thin end of the wedge, she said it must be 
 getting late. To which her hostess replied that it couldn't be 
 really late yet. They talked of lateness as if it was a quality 
 the Hours acquired with Time, a bouquet as of wine in the bin. 
 In deference to the intrinsic impossibility of their having de- 
 veloped this bouquet, neither looked at her watch ; and that clock 
 was wrong, said the owner. Nevertheless, it was evident that 
 belief in this i^ipossibility was only skin-deep, from the creeping 
 in of peroration, insidiously. Thej harked back on leading 
 topics, and showed a tendency to wind them up. They arranged 
 a visit to The Cedars — going over premises was always a fas- 
 cinating employment ! — although Mrs. Carteret was satisfied that 
 it was the veriest castle-in-the-air, and would come to nothing.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 171 
 
 Then they supposed that the lovers had been blest in one 
 another's company, and remarked that if they quarrelled half 
 a dozen times a day it did not matter, provided they ended on 
 a reconciliation. Mrs. Carteret expressed confidence in her son's 
 stability. She knew that in his professional departures he had 
 shown — well, one ought to call it perhaps a lack of concentration, 
 but this applied only to his intellectual life. Where the heart 
 was concerned he was stability itself. She believed this, evi- 
 dently, and Nancy said : — " Oh yes ! " Then they used the fag- 
 end of their day's intercourse for a serious addendum about 
 the shadow that was darkening the time for one of them directly, 
 for the other by sympathy, making the most of any possible 
 light behind the cloud. 
 
 " I will write the moment we hear anvthing," said Mrs. 
 Carteret. '^ Indeed, I'm not sure I won't telegraph. I shall if 
 it's good." 
 
 " Oh do! — it would be so nice of you. You'll see, you'll have 
 to telegraph." 
 
 " I shall hope to. But oh dear — how the time will keep on 
 going! It's three weeks already. I sometimes feel quite sick." 
 
 "■ Three weeks is nothing." Nancy put plenty of emphasis 
 intQ this; she was not going in for encouragement by halves. 
 " People have disappeared for months and years, from all sorts 
 of causes, and turned up all right in the end." All the same, 
 the young lady was not sorry she was not called on to give 
 instances. She may even have jisen to the necessity for going 
 in order to avoid doing so. " I really must be off," she said ; 
 and then added, laughing : — " I feel exactly like the Wliat's- 
 their-names — Bagster Sutcliffes." 
 
 Then followed a short interregnvim of lamp-lighting and 
 preparation, and she was off, and Mrs. Carteret felt painfully 
 alone. But Fred would be back soon. She was going to sit 
 up for him. 
 
 If this lady had known how many of the items of that last 
 postscript of chat with her young friend were destined to be 
 thwarted or falsified in the near future . . . ! But there ! — 
 if we were all prophets, would Life be worth living? What is 
 its value now, even with a curtain ahead that our imaginations 
 may run riot behind, and Hope always at hand to give them a 
 lift?
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Mrs. Carteret almost wished that the little dachshund's sub- 
 terfuge had succeeded, so lonely did the place feel after she had 
 watched the bicyclist's lamp turn the first corner, and heard the 
 last audible exclamation of her bell. Also after she had admitted 
 that it was a fine night. This was to the night policeman on his 
 beat, who had seemed interested in the bicycle, and turned his 
 bull's-eye on it. She returned his good-night, and went indoors. 
 Yes, Liebig would not have been unwelcome in the empty draw- 
 ing-room, although the callous egotism of his nature was not 
 suggestive of sympathy. 
 
 Fred might bo very late. She knew the extraordinary elasticity 
 of the times of trains, and that lastnoss was only an official 
 quality of a penultimate train, that might safely be ignored by 
 a gentleman who, as it were, knew railways at home. For the 
 engineering firm that had been Fred's alma mater was deeply in 
 the confidence of railways. All that she could rely upon was 
 that the Fraser family would retire to bed at twelve, at the latest. 
 So she should make up her mind to see nothing of her son till 
 one, at the earliest. She would write letters, presently. For 
 the time being, she would think over this girl and her ways. 
 She confessed to herself that she was getting very much attached 
 to her. 
 
 How very superior to her sister she was ! Wliy on earth need 
 Fred go and fall in love with Cintra, when it was so obviously 
 wiser for him — for any man — to fall in love with Xancy? But 
 that was just like men. Any frivolous chit, with a pretty face — 
 she did not deny the prettiness — had all mankind at her feet, 
 while girls with hearts and souls and lives and purposes simply 
 went to the wall. Of course she could not be sure, yet-awhile, 
 about this Nancy girl. But she certainly had a very good im- 
 pression of her. She was not going to admit to herself that she 
 was inclined to love her. 
 
 As for that explosion of the sister against the other girl — 
 Mr. Snaith's girl — it was simply an outburst of unreasoning 
 jealousy, and if that was the sort of thing Fred had to expect 
 all that she could say was that she was bitterly sorry for him. 
 After all, it was not as if she herself had not been in the room 
 
 172
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 173 
 
 all the time and •seen everything that took place. Jealousy of 
 that sort was no proof of affection, but rather the contrary. At 
 least, it was a confession of entire absence of confidence in her 
 lover. Would the thing last? We should see. At any rate, she 
 should say nothing. One always did more harm than good by 
 meddling, in things of this sort. 
 
 She should show that paragraph in the newspaper to Fred as 
 soon as he came in. It could do no serious harm. But it was 
 very mysterious. It could never have been written by anyone 
 who had a first-hand knowledge of the matters it referred to; 
 and was, in fact, newsmongering on the face of it. Some penny- 
 a-liner's work. As for that dear crazy-pated girl's dream, that 
 it resulted from some indiscreet utterance of Mr. Snaith — -what 
 an idea! A breach of confidence by the Lord Chancellor! 
 
 Well — she was a crazy-pated girl ! What was her idea that 
 wasn't coal ? Mrs. Carteret smiled as she remembered the 
 earnest hazel eyes, waiting for permission for their owner to be 
 silent. " ]yonId I mind her not telling? She would so much 
 rather not." She repeated the words, and the smile died of an 
 effort to remember what topic had provoked this thought she 
 was so unwilling to tell. It was before those tiresome visitor 
 people came. She was then guilty, the story feels, of an unfair 
 and illiberal semi-comment, half-aloud : — " The Bagster Sut- 
 clifies, indeed !•" Now if these people liad not been named thus, 
 they would have had some other name. 
 
 Yes, -she had recollected the moment of the coal. But what 
 on earth were they talking about then? If she could get at that, 
 conjecture would have a chance of a glimpse into that dear 
 crazy mind. But her effort of memory, after all, led nowhere. 
 For she was sure that, at that exact moment, she had been speak- 
 ing about what her own mother had said to her, years and 
 years ago, about that love-affair of her brother-in-law, before 
 lever she herself was married. It was not about thai ? — one might 
 be pretty sure! What should Nancy Fraser have ideas for, espe- 
 /cially ideas she wouldn't tell, about a thing of no interest to her, 
 that happened before she was born or in contemplation? Quite 
 out of the question ! 
 
 But this rejection of the thing as impossible was to set her 
 thinking on the subject it related to. She got well back in a 
 dream of the past, to be roused from it by the sudden clang of 
 a pull at her own gate-bell. 
 
 \Vliat was that? Surely not Fred back again already! How 
 could it be, when he had his own key, as well as a latchkey for 
 
 12
 
 174 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 the door? It was needed, for at night the gate was fastened. 
 She knew ! It was that night-latch out of order. To be sure ! 
 But how came he to be so early? It was not much past eleven. 
 
 She heard one of the servants moving, to go down and open 
 the gate. But she was too curious to know what had brought 
 him with such double-quick speed, to wait for a sleepy hand- 
 maiden to get " things on," and was out of the house first. But 
 it was not Fred. She found that out before she reached the 
 gate. People were outside, talking; but seriously, not trivially — 
 talking about something. It must be a mistake. Probably the 
 wrong house. 
 
 " What is it ? This is number seventeen." She felt so sure 
 her surmise was correct, that she anticipated action upon it. 
 
 Then she heard a man's voice say : — " It's all right as I told 
 you. That's the lady's voice." 
 
 She threw the gate open instantly, and saw a face she had seen 
 before that evening, the policeman who had bull's-eyed Xancy's 
 bicycle when she left the gate twenty minutes since. And beyond 
 him something dark and covered on a stretcher. 
 
 A young man, approaching quickly, said : — " Not out here. 
 Get her into the house." To which someone made answer : — 
 *' Eight you are, doctor ! Fetch up your end, Sam ! " WTiere- 
 upon the something travelled through the garden and into the 
 entrance lobby. 
 
 The whole world had become a stunning boom in her head, 
 accompanied by a strange consciousness that it had got to sub- 
 side. It was the knowledge that a decision was wanted as to 
 where the something should be carried that roused her to articu- 
 late speech. That climb up the stairs must be avoided if possible. 
 Now, there was a bedroom on the ground floor, which was Fred's 
 when needed, or anyone's in his absence. Into this she directed 
 the bearers. Dared she followed them ? 
 
 Yes, after a pause of a moment to help her against her head. 
 It was her enemy. The moment was longer than she thought, 
 for when she mustered courage to enter, it was into a mysterious 
 smell like ether with a young doctor in his shirt sleeves in it, who 
 was saying : — " I can tell you she's not dead. That's all for 
 the present, and that's enough." Then, hearing that, her head 
 cleared, and she became herself. " I am all right now," she said 
 to the doctor. " It was only at first. Now tell me everything." 
 
 " I can't find any fracture," said he. And it was then she 
 became aware how long that moment must have been. For he 
 continued : — " I have made all the examination possible, and I
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 175 
 
 hope it's no more than a bad concussion. If so, she may be all 
 right to-morrow. But it's my duty to tell you that we can't be 
 sure the spine isn't injured." It then appeared that this doctor 
 could not stay, but that someone of the household had been sent 
 to summon, if possible, her regular medical attendant, to take 
 over the case; and also, if possible, to get a prescription made 
 up, in spite of the late hour. He himself had been just return- 
 ing home from a patient, when he had chanced upon the acci- 
 dent, and seeing it was a matter of urgency, had submitted to 
 detention. " I know I am wanted at home," said he, " or I 
 would have stayed on. But it wouldn't be any good, as far as 
 doing anything goes. I'm sure there are no bones broken. She 
 came down on her head. ... I saw the fall, you know." Xo 
 — she did not know. How was it? He gave particulars. The 
 young lady's own riding was in perfect order ; right side of the 
 way, sounding her bell, and so forth. The cart that collided 
 with her had swung round a corner close to the kerb on its right, 
 and swerving to avoid it, she had struck the kerbstone and 
 fallen full on her head on the pavement. " I saw the fall 
 clearly," said he, " and the left shoulder's all right. She could 
 have been hurt nowhere else, except the spine. I don't anticipate 
 anything, but, as I said, we can't tell." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret, quite overwhelmed at first by this new trouble, 
 was beginning to collect her faculties. " How did you find out 
 where to bring her?" said she. This was soon explained. A 
 policeman had identified the bicycle by the red leather wallet, 
 which he had seen as the rider was leaving a house in Maida 
 Vale — this house in fact. Then Mrs. Carteret could trace each 
 
 1 event, as it happened. Her dear girl had only got the length 
 
 1 of a policeman's beat from the liouse, at the very outside, when 
 this accursed cart, with its probably drunken driver, had stopped 
 
 I her bicycling for months — for years — for ever perhaps. This 
 was all the evil anticipation she felt strong enough to bear, now. 
 
 . At all forecasting of a fatal end, thought shrunk back shudder- 
 
 f ing and was silent. 
 
 She was not overclear, afterwards, about any of these hap- 
 
 I penings, but she remembered about this time that she felt sick, 
 
 '. and could no longer endure to keep gazing at the motionless 
 figure on the bed, with its terrible white suggestion of death on 
 
 I the face. She left the room, for a moment's freedom from it, 
 meaning to return immediately. But outside were the house- 
 hold, untidy in extemporised costume, hungry for news, each one 
 on the watch to claim credit for some service rendered, having
 
 176 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 rendered none. Sho made a show — a poor one — of a fayourable 
 report, for encouragement ; and while the better, or human, side 
 of the female domestic was glad, the sensational side was baffled 
 and disappointed. It revived, however, when Lipscombe returned 
 with Dr. Culpepper, the tutelary Galen of Maida Vale, who 
 said : — " Sorry to hear of the accident, Mrs. Carteret. Your 
 maid told nie. Let's see the patient," and passed into the 
 bedroom. 
 
 He and the other doctor seemed acquaintances. " You saw 
 the fall, Harrison?" said he, and the other told about it in an 
 undertone. " You're sure about the shoulder," he went on, and 
 the answer was : — " Absolutely certain." Dr. Culpepper then 
 said, addressing Mrs. Carteret : — " I think you may rely on that. 
 Mr. Harrison is a very strong man in surgery. I consider his 
 opinion better than my own. I shall not examine the shoulder 
 myself. . . . Unless you wish it, of course ? " But Mrs. Car- 
 teret had no wish, either way. 
 
 Then Mr. Harrispn went, and a nurse came, somehow arranged 
 for by Dr. Culpepper. And all the while the motionless figure 
 on the bed, that was Nancy Fraser, showed no sign of life. But 
 neither nurse nor doctors seemed alarmed at that. Then, when 
 all seemed settled. Dr. Culpepper went away also, and Mrs. 
 Carteret went out at the front door into the clear starlight night. 
 
 Those stars should by now have seen her girl's arrival at home. 
 How little they cared ! And at that home of hers, how they 
 Avould wonder when Nancy would be back, and invent new possi- 
 bilities to account for the delay in her arrival. She could fancy 
 the panic-stricken voice of the brother or sister who had settled 
 not to wait up, but to go to bed and sleep, catching in a waking 
 moment some sound of speech below, and calling to the 
 watchers: — "Isn't Nancy come in yetf" She knew how the 
 father or brother would come post-haste in the morning, before 
 any telegram she could send could reach them, to learn what 
 sombre news she had to give. Oh, if only consciousness had 
 returned by then, what a gain that would be ! 
 
 She went back restlessly, and packed the household off to bed, 
 telling them what was not true, that there had been signs of 
 consciousness in the patient. This was that they might slee[). 
 But her solicitude for them was quite uncalled for. They would 
 have slept — trust them for that ! She talked a little with the 
 nurse, but found her depressing, as she destroyed the value of 
 her sanguineness about the return of consciousness before morn- 
 ing, by dwelling on the probability of secondary consequences
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 177 
 
 to follow. " You get lockjaw, as often as not," she said. And 
 she had known creeping paralysis to set in after the patient had 
 been credited with complete recovery. So Mrs. Carteret, after 
 detecting, or fancying she detected, some sign of returning colour 
 in the pallid face, and then condemning her own hope as futile, 
 again left the room and went uneasily down the garden path to 
 the gate, and stood watching along the road for Fred, as people 
 do for late comers overdue, knowing all the while how little they 
 gain by doing so. 
 
 But Fred was overdue — no doubt of that ! That was one 
 o'clock — and that — and that ! They were all of a mind, from 
 her own clock in the hall, heard through the door she had left 
 open, to deliberate Big Ben at remote Westminster, showing how 
 the east wind was veering south. She wished he would come; 
 his presence would be a great help. . . . There was a cab 
 stopping. That would be him ! 
 
 It was not him. It was an indignant hoarse gentlv^man, who 
 roared to his cabman : — " I told you Acacia Eoad — wher^ are 
 you going?" She heard the cabman's reply: — "You git more 
 riding for your money this way, anyhow ! " as he pulled up and 
 turned down a plausible road. Then the hoarse gentleman's 
 growls died down in the distance. 
 
 The policeman coming slowly along the pavement was the 
 same policeman, still on his beat. She waited for him. He 
 might tell her something. 
 
 She thought he was not going to speak, and indeed he all but 
 passed the gate, without doing so. But he turned square and 
 faced her, to say : — " A serious job, ma'am, I'm afraid ; " and 
 waited for confirmation or contradiction. 
 
 " Serious — yes ! But the doctors say she is only stunned, and 
 will most likely come to in an hour or two." Her words sounded 
 hopeful to herself, but she mistrusted them. 
 
 " Well — maybe they'll be right. It was a bad fall, they said 
 round at the accident." 
 
 " You didn't actually see it, then ? " She had thought he did. 
 
 " It happened before I come up. The doctor saT7 it — the 
 young gentleman." - 
 
 " So he told me. You knew her again. It v;a^^ lucky.'" 
 
 " I might not have known her. Young ladies run of a much- 
 ness. Sometimes you can't tell 'em apart. But the marocker 
 knapsack I went by. There couldn't have been two such, not in 
 a short half-mile." 
 
 " What v^ould have happened if you had not recognised her?**
 
 178 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " They'd have identified her at the infirmary, and communi- 
 cated." 
 
 " Suppose she liad had notliing on Iier to identify her?" 
 
 " That docs liappen, now and again. Then they have to keep 
 'em pending enquiry. If a bicychst rides without his card in his 
 pocket he's the responsible party himself. It's his own lookout, 
 and he knows what to expect." This policeman had renounced 
 all human interests^ and had devoted his whole soul to Kespon- 
 sibility. 
 
 jSTo sign of Fred ! Mrs. Carteret said good-night to the 
 policeman and returned into the house. It was just possible that 
 Fred, if made very late by some unforeseen cause, might go 
 straight to his chambers and sleep there — just possible, but not 
 very likely. It was rather a device of her mind to shelve a new 
 anxiety, than a reasonable conviction. 
 
 She and the nurse stood together by the motionless figure on 
 the bed. . . . Yes — quite motionless, but . . . ! 
 
 The room was half darkened — one gas-jet only — a glimmer 
 accented, no more. Mrs. Carteret said : — " I want more light to 
 see the face. Is there any objection ? " 
 
 The nurse replied, through a palpable yawn: — '• None that I 
 know of. . . . No — none whatever!" Tbo correction was a 
 struggle or a protest against the cause of the yawn. She went 
 to the gas bracket, and turned the tap cautiously. " Rather 
 more please ! " said Mrs. Carteret, watching the patient. The 
 gaslight went up, hissed remonstrance, and was checked. " Come 
 here," she continued, " and look ! " The nurse came, and looked. 
 " Yes," she said, " I see what you mean." It was a change in 
 the colour; little enough, but something! 
 
 " I thought so," said Mrs. Carteret. '' But it might have been 
 mere hope." She felt as if a great lump of lead had been sud- 
 denly lifted from her heart. And then an intense impatience 
 to hear the girl's dear voice again. " Will it be long, do you 
 think ? " said she. 
 
 "Will what?" said the nurse. " Oli — you mean conscious- 
 ness? No — yes. . . . Well, it may be some time." 
 Do you means hours, or days ? " 
 
 Do I mean . . .? Oh — hours or days?" But this 
 nurse's testimony was worth little or nothing. She was break- 
 ing down fast before the most irresistible of logicians, Sleep — 
 him against whom all conclusions may be tried in vain. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret saw what was the matter, and went straight to 
 the point. "You have been awake too long," she said. 

 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 179 
 
 " Only thirty-six hours," said the nurse. 
 
 " Exactly. They shouldn't have sent you. You're not the 
 least fit for night-worK." 
 
 " They had no one else to send. I should not have come only 
 it was for Dr. Culpepper, I wasn't the least sleepy when I 
 started." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret considered the position. " I think," she said, 
 "the best thing will be for you to lie down and go to sleep. 
 I could not sleep if I tried, and I can wake you if necessary." 
 But she did not feel very confident on the last point. 
 
 There was a sofa at hand, in an off-room ; and upon it, in a 
 very few minutes, was a sleeper to all appearance beyond the 
 reach of any rousing power less decisive than that of the hot 
 iron with which the Oriental keeps his victim awake till he dies 
 raving mad. Mrs. Carteret left her without any anticipation of 
 needing her services, and returned to the bedroom. 
 
 The figure on the bed had not moved. The hand lay on the 
 coverlid where she had seen it last. But before turning down 
 the gas she made sure of that returning colour in the face, and 
 the fingers she took in hers to feel for a revival of the pulse 
 were warmer — or, rather, less cold. 
 
 As for the pulse, that she could not be certain about. But 
 finding of pulses was not one of her strong points. She had an 
 inner conviction they never occurred twice in the same place. 
 But she fancied, after many trials, that her finger was conscious 
 of intervals, though it would have been absurd to say that they 
 were separated by beats. Well — patience ! All might be well, 
 in a few hours. 
 
 There v/as no fear that sleep Avould overcome lier, with those 
 dry burning eyes. Besides, she seldom slept in the early hours 
 of the night as it was, and was in no want of sleep ; had over- 
 slept last night. She settled down on an easy-chair close to the 
 bed, without misgiving. As the silence grew she could hear the 
 regular breathing of that unhappy nurse, whom she was sin- 
 cerely sorry for. It was much better to have acknowledged the 
 position, as she had done, than to have that unhappy woman 
 struggling all night against a fo?'ce majeure. 
 
 She had made up her mind by now that Fred had gone back 
 to his chambers, and had no disposition to beg and borrow a 
 trouble about that young man. The fact was, he was always 
 very easy about his comings and goings, and this defection of 
 his would hardly have called for notice at another time. ]\Iore- 
 over, the presence of her young friend counted as a set-ofE or
 
 180 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 makeweight. Fred would have come back early enough for a 
 chat before retiring had he not known she was not alone. This 
 was the substance of the excuse she concocted to cover her son's 
 absence. But it had its weak points, and she was subconscious of 
 them. Fred ought to have been back; there was no doubt of 
 it. 
 
 Is one alive, ever, to more than one pain, or bad anxiety, at 
 a time? So Mrs. Carteret asked herself, when she felt the old 
 wound return, as the balm of revived hope began to operate on 
 the new one. Nancy would be all right — or was she only catch- 
 ing at a straw? Anyhow, she had to live, and hope she must. 
 in self-defence ! But the black cloud came back and back^ all 
 the worse for her short oblivion of it. 
 
 Where was he, this brother of her dead husband — this man 
 who through a lifetime, or the most of it, had been her first 
 refuge, and his, in all the cross-currents of life; whose pilotage 
 had always been at hand in unsafe water? Had she paid him 
 his due of love, or even reverence, in all these years of his help- 
 fulness ; accepted as of right, sometimes even with a trace of 
 resentment against his prepotent exaction of deference to his 
 opinion? Her thought of him fell short df taking form, but 
 might have become : — " Dear, dear old Dru ! — how overbearing 
 you were! What a drill-sergeant! What an Amurath, 
 almost ! " But only the first phrase stirred in her mind. For, 
 where was he now ? 
 
 Her thought had to rush up its reserves, to stand against 
 despair. And the chief one was a sort of mechanical derision 
 of herself, for taking the worst for granted; partly of herself at 
 least, at the bidding of a distempered fancy — an unwholesome 
 nightmare of the small hours, and a memory of it in the healthier 
 daylight. It would be no miracle, if he walked into this house 
 to-morrow, denouncing the fatuity which had ended in that fool's 
 paragraph in the newspaper. As if he did not know how to take 
 care of himself! She could almost hear the words he would be 
 sure to use, and the tones of that familiar voice. 
 
 But . . . where teas he, now? That terrible image of a 
 hidden victim of murder would force itself before her; or rather, 
 would force itself into the image of a railway line that stretched 
 from her consciousness of Wimbledon or her consciousness of 
 Exeter — she had never been free from either — with an ill- 
 searched margin on either side. And then again she found her- 
 self in revolt against this incorrigible pessimism, to again allow 
 her indignation against herself to collapse, and be renewed for
 
 TPIE OLD MADHOUSE 181 
 
 a new nightmare after a brief spell of resolution. She said to 
 herself again and again that all this wear and tear of the soul 
 was needless; would be mere food for regret in the future if 
 all turned out well in the end, as might be — yes, as might be! 
 Why be blind to the possibility of good? 
 
 After all, that wild surmise of Fred's might have something 
 in it. It would not be the first extravagant theory that had 
 turned out sane. She took it up for serious examination. 
 
 All that first condemnation of it had been on the score of its 
 improbability, not impossibility. It was not impossible that he 
 could treasure, in his secret heart, a love he had never confessed, 
 even though his rival were dead and gone, for any term of years. 
 \\liy not ? She could fancy a hundred motives that might work 
 upon a nature like his, that, for all the roughness of its outer 
 shell, was chivalry itself at the core. Who could say that mere 
 reverence for a possibility in this lady's mind — the possibility 
 of a disbelief in any but physical death, except indeed for the 
 man who destroys his own soul— might not influence him to keep 
 silence? If he said to himself: — " How can I, who am officially 
 bound to condemn materialism, ask to enter the temple sacred to 
 no m.ere memory, but to belief in present survival beyond the 
 tomb?" If he said this, and acted on it or disallowed action 
 on it, would it have been anything one would not have foretold 
 of a man of his antecedents? Surely too, if, as was likely, he 
 took her mother completely into his confidence on this point, it 
 was one that would have warranted her emphatic rejection of 
 every effort towards a resuscitation of his dream of former years. 
 Otherwise what could justify her statement, almost angry in its 
 positiveness, that the thing was impossible — absolutely impos- 
 sible? So far from being a refutation of this thing, the fact that 
 her mother had spoken thus was a confirmation of it. Her 
 emphasis only showed how completely she had understood his 
 feelings and been in his confidence. 
 
 Then supposing this view of his prolonged silence accepted, 
 where was the difficulty of accounting for his possible disclosure 
 of his old passion in the end? Consider the difference that 
 would have been made by half a word, half a hint, from the 
 lady herself! And as for the inexplicable privacy of the step 
 he had taken, whatever it was, would he be his own master? 
 Would he not have to consult his confederate in everything? 
 Certainly, her wish for secrecy would be odd, and she would be 
 an odd woman. But why should she not be an odd woman? 
 Some singular thing was wanted, to account for the facts. AVhy
 
 182 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 not an eccentric desire for a private wedding on the part of a 
 lady absolutely unknown? Besides, what was there to show that 
 a letter had not miscarried? 
 
 She went on to construct a meshwork of imaginary circum- 
 stances that would account for everything, beginning at the 
 moment when he caught his train at Wimbledon. There was 
 no strain on probability in supposing that he met the lady by the 
 way. She might be travelling in the same carriage, but dra- 
 matic contexts would have to be devised to make such a meeting 
 serve the end in view, that of a prolonged interview, leading to 
 a revival of an old cordial acquaintance. A much more probable 
 contingency would be, for instance, that he sliould recognise her 
 on the platform of a side station, seeing a friend off. Then that 
 an occurrence should ensue such as we have almost all known 
 to happen, if it has not happened to ourselves. He left the 
 train heedlessly, moved by an irresistible impulse to speak with 
 her on the platform, and perhaps, over-confident that the guard 
 would give him time, come what might, to resume his place be-, 
 fore starting. She could imagine the " Jump in there — just 
 off ! " of the guard, and his run after his own brake ; his 
 hanging on its step long enough to see the big clerical gentleman 
 fail to reach his carriage ; his " Very sorry. Sir — couldn't wait ! " 
 to the latter as he swept past him at too great a speed to risk 
 inviting him in — a younger man would have been different — and 
 in the end the humiliating confession that that was the very last 
 train; and he would have to go to an hotel. Does not all this 
 happen every day? 
 
 She found the possible lady, in some side locker of Fancy, 
 and brought her out to act her part. An interesting looking 
 woman in deep widow's weeds — Heaven knows why, as her 
 widowhood was come of age by hypothesis ! — and preferably an 
 appearance of having suffered much. Such a one could fairly 
 scout the idea of the hotel, and invite Dr. Carteret to take 
 advantage of her hospitality ; that was her brougham, and it 
 was less than half an hour's drive ; he could go on to Exeter by 
 the ten-thirty in the niorning, and really lose very little time. 
 . . . Well — yes ! On the whole a grown-up daughter would be 
 desirable, and would cost nothing. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret's imagination provided a chubby one, just out 
 of her teens, who had often heard mamma say she knew Dr. 
 Carteret years ago. . . . And so on. 
 
 The moment she saw a possible denoiiement ahead, she was 
 contented to leave events to develop themselves. All she wanted
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 183 
 
 this fiction for was to fortify, as an example, her belief that other 
 possibilities existed, any one of which might lie at the root of 
 the mystery. She took kindly to it in itself too. Such a sweet 
 St. Luke's summer of happiness for the old boy himself after a 
 life so cruelly frustrated. But the principle point was that it 
 was absurd to give up hope, when so many ways of evading 
 despair were open to imagination. 
 
 What a strange thing it was— the story is still following Mrs. 
 Carteret's thoughts — that in those early days, which she could 
 still remember well, when she and her dear dead husband, little 
 more than a bo}^ were revelling in their early dream of love, and 
 caring not a straw how others lived and died, this young divine, 
 her destined brother-in-law, should be hiding a grievous sorrow 
 at heart from all the world ! WHiy — she could remember him, 
 rather, as uniformly cheerful; his future self concealed, one 
 might have said, in the mere strength and freshness of his 
 youth. For though family jests nicknamed him the inflexible 
 One, and Ehadamanthus, those who coined them never knew 
 their truth. Even her husband never saw his brother as the 
 man that he became. She could not say to herself that he would 
 not have recognised him ten years later, but he certainly would 
 have been surprised at the change. 
 
 When did it begin? It must have been about that time; the 
 time, that is, of those terrible days that changed her life and 
 left it lonesome. Or, it may bo, rather later. It is impossible to 
 recall the successive phases of a change of character. All she 
 could be sure of was that the brother-in-law she remembered in 
 her husband's lifetime had become a different man a few years 
 after his death. She could remember her mother noticing this 
 change, and speaking of it. 
 
 However confident one may oe of one's power to keep awake, 
 it will be put through a severe trial by circumstances such as 
 those which surrounded Mrs. Carteret at this small hour of the 
 morning, one which in itself makes vigilance almost impossible. 
 That heavy breathing in the next room, with its constant new 
 resolutions towards some still lower depth of consciousness, was 
 her worst enemy. What watcher has not felt the malign in- 
 fluence of example ? But for that ineffectual nurse, she was sure 
 she never would have closed an eye, and indeed was inclined to 
 resent the idea she had. But then, you cannot wake with a 
 start, and say: — "What? — Who spoke?" unless you have been 
 asleep. Moreover, the eldest Miss Bagster Sutcliffe was not in
 
 184 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 the room two minutes ago. She would have been a dream, even 
 if she had not been smoking. 
 
 But who was it that spoke? That must have been part of the 
 dream. Because though the gas, turned up, showed on the face 
 of the insensible girl on the bed more colour than three hours 
 ago, she remained motionless. Surely such a glare would have 
 been enough to rouse her. However, there could be no reason- 
 able doubt of the meaning of the colour. It was a good omen. 
 
 It made the watcher's mind happier. She went back to her 
 chair to decide at leisure what attitude she ought to take up 
 about the nurse, who had not come here simply to sleep, after all. 
 But wliat a sleep to spoil ! Listen to it. 
 
 Suppose she gave her till four o'clock ! The woman had a 
 right to be called, clearly. It might be Samaritan to let her 
 have her sleep out, but it wasn't business. She herself would 
 be the first to ask why she was not roused. So be it — at four 
 o'clock. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret felt like Fate, sitting there watching the long 
 hand of the clock on the chimney-piece. Unlike Fate, she had 
 misgivings more than once that the hand had stopped. It 
 always hung fire, surely, at each five minutes' end, and seemed 
 reluctant to cross the open. But then, it made a rush. She felt 
 that this illusion — for it could be nothing else — had a kind of 
 lanjniid interest for her. . . . There now ! — in five minutes 
 more, the nurse ! 
 
 There was a fire in the grate, lighted at the request of the 
 young doctor when the room was first settled on, but never much 
 encouraged, since the weather was getting warmer. It would 
 not do to let it out now, in the coldest part of the night, ilrs. 
 Carteret rescued it from extinction, but in doing so made a noise 
 with the fire-shovel which clashed with some other sound, and 
 spoiled her hearing of it. 
 
 She paused, shovel in hand, and spoke through the open door 
 to the nurse : — " Yes — I was just coming to wake you. It's 
 four o'clock." 
 
 But it was not the nurse, it was the patient. Mrs. Carteret, 
 uncertain which, for the moment, relinquished the fire-shovel 
 with a noiseless caution, and listened. 
 
 A moment after she was at the bedside, trying to catch speech 
 barely articulate, and repeating it for the speaker to confirm 
 or contradict her hearing of it. " Yes, dear child, ' the man in 
 the cart with one eye ' — yes !^' on the wrong side ' — of course 
 he was! 'We shall catch him if we're sharp about it?' . . .
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 185 
 
 Oh, you poor dear darling girl — just fancy! Why — it all hap- 
 pened hours ago! . . . What happened? Why, you were 
 thrown off your bike and rery nearly killed, and brought back 
 here five hours ago." 
 
 " I thought it was five minutes. \Vliere is ' here '? 1 thousfht 
 I was at home." For, as is commonly the case, the hours of 
 insensibility had been a blank. 
 
 " ' Here ' is Maida Vale, and I am Mrs. Carteret^-Fred's 
 mother, you know." A misgiving crossed her mind that she 
 herself had been forgotten. She had heard of such cases. 
 
 " I know. We were talking here a few minutes ago. Only 
 I don't see the use of trying to open my eyes. Don't believe I 
 could. Oh dear! I'm all head and such a weisrht. ... I 
 say — would you look and see if my watch is going. On my 
 wrist." 
 
 " They've taken it off, dear," said Mrs. Carteret, feeling the 
 wrist. For the low gaslight showed scarcely anything. 
 
 " Do please find it, and make sure. . . . Oh dear, what a lot 
 of trouble I am giving ! " 
 
 " Never mind. Give more." 
 
 " All right. I say — I want something cool, to drink. Only 
 I'm not sure I can sit up to drink it. Perhaps my head won't 
 come up off the pillow." 
 
 " Don't try — stupid girl ! I've got something." So slie had, 
 an invalid's feeding-bottle with an elastic tube. " I can give you 
 nothing better than cold tea," said she. 
 
 The tea was a bit of forethought of the cook's and turned out 
 luckily. Nancy seemed to appreciate it, and said it felt like 
 being in a perambulator. 
 
 But the hand that Mrs. Carteret had explored for the watch 
 had felt quite hot, to her surprise, so recently had it been quite 
 cold, and a riotous pulse liad insisted on being taken notice of 
 in the wrist as she touched it. Fever has ungoverned impulses. 
 She turned up the gas for a moment and was startled at the 
 flush that had come suddenly. She must wake the nurse now; 
 she was not familiar enough with this sort of thing not to be 
 alarmed by it. 
 
 But she hesitated, because how was she to account for the 
 nurse? Would it not be better to pause at least until she saw 
 her way plainer? If the nurse had not had a professional 
 manner, and a costume, she could have palmed her off as — 
 as what? Well, as somebody else. But no veil could be thrown 
 over that identity. She must wait until the patient slept: or
 
 186 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 the nurse woke spontaneously, for that might give, a chance of 
 consultation. Even then, tact would be needed to save the 
 situation. Had that nurse any? Has any nurse any? 
 
 As she wavered Nancy spoke. " Mrs. Carteret dear ! " said 
 she. " I want you to go to bed. It's perfectly ridiculous your 
 stopping up. I shall bo all right. Talking hurts my head a 
 little, but it's all right when I don't talk. Do go to 
 bed." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret turned the gas up again, and to her thinking 
 the colour in the face was less. Had she fancied it, or was this 
 a natural change under the circumstances? She took the hand 
 again, and it seemed less hot, and the pulse quieter. Yes — that 
 was what it was ! Excited imagination on her part. Was it 
 strange that it should be so, after all the tension of the last few 
 weeks ? 
 
 '' Look here, jSTancy dear," said she. " I'll tell you what I'll 
 do. I'll just sit here till I think you're asleep again, and then 
 I'll go to bed and send one of them to be handy if you want 
 anything. There now! Won't that do? " 
 
 " Yes — if you promise. Honest Injun and no cheating ! " 
 Whereupon ^Irs. Carteret turned down the gas and resumed her 
 armchair by the fire. 
 
 But she was not on her guard against one contingency of her 
 position. A state of anxious tension like hers may make its 
 subject venomously sleepless, but if one cause of that tension is 
 removed reaction may set in. It did in her case, and even while 
 she was listening to hear the regular breath of sleep from the 
 patient, an insidious drowsiness was upon her, which took no 
 notice of her intention to ignore it in a minute or two, and 
 wafted her would-be-watchful senses into a dreamland. 
 
 Some believe that the soundest sleeper may be awakened by 
 the announcement, even in a whisper, of some news vital to 
 himself whether it be very good or very bad, however little he 
 may grasp its meaning. If this belief is well grounded, it may 
 account for the fact that an hour later — earlier than one might 
 have anticipated — Mrs. Carteret woke with a start, to catch 
 Avords spoken by the patient; dream-speech certainly, but clear 
 and unmistakable in the morning silence for all that. They 
 came as the end of a sentence. 
 
 "... And all the while she was the girl herself ! " Wliat 
 could that mean? Mrs. Carteret was quite unconscious of any 
 feeling but bare curiosity. The words must be connected with 
 something actual, yesterday or earlier. Who was the girl? Not
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 187 
 
 the youngest Miss Bagster Sutcliffe, surely? Certainly not one 
 of the elder ones. The name " girl " sat awkwardly on 
 either. 
 
 There was the feverish voice again, not so articulate this time. 
 A sound of earnest reasoning in it — remonstrance with someone, 
 for incredulity ! " You wouldn't say ' stuff ' if you knew. . . . 
 Never was more sure of anything in my life ! . . . Stupid ! " 
 Mrs. Carteret felt that the dream-talk was to a sister, from the 
 manner of it. Sisters talk like this to one another. But why 
 Cintra, the only possible sister in this case, should be denounced 
 as stupid she could not guess. At this moment nothing was 
 further from her mind than the fact that she herself was the 
 girl referred to. 
 
 Nor might she ever have been any the wiser if Nancy's feverish 
 utterances had stopped there ; for nothing, so far, connected them 
 with herself. It was when, after incohorencies too disconnected 
 to tempt interpretation, the sleeper said with startling distinct- 
 ness : — " Her brother-in-law. Goosey ! How could he ? " that 
 the light began to break in upon her. Even then, the effect of 
 the first gleam was only to make lier aware that some wild 
 speculation was afoot in her young friend's mind, connecting the 
 vanished man with her own life in a perfectly absurd and un- 
 justifiable way. 
 
 Now, when this dear foolish bicyclist was up and well again, 
 as she would be — yes, that was good ! — would it be possible to 
 repeat this nonsense to her and try for an explanation of it? 
 Then she remembered how Nancy had begged off giving any 
 particulars of the idea that wasn't a coal. She would do the 
 same thing next time. 
 
 Hush ! — there she was talking again. " Hush " meant : " Stop 
 speculating and listen ! " Mrs. Carteret did as she was bid — by 
 some inner consciousness. 
 
 It was very difficult to make out, this ! Who was it that was 
 a widow herself, ihe7i, with such a stress upon the the?i? Was 
 it her own self, or was it that of the interesting widow whom 
 inner consciousness suddenly dubbed " the railway-station lady," 
 hefore it had time to intercept and untJiinJc her? Never mind! 
 She would do as well as another to hang thought on ; a kind of 
 jury widow, so to speak, for imagination to sail under. Mrs. 
 Carteret listened on, in hopes of hearing more, but speech became 
 mere wandering, and she lost clue of any meaning. It seemed 
 as if that soothing draught was acting up to its name, for the 
 confused dream-speech fled before it, and the patient slept. Very
 
 188 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 soon the nurse might be summoned. But a few minutes more 
 would be on the safe side. 
 
 Who was "a widow herself," and when was "then"? She 
 was very hazy about anything in the past few hours. But she 
 did recollect that when she identified the moment of the coal, 
 but a short while since, she had dismissed the connection of 
 Nancy's idea, that wasn't the coal, with her own thought at that 
 moment, as untenable and absurd. Was it absurd? Here was 
 the child talking about her brother-in-law ! 
 
 Then an uneasy feeling crossed her mind and grew, that she 
 would rather not know this idea of Nancy's. Unless indeed she 
 could be sure that the widow referred to was the railway station 
 lady, or her mother^that was a possibility? ... or indeed 
 anyone except herself ! It if was she that was the widow herself, 
 her mind flinched from any further knowledge of Nancy's specu- 
 lations, and courted ignorance. But ignorance, with a constant 
 itching to find out its subject, w^as one thorn more to vex her 
 mind. IndifEerence to the unknown is a sine qua non to the real 
 article. 
 
 Fear to look in the face a fact that one half-knows is lurking 
 round the corner is unendurable for any length of time. One 
 must see it, and make the worst or the best of it, as may be. 
 After a short period of flinching, Mrs. Carteret saw that what 
 she suspected might come to nothing on examination, but would 
 remain at its worst half-known. At least, she must revise the 
 position and find out what had set the girl's mind on these 
 imaginings. 
 
 It had begun by Nancy's asking her about that early love- 
 affair of Dr. Carteret's and Fred's theories about it. She had 
 thought it better that Nancy should not rely solely on her sister's 
 transfer of Fred's version of it, and had then told the story, aa 
 she knew it. After all, what was there to conceal? Nothing. 
 
 Further, she remembered that she had given a short shrift to 
 Fred's imaginings of a reappearance of this lady, and a revival 
 of Dr. Carteret's aspirations. But she was a little inclined to 
 blame herself for having given rein to reminiscence, beyond the 
 needs of the occasion, in the presence of this young lass, who, 
 strongly as she was drawn towards her by affection, might not be 
 discretion itself. She recollected repeating aloud, for her own 
 benefit more than for Nancy's, her mother's exact words about 
 this attachment ; and especially that last enigmatical saying of 
 hers : — " It would have been all right before her marriage. Now 
 it would be impossible. ..."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 183 
 
 Yes — and it was at that very moment the girl gave such a 
 start and she thought it was the coal. She remembered the 
 explosiveness of that coal, and the look of some new insight on 
 that candid face which betrayed the owner's ever}' thought. It 
 was then that this new idea took possession of her mind, and 
 what provoked it had been those curious words of her mother's, 
 which she indeed had all these years set down as a miscarriage 
 of speech due to paralysis. 
 
 And the outcome of it was summed up in the feverish 
 ramblings she had just heard. " She was a widow herself then,'^ 
 and, "Her brother-in-law. Goosey! How could he?" She saw 
 jS'ancy's " idea " now, plainly. And she saAv why the young lady 
 had cried oft' confession of it. 
 
 No wonder she had done so ! Hov/ look an older vv'oman in 
 the face and say : — " I see now that this man, whom you sup- 
 pose murdered, had loved you all his life; had kept silence not 
 to cross his younger brother's liappiness, and had accepted — with 
 v-'hat pain who knows? — the inevitable position of legal consan- 
 guinity at his brother's death"? No groat wonder, too, that she 
 should have jumped at this false construction of facts, seeing 
 the way in which they had been presented to her ! 
 
 False construction, of course. Who should know better than 
 she? Was it credible that the grave elder brother — who was a 
 man, mind you, while she was a child! — was enshrining her in 
 his heart of hearts, to the exclusion of every other tenant, while 
 she and his irresponsible junior were indulging in unmitigated 
 romping — for in their case love surprised a mere schoolboy and 
 schoolgirl — and preparing for himself a lonely future in the most 
 painful of circumstances ; thirst near the ripple of a forbidden 
 spring, starvation in the very land of plenty? Perfectly in- 
 credible ! She would have found it out, of course. And she 
 never so much as suspected it. 
 
 False construction, of course ! But excusable in a bystander 
 who had got the story scrapwise. Mrs. Carteret promised her- 
 self that she would tell Nancy, who would be all right again 
 very soon — she was sure of that — plenty of things that would 
 show her the absurdity of her idea, without raking up the whole 
 story again. Now, she must go and wake that sleepy nurse. 
 
 13
 
 CHAPTEE XIII 
 
 At Lyndhurst, where there was a puzzle-monkey, a minute 
 down the road from The Jessamines, dwelt a retired army officer, 
 Captain Maefarren, whose name so closely resembled Professor 
 Eraser's in the eyes of the post that each frequently received 
 the other's parcels and letters. When this happened of a Sat- 
 urday night, Macfarren's, being of an obliging disposition, did 
 not wait for the postman on jNIonday, but just sent round a 
 young man they harboured, with the letter or parcel, and Captain 
 Macfarren's compliments. On this particular Sunday this young 
 man was instructed to carry a wandering parcel to The Jessa- 
 mines, and ought to have done so in the morning. But he 
 forgot all about it till the evening, and that is why, at nearly 
 eleven o'clock, he was conversing with the 3'oung lady at the door 
 she opened to Fred early in the day. Their talk turned on the 
 voices audible in the parlour near at hand. 
 
 What the young man said was : — " 'Ouse'old's a keepin' of its 
 temper to-night, to jedge by the sound." To which the young 
 lady replied, following the slight indication of his glance: — 
 " That's our youngest, and the young gentleman she's engaged to 
 be married to. She'll keep him in order, I lay." So the young 
 man's remark had been sarcastic, as also was his comment: — 
 " Wife of his buzzim — that sort of thing ! " Then he, very im- 
 pertinently as the story thinks, gave a personal turn to the 
 conversation. " A 'ansum gal like you," said he, " wouldn't go 
 on like that. Ketch you at it ! ! Nor you shouldn't set on my 
 knee, if you did." The young lady did not seem mortally of- 
 fended, saying in reproof merely : — " I shan't ask to be took, not 
 if it's you!" They parted with equanimity, and the young lady 
 placed the parcel on the hall table where you couldn't easy miss 
 it; and, finding she couldn't make out what the dissension was 
 about, owing to the thickness of the door, vanished into the 
 basement. 
 
 Had she remained within hearing, and the speakers been 
 unaware of her, she would have heard, through the door, half 
 ajar for someone to come out, that her young mistress within 
 said : — " Yes — that is what I wish. Good-bye ! " And she 
 would have heard that Cintra meant what she said. 
 
 190
 
 )} 
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 191 
 
 Fred was not sure about her real meaning. This was not their 
 first lovers' tiff. She would recant again, as she had done before 
 So he half said to himself, as he paused at the door. " Cintra ! 
 said he, appeaiingly. " Think of the meaning of what you say ! 
 Is it all to be at an end between us ? " 
 
 "Yes I" She made this affirmative harsh with emphasis, be- 
 yond the needs of its meaning. 
 
 "And for such a cause?" He closed the door as he said 
 this, as though to shut in the conversation. 
 
 " Are you sure you know the cause ? " This was spoken coldly 
 — icily. 
 
 " I think I do. At least — it has to do with that house." 
 
 " It has nothing to do with the house. I should have said 
 exactly the same of any other house, if . . . if ..." 
 
 " If there had been a proposal to share it with Charley Snaith 
 and his wife? " 
 
 '*' jS^ot with Mr. Snaith and his wife ! With Miss Lucy Hinch- 
 lifEe and her husband ! ]\Ir. Snaith indeed ! As if Mr. Snaith 
 could make any difference ! " 
 
 "Why should Lucy Hinchliffe make a difference?" A hesi- 
 tating question. 
 
 " Ask yourself that ! " was the unhesitating answer. " You 
 know why, better than I do." 
 
 " Oh, Cintra — how can you be so unreasonable ! Have I not 
 told you how utterly groundless ..." 
 
 " No — you haven't ! " This was unfortunately true. On the 
 other hand, the young lady could scarcely lay claim to having 
 formulated any definate accusation against her lover. How could 
 she have done so, when there was nothing to lay hold of? Has 
 not this been, so in many another action in the Court of Love? 
 The gravamen of the indictment has been indisputable, but it 
 has taken the skill of Shakespeare or Browning to frame it. 
 
 Fred knew he was technically guiltless, even of a confessed 
 sensibilit3^ But he had given away his case by alleging a plea 
 of not guilty to an accusation he had never heard the terms of. 
 What but consciousness of a crime could prompt a knowledge of 
 its particulars? We all remember, in youth, the overpowering 
 force of a reproachful finger and condemnatory headshake? 
 And the frequent gross injustice of both ? But the worst of it 
 was, in this case, that the injustice was not vital enough to satisfy 
 a culprit so truthful as Fred. He knew that the items of Miss 
 Hincldiffe, that have been referred to ante, had at least borne 
 favourable comparison — suppose we say — with those dissimilar
 
 192 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 ones of his legitimate lady-love, which were now, to say the truth, 
 at their best when anger was evoking a flash from eyes which 
 bore no comparison with the lustrous orbs stocked by her bete- 
 noire. It was a thorn in the side of Fred's inner conscience 
 that his admiration of Cintra in a rage took this analogy, of all 
 others, in his acknowledgment of it. 
 
 Had he been ready with a convincing protest of undivided 
 passion, Cintra would have met it with a torrent of tears and 
 contrition for her unreasonable jealousy. What girl would not? 
 But this intrusion of Lucy Hinchliffe's insidious image, even 
 though plausibly found wanting in the balance, was always vivid 
 enough to constitute a stumbling-block in the path of the impulse 
 that would have made for reconciliation. It alwa3's insinuated 
 itself, but never lost by comparison. It is scarcely an exaggera- 
 tion to say that he would have felt glad had it done so. At least, 
 it would have been a relief. He did not at all relish his own half- 
 heartedness, and sincerely wanted Cintra to be peerless in his 
 eyes, as indeed she was till a fortnight since. , He had a feeling 
 like gratitude towards her for that flash of anger just now, which 
 — the Critic of Beauty would have said — brought out her good 
 points. She was helping him against himself. 
 
 If he had been wise he would have met her interruption by 
 saying bluntly: — "You are jealous of Charley's fiancee, and 1 
 have given you no cause for jealousy." Whether exactly true or 
 not. it would have dispersed the ambiguity of their talk. In- 
 stead of doing so he made the ambiguity permanent by saying: — 
 " They are utterly groundless " — and sanctioned their adoption 
 as a text of conversation, without getting an inch nearer to de- 
 fining their nature. 
 
 "What are?" said Cintra, catching at the opportunity of 
 throwing on her lover the responsibility for this dissension, which 
 was an expression of suppressed feelings rather than a logical 
 outcome of anvthing either had said. " What are you speaking 
 of? " 
 
 "' Your suspicions." 
 
 " ^^^len have I said I suspected anything?" Strictly speak- 
 ing, she had not. 
 
 " You may not have actually said anything, Cintra. But you 
 know what you meani." 
 
 " \Vliat did I mean ? " 
 
 Fred evaded a direct answer. " What did you mean," said he, 
 " by saying that nothing in the world would induce you to live 
 under the same roof as Miss Hinchlitfe?"
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 193 
 
 " WTiat I said. Nothing in the world would induce me. But 
 take The Cedars. Oh yes — take The Cedars by all means ! 
 Only — don't ask me to live there." She gave a strained unreal 
 laugh. "But what would it matter? / should not be wanted. 
 Yes — go to your Cedars and bask in the smiles of your Miss 
 Lucy Hinchliffe ! " 
 
 " Oh, Cintra ! " Fred's honestly shocked tone of voice testi- 
 fied to the flagrancy of this bald statement of the casus belli. 
 It was the first time it had found such a plain expression in 
 language. 
 
 She seemed relieved, though, to have spoken it, and was m.ore 
 subdued in manner as she continued : — '' I have said it badly. I 
 knew I should. But it is what I mean." 
 
 The reserve of her speech carried far more weight than the 
 petulance of its predecessor. Fred was alive to it, and his own 
 manner changed as he said : — '' What is it that you wish, Cintra ? 
 Tell me, what would you have ? " 
 
 " I will tell you what I would have. I would have you say 
 good-bye to me and go. Let us end the foolish mistake we have 
 made, and be friends. No more than friends." 
 
 "But why?" 
 
 " Call it my wish for it, if you must put the blame on me. 
 But let it end. Oh, Fred, let it end ! Do not make me say more 
 than I have said — more than I forced myself just now to say — 
 about the cause." 
 
 The spell of the enchantress had died down steadily for a fort- 
 night; and its flame, after a day spent witli his old love under 
 their old circumstances, was like a candle-flame with its liquid 
 aliment up to its chin, all but extinct. All might have been well 
 if Cintra's jealousy — too much on the alert throughout, the story 
 thinks — had not rankled; had not been on the watch for its 
 opportunity overmuch. Yet the story is aware that in saying 
 this it is only reciting one of the lessons of convention. W[\o 
 can say that what it is correct' to call outbursts of jealousy arc 
 not — in young women, at least — gleams of insight into the in- 
 stability of their lovers' hallucinations? How be sure that 
 Cintra's seeming exaggeration of what might have been the 
 merest trifling was not such an insight? A little premature, 
 certainly! — but, after all, essentially sound? The story pauses 
 to think. 
 
 Not so Mr. Frederic ! He preferred to rank it as delusion, 
 pure and sim])le, and possibly thougbt that the less ho thougb.t 
 about it the better. " Say you are tired of uio, Cintra/' said lie
 
 194 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 irritably, " and I shall know what you mean. But for God's 
 sake let's have an end of this wretched nonsense about Miss 
 Hinchliffe. You know it is nonsense. You know I have hardly 
 seen her." 
 
 " It does not matter how much or how little you have seen 
 her. Or rather, the less you have seen her the worse — the worse 
 for both of us! Have I no eyes, do you think? Oh no, Fred, 
 it is useless — worse than^ useless — to tajk about it. I could not 
 be mistaken." 
 
 " You ai-e, for all that ! The whole thing is midsummer 
 madness. There is not a particle of foundation of any 
 sort . , .■" 
 
 " Stop, Fred ! " The young man made no attempt to finish. 
 Was he just enough conscious of the weakness of his case to be 
 glad to be stopped ? Cintra continued : — " Will you make me a 
 promise ? " 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " To give up the idea of The Cedars." 
 
 " ^^^lat ! even for us alone ? " 
 
 " You know that is nonsense. Look at the size. You know 
 what I mean. Give up the plan." 
 
 Fred stuttered and hesitated. " It's not so easy as you think," 
 he said. " Charley and I have talked such a lot about it, and 1 
 know he's looking forward to it so. It's awfully awkward. Just 
 exactly the very day he is taking her to see the old place ! " He 
 then made a great mistake — that is, if he really wanted to con- 
 ciliate the young lady. " Of course," said he, with a sense of 
 relief in his voice, " Miss Hinchliffe may take a dislike to it, and 
 that would make it all right." 
 
 " I see." Very coldlv, this. 
 
 " How do you mean — see ? " 
 
 " I understand." Quite as coldly, or even more so. 
 
 " Perhaps I don't understand." 
 
 " Perhaps not." 
 
 " Might we be a little less enigmatical ? " 
 
 " What is it that you find so difficult to understand?" 
 
 " Well — the way you speak ! W[va.i did I say wrong? " 
 
 There was real anger in Cintra's voice, which up to now had 
 been showing signs of softening, as she flashed round on him. 
 " Miss Hinchliff'e," she began ; and then again : — '•' Miss Hinch- 
 liffe — Miss Hinchliffe is to settle it. I am nothing ! Oh no — I 
 am to count for nothing. I am only Cintra Fraser ! " She be- 
 came subdued again in a moment. " Fred — what I said just
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 195 
 
 now was right. Let us part. Let this be the end of it. . . .1 
 ask you to go." 
 
 Now, Fred had not intended his speech as an exaltation of 
 Miss Lucy Hinchliffe's relative importance. The gist of it Avas 
 merely that the adoption of the same view by both ladies would 
 relieve the position^ and make a solution easy. The Old Mad- 
 house would lapse naturally; and the two couples, the wiser by 
 their experience, would nest in different trees, if in the same 
 coppice. So it vexed him to be represented as claiming a higher 
 position for his friend's wife than his own. Also, it must be 
 said that he was conscious enough of defect in his own de- 
 meanour as a lover to welcome an opportunity for a little justi- 
 fiable indignation. He had felt great discomfort from being in 
 the wrong, so far. Not that he admitted it. 
 
 " I shall go," he said, and put his hand on the door-handle. 
 
 The girl's breath seemed to catch, and she said with a half- 
 gasp : — " Yes — and part friends. It must be this way. Fred — 
 good-bye ! " 
 
 How often at some moment when all hangs on our choice of 
 onward or backward, right or wrong, black or white, we give 
 way to that worst of all counsellors, a proper pride ! Fred had 
 one, unfortunately for him; and in addition was, just at this 
 moment, landed on an outcrop of self-respect by the misinter- 
 pretation of his reference to Miss Hinchliffe's possible disap- 
 proval of the house. He was in the right there, and was anxious 
 to forget a self-condemnation he could not help about his sensi- 
 tiveness to Miss Lucy's black-eyed witchery. Pride had its way 
 at a crisis, and instead of throwing himself on Cintra's mercy, 
 and pleading readiness to confess any sin, anyhow, truly or 
 falsely, rather than lose her, he actually took the hand of fare- 
 well she offered him, and left the room. Outside the door he 
 had closed slowly, hoping that she would try and detain him, he 
 paused and listened. A cry, a sob, any evidence of emotion, 
 would have brought him back, penitent. But her pride was at 
 hand, and equal to the occasion. Can it be certain that her 
 resolution — obduracy, if you will — had in it no element of 
 prudence and foresight on her own behalf? May she not have 
 judged her lover's devotion to herself rightly, assessed it at its 
 proper value ? 
 
 Anyhow, no signal of distress within came to influence the 
 young man without, who had no choice — consistent with self- 
 respect aforesaid — but to go on to the street door and open it. 
 He did so very audibly; not noisily, but with audible delibera-
 
 196 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 tion, and listened. No sound ! He closed it behind him and 
 listened. Still, no sound! He went slowly down the long 
 flight of stone steps; across the front garden, always slowly; 
 paused long over his last chance — the clang of the garden gate — 
 and then stood still listening in a sort of despair, not the least 
 believing in any rescue now, before he walked away in the moon- 
 light, emphasising his footsteps as a farewell chance. But it 
 was all over. 
 
 And Cintra? 8he waited — waited immovable, with quick- 
 coming breath and eyes still fixed on the door he had closed, 
 waited till the garden gate had put its seal upon the deed of 
 separation, and till she was sure those footsteps had taken him 
 well out of hearing, and then gave way to a torrent of eager tears, 
 that she had had ado to keep in check till now. 
 
 Papa Fraser, wandering downstairs in search of a parcel that 
 ought to have come, found it on the hall-table and exclaimed 
 against the vice of non-delivery of parcels immediately on their 
 arrival. Had this one been in his possession an hour since, he 
 would already have made up his mind what tone to take in 
 reviewing the History of Chemical Nomenclature which it con- 
 tained. He might even have had time to examine the chapter 
 on the Alchemists. His wife, on the landing above, just going 
 to retire for the night, said oh, dear ! — she was always speaking 
 to the servants on this very topic, and her efforts were fruitless. 
 He must speak to Annette himself. Perhaps she would mind 
 him. It appeared, however, that he had done so already, and had 
 failed to imnrcss Annette. " His wife extenuated Annette, say- 
 ing what could her husband expect of an uneducated girl whose 
 father was a pork-butcher? The Professor said that nothing 
 that he knew of in butchering of pork need prevent a conscien- 
 tious daughter of one so employed from bringing a book to its 
 reviewer. Annette herself appeared and excused herself on the 
 ground that this was not a book, but a parcel, having come by 
 parcels post. Not but what she was well aware of the contents, 
 but a principle was involved. Of course — said she — if parcels 
 with books inside was to count as books, she would know where 
 she was, another time. Her mistress said she must mind she 
 did, but what was she so late for? The force of the hut was 
 scarcely clear. Annette said she was waiting up for Miss Nancy, 
 who hadn't come in. 
 
 " Not — come — in — yet ! " The Professor brought his watch 
 tempestuously from his pocket, exclaiming that it was Just upon 
 twelve o'clock, but was convicted of exaggeration, as it was only
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 197 
 
 just past eleven. The boy Eric, from some unknown overhead 
 region, shouted out with incisive distinctness that Nance wasn't 
 going to be home at any known hour, that everybody was to go 
 to bed, that nobody was to fuss, and that admission to the house 
 was to be achieved by the aiming of small pebbles at his window, 
 if indeed he was not waked by Ajax the dog, who would hear 
 Nancy's bell a mile off. So the family agreed not to fuss, though 
 the Professor rather shook his head over the position. 
 
 But where were those two — videlicet lovers — who were insu- 
 lated as much because they might become unbearable as for any 
 other reason? Annette testified that she thought she had heard 
 Mr. Carteret go half an hour back, and she supposed Miss Cintra 
 was still in the little parlour. The Professor humphed, and 
 thought it odd. '' He never came upstairs to say good-night,'' 
 said he. 
 
 "■/ have no control or influence of any sort," said the lady of 
 the house. " But no doubt your daughter can explain." She 
 took her candle and soared bcdwards. 
 
 The Professor looked into the little parlour. " Sitting in 
 the dark," said he. "What's become of the Patentee?" For 
 Cintra had turned off the gas, and was sitting in the firelight, 
 now a dull expiring glow. 
 
 " I am here," said she. " Mr. Carteret has sone." 
 
 " Mr. Carteret ! " her father exclaimed. " Xvhy, Cit !— what's 
 that for?" 
 
 " It is all right," said she. " I did it." It was not so right 
 though but that she fell suddenly into her father's arms and 
 cried upon his bosom, as though her heart would break. 
 
 "Why, Cit— why, Cit— why, Cit, child! What is it all? 
 Tut — tut — tut! . . . Pooh, girl! — just another bit of a quarrel, 
 and a reconciliation ! I know — lovers' quarrels — lovers' quarrels ! 
 None the worse for that ! " 
 
 " This is not a lovers' quarrel — not what people call a lovers' 
 quarrel. It is not a quarrel at all, perhaps ; certainly not on my 
 side." They were sitting on the sofa side by side now, he keep- 
 ing her hand to pat — the hand Fred had held so short a time 
 ago. It seemed an age already to her, and her hand Imng list- 
 less, claiming no share in life. 
 
 " What is it then, if it is not a quarrel? " 
 
 " Only the end — the end of it all ! I have done it. I have 
 no quarrel with Fred. I daresay he is only like another man." 
 
 " You don't like to tell me what it is? " 
 Yes, Papa, I will." She paused a moment as to collect 
 
 «
 
 198 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 herself for an effort. " It is because I will not submit to . . . 
 to what I know other girls are called jealous for . . . for 
 making any complaint about. That is all — it is jealousy. 
 Others can bear it. I cannot." She seemed to be analysing 
 herself, without unfair bias. " I must have him all to myself, 
 or not at all." 
 
 " I see. Master Fred has been making sheep's eyes at some 
 other young lady. Well . . . well . . . well , . . ! " 
 
 She was immediately anxious to exonerate him. Oh no — Fred 
 was far too good for anything of that sort. He had done noth- 
 ing. He would not do anything. 
 
 " Well — what's all the rumpus, then ? " The Professor was 
 quite honestly bewildered. 
 
 She only repeated : — " I must have him all to myself." 
 
 "Or not at all?" said her father. He mused, and got an 
 insight. " I think I see what it is. Some other young lass has 
 got into his head — like alcohol. They do. I know, because I 
 was young myself once — before you were born, my dear." His 
 voice saddened a little to say : — " Your dear mamma had a com- 
 plaint against me once. She did the right thing though — she did 
 the right thing." 
 
 "Ye-es?" Too close interrogation would scarcely have been 
 daughterly. 
 
 " She took away the bottle. Perhaps I ought to put it, she 
 took me away from the bottle. Either does. . . . Ah dear, 
 dear ! " He was reminiscent for a short moment, and then said, 
 almost to himself : — " Saw the brute the other day ! My word ! 
 . . . Well, it would be just the same with Fred, keep him away 
 from the bottle ! Alcohol's the worst, because in this case there's 
 only one bottle. That's an advantage. Keep him away from 
 the bottle." 
 
 " I know what you mean. Papa dear ! But you put it so 
 funnily. Only in this case it is impossible. Quite impossible." 
 She flinched from a statement in full, though she foresaw it 
 would have to be made in the end. 
 
 He did not press to know more. Indeed, he was satisfied that 
 " it would be all right " ; that there was no reality in the tragedy, 
 and that the lovers would be billing and cooing again in twenty- 
 four hours. Above all he was quite sure that he would do more 
 harm than good by putting his oar in. So he merely counselled 
 moderation, and temperance, and forgiveness, and all the things 
 that would naturally be on the tongue's tip of a good little man; 
 who, so far as he had a selfish motive in the matter, was gov-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 199 
 
 erned only by a possibly too perfervid love of peace and quiet, 
 and detestation of shindies. He was entirely wanting in the 
 combative character of a true pacifist. 
 
 Cintra went away to a sleepless pillow, to watch and wait for 
 the return of her sister, into whose ear she was longing to pour 
 out the whole tale. She w^as sure of heartwhole sympathy in 
 that quarter, for Xancy was always on the woman's side when- 
 ever a balance had to be struck between creditor and debitrix, 
 or debtor and creditrix, as might be. But the hours passed and 
 the clocks struck, and no Nancy came.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Fred's first feeling of irritation against Cintra for what 
 seemed an unreasonable and overstrained jealousy did not last 
 him many minutes' walk from the garden gate. It gave way to 
 two misgivings — one that she was not absolutely unreasonable ; 
 the other that she was in earnest. If she were — what then? 
 The thought made him feel as much like a vacuum as was con- 
 sistent with a belief in his existence — a belief that cannot be 
 easily shaken. The future, or rather the futures, that he had 
 been planning out so busily for himself and for her had vanished 
 like the white ring of the magic lantern on the sheet, when all 
 the slides are done and there arc to be no more enchanting 
 dream-worlds, and it is time for the children to go to bed. The 
 air itself was gone in which his castles had been built; he had 
 been roughly awakened from the sleep that his dream-worlds 
 demanded, and he was a unit, without a purpose, on the cold 
 bare earth ! And worst of all — a thing he thought of now for 
 the first time — he could never tell the source and origin of this 
 collapse to Charley. How could he? 
 
 This was an awful thought. But it was simply an inevitable 
 context of the position. There would be absolutely no choice for 
 him but to put the whole miscarriage of his schemes and hopes 
 on a cryptic dissension between himself and his love, of too 
 intangible a nature to be understanded of any people but them- 
 selves. That would always be practicable. But he must be on 
 the alert to surround his entrenchments with barbed-wire en- 
 tanglements, to keep Inquisitiveness at bay. Could he succeed, 
 after so manv years of unreserved mutual confidence with Charley 
 Snaith? 
 
 A nev*' terror shot across his mind. He knew that that young 
 man and his fiancee had chosen this afternoon, that had just 
 ended in an unwelcome midnight, for a visit to the Old Mad- 
 house. What if the young lady took to the place with a pas- 
 sionate enthusiasm like that of Cintra that autumn day — Oh, 
 how long ago, and how unlike it all was to now, that happy 
 sanguine time ! — when he and Cintra were wandering afar, on 
 that most joyous of errands, the seeing of premises, and found 
 the Old iladliousG as the result of an intei'view with that Wim- 
 
 200
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 201 
 
 bledon house-agent? What if she too had come tinder that 
 fatal fascination of its decay — its white lichens on grey Port- 
 land, of the days when those quarries were sure they were inex- 
 haustible — its matchless iron grill over the gate between two 
 red-brick piers whose bulk alone deserved an article in The 
 Builder, its panelled mahogany doors, its possibilities of History 
 responding to Investigation ? What, in short, if she had set her 
 heart on the house as Cintra had done, and the whole arrange- 
 ment had to be explained away, somehow or other? If, by good 
 luck, she hated the place, the collapse of his own engagement 
 would be but as that of any other couple's — an everyday affair. 
 There would be no nexus, no mutual interdependence of arrange- 
 ments. However, that was begging or borrowing a trouble. 
 
 He was very disinclined to go home, and equally averse to 
 returning to his chambers; where, if he did not chance on 
 Charley Snaith coming home late, he was tolerably sure to see 
 liim first thing in the morning. He woiild soonest break the 
 news to him by letter, if possible. Then as to ^laida Yale, it 
 would at least be safer to be very late, to make sure of the de- 
 parture of Elbows — this was how his mind traditionally spoke 
 of Nancy — -for after what he had heard of her lawless nocturnal 
 escapades on her bicycle, he felt it was far from certain she would 
 not stop the night witli his mother, and depart in the early 
 morning. Anyhow, he preferred that she shoukl know that her 
 sister's engagement was at an e^^d from herself, not from liim. 
 So far as seeing his mother, and telling her, was concerned, he 
 rather wished for it than otherwise. But then, had she not 
 troubles enough, without helping him to bear his? Fred was 
 not without his selfish side — for was he not a young man? — 
 but he did not show it towards his mother. 
 
 He had another side of which the story has seen nothing, no 
 chance having brouglit it into court — an active or athletic side. 
 From boyhood upwards, in rowing, riding, swimming, walking 
 — any exercise or athletic game — he had always borne a dis- 
 tinguished part among his fellows at school or college, and would 
 have led easily had his physique been abnormally powerful. But 
 in that respect he was only a little above the average. It was 
 rather in muscular alacrity and a great endurance of fatigue that 
 he shone. More especially, his walking and running, when sus- 
 tained endurance was the end in view, had left fame for him 
 both at his uncle's school and at Cambridge, where indeed the}'' 
 had to make up for that fatal lack of concentration which had 
 always stood in his light, and was the real cause of his taking
 
 202 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 a very low place in Honours. The practice of walking pro- 
 digious distances had remained, while the classics had died away, 
 leaving him some mathematics to forget at leisure, except in so 
 far as they proved of service in Engineering. He would still 
 occasionally, on no provocation, walk five-and-twenty miles in 
 six hours, merely to stretch himself. 
 
 So, when he said to himself : — " I won't go home at all. I 
 shall just walk over to Guildford and be back to breakfast at the 
 Vale about nine o'clock," he meant exactly what he said. Maida 
 Vale would stare, but what of that? He had symptoms upon 
 him — mental-feverish symptoms — that called for a good long 
 stretch to shake them olf. It was his business to see they got it. 
 Nothing like walking all night — all such a night as this — with 
 the full moon swimming through the scattered cloud-rack over- 
 head, and almost the certainty of a clear sunrise. He was angry, 
 angry with Cintra, angry with himself. Perhaps more the 
 latter ; but he would not mope, that was flat ! If Cintra was 
 jealous about Lucy Hinchliffe, on the strength of the evidence, 
 what would she not be jealous about? Cintra's husband, whether 
 himself, or N or M, as might be, would have to take to his heels 
 and run, whenever a tolerably pretty woman appeared on the 
 horizon. 
 
 All the same, he said peccavi to himself, and admitted that no 
 justifications might have had to be found for Cintra, if she had 
 had all the evidence before her. But lie knew he had kept it 
 deep down in his very inmost heart. It was not as though he 
 had confessed to those items of witchery which he now revised 
 mentally, as from a Catalogue without Words; about which he 
 stipulated that they were obvious facts which he could bear to 
 look in the face, but could keep quite cool about, even while he 
 enumerated them. Still, he asked himself, if Cintra had seen 
 that Catalogue over his shoulder, how should she know how 
 unmoved he was by this, or that, — wordless items of the lots on 
 view? She would only have noted the beauty of this, the charm 
 of that, the grace of t'other. She never could have gauged the 
 depth of his critical indifference. . . . And so on, to talk him- 
 self into a good mood, to exonerate himself from a haunting self- 
 blame, and to be magnanimous to Cintra. One ought always to 
 be magnanimous to women, as one has been created stronger 
 and wiser than they, however keenly alive one may be to the 
 fact that another hasn't. 
 
 He formed a vague scheme in his mind of walking to Guild- 
 ford — some five-and-twenty miles; say, six hours' walk. He
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 203 
 
 knew an inn there where they would get him a cup of coffee, as 
 early as that, or earlier. Then he would catch an early train 
 back, and be in time for his mother's breakfast, which was late. 
 If Elbows had stopped the night, she would by that time have 
 had breakfast to herself and departed, with an early farewell to 
 her hostess. Then he could announce the change in his rela- 
 tions with Cintra, which he deliberately intended to optimise 
 about ; he would be by that time thoroughly able to see it in its 
 right light, as really the best outcome of what was after all a 
 mistake; and would go on, fortified by his mother's counsel, to 
 what was really the much more difficult task of breaking the 
 news to Charley Snaith. 
 
 That was his programme, and it lasted him as far as Eipley. 
 "WTiere it chanced that a party of bicyclists, on some expedition 
 that ignored Time and Space, were resuming their journey at an 
 unearthly hour in the morning, at the doors of a roadside inn, 
 where in old days many a nocturnal coaching-party or horseman 
 had rung up sleepy 'ostlers at hours equally unearthly. This 
 inn had nearly died of the railways, with many others, when the 
 sudden bicycle filled the country roads with a new and un- 
 dreamed-of traffic. It was well known to Fred, and he was well 
 known to the boy who had left his bed reluctantly to fasten up 
 after the early departures. Of course they might have been left 
 to let themselves out, like you might say, but they was good for 
 a tanner among 'em, and these were not the days for pointing 
 the finger of scorn at tanners, or indeed tizzies, if you come to 
 that. The boy, interrogated about the available commissariat, 
 could not provide a Lord j\Iayor's dinner at that time of night, 
 but he could go as far as 'arf of mild and a cold sarsage. Fred 
 did not seem tempted. 
 
 "You couldn't manage a cup of hot coffee, I suppose?" 
 said he. 
 
 " Not without I 'oiler up the missus," said the boy. " She's 
 locked the cupboard and took the key to bed with her, she 
 has. And her temper gets very short, times and again. ... I 
 tell 3'ou what I can do for yer though if you ain't in any bloom- 
 ing hurry. I can 'ot yer up a cup o' bovril over the gairce. 
 There's a 'arf a tin left after these gents." 
 
 The last two or three of the bicyclists were just about to 
 follow their companions. One of them, close at hand, joined in 
 the conversation. " It's ' alas my poor brother ! ' " said he. 
 " In the advertisements. It's not bad after you've got it down, 
 don't you know! And it all depends on how you look at it.
 
 204 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 It's very bad soup, but it's very good glue. . , . Hey, what's 
 that? " This was in answer to a question from a companion, 
 which Fred had heard imperfectly. "An old woman's? No! 
 — an old man's . . . old gentleman's. . . . That's what they 
 said. I don't know how they knew." 
 
 Fred, on the alert, asked: — "What was that? An old 
 gentleman's wliat ? " 
 
 " Only a body they found, as we came along. Some old chap 
 committed suicide ! Felo de se — that sort of game ! " 
 
 " Stop half a moment. . . . Only to know where ! . . . I 
 have a reason for asking." 
 
 " All right ! I shall catch 'em up, easy. They'd fished him 
 out of a mill-pond. Somewhere." 
 
 "Yes— but w/(eref " 
 
 " Hoy — Moses and Son ! " He was calling to a companion, 
 just departing, who halted and looked back. " Where did they 
 say he was fished out? " 
 
 " Out of a pond just off the road." 
 
 " Yes— but ickcrc ? Stoopid ! " 
 
 "How should I know? Pickles told me. He's gone on." 
 Then this young man — evidently nicknamed " Moses and Son " 
 from his race — shot round and was beside them in an instant. 
 He had to rotate on a very short axis to keep his seat, but was 
 always within hearing. " Pickles said ' Old woman,' " said he. 
 
 " Because he didn't know. A man with brooms to sell told 
 me. But what, I, v/ant, to, know, is, — where were we at the 
 time ? That's the point ! " 
 
 " Oh — I s-s-see . . . ! Well — just about Wimbledon. This 
 side of Wimbledon." 
 
 "Then why couldn't you say so?" But Moses and Son had 
 no explanation to offer, and neither seemed to have any first- 
 hand knowledge, except that last evening they had shot past a 
 group of persons in the twilight, surrounding something which 
 had just been placed on a stretcher. Their information was 
 fragmentary, and indeed contradictory. But Fred had got his 
 main point clearly established, and he was visibly agitated by it. 
 So much so that Closes and Son said to the other young man 
 sotto voce: — " Does the gentleman know any party who would be 
 by way of committing suicide? You ask him, James!" But 
 James seemed unable to frame the question, and they had to 
 catch up with their comrades; so said good-night, and went off 
 at fifteen miles an hour. 
 
 Fred changed his plan at once, and decided to go' back. Per-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 205 
 
 haps he was not in a good mood for cool reasoning, and that was 
 why he weighed no evidence, but at once concluded that this 
 drowned man would prove to be his uncle. He wondered, after- 
 wards, why he jumped so readily at this conclusion, and on such 
 vague information. 
 
 He had very nearly started to retrace his steps, when a voice 
 stopped him — the Boy's. " Hoy ! " it said, " you ain't a going 
 to sarve me like that, after me a hotting of it up for yer, reg'lar 
 prime, when 1 might just as v/ell ha' been in bed." Fred 
 remembered his bovril, and went into the inn-parlour; where he 
 found that the Boy, to make it as princely as circumstances per- 
 mitted, had prepared it on a tray, with a table-napkin folded 
 double to veil a spill of gravy. An exuberance of fancy had 
 added a colosssal decanter of cold water and a tumbler. Salt in 
 a blue glass salt-cellar seemed more to the purpose, and Fred 
 took a good deal with the wrong end of a pewter spoon, in the 
 hope of abating thereby the gluefulness of the thick teacup's 
 contents. Tasted with that spoon, as it was too hot for human 
 lips to approach its base, it was eclipsed by the pewter, which 
 was very unlike the wine of advertisements which leaves 
 the palate immediately. He v/aited for the glue to cool, well 
 knowing that this did not depend on caloric, or anything chemists 
 have run home, but on the caprice of a particular coffee-cup. 
 Never mind ! — he could converse with the Boy. Where did he 
 suppose those young men were going to? 
 
 " They don't know theirselves. Eeg'lar on the loose, they 
 are! They come in last evening. Greedy as you please, they 
 was ! Then they was all for going to bed early, and to be woke 
 at three-thirty, and git on to a substantial breakfast at Guild- 
 ford. Said it'd be plenty of time to talk over where they was 
 a going after breakfast. Come from somewhere in Hcssex', they 
 did. Hout-of-the-way sort o' place. Next door to Roosher, as 
 you might say." 
 
 Fred thought you mightn't, if you had accuracy at heart. But 
 he said nothing, having his mind full of what he had just heard. 
 " Did those chaps say anything in your hearing about a man 
 drowned in a mill-pond, somewhere about Wimbledon ? " This 
 question, he thought, might get him some information he had 
 missed in his short interview with the departed youths. 
 
 " I beared 'em mention some such a sort of game. I don't 
 suppose they was expectiu' me to take account of what they 
 said." 
 
 "It wasn't a secret." Fred was misinterpreting the Boy. 
 
 11
 
 206 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Didn't say it worze. I was mentioning that we don't take 
 much account of these here things, not in these parts. We lets 
 'em slide." 
 
 " What— suicides ? " 
 
 " Ah — corpses and things ! They don't trouble we. Nor yet 
 anything else^ that I know of. Missus she reads 'em in the noos- 
 papers, now and again. But they don't trouble we." 
 
 Fred was impressed by this splendid indifference to the human 
 lot. Was it an idiosyncrasy of the Portsmouth Road, or was 
 it limited to halting places for bicyclists ? " Couldn't you re- 
 member what they said?" said he. "Just to oblige — you 
 know ! " He was aware it would be a departure from a beaten 
 path, but it would surely be an excursion into — suppose we 
 say? — Samaria. 
 
 " I can tell most anything you like, as far as that goes, when 
 it comes to obligin' a gentleman." 
 
 " Well, what did you hear them say about this drowned man 
 that was fished up?" Fred felt he was speaking brutally; but 
 then, he did not want the Boy to suspect motives. 
 
 '' Just precisely that. He was a drowned man they fished up." 
 
 " And what sort of a man ? ^Yhat was he dressed like, did 
 they say? " The Boy mused, and wanted prompting. Fred was 
 getting impatient, and forgot Charley Snaith's frequent cautions 
 about leading questions. " Was he dressed like a parson, for 
 instance ? " 
 
 The Boy picked up his spirits. " Eight you are, Master ! " 
 said he. " Xow I call to mind, that's the wery selfsame thing 
 one on 'em did say. Said he was a parson." 
 
 " And a big man — big and tall ? " Fred felt so painfully 
 certain now, that he did not scruple to make suggestions. 
 
 '' Right you are again, Master ! That's what they said. A 
 rare big 'un. I heerd 'em a sayin' of it." 
 
 Fred was satisfied. He would go to Wimbledon anyhow, as 
 that was the only tracing clue that he had. But he was keen now 
 to come at the facts, and not disposed to spend time over 
 walking, if there was any chance of an up-train at the nearest 
 station. The Boy testified that he would catch the six-ten if 
 he looked sharp, but it was a tidy walk to the station. He bolted 
 the glue, and started, leaving the Boy to finish his night's rest, 
 if so disposed. But the day had become an established fact, 
 and the rosy dawn had gone away westward, and was well over 
 the Atlantic by now. 
 
 Fred's brain was in a whirl, and no wonder, after such a day.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 207 
 
 followed by such a night ! His physical vigour was still many 
 hours from a collapse; indeed, he was not looking forward to 
 any rest till next night in bed. But his judgment had gone by 
 the board. As he sped along the highroad toward the station 
 acknowledging the truth of what the bicyclist had said, that the 
 glue was not so bad when you had got it down, no doubt crossed 
 his mind but that the mystery was solved, and the cause of his 
 uncle's disappearance discovered. He would go to hear what 
 he could of it at Wimbledon police station, and had no doubt he 
 would be able to identify the body. He was consoled for the 
 horror of his task by the reflection that but for this accidental 
 hearing of the thing the news in all its gruesomeness might have 
 come suddenly to his mother. He could save her from 
 that. 
 
 He caught the up-train, and found himself at Wimbledon just 
 as the clocks were striking seven. In a very short time he was 
 interviewing the Inspector in charge, but was disappointed at 
 his unsympathetic attitude. " Nothing of the sort reported so 
 far. At least, not here!" — was his only comment. This was 
 before he knew more than was to be learned from Fred's bald 
 first enquiry about the drowned man, v/hich did not show his 
 identity. After he had entered the enquirer's name and address, 
 he became more interested, saying : — " \Yhat was the name of the 
 party again you mentioned ? " — the party, of course, being the 
 mortal coil someone had shuffled off in that mill-pond. Fred 
 had not referred to his uncle by name, but did so now, with 
 an effort towards illumination of the Inspector. " Xot the sub- 
 ject of enquiry three weeks ago?" said he. He thought he had 
 heard Fred's name before. But Fred might rest satisfied about 
 the yield of that mill-pond. If that had been the Rev. Drury 
 Carteret, they would have heard of it at that station by 
 now. No fear on that score. But this Inspector threw doubt 
 on the whole story of the mill-pond. 
 
 Nevertheless, Fred '' elicited " from him that there was a 
 mill-pond about two miles off, which liad always been popular 
 with suicides, and had had more than its fair share of attention 
 from the victims of accidents. Nevertheless, that Inspector had 
 a deep-seated conviction that it was, in this case, not guilty. 
 " In course if you want a walk," said he, " there can't be any 
 great harm come of your walking over to enquire. But / 
 shouldn't, if I was in your place." Fred affected a general 
 assent; but as soon as he was out of sight of that station, 
 gave way to restless desire for certainty, and started for
 
 208 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Flinders's Mill, which he understood was the name of the water- 
 mill in question. He did not want to arrive at Maida Vale, 
 with this bad news, any earlier in the morning than was neces- 
 sary. This would just fill out the time. 
 
 He found himself, rather to his discomfort, being directed 
 into exactly the road the loquacious fly-driver had driven him 
 and Charley Snaith along when they paid that visit to the Old 
 Madhouse. If his directors to Flinders's Mill persisted in their 
 testimonies as to its whereabouts, he might be unable to avoid 
 it, as he told his inner self he wished to do. That self refused 
 to accept his statement; and further accused him of an unac- 
 countable desire to see the place again. Absurd as this seemed, 
 he felt unable to pooh-pooh it with the thoroughness it deserved. 
 However, he would only look at it outside, would certainly not 
 go in. 
 
 He had arrived on the jerry-builder's desolation on the edge 
 of which The Cedars still held to the traditions of past rusticity ; 
 now given over as " ripe for building " to what is known to 
 house-agents as " development." He did not — could not — re- 
 joice at the decision of Destiny to write nothing about it in the 
 book of his future, but could he regret it? He answered this 
 question, in the negative, as an elm fell by the roadside, to make 
 way for the next lot of eligible residences. In a year or so The 
 Cedars would be a piteous survival of a forgotten past, pro- 
 testing in vain against the ghastliness of a residential present. 
 If indeed anyone ever bought the remainder lease and prolonged 
 its forlorn existence for a few short years, only to be " devel- 
 oped " in the end ! 
 
 Those were his thoughts as he turned out of the main road into 
 the lane which led past the gate of the disconsolate mansion. 
 But they changed when he reached it, for in the freshness of the 
 first really summer-like morning of the year it looked far from 
 disconsolate. Fred saw through the grill of that coveted iron 
 gate that the roses on the big bush half-way up the garden path 
 would be bursting in a week or two, unless Fate caught them 
 at it and changed the weather out of spite. He wondered which 
 was which of the singing birds who, still in happy ignorance of 
 the nightmare city, a year's march nearer since they had their 
 last spring concert, were making their protected oasis vocal with 
 their story of a hundred broods. Was that a chaffinch, for in- 
 stance, that clear persistent note in a flood of trills and ripples? 
 It was like his idea of a chaffinch — but what was the use of 
 that? He was always wrong when he tried to guess songsters.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE .209 
 
 Did they, he speculated, sing better or worse for having no 
 lunatics to sing to nowadays? 
 
 He stopped with his hand upon the bell-handle to invent, if 
 possible, a sound reason for being at the house at all, and failed. 
 He knew perfectly well that if ever man had taken action on 
 a pure and unadulterated whim, he had done so when he turned 
 off the main road in this vague purposeless way. He clinched 
 the matter by a good round pull, which set the bell within — 
 which lived under a decaying cover in the open air — swinging 
 and jangling in a way that almost convinced him he had a pur- 
 pose. He had none, and had to devise an obligation, with any 
 caretaker in the wide world. Mrs. — what was her name? — 
 Grewboer, in consideration of an inordinate tip, was bound to 
 wink at any fiction he chose to justify his conduct by. If she 
 chose to say : — " Don't you tell me no lies ! " he would be justi- 
 fied in reducing her shilling to sixpence. This ethical specu- 
 lation, however, engrossed him less than the question why on 
 earth, seeing that he and this domicile had surely parted company 
 for good, he should suffer from this involuntary persistency to 
 see the inside of it again. 
 
 ]\Irs. Grewbeer in the flesh — or the skin and bone rather — 
 appeared at the end of the gravel pathway, but grudged loco- 
 motion, seeming to disbelieve in the bona fides of the summons. 
 Fred heard her commune with one within, whose words must 
 have been angry, judged by his voice. " It's them boys again," 
 said she. " I ain't goin' to traipse all the way to the gate, not on 
 ilieir account." She, however, moved a little further down the 
 path, and called out:— "Who's that rang?" 
 
 " Me ! " shouted Fred. The question had been to determine 
 whether the ringer had fled, and was watching from behind 
 some^diere to witness her discomfiture, or otherwise. So Fred 
 thought a monosyllable met the case. Indeed, how could he 
 have described himself? 
 
 The old woman came to the gate, and recognised liim as 
 " the gentleman." She said, for courtesy : — " If you'd ha' said 
 it was you, I'd have 'urried a bit more." But could Fred have 
 called out : — " I'm the gentleman " ? 
 
 He produced his prearranged fiction, with nonchalance. He 
 had got a dimension wrong by accident, and couldn't get his plans 
 right. He enlarged upon it, to convince himself of its validity. 
 "It's only a few inches out," he said, "but there's nothing like 
 having a thing right, while you're about it." 
 
 Mrs. Grewbeer applauded this, as a maxim or principle that
 
 21C TH*E OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 guided the lives of Grewbeer, his Uncle Mark, and her own 
 family connection. But fancy the gentleman coming all the \A'ay 
 from town for only a few inches ! And the other gentleman 
 could have took a little measure like that, only yesterday, when 
 he come with the young lady. She seemed to think that the 
 unprofessional mind could grapple with small measurements — 
 the smaller the easier. Micrometry thinks otherwise. 
 
 " Did the other gentleman come yesterday ? " Fred, with 
 aroused interest, shouted tlie question in her ear. 
 
 " Oh — ay ! Sure enough ! In a carriage they come. Him 
 and a young lady.^' 
 
 "And were thev — was she pleased w'ith the house?" Fred 
 asked with some anxiety. 
 
 " Oh — ay ! I shouldn't say she took it to 'art much." Wliat 
 did that mean? It was enigmatical. 
 
 "Didn't care about it?" Fred affected insouciance, but lis- 
 tened carefullv for an answer. 
 
 "The lady?" 
 
 " Yes — the lady. . . . Damned old slowcoach ? " This was 
 aside, of course. 
 
 " The lady . . . only it ain't for me to say ..." 
 
 "Go ahead!" 
 
 " The lady she was what the folks they do call hairy, down in 
 these parts. Gives herself hairs." 
 
 Fred had to reflect a moment to find the meaning of this. 
 Then he saw that he had been momentarily deceived by an aspi- 
 rate — a too too solid one. In other quarters of the world, no 
 doubt, folks would have avoided the association of a Persian Cat 
 by the use of some such expression as airisome. This was so far 
 satisfactory though, that it showed that the young lady's approval 
 had not been rapturous. " What was it she said now ? " he 
 asked in a confidential shout — or the nearest reasonable approach 
 to it. . 
 
 " I didn't ketch much she said, but I took notice, with my 
 heyesight. The apartments was too small or too large, and 
 mostly looked the wrong way." 
 
 "That's all right, anyhow!" Fred spoke to himself, in a 
 tone of relief. " Anything else? " 
 
 " There was too many heckers when a door slammed. And 
 she reg'lar took against our senk. I see her smellin' and a 
 thinkin' — a smellin' and a thinkin' — and I says was she noticin' 
 anything? Because they was a rare lot worse, I says, and the 
 senk was a patent, and the trappin' might want a bit of seein'
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 211 
 
 to, but nothin' un'olesome by the flaviour. And Grewbeer he 
 giv' assurance, being practical hisself. But there! — she put me 
 past, the hairs she gave herself. What I cannot abide, is notice- 
 takin'; and so I said to Grewbeer the minute I seen the last of 
 her. A pryin' and sniffin', indeed ! " 
 
 All this was most gratifying to Fred, and he really felt quite 
 indebted to that senk, or sink, whose flavour had produced so 
 strong an effect on Miss Hinchliff'e. It was a weight off his 
 mind to hear that the beauty took an unfavourable view of the 
 residence. He would be much better able to tell Snaith of his 
 own disastrous climax. 
 
 But he was bound in honour — to keep on speaking terms with 
 Probability, as it were — to carry through his little farce of 
 measuring something. It should be the width of that long 
 passage going to the greenhouse. If he wavered about where it 
 was, his fiction would be shaken. Self-respect demanded per- 
 sistency, and he measured it carefully twice with his little ivory 
 foot-rule, and made a note of it on his shirt-cuff. " Three-and- 
 a-quarter inches out ! " said he. " I thought so.'' He did it 
 solely to deceive himself; certainly not for the benefit of Mrs. 
 Grewbeer. And as for Mr. Grewbeer, Fred surmised that he 
 was still in bed. 
 
 There was no substratum of sense or purpose in any of this 
 performance. He did not suspect himself of being light-headed 
 or irresponsible. Yet, in a sense, he probably was so. He kept 
 on telling himself, at odd moments, that the termination of his 
 relation with Cintra was to make no difference to him. It was, 
 he decided, not to be a disappointment — only an awakening; 
 only the end of a mistake. He had some misgiving now as to 
 how he should meet his mother's sympathy — pray Heaven she 
 would not be sympathetic ! Charley might sympathise if he 
 liked. It would be a reasonable weakness in Charley, seeing 
 what 7ns position would be if Lucy Hinchliffe . . . 
 
 He stopped himself with a jerk, and felt ashamed. The story 
 suspects that he saw himself now for the first time; all the 
 shallowness of his love for Cintra, which had allowed — he could 
 not deny it now — that the pulses of his heart should be abnor- 
 mally stirred by what self-speech elected to call mere beauty, 
 and that beauty already dedicated to his friend ! That love had 
 been illusion all along, and Cintra had found it out in time! 
 Tortunate for her that she had done so ; fortunate for him. 
 But stop! How if her love for him had been of another sort? 
 He could recognise the instability of his own passion for her.
 
 212 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 and could — magnanimously — despise himself for it. But how 
 about the nature of her affection for liim? Had he ever given it 
 a thought? 
 
 He shook himself free of any responsibility to his conscience 
 on that score, considering that the decision of the question rested 
 with Cintra, not with him; and that it was at her desire, not 
 his, that their relation was terminated. He would nevertheless 
 have felt more respect for himself had the draught been more 
 bitter to swallow. 
 
 The most he could do, as he stood there in the dwelling tliey 
 had schemed to make their home,, was to heave a fairly heartfelt 
 sigh over the uncertainty of our lot on this planet. But, on the 
 wav from the bottom of his soul, it got mixed v.-ith one of relief 
 that sundry embarrassments incidental to the proposed sharing of 
 the one nest by the two pair of love-birds would be avoided. 
 
 In that avenue of thought he was caught in another trap of 
 self-reproach. His reflection that Uncle Drury, after all, prob- 
 ably would have vetoed the whole scheme, made him angry v/ith 
 himself for allowing liis own troubles and perplexities, even for 
 a moment, to obscure the darker cloud of the mystery of his 
 uncle's disappearance. Here too on th.e very spot where he was 
 last seen alive ! 
 
 Was he getting a little light-headed ? He did' suspect him- 
 self of it a moment later ; for nothing else could account for an 
 odd incident that happened at this moment, and caused him 
 some uneasiness about his own condition. 
 
 ^Irs. Grewbeer had withdrawn impressed by a belief that a cat 
 had got in and 'id, and the trouble they giv' was beyond language 
 to describe. She was hunting for that cat in a remote apart- 
 ment when Fred put away his pencil. He turned and walked 
 after her, not because he could not let himself out, as his uncle 
 had done; but because, unlike him, he had not paid his footing 
 in advance. At the angle of the passage a vivid image of his 
 uncle, as described by Mrs. Grewbeer, when she left him to 
 answer the bell, had power to stop him for the time that it 
 lasted. And it was then that the voice which on his former 
 visit he had ascribed to his friend — because it could not have 
 been anyone else's — said again, in precisely the same drill-ser- 
 geant tone : — " Come back, Fred ! " 
 
 He was alarmed, almost seriously. But his alarm was about 
 his own state — a scare free from superstition. He remembered 
 how Charley — jokingly, to be sure — had accused him of being 
 " dotty," and had ascribed his dottiness to the atmosphere of
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 213 
 
 lunacy which still hung over the Old Madhouse. That was a 
 Scientific Possil)ility, as we now knew. Had wo not ascertained, 
 bevond a shadow of doubt, that there were microbes too small 
 for detection by the most powerful microscopes? It had become 
 scientifically certain that things existed that could never be per- 
 ceived by us. No superstitious nonsense — spirits and ghosts — 
 but real Scientific things ! Among these, why not the bacillus 
 of Lunacy? Anyhow, after that, the sooner he was on his way 
 to Flinders's Mill, the better ! 
 
 A sound as of an old person terrifying a cat with whoops, a 
 scud and a rush, and then the reappearance of Mrs. Grewboer 
 on the main staircase. Her first words reassured Fred about the 
 state of his own faculties. " Who 'ollered? " said she. " Some- 
 hod;/ 'ollered ! " 
 
 It occurred to Fred that he would be more likely to have the 
 good lady's report in full if he affected to have heard nothing. 
 So he replied : — " Couldn't say! Who hollered where? " 
 
 The old woman's bony finger pointed. " Jist round where you 
 was, a medjerin ! " said bhe. 
 
 "Outside in the street," said Fred. " ]\Iust have been! 
 There was nobody my way, to holler." He preferred falling 
 back on n priori certainty to giving personal testimony. Besides, 
 his object was to elicit personal testimony, and nothing does 
 this so well as an affirmation of impossibility' 
 
 " Warn't nobody, good Lord ! Then what should I hear liim 
 'oiler for? He took care to be there, afore ever he 'ollered. 
 You may take that off o' me, for all I'm nigh on ninety." She 
 evidently had heard the voice. But when he asked what tlie 
 AA-ords were, she demurred. " One don't ketch one word agin' 
 another, at ray time o' life," she said. " He didn't 'oiler for to 
 say nothing. You may put your money on that, young Master !" 
 
 It was evidently useless to press for details. She had heard 
 that someone shouted something, but could not say what. Fred 
 resented her having heard anything, as it presented an obstacle 
 to a theory of hallucination, which his nervous condition and 
 want of sleep would have made plausible. It was more with the 
 idea of rounding off the subject than that he expected intelligent 
 information that he asked the old woman the whereabouts of 
 Flinders's Mill. 
 
 "Hay?" said she. " Ho !— Flinders's Mill. No— not 
 - Flinders's Mill I don't know. Arc ye sure it wasn't Dray- 
 croft's ! " But Fred was as certain as of anything in an uncer- 
 tain world that it was Flinders's, and by no means Draycroft's.
 
 214 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Would it be possible that Mr. Grewbeer would know of it? 
 " He don't know, if I don't," said his wife. " And no wonder ! — 
 seein' I've known these parts seventy-two years, ever since I 
 married my first, and Grewbeer's not been here above forty years 
 yet. But there ain't no law that I know of against asking him." 
 
 In the absence of any statute, Fred decided on making the 
 enquiry. Mr. Grewbeer was out of bed, if you like. This was 
 Mrs. Grewbeer's way of intimating that he had not arrived at 
 the point of putting off his nightshirt. He was, in fact, when 
 Fred looked in at his door by permission, in a flannel gown. 
 So his wife said, adding her advice that he should git his trousers 
 on, and not set there thinking, like a howl. There was no 
 ground whatever for concluding that he was employed in 
 thought, except that he was not emplo3'ed in action. 
 
 When asked for the whereabouts of this mill, he repeated its 
 name several times with a stress on the first syllable, as though 
 he did know of a mill spelt nearly like that, but not quite. 
 ^' Flinderses — Flinderscs — i^/mderses ! " said he. Then a light 
 dawned suddenly, and he addressed his wife : — " Why, that self- 
 same mill I was a tellin' you of last night was Flinderses, where 
 the party was took out dead. Only last night ! So there's the 
 mill safe enough, and there you'll find it. You keep right along 
 the road till you git to The Three Magpies. And don't you stop 
 there, but foller right on till you get acrost the bridge." 
 
 Mr. Grewbeer waited so long for his hearer's imagination to 
 cross the bridge, that the latter said impatiently : — " Yes, 3'es 
 — and then ? Then do what ? " 
 
 " I'm a tellin' of yer ! " said Mr. Grewbeer, not to be hurried. 
 " You keep to your right, where you see the towin' path, and 
 keep along betwixt and between the canal on your right and the 
 overflow on your left, and you'll come to the backwater where 
 the party was took out dead." 
 
 " Good God ! " Fred was unable to restrain an expression of 
 emotion. But he would have done so if he could, for he did not 
 court the confidence of these two old people. 
 
 " You ain't keerful what you say, Grewbeer. Supposin' the 
 gentleman's acquainted ! " 
 
 " What was I a sayin' of ? The gentleman ho up and asks me, 
 ' Where do you make out Flinderses Mill is ? ' And ain't I a 
 tellin' of him? You be keerful what you say yourself, afore 
 takin' other folk up short." The old man was very irritable, 
 and, Fred thought, unreasonabl}'. 
 
 So he took on himself to make peace. " You mustn't blow
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 215 
 
 your wife up on my account, Mr. Grewbeer/' he said. "You 
 see it is possible ... I have some reason to believe, that is — 
 that this man that was found in the water yesterday was . . . 
 was in short a relation of my own. ..." He hesitated, as he 
 was far from clear that old Grewbeer knew, or at least was 
 alive to, the facts of his uncle's disappearance, and that he had 
 been last seen at The Cedars. 
 
 " Well, young ilaster, you go down to The Three j\Iagpies and 
 enquire, and if you don't find your relation there^ it'll be because 
 he's gone home. Ah — on his legs ! You may stare, but he was 
 getting all to rights, said the doctor when I come awa}^, maybe 
 eleven of the clock." 
 
 Fred fairly gasped. " Why, man, what the . . . what the 
 . . . devil do you mean? * Getting all to rights' after . . . 
 after ..." He could not finish: — "After being nearly a 
 month in the water." The clash of his firm conviction that this 
 must be his uncle, with this first-hand evidence of the incident, 
 now heard for the first time, was overpowering. He could only 
 find hoarse utterance for: — "Impossible! — impossible! What 
 does it mean?" 
 
 The old man caught half his meaning, and ascribed to him 
 unfamiliarity with the powers of resuscitation after drowning. 
 " Arter three-quarters of an hour in the water? That ain't 
 nothing uncommon. I've known a man five hours under, and 
 the doctor he fetched him round. If this here chap had knowed 
 how to swim, he'd have got hisself out easy. As it was they had 
 to go for the dredge — 'angs near the ash-tree 'cos of frequent 
 accidents — and a party misdirected of 'em." Strange to sa}^ 
 this statement, that the man who fell in could not swim, did 
 what nothing else in the case as presented had been able to do ; 
 namely, showed Fred what an utterly false hare had been started 
 by that incoherent young bicyclist at the inn at Eipley. Fancy 
 his Uncle Dru, famed for his swimming in school and college 
 records, unable to get himself out of a mill-pond ! 
 
 Then he asked the question that he should of course have asked 
 old Grewbeer at first. " What was the name of this man who 
 fell in the water?" The reply threw a light on one corner of 
 the misunderstanding. " He was the Rev. Soomat-or-other. 
 Name of Sewell — or Grooby — some such a name ! Couldn't 
 say." 
 
 ' Fred left the enlightenment of the old man, as to the motives 
 of his enquiry, to chance, or to his wife, as might be, and said 
 what he believed to be a final farewell to The Cedars. The
 
 216 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 place had been the motif of so mucli air-castle building in the 
 past that he had now the task of forgetting, that his farewell 
 was not without a mixed feeling liard of definition. Was it 
 regret ? He denied it. Still, it wasn't exactly rejoicing. 
 
 He was at least sure of one satisfaction, that it was farewell. 
 
 Such self-reproach as it stimulated might be a thing of the 
 past. He would not have felt so sure of this if Mrs. Grewbeer 
 had reported a rapturous attitude of the young lady visitor of 
 yesterday. Keen regret on her part at the collapse of the scheme 
 would have embarrassed the revelation of his own position to his 
 friend, the prospect of which was already a discomfort to him. 
 
 What was 7iot a satisfaction was that recurrence of the illusion 
 of the voice calling out to him to " come back," as it had done 
 before. And yet — why illusion? — when the old woman heard a 
 shout at the same moment? That must be his consolation. 
 Because no one ever hears or sees another person's hallucination. 
 Therefore — this is real reasoning, you know — what Mrs. Grew- 
 beer heard could be none of his fancying. That was all he 
 cared about — to be kept in temper; let him not be mad, sweet 
 Heaven! He had not quite King Lear's excuses for delirium, 
 but he was beginning to feel that his past twelve hours were so 
 much playing fast and loose with sanity. 
 
 The world was swimming about a good deal when he got to 
 Waterloo, having been lucky again witli an up-train from Wim- 
 bledon, and he felt very unsure what he was going to do next. 
 Go to Maida Vale in a hansom? Of course! But what a plight 
 to present himself to his mother in ! He caught sight of him- 
 self in a sheet of plate-glass with solid darkness behind it, and 
 wondered who that wasted, haggard chap was. For he was not 
 feeling much the worse physically. Yet all his powers of af- 
 fecting equanimity must be at their best when he came to the 
 telling his mother of the trick Fate had played her; conjuring 
 awav a daughter-in-law, without a hint of a substitute! Be- 
 sides, would he not bo late for breakfast — even for her late 
 breakfast? He looked at his watch; it had stopped of course, 
 never having been wound up. But there was the station clock, 
 and it was nearing half-past ten. Obviously, a case for a wash- 
 up, boots cleaned by macliinery, and breakfast at the refresh- 
 ment room, however much the young ladies at the buffet seemed 
 to prefer the other customers. Fred thought to himself how odd 
 it was that ever3'one has the same experience. A contradiction 
 in terms ! 
 
 He relented to his breakfast, consumed it, and felt better. He
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 217 
 
 might have let himself go to sleep — but no, that was not safe ! 
 Sleep must not be risked till after lunch. Who could tell how 
 he would feel after oblivion ? Most of us have had the experi- 
 ence of knowing that troubles and perturbations are best dealt 
 v/ith on the nail — by our first self, as it were. One goes to sleep 
 all resolve and readiness for action ; one wakes a dejected victim 
 of moral cowardice and physical irresolution — the understudy' of 
 our first-self, who always falls through when called on. 
 
 Besides — get it over ! That was the thing that had to be done. 
 *' Hansom ! "
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 " It's perfectly ridiculous in me lying here," said Nancy. 
 " Simple self-indulgence ! " But she didn't attempt to raise her 
 head from her pillow. 
 
 " You will lie still till Dr. Culpepper has seen you, at any 
 rate. If he lets you get up — well, he'll be responsible ! " Thus 
 Mrs. Carteret; not uneasy now about the ^^ltimate outcome of 
 this accident, and not the least fidgety about the non-appearance 
 of Fred, which she ascribed partly to his prejudice against this 
 dear girl, who after all will be his sister-in-law. Of course he 
 went back to his chambers ; and will most likely turn up to lunch, 
 in a couple of hours. 
 
 " Isn't the other man's word sufficient — the young man's? " 
 
 " ]\Ir. Harrison's ? Quite sufficient to satisfy me that you'll 
 be all right in a day or two. He says he'll answer for your 
 spine, now." 
 
 " I consider that's taking a great liberty." 
 
 " I'm very much obliged to him for taking it. Especially as 
 he says you are Dr. Culpepper's case, and he has nothing to do 
 with you. We shall see what Dr. Culpepper has to say." 
 
 The case murmurs something to the effect that Dr. Culpepper 
 is only an old fogy, and changes the subject. " Eric must be 
 back by now ? " she says, half as a question. 
 
 " Oh dear yes ! He's been gone quite two hours." 
 
 " And he was sure the machine was all right? " 
 
 " Quito sure. All but a spoke of the hind-wheel a little 
 jammed." 
 
 "■ I'm glad, because of riding it back. . . . What ! — not ride 
 it back ? You'll see I shall be all right after lunch." 
 
 " I shall see." 
 
 "Well— you !n7/./" 
 
 " Very well. I shall." This conversation — during which it 
 is noticeable that the patient, who is making such bold schemes, 
 keeps her head remarkably quiet on the pillow, and speaks cau- 
 tiously — arises from the reference to Nancy's brother Eric, who 
 had appeared on his bike at eight o'clock in the morning, to 
 find out about his sister. He, of course in ignorance of what 
 he should hear, and only knowing that she had not come home, 
 
 218
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 219 
 
 had prefaced his enquiry with a statement that he knew it was 
 awful rot to get in a blue funk about people who didn't come 
 home, because they always turned up all right in the end, and 
 you looked like a Lot of Asses. Nevertheless he, himself un- 
 moved, had consented to run over and ascertain the facts, to 
 soothe the nervous terrors of " his people " ; especially his 
 governor, who was noted for unreasonable fits of panic under 
 such circumstances. The exact expression he used was that 
 the aforesaid governor was a " one-er at getting in a stew," 
 especially about the girls; but that his own calmer judgment 
 had held this stew to be great rot. He seemed, however, relieved 
 from some feeling inconsistent with absolute stoicism when he 
 found his sister able to talk, with no fractured limbs, and a 
 guaranteed spine. For Dr. Harrison had only just ended a 
 flying visit of enquiry. 
 
 " "WTiat was that he said about Cit and Fred havincr had 
 words?" Xancy says this, as a corollary to Eric. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret can remember, but she doesn't seem to attach 
 weight to it. "He described it as a shine, I think. But he 
 added a note of explanation. It wasn't exactly a scrap, but you 
 might call it a scrum, if you liked. 1 had no guide to a choice 
 of language. Probably it's nothing. That's their way ! " 
 
 " How I do enjoy boys ! " says Nancy. " But they spoil at 
 sixteen. I hope 'Eic will last another twelvemonth." 
 
 AYhat a blessing it is that one can neither see nor hoar what 
 goes on at a distance ! Only then, to be sure, one has to hear 
 of it after ! 
 
 Dr. Culpepper came, and made himself very unpopular witii 
 Nancy. For he treated her intention to ride back to Gipsy Hill 
 after lunch as suicidal, if practicable; though probably quite 
 out of the question. Still, while she condemned the doctor as 
 an old mollycoddle, she began to be afraid she might presently 
 suspect him of having a certain amount of conventional reason 
 on his side. Otherwise, why hold so fast to that pillow? 
 
 He was very apologetic, was Dr. Culpepper, for sending such a 
 collapsible nurse. It was just as well, on the whole, that she 
 wasn't particularly wanted. But what could you do? There 
 was no hard and fast line of possibility, in resisting that in- 
 sidious enemy. Sleep. The only rule was to go on till they broke 
 down, and blow them up next day. Nancy " pointed out " that 
 if there was no nurse she wouldn't break down. The doctor 
 assented, but would not admit that this expedient was practicable 
 in all cases. All he could say was that this one had seemed as
 
 220 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 brisk as a bee at the Home. " How brisk is a bee?" said Mrs. 
 Carteret, with misgivings about Insect Life, as known to 
 proverbs. 
 
 Dr. Culpepper was quite clear about one thing — that the 
 more the patient slept the better. If she could sleep for a week, 
 she would probably be ready for another bicycle accident at the 
 end of it. Mrs. Carteret said : — " Suppose, dear, you take the 
 doctor's very broad hint, and go to sleep. I shall go out and 
 get a little air before blaster Fred comes. See ! — I'll put the 
 hand-bell here and tell Lipscombe to run the minute she hears 
 it." Nothing could be said against this, and she and the doctor 
 left the house together. He rode off in his brougham, and she 
 walked towards Regent's Park, countenanced by the dachshund. 
 His attitude towards her was that of a guardian who could not 
 give her his whole attention, having many discriminations to 
 make in the gutters and on posts and basements. When whistled 
 for, he ahvays completed the matter in hand before giving at- 
 tention to the summons. His figure — if that term can be applied 
 to him — lent itself to deliberation. 
 
 She was glad to be alone for av/hile. She could not think over 
 old times among new associations, and her mind had been 
 wrenched back into the old time by those few odd words of a 
 feverish girl ; spoken in sleep too ! Why should these incoherent 
 words set her thoughts on the alert to rake up forgotten events 
 that might throw a light on that early story of her husband's 
 brother? That was what they did. 
 
 Possibly it was because the words were sufficient to show the 
 nature of the false surmise that had produced them. It was 
 not an unnatural one, after all, to be indulged in by a romantic 
 Nancy. She could look it in the face without Avincing, because 
 of the very absurdity of it. What was it, after all, that had pre- 
 sented itself to the child's mind as a possibility? That her 
 liusband's older brother had set his heart on her; had never 
 declared his passion; and had suppressed it when he found the 
 way things had gone. That was the only meaning she could 
 devise for: — "'She was the girl herself." Not so very far- 
 fetched, when all was said ! Where would the absurdity have 
 been, indeed, had she been even nearing womanhood when Dru 
 first set eyes on her? 
 
 The obvious basis of Nancy's whole flight of fancy was that 
 speech she herself had repeated to her of her mother's that it 
 was impossible that he should wed now with this widow-lady, 
 who would have filled out Fred's theory of the cause of the dis-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 221 
 
 appearance of his uncle. What obstacle was there, of a legal 
 sort, to any marriage, except consanguinity? And what con- 
 sanguinities were there open to discussion as rendering marriage 
 impossible, except the two factitious ones? It was a perfectly 
 natural mistake for Xancy to fall into, as she might easily con- 
 jure up a completely false image of another family's relations 
 thirty-odd years ago. She certainly was not " the girl herself ! " 
 She could, and did, smile at the idea. 
 
 But absurd as the idea was in itself, it had power to infect 
 her mind with an almost morbid tendency to reminiscence. No 
 one survived now to tell her the story of that early love of her 
 brother-in-law which had jarred on his life and thrown its 
 machinery out of gear. All who could possibly have had any 
 knowledge of it had passed away; from her world, at any rate. 
 Xothing was now left for her but speculation, and this dear 
 Nancy girl's preposterous dream was responsible for it. 
 
 She asked herself, did she really remember the very first 
 occasion when she saw Dru? Ye-es — she was pretty sure of it! 
 And one thing was certain — that on that day he cannot have 
 been an unrequited lover, unless indeed that class has excep- 
 tional powers of dissimulation. For on that day she remembered 
 him as the nucleus of a sort of bundle of small girls and boys — 
 it was at a children's party — whom he was carrying on his 
 shoulders, while their friends noisily demanded to be taken too, 
 contrary to all physical possibility. She could recollect at this 
 length of time — thirty-eight years ! — his big voice from under 
 the legs of a midget who was holding on by his hair : — " Now 
 then, children ! Add yourselves together ! See how old you are, 
 all added up ! " And then afterwards, when the creatures had 
 been disentangled from him with shrieks of laughter, his com- 
 ment on the achievement to two Oxford youths whom he had in 
 charge. "You tell them that at Brasenose, boys, — that you saw 
 your respectable coach, the Rev. Drury Carteret, run round 
 the garden with forty-two years of baby on his shoulders." That 
 was not the voice of a saddened and disappointed man that she 
 could recall so clearl}^ Nor was the face that turned to hers 
 afterwards the face of one. What was it he said? "You're 
 the kid that wouldn't come, aren't you? Why — how old are 
 you ? " She remembered saying she was nearly ten, and much 
 too old to carry ; also, that she felt she was telling stories, being 
 only just over nine. 
 
 That fixed the time. How long could she remember him after 
 that, without any observation on her part of material change, — 
 
 15
 
 222 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 of such depression as must have resulted from so severe a dis- 
 appointment? She could not follow the years that came after; 
 she could only remember the general order of things. The 
 colossal young parson who came at intervals to visit his parents 
 next door was the Rev. Mr. Carteret. Fred^ her particular 
 friend, was his little brother, fourteen years his junior ; her hus- 
 band had been one of those singular late arrivals turning up for 
 enrollment a good five years after recruiting was supposed to 
 have ceased for good. She and he carried on a long corre- 
 spondence at that period, of which a peculiar feature was that 
 the sealed letters were handed from one to the other over the 
 wall, not sent by post. She had them all, carefully tied up with 
 a blue ribbon, among her treasures from the past. She had 
 re-read them all, more than once, since her husband's death ; and 
 had been amused, in a sort of smileless way, at the frequent 
 references to a Secret Society which flourished in those days, 
 whose objects — secrecy apart — were undefined. Even that 
 raison-d' Hre seemed likely to disappear, when the Prospectus 
 was issued; for one was proposed, and was the subject of con- 
 troversy about Style. She could remember an animated discus- 
 sion as to whether Fred's big brother " should be told," or should 
 be kept in darkness. She herself was in favour of admitting 
 him to the knowledge of this Society's existence — the only dis- 
 closure it ever had to make ! — when he came up from Oxford 
 to stay. 
 
 But the image of him in her mind during those unsuspicious 
 years of infancy was the image of a person who was a matter- 
 of-course. All of us can remember in our early experience 
 many such grown-ups in the family and out of it, and the story 
 is convinced that no better description of them can be given. 
 Are we fully aware — we oldsters — that we are regarded by 
 youngsters as matters-of-course? — that is to say, as persons who 
 must be, or there would be no grown-up people; but who never 
 were properly young, by hypothesis ? 
 
 She felt certain, although "• Fred's big brother " was an in- 
 determinate item of maturity of this sort in those three or four 
 years that were neither childhood nor womanhood — those years 
 in which she and Fred had found each other out, but she at least 
 did not suspect the meaning of the discovery — that if any shadow 
 fell upon the young clergyman's life at that time it made no 
 change in him by which any bystander would have guessed it. 
 Eather, her memories of him — hazy as they were — all went iu 
 the other direction. If the hopelessness of this attachment.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 223 
 
 which he had confided later to her mother, was brought home 
 to him during that period, it must have been during one of his 
 long absences as tutor in charge of reading parties of young 
 undergraduates. This would have given him time to shake off 
 visible depression and make an effort towards concealment. 
 But, making every allowance for every possibility, she could not 
 understand a disappointment — such a one as her mother's tale 
 pointed at — passing over a young man's life without causing 
 visible change, or exciting the suspicion of any of his own family. 
 For her mother had certainly seemed to imply that she herself 
 was the sole confidante of this story. Indeed, she was almost 
 certain that she made use of the expression : — " He never told 
 anybody else." 
 
 Her thoughts travelled on to the time that followed — the long 
 period of her own engagement; long because of the youth of 
 the parties. There, Memory was on the alert, bringing from 
 her stores any quantity of raptures and despairs, fears and 
 hopes; precious moments easily forgotten then, with such a 
 future to forget it; tearfully remembered now, with such a 
 present to look back from ! But they were of little service to 
 her at this moment, when what she wanted was to remember 
 something of the youth of the brother she had lost so strangely. 
 
 She was not to be allowed to continue on these lines of reflec- 
 tion undisturbed. For Mr. Bagster Sutcliffe, the husband and 
 father of her visitors of yesterday, crossed her path; or, rather, 
 met her upon it, going in the same direction. He was an editor, 
 and his newspaper didn't seem to want editing on Monday, till 
 near eleven o'clock at least. The advertisement manager was 
 at work, no doubt, and that was half the battle. For nine-tenths 
 of the battalions were advertisement, and if the human race is 
 really the better for voluminous misstatements of the merits of 
 goods for sale, the Central Sun was one of its benefactors. This 
 editor lived at St. George's Terrace, Primrose Hill; and liked 
 walking to his work when it was fine, for exercise. But he 
 seemed surprised to overtake this lady and her dachshund. 
 " Wasn't aware you took an early walk, Mrs. Carteret," said he. 
 
 " I frequently do, in fine weather," she replied. " But I 
 wasn't able to do so to-day. However, I have had the advantage 
 of meeting you, Mr. Sutcliffe." 
 
 The gentleman would have liked to hit back, but didn't see 
 his way; repartee was not his line. He probably was referring 
 to this interview when he said, later in the day, that some women 
 were dam -sharp ; but best out of politics — best out of politics !
 
 224 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 He changed the subject. By-the-bye, he said, he had been made 
 quite, uneasy that morning by a paragraph in the newspaper, but 
 his wife had been able to assure him it was not the same Car- 
 terets. . . . He was pulled up short by an expression on his 
 hearer's face. 
 
 " It is the same Carterets," said she. " You mean the para- 
 graph about the disappearance of the Rev. Dr. Carteret. He is 
 my brother-in-law." She knew she would have to face a great 
 deal of this sort of thing. Was she bound to do more than 
 declare the facts, drily? What a relief it would be to make for 
 any solitude, to be out of sight and hearing of her tiresome 
 species ! 
 
 This gentleman seemed an undeserved example of its tire- 
 someness. He appeared suddenly paralysed with horror, while 
 at the same moment he experienced a paroxysm of decision. 
 *' You don't say that, Madam ! " he exclaimed, gasping and 
 glaring. " Why — good Goard ! Something ought to be done!" 
 
 " Quite so ! " said Mrs. Carteret, quietly. " The only question 
 is — what? My son and I have every reason to be satisfied with 
 the energy and intelligence that the police are showing." She 
 said this rather perfunctorily. Had they? Did she not mean 
 that she and Fred had been unable to do anything themselves? 
 
 The editor nodded sagaciously a great many times. " You 
 do right, Mrs. Carteret," said he, " to rely upon the efficiency of 
 the police force — especially the Detective Department in Scot- 
 land Yard." He brought his forefinger into action to emphasise 
 this, much as though it had been a good typical example of an 
 Inspector. " Rely upon it — you may take my word for this — 
 that if there is anything that can be done, the police will do it." 
 
 As Mrs. Carteret had already expressed all faith — short of 
 Fetichism — in the powers of the Force, she merely said : — " I 
 am sure they will," rather tepidly. For that undredged pond 
 had occurred to her. She added suggestively that she m"»at not 
 detain Mr. Sutcliffe, and she had to get home herself. 
 
 " Yes ! " he said, with decision. " I must be getting on. I 
 am late. . . . My wife will be most concerned to learn her 
 mistake — that it is not, as she supposed, 710 1 the same Carterets. 
 Most concerned ! " His victim thought he would go now ; but 
 he didn't. He got a new lease. " A . . . you must allow me 
 . . . just one word! My wife and the girls were so delighted 
 with the charming visit they paid you yesterday. They have 
 been able to talk of nothing else ever since. Good-bye — good- 
 bye — ^ooc?-bye ! I must Virry."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 225 
 
 Mrs. Carteret shook hands with this gentleman without ex- 
 pressing a hope she felt that this phase of his family's life would 
 pass, and a change become possible in their conversation, Liebig 
 took upon himself to see him to town, and had to be whistled 
 for. He stood half-way between the whistler and his new 
 acquaintance, looking from one to the other; but finally decided 
 that the former had a prior claim, and came back without 
 undignified haste. Mrs. Carteret started for home, without 
 picking up the lost thread in her musings. Now that her son was 
 so very much overdue, she felt there might be another uneasi- 
 ness in store for her. Suppose he too . . . ! However, surely 
 that was a trouble she need neither beg nor borrow. 
 
 She was soon at ease on that score. For as she turned the 
 corner of Hall Place, sure enough there was Fred, waiting at 
 the garden gate of her house. He saw her and came to meet 
 her. Liebig started also to meet him, with the alacrity of a 
 bolster. 
 
 It was she who spoke first. But she only said : — " Why — 
 Fred ! " 
 
 He said : — " Yes — anything the matter ? " 
 
 She answered : — " Plenty's the matter. But it wasn't that. 
 It was that you looked so." 
 
 '•'How do I look?" He had arrived some minutes ago, and 
 had heard the news of the accident from Lipscombe. He fol- 
 lowed his mother straight into the house, the street door having 
 been left standing open during the short time he had awaited 
 her outside. He glanced at his image in the mirror over the 
 chimney-piece, and reported on himself. " I'm all right enough,"^ 
 he said. "What is it that's the matter? The 'plenty,' I 
 mean ? " 
 
 " That poor darling girl. She was as nearly killed . . . 
 But Lipscombe told you, I suppose? " 
 
 " Lipscombe told me something." 
 
 " Well — she had the narrowest escape. She hadn't gone above 
 half a mile — not so much — when ..." 
 
 " Lipscombe told me. But she said the doctor had seen her 
 and she would soon be all right. She's welcome to the room. I 
 needn't see her, I suppose ? " 
 
 " You needn't see her ! " Mrs. Carteret repeated her son's 
 words in a puzzled tone of voice. It meant : — " I cannot see why 
 the question should be asked ; " not : — " Why should you ? " 
 
 " I mean, of course, when she's up," said Fred, uneasily. 
 " But I must get on to town as soon as possible."
 
 226 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Now, this speech contained a nicety in language. The ex- 
 pression " get on to town " implied, temperately but decisively, 
 that Fred had spent the night elsewhere; had in fact come up 
 from the country. His mother saw this at once. " Why, where 
 have you been?" said she. "Did you stop at Norwood?" 
 
 " Oh no. No, I didn't stop at Norwood." He spoke in a 
 vague sort of way, which might have meant either : — " Question 
 me ! " ; or : — " It is no concern of yours where I stopped." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret acted on the first interpretation. " Fred ! 
 What's the matter? Something's the matter. . . . You have 
 quarrelled." For she remembered the boy Eric's serai-report 
 of a shine, or scrum, and knew it must have meant more than 
 an ordinary tiff. 
 
 Fred was relieved from the embarrassment of having to in- 
 augurate his disclosure — always a tax on one's adroitness — and 
 felt he could speak and be dignified. After all, he was quite a 
 young man. " Cintra and I have not quarrelled. But ..." 
 
 "But what?" 
 
 " We have decided that it is better for both of us that we 
 should consider our engagement at an end. Perhaps I ought to 
 say — she has decided. It was no wish of mine." 
 
 The first dozen words of this speech pointed to an everyday 
 lovers' quarrel, which their hearer might have laughed at. A 
 shine or a scrum ! Its conclusion stopped her, backed as it was 
 by something in her son's appearance. For all the resources of 
 Waterloo Main Line had not obliterated the marks of his sleep- 
 less night and its excitements. " Is it so serious ? " said she, and 
 waited for him to tell her more. 
 
 But his reply was : — " It is. Perfectly serious. ... If you 
 don't mind, I would much rather tell you some other time — 
 some time later ..." 
 
 " Just as you please, Fred dear ! " He, however, went on 
 explaining, as people usually do when they have announced their 
 intention of keeping silence. Their decision — or rather her 
 decision — had turned on a point he did not feel free to talk 
 about. " Even to you, dear mother ! " said Fred. But he was 
 a little disconcerted at her saying, as one who recognises the 
 routine of events — no otherwise : — " Jealousy, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Not in the ordinary sense," said Fred, prompted by a 
 chivalrous feeling toward Cintra. He stopped short in his 
 justification, from an uncertainty about the non-ordinary sense 
 in which jealousy figured in this case. It was more easily 
 hinted at than grappled with.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 227 
 
 His mother seemed content to leave niceties about jealousy to 
 be dealt with later. " Just please tell me," said she, " what you 
 have been doing with yourself all night. Where have you 
 been? " 
 
 " Who— I ? I went for a walk." 
 
 "For a walk? Where?" 
 
 " Oh, Guildford way. Some distance. I felt like a long 
 walk." 
 
 " You foolish boy ! And now you're quite worn out. You've 
 been walking all night. That's what it comes to." 
 
 " I sujDpose it comes to that. But it was good for me. You 
 know — I don't knock up easily. Come, Mother, you do know 
 that!" Indeed, the reaction of his feverish attack of energy 
 had not come yet. He had in him still the materials for a 
 laugh at his own absurdity, — his way of taking a disappointment. 
 But when his mother, only half believing him in earnest even 
 now, expressed her incredulity, he put this spirit of levity aside, 
 saying with a seriousness she could not doubt, that it was all 
 over between him and Cintra. She was not to blame at all, and 
 his own blame for himself was very slight. They had misunder- 
 stood themselves and each other, and the wisest thing they could 
 do now was to dwell on the past as little as possible. His 
 mother wondered, in her own heart, whether the young lady was 
 taking the matter equally philosophically. 
 
 " Well, my dear boy," she said, " since you wish me not to 
 ask questions about it, I'll ask none — at least, not just yet awhile. 
 That's what you mean, isn't it ? " 
 
 " That's what I mean. Full particulars some of these days ! 
 Just now, I'm rather ..." 
 
 " I understand. But there's one thing. . . . You must for- 
 give me, Fred, but really — I must know ..." She regretted 
 the necessity for making her son the partner of a perplexity she 
 might have kept to herself. But how avoid it ? What was to be 
 said to Nancy? There was that poor girl in the next room, 
 probably hearing their voices through the wall, and anticipating 
 a cheerful report of Upper Norwood, as consolation for an aching 
 head. Fred must determine how much should be said to her. 
 
 " Oh— Elbows ? " said he, unfeelingly. " Tell Elbows Cintra 
 has broken it off, and I'm not going to cry my eyes out." 
 
 His mother remonstrated. " Fred — dear ! I can't tell her 
 only that. She'll want to know more than that." 
 
 " Very likely. Then she must wait for her sister's account of 
 it. She'll write — Cintra will. She won't come. . . . I say ! ''
 
 228 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "May I have a cigar and make the place smell? I haven't 
 had a smoke yet." 
 
 " Certainly, my dear ! Smoke as much as you like, all things 
 considered ! " 
 
 " Yes — but I haven't a cigar. My Havanas are just inside the 
 oak cabinet in the next room, and that young woman's there." 
 Mrs. Carteret undertook to find the cigars. 
 
 " I heard Fred had come. How did he leave them last night? 
 Of course they knew nothing about my smash ? " Thus Nancy 
 to the cigar-seeker, who hoped she was asleep, and was proceeding 
 furtively, that she might not rouse her. 
 
 " Of course not ! How should they ? He knew nothing him- 
 self till I told him just now." 
 
 " Did he say serve me right ? " 
 
 " Nonsense, child ! However, I must say he might have been 
 more sympathetic. I told him you were not badly hurt, though, 
 there's that to be considered." 
 
 " I am not hurt at all. How are the lovers getting on? Are 
 they quarrelling? " 
 
 Was she to be told, or not ? Mrs. Carteret ran away, to avoid 
 decision. " I'll take him his cigars," she said. " I'm coming 
 back." Then, in the front parlour again, talking to Fred, she 
 said: — "What am I to say to the girl? My dear boy, 3'ou have 
 no idea how embarrassing it is." 
 
 He, lighting his cigar, replied : — " Say there's a coolness. 
 Don't have been told anything about it. Why should you? 
 Cintra will write it all to her — you see if she doesn't. . . . 
 But — stop a minute ! How will they know she isn't coming 
 back?" 
 
 " That's all settled. Her brother came first thing this morn- 
 ing — the boy Eric. He has got back by now. ... Oh dear 
 yes, long ago! But he did not know that anything serious be- 
 tween you ..." 
 
 Fred finished the sentence, which hung fire : — " Was going on? 
 No — he wouldn't. Cintra wouldn't tell him. Besides, he came 
 away so early — he would not have seen her." He reflected and 
 smoked, while she sat silent; then said: — "No, I do not see. 
 Mother dear, that you are in any way bound to know anything 
 at all about it. Bother Elbows ! " 
 
 She replied quietly : — " It's easy to ' bother Elbows,' dear ! — 
 much easier than to look in her face and answer her questions."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 229 
 
 And Fred felt that this was true, and in his secret heart was not 
 sorry that present conditions did not favour an interview with 
 the young lady who had possession of his apartment. 
 
 The hour of reaction after excitement was at hand for Fred, 
 and it came after his mother had given him some lunch. In 
 the course of this meal he passed through three distinct stages, 
 the first of pretence that he didn't want anything to eat, and 
 could discuss his unfortunate love-affair in cold blood, with the 
 strictest impartiality; the second, the natural consequence of 
 his scratch breakfast at the railway station, a stage of ravenous- 
 ness; and the third, one of fast-increasing drowsiness which 
 began by strangling loquacity, and ended in futile struggles 
 against collapse, so palpable that his mother recognised them 
 candidly and told him that the sooner he lay down and went 
 sound asleep the better. He accepted the resources of the dining- 
 room — a sofa; and Lipscombe was instructed to abstain swe die 
 from clearing away, to the end that Mr. Frederic should have 
 his sleep out. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret knew it would be impossible to keep the facts 
 from Nancy, but she wanted to communicate them to her in 
 such a way as to favour the construction — if Nancy desired it — 
 of their pointing to nothing worse than a temporary estrange- 
 ment and a reconciliation. So she thought it best on the whole 
 to take the initiative. If it was "' elicited " from her, all the 
 worse for her chances of making light of it! 
 
 She did not feel, however, that any alacrity on her part to 
 return to the subject was called for ; that might even have 
 defeated her object. Equable, philosophical indifference was the 
 safe attitude, with an absolute unreluctance to talk of it if 
 invited to do so. Therefore, when Nancy repeated her ques- 
 tion: — "Didn't Fred tell you how he and Cintra are getting- 
 on? Are they quarrelling? " — she responded without emotion : — 
 " Yes — they're quarrelling — at present ; " the implication being 
 that she, at least, had no belief either way as to the permanency 
 or intensity of the quarrel. 
 
 " What idiots lovers are ! " said Nancy. 
 
 " Proverbially so, my dear ! " said Mrs. Carteret. 
 
 " What's it all about, this time? " 
 
 " The usual thing, I believe. Fred had been looking at some 
 other young lady." 
 
 "Not Mr. Snaith's Lucy?" The first word was fired off like 
 a gun. Mrs. Carteret had had experience of her young friend's 
 penetration, but she was taken aback. She had been under the
 
 230 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 impression that the powerful effect produced by Mr. Snaith's 
 Lucy on her son had been visible to no one but herself; because 
 Nancy, though she had testified to her sister's wroth against the 
 beauty, had never seemed alive to that effect from any personal 
 observation. Although certainly she had shown that she was not 
 in the dark about possibilities, she had not included in them a 
 fluctuation in the stability of an attachment nearly two years 
 old, under the witchery of a mere pair of black eyes. Nancy's 
 pounce on a definition of what the usual thing was, in this case, 
 had shown that she must have been conscious — or, sup- 
 pose we say, subconscious? — of Fred's susceptibility to their 
 influence. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret merely noted that her young friend was probably 
 awake to the facts, and did not pry into her mind. " How can 
 I tell whether it was Mr. Snaith's Lucy, or someone else's Lucy ? " 
 said she, as though the individual was a matter of little moment. 
 Lovers' fancies — all delusion ! 
 
 " They'll come all to rights — make it up again. See if they 
 don't ! " Nancy kept that head of hers very still on the pillow, 
 and seemed careful not to open her eyes. Also, her words came, 
 as it were, cautiously — rather on tiptoe. Mrs. Carteret knew 
 exactly what she felt like. 
 
 Yes, that was the best frame of mind to encourage, clearly. 
 They would make it up again. Nothing would result from this 
 shine or scrum. No bystander need fret or interfere. Mrs. 
 Carteret said nothing to Nancy of how Fred had walked about all 
 night over it, nor of how he had gone to sleep on the sofa in 
 {he dining-room. It would only have made her feel herself an 
 intruder. It was rather satisfactory to have this excuse for 
 omitting what seemed likely to accentuate the seriousness of 
 the situation. 
 
 The Fred who woke up on that sofa the best part of two hours 
 later was a very different Fred from the one that may be said 
 to have swaggered into an abrupt half-hour's nap, warranted to 
 awake refreshed, confident that rest would renew in him a philo- 
 sophical spirit, which would look the facts of life straight in 
 the face, and garner the fruits of experience for Judicious con- 
 sumption in the future. He — the awakener — was, on the con- 
 trary, a woebegone parody of his former self, an abject second 
 volume with a Table of Discontents at the beginning and an 
 Index that referred the reader, on self-perusal, to nothing but 
 misprints. He was not over-certain, for an unpleasant minute 
 or two, what manner of thing he was, or what had happened to
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 231 
 
 it. He could only stretch himself and rub his eyes and wait for 
 reluctant Memory to re-form the world he had to live in. 
 
 He knew there was a rock ahead that he could nowise steer 
 clear of — the communication of his altered circumstances to 
 Charley Snaith. He gradually changed, from mere misgiving 
 as to how he should word it, to a fixed desire to get the Job over. 
 But what a tale to have to tell ! No ancient dwelling-madhouse 
 or sanehouse — to convert into two air-castles at pleasure. No 
 front drive common to both, through lawn and garden-bed ring- 
 ing changes all the year on all the Botany he didn't know the 
 names of, from the first violet to the last chrysanthemum ! No 
 grounds of an acre and a quarter in the rear, large enough. to 
 lay out ; large enough to show visitors over — almost ! No oaken 
 stairways for their mistresses to be graceful on, with light and 
 shade effects. . . . 
 
 He shrank suddenly from his own mind — which the story is 
 following — at this point. For he found that one of two images, 
 of the two possible mistresses, on the two actual staircases, was 
 dim; while the other was vivid, and displaced it. He felt a 
 traitor to his friend, more than to the displaced image, at the 
 vividness of the dark-eyed image which had ousted it. He tried 
 to refer this activity of his imagination to Cintra's own decision 
 to end their engagement, and was not so successful as he could 
 have wished. Was that decision, after all, an arbitrary outcome 
 of a groundless jealousy? He thrust the question aside, angrily. 
 But he never answered it. 
 
 Although tea was beginning to be spoken of as a possibility 
 very shortly after he awoke, he did not wait for its appearance, 
 but went away to his chambers. The presence of Nancy in 
 the house was an embarrassment to him, although it was safe 
 enough not to reach interview-point. He had always felt her 
 an embarrassment, considered merely as a provisional blood- 
 relation, ratified by occasional ungracious pecks. But a dis- 
 embodied sister-in-law ! — that was what he felt she was. He 
 would find plenty to do at his rooms — letters to write and what 
 not — till Charley made his appearance from the office. An 
 uncomfortable thought, now! Nevertheless, he screwed up his 
 courage, and went. 
 
 He found plenty to do, and did none of it. He was altogether 
 too desceuvre even for the simplest letter-writing. As for turn- 
 ing to on the provisional specification of the Non-Vibratory 
 Engine, that was entirely out of the question. He felt, as he 
 looked at the clean, completed elevations of it, that had been a
 
 232 TEE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 joy to his soul on Saturday, that the condition of his mind 
 towards them was painfully near to a working version of Igno- 
 rance — something at least that answered the purpose in practice. 
 If your brain swims and you can't know anything, you know as 
 little of the trade you learned in boyhood as — for instance — the 
 Average Man knows of Aramaic. Fred's brain swam ; or rather, 
 perhaps, sank — for the swimmer at least strikes out — as he gazed 
 vacantly at what had been so keen an interest to him only last 
 week. He had actually made those drawings ! All the con- 
 cession he could make to them now was that he would not tear 
 them up. However, he might do so even now if he looked at 
 them too much. The only safety was in passivity — silence and 
 waiting. Suppose he went out for another wallc, a short one 
 this time, just to get through the hour or so that must pass 
 before his friend's return. Yes — that would do ! ! And he 
 could leave a note in Charley's letter-box to stop his running away 
 if he found no one. He wrote : — " If I'm not back when you 
 come in, don't go away without seeing me. I have something 
 to . . . " he paused here ; he wanted to hint that the something 
 was serious, and " something to tell " might mean either good 
 news or bad. He could not find a phrase that exactly met his 
 requirements, and got bewildered in the choice of one. Every 
 one he thought of seemed either jocular or tragic^ and he wanted 
 to avoid both. He shook his head at intervals, as one thing after 
 another offered itself and was condemned. He decided on 
 crossing out " have something to," and making it read, " I 
 want to talk to you." It didn't read right, but he had to come 
 to a decision. 
 
 Then he found himself loitering in the Temple Garden, listen- 
 ing to a bird. It was, like enough, the same bird that was 
 singing there just a year ago, when he and Charley got the two 
 girls, Cintra and Nancy, to come to tea at their rooms and be 
 taken all about and shown things. His engagement was then 
 not six months old, and everything was rose-coloured. It 
 seemed a thousand years ago now; but vividly clear, like some 
 of the earliest memories of youth. What was a keen discomfort 
 to his soul — almost a nightmare — was, not so much the loss of 
 that bewitching phase of early love, as the terrible thoroughness 
 with which it had vanished. And so suddenly ! But a few 
 weeks since — although perhaps they had steadied down a little 
 latterly — he and Cintra were still in a land of enchantment, 
 laying out imaginary rose-gardens in other lands that awaited 
 their arrival. Were all man's garments woven by him only that
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 233 
 
 he might be clothed with derision? Did he never reap the har- 
 vest of his own sowing, except indeed to find the wheat-ears 
 empty, and the plants run to leaf? Were all our dolls stuffed 
 with sawdust? 
 
 Where was the life that late they led? It was there but 
 yesterday, in outward seeming at least, when he started away 
 for Norwood in the fresh hours of a Sunday morning in May, 
 meeting scarcely a soul but milkmen and early communicants. 
 He could not recall that his anticipations of a joyous greeting 
 from her on his arrival were lukewarm, as he surrendered his 
 railway ticket at Gipsy Hill Station to a station master who 
 returned him the crossed half he had just found unused in his 
 waistcoat pocket, as he locked his office up for its Sunday morn- 
 ing rest. In fact, the effect this exploded ticket had on him was 
 to bring back his expectation of Cintra, fresh and living as the 
 May morning itself, and all-powerful — yes, that certainly liad 
 been so ! — to banish by her presence suspicions of any other 
 image than her own. It was Fred's own Self that he spoke to, 
 and that Self did not disclaim the suggestion he had imputed 
 to it. He felt piqued at its lack of alacrity to do so. For so 
 far from helping himx, that Self kept silence lest it should say : — 
 ** Yes — you had your reason for wanting Cintra's power over you 
 to assert itself, to protect you against that other identity that 
 was working to estrange you from her." If this is a little com- 
 plex, let him who reads this story reflect what a complex 
 thing the human mind is, and look leniently upon its 
 difficulties. 
 
 Fred threw the half railway ticket away, as though by doing 
 so he could also throw away the train of thought it had sug- 
 gested, and walked away to be out of sight of it. But it hap- 
 pened to attract the notice of some juveniles who had found 
 their way into the Garden, in the belief that their presence 
 would be tolerated by Authority, so long as they didn't pluck 
 the flowers or walk on the grass, but with reservations of inten- 
 tion to do both if the absence of Authority could be relied on. 
 They were — if pronounced as by their family connection — 
 Heaverarris and her boyby, or more properly her mother's 
 boyby, she being only eleven, and her little brother Tommyarris, 
 who was not yet six. This young man, catching sight of the 
 railway ticket where it fell, picked it up and, acting under 
 instructions from his sister Heaver, pursued the gentleman who 
 had apparently dropped it, and held it out towards him without 
 explanation.
 
 234 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 "Well, old chap!" said Fred. "Is that for me? What's 
 your name? " He didn't want to know. He only asked to make 
 conversation; but he was told a name, not over distinctly. He 
 guessed particulars, rightly. "Thomas Harris — is that it? 
 . . . Well, / don't want it? You may have it." 
 
 But the youth was not prepared to have the goods returned 
 on his hands in that way. He began a confused statement, from 
 which Fred gathered that he was endeavouring to cite his sister 
 as an authority for something inaudible. He repeated several 
 times : — " Moy sister Heaver — moy sister Heaver — " and then 
 stopped suddenly, pointing. " That's her," said he. 
 
 "Oh, that's your sister Eva, is it? Very well, Thomas 
 Harris. Now what does your sister Eva say? " 
 
 Thomas Harris removed from his mouth a thumb, sucked 
 clean, which had been one of the chief causes of his inaudibility ; 
 and said, not without a kind of distinctness: — "Moy sister 
 Heaver said a hoy'p'ny." 
 
 Fred understood that he was expected to produce this sum in 
 exchange for the void and valueless ticket he had thrown away. 
 He pointed out that the ticket was useless to him ; but, he said, 
 he was not prepared to disappoint Thomas Harris, who had had 
 no means of knowing this, and had acted, no doubt, in perfect 
 good faith. He handed the amount to the claimant, with the 
 words : — " There, that's for you, Thomas Harris ; " and then, con- 
 sidering the incident closed, walked away towards the Embank- 
 ment, leaving Thomas standing gazing after him, with his thumb 
 replaced for further cleaning. 
 
 He found a seat near Cleopatra's Needle, and tried to banish 
 all the haunting ideas the last twenty-four hours had left him 
 as an unwelcome inheritance. He tried to think of Cleopatra, 
 who surely was far off enough from any of them. In vain! 
 For the first tliought of licr and her appearances in literature 
 suggested the question — was she dark or was she fair? Was she 
 — for instance — like Cintra? Or was she like ... He made 
 a resolute effort to drive the first face that came to him out of 
 his mind, and substitute some other than Lucy Hinchliffe's. 
 Remember that to the conscience of this unhappy young man the 
 slightest concession to the witchery of that young lady was an 
 act of disloyalty to Charley Snaith, his fast friend of so many 
 long years. He might have recalled Browning's lines : — 
 
 " One should master one's passions — love, in chief, — 
 And be loyal to one's friends."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 235 
 
 But he stopped them on the threshold of his mind. For he 
 could not admit them without admitting also that they had been 
 justified in knocking at his door. He angrily resented their 
 intrusion. 
 
 A fig for Cleopatra ! A mummy, long ago, more likely than 
 not. He jumped up from the seat, and turned to go. But he 
 was confronted by Thomas Harris — if the phrase can be used 
 of a fraction face to face with an integer — who had tracked him 
 down with a defined purpose. Fred had to give attention to his 
 statement to discover it. It sounded somewhat like this : — '' You 
 divved me vis hoy'p'ny faw me. I wants anuvver hoy'p'ny faw 
 my sister Heaver. Vat's her, wiv boyby, free-munce." His 
 last words as he pointed her out — which he evidently looked upon 
 as so much distinction, like K.C.B. or F.E.S. — meant the age 
 of the baby. 
 
 " I fear," said Fred, " that you are an impostor and an 
 extortioner. But — as Baby is only three months old — I will give 
 you another hoy'p'ny. It doesn't follow, strictly, but we mustn't 
 be too particular." Thomas accepted the second halfpenny and 
 ran away to his sister Eva, bearing a coin in either hand. It 
 appeared then to Fred that Eva blew Thomas's nose for him, 
 after taking charge of his halfpenny as well as her own, and 
 departed with an appearance of having thought of an investment. 
 
 Charley Snaith would be back in half an hour now. He 
 turned to go to the chambers. But there was plenty of time to 
 take it easily. Good Lord, yes! Four-forty-five! He put his 
 watch back in its pocket, and sauntered. In fact, he walked 
 farther than he need have done, to spin out the time. 
 
 Whenever one has anything to communicate of importance, be 
 it sad or joyous, one is pretty sure to dwell on the ways and 
 means of the communication ; sadly or joyously, as may be. And 
 nothing is more certain than the way our forecast never comes 
 about. The good news gets blurted out before its time; all 
 one's neat tropes and clever climaxes are lost. And the bad news 
 gets the bit in its teeth and carries one away — it guessed at 
 once from one's too visible self-command, that one flatters one- 
 self is so sure to serve us at our need. Even so Fred was at 
 work on his fiftieth mental rehearsal of his probable revelation 
 to his friend when all his elaborations were upset by a hansom 
 whose fare was shouting to its driver to stop. For the fare was 
 Charley himself, wild with excitement beyond what a reasonable 
 Briton shows merely because he identifies a friend in the 
 street.
 
 236 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 "Hoy — stamp! Why the devil don't you stop? . , , Here, 
 Fred, come along in ! I have got a bit of news for you. . , . 
 Whereto? — wliy, where I told you, — thirteen, Bolt Court . . ." 
 This of course was to the driver, enquiring through the ceiling. 
 " If my bit of news doesn't make you sit up and think, nothing 
 ever will. Now guess ! " He seized Fred's arm and fixed his 
 eyes on his face, waiting. He was quite beside himself with 
 exultation at this thing, whatever it was. 
 
 " My uncle's found ! " Would not this have been any man's 
 guess, all his surroundings being Fred's at the moment? The 
 young man's face beamed. This was a noble makeweight to all 
 the miseries. The cloud had lifted. 
 
 But Charley's exultation was destined to end abruptly. He 
 went quite pale and his breath caught as he said : — " My God — 
 the fool I was, not to see that ! " 
 
 " Why — what — what — what is it ? Tell me, old chap ! " 
 
 " Dear old boy ! I'm more sorry than I can tell you. But 
 - . . but it isn't your uncle. I only wish it were." 
 
 Fred felt exactly as if a heavy blow on the head had left 
 him dizzy. But he saw, through his dizziness, that his first 
 duty was towards his friend. He must save him from the idea 
 that lie had caused needless pain, at any cost in fibbing. He 
 really managed a very creditable laugh, all things considered. 
 "" I didn't believe it, you know," said he. He utilised a slight 
 flash of misgiving that he had shut liis eyes to a few seconds 
 since. " You wouldn't have said, ' now guess ! ' about that. 
 Now would you? " 
 
 "No — I shouldn't. Of course I shouldn't. ..." 
 
 " Let's have the good piece of news. Out with it ! " He 
 thought it best to assume an air of genial incredulity. 
 
 " Wait till you hear, you unbelieving Thomas. You know 
 that Lucy and I had fixed Sunday to go and look over the 
 Madhouse? Well, we went." 
 
 " And the day's fixed ? Is that it ? " 
 
 " Shut up ! Wait till you hear. We examined the house from 
 garret to cellar. ..." 
 
 " And she didn't like it because of Mr$. Grewbeer's sink." 
 
 " How did you know that ? " 
 
 " Never you mind ! Go on — I'll tell you presently." 
 
 " Very well — me first, then ! We examined the house, and 
 Lucy did some capital pretending — regularly took me in. , . . 
 WTiat for? Why, don't you see? One should always run down 
 what one wants to buy, and crack up what one wants to sell."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 237 
 
 " Right you are ! Like bulls and bears on the Stock 
 Exchange. Cut along." 
 
 " No — it's too good to tell in a hurry. . . . Yes — this house 
 — any house — what does it matter?" This was to the cabman, 
 who insisted on fulfilling his mission, backing his cab into the 
 kerbstone in the effort to obtain his ideal of stopping at a door, 
 a thing not achieved until a line drawn at right angles to the 
 diagonals of that door passes through the cab's centre of gravity. 
 
 " Xow, we may as well have tea before you tell your news," 
 says Fred. He was as cool as that over it; or perhaps it w^as 
 that, now his own revelation was so soon inevitable, he was glad 
 to catch at any pretext to postpone it ; ever so little. Anyhow, 
 the two were enjoying the output of his gas-kettle before he 
 gave his friend, whom he had stopped in one or two false 
 starts, leave to go on with his story. " Xow for it, old chap ! " 
 said he, lighting a cigarette. 
 
 Charley sipped his tea with an eye on his hearer, not to miss 
 any of the effect of his communication. " Now for it ! " said he. 
 " Where was I ? . . . Oh yes — we went over the house, and I 
 assure you I was regularly taken in. I thought Lucy hated the 
 place. Judge of my surprise, then . . . Sounds like a narra- 
 tive, don't it? In a book, you know." 
 
 "Go ahead! 'Judge of your surprise' ..." 
 
 " When Lucy turned round to me in the trap, and said : — 
 ' I'm going to buy that house, Charles,' I was taken aback 
 because, don't you know, it was rather sudden." 
 
 " Very." There was in Fred's manner just enough of the 
 effect the news had had upon him — for was this a new embar- 
 rassment, in view of what he himself was keeping back? — to 
 make its teller feel a sort of chill. It was not the acclamation of 
 delight he had looked forward to. 
 
 The interpretation he put upon it was the wrong one. But 
 it was absolutely the only one possible to his complete unsus- 
 picion of what his friend had to tell him. He took its accuracy 
 for granted, past all question. "' That was exactly what crossed 
 my mind immediately," said he. " The answer I made to Lucy 
 was 'Fred won't like that'; and I explained to her that — well! 
 — that you would want to be in it. It would have to be a joint- 
 stock job, or nothing." 
 
 " Or nothing," said Fred. 
 
 Charley took the parched way in which lie spoke to be a mere 
 expression of his decision not to be out of it. " Or nothing," he 
 repeated. " I rubbed that well in. But — stop a minute and let 
 
 16
 
 238 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 me tell you." For Fred was going to speak. " She gave me all 
 her reasons, and I'm sure you'll admit . , . No — do shut up, 
 old chap, and let me finish what she said. She said : — ' Is not 
 Mr. Carteret dependent on the permission of his trustee, or some- 
 body's trustee ? ' Her expression was ' Trusteeship has to be 
 fiddled with, somehow.' I explained to her that you were certain 
 there would be no difficulty there, when the whole scheme was 
 laid before Dr. Carteret. ''But,' said she, ' when will the scheme 
 be laid before Dr. Carteret?' I said as soon as he came back, 
 which of course must be very soon, unless ..." 
 " Go on." 
 
 " Well, she pulled me up short, repeating my words, ' Very 
 soon, unless! Unless what? Can you answer for how soon? 
 And suppose in the meanwhile someone cuts in and buys the 
 house ? ' I was obliged to admit that this would be very dis- 
 appointing and awkward. Then she said — and I think, Fred, 
 you'll see from this how reasonable and — a — in fact generous 
 Lucy's motives are," — Fred threw in a chorus of assent and ap- 
 proval — " she said it would merely be the question of her mother 
 writing a cheque, which she could do as easily as not — I believe 
 that is the case, when it's only four figures — and then an arrange- 
 ment could be made. I should have to find out what to call it. 
 If I couldn't, where was the use of my being a solicitor? Ha, 
 ha, ha ! " 
 
 Fred's echo was perfunctory; a very cheerless laugh by com- 
 parison. Charley set this down to his own timid indulgence in 
 the hypothesis that the Doctor's disappearance was final. He 
 could not tie himself to the pretence that reappearance was 
 certain in the nature of things. Fred was profuse in his 
 acknowledgments of Miss Hiuchliffe's generosity; so much so 
 that Charley, in the interests of truth, made a sub-remark: — 
 '•' Of course it is her mother's money. But I suppose it comes to 
 the same thing." Fred said :— " Same in principle, anyhow." 
 He added a special tribute to the elder lady, as an obvious 
 inference from her cheque-writing faculty : — " Miss Hinchliffe's 
 mother must be the right sort." 
 
 " I say, Fred. I wish you'd call her Lucy. To oblige me ! " 
 « Well — Lucy's mother, then. It's a mere question of usage." 
 " I'll call Cintra ' Cintra,' you know, as a set-off. I will, upon 
 my word. . . . What's that?" For Fred was saying some- 
 thing inaudible. He repeated it, and Charley echoed back: — 
 "Question won't be raised? No, old chap! Because nobody 
 will raise it. It will raise itself."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 239 
 
 "Charley!" 
 
 " Hullo ? " This was in response to Fred's tone of voice, 
 which was more than uneasy. Also^ his hand was restless, would 
 not leave his moustache in peace, nor his watch-chain, nor the 
 fingers of its fellow. 
 
 He had to say it now. " I've been wanting to say something 
 . . . only couldn't see my way. ... I say, Charley ..." 
 
 " Eh— eh— what ! What's all that ? You say ! What do you 
 say, old man ? . . . Fred dear, what is it ? " He paused a 
 second or so, and his friend's face illuminated him. " You 
 haven't — you surely haven't — fallen out with Cintra?" 
 
 Fred drew his fingers dreamily over his eyes, and said in a 
 dreary way : — " There is no Cintra. She is Miss Fraser — for 
 me, at any rate. . . . No — I know what you are going to say. 
 Don't say it. It is for good. It can't be made up. We have 
 not quarrelled. We shall not quarrel. But we have made a 
 discovery. The love of neither of us was what the other asked, 
 and the thing comes naturally to an end." 
 
 " I don't believe you. I won't believe you. There never was 
 a quarrel that couldn't be made up — only go the right way 
 about it. ..." 
 
 " I said there was no quarrel, and I mean it. There is none. 
 I cannot tell you what it was that led us to find out the truth. 
 Because that's the English of it. We have been under a delusion. 
 Anyhow, the thing's at an end ! At an end — at an end ! Don't 
 run away with the idea that it can be patched up. And, Charley 
 — about that house ! I suppose Miss Hinchlifl:e's . . . well, 
 Lucy's . . . intention — her idea ..." 
 
 " Buying the lease? Yes, go on." 
 
 " I suppose it hinged on . . . the joint-stock arrangement, 
 and that fizzles out. What a good job 1 was in time to tell 
 you ! " 
 
 A bvstander would have found it difficult to guess the voun^ 
 lawyer's thougnts. Perplexed gravity was natural under the 
 circumstances, but why did he withhold a cordial assent to Fred's 
 expression of satisfaction? He seemed either to be doing that, 
 or thinking of something else. A perceptible pause followed, of 
 silence; and then he said in a perfunctory way — a tone of pro- 
 forma acquiescence: — "Good job — yes. A'ery good job!" and 
 changed the subject. 
 
 What had Fred done about telling his mother of this? Would 
 she not be very much upset about it? She had taken very 
 kindly to her future daughter-in-law, had she not?
 
 240 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Fred explained, and told — as was easy enough now he had 
 divulged the main fact — of his various adventures since he 
 parted from Cintra the day before. He derided himself with- 
 out remorse for his ridiculous night-excursion, more particularly 
 for that prej^osterous expedition to the Old Madhouse, and the 
 way he had gone off on a false scent about the parson that had 
 tumbled into a mill-pond. He ascribed whatever was visible in 
 his exterior of the effects of perturbation and excitement more 
 to this section of his adventures than to the collapse of his 
 love-affair, about which he was ostentatiously philosophical. It 
 was much better for both of them, and Cintra would become the 
 happy wife of some fellow much better than himself — well, of 
 another sort, anyhow! He could only rejoice, for his part, that 
 they had discovered their mistake in time. An ill-assorted 
 union, etcetera ! He paid a tribute to Cintra's courage in 
 taking the step she had done, and ending matters. For the 
 thing was entirely her doing. He himself would just have 
 gone blindly on^ in a course which could have led to 
 no true happiness for either of them. Etcetera, etcetera, 
 -etcetera ! 
 
 " But you may fancy, Charley old chap, what a devil of a 
 stew I got in owing to that young fool's story at E'pl-'y, and 
 what a nervy condition I was in altogether, iioni my hearing 
 you sing out again at The Cedars." 
 
 " Hearing me sing out again at The Cedars ? •'' 
 
 " Yes — don't you recollect? Me and the old woman both — we 
 got it into our heads that you sang out : — ' Come back, Fred ! ' 
 :. . . Oh, you recollect ! " 
 
 " I — think — I do. Ye-es ! Just down that long passage." 
 
 " Just there. Well ! — I heard the same voice over again. 
 Same words and all ! " 
 
 " Eeaction of memory on nervous overstrain. It shows." 
 
 " Yes — it shows." Charley was looking at his watch. " Shall 
 I come and chat while you dress? I haven't got to, myself. I'm 
 only going to the Vale." 
 
 " All right — but there's no hurry for a few minutes. I'm 
 not going to my young woman this evening. Dining at Low- 
 kins's — chent of ours — Subterraneous Heat Company — ^you 
 know? But I shall try to get round to Trymer, late. I must 
 get ten minutes talk with him to-night." He repeated these 
 last words twice, as though the importance of this talk was 
 pressing. 
 
 Fred might have asked him why, but he had just remembered
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 241 
 
 a collateral event his narrative had overlooked. ■"' By-the-bye," 
 said he, " I was forgetting all about Elbows." 
 
 "What about Elbows? She's not picked up a sweetheart?" 
 
 " Not that I know of. But she's very nearly killed herself." 
 
 " What for ... I mean — how's she done that? " Fred gave 
 
 an account of the accident. His friend listened absently, saying 
 
 at the conclusion of it : — " Well, I'm glad the young woman's 
 
 not seriously hurt. I'll go as far as that." 
 
 Fred considered, and said : — " Well — I'll join you. Only don't 
 you go any further, young man." To which Mr. Charley re- 
 plied : — " Xo fear ! " So unpopular with them was this young 
 lady at that date. 
 
 That anticipation that the man supposed to be drowned in 
 Flinders's mill-pond would solve the mystery of Dr. Carteret's 
 disappearance had a curious effect afterwards on Fred's mind. 
 It had been a reality to him for a couple of hours or more, and 
 the relief he felt on learning that it was altogether misplaced 
 and illusory did not bring back the confidence he had felt before 
 that his uncle must be alive and well somewhere, and that the 
 whole thing would surely be explained. It seemed to give the 
 theory of the vanished man's death a foothold in his imagina- 
 tion, although his mere reasoning powers refused to be affected 
 by it. It ought by rights to have left both imagination and 
 reason untouched. But the right to be rigidly logical is one 
 that human nature very seldom claims. This incident brought 
 Fred nearer to a belief that he had seen his uncle for the last 
 time than anything that had happened before.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Mr. Charley Snaith had dined at Mr. Lowkins's, and was 
 enjoying a late cigar with his principal, Mr. Trymer, whose wife 
 and daughter had taken a guest to the play. He had laid his 
 business before Mr. Trymer, and Mr. Trymer had thought it well 
 over. 
 
 Mr. Trymer was a gentleman who had earned a reputation of 
 great profundity for his opinions, by never expressing any. Or 
 rather, he had a happy faculty of making advice not to do this, 
 that, or the other sound exactly like an exhortation towards 
 energy in respect of that, the other, or this. So much so that 
 clients would leave Lincoln's Inn under the impression that he 
 had armed them at all points for decisive action, to find it 
 gradually dawn upon them — by the time they reached Totten- 
 ham Court Road, for instance — that they had been enjoined on 
 no account to say anything; to be most careful not to write 
 anything; to refuse to see anybody, even in the presence of sev- 
 eral able-bodied witnesses, and in short to mould their behaviour 
 on that of a rock-limpet. His advice to litigious persons alone 
 to keep out of Law Courts would have been enough to make 
 the reputation of his firm. 
 
 One very extraordinary circumstance about this gentleman was 
 that his sound sense and legal acumen impressed those with 
 whom he was brought in contact more and more in proportion 
 io the length of their acquaintance. One would have imagined 
 the contrary ; that a new employee, for instance, would have been 
 disabused of his exalted opinion of his principal after a certain 
 lapse of time without speech from the Oracle. But the reverse 
 was the case. Here was Mr. Charles Snaith, who had passed 
 through a preliminary clerkship before he became a junior part- 
 ner, and who still believed in the infallibility of that Oracle 
 in spite of the fact that its decisions remained unspoken. " I've 
 come to tap your brains, Mr. Trymer, on a knotty point," had 
 been his introduction to his explanation of his visit at so late 
 an hour, when he surprised that gentleman by his appearance 
 after dinner with the Lowkinses. Mr. Trymer had replied: — 
 " My dear Snaith, my experience and professional abilities — such 
 as they are — are at your service now as always. This is the 
 
 242
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 243 
 
 comfortablest chair. Take it." After which Charley had told 
 him what had brought him to the fountain-head of legal wisdom. 
 
 " On thinking it well over," said the Oracle, three-quarters of 
 an hour later, " m}' strong impression is, that any attempt on 
 your part to influence the course of events would be unsuccess- 
 ful. Yes. Un — sue — cessful." Charley looked disappointed, 
 and the Oracle started on a recapitulation of facts. " If I 
 understand you rightly, you had concise instructions from this 
 lady — whose daughter I shall hope to have the opportunity of 
 congratulating shortly on her marriage with " — here the speaker 
 adopted a tone of uncalled-for slyness — " with a young friend of 
 mine — to write a definite offer of eighteen hundred pounds for 
 the purchase of this lease, the sum named by the vendor being 
 two thousand." 
 
 " Ye-es — in fact, Lucy settled the matter ; told her mother 
 she must make the offer, and told me I must write the letter. 
 I don't see that I had any choice," said Charley, somewhat 
 ruefully. 
 
 Said Mr. Trymer, in a parenthesis : — " Fifteen hundred quite 
 enough — quite enough ! " 
 
 " So I said. But Lucy said if she gave way and allowed it 
 to be eighteen hundred, that was as much as any mother could 
 expect, and she wasn't going to run any risk of losing the 
 house. What could I do ? " 
 
 " I see. You were acting under the instructions of a client 
 whom you were unable to influence." 
 
 " Precisely." 
 
 " And — as I understand — circumstances have arisen which 
 make the proposed arrangement most undesirable." 
 
 " I am afraid so." 
 
 " H'm ! Now, always if I understand you rightly, you do not 
 ask my advice or opinion on any question but this : — " Does your 
 client stand committed to the purchase of this property?" 
 
 " Yes — that is really what I want to know." 
 
 The profundity and responsibility of Mr. Trymer's appearance 
 was most impressive as he replied : — " Subject to certain condi- 
 tions which might — or might not — be implied by the terms of the 
 contract, I should say distinctly yes," — Mr. Snaith looked crest- 
 fallen — " or no." An addendum which made Charley pick up 
 his spirits. 
 
 ''As for instance . . . the conditions . . .?" said he. 
 
 " On condition — for instance — that the offer was accepted 
 within twenty-four hours, unconditionally, I should say it would
 
 244 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 bo extremely difficult to withdraw from it — extremely difficult." 
 
 " They only got my letter this morning. Or rather, I doubt 
 if the solicitors have got the offer yet. I sent it to the agent at 
 Wimbledon. Suppose I were to call on them to-morrow and 
 put the case . . . would that . . . ? " 
 
 '' Advance matters ? No — I should say not — certainly not. 
 If I am asked to advise in any case, my advice is always ' Never 
 do things ! ' My dear Snaith, when you are my age you will 
 know, what I know, that out of every hundred mistakes that are 
 made, ninety-nine are due to someone having done something. 
 The odd one may be due to inactivity. But my advice is — leave 
 M-ell alone, in case you make it bad ; and leave ill alone, in case 
 you make it worse." Mr. Trymer's appearance as he said this 
 was so intensely responsible that had Experience herself been 
 speaking, the words could not have seemed more impressive. 
 
 "■' Then, in fact," said Charley, " you recommend me to leave 
 matters as they are ? " 
 
 " As they are." 
 
 " Then what do you suppose will happen? Will Mrs. Hinch- 
 liffe be under an obligation to purchase the Iiouse? " 
 
 '' I should say not. No, I should say not. If the vendors 
 write accepting the offer unconditionally, of course it may call 
 for a little circumspection. We shall have to examine the title- 
 deeds." 
 
 " And suppose tliey turn out indisputably sound ? " 
 
 " My dear sir, if they turn out so sound that this lady is under 
 a legal obligation to be satisfied with them, they will be the first 
 examples of such instruments that liave come within my experi- 
 ence. I have yet to learn that there exists a statutory obligation 
 to be satisfied with any security, however sound. But I would 
 lay any reasonable wager that on examination the title of this 
 estate will not prove so flawless as to give no satisfactory ground 
 lov dissatisfaction. Anyway, let us examine them." 
 
 Charley looked considerably comforted. But his Mentor had 
 not exhausted all the legal possibilities of the case, and continued. 
 '■' However, it won't come to that. You'll see, it won't come to 
 that. They'll accept the offer, and they'll impose some condi- 
 tion. Vendors always do. But — as I view the matter, and I 
 think the Courts would bear me out — the lady's offer was uncon- 
 ditional, and the imposition of a condition would release her 
 from any obligation in respect of it." 
 
 " And suppose they withdrew the condition ? " 
 
 " Well — suppose they did ! And suppose that she had been
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 245 
 
 wavering between two purchases, and had closed with the other 
 on receipt of their conditions, accepting them as final. How 
 then ? " 
 
 '•' I appreciate that point," said Charley. " Thank you, Mr. 
 Trymer." And he really felt grateful to his principal, wlio had 
 indeed given more luminous guidance in this case than he had 
 conceded to any client for a long time past. 
 
 They talked of other matters. " By-the-bye," said Mr. Trymer, 
 very incidentally, " has that old gentleman turned up yet ? Dr. 
 What's-his-name ? Your friend Fred's relation?" 
 
 "Why — no! Do you anticipate . . .?" 
 
 " That he'll turn up? Oh dear yes — sure to ! Missing people 
 have been known to vanish for good; but under circumstances. 
 In this case I understand there were no circumstances." 
 
 " Absolutely none whatever ! " 
 
 "No lady, naturally. But how about creditors? Creditors, 
 without assets, become circumstances." 
 
 " Certainly no creditor-circumstances, and any amount of 
 assets. As for the lady-circumstance, Fred had a theory. I 
 fancy he's given it up though." 
 
 " Confidential, I suppose? " 
 
 " Well, I don't know. I think you would be an exception. 
 Anyhow, I'll risk it." Charley gave a brief abstract of the 
 early-love-affair theory, as he and Fred had worked it out to- 
 gether, in several chats. 
 
 " Nothing to be kept secret there that I can see," said Mr. 
 Trymer. " At least, nothing juicy in the way of crime or im- 
 morality. Interesting perhaps — romantic — that sort of thing! 
 Not probable." 
 
 " Improbability seems to me of the essence of the contract,'* 
 said Charley. " We can't do without it." 
 
 " ^Vllat does Mrs. Carteret believe — Master Fred's mother?" 
 
 Charley dropped his voice to answer: — "Murder," and raised 
 it again, to say : — " But I fancy she's an impressible woman. 
 Not hysterical, you know, but impressible." 
 
 Mr. Trymer was trying different ways of bringing his finger- 
 tips in contact. "If she's not hysterical," said he, "why, then 
 — her impressions may be right." He left his thumbs in firm 
 contact, expressive of trustworthy and non-hysterical conclusions, 
 and disbarred his other fingers. 
 
 " We must hope not," said Charley. A sound came as of 
 ladies returning from a theatre, and talking about a play. " I 
 must be off," he continued. " I want to catch Fred before he
 
 246 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 turns in." He professed insincere rapture, as he departed, at 
 the opportunity vouchsafed to him of wishing Mrs. Trymer and 
 her daughter a good-night apiece, and ran away to Praed Street 
 to catch tlie last train. For Mr. Trymer hved in Porchester 
 Terrace. 
 
 But when he got to the Temple, he saw no light in Fred's 
 window, and inferred that he had gone to bed. So he had, more 
 than an hour since, and had plunged straight down into the 
 caverns of Sleep. And no wonder, considering what his previous 
 night had been. So Mr. Charles Snaith went to bed himself. 
 
 Next morning saw the two young men at breakfast in Fred's 
 room. The story may take up their conversation half-way 
 through, and let it explain what preceded it. 
 
 Fred said, recurring to something his friend had just told 
 him : — " I'm very much relieved to hear that. It really would 
 have been an awful fix if Lucy's mother had stood committed. I 
 suppose we may rely on Trymer." 
 
 " Oh dear yes ! And on the Lord Chancellor. P'r'aps Tr3Tiier 
 is the most trustworthy, — less liable to be run away with by 
 sentiment. But, you know, it's Just possible that Lucy will 
 refuse to give the house up. You've no idea hov/ — how nuts she 
 was upon it." 
 
 Fred looked gloomy. " I hate the place," said he. " Can't 
 help it, Charley." 
 
 " Not to be wondered at, under the circumstances ! I should." 
 A short silence, over the new-made grave of Fred's engagement. 
 Tlien Charley took in sail. " When I say it's just possible Lucy 
 will refuse to give the house up, perhaps I ought to put it that 
 she isn't the least likely to do so. Not in practice. Because, you 
 see, her nutness was conditional on the Joint-stock occupancy." 
 
 Fred took no notice of his friend's high-handed treatment of 
 the English language. " She knew nothing of what had taken 
 place," he said. " She still thinks the arrangement stands. 
 You must write at once and tell her. Or go and see her about 
 it at once. Much better ! " 
 
 " I'm going there this evening, old chap. Won't that do ? 
 You needn't fidget about Mrs. Hinchliffe and the purchase of 
 the house, that's only a letter written. Trymer knows what he's 
 about. You may rely on him. Anyhow, whether Lucy's mamma 
 knows or not won't make any difference. . . . There's the 
 post." 
 
 There was. And Mrs. Gamridge, who acted as domestic for
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 247 
 
 laoth households, or diggings-holds — if the name in commonest 
 use b}' these young gentlemen can be so adapted — was signing 
 for a registered letter. This was not a thing that Mrs. Gamridge 
 could do offhand. Indeed, she would have saved ninety-per-cent 
 of the time consumed, by appealing to her employers for their 
 caligraphy. But she was too proud of her own to do that, and 
 when Fred went into the passage to anticipate the slow develop- 
 ment of the delivery, he found her with her head sideways on 
 the window-sill, her tongue out, and the postman's book placed 
 so that the eye she had left open for the purpose could note her 
 pen's point travelling directly away from it. Even so the spec- 
 tator of Holbein's two ambassadors at the Xational Gallery gets 
 as near the picture as he may to detect the miraculous skill in 
 perspective. It was the attitude of a Scribe, but not of such a 
 one as the story's memory associates with Seti-Menephthah or 
 Assur-Bani-Pal. Their scribes had a certain diabolical alacrity, 
 and an appearance of preternatural skill that was wanting in 
 Mrs. Gamridge. 
 
 " There, that'll do," said Fred, unfeelingly. He came back 
 bearing letters and a small packet, which he put in his pocket. 
 A letter in a lady's writing, which he read and pondered over 
 a good deal, provoked his friend to an enquiry. " Mustn't know 
 what she says, I suppose," said he. 
 
 " 'Wliy — no ! At least, she didn't mean it for the public. But 
 I suppose there's no harm in saying she takes all the blame on 
 herself." 
 
 '^ \Vhat blame ? Can't see that anyone's to blame." 
 
 " Says she ought to have spoken before — ought to have known 
 her own mind better." 
 
 " If she had spoken before, she would only have thought she 
 ought to have spoken heforer. Twig? " 
 
 " Oh yes — I twig, fast enough. Don't translate. Beforer is 
 quite intelligible." Fred welcomed tl:is view of the case, with 
 somewhat too much promptitude. It enabled him to ignore any 
 recent event — any new personality in particular — that had 
 broken into his dream of what had seemed Love up to the date 
 of its intrusion. He was grateful for any theory that made it 
 possible to shut his eyes to Lucy Hinchliffe; especially when 
 talking with Charley, to whom she was dedicated. 
 
 But — a mistake from the beginning! How could that be? 
 His mind sought for the beginning. Was it a mistake, when he 
 met Cintra at Mrs. Searcival's Cinderella, that they should sit 
 through the next two dances together on the stairs, while
 
 248 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 loquacious couples passed up and down; and, to play fair, took 
 no notice of them? Was it a mistake that, when he found her 
 father was " the Professor Fraser," he should jump so greedily 
 at the chance of making that Professor's acquaintance — in spite 
 of the fact tiiat the Professor's specialty was Chemistry — on a 
 pretence that was connected with Dynamics. He could so easily 
 have avoided that mistake. After all, what connection was there 
 between Vibration — Fred's particular weakness — and the Mono- 
 morphism of Molecules? As far as the story can recollect, that 
 was the Professor's strong point; but it can't be sure. Were 
 all the pretences he had been guilty of in order to establish a 
 foothold in the family of the Professor's daughter mistakes? 
 Would he not have done more wisely to discredit altogether the 
 Professor's thesis, that, if nothing' existed in Space but one 
 Atom, Motion would not exist, than to make believe it was a 
 point he had concentrated his faculties on, in vain, until he 
 read the Professor's beautiful disquisition on it? If he had 
 flouted it, probably he would not have been asked to the house 
 again, and his growing intoxication of delight with the society 
 of Cintra would never have ended in a climax. Was that climax, 
 and its rapture as of a newly discovered land, the greatest mis- 
 take of all ? 
 
 And the curious part of it all was, that nothing had marred 
 this felicity of a plighted troth — mere squabbles apart, that 
 neither believed to be discords, and that always ended in recon- 
 ciliation — until . . . His reflections hung fire on the threshold 
 of definition, and would not admit the share Charley's fiancee — 
 unwittingly of course — had in his disillusionment. Yet honour 
 and chivalry towards his dethroned idol shrank from accusing 
 her of indulgence in unreasonable jealousy. And then, how 
 specify its object, in the very presence of that object's uncon- 
 scious devotee! Poor Charley! — his absolute unconsciousness 
 of the forces co-operating towards confusion and mischief were 
 a nightmare to his friend. There he sat, enjoying an after- 
 breakfast cigar with a serene face — a face with a buried smile 
 that spoke of happy hidden contemplations — a face that knew 
 nothing of the seeds of turmoil in that invisible mind just across 
 the table. 
 
 The story is sorry for both these young men. There was 
 really no way out of the position — putting aside, of course, the 
 possibility of Fred's disenchantment the next time he inter- 
 viewed the witch ; not at all out of the question, seeing that she 
 might have a cold, and sniff or anything — no way except that
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 249 
 
 the two old friends from boyhood should be wrenched asunder 
 because their two hearts had fallen into possession of the same 
 chit. No way, except that Fred should go, like the gentleman 
 in Mrs. Browning's poem who couldn't stay to supper because 
 the lady was fair, and was able to strangle his soul with a lock 
 of her yellow hair — you remember? — and whom the lady gave 
 such a severe lecture to ! Even admitting that Fred had been 
 rash in vowing undying love to Cintra, as he had done on many 
 occasions he recalled with embarrassment, not shame, did he 
 deserve so cruel a position as the one in which he found him- 
 self? 
 
 He did not absolutely say to himself : — " I hope to God that 
 next time I see her I shall hate her," — meaning, of course, the 
 enchantress. But he knew that if he could have said it, and his 
 hope had been fulfilled, he would no longer have felt choked with 
 disloyalty to his friend. 
 
 He disappeared into his sleeping-room with the registered 
 packet unopened, and returned without it. Charley heard a 
 small drawer opened, shut, and locked. He identified the parcel 
 as the jeweller's cardboard box, almost certainly, in which the 
 ring he had helped his friend to buy over a year ago had been 
 enshrined by its vendor, over and above the satin-lined casket 
 it lived in, stuck edgewise in a slot — Cintra's engaged ring. 
 He wondered what became of all the returned presents, when 
 trothplights miss fire. Was it true that jewellers offered to 
 take them back at par on production of documentary proof of 
 the engagement having come to an end, and less fifteen-per-cent 
 anyhow? If the engagement revived, and the gentleman wanted 
 the ring back, to go on again, did he sacrifice all the discount 
 or how? He felt the interest in these issues of one who could 
 never be personally involved in similar ones. His trothplight 
 had its foundations in some Silurian system that never changed, 
 by nature; was built on an outcrop of Primitive Trap in a desert 
 of shifting sands — the sands of human weakness. 
 
 The young ladj who was the other necessary factor to this 
 immutability was a subject of wonder to a large circle of well- 
 to-do card-le«Ters whose function as such brought them into 
 touch with her mother's house in Devonshire Place, Eegent's 
 Park. This circle wondered at two things : the daughters at 
 one, the mothers at the other. The former wondered what on 
 earth could possess Lucy Hinchliffe to engage herself to that 
 plain Mr. Snaith; the latter what on earth could possess her
 
 250 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 mother to allow her to do so. Neither thing could be accounted 
 for by anything short of possession. 
 
 The solution of the mystery was not really difficult. This 
 mother and daughter belonged to a privileged class — a class 
 that is in the confidence of Property. If you, who read this 
 story, are middle-aged and fairly observant — and, it must add, 
 if you mix with circles — ^you surely have chanced across examples 
 of this privileged class. Have you never felt the force of the 
 secret knowledge that Mrs. So-and-so or Lady Such-and-such 
 have, of who is going to inherit what — or whose heir Snooks is, 
 or where the Panjandrum property will go when old Lord Chit- 
 terling dies? Mrs. So-and-so and Lady Such-and-such are the 
 sort that say — when you have mentioned, for instance, some 
 connection by marriage of your great-aunt Deborah : — " Let me 
 see ! She was a Penultimate, wasn't she ? " Whereupon you have 
 been fain to confess that you have not known the interesting 
 fact, but that Mrs. Dabchick has very likely been a Penultimate, 
 all the while. 
 
 But this has been at best a surface-symptom of the secret 
 knowledge in the depths beneath of these ladies' minds. It 
 exists nevertheless, and only comes to light when they have 
 daughters, which indeed is generally the case. Then you awake 
 one day to the fact that the swarm of young men whom these 
 bevies or clusters or groups of daughters have married is a well- 
 connected swarm. One after another, as Lord This or Sir That 
 succumbs — that's what they do in their walk of life — it is borne 
 in upon you that you have been, as it were, entertaining a 
 potential Duke or Baronet unawares, and that what seemed 
 merely Tom or Bob for so many years was all along a terri- 
 torial potentate. Also that the lady who has become his mother- 
 in-law knew, and when she resigned herself so meekly to her 
 daughters' love-matches, did so with a consciousness of the ace 
 of trumps up her sleeve. She was in the confidence of Property. 
 So, no doubt, was her daughter. But the daughters of this tlass 
 do not participate actively in this communion with Property. 
 They are content with the outer courts of her temple, and leave 
 the functions of the Altar — the higher inner knowledge — to 
 their mothers. What seems so curious to the likes of us, when 
 the aforesaid potentate succumbs, and the' obituary reveals his 
 next of kin, alwa3's is, that we should have been for so long out- 
 siders. 
 
 \Yhy didn't Tom or Bob tell us that he would one day come 
 into the Panjandrum estates? The answer is simple enough in
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 251 
 
 some cases. Tom or Bob hardly knows, himself. He is not the 
 sort of fellow to advertise his connection with a bigwig if, as 
 may happen, his father's family and his own are not on speaking 
 terms. He may never have assimilated the idea — if his educa- 
 tion kept him rather in the dark — that if the icy hand of Death 
 were laid on sundry cousins he had never seen, always supposing 
 those cousins to die without male issue, he would suddenly find 
 himself overwhelmed with a huge income, countless acres, and 
 responsibility. It is not the mission of this story to wonder at 
 this; but, as to how Mrs. So-and-so and Lady Such-and-such 
 come to know all about it, that certainly is a mystery on which 
 it can throw no light. It can only surmise that they are in the 
 confidence of Property. 
 
 Even so Mrs. Absalom Hinchliffe was in the confidence of 
 Property about what was in store for Charley Snaith, in the 
 event of three not improbable deaths, when she countenanced his 
 addresses to her beautiful daughter Lucy, in spite of his looks, 
 which were against him, and the fact that he was a mere solicitor. 
 He might get into Parliament certainly. But after all — if he 
 did . . . ! 
 
 The question : — " Ought such beauty as Lucy Hinchliffe's to 
 be thrown away on a mere solicitor, even with a seat in the 
 House? " was asked and negatived by both mothers and daugh- 
 ters in that circle the story has referred to, each segment of 
 which continually left its cards on every other, and frequently 
 wrote on their backs that it was so sorry not to find it at home.. 
 Lucy had the faculty some girls have of exciting the admiration 
 of her own sex, even when it made no secret of its jealousy. 
 
 As for Charley himself, if he had heard a suspicion of the 
 purity of the motives of either mother or daughter expressed by 
 any member of that or any other circle, his indignation would 
 have been boundless. The worst he ever said of his mother-in- 
 law-elect was that she was overpowering; for his estimate of her 
 as an Orientally-disposed female was hardly disparagement, and 
 indeed might have been praise. Moreover, to him the complex 
 possibilities of heirs to his great-uncle's wealth and position were 
 too numerous to admit of speculations in which he could have 
 any personal interest. Perhaps Mrs. Absalom Hinchliffe had 
 among her Oriental dispositions powers of prophecy, and that 
 they foretold, truly or falsely, that the bachelor Lord Nextley, 
 the eldest son, would never marry and was sixty ; that one of his 
 married brothers would die without issue, and the other be 
 limited to a female one. Anyhow, it would appear that she had
 
 252 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 come to the conclusion that the prize was so big that a coura- 
 geous mother would be justified in putting it to the touch, to win 
 or lose it all. The story is inclined to the opinion that this lady 
 was in the confidence of Property, and that that Goddess, or 
 Principle, or Essence, or Abstract Idea, had breathed in her ear 
 exactly what might possibly happen to the Panjandrum title and 
 estates. As to her daughter it considers that possibly her con- 
 science was unblemished, as all this sort of thing was really 
 mamma's business, not hers. 
 
 And as for Charley — who while the story indulges in these 
 speculations is on his way to Devonshire Place to dine on deli- 
 cacies first and felicity next — he had been from his babyhood an 
 illustration of how it is possible to know a fact to be true and 
 know absolutely nothing more about it. Just as an examinee 
 knows a subject only that he may pass in it, and forgets it like a 
 shot the moment he is " through," so Charley knew that his 
 family was akin to a live Earl. If he was reminded of it, he 
 did his duty by it, knew it for a second or so, and there an 
 end. It would almost be imputing too great a mental activity 
 to him to say that he forgot it. 
 
 He was in some trepidation about the news he carried, and 
 not without hopes that it might be discredited on its merits. 
 After all — a lovers' quarrel ! Even unassisled by experts he had 
 been more than half inclined to pooh-pooh Ered's certainty that 
 an impassable chasm yawned between him and his late fiancee. 
 Standing on the doorstep of No. 98 Devonshire Place, waiting 
 for a bullet-headed butler of incredible responsibility to open 
 the door to its utmost as though to admit a spread eagle, he 
 indulged a hope that his disbelief in that chasm might be 
 strengthened, even by the overpowering mother of his adored 
 one. (3f her refusal to believe that such an inauspicious end 
 had come to his friend's immutabilities he had no doubt. Her 
 faith in the reality of human love — in the bosom friend of her 
 own chosen among mankind, that is to say — was too strong to 
 permit her to believe offhand that such a rupture could be 
 permanent. For Miss Hinchliffe had dwelt rapturously on the 
 ■unchangeable nature of true love, showing — Charley thought — 
 the purity and sweet integrity of her soul. 
 
 But he was destined to a certain disillusionment. For when 
 the bullet-headed one had done his heralding, and he had been 
 marshalled into the drawing-room, where the two ladies, in the 
 grandest icnue, were standing in wait for guests, he used the 
 first treasured moment of aside with his beloved to say to her : —
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 253 
 
 " I say, Luce, they've burst up — Fred and Cintra." And he 
 fully expected her to be shocked and astonished beyond measure. 
 
 He felt a perceptible chill when the young lady simply 
 shrugged a beautiful shoulder very slightly through a downy 
 boundary to which ]\Iadame Somebody, Eobes et Modes, had 
 recently said: — "Thus far shalt thou come and no further!" 
 She did not seem the least surprised or taken aback, and only 
 paid his rather panic-stricken manner the compliment of add- 
 ing: — " You are thinking of the house, I see. You needn't fuss 
 about that. I shan't allow it to make a difference, in any case. 
 But you'll see they'll have made it up in a day or two.'^ She 
 spoke across the room to her mother : — " Do you hear, Mamma ? 
 Frederic Carteret and that girl have quarrelled. Miss Cintra 
 Fraser . . . that's the name right, isn't it?" This was to 
 Charley, who assented. 
 
 " Oh ye-es — ^Miss Cintra Fraser. And Mr. Carteret. Dear 
 me ! " The mother showed no interest, and drawled. But then 
 llie bullet-headed butler was opening the door, to announce. 
 It was one of the handicaps, Charley found, to a complete enjoy- 
 ment of his engagement, that there were always guests at Devon- 
 shire Place. This evening he had promised himself a really 
 quiet talk with his squI's idol. And here — teste the bullet- 
 headed one — were Sir Pantrey and Lady Cookson, Miss Cookson, 
 and Mr. Carver. 
 
 " You see what mamma thinks," said the young lady. " But 
 it won't make the slightest difference. I've made up my mind 
 to have that house, and I mean to have it. Besides, the offer's 
 made, and there's an end of it. . . . Oh yes, — you needn't 
 live there unless you like. . . . Marry somebody else, and find 
 a stodgy house in Kensington or Tyburnia — do ! / shall be very 
 happy, leading apes at The Cedars." This mockery, which 
 seemed to Charley the most subtle wit, was interrupted by the 
 necessity for greeting the Cookson family, and being introduced 
 to Mr. Carver, with whom that family was about to form an 
 alliance. Miss Cookson was going to put " ]\Irs. Hawkword 
 Carver " on her cards. 
 
 But none of these people concern the story. Destiny had 
 ordained that they should call in due course, and find Mrs. 
 Hinchliffe and her daughter out; that they should ask those 
 ladies to dinner, and find them engaged, though weeping salt 
 tears at the fact; that the weepers should recover their spirits 
 and go through exactly the same operation; until at last both 
 parties acknowledged the powers of Destiny, and each submitted 
 
 17
 
 254 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 to the loss of the other. However, the Cooksons and Mr. Carver, 
 and the only other guest — a stray male who always dined out — 
 made up a something which wasn't a party, but which was an 
 obstacle to Mr. Charles Snaith talking with his fiancee and her 
 mother till near eleven o'clock, when they departed with bene- 
 dictions. Charley's happiness at getting rid of them did duty 
 for the remains of the rapture he ought to have experienced at 
 their presence. 
 
 He was just congratulating himself on the way in which he 
 had played his part, when Lucy said to him, minimising a pal- 
 pable yawn : — " What boring people ! Oh dear ! Now come 
 and tell me about your friend and that girl." 
 
 The tone of this specification of Cintra called for a mild 
 protest. " It isn't in any sense Miss Eraser's fault," said he. 
 " If either one of them is to blame for it, I should say it was 
 Fred. Yes, certainly Fred, if one must blame somebody. I've 
 told him no man should make a girl an offer unless he feels 
 as sure as . . ." 
 
 "As one does oneself? Is that it?" Charley gave a short 
 nod of assent, all he could spare at the moment from his admira- 
 tion of the speaker. She continued : — " Don't sit on the edge of 
 the sofa and glare round at me through that odious monocle. 
 It makes you screw up your face to a grin, and it isn't be- 
 coming." Charley abated the demeanour complained of. " Now 
 tell me about the girl. . . . No — put it away ! You can see 
 me just as well without it." 
 
 " You do look so awfully jolly in the lampshade light," said 
 the gentleman, humbly. " You've no idea how awfully jolly 
 you look." He suppressed the eyeglass, though. 
 
 " Yes I have. I'm not a shepherdess." This disclaimer of 
 Arcadian innocence was suggested by a fascinating little porce- 
 lain figure on a console. " Not that they didn't know. That 
 one knows. Little minx ! . . . Now about the girl ! The girl 
 Cynthia, or whatever her name is." A brisk tap with a paper 
 knife, carved by some unknown Oriental through half a lifetime, 
 recalled Charley from the shepherdess, about whom he seemed 
 to be solving a problem. 
 
 " Cintra, not Cynthia," said he, recalled. " Her parents spent 
 their honeymoon at Lisbon, and called her Cintra after Cintra. 
 They thought it such a ripping place." 
 
 " People do. Well — she hasn't grown up quite so . . . 
 ripping, if you must use unintelligible English. . . . Don't 
 look so injured. I wasn't going to call her dowdy."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 255 
 
 " No-o ! I didn't supi^ose you were." 
 
 " Perhaps I've no right to express an opinion. I really hardly 
 spoke to her. I only go by looks. But . . . Cintra ! It 
 really is ..." 
 
 "A large order? That's the idea, isn't it?" 
 
 " Possibly that's the right expression. I couldn't say. I 
 think perhaps, if I had been asked, I should have advised any 
 English's child's parents not to call it Cintra. Why couldn't 
 they call her Hoxton, or Hackney Wick ? " 
 
 Charley sought safety in weighing the merits of these two 
 names. " Shouldn't care about Hoxton/' said he. " Not for a 
 girl. Hackney Wick's rather another pair of shoes. More 
 flippety-squippety kind of a name ! More like Nancy." 
 
 The young lady entered into this comparison of names. 
 " Nancy — Hackney Wick — Nancy ! " said she, to see their effect. 
 " Do we know any Nancy, to try it on ? " 
 
 " I was thinkin' of her sister Nancy — Cintra's." 
 
 " Oh — that's a sister I haven't seen." 
 
 '' Yes, it is. She sat next to Mrs. Carteret, on her left." 
 
 " I only knew she was Miss Eraser, then. But which is the 
 one I've heard you call Elbrouz ? " 
 
 " Her. Only ' Elbows ' is what we call her." 
 
 " Oh — Elbows ! But why ? " Yes, why was that taller girl, 
 whom Lucy had thought quite the more interesting of the two 
 sisters, to be called " Elbows " ? 
 
 Charley, called to account, lacked decision. *' Well — you see 
 — it's a sort of idea ! An association'! Elbows — the idea of 
 elbows ! " 
 
 "What is the idea?" It occurred to Miss Lucy — not un- 
 naturally, especially as her own beautiful arms were in evidence, 
 all but an inch or so — that Nature might throw a light on the 
 subject. She endeavoured to get an insight into the idea of 
 elbows by glancing first at one of her own, then at the other, 
 and failed to get round either corner. 
 
 " A bony idea," said her lover. " Yours won't wash, and are 
 not in it. Besides, you can't see 'em without a looking-glass. 
 It stands to reason. Now I come to think of it, I can't say 
 exactly why we called her Elbows. You would see at once if 
 you knew her. But I'm sorry to say she's had a bad fall." 
 
 " I suppose that's consecutive." 
 
 " No, it isn't, very. However, she has fallen off her bicycle 
 and was all but killed, I believe. She's at Fred's mother's." 
 
 " What's she doing there ? "
 
 366 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " They're very thick. . She spent Sunday with Mrs. Carteret, 
 and was going home in the dark, on her bike ..." 
 
 " Mamma ! " Miss Lucy d'id not seem keen to know details. 
 
 " Ye-GS, mv dear ! Go on." 
 
 "I sliall not go with you to the Topley Skimmers' tea to- 
 morrow. I shall go over to Mrs. Carteret's, and must have 
 the carriage. I can take a card of yours. You needn't come. 
 I can send the carriage back in time for you. You see," — she 
 was addressing Charles — " I have never called, and may as well 
 go to-morrow. If Mrs. Carteret is not in, I can come back 
 and go to the Topley Skimmers' with mamma. . . . Yes — ^you 
 were saying . . . ? " 
 
 " She met a vehicle coming round the corner on the wrong side 
 of the road, and got knocked over, and was considerably dam- 
 aged. Head. She's still there and may not be fit to move for 
 awhile. Doosid awkward." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Don't you call it awkward when the sister of a girl your 
 son's engaged to gets smashed, and is brought home to your 
 house — alive you know, not in pieces — and can't be moved — and 
 your son gets his engagement broken off . . ." 
 
 " No, certainly not ! Why should it make any difference to 
 the families? Besides, they may break it on again." 
 
 "' Not this time ! " said Charles, with comically serious good 
 faith in his case. " It's for good." 
 
 " It always is." 
 
 " No — they've really made up their minds." 
 
 " They always have." Charley evidently shook his head men- 
 tally. The young lady seemed to think this topic had had its 
 day, by the way in which she said : — " Anyhow, I shall call to- 
 morrow. If I see neither of them it doesn't matter. . . . 
 Mamma dear, I wish you wouldn't moon." This referred to a 
 certain disposition to sail slowly about the drawing-room on the 
 part of the older lady, with some show of a bias towards tentative 
 rearrangement of ornaments. It was aesthetic, not domestic. 
 If there had been anyone to impress, she might have been open 
 to suspicion of consciousness of an imj)erial crimson satin; one 
 tliat Paul Veronese would have gone for. But there was no 
 one but Charley, and his eyes only saw the daughter. 
 
 She ignored that young person's disrespectful wish, merely 
 saying : — " I can wait. Only say when 3'ou are ready and they 
 can shut up." Lucy replied flippantly : — " Nonsense, Mamma ! 
 As if it mattered when Peterfield went to bed, to half a
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 257 
 
 minute ! " — that being the name of the model butler. To 
 Charles, who was wavering under her mother's broad hint, she 
 said imperiously : — " Don't go ! ! Xever mind mamma. I want 
 to talk about that house. Sit down." He obeyed. 
 
 The mother awaked from her aesthetic dream, and joined in 
 the conversation. " I was forgetting about that house. iVre the 
 people ready to sell it, or not? " She subsided into an armchair, 
 to hear particulars. 
 
 " Well — you see," said Charley, " they only got my letter 
 yesterday morning. Give the poor beggars time to turn 
 round." 
 
 " Charles," said the beauty, in a warning voice, " I have a 
 horrible presentiment about that house. We shall lose it." 
 
 " I can't see," said her mother, " that it so very much matters. 
 I suppose that Mr. Carteret and Miss What-was-her-name have 
 come to an end for good." 
 
 " Oh dear yes. Mamma. Either they have or they haven't. 
 It doesn't matter which. ^^^lat can it matter? I want the 
 house anyhow, and I shall be bitterly disappointed if we have 
 lost it. Can't you write to them again, Charles, and say they 
 may have the two thousand pounds?" Charles explained that 
 the only effect of this would be that they would immediately 
 say the two thousand had been a mistake for three. On which 
 Miss Lucy said in a voice of conviction : — " I see how it will be. 
 We shall lose that house." 
 
 Her mother said : — " Can't imagine, Lu, what makes you so 
 in love with the place. The neighljourhood's odious ; at least, 
 it was you said so. / don't know. The house seems to be large 
 enough for two young people beginning. But how on earth you 
 would have split it in half, so as to do for both, quite passe? 
 my comprehension." 
 
 "Well — we shall lose the house ..." 
 
 W^hen a middle-aged lady, who has evidently been handsome 
 once, albeit a little dried up now, shuts her eyes to talk, she 
 does not mean to be stopped. Mrs. Hinchliffo contin^ied : — 
 " Buy it by all means, if you have made up your minds. Only 
 please let it be understood that I had nothing to do with it. 
 As for losins: the house, that's nonsense ! It seems to have been 
 empty for fifteen years. And didn't you say there was a public- 
 house next door ? " 
 
 " Oh dear no ! — miles off. But it doesn't matter. I foresee 
 we shall lose that house." 
 
 " Nonsense, child ! People have had plenty of chances of
 
 258 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 taking it for fifteen years, and nobody has taken it. Nobody 
 will.'' 
 
 " We shall see. When it's too late." 
 
 " Wliy — nobody ever sees the house." 
 
 " Oh dear yes, they do ! Hundreds of people ! There were 
 people at it when we were there on Saturday. They seemed 
 delighted. You saw them." She turned her splendid dark eyes 
 round on her lover. 
 
 But his only met them with astonishment. " I saw no 
 people," said he. 
 
 " Perhaps I shouldn't have said people. People's too many. 
 You saw the old gentleman, though? The others were some- 
 where else." 
 
 "I saw no old gentleman. \Vlien? Where?" 
 
 " Stupid ! The old gentleman we passed in the passage. . . . 
 The old gentleman that looked like a rector. . . . The long 
 passage that leads to the greenhouse. Notv you know." The 
 greenhouse seemed to be the climax of identification, Avarranting 
 an impatient finger-tap on Charley's coat-sleeve to rouse and 
 accelerate his powers of recollection. 
 
 But it was ineffectual. He only looked puzzled, tried hard to 
 recollect, visibly; but w^as compelled to a slow continuous head- 
 shake of confessed failure. " There were the two old caretaker 
 people," said he, dubiously. He only mentioned them as two 
 collateral facts, not as illuminating the subject. He then went 
 on repeating : — '' The old gentleman we passed in the passage — 
 old gentleman we passed in the passage," several times, and 
 ended up with, " Xo — I don't see my way to any old gentleman. 
 Sorry I can't accommodate you." 
 
 " Then all I can say is — how do you expect to get on at the 
 Bar? . . . Well — as a lawyer, then! Bother the bar! — you 
 know what I mean. You certainly are iiot sharp, Charles." 
 The young man seemed rather gratified than otherwise at this 
 castigation ; indeed, each word that came from this young lady's 
 beautiful lips seemed more enchanting than the last, no matter 
 how censorious it was. He offered his cheek to the smiter. 
 
 But he looked mortally puzzled, too ! What on earth was this 
 story of an old gentleman? That he was actual — no dream — 
 was not a subject for doubt. His duty to his idol forbade it. 
 How question any statement she chose to make? Every word 
 was sacred. And as for the possibility of pleasantry, where 
 would the joke be, and what the object of it? 
 
 What flashed across his mind most vividly was that it would
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 259 
 
 never do for Fred to hear that, on the very spot where his uncle 
 was last seen, an accidental divine, who might have been any- 
 body, had been seen by Miss Hinchliffe and invisible to himself. 
 He knew well how prone the human mind is to mystery- 
 mongering, especially at times when mystery is afoot on its own 
 account. Moreover, there had already been some rot about a 
 voice that called out, in that very place ! But to ask his 
 divinity to hold her tongue about the incident would exag- 
 gerate its importance and fix it in her mind, while in the natural 
 course of things it would be soon forgotten. 
 
 Perhaps on the whole it was wisest to say, as he did: — 
 " Rum ! ", and allow the event to find its own way to Oblivion. 
 
 Moreover, he perceived that if he said no more on the subject, 
 he would be under no obligation to dwell upon the fact that this 
 old gentleman, if he were again referred to, had been unseen by 
 him. Indeed, who could say that he might not recollect having 
 seen him, if he could only succeed in forgetting that he had not 
 done so ?
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Said Mrs. Carteret, coming downstairs from a visitor 
 unknown, to the bedroom still in possession of Cintra's sister 
 Xancy : — " It's the good-looking young woman that's going to 
 marry your hcte-noire — I won't mention his name for fear of 
 enraging you . . ." 
 
 " Mr. tlglibus. I know. Fred's friend. She's perfectly 
 divine." 
 
 " Well — the question is, shall I bring her in here? She wants 
 to come.'* 
 
 "Bring her in? Bather, if she doesn't mind! Only look 
 here. Put her in a good light where I shall see her. I want 
 something to gloat over. . . . Yes — like that ! " 
 
 Thus it came about that, on the afternoon following, Miss 
 Lucy Hinchliffe floated into the apartment still occupied by 
 Xancy Eraser under protest, as that young lady was convinced 
 that, in theory, she was quite fit to be sent home. Indeed, for 
 that matter, fit to bicycle home, as she had come. But she 
 showed no great physical alacrity towards getting up out of the 
 bed to which — according to her — the scruples of medical ef- 
 feminacy had condemned her. 
 
 Xow, if Xancy had been duly alive to the share that this 
 youns" beauty had had in breaking up her sister's engagement — 
 beyond a bare suspicion — she might have been much less dis- 
 posed for an interview with her. But Cintra had said nothing 
 in her letter, received by Xancy on the previous morning, to 
 that effect. Xor indeed had she given any details, saying merely 
 that she and Frederic had talked the matter well over, and had 
 agreed to part, as the best course, for both ; with the retention 
 of an edifying amount of friendship, cultivated as a sort of 
 religious duty. She inaugurated this last by declining to come 
 over to see her sister, as it might involve what under the cir- 
 cumstances could only be considered a coniretemps. When 
 the friendship had mellowed up to a fine bouquet, it would 
 be time to think about uncorking it. Eric would come 
 over every day, and would bring back word. It may be noted 
 too that Mrs. Carteret had continued in much ignorance of the 
 immediate cause of the disruption. So that Xancy was too in-. 
 
 260
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 261 
 
 definite in her impression that Lucy was responsible for it to 
 feel any reluctance for her society on that account. Indeed, the 
 attributino; of any responsibility, other than an unconscious one, 
 to any lady who caused jealousy in another, would have been, 
 according to her view, not playing the game. She resented the 
 vernacular condition of mind which always imputes the most 
 share in any imbroglio to the best-looking woman. So she felt 
 herself in honour bound to acquit any culprit all the more in 
 proportion to her beauty. 
 
 A slight concussion of the brain leaves the eyelids very heavy, 
 and those that Xancy raised to see the sight felt that nothing 
 less would keep them open. It was they too that glued her to 
 that pillow. Having been " persuaded " to lie in bed, it was as 
 well to take advantage of it. 
 
 " Oh dear, I am so sorry! " said Miss Luc}^ effusively. As it 
 was as well to be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, she grasped her 
 nettle, and pretended that she and Nancy were familiar friends. 
 As a matter of fact, they had barely spoken together on that 
 day of the luncheon party. " Wliat a terrible business ! But you 
 really are going to be all right again? " 
 
 " I've nothing the matter with me. As well as I ever was in 
 my life. I'm only lying here to please the doctor." 
 
 " And me, if you please ! " said Mrs. Carteret. Then to her 
 visitor : — " It really is only to be on the safe side." Miss 
 Hinchliffe broke into a paean in praise of precaution, which ]\Irs. 
 Carteret arrested to say: — " You won't mind my going? That's 
 my son who has just come in, and I particularly want to see 
 him." Miss Hinchliffe's manner combined mortal regret that 
 she and the speaker should ever part, with an almost passionate 
 eagerness to stand out of the way of the door. 
 
 She came to an anchor in the chair that had been predestined 
 for her, after exhibiting humility in an attempt to select an 
 inferior one; reasonlcssly, as its success would have left the 
 appointed one without the occupant, and a place for a ghost 
 is uncalled for. Conversation then hovered round topics of no 
 immediate interest. 
 
 But Miss Hinchliffe had not come to talk about the price of 
 things, the fashions, or the weather ; nor even about the advan- 
 tages or otherwise of a variable gear for bicycles. Her manner 
 dismissed Sturmey-Archer, and she gathered up, as it were, for 
 seriousness, as she said : — '*' Now I hope, dear Miss Eraser, you'll 
 forgive me for wanting to talk about your dear sister and Mr. 
 Frederic Carteret."
 
 262 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Couple of geese ! " said Nancy, trenchantly. 
 
 " Oh, I'm so glad to hear you say that." 
 
 " Of course I say that. What would anybody say? '* 
 
 " It's quite a relief to me. You know it has been the most 
 bitter disappointment to Charles and myself." 
 
 " What has ? " 
 
 " Why, of course ! — our delightful castle in the air." 
 
 "Which one is that?" 
 
 " You laugh at us. But it has really been a serious disap- 
 pointment to Charles. . . . The one they say was a madhouse 
 out beyond Wimbledon." 
 
 " You wanted to halve the house with those two geese ? " 
 
 " With those two other geese. Yes, I believe Mr. Frederic 
 Carteret had made out complete plans for the division into two 
 parts. Oh dear — it was such a delightful scheme ! And 
 now ..." 
 
 " You've lost the house — is that it ? " 
 
 " Well — not exactly that ! Because we are buying the house 
 — I suppose I should say my mother is buying it. I don't pro- 
 fess to understand these things. It's to be our house — I know 
 that. What we are both lamenting over is the collapse of the 
 delightful arrangement of the housekeeping, or being next-door 
 neighbours at any rate. Charles was looking forward so to hav- 
 ing his friend so near. But of course from the point of view of 
 their being only a couple of geese . . . Oh, my dear Miss 
 Fraser, how grateful I am to you for the expression ! " 
 
 " You're very welcome. Only mind you ! — I've only had one 
 letter from Cintra about it. It isn't as if we had talked it over. 
 I may be mistaken." 
 
 " But you do think it may be all a false alarm, and they may 
 make it up again." 
 
 Nancy laughed aloud at the speaker's scared tone. " Eather," 
 said she, slangily, " I should say it was ten to one they would. 
 I've written to Cit to l^low her up. But I shall be fit to ride 
 back to-morrow — see if I'm not! And I mean to pitch it hot 
 and strong into the young woman. She's the sort that wants a 
 little decision. And really, if I'm right about the cause of this 
 shindy, she is the biggest goose." 
 
 " I suppose I mustn't ask what it was — the cause? " 
 
 To the frank integrity of Miss Nancy's nature this speech 
 was all-powerful to scatter what remained of her suspicions of 
 her visitor, and was almost proof positive that that young lady 
 was honestly unconscious of her own complicity. How could
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 263 
 
 those beautiful dark eyes that gazed into hers so anxiously and 
 candidly be the eyes of a mischief-making minx ? That was the 
 form her question would have taken, had it reached language. 
 Nancy wavered on the edge of an unreserved confidence — a full 
 disclosure of her suspicions. But prudence prevailed. For if 
 she replied: — " Of course it was you — the cause," on what lines 
 could the joint housekeeping at The Cedars ever be conducted? 
 Such a mutual consciousness between the two mistresses would 
 surely damn the whole arrangement, were the breach between the 
 separated lovers to be healed over with never a scar. A hurried 
 review of these considerations made her answer : — " I think I 
 would rather not tell you, if you don't mind." 
 
 " Why, of course ! As if I had a right to pry into your sister's 
 affairs ! " Nancy immediately felt as if she had given a rude 
 rebuff, and must make some amende honorahle. The beauty pro- 
 ceeded : — " You see, I really am a perfect stranger if you come 
 to think of it." She really was, but the perfect candour of her 
 disavowal of intimacy sent strangership flying. Nancy felt that 
 she was not a stranger because she said she was. 
 
 Here was the opportunity for the amende. " We may be 
 strangers," said she, " but if Cit comes to her senses, shan't we 
 be a sort of wishy-washy sisters-in-law? '. . . Well, no — not 
 quite, I admit. But that kind of thing. Because Fred Carteret 
 and Mr. Snaith are as good as brothers, aren't they ? " 
 
 " Better than some brothers. Charles is simply heartbroken 
 about this miscarriage. You'll quite understand me, dear Miss 
 Fraser, if I say that it is on his account that I feel it so strongly. 
 I don't mean that I shall not be dreadfully sorry to lose your 
 sister. . . . Because — because ..." It was rather difficult 
 to round up this sentence out of the materials at her disposal ; so 
 the speaker clasped her hands in a sort of mild frenzy, 
 exclaiming : — " Oh dear ! — you know the sort of thing I 
 mean." 
 
 Nancy didn't, but it didn't matter. She said she did. Those 
 eyes, that she could not take her own off, were at work upon 
 her, and she certainly was not going to refuse to accommodate 
 their owner with such a very small compliance. She was quite 
 ready to pretend that this young lady had become somehow 
 embosomed in her family; that she had a perfect right to be 
 desolated at any miscarriage of its affairs. But she reflected on 
 the oddity of the position. Was she sure that this solicitude 
 from a stranger would be welcomed by all its members? A 
 dream of Cintra crossed her mind, thanking this Miss What's-
 
 264 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 her-name to keep her eondoleuees to herself till they were asked 
 for. 
 
 But Cintra would not come near Maida A^ale, for fear of 
 meeting Fred; so Nancy might pretend to her heart's content. 
 Besides, how could she anticipate Cintra's resentment against 
 any Miss What's-her-name's impertinence, when she herself was 
 impertinently wondering all the while how the Miss What's-her- 
 name could endure to have Mr. Snaith ki . . , But her mind 
 flinched from completion of the verb, and was even in doubt 
 whether she ought to think of the gentleman as " Mr. Nosey,'' 
 which was the designation it had employed. 
 
 Did you ever feel that bosom-friendship was overtaking you 
 apace ; for someone of your own sex, of course ? Ten to one you 
 have, if yours is the female one. Nancy felt it coming on, and 
 resigned herself to its influence, especially when the Miss ^^^at's- 
 her-name, quite ofl: her own bat, brought her chair a little nearer. 
 But she was laying down conditions all the while, Nancy was; 
 one, for instance, that she should get at the mystery of her visi- 
 tor's entichement for Mr. Nosey. 
 
 Not that she supposed that she should get so far as that 
 during this interview, or perhaps the next one. She would have 
 to be content, for the present, with the merest surface chat. 
 Was not Mr. Snaith a very clever lawyer? That seemed to her 
 a good way of getting her visitor to talk about this gentleman, 
 in whom the questioner felt absolutely no interest, except to dis- 
 cover how so uninteresting a person could have engaged the 
 afi'ections of one so fascinating, so superior to himself in every 
 way. 
 
 " Charles Snaith may be very clever," said she, shrugging her 
 perfect shoulders and laughing, more tolerantly than respect- 
 fully. " I daresay he is. But he keeps it for business hours. 
 I can't say I ever saw it in society. But he's very good and 
 upright and all that sort of thing." 
 
 Nancy fairly stared with astonishment. " Well ! " said she, 
 " I couldn't marry a man because he was good. Or upright. I 
 should require him to be handsome at least, even if he wasn't 
 clever." 
 
 Miss Hinchlifl'e was stretching the fingers of a lemon-coloured 
 kid glove round her beautiful right hand, and seemed to defer 
 her reply to get an accurate measurement. Then she said, with 
 a sigh : — '' How true that is ! Charles is not handsome. . . . 
 Oh no, dear ]\Iiss Fraser, I know you didn't say so. You are 
 much too kind-hearted." She took the beautiful eyes off the
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 265 
 
 glove problem to say : — " But you did mean it. Now, didn't 
 you? " 
 
 The circumstances called for a good round fib. But fibs Aveve 
 not Nancy's line. She considered a moment — a pause for con- 
 sideration being her only tribute to mendacity — and then said : — 
 "Well — I did! And it's no use saying I didn't. But I didn't 
 say I was a beauty myself. We're both in the same boat, he 
 and I. Fellow-townspeople — that sort of thing ! " * 
 
 " I should like to live in that town. It would be very inter- 
 esting. But do poor Mr. Snaith justice. He never said he was 
 a beauty." 
 
 " Did he say I was ? Come now ! " 
 
 It was Miss Lucy's turn to feel that concealment was useless. 
 Said she, evasively : — " I don't think I ever heard him talk about 
 . . . about looks." 
 
 "Did, you, ever, hear him — say I was a beauty? That's the 
 point ! " 
 
 Miss Hinchliffe made a moue and raised her eyebrows slightly. 
 " We-ell ! " said she. " I don't suppose I ever did. So it's no 
 use saying so. Is it ? " 
 
 " Now, do tell me the sacred solemn truth! Did you ever hear 
 him call me by a nickname ? " 
 
 Miss Hinchliffe looked as if she felt that the conversation was 
 rather absurd. " What nickname ? " she asked. 
 
 " Oh, very well then ! — he calls me several. I have no doubt 
 of it. He and Fred Carteret ! I'm not in a rage Avith them, 
 you know." 
 
 " No — I see you are laughing. But do tell me which nick- 
 name it was. How can I tell that any two of Charles's 
 nicknames belong to the same person?" 
 
 " Is it possible that ? . . . Don't make me really laugh, be- 
 cause of my head ! . . . Is it possible that you never heard 
 the expression 'Elbows' applied to — to this connection?" 
 
 " If I'm to tell the truth ... All right ! — I'm c:oino; to. 
 ... If I'm to tell the truth, I have heard that expression, 
 and I thought it was Elbrouz, because of your sister being 
 Cintra." 
 
 "Elbrouz is a town in Persia, isn't it? Or Mesopotamia: 
 It doesn't matter which, as I wasn't called after it. Cit was 
 called after Cintra. It's in Portugal. And Portugal is a little 
 outlandish, but still possible. Mesopotamia is out of all 
 reason." 
 
 " Charles explained that it was Elbows, not Elbrouz. But
 
 266 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 he couldn't assign any reason for its use — any reasonable 
 reason. . . . You were feeling to see ? For Nancy's hands had 
 vanished up the two sleeves of her kimono. 
 
 '•' Yes," said she. " Feeling for something distinctive or char- 
 acteristic. But they seem normal. By-the-bye, I never thought 
 of it before — never thought of them, in fact! How awfully out 
 of it the poor things must feel ! Xo one ever takes the slightest 
 notfte of them. And they can't talk to one another about it, by 
 nature." Nancy seemed to think that this required revision. 
 For she added, a moment later : — " Unless one pulls them to- 
 gether behind one's back, like Calisthenics. Perhaps one ought 
 to, to give them a chance." 
 
 " Do 3'ou know, Charles said if I knew you, I should see at 
 once ivliy they called you Elbows. 'I must say I think his legal 
 acumen is at fault, for once." 
 
 " I'm no judge, as a party concerned. But I must say I do 
 think that anyone who saw him would see at once why we call 
 him . . . But — oh dear ! — I suppose I oughtn't to have said 
 that ! " 
 
 '• Oh — but do, please ! I would give anything to know what 
 you call him." 
 
 " I can't. It's too . . . excessive. It's really bad taste. 
 Only, you know, of course it has all been in the strictest 
 confidence." 
 
 " So was Elbows. He never knew when he told me that I 
 should go away and tell you. Besides, if you don't tell me now, 
 I shall believe it was worse than it really was. Consider ! " 
 
 " Well — there is that ! " Nancy considered. 
 
 " Yes — there is that." 
 
 " And you are quite certain not to tell him. However, you 
 couldn't tell him. Of course not. Only it is to be the silent 
 tomb — that's understood? " 
 
 " Of course ! — the silent tomb." 
 
 " Well — Nosey, then ! There ! . . . Oh, dear, what a wig- 
 ging I should get from Cintra if she knew I had told that ! " 
 
 Why is the story at pains to record such absolutely trivial 
 chat? Simply because of the bearing its very triviality has on 
 the character of its perpetrators. The story hopes too, if a story 
 can be said to hope, that some of the most trivial passages of 
 this conversation will remain in its reader's memory. 
 
 As for Miss Hinchliffe, she was ready to acquiesce in any topic 
 that came to hand, provided that close attention to details was 
 not called for. For although her visit to Nancy had been at
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 267- 
 
 her own express wish — merely to consolidate, as it were, her 
 foothold in the house — she was keeping an eye, or rather an ear, 
 the whole time, on the man's voice on the upper floor. She 
 could not do what would have pleased her best, and hark back 
 on this visit to Nancy, and exchange the girl's society — for that 
 was all she was; interesting and original perhaps, but a mere 
 girl for all that — for that of her fiance's good-looking friend 
 upstairs. It was unfortunate that she came away from Mrs. 
 Carteret so soon. Another three minutes and Fred would have 
 crossed her on the stairs. 
 
 But Fate's last word on this visit was not spoken. A sound 
 of winding-up was felt more than heard from the upper region, 
 and it was obvious that the male voice implied its owner's 
 departure. What more natural, exits being on the tapis, than 
 that Miss Hinchliffe should look at her watch, and become 
 panic-stricken at the lateness of the hour? Go she must — that 
 was clear ! As to the exact time and manner of her going, it 
 justified the conversation between Nancy and her hostess which 
 followed it almost immediately. 
 
 The latter came into the room after her son had departed, the 
 young lady having gone hurriedly away just before in order — so 
 she said — not to get mixed up with him in the passage, a thing 
 she hated. She liked, she said, that the drama of human life 
 should be enacted like a French play, with a well-defined group 
 to every scene. " Well, Nancy dear," said Mrs. Carteret. " How 
 did you get on with your visitor ? " 
 
 " She is simply lovely," said Nancy, considering that an 
 emphatic reply on her main j)oint — beauty, to wit — would answer 
 for everyone else's. 
 
 " Her looks are all very well. But how does she impress you? 
 She does impress you, doesn't she? " 
 
 " I suppose she does, somewhere. Only it doesn't mark. 
 Comes off! It's always like that, with me, when looks come in. 
 They might be Judas Iscariot — the parties might. But / should 
 never know it." There was obduracy for its own sake in this 
 attitude of Nancy's. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret may have felt this. She said, gravely: — 
 " Would you trust her? " 
 
 " Oh dear yes — I'm sure I should ! Look at her eyes ! " 
 
 " But I mean — would you feel safe ? " 
 
 " I don't know about that. Couldn't say. But as a matter 
 of fact, I should trust her, safe or no, down to the ground." 
 
 " I hope it would ..."
 
 268 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 "Pay?" 
 
 " I hope you wouldn't bo disappointed." 
 
 " I should expect not to ])e — so it wouldn't matter. But what 
 makes you so down iipon her ? " 
 
 " I may be all wrong, you know. One is, very often. But I 
 think your sister may be right. I don't mean in quarrelling 
 with Fred about it — because it is quarrelling, whatever they 
 may say ..." 
 
 " Oh, they'll make it up all right ! You see if they don't. 
 But go on. I interrupted you." 
 
 " I was going to say that when Cintra got so angry with her 
 on the way home, that day you met her here — you told me, you 
 know ..." 
 
 '"' Oh dear yes ! Cit was in a towering passion." 
 
 " Well — she may have had provocation." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Xancy, abruptly. She said it in the way in 
 which one doesn't welcome a new thought. She seemed to dwell 
 on it uneasily for a moment before she continued : — " I'm not 
 very sharp at this sort of thing. You think . . . 
 what?" 
 
 " I think — after that lunch — if I had been in your sister's 
 place, I should not have liked the idea of a joint household." 
 
 " I see. Perhaps you're right. But nothing struck me at 
 the time. Everything seemed quite square. Then I'm a bad 
 judge of this sort of fun. I'm not in it." 
 
 " I have just been getting Fred to tell me more. This about 
 their having found out their mistake and so 'forth is all nonsense. 
 "Wliat your brother called the scrum was a good round quarrel 
 over the house scheme. Please understand — I take your sister's 
 part ! " 
 
 " I don't." 
 
 " Well — you're her sister. Of course that makes a difference. 
 But do try and think of it this way — to oblige me. Try and 
 think how you would feel if you were in this sort — it's your own 
 expression ! — in this sort of fun. Imagine yourself pledged to 
 become the wife of a man whom you credit with an undivided 
 affection for yourself ..." 
 
 " Thing's impossible ! But never mind ! — cut along ! " 
 "... And imagine yourself suddenly convinced that he is 
 susceptible — suppose we say — to someone else." Mrs. Carteret 
 paused, for her hearer to assimilate ideas. 
 
 Nancy accepted the pause, and came to a decision at the end 
 of it. " I should chuck him," said she.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 269 
 
 " Then you would act on less provocation than your sister's." 
 
 " I don't understand." 
 
 " Cintra has not chucked him . . . Eeally you are the most 
 slangy young monkey ! . . . " 
 
 " I get slangy from having to stop in bed. Go on ! . . . 
 * has not chucked him ' . . . " 
 
 "... Because she thought he admired another girl. It 
 was more than that. If every girl acted as drastically as I 
 understand you would . . . Well — how many engagements 
 would last a fortnight ? " 
 
 '• Precious few, I daresay. But what do you mean by ' more 
 than that'?" 
 
 " I think it's pretty clear. Cintra's provocation was that slie 
 was asked to live in the other young woman's pocket — as the 
 phrase is." 
 
 Nancy raised the still heavy eyelids that had been resting after 
 an unusual effort, and looked at her friend in a wondering, 
 puzzled way. " But they would be married — both of them ! " 
 said she. " That would be all settled and done with." Mrs. 
 Carteret bit the smile she could scarcely resist, to check it, with 
 indifferent success. " Why are you laughing at me ? " said 
 Nancy. 
 
 " Was I ? Well-^perhaps I was ! You are so very unlike 
 . . . most girls. Most girls out of their teens, I inean. You. 
 are so very ..." She stopped. 
 
 " Why not say innocent at once and have done with it ? " 
 
 '• Because it's rather an offensive expression, on the whole." 
 
 " I'll promise not to be violent if you call me it." 
 
 " I don't think I meant exactly innocent. Perhaps I should 
 say unworldly." 
 
 " There's not much difference in the offensiveness." 
 
 " I don't know that I need say either. What I meant was, 
 that you seem to have lived among very . . . very ivell- 
 halanccd people." 
 
 Nancy was weighing some consideration in the background of 
 her mind. "■' I was thinking," said she, " which of the people 
 down our road are well-balanced. Fancy they nearly all are! 
 There's the theatrical lot at forty-seven certainly — they might 
 bear a little balancing. But all the rest that I know anything 
 about are respectability itself. They snap at each other all day 
 long, and go to church regularly." 
 
 " I think I follow the connection of your ideas," said Mrs. 
 Carteret. Her amusement at her young friend's way of ex- 
 
 li
 
 270 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 pressing herself did not seem to prevent her understanding its 
 dominant motif. " I remember wlien I was young I used to 
 think of married persons very much as you do. Only, they were 
 always elderly and had large families. Do you suppose that all 
 the wives and husbands who figure in divorce cases are like that 
 — like the well-balanced people in your suburb ? " 
 
 " Stodgy and respectable ? Oh dear no ! — there's the other 
 sort. But then they are dissolute." 
 
 " Don't you think that perhaps you classify people with rather 
 too much severity?" 
 
 " Perhaps I do. But what I meant just now, when I said 
 that if they married they would be settled and done with, was 
 that then they would know where they were." 
 
 " And do you think that if Cintra married Fred after sus- 
 pecting that — mind, I only say suspecting — that he had shown 
 a susceptibility to another young lady, she would be able to 
 live in serene security in the same house? I think not. I don't 
 think matrimony is exactly a panacea against all the vagaries of 
 human nature. Remember that the scrum, or shindy, turned 
 entirely on the residence of the two couples in this queer old 
 house. No — on the whole I cannot be surprised at your sister's 
 attitude. I should have said exactly the same myself, in her 
 position." 
 
 " Doesn't a good deal turn on the other party ? The other 
 young woman? " 
 
 " Almost everything." Mrs. Carteret spoke very gravely, and 
 seemed to await Nancy's comment with a good deal of 
 interest. 
 
 "Well — then — in this case ..." Nancy stopped short. 
 
 " In this case — what? " 
 
 The girl raised herself from the pillow that still had such 
 attractions for the contused head that had completely recovered, 
 and reclined on one of the condemned elbows. " Oh, dearest 
 Mrs. Carteret," said she, " you never can imagine ..." She 
 stopped again, with an excited, distressed look on her face. 
 
 " I'm very sorry, but — I can." 
 
 "Oh, but it is impossible — impossible! You should have 
 heard her — only Just now — how she spoke." 
 
 " What did she say ? " 
 
 " Promise not to disbelieve her on purpose ! " 
 
 " I shall be only too glad to think I am mistaken." 
 
 Nancy lay down again to recollect, not without satisfaction. 
 ** I said they were a couple of geese," said she, " and that they
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 271 
 
 would make it up again and it was sure to be all right. And 
 she was so glad ..." 
 
 " Because of the house ? " 
 
 " Oh dear no ! — simply at the prospect of their coming to live 
 there. The failure of the housekeeping plan doesn't put an end 
 to the house. Indeed^ I understood her to say that her mother 
 had bought the house." 
 
 " "What else did she say? " 
 
 " She said what a terrible disappointment it had been to 
 Charles and herself when they heard the engagement was broken 
 ofE. Particularly Charles, because he had looked forward so to 
 having his friend so near him. And now it would be all right, 
 and how grateful she was to me for calling them a couple of 
 geese. Then she supposed she mustn't ask what was the cause 
 of the row, and I could see by her manner that she was igno- 
 rance itself. Anybody could." 
 
 " Could they ? What did you say? " 
 
 " Said certainly not. Because think what a smasher it would 
 have been to the house plan — any chance that was left of it — if 
 she had had an inkling ..." 
 
 " What a smasher ! " Mrs. Carteret acquiesced somewhat 
 drily. " What did she say to that?" 
 
 " Said of course, what right had she to pry into my sister's 
 affairs ? And then we got off the line, and said shouldn't we be 
 a sort of half-cooked sisters-in-law if it came off after all — the 
 wedding? But it was no go, because though your Fred and her 
 young man are thicker than thieves, they are not exactly 
 brothers." 
 
 "Not exactly brothers. And then you let it alone?" 
 
 " Very nearly. She got rather mixed over saying how sorry 
 she would be to lose Cintra. Because, don't you see, she and 
 Cintra scarcely know each other from Adam." 
 
 "They might get as far as that. Anything else? I mean, 
 was that all the conversation ? " 
 
 " No — yes — no ! I wanted to ask her — only I didn't — how 
 she could stand . . . Well ! — how she could stand a loverlike 
 attitude on the part of Nosey." 
 
 " Nosey being Mr. Snaith ? " 
 
 " Precisely. Let me see — then she got it out of me that I 
 knew that he and Fred called me Elbows, and I admitted that 
 at home we called him Nosey. Then she looked at her watch, 
 and went. Said she should walk to the railway station." 
 
 " When was that ? How long before we came down ? "
 
 272 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 '' Very little time. No time." 
 
 " I heard the street door just as we came into the passage. 
 Was that her? " 
 
 " I expect so. I heard you and your son a moment later." 
 
 " Oh." Mrs. Carteret's audible concern did not go beyond a 
 monosyllable, but in her heart she was hoping that Miss Hinch- 
 liffe causht her train. Also that Fred didn't. 
 
 o 
 
 Fate favoured neither wish, — or both, according to the views 
 we take of trains on the District Eailway. Can one catch or 
 lose one's train, when — catch it or miss it ! — there is always 
 another in ten minutes? Which is one's train? The one you 
 ride in^ says Destiny. The one you find in me, says Bradshaw. 
 Each speaks with the voice of mere Officialism. And, when the 
 intervals are so short and the trains so many, even the subtlest 
 of station masters cannot tell you whether the one that is coming 
 is this one, or the last one, or the next one. 
 
 Fred's visit to his mother this afternoon belonged to a class 
 of visit that he had invented as an exponent of filial duty, to 
 serve its turn until Nancy should take her departure from 
 Maida Vale. He minimised his chances of being brought into 
 contact with that young woman — a contingency he shrank from 
 — by being unable, owing to an important appointment in town, 
 to get over to lunch ; and compelled, by an old promise to dine 
 with a friend, to go away early. But it was not in him to let 
 forty-eight hours pass without seeing his mother, and indeed 
 seldom did so even in ordinary times. At this period it was a 
 consolation to him that the very obstacle which barred his free 
 ingress and egress supplied his mother with a society that ap- 
 peared to compensate her for the loss of his own. So he chose 
 his times for visits as suited him best, merely avoiding risks 
 of coming across Miss Nancy. 
 
 Of course he was not afraid of being pitchforked into her 
 apartment, d conire ccciir. But he never knew, when he fished 
 for his latchkey outside the street door, that he should not meet 
 her in the passage, reinstated and ready for tlie bicycle ; even for 
 its pump, if called on. 
 
 There was nobody in the street when Fred went out at the 
 garden gate, this time. That is to say, God-knows-who was 
 walking to and fro as usual, or riding, as might be; but the 
 young lady whose exit had preceded him — as he judged by a 
 door-slam, ascribed to her by his mother — was not visible. He 
 had then been accurate in his calculation of what time would be
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 273 
 
 needed for a clear oflfing before he left port. He had had a sub- 
 wish to be inaccurate. But it had not been sufficiently marked 
 to forbid his being glad the contrary was the case. He was 
 therefore at liberty not to be sorry that this antecedent young 
 lady was well on her way to St. John's Wood Road station before 
 he left the house. Perhaps she wasn't going there. That would 
 leave hirn free to walk as quick as he liked. He walked as quick 
 as he liked. 
 
 He reached the station without seeing anybod}^ and felt, 
 officially, glad. He would have felt officially sorry if he had 
 chanced upon Lucy Hinchliffe going the same way as himself. 
 He had considered it his duty to decide that it would be embar- 
 rassing to meet her just at present. But she would have had 
 her usual effect upon him, for all that. 
 
 Perhaps the story is rash, with its limited powers of descrip- 
 tion, in trying to describe such a curious and contradictory mix- 
 ture of impulses as Fred's at this moment. But what can a poor 
 story do, with so queer a contrivance as the human soul to deal 
 with? If only that mystery would always be clear and intelli- 
 gible, how much easier its chronicle would be to write ! 
 
 Fred's preoccupations prevented his noticing that the price of 
 his ticket was greater than usual. It dawned on him later, after 
 it had been perforated past recall. Not that he would have 
 taken the trouble to change a first-class ticket taken by mistake. 
 But it made him resolve that he would have his money's worth 
 out of the company ; and it was probably his looking for a first- 
 class carriage, and not seeing one, that prevented his jumping 
 into the train that was just leaving the station when he reached 
 the platform. " Another in ten minutes! " said the genius loci, 
 to console him. 
 
 He did not the least know whether it was relief or disappoint- 
 ment that he felt at not having overtaken Lucy Hinchliffe. He 
 suspected himself now of having really schemed to that end, that 
 looked like disappointment. But he received the idea very easily 
 that she had taken a cab home, or gone another way altogether ; 
 that looked like relief. Anyhow, she had vanished from his 
 immediate possibilities. 
 
 He walked about the platform thinking— thinking. Not 
 about Cintra; she had also vanished. He was sometimes sur- 
 prised at himself that it should be so, that he should not feel 
 more chagrin at his position. But whenever memories of the 
 earlier days of his engagement crossed his mind, with their in- 
 evitable suggestion of a tempo felice, it took refuge in the reflec-
 
 274 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 tion that that happy time had not been without its drawbacks; 
 and that, with it, they had disappeared. At least he had got his 
 release from the anticipation of that extremely British family at 
 Gipsy Hill; that, but for this denouement, would have been his 
 for good and all. He found that the one epoch he really re- 
 gretted was that of the first intoxication of reciprocated love, 
 gradually settling down to a chronic condition of desire to 
 insulate its object from her surroundings, and have her all to 
 himself. That end would have been attained — but ! There 
 were so many buts. Had she been prepared to give her family 
 up? Had he been prepared to marry it? He replied to both 
 questions in the negative, with a super-emphasis to the latter 
 when he thought of that stepmother. 
 
 So he found it easy to think of Cintra as little as possible, 
 but he took care to do it because that course was wise and showed 
 fortitude. Do not let it be supposed that the story is laughing 
 at Fred for his precautions against himself. They were merely 
 the form conscientiousness took in a mind somewhat over-prone 
 to self-examination. 
 
 It was active also when he found that for forty-eight hours 
 he had scarcely given a thought to what was after all of more 
 importance than the failure of one trothplight — namely, the 
 unsolved problem of his uncle's disappearance. Was this owing 
 to a growing acquiescence in what was inevitable? And had it 
 grown to' seem more inevitable since Flinders's Mill the other 
 night? Had the fact that Flinders's mill-pool yielded when 
 dredged a resuscitable corpse familiarised his mind with ideas 
 of other mill-ponds concealing life extinct? It seemed not 
 impossible. 
 
 A dreadful idea that had disquieted him more than once came 
 back on the heels of this thought. If, long after every search 
 had proved a forlorn hope, and everyone had been convinced 
 that his non-return meant death, the missing man should sud- 
 denly turn up — would he be welcomed? Not necessarily. . . . 
 Well — of course he would, in a sense ! But might he not see, 
 behind the curtain of a glad surprise as far as the thought in 
 some minds : — " Must we hark back through all those obsequies 
 and windings-up we hated, and be prepared to take up life at the 
 sundering of our ways, and perchance after all be prepared to 
 have the same thing over again, a day's march ahead or so ? " 
 He was trying to picture to himself a reappearance of the old 
 familiar figure of his uncle, after he and all about him had long 
 tliought of him as dead — for that time must come one day, how-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 275 
 
 ever much one shrank from acknowledging it — and wondering 
 what would he feel himself in such a case, when the sound of 
 his train in the tunnel stopped his imaginings, and revived his 
 interest in his receipt of full value for that ticket. 
 
 The porter on the platform seemed as interested as himself. 
 " First-class forward," said he, spontaneously, as Fred looked 
 up and down the thirds, which were very empty, and really 
 acceptable enough for a journey from station to station. But 
 the ticket held Fred spellbound. To be even with the company 
 he actually ran along the jDlatform. The guard shouted to him 
 to get in there — look alive ! He looked alive, and found himself 
 in a carriage with one other occupant. 
 
 "When one is starting on a journey and there is loads of time 
 — this phrase is familiar to the lax of speech — one examines the 
 persons already in the carriage as though it was to be matrimony, 
 if ladies; and a fight, if males. They in return glare upon you 
 with an unspeakable bitterness ; but, if you show resolution, 
 relent, and admit that that is really an empty seat. On the 
 other hand, when you join the train in a hurry, you postpone 
 assessment of your companions, at least until you know which 
 side up you are, which sometimes you don't. 
 
 Fred didn't look at the other occupant at all till after he had 
 looked at his watch. When he did so, he thought his wits had 
 surely forsaken him. Otherwise, he was face to face with the 
 Impossible, with a full knowledge of how seldom it comes to 
 pass.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 The Impossible in this case was not perhaps what is generally 
 understood by those who will have it that everything is possible 
 80 long as one can tell the truth about it without one's words 
 contradicting themselves. There is no contradiction in terms in 
 saying that one can be in any two places within a quarter of an 
 hour; but to say that this is possible, at one and the same 
 instant, is to call in question the meaning of the verb he. A 
 man could be in Melbourne and London within that period if 
 his ship went quick enough, but no ship could go quick enough 
 for him to be in both towns at once. It would take all the edge 
 off his unity, and compromise his entity past reinstatement. 
 You may not asrree, and the Logician may not agree; but that 
 is the story's view. It will leave you and the Logician to settle 
 the point, and get on with itself. Perhaps if it says that the 
 Physically Impossible was what seemed to Fred to have gone 
 and come to pass, all parties will be satisfied. 
 
 If it uses words that length, surely much fr.Uacy may be 
 forgiven it. Its position is that of the Magdalen, with some 
 details varied. 
 
 Anyhow, there in the diagonally opposite corner of that first- 
 class carriage, in defiance of everything conceivable from the 
 data at his command, sat a young lady, who — if such a thing 
 had not been physically impossible — would certainly have been 
 Lucy Hinchlift'e. But it ivas Lucy Hinchliffe, beyond a shadow 
 of doubt. Her eyes could be no one else's. Moreover, they were 
 luminous with greeting to Fred, and her smile was luminous too. 
 Some kind of impossilDility had happened. Never mind that! — 
 its results were too good to cavil at. 
 
 " But I thought you were at my mother's," said Fred, as soon 
 as surprise permitted speech. For not only was he face to face 
 with the Impossible, but a well-defined electric shock had passed 
 up his arm. Evidently lemon-coloured kid gloves were con- 
 ductors of electricity. 
 
 " So I was. Why not ? " Simple English monosyllables 
 surely ! But spoken in such a voice, they might have been 
 Italian, or Romaic, or the language in which nightingales say 
 
 276
 
 OT7 
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE z// 
 
 the same thing to each other all nicrht ahout the stars in June. 
 
 " Why ? Because you've come the wrong way." 
 
 "Have I? Why? That's like Alice In The Looking-Glass, 
 f, when the guard said she was going the wrong way. But then, 
 ; that was in the looking-glass." 
 
 '' So it was. Of course! Don't think I ever noticed it! But 
 how did you manage it, coming from my mother's. . . . Oh, 
 I think I see. You walked to the other station — Marlborough 
 Road ? •' 
 
 " No — guess again ! " 
 
 " Give it up ! " 
 
 ''' Well — it's very simple. I got on the wrong platform, and 
 got in the wrong train before I knew where I was. I got out 
 and crossed to the other side at Swiss Cottage — because it 
 took two stations to convince me — and was just in time to catch 
 this train. I'm so glad." 
 
 How olad Fred would have been that she was elad — if 
 only . . . ! But the reservation was absolutely proliibitive. It 
 made him shudder, almost, to think of his friend's unconscious- 
 ness of this. ... Of this what? What was it his friend was 
 to remain unconscious of ? Never mind ! 
 
 But the young lady's gladness was a formulated and per- 
 missible one. She had wanted so much to get half an hour's 
 chat with Mr. Carteret; therefore she rejoiced that she was in 
 this train, not the next. Her exclamation had been opportunist, 
 not personal. Fred felt relief, as well as chagrin, at this. He 
 denied the latter, and made a merit of the former. He was 
 bound in honour to Charley to be relieved at the dissipation of 
 any suspicion that his friend's Lucy could derive satisfaction 
 from any society but his. He was merely discharging a duty. 
 
 But — oh dear! — if was impossible to talk in this tunnel. We 
 must wait till we get out at Baker Street. Here was Baker 
 Street. Now we could hear ourself speak. 
 
 Fred made a practical suggestion. He had intended to go to 
 King's Cross — as witness his ticket — and to cab therefrom to 
 the Temple. But he could just as easily cab from here. He 
 stuttered a little over suggesting that Devonshire Place — where 
 he had been to dinner, you remember? — was on the way, 
 and . . . But perhaps Miss Hinchliffe wouldn't like a han- 
 som . . . ? 
 
 On the contrary, Miss Hinchliffe was wedded to hansoms. 
 Had she her choice, she would pass her" life in hansoms. But 
 they had a fault — they were too quick. She wanted to talk to
 
 278 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Mr. Carteret quietly; not to be hurried. Therefore, let them 
 walk at their leisure to Devonshire Place. Then if Mr. Carteret 
 could not be persuaded to come in, the butler would call a cab 
 for him in a moment. He could only lose a very few minutes. 
 
 " You know what I want to speak to you about ? " said the 
 young lady, timidly, as they left the station. 
 
 " I can guess. Please, dear Miss Hinchliffe, don't stand on 
 ceremony. Talk to me as plainly as you like about — my engage- 
 ment to Miss Fraser. It is at an end, as you know. . . . That 
 is what you were referring to, isn't it ? " 
 
 "What else could it be?" 
 
 " Nothing at all. But there is nothing to be said. It is 
 over and done with." 
 
 " Is it quite — quite certain? Is there no chance? " 
 
 " Absolutelv none whatever. IS^either on my side nor hers. I 
 see that is what you were thinking." 
 
 She did not contradict him, but said only : — " You are not 
 angry with Miss Fraser ? " 
 
 "Angry with her? Why should I be? I am angry with my- 
 self, I grant you. But not with Cintra." 
 
 " There is a thing I cannot understand. . . . But you will 
 think me so odd ! " 
 
 " I don't think I shall. I may think you more frank and 
 honest than other women, but not , . . However, perhaps that 
 is odd." 
 
 " Odd to be frank and honest? Then I should like to be odd. 
 But let me tell you ..." 
 
 " Go on." 
 
 " What I mean that I cannot understand. When two persons 
 — a man and a girl, you know — once speak to one another of 
 affection ... of love ..." Her colour heightened per- 
 ceptibly in the evening light, as she paused in her walk for a 
 moment and turned her destructive eyes upon her com- 
 panion. 
 
 " You mean that you cannot understand how either of them 
 can ever shy off ? " 
 
 " Ye-es. I think that is what I mean. Only you put it more 
 — more incisively — than I should have done. How can they ? " 
 
 " They do, every day. Isn't it better that they should, when 
 they find out what we have found out? Cintra and myself, I 
 mean." He too was flushed, and candid. 
 
 " What is that? What have you found out? " 
 
 " Our mistake. It was a mistake all along. It was a mistake
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 279 
 
 which might easily have ended in unhappiness for both, and I 
 shall always be thankful for the accident which — which opened 
 our eyes." Something seemed to come in the way of the natural 
 continuance of this speech. His immediate silence did not seem 
 a reasonable sequel. 
 
 She was watching him too closely to overlook it. " You are 
 not going to tell me what it was ? " — she half asked, after a 
 moment's waiting. Then in response to an embarrassed reluc- 
 tance on his part : — " Xo ! — no ! I am not asking to be told 
 what it was. I have no right to know. . . . No — stop — you 
 mustn't tell me ! I have no right to know." Whereupon Fred, 
 who was indeed at some loss to think what he could ascribe the 
 collapse of his engagement to, speaking as he did to the uncon- 
 scious cause of it, was glad to renounce further explanation. So 
 he said, somewhat weakly : — " Well, perhaps you're right," and 
 surrendered the point. 
 
 Very likely you — you who read this — have noticed how slowly 
 conversation develops between companions who walk together in 
 a crowded street. The foregoing fragment of chat, which would- 
 scarcely have filled out three minutes of stage-time — if spoken 
 trippingly on the tongue — had lasted these two from Baker 
 Street to Devonshire Place : and, so far, the young lady had 
 rather elicited conversation from the gentleman than contributed 
 to its substance herself. It seemed natural that she should 
 exclaim at this point : — " Oh dear !— here we are close at home, 
 and I haven't said what I wanted to say." Fred felt that this 
 could be remedied by finishing the interview indoors, but he 
 preferred what Miss Hinchliffe suggested, that they should walk 
 on a short distance to accommodate matters. 
 
 He kept silence for a hundred yards, waiting for her to use 
 the opportunity, and then said, lubricatively, " Yes — you were 
 going to . . .," and stopped. 
 
 " To try and make you change your mind — somehow ! But I 
 don't know what to say, that's the truth. And it wouldn't be of 
 any use. . . . Now, would it ? " 
 
 A sort of delirium clouded Fred's mind. It forcibly presented 
 to him, as something on no account to be spoken, an epitome of 
 his position. Witat he had to keep his tongue from saying 
 was : — " This, and this only, is what I cannot do at your bidding. 
 Set me to any other task and I will do it, — oh, how willingly! 
 But wed another woman ! Not I ! I can and will choke back 
 this growing turmoil of passion, for I hold my friendship sacred 
 for your husband that is to be, but the girl who had sole keeping
 
 280 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 of my heart until 1 saw you has become a mere shadow in my 
 memory." 
 
 He struggled hard to speak in a matter-of-fact, matter-of- 
 course, everyday, commonplace way — and failed. Of course he 
 failed. It is a thing no man has ever yet done on purpose. He 
 answered her " Xow would it ? " with " Not very much, cer- 
 tainly ! " The words were well chosen, the manner in fault. 
 He was looking away from her as she glanced shrewdly at him. 
 He ought to have met her eyes. He was adding a supplementary 
 half-cough behind his hand, needlessly. He ought to have been 
 content to leave his words ungarnished. 
 
 Her observation of his manner apparently encouraged her to 
 say : — " I suppose it would be of no use for me to call on her 
 and . . . and represent to her . . " 
 
 The idea of such an interview scared Fred. He could not 
 trust Heaven to avert it in response to the unexpressed prayer 
 of a private individual. He must take action to stop it. " ily 
 dear Miss Hinchliffe," said he, " if you were to carry a petition 
 from me to Miss Fraser to reconsider her decision for both our 
 sakes ..." He stumbled and hesitated. Was he not man- 
 aging to say the exact opposite of what he wished? 
 
 Probably. Because she brightened and said : — " Oh, do let 
 me ! That is what I really should enjoy doing." 
 
 Fred hastened to correct the false impression. That he must 
 do at any cost. " Excuse me — I was going on," said he. " I 
 was going to say that I have no doubt you would be as likely 
 to influence her as myself. But — to put it plainly — I cannct 
 send that petition." 
 
 " Oh, how you have disappointed me ! " said Miss Hinchliffe. 
 
 " I am so very sorry. But what would you have? Now that 
 we have parted, by complete consent — for we are unanimous — 
 should I be consulting her interest, or my own, in trying to 
 renew relations which we both regard as completely at an end ? " 
 
 Now, the story has a conviction that had this young lady really 
 had an honest wish to relight the extinct fires of love for his 
 former idol on this young man's altar of sacrifice, she would 
 have availed herself of old materials for doing so. She would 
 have dwelt entirely on the cruel position of the deserted damsel, 
 would have pooh-poohed the idea that she could have been in 
 earnest in her renunciation of her lover ; would have " pointed 
 out" the share that pride and dignity — both false, perhaps — 
 might have had in influencing her action. She would have made 
 insidious suggestions based on the well-known fact that the least
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 281 
 
 suspicion of partiality on the part of her for him, or him for 
 her, will ignite a spark of counter-partiality in each, t'other way 
 round. But a brace of jealousies will play the same game back- 
 wards, and either will hark back and become love again that 
 suspects its fellow of being love in disguise. Manipulation of 
 this fact was possible. 
 
 Miss Lucy might also quite easily have " pointed out " that it 
 would be doing greater justice to his own noble nature to consult 
 Cintra's interests more than his own, and to credit her with a 
 sorrow at heart for the success of her hasty actions. Instead of 
 that she appeared to ascribe to her a stony indifference, whicli 
 however would probably yield to renewed efforts on Fred's part, 
 which she exhorted him to make on his own behalf. Was ohe 
 aware, or not, that the young man's soul had begun to discover 
 that Cintra v/as not an absolute necessity to it? The story, 
 keeping in view some remarks she made about Cintra after their 
 introduction, inclines to the belief that she was. She was quite 
 safe in exhorting him to try again, at any rate; and to do so 
 was to maintain the purity of her altruism. But she didn't want 
 Cintra in her house, or next door. Did she want Fred ? 
 
 Her exhortations to him to reinstate himself with Cintra 
 lasted round two sides of Regent's Park Square. Fred was 
 basking all that while in the sun of a dangerous happiness, with 
 a painful consciousness always that his enjoyment of the warmth 
 of its rays was almost criminal. Men v/lio have been saved from 
 the jaws of a lion have told of a strange anassthesia that enwraps 
 them, in the very throes of a terrible death ; how they have looked 
 this death in the face and felt no fear. Fred knew that his 
 growing passion for this girl meant to show him no mercy, even 
 as that lion meant none to his victim. It would devour him — 
 but what of that? The seductive moment was irresistible, and 
 he made no stand against its enchantment. And all the while 
 he was clinging to his belief in her utter unconsciousness of his 
 feelings, as a safeguard — his only safeguard — against himself. 
 If that unconsciousness were flawed in the least, even though 
 the complete indifference to himself that he imputed to her were 
 maintained intact, would it not undermine and destroy his rela- 
 tions with his friend? He fairly winced at the hint of some 
 passing imp that she too might . . . But no! — rather a breach 
 of the canon against self-slaughter than that! A traitor to his 
 old friend — never ! 
 
 He did not care very much what she was talking about. His 
 interest in Cintra had fallen to zero by now. She was a thing
 
 282 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 of the past; a mistake he had made once, whom it was an easy 
 duty to forget. This girl was a reality. Or rather, she was 
 reality itself. Everything was a mist, beyond the two eyes that 
 flashed their earnestness — real or assumed — ujoon him in the 
 blaze of that May sunset, and the lips that spoke with a voice 
 that made the roar of the London streets a meaningless murmur, 
 a stupid continuity he might be alive to again, or not, when 
 that voice ceased speaking. What was that it spoke of? Cintra ! 
 What was Cintra now ? 
 
 '' I see that it is no use my talking to you, Mr. Carteret. 
 I shall never persuade vou into the belief that you are mis- 
 taken. ..." 
 
 " We were mistaken, once. Or — how do you mean mistaken? " 
 
 '' In allowing yourself to be so easily discouraged." 
 
 Fred collected words for explicit speech. " The way you put 
 it does not give the facts correctly. Pardon me, dear Miss 
 Hinchliffe, if I seem to — to contradict you flatly. I must do it, 
 in the interests of truth ..." 
 
 " Which are always so valuable. Go on ! " 
 
 " The word discouragement conveys a false impression. It 
 does not apply to the position. I am ashamed to confess it, 
 but it is true for all that, that ..." It stuck in his throat, 
 nevertheless. 
 
 " You are never going to say that you have ceased to care 
 for her ? " 
 
 " Well — I was. At least, it amounts to that. ... I see 
 what you are going to say, but — allow me ! If I had never 
 known — as I most certainly do — that her own sentiments 
 towards me had changed, it would have been exactly the same. 
 I should have ceased to care for Cintra Fraser." 
 
 " Then there was a quarrel ! " 
 
 " There was no quarrel ! " 
 
 " Then there was some reason. Love never changed to Indif- 
 ference yet without a reason. Come, Mr. Carteret, you have 
 told me so much that if you keep anything back now, you will 
 only set me guessing — and I shall guess wrong ! Shall I help 
 you? There was a reason, and a very distinct reason. And 
 that reason was — another woman ! . . . I see I'm right." 
 
 For Fred was looking very like a handsome thief, detected. 
 She did not stop short, but continued : — " And Miss Fraser 
 knows, and knows who she is." 
 
 There Avas a kind of desperation in Fred's voice as he 
 answered: — " That is so. But not a living soul else knows it —
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 283 
 
 or ever will. Least of all the girl herself. ... I beg and pray 
 of you most earnestly^ dear Miss Hinchliffe, that you will ask me 
 no further questions about this. And — please ! — say nothing to 
 Charley about it. I shall tell him all I have told you, perhaps 
 more." 
 
 How much Miss Hinchliffe really knew, or suspected, who 
 shall say? She certainly knew all Fred had told her, and that 
 may have been as much as she sought to know. She acquiesced 
 readily in Fred's wish that she should ask no further questions, 
 saying : — " Very well, then ! I won't bother you any more, since 
 it's no use. But it's a terrible disappointment to me and to 
 Charley that we are not to live in our air-castle at The Cedars. 
 The next news will tell us that they have sold the place to 
 someone else. Exactly the sort of thing that always hapiDcns. 
 And we shall be doomed to some horrible house in a row, near 
 Hyde Park, I suppose. One thing I've quite settled, that we 
 won't go and live with mamma as she wants us to do. If there 
 is one place I hate more than another it is \Yimpole Street. 
 Besides, there are other objections." 
 
 They turned and walked back the way they had come, chatting 
 impersonally; and Fred recovered his equanimity. So far, that 
 is to say, as a man may be said to have an even mind who is, 
 painfully as well as pleasurably, conscious of enslavement. 
 Every word, every look, every smile was a new rivet in the 
 manacles that were — so far as he could see — to bind him for all 
 time. And purposelessly too, so far as he could assign a reason 
 to an unprovoked decree of a capricious Fate. Could he break 
 himself in, to bear the position it created, or would he have to 
 run away from his old friend, to escape from his wife? The 
 position would be maddening; it was so now, and would grow 
 worse with time. His only escape would be to run away from 
 himself and — there was the sting of it — from his old friend. 
 How would he account for his action to Charley? 
 
 A crazy thought fluttered in his distempered brain, as she 
 chatted on equably about the advantage to young coupTes of 
 keeping their relations out of their housekeeping; especially 
 their mothers, however dear. Fred's distraction was prompting 
 him to speculate as to whether a possible release from his 
 bondage might not be found in a bold declaration of his passion, 
 always in reliance on this girl's icy indifference to himself, her 
 immutable fidelity to his friend ! 
 
 But could that little drama be carried through without Charley 
 coming to the knowledge of it? The lady in Mrs. Browning's
 
 284 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 poem presumably never told her Walter anything about that 
 little stramash which came of the gentleman's diseased impulse 
 to confess the truth at any cost. He ought to have had urgent 
 business, calling him to London, or Paris, or Tokio. Anywhere 
 somewhere else ! Fred may have had sub-misgivings that he 
 could not rely on so stoical an indifference in the present case 
 as the lady's. Granting that Miss Hinchliffe appreciated 
 Charley as much as she did her Walter — why, his course would 
 be clear enough ! Open his heart out, listen patiently to a 
 psycho-ethical analysis of the position, and promise not to do so 
 any more. But, to do full justice to this scenario, ought not the 
 leading lady to be a cold-blooded prig? He dismissed the crazy 
 thought. 
 
 The silence which ended their half-hour's chat was almost 
 more trying to Fred than its subject-matter had been. He was 
 half in favour of feeling relieved when she ended it by turning 
 to him on the steps of her mother's house and saying, with a 
 lemon-coloured hand stretched out for farewell : — " Good-bye 
 then, as it's no use. But you will think it over again though 
 — won't you? Say you will." 
 
 A little indulgence that could do no harm, surely, to say in 
 a man-of-the-worldly kind of way : — " I will do any mortal 
 thing, ]\riss Hinchlift'e, to give you pleasure. But it won't be 
 any good." 
 
 She said again, with those eyes fixed dreamily upon him : — 
 " Good-bye then — as it's no use." 
 
 '• Goocl-bye, Miss Hinchliffe ! " He had just turned away 
 when her voice followed him, calling him by name. " Yes, Miss 
 Hinchlifl'e, what? " said he. 
 
 "' Oh, it's too sillv of me to drag vou back. Please never 
 mind ! " 
 
 "• But I cZo mind, ^^^lat was it? " 
 
 " x^lmost an absurd thing. But you have just called me it 
 twice." 
 
 "Called you what?" 
 
 " Called me ' Miss Hinchlift'e.' Do you know what I shall call 
 you next time I see Charley ? " 
 
 " No — yes I do, though I Probably ' Fred.' Because Charley 
 always insists on my speaking of you as . . . well ! — Lucy. 
 When we are talking together you know, no one else there ! '* 
 
 " What a sense of delicacy ! Considering my feelings, 
 quite ! " She laughed a silvery laugh, which Fred could answer 
 back. She continued : — " I can't say I've been as good a girl
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 285 
 
 as you have a boy. I cannot swear to having religiously spoken 
 of you as ' Mr. Carteret ' always — everywhere ! In fact, my 
 impression is that this very day I have talked of you as ' Fred ' 
 to that nice girl at your mother's — whom Charley hates, by the 
 way. ..." 
 
 " Oh— Elbows ! " 
 
 "I believe that is the horrible name you have thought fit to 
 apply to her." 
 
 " It was Charley's invention. I merely accepted it." 
 . " You should have resented it." 
 
 " It's only a sobriquet, you know. It doesn't imply any- 
 thing." Fred felt quite apologetic about this designation, for 
 which he was not responsible. His mind went sadly back to the 
 occasion of its first appearance as a nickname — the dance where 
 the two young men had met the two sisters — and their utter 
 unconsciousness of the things that were to be. He remembered 
 their walking homewards at an unearthly hour in the morning, 
 and how Charley chaffed him about the very pretty girl he had 
 stuck so close to all the evening, whose father was said to be 
 the Professor Fraser. And how, when he said that tlio tall 
 square girl was her sister, Charley said: — "What — Elbows?" 
 And he said was that her name? And Charley said: — "Don't 
 suppose it is! But don't you think it suits her?" That was 
 the genesis of that name, in the sweet light of a midsummer 
 morning, hours before the Milk, early enough in fact to be 
 nominally last night. Nearly two years since now ! To think 
 of all that had happened in those two years ! Fred felt very 
 old. 
 
 Would he not be glad — the thought was a flash in the mind's 
 pan, past in an instant — that he should awake now, as from a 
 dream, and only remember those beautiful eyes that held him in 
 thrall; those beautiful lips that were speaking to him, the 
 words they said, that seemed so much and were so little, as 
 the mischievous delusions of a night? But how far back would 
 he have the dream to go? When should sleep have come upon 
 him? Oh, he knew. He would have the dream begin from his 
 first sight of his friend's fiancee. Or, better still, from the hour 
 of his uncle's disappearance, that sombre background to every 
 thought in life. How he would rejoice to hear that draconie 
 voice again! But, for the girl that stood there before him, in 
 the dying evening glow, was it in hira to awaken from her 
 presence, and not wish to sleep again? 
 
 What were the beautiful lips saying, that he should miss tw« 
 
 19
 
 286 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 words of it? He had only lost some just condemnation of Nancy 
 Fraser's nickname — that was all. Peterfield, the butler, was 
 holding the door open for his young mistress to enter, with an 
 appearance on his face of respectful indignation at being kept 
 waiting. This man always seemed, Fred thought, to have just 
 come away from a Cabinet Council, and to want to get back, 
 
 " Now remember ! " said the lips, seriously, not jestingly. 
 " Next time, it is not to be Miss Hinchliffe. Let Charley have 
 his way — he likes it so. . . . Now — what is it to be, next 
 time?" 
 
 " Lucy. I suppose I'm not bound to wait till next time ? 
 Good-night, Lucy ! You'll see Charley before I shall — he's 
 coming this evening, isn't he? — so tell him how docile I was." 
 
 " All right ! I'll do you justice. Good-night . . . Fred ! " 
 She threw him his name, with a smile that went far to stultify 
 her stipulation that it was for Charley's sake. Was she aware, 
 all the while, that this trivial familiarity would have its zest, 
 for a victim?
 
 PART II
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 The Cedars was not rechristened when Mr. Charles .Snaith 
 and his beautiful young wife started Housekeeping there. What 
 did it matter to them that its high reputation as a lunatic asylum 
 had been earned for it under that name a hundred years ago. 
 The son of its first owner had died an old man fifteen years 
 since, and a clause in the lease had prohibited its use otherwise 
 than, as a dwelling-house by any tenant after that said first 
 lessee's death and that of the son whom he was educating to 
 his own profession. Its great size and the cost of repairs and 
 modernisations had no doubt stood in the way of the sale of 
 the remainder-lease ever since it came on the market; and it 
 was, in point of fact, considered very surprising that it should 
 have found a private tenant at all. 
 
 However, there on the lawn were the two noble Cedars of 
 Lebanon that gave it its name, well worth — so said Mrs. Charles 
 Snaith, the beauty, to her many visitors — at least half the two 
 thousand pounds mamma had paid for the twenty-two years 
 unexpired. So why change it? Also, owing to a special proviso 
 in the contract with the builder for repairs, the old porch of 
 lichened stone remained intact. For Mr. Snaith had brouglit 
 his legal acumen to bear on the phrasing of this contract, to 
 the effect that should the builder molest, injure, or alter in the 
 smallest degree one jot or one tittle of sundry features of the 
 building therein specified, he should reinstate same, antiquity 
 and all. within three months. It was unfortunate that he was 
 never called on to fulfil this condition. If it were only known 
 how to restore the antiquity of an ancient building, how happy 
 Archaeology would be ! 
 
 Charley Snaith had suffered many questionings of his inner 
 conscience as to whether he ought to allow — still less induce — 
 his friend Fred Carteret to supervise the numerous adjustments 
 and modifications needed to bring the old house up to date. It 
 would excruciate the soul of that young man, to the extent 
 perhaps of handicapping his omniscience, to be brought into 
 daily contact with comparisons of his original plans, those of 
 the contemplated joint tenancy, and the ones finally adopted. 
 Miss Hinchlift'e showed true delicacy of feeling, and shrank 
 
 289
 
 290 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 from reminding Mr. Carteret of the painful collapse of the 
 original castle-in-the-air. She was, however, keenly alive to the 
 fortitude and common sense which her husband's friend showed 
 about his extinct engagement. " He is so right," she said, " not 
 to allow himself to be influenced by nonsensical, unreal fancies. 
 It is your duty and mine, Charles, to assist him against himself. 
 . . . Dear me — how like a book I am talking ! " Neverthe- 
 less, Charles submitted, there was something to be said for the 
 text of that book. His conscience was at rest, keeping in view 
 its decision that it was his duty to assist Fred against 
 himself. 
 
 Would Fred have required any such assistance — supposing 
 that he really did, now — if his friend had been wedded with less 
 lustrous eyes, less pearly teeth, a less bewitching voice? Well — 
 how much less? After all, that's the point. 
 
 As much less, suppose we say, as Miss Skinner's, Cintra's 
 friend ! The story finds that this hypothesis throws a light on 
 the situation. For had it been a credible one, Fred surely would 
 not only have needed assistance, but compulsion, to induce him 
 to near the house at all. He would have been content to leave 
 the alterations to any builder, and to see his friend every day at 
 his chambers; for Charles did not end his connection with the 
 diggings, so called. As it was, he certainly seemed to require 
 no assistance against himself towards compliance with his 
 friend's wish that he should make the house his own. He might 
 have welcomed any help in the contrary direction had he become 
 alive to the danger of his position. He may have done so by 
 fits and starts. But misgivings about the safety of laisser-faire 
 never lasted long enough to make him take the only step that 
 would have been efficient against its perils. 
 
 It is easy to say now that he ought to have gone awa}' — ought 
 to have run from the self that he was when a three-days-a-week 
 guest at The Cedars, and found another and wiser self in change 
 and incident elsewhere. But who is qualified to preach upon 
 the subject except he has been in the same position? Think what 
 is meant by the clash between two of the strongest human affec- 
 tions in one human soul; the one of them the closest tie of 
 friendship that can link man to man, the other the pitiless 
 magnetism of mere beauty. For that describes in a word the 
 thraldom in which Fred had been entangled by Miss Hinchliffe; 
 still exercised by her, perhaps consciously, as Mrs. Charles 
 Snaith. And to Fred, Charley remained still the boy with a 
 large nose whom he took into his heart without reserve on the
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 291 
 
 very first day of their school life; who had been Pythias to his 
 Damon day by day and hour by hour ever since. 
 
 The sway of such a friendship is the most powerful influence 
 known to man, except the love of woman. And one variety 
 I of this last is as a burning fire; the sort that is kindled by what 
 the story had just called, in compliance with convention, mere 
 beauty. Why mere. Heaven knows, when it has all but the 
 power of gold — gold that can make foul fair, wrong right, base 
 noble, and warp the best man's heart against himself. It is 
 a love that calls for no return, a fire that rages with no fuel 
 beyond what sight and hearing can supply. It is strangely 
 independent of its object's sentiments; indeed, in some cases 
 that object's scorn only stimulates it. But it is omnipotent 
 for mischief, and he who speaks lightly of the Cyprian goddess 
 had best beware that he is well outside her realm. Many peace- 
 ful and blameless lives of men might have been quite otherwise 
 had Fate carried them to the neighbourhood of the Venus- 
 berg. 
 
 So the story asks you to pity Fred, not to blame him. Say, if 
 you will, that his good and evil Angels were at grips for his 
 soul, but admit that he himself was on the side of the former 
 — a constant backer. And note this — that it was impossible for 
 him to withdraw from the zone of danger, without also seeming 
 to fly from the zone of friendship. How could he account to 
 Charley for his change of front, if he abruptly ceased to make a 
 home of The Cedars? True, he might have been seized with a 
 sudden intense desire for foreign travel, and thereby given his 
 good Angel a chance for a right-swing home on the jaws of his 
 opponent. But how about his duty to his mother? A short 
 absence would be useless. Indeed, could any absence be long 
 enough? And how could he leave her alone, to brood over the 
 past, to nurse the nightmare imagination of his uncle's murder 
 — murder, perhaps; unexplained death, certainly — while he 
 ranged free over the wide world? 
 
 If she would have consented to accompany him, all ends might 
 have been served. And no doubt she would have done so had 
 he said to her : — " I am distracted for love of my friend's wife, 
 and cannot get out of range of her eyes that madden me, her 
 voice that cuts me like a knife; and 1 cannot make my friend 
 the confidant of my reason for doing so. Help me by assenting 
 to my conviction, and his, that you would benefit by a complete 
 change of scene, and so warrant my absence as your companion." 
 But it was impossible for him even to hint at more than the last
 
 292 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 suggestion of this. He managed to get so far, certainl3^ But 
 his mother stopped him peremptorily. She was all in favour of 
 his going, but nothing would induce lier to leave home; not even 
 the pleasure of showing her son the old Flemish towns where 
 she and her husband had spent their hone^anoon thirty-odd 
 years ago. To go away with the terrible burden of this undis- 
 covered mystery upon her of her brother-in-law's death — she 
 always spoke of it as a certainty — would be no relief or relaxa- 
 tion to her. Nothing would be that, except illumination as to 
 its cause. That she was convinced he had been murdered only 
 made matters worse. If she could have believed any of the 
 theories of accidental death that had been launched without data 
 &l any sort, she would have been as happy in one place as 
 another, and would have accompanied her son for his sake; but 
 he must take her word for it that she was happiest in her own 
 home, where the Doctor would find all unchanged if — if — some 
 strange combination of unknown events should come to light, 
 and yield him up, after all, uninjured. 
 
 Let anyone who has ever had a difficult confession to make 
 say how he would have had Fred Carteret word such a one as 
 his would have been, even to his own mother. 
 
 For him, the secret communings with himself — a regular 
 system of self-torture whenever he found himself alone — always 
 ended the same way. The easiest and the only course open to 
 him was to live his life out as best he might, always making 
 dissimulation absolute in the presence of his friend. That was 
 the one great point he had to keep in view. Like the Spartan 
 bitten beneath his cloak by the fox he was concealing, Fred 
 choked back every approach to an expression of pain. So long 
 as lie conceived that his passion was unsuspected by its object, 
 his was no half-hearted secrecy. As for poor Charley, he was 
 unsuspicion itself. 
 
 And the creator of all this turmoil, how far was she aware 
 of her handiwork? The story hesitates to say. Is it possible that 
 that very disagreeable woman whom Mrs. Browning imagined 
 into a position much like that of Mrs. Lucy Snaith was all the 
 while chuckling in her inmost heart to think how great her 
 power was over this fool of a man? Him and his love, forsooth! 
 Look at her position of vantage! How could anything assail it? 
 What had she been guilty of, except existence? And yet, had 
 she been brought to trial before a jury of her own sex, which 
 «f the jurywomen would have acquitted her? And among her 
 own friends even, would not one or two have been found to say
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 293 
 
 that Sukey — or Sophonisba, or whatever her name was — knew 
 perfectly well what she was about all the time? 
 
 However, the story hopes. That is all it can do, with its 
 very imperfect information about the inmost souls of its char- 
 acters. Perhaps Lucy Snaith was innocence itself, at this date 
 — was utterly in the dark about her husband's friend's inner- 
 most, and its perturbations. Perhaps her smiles were only meant 
 for his outworks; her rich voice for his ears only, not for his 
 heart. Perhaps, when he was pending, she never stood before a 
 mirror thinking what that beautiful form would look best in, 
 or schemed a vision for his eyes before she went to dress. 
 Perhaps. 
 
 " I tell you what, Fred," said Charley one evening, as they 
 ended the week with a pipe apiece, like Corydon and Alexis: — 
 " You'll have to persuade your mother to go away somewhere 
 for a change. If she sticks on at the Vale, peaking and pining 
 about this business ... Oh yes, I know ! It's an awful busi- 
 ness! . . . she won't do any good, and she'll be an old woman 
 in a year or so. Then, all of a sudden, the Doctor will turn 
 up, and it'll all be wasted." 
 
 " What will all be wasted ? " 
 
 " All her peaking and pining. All thrown away ! " 
 
 This, or something near it, was a sort of standard conver- 
 sation, to be continued or not. Fred's reply was continuation, 
 of a sort. '* Do you mean to say, Charley, that you expect ever 
 to see the old Doctor alive again? . . . No, I expect you don't 
 — any more than I do." This last was a private record of 
 inner conviction, whatever his friend might say. 
 
 But Charley was not going to yield the point. '' My dear 
 Frederic," said he, " you are not looking at the thing from the 
 right angle. A great deal turns — as you ought to know, con- 
 sidering you are an engineer — on the angles people look at 
 things from. Have the goodness to look — metaphorically — 
 over my shoulder, and endeavour to see the thing as I S2e it. 
 I share the conviction of each of my fellow-creatures, that 
 everyone else will benefit bv seeing things as he sees them." 
 
 "Cut along, old Prosy!" 
 
 This seemed an appeal for seriousness, and was accepted as 
 such. "' Have you had any further conversation with Manton 
 about the case — the police officer? " Charley waited, his pipe 
 in his fingers and his eyes on his friend, as though something 
 turned on his question. 
 
 No, I haven't. Why?" 
 
 a
 
 294 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Because I have. I saw him last week. I didn't mention it, 
 for fear of making too much of it. But you may just as well 
 know what he said. He had called at Trymer's to take instruc- 
 tions about another business, and when he had got them I 
 asked him what he thought now about your case. To my sur- 
 prise his answer was : — " I think just what I thought three 
 months after Dr. Carteret's disappearance. He might turn up 
 at any moment." Trymer asked him what his views were as 
 to the possible cause of such a disappearance, and he said he had 
 none. ' Then/ said Trymer, ' how on earth can you believe his 
 reappearance possible ? ' " 
 
 " Ah — how could he ? I thought him a muddle-headed sort 
 of chap." 
 
 " He's sharper than you think. There's something to be said 
 for his view of the matter. ... I was trying to tliink of his 
 exact words. ..." 
 
 " I should certainly like to know them." 
 
 " He said : — ' You think I'm talking nonsense, Mr. Trymer. 
 But I assure you that in all the dozen or so of disappearances 
 I have known, the guesswork about the cause has been all wrong 
 in at least four-fifths of the cases. As for the odd fifth, the 
 parties that guessed right always had something to guide 'em. 
 We've got nothing ! " 
 
 " Almost nothing! " 
 
 " Well— what have we ? " 
 
 " H'm — well ! — at least we know where he was last seen. In 
 this very identical house." 
 
 " How does that help us ? " 
 
 Fred tried to look as if what he was going to say would be 
 very convincing when he uttered it. But he had not thought of 
 what it was to be; and when Charley said, as one who expects 
 enlightenment: — "Well?", he had no answer ready. So he 
 said he didn't know th'at it did come to much after all, when 
 you came to think of it. 
 
 " Comes to notliing," said his friend. " And yet it remains 
 the only trace of a clue — if it can be called a clue — that we 
 have." Then, as the conversation had gravitated into a well- 
 worn channel, it lapsed. The two young men smoked over it 
 reflectively, until a corollary suggested itself. 
 
 " I wonder," said Fred, " if those two old images are still 
 come-at-able. You know who I mean? The caretakers who 
 had come for a month or so, and lived here a decade or so. 
 What's become of them?"
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 295 
 
 " Didn't I — hear — my missus — say," said Charley, with slow 
 consideration, — " that some means of tracing these images still 
 existed? I'm pretty sure she did, but whether it was through 
 an individual or a corporate body of some sort, I couldn't say. 
 The exact expression my wife used was : — ' The Wash knows.' " 
 
 " Can it be approached — the Wash — and enquiry made ? " 
 Fred asked doubtfully, as though his question referred to the 
 Bank of England or the Privy Council. 
 
 " I am told that it comes in person on Friday evenings in its 
 cart, for it has a cart. I suspect it of being the same thing that 
 talks continuously in the kitchen for an hour, chiefly reporting 
 conversations it has had elsewhere. I have heard it, through 
 open windows, in my dressing-room, so I know. It cannot be 
 communicated with directly; there must be an intercessor and 
 mediator." 
 
 " Would not . . ." Fred began. 
 
 " Lu know ? " Her husband finished the question, filling in 
 the name for his friend as he often did, to a peculiar pause, 
 which he had become very familiar with. " Yes — she must be 
 the intercessor and mediator. Suppose we go and ask her ! 
 Done 3-our pipe ? " Fred had come to the end of it, or said so, 
 and the two sought the drawing-room. 
 
 " Come at last ! " said the beautiful young mistress of The 
 Cedars, stretching herself and yawning like any schoolboy. Of 
 course we all know that it's unladylike to stretch, because it takes 
 the arms away from the sides, and invites the confidence of the 
 Universe about one's outline. But it may be done gracefully 
 or ungracefully, however disgracefully. Lucy's method was con- 
 sistent with the first, and claimed exemption from the third, 
 as there was no company. Fred was not company; no house-cat 
 was more apprivoisL 
 
 " I don't see that we are so very late," says the master of the 
 house, humbly. " It's not ten yet." 
 
 " I relied upon you," says the young lady to Fred, reproach- 
 fully. " However, I forgive you this once, now you have come." 
 She forgave him with both eyes, as the stretch abated, ending 
 in a slight counterstretch downwards, and a repressed yawn. 
 " What am I to sing, please ? " The question Was nearly one long 
 word, spoken through the yawn without consonants. 
 
 Her husband, by this time seeking for the leader in the Morn- 
 ing Post, said absently but cheerfully : — "" Sing^ sing, what shall 
 I sing? I say, I always wonder whether that party got the 
 pudding-string back from the cat, or not."
 
 296 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Lucy ignored the remark. ** What shall I?" said she to Fred 
 exclusively. Charley was rather outside the music zone, and 
 did not resent this, but settled ,down to his leader. Presently, 
 however, he remembered something, as his wife and friend to- 
 gether turned over Italian music of two hundred years ago, 
 wavering between this and that. " By-the-bye," said he — " those 
 two old fogies ! " 
 
 His wife said: — '"Those two old whats?" And Fred said: — 
 " Oh, ah yes — by the way ! How about Mr. and Mrs. Klem ? " 
 For this name had been substituted for that of Grewbeer in 
 honour of Dickens's caretakers in the " Uncommercial Trav- 
 eller." 
 
 Charles explained. " The deaf parties. The old woman who 
 was' the owner of a sink. Don't you remember, Lu? Why, she 
 very nearly put you off taking the house ! " The lady remem- 
 bered, with expression of abhorrence for an unforgotten flavour. 
 "■' Well — didn't I understand that these parties could be traced ; 
 in fact, that their whereabouts was known to a person, or per- 
 sons, or company, or confederation, or league, or firm, known 
 as ^The Wash'?" 
 
 " I suppose you mean the laundress. Very likely she knows. 
 You must ask Modicum to ask her, when she brings the wash 
 on Friday. She sees her. What do you want with the care- 
 takers?" But the lady did not wait for an answer, going back 
 to Stradella and Galuppi. " It's a tenor song, " Star vicino.' 
 But of course I can sing it if you particularly want it." Then 
 she harked back, as though further reflection had roused curi- 
 osity. •* Well, Charles, aren't you going to tell us — what you 
 want with the caretakers, I mean ! " She had already come to 
 treat her husband as most ladies do, in a year or so ; a harmless 
 creature he, with strange fads, to be tolerated when the lady 
 has time for toleration, not otherwise. 
 
 " Fred wants 'em. Wants to keep 'em in sight, anyhow." 
 Charles was trying to read the leader at the same time, so he | 
 treated the subject as lapsable, and lapsed it. Fred nodded an 
 affirmative to Lucy's look of enquiry, and added explanation: — 
 " You see, the old woman was the very last person who set eyes 
 on my uncle. It's no clue, because it's known that he left the 
 house. But I don't want to lose touch with her — in case ..." 
 
 ChaHes laid down his paper to correct an important point. 
 " Not the very last person ! " said he. " Because the boy — sup- 
 posing his denial of the fact to be false — saw him go out of the 
 gate towards Wimbledon."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 297 
 
 " But he didn't speak to him? " This was liis wife. 
 
 Fred said : — " That's what I meant. One means ' talk ' by 
 'see.' As for the boy, lie must have seen him go out. Most 
 likely he didn't stay to mind the horse at all, and won't confess 
 up. He went off after a friend. After all, a boy's a boy." 
 
 " Yes, I don't think much of the boy's evidence, one way or 
 the other. But anyway, Dr. Carteret went out of the house, or 
 lie would be in it still, to a certainty." Fred saw, but the 
 speaker did not notice, his wife's slight movement of protest 
 or dissent — or rather change of expression — but continued : — 
 '• The Wash may be legitimately asked to furnish Mrs. Klem's 
 address, anyhow. You'll see to it, dearest, won't you?" But 
 his wife's attention was already given to her search for a song, 
 and he had to resay his last words : — '* Won't you, dearest ? " 
 
 " Oh yes — let me see — the old caretaker's address. You must 
 remember to remind me when Modicum's here. Mind you do ! " 
 The song was found in a volume, and taken to the piano. Fred 
 followed to turn the pages. He is her slave, but his slavery is a 
 misery to him. He cannot see the end of it. 
 
 He almost hopes she will keep those eyes on the song. And 
 yet when they come round full upon him he accepts their intoxi- 
 cation, for how can he do otherwise? " Have I not an uncom- 
 fortable husband?" she asks; at first, to Fred, inexplicably. 
 Then in answer to his evident incomprehension, she explains. 
 " So creepy to say . . . You don't mind mv talking about it? " 
 
 " No— why should I ? " 
 
 " To say that if Dr. Carteret didn't go out of the house he 
 must be in it still ! Don't you think so ? " 
 
 " I'm not sure that I see why, exactly." 
 
 " It seemed to me an idea to have cold creeps about. That's 
 all." She adjusted the music on the piano, but used the time 
 occupied in doing so to say to Fred, for his ears only : — " Who's 
 to know that that boy isn't speaking the truth ? " 
 
 Fred said: — "Does it make any difference?" But the 
 leader-reader had caught the upshot, and said over his shoul- 
 der : — " Of course it doesn't ! The fact that a boy hasn't seen 
 a person go out of a house proves nothing. It's the most nega- 
 tive evidence possible. But the fact that a person is known not 
 to be in a house is positive evidence that he's gone out of 
 it." 
 
 " I s-see," said his wife, languidly, to show lier indifference 
 to such subjects. But the sting of her indifference, like the 
 poison in the rattlesnake's tail, was in her postscript. " How
 
 298 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 long does it take to know that a person isn't in a house?" she 
 asked. " Can you do it right off ? " 
 
 Her husband saw shoal-water ahead, and starboarded — or 
 ported — his helm. " It's more a matter of practice, my love, 
 than evidence," said he. " One is practically certain a person 
 isn't in a house when one has lived in it without seeing him 
 long enough." 
 
 " If one is grown up, I suppose? " 
 
 " Don't understand." 
 
 " I understand that boys not seeing people come out of houses 
 proved nothing. So I suppose the persons who don't see them 
 inside the houses must be grown up, to prove anything." 
 
 " I say, Luce ! — you're horribly sharp. Isn't she, Fred ? — 
 sharp as a razor." He was proud of his wife's cleverness — 
 which Fred more than admitted — but always with reservations, 
 in the background,' connected with the fact that women's wits, 
 compared with men's, are hors de concours. To Fred, her bril- 
 liancy seemed dazzling. Why is it that, when men are entranced 
 by a woman's beauty, the slightest manifestation of human 
 intelligence on her part is regarded by their devotee as 
 miraculous ? 
 
 Charley became absorbed in his leader. Mrs. Hinchliffe, 
 who hacl been reading and dozing on the sofa-chair, took her 
 candle and retired for the night. Mrs. Charles, remarking that 
 she was not going for a long time yet, found another song to 
 
 smg. 
 
 Fred, fatally absorbed, hung on every note. This was all in 
 harmony with what had gone on every evening Fred spent at 
 The Cedars; and those evenings were many. Charles was so 
 glad his friend and his wife should be so like brother and sister. 
 
 He went into the library to get a book, and couldn't find it 
 offhand. The song finished in his absence, and the singer turned 
 to her enthralled listener, saying rather to his surprise, for he 
 thought the subject forgotten : — " It doesn't make Charles un- 
 comfortable. Odd — isn't it? " He had no doubt what she was 
 referring to. The book seeker was far enough off, turning over 
 leaves, so it was not the fear of being overheard that kept Fred 
 from saying: — "No — why should he be uncomfortable?" It 
 was the fact that he himself never entered the house without 
 the thought crossing his mind that he would be so much better 
 satisfied had his uncle been traced to some place he only knew 
 by name, and had never set foot in. That image of Dr. Carteret, 
 as Mrs. Grewbeer had reported on him, talking to himself at this 
 
 I
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 299 
 
 end of the long passage to the greenhouse, refused to make its 
 exit from the chambers of Fred's imagination. 
 
 So he left Charles's oddness, or otherwise, an open question, 
 and took refuge in generalities. It was, of course, all nervous 
 fancy, because we knew, practically, that the missing man had 
 gone away to Wimbledon to catch the five-thirty from Waterloo. 
 But what a powerful agency nervous fancy was ! He confessed 
 to the way in which his own got possession of him. Charley 
 was exactly the same, only he wouldn't admit it. He thought 
 it was his duty to pooh-pooh things, and call them subjective. 
 After all, what was more subjective than a nightmare, and what 
 misery was more grievous than a bad one? 
 
 Mrs. Lucy, still seated at the piano, listened unimpressed — so 
 it seemed — to the gentleman's dutiful recital of indisputable 
 truths. Her beautiful left hand touched the notes of some 
 phrase that remained unheard, tantalising the keys. She played 
 it over again in a short silence that followed ; then said with her 
 dangerous eyes behind their dropped lids, looking down on her 
 fingers : — " Are we so nervous then, you and I, Fred ? I had 
 not thought so — not of myself, at least." And Fred half formed 
 in his inmost heart a prayer that those eyes would keep in 
 ambush, with that gold ring on the piano-hand's third finger 
 all but exclaiming aloud : — " Remember me ! " 
 
 The story's aim is to dwell, so far as may be, on moments 
 like this, that its reader may find excuse for this young man. 
 It finds many, itself; scarcely perhaps in this one instance, so 
 much as in its sequel. 
 
 For his infatuation, or his Evil Star, or both, egged him on 
 to an analysis most safely left alone — symptoms are always 
 perilous ! — and made him say : — " Perhaps I didn't mean ner- 
 vous fancies exactly in that sense. I was referring to a tendency 
 of the mind. The expression — as it is used — connects itself 
 with fever — something feverish. ..." 
 
 Lucy suddenly raised her eyes from her jewelled fingers; 
 unmasked a concealed battery, as it were ! " Am / feverish ? " 
 said she. " Feel my pulse, and be convinced ! " A dowdy of 
 heartfelt stuffiness might have done this unblamed. But to 
 stretch out such a hand as that, backed by such a glance, 
 endorsed by such a smile ! Was it fair ? 
 
 Fred could not take flight. That was not open to him. 
 
 But he would have done so if he could. Standing committed 
 as he did to whatever falsehood was necessary to the only part 
 possible to him — that of cold friendship — it was clear that the
 
 300 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 more thoroughly he played the part the better. Ho accepted the 
 role of medical attendant for the nonce, and drew out his watch, 
 which had a second hand. 
 
 "Feeling pulses? What's the fun?" Thus Charley, coming 
 all unconscious from the next room with a captured book. His 
 good-humoured acquiescence in anything — in everything — had a 
 kind of reassurance in it for Fred. Clearly, his own ignes 
 suppnsiti were idiosyncrasy. A normal, reasonable man could 
 touch that hand without a tremor, could meet those eyes without 
 flinching. 
 
 " Never you mind, Mr. Inquisitiveness ! " says the lady. 
 "Seventy something, isn't it, Fred? It's sure to be that. I 
 know that much ! " Fred reports seventy-four, and puts his 
 watch away. " Now, what's yours? " 
 
 But Fred won't keep his watch out. " It's no use comparing 
 it with mine," says he. " Mine always gallops." Then to 
 Charley, amused but awaiting enlightenment: — "You see, ner- 
 vousness was under discussion, and I said one might suffer from 
 mental nervousness without what is commonly called by the 
 name — physical nervousness. ..." 
 
 " You said " — thus Lucy, striking in — " that nervousness and 
 feverishness were much of a muchness. And I said I wasn't 
 feverish — witness mv pulse ! That's where we got to pulses — 
 Fred and I." 
 
 "Are you satisfied, old chap?" says Charley. 
 
 Fred laughs. " Lucy's as cool as any cucumber/' he says. 
 " But that proves my position." 
 
 " Which is ? " 
 
 " That one may be mentally nervous without any fererish- 
 ness at all." 
 
 "What's the mental nervosity this time?" says the subject's 
 husband, caressing her. "What are we in a stew about?" 
 
 " Nothing. . . . It's late. Suppose we go to bed ! " 
 
 "All right. But what is it? Mustn't I be told? " 
 
 " Not by me. Fm going to bed. Fred must tell you. Ask 
 him." This had to be enough for the moment. 
 
 Now, it must be understood that the sitting-room where this 
 conversation took place was a passage-room; had a door at 
 either end. The two flights of stairs gave a choice of which 
 end of a lobby a stair-climber preferred. The obvious one for 
 Mrs. Charles Snaith's exit was the one further from the main 
 staircase; and nearest to the back staircase, near Mrs. Klem's 
 former quarters. For some reason, this time, she chose the
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 301 
 
 latter — the much longer way. But her candle was in the other 
 lobby, and Charles must get it for her. Competition ensued for 
 the privilege of discovering and lighting it, and Fred reached 
 the door first, going away through the room beyond, candle 
 seeking. 
 
 In his absence, the talk ran as follows : 
 
 " I say, sweetheart, of course a real lady has a right to go to 
 bed up any staircase she likes, but when her candlestick's at 
 the South Pole ..." 
 
 " It's her concern, anyhow. You know mamma has heard 
 from Lady Humphrey Pordage, whose odious dinner-party is 
 put off. Isn't it a blessing?" 
 
 " An awful blessing ! With every sentiment of respect, esteem, 
 and veneration for her ladyship — damn Lady Humphrey 
 Pordage ! . . . But I sa}' — look here ! Be a ducky darling and 
 tell me reasons why. I mean why you like that staircase so 
 much better than the other." 
 
 " Never mind ! " 
 
 " Yes — but do tell your loving husband. Remember he may 
 beat you with any stick no thicker than his thumb ! " 
 
 " Silly Charles ! . . . Well — you know perfectly well. It's 
 that dreadful old man of Fred's. We've been talking about him 
 and it's brought it all back." 
 
 " But — you goosey ! — he was ever so far on. I mean when 
 the old sink proprietor saw the last of him. He was out away 
 near the green'us." 
 
 " Well — I know that as well as you do. But he had Just 
 come down by the big stairs. You said Old Sinkey said so. 
 There's Fred." It was, and the conversation ended. The lady 
 departed. 
 
 This narrative aims at Psychology. So it may note as curious 
 a memory that stirred in Fred's mind at this moment. A dis- 
 tinct recollection of a day-dream of two years ago crossed it; a 
 day-dream of the double household and the young mistresses 
 ■of each, each on her own staircase; the fair one — the might-Iiavo- 
 been — painfully inferior to the one that had become a reality ! 
 There on that stairway, a few yards olf, was she at this moment, 
 where his fancy had placed her two years ago ! 
 
 Would it luive been harder to stilie his underlying fires had 
 Cintra become his wife? Had lie and she been man and wife 
 now, in the halved house with the doubled household, would 
 the ashes that concealed them now have been one whit more 
 treacherous, the cinis one particle more dolosusf But how about 
 
 23
 
 302 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 the duplicit}^ of his concealment then; its activity of simulation, 
 set against the passivity of mere dissimulation 7ioiv? The last 
 was possible, he knew, though difficult. Would his powers as 
 an actor have been sufficient for the former part? No — Cintra 
 had acted wisely in forestalling and avoiding the situation. 
 
 Forsake Psychology, and go back to fact. \Yhen the two 
 young men were left alone after the young lady's departure^ her 
 husband turned to his friend, saying: — " Eum, isn't it?" 
 
 " What's rum ? " said Fred. 
 
 " The way Lu wrong-sherries "—an obvious perversion of a 
 French word, quite understandable — " over that unfortunate 
 knowledge of where Dr. Carteret was last seen. It quite spoils 
 one side of the house. I wish to gracious goodness I had never 
 told her of it." 
 
 " Couldn't one do anj^thing ? " • 
 
 "Do what?'' Fred couldn't say, and Charles continued: — 
 " I know she has got a fixed image in her mind of the old boy 
 coming down those stairs, based on Mrs. Drewbeer — Strewbeer — 
 Grewbeer — Mrs. Klem's statement, in fact." Fred could under- 
 stand that, he said. He himself was subject to ideas of the 
 sort, associating people with places. Charles added, '' Then she 
 walks the image on as far as Mrs. Klem's evidence goes, and it 
 gets stuck, just at this end of the greenhouse passage." 
 
 Fred said, after reflection: — "I suppose if the untruthful boy 
 had testified that he saw my uncle on his way to Wimbledon, 
 that would have set her mind at rest." 
 
 " Yes — she would have been able to think of your uncle 
 striding along the main road to catch the five-thirty. As it is 
 — I can't say for certain of course, but I suspect it's true for 
 all that — she has got it on her mind that your uncle never . . . 
 It's quite crazy, you know — a sort of waking nightmare. A day- 
 mare, as you m.ight say ! " 
 
 "Cut along, old boy! That my uncle never — what? What 
 didn't he do?" 
 
 " That 3'our uncle never left the house at all ! " Charles 
 spoke in rather a subdued way, and watched Fred to see what 
 effect this idea would have on him. It had never been hinted at, 
 except as an example of the impossible ; but for all that, Charles 
 felt shy of propounding it, in case it should get hold of Fred's 
 mind, and work disquiet in it. His wife's dayniare might be 
 infectious. 
 
 "Never left the house at all!" Fred repeated, but uncom- 
 fortably. " Well — we can dismiss tliat. But the question is.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 303 
 
 can't we do anything to disabuse — her?" Fred nodded towards 
 the door Lucy had gone out by. 
 
 '' Oh no — hardly necessary. She'll forget all about it soon 
 enough." 
 
 " It's a good long time. More than a year, anyhow." 
 
 " The only thing I can see," said Charley, with slow consid- 
 eration, '■' is to get at that boy, and make him testify." 
 
 "' Suppose he testifies wrong ? Suppose he sticks to his story, 
 I mean." 
 
 " Yes — that's a fix. But he only says he didn't see your 
 uncle, after all. What we want is someone who did see him, 
 and saw him go out. If anyone would only be so good as to 
 tliinl: he saw him, that would set Lu's mind at rest. Would it 
 be any good to try to convince the old man that he or his wife 
 must have seen him go out because he unquestionably did go 
 out? He would recollect seeing him for a pound, no doubt. But 
 one isn't exactly Sampson Brass. ... I say, it's getting on for 
 one o'clock to-morrow morning." 
 
 They lighted candles and departed to rest, making a parade 
 of going the usual way, up the main staircase. But a restless 
 spirit was on them about the old unsolved mystery, that would 
 not let them ignore the place that Avas mixed up with it. At 
 the foot of the stairs Fred stopped and looked along the passage 
 to his left. He never passed it without an uncanny conscious- 
 ness of its story, and how his mind was full of it. The image 
 of the vanished man was on him, and oppressed him. If, by 
 some strange turn of events, his old guardian should reappear, 
 safe and well, how would he answer his enquiries about things 
 that had happened in his absence? He could fit Ihe speech: — 
 '*' xVnd what became of the madhouse, nephew?" so easily to 
 the magisterial voice that had become, provisionally at least, a 
 thing of the Past. 
 
 Charley answered his pause, as though it had been speech. 
 '• One sees exactly how it is," said he. " It's because there's a 
 kink in the passage, and he was just round the corner. If one 
 saw the place itself, and saw there was no one there, it wouldn't 
 give anyone the jumps. I can quite understand Lu's idea. If I 
 was a delicate female, no doubt I should feel precisely the same. 
 ... I say, how would it be to put a curtain across the 
 passage ? " 
 
 '■' Make it worse ! " said Fred, decisively. " When I was a 
 small kid, I was always frightened at what was on the other side 
 of a curtain. No — a door, if you like ! "
 
 304 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Well, then, a door. Ix)ts of room for it ! Too much.'' 
 
 " We could make it up with panelling. All that's easy." 
 Obviously so. 
 
 Any scheme for an alteration in a house is fascinating, even 
 at two in the morning, and Fred produced his invariable foot- 
 rule, to allot the proportions to that door and its panellings. 
 " You see," said the architect ; " this was the wall of the old 
 house, and when they cut through it to connect with the new bit 
 they put a bressummer across. So a seven-foot door will work in 
 nicely without any panelling across the top. That's a partition 
 you are up against, put in when they made the passage. It's 
 carried on a small ijirder over the kitchen." 
 
 " I see," said Charley. "Of course that's why the kitchen's 
 such a jolly lot larger than the room above it. They didn't cut 
 -a passage off." 
 
 " They didn't want one. There would be nowhere to go to. 
 The new building's all above ground." 
 
 " Are you sure? Isn't there a cellar? " 
 
 "No cellar — quite sure! Why — look here!" The solid 
 resistance to his heel, as he struck it down on the floor, said 
 <?oncrete inexorably. 
 
 Charles looked doubtful. "I thought," said he, "that I 
 heard hollowness underneath, in the long passage, the other 
 day." 
 
 "Where?" said Fred. 
 
 " Try it and see ! " Charles passed him, and turned round 
 the corner, where the old Doctor had been left by Mrs. Klem, 
 stamping on the ground to detect hollowness. But he was little 
 over half-way, when he stopped short, saying: — "Yes — what?" 
 For Fred had called after him, inexplicably. And, still more 
 inexplicably, he now said, as his friend came back for explana- 
 tion : — " What did you sing out for, Charley, to me — just now? " 
 
 "' I sav, Fred, this won't do ! This is the lunatics asrain. Do 
 vou know that I never so round that corner without vour hearing 
 me sing out? I never sang out." 
 
 " Yes — YOU did. At least, I heard vou. I thought vou had 
 struck ile — at least, struck vacuum. Eather rum ! " 
 
 " Very rum ! . . . I say, there's the missus calling. We 
 shall catch it. Come along ! " 
 
 At the stair-top, as they hurried bedwards, "was a vision of 
 beauty. Its lips parted to say: — " Oh dear! — what a fright you 
 two foolish men have siven me ! I thought something was the 
 matter." Its hair fell back in great rich clusters, over a mys-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 305 
 
 terious Oriental overwrap, that glistened like a tropical snake. 
 Its reproachful eyes flashed through many stray hairs, a scat- 
 tered crowd that failed to hide them. It was not a vision to 
 sleep upon, but to lie restless and feverish awake about. Fred 
 was in no hurry to get to bed ; and when he did, he made a poor 
 show of a night's rest. 
 
 At least, there was one consolation. The man that took her 
 in his arms, and Jcissed those lips for apology and consolation, 
 was Charley, his friend of friends. How it would have mad- 
 dened Fred had he been any other man I
 
 CHAPTEE XX 
 
 The little dachshund at Maida Vale had passed a large 
 fraction of his short life since the story saw him last. That is 
 the worst of dogs, they live so fast, or get through their lives 
 so soon — put it which way you will. The cat, self-ahsorbed and 
 immutable, was philosophically unconcerned at this, and at 
 everything else, so long as the Purveyor of her Meat — who also 
 claimed to serve the Royal Family — left the same at the house 
 each morning, impaled on a skewer by an expert, who knew 
 exactly how much. She has got over her suspicion of the new 
 servant — for Lipscombe had found an opportunity of bettering 
 herself v/ithout growing — and was satisfied that Jane the par- 
 lour maid in esse ate none off the skewer before allotting their 
 respective shares to herself and Liebig. That young woman was 
 bony and knucklesome, and one of her eyes had an appearance 
 of having been taken out and put back recently, so that she had 
 scarcely had time to get used to it. When asked what she would 
 prefer to be called, she had professed indifference, but had 
 thrown out — for the guidance of her new mistress — that she had 
 been called Ogden in her last place. Mrs. Carteret having de- 
 murred to this, as almost too drastic a name for a young woman, 
 she had consented to Jane, and had been Jane for three months 
 at the date of the story. 
 
 Otherwise, nothing had changed but the colour of the hair 
 of the mistress of the house. It was not quite white; but it 
 meant to be, and every one of her friends knew what was at work 
 to cause the change. The Artistic part of them did not com- 
 plain, but the contrary. Miss Values, at her Studio, said to Mr. 
 Treatment, who had looked in from his, five hundred Studios 
 down — these names and figures are wrong, but no matter : — 
 " Ought we not, Pindar, don't you know, to be grateful for 
 Trouble when it contributes to Beauty?" For Mr. Treatment 
 was an old friend, and much her junior, so she called him by 
 his Christian name. And he repeated her words later to an 
 ally, with the comment: — " The Old Cat wasn't wrong, for once; 
 only I wish she wouldn't trot out her gormy daubs and ask for 
 my honest opinion of them. Because I have to tell all sorts of 
 rotten lies." 
 
 306
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 307 
 
 The Old Cat in question was certainly right this time, for 
 there could be no doubt of the addition to Mrs. Carteret's beauty, 
 and little if any of the cause of it. Her face did not suffer, for 
 a slight accent laid by Xature on its bone-structure was only 
 another Beauty, of a new sort. But her son, whose aesthetic 
 education was imperfect, derived no consolation from these 
 facts. His Philistine soul would have rejoiced to know that 
 the weight of their great trouble was growing less, and sparing 
 hers. For her part, she was always cheerful in her words to 
 him, so far as circumstances could be ignored to cheerfulness- 
 point. But he discredited this as parti pris for his sake, and 
 indeed that was all tliat it was. 
 
 Nancy Fraser was a constant visitor at the Vale, staying the 
 night as often as not; for a room upstairs was by now familiarly 
 spoken of as " Miss Fraser's apartment." Her presence was an 
 embarrassment to Fred, although he did his best to conceal it. 
 If you put yourself in his place you will easily understand this. 
 There may be young men who after an engagement to marry, 
 broken off, have maintained their connection with the young 
 lady's family. If so, they were unlike Fred, mentally and 
 morally. He and Cintra had taken up an attitude, quoad their 
 families, that made interference in their affairs more difficult 
 than one of public recrimination — mutual fault-finding soliciting 
 the sympathies of bystanders. They had laid such stress on their 
 prudence, as a leading motive, that their seconds, or umpires — or 
 whatever they are that hold bottles in this kind of match — were 
 quite nonplussed and reduced to trusting to Providence to see 
 to everything being in order, and nothing happening that could 
 possibly be regretted later. Each family had done its duty in 
 the way of assurance to the other that there was no ill-will 
 borne, and a sufficient number of chats over the position had 
 ended with a nem : con : resolution that these things were in 
 wiser hands than ours, and that Time would show. Possibly 
 Time was showing at the date of the story, for the only surviving 
 record of Fred's engagement to Cintra then was the seeming 
 unalterable friendship between her sister and his mother. 
 
 A kind of dry geniality was Fred's attitude towards Miss 
 Fraser, who had once been Nancy; and, in her absence, even 
 Elbows. As for hers towards him, she drove a coach-and-six 
 through the status-quo nearly every time she spoke. Justifica- 
 tion was not wanting for this. It was more easy and natural 
 for her to put his name, as it were, in inverted commas supplied 
 by his mother, than for him to " Cintra " her sister, with an
 
 308 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 implication of " as I used to call her," in a parenthesis, every 
 time he did so. He solved the problem by speaking of C intra 
 as seldom as possible, and, when he did so, calling her " your 
 sister." 
 
 It was not long after that evening at The Cedars, just 
 recorded, that Fred, letting himself in with his latchkey at his 
 mother's, stumbled on Nancy in the entrance hall, just turning 
 the corner of the stairs. " Good-evening^ Miss Fraser," said he, 
 becoming interested in a letter on the hall-table, to himself. 
 This was dry enough, but geniality had to be attended to. 
 " Professor quite well?" he added perfunctorily, with his finger 
 getting the better of the envelope. His manner said : — " My 
 interest in your father has lapsed, but I entertain Christian 
 sentiments towards him." 
 
 " You know you don't care," said the young lady, who was 
 carrying a basket. " But he's perfectly well, as far as that goes. 
 . . . You go on first, because I've got my hands full." 
 
 Fred felt it was safest only to speak on what arose strictly 
 from his question. " Glad he's all right. The weather's been 
 trying," said his tongue. But his mind wanted his words to 
 imply : — " With the best of good wishes for your father's health, 
 pray understand that 1 am absorbed in this, which is important." 
 It — the letter — vas only an expression of the sender's ardent 
 desire to lend him, if not a minor, ten thousand pounds on his 
 own security in the strictest confidence. To play his part out, 
 he re-enveloped and pocketed it. '" All right," said he. '• I'll 
 go on in front. Is my mother in the drawing-room?" 
 
 " I left hei there," said Nancy. " I've been for the kittens 
 to show her." She raised the basket lid, accounting for small 
 and complex sounds, which intensified. " Oh, you little 
 darlings ! " 
 
 "Kittens — are there? What a lark!" His manner was 
 nicely adjusted to express the difference between his interest in 
 kittens carried by a young lady to whose sister he was fiance, 
 and one to whose sister he was not. He went on to his mother 
 upstairs. 
 
 She was going to be a wonderfully handsome old lady, cer- 
 tainly ; in a few years, be it understood ! Her son, acknowledg- 
 ing the beauty, but in revolt against the idea that his mother 
 could ever be a real old woman, never saw her without saying 
 something like this to himself. But he had not risen to Miss 
 Values's standard of beauty worship, and resented the share that 
 he knew pain had had in the evolution of his mother's.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 309 
 
 " No news, I suppose, dear? " This had been her first greet- 
 ing to him alwa3's for eighteen months past and seemed likely 
 to last out their joint lives. He shook his head and looked 
 " No," but said nothing. He had to, for there was no news. 
 She checked a sigh, and made for cheerful speech. Her son had 
 been at The Cedars on Sunday, she supposed? ^Yere they both 
 well? How was the baby? The baby was all right, Fred testi- 
 fied. At least, he had concluded that that was the case, having 
 heard nothing to the contrary. " You saw it, 1 presume? " said 
 his mother. Oh yes — he had seen it, of course ! Saw it the 
 next morning. Charley had insisted. But did not its mother 
 insist too? asked Mrs. Carteret. " She wasn't very urgent," said 
 her son. " You see, the little beggar is awfully small, and too 
 milky to be safely handled. His mother is rather afraid of him 
 — leaves him to the nurse. He'll be a lot jollier in another three 
 months. Charley quite admits that." 
 
 " I have known mothers like that," said Mrs. Carteret. 
 
 " It isn't want of affection, you know. Charley says so. It's 
 idiosyncrasy." Fred felt bound to prevent any misinterpreta- 
 tion of Lucy's character, and rejoiced to have Charley on his 
 side. 
 
 " I see," said his mother. '' It's idiosyncrasy." Then, as he 
 looked rather unhappy over it, she said, to comfort him : — " It 
 often is so. But they come all right in the end." Fred was 
 sorry to have handled this subject of the baby so awkwardly, 
 as it reflected equivocally on its mother — in the eyes of anyone 
 who did not know her as well as he did, added Fred. He had 
 no idea of the length and breadth of his own incapacity to form 
 a judgment in this case. 
 
 The story feels guilty on the subject of this baby, as it cannot 
 recall to mind having referred to it. Why could it not wake up 
 and do a little self-assertion? No narrative could have omitted 
 that. 
 
 \Mien, a few minutes later, Nancy followed him into the 
 drawing-room, saying : — " Sorry to interrupt you, but the cat 
 says you must look at them, dear, now they've come up," Fred 
 resented the context of events, and was inclined to ignore those 
 kittens, and the two ladies' appreciation of them; especially the 
 younger one's, which was fatuity. " Their mummy sits on them 
 like a fur lid," said she, " and their ducky little noses come 
 popping out." The cat gladly gave a resume of this perform- 
 ance, and appeared to accept the comments of the public on her 
 preposterous vanity as praise. It had its melancholy side, in its
 
 310 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 profound unconsciousness that three kittens out of the five were 
 then and there condemned to death. "' I'm sorry you must have 
 them drowned, dear/' said Nancy. " But I admit the necessity. 
 And those three are the most plebeian." An attempt was made 
 to introduce them to Society, but their mother seized them by 
 the throat and dragged them back into retirement. "Oh, very 
 well ! " said Nancy. " If you are going to be disagreeable and 
 exclusive, it's time you went back into the cupboard." And 
 they went. 
 
 " I thought you were so fond of young creatures, Fred," said 
 Mrs. Carteret when the young lady had vanished with the basket, 
 very incidentally. 
 
 " Puppies p'r'aps ! " said Fred, equally so. " Never was so 
 specially fond of kittens." 
 
 "Have you had tea, Fred?" said his mother. No — ^he 
 hadn't. Well, then if he would ring the bell, Jane would take 
 the pot and make him some fresh. But he declined, saying that 
 what was left in the pot would do very well for him. She 
 deprecated this course as needless, and said Jane had nothing to 
 do. He, however, had, or took, his own way. One cup seemed 
 enough. But might he smoke a cigarette? Certainly. 
 
 He had come to stay on, so there was no need to hurry talk; 
 especially as Nancy, who was going back, would look in directly 
 to say good-night. Fred was aware that she always had to be at 
 home on Thursdays, to help her sister and stepmother to receive 
 in the evenings. So that was his most convenient evening te 
 give his mother, as a fixture — without prejudice to stray inde- 
 terminate occasions. He smoked in silence, nursing topics, if 
 any, till later. 
 
 Nancy's reappearance, said Mrs. Carteret, was delayed, prob- 
 ably, by the need for pumping up a tyre, or putting oil in a 
 lamp, or screwing up a brake, or elevating a saddle, or some such 
 bicyclic evolution. Near the end of the cigarette, she thought 
 that was the bicyclist coming now. She appeared to ponder over 
 something; a thing to be remembered or a course to be taken. 
 The latter, probably, for she appeared to decide on one; saying, 
 as she looked enquiringly on her son: — "Has she told you?" 
 . "Told me what? No — she has told me nothing." 
 
 " Well — it's not bad for anybody, that I know of. So you 
 needn't look scared. Here she comes. Ask her." 
 
 " Ask me what ? " says Nancy, coming in at the door, in 
 bicycle ienus. " Oh yes — Cit of course ! I left it for you to 
 tell him."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 311 
 
 " Well— I haven't told him. You do ! " 
 
 " All right. Cit's engaged to be married to papa's old friend 
 Dr. Lomax. He's a widower with four children, and one of 
 them has necrosis of the Joints, or some such game. He's not 
 a real doctor, onl}' a plii dee. They'll be married in the summer 
 when Dr. Lomax gets his holida}'." 
 
 Fred took this piece of news with admirable discipline. 
 Where was the need for any? — some may say. All the answer 
 the story can give is to ask another question : — " How shall a 
 man who has at one time clasped in his arms what he thought 
 was to be his wife^ who has lived — though but for a few months 
 or so — on what Maud's lover recognised as kisses sweeter, sweeter 
 than anything on earth; who has thought that other fellow 
 horribly presumptuous for daring to touch that sacred glove — 
 how shall such a man be able to endure offhand the news that 
 someone else is to have the extended enjoyment of what was his 
 monopoly ? 
 
 That is exactly what Fred did — endured it offhand. And the 
 effort was creditable to him. " Lomax — Lomax — Lomax," said 
 he,, with an increasing strength on the first syllable, as though 
 he knew several Highmaxes. " Didn't I meet him at your 
 father's — a — one evening? " He did not feel equal to specifying 
 the occasion. It was in the halcyon days at the outset of the 
 engagement. 
 
 " I expect you did," said Nancy. " He's not a bad chap. 
 Only he's rather pink, and looks as if he had been stretched." 
 
 " Do looks matter? " said Mrs. Carteret. And Fred felt grate- 
 ful to her for speaking, for indeed he was a little at a loss what 
 to say. Could he show pleasure? Could he show pique? 
 Neither recommended itself. Could he say he had heard the 
 gentleman very highly spoken of, when he had repeated over his 
 name in that doubtful way? He couldn't very well do anything 
 active. So he remained silent. 
 
 " Seems they don't ! " said Xancy, answering Mrs. Carteret's 
 question. ""' He's a Public Analyst, if that does you any good. 
 It doesn't me ! Good-night, dear ! " But it was not in the 
 nature of this girl to accept a broken-off trothplight as a thing 
 to be dumb about, like a death, or one's stockings. She turned 
 to Fred as she was leaving the room, and said — with dreadfully 
 bad taste, the story admits : " Are you glad or sorry, 
 Fred?" 
 
 He steered cleverly out of the cross-currents. " I wonder 
 which ! " said he. " You can say whichever you like, you
 
 312 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 know." And tlien Nancy was gone, and he and his mother 
 were at liberty to laugh over her individuality. 
 
 " I wish," said Mrs. Carteret, as a corollary to this incident, 
 " that you had something to tell me about yourself, Fred. But 
 I suppose we must wait for that." She spoke in a way which 
 may have been invented by Nature to refer to projects of mar- 
 riage, as the moment one hears it one knows what it is about. 
 It is always about Hymen, proper ; that deity never being other- 
 wise, for that matter. But Fred had nothing to tell, in that 
 connection; his own fatuous passion being hopeless by hypothesis, 
 and not a thing to be talked about, even to his mother. 
 
 Besides, Just as Mrs. Carteret was thinking of making this 
 news of Cintra's a fulcrum on which to rest a lever of catechism 
 about her son's own affairs, in comes the new parlour maid Jane 
 with a missive on a salver, and an intimation that its source or 
 origin is waiting for an answer. The answer had to be written, 
 if the bearer could prolong his or her or its waiting for five 
 minutes; so the opportunity was lost. And as its purport was 
 that the writer hoped that the Rev. Mr. Somebody would 
 come in to coffee at nine o'clock, and dinner was by this time 
 imminent, no real chance of another came until after his rev- 
 erend departure. It was near eleven o'clock before the mother 
 and son could have communication to themselves. 
 
 Then the mother tried back for the last point of contact. " I 
 suppose," she said, taking the maintenance of the topic in both 
 their minds for granted, "■ that this Mr. Lomax . . . The name 
 is Lomax, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes — Lomax." Eather censoriously, as if a much better 
 name would have been possible. 
 
 " I suppose this Mr. Lomax has a good official salary. What 
 is he?" 
 
 " Something to do with Inspection of Factories, I fancy. He 
 analyses pickles and preserves, and detects minute quantities of 
 organic poisons. Oh yes — I should say he was good for a 
 thousand a year. Quite." 
 
 " I wonder whether they'll be happy." Mrs. Carteret waited 
 for a comment. 
 
 Fred felt he would have been glad to drag Providence in, and 
 leave the decision in His hands. But it would have seemed 
 unlike him, to his mother. So he let it alone, and said 
 vaguely : — " You never can tell." 
 
 " I am glad at any rate, my dear boy, that you didn't rush 
 away in a fit of pique and propose to the nearest pretty girl that
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 313 
 
 you thought would have you. That's what very often 
 happens." 
 
 " Perhaps I did, and the nearest pretty girl wouldn't have 
 anything to say to me." 
 
 " Perhaps. How can / tell ? " 
 
 " I can tell, dear ^lother mine. Xothing of the sort took 
 place, nor of any sort. Cintra and I . . . Well ! — we found it 
 wouldn't work, and it would be wisest to stop it off! So we 
 stopped it off. That's the story." 
 
 " I see. How very sensible and reasonable ! " There may 
 have been some equivalent of : — " If you are going to talk non- 
 sense I may as well read " — in the way Mrs. Carteret took up a 
 book and opened it nowhere in particular. That she had read 
 none of it was clear enough from what she said two minutes 
 later, as she closed it and laid it down. '" Tell me the real story, 
 dear Fred ! Do you suppose I don't know that there is a real 
 story? There must be!" Fred kept silence. '"There may 
 have been — somewhere — some time or other — two young people 
 as prosaic and prudent as you make out you two were. But I'm 
 sure he wasn't 3'ou, and she wasn't Cintra." Fred looked embar- 
 rassed, but still said nothing. She went on: — "Do you know, 
 my dear — I think you do know, for I fancy I said something 
 about it — I did suspect Cintra of ... of some sort of unrea- 
 sonable jealousy." 
 
 Fred kept the embarrassed look, but tried to laugh, not over- 
 suocessfull}'. " I know what you are referring to," said he. 
 
 "Well, was that it?" Her eyes were watching the embar- 
 rassed look. 
 
 " It was — and it wasn't. I think the entire unreasonableness 
 of it contributed to . . ." 
 
 " To what ? " She waited. 
 
 " To mv belief that we should never agree," said he at lengtli. 
 ^' You know, ^lother dear, that it may be entirely untrue that a 
 groundless fancy of this sort brought about — the result that we 
 know of. But all the same it might have a very strong in- 
 fluence. It had — on me — the unreasonableness of it." 
 
 " But you did nothing — so I understand ? The initiative was 
 Cintra's ? " 
 
 " Yes, it was, to all appearance. But how can I tell that she 
 did not see into my mind? I admit that I was nettled at tlie 
 suggestion that I . . . However, it's no use talking about it." 
 
 " Would it not be more use talking about it if we did not fight 
 shy of the main point — did not speak plainer, in fact? AVas
 
 314 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 not the suggestion that nettled vou that vou admired Lucy 
 Hinchliffe?" 
 
 Fred was very uncomfortable, and flushed. "■ The suggestion, 
 was/' said he, " that my admiration for Miss Hinchliffe — for 
 Charley's wife, that is — which is one that is shared to the full 
 by all her friends, was . . . was of a sort that ..." He 
 hung fire. 
 
 She finished for him. " That was incompatible with your 
 sworn fidelity to herself. You stupid boy, why did you pay any 
 attention to her? All girls behave like that. It only means 
 that they want to be cosseted over a little." 
 
 "But suppose one doesn't feel like it?" 
 
 " I'm afraid that goes to the root of the matter. You mean. 
 in short, that you didn't care for Cintra." 
 
 " You are very unjust. Mother dear ! I did care for Cintra." 
 
 " Not enough, then ! " 
 
 " Well — how much is enough ? " 
 
 " Xo love that wavers the least is enough. Yours was not 
 equal to the test that all girls have held to be their prerogative 
 from the beginning of Time. If their lovers, when called on 
 to swear that they are incomparable, hang fire, let them make 
 no further pretence of love ! You ought to have pledged your- 
 self forthwith to Cintra's greater beauty — greater than Lucy 
 Hinchliffe's — should have said crystal was muddy to so ripe a 
 glow, and so forth. ..." 
 
 " But it would have been romantic nonsense. It would have 
 been — suppose we say ? — inaccurate." 
 
 " Fred — Fred ! It is inaccuracy of this sort a girl expects. 
 An accurate lover had better pack up and go — unless indeed he 
 is pretty sure that his idol has Helen's cheek but not her heart. 
 Then he may claim mathematical accurac3^ About the face, at 
 least. Hearts don't matter so much." 
 
 " It seems to me," said Fred, " to come to the same thing in 
 the end. Cintra and I only looked a fact in the face. You 
 say she had a right to put my affection for her to this test. 
 I daresay she had. I can't pretend to know what rights a girl 
 has or hasn't. But I do know that she would have been expect- 
 ing me to talk ridiculous nonsense if she had ..." 
 
 " Had expected you to sing her praises like a real lover, when 
 you were only a half-hearted one — is that it?" Mrs. Carteret 
 had formed a false idea of the lines on which the lovers had 
 fallen out — thought point-blank jealousy was responsible. Fred 
 was inclined to encourage this idea, as one that kept the subject
 
 THE OLD MADPIOUSE 315 
 
 safer for discussion. But he had used an unguarded phrase, 
 and his mother went back on it for explanation. " I can't quite 
 understand, though, why you say ' would have been expecting 
 you.' Wasn't she? Expecting 3-ou to disclaim the admiration 
 for this other young lady that she imputed to you, I mean ? " 
 
 Fred assumed a secretive air. " It didn't work exactly that 
 way," he said, speaking in a dry tone, which implied that further 
 enquiry was not invited. 
 
 But mothers are not strangers, bound to take hints. Mrs. 
 Carteret considered the position, while her son kept his lips 
 ostentatiously closed. Presently she decided to say : — " I think 
 you had better tell me exactly what did happen." 
 
 Xow that Cintra's third finger was definitely destined to wear 
 a wedding ring placed on it by another man, even though he was 
 a pink widower with four children who looked as if he had been 
 stretched, no engineering of a reconciliation would be possible, 
 say what Fred might. So it was safe for him to say after a 
 pause : — " Perhaps 3fou're right." He then went on to explain 
 that the cause of the rupture of relations had really been Cintra's 
 absolute refusal to go on with the scheme of The Cedars; or 
 rather the ground on which she placed this refusal — that of a 
 perfectly unreasonable and violent antipathy to the lady who 
 was affianced to his oldest and dearest friend, and whom she had 
 barely seen. It was a good while back now, he said — a year and 
 a half, wasn't it? — but his mother must remember that Cintra 
 and Miss Hinchliffe, now Mrs. Snaith, had scarcely spoken on 
 that Sunday when they came to lunch, and they had never met 
 since. And it was Cintra's doing, not Lucy's. At least, Cintra 
 might have Vi-aitcd for completer acquaintance. 
 
 " H'm ! " said Mrs. Carteret. " I thought it was then." 
 
 " Thought what was then? " 
 
 "My dear — the ca^us belli! If you hadn't been such a 
 goose. . . ." 
 
 " Why was I a goose ? " 
 
 " Well — if you could have contrived a little ... a little 
 politic concealment of your admiration for Mistress Lucy ..." 
 
 " I say, Mother, come now ! " 
 
 " Don't be in a rage, dear boy ! I know it was all quite right 
 and perfectly harmless. But if you had had the common sense 
 to exercise a little self-repression — to bottle up, in fact — all 
 might have been well ! " 
 
 Which is ' well ' ? I am not dissatisfied with things as they 
 
 
 are."
 
 316 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Then there is no more to be said on the matter. I hope 
 Cintra is equally satisfied." 
 
 "I hope so. Why shouldn't she be? It was her choice, you 
 know — none of mine ! " 
 
 If Mrs. Carteret had expressed the thought that was in her 
 mind — that jealousy is one of the signs of love — Fred would 
 have felt very uncomfortable. Perhaps it was to spare him self- 
 questionings that she held her tongue. And, after all, consider 
 that Analytical Chemist ! To what end should she supply Fred 
 with food for regrets? Even if her son had not been so philo- 
 sophical over it, Destiny could not hark back now. So she 
 merely said : — '' I think I might have felt as Cintra did about 
 the housekeeping. Plans of that sort seldom work well. Of 
 course if the house had been halved, that would have made a 
 difference." 
 
 "Would it?" 
 
 " Well— wouldn't it ? " 
 
 " I should say not. I don't think Cintra would have objected 
 to the house scheme if Miss Hinchliffe's . . . personality had 
 been different." 
 
 " If she hadn't been so pretty — is that it ? " 
 
 " Something of that sort. I think it is just possible that she 
 had formed a false image of the girl Charley Snaith was engaged 
 to — bony sort of female with fangs, or else a puddingy one 
 with little eyes. ..." 
 
 " Neither description would apply to i\Iiss Hinchliffe," said 
 Mrs. Carteret by the way, but not as though she expected assent 
 or dissent. 
 
 Fred continued : — " And it made her a little premature. She 
 and El . . . she and her sister had^ I suppose, made up their 
 minds to a Mr. and ]\Irs. Charley in keeping — as the artists say 
 — with their interpretation of Charley himself. Of course I 
 know what tit at was." 
 
 '' I'm sure that Elbows — as you all but called her — never said 
 a word against Miss Hinchliffe, and would have backed up the 
 double housekeeping to any extent. She's a dear girl, Nancy. 
 In fact, the dearest of girls; but the moment beauty comes into 
 question, she becomes simply abject, and grovels. She got quite 
 idiotic over Miss Hinchliffe." 
 
 " Isn't she equally idiotic over Mrs. Charles Snaith ? " 
 
 Mrs. Carteret gave a little thought to this, then said, as one 
 who decides a well-weighed consideration : — " Perhaps not just 
 lately. At least, she sticks to the beauty, but has rather given
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 317 
 
 in on the point of its owner's . . . well ! — perfection. You 
 see, she imputes an2;elic qualities to the owners of beautiful faces. 
 And then she gets disappointed when she finds they are 
 human." 
 
 To take an interest in what Nancy thought, was infra dig: 
 Fred judged it advisable to infuse a certain amount of loftiness 
 — a disguise of curiosity, in fact — into his enquiry: — " And what 
 is the evidence of humanity Miss Nancy Fraser has discovered 
 in this particular case?" 
 
 " You needn't be so scornful, Fred dear ! I think it's prob- 
 ably all nonsense. Did you know that your friend Charles 
 Snaith was next of kin to an earldom? " 
 
 Fred laughed out. " No — that indeed I didn't, and don't. 
 But if anybody has said so, I know what it comes from." He 
 gave a very brief and imperfect account of his friend's aristo- 
 cratic connections, pooh-poohing the idea that Charley could 
 ever, short of a miracle, enjoy the satisfactions, or undergo the 
 miseries, of wearing a coronet. " Kill half the family," said he, 
 " and of course Charley would have a chance. But there's an 
 heir, fast enough, when the venerable head of the family departs 
 this life. He'll be a centenarian before that happens, if he 
 doesn't look sharp. And what's more the heir's just married. 
 I can't be certain, but my recollection is rather emphatic, that 
 Charley told me he was married — just lately." 
 
 " I don't think it's all nonsense — not quite all. What is the 
 heir's name? Lord Something he's got to be." 
 
 '' It's a name I always forget. Honeyguts, I think." 
 
 " Nonsense, Fred ! It's much more like Chitterling." 
 
 " I don't consider Honeyguts a bad .shot for Chitterling," said 
 Fred, perversely. "But what about him, whichever he is?" 
 
 " Lord Chitterling, who is seventy-four, is just married cer- 
 tainly. But he's not expected to live." Further, it appeared 
 that this marriage, solemnised by the bridegroom on what was 
 probably his deathbed, was a ceremonial that ought to have taken 
 place many years ago, in which case the earldom would have been 
 well provided with heirs, who were now in danger of being 
 twitted with their illegitimacy by a babe as yet unborn; which, 
 if it turned out male, would inherit a rent-roll in two or three 
 shires, while they and their sisters would have to live on the 
 borders of Society, in the enjoyment of modest competences. 
 
 Fred's curiosity at this point forced him to climb down from 
 his lofty superiority to Nancy's views. " Yes," said he, when 
 his mother had ended, " but what I want to get at is — what 
 
 21
 
 318 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 has Mrs. Charles got to do with this? Why does El . . . 
 Avhy does Miss Fraser connect her with it, I mean? " 
 
 " Only in this way. . . . It's very absurd, you know. At 
 least, I think it's absurd." 
 
 "I've no doubt I shall, too. Cut along! How does Mrs. 
 Charley come in ? That's the point." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret seemed to find her explanation more difficult 
 than she had anticipated. " You must look at this, you know, 
 by the light of Nancy's absurd antipathy to Mr. Snaith's nose. 
 You may laugh, Fred, but I'm sure that's it." 
 
 " Just as like as not ! " said Fred. " But you haven't told me 
 what it is I'm too look at." 
 
 " Well — I suppose I must. But I'm almost sorry now I began 
 about it. It seems so foolish." 
 
 " Get on. Fire away ! " 
 
 " The girl has got it into her crazy pate that Mrs. Charles 
 Snaith doesn't care a straw for her husband, and only married 
 him on the chance of . . . Well — you see!" The lady spoke 
 these words with a blind faith in the Rectitudes as developed 
 in her own flesh and blood. They could not affect her son. A 
 worser, more astute woman would at least have looked at his face 
 to see how he took them. 
 
 As it was, she did not even notice the uneasiness of his con- 
 temptuous laugh. " That's what Elbows thinks," said he, not 
 hesitating over the disparaging nickname this time. " Elbows 
 had better shut up." His mother accepted this as a dismissal 
 of a subject too absurd for discussion. But his disquiet would 
 not let him leave it. After a moment or two he said — but 
 equably enough : — " I wonder what put that rot into the young 
 woman's head." 
 
 " Of course it isn't only Mr. Snaith's nose. I wasn't quite 
 in earnest about that." So Fred had understood. His mother 
 continued : — " Nancy has picked up the idea from her visits at 
 The Cedars. You know she visits her friend there?" 
 
 Fred had not met her there, he said. But he was there chiefly 
 in the evenings and early mornings, and would be almost sure 
 to miss her. He seemed a little puzzled that Mrs. Charley 
 should not have referred to these visits, but his mother accounted 
 for the phenomenon. "You don't liide your dislikes, my dear 
 boy ! You shouldn't be so transparent. Mrs. Charley knows 
 you hate Nancy, and call her Elbows." 
 
 " I call her Elbows," said Fred, " because Charley nicknamed 
 her Elbows the same evening we made her acquaintance." He
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 319 
 
 was conscious that Memory felt raw over the levival of this 
 event and fidgeted under it, dismissing it curtly as " Mother 
 Ladbroke Square's hop." He disclaimed personal dislike of 
 Nancy, but disallowed her as unimportant. What did it matter 
 what impressions so insignificant a character formed of — of any- 
 thing or anybody ? He would have taken anyone but his mother 
 to task for treating the mutual affection of his married friends 
 as a legitimate subject of discussion. As it was, the case was 
 fully met by his repeating : — "•' Elbows had better shut up." 
 
 " You mustn't run away with the idea, Fred," said Mrs. 
 Carteret, " that / endorse what the child says in any way. 
 Because she is a child, though she's twenty-three. It's the sort of 
 idea young women get from works of fiction. Thank Heaven ! — 
 one never meets the people in novels in real life." 
 
 If ever woman was unconscious of the effect of her words, it 
 was this lady, during this conversation. When her son changed 
 the subject abruptly, she set his doing so down to a mere Avish 
 to make short work of a thesis too ridiculous for discussion, plus 
 an unwillingness on his part to be severe on her informant, in 
 consideration of the affection he knew to subsist between them. 
 For he jumped quite suddenly from this personal conversation 
 to his Anti-Vibration Engine. He had just finished his full 
 specification of the patent and a friend was going to introduce 
 it to a man whose hobby was new inventions, and who had the 
 rare qualification of being able to put down ten thousand pounds 
 as easily as not. It wouldn't take long to construct — and 
 then . . . Well — then let Vibration look out ! His hearer 
 congratulated him warmly, as she had congratulated him on a 
 score of similar great successes before. Then they saw that it 
 was near midnight, and went upstairs to bed. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret turned on the first landing to say to her son : — 
 " Fred dear, you mustn't let what I told you that dear silly child 
 said make you uncomfortable. It's all nonsense together." In 
 reply to which Fred laughed outright. " Oh — you mean 
 Elbows's rot. Yes — I should rather think it was," and wenr 
 away to his room whistling nonchalance in support of his 
 declaration. 
 
 But his night was not to be a restful one. How shall a young 
 man be at rest every drop of whose blood has been insidiously 
 poisoned by a delirious longing for a woman out of his reach, 
 when his only salvation against himself is the knowledge that 
 she cannot be won without an act of treachery from which he 
 recoils heart and soul? And how shall that salvation keep its
 
 320 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 power over him, when a creeping doubt is constantly growing, 
 growing, in his mind that that act of treachery is already com- 
 mitted ? For if there is a particle of truth in this foolish story 
 of that confounded girl — devil take her ! — who can say that 
 estrangement, assuming it to exist, is due to such an idiotic 
 cause as Property missing the right pocket, videlicet our own; 
 an elusive Title inherited by someone else? Much more likely, 
 said Fred's innermost thoughts among themselves, much more 
 likely than that, that a spark from the fire on this side of the 
 hedse should have set a heart a smouldering on the other side. 
 But then — how about Charley ? 
 
 In the darkness of the night and the loneliness, Fred felt 
 towards his mother the nearest feeling of anger or resentment 
 against her of which he was capable. \V\vdt possessed her to pass 
 on to him that idiot girl's suggestion that Charles and Lucy were 
 less than innamoraii? Why cut him adrift from his only 
 anchora<re, his faith in their affection which made his own 
 passion a mere aimless madness? A torment — yes! But a 
 torment to be concealed and buried with him, an unsuspected 
 disease that might have his death to answer for. How could 
 he tell? 
 
 Anyhow, why need mothers think their sons superhuman ?
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 It must not be supposed that Mr. and Mrs. Klem, or Grewbeer 
 more properly, allowed the extraordinar}' disappearance of Dr. 
 Carteret to be forgotten. In fact, as time went on, they became 
 more than ever alive to his non-reappearance ; and the subject be- 
 came a piece de resistance, which appeared capable of indefinite 
 examination. Indeed, there did not seem to be any reason why 
 it should ever be exhausted, seeing that one element of its 
 yitality was a curious property it had of presenting itself as 
 d propos of everything else. 
 
 Thus the handy young man whom the story has seen making 
 himself useful on a door-lock at The Cedars, and who owed 
 opportunities for extending his connection to its ex-caretakers, 
 said to them on the occasion of his suppression of a partik'lar 
 bad gas-escape, owin' to rats, at the empty house which was the 
 object of their solicitude at present : — " Speakin' of what rats is 
 capable in the way of biting through lead pipin', Mr. Grewbeer, 
 you never heard no more, I suppose, of that old cove that 
 varnished ? " By which this young man, whose name was Ham- 
 brose, or was pronounced so, no more meant that he knew any of 
 Dr. Carteret's relations with rats, than that the Doctor practised 
 varnishing, or any trade. The one was a convention — an easy 
 channel to conduct the stream of discourse through — the other 
 an overstress on a syllable, to indicate perhaps a misgiving that 
 the word might be of foreign origin, and ought to be handled 
 with caution. 
 
 Mr. Grewbeer accepted the convention, and showed a sym- 
 pathetic mistrust of the word. " Varnished ! " said he. "' It 
 ain't for the likes of we to say gentlefolks has varnished, not of 
 their own accord. But I'll give you this much, young man, that 
 I've heerd tell no more of him from that day to this. Nor I 
 don't believe anyone else has." 
 
 " That's what they said in the noospapers. 'Cos I read 'em 
 every Sunday morning. Sunday Times and the Pink 'Un. 
 Rev. Doctor Cartearet. Same story in both of 'em. Looks as if 
 they'd got something to go by." 
 
 " That's no account. That's on'y how they backs each other 
 up." He added a remark to the effect that a blood-stained liar 
 
 331
 
 322 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 was a blood-stained liar wherever you met him. This seemed 
 merely the expression of an abstract truth, not a special indict- 
 ment of the Sunday Press. " But you've got the name wrong, 
 so I don't think much of your noospapers." 
 
 " Cartearet's right." 
 
 " Cartearet's wrong. You can tell your noospaper boy the 
 name's Carter, Eet. And he may just go home and tell his 
 guv'nor I said so, and I knows. Why, there's my missus ! — 
 she'll tell you the same. Warn't she sent for to the house for to 
 recall partic'lars of the sarcumstances, by the parties that 
 bought the premises and paid for 'em, square?" Mr. Grewbeer 
 seemed to think this honourable discharge of a business obliga- 
 tion reinforced his pronunciation of the name under discussion. 
 He shouted at the old woman to testify to the accuracy of his 
 report, especially as to one of its phrases : — " Sent for you was, 
 Alison, for to recall partic'lars of the sarcumstances attendin' 
 the Rev. Drury Carter Ret, on the occasion of his bein' 
 showed over these here premises September twelvemonth. That's 
 what the letter said — so just you up and speak the truth." 
 Which being confirmed by the woman — after repetition shouted; 
 for of course she had not heard a word — her husband subsided, 
 growling: — "There — what did I tell you? You might just as 
 easy have said so the first go-off ! " For he was always cen- 
 sorious of his wife's deafness, which certainly exceeded his own, 
 though acknowledging its advantages sometimes, as leaving his 
 choice of language a greater latitude. " She don't ketch expres- 
 sions I happen to use " was his way of putting it. 
 
 The handy young man, Hambrose, being as it were free of 
 the subject, went nearer to the old woman, and shouted: — 
 " Wrote you a letter, the party did as took the house — was that 
 the game? " 
 
 Mrs. Grewbeer assented, with a reservation. " You might 
 call it a letter," she said. " Only mind ye, it was three- 
 cornered." 
 
 " I've seen them," said Hambrose. " Ladylike sort of a letter. 
 But it's again the Regulations to send them by post. I reckon 
 it's because there ain't no square corners for the stamp." 
 
 Mr. Grewbeer contradicted this. " Anythin' you can shove 
 in at the Post Orfice'll go, if you come to that. Tork of goin ! 
 Only the P'int is — will they deliver it? Not they, except it's 
 properly stamped. Wot they gain, by stickin' out for a hextry 
 charge, Goard only knows! If they git it, all right! — then I 
 don't say nothin'. But if they don't git it, where the use is of
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 323 
 
 carrin' of the letter back is what disagrees with my stum- 
 mick." 
 
 This side-issue was disposed of by his wife. " There wasn't 
 no postman, nor yet any stamp," said she. " It come by hand. 
 Cox's Caroline, that takes in The Cedar's washing, she kep' it 
 in her dress pocket for next time she come this way. And it 
 wasn't so very long, in the manner of speaking." Caretakers 
 have a fine perception of the irrelevant, and make a point of 
 supplying it in conversation. 
 
 " And then you see the lady at the premises? " 
 
 " Because I went there by appointment. I see the lady. 
 'Ansum she is, enough to make you call out. Only I reckonised 
 I'd seen her before. She come to the house when we had charge, 
 with the gentleman, in a carriage. He was one of them two 
 that come more than once. I understood they was going to be 
 married." 
 
 " I never heerd 'em say nothin' o' that." Mr. Grewheer, on 
 the watch to contradict his wife, or anyone, jumped at the chance 
 of throwing doubt on anything she said, even by merely negative 
 testimony. 
 
 " Lard, Grewheer ! " was the old woman's comment when she 
 heard and understood his words, shouted and re-shouted. "■ Who 
 ■do you think was going to be sayin' this and sayin' that, to the 
 likes of us, when it was no concern of ours? But I took it they 
 was sweet, by the ways of 'em. . . . Well — they was keeping 
 company, anyway you put it. One don't want to be told every- 
 thing. One has a pair of heyes, when all's said." 
 
 " What's the name of this here one ? " . 
 
 " It's wrote at the end of the letter. I giv' it you to read. 
 A name with a hen and a hess in it. Oh. . . . Snaith ! — in 
 •course, it was Snaith." 
 
 " That ain't the name of the parties that bought the house. 
 Much more like Pinchquitch, or Splitchwink — some such a 
 
 name." 
 
 " Garn, Grewheer, ye old silly ! It was this lady's mother 
 bought the premises, for her and her husband to orkupy. So 
 that name what you choose to call her by was her maiden name. 
 I heerd her say it, explainin' to me how she come to send 
 Cox's Caroline with a three-cornered letter. Says she to me, she 
 says : — ' Before I married Mr. Snaith, you know, my name 
 was . . .'" But Mrs. Grewheer could not supply the name, 
 and had to stop. She made a trial, but could get no nearer 
 than Fleshwinch; an improbable name outside a dream about
 
 324 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 the rack. Her husband seemed to think ho had been much 
 nearer the mark, saying : — '' Well — Splitchvvink 1 stands by. 
 Suppose we let it go at that ! " 
 
 Now, none of this discussion had any relation to the handy 
 young man Hambrosc's interest in the topic of Mrs. Grewbeer's 
 visit to The Cedars, which was to arrire, tortuously if a direct 
 approach was impossible, at something on which he could hinge 
 a recommendation of his own deftness to the tenants thereof. 
 He therefore endeavoured to bring back the discussion from the 
 onomatologies into which it had strayed, by saying: — " This here 
 lady who sent for you, marm, she warn't enquirin', by any 
 chance, for a young man who could turn his hand to most 
 anything you could put a name to — plumbin', carpenterin' and 
 jinin', fittin', gardenin', wood-choppin', tendin' on a 'oarse? Or 
 could drive a motor if required." Motors, about this time, were 
 beginning to make themselves felt; but their owners had not 
 begun to disbelieve in professions of chauffeurship by young 
 men whose only qualification was a pair of dirty hands. 
 
 Mrs. Grewbeer met this suggestion with a Universal Negative, 
 to which the dry and perfunctory formula of the Logicians was 
 passionless milk-and-water. The lady, she said, didn't want no 
 young man for to do nothing for her, being already provided 
 with a rare plenty of specialists in each department. Moreover, 
 The Cedars was unlike other houses in one respect, that it never 
 stood in want of any repairs at all, owing to the unblemished 
 reputation of the builders who had carried out the alterations. 
 
 At this point Mr. Grewbeer became impatient of the way in 
 which the thread of the conversation got lost. " There's no 
 holdin' females to the p'int," said he. " They gets wornderin' 
 off after this, and wornderin' off after that, till ;t'd take a 
 lawyer to say which end you was uppermost. . . . What was 
 the p'int? Why — the p'int was, what did this here lady send 
 for parties two mile off to talk to her for, as if she was the 
 Hemperor of China?" The selection of this monarch, a typical 
 autocrat, implied that the action of this lady had been arbitrary, 
 and overbearing. 
 
 " She giv' me plenty to eat, anyhow, Grewbeer. Or told 'em 
 to it, in the kitchen, which is all one. Likewise a cup of tea and 
 a half a crown — two cup o' tea I should say — and bread-and- 
 butter. So you ain't got nothin' to complain of ! " 
 
 " ^^^lat did she want to be torkin' to you at all for?" He 
 went on, under his breath, to indicate the universal practice 
 of womankind : — " Torkin' — torkin' — torkin'. Always torkin'.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 325 
 
 Nothing but tork, all day long! What had she got to say for 
 herself, missus? That's the p'int." 
 
 Thus exhorted, the old woman concentrated on a report of 
 what had actually happened. The young lady of The Cedars 
 had not behaved like the Emperor of China, but had, on the 
 contrary — though this was by implication, no European having 
 a right to speak positively of the conduct of that potentate under 
 such very hypothetical circumstances — asked Mrs. Grewbeer to 
 set down after her walk. An auxiliary cup of tea — without 
 prejudice to later developments — had lubricated intercourse. 
 Mrs. Snaith had wished to hear, all over again, the story of Dr. 
 Carteret's visit and of his final disappearance; since which, as 
 Mrs. Grewbeer knew, he had never been seen by mortal man, 
 unless some mortal man was keeping testimony back. Mrs. 
 Grewbeer had told that story, like she done afore, and not put 
 nothin' in hextra for to fill out. Then Mrs. Snaith she asked, 
 she did, comfortable-like, what really ivas Mrs. Grewbeer's idear 
 about that young boy's 'istory how he never seen no one come 
 out of the house. WTiereupon Mrs. Grewbeer had replied, 
 vaguely, that boys was boys, and where they come in there was 
 no sayin'. Then Mrs. Snaith says, if j\Ir. Grewbeer was right 
 — here that gentleman interposed to say that in course he was 
 right; you might put your money on that, and not lose a tanner 
 — this boy, being naturally a liar, had affirmed that he had seen 
 no one come out of the house, which being naturally a lie, must 
 be accepted as a direct proof that he had seen someone do so. 
 This could only have been Dr. Carteret ; ergo it tuas Dr. Carteret. 
 Mr. Grewbeer interjected that any fool with half-a-head on his 
 shoulders could see that. His wife went on to say that the young 
 lady had again asked her, serious-like, what she really believed, 
 herself. To which she had replied that it wasn't for the likes of 
 her, at her time of life, to be believing and disbelieving things. 
 Of which formula of evasion she seemed proud. 
 
 Then it appeared further that the young lady had requested 
 Mrs. Grewbeer to repeat her story, or portions of it, on the 
 actual scene of its enactment, taking her first to the foot of 
 the large staircase, and making her say, partic'lar like, exactly 
 which side of the stairs the Doctor come down. Then an event- 
 less recital of his examination of sundry front rooms in the more 
 modern part of the house; and finally the corner of the long 
 passage where she left him, to answer the bell. She had given 
 Mrs. Snaith full particulars of every word that he spoke, his 
 last enquiry relating to the name of the former owner of the
 
 326 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 house, the authority on Insanity, and inventor of many new 
 forms of treatment. Dr. Aytcholt. And especially of how he had 
 said to her: — " Hadn't you better answer your bell? " As if it 
 mattered to a minute ! 
 
 This version of the old woman's story has taken no account 
 of sundry interruptions by her husband, he having heard the 
 whole of it before more than once, and being very anxious to 
 catch his wife contradicting herself. Their only importance is 
 due to the fact that every effort he made in that direction turned 
 out a failure. Which looks as if she were a trustworthy 
 witness. 
 
 '' But, my word ! " said she in conclusion, chiefly to impress 
 the handy young man. " You should see the beautiful place 
 they've made of it ! "What with hamphilopsisses in tubs and 
 cherokeets in cages, that long passage leadin' up to the green'us 
 is, you might say, 'Eaven itself." The story has not the dimmest 
 idea what Mrs. Grewbeer's botanical name was founded on, but 
 supposes Cherubin and Cherokee Indians to be equally responsible 
 for the name she gave Mrs. Snaith's parrakeets. 
 
 The handy young man professed some interest, but a perfunc- 
 tory one, in the changes at The Cedars which his handiness 
 had had no share in. He had, in fact — now that professional 
 advancement had waned — only been waiting till a full stop to 
 the narrative should make an opening for his departure. He 
 responded, however, civilly, to Mrs. Grewbeer's excursion into 
 Botany and Ornithology, saying: — ''You carn't never say what 
 these here toffs won't do with their money." He then remem- 
 hered that he was doo on a job, and took his leave. 
 
 The old couple remained silent for awhile. Then Mr. Grew- 
 beer, Avho had been casting about in his mind for a censure to 
 pronounce on his wife, appeared to find one. " AVhor d'yer want 
 to be setting that young jackanapes a forking about what ain't 
 no concern of his'n ? " said he. 
 
 This caused more than one interrogatory "Hay?" from 
 the old woman. But explanation reached her mind in the end, 
 and she replied : — "' It's every bit as much his concern as it is 
 yours or mine. Likewise, I kep' back." 
 
 "What was it you kep' back?" 
 
 " Nothin' much when you come to think on it. Only a idear'd 
 got hold of the young lady." 
 
 " You never told me nothin' about no idear." 
 
 " Nor yet I don't know that I shall." There is no greater 
 satisfaction than that of whetting curiosity, especially when one
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 327 
 
 has something to conceal. When the reverse is the case, a sense 
 of insecurity vitiates a complete enjoyment of the position. 
 
 Mr. Grewbeer affected indifference. That is the safest atti- 
 tude to assume, but it requires a consummate actor. His " You 
 can soote yourself " was good as far as it went. But an im- 
 passive negative demeanour should have followed it. Active 
 indifference, in any form, is a mistake. Even whistling or hum- 
 ming should be avoided. Instead of acting in harmony with 
 these precepts, Mr. Grewbeer spoiled his case by suddenly ex- 
 claiming a moment or two later : — " As if I cared threepence for 
 anyone's idears ! " This is bowdlerised, he having qualified the 
 sum he specified as one that a cut finger might have handled. 
 A discreet silence would have been better, and he certainly 
 should not have snapped his fingers. 
 
 " Lard, Benjamin ! " said the old woman. " 'Ark at your 
 language ! As if I wasn't a tellin' of yer ! " She then pro- 
 ceeded to take him into her confidence, describing how, when she 
 had again gone over full particulars of Dr. Carteret's deport- 
 ment at the entrance to the long passage, her hostess had took 
 on a kind of skeery look — only she kep' 'andsome all along — 
 and walked her all down the passage right to the end, saying 
 ne'er a word. Here the narrator paused. 
 
 " And what come of it all? " said her husband. " I don't see 
 nothing in any of that." 
 
 " Don't you 'urry me, Benjamin'! I can't abide to be drove. 
 So soon as ever she got me clost up to the green'us door, round 
 she turns and points all down the passage, towards the house. 
 Then she says : — ' Was he where we should see him now ? ' she 
 says. ' Yes,' I says, ' just as in the hangle of the wall, 'andling 
 his comforter, 'cos for the chill of the evening.' So then she 
 fiays : — ' With his back to us now ? ' she says. And I says : — 
 "^ Yes,* I says, ' only then there warn't nobody behind his back.' 
 Then she says : — ' In course,' she says, ' me and my husband was 
 behind the other old gentleman's.' Says I : — ' What old gentle- 
 man's? ' " The speaker's delivery of this laid claim to an almost 
 convulsive accuracy, and made the hearer aware that close atten- 
 tion was expected of him. 
 
 " Who was the party spoke of ? " said he. " There warn't any 
 other old gentleman." 
 
 " There's where it was, Grewbeer. There warn't any other 
 old gentleman. Only, the lady she sticks to it there was." 
 
 *' Who did she put him down for to be ? Summun or other, 
 she must have took him for ! "
 
 328 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Just what I made bold to say to her. And she turns round 
 to me quite unconsciouslike, and says ' Why, in coorse/ she says, 
 * he was with the other parties goin' over the premises.' So I 
 giv' my assurance there was no sich, that day. Or if there 
 was, I'd never let 'em in. Nor yet my old man; or if he'd 
 'a done so, I couldn't have been off seeing of 'em — let alone 
 voices in an empty house, soundin' all over the place." 
 The old woman stopped and waited for her husband's com- 
 ment. 
 
 It came after visible retrospection. '" No one come anigh the 
 house that day," said he, very decisively. " I'd 'a seen 'em if 
 they had. On a Sunday it was them two came, in a brougham. 
 I was bound to be at home all day." This did not refer to any 
 bond or treaty. It only meant that Mr. Grewbeer's anchorage 
 in port on Sundays was a very binding one. The story has 
 seen something of the way he spent Saturday, and feels no 
 surprise. 
 
 " Just the very selfsame words I said to the lady. My hus- 
 band was bound, I says, to be at home that day you come, bein' 
 it was Sunday, and he'll know, seein' he takes account of all 
 })arties as come to see the premises; though, as may 'eppen, he 
 don't show 'em over." Mrs. Grewbeer's reference to Sunday 
 seemed to point vaguely to some obligation her husband was 
 under to — suppose Ave say ? — the Archbishop of Canterbury. No 
 doubt Mrs. Snaith had accepted it as conferring a halo of 
 respectability, without close analysis of it. 
 
 Mr. Grewbeer wanted to know what followed, but he did not 
 want to compromise his dignity by asking for it. He chose a 
 middle course. "It's time I was at the Six Bells," said he, 
 "for to meet a party by the name of Jennins I promised to. 
 So you better look alive afore I'm off. This here lady, what 
 did "she say upon that? You said no one else was about the 
 house — warn't it ? " 
 
 " I said no one else was about the house, barring you and me 
 and him and her, nor yet hadn't been all day. Then she says :— 
 'Are you sure?' saj^s she. 'Safe sure,' says I. 'Then all I 
 can say is it's mighty queer ! ' says she. And she gits a sort 
 of hagitated look as if took with a flurry. ' I wish I knew what 
 to make of it,' she says. Then, to pour hile over her, as you 
 might Gay, I says I was mistook, and some party had got in by 
 a mistake." 
 
 " I shouldn't 'a thought you'd 'a had the sense to it," said the 
 old man, growling to himself. Then audibly :—" In course it
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 329 
 
 was just heyesight and nothing else, and she never saw no party 
 at all. . . . Time I was off ! " 
 
 " You come back from them Bells time enough for your 
 supper, Benjamin. And not the worse ! " To which the old 
 reprobate answered, briefly : — " You mind your own consarns ! " 
 His wife turned her attention to cooking the supper, repeating 
 to herself : — "' Jennins — Jennins — Jennins ! He don't know no- 
 body by the name of Jennins. Xor yet he ain't likely to, that 
 I can see ! But his 'eart's good, that's one comfort." 
 
 Mrs. Grewbeer had a touching faith in the intrinsic excellence 
 of her husband. His material and audible manifestations were 
 those of a selfish and dissolute old man, but she had a mysterious 
 insight into his inner soul, and saw that it was good, in some 
 unexplored hinterland of entity. She called it his Heart, but 
 that was mere metaphor. 
 
 This short intrusion into domestic life was made by the story 
 to obtain at first hand Mrs. Grewbeer's report of her interview 
 with young Mrs. Snaith ; who, as it appears, had availed herself 
 of the means of communication supplied by the Wash, to procure 
 this interview, after deciding that it would be most fruitful of 
 result if the old woman's recollection of Dr. Carteret's last 
 appearance to human eyes was repeated to her on the spot of its 
 actual occurrence. It is interesting to notice how the character 
 — almost — of an Abstraction which the Wash presents to its 
 clients vanishes when seen from the point of view of its own 
 circle. So much depends on which side we see things from. In 
 the e3'es of Mrs. Grewbeer the Wash was Cox's Caroline, and 
 the mission entrusted to her as an agency had been fulfilled by 
 her — according to Mr. Grewbeer — as a Young Slut. He had 
 added his belief that it warn't difficult to foretell the destiny 
 of that Slut. 
 
 As it chanced, no one but Mrs. Charles Snaith herself was in 
 the house — except of course sundry domestics — when Mrs. Grew- 
 beer answered this summons; so there was no one to notice the 
 effect the interview had upon her. It was, however, probably 
 responsible for a taciturnity of which her husband complained 
 next day, at lunch with Fred Carteret at the restaurant they 
 affected at this time in Holborn. " Luce has got tlie blues," was 
 his reply to an enquiry from his friend as soon as instructions 
 to the waiter were ended. " Hadn't half-a-word to throw at 
 her devoted husband all last night, except to blow him up 
 because the new door wasn't put in hand. Can't you stimulate 
 the building miscreant, dear boy ? . . . What's that!"
 
 330 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Fred's wits had wool-gathered for a moment. He produced 
 the crop. " A ... it wasn't applicable — what I was going to 
 say," said he. " Sort of plausibility about it, though ! " 
 
 " What were you going to say ? " 
 
 " That the mills of God ground slowly, but they ground 
 exceeding small." 
 
 " And the plausibility ? Explain." 
 
 " Well — the idea was that Simcoxes took a jolly long time to 
 find an old mahogany door, but it would be sure to be a beauty 
 in the end." 
 
 " Don't see the connection of ideas. Suppose we chuck meta- 
 phor. . . . All right — whitebait for both ! " The waiter had 
 come back to say the whitebait was still on draught. 
 
 Fred threw away the wool-crop. " By all means chuck meta- 
 phor. What I mean is, where's the sense of starting the job 
 till we've got the door? The only consequence would be that a 
 perfect door, just too large or too small, would turn up a day 
 too late. That would happen equally whatever size we made the 
 framing. Whereas, if we start from the door, we shall get 
 round Fate — spoil her fun. I really believe Destiny gets more 
 gratification for her naturally spiteful disposition ..." 
 
 " Shut up, and help yourself to whitebait. . . . No, really, 
 when are they going to fix up that door? " 
 
 " They won't be long now. Next week they are doing some 
 alterations at a jolly old house in St. Anne's Gate, and they'll 
 have a splendid old door on their hands — a ripper ! Panelling 
 to make your mouth water ! " 
 
 " Well — of course we had better have a nice door than a nasty 
 one. But hurry 'em up — that's a dear boy ! Of course it's a 
 little queer of Luce to get such a fancy over that passage. . . . 
 Oh no — I'm making every allowance for nerves and health and 
 that sort of thing. . . . But what I look at is that there's 
 nothing underneath it; no backbone exactly." Charles was 
 brought up short by fear of giving pain. 
 
 It was needless. Fred was not afraid of the subject. '' You 
 mean," he said, " that the mere accident of my uncle having 
 been seen on the spot, just before he started for Wimbledon, 
 hardly — hardly individnalises the place enough to justify . . . 
 creepiness about it? You see what I mean?" 
 
 " Perfectly. That exactly puts the case. . . . You haven't 
 got enough lemon. The idiots always chop the lemon up too 
 small, and one squeezes it over one's fingers and none goes on 
 the fish. . . . But it's impossible to reason about nerves. If
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 331 
 
 your mother got what they call a scunner^ in the north, over 
 your garden gate, because he went out at it, I shouldn't under- 
 stand it myself. But I shouldn't feel the least surprise." 
 
 " You know, Charley, my dear mother isn't exactly . . . 
 logical over it. I told you about the dream ? " 
 
 Charley said absently : — " Yes — you told me about the dream," 
 and Fred classed his absence as a form of assent to the laxity 
 of logic ascribed to Mrs. Carteret. He was wrong, however; for 
 Charley said — after an exhortation to him to help to finish the 
 whitebait : — " I'm not so sure though about the logic." 
 
 " She admits that it ivas a dream, you know," Fred advanced 
 doubtfully. 
 
 " When did she dream it? That seems to me to be the point." 
 
 " Immediately after. I mean on the Saturday night — morn- 
 ing of Sunday." 
 
 " When did she tell you of it? " Fred had to think this over. 
 For remember — at the time of this conversation its topic was 
 no affair of yesterday. A year and a half had passed. " I see," 
 Charles continued, " that it wasn't next day, or you would 
 say so." 
 
 " No — it wasn't next day, but later. It was after . . . after 
 I last saw Cintra Fraser. I remember that, because I recollect 
 not knowing anything about it . . . somewhere about that 
 time." 
 
 " Don't understand. How does one recollect not knowing any- 
 thing about a thing? " 
 
 " Well — one does ! You and your legal mind ! You want 
 everything cut and dried to order. No really, old chap, I'm in 
 earnest. I quite distinctly remember that when I was enquiring 
 about the man that was drowned at Flinders's ]\Iill, I knew noth- 
 ing whatever about my mother's dream. And that was the 
 morning after Miss Cintra Fraser and your humble servant 
 decided to . . ." 
 
 " To cancel articles of partnership. All right about the dates. 
 Well — it makes all the difference. I was disposed to defend 
 your mother's position about the dream ; but if she didn't men- 
 tion the thing at the time, of course the incident loses 
 force." 
 
 " All the same, she's quite convinced herself. Only I don't 
 know that she expects everyone else to be." 
 
 " Not like my missus. . . . What are you having? Cold 
 chicken? No — I won't have cold chicken. . . . Hot roast 
 lamb, James. ..." Having disposed of the waiter, Mr.
 
 332 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Charley went back to the previous question, but got no farther 
 than : — " She expects everyone else ..." and stopped. 
 
 '' What does she expect everyone else to be convinced of? " 
 
 "Lucy? Oh, Lucy expects me to believe she sees an Arch- 
 bishop strutting about the house. Of course one knows what he 
 comes from." 
 
 "No. What?" 
 
 Charley felt somewhat disconcerted at Fred not taking his 
 " of course " as obvious, because he did not want this reference 
 to Dr. Carteret's last appearance to top the conversation. The 
 subject was painful. So he sought for some way of explaining 
 his meaning without direct reference to it. " Well ! " he said. 
 " You know she got at the old woman that was in the house at 
 the time? " 
 
 " Mrs. Klem. I know." 
 
 " She made her repeat the whole story again. And now it's 
 got on her nerves, and she has all sorts of fancies." 
 
 "Well— but— what?" 
 
 " Sheer nonsense — not worth repeating." Charley dismissed 
 the subject, and manifestly intended to talk of something else, 
 as soon as he had selected a topic. But his pause gave the dis- 
 missed subject a chance to recrudesce. " P'r'aps though I may 
 as well tell you," said he. " Don't see that it makes any dif- 
 ference ! " He then went on to tell how that Mrs. Klem's repe- 
 tition of her testimony had produced so powerful an effect upon 
 her hearer that the latter had contrived to see, on the very 
 spot where Dr. Carteret had been seen, an elderly clerical gentle- 
 man who turned and walked away down the passage; an evident 
 result, according to the narrator, of Mrs. Grewbeer's conviction 
 that the Doctor must have got out of the house through the 
 greenhouse, as there was no other way out except the front door, 
 which investigation had already disposed of. Also how that the 
 palpably hallucinate character of all this was as good as proved 
 by the close resemblance of this clerical gentleman to a person 
 who had been inspecting the premises when he and his wife — 
 then his fiancee — had first visited them. She had, of course, 
 never seen Dr. Carteret, and this chap, being some similar sort, 
 of person, had evidently got mixed up with him. 
 
 " What sort of looking chap was he? " interposed Fred at this 
 point. " Perhaps he was like my uncle? Same size, anyhow! " 
 
 ** What size was your uncle? Big man, as I recollect him at 
 school." 
 
 " Very big. Weighed twenty stone."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 333 
 
 " So I thought. I hadn't SGcn him since those days, and 
 thought he might have fined down a bit.'' 
 
 " Oh dear no ! The other way, if anything." 
 
 " Well — that settles the matter. You see, this man was very 
 big, and happened to be a parson, as it chanced. Most likely 
 Luce had seen a photograph of the Doctor. Anyhow, she's 
 cooked up an image of him. It began with that chap though. 
 I recollect her describing him." 
 
 Fred must have had misgivings as to how far selection of 
 facts to be guided by was legitimate, even when they related to 
 "phenomena"; for he said: — "But I say, Charley, let's be fair 
 to the caretakers. Remember that both deny anyone else was 
 in the house at the time." 
 
 " Don't think much of their testimony ! " said Charley, easily. 
 In which he was only following a time-honoured usage — that of 
 rejecting all witnesses but those who testify to the truth of what 
 we want. " Anyhow, old chap, do make them look alive 
 with that door." And then they talked about something 
 else. 
 
 Fred fought shy, for some reason he could not define, of trying 
 for first-hand information about Mrs. Charley's interview with 
 Mrs. Klem, and the eerie fancies her husband imputed to her. 
 Perhaps it was that it was impossible to approach the subject 
 otherwise than seriously; and to do this without seeming to 
 attach too much importance to a mere hallucination was just 
 as impossible, or more so. If he could have brought the inci- 
 dent into line with any accredited ghost story it would have been 
 easier to contemplate it as matter for discussion; but how could 
 he refer to such a phantasy otherwise than jocularly? Consider 
 dignity ! Are we not all committed to derision of suchlike 
 legends — when men? Women are at liberty to discuss them 
 seriously. But in what spirit of enquiry could Fred approach 
 this one? As matter for derision; a good joke? Surely not! — 
 for, consider his uncle's memory. Seriously, then? — with the 
 seriousness that memory demanded ? Perfectly ridiculous ! 
 
 So he held his tongue, and the mahogany door, which appeared 
 before midsummer, was generally accepted as an outcrop of the 
 higher ajsthesis; a decorative aftermath of the embellishments 
 of the mansion. Its connection with the nervous fancies of that 
 mansion's beautiful mistress was known only to her husband and 
 his friend. 
 
 It was to all appearance complete and in its place on a 
 Wednesday. To the unprofessional eye nothing was left to be 
 
 22
 
 334 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 done. A higher discrimination on the part of the foreman on 
 the job perceived that he and his confederates could " make a 
 finish^' by Saturday. This expression has two meanings; one, 
 that a spirited effort — with perhaps a trifle of overtime — may 
 end the job on that day; the other, that a leisurely attitude, as 
 of lotus-eaters, may expand or dilute that job in such a manner 
 as to deceive the unprofessional eye, and make its owner submit 
 with a good grace to a charge of a week's wage for a day's work. 
 In the present case those tiresome workmen had only just got 
 out of the house when its master returned, accompanied by Fred 
 Carteret as usual. They went straight to the contemplation of 
 their result. 
 
 " Not half bad that, Fred," said Charley, who had been show- 
 ing some tendency towards an aesthetic raison-d' ctre for this 
 door. The original impulse to construct it had served its turn, 
 and might be discarded as a concession to Xeurosis of which one 
 might be half ashamed, but which deserved forgiveness. " Let's 
 see how it looks open." Of course the way out, when the dbor 
 stood open, was like any other exit. But it was a satisfaction, 
 for all that, to put it through its paces, as it were. The two 
 young men passed into the lobby, crossed it, and stood looking 
 out into the garden, now in the fullest glory of a summer 
 evening. The days were just passing through the short period 
 when the redundance of new foliage on every tree cancels the 
 memory of its winter; and in the suburbs of the great black 
 town scores a new triumph over the sooty atmosphere we 
 thought had this year slain branches and trunk outright. The 
 sun had passed off half the lawn and rose-beds, and stood pledged 
 not to return till to-morrow's dawn, leaving Tom the gardener 
 free to squirt over them to his heart's content, and fill the air 
 with an assurance that " God's in His Heaven, all's right with 
 the World." A thought one is happy over, until some other 
 bouquet reminds us where the Devil is. 
 
 " I must get Tom a bigger lawn-mower," said the master of 
 the house. " He can't keep the oTass down with the one he's 
 got." 
 
 " You won't save power by increasing the size of the machine," 
 replied the engineer. 
 
 " Xo — but if he harnesses his son in front of a bigger one 
 he'll cut twice as quick. ... I sav, Fred ! " 
 
 " m\a.i say, old chap ? " 
 
 " I was thinking how jolly different the place looks from when 
 we came here first — me and the missus, I mean." This was an
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 335 
 
 attempt to dissociate the place, as far as might be^ from the cloud 
 that hung over it. But it did not succeed. 
 
 " Very unlike what my uncle saw/' said Fred, gravely. 
 There was no getting away from it. 
 
 Charley laid an affectionate, apologetic hand on his friend's 
 shoulder. " I'm sorry, dear boy," said he. '' Never mind ! " 
 
 '• My fault," said Fred. " I might have let it alone. The 
 thing is as it is, and we can do nothing." A mere common- 
 place of fatalism this, and Fred knew it. 
 
 They said no more, but walked in silence to the far end of 
 the lobby, incurring a sudden shrill censure from the parrakeets 
 as they passed the big cage. They returned in silence, but 
 stopped half-way, and the parrakeets reserved their opinion until 
 it could be repeated as a broadside. 
 
 " You know what I think, Fred? " Charley was bent on con- 
 solation. " He'll come back, alive and well, and we shall see 
 him here, I hope, in this very house — in this very place ! I 
 wonder will he remember coming here, and the old woman 
 running away to open the door." 
 
 " But . . . ! " 
 
 " Oh, I know — it seems impossible. But I'm only telling you 
 my conviction. . . . There's Lucy." He shouted and whistled 
 to her, but she either did not or would not hear him. She 
 came slowly across the lawn to the house, absorbed in the roses 
 she had gathered, — an image of beauty that merged in the beauty 
 of the dying day or cancelled it, according to the preoccupation 
 of the eye that saw her. Fred would have ignored his, only too 
 gladly; but how ignore the pulsations of an unruly heart? 
 Nothing left but pretence ! It should succeed, if human force 
 of will could make it do so. So said Fred to that unruly heart 
 of his, and it seemed to mock at his resolution, cruelly. 
 
 She vanished into the house, through a door that opened on 
 the lawn, that had been a window of the sitting-room before the 
 alterations, and they retraced their steps to meet her. The 
 parrakeets waited for their chance, firing their broadside of 
 shrieks with unanimous discipline, and dropping the subject the 
 moment the enemy was out of sight. 
 
 "Haven't we met before to-day? I suppose we haven't," was 
 Lucy's languid response to her husband's remark on entering 
 the sitting-room. " I never heard you go in the morning." She 
 put out her countenance, cornerwise, within kissing distance. 
 But she retained Fred's hand in her own while she did it. 
 
 " Thought I had better let you have your sleep out, dearest,"
 
 336 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 said Charley, apologetically. " You see, Fred, it's like this. 
 When I walk to the station, I have to clear out of the house 
 at eight o'clock, to catch the train at half-past." He was 
 entering into further particulars of the position, when his wife 
 stopped him. 
 
 " It's all right, Charles dear. We understand that it's inevi- 
 table. Never mind about the alterations of the trains." Then 
 she had time to finisli saying good-evening to Fred, with the 
 help of the hand she had left with him for the purpose. 
 
 It was the slightest of incidents, and passed in half the time 
 it takes to write it. 
 
 " I sang out to you across the garden, and you didn't hear 
 me," said Charley to his wife. 
 
 " You should have shouted louder," was the unconcerned 
 reply. Then she asked — where was he when he shouted? But 
 the question was addressed more to Fred than to him. 
 
 Fred's mind was a maze of inconsistencies, bred of the posi- 
 tion. How reconcile a blind intoxication of unruly passion with 
 indignation at its object's semi-neglect of her husband? Yet 
 that describes the bias of his thoughts at this moment. His 
 task was resolute concealment, hers to help his resolution by 
 clear tokens of a love elsewhere. If she failed there, he was 
 lost. Otherwise, his lot was a burden to him alone. Grant that 
 it was a hell, none need know it but himself. But it was 
 -easiest borne when she had no suspicion of it. That hell was 
 .at its worst when its evil spirits muttered — had she? 
 
 Fred strove to accept the hand that remained in his, the eyes 
 that rested unreservedly on his face, as the best negative to such 
 •questioning. "Where was he when he shouted?" he repeated. 
 " Where were we, Charley ? . . . Oh, I know ! Just the other 
 side of the little green birds." 
 
 " Half-way down the long passage, sweetheart," says Charley. 
 " We went through the new door. To baptize it, don't vou 
 know?" 
 
 '^ I thought so." 
 
 " I thought you didn't see us. You said so." 
 
 " I said I didn't hear you. I saw you plain enough. And 
 somebody with you. Who was it ? " 
 
 Fred and Charley looked at each other, in doubt. Each shook 
 Ills head as though to a spoken enquiry. No — they had been 
 alone. 
 
 The lady looked incredulous. " But I saw someone," said she. 
 ■" As plainly as I see you now,"
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 337 
 
 " There wasn't anybody," said Charley, in the tone of a man 
 who is getting used to his wife's fancies. Then he looked at his 
 watch, and became alive to the lapse of time. " I say, Luce," 
 said he. " We shall keep dinner waiting again if we don't look 
 sharp." So they went away to dress. But Mrs. Snaith went 
 through one door, and her husband and his friend through the 
 other, the one that led to the great staircase. Each of the men 
 looked at the other, and the husband said : — " Rum that, too ! 
 With the new door and all ! But let her alone. She'll come 
 to rights." His eyes were open to this singular nervous fancy 
 of hers, about the place, but closed to his own — and his friend's — 
 danger.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 Mamma Hinchliffe — so called by her son-in-law — had been 
 deposited by her barouche at The Cedars some half-hour since, 
 and was accompanied by a friend, this time. She was thick- 
 sown with jewellery when she appeared in the drawing-room, 
 and majestic. The friend was another sort; but it was worth a 
 great deal, that sort. Its value may only have been a third of 
 what her late husband died worth, but that only showed what 
 a superior sort he was. Her dress said, almost audibly: — 
 " Xever mind my dignilied reserve. Only think of what I cost." 
 And every one of her rings, restrained though it was, was Avorth 
 quite a real person's banker's account. 
 
 Hers was not a full-blooded opulence, but one of a sort very 
 recognisable by Society, which really knew. This lady had come 
 to enjoy a full week-end — to spend Saturday evening and stop 
 over Sunday. She did the former on the lines of one who wishes 
 others to say next day what a very nice person that Mrs. So- 
 and-so is ! But the next morning she said to Mrs. Hinchliffe, 
 visiting her after breakfast in her own room : — " Mr. Carteret is 
 an old friend of your daughter ? " 
 
 " Of her husband," replied Mrs. Hinchliffe. " They are like 
 brothers, I'm told. I know him very little myself." 
 
 " Brothers. I see," said the visitor. " How very nice ! And 
 he sings Italian duets with his friend's wife. Quite ideal ! " 
 One has no authentic particulars of the behaviour of a lynx on 
 a week-end visit, so it is safest to say that Mrs. Bannister Stair 
 seemed an observant person. Even a lynx, however, could have 
 seen nothing, ideal or otherwise, next day; as Fred and Charles 
 went for a long walk. When they returned, they found that 
 the party that sat down to dinner would be a party of eight, by 
 the time three guests from the neighbourhood had been an- 
 nounced. "Who are Mr. and Mrs. Wigham Baynes?" Fred 
 asked of Charley, who replied : — " Haven't the slightest idea. 
 But they live near, so Luce asked them to dinner. He writes 
 things, i believe." The odd gentleman — to make up the eight 
 ^was a chap he had met at the Club, who was staying at 
 Wimbledon. Something in the Board of Trade, Charley be- 
 lieved, but he wasn't sure. "What's his name?" asked Fred. 
 
 338
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 339 
 
 Charley wasn't sure of that either, but thought it was something 
 like Monday Morning. "Look out sharp when Modicum an-' 
 nounces him," said he. " It won't do to have him here all 
 the evening and not know his name ! " 
 
 " It isn't ]\Iunby Moring by any chance, I suppose ? " said 
 Fred. But it was. And Fred breathed a prayer that this 
 gentleman had heard that he and Cintra were " off," and that 
 he had not forgotten it. 
 
 Mr. Munby Moring was late, appearing some time after the 
 above conversation. When one sees any acquaintance of hours 
 gone by after its successors have passed into years, raptures are 
 desirable, as for a dear friend risen from the dead. Fred 
 executed his creditably, but Mr. ]\Ioring put too much side on. 
 If his statements were trustworthy, nothing short of a rapid 
 succession of miracles had prevented his calling every week 
 through the whole interval to pay his respects to the Professor. 
 And on each of these occasions he would have looked forward 
 with joyous anticipation to the luxury of meeting his old friend 
 Mr. Frederic Carteret. But his official preoccupations had been 
 of such a nature that every social relaxation had been out of 
 the question. 
 
 After exhausting this phase of the topic, Mr. Moring appeared 
 to remember something he had forgotten, for he prefaced his 
 next remark with : — '" But — by the way ! " Fred prepared for 
 the worst. He knew it must come, and waited. Mr. Moring 
 appeared to decipher in his mind's diary, and to experience 
 confirmation. " Yes — by the way ! " said he. " I was promised 
 the pleasure of congratulating ..." and stopped, with a sly 
 or waggish identity asserting itself through his everyday de- 
 meanour. It was nipped in the buy by what Fred suspected was 
 an inarticulate grimace of someone behind his back, probal)ly 
 Charley come to the rescue. As usual in such cases, Mr. Moring 
 had not the slightest idea why he was to pull up short, nor even 
 the inadvisability of saying : — " Oh, I beg pardon ! " However, 
 that didn't much matter, "and Fred felt that, on the whole, he 
 had got off cheap. 
 
 Over two hours later, when the four gentlemen emerged 
 from the atmosphere of their cigars to join the ladies in the 
 drawing-room, they found it empty, and heard the voices of 
 the said ladies in the garden beyond, outside in the summer 
 night. Then it was that Mr. Munby Moring, catechetical 
 about the identity of Mrs. Bannister Stair, the friend of 
 Charley's wife's mamma, detained his host to explain that he
 
 340 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 had known that lady's deceased husband intimately in early 
 life — in fact, till he wont to India. Made a heap of money 
 there, Stair did. Comin' home to see what he could spend it 
 on, and got a chill, comin' north. You did, if you didn't take 
 care. Great mistake, hurryin' off the boat, to save time, at 
 Genoa. Much better go round by Gib. Nobody ever got any- 
 thing on the chest, aboard ship. Let him see, wasn't she a 
 Crackham? Must have been a Crackham. Or wasn't she one 
 of the Strawbury girls? 
 
 Fred lost the rest, and presently Lucy's voice was saying to 
 him, under the stars : — " I'm glad you're come. These women 
 bore me. Suppose we walk about ? " And they did so, leaving 
 — said Lucy — her maternal parent to look magnificent by the 
 light of a Chinese lantern, and make what she might of the 
 literary gentleman. Charley would have to amuse Mrs. 
 Novelist. Perhaps she would pass him on to her husband for 
 copy, and he would get into print. 
 
 As for Mr. Moring and the former Miss Crackham, or 
 Strawbury, they went as near rushing into one another's arms 
 as one does — or two do — in blameless vSociety. They launched 
 into a revision of all the persons l)oth had known, all those 
 that either had known and the other hadn't, and all those 
 neither had known but both might have known. The classes 
 were so numerous that they had to retire to a solitude, under 
 an ilex, to do any sort of justice to them. And there Modicum 
 provided them with a Chinese lantern, all to themselves. 
 
 " What were you and Charles doing in the colonnade ? " said 
 Lucy, giving the long passage a name it had acquired in the 
 past 3'ear; somewhat unreasonably, as there were no columns. 
 '* Yes — this eveninsf, when vou said there was nobodv there." 
 
 " There iras nobody there," Fred answered. " Nobody but 
 ourselves." 
 
 They were in a leaf-covered avenue that crossed the end of 
 the large garden. It had still the marks of its antiquity. The 
 thick moss upon the gravel footway, the memories of some- 
 thing built of stone, disintegrating at the bidding of the damp 
 — something that might have made part of a summer-house, or 
 parapet at least, but that gave no clue to speculation to say 
 what part. It ended — the avenue did — in a dead wall invisible 
 for ivy, that only emerged into being as a cheval-de-frise at its 
 top, much the worse for two centuries of oxidation. The place 
 had been left a wilderness to satisfy Archaeology yearning for a 
 raison-d'ctre, and had not supplied it. But it suggested grue-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 341 
 
 some memories of the days when ^lolancholia paced its length 
 in silence, no sadder than its wont for the gibber of harmless 
 Lunacy close at hand, unconscious even of the violent cries of 
 the bad case in the padded room up yonder. For the lock-up 
 for raving madness had been identified, by the iron stanchions 
 of an upper window within the glass. 
 
 Lucy turned to her companion at the end of the path, by 
 the dead wall. " Xobody but ' yourselves ! " she repeated. 
 " Upon your honour, Fred ! Look me in the face." 
 
 " Upon my honour, no one ! " He complied with her im- 
 perious word of command. But never had ho felt more glad of 
 his conviction that she could not see into his heart. It was a 
 faith that stood between him and a madness as bad as any of 
 its forerunners, here in the past. He clung to it as his sole 
 resource against himself. 
 
 " You sound like a man speaking the truth," said she. " But 
 then, ivho was it I saw?" 
 
 "You are sure you did see someone?" 
 
 " Perfectly certain." 
 
 "What was he like?" 
 
 " That's quite another matter. I wasn't interested enough 
 in him to take his measure. If I had known you and Charles 
 were going to deny his existence, I should have looked to see 
 what he was like. I was some distance off, too." 
 
 " Well — he wasn't there ! " 
 
 " I suppose he wasn't, since you both say so." Then, dis- 
 missing, as of«-no importance, this ambiguous unknown person, 
 — for indeed that was what he seemed, with such small testi- 
 mony for his existence — she turned to another topic. " You 
 know the man that took me in to dinner — sat between me and 
 mamma? What is he? Charles met him at his Club, I be- 
 lieve. But he didn't seem to know much about him." 
 
 " He knows as much as I do. I only met him once — a year 
 ago. More." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 Fred never could mention the name of Cintra's family with 
 complete unconcern. " At the Frasers', a year ago. " Oh — 
 more than that! Yes — a good deal more." He seemed to 
 consider the lapse of time an extenuating circumstance. " I 
 really know very little more of him than you do." 
 
 " Fancy that ! I thought he was quite an old friend, by his 
 manner. But what a narrow escape he had ! " 
 
 " I don't think I understand."
 
 342 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " WTiy — when he was ushered in. He all but asked you 
 after . . . after that young lady. If Charles hadn't made 
 grimaces — well ! — all the fat would have been in the fire." 
 
 Fred laughed, or made believe to laugh. " It wouldn't have 
 flared," said he. " He might have felt rather like an idiot, 
 though." 
 
 ''What should you have said?" 
 
 " Oh, I should just have said we had thought better of that | 
 — might have told him the young lady was engaged to some- 
 body else. It would have been true." 
 
 " Yes. But suppose he had taken for granted that it had 
 mellowed up and come off — that this Fraser girl was Mrs. You, 
 in fact ..." 
 
 " He couldn't have thought so. She would have been here." 
 
 " Oh nonsense ! A cold — any little thing ! " 
 
 " Well — he didn't think she was Mrs. Me, or anything of 
 the sort." 
 
 " Don't be offended." 
 
 "How could I be offended at anything you said?" 
 
 Oh, the vanity of human resolutions ! Here was this young 
 man, who for so long had sealed up in his heart a futile 
 passion that, for all its futility, seemed to him a supreme 
 disloyalty to his friend — here was Fred Carteret, the moment 
 these words had passed his lips, turning angrily on his inner 
 self, to rend it for its indiscretion. For nothing can be more 
 certain that that he who would conceal from a woman the 
 fact that she has turned his head, had best beware lest by so 
 much as half a word he implies that she is to him anything 
 that Poll round the corner or Betsy over the way are not. 
 Above all, let him avoid any accent on the lady's personal 
 pronoun. 
 
 However, it could not be unspoken. Moreover, there was 
 always a golden bridge — or was it a copper, or even a pewter 
 bridge? — the bridge of Friendship. How many reciprocities 
 have made the mere fact that it was near at hand, to run to 
 on a pinch, a modus vivendi through a period of embarrass- 
 ment! Besides, so long as the lady is silent, nothing comes 
 of it. The burr in your sleeve remains stationary, till your 
 arm moves. 
 
 They walked in silence the length of the pathway, and came 
 almost within hearing of Mr. Munby Moring and the com- 
 panion of his tcte-a-tcie, Mrs. Bannister Stair. They had got 
 something to talk about, from the vivacitv of their manner;
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 343 
 
 something with a lady and a gentleman in it, said Suspicion, 
 always on the watch. But the very nature of this something 
 had caused their voices to drop in a disappointing manner. 
 
 "' I wish they wouldn't be so confidential/' said Fred's com- 
 panion. " It would be so amusing to know what they have 
 found to talk about; apart from the pleasure of eavesdropping, 
 which is always great." Fred assented. 
 
 What was it that lady and gentleman dropped their voices 
 over, there in the summer night, out of all reasonable hearing 
 of host, hostess, and other guests? To say nothing of their 
 security among honourable people, best expressed by their young 
 hostess's fearlessness of making eavesdropping the subject of 
 a jest. The reason was probably the usual one for voice- 
 dropping — the fear, that is, that he or she whom you are just 
 speaking of will hear you speak of him or of her. For it was 
 just about the time that the lady said, as a sequel to personal 
 matters that do not concern the story : — " And who is the 
 handsome young man? You know him at home, it 
 seems." 
 
 '^ Eh — who — I ? Well, I don't know that it goes, as far as 
 that. Don't even know where he lives, exactly. Was to have 
 married the daughter of a man I know. That's all." 
 
 " Oh — I'm disappointed ! I should have thought he was a 
 long-lost second-cousin once removed, for instance." 
 
 " No — not a bit — not a bit ! Merely met him — merely met 
 him — at an old friend's. At her father's, in fact; but it was 
 broken off, it seems. Snaith was tellin' me, just as we'd done 
 our smoke." 
 
 "Didn't he get to ivhy — to why it was broken off?" 
 
 " Can tell you what he said — mutual consent of parties — 
 that kind of thing." 
 
 " And did you believe him? " 
 
 "Middlin'! Well— no— perhaps I didn't." 
 
 " Who was the other girl ? " Really the story might just as 
 well have likened this Mrs. Stair boldly to that lynx. For she 
 was one of those diabolically penetrative people who have seen 
 a great deal of the World. But it and she never came to a 
 crisis. For her diamonds were unimpeachable. 
 
 Mr. Moring, on the other hand, professed a deadly discretion 
 — a soul-freezing discretion — whenever any two persons pos- 
 sessing a sex apiece came within a league of ane another. He 
 may be said to have lived with his forefinger on his lips to 
 show how much he wasn't saying about his neighbours. " Xo
 
 344 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 — I say now ! " said he. " No scandal against Queen Elizabeth. 
 . . . Well — he never told me anything." 
 
 " And if he had you wouldn't have repeated it. / see. But — 
 isn't that them coming back . . . ? " It may have been just 
 at this moment that their words became inaudible. 
 
 Nobody on the other side of the evergreens could have heard 
 Mr. Moring's :—" Shish !— they'll be off directly." ... A 
 short interregnum for their benefit followed, in tones ostenta- 
 tiously audible; a mechanical recrudescence of the personal 
 matters just disposed of. It referred to Llandrindod, where 
 Mrs. Moring's rheumatism was receiving incalculable benefit. 
 Llandrindod was in Monmouthshire, and ]\Ir. Moring couldn't 
 speak too highly of it. He could be audible with safety about 
 Llandrindod. But as soon as the only possible audience was 
 out of hearing, he dropped his voice illogically to secrecy 
 point. ..." You were going to say . . . ? " He came 
 nearer to hear. 
 
 " It's those two I'm talking about. ... Of course I 7nay 
 be mistaken. ..." 
 
 " H'm ! ," 
 
 "... But anyone could see, by the way they went on in 
 the house." 
 
 " Which way ? I saw nothin'." 
 
 " Stupid man — that's just the point. They looked the other 
 way, and never spoke. And now — look at them ! . . . Yes — 
 this side." 
 
 This last referred to Mr. Moring's eyeglass, which he had 
 started in chase of, over his waistcoat. He found it on that 
 side, and directed a search-glare through it into the darkness, 
 from which were audible the voices of the couple under dis- 
 cussion. But they were shrouded in gloom. " Can't see 'em," 
 said he. " Take your word for it ! " 
 
 " Well — don't do that ! But look at them next time you 
 get a chance. . . . Wait a minute ! — they're coming back 
 now." 
 
 Mr. Moring kept the gloom under observation. From it 
 emerged, chiefly, a white cloud of muslin. In subordination 
 as to size, but whiter, and sharper in outline, a shirt-front. 
 The observer noted that these two objects approached through 
 the gloom keeping the same distance apart. This'was in favour 
 of their relations being normal. " Well," said he, " I shouldn't 
 say they were quarrellin', as far as I can see. That's nothin' 
 to go by."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 345 
 
 " Perhaps my penetration is at fault," said the lady, some- 
 what coldly. 
 
 Mr. Moring hastened to acknowledge the inferiority of his 
 judgments of human nature. " Dessay I'm wrong," said he. 
 " Not a dab at this sort of thing. , . . Never was ! " 
 
 " Very likely I am mistaken. Let us consider that I am 
 mistaken. But you can tell me who was the other girl." 
 
 " Can't — 'pon my honour ! ]\Iy friend here — Mr. Snaith, 
 you know — only told me the thing went off. Died a natural 
 death by consent of both parties. Things do." 
 
 " But I understood that you didn't believe him." 
 
 "Well-1-1! p'r'aps I didn't, altogether. Didn't boil over, 
 s'pose we say ! " 
 
 " Rather a half-hearted belief — was that it? " 
 
 " Somethin' of that sort. Much better expression than mine. 
 As I said, I'm not exactly — a dab." 
 
 " Then — who teas the other girl ? It comes to that." 
 
 Mr. Moring seemed a little restive under the incisiveness of 
 this conclusion. " Put it that way if you like," said he. 
 " Snaith said nothin' about her, anyhow. Don't believe he 
 knows." 
 
 '^ My dear Mr. Moring, you men really are! Now is it likely 
 that he would know? Be reasonable!" 
 
 " Don't follah, altogether ! " 
 
 " Do you mean to say you don't see ? " 
 
 " I see what you're drivin' at." A slight inflection of the 
 speaker's countenance towards the gloom in which the uncon- 
 scious subjects of this conversation were again approaching 
 showed his appreciation of what was meant. 
 
 " Of course you do ! " said the lady. Then a pause followed 
 to allow voices and footsteps to get out of hearing. It gives 
 the story time to note a ciirious fact. In this conversation 
 absolutely no direct reference was made by either party to its 
 subject. 
 
 It must have been at this moment that Lucy said : — " Tliey've 
 fallen flat — used the gossip up, I suppose." 
 
 " No, they haven't. You'll see they'll begin again wlien we're 
 out of hearing." Which proves to be the case, for the moment 
 the eavesdroppers' chance was gone the conversation freshened. 
 No suspicion had crossed their minds that they were under 
 observation. 
 
 That unfortunate stress on the personal pronoun had had to 
 be actively ignored, by mutual consent. The young lady's abso-
 
 346 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 lute silence in answer had seemed to take Friendship's efficiency 
 to deal with it for granted. The opportunity for eavesdropping 
 had helped to slur it over, and what passed in the gloom during 
 the next turn up and down had been almost hysterically im- 
 personal. But it rankled, that personal pronoun. Like the 
 soul of the slain Eedskin that soaks into that of his slayer, so 
 it soaked into the conversation, and coloured it. It was its 
 unacknowledged influence which dictated that a memory of the 
 past should be disinterred, as soon as talk could go back to 
 business. 
 
 " Do you remember one day," said Lucy, " when I had been 
 over to see your motlier, and you met me in the train ? " 
 
 " Yes — a year and a half ago." He had dispositions to say 
 he should rather think he did; but checked them after his 
 experience with that personal pronoun. " You mean when we 
 walked round Eegent's Park Square in the sunset." It would 
 have been safer to leave the sunset out. But why? Leave it in 
 now, having done it. 
 
 Lucy palliated that sunset, with a judicious correctness of 
 phrase. " I remember it perfectly," said she. " It was an 
 exceptionally fine one. But do you remember what I said to 
 you then, about Miss Cintra Fraser?" 
 
 " You wanted me to go back to her — to try to undo the past." 
 
 " I did. And when you said that was impossible, because you 
 had ceased to care for her, I accused you point-blank of caring 
 for some other woman ; as, else, how could you know ? And you 
 admitted that it was the truth." 
 
 " It was the truth." 
 
 " Was ? Then it is not true now ? Oh, do say that that is 
 what you mean ! " 
 
 " I cannot. I did not mean it in that sense. It is as true 
 now as it was then. Nothing has changed." His voice was 
 strained, and he must have known it. He did not meet her gaze, 
 but flinched from the burden of its enquiry, as he continued 
 in short sentences, each one seeming to cost a separate effort. 
 " But I can tell you nothing. Nothing is left to be said. I 
 entreat you not to question me. The tiling must be, and I must 
 bear it.' What harm is done? The penance is my own — leave 
 me to deal with it. I could not tell you if I would — could not — 
 could not! " 
 
 " Fred ! " Wrenched as he was, her voice, speaking his name, 
 was a solace to him. " One thing you can tell me, at least. 
 Does this lady . . . ? "
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 347 
 
 "Does this lady what?" 
 
 " Does she know it ? " 
 
 " Know what ? There is nothing to know." 
 
 " Is it nothing that you love her ? Is she a stone ? " 
 
 " She is as sweet-hearted as she is beautiful." The safety of 
 saying this was as a breath of fresh air to him, half choked as 
 he was with his life of secrecy. And his eyes could feast on 
 her face unblamed, there in the dim starlight. " But this I do 
 know," he continued, " that she knows nothing — and by Heaven 
 she never shall know anything! — of my love for her, cost me 
 what it may to conceal it." He should have stopped there, and 
 kept a check on a too compliant tongue, under sway of a tem- 
 pestuous heart. He should not have let it add : — " I shall never 
 speak of it to her nor her ..." He stopped with a jerk, 
 and would have recalled the last two words. The others he 
 might have compounded for, somehow. 
 
 But she had heard them too plainly. " Nor her what ? " 
 said she. 
 
 What a blunder to make! He had not seen that no question 
 could arise of speech with a husband on such a matter except 
 his relations with that husband had been like his with hers. 
 But then, how was she to know what his friendships were? 
 Would not open speech be safer than an entrenchment in 
 silence ? 
 
 He cut short weighing the subject, and said simply : — " Her 
 husband." He was relieved when her next words franked him 
 of explanation. 
 
 " Oh dear ! " said she. '' Then I see. She has a husband." 
 
 " Yes. But I have no reason to suppose she is not devoted 
 to him." 
 
 " Has one ever ? With any wife and any husband, I mean." 
 She spoke drily ; and, do what he would, the thought would creep 
 across his mind of that demoralising suggestion of his mother's. 
 Was that idea of Xancy Fraser's about her beautiful friend's 
 coldness to her husband necessarily a fantastic dream? He 
 repudiated it angrily, but it ignored his rebuffs. Slie went on 
 speaking : — " But — poor Fred ! — it is all over for you, any- 
 way." 
 
 "How could it be otherwise?" 
 
 " Well — I mean that it doesn't come into practical politics. 
 The Workl is too much with us. But sometimes — not infre- 
 quently neither — it is otherwise." 
 
 " 1 don't know whether I quite follow."
 
 348 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " How slow we are to-day ! Do jjcople never drive a coach- 
 and-six through . . . ? " 
 
 " Through morality? Of course they do. And we — we 
 respcctahles — help the World to })ull a long face over their 
 enormity. But ..." 
 
 She misunderstood his pause. " Oh, I can assure you/' said 
 she, "' that / am not strait-laced. I feel very lenient towards 
 the Sinner." 
 
 " 1 did not mean that," said he. " I am less strait-laced than 
 I like to acknowledge — less than you would approve perhaps. 
 But it does me no good in this ease." 
 
 " Does you no good ? " His words puzzled her. 
 
 "Jly loose-lacedness — if that's the word. ... I am afraid 
 I had better stop and say no more about it. For it is impossible 
 that I should make myself understood." 
 
 They had twice or thrice been within hearing of the middle- 
 aged gossips under the Chinese lantern, but the earnestness of 
 their own talk had destroyed the charm of eavesdropping. At 
 this moment fhey had the world to themselves, at the dark and 
 silent end of the path. For all that, she dropped her voice to 
 answer him, as though the stars with their light and the Avind 
 with its music in the leaves were best kept out of their confi- 
 dence. " Listen, Fred," said she. '" You say that this idol of 
 yours is all wifely devotion, and that sort of thing. How do 
 you know you are not mistaken? Have you ever dared — now 
 mind — ^}^ou are not to answer this question unless you like ! — 
 have you ever dared to speak of your love to her? Or have you 
 perhaps — man-fashion — been treating her as though she, being 
 only a woman, was entitled to no voice in the matter? Wliat 
 evidence have you of Iter feelings towards you?" 
 
 Fred felt much like the poet's wild thing taken in a trap, 
 that sees the trapper coming through the wood. But he could 
 not cry out. He must needs articulate some reply. He made 
 answer, white as a sheet, and with the controlled voice that tells 
 of its owner's distress : — " I have never said one word of it to 
 her. She knows nothing. I do not know — cannot know — that 
 if I did she would not despise and hate me." 
 
 The story can only suppose that the reason Mistress Lucy 
 preserved so complete a self-command at this moment was the 
 one it imputes to all women of her type under like circumstances. 
 She stood committed to nothing — was safe in a supposed igno- 
 rance, a port of shelter at the slightest threat of storm. Had 
 Fred given way to what was really easiest to him, and made full
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 349 
 
 confession that she, and only she, was the idol he had spoken of, 
 she would always, if she was really in need of a haven, have had 
 this one to run to. Who could blame her, for mere warm 
 friendship, shown to her husband's friend? Why — any falter- 
 ing in that friendship would have laid her open to a suspicion 
 of consciousness on the subject, consciousness from which perfect 
 innocence was free. 
 
 Anyhow, her voice sounded self-possessed enough when she 
 made answer : — " And why ? How can any woman despise and 
 hate a man for loving her? I don't believe in that woman." 
 
 It was a kind of desperation that made Fred say : — " Not for 
 loving her maybe, but for an act of perfidy — of treachery with- 
 out a parallel — in this case." He ought to have kept th« whip- 
 hand over his tongue. 
 
 She drew the inevitable conclusion, and repeated it with per- 
 fect control. " Perfidy towards her husband, of course." She 
 did not wait for contradiction, his only chance now of escape, 
 but went on : — " Only — why without a parallel ? ^^^lat is her 
 husband to you that you should be so scrupulous? Are you not 
 thinking more of him than of her?" 
 
 Fred could not utter a word. How could he say : — " He is my 
 oldest friend, and my dearest. His wife is a plant of last year's 
 growth " ? 
 
 She continued : — " Perhaps you think, as men do, that if you 
 can conceal your love it is your right to do so. But how do you 
 know you can? Love is harder to conceal than hate." He 
 muttered something under his breath. " What is that ? " she 
 said. " You know that she is unconscious — is that it ? Oh, 
 Fred, is a woman ever unconscious of a man's love? " 
 
 " She is unconscious of mine." Fred believed this at the 
 moment, with what was scarcely a hope lurking in the corner of 
 his heart that the belief was unwarranted. Human nature was 
 in am])ush in a thicket of good resolution. The story is sorry 
 for Fred. 
 
 " If that were a thing you could know, you might be right. 
 But — how can 3'ou Icnow it?" 
 
 " I am convinced of it. Do not let us talk any more of this." 
 
 There was, at the end of the blind alley where they stood, an 
 exit under an arch of pleached boughs leading out on the lawn. 
 Fred made as though he would pass through this and bring their 
 conversation to an end by rejoining the party, on the lawn. She 
 stopped him, standing before this narrow opening, with : — " No, 
 Fred, not yet! Do not go in till you have told me more. You 
 
 23
 
 350 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 had it on 3'Our lips to tell me but now. Whose wife is she whom 
 you are so mad about — whose husband is so dear a friend as to 
 make you hate yourself for loving her so much? \Yho is he 
 that we have never heard his name? " Her hands were upon 
 him to stop him, and all the lustre of her beseeching eyes was 
 upon him, so near his own. 
 
 The middle-aged gossips under the Chinese lantern allowed 
 the voices and footsteps to get out of hearing; then went on 
 again. 
 
 " It goes without saying," said the lady, " that I may be 
 altogether mistaken. No one is readier than I am to admit 
 herself fallible. But . . ." The implication of this con- 
 Junction was, that a situation might occasionally arise which 
 would be prohibitive of a false construction, even by an observer 
 inferior to herself. 
 
 Mr. Moring seemed to wish to demur to this, but to lack 
 physical courage. " I don't know quite — p'r'aps — whether I 
 should go so far as that . . . 'pends on circumstances, don't 
 it ? " said he, feebly. 
 
 The reply : — " Time will show " — expressed confidence, with 
 patience. Experts in prophecy can bear to await its fulfilment. 
 Mrs. Stair, however, could be lenient to a mere outsider. " You 
 would perhaps think quite differently, Mr. jMoring, if you were 
 in my position. Naturally, I hear things. You see, this young 
 lady's mother is my very old friend."' She paused a moment 
 before adding : — " Let me see ! I think you said your acquaint- 
 ance with ]\Ir. Snaith was not of long standing." 
 
 " Only introduced the other day, at the Club. . . . "Wliat's 
 that? . . . Somethin' I don't know? . . . Nobody ever tells 
 me anythin'. . . . I'm out of it." He was ready to imbibe 
 information, and listened. 
 
 " I suppose I oughtn't to repeat things. Only really, when 
 everybody knows them, it's absurd ! " In point of fact, this 
 excellent lady was itching to talk over some surmises she had 
 indulged in about Charles Snaith, and the reasons why her 
 friend's beautiful daughter had accepted him ; and this gentle- 
 man, whom she was getting so confidential with, and who was 
 in the way of hearing things, would be sure to be able to confirm 
 or contradict these surmises. Briefly then, she told him — of 
 course stipulating that he should have his tongue torn out with 
 hot irons rather than repeat a word he heard — the whole of the 
 story about Charles's relationship to the Earl, and his narrow 
 
 I
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 351 
 
 escape from a coronet. Mr. Moring undertook profound secrecy 
 with a levity which promised ill for his observation of it. He 
 was able to confirm citations from Debrett, and to add to that 
 writer's information about this Earl's family particulars which 
 he omits. Debrett finds no place for any statement that the 
 Panjandrums are a dam bad lot — always were ! Nor that Mr. 
 Moring, or anyone else, wouldn't trust any member of that 
 family with half a crown, or introduce him to any respectable 
 female — not to his own sister, for example. Debrett's would be 
 a livelier compilation with marginal notes on these lines; but of 
 course he has to take space into account. 
 
 Apart, however, from his admission of the authenticity of this 
 Earl and his family, and the possibility that his host was a blood 
 relation, who had drifted away from it, Mr. Moring showed 
 incredulity. He managed to say, though he had to muster 
 courage to do so : — " It's only your idea, you know ! " He felt 
 frightened when he had said it, and almost inclined to soften 
 the impeachment by adding : — " But your diamonds are 
 genuine." 
 
 Their owner frightened him still more, by making him repeat 
 his words — a very good way. " It's only my ... I don't 
 know whether I quite understand. . . . Wltat is my idea?" 
 Her tone may not have been severe — that is too strong a word 
 — but it was certainly forbearing, and forbearance is next door 
 to severity. 
 
 Mr. Moring's tone was conciliatory to the point of self-abase- 
 ment. " Very good idea — you know — " said he. " Very good 
 idea ! Quite right in itself. But still — don't you know — 
 an idea I Don't see any other way of puttin' it." 
 
 " You mean that I have formed an opinion on insufficient 
 grounds ? " 
 
 " Oh no no ! \youldn't go as far as that — wouldn't go as far 
 as that." He went on to point out that his expression might 
 be legitimately interpreted as having no meaning of any sort or 
 kind. It was merely a way of puttin' it. 
 
 Mrs. Stair allowed him to ring changes on disclaimers for 
 awhile, then appeared to gather up for seriousness; to rally the 
 conversation against discursiveness, as it were. " Would it very 
 much surprise you, Mr. Moring," she said, " if I were to ask 
 you to regard all this — especially what I am going to say to you 
 — as a matter of the strictest confidence ? " Mr. Moring was 
 eloquent of his consciousness of obligation in this respect. The 
 lady went on to say that her dear husband had frequently spoken
 
 352 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 in terms of eulogiiim of Mr. Morintr's peculiar gift of discretion, 
 so she knew she might rely upon him. After which foreword, 
 she got to the point, dropping her voice many degrees below the 
 needs of the case, the better to defeat publicity. 
 
 " This girl's mother," said she, " is one of my oldest friend's. 
 I knew her as a girl, when she was exactly the same as she is 
 now. . . . jSTo — I don't mean in appearance, so you needn't 
 hunt for your eyeglass. I mean in — well ! — in individualities of 
 character. No one else that I ever heard of would have allowed 
 her daughter to marry a man on such very insufficient grounds. 
 It seems to me to have been simple madness." 
 
 Mr. Moring had found his eyeglass by now, and was gazing 
 at Mamma HinchlifFe on the other side of the lawn, to discrim- 
 inate her individuality, and was not sure he was succeeding. 
 " P'r'aps her daughter got the bit in her teeth — will of her own 
 — that sort of thing!" said he, fragmentarily. "Some girls 
 won't be guided. Once they get an idea in their heads, there's 
 no getting it out." 
 
 " It was nothing of the kind in this case. Mrs. Hinchliffe 
 told me herself that her girl was not in the least in love, and 
 was not subject to sentimental nonsense. ' Then, Zoe ' said I — 
 her name's Zoe — ' what on earth is she marrying him for, with 
 a nose like that?' Because our host's dearest friend couldn't 
 say his nose doesn't stand in his way." She stopped, to give 
 her hearer time to consider Mr. Snaith's appearance, so far as 
 distance allowed him to see it through lenses. Charley was 
 chatting unconsciously with the author's wife, unaware that he 
 was being overhauled. 
 
 Mr. Moring was considering how far lie was bound to defend 
 a nose whose hospitality he was, so to speak, enjoying. His 
 verdict was equivocal. " Good deal of character in it, I should 
 say," said he. " Good deal of character ! I've known a many 
 worse noses in my time though. . . . You were saying? . . . 
 What did your friend — capital name for her, by George, Zoe ! — 
 AVhat had she to say to his nose ? " 
 
 " That is what I was going to tell you. . . . Only, as I said, 
 this is strictly between ourselves. ..." 
 
 " All right ! You can rely on me." 
 
 " Well — she didn't say anything specifically in defence of his 
 nose. How could she? Her words — as I remember them, and 
 I've a very crood memory — were ' I understand you to take 
 objection to this young gentleman's appearance. I am no judge 
 ^of appearances; besides, tkat's Lucy's business. However, 1 do
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 353 
 
 know one thing — that, nose or no nose, there are only two pre- 
 carious lives between him and the Panjandrum property. And 
 the title.' That's what she said." 
 
 " H'm ! " 
 
 " Yes. And now of course everybody knows about this hor- 
 rible noisy Lady Chitterling, and how his lordship married her 
 when he was dying, to legitimate the baby that's just born — 
 heir to the best part of three counties if he lives to come of age. 
 / call it abominable." 
 
 " It's all regular. Quite legal. They say old Chitterling 
 only did it to spite his other sons and daughters — all illegitimate 
 of course — because he hates them. I don't know." 
 
 " Anyhow," Mrs. Stair said, reflectively, " Mr. Charles 
 Snaith might very easily have inherited, if he hadn't." 
 
 " Xarrow squeak ! You think, then, that . . . ? " 
 
 " I don't think ; I know. I mean I know that Zoe Hinchliffe 
 encouraged her daughter's marriage because she believed that 
 Mr. Snaith — whether he knew it or not — was within an ace of 
 inheriting. At least, she never opposed it. And the daughter 
 knew of the family connection. . . . Oh yes — she may have 
 known of it and yet been in love with Mr. Snaith ; nose or no \ 
 May have — may have — anything may have! . . . Well — you 
 see the results." The speaker motioned with her head very 
 shohtlv towards the darkness in which these results were buried. 
 The footsteps and voices of their subjects, or exponents, con- 
 tinued to be audible, but it seemed to Mr. Moring that inference 
 was a little too busy about them. After all, walking up and 
 down a blind alley and conversing — perhaps in platitudes — is 
 not an indictable offence, according to any statute of morality. 
 
 He made a half-hearted attempt to defend them. " Oughtn't 
 we to have something — something more decisive to go upon?" 
 said he. " Of course I don't mean for a moment to put my 
 own — my own insight, you understand, on a par with that of a 
 lady of experience." 
 
 She interrupted his rather unfortunate remark, saying in a 
 freezing tone : — '' I do not quite understand what experience you 
 are referring to. I am not aware that my experience differs in 
 any respect from that of — that of the World in general." 
 
 Mr. Moring made matters worse. " Oh — nothin' practical, of 
 course. Only mean to say I never see these things myself. 
 Always was a duft'er over noticin' anythin'. Much sooner trust 
 your impressions than my own ! Really would." 
 
 As this was unconditional surrender, the lady accepted it;
 
 354 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 only however slightly relaxing her severity of manner to say: — 
 " I am obliged to you. I think you will find that I am right." 
 She repeated her injunctions that this was all in solemn con- 
 fidence, and recognised a move towards departure of the other 
 guests. " I suppose we ought to think of going in," she said. 
 " Stop a minute and let them pass us." This of course was Fred 
 and their hostess, who emerged from the darkness in silence. 
 
 In perfect silence as towards each other. But Lucy had a 
 society smile for the observant lady, and: — "It almost seems a 
 sin to go in on such a night — now does it not? I should like 
 to stop out till sunrise." Mrs. Stair applauded this wish, and 
 lamented our artificial civilisation. Mr. Moring remarked that 
 there wasn't any moon. Fred looked well round the sky, and 
 said : — " No — I don't see any moon." Both seemed to think 
 that Astronomy might have looked a little sharper. Then the 
 couple passed on towards the group on the lawn, who were 
 winding up for departure, for home or bed, as might be. 
 
 But Mrs. Stair turned to Mr. Moring, and said : — " Well — 
 you saw ! At least, I hope you did." His look in response was 
 that of one who appeals in arrest of judgment, and he began : — 
 " Must we . . . must we . . . ? " She caught up his words 
 with: — " ]\Iust we conclude that there is something? Of course 
 we must, when people look like that. But wait and see. All I 
 say is — wait and see ! "
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 The only departures from the house, to acknowledge the end 
 of the evening and the beginning of the night, were those of 
 the literary guest and his wife, and Mr. Munby Moring's. Or 
 rather, they would have been, if Charles had not persuaded the 
 latter gentleman to remain on through the smoking of a cigar 
 and its concomitant chat. On such a fine night as this, he 
 could saunter back to where he was staying quite easily. So 
 Time might take care of itself. 
 
 " What ! — go to bed at twenty to twelve ! Bother Sunday 
 night ! No — come and have a smoke, dear boy ! Do you good 
 — soothe your nerves!" Thus Charley, to check a disposition 
 of Fred's to say good-night, on the plea of a nervous headache. 
 
 Fred was not subject to nervous headaches. " Nothin' better 
 than a mild cigar for a nervous headache ! " said Mr. Moring. 
 And Charley added : — " Come along, old chap ! Xo more 
 gammon ! " 
 
 And his wife accompanied Mrs. Bannister Stair to her room, 
 to make sure that she should not be left without every luxury 
 under heaven ; and consigned her to Morpheus with benedic- 
 tions. Mrs. Zoe Hinchliffe, who had been magnificently, op- 
 pressively, silent through the evening — not that she ever was 
 talkative — floated away to roost accompanied by a maid. 
 
 All the mansion was, so to speak, disbarred and unfrocked by 
 a rout of domestics; except the little smoking-room to which 
 the three gentlemen retired to pretend it was still yesterday, in 
 the smallest hour of to-morrow's morning. 
 
 Fred was very silent and distrait. So much so that Charley 
 was uneasy about him. It was so unlike him to keep out of the 
 conversation; to answer irrelevantly when spoken to; and to 
 rather not have anything that was olfored him, thank you ! His 
 human interests seemed to centre in the smoke he himself was 
 making. 
 
 Said Charley, with his back to the recollection of extinct fires 
 in an empty grate : — " Didn't know I was asking you to meet an 
 old acquaintance, Mr. Moring. What's the lady's name? — Ban- 
 nister Stair. Great friend of my mother-in-law." 
 
 " Well ! " was the reply. " P'r'aps old acquaintance isn't the 
 
 S55
 
 356 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 expression. Married an old friend of mine's nearer the mark. 
 But as a matter of fact 1 never saw her in my life before." 
 
 " Comes to the same thing, though ! " 
 
 " Oh yes — comes to exactly the same thing ! Plenty to talk 
 about, you know — plenty to talk about." 
 
 " I thought you seemed very busy at it under the trees over 
 there. She's a very . . . Well, — perhaps 1 should express it 
 — she has been about a good deal. Seen a good deal of the 
 World?" 
 
 " Quite so ! " said Mr. Moring, in the tone of a man who feels 
 bound to sav something. " Quite so. A great deal of the 
 World." 
 
 Charley eased off the conversation. " You and her husband 
 were at college together?" said he, in an incidental sort of way. 
 
 " Yes — thick as two thieves we were. Oh yes — and for many 
 Vears after that. It was after his wife died he went to India — 
 his first wife, you know." 
 
 " Yes. I was thinking. Of course this lady was his second." 
 
 "Was his second. She's a rather different person from his 
 first. We kept up our correspondence till the year of his death, 
 her husband and 1. Four years back, I suppose. Died of 
 double pneumonia in Paris. Caught it in the Alps coming 
 from Genoa. Much better have stayed on the boat, and come 
 round by sea." But the lady reasserted herself. " He left her 
 all his monev though. I must say I did not expect that," 
 
 " Any children ? " 
 
 " No — at least, none livin'. Son died." 
 
 "Then, why shouldn't he leave her his money?" Charley 
 w^as interrupted by Fred, who rose to depart. He hadn't listened 
 to the conversation, evidently. It was that nervous headache, 
 presumably. Was he going to take anything for it? Xo, he 
 wasn't — he was going to sleep it off. Good-night ! AMien Fred 
 had gone, Mr. Moring got back to the subject his de])arture had 
 interrupted, seeming nevertheless only half disposed to say any- 
 thing intelligible about it. " I'm not — at all — sure," said he, 
 " that one ought ever to say anything to anyone. About any- 
 thing. But gentlemen in your profession don't count. You 
 never repeat anything." 
 
 Charles shook his head continuously. " Never by any chance," 
 said he. " If you want anything kept secret, you can't do better 
 that tell it to all the Solicitors in London. T]}ey'll keep it secret 
 for you." 
 
 "All right. Chaff away. But I know you won't repeat it.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 357 
 
 if I mention to you that that lady was not exactly . . . not 
 exactly ..." 
 
 " Not exactly what ? " 
 
 " Not exactly a perfect wife. That's why I didn't expect her 
 husband to leave her all his money." 
 
 " It was rum. But there's no accounting for people." 
 
 " None whatever. None whatever." He mused a moment 
 and said suddenly : — " Are you — by way of seeing much of 
 her?" 
 
 ''Who? I? "\Aliy— no! Not very much, at least. She's a 
 friend of my mother-in-law. Never been here before ! Wliy ? " 
 
 Mr. Moring became concrete and serious. " You may have 
 observed, Mr. Snaith, or you may not — I have, certainly, — that 
 when a lady has been, as the phrase is, blown upon, she becomes 
 — in a certain sense — mentally diseased? " 
 
 " A — how do you mean ? " 
 
 " Well — this way — she can't let it alone. When she sees a 
 fellow shake hands with a girl she looks to see how long it lasts. 
 When she sees two married couples playing whist or bridge, she 
 keeps here eye on them all the evening. That sort of thing." 
 
 '■' Ye-es — I think I know what you mean. . . . Yes — I cer- 
 tainly know what vou mean. And vou think this good ladv has 
 —got like that?" ^ 
 
 " Well — I think I may go as far as that." 
 
 " And I had better be on my guard against her ? Is that it ? " 
 
 " I shouldn't take everything she says for gospel — that's all. 
 This was probably an attempt to discount the effects of mischief- 
 making on the part of Mrs. Stair, for Mr. Moring doubted the 
 soundness of her impressions. It did not reach his hearer's 
 mind, for Charles only said indifferently : — " She won't talk 
 scandal to me. Nor to my wife, for that matter. Besides, she 
 isn't stopping on — is in fact going away to some friends at 
 Beckenham, early to-morrow." 
 
 Mr. jMoring, content with his effort, felt about for a change of 
 topic. " Let — me — see ! " said he. " It's getting on for two 
 years ago that I met this young gentleman, ^Mr. — Mr. . . ." 
 
 " Carteret. Fred Carteret." 
 
 " Precisely. I ought to have remembered his name, but I'm 
 bad at names. He was, as I remember, at the time very anxious 
 and uneasy about a relative who hadn't turned up — was missing. 
 I hope that affair all came right? " 
 
 " Well — no ! I am sorry to say it didn't. Dr. Carteret 
 never reappeared — never has done so, at least."
 
 358 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 "Whew — you don't mean that? WTiat do 3'ou suppose?" 
 
 " Don't know what to suppose." 
 
 " What do the poHce say ? " 
 
 " They haven't given him up. Say he may be alive still — 
 somewhere. ... I believe that's what they think still. But I 
 can't say for certain. I haven't heard anything lately." The 
 old Doctor was rapidly becoming a memory — a thing to com- 
 mand a passing word, no more ! 
 
 Very passing, in this case. For Mr. Moring looked at his 
 watch, and said he must be going. But he had just time for 
 a reminiscence, a propos. " I remember," said he, " now that I 
 come to think it over, that our young friend Mr. — Mr. Carteret 
 seemed rather surprised, that day I met him at the Professor's, 
 to hear that a paragraph on the subject had been inserted in 
 the daily Press. I was in some doubt shortly afterwards 
 whether I should not write to let him know that I had heard 
 — which I did quite accidentally — how that paragraph had come 
 to be inserted in the Daily Telegraph, I think it was." 
 
 " Why didn't you ? How was it? " 
 
 '• It was McMurrough — he was sub-editor ; is still, I believe. 
 He said he had it from the family. So I supposed Mr. Carteret 
 was sure to hear. I thought I needn't put my finger in the pie." 
 
 Charley heard the name as one hears chance names ore does 
 not commit to memory. " He certainly didn't have it from any 
 of the family that I know," said he. "Or I should have heard. 
 My recollection is that we all agreed that the less that was said 
 about it the better. Especially in those blessed news- 
 papers." 
 
 "Well— that's what he told me. That he had it from the 
 family. Or stop ! — was it through an intimate friend of the 
 family ? " 
 
 " Much more likely. That's the way of these things usually. 
 Or it's a friend of a friend, or of a friend's friend. It's the fate 
 of all first-hand information to have its edge taken off next day. 
 However, you may take it from me that Fred doesn't know — 
 what's his name ? O'Dowd? O'Flannigan? " 
 
 " No — Mc]\Iurrough. I suppose it was a liberty of the 
 Press — a liberty the Press took ... I say, I must be off." 
 
 The night air was sweet at the great front gate when Charley 
 went out to see his visitor off. The laggard moon was rising 
 in a sky that was showing no interest in the dawn over yonder, 
 as he left that gentleman on his way towards Wimbledon, and 
 sauntered back to the house. He found his own bedroom candle-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 359 
 
 lamp awaiting him in solitude at the foot of the great staircase, 
 which creaked as stairways do in the nightl}' silence as he passed 
 up it, pausing to cancel a stray light or two that had outlived 
 its fellow to make darkness visible to the last comer. As he 
 passed the doorway of the room Fred occupied, he hung fire for 
 a moment, and listened. Yes — a restless footstep within, pacing 
 about ! 
 
 " Hullo, Fred, old chap ! — aren't you in bed ? " He had to 
 accompany this with a tap, speech above a loud whisper being 
 irregular, near so much sleep presumably in full swing. Fred 
 came to the door. " It wasn't locked," said he. "" Come in." 
 Charley came in, and noted that his friend's only bedwardness 
 was shown by his having thrown off his evening coat and waist- 
 coat and substituted a thin silk jacket, suited to the weather. 
 He had shed his watch and some keys on the dressing-table, and 
 kicked his shoes off. Otherwise he had made no concessions to 
 the hour. An unappreciated hot-water can stood in his basin, 
 moistening a towel in defiance of common sense, and falling 
 slowly to the temperature of the atmosphere. His bed gaped 
 for him in vain, offering pyjamas, and seeming to urge him 
 to put them on and come to its bosom, unheeded. 
 
 " I say, dear boy, this won't do. What's the matter with 
 you? You're feverish." So Charley said, and thought. 
 
 " Do I look feverish ? Don't think I am — one — two — three — 
 four." He reported on his pulse, with his finger on it. 
 
 " Come, I say ! Xever was a pulse as slow as all that ! Give 
 me hold." Charley took his wrist from him, and gave his 
 version — allegretto nioderato, against Fred's largo. " Look here, 
 young feller ! This won't do. You go to l)ed and go to sleep ! 
 What's the matter ? " 
 
 " Nothing's the matter." This was very brief and conclusive. 
 " I say, Charley ! " 
 
 " You go to bed and go to sleep." 
 
 " All right. In a minute. Or two. Or six. You know I've 
 always been liable to sleepless fits — used to have them when I 
 was a boy. Not like most boys, was it ? Why — don't you recol- 
 lect, when we were kids — quite nippers — at Vexton, and slept in 
 dormitory twenty-two . . . ? " 
 
 " Eather ! " 
 
 "... What a row I got the dormitory in for keeping it 
 awake, because I couldn't sleep myself?" 
 
 " I should think I did ! And old Cuticle came round in the 
 middle of the night, and caught us singing Vilikins under the
 
 3G0 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 bedclothes, not to be heard outside. Wasn't his name really 
 Carter?" 
 
 " Something of the sort. But we called him Cuticle for being 
 such a skinny beggar. Yes — he reported us, and we got a 
 hundred lines apiece all round. . . . What fun it was, in those 
 days ! " 
 
 " Yes — and we didn't hate old Stultifex Maximus in the least. 
 . . . Beg your pardon, old boy ! I had quite forgotten." For 
 the words had passed his lips before he remembered the tragedy 
 of Fred's uncle, who of course was referred to. But was it the 
 recollection of him that had somehow modulated Fred's coun- 
 tenance, and reset it in a minor key? May it not have been the 
 memory of the old schooldays, the thought of long ago, clashing 
 with the dread of a gathering nightmare — the enforced ruin of 
 an ancient friendship? 
 
 Charley could not be off seeing it. " What is the matter ? " 
 said he. " Something's the matter or you wouldn't look 
 
 so." 
 
 " No — nothing — nothing ! Nothing's the matter. Except a 
 bit of a headache — not worth speaking of ! " Fred tried for a 
 laugh, but it didn't come off. He gave it up, and said seri- 
 ously: — "I shall be all right to-morrow. Good-night, old boy! 
 . . . No — I'm quite in earnest ! There is nothing the 
 matter." 
 
 Charley looked incredulous, tried visibly to find a solution of 
 the puzzle, and gave it up. " Well ! " said he at last. " Don't 
 walk about all aight this time. Go to bed, dear fellow, like a 
 reasonable Christian, and sleep it off. Ta, ta." 
 
 " All right ! Don't bother about me. 1 shall turn in pres- 
 ently — directly." He passed through the door after his friend, 
 and watched him down the passage. Then he closed the door, 
 and felt that a chapter in his life was over — the chapter about 
 Charley Snaith. 
 
 For those few moments in which the story lost sight of him 
 and his beautiful companion under the stars, in that walk so 
 often trodden by madmen no madder than himself — those were 
 the most momentous of his life. Ergo — he who reads this will 
 think and say — he must then and there have poured out his heart 
 to the object of his insane passion. He must have declared his 
 love for her. This was not so, in the sense of the mere words. 
 But in the spirit of their meaning, yes! For the man that 
 catches a woman in his arms, and strains her to his breast as
 
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 361 
 
 though he could not release her if he would, breaks through the 
 need of language. 
 
 Yet even in the very crisis of his long-restrained outbreak 
 of feeling, he was conscious of a sort of stifled wish that she 
 would yet save him, who could not save himself — that she would 
 thrust him from her in impatient disgust; would prove, at the 
 cost of his happiness, her inalienable fidelity to his friend. A 
 mere straw, for the inner workings of his better self to catch at, 
 drowning ! ! For never was acquiescence more complete — no 
 trace of shrinking away from him, no reluctance when his lips 
 touched hers. 
 
 Xeither could speak. It was the moment of each one's con- 
 fession to the other of what each had for so long kept back. 
 For the story, in the dark about much of feeling and motive in 
 the innermost hearts of those it tells of, is yet convinced — no 
 proof is possible — that Mrs. Charles Snaith was nowise surprised 
 at this sudden disclosure of Fred's infatuation. On the con- 
 trary, it believes that it was no secret from her even in the 
 early days of their acquaintance; though then she believed that 
 her own self-command involving command of the whole position 
 was unimpeachable. She — a woman of the world — could indulge 
 in the pleasure of this handsome young man's society, unscorched 
 by flames on the altar of any Eros. Had she not accepted 
 Charles Snaith, after analysing him thoroughly with her mother ; 
 — and was she not to be Mrs. Charles Snaith, heartwhole and 
 undivided — at any rate so long as the gilt remained on the 
 gingerbread of that possible inheritance? 
 
 Whether, before recent events had made that castle-in-the-air 
 a thing of the past, she had begun to perceive that her amuse- 
 ment was not without its dangers, who can say? That she 
 had, at the time of this interview with Fred in the garden, made 
 up her mind what course to pursue under given circumstances 
 seems to the story obvious enough. It is inclined to suppose 
 also that she forced the running at the last; for she must have 
 known by then, if she did not know before, that she herself Avas 
 the cause of this distemper of the young man's mind. Was it 
 likely that any man could be on such terms with ttvo friends 
 that his betrayal of cither's domestic peace could be " treachery 
 without a parallel"? This might seem to Fred a reasonable 
 description of his behaviour to her husband, in case . . . 
 
 But what other woman's husband was there who could be the 
 object of such a treachery? Xo — she was the woman, and she 
 knew it, when she stood between him and an escape from his
 
 362 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 own admissions, through tho little archwa}- at the end of the dark 
 alley beyond the lawn. And he, walking to and fro in the silence 
 of his bedroom, after his friend had left him, was little consoled 
 to reflect that, technically, his pledge against avowal of her 
 possession of his heart had been observed; that he had never 
 said to her, in so many words : — " I love you." 
 
 What was Fred to do with the Monday morning ahead of him 
 in the house of his dear old schoolmate — for nothing could alter 
 that relation between them? Charley was Charley Snaith still, 
 and would remain so for him to the end, come what might of 
 this madness. But to be there in his unconscious friend's house, 
 a traitor against him; to have an awful secret preying on the 
 vitals of his soul, yet to be pledged to conceal it by every 
 bond of honour to a fellow-traitor, was unendurable, even for an 
 hour. 
 
 Fred knew, or thought he knew, what he should do to avoid 
 those terrible days ahead of him. He would begone, somehow, 
 somewhere — what matter where? To go away and endure his 
 thwarted life alone, in new scenery, with new faces to look upon 
 — that was possible, even if it was painful. This present here 
 and now were two impossibles, even if they should come to be 
 the place and time of an unholy delirious joy; a draught to be 
 drained by stealth, with a bitterness to follow — the dregs of 
 guilt at the bottom of the cup. He shuddered at his own fore- 
 cast — shrank from the vision he conjured up, even as the knight 
 of the old story shrank from the dark caverns of the enchanted 
 mountain, yet heard the song and joyous laughter calling from 
 the heart of it to him to come. Oh, that she had only been the 
 legal possession of some man whom he could have hated ! What 
 a joy it would have been to defy the world — the calling, card- 
 leaving world — for her sake ! But — Charley ! 
 
 And yet, as he stood there, with the memory upon him of that 
 moment in the starlight, scarcely two hours since; stood there 
 with the touch of her fingers still tingling in his, the touch of her 
 lips still warm upon his own; the consciousness of her name, 
 unlike all others, still whispering in his brain; every fibre of 
 his soul penetrated with her personalit}' — as he stood there and 
 spoke to his heart of his overwhelming passion as Love, and 
 believed his own speech, was he not even as the word passed 
 his lips doing the very thing she herself had condemned ? Was 
 he not placing her below her husband — ignoring lier claims 
 upon him because forsooth she was a woman? What right had 
 he to let the well-being of any human creature — even Charley's
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 363 
 
 — weigh in the scale against hers, if her self-sacrifice was to be 
 his guide ? 
 
 No — to run away would be mere cowardice, and an ill requital 
 of her confession — for her passiveness in his arms, brief as it 
 was, amounted to that — that she returned his love. It was he 
 that had exacted that confession, by overstepping established 
 rules of conduct, as laid down by authority for himself and his 
 like. Her acquiescence, in another class of life, would have 
 meant little or nothing. Polly and Jenny and Bob and Bill, 
 who play kiss-in-the-ring in public without remorse, are not 
 strait-laced about a chance caress or two in private. Lucy's 
 unresisting surrender to him meant — as he understood it — all 
 that complete absence of protest could imply. After that, how 
 could he run away from her, excoj^t at her own wish? It was 
 a mighty little thing in itself, that winding up of their garden 
 interview; but its implications filled the Universe. They were 
 all the greater — all the deadlier, one might almost say — in that 
 the interview ended, otherwise, in silence. . . . 
 
 And yet — to remain there ! To 2,0 on with the old life — as 
 before ; to be able to say, each to the other : — " Let us forget our 
 love ! " — how could that be possible ? They had crossed the 
 Eubicon, and the only word was forward — if he remained. And 
 what would the future be, if that advance was made? For 
 Charley, a hearth made lonely by a tried old friend — a disguised 
 traitor ! For him and for her, some new life — an unpalatable 
 one perhaps — but exile in any case. Look the facts in the face. 
 How could he inflict upon her a life in which the lightest evil 
 to be borne would be her renunciation by old friends on moral 
 grounds? — a much harder one being Chris'^ian forgiveness by 
 others, accommodated to their conscience by the reflection that 
 she was married to him now at any rate. A dire picture of a 
 suburban home discriminately visited by some, avoided by others, 
 shot through his fevered imagination. That would be the 
 unkindest cut of all — the tempering of Injustice with ]\Iercy. 
 
 He practised self-torture for another hour — suffered remorse 
 for a crime that, so far as it was committed at all, would 
 hardly have been regarded by Bill or Bob or Jenny or Polly as 
 conferring on its perpetrator that status of a criminal, hardly 
 so much as an honorary degree in the Faculty of Immorality. 
 Then he lay down as though to sleep, with a parade of confidence 
 in ultimate success, and was brought up short in his first ap- 
 proaches to unconsciousness by a question of some speaker in a 
 coming dream, heard beforehand on the hither side of a gate of
 
 364 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Dreamland standing temptingly ajar. It was a terrible question, 
 for all that the unseen speakei' spoke it so glibly. " What shall 
 you say to your mother?" Then in a moment he was broad 
 awake, with the cold sweat upon his brow of a new apprehension. 
 What would he — what could he — say to his mother? 
 
 It was that pitiless whiteness of her soul, that would not allow 
 her to picture a black spot on her son's, that stood between him 
 and a full confession. Why could she not, when they talked 
 together of Charles Snaith's beautiful wife, say to him jest- 
 ingly : — " Mind you don't fall in love with her, Fred ! " Why 
 not some passing reference to the moth in the candle-flame? 
 Why not anything for him to hark back upon, to make his task 
 of revelation easier? What an easement to that task it would be 
 to him to be able to recall some such light speech, and to go 
 with : — " Well — your caution was needed. The moth is in the 
 candle-flame." But now, with the barrier of her unconscious- 
 ness between them and the Sahara of her faith in him, in which 
 there were no wellsprings of sympathy for human weakness, what 
 were his chances of making an approach to a confession easy? 
 Even if he began by saying: — " Your friend Miss Fraser is right 
 for once, Charley's wife doesn't care about her husband, and had 
 much better not to have married him, whatever her reason was 
 for doing so," — even if he tried to entamcr the subject thus, how 
 much nearer would it bring him to saying : — " I am the cause of 
 their estrangement, and had I concealed my love for her, I 
 should never have known it was returned. It is I that am to 
 blame, but it is impossible now to go back"? No — he knew 
 what his mother would say. She would at once infer that there 
 was another man somewhere — a potential co-respondent in a 
 divorce case — but that this man should be her Fred ! — why, see 
 what dear friends he had been with this young lady's husband, 
 from boyhood ! " Absurd ! " 
 
 In the end, the only determination that seemed to bring relief 
 to the turmoil of his soul was a vague provisional resolve of 
 flight, with explanations of his conduct by letter. It was no 
 solution of the difficulties of the case. He saw that. Still, it 
 substituted a bearable image of his future for one which seemed 
 to leave no end, for him, but raving madness. He could picture 
 himself to himself as an Ahasuerus, an Esau, or for that matter 
 a Cain, a purposeless wanderer on the surface of the globe; the 
 last outcast being a fit analogue for a man who stabs his brother, 
 even metaphorically. But he could not come to terms with the 
 future in any wise at all, if it was to mean a tension like the
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 365 
 
 present, at each week's end, witli duplicity in every thought and 
 action. Things might have continued as they were but for that 
 incident in the garden, even though the two of them had each 
 known the fact of the other's knowledge, so long as a plausible 
 pretext of mutual ignorance was possible. But that one moment 
 of indiscretion had put an end to whatever hope remained of a 
 reciprocal concealment that was growing harder to maintain day 
 by day. Fred had to accept a wild project to fly from his temp- 
 tation. Heaven knew where, in order to gain a right to give way 
 to sleep, quite two hours after his friend had left him. 
 
 24
 
 CHAPTEE XXIV 
 
 Mrs. Hinchliffe, Lucy's majestic mother, did not return 
 home after the departure of her friend Mrs. Stair for Becken- 
 ham, but remained on at The Cedars till next day. Her visits 
 there always had an unpleasant effect on the master of the house, 
 whom they reduced to a cypher. The expression is not the 
 story's, but Charley's in conversation with Mr. Trymer, who had 
 asked him to dinner at his own request when he suspected, 
 though he did not know, that the good lady intended to honour 
 his domestic hearth by her presence until Tuesday morning. His 
 words to his principal were : — " Of course I love my ma-in-law, 
 as in duty bound, but she reduces me to a cypher, for all that." 
 Mr. Trymer nodded slowly and authoritatively, as though that 
 had also been his experience of many mothers-in-law. " But she 
 may abate, my dear boy ! " said he. " She may abate. I have 
 known very severe cases of them to do so." Charley felt the 
 cheerful effect of Mr. Trymer's optimism. 
 
 " I asked Fred as you were so kind/' said he, packing speech 
 close, colloquially. " But he had another engagement. Some 
 people whose name was new to me. Can't say I'm altogether 
 sorry. Fred wants change. Gets moped. Do you know he 
 scarcely goes anywhere except us and his mother's? He just 
 sees nobody. Xow, that's not right for a young man." 
 
 Mr. Trymer assumed a profound sagacity. " Is there by any 
 chance," said he, " among the people whose name is new to you 
 — now mind I am suggesting nothing ! — but is there by any pos- 
 sibility ... an Attraction ? " He looked fixedly at the cor- 
 nice of the ceiling as if he meant to do so till an answer came, 
 and pulled at the cigar he had taken from his lips to ask the 
 question. For this was at cigar-time, and the ladies had retired. 
 
 " Well-1-1 — no ! I should say not. I should say — certainly 
 not. I'm not speaking from my own knowledge, because I don't 
 catechise Fred on these points. But my wife is in his confi- 
 dence, and would tell me if anything was up. Sure to." 
 
 " The burnt child dreads the fire ! Is that it? '' 
 
 " Something of the sort. Yes." 
 
 Mr. Trymer took his eyes off the ceiling, and nodded a general 
 acquiescence in the order of Nature. Everything was evidently 
 
 366
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 367 
 
 what everyone would have expected. Still, the most optimistic 
 philosophy might compare notes. " Nearly a couple of years 
 too, now, isn't it? " said he. 
 
 " Thereabouts." 
 
 " The young lady married a ... let me see ! . . . Miss 
 Fraser, wasn't she?" 
 
 " Cintra Fraser. Married a Professor Lomax." Both spoke 
 as if Cintra had selected one of a species to marry, leaving a 
 good assortment for subsequent customers. So she might have 
 wedded a gnome, a vegetarian, a landed proprietor — anything. 
 
 Mr. Trymer wasn't really interested in the subject — was in 
 fact merely conversing. " What name did you say ? " said he. 
 " Cynthia ? . . . Oh, Cintra — same as the place. Now, that 
 shows what a queer thing memory is. I should have said the 
 name was Nancy. There's a C in both, certainly. But . . ." 
 
 " There's a sister named Nancy. ... I suppose you mixed 
 them up. Nancy turns up at our crib still. Bikes over to see 
 the missus. I never see her because I'm always at our shop 
 when she comes. She and the missus are rather thick. I recol- 
 lect her square with rather a pleasant mug. She's Jolly well 
 gone on my son, but I don't suppose it will come to anything, 
 because of his years. She's well on in the twenties, I should 
 
 say." 
 
 " And your son is ... " 
 
 " One. At least, if you play fair, and count from when he 
 first drew breath, he isn't quite that. But that doesn't prevent 
 her being nuts upon him." 
 
 "Isn't Mrs. Snaith jealous?" 
 
 Something stood in the way of an answer, such as badinage 
 of the conversation would have warranted. Charley looked odd 
 over it, and paused. After a moment he said : — " Well — no — 
 she isn't. I wish she were." 
 
 " Isn't that rather . . . peculiar ? " 
 
 " I daresay I make too much of it. Most likely it's nothing 
 but what they tell me — his nurse and others. They all say it's 
 not so very uncommon with young mammas." 
 
 "What isn't?" Mr. Trymer was more interested. 
 
 " Mothers taking against their first children." 
 
 " I thought it was the exact reverse." 
 
 " So used I to. But they tell me that now and again they 
 hate the poor little beggars. For giving such a lot of trouble. 
 And the small cards are so unconscious all the while. And no- 
 body ever consults them. ..."
 
 368 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " How consults them ? " 
 
 '' AMi}' — if they had any voice in the matter — they might 
 prefer not to be produced at all." 
 
 Mr. Trymer could not entertain such an idea — was of opinion 
 that all sorts of obscure and even forbidden questions might 
 arise in connection with it. He presented the aspect of a pater- 
 familias who felt he ought to say something religious and wasn't 
 sure what. He got off the subject. '' Still no hint — no sug- 
 gestion of a hint — of anything to throw a light on that most 
 mysterious disappearance ! " said he. 
 
 " Dr. Carteret ? Not a word. Do you know, I sometimes 
 fancy that's the cause of Fred's low spirits ? " 
 
 " Nothing more likely. I must say this — that nothing would 
 be more welcome than a light upon that subject. I am imagin- 
 ing myself in the position of a relative. Absolutely nothing. 
 Not even a definite certainty of murder." 
 
 " No — I agree. The uncertainty is hideous. Fred, I should 
 say, doesn't admit the effect on himself. He frets about his 
 mother though." 
 
 " She hopes still — is that so?" 
 
 " No, she doesn't. That's the funny part of it. She believes 
 he ivas murdered." 
 
 " H'm ! We have no direct evidence." 
 
 " She doesn't go by evidence. There's some rot about a dream 
 — / don't know." 
 
 " Ah well well ! — we mustn't be impatient." Mr. Trymer's 
 implication was that it would not become us men, who of course 
 are above superstition, to condemn woman, the weaker vessel, 
 for susceptibility to it in trying circumstances. 
 
 " Oh. I'm not finding fault. It's all perfectly natural. One 
 expects this sort of thing. Only — it travels. Once set it going, 
 and all the females go off at score. Can't stop 'em ! " 
 
 '' You seem to speak as one who has suffered, — as though 
 referring to a particular case, perhaps I should say?" 
 
 " Well — I do. Because — in a certain sense — I have. . , . 
 You won't mention this?" 
 
 " Certainly not ! Honour bright. Professional confidence.'* 
 
 " I don't know whether you happen to remember the details 
 of Dr. Carteret's disappearance ? " 
 
 " Fairly well. Yes — I think so." 
 
 " Well — do you recollect that the last time he was seen was at 
 my house. The Cedars ? " Charley went on to recall some of 
 the facts, when his hearer interrupted him to say he knew all
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 369 
 
 that perfectly well. " Then," said Charley, " I expect you'll be 
 c surprised to hear that they've cooked up a ghost out of that. 
 They have! Dr. Carteret's ghost, as large as life! Soon we 
 shan't be able to get a servant to stop in the house. Fact ! The 
 missus is just as bad as any of 'em ! " 
 
 Mr. Trymer was ready, like any well-considered member of 
 Society, to pooh-pooh the human ghost on his merits. But he 
 was equally ready to analyse him from the point of view of a 
 priori acquaintance with the ways in which any logical ghost 
 would act if he were not in the nature of things non-existent. 
 ... He took time for reflection, then said : — " But Dr. Car- 
 teret was not in the house above half an hour." 
 
 " If that ! " said Charley. " However — there's his ghost, sure 
 enough. Everybody sees it, the minute he's told to. Or she 
 does, anyhow." 
 
 But the weakness of Dr. Carteret's title to haunt The Cedars 
 seemed to Mr. Trymer to call for consideration, before looking 
 at him on his merits as a spectre. " Dr. Carteret had no con- 
 nection with the house," said he. " He merely went over the 
 premises to inspect them, with a caretaker. 1 don't profess to 
 understand these things, but ..." 
 
 " It is rather rum, certainly," Charley said. " But I suppose 
 it would work out all right, as far as that goes. They would 
 know all about that, at the What-do-you-call-it Research 
 Society. I shan't ask 'em though, or I should be investigated, 
 before I knew where I was." 
 
 Mr. Trymer still seemed dissatisfied, on the same point, going 
 back on it. " How long do you make out that Dr. Carteret was 
 in the house, all told?" said he. "Remember too that this 
 house at the time was to him just like any other house. I believe 
 there was then some question of his nephew taking it on lease. 
 But there was not even an agreement." He went on to adduce 
 precedents tending to show that no well-authenticated ghost 
 would haunt a building he had only casually visited during his 
 residence here below. Ho left the subject unsettled and asked 
 Charley to tell him who had seen the ghost. 
 
 Charley gave him an abstract and brief chronicle of events 
 as he recollected them. It included incidents the story has not 
 referred to, chiefly as proof that a ghost will grow the moment 
 the germ of it falls on fertile soil. He traced it all to his visit 
 to the house with his fiancee, an age ago. She had then seen, 
 by tlie merest chance, an elderly clerical gentleman, one among 
 sundry persons who were viewing the premises at the same time,
 
 370 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 just on the spot wliere Dr. Carteret had been left by the care- 
 taker. It had never occurred to her till some months later 
 that this worthy person, whoever he was, was other than incar- 
 nate. The drunken old caretaker had thought fit, long after, to 
 deny that any other visitors were then in the house; whereupon 
 Mrs. Charles, unaware of the fatal reaction caretaking has on 
 the truthfulness of its votaries, had jumped to the conclusion 
 that he was a ghost, or at least an hallucination — at any rate a 
 phenomenon, not a party. Mrs. Klem had continued to ascribe 
 the latter character to him. But then her veracity was at 
 stake. 
 
 Well then — what was the consequence? Xo sooner had this 
 casual visitor to the house taken rank as a phenomenon, than 
 every blessed member of the household — cook, nurse, kitchen- 
 maid, groom or gardener — who happened to see any stranger in 
 or near the premises, at once contrived on enquiry to recollect 
 that stranger as of clerical appearance, whereupon he was forth- 
 with enrolled as a ghost. There was no stopping it once it was 
 started. Just set one of 'em off and the others followed suit. 
 Mr. Trymer — said Charles — knew what uneducated people were. 
 And that gentleman nodded a comfortable appreciation of the 
 reasoning powers of the ill-informed. 
 
 " But, however," — Charley resumed — " what was it brought up 
 the ghost ? Oh — I know ! It was Fred's mother's unshakable 
 conviction that Dr. Carteret was murdered. I know she has that 
 idea. Because Fred told the missus." 
 
 " Where did she get such a confirmed impression from? 
 Didn't you say something about a dream ? " 
 
 " Oh yes — she dreamt something. Heaven knows what ! But 
 she would be sure to do that, if she once got the idea. I know 
 the way she broods over it makes Fred very unhappy. Eegu- 
 larly gives him the blues, something does, anyhow. Don't know 
 what's got him, this last day or two. Hasn't a word to throw 
 at a dog ! " So they chatted on, the conversation tending 
 towards discussion of the merits of a particular vegetable pill, 
 as a remedy for nervous depression and low spirits. 
 
 Charley's respect from of old for his senior partner often 
 led him, as the foregoing conversation shows, to a frankness 
 about his own private aft'airs which he would scarcely have shown 
 to anyone else. That he gained very little by his candour is 
 true, but his belief in the wisdom of the counsel that his adviser 
 would have yielded, had he been so minded, made up for that.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 371 
 
 This interview left him convinced that he had talked well over 
 a good variety of subjects with Mr. Trymer, and had been 
 profitably illuminated on all of them. He had a general im- 
 pression of having gone for advice to a fountain-head, and got 
 it. But, except that he had talked freely to that oracle of things 
 he would not have taken Jones or Eobinson into his confidence 
 about, his chat with him was not much unlike what it might 
 f have been with Eobinson, or Jones. 
 
 When Charley went to this gentleman's in the evening, or 
 indeed anywhere in town without Lucy, he did not go back to 
 Wimbledon, but slept at his old diggings in the Temple, which 
 he had maintained from sheer conservatism. It was his prac- 
 tice on such occasions always to ring Fred's door-bell on the 
 floor above, when he returned late at night, unless indeed the 
 lateness meant that next day's clocks were striking. On this 
 occasion he arrived home just after midnight and rang with very 
 little expectation that his friend would reply to his summons. 
 It was just a chance — no more. However, a sound came — foot- 
 steps within, and then Fred, in darkness. Just returned pre- 
 sumably. 
 
 " Come along in, old man. I was just going to turn in. I'll 
 light up." Fred was going as near as he could to the greeting 
 he would have given his friend in the old days, before . . . 
 Before what ? 
 
 The gas was burning in the bedroom, and Fred was seeking 
 a match to light that in the sitting-room. It was just too dark 
 to distinguish costume. It was not until a fishtail of flame 
 hissed into being that Charley said " Hullo ! " about Fred's 
 raiment. 
 
 " What's ' hullo ' ? " said he. '•' Oh— my togs !— Yes— I haven't 
 been out. I cried off. Sent a wire to 'em not to expect me. 
 Didn't feel like going." 
 
 " Won't Mrs. Fiztpcttitoes — or whatever her name is — won't 
 she . . .?" 
 
 " Mrs. Fitzpatrick Ellison — not a bad shot, considering — 
 won't she be offended? Yes — probably. Does that matter?" 
 
 " Well — ^^she's a human creature, anyhow ! But ivliy didn't 
 you feel like going ? " 
 
 " Temper, I suppose. Impatience. I was sorry for Mrs. 
 Gam. She had deranged all my things quite beautifully on the 
 bed — and I disappointed her. I wasn't sentimental about Fitz. 
 She'll get over it." 
 
 Charley ignored Mrs. Fitz. What did she matter? There
 
 372 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 was P'red, with that strained look on his handsome face, and 
 every appearance of having passed an evening of lonely self- 
 examination at the best, — possibly of some more effectual mental 
 torment. The aroma of a Havana said unmistakably that it 
 was not long extinct, and that it had been smoked in that room 
 and no other. "What's gone wrong, dear boy?" Charley said. 
 " Something's gone wrong." 
 
 Fred roused himself to a vigorous disclaimer. Oh dear no ! — 
 nothing had gone wrong. A little out of sorts, perhaps. Felt 
 that a quiet evening would do him good. It did, sometimes. 
 No — really and seriously — nothing was the matter. He did it 
 very well, all things considered. How was old Trymer? An 
 ill-thought-out question, as Charley saw his partner every day, 
 and Fred never asked after him. Who else was there? Not a 
 soul but the family; however, it was a better question — it 
 deflected comment from his appearance. 
 
 " You see," Charles said, " I asked myself. So I didn't expect 
 company. I told him candidly I wanted to get away from my 
 august mother-in-law, and he was very obliging and sympathetic. 
 It Avas really all the better, because I got an opportunity of 
 talking to him. I always go to him for advice. Because 
 he is the very soundest of advisers. Quite a tower of 
 strength." 
 
 Fred looked like a person who thought he ought to look inter- 
 ested and said, rather absently: — " What does he think about — 
 about mother-in-laws?" He only settled how this question was 
 to end, half-way through, so he failed to suggest that its answer 
 was vital to him. 
 
 " Oh — well — I don't know that he said any one definite thing 
 about mothers-in-law, as such. Nothing one could exactly 
 repeat. But there can't be much doubt what he thinks. The 
 way he said : — ' You can always run away from yours here,' 
 showed that plain enough. However, I think you know, he looks 
 on them as distinctly inevitable." 
 
 " A — oh yes ! — mothers-in-law. Inevitable ! Of course they 
 are. Yes — inevitable ! " But he was not thinking of what he 
 was saying. 
 
 Charley turned a curious eye on him. This was not like 
 Fred. He was very much out of sorts, clearly. But stop ! — 
 was it not possible that . . . Yes, that must be it! Charley 
 hung back a moment, then said suddenly : — " You've heard some- 
 thing? — about your uncle?" 
 
 It roused Fred. " Absolutely nothing," said he. " 'What
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 373 
 
 makes you think so?" He was all on the alert to show that 
 he was normal. But he knew the contrary. 
 
 '' Only your manner, dear boy ! You made me think. But 
 I'm glad there is nothing." Fred looked enquiring. '' Why, 
 don't you see? — it couldn't have been good, with a face like 
 that!" 
 
 ''What — my face?" Fred tried a laugh over this, with only 
 moderate success. Then, it relieved him to make his voice 
 serious. " Of course. I understand. It could only have been 
 — what my mother thinks. Or good news. In that case . . . 
 you would have seen it fast enough, without telling." 
 
 " I suppose I should." He kept on looking at his friend 
 reflectively, as though to get at the heart of his mystery; then 
 said, suddenly : — " 1 wish you would tell me what the rumpus 
 is, Fred. I'm sure there's something." 
 
 Fred saw he must put more backbone into his mendacity, or 
 it wouldn't tell. " I'm all right," said he, in a convincing 
 manner, as if he was really speaking the truth. " Only I want 
 to get to bed." He was taking good care to mean what he said, 
 for purposes of veracity. Really capable liars always do this, 
 and he took a leaf out of their book. He rubbed it in, by a 
 crushed yawn behind his hand. 
 
 Charley looked very doubtfully at him, but had to surrender. 
 " If that's it," said he ; " bed's the best place for you. Adoo, 
 old man! " He was through the door and had closed it behind 
 him before Fred had found a word to soften off the posi- 
 tion. 
 
 And those footsteps dying on the stairs were Charley's — his 
 old friend of so many years. And there was the shadow of a 
 lie between them — of such a lie ! A few final words over the 
 stair-rail would palliate matters, perhaps. Fred was out in time, 
 and speaking to him on the lower landing, just succeeding with 
 a rather troublesome latchkey. 
 
 " I say, Charley ! " 
 
 "Hullo — out again? Go to bed! . . . No — what is it?" 
 
 " Nothing particular — at least, it will do in the morning." 
 
 " Go ahead ! " 
 
 " I've an idea of taking a run at the end of this week — going 
 away for a change. So I shouldn't come down, Saturday." 
 
 " You're a mercurial sort of party. Why this week ? Wiry 
 not next ? " 
 
 " Can't say exactly. Got a restless nt. That sort of thing. 
 If I wait till next week I may change my mind."
 
 374 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " You hadn't thought of going this morning, in the train. 
 At least, I don't believe you had." 
 
 " I don't think I had. I got the idea sitting here thinking 
 things over. It came with the baccy-smoke." 
 
 "XVhere do you think of going?" 
 
 " I think I shall make it Norway. There's a very good boat 
 for Christiansand on Friday. That's one of the reasons for go- 
 ing this week. If I can't get a passage I shall have to stand 
 it over." 
 
 " Well — you must square it up with the missus. I know she 
 particularly wants you next Saturday." 
 
 " All right. Tell you more about it in the morning. Ta, 
 ta! " For" Fred felt that if the conversation was -going to drift 
 that way, he was best out of it. 
 
 It was something, at any rate, to have announced his intention 
 of taking a holidav abroad, and that Charlev had not seemed, on 
 the whole, to see anything very extraordinary in it. What on 
 earth, except his uneasy conscience, should prevent his taking a 
 run on the Continent for unimpeachable reasons? He could be 
 influenced by sane and ordinary motives, with the holiday season 
 so near at hand. There was not the slightest necessity to go 
 abroad to escape from himself. He could ignore his wish 
 to do so, and find a hundred ways of accounting for a trip to 
 the south of France or Switzerland. Or perhaps he had 
 better stick to Norway, because it would be hot, going 
 south. 
 
 This resolve, to shut his eyes to the problems that were 
 afflicting his life until he had left the country for reasons 
 entirely unconnected with them, was an anodyne to the disquiet 
 of his soul, and may have had a share in procuring him a night's 
 re?t. There was, however, plenty of reason that he should sleep, 
 for his accounts in that quarter were terribly in arrear. He 
 waked late, from dreams of himself and Charley at school to- 
 gether in the old days, to find Mrs. Gam knocking at his bed- 
 room door with a message from Mr. Snaith to say he had break- 
 fast ready for him in the room below, and would he prefer eggs 
 or kedgeree, because there was both? 
 
 " Very well. Go to Norway, by all means ! " said Charley. 
 " Do you all the good in the world, old chap ! Wish I was 
 coming with you." 
 
 Fred felt all perfidy from head to foot, as he assumed non- 
 chalance to say : — " Wish you were, old boy ! I may think better 
 of Norway though. I had an idea of getting out of the heat.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 375 
 
 Onl}' some say it's just as hot there as anywhere else, in July. 
 And I believe the skeeters are diabolical." 
 
 " So I've been told. But look here !— Wlien's the boat? " 
 
 " Saturday — early." 
 
 " To-night is your Maida Vale evening, isn't it ? Well — you 
 must come to-morrow, or Thursday, or Friday, to say good-bye. 
 Lucy won't forgive you if you don't." 
 
 Just what Fred was afraid of! 
 
 The distance of Mr. and Mrs. Snaith's suburban residence 
 from the centres of things, often as its existence had been dis- 
 proved a priori, had asserted itself very shortly after their 
 marriage, and its inconveniences were at this time becoming 
 vociferous. One way of silencing them and making evening 
 visiting a possibility was for the lady to sleep at her mother's, 
 while Charley almost invariably preferred to spend the night 
 at his own old haven in the Temple. It was part of his system 
 of minimising his mother-in-law, who submitted to his absence 
 with a good grace, suggesting that it was not entirely unwelcome 
 to her. 
 
 In the evening of the story — Fred's Maida Vale evening — 
 Mrs. Snaith, having been driven up from The Cedars by her 
 mother, was awaiting her husband at Devonshire Place, to go 
 with him, after a slight refection, to the Lyceum. He arrived 
 duly, behind an adequate shirt-front and necktie, but alone, 
 naturally. 
 
 " \Miat — vou haven't brouoht him ! " was Lucv's greeting to 
 her husband, in a tone of real disappointment, which Charley 
 seemed to share to the full. 
 
 " No — I wanted the beggar to chuck his mammy for once. I 
 told him I should bore you horribly. But he wouldn't 
 come. ..." 
 
 The two were not absolutely alone at the moment. Probably 
 had they been so, Mrs. Snaith would have concealed her chagrin 
 even less. For she was quite alive to her husband's unsuspicion. 
 But an observant eye was upon her, that of Mrs. Bannister Stair, 
 who had just arrived, to avert loneliness from her friend Mrs. 
 HinchlifPe, and was taking mental notes. She listened carefully 
 to Charley's continuation : — " He's got a restless fit on him, and 
 wants to go to Norway. Can't quite make out what's the matter 
 with him. Something's up." 
 
 Lucy appeared taken aback. " What can he want in Norway, 
 of all places in the world ? " said she. 
 
 " I've nothing to say against Norway, if he chooses to go
 
 376 THE OLD MADHOUSE ] 
 
 there," said Charles, refusing to take sides. " As far as the place 
 goes. It's the going I object to. Why can't he wait till going- 
 away time conies? He's got the hump, and wants a change. 
 He spoke of going early on Saturday." ; 
 
 " Oh, Saturday ! Then he won't come to us on Saturday." i 
 
 " Xo — he certainly won't." Lucy looked blank. " He'll come 
 to-morrow or Thursday or Friday." She appeared relieved. '* I 
 may not see him to-morrow, but he'll write." She looked blank 
 again. 
 
 "He must come!" This was spoken with a passion beyond 
 the occasion. But it pleased Charley that his wife should be so 
 intriguee about his friend's comings and goings. 
 
 What did the bystander think, whom Chance had permitted to 
 hear this domestic dialogue? Well — Mrs. Stair conveyed that 
 she acknowledged the beauty of this family's character; so 
 Arcadian-pastoral — so free from the taint of this shocking 
 World. But she would look in another direction — at the inter- 
 esting water-colour there, for instance — rather than obtrude her 
 impressions about what was no concern of hers. She was an 
 outsider. 
 
 Mr. and ]\Irs. Charles drove away to the stalls of the Lyceum 
 after the slight refection, and saw a problem-play which neither 
 recited its enunciation nor arrived at Q.E.D. They left Mrs. 
 Charles's august mamma and her visitor to a better developed 
 refection, announced as soon as the house was clear of them. 
 
 Lucy was looking her best, and her husband felt that his lot 
 was indeed an enviable one to have such a wife to take to the 
 play. If only there had not been that empty seat! For Charley 
 — humble being that he was at heart — never felt able to live up 
 to the meteoric wife he had married, unassisted. And his hand- 
 some friend rounded up the position, and completed it. Not 
 to have him with them was bad enough, but to have an empty 
 stall beside them in which he should have been, and was not, 
 made matters worse. Charley had an uncomfortable feeling, 
 helped by Fred's enigmatical demeanour, that something was 
 wrong — he couldn't guess what. It was, however, a reassurance 
 to him that Lucy seemed as little contented about it as himself. 
 For if it was not that that made her so very brief of speech to 
 a deserving husband, what was it? If it was Fred's defection, 
 and this sudden impulse of his of a voyage to Norway, he was 
 quite at one with her — completely in sympathy. 
 
 Let anyone who doubts the possibility of this state of mind 
 reflect that the actual facts of the case were inconceivable by
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 377 
 
 Charley; and that, had they been presented to him on any 
 evidence, however satisfactory, they would only have seemed to 
 him a grotesque dream. 
 
 They were rather late, owing to the block in Piccadilly, which 
 one always thinks isn't going to happen, and which has never 
 been known to miss its appointment yet. But they only lost 
 a preliminary housemaid, whose outspoken, or rather vociferous, 
 soliloquy wlnle she dusted v,'as a short sketch of the leading 
 characters, schemed by a playwright who would not allow them to 
 speak for themselves. 
 
 " Oh dear — there's a man I'm supposed to know. And I shall 
 have to introduce him." Thus Lucy, distinguishing the contents 
 of one dress suit from its congeners in a group that was pre- 
 ceding them into the stalls. 
 
 "Where the difficulty?" said Charley. "Fire away! He 
 looks like an Irishman." 
 
 " He is an Irishman, — writes for the newspapers. Irishmen 
 do. But what on earth should possess me that I should forget 
 his name? Oh dear — whatever is it? O'Donoghue , . . 
 O'Leary? Something quite as Irish." 
 
 " Call him O'Donoghue and O'Leary then, and say you 
 forgot." 
 
 "Oh no — it would never do for a . . . Never mind now! 
 I'll tell you after." For the Irish gentleman was upon them, 
 claiming acquaintance, and Lucy had slurred over the name dif- 
 ficulty by her sudden perception of the necessity to introduce 
 her husband. He liad been cut short off at Mister. A dis- 
 composure reigned — a magnetic disturbance of the atmosphere 
 perhaps. Charley beamed with a fixed geniality. He had 
 learned from previous experience the best attitude to assume 
 with antecedent male acquaintance of his beautiful wife. They 
 were numerous, he knew. But she might at least have remem- 
 bered their names ! 
 
 This one dies away, after a profusion of sentiments of esteem 
 from Charles and Lucy, such as we all feel, in crowds for per- 
 sons of ill-established identity. But, at plays, when chocolate 
 abounds between the Acts, and hardened playgoers smoke in the 
 lounge till they can exasperate you and me by coming in after 
 the curtain is up, and getting in our line of siglit, weak-spirited 
 domesticated persons stop in their places and await develop- 
 ments, the more dare-devil among them going so far as to pay 
 visits to boxes, preferably containing baronets. Xow, this Irish 
 gentleman, whose name Lucy suddenly recollected when he had
 
 378 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 got to his own stall^ a mile off — too far off to call him by it, — 
 seized this opportunity to pay another instalment of his respects 
 to Mrs. Charles Snaith, and was motioned or mesmerised by her 
 into the empty seat beside her. Having secured him she said to 
 her husband, who was showing restlessness : — " I know you want 
 to smoke, Charles; so you may desert if you like. Go and have 
 a cigarette outside, and then you won't look so miserable. Mr. 
 McMurrough will amuse me." For the gentleman was that 
 sub-editor of the Daily Telegraph whom Mr. Moring had men- 
 tioned two da3'S ago, but whose name was not active enough in 
 Charles's memory to revive with its repetition by his wife, 
 although she had spoken it audibly to show she knew it. 
 
 Charley, whom Mr. McMurrough had disappointed by the 
 purity with which he spoke the tongue of the bloody-minded 
 Saxon — for he had not a syllable of brogue to throw at a dog — 
 accepted the suggestion of a short smoke in the coulisses^ and 
 only consumed half a cigarette before it was time to return to 
 his place. So returning, he caught the fag-end of what seemed 
 an earnest conversation between his wife and this gentleman, and 
 was pleased to note that, when moved to speak naturally by 
 interest in his subject, the latter cast off the correctitudes of an 
 acquired cockneyism, and fell back into the more musical accent 
 of the Celt. But the curtain was rising, and people were shish- 
 ing and saying sit down, and one of the most popular of 
 actresses was waiting for a real hush before beginning to be 
 Hilda. So Mr. McMurrough had to get away with all speed, 
 and the house was soon absorbed in that young person's per- 
 plexities, which a little common sense and right feeling on her 
 part and a deafness to the needs of the stage, might very easily 
 have avoided. 
 
 Said Charles to his wife, in her mother's carriage which had 
 come to fetch them : — " \Vliat was the Irish party so earnest 
 about when I came and interrupted you and him ? " 
 
 "Mr. McMurrough? Oh — nothing. lie wasn't earnest." 
 She seemed a little taken aback. 
 
 " He was earnest enough to speak Irish. He said ' I'll plidge 
 mesilf. I'll kape ut in mind.' What was he pledging himself 
 to? What was he going to keep in mind?" It was just a 
 chance that he looked round at his wife as he said this. He 
 might have been lighting a cigar. As it was, his eye rested, 
 the moment after he spoke, on a beautiful face thrown out of 
 all composure by some disturbance of its owner's mind. " What's 
 the rumpus, Luce ? " said he, innocently.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 379 
 
 She turned her confusion into an uneasy laugh. She did not 
 want to tell the cause of that rumpus. But she could evade the 
 difficulty easily enough, surely ! This man was too docile to give 
 trouble. " Silly Charles ! " said she. " Don't you know that 
 one shouldn't ask questions, sometimes? You shouldn't force 
 me to tell you how unfeeling I had to be to Mr. McMurrough — 
 I mean a couple of years ago." 
 
 " Oh — was that it ? I see." He was so unsuspicious that his 
 comparison between the Irish gentleman's words and the young 
 lady's way of accounting for them hung fire, until indeed she 
 had become quite comfortable in the thought that he had for- 
 gotten them altogether. It was disappointing to have him hark 
 back on them, and seek for explanation. " I can't see though 
 that what he said arose out of the question before the house. 
 Why should an illigant young gay female's non-appreciation of 
 an Irish gentleman lead to his plidging himself to anything two 
 years after? And what was he to kape in mind?" 
 
 " Oh dear — how you do keep on worrying over that man ! 
 What did you say he said ? " Charles repeated again the words 
 he had heard, doing more than justice to the brogue. Lucy had 
 by this time recovered her self-possession. " I wonder what it 
 was that sounded like that," said she. " It wasn't that. But 
 I can't remember what it was — the last thing he said." She 
 underwent severe recollection, but could make nothing of 
 it. 
 
 To understand why her husband accepted this without a waver- 
 ing of doubt would be to know what is meant by unswerving 
 faith in a blindly worshipped idol. The Calabrian peasant does 
 not kneel to Our Lady of Sorrows in the church of his boyhood 
 with a more unquestioning devotion than was Charles's to the 
 sovereign of his heart. Probably the contadino has the best of 
 it — but who shall say? 
 
 If Charles had been on the stage, he would at once have per- 
 ceived — to make the piece move — that this Mr. McMurrough 
 was the person Mr. ]\Ioring had spoken of two days since, who 
 was responsible for that newspaper paragraph about Dr. Car- 
 teret. He would then have proceeded, as fast as soliloquy could 
 carry him, to the conclusion that his then-^ancee had com- 
 municated the facts to that Irishman in spite of her solemn 
 promise of discretion. Being off the stage, the only effect of 
 the germ of such a suspicion, if it existed — was to establish a 
 conclusion of its own falsehood on the ground of Lucy's intrinsic 
 veracity, rock-bedded on fundamental truth. Such an idea
 
 380 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 passed off his mind at once, especially as he had not been giving 
 his whole attention to Mr. Moring and his mind had taken a very 
 loose hold of the Irish editor's name. 
 
 She knew this and in the luxury of her security kept the 
 subject needlessly in the foreground, wondering what on earth 
 it was that sounded like what Charles thought he had heard. 
 There was only one point she was quite clear about, that he had 
 heard wrong. 
 
 Nevertheless her interview with the gentleman, while Charles 
 smoked in the lobby was somewhat as follows : — '' He'll be very 
 happy smoking, Mr. McMurrough. You're not to go with him. 
 I want you here." 
 
 He lapsed slightly into brogue. '" Xobody more delighted 
 then mesilf," said he. 
 
 " I want particularly to speak to you. You remember my 
 telling you about Dr. Carteret, who disappeared? " 
 
 " I do. No, I don't — Yes — of course I do — Dr. Drury Car- 
 teret! Has he turned up again? " 
 
 " Not at all. He seems to have vanished. But I owe you a 
 grudge about him." 
 
 " You owe me a grudge ! " 
 
 " Yes — don't pretend you don't know why." 
 
 " No pretence at all. Honour bright all round ! What will 
 ye be owing me a grudge for, then? " The brogue hovered about 
 his tongue as he said this. 
 
 '• Do you mean to say you didn't know that I told you all that 
 in the strictest confidence?" 
 
 His native speech began to get the better of him. '' Yiss, to 
 be sure. In the sthrictest confidence ! " 
 
 " And you put it all in the newspaper ! " 
 
 " Will thin, I did. In the sthrictest confidence. Iverybody 
 we insurrut is communicated to the public in the sthrictest con- 
 fidence." 
 
 '' Don't be nonsensical ! You know perfectly well I didn't 
 want you to make a paragraph of it." 
 
 ]Mr. ]\IcMurrough became aware that the young lady was not 
 to be trifled with. He dropped the brogue to say that he had 
 only supposed the confidence to be the usual confidence of gossip, 
 which is never accepted as binding on its recipient. Indeed, be- 
 yond saying: — "Of course you won't mention this," in a per- 
 functory way after giving full particulars. Miss Hinchliffe had 
 done nothing to secure his secrecy. Mrs. Charles Snaith said 
 she had. Tlie gentleman was very apologetic, and promised
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 381 
 
 never to do so any more. He had no idea of getting anybody 
 in a row. 
 
 Lucy took him into her confidence. There was no row at 
 present, but there might be if her husband came to know that 
 the newspaper paragraph was traceable to her. Would Mr. 
 ]\IcMurrough be so kind as to give someone else's name as hiss 
 informant, not hers? He nodded comfortably, in a conclusivie 
 kind of way. Oh yes — he thoroughly understood ! 
 
 They then talked a little about the play, and a little about the 
 weather, until the former threatened to begin again, when Lucy, 
 seeing her husband coming back, gave Mr. ^IcMur rough a hur- 
 ried reminder of his promise. To which he replied, accentuating 
 his bona fides by a resumption of the brogue, in the words that 
 Charles just caught as he arrived to resume his place, only just 
 in time for other people to spoil his introduction to Act Two, 
 vScene One. 
 
 So that Lucy's attitude about this interview in the carriage 
 with her husband was distinctly mendacious. But, at the time, 
 with her living presence to stand between him and a doubt of 
 her veracity, such a doubt was as impossible to Charles's mind 
 as a doubt of the Xorth Star would have been to the mariner 
 of old, before a single compass had pointed to anv Pole at 
 all. 
 
 When they arrived at the Hinchliffe mansion, they found 
 Mrs. Stair's carriage just absorbing her at the door. In spite of. 
 a mutual gush between that lady and his wife, expressive of the 
 rare benevolence of Destiny in permitting them a momentary 
 meeting on the doorstep, the latter threw out to his surprise a. 
 suggestion that the former's temper was ruffled. Her words 
 were : — " Stair's mifi'y. I suppose she and mamma have been 
 quarrelling," to which he replied : — " H'm — she seems all right 
 to me — can't see the miffiness." 
 
 She said : — " Chilly, at any rate. Of course you can't see. 
 You men never can." Then, with more interest in her topic : — 
 " Xow mind, Charles ! You've got to make Fred come to-morrow, 
 whatever he says. Or next day at latest. Because we have 
 bores coming on Friday. . . , There — that'll do ! Good- 
 night ! " Whereupon Charley, nowise damped by the frustration 
 of a farewell kiss — in fact regarding it as rather charmingly 
 capricious — took his departure into the summer night, lighting 
 a cigar. 
 
 If the observations of Mrs. Stair's carriage retinue, while it 
 stood at the door for the most part of an hour, were shrewdlj 
 
 23
 
 382 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 made and well-grounded, the evening she and her hostess had 
 passed together had not ended peacefully. 
 
 For Archibald, the young man in attendance, who must have 
 cost a good deal to dress like that, put on record to Chambers 
 the coachman, shortly after their arrival at the door, that they 
 seemed getting on amiably on the first floor. Which caused the 
 ©nly sign of vitality of which Chambers was capable, a slight 
 deflection of his eyes towards the house he had reined up at. 
 Otherwise he remained monumental. Archibald added what 
 seemed a contradiction, " Amiable as a house afire, I should 
 say ! " But no one who is accustomed to the system of always 
 conveying an idea by inverting it, the common method of a very 
 large class of Englishmen, will be the least at a loss about 
 Archibald's meaning. 
 
 Chambers deflected his eyes again, with the slightest stir pos- 
 sible of his smile-muscle — one whose mechanical action produced 
 no smile — and seemed to try for the opinion of the off-horse, 
 by stroking him with his whip, but without result. Archibald 
 listened for awhile to the voice of an indignant dame, that was 
 finding it way through an open window above; and, when 
 another voice took its place, announced the change by saying: — 
 " That 'un's owns, just come in." After a few seconds, he 
 supplied a commentary. " Temperate re-monstrance, j^ou might 
 call it." Then, when the former voice interrupted emphati- 
 cally : — " Here's old Spitfire back again ! Fresh as a daisy ! 
 She don't spile by keeping." He was the only contributor to 
 these marginal notes, for the slightest changes in Mr. Chambers's 
 countenance were the barest acknowledgment of their value. 
 
 On the whole, a comparison between them and Mrs. Charles 
 Snaith's impression that Mrs. Stair was ruffled seems to point 
 to a stormy interview having taken place during the younger 
 Ijady's absence at the Lyceum.
 
 CHAPTEE XXV 
 
 How nice it would be, whenever we have something unpleasant 
 to confess or communicate — something that must be unwelcome 
 to the ears that have to hear it — that those ears should always 
 be on a head we hate. Surely it would be better economy to 
 inflict all painful confidences on our hetes-noires, and keep our 
 pleasant news for those we love. Unhappily the only satisfac- 
 tion we ever get in this direction is in keeping secret things our 
 foes would like to know. A short-lived pleasure, because some 
 other chap tells them ! 
 
 The idea of rushing away, and leaving his mother in the 
 dark as to the reason why, did not present itself to Fred Carteret 
 as humanly possible. But then the other idea, of telling the 
 whole truth — and not only telling it — but getting her to believe it 
 — seemed to him superhumanly impossible. Seriously, how could 
 he set about it? As he walked across Regent's Park from Port- 
 land Road station the next evening — when he was naturally 
 due at Maida Yale — he mentally sketched out plans to be adopted 
 for approaching the subject. There was the vigorous, trenchant 
 plan, somehow thus : — " I wish you to know that I love my 
 friend's wife, and have good reason to believe that she loves 
 me, and is indifferent to him. I propose, under these circum- 
 stances, to go to America, and am taking my passage to-morrow 
 by the ..." At which point he was stopped by want of 
 information of day of sailing. Then there was the cautious, 
 delicate method — the approach on tiptoe, as it were — on these 
 lines : — " I have been for some time in doubt as to whether I 
 should or should not take you into my confidence on a subject 
 which ..." But he cancelled this method on its merits before 
 he got any farther. Hypothetical schemes recommended them- 
 selves for awhile, beginning : — " Wliat, I wonder, would you say if 
 I were to tell you . . . ? " or " What would you do if you found 
 yourself in my position ? " Which last involved itself in a ridicu- 
 lous sententiousness : — " Or rather, 1 should say, what would you 
 recommend me to do if I were to confess to you that," etcetera, 
 etcetera. But he discarded all such prolegomena as imprac- 
 ticable and unsatisfactory, and arrived at the gate of his mother's 
 
 383
 
 384 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 front garden believing that when he repassed it next day he 
 would be no nearer a solution of his difficulty. 
 
 And so it might have been, but that Nancy Fraser had written 
 the day before to ask if Mrs. Carteret could have her to-morrow 
 instead of Friday, because of reasons, and would she wire reply 
 if not? It was Fred's day, she knew; but just for once wouldn't 
 matter. This referred to a tradition that she and Fred were best 
 insulated; which was considered ridiculous, but showed a strange 
 vitality. It had nothing to do with household matters. There 
 was plenty of room in the house, and, indeed, Nancy had long 
 since been allotted special quarters upstairs, and was on the 
 footing of an inmate, almost as much as Fred. 
 
 Thus it happened that, as he came up to the gate, a young lady 
 arrived on a bicycle and dismounted on the pavement, having 
 trespassed thereon over a dip in the curb; such a one as the 
 bicyclist turns to account on familiar ground. She took an 
 apologetic tone in her greeting to Fred, saying as she shook 
 hands : — " I'm sorry it's me. I couldn't make it Friday, this 
 week. But it shan't occur again." 
 
 "Well, but-^why?" said Fred. And he really meant the 
 question, for he had gradually merged his bygone antipathy to 
 this young woman in gratitude for her devotion to his 
 mother. 
 
 She left some essential out of the conversation, and jumped 
 at once to : — " Oh, then it wasn't that ! " with all the honesty 
 of her hazel eyes fixed thoughtfully upon him. Whereupon he 
 naturally asked — what was it that it wasn't? To which her 
 reply was : — " Never mind ! . . . However, I'm glad if you're 
 not disgusted. I thought perhaps you were." She declined 
 assistance in getting the bicycle into deposit, and he went into 
 the house, to be greeted by his mother from an upper landing 
 with: — "Is that you, Fred? ... I thought it was. Nancy's 
 coming, instead of to-morrow. I hope you won't mind." He 
 answered the question first, with: — "Why on earth should I 
 mind?" and then said casually that he had seen her — she was 
 outside — and went on into the drawing-room. Tlie dachshund 
 followed him, having run to the first sound of his latchkey so as 
 to prevent anything irregular. The cat rose for a moment on 
 his entry, for civility; then stretched herself, and pivoted to a 
 convenient attitude for getting a little more sleep. He read 
 the paper. 
 
 Nancy passed straight upstairs to Mrs. Carteret in her bed- 
 room, and was greeted with : — " Of course I didn't wire, dear
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 385 
 
 child ! Why should I ? . . . Well — no doubt it's nicer to have 
 you and Fred separate. It goes farther. . . . You've seen 
 him ? " 
 
 The young lady did not at once reply verbally. She nodded ; 
 quite six times, perhaps more. Then she said : — " Oh yes, I've 
 seen him. But ..." 
 
 "But what?" said Mrs. Carteret. 
 
 " But something's the matter." 
 
 " Something's the matter ? " A terrified look came upon her 
 face. 
 
 Nancy saw it, and wished she had not blurted out her impres- 
 sion like that. She ought not to have forgotten the dread that 
 always hung upon her friend's life. But remember ! — it was 
 nearly two years since the tragedy. " Not that, Madrina dear," 
 said she quickly, using a name that she had found for her some 
 while since, and that had caught on. " At least, I don't think 
 it was that — not what you thought it was." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret's alarm died down. " I think not cither," said 
 she, " by the way he spoke from downstairs Just now. But I am 
 always fancying the news will come that they have found it." 
 
 " Some news about Mm?" Nancy wanted to soften away the 
 grisliest interpretation of her words. 
 
 But she would not have it. " No. Found the body ! " said 
 she, firmly. " Well — it would be something to know." 
 
 " I don't think it can be that," said Nancy. " He would have 
 told me. There was plenty of time." Then she cast about to 
 find something that would do to account for Fred's expression 
 and could find nothing better than: — "Perhaps Mrs. Snaith's 
 baby's dead. They do die like a shot sometimes, poor little 
 parties ! I hope that isn't it." 
 
 " I hope not, I'm sure," said ]\Irs. Carteret. She at least had 
 no suspicion of the facts, to help her son to a full disclosure of 
 them. The story is not so confident about Nancy. She may 
 have had one of her shrewd inspirations, even from that short 
 interview with him at the gate. 
 
 She certainly had one during dinner. For when they had 
 left Fred to himself and his cigar, and the drawing-room door 
 had been closed — after a certain amount of obstructiveness from 
 Liebig, who refused to go in or out — she turned to her com- 
 panion, saying : — " There, did you see ? " 
 
 " See what ? Oh, he's no worse than usual." 
 
 " I didn't mean the dog. I meant him. I'm sure something's 
 the matter."
 
 386 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Do you know, I think you must be mistaken. I'm sure 
 he would have said." 
 
 " Not with me there ! " Nancy shook her head continuously, 
 with a firm conviction. " Of course he would have told if it 
 had been the baby. That's why I asked him." This referred 
 to an early phase of dinner, when she had pressed for informa- 
 tion on the point, eliciting from Fred that the said baby was 
 all right, but very powerful and self-willed; with particulars 
 of a visit he and his father had paid him on Sunday morning. 
 
 Then she wanted to say more, but had to stop while Jane 
 brought in coffee and died away. Then Mrs. Carteret wanted 
 an end to a fractured sentence. " You're the last . . , some- 
 thing , . . ? " said she. 
 
 '• I'm the last person he would like to know anything about 
 it. If I'm right ! I mean, at least, I'm one of the last people." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret said, with her beautiful eyes fixed thoughtfully 
 on her young friend : — " I wonder what the child means." This 
 treated Nancy as out of hearing. She went on as to listening 
 ears : — " You've got it into your foolish noodle that the boy's 
 in love again. Isn't that it? " 
 
 " Well — it is and it isn't. ... Do you know, I'm sorry I 
 spoke ? " 
 
 " Why do you suppose Fred would so particularly object to 
 your knowing about his love-affairs? Because of Cintra, I 
 suppose." 
 
 " No — Cintra doesn't come in. . . . Well, I don't know. 
 Cintra does, in a sense. // I'm right. Only mind you, it may 
 be all nonsense ! " She seemed extremely anxious to lay the 
 utmost possible stress on her own fallibility. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret looked uncomfortable. " Why did you change 
 round?" said she. "I mean — what sense does Cintra come in, 
 in?" A painful possibility had crossed her mind. 
 
 The girl's cheeks were changing colour, making her eyes all 
 the brighter. " Oh dear ! " said she. " I am so sorry I spoke. 
 . . . Why, of course ! Because it would make Cit seem to have 
 been in the right all along. You remember that day when we 
 hiked over to lunch — the first time we saw Lucy Hinchliffe . . . 
 I told you . . . ? " 
 
 " Oh dear yes. T remember perfectly." 
 
 " And how Cit flew into a towering passion on the way home. 
 I told you after, didn't I . . . ? " 
 
 " Yes. But how does that . . . ? " ^ 
 
 " How does that bring Cit in? Oh, don't you see?"
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 387 
 
 " Yes — no ! No, I don't." The painful possibility was 
 growing. She said after a pause, quickly and uneasily : — 
 " Nancy dear, would you mind telling me at once exactly what 
 you mean ? " 
 
 Nancy rushed the position. " Why — see how continually Fred 
 is at The Cedars. Every Saturday afternoon and the whole 
 of Sunday." Then she saw the effect of her words, and would 
 have recalled them. " Oh, Madrina . . . darling ! See — see 
 what I've done ! And it may be all a mistake, all the time." 
 
 For Mrs. Carteret, hurriedly putting down the coffee-cup she 
 was raising to her lips — and it tinkled with the shaking of her 
 hand — had turned very pale and sunk back in her chair. Nancy 
 was beside her in an instant, caressing her and trying at any 
 cost to get her Avords unsaid. It was her fault. \Yhat right 
 had she to think such a dreadful thing? She ought to have 
 known it would be impossible for Fred to ... to take some 
 course, presumably, which did not lend itself to description in 
 words, as she hung fire over it and said, in preference : — " Of 
 course it was what put Cit's back up so two years ago that set 
 me on thinking it." And seemed to find in that refuge from 
 her own sinister conviction. 
 
 But it was not a very safe haven. Mrs. Carteret recovered 
 her customary self-possession, saying : — " Perhaps Cintra was 
 right after all, and wiser than we thought. These things do 
 happen, we know. And I don't see how they can be avoided, 
 unless every man who marries an attractive woman divorces all 
 his male friends." 
 
 Nancy appeared anxious to deal out blame justly. '' I can't 
 see that Cit was right in one thing," she said. " I do not be- 
 lieve that Lucy Snaith is half as minxish as she made out 
 And a good deal turns on minxishncss in a thing of this sort." 
 The gravity of the speaker was as great as if she had been 
 moving the reduction of a Bishop's salary. .Mr&. Carteret could 
 not help smiling at it, she called her a dear goose, and left the 
 subject : — " Don't let's jump at conclusions, before we know," 
 said she. And Nancy said no more. 
 
 Fred was a long time over that cigar — longer than usual. He 
 apologised, saying it wouldn't pull. This may have been that 
 he wished to minimise Nancy ; so his mother thought. Hrs 
 personal criticisms of her had no weight in this; it was merely 
 the fact of her having been so nearly his sister-in-law. Possibly 
 it was the same feeling which prompted her to go away to bed, 
 less than twenty minutes after his appearance. Then the soii
 
 388 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 and mother were left alone, and he knew by her manner that 
 in a moment she would speak of the thing that was preying on 
 his heart. The way in which she said the one word " Fred ! " 
 was enough for this. 
 
 " What — Mammy dearest ? " He was looking through the 
 window that stood open on the balcony, letting in the summer 
 night ; so that his back was towards her. He did not turn 
 round. 
 
 She went nearer to him and threw an arm round his neck — 
 drew his face round to her lips and kissed it. " Tell me the 
 whole truth, darling boy ! " said she. " Tell me everything. 
 Come out and tell me in the dark." 
 
 It was easier somehow, that way, and he was grateful to her. 
 They went out on the balcony, which was wide enough for chairs. 
 Two were there, but he preferred leaning over the balustrade. 
 " You know that 1 shall have to go away ? " said he. So con- 
 fident was he that the thing had come to her knowledge, though 
 how and why it should have done so was a mystery to him, that 
 he jumped at once beyond the subject to its consequences. 
 
 " Suppose we talk about that afterwards. Tell me first 
 exactly what has happened. Eemember — I don't know! I only 
 guess." She felt that it was risky, this pressing for particulars. 
 But it was best to be courageous. For, after all, she must know 
 in the end. 
 
 "What has happened?" said he, dreamily. "Strictly speak- 
 ing, nothing has happened. But I cannot remain here. My 
 life must pass somewhere else. I came here to-day meaning to 
 tell you how things stand." 
 
 " Yes — that is right. Tell me more." She was much easier 
 at heart for these few words. 
 
 " How can I live near my friend, when his wife is . . . 
 what she is ... to me? How can I deprive him of her, when 
 he is . . . Charley? I can only go — get away out of sight. 
 And yet ..." 
 
 " And yet what ? " 
 
 "And yet, if I do that, how shall I have behaved to her?" 
 
 His mother began to doubt if her ease of mind had not been 
 premature, after all. " I thought 3'ou said," said she, " that 
 nothing had happened." 
 
 " I see what you mean. Oh no — nothing has happened, in 
 ihat sense. All the blessed commandments are intact. But I 
 must begone, for all that. And how much the happier will she 
 be, by my departure ? "
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 389 
 
 " You foolish boy ! " Her voice had real relief in it, this 
 time, however. " Look here now ! Suppose you come away 
 from that paling, and sit down. . . . Yes — like that — opposite 
 me. Now tell me, please, exactly what has happened. No non- 
 sense, you know ! " 
 
 It was rather difficult to tell a story that really was poet's 
 work, or dramatist's, as if it had been an inventory of goods, or 
 an attestation before a Court of Justice, or anything with tactile 
 values in it for the practical mind to lay hold of. But Fred 
 succeeded fairly well, his hesitations often explaining points his 
 attempts at lucidity had only obscured. He was a little taken 
 aback that his mother should say " Of course ! " and " Nat- 
 urally ! " more than once when he conceived that he was nar- 
 rating something peculiar and recondite, foreign to human ex- 
 perience. Especially so, when having carried his narrative up 
 to that final interview with Lucy on the Sunday night, he had 
 flinched from its climax, preferring to leave it to the imagination 
 of his hearer.- For he was quite disconcerted when she supplied 
 it for him, saying: — " And then I suppose you kissed her? " with 
 perfect cahnness, as if such trespasses were written on every page 
 of human history. 
 
 She continued, as though a result so inevitable called for no 
 further comment : — '' Well then ! What did she say after that ? " 
 and seemed to expect a continuation of the story. 
 
 But he said : — " Nothing. We went out on the lawn, to the 
 others. In fact, we have hardly spoken since. She was only 
 just coming down to breakfast when Charley and I went off to 
 catch the nine-thirty. Of course I have been at my diggings 
 ever since then." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret almost laughed. " What an absurd boy my son 
 is ! " said she. " Just fancy ! He kisses a lady, and because she 
 lets him, he takes for granted that she is ready to throw her 
 husband and her baby over — and the world's good opinion, 
 whatever it's worth — and to give herself away to him ! Do you 
 suppose now, soberly and seriously ..." 
 
 Fred struck in. " Yes, I do suppose, soberly and seriously. 
 I mean, that what I know, I know. We understand each other. 
 Think of what I had just told her. All I had said, mind you, 
 was about herself, and I was only keeping back the name. It is 
 all quite clear." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret considered. Fred's tale to Lucy had been, it 
 appeared, of how a crazy passion for some woman, unnamed, had 
 broken his allegiance to Cintra Fraser, and she had pressed him
 
 390 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 to say who this woman was. Then see ! — all in a moment she 
 finds herself caught in his arms, and kissed. What was an im- 
 partial bystander to think? On the whole, Fred's mother 
 inclined to the belief that this unfortunate development was 
 mutual, and moreover that that young lady had been perfectly 
 conscious of the position for some time past. But she knew 
 that any suggestion to this effect would only offend her son's 
 chivalrous instincts. So she held her tongue. She saw that 
 any declaration of the feeling that was creeping over her of 
 detestation for the woman who had enslaved him, would only 
 destroy whatever chance remained of weaning him of his in- 
 fatuation before it led to absolutely disastrous consequences. 
 She determined not even to reason with him on the subject. 
 She felt, however, that the more clearly she kept before him how 
 grievous a wrong he was doing to the old friend whom he all 
 the while professed to love, the better was the chance of his 
 shaking off his madness, and finding a resource against it in a 
 healthier love for . . . there her thoughts paused a moment 
 before adding : — " For a better woman than Lucy Snaith." The 
 words came to her mind though, distinctly. And with them 
 an image of the girl and her eyes; such a one as Browning 
 chooses to present of the woman at whose door he lays all 
 the mischief in that poem of his — you know which? Most of its 
 readers pity her least of the three. 
 
 " Do you know, darling boy," said she, after a silence, " what 
 I am thinking of? I am thinking of poor Charles Snaith when 
 he comes to know of this. ..." 
 
 Fred gave a moan as of sudden pain. " Mother — Mother ! " 
 he cried. " For God's sake— don't! " 
 
 " But it must come." 
 
 " That's the worst of it." 
 
 " It must come, and you will have to face it." 
 
 " I shall have to face it. . . . Charley ! " As the name 
 came from his lips, without any place for it in his speech, his 
 mother could hear in its utterance what it meant to the speaker. 
 What memories of school and college, of boyliood from child- 
 hood, of manhood till this saddest hour for both ! Such memo- 
 ries were upon him now, night and day. And the hardest to 
 bear of all were those of the early time. 
 
 She knew the cruelty of her words, and that they must cut 
 him to the soul. But she knew also how hopeless would be any 
 attempt to make him see this idol of his as she saw her. She 
 was playing for the only chance, in thus dragging him face to
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 391 
 
 face with his treason against his friend. And her silence about 
 the woman who was causing it was keeping her in touch with 
 him, while free speech of her thought of her might make them 
 drift apart. Better anytliing than that. " Have you thought of 
 his child, left without a mother? Think of the tale that father 
 will have to tell him — or to keep him in the dark about — when 
 he comes to be of an age to understand." 
 
 " Mother, for Heaven's sake have pity ! You cannot make 
 things better. Do not make them worse ! " 
 
 " I am speaking only of what must be, that you may not 
 deceive yourself. That baby will in a few years be old enough 
 to ask — why he has no mamma, like other children. And his 
 father will have but one answer to give him. He will have to 
 say : — ' It was because my tried friend, who was dearer to me 
 than my brother, played me false and left me broken- 
 hearted, in a home that both of us had made his, as much as 
 mine.' " 
 
 " No— no — no no! A thousand times — no! It shall never 
 come to that." He choked back excitement that would have 
 been relief, and his effort only made what he sought to conceal 
 more manifest. 
 
 How his mother pitied him ! But she had the right of it — 
 to press her views of the case, cost him what it might. She was 
 sure of that. Whichever side he looked at it from, he must needs 
 go half-mad over it. Well — at whatever cost to himself in pain 
 present or to come, let him choose the course freest from dis- 
 honour ! She almost felt her breath fail her as she put to 
 him the unanswerable question : — " But how can you avoid it ? " 
 It seemed too cruel. 
 
 " How ? " he repeated. " I told you. I shall have to go away. 
 My life must be passed somewhere else. I know it now." Then 
 more quietly, but rather as though the strain of his excitement 
 had exhausted him : — " Charley shall never know the reason 
 why." 
 
 Stop it at that! That was Mrs. Carteret's feeling. Beware 
 of a single word of the position of that woman — she was already 
 '•' that woman," you see ! — while his life passed somewhere else ! 
 Could she do anything, here and now, to make this resolution of 
 his a fixed one? Yes, she could. And if she saw the oppor- 
 tunity, she would. 
 
 A short lull followed his last words, and seemed to ratify 
 them. Then she said quietly : — " Yes — that will be the best 
 way. Have you thought where you can go, at all? "
 
 392 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " No. I haven't thought. I don't know. As far as 
 possible." 
 
 " Must it be so far? I'm sorry." 
 
 " Does it make any difference ? " 
 
 " It might, if an idea that crossed my mind ..." 
 
 " I said I hadn't thought — but perhaps I had. In a vague 
 kind of way. I had a notion yesterday that Xorway woukl do. 
 But I think I prefer Canada or the States. Possibly San Fran- 
 cisco. What was your idea ? " 
 
 " Oh, nothing ! A freak of fancy. But it would be out of the 
 question. San Francisco would be too far." 
 
 " Too far for what? What was your idea? " 
 
 But she wanted the same idea to occur to him. So she only 
 answered, rather wide of the mark apparently: — "The great 
 trouble to me would be that you would be so far out of my 
 reach. Anyhow, the nearer the better." 
 
 " In England won't do. I must be far enough off to 
 forget." 
 
 " Then we have to bid each other good-bye. There are no two 
 ways. If anywhere in England would have done ..." 
 
 " Quite impossible ! How could I cry off going to see Charley, 
 if there were only a day's journey between ns ? " 
 
 " I see. It is so. I could have come to you, though, that way. 
 But, however — what vi usthe. . , ! " 
 
 He finished the sentence for her: — "Must!" Then the sug- 
 gestions she had been throwing out bore fruit. For he said sud- 
 denly : — " Do you know what I was hoping you would say your 
 idea was? . . .No? Well then — that you would come too. 
 Do, Clammy dearest ! Shut the house up and come away. . . . 
 But I'm afraid that wasn't your idea." 
 
 "It was very vague — my idea ! " She half admitted the idea 
 too — so Fred thought — even though she shied off it a moment 
 later. " Oh no ! I am too old for travelling about, at my time 
 of life ! " Her manner said it would never do to think any 
 more of that! And all the time she was hoping that her son 
 would not be put off by it. 
 
 If anything it made him more in love with the plan, or seemed 
 to do so. He derided the idea of her being too old for travelling. 
 She must come; he could not leave her alone, and go away he 
 must. He was dominated at the moment by an eagerness to 
 escape from the position of a traitor. All the foreground of his 
 mind was filled with the image of his friend, and the ruin and 
 misery he was going to cause him. It had power for the moment
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 393 
 
 to banish even the thought of that interview under the stars — 
 of Lucy herself, so near him. But only for the moment. 
 
 In her secret heart his mother rejoiced at this. Once com- 
 mitted to a course that would take him out of the zone of " that 
 woman's " influence, he would not go back upon it. Least of 
 all would he do so if his resolve to go abroad was confirmed by 
 the knowledge that his mother, at his own invitation, was ware- 
 housing valuables and buying an outfit to accompany him. If 
 it came to that, it would be the seal or stamp on his compact 
 with himself to place his friend's interest above his own, even 
 at the cost of the woman's happiness. Indeed, why should Mrs. 
 Carteret fret about that? As if Mistress Lucy did not know 
 perfectly well what she was about, all the time ! 
 
 It was safest, now that Fred had committed himself definitely 
 to leaving the country, to say nothing that would revive the 
 question. She took it for settled that it would be so, but had 
 just enough misgiving on the point of whether he would change 
 his mind, to keep off anything that would give him an oppor- 
 tunity of doing so. In fact, she thought it would be best to 
 change to an entirely different topic, and there was one that was 
 still sure, as between her and her son, to cancel every other. 
 
 " By the by," said she, " I never told you. I had a letter from 
 Mrs. Orpen. She is going to be married." 
 
 " What — Orpey Porpey ! Who's she going to marry ? " 
 
 " Foolish boy — fancy your asking that ! Why — you were here 
 when she brought him here! Then, you know." 
 
 " They didn't say anything about getting married, then." 
 
 "Why should they? But one has one's eyes, and can see 
 things. I thought them very transparent. Mrs. Threepwell 
 she'll be." 
 
 " I recollect him. Chop-jawed humbug ! But what has kept 
 them hanging about so long? That's a year ago — two years 
 nearly." 
 
 " I suppose they have waited for him to have the mastership." 
 
 " I thought he had that, a long time ago. Have they been 
 going on without a headmaster ? " It was a sign of how Time 
 was chilling the memory of the vanished man that Fred could 
 ask this question without any vivid consciousness of the degree 
 to which it must grate on his mother. He heard it, an instant 
 later, in the sound of her voice. 
 
 " I knew it must be, sometime," said she. " They put it off 
 as long as they could. There was some sort of temporary 
 arrangement ... in case ..." A contingency hard to
 
 394 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 speak of stopped her, but she recovered in a moment. '*' Onlv — 
 why should I shrink from speaking of it? \Miy should I mind 
 who knows ? " 
 
 '' I'm not sure, Mother dear, that I quite understand." 
 
 " I know that he was killed. Yes — murdered ! " 
 
 Fred protested in an undertone. " You are convinced." For 
 he could not acquiesce outright in the claim to knowledge. 
 
 " If you like. It is only one word instead of another. So 
 long as it means that I am sure about it, I do not care which you 
 call it. I am convinced." 
 
 Fred had nothing to say. After all, do we not hang men, 
 every day, because a jury is convinced? How often do we know 
 — even as well as we know geometrical truth — that a murder 
 has been committed ? 
 
 Mrs. Carteret continued, quietly enough, but with the same 
 sound in her voice : — '" I said the same, thought the same, when 
 Mr. Trymer told us we could not expect letters of administration 
 in less than seven years, as there was no absolute proof of your 
 uncle's death." 
 
 This referred to a subject of frequent contention — or at least 
 argument — between the mother and son: the deadlock which the 
 strange circumstances had occasioned in the disposition of Dr. 
 Carteret's worldly affairs. His will had been opened and read, 
 without a word of protest from any relative, some six months 
 after his disappearance. But, as is usual in such cases, adminis- 
 tration had been refused until definite proof was forthcoming 
 of his death. 
 
 Fred immediately utilised his mother's reference to it as an 
 engine of Hope. " Yes — and for once the Court of Chancery 
 was right. There is no proof. And not only that, but the 
 circumstances are such that it is almost morally certain that 
 proof of his death would have been forthcoming — certainly 
 would if he had been, as you think ..." 
 
 " Murdered." She supplied the word. It was scarcely ever 
 spoken but by -herself. 
 
 " Exactly. Xow, Mother dear, only look at this. Improb- 
 able as it seems that a sane responsible man like Uncle Dru 
 should voluntarily absent himself from his employment and 
 occupations, friends, relatives — everything and everybody — is his 
 doing so one whit less improbable than that he should be . . . 
 made away with ..." 
 
 " I understand." 
 
 "... And the deed so successfuUv concealed that no clue to
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 395 
 
 the mystery has come to light — in over a year and a half, 
 isn't it? — yes! For my part, I think the last far the most 
 improbable." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret only shook her head. " We gain nothing by 
 going over and over it, Fred dear ! " said she. But something 
 had been gained, for her, by the revival of the painful subject. 
 For the stress of it had dragged Fred's mind away from his 
 ■own trouble, and kept him from recanting his resolution to 
 take the only step to escape from the tragedy that seemed to be 
 hanging over him if he remained in his present surroundings. 
 And he had bound himself, as it were, to this course by his 
 urgent invitation to her to accompany him. 
 
 This long talk of theirs had lasted till past midnight, and 
 Mrs. Carteret had reason on her side in saying that go to bed 
 they must, or Heaven knew when they would be up in the 
 morning. Fred departed downstairs, and she said good-night 
 ;affectionately to him and sought her own quarters on the floor 
 above. 
 
 She had to pass Nancy's door. It ojDened furtively and let 
 its occupant's voice through, saying in a whisper : — " Is he gone 
 ■down? " 
 
 " Yes, dear, he won't hear you. But let me in and I'll tell 
 jou." She passed into the room, thinking what an injustice this 
 girl did herself in screwing her hair up so tight all day, when 
 such a nocturnal deluge was possible. " You've never been to bed, 
 JOU naughty child." 
 
 " No — I've been waiting to hear. Was it what we thought? " 
 
 " I'm afraid so. I mean, I'm afraid it's gone — rather far ! " 
 
 " Oh, not too far! — not too far to back out? " 
 
 Mrs. Carteret wondered, as she looked at the blameless hazel 
 ■eyes, grave in their surrounding of loose hair, how much their 
 owner meant her to deny. She decided that " No, dear — not 
 too far to back out," would cover all contingencies, and be 
 perfectly true. 
 
 The girl looked relieved, but perhaps would have been put to 
 it to say why. " I see," she said. " But have they got to kissing 
 point? Did you get that out of him?" 
 
 Mrs. Carteret nearly laughed, tliough indeed she was in no 
 mood for laughter. " I got that out of him," she said. " But 
 then, you see, I'm his mother." 
 
 " All right. I'm an outsider. I won't ask questions." She 
 seemed to repent of this, though. For, a moment later, she 
 said : — " I must ask one. Does poor Nosey know about this ? "
 
 396 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Mr. Snaith? Oh dear no ! How should he? " 
 
 " She might tell him. 7 should if it was me. Not to would 
 be fibs. ..." 
 
 "It isn't you, child! And it couldn't be you, in the nature 
 
 of things." There was no chance of a smile over Nancy's 
 
 •method, now. And her voice hardened to say :— " She will 
 
 easily keep hint in the dark. She can manage the position." 
 
 " Oh, Madrina ! " 
 
 '' I'm sorry it is so, dear ! But you will find I am right. It 
 will prove so in the end. She's that sort. But of course I shall 
 not breathe a hint of that to my boy. I would sooner he- 
 credited me with a good opinion of her. If I stroke him the 
 wrong way, the least little bit, it will spoil all. . . . Yes, dear,, 
 I have a plan. But it has its drawbacks." 
 
 "Its drawbacks?" 
 
 " I'll tell you to-morrow. Go to bed." 
 
 " No — tell me now. Bother the clock ! " 
 
 " It has one big drawback. I shall have to leave my figlioccia 
 behind." This byname of course resulted from Madrina, first 
 used by Nancy because it sounded well, not because it was 
 applicable. 
 
 " Then you are going away somewhere — going with him. I 
 
 see." 
 
 Mrs. Carteret nodded. '" Tiiat's it! Someiuhere," said she.. 
 " Anywhere, somewhere else — New Zealand, if you like — to get 
 him out of the way of that woman. Don't look so shocked, dear,, 
 but go to bed. I'll tell you to-morrow." 
 
 Nancy took no notice of this, but cogitated. " It's a good 
 move," said she. " Of course I wish it could be done any other 
 way. Because one doesn't pick up stray extra godmothers, in 
 every bush. I don't like it, but I shall have to lump it." 
 
 " It isn't absolutely settled. Only, it may be tile other way.. 
 He may shy off going if I don't stick to it. You see, he made' 
 me promise to go^ so he can't back out, as long as I don't." 
 
 '' Oh yes — I quite understand. You made him make you 
 promise to go away with him, of his own accord, and now 
 he's done it and can't help himself. Very good idea ! " 
 
 " Yes — you put it very nicely. Now, dear, go to bed and 
 we'll talk about it to-morrrow." Nancy wanted to go on talking;: 
 but ^Ii's. Carteret was firm, and departed. 
 
 Fred, left to liimself, promptly wavered. So long as Charley 
 was kept before the eyesight of his mind, his conscience told him
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 397 
 
 that the only course open to him was to fly from his temptation. 
 The moment he was free to indulge in memories of Lucy — her 
 glance, her voice, her touch above all .in that fatal moment in 
 the garden — they came back upon him in a throng and over- 
 whelmed him. The intoxication of her identity seized on every 
 fibre of his being. And all the more that, in spite of doubt 
 thrown by his mother he held sacred his conviction of the mean- 
 ing of her passive acquiescence in his caress. It came of his 
 placing his idol on so high a pedestal. A commonplace woman 
 might see her way to a chance kiss from an adorer; might enjoy 
 it as a transgression, and exult in its wicked secrecy. But not 
 Lucy, she was above that sort of thing. Her action meant " Do 
 not suppose you are alone. Do not suppose your love is unre- 
 turned. Our relations can never go beyond those of dear 
 friends, because of the height of my ideals, and no doubt yours. 
 But I can tell no lies. I can make no pretence to a frigid indif- 
 ference to the passion you have as good as confessed to me, and 
 you are at liberty to draw your o ,vn inferences about my feelings 
 towards my husband. The path of duty is strewn with thorns 
 for both of us, but if I walk barefoot upon it without complain- 
 ing, you will have to do so too. Beyond this, if your conscien- 
 tious scruples condemn as iniquitous the amount of subterfuge 
 needed to conceal a relation that my morality excuses, I will 
 thank you to keep them in abeyance. What is your conscience, 
 that it cannot face an indictment mine does not shrink from ? " 
 That was Fred's interpretation of her attitude, anyhow. Not 
 that he could sort it out as the story has endeavoured to do 
 for him, conscious of its verbosity. It presented itself clearly 
 to him nevertheless, in a flash, just as a phrase of music sum- 
 marises what would need a volume to tell. 
 
 There was an obscurity, though, in one note of Itis music. 
 How came a creature so pure and perfect, so flawless as this idol 
 of his, to have wedded his friend for the only reason possibh^ 
 to such a one as she — an almost divine insight into the soul 
 which Providence, for Purposes of Its Own, had thought fit 
 to enshrine in a casket which was, to say the least,, prosaic? For 
 Fred, who would not have had Charley altered by so much as 
 a pin's point, could not shut his eyes to his individualities. 
 How then came Lucy Hinchliife, having once seen beyond this 
 mere material conipages or shell of the body, to be able to revolt 
 against, or disallow, the actual Charley, the inner soul or self 
 of it? Fred was forced to ascribe one imperfection to his idol. 
 She had — for his sake — wavered in her allegiance to his friend. 
 
 2i
 
 398 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 She was human, so far; otherwise, divine. But was it not pos- 
 sible that she had been misled by a bad influence? — a plausible 
 theory. He had frequently discerned before this a sinister char- 
 acteristic in her august mother, and had discussed it with 
 Charley, who had seemed to acquiesce in the correctness of his 
 views. Both had accepted the description of the lady — " a regu- 
 lar old stager " — as applicable, and it had seemed to convey to 
 them more meaning than the mere words show on the surface. 
 !N'ow, the suspicion at work in Fred's mind that, little as his 
 own mother had said, she was laying all the blame at Lucy's 
 door, made him rather glad of the presence of the old stager 
 in the background as a scapegoat. It would make his mother 
 — of whom Fred was frightened — much more lenient in her 
 heart towards the cause of her son's distraction. And after 
 all, there was that story of the noble relative ! But it had never 
 been discussed or hinted at before Lucy — oh dear no ! 
 
 He found that he could account for her readiness to accept 
 Charley for her husband by a composition of two forces, acting 
 on her inexperienced mind before her marriage. One the per- 
 sistence of a lover for whom it was impossible to feel no affection 
 at all — for was he not Charley? — the other the untiring stress of 
 a dominant parent, ceaselessly working to an end, an end dear 
 to the old stagers of her class. Think of that coronet! Think 
 what a Countess her daughter would have made ! To Fred, this 
 last consideration seemed to palliate almost any amount of 
 worldliness in so old a stager. He wondered more at her daring 
 so much on so small a chance. Then, who could say what 
 callousness Lucy may not have shown to other would-be lovers? 
 She evidently had never known the meaning of the word " love," 
 or she — with all that beauty and purity of character, mind you ! 
 — never could have deliberately married, to gravitate down to 
 indifference in less than a couple of years. 
 
 But the oddity of it was that Charley's own devotion to her 
 seemed unchanged. At least, it had only lulled as all men's 
 may in the end; for life at high pressure is impossible. Why 
 had not her indifference reacted on his ardour? It would have 
 made matters so much easier — Fred thought — if Charley could 
 only have contributed his share to their estrangement. As it 
 was, every affectionate word to his wife, every little turn or 
 action that spoke of his confidence in her, fairly made Fred 
 wince, to think of the precipice so near by, and the inevitable 
 catastrophe. As he paced to and fro in his room that night, 
 conscious that he would be inaudible above, with a floor be-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 399 
 
 tween, his mother's words : — " I am thinking of poor Charles 
 Snaith when he comes to know of this " — came back to him in 
 the middle of an undisguised dream of what might have been 
 his, if only . . . and that reservation brought the same 
 thought before him now. That terror would not leave him free 
 to dwell on the sweetness of the poison that was current in all 
 his veins. It would come again, and yet again. Its sting could 
 never be withdrawn from the heart of his conscience, except at 
 the cost of an exile that would have to dwell on such scanty 
 memories of a banquet half-tasted, a cup snatched from his lips, 
 as life in a new world elsewhere might leave him. 
 
 And how about her ? After all, had he a right to absent him- 
 self from her in this way? If he had kept his passion for her 
 secret, and fled in time, then he might have said to himself : — 
 " I have placed my friend's happiness above my own, and the 
 woman I have loved in vain has at least never known of my 
 love, through any disloyalty of mine." How could he say so 
 now? 
 
 Then his thoughts ran to the asking of a question he shrank 
 from answering. Was he to see her again? He must, and yet 
 he dared not. What would become of all his resolutions if 
 he and she had to say farewell, face to face? It would be hard 
 enough to depart in any case, even under the sanction of an 
 exchange of letters, declaring and setting forth that course as 
 the only justifiable and reasonable one; how much harder to 
 tear himself away from her living presence, each knowing the 
 other's heart! And yet — was he not pledged to the one coursG 
 or the other — pledged to begone, in any case? It was he him- 
 self, of his own free will, that had sought for and obtained his 
 mother's consent to'accompany him. 
 
 Then another nightmare idea came to persecute him. Sup- 
 pose all things arranged and a plausible excuse forthcoming for 
 iiis departure, and the embarrassment — or worse — of a tcte-a- 
 tete with Lucy barred by any fortunate conjunction of circum- 
 stances, was he to vanish from her without so much as a word by 
 letter. And if he wrote, what was to prevent Charley seeing 
 the letter ? Of course if she saw the envelope first, all would be 
 safe, for she would know his handwriting. But how write such 
 a letter as his pen's point would yearn for, on the chance — 
 though the odds were a hundred to one in its favour — of its 
 reaching her eyes first? For if the hundred and first chance 
 came about, and Charley's eyes first caught sight of his well- 
 known script — how then? Why, he could almost hear his
 
 400 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 friend's voice: — "Hullo! — what's the fun? Letter from Fred 
 to the missus, a mile and a half long ! Must open this ! " And 
 then — fancy the sequel ! How at first he would think it a joke, 
 and would carry it to his wife for a needed explanation. And 
 then — how? He turned sick as he pictured to himself one 
 hideous contingency after another. 
 
 He could not sleep — that was certain — until he had seen some 
 way out of this labyrinth of difficulties. He could explain his 
 sudden departure, though on different lines, to her and to her 
 husband. But then he must have some security that no eyes but 
 hers should read what he would write for them, and them alone. 
 The only possibility would be to delegate it to someone to 
 deliver into her hands — some trustworthy person. But there 
 was no one; no one but Charley himself. Charley would not 
 open a letter entrusted to him. But how hand him such a one, 
 and look into his honest face the while? Fred shuddered at the 
 bare thought. No, he must give up that idea of the letter. 
 There was absolutely nothing for it — no human creature com- 
 mon to both who could take charge of it. Not one he could 
 rely on, at least ! Of course there was Elbows, but she was 
 out of the question. . . . 
 
 Well — to be very exact — why was she? Fred wanted at first 
 to pooh-pooh Elbows as an absurd hypothesis, considered as a 
 letter-carrier. But she was not so easily eliminated. He tried 
 at first to justify his position by an answer which he all the 
 while knew to be absurd. Because Elbows would carry the letter 
 to her sister Mrs. Lomax, and between the two of them and a 
 hot-water kettle its contents would be got at and read — copied 
 perhaps — before it was stuck-to again and passed on to Lucy. 
 He knew better than to run that risk ! This justification failed 
 because he knew in his heart that, whatever Nancy's defects 
 might be, duplicity was not one of them. Was not her short- 
 coming rather an offensive veracity, an unfortunate literalness 
 of mind, tending to place her in the odious position of a teller 
 of truths? Oh "no — she was quite square, if you came to that I 
 After all, for a thing of this sort, you might do worse than 
 Elbows. 
 
 Besides she was absolutely the only person to the fore whom 
 he knew as a visitor at The Cedars. He had heard of her being 
 in the house only the last time he entered it, when paying a 
 visit, by request, to the nursery. The baby had expressed his 
 satisfaction at another visit he had received the day before, from 
 a lady friend, who had brought him a bright yellow balloon, and
 
 THE OLD MADPIOUSE 401 
 
 inflated it as his request. Her name, he had said, was ]\Iiss 
 Fraser, and he had onl}^ allowed her to depart at the end of a 
 long visit, when she had given an undertaking to come again 
 next week, and bring some other object of interest capable of 
 inflation, say a pig. At least, an allegation to that effect was 
 made by his nurse, in a Parliamentary formula suited to ques- 
 tion-time, asking him did he make statements to that effect, and 
 was he by nature precious and even divine? He had, it is true, 
 followed precedents and made no reply ; for surely the most un- 
 observant student of the Debates must have noticed that, in 
 Parliament, question-time never is answer-time. But Fred had 
 accepted a silence, with hiccups, as confirmatory of his nurse's 
 imputations, though he wondered whether the creature who was 
 hanging on to him by his beard was alive to any fact whatever, 
 even tliat he was Master Charles. Anyhow, Nancy was evidently 
 still a worshipper of her friend's beauty, although the latter had 
 not spoken of her to him. Possibly because she, Nancy, would 
 have involved reference to Cintra. 
 
 He was far advanced in a night of speechless wakefulness, 
 and feverish imaginations, when the chance of using Nancy as a 
 means of getting a letter into Lucy's own hands gave him a 
 factitious ease of mind, and allowed a troubled sleep to super- 
 vene, ending in an unconditional surrender to Somnus, who 
 caught Unrest at a disadvantage, and strangled him.
 
 CHAPTEE XXVI 
 
 Charles saw nothing of Fred next day, as he went straight 
 away from the office at six o'clock to his home at The Cedars. 
 Fred had evidently stayed on to lunch at his mother's, or he 
 would have put in an appearance at the usual hour at the lunch 
 rendezvous. 
 
 By the time Charles arrived at The Cedars^ all recollection of 
 his conversation with his wife in the carriage cominsj home from 
 the play had vanished, in the course of a night's rest and a day's 
 business. He had not thought himself called upon to put two 
 and two together, in connection with what Mr. Moring had told 
 him of the source of Mr. McMurrough's information that he had 
 embodied in that paragraph. The mere aroma of a conclusion 
 that a person one has absolute faith in has been playing fast and 
 loose with veracity, is sufficient to scare the investigator from a 
 clue he would follow keenly if he saw his way to convicting his 
 cook, his laundress, ^ven his medical or legal adviser, of telling 
 fibs. The fact that'^xjucy was to his knowledge the only person 
 in that quarter who could possibly have given Mr. McMurrough 
 his particulars was proof positive that he had got them some- 
 where else. 
 
 Moreover, his mind on the journey home was fully employed 
 on the speculation whether the first person he found at his 
 domicile on arriving would or would not be Fred. He was 
 inclined to answer in the affirmative, and was distinctly dis- 
 appointed when Tom the gardener, trimming the lawn-edge in 
 the front garden with shears, replied to 'his enquiry whether 
 Mr. Carteret had come, cautiously with all reserves : — " Can't 
 say I've seen him myself. Sir." The answer he expected was 
 that Fred had come by the previous train. 
 
 He was pleased that his wife should share his annoyance at 
 the non-arrival of his friend. She came in late, after him, and 
 her first words were: — "What! — you haven't brought him?" 
 To which his reply was another question : — " Has no letter 
 come?" For a premonitory letter to the house was more prob- 
 able than one to himself in town, and would be sure to be sent 
 to its mistress. 
 
 She jumped to a conclusion. " His mother's ill," she said, 
 
 402
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 403 
 
 " It must be that. Nothing else would have kept him. . . . 
 j^o — no letter's come." The last words were for Charles. 
 Otherwise, she spoke to herself. 
 
 " We shall get a letter in the course of the evening — you'll 
 see." Charley had not a shadow of misgiving of anything 
 amiss, As a blindfold man walks calmly on the edge of a 
 precipice, he trod his path of life with a serene assurance. Was 
 he not a happy man, with such a wife, such a friend, and — his 
 inner consciousness might add — such a son-and-heir ! For he 
 never paid a visit to his perfectly organised nursery without 
 feeling that its succulent raison-d'Hre was all a well-constituted 
 mind could desire. There was only one little pitted speck in 
 that garnered fruit, the drawback that Charley had mentioned 
 so diffidently to Mr. Trymer, in the hope that his profound 
 experience would throw light upon it; namely, that the crea- 
 ture's mamma showed such a very half-hearted enthusiasm about 
 it. Never mind ! Charley felt as he contemplated his son-and- 
 heir's fine masculine proportions when bathing, his delicate yet 
 firm texture, and his unfathomable creases, that he was to be 
 relied on to make good his own case with the most censorious of 
 mothers. Still, he would have been much happier that Lucy's 
 enthusiasm about her offspring should have equalled his own. 
 
 " Oh yes — of course we can go and pay that blessed baby a 
 visit if you won't be content without it. Nancy Fraser — only 
 you hate her, I know; so she never comes when you're here — 
 always wants him awake." Charles, having made himself happy 
 about Fred, had proposed this course before going to groom for 
 dinner. She added : — " Perhaps on the whole he is nicer 
 asleep." 
 
 Charles said : — " They are particularly ripping, asleep. So 
 pulpy ! " and led the way to the nursery. 
 
 " I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking of the noise they 
 make — at least this one does — whenever they want a thing and 
 can't get it. And some other odious . . . peculiarities." 
 
 Charles looked amused, but made no further enquiry. Espe- 
 cially as at first it seemed as if admission to the nursery would 
 be denied them. The nurse was not a person to trifle with ; in 
 fact, Charles had more than once remarked upon her truculent 
 disposition. There were many people, he said, whom he would 
 rather meet on a lonely road on a dark night than Gorhambury. 
 She softened, however, when she found it was the master of the 
 house who was seeking admission. '"If you'd 'a said it was his 
 pa ! " said she. " On'y, however was I to know ? " It then
 
 404 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 appeared that whatever may have been the cause of ^Mrs. 
 Gorhambury's desire to exclude the public from that nursery, it 
 was not the fear of awakening Master Charles. " Wake him 
 v.pl" said she, with evident pride. "Not if he don't choose. 
 1 don't say but what if you fired off a canning close to his head 
 you might. But not with common hollering nor stamp- 
 ing." 
 
 " Now, isn't he a jolly little bloke. Luce ? " said Charley, his 
 Tvhole soul going out in sympathy to the minute growing thing, 
 the small type of humanity, its veriest minuscule. " Just look 
 at him taking a snack — a snack in dreamland — and then say he 
 isn't a jolly little bloke." 
 
 " Don't understand. Oh yes, I see ! He thinks he's got his 
 bottle — greedy little pig! He never thinks of anything but his 
 bottle. . . . Yes, dear Charles ! He's very interesting, and I 
 suppose I ought to be more enthusiastic. But I've never been 
 able to lose my head about children." She then seemed to think 
 she ought to show a more definite interest in the baby, so she 
 talked to the nurse about its teething; rather over her husband's 
 head, as of a thing he, being a man, would not understand. But 
 ^Irs. Gorhambury responded very coldly to these confidential 
 overtures, making perfunctory answers which tended to show 
 that Master Charles knew quite well how to cut his teeth with- 
 out any interference from the Faculty, which would be so good 
 as to keep its horrid lancets out of his sweet ickle mouse. " But 
 1 thought babies always had to have their gums lanced," said 
 this young mother. And in response to a curt correction from 
 the nurse : — " I suppose I'm not up-to-date," with an indifferent 
 drawl, as if it really did not concern her, one way or the other. 
 Then she said, addressing Charles, who had no eyes for anything 
 but his progeny : — '" 1 needn't drag you away, since you're so 
 engrossed. Only don't be late for dinner," and withdrew. 
 
 Charles felt he should like to sound Mrs. Gorhambury on the 
 strange subject of this mother's indifference to her male issue. 
 Experience like hers would be valuable in throwing light on 
 the phenomenon; the only difficulty was how to approach it. 
 Suppose then he were not to approach it at all, but to take its 
 immediate proximity for granted — grasp it and chance the 
 result. 
 
 "Not a very popular little card with his maternal parent?" 
 said he. 
 
 " Beg your pardon ! " 
 
 Try again — better luck next time ! " I was saying, Mrs. Gor-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 405 
 
 hambiiry, that Mrs. Snaith doesn't seem to appreciate this — 
 character." 
 
 But Mrs. Gorhambury's principles disallowed every form of 
 epithet, and metaphorical speech of every class. " Was your 
 meanin' Baby ? " said she. Her tone promised concession as 
 soon as the most elementary forms of speech were alone 
 employed. 
 
 " Well — Baby was my meaning, certainly. I am bound to 
 say he gives me the impression of a strong character. I may go 
 so far as to say — a tentacular character." For he had rashly 
 trusted a finger in a palm that was open, in a sense in which a 
 half-blown rose is open, and its fingers had closed upon it with 
 a giant's force. 
 
 " He won't let go," said Mrs. Gorhambury, with conviction. 
 
 " That's a pretty prospect for me," said Charles. " Doesn't 
 he ever? " 
 
 " I never knew him to. Once he gets tight hold, there you 
 are ! " This held out a hope, however. For it was impossible 
 that this child, whose diet was exclusively milk, should have 
 absorbed its captives, like the boa constrictor or the cuttlefish. 
 The nurse proceeded, suggesting extreme suddenness of action. 
 " If you don't mean to it, you'll get free. But the minute you 
 think, he'll tighten up." Charles recalled to mind the rock- 
 limpet, who can be detached by one who simply acts, without 
 the formation of an intent to do so; but who can read thought 
 with ease. " We must have patience," he said. Meanwhile 
 Master Charles slept deeply, profoundly, without breathing. 
 Only the occasional suck at his dream-bottle betrayed life, 
 visibly. There was an advantage about this; it compelled 
 Charles to stop and talk to Mrs. Gorhambury, and he wanted to 
 be compelled, in order that he might have the opportunity to 
 decoy or persuade her into a clear expression of opinion about 
 Master Charles's mamma's unnatural indifference to his fas- 
 cinations. He returned to the charge, leaving his finger in a 
 grip whose power wa? phenomenal, especially as it was that of a 
 sleeping man not a year old. " Don't you call it rum, Mrs. 
 Gorhambury?" said he. 
 
 Mrs. Gorhambury assumed a reserve that would have done 
 credit to a sphinx putting up the shutters on Saturday night. 
 " It- is not for me," said she, "to be asking of 'no questions. 
 Nor yet a answering of them. I know my place." 
 
 Charles knew he could not have wheedled a real Sphinx into 
 revealing any official secret. But her responsible employers —
 
 406 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Zeus or the Graise, whichever it was — might have done so; and 
 Mrs. Gorhambury was in receipt of a liberal salary, which came 
 out of his pocket. Surely he was entitled to the advantages of 
 her experience of babies and their mothers^ which was, by her 
 own showing, almost infinite. " Come, I say now ! " said he. 
 " Did you ever, in all your situations, come across a mamma that 
 was such an unqualified cucumber towards her baby? And such 
 a baby ! Come now — I'll promise not to tell ! " 
 
 The Sphinx relaxed. Yes — she had known cases of a similar 
 indifference, the number thereof being small in comparison with 
 that of the babies she had dry-nursed, but still considerable — 
 not to be counted on the fingers of man ; but fewer, for instance, 
 than the toes of a centipede — while the latter number was as 
 the swarm of gnats that at eventide out of the fens of Allen do 
 arise, in Spenser. But, if you asked her, and she were to give 
 way to an intense — indeed ahnost superhuman — love of Truth — 
 she would be bound to admit that never in the course of her 
 wide experience had she known an instance of such a baby 
 as Master Charles being anything but what you might call a 
 signosure to both its parents. She was perhaps tempted by an 
 ambition towards rhetoric to make use of a word of which she 
 misconceived the spelling. The story has thought it best to 
 give her misconception. 
 
 " I expect it's only the missus's humbug," said Charles, a 
 hope dawning, of an irresolute sort. " It's when I'm here — 
 that's all ! " For he had already begun to notice the natural 
 wifely desire to disallow, disqualify, incapacitate, and cancel 
 which marks the demeanour of any wife to any husband ; of 
 her own, that is. He didn't want to give Mrs. Gorhambury 
 a chance to throw cold water on this theory, and the good 
 woman seemed to be gathering up for a negative. So he de- 
 flected the conversation. "What's the Dying Poet?" said he. 
 " In that box there ! " He could not reach across for the box — 
 he was too firmly held. But he had read its image and super- 
 scription. 
 
 Mrs. Gorhambury had to consider dignity. It does not do to 
 show too lively a sympathy with children's toys in detail. 
 
 "Which was it you meant?" she asked. "Ho — that one? 
 That's a Rubber ISTovelty Miss Fraser fetched, and he took notice 
 quite beautiful. The Dyin' Poet." 
 
 " I know. You blow him up and he squeals. Just like a 
 Poet ! So it was Miss Nancy Fraser brought him that ? " 
 Charley was alive to the injustice of his former attitude towards
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 407 
 
 Elbows. " It was very jolly of her to bring him a Poet," 
 said he. 
 
 " But Miss Nancy Fraser is — a — real — lady ! " The efEusive- 
 ness of the nurse's manner seemed to point to someone who was 
 not. She went on to describe the notice taken of the Poet by 
 Master Charles, which seemed to have resembled the notice a 
 shark takes of a diver at his mealtimes. This shark's rapacity 
 had been discouraged on account of the dye which occurs in 
 rubber novelties. Charles fought shy of any discussion of who 
 was, and who was not, a real lady. Mrs. Gorhambury was too 
 valuable to quarrel with. He changed the topic again. He 
 would be late for dinner unless this young party could be pre- 
 vailed upon to let go. 
 
 It was managed somehow, but not without arousing the young 
 party from his sleep. His indignation was too deep for words, 
 probably; but language was still, for him, an untasted luxury. 
 When his father, on his way down to dinner, twenty minutes 
 later, looked in again for a moment to find how the riot had 
 subsided, he was again a closed flower, breathless and moveless, 
 the very image of sleep itself. That philosopher was wise who, 
 being asked to choose the happiest lot, replied that he would 
 soonest be a baby without ailments, sound asleep. 
 
 That Rubber Xovelty made for Christian forgiveness in the 
 mind of its receiver's father. Not that any act or deed of the 
 donor called for forgiveness. But he and Fred had carried a 
 nem : con : resolution, years ago, to the effect that no man could 
 be expected to stand Elbows, and he had held fast to the tradi- 
 tion. No sane reason ever had been, or could be, assigned to 
 it; but then young men are very prone to antipathies, — espe- 
 cially against young women — for no sane reason. They are 
 perfectly fair and equitable in this matter of likes and dislikes, 
 their loves being based on sound foundations as little and as 
 much as their hates. It is just conceivable that Nancy's terri- 
 fying veracity, which with her was simply an automatic habit, 
 had grated on some projection of the structure of one or both 
 of these young men's amour propre. So the position at the date 
 of the story was, that Nancy, caught by her propensity of 
 admiration for beauty in her own sex, having become a devotee 
 of Mrs. Carteret's, thereby maintaining her connection with her 
 once-to-be brother-in-law, instead of following the natural drift- 
 apart consequent on the dissolution of his engagement to her 
 sister, had further — always under this influence of personal 
 beauty — developed her relations with the wife of his friend.
 
 408 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 She had, to crown these aberrations, become the victim of a 
 blind and absorbing passion for their son, and her attentions 
 had been, so far, well received. Charley, however, felt this 
 evening that such an offering as that Poet, that squealed and 
 collapsed when blown up, was too poorly acknowledged by mere 
 acceptance. Besides, he had a strong bias towards sympathy 
 with an}^ form of deification of his son. 
 
 " I say, Luce," said he, across the table after dinner — the 
 first meal they had had alone together for some days — " we really 
 ought to do something civil about j\Iiss Fraser. She comes all 
 the way here on her bike, and never gets anything beyond her 
 tea." 
 
 Lucy, beautiful but bored, said: — "Yes. But why to-night? 
 I mean what makes you speak of it to-night?" 
 
 " More than any other night ? Well — because I was visiting 
 our Family in the nursery just now, and Mrs. Gorhambury 
 showed me a present Miss Fraser had brought as an offering — to i 
 the Family. If you blow it up — the offering — it squeals and I 
 collapses. It's a Poet, I understand." 
 
 " Nancy Fraser is quite besotted about that infant. She said 
 she could not get a Pig or an Elephant. They were all sold out. 
 So she got him a Poet. Of course the child's too young to 
 distinguish." 
 
 " Tried to stuff him into his mouth — Xurse Gorhambury says 
 — and got blued all over. Pigs blue you, if you suck them, just 
 as much as Poets. . . . Well — why not get her to dinner, to 
 meet someone ? " 
 
 " It means six at table, or her by herself." Charles did not j 
 see this, and his wife had to explain that it v/as impossible to J 
 ask a young single lady to meet (a) a single gentleman, (b) a i 
 married gentleman without his wife, (c) a married couple unless } 
 reinforced by some unit, because of making five at table. This 
 unit was not achievable at a moment's notice, as Fred was no 
 use if he was going abroad. Indeed, anyhow, it would never 
 do to ask him to meet Nancy. How absurd of Charles to ask 
 why not, when he knew how nearly she had been his sister- 
 in-law ! Charles conceded all points, but left the solution of 
 these problems to a higher wisdom. " Nancy won't be here 
 again till next week, so there's no immediate hurry," said his 
 wife. He submitted that it would be as well to look alive, or 
 Miss Fraser would be going out of town. He was thereon 
 instructed that he need not fidget, as the matter should 
 be maturely thought out, and the proper steps taken. " All
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 409 
 
 right, sweetheart ! " said he, and snicked a cigar-point to 
 smokeabilit}'. 
 
 But that little banquet for six, of whom Nancy was to be 
 one, was never to come off. 
 
 Never was a man more unconscious of impending evil than 
 Charles as he lighted that cigar, after his wife had retired, on 
 the plea of a slight headache, to avoid its fumes. She had 
 hitherto been very indulgent towards the weed, and no doubt 
 would be so in time to come. But this evening she was the 
 reverse of chatty, looked fatigued, was feeling the heat perhaps. 
 Her husband was as solicitous about her as a devoted man could 
 be — didn't want his cigar — would chuck it with pleasure, or 
 smoke it later. How about smoking it later? Yes — he would 
 do that, and come and sit with her in the drawing-room. 
 
 He would have been better pleased had she welcomed the 
 alternative. The emphasis of her rejection of it, in favour of 
 a prompt Yesta match, which she threatened to light herself if 
 he did not, had very little sound of self-sacrifice in it. Her 
 repeated injunctions to him on no account to hurry could not 
 have been much more vigorous had his absence for twenty 
 minutes been an object she really had at heart. That was 
 impossible to Charles's mind, so it only occurred to him to be 
 gratified at his wife's consideration for her husband. See how 
 well Lucy pretended — for his sake ! That was how he looked 
 at it. 
 
 He began his cigar meaning to disobey her, and hurry. But 
 hearing her at the piano made his mind easy. She would not 
 find the time hang heavy on her hands in his absence, with 
 music for a resource. Had the slight headache been sufficient 
 to disallow the music, it might have been otherwise. What was 
 that air she was playing? Oh — he knew — it was that Italian 
 thing Fred was singing the other night. Yery pretty thing. It 
 had come out of the window of the drawing-room into the 
 summer night, along the garden walk to his window of the din- 
 ing-room, open for the heat, and had floated in with the breath 
 of the honeysuckled air to mix with Charles's Havana and add 
 to its soothing influence. The smoker thought there was some- 
 thing to be said for music after all. 
 
 He cut the Havana short because the music stopped, and made 
 for the drawing-room. He found the player walking restlessly 
 about the room. "You're looking very ..." said he, and 
 stopped. 
 
 "Yery what?"
 
 410 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " A^ery so-so ! It's the hot weather. You mustn't try to 
 do so much." 
 
 She appeared impatient, even irritable. " I have been doing 
 absolutely nothing at all," said she. Then she showed what was 
 on her mind by a sudden question. " Why <lid you not go to 
 Fred and tell him he must come ? " 
 
 " Why — I was so late at the shop. And if I miss that train 
 it's such a devil of a time before the next one. Besides, I 
 expected to find him on the platform at Waterloo. Besides, if 
 I had gone to the diggings ten to one I shouldn't have met him. 
 Besides ..." 
 
 She caught him up in the middle of his miscellaneous justi- 
 fications — the sort one doesn't really think of at the time, but 
 that come in very handy afterwards. " ' Besides ' — ' Besides ' — 
 ' Besides ' — " said she, echoing his connecting link. " Why 
 didn't you leave a letter for him at the Temple, to say he must 
 come, from me? " 
 
 Charles had thought of doing so at breakfast, and was able 
 to give a solid reason why he had not done so. " I knew he 
 would come if he could," said he. " What use would it have 
 been to us to know that he couldn't? He's sure to come to- 
 morrow, anyhow." 
 
 Lucy was discomposed at no letter having already appeared. 
 But, however ! — the last post hadn't come yet. That was one 
 consolation. . . . Hadn't it? — said Doubt. Charles had 
 thought he heard the postman, five minutes since. Lucy rang 
 for the butler to determine the point. Yes — the postman had 
 been, as a prosaic fact. But he was a sorry postman, unworthy 
 to bear the name of post, having brought no letter at all, unless 
 indeed one from a correspondent of Mrs. Marsden in the kitchen 
 could be considered a letter. 
 
 It was what Literature would describe as one of the ironies 
 of the position that Charley was all this while rejoicing in his 
 heart that his inseparable friend could command so warm a 
 friendship in that of his wife. How if she had taken a reason- 
 less dislike to him, as she might have done? Such things have 
 been. His concern for her annoyance at Fred's possible depar- 
 ture for a holiday without an express send-off from The Cedars 
 was secretly alleviated by his satisfaction that Fred's absence 
 should be matter of so much concern for her. It had been one 
 of the idle pastimes of the first year of his married life to 
 choose mates for Fred, from among his wife's extensive ac- 
 quaintance and his own more limited one. '^Nhy was Fred,
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 411 
 
 because his first clioice liad clianged lier mind and married a 
 Public Analyst, to be debarred from a happiness such as his 
 own? Lucy had entered keenly into the discussion of schemes of 
 this sort at first, but had never given her consent to any one 
 of them. Many she had scarcely entertained seriously, saying 
 of one : — " What — a dowdy ! Eeally, Charles, I had given you 
 credit for better taste." Of another—" H'm— a passable figure ! 
 But her teeth are odious." Of another : — " Very solid and sen- 
 sible, no doubt! But where are her eyes? What can you be 
 thinking of, Charles ? " And her husband, who was not at all 
 in love with his selections, had discerned in this an echo of his 
 own high estimate of his friend, to provide whom with a really 
 suitable wife he taxed his imagination in vain. Nothing caught 
 on, except a fictitious creature, of a beauty equal to his wife's, 
 but with almost every detail diametrically opposite. Sunny 
 golden hair and eyes emphatically blue were points to keep in 
 mind; the blue not precisely washerwoman's blue, but — suppose 
 we say ? — the colour of the Mediterranean in pictures of Sicily at 
 the Eoyal Academy. 
 
 Latterly, Lucy's interest in this match-making for Fred had 
 flagged. Charley discerned, however, that this might easily be 
 the case, without any diminution of the young lady's sisterly 
 interest and esteem for his friend. In fact, he could see with 
 the naked eye that there was no such diminution. Anybody 
 could. Moreover, no suitable candidate for the position had 
 appeared lately. Wait till Charley's sky-blue beauty dawned — 
 so he thought to himself — and then see how Lucy's enthusiasm 
 would revive ! 
 
 " Don't you fret your hair off about him. Luce'! " said he, 
 consolatorily. " You'll see there'll be a letter from him by the 
 first post to-morrow. Anyhow, I'll go to the diggings on my way 
 to the shop, and I shall find him there. I'll send you a wire." 
 
 " No — don't trouble to do that. He cannot go away without 
 seeing — us." There was the faintest wavering before the last 
 Avord. The substitution of it for " me " was too elusive to be 
 noticeable. It was imperceptible to Charles, at any rate. 
 
 He cast about in his mind for a topic to change to. His mind 
 was protesting against this cloud over her beauty ; on lier behalf, 
 not his own. It was a satisfaction to him that she should make 
 such a point of a farewell visit from Fred; but if it came to 
 being a disquiet and a discomfort to her, that was another 
 matter. What could, he talk about ? Oh, he knew ! A thing 
 that might get him a blowing-up, but a capital counter-irritation.
 
 412 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Any more <ihostesses ? " 
 
 " Any more what ? " 
 
 "Ghosts — spectral appearances — hallucinations ..." He 
 paused for an inclusive word; then, remembering the name 
 and nickname of the first promoter : — " Grewbeerinesses — 
 Klemmeries? " 
 
 " I think I know what you mean. No, I don't know of any. 
 They may have seen things — the servants. But it doesn't follow 
 that they would tell me." She spoke absently, as though pre- 
 occupation made this a matter of secondary interest. " I can 
 ask them, if you like." 
 
 " Oh no — it was only my rot." It seemed to him to be making 
 the matter of too much importance. " I say. Luce, shall I tell 
 you what I believe will happen? The old Doctor will turn up 
 again, all alive and kicking, and then what will become of his 
 ghost ? " 
 
 " You mean we shall all look very foolish ? " 
 
 " Well — yes ! — I suppose I did." He seemed to think this 
 was going too far, and added : — " Or not exactly that, perhaps. 
 But we shouldn't hear of any more ghosts, for some time to 
 come." 
 
 " That would be an advantage," said she, in the same absent 
 manner. She seemed however, after reflection, to want to talk 
 more purposefully, and said : — '' I wish, Charles, you would 
 stop talking nonsense, and would tell me seriously what you 
 suppose has become of Dr. Carteret." 
 
 Charley was rather sorry to be brought face to face in this 
 way with a problem which common consent was daily accepting 
 as more and more insoluble. '' Indeed, my love," said he, " I 
 wish I -could do so. But I am as much at sea as I was two 
 years ago. Beyond what we all know, that he came to this 
 house, and that not a soul can be found that will swear to 
 having seen him after he left it, I know absolutely nothing." 
 
 " It is no use my asking how you know he ever left the 
 house." 
 
 " Xot in the least, if you expect an answer. I don't know. 
 Nobody knows. But there can be no, direct proof that any 
 man has ever left any house he has been seen in, except his be- 
 ing afterwards seen outside it. In this case nobody saw Dr. 
 Carteret." 
 
 " ^A^lat was that about a boy seeing him ? " 
 
 " It all went the other way. The boy said he didn't see him, 
 and he couldn't have been off seeing him if he had come out?"
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 413 
 
 " What made anyone think the boy saw him? " 
 
 " Only Mr. Grewbeer's experience that all boys were liars. 
 This boy said he didn't see him. Mr. Grewbeer knew that this 
 boy — and every other boy — was a liar. Therefore this boy saw 
 Dr. Carteret. If he had said the contrary, it would have proved 
 that Dr. Carteret was still in the house.-" 
 
 Lucy's beauty was no longer disquieted by her doubts about 
 the causes of Fred's defection, and the non-arrival of an explana- 
 tory letter. A look, of terror almost, from some other cause 
 was on her — a look that scarcely interfered with beauty ; indeed 
 some might have thought it enhanced it — as she said, hurriedly 
 and under her breath : — *' Do tell me why you are so convinced 
 that he is no longer in the house ! " 
 
 Charles looked at her with blank surprise. " No longer in the 
 house!" he repeated. 
 
 "Yes — why? \Aliy are you so convinced?" 
 
 "Convinced, sweetheart? How can I be anything but con- 
 vinced? If fifteen workmen, more or less, at work on the repairs 
 of a house, fail to notice the mortal remains of a man over six 
 feet high and broad in proportion . . . That was what you 
 meant, wasn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes — I meant dead." 
 
 " Well then, I can only say that anyone not convinced that the 
 man is outside the house, dead or alive, has a very strong orgaa 
 of incredulity. Anyhow, I'm convinced. " 
 
 " So I ought to be, I suppose. But did the men know they 
 had to look for him? " 
 
 " My dearest love ! Fancy their being told that if they came 
 across corpses they were to mention them to the foreman ! How- 
 ever, as a matter of fact I did say something to him about it 
 myself." 
 
 " What did he say ? " 
 
 " Said he would arrange for them to call particular attention, 
 if such a one turned up. They wore one and all such very 
 respectable men, and had been at work for the firm for so many 
 years, that I might rely on their keeping it in mind. More than 
 that he couldn't say. He assured me at the end of the job that 
 a very sharp lookout had been kept, and no dead party had 
 come to light. Just think what it means — all those men strip- 
 ping walls and cleaning paint and repairing perished woodwork, 
 for two mortal months, and finding nothing ! " Charley seemed 
 to be amused by the foreman's attitude, but his wife did not 
 respond. 
 
 27
 
 414 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " I was reading in to-day's paper," said she, " of some peasants 
 in France, who dug up a body, and buried it again in case it 
 should get them into a scrape." 
 
 Charles fairly laughed out. "My dearest girl," said he, 
 "you've been dwelling on this fancy, which is all made up out 
 of nothing, until it's got on your nerves. It's no wonder I say 
 I should be glad to see the old boy again in the flesh, all other 
 reasons apart." 
 
 "What do you suppose has become of him?" This very 
 
 emphatically. 
 
 " My dear, I don't suppose. I cant suppose. All I know is 
 — he isn't in the house." 
 
 " It's no use going over and over it." She was gathering up 
 towards bedroom candles ; somewhat early, Charles thought. 
 " My dear, do be reasonable ! " 
 " How reasonable ? " 
 
 "Why, only like this. You believe — don't say you don't — 
 that the old boy was murdered and that his body is buried some- 
 where in the house. Or the garden. But where ? And who do 
 you suppose did it ? " 
 
 " I don't suppose. I can't suppose." She was repeating his 
 words of a moment since. He broke into a good-humoured 
 laugh. 
 
 " Well done, Luce ! Had me there ! The engineer hoist with 
 his own petard! I say — let's confess we are at our wits' end, 
 and not argue." 
 
 " I am not at my wits' end." 
 "Well— what do you know that I don't?" 
 The eyes that rested on him might have been commiserating, 
 though not without a certain recognition of his good-humour, as 
 she said :— " It's no use my telling you. You'll only laugh." 
 " I won't. Do tell me." Her answer to this was a recapitu- 
 lation of incidents known to the reader. His comment at the 
 end was : — " Rum ! But I don't believe in ghostesses, you see." 
 He appeared, however, disposed towards an attitude of limited 
 indulgence towards phenomena as long as they kept in their 
 proper place. The power of suggestion, he said, was very strong. 
 An impression of a spectral appearance, hallucination, or any 
 game of that sort, once experienced by any member of a house- 
 hold, was sure to communicate itself to others; and however 
 satisfactorily the first impression was accounted for by purely 
 natural means, the faith of secondary percipients, or at least their 
 affidavits of their experience, would remain unshaken for a very
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 415 
 
 simple reason; namely, that the foundation thereof, being pre- 
 cisely nothing at all, would retain its original value unchanged. 
 He did not believe that the son of Tom the gardener had been 
 asked by a venerable gentleman of masterful aspect, from the 
 window of the long passage opening on the garden — which by 
 now was known among the servants as " the haunted passage " — 
 whether Mr. Carteret was coming, and when, whereupon he had 
 undertaken to enquire of Miss Parker in the kitchen, and on 
 returning could not find the venerable gentleman. Xeither did 
 Charles believe that a vendor of flower-pots, delivering a hun- 
 dred thereof through the greenhouse, had been told, by anyone 
 he could describe as her ladyship's grandfather, to take back a 
 broken one. Nor that the Wash's little sister, wandering afar 
 from the Wash, had returned to her, or it, in the kitchen to 
 say that " the old gentleman "' had sent her in to say he was 
 waiting and somebody must come. There were other 
 similar incidents in Lucy's resume, on which Charles threw 
 doubt. 
 
 She did not seem to consider that she was bound to make any 
 rejoinder to her husband's exposition of the common sense of 
 the case. But when she had achieved her bedroom candle, and 
 was on the edge of departure, she said in a very casual way, as 
 though it didn't much matter : — " I wonder Tom's son wasn't 
 afraid to take back a message to a ghost. I should have been, 
 at his age." 
 
 Her husband considered and then said, generously : — " I see. 
 That walks into my suggestion theory. Yes — I suppose Tom's 
 son thought he was a real old gentleman. A suggestion of a 
 ghost would have worked out as a ghost." The supposition that 
 Tom's son saw a ghost to order, and then took him as embodied, 
 would not wash, even when superstitions had to be dissipated. 
 Charles climbed down from mere orthodox derision, and paid the 
 subject the compliment of treating it seriously. " Look here. 
 Luce! " said he. " You must have some theory about what was 
 done with . . . with the remains. The body, I mean. Tell 
 me, and I'll have the place dug up to-morrow. Honour bright, 
 I will ! " 
 
 But she was not inclined to assist towards any definite action 
 based on her convictions. " How can I have any theory, as 
 you call it?" said she, impatiently. ''All I know is, that Dr. 
 Carteret was never seen to leave this house." And so she 
 left matters, going away, however, through the door which led 
 to the lesser staircase, her usual practice certainly, but seeming
 
 41G THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 to la^f stress on her distaste for the other route, which was very 
 much nearer. 
 
 This mystery-mongering about Dr. Carteret — for that was 
 how Charley described it to himself — was the only tiling, in 
 these days, that ever rnfficd his equanimity. His wife's indif- 
 ference to her baby was nothing; that would pass. She would 
 become as devoted as he was at the shrine of Master Charles. 
 But this idiotic fabrication of a ghost-story out of such very 
 insufficient materials was really . . . ! Well — at least she was 
 doing her sterling common sense a grievous injustice to lend 
 herself to such rot. Why — no ghost worth the name, if any 
 such existed, had ever haunted premises on such a shallow 
 pretext. The wliole thing was too ridiculous for words. Fancy 
 his awe-inspiring old pedagogue deliberately haunting a house 
 he had only set foot in for the inside of half an hour ! The last 
 man in the world to do anything so illogical ! 
 
 Of course if Lucy's evident belief that the Doctor had been 
 the victim of foul play in the house, and was actually buried 
 there, was well grounded, then the ghost was a reasonable ghost. 
 But how could such a thing be? 
 
 It is the only weakness a temperament incredulous about the 
 supernatural is ever guilty of, that it lays down the law which 
 real ghosts — if they existed, which they don't — would be amen- 
 able to. Charley felt sure that this was no hona-fide ghost, from 
 his incorrect conduct. 
 
 Speculation about possible places of concealment, hitherto 
 unsuspected, got on Charles's nerves, and made him restless 
 about the corners of that passage just beyond the new door 
 there. Look at the place again he must, just to make sure it 
 was utterly impracticable as a cemetery! He lighted his candle 
 and opened the door noiselessly, feeling all the while glad no 
 one was there to see him behave so foolishly. 
 
 The emptiness and stillness of the place was unearthly. A 
 sudden cat developed, and left by a window open at the top, 
 treading several times on nothing to reach it, but not embar- 
 rassed by mechanical conditions. The little parrakeets would 
 have waked to a sudden debate at the sicht of Charles's candle, 
 had they been there as in the daytime. But they had been re- 
 moved into an inner room. An irresolute moon, often outflanked 
 by passing clouds, made the long passage visible to the end. But 
 if ever a search had " Give me up ! " written on the face of it, 
 it was this one for a place where assassination might have
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 417 
 
 reasonably hoped to conceal its untidy consequences. The very 
 floor-tiles, in which hexagonal fit the slightest wavering might 
 have pointed to an interment — for this passage had nothing 
 between it and terra firma — were closed edge to edge with a 
 diabolical exactitude known to pressed-dust tiles alone. Which 
 of us has been shown over a restored parish church has not 
 winced about its chancel? As for disturbing and replacing 
 them, all the story can say is — try it. 
 
 No — if any evidence of the foul deed remained near at hand 
 it was not in the house, but in the garden. And every square 
 foot of its soil that was penetrable, without spoiling horticulture, 
 had been turned over by spades that Avould have recoiled from 
 the work of a predecessor. 
 
 Charles came back from his investigation more convinced than 
 ever that the ghost story was simply a nervous delusion, orig- 
 inated by Mrs. Klem's report of her last sight of the Doctor, and 
 cultivated by the strange epidemic faculty which such delusions 
 are well known to have, until it had become a reality capable 
 of affecting even the most sane and reasonable intelligences. 
 Fancy his unlocking that door and going out in the passage to 
 satisfy himself of the impossibility of a thing he already knew 
 to be impossible ! 
 
 He closed the door furtively, to minimise this lapse from 
 masculine common sense, and then, not feeling disposed to go to 
 bed yet awhile, resolved on half a pipe to assist cogitation, and 
 retired to enjoy it into his smoking cabinet ; to spare the 
 atmosphere of the sitting-room, whereof the windows were closed 
 and the curtains drawn, concealing bells that would have to be 
 handled cautiously if he opened them. 
 
 He decided that he would banish the old Doctor's disappear- 
 ance from his thoughts, with the usual result that he could 
 think of nothing else. Look at that story of how the man that 
 put that paragraph in the newspaper had got his particulars of 
 the Doctor's disappearance from the family. Even an Irish 
 journalist — Charles did not know why he should put it, men- 
 tally, this way; but he did — could not speak of the police as 
 ' the family,' or even as intimate friends of the family. But 
 he could only have got his facts from Scotland Yard. Who 
 knew them at the time? Only one or two folks at the school, 
 imperfectly ; Fred and his mother, and himself. As for Elbows, 
 query? Mrs. Carteret would never tell her, without -a caution 
 not to tell again, whether to an Irish journalist or anybody 
 else. The Klems were negligible, as devotees of the bottle; and
 
 418 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 uninformed at the time, anyhow. Not a soul else knew any- 
 thing about it. 
 
 Except Lucy, of course ! She didn't count. 
 
 The half-pipe was waning before Charles became aware that 
 he had not banished the Doctor's disappearance from his 
 thoughts. He gave up the attempt to regulate the subject- 
 matter of his meditations, and accepted an effort to revive the 
 name of Mr. Moring's informant. He did so because although 
 he remembered throwing out O'Dowd and O'Flannigan as feelers 
 for it — feelers for a reminder — he could not for the life of him 
 recall the reminder, quite clearly spoken when it came, and 
 repeated by him in acknowledgment. 
 
 McMurrough! Was it by any chance McMurrough? . . . 
 Oh dear ! — what a fool Charles was ! Why — of course, Mc- 
 Murrough was the name of that man Lucy was speaking to at 
 the play. That cock wouldn't fight. 
 
 His recollection was on its mettle to recover that name. He 
 resumed in his mind the conversation that preceded Moring's 
 second mention of it, made clearly in correction of his chance 
 shots of O'Dowd and ^O'Flannigan, and was disconcerted with 
 the plainness with which his memory of an elderly gentleman, 
 probably well connected, replied : — " No — McMurrough." It 
 was just before he made that remark about the Liberty of the 
 Press, and departed. 
 
 Charles's equanimity was shaken by something in the per- 
 sistency of his recollection, now aroused. "I must have heard 
 the name wrong," — said he to his memory, resentfully. But his 
 memory respectfully but firmly insisted that it was right. 
 
 He might have treated the case as one of the same name — 
 itot a very uncommon one — borne by two different people. But 
 two or three words of his wife had made this difficult, if not 
 impossible. " He writes for the Press. Irishmen do." That 
 came again to his mind, when it harked back on their entry to 
 the theatre. 
 
 And yet — suppose this the same man! That is to saj^ the 
 man at the theatre, a former acquaintance — indeed, a rejected 
 suitor — of his wife's, the same as the man whom Mr. Moring 
 reported to be the author of that paragraph, and to have had 
 his information from an intimate friend of the family ! And 
 what was it he pledged himself to observe ? What was he going 
 to keep in mind? 
 
 Was it conceivable — was it possible? — that his wife was 
 responsible for it? He tried to exclude the idea from his mind
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 419 
 
 — shut the door in its face, as it were; but it got in at the 
 back window. Possible but inconceivable, was his answer to 
 the question. Possible because anything is possible, everything 
 is possible. Inconceivable because Lucy had given him an un- 
 conditional pledge of silence. He remembered how he had 
 pressed Fred for leave to tell her, and how urgently he had 
 represented to her Fred's desire that the subject should not be 
 talked of. 
 
 The thousfht made him very uncomfortable as he walked 
 slowly upstairs to his bedroom. Have not we all known the 
 shock of the first discovery of duplicity or ill-faith on the part 
 of some object of blind confidence, someone who has com- 
 manded the whole heart of our trustfulness? He was angry 
 with himself for his disloyalty to his wife, as he accounted it, 
 in admitting to his mind a doubt of the validity of her given 
 word. The disillusionment which the cynic deems an invariable 
 sequel of six months of married life was not yet complete enough 
 in Charley for him to accept the possibility of such a thing 
 unchallenged. The only cloud that had crossed the zenith of 
 his idolatry so far had been the revelation that she had nervous 
 fancies; fancies which, obsessing the faculties of a less clear- 
 headed woman, might have made her superstitious.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 Fred woke late next morning at Maida Vale, and did his best 
 to get into his clothes, to avoid anticipated cold eggs-and-bacon 
 at breakfast. His exertions proved needless, for no one was 
 visible when he went into the breakfast room, and no bell had 
 rung. The testimony of Jane, the new servant, was to the effect 
 that Miss Frasiour — whose name she elaborated to add to its 
 effect — had gone out on her bicycle, but would return to break- 
 fast. Jane was expecting her in any minute. Mrs. Carteret 
 would take hers in her room. Would Mr. Carteret like his 
 separate, or wait for Miss Frasiour? He would wait, certainly. 
 In fact, he welcomed a tctc-a-tcte with the young lady whom he 
 had once spoken of to Charley as his disintegrated sister-in- 
 law ; not on her merits, but because he wanted to feel his wav to 
 the delivery of that letter to Lucy. 
 
 Fred had had experience, in old times, of the deadly and 
 incisive literal-mindedness of this young person. It had, in fact, 
 been the basis of the half-confessed hostility between her and 
 the two young men. But he had still to learn the full scope 
 and intensity of her faculty of direct speech. 
 
 "You will be sroino^ over to The Cedars . . . soon?" said 
 he, casually, to open the way to the request he had to make. 
 
 " Yes — next week." 
 
 This was much too far off. " I thought you would be going 
 sooner," said Fred. " But I can manage." 
 
 "What's it for?" said Nancy. "I can go on purpose, you 
 know." 
 
 " I want to get a letter to Mrs. Snaith." 
 
 " Why can't you send it by post? " 
 
 Wliy not indeed? Fred saw he had blundered at the very 
 first outset. So much so that he was inclined to acknowledge 
 defeat, and take to flight. "Of course I can send it by post. 
 But I thought, if you were going . . . However, it doesn't 
 really matter." 
 
 " That's absurd," said Nancy, after consideration. " It must 
 matter. You wanted to get your letter to her for some reason. 
 It wasn't soonness. The post would have been as soon as me. 
 Unless I had been going this very minute. I can go — straight 
 
 420
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 421 
 
 away now, if the madrina is propitious. Where's the letter? 
 Hand it over." 
 
 " It isn't written." 
 
 " Well then — write it ! I can go to lunch at The Cedars just 
 as easily to-day as to-morrow." 
 
 " Suppose Mrs. Snaith has gone out to lunch ? " 
 
 " I can lunch with Master Charles. He'll have his bottle, 
 and Gorhambury will feed me all right. Go and write it!" 
 
 Fred felt embarrassed. How could he word such a letter 
 under pressure, with this obliging girl — he was bound to admit 
 his obligation to her — waiting to carry it for him? Tlie raw 
 prosaic daylight alone threw him out of gear for the writing of 
 such a letter. But it would never do to admit to Xancy that 
 its contents were anything outside everyday life; the date of an 
 appointment, for instance — that sort of thing. That she was so 
 near the heart of his mystery as that interview overnight with 
 his mother had left her, was a thing that never entered his 
 imagination. 
 
 He had just begun to seek for a pretext that would lapse his 
 application to Xancy, and cancel it, when he remembered that 
 it was his only chance of getting a letter into Lucy's hands with- 
 out risk of its being opened and read by her husband — or at 
 least putting her in danger of being questioned about it — unless 
 it were the one his whole soul recoiled from, of entrusting it 
 to Charley himself, facing his unsuspicious honesty with the 
 unflinching eyes of a liar. It would reach Iter unopened, 
 but . . . 
 
 No — that was a thing he could not do ! Anything but that. 
 But then it seemed to him he could not write that difficult last 
 letter of farewell offhand, so that Nancy could be the bearer 
 of it here and now. Of course he could ask her to take it to- 
 morrow instead. Only — how could he account for it? Except 
 indeed by taking her into his confidence. That occurred to him. 
 He was wondering what his mother would advise, when Nancy's 
 own penetration, adrift for tlie moment among contingencies, 
 seized upon a point that up till now had escaped its notice. 
 
 " What on earth," said she, " is to prevent you giving your 
 letter to Mr. Snaith to take to her? You'll see him in town, 
 won't you? " 
 
 He wavered and flinched off a straight answer, the true one 
 being impossible. There were reasons, he said. They didn't 
 seem comfortable ones, to judge by his voice. 
 
 " What are you going to say in it ? " No arrow from Robin
 
 422 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Hood's bow ever struck venison or foeman straighter and swifter 
 than this question of Nancy's struck into the heart of the 
 matter. 
 
 It was evident to Fred that he must either make this girl 
 his confidante, or give up the idea of entrusting his letter to 
 her altogether. He chose the former course, influenced perhaps 
 by the unblushing truthfulness — the only phrase that does it 
 justice — of the frank gaze that met his as he looked up, sur- 
 prised a little at her extraordinary directness. " Good-bye ! " 
 said he. Which was not an apostrophe to Nancy, but what he 
 was going to say in his letter. To avoid the former interpre- 
 tation, he added : — " I mean that that will really be the sub- 
 stance of the letter." 
 
 " Look here ! I know all about it. To say I didn't would be 
 fibs. You are going away with your mother — somewhere." 
 
 " Yes. We haven't settled where. We shall go almost im- 
 mediately. But it is best that Lucy Snaith and I should not 
 meet. You can see that?" He had thrown off all disguise of 
 the tension he had to live under now, and was speaking with a 
 strained earnestness. She merely nodded assent, and he con- 
 tinued : — " I could not go away without a word, and — what am 
 I to do? Eemember that, come what may, Charles Snaith has 
 to be kept in ignorance of why I am going. The very worst 
 thing that could happen would be that he should find out why." 
 
 " I will take your letter, if you wish it ; to-day or to-morrow, 
 when you have written it. To-morrow would be best, because I 
 can send a line to-day to say I am coming. You want me to 
 give it to her herself, and see that she opens it? That's it, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 " That's the sort of thing. I see you understand." 
 
 " Very good, then ! You write it and I'll take it." But the 
 proceeding was too surreptitious for Nancy to acquiesce in it 
 without a protest. " It makes me feel like a thief in the night," 
 she said. '" Like an area-sneak or a Venetian mystery. But 
 I'll take it to her, because I see your fix." Then reflection on 
 the undertaking gave her misgivings ; inclined her towards back- 
 ing out of it. " I cannot for the life of me see why, if you can 
 square it with Mr. Snaith when you see him to-day, you shouldn't 
 give him her letter to take ..." Fred shook his head as she 
 hesitated, and was going to speak, when she interrupted him 
 with : — " Oh yes, I do, though ; I do see why. It would be too 
 Venetian by half . . . But I'm not sure about the post. After 
 all, why not the post? "
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 423 
 
 There was a ring of excruciating pain in Fred's voice as lie 
 answered : — " You ivould be sure — indeed you would ! — if you 
 knew how Charley and I have opened each other's letters for 
 years past. If he came down first to breakfast to-morrow and 
 found a letter from me in her lot, he would open it to a dead 
 certainty. And suppose it was the letter I want to write to 
 her — the letter I jnust write — how then?" 
 
 Nancy had an idea, but dismissed it as obvious nonsense, that 
 the letter might be posted with superhuman discrimination, so 
 as to reach Mrs. Snaith at a chosen moment. An3'one who has 
 ever tried the experiment will know that her rejection of this 
 idea was well grounded. " I don't half like the turn-out," said 
 she. " But I can't see any other way out of it. You must 
 write to her. I see that. You can't post it. I see that. 
 And you can't give it to poor No — ... Oh dear — I didn't 
 mean . . . ! ! " 
 
 " Never mind. I knew you called him Nosey." 
 
 " To have in his pocket all the way down to Wimbledon. 
 You must send it to her, and there's nobody but me to take it. 
 So just you get it written and hand it over." 
 
 Said Nancy to Mrs. Carteret, later in the day, as a resumption 
 of a former item of conversation earlier : — " I knew all about it 
 of course, and he saw. Where was the use of humbugging? 
 Besides, I do it so badly I shouldn't have kept it up. So I as 
 good as told him I wouldn't take his letter unless I knew what 
 was in it. He didn't tell what, except that it was to say good- 
 bye. I wasn't asking for details, you know." 
 
 " No — I quite understood that. Then you'll take it to- 
 morrow." 
 
 " That's the idea. If he's written it. Shan't if he hasn't." 
 
 " We shall find it at home when we get back. You'll see." 
 For this was not at Maida Vale, but at a shop. It was one of 
 those shops where they don't keep your size, and a young lady 
 of perfect manners and an unparalleled sweetness of disposition 
 had gone away from her side of the counter through a wilder- 
 ness of avenues of counters, to seek in other climes for Mrs. 
 Carteret's size in reindeer. So she and Nancy had picked up 
 the thread of a previous chat. 
 
 *' You think, then, you'll go to Paris for a week or so, and then 
 on to Switzerland." Nancy had never been abroad, and spoke 
 with a mj'sterious awe of foreign parts. 
 
 " That would suit Fred. He wants to prowl about the Exhibi-
 
 424 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 tion, and particularly to see the flying machines, it will amuse 
 him and make him I'orget . . . forget things." 
 
 "You think he will?" 
 
 Mrs. Carteret laughed. " My dear child ! — of course he will. 
 Men do. Do you suppose 1 mean to go abroad for ever, because 
 my foolish son ..." 
 
 "'/ know." Mrs. Carteret had stopped because she thought 
 a stout lady was listening. " She won't hear. You needn't be 
 afraid. She's too busy buying com ..." Delicacy pulled 
 the speaker up short. 
 
 " Well — I think Fred will have come to his senses within 
 three months. . . . That young woman of ours is a very long 
 time over these gloves." 
 
 " When do you expect to get away ? " 
 
 " We must go at once, in order that he may not have to go 
 to The Cedars. He says he can manage the excuse-making for 
 a day or two, if I insist on going. So I shall insist. Only, it 
 will never do to have a delay. Is that young woman never 
 coming back? . . . Oh, herQ she is! Well, have you got my 
 size?" Not in reindeer, said that young woman. j\[illions 
 were ordered, and were certain to be in stock at dawn to-morrow. 
 Many thousand gross of every other size were in stock now. 
 Also, the almost incalculable accumulation of gloves other than 
 reindeer consisted almost exclusively of Mrs. Carteret's size. 
 Whether they were kid. Lisle thread, calf-skin, sackcloth or ashes, 
 that young woman could supply any number of six-three-quarter 
 at a fraction of a second's notice. But in reindeer, nothing be- 
 fore dawn to-morrow. 
 
 It really did not matter, as the time had been passed in chat 
 that the story has thought worth recording, as having a direct 
 bearing on its own tenor. Mrs. Carteret absolutely declined 
 to compromise for gloves and silk stockings, however new the 
 line of the latter ; indeed, though the latest novelties, they looked 
 to her almost painfully identical with the silk stockings of other 
 days. So she and Nancy went their way, leaving the stout lady's 
 young woman, who was of the bulldog type, all but trying on 
 her by force a medium size of the garment she was seeking, in 
 the teeth of her statement that she wanted the " out " size, and 
 nothing a millimetre smaller would come on. The story avoids 
 mentioning the garment by name, and it is not important that 
 it should do so. Nancy said to Mrs. Carteret, as soon as they 
 were outside the radius of this riot : — " I wonder which of those 
 two will be top-dog." And Mrs. Carteret said: — "I wonder.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 425 
 
 dear ! " and explained, as soon as they had done losing their 
 way in the shop, and got out at a new door into a street 
 previously unknown to both, that she had only gone to this 
 shop as an ascertained source of reindeer, and did not mean to 
 buy anytliing in London; as she and Fred had decided to go 
 to Paris, where shopping was a joy to the heart, even if the 
 establishment spoke English, which took time. Nancy said: — 
 " Can you buy things in French, then ? " and felt how very 
 much she herself couldn't. 
 
 For Mrs. Carteret had had a long interview with her son 
 that morning, before he went away to a trial of his powers of 
 dissimulation with Charley — how he shrank now from meeting 
 his old friend, albeit the latter was as dear to him as ever! — 
 and had had to wrestle with a disposition on his part to waver 
 in his resolution to go abroad. She had met this with an 
 emphatic : — " Nonsense, Fred ! A promise is a promise, and 
 I hold you to yours." She then went on to reason with him 
 about the impossibility of his position if he remained at home. 
 " Do you mean," said she, " to go on fudging up new excuses 
 every week for not spending Saturday and Sunday at The 
 Cedars, or do you mean to break your friend's heart and blacken 
 his whole life? There is no half-way. It must be either the 
 one or the other." 
 
 Fred was sorely put to it. " I know I made you a promise 
 last night," said he. " But when I came to ask myself, what 
 would her position be ? . . . " 
 
 His mother at first said : — " Very well — go your own way, 
 then!" and was half inclined to add — "And lose your mother 
 as well as your friend." But she thought belter of impatience. 
 " Listen, Fred," said she, " you say you can manage with 
 Charles Snaith if I make it a condition that we start on Satur- 
 day morning. I do make it a condition, for your sake. It's 
 very inconvenient, but I will do it because the more I think it 
 over, the plainer I see that if you stop here a tragedy will come 
 of it. And the principal victim will be the one least to blame; 
 I mean your poor dear friend Xosey, as Nancy calls him. What 
 has he done, except put too much trust in his friend ? ... Oh 
 yes — I know what people will say!" For Fred had been about 
 to speak. 
 
 " They will say he should not have trusted you so much alone 
 with his wife, and they said all along what would come of it. 
 The idiots!— as if Eve\ . ." 
 
 '■'Well — why did you stop?"
 
 426 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Why ! — it seemed like questioning the Higher Wisdom to say 
 that if nothing had been said about the only tree in the o-arden 
 Eve was not to eat, it was just a chance she would have kept 
 her paws off that apple. Mr. Snaith would not have avoided 
 this by chaperoning his wife. Rather the contrary.-" 
 
 " That's all true. But it does not make me feel any the com- 
 fortabler about my conduct towards her, if I simply run away 
 for Charley's sake. Tell me, Mother mine, do you believe it to 
 be really impossible for a man ..." 
 
 " Go on, Fred. Speak out, to me." 
 
 " For a man to go on loving a woman and to hide his love — 
 crush it out for her sake as well as his own — when surrender 
 would only mean ruin for her and a life of self-reproach to 
 him ? " 
 
 Mrs. Carteret had been speaking earnestly, but her voice took 
 a new sort of earnestness to say : — " I not only do not think it 
 impossible. I know it to be possible. But not if the woman 
 knows. So long as either believes the other in the dark, there 
 is safety. But neither of you is in the dark, after Sunday 
 evening. I am going by what you told me last night." 
 
 " All right. I told you exactly what happened. Yes. We 
 have passed the Rubicon." Fred was too much absorbed in his 
 own perplexities to wonder at his mother's slight change of 
 manner. 
 
 They decided in the end, after much talk of this sort, that 
 there was only one way out of the difficulty, and Fred went 
 straight away to his chamber, to lock himself in and make the 
 best he might of that letter to Lucy, which ISTancy had promised 
 to deliver to her the next day. He had not overmuch time 
 to write it, for it had to be posted to Nancy in time for her 
 to receive it next day before starting for The Cedars, which was 
 a two hours' ride from Gipsy Hill, even for so expert a cyclist. 
 
 However, he managed to get it written somehow, face to face 
 as he was with an insoluble problem — that of expressing undying 
 love for a woman, leashed with unflagging friendship for her 
 husband. In fact, he could not have written that letter at all, 
 if he had not already spoken to her of his passion and its 
 inexorable barrier, under the guise of a ridiculous hypothesis — 
 an imaginary couple, dangerously like her husband and herself. 
 That fiction in the past built a golden bridge to plain speech 
 about the status-quo in the present. 
 
 The substance and effect of a letter almost too florid for an 
 unconcerned bystander to follow with sympathy was that the
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 427 
 
 writer's position was unendurable — that begone he must, and 
 that too without letting his eyes rest once more on the object 
 of their adoration. He could not even bear, feeling towards her 
 as he did, to touch her hand in token of farewell. He must go 
 away, at whatever cost ; where he knew not. He could, he knew, 
 write to Charley — from whom, mark you, the understory of all 
 this must be concealed — a plausible reason, first for the post- 
 ponement of his return, then for his ultimate settlement in 
 some remote locality which would lend itself to forgetfulness, 
 although he could never hope to meet, there or elsewhere, per- 
 fections which etcetera. 
 
 There was a full measure of these cetera; and indeed the story 
 is more than half inclined to forgive Fred that he did this once 
 give the rein to his passion, in a way that was after all but a 
 stinted indulgence of it. Kemember that at the moment he was 
 honest in his intention to wrench himself away from his temp- 
 tation, and forget it. 
 
 His letter ended thus — too late for the evening post, but sure 
 to be delivered before eleven o'clock next day ; Nancy would not 
 have started, no fear of that — " This letter will be handed to you 
 by Miss Fraser, who has kindly arranged to visit you to-morrow 
 that you may get it as soon as possible, and know my intention. 
 I feel that I lost a good sister-in-law in ' Elbows.' How strange 
 and long ago that time seems now ! . . . What more have I 
 to say? Only, forgive me! Forgive me that, having to choose 
 between two courses, either of which means madness in the end, 
 I choose the one that keeps my faith to my old schoolfellow 
 intact. It is the one that stings the most, for my heart must 
 remain yours. Farewell ! " 
 
 Charles Snaith, who had left his home that morning feeling 
 less comfortable than he had felt since he took possession of it, 
 in spite of a particularly cheerful visit he had paid to his off- 
 spring, was not much surprised at Fred's non-appearance at the 
 Holborn, although he was certainly looking forward to seeing 
 him and hearing what he had settled about Xorway. He decided 
 that he had gone out to lunch somewhere. However, Charley 
 was wrong there, for Fred had let his midday refection lapse 
 altogether. He was too perturbed in his mind to be able to 
 think of eating and drinking, and was living in an uncomfor- 
 table world of snacks. 
 
 Therefore it was that Charley, washing his hands of the Law 
 earlier than usual, went three steps at a time up the prison-
 
 428 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 stair that led to the diggings. It was not often that these 
 friends were separated — or had been separated hitherto — for 
 over forty-eight hours. Fred heard his name called from out- 
 side, and knew he had to bo himself as of old, now or never. 
 He answered the summons promptly, and greeted the visitor 
 warmly. 
 
 " Come along in, old chap ! I knew it was you. In fact, I've 
 been taking you for granted, or I should have written." 
 
 Something in these words ran counter to the programme of 
 the next twenty-four hours which Charley's mind had composed. 
 " But you're coming to The Cedars! " said he, blankly. 
 
 " Well — that's wliere the shoe pinches ! No, I'm not. I 
 can't." 
 
 " Kot ! " 
 
 " Unfortunately it isn't rot, but sad reality. Coine along in 
 and I'll tell you." He knew he had a tussle before him to 
 convince his friend he was in earnest. But it had to be gone 
 through with. He proceeded with semi-fiction, for there was a 
 measure of truth in it — that he and his conscience had agreed 
 to resort to, to cover his defection. '"' You see," he said, " it's 
 my mother. You know how much I have wanted her to go 
 abroad with me, and how she has always refused." Charley 
 nodded. " Well — when I told her I was going to take a holiday, 
 she mentioned incidentally that an old friend of hers, Avho lives 
 in Munich, had written to her to say she should be in Paris in 
 a day or two, and had suggested that my mother should meet her 
 there, as she hasn't seen her for fifteen years ..." 
 
 " She be hanged ! Why can't she come to London ? " 
 
 " She's going with her husband to Marseilles, to meet a boat 
 that's going a tour in the Greek Islands — her husband's a Ger- 
 man antiquary — but they are spending two days in Paris on 
 the way. Of course I offered to see the mother out, if she would 
 go. I was rather surprised at her saying she would. But of 
 course I jumped at it." 
 
 Charley showed impatience. He expressed a wish that the 
 Devil might take all areha}ologists, but especially German ones, 
 who were all impostors, and knew of all things least about 
 antiquity. " But how does that prevent your coming to The 
 Cedars? " said he. 
 
 '•' Because it makes the time so short. These Ger-persons have 
 only Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday in Paris. When my mother 
 consented to go, she thought there was more time, but when we 
 came to look at the letter, it turned out that she had confused
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 429 
 
 between this Sunday and the next. But she had promised, and 
 I wasn't going to let her off." 
 
 Charley considered. " You're quite right," said he. " Do her 
 all the good in the world! She hasn't been away since ..." 
 
 " Since it. No— that's just it ! She hasn't." 
 
 " But why should that prevent your coming with me now ? 
 Get your traps and come along, old man. You shall come back 
 as early as you like to-morrow. Just think what the missus will 
 say if i don't bring you back. She'll make a fine row." 
 
 '•' I was going to ieW you why to-night's no go. You remember 
 those Stockport people, Sampson and Strongitharm ? " 
 
 " Yes — men who wanted to put money in the Anti-Yibration." 
 
 " Strongitharm did. Well — he's in town, and has written to 
 say he'll be at the Grand Hotel at nine-thirty, if I can make 
 it convenient to look in. I must. It's not a chance to lose." 
 
 " N-no ! It's not a chance to lose. Lucy mustn't stand in 
 your wav there. But how about to-morrow? I know there are 
 some beasts coming, but we can lump them. Anyhow, we 
 must." 
 
 Then Fred promised, mendaciously, to come to-morrow if he 
 could. There had been foundations of truth for every word he 
 had said hitherto. The letter from Stockport was quite gen- 
 uine; a piece of luck! "You see, Charley," said he, "it's a 
 close squeak for time. I may manage to-morrow — will if I can." 
 Then he indulged in the only honest untruth of which he was 
 guilty. ■ " You know, it isn't as if I wasn't coming back in a 
 week or two at most." 
 
 If Charley's unsuspicion had not filmed his eyesight, he would 
 have seen how haggard his friend's face was, how strained his 
 manner. He saw enough to make him say to himself that a 
 chap that looked like that would be all the better for a little 
 sea-air, mountain-climbing, what not. ... To Fred he said : — 
 "Oh no — it's not a hanging matter; Luce will have to do with- 
 out you for a bit. But I shall catch it hot, young feller — and 
 so I tell you. However, come to-morrow if you can. If you 
 can't — why, you can't ! Now I must be off." 
 
 The thought crossed Fred's mind that he might never see 
 Charley's face again. Yet he was glad he had gone — almost. 
 He was sick to think how nearly.
 
 CHAPTEE XXVIII 
 
 This was the afternoon of the day on which Nancy, having 
 duly received Fred's letter to Lucy, registered, had cycled over 
 to deliver it to her at The Cedars. She had written to say she 
 was coming, so she was expected. 
 
 " Sorry to inflict myself on you again so soon ! " said she. 
 '' But I was asked to bring you a letter." 
 
 " You were asked to bring me a letter ! Well now, what does 
 that mean ? " 
 
 " What it says. Here's the letter." 
 
 " Who's it from ? " 
 
 " Look inside and you'll see." Nancy's style was epigram- 
 matic. She had in fact made up her mind to answer no ques- 
 tions, and conveyed that resolve by a certain immobility of 
 feature as she held Fred's letter out for her friend to take. 
 " Now I've given it you, haven't I ? " said she. " Fair and 
 square as per undertaking." 
 
 " Yes ; you've done your part." ^Mrs. Charles Snaith was 
 pale — beautiful of course — as she looked for a moment at the 
 letter, which she thrust hurriedly into her bosom; not what one 
 generally does with a letter. 
 
 " Look here ! " said Nancy, abruptly. " I shall go and pay 
 Charles the Third a visit, while vou read your letter." 
 
 "Oh— that baby? Very well. Go, dear!" She did not 
 open the letter then and there, but fell back on a sofa, white 
 with a bitten lip. She was asking herself, would Fred come 
 back with Charles to-night? L^nless the answer was negative, 
 why this letter? Sounds of an appreciated baby — these sounds 
 differ absolutely from everything else of which the human voice 
 is capable — had been for some time audible from the nursery 
 before she slipped her hand into her bosom in search of it. 
 Even then she did not pull it out at once, seeming to flinch 
 and vacillate. 
 
 But once fairly opened and the first words read, the text 
 became the source of a greedy pleasure to her, visible on her lips 
 without a smile, in her e3'es without a gleam. ... It was not 
 a secret to show, even though not a soul was there to see. She 
 read on and on, through the long letter to the end. 
 
 430
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 431 
 
 Then the anger, that had begun to grow, half-way through, 
 broke out in its fulness, and forced speech from her lips, though 
 there was none but herself to hear the words. " Then let him 
 go — let him go ! " she cried out to the empty air. " ^Vhat 
 thought has he for me in this?" She went to the door after 
 that, as though in doubt if she had been overheard, and looked 
 up and down. But there was none to hear her. And nothing 
 audible but the prolonged appreciation of Charles the Third — 
 Nancy's name for him — in the distant nursery. 
 
 She threw herself again on the sofa, the letter half crumpled 
 angrily in her hand. She was exasperated with herself, with 
 Fred, with the World. And her inner consciousness was assign- 
 ing a meaning to this last, beyond its usual interpretation. She 
 called it the World, but she meant her mother. She had told 
 that impressive lady, to her stony surprise, on the morning after 
 the theatre, that it was perfectly ridiculous in her to try to throw 
 the blame of something — something not very clearly defined — 
 on that woman whom she had been quarrelling with, about the 
 said something, on the previous evening. What had the woman 
 done, when all was said, but mentioned some facts about 
 Charles's family that were just as true now as they were then? 
 She could not lay at her mother's door the sole blame for accept- 
 ing them as guides, when she knew the extent to which she her- 
 self had been influenced by them. So she made an abstraction, 
 the World, into a scapegoat, and denounced it mentally for her 
 marriage with ... a man she respected. 
 
 For she had no fault to find with Charley, except that he 
 stood between her and her heart's desire. In fact, she had an 
 almost cordial liking for her husband — was very sorry for him, 
 anyhow. If she had not been amiably disposed towards him she 
 would not have given herself away to him — that saw itself — 
 however tempting might have been the prospect of a not too 
 remote contingency; which she and her mother, by common 
 consent, never referred to specifically now. Indeed, even in dis- 
 cussing last night's wrangle, no mention had been made of the 
 noble Earl and his coronet, and the barren prospects of an heir 
 direct. All details were ignored, held in abeyance. But there 
 was no disputing that Charley, minus these contingent possi- 
 bilities, was a very different prize from what he seemed when 
 they were both contingent and possible. 
 
 Therefore her anchorage in her domestic haven, which she 
 might have acquiesced in as long as she and Love remained 
 strangers, as on the whole a very fair samjDle of a human lot,
 
 432 TPIE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 in consideration of prosperities to come, had become an irksome 
 bondage. It had been that, unconfessed, for some time past, 
 when the sudden revelation had come of the state of mind of a 
 man whose passion for herself had been as nearly anticipated by 
 her own heart as might be, taking into account that she had half 
 believed his own was given away elsewhere. 
 
 And now all the resolution of this discord that this man could 
 see his way to was that he should take to flight, and run like 
 a coward ! Friendship was to take precedence of Love ! We 
 were to " master our passions, Love in chief, and be loyal to our 
 friends." She recalled the words of Browning's poem, and they 
 brought an almost ugly look to her beautiful face. " \^niere is 
 his thought of me, in all this?" — said she again, as before. 
 
 One thing the letter made quite clear. He would not come 
 to see her again, before he went away. He would not dare — 
 not he ! — to look her in the face and say : — " I must leave 
 3'ou for your husband's sake, for the sake of my old friend." 
 He would run — would vanisli — would become a thing of the 
 past — would take to his heart the next woman he longed 
 for. . . . 
 
 Well — let him ! She had her lesson, and understood. Xo 
 need to caution her so strongly to let no clue to all this reach 
 the knowledge of her husband ! Was she a downright fool, to 
 lose a useful mate whom she was pledged to love and honour, 
 because forsooth a man whom she loved outright might have 
 claimed her as his own; but would not, thereby to keep his 
 conscience clear, and not betray his friend? No — if she must 
 lose Fred, so be it! Why should she be less considerate of 
 Charles than he? Keep the pretext in trim. Foster the 
 decorum of the British household. Give gossip no plea for 
 comment on the coolness between the married couple at The 
 Cedars. Baffle Mrs. Candour ! 
 
 That was Nancy, coming from the nursery. Was she to 
 know anything of this? Did she know anything of this? 
 
 '^ Dear ! — how white you look ! " This cut across a languid 
 enquiry from Lucy: — "Well — how's the blessed baby? I ought 
 to go up and see him, I suppose. I'm supposed to be his 
 mother, I believe." Nancy responded : — " I should rather think 
 you are. Wish I was ! " 
 
 " You may have him, dear, as far as I'm concerned. But 
 I'm afraid his father won't give him up. He's infatuated about 
 him." 
 
 " He's not an unnatural beast," said Nancy, imperturbably.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 43-3 
 
 iSTeither of these ladies seemed to wish the other to think her in 
 earnest. 
 
 The conversation did nothino; towards answering? the question 
 Lucy had asked herself. Did Xancy know, or not? The safest 
 thing would be to skirt round the topic, with an eye to cross- 
 ing the fence if a chance came. " Mrs. Carteret is going to 
 take her son away from us, I understand," said Lucy, tenta- 
 tively. 
 
 " That's the way he puts it in the letter, is it ? " 
 
 " I gathered as much from something he said in his letter," 
 said Lucy, reservedly. 
 
 " Very well. If you want me not to talk about it, I won't." 
 This was in response to the barest hint that the letter was to 
 her, not to the general public. 
 
 Lucy hesitated. " I should so much like to know, dear," said 
 she, " how much ... I mean whether Fred Carteret said any- 
 thing at all to you of the contents of the letter." She made 
 the alteration in her speech to soften down the meaning — to 
 keep it a little off the point. 
 
 " Precious little to me," said Nancy. " Wliat he said, he said 
 to his mother. She told me things. I waited up on purpose 
 to hear." 
 
 ^' And does he know how much you know about it? " 
 
 " Eather. I told him flatly. That's why he gave me the 
 letter to bring. He couldn't have made a reason for my bring- 
 ing it unless he knew I knew." 
 
 " ^^^^at reason did he make? I don't know if I quite see." 
 
 " You'll see if I tell it all through. He wanted me to bring 
 you this letter, and I said why on earth not send it by Mr. 
 Snaith. He could only hum and haw, and say there were 
 reasons. So I just asked him what he was going to say in it. 
 That was the most natural thing — wasn't it? " 
 
 Lucy did not keep back a smile. " You are the funniest girl," 
 said she. "What had he to say to that? What was his most 
 natural answer? " 
 
 Nancy did not look exactly resentful. Dignified, perhaps. 
 " He did not seem to see anything peculiar in the question," she 
 said. " He said the letter would merely be to say good-bye to 
 you. So to make his mind easy, I just told him 1 knew all 
 about it. I think he felt that was all right." She thought a 
 minute before adding: — " Of course having had a narrow squeak 
 of being a party's sister-in-law doesn't make one exactly a party's 
 father-confessor, but . . . Well ! — it intimatises things, don't
 
 434 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 you see? Things which would, otherwise, be extimate. Like in- 
 ternal and external, don't you know ? " 
 
 " Oh dear yes ! — I quite understand. A man would never be 
 quite the same who . . . even as a duty ..." 
 
 " Precisely ! " Nancy produced a clean pocket-handkerchief 
 — not the bicycle one ; that was in abeyance — and wiped a mem- 
 ory of Fred off her face. " However, we didn't rake up details. 
 He pitched it very strong that, come what might, Mr. Snaith 
 must be kept out of it." 
 
 " Listen, you mad child, and tell me one thing seriously. Did 
 he make any allusion to me? " 
 
 Nancy saw the pallor of the speaker's face, and felt glad that 
 she herself was " out of it," the " it " she was out of being 
 explained — by herself to herself — as " Love and all that sort of 
 thing"; a sort of thing to which female beauty, preferably 
 accompanied by a certain succulence or tenderness, was an essen- 
 tial she did not possess, so she was safe out of it. Nothing to 
 tempt a cannibal in her! — that was how she worded explana- 
 tion, possibly needed. But she could sympathise with friends 
 whose outline and texture had entangled them in that sort of 
 thing. In answer to Lucy's question she thought long enough 
 over the answer to make it exactly true, and replied : — " I can't 
 say exactly he didn't make any allusion to you, because we both 
 did, and called you her. But what you mean is — did he talk 
 about you? Isn't it?" 
 
 " Yes — ahout me. What did he say about me? " 
 
 " Nothing. And I wasn't going to ask him." Lucy crossed 
 to the window, and stood looking out. Nancy added : — " It 
 isn't any of it my fault, 3'ou know." 
 
 But the flash of resentment Lucy had hidden — the bitten lip 
 that spoke of a swelling heart; the passionate tears so hard to 
 keep back — was not against her friend. She quenched it, and 
 returned whiter than ever, otherwise in possession of herself. 
 " No — dearest child ! " said she. " I know it isn't your fault." 
 For she always spoke to Nancy as though to a junior, 
 although she was really two or three years the younger of the 
 two. 
 
 " I wish he hadn't bottled up so, but said more. Then I 
 could have told you." Thus Nancy, with the afterthought : — 
 " But I thought it would all be in the letter. Isn't it? " Then 
 a revision of it : — " No — what a fool I am I Of course, the 
 letter wasn't written then. If he had said anything to me about 
 you he would have told you."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 435 
 
 " Well — he doesn't refer to you in the letter, except to say 
 that you will bring it." As if infected with Xancy's accuracy 
 she reopened the letter, glanced at it, and said : — " Oh yes — he 
 says he lost a good sister-in-law, when ..." 
 
 " When he didn't marry Cit." Then Nancy used the very 
 expression Fred had used. " Oh dear — what a long time ago 
 that all seems ! " 
 
 " Exactly what he says himself," said Lucy. 
 
 " I always think now," said Nancy, " that I knew what was 
 coming then. But perhaps I'm only I-told-you-soing." 
 
 Lucy followed the new verb, and understood it. " Oh, 
 Nancy," said she, "I hope you don't mean that I . . ." 
 
 " That you whatted ? " 
 
 "That I did anything that day wlien ..." 
 
 " I know when. No — you were quite maidenly and all that 
 sort of game, that time. I don't go by you. I go by Cit." 
 
 "What did Cit do?" 
 
 " She flew out. Like a Turk. But it wasn't your fault. It 
 was all Fred. Not but what, in his place ..." 
 
 " ' In his place ! ' What were you going to say? " 
 
 " In his place, I might have been just as bad. If I had been 
 a him, you know ! "- 
 
 " You are a queer girl ! You look so innocent, and then you 
 seem to know such a lot, about it." 
 
 Nancy shot back into her shell like a hermit-crab detected 
 out of doors. " I don't see that there's anytliing to know about," 
 said she, stiffly. Then, perhaps to change the subject, she went 
 off at a tangent. " I tell you one thing though. I never said 
 what I ought to have seen — that Fred wasn't really in love with 
 Cit, all along. ..." 
 
 " Not in love ? " asked Lucy, in an odd, inquiring way. 
 
 " Not as he ought to have been." 
 
 " Ought people ? " Lucy did not ask this question as one who 
 expects an answer, but as one who casts doubt. Then she fairly 
 took her hearer's breath away by saying, without emotion: — 
 " I was never in love with my husband." 
 
 " I don't believe you ! " said Nancy, flatly. 
 
 " Don't if you like. But it's true. Of course I don't mean 
 that I dislike him, don't you know? I respect him and all that. 
 He's the sort of man it would be very creditable to any woman 
 to be in love with. I quite see that. But ..." 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't talk so horribly. But what ? " 
 
 " But there are limits."
 
 436 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " You should have thought of that before you married him." 
 Nancy was very much excited ; flushed and ahnost angry. 
 
 '' That sounds very correct," said Lucy, more as thougli it 
 really did than as a sneer. She spoiled it though, by saying: — 
 " How I hate heroics! I wish, dear, you wouldn't mind coming 
 down off the high horse, and talking reasonably." 
 
 '"• I hate reason. Ecasonableness is out of it, when it's about 
 — this sort of thing." 
 
 " So it seems ! " said Lucy, coldly. But when she next spoke, 
 she got no answer, and turning round to look for one, found she 
 was alone. For her friend had vanished, and the reason thereof 
 was clear a moment later, when a bicycle bell's sub-tinkle was 
 audible outside. She went out of the room, and into the front 
 garden, just as the rider was mounting. " I'm so sorry," she 
 said. "Do please forgive me! Only this once. I'll be as 
 sentimental as you like." But her tone was ill-chosen. 
 
 " Xow you're making matters worse," said Xancy, grimly. 
 
 Lucy changed her note. " Xancy darling! " said she appeal- 
 ingly. " Don't be angry with me. If 3'ou knew what it was 
 to . . . to be like me ..." 
 
 "■ I see that you're in a fix," Xancy interrupted. " But you 
 got yourself into it." 
 
 "Does that make it any easier to bear? Oh — don't be so 
 hard with me ! At any rate, don't go ! " 
 
 " I don't see why I shouldn't. I've given you the letter, and 
 that's what I came for. . . . Xo — I do not see why one should 
 stay to have a dose of common sense emptied into one's very 
 vitals. Xot but what " — relenting a little — " I like common 
 sense in its proper place, only not in this connection." But she 
 was giving in to the pathos of the large dark eyes. 
 
 So, as was to be expected, when Lucy spoke to her, or seemed 
 to speak, from her heart, she gave up the point, and went back 
 into the house to their former anchorage ; but this time with a 
 carefully closed door, to shut in a real confidence. 
 
 **' I'm sorry I was so miffy," said Xancy, apologetically. " But 
 you did seem to me so very unfair to ]\Ir. Snaith." 
 
 " Xancy dearest," said Lucy, " suppose I tell you everything ! 
 If you would let me, I think I would rather." 
 
 Xancy said afterwards to Mrs. Carteret : — " I didn't above 
 half like being told, but what was I to do? " She then repeated V 
 what she had done, which was to say: — "All right — fire 
 away ! " 
 
 Lucy produced Fred's letter. It seemed to concentrate and
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 437 
 
 define the topic. " I suppose you know, or half know, what lie 
 has written to me," she said. 
 
 " I'm not sure that I did, till you asked. But I do now, from 
 your way of puttinoj it." 
 
 "However, you knew generally?" Nancy nodded. "Dear, 
 I can't tell you what a relief it would be to me, if you would 
 only say you are sorry for me." 
 
 Xancy considered. " I'm not given to being sorry for people 
 who get themselves into fixes over this sort of thing," she said. 
 " The T.P. isn't exactly my line. But I'm sorry for ]\Ir. Car- 
 teret. Because I see he couldn't help himself." 
 
 "Oh dear — then you are not sorry for me? I suppose I 
 deserve it." 
 
 The conversation had wavered on the edge of seriousness, but 
 had never crossed over the boundary. Xancy suddenly flung 
 reserve aside, more suo. She turned on her friend, face flushed 
 and eyes flashing, with : — " Lucy Snaith ! — how dared you marry 
 your husband ? " 
 
 The beautiful woman flinched before the plain one — she was 
 plain by comparison — and threw up her hands, almost as though 
 to ward off' a blow. " Oh, what could I do — what could I do? " 
 she cried out, despairingly. " Indeed — indeed I liked him as 
 well as any man I knew at the time. And think what it was, 
 when he was so urgent and my mother backed him up so . . ." 
 
 " What made 3'our mother back him up ? " Xancy was not 
 going to think this question and not ask it. 
 
 Xow, though Lucy and her mother rarely agreed, they were 
 mother and daughter. And a daughter may slate her mother 
 eti famille, but not in the market-place. So she palliates her 
 always; before enemies, usually before friends. She introduced 
 a scapegoat. " I don't think 3'ou know the woman," said she. 
 " Mrs. Bannister Stair — do you? " 
 
 " Xot in the least. What about her ? " 
 
 "Well — she quite poisoned mamma's susceptible mind with 
 stories about Charles's connections, and his great expectations. 
 And poor dear mamma, who is simplicity itself about this soit 
 of thing, swallowed it all down for Gospel." 
 
 Xancy felt incredulous about the simplicity, but she kept her 
 scepticism in the background, saying merely : — " And I suppose 
 there wasn't a word of truth in it ? " 
 
 " Xot a word ! At least, I should say, it was all right enough 
 about the connections, but it was all wrong about the expecta- 
 tions. Charles's father was a younger son who had quarrelled
 
 438 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 with his family. And if he hadn't, he couldn't possibly have 
 come into the title." 
 
 " The title ! Were they dukes, then ? " 
 
 " Something of that sort. Earls or marquises, I believe. I 
 knew nothing about it, and am not supposed to know." 
 
 "Your mother knew, and you didn't. You mean that?" 
 
 " Yes — of course ! " Lucy felt as if she was telling truth all 
 through, because she was only saying yes and no. If she had 
 been called on to say unblushingly : — " I was told nothing about 
 my husband's prospects, and I never asked," she would have 
 spoken the lie boldly for what Prussia calls military reasons — 
 her own exoneration at any cost being the chief one. As it 
 was, she paid Truth the compliment of feeling happy she could 
 manage the job with monosyllables. Having used them, she got 
 away as quick as possible to her mother and Mrs. Stair, chiefly 
 the latter. "You'll understand now, dear, why I hate the 
 woman as I do. It was her ridiculous officious nonsense that 
 set my mother off about Charles; and after all she was only 
 acting in her daughter's interest, as she thought. Parents do 
 that kind of thing, I am told. I wish they wouldn't. Because 
 they make mistakes. She certainly did." 
 
 " Do you mean to say," said Nancy, drastically, " that if it 
 had not been for your mother you would have refused Mr. 
 Snaith?" 
 
 " My dear, how can I tell? All I can say is, that my mother 
 was verv urgent. And at the time ..." 
 
 "Which time?" 
 
 " When the arrangement was made." 
 
 " I see. When he was spooneying up to you. Go on. At 
 that time ..." 
 
 " At that time I certainly knew no one I liked better than 
 Mr. Snaith. I am sure of it. I am not quite prepared to say 
 I accepted him to oblige mamma." 
 
 " But it's on those lines? " 
 
 " You may put it that way. I really had no strong motive." 
 
 " So you added a lot of weak ones together. Wasn't that it ? " 
 
 The beautiful eyes looked aimlessly at space under half-closed 
 lids, and their owner replied : — " It may have been. I daresay 
 it was." But she appeared dissatisfied with her own answer, for 
 a moment later she added : — " Perhaps. Perhaps not." 
 
 Nancy's face remained fixed, as of set purpose. She waited 
 for clear evidence that her friend had done speaking and then 
 said abruptly: — "Well — which luas it?"
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 439 
 
 Lucy may have thought — as Fred had done before her — that 
 perhaps, after all, outspeech would be the safest course as well 
 as the easiest, with this girl. " There ! " she said suddenly, " I 
 won't make any more pretences. You are so dreadfully truth- 
 ful, Nancy dear, that it quite gets on one's nerves. . . . 
 Look the other way and I'll tell you ! " 
 
 " Stuff ! Tell me without." 
 
 " ^Yell — it isn't fair of me to put it all on my mother. It's 
 no use pretending I didn't know the whole story. Or that I 
 wasn't influenced by it, for that matter! I was." 
 
 " It was a good big story to be influenced by, after all." This 
 meant that Nancy's mind was seeking to palliate her friend, 
 purely for friendship's sake. For she found the materials bad 
 to handle. 
 
 " You wouldn't have been influenced by it, you know you 
 wouldn't. Come now ! " 
 
 " Couldn't say what would happen if some Dukes and Earls 
 turned up among my admirers. None have, so far. But then 
 nobody else has, for that matter! However, I am very sensi- 
 tive to large landed estates, with villagers." Nancy knew she 
 was talking nonsense. 
 
 Lucy passed by the points raised. " I admit this to you, dear, 
 because I know you won't be hard upon me. But of course my 
 husband is in blessed ignorance, and I hope will remain so. 
 Because I value his esteem — and all that sort of thing. You 
 understand ? " 
 
 " I understand that when you talk in that way you make my 
 flesh creep." 
 
 " Nancy dear ! Why should we be so artificial ? Eemember 
 that I have to live with the knowledge that I do not love my 
 husband. I certainly respect him. Oh yes — I respect him. 
 But as for love ..." 
 
 Nancy rose in her wrath. " Lucy, I tell you I — will — not talk 
 to you, if you talk in that horrible way. Do you mean to say you 
 married Mr. Snaith without feeling the smallest . . . ? " 
 
 The beautiful woman thought over it, quite deliberately. '' I 
 don't think I do," she said at last. " Because I remember feel- 
 ing quite an affection for him once. It was his enthusiasm about 
 Mr. Carteret that made me like him, after he first brought 
 him to Devonshire Place. I told him it was delightful to 
 hear a man sing the praises of his friend. So he went on 
 singing them, and I listened. Yes — I really liked him for 
 that."
 
 440 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 "That wasn't being in love!" Nancy spoke scornfully, and 
 as if she were an authority, of wide experience. 
 
 " Well, Nancy dear, I "can't unmake the facts, to oblige any- 
 body. It was enough to make any woman like him, to hear him 
 talk about Fred Carteret." 
 
 '• I don't see anything to apologise for. I think it perfectly 
 contemptible to be unable to like a man because . . . of . . ." 
 
 "■' Because of what? " 
 
 " Because he isn't up to one's ideas of personal beauty." 
 
 " You weren't going to say that. You were going to say be- 
 cause of something." 
 
 " Well — if you insist upon it, because of his nose." 
 
 " I do insist upon it. But I must confess that for a long 
 while Charles's nose did stand between us. In fact, I don't think 
 I should ever have got over it — the nose — if my mother had 
 not trotted out the earldom. It was all that odious woman's 
 doing." 
 
 " But she told you nothing but what was true — at the time. 
 You know it was." 
 
 " I know nothing of the sort. She knew perfectly well what 
 the position was. She admitted as much to my mother only two 
 nights ago, when we were at the play, and my mother told me 
 yesterday. If she had known at the time, it would have made 
 all the difference. Oh dear— it's past praying for now ! " She 
 sighed wearily, and sat listlessly fanning herself. For ^he 
 smnmer day had grown very hot, and thunder was muttering 
 all round, perhaps about how chilly the air was going to be 
 after its innings were over. 
 
 There was one point which even Nancy's directness scrupled to 
 make the subject of undisguised catechism. She could not say 
 to her friend : — " Your affection for your husband is very slip- 
 shod, but does that mean that you love Fred Carteret?" She 
 wanted an answer to this question, for all that ! Fred's mother 
 had told her nearly all the version of the garden interview she 
 had had from her .son, but had rather made light of it, saying — 
 as she had done to him— that a kiss was not conclusive and that 
 its passive reception did not necessarily imply a readiness on the 
 lady's part to throw up the advantages of an established social 
 position for the sake of its giver. Nancy was as nearly within 
 reach of an answer to this question as she was ever likely to be. 
 Was the opportunity to be let slip? 
 
 She owed it to "Mrs. Carteret to get what light she could 
 thrown on this question. " Do you mean to write to him, or do
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 441 
 
 you not?'' seemed to her a concession to a polite delicacy of 
 "speech, a departure towards tact somewhat outside her usual 
 outrightness ; and at the same time likely to lead to useful 
 information. 
 
 "Do I, or do I not? How can I tell? What should you do 
 in my position? " 
 
 " I should never be in your position. So where's the use of 
 talking about it ? " 
 
 "■ The use is that I want to know. What should you . . . ? " 
 " I haven't the slightest idea." 
 
 " Look at this, Xancy ! I'll tell you honest truth. I despise 
 Fred Carteret. Yes — 1 despise him for running away." 
 '• Then you don't love him, according to my ideas." 
 "Perhaps not. But I ivant him. I want him back. \Miat 
 right has he to place his love for his friend above . . . 
 above . . . ? " 
 
 "Above ?/o»? Is that it?" 
 " Yes— that's what I mean. What right? " 
 " Can't say ! But I should run away, if I were in his place." 
 "Why?" jSTancy found this too difficult to answer offhand. 
 Yet she was probably as well able to sympathise with a young 
 man in Fred's position as any young woman of her class and 
 upbringing. So her answer hung fire, and Lucy repeated : — 
 " ]yhij should you run away? " 
 
 jS'ancy saw safety in metaphor. " Wiien I was a small," said 
 she, "and was told I wasn't to steal sugar, I ran away from 
 the basin." 
 
 Lucy caught her up resentfully. " That's the sort of thing 
 people say,""she said, " and it maddens me. Are women always 
 to be a sort of lollipops, to be taken or left? " 
 
 " It's their own doing. What do they fig up for, except to 
 be titbits?" The story's belief is that though Nancy worded 
 this question on the surface of the subject — indeed how could she 
 do otherwise? — yet it went to the very root or source of it. 
 
 " Lucy's reply showed a wider experience, probal)ly. She 
 accepted the sugar metaphor. " Do you mean to say, Xancy," 
 she asked, " that you couldn't leave the sugar alone, after you 
 had been told not to touch it ? " 
 
 " Xo, I couldn't," said Xancy, with decision. " I ran away 
 from the basin. . . . You won't get round that way." These 
 last words betrayed a sense of the unsoundness of the metaphor, 
 and a suspicion of the danger of relying on it. 
 " You must have been a very naughty child."
 
 442 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Xo, I wasn't. I was human." 
 
 " You mean, then, that Fred Carteret is running away because 
 he's human ? " 
 
 " Just exactly that. He can't help himself. He has abso- 
 lutely no course open to him except to run away — from the 
 basin." 
 
 " You've got back to the sugar again. I don't think it a fair 
 comparison." 
 
 Xo more did Xancy. But everyone feels bound to stand by 
 his analogy. " I think it very fair — for a comparison — " said 
 she. She added with immovable gravity : — " Comparisons won't 
 always wash. But they do to talk with." 
 
 A face less bent on its thought than Lucy's might have relaxed 
 into a smile at Xancy's comment, or at least heeded it. Lucy 
 passed it by ! " It is not a fair comparison," said she, " because 
 the sugar has no choice. Is a woman not to have any voice in 
 the matter? " 
 
 Xancy then made an observation which some may think went 
 to the root of the subject. You can't expect," said she, in- 
 exorably, " to eat your cake and have it too." It certainly 
 showed that thought had passed through her mind which had 
 not found its way to words. 
 
 That might easily have been her friend's case too, to judge by 
 her heightened colour and the way her articulation caught her 
 breath. " I suppose he must go — he must go — he must go ! " 
 said she, in hurried scraps of speech. " But I wish he could 
 have thought of me. If he had known what he was to my life ! " 
 
 Xancy looked hard at her, as if she would have seen through 
 her, literally. " I wonder if you know what you seem to mean," 
 said she. 
 
 " What do I seem to mean ? " She asked anxiously, as though 
 her friend's answer might reveal her to herself — help her to 
 know her own mind. 
 
 " Perhaps you don't." 
 
 " But what was it you thought ? " 
 
 " That you fancied you could keep up to the scratch, and yet 
 have as much as vou wanted of . . ." This was sailing too 
 near the wind, and Xancy shied off, to avail herself of metaphor. 
 " It was nonsense ! " said she. " You can't have another little 
 boy to play with." She added a postscript, after reflection : — 
 " Unless you want to drive him raving mad ! " She got sud- 
 denly back from the land of metaphor. " And your husband too, 
 for that matter! And yourself — in the end."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 443 
 
 Not so very unlikely, if words are guides to feeling — words 
 cut short by a shortened breath ! Lucy's, so spoken, were: — " Is 
 it my fault — my fault — that men are like that ? " 
 
 " Shall I tell you what you are? " 
 
 " You think lama fool ? " 
 
 " Well— I do. And I think Fred Carteret's got a fit of not 
 being a fool, for once. He's quite right to run away. / should 
 if I were in his shoes." 
 
 Lucy flashed back : — '' Then what right has he to write me a 
 letter like this, to say why he's going? Does he want to drive 
 me mad ? " And so they talked on, Nancy always feeling very 
 much out of her depth, and a trespasser in strange waters, even 
 though she went no more than ankle-deep. She was conscious 
 of an intention not to tell her sister a word of this conversation. 
 The story wonders, apropos of Lucy Snaith's vague state of mind 
 about Fred Carteret, what was the sequel of that curious inter- 
 view already referred to for which the reader of poetry is in- 
 debted to Mrs. Browning. The lady ends, you will remember, 
 by inviting the gentleman to dinner with herself and a pre- 
 sumably very young daughter, the only chaperone indicated, who 
 must have been still liable to be sent to bed early. Perhaps, 
 however, the gentleman went home to roost betimes ; or, for that 
 matter, the lady was expecting a maiden aunt. All the story 
 knows is, that it does not envy the gentleman, and considers that 
 the lady, though she was able to strangle his soul with a lock of 
 her yellow hair, was not at all fair to him, but the reverse. 
 Anyhow, it is very sorry for him, as it is for Fred Carteret.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 That evening at The Cedars had a penitential cast, having 
 been kept open for Fred, who never appeared. Lucy naturally 
 did not say a word of the letter she had received from him, 
 though she might easily have reduced it, for working purposes, 
 to a mere line on a card to say don't expect him, reported and 
 perhaps looked for in an insincere pocket. She was wisest on 
 the whole to make no such excursion into fiction, merely saying 
 to her husband, when he reappeared somewhat late in the eve- 
 ning: — " I see he hasn't come," without appearance. of concern. 
 Charley felt relieved, for he had anticipated a much more incon- 
 solable attitude. 
 
 '' He'll come to-morrow, darling," said he. " If only those 
 beastly nice persons were not coming, we could have had a jolly 
 evening for a send-off. What is their respectable name? " 
 
 " The Akerses. Porley Akers. We must be civil to them, 
 because they've taken The Eefuge — that big house at Esher — and 
 besides, she was a Miss Payne, whose mother knew us at home, 
 I believe. We shall have to endure them." 
 
 " All right ! " said Charley, cheerfully. " I'll deflect them off 
 you, and you shall have him all to yourself, all the evening. 
 You see, he got a letter from a machinery bloke, fixing this 
 evening to talk to him about the great invention — the Anti- 
 Yibration Engine. He couldn't put him off. It was impossible." 
 
 " Oh — that was it, was it ? I thought it was his mother, 
 somehow." 
 
 " So it is. Mrs. Carteret has consented to go to Paris, to meet 
 an old friend, and she and her husband have to catch a boat, 
 and ..." And a good many other particulars. 
 
 " I see," said his wife when they began to flag. " They have 
 to catch a boat. That's very pressing. Nancy Eraser told me 
 some of this. . . . Yes — Elbows, if vou choose. She came to 
 lunch." 
 
 " Oh — then I expect you know as much as I do." He went 
 away to get ready for dinner without having received from her 
 manner any impression of anything unusual or sinister afoot. 
 
 Is it usual for young husbands to impute two distinct per- 
 sonalities to their wives after a couple of years' experience? If 
 so, Charles Snaith's estimate of his was only developing on the 
 
 444
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE ^ 445 
 
 line of least resistance, when he recognised, as he had done for 
 some months, a distinct duplex identity in Lucy, a sort of fem- 
 inine version of ^Ir. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll. For the former he 
 had, so far, only admitted to himself a disposition in her which 
 she had in common with that Mary whose garden was known to 
 a contemporary poet, as containing silver bells and cockleshells 
 and cowslips all in a row. He would say to himself that Luce 
 had a fit of contrariness on her to-day, but it would soon pass 
 off — a thing which the poet seems to imply was never the case 
 with Mary. Her other identity was revealed to him as her true 
 and better self, which always underlay a contrariety which — 
 though ingrained in her prototype — was factitious in her, and 
 even in a sense assumed as a sort of discipline — a utilisation of 
 Mr. Hyde that Dr. Jekyll should not make himself too cheap. 
 He considered that this individuality was best described by the 
 word propitious. 
 
 Never had the young lady been more propitious to him than 
 on this particular evening, and it was to Charley another evi- 
 dence — though none was wanted — of the singular beauty and 
 purity of her character that this propitiousness should manifest 
 itself abnormally under the disappointment of which the whole 
 evening was conscious, due to the absence of Fred, and the cer- 
 tainty of its continuance. However, even if he didn't come to- 
 morrow, two or three weeks was not eternity. Never were the 
 soles of feet more unconscious of the fires below than Charley's, 
 as he trod this furlong of his path in life. 
 
 " Be a propitious and benevolent angel," said he, as she took 
 the chair in the smoking-room Fred usually occupied, ''' and pass 
 your deserving husband the matches." She not only complied, 
 but went so far as to light one and consign it to him. There 
 was a great contentment on his face as he lit his cigar, and 
 subsided to an enjoyment of it which the proximity of her fingers 
 had enlianced. 
 
 '•' I did tell you, didn't I, that I had a visit from that dear 
 mad bull? " Lucy added, in case this should be unintelligible, — 
 " That mad bull of a girl — Nancy Fraser. She came on her 
 bicycle." 
 
 " Oh ah — Elbows ! What has Elbows got to say for herself? " 
 
 Lucy smiled down from a pinnacle on a memory of Nancy. 
 "Such a funny girl!" she said. "I can't help laughing at 
 her." But her husband couldn't give proper attention to a 
 chance incident of the conversation like Nancy, as his Havana 
 was not drawing to the full of his expectations. Would his 
 
 29
 
 446 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 wife be more propitious still, and lend him a hairpin? She 
 would, although its withdrawal involved the fall of a released 
 black splendour on a white shoulder. Charley kissed that hair- 
 pin in acknowledgment, with the comment : — " A^ery thin kiss- 
 ing ! " as a hint that lips would be not unwelcome. He did not 
 get them, and had to be content with the shoulder, en passant. 
 But he perforated the Havana, without piercing its side, which 
 Ave all know ends any cigar's life. Then he had time to hark 
 back to his forsaken question. " Let's see — what were we talk- 
 ing about? Oh yes. Elbows ! AMiat did Elbows say ? " But he 
 didn't really want to know, as his eyes were at rest on the beau- 
 tiful image before him. All his, it was! AYhy think of any- 
 thing else? 
 
 " She had been at Mrs. Carteret's, yesterday. So I heard the 
 whole story at first-hand. Mrs. Carteret wants to see this Elise 
 Hofer, whom she hasn't seen since she married her German. 
 No doubt Fred is very glad to get her away on any terms. He 
 always is saying how bad it is for her to go on peaking and 
 pining about that old Doctor . . . Really the disappearance 
 incident is getting so long ago that it will soon become a bore. 
 These things have got to be forgotten, sometime or other." 
 
 Charley "welcomed this as a sign that his wife was getting 
 the better of her leanings towards superstition, and applauded 
 what he might otherwise have protested against as unfeeling. 
 " Quite right you are about that ! " said he. " Don't see the fun 
 of crying over spilled milk ! Besides, old Stultifex — that's what 
 we used to call him; Stultifex Maximus, after the place — old 
 Stultifex had had a pretty long whack, and he might have died 
 lots of ways. It wasn't like a young man, mind you! . . ." 
 Then he repented of his pessimistic tone, and reinstated opti- 
 mism : — " Only don't you run away with the idea that I believe 
 he won't turn up again, yet." 
 
 " If he does it will be very . . . interesting." The young 
 lady hid the beginning of a yawn behind her fingers. 
 
 " It's all very fine to be incredulous," said Charley, inter- 
 preting her manner in that sense. " But don't you see, sweet- 
 heart, you're not a fair judge. You stand committed to believing 
 the old boy dead." 
 
 " Do I ? " 
 
 "To be sure you do. You've seen his ghost, you know. A 
 party who sees a party's ghost stands committed to believing him 
 dead." 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't ..." 
 
 i
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 447 
 
 "Wouldn't what?" 
 
 " Talk in that way." 
 
 " Very well then, I won't. . . . What's the matter, dearest ? " 
 
 " Nothing. , . . No — really nothing ! Only you talk so 
 uncomfortably. Suppose we talk of something else ! " She was 
 really looking quite upset. 
 
 He seized on another topic obediently, the first that came to 
 hand. " Suppose we do ! " he said. " Let's talk about Hilda 
 and her Perplexities. We haven't done Hilda justice." This of 
 course was the play they had seen two nights ago. It was not a 
 fortunate subject, the young person's chief perplexity being how 
 to combine a rigid morality with a disposition towards several 
 male characters in the same piece after interviews short enough 
 to allow of its performance between half-past eight and eleven. 
 This disposition had features in common with greed. 
 
 " Hateful girl ! " said Lucy. '^ But she was too improbable 
 and . , . and altogether too inartistic to talk about." 
 
 " Very well then, we won't," said her husband. Exit Hilda, 
 to Lucy's satisfaction, because although she thought of her own 
 case — as one does — as of one entirely exceptional and not the 
 least like those of the people on the stage and in the newspapers, 
 she perceived the fatal liability of the latter to points in common 
 with it, due to the habit of authors of drawing on Nature when 
 their own invention is exhausted. 
 
 Therefore, according to Lucy, Hilda was too inartistic to talk 
 about ; but the evolution of another topic lay with her husband, 
 and this justified silence on her part, relieved by the use of a 
 fan. For the thunder-clouds of the morning had put off active 
 operations, and given the sultry heat an extension of a short 
 lease, such as caloric has to be content with in a normal English 
 summer. So she fanned half-closed eyelids, dropped lazily over 
 eyes that took no interest in anything in sight, and wondered 
 what pleasure men could find in horrible cigars, in weather like 
 this. 
 
 The immediate man puffed at his, pondering with animation 
 over the problem of what he should say next. He had been 
 headed off two topics, but he knew of a third, one that he had 
 set aside in his mind as a mystery that called aloud to be cleared 
 Tip at the next opportunity. Was this it? 
 
 " I say, Luce ! " This followed a silence, quite half an inch 
 long, measured on the cigar. 
 
 " Yes. You must make haste, because I want to get to bed. 
 It's late. . . . Wrhat is it ? " She yawned illustratively.
 
 448 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " ]\rustn't keep you out of bed. ..." 
 
 " Nonsense ! Go on." 
 
 " It's only to satisfy my curiosity." 
 
 "Well— what is it?" 
 
 " V/hat was that Irishman talking about — at the theatre?" 
 
 She was not prepared to be asked this question, and her want 
 of preparation was just visible in her manner as she asked in 
 return : — " What Irishman ? When ? " 
 
 It was an injudicious pretext. Charles recited full and sub- 
 stantial particulars, ending with a repetition of the words the 
 gentleman had used, in an enriched brogue. 
 
 Now, if Lucy had only been fully alive to the advantages of 
 speaking the truth, and nothing but the truth, she would have 
 represented to Charles, as she and he were returning from tlie 
 play, how that her anxiety that he should go away to smoke had 
 been occasioned by her desire, in the interests of veracity, to 
 reproach Mr. McMurrough for a gross and unpardonable breach 
 of faith two years since, when he utilised for his newspaper par- 
 ticulars of a private domestic tragedy communicated to him in 
 the most solemn confidence. She might have done any amount 
 of penitence for her own indiscretion, ascribing it to a misunder- 
 standing on her part of the solemnity of the pledge of secrecy 
 she had given to her lover. That v\-ould have assoiled her — 
 after two years; quite a little eternity! — of more than a few 
 words of easily borne blame. But she stood committed to du- 
 plicity by the attitude she had taken up since. In this way the 
 most harmless little fib will grow and grow, and become an 
 infliction to its papa or mamma, who will have to nour- 
 ish and protect it as though it were truly the apple of their 
 eye. However, this is common experience, and does not need 
 telling. 
 
 The opportunity was gone by for confession and what would 
 have been a very easy penitence. Lucy's only safety lay in an 
 enforced effrontery, every moment of which intensified its neces- 
 sity. It would be better to throw herself into the part in full — 
 to be hanged for a sheep rather than a lamb. " How very odd ! " 
 said she, taking care to feel genuinely puzzled. " What cati he 
 have meant ? " She had better have let it go at that — left Truth 
 to shift for herself, relying on the shyness of that goddess to 
 keep her at the bottom of her well; and her husband's unconcern 
 to keep him from the well-head, and his paws off the handle. 
 But she must needs reinforce her position. " What I can't make 
 out," said she, " is your hearing it and me not. Are you quite
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 449 
 
 sure you heard right? — quite sure it wasn't something somebody 
 else said to somebody else ? " 
 
 " Quite absolutely certain. Because it was answering you. 
 I know your voice by now, ma'am ! " There was a lovingness 
 in his look and manner as he spoke to her of herself that was 
 unwelcome to her. She did .not wish to have her duplicity 
 rubbed in. 
 
 " Indeed ! I suppose you heard what I said, then." How 
 devoutly she hoped he hadn't ! 
 
 But ills ears had been offensively sharp. " Well — I did. At 
 least, I heard the two last words." 
 
 " Can j-ou recollect them ? They might remind me." 
 
 " Yes. ' Not forget.' It might have been ' Mind and not 
 forget.' Or anything of that sort. And then he said he would 
 pledge himself, and would bear it in mind. Wliat was it he was 
 going to bear in mind ? " 
 
 She thought it better to do a good deal of recollecting before 
 she said another word. It looked well to have' the solution of 
 this mystery at heart — showed that she had nothing to fear from 
 its publication. After prolonged research in the caverns of 
 memory, she was in a position to turn round, look her husband 
 full in the face, and say : — ' No. It's very funny ! — but I can't 
 remem.ber anything at all about it." 
 
 It is a perplexing and embarrassing thing to be told a down- 
 right lie by a perfect stranger. How much worse when it comes 
 from lips we have revered as the very source of truth itself ! Of 
 course Charles's decision was unhesitating. He had made a 
 mistake. Otherwise, Lucy would have been speaking untruly. 
 ^^^lich was impossible, Q.E.D. 
 
 " Good-night ! " This only waited long enough for the full 
 stop after her disclaimer of memory of anything at all about it. 
 " I shall go to bed. I'm tired. Now, don't you sit up worrying 
 over that nonsense. If you are going to worry over every word 
 that comes from the lips of an Irish newspaperman, we shall 
 never have a minute's peace. Get me my candle and don't sit 
 up smoking." 
 
 "All right. I'll only finish this cigar." He got the candle 
 and was rewarded with a kiss from lips fresh from a falsehood. 
 They seemed to him charged Avith the soul of honest benediction. 
 So may have those of Judas, divine insight apart. But Charley- 
 had no insight at all on this score, divine or otherwise. 
 
 That cigar did not last long, but it was long enough for ques- 
 tionings to stir in his mind, when freed from the glamour of his
 
 450 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 wife's presence. It was all very fine — he thought — to have for- 
 gotten what McMurrough said. Luc}^ liad forgotten, or she 
 wouldn't have said she had. That truth was rooted in the 
 nature of things. But he himself had a perfectly vivid and 
 distinct memory of the words; all the more so for the speaker's 
 accent, developed in his hearing for the first time. But for 
 that, the mere words might have been — might have been — his 
 imagination. But how imagine a full-blown Irish brogue, that 
 had lent itself to exaggeration? 
 
 He remembered distinctly. The speaker plidged himself to 
 something he would kape in mind. What was it? Charles 
 fidgeted uneasily, for was it not something Lucy had just 
 charged that Irishman not to forget? He turned angrily on 
 the thought. Had she not just disclaimed all recollection of 
 those words ? Did not that settle the matter ? 
 
 He recalled another occasion when ... No ! — not when a 
 doubt crossed his mind at all, but when he nipped in the bud 
 one that was trying it on — a doubt that^ if indulged, might have 
 shaken his faith in his wife's veracity. It was after old Moring 
 had said that an acquaintance — surely this very McMurrough — 
 had had the information on which that paragraph was based 
 from Dr. Carteret's family. Or — and this was the disturbing 
 point — from a friend of that family. 'Wliy — what other friend 
 of that family was there who knew of it at the time, except 
 himself ? 
 
 The solution of the difficulty would have been easy, if a little 
 disappointing and unpleasant, had it not been for his wife's 
 denial of what seemed the upshot of her interview with McMur- 
 rough. He at least would have put a lenient construction on 
 her conduct if she had admitted indiscretion, partly the result 
 of her underrating the necessity for silence. She had only to 
 plead that she had had no idea that he was so much in earnest. 
 He could have excused her to Fred, and taken the blame on him- 
 self. But how about her disclaimer of Mr. Mc^Iurrough? That 
 could only be accounted for by a sort of impossible oblivion on 
 her part of the actual facts. Any other theory was nonsense 
 that imputed falsehood to her. And what other theory was there 
 that did not? Oh no — she was all square! Less familiar lan- 
 guage would have said blameless or immaculate. 
 
 Anyhow, it was his clear duty to brush away the smallest 
 stain from the image of her that he cherished in his heart. No 
 suspicion of a suspicion of her was to be tolerated. How could 
 he make his mind quite easy on this score? He had finished his
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 451 
 
 cigar, but he could not go to bed until he had decided on the 
 safest course to take. 
 
 Get at McMurrough, of course! But how? To call on him 
 and ask him questions would be much too flamboyant a proceed- 
 ing. But why not ask old Moring to get the information for 
 him? After all, he was much more likely to speak freely to 
 Moring. 
 
 There was an escritoire at hand, with clean note-paper, sug- 
 gestive and tempting. Charley stood at the desk to write on it, 
 thereby to impress upon himself the incidental, touch-and-go 
 nature of the transaction. He nearly spilled the ink to carry 
 this out effectually. His note was written on the same lines, as 
 thus : — " Dear Moring — If you chance across Mac whatever his 
 name was — you know the man I mean — the Irish editor — try to 
 get out of him who it was told him about Dr. Carteret's disap- 
 pearance two years since. Let it alone if he shuts up about it. 
 It doesn't really matter if I never know, but I have a fancy to 
 do so." And its writer remained sincerely Mr. Moring's. 
 
 He folded, enveloped, and enclosed it, directing it to his recol- 
 lection of the gentleman's town address ; pocketed it and stole 
 away upstairs, slipperless lest half a creak should disturb in- 
 cipient night's rests near at hand; and utilised the fact that he 
 had written it as an anodyne against his own unrest, the natural 
 outcome of that interview with his wife. He slept soundly, and 
 in the morning pooh-poohed himself for having written it. How- 
 ever, he put it in a side pocket, leaving it an open question 
 whether he would or would not post it. 
 
 It was by a bare chance that this question was decided in the 
 affirmative. For when he arrived at Waterloo, having two other 
 letters " to post as soon as possible " — a special instruction from 
 Lucy — he failed to observe the difference between two and three; 
 and licked a third stamp — Now, everyone who has tried it knows 
 what it is to be afflicted by a licked stamp. He has to stand 
 beside it and keep curiosity at bay, to say nothing of malignant 
 interference tending to double its licked side on itself. Charles, 
 left alone with the fruits of his rashness, saw nothing for it 
 but to complete, or have this stamp stick to the inside of his 
 pocket-book, a perpetual monument of his blunder. Never 
 mind ! — he needn't post the letter. Besides, there was always 
 hot water. 
 
 But nothing equals the suggestive powers of a stamped letter 
 that is not to go, nor their persistency. It is the appeal of the 
 quintessence of the most perfect helplessness, to power within
 
 452 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 such easy reach in a civilised community ! He wlio stand? at the 
 yawning mouth of a pillar letter-box, with such a missive in 
 his hand, has to make a distinct struggle to abstain from posting 
 it. He will probably give in, unless his reason is convinced of 
 the necessity for abstention. In this case Charles was under no 
 such conviction; indeed, it seemed to him a matter of indiffer- 
 ence, except in so far as that it might save Mr. Moring some 
 trouble if he left the letter unposted. But then, had he not 
 written it? Yes — and had stuck a stamp on it. In short, the 
 letter had its way, and may have chuckled over its success, if 
 malicious. For it was not a matter of indifference, whether it 
 was posted or not. 
 
 To Fred, that day was miserable enough. It would have been 
 worse, certainly, if' the need for activity in matters relating to 
 his departure had not kept him constantly on the alert. But it 
 was bad enough as it was. 
 
 One thing 'hung on his mind constantly — a haunting terror! 
 He had still to see his friend for the last time. He had to say 
 farewell for ever to that old Past that had been theirs in common 
 —at School, at the 'Varsity, in the World; to speak his last word 
 to the other half of that 'old friendship of near twenty years. 
 And the completeness of this sundering — here was the very 
 worst of it ! — known only to himself ; his friend all unsuspicious 
 ignorance! But how immeasurably worse that Charley should 
 suspect ! That would indeed be the crudest sting to bear of all. 
 But what earthly good could come of his enlightenment ? Noth- 
 ing — it could oiily make three lives miserable instead of two. 
 Then a new op])ression was upon him. Was not this solicitude 
 for Charley disloyalty to her? His heart said yes it was, but 
 turned sick and recoiled from thought. His mind crushed out 
 a repetition of the question, and then was silent. For how, if 
 he let this influence him, could he account to his mother for 
 the change of purpose it was sure to produce? She was actually 
 preparing to leave early to-morrow, urged by him to do so. 
 
 Therefore, through all that morning and most of that after- 
 noon Fred lived in a turmoil of self-reproach and conflicting 
 emotions, intersected by the activities of the position. He had 
 to wind up episodes, and go to shops. A man is more wedded 
 to his shops than a woman. He does not expect, blindly, to be 
 able to buy all he wants in Paris. His mind misgives him about 
 such things as shirts and collars, for instance. So a journey 
 to Holborn swallowed up the morning, for Fred. And a council 
 of war about the Anti-Vibration Engine with Mr. Strongithai'm
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 453 
 
 — who was in earnest about it — and some opulent friends, at an 
 otBce in Queen Victoria Street, accounted for most of the after- 
 noon. A small remainder was absorbed by a visit to a patent- 
 agent to talk over the advantages of a world-wide patent, to 
 secure profits on non-vibration throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, 
 and America. Then Fred said to himself — was he to be content 
 with the meagre provisional farewell he had said to Charley the 
 day before, or go back to the diggings, where he knew his 
 friend would call in the hope of bearing him away to The 
 Cedars? Far better than either to grasp his nettle. It would 
 make his refusal to go there infinitely easier if he looked in 
 at Trymer's to record it. 
 
 Trymer's was close at hand, too. A young man, in a railed- 
 off office, asked an elastic tube if Mr. Snaith was disengaged, 
 and interpreted a gurgle in its intestines as an affirmative. 
 Would Mr. Carteret step upstairs? He would, and did. 
 Charley met him at the door of his particular room. '"' That's 
 a good boy," said he. " Come to say he's ready for his dinner 
 — or will be." 
 
 Fred stood still shaking liis head, instead of entering the room. 
 " No go, old chap ! " said he. " Must go to the mother ! " 
 
 •Charley stood looking at him with a falling face. " I sup- 
 pose what must be must," said he. " But come in and explain." 
 
 Fred did so. The substance of the explanation was that 
 although it would be theoretically possible for him to come to 
 dinner, stay the night, and join his mother next day at Charing 
 Cross Station, the scheme scarcely came within the bounds of 
 practice. Even supposing he forsook his mother and left her to 
 shift for herself, he would have to be up almost prehistorically 
 early in the morning to catch the tidal train. ]\Ioreover, goods 
 ordered that day would not arrive in time for packing — for that 
 would have to be finished in the next two hours — and would have 
 to be forwarded. 
 
 Always stick to big reasons why. If you let in a little one, it 
 will be snapped at by the Opposition, and treated as your leading 
 article. Charley's legal instinct seized on this abject little 
 reason about the goods, and flaunted it in Fred's face as though 
 he had advanced it as exhaustive. '' What diabolical rot ! " said 
 he. " As if I couldn't send your ready-mades on as soon as 
 ever I know your hotel ? You come along with me and don't be 
 an idiot." 
 
 Fred had to discard his feeble little argTiment. " I daresay 
 I can make shift about the ready-mades, as far as that goes.
 
 454 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 But my mother expects me to-morrow morning at eight, and I 
 mustn't disappoint her. Go I must ! " 
 
 Charley could not but acquiesce. But he pulled a long face 
 over it. " You're quite right, old chap ! " said he. " I see that. 
 All the same I shall catch it hot for not bringing you back to- 
 night." He broke into a good-humoured laugh as he added : — 
 " You've no idea, young feller, how popular you are in some 
 quarters. You ought to feel flattered." 
 
 The excruciation to Fred of Charles's unconsciousness was like 
 a knife edge. He was quite at a loss for the sort of mock- 
 affectionate, anything-but-serious speech that he would have 
 been so ready with had his friend's insight into their relativi- 
 tives been truer. What so natural as a quasi-loving message, 
 the more exaggerated the better, to the wife of a friend who 
 had been more than a brother to him for so long, under existing 
 circumstances? What so difficult as to utter it to the unruffled 
 unsuspicion of the serene face before him ? His " How do 
 you know how flattered I don't feel, old man ? " was as good a 
 performance as could have been expected, all things considered. 
 Fred's continuation : — " Good job I'm not going away for thirty- 
 thousand years ! " met the case without overtaxing his conscience. 
 Hyperbole is often a great lubricant to embarrassment. 
 
 " When do you expect you ivUJ be back? " Charley asked, com- 
 ing down to the practical tone of everyday life. " Fortnight or 
 three weeks, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Thereabouts. But a good deal depends on my mother. She 
 may like to stop on. I fully expect she'll appreciate new sur- 
 roundings, when she gets them. Take her out of the way of 
 thinking of ... of it, don't vou know ? " 
 ■ " I know." 
 
 " She frets fearfully still, and will always do so wherever she 
 is. But change of scene will certainly keep it at a minimum." 
 
 " I quite agree with vou." 
 
 " Apart from that, and in the natural order of things, I don't 
 suppose I shall be away more than the inside of three weeks." 
 He felt quite a full-blown liar as he said these words. 
 
 " Very well ! " Charles said. " Three weeks nominally. But 
 good Lord ! — as if I didn't know my fellow-creatures ! Once 
 they get abroad, they are in no such a mighty hurry to come 
 back.'' 
 
 This seemed to imply that the speaker recognised British 
 islanders alone as his fellow-creatures. " Suppose we make the 
 three weeks six ? Just to be on the safe side, you knov,^ ! " 
 
 > 
 
 I
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 455 
 
 Fred felt a worse liar still as he pooh-poohed this limitation. 
 " Six be blowed ! " said he. " I oughtn't to reckon on three. 
 Why — what's to become of business? JN'o — ^}'ou'll see me back 
 here, like a bad shilling, before a month's out, certainly. Even 
 if my mother took to it, and decided to find an anchorage abroad 
 for a time, I should have to come back and make arrangements." 
 This circumstantial effrontery was a climax in lying. Fred felt 
 that he was acquiring skill in the Art. 
 
 We all know the last moments of a parting interview — how we 
 feel it an imperative duty to make the most of them, and how 
 often we spoil them outright by the strenuousness of our efforts. 
 We know how we get our last farewells said too soon, and leave 
 an awkward blank we cannot find a use for. Then it is 
 that an inexorable train that will not wait becomes as it 
 were a finger of Providence pointing to the door of our de- 
 parture. 
 
 But this is when we are cocksure of our return. How many 
 of us ever have to undergo a bona-fide parting, under a guar- 
 antee that we shall never meet again? Even Death itself is no 
 security for that. On this occasion, for one of the men con- 
 cerned, a cruel knowledge made their severance as good as 
 Death; and he clung honestly to every moment that was left, 
 always conscious that the next one might be the last. But the 
 other, serene in his security that the six weeks, blowed or other- 
 wise, would cover his friend's absence, perhaps twice over, was 
 so far from wishing to prolong the interview, that he saw nothing 
 to be gained by doing so, and looked at his watch. After all, 
 there was a train he mustn't lose; and this train was, to Fred, 
 much like the thumb of Providence, turned downwards as in- 
 exorably as a Eoman thumb to condemn a gladiator. Charley 
 got up to go. 
 
 "Well!" said he, "I must hook it. Good-bye, old chap! 
 Pleasant journey! Come back robust, please! Another man, 
 as the saying is. I shall tell Lucy she may look out for you in 
 about three weeks' time." 
 
 " I'm looking all right," said Fred, with misgivings that his 
 looks were betraying him. "At least, I'm feeling all right. 
 Missed my tea — s'pose it's that ! . . . Yes — expect me in about 
 three weeks. . . . \^liat? Yes — you must say adieu to the 
 missus for me. Make out the best case you can for me." Fred 
 was up to his neck in falsehood by now. 
 
 " All right ! Love and a kiss, and you won't do so any more. 
 I know. Xow I must catch mv train. Good-bve ! "
 
 456 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Good-bye ! " Fred had winced so over the items of his 
 embassy, as recited, that he had managed only an uneasy: — 
 " That sort of thing ! You know ! " in response. Wliy — 
 think of it! Suppose Charley had known! 
 
 He accompanied him down the prison-stair and saw him into 
 his cab, that awaited him — for there were still hansoms in those 
 days — and stood beside it with his eyes fixed for the last time 
 on his friend, his mind half wandering back through their 
 twenty years of friendship. In that short span of time, no 
 longer than the driver needed to fold the Pink 'Un he was 
 reading and consign it to a side-pocket, it had hovered through 
 a mist of early schooldays, — all memories fairly clear there — a 
 less transparent one of their University life, and a very cursory 
 acknowledgment of the London days that followed. Until a 
 something came into the dream that made havoc of all other 
 memories, and left him in the bare cold day, to struggle with 
 its crude realities. A flash of two dark eyes, burning into his 
 soul under lash and lid that drooped as though to spare him 
 the full strength of their dominion; a flood of warm dark hair, 
 rich in its power to bind and hold a human heart, every lock 
 a fetter; a hand whose palm was surely vitality itself. He strove 
 against that something, and for the moment was himself, parting 
 from his friend, whatever slavery his memories might entangle 
 him in as soon as he was left alone. 
 
 '' It's good-bye then, for three weeks or so," says Charley as 
 a wind-up. 
 
 " That's about it," is Fred's mechanical reply. He can think 
 of so little to say, that he welcomes any crude and obvious thing 
 that comes to hand. " I'll write from Paris. But don't expect 
 to hear before Tuesday." Something is strange in his own voice 
 as he himself hears it. 
 
 Something in his appearance too, to the occupant of the cab. 
 For the latter is not content to part without comment upon it. 
 
 I say, young man," he says, " I'll thank you to come back look- 
 ing better in three weeks than you look now. However, 
 bye-bye ! " 
 
 "Do I look queer?" savs Fred, with a creditable laugh. 
 *' Shouldn't know it by the "feel! But good-bye!" The two 
 right hands m.eet again for a final shake, over the closed cab-lid. 
 The cab hints collectively, at the instigation of the driver, that 
 it is time to be off, but the hand outside seems loth to release 
 the other. It only does so when a stern peremptory question: — 
 "Waterloo, did you say, or Charing Cross?" comes from the 
 
 a 
 
 i
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 457 
 
 sky, and suggests that this is a much-tried cabman — his temper 
 shortened by unreasonable fares. 
 
 Fred went slowly up the prison-stairway, and back to his room. 
 The way he collapsed on his sofa and remained idle and motion- 
 less, watching the sunlight on the buildings opposite, that was 
 doing more for them at the end of a summer day than their 
 architect's imagination had bequeathed to them, was not due to 
 fatigue, but to a sort of despair. He had parted with his old 
 friend for good, as far as all but a correspondence, always in 
 disguise, could fix its date. There would be an interregnum of 
 letter writing, of course, but time wovdd see it die down, like 
 other things human. Then Charley would no longer be, at all, 
 for him. 
 
 Yet there was no other way, and he had done right. 
 
 But was it conceivable that he should ever see Charley again? 
 He could imagine a possibility of such a thing, in his present 
 despairing mood, which shrank from no calamitous anticipation; 
 seeing that all was calamity, for him, in his own future. Sup- 
 pose that Lucy were to die — how then? 
 
 He pictured himself on his way from some remote corner of 
 the world, to reclaim and reinstate his old friendship, whose 
 surviving links would by that time have dwindled down to short 
 perfunctory four-page letters. Ho could forecast the gradual 
 degringoJade of correspondence with Charley, the latter holding 
 on courageously, like himself; but none the less, dying down 
 year-by-year. He could imagine a long series of reports of the 
 growth. School and 'Varsity career, and finally courtship or 
 courtships, of the contents of that cradle at The Cedars. His 
 mind took kindly to the interruption of this young man's nup- 
 tials with an American millionheiress of startling beauty, by his 
 mother's untimely death. But it foresaw a long la})se of time^ 
 even then, before the occurrence of an event it dwelt on with a 
 sort of heartbroken satisfaction, concerning two old men who 
 stood by a grave made long ago, one of whom, somehow himself, 
 told the other, who had been Charle}', how he had fled for both 
 their sakes from the woman whose remains it held, at the bid- 
 ding of a passion that had overmastered his reason. But his ' 
 mind did not leave the stage of imagination blank, without pro- 
 viding a sort of afterpiece, with fireworks, of recognition of his 
 own noble self-sacrifice, and the righteousness of the resolute 
 way in which he had grappled with the inevitable, and knocked 
 it out ! — or, if not quite that, had at least outgeneralled Provi- 
 dence, whose Inscrutable Ways had for once met their match.
 
 458 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 How much of egotism there was in this dreaming may be 
 inferred from the fact that the graveyard scene in the drama 
 was a real solace to the dreamer, who went back and back to it. 
 He roused himself from visionary aimlessness at last, to meet 
 the need for leaving his house in order, so that whoever had the 
 task of shifting his belongings — to dispose of them somehow, 
 not settled yet — might find it an easy one. He had not much 
 trouble in doing this as far as his professional plant was con- 
 cerned, for chaotic untidiness was not among his failings. 
 Some people are Chaos itself, even when endowed by Heaven 
 with Genius. He had no difficulty in systematizing the volumi- 
 nous drawings of the great Machine, whose patent he was assign- 
 ing to Mr. Strongitharm and a syndicate that could put money 
 down, cornucopiousl}^, if plenty more was coming. But things 
 that belong nowhere, that evade categories, are much more trouble 
 than bulky things that fill wardrobes and lend themselves to 
 classification. 
 
 Fred had half-an-hour left before starting with his travelling 
 traps for Maida Vale, where he had told outfitters to send 
 sundries which he sanguinely hoped to stuff into the top of his 
 box. He had opened every drav/er, looked in every cupboard, 
 felt round every shelf his eyesight could not be even with, and 
 was just about to summon a cab when a locked drawer, un- 
 examined for insufficient reasons, forced itself on his notice, 
 seeming to say : — " I contain something. Open me ! " 
 
 " Yes," said Fred aloud, as if the drawer had really spoken. 
 " Of course you do ! Now what the dickens am I to do with 
 that? Can't sell it. Can't give it away." He discovered a key 
 on a bunch, and opened the drawer. The thing in question was 
 a ring in a casket — his affiancing present to Cintra Fraser ! Of 
 no practical use now. Not to be given awa}', without slighting 
 Cintra. Not to be sold, on any terms. 
 
 The little casket had been shelved unopened on the day of its 
 arrival, and ignored rather than forgotten because of this very 
 unadaptability. Now Fred felt disposed to look at it, as a 
 preliminary to a decision of its destiny. Even so Mr. Micawber 
 decided to look at the Medway. Fred slipped off a rubber ring 
 that alone remained of the casket's enclosures, pinched it, and 
 the lid sprang up. Why was there a little slip of paper, folded, 
 inside the lid? With writing on it too! Fred oi^ened it, and 
 read : " With thanks, for all that ! Cit Fraser." 
 
 Fred felt that he changed colour, and was glad that there was 
 no one else in the room to see. But, after all, what did it matter. 
 
 I
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 459 
 
 that five words^ not meant for an answer, should have lain un- 
 answered and unnoticed for two years, forgotten in the dark? 
 If he had opened the casket then and there, what response could 
 he have made ? None. 
 
 He had said to himself, a thousand times since then, that it 
 was Cintra, not he, that had put an end to their engagement. 
 But he was always this much unconvinced, that he had invariably 
 found himself, shortly after, saying it again. If it was true, why 
 did it call for so many repetitions? If it was false, what good 
 end would have been served by their engagement ending in 
 marriage? That the result of that insane joint-household scheme 
 would have been a development of all the present evils in a worse 
 form, he did not doubt. But where was the guarantee of safety 
 in a measured and limited intercourse between the two couples? 
 He pictured to himself an unnatural constraint upon his inter- 
 course with Lucy, an excruciating clash between the blind con- 
 fidence of dear old Charley, that would have made them brother 
 and sister at least, and the v/arrantable jealousy of a wifehood 
 that would have demanded undivided love, over and above the 
 mere prosaic fulfilment of a husband's duties as interpreted by 
 current domesticity. Cintra would have wanted his whole heart 
 for herself, and would it have been his to give ? It may be that 
 he answered this question too emphatically in the negative, but 
 what right would he have had to run risks? 
 
 There had been only one thing till now that he blamed himself 
 for— that he had not seen his own danger and fled from it while 
 he still believed that Lucy would not guess his reason for doing 
 so. For, before that crisis of last Sunday at The Cedars, he 
 could at least have persuaded himself that she was ignorant of 
 the cause of his flight. It was that terrible knowledge each had 
 of the other's mind that prevented his saying to himself — as he 
 would now have been so glad to do— that at least he was the 
 .only sufferer. It is a great solace to mental pain that some of 
 it at least is vicarious — that one's own soul alone is weighed 
 down by what would else be a burden on another's. He believed, 
 or thought he believed, that he would have been happier had he 
 known that Lucy was indifferent to him. Possibly he would 
 have, but the story doubts it. It does not doubt that this acci- 
 dent of the casket, and the way it brought back all the incidents 
 of two years since, added a new sting "to his self-reproach. 
 
 What if Cintra . . . ? He began a question to himself, and 
 left it uncompleted. He was not the person to word that ques- 
 .tion. A mere spectator of the drama might have done so easily
 
 4G0 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 — might have said outright : — '' Suppose the girl loved him all 
 along, and was only acting against her own heart in a momen- 
 tary stimulus of passionate pride?" Fred could ascribe such 
 a thought to another, and could suggest a shorter version of its 
 last words — mere jealousy ! He half repented of it too, for what 
 would love be worth that was incapable of mere jealousy — the 
 merest of the mere? 
 
 Of course Cintra was jealous, and with reason. But would 
 she have been less jealous, with more reason? For she surely 
 would have had more, except his passion for his friend's wife 
 had perished in the flames of the altar of his own Hymen. Not 
 a very likely thing, as he saw matters now ! No — whatever cause 
 he might have for self-reproach, one thing was clear as daylight 
 — that Cintra was well quit of him. He could never have played 
 the part of a good husband to her. Nor to any woman, if his 
 speech to himself, which ended his self-examination, was as well 
 founded as he seemed to think it. 
 
 There was nothing now to prevent his starting for Maida Vale, 
 except this embarrassing ring. He did not fancy leaving it to 
 be dealt with by persons whom he regarded as contemporary 
 executors, even if he could formulate directions for its disposal 
 in a rough sketch of a last Will and Testament, to leave behind 
 him. Fie would gladly have given it away, and would have 
 presented it to Mrs. Gam, who occurred at this juncture to see 
 him off, and take provisional charge of his keys, if it had not 
 been so abominably valuable. Not that its value influenced him ; 
 except indeed that he could not think of any way of accounting 
 for such profuse liberality. ]\irs. Gam would probably have 
 summoned a specialist in mental cases. Besides, this evening 
 she had an unsettled eye, though it was impossible to determine 
 which of the two it was. Either, being closed, would have left 
 the other determinate and collected, however waggish. More- 
 over, she had with her an unpleasing child of doubtful sex, whose 
 mission seemed to be to keep its mouth full to overflowing of 
 cake, but to swallow none. Fred decided against leaving Mrs. 
 Gam in a position of any responsibility. He preferred to leave 
 his rooms virtually under the guardianship of his friend Mr. 
 Snaith, who would communicate the date of his return to Mrs. 
 Gam, as soon as he knew it himself, to the end that she should 
 do out the rooms and make them smell of soap and disinfectants, 
 to welcome him back after his painful experience of the tainted | 
 atmosphere of a Continent whose aversion to a regular good clean 
 out is well known to all true Britons. It was no use, Mrs. Gam
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 461 
 
 said, her pretending that she ever did take^ or could take, to 
 the nasty ways of foreigners. But this was a good deal due to 
 the courage and truthfulness of her disposition, and her aversion 
 to false pretence of any sort. She had never been able to abide 
 them and their ways, nor yet anything underhanded. She 
 claimed probity as an attribute of her countrymen; admitting, 
 however, that, for them who liked change, there was something 
 to be said for intermittent flights among the Frenchified popu- 
 lations of foreign parts, if only to see the contrast, and become 
 alive to our insular blessings. Only, all she said was, rather 
 them than her ! 
 
 " Very well then, Mrs. Gam," said Fred. " That's under- 
 stood. You're not to be compelled to visit foreign parts against 
 your will, but I'm to go away for a change. I shall be back in 
 about a month's time, and then Mr. Snaith will give you my 
 key and turn you in to clean and tidy to your heart's content. 
 I shall expect to find the place as fresh as the top of the Matter- 
 horn." 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Sir," said Mrs. Gam with dignity. " But 
 which place was it you said ? " 
 
 " The top of the' Matterhorn." 
 
 Mrs. Gam drew herself up to her full height, to yield nothing 
 to the Matterhorn. " I 'ope so, I am sure ! " said she with a 
 powerful accent on the absence of an H in her verb. " I should 
 ^pe to give every satisfaction." 
 
 " Very good then, that's settled ! Xow let me into Mr. Snaith's 
 room, as you have the key, and call me a cab. I want to leave 
 a note on his table." Mrs. Gam complied. 
 
 There was Charley's room, in the last glow of the summer 
 evening. The last sight of it Fred would ever have, miracle 
 apart ! There was the gate-legged table, all corkscrew, that he 
 had given his friend, years ago, that his room might not look 
 entirely Philistine. For Charley, left to himself, was Philistine, 
 alas ! How many a time had the two young men breakfasted 
 at that table, conveying a sort of intimation to Fate each time 
 that she might do her worst, but college life should never cease! 
 What was it that had come between them, to give cruel Fate 
 a helping hand? Wliat was she — rather? 
 
 There she was, on the walls, on the table, on the chimney 
 shelf beside the clock! \A1iere was she not, so far as her image 
 could be said to be herself, and so far as the camera could be 
 relied on. For one of Charley's great delights was to get a new 
 photograph of his wife, and a copy was always in evidence at 
 
 30
 
 462 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 the diggings, framed and glazed if a notable success; otherwise, 
 at hand in an album passe-partout. He had copies, too, at his 
 place of business, to refer to. But these were hidden away in 
 drawers, not to distract his attention from his clients. Here, 
 whichever way he turned his eyes, he saw Lucy. And it was she 
 that was driving him away from his Past, into a mist that he 
 abhorred, known to him now only as his Future. 
 
 If he could have waked to find this all a dream — a long dream, 
 two dream-years long — how he would have rejoiced ! Where 
 would he have had it begin? Clearly enough, just before his 
 introduction to those eyes with the drooping lids, in the photo- 
 graph on the table; those lips that parted to smile dutifully at 
 the camera, on the chimuey-piece ; that form its enclosure said 
 so much about to the hand that lay upon it, a tale to be passed 
 on to the next palm it pressed, in that full length the dying 
 sunlight caught; near the window. To wake up now, and find 
 that all these things had been unrealities, what joy that would 
 be ! And this for all that they had been fraught, for him, with 
 the sweetest experience possible to man ! For such a waking 
 would not drag him from its possible fruition, but only from a 
 worse version of the tortures of Tantalus. 
 
 Yes — he would like to hark back in time that much, and to 
 meet after that waking the new fancce of his friend, and find 
 her all his heart could wish for that friend. A perfectly de- 
 lightful girl, all sweetness, honour, generosity. And beauty, if 
 you will, but in reason; grace, but bearable grace, that would 
 not drive a man mad ! Charley would have been just as happy 
 with any woman his heart had chosen, as with the one chance 
 had brought him. What had he to gain, so long as she was 
 perfect in his eyes, by a dangerous fascination that entangled 
 others in the meshes of their own passions, a mirage that led 
 them astray in a desert where there was no hope of an oasis? 
 Then, who could say that his own fidelity to his first love would 
 not have remained unshaken? If this all proved a dream, and 
 he woke now, would it not be to look forward to his next 
 welcome at Gipsy Hill, a whole-hearted lover? He thought now 
 with shame — a shame he was half ashamed of — of his earnest- 
 ness about Cintra in those early days, and with a pity for her 
 that he silenced as insulting. Cintra was no child ; a woman with 
 a will of her own, and a clear insight into his character, her 
 position — all the facts of the case. She would be much happier 
 as Mrs. Lomax . . . and so on. 
 
 Anyhow, this was no dream — that was certain! His hand
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 463 
 
 closed in proof on the corners of that casket in his pocket. He 
 "had had an idea of leaving it on Charley's table with a note, 
 asking him to take charge of it till his return, so as to make 
 sure it should fall into no stranger's hands. But on reilection 
 he did not see his way to wording an explanation of it and his 
 reasons, offhand. So he changed his mind and left it in his 
 pocket. He could explain it to his mother, and leave it with her 
 jewellery, which would go in the plate-chest to the Bank. 
 
 What then ? He had seen Charley for the last time, Lucy for 
 the last time — that was his judgment and belief — and now he 
 had to say good-bye outright to all his past. For, come what 
 might, he could never go back upon it. This was to be farewell. 
 
 Mysterious sounds of bumps, and of a hoarse hireling de- 
 nouncing staircases, showed that Mrs. Gam had grappled suc- 
 cessfully with the situation, and was helping to get the boxes 
 on the cab. There was only just room, but the driver was 
 " accommodatin'," and could see round a group of luggage 
 " you wouldn't have thought possible to." So, after yielding to 
 a claim for overpayment by the hireling on account of the 
 peculiar shape of that staircase — which was exactly like any 
 other staircase — and satisfying Mrs. Gam beyond her deserts, 
 Fred was off, and on his way to forget — to attempt it, at least — 
 all that had made up his early life. His heart was heavy at the 
 thought, but his eyes were closed to everything but the need for 
 escape — escape from surroundings that made for self-torture. 
 He knew that changed scenes and the stir of new life about him 
 would make matters better than this. 
 
 He had no chance to brood over the situation, as most of his 
 drive to Maida Vale was needed to convince the cabman that he 
 did not want to be driven to any railway station whatever, the 
 said cabman having a rooted belief that it was impossible that 
 any person with luggage could want to be taken anywhere else. 
 He conceded the point, however, saying resignedly : — " 'Axe it 
 your own way, then. Only don't go orf in a 'uff and say I didn't 
 arsk you."
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 That letter that Charley had posted to Mr. Moring on his 
 way to town, on the Friday morning that occurs in the last 
 chapter, produced no reply at the time, and Charley concluded 
 that it must have miscarried. As he had hesitated ahout post- 
 ing it, he did not take its disappearance to heart. The two 
 things together had bridged over that inexplicable incident of 
 the Irishman at the play, by giving his wakeful inquisitiveness 
 an excuse for a nap in the first place, and in the second by 
 postponing indefinitely the hour of its awakening. 
 
 Indefinitely, but not finally; though indeed long enough for 
 Charley to have forgotten nearly all about it. It was not until 
 August gave Themis leave to knock off work and go abroad that 
 he was reminded of the incident by receiving a reply to his 
 letter, and so much time had elapsed, and so unconnected with 
 his surroundings at the moment was its subject, that he had to 
 undergo some reminiscence before he could understand wdiy the 
 ■dickens Moring was writing him such a long screed. For he 
 looked at the signature before he read the missive. 
 
 He was abroad when he got it — there was no doubt of that ! 
 For no such aroma of coffee ever permeated the salon of a 
 London hotel as the one that rose from the black-and-white 
 torrent Jules the waiter poured into the thickest possible cup 
 ■on the wliitest possible table-linen at his hotel in the Avenue 
 de I'Opera, while he examined the directions of his forwarded 
 letters with a delicious sense that hurry and business were 
 things of the past, and breakfast was the very essence of leisure. 
 At no London hotel would a cavalry officer with a scabbard have 
 finished his breakfast half a cigar ago, and that cigar such a 
 black and strong one. Nowhere in Piccadilly or Jermyn Street, 
 though one spent a week searching their hostels, could one find 
 middle-aged dames of such a diameter, or capable of such an 
 amazing rapidity of speech as sundry voluble samples that flut- 
 tered about, like very solid butterflies, in the Hotel de I'Etoile — 
 suppose we call it? — in those days, and perhaps do so still. The 
 story hopes so. But they are never seen in these islands. Or 
 is it that they shrivel and become dumb, because of Sunday, 
 when they rashly pay them a visit ? 
 
 4C4 
 
 1
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 465 
 
 Charles was abroad by the wish of his wife, who adored Paris 
 — small blame to her; the story does so too — and had not been 
 there since their honeymoon. She had to all appearance accepted 
 his version of Fred's intention — to come back in a month at 
 most — and with it the consolations for his absence that her 
 husband was not backward in offering to her, " Cheer up. 
 sweetheart ! " he would say when he suspected she was missing 
 her baritone. " He'll be back by the time we are. The music 
 will keep, and be all the better for keeping." For he felt 
 Fred's absence as much on her account as his own. 
 
 She had, however, disclaimed any desire to overtake Fred and 
 his mother in Paris when she expressed a wish to spend a week 
 there before going on to the Dolomites, which had seemed good 
 as a place to spend an autumn holiday. Her motive was en- 
 tirely love of Paris. Nevertheless, she had felt a strong disposi- 
 tion to go round to Fred's hotel — very near at hand — after the 
 table-d'hote, to find if he and his mother were not still there. 
 Therefore after dinner she and Charley had turned out into 
 the electric daylight of the Avenue de I'Opera, and made their 
 way to an hotel whose name the story recollects imperfectly, but 
 H6tel de I'Eternite et d'Espagne will do, as will Rue Champs 
 des Petits Pois for the street it stood back in. It was a scrap 
 of old Paris, whose saUe-a-manger had once been a coachhouse 
 for diligences; from whose courtyard they had adventured out 
 into cobble-paved streets by the light of flambeaux. But lapse 
 of an hour or so may part us from anything whatever as in- 
 exorably as a century, and when Charley and his wife reached 
 the Hotel of Spain and Eternity, they found that Fred and his 
 mother had gone away that morning, and were not quite certain 
 whether they should stop at Basle or go on to Italy. So they 
 were just as much things of the past, at that hotel, as the 
 vanished diligences of a hundred years ago. 
 
 However, this was on the evening of their arrival, and it 
 was next morning at breakfast that he received Moring's letter; 
 for they had broken their journey at Rouen for a couple of days, 
 and he had left word for all forwarding to be to his Paris 
 hotel, as above. 
 
 " Yes — Moring," said Charles to his wife across their table. 
 "What can he have to fill up four pages?" 
 
 " Why don't you read it and sec ? " 
 
 " Well — of course I can do that. Wait a minute till I've 
 looked through these others, and then we'll do Moring." He 
 glanced through other letters, and found nothing of interest.
 
 466 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Lucy did not show the least concern. What was Mr. Moring 
 to her? A dim recollection of elderly respectability, with good 
 connections. Nothing more. 
 
 She was recalled to a more vital interest in him, when her 
 husband, having begun his letter this time in earnest, com- 
 mented on its first paragraph. " Of course ! It's that Irish 
 chap I wrote to him about." Then he went on reading, like 
 you and me when we get a letter, and never considered the 
 curiosity his words might have aroused in his hearer. 
 
 Might have, but apparently had not. At least, his wife never 
 showed any, but went on reading a letter she herself had received 
 by the same post. Certainly she said : — " Ye-es — what does he 
 say about him ? " But it was in a drawling, indifferent way 
 that as good as said : — " This is merely civility, for your Irish 
 chap does not interest me in the least." 
 
 Had she felt any curiosity, Charley's absorption in his letter 
 might have irritated her. For he not only read to the end, with 
 a deepened gravity and a bitten lip, but turned back and read 
 it through a second time. Then instead of divulging its con- 
 tents, as might have been expected, he — so to speak — washed 
 his hands of it; thrusting it first into its envelope, then both 
 abruptly into his pocket. 
 
 She said with languid enquiry, through the continuous reading 
 of her own letter : — " Well — what's the mystery ? " It was 
 rather as though she felt a remark was called for than as if 
 slae cared for an answer. 
 
 " Oh — nothing — nothing ! What's yours ? " 
 
 " Only mamma. Says she may go to Harrogate. Only not 
 unless Adela comes. I thought she and Adela were at dag- 
 gers drawn." A certain accent on Mrs. Bannister Stair's 
 christened name showed that she was echoing her mother's 
 reference to her — not exactly mockingly, but not far short 
 of it. 
 
 " Yes — I remember you thought they had been fighting that 
 time we met her coming out. After the play about the young 
 woman. What have they got to fight about ? " 
 
 " I haven't the remotest idea." This wasn't true, so the 
 speaker ran away from her words as quickly as possible. " All 
 plays are about young women, but I know the one you mean. 
 . . . Now, the question is, what are we going to do? I want 
 to go to the Opera Comique this evening, so wherever we go we 
 must take tickets first." 
 
 " They'll get us places from the hotel. If they can't or
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 467 
 
 won't, we can get themr That's all right enough. But where do 
 you want to go now ? " 
 
 " The Beaux Arts, if it's open." 
 
 " Xot sure that it is. However, it either is or isn't. We can 
 ask at the bureau. If it isn't, what I should like would be 
 loafing — crossing over the bridges — sitting about in the 
 Cham"ps-El3'Sees — fooling about the Bois de Boulogne in a 
 fee-arker. ..." 
 
 " Don't be a goose ! "Well — only geese pronounce French 
 wrong on purpose. . . . However, I don't mind going about 
 when it's fine. It may rain to-morrow." So it was settled, and 
 they walked as far as the Arc de Triomphe and then took a 
 vehicle which Charley obstinately mispronounced, and drove to 
 the Bois de Boulogne. 
 
 The Bois de Boulogne was very like itself in August, and 
 meant to be too hot for anything by midday. There was, how- 
 ever, still time, as it was not ten o'clock yet, to dismiss the mis- 
 jH'onounced vehicle and walk about for an hour under the trees. 
 This course recommended itself, as a sort of preliminary to a 
 period of unlimited leisure — Lincoln's Inn Fields a mere tradi- 
 tion of a half -forgotten past, remote and dim ! It was not re- 
 solved on until they had been trundled at a foot's pace — the 
 horse's foot's — to nearly the centre of the Bois. Thence they 
 could easily return at the pace of other feet — their own — to the 
 gate they had entered by, and there find another vehicle to get 
 them back in time for lunch at the Etoile. They could sit on 
 this seat till it was time to start back, and look at the water. 
 
 Charley, thinking in such French as came to hand — he felt 
 bound in honour to do so — decided that Lucy was looking ravis- 
 sante. He had never considered that she looked ravishing, in 
 English. It was much too heavy an expression. The French 
 word touched her identity delicately. He sat looking at her, not 
 at the water. Then he lit a cigar and said simply: — "Rip- 
 ping ! " as an expression of general contentment. It might have 
 pleased him better that she should feel a more active interest 
 in him; but then, did he not know that his nose stood in his 
 way ? He felt confident that he could live down that nose. 
 
 She was languidly interested in Parisian life. " It is the 
 strangest thing," she said, " but whenever I come here I find 
 identically the same child in the same perambulator, in charge 
 of the same bonne, with the same little elder brother and sister. 
 And the same mamma, if it's a little later in the day. I sup- 
 pose it's toe early for her now."
 
 468 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " I suppose a mossoo in Hyde Park thinks he sees the same 
 kids every time." 
 
 The lady did not seem to think tliis tonched the point near 
 enough to call for an answer. She changed the subject of set 
 purpose. " \Yhat was your letter this morning? " said she. 
 
 " Which letter ? I had several." He shied off the letter from 
 Moring, all the while longing for any light that would penetrate 
 its mystery. For it had brought him face to face with a seeming- 
 insoluble problem. 
 
 " You knov/ which. The one from that man. The one that 
 made you look so." 
 "Look how?" 
 
 « AYell—cross. Irritated, ^^^^at was that in Colonel Quaqq 
 — about the bull ? " This referred to the story of the Grace- 
 walking Brother, which probably you have read. They had; or 
 rather, Fred had read it aloud to them, some while since. 
 
 Charley filled out the quotation. "Did I look like a bob- 
 tailed billl in fly-time?" said he, laughing good-humouredly. 
 "Well, I was puzzled— that's the truth!" But it madehim 
 easier that she should be persistent about that letter. It pointed 
 to an explanation of its contents. He would get it before show- 
 ing her the letter, if indeed he did show it at all. " You know, 
 I had written to him to ask him to find out, if he could, where 
 that Irish editor chap had got the story of Dr. Carteret's, dis- 
 appearance." 
 
 If she started, and changed colour slightly, it counted for 
 nothing; he could explain that away by the suddenness of his 
 reference to the gruesome subject they had left behind in Eng- 
 land. When she spoke, it was without any apparent conscious- 
 ness of personal concern. Her "Was he able to tell you any- 
 thing ? " was a perfect model of the interest civility calls for 
 when the affairs of others, none of ours, are under discussion. 
 
 Charley felt hopeful about his explanation. " Something," 
 said he, allowing the disposal of a long cigar-ash to bespeak his 
 attention for a moment. "' Stop a minute ! . . . Yes — some- 
 thing. . . . That'll do. It won't show. But it spoils one's 
 garments if it gets rubbed in. . . . Yes— he told me something 
 —but he couldn't find out what I wanted to know. O'Dowd or 
 O'Toole or O'Eourke — whichever he is — wouldn't give up his 
 informant, because he was bound to secrecy. But he stuck to 
 it that he had it from an intimate friend of the family." 
 
 There was distinct relief on the beautiful face. Mr. McMur- 
 Tough was to be trusted, then! She could safely develop her
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 469 
 
 detachment from any share in the affair. "He must have had 
 tlie story from the school people," said she. " He might easily 
 describe them as friends of the family." 
 
 " It lies," said Charley, " between the school people and our- 
 selves. So it must be the school people." 
 
 '•' Must be. There's no way out of it." 
 
 '' You are absolutely certain you did not give him so much 
 as half a hint? " 
 
 " Stupid man ! How could half a hint have supplied him 
 with all that paragra})h ? " 
 
 " That's true, sweetheart. Sharp you are ! " He was by tliis 
 time beginning to feel ashamed that although he had certainly 
 not entertained a suspicion, he should have gone so far as to 
 answer the door to one. He could make up for that though, by 
 taking her into his confidence outright, and showing her the 
 letter. He went on : — " However, you'll see what he says. . . . 
 Botheration ! — I hope I haven't lost that letter. I'm sure I put 
 it in my pocket. ... Oh no — here it is ! Catch hold." 
 
 They had risen from the seat, and were standing by the 
 water's edge. A light breeze had sprung up, to spoil the 
 reflection of the swans, though indeed they seemed to think it 
 more dignified to take no notice. It was a great relief to the 
 heat, and made the prospect of the midday sun more bearable. 
 This tended to a leisurely return to their hotel. They need not 
 hurry back. 
 
 She caught hold, and read through the letter. What she read 
 till she came to the signature was what her husband had read. 
 And this was it : 
 
 Dear Snaith: I ought to have answered your letter before. 
 But I had to wait for an interview with the Irishman, and I did 
 not get one till yesterday. He was apologetic for his paragraph 
 — surprised that it should have given offence — had imagined he 
 would be doing a service. He repeated that the information 
 came to him through an intimate friend of the family, but 
 admitted that this authority was not his immediate informant. 
 He said he had been asked since then not to mention this person's 
 name, so I did not press him for it. 
 
 My experience is that it is always impossible to trace stories 
 of this sort home to their tellers. Evervone alwavs savs ' You 
 will be sure to let this go no farther.' And one always repeats 
 that caution very earnestly to the next person one tells it to. 
 
 I must say that McMurrough's motive seems to have been
 
 470 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 honestly to assist in tracing Dr. Carteret. He could have had 
 no other. I think, however, I should in his place have consulted 
 the family before rushing into print. 
 
 I hope that you and Mrs. Charles Snaith are enjoying your 
 holiday. My very kind regards to both, as also to Fred Carteret 
 if he is with you, which I take to be not at all unlikely. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 Septimus Munby Moring. 
 
 This was all that Charley had read. But his wife read a little 
 more. For there was a postscript overleaf that he had missed. 
 Xo great wonder ! — for the name, as above, only just found room 
 at the end of the third neat and closely written page, and there 
 was no T.O. in the corner. The appearance of a wind-up was 
 deceptive, not to mention the fact that the letter had been folded 
 backwards, shutting the postscript in. He had missed it, but 
 his wife caught sight of it. It ran thus : 
 
 " P.S. Perhaps I ought to mention — though I am not quite 
 sure on the point — that j\IeM.'s informant seems to have been a 
 lady. He certainly said that a lady he met at the Lyceum in 
 the stalls, had begged him not to say where he got the informa- 
 tion. But of course it does not follow from this that she herself 
 had told him." 
 
 " "What's that — postscript I didn't read ? " said Charles. 
 " Hand over ! " He reached out for it, not noticing how his 
 wife was going pale and red by turns. 
 
 She for her part was under pressure to make up her mind 
 then and there whether it wr.s to be confession or further con- 
 cealment. Also, whether the latter was practicable. It Avas a 
 very doubtful point. 
 
 "\Miat confession, and how ? To say pointblank : — " I am a 
 liar, who for months past have lied black white over a matter 
 I might have told the truth about at the cost of a very mild 
 rebuke " — this seemed to her an unqualified impossibility. On 
 the other hand, what loophole of escape did further duplicity 
 offer ? None ! 
 
 Yes ! Destroy — ^get rid of — this horrible letter ! She thought 
 she saw a chance. Fortune might favour the bold, this once. 
 
 " You must make this out, Charles ; I can't. He WTites one 
 of those dreadful clear writings, that one thinks one can read, 
 and finds one can't. ... Oh dear — there it goes! Catch it."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 471 
 
 For the letter, at the suggestion of a new gust of wind, had 
 taken the bit in its teeth, and flown away across the water. It 
 may have been relinquished intentionally, of course ; if so. Zephyr 
 was not to blame. 
 
 " Stop it ! Wo — — ! " said Charley, and tried to reach it 
 across the water, but in vain. It was not worth going in over 
 his ankles to salvage that postscript. If it had been the least 
 important, Moring would have been sure to put T.O. in the 
 corner of his last page. The letter, blown by the wind, was well 
 on its way to the opposite coast in a very short time. A man in 
 a suit of blue canvas — no : 100, if the badge on his arm told the 
 truth — who was sweeping nothing carefully up with an osier 
 broom whose business twigs were longer than its handle, stopped 
 his laborious task to watch the departing voyager. " Je le 
 retrouve pour Madame, si M'sieu le veut. Un franc pour le 
 bateau, et un pourboire. C'est peu ! " But it seemed to be con- 
 sidered heaucouj), especially as Monsieur said he didn't want the 
 letter. 
 
 " I really don't think we've lost anything," said the lady. 
 " The envelope's no use now, is it ? It may as well follow the 
 letter." She crushed it and threw it after its late occupant. It 
 was a mistake. She should have destroyed it. She watched it 
 for a moment, to see if a swan who had thought it might be 
 eatable would have the courage of its opinions : then, as it had 
 not, continued : — " What's the time ? I'm sorrv I was so . . . " 
 
 " So butter-fingered ? " Charles laughed good-humouredly, 
 and looked at his watch. " Twenty past eleven — hookey ! 
 I say — we ought to be getting back." They turned to go, and 
 wandered easily towards the gate, Lucy's face showed either 
 relief or triumph, or both. 
 
 jSTo further reference was made to the lost letter, except that 
 Charles said, much as though the answer was a foregone conclu- 
 sion : — " I suppose you didn't make out a word of the post- 
 script? " 
 
 " iSTot a word. But I didn't try very hard. I left it for you." 
 She had better have stopped at that. But she could not be con- 
 tent without a finishing touch : — " Stop a minute ! I think there 
 was a long word that looked like the name of the school. ..." 
 
 " Vexton Stultifer ? " 
 
 " It looked like that. But I couldn't be sure." 
 
 " Very likely to be. Probably a guess of his about where the 
 tale came from." Then they talked about the Eiffel Tower, and 
 how it promoted thunderstorms, or didn't.
 
 472 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 They could not get places at the Opera Comique, but a box was 
 to be had for Divorgons at the Folies Bergeres. Charley had 
 seen it before, but wanted to see it again. He viewed it as an 
 awful lark, especially when the Him and the Her of it eat 
 their little parting diner-de-noces together and the waiter has to 
 look the other way. Lucy had never seen it, but would go, to 
 satisfy her husband, only that she suspected it of being inten- 
 tionally spicy, and spiciness of set purpose always bored her. 
 However, she would go, provided she wasn't required to rush 
 about the whole afternoon and get fagged to death first. This 
 was granted, and she remained at the hotel, while her husband 
 went by himself for a long rampage all over Paris, and came 
 back at dress-for-dinner time in great spirits, saying he didn't 
 believe there was a street or boulevard in that vast city that he 
 hadn't been in. Which was an obvious exaggeration. 
 
 She had not left the hotel, although she had contemplated 
 being driven over to Vincennes, to call on the Princesse Dela- 
 force jMajeure — or some such name, — whom her mother had 
 known in India as Annette Smithson. She seemed to have found 
 time hang heavy on hand, and Charley reproached himself for 
 deserting her. " Not that I should have been much use," said 
 he, humbl}-, "in the way of amusement! Because I always was 
 a slow sort of beggar. Now, what the dooce possessed Fred to 
 go rushing away before our Terni was up? He could perfectly 
 well have waited, as far as that goes. And then you wouldn't 
 have found it so dull. . . . ^Yell — of course if he had come 
 with us, he couldn't have gone with his mother too. Right you 
 are, sweetheart ! " 
 
 What was the odd look in those lustrous eyes that rested on 
 him, rather longer than was their wont? Was it pity? The 
 story hopes so. A sort of pity, suppose we say ! 
 
 You know Divorgons? Every playgoer does; but, perhaps, 
 you are not a playgoer? If you are, you may be inclined to 
 sympathise with the view this story takes, that the lover in that 
 play is really needlessly unattractive. Surely a magnet twice — 
 three times — a dozen times more powerful would have been 
 needed to detach the most frivolous of wives from so engaging 
 a husband. Charley evidently had an impression to this effect, 
 for he propounded the view that the lady in the play had only 
 become reconciled to her lawful mate because of the terrible 
 identity of the unlawful substitute to whom she stood com- 
 mitted — which, by the way, may only have been its actor's
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 473 
 
 endorsement of a belief, apparently common among playgoers, 
 that no man is too repulsive an idiot to supply a co-respondent 
 to a lady anxious to develop infidelity. 
 
 This suggestion of Charles's procured him a pleasant experi- 
 ence — his wife's unstinted approval. She so frequently took 
 exception to things he said, as often as not passing them by in 
 silence, that it was a real pleasure to him when she responded, 
 this time : — " I entirely agree with you. If the two men had 
 been changed across, the husband the lover and the lover the 
 husband, she would have made short work of her marriage tie." 
 They dwelt upon this way of looking at the matter, and endorsed 
 it, as they rode back to the xVvenue de I'Opera. 
 
 There was a man in blue canvas, who was no: 100, but other- 
 wise undefined, in the outer entrance of the hotel. Charles 
 would have recognised him at once for the sweeper in the Bois 
 de Boulogne, even without an introduction from the hall-porter, 
 who spoke English quite intelligibly. " Thees ees," said he, " a 
 working-man for M'sieur Snai-eess. He hass a lettare he hass 
 found." The working-man seemed overwhelmed with the 
 grandeur of the hall-porter, and indeed rather cowed by his 
 surroundings generally. But he found his tongue, and backed 
 it with a hoarse larynx, identifying himself by naming the place 
 in which he occurred last, and the date of the occurrence. 
 
 " Bois de Boulogne, M'sieu, ce matin — une heure avant- 
 midi. . . . Vous le savez, n'est-ce pas? " 
 
 " All right. Go ahead. En avant. I know all about it. 
 You've got my letter." N^umero Cent understood perfectly, and 
 was producing the letter, when Charley must needs complicate 
 matters by endeavouring to be still more intelligible, in 
 French : — " Vous avez trouve mon lettre dans I'eau ? Ou 
 est-il ? " Which made Numero Cent stop producing the letter, 
 and look in bewilderment to the hall-porter who could speak 
 English, for an explanation. 
 
 " Va bien — va bien ! M'sieu vous demande sa lettre. Voila 
 tout! Donnez-la lui." 
 
 Numero Cent, relieved, handed the letter, in its envelope and 
 much the worse for its adventures, but dry, to its owner, giving 
 as he did so a brief sketch of its recovery. " M'sieu et Madame 
 s'en vont; et moi, des le soir quand je laisse travailler, je vais 
 chercher la lettre. Je cherche sur la rive au dela de I'eau. Et 
 je cherche et je cherche, jusque pst: — la voila sous la grille, 
 dans I'ecume.' Alors I'enveloppe — je I'ai trouvee — un pcu ?ale, 
 oui ! Mais je lis le nom de I'Hotel ..." The story could not
 
 474 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 spell the pronunciation of this, if it tried. It was so mixed with 
 some large teeth that remained of Numero Cent's original set. 
 But one thing was clear — that if that envelope had not followed 
 its letter, the two would never have found their way to the Hotel 
 de rEtoile. Charley saw that plain enough, but the man's speech 
 might have been Esquimaux, for anything he understood of 
 it. 
 
 The lady at the hotel-bureau seemed to have something to 
 explain to the commissaire. The latter was to tell Monsieur 
 something. Madame had felt fatiguee, and had montee par 
 I'ascenseur to the appartement. Charles caught the meaning of 
 this; and, turning round, saw that Lucy had not waited to hear 
 about the adventures of the letter, but had gone upstairs to bed. 
 He felt in his pocket for a franc to give the Numero Cent, but 
 found that his discharge of the cab fare had left him Avithout 
 small change. He said to the commissaire, with a painful intel- 
 ligibility to ears accustomed to human speech, deliberately trans- 
 lated from the language of the speaker : — " Donnez quelque chose 
 a I'homme, et mettez le au compte." The commissaire nodded 
 confidentially, saying : — " Justement ! " But he probably com- 
 mandeered at least half the deux francs that the account after- 
 wards described as " gratuite." 
 
 He hurried upstairs, somewhat apprehensive about Lucy, not 
 waiting for the second coming of the lift. But on the way he 
 opened that letter to read its postscript. 
 
 He was not prepared for it; indeed, nothing could have pre- 
 pared him. He had to pass, all on a sudden, from a serene faith 
 in his idol that no suspicion had been able to disturb, to a 
 knowledge, complete and irresistible, of the way that she had 
 played him false. 
 
 He read and re-read that postscript in the vain hope of reatl- 
 ing some new meaning into it — foisting some interpretation on 
 it that would leave him his life, give him back his faith in his 
 idol, restore peace to his heart. At least, some gloss upon it 
 that would hush his pulses for the moment, and quench the 
 fire that the reading of it had started in his brain. He could 
 not have suffered more had the crime of which Lucy stood 
 convicted been ten times worse. What was it, after all? A 
 promise broken and, instead of an honest confession on occasion 
 shown, a certain amount of — what should it be called? — equivo- 
 cation? — prevarication? — as a sequel. How if it had been — but 
 Heaven forgive him for the question ! — some coarse disregard of 
 married honour, some blot that we believe possible on our neigh-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 475 
 
 hour's scutcheon, hut find incredihle on our own? . . . Oh — 
 well — then he would have killed himself. 
 
 But how ahout now? What was he to do now, with Lucy 
 probahly joostponing final retirement until he was well on his 
 way to his own pillow? The question would not have arisen if 
 the Etoile had been able to accommodate them with the room 
 apiece that they had asked for. But Paris was full of a good 
 deal of world, and what would 3'OU? Perhaps his best course 
 would be to delay, on the chance that she would think he had 
 met a friend, or gone to the smoking-room for a farewell pipe, 
 in which case he miglit sneak noiselessly to bed at an unearthly 
 hour. But no ! — that would not do. Such proximity, and such 
 a silence about such a rift between them, would drive him raving 
 mad. Besides, did not she know, and know that he knew, the con- 
 tents of that postscript? And could any sane man believe that 
 Mr. McMurrough ever met another lady in the stalls at the 
 Lyceum, and made her a promise of secrecy about this thing, or 
 any other. Then, see what he himself had overheard ! 
 
 ]N'o — no ! Speak he must, and that forthwith. He crept up 
 the flight of stairs that was still between him and his terrible 
 task, but so slowly that the lift made two journeys in the time, 
 shooting past him in its cage. Odd moments catch Memory 
 by the forelock, and hold her through life. This was one such 
 moment for Charles, and the smallest details of his surroundings 
 were never to be absent from his image of it — or rather his 
 efforts to forget it — in after life. Even the fact that the wide 
 balustrade, that was between him and the ascenscur, was cased 
 in Utrecht velvet was destined to remain, unchangeable. 
 
 Was this numero deux-cent soixante-quinze their number? 
 Yes — but there was a bootless vacuum outside the door. She 
 was still going, not gone, to bed. The better, perhaps. 
 
 He had to make an effort, to knock at the door. But he did 
 it, somehow; and a voice of irritating equanimity told him to 
 come in. He wished it had shown apprehension, annoyance, 
 impatience. Sweetness and light were terrible barriers to pass. 
 
 ""\Miat kept you so long?" This was not a complaint, by 
 the tone; merely an enquiry, to satisfy curiosity. 
 
 " You saw who the man was ? " His voice was not like itself, 
 and there was not a trace of its usual amiable tone. Charles 
 was gone, and another man had come in his place. She would 
 have done more wisely to recognise this change, instead of ac- 
 centing the suavity of her manner. That was unnatural, and 
 would have sounded overdone even if perfectly successful. But
 
 47G THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 the intrusion of a barely perceptible nervous catch in her breath 
 spoiled all. 
 
 Also it was scarcely natural that she should not notice his 
 unusual tone. She replied to his semi-question without turning 
 round from the mirror in which he had seen and spoken to her 
 pale reflected face, rather than to herself : " I saw you were 
 speaking to a man." 
 
 " And you saw who the man was." His repetition of his own 
 words, this time a statement of fact, not a question, was in 
 a controlled voice, but very positive. 
 
 She threw aside disguise, and turned full upon him the two 
 lustrous orbs that had never looked on him in anger before. 
 Thev were full of it now. " Suppose I did ! " said she. " What 
 then?" 
 
 He could hardly speak, to accuse her of bald falsehood. But 
 it was being forced home to his mind now, how she had lied 
 in self-defence, and knew it. Why, else, a defiant manner? He 
 threw the soiled letter on the dressing-table before her, speech- 
 lessly for the moment ; then at last, after twice walking the length 
 of the room restlessly, found his voice, to say : — " You knew the 
 contents of that letter. You knew, I mean, what was in the 
 postscript. You wished me not to know, so you threw it in 
 the water that I should not read it." 
 
 "What if I did?" 
 
 " You knew that you had deceived me about what you were 
 saying to that man we saw at the play in London. You knew, 
 when we were on our way back to your mother's in the carriage, 
 that you had not forgotten a word he said to you, nor a word 
 you said to him. You knew that your object was to conceal 
 from me that 5^ou — you ! — were his informant about old Car- 
 teret's disappearance, and you tried to make me believe — only 
 this morning — that he had the particulars from someone else." 
 He picked up the letter from where it lay on the toilet table; 
 and hurriedly, with a shaking hand, drew it from its envelope, 
 and held it towards her, showing the postscript. " Can you 
 show me now a single word in that postscript that you could 
 possibly have mistaken for the name of the school ? " 
 
 She ignored the challenge. Indeed, nothing could have been 
 more lio])elcss than an attempt to find in it any words that could 
 possibly have looked like " Vexton Stultifer." So hopeless was 
 any direct justification of the deceptions she had practised that 
 she had no choice but silence, or to raise a false issue. She chose 
 "the latter. " I wish you wouldn't put your filthy letter on the
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 477 
 
 clean damask table," said she, petulantly, but much as she might 
 have done had there been no issue between them. " How do 
 you know where it has been ? Where did that man find it ? " 
 
 A false air of being in the wrong went with the admission that 
 it had been in a drain-pipe, but Charles faced it courageously. 
 " I suppose it was an overflow pipe out of the lake," said he. 
 " He said something about a grille, I believe. A grille is a grat- 
 ing, I suppose? There's been nothing worse than scum on 
 it." 
 
 To head off a discussion about her personal veracity towards 
 an investigation into the flavour of a piece of soiled paper that 
 had been in very bad company, was a tactical triumph for Lucy. 
 It might have become a strategical one — that is to say, might 
 have voided the whole conversation — or at least thrown diffi- 
 culties in the way of its renewal — but for her husband's earnest- 
 ness. He was in no mood for so pitiful an evasion. When she 
 replied to his attempt to reinstate the letter in decent society : — 
 " Whatever it has had upon it, I do not want it on my table. 
 Please take it away. Take it out of the room — " he felt that 
 the difficulty of renewing the previous question would be multi- 
 plied tenfold if he complied. He cut the difficulty short by 
 picking up the soiled letter, lighting it with a cigar-match that 
 he took from his pocket, and laying it carefully on a patch of 
 safe fireproof floor beside the unemployed stove. He kept watch 
 upon it, not heeding her protests that he would burn down the 
 hotel, and so forth, until it was a cinder without a spark. Then 
 he flattened it with his foot to keep it still; for cinders fly. 
 But he did not speak at once, and his silence was more effective 
 than anything he could have said. Nothing was left of the 
 false issue she had raised, and she had no choice between facing 
 his accusation and leaving it altogether unanswered. 
 
 " Perhaps now," she said, " you will tell me the meaning of all 
 this." The interlude of the burnt letter had furnished her with 
 a plea — though an entirely spurious one — for the implication 
 that she at least had nothing to fear from the truth, and that it 
 was he that was shrinking from its disclosure, though ready to 
 make insinuations about its nature. 
 
 He passed by the suggestion, as unworthy of comment. 
 
 " Lucy," said he, " listen to me ! If you wish it, I will be 
 silent; I will not say a word of your disregard of my wish that 
 Dr. Carteret's disappearance should not be talked about. Call 
 it a misunderstanding — call it what you will ! It was a matter 
 of small importance — ^less than I thought it at the time — more 
 
 31
 
 478 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 a deference to a feeling of Fred's than because I judged it 
 necessary. But why — but why . . . ? " 
 
 She was so anxious to cross the golden bridge his chivalry had 
 built for her that she interrupted him. " You may well call it 
 a matter of small importance. Why — what difference did it 
 make? Besides, you should have made it clearer that it was a 
 state secret. For my part I naturally thought the more publicity 
 the better, if the old gentleman was to be hunted up . . ." 
 
 " It was not a state secret, but I should not have spoken of 
 it to you if I had not thought it would be . . ." He stopped 
 short and changed the words he meant to use, to get something 
 that would slur over her offence, . . . " if I had not thought 
 I could make my wishes clear ..." 
 
 She struck in again, to keep touch with an accusation more 
 easy to defend herself against than an indictment for her subse- 
 quent evasion and falsehood. " You admit then that it wasn't 
 a hanging matter — why do you rake it up now ? You might at 
 least have waited until we were back in England, and not spoiled 
 our holiday with horrors — all that dreadful story of Dr. Car- 
 teret's disappearance. Oh dear ! — are we never to be allowed 
 to forget it ? " 
 
 He raised his voice a little, impatiently. " It is not necessary 
 that we should speak of it. Let us keep to the point. You 
 knew the contents of that letter I have just burned. You tried 
 to conceal the postscript, which I had not read, by throwing it 
 in the water. You tried then to mislead me about it, by pre- 
 tending it contained a reference to Dr. Carteret's school. ..." 
 
 Lucy Avas a fool here. For she thought to find shelter behind 
 the fact of the destruction of the letter. " Who is to know 
 that ? " said she. " \\liv did vou burn the letter ? Did I ask 
 you to burn it ? " 
 
 " I know it," said Charles, quietly, " and that is enough. No 
 one else will ever know it — would ever have known it, from me. 
 But that does not alter the fact that you, Lucy — you, whom I 
 believed in — you, whom I loved and trusted ..." 
 
 " Please no rhapsodies ! " 
 
 " Very well ! " He was silent a moment, as his earnestness 
 recoiled before the half-sneer of her words. For he had not 
 expected cynicism, or bravado, and this was very near to both. 
 It was but a moment, and then he resumed, even more quietly 
 than before : — " That does not alter the fact that you have been 
 scheming to keep me in the dark — that you have been able to 
 look me in the face with a perversion of truth on your lips . . ."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 479 
 
 " Why not say a lie at once, and have done with it ? " 
 
 He could neither accept the word, nov repudiate it. So he 
 ignored her question, and continued : — " As you did on your 
 way home in the carriage, that night of the play. You had 
 completely forgotten every word this Mr. McMurrough said. 
 Was not that it ? " 
 
 " It suited me to forget it, and I succeeded in doing so. I 
 think that ought to be enough." 
 
 " You tried to remember what words he could possibly have 
 used, that could have resembled what I overheard. Was 
 that so ? " 
 
 " Just as you please ! Why do you keep on at me ? Do you 
 expect me to go down on my knees, and do penance? Do you 
 expect me to cry and be frightened ? Or what ? ^' 
 
 The more she evaded any real answer to his accusation, the 
 more determined he seemed to become to force her to look 
 the position seriously in the face. " Dearest," — said he — and the 
 tone of his voice showed how he still clung to his love for her — 
 " I expect nothing of you except your help. I ask you to help 
 me to forgive the wrong you have done me — for it was a great 
 wrong to practise deception on me, to try to keep me in the 
 dark. What had I done to deserve such treatment at your 
 hands? But I should not better matters by helping to hush 
 it up — by a false pretence that no such thing had ever happened. 
 That would only have been mutual consent to more deception 
 in the future ..." 
 
 She cut him short with : — " I quite agree. But what do you 
 want noiv? That's what I want to get at." She had chosen her 
 line of defence. It was to be that he was fanciful, suspicious, 
 neurotic — a capital word to pooh-pooh with, that! — and that 
 she, on the other hand, was all straightforward common sense, 
 whose scorn of sentimentalism did not the least imply the ab- 
 sence of sterling qualities, whatever they are. She added, the 
 moment she saw that he was opening his lips to speak : — " Per- 
 haps you will have the goodness to tell me ? " 
 
 He changed what he was going to say to : — " Yes — I will tell 
 you." Then continued : — " It is impossible for us — for either 
 of us — to pretend that what we know has happened has not 
 happened. God knows how gladly I would join, for my part, 
 in such a mutual deception, if anything could make it pos- 
 sible. ... Do not be afraid — ^I am not going back on the 
 story. You know my knowledge of it now^ and that is enough 
 for me." She may have felt a disposition to quarrel with this.
 
 480 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 but discretion had the best of it, and she was silent. He con- 
 tinued : — " I will not be what you call rhapsodical, since it dis- 
 pleases you. But oh, if you knew how my heart aches that 
 there should be no secrets between us, that I should be able to 
 look you in the face and fear no concealment — nothing in 
 ambush behind it ! " He moved uneasily about the room, and 
 twice began to speak, and stopped, as though at a loss for words 
 to say something he had left unsaid. Then he seemed to see 
 his way, and began abruptly : — " I cannot tell you how much 
 happier I should feel if . . ." and was brought up sharp by 
 some obstacle inherent in the limitations of language. 
 
 She said, more to herself than to him : — " I know, precisely ! " 
 and the manner of her speech said : — " I could have told you all 
 this. It is no more than I expected." 
 
 He said, enquiringly, as one who may not have heard aright : — 
 " You — a — know . . . ? " and waited. 
 
 " Yes — how much happier you would feel if I were to say 
 I was sorry, and would not do so any more. Isn't that it ? " 
 
 He answered gravely, sadly : — " That is not exactly what I 
 meant. Let us talk no more about it." And was silent. The 
 fact was, that a tone of semi-derision, which might have sat on 
 a schoolgirl brought to book for a trivial fib, seemed to him out 
 of place in a mature v/oman, a wife and mother, convicted of 
 more tlian one direct falsehood ; told, or acted, to keep him, her 
 husband, in the dark. He had not asked for artificial penitence, 
 but the entire absence of an}i;hing like remorse on her part 
 whom he had made an idol of, had credited with every virtue, 
 was a greater shock to him than angry resistance would have 
 been. It put his idol in a new light. 
 
 What was so painful to him was that he had to fight against 
 a suspicion that this attitude of hers showed the depth, or 
 shallowness, of her love for him. Did she care about retaining 
 his. at all? Indeed, had she done so, a false version of her 
 motives would have been easy, that would have seemed all- 
 sufficient to a man so ready to be deceived. Wliat more plausible 
 than that she had merely misunderstood at first the importance 
 he attached to her secrecy about Dr. Carteret; but that, finding it 
 out later, she had been driven to deception by terror lest he 
 should be turned against her on discovering her untrustworthi- 
 ness? Where is the man that would not have forgiven a more 
 serious offence in a wife whose plea of guilty was extenuated 
 by such a motive as the desire to retain his love? Charles may 
 not have formulated such a defence for Lucy, but he certainly f
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 481 
 
 felt keenly that the half-mocking, half-defiant spirit she had 
 shown was inconsistent with his idea of a wife's love for her 
 husband — a love that had to last through their joint lives at 
 least. 
 
 All the chivalry of his devotion to her had clung to the idea 
 that, with her help, and on that condition only, the opening of a 
 gulf between them — one that might never close — would be 
 avoided. And her help had not been forthcoming. 
 
 The way that she answered his suggestion that they should 
 talk no more about it had no help in it either. She only said, 
 coldly : — " I do not desire any further conversation on the sub- 
 ject." He did not answer, nor speak to her again except to get 
 her assent to his switching off the electric light. On doing so he 
 said good-night in a disheartened sort of way, and she responded 
 formally. Those two good-nights were the last words that passed 
 between them. 
 
 I ■
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 As he lay there in the dark, chafing at his own bitter thoughts, 
 gradually becoming aware of the full meaning, to him, of the 
 worst disappointment he had ever experienced, Charles was still 
 so tenderly thoughtful for the comfort of the woman who re- 
 mained in spite of all — so it seemed to him — unchangeably his 
 own, the sharer of all joy and sorrow in his days to come, that 
 he was actually glad of the deep breaths that he listened for and 
 so soon heard, coming from the curtained bed in the alcove at 
 the far end of the room. Why should she be miserable because 
 he was? 
 
 Rather, if anything, it tended to reinstate her in her old posi- 
 tion of his heart's unquestioned Queen, that she should show a 
 strange insensibility to what seemed to him the enormity of her 
 behaviour. It was a certain childishness — so he reasoned with 
 himself — a simplicity of character of which later in life she 
 would recognise the perversity. Had he not himself seen — or at 
 any rate could he not remember when he tried, as presently he 
 might? — cases of children who combined entire sweetness of 
 disposition with a curious unconsciousness of obligation to truth 
 and falsehood ? — Well — he had heard of such cases, anyhow ! 
 
 Besides, we could not expect to eat our cake and have it too. 
 Look how odious some perfectly truthful people were. He pro- 
 ceeded to credit a large class of his species with odiousness, on 
 the strength of their combination of physical shortcomings with 
 vulgar veracity. He wasn't thinking of Elbows Eraser; though 
 as a matter of fact her exorbitant truthfulness did seem to be- 
 long, as it were, to — suppose we say? — very moderate feminine 
 charms. He was not thinking of her, because of her attachment 
 to Charles the Third. Oh dear no, if only Lucy . . . ! 
 
 However, that was idiosyncrasy — a freak of Xature. It was 
 impossible to account for these things. Moreover, Charles the 
 Third was almost irresistible now, and would become more so 
 when he was — suppose we say — a little more conventional on 
 certain points of social demeanour. Lucy had expected too 
 much in the way of delicacy from a character who was, after 
 all, the merest rudiment. His own indifference on these points 
 he traced to the natural coarseness of his own fibre. But he 
 
 483
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 483 
 
 hoped his offspring would not presume on tlie existence of a 
 similar insensibility in his lady friend, which might have its 
 limits, although his wife had testified of her: — "Nancy doesn't 
 mind babies, and I do. People are different." Perhaps Elbows 
 was a freak of Nature too — a counterpart. 
 
 He felt Fred's absence keenly. When one has for years car- 
 ried all one's troubles to a chosen friend, to lighten them by 
 turning them this way and that, in confidential council ; and 
 then finds oneself cruelly face-to-face with some formidable 
 trouble in that friend's absence, one learns what it means to 
 be thrown on one's own resources, and very often is disgusted 
 to find how scanty they are. Charles was far from satisfied wdth 
 his stock, in this emergency. It would have been so consolatory 
 to him to look forward to an analysis of the whole position to- 
 morrow with Fred, an undisguised condemnation — this is what 
 he would have liked best — of his own conduct by his friend, and 
 an unhesitating espousal by him of the case of his wife. He 
 wanted to be, as it were, forced into a minority against his 
 own judgment, in order that she, spotless in his eyes till now, 
 should be w^ashed clean of the stain of falsehood that he could 
 not shut his eyes to unassisted. How willingly he would have 
 eaten humble pie to the end of her reinstatement ! But he was 
 powerless before the evidence that she had more than once — 
 more than thrice, for that matter — lied black white to hide her 
 own unfaith from him. He could not whitewash her, try how 
 he might. But he would have caught gladly at the absolution 
 of any other priest to get an excuse for his own; or, sa}', wel- 
 comed a verdict of not guilty in any other court to justify a 
 condonation of the offence in his. 
 
 Was his mind only reciting a commonplace of human thought, 
 in thus condemning a sin against himself by a woman who still 
 held him spellbound in spite of all? Why could he not let his 
 heart release his speech, as it yearned to do, and leave him free 
 to say : — " I love — love — love you ! What is my love worth if it 
 does not give me the right of forgiveness, plenary and uncondi- 
 tional ? " Was it not a mere convention of human theology, that 
 reserves this right of complete forgiveness for a Supreme Being, 
 who might quite excusably summon before Him all the Con- 
 sistories of all the Cathedrals, all the Preachers and all the 
 Prophets, and say to them : — " Am I to be twitted with my 
 Omnipotence by the whole caboodle of you every Sunday, and 
 not allowed to let off Sinners at pleasure without a Sacrificial 
 Atonement and no end of fussy complications?"
 
 484 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Yes — a convention, if jou choose to call it so. But what 
 check would there be on persons with a natural turn for crime, 
 if indulgence of their tastes always ended in a let-off? If the 
 Commissioners discharged all bankrupts on principle, without 
 an undertaking to pay anything in the pound, how long would 
 any of us remain solvent? But at this point in his reflections 
 Charles felt that he was drivelling — which had not occurred to 
 him when he was involved in his Higher Metaphysic about the 
 Almight}' — seeing that there was no sort of parallelism between 
 the cases. This culprit had no natural turn for falsehood. On 
 the contrary she was intrinsically truthful — did he not know her 
 soul at home, as it were? Was she not his Wife, with a capital? 
 In her, it was no vulgar disposition towards fibs, but a puzzling 
 individuality, to be regarded as Laputa's Royal Society regarded 
 Gulliver, as relplum scalcath. It was a thing that occurs once 
 in a lifetime, by an inexplicable accident . . . and so on. 
 
 So on for full four hours, by the counted clocks. So on with 
 dry eyes — too dry — and a burning palate, hand-palms on fire, 
 every movement painfully in check lest he should spoil her sleep, 
 behind those curtains. Then a sudden change, and drowsiness. 
 It just left him time to thank God — more respectfully this time 
 — that she was still behind tlrem there, and would be there when 
 daylight came, and then — oblivion. 
 
 He overslept himself, of course. But not unreasonably. For 
 a clock which he expected to stop at the seventh stroke only 
 went on to the ninth. He started into wakefulness at the eighth, 
 so suddenly that he had sounded his electric button one time 
 for the femme-de-cliamhre, before he knew how late he was. 
 Also, before he looked at the still-closed curtains of the other 
 bed. She was sleeping sound, no doubt of that ! But he would 
 not wake her. Not yet, at any rate ! Let her have her sleep 
 out. 
 
 To that end he rose furtively, and explained to the femme-de- 
 cliamhre, when she came, that he had sounded for show. She 
 guessed : — " De I'eau chaude ? " and guessed right. He felt that 
 his French was coming back to him — that was how he put it — 
 and he ventured still further, saying : — " Ne f aites pas un bruit 
 pour disturber Madame." Fifine the maid heard that he spoke 
 of Madame, but was uncertain what he had said about her. She 
 said : — " Madame est sortie deux heures passees," and he did not 
 understand her in the least; in fact, considered she was rather a 
 stupid Fifine.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 485 
 
 But although the sound of her words remained on his ears, 
 i^specially that word " sortie," it was not until a growing wake- 
 fulness brought his attention to one or two things that struck 
 him as abnormal in the apartment that it occurred to him to 
 assign a meaning to them. " That young woman never meant 
 that Lucy had gone out ! " was what he said to himself, all but 
 the mere articulation of it. For one of the abnormalities was 
 the disappearance of sundry articles of wearing apparel, notably 
 the hat and overmantle she had travelled in, from the pegs they 
 had hung on — he remembered them — the night before. Yes — 
 surely he remembered them, the very last things that caught his 
 eye when he switched the light off ! 
 
 Still, she never could have got up and gone out without his 
 hearing her. And what of the solid, unmoved look of those 
 substantial curtains on the bed? 
 
 Till now, he had been managing to dress in studied silence — 
 had washed himself with no more noise than a cat. Xow, he 
 tried a slight noise or two — indulged the gurgle of a water- 
 decanter, dropped a slipper, opened and shut his cigar-case — 
 such sounds as might legitimately hasten awakening at the end 
 of a long sleep. Xo results ! ISTot a movement in response. 
 And those curtains might have been granite, for any stir in 
 them he could detect. 
 
 . He began to be less certain about the occupancy of the bed 
 behind them. Still, he owed it to his previous convictions to 
 handle the subject discreetly. He pulled the curtains an inch 
 apart, and saw in an instant that they had been replaced care- 
 fully by the departing occupant, who had even been at the 
 trouble of accommodating the bedclothes. She had got up and 
 gone out, evidentlv, as the chambermaid had probably said. . . . 
 Well— what of that? 
 
 That was all right. He would find her downstairs in the salle- 
 (i-manger. Probably she had breakfasted by herself, after a walk 
 in the glorious weather, and would be sitting on at the table, 
 waiting for him. Eather that, than that she should have de- 
 parted into the salon-de-lecture, or elsewhere. Her prolonged 
 stay at table would look more like peace and reconciliation than 
 any move to another anchorage, which would involve his break- 
 fasting alone. 
 
 Still, he had doubts enough on the point to make a parade of 
 his confidence desirable, in its own interest. Here was a delivery 
 of letters, Just come in, at the Bureau. He would wait to see
 
 486 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 what there was for her, and take it to her. He was in no hurry, 
 and it would be an olive-branch. 
 
 He would also, to emphasize his confidence, open and pretend 
 to read one of his own letters. He did so, and read it slowly, 
 deliberately, all the length of the salon, until he arrived at the 
 recess in which they had welcomed yesterday's morning roll and 
 coffee. Then he looked up, and found her place empty. 
 
 " I say ! . . . What the dickens . . . ? " He asked him- 
 self the question, but the waiter answered it. Madame had sortie 
 de bonne heure, tres tot. She had commandee du cafe-au-lait et 
 deux oeufs a la coque, and had gone away it was more than an 
 hour since. Of course this was all in French. 
 
 The same officer was seated at the same table, smoking to all 
 appearance the same cigar. He came to the rescue, addressing 
 the gar(^on, who stood holding Charles's chair as if it was a horse 
 he would mount shortly — and a spirited one who needed restraint. 
 This officer spoke English fluently, with a sKght foreign accent. 
 " Your vayeef bass gone ayvay," he said, " out off doorce. I 
 see her go mayee-self ." He tapped his breastbone to show whom 
 he was referring to. " She told the dryvair ' a la gare.' I see 
 'eem drife ayvay, kveek." 
 
 " My God ! " Charles felt as though he had had a blow on 
 the head, and the room went round. He was not aware that he 
 staggered, but guessed it when the officer put his cigar suddenly 
 but carefully on a plate with half-a-franc on it, and came across 
 to guide him into the chair the garc:on continued to offer. He 
 was a gargon uninterested in the life-dramas of the hotel's guests, 
 except in so far as they affected his emoluments. 
 
 "Cognac — p'tit verre ! Yite!" So said that officer to him, 
 and he hastened away to obtain the brandy. But Charles had 
 pulled himself together by the time he returned with it, and was 
 concocting an explanation of his volcanic demeanour, inter- 
 spersed with gratitude for the interest his military friend had 
 been so prompt with. As the latter was quite ready to accept 
 any explanation, whether he understood it or not, there were 
 advantages of a sort in Charles's being almost unintelligible to 
 him. Probably '' misunderstanding " was the only word of 
 which he took in the meaning. But he was very proud of his 
 English speech, and the way he understood the language. He 
 was a good-natured sort of fellow. 
 
 Charles made Jules the gargon a present of the cognac, and 
 collected his scattered faculties as best he could. He saw dimly 
 that the best course open to him would be to swallow his break-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 487 
 
 fast, however much it choked him. But first he must make sure 
 that he could not overtake her at the Gare du Nord. For he 
 was convinced at once that she had left him to return to Eng- 
 land. Where else could she possibly go? 
 
 He went to the Bureau to learn the times of the trains, not 
 feeling equal to an interpretation of a Continental Bradshaw, 
 but first enquired — though not hopefully — about his wife's de- 
 parture. The presiding Goddess at the Bureau was very unsym- 
 pathetic, but testified that the lady had certainly appeared shortly 
 after seven o'clock^ having descendue her tres pen de baggage, un 
 petit coli comme qa, de ses propres mains. She had desired a 
 fiacre, but her instructions as to her destination had not been 
 overheard — or rather, there were almost as many testimonies as 
 terminuses in Paris, no two alike. Then, asked Charles, what 
 time was the tidal train for Calais? Eight o'clock apparently. 
 That was it, clearly. She had made for the earliest departure 
 for London. 
 
 The next train was many hours later — well on in the after- 
 noon. There was nothing for it but to saunter about Paris, 
 chafing, counting the fruitless minutes as they passed, wonder- 
 ing at the innumerable advertisements of bitters and laxatives 
 that covered in every spare wall and hoarding. Why did so many 
 young ladies of startling — very startling — beauty take such an 
 interest in the removal of their compatriots' obstructions? He 
 got through a good deal of time going up the river to Vincennes 
 in one crowded boat, and down the river to Auteuil in another. 
 He cared for nothing but getting through the time, and he got 
 through a long morning. Then he returned to lunch at the hotel, 
 to pay his bill and finish his packing. After that there was only 
 an hour to get through before starting for the Nord. He would 
 feel himself again when he was fairly on his way to London. 
 Till then, he had to bear the delay, and he bore it. 
 
 The weight on his soul grew less as he approached the station ; 
 still less as he booked his luggage, and hers which she had left 
 behind; but it was not until the train really began to move, and 
 the clanks of dissevered rails at intersections were approaching 
 from the engine and dying away, each after its climax, towards 
 a last guard's van. Heaven knows how far off, that ho felt his 
 identity to the full, and settled down to an evening paper. 
 Only ten hours now at most, including his journey to Wimble- 
 don ! Or — stop a minute! — why Wimbledon? Because, a thou- 
 sand to one she had gone to her mother's ! Of course he would 
 find her there. A young woman who leaves her husband in a
 
 488 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 fit of pique naturally goes home. Her love for her mother may- 
 have been lukewarm, in a daughter, but she was her daughter, 
 for all that. And no one has more than one mother. Yes — 
 she would be in Devonshire Place, sure enough! Say, twenty 
 minutes from Charing Cross. He would leave his luggage at 
 the Customs, and go on, straight. 
 
 He had quite made up his mind what his attitude should be. 
 Peccavi — culpa mea ! — that was to be the upshot of his pleading. 
 He had done his part as the' champion of Truthfulness — had 
 spoiled her holiday and driven her away over the dark Channel 
 alone. Well — at any rate she must have had a beautiful passage ; 
 that was one comfort ! This wind, that was keen to flatten out 
 the osier beds in the drained marshlands out yonder, only rose 
 after we left Paris. A northwester of this sort might mean a 
 two-hours passage, turbines or no ! 
 
 Calais pier and the usual pretences on the part of the stagger- 
 ing throng that has to get across the gangway and secure a sofa 
 in the cabin, or failing that, a chair in a sheltered corner. A 
 throng that encourages itself with a delusion that this wind is 
 endemic — always does blow at the mouth of this harbour. It 
 will be a lot better, your informant can testify from past experi- 
 ence, when we get fairly out to sea. Has he not known Calais 
 harbour from early boyhood? 
 
 Then disillusionment, and general surrender to despair ! The 
 turbines that were going to drive the ship arrow-straight ahead, 
 through billows mast liigh if obtainable, seem deterfliined to 
 disappoint their backers. Stewards — the converse of those at 
 public dinners — rush about with armloads of empty vessels and 
 sixpennyworths of brandy. The stewardess has too much to do, 
 and can't do it. But this will rather increase her salary, so she 
 is resigned. Then your ticket, please; and we shall be in in 
 ten minutes now. Are we very late? Well, we ought to be in 
 by now — that's about all it comes to ! 
 
 Then a hush, and a sudden alacrity to be among the first to 
 scramble up the gangway. Then the train — in Charles's case 
 the first cargo dispatched — and an English evening paper to 
 bring him up to date. Then, gliding through darkness with a 
 preposterous feeling of surprise that everything here is so in- 
 tensely the same as when he left it less than a week ago. 
 
 What did he care how near midnight he rang up the immacu- 
 late butler at Devonshire Place? Or indeed his august mother- 
 in-law herself? Lucy was there, and he wanted to eat that 
 humble pie and get it over. All would be well, and they would
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 489 
 
 enjoy the holiday yet that he had been looking forward to. 
 What was it, after all, but a double journey for both of them? 
 And by good luck she had escaped the dusting he had just had, 
 on the Channel boat. For an amphibious person on the pier 
 had said to him, in response to an enquiry : — " You should have 
 been a bit smarter and caught the morning boat, if you wanted 
 a smooth run. Just your sort of water it was. Likewise, if 
 you wanted a bad passage, you might have had that, in an hour 
 or so. Because it's just as like as not to turn stormy." Charles 
 shuddered to think what this person's sort of water Avas. 
 
 A little scheme ran in his head how he and Lucy, friends 
 again after reconciliation — better friends than before, for that 
 matter — would celebrate the occasion by a little diner-de-noces, 
 like the people in that play. Only last night — oh, think of it ! 
 That scheme made a halt in Oxford Circus, due to a traffic block 
 unexplained, quite endurable, and did not end because the cab- 
 man turned round and went through Hanover Square. But it 
 lapsed under exasperation at the length of Wimpole Street; an 
 unchangeable affliction which mere measurement does not 
 lighten the burden of, in spite of the nature of Magnitude. 
 
 But it ended, and here we were at last ! He did not dismiss 
 his cab; for, though she was sure to be here — where else could 
 she be? — he was not going to intrude on his mother-in-law's 
 hospitality. He would go on to the diggings and astonish Mrs. 
 Gam when she came in the morning. 
 
 He decided that a generous, outspoken knock would herald 
 him best — would forecast the import of his mission to Lucy. 
 He could hear sounds within of a deliberate butler coming up 
 from the kitchen; and in his footsteps, each one of which was 
 grudged as unnecessary, that butler's conviction that he was a 
 Mistake. Why the devil could not that old fool be a little 
 quicker ? Even if he was ever so much convinced that that knock 
 had come to the wrong door, he would have to open it in the 
 end. 
 
 No shooting back of bolts or unslotting of chains on the other 
 side of that door ! Someone was coming home late, with or 
 without a latchkey. It could only be Mrs. Hinchliffe herself. 
 Ten to one he would find his wife alone, because she could 
 scarcely have accompanied her mother, who never went out 
 except to dinner, and could not bring an uninvited guest. So 
 much the better ! 
 
 The demeanour of Mr. Peterfield was dictated by what was 
 due to his position on the one hand, and by unqualified aston-
 
 490 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 ishment on the other. The two dictations clashed, as no well- 
 constituted butler ever shows surprise — it is a human weakness. 
 Had he given way to his, Charles's expectation of finding his 
 wife at her mother's would have been cut short on the doorstep. 
 As it was^ the mere fact that Mr. Peterfield's reply to his 
 enquiry : — " When did Mrs. Snaith come ? What o'clock, I 
 mean ? " was caught by a gasp, did nothing to shake his deeply 
 rooted certainty that the young lady had arrived, and was in the 
 house. It had still such hold over him that he could repeat : — 
 '' What o'clock ? When did she come ? " with scarcely a trace 
 of missivino; in his own voice. 
 
 Mr. Peterfield overcame the gasp, and spoke. " I ask your 
 pardon. Sir," said he, " but did I understand you to sav Mrs. 
 . . . Mrs. . . .?" 
 
 " Mrs. Snaith, I said. Who the devil should I say but Mrs. 
 Snaith ? " Charles shouted impatiently, but his voice fell to 
 say : — " Do you mean that she isn't here ? Where is her 
 motlier . . . ? When do you expect her in ? Mrs. Hinchliff e 
 — your mistress, I mean. Where is she ? " For Charles had 
 inferred from surroundings that his mother-in-law Avas dining 
 out. The butler looked at his watch. Mrs. Hinchliffe might 
 come any minute, — was late, in fact. " Then where is Mrs. 
 Snaith ? ^^^len did she come ? " Charles repeated the question 
 with a voice again raised. 
 
 " Would you excuse me just one moment. Sir ? " The butler, 
 confronted with so trenchant a tone of doubt on a point of what 
 was to him certainty, got away to the kitchen stairtop, and 
 sought confirmation from the cook. He came back from a col- 
 loquy fortified, and prepared to deny Mrs. Charles Snaith, at 
 all hazards. " I would not have spoke positive, myself, Sir. 
 But Jlrs. Branch is not likely to be mistook. Mrs. Snaith has 
 not been here, and we certainly was under the impression she was 
 in Paris, Mrs. Branch and myself." 
 
 " She must have been here, I tell you," Charles almost shouted. 
 It seemed too incredible that she should never have been to the 
 house, although possible that she had gone home afterwards. 
 Mr. Peterfield looked like a butler who knew it would be bad 
 form to contradict his betters, and was correctly silent. Mrs. 
 Branch, an old lady whose resources in clean frills and aprons 
 seemed inexhaustible, testified from the top of the kitchen stairs, 
 as one who really had no claims to be heard above the basement. 
 '" I think you will find Thomas is right. Sir. It would have been 
 mentioned to me if Miss Lucv had been here." For Mrs.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 491 
 
 Branch ignored on principle that that young lady had changed 
 her name. It was an assertion of her footing in the family. 
 
 Charles did not quarrel with this. He even accepted her 
 conservatism, repeating the name after her without inverted 
 commas. " Miss Lucy left me in Paris this morning to come to 
 London. She ought to be here. I thought I should find her 
 here." He passed into the house for nearer speech. " Are you 
 absolutely certain she has never been? " To which Mrs. Branch, 
 always looking beyond him for sanction and confirmation from 
 the butler, as a higher authority, replied : — " There could no one 
 come to the house without Mr. Peterfield knowing, or me." 
 
 Charles was discouraged, and bewildered. The idea had pos- 
 session of him that his wife never would run away from him to 
 go back to their own home, and had left his imagination no 
 resource but to picture her at her mother's. Not finding her 
 there, how could he think of her otherwise than as at The Cedars ? 
 — there was no other possible place. And apart from the diffi- 
 culty of following her now — for a cab all the way was the only 
 chance now, at near midnight — a hundred irreconcilables started 
 up full-armed to be dealt with. The only idea that crossed his 
 mind was that possibly — only was not this too good to be true ? — 
 that inexplicable callousness towards their son and heir had sud- 
 denly vanished, mysteriously expelled by the excitement of her 
 resentment against his father. 
 
 A very slight chance of a very big boon is a palliative. Panic 
 must hold her hand as long as one can caress the idea that all 
 this seeming disaster is a blessing in disguise. Charles was 
 reassured too by the butler's calmness. 
 
 He settled down to a proffered Times sheet, with an option of 
 a Graphic in reserve. But he was only affecting an interest in 
 their contents, not to fall short of Mr. Peterfield's philosophic 
 calm. He would take nothing after his journey — he was sure of 
 that, in spite of Mr. Peterfield's confidence that he could offer 
 him anything — everything. He sent the cabman's fare out, de- 
 ciding that he would walk to the diggings — could get another 
 cab anyhow if his valise was too heavy to carry. He only caught 
 six words, or perhaps seven, of the chat between the cabby and 
 the butler — not a dispute about the fare, for it was like Caesar's 
 wife — but probably about the general situation. For the six 
 words were : — " I could have told him that," and the doubtful 
 seventh was Cl-cch! It is a word? 
 
 Mr. Peterfield returned with news of his mistress. He was 
 pretty sure that was our carriage just come into the street. His
 
 492 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 confidence in the length of Wimpole Street allowed him to bring 
 this fact upstairs without misgiving about getting back in time 
 for the knock, which was de rigueur. It would not have been at 
 all correct for him to wait and watch, like Mrs. Bluebeard for 
 her brothers. 
 
 " Oh — Charles ! . . . AAHiat's this nonsense about Lucy ? 
 She's in Paris." This excellent lady was disposed to be intol- 
 erant towards actual facts, when they ran counter to her pre- 
 determination of them. 
 
 " She's nothing of the sort," said Charles. " She's in London, 
 somewhere. Unless " — dropping his voice — " something's hap- 
 pened." 
 
 Mrs. Hinchliffe was taken aback. Or possibly her breath had 
 been affected by the stairs. She fell back in an armchair. 
 
 " What silliness ! " said she. " As if anything could have 
 happened ! " 
 
 Charles felt it would be as well to get his tale told. He passed 
 by what amounted to a claim that Mrs. Hinehliffe's belongings 
 were immune from human mischances, and continued : — " Lney 
 came away from Paris this morning . . . without consulting 
 me ..." 
 
 " Without consulting you ? What does that mean ? " 
 
 " And ought to have arrived in London . . . Well — by six 
 o'clock at the latest. 1 expected to find her here." 
 
 " And why did you expect to find her here ? " 
 
 " Because nothing would be ready for her at home. But she 
 must have gone there, 1 suppose." 
 
 Mrs. Hinehliffe's most active quality was torpor — if it is a 
 quality, and can ever be an active one — and her whole soul would 
 rise to resist any inroad upon it. Now, a son-in-law who rushed 
 into her house at midnight expecting to find his wife there was 
 clearly an inroad on her torpor. She caught at his supposition 
 that his wife must be at home in order that his departure thither 
 should be as prompt as possible. " I suppose she has gone there," 
 said she. And shut in a yawn with five fingers and several 
 diamonds in a way that added : — " Hadn't you better follow 
 her?" 
 
 Charles recognised the force of the yawn by saying : — " And I 
 suppose I had better go too " — and rose to do so. He had ex- 
 pected a more sympathetic interest, and was disappointed. How- 
 ever, he was getting to know this mother-in-law of his.' He could 
 soften the position — make its angles less abrupt, so to speak — 
 by looking at his watch, and did so. " Gracious bless us ! " said
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 493 
 
 he. " I had no idea it was so late." And held out his hand, 
 good-night-wards. " I'll send you a card," said he, imputing an 
 interest in her daughter to this lady; indeed, he felt her stoni- 
 ness rather an embarrassment. 
 
 " Oh yes — do by all means ! " said the stony one. " But no 
 doubt she's all right." 
 
 Charles was going — going — but not gone, when a slight stir- 
 ring in the dry bones of her apathy made Mrs. Hinchliffe say : — 
 " I suppose I'm not to be told anything ? " The suggestion that 
 she was being kept out in the cold was unwarrantable. But 
 Charles forgave it. He was too glad to get anyone to talk to 
 about the situation, on any terms, to be drawing fine distinctions. 
 
 He decided, after a moment's reflection, on : — " You see — the 
 fact is — we had had a misunderstanding." 
 
 " A misunderstanding ! " Mrs. Hinchliffe's sudden look at 
 him as she repeated his words said plainly : — " Oh ho ! — this is 
 interesting. Tell more ! " 
 
 He resumed the chair he had left, and started on a complete 
 explanation, from the beginning, of Lucy's rash disclosure of 
 the particulars of Dr. Carteret's disappearance, and of her sub- 
 sequent silence — that was how he put it — about the newspaper- 
 man to whom she had disclosed them. He was humbly apolo- 
 getic for his own part in the matter, ascribing to himself a 
 most reprehensible impatience and hastiness of temper. This 
 may have been partly due to the fact that, as things stood, it 
 was impossible to be sure that something had not happened. 
 How often one notes a growing leniency towards the failings of a 
 person who may be in pieces, or — as Mr. Mantalini said — a demd 
 damp unpleasant body ! We earn the good opinion of our fel- 
 low-creatures by Death, especially when it makes short work of 
 us, and we have had the misfortune to be caught napping by 
 Azrael. 
 
 He did not observe — his preoccupation perhaps made him 
 unobservant — that his mother-in-law's aroused interest seemed to 
 die down mysteriously in the course of his narrative. It seemed 
 to subside as he disclosed the bone of contention between her 
 daughter and himself. A mere suppressio veri; scarcely a fib, 
 certainly not a lie ! Eidiculous to fall out over a thing like that. 
 He had a sense that his tale had somehow fallen flat — not that 
 his hearer had been expecting something juicier, and was dis- 
 appointed. Far from it! — in fact, he credited her maternal 
 solicitude with a sense of relief, which she may, or may not, have 
 experienced. 
 
 82
 
 494 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Is that all ? " said she, when he had finished. " Just a fit 
 of petulance. Well — we must hope you'll find her more reason- 
 able when yon get to Wimbledon. Dear me ! — as if I didn't know 
 Lucy." 
 
 Unless a man loves his mother-in-law — and Charles's love for 
 his was a very chilly one — he resents a superior maternal tone 
 towards his wife. He was not yet prepared to join chorus in a 
 patronising criticism of her weak points, Avhile he would have 
 welcomed any censure of his own impatience gratefully. So he 
 looked at his watch again ; a pure formality, as he knew. Time 
 had continued since he consulted it last, fifteen minutes ago. 
 And then he said good-night, and meant it^ so far as it was 
 simply a finality. As a wish for a fellow-creature's slumbers, 
 it was lukewarm. For he thought Mrs. Hinchliffe should have 
 shown more concern about her daughter's non-appearance. 
 
 He was not really seriously frightened about her himself, being 
 convinced he should find her all safe at The Cedars to-morrow. 
 But he felt bewildered at his transitions from place to place, and 
 at the odd turn events had taken, as he walked by short cuts, 
 known only to the confirmed Londoner, through intricate Soho, 
 by Lincoln's Inn to the Temple. Trymer's, that believed him 
 afar in foreign cities, ignored him on that account still more 
 forcibly than'it had done in his absence in broad daylight. Its 
 gloomy silence in that small hour of the morning oppressed him, 
 as he paused to think how he saw the last of Fred, waving fare- 
 well to him opposite the College of Surgeons. What malice of 
 Fortune had possessed her that she should spirit him away Just 
 at the time when he was most wanted? For who could have 
 calmed the troubled waters of his life — and Lucy's; it was to be 
 the same life — like Fred? However, he could write him a long 
 letter, begging him to write to Lucy; telling the whole story 
 without reserve; relying on him to pooh-pooh the offence of the 
 newspaper paragraph. He went a long way in forecasting the 
 words Fred would employ in speaking of it to Lucy — how that 
 he was sorry to hear that Charley had been making an ass of 
 himself about that premature announcement of his uncle's dis- 
 appearance. As if it mattered one straw when the thing came 
 to be known of ! She was to tell Charley to shut up, and keep 
 his legal views to himself till they were called for. Continuous 
 self-blame, as the source and origin of the whole business, would 
 be his until he was assured, from her lips or pen, that every 
 ripple the affair had raised on the calm waters of their married 
 lives had disappeared. This imaginary letter of Fred's went oa 
 
 I
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 495 
 
 to announce his return in a few days, he having already out- 
 stayed his most liberal estimate of a holiday. But he did not 
 expect to find them in London — hoped they would be climbing 
 Dolomites, or otherwise touristically employed. 
 
 He arrived at the diggings, and mounted its familiar prison- 
 stair, haunted by a painful consciousness of the dissimilarities of 
 Paris and London. His little den was in apple-pie order, and he 
 felt accordingly grateful to Mrs. Gam. But sheets on the bed 
 were not to be expected by a home-comer who was not expected 
 himself. No one lies down in blankets until he is so sleep rife 
 that he cannot lie awake in them. A rhinoceros might do so 
 cheerfully, not an ordinary thin-skinned human creature. 
 Charley sat down to write to his friend without a guess that 
 every word he wrote would have its sting. 
 
 Where did Fred suppose he was as he wrote ? — so ran his letter. 
 Postmarks and date apart, would he have guessed? However, 
 the date as he had written it above was written by an honest 
 Injun, and official stamps would be as illegible as usual on the 
 envelope to-morrow. Then reasons why, showing that Injun in 
 a most unfavourable light. He had behaved odiously to Lucy 
 in Paris, found fault with her, lectured her, nagged at her. 
 And what for, did Fred suppose? Nothing in the world but 
 that old story of the paragraph — Fred would remember all about 
 it — in the newspaper two years ago ! It seemed that he had 
 failed to impress his fiancee at the time with the confidential 
 character of his communication, and an impudent Irish editor 
 had wormed it out of her under solemn promises of secrecy. 
 Charley exaggerated grossly in favour of the culprit at this 
 point. In fact, his whole story — for he gave full details — took 
 Lucy's part against himself. 
 
 AVell — said his letter— what was the consequence? His atti- 
 tude of blame towards his wife could only have one result — that 
 of causing her intense annoyance, more particularly as — so he 
 suspected — she was probably quite unconscious of any blame- 
 worthiness in her conduct from the beginning. But she need 
 not — and this was his only serious indictment against her — she 
 need not have acted so hastily as she did. He then filled in 
 particulars of her flight — as he took for granted — to England, 
 and brou.ght his narrative up to the mom.ent of writing. His 
 letter reflected more credit on the chivalry of the writer than it 
 did on his truthfulness. 
 
 It ended : — " I shall go straight from here to The Cedars to- 
 morrow, and shall make the best amends I can for my unhus-
 
 496 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 bandly conduct. Now I want you, dear old boy, to do me a good 
 turn. There is no sense or reason in her making herself uncom- 
 fortable about that newspaper business. The thing luas my fault 
 from the beginning. So just you write her a long letter, wig- 
 ging me up hill and down dale^ and acquitting her without a stain 
 on her character. Twig? ^'
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 He went to bed as soon as he felt sure of sleep, and was not 
 disappointed. He woke next morning early, and remembered 
 that he had forgotten that he should want breakfast. Never 
 mind ! There was a place at the corner of Smith Street which 
 would be open early and he could get a cup of coffee there. 
 Could he? He had forgotten that he was not in Paris, but in 
 London. 
 
 A woebegone waiter, who was providing an even more woe- 
 begone customer, who looked as if he had passed the night in 
 the streets, with a pennyworth of milk and a slice of j-esterday's 
 bread, heard Charles's application for breakfast, and seemed to 
 doubt his hearing. " Did you say coffee ? " said he. Yes — that 
 had been Charles's very expression. " You'll have to w^ait," said 
 the woebegone waiter. Charles thought so too, to judge by 
 appearances ; and went to the buffet at Waterloo ; where, having 
 compounded for coffee by accepting chocolate, he got away to 
 Wimbledon, and finally by cab to The Cedars. His reflections 
 by the way on the differences between London and Paris were 
 uncomplimentary to the former. 
 
 Well — here he was at last! Now he should find Lucy, and 
 make it all up. And of course! — there was all her luggage at 
 Charing Cross. Nothing to be done but disinter it at the 
 Customs, and they could be off again, to catch the midday boat. 
 After all he was not sure he was not glad this had happened. 
 Better this way than that they should have gone on, with a buried 
 misunderstanding. Eather a heavy price to pay, though ! 
 
 It was Tom the gardener who came to the gate. It was a 
 settled policy with Tom to show no surprise at anything. 
 Charles found it convenient to forget that he had an imperturb- 
 able gardener, and put this parti-pris down to Tom's having been 
 forewarned by his mistress's coming the night before. 
 
 " Didn't expect to see us again so soon, Tom, eh ? " was ac- 
 cepted by Tom as a sufficient reason for not enquiring after 
 that lady. Any. satisfactory reason for silence, on any subject, 
 was welcome to him ; and Charles's speech could only mean that 
 his wife had stopped somewhere on the way — at her mother's, for 
 instance. Per contra, Tom's demeanour went to prove that she 
 
 497
 
 498 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 had already arrived, preparing him for his master's advent, later. 
 
 On which account Charles felt mightily at ease as he walked 
 up to the house, accompanied by Tom bearing his valise. For it 
 is an established law that though we may have carried our own 
 bag from Greenland's icy mountains, or across Ararat, it shall be 
 snatched from us at the dawn of a domestic — ours or any man's 
 else — who will unpack it in a bedroom forthwith if we don't 
 keep a tight hand on the key. Tom would not have done so, but 
 Anne would, who met them at the door. He would have sur- 
 rendered it in, silence, and fallen back on his wheelbarrow 
 straightway, but that the blank astonishment of Anne's face pro- 
 voked him to say : — " It's the master." Had he been loquacious, 
 he might have added : — " Not a spectre, though you seem to 
 think so ! " 
 
 Charles's thoughts were inside the house already, where he 
 saw Lucy, in anticipation; so he could not stop to analyse the 
 expression of a mere souhrette. He walked in and began pick- 
 ing up unforwarded letters. Something of importance might 
 have been overlooked. He was perfectly convinced, at that mo- 
 ment, that the next would bring him Lucy. 
 
 " Would you wish, Sir . . . ? " 
 
 " Eh — what ? Stop a minute ! . . . Would I wish what ? " 
 
 " Would you wish . . . Would you wish ..." Anne was 
 trying to discover some indirect way of obtaining a light on the 
 inexplicable. She ended up : — " Would you wish your room got 
 ready ? " 
 
 " Would I wish my room got ready ? " Charles left the ques- 
 tion for an answer as soon as he had wondered enough why 
 advertising dentists poured out their hearts so much for his 
 benefit. Then he picked it up. " j\Iy room got ready ? Of 
 course I wish my room got ready. Why shouldn't I ? " He 
 looked up, to see what he could make of this handmaiden, and 
 only saw that she seemed at a loss. But why ? " Is your mis- 
 tress in her room ? " then said Charles. 
 
 Anne faltered out : — " The mistress . . . the mistress . . . 
 is not here. Sir ! " And her voice was fraught with possibilities 
 of panic, kept in check by domestic obligation. 
 
 " But she is here — she must be here. Tom ! — Torn ! " He 
 called the gardener, who still remained within reach. " Didn't 
 you say you had seen Mrs. Snaith ? . . . Yes, just now ! " 
 
 For Tom, taken aback, had wavered. His reply of course was 
 an explanation, clear enough. He had merely taken Mrs. Snaith 
 for granted, as a probable sequel.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 499 
 
 "Who is here, then? Is Mrs. Gorhambury here? Who is 
 that going upstairs ? " Mrs. Gorhambury was laid up with lum- 
 bago. That was the young lady. What young lady? Why— 
 Mrs. Gorhambury's young lady, Miss Fraser. She had stopped 
 on from yesterday. Charles very nearly said :— " Elbows, I sup- 
 pose '' — but stopped in time, and said instead: — "Ask her to 
 come and speak to me." He thought that the sooner he went to 
 headquarters for information, the better. 
 
 Anne left him chafing, and went upstairs. Charles was at no' 
 loss to see what had happened. Mrs. Gorhambury had one of 
 her lumbago attacks; probably had written to Paris to say so, 
 only of course they couldn't have had the letter. Elbows had 
 come on her bike, as an intermittent visitor; and, finding the 
 nurse helpless — one knows what lumbago can do when it tries— 
 and the baby practically dependent on a nursemaid whom its 
 father called Tilly Slowboy, had volunteered a rescue, an-d wired 
 to her own family not to expect her till they saw her. It was all 
 very obvious, and really that girl was an awfully good-natured 
 girl. 
 
 She would come directly; so Anne reported. Afterwards, in 
 telling her sister the tale of Charles's unexpected home-coming, 
 she averred that she had all but said aloud :— " What, Nosey 
 back again ! " but had got the whiphand of her tongue in time. 
 However, when she made her appearance a moment later, she 
 seemed to have merged her first surprise at his appearance in 
 that caused by his coming alone. For her words were : — " But 
 what have you done with your wife ? " 
 
 Charles rather welcomed the opportunity for accounting for 
 Lucy's absence aloud. The sound of his own voice gave him 
 courage to believe her all safe, only delayed by some accident. 
 " To tell you the truth," said he, concealing his uneasiness osten- 
 tatiously, " I rather expected to find her here, as she started 
 before I did. But it was rather fortunate as it turned out, 
 because she's a bad sailor. They told me on the boat that in 
 the morning the sea had been like glass. Has it been stormy 
 here?" 
 
 Nancy didn't want to talk about the weather. She wanted 
 particulars of Lucy's independent journey from Paris. How, 
 why, when, and where had she and her husband parted company ? 
 Charles caught her grave and curious look fixed on him, and 
 knew what it meant. But it seemed to him that his ease of mind 
 would be best shov/n by an entr'acte about the lumbago pa- 
 tient. " Sorry to hear this about Mrs. Gorhambury," said he.
 
 500 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " I know she has these attacks. She's seen the doctor, I 
 suppose ? " 
 
 "• Oh no ! No, she won't see doctors — says if Nantucket Oil 
 of Green Myrtles doesn't cure her, nothing will. . . . When 
 did she start ? — Mrs. Snaith, I niean." 
 
 " From Paris yesterday morning — tidal train about eight 
 o'clock. If she isn't here soon, I shall ... I shall begin to 
 wonder," he made a poor show of a laugh over this, and his 
 hands were restless, a sure sign of uneasiness. He continued, 
 somewhat as though the matter might be discussed seriously, 
 without prejudice to the impossibility of " anything " having 
 happened : — " Of course I should be very uneasy if I didn't know 
 she might have stopped the night at Dover . . • Yes — that was 
 it, no doubt ! There's a Mrs. Scroope or Scrope, who was a 
 friend of Lucy's at school — lives near Dover ; Canterbury, I think. 
 Nothing more likely than that she would be driving over to Dover 
 — seeing someone off by boat as like as not — and just caught 
 Lucy on the pier. If she did she would never have allowed her 
 to come on to London. One of the Fotheringay Smith girls she 
 was — know 'em ? " 
 
 " Me — no ! But if Mrs. Snaith had gone to Canterbury, 
 surely she would have written to say so ? " 
 
 " Much more likely that she should have written and the letter 
 miscarried, than that anything . , . should have happened. 
 For one thing, if it had, we should have heard of it before this." 
 His attention was caught again by the serious look in Nancy's 
 eyes — serious enough this time to make him say: — "What is it 
 you are afraid of ? " The role of reassurance did him good, re- 
 acted on him. When you are apprehensive of evil, nothing does 
 you more good than to encourage your fellow-creatures. 
 
 The reply was : — " Oh, nothing — nothing ! She'll take care of 
 herself all right. Not go near the edge of the platform and so 
 on. , . . Now let me tell you about Mrs. Gorhambury and 
 why I'm here." 
 
 " Yes, I want to hear that. . . . Baby's all right, I sup- 
 pose ? " 
 
 " Lord yes ! — I should rather think he was. . . . Don't go 
 up to sec him for a minute or two. Wien he's ready to receive, 
 they'll come and tell us." 
 
 "Who will? . . . Oh, Tilly Slowboy, of course! Now tell 
 me about Mrs. Gorhambury." He settled down to listen, as a 
 hint towards an armchair opposite for the young lady. She 
 liked the window-seat, farther off, and would be very comfort-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 501 
 
 able there, thank-you! The grouping seemed somehow better 
 form to her. It was not because her frank face looked better 
 against the light, catching its stray locks, nimbus-wise, that she 
 did it; but from a superstition about the fitness of things, not 
 easy to describe. She could tell Nosey about the nurse's collapse 
 there, just as well as in that big chair, like a visitor. 
 
 It seemed that Mrs. Gorhambury had been perfectly well till 
 the day before, when Nancy, who was a frequent worshipper at 
 the shrine of her admirer, Charles the Third, noticed that she 
 appeared to move stiffly ; and, in reply to enquiries, was told that 
 it was only a slight touch of lumbago, and would go. It had 
 not gone, but had got worse, showing a very intransigeant spirit. 
 Nancy, perceiving that this meant a Eegency of Tilly Slowboy, 
 and alive to her limited capacities, had done precisely what 
 Charles anticipated, and established herself as Charles the 
 Third's guardian pro tempore. 
 
 " And what does that young man think of the turn-out ? " said 
 Charles. 
 
 " Baby ? — oh, he sanctions it, but treats it as a joke contrived 
 for his amusement. I think as he grows older he'll be keenly 
 alive to the humorous side of things. I took him in just now 
 to pay a visit to poor Mrs. Gorhambury, who I assure you simply 
 can't move, and he didn't show a particle of sympathy — merely 
 split with laughter." 
 
 " His withers are unwrung," said Charles, not affected by this 
 tale of his son's selfishness. Nancy, not catching the drift of 
 the remark, looked unresponsive ; whereupon he said : — " Let the 
 galled jade wince, don't you know ! " A quotation which she 
 may have recognised or not; it did not appear -which. For she 
 exclaimed : — " There's the post. Shall I go ? " and went. 
 Charles's nerves were all on the strain to know if a letter had 
 come from Lucy. His masculine dignity must be maintained, 
 and he made a parade of deliberation in following her. 
 
 He met her coming from the doorway, reading the envelopes of 
 a very perceptible postal delivery. Stupid, irritating girl ! — why 
 could she not give them to him ? He would see the handwriting, 
 at once. But an appeal to hasten matters would have looked as 
 if he was anxious. And he wasn't — mark that ! — he wasn't. 
 " Fetch them in here," said he, to prove it. " Fetch them in 
 here and look at them on the table." He was doing his duty by 
 masculine dignity, and really doing it very well. 
 
 Three minutes later, he was examining the unopened letters 
 again all through, and Nancy was saying : — " No — There's noth-
 
 502 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 ino- ! " She was convinced. But he said : — " Stop a minute ! 
 Don't let's be in too great a hurry ; " and went slowly through 
 them, looking at back and front. Then he gave it up. No — 
 there was no letter. 
 
 He walked uneasily, fitfully, about the room ; and she said not 
 a word. Pray Heaven that an uncanny thought that had crossed 
 hor mind was wrong ! That would be too horrible. 
 
 He had stopped opposite the window, with his back to her, 
 looking aimlessly out on Tom at work, and the lawn. Now he 
 turned round suddenly, and said : — " No — I don't think any- 
 thing of that. Why should she write, unless she meant to stop 
 on at Mrs. Scroope or Scrope's? It only means that she will 
 turn up presently. And a nice blowing up we shall get for 
 being in siich a stew about her! . . . Come along and let's 
 have a look at Master Charles." He spoke as one who brushes 
 away a perplexity to make room for a pleasant thought. She 
 too was glad of a diversion, for that wandering idea that had 
 come into her head had made her quite uncomfortable. 
 
 A story may be at a loss to account for the thoughts and 
 actions of its characters, and its safest line may be to simply 
 tell them, and leave its reader to analyse and understand them 
 as best he may. But some stories have a certain fussiness of 
 their own, that will be always probing for motives and impulses, 
 for the sources of ideas that seem to spring from nowhere, and 
 the blindness to others— gross as mountains, open, palpable, — in 
 eyes most deeply concerned to see them. This story, for instance, 
 would fain know why at this particular moment this girl Nancy 
 Fraser should suddenly— for the first time, mind you !— become 
 alive to the danger of a reciprocal passion, fraught with tragic 
 consequences, between this good honest Nosey's wife and his 
 friend. That was the idea that flashed into her head and made 
 her life for the moment a misery, inflicting on her a burden she 
 hated — secret thought. For a politic concealment of any kind 
 was a thorn in the flesh to her ; or a thorn in the mind — a mental 
 thorn. And she could not petition Nosey for the wherewithal 
 to quash this thought. 
 
 WOiat a let-off it would be if Lucy drove up to the door, and 
 her voice were heard again in the house as it was only a month 
 since ! How welcome would be the sound of mutual reproaches, 
 each one's blame for the other's share of some stupid misunder- 
 standing ! That was the English of it, and as for what the mis- 
 understanding was, enquiry into that would be simply ridiculous. 
 Besides, it was no concern of hers. If her married friends had
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 503 
 
 tiffs, the more candid they were about them the better for her. 
 Not that she was in any present want of a beacon to head her 
 off the shoals of matrimony. So long as the opposite sex had 
 the good sense to steer clear of her, she could handle her own 
 helm unassisted. 
 
 But Lucy had not come back, yet ! 
 
 So a look at Master Charles would be an alleviation, both to 
 his father and herself. " Stop half a minute while I run up- 
 stairs and see that his Majesty is fit to receive," said she. 
 Charles was left an easy prey to his own thoughts for a meta- 
 phorical half -minute which may not have been over six times 
 as long as a clock half-minute. He could not keep them at bay, 
 and was truly glad to be told that now he might come up, please ! 
 
 Master Charles was an alleviation. He was evidently pre- 
 pared to receive a visitor, or even cavalry, if the latter were 
 small and soft. For he all but got his father's head in chancery 
 in the very first round; indeed, he did, only a certain vagueness 
 of purpose got the better of him, and made him release it, 
 throwing it away with an apparent anticipation that it would 
 go through space, pointblank. Then he attached himself to a 
 button with the fixity of a limpet, and made awkward attempts 
 to get it into his mouth. His attitude towards that newfound 
 oddity, the Universe, seemed to be identical with that of the 
 boa-constrictor towards a blanket; who would like it all, please, 
 but wants a corner to begin upon. 
 
 A voice which was evidently that of a nurse on her back, 
 behind a door which was on the jar, or only just off it, wanted 
 to assert itself, but was handicapped by local causes. " I'll see 
 what Mrs. Gorhambury wants," said Nancy. " I'll risk leaving 
 him with you. Back in a minute ! " 
 
 Tilly Slowboy stood by, in case of emergency, like a ship near 
 one that doubts if it will founder — can't be quite sure — and 
 Nancy interviewed Mrs. Gorhambury, and came back. 
 
 " Wants to know when Mrs. Snaith is expected," said she. 
 
 "What did you say to her?" said Charles, holding his off- 
 spring at arm's length, who seemed to enjoy his inability to 
 claw his father by the hair or eyelid, established by the fact that 
 it was his father's arm's length, not his own. 
 
 " I said in an hour or so." Nancy thought it her duty to 
 inspire confidence. Her pretext of it was very fair, considering. 
 
 " In the course of the afternoon, anyhow ! " His pretext was 
 very poor. Then, apparently at right angles to the line of argu- 
 ment, he said abruptly: — "' tMien do you have lunch? "
 
 504 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Not till one, I suppose. Do you want it sooner ? " 
 
 " Oh no ! — rather the other way. She will scarcely be here by 
 one." Then he saw it would be as well to open further margins, 
 as one cuts the leaves of a book; to have plenty of alternatives, 
 ahead, in case the next page of experience should leave her com- 
 ing in suspense. " I'm not sure," he continued, " that it 
 wouldn't be safest, on the whole, to keep the two lunches apart. 
 If she arrives just before lunch, of course cook can bottle up a 
 little till she's ready. But if she comes in in the middle, she'll 
 get it cold and mossy." 
 
 Nancy saw how he was hedging against disappointment. " It 
 isn't cook," said she. '" It's Anne. Cook's not back yet from 
 her holiday. But Anne can manage, perfectly well." Charles 
 was rather impressed by this young woman's mastery of house- 
 hold details. She went on : — " They fed me up here yesterday. 
 I stopped them laying the table for me, all by myself. Of 
 course to-day it's dilferent." 
 
 Said Charles, speaking through his son's fist, which was partly 
 down his throat : — " We needn't be ferociously punctual. Call 
 it half-past one. I've a sort of impression she'll be here about 
 half-past one." He was really feeling a kind of collateral grati- 
 tude for this third place at table, not only because it seemed to 
 give substance and reality to the prospect of his wife's return, 
 but because he wasn't quite sure what was the correct attitude for 
 him about a tete-d-tete luncheon with a young lad3^ It had not 
 occurred to the young lady to give the matter a thought. 
 
 Her whole soul was fretting under that calm exterior, at that 
 hideous dream — Nancy went through the form of denouncing 
 it mentally as such — of this man's wife having deserted him for 
 his friend. Was it a wonder that his restless anxiety about her, 
 visible through his courageous mock-confidence in her timely 
 reappearance, should intensify her pity for him when the blow 
 fell? Her perception of the fact was no mere guess — rather, 
 it was the result of a number of iraperceptions, no one alone of 
 which had power to open her eyes to the truth, but which had 
 suddenly combined to make it manifest. The legend of the 
 mother's worldliness which had brought about the marriage, dis- 
 missed when she first heard it as obvious nonsense, came back 
 now as a powerful auxiliary to a suspicion, whose every recur- 
 rence was more vivid than the last, that her friend Mrs. Snaith's 
 own affection for her lawful husband had not stood the test of a 
 knowledge of his friend's passion for her. She certainly had 
 known that Lucy was no stranger to Fred's infatuation about
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 505 
 
 her, but then it was a long step, to her mind, from knowing that 
 a fool of a man was besotted about you, to readiness to do despite 
 and wrong to an affectionate husband, in order to satisfy his 
 lawlessness. In fact, she had been so convinced of Lucy's indif- 
 ference to Fred — except in the sense of compassion for this 
 infatuation, as a sort of disease — that she would have felt it an 
 insult to her friend to breathe a suggestion to the contrary. But 
 now that a number of half-forgotten trifles came back to her 
 memory, in a seeming conspiracy to put the most sinister con- 
 struction on this outcome of the couple's holiday in Paris, she 
 felt fairly racked to know more of its real causes. Mr. Snaith 
 had said absolutely nothing to account for their premature 
 return. 
 
 And he withdrew to his little smoking-room — to write letters, 
 he alleged — without saying anything. Master Charles en- 
 deavoured to detain him, but was overcome by numbers. When 
 half-past one came, or rather twenty minutes to two, and yet 
 no arrival of the mistress, the scratch cook, embarrassed, sent 
 Tip to know what to do. Was she to send up lunch, or have it 
 spoil? Nancy, thus referred to, said the former, and the gong 
 was sounded. For in a well-regulated household, even though 
 there be but one to be summoned to the table, and he is already 
 in evidence, any trained parlour-maiden will as it were break 
 loose like a mad drummer until the wonder is that anyone within 
 a mile stops away. 
 
 " Bless us and save us ! " said Charles, coming from his letter- 
 writing, which may or may not have been genuine. " You don't 
 mean to say it's half-past one already ! . . . All right ! — I'll be 
 down in a minute." Wlien he did so he was clearly beginning 
 to show distress. For he considered it incumbent on him to 
 reassure Nancy. " You mustn't think anything of her not 
 coming yet," he said. " My experience is that people who are 
 waited for never come. Like the watched pot that never boils. 
 You'll see, that we shall either get a letter by this next post, or 
 she'll come in and blow us all up sky high for expecting her 
 sooner. That's what people do." He gave Nancy a selected 
 cutlet carefully, and then himself a chance one in a hurry, which 
 he seemed to think could take care of itself for awhile, for he 
 leaned back in his chair and went on talking. " Haven't you 
 noticed how unfeeling one is about folks that have been expect- 
 ing one every minute for hours? You see^ one has such first- 
 hand information about one's own safety. It doesn't the least 
 matter how good one's heart is, etcetera ; one always behaves like
 
 506 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 a beast to one's anxious family. ... I suppose yours under- 
 stands about you, and won't fret ? " 
 
 Nancy treated her family as if it and she were Lacedge- 
 monians. " If they do it's their own lookout/' she said. " I 
 told them not to expect me till they saw me. They're used to 
 me, by now.^' She took mashed potato, but laid down her knife 
 and fork. " I won't eat my lunch unless you eat yours, Mr. 
 Snaith. That's flat ! " 
 
 " That's a contradiction in terms," said Charles. " Oh yes — 
 I'm going to devour my lunch. Why shouldn't I ? " He also 
 took potato, and picked up his knife and fork. 
 
 She ignored his question, but said : — " What's a ' contradiction 
 in terms ' ? Explain ! " 
 
 " Why — taking potatoes and saying you won't eat your lunch, 
 in the same breath ! " 
 
 " Well — I certainly shan't ! So now you know. . . . Take 
 some mushroom catsup, in the square bottle, and pass it over 
 to me. . . . Yes — that's it." 
 
 " Oh yes ! — that's what I was looking for." But this was a 
 lie, and only a transparent apology for the speaker's pause. 
 However, he stood committed now to that cutlet, anxiety or no. 
 
 Lunch passed, and they talked. And Nancy hung out baits or 
 invitations to him to throw some light on the story of his abrupt 
 return home, which she felt they were conspiring to take for 
 granted. And still, he changed the conversation whenever it 
 neared explanation point. And still the object of their anxiety 
 did not come — did not come ! 
 
 A postman's knock an hour after brought Charles out in haste 
 from his den, to which he had retired. Nancy, from the 
 nursery, Avas scarcely later. " Say there's a letter ! " said she. 
 But he said, with a pretence of cool non-disappointment that 
 she found painful to hear: — "I'm afraid I — can't, this time." 
 He returned slowly to his citadel, reading a letter of slight im- 
 portance from some casual of none. She climbed up, equally 
 slowly, to the nursery. She found the contemplation of Master 
 Charles, in a sleep just distinguishable from waxwork by recol- 
 lections of his bottle, discernible only by experienced eyes, a 
 great resource and consolation. On the other hand, the enquiries 
 of the lumbago patient from afar were perplexing. Why couldn't 
 Mrs. Gorhambury have a little tact, and help to accept the situa- 
 tion as the true and perfect image of what one expects, nowadays, 
 instead of asking whenever a ring or a cart wheel was audible 
 from below : — " Is that the mistress ? " and saying on receipt of
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 507 
 
 a negative : — " There now, I made sure it was her ! " ? But it 
 never was ! 
 
 Nancy was not surprised at Mr. Snaitli's silence about the 
 reasons why he and his wife had parted company to come to 
 London. Nor is the story, when it bears in mind how very 
 slight had been her intercommunion with him, measured against 
 her comparative intimacy with Lucy. She would, in fact, have 
 felt some astonishment if he had considered himself bound to 
 explain the situation. After all, she was to him, as he was to 
 her, little more than a name. And neither name, when used in 
 confidence to intimate friends, was such as to convey to an 
 uninformed bystander an idea of respect or reverence, or even 
 affection; which may subsist, after a fashion, without either. 
 Any other story may say what it likes, but this one will continue 
 to hold that the names of " Elbows " and " Nosev," which either 
 had chosen for the other, could never have suggested themselves 
 except as — suppose we say? — semi-discompliments, more akin to 
 indifference than contempt. Such names as one chooses at 
 random, for mere discrimination of individuals, are apt to refer 
 rather to defects than to beauties of appearance. Charles had 
 felt more than once that " Elbows " had been premature, since 
 so marked an attachment had sprung up between the young lady 
 and his eldest son, and liad wished it could be reconsidered. But 
 to her he continued " Nosey " pure and simple, as the feature 
 that had suggested the name remained in evidence. Until 
 she had a tete-a-tcte luncheon with him, a couple of hours 
 since, he really had been, for her, the merest walking gentle- 
 man on the stage of life, who had married her beautiful 
 friend, but was always away when she called, and didn't 
 count. 
 
 Surely mam" a lady who reads this may recall some such in- 
 timacy with a friend, who had a thing called a husband, a sort 
 of tame cat or rabbit, a mascot attached to the house, who only 
 came in for a minute and said how did she do; and wanted to 
 know where the paper-knife was, or the hammer, and had better 
 ask Jane. Charles's identity, so far, had run on those lines, for 
 Nancy Eraser. 
 
 So she took his incommunicativeness as a matter of course, 
 and would have been rather embarrassed than otherwise if he 
 had plunged into an explanation. This did not the least inter- 
 fere with a growing curiosity as to what that explanation might 
 be. It grew continually, fostered by a hope that an l-daircisse- 
 ment might dissipate that ugly suspicion, that would come back
 
 508 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 and back, clouding her mind against her will, constantly fought 
 against and rejected on its supposed merits, in vain. 
 
 Why should this suspicion thrust aside anxiety about Lucy's 
 safety as a traveller — ordinary safety? Somehow or other, mis- 
 givings about security of sea and land carriage found very little 
 place in Nancy's mind. For one thing, news about accident to 
 life and limb on frequented routes travels quick — could only have 
 been delayed in this case by difficulty of identification, a most 
 unlikely thing. For another, Nancy's own experience had 
 taught her that even a fairly comely woman traveller may rely 
 on a sort of universal aegis of protection from railway guards, 
 captains of Channel steamers, and so forth. How intensely secure 
 good looks — real beauty — must make one on a journey ! 
 
 It was this thought that made Nancy say to Charles, later that 
 afternoon : — " You need not be the least afraid that anything 
 had happened to her," with a stress to show the kind of happen- 
 ing referred to. This was in Master Charles's nursery, where 
 his father had been invited — by him, it was alleged unground- 
 edly — to take afternoon tea. His own tea went on all day, more 
 or less, and had no real tea in it, only milk. 
 
 " Oh no — of course not — of course not ! " Charles brushed 
 the idea aside. " We should have had news of anything of that 
 sort long ago." He was impatient of hysterical fancies. But 
 he volunteered no substitute for them — made no new conjecture 
 to account for this long delay. He drank his tea in silence, 
 and watched his son's method of dealing with offerings from his 
 admirers. 
 
 " He does take hold of anything that's small enough for his 
 hands," Nancy explained. " But of course a balloon like this is 
 ridiculous. You see, he bangs it away. The worst of it is, that 
 he shows temper if it isn't offered to him again immediately. I 
 assure you he flies quite into a violent passion sometimes, when 
 he doesn't get everything exactfy to his liking." 
 
 " Take the balloon away and let's see," said his father, rashly. 
 
 " It's sinful to tantalize the darling," said Nancy. " But 
 just this once, to show what a spirited precious he is ! " A 
 creditable effort of ]\Iaster Charles to embrace the balloon, with 
 a view to ultimately sAvallowing it, missed fire, and supplied an 
 opportunity for putting it out of sight. He appeared for a 
 moment dazed and bewildered, as though he found its disap- 
 pearance difficult of belief; then burst into lamentations, at the 
 same time becoming crumpled with rage and despair. Nancy 
 did not venture on contention; it would have been useless. She
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 509 
 
 even had the disingenuousness to suggest that malignants, whom 
 she spoke of as " they/' were at the bottom of the balloon's 
 disappearance and that she herself was a benevolent agency that 
 had frustrated their nefarious operations. " Did they, then ? " 
 she asked. " Did naughty wicked people come and carry away 
 his balloon ? " But he wouldn't give it up to any such maraud- 
 ing tribes, especially if he could get his arms round it. That at 
 least was Nancy's conviction, as she calmed the troubled waters. 
 A heavenly peace irradiated Master Charles's . countenance, in 
 a tenth of a second or perhaps less. A baby's sudden transition 
 from infuriation to benignity is one of the most consolatory 
 events in jSTature. 
 
 " I think I had better stop on to dinner here," said Charles 
 the father, taking a second cup of tea, " in case she arrives in 
 time. She's much more likely to be late, wherever she's stopped 
 by the way." This fiction of a halt e?i route had found a good 
 deal of favour. It was plausible enough as a working theory; 
 one to sustain hope on. He continued, rather as one who for- 
 mulates a programme than announces a complete one : — " I shall 
 go back to town to-night, to sleep at my chambers, if she doesn't 
 turn up." 
 
 " Most likely she will," said Nancy. She only said it because 
 she thought he deserved a little help and encouragement. 
 
 " I sent a card to Mrs. Gam to have the place ready, in case 
 I came." 
 
 " Just as well to be on the safe side ! " said Nancy, meaning- 
 lessly. There was no earthly need, that she could see, for him 
 to go away to his chambers, whether his wife arrived or not. 
 Mere restlessness ! 
 
 And he seemed to think that explanation was called for. For 
 he said : — " You see, the chances are that if I go there to-night 
 I shall find a letter that wants an answer. Some correspondence 
 seems to have been going astray." This was vague and unsatis- 
 factory, so he continued — inventing as he went, Nancy thought. 
 " If she doesn't come to-night I shall only have lost a post, for 
 nothing. And if she does — come after I'm gone — not very 
 likely ! — you'll send me a wire, won't you ? " 
 
 " Of course. First thing in the morning ! " 
 
 " Just so. And then I can come back here at once, to talk 
 over arrangements. The chances are she'll vote for going 
 straight out to the Tyrol, without stopping at all. She takes 
 rather kindly to travelling." 
 
 All this of course was manufactured, as Nancy saw— full of 
 
 33
 
 510 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 weak points. But Charles had a reason for sleeping at the dig- 
 gings, which he could not well speak about to her. If he decided 
 to remain the night at The Cedars, might not Nancy herself 
 decide on blowing up her tyres and speeding back to her own 
 home ? "\Miat need for her to mount guard over blaster Charles 
 with his father in the house, were his nurse's lumbago ever so 
 bad? Moreover, a sub-murmur in his mind kept on hinting that 
 the young woman might have ideas . . . ideas about the posi- 
 tion, don't you see? . . . connected with the gentleman's wife 
 not being there, don't you know. That sort of thing. Some 
 young w^omen were particular. 
 
 Charles had wTitten letters during his retirement in the morn- 
 ing, and one was to his august mother-in-law, that she might 
 have the opportunity of sharing his anxiety about her daughter 
 if she was so disposed. " Not that she cares a damn ! " said he 
 as he fastened the envelope. Tliis letter reached her as she 
 awaited a tea-visitor in the afternoon. As soon as she had satis- 
 fied herself about her figured silk's skirt-disposition in her 
 armchair, she opened her letters and condemned one or two, as 
 uninteresting, to a later inspection; then came to her son-in- 
 law's. His was less so, but she could not find a distance at 
 which it was easily legible, without her double eyeglass. So she 
 fished out the latter from somewhere under her chin, and held 
 out her nose for it. 
 
 "■' Don't get up because of me, dear ! " said her visitor, coming 
 in unheralded. Mrs. Bannister Stair scarcely needed a pre- 
 cursor. " Letters, I see ! " 
 
 Mrs. Hinchlift'e's attention seemed riveted, for the moment. 
 The other lady waited patiently, for that moment, and for one 
 or two more. Then the letter-reader turned the last page 
 smartly, and read it too quickly. Then she said deprecat- 
 ingly : — '' Half a minute, dear ! " and went back a page. 
 Then : — " Yes. Eather odd, too ! " and dismissed her preoc- 
 cupation to kiss her friend efEusively, who threw out suggestions 
 in favour of enlightenment. Whereupon Mrs. HinchlifEe de- 
 clared that it really was nothing. This declaration she weak- 
 ened, however, by saying a second time : — " Eather odd, 
 too!" 
 
 '' A mystery ! " said Mrs. Bannister Stair. But she could wait. 
 
 " No — no mystery ! Only that absurd girl of mine . . . 
 Yes — tea, Unwin, and if anyone else comes, I'm not at home. 
 . , . That absurd girl of mine " — Mrs. Stair waited, exem-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 511 
 
 plarily — " came away from Paris by herself and hasn't been 
 heard of since ! " 
 
 " Well, but— that's very odd ! " 
 
 "Just what I was saying, dear! Very odd. That husband 
 of hers " — the lady spoke as if her daughter had married a regi- 
 ment and this was a subaltern — " turned up last night to look 
 for her here, and of course didn't find-her. Xow he's gone down 
 to Wimbledon and she isn't there either. Here's his letter ! " 
 She didn't give it up, but read : — " ' Got here an hour since, but 
 no sign of Lucy — so far. I don't think we need be the least 
 uneasy. For one thing she may have stopped by the way — 
 nothing more likely — she has friends not so very far from Dover 
 — parties named Scroope or Scrope — she knew the she-one at 
 school at Canterbury, I think. I shall probably get a letter in an 
 hour's time, to say. I'm sending this off to catch the post. If 
 she comes to you to-day, as may happen, make her wire. I know 
 I'm fidgety — it's the nature of the animal ! ' Yes, he's a dread- 
 ful fidget." She dropped the letter on her expensive silk, and 
 resigned herself to reminiscence : — " I don't believe Lucy had 
 any friends at Canterbury — Can't think who he can mean ! 
 Scroope or Scrope — Scroope, or Scrope ! Let's see — didn't 
 Emily Fotheringay Smith marry a Scroope or Scrope, and go 
 to New Zealand ? '' 
 
 " Of course she did. And he's mixed Canterbury in Xew 
 Zealand with Canterbury-Cathedral Canterbury, in England. 
 That accounts for it. Canterbury Lamb, don't you know? " 
 
 " Oh dear yes — Canterbury Lamb of course ! How people do 
 mix things up ! " 
 
 " But what can have kept Mrs. Snaith ? " Mrs. Stair was 
 interested. Apart from personal acquaintance, any beautiful 
 young married lady was an object of interest. The disappear- 
 ance of a dowdy single one would not have roused her curiosity 
 half so much. She would not have given a second thought to 
 a really plain sample over thirty. " Nothing can have happened 
 to her ? " This with rather a subdued manner. 
 
 " Oh dear no ! I'm not the least uneasy about her." The 
 suggestion made the speaker quite short and irritable. " She's 
 not a chicken." The word "'' chicken " was a good one to snap 
 with, and Mrs. Hinchliffe used it for that purpose. But she 
 softened down to say : — " What do you suppose could have hap- 
 pened ? " 
 
 " Simply nothing whatever. Dear me 1 — as if I didn't know 
 what travellinc^ alone was. Why — I went to Calcutta all by my-
 
 512 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 self when 1 was eighteen, and never was more protected in my 
 life. One is, on hoats and in trains. And I hadn't a tenth part 
 of your Lucy's looks." 
 
 " Exactly my way of looking at it. Anyhow, I am not going 
 to get in a fuss because Lucy and her husband choose to have a 
 tiff and come home separately. I've no doubt he was in the 
 wrong, with that nose." 
 
 Mrs. Stair's look said, " Aha ! " But only for a fraction of a 
 second. Her well-restrained remark was : — " Dear me ! — those 
 two. Fancy their quarrelling! I never should have suspected 
 it." 
 
 " I don't mean seriously quarrelling, Adela. How silly you 
 are ! I said tiff." 
 
 " Well — tiff ! Tiff enough to make them part company, and 
 travel separately." 
 
 " I tell you I don't think anything of that. Some say the 
 less married people see of one another the better. They see 
 too much of each other, in my opinion, at The Cedars." 
 
 " My dear Zoe, you give me courage to say something." 
 
 " Well— say it !'" 
 
 " That Mr. Snaith has it in him — mind, I am ready to give 
 him the credit of every possible virtue — but he has it in him 
 to become a bore." 
 
 " My daughter has not complained of him. What makes you 
 think so ? " 
 
 ]\Irs. Stair was settling down for a chat in the opposite arm- 
 chair. In time she was ready to pick up the thread of the 
 conversation. " ^^^lat makes me think so?" said she. "Well 
 — perhaps I don't exactly know, myself." 
 
 " Something must have put the idea into your head." 
 
 " Ye-es — something! But ought I to say? However, we 
 really are such very old friends ..." 
 
 " Please don't have a nonsensical fit, Adela, but say what 
 you've got to say." 
 
 " It isn't much from any knowledge I myself have of your 
 son-in-law. You know how little I know him personally. 
 Eeally the idea is founded entirely on what I noticed that Sun- 
 day. I'm almost sorry I mentioned it." 
 
 " Oh— don't tell me if you doti't like." 
 
 But that was not what Mrs. Stair wanted. None of that, 
 please ! She jerked the topic back into its groove. " The idea, 
 Zoe dear, — with you ! " Then she went on quickly, to block any 
 other form of ref'usal to hear : — " It was suggested to me entirely
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 513 
 
 by the animated pleasure Lucy seemed to me to find in the 
 society of ... in short, of other gentlemen." 
 
 " What other gentlemen ? I knew you ^vere going to say some- 
 thing of that sort, Adela." 
 
 But Adela was shocked at her dear Zoe's suggestion that what 
 she had said was of any sort whatever. If it came into any 
 category at all, it was one that was distinguished by the lamblike 
 innocence of everything it described. As to imputing anything 
 to dearest Lucy, nothing could have been further from her inten- 
 tions. Was it likely? 
 
 Mrs. Hinchliffe seemed to think that on the whole perhaps it 
 was. " Who was the other gentleman ? " said she, doggedly. 
 
 " I may as well be candid. ..." 
 
 " Better, I think ! " 
 
 " Well — there ivas no one there except old What's-his-name and 
 the scribbler, and they don't count. And the man I mean — the 
 handsome young man, of course." 
 
 " Why, of course ? Mr. Carteret is my son-in-law's oldest and 
 most intimate friend. And the idea of a flirtation ..." 
 
 " My dear Zoe ! I never used the word ' flirtation.' " 
 
 " No — but you meant it." As the lady had meant it, or had 
 meant to mean it a little later, her voucher, which she now made, 
 that nothing could have been further from her intentions, had 
 not the full force which it might have had. 
 
 Now, the curious part of this colloquy was, that it did not 
 lead to strained relations. On the contrary, the fact that it 
 seemed to land its subject within reach of candid discussion, 
 seemed to be a source of satisfaction to both parties. Once 
 launched on an interchange of ideas not so embarrassingly pure 
 that even flirtation was not to be spoken of, the transition was 
 easy to a daring consideration of the eventualities of a dull hus- 
 band, a beautiful wife, and a susceptible friend. But the points 
 raised could only be ventilated under a continual reservation, 
 that nothing therein could possibly apply to any blood relations 
 — not of the speakers but — of the persons spoken to. For Mrs. 
 Hinchliffe had not the same need, presumably, of such reserva- 
 tions on her own behalf, and was not the maker of them. 
 
 Thus it was that Mrs. Stair, longing for information of Fred 
 Carteret's whereabouts, and suspecting that he was in Paris, felt 
 bound to give absolution, anticipamente as the Italians say, to 
 Mrs. Snaith for happening to be there at the same time. She 
 got it done somehow, however; and not only that, but managed 
 an enquiry about Fred in so unconcerned a way that her friend.
 
 514 
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 whatever she supposed to be its motive, was able to reply : — 
 " He's somewhere abroad, I believe, but not in Paris," casually 
 enough to dissociate him from her daughter in that capital. 
 
 ^Miether Mrs. Stair accepted her words does not appear, but 
 she appeared to breathe freer, rather offensively, on hearing that 
 Fred, though perhaps abroad, was not known to be in Paris.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 Dinner time had nearly come at The Cedars. But there was 
 no sign of its mistress. W\\i\t was Xaney Fraser to say to that 
 poor man, its master, who had gone for a long walk, when he 
 came hack and she had to report his wife's non-arrival? 
 
 What a godsend it would be — just think of it ! — if she were to 
 arrive now, just before his return ! 
 
 No letter had come by the postal delivery just after he started 
 on his walk. She had examined the envelopes, but there was 
 no handwriting bearing the faintest resemblance to Lucy's. A 
 diseased optimism made her say to herself that this was rather 
 good than bad. If she was on her way — arriving in an hour or 
 so — a letter arriving no sooner than this would have been a super- 
 fluity. She never would have written such a letter. Therefore, 
 she would probably arrive in an hour or so. Clearly. It was a 
 handy sophism to live upon, during that hour or so. But now, 
 the fact was staring her in the face, that the time had lapsed, 
 and Lucy had not come. 
 
 Still, the sophism might last through dinner, and eat Xosey 
 must. Nancy could not have him on her hands starving himself 
 from anxiety. That was the way her inner consciousness put it, 
 although she was aware she- was the merest accident in the house. 
 
 So, when she heard Charles's key in the front door, followed 
 by his step in the passage, she ran downstairs from the nursery, 
 leaving Tilly Slowboy to convince Master Charles that he ought 
 to go to sleep, and found his father hunting in those letters for 
 the handwriting he longed to see. " Nothing has come," said 
 she, with an equanimity too marked to be of any value. " But I 
 don't think that implies anything. Why should she have written 
 when she's coming herself ? " And Charles said : — '" That's 
 what it is, no doubt. ... I shan't be long. I had no idea it 
 was so late." 
 
 He had stuck to his colours manfully through dinner. That 
 is to say, he had held on, with the courage of despair, to the 
 transparent pretext that all was normal — that nothing unusual 
 was happening or would happen. He had eaten, or seemed to 
 eat ; and she, who was also somewhat of a pretender, had accepted 
 
 515
 
 516 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 this seeming as a reality. Very little was said to show how either 
 was on the watch for an arrival — an arrival and an explanation. 
 They had so far recognised the facts that had to be faced as to 
 have decided silently, by mutual agreement, that it was better to 
 talk of something else. And they had talked of something else. 
 
 Charles, as soon as a rather scratch meal was dying away in 
 a very scratch dessert, had made boldly for fresh fields and pas- 
 tures new. " Let me see ! " said he, " your sister married Pro- 
 fessor Saxon, didn't she ? " 
 
 " Not Saxon — Lomax. He's a Public Analyst, if you're any 
 the wiser for that." 
 
 " Not sure that I am, much ! I did know a chap though once 
 who did that sort of thing, only he got the sack." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 " For analysing wrong. Or for getting detected, I don't know 
 which." Charles told the tale of this misadventure in full. His 
 friend had " detected " twent3'-eight per cent of soluble lead in 
 a potter's glaze-tub, and the potter swore that he and his an- 
 cestors had brewed that glaze for two hundred years and knew 
 perfectly what it was made of, and that the analyst was an 
 impostor. By agreement the decision on the point was referred 
 to a great German chemist — who, being German, was sure to 
 be right. But he, being naturally inclined to side with any 
 official, anywhere, proceeded to " detect " thirty-three per cent 
 of soluble lead in that glaze. It was a case of trop de zele — that 
 was all ! 
 
 " I believe," said Charles in conclusion, " that my poor friend 
 got the sack for not " detecting " more while he was about it. 
 What does Professor Lomax analyse ? " 
 
 Nancy, who had only half followed this tale — which indeed 
 travelled outside her record — replied : — " Anything that comes 
 handy, I believe; suicides' insides — anything of that sort. He 
 detects arsenic in large or small quantities. They live at Brix- 
 ton and I see them every Sunday. He's not a bad chap." 
 
 The scratch dessert had remained unappreciated by its pro- 
 posed consumers, and Charles was by this time dallying with 
 his pipe, with a view to permission to smoke then and there. He 
 left the Professor a moment to say : — " May I smoke ? " and 
 having received Nancy's reply, that she could go away if she 
 didn't like it, returned to him with a divided attention — divided 
 between him and ignition. " I say, Miss Fraser," said he, being 
 fairly alight, " speaking of Professor Jackson — Saxon — no, beg 
 V, your pardon ! — Lomax . . . "
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 517 
 
 "Speaking of him, what?" 
 
 " Well — he put it into my head to ask you. But perhaps I 
 oughtn't?" 
 
 Nancy considered. " Depends so very much on what it is," 
 said she. " But whatever it is, if you didn't mean to ask it, 
 you shouldn't have mentioned it. Ask away ! " She was not 
 quite free from misgiving that this question might be unwel- 
 come. 
 
 Charles also considered. His consideration ended with a nod 
 of general assent, and then he went straight to the point. 
 " What made your sister chuck Fred Carteret? If you know! " 
 
 Nancy flushed visibly — was evidently uncomfortable. Her 
 misgiving was justified. " I know," she said, " perfectly well. 
 Cit told me. But she didn't mean me to tell you or anybody." 
 If she had stopped there he would have enquired no further. 
 But she must needs add, with a superfluous candour : — " Espe- 
 cially you." To think anything, and not speak it, was to her 
 an artificial effort. 
 
 Had a thought of her meaning been possible to him, he would 
 have been at once on the track of it. But the consciousness of 
 any kind of complicity in the miscarriage of Fred's love-affair 
 was so remote, that he was merely puzzled; indeed, was inclined 
 to think he had mis-heard her words somehow. He merely said, 
 apologetically : — " Of course I have no right to ask," and with- 
 drew from his enquiry, checking curiosity about the meaning 
 of the last two words. His nearest guess connected it with his 
 intimacy with Fred, which this girl must know all about — no 
 doubt of that ! If Fred was held to blame in her family, was 
 it likely she would advertise their indictment to his brother? 
 
 He forgot the whole thing a moment later. For just as Nancy, 
 anxious to avoid further catechism, rose saying that perhaps she 
 had better see that Mrs. Gorhambury was going on all right, the 
 post was audible on the garden-pathway, followed by convulsions 
 in the letter-box. Oh, if that were only a letter — at last ! 
 
 Charles was no longer keeping up the farce of disguising his 
 anxiety. He sprang up and was out of the room in an instant. 
 The postman's knock came after his exit. She did not go up- 
 stairs, but waited, hoping with very little hope. For that grisly 
 idea that had tormented her before was with her still, cropping 
 up at unexpected moments, connecting itself undefinedly, but 
 more and more persistently, with this seeming disappearance of 
 Lucy. If only she could muster the courage to make Nosey tell 
 her why he and his wife left Paris separately !
 
 518 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 There was no letter, and Charles's blank look was painful to 
 see. She could find no foundation for a spurious hope; so she 
 said nothing. What could she have said, that would not have 
 resembled cheering him up, and giving him courage and so 
 forth — about the most depressing attitude possible under cir- 
 cumstances calling for fortitude? \Yho does not break down, or 
 burst into tears, under consolation? 
 
 She went upstairs, and he turned to go into the little smoking- 
 room, without a word. He felt the germs of panic about his 
 wife's safety growing in his mind, and knew he had to keep 
 cool. Well, then — accepting that obligation, what was the next 
 step to be? 
 
 The time-honoured course in all such cases — go to the police? 
 Was that the onl}- resource ? See how utterly at a loss they were 
 when Fred's uncle, old Carteret — poor old Stultifex Maximus — • 
 vanished so strangely two years ago. Besides, he shrank from 
 catechism about recent events. His imagination created a speech 
 Manton would most likely make. " You'll excuse me, Mr. 
 Snaith, but we are obliged to ask these questions. Had there 
 been Avhat we call words between you? " Could he say no? . . . 
 Tush ! — what rubbish ! — to allow mere diseased terrors to get 
 possession of him like that ! 
 
 A tap came at the door. Oh — Miss Fraser — yes, come in! 
 Nothing the matter ? Babv all right ? Oh dear yes ! — babv was 
 all right. But Xaney had something to say, something fraught 
 with an earnestness that could for the moment supersede even 
 baby. 
 
 " I've come down to see what you intend to do, Mr. Snaith ? " 
 Then as if to add : — " I know that is a question you cannot 
 answer offhand," she took a seat. 
 
 It was an opportunity not to be lost for Charles to show that 
 he was not the least alarmed. " You mean," said he, " what I 
 should do if I were at all alarmed about Lucy? But I'm not." 
 
 " All right ! " she said. " Put it that way if you like it better. 
 Wliat would you do ? " 
 
 " If I were — // I were — " said he, intensifying his hypothesis, 
 " I suppose I should ... I suppose I should take steps." 
 
 " I suppose so too. Wliat steps ? " 
 
 Perhaps a pretence that he need not shrink from a supposi- 
 titious case was the most effective way of showing fortitude. 
 
 " Why — in that case — in that case, mind you ! — I should con- 
 sult the people at Scotland Yard. ..." 
 
 " This isn't a police case."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 519 
 
 " No. But they have exceptional and most effectual means of 
 enquiry. Nothing like it anywhere in Europe ! Even the 
 Ereneh and Kussian police may take a lesson from our people 
 at Scotland Yard. I saw a good deal of them at the time of 
 that unfortunate affair of poor Fred's uncle — our old school- 
 master, you know. ..." 
 
 " I know — Dr. Carteret. But they found nothing." 
 
 " Well — no ! But I am convinced that if there had been 
 anything that could have been found they would have found 
 it . . . " He stopped abruptly and broke into an uneasy laugh. 
 " But what has all this to do with Lucy's being a bit behind 
 time in coming home from Paris ? Why — God bless my soul ! — 
 isn't it a thousand times more likely that she has stopped on 
 the way, and written that she won't be home for a week, than 
 that anything should have happened to her! I mean, suppose 
 the letter miscarried. They do miscarry, every day. I don't 
 care what the post office says. , . . \\liat ? " 
 
 She had begun to speak, and stopped. She began again, 
 speaking in a curious, significant way : — " I do not suppose for 
 a moment that anything has happened to her — anything of that 
 sort. . . . " She was getting into difficulties. She halted and 
 changed colour. 
 
 He changed colour too, but his change was towards pallor. 
 " Then what . . . what do you suppose ? " He hesitated. 
 
 Instead of replying to his question, she looked straight at him, 
 and said : — " Mr. Snaith, I want you to make me a promise. 
 Promise me that you will not go to the police without telling 
 me." 
 
 He began confidently enough, saying : — " That's an easy 
 promise to make, seeing that I shan't ..." But something 
 crossed his mind before he could say what he meant — that Scot- 
 land Yard was foreign to this subject. He stopped uneasily, 
 and ended : — " I wish you would tell me why. You've got some 
 idea." 
 
 Nancy stood biting her lip, in sore perplexity. How she 
 longed to be able to speak out ! But the " idea " she had got 
 was simply too terrible to utter aloud — to Charles, at least. To 
 sav that this was so, and yet to keep silence, would be worse than 
 plain speech. But could she not speak plainly, without bringing 
 in Fred Carteret? It was he that was the terror of that idea. 
 Keep him out! A fortunate recollection of her mother's family 
 came to her and made speech easier. " I may just as well tell 
 you/' said she. " It was an aunt of my mother's ..."
 
 520 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Charles looked puzzled, and repeated : — " An aunt of your 
 mother's ! Ye-es — what of her? " 
 
 " She bolted from her husband — went to the Orkneys, I be- 
 lieve, all by herself. She wrote to him — some weeks after, I 
 think — and then he went to the Orkneys, and brought her back. 
 She was very good friends with him, all the time." 
 
 " How rum ! Did she say anything in her letter ? Anything 
 in the way of explanation ? " 
 
 " Said she wanted a change, I believe." 
 
 " She must have been cracked." 
 
 " Not at all. The doctors said it was a form of mental aliena- 
 tion. What's to prevent Lucy having an attack of mental 
 alienation ? " 
 
 " Your great-aunt couldn't expect a monopoly, certainly." 
 
 " I'm so glad to hear you laughing at me. But one can't help 
 being uneasy." 
 
 " Yes, one can. If ' one ' means me. I'm not, the least. 
 Mental alienation may go and hang itself. A letter has mis- 
 carried — and there's the whole mystery in three words. You'll 
 see I'm right." 
 
 Nancy was on the edge of saying : — " I hope I shall." She 
 stopped herself in time, and said she expected she would- The 
 change of a word made the whole difference, and the phrase was 
 good to make her exit on. She had been so near an awkward 
 corner that she was glad to get away. So she said good-night, 
 and was going, when Charles stopped her. 
 
 " I say, Miss Fraser ! " said he. 
 
 " You say — what ? . . . All right, I'm not in a hurry ! 
 Tilly Slowboy's mounting guard." 
 
 " Well — it's nothing, only I thought I should like to know. 
 About your great-aunt and great-uncle. . . . That's right, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 " Yes — great-aunt and great-uncle. My mother's aunt by 
 marriage she was. Why ? " 
 
 " I'm not sure that I have any right to be inquisitive ? " 
 
 " It's not inquisitive. They've been dead twenty years. I 
 only remember them as a child." 
 
 " What I wanted to ask was — are you sure there had been no 
 quarrel ? But if you were so small how could you know ? " 
 
 " I knew nothing but what my mother told me, that Aunt 
 Cecilia ran away from Uncle Frank to the Orkney Islands and 
 the doctors said it was mental alienation. He didn't find her 
 through the police at all, but got a letter a month after, and just
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 521 
 
 went and persuaded her to come back. What has happened once 
 may happen again. So you see now why I want you not to go 
 to Scotland Yard enquiring. Where's the use of setting people 
 talking ? " According to Nancy's standard, this speech was a 
 piece of duplicity, and she felt quite guilty. But, after all, her 
 suspicions about Fred Carteret might be so much unqualified 
 delusion. She had simply no right to speak of them. Re- 
 member that, for all she knew, Lucy was unshaken in her wifely 
 constancy, and she only looked on Fred as the victim of an 
 unfortunate delusion. With his mother it was otherwise; but, 
 to her, Fred's indication of how the land lay had been just as 
 much as was necessary — no more. 
 
 Charles seemed to find that great-aunt's eccentric conduct 
 soothing. No — it would be quite premature to take for granted 
 that any case was made out for a hue-and-cry after Lucy. He 
 would not have been deterred from it by any fear of being 
 thought over-nervous and fussy about her delayed arrival; it 
 was simply that he saw no occasion for panic under the circum- 
 stances. Of course he was in a fuss; he admitted that. But 
 his common sense told him that this fuss was unreasonable, and 
 it was our duty to be guided in all things by reason and common 
 sense. In a few days' time — probably hours — we should be 
 laughing at all this groundless alarm. 
 
 " Just so ! " said Miss Fraser. She had said good-night once, 
 and was not going to say it again. But she was going back to 
 Mrs. Gorhambury, who would be wondering what on earth had 
 become of her. Charles felt that he did not want her to go. 
 He was afraid of himself, left alone. He had a sort of feeling 
 that he could not press a young lady to stop and keep him com- 
 pany. In old days he would have added the words " even 
 Elbows " to his reflection to this effect. He did not do so 
 now. 
 
 How terribly he missed Fred ! Think of the comfort — the 
 support — the consolation it would have been now, to see his face, 
 to hear his voice. 
 
 He had not announced his own programme — had merely told 
 Anne that he might stop; so his room was to be ready. He did 
 not feel inclined to toss and tumble on a sleepless couch, perhaps 
 all through the small hours. And all the while — now he thought 
 of it — a letter might be lying at the diggings, waiting for him. 
 Yes — that was the idea ! Walk over to Wimbledon in this splen- 
 did moonlight and catch the last train up. If he came back here 
 to-morrow he would probably find her letter ; but she mighi have
 
 522 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 written to his chambers. It was possible? Anyhow^ no harm 
 would be done. 
 
 The servants had gone to bed, and he had to unbolt the house- 
 door to get ovit. No one would bolt it up again, that was cer- 
 tain, in case he changed his mind and went for a walk instead. 
 But he wouldn't do that. Much better go up to London, and 
 come back in the morning. He looked at his watch. Just time 
 to catch the last train — no more! He started for Wimbledon 
 at a brisk walk. However, there was really no hurry, as that 
 train was always late. 
 
 A train that is always late is not to be trusted. If it comes 
 to its knowledge that you or I want to catch it, it is as like as 
 not to reform its bad habits, and be in time, this time, although 
 it may have a relapse to-morrow. This vice especially distin- 
 guishes last trains to London. Charles's train left the station 
 just as he entered it; and he, ascribing last-but-oneness to, a 
 priori, had the humiliation of learning that there was nothing 
 till seven-thirty to-morrow morning, and had to walk back. 
 However, it was evident — and this was satisfactory — that there 
 must be a letter at the diggings; otherwise, what motive could 
 Fate have in thus reserving the natural order of things ? 
 
 The most grievous anxiety will not force a man to lie awake 
 who has covered nearly five miles of ground overnight. But it 
 will fight a hard battle ere it gives way to Morpheus. Charles's 
 yielded so late that he did not wake until Anne, who had drawn 
 inferences from dusty boots outside his door, came with hot 
 water. 
 
 He was late, and disconcerted to find that Nancy, in bicycle 
 trim, was pumping up her tyres to depart. '*' I've committed 
 myself to going," said she, " by sending them a wire at home 
 to say I shall be home to lunch. And I've told Mrs. Gorham- 
 bury to write for me if she wants me. She's a lot better, and 
 I'm rushing away because I'm really overdue at home. They'll 
 be making a rumpus if I don't go. You'll see, you'll hear from 
 Lucy to-day. . . . No, I won't go till the next post comes. 
 Hadn't you better go and get some breakfast, Mr. Snaith ? I'm 
 going upstairs to say farewell to my beloved. Makes one feel 
 like the Song of Solomon ! " She felt her tyre, and saw that it 
 was good, and went away upstairs. 
 
 Charley deceived himself into thinking that all was well with 
 him, to the extent of swallowing an ordinary breakfast, and 
 glancing at the usual news in a customary newspaper. He was 
 braced up to this point by Miss Fraser's assurance and sangfroid 
 
 1
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 523 
 
 about the coming post. There she was outside, talking to King 
 Solomon, who was being carried out by Tilly Slowboy to give 
 her godspeed. She was speaking to him in a conventional 
 tongue he was supposed to understand, to the effect that as soon 
 as his delicious little legs were long enough, he should have a 
 Humber all for himself and come for rides with his lady friends. 
 Charles looked happy over this. It was as well that he should 
 do so while he could. 
 
 Which of us has not felt that what the postman drops in the 
 box cuts time in half, ending the Past on the hour when we had 
 not read that letter; or beginning the Future, as may be? We 
 have not read it yet, but its contents are there. When the un- 
 mistakable footstep was heard on the gravel path outside— for 
 this postman knew how to open the outer gate, though no one 
 else did, not even the Milk — Charles made his face stoical, not 
 to show any emotion whatever before Tilly Slowboy, and the 
 taker away "of breakfast, or its memories. He communed with 
 his son, leaving the undisguised eagerness of Nancy to get at the 
 envelopes. 
 
 " Yes — here we are ! This is her ! Foreign postmark though 
 —what's that for?" 
 
 Charles did not see the issue. " Well — that's all right ! " said 
 he. " Posted abroad. ... Oh no ! — I see what you mean. It 
 is rum. But it's her handwriting, anyhow! Give us hold. 
 Nothing like looking inside a letter to find what there is in it." 
 For Nancy, clearer headed perhaps than he was — for indeed the 
 sight of Lucy's handwriting had so relieved him that his judg- 
 ment was, for the moment, nowhere — had seen that a Lucerne 
 postmark brought no solution of the mystery; rather deepened 
 it, in fact. " I'll just run my eye through it and tell you what's 
 in it — honour bright ! " Charles did not open the letter then 
 and there — perhaps to assert Stoicism — but bore it away to his 
 little smoking den, just round the corner. 
 
 Nancy would of course have waited anyhow, but outside this 
 fact she was influenced by a misunderstanding of Master 
 Charles's; if indeed she rightly ascribed an outbreak of savage 
 violence on his part to a sense of injury at the letter being 
 delivered to his father, and not to himself. WTiatever the cause, 
 he required a good deal of explanation and apology, accompanied 
 by suggestions of his motives. As soon, however, as an intensely 
 sudden calm came upon him, for no apparent reason, Nancy 
 said to Tilly Slowboy, who was a lay-figure to converse with, but 
 no more : — " I'm curious about that postmark — why Lucerne ? "
 
 524 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Tilly conceived that this referred to the use of that name, when 
 it would have been Just as easy to call that place, wherever it 
 was, by some plain intelligible English name. 
 
 " Well now," said Tilly, " if that very thing didn't crost my 
 mind. Loose Hurn ! — such a name I never, nor yet anyone 
 else. As I say, there ain't no accountin' for foreigners, nor 
 askin' of 'em what next. You won't be even with them. ..." 
 And so on. At another time, Nancy might have tried to correct 
 the under-nurse's misconception. Just now, she was only 
 anxious to hear the explanation contained in that letter. She 
 would finish making sure of her bike's readiness for the road. 
 It might be a long letter, and Nosey would read it all through 
 before he came out to tell what was in it. No misgiving crossed 
 her mind that anything was not all right. In fact, she went so 
 far as to think to herself a wish that Nosey would look alive. 
 
 The nursemaid might communicate to j\Irs. Gorhambury that 
 a letter had come from the mistress. Nancy favoured a fiction 
 that Master Charles was yearning to carry tlie news, and was 
 rejoicing in the prospect of welcoming his mamma. He was 
 borne away upstairs shouting and much pleased with himself, 
 but neither confirming nor contradicting these statements. 
 
 It icas a long letter — no doul)t of that I Still, Lucy must have 
 been all alive and kicking, to write such a long letter. That was 
 satisfactor}^ at any rate. 
 
 Tom the taciturn appeared restless, irresolute, uncertain what 
 he should garden next. For as he walked along the terrace-walk 
 in front of the house towards where Nancy was engaged with her 
 bicycle, he faltered and lingered — seemed to glance in at the 
 window of the room where Charles was reading the letter. Not 
 like Tom ! — for one of Tom's aims in life was to limit all the 
 others to the garden, and to ignore the house so far as was 
 consistent with respect for its inhabitants. 
 
 Nancy set this action on Tom's part down to his ignorance — 
 which she inferred — of his master's unexpected arrival. " Glad 
 to see Mr. Snaith back, Tom?" said she, under this impres- 
 sion. 
 
 Tom corrected it, but with something odd in his manner. " I 
 seen the master before," said he, " to talk to. Out in this here 
 garden, early Thursday morning." 
 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon," said Nancy. " But you were very 
 glad to see him then, no doubt ? So it comes to the same thing." 
 
 " Ah, I was. Very glad to see him then, I was." 
 
 " Aren't you glad to see him now ? You don't mean that ! "
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 525 
 
 Nancy was amused at what she thought was merely the man's 
 manner. 
 
 Instead of answering, he turned back along the walk, and 
 stopped opposite the window, as before. In a second or so, he 
 turned and came back, but seemed in a difficulty about speech. 
 
 " Well — what's that for ? " said Nancy. 
 
 Tom stammered and turned red; then, vnth an effort, said: — 
 "Wasn't I glad to see the master now, you said? Well, I'd be 
 gladder to see him move, if you ask me. And that's the honest 
 truth." 
 
 " Gladder to see him move ! " Nancy repeated the words in 
 sudden fear. " You mean that he's . . . ill ? . . . What do 
 you mean ? " 
 
 Tom was ready with an indirect reply. " I should knock at 
 his door," said he. " That's what I should do." 
 
 Nancy looked at him, and saw from his face what he meant. 
 His look was explicit, though his words were not. " See that my 
 machine doesn't fall down," said she, and forsook it. 
 
 She ran along the passage, stopped at the door of the smoking- 
 room, and listened — No sound ! — Then she tapped, once, twice. 
 No answer ! She wavered twenty seconds, still hoping an answer 
 would come, then gently opened the door, ready to speak again 
 if any sound came. She looked in and saw no one. 
 
 He must be there, of necessity. Tom had not seen an empty 
 room through the window. His speech had settled that. It was 
 the further window that he had paused at. Nancy saw the facts 
 at a glance. She could account for the whole room, all but the 
 floor between a sofa-back and the desk, easily visible from that 
 window. What he had seen was there. And she, Nancy Fraser, 
 had to see it first, and then call help. It was all clear to her in 
 a moment. 
 
 She went near, in silent dread, and looked with an effort, at 
 the insensible figure she had foreseen ; then turned and ran back, 
 calling for help as she went. 
 
 " Come ! — come ! Mr. Snaith is ill — he has fainted. Come ! 
 . . . Where is a doctor? . . . Wbcre is his house? I can go 
 for him. . . . Yes — quicker than any of you — on the bike." 
 And being informed, Nancy would have started off there and 
 then, to find him, if testimony had not gone to show that the 
 same doctor would be sure to be out seeing patients: more by 
 token that he was already due at The Cedars to succour Mrs. 
 Gorhambury. It was a lucky chance, and he would be sure to 
 arrive in a minute or two, as he had been in the neighbourhood. 
 
 " 34
 
 520 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 His carriage had been seen to pass the house on the waA' to 
 another patient, like it did yesterday, when he called on his way 
 back. 
 
 An unexpected auxiliary appeared too in the shape of the 
 doctor's patient. The shock and excitement drove the himbago 
 suddenly away from its victim, and the semi-dishevelled figure 
 that met Nancy's surprised eyes on the stairs as — returning from 
 her second visit to the insensible man, having found that neither 
 she, nor the cook, nor the gardener, had any real knowledge of 
 first aid in such a seizure — was actually Mrs. Gorhambury her- 
 self ! Her experience was useful, as it saved Charles from 
 sundry methods of treatment of which the other members of the 
 household had heard tell as sovran remedies. She was reassur- 
 ing about the case, saying after a very slight examination of 
 it : — " No — don't you put his feet in boiling water, nor yet his 
 head. Nor don't rub brandy on the palms of his hands. Just 
 lie him fiat on the sofa, and open out his collar, and bide a bit. 
 He'll be come to before Dr. Tinkwell gets here — you see if he 
 isn't ! " 
 
 On her second visit to the room, after giving the alarm, Nancy 
 had seen in Charles's hand the letter he had carried away to 
 read. It was something in that letter that had done it. She 
 longed to know what, to be relieved about Lucy's safety. But 
 rules must be observed. " No man shall read another's letter 
 without his leave " is a rule that scarcely admits of an exception. 
 Nancy opened the table-drawer close at hand, and put the letter 
 in and shut it. This was not to free herself from temptation, 
 but to prevent its being seen — possibly read — by someone else. 
 
 Mrs. Gorhambury was right. The unconscious man recovered 
 and spoke, or tried to speak, before the doctor arrived. Nancy 
 could not catch what he said, and had to go away to head off 
 the doctor from him, knowing that officious therapeutics would 
 be unwelcome. She had also to explain Mrs. Gorhambury. Dr. 
 Tinkwell was rather indignant at that patient's independent be- 
 haviour, he having told her on no account to try to get up. But 
 he admitted the capricious character of lumbago. Nancy prom- 
 ised that she should appear forthwith and state her own case. 
 She said almost nothing about the cause of the sudden alarm 
 that had brought the nurse to her feet, and said good-bye to the 
 doctor. 
 
 She met Mrs. Gorhambury leaving the smoking-room in an 
 optimistic mood. 
 
 "The master's coming to all right," said she. "Just like I
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 527 
 
 told you ! He's asking for some letter. We don't see no letter. 
 Perhaps you know, Miss ? " 
 
 That was all right. Miss Eraser knew what he meant. " You 
 go and see Dr. Tinkwell, Mrs. Gorhambury," said she. " He's 
 in the parlour." She went into the smoking-room. 
 
 They had got him to swallow brandy, in her absence. It had 
 roused him, there was no doubt of that ; was rousing him still, 
 for that matter. '' Miss Fraser knows," said he. " I had it in 
 my hand — just now! What's become of it? " 
 
 " I know about the letter," said she. " I slipped it inside the 
 desk. Here ! " She went to the desk, adding, as she brought 
 the letter out: — " Hadn't you better lie down, Mr. Snaith? " 
 
 He was raising himself with his hands, dropping his feet to 
 the ground. Probably he felt his weakness and dizziness. For 
 he fell back, saying : — " Perhaps I had," with evident relief. 
 " They may go now," he said. But he seemed to think this 
 might be felt as ingratitude, for he added : — " Thank you all 
 very much. You were very kind. Now I am all right." The 
 household departed, the housemaid Anne slightly asserting her- 
 self, as priestess of that floor, by removing something, or replac- 
 ing something, or adjusting something she might just as well 
 have left alone. 
 
 Nancy held out the letter for him to take. But he shook his 
 head, saying : — " No — no — no ! I cannot read it. I cannot 
 trust myself. I must have read it wrong. I should read it 
 wrong again. You must read it — aloud — now!" On the last 
 words, he rose to emphasis ; then seemed unable to say more, 
 as though exhausted. 
 
 But it was something in this letter — some news or what not — 
 that had brought on this attack. Nancy wavered, not uncom- 
 pliant, but protesting. " Did Lucy expect me to ? " said she, 
 hesitating. 
 
 " Read — read ! " said he, impatiently. " Never mind ! — read 
 it through, and get it over. . . . Oh my God ! " 
 
 What could it be in the letter, to make him moan like that? 
 All that Nancy could see at this moment was a letter written 
 to all seeming with a steady hand, dated Hotel d'Europe, 
 Lucerne, two days since. She glanced quickly at the signature, 
 and saw that it was from his wife, beyond a doubt. But why 
 Lucerne? Her pause of bewilderment was brought to an end 
 by his repetition of his request to her to read. '' If I am gone 
 mad, let me know it." More to himself than to her, he added : — 
 " Perhaps this is all a dream."
 
 528 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 She had no choice but to read, but the words were wormwood 
 on her tongue. This was the letter : — 
 
 " After your accusation of falsehood against me last night 
 no course is open to mc but to end our connection. If I loved 
 you, I might think otherwise. But I have come to understand 
 how little affection had to do with our union. I was influenced 
 — I am ashamed to confess it — by my mother and others, who 
 represented to me that to reject your suit would be to throw 
 away worldly advantages of which I might live to regret the loss. 
 I was influenced too, very seriously, by the fact — which I freely 
 admit now — that at the time I knew no man towards whom I felt 
 more amiably disposed. Young women at my time of life often 
 imagine that a feeling of this sort may warrant matrimony. I 
 was mistaken, but a mistake is no crime, and once discovered, the 
 sooner its consequences are undone the better. 
 
 " I do not blame your behaviour towards me last night. On 
 the contrary I feel in a sense grateful for it. It has given me 
 courage to speak plainly and end the unsatisfactory conditions 
 of my life. Women would often take the same step, but they are 
 cowards, and slaves of superstition. Their ' wifely duties ' — 
 forsooth !— are to be considered before their happiness. I am not 
 prepared with this extent of docility. 
 
 " I am much concerned that you should not misunderstand 
 me. You may easily put this action of mine down to resentment 
 or dislike. If you ascribe either feeling to me you will do me 
 an injustice. 1 have every feeling for you that is described as 
 friendship, friendly regard, or respect. But one feeling I have 
 not, and it is the one that is essential to every marriage in which 
 the wife is more than a slave, I mean Love. / do not love you, 
 and that is the simple truth in three words. That wife that we 
 saw at the play in Paris obviously loved her husband in spite 
 of herself. 
 
 " You will oblige me by informing my mother of this, and 
 telling her that I do not propose to return to England, at least 
 at present. Letters sent to me at this address will be for- 
 warded. With every good wish for your happiness without me, 
 I remain, your legally,' at present, however impatiently, 
 
 " Lucy Snaith." 
 
 Nancy had a hard task to read this letter. When she had 
 finished it she did not dare, at first, to raise her eyes from it, 
 and look up at the unhappy man on whom she had, as it were,
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 529 
 
 been compelled to use it as a knife. She had been stabbing 
 Charles Snaith against her will. 
 
 A moment passed. Then she was forced to look up at him by 
 the strangeness of the voice that said : — " What am I to do ? " 
 It was almost as though someone else, not known to be in the 
 room, had spoken. His eyes were wild, and his breath came 
 quick. He repeated a^ain — kept on repeating : — " What am I 
 to do — what am I to do ? " 
 
 Nancy had her own convictions of what had happened — of 
 what was going to happen. But her immediate task was to catch 
 at anything that would bring him hope — anything to stave ofE 
 the worst tension of the moment. An idea crossed her mind. 
 " Listen ! " said she, in a voice that meant that he should do 
 so. " What was the name that doctor called it by ? ' Mental 
 alienation.' That's what it is with Lucy. She has not gone 
 mad." 
 
 That eased him, with its clever assumption that nothing short 
 of some form of insanity could account for such a letter. 
 Nancy's speech simply dismissed as incredible any substantial 
 change in Lucy's affection for her husband. Panic went out of 
 his voice, and left it free to say : — " Yes — it's that ! That's what 
 it is — mental alienation — mental alienation! Nothing short of 
 stark madness, else ! . . . You really think that, Nancy Fraser, 
 do you not ? " 
 
 " Oh dear yes ! — I'm entirely in earnest. I believe these things 
 happen every day, if we only knew. Shall I toll you what I 
 think you had better do ? " 
 
 He thought a moment ; then said very emphatically : — " Yes 
 — I'll be guided by you. I can't see my way. This thing has 
 turned me right over." Then he went on, but more as though 
 speaking to himself than to her : — " What a brick of a girl you 
 are ! . . . Beg your pardon ! " This last as though in apology 
 for freedom, of speech. 
 
 She took no notice of this, but went on, keeping to the point. 
 " Write to Lucy, saying you have got this, and that you are 
 starting for Lucerne at once ; or — well ! — as soon as possible. 
 That is, lose no time ! " 
 
 He caught at the idea eagerly. "' Quite right— quite right," 
 he said. " Much the best course. I'll go at "once. I'll go to- 
 day." He waited a moment for her to speak; then, misunder- 
 standing a silence on her part, added hesitatinglv, wistfullv: — 
 " It will be all right— all made up ? You ^think so, don't 
 you ? "
 
 530 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Whatever she felt or feared, confidence was necessar3\ Put a 
 good face on the matter, anjdiow ! — that was her feeling. 
 "Think so!" said she. "I am sure of it. Shall I tell you 
 what makes me so sure of it? . . . All right, I will." She 
 explained that her reading of the letter had thrown a light 
 on Lucy's disappearance, about the causes of which she had 
 hitherto been quite in the dark. " To be sure," said she, " it 
 did cross my mind when you asked whether my aunt Caecilia 
 and her husband had not quarrelled, but then I decided that 
 you might mean that you and Lucy had not, which was all 
 the difference. But her letter says, ' accusation of false- 
 hood.' " She glanced at the first page in confirmation, then 
 looked him straight in the face, her frankness scattering eva- 
 sions in advance, with words he could not possibly contradict : 
 " You and she were not in a honeypot, anyhow." 
 
 At another time he would have smiled at her way of putting 
 it. Now he said, sadly and seriously : — " No, we were not, — 
 not exactly. But nothing was further from my thoughts than 
 to quarrel with Lucy." He really believed what he said. 
 
 " What a very funny thing it is," said Nancy, " how many 
 people nothing is farther from everybody else's thoughts than 
 to quarrel with ! . . . Yes — I know that isn't big-wig lu- 
 cidity, but you'll have to make it do." 
 
 " I'll make it do. It is a very funny thing, and I know 
 quite well what you mean. But let me tell you the whole of 
 it." He did so, after some protest from Nancy, who said it 
 wasn't fair, because she always believed the side she heard 
 first. However, she listened to a narrative of the facts, which 
 was only misleading in the persistent attempt of the narrator 
 to take the blame on himself. It was so transparent as to be 
 intelligible to its hearer. 
 
 " I'm sorry for Lucy," said she, when he had done. " I'm 
 afraid there's nothing to absolve her with, except that two 
 years have passed since she told the editor chap. Plenty of 
 time ago is as good as Holv Water." Charles interjected: — 
 "Yes— I know. But it wasn't that." She replied:— "Of 
 course not. She ought to have told the whole truth after 
 you met the man at the play. Then she wouldn't have had a 
 hocus-pocus about the letter. She got mixed up and couldn't 
 get clear. Just like me when I tell lies ! " 
 
 " Do you ever tell lies ? " 
 
 " Precious seldom nowadays. I'm too stupid to get out of 
 the messes I get into. Eeally if you heard me you would
 
 ) 
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 531 
 
 think . . . Well!— it's a caution for snakes, I assure you."' 
 Somehow the gravity of Nancy's face, colliding with the 
 schoolboy levity of her language, had the strange effect of 
 making 'her look pretty; or, if that overstates it, of accen- 
 tuating whatever beauty she possessed. For she had Just 
 enough to give her face an interest — must have had, for 
 Charles to notice it at tliis moment. 
 
 He began one or two supplementary extenuations of Lucy's 
 breach of faith in spite of the time that had elapsed, and made 
 but a poor show. Nancy gave him very little help in this, 
 though she did what she could. He was unable to conceal 
 what was perhaps the worst feature of the case — that manipu- 
 lation of the letter in Paris. Nancy's generous offer of her 
 own reputation for veracity did very little good. 
 
 She was much embarrassed by the fact that she had sent 
 that telegram home to say she was coming. As things had 
 turned out, she would much rather have stopped and kept an 
 eye on Nosey, with that terribly unsettled, haggard look upon 
 liim. Was he safe to leave alone? She would have no mis- 
 givings about him when he was fairly started on a journey, with 
 Lucy at the end of it. That would be to-morrow. He would 
 write for the evening post to-night, and would follow his letter 
 in the morning. But how about the remainder of to-day? Well 
 — he might go for a walk, as he did yesterday. He would be safe 
 walking about as long as it was daylight. Or he might go up 
 to town, to his place of business in Lincoln's Inn Fields, or to 
 his chambers. But suppose he went to the latter, now the very 
 essence of loneliness ! Would he be safe there., in the dark by 
 himself, with a razor? 
 
 She had an idea that would prevent that. The next time the 
 conversation admitted it, she developed that idea. " I really 
 ought to be getting on my way now," said she, " after saying 
 they were to expect me at lunch. Papa's at home to-day, and he 
 is a fidget and a half, I can tell you. You are just a born angel 
 compared to him. ..." 
 "A what?" 
 
 " A born angel. If one is five minutes late, he can't keep his 
 hair on. . . . No — really I'm serious ! . . . Well — you know 
 Mrs. Gorhambury took up her bed and walked — as least, she 
 ivalked. Anne told her some nonsense about you, and it gave 
 her a start. I wouldn't trust her not to have a relapse. Miracu- 
 lous cures do. Now, I should be much comfortabler if you would 
 promise to stop here to-night, and not go up to town."
 
 532 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 " Don't see why. But cither way will do for me. Oh yes, 
 I'll promise, since you wish it." 
 
 " I shall be much more easy in my mind about the King, if 
 you do. Now I'm going up to have another touching farewell 
 of his Majesty, and then off I go, and precious late I am ! " 
 
 " I'll come and have a look at his Most Gracious, myself." 
 So Charles followed Nancy up to the nursery. The monarch 
 was in a most favourable mood, talking to himself in a language 
 whose alphabet was very easy to say, as it consisted only of L 
 and G. Twenty-six letters are needed to spell English, but then 
 consider what a quantity of nonsense is talked in that language. 
 Could it manage with fewer? Is there anywhere — in four-di- 
 mensional space, for instance — a tongue wdiose alphabet has a 
 thousand letters ? What a chance for the Press, if there is ! 
 
 That such a current of thought as this should pass through 
 Charles's mind — for of course that is where the story sees it — 
 was nowise strange, if their observation is true who ascribe to 
 moments of the gravest trial and tension a special bias to all 
 that is odd and grotesque in thought, or merely trivial. To be 
 dramatically correct, Charles's dominant image of his son and 
 heir should have connected itself inseparably with that of his 
 mother. Instead of that, it really seemed as though an impres- 
 sion of Nancy's was well founded, that the more he saw of the 
 baby the less he would fret over her absence. The fact was that 
 his son's powerful individuality was already asserting itself, 
 though encumbered by the abundance of its incarnation. It 
 may be that very few or none of the actions or motives at- 
 tributed to him by his retinue were grounded on facts — such, 
 for instance, as that he had been asking all the morning for his 
 papa, to show him his new toof — but it was certain that when 
 he was opposed in the minutest particular he showed a very bad 
 temper indeed — roaring, Mrs. Gorhambury said, like a bull, and 
 never giving over not till you let him have his way, if it was 
 ever so. On such occasions it was difficult to dissociate the 
 heavenly smile which illuminated his incipient countenance from 
 some equivalent of gratification at success. This and similar 
 phenomena had contributed to the formation of a belief in his 
 father's mind that he really was a person on his own, however 
 crude his character might be. 
 
 Therefore his lady friend Miss Fraser felt much better satis- 
 lied that Mr. Snaith should remain on at The Cedars during her 
 absence — for she was meaning to ride over next day — than that 
 he should go away, with this nightmare doubt about the future
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 533 
 
 upon him, to Heaven knows what degree of loneliness and con- 
 sequent depression at his chambers. She really felt almost 
 cheerful about him as they parted at the garden gate. Her last 
 word to him was : — " Now, suppose you go away and write that 
 letter to Lucy ! " His reply was : — " All right. Plenty of time 
 for that. I shall put off" posting it till the last minute. I 
 shouldn't the least wonder at another letter coming from her — 
 and her coming after it. Ta-ta ! " He watched the rider till 
 she vanished with a loud stroke of the bell at a turning, and 
 then went straight away to his writing-desk and began his 
 letter. 
 
 Contrition. How could he blame himself enough for his im- 
 patience ? It was all his fault and none of hers. He only asked 
 to be forgiven and taken into favour again. He could not bring 
 himself to believe — how was it possible that he should do so ? — 
 that her letter was in earnest. He would not discuss it nor show 
 it to her mother. It would be an injustice to her that he should 
 do so. He would not, in fact, take it seriously. At this point in 
 his own letter he felt an uncomfortable misgiving that he was 
 overstating the degree to which he was able to shut his eyes, and 
 drew out the letter to reread. 
 
 But then — consider what he had just written! He was not 
 going to take it seriously. Then, why reread it? Why think 
 about its contents at all, when to admit them to his mind was 
 to treat as a possibility the idea that this wife whom he idolized — 
 this woman for whom- his love was as the core of his whole soul 
 — did -not love him, had never loved him ? If that were to be 
 true, what was left for him but death — death by his own hand? 
 He looked that contingency in the face without emotion, witliout 
 a shudder. It w^ould simply be a sequel, far less terrible to him 
 than its antecedent cause. Why, then, indulge for a moment the 
 idea that such a letter could be in earnest? Suppose it real, how 
 could he face life, after such an experience? He could face 
 death. 
 
 That very nice girl who had just gone — by the way, what a 
 jolly shame it was of him and Fred to speak of her always as 
 "Elbows"! — slie would tell him suicide was cowardice. He 
 could see a mental image of that frank serious face, could mark 
 the unfaltering decision of those lips that said it. But what 
 would it matter, then, whether it was cowardice or courage? 
 ^NTothing would matter ! Oblivion is feelingless, and Death is 
 Oblivion. 
 
 He wavered half a moment witli that hateful, or merely
 
 534 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 ludicrous, letter in his hand; then lit a Vesta match, the 
 smoker's resource, never out of reach. Was ho right? He 
 could blow it out still? . . . No — he was quite right, and the 
 letter was burning. He placed the cigar tray on a big red book 
 that was lying on the desk, which he recognised as the Conti- 
 nental Bradshaw he and Lucy had managed to leave behind when 
 they started. One always leaves something behind. 
 
 There! Half of the letter was cinder, and he felt happier 
 already. Now three-fourths was gone, now four-fifths. And 
 now nothing was left of it but what his fingers held — the fag-end 
 he dropped in the cigar tray that they might not be burned. 
 "\^nien the very very last combustible scrap was a sparkless ash, 
 his breath came freer, and he turned to finish his own letter to 
 Lucy. 
 
 He put dots to express this incendiarism, and continued : — 
 " That means I have burned it. What less could I do, when 
 every scrap of me is made up of denial of its possibilit}' — is in 
 revolt against every word it contains, and condemns its absurdity ? 
 Dearest, dearest love, if what you say were true — if I could 
 dream that your love for me had never been other than luke- 
 warm at the best, that would be the end of everything for me. 
 I tell you I should kill myself. But I don't believe you — that's 
 flat ! This letter will go by the afternoon post and I shall follow 
 it next day at the latest. I have thought it best, being here, to 
 see Trymer in case he has anything to say to me. I might have 
 seen him yesterday, but really I want a few hours to get settled in 
 before talking business. Remember that for anything I knew 
 something might have happened to you. In fact, I have been 
 very anxious about you — that's the truth! I shall telegraph (I 
 have just this moment seen the need for doing so) to say I am 
 writing, and I shall come straight to your hotel confident of 
 finding you. Till then good-bye ! " 
 
 He did not mean to see Trymer, nor was it necessary. The 
 merest put-off, that she might get a letter from him before his 
 arrival ! He did not analyse the whole of his motives, perhaps 
 lest he should find that one of them was a fear that she might be 
 in earnest after all. In that improbable contingency, surely it 
 would be generous to help her to avoid a useless and painful in- 
 terview. And prudence always makes allowance for evei'ij con- 
 tingency, however improbable. 
 
 His letter finished, he was somewhat at a loss what to do ; or, 
 rather, what to pretend to do. For his head was too dizzy for 
 any real employment. He went up to the nursery, to enjoy its
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 535 
 
 present lord and master, and further his views, if possible. But 
 Master Charles was out in his pram, taking the air. Not the 
 whole of the air — only as much as suited him. The capacity of 
 his lungs had to be considered. So Charles began a letter to 
 Fred, telling something, but not much, of his misunderstanding 
 with Lucy; taking the tone that the course of true love never 
 did run smooth, and Life, whatever The Optimist might say, 
 could not be expected to be all beer and skittles. He was enabled 
 to make short work of this part of his story by giving a full 
 account of the fortnight they had spent in Normandy before go- 
 ing to Paris. Such a delicious time that had been ! And to 
 have it end in such a dismal fiasco as this ! He was far from 
 sure Fred would ever get this letter; as, if not already on his way 
 back to England, he would be very shortly. In fact, it was 
 rather a problem where to direct it, as he really did not know 
 where Fred was. The hostess of the hotel Fred and his mother 
 had just left in Paris, the day before his own arrival there with 
 Lucy, had been told to forward letters to the Hotel Washington 
 at Lugano. Should he, or should he not, direct to that hotel? 
 For some reason unknown, it seemed to him an improbable hotel 
 per se, not one that a matter-of-fact tourist would go to, to stop 
 at. Much more like one that French esprit, which was visible 
 in every fluctuation of that hostess's countenance, would invent 
 rather than not answer an enquiry. Why Charles discredited 
 this hotel is not known to the story ; it was most likely only due 
 to the state of his mind. But the fact remains, and also its 
 immediate consequence. He took the cigar ash-pan off the Con- 
 tinental Bradshaw, and opened that work at a particular page, 
 after an Index hunt. 
 
 Yes — he was right. Lugano and Lucerne were not a thousand 
 miles apart — quite the reverse ! This merely follows Charles's 
 reflections ; it does not justify the form they took. His impres- 
 sion of their distance had been due to the fact that they began 
 with the same two letters. \Vliat could possess two lakes, so 
 near one another, both to begin with Lu? If one of them had 
 been in China now, it would not have mattered how much alike 
 the names were. 
 
 But, being so near, an idea occurred to Charles. The way 
 from Lucerne to Italy was through this very selfsame Lugano. 
 So Bradshaw said. And Lucy had always harked back on some 
 memories of a portion of her childhood passed in Florence, years 
 ago. In fact, a vague ultimate trip to Florence had formed part 
 of their recent programme — time permitting, of course. What
 
 53G THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 more likely than a bias in that direction on her part? It would 
 account for Lucerne, at any rate. 
 
 He had written to the end of his paper to Fred, and was going 
 to consign it to its envelope when this idea crossed his mind. It 
 was worth a double postage to add a postscript, and he started it 
 on a fresh sheet, as follows : 
 
 " P.S. Just got a notion ! I didn't mention that the missus 
 had deserted me and miffed off in an opposite direction. I 
 didn't do this because I regarded the whole thing as unreal — a 
 flash in the pan; but all my fault, mind you! I add this P.S. 
 with a purpose. Lucy writes from Lucerne. I see from Brad- 
 shaw that Lugano is a very good stopping-place on the line to 
 Florence and Eome. And if my surmise is right, she is making 
 for Florence — and nothing is more likely than that she should 
 eome across you and your mother en voyage. If this happens, 
 what seems to me most advisable will be for neither you nor your 
 mother to show any surprise at her appearance, but wire at once 
 to the last address I have sent 5^ou, to tell me where she is, and 
 I will come immediately. I know you will be able to keep her 
 till I can join you, and then perhaps we could all go on to Italy 
 together. You can't be in any great hurry to come back. Do 
 do this for me, dear old boy, and whatever you do dont hlame 
 Lucy. The thing was absolutely my fault, as you will see when 
 I give you the story in full, viva voce. Grant that her attitude 
 on the subject is a little jrealcish, only don't condemn her until 
 you have heard from my own lips how I have misbehaved. I 
 must tell you that I have torn her letter up, as it seemed to me 
 that it contained things she could not have meant. 
 
 " I have wired and written to her at Lucerne, telling her that 
 I shall join her there to-morrow. If this reaches you there- 
 abouts, you may conclude I am at the Hotel d'Europe there — 
 till further notice." 
 
 His mistrust of his powers of finding or fabricating excuses 
 for what he called Lucy's freakish conduct kept him rather silent 
 about details, all through this letter; and it did not satisfy him. 
 But he could not think of anything better to say, and the idea 
 of rewriting a letter to Fred quarrelled with his pen. So he 
 ended by doing what so many of us have done under the same 
 circumstances — enveloped it because he had written it, directed 
 it because he had enveloped it, and stamped it because he had 
 directed it. Then it liad to go. A letter acquires a certain self- 
 assertion when melloAv. Nothing is then wanting but the postal
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 537 
 
 stamp, compared to which Destiny is mere vaciihition. Charles 
 felt impatient of the presence of these two letters, staring at him 
 reproachfully from the letter-rack with an inscription on it " For 
 the Post ! " So he took them himself to the Chemist's and 
 Druggist's down the road, wavered an instant before the official 
 slot that yawned laterally for them, laughed at his irresolution, 
 and thrust them in. Now they would go, come what might ! He 
 felt happier, as though he had done something. Well — what else 
 was there to do? 
 
 He walked back slowly to The Cedars, thinking — thinking of 
 the Past. How unlike the Present was — this Present — to the 
 vague Future that had been foreseen by him and Fred that first 
 time that he visited the house ! Where was that scheme of a 
 double household now? Where was the bride that was to have 
 been Fred's? A female Analytical Chemist, the step-parent of 
 several small Analytical Chemists, male and female; and the di- 
 rect parent — so Miss Xancy Fraser had told him — of one whom 
 she had added to their number, like a Committee with powers ! 
 How funny it seemed that this jSTancy Fraser, who had assumed 
 quite a new identity to Charles, should be the sister of that 
 Cintra of Mrs. Hopkinson's Cinderella, over three years since; 
 whom Fred raved about for a term, as long as he adored her, 
 and by whom he was ultimately abruptly cancelled, for Heaven 
 knows what reason. What icas the story of that affair, Charles 
 wondered? He knew or guessed this much, that the pair had 
 been led to discover their indifference to one another owing to 
 some jealous tiff on the part of the lady. " Some other girl in 
 that business!" said he to himself. Who was that other girl? 
 Very.likely Fred would have told him all about it if he had asked 
 him. But he had never pressed him on the subject. Would it 
 have been fair to do so? 
 
 Well — it was all forgotten now ! — a thing of the past. But it 
 had left a residuum — Elbows. And with it remorse in Charles's 
 inner consciousness that he and Fred should have chosen such a 
 disparaging nickname for her. Now, that showed Lucy's pene- 
 tration. Trust a clever woman's sagacity in these things. 
 " Why " — she had said — " must Fred want to marry that stupid 
 sister, when such a nice girl as that was vacant ? " Charles 
 wondered why, now. He supposed Lucy was right, and men 
 were the slaves of mere beaut}^ Of course Cintra was the better 
 looking of the two. . . . Stop a moment! — was she? His 
 memory had kept a spare corner for the gravity of Nancy's face 
 when she said that her imskilfulncs? in telling lies was a caution
 
 538 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 for snakes. He utilised it to throw doubt on Cintra's superiority, 
 successfully. 
 
 It was a satisfaction to him to dwell on those b3^gones, to take 
 his mind off the torture of the present. He did it mechanically, 
 in self-defence. Behind it was the shadow — the home without a 
 mistress that he was approaching. But courage ! — courage ! 
 Only a few hours more, and he would be on his way to Lucy ! 
 Why — by this time to-morrow he would be across the Channel ; 
 or at Dover, anyhow. He would have begun a journey that was 
 to end in Lucy. 
 
 But suppose that she . . . Oh, rubbish? — the thing was 
 impossible. He flung the idea from him indignantly, that she 
 really meant that odious letter. "What would the misgivings of 
 his secret self ask him to believe next ? 
 
 Much pleasanter now, as M^ell as more commonsense-rife, to 
 pooh-pooh the preposterous notion; at any rate till she, his wife, 
 the mother of his child, met his eyes with the harsh indifference 
 that letter laid claim to on her behalf. Suppose that unnatural 
 absurdity to be actual, what would come next? Well — for choice 
 — a leap over a ship's counter into its track of white sea-foam, 
 with pockets full of shot. For mere handiness, without regard 
 to the inconvenience a slovenly unwholesome corpse would oc- 
 casion to his survivors, sixpennyworth of potassic cyanide, 
 which would have been cyanide of potassium wlien he was 
 young, which could be obtained easily of any dealer in photo- 
 graphic chemicals. H was highly recommended for purposes of 
 suicide, and there was only one way of using it. A great advan- 
 tage that, over the bare bodkin Hamlet talked so confidently 
 about. 
 
 Tush — he was laughing at his own folly ! It wasn't going to 
 come to that, but to joint laughter of Lucy and himself at their 
 two absurdities; to the lips and eyes and warm embrace of recon- 
 ciliation. And then she, Lucy, could pour out gratitude without 
 reserve at the feet of that good creature — she ivas a good creature 
 — who had been such a help to him when that detestable letter 
 had to be read ; who had produced her Aunt Csecilia's " mental 
 alienation " with such promptitude. Charles would be grateful 
 to Nancy all the days of his life for " mental alienation." But 
 he couldn't kiss her, and call her a darling, for it. Luce could. 
 . . . By-the-bye, what is mental alienation ? 
 
 Was mental alienation the undefined agency that caused poor 
 old Stultifex ]\Iaximus to wander away, up this very lane, to 
 Heaven knows where? That was a strange story. That a man
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 539 
 
 in the prime of life — the prime of his life, though maybe the 
 ending stage of a lesser man's — should suddenly vanish away like 
 Waring, who gave us all the slip? And this too when his alter- 
 native of land-travel or sea-faring was not the aimless pacing up 
 and down of London town, but the business of the busiest of 
 men, the absorption and fascination of the human gardener's 
 work, the intense responsibility of giving to each human twig 
 its bent, that was to make the inclination of a great forest tree 
 half a century hence ! Fancy that swarm of boys on the watch 
 for him, only two days later ! 
 
 Observe that the belief in Charles's mind was deep-rooted that 
 the murder, or other violent death, of Dr. Carteret might be 
 crossed off the possibilities. It would have been found out long 
 ago, in practice — that was the reply to any such suggestion. It 
 was true that even Scotland Yard could not prove a negative, 
 but we had to be content with something short of proof absolute, 
 every day. He was satisfied, anyhow ; though as for being satis- 
 fied that the old gentleman would return, that was a thing about 
 which no man could prophesy. 
 
 A perambulator, wheeled by a nursemaid, who was acting as 
 interpreter for its occupant; who, if he had really expressed 
 pleasure at the sight of his papa, had done it in the alphabetically 
 limited tongue the story has referred to. Tilly Slowboy was in 
 charge alone, for the miraculous cure had not undertaken to last 
 if the lumbago patient ran any risks. Being unchecked by the 
 presence of an Authority, the young lady ventured on a trans- 
 lation of what seemed only a gurgle or splutter, to the effect that 
 Master Charles had expressed a wish to be took out of his pram 
 and carried by his pa. 
 
 Charles accepted this exegesis as sound, and his burden de- 
 voted itself, or himself, to interpreting his bearer's eyesight and 
 compromising his own security. He seemed greatly pleased with 
 his father's protest : — " I say, young man, if you go on jobbing 
 me in the eye like that, I shall tumble into the gutter and you'll 
 be killed ! " 
 
 " I declare now," said the nursemaid just after their arrival 
 at the house, " if that blessed child isn't trying to read his pa's 
 letters ! " He may have been, but he had never learned to read, 
 and a bystander unaccustomed to children might have supposed 
 he was "trying to stuff them down his throat. The post had oc- 
 curred in Charles's absence, and had shed letters. A flash of 
 momentary hope crossed his mind that one of them might be 
 from Lucy in a repentant mood — a revise of her former letter.
 
 540 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 Ikit as soon as Miss Slowboy, in response to his: — "Here — eatcli 
 hold of this cliap," had disencumbered him of Master Charles, he 
 had to face another disappointment. There was no letter — only 
 picture-books of cigar-boxes, and facsimiles of Dukes' signatures 
 to appeals for cash. 
 
 However, it was one o'clock, and luncheon, however irksome 
 in profound solitude, marked a bygone episode, and sighted the 
 end of another. What could he do with this interregnum of a 
 few hours that would skip by so quickly if he wanted them to 
 stop? Go for a walk? — Yes^ that was the safest course open to 
 him. He had made up his mind not to see his mother-in-law — 
 not on her merits ; polite usage demanded that he should conceal 
 a personal sentiment — but because he felt that, short of mental 
 alienation, he was not bound to take her into his confidence about 
 a fit of ijique of her daughter's. That was it — a fit of pique! 
 But observe ! — more than half the blame of it was his. She was 
 human ; but not culpable, thank you ! 
 
 As for the bare possibility that she was in earnest, it had 
 crossed his mind a few hours since certainly, but by now it had 
 made up its own not to do so again. And it should cross no 
 other mind than his — at least as a consequence of any confi- 
 dences from him about that letter he had torn up. The thing 
 should be buried out of sight, and forgotten. 
 
 He went for a long walk, to kill as much time as possible. He 
 was better losing his way in country lanes — you can do so still 
 within five-and-twenty miles of Charing Cross — than in brooding 
 over his anxieties at home. If he could have relied upon his 
 son's company he would have fallen back upon it, as that young 
 man's views of life pleased him. Everything, according to 
 Master Charles, was either the best of jokes or the deadliest of 
 injuries, which a man of his inches could only resent by becoming 
 a mere mass — however small — of crumpled fury, and hitting out 
 right and left at space. 
 
 The image of the young gentleman, carried upstairs in this 
 latter mood by Miss Slowboy, soothed his father through many 
 miles of country lanes and field paths, and still dominated him 
 when he returned home over three hours after he started. He 
 treasured, behind this image a hope that the first voice that 
 would greet his return would be hers — that baby's mother's — a 
 welcome arrival in his absence, having had a repentant fit and 
 started for home a few hours after posting that ridiculous letter. 
 The hope became, as he walked up the gravel road to the house, 
 a fear that nothing so good as that was in store for him; and
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 541 
 
 later on, after a doorstep pause with his ears painfully on the 
 alert, a- certainty to that effect. So he had to pretend that no 
 such anticipation had ever o:erminated. 
 
 No member of the household saw him return, because it con- 
 sisted, so far as he was concerned when he was replacing his 
 ' Panama hat on its peg, and his stick in the stand below it, of 
 ( remote voices in the kitchen and nursery. He passed unnoticed 
 ; into the smoking-room, and sank back on the couch on which, 
 only this morning, he had been as unconscious as a stone, and 
 had come back to a ])ainful consciousness in time to avert a visit 
 from the doctor. He felt none the worse for that occurrence 
 physically, but his head swam, and he mistrusted his judg- 
 ment. 
 
 Sometimes, when one's brain gets clouded in this way, it is 
 a relief to find some simple thing tliat wants doing, that one 
 may, by doing it, get into touch with current event again. Such 
 a thing presented itself to Charles — that Continental Bradshaw 
 which ought to have travelled with them to Paris! It should go 
 there to-morrow, anyhow. A vision of Lucy and himself, recon- 
 ciled like the couple in DivorQons, taking a little dinner d& 
 noces at the Europe at Lucerne — or even better, at Lugano with 
 Fred and his mother — passed across the proscenium of his intelli- 
 gence. He picked the book up, and carried it towards his room, 
 explicitly to add it to the contents of a small handbag of after- 
 maths which he was scheming to carry with him next da3^ It 
 would be the text-book of that banquet — would suggest the when 
 and where of next day's Journey. 
 
 The young woman, Anne, was passing down from the nursery 
 with a milk Jug, probably to renew the supply Master Charles 
 spent time, that could not possibly have been better employed, in 
 assimilating. Anne always resorted to a sort of chromatic scale 
 when she addressed gentlemen, which expressed — suppose we say ? 
 — a readiness for appreciation, but is itself impossible to any 
 known calligraphy or printing-type. The reader must imagine 
 it prefaced to her remark to her master, as she saw him emerge 
 from his private sanctum, bearing the Continental Bradshaw: — 
 " Haven't you seen the gentleman, Sir?" 
 
 "I? I haven't seen any gentleman. What gentleman ? " 
 
 " In the setting-room. . . . The gentleman in the setting- 
 room. Only he wasn't showed in by me, so I couldn't say. I 
 only come upon him, as you might say." 
 
 " What sort of gentleman ? " Charles's liand was too near the 
 handle of the door where the gentleman was for this to be a 
 
 3')
 
 542 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 reasonable question. But it arose out of the previous conver- 
 sation. 
 
 Anne stoppjed a moment to consider how she could make her 
 reply distinguished, and show a wide range of social information ; 
 then replied : — " A gentleman in horders." Her pride in this 
 way of describing a clergyman resulted in a powerful aspirate on 
 the initial of the last word. Charles remembered that ho had a 
 pound in gold in his pocket. This parson could only mean sub- 
 scriptions. He felt his coat outside, and decided that he was 
 safe. He could face the local curate whom he anticipated, with 
 the consciousness of such a coin available. 
 
 The curate he anticipated was a small man, meek and pink. 
 So unlike the man that he expected was the one that was wait- 
 ing to see him, that he could not have discarded at a moment's 
 notice the words ready for utterance on his tongue, and found 
 others to meet the position, even had there been no other be- 
 wildering circumstance in his identity. But that this man of 
 all others should be actually standing there before his eyes . . . ! 
 
 ^Yas it real? — that was his first thought. Was it not some 
 hallucination of his own brain, at odds with reality after that 
 overwhelming experience of the morning? Was it not delusion 
 pure and simple, this image of an old divine, broad-chested and 
 strong of limb, straight as an arrow for all that — unless his 
 white hairs belied him — his years, weighing heavily on a weaker 
 constitution, would have meant a hundred infirmities, or decrepi- 
 tude outright? Was it not more likely that Charles, wrought to 
 the extremest tension first by his anxiety about his wife's safety, 
 and then by the contents of the letter that had ended it, should 
 go clean off his head and become the victim of a delusion than 
 that his old master, old Stultifex Maximus — he remembered him 
 well, though he had scarcely seen him since schooldays — should 
 reappear inexplicably, after being despaired of, for two years? 
 He knew that he himself had always predicted this, but when it 
 came, its strangeness almost stunned him. 
 
 The only words he could find were : — " Good God — Dr. 
 Carteret ! " He would have liked the grasp of his extended 
 hand to make good by its cordiality the defect of welcoming 
 speech. But the old gentleman seemed to shrink from his touch 
 - — in fact, placed his own right hand without disguise behind his 
 back. 
 
 " Yes, Snaith — Dr. Carteret. . . . Excuse me. Do as I tell 
 you, and ask no questions. The time will come for explanation 
 later. For the present, let me ask you to be content without —
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 543 
 
 without touching me, in short. Treat it as a whim if you will, 
 and a strange one, but let me have my way. Is that under- 
 stood?" 
 
 He was mad of course, and the whole thing was accounted 
 for. So Charles said to himself. But our schoolmasters remain 
 our schoolmasters to the end. He felt that it was not for him 
 to dispute the fiat of Stultifex Maximus, mad or sane. He 
 spoke for a scattered host of fellow-schoolboys at Yexton when 
 he replied : — " Your will is our law, Sir. We don't question — 
 we obey." Any one of that host would have said the same. 
 Charles had a half-laugh for the position, but he spoke in good 
 faith, for all that. 
 
 The old gentleman — one thing was evident ; he was perfectly 
 harmless — seemed pleased. " I am glad to see that you remember 
 the old days, Snaith," said he. He then went on talking, evi- 
 dently with regret for his loss of the school, but without refer- 
 ring to his inexplicable and needless renunciation of it : — " If 
 men — men who have thought fit to be the authors of other men — 
 could only see clearly the overwhelming importance of every 
 moment of boyhood to the hours and years of manhood that are 
 to follow, it would simply change the race. If boys, good in 
 themselves, were not left to lie fallow, or to get intoxicated with 
 the taste of so-called pleasure — gross mud honey, Tennyson calls 
 it — they would grow up as good as girls. Men would be as good 
 as women. You think, Snaith, that I am talking professional 
 shop. ..." 
 
 " Not at all ! " said Charles. 
 
 " However, I was. I was just on the point of coming to the 
 schoolmaster's estimate of his own importance to the World. 
 So it ivas professional shop. If I had been permitted to con- 
 tinue at the school for a while longer ..." He spoke wist- 
 fully, as of a thing to regret. 
 
 Now, thought Charles, he will say something to throw a light 
 on his seemingly insane action. He, however, seemed to become 
 suddenly silent. A reminder might keep him to his topic. So 
 Charles said : — " I understand from what you are saying. Doctor, 
 that you were under some compulsion in leaving the school. I 
 have no right to be inquisitive, but ..." 
 
 " But you would like to be told? Is that it? " 
 
 " Something of that sort. Yes." 
 
 " You ask to be told, in fact." 
 
 " Well— I do." 
 
 The firm frown on the Doctor's brow strengthened slightly
 
 544 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 from increased consideration ; his closed lips met more decisively. 
 At last he spoke. " On the whole, no ! " said he, as though 
 answering a question that called for an affirmative or negative. 
 ** I might tell you something — yes ! But enough to satisf}' your 
 wish for information — a perfectly natural one, Snaith, a per- 
 fectly natural one — certainly not! And my time is limited. So 
 I must beg you to be content with my assurance that my non- 
 return to my duties at the school " — the sound of regret came 
 again in his voice — " was not a matter of choice, but of neces- 
 sity. At that, I stop. I am sorry." 
 
 His speech was so clear and calm, and his manner so settled 
 and decisive, that no reasonable doubt could remain about the 
 diagnosis of his mental disorder. Manifestly one of those rare 
 cases of mind-disease pure and simple, where autopsy of the 
 brain shows no lesion or disintegration of the organ ! Charles 
 saw this plainly, and knew that discussion of the point would be 
 useless. He had said he had a wish to know, so he could not 
 disclaim curiosity. It was a case for glisser, sans s'appuyer. So 
 lie said lightly : — " Never mind ! I shall know in time, per- 
 haps." 
 
 ''In time — perhaps!" The Doctor repeated his words, ac- 
 centing the last one. He added thoughtfully, half to himself : — 
 " The thing may remain unknown, for a very long time." Then 
 as one who dismissed one subject to take up another, he added : — 
 " But I am here with a purpose. I wish to speak to vou about 
 Fred." 
 
 Charles was glad. He had felt very uneasy in many ways 
 about Fred. Yet there was no one to whom he could talk about 
 Fred's affairs without reserve; unless indeed he overstepped the 
 limits that he conceived Fred's confidence imposed on him. Had 
 lie been in Fred's motlier's, he might have tried to approach the 
 subject; but he and she were little more than cordial acquaint- 
 ances. Xow, here was a man of great weight and authority with 
 both young men, and somewhat in loco parentis to one of them, 
 who would be very likely to break through all reserves — if indeed 
 lie knew anything of Fred's mysterious love-affair — and might in 
 any case deal with the subject in such a way as to justify allusion 
 to it. Therefore, Charles was glad, and met his visitor's wish 
 half-way. " It is very satisfactory to me to hear you say that," 
 said he. " For to tell you the truth, that young man has been 
 a source of anxiety to me. I think he wants advice, and I don't 
 feel qualified to speak to him. . . . But I wish. Doctor, you 
 would sit down, instead of standing on that hearthrug. Do come
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 545 
 
 in this armchair, and I will ring for some tea, if you don't mind 
 having it so late." No, the Doctor would prefer to take no tea, 
 he said. 
 
 Nor did he rise to an invitation to remain on to dinner. Xor 
 to coffee, nor to chocolate, nor even to a cigarette. He would 
 take absolutely nothing, thank you ! He, however, settled down 
 in the armchair, and Charles was not sorry to come to an anchor 
 opposite to him, for his long walk had qualified him for a rest. 
 He had some misgiving that his guest's mind, under these inter- 
 ruptions, might have wandered from its subject. 
 
 But it was set at rest when the old man resumed the con- 
 versation by repeating very nearly the words he had himself used 
 a moment back: — " Fred wants advice, and you are not qualified 
 to give it. Quite so. But you are qualified to repeat advice 
 from his guardian. In fact, I have a message to send to Fred, 
 touching his own affairs. You will give it him." 
 
 " I can write it to him, and will do so at once." And yet, 
 for all that Charles's manner was that of one who was taking 
 his guest's wish as a matter of course, and could readily under- 
 take a mere embassage, he was in fact saying to himself: — " How 
 comes the old boy to know anything of Fred's affairs now?" 
 What kept Dr. Carteret in touch with his own circle, when every 
 avenue that connected it with the outer world had been explored 
 in vain to find a trace of him ? What was the secret connecting 
 link? But whatever Charles thought, he showed no curiosity. 
 The old boy was non compos without a doubt, and that would 
 cover everything. 
 
 He, however, was perfectly sane to all outward seeming, as he 
 went on to formulate this message to Fred. He paused now and 
 then to pick a word carefully, but otherwise showed no hesitation 
 or embarrassment. " You are already aware, Snaith," he said, 
 '• that my nephew's engagement to marry of two years' since was 
 broken off because the young lady suspected — and with good 
 reason — that his affections were far from undivided? " 
 
 " I have a fair insight into that matter; a bystander's insight. 
 I have never talked to Fred about it. I mean, that my informa- 
 tion comes through another channel." 
 
 " Your information is correct. But are you fully alive to the 
 fact that this unhappy infatuation has persisted — has if anything 
 increased — during this last two years ? " How came the old boy 
 to be able to speak with such certainty? 
 
 Charles was puzzled at this, as well he might be. But he 
 .thought it safest to express no surprise — to take everything as a
 
 546 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 matter of course. He replied : — " Well — I have at least had no 
 reason to suppose it has diminished." 
 
 The answer came in the same quiet, positive way. " There is 
 no reason to suppose it. You may rely on me for this. Under 
 these circumstances it is my duty to do all I can to avert dis- 
 astrous consequences, and to help the poor foolish fellow against 
 himself." 
 
 " And mine," said Charles parenthetically. 
 
 The old man's answer was peculiar. " You can do nothing." 
 
 Its perfect quietness, and the speaker's conviction as of an 
 obvious truth, seemed to imply some special reason why Charles, 
 of all mankind, should be powerless to help. Yet he himself 
 only saw in it — for a man stone-blind sees nothing — another 
 symptom of insanity on the Doctor's part. To ascertained sanity 
 he would have said : — " Why can I do nothing, who am surely 
 almost Fred's brother ? " To the Doctor he only said : — " Per- 
 haps not," and let him continue : — "■ Except indeed the thing I 
 have come here to ask of you. You can do that." 
 
 Charles, utterly perplexed about what this was going to lead 
 to, could only reply : — " You may trust me to do anything that 
 is within my power," and wait. 
 
 He felt more than ever convinced of the old man's insanity 
 when he heard his next words : — " Have )'ou a good memory ? " 
 and saw the knitted brow and concentrated gaze of the speaker. 
 It reminded him of chance moments in bygone years — in Vexton 
 School, in the old davs. 
 
 " I liave to have a good memory. Doctor," said he. " It is a 
 professional asset. A solicitor with a bad memory is doomed to 
 failure. I assure you I cultivate mine. Go on." 
 
 " Try to remember all that I say to you, and repeat it to Fred, 
 as from me. Never mind the strangeness of it. I mean the 
 strangeness of my telling it to you. You will come to under- 
 stand the reasons of my doing so, some time." 
 
 Better to indulge his whim, thought Charles. " I will re- 
 member every word, to the best of my ability," said he. 
 
 " Yes. And ask for no explanations, but repeat my words to 
 Fred, as near as you can." He made the pause of a speaker Avho 
 leaves further prelude, and steps to his main subject. " It has 
 come to my knowledge — never mind how — that Fred questions 
 the possibility of concealing a misplaced passion from its object. 
 Well — it has been done, and I want him to know it. It would 
 strengthen him against himself." 
 
 " Very reasonable, Sir ! But why not say this to Fred him-
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE , 547 
 
 self? It would have more influence on him than coming through 
 an intermediary." 
 
 " You would not ask that question, Snaith, if you knew all the 
 circumstances of the case. Let me ask you again not to press me 
 for details which I cannot give. For one thing, there are diffi- 
 culties in the way of seeing Frederic. I must ask you to accept 
 the fact from me, without further explanation, that I cannot 
 write to him." 
 
 Wliere was the use of doing anything with a man evidently 
 insane ? There could be no reason why a letter should not carry 
 a message as well as a messenger; indeed better, for one takes 
 a messenger into confidence. Mad, evidently ! Charles hastened 
 to apologize for seeming inquisitiveness. " I did not mean to ask 
 questions," he said. " It was merely by way of suggestion. Do 
 not let me interrupt 3'ou, Sir." 
 
 The severe countenance of the old School King relaxed when- 
 ever Charles spoke to liim as a pupil — for that was what his form 
 of speech meant — and there was satisfaction in his voice. " No 
 harm, Snaith," said he. " I will go on and say what I have to 
 say. My time is necessarily short, I am asking you to tell Fred 
 from me that he is not alone — very far from it — in his . . . 
 unhappy entanglement of the affections." He paused a moment 
 to find the right phrase, then continued: — " I wish him to know 
 that his guardian and old schoolmaster, his father's brother — 
 yes, Snaith, I myself ! — lived from youth to old age under the 
 burden of a secret passion, impossible of requital even if its 
 object could have suspected it. Tell him that the birth of this 
 passion was in the girlhood — the childhood — of the woman who 
 was to rule my heart through life; that it had possession of 
 every fibre of my soul long and long before the fatal knowledge 
 came one day that it was hopeless and purposeless. Tell him 
 that in its inception there was no trace of guilty intrusion on 
 the rights of another, no shadow of blame such as may attach to 
 the would-be lover who seeks to undermine a woman's pledge 
 given elsewhere. Tell him that, so as to make him understand 
 what my position was. . . . You understand it yourself ? " He 
 stopped to ask this question abruptly in a rush of emphatic speech 
 which seemed to have taken possession of him, rather than to be 
 spoken by him, and awaited the answer with knitted brows. It 
 made his hearer a boy again to see him — a boy at one of the class 
 exams ; at the old school at Vexton, years ago. 
 
 But, although taken aback to find himself the recipient of such 
 a confidence, coming to him with such an overwhelming sudden-
 
 548 . THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 ness, Charles answered clearly and directly : — " I understand per- 
 fectly. You fell in love with a very young girl, and she came to 
 an understanding with another lover, perhaps before ..." 
 
 " Yes — go on." 
 
 "... before you thought she wa? old enough to know any- 
 thing about such matters. Was that it? " 
 
 " That was so, as you put it. Make Fred understand this 
 clearly. If you cannot remember my exact words, give my mean- 
 ing in your own. It may be more intelligible — I do not know. 
 Then, having made quite sure that he grasps these facts, tell him 
 that circumstances compelled me to a forced concealment of every 
 feeling, a forced repression of every impulse, throughout a long 
 term of years — a term as long as a lifetime. And to me it 
 was a lifetime — a painful one; the latter part of it worse 
 than the first. For, until that ladv's husband was taken from 
 her ..." 
 
 " He is dead, then ? " 
 
 The Doctor seemed to pause a moment before answering: — 
 " Well — yes. That is the shortest way of putting it. He is 
 dead. During his life on earth, my love for him helped me 
 against my love for his wife, and I was able to feel that my 
 self-repression was not all fruitless. Someone benefited by it. 
 But when he departed ..." He seemed to hesitate. 
 
 Charles recalled his last word, as a catchword of speech; but 
 added to it, without thinking. " ' When he departed this life,' " 
 said he, " how then ? " 
 
 Dr. Carteret appeared to reflect, but only for a brief moment. 
 Then he said, more to himself than to Charles : — " Let it pass." 
 Then definitely to Charles : — " He departed from us. Suppose 
 we put it that way ! . . . Well — anyhow ! When he left us, 
 he left me alone with his still young wife and her baby son — 
 left me to endure the torture of her friendship without the right 
 to call it love, and to take over the responsiljilities of a parent 
 towards his boy. ..." He stopped abruptly, with his eyes 
 keenly fixed on Charles. '' Do you begin to understand me ? " 
 said he. " I think so." 
 
 For Charles's face showed the dawning of an idea — but its 
 surprise was due more to the fact that this idea had never 
 dawned before than to any intrinsic oddity of the idea itself. 
 On the contrary, his word to himself was : — " How strange that 
 I never saw that before ! Of course — Fred's mother." To Dr. 
 Carteret he said : — " I think I understand you. But I don't 
 think anyone ever suspected it. Certainly not Fred."
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 549 
 
 " Certainly not Fred. Fred will deny the possibility of it 
 when you give him particulars of this interview. He will look 
 on what I have said as the words ... as, in short, the words 
 of a madman. But he will come to think otherwise. I am not 
 mad — I never was more sane in my life — never was so sane 
 would be nearer the truth." Charles bore these words in mind; 
 at the time as an additional testimony, if any were wanted, of 
 the diseased state of the speaker's faculties, but later as a curious 
 subject of speculation. Dr. Carteret resumed the main thread 
 of his communication, saying: — " That is neither here nor there. 
 Let it be as it is. I want you, Snaith, to lose no time in com- 
 municating to Fred, as from me, the particulars I have given you 
 of my own life — a life of self-repression and renunciation. I 
 wish him to be influenced by them. I do not know if you are 
 alive to the fact that Fred has it in his mind to leave England 
 permanently, solely that he may be at a distance from a tempta- 
 tion he may be unable to resist. It is a pusillanimous and cow- 
 ardly action. Let him grasp his nettle as I grasped mine, for 
 twenty long years and more. That is the manly course. And 
 mark you this, Snaith ! This passion of my nephew's is a 
 spurious one — a disease of the imagination as much as the heart. 
 Such a passion, nursed in the absence of its object, may poison 
 the best years of a life — may be a man's undoing. I have little 
 doubt that in time it would die a natural death." 
 
 Charles could not help entering a protest. " In time ! Yes — 
 but in what time, Doctor? You have just spoken of your own 
 — your own aberration. . . . Excuse me ! — well, suppose we 
 say entichement . . . having lasted over twenty years. Wliat 
 right have we to suppose that Fred's would be more short-lived? 
 May he not be taking the wisest course, after all . . . ? " 
 
 "In running away from himself? No. The two women are 
 absolutely unlike. He would come to know . . . that is to 
 say, would come to form an entirely different estimate of this 
 woman who has intoxicated him." 
 
 " Do you know her? " 
 
 Dr. Carteret did not answer at once. He looked at his watch,, 
 a massive gold repeater which in other days had decided all dis- 
 cussions about the accuracy of school-time with the certainty of 
 Greenwich. " My time is short," said he. " 1 must finish. . . . 
 Yes — I have seen the lady." 
 
 Charles's curiosity was keenly roused. He half forgot his 
 belief in the unsoundness of the Doctor's mind; indeed, the old 
 gentleman's perfectly collected speech and manner were in them-
 
 550 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 selves enough to refute such an idea, even in the face of all the 
 collateral proof to the contrary. Charles could not resist the 
 question that rose to his lips. " Seen the lady ? Where have 
 you seen the lady ? " 
 
 Dr. Carteret shut his watch with a snap, and returned it to 
 his pocket. He then replied, with a quiet assurance that com- 
 pletely silenced further enquiries : — " I am not at liberty, 
 Snaith, to say anything that would enable you to identify her. 
 Let me ask you again not to press for details which I cannot 
 give. I must tell you that the knowledge you ask for would not 
 in any way favour the transmission of my message to Fred, 
 which is the object I have in view. If anything, the reverse." 
 He seemed to wait for comment; then as Charles made none, 
 asked somewhat abruptly : — " Where do you suppose he is at 
 this moment? Perhaps you don't know." 
 
 " I think I do. At least, I know the address he left in Paris 
 — Hotel Washington, Lugano." 
 
 " Well — will you write to him there at once, giving him word 
 for word what I said to you just now? Tell him nothing about 
 my sudden reappearance and disappearance in this way. Noth- 
 ing could be gained by it. I will only say to you this much 
 about it — that I am not a responsible agent. I cannot even 
 account to myself for my position. . , . No — I can explain 
 nothing, and I must go, as my time is up. Ask for no explana- 
 tions." 
 
 " One moment, Dr. Carteret ! Only a word. You must 
 surely see that it will be very difficult to word your message in 
 a letter to Fred. How am I to account for it ? " 
 
 " Don't account for it. Give it." 
 
 " Without a word of explanation of the circumstances under 
 which I received it ? " 
 
 The Doctor thought a moment. " You can say," said he, 
 " that I returned to give you this message for him. That's 
 enough." 
 
 " He won't believe it. He'll think I've gone dotty on the 
 brain." 
 
 " Very possibly. But he won't continue to do so. He will be 
 convinced by collateral evidence. You need not be uneasy on 
 that score." 
 
 An idea presented itself to Charles's mind, and was welcomed 
 by it. '' Would not this way do, Doctor ? " said he. " Don't 
 pooh-pooh it offhand. Suppose I send the letter out to my wife, 
 and leave it to her to break the news of your return and give
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 551 
 
 it to him to read. He will be overjoyed — at your return, I mean. 
 Do let me manage it that way. Don't say no ! " 
 
 " No — that would not suit me, and would not suit the circum- 
 stances. I am sorry to have to negative that proposal. . . . 
 But where is your wife? Is she at the Washington Hotel, 
 Lugano, too ? " 
 
 " I am not positively certain where she is at this moment. 
 She wrote from Lucerne, but may have gone on to Lugano. I 
 shall have a letter this evening, and shall go out to join her 
 to-morrow." He half persuaded himself this was all gospel. " I 
 wish I could induce you to . . ." 
 
 " To let you tell her all this, for her to repeat to Fred. As 
 you are going out to her, you of course could easily do so. But 
 my wish is that you do no such thing. It would not suit me at 
 all. I have decided that this should be written by you to Fred, 
 or repeated to him personally. Is that understood?" If the 
 Doctor had been propounding the Law to schoolboys in revolt, 
 he could not have spoken more draconically. 
 
 Charles felt his ruling power, and bowed before it. Once a 
 headmaster, always a headmaster. " Of course I should not 
 dream of doing anything contrary to your wishes, Sir," he said. 
 " Only, women sometimes put points better than men. They 
 handle this subject with greater delicacy." 
 
 " Very likely. But I do not wish your wife to handle this 
 particular subject at all. So that's understood." Charles 
 nodded assent, and the old gentleman proceeded : — " Now, there 
 is one other point, and I am afraid, Snaith, that my insisting 
 upon it may seem to you arbitrary. I have no address." 
 
 " But, for Fred's sake, you will communicate it when you have 
 one." 
 
 " Not only for Fred's sake, but for my sister's, for the school's 
 sake — for your own, for that matter. But it is not a matter of 
 will and won't. It is a matter of ability. I cannot give you 
 any account of my whereabouts. It is a subject on which I can- 
 not speak positively. This may seem strange to you. I must 
 ask you to rest contented with it." 
 
 Midsummer madness, evidently ! If he had said : — " I am 
 unsettled at present, but will communicate with you as soon as I 
 am. able to speak deiinitely," it might have seemed odd, but could 
 not have implied insanity. Charles kept off arguing the point as 
 unsafe, but softened an abrupt departure from it by saying : — 
 " Fred will be inconsolable at not being able to rush to you at 
 once. Do you know. Doctor, I am not exaggerating when I say
 
 552 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 that your return to life — to onr life, I mean, — will be looked 
 upon by all your friends as a resurrection from the dead. It 
 will indeed." 
 
 " You don't say so ! " said the Doctor. But he did not seem 
 concerned with the opinion of his friends; a little amused, per- 
 haps. He was wiping his glasses as he spoke, and when he 
 replaced them, he looked round the room. " Xo change here," 
 said he, " except paint and paper , . . you know, 1 saic this 
 house before the alterations." 
 
 " Oh yes — of course I heard of that." Charles hesitated over 
 speech about the sequel. Before he could frame it to his liking, 
 the old boy spoke again. 
 
 " The bit I was best pleased with," said he, " was the big stair- 
 case out there, and a long passage with windows, looking on the 
 garden." 
 
 " It's rather fetching," said Charles. " Come and look at it. 
 Through here." He led the way. 
 
 "I don't remember t]iis/' said Dr. Carteret, stopping at the 
 new door, and placing the palm of his hand against the panel. 
 " There was no door here." 
 
 " No — that door's new. Look at it. A fine old bit of mahog- 
 any from an old house they pulled down in Jermyn Street — Sir 
 Something Mordaunt's." They passed through, to be met by the 
 clamour of the parrakeets; which stopped suddenly, and left 
 their loquacity free to talk about the newcomer, among them- 
 selves. 
 
 " Yes — this is the place " — said the Doctor. " But you have 
 done wonders with it, Snaith. It was dilapidated enough 
 then." 
 
 " I rather make it a rule," said Charles, " to have this place 
 kept point-de-vise. My wife has taken a rather absurd dislike 
 to it, and I want her to get over it. I don't see why 1 shouldn't 
 tell you the reason. It was because that drunken old char- 
 woman, who showed you over the house, told how she left you 
 here to answer a bell — I think — and nobody saw you again. 
 That gave my wife a painful association with the place." 
 
 '' I'm sorry," said Dr. Carteret. 
 
 " There was some stupid nonsense about its being impossible 
 for you to leave the house without being seen, which made it 
 worse. Now when you go, I will ask you to show me which way 
 you went out then, and that will reinstate this passage in my 
 wife's eyes. At present she won't sit here in the summer because 
 she hates the place. And that's her only reason."
 
 J 
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 553 
 
 " You wish me, I understand, to show you how I left this 
 house ? " 
 
 " Only which door you went out at. . . . But it doesn't 
 matter." He added the last words because of an odd expression 
 on the Doctor's face, for which he saw no explanation. It 
 reminded him that perhaps he was dealins; with a lunatic. 
 
 "I should be delighted, Snaith." said Dr. Carteret, "to 
 comply with such a very reasonable request, if it were within 
 my power to do so. But honestly, I do not know." 
 
 " Do not know which door you went out by ! " Charles was 
 sorry for having shown astonishment, as the condition of his 
 visitor's mind became more and more manifest to him. 
 
 " That is so. My memory is clear up to the moment of the old 
 woman's departure. I remember nothing further. I am com- 
 pelled to leave much unexplained. Let me press you not to 
 question me on this subject. I am certain to be misunderstood, 
 and have decided to keep silence." 
 
 Charles saw through the whole thing now. Tlie old man's 
 " mental alienation " — or, rather, total aberration of mind — had 
 come upon him at that very moment when the old woman saw 
 him preparing to wind up his inspection of the premises. Natu- 
 rally all that followed was a cloudland of confusions. Probably 
 Avhat he said was true, that he could not make a consecutive nar- 
 rative of it if he would. Charles felt that the narrative he had 
 just heard, that he was to transmit to Fred, might be relied on 
 as the outcome of a lucid interval. It was odd that its narrator 
 should be so outspoken on such a subject, but there was no trace 
 of insanity about it. 
 
 His own responsibility in the face of the facts began to disquiet 
 him. Was it prudent to allow the old man to depart, when to 
 do so might be to lose sight of him again outright? "What would 
 Fred say to him if he tamely acquiesced in such an end to this 
 strange visit? On the other hand, how could he detain him 
 without calling help, if he persisted in departing without leaving 
 any satisfactory clue to his whereabouts? It would only be 
 possible if the grey head and the wrinkles of visible age meant 
 senile weakness, and even then such weakness, in a frame that 
 must once have possessed great athletic powers — and indeed 
 Charles knew that his old master had been famous in his time in 
 this respect — would have been strength compared to his own 
 modest physical capacity. Add to this the well-known fact that 
 the muscular developments of insanity are sometimes gigantic 
 and quite unaccountable. No — ^lie would have to call in Tom
 
 554 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 the gardener and his able-bodied son, Jack, whose v.oices he had 
 heard mixing with those of the household as they passed the foot 
 of the great staircase. But he shrank from the idea of violent 
 restraint, although he believed that Law might back him in 
 employing it in this instance. 
 
 Stop ! — was there no half-way between simply letting him go 
 and taking him prisoner? Yes — there was. He might be fol- 
 lowed — kept in view and watched, until his tracker was satisfied 
 that he was run home to his domicile. This was not in Charles's 
 line ; besides, he would arouse suspicion if seen, and set the well- 
 known cunning of insanity on the alert. But there was Jack, 
 son of Tom, totally unknown to the Doctor, and as sharp as a 
 razor. 
 
 " Would you excuse me for half a minute. Doctor ? I want 
 to give a message to a young man I heard in the kitchen just 
 now, and I'm afraid he may run away without seeing me." Thus 
 Charles to the Doctor, who replied : — " Oh, certainly, certainly ! 
 Don't hurry on my account." Said Charles then, remembering 
 that instructions may take time : — " Well — two or three minutes, 
 then ! — not long, anyhow ! " 
 
 He paused a moment outside the now door. It would never 
 do to call Jack up and talk to him outside that new door. Sup- 
 pose the Doctor came out ! Neither would it do to go out of 
 sight df it. The Doctor might slip through and be off as he 
 had done before. He turned the key carefully, and went on 
 towards the kitchen. 
 
 He found Jack, who understood what was wanted of him with 
 amazing rapidity. He might have been in training for a de- 
 tective. It was arranged that he should make a feint of working 
 near the garden gates, and should happen to be knocking off 
 work just as the governor accompanied his visitor down the 
 gravel path to see him off. Then, he was to throw down his tools 
 and follow unseen. 
 
 It may have taken more than the three minutes to arrange 
 this, but that did not matter, as the door was locked and there 
 was absolutely no other exit except the door leading into the back 
 garden through the greenhouse. Charles had not a shadow of 
 doubt as to finding Dr. Carteret where he left him. 
 
 " Sorry to be so long," he began to say, before he had turned 
 the corner of the passage. He did not get to the last word. He 
 found himself speaking to no one. He called out : — " Doctor 
 — where are you?" But no answer came. He jumped to the 
 only conclusion possible. Dr. Carteret had walked out into the
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 555 
 
 garden. Ho went along the passage absolutely confident of this 
 until he turned the handle of the door, and found it locked. So 
 dominant was the idea that the old man must be in the garden 
 — because, where else could he be? — that he had actually begun 
 to turn the key to go out before he remembered that it could 
 not have locked itself after the Doctor's exit. 
 
 When an apparent impossibility happens, the brain reels ; noth- 
 ing can be relied on. Man's terms with sanity, with logic, with 
 everything that can give the mind a secure foothold, are broken 
 through, and mistrust of sight, touch, and hearing saps his judg- 
 ment and leaves him helpless. Charles grew sick with fear that 
 perhaps his own faculties were unhinged. Was this return of 
 his old schoolmaster all a dream? Had his recent anxiety un- 
 settled his understanding? No — that was out of the question. 
 Had not the servants seen the old gentleman before he did? 
 
 He ran back into the house, calling loudly to whomsoever 
 might be in hearing. W^iere was Dr. Carteret, the old gentle- 
 man he had been talking with in the parlour? . . . Yes — he 
 had left him in the greenhouse passage less than ten minutes ago 
 to speak to Jack, and now he was nowhere to be found ! 
 
 From the kitchen below and the nursery above came the 
 womankind of the household; normal at first, then gradually 
 infected with the master's alarm. The gentleman must be some- 
 where. He couldn't be ofi^ of it. That was cook's decision. 
 Anne the housemaid went further, and said he must be in the 
 house, as she had never been rang for to let him out. Pinning 
 her faith on this, she passed into the passage where he ought to 
 have been ; the import of her demeanour being, that her shrewder 
 insight would at once discern the whereabouts of
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 The story would now liave told how Charles's utter bewilder- 
 ment at the disa])pcarance of his old schoolmaster was increased 
 and intensified by tlie hysterical excitement of the household. No 
 one liad let Dr. Carteret in, or been near the front door since 
 Charles left the house for his walk. He knew he had closed the 
 door on leaving the house, and let himself in with his latchkey' 
 on his return. As for the back entrance, that opened into the 
 kitchen, so that no one could have entered that way unperceived. 
 The kitchen, as all the evidence went to prove, had been tenanted 
 the whole afternoon. Anne, the housemaid, who found the vis- 
 itor in the study waitino; to see ]\[r. Snaith, had naturally con- 
 cluded that one of the others must have shown him in. Tom, the 
 gardener, when cross-questioned admitted having seen a tall stout 
 o-entleman through the studv window, but had not seen him come 
 up to the house; in fact, the mystery seemed to grow, and as poor 
 Charles settled himself down to a cigar after an uncomfortable 
 and agitated meal that evening, his thoughts turned eagerly to 
 the journey to meet Lucy on the following day. He felt if he 
 could join her at Lucerne, and then both go on together and 
 pick up Fred, life would become sane again. The message to 
 Fred was an additional reason for hurrying off. Fred might be 
 able to suggest an ex{)lanation, and anyhow it showed that Lucy 
 was not alone in her strange experiences in the house. 
 
 Perhaps tliat had been at the bottom of all the trouble. He 
 had been so hard and unsympathetic with her, and her nerves 
 had been unduly tried all round. 
 
 That it was the Doctor himself Charles could not reasonably 
 doubt. Who, and what, else could it have been? 
 
 Furthermore that he was mad was perfectly evident. Of 
 course -some natural explanation of his clisappearance would be 
 found; such things always were explainable. Still, it was very 
 odd, very odd indeed. He must be hiding somewhere near, but 
 tlien those locked doors ! There certainly was something queer 
 about the house ! Lucy had always said so. They would discuss 
 it together, and it would form a new bond of sympathy between 
 them. Could there be a secret way leading to some hitherto 
 unknown exit? 
 
 556
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 557 
 
 Such things had been heard of in old houses, but then that 
 passage led only to the greenhouse, and that was locked from the 
 inside. 
 
 No, he gave it up, he must wait for Lucy and Fred ; they might 
 possibly be able to throw some light on the mystery; and com- 
 pletely worn out by the events of the day, Charles fell to dozing 
 over his cigar. 
 
 A sharp knock at the door roused him with a start, and Mrs, 
 Gorhambury stood before him. Pompous and important, she 
 informed him of fresh difficulties that beset his path. The 
 servants were all so upset by the uncanny occurrence of the 
 afternoon that they declared they could not stop in the 
 house. 
 
 Two of them whose homes were near had already taken them- 
 selves off, refusing to sleep another night at The Cedars; the 
 others vowed they would leave in the morning. Mrs. Gorham- 
 bury understood Mr. Snaith was starting for the Continent early 
 the next day, and she felt that under the circumstances she could 
 not risk being left alone in the house with sole charge of the 
 baby ; besides, was it safe for the child with such happenings and 
 both Mr. and Mrs. Snaith away? 
 
 Poor Charles saw the fLx, and at once bethought him of his 
 mother-in-law. He would wire and ask her to take pity on Mrs. 
 Gorhambury and the baby for awhile, and then he need not delay 
 his start. Or stay, a letter would reach Devonshire Place by the 
 first post the next morning, and be more explanatory and less 
 upsetting than a telegram delivered late at night ; he would ask 
 Mrs. Hinchliffe to wire her reply in order that he might know 
 in time to be able to catch the midday boat. There could be no 
 difficulty about it ; she would be sure to take them in. Indeed, it 
 had already been spoken of, but decided against in favour 
 of Wimbledon air for the child versus Devonshire Place breezes. 
 
 So a letter was composed to Mamma Hinchliffe explaining 
 that the household threatened leaving en bloc, owing to some 
 silly fancy about ghosts and hauntings. Charles carefully 
 avoided entering into any details as to the real nature of the 
 upset, and dwelt on the need for his joining Lucy with as little 
 delay as possible. 
 
 He went out to post the letter himself. The night air was 
 refreshing, there was a bright moon shining, and as Charles 
 walked slowly up the drive to the house he peered behind the 
 laurel bushes, and then leaving the path, he carefully explored 
 every nook and corner of the large garden, half hoping to find 
 
 86
 
 558 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 the Doctor's portly frame hiding in the deep shadows cast by the 
 trees in the moonlight. But there was nothing to be seen. He 
 walked along the outer wall of the long passage to examine the 
 windows. Could old Stultifex Maximus have squeezed out that 
 way? 
 
 But the windows — there were only two of them — were, as he 
 well knew, small and placed rather high up; moreover, they were 
 guarded by iron grills, relics of the old madhouse days, that 
 Charles had decided not to remove on anti-burglar grounds. 
 
 No, that explanation would not work. He let himself in, 
 bolted and barred the door for the night, then set himself the 
 task of exploring all over the house from the cellars to the attics 
 in an exhaustive search for the slightest possible clue to the 
 mystery. Everything appeared normal, not a hole or corner 
 where a portly old gentleman could under any circumstances 
 have taken cover. Charles went into all the empty rooms, looked 
 under all the beds, opened all the cupboards, as he put it " to 
 leave no stone unturned," and, finally taking a last look down 
 the passage, unlocked the door of the greenhouse and looked in 
 at the plants. 
 
 A row of small flower pots blacked the gangway. In the 
 absence of the family, the gardener had placed a quantity of 
 cuttings in the greenhouse for protection, so that even had the 
 Doctor been able to overcome the difficulty of letting himself out 
 bj that door and locking it after him from the inside, he could 
 not have jumped over such an array of flower pots without 
 causing considerable havoc and disaster. 
 
 So there was nothing left to Charles but to acknowledge the 
 insolubility of the problem and go to bed. 
 
 The morrow brought a promptly dispatched wire from Mrs. 
 Hinchliffe in reply to Charles's letter. " Impossible take baby. 
 Come and see me eleven o'clock on no account start. Hinch- 
 liffe." AMiat could it mean? Lucy must have returned; that 
 was the only explanation that presented itself to Charles's excited 
 brain, and his spirits rose as he prepared to leave the house to 
 go up to town. 
 
 He told Mrs. Gorhambury to expect him back by the after- 
 noon, and in all probability Mrs. Snaith as well, when they would 
 decide about the baby and evolve plans. 
 
 On arriving at Devonshire Place, with growing confidence, 
 Charles again enquired of the stolid butler " when Mrs. Snaith 
 had arrived," to be again told that no Mrs. Snaith was there. 
 
 " But Mrs. Hinchliffe is expecting you, Sir," said the man 

 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 559 
 
 with a sort of hesitation in his voice as if to convey a hint at 
 consolation from a distant but respectful sphere. 
 
 Mrs. Hinchliffe rose to greet Charles with a certain nervous- 
 ness in her manner that he had never detected in her before, and 
 that forced the conviction upon him that something very unusual 
 and upsetting had occurred. Slowly Charles learned from Ms 
 mother-in-law that she had sent for him because she gathered 
 from his letter received that morning that he was totally in the 
 dark as to the scandal Lucy had communicated direct to her 
 mother in her letter of the previous day. Otherwise how could 
 Charles be contemplating joining her in Switzerland? She 
 thought it better he should see the letter for himself, without 
 loss of time. He might be able to throw some light on it, or 
 he might not, how could she tell? All she bargained for was, 
 that the vulgarity of motives imputed to her by her daughter 
 might be spared her, and that for the honour of the family, 
 some means might be found of hushing things up, and bringing 
 Lucy back to a sense of duty. 
 
 Lucy's letter openly accused her mother of having manipulated 
 her marriage, with a view to a possible title in the future, and 
 brusquely told her that she was now deeply in love with anotlaer 
 man, and that they had both decided that they would kick over 
 the traces and belong to each other, that she was very sorry for 
 poor Charles, whom she regarded with affectionate respect, but 
 that if he had been erred against it was entirely her mother's 
 doing. She, Lucy, could not be expected to starve all her life 
 because the feast her mother had provided for her was not to 
 her taste. 
 
 Mrs. Hinchliffe then proceeded to tell Charles how she had 
 promptly sent for her great friend Mrs. Bannister Stair, who, 
 after reading Lucy's letter, actually said it was what she had 
 been expecting all along, and that for her part she had not .a 
 shadow of doubt as to who the man was. 
 
 AYho else could it be but Fred Carteret? She had known "it 
 must come to that from the very first time she saw them to- 
 gether. In fact, anyone with eyes in their head would have 
 known what to expect. 
 
 Charles felt stunned and dazed; the whole fabric of his life 
 seemed to be crumbling. Fred, his beloved Fred ! the thing was 
 impossible ! ! No, he could not believe it, he must go at once 
 to Maida Vale. True, both Mrs. Carteret and her son were the 
 other side of the Channel, still he might find out from the ser- 
 vants if Mrs. Carteret had left Paris, and then if he could get
 
 560 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 into communication with lier, she would reassure him about 
 Fred ; he felt certain of it. And Charles was preparing to rush 
 off like a demented being, when Mrs. Hinchlilfe stopped him, and 
 with considerable dignity informed him that she must positively 
 know what steps he intended taking about Lucy. 
 
 For her part no breath of scandal had ever before touched 
 either her, or her singularly upright family. She was entirely 
 new to such upsets, and could not face the unpleasantness of the 
 situation. She had written to Lucy strongly, most strongly, 
 urging her to return to her husband, her home, and her duty. 
 She liad directed the letter to the hotel at Lugano^ though she 
 gathered from Lucy's letter that they were on the point of leav- 
 ing; the letter would be forwarded, Lucy would be sure to get it. 
 
 As for the child, Mrs. Hinchliffe could not possibly have him 
 and the nurse at Devonshire Place. She had arranged to leave 
 London that afternoon with her dear friend Mrs. Bannister 
 Stair and the house would be shut up. Charles must really not 
 put \\p with such nonsense from the servants. As if there were 
 not troubles enough in the world without bringing in ghosts. It 
 was too ridiculous ! 
 
 Charles in his utter misery and bewilderment could only think 
 of one thing he could do, and in reply to his mother-in-law's 
 question, said he would wire at once to Lucy. " Come back and 
 all will be forgiven." She must be suffering from some sort of 
 mental aberration ; she clearly was not herself, he felt convinced 
 of that. Her mother had no doubt written very harshly to her ; 
 it was kindness she needed, she must be made to feel that no 
 doors were closed, that all could yet be set right. 
 
 Yes, that was the thing for him to do, and hastily bidding 
 adieu to ]\Irs. Hinchliffe, Charles rushed off to the nearest tele- 
 graph office. 
 
 From there he jumped into the first hansom he saw and drove 
 straight to Maida Vale. To his surprise he found that Mrs. 
 Carteret had returned alone the night before quite unexpectedly. 
 
 " She was very tired," the servant said, and in fact seemed 
 quite ill, no better for the change, but she would enquire if Mrs. 
 Carteret could see him, if he would wait in the dining-room while 
 she went upstairs to see. 
 
 Charles paced the room uneasily. What could have brought 
 Mrs. Carteret back so soon? and by herself too? but — ! No, no, 
 it was too horrible to contemplate such an idea. Charles simply 
 could not face it! It was all some mistake, some nightmare; 
 Mrs. Carteret would be able to explain; but as the door opened
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 561 
 
 and Mrs. Carteret herself entered, her handsome face worn and 
 grey, her shoulders bent as if with an added weight of years, 
 Charles grasped the truth. He sank into a chair and covered 
 his face with his hands, imploring lier to tell him all she knew. 
 
 Gently and sympathetically Mrs. Carteret told Charles the 
 whole story as known to herself. How Fred had struggled and 
 striven with his love for his friend's wife, and how the thought 
 of treachery to Charles had almost driven him mad, till finally 
 he had decided that flight was the only course open to him, hence 
 their hastily planned journey to the Continent. How in his 
 restlessness he had gone on to Lugano, and left her for a few 
 days' longer stay in Paris where she had friends. How she was 
 to have followed him to Switzerland on the very day that she 
 received a wire from him to stop her, " Do not come, Lucy has 
 joined me here, we go to Italy together, forgive me Mother. 
 Fred." So far no letter had come, and Mrs. Carteret had 
 returned at once to Maida Yale. She had no further reason 
 for remaining abroad, and longed for the quiet of her own 
 home. 
 
 There was nothing to be done, the die was cast. It was hope- 
 less to attempt to follow them ; besides it would be useless ; they 
 had chosen, the thing was done. 
 
 Mrs. Carteret did all she could to comfort the unhappy 
 Charles and insisted that it would be a great consolation to her 
 to have Mrs. Gorhambury and the baby in the house. Charles 
 would go back to sleep at his chambers, and come and see her 
 and his son as often as ever he could, and The Cedars must be 
 shut up for the time being. 
 
 So far Charles had said nothing about the mvsterious visit of 
 the Doctor, merely dwelling on the fact of a sudden domestic 
 upheaval at The Cedars, and the inability of ilrs. Hinchliffe to 
 take in the baby and the nurse, but when at Mrs. Carteret's in- 
 sistence he returned that evening to dine with her, and inspect 
 Master Charles in his new quarters in which he had been in- 
 stalled late in the afternoon, Charles unburdened himself of the 
 whole strange story of his interview with the old Doctor. Mrs. 
 Carteret appeared startled at first, but her firm conviction 
 that her brother-in-law was really dead remained unchanged, 
 Charles's mental condition at the time of the alleged interview 
 inclining her to the theory of hallucination. But then there was 
 that servant who had seen him first ! and the strangeness of the 
 story he had told about himself! certainly unknown to Charles, 
 and only just in these latter years even suspected by her ! The
 
 562 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 message to Fred might have been a sort of subconscious working 
 of Charles' own brain, but the other, no ! 
 
 It was all very puzzling, very unaccountable. Still she could 
 not rid herself of a sort of certainty in her own mind that the 
 Doctor had been murdered, and that Charles in his. overwrought 
 state must somehow have dreamt the whole thing. 
 
 The days that followed were days of intense misery to Charles. 
 The whole fabric of his life seemed to have crumbled away and 
 left him high and dry in a changed world. He felt himself aim- 
 lessly drifting God knows where to God knows what. Charles 
 the Third alone kept him from yielding to the temptation to end 
 it all by his own hand. 
 
 In due course Mrs. Carteret received a letter from her son. 
 Lucy had come to him desolate and disconsolate. What could 
 he do? It was a force majeure; they were in the hands of 
 the Fates. It was bad, and mad, and sad, and he could never 
 forgive himself. But if only his mother really knew his Lucy. 
 She was an angel, and to know all is to forgive all, and so forth 
 for pages and pages of a closely written but most unconvincing 
 letter. 
 
 They were going on to Italy, he said. Charles would of course 
 apply for a divorce, and then they could be married at once. 
 He i'elt sure his mother would get to love Lucy and understand 
 her, and in the end all would, must, be well. 
 
 For Lucy's sake Charles made no delay in suing for a divorce. 
 He placed the matter unreservedly in the hands of Mr. Trymer 
 with instructions to make everything as easy as possible for Lucy 
 and not to regard him himself or his interests in any way. The 
 Cedars had been bought with money that was to come to Lucy, 
 and Charles would merely remove his household goods, pay off 
 the servants, and as to the rest Mrs. Hinchliffe must be con- 
 sulted. 
 
 So it came about that The Cedars was again to be sold, and Mr. 
 and Mrs. Grewbeer came to their own as caretakers. They dwelt 
 persistently and with much emphasis on the bad luck that the 
 house seemed to bring its occupants, and the many mysterious 
 happenings that had occurred there. In consequence The Cedars 
 got a doubtful reputation and stood empty for a long time, until 
 at last it was bought by an enterprising doctor who contem- 
 plated building on another wing, and converting it into a sana- 
 torium for consumptive patients.
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 563 
 
 Meanwhile Charles had got into the habit of frequenting 
 Maida Vale. Mrs. Carteret had always seemed so genuinely- 
 upset whenever he had suggested taking a house and having his 
 son with him, that the arrangement had drifted on. Nancy con- 
 tinued her-weekly visits to Mrs. Carteret. Charles in consequence 
 saw a great deal of her, and before they were either of them 
 aware of it they found they had become indispensable to each 
 other, and in the end Elbows married Nosey, and they live in 
 St. John's Wood to be as near Mrs. Carteret as possible. 
 
 As for Fred, as soon as the divorce was procured he at once 
 married Lucy, but they continued to live abroad, and arranged 
 that Mrs. Cartaret should go to Homburg to meet them, Lucy 
 having objected to returning to England on any terms. Mrs. 
 Carteret had been still heavier hearted about Fred after this 
 meeting, and disliked Lucy more than ever. It struck her that 
 even in those early days he was beginning to weary of a life of 
 continued idleness at foreign spas, though he refused to admit 
 it, and that Lucy with her beauty and money was likely to drift 
 away from him and get bored by his constant hankering after a 
 settled home. And when later on she eloped with a Eussian 
 prince, Mrs. Carteret was not astonished, and felt that on the 
 whole perhaps it was the best thing that could happen to Fred. 
 
 He, Fred, had then returned to England, looking old and 
 worn, but had found it impossible to pick up the threads of his 
 old life, so in the end he decided to go to Canada and start life 
 and work anew. The true revelation of Lucy's real character 
 built a bridge for a reconciliation between Fred and his old 
 friend Charles, and the two met once again on the evening before 
 Fred sailed for Canada. 
 
 As for Mrs. Hinchliffe she never forgave Lucy, and as the 
 latter's career became more and more stamped as that of an 
 adventuress, she openly denounced her, refusing to have any 
 further communication with her. She continued, however, to see 
 her grandchild at stated intervals, and settled all the money she 
 had control over on him, disinheriting her daughter. 
 
 Lucy never made the slightest attempt to see her child, and as 
 time wore on Charles's great fear that she would do so died a 
 natural death. 
 
 Nothing more was heard of Dr. Carteret, letters of administra- 
 tion were taken out, and his affairs were wound up, and a new 
 headmaster reigned at Vexton Stultifer.
 
 564 THE OLD MADHOUSE 
 
 As for Charlci? lie never could entirely rid his mind of the idea 
 that his old schoolmaster must be hiding somewhere, but Mrs. 
 Carteret stuck to her conviction that he was dead, most probably 
 murdered. 
 
 Communications with Scotland Yard over the disappearance 
 had practically ceased, when one morning the maid brought up* 
 Mr. Manton's card to Mrs. Carteret with a request that she would 
 see him on important business. 
 
 After being duly shown in to the somewhat flustered Mrs. 
 Carteret, and the door carefully closed, the Inspector, with but 
 an indifferent attempt at subduing his sense of professional tri- 
 umph to an attitude of becoming sympathy with the bereaved, 
 produced a gold watch and chain, and a bunch of keys easily 
 identified by Mrs. Carteret as belonging to her brother-in-law. 
 She turned very pale, but asked in a strangely composed voice, 
 if they had found the murderer. 
 
 " Xot murdered at all, ]Madam," was the reply, " an accident, 
 most peculiar." He then proceeded to tell her how in the course 
 of the alterations at The Cedars the greenhouse had been pulled 
 down, and the tiled floor that Charles had had laid along the 
 passage leading to it been taken up, and how the men in shift- 
 ing some heavy iron girders had let one "end of their load drop, 
 just about the middle of the passage. That the weight of the 
 girders had caused a hitherto unsuspected trap door to spring 
 open. That on examination they found that there had evidently 
 been a surprise bath there worked by pulleys on the other side 
 of the wall of the passage. The trap was most skilfully con- 
 cealed in order to deceive the unsuspecting lunatic, who Avhen 
 walking along the passage had been suddenly let down into the 
 bath, with a view to the beneficial effects supposed to accrue 
 from the shock of an unexpected plunge into cold water. The 
 springs were rusty and stiff with age, and only a very heavy 
 weight could have caused them to spring open. 
 
 On examination they found that about a quarter of the way 
 down there had been an iron grating that allowed of the water 
 being drained off, and also prevented the patients falling to the 
 bottom of the well, which was of a very great depth. This iron 
 grating had rusted and worn away with time, but some jagged 
 edges were left sticking out, on which they had found torn pieces 
 of tweed clothing, evidently of a recent make, and on penetrating 
 to the bottom of the now dried up well, they had come upon the 
 skeleton of a very big man, which Scotland Yard had promptly 
 identified as that of the missing Doctor. The sewer and pipes by 
 
 f
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 565 
 
 which the well had formerly been filled from a stream, that in 
 those days flowed close to the house, but that had long since been 
 diverted into another channel, were all intact, and swarming with 
 rats. 
 
 It was easy to see how it had all happened. The great weight 
 of the unfortunate Doctor, when he inadvertently trod on the 
 concealed spring of the trap door had caused it to fly open and 
 let him through with a sudden jerk, that closed it up again 
 behind him. He must have tried in vain to catch at any pro- 
 jection that could possibly stay his fall, but the iron grating was 
 worn away and completely rotten and gave way as he clutched it. 
 The chances were that falling to that depth he had been killed 
 outright on reaching the bottom. The extremely close fitting of 
 the trap door that closed behind him, the army of rats in the old 
 sewer, and finally the tiled floor that had been laid down the 
 whole length of the passage, all combined to make the discovery 
 of the tragedy unlikely. It was the merest chance that had 
 brought to light the horrible way Dr. Carteret had met his end. 
 
 But of Charles's interview with him that afternoon in the study 
 at The Cedars no explanation was ever forthcoming, and Charles 
 to this day believes it was really his old schoolmaster either in 
 the body or out of it, who came to" him in a vain endeavour to 
 make the crooked straight, and tell the secret of his own lifelong 
 love.
 
 
 A FEW LAST WORDS TO THE EEADER 
 
 I FEEL that a short explanation might be welcome to the 
 readers of this unfinished novel, in order that they may under- 
 stand how the notes as to the proposed ending of the story come 
 to be really what my husband had intended and not merely a 
 matter of surmise on my part. 
 
 When my husband started on one of his novels, he did so 
 without making any definite plot. He created his characters 
 and then waited for them to act and evolve their own plot. In 
 this way the puppets in the show became real living personalities 
 to him, and he waited, as he expressed it, " to see what they would 
 do next." 
 
 It was his usual practice to read out aloud to me every Sunday 
 evening all he had written during the week. When the novel 
 was completed we read it aloud again straight through from the 
 beginning to the end, so that he might judge of how the story ^ 
 came as a whole, omitting or adding parts as he considered 1 
 necessary. This process of weeding or elaborating was not I 
 always left till the completion of the story, but he relied on 
 being able to do it before giving his work to the public. 
 
 As the story was always read to me while in progress I too 
 got to believe in the reality of the characters, and found myself 
 thinking of them as real live people, and I have frequently asked 
 him when he came down to lunch, or had finished writing for the 
 day, such a question as, for instance, " Well, have they quarrelled 
 yet ? " and he would reply, as the case might be, " No, I don't 
 know if they will come to a quarrel ; after all, I must wait and 
 see what they do." However, towards the end of the book when 
 an intelligible winding-up of the story became imperative, the 
 plot was taken up and carefully considered, all the straggling 
 threads gathered together and finalities decided upon, though 
 latitude was always allowed for details to shape themselves after 
 their own fashion. 
 
 Thus it happened that on that last Friday night in December, 
 when my husband laid down his pen in the middle of a sentence 
 never to be completed, he had told me as much as he knew him- 
 self of what the ending of the book was to be. I am therefore 
 able to give a short synopsis of his ideas, and furthermore to 
 
 566
 
 THE OLD MADHOUSE 567 
 
 assure the reader that not one word has been altered in the manu- 
 script. It is exactly as my husband left it; even in places where 
 I knew he had intended to make some slight alteration, I have 
 left it as it was written. 
 
 My husband's handwriting was wonderfully clear and distinct, 
 with very few erasures. He considered that he wrote very slowly, 
 but judging by the amount of work he got through, this cannot 
 be regarded as having been the fact. He never made rough copies 
 and practically finished as he went; everything was so complete 
 that he found even a slight alteration in the text would often 
 let him in for as much work as the writing of a whole chapter 
 would have given him. 
 
 Latterly he found that he did his best writing after tea, but 
 he never could be persuaded to give up the traditional working 
 hours of the artist, with the result that he usually spent the 
 whole day in his study, not allowing himself a short walk before 
 dinner. 
 
 When the war broke out his instinct for mechanical invention 
 revived, and he spent much thought on various schemes that he 
 submitted from time to time to the board of inventions, always 
 hoping to hit on some contrivance that would be of real service. 
 In this way valuable time was stolen from literature. Still, he 
 told me that even with all the other work he had on hand, two 
 more months would see the novel completed. . But alas it was 
 not to be ! 
 
 Evelyn De Morgan.

 
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