UNIV. OF CALIF. LIBRARY. I.OS AN
 
 INVISIBLE TIDES
 
 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 BY 
 
 BEATRICE KEAN SEYMOUR 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS SELTZER 
 
 1922
 
 Copyright, 1921, by 
 THOMAS SELTZER, INC. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 First Printing, May, 1921 
 Second Printing, July, 1921 
 Third Printing, January, 1922 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OT AMEEICA
 
 TO 
 
 MY HUSBAND 
 WILLIAM KEAN SEYMOUR 
 
 IN 
 COMRADESHIP AND LOVE 
 
 2132774
 
 CONTENTS 
 BOOK I 
 
 PAfll 
 
 DAWN i 
 
 BOOK II 
 SHADOW 45 
 
 BOOK III 
 STORM-WRACK 125 
 
 BOOK IV 
 WASTE SHORES 233
 
 Impelled of invisible tides and fulfilled of unspeakable 
 things. Hymn to Proserpine.
 
 BOOK I 
 DAWN
 
 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 
 YEARS afterwards it sometimes seemed to Hilary Sargent 
 that the first really interesting event which had occurred 
 in his life was the receipt, soon after his seventh birth- 
 day, of the letter from his mother in America a phenomenon 
 none the less wonderful because its recipient was not enough 
 of a scholar to decipher its meaning without skilled assistance. 
 But in reality, of course, Hilary knew quite well that lots of 
 interesting things had happened to him long before this in 
 that remote past which had been his fifth and sixth years of 
 existence. Yet the memory of these things, it could not be 
 denied, had become somewhat blurred, so that to look back at 
 them was rather like looking at a familiar landscape through 
 a faint mist one could not be sure that one saw what actually 
 existed. Here and there a tall object, like a church spire, 
 would stand out boldly challenging recognition, but for the 
 rest one could not help believing that the mist altered perspec- 
 tives and mischievously inverted values. 
 
 Certainly two figures from out this very early period of 
 Hilary's existence were rather like the church spire in that 
 they did stand out with amazing clearness. The first of these 
 figures was that of a tall slim woman with dark hair curled 
 about her forehead and a voice that seemed to lift the heart 
 right out of a small boy's body. This was Hilary's mother, 
 and with her nearly all his earliest recollections had to do. 
 The slim, exquisitely gowned picture she had made for his 
 childish eyes she remained for his maturer vision, and it was for 
 her rather than for any sculptured pair of lovers on a Grecian
 
 4 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 vase that Keats had promised eternal youth and beauty. To 
 Hilary, his mother was for ever young, for ever fair, and long 
 after Fate had written finis to the chapter of youth that Tragedy 
 had so pitilessly blotted, there lingered with the boy the soft 
 tones of her voice, a recollection of her smile or some pathetic 
 ghost of a chance attitude and these things had about them 
 the sweetness of an old perfume and all its tenderness. They 
 could never die or be forgotten and yet, none the less, that 
 chapter was smudged and blotted. . . . 
 
 The second figure that looked out of the dead years of 
 childhood with the persistency of the church spire was nurse, 
 who, however, did not like children even when they were 
 " good " and refrained from asking questions. In nurse's 
 slovenly meaning of the word, Hilary was very seldom " good " 
 and certainly he never failed to ask questions. To Hilary the 
 word " nurse " came to stand for a person who said continually, 
 " Goodness gracious me, 'ow should / know? " and became 
 disagreeable when the day was wet. 
 
 Besides nurse there was Annie. Annie was the housemaid, 
 young, pretty and talkative; as unfavourably disposed as nurse 
 to the answering of questions and as resentful of the rain. 
 Hilary found this dislike of grown-ups for rain an extremely 
 puzzling thing, and it seemed to be the mark of them all if 
 he excepted his mother. Somehow, he had always to do that. 
 Molly Sargent went with no rule that was ever made: the 
 very thought of her converted your most accurate generalisa- 
 tion into something entirely ridiculous. Certainly she was 
 never known to make rude remarks about the weather nor to 
 grow provoked at a child's interminable questions. And you 
 always knew when something pleased or amused her, because 
 she looked at you with such a merry gleam in her eyes, which 
 would run like magic down into the corners of her mouth until, 
 throwing back her head, she would laugh aloud so delightedly 
 that if you were a small child there was nothing for you to do 
 but laugh as well even if the joke had escaped you. 
 
 Sometimes from out the misty days to which these two 
 clearly defined figures belonged, there would arise another 
 less clearly to be recognised and always just a little mysterious. 
 Him the boy addressed as " father," and in later years found it 
 difficult to identify him with the stern, prematurely grey and
 
 DAWN 5 
 
 taciturn man he came eventually to know. Out of the shadowy 
 uncertainty of this earliest of times there arose a distinct 
 recollection of a grave, kindly-eyed man who called his mother 
 " Molly " and sometimes " Molly darling," and who, in a 
 manner which must surely have been light-hearted would ask 
 the boy if he didn't think his mother a pretty lady. 
 
 "Isn't she charming?" he would say gravely, "and don't 
 you just love the way her hair curls? " 
 
 And Hilary always remembered that while he struggled with 
 his admiration and incoherence his mother would begin to 
 laugh in her delightfully unexpected fashion as though life 
 were the jolliest thing you could imagine and the compliments 
 of a husband and a baby son the best things in the world. 
 
 There were other times, too, the memory of which it was 
 always a wondrous joy to recapture and they belonged, most 
 of them, to that hour when nurse had tucked him up in bed 
 and had gone tramping with her heavy step down the long 
 dark staircase: and they were always heralded by a light 
 quick footstep that Hilary knew belonged only to one person 
 in the world. And the " only person " would come in, dressed 
 beautifully for dinner, and sitting by the side of Hilary's cot 
 would tell him stories of the little elves that live in foxgloves 
 and the fairies who dance in the long grass when the moon 
 shines brightly. Listening, Hilary would forget that nurse 
 had said there were no fairies: his mother took them for 
 granted, so of course there were fairies. And sometimes she 
 would recite little poems to him not the stupid things nurse 
 said about Mary who had a little lamb and Jack and Jill who 
 fell down a hill, but real poems about real children. The first 
 time Hilary heard one of these " real " poems was at the close 
 of a cold winter day when the night-nursery fire was banked up 
 cheerfully and bed, beyond question, was a very comfortable 
 place indeed. Mrs. Sargent had stood with one foot held out 
 to the bright blaze and her small son had lain regarding her 
 with eyes wide with approval. Yet not until many years later 
 did Hilary realise how grateful he was to her for that dainty 
 appearance. Molly Sargent, at least, was never guilty of
 
 6 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 offending the fastidious gaze of a child by a slovenly or careless 
 manner of dress. 
 
 " Comfy? " she asked, neatly poking in a too-venturesome 
 piece of coal with a buckled shoe. 
 
 " Yes. I don't mind coming to bed when it's dark. But it's 
 awful when the sun shines." 
 
 Still intently concerned with the daring piece of coal Molly 
 Sargent had looked up and smiled. It was an understanding 
 smile, full of sympathy and a rare camaraderie. 
 
 " There was a man once," she said, " who felt like that when 
 he was a little boy, and when he grew up he remembered all 
 about it and made a poem out of it." 
 
 "What's a poem?" 
 
 His mother left her piece of coal to look after itself and came 
 and leant over the rail of his cot. 
 
 " That's too big a question for to-night," she said. " But 
 a poem's a very charming thing." 
 
 " Is it? " said Hilary, " say one." 
 
 Molly Sargent " said " two and told him their names " Bed 
 in Summer " and " The Shadow." They left Hilary strangely 
 thrilled. That, he discovered later, was what his mother's 
 voice did to people. It had thrilled more people than you 
 could count. . . . 
 
 "Is he dead the man who wote the poems? " he wanted 
 to know. 
 
 Somehow it was always a safe assumption this gloomy one 
 that people were dead. Grimm and Andersen were dead, of 
 course. He knew that. Even nurse knew that. All the really 
 interesting people were dead, if you came to think of it. This 
 new man, too. He had died, so his mother told him, only a 
 year ago. She said it sadly, almost as though he had been a 
 personal friend of hers. And she told him his name Robert 
 Louis Stevenson. 
 
 " P'waps he isn't weally dead," Hilary suggested. 
 
 " I'm afraid he is, darling. He died ever so far away from 
 England in a place called Samoa." 
 
 Luckily for Molly Sargent the glamour of the new poems 
 overcame Hilary's desire for information regarding Samoa. 
 He settled himself on his pillows and demanded " more." 
 
 That was the beginning, for Hilary, of his knowledge of
 
 DAWN 7 
 
 Stevensonia. From that time the author of " Bed in Summer " 
 became a great favourite and shared the honours with Grimm 
 and Andersen. It was wonderful what a lot of poems and 
 stories his mother knew, and how well she told them. Her 
 deep vibrant voice stirred her little son so deeply that it became 
 a pleasure merely to lie still and listen to the sound of the 
 words: so that sometimes he missed the point of the story and 
 it had to be repeated. 
 
 And once Stevenson was responsible for a tragedy. 
 
 Primarily, of course, it was nurse's fault, because she ought 
 to have given him his hot milk in the nursery instead of there 
 in bed. But it was certainly Stevenson's fault that he forgot 
 all about the cup he was holding. Nobody could think of hot 
 milk and the need to hold a cup tightly while somebody was 
 telling you the story of Treasure Island, and Hilary would not 
 have cared in the least if the milk had not spitefully chosen 
 to run down the side of his mother's beautiful blue frock and 
 spoil the look of it. Seeing these things he collapsed into 
 tears. 
 
 " Silly boy," said his mother, " to cry about a frock. It 
 doesn't matter a bit." 
 
 Hilary, however, continued to cry. Accidents of this kind 
 were " carelessness " in the nursery something you couldn't 
 possibly pass over. 
 
 " Now, please," said Molly Sargent. " Why should you cry 
 about it if I don't? " 
 
 "Don't you mind its being spoilt? " 
 
 " Not a bit." 
 
 " P'waps it was worn out? " Hilary suggested hopefully. 
 
 '* No but I can so easily get another, you see. And if you 
 spoil your eyes with crying you'll have to make do with them. 
 You can't buy eyes in the shops, you know at least, not the 
 sort of eyes you d like to have." 
 
 "Will daddy give you some more money to buy a new 
 fwock with? " 
 
 " Daddy? " She smiled. " Oh, yes, of course . . ." 
 
 " Does daddy give you a lot of money? "
 
 8 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 " Well, not a lot, perhaps." 
 
 "Doesn't anybody?" 
 
 "Yes. There's a nice kind man at a theatre." 
 
 " What's theatre? " 
 
 "A very interesting place. You'll see when you grow big. 
 P'raps you'll go and work there some day, too, like mother. 
 And the nice kind gentleman will give you lots of money." 
 
 "Would I have to work?" 
 
 "Hard." 
 
 "Nice work?" 
 
 " Ever so nice the nicest ever. You wouldn't ever be able 
 to bear doing any other afterwards. Shall I go on with the 
 story? " 
 
 So the tragedy was forgotten and Molly Sargent sat down 
 in her ruined frock to finish the story of Treasure Island. 
 
 But things were not always like this. . . . 
 
 In the midst of happy days there would suddenly intrude 
 some hint of times less blissful to come. It would arise from 
 different quarters from nurse with her raised finger enjoin- 
 ing quiet, from stray scraps of conversation in the nursery, 
 from a brief, careless recognition far too brief and much 
 too careless of his existence from his father, and alas! from 
 a tired, fretful note in his mother's voice. When she came to 
 put the finishing touches to nurse's process of " tucking up " 
 Hilary learned to tell at a glance when it was quite certain 
 there would be no story. 
 
 "Mother's too tired," she would say, and go out without 
 once looking back in her pretty fashion over her shoulder. 
 Recalling these things across the gulf of many years Hilary 
 had a queer sense of compassion for the small boy who had 
 wept hot and bitter tears into the white pillow which smothered 
 his sobs. 
 
 These were bad times, but there were worse. There were 
 the dreadful days when the sound of loud and angry voices 
 would travel upstairs and, with eyes wide with terror and dis- 
 may, Hilary would steal out to listen. And doors would bang 
 and nurse would come rushing up and bundle him roughly
 
 DAWN 9 
 
 back into the nursery, and soon the only sound he would hear 
 in the house would be that of his own sobs. Not for years did 
 Hilary know what these quarrels were about, but to him they 
 were always catastrophic, for almost invariably one thing would 
 happen a few days later. Numerous trunks and boxes would 
 be packed, a cab would come rumbling up, his mother (a sub- 
 dued, graver mother than usual) would come in to wish him 
 good-bye, and he would hear her driven off down the Square 
 into the road beyond. 
 
 For Hilary in the days that followed the universe had lost 
 its charm: somehow, things had cheapened. Across all the 
 gladness of life a heavy veil had been flung, so that the days 
 were rather like those winter mornings when a thick fog shut 
 out the evergreens in the Square garden : it was hard to believe 
 they had ever been there. Only, these days, the fog did not 
 lift: one caught not even the faintest glimpse of the ever- 
 greens. . . . 
 
 5 
 
 But presently, when he least expected it, his mother would 
 return, and from a sad little boy with a lump in his throat, 
 Hilary would become the happiest child in London. For after 
 these absences Molly Sargent would always seem to be very 
 glad to be home again: she would come into the night-nursery 
 with her store of tales, and into the day-nursery, where she 
 would teach Hilary the jolliest new games, caring not a scrap 
 that in her role as a lion or tiger she might tear her pretty 
 frocks, or as the Beanstalk or Giant might bump her curly 
 head. But suddenly there would be nurse again, enjoining 
 quiet. His mother was busy and must not be disturbed, and 
 whether he liked it or not he must learn to play by himself. 
 "Wy, no other child in London's got as many toys to play 
 with as you," she would say, more often than not provoked to 
 the sharp shaking of a rebellious shoulder, " I'm sure I don't 
 know what'll become of you." 
 
 Hilary didn't care. And as for the bit about the toys he had 
 heard it far too often to be impressed by it. Moreover, he was 
 in no mood to be chastened by the woes of other small boys. 
 His own were far too tumultuous. 
 
 Gradually Mrs. Sargent's journeys grew more frequent,
 
 10 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 the intervals of absence longer, and Hilary's sense of desola- 
 tion deepened. For his father seemed to become more silent 
 every day and less and less inclined to pay attention to an 
 inquisitive little boy whose questions were obviously a source 
 of great annoyance to grown-up people. 
 
 Yet they were kind, sometimes, and gave him information 
 unasked. (Not his father, of course, but Annie and nurse.) 
 There was, for instance, the surprising day when nurse had 
 explained his mother's absences by saying she was an " hac- 
 tress " (which told him nothing at all) and that she was in 
 Americy (which told him very little more, since neither Annie 
 nor nurse knew anything at all about Americy, save that it was 
 a long way off and that you never went there unless you were 
 a good child and refrained from asking questions). 
 
 There was, too, another day, more surprising still, when 
 Annie showed him a photograph in one of the sixpenny 
 weeklies and asked him if he knew who it was. To be per- 
 fectly candid, Hilary, at first, did not. No memory of the past 
 jumped out at him of this woman with the floating hair, the 
 wide scared eyes and the bunch of grasses and wild flowers 
 caught up against her breast. Annie had laughed. 
 
 " 'E doesn't know 'is own mother w'en 'e sees 'er," she had 
 said. " 'Pon my word, Master 'Ilary, you are a one." 
 
 "But what does she look like that for?" Hilary had de- 
 manded, and it was nurse, not Annie, who explained. 
 
 "Because she's pretendin' to be Hawphelia," she told him. 
 "And (condescendingly) Hawphelia had to look like that" 
 
 " Who was Hawphelia? " Hilary asked. 
 
 Oh, someone in Shakespeare someone who had to go 
 mad, nurse thought, and the idea of his mother having to 
 pretend to be someone who " had to go mad " haunted Hilary 
 for the rest of the week, when he found enough courage to 
 show the paper containing the photograph to his father who 
 instantly threw it angrily into the corner. 
 
 " I will not have you looking at these papers," he shouted. 
 " Never let me see you with one again." 
 
 " All wite," said Hilary, " but who, please, was Hawphelia? " 
 
 " It's not //awphelia, but Ophelia." 
 
 " But nurse said . . ." 
 
 " Never mind what nurse said."
 
 DAWN 11 
 
 "And why, please, did Miss Ophelia have to go mad? " 
 
 But instead of answering Ralph Sargent had walked over to 
 the corner where the paper had fallen and picked it up. 
 Smoothing out the sheet he stood for a few seconds gazing at 
 the photograph; and presently he said a strange thing. 
 
 " Ophelia ought to be fair and not dark." Then he tore 
 out the photograph and put it into his pocket. 
 
 The boy added this strange item to the information he had 
 acquired from nurse, for nothing else, apparently, was forth- 
 coming from this new quarter. For years afterwards Ophelia, 
 to Hilary, was just "someone in Shakespeare who had to go 
 mad and who ought to be fair."
 
 CHAPTER TWO 
 
 IN the matter of stories some children have all the luck. . . . 
 Little Helena Morden had none at all. She would have 
 loved those poems and stories Molly Sargent told to 
 Hilary, but Mrs. Morden knew nothing at all of Stevenson, 
 and if it had been otherwise it is extremely doubtful if she 
 would have passed on her knowledge to Helena. For to begin 
 with, Agatha Morden was not that " sort " of woman, and un- 
 like Hilary, Helena was not an only child. Helena had two 
 brothers and two sisters, and even Molly Sargent would have 
 admitted that the difference between one child and five is, for 
 all practical purposes, unbridgable. Besides, Mrs. Morden 
 had not wanted any children at all, though she had wanted to 
 get married. At twenty-one she had accepted Arthur Morden 
 because he was the first person who had asked her, and because 
 she could never quite forget that she had five other sisters, 
 four of them her senior and all of them unmarried. No other 
 fact could have made her overlook the obvious drawbacks of 
 Arthur Morden's position (he was the Manager of the Wands- 
 worth branch of a big London bank) and of his salary, which 
 was two hundred and fifty a year. But these were facts which 
 her father and mother saw with uncompromising clearness, 
 and it took Agatha a couple of years to overcome their objec- 
 tions to so poor an alliance. But she had the ultimate satisfac- 
 tion of reading a column and a half about herself in the local 
 paper and of wearing white satin and orange-blossoms, after 
 which she retired to a ridiculously small house off the Wands- 
 worth High Street and wondered if " this " was romance. Two 
 years of married life brought her little beyond several financial 
 crises and two children a girl and a boy. The children she 
 accepted philosophically, as one of the penalties and in- 
 conveniences of marriage, so that a legend grew up in the 
 
 12
 
 DAWN 13 
 
 Burke family that " dear Agatha was such a splendid mother." 
 The financial crises were much less amenable to philosophy, 
 and after a time Agatha ceased her struggle to prevent romance 
 from flying out of the window. It was absurd to expect 
 romance on their ridiculous salary, when there was a position 
 to keep up and two children to provide for. Romance, sizing 
 up the situation, sought for itself a more promising abode 
 and Agatha was left with her babies and money-troubles. 
 
 When romance had flown to so remote a spot that, as far as 
 the Mordens were concerned, it was for all time out of earshot, 
 Arthur fell suddenly ill and the situation was saved. For 
 medical opinion having agreed that Agatha's husband must 
 live in the country, the Burke influence exerted itself to the 
 extent of finding him a post in the bank at Rattenby, in the 
 West Riding of Yorkshire, and here, with their two children 
 and household effects, the Mordens moved, and here, ten 
 months later, Helena, not rapturously welcomed, made her 
 entrance into the world. 
 
 Whilst Helena was still a baby in arms, Walter was born, 
 and before he could run, came Lucy, whom Providence luckily 
 decided should be the " baby " of the family. Five children 
 in seven years were more than even Agatha's philosophy could 
 endure; had there been any more she would have grown 
 resentful. These things went by luck, she reflected, for though 
 her mother had married at twenty-one and had a large family, 
 she was twenty-six when her first child was born. Five years 
 of freedom ! How bitterly, at times, Agatha, the " splendid 
 mother," begrudged them to her! And then, to make the 
 " luck " more pronounced, grandmamma Burke had married 
 money. . . . 
 
 2 
 
 Out there on the breezy moors, however, the five little 
 Mordens grew strong and healthy; life made less demands 
 upon their mother here than in London, and Arthur's health 
 grew slowly normal. Life, which had begun to smile again, 
 broke into a positive guffaw when the death of Agatha's father 
 enriched the Morden exchequer to the extent of eighty pounds 
 a year. Agatha, heart-broken, went up to town for the funeral, 
 but she wore a new frock for the first time in two years, and
 
 14 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 during the ceremony in the parish church at Putney, tried 
 hard not to let her thoughts dwell too fervently upon the will 
 that was to be read when they returned to the house. But with 
 five small children it was enormously difficult not to think 
 of these things. 
 
 Helena was barely six when the big house at Putney was 
 given up and grandmamma Burke, in widow's weeds, came to 
 make her home at Rattenby-on-the-Moors. Of course there 
 were Agatha's unmarried sisters to provide for and a whole 
 host of small grandchildren, but grandmamma Burke, none 
 the less, was a splendid investment and neither Arthur nor 
 Agatha proposed to dispute her tyrannous sway over their 
 household. Besides, Agatha was devoted to her mother. . . . 
 
 Gradually, as Helena grew up, there came to be a consensus 
 of opinion that she was a " difficult " child. It was her mother 
 who said of her at the age of ten that she had no " natural 
 feeling," a statement based chiefly, it must be confessed, upon 
 her refusal to weep over grandmamma Burke's death and upon 
 her rebellious attitude towards the wearing of decent mourning. 
 ("I hate black," Helena said, "it makes me feel dismal! " 
 As though one should not be dismal, or at least look dismal, 
 when a member of one's family had recently died!) 
 
 But Helena's recollection of her grandmother was of a 
 distinctly tiresome old lady who wore spotless caps threaded 
 with mauve ribbon, and who said repeatedly to Helena's 
 mother, "Agatha, can't you really keep the children quieter? 
 I'm sure when you were all little you weren't allowed to make 
 so much noise." Helena, looking at her grandmother out of 
 those big, frank eyes of hers, used to suppose it was all too 
 long ago for her to remember anything very definite about it, 
 for, to Helena, grandmamma Burke was a very old lady indeed. 
 (Poor soul, she was only seventy -two when she died, though 
 she did look more.) Perhaps it was because it was upon 
 Helena that this unreasonable request for quietude pressed 
 most harshly ; invariably it was she upon whom Agatha, fussily 
 maternal, urged the necessity for less noisy games. That it was 
 mainly Helena who invented them affected the question in
 
 DAWN 15 
 
 nowise. One had to play at something, and of course every- 
 body knew (save grandmamma Burke) that all the really good 
 games were frightfully noisy! 
 
 In one way and another Helena spent much deep speculation 
 upon the subject of grandmamma Burke or, rather, upon the 
 subject of old age as exemplified in that lady. It must be, 
 she would think, a very dreadful thing to get old as old as 
 that. She used to wonder what it felt like to want to sit all 
 day by the fireside, distressed by the slightest noise and in- 
 convenienced by hands which trembled so much that at dinner 
 you sometimes dropped your knife and fork three or four times 
 during the meal. Grandmamma Burke so Helena's mother 
 told her had, in her day, been a beauty, and before her 
 eighteenth birthday three gentlemen had asked permission to 
 marry her. It used to amaze Helena that it should have been 
 necessary to ask permission, for Helena's only idea of maturity 
 was the freedom to do exactly as one liked just whenever one 
 liked. But success, according to the maternal recital, had 
 not waited upon any one of the intrepid three and it was 
 quite another whom grandmamma Burke at twenty-one had 
 been permitted to marry, and she had been taken, a very lovely 
 bride, to a big house in Putney, in those far-off days when 
 Putney had meant decent seclusion and the heath at the top 
 of the hill. . . . Critically regarding her grandmother, 
 Helena would piously hope that her mother was telling the 
 truth; for of the alleged beauty the child, now, could see 
 not a trace. Grandmamma Burke was become only a shriv- 
 elled, wrinkled old lady, with a wig and no teeth save those 
 which glared so horridly at you from the tumbler on the 
 dressing-table when you went in to say " Good morning." 
 And the wrinkles, Helena had heard cook say (who knew all 
 about these things) were only due to the powder and " cos- 
 mics " grandmamma Burke had used when she was engaged in 
 being a beauty. 
 
 However, " cosmics " or no " cosmics," one night grand- 
 mamma Burke took it into her head to die quite decently, 
 in her bed, and everyone (save Helena) wept as though they 
 were heart-broken. Helena was enormously puzzled by this 
 unexpected and overwhelming display of grief. She was far 
 too deeply interested to have time or desire for tears, and, in
 
 16 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 any case, she had not loved grandmamma Burke and was 
 fairly certain that grandmamma Burke had not loved her. 
 And small wonder, for after all, even if one is hairless and 
 toothless, and well on the way towards the seventy-third 
 milestone of life, it is not altogether pleasant to be reminded 
 that one has at least one foot firmly planted in the grave, 
 nor exactly exhilarating to be requested to answer embarrassing 
 questions concerning that dark backward and abysm of time 
 when one was young and didn't object to noise! Helena felt 
 vaguely that she was a tactless child and did not blame grand- 
 mamma Burke in the very least for not loving her, but she 
 couldn't pretend to be sorry she was dead. She was only 
 enormously relieved that she would no longer have to rack her 
 brains to think of quiet games, nor watch that terrific tragi- 
 comic struggle with a knife and fork. . . . 
 
 When grandmamma Burke's will was read it was found that 
 she had left Helena's brothers and sisters an annuity, upon 
 their coming of age, of fifty pounds each. Helena had been 
 left out. . . . 
 
 " I don't care," she said loftily, answering one of the pros- 
 pective capitalists, not over-generous references to her wretch- 
 edly penniless condition, " I don't want her money. When I 
 grow up I shall marry someone who has plenty and go to live 
 in a palace. I didn't love grandmamma Burke a bit. Neither 
 did you, only you're all too sneaky to say so. But I'm glad 
 she's dead, and I hope she won't go to heaven, so there! " 
 
 Nevertheless, mutinously regarding the four bloated cap- 
 italists who were her brothers and sisters, Helena reflected 
 that, after all, perhaps she had repeated that phrase of cook's 
 about the one foot in the grave a bit too often. For, sup- 
 posing she didn't marry someone with plenty of money and 
 go to live in a palace? Money was a very serious business. 
 You couldn't really get on in life without it. Helena was 
 quite sure of these things, for she had heard her mother say 
 so repeatedly. 
 
 4 
 
 She said it again that evening after the reading of grand- 
 mamma Burke's will. Secretly, Agatha thought that cutting 
 out of Helena was unnecessarily spiteful of her mother, though
 
 DAWN 17 
 
 nothing would have induced her to say so. As she stood there 
 brushing out her long dark hair, touched only here and there 
 as yet with grey, Agatha's outlook upon Helena's future was 
 a gloomy one. 
 
 "Oh, lord," growled the man in the big, brass bed the 
 bed Helena always used to think it must need a ladder to climb 
 into " What a time you are! What's the good of worrying? 
 Ten to one she'll find somebody to marry her. The Mordens 
 are a good-looking lot, as that Ellingham woman said the 
 other day. . . . Do hurry up and put out the light." 
 
 He had forgotten the time when he had loved to watch 
 Agatha as she stood combing out the long dark strands of her 
 hair. Both of them had forgotten a great number of things 
 besides that.
 
 CHAPTER THREE 
 
 HILARY'S mother never came back from America. 
 That one letter came for him on his seventh birth- 
 day and no message ever again. He forgot, presently, 
 to look for any, and grew tired eventually of asking the ques- 
 tions no one was ever prepared to answer. They let him 
 think between them that his mother was dead. The servants 
 may have known better (servants always do), and in any case 
 they had, as they would have told you, their " instructions." 
 
 Life, in its way of course, went on being interesting. A 
 tall, angular woman came to the big house in the Square for 
 two hours each morning to teach Hilary, as nurse said, " his 
 letters and not before it was time, too." Miss Atwell was 
 kind and on the whole good-humoured, but Hilary disliked 
 the way her front teeth grew and the manner in which she 
 drew back her dark brown hair. Two other faults Hilary 
 found with her: the first that she regarded his passion for 
 interrogation with scarcely less disfavour than nurse and 
 Annie; and the second that she knew very little about the 
 man called Stevenson and did not seem to share Hilary's 
 opinion of the wonderful things he had written. 
 
 Then suddenly the centre of life shifted to Sussex and an 
 old rambling house with long windows from which you could 
 step straight out into the garden. This old house had a garden 
 which shamed the London Square into extinction, and at the 
 bottom of it grew a long line of poplars that sang all day and 
 all night in the breeze a song that was like summer rain on 
 dry leaves. Here in the country he might keep a cat and dog, 
 though nurse disliked both tremendously, but especially Flossie, 
 the cat a " narsty 'orrid creature she couldn't abide the feel 
 of." A ridiculous statement, this, to Hilary, who loved noth- 
 
 18
 
 DAWN 19 
 
 ing better than to rub his face against Flossie's soft black fur 
 or to feel the warmth of her body working insidiously through 
 his knickerbockers. 
 
 The country revealed several new traits in nurse's character. 
 There were so many things that lived which she disliked. 
 Frogs and toads (of which she told dreadful tales) and moths 
 of every description. These latter (poor, unhappy creatures!) 
 she would pursue around the ceiling at night with any article 
 of clothing which happened to come first to hand, whilst 
 Hilary watched with big eyes full of a horrible fear that they 
 would hurt themselves against the candle-flame and fall to 
 the ground with their delicate wings scorched and maimed 
 a consideration, however, which did not seem to disturb 
 nurse in the least. 
 
 In the place of Miss Atwell (who had preferred London to 
 Sussex and to whom Hilary had consequently had to say good- 
 bye) a girl with a bright face and dancing brown eyes came 
 regularly each morning from the village to deal with this 
 business of lessons. Ursula Yeomans did not resuscitate the 
 bead and wool-mat industries beloved of Miss Atwell, of 
 London, and (what was far better) she knew and loved all 
 those things of the man called Stevenson. She taught him, 
 too, the names of birds and trees and of wild flowers; and 
 disposed of nurse's wild flights of fancy regarding frogs and 
 toads, both of which turned out to be quite nice creatures 
 that (if you wished and when they were tiny) you might keep 
 in a bath. Ursula Yeomans, too, it was, who discovered to 
 Hilary the interesting fact that butterflies had names and 
 appeared at different seasons, so that it became a matter of 
 delirious excitement to find a May butterfly out in June. Hil- 
 ary's ideas of capture, however, never matured, because Miss 
 Yeomans considered it cruel. (" Such a tiny life, Hilary. 
 Don't you think they're entitled to every bit of it? " And 
 Hilary did.) So he learned to stalk his butterfly and study it 
 at short distances, and grew to be terribly scornful of other 
 small boys who rushed wildly about with nets. 
 
 This new free life in the country had grown to be most 
 tremendously interesting when Aunt Lavinia came and 
 spoiled it
 
 20 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 Lavinia Sargent was a narrow woman the outcome of a 
 narrow creed whose life was controlled by two passions, the 
 one for her brother, the other for her God. Not that Lavinia 
 would have admitted that they were "passions" at all (you 
 would not find the word in her vocabulary) nor that they 
 should be put in that order. Other people might have enter- 
 tained doubts as to their eternal salvation, but not so Lavinia 
 Sargent. She knew the day and hour when she had " crossed 
 the line," when for ever she had separated herself from the 
 ungodly and stepped out boldly along the narrow path which 
 led, she was assured, to heaven a dull place, it is true, as 
 Lavinia pictured it. But she would not mind the dulness: 
 all her life beauty and happiness had been suspect, and if she 
 could she would have swept the whole world of art into 
 oblivion. Cromwell was for her the saviour of England: a 
 vile print of him hung in her room where each morning he 
 saluted the new day with a heavy scowl of disapproval. Dar- 
 win, Huxley, Spencer and the German philosophers were all 
 blasphemers against the Truth to Lavinia, just men "who 
 thought they knew better than Genesis." To have tea with 
 Lavinia Sargent was invariably to be put in one of these two 
 groups: there was no possibility of escape and no appeal. 
 If you were a person of sense you saw that at once, for there 
 was literally nothing to argue about; you were either fit to be 
 mentioned in the same breath as Cromwell or you were not. 
 Generally, of course, you were not. 
 
 It took no more than two minutes for Lavinia to consign 
 Mary Hilary (who became Mary Sargent, and Hilary's mother) 
 to her proper group, for Mary detested Cromwell and in her 
 innocence she said so directly her eyes fell upon the vile print 
 of him in Lavinia's bedroom. 
 
 " Oh, you have that awful picture," she had remarked 
 cheerily, " I always think it was so morbid of him to insist on 
 the painter including the wart. ' Wart and all ' was the famous 
 phrase, wasn't it? " 
 
 " Cromwell," Lavinia had informed her, " was as his Cre- 
 ator made him." 
 
 And Mary had said, " Oh, I know, poor creature, the wart
 
 DAWN 21 
 
 wasn't his fault." Then she had laughed and the merry gleam 
 had danced madly in her grey eyes, and Lavinia, very dig- 
 nified, had led the way downstairs. 
 
 But because life was so full of a number of things Mary had 
 thought no more of the incident. She was sorry for Lavinia, 
 because she must find life so dull; and she was rather sorry, 
 too, for Ralph, because she supposed it could not be pleasant 
 for him to have such an impossible sister. But she resolutely 
 refused to see in that unsuccessful visit any omen for the 
 future. Which was just as well, since she was in love with 
 Ralph Sargent and he with her, and they intended, Lavinia 
 notwithstanding, to marry each other. 
 
 But from that day Lavinia bitterly opposed this preposterous 
 friendship of her brother's with Mary Hilary, the actress, 
 using arguments that to her were unanswerable. Later, when 
 the engagement she could not prevent was announced, she 
 wore upon her face the expression of a martyr, which, however, 
 did not prevent her from hating Mary Hilary. " Once an 
 actress, always an actress," she said when the marriage took 
 place, and she went on saying it at various intervals ever 
 afterwards. But at first it really did look as though she were 
 wrong, because Ralph and Mary were so obviously happy. 
 Ralph thought his sister and her precious phrase ridiculous: 
 for a woman in love is just a woman in love. At heart 
 when you get right down to fundamentals all women are the 
 same. He said (and thought) that of Mary Hilary, whom the 
 world had called a genius, and half-truth as it was it did for 
 some time look surprisingly like a complete one. Hilary was 
 born after eleven months' glorious happiness, seven of which 
 had been spent in France and Italy, out of reach of Lavinia 
 and her angles (alike of religion and personality) which Mary 
 found later could hurt you so abominably if you happened to 
 encounter them. And Mary did. . . . 
 
 " Once an actress, always an actress," Lavinia said, when a 
 charity performance lured Mary back to the stage as Beatrice. 
 She said it six months later when Mary had gone back to the 
 stage for good, when her name, flaring out from boardings and 
 'buses, offended her eyesight. And when Ralph Sargent grew 
 tired of the phrase she found other ways of saying the same 
 thing. At least she would be heard.
 
 22 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 But Ralph Sargent knew, without his sister's reminders, that 
 this was the beginning of the end. Nothing was ever going 
 to be the same again. For the first time in his life he hated the 
 theatre: the thought of it, with its critical, appraising eyes, 
 was a perpetual thorn in the flesh. His work (which was 
 scientific, and appallingly dull to Mary, to whom he would 
 talk about it!) began to suffer: his temper took on an edge. 
 Lavinia prayed for him with fervour and her martyred ex- 
 pression daily deepened. For Mary, the return to the old 
 loved life meant hours of study and long rehearsals. Molly 
 at her work was temperamental: if a part went wrong she 
 was nervy and distrait; she came back from the theatre tired 
 and just a little irritable, and she missed the accustomed 
 ministrations of the old servants who, in the days that were 
 past, had always waited up for her and who, somehow, had 
 never seemed tired superhuman, sleepless beings who made 
 her comfortable with cushions and brought her delicious things 
 to drink. But the big house in the Square was icy in its re- 
 ception of her; her suppers were cold, dismal affairs hor- 
 rible anti-climaxes. Presently she took to having supper out 
 one of a gay choice little party of folk who with langhing 
 lips blew lightly at the foam on the cup of life and sipped at 
 it happily. But the next morning there would be Ralph's 
 grave face (and Lavinia's martyred one) silently rebuking her, 
 and she knew that she had encountered the anti-climax after 
 all. It might be dodged, but it was not to be escaped; it 
 was always waiting for her just round the corner. It always 
 would be waiting for her, and all the artist in Mary rose in 
 rebellion against its importunity. Nevertheless, she made 
 praiseworthy efforts and to please Ralph would have intervals 
 of " rest," when feverishly they would endeavour to get back 
 to their old footing, only to become dreadfully aware that the 
 thing was impossible. 
 
 The thought of Hilary steadied the woman, at least. Sun- 
 ning herself in his ready adoration, delighting in his eternal 
 appreciation, she would almost believe that she could bear to 
 turn her back for ever upon the work she loved would 
 imagine she could recapture the wonder and glory of those 
 first two years of married happiness. But they had slipped
 
 DAWN 23 
 
 so far behind, and in front of her now stretched always the 
 blue-misted savannahs of fame and ambition, filling her with 
 a nostalgia that threatened to overwhelm completely every other 
 feeling. 
 
 Lavinia was right. " Once an actress, always an actress." 
 And yet, all the time there was the thought of the child drag- 
 ging her back. 
 
 Presently the inevitable happened. They began to quarrel. 
 Even Hilary could not prevent that. Dreadful quarrels they 
 were the quarrels of people with passionate natures and 
 intense emotions. Molly was horrified at the things she said, 
 and she, to Ralph, was " theatrical," a woman who " made 
 scenes." Both alike were aghast at the new, strange vista 
 opening up before them and neither had the strength to 
 turn in the opposite direction. They dragged each other 
 along the fresh paths, blind with passion and emotion, and 
 knew that nothing and no one could save them. Their very 
 love for each other (struggling, miserable, at its last gasp) was 
 but an additional obstacle in the way; it was too intense, 
 too feverish; and it entirely prevented either of them from 
 getting a clear view of their path or destination. 
 
 The end came with Molly's American tour and the renewal 
 of a friendship she had snapped with determination when she 
 first met Ralph Sargent. Her original contract finished, Mary 
 signed another and wrote home when she was irretrievably 
 committed to several months' further stay in America. Ralph 
 Sargent knew all about that old interrupted friendship, and 
 knew, too, that it was with this man she was playing in America, 
 so that when the bomb fell he was not altogether unprepared 
 for it. Molly's letter was unequivocal. It begged quite 
 frankly for freedom and it gave just as frankly, the reasons 
 why Ralph should take steps to procure it for her. 
 
 And Ralph would not. He would do anything but that. 
 He would have taken her back if she would come. But she 
 would not. She had left him because he had made life (as she 
 understood life) unendurable for her, or they, perhaps, had 
 made life unendurable for each other. In either case the re- 
 sult was precisely the same. Yet if Molly would not belong 
 to him, at least she should not, lawfully, belong to any other
 
 24 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 man. His mind shut fast on that thought: it never escaped 
 him. 
 
 What correspondence there was took place between two 
 firms of solicitors. It was business-like, impersonal and con- 
 cerned not in the very least with love and the things of love. 
 But it had the merit of brevity. It was soon over and after 
 that, silence. Mary neither implored nor reproached, and 
 there were days when Ralph would have given much if she 
 had. 
 
 Yet it was astonishing how difficult it was to forget her 
 that radiant creature he was riot able to keep, and often he 
 came near to hating the things which reminded him of her, 
 for in his own pitiful fashion he loved her still and knew that 
 he would go on loving her until life ran out, and beyond. 
 But he would never forgive her. That was what made it piti- 
 ful he could love but he could not forgive. 
 
 And Hilary, because he belonged to that great army of 
 memories, was speedily turned over to other hands the 
 responsibilities attaching to that small person relegated with 
 the rest of the duties of life. Beyond an assurance that the 
 child was well and in capable hands he desired to know nothing 
 whatever about him. Briefly and unsuccessfully Ralph Sar- 
 gent had emerged into parenthood; at no time had the experi- 
 ment been wholly a success, and now the episode had merely 
 to be forgotten. From this point he turned his back upon 
 the world, becoming more than ever absorbed in his books 
 and his work, conscious that life, somehow, had to be got 
 through as if Molly and he had never met as if Love, in- 
 finitely tender-eyed, had never halted for them upon the dusty 
 highroad of the world. It was difficult, of course. It would 
 always be difficult, for there was Hilary, and after all, in La- 
 vinia's homely phrase, a child isn't exactly a bale of goods. 
 The remark was not entirely a helpful contribution towards the 
 solution of the problem, but Lavinia was right, all the same. 
 
 For Hilary, certainly, was not going to make things easier. 
 
 Two years later Mary Hilary was found drowned in an orna- 
 mental pond in the grounds of an American hotel. The med-
 
 DAWN 25 
 
 ical evidence showed that she was expecting a child. The jury, 
 however, were kind and brought in a verdict of " Found 
 drowned," which hurt nobody's feelings. Because, when it 
 happened, Hilary was not old enough to look at the papers.
 
 CHAPTER FOUR 
 
 DESPITE the insistence of the maternal legend, it was a 
 strange isolation of soul in which Helena Morden grew 
 up. Somehow, she was always " odd woman out." 
 Between her and her brothers and sisters there could hardly 
 have been a more decided cleavage. If Agatha was to be be- 
 lieved, she was " no Burke " and " no Morden," and it was, 
 of course, an impertinence on your part that you should not 
 belong to one side or the other of your family. Agatha liked 
 ordinary normal children because novelty was disturbing and 
 she did not care to be asked awkward questions. There was 
 much sound sense, all those years ago, behind that desire of 
 hers for marriage without children. She did not know and 
 never had known what to do with the individuality of a child; 
 she did not think children should be " individuals." Children 
 should do what they were told: they were to be seen and not 
 heard. But Helena showed at no time any great liking for the 
 role of audience and Agatha wished continually that she was 
 " more like Gertrude," because you always knew " where you 
 were " with Gertrude, and that was such a blessing. Gertrude 
 was a large, broad-faced girl, phlegmatic alike in appearance 
 and in temperament, careful of the conventions (even as a 
 child) and concerned for other people's regard; accepting 
 things, not so much as they are, but as they seemed to be 
 which was less exhausting, of course. It was Gertrude who 
 said scornfully, "Why, what other colour should it be, 
 stupid?" when Helena had said, "Isn't it lovely the grass 
 should be green? " A world of red grass to Gertrude was un- 
 thinkable (because grass wasn't red), whilst to Helena it was 
 a horror the world had most marvellously escaped. Things 
 like this yawned continually between Gertrude and Helena, 
 whilst between Helena and Lucy there was always a good deal 
 
 26
 
 DAWN 27 
 
 more than the three years which divided them in age. Lucy 
 (the phrase much later was Helena's own) was a neat and tidy 
 child with a neat and tidy mind. Lucy was the beauty of the 
 family and probably there never was a time when she was not 
 aware of her " points," since they were continually discussed 
 in her presence, and grandmamma Burke, when she was alive, 
 had Lucy for favourite, and would have you believe that she 
 was an exact reproduction of herself at a similar age. " Yes, 
 and if you don't look out you'll be just like grandmamma is 
 now. You see! " Helena would gibe at her. Helena used to 
 think it was a good job God had made Lucy so pretty because 
 He had made her stupid. People who like the one might not 
 really mind about the other. 
 
 If the truth were told, Helena was happier in her brothers' 
 company than in that of either of her sisters, until she began to 
 notice that they spent much time in pulling the wings off flies 
 and in pinning moths and butterflies between the pages of 
 scrap-books, which things they called "having a hobby." 
 When Helena remonstrated with them and said it was cruel, 
 they showed her that as she was a girl she couldn't possibly 
 know anything about it: all boys knew that flies and moths 
 didn't feel things. They thought Helena a mug because when 
 she saw them doing unutterable things with moths and flies her 
 face would go white and tears would well up slowly into her 
 big blue eyes. At such moments all boys were hateful to her; 
 the very word a synonym for cruelty. 
 
 There was, too, a dreadful day when she had gone with her 
 mother and brothers into a little tea-shop in Rattenby town, 
 where the walls disported cases of moths of every description, 
 all pinned up dead and helpless behind the glass, moths of 
 varied sizes and colours, over which Ted and Walter gloated 
 and argued. Helena, turning her eyes from the sickening sight, 
 found nothing to look at but the equally horrid sight of bright- 
 plumaged birds, stuffed and stiff, all gazing out unseeingly 
 upon that dingy little tea-room all those glorious, beautiful 
 things that had loved freedom and the sweet summer air. 
 And Agatha had been angry because Helena would not eat 
 her tea. 
 
 " It really is perfectly ridiculous, Arthur," she said later to 
 Helena's father. " Such a fuss over a few birds and things,
 
 28 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 and I don't believe she shed one tear when grandmamma Burke 
 died. And the trouble to get her to wear her black frock! " 
 
 In Agatha's mind these two incidents came to be ranged very 
 carefully side by side, and to them, from time to time, many 
 others quite similar were added. Affection or consideration 
 for animals and birds went for nothing beside a constitutional 
 inability to bewail the death of one's grandparents, and grad- 
 ually there sprang into existence the legend that Helena was 
 " heartless," devoid of all " ordinary feeling." It was a legend 
 that had in it neither more nor less of truth than the average 
 legend. But it was about this time that there was born in 
 Helena the first overwhelming realisation of the astounding 
 indifference of perfectly good people towards the suffering of 
 animals. 
 
 But always, for Helena, there was one fact for which she 
 could never be sufficiently grateful and that was the natural 
 beauty of her home. Four Cross House stood high up on the 
 edge of the moors of the West Riding of Yorkshire an old, 
 rambling, inconvenient house, buffeted by wind and rain and 
 kissed in summer-time by the rays of the sun which deepened 
 the purple of the heather and ripened the rowan berries. From 
 her bedroom window Helena could look right across the moor, 
 as it lay stretched out for mile upon mile, boundless and pri- 
 mordial a natural element that for centuries had resisted 
 the efforts of mankind to subjugate it. Very little, she knew, 
 would grow on Rattenby moor. People said of it that it was 
 " irreclaimable." You found no startling patches of wheat, 
 corn or oats springing up here and there among the purple 
 and green. The heather sprawled across it and the verdant leaf 
 of the bilberry bush. For the rest there was the sun, an " ever- 
 lasting wash of air," and that sense of freedom and exhilara- 
 tion that she thought could not be found anywhere else at all. 
 Nothing of the great universe did the child know beyond the 
 little village at her feet and the neighbouring town of Rattenby. 
 The crowded, bustling, busy mills of the great adjacent cities 
 did not disturb her peace: she heard them spoken of as vaguely 
 as one spoke of Timbuctoo and her idea of the one was no 
 less shadowy than of the other. For years Helena's world was
 
 DAWN 29 
 
 just that wind-swept, sun-kissed moor black and gaunt in 
 winter, green with the bilberry leaf and purple with heather 
 when summer had come. And so much did these things come 
 to mean to her that for years she imagined she could not pos- 
 sibly live without them. 
 
 Of all Agatha Morden's children Helena was by far the apt- 
 est pupil. Gertrude learned, if not with actual difficulty, at 
 least without enthusiasm, whilst Lucy was frequently reduced 
 to tears even at so early a stage as the multiplication table, and 
 as long as she lived was never quite certain whether seven 
 nines were fifty-six or sixty-three. Ted and Walter were infi- 
 nitely more interested in their questionable " hobby " and their 
 sports than in the business of study, but since they were boys 
 and would "have to have a profession," a certain amount of 
 gentle paternal persuasion was found an excellent corrective 
 to their natural instinct for laziness. As to the girls, marriage 
 was the one profession which, in Agatha's opinion, they could 
 honourably follow. To Agatha the very word " spinster " was 
 absurd, and she was determined that it should be used to de- 
 scribe her daughters once and once only upon that proud 
 occasion when she sat in church and heard it for the first and 
 last time. " Gertrude Alicia Morden, spinster, of this parish," 
 " Helena Burke Morden, spinster, of this parish," " Lucy Ade- 
 laide Morden, spinster, of this parish." To Agatha it was so 
 extremely gratifying she could almost wish she had half a 
 dozen daughters. She would be very fond of them and proud, 
 seeing them grown up and suitably married. It was their 
 youth she found so trying. 
 
 Something she found, too, that was rather uncanny about 
 Helena's passion for learning. Of her only among the young 
 Mordens was it in any sense true to say that she loved her 
 books. She learned with ease and had an exceptionally reten- 
 tive memory. Her English mistress wrote on her reports 
 (somewhat to Agatha's amusement, because what did it mat- 
 ter?) that she knew her Scott, and sent home an essay she had 
 written, which began, " In these days of cheap and rapid tran- 
 sit. . . ." It wasn't all like that, but it was undoubtedly the
 
 30 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 opening which made Miss Denton write at the bottom of the 
 essay, " I am sure you will agree that for so young a child, 
 Helena's vocabulary is certainly remarkable." Agatha sup- 
 posed it was, but, once again, what did it matter, so long as she 
 could speak correctly? 
 
 Stories and poems had for Helena a terrible fascination; 
 the people in them took a firm hold upon her imagination. 
 They trod the moors with her, became as intimate acquaint- 
 ances. She would stride along to school to the accompani- 
 ment of Glassford Bell's " Queen Mary " or some poem of 
 Scott's, beating out the iambics with such maddening precision 
 that her unliterary brethren would tell her to " cheese it " or to 
 "dry up for Heaven's sake! " She found it, however, less a 
 matter of congratulation than of sorrow that she alone of all 
 the Mordens should have any appreciation of the beauties of 
 English literature. 
 
 Helena grew up with a rapidity that surprised (and doubtless 
 gratified) her parents. She was a " fine-looking girl," they 
 told one another: it was a pity she was so " queer," so different 
 from the rest. (That most of all that she was " different.") 
 But they raised no objection to her sitting for matriculation, 
 and were proud of her when she took a first-class. After that, 
 however, they exhibited no sort of interest in her studies and 
 turned a deaf ear to the suggestion that she should go on to 
 college and specialise in her beloved English. So because 
 there was no help for it, Helena at seventeen came home from 
 school to take "her proper place in the house," as Gertrude 
 had done. In the course of time she would doubtless marry 
 as so far, however, Gertrude had not done. Visitors to Four 
 Cross House might have wondered how this consummation was 
 to be brought about who, just precisely, there were for the 
 Morden girls to marry. Their immediate neighbours were 
 childless; the Ellinghams, who kept the low white house at the 
 foot of the hill, had a large family of girls, one of whom, as 
 Gertrude's friend, came frequently to Four Cross House to tea 
 and bemoaned the disadvantage of being " one of seven and 
 no boys." Besides the Ellinghams there were the Brown-Fos-
 
 DAWN 31 
 
 ters, whose only son was already married and settled in Lon- 
 don, the Evertons, whose two boys were still -at school, and the 
 curate, who before coming to Rattenby had taken the liberty of 
 choosing a wife elsewhere. Looked at how you would the mat- 
 rimonial chances of Rattenby seemed despairingly remote. 
 But Agatha would have been ready for you, conceding the im- 
 possibility of Rattenby with the blandest air in the world. For 
 it was not on Rattenby that Agatha staked her hopes, but on 
 Putney, where lived her youngest sister, Milly, most desirably 
 and conveniently married to a man who could afford to main- 
 tain her as became a Burke residing within the zone of the 
 Burke traditions. With the generosity that comes so readily 
 to the easy-going woman to whom the lines have fallen in 
 pleasant places, Milly Meynell was willing to lend a helping 
 hand in this matter of husband-hunting, not unaware perhaps 
 that the service would cost her nothing at ail in the way of 
 personal sacrifice. And so it came about, six months before 
 Helena left school, that Gertrude, a big box of clothes and the 
 fervent hopes of her mother, travelled together up to London 
 and down again to Putney. Of course no one was sufficiently 
 ill-bred to mention " marriage," but assuredly neither Ger- 
 trude nor Agatha thought of anything else. Gertrude was her 
 mother's daughter: she, too, would not like to have to remain a 
 spinster. . . . 
 
 And at Four Cross House Helena was bored. There was not 
 even enough housework to go round, even if it had been any 
 part of Agatha's scheme to have her daughters do a share of 
 the work she paid others to do. And it was not: nothing an- 
 noyed her more than to find Helena in the kitchen, making 
 cakes or pastry, though Helena did both extremely well and 
 usually (as Emily Bronte made the bread) with a book propped 
 up before her. Paying calls with her mother, being polite 
 to visitors, struggling with small talk, Sydney Smith, Tito Mat- 
 tei and Mendelssohn in the drawing-room, seemed to- Helena 
 just so many absolutely ridiculous things to do with life. She 
 fell back upon her long moorland walks, scoured the country 
 in all weathers and a mackintosh; and when she was at home 
 retired into her own little world of books where Agatha, wor- 
 ried and mystified, could never follow her. The books she 
 deplored until one day she came across a little volume of Ten-
 
 32 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 nyson lying face downwards on a chair in Helena's room, with 
 a heavily pencilled mark against that passage where Elaine 
 meets Lancelot. 
 
 . . . she lifted up her eyes 
 And loved him with that love which was her doom. 
 
 It was the pencilled mark, not the poetry, which brought a 
 smile to Agatha's mouth, for the thought came to her that it 
 was superfluous to despair utterly (and matrimonially) of a 
 girl who read " this sort of thing." 
 
 It was .in the June following Helena's eighteenth birthday 
 that Gertrude became engaged to Edgar Holmes, the junior 
 partner in the old-established firm of Holmes, Raiding and 
 Holmes, solicitors, of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and an apparently 
 entirely eligible young man in every way. Gertrude wrote 
 from Putney that she hoped her dear father and mother would 
 approve and would not object to their being married almost 
 immediately. Her dear father and mother did approve 
 were, in fact, delighted, and Agatha spent an hour that morning 
 in covering several sheets with sentiments more or less to that 
 effect. (Left to herself, Agatha was inclined to write what 
 is called a "rambling" letter.) 
 
 But Helena had very little to say. She was wondering what 
 it was like to fall in love, and this engagement of Gertrude's 
 translated at once the romance of her world of books into the 
 world of reality, so that it both excited and thrilled her. Later, 
 however, when the eligible Edgar spent a week-end at Four 
 Cross House, she was less sure of things. Her prospective 
 brother-in-larw was revealed as a darkly handsome young man 
 of twenty-eight, tall of figure, smooth of hair and skin, bold 
 of eye and of touch (at least, when he passed you anything 
 at table or encountered you at the dark turn of the stairs). 
 Moreover, there was an evening when Gertrude and he quar- 
 relled, and when seeing Helena emerge from the house Edgar 
 had deliberately walked over to her, forsaking the angry Ger- 
 trude, who had raged at Helena afterwards and said horrible 
 things.
 
 DAWN 33 
 
 The wedding took place at the end of September, and Edgar 
 and Gertrude went to live in a villa at Wimbledon. And when 
 Aunt Milly (who had come to Rattenby for the ceremony) 
 went back to Putney she took Helena with her. There she re- 
 mained for a year and nothing happened save that she learned 
 to take an interest in her appearance and discovered that her 
 hair had a broad, natural wave in it, and that her eyes were so 
 deep a shade of blue that at certain times and in artificial light 
 they appeared to be black. In addition she learned from Ger- 
 trude that marriage had its drawbacks that it was rather like 
 living on the side of a volcano: you were lucky if you escaped. 
 Gertrude, apparently, had not "escaped." She was expecting 
 a baby in October. " Such a nuisance," she said, " all my 
 plans dished. Edgar's quite cross about it. I do hope I'm 
 not going to take after mother. Five of us in six years! Just 
 fancy! Aunt Milly told me how cross mother was about it, 
 and they were so wretchedly poor then, too." 
 
 Aunt Milly also it was who explained the incomprehensible 
 failure at Putney of Agatha's second daughter. 
 
 "She simply hasn't any idea, my dear Agatha, how to make 
 herself attractive to people. She ignored every eligible young 
 man I asked to meet her, and the only person she seemed to 
 care anything about was that man Harry will bring here Pet- 
 ersen, old enough to be her father. And all he cares for is 
 books. Helena and he used to talk for hours about them, as 
 far as I can make out. Harry tells me Peterson once wrote a 
 book himself about the poet Shelley I think it was Shelley 
 he was the man whose wife (or one of them) drowned herself 
 hi the Serpentine, wasn't he? I believe he once took her to the 
 National Gallery. . . . Oh, have I said something funny? I 
 had to speak very severely to Harry about it. Because Peter- 
 sen's fifty if he's a day. Of course, my dear, I'm quite willing 
 to have her up here again if you like, but I really don't believe 
 it'll be a scrap of good. If you ask me, she isn't the marrying 
 sort." 
 
 But Agatha, clinging still to her recollection of the pencilled 
 Tennyson, refused to relinquish hope. Of course, people who 
 read poetry and marked it were the "marrying sort," even if 
 a shade too exacting.
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 HOWEVER you looked at it, Hilary thought, Aunt Lavin- 
 ia's coming was a mistake. For she brought with her 
 no knowledge whatever of the man called Stevenson, but 
 only a lot of new rules that complicated life most dreadfully 
 and a horrible thing called "The Sabbath." (Aunt Lavinia 
 called it "The Seventh Day," though that didn't make it any 
 better.) 
 
 And with the Sabbath (if it was fine) came chapel. If it 
 was wet an awful picture-book, which alarmed Hilary con- 
 siderably until he developed sufficient strength of mind to 
 ignore it. The only thing that mattered was that when Aunt 
 Lavinia inquired if you had been looking at the beautiful pic- 
 tures like a good boy you should say that you had, ignoring 
 the implied compliment, of course, and not contradicting her 
 about die word " beautiful." But chapel was a much more dif- 
 ficult thing to dodge or to forget, because it opened up vistas 
 of new and distressingly difficult thought and brought strange 
 words into his vocabulary, like " salvation " and " condemna- 
 tion " and the "unforgivable sin." (Hilary did not know 
 what that was, but was quite sure he had committed it.) The 
 Rev. Jabez Ham expounded the gospel with the same extraor- 
 dinary vehemence as that with which nurse chased the moths 
 around the ceiling, and sometimes Hilary used to think he 
 would never stop. But he always did, and no one ever seemed 
 any the worse. His aunt would shake hands, then, with the 
 people she knew and make trivial comments about the weather, 
 with which, usually, they all had some fault to find. One took 
 comfort from that familiar, everyday scene. You could not, 
 beholding it, believe that things were anything like so bad as 
 the Rev. Jabez Ham represented them. 
 
 Interrogated on the point Miss Yeomans said that of course 
 they were not, and her voice had been most terribly scornful. 
 
 34
 
 DAWN 35 
 
 But then, no one insisted that Miss Yeomans should go to 
 chapel, so that perhaps she didn't properly know. But at least 
 she came to the Mission. 
 
 And it was at the Mission that Hilary disgraced himself by 
 screaming aloud and having to be carried out. Afterwards he 
 thought he would not have screamed but for the thunder-storm 
 which broke at a moment already sufficiently alarming. For 
 the preacher (not the Rev. Jabez Ham, but a stranger with a 
 mouth ludicrously reminiscent of india-rubber or a dying 
 codfish) had suddenly invited all those in the congregation who 
 were going to heaven to stand up. Nobody seemed to have any 
 doubts at all on the matter, and the whole congregation (save 
 only Hilary) arose in a body. Very stiff and erect, Aunt 
 Lavinia was standing with the rest, and but for the thunder- 
 storm this fact might very well have comforted Hilary and pre- 
 served to him his dignity. Because one would not be extremely 
 anxious to go to heaven if Aunt Lavinia were to be there. 
 Heaven, somehow, was just a place where Aunt Lavinia was 
 not. But the thunder-storm came and Hilary screamed. The 
 storm and Hilary's screaming, the hallelujahs of the men, 
 the whisperings of children and the stifled sobbing of women, 
 all got mixed up horribly together, so that Aunt Lavinia, very 
 red in the face, was forced to abandon the congregation momen- 
 tarily halted en route for heaven, and carry Hilary out. And 
 suddenly from a seat by the door Miss Yeomans arose. " It's 
 all right, it's all right" she said to Hilary as he clung to her, 
 but of Aunt Lavinia she took no notice at all. " To take a 
 child to that! " she said later (and very scornfully) to someone 
 else rather as if she, at least, had discovered the "unfor- 
 givable sin." 
 
 Afterwards, of course, Aunt Lavinia said he had screamed 
 on purpose because he didn't like going to chapel and hoped 
 that way to get out of it. (That was the sort of mean thing 
 Aunt Lavinia was always doing: so that you couldn't think of 
 her without thinking of them. They stuck out behind her, 
 luminously, like a comet's tail.) But Hilary didn't care what 
 Aunt Lavinia thought or what she said, because from the day 
 of the Mission he never went again to chapel, for Miss Yeomans 
 had bearded his father in his philosophical den and had 
 emerged with the satisfactory information that if the doctrines
 
 36 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 of Calvin were not suited to Hilary's temperament he might 
 try those of the Church of England. So Hilary went to the 
 Parish Church (at reasonable intervals) with Ursula and found 
 that he liked it. 
 
 2 
 
 Long afterwards when Hilary heard smart people declare 
 that they thought the Church of England had died years before 
 of inanition, he would remember those pleasant mornings in 
 Yewhurst Church, and how, even then, it had seemed as if life 
 and this business of church-going- were two quite different and 
 separate things. For all that, he found it pleasurable enough. 
 He liked the music and the riot of colour in the stained-glass 
 windows (that most of all, perhaps), and it was comforting to 
 know that here, always, you might rely upon uninterrupted 
 peace and quiet and uniformly good behaviour. Under no 
 circumstances whatever, could you imagine the man behind you 
 or the woman in front rising in ecstasy and shouting " Halle- 
 lujah " or " Praise be to His Name," and these were things for 
 which Hilary could never be sufficiently grateful. Yewhurst 
 Church, so Ursula told him, was very old. The tower belonged 
 to the thirteenth century, and there seemed to be a lot of reasons 
 why you should admire it tremendously, even though some peo- 
 ple to whom Ursula referred as the " Vandals," and with whom, 
 as Hilary thought, she seemed unnecessarily wrathful, had 
 " ruined " the main building by " restoring " it. The tower, 
 so Ursula said, they had had the goodness to leave alone. She 
 mentioned these people quite casually, as though they were a 
 family she knew very well and disliked intensely. Hilary "won- 
 dered who they were, but rather fancied they were all dead, like 
 Grimm and Stevenson and Andersen, but Ursula said, " Dead? 
 The Vandals? Good gracious, no. They'll never die. They'll 
 still be living when you and I are dead and forgotten." 
 
 Hilary thought that if this were so there was not much hope 
 for that thirteenth-century tower. There was still plenty of 
 time for it to be " restored," and if the Vandals lived so long 
 doubtless they would be glad of the occupation. He rather 
 wished Ursula didn't dislike the family so much : it would have 
 been distinctly interesting to have known one of the Van- 
 dals. .
 
 DAWN 37 
 
 It was very soon after this that the " tragedy of Annie " oc- 
 curred. ( Somehow that was how one used afterwards to think 
 of it.) Annie had disappeared quite suddenly from Yewhurst 
 Lodge and two days later they had found her body at the bot- 
 tom of the deep green pond in a little dark fir wood through 
 which Hilary had often walked with Ursula. He had over- 
 heard the milkman talking to Rayner, the Lodge gardener, 
 about it and he had gathered that Annie had jumped into die 
 pond because she was going to have a baby, and Aunt Lavinia 
 had sent luer away and she dare not go home. This to Hilary 
 was all very mystifying, but it was less these things which 
 troubled him than the thought that Annie, who had been so 
 young and so nice to look at, was dead. They had dragged 
 her body out of the deep green pond and the milkman and Ray- 
 ner between them had told some dreadful tales of the ugly 
 things green and stagnant water could do to you. To be dead 
 when one was young an awful thing, that. The most awful 
 thing you could imagine. To Hilary, for ever tugged at the 
 heart by the beauty of the thing seen and felt, who loved life 
 with a white-heat intensity that never burned itself out, pre- 
 mature death was always an unspeakable horror. All his life 
 it was extremely difficult to grasp the state of mind which urged 
 any human being to this ghastly act of self-extinction; so diffi- 
 cult to envisage a set of circumstances which expunged the 
 phantasmagoria of life- like a wet sponge passed over a state. 
 Even as a child, this incident of Annie's death meant one thing 
 only to him: that she who had loved to live was dead dead 
 to the stars and the winds and that he would never see her 
 pretty face again nor hear her gay voice on the stairs. 
 
 Out of the quiet level of happy days that ensued (for you 
 couldn't, thank Heaven, think of poor Annie and the dank pond 
 for ever) one or two things emerged into prominence. One 
 (and not the least important) was Aunt Lavinia's departure 
 from Yewhurst, her evangelical stomach having risen at last 
 against the heretical doctrines of the Church of England which
 
 38 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 she had, so to speak, been forced to swallow. In her place 
 there came a new housekeeper who required nothing of you save 
 that you should bow down to the chief of her domestic gods 
 the one with the brazen face called Punctuality. A bagatelle, 
 that, for the small boy who had lived with an Aunt Lavinia. 
 
 But even more exciting than Aunt Lavinia's departure was 
 Arthur Yeomans' arrival. Arthur was Ursula's brother and 
 he came to Yewhurst Lodge twice a week to give Hilary the 
 art lessons Ursula had discovered he ought to have. (Ursula 
 always discovered things of this sort: she was as clever as all 
 that knew what you would love best to do before you knew 
 it yourself!) Arthur Yeomans preferred Paris to London as a 
 place of habitation, but had been driven to London by a love- 
 affair which had gone awry and was going to remain like that 
 for ever. And London being, to Arthur's mind, as insupport- 
 able as ever, he had turned his back upon it and come home to 
 Yewhurst. Not that the miracle of his coming was explained 
 like this to Hilary to whom it was sufficient that he came. 
 Because for Hilary it wasn't only the lessons he loved, but the 
 man who gave them. Arthur's visits were a rich, rare pleasure 
 to Hilary a new subtle fragrance added unexpectedly to 
 life, for as a child his capacity for friendship was remarkable. 
 All the affection which in ordinary circumstances he would 
 have lavished upon his mother contrived to get itself diffused 
 across and along the pathway of life like vivid colour spilled 
 over the edge of some luxurious garden. 
 
 Two other things there were peeping up above the level, 
 the death of Flossie, the little black cat, and the day when 
 Ursula had suddenly sat down and cried, and someone cut 
 little bits out of every paper that came to the house. . . . 
 
 Then a lot more happy days, another summer and winter, 
 and presently the decision on somebody's part that he was old 
 enough to do certain things for himself. Which meant that 
 nurse packed up and went to look after someone else who 
 could not. Somehow, it was nicer without nurse, and one felt 
 delightfully free and grown up. Winter passed and spring and 
 another summer, and suddenly came devastating news of Ur- 
 sula's impending marriage and departure to Yorkshire, and in 
 the middle of it all people went off to fight the Boers and 
 Yewhurst village was hung with flags and everybody got tre-
 
 DAWN 39 
 
 mendously excited. But not Ursula and not Arthur (nor his 
 father, who, of course, never got excited about anything at all) . 
 Queer things happened at this time, very difficult to under- 
 stand. There was the afternoon when Arthur came in with a 
 deep cut over his left eye from which the blood was running 
 freely down his cheek, and who said nothing whatever as to how 
 it happened, save (to Ursula, as she was bathing the wound), 
 "My country right or wrong!" There were also several 
 other occasions when a mob of village youths and small boys 
 foregathered at the gates of the Lodge and threw stones at the 
 windows, and still other occasions (and by far the worst) when 
 a new strange word came hurtling after them when Hilary went 
 out walking with Ursula or Arthur. Personally, Hilary did 
 not like being called a pro-Boer, and could not in the least un- 
 derstand why, when she heard it, Ursula should lift her head 
 in that proud fashion, for all the world as if it were a term of 
 honour and respect. And Hilary hated the mob that tossed the 
 word about and spoilt these last few months he and Ursula had 
 together. 
 
 For in the midst of the Mafeking demonstrations Ursula was 
 married and went off to Yorkshire, leaving Hilary to support 
 the trial as best he might on Cooper's Indians, Marryat's ad- 
 ventures on the high seas and Stevenson's terrible seafaring 
 man with one leg. He retired into a booky world of his own 
 from which he emerged at intervals to his art lessons and to 
 take a fierce, unchildish joy in contemplating with passionate 
 scorn the fervid displays of patriotism in which, these days, the 
 village abounded. During the long walks with Arthur Yeo- 
 mans, which helped to fill up the strangely empty days, Hil- 
 ary's young mind was frequently occupied with subjects which, 
 for the average boy of his age, do not exist at all. The germ 
 of very many of those conversations remained with Hilary for 
 the rest of his life. Unconsciously, these days, he learned to 
 lift his head as Ursula had been used to do when that horrible 
 word " pro-Boer " came winging after them, and which, for 
 all his pioneer pride, never failed to send a cold shiver down 
 Hilary's spine. He dreaded, even whilst he despised, the vio- 
 lence of the mob, though acutely conscious sometimes of an 
 incongruous desire to rush blindly upon the big bullies who 
 shouted insults at him in the village and smashed the windows
 
 40 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 at Yewhurst. It was Arthur, too, who taught him the art of 
 fisticuffs, and the two would conduct a sparring bout on Yew- 
 hurst lawn for the edification of such of the bullies as might 
 happen to pass that way. It puzzled Hilary that the man who 
 detested the war should be so keen a disciple of the art of self- 
 defence; but then a good many things in life puzzled Hilary 
 at this time. Besides, even if the displays on the lawn con- 
 stituted but a fearful joy to Hilary, at least they represented an 
 argument the village bullies could understand. That, always, 
 to Hilary, was the use of this art he never learned to care for : 
 it did represent an argument that one type of person could un- 
 derstand. The "type," he discovered later on, was distress- 
 ingly ubiquitous. . . . 
 
 Ursula's departure was devastating. The bottom of Hilary's 
 life had dropped out, leaving him suspended in mid-air, desti- 
 tute of a foothold. For Ursula had meant so much. All un- 
 knowingly he had given to her the bright blossom of his love, 
 so that his feeling for the mother who lived even yet in his 
 memory had become rather like the pale wind-flowers that creep 
 shyly up the hillsides. . . . And now Ursula was married and 
 would, doubtless, have a little boy of her own. People did 
 when they were married. Hilary did not understand these 
 things. 
 
 And, anyway, he wa to have nothing but tutors. . . . 
 
 They came. Four of them in five years. And, in each case, 
 singularly cold-blooded, Hilary watched their flitting without 
 a pang. Sandwiched in between their coming and going were 
 wonderful visits to Yorkshire, where Ursula helped him to fall 
 in love with the moors and with the Bronte sisters who belonged 
 to them. She took him to see Haworth village and across to 
 Stanbury Moor to the Waterfall and told him of the little black 
 cat that, like Flossie, had died, and of " Keeper," Emily's dog, 
 who followed his dead mistress down the flagged path to the
 
 DAWN 41 
 
 grave under the church pavement, over which no heather waved 
 nor wind breathed requiem. 
 
 None of the tutors mattered, of course, but Hilary always 
 considered that Mr. Carton was the best of them perhaps 
 because he was also the last. But Mr. Carton possessed yet an- 
 other claim to the distinction of Hilary's preference he was 
 not in the least dismayed at his pupil's failure to be thrilled 
 or held by the mysteries of Pi. R- and relative symbols. Mr. 
 Carton, however, had an enthusiasm of his own and that was 
 for the art of writing shorthand according to Pitman. " You 
 know nothing whatever about the construction of English 
 words," this gentleman would say, " until you have mastered 
 the principles of phonography. So peg away." And because 
 even shorthand was preferable to " maths," Hilary pegged away 
 with what will he could muster. He was never a good stu- 
 dent of the winged art, and wrote outlines that Mr. Carton de- 
 clared were " abominable for a boy who could draw," but he 
 managed to attain the giddy stenographic speed of eighty words 
 a minute and his sixteenth birthday somewhere about the same 
 time. It was just at this point that something awoke his father 
 to the fact of his existence, and he was requisitioned to assist 
 (with Pitman) in the production of yet another of the dull 
 tomes whose existence he deplored. How far Mr. Carton was 
 concerned in this direful arrangement never transpired, but 
 the fact remained that in the interest of a philosophical treatise 
 for which he cared nothing, Hilary wrote his weird hiero- 
 glyphics for half an hour each morning and wrote them ex- 
 tremely badly. Pitman was a name to deplore, and yet they 
 had made the man a knight. 
 
 A disappointing world, grown most suddenly and unbeliev- 
 ably dull. . . . 
 
 It was much duller by the end of June when Mr. Carton was 
 hurried off by his doctor to some warmer climate and Arthur 
 Yeomans went down into Norfolk to paint a portrait of an 
 important somebody's small daughter. Mixed up with the 
 dulness, however, was one week of delirious excitement when 
 Hilary fell desperately and unexpectedly in love. It was an
 
 42 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 idyll as brief as it was unexpected, lasting just exactly a week 
 which was the precise length of the holiday the charming 
 young person was spending in the village. She disappeared as 
 suddenly as she had come, and Hilary had no time at all in 
 which to indulge his grief because just then there came a 
 devastating letter from Yorkshire, written not by Ursula, but 
 by the young doctor, John Wyatt, whom she had married. Ur- 
 sula, it appeared, was ill: not very ill, but certainly not well 
 enough to be bothered with Hilary (not that Dr. Wyatt put 
 it in the least like that: that was Hilary's perverse reading of 
 his letter). They would, however, expect to see Hilary at 
 Christmas, when they would give him a good time and hoped 
 to have a surprise for him. Surprises, of course, were all very 
 well, but a "surprise at Christmas" Hilary thought was but 
 poor compensation for no holiday in July. Life was certainly 
 disappointing. There simply wasn't anything at all you could 
 depend upon. 
 
 Things went on being dull and disappointing until Arthur 
 came back from his portrait-painting, and then, just as they 
 were beginning to get interesting again, telegrams flashed hor- 
 ridly between Yorkshire and Sussex, and Arthur, packing a 
 hasty hand-bag, rushed off to Haxby Wyke, because that was 
 the place where Ursula lived, and the telegrams said she was 
 worse. 
 
 For a week Hilary lived with new and horrible thoughts of 
 a universe in which Ursula was not. He was so dreadfully 
 afraid she would die. But she did not. The end of August 
 found her convalescing among the English lakes, from which 
 she wrote to Hilary that she was almost well again, but that 
 she was afraid there would be no " surprise " for him at Christ- 
 mas, after all. As though Hilary cared in the least for that! 
 But Ursula cared. It was many years before Hilary realised 
 that she always had cared that she always would. 
 
 In the midst of Ursula's convalescence quite suddenly and 
 wonderfully school loomed on Hilary's horizon, for Mr. 
 Carton's departure had proved the final straw in the breaking 
 of the back of Ralph Sargent's prejudice against sending his 
 son into the society of other boys. Even Pitman and the hated 
 philosophical dictation could not dim for Hilary the bright 
 radiance of those two things shining there on the horizon
 
 DAWN 43 
 
 school at the end of September and his Haxby Wyke holiday 
 at Christmas ! They spelt something very like oblivion for his 
 memory of the week-long idyll, which remained where Ursula's 
 illness had pushed it in some remote corner of his brain, in- 
 extricably mixed up with a page of shorthand notes. Properly 
 he never disentangled it. Years afterwards when he thought 
 of it at all it was always like that as a grateful, restful 
 oasis in the Pitmanic desert. . . . 
 
 8 
 
 But before Christmas came, the inevitable had happened. 
 An old story was dug up out of its grave, most indecently, and 
 Hilary found himself confronting it. 
 
 It was Carfax's fault, if fault is the word. Carfax had a 
 stepmother very well known on the Comedy Stage, so Car- 
 fax said, at any rate. And he was a beast though in this 
 particular instance he had not intended to be. He had merely 
 thought that Hilary knew. It was the sort of thing that Carfax 
 would think, of course. But when he found that Hilary didn't 
 he had declared he could bring proof, in the shape of news- 
 paper-cuttings, which he knew his stepmother had somewhere 
 if he could only find them and if Hilary would promise not to 
 "blab." Hilary, very white, had said, " Damn your news- 
 paper-cuttings," but when Carfax turned up with them 
 he read them every one and felt desperately sick afterwards. 
 Because, no doubt about it, Carfax was right. These things 
 had been. 
 
 That afternoon Hilary played goal for his House and the 
 House lost ignominiously. He had played, everyone said, a 
 bally rotten game, not knowing that Hilary had not once 
 thought of the game or his House; and that every now and then 
 in his mechanical play he was handicapped by seeing neither 
 players nor ball, but only a dank green pond in the middle of a 
 little fir wood. . . . 
 
 Everyone was angry with Hilary: only Carfax stood up for 
 him. But then Carfax was frightened horribly frightened 
 by the queer look in Hilary's dark grey eyes and that white, 
 frozen face of his. And, too, Carfax was half afraid he 
 wouldn't get his newspaper-cuttings back.
 
 44 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 For months it was only that dank green pond Hilary saw 
 when he allowed himself to think of that old story at all. The 
 illicit relationship, the fact that his mother had " run away with 
 some other fellow " (which was the whole point of the story to 
 Carfax because that was the sort of person Carfax was) mat- 
 tered to Hilary at this stage not in the least. It mattered later, 
 but not so much and not for long. It might have mattered 
 more and longer but for something else which had happened 
 and beside which nothing was of the least importance. But 
 here at sixteen the really dreadful thing about Carfax's old 
 story was that the " tragedy of Annie " (that was how, all these 
 years, it had stuck in his mind) had dragged its muddy trail 
 across the delicate lovely memory that had lain so deeply en- 
 shrined in his heart like a flower laid up tenderly in laven- 
 der. She who had loved to live had there, at the last sim- 
 ply not wanted to go on. You couldn't, somehow, believe 
 it. ... 
 
 Hilary did not see then and, properly, he never did see 
 that there was any other tragedy in life that mattered beside 
 this hideous one of dying before you were old before you 
 had lived, actually, at all. It was a thing so horrible it never 
 should happen at all. It was outrageous that it ever could hap- 
 pen to anyone. 
 
 He said so to Ursula in a long, not very coherent, letter 
 that it made her sad to read, because she saw how it was. Hil- 
 ary had grown up. To Ursula, who loved him, there was some- 
 thing infinitely pathetic in growing up at sixteen. 
 
 With the letter in her hand she stood for long at the open 
 window, looking out across the broad dark moor, and her heart 
 as the hearts of women will was crying bitterly for the 
 little child she had kissed and comforted, and who, save per- 
 haps in dreams, would never again come back to her.
 
 BOOK II 
 SHADOW
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 
 FOR nearly three years nothing whatever occurred to break 
 the even tenor of Helena Morden's life in that old house 
 on the moor, save her occasional visits to Gertrude at 
 " The Laurels," Wimbledon, and her discovery of Thomas 
 Hardy, Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner, Mark Rutherford and 
 Elizabeth Robins. She had said she did not want to go back 
 to Putney, and as Aunt Milly had not been pressing she had 
 remained in the family circle. That, however, was some- 
 what depleted these days, for Ted, who was to be a solicitor, 
 having passed his " prelim.," had been taken into Edgar's office 
 and home; whilst Walter (whose ambitions were less exalted) 
 had been content, at eighteen, to go into a Bank at Halifax, and 
 nowadays came home only for week-ends, the greater part of 
 which time he spent at the white house at the foot of the hill, 
 paying court to Cissie Ellingham. It amused Helena to watch 
 her mother's consternation over that little affair: it was one 
 thing to marry off your own daughters; quite another to see 
 your sons desirous of performing that kind office for some other 
 woman's daughters. Helena knew that in her mother's eyes 
 poor negative little Cissie had utterly condemned herself in 
 contriving to get born two whole years before Walter. That 
 fact alone would have stamped her in Agatha's eyes as a de- 
 signing minx out to catch her poor innocent boy, even if it had 
 not happened that Cissie, with her big pathetic brown eyes and 
 small pale face, had six other sisters at home, all unmarried. 
 " The Ellingham girls were born to be old maids," Agatha 
 would say and was distant to Cissie when Walter brought her 
 home to tea. Helena was sorry for Cissie but she found the 
 situation amusing. . . . 
 
 The news of Lucy's engagement to the Rev. John Elleker, a 
 
 47
 
 48 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 curate at a Putney church (what had Aunt Milly been thinking 
 of?) and her marriage only of a couple of months later, 
 switched Helena's thoughts from Walter's undesired love-affair 
 and fixed them upon an aspect of things that had never before 
 occurred to her. "She was twenty-one: she had never been 
 kissed. She would get left." 
 
 The phrases were her father's. Coming in, that March day 
 of Lucy's wedding, from his speeding of the final parting guest, 
 his eyes had fallen upon Helena standing there at the window 
 looking out over the broad sweep of dark moor and he had 
 blurted these things out at her as he opened the pages of his 
 Post and turned his back on her. 
 
 " Twenty -one, and never been kissed! Well, it beats me! " 
 he had said. 
 
 But Helena had never thought of it in that way before. She 
 sat there at the window, with the shadow of coming evening 
 upon her face, and burrowed deeply within her memory of the 
 past, searching for something which might be dignified by the 
 name of a love-affair. But not one could she find, for it was 
 impossible to count the youth at the Wimbledon library who 
 had introduced her to Elizabeth Robins and waxed enthusiastic 
 over Hardy. With your head full of golden memories of the 
 " blameless king " and bold Sir Lancelot, it was not to be ex- 
 pected that you could look with favour upon a red-haired boy 
 who addressed you as " Miss," and who, when he met you in the 
 road, snatched off his cap to the accompaniment of a blush as 
 vivid as his hair. Perhaps one should not notice these things, 
 but then, unfortunately, one does. And when you had said all 
 you possibly could say for the library youth, there was simply 
 no one else left. 
 
 Here, really, was the beginning of it all the beginning of 
 the gradual realisation of the process with which she had been 
 concerned so long. She was waiting! For what she did not 
 know but that she must go on she was assured. There was 
 no other way out. 
 
 And sometimes it seemed as though she was waiting for 
 something big, something vast, impersonal. . . . 
 
 Then suddenly, surprisingly, " something " happened, though 
 whether it was " big " and whether it was " vast " and " imper- 
 sonal " was another matter.
 
 SHADOW 49 
 
 It was some sixteen months after Lucy's marriage that Hel- 
 ena, coming into the house after a long walk across the moors 
 on an evening towards the end of July, found her father deep 
 in conversation with a tall, dark man whom she did not know, 
 and who she imagined had come upon some matter of business. 
 Her father's voice, breaking in upon her murmur of apology, 
 had called her back. 
 
 " It's all right, Lena, don't go. This is our new neighbour, 
 Mr. Courtney. He's building the house at the top of Hill 
 Brow. . . ." 
 
 Helena had noticed the uprising house. 
 
 " Grey stone is so much nicer than red brick," she said to 
 the stranger and quite unaccountably her smile deepened. She 
 liked his face: it was frank and open, and his voice singularly 
 low and charming for so big a man. After he had gone Helena 
 agreed with her father when he said that he seemed a very " de- 
 cent sort of chap," and then promptly forgot all about him. 
 
 But after that day it seemed to her that Mr. Courtney's calls 
 upon her father became remarkably frequent, and one sur- 
 prising day he drove down in his motor-car and insisted upon 
 taking them out for a drive. Helena had sat at his side and had 
 revelled in the motion and the breeze, wondering what it all 
 meant and why the owner of such a beautiful car should be so 
 anxious to take three such ordinary people for a drive. But as 
 the days went on it became clearer, for Helena began to realise 
 that somehow when this man called she was sure to be left 
 alone with him during some part of his stay, and there had 
 speedily come a day when he had arrived to find neither her 
 mother nor her father at home, when he had urged her to let 
 him take her for a drive "just you alone"- when all her 
 excuses were exhausted. It had been daylight when they 
 started and Helena had enjoyed every minute of the run, 
 but on the return journey the light was beginning to ebb and 
 before they were half-way home it was quite dark. Presently 
 she had felt the pressure of a hand upon her arm and quite sud- 
 denly the man's hand had closed upon hers. She had drawn 
 away with a quickly-breathed " Don't, please don't," and for the 
 rest of the homeward journey had talked quickly and unceas-
 
 50 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 ingly, stricken with an unreasoning panic and a dread of some- 
 thing she dared not define. Two days later Mr. Courtney came 
 to dinner and presently Helena found that once again they had 
 the drawing-room to themselves, and, although she hated play- 
 ing to any sort of audience, she was yet relieved when Courtney 
 asked her to play the False Triste of Sibelius, because anything 
 was better than these embarrassing tetes-a-tetes. She began to 
 play with a rather uncertain touch, her mind anywhere but on 
 the music, revolving every now and then the possibility of es- 
 cape. But as though he divined her thoughts, Jerome Court- 
 ney moved to her side. 
 
 " You like music? " he asked. 
 
 "Yes but I don't play well." 
 
 The man looked down at her and smiled, and Helena sud- 
 denly deserted Sibelius and invented weird and wonderful 
 chords of her own, with an overwhelming realisation that she 
 was powerless to prevent what she knew was coming. 
 
 '* You are too modest," said the man, and there was that in 
 his voice which made Helena push back the music stool in a 
 sudden attempt to get away from the tall figure which seemed 
 to be encompassing her. But Courtney was too quick for her; 
 his hands caught at her wrists and he held her a prisoner, so 
 that she was bound to listen to what he had to say. 
 
 " Look here," he began, " I want you to come and look over 
 that house of mine. It's nearly finished . . . and there's the 
 furniture, and the name. It must have a name, I suppose. 
 Why can't you come to-morrow? I've asked your father and 
 mother up to lunch. There's a lot to show you . . . and I 
 want your opinion. Besides, well I wani you to like things." 
 
 " Why? " Helena's eyes met his steadily enough, but her 
 heart was beating painfully, and all the time her wrists were 
 twisting themselves between the strong hands that held them. 
 " What do you want? " 
 
 "You!" 
 
 Helena's eyes fell before the look in the man's. 
 
 " Let me go," she said. 
 
 " Not until you promise to come to-morrow. It's no use 
 to refuse. I know my own mind and I always get what I 
 want. And this time I want you." 
 
 After that Helena remembered very little about anything save
 
 SHADOW 51 
 
 that she was suddenly caught in strong arms and kissed with a 
 violence that took her breath away that the door opened un- 
 expectedly and that there was a buzz of sudden conversation, 
 out of which her father's " With all my heart, my dear chap! " 
 and her mother's " My dear Helena ! " rose like a Greek chorus. 
 And she suddenly realised that it was she herself who was stand- 
 ing in the midst of all this unfamiliarity . . . that she was 
 pushing back her hair with one hand, and with the other was 
 pressing her handkerchief to her lips, which, as she was dully 
 aware, felt bruised and sore. 
 
 So this was what she had been waiting for! 
 
 ** I wonder ! " she said, as later she lay in bed and watched 
 the moon and stars symbols of infinity and spaciousness 
 through her unshuttered window. Certainly there was nothing 
 vast, nothing impersonal about this " engagement " of hers. 
 It was bounded by the circumference of that great house on the 
 hill, and it seemed in some strange fashion to be connected with 
 the unexpected appearance of her father and mother, and with 
 a grey silent motor-car. . . . 
 
 And of love, once again, not one word had been spoken. 
 
 Other things, too, came in the space of the next few weeks to 
 emphasize the personal note of this unfamiliar happening, 
 and to deepen the sense of uncertainty and bewilderment in 
 Helena's mind new frocks, new hats, and the process of " try- 
 ing them on "; congratulations, presents, visits, and above all, 
 perhaps, the knowledge that for the first time one is a person of 
 some importance in one's little family circle. Never before, 
 indeed, had Helena met with so much approval; it seemed to 
 her that with the arrival of each fresh day her surroundings be- 
 came less real, gathered to themselves yet a little more of the 
 similitude of a dream. It could not actually be she who was 
 to marry Jerome Rutherford Courtney, one .of the " Courtneys 
 of Gloucester " as Agatha, middle-class to her finger-tips, was 
 never tired of reminding her. Helena's mother had all the rev- 
 erence of her class for " family " and " position," and it mat- 
 tered not at all to her that the Courtneys of Gloucester were 
 bankrupt; that their traditional home had been out of their
 
 52 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 hands for a century or more, until Jerome's sister, marrying a 
 wealthy American, had persuaded him to buy it b.ack and adopt 
 her name. Certainly the bankruptcy would have mattered 
 enormously to Agatha had it extended itself to the fortune of 
 that particular male representative of the family to whom her 
 daughter (almost unbelievably) had become engaged. 
 
 To Agatha there was something eminently satisfactory in 
 the reflection that Jerome Courtney's very comfortable income, 
 though it owed its origin to an unexpected legacy, came now 
 from the personal enterprise that had built up the successful 
 motor-business with which his name was associated. Mrs. 
 Morden loved a capable man a man who could " make 
 money and keep a wife decently " ; and Jerome, she felt, was 
 essentially a " capable " man, as the last dividend of Courtney 
 Motors, Limited, bore witness. Money and family! What 
 more could anyone, even Helena, desire? Nevertheless, in 
 this case one was fain to admit that there was a good deal 
 " more," for the fates had endowed the Managing Director of 
 Courtney Motors, Ltd., with the tall, broad proportions of bis 
 ancestors and contrived in a delicately subtle manner to blend 
 the appearance of strength with an undeniable gentleness and 
 amenity of manner. Over the natural amiability of his brown 
 face, with its shrewd, penetrative eyes, there had grown with 
 the passage of years another expression, difficult to give a name 
 to, but which Helena's mother, forgetful for once of the Glou- 
 cester escutcheon, sought to explain as " rather the look of an 
 American, don't you think like one of those heads in Har- 
 per's." The dominant features of the face were the square 
 firm chin and the alert, shrewd but kindly eyes. It was the face 
 of a man capable of tenacity and effort, of one who, against 
 heavy odds, would reach his objective, so that, in a way, per- 
 haps, Mrs. Morden was right. 
 
 The fact that Courtney .was thirty-four and Helena only 
 twenty-two was scarcely the sort of fact that was likely to hold 
 significance for Agatha. A man, she would have said, could 
 always " give a woman ten years at least," and in any case it 
 was not romance Agatha was looking for. Her philosophy was 
 extremely simple, and did not deal in abstractions. For her, 
 romance had ceased entirely to exist when, all those years ago, 
 it had suddenly flown out of the window of that ridiculous little
 
 SHADOW 53 
 
 house in Wandsworth ; and now, at forty-seven, she was quite 
 incapable of seeing any sort of objection to so desirable an 
 alliance for Helena as that which here presented itself. Money 
 and family! She went over them again. What more could 
 you want? And again she saw how very much " more " there 
 was! Agatha was essentially the sort of person who believed 
 in the irrevocableness of marriage, just as she believed that, 
 for womankind, it was a sort of miraculous panacea. Her 
 word for Helena was " discontented," and well if you were 
 discontented after you were married at least you had the de- 
 cency not to talk about it. 
 
 Angela Richardson-Courtney (Jerome's sister who had mar- 
 ried the American) sent along an invitation within a week of 
 her knowledge of the engagement; she was anxious, she said, 
 to make the acquaintance of her future sister-in-law. The ad- 
 mission to her husband of an overwhelming curiosity to see 
 what sort of creature Jerome was marrying may have been 
 merely another method of expressing the same thing. But, 
 anyway, Helena went to Courtney Towers, stayed a week and 
 returned, to be plied with numerous questions from an agitated 
 family. She showed, however, a strange reluctance to discuss 
 either her visit or her prospective sister-in-law. It struck her 
 as incongruous, somehow, that her mothef should seem to think 
 she had been expected to eat with her knife; and to talk a sort 
 of jargon that no one outside Yorkshire could understand. 
 But she conceded, in Agatha's phrase, that Mrs. Richardson- 
 Courtney was a " very great lady indeed," adding, with that 
 quiet air of finality from which there was no appeal, that she 
 was also a snob. /A hard saying that, to Agatha, who was 
 wholly incapable 01 imagining a snob at the top of the social 
 ladder; the word was associated in her mind with one thing 
 only the undignified struggle in which one indulged at the 
 bottom. \ * 
 
 As forthe great lady herself, she wrote to her brother, a 
 trifle darkly perhaps, that she had discovered something even 
 more obstinate than the Courtney mouth and that was the 
 Helena Morden chin. Angela had perceived that Helena pos- 
 sessed " ideas," but ideas, of course, were only dangerous in a 
 woman when she acted upon them, and that was not very often. 
 Ideas, in theory, were picturesque enough: Angela passed Hel-
 
 54 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 ena's possession of them with no more than a friendly nod of 
 recognition the same nod with which she indicated her con- 
 sciousness of Helena's claim to good looks. Her dexterous 
 prose touched on all these things with the imponderability of a 
 gossamer-thread, but she spared her brother her written ap- 
 proval of his fiancee's satisfactory breeding. There were, it 
 seemed, certain things which if you were wise you did not say 
 to Jerome Courtney. 
 
 Nevertheless, there were moments when Helena revealed 
 (even to her mother) just a hint of that uncertainty and bewil- 
 derment which Angela had noticed and which, indeed, were 
 sweeping her off her feet. 
 
 " I can't imagine," Agatha said to her sharply one day, " how 
 you can talk like that of the man you have promised to marry." 
 
 "That's just it," Helena had asserted. "I didn't promise, 
 and I can't remember that he ever asked me." 
 
 Agatha, cautiously feeling her way, had remembered that 
 little volume of Tennyson with its heavily scored passage, and 
 she said : " Of course, dear, you can't expect things to happen 
 quite as they happen in books." 
 
 Helena was coming to believe that was true: yet twenty times 
 a week she decided that she did not want to marry anyone at all 
 certainly that she did not want to marry Jerome Courtney. 
 She told herself that she liked him, of course; she was aware 
 that she respected and admired him, and, too, that she had a 
 lofty opinion of his character. The essential Eve in her was 
 gratified by the evidence of his business capability, for success, 
 after all, has its charm, and a powerful masculine mentality, 
 say what you will, is always a compelling factor in the eternal 
 game of the sexes, invigorating whilst it fortifies. Helena felt 
 these things ; recognised that in matters of intellect the Atalan- 
 tean qualities meant a good deal to her. She would not have 
 liked to have been loved by a fool. But in her feeling for 
 Jerome Courtney there was no touch of romance; he did not 
 thrill her; did not once find the key to that " something " deep 
 down within her which clamoured so persistently for deliver- 
 ance. This that she felt this calm, level-headed approval
 
 SHADOW 55 
 
 and cool deliberate amity was surely not what the poets and 
 novelists meant by " love." But it might be, after all, that mar- 
 riage even though one went to it devoid of that great ro- 
 mantic feeling of which she had dreamed did ultimately 
 provide the " other " things, did come to give that meaning and 
 purpose to life which, ever since she had begun to comprehend 
 the facts of existence, she had seemed to lack. There was, too, 
 the possibility that she might have children. Helena, rather 
 nale, would draw in her breath at the thought, until she remem- 
 bered Gertrude's outburst of anger before Adrian was born, and 
 the things that Gertrude and her mother had said of Lucy who 
 was already expecting a second child, though she had been 
 warned against having any more children. Her mother, Helena 
 remembered, had blamed the Rev. John; Gertrude had blamed 
 Lucy, calling her a Puritanic little fool. Their phrases had a 
 way of floating menacingly back to Helena. No, an orgy of 
 motherhood was certainly not what she wanted. She would 
 hate to be discussed like that. People talked as though mar- 
 riage (no mention of love! ) was the Open Sesame of a woman's 
 life. Very well! She was going to find out. For herself, and 
 once for all, she would know. It was a risk, but anything was 
 better than the stagnation of the last five years. Besides, One 
 must be venturesome and fortunate. What is one young for 
 else? 
 
 So on a windy October morning, and very quietly, Helena 
 and Jerome were married in the Registry Office at Rattenby. 
 It was Helena who had vetoed church and ceremony. " I 
 won't be married at all if I've got to have all that fuss! " she 
 had said, and Jerome, to whom, as a matter of ethics, it made 
 no sort of difference whatsoever, was secretly relieved to be 
 spared the pageant. Instead of white satin and orange-blos- 
 som, Helena wore a plain tweed costume and a close-fitting 
 hat, because immediately after the formality in that poky little 
 room they started on the motor tour that was to be their honey- 
 moon. There was no reception, and no guests were asked. 
 " No anything," as Agatha put it, in blankest disappointment. 
 To her there was something almost indecent in the whole busi- 
 ness. She knew people did get married in a registry office, of
 
 56 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 course, but it was a thing no Burke had ever been known to do. 
 A hole-and-corner wedding! It would be difficult to believe 
 that Helena was really married! 
 
 Yet it seemed to Helena that it was an appallingly easy thing 
 to accomplish this business of marriage. A few moments 
 only, but in them she had signed away her old name, her old 
 life and, perhaps, her old freedom. The man at her side 
 seemed almost a stranger. She had married someone she had 
 only recently met, someone she hardly knew and for just 
 one moment she hated him; hated him because he was there, 
 because he always would be there, and most of all because he 
 didn't understand. The moment passed, and a very kindly 
 voice was saying: 
 
 " I should button up, dear. There's a touch of the east about 
 this wind," and even while she hesitated Jerome turned and 
 began to button up the collar of the long coat she had slipped 
 over the tweed costume her mother had so much deplored. 
 Helena twisted in her seat a little, raising her chin, but even 
 so she could feel Jerome's warm hands on her skin, and for 
 one brief second she thought he was going to kiss her. She 
 hoped passionately that he would not. Above all things, just 
 then, she did not want to be kissed. 
 
 But Jerome made no attempt to kiss her, and Helena did not 
 know that his fingers trembled still from contact with the 
 smooth white curve of her throat. She sat quite still, her eyes 
 gazing ahead at the wind-flecked, sun-dappled moor out- 
 stretched to right and left. And she was thinking of what her 
 mother had said that she couldn't expect things to happen 
 quite as they happen in books. Yes, that must be it: she had 
 expected the impossible; wanted too much, and yet . . . and 
 yet . . . even Gertrude and Lucy had loved their husbands. 
 But presently her thoughts wandered away into a kind of won- 
 derment that she should still feel the touch of her husband's 
 fingers against the curve of her throat. . . . 
 
 They stayed that night at an old-fashioned inn at the other 
 side of the moor. Their bedroom window looked across to 
 Haffington Ridge; a wild night of wind and cloud and shimmer-
 
 SHADOW 57 
 
 ing stars had shut it out from view, but Helena knew it was 
 there. Once, years ago, she had had tea with her sisters in this 
 very inn. . . . Careless, free, unfettered she had been in those 
 days and astoundingly healthily hungry. There had been eggs 
 for tea and piles of freshly cut bread and butter. Smoothing 
 her hair before the glass in the big bedroom she dismissed its 
 memory that brought a lump to her throat. She had not 
 known, till now, how happy those old free days had been. 
 
 It rained heavily all the night and the wind moaned dismally 
 round the creaking old house that, desolate and grey, looked 
 away over to Haffington Ridge. Helena could not sleep: she 
 lay staring out into the darkness of the strange room, listening 
 to the wind and the rain, wishing, almost, that she was out there 
 in their midst. . . . 
 
 She was up, next morning, in time to see the sun heave him- 
 self proudly over the shoulder of the huge hill, and was dressed 
 and ready to go out when Jerome stirred and opened his eyes. 
 
 "Hullo! "he said, "is it late?" 
 
 " No," said Helena, " two hours yet to breakfast." She 
 found it a little difficult to believe that die man sitting up in bed 
 and looking at her out of a pair of sleepy dark brown eyes was 
 really her husband. She had never seen him before with 
 roughened hair. He looked like a rather confused and happy 
 schoolboy. He seemed more than ever a stranger even after 
 last night. 
 
 " What sort of a morning is it? " he asked, stifling a yawn. 
 
 " Fine," said Helena, " after the rain." 
 
 "Rain? Didn't hear it," said the man. "Couldn't you 
 sleep? " 
 
 " No," said Helena, and then, " I'm going out for a walk 
 before breakfast over the moor." 
 
 She moved across the room and smiled down at him, her 
 hand on the door-k~ob. 
 
 " Good-bye," she said. 
 
 When she had shut herself out of the room she remembered 
 that she had not kissed him. And Jerome remembered it, too. 
 For some time he lay quite still, staring at the ceiling, with but 
 one recurring thought: 
 
 " She's got to love me. She must. She must. . .I'll make 
 her."
 
 58 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 There was determination in those brown eyes, but also there 
 was an infinite tenderness. They expressed a pathetic inability 
 to believe that she could never come to love him, for he loved 
 her so much she held his heart in her hands, and they were 
 cold, cold. . . . But one day they should be warm and glowing. 
 Lying there in the big bed in the sunlit room, with her empty 
 place beside him, he swore it gently to himself. 
 
 Helena walked abroad in the chill freshness of the October 
 morning, her face lifted to the south-west wind that sung in the 
 trees and shook down from them their golden glory. Through 
 the hurrying scudding clouds came dazzling beams of sunlight 
 and patches of bright blue sky. The rainy night had converted 
 the ground beneath her feet into an amazing, sparkling emer- 
 ald. Moorland birds flew overhead, high above the rain- 
 drenched earth, calling shrilly as they shot away into the un- 
 known. A morning of flying sunlight and hurrying, fitful 
 shadow, answering some deep unspoken need in Helena's soul. 
 She strode on towards the grey shoulder of Haffington Ridge, 
 luminous and enticing in the distance. . . . 
 
 8 
 
 Jerome came to meet her, and in his hand he held a little 
 nosegay of violets tempted into a second blooming by the 
 mild south-west wind and the October sunshine. He had found 
 them, he said, in the little wood at the back of the inn. They 
 were the small dark variety like those that bloom in Italy in 
 the first freshness of spring. Helena had never been in Italy, 
 but a girl she had known at school had gone there once, and 
 had sent her just such violets crushed in a letter, and had writ- 
 ten that the graves of Keats and Shelley just then were covered 
 with them. . . . She wondered why she should remember that 
 now. . . . 
 
 They had breakfast in the window of a room overlooking an 
 old-fashioned garden, with a tangle of orchard beyond. From 
 where she sat Helena could see a glowing cherry-tree in full 
 autumn dress shaming the still green gowns of its neighbours.
 
 SHADOW 59 
 
 In the garden were clumps of Michaelmas daisies and tall white 
 marguerites, golden-hearted, growing on each side of an old 
 flagged centre-path, over which strayed a riot of bronze and 
 orange nasturtiums. Here and there the bright spear of the 
 tritoma plant shot up into view, and one blood-coloured rose 
 bared a full heart to the warm west wind, whilst across the 
 deep, mullioned window dropped very gently a golden fairy 
 shower drifting slowly and tenderly down from larch and 
 lime. . . . 
 
 At Helena's breast were Jerome's surprising violets, and their 
 thin sweet scent rose suddenly and drenched her in emotion. 
 Her eyes, resting on the old-fashioned country garden, grew 
 suddenly misty; something was taking her heart and squeezing 
 it, though very, very gently. She wondered vaguely if she 
 were going to cry. She had not cried for years. There had 
 been so little to cry about. . . . 
 
 Then she looked away from the garden and her eyes rested 
 upon her husband. He had been sitting there quite quietly, 
 steadily regarding her. His eyes were kind and tender as 
 they had been earlier that morning when he had asked her if 
 she had not slept. They met her own tranquilly, undisturbed. 
 Impossible not to know what he was thinking. Slow colour 
 crept into her cheeks: she smiled, and to Jerome her smile was 
 like the morning all sun and shadow. 
 
 " Coffee or tea? " he asked, smiling back. 
 
 " Coffee, please," said Helena, and kept her voice from 
 trembling.
 
 CHAPTER TWO 
 
 THEY came home six weeks later. A sunset, typically No- 
 vember's own, reddened the sky. Through the bare 
 branches of the trees the wind whistled ominously, and 
 in everything the eye rested upon there was a hint of decay. 
 The same tristful wind which sighed through the dismantled 
 trees whirled the dead leaves tempestuously through the keen 
 air more than ever to-day they seemed to Helena as " ghosts 
 from an enchanter fleeing." (No one, she thought, who knew 
 that line of Shelley's could ever think of dead and whirling 
 leaves in any other way.) Save for that one red patch in the 
 sky there seemed no colour at all in the world. The cold fin- 
 ger of November had bleached the universe. . . . 
 
 Jerome's grey car wound itself round the long length of the 
 Yorkshire roads, and Helena, comfortably ensconced in her 
 corner, looked out upon the pageant of the passing of autumn, 
 and found in it something unexpectedly pathetic. Autumn 
 was the complement of summer, but it was also the harbinger 
 of winter, and it was of winter, somehow, that one thought 
 to-day. It was almost possible to catch a glimpse of his stern 
 figure lurking, deliberative, among the shadows. 
 
 Helena, as she sat in her becushioned car, looked remarkably 
 well. Her warm coat was close-buttoned to her chin. Her 
 hair, with its hint of ripe corn, showed just here and there like 
 a deep halo beneath the small close-fitting hat she wore. In 
 the fading daylight her eyes were black, and with the assertion 
 of the last bit of colour in the sky the tips of the upcurled lashes 
 were touched with gold. There was a note of wistfulness in the 
 curve of the finely shaped mouth, which looked redder than 
 usual to-day perhaps because the November breeze had 
 beaten out the fine colour from her cheeks. 
 
 60
 
 SHADOW 61 
 
 She looked like a gorgeous white butterfly dusted with the 
 gold of pollen, or a porcelain vase with the wan light of the 
 winter sun on it. Her hair and her mouth and that red 
 patch in the sky made the one delicate note of colour in a 
 sombre landscape. 
 
 She mused a little as she sat there, her eyes shifting at times 
 from the hurrying countryside to the firm, broad hack of the 
 man at the wheel. Jerome was driving his own car; it was, she 
 knew, an occupation he delighted in. You had only to look at 
 him to know it too. From where she sat Helena could see the 
 firm grip of his hands on the steering-wheel ; the line of profile 
 revealed to her showed the half of a masterful mouth, the sharp 
 angle of an obstinate chin and one keen eye fixed on the leaf- 
 strewn road beyond. A strong, capable man he looked: her 
 mother was right. The thought struck her, as it had done be- 
 fore, that he deserved more of her than she had given him, 
 more than she could ever give him. His very masterfulness 
 had its attraction; she admired him intensely. There was a 
 force about him that after six weeks of married intimacy drew 
 her in spite of herself, but which yet left her free to look from 
 the outside at her emotion to stand afar off and view it as 
 though it concerned someone else. It never entirely absorbed or 
 overwhelmed her. She was so appallingly level-headed so 
 analytical about it, and she had, all the time, a wild insane 
 desire to be rushed off her feet. Had Jerome been capable of 
 satisfying this unreasoning longing he might have had of her 
 all that he wished. But he was not; even his masterfulness 
 could not achieve it. Helena had succumbed once to that, but 
 could scarcely do so again, for now she recognised it for what it 
 was, and something of its magnetism had gone with the coming 
 of that knowledge. What she wanted most of all (the thing 
 that would have made all the difference) was still denied her 
 community of interests and ideas. She sighed, sometimes, 
 with the instinct of gregarious humanity, for intellectual com- 
 panionship, for the kindred spirit than which in all the world 
 there is nothing more difficult to encounter. It was rather like 
 that crock of gold where the rainbow ends, for which you 
 looked as a child. ... As you grew older you began to realise 
 that nobody ever had found it. ...
 
 62 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 All the same, it was, if you came to think of it, a little de- 
 pressing to realise that the man you had married looked at the 
 world from an entirely different standpoint; a little danger- 
 ous, too, if you were as sure as was Helena that your own was 
 on a higher altitude. She had seen already, and not without a 
 pang, that Jerome regarded her passionate idealism with the 
 slightly amused air of a master of facts. Quite honestly he was 
 incapable of sharing his wife's faith in mankind: her enthu- 
 siasms or her indignations. (That was what struck Helena 
 hardest his apparent inability to feel indignant at the wrong 
 life- did to so many. ) To Jerome it was simply incontrovertible 
 that power and pelf ruled the world. You might not think it 
 right that they should, but they did. That was the stark fact, 
 and it was not going to be altered in a thousand years. He saw 
 no meaning, no pathos, no appeal in humanity en bloc. If you 
 wished to arouse his sympathy you must present your isolated 
 case. He would not, Helena felt, be able to see, unaffected, a 
 single instance of pain or distress, but the spectacle of a world 
 in travail left him unmoved. His was the kind of mind that 
 registered facts simply, and in the main accurately. It did 
 not, as Helena's was apt to do, turn them over and over, looking 
 at them from every standpoint, letting them sink in and hurt. 
 He was not callous; he would, she felt, be humanely ameliora- 
 tive, passionlessly utilitarian, but the gods had endowed him 
 with no desire for tidying up the world : its loose ends and torn 
 edges neither irritated nor distressed him, and he thought about 
 the world, on the whole, as little as possible. 
 
 It was precisely there that Helena, during these clairvoyant 
 six weeks, had seen the difference between them to lie. Her 
 feelings were in the melting-pot before Jerome's had left the 
 refrigerator. 
 
 In his own fashion Jerome realised that, too, though it would 
 not have occurred to him to express it in that way. There was, 
 he thought, a good deal of high pressure about Helena's emo- 
 tions; they bubbled over quite suddenly, to your utter bewilder- 
 ment. That, really, was the joke of it the unexpectedness of 
 such an occurrence. For you'd never think it to look at her. 
 She was so calm, so still. ... It was with that quiet outward
 
 SHADOW 63 
 
 seeming Jerome had first fallen in love. He admired, above all 
 things, serenity in a woman, and Helena, that first evening he 
 had set eyes on her, had looked as if she could keep still. 
 She could, he found. She could do it so well, in fact, that you 
 might never suspect the fire beneath the ice. . . . 
 
 But to Helena there was still another thing these six weeks 
 in Scotland had revealed. She had seen (and not without a lit- 
 tle inward sinking of an obdurate ego) that Jerome would have 
 loved her had she possessed the brain and outlook of a pigeon 
 and she did not want to be loved like that. 
 
 Her face was wistful to-day as she sat there passing those 
 six weeks in review: for to her eager and unsatisfied spirit it 
 seemed as- if, even now, she had not lived at all. Yet one big 
 instalment of experience had come to her. She was a wife. 
 With her husband she had been to the Highlands and back in a 
 fast-running grey-padded car. They had stayed at fashionable 
 hotels and met people of influence and position. She had 
 worn many beautiful frocks and two at least that had been ex- 
 quisite. People had paid her litt.le polished compliments. 
 She had heard whispered comments and had known herself en- 
 vied and admired. But she sat there to-day with her wistful 
 eyes fixed on a pair of broad male shoulders and wondered 
 what it was that somehow she had managed, after all, to miss. 
 
 The big house on the hill that was henceforth to be her 
 home loomed up at a sudden bend in the road and confronted 
 tter. The grey car began to climb the hill and Helena sat up, 
 collecting her books and wraps, remembering suddenly that her 
 father and mother were dining with them that evening. Prob- 
 ably they were there already eagerly awaiting them. Her 
 mother, she knew, would be effusive, would kiss her on both 
 cheeks and tell her how well she was looking. Her father, 
 quite as certainly, would remark that marriage appeared to 
 agree with her, just as he had said it to Gertrude and to Lucy. 
 He was so glad to have his girls married, he would never for 
 one moment have permitted himself to think otherwise. Mar- 
 riage, he felt, ought to agree with women, anyway; it was what 
 they were here for. . . .
 
 64 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 The car turned in at the dark-painted gate, swung expectantly 
 back on its hinges, and Helena noticed that they had fixed 
 a beaten-copper plate to it, bearing the one word " Windward." 
 That had been her suggestion, since (as Jerome had insisted) 
 the house " had to have a name." " Windward " had at least 
 some claim to distinction, and even more to truth; for surely 
 there was never a house through which the breezes chased each 
 other more tempestuously. Helena had rejected " The Moors," 
 " Moorside " and " Moorview " with quiet scorn of the obvious, 
 and " Windward " had triumphed. 
 
 Following a straight neat drive the car drew up in a few 
 seconds before the front door, and jumping out, Helena stood 
 for a moment looking critically up at the house which hence- 
 forth was to be her home for all the world as though she had 
 never seen it before. Somehow to-day it looked aggressively 
 new (despite its grey stone) and, too, aggressively prosperous. 
 There was about it none of that quiet resolute dignity which 
 hung like a close garment about the old inconvenient house 
 farther along the road where all her childhood and young girl- 
 hood had been spent. " Windward," as yet, had no memories 
 of its own. It stood there, desolate, stark a sort of mush- 
 room growth that had sprung up in the night and had not as 
 yet had time to get used to its own existence. It seemed to 
 apologise for its brightness and cleanness, as though it had 
 no right there upon the lift of the moor that was as old as 
 time. 
 
 In some queer fashion, too, it seemed this afternoon to be 
 apologising for the man's cycle propped up rather helplessly 
 against the wall of the porch. The front wheel was badly 
 buckled, and the handles bent sign and symbol of someone's 
 serious spill. For a second Helena's thoughts jumped forward 
 to her father and Walter, for both were reckless riders, and that 
 hill outside was horribly dangerous. Only a year ago a man 
 had been killed there . . . had broken his neck against the 
 solid Yorkshire wall which ran along obliquely and unexpect- 
 edly at the bottom. . . . 
 
 Jerome, who loved his car as another man might his horse, 
 was already making for the garage at the back of the house. 
 Helena stood there alone, gazing idiotically at that badly 
 buckled bicycle as if, in much the same way as the sight of the
 
 SHADOW 65 
 
 house had done, it hypnotised her. She pushed open the fold- 
 ing glass door that counteracted the too-brazen hospitality of 
 that wide-flung outer portal, and went in. 
 
 Years afterwards Helena remembered just how it happened, 
 just how strangely excited she had been, as if something of tre- 
 mendous import to herself had come to pass. The incident 
 contrived to get itself inscribed on her brain the advancing 
 figure of her mother, hands outstretched; her father coming 
 out of a smoky background; the parental kisses and embraces; 
 her own little feeling of repugnance because her father exuded, 
 as he always had exuded, the smell of stale tobacco; the pleas- 
 ant tinkle of the tea-things in an adjoining room, and her moth- 
 er's voice blurting out her little bit of news. 
 
 " My dear ! there's been an accident ! Really, too bad on 
 your first evening." 
 
 But above all she remembered always that queer pounding 
 of her heart, a deep painful thudding working quickly upwards 
 to her throat, and then, quite suddenly, ceasing altogether, as 
 though the tiresome organ had suddenly realised its own ab- 
 surdity. She listened quite calmly to her mother's account 
 of the accident, wondering what it was she had for that instant 
 feared and for whom. 
 
 " It was at the foot of that dreadful hill . . . just as we came 
 along. A young man . . . oh, guile young ... on a bicycle 
 . . . tyok the hill much too quickly. . . ." 
 
 Helena heard herself enquiring if the young man was hurt. 
 
 " Broken arm, by the look of it," said her lather, unusually 
 laconic. " Shaken up, too, you know. . . . We had him 
 brought in here ... in the morning-room . . . felt sure you 
 and Jerome wouldn't mind." 
 
 " Of course not. You've sent for the doctor? " 
 
 " He insisted that we shouldn't." This was her mother, 
 awkwardly apologetic. " He is staying at Haxby Wyke and 
 says he can easily get across there to-night." 
 
 "How? On that buckled machine, and with a broken 
 arm? " The questions were almost a challenge; Agatha be- 
 came more apologetic than ever.
 
 66 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 " He said something, my dear, about a train." 
 
 " How long has he been here? " 
 
 About half an hour, they thought; they knew they came 
 early to avoid the dark. Helena threw down her wraps on an 
 adjacent chair and walked over to the telephone. They heard 
 her call up Dr. Walton, and give clear, crisp directions to the 
 maid at the other end. The receiver went back into position 
 with a little snap. Agatha, beside this arrogant young daughter 
 of hers, felt like a child of six. Of course she ought to have 
 sent for the doctor, but the young man was so very insistent, 
 and besides, it wasn't her house. It was just like Helena to 
 repair the omission in that way, without saying a word. She 
 was difficult; it was no use to pretend otherwise; an extraor- 
 dinarily self-possessed young person, always adjusting other 
 people's mistakes, or giving you the impression that she could 
 if she wanted to. And here she was now, looking at you with 
 that distressingly straight glance, and asking a seemingly sim- 
 ple question with that dull even note in her voice that Agatha 
 had never yet learnt how to combat, and probably never would. 
 
 " Do you know who he is, mother what his name is? " 
 
 And of course Agatha didn't. It would happen like that. It 
 simply hadn't occurred to her to inquire. It hadn't occurred 
 to either of them . . . they had been so upset ... so flur- 
 ried. . . . 
 
 They breathed, the pair of them, a little sigh of relief as 
 Helena opened the morning-room door and disappeared. 
 
 There on the threshold a strong smell of brandy assailed 
 her, and her spirit of youthful impatience relented somewhat. 
 At least they had had the sense to give him that, and someone 
 had even remembered to make up the fire! It flickered now in 
 a jerky blue flame that lighted up the half-dark room. The 
 windows were open; the curtains flapping wide in the cold 
 breeze that was sweeping into the room. A rustling poplar, 
 guarding the house like a sentinel, gave the impression of 
 rain, and that faint reassuring tinkle of the tea-things made you 
 think, pleasurably, of a fire and a close-drawn comfortable 
 chair. Helena could just see that the man lying sideways in
 
 SHADOW 67 
 
 the chair by the window was young, and it was quite easy to 
 tell that the arm hanging limply over the chair was broken. 
 The blue flame of the fire, resting fitfully upon the motionless 
 figure, revealed to her a white face, rather tense, as if with pain. 
 The eyes were shut, but as she entered they opened and a voice 
 it was a rather charming voice said from out the twi- 
 light: 
 
 " I beg your pardon. I'm afraid I'm being a very great 
 nuisance." 
 
 Again to Helena there came that little thrill of excitement 
 surging over her resolute calm. 
 
 " Oh, please don't apologise," she said, " I'm so sorry you've 
 come to grief," and she turned to rescue the white curtain from 
 the misty dampness of the November afternoon. The red patch 
 in the sky had faded out. Before Helena now the great moor 
 stretched away like some colossal monochrome. Heavy banks 
 of cloud shut out the thin, new moon that earlier she had seen 
 straggling faintly up the heavens. She shivered a little while 
 she stood there, with some difficulty securing the window against 
 the strong breeze that fought hard to drag it backwards from 
 her hands. There was something this afternoon rather sinister 
 in the look of the sombre world she was shutting outside. The 
 half-dark room and the warm blue flame of the fire were sud- 
 denly reassuring, comforting elements. She turned back to 
 them and to the young man in the chair. Upon him she let 
 her eyes rest, a shade interrogatively perhaps; a little, just a 
 very little (and most surprisingly) at a loss for what to say. 
 She was conscious of the sound of familiar voices drifting in 
 with that pleasant music of the teacups, through the half-open 
 door; she wondered, just for a fraction of time, if they would 
 remember to bring him some tea, and then, quite abruptly, her 
 thoughts came to an end, for as she looked down upon the 
 young man in the chair she was once more conscious of that 
 queer, quite painful thudding of her heart. His paleness seized 
 sudden hold upon her, accentuated as it was by the fantastic 
 blue flame from the fire. Someone had loosened the soft col- 
 lar of his shirt, and he tried now, as she looked at him, to 
 pull it round again into position. The faint, uncertain smile 
 with which he relinquished the effort, for one brief second 
 turned up the corners of his mouth in a way that seemed to
 
 68 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 Helena most tremendously pathetic. It was a vivid mouth 
 a red flame on ice, curiously beautiful. And his hands were 
 beautiful, too. It was a trick of Helena's to notice hands; 
 there was, she fancied, an eloquence about them not to be de- 
 nied. You might, if you were clever enough, control your 
 mouth and your eyes, but your hands would give you away, 
 after all. ... As for the eyes of the young man in the chair, it 
 was impossible in this light to discover anything at all about 
 them, save that they seemed to be fixed on her face and that the 
 lashes which shaded them were dark. There seemed, too, to be 
 something else about them something that made you want to 
 look at them again. But that, whatever it was, was a secret 
 jealously guarded just now by the impish flame from the fire. 
 Helena's heart filled suddenly with compassion : ardent concern 
 looked out of her eyes. And, above all, she was oddly excited ; 
 she wanted to speak, but was afraid lest her voice should betray 
 her. She stood there, not even wondering why she did so, or 
 why her capacity for speech had so surprisingly deserted her. 
 The stranger, not shifting his position in the least, returned 
 her scrutiny with interest. He saw a young woman, bare- 
 headed, her hands deep-buried in the big pockets of the dark 
 coat she wore, regarding him from what seemed to be an enor- 
 mous height. Later, it was strange to recall that first impres- 
 sion of his that she was unusually tall, because, actually, he 
 could give her a good half-inch. . . . He wondered if her eyes 
 were really as black as they looked in that queer blue flame, 
 and if her face were indeed the cold mask it seemed. Even 
 in this light he could see that her hair was beautiful; he could 
 trace the crisp wave in which it swept back from her forehead, 
 and there was a sheen on it, wavering and fitful now, as the 
 light of the dancing blue flame leaped ecstatically across it. 
 His eyes met hers, and for a few seconds they remained thus, 
 silently regarding each other through the deepening twilight. 
 It was the man who broke the spell by an indiscreet move- 
 ment of his body in the depths of his chair, and a recurrence of 
 that faint, upturned smile, which this time broke off midway 
 into a little twist of pain. He was suddenly conscious that his 
 arm was hurting him atrociously. He saw a little quiver pass 
 over the white face of the girl as if something were hurting 
 her too. There was a red-hot needle running up and down his
 
 SHADOW 69 
 
 arm in a perfectly sickening manner: he hadn't known any- 
 thing could hurt quite so much. He wanted to go on staring 
 at that white face in the dusk, but his eyes wouldn't keep open. 
 For a moment he had a queer idea that the white face began to 
 dance, keeping a rhythmic measure with the ecstatic blue flame, 
 and that the ceiling had lowered itself several inches as if in a 
 spiteful attempt to fall down and crush him. His eyes refused 
 altogether to regard any longer these strange phenomena; they 
 closed resolutely against his desire to know whether the white 
 face was really dancing or not. 
 
 Helena came to her senses. She poured out some brandy 
 and carried it over to the half-unconscious figure in the chair. 
 The firelight flickered eerily over the white face on which the 
 thick lashes were making long dark shadows. Against the 
 black cushion of the chair the white face was startling like 
 ivory on ebony. She slipped an arm beneath his head and ad- 
 ministered her draught. After a few seconds the man opened 
 his eyes and found that the red-hot needle had called a truce. 
 
 " I say," he said, " I'm being a most unholy nuisance." 
 
 Helena removed her arm and turned to put the empty glass 
 upon the table. It went down with a sharp little rattle, because 
 for some unknown reason her hand was trembling. 
 
 " Oh, no," she said, " I'm quite sure your arm must be dread- 
 fully painful. It was very wrong of you to dare my mother to 
 send for the doctor." 
 
 " But I really don't want a doctor. I don't want to be a 
 confounded nuisance. If you'd just find out for me about that 
 train back to Haxby Wyke. . . ." 
 
 " The last train's gone," said Helena, quite untruthfully, 
 " and I'm surprised you shouldn't know that a broken arm is 
 usually far less painful when it's set." 
 
 "Good Lord! you don't really think it's broken, do you? " 
 
 " I should say there is no doubt." 
 
 " Oh, good Lord ! " the young man said again, as if he could 
 think of nothing else at all to say, " you do seem positive. 
 Do you know, I never thought it might be broken? But if I 
 can hang out for an hour or two I can get back to Haxby Wyke 
 and Wyatt'll set it for me. Wyatt's a doctor, you know." 
 
 " Yes ... I guessed that, but you can't ' hang out for an 
 hour.' Do please be sensible. Your room is being got ready
 
 70 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 for you now. . . . I've already sent for our own doctor. It's 
 quite impossible for you to go home to-night, and if you say 
 anything more about such a ridiculous project I shall begin to 
 think you're like the young man in Barrie's book and that 
 you haven't really hurt yourself at all." 
 
 The corners of the vivid mouth slid up again, in the wake 
 of the faint, whimsical smile, for this young man had read his 
 Barrie. 
 
 " Sentimental Tommy, you mean the chap who smashed 
 his own foot in the door? Well, I disown the relationship. 
 I'm not a bit sentimental." 
 
 " Then don't you think you ought to behave as if you 
 weren't? You can't be a Don Quixote with a broken arm. . . . 
 Oh . . . but it really is broken, you know. If your friends 
 are on the 'phone I'll just let them know what has happened to 
 you and that you will be spending the night here. Really, you 
 see, there's nothing else at all to be done." 
 
 The young man did seem to see that. At any rate, like a 
 rational being he gave Helena the particulars she wanted. His 
 name it appeared was Sargent Hilary Sargent (a nice name, 
 thought Helena) and he was staying over at Haxby Wyke with 
 some old friends, a Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt, at the Red House. 
 Yes, they were on the 'phone all right. He had cycled over 
 from Haxby Wyke to finish a little sketch of Haworth (then he 
 loved the Brontes!). A particularly fine sunset had tempted 
 him across the moor to Rattenby, and half-way down that beast 
 of a hill his brake had refused to act. She knew the rest, 
 didn't she? 
 
 Helena nodded, her mind on the facts. And then something 
 happened something totally unexpected, preposterous al- 
 most. Three musical syllables, uttered in Mr. Sargent's 
 equally musical voice, flung themselves softly upon her through 
 the quivering blue-flecked twilight of the room. 
 
 "Deirdre. . . ." 
 
 She turned, faintly aware that this young man should be 
 snubbed. Every canon of her class and upbringing would 
 have insisted that this was her proper course that the young 
 man deserved it. Five minutes ago he had never set eyes upon 
 her and he could not possibly imagine that Deirdre was her 
 name. She knew that she ought to be angry not very angry,
 
 SHADOW 71 
 
 perhaps, but just angry enough to put this young Mr. Sargent 
 quietly back in his place. But somehow (and she realised it 
 with a sort of inward panic) she wasn't angry, not even in the 
 very least. She was only intensely surprised. She stood there 
 with her hand on the black knob of the door, and she didn't 
 say anything at all. Long, conical shadows played bo-peep 
 with that whimsical flame from the fire, and as she waited the 
 new moon slipped out from the clouds and stood looking at 
 her through the unshuttered windows. Helena glanced up 
 and saw it a thin thread of silver on a black gown. ... It 
 was always so that she saw it when this scene came back to her 
 in the long afterwards. Until that day when she couldn't bear 
 to think about it any more at all. . . . 
 
 But the young moon peeped at her now as she waited and 
 she hadn't put Mr. Sargent in his place. Mr. Sargent remained 
 precisely where his daring had placed him wherever that 
 might have been. 
 
 " Deirdre ... if you really think it's broken, will you 
 please tell Mrs. Wyatt it's the left arm? She'll think that no 
 end important." 
 
 It was extraordinary. He had called her by that ridiculous 
 name again, and still she had said nothing. Instead, across the 
 gathering darkness she gave him a long, slow smile, and one 
 lingering look out of her blue-black eyes. The fickle flame 
 and the thin young moon combined forces against her, and re- 
 vealed both, suddenly, to the man who had not been snubbed. 
 
 The door opened and shut. She was gone. 
 
 Extraordinary. That, really, was the only word for it! 
 Why hadn't she snubbed him? Of course he deserved it. She 
 had been supremely foolish; worse than that, supremely undig- 
 nified. She caught her breath quickly as the door closed softly 
 behind her. Why, it would have been so easy to have done the 
 right thing. She need only have told him who she was. . . . 
 
 Outside it was nearly dark, save for the thin shaft of light 
 that came from the half-open door of the drawing-room on 
 the other side of the hall. She could hear the subdued murmur 
 of conversation as her father and mother waited there beside 
 the fire until she should come in and pour out tea for the 
 first time in her own house. She fancied that she no longer 
 wanted any tea ... that by now it must be too late.
 
 72 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 A maid crossing the hall turned up the light and Helena 
 saw that it still wanted ten minutes to four. That extraor- 
 dinary interview had taken up not quite five minutes of time. 
 Yet it had seemed to her like Eternity ... as if nothing had 
 happened to her before and nothing could happen again. 
 The sudden flood of light switched her back quite painfully 
 into the present and left her wondering why it was she hadn't 
 thought of turning on the light in there instead of leaving 
 herself to the impish mercies of a blue flame and an impudent 
 moon. 
 
 She took down the telephone book and ran her finger slowly 
 down the list of Ws. Wyatt . . . Dr. John . . . and as she 
 did so the thought struck her that it was queer her father and 
 mother should be sitting there by the fire waiting for her to 
 come and pour out tea from her new silver teapot just for 
 all the world as though nothing at all had happened. Well, 
 and what had happened? 
 
 The door swung open and Jerome Courtney's tall figure 
 stepped into the light. 
 
 6 
 
 Lying very still in the firelight, Hilary was conscious not of 
 the dull pain in his arm, but of a queer throbbing of his pulses, 
 and a restless desire that Helena should come back again into 
 the room. He could hear her clear voice on the telephone; 
 heard her say good-bye and guessed that the receiver had been 
 hung up in position again. She was coming back! Curse it, 
 no! Someone outside there was engaging her in conversation 
 somebody male, with a deep bass voice. He heard her 
 laugh a little delicate laugh that broke across the slight 
 murmur of conversation like the soft pattering of rain on dry 
 leaves. Why didn't she come back? He wanted to look at her 
 again. She had been lovely in that queer light, unbelievably 
 calm and white, like a big star in a black sky. It was almost 
 worth while to have risked one's neck down that crazy hill just 
 for the sake of looking at her in that flame-flecked room hung 
 about with shadows, and with the night coming down swiftly on 
 the black moor beyond. He had a sudden desire to paint her as
 
 SHADOW 73 
 
 she had stood there in the dusk, with her white face and gleam- 
 ing hair silhouetted against the blurred outlines of the room. 
 The look of her head was startlingly clear to him even now; he 
 remembered its delicate poise, the way in which the blue flame 
 every now and then had revealed its outline, and the pale aure- 
 ole that was her hair. He would call his picture Deirdre 
 Deirdre of the Sorrows, " pale as the coat of swans " for that 
 was how he had thought of her first. He could imagine her 
 walking the hills at night, rain-dripping before the wind. She 
 had suggested, even in this light, the stinging downpour and 
 stiff breeze of the uplands and a cold bath in the morning. 
 He hadn't intended to call her Deirdre at all it had just hap- 
 pened! And, by Jove, how well she had taken it! 
 
 The pain in his arm had certainly dulled; it was pleasant to 
 lie there so quietly, watching that desultory fire-flame play 
 hide-and-seek with the shadows, his thoughts revolving round 
 the girl whose voice tantalised him now through the shut door. 
 That long, slow smile of hers and that lingering wistful look 
 he could see them yet, though perhaps she had not meant 
 that he should see either at all. 
 
 There came again, through the closed door, that little sound 
 of delicate laughter, shivering his idle dreams into a thousand 
 insignificant pieces. It was heartless of her to laugh, and he 
 lying there with a broken arm at least, she said it was 
 broken, and she seemed to know. He was seized again with a 
 restless longing for her return. It was getting dark: the blue 
 flame was almost spent; when she did come in he would not be 
 able to see her. Perhaps the firelight had been kind to her. 
 Perhaps when the room was lighted . . . Oh, curse them, who- 
 ever they were! Why didn't they let her come back? An- 
 other voice now and another ! Everyone might talk to her, 
 it seemed, but him! 
 
 Then, quite suddenly, the door opened and Helena appeared 
 on the threshold. Hilary turned his head quickly much too 
 quickly; was conscious of a sharp, intolerable pain in his arm, 
 and of yet another sickening lunge of the ceiling towards him. 
 Then the shadowy face in the doorway faded out very gently 
 on a sea of blackness. 
 
 Helena, switching on the light, saw that he had fainted.
 
 74 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 He thought, when presently emerged from that engulfing sea, 
 that he must have dreamed someone called her " Mrs. Court- 
 ney " and someone else, " Helena." Neither name belonged to 
 her; and it was supremely ridiculous that she should have any 
 right to the prefix. 
 
 Then the black waters receded further and the incongruous 
 names fell again on his ears. He opened his eyes and looked 
 at her. She had taken off the enveloping coat, and was stand- 
 ing quite close to him, just there by the window, talking to a 
 tall dark man in tweeds and to another who wore professional 
 black. She was smiling a little, twisting a ring on her finger; 
 and as he looked at her there came again to him the strange 
 illusion that she was unusually tall. . . . 
 
 Helena turned, caught his glance, and paused in her con- 
 versation. Without trace of embarrassment or self-conscious- 
 ness she came at once towards him, still with the ghost of her 
 smile upon her lips. 
 
 "Mr. Sargent," she said, "may I introduce my husband? 
 Mr. Courtney, Mr. Sargent. And my very old friend, Dr. 
 Walton, to whose tender mercies I am going to leave you. I 
 am sure that if there is such a thing as painless bone-setting, 
 Dr. Walton will accomplish it." 
 
 The three men shook hands and said the usual things. By 
 the time they were said Helena had disappeared and an im- 
 maculate maid stood on the threshold. She had come, she said, 
 to show Mr. Sargent to his room. 
 
 They followed her, a silent trio, up the broad oak staircase. 
 
 8 
 
 Hilary roused himself to talk as Dr. Walton set and bandaged 
 the broken limb (she had been right it was broken) and by 
 the time the operation was completed he had discovered all 
 there was to know. 
 
 " A remarkably good patient," Dr. Walton said, as he took 
 his leave. " One would have thought I'd scarcely hurt you at 
 all."
 
 SHADOW 75 
 
 Hilary's smile had been enigmatic. He was thinking that 
 what the doctor had said had hurt, by comparison, so much 
 more than what he had done. Left alone, he lay quite still, 
 and by degrees he forgot everything save that long, slow, smile 
 of hers dividing the dusk. . . . 
 
 But presently there rose up quickly and confronted him a 
 pale, pitiful ghost, climbing up softly out of the past the 
 ghost of a young boy who had cried his heart out over a batch 
 of brutal newspaper-cuttings. Icy little phrases floated out to 
 him . . . odd little sentences that pieced an old story together 
 again with surprising rapidity, an old story that Hilary had al- 
 ways hoped he might one day forget. 
 
 Later on someone brought in his dinner, served beautifully 
 on a tray of dark oak. The " someone," whoever it was, 
 propped up his cushions and said something kind that he didn't 
 seem properly to hear. Whilst he ate, that pitiful desolate 
 ghost stood yet at his elbow, and once when he awoke in the 
 night he saw that it was still there. . . .
 
 CHAPTER THREE 
 
 DR. WALTON kept his patient in bed for the whole of 
 the following day, and in the evening Jerome went up 
 to spend a couple of hours with him, leaving Helena to 
 her correspondence down there in her mauve drawing-room that 
 was an exquisite expression of her sudden passion for purples 
 the chromatic aspect of a mood. A maid came in and drew 
 the soft amethyst curtains, shutting out the blackness that had 
 crept down over moor and house alike. The fire crackled 
 cheerily, the sparks sped up the wide chimney, and from the 
 cup the maid had placed at Helena's side arose the delicious 
 appetising smell of expensive, excellently made coffee. But 
 from the room overhead there filtered through to her at inter- 
 vals a faint tantalising murmur of conversation. She won- 
 dered what they were talking about . . . what things this rather 
 surprising young man was interested in. Every now and then 
 she heard Jerome's laugh the good-tempered chuckling laugh 
 of his that she was coming to know so well. It became, pres- 
 ently, impossible to string her polite sentences together, so that 
 the letter-writing had to be abandoned. When Jerome came 
 down he found her curled up on the divan with a book. By 
 the light of one small globe at her side she appeared to be 
 reading. 
 
 " What a bookworm it is ! " he said, making room for him- 
 self on the edge of the divan. 
 
 Helena didn't tell him that Browning no more than her 
 epistolary efforts had been successful in shutting out that over- 
 head interstitial conversation. But she shut Browning up and 
 dropped him, very gently, on to the floor. 
 
 Jerome edged a little further on to his precarious seat, and 
 with a careless hand switched the room into sudden gloom. 
 
 " Your man's nice," he observed. 
 
 "My man?" 
 
 76
 
 SHADOW 77 
 
 " Well, somehow I associate him with you. You took him 
 in hand, anyway." 
 
 "Did he tell you that?" 
 
 " Oh Lord, no. I can't remember that we mentioned you. 
 It was your mother who told me he'd refused to let her send 
 for the doctor." 
 
 " Oh that! I only told him to be sensible. What have you 
 been talking about? " 
 
 " Crowds of things politics, finance, the suffragettes, art, 
 religion. . . ." 
 
 Helena laughed. 
 
 ** I thought it sounded interesting," she said. " Let's take 
 art first. He paints, doesn't he? " 
 
 " How do you know? " 
 
 ** Quite simple. He admitted that he'd been over to Haworth 
 to finish a sketch." 
 
 " It's a good sketch even I know that." 
 
 " You've seen it? " 
 
 " I have. The artist suggested that we might like to keep it 
 ... as a grateful acknowledgment for ' all our kindness.' His 
 phrase, I assure you." 
 
 "And of course you accepted it? " 
 
 " Well, yes, but hardly with such indecent haste." 
 
 Again Helena laughed. 
 
 " Where is it? " 
 
 " I put it down most carefully over there on the Bechstein." 
 
 " Let me see it." 
 
 " Presently. We're too comfortable to move." 
 
 His fingers caught hers and held them. 
 
 There was a little pause. 
 
 Presently: 
 
 " Interest evaporated? " 
 
 " Don't be silly. Anyone would think there was a whole 
 army of artists falling over themselves on our doorstep. I 
 don't believe I've ever seen one before. Tell me. Has Mr. 
 Sargent got a real studio of his own? " 
 
 He had, Jerome said. In Chelsea. 
 
 Helena had heard of Chelsea. 
 
 " Go on," she said. 
 
 Jerome went on. Mr. Sargent, it appeared, not only had
 
 78 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 a studio and spent the days in painting pictures, but he also 
 exhibited them. 
 
 "At the Academy?" 
 
 "Well, I fancy he didn't seem awfully bucked about the 
 Academy. There were several other galleries he appeared to 
 think licked the Academy into a cocked hat. One of them hung 
 a thing of his last year . . . something out of Keats, he said. 
 I can't remember what it was." 
 
 "Oh Jerome!" 
 
 " Well, you can ask him about it to-morrow. By the way, 
 the Mrs. Wyatt he's been stopping with at Haxby Wyke was his 
 governess. She married and came up here to live when he was 
 a youngster, so he told me. He calls her Ursula." 
 
 The big log on the fire slipped with a little crash and threw 
 up a spray of blue-gold sparks. The aspect of the room 
 changed became faintly reminiscent. Helena's fingers 
 twisted restlessly beneath those of her husband. 
 
 " Jerome, can't I see the picture now? " 
 
 "Presently. . . ." 
 
 " But it's so dark in here and you don't like the twilight. . . ." 
 
 "Yes I do sometimes. I like it now." 
 
 " I want to see the picture, Jerome." 
 
 " The picture can wait. I'm enjoying the twilight." 
 
 " Please, Jerome. . . ." 
 
 He looked down at her, smiling. 
 
 "What's the hurry? Aren't you comfortable? " 
 
 She watched the track of the blue flame as it hovered over 
 his face, and of a sudden she saw, not Jerome at all, but a 
 thinner, paler face altogether, with a red streak for a mouth 
 that curled up every now and then at the edges, surprising you. 
 . . . She made another effort to release her fingers as abor- 
 tive as the rest. Jerome sat there still on the edge of the divan 
 . . . looking down at her, smiling, and with his fingers round 
 her rebellious ones. 
 
 " I like that gold thing you've got on. . . ." 
 
 " You've seen it at least twice before." 
 
 " Have I? That doesn't prevent my liking it. . . ." 
 
 "Of course not; but you should have admired it the first 
 time I put it on, not the third .... Oh, Jerome, please, I 
 don't want to be kissed. .
 
 SHADOW 79 
 
 Later in the evening Jerome rang up the Red House across 
 the moor and asked Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt to lunch with them on 
 the morrow, when it was hoped that Mr. Sargent would be well 
 enough to return with them. The invitation was accepted: but 
 it struck even the unobservant Jerome that if Mr. Sargent were 
 pleased about it he had a remarkable way of showing it, or 
 rather, of concealing it. 
 
 The next morning, half an hour before the Wyatts were due, 
 Hilary came down into the drawing-room and found Helena 
 busy again with her letters. She looked up as he entered and 
 pushed back her writing-pad, as though the letters could wait. 
 
 " Oh no, finish them please," he said, and picking up the 
 Confessions of a Fool began to read. 
 
 Helena flushed a little as she bent again over her letters, re- 
 membering that moment of yesterday. An impression of 
 cheapness stole over her and a little smarting sense of shame. 
 This young man was showing her what she should have done 
 then. Very politely, but quite unmistakably, he was putting 
 her back in her place in the place from which she had 
 stepped when, a young married woman, she had allowed him, 
 unchecked, to call her by a ridiculous name. And having put 
 her there he was keeping her there more with Strindberg's 
 aid, he was building a remarkably stout high wall between 
 them. Soon she wouldn't even be able to see over the top. 
 Her head bent lower. 
 
 That was Hilary's opportunity. Basely deserting his ally he 
 looked up and with penetrative critical eyes began to study the 
 line of profile outlined for him against that background of 
 amethyst. It had, he saw, just that touch of imperfection 
 which lends fascination, the pleasurable tantalising suggestion 
 of shortcoming which makes you look a second time to discover 
 wherein exactly it lies. Hilary decided this morning that the 
 fault only that was not the word lay in the strange little 
 tilt at the end of the nose that seemed to have begun with the 
 intention of running perfectly straight and at the last moment 
 had whimsically altered its mind. Hilary half suspected that 
 at times that infinitesimal upward inclination was not there at 
 all that it was all a question of mood. There was, this
 
 80 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 morning, a fine, quick-moving colour in her cheeks. He could 
 see it ebbing and flowing beneath the white skin like wine 
 seen through an opalescent glass. So, he thought, might Deir- 
 dre have looked when the hot eyes of Connachar devoured her, 
 or when, unseeing, Naois, with his brothers, passed her on the 
 hillside. . . . 
 
 Presently a thin unexpected shaft of sunlight came bursting 
 triumphantly through the window where Helena bent still over 
 her letters. If it surprised her she did not look up and the dar- 
 ing sunbeam hovered lightly to and fro about her, making a 
 little dancing point of light on the nape of her bended neck and 
 entangling itself ridiculously in the maze of her hair. In that 
 pale wintry gleam her head had a burnished look. The loosely 
 braided coils of hair, close to but not over her ears, gave to 
 the profile a certain balance and poise. Hilary wondered what 
 colour her hair was when you saw it in the shadow. At this 
 moment she reminded him of an October morning russet 
 and gold of dying bracken in sunlight. There was warmth 
 and colour and feeling about her: it was not, just now, of a 
 white ghost on the hillside that you thought when you looked 
 at her. 
 
 And Helena went on writing, holding her pen in the light 
 friendly manner of the born caligraphist. Watching her 
 Hilary had a sudden idea that she was writing mechanically a 
 formula she had used many times already the pretty gracious 
 note of the bride of six weeks (Dr. Walton had given him that 
 piece of information). She was thanking numerous friends 
 and relatives for presents and congratulations, using, probably, 
 the familiar first person plural, the intimate " we." Some- 
 where far back in his brain a pulse was beating madly. Fate 
 had smiled at him once a smile of ineffable sweetness and 
 then had slammed a heavy door in his face, cutting the smile in 
 twain. He felt suddenly tricked and impotent realised, for 
 one appalling instant, that fate had him already gagged and 
 bound. 
 
 In Helena's mauve drawing-room there was no clock. Ut- 
 terly noiseless, her pen moved sViftly over the paper. You 
 could have heard a pin drop. And all the time, with that curi- 
 ous little air of stealth, Hilary sat there watching. It made
 
 SHADOW 81 
 
 him supremely happy just to sit there like that looking at her. 
 He hoped she wouldn't look round. The wall was down be- 
 tween them for the moment, but he held a page of his book 
 very carefully between his thumb and finger, ready to turn it 
 at a moment's notice if she moved in his direction. And with 
 the turning of the page up would go the wall again. . . . 
 
 Helena did not look round, but presently she wrote her last 
 word, and as she put down her pen Hilary ostentatiously turned 
 his page, as though completely unaware of the vagaries of a 
 stray sunbeam on blue and gold, or of the decisive rattle of a 
 malachite pen on a bronze tray. You might have supposed that 
 for him Strindberg had blotted out the universe gold-blue 
 figure and all. 
 
 Slipping her letter into its envelope Helena turned her head 
 and looked at him. She was ready to swear that he wasn't 
 reading at all. . . . 
 
 " Have you read much Strindberg? " she asked. 
 
 For a very little while after that it was Strindberg they talked 
 about. Helena detested Strindberg and the things he wrote 
 as she detested all the people who divided the world into male 
 and female and chalked a thick line between the divisions. 
 And, though Hilary seemed to agree with her, it was not long 
 before he dismissed Strindberg as a false ally. He had drawn 
 fire. Helena sat very still, her eyes fixed meditatively on the 
 garden beyond. She had a remarkable capacity for stillness. 
 It spoke of strength and reserves of strength. It came to Hilary 
 that there was about her no undue emphasis of womanhood. 
 Her eyes blue, not black, as he saw to-day were clear and 
 frank as a child's. There was in her no trace of coquetry; she 
 appeared to have no feminine tricks. Sex, in Helena, was a 
 delicate suggestion rather than a definite statement, and it was 
 that which set her apart which differentiated her from all 
 those other women he had known, who had carried their wom- 
 anhood like a flaming sword in front of them. 
 
 When next she spoke it was not of Strindberg. 
 
 "Mr. Sargent. Are you sure you really want us to have 
 your sketch of Haworth? " 
 
 Her glance shifted from the garden. It made, as it passed 
 him, a scarcely perceptible pause, coming to rest on the Bech-
 
 82 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 stein grand where, wistful and tender, the sketch made a lu- 
 minous patch of delicate colour. Against that Ethiopic back- 
 ground it attracted the eye as a jewel the sun. 
 
 Hilary's eyes followed Helena's. 
 
 " If you will accept it, yes," he said. 
 
 " But how can you bear to part with it? " She walked 
 across to the piano and stood there looking down at the water- 
 colour. She was quite sincere: she did wonder how, having 
 painted a thing like that, he could, quite calmly, propose to 
 give it away. Standing there in the centre of Helena's mauve 
 drawing-room it struck a new and arresting note, which Je- 
 rome's heavy oils of dead and gone Courtneys were powerless 
 to smother. It brought with it a wonderful, not quite canny, 
 sense of atmosphere. You did not need to know anything at 
 all about art or the criteria of art to know that: it gripped you 
 at once by the throat. This little sketch lived because the 
 artist had not only seen, he had felt. You were immediately 
 conscious of that, even if you didn't know Haworth and had no 
 feeling for the Brontes. The delicate glow in the west, the 
 pale moon straggling wanly up the sky and the faint silver- 
 grey mist hovering like a wraith over the naked village struck 
 for Helena at once a definite note of tragedy. Only a lover 
 of the Brontes, she felt, could have got quite that note in quite 
 that way. The little sketch, like Haworth itself, was saturated 
 with the Brontes and their drama. Even in that comfortable 
 mauve drawing-room it was tragedy, palpitating and passion- 
 ate, that looked out at you from the pictured scene of it. It 
 looked out now at Helena. 
 
 " But I feel we ought not to take it ... that some day you 
 may be sorry you gave it away." 
 
 Hilary was not looking at his drawing. His eyes had been 
 on Helena's burnished head, bending, as if in humility, before 
 the work of his hands. It was her head which fascinated him 
 that and the regal way she carried it. He got up and moved 
 to her side. They stood there together, their shoulders almost 
 touching, and for a little neither spoke. It was strange, Helena 
 used afterwards to think, that it should have been at tragedy 
 they had looked, first, together. . . . 
 
 ' No," said Hilary presently, " I think I should like you to 
 have it. If you don't, anything may happen to it. It may even
 
 SHADOW 83 
 
 get into the hands of someone who cares nothing at all about 
 the Brontes. There are such people, you know." 
 
 Helena did know. She smiled, a little ruefully, and Hilary 
 wondered why he hadn't noticed before that in her smile there 
 was just a hint of obliquity it surprised you like that sudden, 
 unreasonable, variable tilt of her nose. It gave you yet an- 
 other reason for looking a second time at her; you wanted to 
 think of something else to say which might make her smile 
 again. 
 
 Side by side they moved slowly round the room, talking of 
 the dead and gone Courtneys in their dull frames, of the men 
 who had painted them, and of the position that was to be given 
 to the water-colour. Yet all the time Helena was wondering 
 why it should seem to her that this very clever young man 
 (that was how she thought of him now) did not really want to 
 talk to her not, at least, about anything that mattered, about 
 his pictures, about books or ideas. He bred in her this morn- 
 ing a surprising sense of self-consciousness, an odd speculative 
 tendency that she found perplexing until there rushed upon her 
 again a recollection of those five baffling minutes of twilight. 
 She could scarcely bear, now, to think of them, and yet they 
 were making for theni this morning or so it seemed to Helena 
 
 a sort of secret pact. Already there was something which 
 they shared between them . . . something of which no one 
 knew at all save only themselves. 
 
 Just a common flirtation! That was what Gertrude and 
 Lucy would have said of it, she knew. And yet it hadn't 
 seemed it didn't seem now in the very least common or 
 vulgar, and Helena had certainly not meant to flirt. She had 
 never flirted in her life: that was one of the " tricks " (feminine 
 or not, as you like) which the Fates had denied her. Those 
 baffling minutes were not to be explained as easily as all that: 
 if there was any explanation at all you must dig deeply to come 
 at it. Helena, as yet, did not dare disturb the soil. She was 
 afraid of what she might see. The thing whatever it was 
 had just happened, through no conscious v6lition of her own. 
 She hadn't known, hadn't realised, till now, that it was wrong 
 
 something she ought to have tried strenuously to have pre- 
 vented from happening at all. . . . 
 
 Yet here she was this morning beset by a sense of mingled
 
 84 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 shame and fate. She felt cheapened and yet absolved. What- 
 ever had happened and perhaps it was very little, after all 
 had happened not because of but in spite of herself. But she 
 wanted, suddenly, to know what he thought: wanted to know 
 whether he, too, held her cheapened, whether with Gertrude 
 and Lucy he could think her capable of " making eyes " across 
 a half-dark room. A sudden spurt of courage ran through her, 
 like the zigzag of lightning across a stormy sky. Somehow 
 and at once she had to find out, had to know, for certain, 
 what he thought of her. . . . 
 
 She turned her head and their eyes met. Frankly and freely, 
 uncurtained by the blue of the dusk, for the first time they 
 looked at each other. 
 
 In those few seconds there came to them both, perhaps, a 
 brief, shuddering vision of things definitive, calamitous. For 
 that one fraction of time the wall Hilary had been so carefully 
 erecting was down completely between them. But what they 
 saw they understood, as yet, scarcely at all. 
 
 Their gaze dropped asunder. But now, at least, Helena 
 knew. Whatever it was he thought of her it was not that sordid 
 thing she had feared. He too had absolved her. So much that 
 one steady look had shown her. 
 
 What it had not shown her, what to-day she could not see, 
 was the end. For this morning there was no future at all 
 there was only this wonderful palpitating minute that was the 
 Present. She heard, as yet, no paean of dawn cleaving the 
 darkness; she heard nothing whatever save the beating of her 
 own insurgent heart.
 
 CHAPTER FOUR 
 
 ABOUT the lunch that followed Helena remembered noth- 
 ing at all save that Ursula and Dr. Wyatt talked a good 
 deal of the cripple children they domiciled over at the 
 Red House at Haxby Wyke (which at any other time Helena 
 might have found of interest but which to-day didn't matter), 
 and that every time Hilary looked at her he glanced away again 
 hurriedly. Once, listening to something Ursula was saying to 
 Jerome, it struck her as ridiculous that Ursula Wyatt should 
 have no children of her own while only with difficulty was Lucy 
 to be persuaded from having a baby every year. For Ursula's 
 energy and her manner were tremendously, vitally, maternal: 
 you could not imagine that she would ever be appalled or dis- 
 mayed by the personality of a child. She existed as a perpet- 
 ual contradiction of that terribly scientific statement that there 
 is no such thing as a " born mother." 
 
 To that one coherent thought was added, presently, another 
 the thought that, for all the meal moved with the stately 
 grace of a dignified ritual, they did seem rather to have over- 
 done it. Helena began to feel ashamed of the dishes as they 
 appeared; once, when Hilary passed a course, she flushed and, 
 a little awkwardly, passed it too. Angela Richardson-Court- 
 ney in that old turreted house of hers might have lunches like 
 this is she chose just as an earl may drink his tea out of his 
 saucer if he likes because no one will think he does it because 
 he doesn't know any better. But in this brand-new house, des- 
 titute of the Courtney tradition (or of any tradition at all, for 
 that matter), this lunch did seem to hint at vulgarity. Rather 
 as if, Helena thought, they were spelling it with a capital " L." 
 For the rest, all this food and drink and this sparkling ever- 
 rolling ball of conversation, was only something which got 
 most tremendously in the way of the things she was trying to 
 
 85
 
 86 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 think out. For it seemed to-day as if for that " something big " 
 she had not waited long enough or that the " something " 
 had not been so very big, after all. Here at the end of six 
 weeks that was how she thought of her marriage as a not 
 very big thing, after all. Perhaps for Jerome it was different. 
 Jerome had so much else : it seemed as if she herself had merely 
 got wedged into a prominent place among other things equally 
 necessary to him ... his career and his business interests. 
 Jerome had made a sandwich of love. . . . 
 
 Five minutes in a flame-flecked twilit room, one brief elo- 
 quent look across a Jacobean drawing-room and life if it had 
 ever been simple was simple no longer. Its new note of 
 complexity was disturbing because Helena had not heard it be- 
 fore, and there was no knowing what disharmonies it might en- 
 gender. It was like those wonderful chords in Sibelius 
 hideous if you got them wrong. Anyway, here she was again, 
 waiting, all her being poised; and stabbed every now and then 
 by a point of wonderment as to how she had come to get into 
 " all this." And " all this " at the moment was extraordinarily 
 exciting and extraordinarily chaotic. 
 
 It was chaotic, too, for Hilary, but (since he was a more 
 practised hand at the social virtues than Helena) you would 
 never have guessed it, because the more he talked the less risk 
 he ran of encountering that disturbing crooked smile of Hel- 
 ena's or of seeing the colour come and go in her cheeks, most 
 tantalisingly. But when she spoke her rather scornful young 
 voice reached him as from a distance, giving to him, none the 
 less, a curiously definite sense of unity, creating between them 
 bonds of perfect harmony. And once, when (for all his ef- 
 forts) their eyes met, it was as if across that stately dilatory 
 luncheon they had extended sudden hands of complete and 
 sympathetic understanding; as if, to Hilary, there had been 
 vouchsafed a manifest ratification of that slow, lingering smile 
 of hers. . 
 
 Later, over their coffee, they arranged a return visit to the 
 Red House for the Friday of the following week. Hilary made 
 a note of the date for Ursula, and Helena saw that he made it in 
 shorthand, and on the edge of his cuff. Their hands met. as
 
 SHADOW 87 
 
 they said good-bye: their eyes scarcely at all. And no word 
 at all about Friday not half a word, though that, Helena 
 thought, was what she was going to live for. 
 
 When they had gone she came in and stood for a minute 
 inside the morning-room, looking across to the empty chair by 
 the window. Already the dusk had fallen. The fire had been 
 allowed to go out: there was to-day no impish blue flame to 
 play tricks . . . and no one to play them with. Grey ashes 
 littered the green tiles of the fireplace. The windows were 
 wide open and the white curtains flapped briskly in the breeze, 
 just as they had done two days ago. But this time she did not 
 rescue them. She stood there in the doorway, looking a little 
 wistfully at the cold, empty room, then with a slight shiver 
 she turned and went out, closing the door very softly after her. 
 Yet it was not of things past, things dead and cold, that she 
 thought so much as of things present and to come. A sense 
 of days predestinate was upon her. . . . 
 
 Jerome, crossing the hall, suggested a walk across the moor. 
 He wanted, she could see, to do something with his unusually 
 idle afternoon, and she knew he had suggested the thing most 
 likely to appeal to her. But she shook her head. 
 
 " Do you mind if I don't? " she asked. 
 
 "Tired?" 
 
 "Yes just a little." 
 
 That wasn't true. She wasn't in the least tired. She was 
 only unbearably conscious of a mutinous desire to get away 
 somewhere alone, to think. . . . 
 
 " All right," said Jerome, " I'll put on a pipe." 
 
 She saw him vanish into the little room he called his study, 
 and as she went upstairs she wondered why, for just one second, 
 she should feel sorry for him. 
 
 She was to feel that same little thrill of pity once or twice 
 again, as very slowly the next few days passed by. Outwardly 
 calm and still, to all appearances more than usually self-pos- 
 sessed and deliberative, she was yet devoured by that odd sense 
 of excitement that had surged over her as she had stood gaz- 
 ing at a badly buckled bicycle beneath the green porch of the
 
 88 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 door. In some strange fashion all ordinary life seemed sus- 
 pended caught up as if by a charm. The note of high 
 romance had come to her at last, had left her a little breathless, 
 on tiptoe of expectancy. It transmuted now everything she 
 looked on, everything she thought, every emotion that swayed 
 her. Like a sycamore in the wind her spirit bent before it, 
 under the resolute compulsion of this new bewildering sense of 
 an overmastering, indomitable fate. Her fine sense of honour, 
 of loyalty and respect, went down before it like a sapling in 
 a gale. Something deep stirred within her at the recollection 
 of a pale tense face in the murky twilight, at the memory of a 
 musical voice trailing softly across the dusk to her. . . . She 
 lived, for those few days, a charmed life, in which nothing 
 mean or paltry could touch her. Romance had drawn a magic 
 circle about her and within it she moved a free and radiant 
 being. 
 
 Even that queer little sense of pity just came and was gone 
 an arrow glancing lightly upon her enchanted armour, and 
 dropping harmlessly. She was sorry and she was tender 
 unusually, adorably tender. She was too happy to hurt; too 
 happy even to be hurt. Her pity and her sorrow for Jerome 
 came from this that he had not been able to make her feel 
 as she felt now disembodied, bewitched ; because for him 
 nothing profound had ever stirred within her, had never once 
 raised its head and looked in at the windows of her soul. No 
 emotion she had ever felt for him had left her like this glow- 
 ing, uplifted: she had retained always her natural analytical 
 faculty and had used it mercilessly, as a surgeon uses a knife. 
 It had dissected, examined, dissected, without cessation: her 
 feeling for Jerome was not feeling at all, but thought. He 
 stimulated not her emotions but only the intellectual machinery 
 that controlled the operations of that deadly knife. And now, 
 for the present, she wasn't thinking in the very least; she was 
 giving herself up completely to this new and delectable sensa- 
 tion which she did not stay to analyse. That would come later. 
 At present she could only feel : thought drowsed contentedly in 
 the sun. 
 
 To Jerome her new tenderness and sweetness were things of 
 unmitigated delight. They argued, for him, that the love he 
 craved from her the gift he wanted most of life would
 
 SHADOW 89 
 
 one day shortly be his. He did not know how should he? 
 that when her eyes rested upon him in that tender, fugitive way, 
 she was thinking of an impudent moon trailing up a grey-black 
 sky, that watched her as she flung the gleaming banner of her 
 smile across the heaving blue of the dusk; that once again there 
 rose before her, as it had done across the misty tragedy of the 
 Bronte sketch, a brief shrouded vision of the ultimate destiny of 
 things. But because these things were hidden from him Je- 
 rome was happy life for him these days became just one ex- 
 tremely pleasant thing after another, each definitely tinged with 
 an agreeable certainty. But for Helena it was just a big unex- 
 plored world, hung with a great orange moon, that she had 
 stumbled upon out of the mist. It was so new and strange and 
 unexpected that it baffled even while it enticed. . . . 
 
 Was this love? If so, it was love for the first time . . . Hel- 
 ena had not known that anything could be so wonderful. 
 
 The morning of the Friday for which she had been living 
 dawned chilly after a night of rain, and Jerome ordered the 
 closed car and told Fownes to drive. (Fownes, according to 
 Jerome, was the best man with a licence on the road, which 
 appeared to mean that Fownes had exceeded the speed limit 
 the maximum number of times with the minimum number of 
 convictions. He was a magnificent person with an uncanny 
 facility in dodging police traps and a strenuous objection to 
 the owner of a motor-car using it or wanting it used as if it 
 were a steam-roller.) The closed car and the services of 
 Fownes were decided upon not on account of the weather but 
 because these days Jerome liked to look at Helena instead of 
 at the long, muddy Yorkshire roads, liked to watch her eyes 
 darken with the dreams he did not suspect, and her mouth 
 quiver, when she smiled, in a way that was new and infinitely 
 tender and appealing. 
 
 She was very quiet on the journey to Haxby Wyke; she sat 
 looking out across the moor as though she had never seen it 
 before. Jerome wondered if she remembered that it was 
 across this same road they had come that morning nearly two 
 months ago, after that ceremony in the Registry Office at Rat-
 
 90 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 tenby. He wanted to ask her, but that was precisely the sort of 
 thing Jerome could never bring himself to say. His deepest 
 feelings where Helena was concerned were almost always 
 inarticulate. There were some things you couldn't say without 
 feeling a fool. This was one of them. They sat there quite 
 silent as the great moor unfolded itself and the sweeping clouds 
 rolled down to meet it. The wind, like organ music played on 
 the diapason stop, rushed on towards them; it echoed fiercely 
 among the leafless trees above them and pursued them with pas- 
 sionate entreaty. Fitful sunlight rolled over the black aspect 
 of the moor as the pearl-grey clouds rolled over the sky a 
 sad transitory smile on the face of winter. 
 
 This county of hers moved Helena to deep silences. She 
 knew no other and would not have compared it if she had, for 
 it had a beauty wild and untamable of its own, that had 
 got into her blood. Just to look at it was at times an ecstasy of 
 delight. Gertrude had been scornful of that profundity of feel- 
 ing Helena had for the moors. Away there in her elegant 
 Wimbledon villa, she did not miss them. When she wanted to 
 walk and it wasn't very often, for why walk when you had a 
 motor-car? there was always the Common. Helena was 
 grateful to Wimbledon Common, because on those occasions 
 when she stayed with Gertrude it had somewhat consoled her 
 for London's intolerable lack of background. On the Com- 
 mon a wind blew always; it had soft springy turf, and in the 
 summer and autumn the heather grew there in clumps. It was 
 true the Urban District Council forbade you to pick it, but the 
 main thing was that it grew. You could see it, walk on it, lie 
 down on it with a book. . . . That had amused Gertrude 
 that lying down on Wimbledon Common with a book. Ger- 
 trude had never felt the need to walk or run or lie on a moor. 
 A moor, to her, represented country and that Gertrude hated. 
 Helena had heard her grumble once because the Common cost 
 money: it made the rates so heavy. The moors you didn't have 
 to pay for. Gertrude granted them that much superiority over 
 the Common at Wimbledon. . . . 
 
 Presently the car slowed down over a difficult piece of road 
 and Helena began to put on her gloves. Her face was grave; 
 but there^was about her an ardent eager look that Jerome, 
 watching, found irresistible. Suddenly he put his arm round
 
 SHADOW 91 
 
 her and pulled her roughly up against him. For a second she 
 lay rigid in his arms, then her body relaxed her lips parted 
 as his met them. She shut her eyes as he kissed her. 
 
 Afterwards for just a second she wondered whether she hated 
 him because he had kissed her, or because he exhaled the scent 
 of stale tobacco. She sat up, straightening her hat. And pres- 
 ently she smiled a sweet fugitive smile that made Jerome 
 want to kiss her again. 
 
 " We're nearly there," she said. 
 
 Her tone was an even level: you would never have guessed 
 the leaping fury of excitement which was going on down there 
 beneath all that calm and quiet. Jerome didn't guess it, either. 
 He lit for himself another cigarette, with the air of a man for 
 whom life moves serenely in pleasant places. 
 
 Helena sat a little forward in her seat, watching the red roofs 
 of Haxby Wyke coming rapidly into sight. A sudden fleeting 
 shaft of sunlight lit them up and made them beautiful. The 
 bare shoulder of Haffington Ridge towered black above them 
 and the white coursing clouds rolled down to meet them. Je- 
 rome looked at his watch and crowed with delight because the 
 magnificent Fownes had done the journey in record time. The 
 car stopped and they stepped out. As Jerome lifted for her 
 the latch of the gate Helena heard him congratulating Fownes 
 on his achievement. She went on up the path to the house. 
 
 " My dear, how very charming you look." 
 
 Ursula, rustling up to the door, drew her inside and kissed 
 her. Helena did look charming. Excitement had deepened 
 her colour, her eyes were bright, and their blue had intensified 
 as it often did, till they looked black. The wind, through the 
 open window of Jerome's car, and under the spur of Fownes's 
 record driving, had beaten out her hair in short, gold-brown 
 tendrils round her face. There was a glow about her her 
 skin looked translucent, as if, this morning, a warm flame had 
 been kindled somewhere just behind it. 
 
 She stood there beside Ursula as Jerome came up and began 
 to speak of their journey. She moved a little away from the 
 big fire, for all the blood in her body was rushing to her face, 
 and she was hot. 
 
 Ursula was speaking. 
 
 " I am so sorry . . . Mr. Sargent asked me to make you his
 
 92 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 apologies that he will not be here to meet you. He went back 
 to town quite early yesterday morning." 
 
 As though you'd thrown a hood over it that bright glow went 
 out suddenly from Helena's face. She said nothing. 
 
 Jerome, getting out of his coat, spoke for them both. 
 
 " That commission he was telling me about, I expect. . . ." 
 
 A little ghost of hope showed faintly in Helena's eyes. The 
 commission would explain matters . . . put things right. But 
 Ursula, hideously truthful, did not allow her even that much 
 comfort. 
 
 " No, I don't think he had heard anything in regard to that. 
 It was, I'm afraid, rather a caprice. He's like that . . . you 
 never know. He comes when he likes, often very unexpectedly, 
 and he goes in just the same way." 
 
 " Oh the artistic temperament ! " Jerome was suitably 
 understanding. Ursula was very grateful to him: she had 
 really, this time, been rather annoyed with Hilary, too annoyed 
 to make the usual polite excuses. Even her threat of the truth 
 had been unavailing. She had never known him more deter- 
 mined. 
 
 " Yes ... he has rather a big streak, I'm afraid . . . it's 
 a bit difficult, sometimes, with other people." 
 
 Helena moved towards the fire, as if suddenly she had be- 
 come cold. 
 
 The high wind had dropped. The moor, as they rode home, 
 was very still. The outlines of the surrounding country were 
 blurred by a clinging diaphanous mist: you could not any 
 longer see the black shoulder of Haffington Ridge away there 
 over the top of the red roofs of the village. Night, silent 
 and immense, was creeping up on the heels of twilight. Long 
 dark shadows strode, brooding, over the moor, and through the 
 mist of sapphire a white moon showed wanly. Already on the 
 face of the moor there was the hint of mystery and terror 
 which comes with the dark. 
 
 Helena sat very still. She was tired: tired to death. In 
 mind and body she was suffering a hideous reaction from that 
 unreal, impossible, immediate past. No pulse of excitement 
 beat in her now; the spring had been wound too tight, had
 
 SHADOW 93 
 
 snapped. She had taken off her hat with its gorgeous feather, 
 and it rested now on her lap, her hands crossed idly beneath it. 
 Her face, as she leant back in her corner, was arrestingly white. 
 The night air came in at the window, and with a fierce gesture 
 swept her hair back from her white forehead. Every now and 
 then it blew across her face and into her eyes but she did not 
 raise her hand to brush it away. She looked as though she 
 were made of stone white stone, and terribly cold. But 
 when she spoke her voice was very soft and gentle, her manner 
 inexpressibly tender. Jerome, adoring these things, failed en- 
 tirely to catch the new note slight but unmistakable which 
 had crept into them. Already, if Jerome had but eyes to see, 
 there was in her attitude a hint of mingled pity and remorse 
 remorse because of herself, and pity for him because, in 
 thought at least, she had so soon and so easily betrayed him. 
 
 Like snow on the face of the desert her world of enchantment 
 had vanished suddenly and utterly: that white ghost hung aloft 
 in the mist was all that was left now of its pendent orange 
 moon. Motionless, she sat there staring at it, until presently 
 the sapphire deepened and shut even that out.
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 AFTER a week of brooding Helena Courtney faced the 
 truth about that broken illusion of hers realised with 
 a sort of sick desperation that it was one of the things 
 which had speedily to be forgotten, or if that were impossible, 
 that she must cease to remember that she had not forgotten. 
 Her dream and her awakening were thus far sacred that no 
 one knew of them but herself. 
 
 Jerome, manlike, attributed her moods and her silences to 
 the fact that she had no child. It never occurred to him to look 
 deeper, or to imagine there might be anything deeper; he had 
 forgotten, if indeed he had ever known, that he had married a 
 clever woman. It wasn't cleverness he looked for primarily 
 in a woman certainly not in the woman he had made his 
 wife. Of that one bitter-sweet week of dreaming he knew 
 nothing; nor of the pale sanctity with which for evermore it 
 must tinge life for Helena, He did not guess that there were 
 times even now when a poignant memory of that episode floated 
 down to her, redolent of rue and rosemary of all that you 
 lay tenderly across the sweet things of life that have died. It 
 seemed sometimes as if Love, though now he shrouded his face, 
 had not done with her yet that still he held for her wonderful 
 things in store. She had a wild, insane vision, pitifully brief, 
 of love that made the crooked paths straight, that demanded 
 nothing, that understood; and of a companionship that com- 
 pleted life, that was in itself a recognition of her full human 
 worth. For Helena still believed rather arrogantly, perhaps 
 in love. That she had missed it proved nothing. To the 
 other women who came and sat in her big mauve drawing- 
 room she was at all times an enigma. They knew no more 
 of her than she chose to reveal and that was not much. 
 But they served to Helena as a whetting-stone against which she 
 
 94
 
 SHADOW 95 
 
 sharpened continually that natural analytical faculty of hers, 
 resolving those " first Wednesdays " into a perpetual effort to 
 get at their souls, to tear down the conventional mask with 
 which they had grown accustomed to hide their real thoughts 
 and emotions. They let her see sometimes that in not having 
 a child she had missed something, and she grew occasionally 
 impatient with this insistence, male and female (or was it only 
 female because it was in the first place male?) upon the 
 strength and force of the maternal sense in women. It was a 
 virtue which, if they had not, they all hastened to assume. 
 Men liked women to like children, so when women didn't they 
 pretended they did. " You have to have children, my dear," 
 they said to her, " if you want to keep your husband's affec- 
 tion! " 
 
 Insensibly a sort of dull resentment grew up within Helena 
 Courtney. She had never had a chance : had never stood alone 
 and faced life, braced for battle. She had always been depen- 
 dent upon somebody else to put it truthfully, upon some 
 man. And nothing, somehow, made amends for that. Look- 
 ing back she saw that there had never really been anything 
 else at all on her horizon save marriage. That she could have 
 done other things didn't matter. " Oh, you're a girl, you'll get 
 married." It was just so her mother and father between them 
 had disposed of her " career," and her lack of it, she saw now, 
 had been Jerome's opportunity. She was suddenly aware that 
 she would never have married him had she been free, with a 
 profession in her hands that could earn for her independence 
 and a livelihood. Some women married for love and that, 
 perhaps, was different. But she hadn't. Respect and liking 
 were not enough. She was sure at least of that. So much that 
 one rapturous incident had taught her. Its recollection these 
 days complicated the issue. For, if once you had felt like that, 
 you didn't easily take second best. And that, she was coming to 
 believe, was what most women did. They liked the things they 
 were supposed to like. They were so ill-trained they probably 
 wouldn't have known, left to themselves, what they really did 
 want. They followed, the great bulk of them, the line of 
 least resistance. 
 
 If this theory which ruled the world were true, Helena 
 decided that she ought now to be completely obsessed with the
 
 96 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 idea of thwarted motherhood. And she wasn't. The maternal 
 instinct, if in her it existed at all, slept still. What, at this 
 time, she wanted above all things else was to be regarded 
 primarily as a human being as a creature possessing an in- 
 dividuality of her own, as undeniable as that of a man 
 utterly apart from that of husband or child. It was Jerome's 
 implied refusal to recognise this which irked her continually. 
 He thought of her just as everyone else had always done, simply 
 and solely as a woman. She didn't exist, except as a wife and 
 potential mother, and it seemed to Helena that there was rather 
 more of her, somehow, than that. It was a conviction which 
 rose steadily to an intense overwhelming passion of belief. . . . 
 
 What exactly it was that had induced her one day to look at 
 the advertisement columns of the Post or what had impelled her 
 to answer Emanuel Harvey's shorthand announcement she did 
 not know. Caprice, impulse, it might well have been either, 
 but more than all else, the art of writing shorthand according 
 to Pitman had suddenly presented itself as just one more thing 
 to do an opportunity for study and concentration, a subject 
 with which ( hideous phrase!) to "kill time." She began in 
 much the same spirit in which she had begun of late to practice 
 Chopin and Beethoven, because it required effort because it 
 didn't, on the face of it, look easy. She had discovered that 
 the thing which you did too easily didn't help. What she 
 wanted just then was to drudge with her brain, as she had 
 drudged with her fingers on the white keys of her Bech- 
 stein. . . . 
 
 Emanuel Harvey's fees, as it happened, were not high, and 
 had been paid quite easily out of her very generous dress al- 
 lowance. And though she did not take Jerome into her con- 
 fidence, at least, there, at the first, she had no ulterior motive 
 in mind. Perhaps she knew that Jerome would have been 
 amused. That was another queer thing they laughed, nearly 
 always, she and Jerome, at different things. The occurrence 
 that was tragic to Helena was not infrequently comic to Jerome, 
 and when she didn't laugh he was apt to say, " Where's your 
 sense of humour, my dear? " It was extraordinary how bit-
 
 SHADOW 97 
 
 terly she could resent that phrase! There were things in life 
 at which you simply dare not laugh. And men said " Where's 
 your sense of humour? " or " Do have a sense of proportion." 
 Hateful phrase that Helena came to loathe! 
 
 It was later, when she went down to Wimbledon to stay with 
 Gertrude and Edgar, that the ulterior motive crept up and 
 looked at her out of shy, glad eyes. ... It happened that 
 Edgar one evening had booked seats at a theatre where, amongst 
 other things, they played Barrie's Twelve Pound Look, and this 
 little play she had not known before gripped hold of her, 
 helped her to discern clearly that, to be free and independent, 
 you must have money enough money to keep you. If you 
 didn't happen to possess it you had to earn it, in some such way 
 as the girl in the play earned it if you couldn't think of a 
 better. 
 
 For the first time in her life Helena felt as that spiteful old 
 woman, her grandmother, had intended her to feel when she 
 cut her out of her will. The money now would have been so 
 useful. The thought went through Helena's mind that if 
 grandmamma Burke only knew what she was thinking she 
 would surely turn in her grave for joy. 
 
 When she got back to Yorkshire she began to save until she 
 had just fifty pounds locked away in a drawer. There were 
 times when she felt like a miser. Other times, too, when she 
 wondered if, ever, she would have the courage to run 
 away. . . . 
 
 3 
 
 But it never came to that because, suddenly, Opportunity 
 stood on her doorstep, bowing her out. . . . That was how she 
 put it to herself: what really happened was that business sud- 
 denly called Jerome away to New York and that Helena had 
 begged to be allowed to stay behind. Jerome had assumed, of 
 course, that she would accompany him, because, in his simple 
 philosophy, wives did. Besides, he thought the idea of travel 
 would have appealed to her. It might have done, of course, 
 but for these other ideas crowding it out. 
 
 It took her two whole days in which to work up her courage, 
 in which to clothe the scheme she had in mind decently in 
 words; and when she had done her best with it, it remained
 
 98 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 still most hideously and indecently naked. Nevertheless, on 
 that third morning she had managed to get it out. 
 
 It happened, of course, that Jerome was late that morning 
 for breakfast, so that instead of hurling her bomb and getting 
 it over, she had sat behind her silver coffee-pot and hoped 
 things wouldn't get cold her courage among them. (That 
 was her business in life seeing that things didn't get cold.) 
 
 Long afterwards she remembered that last morning in Sep- 
 tember, and the bright sunshine and sting in the air that had 
 come with it. In almost equal measure they had filtered into 
 Helena through the flung-back window. The room smelled of 
 autumn the pungent herbaceous perfume of chrysanthe- 
 mums and of all the other flowers that herald the approach 
 of winter. From where she sat Helena could see the quiet 
 leaf-strewn garden, beyond it the purple moor, and beyond that 
 again the morning mist on Haffington Ridge. Against the blue 
 of the sky the trees, tall and motionless, showed faint russet 
 and gold. Above them the white clouds drifted and drifted. 
 ... It was so still you could hear the coloured leaves dropping 
 among their already-fallen fellows, or a horse-chestnut hurtling 
 headlong to the ground. . . . 
 
 Presently the door had opened and Jerome appeared. 
 
 " Sorry," he said, and kissed her, as he had kissed her regu- 
 larly every morning of the past eleven months. " Your good 
 habits seem to react on me." Her " good habit " of early 
 rising, he meant, remembering that vague sense he had had 
 of her two hours ago moving softly about their common room. 
 Jerome did not rise early. He liked his world not only gar- 
 nished and swept before his descent upon it but thoroughly 
 aired as well. 
 
 Afterwards, she remembered how he looked as he lifted 
 the cover and inspected the bacon. And, too, she remem- 
 bered what he had said, though it was nothing that mattered. 
 " Been out? " 
 
 " Yes, as far as Elmtondale." 
 
 " Fresh, wasn't it? " 
 
 " It was, rather. I hope nothing's cold " (a variation, this, 
 on the usual phrase, " I'm afraid the bacon isn't very hot.") 
 She poured out coffee, punctiliously dropping three lumps of 
 sugar into Jerome's cup because Jerome always knew if you
 
 SHADOW 99 
 
 only put two. (Another of her " missions " in life remem- 
 bering how many lumps of sugar Jerome liked in his coffee, 
 and that he took none in his tea!) He tossed over now a dull 
 post, served out the excellently grilled bacon, hunched up his 
 shoulders at the wide-flung window, and the meal began. 
 
 Nothing was cold, it seemed, but Helena's courage that 
 had coagulated. It lay like a solid thing there in the pit of 
 her stomach and spoiled her appetite. A century seemed to 
 pass before she heard herself say: 
 
 " Jerome ... do you mind very much ... if I don't come 
 to America? " 
 
 She saw, before the words were out, that he had misunder- 
 stood that he supposed her to have some excellent (wom- 
 an's) reason for not wanting just then to leave home. 
 
 "No ... not that," she said quickly, and spurred on her 
 drooping courage. Above all things she did not, then, want 
 to remember that Jerome longed for a son. . . . 
 
 So, gradually, bit by bit, she got the truth out, contrived to 
 fling a few rags of clothing upon the stark figure of her astound- 
 ing proposition. Out came the facts the shorthand " facts " 
 of Emanuel Harvey's postal tuition, a passionate insistence on 
 the lack of that ulterior motive, and that astounding proposi- 
 tion of hers to go up to London to one of the commercial 
 schools there and finish her training whilst Jerome was in 
 America . . . 
 
 Jerome went through a week of argument, entreaty and 
 despair. He went to see Emanuel Harvey at his Halifax school 
 and discovered (the idiocy of it!) that Helena possessed the 
 "makings of an unusually good phonographer." He would 
 have been better pleased to have heard Emanuel Harvey pro- 
 nounce his wife a stenographic idiot. Once or twice his mind 
 played round the idea of coercion. Vague thoughts came to 
 him, floating chaotically about a word he had never dreamed 
 of before in connection with Helena, but, fortunately or un- 
 fortunately, he could well imagine the scorn on Helena's face 
 if he tried that line and he wouldn't like Helena to despise 
 him. But at the back of his mind he always hoped feebly,
 
 100 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 childishly that if he left it alone this wild cat scheme (to 
 the end he called it that) would peter out. . . . But it did noth- 
 ing of the sort, and a week later Helena was installed in a 
 boarding house in Bloomsbury, had entered her name on the 
 register of Gwynne's Commercial College in Finsbury Pave- 
 ment and Jerome was on his way to America. 
 
 However it was with Jerome, Helena found only one thing 
 wrong with her boarding-house it was much too comfortable. 
 Jerome, during that one week he had spent there with her, had 
 taken the largest available bedroom and had wondered why it 
 seemed to amuse her. But it reminded her, that great bed, of 
 the Dulac drawing (at least she thought it was by Dulac!) of 
 the fairy princess tossing wearily on the mountain of her 
 twenty mattresses and twenty eiderdowns, so very much a 
 princess that she could feel the pea beneath them all. But if 
 Jerome had read Andersen it was so long ago he had forgotten 
 all about it, and, entirely missing the joke, he had only insisted 
 sternly that she couldn't live in a bedroom and must have a 
 sitting-room. 
 
 " But surely there's a drawing-room," Helena had begun. 
 
 " Oh that a communal affair." 
 
 "But, Jerome, I don't want special favours. A business 
 girl, I'm sure, couldn't afford a private sitting-room." 
 
 " You aren't a business girl," Jerome had said. 
 
 " Not yet," Helena agreed. (For by this time it had come 
 to that. Not only the business school but the business office at 
 the end of it!) 
 
 Mrs. Bryan, the proprietress of Cowdray House, had pro- 
 duced a suitable sitting-room with the air of a conjurer pro- 
 ducing rabbits from a hat, and Helena had arrived at the 
 conclusion that Mrs. Bryan was not entirely unaffected by the 
 magnificent Fownes who had arrived each morning with the 
 grey car, and " shown them London." All things considered, 
 she was not sorry when she said good-bye to Jerome at the end 
 of the week. She was like that to the end quite hard and 
 untouched by any sense of the imminence of farewell even 
 when Jerome on Euston Station looked at her out of hungry
 
 SHADOW 101 
 
 eyes, and, with a knife turning and twisting in his heart, 
 implored her to give him another kiss. The things she had 
 thought of there on that dusty station, the things she had seen 
 and heard, were queeV, happy, impersonal things porters 
 passionately entreating passengers to take their seats: the 
 haste and clumsiness of the people who kissed and were kissed 
 (so many kisses, and with an amusing unanimity about them, 
 as though the porter's stentorian voice had wound up some 
 hidden machinery, compelling them to this queer osculatory 
 exhibition) ; and Fownes strolling past, magnificent in great 
 coat, touching his hat to Jerome who did not see him, and to 
 Helena who did. She had looked after him with her faint 
 crooked smile and had reflected that for just six months she 
 might relax. For just so long at least there would be no 
 Fownes to " live up to." 
 
 But Jerome saw nothing and nobody save Helena standing 
 there with her sweet oblique smile the Helena all the world 
 might know. And he saw that she wasn't going to miss him: 
 that his failure was worse than he had known even as bad as 
 all that. None of the keys he had tried had fitted. The inner 
 self he wanted to get at was locked away from him still, and 
 his stock of keys had run out. Something within him felt 
 jagged and torn. One queer detached part of him was angry; 
 resenting this thing that had happened to him, this avalanche 
 of feeling that had descended upon him. He did not want to 
 suffer. He wanted happiness. Happiness and Helena; but 
 Helena anyway the real Helena, the strange essential woman 
 hidden away there out of his reach. 
 
 Just one of the many points of interest a generous world had 
 given him so Helena had said of Jerome and his affection 
 for her. And she really did believe it. For so clever a girl 
 she could be at times incredibly stupid where this man she 
 had married was concerned. It was many months before she 
 began k> realise that her calculations had gone astray that, 
 somewhere, her neatly worked sum was " out." 
 
 Cowdray House was full, Helena discovered, of a good many 
 people who not only did not interest her but did not seem to
 
 102 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 interest each other, and one nice boy who interested everybody. 
 His name was Baxter James Hallford Baxter, though nobody 
 remembered that because " Jimmy " was so much more suit- 
 able and human. And Jimmy, as it happened, had fallen head 
 over heels in love with Helena on that very first evening when 
 she and Jerome had burst like an unbelievable vision into the 
 dull respectability of Mrs. Bryan's dining-room. But as Jimmy 
 was only just twenty-one this didn't matter because it gave 
 him plenty of time in which to get over it. Just at present, 
 however, Jimmy didn't want to " get over it " ; he was con- 
 tent just to sit opposite Helena at dinner and he contrived 
 to look as though he sat in heaven. He handed her what she 
 wanted at table, before she wanted it, and flew, a galvanised 
 Mercury, to open doors for her. After a while he manoeuvred 
 for a more intimate seat in heaven: sat not opposite Helena 
 but at her side and talked to her quite brightly of the drama. 
 Later he suggested that the drama was a subject they might 
 study together: he was in need, he told her, of an occasional 
 pleasant evening. Life was so " samey." (Really, life did 
 seem to bore Jimmy: he had so much money and so much 
 leisure, far more of both than was good for him, because 
 " reading for the Bar," if you have no more enthusiasm for it 
 than Jimmy had, takes up surprisingly little of either.) 
 
 But Helena was not in town for the purpose of providing 
 James Hallford Baxter with " pleasant evenings," and after a 
 little Jimmy gave it up. That is to say, althqugh he never 
 ceased to ask his question he did cease to expect Helena to say 
 " yes." His invitation became just part of the simple ritual of 
 Mrs. Bryan's quite excellent seven o'clock dinner. 
 
 At Gwynne's Commercial School in the City was a rigid 
 discipline that relaxed scarcely oftener than the moon is blue, 
 for to Henry Herbert Gwynne, its Principal, a school remained 
 a school whether you were sixteen or sixty. He said so con- 
 tinually. He also said that if you wanted to " slack " you 
 didn't (if you were wise) come to Gwynne's for the purpose. 
 Henry Herbert Gwynne ("H.H." as any day below stairs you 
 might hear impudent Sixteen, partly Jewish and partly Chris- 
 tian, refer to him) was an Irishman who hid a native dislike 
 of women under a grudging appreciation of their business 
 abilities. Now nearing his forty-fifth birthday, he could re-
 
 SHADOW 103 
 
 member the days when a woman in an office Was a rarity, but 
 even then he had cherished a conviction that the day was com- 
 ing when she" would be nothing of the sort. And to this intui- 
 tion Gwynne's Commercial College owed its existence. Like 
 most similar institutions (and it flourished) it was run on a 
 system of " results "; you realised that as soon as you entered 
 the classrooms, even if you had missed it as you turned over 
 the pages of the illustrated prospectus! From the first day 
 at Gwynne's you ceased to be an individual at all; you be- 
 came the living embodiment of a potential result! 
 
 Mr. Gwynne accepted Helena with alacrity because of her 
 " matric.," because of her obvious enthusiasm and because of 
 the really good " grounding " Emanuel Harvey had given her. 
 And Helena accepted Mr. Gwynne partly because she had, 
 on the whole, very little to do with him, and partly because 
 xwhen she did she found him amusing. Irritable men she had 
 met, but the man who flew into so bad a rage that he became 
 lyrical in his abuse of you, was a new type to her. Whilst 
 Sixteen, its insolence temporarily banished, paled and cowered 
 beneath the trenchant emphasis of an Irish brogue lashing its 
 stupidity and ignorance, Helena sat still and wondered why it 
 should be the Christian girls it reduced to tears whilst Miss 
 Levy upheld Miss Abrahams untiringly in a praiseworthy ef- 
 fort to show a united front to the worst onslaught of the Irish 
 temperament. 
 
 The only other male member of the staff with whom Helena 
 came into contact was a fair, ruddy-faced man from Angela's 
 county who despised the cockney trick of ignoring the letter 
 " r," and who loved shorthand almost as much as journalism 
 (which he practised in his spare time, what there was of it. 
 There couldn't, Helena felt, be much). Mr. Calderson ad- 
 mired Helena because she recognised an " r " when she saw 
 one, because she knew the meaning of words and could read 
 the shorthand she wrote (a rare accomplishment that) and 
 never wrote nonsense when she couldn't (a still rarer accom- 
 plishment). Helena found his jokes rather tiresome, but 
 rather imagined shorthand jokes were like that, because she 
 once came across another member of the staff who made them 
 too, and his were just the same. But Helena liked Mr. Cal- 
 derson because he was enthusiastic and honest and pains-
 
 104 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 taking, and if he did get irritable, at least it was not with her. 
 
 JNext door, in the typewriting room, was a little dark lady 
 (Miss Rollings by name) who controlled fifty typewriters 
 (and the young women who used them) ; who reduced type- 
 writing to a fine art and had written several " manuals " about 
 it. At Christmas she sent Helena a greeting card with a 
 railway train for decoration, all of which (steam and all) had 
 been produced by means of the typewriter. It was a worrying 
 sort of card to get for Christmas, because you had continually 
 to go back to it to try to find out how it was done, and " what " 
 had been used for " what." 
 
 But it wasn't only discipline and " results " and conscientious 
 tuition that Helena found at Gwynne's, but Evey Frampton. 
 And Evey was twenty-one and dark, with vivid colouring that 
 made her look like a Cardamine butterfly or some gorgeous 
 tropical flower. Evey loved shorthand and books and plays: 
 and fresh air, the physical exhilaration of walking, and cats 
 and dogs (dogs rather less than cats because they were a little 
 slavish, even the nicest of them. You couldn't deny it). 
 Most things and many people interested Evey, but not scenery 
 or relatives or musical comedies or classical concerts. Evey 
 fished for her taboos with a wide net. 
 
 But for Helena there was something else about Evey. It 
 wasn't only a similarity in impulse and outlook, nor that they 
 were both rebels, " candidates for truth," but that Evey had 
 succeeded in doing what Helena had failed to do. For two 
 years Evey had been engaged to be married and just one week 
 before the date announced for the ceremony she had broken 
 it off, not because there was " anything the matter with 
 Claude," but only that he was " the wrong man," which was 
 reason enough. 
 
 " You see," Evey said to Helena, " I was suddenly quite 
 certain that respect and admiration weren't sufficient. They're 
 not, for marriage, are they? " 
 
 " They're not," Helena said, " once you feel like that about 
 them. . . ." 
 
 Evey agreed with Helena, too, about the middle-aged 
 spinsters at Gwynne's. . . ,
 
 SHADOW 105 
 
 There were not very many of them and you were thankful 
 for that, not liking to be reminded by these relics of a bad old 
 system how very bad it was. It had given these women one 
 outlook only that of marriage and missing that they had 
 missed everything. Here, in November, nineteen-thirteen, 
 they believed that still, for they had been taught that a woman 
 unmarried was a woman incomplete, and however much she 
 might pretend to be happy everyone knew she was nothing of 
 the sort. 
 
 And they certainly weren't happy, poor dears. They 
 envied all that was bright and youthful in that busy bustling 
 commercial school envied Sixteen its lightness of heart, its 
 immunity from worries and problems, and the chances (they 
 thought of them as chiefly matrimonial) that lay before it. 
 These " odd women out " of an egregious system had -drifted 
 into the shorthand world as into a last forlorn hope. They 
 came, some of them, from good homes that had disappeared 
 with the death of the bread-winner, and their " protected " 
 women-folk were flung, hideously unprepared, into the vortex 
 of the money-earning world. They had tried " companioning " 
 and " mother's helping," and some of them had essayed to 
 run somebody's household or a shop of their own; but they 
 came now to Gwynne's in the city because it seemed that the 
 sun of the Pitmanites shone* ever so little brighter than their 
 own. 
 
 One and all they envied Helena the plain gold ring on her 
 finger, and wondered why she of all people should want to 
 learn shorthand. It was a subject which, for the most part, 
 they learnt rather painfully. It was years since they had been 
 to school. Since they were sixteen or seventeen their brains 
 had remained dormant, and were not now to be spurred into 
 quickness of movement. The points to which Sixteen jumped 
 in a trice they arrived at by a slow laborious process, extraor- 
 dinarily irritating to the Irishman at the head of affairs. 
 What they needed was encouragement, but encouragement was 
 hardly a commodity that went a-begging at Gwynne's save 
 in that form which urged you to think yourself a little stupider 
 than you really were. Praise, except of the very faintest 
 variety, was regarded at Gwynne's as little short of an inde-
 
 106 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 cency. You were never recommended for having done a thing 
 well, but only for having done it a little less ill than was 
 expected a policy which these " odd women out " quite 
 definitely resented en bloc. For they were tired of regarding 
 themselves as failures; so tired of it that sometimes they sought 
 little ways queer, left-handed little ways of rehabilitating 
 a bruised and battered self-esteem. That was why Miss Ben- 
 nett said to Helena one day: 
 
 " You learned shorthand before you came here, didn't you? " 
 
 As Miss Bennett said it, it was less an inquiry than an 
 accusation. The tone of her voice dared Helena to deny it. 
 But it would never have occurred to Helena to deny it. 
 
 " Oh yes, for a long while," she said. " I studied at home 
 and took lessons through the post." 
 
 "Through the post? Did you really? Now it never oc- 
 curred to me to do that." 
 
 Helena felt that it was just the sort of thing which wouldn't 
 occur to her. But she didn't know what to say. Miss Bennett 
 and her circle bristled so easily, for all the world like a little 
 group of hedgehogs. They wouldn't let you be friends with 
 them: resented you, somehow, in toto. 
 
 " I wouldn't stay here another five minutes," said Miss 
 Bennett one day to someone else, " if I wore that on my finger, 
 would you? " 
 
 " It may be necessary," said someone else. " It's one thing 
 to get a man, my dear quite another to keep him." 
 
 " That costume wasn't bought anywhere in London for 
 eight guineas," Miss Bennett said, " so it can't be that." 
 
 "And she's staying at Cowdray House in Bloomsbury 
 Square. I saw the address on a letter that fell out of her 
 Manual yesterday. And you don't stay at Cowdray House for 
 five shillings a week, my dear." 
 
 " Oh, what does it matter? " said another. " The first 
 bell's gone. Let's go up. I know those two youngsters will 
 get the seat nearest the fire, and my feet yesterday afternoon 
 were simply perished." 
 
 Still, as Evey said encouragingly to Helena, if there were 
 Miss Bennett and Company there had also been Florence 
 Nightingale. Evey was always having hopeful thoughts of 
 that kind.
 
 SHADOW 107 
 
 8 
 
 Helena and Evey did most things together these days took 
 to meeting each other for theatres, concerts (of the non- 
 classical " variety), walks and 'bus rides (for Helena had for- 
 gotten all about the grey car Jerome had left at a Bloomsbury 
 garage with a lot of orders as to what was to happen when 
 Helena wanted to use it. Because she never did). And once 
 she went down to Streatham to tea and met Evey's father and 
 mother, and a younger sister called Estelle, who converted 
 the Broadwood grand in the drawing-room into an instrument 
 that plucked out every emotion you had and piled them in a 
 desolate heap in front of you. 
 
 " Estelle," Evey told Helena, " loves to harrow people. I 
 just hate her playing it's too . . . too something . . . un- 
 restrained, p'raps that's the word. But everyone thinks it's 
 wonderful. Only father and mother don't want to believe it. 
 They think it would be very nice for Estelle to be a music 
 teacher if she cares about music as much as all that. But 
 that makes Estelle laugh all she wants to do is to go to 
 Leipsic to study. Mother hopes she'll fall in love and forget 
 all about it. Poor old Estelle! And poor old father and 
 mother, I suppose. It must be awful being a parent. You 
 do seem to have the most unaccountable children, don't you? " 
 
 That was a point of view Evey's father seemed to share. He 
 walked down to Streatham Common Station with Helena when 
 she left, and he talked to her, as they went, with a mixture of 
 affection and bewilderment that touched her, about his daugh- 
 ters. 
 
 "I can't understand," he said, "how I ever came to have 
 two girls like that. They don't seem to belong to me at all. I 
 can't understand it. Now, I know where I am with the boys." 
 
 Yes, poor dear, he would, thought Helena. He was such a 
 correct little man, so immaculately dressed, so desperately 
 middle-class to his very finger-tips. He was ready to play, 
 in excelsis, the affectionate generous father. (He could afford 
 to be generous: he was a silk merchant in the city, with a 
 thriving business.) He was ready to give these girls of his 
 whatever they wanted, and he found that one of them had never 
 wanted anything at all but a Broadwood piano and the other
 
 108 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 cared about nothing but a queer thing which she called her 
 independence. Helena thought, all the way to Victoria, of 
 that eminently correct little figure flying in pursuit of the 
 Eternal Feminine. Of the Eternal Feminine plus something 
 else that in one case people called " genius " and in the other 
 " discontent." Mr. Frampton, poor little man, was equally at 
 sea with either. And he reminded Helena quite ludicrously 
 of Jerome. They both wanted their women-folk to be happy, 
 and they couldn't for the life of them understand why they 
 couldn't be. . . . 
 
 9 
 
 Evey and Helena plodded steadily away at their stenographic 
 speed course, not altogether dissatisfied with their progress and 
 maintaining it at a rate that was happily more or less uniform. 
 They suffered together, and to about the same degree, the fever 
 of shorthand enthusiasm which descends some time or other 
 upon most carefully taught students of the Pitmanic system. 
 They dragged shorthand into all things, learned to " think in 
 shorthand," acquired the queer trick of making mental outlines 
 of the advertisements that stared at them from 'bus, tube and 
 train, and traced them, to much mystification of the travelling 
 public, upon book or paper with an energetic forefinger. They 
 made a simultaneous discovery that shorthand had got into 
 modern literature into the novels of Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett 
 and Mr. Oliver Onions. They laughed at Mr. Wells's idea that 
 shorthand could be written with a stylographic pen, and at Mr. 
 Bennett's notion that " capital punishment " was a " famous 
 grammalogue." 
 
 It really was extraordinary how adventurous and interesting 
 life had suddenly become for Helena. The twin arts and this 
 new surprising life of freedom had brought a deliciously 
 poignant happiness that ran through the days like magic. Her 
 letters to Jerome were full of it, though you would never have 
 guessed it from the replies which he sent her. Jerome had no 
 literary gift of expression and Helena could read just nothing 
 between the lines. She could yet work that neat sum of hers 
 without discovering any disturbing phenomenon in regard to 
 the addition of two and two. Quite sanely and sensibly they 
 seemed still to make four.
 
 SHADOW 109 
 
 When the school closed at Christmas Helena gave herself 
 about another month at the College in the New Year, and 
 began to measure her commercial chances. She wrote now 
 quite a creditable note at eighty words a minute, and even 
 allowing a broad margin for the Christmas holidays, she 
 counted upon a reliable speed of a hundred by the beginning 
 of February. A hundred words a minute, Mr. Gwynne pointed 
 out, was nothing to boast about; but he allowed it made a good 
 jumping-board and (not without some mixing of metaphors) 
 pointed encouragingly to the greater heights that might be 
 reached by the ladder of evening classes and the spring exam- 
 inations. Helena, buoyantly optimistic, booked herself for 
 both and continued steadily to" regard her New Year outlook. 
 Most of the beginners, who dived intrepidly from the spring- 
 board of one hundred words a minute, considered themselves 
 lucky, she knew, if rewarded with a weekly salary of a pound 
 or twenty-five shillings. But Helena, pitting twenty-three 
 against seventeen, and with her French and the " Open Sesame " 
 of her " matric.," courageously hoped to do a little better than 
 that. In any case, whatever it was, she was going to live on it 
 until Jerome came back. That seemed the one thing certain 
 in a world of uncertainties, and it bothered her a little, there- 
 fore, when Jerome sent her twenty pounds for a Christmas 
 present. Obviously Jerome did not take her seriously yet. 
 Perhaps, in that way, he never would. But Helena disposed 
 of his cheque as she had disposed of those others, signed and 
 blank, that he had left with her. She locked it away out of 
 sight and presently she contrived to forget all about it. 
 
 An unlimited supply of money belonged, as she frequently 
 took occasion to remind herself, to that one extremely pros- 
 perous year of her existence, and that already had slipped a 
 little into the background. Even as early as this, any other 
 life than the present one of effort and industry had about it 
 more than a suspicion of unreality. Only the moors remained 
 real, tugging at her heart. 
 
 10 
 
 That was why at Christmas she accepted Gertrude's invita- 
 tion to go down to Wimbledon. A common wasn't a moor but
 
 110 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 it was a good deal. For all that, the visit was not a success, 
 not only because her brother Ted was there with some new 
 words in his vocabulary, like " peach " and " ripper," which 
 Helena did not care about, but because a new unfamiliar at- 
 mosphere of politics had descended upon " The Laurels." 
 Edgar, it transpired, had been asked to stand as the Tory 
 candidate for East Rokesby when that seat fell vacant at the 
 end of May, and for some reason or other he seemed to think 
 that if he accepted (and you could see he meant to accept) it 
 would be a splendid idea if Helena took up her abode at " The 
 Laurels " and turned her excellent shorthand to his account. 
 Helena found both Edgar and his idea a trifle wearisome, be- 
 cause nothing would have induced her to say " yes," and Ed- 
 gar was essentially the tiresome sort of man who goes through 
 life believing that a woman really means " yes " when she 
 says "no." Helena had her own reasons for refusing: her 
 dislike of Edgar's politics, what she knew of them, for one 
 thing, and her recollection that only the day before Edgar 
 had made himself supremely ridiculous with a piece of mistle- 
 toe. Edgar was still very much the same person who had 
 tried, all those years ago, to kiss her on the dark turn of the 
 stairs. . . . 
 
 So disdaining his suggestion that she should keep her " short- 
 hand in the family," Helena went back to her commercial 
 school with a new burst of enthusiasm that was responsible 
 for the zeal with which, on the first day of the new term, she 
 ratified her decision to enter for the spring examinations and 
 arranged to attend two evening classes a week. She was hap- 
 pier, so she thought, than she had ever been in her life before. 
 And then, on that " first " afternoon, walking down with Evey 
 to her tram on the Embankment, something happened. . . . 
 
 The immense surprise of it caught at her breath like an east 
 wind. Her slow, comfortable stride stopped with a little jerk, 
 and then with a tremendous effort went on again. Evey had 
 noticed nothing, and if she had followed Helena's glance she 
 would have seen only a young man standing on a refuge in 
 the center of the road awaiting, not too patiently, the pleasure 
 of an uncertain tramcar. But Helena's glance a thing ut- 
 terly careless, alighting by the purest accident where it did 
 had already seen a good deal more thaa
 
 SHADOW 111 
 
 have told you that the young man was tall and slight, that he 
 wore a dark overcoat unfastened at the neck; that there was a 
 soft hat on his head, and a portfolio under his arm. It was 
 extraordinary, the comprehension of that glance of hers. 
 And the effect of it. It left her floundering in a sea of poignant 
 emotion above which the sapphire sky and its one white star 
 rose and fell madly together. Evey's voice reached her from 
 an immeasurable distance an absurd jumble of words from 
 another world. 
 
 "It's absurd, isn't it, to pretend that Claude was heart- 
 broken, because, you know, he's engaged again already." 
 
 The tram moved on. For one second it obliterated the young 
 man on the refuge; then Helena saw that he was crossing the 
 road . . . making straight for them . . . stepping on to the 
 kerb. Unheeding, he passed by on their left, almost touching 
 Evey's shoulder as he did so. Beneath the glare of a street 
 lamp, Helena caught a glimpse of a pale face, a red mouth, 
 and long straight lashes over eager grey eyes before the night 
 and the crowd swallowed him up. Suddenly the things Evey 
 was saying ceased to concern her in the least. Nothing con- 
 cerned her save this thing that had happened to her, and the 
 appalling knowledge that it could hurt like this after all 
 these months! 
 
 Presently Evey climbed on to her tram and Helena stood 
 there on the pavement looking up at her, without seeing her at 
 all. When the tram moved on she went and leaned her elbows 
 on the parapet of the Embankment and looked down into the 
 muddy waters of the Thames. But she saw them no more than 
 she had seen Evey and her tram. Something had wiped out 
 the Embankment; had flung her back precipitately into a dim, 
 unshuttered room that looked out on to a moor. And what she 
 saw now was a stormy sky up which there straggled a slim and 
 impudent moon a silver thread on a black gown. . . . 
 
 For the young man who had crossed the road was Hilary 
 Sargent.
 
 CHAPTER SIX 
 
 SHE saw him twice quite soon after that, and on neither 
 occasion did he see her. 
 Afterwards, at least, she was grateful for that. On 
 that second day, as she had walked home, Helena's proud 
 mouth had curved in disdain of herself, so hateful was it to be 
 reminded of that year-old blunder of hers. It took too much 
 out of her or out of her pride. It scarcely mattered which, 
 since the result was the same. Yet certainly it did seem to 
 be her pride which suffered most. She lashed herself with 
 scorn, hating herself because a man who had not wasted a 
 thought upon her should have this tremendous power over 
 her. For all her modernity that was some part, at least, of 
 the trouble with her. 
 
 But though she applied the lash, she winced under it. And 
 for that, too, she despised herself. 
 
 Happily there were other things to think about. It was 
 quite early in January when Mr. Gwynne sent her along to a 
 temporary situation in the office of a solicitor, where, for the 
 first time in her life, she came up against the anomaly of the 
 English Divorce Laws. It was queer, she used to think, that 
 divorce should be so difficult, but more queer than anything 
 else was the fact that it should be assumed that it must also be 
 disgusting. 
 
 Those three weeks for Helena were fevered with delight, with 
 one minute of positively delirious excitement on the Friday of 
 the first, when the office boy placed on her desk a sealed, 
 diminutive envelope inscribed with her name. The two gold 
 coins it contained she loved the sight of, because they gave her 
 a new value in her own eyes. They represented the first money 
 she had earned that she had received for services definitely 
 rendered. But it was not the money that mattered. Money 
 
 112
 
 SHADOW 113 
 
 never did matter, much, with Helena. Even now it was only a 
 symbol of the thing which really did matter the justification 
 of Helena Courtney by Helena Courtney. 
 
 There was, too, another thing. Her new work was a benevo- 
 lent germ a sort of phagocyte feeding on the germs of her 
 discontent and of her humiliation, so that the quiet happiness 
 of the past weeks came back to her. The analytical knife had 
 come to rest again. 
 
 Then at the close of her temporary engagement with Mr. 
 Ford, the solicitor, Jerome wrote that his return must be de- 
 layed. He would not be able, he was afraid, to get away until 
 the end of May: and he sounded annoyed. But Helena 
 scarcely noticed that: she noticed, these days, so little about 
 Jerome's letters, which were not particularly interesting. 
 Neither did she think over much about Jerome himself, so that 
 sometimes it almost looked as though the phagocyte had gone 
 too far and had eaten up Jerome as well. . . . 
 
 Back there at the Commercial College a week passed as others 
 had passed before it, save that Evey was away with influenza 
 and Miss Bennett had struggled up at last into the Speed Room. 
 Miss Bennett was a poor substitute for Evey, and Helena be- 
 came rather tired of answering her eternal questions as to the 
 ritual of life in an office. You could see she was scared at the 
 thought of it, that she hungered, and would hunger for ever, 
 after that comfortable existence in that vanished middle-class 
 home in the suburbs. 
 
 During Evey's absence Helena interviewed several business 
 men as prospective employers, who, one and all, declined her 
 services, and for the same reason. None of them cared to em- 
 ploy a married woman. Once, Miss Bennett obtained the 
 situation in her stead, and as they had both worked tests had 
 quite naturally concluded that hers was better than Helena's. 
 It was a triumph for which she had waited a long time; and 
 in the light of her delirious happiness, any masculine preju- 
 dice, however absurd (and Mr. Gwynne seemed to think it very 
 absurd indeed), was to Helena more than justified. It gave to 
 Miss Bennett, for just this once, something of all that it had
 
 114 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 snatched from her, and Helena did not begrudge her. For all 
 that, two days later when Mr. Gwynne sent her to interview 
 Mr. Smith, chief clerk to Wickham, Toole & Co., of London 
 Wall, she slipped her wedding-ring into her purse and did not 
 correct Messrs. Wickham & Toole's head clerk when he ad- 
 dressed her presently as " Miss Courtney." Mr. Smith en- 
 gaged her. Could she start the next morning? 
 
 So at ten o'clock on the following day Helena hung up her 
 hat and coat in the offices of Wickham, Toole & Co., Wool 
 Merchants, of London Wall. It was a Tuesday in the third 
 week of February, and outside there were racing clouds and 
 a mad wind. . . . 
 
 For a fortnight Helena worked at the side of Miss Carey, the 
 girl whose place she had been engaged to fill. Miss Carey was 
 leaving to be married to a bank clerk, and Helena's education 
 as to the financial status of bank clerks had been somewhat 
 extensive. Her mother had married her father, as a branch 
 manager, at a salary of two hundred and fifty pounds a year 
 and her mother, she knew, had considered herself miserably 
 poor. Miss Carey's fiance was not even a branch manager: 
 most probably, Helena reflected, he had had to wait until his 
 salary reached the matrimonial minimum that " inexcusable 
 outrage on the liberty of the subject," as her father called it. 
 Miss Carey, however, was entirely philosophic about these 
 things. She admitted that " Tom " was not well off. " But 
 then," she said, " bank clerks never are until they're middle- 
 aged, and if one waited for money one might wait for ever. 
 Money isn't everything, and you're only young once, after 
 all. An office is all very well, but you don't want to work in 
 it all your life, do you? " 
 
 Later Helena was introduced to " Tom " as " Mr. Wright." 
 He came to the office just before six, and he sat reading the 
 Star whilst Miss Carey cleared up and locked her desk. Helena 
 saw only a tall, plain young man, very neat and clean as to 
 collar and tie, and with neat patches on his brightly shined 
 boots. But then, Helena had not Miss Carey's eyes. Miss 
 Carey contrived to see a good deal more than that and, too, 
 a good deal less. It was quite possible, for instance, that she 
 didn't see the patched boots at all, or perhaps she didn't mind 
 them. But once Helena caught the lovers looking at each
 
 SHADOW 115 
 
 other. It was a glance which, if it knew anything at all of 
 neatly patched boots, took them in and annihilated them. " Of 
 course," thought Helena, " if they care like that," and she left 
 it at that. All the same, the ellipsis was comprehensive. It 
 took in the tiny house in North London and the drudgery of it 
 and Marion Carey's heavily mortgaged liberty. It took in, 
 too, the tone of her voice as she had said, "You can't have 
 everything, can you? " And it made Helena wistful, because 
 in the light of that one intercepted glance it did certainly 
 seem as if Miss Carey was going to get what she wanted most. 
 
 It was not until her last day at the office that Marion Carey 
 uttered her word of warning rather with an air, Helena 
 thought, of saying something she felt she ought to have said 
 before. 
 
 " Steer clear of Wickham," was what she said. " He's our 
 Managing Director and a beast. You understand? You 
 know the proverb? Forewarned is forearmed. There's some- 
 thing in it, too." 
 
 "I suppose there is," Helena said. But for just one second 
 that confident smile which Jerome had found so annoying sent 
 her red mouth aslant. And that meant as Jerome could 
 very well have told you that she was feeling more than a 
 match for a dozen Rupert Wickhams. 
 
 That was on the Saturday. On the Monday Helena entered 
 upon her full inheritance in her new post and Marion Carey 
 became Mrs. Thomas Wright. She and Helena never met 
 again, but on the Wednesday there came for Helena at the 
 office an inch of wedding cake in several inches of cardboard 
 box. Helena put it in her drawer and managed somehow to 
 forget all about it. When eventually she remembered it again 
 she found the mice had forestalled her: they had eaten not 
 only the inch of cake and two inches at least of the cardboard 
 box, but part of the little three-cornered card upon which Mrs. 
 Wright's maiden name had been neatly transfixed with an 
 arrow. Helena did not grudge the mice their meal, but they 
 prevented her for ever from learning the exact position of that 
 tiny house in North London.
 
 116 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 Quite uneventfully a week passed by. Helena had become 
 used to her work and was rapidly acquiring a steady confidence 
 in her own ability, very gratifying to her self-esteem. As Miss 
 Carey had been, she was the only woman on the staff, which 
 was a small one, and consisted, besides Smith, of Smith's two 
 subordinates and an office boy. Helena liked Smith. He lived 
 at Ealing and cultivated a garden. He talked to her at times 
 of this garden and, too, of his wife and baby, and she marvelled 
 at an enthusiasm that could be so blissfully impartial. Occa- 
 sionally he brought her a bunch of daffodils which he had 
 grown " under glass," and he explained that bringing them to 
 the office was " the wife's idea." " She would have me bring 
 them," he said. " Thought they'd liven the office up a bit." 
 You got the impression that Mrs. Smith's heart bled perpetually 
 for anyone who worked in an office. But Helena was glad to 
 have the daffodils. All day long they stood on the top of her 
 desk in their clumsy earthenware vessel and reminded her of 
 the spring that was coming. 
 
 Having consolidated her position and her thirty shillings 
 a week in the office of Wickham & Toole, Helena made her 
 first real declaration of independence by leaving Cowdray 
 House and taking a bed-sitting-room in Guilford Street. Cow- 
 dray House was not, so she had decided, within the capacity 
 of a business girl earning thirty shillings a week, and thirty 
 shillings was what, for the time being, she proposed to live 
 upon. Nothing would induce her to stay there at Cowdray 
 House until Jerome returned and collected her (like a bale of 
 goods) . For she was able still a little cold, a little, a very 
 little arrogant to move along the even tenor of her way, 
 ludicrously blind and deaf to the hurricane of feeling she had 
 aroused in Jerome: was still convinced that he had what he 
 wanted; that she and his work shared the honours between 
 them. Helena was young and her judgments had the touch of 
 austerity that belongs to the judgments of youth. She had 
 suffered as yet scarcely at all and then only in her pride. 
 She had not been touched as had Jerome to the quick. 
 The ice which, for one brief span, had begun to melt had 
 frozen over again. Down below the surface deep things might 
 stir and quiver, but they did not dare to raise their heads. 
 
 One person at Cowdray House was inconsolable at her
 
 SHADOW 117 
 
 imminent departure: and that person, of course, was Jimmy 
 Baxter. Jimmy mattered little to Helena. Nothing stirred 
 beneath the ice for him. Nevertheless, when he beseeched her 
 as a " farewell treat " to let him take her to a theatre, she sud- 
 denly relented and agreed. 
 
 "You will? Good egg!" Jimmy said. "What shall it 
 be?" 
 
 Helena looked at him and was suddenly sorry for him not 
 sorry enough to feel the pang of it herself, but, at any rate, 
 sorry enough to make her choose something that would not 
 bore Jimmy overmuch. "A Night with the Gods" she said, 
 mentioning a stubborn success now in its third year. Jimmy, 
 who had resigned himself to the Ibsen play then running, 
 was relieved, though he could have stood even Ibsen for Helena 
 Courtney. 
 
 Over the 'phone he secured stall seats and they got down to 
 the London rather early. The house rilled up rapidly. Five 
 minutes before the curtain was due to rise the stalls were full 
 save for a couple of seats three rows in front of Jimmy and 
 Helena. Over the house there ran a buzz of pleasurable an- 
 ticipation; the orchestra was playing the latest waltz, cloying 
 and seductive, and Helena was glancing at her programme 
 for about the fiftieth time when Jimmy suddenly exclaimed, 
 "Hallo, I know that chap!" 
 
 Helena looked up, and her eyes fell upon the figure of a 
 young man with a girl in blue moving to the two empty places 
 just below. The girl Helena had not seen before, but the man 
 no need to look twice the man was Hilary Sargent. 
 
 Helena was breathing deeply; but she had herself well in 
 hand. Even had Jimmy been looking at her he would not have 
 known she was excited. Her face was like a mask expres- 
 sionless. Jimmy wasn't clever: he would merely have thought 
 she was bored. 
 
 " Queer chap, Sargent," he was saying, " haven't seen him 
 for over two years: last ran across him in Paris. We were at 
 school together. He was my senior by four or five years, but 
 
 country used to stop 
 up there as a kid. Up your way, isn't it? Had some things
 
 118 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 in last year's shows. Seems to be getting on. Nice-looking 
 beggar, isn't he? " 
 
 Helena's answers were mechanical. She forced her voice to 
 a note of indifference and wished the curtain would go up 
 because that might stop Jimmy talking; his staccato matter- 
 of-fact sentences were beating against her brain with all the 
 force of a sledge-hammer. 
 
 "There was some tale, I remember, about his mother, 
 Mary Hilary, the actress. That's her portrait downstairs in 
 the vestibule: like her a bit, isn't he? I never knew the rights 
 of it, but some bounder at school began to talk about it and 
 there was a shindy. Someone had taught him to box, and after 
 the row he just let himself go. The joke of it was that he 
 hated fighting: you had to wind him up like that before he'd 
 move. I can tell you, the bounders. . . . Hallo, the curtain's 
 going up." 
 
 It went up on the hero of the farce in an ecstasy of drunk- 
 enness. Helena began to laugh, and Jimmy who did not know 
 it was the long arm of coincidence and not the farce which was 
 amusing her, had the second surprise of the evening. Because 
 it had not occurred to him that she was the sort of person who 
 would see the quite remarkable humour of insobriety. 
 
 At the end of the first act Sargent and his companion left 
 their seats to speak to some people sitting nearer the front. As 
 they stood they were on the extreme left of Jimmy and Helena, 
 and Helena, on Jimmy's right, was half-hidden by him as he 
 sat forward in his seat, as if trying to catch Sargent's eye. 
 " Do you mind if I have a word with him? " he asked, just as 
 Sargent turned, caught Jimmy's eye, raised a hand of recogni- 
 tion and came over towards him. 
 
 He had not yet seen Helena. 
 
 The passage of time that elapsed between his recognition of 
 Jimmy and the moment when he stood there at their side, 
 seemed to Helena like a century. She sat very still, looking 
 straight ahead, hearing above the violin strains of that sickly 
 waltz the deep painful beating of her own heart. And still 
 Hilary had not seen her. He was coming on, steering his way 
 carefully past the men and women who intervened between 
 him and Jimmy; and even right at the last it was only Jimmy 
 he saw not that straight figure in amethyst and silver sitting
 
 SHADOW 119 
 
 there, utterly quiet, on his right. And then Jimmy did it. He 
 said, " Let me introduce Mrs. Courtney." 
 
 Up came the traitorous colour to Helena's cheeks; by the 
 hugest effort in the world she turned her head, and for just an 
 instant they remained there looking into each other's eyes, and 
 though neither of them knew it, both were trembling. They 
 did not shake hands. They did not say they had met before. 
 They did not say anything. They were, both of them, beyond 
 words. The smile on Hilary's face had not so much disap- 
 peared as stiffened. He bowed. Helena bowed. And it was 
 over. Jimmy and Hilary drifted into their talk and Helena 
 sat there praying for the dark. 
 
 Before it came, Hilary addressed her once just before he 
 turned to go. And he had the courage to look her full in the 
 face. 
 
 " What do you think of the piece, Mrs. Courtney? " 
 
 And Helena said, " Oh, it's really very funny, isn't it? " 
 
 After all this time, that, when they met face to face, was all 
 they could find to say to each other. The banality of it was 
 almost unbelievable. 
 
 Unexpectedly the curtain went up on the second act. Mr. 
 Sargent went. In the sudden gloom Helena saw him groping 
 his way through the auditorium to his seat. On the stage the 
 hero, drunk no longer, was making violent love to another 
 man's wife, whose objection was not overpoweringly evident. 
 And that, too, appeared to strike Helena as extraordinarily 
 funny. Jimmy could not understand it. There was obviously 
 another Helena Courtney he did not know. He wondered, 
 poor boy, whether he liked it better or not so well, and he did 
 not know that when Helena was not laughing her face was 
 scornful and a little defiant, and that she was biting her lips 
 to keep them still. . . . 
 
 As they walked home beneath a starlit sky, with a southwest 
 wind, that smelt of rain, ruffling the deep waves of Helena's 
 gold-brown hair, Jimmy asked her if she had enjoyed her 
 evening. For all her merriment he could not help having 
 his doubts about it. 
 
 And Helena, dragging her wrap out of the hands of the wind, 
 had said, "Oh, yes. It's so much like life. Life's a farce, 
 don't you think, Jimmy? "
 
 120 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 Really, at that moment, that was exactly how life did look 
 to her. 
 
 4 
 
 Either it looked a little less like it during the next few days 
 or Helena had too many other things to think about to have 
 time for things abstract. For she and Evey were busy making 
 that bed-sitting-room in Guilford Street " possible," and it 
 took some doing. But Mrs. Rogers (Helena's landlady) was 
 amenable. She raised no objection to removing her curtains 
 and a stuffed fish, whose pitifully open mouth very nearly 
 convinced Helena it struggled yet for breath. She hoped Mrs. 
 Rogers was not hurt at its banishment, but it had to be. It was 
 Helena or the fish: they could not both live in that room. 
 So the fish was carried forth and Helena went out and bought 
 chintz curtains at Liberty's and an oriental coverlet with which 
 to convert her bed into a couch by day. A diligent search in 
 the shops of the Bloomsbury picture dealers resulted in the 
 purchase of sepia copies of Rossetti's " Beata Beatrix " and the 
 "Well-Beloved," and the "Aurora" of Burne- Jones. But 
 when she had them on the walls Helena longed, despairingly, 
 for some colour. She wanted, horribly, that little luminous 
 sketch of Haworth away there amid Jerome's heavy oils in her 
 mauve drawing-room. She wrestled with her mood for half the 
 evening, then went out and bought a copy of Greiffenhagen's 
 " Idyll," because its red sun and redder poppies answered 
 some urgent need of hers, and because, too, she loved the line 
 that the white arm of the shepherdess took. She bought also, 
 on this expedition, for seven-and-sixpence each, a small plaster 
 cast of Phryne and a head of Beethoven; and when she got 
 them all home she wondered if she had secured the right 
 things. The fear that she hadn't made her restless, and then 
 Evey came in and enthused over the whole effect. 
 
 " I'm so glad you've got the Greiffenhagen," she said. " It's 
 the first picture I ever really wanted to have. I've always 
 remembered the look of that arm. I love arms, don't you? " 
 
 So Helena was reassured. And, anyway, this room was her 
 own as no other room had ever been before, and she was very 
 happy in it. 
 
 Evey came often to share her evening meal, and stayed
 
 SHADOW 121 
 
 for " speed practice " when the table was cleared. Through 
 the early sweet spring evenings they " swotted " together at 
 this eternal shorthand of theirs, for Evey, too, was chasing the 
 speed certificate. Sometimes they were at it so late that Evey 
 would be forced to spend the night with Helena. They would 
 sit over the fire hi their dressing-gowns till midnight, and then 
 squeeze together into Helena's bed that, properly, was only 
 big enough for one. In the morning, wet or fine, Helena 
 would drag Evey out of bed at seven, fling open the windows 
 and walk her round the London streets while the room aired. 
 When they got back Mrs. Rogers would have a fire and their 
 breakfast ready; and presently they would walk down to the 
 City together, almost persuaded, with Browning, that it was the 
 best of all possible worlds, and convinced that youth and the 
 spring must carry all before them. For both were irresistible. 
 The days mellowed and grew longer. In Richmond Park 
 the little white flowers of the blackthorn were beginning to 
 show (only Helena and Evey were too busy to go and look at 
 them) ; and in the London streets women with tired eyes were 
 selling violets. 
 
 5 
 
 Easter, in nineteen-fourteen, fell in the second week of 
 April, and Evey and Helena went down into Surrey and spent 
 their four holiday-days amid the gold of the gorse, beneath a 
 windy, passionate sky. And across the land, stabbing its sweet- 
 ness, they heard all day the call of the cuckoo. 
 
 Even after that Helena went back to her office quite gladly, 
 because she was happy there, and two days later Rupert 
 Wickham suddenly made it impossible for her to stay any 
 longer. . . . 
 
 Afterwards she couldn't bear to remember it. Thoughts of 
 it pursued her, however, came to her in the night. It made her 
 sick to think of the abyss of passion she had stared down in 
 those few seconds he had held her in his arms and struggled to 
 kiss her. A wild beast of rage had swept down upon her: she 
 had fought tooth and nail: had realised, horridly, how people 
 must feel when they commit murder. But she had not been 
 frightened. It was a consolation to be able to remember that. 
 She had only been angry. Even though the whole staff had
 
 122 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 gone, though she was there alone with this unpleasant 
 beast; because you can't possibly be frightened when you are 
 as angry as all that. 
 
 The picture of it all remained with her for months. Smith's 
 daffodils lay prone on the floor: the earthen vessel which had 
 contained them lay there, too, split neatly in half. The water 
 had splashed the exquisite polish of Mr. Wickham's brown 
 boots and made a long, thin track to the window. Mr. Wick- 
 ham stood back against his desk whither she had managed at 
 last to fling him. Flushed and dishevelled he stood there ar- 
 ranging his collar, his long legs spanning the thin track of 
 water like some new, unpleasant Gulliver fording a Lillipu- 
 tian river. . . . 
 
 And with the picture there remained in her mind the sound of 
 running feet on the stairs without, and Smith's voice as he 
 tugged on the other side of the door Wickham had locked. It 
 said something about a forgotten overcoat and a key in the 
 pocket. . . . And then, Smith's look as he came in Smith 
 who had brought her the daffodils from his garden, who had 
 talked to her of his wife and baby. . . . 
 
 It was Smith, too, who laughed when she went running down 
 the stairs. . . . She knew his laugh when Wickham made a 
 joke. 
 
 6 
 
 She had no memories at all of what came after until she 
 found a seat (much later) on the Embankment and slipped into 
 it. She realised, then, that her head ached that it ached 
 dreadfully, so that she had to take off her hat because she sim- 
 ply couldn't bear it on. She sat there watching the steady, 
 stately procession of tramcars moving on across Westminster 
 Bridge. In front of her a river-sign advertising somebody's tea 
 and another advertising somebody else's whisky, tortured her 
 eye-sight. She wished vaguely that they might go out, or that 
 the hand controlling their colour-mechanism, for just once, 
 would blunder. Red, green, red, green ... as though there 
 were no other colours in the world. But presently even the 
 river-signs failed to disturb her. She was so glad to be still, so 
 glad to sit down. ... It was appalling to be as tired as this, 
 not to care whether you were ever going to be sufficiently rested
 
 SHADOW 123 
 
 to go home or not. Nothing mattered, or at least, nothing 
 would matter if only that throbbing pulse in her temples would 
 slow down and be still. And when it did she would get up 
 and go on. 
 
 7 
 
 Chance plays a queer game. . . . 
 
 Down there where the trams pull up beneath Waterloo Bridge 
 Hilary Sargent was saying good night to a friend. At a swing- 
 ing stride he came along presently in Helena's direction, his 
 hands in his pockets, his head thrown back and up, as if the 
 sensation of the evening air on his face delighted him. So still 
 Helena sat it was almost as if she knew he must come as if 
 she waited. Yet the truth was that she did not know that 
 she sat there thinking of just nothing at all. 
 
 A queer game. But sometimes, if you are clever enough, 
 you can follow the moves. You could have followed them 
 now. Hilary came on and Helena continued to sit there, very 
 still, for all the world as though she awaited him. And Chance 
 chalked her trick and waited too. 
 
 The next trick was Hilary's. He paused in his long comfort- 
 able stride and looked across at that quiet figure sitting slightly 
 huddled on a public seat on the Embankment. The harsh 
 glare of a street lamp fell full upon her lowered head, turning 
 her hair to fire. And it was her hair which pulled Hilary up. 
 On that shadowed thoroughfare it looked like something glow- 
 ing something that you might warm your hands at. No one, 
 least of all Hilary Sargent, could have missed it. But for a 
 moment he hesitated. Even with Chance playing heavily for 
 you there are things which seem impossible. This for Hilary 
 was one of them. His little diffident pause seemed to suggest 
 that there are some things, too, a man cannot fight against for 
 ever that Hilary, at least, could not any longer fight against 
 this. But as he hesitated she looked up and recognised him. 
 He saw the colour run swiftly up into her face and she smiled 
 in that slow, crooked way of hers ; the way he remembered 
 and loved. 
 
 " It's Fate, isn't it? " he said, sitting down at her side. 
 
 She shook her head as though she did not believe in Fate, 
 but she said nothing. She just sat there with the ghost of her
 
 124 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 wistful smile turning up one corner of her mouth, and the col- 
 our creeping like a tide up the dead whiteness of her face. 
 And in his heart he called her as he always had called her 
 Deirdre, Deirdre of the Sorrows. The old phrase darted 
 through his mind like the flash of a swallow's wing across the 
 blue of June, but he wished to-night that he had not remem- 
 bered it. He leaned towards her: his hand just touching her 
 coat sleeve. 
 
 " I've tried, haven't I, to avoid you? " he asked. 
 
 "You've always tried," she said. 
 
 "I know. That's why, this time, you've got to think it's 
 Fate. I don't see how you can possibly think it's anything 
 else." 
 
 She seemed to consider this. The faint smile came again. 
 
 " Fate didn't rate our intelligences very high, do you think, 
 when she ordained for us to meet at that idiotic farce? " 
 
 " Fate couldn't help that. She can only work with the ma- 
 terials given her. What took you to the farce, anyway? " 
 
 She laughed. " Jimmy," she said. 
 
 " And did you really think it funny? " 
 
 " Everything was funny that night," she said, " and we were 
 funnier than anything else." 
 
 They became, after that, quite silent, as if in some shy 
 subtle fashion each had become overwhelmingly conscious of 
 the nearness of the other. She did not tell him of the obscene 
 thing which had happened to her, of her hideous realisation 
 of woman as a creature who secures immunity from unpleasant 
 masculine attentions only at the hands of some other masculine 
 creature with a horsewhip in his hand, or by the knocking out 
 of two front teeth, which seemed to amount to the same thing. 
 It was as though she realised that there was going to be plenty 
 of time for them to tell each other things like that. But now 
 that they were so still they looked, both of them, a little weary. 
 Their intense calm stood revealed suddenly for the precarious 
 thing it was the calm of people who have ceased to struggle, 
 who, for just this once, have so far resigned themselves to the 
 tide as to float with it, and who have not realised as yet that the 
 tide may be stronger than they.
 
 BOOK III 
 STORM-WRACK
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 
 INDIRECTLY it was Hilary who found Helena new 
 work. . . . 
 Perhaps it had struck him, as it might strike most people, 
 that Helena in an office was rather an incongruity, but he had 
 no use at all for the idle man or woman, and was sufficiently 
 dissatisfied with the scheme of things to dislike profoundly the 
 parasitic woman of his own and Helena's class. 
 
 The memory he had carried of her in that big modern house 
 on the moors had contradicted for him continually his more 
 intimate reading of the essential woman that you could not, 
 anyhow, imprison in clothes and a house. Yet Hilary had 
 stuck to it obstinately that the " essential woman " he had 
 discerned across that stately luncheon table did really exist, 
 that she had merely strayed into this world of solidity and 
 comfort and, for the present, had lost her way. That was why 
 on that first evening she seemed to him incomparably finer as 
 she sat there discussing her plans with him discussing them 
 earnestly but quietly, even, he felt with certain reservations, 
 for neither of them as yet dared to be perfectly frank with each 
 other. He did not ask her what she was going to do when Je- 
 rome's American tour was ended, and she did not refer to it. 
 That was one of the " reservations," and to them, at present, 
 they paid, by instinct, a common unfaltering respect. 
 
 " I'll get hold of Nelly Kenyon," Hilary said. " I'll bring 
 her along here to lunch to-morrow. You'll like Nelly: every- 
 one does. And if she knows anybody who wants an amanuensis 
 you can go ahead at once." 
 
 And, as it happened, Nelly had known of someone. She 
 knew that the great Alexander Bletchington (editor of that pop- 
 ular weekly, the Britisher) had been recently deprived of the 
 services of a really excellent phonographer by the enchanter 
 whose wand is a wedding-ring. Mr. Bletchington's mortal 
 
 127
 
 128 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 enemy, you gathered from Nelly, was matrimony, and at the 
 moment it had left him in direst need of a shorthand-writer 
 who was reliable and discreet. Above all, discreet. Miss Ken- 
 yon looked at Helena, laughed a little and said, " I should 
 think you would suit Alexander admirably." 
 
 The little pause before the adverb was eloquent. Helena 
 blushed and began to protest a trifle feebly. She did not 
 want, she said, to suit Mr. Bletchington like that. 
 
 Nelly laughed again. " Oh, don't worry," she said. " It's 
 quite true most of the women Alexander Bletchington meets 
 seem to fall flat at his feet or hang themselves about his neck. 
 But when he does meet one who manages to preserve the per- 
 pendicular he appreciates her quite hugely. You see, my dear, 
 she usually writes better shorthand." 
 
 So the next morning Helena presented herself at the offices 
 of the Britisher, only to learn that its editor had not yet arrived. 
 She gathered from the extremely polite and energetic young 
 man who interviewed her that you stood as good a chance of 
 getting a quiet five minutes with the Archangel Gabriel as you 
 did of seeing Mr. Bletchington without an appointment. The 
 polite young man, however, was acquainted with Nelly Kenyon: 
 he gave Helena a test, congratulated her upon her shorthand 
 and engaged her services on Mr. Bletchington's behalf all well 
 within the space of a quarter of an hour. 
 
 "I'm a Pitmanite myself," he told Helena. " So's Mr. 
 Bletchington. Doesn't use it much, now, of course. Ah-h . . . 
 ever met Mr. Bletchington? P'raps you've heard him speak 
 in public? " 
 
 But Helena had not, and she felt from the young man's 
 manner that it was a reflection upon her whole existence 
 that she had not heard Mr. Bletchington speak in public. 
 
 *' Fine speaker born orator, born. . . . You must hear 
 him. Holds his audience spellbound. Ought to sit in Parlia- 
 ment. Make 'em sit up. . . . 'Strordnary man 'strordnary. 
 Ah-h. . . .Come along on Tuesday, can you? Monday's press 
 day. Better start Tuesday, eh? " 
 
 They shook hands cordially and cordially this affable young 
 man bowed her out. And on the Tuesday morning following 
 he ushered her into a long, well-furnished apartment with a 
 desk at the far end before which sat a short stout man in a dark-
 
 STORM-WRACK 129 
 
 grey suit doing three things at once talking to a tall flaxen 
 man at his elbow, reading a letter held up well before his eyes, 
 and carrying on a spasmodic conversation with someone on the 
 telephone. Helena and the affable young man, whose name she 
 had discovered was Vane (V-A-N-E. He had spelt it carefully, 
 as though people usually got it wrong and it annoyed him), 
 came to a simultaneous halt in the middle of the carpet until 
 the flaxen man disappeared, the telephone receiver snapped 
 back into position and the little fat man at the desk looked up. 
 As that appeared to be the signal for a general advance, Helena 
 and Mr. Vane walked up to the desk, and Mr. Vane began to 
 explain. 
 
 And Alexander Bletchington said, " Good morning, my dear. 
 Come and sit down beside me." 
 
 Helena sat down opposite, not beside, Mr. Bletchington, 
 and she tried not to notice the term of endearment. Mr. Bletch- 
 ington's desk was literally covered with papers: they sur- 
 rounded him, hemmed him in, looked as if at any moment they 
 might arise and smother him. Mr. Vane, rather red about the 
 face, but as urbane as ever, was explaining at great pains the 
 respective claims to attention of the various piles. 
 
 " This, sir, is copy a good deal of it marked ' Must.' You 
 won't forget to let Saunders have the apology par. we prom- 
 ised that clothing firm? That's important. Masters has sent 
 in his page 3 article, but we want some more ' Quips and 
 Queries ' pars. I've had the papers in the Latimer case looked 
 up. These are they, sir here on your right. Those people 
 at Leyton threaten an action. Bluff, of course: they haven't an 
 earthly. . . . Our par. was fair comment. I'll have the docu- 
 ments looked up for you. Ah-h. . . . P'raps you wouldn't 
 mind, Mrs. Courtney? Just a note Memo to Page. Please 
 let Mr. Bletchington have at once all the papers in connection 
 with our article ' Lingering Long at Leyton,' in last week's 
 issue. Type my initials on it and put it on Page's desk outside. 
 Anybody will show you. And underline ' at once.' That's im- 
 portant." 
 
 "That all, Vane? " Mr. Bletchington asked. " Well, give 
 me just five minutes, will you, there's a good chap. And, Vane 
 - I'm not supposed to be here. No matter who it is, I'm not 
 here."
 
 130 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 "Ah-h . . . very good," said Vane, and went out. 
 
 Mr. Bletchington went back to his letters. Getting tired 
 of reading over her note of Mr. Vane's "memo, to Page," 
 Helena's eyes wandered casually round the room that seemed 
 in strange contrast with its owner who sat turning over his 
 correspondence with a rather weary gesture as though it was 
 some sort of pudding that had to be stirred though his arm 
 ached. In this atmosphere of work the settee of dark-green 
 leather had an appearance of oddity, even though it was pushed 
 right back against the wall and had been made a temporary re- 
 ceptacle for the Post Office Directory and other official-looking 
 volumes. Even the two arm-chairs that matched it, and the 
 third that didn't, were so deep and capacious that it was almost 
 as if they gaped with the boredom of their own untroubled, 
 incongruous existence. None of them even looked as though 
 they ever expected to be sat on, as though they quite understood 
 that they were there not for use but for the look of the thing. 
 Only the table that ran down the centre of the room seemed 
 to belong to it. Two rows of chairs were pushed up in friendly 
 fashion closely against its sides, and ink-bottles and pen-trays 
 set out at regular distances upon its highly polished surface. 
 It stood secure in the knowledge of its own importance, breath- 
 ing forth an odour of Committees and Board Meetings, a posi- 
 tive old dog of a table that could have told you more than a 
 thing or two about human nature and its weaknesses. Facing 
 Helena, on Mr. Bletchington's mantelpiece, was a framed repro- 
 duction of the Britisher's well-known cover, two cartoons (also 
 framed) that were tantalising because she could not get near 
 enough to see what they were about, and a coloured print of 
 Napoleon's apothegm, Good God, how rare men are! But that, 
 for some reason or other, nearly made her laugh. She wished 
 Mr. Bletchington would begin. He sat there frowning over his 
 letters, every now and then transferring to his waistcoat pocket 
 the stamp which some of his correspondents, in the hope of a 
 reply, had thoughtfully affixed to their communications. The 
 action, though mechanical, was careful carried through with 
 a nice precision of first finger and thumb very fascinating to 
 watch. The minutes passed and just as she was beginning to 
 gape with the furniture Mr. Bletchington plunged suddenly 
 into the heart of his dictation.
 
 STORM-WRACK 131 
 
 His voice was surprisingly low and musical. For the most 
 part he knew what he wanted to say and said it with the min- 
 imum of words. He did not seem to feel the need of walking 
 about and kicking down the fire-arms, as Helena's solicitor-em- 
 ployer had been apt to do, nor grow irritable as had Mr. Smith 
 over the incorrigible elusiveness of the English language. Mr. 
 Bletchington went straight ahead, his mind very plainly on the 
 business in hand, and even when he interrupted himself to say, 
 " I hope I don't go too fast for you, my dear," it was not in 
 the least as Rupert Wickham had been used to ask the same 
 thing. To Mr. Bletchington, at the moment, Helena was just a 
 machine, into which he might pour his thoughts, in the sure 
 and certain hope that she would presently pour them out again, 
 quite neatly and correctly, for him to sign. Every now and 
 then, however, he coughed candidly across the table or vehe- 
 mently cleared his throat mannerisms which Helena found 
 almost as trying as the perambulations of the solicitor or the 
 pleasantries of Rupert Wickham. 
 
 The dictation went on for close upon an hour, and when it 
 ended Mr. Bletchington looked at Helena with fatherly solici- 
 tude over the rim of his spectacles, as though he hoped it had 
 in no way inconvenienced her. He was a fat, tubby little man, 
 with thin hair, just touched with grey, which he had ruffled 
 during the tussle with his overwhelming mass of correspond- 
 ence. His face was pale, clean-shaven and coarse-skinned ; his 
 mouth, for all its downward droop, managed in some queer 
 fashion to suggest good-nature and an equable temper (he had 
 both, Helena discovered later) but the name of his chins was 
 legion. 
 
 " Thank you, my dear," he said to Helena, and his eyes 
 searched her face. But they learned nothing from that except 
 as others had done that Helena looked charming when she 
 blushed. Mr. Bletchington was hardly the man to miss a fact 
 of that sort. 
 
 "What a business-like little person you are, my dear! " he 
 said to her, as she collected her papers and prepared to depart. 
 (Nobody but Mr. Bletchington would have called Helena " lit- 
 tle.") " But I am here to be business-like," she said, and Mr. 
 Bletchington smiled. " So you are, my dear, so you are. 
 Send Vane in to me, there's a good girl."
 
 132 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 He really couldn't help it: it was constitutionally impossible 
 for him to address a woman without some term of endearment. 
 In time Helena got used to it, because his attitude remained 
 exactly what it was that first day benevolent, fatherly, oddly 
 familiar and yet always kindly and considerate. She was never 
 able to dislike him, though (hating all he stood for) she tried 
 later on more than once. There, he was like Helena herself: 
 in some subtle fashion he disarmed you, robbed you of your 
 hostility. Though you might hate the things he did, the things 
 he said, the things he was always going to do and to say, you 
 couldn't hate him. , 
 
 It was ten days after Helena's initiation into the mysteries 
 of the Britisher post that she heard of Jerome's motor accident. 
 
 That she heard it even now, at this belated hour, she owed to 
 Jerome's sister, Angela Richardson-Courtney, who, on a visit 
 to town had called at Cowdray House and had been sent on to 
 Guilford Street. Helena found her waiting when she came in 
 from the office (late, because she had been having tea with 
 Hilary). Scented and powdered, in her elegant clothes, there 
 was about Angela an almost overpowering sense of incongruity. 
 She was like an orchid blooming in a vegetable garden. More- 
 over she was very bored with Helena's room. Nothing in it 
 interested her : not the books, not the pictures certainly, for she 
 disliked Rossetti's women and thought Burne-Jones's insipid, 
 besides being scraggy and anaemic. Also, she was at the dis- 
 advantage of not knowing what they meant if they meant 
 anything, which she doubted. She understood the Greiffen- 
 hagen better, but wondered why Helena, of all people, should 
 have it. It surprised her as Helena's poetry-reading had, years 
 ago, surprised her mother. 
 
 Afterwards Helena wondered if Angela's visit was dictated 
 by curiosity as to the whereabouts of Guilford Street and what 
 it was like (after all, one had heard of Bloomsbury Square) or 
 whether she really did think it was time Helena heard of that 
 two-months-old accident of Jerome's. At any rate, she was in 
 no hurry to impart her information, but listened quite calmly 
 to Helena's account (which could no longer be avoided) of her
 
 STORM-WRACK 133 
 
 incursion into the ranks of business women. Even when Hel- 
 ena got as far as Mr. Bletchington Angela did not scream, 
 though everything about her stiffened even her finely pen- 
 cilled eyebrows. Helena could stand that, although she did 
 wonder how Angela did it. Neither did she mind what Angela 
 had to say, vaguely, about " morals," because she knew that 
 when Angela applied the word " morals " to men she meant 
 " women," and when she applied it to women she meant 
 " men." Angela was like that, so that " morals " became a 
 dull subject, because Helena wasn't. . . . 
 
 It was right at the end of these things that Angela had shot 
 her bolt. " You know, of course," she said, " that they won't 
 let Jerome come back at the end of May? " 
 
 When Angela had finished the tale of the accident (which 
 included details about the egregious Fownes who, of course, 
 had escaped without a scratch, and details about Jerome's 
 insistence that she was not to be told) Helena was frightened. 
 Not for herself but for Jerome. It was outrageous, somehow, 
 that she didn't care more that her chief sensation should be 
 one of irritation because Jerome had kept her in the dark 
 treated her like a child who must be shielded, saved from the 
 truth. She ought to care more and differently because 
 Jerome might have been killed. Something wild and scared 
 rose up in her at the thought, something ugly and ghastly that 
 had to be slain, there on the instant, before she could listen, 
 properly, to what Angela was saying. She felt cold, as though 
 the wind had shifted suddenly to the east. 
 
 Later, when Angela had gone the thought stayed. It was 
 still there when Mrs. Rogers brought in her dinner, and it had 
 not gone when Evey arrived, looking like some gorgeous trop- 
 ical flower and infinitely reproachful. 
 
 " I came up twice last week and both times you were out," 
 she said. 
 
 Helena did not look at her. 
 
 " I'm sorry, dear. You chose the wrong evenings. I went 
 to the theatre."
 
 134 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 " Then I think you might have asked me." 
 
 " I went with a friend." 
 
 " With the same friend both times? In one week? " 
 
 ** I'm afraid so, Evey, dear." 
 
 " I'm jealous." 
 
 " Dear, there's no need." 
 
 " Male or female? " 
 
 Helena was suddenly absorbed in her dinner. 
 
 " Male ! " said Evey, watching the colour come up into 
 Helena's cheeks. "You're not going to keep it up, are you, 
 Lena? " 
 
 "Keep what up?" 
 
 " I mean, there isn't always going to be someone else now, 
 like this, is there? Will you come to Richmond with me on 
 Saturday? " 
 
 " I've promised to lunch with my sister-in-law." 
 
 " Oh ... I forgot. I have to reckon with these grand 
 relations of yours, have I, as well? " 
 
 ** Relations-in-law," Helena said. "They don't count, do 
 they? " 
 
 " If they are as grand as all that they do. But even at the 
 Ritz or the Carlton or wherever you're going you don't 
 take quite all the afternoon over your lunch, do you? Can't 
 you manage tea somewhere, Lena? " 
 
 Helena hesitated. 
 
 "All right," said Evey. "I understand. That's booked, 
 too." 
 
 Her eyes were on Helena's face. She had never seen 
 Helena with this rare glow about her. "What have you done 
 to yourself? " she asked. " You look I don't know how to 
 put it as if someone had lighted you up inside." 
 
 Helena laughed, a little uneasily. " It's because I'm hot," 
 she said. " I walked down from the office and the sun was in 
 my face the whole way." 
 
 Evey said, " Rubbish. That isn't the reason. You don't 
 look hot. If I can't have Saturday will you come for a walk 
 with me this evening? " 
 
 The examinations were over. It would not be Pitman who 
 would monopolise the sweet summer evenings as he had monop- 
 olised those of the spring. . . .
 
 STORM-WRACK 135 
 
 " Of course. I'd love a walk." 
 
 " Then hurry up and finish eating," Evey said. " It's after 
 seven already." She got up and came round to the back of 
 Helena's chair. "And you'll tell me, won't you, all about 
 this horrid male creature who's come between us? " 
 
 " He hasn't come between us, Evey. No one will ever do 
 that." 
 
 "Of course he has. Don't try to be nice about it, Lena. 
 There are two male creatures in the way the new one and 
 your husband. Only he, somehow, hasn't mattered. But I'm 
 not a vampire. I know I can't have you altogether to myself, 
 however much I might like it." 
 
 " Evey, you're rather a dear." 
 
 " I know," said Evey. " Who is he, this horrid male? Do 
 tell me all about him." 
 
 " Really, dear, there's nothing to tell. It's someone I knew 
 in Yorkshire a long time ago. I met him recently quite acci- 
 dentally here in London." 
 
 " But there must be a lot more than that." 
 
 " There isn't, really." 
 
 She meant there was nothing to tell nothing she could 
 possibly tell. Evey shrugged her shoulders, moved away and 
 began to dip into Helena's books. She came first of all upon 
 the little pile Mrs. Rogers had cleared from the table when 
 she brought in Helena's dinner. They had bored Angela an 
 hour ago to distraction. Even Evey wrinkled her brows at 
 them: Women in Political Evolution by Joseph McCabe, The 
 Origins of Religion by Andrew Lang, and two others by a man 
 neither Evey nor Angela had heard of before. They were 
 Morocco in Diplomacy and Red Rubber by E. D. Morel. It 
 was these that Evey held up to Helena. 
 
 " I say . . . whoever put you on to these? " she asked. " I 
 didn't know you went in for politics." 
 
 " Why not? " Helena said, " don't we want a vote? " 
 
 But Evey's eyes were sharper than Angela's and she saw what 
 that lady had missed. Inside the cover of each of the vol- 
 umes, in the top left-hand corner, was a name written in correct 
 but untidy shorthand, and Evey, of course, could read short- 
 hand. She read this signa*ure quite easily. It was " Hilary 
 Sturge Sargent."
 
 136 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 " I like your friend's name," she said over her shoulder to 
 Helena, " but he doesn't write very good shorthand, does he? " 
 
 That was on the Thursday. On the Saturday following 
 Helena went to Richmond with Hilary. That was why she 
 couldn't meet Evey, as Evey, of course, had guessed. The 
 lunch with Angela did not count. . . . 
 
 Hilary was waiting when Helena reached the Bureau de 
 Change at Charing Cross, although she had left Angela in her 
 Metropole splendour in such good time that she arrived wholly 
 five minutes before the appointed hour. Her heart, when she 
 saw him, gave a great bound, because everything about him 
 not merely his face seemed to express his joy in the sight of 
 her. All the world could see, and all the world must not. . . . 
 They waited in a delicious, delicate excitement for a 33 'bus, 
 and when it came, rode on the top front seat all the way to 
 Richmond. 
 
 The world that afternoon seemed very young and fresh, its 
 blue and green splashed into delicate beauty by the mauve of 
 lilac and the pale gold of laburnum. In the London parks the 
 children were playing: from the flower-sellers' baskets in the 
 streets below narcissi and daffodils urged you to buy them be- 
 cause they would soon be gone, an appeal charged heavily with 
 the tender sadness that is the note of all beautiful things that 
 cannot stay. Overhead white clouds drifted idly across a sky 
 of azure, towards which the London trees stretched eager arms 
 like Pagan priests at their invocations. In the old gardens 
 at Richmond the red and white of the fruit trees dotted all the 
 land: across the broad sweep of the park the warm breezes 
 raced and the cuckoo went calling. 
 
 It was of these things Helena thought when the day was 
 done. And of one thing else that Hilary had called her 
 Deirdre and that she had rebuked him because Deirdre had 
 brought sorrow to all the people she loved. That was the 
 phrase she used because that was how she thought of it, 
 but when it was out she had blushed because of the terrible 
 sweetness of the word, because of the look on Hilary's face and 
 because of the terrible sweetness of that. . . ,
 
 STORM-WRACK 137 
 
 It was a perfectly glorious afternoon, so glorious that they 
 must not, they decided, have another like it. That was the 
 thought that occurred to both of them, and though every now 
 and then it twisted about, changed its form or clothed itself 
 differently, it remained substantially the same thought. But for 
 all that Hilary went home to his Saturday evening gathering of 
 friends (who came whether or not he was there to receive them) 
 feeling hot and bitter and resentful, and, right at the end, very 
 tired and flat. Standing there on his doorstep, fitting his key in 
 the lock, he wanted Helena so badly that he wondered in a sort 
 of shivering apprehension how he was going to exist without 
 her. The front door closed with a bang behind him, and a min- 
 ute later his Crowd absorbed him, just when the Crowd had 
 given him up. 
 
 In Guilford Street Helena, too, was feeling tired and flat, 
 and was glad when the postman came and brought her a letter, 
 though it was from Lucy and was not in the very least interest- 
 ing. It reproached Helena for not having been to Putney for 
 so long and suggested tea on the morrow. And Helena, who 
 was tired of that twisting, stabbing thought, decided that she 
 would go, because in that sugary little house at Putney there 
 would be no room for the thought and no room, either, for 
 Hilary Sargent. She smiled at that a smile that began 
 bravely and twisted awry midway and tearing Lucy's letter 
 across, she threw it suddenly on to the fire. Lucy wrote the 
 kind of letters you could do that with. They had no soul. It 
 didn't hurt you, somehow, to watch them burn. 
 
 At Putney, however, Helena had something more than tea. 
 She had a brief vision of the strength of the conventions she 
 and Hilary had defied for a fortnight between them and a long 
 sermon from her brother-in-law who, with Lucy, had been at 
 Richmond the previous afternoon and had seen them together. 
 John had been very trying at supper in his assumptions, de- 
 ductions and platitudes, but Lucy had tried hard, beneath 
 John's eagle eye, to be as broad-minded as possible about 
 things. 
 
 "I thought your friend very nice-looking yesterday," she
 
 138 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 said to Helena, who was pleased because she could laugh at 
 Lucy's way of putting it. " Oh, you needn't limit it to yester- 
 day," she said, " he usually looks rather like that, you know." 
 But while John talked and Lucy tried to tone down what he 
 said, Helena realised that, at bottom, she did not care in the 
 least what John or Lucy or anybody else thought or said of 
 her. Nothing like that would influence her when the time 
 came. And perhaps it would come. . . . 
 
 It was of quite other things she thought on the way home 
 up there on the top of her 'bus of Lucy's tired face and fad- 
 ing prettiness (Lucy, who was not yet twenty-two ! ) ; of her 
 continual efforts to keep the children from disturbing their 
 father, and of John himself and his fiddling complaints at 
 supper about things that didn't matter in the least. . . . Some- 
 how, a little vinegar was getting mixed with the sugar of that 
 little Putney household, and Helena liked it even less that way. 
 Marriage did not give people beauty or understanding, and she 
 felt it ought that the best sort of marriage did. And Helena 
 sighed, because the night was large and peaceful and people's 
 lives were narrow and circumspect, a little mean and ugly. . . .
 
 CHAPTER TWO 
 
 NOT once during the ensuing week did Helena and Hilary 
 meet: nor did they write. It was as though that per- 
 sistent thought of Saturday had dropped between them 
 like a curtain. But Helena, at least, went serenely on her way, 
 vaguely pleased at her own inward calm, as though she knew 
 that presently the curtain would lift. 
 
 Meantime, as far as she was concerned, there was a slack 
 time at the Britisher office, for Mr. Bletchington was swept from 
 one race-course to another by the impetus of the Spring Races. 
 Mr. Bletchington was a "sportsman": the man in the street 
 said of him that he loved the " gee-gees," and applauded him to 
 the echo when he asserted that every man ought to be allowed 
 his bottle of Bass and his shilling on a horse. That was a 
 " stunt " which accounted as Helena speedily realised, for a 
 good third of the Britisher's circulation. The Englishman is a 
 liberty-loving creature, and this, certainly, was a declaration 
 that sounded perilously like liberty. Mr. Bletchington was out 
 to let the working-man have his innocent amusement because 
 it was easy and cost him personally just nothing at all. And 
 even if the man in the street lost his shilling (which, maybe, 
 he could ill afford to do) still he had the pleasure of seeing Mr. 
 Bletchington in the Grand Stand, talking to a lot of people 
 more or less in the public eye, and he had the gratification of 
 saying to the man with whom he rubbed shoulders, " Do you 
 know who that is? That's Bletchington. He's a jolly good 
 fellow, he is. Clever chap, too. Ought to be Prime Minister 
 of England." 
 
 A new note crept into the Britisher post during that week of 
 the Spring Races, and on Mr. Bletchington's return Helena pre- 
 sented him with two neat piles of letters which dealt exclusively 
 with the races: and he had looked at her rather whimsically 
 over the top of his spectacles as she explained. 
 
 139
 
 140 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 " Here are fifty-nine letters from people who recognised you 
 at Manchester yesterday, Mr. Bletchington, and these are from 
 sixty-one people who think your horse should have won." 
 
 And Mr. Bletchington said, " So it ought. Did they back 
 it?" 
 
 " Yes that's why they've written." 
 
 Mr. Bletchington took a short way with the fifty-nine and the 
 sixty-one. He lumped them together and replied to them 
 brightly in the Correspondence Columns. " F.A.B., C.E.V., 
 and over a hundred others, etc., etc." Helena typed the para- 
 graph and marked it " Must," which meant that on no account 
 must the printer crowd it out and deprive the hundred and 
 twenty men in the street of the reward of their zeal. 
 
 That type of letter Helena found amusing: but certainly that 
 was not the word to apply to the bulk of the correspondence 
 which found its way to the Britisher office. Mr. Bletchington's 
 editorial post revealed, day by day, to Helena not a little of the 
 sordid side of life. In a very definite way it educated her, just 
 as those three weeks in the lawyer's office had done: confirmed 
 her impression that for all its surface jollity and beauty, life, 
 deep down, for thousands upon thousands of people was a 
 hideous business that you simply dare not think too much 
 about. What they all wanted, what they all asked for, was " re- 
 lief." Not justice: not what the world owed them: not what 
 they should have claimed, boldly, as their birthright. For the 
 poor do not fight; they are too occupied in eking out a miser- 
 able existence, in making " both ends meet," in keeping body 
 and soul together. They hold out their hands for the world's 
 " leavings " for some scrap of its superfluous cash and are 
 quiet again if they get it. 
 
 Not all the Britisher's correspondents, however, wrote from 
 the pit. Some sat precariously on the edge; some had never 
 been in it, and some seemed not to know there was any pit at all. 
 Helena's mind, when for two hours each morning she sat read- 
 ing Mr. Bletchington's editorial post, was capable of two emo- 
 tions only the one pity, the other contempt. Pity for the 
 wretched and contempt for a world which suffered them, which 
 scarcely knew they existed, which held that poverty was a 
 crime, an unpleasant thing it was determined at all cost not 
 to think about.
 
 STORM-WRACK 141 
 
 Mr. Bletchington's correspondence revealed one thing else 
 the way the writers of it regarded Mr. Bletchington himself. 
 In the public mind he stood for the typical Englishman, and 
 Helena wondered why, because it seemed to her that he was 
 typical not so much of Englishmen as of most men (and a good 
 many women) everywhere. He stood for " things as they are," 
 with as many modern improvements as could be managed with- 
 out inconvenience to the men in possession. The public saw 
 him as a plain man with plain views, bluff, hearty, good-natured 
 and anti-Puritanic (useful word!). How far the public was 
 right and how far it was wrong in its estimate Helena had little 
 chance of judging, but she was not disposed to be grateful to 
 anybody who was assured (and who assured others) that the 
 world was by no means a bad place, and that if it were altered 
 here and altered there quite a good deal might be done with it. 
 Because Helena didn't believe it could be altered except 
 radically, from the bottom upwards. She had said so once to 
 Jerome, driving at his side through a maze of mean streets, and 
 Jerome had laughed, patting her hand. " Don't you worry 
 your pretty head," he had said. 
 
 " But we ought to worry. We ought to worry horribly. If 
 we worried enough if everyone of us in our nice houses wor- 
 ried, we could do something." 
 
 " We do ' do ' something. Some new patch goes on the sys- 
 tem every day of our lives." 
 
 " I don't believe you can patch it up. It's got to be pulled 
 down. We've got to start again and differently." 
 
 It sounded feeble: she knew that before Jerome patted her 
 hand again and changed the subject. And probably it was 
 feeble, but she had gone on believing it. She believed it now, 
 with Mr. Bletchington saying the exact opposite week after 
 week and week after week. 
 
 But for his " bluffness " and heartiness, Alexander Bletching- 
 ton, so Helena thought, was steeped in sentimentalism. In his 
 way he was as sticky as that little house in Putney, or as the 
 little house in Putney had been. Sentimentalism smudged 
 every article he wrote; it trickled out from the page on to the 
 fingers of the reader, and you wondered why the pen that wrote 
 it did not stick to the paper. And his public loved him for it. 
 Young girls wrote for his autograph, for his portrait to hang
 
 142 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 over their beds (they put it like that, most of them), and to 
 Helena's eternal amusement one young woman writing from the 
 Midlands addressed him as " My Hero." (You felt he really 
 was!) Not only the working man and the artisan and little 
 clerk, but men of wide education and experience doctors, 
 clergymen, writers, professional men and women of all sorts 
 wrote for his opinion on a variety of subjects and subscribed 
 to the companies he floated. But for Helena he remained a 
 " little " man insufferably vain and conceited, hardened in 
 his own egoism (so that he could actually say he didn't care 
 what people said of him as long as they said something!) : and 
 clever, with the showy cleverness that, without being deep, 
 appeals to the crowd the crowd that, though it starved, must 
 have a demi-god. Not all his " bluffness " nor his good-nature 
 atoned for these things she read in him. Once and once only 
 she wrote of him to Jerome. Somehow she never cared to 
 do it again, though she never quite knew why. Perhaps be- 
 cause Jerome's reply was not exactly effusively approving. 
 
 "He is the sort of man (she said then) who looks at life 
 eternally across a well-laid table. When he gets to heaven 
 and of course he will get there he will first of all inquire 
 the way to its premier restaurant. To the people who don't 
 accept him he is either a supreme joke or a supreme tragedy, 
 and to his million readers (who do) either a demi-god or an 
 encyclopaedia. (That is the sort of public we have.) He 
 believes there is always going to be a man on top and a man 
 down below. He even thinks it right and proper that this 
 should be so, but he thinks the man on top should be liberal 
 with his crumbs. This, to do him justice, he is, and on much 
 the same principle which prompted my Aunt Milly to have us 
 to stay with her when we were young and had to be ' suitably 
 married.' The kind of generosity which costs you per- 
 sonally nothing at all is usually worth just that. . . . Mr. 
 Bletchington, however, has brain (quite a lot of it) without 
 intellect; charm (personality, if you like) without attraction, 
 and he addresses all women under thirty as ' my dear.' This 
 he does partly on principle and partly because he thinks, 
 being women, that they like it. So they do, unfortunately, 
 most of them. . . ."
 
 STORM-WRACK 143 
 
 Later, she decided it was that last passage which had intro- 
 duced that icy note into Jerome's reply. 
 
 It was on Saturday that the curtain lifted, when Hilary's 
 note lay on Helena's breakfast-tray. It contained none of the 
 beginnings common to polite letter-writers. It plunged straight- 
 way into the middle of its subject and it was very short. It 
 said: 
 
 " Will you come on Saturday and meet some friends of 
 mine? They're an interesting crowd that youll like. Do 
 come. Why not to tea? Early. Say at four." 
 
 It was signed just " H.S.S.," and appended was a beautifully 
 drawn map which showed her how the studio might be reached. 
 
 She went, but as she stood on Hilary's doorstep and pulled 
 at his bell, an outrageous feeling of panic swept down upon 
 her. She heard his feet on the stairs and had a frantic desire 
 to turn and run. Then the door flew open, shut again, and she 
 and Hilary were going together up the staircase. She felt that 
 they were cut off from the world, the world of 'buses and 
 traffic from which she had just emerged. The shutting of 
 Hilary's hall door behind them had rendered it as remote as 
 the poles. 
 
 At a turn of the broad old-fashioned staircase he flung open 
 a door and stood aside for Helena to pass through. What she 
 saw first was just a big room, from which blue and silver 
 jumped out at you, with an immense window, a wood fire, and 
 before it a white table laid for two. There was no one at all 
 in the room save a huge, long-haired cat curled round in a cir- 
 cle on the hearthrug. As Helena stooped to stroke him two 
 bright yellow eyes looked out suddenly from the ball of fur 
 and almost immediately disappeared again, as if their owner 
 realised that the new arrival boded no sort of disturbance to 
 his peaceful afternoon. Helena was feeling a little dazed, a 
 little bewildered, and she was grateful above all things to this 
 gorgeous black creature just for being there. 
 
 " What a beautiful cat! " she said.
 
 144 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 With his back to her, Hilary was drawing a deep blue cur- 
 tain across the door by which they had entered. Its heavy 
 folds seemed to Helena to push the outer world even a little 
 farther away still. It was very quiet. There was no sound at 
 all in the blue and silver room save the black cat's regular 
 breathing and the cheery singing of a bright copper kettle on a 
 gas-ring in the hearth. Hilary was taking great pains with his 
 curtain, but as Helena spoke he gave it a final tug and looked 
 round. Neither of them was quite at their ease. 
 
 " Oh, Mark Antony," he said. " Yes, isn't he? " 
 
 She smiled at his Roman name for a Persian cat. " Where's 
 everybody else? " she asked. 
 
 "Everybody else? Oh . . . there isn't going to be anybody 
 else." 
 
 " But you said. . . . You said there was to be a ' crowd.' " 
 
 " But not to tea. I'm quite sure I didn't say to tea." 
 
 It was quite true. He hadn't said so: he had merely sug- 
 gested that she should come to tea. She had not realised that 
 until this minute. "Casuist! " she said, "and when does the 
 * crowd ' arrive? " 
 
 " At seven or thereabouts." 
 
 " And it's now barely four." 
 
 " I know. It was just ripping of you to be early like this." 
 
 Hilary knelt down suddenly in front of his rather unneces- 
 sary fire and poked it into a brighter blaze. It crossed 
 Helena's mind that he, too, perhaps was having an " awkward " 
 minute. 
 
 " Don't be angry, Deirdre," he said. 
 
 She flushed. "With you?" 
 
 "With yourself." 
 
 " Why with myself? " 
 
 " For reading more into my letter than I put into it." 
 
 "How very dishonest you are! " she said, and the flush 
 deepened. 
 
 " I wonder if I am? Anyway, it was worth it. Because, if 
 I'd have been as honest as all that you mightn't have come." 
 
 And, as to that she said nothing, he pressed his point 
 further. 
 
 " Would you have come, Deirdre? " 
 
 " No of course not. I mean . . I don't think so."
 
 STORM-WRACK 145 
 
 "There you are, you see! I had to go on the assumption 
 that you were like that." 
 "Like what?" 
 " That you were a little (only a very little) conventional." 
 
 She sat there silent, staring at the broad back he presented to 
 her, as he knelt there before his fire, doing things with hot 
 water and a teapot. And she thought that in this accusation 
 of conventionalism which he lodged against her, she saw merely 
 a defence of his own action in asking her there. For, if ever 
 she was, Mrs. Grundy was justified here. She had a clear case. 
 The flaming sword she held out was no thing of tinsel and 
 paper: it was a reality that should have separated them for 
 ever. But just now it was going to do nothing of the sort, 
 because they were both steadfastly regarding it as a magnet, 
 drawing them together, and Mrs. Grundy was hopelessly out- 
 classed. But in their hearts they knew, both of them, that 
 these stolen hours were dangerous more dangerous than any- 
 thing which had preceded them and very sweet. 
 
 " Don't be angry," Hilary said, looking up from his toby 
 teapot. How could she be angry when she smiled like that? 
 
 " I'm not," she said, " now." 
 
 " Then take off your hat. It's a cardinal sin that you should 
 ever wear a hat." 
 
 She took it off and put it down on the floor at her side. 
 
 " And now. What is there for tea? " 
 
 "Teacakes, cress sandwiches, bread and butter and an 
 American cake." 
 
 " And did you cut the sandwiches? " 
 
 "No. Would you have liked them better if I had? " 
 
 She laughed, but said nothing. Hilary reached a spoon 
 from his neatly-laid table, lifted the lid of his teapot and stirred 
 its contents round, once, very carefully. 
 
 " All the best tea-makers do that," he assured her, " and 
 afterwards they leave it for just one minute." 
 
 He used that minute to look at Helena in her blue-gold frock 
 with its square-cut neck from which her face rose, flushed and 
 sweet, like a pink tulip. Everything about her was fine and 
 rare, and yet not exotic. Even the shoes she wore surprised 
 and delighted him, combining in some quite magic fashion 
 daintiness and common sense. No other woman of those he
 
 146 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 knew or had known managed to secure that happy blending in 
 just that way. He felt that Helena must always go shod in 
 comfort because at any moment she might be devoured by a 
 passion for walking. Do what you would, you could not think 
 of her in a hot-house. It was still, for all this dainty apparel, 
 of the moors and the uplands that you thought as you looked 
 at her. London had left her unspoiled. For Hilary, she was 
 like Aurora, who had for children the winds and the stars; and 
 the winds and the stars and the sun were all enmeshed in 
 Helena's hair. The sun most of all, perhaps. Whatever light 
 there was in a room was caught, always, by the warmth and 
 glow of it, as the firelight was caught now. The clay was dull 
 and uncertain, but in the glow of Hilary's wood fire, Helena's 
 hair turned every now and then to flame, giving her a burnished, 
 ardent look that was repeated again in the glow of her skin. 
 Blue and gold was the note of her. She was like the morning 
 might have run by Aurora's chariot as she drove to open the 
 gates of day. From head to foot she was fine and exquisite 
 and from head to foot he loved her. 
 
 Something new about him some fresh look in his eyes, 
 some fleeting emotion of her own, made her say abruptly, 
 " Don't you think the tea is drawn by now? " 
 
 3 
 
 They had their tea, talking the while. And though it was 
 extraordinary how the conversation continued to skim lightly 
 over the surface of things, every now and then they looked at 
 each other and it was as if they said: " Isn't this clever of us? 
 I wonder how we do it? " And sometimes it was as if they 
 said : " Never mind how we do it. We've got to keep it up." 
 
 But presently Helena forgot. " We're talking a great deal of 
 nonsense," she said. 
 
 " I know," Hilary agreed. " People do, sometimes when 
 they're happy. Are you happy? " 
 
 " I think I am very." 
 
 "Don't you know?" 
 
 She wouldn't answer that. 
 
 "Would you know if you'd got to heaven? Would you 
 recognise it when you saw it, Deirdre? " 
 
 " Perhaps. I don't know. Would you? "
 
 STORM-WRACK 147 
 
 "Rather." 
 
 " What sort of a place would it be? " 
 
 " I'm afraid, Deirdre, it would be just any place where you 
 happened to be." 
 
 The surface of their lucent, tranquil pond trembled suddenly 
 into a wave. But Hilary wouldn't step back from it. Neither 
 of them at that moment, was going to step back. They stood 
 there together, very precariously, on its edge, and they looked 
 at each other and smiled. Their carefulness dropped from 
 them like a cloak. They let it lie where it fell. 
 
 * You're very absurd," she said. 
 
 ' Am I? What sort of a place is your heaven, Deirdre? " 
 
 ' Is there more than one? " 
 
 'Six others, at least, because this is the seventh." 
 
 "The seventh?" 
 
 ' Of delight." 
 
 She didn't look at him, but she said, " My heaven may not 
 be yours." 
 
 " You really think it isn't? " 
 
 "Ought one to be ... tricked . . . into heaven? " 
 
 She was suddenly serious. On the instant she saw this 
 friendship as a thing of tricks and shadows. And she didn't 
 want it to be like that. She wanted it open and frank . . . 
 like a picnic in the sun, a picnic for two! As though it could 
 ever be that for long! As though for them it could ever b* 
 that at all! Her eyes were suddenly sombre. 
 
 " Why not, if you like it when you get there? Or don't you 
 like it now that you're here, Deirdre? " 
 
 She looked at him then, the colour very rich and quick in 
 her cheeks. She looked, as Evey would have said, " All lighted 
 up inside." Hilary did not know Evey or her phrase, but as he 
 looked at Helena his blood leaped, and he thought : " I was 
 mad to bring her here like this, mad. . . ." 
 
 " Of course I like it," she said. " May I have another cup 
 of tea?" 
 
 He saw that she had picked up again that cloak of terrible 
 carefulness. He said nothing, but his hand shook as he poured 
 out her tea. And at the back of his brain his thought com- 
 pleted itself: "And she was mad to come. . . ."
 
 148 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 4 
 
 Even so it might have been all right if he had not shown her 
 his pictures. Or if she had not seen more of them than he 
 meant she should. . . . 
 
 They stood, most of them, with their faces to the wall, so 
 that Hilary had to turn them round for her to look at. They 
 made her proud and yet very humble; touched some fine 
 tender chord within her that had been touched only once 
 before, when she had looked with Hilary upon the little misty 
 Haworth sketch as it had stood like a streak of amethyst and 
 gold against the background of her Bechstein grand. Though 
 she knew nothing of art she had a natural feeling for beauty: 
 it explained her love of the moors and of poetry. She felt 
 dimly that joy and happiness meant just that the perception 
 of the beautiful, and the work of Hilary Sargent seemed to her 
 beautiful beyond all things. His landscapes fascinated her. 
 They had, all of them, an atmosphere of the weird, of the 
 unusual as though the painter had got at the back of things 
 and saw something which most people did not even know was 
 there at all; as though what he painted was the soul of things 
 mystic, unfathomable; tragic, sometimes, as the Haworth 
 sketch had been. She saw the same thing much more faintly 
 in the portraits he showed her; but she was less sure of its 
 significance here. She could read the face of nature with more 
 readiness than that of humanity. Her very indifference to you 
 gave to nature a perfect freedom in which to be herself 
 ugly, beautiful, captivating or repellent; but men and women 
 were not indifferent to you, and they could hide if they 
 wished so much that was real in themselves that you might 
 very well never come to know them, actually, at all. These 
 faces of men and women that she looked at this afternoon were 
 just so many enigmas to her. They seemed to her well- 
 painted, but she was too uncertain of herself to offer an opinion 
 there too humble. Yet she wondered why one o.f them (the 
 head of a man, thin, gaunt, and with eyes that questioned) 
 should be so oddly familiar to her. The head belonged, so 
 Hilary said, to the oldest friend he had. 
 
 "He gave me my first art lessons. You'll like Arthur 
 Yeomans."
 
 STORM-WRACK 149 
 
 " But why should his face be familiar to me? " 
 
 " You've met his sister, Mrs. Wyatt." 
 
 Helena flushed. She had qualms, sometimes, even now, 
 about that interrupted friendship with Ursula Wyatt. She 
 simply had not been able to bear her talk of Hilary and his 
 work. Headaches were not really satisfactory as excuses, es- 
 pecially when you looked (as Helena did) as though headaches 
 were accidents rather than a habit. 
 
 " But Mr. Yeomans," she objected now, " isn't a scrap like 
 his sister." 
 
 " I know. But you look there is something. You'd 
 think it was the eyes until you came to paint them, and then 
 you'd find that even they were different. It's very queer." 
 
 Helena went close and peered at the portrait. She saw the 
 thick, almost lumpy fashion in which Hilary put on his paint, 
 and it seemed to her, grotesque, absurd, that by doing that he 
 got the effect he did. For she felt vaguely that the portrait 
 was fine, that the painting had force, courage, strength about 
 it. Yet pictorial art to her was Black Magic. She wrinkled 
 her fine brows over it, and the tip of her nose took that slight 
 upward curve, as you might upon occasion catch it doing. 
 Hilary caught it now and he laughed. 
 
 " It's a wearisome business," he said, " this looking at other 
 people's pictures. You're sure you're not bored? Perhaps 
 you've seen enough? " 
 
 She only said, softly, with a little intake of her breath, 
 "Bored!" 
 
 It struck him that she looked shy and fugitive, like a white 
 flower of the hills in a bowl of orchids. 
 
 " I wish," he said suddenly, " that you'd come and sit for 
 me one day. Will you? I promise not to tire you out." 
 
 The glow about her deepened. " I should be pleased, some 
 day," she said. 
 
 " That's vague. What about a Sunday quite soon? And 
 quite early. When the light's at its best." 
 
 What was left of Mrs. Grundy, poor dear, must have fled 
 in horror from the sound of his voice, and from the sight of 
 Helena standing there bathed in joy. Great waves of it rolled 
 over her, swamping her, waves of wild, delirious, unexpected 
 happiness. They caught at her breath, robbing her of words.
 
 150 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 "You haven't answered, you know," Hilary said presently. 
 
 " I shall be pleased," she said again, " and whenever you 
 like. . . ." 
 
 But she was grateful to him for turning back to his canvases 
 instead of standing there looking at her. She noticed (even 
 across this queer, unbelievable agitation of hers) that Hilary 
 only glanced very hurriedly at the next batch of pictures and 
 passed on. The thought flashed through her brain: "Why 
 doesn't he show me those? "; she took a step forward and the 
 next instant her foot had caught against the edge of the fore- 
 most and the whole batch came clattering noisily down upon 
 the floor. 
 
 " Oh, how clumsy . . ." she began, and then stopped, her 
 eyes on the one picture she could see in its entirety a water- 
 colour sketch of a girl in blue and gold, who sat writing in the 
 path of a winter sun. Beyond the window a November garden, 
 and over it November's silvery mist. Her Yorkshire garden, 
 and she sitting there on that first day waiting. She remem- 
 bered for what for the luncheon bell to ring. . . . 
 
 She lifted her eyes from the picture to Hilary's face, but he 
 evaded the glance, stooped and began to pick up his displaced 
 canvases. She stood there, making no attempt to help, hearing 
 his voice come a little thick, a little hard. 
 
 " I wasn't going to show you these. But perhaps now you'd 
 better see them all." 
 
 He set them out neatly before her. Something mechanical 
 within her counted them as he did so four, five, six, seven. . . . 
 
 "Eight! " she said, almost to herself. 
 
 " I did them from memory, and that's not all. There's a 
 whole book of sketches." 
 
 She stood there looking from one to the other of them, her 
 hands clasped quite tightly in front of her, her mouth a twisted 
 piteous bow in her white face. Because she had thought, that 
 day at the Red House, that she had deceived herself, that he 
 had not cared. And he had cared, all the time, like this. 
 Suddenly something hot welled up in her throat, choking her: 
 a mist before her eyes blotted out the pictures. She heard 
 Hilary saying, "You see . . . how it is," and then, very 
 slowly, she lifted her hands and covered her white face with 
 them. Hilary stood there looking at her, struggled to stay
 
 STORM-WRACK 151 
 
 where he was and then went forward and tried to pull down her 
 hands. 
 
 " Don't," he said, " don't. What's the matter? " 
 
 Her hands resisted his. 
 
 " Don't hide your face, Deirdre," he said. " I want to look 
 at you, and I can't if you won't uncover your face.". 
 
 And still her hands resisted his. 
 
 " Deirdre. Look at me. Look at me, dear." 
 
 She let him draw her hands down. Her fingers against his 
 were wet. He looked at her, and he said: 
 
 " Deirdre. . . . You look very beautiful, I think, with the 
 tears in your eyes." 
 
 Of his voice nothing remained but a passionate whisper, but 
 the passion had awe in it, awe and wonder and reverence. 
 That, perhaps, most of all. Reverence for her and for the 
 wonderful thing that was happening to them both despite their 
 effort to prevent it. For an instant it was as if they swayed 
 helplessly towards each other something impalpable, in- 
 tangible stretched between them, drawing them together, and 
 then, because there was no help at all for it, he had her in his 
 arms, his mouth on hers. 
 
 Outside, the moon, very young and thin, a pale wraith in the 
 afternoon sky, came up and looked in at them, as it had looked 
 at them once before. . . .
 
 CHAPTER THREE 
 
 THE evening that followed remained with Helena as 
 a mere jumble of recollections odds and ends of her 
 talk with Arthur Yeomans about many things, femin- 
 ism, the Brontes, books and of Yorkshire, and the way the 
 sun came up like fire over Haffington Ridge. And things about 
 Hilary and his last year's Academy picture, " La Belle Dame 
 sans Merci," which had brought him many portrait commis- 
 sions that bored him as much as the sitters. A strange, un- 
 familiar Hilary, this, who would have it there wasn't time for 
 life and a career that you had to decide which you wanted 
 the more. 
 
 Mixed up with this conversation was a. girl's playing of 
 Chopin, a girl who wore black and white and whose portrait 
 hung over the Bliithner grand at which she played. Helena 
 remembered the racing of slim, white fingers over the key- 
 board, holding a twisting and turning melody well in hand 
 like a strong wrist on the bridle of a thoroughbred. But she 
 remembered more than that: she remembered that once Hilary 
 raised his eyes and looked at her, as though through the music 
 he sent her some message she would catch and understand. 
 But she had flushed and looked away, as though, after all, she 
 had not understood or had understood too well. 
 
 And besides the Chopin, and Arthur's conversation, there 
 were echoes of what other people said queer, bright tan- 
 talising talk of politics, art, some Impressionist Exhibition in 
 East London; personalia by Nelly, a violin solo by a girl in 
 a red frock who looked like a streak of flame against Hilary's 
 black piano ; ragtime by the youhg man who played her accom- 
 paniment (an outrageously brilliant performance, this, at which 
 the black and white girl who played Chopin raised scornful 
 shoulders) ; a smashing criticism by Hilary of somebody's 
 
 152
 
 STORM-WRACK 153 
 
 sketch of a little Quaker-like person in grey; the lazy voice of a 
 big girl in green addressing a pretty person in a terra-cotta 
 frock that made her look like a pink rose growing on an old 
 garden wall, " My dear, do tell us. Have we to congratulate 
 you? . . ." And the chorus of congratulation which came 
 when a tall someone who had been talking politics in a corner 
 came out of it and said that they had. Only Hilary stood 
 aloof, saying nothing, not looking at the tall someone at all 
 and scowling at the pretty pink and white person in the 
 terra-cotta frock. 
 
 And presently, right at the end, there was Arthur Yeomans 
 again, helping in her search for truant hatpins, and his voice 
 asking her carelessly if she had far to go. ... And then 
 Hilary's, telling her in a whisper that she wasn't to hurry . . . 
 that she was to let them all get on. 
 
 They all did, except Arthur. Even when the hatpins were 
 found he seemed in no hurry to do anything of the sort. It 
 was a rather silent trio that walked down to the King's Road 
 where Arthur presently took his leave and Hilary and Helena 
 crossed over and waited for a 'bus. When it came they climbed 
 on top and sat in the front seat, with clasped hands. 
 
 Guilford Street, as they walked up it, was very quiet. A 
 pale crescent moon in a cloudy sky alone kept watch, and down 
 the street a strong west wind came rollicking. Outside Mrs. 
 Rogers's house they stopped short. There was a tiny bead 
 of light in the hall the sort of light that has the air of 
 sitting up for you in dressing-gown and curling-pins. It 
 " felt " very late. Suddenly, as she stood there pushing back 
 the hair that stung her eyes and hot cheeks, Hilary drew her up 
 closely against him and kissed her. They had forgotten the 
 street completely: they had forgotten, in that one moment, 
 everything in all the world, save their unutterable, terrible 
 need of each other. 
 
 This jumble of odds and ends that made up an evening 
 presently sorted itself out, so that Helena's memories and im- 
 pressions tacked themselves on to the right people and remained 
 there. Hilary helped, ticking off his friends for her one by one 
 on the next day, when for the whole length of it he had her
 
 154 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 to himself in his blue and silver room. (He had extracted that 
 promise from her down there on the pavement in Guilford 
 Street, but had not dared to believe she would keep it until 
 he saw her standing on his doorstep, looking like a damp 
 violet. For the day was wet a beast of a day, as the people 
 in the 'bus had said consolingly to each other.) 
 
 Hilary's list, of course, began with Arthur Yeomans and 
 went to the accompaniment of the water-colour sketch he was 
 making of Helena. It was a trifle difficult, she found, to move 
 Arthur from the conversational stage when Hilary had got him 
 thoroughly going. And even when at last she did manage to 
 edge him into the wings, she was worried for several minutes 
 afterwards by the sensation that he was standing there keeping 
 an eye on them. For he was one of the people they would 
 have, she and Hilary, to placate. If they went on. And she 
 thought they would. 
 
 It was of that she was thinking while Hilary talked of De- 
 siree Bonnard, the black and white French girl who played 
 Chopin who played Chopin, it appeared, to all London and 
 Paris that cared for him, which was a good deal, even when 
 you had made allowance for the people who preferred ragtime. 
 Hilary had met Desiree in Paris many years ago before Paris 
 (or London or anyone else) had heard of her, and Helena 
 gathered that he had a very real affection for her, despite an 
 unaccommodating temperament that was like some people's 
 umbrella, because you never saw her without it. 
 
 Also, Hilary was fond of Barbara Fielding, the big, dark 
 girl who had talked about the Whitechapel Impressionist ex- 
 hibition and who (so Hilary said) did really beautiful model - 
 lirtg. (Look at that little " Diana " on Hilary's mantelpiece.) 
 Barbara was fine: courageous and firm as steel. A man was 
 lucky who might count Barbara Fielding his friend. And 
 Hilary did. 
 
 There was, too, Denis O'Connell, the man who came with 
 a string of pretty ladies and was an Irish journalist. He had 
 definite views on Sinn Fein, Home Rule, pretty women and the 
 poetry of Francis Thompson. Later, that was all Helena 
 remembered about Denis O'Connell that he believed (or 
 was it disbelieved? Helena never quite knew) in Home Rule: 
 that he disliked the poetry of Francis Thompson (or liked it.
 
 STORM-WRACK 155 
 
 Again Helena never quite knew) and had an affection for pretty 
 women. Not that they mattered, so Hilary said. There was 
 such a procession of them, and they were all like their proto- 
 type in the musical play who had been brought to be looked at 
 and "not to be talked to, please." They existed as sight- 
 refreshers; as so many boracic eyebaths. Besides, the only 
 girl Denis really cared anything about was Barbara, who, for 
 reasons of her own, was not likely to marry Denis. 
 
 The little pink and white person who had looked in her terra- 
 cotta frock like a rose on a garden wall, was Pamela Grant. 
 She wrote the " Georgette " column in the Woman's Looking- 
 glass and similar things in similarly intellectual publications. 
 It was very obvious that Hilary detested Pamela before he 
 called her a boa-constrictor and sniffed at Helena's phrase 
 about the rose and the wall. Because Pamela was the girl 
 they had congratulated the other night. She was going to 
 marry Ronnie Sand and the thought roused Hilary to a queer, 
 impotent fury. Ronnie belonged to the good old days (at 
 twenty-six he talked of them, absurdly, like that, making 
 Helena smile) : the days of the Slade and of Paris. Ronnie 
 was an artist, and art bored Pamela not to the soul (she 
 hadn't one) but certainly to distraction. Besides, she got very 
 badly in the way, so that since her advent pleasant things had 
 come to an end. Hilary and Ronnie spent, these days, but 
 few hours together: Paris, Bucks, Surrey and Rye knew them 
 no more. And even on these Saturday evenings you couldn't 
 be quite sure that Ronnie would turn up, because it wasn't 
 only art, apparently, that bored Pamela, and Pamela just now 
 was really all that Ronnie cared about. These things, Helena 
 saw, were bitter in Hilary's mouth. 
 
 Another person intimately bound up with the days when 
 these pleasant things had been, was Philip Roscoe. Phil was 
 not an artist, at least, not in pencil or pigment. His medium 
 was words. He was on the literary staff of the Signal, an 
 advanced weekly with ideas on Party Government that were apt 
 to become tiresome and several bees in its bonnet that were at 
 least amusing. Lately, however, Phil had left the broad high- 
 way of literature and side-tracked not after a Pamela, it is 
 true, but after politics, which was almost as bad, since Hilary 
 disliked the one as much as the other. Phil, it seemed, had
 
 156 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 written a recent pamphlet entitled Where are we Drifting? 
 which Hilary had not read because he didn't want to know. 
 He never did want to know things like that because he was 
 scornful of politics and politicians, for both bored him pro- 
 foundly. Just occasionally he would read something which 
 Phil enthused about (like the books on Red Rubber and Mo- 
 rocco that Helena had borrowed and which were different) 
 but they were not things of permanent interest. Foreign poli- 
 tics were remote and unreal (even Phil could not make them 
 anything else) and home politics were absurd. You heard 
 continually that if certain things happened the country would 
 go to the dogs: if others, that it would not. And the country 
 remained precisely where it was. You couldn't possibly get 
 excited about matters of this sort: life was far too interesting. 
 And besides, the literary Phil was so much nicer than the po- 
 litical Phil that one hoped it would soon emerge. 
 
 Hilary had little or nothing to say of the girl in green with 
 the lazy voice, though his dislike of her was less active than 
 passive. She was supposed to do secretarial work for the 
 novelist, Paynesfield, though Hilary wondered how so good a 
 novelist could stand so bad a secretary. He was quite sure 
 Dagmar North was bad as a secretary. She was too slow, too 
 fat, too much the embodiment of the qualities he most disliked 
 and which he assumed (quite unwarrantably) that Paynesfield 
 also disliked. 
 
 Then there was Conrad Howe, the young sculptor who was 
 responsible for the bronze relief of Hilary that hung over his 
 mantelpiece, and who disagreed with Hilary over Dagmar. 
 But Conrad's affection for that lady did not greatly trouble 
 Hilary because he was quite sure Dagmar did not intend to 
 marry him. Dagmar had other fish to fry and was very busy 
 over them, so Hilary said. Besides, you couldn't help seeing 
 that he cared less for Conrad and his matrimonial fate than 
 he did for Ronnie and his. 
 
 The little person in grey was Stella Gretton, the wife of 
 Stephen Gretton, a young Quaker, who had married her, 
 according to Hilary, because she looked the sort of wife a 
 Quaker ought to have, though you need not believe that unless 
 you liked. Stephen was quixotic and idealistic and a clever
 
 STORM-WRACK 157 
 
 black and white artist: Stella was none of these things, but 
 she was sweet and charming and simple and had already learned 
 to prefer Chelsea to Brighton. Stella might very well have 
 stepped down from a Marcus Stone picture. Marcus Stone's 
 pictures didn't appeal to Hilary, but he certainly drew pretty 
 women, and little Stella Gretton was pretty in just that way. 
 
 Then there were the sisters Dune Olive and Vivien. 
 Olive was the girl who had made the sketch of Stella Gretton 
 upon which Hilary had been so hard (but not so hard, Hilary 
 told her, as the sketch had been upon Stella ! ) . Olive was red- 
 haired and energetic. She was the sign and symbol, according 
 to Hilary, who seemed to know all about these things, of the 
 modern woman, who works less for results than to keep her 
 mind employed. A great deal of leisure was a dangerous 
 thing, and civilisation had left the moneyed woman little else. 
 Ibsen knew that and had written Hedda Gabler, or The Per- 
 petual Warning to Fathers. Other people to-day were seeing 
 it too, among them Mrs. Snowden and Olive Schreiner. And 
 before any of them there had been Charlotte Bronte. Amaz- 
 ing what Charlotte had known, what she had seen with that 
 Titan-woman of hers, kneeling there on the hillside. . . . 
 
 This, Helena discovered, was another topic diffcult to get 
 Hilary to leave, but he did presently arrive at Olive's sister 
 Vivien, the girl with the red frock and the violin. Vivien had 
 talent and no industry. You simply could not make her work, 
 not even Desiree, who had tried very hard and had given up in 
 despair. Vivien was dilettante to the soul and the only person 
 who really liked her that way was Brian Vincent, the nice- 
 looking youth who played ragtime and (even worse) composed 
 it. Brian did not really care either for genius or energy in a 
 woman, and found Desiree and Olive much too exhausting. 
 His ragtime was a hobby: more or less harmless, according to 
 the point of view. Somewhere in the background or in the 
 City or somewhere equally vague and remote there lurked a 
 clerical occupation. But nobody ever referred to it, because 
 nobody, here, was at all interested in the City. Helena did not 
 blame them for that. 
 
 Hilary thought it was probably true that there was some- 
 thing between Brian and Vivien, but they were a self-contained
 
 158 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 pair and if there were no one knew how far it had gone. And 
 personally, Hilary thought that Vivien would find love a much 
 too exhausting business altogether. 
 
 " But mightn't she be lazy, too, in love? " Helena asked. 
 
 "Then it's Brian who would find it exhausting," Hilary 
 told her. 
 
 These things took up a good deal of time to relate. Later, 
 when they were done, there was tea. 
 
 Later still, they talked of themselves. . . . 
 
 Less easy, this, they discovered. The evening was as wet as 
 the day had been and Hilary had builded a fire. They sat at 
 its side, Helena in Hilary's deep blue chair, he on a pile of 
 cushions at her feet. Her hands caressed his hair, as if in 
 blessing, and the silence came down upon them like mist on a 
 mountain. The room was so still you could hear the sighing 
 of the flames as they sped up the chimney, the sound of Mark 
 Antony's regular breathing and the steady drip, drip of the 
 rain. They reached the ear as separate and distinct sounds 
 stabbing the quiet, that seemed to fold itself yet more closely 
 about them. The world emptied and emptied, until they only 
 were left the last man and the last woman, together. 
 
 Hilary was the first to speak. Ardent yet trepid, his voice 
 divided the mist like the rising sun, and they had it out, then, 
 between them her story and his. Hers came first. Once 
 she broke out in protest over it. " It isn't fair. It isn't fair. 
 One acts in ignorance and suffers for it all the rest of life! " 
 
 But it was left to Hilary to voice the awful staggering 
 thought that had not so much as occurred to her. 
 
 ** Suppose," he said, " that . . . your husband (the word 
 stuck in his throat) makes difficulties. Suppose he isn't ' de- 
 cent '? " For that had been the word they had used. Decent. 
 That was how they thought of it. 
 
 "You'd want, wouldn't you," he asked her, "the sanction 
 of society? " 
 
 She said that she didn't know that she would. 
 
 " I shouldn't want anything so long as I had you. Be- 
 sides, if the law is really like that if someone can stand in
 
 STORM-WRACK 159 
 
 the way as you think Jerome might it's a bad law and ought 
 to be ignored." 
 
 ** Could you ignore it, Deirdre? " 
 
 She said she could. 
 
 " You really love me enough for that? " 
 
 " For much more." 
 
 "You're really not one bit afraid? " 
 
 " Of you? Of your getting tired? " 
 
 She could actually say it. 
 
 " You needn't fear that, Deirdre. But all the other things! 
 Wouldn't they get in the way and spoil things? The lies we'd 
 have to tell (we should, you know, to the people who simply 
 wouldn't have the truth: there are lots of them). The de- 
 ceits, the pretences. Wouldn't you hate all those? And 
 wouldn't you hate having to placate people when you only 
 wanted to get on with life? " 
 
 She smiled. "All that in Chelsea?" she said. "I 
 thought Mrs. Grundy never crossed the King's Road? " 
 
 " Oh, Chelsea ! As if I'd want to keep you cooped up in 
 Chelsea all your life. Besides, Deirdre, I'm afraid, even if 
 you aren't." 
 
 " Afraid that you may get tired ? " 
 
 " No afraid that I hate the thing that is illicit too much to 
 live with it. ... You're bigger on this than I am. Things 
 haven't been spoiled for you, deep down, at the source." 
 
 Some instinct kept her silent, made her sit utterly still. 
 Her eyes rested on that long slender hand propping his head 
 and suddenly she remembered the touch of it against her face, 
 and a lance pricked sharply at her heart. The feeling, the 
 sympathy between them was absolute. He had the power to 
 hurt: they had the power to hurt each other. Suffering and 
 misery could touch them now only through each other. 
 
 He had moved his seat and sat opposite her, but he did not 
 look at her as he told his story of the poisoning of the wells, 
 but once when a little sound escaped her, he stopped short. 
 "Can't you bear to hear it either? " he asked. "Are you as 
 bad as I am, after all? " 
 
 Even in her pain she wanted to smile at this trick he had of 
 charging other people with the faults he loathed in himself. 
 That solicitor man for whom she had worked had had it " I
 
 160 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 suppose you're too proud to carry a parcel? " he had said to 
 her once when he wanted something urgently taken to the post 
 office and the boy was out. It was funny she should remember 
 that now. But funnier still was the fact that Hilary had the 
 trick too. Then the pain came back and she was crouching 
 there at his feet, with her head on his knee. 
 
 It was dark before they had finished with that old story of 
 his and that of hers, which though less old might come to 
 matter even more. And at the end they sat like two solitary 
 survivors amid the calamitous wreck of things. There seemed 
 no more to say. They sat silent, their hands clasped, with the 
 blue flame of the fire dancing along the floor and up the walls, 
 and making weird shadows on their white faces.
 
 CHAPTER FOUR 
 
 A MISERABLE old story, but Helena was ready, it seems, 
 to risk even that. She snapped her fingers at its evil 
 legacy of apprehension. She cared enough for that. . . . 
 So they stopped being serious and grown-up and became 
 like two children playing in the sun. They would cross no 
 more bridges as yet nor think of them stretched out for them 
 in the future, dark and uncertain, as a forest at midnight. 
 Helena had said, " I could write. But I won't. I'm not a 
 coward or not that sort of coward, anyhow. I'll wait until 
 Jerome comes back. . . ." 
 
 A Fool's Paradise! It wasn't much, but it was the best they 
 could do for Jerome at the moment. It didn't prevent them 
 (that thought of him there) from being happy. Nothing 
 could do that. There was the picture to sit for: plays to see, 
 books to read and walks to take. To this first period of quiet 
 happiness belonged Helena's discovery of Bucks and Hertford- 
 shire: of the Surrey villages nestling beneath the great shoul- 
 ders of Leith Hill and Box Hill. Hilary had found them be- 
 fore and had forgotten them, so that rediscovering them with 
 Helena was something of an adventure. But wherever they 
 went Richmond retained for them all the compelling power 
 of first love. They went back to it again and again and each 
 time they agreed that the view from the Terrace was really 
 " one of the finest in England." The phrase was no longer 
 just an extravaganza of the advertisement people. When they 
 looked at it together it just was all they claimed for it. Things 
 were better when they saw them together. That was why 
 Hilary longed to take Helena to Bruges. It did matter, some- 
 how, whom you saw places with. . . . 
 
 161
 
 162 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 Hilary was told all about Evey, of course. " Your wonder- 
 ful Evey," he called her teasingly to Helena, who didn't mind 
 in the least, because Evey was " wonderful." Desiree's wish 
 to hear Estelle play served as a good reason why the sisters 
 should be asked one Saturday evening to the studio. They 
 came. Estelle in white, with her starlike beauty, chaste and 
 remote, a pale aureole of shimmering hair and passionate, 
 wide-set eyes; and Evey in an orange frock unrelieved by 
 anything save her own vivid complexion and the dead black of 
 her hair. Evey was one of the few people who could wear 
 brilliant colours without their stealing her own. Beside her 
 burning incarnadined beauty Helena's had a pellucid diaph- 
 anous note. Against Evey's passionate fervour her calm 
 serenity was like a star shining on still water. Looking at 
 them together Hilary thought of the June sun on Sussex gorse 
 and of moonlight on ice. 
 
 Nelly's sharp eyes had lighted instantly on Evey. " My 
 dear, wherever did he find her? " she asked Helena. " I can't 
 keep my eyes off her. She's like a magnet." 
 
 " Hilary didn't find her," Helena said, thrilling. " I did. 
 I think she's just wonderful to look at; she's like a harvest 
 moon over a cornfield. You don't see anything else." 
 
 That, apparently, was also how it took Philip Roscoe. He 
 came in late that evening, but before the end of it he and Evey 
 were talking together as though they had known each other a 
 lifetime. And later on, outside in the King's Road, Phil had 
 secured a taxi for the sisters before Hilary had as much as 
 seen it. 
 
 " Now," Helena said to Hilary when they had climbed to the 
 top of their 'bus. " Isn't she wonderful ? " 
 
 "Who? Evey or Estelle? " 
 
 " Both. But I meant Evey." 
 
 " Phil seemed to find her charming, certainly." 
 
 " Oh, but she is. She's the most wonderful person in the 
 world." 
 
 "Nonsense. There's only one really wonderful person in 
 the world and you know who that is." 
 
 Helena slipped her arm through his.
 
 STORM-WRACK 163 
 
 " Yes you," she said and smiled. 
 
 In the darkness her smile seemed to glow, phosphores- 
 cent , 
 
 They paused in their own happiness, these two, to watch 
 that of Phil and Evey. For it grew apace. Evey's visits to 
 the studio became very frequent and were not limited to the 
 usual Saturday evening. Either she arrived with Phil or Phil 
 came rushing in so soon after her arrival that you got the im- 
 pression he had followed on the next 'bus, seeing her flying 
 before him all the way like an autumn leaf before the wind. 
 At the studio they talked so much that Helena wondered if 
 when they were together they ever left off. She had a fleeting 
 funny vision of them shrieking at each other from tube to tube, 
 rushing noisily and boisterously from one 'bus to another, with 
 Evey looking like a burning flame and Phil scorching himself 
 at it beyond redemption. 
 
 Perhaps it was the sight of these things that helped Hilary 
 (even amid this quiet wonder of happiness) to realise how 
 terribly he hated this pretence and make-believe, and how 
 right he had been when he had said that love was a thing for 
 the uplands and sunlight that you spoiled and smudged it if 
 you dragged it down into the dark and attempted to hide it. 
 Certainly there were days when he saw with a horrible dis- 
 tinctness that the happiness they shared between them was a 
 terribly precarious affair a thing of tricks and shadows, that 
 depended upon their keeping one person in his Fool's Paradise 
 and upon his behaving " decently " when he emerged. That 
 was still the word they used. Decent. That was still how they 
 thought of it. 
 
 There were difficult days, too, for Helena days when she 
 was disturbed by the thought of Jerome away there in his 
 Paradise of Fools where she and Hilary between them had 
 landed him. She could not protest, with Hilary, that he had 
 had his " chance," and had failed. She didn't see it like that. 
 Everything was against her ever seeing it like that. There 
 were times when she wanted more than all else to lead Jerome 
 out of his Paradise, even though she had no better alternative
 
 164 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 to offer him than the dusty highway of Truth. And that was 
 a thing you couldn't discuss with Hilary. With something like 
 dismay she had seen that very plainly. A decision once made, 
 it seemed to Hilary a sign of weakness (even with things con- 
 stantly happening to show that the decision was wrong) to go 
 back and reconsider it. 
 
 And Helena didn't agree, so that, even as early as all this, 
 amid their new bewildering happiness, there were crises. 
 
 There was the wet evening when after a theatre Evey spent 
 the night at Guilford Street in olden fashion. Mrs. Rogers 
 had lighted a fire and long after Evey was asleep with her 
 happiness Helena had lain watching the flickering shadows on 
 the wall, wondering if, all her life, a room lighted by the 
 uncertain flame of a fire was going to remind her of Hilary 
 and that first meeting of theirs in that deserted house on the 
 edge of the moor. Sometimes, it seems, you grew up in spite 
 of yourself, and thought about things. 
 
 You could stand it when it happened to you alone. But 
 there were times when it did not, like that morning Jerome's 
 letter had come, announcing that he was sailing on the tenth 
 of July. Eight weeks that gave them, nine, allowing for the 
 journey, because this was the middle of May. Helena made 
 the hateful calculation over her breakfast and found she could 
 stand it: that same evening she made it again with Hilary 
 and found she could not. Suddenly the thought that had 
 lived with her all day jumped out through her lips. 
 
 '* Perhaps . . . after all ... it wouild be better if we 
 wrote if we got it over." 
 
 There was a little pause before Hilary said gently, " I 
 thought dear, we had settled all that." 
 
 ** I know, but somehow, now that he is really coming 
 back. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, don't let us go into it all again, Deirdre darling," 
 Hilary broke out. "Don't think, don't think. . . ." He 
 pulled her up to him, his lips on her hair. "Sweetheart, 
 don't, don't rake it all up again. It'll rub the bloom off. And 
 I want it not rubbed off. . . . We've been so happy." He was 
 appalled, somehow, by this sudden unexpected collapse of her 
 the strong partner in this bid for happiness, the happiness 
 neither of them was entitled to. These things happen. . . .
 
 STORM-WRACK 165 
 
 He pushed up her chin with his own and kissed her drooping, 
 moody mouth. 
 
 " Stop being unhappy, Deirdre. It's a crime being un- 
 happy when we're together. Stop it, stop it. . . ." 
 
 Her arms closed about him: beneath his lips he felt hers 
 tremble. 
 
 4 
 
 And there was the Saturday at Kew. . . . 
 
 That was memorable for the encounter they had in the tube 
 with Lucy and John and for what came afterwards. Originally 
 it had been a sextette that was going to Kew (Hilary and Hel- 
 ena, Phil and Evey and Ronnie and Pamela, or rather, the first 
 four of them had planned a quartette and Ronnie and Pamela 
 had somehow got added). But on the afternoon the quartette 
 waited on the edge of the crowd at Charing Cross Station for 
 half an hour, and then only Ronnie turned up. No Pamela. 
 Ronnie was sorry they had been kept waiting but the fact was 
 he had picked Pamela up at the Chelsea Town Hall and they 
 had got into a taxi. Half-way down the King's Road they had 
 run over a dog and Pamela had been sick in the cab, and the 
 driver had been horribly disagreeable about it. Hilary con- 
 ceded that taxi-drivers were a pampered class, and Ronnie went 
 back to the chemist's shop where he had left Pamela to recover. 
 So four instead of six people went on to Kew, and Hilary said 
 it was a pity Pamela couldn't control her stomach better, or 
 at least that she couldn't control it with more consideration 
 for other people. 
 
 " Don't be absurd," Helena expostulated. " You can't help 
 being sick." And Hilary said, " Pamela can. Also, she can 
 sick when she likes, and that's a disgusting habit." 
 
 The District, as it always is, was crowded that afternoon and 
 the quartette broke up. Evey and Helena found seats with 
 difficulty, not quite together, whilst Hilary and Philip secured 
 straps and were not to be coaxed by subsequent passengers or 
 threatened by the conductors to give them up. It was a little 
 farther along the line that John and Lucy got in, and even then 
 it might have been all right if the man at Helena's side had not 
 made room for Lucy, who was genuinely pleased to see Helena, 
 but who said immediately, "Lena. Isn't that Mr. Sargent
 
 166 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 standing just over there? " Lucy had only seen Hilary once 
 before (that afternoon at Richmond not very many weeks ago), 
 but she had an astounding memory for faces and her sharp 
 eyesight was likely to be as inconvenient as her inability to keep 
 a still tongue in her head. Lircy wasn't the only person who 
 knew that Helena had recently spent an afternoon at Rich- 
 mond with the young man who broke his arm at the foot of 
 Rattenby hill. Before the week was out all these " others " 
 would know that on a certain Saturday in May she had gone 
 with him to Kew. 
 
 But it was less Lucy than John who disturbed Hilary when, 
 later, things were explained to him. Because John looked, so 
 Hilary said, as if his sense of duty might be appalling. It 
 wasn't pleasant, somehow, to think that someone else might 
 forestall them with Jerome. At least, it wasn't pleasant to 
 Helena, who thought it mattered mightily how we learn things. 
 Hilary thought the only thing that mattered was that you did 
 learn them. He was wrong, of course, but it was not the sort 
 of " wrongness " which brought you peace, because Hilary 
 could never forget that Helena was continually concerned lest 
 Jerome should be ejected from his Paradise at the point of 
 Gertrude or her mother's sense of duty. That was why, on 
 this particular afternoon, he kept Helena there by a bed of some 
 red plant with a " churchy " smell, while Evey and Phil 
 walked on. He wanted to prevent her from saying what he 
 felt she was going to say, and neither of them was thinking 
 at all of the queer plant though they stood staring studiously 
 down upon the tablet that bore its name. 
 
 There suddenly, in that quiet place, passion gripped Hilary 
 by the throat. 
 
 " Not again, Deirdre, for God's sake. I can't stand it." 
 
 They walked on and overtook the others at the Palm House. 
 
 '* You can walk up to the top, you know," Evey said. She 
 had been to Kew before. 
 
 " We will," said Helena, and they went in. 
 
 She looked, as they went, just once, at Hilary. That grip at 
 his throat had relaxed. He met her glance and smiled, and as 
 they went up the winding staircase caught her fingers and 
 squeezed them tightly in his. 
 
 The afternoon went on wings. There in that place of green
 
 STORM-WRACK 167 
 
 and gold, happiness drifted back to them. It was always like 
 that: nothing for long could prevent their being happy 
 together. Helena sat with her knees tucked up under her 
 chin and that cupped in her hand, staring (under instructions) 
 at a birch tree while Hilary made a colour sketch of her in her 
 queer " modern art " voile dress of uncertain mauve, dotted 
 with lemon and orange bunches of things that looked like 
 cherries and were not. Evey did most of the talking 
 bright, good-humoured, feministic talk, like silver arrows fall- 
 ing across the golden afternoon. It was all about the women 
 of poets of Milton, Shakespeare, Herrick, Kingsley, Brown- 
 ing and Tennyson. And about Southey and Wordsworth and 
 the advice they gave to Charlotte Bronte, and how it moved 
 Charlotte to laughter. And about Charlotte herself, and of 
 her and her sister sneaking up to town under cover of their 
 masculine pseudonyms to see their publishers; and about 
 Harriet Martineau pushing her writing under her needlework 
 when visitors arrived. . . . 
 
 Once, in the middle of it, Hilary forgot and called Helena 
 by the intimate name he kept for their hours together. He 
 was conscious of Phil's quick glance, of Evey's frank stare 
 (that had bewilderment, wonderment and glimmering compre- 
 hension in it), and of Helena gazing fixedly at the birch tree 
 before Phil picked up the conversation from the pool of silence 
 into which it had suddenly fallen. He said, " I don't know 
 if it's struck anyone else, but this conversation's been extraor- 
 dinarily interesting and extraordinarily exhausting. What do 
 you say to tea? " 
 
 They trooped off to look for it, to where, under the trees 
 just past the Pagoda, the white tables gleamed enticingly in 
 the sunlight. 
 
 5 
 
 But on that day it wasn't only the unfortunate encounter 
 with Lucy and John and that Hilary called Helena " Deirdre." 
 Besides these things there was Ursula Wyatt. . . . 
 
 They found her there at the studio when they got back, 
 along with a lot of other people and a perfume of eau-de- 
 Cologne (which meant that Pamela was still engaged in being 
 an interesting invalid). If Ursula was surprised to see Helena
 
 168 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 she gave no hint of it, but, of course, she wasn't surprised. 
 Helena was sure of that. Arthur couldn't have kept as quiet 
 as all that! Ursula was in town for a week and Hilary must 
 give her some days. Helena tried not to hear him doing it, 
 but when he took Ursula's arm and walked her affectionately 
 out through the door, something hot and bitter sprang up in 
 Helena's heart. Hilary loved Ursula as he loved Arthur. 
 The roots of this affection went deep. What they thought 
 meant much to him: what they said, counted. . . . 
 
 When Hilary came back she plunged. 
 
 " Mrs. Wyatt doesn't like me," she said. 
 
 "What makes you think that? " 
 
 " Lots of things. How should she after the way I be- 
 haved about her invitations? I know it was rude Jerome 
 used to be so angry. But I couldn't help it. ... I couldn't 
 bear going there . . . hearing her talk about you and see- 
 ing your pictures. I'd have got over it in time, I suppose, but 
 Mrs. Wyatt got tired of asking me. I don't blame her." 
 
 Hilary smiled upon her, touched her hand for understanding. 
 
 " But, Deirdre, Ursula wouldn't dislike a person just because 
 she didn't show an overwhelming fondness for her society." 
 
 " No, but she might if she showed an overwhelming fondness 
 for yours." 
 
 " I think that's unfair, Deirdre." 
 
 " I know. But there is us, isn't there? Mrs. Wyatt 
 knows that, doesn't she? " 
 
 Misery sat in her heart, and resentment, that this should be 
 all that was left of her happy day down there in the sun at 
 Kew. 
 
 " I haven't told her, Deirdre. I haven't told anybody. No- 
 body knows anything. Ronnie may have guessed and Ar- 
 thur, perhaps." 
 
 " Of course Arthur's guessed. And he's passed it on to 
 Mrs. Wyatt." 
 
 'Well, and what then? " 
 
 ' They'll disapprove." 
 
 ' Not necessarily. And disapproved the wrong word." 
 
 * What is the word, then?" 
 
 ' I don't know. But not that." 
 
 ' I can't think of a better,"
 
 STORM-WRACK 169 
 
 He looked at her. Her face was hard. 
 
 " Dear, they only want to be sure." 
 
 " Of me? " 
 
 " Of us." He pressed her hand. " Silly . . . silly." 
 
 It was their familiar intimate formula. She smiled as he 
 squeezed her fingers up tightly in his own. She tried to see it 
 as he saw it. It was difficult, and yet, after all, Arthur and 
 Ursula would know all about that old story, and how Hilary- 
 felt about it, and you might excuse them, perhaps, for their 
 caution. 
 
 The hard look died out of her face. But as, with an effort, 
 she began to talk about something else, she told herself never- 
 theless that now it wasn't only Arthur she had to placate but 
 Ursula. And she didn't oh God, she didn't want to placate 
 anybody ! 
 
 6 
 
 But far worse then any of these things was the evening of 
 Jerome's birthday letter. The birthday was Helena's her 
 twenty-fourth and Jerome had anticipated the event by a 
 couple of days. His letter said little because (though Helena 
 didn't think of this) it wanted to say so much and from it a 
 folded slip of paper fluttered down upon the floor. Helena 
 left it there, lacking the courage to pick it up, for she knew 
 what it was the cheque Jerome referred to in his letter, that 
 he sent as his birthday gift, and with which he wanted her to 
 buy herself " something pretty." " Something very pretty, 
 and don't wear it too often until I come home." 
 
 She picked the cheque up presently and looked at it. " Pay 
 Mrs. J. R. Courtney" (so like Jerome, not to leave her her 
 initials even on a cheque!) "Pay Mrs. J. R. Courtney the 
 sum of twenty-five pounds. . . ." She sat with it open before 
 her staring at the bold signature, Jerome Rutherford Court- 
 ney; noting the queer "r's" he made and how carefully he 
 formed his figures, filling up the spaces between the pounds and 
 the shillings with characteristic caution! With the cheque in 
 her hand Helena sat there, motionless, at the window. Buy 
 yourself something pretty: something very pretty. She could 
 almost hear Jerome saying it. The memory of his tricks of 
 speech tore bewilderingly at her heart. She had not expected
 
 170 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 to feel like this. She didn't want to feel like it. She rebelled 
 against it horribly, and yet it remained. She did not love 
 Jerome: she had never loved him. But he held her some 
 part of her, not a very important part, perhaps, but she could 
 not wholly escape. Was it the memory of things done be- 
 tween them, things over and past: the physical bond, the daily 
 intimacy that was marriage? Fool, to have forgotten to 
 have imagined that she could ever escape altogether ! 
 
 Later, when she was in bed, the storm broke. She lay there 
 shaken with sobs, and crying crying horribly, because love 
 waited for her on the mountains and hands that clutched and 
 hurt held her back down there in the valley.
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 OUT of her pain one thought emerged. Jerome must 
 be told. The fact was clear and one other that to 
 mention the subject to Hilary was to call up in his 
 face that look she dreaded, that was apprehension and obstinacy 
 and something else for which there seemed be no name at all. 
 
 But beneath it all and around about and above there re- 
 mained always this sense of throbbing happiness that nothing 
 could destroy, because, besides it, there was just nothing at all 
 that really mattered. Nothing does when you are as happy 
 as all that. 
 
 Other people were happy, too. 
 
 Evey, of course (looking more than ever, these days, like a 
 tropical flower), and Estelle, whose luck had turned most 
 unbelievably from the day when Desiree had descended upon 
 the Frampton villa at Streatham and taken everything and 
 everybody by storm. Life sandwiched itself suddenly for 
 Estelle between days which she spent with Desiree at her flat 
 in Maida Vale and days when Desiree stayed at Streatham. 
 Long-haired people (very queer, enthusiastic and excited, 
 according to Evey, who narrated these things) came sometimes 
 with Desiree and prophesied great things for Estelle. Mr. 
 Frampton (poor little man!) did not understand very much of 
 all they said save that his daughter was a genius, and that was 
 a piece of news he found disturbing. The showering of gen- 
 iuses upon the world was not at all his idea of this business 
 of having and rearing children, and Evey shrewdly suspected 
 that he was beginning to understand that a genius could scarcely 
 be expected to sit at its father's knee and have its head stroked. 
 It seemed to him (again according to Evey, who was enter- 
 taining on the subject) that it was so much less important 
 that the world should acquire a genius than that he should 
 
 171
 
 172 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 retain a daughter; but Desiree tackled him and talked to him 
 like any brother silk-merchant, with the result that he had 
 given permission for Estelle to go to Germany at the end of 
 the year. Desiree was to arrange everything. All the silk- 
 merchant would have to do would be to write the necessary 
 cheques, but Evey was sure he wouldn't mind that because it 
 made him happy to have Estelle there at his knee, talking of 
 her plans and of how sweet and dear and darling he was. 
 Estelle, so Evey said, always did get what she wanted. She 
 could coax the man out of the moon if she really tried, or the 
 heart from a cabbage. . . . 
 
 Pamela was another of the happy people. Here, at the end 
 of May, she was preparing for her marriage with Ronnie in 
 the middle of June. Her conversation was hopelessly en- 
 tangled these days in chiffons and satins and old point lace. 
 And even if clothes, as a serious topic of conversation, had not 
 bored Helena quite hopelessly, there were other reasons why 
 she had decided that Ronnie's beloved was rather like Thack- 
 eray's Beatrix Esmond. You liked to look at her, but were 
 rather relieved, on the whole, when you didn't have to talk 
 to her. 
 
 Ronnie's happiness went without saying. It shouted at you, 
 compelled you to notice it. He had taken to dropping in upon 
 Hilary at odd times, in the old way that had been so good: 
 and sometimes he brought Pamela (with her chiffons and 
 laces), but either way he must have seen (because Hilary so 
 obviously meant that he should) that he gave him, these days, 
 a Helena for his Pamela. But the times when Pamela did not 
 come Hilary and Helena liked best: Helena because of the chif- 
 fon and old point-lace conversation, and Hilary because then he 
 and Ronnie between them could almost delude themselves into 
 thinking that things were the same as ever that nothing had 
 changed. 
 
 2 
 
 Helena wondered sometimes (in the way you can, without 
 really caring in the least, either way) whether any member of 
 Hilary's little circle suspected them to be lovers. It seemed to 
 her (if you excepted Ronnie and Arthur, who, even Hilary 
 thought, might have " guessed ") at least improbable. She had
 
 STORM-WRACK 173 
 
 grown used to living with this " something " strangely sweet 
 and shy in her heart: had learned to guard her emotions ut- 
 terly, so that she gave nothing away, by word or look. She 
 had more success, here, than Hilary, for whom there were still 
 times when, with other people present, he simply dare not 
 glance in her direction. 
 
 So far, however, and for the most part, Helena found that 
 these friends of Hilary's barely ruffled the surface of her 
 existence. They accepted her and (most of them) admired 
 and liked her, but at this stage it was certainly Hilary they 
 cared for, not her, for whom, indeed, in their busy varied 
 existence they did not seem to have too much room. The 
 qualities for which Helena might be loved lay deep: you had 
 to dig to come at them. Neither Barbara nor Conrad, nor any 
 of these people who shared so much charm and talent between 
 them, cared for digging as an occupation; so that, as yet, few 
 of them had come to know the essential Helena Hilary knew 
 and loved. With Nelly Kenyon it was different. Nelly hated 
 digging, too, but she had the gift of the diviner; she reached 
 down to the things in Helena none of the others so much as 
 suspected. You had, of course, to except Ronnie (who had 
 his odd evenings with Hilary to help him) and Phil (who 
 had Evey). To do him justice, however, Phil had no sort 
 of objection to digging, but only to digging in two places at 
 once. 
 
 As for Helena's friendship with Arthur Yeomans, that 
 seemed to have advanced no further than on that first night. 
 The look he had given her, hunting in a corner for hatpins, 
 had killed something between them and created something else. 
 Or so Helena fancied. She had never met him since without 
 remembering that nor without realising that Arthur was not 
 on her side. It was like that she put it to herself. Not their 
 side, but hers. It was she, after all, who was the intruder. 
 
 Once, during the week that followed the encounter in the 
 tube, Helena went down to Putney, partly because Lucy wrote 
 to ask her, and partly to see how the land lay. It lay, appar- 
 ently, not too comfortably. Putney and Wimbledon, ob-
 
 174 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 viously uneasy, were joining hands. (For of course Lucy's 
 tongue had wagged as far as Wimbledon.) The Rev. John 
 was very serious and rather tedious. He would ask Helena to 
 be careful not to endanger her good name, a thing no woman 
 could afford to do. Did she think that this new friendship, in 
 Jerome's absence, was quite "nice"? Wasn't it, perhaps, 
 just a little improper? Helena was amused, scenting the 
 Wimbledon touch, and guessed that the word it had really em- 
 ployed had been " fast." Just a common ordinary flirtation ! 
 That, she knew, was just how the thing would look to Gertrude. 
 
 " Oh, John ! " Lucy had said. " You know Lena wouldn't 
 do anything wrong, would you Lena, dear? " 
 
 This being the sort of question no one likes to answer, be- 
 cause no one really knows, Helena had left it at that. But 
 somehow, she breathed again, not for herself, but for Jerome. 
 
 And then, a couple of days later, Edgar called for her at 
 the office and took her down to the Savoy for lunch. The East 
 Rokesby by-election was coming apace, and if she didn't happen 
 to be using it, might he borrow the grey car? Helena never 
 did "happen" to be using it (as Edgar probably knew), and 
 beyond telling him he was welcome to the car she forbore to 
 take any further interest in the East Rokesby election. (Edgar 
 was a Conservative and did not believe that women should 
 have votes. ) She did not even ask the date, which, as it turned 
 out, was a pity. 
 
 Edgar thought he had better drop a line to Jerome. 
 
 "You've his address? " Helena asked. She wanted to be 
 sure of that. 
 
 " Somewhere. I know he gave it me. But I'm no good 
 with addresses. Always lose 'em, or forget to make a note of 
 'em, or something. You see how useful you'd be if you'd 
 only come and help me. Or have you altered your mind? " 
 Helena shook her head. "Ah, well, you may some day. I 
 don't give up hopes. . . ." He stopped hunting through his 
 pocket-book and put it back into his pocket. "No, I don't 
 seem to have it. Doesn't matter, I can send a line via the 
 Halifax people, anyhow. Here, you'd like some chocs, 
 wouldn't you? " 
 
 While he went for them, Helena reflected that, ot course,
 
 STORM-WRACK 175 
 
 that was where they all had her. They could all get at Jerome 
 " via the Halifax people." 
 
 Then something happened which made it matter no longer 
 whether they could or not. 
 
 It arose, in the first place, through Hilary's taking Helena 
 to look at his picture in the Academy. (That was her way of 
 putting it as though the Galleries at Burlington House 
 opened daily just to show one little water-colour of a York- 
 shire moor. That they did show it, however, certainly justified 
 their existence to Helena.) But the misty colours of Hilary's 
 Haffington Ridge made her sad, created in her that old forlorn 
 nostalgia that converted London once again into an old man 
 of the sea on her back. So on the Sunday Hilary took her 
 down into Sussex. They started early, but the train notwith- 
 standing was packed with people bound for Brighton (somehow 
 there always are people bound for Brighton!) and Hilary, 
 who had taken third-class tickets, dashed off to change them, 
 came back abashed at the queue he found at the booking 
 office. Eventually Helena and he squeezed into a carriage 
 occupied by a pair of ana;mic lovers and several families who, 
 by the look of it, had combined forces for the day. Hilary 
 and Helena sat opposite each other, wedged in among hot and 
 wriggling children who complained loudly and long because 
 they couldn't see the sea: and Hilary, restlessly glancing at 
 his paper, felt that things had not exactly started well. He 
 asked himself savagely why, despite his " third " tickets, they 
 hadn't travelled " first " and paid excess. (The truth of that, 
 however, was that Hilary hated explaining a situation of this 
 kind to railway ticket-collectors and preferred, on consider- 
 ation, the discomforts that he knew to the sarcasms he could 
 anticipate.) But Helena, undisturbed, sat tall and straight in 
 her seat, and his heart glowed with the sense of her, and with a 
 wild delight of her rose-pink face. He could smell the faint 
 thin scent of the roses at her waist a scent that was like 
 Helena herself, sweet and virgin. (That was how he had 
 thought of her first: virgin to the soul, like Diana on her
 
 176 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 mountains, chaste and remote, untouched by the passion of 
 love. Save that love had touched her now it was like that he 
 thought of her still.) 
 
 The wriggling child who was obsessed by the idea of the sea 
 began again on the theme. " Daddy, I want to see the sea." 
 Daddy, as befitted the male creature, went on with his paper: 
 a fat woman with a baby leaned forward across " daddy " and 
 shook the insistent one by the knee. " Do you think yer father 
 an' me's got the sea in our pockets? " she demanded. "Now 
 jest you shut up, and don't keep all on." 
 
 The anaemic girl said suddenly to her lover, " I do hope 
 the taide will be haigh. It seems so much more laike the sea if 
 it's haigh." The pale young man sat a little closer and smiled. 
 In a sort of ecstasy he smiled for several minutes, his eyes on 
 the flying scenery, his hand smoothing out that of his lady, 
 who, too, gazed with an expression rapt and beatific out of the 
 window. And Hilary hated them. There was nothing of the 
 democrat about him this morning. He hated them all the 
 pale lovers, the overworked mothers and fathers, and the wrig- 
 gling children especially the obsessionist, who suddenly 
 created an unexpected diversion by bursting into heart-rending 
 sobs. 
 
 It was Helena who offered the despairing one comfort. 
 " You cheer up," she said, " I know for a fact the sea's still 
 there. It always is, you know. You can always depend on 
 the sea. You hang on to that. What do you say to a piece 
 of chocolate? Do you think that would help? " 
 
 Hilary understood that the cake of Peter's in the luncheon 
 basket was here being delicately referred to. He got up and 
 raked it out and then tried to be large-minded about it as he 
 watched Helena distribute it among the round-eyed voyagers 
 to the sea. It wasn't only that he had bought it for her; he 
 was horribly afraid they would be sick. They gobbled it up in 
 such haste, and he was convinced it was better they should cry 
 than that they should be sick. . . . However, he and Helena 
 arrived at their station before Nemesis descended upon the 
 chocolate-eaters. They left them happily gloating over the 
 last precious morsels; and Hilary, out on the platform, took a 
 deep breath.
 
 STORM-WRACK 177 
 
 " Good lord, what a journey! " he said. " Didn't it get on 
 your nerves? " 
 
 And she laughed at him. " I haven't any nerves this morn- 
 ing," she said, " have you? " 
 
 Out there in the pretty day " nerves " was suddenly a very 
 ugly and very sinister word. How could he possibly have 
 nerves when they were going to spend a whofc day together in 
 open country? 
 
 " I shan't have soon," he answered her. " But it was all 
 wrong in there. I suppose I can't be . thorough-going 
 democrat because I do so hate crowds and trams and packed 
 third-class railway carriages." 
 
 " I don't see what that proves," she said, " save that you 
 don't go in them often enough." 
 
 He put an arm through hers and they took the upland patch 
 together. It was barely half-past eight. Like a white sheet 
 of paper on which they might write what they would the whole 
 day lay stretched out before them. 
 
 Half an hour later it was not the day alone but the whole 
 world that they seemed to have to themselves up there on a 
 shoulder of the great Downs across which the wind raced, tem- 
 pering the hot sun. They sat close, and looked out over the 
 coloured counties. Helena's pink roses drooped now at her 
 waist, and she took them out and held them up to the fierce 
 embrace of the Sussex wind. Hilary watched the delicate 
 petals borne out afar on the arms of the wind. Saw, too, that 
 in the blazing sunlight Helena's hair was a fire a man might 
 warm his hands at. 
 
 " I must always kiss you when the sun shines on your hair," 
 he said. And he did. 
 
 It was long after that when she said, " Read to me," and lay 
 stretched out slim and straight, beneath the sun and wind, 
 with her arms above her head and her eyes shut, while he read 
 to her things she knew and things she didn't from de la Mare, 
 Drinkwater, Gould, Hodgson and (most appropriately) Hil- 
 aire Belloc. And there was Flecker and Brooke and Frances
 
 178 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 Cornford and Lady Margaret Sackville; and Dora Sigerson 
 whom Helena loved. 
 
 Thoughts not wholly of the poems, however, came to her as 
 he read, and the realisation that there was about Hilary some- 
 thing that satisfied as nothing and no one else could do. He 
 reached out to a part of her that Jerome had never got within 
 a hundred miles i f. Nothing Hilary could say or do would 
 ever alter that. 1 e satisfied her held her. He could raise 
 and he could cast ot own. He could make her happy he could 
 make her miserab e. Happiness and misery were bound up 
 now with him. fc ? held the keys. She sat up suddenly and 
 looked at him, wa ching him as he read. It pleased her that 
 he looked big and " fit," that, strong as she was, he could pull 
 her bodily up against him from the grass just by lightly grip- 
 ping her wrists. It was a trick he was fond of, and holding 
 her so he would kiss her, so that even if she wished she could 
 not escape. A hint of mastery here, a hint, too, of the desire to 
 be mastered. What had the feminist in her to say to that? It 
 bowed its head, not in submission but in comprehension. For 
 one was not taken, one gave. One possessed and was possessed. 
 That alone was love and the rest was lies! 
 
 It was Hilary who suggested, much later, that they should 
 take in Yewhurst village on their way home. He wanted, after 
 the passage of years, to see how the old place looked. It was 
 half-past six when they arrived and discovered that the last 
 London train calling at Yewhurst on Sundays was the seven 
 forty-one. That gave them just an hour in which to look 
 round. 
 
 It wasn't, they soon saw, going to be anything like enough. 
 There was so much to see, and some things took so much time. 
 
 Yewhurst Lodge, however, Hilary found disappointing. In 
 some queer fashion it had shrunk with the passing of the years. 
 The garden was smaller and the yew trees: the long windows 
 from which he had stepped down to the lawn less wide and 
 imposing. Only the poplars, waving on right and left of them, 
 seemed unchanged and unchanging, singing their eternal song 
 in the breeze.
 
 STORM-WRACK 179 
 
 In the centre of the lawn stood a rocking-horse, painted 
 bright red and striped velvety green, as though its maker had 
 his mind less on a horse than a zebra; and flung over its neck 
 for reins, was a girl's skipping-rope disporting bright blue 
 handles. A swing, built low and with a wooden backed seat, 
 moved idly to and fro. From somewhere in the bushes came 
 the sound of childish voices, and from an upper window of 
 the house a young woman looked down suddenly upon the 
 garden and called to the children. 
 
 Hilary and Helena went on, past the house, down the lanes 
 where Hilary used to gather wild flowers with Ursula, and 
 where already the honeysuckle had come to bloom. Up and 
 down the winding road they went, past the open door of the 
 little iron chapel in the valley, through which they caught a 
 glimpse of a tiny congregation singing a dismal hymn exactly 
 one bar behind the reedy American organ accompaniment. 
 Sitting there on the bank Hilary reconstructed for Helena the 
 old story that belonged to it, but it was all so very long ago 
 it had an air of unreality. He had some difficulty in per- 
 suading himself that it was not some queer tale he was mak- 
 ing up for Helena's benefit. And " queer " was just the word 
 she would have applied to it. Brought up in the respectable 
 atmosphere of the orthodox church, the sterner sorts of noncon- 
 formity were practically unknown to her. She had not under- 
 stood that religion could terrify. There was nothing terrify- 
 ing about the Prayer Book. It just bored you: sometimes, if 
 you were a woman, it made you angry. Nothing more. The 
 psychology of that little story of Hilary's interested her so 
 much that they sat talking of it far too long longer, at least, 
 than was consonant with the comfortable catching of the seven 
 forty-one. 
 
 As they passed the Lodge again a tall quite youthful some- 
 body was giving a curly headed child a pickaback, with another 
 yelling encouragement at his heels: and the woman came back 
 to the window and stood there with the sun on her hair and a 
 light in her eyes. 
 
 "Darling," she called to the youthful "somebody," "I 
 really think they ought to come in. . . ." 
 
 And suddenly Helena sat down beneath the neatly-cut box- 
 hedge and began to cry.
 
 180 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 That, of course and Helena's interest in the psychology of 
 an old story explains why the seven forty-one went without 
 them. 
 
 If they walked on to Threppington they'd find (so a sym- 
 pathetic porter informed them) that there was an eight-thirty 
 " main up," but they'd have to do a steady pace of five miles an 
 hour if they wanted to catch it. Threppington was barely 
 three and a half, and the porter was of the opinion that they'd 
 a very good " sporting chance " if they set off at once and 
 " stepped it out." 
 
 But they did neither. For suddenly it seemed ridiculous 
 that they should spend so beautiful an evening hurrying to 
 catch a train when the next day was Bank Holiday, and there 
 was no urgent need that they should catch it at all. Besides, 
 there was going to be a perfectly glorious sunset, and there was 
 a pine wood Hilary wanted to show Helena and which she 
 would love. 
 
 " It isn't as though Bletchington will be tearing his hair 
 because of you," Hilary pointed out. "Even he will be tak- 
 ing a holiday. Nobody wants you at all to-morrow but me. 
 Don't smile. It may be ungrammatical and not very compli- 
 mentary, but it's true." 
 
 It was. It was, in fact, so very true, that Helena did not 
 trouble to deny it. She agreed to let the " sporting chance " 
 (what there was of it) look after itself, and Hilary went off to 
 send a telegram in her name to Mrs. Rogers. His mind was 
 still sufficiently detached from the sunset and the pine wood 
 to make him see the incontrovertible wisdom of that. He 
 wasn't going to spoil things. They were going, both of them, 
 to be proper and decent and careful damnably careful. He 
 would find a bedroom at some cottage for Helena (because 
 she liked cottages if the windows would open) and book an- 
 other for himself at the "Loyal Heart." And they'd have 
 their meals together at the inn like any respectable engaged 
 suburban couple. Or hadn't suburban youth got as far as 
 that? Anyway, they were going to be happy gloriously 
 happy. They were going to have a whole day of it. 
 
 He thought of all this while he wrote out the telegram, and
 
 STORM-WRACK 181 
 
 the postmistress, with a languid air, counted the number of 
 words and said the message would cost him sevenpence ha'- 
 penny, please. She was a fair young woman with a bored 
 manner, which was why Hilary thought better of his impulse 
 to ask where that airy bedroom might be found and went out 
 to look for it himself. Luckily it did not take him long, and 
 having settled things with the old lady with the apple-ripe 
 face, to whom the room belonged, he went off to the inn. 
 
 There were new people at the " Loyal Heart " since Hilary's 
 days, but they were obliging, and with the minimum of in- 
 terrogation undertook to provide meals for him and Helena 
 on the morrow, and supper that evening if they required it. 
 Hilary decided that they would, and having washed his hands 
 and face in a bathroom tucked modestly away in a corner, 
 as though it hoped nobody would discover it, he went back 
 for Helena. 
 
 Later, he sat outside the cottage on a green bank and smoked 
 a pipe, whilst inside Helena was engaged in being pleased with 
 things, and revelling in the prospect of soft water for her face 
 and a stiff brush for her hair. The apple-faced old lady, who 
 did not look at her hands and apparently hadn't heard her 
 name, called her " dearie," and brought her a glass of milk to 
 drink. Upstairs on a snow-white bed she had laid out a night- 
 dress of her own that delighted Helena, for it smelt of lavender 
 and the winds of heaven. She was convinced that the old lady 
 thought she and Hilary were engaged, and that she considered 
 it rather nice of him to take himself off like that to the inn. 
 
 Helena drank her milk, washed, brushed her hair and went 
 down to the little white gate of the cottage opposite which 
 Hilary awaited her. 
 
 8 
 
 They took, presently, the path that skirted Hilary's wood to 
 the top of the hill, where a breeze came to them scented with 
 pine and honeysuckle and the sweetness of wild briar. Al- 
 ready the wood looked dim and mysterious, the pine trees 
 standing up tall and straight against a gold and mauve sky 
 slashed fiercely with reds. It was very still : no sound came at 
 all save for the occasional call of a bird or the scurrying of
 
 182 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 some woodland animal. Through the flat pine branches the 
 sunset burned fast to its end, and the wide path that ran down 
 the centre of the wood wandered away into shadow like a 
 dream into forgetfulness. Quite soon now the dusk would 
 fall, covering everything like a blue-grey garment. . . . 
 
 Helena watched the shadows steal up almost sullenly over the 
 gold-flushed sky: saw the colder tints creep up and master the 
 mauves and reds, and suddenly she could think of nothing save 
 that here night would come marvellously like a purple pas- 
 sion flower, and that before it came she and Hilary would have 
 to turn and go back down the hill. Care! Care! The chill 
 word was like some poor ghost shivering before them in the 
 evening air. 
 
 They stood there on the edge of things, holding their breath, 
 and feeling, as they had felt all day, that they had the world 
 to themselves, that nobody else was alive at all. The blood 
 raced headlong in their veins; they could scarcely look at each 
 other because of it. The spirit of adventure, of daring, stirred 
 about them like the blue night, and they knew that they might 
 be as careful and as " decent " as they chose without altering 
 that in the least. 
 
 Behind them, down the white road, a grey motor-car ran 
 swiftly towards the village. They did not look round. The 
 way was clear and the driver did not disturb the quiet with the 
 sound of his horn. But in the car sat a man who never missed 
 a feminine figure with the least pretensions to grace. Helena's 
 white frock on the dark edge of the wood caught his eye and 
 held it. And evidently not the frock only, for he smiled and 
 nudged the woman at his side, who turned and followed his 
 gaze with her own. They sat there, the two of them, as if pet- 
 rified, craning their necks to stare back at that couple stand- 
 ing, with clasped hands, on the edge of the wood. 
 
 And as they stared they saw Hilary slip his arm about Hel- 
 ena's waist and draw her more deeply into the shadow. 
 
 On the following morning there was the car again. 
 To Helena it was not a car at all, but a sleek grey beast, a 
 sleuthhound tracking them down. For this time she saw it.
 
 STORM-WRACK 183 
 
 They were emerging, she and Hilary, from the porch of the 
 "Loyal Heart," and her arm was tucked into his. They had 
 just finished breakfast and had come straight out into the sun- 
 light as they were, hatless. It took Helena just a second to 
 take it all in Edgar driving, and Gertrude sitting straight 
 and stiff at his side, with a motor-veil of green floating wide in 
 the morning breeze like a banner. The colours of Edgar's 
 parliamentary party floated with it and suddenly Helena un- 
 derstood, cursing herself because she had not asked Edgar 
 where East Rokesby was and the date of its by-election. If 
 Edgar had told her these things she had not listened. Well, 
 now they had seen. Appearances were dead against her. She 
 knew Gertrude. Gertrude would be certain to imagine the 
 worst. The worst! Something somewhere in Helena laughed 
 softly at that: something else said: " Oh, what does it matter? 
 They've got to know some time! " And she didn't care. For 
 herself she didn't care a scrap and she wasn't going this morn- 
 ing to think of Jerome. Neither was she going to remember 
 that Gertrude and Edgar and all of them could always get at 
 Jerome (and at her!) if they wished, via "the people at Hal- 
 ifax." . . . 
 
 Up there in the woods Hilary began to make a sketch of her 
 on the fly-leaf of his Book of Modern Verse, and every now and 
 then as she watched his happy face as he worked she wondered 
 what he would say if he knew that, which she knew. But 
 she wasn't going to tell him at least, not yet, because it 
 might spoil their day, and it was so tremendously important, 
 somehow, that their day should not be spoiled. 
 
 10 
 
 They got back to the studio that evening at half-past seven, 
 because Hilary was expecting some remnant at least of his 
 Crowd. At half-past seven, however, only Arthur Yeomans 
 had arrived. Helena left him and Hilary talking together and 
 went into Hilary's bedroom to wash and tidy her hair. 
 Through the closed door she could hear voices, one low and, 
 as it seemed to her, admonitory, the other a trifle querulous 
 and excited. Brushing her hair there before Hilary's oval 
 glass her mouth hardened. They stood, she and Hilary, on the
 
 184 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 edge of the crag, and though it made them dizzy they could pre- 
 serve their balance, could stand there looking below. Arthur 
 would imagine they could not: doubtless it was something of 
 this sort he was saying now to Hilary. She flung up her 
 head in fierce pride of her own strength. Arthur knew noth- 
 ing. And the die was cast. Nothing that he could say was 
 going to make any difference. Let him talk. . . . 
 
 She twisted up her hair in the loose way Hilary liked best; 
 twitched her frock into position, wished it were fresher and 
 opened the door. And then the end of what Arthur was 
 saying hit her like a blow between the eyes. She stood still 
 for a moment, with the handle of the door in her hand. 
 Neither of the men saw her there. Arthur was sitting, cross- 
 kneed, on the settee, his eyes on Hilary, who stood with his 
 back to Helena, his elbow on the mantelshelf. 
 
 " My dear boy, don't talk rot. You know you can stop it if 
 you like." 
 
 And Hilary said in a voice Helena scarcely recognised, " I 
 wish to God you'd tell me how. . . ." 
 
 She made a sudden noise with the door and came forward. 
 From a long way off she heard Hilary asking her if she felt 
 refreshed, and then he disappeared and she was sitting at 
 Arthur Yeomans's side talking politely of God knew what.
 
 CHAPTER SIX 
 
 1 ' 
 
 GERTRUDE moved quickly. Her note inviting Helena 
 to dinner came on the Wednesday morning, and it 
 read, Helena thought, very much like a command to 
 Buckingham Palace. She was not so much invited to dinner as 
 threatened with it, and the scolding she was going to swallow 
 with the meal rose up out of the heart of Gertrude's curt little 
 paragraph and stared at her. 
 
 It happened just now that Mr. Bletchington was at a Ger- 
 man spa, whither he had betaken himself for rest and reduc- 
 tion, so that there was no reason why Helena should not have 
 left the office in time to go home and change her frock. (These 
 things mattered at " The Laurels.") But Helena would not 
 go home: she would go to her lecture, but she certainly was 
 not going to dress for it. 
 
 The meal was a queer one, with the conversation going on 
 stilts until Gertrude's trim parlourmaid left them with ciga- 
 rettes, a pile of fruit and a silver dish of chocolates. In the 
 little pause that ensued, Helena helped herself to a cigarette 
 and lit up with aplomb. " I thought you hated smoke," Ger- 
 trude said and was mystified by Helena's cool " I do, but 
 I've learnt to smoke in self-defence." Truth to tell Helena 
 was beginning to enjoy herself. She found that the situation 
 had its humour, especially with Gertrude kicking off for the 
 proprieties and peeling herself an apple whilst she did so. 
 
 Gertrude was very angry, very scornful and definitely threat- 
 ening. But she achieved nothing and after a time she rose 
 in her wrath and left Helena to Edgar. 
 
 " I give you up," she said. " Perhaps, Edgar, you can make 
 her see reason." 
 
 185
 
 186 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 He didn't. But then he didn't try very hard. He started 
 wrongly, of course, by changing the subject. 
 " You know I'm in,' Lena? " 
 
 Lena did know that. She had read as much in her Daily 
 News that morning. Her brother-in-law was " in " by a ma- 
 jority that had made her despair of humanity, as though she 
 was coming to believe, with Phil, that politics counted. . . . 
 
 " I'm returning Jerome's car to the garage to-morrow," 
 Edgar went on. " It's been no end useful. You were a good 
 sort, Lena, to hand it over. All the same, I can't think why 
 the devil you don't want to use it yourself." 
 
 " I think Fownes cured me of my passion for motoring," 
 Helena said. " Motoring for Fownes meant records and short 
 cuts, the edges of ponds and angles of forty-five degrees. It 
 gets monotonous after a time, you know." 
 
 " Then why don't you get the car out and learn to drive it 
 yourself? " 
 
 Helena threw down the stump of her cigarette and smiled 
 at him. 
 
 ** Do you know, Edgar," she said, " you sometimes have 
 quite brilliant ideas. I believe I will if I can find time." 
 ** Does Bletchington keep you busy? " 
 "Yes, rather." 
 " Other people, too, eh ? " 
 "A few yes." 
 Pause. 
 
 Then, " I say, Lena, may I ask you what Bletchington gives 
 you? " 
 
 " No, you mayn't, but I don't mind telling you. Two- 
 fifteen." 
 
 Edgar got up and came and sat on the table, very near her. 
 " Look here," he said, " come to me. I'm going to be 
 horribly busy for the next three months. If Jerome gets 
 through and is back before then we can fix something up with 
 him. He won't mind, I know, and I'll give you two-fifty a 
 year." 
 
 Helena gasped, though she managed to look as though she 
 hadn't.
 
 STORM-WRACK 187 
 
 " Two-fifty," she said. " That's nearly five pounds a week, 
 isn't it? " 
 
 " Exactly 4 16s. 134d. Or 20 16s. 8d. a month." 
 
 "Very tempting. But I think I won't take it on, thanks." 
 
 " Well, think it over. We'd like to have you here." 
 
 Helena smiled. "You mean you would? " 
 
 Edgar grinned and put his hand on hers, lying white and 
 smooth on his polished dining-room table. The Holmeses 
 dined with lace mats under their plates .and no cloth, because 
 at the moment cloths were not fashionable. 
 
 "Well, you know, kiddie, I'm awfully fond of you. Al- 
 ways have been right from the first time I set eyes on you." 
 
 She was very still, keeping him at bay with her eyes. He 
 went on. 
 
 "That's why I want you to be careful over this other 
 affair." He came back to it with a rush seemed to realise 
 that Gertrude had left them that he might make Helena " see 
 reason." He could have found pleasanter ways of spending 
 that interval together. . . . 
 
 " The trouble is, kiddie, that Gertrude may take it into her 
 head to write to your mother may conceive it her duty, I 
 mean. Though what good that would do. ... You see, 
 they're both so attached to Jerome." 
 
 Helena's eyes narrowed. 
 
 " You mean," she said, helping herself to a chocolate, " that 
 probably they may conceive it their duty, between them, to 
 write to Jerome." 
 
 Edgar said, " Well, you never know. It's just as 1 well to be 
 careful. It was a mad thing to go and stay at Yewhurst that 
 week-end of all others, with East Rokesby only a couple of 
 miles or so away. Surely I told you the date, and if I didn't 
 there were the papers. Not that I look at it as Gertrude does. 
 I don't see why a woman a pretty woman, like you 
 shouldn't have her fling as much as a man if she wants it. 
 What's a kiss or two, after all? He's a lucky devil, anyway, 
 who gets your kisses. They're so damn scarce." 
 
 He bent down so that his moustache brushed her hair. 
 
 " Do you know," she said, " they're going ... to get ... 
 scarcer." 
 
 "Are they? "he said.
 
 188 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 She could feel him about her like an atmosphere knew that 
 he kissed the top of her head. She sat very still. Her hand 
 lay supine there on the polished black oak. She heard him 
 breathing heavily above her; got, through the tobacco smoke, 
 a whiff of the scent he affected. Something inside her said: 
 " What am I doing? Is this flirtation? " Then Edgar's hand 
 descended upon hers and the spell was broken. She slipped 
 out of her seat and pulled her hand free. 
 
 " What about that coffee? " she said, " And Lucy tells me 
 you've got a new Orchestrelle. Come and play something to 
 me. Got any Chopin? " 
 
 Edgar hadn't. With his hand pressing the soft flesh of her 
 finely moulded arm he offered her Beethoven and Tschaikowsky 
 as a substitute. 
 
 The trim parlourmaid had just taken in the coffee to the 
 drawing-room. It was black and served in pale mauve cups. 
 And while Helena admired the excellent colour-scheme and 
 enjoyed the coffee which helped to create it, Edgar moved some 
 queer little levers on a shining black grand and produced a not 
 altogether faultless rendering of the Sonata Appassionato and, 
 later, the Sonata Pathetique, for the Orchestrelle was new and 
 as yet Edgar's manipulation of the levers was a trifle amateur. 
 He pulled up, however, on the Tschaikowsky: gave her, quite 
 creditably, the Chanson Triste and, afterwards, the Casse Nois- 
 ette suite. 
 
 It was in the middle of the Casse Noisette that Helena lighted 
 her third cigarette and hoped devoutly that she wouldn't be 
 sick.
 
 CHAPTER SEVEN 
 
 JEROME must be told. 
 That thought pursued her, because if she did not write 
 Gertrude would. Gertrude meant business, and it availed 
 Helena nothing that she could manage Edgar because Edgar 
 (here, and so obviously) could not manage Gertrude. And, 
 like all the others, Gertrude could get at her " via the people 
 at Halifax." . . . 
 
 For all that, however, she did not write, until quite a week 
 later. She funked it as much as all that. And when she did 
 write she took her time over it, drafting it out in shorthand 
 first, because one's thoughts came quicker that way and one 
 could net them before they escaped. The letter when it was 
 finished (even to her own eyes) was a remarkable production, 
 cool, concise and exact. It offered no excuse for what had 
 happened, took no credit for what, so far, had not. (K they 
 expected Jerome to be " decent " at least they could be " de- 
 cent " too.) But you could not for ever fight against love: 
 you ceased to try when once you had recognised love for what 
 it was a thing powerful, despotic and beyond reason. As 
 she copied out her letter in longhand she remembered that Je- 
 rome (though he might at first have rebelled) had always in 
 the end done what she wanted. This was a thought that com- 
 forted her, when, with the letter posted, she began to wonder 
 how Hilary would take it. Because Hilary knew nothing about 
 it. Remembering that look on his face that was obstinacy and 
 apprehension and something else that was nameless, she 
 simply had not been able to tell him. 
 
 He took it, as it happened, quite admirably, because now it 
 was over and dene with. That was what mattered that noth- 
 
 189
 
 190 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 ing should come between them and their hours together in 
 the sun : that they might take them and be thankful, forgetting 
 Jerome hundreds of miles away in his Paradise of Fools. It 
 had almost seemed as if at times that might not be as if there 
 were something in both of them that made it impossible, some- 
 thing ineradicably Puritan, fastidious. . . . And now it was 
 over and done with, this thing that came between, so that relief 
 surged up and lapped them round. Up through the bright 
 June days their love burned as in some marvellous second 
 blooming. 
 
 The week that followed the dispatching of the letter was 
 one of clear skies and sweet scents; of summer winds; of 
 walks abroad in Surrey and in Bucks; of evenings on the 
 near reaches of the river or on the tops of 'buses that went to 
 St. Albans or Epping. They were so happy together that some- 
 times fear trod shadowily upon their heels, padded along be- 
 hind them. It rose up out of nothing, terrifyingly, when they 
 least expected it. 
 
 There was, particularly, the Saturday evening when Hilary's 
 friends were late and he and Helena had drifted into a Bronte 
 talk after a rereading of Mr. Walter de la Mare's Henry 
 Bracken. They had found themselves talking, incongruously, 
 of Emily Bronte, who loved life so well she clutched at it to the 
 last. You couldn't bear to think of it. ... And Hilary had 
 said, " I shall be like that. I shall just hate dying. I should 
 hate it at a hundred." 
 
 " Surely," Helena had objected, " one would be glad to die 
 at a hundred." 
 
 "? shouldn't, Deirdre." 
 
 " But the poor old patriarchs in the Bible old and full of 
 years. Weren't they glad to die? " 
 
 " I'm sure they hated dying." 
 
 "No, what they hated was getting old. Emily Bronte was 
 spared that, at least." 
 
 " It isn't getting old that matters, Deirdre. It's dying before 
 you're old . . . before you've lived. It's hideous to think of 
 the way those Bronte girls were sacrificed one after the other 
 wiped out, when they wanted to go on living. There ought 
 to be a prayer said in the churches, for those who go to 'em, 
 for those who die young."
 
 STORM-WRACK 191 
 
 " So many of them," Helena said, "all those who die on the 
 battlefield." 
 
 "I know: it's horrible." 
 
 He came over and took her in his arms, suddenly, and with 
 passion, as if yielding to an overmastering impulse. She lay 
 there white and silent, envisaging with him, as the measure of 
 their common passion, the very heights and depths of misery. 
 He felt her shudder up against him, her body seeming to cling 
 to his, her eyes shut, their white lids trembling. The minute 
 passed. He smiled at their folly and stroked her hair back 
 from her forehead, kissing her lips till they smiled in answer. 
 
 " Death," he said, " is something that happens to other peo- 
 ple. I forbid you to talk of it." 
 
 Helena had dispatched her letter on a Tuesday, and they 
 judged that it would reach Jerome on the Thursday of the 
 following week. It was on the evening of that day that Hilary 
 began his new picture of Helena as Deirdre. It was so he had 
 seen her first, and the idea born then in his mind had grown 
 steadily since the day he saw her with her hair down. There 
 was so much of it and he loved its colour gold-brown like an 
 October morning. He would bury his face in it and had been 
 miserable a thousand times because the picture could not be 
 begun immediately. And once he had quoted St. Paul to her: 
 " // a woman have long hair "... and had felt her pull 
 herself laughing out of his reach. " I detest St. Paul," she said. 
 He had laughed, too, and told her that so did he, but that for 
 once the little Jew was right. Long hair was a crown and glory 
 to a woman, even though it was St. Paul who said it. 
 
 "Anyway, you look like a picture by Waterhouse. May I 
 say that? And the picture of Deirdre will knock Waterhouse 
 and ' La Belle Dame ' into a cocked hat." 
 
 He had gone on talking about it all the time she stood there 
 like a queen, with flushed face and glowing eyes, fastening up 
 her hair again. 
 
 On this particular Thursday evening the picture kept them 
 occupied a good deal, so that they did not think overmuch about 
 Jerome and his letter.
 
 192 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 Two days later Pamela and Ronnie were married. It was a 
 fashionable little function, conducted with all due and neces- 
 sary ceremony and perhaps a little that wasn't, and it has a 
 place in this history only because of the effect it had on Helena 
 and Hilary. 
 
 Afterwards they would have it that it was the wedding which 
 had done it. Undermined their defences, they meant, which 
 was very strange, because standing there upon their crag they 
 had been so certain that that sort of thing could not possibly 
 happen to them. But even Hilary would have admitted some- 
 thing additional to the wedding. There was that not alto- 
 gether inexcusable mistake on the part of somebody (a fem- 
 inine somebody) who had a disconcerting habit of jumping 
 to conclusions, and not only of jumping to them, but of turn- 
 ing her back on them immediately, so that it never seemed to 
 occur to her to reconsider them. This particular conclusion, as 
 it happened, was concerned with a wedding-ring. Not Pa- 
 mela's, but Helena's. . . . 
 
 And, anyway, it was an incident which came later on in the 
 day. 
 
 5 
 
 Helena found the wedding exactly like all the others she had 
 attended (only, as she said, " rather more so ") save that for 
 some inscrutable reason she remembered afterwards that Pa- 
 mela looked beautiful and interesting while Ronnie looked a 
 fool. Hilary said there was nothing queer about this: that all 
 men looked fools on their wedding-day and most women like 
 lambs led to the slaughter, only in this case it wasn't Pamela 
 who would be slaughtered. All the same, she was very beauti- 
 ful to look at: not a man there who would not dream dreams 
 about her. She was all gold and white and delicate and ex- 
 quisite. Outside in the porch small children in Kate Greena- 
 way frocks threw roses at her and succeeded in hitting Ronnie 
 each time very neatly behind the ear. Helena's sense of the 
 funniness of things struggled up and made her hope the roses 
 had no sharp thorns. Other children, less " official," perhaps, 
 but with considerably better aim, hurled confetti in riotous
 
 STORM-WRACK 193 
 
 handfuls. Pamela tried to dodge the confetti and hurried into 
 the taxi. A Press photographer rushed forward and deftly 
 secured a snapshot, just as she smiled from the open window 
 a smile that wiped Ronnie out completely, poor, foolish-looking 
 Ronnie who sat hiding in the corner, rubbing his ear, as if the 
 roses did have thorns, after all! 
 
 After the ceremony, a reception at the old Chelsea house 
 Ronnie had taken for a year. They listened to too many 
 speeches (Hilary refused to make one, just as he had refused to 
 officiate for Ronnie, who had had to fall back upon a suburban 
 brother, who, however, thoroughly enjoyed himself) ; they 
 drank Ronnie's champagne (which was excellent) and ate 
 Pamela's wedding cake (which was excellent too, if you liked 
 that sort of thing) ; and presently they looked at her presents, 
 a really fine haul, which made Hilary congratulate her upon her 
 business ability. Nothing else, he told Helena afterwards, 
 could have produced such a completely satisfactory collection 
 with so few duplicates. But Pamela took his remarks in good 
 part. She was essentially an amiable person. " Everybody," 
 she said in that honey-sweet voice of hers, " had been so very 
 kind ... so very kind." 
 
 For long afterwards Helena had a vision of Ronnie's face as 
 he shook hands with Hilary and said good-bye. He said it 
 three times, as though it were a sort of lesson he had learnt by 
 heart and must not forget, and his eyes searched all the time for 
 Pamela. 
 
 She came clad in a dark green costume, with a black hat 
 sporting an egret's feather. There were no silly humanitarian 
 scruples about Pamela. She knew, none better, what suited 
 her! "Come along, Ronnie," she said, "we shall miss the 
 train." She did not intend to do that. Pamela was one of the 
 people to whom fiascoes never happened. She had the air of 
 one who knows that she is perfectly beautiful and perfectly 
 dressed, and she was as self-possessed as if she had been 
 through the marriage ceremony every day of her life, and in- 
 tended to make it henceforth a permanent institution. 
 
 After Pamela and Ronnie had gone Hilary proposed that 
 they should all go somewhere and " do " a matinee. But every- 
 one was too much in love with Ronnie's beautiful old house and 
 the idea of drinking tea in the old garden out of Pamela's new
 
 194 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 silver service to listen to him. So he and Helena went off by 
 themselves. They walked, however, not where matinees waited 
 to be " done," but, almost instinctively, in the direction of Hil- 
 ary's studio. And as they went he talked of Pamela not too 
 kindly, Helena thought. 
 
 " If only he hadn't married her," he said presently. 
 
 " But he wanted to marry her," Helena objected. 
 
 " I wonder if he did. He wanted her. She's in his blood. 
 And marriage, with Pamela, is the only way. She has a rigid 
 technical morality a man can't get beyond." 
 
 " What do you mean by a ' technical ' morality? " 
 
 " Do you know Dr. Johnson's definition of a flirt? " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " I don't remember it, anyway." 
 
 He quoted it for her. 
 
 " A woman who rouses passions she has no intention of grat- 
 ifying. Oh yes, you can change the gender, of course. But 
 that's Pamela. She's moral enough, if that's all you mean by 
 ' morality.' " 
 
 " I don't," Helena said, " but I wonder if you're right? " 
 
 "Right? About Pamela? Of course I'm right," and he 
 told her things which did seem rather to prove it. 
 
 " You can see, can't you," he asked Helena, " that a girl 
 like that isn't good enough for Ronnie? " She said yes, she 
 could see that, as he put his latchkey in the door and let her in. 
 
 " Did you tell Ronnie these things? " she inquired, as they 
 went up die staircase. 
 
 "I tried but it didn't do much good. He said Pamela 
 couldn't help it if men made fools of themselves over her, and 
 he could understand it, anyway. Besides, he didn't want, he 
 said, to marry a woman no other man would look at." 
 
 " Oh, well, perhaps he'll never find her out," Helena said. 
 " Are you going to work? " 
 
 He said he was, but when she came back in her Deirdre frock 
 he only sat there looking at her in it. Barbara Feilding had 
 designed and made it up for him over a year ago. She had 
 clever fingers and a good eye for colour, and Hilary had been 
 pleased with the gown, but for some reason or other he had not 
 used it for the purpose he then intended ; and it had hung about
 
 STORM-WRACK 195 
 
 in his room until the projected picture of Helena as Deirdre 
 had brought it again to his mind. It was a greenish-blue silk 
 of heavy texture, with a design of old gold, and a girdle that 
 hid rather than defined the waist-line. Barbara had cut it with 
 a large square neck and short loose sleeves, and had left it so 
 long that it trailed as Helena moved. In his picture Hilary had 
 posed her so that she stood with one bare foot slightly forward, 
 peeping out from beneath the blue-green hem. 
 
 " It's a nice gown," he said, " but I'll have to paint some 
 more colour into it. It used to seem to have plenty: your 
 hair takes it all." 
 
 However, he didn't paint that morning. Something got in 
 the way. Something stretched between them some live wire 
 of feeling they knew they must not touch, and presently Hilary 
 turned from the mixing of his paints to say " Let's go some- 
 where, shall we? " 
 
 " All right, if you really don't want to work. Where? " 
 
 " What about our wood? " 
 
 "Our wood? Oh, our Yewhurst wood. Oh no, not to-day." 
 
 " Why not? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 "You do know, Deirdre." 
 
 " Only that I'd rather not." 
 
 "Afraid?" 
 
 Her eyes rather than her lips said, " Yes." 
 
 "Of me?" 
 
 "Of us." 
 
 He saw her hands gripping the edge of the divan and her 
 hair fall over her face like a russet veil. But she did not push 
 it back: it saved her from that fiercely tender glance of his: 
 though nothing could save her from the overwhelming sense 
 she had of him sitting there at her side. 
 
 "It doesn't strike you, I suppose," he said, "that it's just 
 as dangerous to-day to stop here? " 
 
 Out of a deadly calm she answered him. 
 
 " Yes it does. I think it's always going to be dangerous 
 now, anywhere." 
 
 He turned at that, caught her tightly in his arms and began 
 kissing her as though he would never stop. Beneath Barbara's
 
 196 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 thin silk gown he could feel all the soft, enticing warmth of 
 her. Her hair fell about him intoxicatingly. The blue-green 
 gown slipped on one shoulder. . . . 
 
 When he released her she got up rather unsteadily and moved 
 over to the door of his bedroom. 
 
 " I'm going to get this off," she said, looking down at the 
 unwanted Deirdre gown. 
 
 " And you'll come to the wood? " 
 
 She flushed a little under his deliberate, ardent gaze, but she 
 nodded. 
 
 " Yes," she said. 
 
 He saw the door close between them heard the key turn 
 sharply in the lock. 
 
 He found her a scratch lunch of cheese, tomatoes and fruit, 
 and after they had eaten it Hilary went out to look for a taxi 
 and to send a telegram to Mrs. Rogers (one of the many she 
 received, these days). The taxi landed them at Victoria in 
 good time for the two thirty-five. They would have to change, 
 they were told, at a place called Threppington, and were prom- 
 ised a connection. They said but little during the journey, but 
 once Hilary said suddenly, "Think of it, Deirdre! Doesn't it 
 make your mouth water? A whole month together in 
 Italy." 
 
 He was thinking, she knew, of Ronnie and Pamela, who had 
 chosen Italy for their honeymoon, and she could find nothing 
 to say. 
 
 " They're going to Florence then on to Capri. I could 
 make you love Florence and Capri, Deirdre." 
 
 " You could make me love the Mile End Road," she said, " if 
 you tried hard enough." 
 
 He smiled at that and was silent. For the rest of the journey 
 they spoke scarcely at all. Only, their eyes meeting sometimes 
 across the narrow width of the carriage seemed to speak of a 
 mutual emotion, deep and voiceless, and something white and 
 hot flamed between them. 
 
 And then, as though it scorched her, the red colour would 
 come up swiftly into Helena's face.
 
 STORM-WRACK 197 
 
 They missed the connection at Threppington as one always 
 does miss connections by just a few minutes. (Besides, miss- 
 ing trains was a trick of theirs.) There was nothing to Yew- 
 hurst until the five-fifteen, so they set out to explore Threpping- 
 ton, which Iqoked promising. 
 
 They went together up the winding sunny road until they 
 found a birch wood, and beyond it a blaze of gold that Hilary 
 said was Threppington Common with the gorse in full bloom. 
 They sat down, by a mutual impulse, not in the wood, but 
 on the common, amid the clean nutty smell of the gorse, and 
 Helena's eyes wandered slowly over the Sussex country that 
 lay sleeping and dreaming beneath the hot sun of that mid-June 
 afternoon. Away to the south a line of already yellowing 
 fields rose steeply to the blue belt of the sky; and on the top- 
 most ridge clumps of straggling firs made queer dark patches 
 against the horizon. All leaning slightly forward, they had 
 about them a curious air of vigilance, as though they kept eter- 
 nal watch for something that would some day ride out from the 
 sea up to them there on the ridge of the hill. 
 
 But Hilary would have nothing to do with the roving Sussex 
 country. He was in no mood, he said, for painting. He was 
 going to lie down out there in the sun and go to sleep. Helena 
 opened her book and tried to read, but all the time she was 
 conscious of those seemingly closed eyes that watched her. She 
 felt strung up, intense; out there in the open it was almost un- 
 bearably hot. No breeze stirred. All the world flagged and 
 drooped in the great heat that scorched her neck as she sat. 
 She took out her handkerchief and folded it across the nape, 
 tucking the edges beneath the collar of her frock. The hat she 
 had thrown off she now put on again, tilting it forward over her 
 eyes. She looked at Hilary lying bareheaded, the sun pouring 
 down in a hot stream upon him; and suddenly she called to 
 him. 
 
 " Do let us find some shade. This is awful ! " 
 
 " I don't want to find anything," Hilary replied. " I'm ex- 
 traordinarily comfortable." 
 
 " You know you're not : you can't possibly be," she said. 
 She sounded irritable. That was how she felt. The sun on
 
 198 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 her back was like a scourge. She got up, crossed over to Hil- 
 ary, took the handkerchief from her neck and spread it over 
 Hilary's face. 
 
 " You'll be ill," she said, " it's much too hot even for me." 
 
 His lips moved beneath the strip of linen. " And why should 
 I be ill because it's too hot for you? " he asked. 
 
 " You know what I mean." 
 
 ** Do I? What's the matter, my incoherent Deirdre? " 
 
 " Nothing except the heat. I can't stop here. I shall be 
 sick if I do." 
 
 She saw his mouth move again beneath the linen and knew 
 that he smiled saw it, with strange pain, for just a second, 
 like a fleeting shadow on a drawn blind. 
 
 " Don't," he said, " that's like Pamela. Don't be like Pa- 
 mela, Deirdre." 
 
 She said nothing, but moved away and picked up her book. 
 A fierce sharp anger against him sprang up in her heart as she 
 went on over the long grass in the direction of the wood behind 
 where Hilary lay. She did not go far. Just inside the wood 
 she stopped and flung herself face downwards upon the ground, 
 cooling her hot face and sun-soaked body in the fresh grass. 
 She felt giddy and a little sick, and she was disturbed by that 
 little sharp flame of anger which kept darting up and down 
 within her. She lay very quietly, listening to the hum of the 
 insects busy out there in the sun: to the song of the birds in 
 the wood that, save for them, was so still. There was a peace 
 unfathomable in the birch wood but in her heart there was no 
 peace at all. She lay there longing for it to come back, longing 
 for the familiar friendly intercourse between herself and Hilary 
 a thing of quiet calm and dignity, with all the hot fierce 
 things that looked at her now shut down beneath a surface of 
 everyday interest and friendship and the dear delight of com- 
 panionship. But it wouldn't come back. It was gone for ever. 
 She knew that there was going to be no getting rid of this new 
 turbulent element that had ridden roughshod into the heart of 
 their calm and for ever stopped its beating. 
 
 Down there in the wood the fierce things stared and stared. 
 . . . It's always going to be dangerous . . . now. . . . Face 
 downward in the grass she looked long and steadily at that fact, 
 and found it rather tfrrible. Presently she sat up from the
 
 STORM-WRACK 199 
 
 grass to look at it better, to see it, as it were, from a new angle, 
 and as she looked it seemed to grow less terrible. It became 
 part of life part of her life. And life, for all you under- 
 stood nothing of its riddle, was somehow good. She throbbed 
 and ached this afternoon with her absorbing passionate love 
 of it. 
 
 After a while she got up from the grass and sat with her back 
 to a tree, where she could watch that prone figure out there in 
 the sun. The nutty scent of the gorse and the damp sweet 
 smell of the wood, were all about her. She sat with her hat off, 
 her head back against the tree-trunk, her book neglected on her 
 drawn-up knees. Her eyes never roved from that quiet figure 
 lying out there among the Sussex gorse, with his hat propped 
 over his eyes and her handkerchief over his face. 
 
 Gradually the hot anger died out of her heart. It seemed im- 
 possible presently that it could ever have been there. A new 
 strange sense of understanding, incomparably sweet, stole down 
 to her there amid the birch trees. And presently it crept up, 
 like a shadow, into her watching, eyes. 
 
 Half an hour later he came to her scorched and reeling 
 from his sun bath. 
 
 "Angry?" he asked. 
 
 "Not now." 
 
 " You were? What killed it, Deirdre? " 
 
 " My anger? It was only a little one." 
 
 " But something did kill it? " 
 
 " The wood, I think . . . and all the things a wood makes 
 you see. One understands, somehow, in a wood." 
 
 '* I know. What has this wood made you understand, 
 Deirdre? " 
 
 But she wouldn't answer that. She only looked at him with 
 her quiet shadowed eyes, and a wistful smile sending her red 
 mouth aslant. 
 
 " I suppose," he said, after a while, " you've no idea why 
 that idiotic wedding should have upset us? " 
 
 She clung to the sound of his voice rather than to what it 
 said as if she struggled in seas too strong and Hilary's voice 
 was a raft, upon which, with care, she might manage to effect 
 a landing. 
 
 " Has it? " she murmured.
 
 200 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 " You know it has. Why won't you look at me? " 
 " I am looking at you." 
 
 " No you're not. You're looking through me." 
 Her head bent so that he had only the top of it for his moody 
 eyes to rest on. 
 
 * Aren't you envious? v 
 
 * Of Ronnie and Pamela? " 
 'Who else?" 
 
 ' Of their happiness, you mean? " 
 
 'No of their freedom to take it." 
 
 " Oh, don't," she said, " don't. . . ." 
 
 The conversational raft floated desperately away without her. 
 She could find nothing at all to say because srie saw how it was. 
 He, too, had suffered: had known that longing for freedom that 
 had come to her. And she had thought that, in that way, he 
 had not suffered at all, had striven so hard to hide the signs of 
 her own suffering from him that she had almost succeeded in 
 wiping out for herself the memory of that evening of misery 
 that long sobbing in the dark for the thing that never could be, 
 the unblocked path, the inviolate body and soul. . . . 
 
 She raised her head and looked at him. He saw the shadow 
 in her eyes and her quivering mouth, and compunction smote 
 into him. He leaned towards her yearningly. 
 
 " Forgive me, Deirdre. . . . I'm a brute." 
 
 Balancing herself on her hand she* leaned over and kissed 
 him, very quietly, on the lips. Remembering her eyes and her 
 mouth he restrained the sudden desire that flooded him, man- 
 aged, somehow, to keep his hot hands off her. 
 
 " Don't let's be like that," she said, " wanting everything 
 when we've got so much. Can't we wait? " 
 
 He said he could. They both said they could. They meant 
 it. They were really quite honest, and decent. It was only 
 that Fate, with loaded dice, \as playing heavily against 
 them. . . . 
 
 8 
 
 They had tea presently in an inn Hilary knew. It had a 
 ridiculous name and a fragrance about it of mingled lavender 
 and roses. And while they had their tea Hilary was suddenly
 
 STORM-WRACK 201 
 
 smitten with an idea. "Why shouldn't we stop here, Deir- 
 dre? " he said, " instead of going on to Yewhurst? " 
 
 Over the rim of her cup Helena considered Hilary and his 
 idea, and she smiled because she liked the one almost as much 
 as the other. So when the charming-looking girl in the green 
 frock who had served the tea came back with the bill, Hilary 
 inquired if they had any rooms. Could the " Honey Pot " 
 (that was its ridiculous name) put them up for the nignt? The 
 " Honey Pot " could, and the girl in green inquired if they 
 would step upstairs and look at the rooms. But Hilary and 
 Helena (with the call of the open sounding loudly in their ears) 
 rather thought they would not be bothered. They wanted two 
 rooms and the best there were. And could they have dinner at 
 eight? 
 
 Afterwards Hilary said it was that dreadfully casual manner 
 of his, but Helena said she was sure that hadn't anything at all 
 to do with it. What had made that nice girl jump to her 
 conclusion was not at all that Hil-ary said " Oh, Sargent," when 
 the girl asked, "What name if you please, sir? " but that the 
 girl had a really well-developed power of observation. In fact, 
 that explanation seemed so ridiculously simple and reasonable 
 that they never quite understood why, until the thing had hap- 
 pened, the possibility of its happening had occurred to neither 
 of them. But the simple fact is that it did not. They came 
 back at a quarter to eight to find it staring them in the face 
 un fait accompli. 
 
 9 
 
 It was Hilary who stared at it first because Helena had gone 
 along to the bathroom in search of soap and water, and Hilary 
 had said, " It's all right, don't trouble to come up," to the 
 green girl who had encountered them in the hall and offered to 
 show them to their rooms. 
 
 & Numbers 18 and 19, sir ... on the first floor," and, to 
 Helena (who had inquired after her precious bathroom), "On 
 the same floor, madam, right at the end of the passage." 
 
 Even that dreadful " madam " didn't warn them. 
 
 So, while Helena splashed about in cold water, Hilary faced 
 the tremendous Surprise of it alone. He turned the handle 
 of Number 18 and stood looking at it blankly. For Number
 
 202 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 18 was a sitting-room, and on an old oak-table dinner was set 
 carefully for two. A big bowl of roses stood in the centre of 
 the table, their scent mingling delicately with the odour of 
 lavender that seemed to cling, like a vestment, about the old 
 house. The windows were flung wide, letting in a scented 
 surge of evening air. 
 
 But even then the thing didn't dawn on Hilary. A mistake, 
 of course. He went back and looked again at the number on 
 the door. That, certainly, was 18. Hilary frowned and turned 
 the handle of the door adjoining, which was plainly Number 19. 
 
 And Number 19 stood instantly revealed as a bedroom. It 
 was extraordinary how in a small fraction of time the details 
 of that room stamped themselves upon Hilary's mind the two 
 single black-oak bedsteads set side by side, the big double-mir- 
 rored wardrobe, and the washstand with beautifully carved 
 legs; the armchair of black leather, with deep blue cushions 
 that matched the curtains at the open window, or the evening 
 sky beyond it; the two water-colours on the wall that, even in 
 that moment, his brain registered as " good "; the bowl of roses 
 at the side of the farther bed, and above all, Helena's little 
 attache-case standing in one corner with hia satchel and sketch- 
 book placed intimately and wonderfully on top of it. 
 
 It was that last little item that brought the truth down upon 
 Hilary with a rush. He stepped well into the room and re- 
 mained there staring around it, incapable of thought or of 
 action. 
 
 "Oh, good Lord!" he muttered, "good Lord! What a 
 mess! " 
 
 10 
 
 In at the open door there floated the merry sound of the 
 splashing and running of water, mingled with the cheery rattle 
 of plates below-stairs and a chatter of voices. As if to shut 
 them out, Hilary pushed the door up close and moved to the 
 open window, where he stood looking out across the quiet coun- 
 try, flanked by the downs like a line of blue guards, and with 
 the distant woods mere patches of duskiness against a sky of 
 rose and opal. From the bathroom came still the splashing of 
 water and the sound of Helena's happy voice chanting an old 
 song to a modern tune of Brian's.
 
 STORM-WRACK 203 
 
 The morn is merry June, I trow, 
 The rose is budding fain. . . . 
 
 The song came dancing along the corridor, and even in that 
 moment Hilary thought that Brian's melody was bad that it 
 didn't go well with the words. 
 
 But she shall bloom in winter snow 
 Ere we two meet again. 
 Ere we two. . . . 
 
 Oh, I say, how nice of them, a tete-a-tete dinner! " 
 
 The voice stopped outside the sitting-room: the song began 
 
 again inside it, whither the sight of that neatly-set dinner-table 
 
 had intrigued the singer. 
 
 He gave his bridle-rein a shake, 
 Said " Adieu for evermore, 
 
 My Love, 
 
 And Adieu for evermore! 
 Adieu for. . . ." 
 
 The song broke off. Hilary guessed miserably that the num- 
 bers outside there on the door had incontinently strangled it. 
 Turning, he saw Helena standing in the open doorway, her level 
 brows drawn together in a frown of bewilderment, her white 
 teeth pressing down her lower lip. Neither of them spoke. 
 He watched her taking in, as he had done, every separate item 
 of that oaken room; saw her gaze come to rest at last upon the 
 moving sight of her own belongings set down there in that 
 absurdly intimate fashion with his, and then transfer itself 
 slowly, and with a deepening of her frown, to her hands. 
 
 The light broke. She came into the room, half-shutting the 
 door behind her, the colour in her face, her eyes on Hilary's. 
 
 " Of course" she said slowly, " they think we're married." 
 
 And she stretched her hands forth to Hilary, who wouldn't 
 take them, who wouldn't even look at her properly, who kept 
 repeating, " Deirdre, forgive me, forgive me ! I'm a fool an 
 idiot. It simply never occurred to me! " 
 
 And Helena a new, superb, marvellously calm Helena 
 said quietly: 
 
 " Do you suppose for one single moment that I thought it 
 had?"
 
 204 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 11 
 
 Presently she sat down, not in one of the armchairs arm- 
 chairs, somehow, were not for occasions of this sort but on 
 the edge of the nearest white bed. And Hilary shut the door 
 and loojced at her as she sat there gazing down at her hands that 
 she would have him believe were the cause of it all. 
 
 " Look here," he said, in that quick almost insolent manner 
 of his that meant tremendous excitement and " nerves," " I'd 
 better go down and explain." 
 
 Helena looked up from the twisting of the compromising ring 
 on her finger. 
 
 " To that nice girl ? " she said. 
 
 "Oh damn!" 
 
 And then, partly because (for all the calm of her appear- 
 ance) she was nervous and strung-up, and partly because the 
 situation, after all, had its element of humour, a smile trem- 
 bled crookedly across her mouth. 
 
 " I'm afraid it will be very awkward," she said, and knew 
 that her smile had annoyed Hilary before he snapped out that 
 he couldn't for the life of him see that the situation was in the 
 least amusing. 
 
 " I'll go and find that confounded girl at once. There's no- 
 body here. . . . They're certain to have another room to spare 
 and we can stick to the sitting-room. You'd like to do that? " 
 
 She felt suddenly stupid, as though Hilary's petulant little 
 outburst filled her mind to the exclusion of all else. 
 
 " Do what? " she asked. " Oh, the sitting-room? Yes, let's 
 stick to that." 
 
 " For God's sake," Hilary said, " do try to stop thinking this 
 is funny." 
 
 " But it is funny, you know. It really is." 
 
 " Then God help me, I can't see it," Hilary said in sudden 
 passion. 
 
 Helena said nothing. Her faint smile was quite dead, and 
 like a tide the colour had drifted out of her face. She looked 
 suddenly white and wistful, as she had looked in the wood, as 
 though with the painful death of her smile tears had come near 
 to birth. An immense contrition for the second time that day 
 chased the anger out of Hilary's heart; his face softened. He
 
 STORM-WRACK 205 
 
 came towards her, stooped to pick up her limp hands from her 
 lap and began to kiss them. 
 
 ** I'm an irritable beast," he said. " When things go wrong 
 I'm hateful. To everyone. To you, too, and that's awful. 
 One day, darling, you'll hate me so." 
 
 She neither looked at him nor spoke: her hands at his lips 
 seemed cold and unresponsive. He dropped them back again 
 into her lap. 
 
 " This sort of thing," he told her, " gets on my nerves." 
 
 She looked at him then. " Sit down here," she said, " I 
 want to talk to you." 
 
 She laid her left hand invitingly on the white bed where she 
 sat. The ghost of her dead smile struggled bravely up again 
 and looked faintly at him out of her eyes. Her mouth with 
 its new wistful expresion was the only piece of colour in her 
 white face. He thought she looked adorable beautiful in 
 some new fashion he could not wholly comprehend. He wor- 
 shipped her and yet he could be hateful abominable to 
 her. He came miserably and sat down at her side on the edge 
 of the little white bed. He didn't touch her: several inches of 
 white coverlet gaped hungrily between them. What she said 
 startled him. It may, even, have startled her. 
 
 " Dear. We've got, some day, to do this, haven't we? " 
 
 "Do what?" 
 
 "This. Let people think we're married." 
 
 " We're not going to let them think it. I'm going down to 
 find that beastly girl." 
 
 " But that doesn't answer my question, does it? There 
 won't ever, will there be any other way than this? " 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 "None." 
 
 She sat, now, very upright, playing no longer with the band 
 of gold on her finger. She had the air of one who has made a 
 quick decision and faces a situation boldly. Her eyes gazed 
 not at him but at the opposite wall. 
 
 " Well, if it's got to be intrigue . . . deception ... of a 
 sort, it won't be any better, that way, will it, in three months' 
 time? " 
 
 He said, not in the least seeing where she was taking him, 
 " It won't be any different, if that's what you mean."
 
 206 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 ** It is," she said. " We're quite certain, aren't we, that that's 
 the only way there is? " 
 
 "For us?" 
 
 " Yes. The only way out." 
 
 "Absolutely." 
 
 The white coverlet continued to gape between them: even 
 now, by a huge effort, he kept his hands away from her. But 
 he looked at her, wondering faintly at the way she was taking 
 it; not interested, somehow, in the way she was taking him. 
 He only wanted to rush out, take that absurd girl by her green- 
 clad shoulder and abuse her for the presumptuous idiot she was. 
 Pain and fury contended together within him, and in the back- 
 ground lurked something stronger far than they, that he kept 
 his hand on that struggled beneath his grasp like a mad dog. 
 . . . He wondered desperately how much longer he could keep 
 it under. And then Helena spoke. 
 
 " Supposing? " she said, " that we don't bother that nice 
 girl?" 
 
 He turned and looked at her, but her eyes still stared at the 
 opposite wall. 
 
 "What do you mean? " he asked. 
 
 " Don't you understand ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " I should have thought you would. It's very simple." 
 
 Her eyes had forsaken the wall for her white hands in her 
 lap. He saw the colour creeping stealthily up under her white 
 skin and though his blood leapt he made no movement to bridge 
 the distance between them. Still with determination he kept 
 his hand firmly on that mad dog of a feeling struggling furi- 
 ously to be free. 
 
 " I don't find it simple," he said. 
 
 Suddenly, as if she realised that he didn't intend to help her 
 at all, she turned her head and looked at him. He saw her 
 shining eyes and the colour drifting up like mad in her face, 
 and he thought she must hear his heart beat. But she heard 
 nothing at all save the beating of her own. 
 
 " If they like to think we are married," she said, " why 
 shouldn't we let them? " 
 
 The look she bent on him staggered him the strangest, 
 most wonderful blending, it seemed to him, even in that mo-
 
 STORM-WRACK 207 
 
 ment, of pride and humility. He came nearer to her then, put- 
 ting out a hand, shy and tentative, to touch her. 
 
 " You're sure you'll never regret? " 
 
 Most wonderfully she smiled at him. 
 
 " Neither of us," she said, " is ever going to regret anything 
 . . . whatever happens. Isn't it appalling to be as sure of a 
 thing as all that? " 
 
 For a moment their eyes met, but as she felt his hands upon 
 her, her eyes closed, the proud head lowered. 
 
 "Deirdre," he said, and then, in a sudden rapture of joy 
 and sorrow. " Oh, my dear, my dear, why do you cry? " 
 
 12 
 
 So the girl who jumped to conclusions never knew how 
 wrong, this time, she had been. 
 
 She brought them their dinner presently, and she thought 
 they must be tired because they were so quiet. But speech, 
 somehow, was now superfluous. They had, each of them, the 
 air of a listener, as though their silence was a thing more elo- 
 quent than any speech and much more wonderful. 
 
 There was a hush, too, on the outside world. The June even- 
 ing dropped slowly. The young moon had long since gone to 
 bed, and every time Helena looked out of the window she saw 
 just a sweep of sky, sapphire-blue, and the rounded outline of 
 the summer trees dark against it. There was no sound at all 
 cut there beyond the soft cooing of doves or the occasional 
 shrill cry of the heron. 
 
 The girl who did not know how wrong she had been, sug- 
 gested coffee in the garden. She brought it to them there, and 
 they sat over it until the sky deepened and the white stars came 
 out, and the garden was only a blurred indistinct mass stabbed 
 at intervals by the bold spire of the larkspur. But it smelt 
 divinely of syringa and tobacco plant and the lemon-scented 
 verbena; and the trees dreamed and dreamed 'twixt sleeping 
 and waking. 
 
 Down there amid the scented darkness Hilary pulled her 
 sharply up against him and gazed searchingly into her face. 
 He saw it white and mysterious against the blurred beauty of 
 the garden, so utterly loving that it hurt him to look at it. It
 
 208 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 stabbed into him there in the darkness a thing he had not 
 known any face could do. He crushed her suddenly and 
 fiercely in his arms, felt her body tremble to his, and knew 
 she was his, not for the asking, but for the taking. 
 
 With a new tenderness he kissed her, beneath the dreaming 
 trees and the white-starred sky. He kissed her many times. 
 
 13 
 
 Presently they went in, crossed a dim hall where the pro- 
 prietor nodded over his paper but woke up to ask Hilary to 
 sign the Visitors' Book. Helena watched him do it: saw him 
 write in his straggling untidy handwriting, " Mr. and Mrs. 
 Hilary Sargent." 
 
 Then, on up the broad oak staircase to the door of room 18. 
 Here they paused, their hands touching over the handle. 
 
 " Deirdre, the boats are burned. Do you realise that? " 
 
 " They were burned, weren't they," she said, " a long time 
 ago? " 
 
 The look they gave each other there on the threshold was one 
 of almost terrible tenderness. Nothing like this had ever 
 happened to anyone before in the world and would happen to 
 no one again. Their faces were full of this sense of the 
 grandly solitary: exaltation had them both by the throat. He 
 leaned to her there on the dim landing, his lips against her 
 hair, his voice thrilling. 
 
 " I adore you ... I adore you." 
 
 He saw her face, radiant, for just one second before she 
 slipped past him into the room. 
 
 She undressed slowly in the dark, and then sat curled up in 
 an armchair by the window, gazing out into the blue-black night 
 that was warm and still and scented. 
 
 Half an hour later Hilary found her there, a white figure 
 with shimmering hair.
 
 CHAPTER EIGHT 
 
 SOMETHING joyful and buoyant awoke with Helena next 
 morning. She lay searching her mind, turning it inside 
 out, looking for remorse and finding nothing but this 
 tremendous inordinate sense of happiness. She could not 
 get away from it. You can think of nothing else when you are 
 as happy as all that. 
 
 The morning was beautiful. All the rest of her life she 
 was grateful for that, because this was England and it might so 
 easily not have been. She swung herself over the edge of the 
 bed and crept softly to the window. The room looked on 
 to the garden a country garden, planted closely with all 
 manner of old-fashioned English flowers sweet-williams, 
 candytuft, white pinks in massed profusion, mignonette, wall- 
 flowers, pansies and the earlier roses. It was the sort of gar- 
 den Helena had known all her life, and it reminded her this 
 morning (though this was summer and that was autumn) of her 
 first morning with Jerome, when they had sat together at break- 
 fast, looking over just such another garden as this. Michael- 
 mas daisies had grown in it and marguerites, very tall and 
 straight, and bronze nasturtiums over a flagged path. There 
 had been, too, one red rose, full-blown, and at her breast she 
 had worn violets Jerome's violets, that he had found in 
 some sheltered spot in a wood. And in the night it had rained, 
 so that the morning was green like an emerald. . . . 
 
 Her thoughts went echoing and re-echoing along the windy 
 corridor of the past, and she stood there at the window listening 
 to them. She could bear to do that, because for the moment 
 she was lifted high above all doubts and qualms, bereft utterly 
 of theories. You do not argue or theorise about a feeling of 
 this sort. Even in the bright light of that June morning so 
 utterly passionless and virgin she regretted just nothing at 
 
 209
 
 210 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 all. She was pervaded, wrapt about, with a sense of peace and 
 assurance, and understood nothing save that one gives oneself 
 for love or one does not. And she had. Because she believed 
 in love, because she always had believed in it, even when she 
 had accepted so many other things in place of it. 
 
 Hilary still slept, lying high on his pillows, with tumbled 
 hair and more colour in his face than Helena had ever seen 
 there before. Turning about from her survey of the early 
 morning pageant, her eyes fell upon him and remained there. 
 Something new and unfamiliar stirred within her as she looked 
 at him lying beneath her warmly intimate gaze. She was 
 conscious of new wonderful things coming to birth within 
 her, and was uplifted by a tidal wave of unexpected emotion, 
 compounded of a hundred things that as yet were nameless. 
 In that moment of terrible insight she had a grave sweet sense 
 of the everyday: of the quiet ways of love that are companion- 
 ship and understanding. She saw love suddenly as no mere 
 passionate noctivagation, but an illuminant, that swept like 
 a searchlight into the far corners, where custom, tradition and 
 a miserable morality of possession still held sway. 
 
 Another thought came to her without panic, almost with- 
 out emotion. Jerome, by now, knew the truth, or a good deal 
 of it. They had not bargained for this. And " this " was 
 recorded downstairs in the Visitors' Book in Hilary's untidy 
 handwriting. 
 
 After all, they had not been " decent." 
 She was sorry for Jerome quietly^ sanely sorry. It was a 
 feeling this morning devoid of the passion that had torn and 
 clutched at her a fortnight ago. She looked at it now as she 
 looked at her happiness whh the calm unperturbed gaze of 
 the person who has chosen and does not regret. There was no 
 help for it. She and Hilary were in love with each other, and 
 that they had no right to be in love made not the least differ- 
 ence in the world. That, sometimes, was the way of love. 
 
 For all that, however, the shadowed June garden slipped 
 away as she looked at it, and another, coloured by the hand of 
 October and moist from the passage of the rain, came up in 
 its stead. Tall, white marguerites, bronzed nasturtiums over a 
 flagged path, and one red rose, full-blown. . . .
 
 STORM-WRACK 211 
 
 Dressed and ready .for the morning she yet hesitated, with 
 her hand on the door-knob, looking back at the room where 
 she had been so happy, with its black oak furniture, its blue 
 curtains, the plain white walls they had had the courage (save 
 for those two water-colours) to leave blank; and the deep bowl 
 of roses, some of which had fallen in the night, and had made a 
 futurist pattern on the floor. 
 
 The roses most of all, perhaps. For years afterwards when 
 out of the past that blue-black room was to rise up and look 
 at her, it was always Hilary's flushed face on his pillows, and 
 that splash of vivid colour down there on the black floor, that 
 she saw first, and there would come to her then that queer 
 tantalising scent of mingled roses and lavender. 
 
 Downstairs the girl in green wrestled with a collection of 
 bolts and catches in her interest and let her out into the 
 morning. She walked straight on down the road; crossed the 
 first stile she came to and went on through the fields, growing 
 thick with sorrel, ox-eyed daisies and buttercups. She liked 
 this southern county, with its chalky soil, its rolling open view 
 of hill and dale, its great line of downs and the faint sugges- 
 tion you had all the time of the sea. Helena walked, too, with 
 the seeing eye, so that even this morning her ramble was less 
 subjective than it might quite reasonably have been. 
 
 For out there in the beautiful morning her happiness per- 
 sisted. Nothing troubled her. It was as if her brain had 
 yielded up its functions for a while, so that the deadly knife 
 of analysis it had controlled was stilled at last. Life had 
 ceased to be either placid or comfortable: but was suddenly a 
 thing of daring and adventure. She flung up her head at the 
 challenge of it, that old line of Browning's floated back to her. 
 One must be venturesome and fortunate. What is one young 
 for else?
 
 212 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 At breakfast there was wonder and ecstasy between them 
 no sense of culpability, none of embarrassment. Fair and 
 pure their mutual passion burned up and up between them like 
 
 a white flame, destroying the very heart of wrong and of 
 shame. . . . 
 
 Afterwards they went out together up the winding road 
 that crept past orchards cool and green, down into the birch 
 wood and out again on to the gorse-covered common. And all 
 the morning Hilary worked at his water-colour of Helena in 
 her queer mauve frock and behaved as though, on the whole, 
 he was pleased with it. But after lunch he put it out of sight 
 and took Helena down again into the wood. 
 
 Like a thing loth to depart, that goes with reluctant feet, 
 looking back longingly over its shoulder, their great day 
 slipped away from them. 
 
 And the scent of the gorse was entangled in Helena's 
 memories of it inextricably mixed up with that other of 
 roses and lavender. . 
 
 They went back to town by the eight-thirty the train 
 they had refused to hurry for a fortnight ago, and in London 
 was nothing but a ma^e of wet streets and a devastating 
 scarcity of taxi-cabs. 
 
 And in Helena's room a telegram, bearing Saturday's date 
 and wearing the belated forlorn expression of the telegram that 
 has found you out and must await your coming. Helena 
 frowned at it, thinking that telegraphists wrote a vile hand. 
 With brisk unconcern she broke open the envelope and ran her 
 casual careless glance over the message it contained. And the 
 message was 
 
 Arrived Liverpool this morning expect me Guiford 
 Street four. 
 
 Jerome.
 
 CHAPTER NINE 
 
 LATER, when she looked back, there seemed to be a 
 great gulf between what came after and that moment 
 when she stood with Jerome's telegram of Saturday 
 in her hands, knowing herself grateful in profound measure to 
 the gods who were forcing immediate battle upon her, while 
 her blood raced and her courage leaped from the plunge. 
 
 It was in the night that she realised that Jerome had come 
 back knowing nothing whatever that he could not possibly 
 have received her letter before he started off by the early 
 boat. There were other things, too, that had not yet occurred 
 to her. During the night and early morning they began to 
 descend upon her chill, ominous things, separate and dis- 
 tinct, falling about her like snowflakes, and as silently. 
 
 Even so, she had not known how wretched she was until she 
 was nearing Charing Cross station and saw Jerome, with a face 
 like morning, waiting there for her outside the Bureau de 
 Change. 
 
 2 
 
 Another blank after that, filled up with some horror of a 
 meal at which there was chianti and small talk, and a wish at 
 the bottom of her heart that she were dead. . . . And after 
 that a taxi ride to Guilford Street, tears at the back of her eyes, 
 a strange lump in her throat and the thought climbing out of 
 her wretchedness that Jerome was like a schoolboy home on 
 holiday. Another thought, too, when he kissed her, that it 
 was horrible to be caressed like this by two men, as though, in 
 some dreadful fashion, her body no longer belonged to her. 
 And once she thought: " I can never tell him never. How 
 did I ever imagine I could? " But she knew that she must, 
 because, instantly, there arose before her a horrible vision of 
 
 213
 
 214 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 herself journeying back in the grey car to " Windward " of 
 herself in Jerome's arms in all the dreadful terrifying intimacy 
 of their common room facing the outstretched moor. And 
 then another wiped it out a vision of that other room down 
 there in Sussex, with fallen rose petals, a riot of colour, 
 strewn out upon a black oak floor, and Hilary's face lying 
 flushed and high on his white pillows. Strength came to her 
 then, so that she made the abrupt terrible effort of despair. 
 
 But even as she spoke she hoped that Jerome would be angry, 
 because one suffered less if one could get angry. Anger was 
 like love it burned up everything else. All the same, it 
 was less what she said than the sight of her blanched and 
 twisted face that stabbed furiously down into Jerome's under- 
 standing. Things blinded and frantic rushed past him into 
 the dark, stabbing at him afresh as they ran. And, all the 
 time, Helena's voice relating a ridiculous story. . . . 
 
 " I know it all sounds like comic opera, but it's true. ... I 
 can give you the address . . . All the evidence you want." 
 
 " Comic opera," Jerome said, " Oh, my God! " 
 
 She remembered very little of anything after that. All 
 those things he said to her, all those things she said to him, 
 were best forgotten. Later, the ridiculous outrageous things 
 he said about artists made her smile, but to-day and for many 
 a day to come, only one thing remained with her. Jerome was 
 not going, after all, to be "decent" Resolutely and un- 
 flinchingly he refused altogether to be " decent." 
 
 Presently he rose to go, and the spectacle of Jerome looking 
 for his hat remained with Helena for ever. It had fallen from 
 its chair and lay face downwards upon the faded reds and 
 greens of Mrs. Rogers's carpet. Helena saw it, in that mo- 
 ment, in all its pathetic funniness the hard felt hat of the 
 masculine creature, the " bowler " that is neither dignified nor 
 reasonable. 
 
 " You will know where to find me when you want me." 
 Jerome's voice, cold, dispassionate, reached her from the door- 
 way. Her own, faint and spent, trailed after him, like some- 
 thing wounded to death. "I shall not want you ever. 
 Good-bye." 
 
 The door closed. He went. She heard his footsteps going 
 along the landing and down the stairs . . . heard them stumble
 
 STORM-WRACK 215 
 
 a little at the awkward turn that met them halfway down, 
 knew that they recovered and went on steadily into the passage 
 and along to the front door. That opened, shut, and the foot- 
 steps went on down the road. And when they died away there 
 was nothing at all save that one thought that Jerome was not 
 going to be " decent," that resolutely, obstinately, he had re- 
 fused, point-blank, to be "decent."
 
 CHAPTER TEN 
 
 STRANGELY enough, it was Hilary who pulled her out 
 of her swamp of misery into the delirious happiness of 
 the present a Hilary who was determined, at this 
 juncture, to see neither past nor future. His overmastering 
 need of Helena just then (their overmastering need of each 
 other) wiped out everything save itself and the opportunities 
 for being together that came to them. 
 
 Not that opportunities came entirely without effort on the 
 part of the lovers, who, to be quite accurate, dragged them 
 along to them by cunning manoeuvres that included subterfuge 
 and evasion. Intrigue strode with boldness and startling sud- 
 denness into their lives, making itself so useful that they 
 almost forgot how much they hated and distrusted it. For it 
 was just then (or that was how Hilary seemed to see it) the 
 one friend they had. the one friend in their confidence, who 
 neither passed judgment nor called them to a consideration of 
 things irrevocable between them. Not, of course, that Hilary's 
 friends were going to do either of these things. The people 
 who were going to make a fuss were all on Helena's side. 
 Sooner or later the fight would begin: but it had not begun 
 yet, and it struck Helena (playing this queer game of secrecy 
 because Hilary would have it so) as a little superfluous to don 
 one's armour-plate to meet people who came unarmed. 
 
 From that Tuesday evening when Helena had gone on to 
 the studio from the office with her news of that interview the 
 previous day with Jerome, Guilford Street had known her no 
 more. Just before the telegraph offices closed Hilary had 
 rushed out and sent Mrs. Rogers a lie across the wires. That 
 was Intrigue's first move in the game. The second came when 
 on the following day Helena called and elaborated the tele- 
 gram that lied. These things can be done, and Jerome's visit 
 on the Monday evening to Guilford Street helped considerably. 
 
 216
 
 STORM-WRACK 217 
 
 It was, of course, quite natural that Helena should be rejoin- 
 ing her husband, and, besides, Helena did it all extremely well. 
 She told her lies so boldly that she was convinced only some in- 
 scrutable accident had prevented her long since from embark- 
 ing upon a life of crime. 
 
 In due course her boxes arrived at Hilary's studio, and were 
 pushed well back beneath his bed and locked against the prying 
 eyes of people who came to clean. 
 
 So the secret was born. They tended it continually and 
 nursed it with care, so that it did not cry overmuch nor dis- 
 turb them o'nights. 
 
 They were convinced, by the end of that first wonderful 
 week, that no one suspected its existence not even Evey or 
 Arthur, whose eyes and ears were sharper than most people's. 
 
 But Helena would not have cared if they had. 
 
 By the end of the next week Arthur had. . . . 
 
 He came in on the Friday evening and he exhibited no sort 
 of inclination to depart. Eleven o'clock struck and Hilary, 
 finding an excuse to follow Helena into the kitchen, told her to 
 put on her things and say good night as if she were going home. 
 " Don't come back before twelve, and by that time I'll have 
 got rid of him. Go and have some coffee at the "Kindly 
 Heart " unless you can think of anything better. 
 
 ** You really want," Helena said, " to keep it up before 
 Arthur? You won't let him think what he likes or tell him 
 the truth? " 
 
 " Dearest, I can't. . . . Not yet. We've got to wait. . . ." 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders but she smiled a little sadly, 
 knowing that he was thinking of Jerome . . . that he believed 
 they would beat him at his own game. That was because he 
 did not know Jerome: had not realised yet that Jerome Ruther- 
 ford Courtney did not " fail," that he did not recognise failure 
 even when he looked into its chill blank countenance. But 
 Helena knew these things. And she smiled, not because of 
 them but because of Hilary's optimism, which she had not ex- 
 pected, and because one does smile at optimism when one 
 meets it.
 
 218 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 So Helena put on her hat, collected a book, wished Arthur 
 good night in an excellently natural manner, and went out. 
 She turned down on to the Embankment in the direction of the 
 " Little Restaurant of the Kindly Heart," where she and Hilary 
 often went together and sat in a dim corner and were, happy. 
 You got good coffee at the "Kindly Heart," and, not infre- 
 quently, good company; but this evening it was almost empty. 
 There was a young man sprawling in an armchair a few 
 tables away, and even in the execrable light of the little res- 
 taurant he was audaciously mauve as to shirt, pink as to tie 
 and open as to socks. He was talking what appeared to be 
 sociology of sorts to a young woman in a rakish hat, whose 
 contributions to the conversation more audible than those 
 of the gaily-coloured young man reached Helena in sudden 
 breathless bursts. 
 
 "The middle-classes? Oh yes, I agree . . . hopeless . . . 
 of course . . . Anti-everything we care about. . . . Look at 
 the suburbs. I hate them, don't you? Oh yes, fresh air and 
 all that, .but. . . . Just look at the young marrieds! What 
 are you going to do with them? They will live in flower-boxes, 
 with white paint and polished brass, and babies with heads 
 like the floor of a carpenter's shop. . . . They go to church on 
 Sundays and they vote straight Tory every time, like the snobs 
 they are. So will the women when they get a vote. You can't 
 blame the Liberal Government for not giving it to them: they 
 know they'd be swamped, of course. . . . What are you going 
 to do with people of this sort? They won't think. That's 
 why I hate them because they won't think. . . . How are 
 you going to alter them? I s'pose that's what you want, isn't 
 it, to alter them somehow ? " 
 
 In the other corner sat a couple of lovers eating macaroni 
 and cheese between prolonged intervals of holding hands be- 
 neath the table. When the voice of the lady with the rakish 
 hat reached them they smiled at each other, rather, Helena 
 thought, as if they were sorry for her. Helena wouldn't have 
 wondered if they were sorry for the whole world, including 
 herself who certainly looked lost and lonely away there in 
 her own particular corner. 
 
 She ordered a coffee: spun it out until half-past eleven and 
 then ordered another. The macaroni lovers had long since
 
 STORM-WRACK 219 
 
 departed, and at five minutes to twelve the sociological young 
 man and the rakish-looking young woman got up to go. They 
 squabbled a bit over the bill until finally the young woman 
 secured and prepared to settle it. " Oh, no, this is my do. . . ." 
 The young man got back to his sociology. The young woman 
 having disposed of her change, stood up and put on her coat. 
 " London," she said, as she passed Helena's table and flung 
 her a look, " London, of course, ought to be burnt down." 
 
 " But it looks quite nice at night," the gaily-coloured young 
 man objected. " Come out and look at the stars." 
 
 The association of the stars and this fierce young woman 
 somehow made Helena smile. She was still smiling when the 
 manageress of the " Kindly Heart " came over and said, " We 
 close at twelve. Two coffees wasn't it? Sixpence, if you 
 please." 
 
 Helena paid her sixpence, remarked that it was a fine night, 
 and departed. 
 
 Outside there was a sky sown thick and palely with stars, 
 amid which a moon, like a white disc pushed slightly out of 
 shape, seemed to ride serenely. A wind, soft as down and 
 warm from the throbbing heart of June, went dancing gaily 
 along the Embankment, over which Helena leaned for a while, 
 hearing only the faint rumble of a distant train, and the quiet 
 lapping of the tide. 
 
 It was at least a quarter -past twelve when she let herself in 
 and went up to Hilary's rooms. Without knocking, she turned 
 the handle and walked in. And there, just exactly where she 
 had left him, sat Arthur Yeomans, puffing at his pipe. 
 
 " I had to come back," she stammered, " I couldn't get 
 home I left my purse. . . ." 
 
 Arthur got up, with the air of one who has not waited in 
 vain. Or did she only fancy that? 
 
 " I'll be off, old chap, he said to Hilary. " Coming down ? " 
 
 They went out together. 
 
 "He knew all the time," Helena thought, "that's why h6 
 waited. He wanted to make certain." 
 
 She slipped down on the rug before the fire and pulled off 
 her hat. She sat there listening to the sound of their footsteps 
 that went down to the door, passed out on to the step and halted 
 there. The sound of voices muffled and indistinct came
 
 220 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 to her as she sat there, hearing the soft crackling of the dying 
 fire. . . . 
 
 She was tired and sleepy an ecstasy of weariness that 
 promised dreamless sleep. She yawned and began to take the 
 pins out of her hair. It fell over her face, and without push- 
 ing it back, she sat on, watching the red glow of the fire through 
 the glinting mass of it 
 
 Hilary qame in at last, pulled the blue curtain over the door, 
 shot its little brass bolt and slipped down beside her. 
 
 Something of her sleepiness slid from her as his arm came 
 round her. 
 
 "Well? "she asked. 
 
 " Guessed," Hilary said, his lips on her hair. 
 
 "-Oh, I knew that. I meant, how did he take it? " 
 
 "As I always told you he would. Arthur hasn't the mind 
 of a Baptist. He's broad. Doesn't see how we can do any- 
 thing else if we're as sure of ourselves as I assert. 'And we 
 are, aren't we? " 
 
 " Surer," she said. 
 
 " He wanted to know just where things stood with Court- 
 ney. He suggests I run up to Rattenby, the sooner the 
 better. Thinks he might be amenable to reason now that 
 we've really taken the law into our hands. What do you 
 think? Any good? " 
 
 Sitting with her head on Hilary's shoulder she had to stifle 
 the ** No, none <at all " that was on her lips. What she did 
 say was " You can try." She made a wry face. " But it'll be 
 horrid." 
 
 "Think he'll shoot me? " 
 
 " He's much more likely to ignore you." 
 
 " And you think it's worse to be ignored than to be shot? " 
 
 " I fancy it must hurt more." 
 
 He laughed, holding her close, kissing her mouth through 
 the veil of glinting hair before she broke away. 
 
 " Let's look up trains at once," she said. 
 
 There was, they discovered, a twelve-five from King's Cross 
 which Hilary could catch quite well on the following evening
 
 STORM-WRACK 221 
 
 when the Crowd had departed. It would reach Halifax about 
 six on the Sunday morning, and if there was no connection to 
 Rattenby he could, so Helena said, who knew all about this 
 sort of thing, quite easily charter a car to run him out. It 
 rather amused her, she found, to reflect that Hilary might 
 arrive at " Windward " in a grey " Courtney." 
 
 She lay awake that night long after Hilary was asleep, 
 thinking of Hilary's journey and the futility of it. Because 
 Jerome was not going to be " amenable to reason." Let Arthur 
 think it if he liked. . . . When she thought of Jerome now- 
 adays she was angry. She had been sorry for him, but that 
 had passed. Anger had eaten up her pity; she had been right 
 anger left no room for anything but itself. Something in 
 her had hardened queerly. Of herself, she was very sure. 
 She had done Jerome a wrong, but he, too, much earlier, had 
 done her a wrong that seemed infinitely greater. He had 
 married her knowing that she did not love him. True, she had 
 not then loved anybody else: but there had, surely, always 
 been the possibility that one day she might. She had not then 
 properly understood that, but Jerome was many years older 
 than she, and he must have known. Working it out for herself, 
 these new strange days, that was the conclusion at which she 
 had arrived. That Jerome had known and she had not. It 
 cut somehow, at the very base of their union. Somehow or 
 other, it didn't, to her, seem honest. . . . 
 
 He must have lived with it all that first year that ugly 
 spectre of her potential lover. And now that it was no spectre 
 but the lover himself who had appeared, Jerome shut his eyes 
 and refused to see. That, too, didn't seem quite honest. More 
 courageous than 'Jerome, she faced the situation and stared it 
 out of countenance. She believed that in the circumstances 
 she and Hilary were justified. There was no sense in finding 
 excuses for oneself, and she simply was not able to understand 
 how this life with Hilary was wrong when that with Jerome 
 had been right. She just could not see what marriage the 
 mere civil formality had to do with it, and it was incredible 
 to her that a man should want to keep someone who did not 
 want to stay. What was it worth if that was all love was 
 just possession, the staking out of a claim? Love wasn't pos- 
 session, nor just emotion: not desire nor sentimentality. Love
 
 222 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 was understanding, and freedom and mutual respect. It was 
 the dew on the morning, the stars in the evening sky. . . . 
 
 She remembered what Hilary had once said to her. " More 
 nonsense is talked about love than about anything else :n the 
 world. Think of our plays, our novels, our poems, even! Yet 
 how many people, do you suppose, ever fall in love? " 
 
 They had worked it out between them to a miserable per- 
 centage. Not one in fifty, they agreed. Most people did 
 without the dew on the morning did not look at the stars 
 o'nights. Neither of them would have included Jerome in 
 their miserable percentage that did. Neither of them was in 
 the mood to call that love. 
 
 She fell asleep presently, her head on Hilary's shoulder, her 
 face against his, one arm thrown across him and her hair a 
 spread delight in the white rays of the moon. 
 
 4 
 
 The next evening was wet outrageously wet so that only 
 Jimmy and Nelly, Barbara and the Grettons turned up. 
 Jimmy was spruce, elegant and cheerful, despite the rain (he 
 had probably arrived in a taxi) and he rushed in and shook 
 Helena affectionately by the hand. 
 
 " Fancy meeting you, Mrs. Courtney. . . . Made sure you 
 were back in Yorkshire by this time. Ran into your husband 
 one day last week Monday, I believe it was, anyway, we had 
 lunch together and he told me he was dragging you off that 
 very evening. . . ." 
 
 She escaped after a while to Nelly, who sat back against 
 Hilary's cushions listening to what Stella Gretton was saying. 
 Nelly looked tired. She told Helena that that was how she 
 felt She had just had an offer of marriage and had refused 
 it. Saying " no " firmly yet gently, it seemed, was a terribly 
 exhausting business. "You see," she said to Helena when 
 Jimmy came up and began to be amusing to Stella, " you see, 
 my dear, the man's poor rather a darling, of course, but 
 miserably poor and I can't cook. You know what Mrs. 
 Berry says: Kissing dont last: good cookery do." 
 
 " You couldn't learn to cook, I suppose? " Helena inquired. 
 
 " No, I'm quite sure I couldn't, Lena. If it were a case of
 
 STORM-WRACK 223 
 
 love's young dream, I might. But it ain't, my dear: it ain't 
 even anything remotely approaching it. Ten years ago I 
 might have gone to live in villadom with an easy mind. But 
 now it would annoy me to hear my neighbours sneeze, and 
 they wouldn't approve of me because I don't believe in cleaning 
 steps and shouldn't take a pride in my door-knocker. Subur- 
 ban ideals are beyond me. Always were." 
 
 " Can't one live without the approval of one's neighbours? " 
 
 " Not in Suburbia, my dear." 
 
 " But out of it? " 
 
 " You don't have neighbours anywhere else. And no Mrs. 
 Grundy. It's only in Suburbia you have to frame your mar- 
 riage certificate and produce your banker's pass-book." 
 
 " Hilary wouldn't agree with you." 
 
 "Hilary? Oh, but Hilary's not in love, so he needn't 
 worry." 
 
 "Don't you think he has been in love ever? " 
 
 " Oh yes in love with faces or heads of hair. But Hilary 
 wouldn't marry a face or a head of hair, thank God. Sensible 
 people get over that sort of thing. I remember being in love 
 once with a nose a really beautiful nose it was and an- 
 other time it was a mouth that Rossetti might have painted. 
 On the whole, however, I'm inclined to think it was the nose 
 which gave me the worst time. Good noses are so rare. We 
 needs must love the straightest when we see it." 
 
 Helena laughed. 
 
 " You got over the nose, did you? " 
 
 " I got away from it which comes to the same thing. 
 God was very good to me." 
 
 Somewhere in the house a clock struck ten. 
 
 " Nelly," Helena said suddenly, " do something for me, 
 will you? " 
 
 " Anything," said Nelly, " short of a murder. A murder 
 would be as exhausting as matrimony." 
 
 " Get rid of everybody for me, will you? " 
 
 " Oh, a massacre," said Nelly. 
 
 ** Don't laugh. It's serious. They must all be gone by 
 eleven." 
 
 " You think they look as though they're going to stay later? " 
 
 ** Well, look at Barbara and Stephen. They're talking to
 
 224 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 Hilary about that new man Gaudier Brzeska, isn't that his 
 name? Hilary's awfully keen on him, but all the people he 
 draws seem to me to have at least six things physically the mat- 
 ter with them. And I'm sure they've all had rickets in their 
 childhood. Hilary agrees, but says that doesn't prevent him 
 from admiring them as works of art. Do you understand 
 that? I don't. Anyway, Hilary's forgotten our existence. 
 I don't see what is to prevent them going on for hours." 
 
 "And they mustn't after eleven? What's on? " 
 
 " Nothing, except that Hilary has a train to catch." 
 
 "He's not going away? Don't say he's going to shut up 
 in June? " 
 
 " Oh no this is only a flying visit to Yorkshire." 
 
 " I thought he'd given Yorkshire up. He used to go up 
 there two or three times a year. He had a perfect passion for 
 Yorkshire. I never saw anything like it. Suddenly he stopped 
 going altogether. I used to think there might be a girl in it." 
 
 "The Bronte sisters," Helena murmured. 
 
 Nelly laughed. " By the way," she said, " isn't Yorkshire 
 your county? " 
 
 " It was," Helena admitted. 
 
 " Was. Aren't you going back? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 Nelly looked thoughtful. "You seem pretty final about it, 
 my dear," she said. 
 
 " I feel final about it," Helena said. " Let's go over to the 
 others, shall we? " 
 
 Barbara and Hilary smiled at them abstractedly. But in 
 five minutes talk about Brzeska had languished and died, 
 shocked out of existence by Nelly's persistent and cavernous 
 yawning. 
 
 "You ought to go home," Barbara said. "Anybody with 
 any sense of decency would and pull the blinds down. 
 You're as depressing as Hamlet playing Malvolio." 
 
 But with Brzeska shelved they began talking quite generally 
 about books, the plays they had seen lately, the music of 
 Moussorgsky and the dream-theories of Professor Freud. 
 Those, they found, convicted the lot of them of pronounced 
 " thwarted tendencies " to criminality, but for some reason or 
 other they were not, any of them, particularly interested in
 
 STORM-WRACK 225 
 
 themselves as potential criminals, so that it was, on the whole, 
 a dull evening. 
 
 And, regarding the empty room at five minutes to eleven, 
 Helena reflected that Nelly was really clever. 
 
 They had supper and they washed up (together, because 
 only in very special circumstances did either wait upon the 
 other). The simplicity of Helena's new life, after the com- 
 plications of that domestic machine at " Windward," after 
 Mrs. Rogers's exhausting tussle with the things of the house, 
 amazed her continually. So many houses had the trick not of 
 being possessed but of possessing. They " got " you body 
 and soul. Your whole life, if you were a woman, became one 
 long devotion to them. You offered them incense day and 
 night: you could never escape. Even money, here, did not 
 seem to help: certainly not if you cared overmuch for the 
 things that money could buy. And most people did, so that 
 the more money you had the more intricate life became. And 
 if you had no money it was nothing but a sordid drudging. 
 Hilary and Helena, balanced happily between these two ex- 
 tremes, wondered sometimes which was the worse. To-night 
 Hilary was even magnanimous. He did not omit to remember 
 that, as washer, it was his duty to attend to the sink and bowl, 
 even though he knew this evening that he could so easily have 
 got out of it. 
 
 Back again by the fire he held her presently in his arms, as 
 if for no train on earth could he let her go seeing, as she 
 did, nothing at all but that one blank night and day, that 
 looked like a century. 
 
 " I think, even now," he said, " that you ought to come." 
 
 She couldn't think why she wouldn't some queer idea 
 that he ought to be free: another, more queer, that she must 
 learn to do without him; and still another, that she would not 
 be dragged at his heels, an erring wife, pleading for mercy, 
 consideration. ... It was not, somehow, her pride but her 
 sense of humour that forbade her. 
 
 " I'm not coming," she said, lifting her face to his. " And 
 you must hurry. You've not a minute to spare,"
 
 226 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 But when he had really gone, and the grinding gear of his 
 taxi had faded out into the other massed and indeterminate 
 sounds of the night, she felt suddenly cold and spiritless, and 
 when she got into bed she could not sleep. Outside the wind 
 still hovered and the rain lashed the window-pane. A clock 
 in the house struck midnight, and she thought of Hilary's 
 train steaming out of the station into the cavernous tunnel 
 that yawned for it immediately beyond. But in the morning 
 he would see the dawn over the moors. She knew so well the 
 aspect of the moors after a night of rain the white clouds 
 heaped riotously by the hand of the wind ; the patches of bright 
 blue in the stooping sky. A procession of Yorkshire names 
 filed rapidly through her mind, places she knew and loved, to 
 which earlier that evening she had said she would never go 
 back. And on top of them came another list of places 
 places that Hilary knew and loved and which, as he had said 
 a thousand times, he wanted to see again with her. Bruges, 
 Brussels, Antwerp, Paris, Florence, Rome, Capri. . . . And 
 suddenly she understood what it meant to him, and why he 
 wanted it. Because, at this moment, she wanted, above all 
 things, to stand up there on Rattenby moor with Hilary, watch- 
 ing the red sun come up behind Haffington Ridge. 
 
 In the big bed she grew intolerably lonely. She slipped out 
 and opened the door. There in the studio the unseasonable 
 fire still burned, and in its warmth, stretched out in slumber 
 on Hilary's blue rug, lay Mark Antony an ecstasy in ebony. 
 She stooped, picked him up, and stood for an instant with his 
 black body against hers, white-gowned; and in the fire golden 
 on both. She snuggled him close in her arms and took him 
 back with her, and Mark Antony, whose passion for sleeping 
 on beds needed but small encouragement, sang loudly and 
 licked her face. In some queer fashion, she found, he solaced 
 the sudden surprising ache of body and mind. 
 
 She met Hilary the next evening at King's Cross. They got 
 into a taxi and sat together in the corner of it, taking solace 
 for their brief separation in the quiet joy of reunion. Helena's 
 hat lay at her side, her burnished head on Hilary's shoulder.
 
 STORM-WRACK 227 
 
 She did not care that his mission had failed, as she saw from 
 his face it had, and as she had known it would. What did it 
 matter? What did anything matter now? 
 
 London, to-night, seemed unusually noisy. Though it was 
 Sunday the strains of a barrel organ were discernible through 
 the incessant roar of things. The youth of Euston Road held 
 high revelry at street corners: from somewhere at the back a 
 woman shrieked. Motor traffic dashed past and past, and 
 shrill above all other sound came the raucous voices of the 
 newsboys. 
 
 "Pipeyer! Pipeyer! Extry speshul! 'Orrible noos ter- 
 night. . . ." 
 
 Hilary put up the windows, not quite shutting out the cries. 
 "Extry speshul . . .'orrible 'sassination of H'Archdook. 
 Pipeyer! " 
 
 " Horrible what? " asked Helen lazily. 
 
 " Oh, some Sunday paper tragedy, I expect," Hilary told 
 her. " Providence keeps a special watch over the needs of 
 the Sunday placards: they're never at a loss." 
 
 During a block in the traffic Helena caught a sudden sight 
 of one of them. " Look," she said, " it isn't a murder in a 
 back street, after all." 
 
 " 'Orrible noos . . . 'orrible noos from the Ballkins," 
 yelled a boy. 
 
 Hilary put down the window and called to him. 
 " Here, what's up? " 
 
 " 'Ere y'are, sir. H'Archdook murdered. . . . H'Archdook 
 and his missus . . . 'Orrible noos . . . 'orrible noos. . . ." 
 
 " Oh Lord," said Hilary, opening his paper as they moved 
 on, " who'd be an Archduke, eh? " 
 " Or his missus," Helena said. 
 
 Against Hilary's shoulder her head was very comfortable. 
 She pressed the closer while he gave her the news. It was 
 " horrible " indeed. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the 
 Duchess of Hohenberg had been assassinated at Sarajevo. The 
 murderer had been arrested. To the lovers it seemed a very 
 sordid business, and not really interesting. Sarajevo was a 
 long way off, and neither of them would have known who 
 the Archduke was if the paper had not informed them. 
 
 " Some political reason, of course," Helena said. ** I
 
 228 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 shouldn't like to be killed for a political reason, somehow. 
 Would you? " 
 
 " I don't want to be killed for any reason whatever," Hilary 
 said, growing tired of the paper and throwing it down on the 
 floor of the cab. Assassinations were horrible but they were 
 also dull, unless you were taking a principal part. Why talk 
 of foreign princes and their woes? Life presented so many 
 other problems that seemed to him so much more important. 
 Politics bored him: no one ever took them less seriously. 
 He put an arm round Helena and pressed her warm body up 
 against his. Why think of blood and sudden death on this 
 night of reunion? They were so young and had so much else 
 to think of. ... 
 
 "You've guessed, haven't you, how it was? " he asked, and 
 felt her head nodding " yes " against his shoulder. " Tell me," 
 she said. 
 
 There was very little to tell, he said. Courtney had been 
 perfectly polite and perfectly unreasonable. There had been 
 no scene. He was just not going to stir a ringer. Sooner or 
 later his wife would come back. You couldn't shake him on 
 that point. He was even, Hilary gathered, manufacturing 
 excuses of a highly plausible nature for her non-appearance at 
 " Windward." 
 
 " He expects, you know," Hilary said, " to get you on the 
 rebound." 
 
 "And what, just exactly, does that mean? These sporting 
 terms are beyond me." 
 
 " It means that you'll be glad enough to have him waiting 
 there for you . . . when I'm tired of you." 
 
 " Chucked me. That's the expression, isn't it? " 
 
 It was, he said, but she was not to use it. 
 
 ' Why not ? I'm not afraid." 
 
 'Aren't you?" 
 
 ' Not a bit." 
 
 ' But you see the position? " 
 
 ' Oh, clearly. I'm an infatuated fool and you're a scoun- 
 drel." 
 
 He pulled her up a little closer to him. 
 
 " All artists are scoundrels," he said. " Did you know 
 that? "
 
 STORM-WRACK 229 
 
 ** One of them, at least, is a nice scoundrel." 
 
 " You don't want him altered? " 
 
 " Not the least little bit." 
 
 It was a long while after that when Hilary came suddenly 
 down to earth again. 
 
 "All the same, Deirdre, it's wrong. Love ought not to be 
 like this. It's outrageous it should be like this for us! 
 Don't you feel that? " 
 
 She shook her head. He went on. 
 
 "And if we have any children they'd have a rotten time 
 . . . They always do the illegitimates." 
 
 " That's a much too sweeping statement," she said, " but we 
 needn't have any children if you feel like that about it." 
 
 " I know. But we may want some. . . ." 
 
 " I don't want anything but you. . . ." 
 
 He said nothing to that, save, " Oh, Deirdre, Deirdre. . . ." 
 
 " Let's go on as we are," Helena said. " We're happy. We 
 are, aren't we? Well, let's go on. Don't think, don't 
 think. . . ." 
 
 " We've got to go on. We can't help ourselves . . . now." 
 
 " I wouldn't if I could." 
 
 " You're stronger, you know, Deirdre, than I am. Finer, 
 somehow. I think you're wonderful." 
 
 " That's absurd the silliest thing I've ever heard you say. 
 I don't feel as you do about it. That's all there is in it. To 
 praise me for my attitude is like praising Nelson for his courage 
 and saying that he was born without the sense of fear. If 
 he didn't know what fear was his courage was no credit to him. 
 It's like being born beautiful or ugly rich or poor. You've 
 no choice in the matter. I don't care one little bit about the 
 marriage service or what other people think of me. You do. 
 So the * fineness ' belongs to you, not to me." 
 
 " You're a nice comforting Deirdre," Hilary said. " I hope 
 you mean it all." 
 
 " Of course I mean it." 
 
 " But you do tell lies these days. . . ." 
 
 '* Not that sort of lie and not to you." 
 
 " Don't ever. We'll always tell each other the truth, Deirdre. 
 Let's swear it, now. Even when it's bad hearing it shall still 
 be the truth. God help us! "
 
 230 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 " Always," she said. " Lies between us would be the begin- 
 ning of the end, and there's never going to be an end 
 for us." 
 
 She felt his lips on her hair and fell, suddenly, to a pas- 
 sionate kissing of his hands. 
 
 "Look here," he said presently, "we'll just wait for the 
 autumn shows, and then we'll go over to Bruges and see things. 
 We'll spend a whole year over it, and Bletchington will have 
 to find another editorial secretary. If you'll give me every 
 minute you can spare I can finish the ' Deirdre ' in time for 
 the Draycott Gallery. I'd like it to be hung there." 
 
 She promised him her every spare minute; laid them in a 
 passionate heap at his feet, heard him say that he could work 
 now that he had her as he had never worked before as he 
 would never work again if he lost her. 
 
 " You won't lose me," she said, " why will you be so silly? " 
 
 He kissed her closely and long as she turned up her happy 
 face to his a kiss from which she broke away with a little 
 laugh that was for all the world like a sob, to realise that the 
 taxi had stopped and the driver, despairing of getting them to 
 understand that they had reached their destination, was opening 
 the door for them by performing a gymnastic feat with his 
 arm from where he sat. Helena jumped out and ran, hatless, 
 up the steps to the door. Hilary paid the fare and came after 
 her, carrying her forgotten hat. 
 
 The taxi-driver seemed to think he had got hold of a queer 
 pair. 
 
 They went into the broad stone hall and up the wide stairs 
 to the studio, and there, sunk deeo in the shadow, they made 
 out a brooding masculine form. 
 
 "Hallo," said Philip Roscoe's voice. "This is a cheerful 
 piece of news, isn't it? " 
 
 They discovered presently that he was talking about the 
 Balkan murder which they had dismissed long ages ago 
 that he was so excited about it he had come round to talk about 
 it to somebody else. He had tried Evey over the 'phone, and 
 Evev had said she was engaged to go with her sister to some
 
 STORM-WRACK 231 
 
 concert or other at which Desiree was playing. She couldn't 
 possibly, she said, get out of it. Hilary laughed and privately 
 wished Phil, for once, at Jerusalem. So did Helena. She did 
 not to-night want to talk to him or to hear him talk, and she 
 thought that Evey ought to have " got out of " the concert, 
 because if Phil really had to discuss this horrible murder with 
 somebody, obviously Evey ought to have been the somebody. 
 She dived into the kitchen to make coffee, and when she came 
 back Phil, in a hard excited voice was saying: 
 
 " Continental politics, my dear old chap ! Good God, 
 they're not. I wish to hell they were. This is European, 
 Hilary. Britain's in it, and France, and Germany. . . ." 
 
 " In what? " Helena asked, putting down her tray. 
 
 " In the European war that's coming." 
 
 Helena laughed. So did Hilary. Really, Phil was rather 
 mad on this subject of international warfare. 
 
 "What nonsense! The death of two people to plunge 
 Europe into war! " 
 
 War! Of course there was not going to be war. The thing 
 was ridiculous. Phil was merely riding this diplomatic hobby 
 of his to death. ... Of course there was not going to be war. 
 
 And yet here was Phil saying steadily and gloomily that 
 there was. Sitting there stirring her coffee it seemed to 
 Helena presently that behind the quiet sound of his voice you 
 might hear, if you listened, another the measured tramp, 
 tramp of armed men, marching out in the bright sunshine to 
 die. .
 
 BOOK IV 
 WASTE SHORES
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 
 IN the pale rays of the February sun Hilary stood frowning 
 at his new picture, that he called " Interior." What he 
 had done since lunch did not please him; but it would 
 have surprised him if it had, because these were not " paint- 
 ing " days. One does not do good work with one's mind on 
 something else. 
 
 And that, nowadays, was where Hilary's mind usually was. 
 
 After all, what did painting matter good or bad when 
 one remembered that down there in the street beneath the quiet 
 sky of a windless afternoon the young recruits went swinging 
 by? 
 
 " It's no good," he said, " they just won't mix." 
 
 Helena did not ask what it was that wouldn't " mix." She 
 knew. He meant painting and war. But she got up and came 
 across to look at the picture he was abandoning. " Interior " 
 was a study of the window corner of the studio, with Helena 
 in her workaday frock, sitting with bent head over a book in 
 the path of the sun. It had been begun in the gush of 
 enthusiasm that followed the acceptance of the " Deirdre " 
 by the Draycott Committee, in those queer far-off days be- 
 fore August, 1914. But there were times when Helena thought 
 it would never be finished at all; for Hilary had said that so 
 often that war and painting wouldn't mix. . . . 
 
 " Can't you really go on, dear? " she asked, " the day's so 
 good." 
 
 Hilary said nothing as he turned his picture to the wall and 
 began to wash his brushes. And Helena said nothing either. 
 But she thought of all the other things that these days had 
 been turned to the wall youth and light-heartedness; joy, 
 beauty; the things that were real and enduring. . . . 
 
 " Let's go out, shall we? " Hilary said presently. " Isn't 
 it time we looked Richmond up? " 
 
 235
 
 236 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 It was weeks since they had been to Richmond: walking 
 abroad was no occupation these days for the young and fit. 
 There were too many things against it. ... The red hand 
 with its pointing finger; the women who stared; the White 
 Feather Tribe that hunted in couples; the eternal march of 
 the khaki-clad. . . . One did not " spend " one's odd after- 
 noons, so much as fritter them away, these days, having as little 
 heart for leisure as for work. . . . 
 
 But a sudden passion seized them this afternoon for the 
 wide spaces of the Park, the glint of the river bright like 
 polished steel beneath the wintry sunshine; and for a 
 sight of some of the old sweet things they'd bundled back be- 
 hind the curtain they did not dare to lift. 
 
 They went out and climbed on to a passing 'bus. 
 
 They sat, as in old times, on a front seat, with linked arms, 
 but they said little. Riding on 'buses had ceased, since August, 
 1914, to be the hilarious adventure it once had been; for 
 'buses nowadays had the disconcerting trick of coming to a 
 standstill in the traffic before a recruiting station or of con- 
 stituting themselves an honorable rearguard to a company of 
 volunteers. 
 
 The afternoon was beautiful unusually beautiful for Feb- 
 ruary, as every now and then somebody on the 'bus said to 
 somebody else, for all the world as if they saw neither the 
 posters, the volunteers nor the ubiquitous pointing finger, 
 and were strong-minded enough to refrain from reading Mr. 
 Begbie's recruiting verses. Perhaps, too, in this bright sun- 
 shine (or because of it) they were able to forget what was 
 happening out there in France and Belgium. 
 
 But that was just exactly what neither Hilary nor Helena 
 could do. They had the war on the brain, like most people 
 only, perhaps, more so. ... 
 
 Hilary, of course, would have felt better about it if he'd 
 been in khaki ... or, perhaps, if certain other people had
 
 WASTE SHORES 237 
 
 not been. That, at this stage, was what it seemed almost to 
 amount to. 
 
 You got at his position in regard to the war easily enough. 
 He had no romantic or idealistic illusions about it: and was 
 incapable of finding consolation in the comfortable apportion- 
 ment of blame the Press meted out among the belligerents. 
 He could see, at any rate, a good deal further than that . . . 
 knew that things didn't happen quite that way that it wasn't 
 only the man who put the match to the gunpowder trail who 
 was responsible for the explosion. The war, so Hilary rea- 
 soned, had occurred because people hadn't cared enough to 
 prevent it ... because people would not combine to fight it. 
 War was nothing if not the outcome of bankrupt statesmanship: 
 that muddled along on secret alliances and ententes, the 
 Balance of Power and armies and navies in a perpetual state 
 of rivalry. On this question of internationalism the world 
 was mad. The question for Hilary (and the only question, as 
 it seemed, just now) was: Would it have been quite so mad 
 if people had cared a little to prevent it ... if they had 
 cared, say, as much as Philip had cared? And he never forgot 
 that he Hilary had never cared at all ... that politics 
 especially the foreign variety had bored him always to 
 extinction. . . . 
 
 There was, too, the question of Belgium. Belgium, it is 
 true, had made warriors of so many who might otherwise have 
 remained as they were artists, clerks, tailors, plumbers, bill- 
 posters, bakers, newsvendors, or something equally non- 
 belligerent and sociable. But Hilary did not believe that 
 England had gone into the war because of Belgium. Sir 
 Edward Grey, right at the first, had made that clear enough: 
 but Hilary was ready to agree that Belgium outraged had 
 given the necessary spur of idealism and sentiment to the 
 British cause. " A god-send to our bungling diplomats," 
 Philip had called the invasion of Belgium, and well, Hilary 
 happened to think that Philip was right. 
 
 Only, somehow, that didn't, with Hilary, make the minutest 
 shade of difference. Though he saw the war as a Capitalist 
 imbroglio, an outrage on humanity, he got no sort of help 
 from the vision. He realised only that he wasn't in it and 
 was convinced that he ought to be. Not because he believed
 
 238 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 in it, not because he liked fighting (he didn't he hated it), 
 not even because of Belgium, but because he could not bear to 
 stand aside whilst others ploughed through the horror. 
 
 It was that horror he saw this afternoon, even there at 
 Helena's side, with his arm through hers, the crocuses just 
 showing in the London parks, and their 'bus behaving really 
 well. 
 
 It was what he saw, too, when he stood in front of his easel 
 and tried to paint. Painting and war! Nothing on earth 
 would make them " mix." . . . 
 
 And (even worse) it was what he saw when he looked at 
 Helena. The war got most tremendously in the way of love. 
 The fact was you couldn't escape from it. Unless, perhaps, 
 you joined in. ... 
 
 They nearly all had. 
 
 First of all Jimmy had gone. 
 
 You felt, somehow, that Jimmy had rather liked the war; 
 that for him it had filled in the gaps brought adventure. 
 You couldn't help seeing, of course, that before the war came, 
 life had never given Jimmy enough to do. It must be strange, 
 now, for Jimmy to have nothing whatever to do. Because 
 Jimmy was dead . . . and dead men lie quietly, even in 
 France. . . . 
 
 Then Ronnie Sand and Pamela had come home from Italy, 
 and Pamela had filled many printed pages with romantic 
 versions of their difficulties in doing it, while Ronnie applied 
 for a commission and went off to Salisbury to train. 
 
 ** Look after Pamela," a wistful Ronnie had said to Helena. 
 " See that she takes care of herself. . . ." 
 
 Small doubt she would do that, for Pamela found the war 
 exciting. To her it meant lunches and dinners at the Savoy; 
 the giving of concerts for the wounded; the selling of flags 
 in the street (if the day were fine) ; and an occasional theatre 
 with a uniformed Ronnie when he came home on leave from 
 Salisbury. 
 
 Ronnie, as it transpired, was quite clever about " leave " 
 and things of that sort, so that besides Pamela's occasional
 
 WASTE SHORES 239 
 
 theatre there were evenings in the old house in Chelsea when 
 the war might not be mentioned, but only art and books. 
 Which was all very well if Ronnie arranged them for a Satur- 
 day, with the whole of another day yawning happily between 
 them and the hour of return; but on a Sunday no one was 
 really proof against the abysmal gloom which was apt to de- 
 scend upon them all about nine o'clock in the evening. 
 
 No doubt whatever, of course, but that Ronnie was hating 
 the war. Hilary (with his painful interest in the psychology 
 of the young artist turned warrior) wondered much too fre- 
 quently what had driven him into it. A sense, perhaps, of its 
 righteousness: idealism, sentiment, Belgium, or Pamela. 
 Impossible to learn from Ronnie, who was never to be cajoled 
 into talking about it. And anyway, he was in it. He belonged 
 to the army of the khaki-clad, and he was one of those people 
 who, if he had not, would have helped perhaps to make Hilary 
 feel better about things. 
 
 That was true, too, of Arthur Yeomans. . . . Arthur had 
 been one of the first to join and Hilary had thought he would 
 have been the last. There was no accounting for things of that 
 kind . . . this war had you all ways. Here, at least, however, 
 you understood what had sent Arthur in, when (in these days 
 of appeal to the very young) he might so easily have kept out. 
 But Arthur (entirely without scruple, it seemed, on this ques- 
 tion of age) was " fit," eager, and a dead shot. And he went 
 in, he said, because he loathed Germany as a power. Hilary 
 had said: 
 
 " Yes, but you hate Russia more and Russia's on our 
 sid." 
 
 They argued that pretty fiercely, not once but over and 
 over again. Yet Arthur went, all the same. Helena, who had 
 suffered most, perhaps, from these passionate discussions, got 
 through her good-byes with something approaching equanimity, 
 and was rather inclined to think that Hilary exaggerated 
 when he said that something irreplaceable had gone out of his 
 life with Arthur. There were times even now, it seemed, when 
 Helena could not be entirely fair to Arthur Yeomans. Yet 
 Arthur to-day was not only Hilary's friend, but hers. For 
 Hilary had been right. Arthur had come in on their side. 
 And he had come in heavily. . . .
 
 240 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 Presently with the falling of the leaves Conrad Howe 
 had gone, and Brian Vincent had tried to go and had been 
 refused. Conrad (who found the war a more absorbing mis- 
 tress than he had once found Dagmar North) was still in 
 training, and Brian was trying to live down the heart the mili- 
 tary doctors had given him, and had begun to pull ropes. 
 Helena wondered sometimes how much Vivien cared whether 
 she cared at all. You'd have sworn to see them together that 
 she didn't . . . that, without turning a hair, she let him pull 
 as many ropes as he liked. But Vivien was another of the 
 people who would never talk about the war: it was, she said, 
 a ** rotten " topic of conversation, so that you never knew 
 what she thought about it or what she felt. Even the fact that, 
 like Helena, she did no " war work," didn't help you, either, 
 because knowing Vivien you never expected her to do any. 
 She left that, she would have told you, to Olive, who did 
 enough for a dozen women, whilst Helena (who was con- 
 vinced she hated the war more than anybody else ever had or 
 ever could hate anything) thought that personally she helped 
 it not enough but too much by services rendered to Mr. Bletch- 
 ington. 
 
 For Alexander Bletchington was another of those people 
 who were " enjoying " the war. 
 
 There seemed to Helena to be quite a lot of them. Olive, 
 of course, and nearly all the people you met in 'buses and 
 tubes, and Dagmar North, who had recently turned up wearing 
 her old air of self-complacency and a new V.A.D. uniform. 
 Also, there were several handsome healthy young women 
 whom she occasionally brought with her, similarly attired, 
 though you couldn't tell whether, in their case, the complacency 
 was old or new like the uniform. Then there was Barbara 
 Feilding, who, if she wasn't "enjoying" the war, was at least 
 able to look at it without emotion. Barbara had dropped art 
 for mechanics, and Hilary and Helena thought it a pity. So 
 many people could drive motor-cars, so few could model as 
 well as Barbara. They didn't agree with her when she said 
 that art in war time was useless. A thing wasn't useless be- 
 cause people didn't stop to look at it. 
 
 But perhaps Barbara had discovered as Hilary had that art 
 and the war didn't go together. . . .
 
 WASTE SHORES 241 
 
 Certainly Stephen Gretton had discovered it. But then, 
 Stephen was that hopeless thing in a practical world a 
 young man with unpopular ideals who meant to stick to 
 them. . . . 
 
 5 
 
 Denis O'Connell, too, it transpired, had ideals: of a different 
 sort from Stephen's but no better understanded of the Man in 
 the Street, though this scarcely mattered, because Denis being 
 forty-five might have what ideals he liked at least, in 1914. 
 But as London wasn't included among them he had first of 
 all persuaded a big morning daily to make him its accredited 
 Irish correspondent and had then departed to Dublin, where 
 he had remained ever since. Everyone was sorry but Barbara, 
 who was horribly tired of being proposed to. 
 
 This accounted for everyone save Nelly (who took the war, 
 for the time being, as a part, if a regrettable part, of life and 
 helped o'nights at a canteen in the wilds of Woolwich) : and 
 for Desiree, who had gone back to France at the very beginning 
 of it all in a perfect frenzy of patriotism that had left everybody 
 gasping, and from which nobody had as yet recovered. She 
 was now somewhere in Belgium with the French Red Cross, 
 writing very seldom to Hilary (who, she thought, ought to 
 join up) and very frequently to Estelle, whom she constantly 
 urged to work for her certificate and come out too. But this 
 annoyed Estelle, because she didn't want to be a nurse and 
 she hated Desiree's letters, which were all about wounded 
 soldiers (who were, all of them, preux chevaliers) ; about 
 shells (which were symphonic) and ruins (which were not) ; 
 and the Boches (whom Desiree loathed) : and never once 
 about the one thing on earth Estelle really cared to hear about. 
 
 The war had certainly cooked poor Estelle's goose leaving 
 her to turn back desolate into Streatham as Eurydice, so they 
 say, had turned back into Hades. A half-rescue, perhaps, was 
 worse than one at all, and in Estelle's case they had even 
 " rounded up " her German professor, sx> that she sorrowed 
 indeed as one without hope. 
 
 Evey, these days, wore a blue torquoise ring on the third 
 finger of her left hand and Phil (who had put it there) was in 
 France acting as correspondent to the Sentinel a position he
 
 242 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 jeopardised continually by his inordinate passion for truth, 
 upon the merits of which he and the Censor were by no means 
 agreed. 
 
 Helena had once said that Evey " in love " would be charm- 
 ing. She was. But there were people who thought Evey 
 charming at all times. Helena was one of them and Phil was 
 another, of course. 
 
 But it was Phil who said that Evey was like one of Stephen's 
 drawings you either liked her or disliked her. You couldn't 
 be indifferent. 
 
 The war interested Evey tremendously. That is, what Phil 
 had to say about it (and all other wars, for that matter) inter- 
 ested her. But she regarded it all with horror rather than the 
 toleration her interest might have adumbrated; for she felt 
 that it was evil, and, an apt pupil, had already learnt that it 
 was unnecessary. That, Phil insisted, was what you had first 
 to make people understand that wars simply needn't happen. 
 But, since this one had, he also insisted that while it lasted it 
 was the only thing in the world that mattered. You might 
 call it a dog-fight if you liked: but it wasn't a dog-fight you 
 could ignore. 
 
 Either way, it had crashed into Evey's new-found happiness 
 (as into Helena's) and stunned it. Presently, of course, it 
 would recover: but just now it didn't matter, because somehow 
 it didn't seem as if she had any right to it. That, however, 
 was the sort of thing she might say to Helena if she liked, but 
 never under any circumstances to Phil. 
 
 And it wasn't only the war. Evey had guessed the truth 
 about Helena and Hilary and it made her sad, because Helena 
 hadn't said a word. When Evey mentioned the subject to 
 Phil, he had said in that provoking way of his, that he had 
 guessed how things were long ago ever since that night when 
 news of the Sarajevo murder had come through. They were 
 both so tremendously excited that evening they had forgotten, 
 it seems, to " keep it up." 
 
 And there had been further occasions, so that other people 
 too had guessed. 
 
 But Hilary and Helena did not care these days who had 
 guessed or who had not. On the whole, however, they were 
 glad that Phil and Evey had.
 
 WASTE SHORES 243 
 
 The 'bus (which this afternoon had behaved quite well) ran 
 up its usual backwater at Richmond and left them to wade 
 out into the main stream for themselves. 
 
 They walked up the hill together and along the Terrace into 
 the Park. The day was still beautiful, but they found the 
 Park disappointing, for men drilled on its open spaces and the 
 Boy Scouts spread themselves tempestuously abroad. Rich- 
 mond was a land of shadowed memories, across which as they 
 walked Hilary and Helena scrawled a mental Ichabod, won- 
 dering why it should hurt like that. Presently, in their 
 clever way, they dodged the men drilling and the Boy Scouts 
 doing numerous other things, and kissed each other sadly 
 under the winter trees before they turned their backs on the 
 Park and went down the hill for tea. 
 
 Tea was better. Somehow tea always is. Tea is an in- 
 curably cheerful meal ; and the Richmond tea-shops were bright 
 and coloured. They sat in a corner and ate toasted buns and 
 cakes with cream in them (you could get them in February, 
 1915) while Hilary refreshed his eyesight by looking at 
 Helena's uncovered head against the bright-coloured cushions. 
 He had had her and loved her for seven months now . . . love 
 that had been sweet, was sweet still and might, even, be sweeter. 
 No sign all this time from Jerome . . . the man dispossessed. 
 Seven months was a long time . . . one could forget a lot in 
 seven months, but then one could remember a lot, too. Which 
 had Jerome done? Which, for that matter, had Hilary done? 
 
 But he ceased presently to wonder about that, because 
 looking at Helena's head bent now over the tea-cups he thought 
 he saw what had gone wrong with his work earlier that after- 
 noon. If the light wasn't too atrocious when he got back he 
 could put it right before anybody came. Not, these days, that 
 there were many left to come, except Dagmar North, who no 
 longer mattered, Denis's pretty ladies, who never had, and 
 Barbara who was ceasing to matter much. Nelly was all 
 right, of course. At least she would be if she could only 
 manage to forget the word " canteen." 
 
 Outside the cosy tea-room, however, it was raining hard, 
 and at the foot of the hill discretion drove them inside the
 
 244 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 'bus. Five minutes later the conversation drove them out 
 again, as the conversation inside 'buses was apt to do. 
 
 They got rather wet and cold up there; but they didn't 
 mind that, because up there in the cold and the darkness it was 
 easier, somehow, to forget the war ; easier, anyway, than among 
 that fur-clad cluster of femininity inside. . . . They sat close, 
 talking of other things, keeping the one thing at bay. It was 
 an old game of theirs; only sometimes, these days, they were 
 apt to forget the trick of it. 
 
 It was seven o'clock when they reached home, and there was 
 a letter for Helena. She sat absorbed in it while Hilary tried 
 in the artificial light to get right what he had that morning got 
 wrong. 
 
 The letter was from Cissie Ellingham. Cissie was the only 
 person who wrote now from Rattenby, since Walter had left 
 his bank and gone into training. Helena's father and mother 
 had washed their hands of her. Jerome kept silence deep as 
 the grave. So did Angela. Wimbledon and Putney had 
 remonstrated, pleaded, bullied, and now, presumably, sulked. 
 Helena had almost forgotten these things. ... In time Wim- 
 bledon might probably recover; Putney, less probably her 
 father and mother perhaps never. (A strangely painful 
 thought that last, she found.) Ted had written once, and not 
 very usefully, to the effect that she was making a fool of her- 
 self and would regret it. 
 
 That, too, she had almost forgotten. 
 
 But Walter had not only written, and written differently, 
 Walter had run up to town to see her. He had been grave, 
 very grown-up and concerned. But he had stayed to tea and 
 supper . . . had stroked Mark Antony, smoked Hilary's ciga- 
 rettes and admired his pictures. And when presently, getting 
 him for a moment to herself, Helena had said, " You see, 
 Wally, don't you, that it's just no use what any of them say? " 
 Walter had said that he did see very well and that it was 
 amongst other things a deuce of a shame. 
 
 Walter, at least, was on her side, and Cissie because of 
 him.
 
 WASTE SHORES 245 
 
 That had all happened a month before the war, and now 
 Cissie wrote to say that Walter was going to France almost 
 immediately and that Jerome was already there. He had gone 
 out six weeks ago with the grey car for the British Red Cross, 
 and it had taken him, Cissie said, over three months to get 
 there. He had even tried to get in the line and had failed, 
 for with that knee of his no one would take him as a fighting 
 man. Cissie was loquacious about Jerome in whom she was 
 not personally concerned, and briefly matter-of-fact about 
 Walter who was all the world to her. You could see it was a 
 thought she dared not face as yet that terrible horrible 
 thought of Walter out there in the mud and blood. . . . 
 
 Helena, however, managed to look fairly calmly at the men- 
 tal picture of Jerome who was there with his car. It reminded 
 her, she found, of Jimmy, who had "enjoyed" the war. Je- 
 rome too, she reflected, would take the war rather like that. 
 But Jimmy, though he had "enjoyed " the war, had died of it 
 too. . . . 
 
 Suddenly it flashed on her. Was that going to be the way 
 out? It was horrible, ghastly, not to be thought about. Yet 
 she found that she could think of nothing else. Her mind 
 seemed closed to all else but that one line of hideous conjecture, 
 and long after she had folded up the letter and put it back in 
 its envelope she sat there staring at Cissie's schoolgirlish hand- 
 writing without seeing it at all. She saw nothing whatever 
 but the ugly evil things that came up and stared at her as 
 they had stared before. Only this time she made no attempt to 
 stamp them out. They were horrible, but she found that this 
 time she could bear to look upon them. 
 
 Hilary's voice recalled her an amazing incredible sanity, 
 like a breath of summer air through a lazarhouse. 
 
 " Feeling all right? Not too tired? " 
 
 A little quiver that he was too busy to see swept over 
 her face. 
 
 " Not tired," she said, " but murderous." 
 
 Hilary misunderstood, as she hoped he would. Because she 
 wanted suddenly to get away. 
 
 " I'm a tyrant, I know," Hilary said, unhooking his palette 
 from his thumb and putting it down. " But come ana look. 
 Haven't I made it better? "
 
 246 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 She agreed that he had done that. Even she could see, she 
 told him, how very much better it was. 
 
 " It's coming, isn't it? " 
 
 "Finely!" 
 
 She reached up and kissed him. 
 
 " Cleversticks ! " she said. 
 
 The ridiculous word masked the heights and depths of her 
 pride in him. And that, as of old, both thrilled and delighted 
 him. His arms came round her, making her prisoner. 
 
 " Still want to murder me? " 
 
 She didn't say how could she? that it wasn't on his 
 account she had felt murderous. Instead she laughed, twisted 
 herself artfully from his embrace and went off to change her 
 frock. At the door she looked back. 
 
 " Oh, I forgot," she said. " A Rattenby letter, with news. 
 Catch!" 
 
 Hilary caught. 
 
 The letter was addressed to " Mrs. Helena Sargent," Cissie's 
 compromise or Walter's. And in any case dictated by a del- 
 icacy of feeling that did them infinite credit. 
 
 Helena, however, had her own reasons for not wanting to be 
 there when Hilary read what Cissie had written.
 
 CHAPTER TWO 
 
 "I 1EBRUARY slipped past and the whole of March, and 
 M April came hopelessly, though with Easter, and went out 
 A in the roar of the guns hammering for the second time 
 at Ypres. The Allied forces had landed in Gallipoli, with 
 Arthur Yeomans helping them, and May had begun infamously 
 with the sinking of the Lusitania. 
 
 It was soon after that (on the Saturday of the Whitsun week- 
 end) when Stephen Gretton looked in unexpectedly after an 
 absence of a week or two. Not that the outrage on the high 
 seas was in any way connected with his appearance, but only 
 that, for Helena, it helped, somehow, to date the evening which 
 (as it turned out) she had good cause lo remember. As for 
 Stephen, he came, quite frankly, to exercise the memory of a 
 painful afternoon. Painful afternoons were frequent occur- 
 rences at this time for Stephen : he suffered them sadly, without 
 getting inured or hardened (for that is a trick a certain set 
 of ideals will play you. They prevent you from growing a 
 pachyderm, without which life in war time becomes little better 
 than a series of dagger-thrusts). Certainly, for Stephen, the 
 dagger-thrusts were frequent and deep, so that life was not easy 
 nor conducive to the development of the social virtues. 
 
 Besides, there was Stella. She, in herself, afforded an excel- 
 lent reason why Stephen just now should see less of his friends, 
 why even he should desire to see less of them, and why the dag- 
 ger-thrusts should go more deeply. For Stella was another of 
 those rare people who were doing no " war work," saving her 
 energies for the task of having a baby. Stella, no more than 
 Stephen, was having a good time, these days. Plunged into a 
 strange ugly world of turmoil and strife, surrounded by a hus- 
 band's " ideals " and a family's patriotic objection to them, she 
 was far from feeling that she had chosen her moment with dis- 
 
 247
 
 248 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 cretion. And when it wasn't ideals and patriotism it was 
 money, or, more correctly, the lack of it. For Stephen had no 
 money at all save what he earned, and that, in May, 1915, was 
 extremely little. Stella, whose attitude to money until her 
 marriage had always suggested that she thought it grew happily 
 on trees, could not understand why the war should affect their 
 income so disastrously, and she only looked worried when 
 Stephen informed her that in war time artists were a negligible 
 quantity. The chief fact for Stella, of course, was that there 
 was very little money just when she wanted a good deal more 
 than usual. You could not blame her just now for getting no 
 further than that. 
 
 Though she might have done, perhaps, if she had been 
 present at this particular afternoon for which Stephen now 
 sought oblivion, and which (save for its new air of finality) was 
 typical enough of many others that had preceded it. It was 
 connected with a commission Stephen had recently executed 
 for John Reece at the Sign of the Lighted Lantern, and which 
 that gentleman had rejected contumeliously. Reece was a pub- 
 lisher for whom in happier days Stephen had done a good deal 
 of illustration work, from which (even when it didn't altogether 
 satisfy Reece, and few things did) other commissions were apt 
 to spring. A week or so ago Stephen had been asked to submit 
 a cover for a new book of war poetry, to be issued immediately 
 from the house of the Lighted Lantern, and for reasons doubt- 
 less clear enough to himself Stephen had in due course pre- 
 sented Reece with a line drawing of a hideous figure with an 
 axe, and made matters worse by calling it " war." The thing 
 had a diabolical imaginative cleverness and contained good 
 work but none of these things were of any use to Reece, who 
 wanted Britannia and a flag and said so in language that (not- 
 withstanding Mrs. Recce's drawing-room) was unmistakable. 
 
 It was to deliver Britannia and a flag that Stephen had gone 
 this afternoon to Recce's house. But nothing not even 
 Recce's cheque resting comfortably in his pocket could 
 efface for Stephen the memory of that bitter afternoon. It 
 wasn't only Reece and his impossible views on art for illustra- 
 tion purposes. The well-dressed women who drank tea in the 
 Recces' drawing-room (and who ten months ago had been 
 pleased enough to talk to the nice boy who did, so Reece said,
 
 WASTE SHORES 249 
 
 such clever work) were mixed up in it, too. Because this is 
 a queer world and these fashionably stupid women belonged 
 ("belonged" is really the word) to men who "did" things. 
 The occasional commissions which had reached Stephen via 
 their interest in him were already, he knew, things of the past. 
 And remembering Stella and circumstances and that one has 
 to " live," Stephen cursed himself for an idiot. It wasn't only 
 the line-drawing nor what Reece had said about it (though he 
 had said a good deal) but that Stephen had allowed that bogey 
 of his tremendously unpopular ideals to come up too frequently 
 and look too long over the hedge of his obstinately civilian 
 attire. Stephen could bear to look at the truth: he knew he 
 ought to have held his tongue. But that, at this stage, was 
 precisely what he could not do. For to the other disabilities 
 under which, at this moment, he was labouring, Stephen Gretton 
 added the further and greatest disability of being Stephen 
 Gretton. 
 
 He sat now at Helena's side, talking to her of noncontro- 
 versial everyday things, and of Stella; profoundly grateful for 
 the quiet and calm of Helena's presence and for the blue shield 
 of Hilary's curtains, cutting off the vexed wo/rid at the 
 threshold. 
 
 Over there at the window Hilary stood with the line-drawing 
 of " War " in his hand. Stephen had brought it not only for 
 criticism but for acceptance, because Hilary, so he said, was 
 the only person he knew who would take it off his hands, and 
 he, personally, never wanted to see it again. 
 
 Hilary's voice came to them presently, amused, incredulous, 
 from the window. 
 
 "You don't mean to say, Gretton, you offered this thing to 
 Reece? " 
 
 "Why not? It was for a volume of war poetry. . . ." 
 
 " But, my dear Gretton, nobody wants to think of war as an 
 obscenity." 
 
 " People aren't thinking at all they're only feeling." 
 
 " Of course. . . . Britannia and flags don't satisfy your 
 brain, or if they do it's a queer sort of brain. What was the 
 book? " 
 
 Stephen named it and its author. 
 
 " Well . . . he's done good work,"
 
 250 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 Stephen was understood to say that in this case the work he 
 had done deserved the cover it had achieved. 
 
 " Meaning," said Hilary, " Britannia and the flag." 
 
 Gretton nodded. 
 
 The blue curtain parted to admit Vivien and Brian Vincent. 
 
 " How do, Gretton ? " said Vincent, not too cordially, per- 
 haps. " Haven't seen you lately." 
 
 " No," Stephen said, welcoming this successful assault upon 
 the blue shield with no very great elation. For between him- 
 self and Brian there was of late a great gulf fixed all the dif- 
 ference in fact between the man who believes you can discover 
 the causes of war in Government " Blue " books and the man 
 who does not. It existed, in measure, of course between Brian 
 and Hilary, too: but Brian knew his Hilary or believed he 
 did. Hilary might talk; it was not so certain how he would act, 
 for he was that essentially unhappy creature the man who 
 can see all sides of a subject. And at least Brian could under- 
 stand Hilary's point of view where Stephen's was a sort of sec- 
 ular Athanasian creed which nobody understands or expects to 
 understand. 
 
 Scenting trouble, Hilary came away from the window and 
 put Stephen's drawing on his mantelshelf. He propped it up 
 carefully behind Barbara's " Diana " and looked at it through 
 half -shut eyes. 
 
 " Any news, Vincent? " he asked. These were the days when 
 everyone was expecting Italy to come in. "Got a paper? " 
 
 Brian had, and fished it out. 
 
 Helena and Vivien, watching them poring over it together, 
 and agreed as to the undesirability of war as a topic of conver- 
 sation, greeted the entry of Barbara and Nelly with a relief 
 that emphasised their failure to start another in successful 
 opposition. With Barbara and Nelly to-night was a girl in 
 khaki, whose name nobody caught, but whom Barbara (who 
 had brought her) called Rosamund. Rosamund had a large, 
 white face, round eyes and a limp handshake, and apparently 
 Barbara had brought her for ornamental purposes (there is no 
 accounting for taste even in so good an artist as Barbara), for
 
 WASTE SHORES 251 
 
 after wishing everybody good evening she said nothing at all 
 seemingly overwhelmed by the sight of three able-bodied young 
 men in mufti. 
 
 Nelly was taking a night off. You gathered, somehow, from 
 her statement of this fact that it wasn't " all beer and skittles " 
 at her canteen. Barbara, sick for once of mechanics and the 
 nasty ways of motors, drew Hilary away from Brian and his 
 paper to talk of art and Stephen's black and white drawing of 
 " War," which she probably thought clever but misguided, like 
 Stephen himself. The others made small talk round the fire 
 not very successfully, because the girl Barbara called Rosa- 
 mund was so obviously still working out the problem of the 
 three apparently fit young men. Every now and then painful 
 intervals occurred, when Helena and Vivien plunged to say the 
 first thing that came into their heads, hoping to keep everybody 
 off Italy and the Lusitania, of which Helena (after the Britisher 
 post, immensely augmented of late) was inclined to think she 
 had had enough for one day. Once they tried plays, but not 
 too happily, because Rosamund could not understand how any- 
 body nowadays found time (or the inclination) to go to the 
 theatre, and, in any case, would not have gone to the plays the 
 others cared about. And when the plays gave out, it was 
 books. They grumbled, all of them, at the mass of literature 
 the war had produced. The guns, so they said, had rendered 
 everybody incoherent; nobody seemed able to think. But here 
 the girl called Rosamund, who did not care for reading, and 
 was personally much bored by the conversation, seized the op- 
 portunity to elbow the books out of it. She told Stephen that 
 she thought everyone nowadays was thinking a great deal. She 
 had noticed, she said, that the war was making people much 
 more thoughtful. Not the people, they told her, who wrote 
 things. They were just rushing into print and working off 
 steam. It was very trying for the few people who did really 
 happen to care for literature. Apparently Rosamund didn't. 
 Certainly nobody was prepared to say that the book^ she men- 
 tioned came under that heading, not even Brian, who was not 
 " booky " and was secretly dismayed at the turn the conversa- 
 tion had taken. 
 
 " Well, I must say I like a book that brings in the war," the 
 girl called Rosamund observed.
 
 252 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 " Don't you find it gets a little tiring after a time? " Nelly 
 inquired. "You see, nearly every novelist is doing it because 
 it's so tremendously difficult to explain why your hero, if not 
 actually senile, isn't in one of the Services, and there are only 
 a very limited number of legitimate reasons why he shouldn't 
 be." 
 
 " You couldn't be interested in a shirker, of course," agreed 
 Rosamund. 
 
 Stephen smiled. 
 
 " Not as a hero, perhaps." 
 
 " I hate books with heroes," averred Vivien, " and I hate 
 books about the war." 
 
 " Don't find much to read these days, do you? " Nelly asked. 
 
 Vivien stretched her arms above her head and said no, not 
 much; but anything was better than reading books that made 
 the war romantic. 
 
 " But don't you think it is? " Rosamund asked. 
 
 "Romantic? War? This war? " 
 
 Rqsamund said " yes," rather in the tone of one who would 
 remind you that this was the only war she was old enough to 
 know anything about. 
 
 " Fancy anybody calling this war romantic," Vivien ex- 
 claimed. '" Why it isn't even exciting, much less ' romantic.' 
 It's just a dull slaughter. Everything really interesting in life 
 died within a month of it." 
 
 Rosamund, however, declared that nothing had been really 
 interesting for her until the coming of the war, for Rosamund 
 had lived in the suburbs with old-fashioned parents, and had 
 had no independent life of her own at all. The war, it seemed, 
 had positively emancipated her. . . . 
 
 They weren't sure what Rosamund meant by " emancipa- 
 tion " and they appeared, all of them, not to think very much, 
 anyway, of the girl who waits for a war to " emancipate " her. 
 But they were polite people, on the whole, and kept this unflat- 
 tering opinion to themselves. For a little while the conversa- 
 tion (as it so often did, these days) hung fire. 
 
 Things would have been easier, Helena knew, if Stephen had 
 not been present. She had the feeling this evening that at any 
 moment one of their heated " war " arguments might begin, 
 and knew how difficult it was to remember that she must not 
 take sides. Brian, she thought, tended to make an argument
 
 WASTE SHORES 253 
 
 personal : he disapproved .not so much of your thesis as of you 
 for owning anything so disreputable, and Hilary, so fond in 
 different ways of all these people, would never allow them to 
 quarrel. 
 
 " Between us," he had said to her once, " we've got to save a 
 few friends for Stephen. He's making enemies of them all 
 fast." 
 
 That was long ago, in the very early days of the war, when 
 people were studying and talking of Blue and White and Red 
 Books, and new friendships were being made and old ones 
 broken: but it was still up to her, so she thought, to keep the 
 peace, and she was worried this evening because it seemed to her 
 that the storm and a particularly heavy one might break 
 at any moment. Perhaps Stephen thought so too. At any rate, 
 he began suddenly talking to Vivien of ordinary everyday 
 things: of the latest art exhibition, the newest ragtimes, and of 
 Stella who, as Helena knew, was going shortly to stay with her 
 family at Brighton because they were rich and Stephen was 
 poor and this business of getting born was an expensive 
 one. . . . 
 
 Remembering these things Helena had a moment of fierce 
 loathing of a world upon which Happiness had turned its back, 
 in which Force ruled. 
 
 The entry of Pamela Sand, with a young man in a lieutenant's 
 uniform, hurled that moment of passionate thought into space, 
 for passion and Pamela could not live in the same room. You 
 saw at once that she was the same Pamela as of old that the 
 war had made no difference to her at all, except that it had 
 given her a reason for being more prettily dressed than before. 
 It was a patriotic duty, nowadays, she was fond of saying, for 
 every woman to look her best. More than ever now, men 
 wanted pretty women and pretty things about them. That was 
 the sort of thing she said in the Woman's Looking-Glass week 
 after week and week after week. It is surprising in how many 
 different ways you can say the same thing if you really try. 
 
 Pamela this afternoon was doing her best for an unhappy 
 world in a new spring costume and a little hat of grey that
 
 254 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 showed the pale loveliness of her hair and was adorned with a 
 wreath of flowers in exquisitely blended colours. She shook 
 hands, kissed Nelly and Helena and introduced her friend as 
 Lieutenant Millington. He was a nice-looking boy with a 
 charming smile, a modest manner and (as Pamela announced) 
 a turn for poetry and water-colours. So they let him wander 
 about Hilary's blue room and hoped (some of them) that he 
 could not hear Pamela gushing about him in her clear sweet 
 voice, as she would have gushed about the Archangel Gabriel 
 if he had happened to be on her visiting list. 
 
 " The dearest person, really. Just down from some northern 
 university. Leeds, Manchester . . . somewhere up there. He 
 came down, Harvey tells me (Harvey of the Monitor, you 
 know) on purpose to join up. Don't you think he's charming 
 to look at? " 
 
 They all did, but only Rosamund ventured to say so. They 
 were horribly afraid he would hear. Rosamund didn't seem to 
 think it would matter if he did. 
 
 " It's his eyes I like," she said. " So fearless, aren't they? " 
 
 Her own flashed admiration in the direction of the khaki- 
 clad figure talking so quietly to Hilary and Barbara over there 
 in the corner by Conrad's bronze relief. Pamela went on. 
 
 " Yes, aren't they? And he knows just nobody at all in 
 London. Harvey sent him along to me and asked me to look 
 after him. Harvey, of course, thinks he's a genius. He writes 
 poems, you know. Things about the country and all that 
 hunting and walking and games. You've seen them probably, 
 Lena, in the Monitor." 
 
 " Lena " had. They were signed, all of them, just E. T. M., 
 and that stood, it seemed, for Edmund Talbot Millington, who 
 was, no doubt about it, a very considerable poet. 
 
 " I thought them most unusually good," Helena said, 
 amongst whose accomplishments the art of gush did not seem 
 to be included. 
 
 " That's what Harvey says. He declares he's got a big fu- 
 ture. That's why it's so fine his giving it up, I mean. Just 
 to go out and fight. Of course I told Harvey I'd give him a 
 good time. You can't do too much for these dear boys, can 
 you? "
 
 WASTE SHORES 255 
 
 "You can't indeed," agreed the girl Barbara had called 
 Rosamund. " Is he going to France? " 
 
 Helena, thinking of the poems ("about the country and all 
 that ") hoped not. 
 
 " I don't know," Pamela said. " Of course he's most fright- 
 fully keen to get there." 
 
 Helena and Vivien exchanged glances, as though the thought 
 had occurred to both of them that no one with eyes like that 
 was ever " frightfully keen " on such a horror as France was at 
 the moment. Helena guessed that Lieutenant Millington, like 
 many others, was only " frightfully keen " to get it over and 
 done with. They were victims, these nice boys, every one of 
 them. That always was how she thought of them. She saw 
 them, in fact, so much as victims that she failed almost entirely 
 to see them as the heroes they were. . . . 
 
 Out of the little pause that ensued she heard Brian inquiring 
 for news of Ronnie. 
 
 " Still at Salisbury? " he wanted to know. 
 
 Pamela said yes, but added that it might be " anywhere at 
 any moment." 
 
 " France? " 
 
 "Via Chelsea, I hope," said Nelly. 
 
 Pamela laughed. 
 
 "Well, France, anyway, I expect," she said. She sounded 
 important and thrilled, and rather as though a husband in 
 France was worth two on Salisbury Plain. 
 
 " Lucky devil," muttered Brian. 
 
 The girl called Rosamund had a sudden spasm of interest. 
 
 'Then you do want to go? " she asked Brian. 
 
 ' Won't have me." 
 
 'Oh, hard luck!" 
 
 'Rotten!" 
 
 ' Won't they have you either? " 
 
 The spasm of interest flickered for an instant in Stephen's 
 direction. 
 
 " I'm afraid," Stephen said, " that it will pain you very 
 much to hear I haven't inquired." 
 
 " Oh, you're never one of those funny people, are you, Mr. 
 . . . Gretton, isn't it? "
 
 256 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 Stephen bowed to show that she had his name correctly, and 
 he smiled because " funny " was one of the few epithets that 
 had not, so far, been applied to him. " Funny? " he said. 
 
 " Well, queer, then. People who think we oughtn't to fight. 
 You don't look like one, you know." 
 
 What she meant was that he didn't wear his hair unusually 
 and did nothing eccentric with his collar and tie. It was 
 scarcely her fault, perhaps, that she thought all these " queer " 
 people did. Moreover, she really wanted to think well of him 
 because she considered him so good-looking. 
 
 It was Jimmy (not ordinarily distinguished as a psycholo- 
 gist) who had said one day, " It's no good talking about it, it 
 seems to me. There just are two sets of men in the world: 
 those who can fight and those who can't. Anybody'd spot Gret- 
 ton as a pacifist before he'd opened his mouth." But Rosa- 
 mund would have looked at him a very long time before she 
 would have seen anything of the sort (the mufti notwithstand- 
 ing). She did really want to think the best of him and his 
 words were disconcerting. Jimmy's " two classes of men " 
 were unknown to her. All men fought, of course, when neces- 
 sary, or declared themselves cowards and " shirkers." She 
 considered Stephen too handsome to be classed (at any rate has- 
 tily) with these " outsiders " whom she could not possibly 
 know. And while she hesitated Helena plunged suddenly to 
 the rescue. 
 
 " Mr. Gretton," she said, " is a Quaker. Quakers may not 
 fight. They don't believe, you see, in the argument of physical 
 force." 
 
 " But what else can you believe in with awful people like the 
 Germans? " Rosamund inquired. " Think of poor little Bel- 
 gium and the Lusitania." 
 
 " Isn't this story about the Lusitania absurd? " Pamela here 
 put in. 
 
 "What story? " Nelly asked, "about its carrying arms? " 
 
 " Yes. I've heard it twice to-day. It's such a silly thing to 
 say, even for pacifists. Of course it isn't true, but if it were it 
 wouldn't have made any difference." 
 
 " Of course not. Those beasts would have sunk it, anyway." 
 
 " I fancy," said Stephen, " that wasn't quite what Mrs.
 
 WASTE SHORES 257 
 
 Sand meant." (Pamela nowadays was always " Mrs. Sand " 
 to Stephen.) 
 
 " No," Pamela said. " I meant that the munitions wouldn't 
 have made the sinking of the boat any better. Morally, I mean. 
 Nothing justifies murder." 
 
 " Except sometimes circumstances." 
 
 " Circumstances? " 
 
 Pamela raised her finely pencilled eyebrows at Stephen. 
 She really couldn't imagine what he meant. 
 
 " The Western Front . . . and the Gallipoli Peninsula." 
 
 " But that's war, not murder. Don't be silly, Stephen." 
 
 " When does murder cease to be murder? " 
 
 " Is that a riddle? " 
 
 " One," said Stephen, " that has agitated better brains than 
 mine." 
 
 " Well, I don't propose to let it agitate mine. Is there, by 
 any chance, an answer? " 
 
 " You wouldn't care to hear it." 
 
 " I'm quite sure I shouldn't." 
 
 " Shut up, you two ! " From Vivien. 
 
 " It's Stephen's fault. He will say such idiotic things." 
 
 " Everybody says idiotic things in war time," said Nelly. 
 " The most idiotic, of course, are said by men over military 
 age and by women." 
 
 " And the Press," said Helena, never able for long to forget 
 Mr. Bletchington and the Britisher. 
 
 " I wonder," Stephen said, " if there are really any people 
 who talk like the papers, and if so where are they to be 
 found? " 
 
 " In the 'buses that go to Richmond," Helena said. 
 
 "Oh, really? I live at Richmond," Rosamund announced, 
 and Helena said, " Oh, I'm sorry," rather quickly. But she 
 needn't have done, for Rosamund was far from regarding Hel- 
 ena's statement as a libel upon her townsmen and women. She 
 quite approved of the things one read in newspapers, having all 
 the exaggerated respect of the ill-educated for the printed word. 
 All the same, she did not care for reading, and preferred pho- 
 tographs to letterpress. She was essentially one of the women 
 Lord Northcliffe had in mind when he evolved the first " pic- 
 ture daily."
 
 258 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 " I believe Lena's a pacifist, anyway," Pamela remarked. 
 
 "Am I?" Helena asked. She really didn't know. Were 
 you a pacifist if you hated war? The word was rather ridicu- 
 lous, she thought: she did not like it. It had a negative pas- 
 sionless sound, and it suggested inaction. And that was not at 
 all how she felt. 
 
 " But we're all pacifists, aren't we? " 
 
 It was Barbara who spoke, coming up just then with Hilary 
 and the young poet in uniform. 
 
 " Rotten word ! " Brian said, who disliked it, however, not 
 for its peculiar inexpressiveness but for its present-day associa- 
 tions. 
 
 " I'm not saying it's a good word. It isn't, of course. The 
 pacifists are certainly ill-served by their label. But then, the 
 English language is full of such unsatisfactory words. Look 
 at ' suffragette,' which if it means anything, must mean, I sup- 
 pose, ' a little suffrage.' " 
 
 " Why not say ' pacificists ' and have done with it? " Hilary 
 wanted to know. 
 
 " ' Pacificists ' isn't any better: it's merely longer. I'd rather 
 have the hated ' pacifist.' And there isn't so very much against 
 it used in a broad sense. All of us here hate war and want 
 to prevent its occurring again. Doesn't that make us ' paci- 
 fists '? " 
 
 " Not quite, I fancy," said the young poet. " We should 
 split up, shouldn't we, over ways and means? The issue seems 
 to me to be one not of principle, but of method. All the peo- 
 ple worth while want to end war: the only question is 
 how? " 
 
 Stephen nodded. He was grateful to this tolerant being 
 whose statement did not adumbrate the extraordinary bitter- 
 ness of feeling that seemed eternally to separate Stephen from 
 the mass of people who disagreed with him. 
 
 " The legacy of militarism is militarism," he said in that 
 quiet tone of conviction that Brian had once called " Gretton's 
 God-Almighty certainty." But it did not annoy Helena, who 
 had more than a touch of it herself. Neither did it seem to 
 annoy Lieutenant Millington, who had not. 
 
 " I agree," he said, " but what is one to do in this world 
 of armies and navies? If we acquiesce in them it seems to me
 
 WASTE SHORES 259 
 
 we acquiesce, more or less, in war. In the same way, of course, 
 we acquiesce in our prisons, in our poor law and economic 
 systems. It's the foundation of society that's wrong. And so 
 long as we don't attempt to interfere with that I really can't see 
 that we've a leg to stand on when we complain of inevitable (if 
 inconvenient) results." 
 
 With vague relief Helena saw that this evening Hilary had 
 nothing to contribute to the conversation. He sat gazing into 
 the fire with a face completely non-committal as though the 
 talk was of football or cricket. 
 
 " Take the armament business," Millington went on. " If we 
 didn't know it before at least we've known it since Snowden's 
 speech in the House. The armament business is the one real 
 International. Armstrong and Krupp and the rest of them 
 work hand in hand a loving unity of destruction. Which of 
 us has ever lodged any sort of protest against that? It didn't 
 excite us to know that some of our foremost * pacifists ' held 
 shares in armament concerns. And surely it ought to have 
 done." 
 
 " But you're not going to say, are you," Brian asked, " that 
 armaments cause war? " 
 
 " I'm not, but on the other hand, no one can claim that 
 they cause peace. Nothing and nobody's out to do that, of 
 course. Nobody 'causes' peace: it's just a blessed accident. 
 Whoever heard of a Peace Office? It's war, not peace, you 
 expect, under this system of ours, and it's war, not peace, that 
 we prepare for. The policy's sound, it seems to me, because 
 under the existing state of things war, sooner or later, is bound 
 to come. Always on the one side you have the desire for the 
 maintenance of the status quo the retention of what is pos- 
 sessed and on the other, the desire to possess. We get down 
 at bottom again to the property idea that rules all the civilised 
 world. Our very religion is founded upon it. Or ought I to 
 say our 'creeds'? In our schools we teach our children that 
 theft is a greater crime than cruelty, and we punish it much 
 more severely in our police-courts. As a people, possession's 
 in our blood. What we forget is that it may be in other peo- 
 ple's, too." 
 
 " All that's very probably true," Barbara interposed. " But, 
 all the same, I don't quite see where it takes us to. Or per-
 
 260 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 haps I do see. What I mean is that it isn't much good discuss- 
 ing the beginnings of your fire while your house is burning. 
 Everyone's doing far too much talking about the war and its 
 origins. The thing to do, it seems to me, is to get on with the 
 war. You are, I know. You've a right to talk. I haven't. I 
 hope I'm not sounding horribly personal. But I can't help 
 thinking that those of us who can't help had much better hold 
 our tongues." 
 
 " Bravo ! " agreed Brian. " We're in it and we've got to see 
 it through. That's all that matters to-day, as far as I can make 
 out." 
 
 " It has, of course, occurred to you," suggested Stephen, 
 " that there has never been a war when that wasn't said. Up 
 to a point, the certain knowledge that it would be said has made 
 each fresh war possible." 
 
 " Yes," said Brian, " and it has also occurred to me that it 
 will continue to be said of every war to come because it hap- 
 pens to be true." 
 
 " Perfectly," Millington agreed, " once you grant our posi- 
 tion as possessors and rightful possessors of three-fourths 
 of the habitable globe." 
 
 "But there aren't going to be any more wars," Rosamund 
 observed. " This is a war to end war." 
 
 They told her, sadly, that Queen Anne was dead. 
 
 "What's your own position, Millington?" Hilary asked. 
 "What sent you in? " This was a subject upon which Hilary 
 fished for motives as a pretty girl for compliments. 
 
 " Just this," said Millington. " I can't help thinking that 
 we of the younger generation ought to have done better. But 
 we did, most of us, nothing at all. Politics especially the 
 foreign variety aren't popular with the young of to-day, or 
 weren't (I suppose 'popular' isn't exactly the word now.) 
 Nobody wanted to be bothered. . . . There were exceptions, of 
 course. There's that man Roscoe isn't his name? out 
 there for the Sentinel. Ah, you know him, do you? Well, 
 he's been ploughing his lonely furrow: and there are a few 
 more. Some of them are the most unpopular men in England 
 to-day. That won't last, of course: they're big enough to 
 emerge. But men like Roscoe have earned the right to stand 
 out if they want to. And I haven't. Very few of us have, it
 
 WASTE SHORES 261 
 
 seems to me. . . . I'm not sure, either, that one doesn't fight 
 war best from the inside. Anyway, it's a point of view, and 
 one thing's certain. There isn't anything for me to do but 
 shoulder my own particular piece of responsibility and make 
 the best of it. I've no sort of right to be out of it when so 
 many others are in, who probably don't like it any better than 
 I do. ... Of course, that's only my own personal feeling 
 about it. I think that was what you wanted. I hope I don't 
 sound didactic." 
 
 " Not in the least," Hilary said. " I think you're right. At 
 any rate I've been looking for an answer to your arguments 
 for ten months and I haven't found one yet." 
 
 " But it's absurd," Vivien objected, " how could we have 
 altered things? They were settled before we were born. The 
 juggernaut would have crushed us like worms if we'd attempted 
 to alter its course." 
 
 "Surely that's true? " said Helena. 
 
 " Probably," said Millington, " but it's the effort that counts, 
 that would help us now. And the juggernaut would have to 
 stop if enough of us got in its way." 
 
 " Is it only the system? " Nelly asked. " Isn't it, perhaps, 
 something inherent in the nature of Man who is a belligerent 
 animal? I know that might, too, explain the system, but I 
 read an article the other day which argued that war must be 
 an eternally recurrent event. Men, it seems, do really like 
 killing each other." 
 
 " I can't say," objected Vivien, " that it's a phenomenon 
 I'd noticed myself." 
 
 " Oh, but I think they do, you know," Rosamund assured 
 her. " I know a woman who married a man who had a shoot- 
 ing box down in the New Forest somewhere. She told me that 
 the only way she could keep him decent and civilised was to 
 pack him off for a week every now and then to shoot things.' 
 
 " It's a pity," said Hilary, " that he didn't begin with her." 
 
 The young ptoet smiled quietly into the fire. 
 
 " But even if a man doesn't mind shooting rabbits," he said, 
 " isn't there a possibility that he may, let us say dislike in- 
 tensely the shooting of his fellow-men? " 
 
 "If men become wild beasts, they have to be shot, haven't 
 they? " Pamela inquired. " One doesn't want to do it (I don't
 
 262 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 believe men want to kill each other: that's silly) but you can't 
 argue in the jungle, you know." 
 
 " Oh, if we're still in the jungle. . . ." 
 
 Barbara, who did not like these discussions any better than 
 Helena or Vivien, though for different reasons, shrugged grace- 
 ful shoulders. The only thing worth while, these days, accord- 
 ing to Barbara, was to be a man. She hoped Rosamund wasn't 
 going to make a fool of herself. It was so idiotic to talk when 
 there was so much to be done! She was sick of women's talk 
 about war this war. Barbara considered war a man's job 
 and the little that women could do scarcely counted. They 
 ought in decency to hold their tongues, and let men forget (if 
 they could) in war time that women existed. What right had 
 women, who so fervently resented men's interference in the 
 sphere of the feminine, to hound men on to the battlefield? 
 Though Barbara thought all men ought to fight, she would have 
 died rather than tell any man she thought he ought to join up. 
 The White Feather Army filled her with fury, and though she 
 did not approve of Hilary's indecision at least she understood 
 and respected it. Her imagination helped her there. Killing 
 even in so good a cause as this of the Allies could not 
 be a pleasant business. She knew enough of Hilary to know 
 that he would hate it. But for herself she could submerge the 
 individual into those issues that she considered vastly greater 
 and more enduring. If Barbara had fought she would not have 
 done so without faith. For no hopeless cause would she have 
 drawn the sword. But she was a woman and could not fight. 
 Always something of a trial, her sex just now was a positive 
 pain to her. In war time it was hateful to be a woman. 
 
 Rosamund, on the other hand, seemed to find it extraor- 
 dinarily thrilling and romantic. She liked to think that vast 
 numbers of young men were marching out for her protection. 
 She made the war an intensely personal thing, reached back to 
 the mediaeval woman in her, who sent her knight into battle 
 wearing her favours. Not that she wanted young men to be 
 killed, but only that she liked to think they were willing to be 
 killed. Rosamund was rather like Jimmy she really did ap- 
 preciate the war, and for reasons of her own she was positively 
 grateful for it.
 
 WASTE SHORES 263 
 
 " Do you think, men like fighting? " she asked Hilary, whose 
 gaze just then happened to encounter hers. 
 
 " Good Lord, no. I think they hate it. Most of them. I 
 prefer to think that, at any rate." 
 
 "But then it's all the more credit to them, isn't it, when 
 they do fight? " 
 
 "You think that makes them douhly heroes? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, of course. Don't you think so, Barbara? " 
 
 "I? Oh, quite," said Barbara, who had gone back to 
 Stephen's black and white study of " War." " Stephen, this is 
 good drawing. But I wish you hadn't done it." 
 /'Why?" 
 
 "It disturbs me to remember war's really like that. The 
 beastly thing will haunt me at night. And I don't want to 
 be haunted. Since it has to be done one doesn't want to re- 
 member that war is like that." 
 
 " Why can't we face the truth," Brian asked, " if the men 
 out there can? " 
 
 " Oh, don't you see, they're doing something. They haven't 
 time to think. They're not sitting still with their hands in front 
 of them, their brains jabbing at them. It's inaction that's so 
 dreadful." 
 
 Inaction! They seemed to consider that amusing even 
 Brian who wasn't easily amused, these days! Doubtless he 
 found the business of wire-pulling a sufficiently arduous one. 
 
 " I'm the only inactive person in this set," Hilary said " un- 
 less we include Vi. And she was born that way and prob- 
 ably doesn't mind." 
 
 " You know," Rosamund broke in, " I am so sorry for the 
 men who can't go." 
 
 Hilary grinned at her. 
 
 " Are you really? " he said. "May we know why? " 
 
 " Oh well, it must be awful to be a man and to have to stay 
 at home. I wouldn't be out of it for the world if I were a 
 man." 
 
 "Wouldn't you really?" 
 
 " I mean, it s all very fine to talk about the horrid side of 
 war the blood and men being killed and all that. I don't see 
 the good of thinking too much about that. And it does bring
 
 264 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 out the fine qualities in people. It must be sent for some good 
 purpose, mustn't it? " 
 
 " Like smallpox and fleas, I suppose? " 
 
 Rosamund appeared not to be very disturbed by the intro- 
 duction of smallpox and fleas into the argument. 
 
 " Well," she said, " just look at the brave things men do in 
 battle. I mean, quite ordinary men that you wouldn't think 
 had it in them. You mightn't have found it out if it hadn't 
 been for the war. They'd just have gone on being clerks in 
 offices or liftmen or something of that sort. I must say I do 
 like a man to have pluck." 
 
 " It takes a certain amount of pluck, you know," Hilary told 
 her, "to be a clerk or a liftman. They're rotten jobs, both of 
 'em." 
 
 " I don't see much pluck in pushing a quill or saying ' Stand 
 clear of the gates, please.' " 
 
 " Oh, doubtless they find the war livelier," Hilary said. 
 " Do you know, you're a cheery soul. An incurable optimist. 
 I shouldn't be a bit surprised if you totally disagreed with Mr. 
 Gretton's delineation of war as a monster. Hand it over, Bar- 
 bara, and let her have a look at it." 
 
 Barbara handed it over. 
 
 " You any judge of art? " Hilary asked Rosamund. 
 
 " Oh no I only know what I like, of course." 
 
 "And you don't like that, eh? " 
 
 Rosamund glanced at the drawing and the flesh of her white 
 fat face shivered a little with disgust. 
 
 "You see," Hilary said, " you just can't stand it." 
 
 " Oh, Rosamund's one of the people like Reece who prefer 
 Britannia with a flag, aren't you, Rosamund? I don't know 
 that they aren't right," and Barbara shrugged those graceful 
 shoulders of hers again. 
 
 Rosamund said well, it would be more cheerful than that, 
 anyway. Seeing she was determined to regard war as a roman- 
 tic asset the world couldn't really manage without, Hilary took 
 Stephen's regrettable drawing away and decided that he was in 
 the mood to find her amusing. It was Helena who said sud- 
 denly and fiercely that war wasn't cheerful or romantic or 
 beautiful or anything in fact but a horror. 
 
 "Do you know what I'd like to do? " she asked Rosamund.
 
 WASTE SHORES 265 
 
 " I'd like to visit every battlefield directly the battle was over. 
 And I'd take photographs of the most awful things I saw there 
 the most awful things I could find : the hideous wounds, the 
 frightful deaths . . . and what happens to women and children 
 and old men, to whole towns and villages. And I'd do it with- 
 out the very least regard for people's feelings. They wouldn't 
 my photos be anything like the polite lies you see at the 
 pictures if you go there. They wouldn't stop just when they 
 were beginning to get painful." 
 
 Rosamund's white face shivered again with disgust. 
 
 " I don't see the use of being morbid about it," she said. 
 "What good would all that do? Besides, what could you do 
 with your photographs when you'd taken them? " 
 
 " I'd show them," Helena said, " to the people who haven't 
 enough imagination to see such things for themselves. There 
 should be public exhibitions and attendance should be compul- 
 sory." 
 
 Lieutenant Millington smiled quietly again into the fire. 
 Rosamund rallied her forces, managed to control the shivering 
 disgust of her too-fat face. 
 
 " Oh well," she said, " it doesn't help to lose our tempers, 
 does it? And I'm afraid I must go. I'm * on ' early this week. 
 You will excuse me, everybody, won't you? " 
 
 They murmured that they would. Helena, the colour in 
 her face, got up and, without saying good night, went off to 
 make coffee. She was in the mood to do something passion- 
 ately. Those who knew their Helena felt that this evening the 
 coffee might prove too strong. . . . 
 
 Hilary mentioned refreshment to the Fair Rosamund, who 
 said the Richmond train service wouldn't permit of it. 
 
 " I go to South Kensington and change at Hammersmith," 
 she informed them. " It's rather a long way." 
 
 " Jolly place, Richmond," Hilary said. " I used often to 
 go there before we had all these other interests to distract us. 
 You must come to see us again. You've quite livened us up, 
 you know. It isn't often we have such an interesting discus- 
 sion about the things that matter. I don't think anyone has 
 ever before got the lady who's making the coffee you won't stay 
 for to talk about the war at all." 
 
 " I'm afraid, you know, we shouldn't agree. Funny, saying
 
 266 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 nothing practically all the evening and then suddenly bursting 
 out like that. Took my breath away. Really it did. Didn't 
 it yours, Mrs. Bland . . . Rand? Oh, Sand, isn't it? Do you 
 mind if I say I like that hat? I know it isn't supposed to 
 be polite to make personal remarks." 
 
 " Oh, I don't mind," Pamela laughed. " You'll see it de- 
 scribed in the next issue of the Looking-Glass. Yes, Lady Di's 
 column. She has to describe something or other every week 
 and it's a long while, isn't it, since she's done a hat? " 
 
 "How jolly! I'll get it. Good-bye. Good-bye, Mr. Sar- 
 gent. I'm so glad you think every man ought to fight. It's 
 such a shame you can't go. I'm so sorry for you: I am really. 
 What is it? Heart? " 
 
 " Er, yes. It gives me a good deal of trouble at times. 
 Hearts do, you know. Hearts are a mistake." 
 
 " Oh, don't say that. And cheer up. I daresay the doctors 
 won't be so strict presently, when they find out how much 
 we want men. (Cute of Rosamund, that, at any rate, Hilary 
 thought.) Good-bye, Mr. . . . Vincent, isn't it? You cheer 
 up, too. I'm sure they'll pass you presently. Do you know, 
 I was horribly afraid just at first that you were both paci- 
 fists. I'm so glad you aren't. I do think pacifists are ridicu- 
 lous people, don't you? " 
 
 "They don't wash, either, do they? " Hilary asked. 
 
 " Oh, you've heard that, too, have you? " Rosamund looked 
 hard at Stephen whom she had now definitely classed with the 
 folk who were " queer," but who presented obvious difficulties 
 when it came to including him in this other category of the 
 unwashed. Fortunately at the moment his sense of humour 
 seemed to be rendering him excellent service. 
 
 " It isn't a subject I'd mention to everybody, you know," 
 he said, " but I couldn't bear you to think badly of me in that 
 respect. The fact is I take a cold bath every morning. But 
 perhaps you don't call that washing? " 
 
 In there at her passionate making of coffee Helena heard 
 the sudden outburst of merriment. She was grateful for laugh- 
 ter, these days, for you do not laugh overmuch with a perpetual 
 dread in your heart. Above all the rest, now, she heard Hil- 
 ary's voice: it was long since she had heard him laugh like 
 that. For some reason or other he was very gay this evening,
 
 WASTE SHORES 267 
 
 as though he had caught for a little while Barbara's trick of 
 looking at the war without emotion. But that Helena would 
 never do. Her passion of anger ran through her still, and, 
 with shut eyes, she leaned her hot forehead against the wall as 
 if to cool it. That awful girl with her round white face and 
 her senseless tongue! She wondered vaguely how Hilary could 
 have borne to talk to her, even though she knew his trick of get- 
 ting a malicious sort of amusement out of women he despised. 
 Yet even that nice boy with the dreamer's eyes had seemed to 
 find her amusing! Her thoughts wandered from Rosamund to 
 him and the things Pamela had said of him, to the things he had 
 said of himself. She wondered if he would come again 
 hoped that he would because he and Hilary, she thought, would 
 get on well together. Their views about the war were almost 
 identical. Both of them held that appalling theory about it 
 both insisted on their share of responsibility and merciful 
 Heaven ! wanted to expiate their sin of omission ! 
 
 Victims, victims everyone of them ! The hot tears of 
 pity and anger welled up beneath the shut lids, and, forgotten, 
 the coffee boiled up and over. . . . 
 
 It was Hilary who took the Fair Rosamund down and ushered 
 her forth into the quiet spring night. There were stars, which 
 she did not notice, and no moon, which she seemed to resent. 
 Hilary stayed down there a moment or two listening to her 
 views on this astronomical deficiency, and when he got back to 
 the studio Helena was bringing in the coffee. 
 
 She saw that he had a letter in his hand, and her eyes said, 
 " For me? " Her eyes only, because there were things you 
 didn't want everybody to know, though you couldn't prevent 
 them from guessing. 
 
 Hilary's eyes said, " No for me." His lips, " From Ur- 
 sula I think, but there doesn't seem to be very much of it." 
 
 He held it up to the light, but seemed in no hurry to open 
 it. 
 
 " Where on earth did you pick her up, Barbara? " he asked. 
 "She's a pure joy." 
 
 " Rosamund, you mean? Yes, I suppose she is if you don't
 
 268 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 have too much of her. She palls after a time, I'm afraid. I 
 don't remember how I came to know her: she just happened 
 along, as they say. Never seems to have anywhere much to go : 
 thinks it rather wrong to enjoy yourself in war time. She said 
 she liked pictures, so I brought her with me, but it's since 
 occurred to me that she probably meant the cinema. Her 
 mind's a blank, of course. There are hundreds of her knocking 
 around, it seems. When I first found that out it depressed 
 me horribly, for some reason or other; but I've got over it." 
 
 " Not bad looking," said Nelly, " if you care for that kind of 
 thing. Good regular features." 
 
 " And a good skin," said Stephen magnanimously. 
 
 " Oh, her complexion's merely clever," Pamela told them. 
 
 Hilary laughed. "What's her name anyway? Nobody 
 seems to have caught it." 
 
 "Too profound for you, perhaps. It's Smith. Rosamund 
 Smith." 
 
 " The Rosamund must have been a brain wave. Smith with 
 a ' y,' of course." 
 
 "No with an 'e.'" 
 
 They laughed. 
 
 "Well, Smith's a good enough name to have these days," 
 Nelly alleged. " At least the mob recognise it. You've no 
 idea what they can make of a name like Strachan or Menzies. 
 Or perhaps you have . . . Hallo, what's up? " 
 
 Helena turned from her coffee tray at that moment to see 
 Hilary standing, white to the lips, with a telegraph form in his 
 hands that he seemed to have drawn from Ursula's envelope. 
 The cup she was handing to Lieutenant Millington found its 
 way back on to the tray, because nobody just then was thinking 
 of coffee. Clustered round in a little group they were staring 
 at Hilary, and what they said came to Helena with a tinge of 
 unreality like voices in a mist. " What's wrong? " 
 "What's happened?" "Hallo, old man, bad news?" She 
 wondered why it was they didn't guess. Because she did. Not 
 " guess " that wasn't the word. She knew. The certainty of 
 her knowledge rendered her for those first few seconds speech- 
 less and motionless. The coffee cups executed an idiotic dance 
 before her eyes, the room swam, and then she found herself on 
 the edge of the little ring of people, with Hilary handing her
 
 WASTE SHORES 269 
 
 the telegram over their heads, as though she were the only 
 person he saw. 
 
 The telegram was addressed to Ursula Wyatt by the War Of- 
 fice and Ursula had sent it on to Hilary because, as she had pen- 
 cilled across the corner, she " couldn't write about it yet." 
 
 It was Helena, not Hilary, who announced what Ursula could 
 not write. 
 
 "Arthur Yeomans was killed nearly a month ago ... in 
 Gallipoli." 
 
 It seemed as though her words turned to stone as she spoke 
 and pressed, cold and wan, upon her. She, too, seemed to 
 be turning to stone: she was suddenly hideously cold and 
 frightened. She was conscious of Mark Antony stretching him- 
 self beautifully before the fire; of a quick short cry that seemed 
 to come from Barbara; of horror settling itself down crudely 
 upon the anxious faces around her, and of Hilary standing 
 there in the midst of them, both hands pressed tightly over his 
 eyes. . . . 
 
 They went, all of them, almost immediately, leaving the 
 coffee to get cold in Hilary's tall blue pot. 
 
 Afterwards Helena could not remember saying goodnight 
 to any of them. She only remembered that Hilary hadn't 
 moved; that one by one they had fallen away from him, calling 
 out a soft goodnight as they went. All save Barbara, who had 
 gone up to him and touched his arm. 
 
 " Don't," she said, " don't. It's all over for him. He's 
 dead and he doesn't suffer any longer. And he had the death 
 he would have wished." 
 
 ** It's a lie," Helena thought. " Nobody could possibly wish 
 to die like that." She looked at Barbara saw that her 
 face was white, her hands clenched, and remembering that lit- 
 tle instinctive cry she had a sudden rush of pity and admira- 
 tion. But Hilary gave no sign that he had heard. And pres- 
 ently Barbara went. With the closing of the door Helena's fu- 
 gitive feeling of pity fled and a spurt of anger came up in its 
 place, because Barbara seemed never, these days, to feel any- 
 thing at all because she could look unbroken upon this mon-
 
 270 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 itrous thing that had overtaken the world. She was like the 
 man who boasts in his club that he has " given six sons." 
 
 And yet, so Hilary had always maintained, she had cared for 
 Arthur Yeomans. . 
 
 She coaxed him presently to the armchair by the fire: 
 switched off the light, too gay for sorrow, and sat there at his 
 feet, her forehead pressed in wordless sympathy against his 
 knee. Mark Antony slept on in the silence and the loitering 
 shadows climbed slowly up and down the walls and over their 
 quiet figures. Neither spoke. She would have died just then 
 to have been able to comfort him, and he seemed almost to have 
 forgotten she was there. But when (after a long time) he re- 
 membered, he sat up and took her into his arms. 
 
 *' Oh, my dear," he said, " you do see, don't you, that this 
 . . . settles it? " 
 
 She nodded, choked into silence by an unexpected passion of 
 tears. She had always understood this day must come, but she 
 had not known she would shed tears. It had always seemed 
 that, somehow, she must be braver than that. 
 
 But though she said nothing Hilary knew she did " see." 
 Between them argument and pleading were at an end: silence 
 possessed them and sad-hearted acquiescence, while Helena 
 cried softly on Hilary's shoulder.
 
 CHAPTER THREE 
 
 THE greater part of the next day which was Whit- 
 Sunday they spent putting things in order, stacking 
 pictures up against the walls and on shelves, doing 
 queer things with favourite brushes that must be neglected but 
 must not be spoiled: burning letters which were better burned 
 (a painful process, this like burning some part of yourself) 
 and writing others to the people who mattered to Ursula, to 
 Ronnie at Salisbury, to Brian, Stephen and the rest. Because 
 Hilary was going at once if they would have him. Next 
 Saturday when the " Remnant " came they would find Helena 
 there alone. His little notes asked them particularly to go on 
 coming as usual because Helena must have a lot of company. 
 . . . He wasn't going, if he could help it, to give her much 
 time for thinking. . . . 
 
 It was his idea, too, that Helena should remain at the studio. 
 The rent was paid (thanks to Hilary's short way with accounts) 
 for some months ahead, and someone might as well live in it. 
 There was nobody but Helena, it appeared, with whom he 
 would leave his pictures lying about like that; nobody, either, 
 with whom he would trust Mark Antony. So that, at least, was 
 settled. 
 
 " What about a stroll? " Hilary said presently. " It's a nice 
 evening." 
 
 It was, but out there in the streets newsboys were shouting 
 that Italy had declared war on Austria. Everyone seemed to 
 find that a particularly heartening circumstance. But this 
 evening it did not seem to matter much to Helena who else 
 was to be in the war now that Hilary was. 
 
 271
 
 272 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 On the following day (which was Whit-Monday) they tried 
 walking in Surrey. But it was the least successful walk they 
 had ever taken. There was, of course, everything against its 
 being successful, but chiefly there was that desperate common 
 intention to put a good face upon things. The worst of put- 
 ting a good face upon things is that it tires you out so soon and 
 so utterly. And certainly Helena was tired when they reached 
 home, with that terrible tiredness that is three-parts fatigue of 
 the spirit. Hilary made her put up her feet while he bustled 
 round with tea and poked at his newly built fire, thinking she 
 was cold. She was, but it wasn't a fire which would warm 
 her. 
 
 Before the meal was over Evey dropped in with Estelle, en 
 route for the Wigmore Hall. Estelle, these days, was a grumpy 
 moody child for whom no adventures were left. Music had 
 been an adventure and the German professors and Desiree. . . . 
 And the thought of Leipsic. And they were all gone. Helena 
 watched her lure Hilary over to his Bliithner and keep him 
 there ostensibly, at least, he stayed to defend the English 
 musician against Estelle's quite vicious onslaughts. Little bits 
 of it all reached Helena and Evey. Names drifted across to 
 them Elgar, Joseph Holbrook, John Ireland and Ethel 
 Smyth. And in the middle of it Evey (who wasn't a scrap in- 
 terested in the musicians) said suddenly to Helena (who wasn't 
 either) : 
 
 " What on earth's the matter, Lena? Aren't you well? " 
 
 " I'm always well." 
 
 " But you look like a ghost." 
 
 Colour came into the ghost's white face. 
 
 " Let's take these into the kitchen. We can talk there," Hel- 
 ena said, motioning Hilary back from his attempted rescue of 
 the tray. " It's all right, dear. You stay there with Estelle." 
 
 Evey, leading the way into the kitchen, reflected that this 
 was the first time she had ever heard Helena call Hilary 
 " dear." None so chary as they of their verbal endearments in 
 company! Behind the barrier of the closed kitchen door Hel- 
 ena explained things without preamble to Evey, who said at the 
 end of it, " Oh, Lena, you ought to have kept him out."
 
 WASTE SHORES 273 
 
 " I couldn't possibly do that." 
 
 " Someone ought. He isn't the sort. Phil said that long 
 ago. You can't imagine Hilary out there in that . . . mess. 
 He'll hate it." 
 
 " I know. But then, don't all the others? I haven't any 
 right to demand preferential treatment for someone I love." 
 
 Helena began putting the teacups in the bowl, her pale face 
 averted from Evey, who said nothing because the only words 
 she could think of seemed suddenly to have lost their meaning. 
 There at the sink Helena said unexpectedly, 
 
 *' You know, don't you, all about things? " 
 
 "Your things?" 
 
 " Ours mine and Hilary's." 
 
 " I guessed. Why didn't you tell me, Lena? " 
 
 " I ought to have done. Hilary would have it that way. 
 You see, he minded so much ... at first . . . that we couldn't 
 get married." 
 
 " Aren't you ever going to? " 
 
 " We can't. Jerome won't release me." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " The old reason. If I won't belong to him: . . ." She 
 shrugged her shoulders, only ever so slightly, because it wasn't 
 a trick of hers, nor one she admired. 
 
 " Do you mind very dreadfully? " 
 
 " I don't mind at all ... deep down. It doesn't seem to 
 matter. It never has. It complicates things, of course. But 
 that's different." 
 
 Evey nodded. 
 
 " But complications can be horrid. They get in the way. 
 It isn't nice to be cut by your relatives. Of course yours have 
 cut you? " 
 
 " Long ago . . . except my brother ... the youngest one, 
 Walter. He's been tremendously understanding and kind. So 
 has Cissie . . . the girl he's going to marry if he comes 
 back. He's in the thick of it." 
 
 " France? " 
 
 Helena nodded. 
 
 " It's funny how little all that ' other ' has hurt. It was like 
 a skin wound ... the bleeding soon stopped. Somehow, it 
 just hasn't mattered. Nothing has, you see."
 
 274 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 She poured hot water on her teacups and began to .turn them 
 down to drain. 
 
 ' What will you do now, Lena? " 
 
 ' God knows." 
 
 ' But do you? " 
 
 ' I shall go on living here and there's my work." 
 
 ' Mr. Bletchington's work? " 
 
 Helena nodded. Evey seized a towel and began to dry the 
 cups and saucers. 
 
 "Isn't he a trial, these days? Phil says he's one of those 
 people who have helped to bring this war about created the 
 atmosphere which made it possible." 
 
 " With Germany, you mean ? " 
 
 " Yes. It is strange, isn't it, how soon it developed into an 
 Anglo-German war. It didn't start like that." 
 
 " I daresay Phil's right," Helena said, her mind on the back 
 files of the Britisher. " Germany's probably got a few Mr. 
 Bletchingtons of its own. But it isn't war he's talking about 
 just now. It's God not a very nice sort of God, somehow." 
 
 " Mr. Bletchington's God wouldn't be," Evey said. " Even 
 if he didn't run him as a limited liability company." 
 
 " Very limited," agreed Helena. " His outlook's positively 
 appalling." 
 
 On that, however, Mr. Bletchington's patronage of the 
 Almighty as a topic of conversation fizzled out, for neither 
 Helena nor Evey was really interested in Mr. Bletchington. 
 He was just a symptom, a sign and token of a world terribly 
 out of joint. It was like discussing one's bodily ailments to 
 talk of him. Evey cursed him as she hung her damp towel over 
 a chair. 
 
 " Is Hilary applying for a commission? " she inquired. 
 
 " No, he'll join as a private." 
 
 " That's good. Far less risk, so Phil says. I'm glad you 
 insisted on that." 
 
 " I didn't," Helena said, " I didn't even think of it. It was 
 always understood that if he joined it would be as a private. 
 You see, he hates the caste of the Army. It hurts the democrat 
 in him, he says." 
 
 " I should have thought everything about the Army did 
 that," Evey said.
 
 WASTE SHORES 275 
 
 But Helena's thoughts had moved on. 
 
 " For Heaven's sake, Evey, don't tell him Phil thinks there's 
 less risk as a private." 
 
 " You think he might alter his mind? " 
 
 " Perhaps. I don't know. I'm afraid. Of everything. 
 And Hilary's so quixotic. He takes the war so badly. There 
 was a young lieutenant here the other night a poet, quite a 
 good one too. E. T. M. of the Monitor. Phil would know. 
 Pamela brought him with her. Of course she talked the usual 
 warrior rubbish about him. But he wasn't a bit like that, 
 really. You could see he hated the war; he was talking about it 
 just as Hilary does; he would have it that he had a personal 
 share in the responsibility for it. I know Phil takes that line, 
 but it seems to me such awful nonsense." 
 
 "Don't you think we all are responsible up to a point? 
 Not individually, perhaps, but as a community a social 
 group? It was up to us to do better. None of us cared 
 enough. When we do, things get altered." 
 
 Helena shook her head. She had " cared " all her life, not 
 definitely, perhaps, about war, but at least generally about the 
 system which most people were agreed produced it. Not the 
 people who painted some nations completely white and others 
 completely black, of course; but still, a fair proportion of peo- 
 ple who did honestly want to arrive at the truth. 
 
 " We couldn't have done anything," she said, " the founda- 
 tions of this war were laid by old men . . . when we were in 
 our cradles. You can't dodge the inevitable. No amount of 
 ' caring ' could do it. Certain things happen if certain things 
 are done. It's inexorable like the law of gravity. Phil 
 cared, but what could he do? It doesn't make any difference 
 how much you care except that you suffer more. It isn't 
 nice to suffer. Perhaps that's why most people don't care at 
 all." 
 
 " People don't know. . . ." 
 
 "Do you think they'd care if they did? Do you think 
 they'd revolt? English people don't. The war has killed my 
 belief in democracy. I can't see that the men who are dying 
 out there aren't liberators or rescuers of the oppressed or any- 
 thing at all but helpless victims of an iniquitous system. Even 
 the men who are fighting don't see it."
 
 276 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 " Some of them do. Hilary sees it or will. Phil sees it. 
 That nice poet youth sees it. . . ." 
 
 "Victims! " said Helena, "Victims! " 
 
 Her white face showed suffering and a certain hopelessness. 
 She dropped like a wind-flower in a hothouse. Something in 
 face and attitude pulled Evey up sharp. 
 
 " Lena," she said, " don't think I don't care . . . but one just 
 must not care too much if one's going to live at all. Barbara's 
 right there, anyhow. We've got to set our teeth and bear it." 
 
 " Victims ! " Helena said again. " We, too. All of us a 
 world of victims ! " She hung up her overall behind the door, 
 and turning flung her arms suddenly round Evey's neck. " Oh, 
 Evey, Evey, it's horrible. Just think. It's going on now . . . 
 at this moment and we can't stop it. We can't do anything." 
 
 " Don't, don't," Evey said. " Try not to think. It doesn't 
 help." 
 
 " Nothing helps I know that." 
 
 " One helps oneself in time." 
 
 " In time! " Helena said, " with every day coming on like a 
 century! " She reached out valiantly for composure: raised 
 her head and with cold hands that trembled readjusted the 
 mask. " Let's go in, shall we? " 
 
 They went in. 
 
 " Lena's told me," Evey said to Hilary down at the door. 
 " Good-bye and good luck." 
 
 Estelle said, " Oh, you're not going too, are you? " 
 
 Estelle had her own ideas of excitement: they did not run 
 to khaki and military bands. 
 
 " Yes, I am," Hilary told her, and thought how nice she 
 was to look at, and what a handful she must be to the people 
 who owned her. But it was Evey's serious eyes that remained 
 in his memory when Estelle's insouciant beauty was forgotten. 
 That same evening he suggested that Helena should have Evey 
 to live with her when he had gone. The hideous finality of his 
 phrase took Helena's breath away, but she assented. 
 
 " Evey," she said, " wouldn't mind being bundled off when 
 you came home ... on leave."
 
 WASTE SHORES 277 
 
 " You think I'd like her ' bundled off '?" 
 
 She said that she thought she would, anyway. 
 
 They left it at that, having just thqn so many other things to 
 think of, but also because Hilary was suddenly aware of the 
 new frightening look about Helena. He was awed by the white 
 austerity of her : saw her face as if it were graven in stone as 
 though the sphinx might call her daughter. He realised the 
 effort things were costing her guessed that in there in the 
 kitchen, whilst he had laughed with Estelle, the white mask had 
 been lifted; that Evey had seen beneath the stone. She suf- 
 fered and nobody could help her. Nobody could help either 
 of them. . . . 
 
 Victims! Victims . . . bound and delivered! His youth 
 and passion sobbed out its bitter protest. 
 
 Hilary certainly would have agreed, there, with Helena's 
 obiter dicta! 
 
 They sat there long into the night, gazing into the fire: 
 hoping for the future, remembering the past. . . . 
 
 For whatever happened they had nad ten months of happiness 
 that could not be taken from them. They regretted nothing. 
 It was strange (or wasn't it, perhaps?) how, in the light of this 
 catastrophe which had overtaken the world, all the old scruples 
 had vanished. Nothing of all that mattered any longer. 
 
 Presently, nothing mattered at all, save that after this they 
 had, somehow, to live without each other, and that Good-bye, 
 stern-visaged, inexorable, waited for them on the windy plains 
 of Circumstance. They went out presently to do battle with 
 it, met it with brave eyes and lips that smiled. . . . 
 
 And then in the morning it stood before them again, uncon- 
 quered and with a bitterer countenance. Dressed and ready 
 for the office Helena met its renewed challenge without hope, 
 knowing herself vanquished, striving only to keep calm the 
 face she raised for Hilary's last kiss, and suddenly appalled by 
 the tide of misery that swept over her as his arms came round 
 her. She pulled herself free with a sob in her throat, yet man- 
 aged to smile at him from the doorway, bringing to this last 
 minute all the reserves she had, emptying herself. . . . 
 
 It took, she found, a certain amount of courage to open the
 
 278 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 front door and let herself out into the bright May morning, to 
 fall in an unconcerned unit among those quiet figures on 
 the pavement. 
 
 During that short journey to the office the world of women 
 divided itself sharply into two those who had said good-bye 
 to the men they loved and those who had not. 
 
 And then Helena had to say hers all over again, because they 
 sent Hilary back that night, with orders to report at ten-thirty 
 the next morning, when he and the rest of this latest batch of 
 recruits were proceeding to Essex. This, it seemed, was a way 
 they had in the Army. It had a lot of " ways," you found, 
 very few of which commended themselves to you. 
 
 But they smiled at the anti-climax the War Office had thrust 
 upon them and were tremendously grateful to it for having 
 made it Essex. Helena, because Essex was not so very far 
 away, because it came easily within the limits of the commer- 
 cial " week-end " : and Hilary for that reason and because he 
 knew you got wonderful sunsets in Essex. It rather looked, 
 Helena thought, as though it had occurred to him that painting 
 and war might perhaps go together, after all if you were 
 wearing khaki. 
 
 He even went so far (on that odd evening the War Office had 
 thrown him) as to turn " Interior " again to the light, as though 
 he meant to try to work at it. But it remained there on his 
 easel untouched, and in the morning Helena watched him cover 
 it up and turn it back again to the wall. 
 
 Just at first when he came home on leave it was an operation 
 he repeated. But he never added anything to it nor took any- 
 thing away, and after a while he ceased to disturb it. He 
 seemed so quickly to find that the khaki made no difference at 
 all that, for him, at least, war and painting, do what he 
 might, would never " mix."
 
 CHAPTER FOUR 
 
 SUMMER came a thing extravagant and useless, too 
 sweet to be borne. . . . 
 Somehow Helena got through June and July, grateful 
 for Evey's companionship and for Estelle's music, sad at heart 
 all the time, but mostly too busily occupied to remember it. 
 And grateful, always, for the thought of Essex, and the memory 
 of a fugitive week-end she had spent there six miles from the 
 Camp, unfortunately, because there were other people grateful 
 for Essex and desirous of contriving week-ends. 
 
 In London Heaven alone knew why ! people were tak- 
 ing bets that the war would end by Christmas. Meantime, it 
 went on. London had suffered its first raid. In Gallipoli 
 there had been a British and French advance; the Austro-Ger- 
 mans had captured Lemberg and German South-West Africa 
 was in Allied hands. 
 
 Helena went on with her work; Mr. Bletchington with his. 
 Week by week the Britisher appeared a. perpetual exercise 
 in futility. . . . 
 
 It was a queer world even apart from the war with the 
 pendulum of events swinging wide; so that at the Old Bailey 
 there was a man named Smith being tried for the murder of 
 three " wives," and at the Coliseum Lydia Kyasht danced beau- 
 tifully. . . . 
 
 People came (as Hilary had asked them) to see Helena and 
 Evey. Brian, who liked Helena and could be fairly sure oi 
 meeting Vivien there on a Saturday evening, came quite regu- 
 larly. He continued to apply himself industriously to the pull- 
 ing of strings, sometimes with hope, sometimes not, but always 
 with determination. Ragtime, as a hobby, took second-place 
 these days to the new queer one of being medically examined. 
 The doctors still said " no," l>ut Brian cherished the unalter- 
 
 279
 
 280 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 able conviction that they must sooner or later get tired of it and 
 say " yes " for a change. Meantime his friends discovered for 
 him a strong vein of unsuspected optimism, and Brian that the 
 pleasing legend concerning the Englishman's love of his bath 
 was in nowise founded on fact. But then, as Barbara pointed 
 out, Brian had all the contempt of the man who takes a cold 
 water bath each morning for the man who does not. 
 
 Less often than Brian perhaps because of Brian Stephen 
 Gretton came. He talked to Helena and Evey of the things 
 nobody else would listen to and brought them messages from 
 Stella at Brighton. Sometimes he went out on Saturday after- 
 noons with Helena and Evey to Kew or Richmond; but not too 
 often, because young men in mufti did not really care for walk- 
 ing abroad these days and besides, Kew and Richmond made 
 Helena sad. He painted few pictures and sold fewer; went to 
 meetings and helped sometimes to pass Resolutions. Some- 
 times not. Either way, Stephen's life did not sound too excit- 
 ing. . . . 
 
 Just occasionally, when she had an evening to spare, Pamela 
 would look in upon them. Busier than ever was Pamela in the 
 summer of nineteen-fifteen, with her hours marked out with 
 the clarity of a war-map by determined Colonials, who liked 
 to be seen about with her. You really couldn't blame them for 
 that. 
 
 Barbara Feilding, grown quieter of late and less than ever 
 inclined to talk of the war, came (as she always had done) 
 when you least expected her; and sometimes she brought Rosa- 
 mund, who wanted details of Hilary's venturing but lost interest 
 when she heard he had joined as a private. Denis remained in 
 Ireland, contributing opinions about Irish affairs to his " lead- 
 ing morning paper," which you might read if it happened, of 
 course, to be the particular paper you affected. Not that it 
 mattered very much because Barbara was probably right when 
 she said that what Denis really thought and felt about Ireland 
 would be not in his articles but in the letters he never wrote. 
 
 Olive and Dagmar came sometimes together, with a lot of 
 jolly tales about the Wounded (they spelt it like that, you felt, 
 with a capital W) ; and about queer things which happen in 
 hospitals. They both wore V. A. D. uniforms and were apt to 
 become lyrical upon nursing as a sweated profession. (At
 
 WASTE SHORES 281 
 
 least Olive became lyrical, Dagmar making a fairly successful 
 chorus, which was less exhausting.) They had made the mu- 
 tual and interesting discovery that all nurses at some time or 
 other suffered from varicose. veins, and Olive, it seemed, was 
 constantly in trouble for sitting down when on duty. You 
 gathered that she sat down less because she was tired or afraid 
 of varicose veins than because one had to make a protest against 
 a cast iron and inhuman system, and, also, because she liked 
 making a protest. 
 
 A cheerful person, Olive with no theories and no dismal 
 thoughts, but with a boundless energy and a sunny spirit. Art 
 knew her, these days, not at all (which was a good thing for 
 art, so Hilary said in his letters) ; she divided her time equally 
 between attending the Wounded in hospital, having them to 
 tea and giving them concerts (at which Vivien would never 
 play). You felt, somehow, that the Wounded rather liked it 
 and Olive. Or liked it because of Olive, perhaps. 
 
 And on two memorable occasions Lieutenant Millington came 
 again. 
 
 Out of her busy days Helena wrote regularly to Hilary. 
 Of the books she read, the plays she saw, the concerts they at- 
 tended with Estelle and her free tickets. Of the other things 
 she and Evey found to do and the things they talked of o 'nights. 
 Of the sweetness and wonder of Evey and the joy of having her 
 there like that at the studio. Of Barbara, who wouldn't talk 
 of the war, of Pamela, who would, and of Brian and the ropes 
 he pulled; of Vivien and the violin you couldn't get her to play, 
 and of walks. Of Mark Antony, grown resigned to his lonely 
 days and given to wandering about looking for Hilary in un- 
 likely corners and under impossible things. Of London and 
 Surrey and Bucks. And sometimes (but not often) of Rich- 
 mond and Kew. Of the " Deirdre " picture, and of a letter 
 from the Secretary of the Draycott Galley inquiring if Hilary's 
 determination not to sell was adamant. Of its subsequent re- 
 turn when he said that it was; and of the startling way it looked 
 across at you in the studio. (A good deal of this because pic- 
 torial art was still black magic and black magic is a fascinating
 
 282 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 topic) . Of Phil's dispatches, which made terrible reading, and 
 of his letters which did not, because Evey and the Censor would 
 have it so; and of places she and Evey discovered between 
 them (like the Ethical Church at Pimlico and a sweep's house 
 off Moorgate Street that had flower boxes at the window and 
 might have stepped out of Surrey). Of Conrad who had been 
 home on leave and cared no longer for Dagmar. Of the Brit- 
 isher and the fatherliness of Mr. Bletchington ; of his new 
 strange views on religion and of his unlovely and unlovable 
 God. Of Stephen, who was dreadfully hard up and holding on 
 to his unpopular ideals with both hands. Of Ronnie who had 
 been home on leave, and of Lieutenant Millington who had gone 
 to France. . . . 
 
 And sometimes though not often, because this wasn't the 
 sort of letter that helped, nor that a soldier really wanted 
 about the emptiness of things; the memory of the Essex 
 week-end and the difficulty of waiting for the leave Hilary was 
 going, some day, to get. 
 
 Hilary knew, when he got a letter of this sort, that she 
 thought him less clever than Ronnie who had managed this 
 question of leave so much better. 
 
 \He liked her to admire Ronnie, who needed admiration and 
 letters these days, because Salisbury Plain was not exactly fes- 
 tive and Pamela was not given to rushing down there for occa- 
 sional week-ends. Pamela, of course, preferred Chelsea, Pic- 
 cadilly and the Savoy. Anybody would. 
 
 From Essex Hilary wrote of the dull things he was doing 
 there, and of the people he was with, who were less dull, you 
 gathered, or, rather, not dull at all. Of drills and sergeants, 
 of route marches, of strange new companions ("good sorts" 
 mostly). Of rifles (an extensive subject in which Helena 
 wasn't interested) and of Essex landscapes (in which she was). 
 And of the memory of a recent week-end; of " Interior," and of 
 the leave he was going some day to get. 
 
 And sometimes (but not too often) of Themselves and Love 
 and days that being dead were yet alive. . . . 
 
 Meanwhile the fighting round Ypres went on; train-loads of
 
 WASTE SHORES 283 
 
 wounded steamed heavily into the London termini, and Ronnie 
 Sand went out to France. 
 
 It was on a Thursday in mid-July that Pamela in a state of 
 tremendous excitement rushed in and asked Helena and Evey 
 if they had seen the papers. They said they had seen as much 
 of them as they wanted to see; and what, particularly, had 
 they missed? 
 
 An account, it seems, of an act of conspicuous bravery per- 
 formed by Lieutenant Millington, who had saved the life of one 
 of his men while they held some impossible position on some 
 impossible ridge. Millington was wounded not too badly 
 and was in hospital at the base. As soon as he was well 
 enough he was coming home to be decorated, for, of course, 
 they were giving him the Victoria Cross. 
 
 " I'm tremendously proud of him, aren't you? " Pamela said. 
 
 They were, of course, but they wished Pamela would go. 
 She did soon, because she had an appointment for dinner with 
 an Australian, and another for Saturday with a Canadian; 
 which meant she wouldn't be seeing them that evening. They 
 would try, they said, to bear up, and asked for news of Ronnie, 
 who had been in France a week. Pamela had heard from him 
 that morning. She reported him as well and cheery, then recol- 
 lected her waiting Australian and fled. 
 
 After she had gone they looked up the morning paper and 
 hunted for the paragraph they had missed at breakfast, while 
 Evey said irrelevantly that she thought Pamela was rather over- 
 doing the Colonies. Helena agreed, but absent-mindedly, be- 
 cause having found and read the paragraph she was suddenly 
 overwhelmingly glad that Lieutenant Millington had gained his 
 V. C. not for destroying but for saving life. V. C.'s gained for 
 killing a number of the enemy she was apt to find depressing, 
 especially if the number were carefully specified as it fre- 
 quently was. It must be horrible, she thought, to know just 
 how many men you had killed even in a good cause. The 
 mediaeval woman in Helena, it seems, was a long way out of 
 reach. 
 
 She pinned the paragraph to the top of the letter she had
 
 284 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 just finished writing to Hilary and took Evey off with her to 
 post it. 
 
 On her way home from the office a day or two later she 
 bought a copy of the Monitor and found it contained three short 
 poems over the familiar initials " E. T. M." The poems star- 
 tled her, because they were no longer about " the country and 
 all that " hunting and walking and games but about war 
 and blood and sudden death, and bayonet charges. . . . 
 
 They were the first poems Helena had ever seen Evey ap- 
 preciate unreservedly. It was strange, because Evey like 
 Helena and Vivien detested books and poems about the war. 
 But Edmund Talbot Millington gave you the war with a dif- 
 ference. The biggest difference as yet of any. 
 
 Perhaps that explained it. Evey liked looking at the truth 
 a good habit, in Phil's opinion, which he encouraged, so that 
 he was probably not surprised to receive the Monitor pages 
 containing the poems sandwiched in between the next letter 
 from Evey. All the same, he told Evey not to do anything so 
 risky again: the poems might have got lost, or the Censor 
 might have objected to them, which would have come to the 
 same thing. So Evey (obeying Phil's instructions) bought an- 
 other copy of the Monitor, stuck the three poems neatly in an 
 exercise book with stickphast and kept an eye on subsequent 
 issues. 
 
 There were three more poems in the next issue, terrible, 
 haunting, ironic things about generals poring over maps, 
 moving regiments of men hither and thither like pawns in a 
 gigantic, never-ending game; and about the men who were 
 the pawns and about the people who stayed at home. Most of 
 all, perhaps, about them. 
 
 Barbara disliked them not the people who stayed at home, 
 but the poems. She thought them clever and misguided like 
 Stephen's line-drawing of " War." It simply didn't do to 
 stress this side of things. She thought it plucky of Harvey to 
 publish them; wondered why he had and wished he hadn't. 
 But she went down to Buckingham Palace to see the author of 
 them decorated, perhaps with an idea of talking to him about 
 them ; but she had no chance of that. He was surrounded by an
 
 WASTE SHORES 285 
 
 admiring mother and sister who guarded him jealously from 
 contact with any lesser mortals after he had shaken his sov- 
 ereign's hand. So Barbara came home and reported that he 
 looked ill, wore his left arm in a sling and no air (thank 
 Heaven) of the Almighty Hero. 
 
 Pamela (who had also been to see the ceremony) said of 
 course not he was so tremendously modest. Pamela wasn't 
 in the least concerned about the Monitor poems, because she 
 hadn't seen them, and wouldn't have worried about them any- 
 how, because worrying was not a habit of hers. 
 
 From Essex Hilary wrote that they were the first real poems 
 of the war, and that he had written to Millington to tell him 
 so. They were so real, in fact, that if you pricked them they 
 would bleed. Here at last was war with the romance off- 
 and it was hideous. So hideous that people would not care to 
 look at it, would cry out for the familiar veils and trappings 
 that had .been snatched from it. And because poetry had be- 
 come a thing divorced from life a thing extraneous to it 
 we should be told that these poems in the Monitor were not 
 poems at all, because poetry ought to recreate beauty, and 
 these didn't. And the critics would probably quote Keats, 
 because when you got them on this topic the critics always did ! 
 The one line, of course, which would prove nothing. 
 
 Thus Hilary, and a good deal more to the same effect, be- 
 cause Hilary felt strongly on the subject and let himself go. 
 
 Then, quite unexpectedly, he came home on leave; and 
 Evey went off in a hurry to Streatham, and summer had a 
 sudden brief meaning again. 
 
 On that evening of homecoming they sat Up much too late 
 talking of a thousand things of the Millington poems, the 
 Millington V. C. (about which Hilary agreed with Helena) ; 
 of the Roscoe dispatches, the " wonderfulness " of Evey, the 
 Colonials of Pamela Sand, and of Ronnie in France. Of 
 Brian's wire-pulling and the '* queerness " of Vivien who 
 seemed not to see, or, seeing, not to mind; of Stephen's ideals, 
 Stephen's wife, and of the baby that was coming. (It was a 
 mistake, they agreed, to get born in war time, but hoped the
 
 286 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 baby would never find it out.) And presently they talked of 
 nothing save the wonder of being together again. And, pres- 
 ently, not even of that. . . . 
 
 They crowded a century of happiness into that tiny period 
 of time, so gloriously alive to the present that knowledge of the 
 past and thought of the future ebbed away like a tide. They 
 spent their Saturday walking beneath showery skies in the 
 Chilterns, and only got back just in time to prevent Nelly and 
 Barbara (who had arrived early to find nobody at home) from 
 going away again. Later on Brian came and Vivien, and, later 
 still, Stephen. But they were thoughtful people and went 
 early even Evey who had come up especially from Streatham 
 and would dearly have loved to have stayed and slept on the 
 blue divan, or on the floor, or a shelf or anywhere so long 
 as she could be near these two people she adored. 
 
 On Sunday morning they went to Kew and had lunch beneath 
 the trees, but there was no sketching. (The showery weather 
 bore the blame for this, of course, which was convenient, if a 
 trifle unfair to the weather, that really did make a commendable 
 effort to behave decently.) Kew smelt of late tea-roses and 
 mignonette, of China asters and sweet damp earth, and once, 
 magically, of wood violets, too well hidden to be discoverable. 
 After lunch they followed the gleaming river into Richmond, 
 found a familiar shop for tea and fought for a 'bus at the bot- 
 tom of the hill. By the time they reached home the weather 
 had given up struggling and was definitely wet. But it made 
 no difference to Helena and Hilary because they would have 
 spent the time indoors, anyway, and weather was the last thing 
 in the world to depress them. 
 
 And they forgot the Camp and the coming morning, and the 
 absence of their friends (though not so successfully, because of 
 Jimmy and Arthur for whom the absence was eternal ) . They 
 admired the returned " Deirdre " and were glad Hilary had 
 refused to sell her. And they remembered love and the sweet 
 enduring things of love the war had turned to the wall; dared, 
 even, to raise the curtain behind which they had bundled so 
 much that was beautiful, that they could not forget and must 
 not (too often) remember. . . . 
 
 Two whole days of perfect happiness they filched from nig- 
 gardly Time that week-end at the close of July two days that
 
 WASTE SHORES 287 
 
 proved all the things that had been proved so often and sc com- 
 pletely before that life centred for each in the other; that 
 apart they had only their love and faith to keep the days pos- 
 sible, to keep hope dancing in the wind of Circumstance 
 though it danced high up, high up and out of reach, like Cole- 
 ridge's " one red leaf on the topmost bough." 
 
 But Monday came, because nothing, unfortunately, can pre- 
 vent it from coming, and in the morning they walked down to 
 Liverpool Street through the faintly stirring City streets, and 
 Helena stood on a platform amid a sea of khaki and thought 
 what a hideous colour it was, and how badly suited to most 
 people's complexion. 
 
 And the sun came down into the gloomy station and lighted 
 her up as she stood there, flushed from the ticket adventure and 
 smiling and cheerful, because one had to be that somehow 
 to the last, and must not think of the empty days that were 
 coming back again. Only, perhaps, less empty than before, be- 
 cause of this new memory that would take a lot of dimming. 
 Moreover, hope danced a little more lightly on the top of its 
 tree just now, because more people than ever were willing to 
 wager that the war would be over by Christmas. When the 
 leaf danced most lightly and most frequently it was because 
 some intrepid gambler had put it at the Autumn or referred 
 definitely to " September." You might wonder why they did 
 it, but you couldn't help feeling optimistic when they did. 
 
 Presently (only much too soon and tragically punctually) 
 Hilary's train steamed noisily out of the station, and Helena 
 stood and looked and looked until there was nothing left to 
 look at, when she walked out of the station, got on a 'bus and 
 rode Chelseawards. 
 
 And in Chelsea there was Mark Antony puzzled and hun- 
 gry and a note from Pamela which said that Ronnie had 
 been wounded and was in hospital at Sidcup. Pamela sounded 
 cheerful; but then Pamela always did, of course. Helena 
 hoped it was all right but could not help being glad the news 
 had not arrived until after Hilary's departure. 
 
 While she ate her breakfast she snuggled Mark Antony up 
 closely against her and explained to him that it was really a 
 very clever thing to do to get a Blighty wound after only three 
 weeks of France. Only Blighty wounds, of course, must not
 
 288 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 be too serious. And then, because Mark Antony was one of 
 those cats who loved conversation and understood every word 
 you said, she told him he was a lucky creature because he knew 
 nothing of war and had not heard of the Rockefeller Institute. 
 
 7 
 
 Thoughts of Ronnie, down there in Sidcup with his 
 " Blighty " wound, haunted her all day, however, and because 
 she couldn't get Pamela on the 'phone she went round to see 
 her and collect any news there was on her way home. 
 
 Melton, Pamela's maid, let her in and told her she would 
 find Mrs. Sand dressing in her room. She was dining out. 
 There had been no news from Sidcup during the day, but a 
 letter had arrived for Mrs. Sand five minutes ago. 
 
 Helena went upstairs and found Pamela on the floor having 
 hysterics and being horribly sick. Ronnie, she thought, must 
 be dead, and she steeled herself for the worst, seeing already 
 in imagination the fact as it would look when she wrote it out 
 for Hilary. Jimmy, Arthur, Ronnie. . . . 
 
 Pamela, making all that noise on the floor, had not heard 
 her come in, so that she was able to stand for a moment just 
 inside the door, wondering vaguely why life was so hideous, 
 and how she was going to tell Hilary. Her eyes rested mechan- 
 ically on the frock Pamela had taken off and flung over the rail 
 of the old Queen Anne bedstead, and on the evening gown of 
 blue which Melton had laid out with shoes and stockings for 
 Pamela to glorify. And she lay there in the midst of things, 
 forgetful of the Colonial who would have liked the blue gown 
 (and her in it), and making horrible noises. 
 
 She sat up presently in her camisole and petticoat and looked 
 at Helena. Her hair was loosened, the tears ran down her face 
 unceasingly. Her pretty mouth, slightly open, emitted short, 
 painful gasps; her weeping eyes were wide and scared. She 
 looked like a child who has been suddenly and horribly fright- 
 ened, frightened almost to death. 
 
 And Helena could think of nothing at all, save that Ronnie 
 must be dead. 
 
 But Ronnie wasn't. She got that presently out of Pamela. 
 Ronnie was only wounded but most inartistically. They had
 
 WASTE SHORES 289 
 
 removed an arm and a leg a right arm, so that he would 
 never paint again (though Pamela didn't seem to have thought 
 of that) and something had happened to his face. The 
 nurse who had written the letter Pamela gave her to read had 
 been careful, there, about what she said. But no matter what 
 she said, or rather, what she omitted to say, the hideous truth 
 got through. Besides, Pamela knew that it was the men with 
 facial disfigurements who got sent to Sidcup. Pamela always 
 did know things of that sort. . . . 
 
 And while Helena read the letter again to see if she could 
 make anything else of it, Pamela sank back to her sickness and 
 hysterics on the floor. Helena remembered how Hilary had 
 said, once, that Pamela could be sick whenever she liked. It 
 was absurd, of course; but all the same it got in the way, now, 
 of the sympathy she wanted to feel for Pamela. 
 
 ** Get up," she said presently, " that won't help." 
 
 She found it difficult to be kind to people who were having 
 hysterics. Besides, at this moment, hysterics got most dread- 
 fully in the way. Ronnie was down there in Sidcup, asking all 
 the time for Pamela so that nurse said. She put it nicely, 
 not wanting to hurt their feelings. They all thought it would 
 do him good to see Pamela, but she must be prepared for a very 
 great change. Doubtless she had said that to a lot of other 
 people . . . poor thing, you couldn't possibly imagine she 
 liked the task. 
 
 And Pamela lay here half-dressed on the floor, when she 
 ought to have been on her way to Sidcup. Sidcup, thank 
 Heaven, wasn't far. Suppose it were Dover they had taken 
 Ronnie to? A scrap of vers libre from some modern poet ran, 
 zigzagging, through her mind : 
 
 . . . Dover 
 
 Is such a long way from Victoria 
 
 . . . and your boy is dying, 
 
 Dying at Dover. 
 
 Two hours to wait. 
 
 But Ronnie was at Sidcup. You could get a suburban serv- 
 ice to Sidcup. And Ronnie was not dying. There was a lot to 
 be thankful for. . . . 
 
 Presently Pamela stopped being sick and paused in her hys-
 
 290 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 terics and sat up. Helena found her another handkerchief, shut 
 cupboard doors and did other odd things that she thought 
 might restore Pamela's self-respect, which was certainly at a 
 very low ebb. 
 
 " We'd better look up trains," she said. " How long before 
 you can start? " 
 
 " Start? I can't start," said Pamela. " I'm ill ... Can't 
 you see I'm ill? Anybody would be ill. . . ." 
 
 " I know," Helena said gently, *' it's a dreadful shock for 
 you. But it's Ronnie you've got to think of ... that we've 
 all got to think of. You haven't time to be ill." 
 
 Pamela said nothing, but the tears began to flow down her 
 cheeks again; her mouth trembled pathetically. 
 
 " Oh, don't, don't," Helena said, " do try not to cry." 
 
 She was suddenly infinitely sorry had not believed Pa- 
 mela cared like that. She came and knelt down at her side. 
 
 "We're wasting time, dear, and it's precious, every minute 
 of it. Ronnie wants you, and you sit here . . . crying. And 
 I let you. What is the matter with us? " 
 
 " It's no good, Lena. I can't go. I would if I could . . . 
 but I just can't. I'm afraid." 
 
 "What of?" 
 
 Pamela said nothing only hid her face against Helena's 
 shoulder and shuddered. 
 
 " What are you afraid of, Pamela? " 
 
 " The hospital . . . the awful sights. . . ." 
 
 "You'll see nothing at all but Ronnie . . . when you get 
 there." 
 
 "The thing that was Ronnie! " 
 
 "Oh, Pamela don't!" 
 
 " I can't help it, I can't. . . . That's how I'm made. If I 
 went I should be sick . . . and how would that help Ronnie? " 
 
 " He wants you and you're going to let your nerves stand 
 in the way. Or is it your stomach? " 
 
 Pamela sat up suddenly and pushed Helena's protecting 
 shoulder away. 
 
 " Oh, I know," she said, " you despise me. You're different. 
 I can't stand horrors: they make me sick. I'm not sick because 
 I like it. You're never sick. You don't understand. You 
 don't . . . see,"
 
 WASTE SHORES 291 
 
 Helena got up from the floor and stood looking down at 
 Pamela, who was tearing with her teeth at one corner of her 
 handkerchief. There was genuine anger in action and voice, 
 for Helena's use of that ridiculous word " stomach " had broken 
 down the bulwark of Pamela's hitherto impregnable amiability. 
 
 " I don't," Helena said, " I'm afraid I don't see anything 
 except that you won't try to conquer a bad attack of ... 
 nerves . . . for Ronnie." Her sympathy, now that she saw 
 it was herself Pamela was thinking of, and not Ronnie, was 
 disappearing. She galvanised it into action again, forcing the 
 hard note out of her voice, trying to speak gently. " Listen, 
 dear. Here is someone you love. They've taken him away 
 from you . . . now they've given him back. And you're go- 
 ing to grumble because they've smashed him up a bit. You 
 ought to be grateful ... on any terms. Just to get him! 
 And think! They've spoilt him so much they'll never want to 
 take him again. You will be able to keep him . . . always 
 . . . whatever wars they make." 
 
 Pamela stopped biting at her handkerchief and sat there 
 squeezing it into a ball, the tears, unheeded, falling down and 
 down her face. It was incredible to Helena that anybody could 
 go on crying like that almost automatically, as though the 
 reason for crying had long been forgotten or didn't matter. 
 
 "It's no good. I can't ... I can't ... I can't," she 
 sobbed. 
 
 Helena left her to go and look for an A B C. She knew 
 where one was to be found, and coming back with it sat down 
 to look up trains. The blue enamel hands of the little pewter 
 clock on the mantelshelf showed the hour as twenty minutes 
 past six. On the floor Pamela continued her automatic crying. 
 
 The ABC looked at first as though it were going to prove 
 useless. It told Helena that Sidcup was in Kent (which she 
 already knew) ; that it was twelve and a half miles from Char- 
 ing Cross station (which she didn't) and that you saved tup- 
 pence if you went from Cannon Street; but it seemed to have 
 nothing to say as to the service of trains. She found a table 
 of Sidcup trains eventually, however, lumped in with a lot of 
 other suburban schedules at the end of the book (where she 
 ought to have looked for them before) , and ran a quick busi- 
 nesslike finger over the columns.
 
 292 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 "There's a train at 7.36," she said, "from Charing Cross. 
 You must catch that." 
 
 " I can't possibly. I can't catch any train to-night, any- 
 how. I'm not fit. I shall be ill in the train." 
 
 " I'll come with you. You'll be all right." 
 
 " I shan't. I feel as though I shall be ill for days." 
 
 "You mustn't let yourself be ill. You must forget your- 
 self." She nearly added, " For once." 
 
 Pamela fell to tearing at the handkerchief again with her 
 teeth. 
 
 " It's all very well for you to talk. You haven't any nerves 
 . . . and you're never ill. Besides, it isn't your husband 
 they've sent back to you a horror." 
 
 " My dear! Can't you really stand a few bandages? Oh, 
 you're ungrateful, Pamela, ungrateful. Things might be so 
 much worse. . . . Ronnie might be dead." Something hot 
 boiled up within her, bubbled over uncontrollably. " Do you 
 want me to say I think you wish he were? " 
 
 " I don't care what you say . . . and p'raps it's true. It 
 would be better for Ronnie to be dead than . . . like that." 
 
 " Better for you, I think you mean." 
 
 " You can think what you like. I don't care. I'm too mis- 
 erable to care about anything. Besides, you don't understand 
 . . . you don't see" 
 
 "You've told me that before, and I've agreed with you. 
 Now, will you tell me what you're going to wear . . . and 
 where I can find things? You'll have to hurry." 
 
 " It's impossible, Lena. I can't go. I'm not fit. Anybody 
 would see that but you. Ronnie'd understand. . . . You can't 
 drag me there." 
 
 " I can ... if necessary." 
 
 " You're a beast, Lena an unsympathetic beast." 
 
 " I'm trying to be sympathetic. You make it difficult. Do 
 let us forget ourselves. . . . It's only Ronnie who matters now, 
 not you . . . not me. Can't you do something for him? Get 
 up from the floor and try." She dragged a dark-blue costume 
 out of Pamela's wardrobe, a white blouse out of a drawer. Pa- 
 mela got up and sat weakly on the edge of the bed, fingering the 
 silk of the evening gown she had expected by now to be wear- 
 ing, and dabbing at her eyes with the wet ball that had been a
 
 WASTE SHORES 293 
 
 handkerchief, so that her tears should not fall upon its loveli- 
 ness. 
 
 " She's thinking, even now," Helena thought, " of that beastly 
 Colonial who's waiting for her somewhere." 
 
 But at least it wasn't of the Colonial she spoke. 
 
 " If it weren't Sidcup I could have stood it," she said, " but 
 Sidcup's awful. The people who live there are writing to the 
 papers about it ... only the editors won't publish the letters. 
 They never do. And it isn't only that. There was a man in 
 the tube the other night . . . one side of his face was all right. 
 You didn't know till he turned round. . . ." 
 
 "Don't! " Helena said, "don't. Think of cool clean linen 
 bandages, and flowers in vases and white-capped nurses." 
 
 Pamela said nothing, only watched Helena pour cold water 
 into a hand basin and sprinkle eau-de-Cologne into it. 
 
 " Let me look at you ! " she said. 
 
 Pamela raised her head beautifully, as she did all things. 
 
 " I'm a sight," she said, " don't look at me." 
 
 But Helena did and decided that cold water (even with eau- 
 de-Cologne in it) would only make a bad matter worse. 
 
 " I'll get you some warm," she said, and went into the 
 bathroom to do it. When she came back Pamela was standing 
 in front of her glass, looking critically at her reflection, and 
 Helena breathed a sigh of relief. 
 
 " I've made myself a fright," Pamela said. 
 
 " Never mind, you can wear a veil," Helena told her, pour- 
 ing the hot water into the cold, " and the nurses won't mind. 
 They're used, poor things, to seeing people with red eyes." 
 
 " You're being beastly, Lena." 
 
 " I don't mean to be. I thought I was only being sorry for 
 the nurses. Come, bathe your eyes in this. And hurry . . ." 
 
 While Pamela brushed her hair and got into the blouse and 
 skirt, Helena looked round for shoes. Those she pushed for- 
 ward (the first she saw, for what did it matter?) Pamela re- 
 jected with scorn. 
 
 " I can't wear those . . . with this! " she said. 
 
 Even in a crisis Pamela could not be guilty of the mistake 
 of wearing court shoes with a tailor-made. Helena hunted for 
 lace-up walking shoes, looked anxiously at the clock and went 
 out to ask someone to get a taxi.
 
 294 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 When she returned Pamela had put on her hat and was 
 hunting for a veil. 
 
 "Ready? "Helena said. 
 
 Pamela nodded. She sat down, keeping the veil (a blue 
 one) in her hands, saying nothing. The scared look still lin- 
 gered in her eyes: her mouth quivered. Every now and then 
 she seemed to shiver. 
 
 Helena came to the glass and rearranged her own hat. She 
 was feeling tired and her head ached. She did not want to 
 talk; she could think of nothing save Ronnie lying twelve 
 miles away in his white bed, a strange unfamiliar Ronnie who 
 wore bandages and would never paint again. . . . 
 
 The sound of Melton's shrill whistling drifted in to them, and 
 presently the sound of changing motor-gear and running of 
 wheels. 
 
 " Ready? " asked Helena again. 
 
 Pamela got up and began to tie the blue veil over her hat. 
 Helena looking at her saw the tears running down her freshly 
 powdered face and the stormy heaving of her breast beneath 
 the smartly-cut blue suit. 
 
 ** Oh, don't, don't" she said, " you must be braver than that." 
 
 The door opened and Melton came in with a telegram which 
 she handed to Pamela. 
 
 " The taxi is here, madam," she told Helena, who nodded, 
 her mind on the buff envelope Pamela was shuddering away 
 from. 
 
 " I can't, Lena. . . . You. Oh, Melton, tie this for me! " 
 
 Helena took the telegram and opened it, while Melton strove 
 with the knot Pamela had twisted in the blue veil. 
 
 "That's too tight, Melton. It's pulling my hat out of 
 shape. . . ." 
 
 With a white and rigid face Helena stood folding up Pamela's 
 telegram. The shape of a hat! The grace of a blue veil! 
 And this. . . . ! A queer world ! You hated it. 
 
 " Don't bother any more," she said, " you won't . . . now 
 . . . have to go" 
 
 " Not go ? " said Pamela " Why not ? " 
 
 " It doesn't matter any longer. Ronnie died at four this 
 afternoon." 
 
 Pamela shrieked and flung herself, blue veil and all, face
 
 WASTE SHORES 295 
 
 downwards upon her bed. It seemed quite a long while before 
 Helena said to Melton: 
 
 " Tell that boy no answer, will you? And send that taxi 
 away." 
 
 Hesitant, the girl looked across at her mistress. 
 
 " You can't do anything," Helena said. 
 
 Melton went, and then, suddenly, the fretted string of Hel- 
 ena's patience snapped. What right had Pamela to lie there 
 crying with hysterical relief because Fate had let her off 
 because Ronnie was dead ? Fury seized her. She went over to 
 Pamela and shook her savagely by the arm, hating her. 
 
 " For Heaven's sake," she said, " stop making that hideous 
 noise. Stop it, I say, stop it! "
 
 CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 PAMELA, of course, made a charming widow. She con- 
 sidered the costume picturesque, and certainly black set 
 off to perfection her wonderful skin and hair. Whatever 
 shock she had suffered from the suddenness of Ronnie's death 
 had been definitely counteracted by the enormity of the relief 
 which overtook her when she learnt that she was not to be tied 
 for the rest of her life to a human wreck. (That, now, was how 
 she thought of Ronnie, poor boy, though nobody else ever 
 could.) Death here, for once, was very kind kind to both of 
 them. Pamela had not sufficient imagination ever to suffer 
 deeply (Hilary had been right there, all along) and Ronnie 
 had died (quite decently from sudden collapse) before he 
 found her out. Now, he would never know what Hilary, at 
 least, had always known. Or if he did it wouldn't matter. 
 These things don't when you are dead. 
 
 But being dead mattered mattered horribly. If you were 
 young. . . . 
 
 So Hilary wrote to Helena in a letter that it cut her to the 
 soul to read an elegy of youth and promise, passionately bit- 
 ter. After that, nothing more at all for a week. 
 
 And Helena suffered not only through but with him. 
 Horrible days of recollection came to her, stabbed with 
 thoughts of things done and said things written in the closed 
 book of Yesterday. Scraps of conversation, recollections of 
 walks, things they had done and seen together; the stretched- 
 out Sussex country; the sun startlingly red behind a dark plan- 
 tation. And thoughts of Richmond. . . . Half-lights and sil- 
 houettes, clouds in a hurry and a tempestuous river running 
 high. . . . And at the bottom of the hill traffic and noise 
 again: the winding street and the Richmond tea-shops. She 
 remembered the look of them as she had seen them first . . 
 uncurtained, making, one after the other, bright patches of 
 
 298
 
 WASTE SHORES 297 
 
 colour in a dusky thoroughfare. Life as she had sjeen it 
 through those unshuttered windows seemed a thing of lanterns, 
 cushions and the firelight ... of happy couples who laughed 
 and talked . . . and music. Walking there on the slope of the 
 hill she had caught no hint at all of this time when, with so 
 much else, this little town of tea-shops should be bundled away 
 behind a heavy curtain she could not bear to lift. 
 
 And something nearer something infinitely more intimate 
 and tender the memory (and so clear and vivid it might have 
 been yesterday) of Hilary here in this room, holding her in his 
 arms, and saying that death was a thing which happened to 
 other people. To-day, in this war-ridden world, you simply 
 could not bear to remember a thing like that. Death strode 
 abroad so fast and furious, came so close, you shivered and 
 held your breath. For what touched other people you knew 
 now could touch you and worse, far worse, could touch the 
 people you loved. Jimmy, Arthur, Ronnie. ... So close as 
 all that had death come. 
 
 But here Helena would get up and drag Evey out into the 
 streets to walk and talk so that she should not think. Be- 
 cause Barbara was right: it simply didn't "do" to think of 
 things like that. You had to grit your teeth and bear it. And 
 you had to go on being grateful for Essex, and to go on be- 
 lieving that the war, soon, was coming to an end. 
 
 Not that in the summer of nineteen-fifteen it looked like do- 
 ing anything of the sort. Those cheerful idiots with their 
 bets must be feeling rather blue. They had played her false, 
 as she might have known they would, for none of them knew 
 anything not even Mr. Bletchington, whose outrageous 
 prophecies disfigured the hoardings and the sides of 'buses. 
 Nothing that happened out there in the war zone or here at 
 home seemed to make any difference at all. Dully, incred- 
 ibly, it went on. You could not, these days, imagine the world 
 without the war. You could not, even, imagine a time when it 
 had not been. When someone said " Before the war " you 
 stared at him (or at her: somehow it was usually feminine gen- 
 der ! ) as at some strange prehistoric being who knew of things 
 you could only guess at dimly. You wondered what Mr. 
 Bletchington and the other men with papers to fill found, before 
 the war, to write about.
 
 298 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 War was a gamble, with good luck jostling the bad and none 
 good enough or bad enough, so far, to make any difference 
 either way. Warsaw had fallen at the beginning of August. 
 In Gallipoli there had been a new landing at Suvla Bay and 
 in the Gulf of Riga a Russian naval victory (so the papers 
 said). And in England at the beginning of September there 
 had been another Zeppelin raid on London, and concert tickets 
 had *' Full moon " printed at the bottom of them because of the 
 prudent souls who never went out o'nights unless you had defi- 
 nite information of this sort to offer them. But Helena and 
 Evey were not prudent souls and went out when they liked. 
 Neither of them had time to worry about Zeppelin raids be- 
 cause at the beginning of September men were being hurried 
 out of their camps into France and Salonika. The word " Zep- 
 pelin " did not frighten Helena : the word " draft " did. 
 
 But though (after that one week following Ronnie's death) 
 Hilary wrote of many things, he had nothing to say about 
 ** drafts." He wrote (humorously) of the sketch he had made 
 of a sergeant and (still humorously) of the ten shillings the 
 sergeant had offered him in respect of it. (The sergeant, Hel- 
 ena gathered, was a " good sort " if you could overlook his bad 
 puns on Hilary's surname and his own army rank.) Hilary 
 wrote, too, of rain and route marches and of mud; of James 
 Stephens's Here are Ladies and May Sinclair's Divine Fire, 
 both of which books Helena had recently sent down to him. 
 And presently, at the end of September, that he was coming 
 home on his second leave. 
 
 Helena was happy enough with that one thought drowning all 
 the rest, until the Thursday evening when Pamela looked in en 
 route for the Savoy, and wondered amiably where Hilary was 
 "going." Pamela was always amiable: it was a virtue even 
 Hilary had granted her. 
 
 " Going? " asked Helena. 
 
 " I mean, does he think it'll be France or Salonika? It's one 
 or the other just now, isn't it? " 
 
 Helena said nothing, because it was too terrific to have your 
 half-drowned thoughts resuscitated with such painful thorough-
 
 WASTE SHORES 299 
 
 ness. It wasn't likely that she would find anything to say. 
 But Evey did. She said sharply, 
 
 " Oh shut up, Pam. Why should he be going anywhere? 
 He'd have said if he were. Besides, they can't send everyone." 
 
 Pamela said, " Oh well, it just occurred to me, you know," 
 pulling on her gloves and preparing to depart. Her amiability 
 was unimpaired, her delicate beauty gleamed like a pink rose 
 from a tall black vase, and she carried it out into the uncertain 
 September day and lighted up the street. Outside, people 
 turned on the Embankment to look at her because she was 
 lovely in her black clothes, and inside, in Hilary's blue and 
 silver room, Evey swore mildly because she was stupid. 
 
 " I wish she'd marry one of the Colonials and that he'd haul 
 her off to the backwoods somewhere! " 
 
 'I Why?" 
 
 " Oh because it would make her really uncomfortable. You 
 might be able to like her better that way. Floors and babies 
 to wash might make her human. Babies especially. I'd like it 
 to be a Colonial who insisted on a baby every year. Concep- 
 tion at the point of the sword, sort of thing. I'm becoming 
 vulgar." 
 
 " You are," Helena said, but she laughed. 
 
 Which was what Evey wanted, so she thought her vulgarity 
 had justified itself. 
 
 Helena went down the next evening to meet Hilary at Liv- 
 erpool Street station, and one look at his face reassured her. 
 Nothing sinister lurked behind this welcome sight of him. 
 They might take their days and be happy in them. 
 
 At Charing Cross they picked up Evey and Estelle, because 
 Helena had managed to get seats at the Duke of York's for the 
 Manchester Players in Hindle Wakes, and Hilary had agreed 
 that to make a party of it would be delightful. So four light 
 hearts and a big box of chocolates went to the Duke of York's 
 and sat down in the Upper Circle, because no one had 
 " dressed." 
 
 All four of them were tremendously happy and excited, 
 because they had forgotten the war and were conscious of noth-
 
 300 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 ing save that Stanley Houghton had written a brilliant play, 
 that they were seeing it together, and that Miss Horniman's 
 Company was a histrionic delight that made you, as Evey said 
 later, almost resigned to the idea of Manchester as a dwelling- 
 place. And in the intervals they talked about the play and 
 listened to the old lady in front telling her companion that it 
 was " very clever and very dangerous, and, you could mark her 
 words, it would do a lot of harm." They were really interested 
 in her point of view and were almost sorry when the curtain 
 went up again. 
 
 At the end of the play they bundled Evey and Estelle into a 
 taxi, because Estelle liked taxis and deserted the beloved omni- 
 bus in their favour whenever she got the chance. She was fond 
 of Hilary (among other reasons) because he always remem- 
 bered things of this sort. 
 
 With the departure of the Sisters Charming, Helena and Hil- 
 ary walked through to Soho, and after a hunt discovered a 
 place where they could have supper, after which they rode 
 home to Chelsea on the front seat of the inevitable (and last) 
 'bus, sitting close. . . . 
 
 Above, the harvest moon hung low in a cloudy wind-harried 
 sky, looking like a copper plate somewhat battered at the edges 
 as if, thought Helena, it no more than all else had wholly 
 escaped damage by the war. 
 
 And at home there was an ecstatic Mark Antony, and a letter 
 for Helena in Cissie Ellingham's handwriting, bearing the Lon- 
 don postmark. 
 
 Cissie wrote from the Hotel Russell, where, it appeared, she 
 was staying with her mother. She had come to London because 
 she wanted to see Walter, who was in an improvised hospital 
 for officers in Bethnal Green. Cissie didn't know why Bethnal 
 Green, and Helena didn't care. It was enough to know that 
 Walter was one of the lucky ones: that he wasn't wounded but 
 had merely managed to fall out of the line with fever as his 
 regiment was marching up to go over the top. If you counted 
 the measles for which he had arrived just in time at Havre, then 
 Walter's luck had certainly been phenomenal.
 
 WASTE SHORES 301 
 
 Cissie wrote that she had seen him that morning. Helena 
 gathered that Walter's condition, happily, had not alarmed her 
 but that the condition of Bethnal Green had. She thought it 
 a shame poor Walter should have been sent there, but Helena 
 had no pity for Walter on this score. The nastiest bit of Lon- 
 don, she considered, was better just now than France. 
 
 She read aloud to Hilary what Cissie had written. 
 
 . . . He particularly wants to see you, but they're awfully 
 mean with their visiting hours. You'll have to go between 
 three and half-past four. All that way, too. And I daresay 
 they'll turn you out after half an hour, as they did mother 
 and me and you know how difficult it is to turn mother out 
 when once she has got in. Still they did it. Walter, they 
 say, gets a temperature if he talks too much. But it was 
 mother who did the talking, so I think they might have let me 
 stay. . . . Do be an angel, Lena, and go to-morrow after- 
 noon, and I'll try to persuade mother to let me go alone 
 (though of course she won't) and you can invite me home to 
 tea. So if you meet us on the stairs remember she doesn't 
 know anything about you: nobody in Rattenby does. Of 
 course she may think things : but that doesn't matter. But do 
 remember, dear, that you are supposed to be very busy help- 
 ing some public man. ( You can say Mr. Bletchington if you 
 like: I should think that would make a good impression on 
 mother.) Anyway, you're a patriotic person, doing war 
 work. . . . 
 
 There was a good deal of it, but Hilary listened quite pa- 
 tiently to the end. He did not mind that Cissie's letters ram- 
 bled, because they were kind and friendly. Besides, he was not 
 likely to forget how grateful they had been, in those early days, 
 to get them. 
 
 " Let's go to-morrow," he said. . 
 
 " All right. And what happens if we meet Mrs. Ellingham 
 on the stairs? " 
 
 Hilary considered. " Never heard of me, has she? " 
 
 " She hasn't heard of anyone, apparently, except the busy 
 public man I'm 'helping'! " She laughed. 
 
 " Think I'd do for the ' busy public man '? "
 
 302 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 She eyed his uniform and laughed again. 
 
 " I see," said Hilary, " not in these! Oh well, we'll chance 
 it. I can be ' a friend '! And anyway, what does Mrs. Elling- 
 ham matter? Damn Mrs. Ellingham, if it comes to that! " 
 
 "Willingly! " Helena said, remembering ancient grudges. 
 
 Besides, she would have damned the whole world to-night, 
 quite cheerfully, for the sight of Hilary sprawling there by 
 the fire with a light in his eyes. 
 
 She went over to him, slipped down on the rug and leaned 
 her head on his knee. 
 
 "Happy? " he said. 
 
 " Happy! " 
 
 "Isn't that the word?" 
 
 " There are no words. . 
 
 They slept late next morning and the clock was striking nine 
 when Helena slipped out of bed and looked at the day, which 
 was doubtful. And while she was looking at it Hilary sat bolt 
 upright in bed and looked at her. 
 
 "Good lord! " he said. "That beastly office! You'll be 
 late." 
 
 Helena turned away from the doubtful day and shook her 
 head. 
 
 " Oh, I manage better than that. There's going to be no 
 office to-day though it really isn't a bit * beastly ' you know." 
 
 " It is," Hilary said, " when it gets in the way." 
 
 Helena sighed, thinking that it did that so seldom. What it 
 mostly did was to fill up a gap a big one. 
 
 " I've turned Miss Helstone on," she explained. " A little 
 work for once won't hurt her, and Mr. B. won't bother her. 
 He's making a recruiting speech in Glasgow." 
 
 Breakfast was a leisurely and happy meal, for they had con- 
 trived, both of them, to staunch their wounds, and their courage 
 and laughter had blunted the sword of the Terribly Familiar, 
 so that at the moment it could not hurt them at all. They ate 
 their porridge and bacon in high spirits, and Hilary blessed 
 the name of Miss Helstone and that of the woman whose " day " 
 it was, to whom they left the business of clearing away and
 
 WASTE SHORES 303 
 
 washing up, and went out to buy things. They climbed on a 
 'bus and went up to Liberty's because when you were vague like 
 that and only wanted to " buy things " and not any special defi- 
 nite article, Liberty's was the best place. So they went there 
 and found a great deal to admire, and Hilary bought Helena a 
 piece of Chinese silk for a wrap, beautifully worked in blues 
 and golds (which were Helena's colours) and Helena bought 
 for herself a hand-made Dorothy bag of leather that smelt as 
 good as it looked. For the studio Hilary bought a pewter vase 
 that he liked the shape of, some gorgeously coloured cushions 
 and a black-and-silver tuffit that no one would sit on but Mark 
 Antony who would spoil it. They took the handbag with 
 them and the pewter vase, and, because the day was chilly, 
 Hilary made Helena wear the Chinese silk though that was 
 less the reason, perhaps, than the excuse. And because he 
 wanted to be able to look at his " tuffit " and cushions again be- 
 fore he went back to camp, the Liberty people promised to send 
 them along that day without fail. Shop people were obliging 
 to folk in uniform even the uniform of a private. It was an 
 item that Helena scored heavily to their credit as she walked 
 across with Hilary to the Trocadero Grill Room for lunch. 
 
 Pamela was having lunch there, too, they found, with a 
 young flight officer, and she tried not to see them because it was 
 always so awkward speaking to a private when you were with 
 an officer. But Helena looked beautiful in her new wrap: 
 she counteracted the painful shoddiness of Hilary's khaki attire 
 and was thoroughly worth the smile and raised hand of recog- 
 nition Pamela finally decided to bestow on them. 
 
 " Such a queer person, the young man in uniform," she ex- 
 plained to the youth who was paying for her lunch. "Yes, 
 an artist. A friend of poor Ronnie's, of course. (By the way, 
 you must come along and see Ronnie's pictures before I give 
 up the house. We must arrange an evening.) Oh no, Hilary 
 Sargent's things aren't a bit like his. Ronnie would have it 
 they were miles better. They really are rather distinctive. 
 Don't you know them? Landscapes misty things, wet 
 nights, fogs, moonlight and clouds. Horribly creepy. And he 
 does portraits. Ronnie used to say if he'd only stick to por- 
 traits he'd make a fortune. But he won't. Says fashionable 
 women bore him. He's got the queerest ideas about most
 
 304 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 things. Talks like a socialist, though he can't be, because he's 
 quite comfortably off and socialists never are, are they? He 
 objects to taking a commission. I don't know why. Some- 
 thing I can't understand about the caste of the Army. I sup- 
 pose he looks as well as anybody in the ranker's uniform. But 
 I really don't admire the cut, do you? " 
 
 " Oh, rather not," said the youth who was paying for her 
 lunch. " Awfully pretty girl, though. His wife? " 
 
 " Well . . . not exactly. There's a husband in the way who 
 won't budge. I don't know much about it. Ronnie knew, and 
 would always have it they were justified. After all, I suppose, 
 people's morals are their own affair, aren't they? " 
 
 " What? Oh, rather. I say, what wine will you have? " 
 
 Hilary and Helena meanwhile had found a corner table. 
 Hilary ordered hors d'oeuvres and Helena said she was quite 
 sure Pamela was apologising for them to her young officer 
 friend. 
 
 "Not for you," Hilary said. "You look lovely. It's me 
 she's apologising for or, rather, His Majesty's uniform." 
 
 " You can't apologise for the contractor who's responsible 
 for it," Helena said, " anyway. He's past praying for. But 
 why don't you buy one of your own? " 
 
 "Want me to?" 
 
 " Not particularly. Only wouldn't you feel better in it? " 
 
 " Suppose I should. But . . . well, I don't want to wear 
 anything . . . different, somehow." 
 
 " Then don't. I don't care what you wear." 
 
 She looked at him over the hors d'aeuvres, and thought that 
 nothing not this vile colour and the viler cut of his uniform 
 could coarsen him or strip him of the grace and charm that 
 was a part of him. His face was still pale, tanned scarcely at 
 all by the summer sun (what there had been of it). His hair 
 was shorter, but even the scissors had not been able to wrestle 
 very successfully with the wavy thicknesses of it, and his head 
 was very far from being the cropped close " soldier's " head 
 it ought perhaps to have been. But to-day the contrast which 
 the intractable wave of Hilary's hair presented with the per- 
 fect straightness of his black eyelashes struck Helena afresh 
 as she looked at him. She looked at him so long, in fact, 
 that she forgot her lunch and the waiter thought (as they
 
 WASTE SHORES 305 
 
 always do) that she had finished and took her plate away. 
 And though Hilary laughed at her face of surprised dismay 
 he called the man back, because it is, after all, rather a 
 tragedy to have your hors cTcevres removed before you have 
 finished with them. The waiter seemed to think they were 
 rather mad. He was an Englishman and wore that air of 
 tired contempt for the hungry that is the dominant char- 
 acteristic of the English waiter. But Hilary and Helena 
 thought a waiter's a dull enough life and made him very 
 kindly welcome to any little enlivenment he might be able to 
 get out of them. 
 
 They were a long time over their lunch chiefly because a 
 private's uniform these days was misleading, and the waiter 
 being uncertain of his tip spent rather too much time trying 
 to square Hilary's manner with his uniform. But his leisure- 
 liness disturbed neither Hilary nor Helena. They liked sitting 
 there eating their nice food and listening to the music, and look- 
 ing at each other and talking. They were in no hurry at all. 
 It was still barely two o'clock and they had not to be at the 
 hospital until three. It wouldn't matter either if they were 
 later. All the better, perhaps, because they might then escape 
 Mrs. Ellingham. 
 
 6 
 
 An eastward bound 'bus took them down to Cambridge 
 Heath station with the Saturday afternoon crowd, and as they 
 sat on the back seat Hilary was able to take out his pewter vase 
 and look at it again. It was one way of avoiding the sight of 
 Bethnal Green, which (without knowing anything of the 
 " Brady Street area ") they resented en bloc. Hilary thought 
 the Zeppelins here might do a very good work if you could 
 only manage somehow to clear out the people while they did it. 
 Helena agreed, and was reminded of the girl in the " Litlle 
 Restaurant of the Kindly Heart " who had wanted to burn 
 London down. 
 
 " Down here it seems almost criminal to prevent her," 
 Hilary said, twisting his lovely vase in his hands. He liked it 
 better out of doors (even here in the Belhnal Green Road) than 
 he had done in the Regent Street shop, and he pointed out to 
 Helena the one special curve which made the shape so beautiful.
 
 306 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 It was a long while before he could persuade himself to wrap 
 it up again and go back to the task of trying not to look at the 
 sordid squalor of the No. 6 'bus route. 
 
 It was twenty minutes past three when they walked up the 
 stairs of the improvised hospital with their arms full of fruit 
 and roses, and were just in time to meet Mrs. Ellingham com- 
 ing down. 
 
 7 
 
 " Really, my dear," she said to Helena, " this is a very great 
 pleasure." 
 
 Helena simulated an admirable surprise (she had grown 
 clever at this sort of thing) and introduced Hilary. Mary El- 
 lingham looked at him standing there with his arms full of 
 flowers and his beautiful pewter vase (very badly wrapped up) ; 
 and those keen eyes of hers seemed to find, as others had done 
 before her, that his pale distinguished face counteracted the 
 very worst you could say of his shoddy uniform. At any rate, 
 she smiled and was immediately amiable to its owner. 
 
 " Isn't this a dreadful part of the world, Mr. Sargent? Of 
 course, I know the poor must live somewhere, but, really, some- 
 one ought to do something. . . . What a lovely wrap, Helena 
 dear, and how well you are looking ! Your hard work must be 
 suiting you." 
 
 Helena said it was. 
 
 "And when are you coming back to your delightful house? 
 Really, it's a shame to have it muffled up in canvas and holland. 
 I do hope your old housekeeper and her husband look after 
 things. I'm sure we shall all be very glad to see you again 
 when this dreadful war is over. Not, of course, that we saw 
 anything at all of Mr. Courtney before he went to France (so 
 fine of him, my dear, I thought! ) . After his return from Amer- 
 ica he was quite a recluse. Oh yes, I assure you. He must 
 have missed you terribly. Do let us hope the Germans will 
 soon be beaten, so that we can all settle down again in the old 
 way. Of course we're going to win, aren't we, Mr. Sargent? " 
 
 " Sure to," Hilary said, " England always does, you know." 
 
 " Of course. I'm not really alarmed, only it's so very sad 
 for everybody. For you young people especially. I'm sure I 
 really dread Walter's getting well enough to go out again.
 
 WASTE SHORES 307 
 
 Cissie worries herself to a shadow about him, the poor child! 
 And Walter was getting on so well in the Bank: I'm sure his 
 father has been most kind." 
 
 " How w Walter? " Helena managed to get in here. 
 
 " Oh, improving wonderfully. His constitution, the doctors 
 say, is extraordinary. Really, you know, one almost wishes it 
 were not. Things, I hear, are impending in France: I hope 
 they won't find him well enough to go out again yet awhile. 
 I'm sure you understand what I mean, Mr. Sargent." 
 
 Mr. Sargent said that he did and that it was very natural, 
 or something to that effect. He found Mrs. Ellingham's em- 
 phatic amiability a trifle overpowering. 
 
 " I think the world is terribly sad," she went on, " Really, 
 the war has complicated things dreadfully . . . especially for 
 mothers with daughters, Mr. Sargent. I have seven, you know. 
 A family of seven girls is really a great tragedy, especially now 
 that so few women will be able to get married, and I think all 
 young people are better married. I'm old-fashioned enough to 
 believe in youthful marriages, though these war weddings are 
 really very imprudent, don't you think, Mr. Sargent? " 
 
 Hilary did. He was in the middle of trying to say so when 
 a white-clad nurse hurried up to them and said they must not 
 stand talking on the staircase. 
 
 " Who is it that you want to see? " she asked. " You are 
 making a great deal of noise." 
 
 They said they were sorry and that they had come to see 
 Lieutenant Morden who was in Alexandra Ward. 
 
 "But Lieutenant Morden has one visitor with him now. 
 Only one of you can go up until she comes down." 
 
 " Then you go, Helena dear;" Mrs. Ellingham said. " I've 
 just come down, nurse. Perhaps you'll come and talk to me in 
 the hall, Mr. Sargent, until Cissie joins us." 
 
 So Helena followed the white-clad nurse up the staircase and 
 along a passage, and Hilary went down into the hall with Mrs. 
 Ellingham, who asked him when he thought the war was go- 
 ing to end and if he believed these rumours about Russia. Of 
 course people did say such dreadful things about the Tsar 
 before the war, but after all he was our ally and you couldn't 
 really believe, could you, that he secretly favoured the Ger- 
 mans?
 
 308 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 Hilary said hecould believe anything about the Tsar and 
 wished Cissie would hurry up and come down. 
 
 8 
 
 Walter, always a pretty boy, looked prettier than ever this 
 afternoon, because there was a flush on his cheekbones and his 
 eyes were more than usually bright. 
 
 " You do look nice, all of you," Helena said, glancing from 
 him to the rest of the little Ward. She hadn't expected it to 
 look like this. Walter laughed. 
 
 "We're all medicals," he said, "we don't shock anybody. 
 We leave that to the surgicals." 
 
 " He's not to be excited, please," said the Staff Nurse, coming 
 up just then. She had a kind pale face and didn't look as 
 though she had varicose veins, though Olive would have sworn 
 she must have. " No, I don't think the grapes will hurt him 
 at all." 
 
 " Do smell my flowers, nurse," Walter begged. " And 
 don't glare at them like that you'll wither them." 
 
 Staff unbent and smiled inclusively upon the flowers, their 
 recipient, and Helena who had brought them. 
 
 ** This is my sister, nurse. Do say you think I'm like her." 
 
 Staff considered. 
 
 " You aren't ... a scrap," she said, " but I can quite under- 
 stand why you want me to say so. Now, please, not too much 
 talking." 
 
 Staff moved away and Helena explained that Hilary was on 
 leave and that he was downstairs, talking to Cissie's mother. 
 
 " We were reproved for talking on the stairs," she laughed. 
 
 " Staff's orders," said Walter. " I tell you. She's a terror." 
 
 Cissie plucked up sufficient courage presently to go down- 
 stairs and see Hilary, whom, for all her friendly letters, she 
 had never yet met. Helena and Walter were left alone. 
 
 "Well? " they said simultaneously. 
 
 " All right! " said Walter. " How about you? " 
 
 "All right, too," said Helena. 
 
 "Happy?" 
 
 " Much too happy . . . to-day. There's no France and no 
 Salonika."
 
 WASTE SHORES 309 
 
 "Shouldn't worry about the beastly places. They can't 
 send everybody. Some chaps have been at home since the 
 beginning. Chaps I mean, who joined up in the first few 
 weeks." 
 
 " But when is it going to end, Wally! You've been out there. 
 What do you think? " 
 
 " Going out there doesn't help you. You only know what 
 happens on your own little bit of the line not always that. 
 Life in the trenches is frightfully dull." 
 
 " But you think some day there's going to be a smash- 
 ing military victory? " 
 
 "For us?" 
 
 " Yes. I suppose I meant for us." 
 
 " I don't think there's going to be one for anybody. Military 
 victories belong to the past. If we get one it will be be- 
 cause of other things . . . want of food ... or a social 
 revolution." 
 
 " In Germany? That doesn't look very likely." 
 
 " Nothing looks very likely," Walter said, " if it comes to 
 that." 
 
 They were silent a minute, because Staff was looking at 
 them. 
 
 " You haven't congratulated me yet," Walter said presently, 
 " on getting the fever." 
 
 Helena apologised. 
 
 " I've done nothing else since Cissie's letter came last night. 
 It was tremendously clever of you." 
 
 " Oh, I've a positive genius for that sort of thing. The 
 measles at Havre were awfully jolly. They are, you know, if 
 you postpone getting 'em till you've reached years of discre- 
 tion." 
 
 Helena laughed. 
 
 " Any news from home? " 
 
 "Oh, nothing save that Ted's joined the 0. T. C." 
 
 She thought that out. The meaning of these military abbre- 
 viations did not yet jump to her mind. This particular one 
 always sounded to her like the name of a sauce. " Nothing 
 else? " she said, when she had managed to place Ted. " No 
 news of Jerome? " 
 
 " None. Doesn't he write? "
 
 310 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 *' Why should he? There's nothing now for us to say to each 
 other." 
 
 "The home people don't write either? They're still keep- 
 ing it up? " 
 
 Helena nodded. 
 
 " There's Cissie, of course. The kind child ! " 
 
 "Poor old girl!" 
 
 " Oh, don't be sorry for me! I don't mind I mean that. 
 I've just stopped caring. I did care, at first . . . hoped they'd 
 understand a little. They don't, and letters only make mat- 
 ters worse. It's better as it is. Years ago I remember mother 
 telling father I had no natural feeling. He said he didn't 
 know what she meant. Neither did I then. But I do now 
 and she was right. I do seem able to cut myself off it looks 
 heartless, and I'm not, really." 
 
 " Jerome too ? Is he cut off? " 
 
 She shook her head, looking puzzled. 
 
 " Not quite perhaps. There's some link there, still, which 
 holds. Even my anger against him didn't break it and that's 
 gone." 
 
 " Can't think how you manage it. I should be furious." 
 
 " But you can't go on being angry all the time. Besides, 
 I do somehow understand. Even when I want to be an- 
 gry with him I can only be sorry. Not that he'd like that any 
 better." 
 
 She paused, reflecting that, at its best, pity was an insolent 
 virtue. 
 
 " After all," she said, " it isn't as though he has made any 
 difference. Any real difference, I mean. We're horrible self- 
 ish moderns . . . who did at least try to be decent. We 
 weren't very successful. Our generation isn't, somehow, at the 
 old-fashioned virtues." 
 
 " Oh, damn the old-fashioned virtues," said Walter. 
 
 "We have!" 
 
 "Any regrets?" 
 
 "None." 
 
 They were suddenly silent, because Staff was crossing their 
 line of vision again. When she had moved away Helena said 
 irrelevantly :
 
 WASTE SHORES 311 
 
 " Why don't you and Cissie get married ? Hasn't it occurred 
 to you? " 
 
 " Oh, rather. The point is, Mrs. Ellingham doesn't believe 
 in war weddings. She probably told you that on the stairs." 
 
 "She did. She told us quite a lot on the stairs, in fact, 
 before they stopped her. What has she got against the war 
 wedding? " 
 
 " Oh, she's afraid I'd get killed or something and leave 
 Cissie saddled with a baby." 
 
 "How silly! Because you needn't." 
 
 ** Of course not. I've no intention of getting killed. Or 
 was it the baby you were thinking of? " 
 
 " Don't joke." 
 
 "About babies? Good Lord, no. They aren't any laugh- 
 ing matter, I suppose." 
 
 " About being killed, I meant." 
 
 " I wasn't joking about that. I'm not going to get killed." 
 
 "Don't . . . don't. It's what they all say. It's tempting 
 Fate." 
 
 " Didn't know you believed in her." 
 
 "Neither did I. It's this beastly war. I hate it! " 
 
 " Doesn't everybody? " 
 
 " No. Some people are enjoying it. A lot of people are 
 rinding it useful. Women especially. It's giving them some- 
 thing to do. That's what most women wanted. Sooner or 
 later it will give them the vote. I'd rather never have it." 
 
 " Is it war you hate, or just this war? " 
 
 " War all war. But this most of all. Because I'm living 
 in it; and I've got so little of this national sense ... or at 
 least if I have I've got it differently. I'm not possessive, I 
 suppose, even about my native land. Our patriotic songs don't 
 thrill me at least, not with pride. Patriotism doesn't seem 
 to produce poets anyway, not the sort of patriotism that 
 produces the songs." 
 
 "The National Anthem," said Walter. "Pretty rotten, I 
 suppose, on the literary side." 
 
 " I'd rather have that than Rule Britannia" Helena said. 
 " I know it was written in the eighteenth century. You'd 
 think people wouldn't care about singing it now that they'd
 
 312 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 know better! That awful idea the old Jews had, of being the 
 Chosen People! " 
 
 " I know and yet there is something. I can't explain. 
 Somehow, you can't even think of us not getting through this. 
 England means something . . . somehow." 
 
 " Yes association. The sort of thing everybody feels for 
 the place they were born in and have lived in. I've, got it 
 for Yorkshire. Or used to have. But I wouldn't go back 
 there now . . . London means so much more than Yorkshire 
 ever did. Parochialism writ large! I don't object to that if 
 that's what you mean by patriotism. But scarcely anybody 
 does." 
 
 " I think it may be what / mean. One's own country ought 
 to mean something ought to stand for something. One does 
 want her to set an example ... I can't explain. . . ." 
 
 " Don't try. Staff is simply glaring at us. It's so nice to see 
 you, and so difficult to remember you mustn't talk. . . ." 
 
 They managed not to, however, until Hilary came up, when 
 they began again. Only on all sorts of jolly things and not 
 about the war at all. Soldiers, it seems, were not much inter- 
 ested in the war when they were on leave. Sometimes, they 
 weren't interested in it at all were only inexpressibly bored 
 by it and hoped you would let them forget all about it. 
 
 Presently Staff came up (it was a wonder she had not come 
 before) and said she thought it was time Lieutenant Morden's 
 visitors said good-bye. 
 
 " And it's time for your medicine," she told him. 
 
 They left him taking it. 
 
 " I wouldn't be a nurse for a million," Helena said, as she 
 walked out into the (not exactly fresh) air of Bethnal Green. 
 "Would you?" 
 
 " I might consider it," Hilary said, " if I were a woman and 
 all my patients were as nice to look at as Walter." 
 
 " Oh, the Mordens are ' a good-looking lot.' Didn't you 
 know that? Mrs. Ellingham said that many years ago, when 
 we were all young and beautiful." 
 
 " Why doesn't she say sensible things like that now, 1 
 wonder? " 
 
 Helena laughed, climbing on to their 'bus.
 
 WASTE SHORES 313 
 
 It was bleak up there in the wind of the late sunless after- 
 noon. September was going out in sullen bad temper, very 
 disappointing to those who loved her and had expected better 
 things of her. 
 
 ** Pull that wrap of yours up tighter," Hilary said, fishing 
 for pennies. " It's draughty up here." He pulled her round 
 gently by the shoulder to see that she had obeyed, and she 
 shivered a little as his fingers came against her throat, remem- 
 bering that other'bleak day, quite early in the morning, when 
 it had been Jerome who covered up her throat -in this gentle 
 fashion. Not often, these days, but always unexpectedly, trist- 
 ful memories like this floated back to her. Now, as always, 
 they brought her to silence. 
 
 "Tired? " Hilary asked her after a while. 
 
 " No just thoughtful." 
 
 " Oh, don't think, Beloved. It's a rotten habit." 
 
 She slid her hand into his, sat closer, while the 'bus ran on 
 through the dingy streets, and presently they laughed together 
 at the jolly sight of a man coming down Bishopsgate Street 
 with a huge Teddy bear in his arms. He had evidently just 
 bought it at Wisbey's on the corner of Houndsditch, and had 
 preferred it without paper, as Hilary preferred his pewter 
 vase. 
 
 When they reached home they found the Liberty people had 
 been as good as their word, for their new cushions and the black 
 and silver tuffit, thinly disguised in brown paper, sat awaiting 
 them in the hall. 
 
 They dragged them upstairs after them and made the studio 
 gay, after which they had tea and tried to decide where the 
 pewter vase should go. That, however, was a long and serious 
 business, scarcely settled before people began to arrive. 
 
 The news of Hilary's " leave " had gone abroad : so that 
 there was quite a crowd in his honour. Barbara and Stephen 
 came early, but with eyes and tongues for nothing save the 
 pewter vase; Dagmar and Olive were early, too, with more 
 details concerning varicose veins and the nurses who had them
 
 314 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 (which for some reason or other, everybody seemed to find very 
 funny probably because the veins belonged to somebody 
 else). And Evey came with Estelle and a letter from Phil, 
 passages from which she read in a corner to Hilary (which was 
 what she had brought it for). Nelly had deserted Woolwich 
 for Chelsea, and had managed to bring with her the vital part 
 of her they missed when she left it behind. Vivien came, too, 
 not with Brian, but with a horrible tale of some Government 
 office into which he had disappeared some three days ago and 
 had never been heard of since, a thing, it seems, that people 
 were constantly doing. Vivien, shrugging thin shoulders under 
 her flame-coloured frock, thought there were probably some 
 strings Brian could pull more effectively from the inside of a 
 Government office, but seemed bored with string-pulling as a 
 topic of conversation and went over to look at the new vase. 
 
 Towards the end of the evening Lieutenant Millington looked 
 in, wearing a sling, and a thoughtful air. With him came Pa- 
 mela, pathetically lovely in her fashionable mourning and with 
 the soul she didn't possess looking as usual out of her beau- 
 tiful eyes. 
 
 But it wasn't Pamela's eyes you thought of at all, this evening 
 but those of Lieutenant Millington. It would have been a 
 jolly enough evening if you could have got the look in them out 
 of your mind. 
 
 Helena and Hilary agreed that later, when everyone had 
 gone. And that they couldn't. 
 
 "What's it mean? " Helena asked, "that he's seen abomin- 
 able things? " 
 
 " Worse that he can't forget them." 
 
 She shivered and was quiet. 
 
 " Did he mention the poems? " 
 
 "Wanted to know if I thought people were reading 'em. 
 Are they, do you think? " 
 
 " Oh yes. Even people who don't read poetry as a rule." 
 
 " Egged on, I suppose, by the people who do and are quar- 
 relling about him. But will they see what he wants them to 
 see?" 
 
 " He asked you that? " 
 
 Hilary nodded.
 
 WASTE SHORES 315 
 
 " They won't, of course. People never see more than they 
 want to see." 
 
 Helena said nothing to that. There was nothing to say be- 
 cause it was true. But presently: 
 
 " Has it been a nice day? " she asked. 
 
 "More than." 
 
 They sat there by their dwindling fire thinking of their 
 " more than nice " day, and of the other coming apace 
 stretched out before them, white, inviolate, that they might 
 write on it what they would. 
 
 The passion of life and youth stirred within them. The 
 world was in travail, but here were two whole days of happi- 
 ness. Like children, they stretched out their hands to them, 
 forgetting the world's pain and that look in young Millington's 
 eyes. 
 
 They were so young. They could not remember all the time.
 
 CHAPTER SIX 
 
 AFTER Hilary's return to camp, life settled down again 
 for Helena into that routine groove where dull things 
 waited to be done, and she found she was glad enough 
 to see them, because the more work you had to do the better 
 you felt about things. With Mr. Bletchington still on his Re- 
 cruiting Campaign, Helena was grateful for the first time in her 
 life to those people who responded so thoroughly to the invita- 
 tion they saw in tube, 'bus and train, to confide their troubles 
 to the Britisher. She discovered how true it is that when you 
 are reading about other people's woes you have very little time 
 to remember your own. 
 
 At first, too, there were visits to be paid (with Evey) to 
 Walter at Bethnal Green, and Cissie to be brought back to tea; 
 but early in October these pleasant things came to an end, for 
 Walter was discharged from hospital and went to convalesce 
 at some ducal estate beyond Edinburgh. From the letters and 
 postcards which arrived for Helena and Evey they gathered 
 that he was having a good time and that the ducal estate ran 
 to a park, a library, swimming baths and lochs though the 
 latter, to be sure, were rather lost upon Walter because he 
 didn't fish. But Evey and Helena missed their visits to the 
 Bethnal Green hospital and wished the ducal estate had been a 
 little nearer Chelsea. 
 
 About this time, too, Hilary was sent further into Essex 
 to embark on some new course of musketry drill. Helena and 
 Evey found this depressing. Still, Essex was Essex: one had 
 to remember that. But though the word " draft " had receded 
 for the moment, it had not by any means lost anything of its 
 terror, because with the Allied Forces landing at Salonika and 
 moving away into Serbia, and the Greek Government declining 
 
 31ft
 
 WASTE SHORES 317 
 
 to come to Serbia's assistance, you felt that anything might 
 happen and at any time. 
 
 Zeppelins and rumours of Zeppelins continued to liven things 
 up in England. London had sustained another air raid and 
 Helena and Evey had got stuck in the tube and did not reach 
 home until nearly three in the morning. " Treating " had been 
 abolished in the public-houses, and the barometer and the 'bus 
 fares had risen simultaneously. 
 
 There was another thing, too, that happened in October, nine- 
 teen-fifteen, for it was the first fine day of the month that 
 Stella's infant selected to make its entry into the world. 
 Stephen travelled down into Sussex to see Stella and the new 
 arrival and did not have too good a time. He had only been 
 allowed to see Stella for ten minutes or so, had been shown the 
 baby in a niggardly grudging fashion, very hurtful to his new 
 fatherly impulses, and had not been asked to stay to lunch. 
 So Stephen came back to London miserable, save when 
 he remembered that his baby was a girl, because girls weren't 
 expected to fight. Stephen seemed to find that a cheerful 
 thought in a dismal world. Not so Barbara, however. 
 
 "No, poor little devil," she said, "she'll probably think, 
 some day, that it's better to fight than to stop behind." 
 
 It was not a tactful remark. Barbara herself seemed to think 
 so and added, " Even in war, men come off the best." 
 
 That was her unshaken conviction. Probably she would al- 
 ways believe that. She may even have been right. Anyway, 
 just then Brian had come in and put an end to the conversation, 
 because Brian, they felt, would not be over-interested in the sub- 
 ject of Stephen's baby nor in any subject germane to her. He, 
 too, dealt in unshakable convictions. One was that Stephen 
 was a hopeless idiot; the other, that Stella was a woman to be 
 pitied. That explains why, when Barbara gave him the news, 
 he said: 
 
 " Oh, congratulations, Gretton. I hope Stella's all right," 
 with the air of one denying the right of a man to the common 
 possession of unpopular ideals and the ordinary human rela- 
 tionships. 
 
 The baby, they learned later, but not until Brian had gone, 
 was to be called Hilary Elizabeth. The " Hilary " it seems had 
 been decided upon many months ago. That was the best of
 
 318 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 these ambiguous names: Fate could not play you any dirty 
 trick. You did not have to say " If it's a girl " or ** If it's a 
 boy." 
 
 " Why ' Elizabeth '? " Barbara wanted to know. 
 
 " Oh, there's always someone in a family called ' Elizabeth,' " 
 Evey told her, " though I can't see why they should keep pass- 
 ing it on. But families are like that." 
 
 Evey, of course, knew everything there was to know about 
 " families." Moreover, there were numerous " Elizabeths " 
 in hers, so she spoke feelingly. 
 
 But Helena laughed. 
 
 " I'm fond of Elizabeth," she said, which was true. " And 
 it makes the ' Hilary ' human. Hilary was a saint or a pope 
 or a bishop, wasn't he? something that wants a human touch, 
 anyhow." 
 
 But looking at Stephen's rueful face, she felt that Stephen 
 had no love for " Elizabeth " and understood, somehow, that 
 that was how the Brighton people had felt over " Hilary." 
 
 At Brighton, of course, all Stephen's friends were suspect. 
 
 Christmas came and the New Year, but no Hilary, because at 
 the new camp Christmas " leave " had begun at the end of 
 the first week in December, and Hilary's had been in the first 
 " batch." His luck as it usually was in this sort of thing 
 was " out." 
 
 Still, though you cannot have your cake and eat it, it was 
 very difficult not to feel depressed, for life on a memory be- 
 comes, in time, too big a strain. And events didn't help you, 
 either. Conscription loomed on the horizon: war and more 
 war, and the hope of peace growing fainter. An unpromising 
 New Year. 
 
 On a fine Saturday towards the end of January, when Evey 
 had to work late at the office, Helena's new-born restlessness 
 drove her out of doors down to Charing Cross, where she 
 jumped on a 33 'bus and rode to Richmond. 
 
 The world that afternoon was bright and clear cut: there 
 was an amber streak in the sky and the robins sang in their 
 cheerful fashion on the winter trees. But in Richmond Park 
 were memories. Ghosts walked there, sat forlornly on seats, 
 dreary-eyed, as if lamenting what man had made of man. Hel- 
 ena had a sense of loneliness, realised that here at Richmond
 
 WASTE SHORES 319 
 
 she was an anomaly. She wondered why she had come, and 
 striding on towards the Robin Hood Gate had a moment of 
 passionate regret for the fireside and book she had left behind. 
 She went out through the park gates into a road that har- 
 boured ugly cottages and across which flowed a constant and 
 surprising stream of traffic. Crossing this, she went along the 
 strip of meadow ground, over the wooden bridge and up 
 through the dead-leaf drifts to Wimbledon Common. It was 
 colder up there and against the amber streak in the sky the 
 leafless woods of Coombe rose dark and brooding. More traffic 
 darted across the roads that bisected the Common. The smell 
 of the earth came up fresh and fragrant, and the poignant scent 
 of the daphne shrub. Helena thought wistfully of spring. 
 Of snowdrops and crocuses and the blue of scyllas; and of the 
 little winds that come laughing over the land. . . . 
 
 And there, sitting on a backless seat, with an open magazine 
 on her lap, was Lucy Elleker. 
 
 Helena kept on. Lucy, though she might not have the 
 strength of mind to come to see her, nor to write to her (be- 
 cause doubtless John had forbidden it) yet would not either 
 have the strength of mind to " cut " her when they met face to 
 face. She looked up presently in Helena's direction, recog- 
 nised her and shut up her magazine suddenly as if she were 
 nervous. 
 
 "Hallo! " said Helena, when she was near enough. 
 
 "Hullo!" said Lucy. 
 
 Helena sat down at her side. 
 
 "This is a visit to 'The Laurels,' isn't it? " she asked. 
 
 Lucy said yes. She had been there j ust a week. 
 
 "111?" 
 
 " No. The air raids have rather upset me. I've been or- 
 dered a rest ! " 
 
 That was nothing new. Lucy was constantly being ordered 
 " rests." What was new was that she was taking one. 
 
 " You can't help being nervous if you have babies, you know. 
 Oh, I suppose you don't. But you're so much farther in. You 
 have them badly at Chelsea, don't you? " 
 
 " Oh . . . air raids! " said Helena, who had been getting 
 confused. 
 
 Aid raids didn't interest her, and the conversation slackened
 
 320 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 until Lucy remembered the magazine and showed Helena a full- 
 page photograph of Gertrude and Adrian. Gertrude wore a 
 studied maternal air and a very gauzy frock of which there was 
 surprisingly little; and Adrian frowned as though he did not 
 like being hugged in this public fashion, as he probably did 
 not. He was an extraordinarily handsome boy, of whom any 
 mother might well have been proud. Helena smiled at the 
 paragraph that was printed below the photograph. 
 
 Mrs. Edgar Holmes, one of the youngest of our political 
 hostesses, with her little son, Adrian. It is rumoured that 
 her husband is giving up his parliamentary duties " for the 
 duration "and is about to take up a commission in a very 
 famous regiment. 
 
 " That true? " Helena asked, who never believed what she 
 saw in the papers. 
 
 " I'm sure I don't know," said Lucy. " They never talk 
 about things like that to me. I haven't heard anything. Do 
 you think Gertrude has grown stouter? " 
 
 " Probably. What's to stop her? " 
 
 " It's a lovely frock, don't you think? " 
 
 " Very. Cleopatra might have worn it or Caesar's wife. I'm 
 not sure that Gertrude can." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " There's too little of it. You can't steer any middle course 
 in a frock like that. You've got to be one or the other. A 
 Cleopatra or a Caesar's wife or perhaps Dante's Beatrice." 
 
 " You are funny, Lena. You haven't changed a scrap." 
 
 " People don't much do they? " 
 
 "I don't know. But you haven't." 
 
 " Did you expect to find me changed? " 
 
 " I did rather." 
 
 "You seem disappointed. What did you think I'd look 
 like? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. You see . . . you look happy." 
 
 " Why shouldn't I? I am happy." ' 
 
 She really was. Even with this awful war. Because of 
 Essex . . . and the One Person who lived in a dull camp there. 
 
 " I am happy ! " she repeated, more for her own benefit than
 
 WASTE SHORES 321 
 
 Lucy's perhaps. There was such a danger, nowadays, that she 
 might forget it. Down there in the park she very nearly had. 
 
 Lucy was puzzled. 
 
 " But I thought women weren't when they . . . when 
 they . . ." 
 
 " Kick over the traces? " 
 
 Helena laughed. 
 
 " Oh, but I haven't kicked very high, you see." 
 
 " High enough ! " said Lucy, who knew that it wasn't how 
 far or how high you kicked that mattered, but just that you 
 kicked at all! 
 
 Lucy looked at her watch. 
 
 " I ought to be going," she said, " and I believe I'm getting 
 cold." 
 
 The amber streak in the sky was fading. Coombe Woods 
 were a dark smudge against it, cold and foreboding. Helena 
 shivered a little, though she was not cold, and walked at Lucy's 
 side down to the edge of the Common. They talked as they 
 went of the children ... of John, and Lucy's health, and 
 that day they had all met in the tube; and of Walter and his 
 " luck " and how kind he had been, and of what John thought 
 of Helena. There was a lot of this, though Lucy put it as 
 kindly as she could because she had always envied Helena 
 and did not believe, as John asserted, that she must be suffer- 
 ing for her wickedness in a constant mood of remorse. She 
 didn't look remorseful and she didn't look unhappy. Lucy 
 was sentimental, but in some dim far-off fashion she under- 
 stood that the thing which can make you really happy cannot 
 be a bad thing. Badness had no permanent quality of happi- 
 ness. She disapproved of what Helena had done: was re- 
 minded at least once a week why she and all other women must 
 disapprove of it: but, none the less, there persisted this queer 
 feeling of admiration that Helena could do it and this 
 queerer feeling, suspiciously like envy, because always, some- 
 how, Helena seemed to get the thing she wanted . . . and was 
 happy. Lucy, hunting for her happiness on low levels, had 
 lost the trick of looking up, and the happiness that lives on 
 the low levels gets sometimes soiled and spoiled. Anyway, 
 from out a narrow existence of safety, chastity and good re- 
 pute which nothing on earth would really have induced her
 
 322 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 to change Lucy could not help glancing at this gloriously 
 tall defiant sister of hers, with eyes shadowed with wistful 
 envy. 
 
 Helena had something somehow. 
 
 They parted at the corner of the road that led down to 
 " The Laurels." 
 
 " I wonder," Lucy said, " if I could persuade John to let me 
 come and see you. He's so dreadfully strict about this sort of 
 thing and he's terribly angry with you still. He will have it, 
 you know, ' Whom God hath joined. . . .' " 
 
 " But God had less to do with it than a white-haired old 
 gentleman in a Registry Office," said Helena. 
 
 " Perhaps that's why, Lena. Of course, you've never felt 
 married. It didn't mean anything. If you'd been properly 
 married I daresay it would have been different." 
 
 " Not it," said Helena. " I made a mistake. Lots of peo- 
 ple do and never find it out. I did. And it mattered so much 
 I couldn't go on. That's modern and selfish. Our generation 
 is. The pendulum has swung round. I don't know . . . some 
 day it may swing back, but not for me. I shall go on being 
 selfish, I expect, all the days of my life." 
 
 " I feel so awfully sorry for Jerome, Lena. We all liked 
 him so much . . . and he's so fond of you." 
 
 " I'm sorry, too. He'd hate us, if he could hear." 
 
 " Of course, if he'd only divorce you so that you could be 
 married to this Mr. Sargent, it would be all right. I believe 
 John would soon come round then though he does disap- 
 prove of divorce. There ought, somehow, to be special laws 
 for people like you." 
 
 Helena laughed. 
 
 " The present ones altered rather severely would do, you 
 know," she said. " We're not unreasonable. Never mind. 
 Come and see me. Any Saturday or Sunday afternoon." 
 
 " I'd love to." 
 
 " Then do. What about next Saturday? " 
 
 " Of course, I must ask John." 
 
 " Oh damn John," Helena said. 
 
 They kissed and parted. 
 
 Helena strode on down the hill, meaning to go straight to
 
 WASTE SHORES 323 
 
 the station, but half-way through the High Street she was 
 seized by a violent hunger and went into a Lyons's and de- 
 voured a scone and butter and some china tea. Cakes, at the 
 beginning of nineteen-sixteen, were already showing signs of 
 their ultimate demise. Helena avoided them. 
 
 She got on the District at Wimbledon station and rode to 
 South Kensington, from which ten minutes' sharp walking 
 landed her home. 
 
 She found Evey sprawling on the blue divan reading an 
 article by Pamela in the current Looking-Glass on "Things 
 to Avoid if you are in Uniform." An amazing article, this, 
 inspired, as Helena knew, by the mental anguish induced in 
 Pamela by the sight of the silk stockings and high heels Rosa- 
 mund thought fit to wear with hers. 
 
 "There's a letter for you," Evey said. 
 
 But Helena had already seen it. Hilary's sprawling hand 
 had shouted to her as she stood in the doorway. She took it 
 down, read it and passed it over to Evey. 
 
 " Read that," she said. 
 
 Six lines only and in shorthand, which Hilary never used 
 save in a desperate hurry. His outlines were untidy but 
 readable. Transcribed, this is what Evey made of them: 
 
 Dear. Have leave from six to-morrow (Saturday). Hope 
 to catch the '55. Can you be at Liverpool Street at nine? 
 We'll eat something at Le Diner Francois. 
 
 Hilary. 
 
 "Well?" said Helena. 
 
 "You think it means . . . draft? " 
 
 "Yes. Don't you?" 
 
 " I'm afraid I do. Want me to clear out? " 
 
 "No, I don't think I do ... somehow." 
 
 " Try to be sure. . . ." 
 
 " I am sure. I want you to stop." 
 
 So Evey stayed, and later not only she and Helena, but the 
 whole crowd, when it arrived, went down to Liverpool Street 
 and presently took Le Diner Frangais by storm.
 
 324 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 They were right, of course. This unexpected leave did 
 mean "draft." Hilary was going to France in four days' 
 time. 
 
 In a way, he was glad, or at least relieved. He was tired 
 of drills and camp, and anyway, it was not for these things he 
 had " joined up." But even that did not make it easier for 
 him or for Helena during those three days of leave. They 
 knew them for what they were three days of reprieve. Not 
 all the heroism of the world has the battlefield for back- 
 ground: nothing and no one was ever more truly heroic than 
 these two pretending not to feel, not to suffer, concerned only 
 just to hearten each other a desperate game that it nearly 
 broke Evey's heart to watch. 
 
 But they were grateful for Evey during those three days. 
 Because Evey helped putting forth every ounce of determi- 
 nation and effort in the cause of these two she loved. They 
 understood, too, that Evey saw the position knew where they 
 stood. (So few people got anything like as far as that. No 
 wonder they were grateful ! ) Evey glimpsed the vivid reality 
 of that sense of a common brotherhood that sent Hilary into 
 this thing he hated and distrusted: and understood that if 
 Helena could not bear to think of him as a " passionate, de- 
 stroying beast," neither could she attempt to keep him back, 
 because she loved him and believed in the complete freedom 
 of the individual. That, briefly, was their code of love and 
 even now the worst that could happen to them was that one or 
 the other should transgress it. No two lovers ever had less of 
 the sense of possession in their mutual passion than these two 
 people Evey loved; ever more deliberately kept it out. No 
 " thou shall not " was ever breathed between them ! no mailed 
 fist of the imposed will lurked beneath the velvet glove of 
 affection. They had learnt most difficult lesson of all to 
 grant each other sincerity and to respect it. 
 
 Even now, over this question of the war (or over this ques- 
 tion of the humanity that sent Hilary into it) though the paths 
 had deviated more than ever before, they had not deviated so 
 widely that they had lost sight of each other, or could not meet 
 at the cross roads.
 
 WASTE SHORES 325 
 
 But Evey (wise person!) saw more than that. She saw that 
 so long as Hilary lived he would think. He was essentially a 
 thinking being, who could no more help thinking than he could 
 help breathing. He had thought down there in camp about 
 Army " discipline " and routine and moral effects. He would 
 go thinking into battle (as Masefield's Saul Kane went thinking 
 into the prize ring) ; would be reduced to despair by the things 
 he saw, the things he had to do. No typical soldier, Hilary. 
 He not only hated soldiering: he would not be able to forget 
 that he hated it; that violence was abhorrent to him; that 
 the things he loved were peace and beauty and colour and 
 poetry; the look of a sunset, of moonlight on a sandy shore, 
 the scent of the earth after rain. . . . 
 
 He would have "moods "-moods of bitter hatred of 
 things of himself. He who loved life and would not have 
 taken the life of the meanest thing, would bring death to 
 many. . . . 
 
 And for reasons his intellect could not accept. Here again 
 was heroism, if you liked here in this Unhappy Warrior 
 who had no romantic illusions and none of Barbara's beliefs 
 to sustain him, but who with calm face walked the shambles 
 because others walked them because if there was suffering 
 and pain to be borne he, too, must shoulder his share! Not 
 else could he bear to live. 
 
 He would fight in agony, misery and disgust, and Evey 
 honoured him, because he knew these things and yet went on. 
 
 Helena, too. Even while she suffered and realised nothing 
 of anything save that she would give her life to save him 
 from . . that. 
 
 Hilary returned to camp on the Monday, and on the Wednes- 
 day Helena went to Victoria in a cold mist and saw him march 
 by to entrain, encumbered horribly by the trappings of war, 
 but smiling, because she stood there showing him a brave 
 face and he had not known she would be there at all. 
 
 But one pays heavily for this sort of thing, and Helena 
 went home and cried terribly on Evey's shoulder. Later she 
 went to the office and suffered the dictation of Mr. Bletching-
 
 326 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 ton's page eight article, which was all about the bestiality of 
 the Germans and why we must hate them for ever and ever. . . . 
 Later still, she told Evey she could have borne that scene 
 at Victoria better if they had not sung Tipperary. To sing 
 Tipperary whilst you swept out on to the plains of Death! 
 That was not the way to think of it, but, obstinately, Helena 
 could think of it in no other way. And one thing was certain. 
 She would hate Tipperary as long as she lived. 
 
 Untouched by Walter's " luck," unstopped of measles and 
 fevers, Hilary got out to France in time, as Helena did not dare 
 to let herself think, for the Verdun battle which began at the 
 end of February. But letters headed " Somewhere in France " ! 
 What did they tell you! 
 
 Yet, after the passing of those first few weeks, insensibly 
 things began to settle down again, and Helena with them. For 
 it is remarkable to what degree you can school yourself to go 
 on with life where, for one frozen moment, you have laid it 
 down. So many things to do, and all so ridiculously neces- 
 sary : meals to be prepared and eaten : 'buses to catch, letters to 
 write, books to fetch and return to Mudie's; books, even, to 
 read, because reading was the one supreme way of forgetting 
 the things it didn't help you to remember. For Helena, too, 
 there was always the Britisher, a sufficiently absorbing occu- 
 pation. Everlastingly, that had to be read and marked: let- 
 ters sent to its editor from out the pit had to be read and an- 
 swered, or read and passed on. Articles had to be taken down 
 in shorthand and transcribed furiously, with the printer's devil 
 at one's elbow ; and each press morning there was a minor rev- 
 olution to be dealt with when the things that Mr. Bletchington 
 had " left to the last " could suddenly wait no longer, but rose 
 up and attacked en masse. 
 
 There was humour, too, in the Britisher office, of a sort. 
 Things went on being funny, even though your heart ached. 
 Never even for a moment would life leave you alone. 
 
 "Just make certain who wrote that, will you, my dear? " 
 Mr. Bletchington said one morning, handing Helena a sheet of 
 paper with something typed upon it. The extract began:
 
 WASTE SHORES 327 
 
 Breathes there the man with soul so dead 
 Who never to himself liath said. . . . 
 
 " Scott," said Helena. 
 
 " You'd better make certain. Sure it isn't Mrs. Hemans? 
 Borrow Vane's Dictionary of Quotations." 
 
 So Helena went out, borrowed the book and wrote beneath 
 the verse: "Scott. Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto vi. 
 Stanza I." 
 
 " Ah, Scott, was it? " Mr. Bletchington said, looking at her 
 in a reproving fashion over the rim of his glasses; but he 
 quoted him very aptly in his article that week which dealt with 
 " pro-Germans " and " slackers." The Deity, it seems, was 
 thought to be in need of a rest ..." Pro-Germans " and 
 " slackers " of course were not entitled to one. 
 
 Few people quoted poetry as prettily as Alexander Bletch- 
 ington, or knew as little about it. Not that that is necessary. 
 A really reliable Dictionary of Quotations saves a deal of 
 learning. 
 
 The days that were amusing, however, did not crowd out the 
 days that were not; the days when Helena could have choked 
 Mr. Bletchington with his own articles, when her head ached 
 and things got on her nerves and she went down to the National 
 Gallery at midday instead of meeting Evey like a reasonable 
 being and eating a sensible lunch. What she looked at most 
 when she went there was Rossetti's " Well-Beloved " that Hilary 
 had first sent her to see. There was something infinitely 
 soothing in the sight of that beautiful central head and in 
 those others that surrounded it; something that made you 
 forget how ugly the world had become. They were so lovely, 
 all those girls: you could not imagine them smothering the 
 bright beauty of their hair under a munitioner's cap, nor 
 (though these things were necessary in war time, perhaps) 
 enfolding their limbs in khaki. Helena loved them because 
 they stood aside from this world of war and bloodshed; un- 
 troubled, untouched by the anxiety that would not let her 
 rest . . . that sent her here where it was quiet and where 
 things that were beautiful caressed her spirit as the hand of 
 spring breezes outside caressed her face tenderly, as though 
 they loved her.
 
 328 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 On other days she went down to Westminster and sat in the 
 Cathedral. Sometimes during this hour given over to the 
 workers' lunch there was a service in progress and singing. 
 But more often there was not, and Helena liked it better that 
 way ; wanting only to sit somewhere at the back and keep quiet, 
 praying, like Matthew Arnold, to the Calm Soul of Things 
 for the power neither " to strive nor cry." There were things 
 here it quieted you somehow, to look at: the big cross swinging 
 high in the gloom before the great altar, the face of Eric Gill's 
 St. Veronica, that she thought beautiful, though she remem- 
 bered that Hilary did not, and that a great many people agreed 
 with him. It was queer to sit here amid this atmosphere of 
 things she rejected, untouched by the faith that inspired them 
 and rendered scarcely wistful by the sight of the supplicants 
 who came and went, lighting their candles, telling their beads. 
 One girl in particular there was. She had a pale thin face 
 and dark burning eyes, and she made a slow round of the 
 shrines, praying before each on her knees and standing before 
 them when the prayer was done with an agony of supplication 
 in her eyes, her hands crossed devoutly on her breast. 
 
 Helena thought it must be for her lover she prayed and was 
 sorry for her because she knew how horrible it was to care 
 like that for someone out there in the midst of battle. So 
 many people praying for so many others and for such a 
 reason! Presently Helena went no more to the Cathedral. 
 She did not know why, unless it was that the dark girl had 
 begun to get on her nerves. . . . 
 
 Nothing, however, could do that on those days when Hilary's 
 letters arrived. Astonishing letters they were, to Helena, tell- 
 ing her nothing save that he was well and safe (though that 
 was everything, perhaps) but across which played a continuous 
 flicker of delicate humour. But they made her happy, sent 
 care dropping from her like Christian's bundle of sin, and she 
 herself into the open to walk hopefully abroad. That was why 
 on the Saturday following the Arctic storm with which March 
 in nineteen-sixteen went out, Evey and Helena climbed on to a 
 TJUS at Hammersmith and rode down through the turquoise 
 afternoon to look at the park at Richmond. They descended 
 from their 'bus at Sheen Lane and walked up to Sheen Com- 
 mon, past neat suburban houses and neat suburban roads along
 
 WASTE SHORES 329 
 
 which young women wheeled neat babies in neat perambulators, 
 and in which lime trees (cut to look as neat as the babies) 
 lifted shorn blunt branches to the bright blue of the day. A 
 neat suburb, this, in which even nature must be made to toe 
 the line. 
 
 Sheen Common, which should have burned yellow beneath 
 this hot sun, was still brown and bare, because the gorse had 
 seen what had happened last week to the almond trees and had 
 grown disheartened. But Helena and Evey wended their way 
 through the prickly bushes into the park and sat down on 
 mackintoshes to smell the spring in the air and to feel the tug 
 and charm of things that grow. 
 
 They had chosen a spot overlooking the Penn Ponds, beyond 
 which, to right and left, were sloping hillsides across which 
 and up and down the long shadows ran swiftly. A hawthorn 
 tree near by (much braver than the gorse) was heavy with 
 bud pale green beads on a brown string: and out there on 
 the slopes the dead bracken took on a purple hue, as though it 
 were not bracken, nor dead. And once or twice a swallow 
 darted past above their heads a white-flecked arrow in the 
 turquoise sky. 
 
 " Tiresome bird, the swallow," Evey said, when her attention 
 was called to him. " He doesn't make a summer. So lazy of 
 him!" 
 
 Helena spent the afternoon in writing to Hilary, and Evey 
 read Sir Edward Cook's Life of Florence Nightingale, for 
 which Evey was profoundly grateful. No sentimentalised fig- 
 ure of the Lady of the Lamp did you encounter in Cook, but a 
 gigantic, wonderful person who stormed the War Office, worked 
 her friends to death and "had done with being amiable." 
 Evey had waited too long, she thought, before getting ac- 
 quainted with her. The Lady of the Lamp faded quietly into 
 blessed oblivion: Miss Nightingale was so much more than that 
 and, besides, Evey had no use for the Victorian ideals. 
 
 Presently, when the letter was finished, Evey was persuaded 
 temporarily to abandon Sir Edward Cook and Miss Nightingale 
 in favour of tea. They had it in a rose-coloured room that 
 looked on to the river, and were a very long while about it so 
 that the sky was no longer blue when they left, but growing 
 black, like the river. . . .
 
 330 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 But they were happy because somehow or other they had 
 escaped from all the things that stood between youth and the 
 happiness that belongs to it. And then as their 'bus rose 
 noisily over the railway bridge at Barnes, an ambulance train 
 was crawling slowly beneath them through the station. . . . 
 
 Not for long were you permitted to forget. That, always, 
 was the way of it. 
 
 5 
 
 Two days later, on the Monday, news came that Hilary was 
 wounded. Not badly, in the left shoulder. They had oper- 
 ated, and he was going on satisfactorily. No need, said the 
 nurse who wrote the letter, to worry. Pte. Sargent asked 
 particularly that they should not. 
 
 But Helena cried bitterly into Hilary's blue cushions because 
 it was not a " blighty " wound. . . . 
 
 Later, to please Helena, Hilary wrote of his Ether Adven- 
 ture, in which, as he said, he had played a singularly unin- 
 spiring principal part. 
 
 llth April, 1916. 
 
 . . . It's a queer business, this taking of ether. Someone 
 holding your hand, someone else saying " Breathe hard . . . 
 breathe hard," and (presently) " That's right . . . that's 
 right" For a moment you feel proud that you are doing so 
 well, and then that you simply can't stand any more of it. 
 After that, an awful stabbing darkness, an unutterable pres- 
 sure and miles away that nice voice, "Breathe hard! " 
 . . . You come back hours afterwards trailing a crowd of 
 happy memories . . . sobbing idiotically because you can't 
 remember what they are. (Talk about " recollections of Im- 
 mortality"!) I wonder if it's like that to die? . . . Only I 
 mustn't talk of dying or Deirdre will look like the Little 
 Sister of the Sphinx which always means that she is un- 
 happy. People are kind to you when you're coming back 
 to earth dropping all your pretty memories. Even here in
 
 WASTE SHORES 331 
 
 a great hospital where there are so many of you, and they 
 must get tired of you. They understand you feel sick and 
 limp and have a pain in your left shoulder. They smile at 
 you . . . find you pillows and oilier comfortable things. 
 And you let them because nothing matters any more, only 
 you're feebly glad they have given you a hot-water bottle. . . . 
 
 The letter broke off here as though the necessity of writing 
 with no left arm to steady the paper got between the writer 
 and what he wanted to say. It went on again beneath the 
 next day's date. 
 
 18th April, 1916. 
 
 Much later you discover there's a Concert going on some- 
 where in the hospital (hospitals are the noisiest places!). I 
 lie here now that I'm better trying to distinguish and classify 
 them. On this night people are singing and clapping their 
 hands. . . . It seems silly; you find you aren't interested 
 in concerts. The sound of dinner-plates gets mixed up with 
 the music and the singing: other people have things brought 
 to them on a tray. You feel you aren't going to have any 
 dinner and that seems a tragedy. Presently you discover 
 that you don't want any dinner that you don't want any- 
 thing save not to feel sick and not to have a pain in your 
 left shoulder. 
 
 Later, a nurse appears and says, "Are you feeling bet- 
 ter? " and " Good night " and " No, I'm afraid you can't 
 have any tea yet." This is another tragedy. The day 
 nurses go off, and you are left thinking of tea out of a blue 
 teapot in a blue and silver room with a black and yellow 
 cat on the hearth-rug, and Someone adorably shy in a blue 
 frock in a blue armchair, whom, presently, you persuade to 
 take off her hat. Such a lot of blue, always, in the best 
 places. . . . 
 
 When the night nurse comes she brings you a letter from 
 the Someone (though she oughtn't to have done because it's 
 against the rules. Nearly everything's against the rules, in 
 hospital). You struggle up and read it because " Someone " 
 w the Person Who Matters Most. They have sent it down 
 the line ... a Utter about Spring at Richmond, and swal-
 
 332 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 lows and Evey and Florence Nightingale and the hawthorn 
 buds. Such a nice letter to get! You put it under your 
 pillow and press your head down tightly upon it. You 
 think it makes the headache better. The night nurse brings 
 you some water. You drink it and wonder why it doesn't 
 stop your feeling sick. Because it doesn't. 
 
 You go on feeling sick. You are convinced by this time 
 that you will never feel anything else. You hate the sight of 
 the enamel bowl someone has put at your side. You sud- 
 denly remember what they said: " Here's a bowl if you feel 
 sick." An" If " as great as Shakespeare's. Ugh! 
 
 The night nurse goes away and leaves you. This is a 
 tiny ward: there are no bad cases in it. The others are 
 asleep: you can't help feeling it's heartless of them. Some- 
 body might have the decency to wake up and ask how you're- 
 feeling. Eternity passes and morning comes and the day 
 nurses and three pieces of bread-and-butter and a cup of 
 tea. You are profoundly grateful: you feel as if you haven't 
 had anything to eat for a century. Another (and rather 
 shorter) eternity passes and lunch time comes. An ach- 
 ing void inside inclines you to look favourably on the bavril 
 Sister says you may have because you've only felt and not 
 been sick. (That's clever of you, anyway, you feel.) Your 
 afternoon is better. You say you are fond of cats: someone 
 rakes up a very plain tabby, not a distinguished specimen 
 of her kind, but sociable and understanding. You begin to 
 tell her all about a cat named Mark Antony when Sister 
 comes in and says, " Cats are not allowed in the ward, you 
 know," and spoils the story. However, Sister (who is really 
 human) says you may be permitted to stroke the plain tabby 
 once a day. That comforts you during the third eternity 
 that passes before it is dinner-time. You get on better this 
 time and behave quite well over fish and custard. All the 
 same you're a bit bored. You can't read because it tires 
 you to sit up. You're tired of the hospital sounds and of the 
 cough of the man in the corner. Someone comes and dresses 
 your arm and brings you a letter, not from the Person Who 
 Matters Most. All the same you try to be grateful. . . . 
 
 Another break here. And the next day's date.
 
 WASTE SHORES 333 
 
 19th April, 1916. 
 
 Night comes again. The lights are lowered. You lie 
 there high and dry on the rocky coast of wake fulness, and a 
 bitterer tide comes up. It floats you presently out to sleep 
 ... a troubled sea, somehow, on which you toss about like 
 an eggshell craft on Niagara. The turning up of the lights 
 sweeps you again to shore. Night-probationers rattle in with 
 pails, clearing up before they go off duty. It is certainly 
 morning. You feet it is only reasonable to suppose you 
 have been asleep. 
 
 You get some breakfast this morning and somebody brings 
 you the paper. You must be belter because you hunt for the 
 book reviews and are annoyed when the doctor comes in and 
 interrupts your reading. . . . 
 
 To-day is Primrose Day. The French sky is blue . . . 
 April air comes in at the window . . . Do you remember 
 that place in Kent two years ago where the primroses grew 
 all along the roadside like a yellow sea? Beneden, didn't 
 they call it? A nurse has just brought a big bowl of them 
 in and put them down where I can see them. If someone 
 comes near before the letters are collected for post, I'll 
 beg one or two to slip in with this. . . . 
 
 But evidently no one did, because there were no primroses 
 in the envelope, though Helena turned it inside out to make 
 sure. 
 
 There began here, for Helena, a period of comparative peace. 
 The relief of knowing that for the moment he was out of things 
 was tremendous, though there were days when the fact that 
 she was happy went some part of the way towards making her 
 wretched. Because he was safe, she had ceased to care. Was 
 that it? It was what young Millington had said of women in 
 one of his bitter poems. Was it true of her? She did not 
 think so ... hoped that it was only (as Evey had said long 
 ago) that one cannot go on "caring" (like that) all the time. 
 One had to forget when one could. . . .
 
 334 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 And that thought of Hilary in his white bed, tended by the 
 cheery nurse v/ho had written to Helena, was apt at times to 
 crowd out all other thought whatsoever. It set free some part 
 of oneself that had lived in a prison house the part that is 
 gay and merry and young and wants theatres and concerts 
 and laughter. 
 
 So Helena and Evey made a list of the few " possible " plays 
 that existed amid a welter of revues and " spy " plays and 
 went to see them. And Estelle secured tickets for recitals and 
 took Helena off to hear them. 
 
 Just occasionally they went down to the new sort of church 
 in Pimlicoi and regretted the departed choir (that had sung 
 Palestrina's Mass to English literature) and, sometimes, were 
 disappointed with the discourse, because a plague of eugenics 
 and race-culture had descended upon the place, as tiresome as 
 all other plagues and as hard to " dodge." Twice within a few 
 weeks Helena and Evey ran up against the same enthusiastic 
 eugenist whom they found entertaining enough without in the 
 least agreeing with what he said. Humanity as one big 
 stud farm did not seem to appeal to either of them. Be- 
 sides, as Evey said, " Why should one go on with this? It 
 was a rotten thing to do to bring more people into this ! " 
 
 *' Have you ever wanted any children ? " she asked Helena 
 suddenly. 
 
 "Once. Quite a big desire, too; but the war killed it. 
 Though I think it was badly stunned before that. Hilary, you 
 see, would have it there is no place in this world for illegitimate 
 children and ours would have been." 
 
 " But he wouldn't always have thought so. He changed 
 about so many other things, why shouldn't he have changed 
 about that? " 
 
 " I don't think he would have. There's something so terrific, 
 somehow, about history repeating itself. Hilary's mother ran 
 away with a lover, you know, when he was about six or seven. 
 He remembers her . . . things about her . . . the way she 
 used to speak, how she used to stand in front of his nursery 
 fire, holding out a foot to the flames. . . . Things like that.
 
 WASTE SHORES 335 
 
 Queer, isn't it, such a baby should remember attitudes and 
 tricks of speech. . . ." 
 
 " Yes," said Evey, " but then one does remember at six or 
 seven, ever so clearly. It's things that come later that get 
 smudged. What happened to Mrs. Sargent? " 
 
 " She killed herself rather than bring an illegitimate child 
 into the world! It's wrong, somehow; it doesn't fit in with 
 the rest you know of her. You can't imagine her crumpling 
 up like that. She was such a vivid creature so tremendously 
 alive, like Hilary. You simply can't imagine them ever coming 
 to an end. You know that portrait of her in the London . . . 
 Mary Hilary she was. It's idiotic that she should have drowned 
 herself in a pond ignominious." 
 
 " Why did she do it, do you think? " 
 
 " I think she'd had a bad time generally. People did, in 
 those days, if they offended Mrs. Grundy. Besides, there was 
 Hilary. She knew her husband and his sister (there were only 
 the two of them) would never forgive her, and that they'd get 
 at her through the child, in the mean way adults have. Ralph 
 Sargent wouldn't divorce her and she was never allowed to see 
 the child. He'd have had her back if she'd have gone, but she 
 wouldn't. They'd been wretched together. I suppose, in the 
 end, she just got tired . . . felt she couldn't go on. What 
 makes us do things, do you suppose? Chance? You remem- 
 ber that book of Conrad's? " 
 
 Evey did. 
 
 " But do you believe in ' chance '? " she asked. 
 
 " No, I don't think I do. It's much more likely there's a 
 reason for things if we go deeply enough . . . get back far 
 enough. Usually we don't, of course. It's much easier to say 
 * Oh, chance! ' But isn't it perhaps just the urge of things 
 hundreds of things that have gone before? Things done, 
 said, suffered down the ages? * Invisible tides! ' That phrase 
 of Swinburne's gives it you. You don't read Swinburne, do 
 you? You should. Read the Hymn to Proserpine. You'll 
 find that phrase there. Invisible tides! Everywhere. In our 
 own lives, in the world of nations . . . that you can't pull 
 against, that tug at you, this way and that . . . that make war 
 and peace and tragedy and unhappiness . . . and us" 
 
 The talk ran on.
 
 336 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 8 
 
 Easter came, the Easter flowers and ;he Easter rebellion in 
 Ireland, and Helena found that she likec the world somewhat 
 less than she had thought. And Stella and Hilary Elizabeth 
 were in Chelsea again, and Sir Roger Casement in the Tower. 
 Mr. Asquith went hurriedly to Belfast and Evey and Helena 
 with more leisure to Burlington House, where hung two water- 
 colours of Hilary's which Helena had begged him to let her 
 send in. 
 
 Empire Day passed and the Conscription Bill, and things 
 began to look black for Stephen. An important morning paper 
 suddenly found itself without an Irish correspondent and 
 hastily appointed another. No one knew what had happened 
 to Denis O'Connell: nobody ever knew. He just dropped out. 
 
 Then, suddenly, Walter got well enough to go back to France, 
 Lieutenant Millington followed him, and Helena heard that 
 Hilary's shoulder was still giving trouble. It began to look as 
 though they would send him home, after all. Joyful news, 
 that, despite the thought of the poor shoulder. 
 
 The casualty lists grew longer. The Labour Leader pub- 
 lished actual figures week by week that left you stunned and 
 appalled. You wished someone would suppress the placards, 
 for the war seemed, somehow, to have that effect upon you: 
 you were always wishing vaguely that somebody would sup- 
 press something (or someone) somewhere. 
 
 In France things, as Mrs. Ellingham would say, were " im- 
 pending." The battle of Verdun still raged: the heights of 
 Vimy were gained and lost, and more men went out and the 
 first " Derby " groups were called up. 
 
 And Conrad Howe came home on leave and in cantankerous 
 mood. He thought London had deteriorated and disliked all 
 women save Helena and Evey so he said. Oxford Street 
 appalled him and war widows, especially Pamela. He spent a 
 lot of time at the studio, and wondered (audibly) what he had 
 ever seen in Dagmar, and he made a little relief of Helena's 
 profile, cast it himself, and hung it up for her. And when it 
 was finished, he shook the dust of London from his feet and 
 went back (as Evey put it) to the comparative peace of the 
 trenches.
 
 WASTE SHORES 337 
 
 In England was summer again and a white and gold drift 
 of hawthorn and laburnum; the cool voices of the wind in 
 the trees; the first red roses, white butterflies, bluebells and 
 the scent of syringa and lilac; fields, out Chessington way, 
 of sorrel and ox-eye daisies, and skies of deep blue; massed 
 trees and waving grasses. Purple nights with a silver moon 
 and dawns of pearl and opal. 
 
 And Hilary's shoulder grew suddenly better, so that he did 
 not come home, after all, but went instead up the line.
 
 CHAPTER SEVEN 
 
 AT the beginning of September, Hilary wrote that he 
 would shortly be sending some things which he wanted 
 Helena to lock away for him without opening. They 
 would be addressed to her, but marked so that she might 
 recognise them. 
 
 A week later they began to arrive. Helena locked them up 
 with the air of a conspirator, and noticed that they bore the 
 London postmark, so they had evidently been smuggled through 
 by men coming on leave, and she wondered why. But whatever 
 they were they would wait. Hilary said that of them that 
 they would wait until they might read them together, and his 
 letters, as ever, went on being cheerful and whimsical and 
 humorous. Helena even wondered if he had been able, at 
 last, to grow a pachyderm; if he had managed, somehow, to 
 shut up some part of himself so that, perhaps, he suffered less 
 than she and Evey had believed he must. 
 
 The year crept on through a mild October to a Parliamentary 
 upheaval in December; and rumours of peace overtures from 
 Germany and a Peace Note from America; but nothing came 
 of either. And December was wet and foggy and would have 
 depressed you, anyhow. 
 
 Christmas brought more fog and the New Year a thrilling 
 story out of Russia of a Muscovite monk, and war bread and 
 very little sugar and the east wind and snow; and The Aristo- 
 crat at St. James's. Things seemed quiet on Hilary's part of 
 the line, and Helena and Evey worked at their speed practice 
 in the evening, to keep them from thinking that perhaps they 
 might not be. Horrible things happened at sea, and the Revo- 
 lution in Russia. And it snowed on and off all March and the 
 Penn Ponds in Richmond Park were frozen. Skating on 
 them, Evey caught a chill and had to go to bed. 
 
 338
 
 WASTE SHORES 339 
 
 It was at the end of March that Hilary wrote to say he 
 might be coming home " any day " on leave. They were to 
 look for him each morning in case he might be coming up the 
 road. He and the primroses could come back to England to- 
 gether. . . . 
 
 But April arrived in the midst of winter and with more frost 
 and snow, but by the new law it was " summer time," so Helena 
 put on the clocks, and Evey got better and the Americans came 
 into the war. But no Hilary to Chelsea. 
 
 From Yorkshire Cissie wrote that Walter had been wounded 
 and was in hospital in Wales, and that Jerome's knee had given 
 out and that he had had to come home. They saw him drive 
 past in the mornings in a new Courtney, painted red, and if you 
 met him on foot you saw that he limped. 
 
 Life went on pretty much this year as it had last. Out- 
 wardly, at least, the war did not seem to make very much 
 difference to people, except that food was dear, and clothes, and 
 the streets dark at nights, and there were gaps. . . . People 
 wore an air, somehow, of having accepted the war as part of 
 life. One can, in time, get used to anything. Only Helena 
 couldn't. She could not accept . . . could not forget. Hilary 
 was in France and her heart was there with him. This death 
 in life! How much longer was it to go on? 
 
 The days slipped by and suddenly it was Primrose Day again, 
 bringing with it poignant bitter-sweet memories, but no Hilary. 
 And what was worse, no letters. And no mysterious flat pack- 
 ages. Nothing. A week passed and still nothing. . . . Just 
 silence and, at night, Helena's quiet sobbing in the dark. . . . 
 
 It was on the last day in April that Nelly came in en route 
 for Woolwich and talked pleasantly about nothing for ten 
 minutes and looked worried. Nelly was one of the people who 
 had " guessed " long ago. 
 
 " Come down to the door with me," she said to Evey, as she 
 pulled on her gloves. 
 
 Helena and Evey had only just finished tea. Helena picked 
 up the tray and disappeared into the kitchen and Evey went 
 down with Nelly.
 
 340 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 " Look here," Nelly said at the door, " they've sent a letter 
 of mine back. . . ." 
 
 "A letter . . . whose letter? " 
 
 " Mine, to Hilary. I came in to see if any of Lena's had 
 come back. But you just can't ask her things like that. . . ." 
 
 " Nothing's come," said Evey. " We can't hear anything." 
 
 Nelly looked relieved. 
 
 " Oh, it's probably all right then. He's got moved up the 
 line somewhere, I expect . . . lost sight of. Some mistake, 
 anyhow. These things happen. . . . Don't \ say anything to 
 Lena, and, look here, can't you do something with her? Make 
 her go out. ... I can't bear to look at her." 
 
 " You can't do anything with Lena when she shuts herself 
 up like that; though you rap at the door till your knuckles 
 ache she won't let you in. She's like that: she always hides 
 what she feels. ... It was just the same when Hilary first 
 went . . . and when he went back after leave. . . ." 
 
 " I know . . . that awful mask. Don't say anything about 
 the letter. I expect it's all right, only one gets worried. . . ." 
 
 Evey went upstairs again. 
 
 Helena had finished her washing up and sat reading the 
 English Review. Evey waited for her to speak, to ask what 
 Nelly wanted. She said nothing, however. Just looked up 
 and smiled. 
 
 " Nelly's been to the Coliseum to see Madame Navarro 
 Mary Anderson you know. Some charity performance. . . ." 
 
 "Oh yes. Was she good? " 
 
 " Better than the play, Nelly says." 
 
 In the presence of Helena's calm face these admirably told 
 lies seemed suddenly unnecessary. Evey stopped telling them 
 and presently she and Helena settled down to their speed 
 practice. 
 
 The weeks passed six of them came and went, empty of 
 hand, and at the end of them Vivien dug Brian out of his 
 Government Office to pull strings. He pulled them inde- 
 fatigably and with no result. But he did more than pull 
 strings. He waited hours at the War Office in a long queue 
 . . . still with no result. More and more interviews and no 
 news even then save that the fighting round Arras had been
 
 WASTE SHORES 341 
 
 long and costly, which you could read for yourself if you were 
 so minded in your morning paper. 
 
 Then, with that appalling suddenness with which the thing 
 waited for always does come, Hilary was posted by the War 
 Office as missing, and Helena's letters to Hilary came back in 
 a batch. 
 
 All her life Evey always remembered how they found them, 
 lying there on the doormat, and the way Helena took them up, 
 turned them over in her hands with a little hopeless gesture, 
 most infinitely tender and pathetic, and went on up the stairs 
 without a word. 
 
 There in the blue studio she sat till long after midnight, 
 saying nothing. It was her silence that Evey found terrifying: 
 that made her chatter hopefully when hope seemed dead. 
 Returned letters were not as definite as all that: the word 
 "missing" left loopholes: "no news was good news" and 
 all the rest of the useless cliches. They fell as flat as the un- 
 necessary lies. Helena only sat there, her hand on Mark 
 Antony's soft head, her face like a stone. You couldn't get 
 near her. Evey was right: you might rap until your knuckles 
 were sore. She would not let you in: doubtful, even, if she 
 would hear. . . . 
 
 Evey got her to bed presently, brought her some hot milk 
 and sat on the edge of the bed while she drank it. 
 
 " You look so tired. Do try to sleep. Don't you feel that 
 you could? " 
 
 " I feel as if I shall never sleep again ! " 
 
 June passed, leaving a record of fine weather, of battles and 
 still more battles: of abdications and resignations in high 
 places and of a daylight raid on London. She had brought 
 sorrow to many, a Zeppelin to destruction on the Kentish 
 coast and the first Americans to France. 
 
 Other things, too. Colour and perfume and the drifting
 
 342 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 song of birds: clear skies and dusky woods: green paths and 
 the roaming winds. White daisies, buttercups and sweetbriar 
 and honeysuckle; the deep unfathomable summer night and 
 a yellow lantern of a moon. . . . 
 
 But one was ungrateful, forgot these things and hoped July 
 would be better. 
 
 July came. She brought another daylight raid and more 
 battles, and more Americans to France and news of the Rus- 
 sians retreating. . . . Lime blossoms, too, came with her, and 
 the scent of them and of new mown hay, and roses in the gar- 
 dens, and a large moon, unbelievably calm and white. . . . 
 
 August came and summer's " overplus," the scent of the 
 deep red roses and the colour that blinds. 
 
 For Helena the record of those months from June to Sep- 
 tember was merely a record of day succeeding day, each a little 
 blanker than the other, with hope fighting every inch of the 
 way and despair coming up redly like an angry dawn. She 
 fought on along a darkening road, with panic pressing her 
 forward and despair's spear at her heart. 
 
 Hilary lived somewhere, somehow because he simply 
 could not be dead. You could not imagine him dead he who 
 had said that death was something which happened to other 
 people, and had believed it. But sometimes the point of 
 despair's sharp spear was unbearable and she turned to ask 
 men in uniform who sat next to her in 'bus or tube how 
 long one might dare to " hope " after that word " missing " 
 had come through. They gave her, most of them, six months: 
 two, greatly daring, gave her nine. For anything might have 
 happened after a battle like that round Arras, they told her; 
 and a lot of things, too, about prisoners they had known or 
 had heard of. 
 
 So Helena struggled on through the shadows and Brian went 
 on worrying the War Office, while August and September 
 waned and passed. October came season of bombs and gun- 
 fire frightfulness. 
 
 Towards the end of the month Philip Roscoe came home with 
 fever and suddenly there was considerably less of Evey, and 
 Estelle came frequently to the studio of an evening and played 
 to Helena on Hilary's black Bliithner grand. 
 
 On one such evening Helena took out the mysterious flat
 
 WASTE SHORES 343 
 
 packages Hilary had sent, cut the string of each and drew out 
 its contents. A passion to know what Hilary had written was 
 upon her, but when she had arranged the pages in order, she 
 sat with them on her lap, unable to get beyond the words 
 Hilary had written there at the head of the topmost: "The 
 Diary of a Soldier in France, 1916." Her courage had ebbed 
 down and out. She had to wait until it drifted back again. It 
 took some time, but presently she managed to begin. 
 
 While Estelle played Helena read through this diary of a 
 sensitive soul caught in the horrors and abominations 
 of Armageddon. And when the music stopped she still read 
 on. 
 
 "Finished reading? " Estelle asked from the piano. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then may I turn out the light? It's so much nicer to 
 play in the dark! " 
 
 The light went out and suddenly the room was full of 
 shadows. A blue flame danced along the walls and across the 
 floor, and Helena went down into hell. . . . 
 
 At Hilary's piano Estelle played, beautifully, the Sonata 
 Appassionata. 
 
 But Helena did not hear: it was dark in hell and someone 
 had slammed a heavy door behind her. The Sonata Appas- 
 sionata came to an end, but Estelle went on playing scraps of 
 Bach, Schubert and old airs from Purcell; and presently the 
 heavy door opened again and Helena emerged. 
 
 "What a smell of burning paper! " 
 
 Estelle's voice rose, bell-like, over the soft melody of Pur- 
 cell's Knotting Song, 
 
 Helena, on her knees before the fire, was feeding it with the 
 pages she had been reading that had dragged her down there 
 into the pit. 
 
 He had not meant her to know . . . had written her those 
 cheerful sunny letters while he suffered that. He had writ- 
 ten it down not that she should read it there in misery, but that 
 later they might read it together when the thing was done and 
 life began afresh. It was to be a testimony to the truth when 
 people were forgetting and historians were lying again. 
 Neither we nor any child of ours, Deirdre, must forget what 
 war really looks like without its trappings of romance. The
 
 344 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 only hope for the world is that we never allow people to for- 
 get. . . . 
 
 She, certainly, would never forget. No child of theirs 
 would ever be born, and he who had suffered these things was 
 dead. . . . 
 
 Down there in hell she had seen that fact written clearly in 
 letters of blood that flamed across the dark. And the world 
 was appallingly empty. 
 
 It was not good to be left behind. Barbara was right. 
 Better the arena and death than this vast emptiness. Even 
 for the young, who ought scarcely to know that death is ... 
 or what it is. 
 
 From that day Helena, to Evey, in some subtle fashion 
 was changed. Difficult to say how, precisely, save that 
 hope had gone from her: though she never mentioned the 
 word, you could see she believed that Hilary was dead. And 
 some little piece of Helena had died, too, and had got itself 
 buried in Hilary's grave. What was left of her, bruised and 
 battered, struggled up to look out at a strange new empty world 
 and shuddered eternally away from it. And a drama not of 
 resignation but of rebellion was being played. 
 
 It was true, of course, as Barbara said, that one cannot live 
 on rebellion; but it was also true that Helena could not teach 
 her heart submission; could not submerge the individual into 
 issues vastly greater and (probably) more important. Like 
 any Wells heroine, she wanted passionately " her " things: was 
 possessed of a fierce resentment against life and fate, a deep 
 hatred of man-made statecraft and " civilisation." The futility 
 of it all gripped her by the throat, choking her as Hilary's 
 Diary had choked the fire that night. Life had no longer any 
 meaning or sense, but had become a blind unreasoning force 
 towards which humanity lifted impotent hands of supplica- 
 tion. . . . 
 
 Ursula, writing from her Yorkshire hills, with bitter griefs 
 of her own to staunch, attempted, at least, to give it a meaning. 
 It was not her fault she did not succeed: for there Helena held 
 the trump card. With those sentences from the Diary written 
 in blood upon her heart she smiled bitterly, a little cynically,
 
 WASTE SHORES 345 
 
 pr rhaps, at Ursula's sacrificial halo. They died, these dear 
 people we loved, as they would have wished. I do not think 
 we ought, in our grief, to let ourselves forget that. 
 
 Even Evey took something of that line. 
 
 " But, dear, he chose to go. He went freely. He wouldn't 
 have been out of it ... with so many others in. ... It is 
 true, so far, isn't it? " 
 
 But Helena wouldn't admit it. Evey and Ursula didn't 
 know hadn't read that, the thing that had choked the fire. 
 And sometimes she wished she had not read it either, because, 
 somehow, " that " was a thing you couldn't fight against. 
 Always it twisted the weapon from your hand, turned it against 
 you, and wrenched open your wound. 
 
 Stephen might have helped her here, if he had been available, 
 but back in September Stephen had carried his ideals into 
 prison, where you felt they would be even more uncomfortable 
 than they had been outside in the world. Stella, who wanted to 
 know for certain whether Stephen and his ideals were really 
 within, had waited at the prison gates in a downpour for a 
 couple of hours, because warders were not there to answer 
 questions and objected to doing so, anyway. After which she 
 and Hilary Elizabeth caught the next train to Brighton, doomed 
 to their relatives' pity and hospitality but keeping bright 
 faces; Hilary Elizabeth because her face was always bright, 
 and Stella because Stephen had enjoined it. Stella believed 
 in Stephen without understanding him. She knew he could 
 not do anything mean or paltry: by no means clever or bril- 
 liant, she had nevertheless learned the lesson some of her 
 cleverer brothers and sisters had yet to learn the granting 
 of sincerity and nobility of purpose to those we think mis- 
 guided. 
 
 It was in January, when the snowdrops and scyllas were 
 showing and the world, all black and white, was like an ex- 
 tended etching, that Helena dropped quietly out of the fight. 
 The first sign came when she sent in her resignation to Mr. 
 Bletchington and announced the fact quite quietly to Evey the 
 next morning at breakfast.
 
 346 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 " But why? " Evey asked. 
 
 " Because I can't go on." 
 
 " Helping him, you mean? " 
 
 Helena nodded. 
 
 " It's just got to stop ... I can't go on. I'm leaving on 
 Friday." 
 
 " Didn't he try to keep you? " 
 
 " He offered me a month's holiday . . . told me to come and 
 see him at the end of it!" She laughed. "As though 
 a month would make any difference! Or a thousand 
 months! " 
 
 Evey was worried. While Helena worked things were not 
 so hopeless. Work kept you sane. Very pale and thin, Helena 
 looked as though she wanted a holiday, but Evey, hardening her 
 heart, was convinced that was the very thing she must not have. 
 She simply must not be allowed to be idle, must not be allowed 
 to think. But for all that, Evey was powerless. Helena gave 
 no indication of finding other work, though she reiterated her 
 determination not to return to Mr. Bletchington. Evey sug- 
 gested Yorkshire, thinking of Ursula, forgetting Jerome. 
 Helena must have forgotten him, too, for a look of utter wist- 
 fulness crept into her eyes. Then she remembered and shook 
 her head. 
 
 Sometimes Evey was worried not only about Helena, but 
 about the future. That was a thing Helena would not dis- 
 cuss. She wanted just to stay where she was ... let things 
 drift. 
 
 " But, Lena, we can't always. When things are settled . . . 
 we've got to decide something." 
 
 She meant (but could not say) that soon Hilary would be 
 presumed dead and John Wyatt, who was Hilary's executor, 
 would be granted probate, and his estate wound up. Helena 
 and she couldn't go on living there always, even if, as Evey 
 supposed, Hilary had left his inheritance to Helena, the thing 
 would be unwise. But things of that sort did not interest 
 Helena any longer. What did it matter where one lived or 
 what one did? The only thing that mattered was how long 
 before one began to forget, before one ceased to suffer, like 
 this? 
 
 It seemed to Evey that in those first three weeks of January,
 
 WASTE SHORES 347 
 
 nineteen-eighteen, Helena floated rapidly down stream, borne 
 along by Heaven alone knew what invisible tides of grief and 
 apathy. Nothing happened to mark one day from another. 
 They had, all of them, a hideous sinister sameness, so that you 
 hated and distrusted them. For Helena there were a lot of 
 days to come, because she was young and strong and was not 
 going to die: one did not die by wishing. The future was 
 there, unknown and unknowable, lying deeply in shadow and 
 Helena was too tired to think or worry about it. The day 
 was enough. In it, let us eat, drink and not expect to be 
 merry. For merriment was dead, like " the battalions that 
 were youth." 
 
 " What do you do all day ? " Evey asked her once, coming 
 in from the office and finding her there by the fire with idle 
 hands resting listlessly in her lap. 
 
 "Walk," Helena said. 
 
 "But where? You can't walk all the day." 
 
 " I can. It makes you tired if you walk long enough. I 
 like to be tired because then things don't matter. Nothing 
 matters. And sometimes you can sleep." 
 
 Helena did not, much, these days. Evey knew that. 
 
 " But where do you go? " 
 
 " Oh, anywhere. It doesn't matter where. Richmond, 
 Kew . . . Epsom . . . Chessington . . . Jordan's. Yesterday it 
 was some place called Edmonton. . . ." 
 
 "Good Lord," said Evey. "Why?" 
 
 " No reason. A 'bus was going there. I got on it. The 
 man next to me said it was the ugliest 'bus route in London. I 
 think he was right." 
 
 " Where else do you go? " 
 
 "Sometimes to the British Museum." 
 
 "You can't. It's shut." 
 
 " The Reading Room isn't." 
 
 " But you haven't got a Reader's ticket." 
 
 " I say I have. They believe me. At least they did until 
 yesterday. . . . That's why I went to Edmonton." 
 
 Then one wretched day Phil came across her at Victoria, 
 watching a leave train come in. 
 
 " This can't go on," Evey wailed to Phil when he told her. 
 " Do think of something."
 
 348 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 But Phil couldn't. And the worst of it was he was going to 
 France again at the end of the month. 
 
 " I'd rather she'd taken it like Pamela," Evey wailed on. 
 " She felt nothing. Nothing at all." 
 
 "Anything's better than that she should be like Pamela," 
 Phil said with decision. He detested Pamela. 
 
 " But it isn't. At least Pamela doesn't suffer. And Lena 
 does. The old Lena we loved is dead. Dead and buried . . . 
 in Hilary's grave, wherever it is. The new one we can't even 
 get at. She doesn't care about us any more at all." 
 
 The crisis came, however, towards the end of the month, 
 on a Monday evening. Helena was out when Phil and Evey 
 came in to tea, and they had their meal without her. Presently, 
 in the way anxious people have, Phil went down to the door to 
 look for her, as though that could hurry her up. He was still 
 there when the first indications of the raid came, and Evey put 
 on her own hat and coat, seized Philip's and tore down after 
 him. 
 
 " We've got to go and look for her," Evey said. 
 
 " But where? " the distracted Phil wanted to know. 
 
 " We'll try Victoria first. Come on." 
 
 Not too easily they reached Victoria - a strange unfamiliar 
 place with only a stray porter or two and no trains. Certainly 
 no Helena. 
 
 They made for the street, and there the specials met them, 
 turning them back. There was a hideous noise going on out- 
 side: the streets were deserted, save for an empty 'bus or tram 
 that rushed past like the wind made visible. 
 
 " Dangerous to go out, sir," said a special to Phil. " Where 
 do you want to get to? " 
 
 Phil didn't know. How explain that they were looking for 
 someone who, for all they knew, had chosen to take her walk 
 on the other side of London? 
 
 " Damn ! " said Evey. " We can't stay here. Come on, 
 Phil. Ask him if the tube's running. . . ." 
 
 But she asked him herself before Phil had a chance. 
 
 The special said it was.
 
 WASTE SHORES 349 
 
 They burrowed again, and got back with some difficulty to 
 South Kensington station. No 'buses were running, but Evey 
 would not wait. Hand in hand they ran, like demented crea- 
 tures, through the deserted Chelsea streets, past people shelter- 
 ing in porches and specials who shouted warnings. Reaching 
 home Evey dashed upstairs, flung open the door and switched 
 on the light. No Helena. The room was empty save for 
 Mark Antony. 
 
 Eleven o'clock, twelve, one o'clock came and the " All 
 Clear " signal, and presently footsteps on the stairs. Evey flew 
 to the door and opened it, and Helena came in slowly, as 
 though infinitely weary, and without looking at them sat down 
 in the blue chair by the fire. 
 
 " I'm so tired," she said. 
 
 She took off her hat and sat holding it limply over the arm 
 of the chair. They pounced on her, pelting her with questions. 
 What had happened to her: where had she been? 
 
 " Richmond." 
 
 " When the raid began? " 
 
 The hat she was holding dropped on the floor. They left it 
 there. 
 
 " Yes. I was walking down the Terrace looking at the river. 
 Then the searchlights came out like white daggers." 
 
 " But when the noise began? You didn't stay up there 
 then, looking at the river? " 
 
 Helena wrinkled her forehead as though she could not re- 
 member. 
 
 " People began to run." 
 
 " Why didn't you run with them? " 
 
 " I don't remember." 
 
 ^ What du/ you do?" I 
 
 " I went- on to the station. People kept running by and 
 shouting out things. Somebody got hold of me and pulled me 
 along. I was too tired. . . . They went on without me." 
 
 " And when you got to the station? What then? " 
 
 Evey was impatient. 
 
 " There weren't any trains. I walked . . . miles, it seemed. 
 At Barnes I found another station. I think it must have been 
 Barnes because there was a common. Ever so long afterwards 
 a train came in. I got out somewhere . . . Clapham Junction,
 
 350 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 I think." She wrinkled her forehead again, in this painful 
 effort to remember. " There weren't any 'buses, I suppose. I 
 don't know. I think I walked. . . . I'm so tired. I couldn't 
 be as tired as all this if I hadn't." 
 
 Evey said nothing just sat there at Philip's feet and 
 sobbed, her head on his knee. 
 
 " Why does she cry? " Helena asked Phil. " I wish she 
 wouldn't. It makes my head ache." 
 
 Evey stopped crying, sat up, blew her nose hard and went 
 into the kitchen. She emerged presently, dry-eyed, and with 
 hot milk which she made Helena drink. 
 
 Phil spent that night curled up on the blue divan. 
 
 8 
 
 The wan January morning was looking in through the win- 
 dow when Evey awoke to find Helena sitting up in bed chanting 
 something in a high shrill voice. 
 
 " April again . . . two days to Primrose Day. . . . What 
 does it matter? We shan't see any primroses here. ... I can 
 see them as they grew down there in Kent, flowing over the 
 roadside like a yellow sea. You trod on them, as you walked. 
 And primroses in a blue frock I know. April ought to be 
 green and gold. And here it's all red. . . ." 
 
 And then, all over again from the beginning. 
 
 "What does it matter? We shan't see any primroses 
 here. ..." 
 
 Evey tumbled out of bed and sent Phil for a doctor, then 
 went into the kitchen and hunted for lemons. Because Phil 
 looking at Helena had said " Fever, of some sort," and lemons 
 were supposed to be good for fever. 
 
 The young slim woman with the earnest eyes who came back 
 with Phil and announced herself as a doctor, said they must 
 have a nurse. 
 
 , Helena faced the world again on a windy day in March, and 
 with reluctance, for bed was a comfortable place where you 
 did not need to make any effort at all. And if you remem- 
 bered things that were too poignant and terrible you just
 
 WASTE SHORES 351 
 
 turned your face to the wall and people thought you were 
 asleep. But the young woman with the earnest eyes had 
 said that she was well enough to get up. The studio was full 
 of flowers, and Ursula, for whom Evey had sent, had put 
 a little pile of cards and letters on the table for her to look 
 at. Letters from Nelly, from Vivien, Stella, Cissie and Wal- 
 ter; cards from Brian and Barbara, and one, quite plain, on 
 which was scrawled in a hand she knew, " J. R. C." with a 
 few flowers. 
 
 Jerome too ! Easy to see which were his flowers a great 
 handful of them, red roses and pink, fragrant and unseason- 
 able, like the peaches on the table that he must also have sent. 
 Ursula had put the roses in Hilary's pewter vase (the one he 
 had bought that morning at Liberty's), and the sight of them 
 there touched some tender fretted string of memory. Helena's 
 mouth quivered. She went over to them, stooped to smell them 
 and saw not the roses at all, but only slender hands she had 
 loved, that turned the vase round and round up there on a 'bus 
 in the windy day. . . . 
 
 She buried her face in them asked no questions. 
 
 The days of convalescence passed. Helena regretted each 
 one as it went, because it was pleasant to lie here in the March 
 sunshine and feel that one was expected to do nothing at all, 
 save take slow walks round the Chelsea Squares and read the 
 books Evey brought in from Mudie's and talk to Ursula of little 
 trivial things like the weather and the cripples (even they 
 seemed trivial, somehow, but then most things were; most 
 things, that is, that one could talk of at all). Ursula talked 
 sometimes of Evey, whom she liked. She supposed that Evey, 
 one day, would be marrying that nice Mr. Roscoe who had been 
 here when she came. Helena had not thought of that, but it 
 was true, of course. Evey's world was not empty. There were 
 lots of things for Evey. And for her? Nothing. Nothing 
 at all. Things for her were finished. It was as though she 
 and Hilary had sat through a rapturous prelude, and had had 
 to go out before the main theme developed. Never, now, 
 would she or he! know what the finished symphony was 
 like. 
 
 Helena grew rapidly better as the days passed, but though 
 her strength revived her soul felt threadbare. She no longer
 
 352 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 wanted to fight, because the part of her that had wanted to do 
 that had died. These idle dreaming days were tolerable. 
 Perhaps they would go on for ever. 
 
 Presently it was April again an unbearable month trailing 
 sharp-edged memories. Helena shrank away from it, not want- 
 ing to see the swelling buds on the beech and chestnut trees, 
 nor the mists of pale lilac nor the primroses they sold in the 
 streets. But the earnest-eyed woman-doctor insisted that she 
 must go out into the sun, and because it was easier to go than 
 to explain why she wanted to hide, she went. 
 
 Yet she realised, none the less, that from now onwards it 
 was always going to be easier to do things than to explain why 
 you would rather not. 
 
 So Helena and Ursula continued to walk abroad in the April 
 weather, until presently it was May and Ursula began to talk of 
 going home to Yorkshire. 
 
 Quite suddenly then there woke up in Helena a queer longing 
 for the moors and the things that grew on them, the strong 
 winds that blew over them, the peace that was theirs, indige- 
 nous like the heather and the bilberry bush. Peace, most 
 of all, was what she wanted. Peace and retreat and healing. 
 Must one go back to Yorkshire to look for them? 
 
 Then one day just as tea was ready there was a ring at the 
 front door bell. Ursula went down to answer it and it was 
 some time before her step came on the stair again, and with it 
 another, heavier, more deliberate, and the sound of a masculine 
 voice. Waiting there at the table the colour came into 
 Helena's face. An impulse seized her to turn and flee. Then 
 the door opened and an anxious-faced Ursula said steadily: 
 
 " Here is a visitor for you, my dear! " 
 
 She stepped on one side, and, limping a little, Jerome came 
 into the room.
 
 CHAPTER EIGHT 
 
 IT was Helena who spoke first, though she never remem- 
 bered what it was she said. Neither of them ever remem- 
 bered much of anything of that meeting. But somehow 
 Jerome took a seat at the table and Ursula gave him some tea: 
 and they talked, quite intelligently, of intelligent things. 
 
 Presently they had the room to themselves. How that hap- 
 pened, too, they did not remember. Some shadowy mental pic- 
 ture of Ursula with a basket stayed with them and some excuse 
 (equally shadowy) about a shop that had been forgotten. 
 Anyhow, it was all grotesquely like the beginning of things 
 away there in that old house on the edge of the moor when 
 Jerome used first to come to dinner and people schemed to leave 
 them alone together. 
 
 Time passed. A good deal of it. A trivial conversation be- 
 gan, halting and uncertain. Ursula did not come back. The 
 trivial conversation fluttered like a faint breeze before thunder 
 and died down. And still Ursula did not come. It grew 
 darker: the fire sank lower. Shadows danced into the room 
 and with them memories, sharp-edged, like those that came with 
 April. Across the gloom the painted figure of Hilary's " Deir- 
 dre " gleamed, shadow-strewn. Away there in the corner, its 
 face covered and turned to the wall, was " Interior." That, 
 now, would never be finished. Ars longa. . . . The intoler- 
 able memories surged and surged. Helena shivered in the chill 
 May evening. For how should one ever forget? And how 
 could one bear to live if one should not? 
 
 "Lena. I came to ask you something. . . . May I? " 
 
 Out of the pain and the quiet and the intolerable memories, 
 Jerome's voice. And her own, tremulous with things remem- 
 bered. 
 
 "Of course. . . ." 
 
 353
 
 354 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 " I want you to come back." 
 
 " To you? " 
 
 "To 'Windward.'" 
 
 Even in that shadow-girt room he saw the little spasm that 
 passed over her face. Was it wistfulness or distaste? One 
 could not tell in this half-light. And she said nothing. An 
 interval long as eternity before she spoke. 
 
 " But I have nothing to give you. Nothing at all. Not one 
 of the things you will want." 
 
 " I want nothing that you are not willing to give. I ask 
 nothing. Just come back. On your own terms." 
 
 Pity, not wistfulness, sat now in Helena's eyes, and for the 
 first time pity seemed to her something other than the wholly 
 detestable virtue she had always thought it. It appeared, 
 almost, a thing upon which one might erect a new life. Invis- 
 ible tides! Where now were they bearing her? A strange 
 thing, this that Jerome should be asking her to go back. 
 After all that had happened. But what was stranger still was 
 that she could bear to think of returning. Because she found 
 that she could. 
 
 She wanted peace and retreat and healing, and Jerome was 
 offering them to her. For nothing. Nothing at all. One had 
 to remember that: it was important, since one had nothing left 
 to give. But one had to try to think clearly to get a little 
 deeper. Impossible to do either in this room so full of mem- 
 ories and agonies. 
 
 She moved across the room and switched on the light. 
 
 "Well? "asked Jerome. 
 
 Her face was hidden from him. The big chair shielded her. 
 
 *' Let me think," she said, " let me think. . . ." 
 
 A queer situation. The sort of thing you would say did 
 not happen. Helena herself would have said so. But it had. 
 Here in this blue and silver room she had passed happy hours 
 with the one man she had ever loved. And he was dead. In 
 his stead there sat here now the man who after all that had 
 happened remained still her husband. She had married him
 
 WASTE SHORES 355 
 
 because you have to buy your own experience and some of us 
 are bad marketers and pay too dearly. She had known from 
 the first (in the way women do know, unmistakably) that she 
 had not loved him: but she had for him respect and a sort of 
 genuine liking cold substitutes for love, perhaps, but many 
 people have managed admirably on much less. She, too, per- 
 haps, if Hilary had not come to show her what she had missed. 
 . . . With hands too eager, then, and hearts too greedy, they 
 had snatched and taken. Jerome had been left to realize how 
 very cold love's substitutes really are: what tricks they can 
 play you. . . . 
 
 But here was the end. Here, too, the man despoiled asking 
 her to go back. On her own terms. Asking nothing. Want- 
 ing nothing, save the sight of her, there as of old, in the house 
 she had christened. . . . 
 
 She looked across at him sitting back in Hilary's blue arm- 
 chair, and saw that he had changed: that suffering had not 
 visited him without leaving its mark. And he was her victim. 
 She forgot that, in some sense, she too had been his. Because 
 that hadn't mattered. He had not been able to prevent her 
 from being happy. One did great things for love and cruel 
 things. Love was beyond knowledge and reason and little 
 kindly acts. It was stronger than pity, but it could die, or be 
 made of no account. That was how it had been with hers. 
 It had been made of no account. Hilary had passed out be- 
 yond its reach, and all that was best in her had passed out after 
 him, though it could never overtake him nor come within hail- 
 ing distance. 
 
 Love and she could have no more to say to each other. Some 
 women might love again, but she would not. All that was 
 over. You could not undo it nor forget it. But it was over 
 done with. 
 
 The things of love were dead. The things of pity lived on. 
 
 Jerome realised one thing only as he waited for her to speak. 
 That he loved her after all that had happened! as much 
 as before, even far more. It was a passion of feeling that 
 would go down with him to the grave. You could not explain
 
 356 INVISIBLE TIDES 
 
 or reason about it. It was a thing as inexorable, as unwav- 
 ering, as the law of gravity. 
 
 He did not find her much altered. A little thinner, perhaps, 
 a little older, certainly; with some new quality about her that 
 had not, in quite that way, belonged to the former Helena, and 
 something that was tenderer and wiser looking out of her eyes. 
 In a dim fugitive fashion Jerome realised that she knew more 
 understood more than that slim girl he had fallen in love 
 with and married with so much expedition. For those who go 
 down to sorrow bring back understanding with them. . . . 
 
 The things of pity lived on. ... 
 
 Jerome wanted her. Had always wanted her: so that her 
 going back would make him happy. She scarcely looked for 
 happiness for herself. One does not, in an empty world. It 
 takes you a long time to fill up a world. 
 
 Decision stirred within her. Jerome needed her, and his 
 need stood suddenly as a bulwark between her and the intoler- 
 able emptiness of things. No one else wanted her as Jerome 
 wanted her not even Evey whose life would soon be full of 
 those beautiful things Helena had had and was now done with 
 for ever. Not that you could have had them for nothing. 
 Deep down within her was stored their sweetness and fra- 
 grance. Later one might dig and come to them. Only not 
 now. One had no energy for digging to-day nor any mind 
 for it. 
 
 Meantime, there was Jerome. Jerome had shifted back again 
 into her life. She saw him suddenly as a permanent figure, 
 and knew that she had it in her power to make him happy. 
 Here, now, at the last, she owed him that. It was a debt she 
 could pay. And though she might not have happiness she 
 would certainly have peace. That, at the moment, was the only 
 thing that mattered that she might have peace. 
 
 " Well? " said Jerome again. 
 
 Her slow crooked smile made his heart leap. 
 
 " If you'll have me ... empty-handed," she said, " I'll 
 come."
 
 WASTE SHORES 357 
 
 Later, Evey had to be told. . . . 
 And at the end of a lot of other things she said, 
 " Oh, Lena, it seems like the end of everything. . . ." 
 " But the end," Helena objected, " is so much like the begin- 
 ning, you see. . . ." 
 Evey wept. 
 
 6 
 
 Ursula was wiser than Evey. She knew that life did not 
 come to an end just because the thing you treasured most had 
 dropped out. Life went on. You had to do the best you 
 could for yourself with the things that remained. For Helena 
 there remained Jerome. Ursula liked Jerome and honoured 
 him. He was possessive: he clutched still with both hands 
 at the traditions modernity was tearing from him. But he 
 loved Helena. And Ursula, being wise, knew that you look at 
 your possessions very differently when once you have realised 
 that they are capable of getting up and walking away from you. 
 Moreover, she was optimistic enough to believe that the world 
 must hold some place for two people who honestly desired to 
 make each other happy. . . . 
 
 So Ursula did not weep. 
 
 Two days later Jerome and a car awaited Helena at the door. 
 A car as new and unfamiliar as the scene to which it was bear- 
 ing her. She stepped in, hugging Mark Antony tight in her 
 arms. Jerome tucked the rug round her feet, and Evey and 
 Ursula called good-byes from the open door. 
 
 The London streets took some shaking off: there were so 
 many of them. But presently the open road gleamed ahead 
 and Helena lay bark and closed her eyes. If her heart ached 
 she was not aware of it. She was aware this morning of noth- 
 ing at all save, as of old, that Jerome drove well, and that away 
 there in the hills peace waited. 
 
 THE END
 
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